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• InSync12 and Australia Visits: UX is Global, Regional, Everywhere!

  - by ultan o'broin

  I attended the Australian Oracle User Group (AUSOUG) and Quest International User Group's InSync12 event in Melbourne, Australia: the user group conference for Oracle products in the ANZ region. I demoed Oracle Fusion Applications and then presented how Oracle crafted the world class Fusion Apps user experience (UX). I explained about the Oracle user experience design pattern strategy of uptake for all apps, not just Fusion, and what our UX pattern externalization strategy means for customers, partners, and ADF developers. A great conference, lots of energy, the InSync12 highlights for me were Oracle's Senior Vice President Cliff Godwin’s fast-moving Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) roadshow with the killer Oracle Endeca user experience uptake, and Oracle ADF product outreachmeister Chris Muir’s (@chriscmuir) session on Oracle ADF Mobile solution and his hands-on mobile app development showing how existing ADF/JDev skills can build a secure, code once-deploy-to-many-device hybrid app solution in minutes. Cliff Godwin shows off the Oracle Endeca integration with Oracle E-Business Suite. Chris Muir talked the talk and then walked the walked with Oracle ADF Mobile. Applications UX was mixing it up with the crowd at InSync12 too, showing off cool mobile UX solutions, gathering data for future innovations, and engaging with EBS, JD Edwards, and PeopleSoft apps customers and partners. User conferences such as InSync12 are an important part of our Oracle Applications UX user-centered design process, giving real apps users the opportunity to make real inputs and a way for us to watch and to listen to their needs and wants and get views on current and emerging UX too. Eric Stilan (@icondaddy) of Applications UX uses an iPad to gather feedback on the latest UX designs from conference attendees. While in Melbourne, I also visited impressive Oracle partner, Callista for a major ADF and UX pow-wow, and was the er, star of a very proactive event hosted by another partner Park Lane Information Technology (coordinated by Bambi Price (@bambiprice) of ODTUG) where I explained what UX is about, and how partner and customers can engage, participate and deploy that Applications UX scientific insight to advantage for their entire business. I also paired up with Oracle Australia in Sydney to visit key customers while there, and back at Oracle in Melbourne I spoke with sales consultants and account managers about regional opportunities and UX strategy, and came away with an understanding of what makes the Oracle market tick in Australia. Mobile worker solution development and user experience is hot news in Australia, and this was a great opportunity to team up with Chris Muir and show how the alignment of the twin stars of UX design patterns and ADF technology enables developers to make great-looking, usable apps that really sparkle. Our UX design patterns--or functional (UI) patterns, to use the developer world language--means that developers now have not only a great tool set to build apps on Oracle ADF/FMW but proven, tested usability solutions to solve common problems they can apply in the IDE too. In all, a whirlwind UX visit, packed with events and delivery opportunities, and all too short a time in the wonderful city of Melbourne. I need to get back there soon! For those who need a reminder, there's a website explaining how to get involved with, and participate in, Applications User Experience (including the Oracle Usability Advisory Board) events and programs. Thank you to AUSOUG, Quest, InSync, Callista, Park Lane IT, everyone at Oracle Australia, Chris Muir, and all the other people who came together to make this a productive visit. Stay tuned for more UX developments and engagements in the region on the Oracle VoX blog and Usable Apps website too!

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• Oracle's PeopleSoft Customer Advisory Boards Convene to Discuss Roadmap at Pleasanton Campus

  - by john.webb(at)oracle.com

  Last week we hosted all of the PeopleSoft CABs (Customer Advisory Boards) at our Pleasanton Development Center to review our detailed designs for future Feature Packs, PeopleSoft 9.2, and beyond. Over 150 customers from 79 companies attended representing a variety of industries, geographies, and company sizes. The PeopleSoft team relies heavily on this group to provide key input on our roadmap for applications as well as technology direction. A good product strategy is one part well thought out idea with many handfuls of customer validation, and very often our best ideas originate from these customer discussions. While the individual CABs have frequent interactions with our teams, it's always great to have all of them in one place and in person. Our attendance was up from last year which I attribute to two things: (1) More interest as a result of PeopleSoft 9.1 upgrade; (2) An improving economy allowing for more travel. Maybe we should index the second item meeting-to-meeting and use it as a market indicator - we'll see! We kicked off the day one session with an overview of the PeopleSoft Roadmap and I outlined our strategy around Feature Packs and PeopleSoft 9.2. Given the high adoption rate of PeopleSoft 9.1 (over 4x that of 9.0 given the same time lapse since the release date), there was a lot of interest around the 9.1 Feature Packs as a vehicle for continuous value. We provided examples of our 3 central design themes: Simplicity, Productivity, and lower TCO, including those already delivered via Feature Packs in 2010. A great example of this is the Company Directory feature in PeopleSoft HCM. The configuration capabilities and the new actionable links our CAB advised us on last Spring were made available to all customers late last year. We reviewed many more future Navigation changes that will fundamentally change the way users interact with PeopleSoft. Our old friend, the menu tree, is being relegated from center stage to a bit part, with new concepts like Activity Guides, Train Stops, Related Actions, Work Centers, Collaborative Workspaces, and Secure Enterprise Search bringing users what they need in a contextual, role based manner with fewer clicks. Paco Aubrejuan, our PeopleSoft GM, and Steve Miranda, the SVP for Fusion Applications, then discussed our plans around Oracle's Application Investment Strategy.  This included our continued investment in developing both PeopleSoft and Fusion as well as the co-existence strategy with new Fusion Apps integrating to PeopleSoft Apps. Should you want to view this presentation, a recording is available. Jeff Robbins, our lead PeopleTools Strategist, provided the roadmap for PeopleTools and discussed our continuing plan to deliver annual releases to further evolve the user experience. Numerous examples were highlighted with the Navigation techniques I mentioned previously. Jeff also provided a lot of food for thought around Lifecycle Management topics and how to remain current on releases with a  lower cost of ownership. Dennis Mesler, from Boise, was the guest speaker in this slot, who spoke about the new PeopleSoft Test Framework (PTF). Regression Testing is a key cost component when product updates are applied. This new tool (which is free to all PeopleSoft customers as part of PeopleTools 8.51) provides a meta data driven approach to recording and executing test scripts. Coupled with what our Usage Monitor enables, PTF provides our customers a powerful tool to lower costs and manage product updates more efficiently and at the time of their choosing. Beyond the general session, we broke out into the individual CABs: HCM, Financials, ESA/ALM, SRM, SCM, CRM, and PeopleTools/ Technology. A day and half of very engaging discussions around our plans took place for each product pillar. More about that to follow in future posts.      We capped the first day with a reception sponsored by our partners: InfoSys, SmartERP (represented by Doris Wong), and Grey Sparling  Solutions (represented by Chris Heller and Larry Grey). Great to see these old friends actively engaged in the very busy PeopleSoft ecosystem!   Jeff Robbins previews the roadmap for PeopleTools with the PeopleSoft CAB  

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• Database Mirroring on SQL Server Express Edition

  - by Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)

  Like most SQL Server users I'm rather frustrated by Microsoft's insistence on making the really cool features only available in Enterprise Edition.  And it really doesn't help that they changed the licensing for SQL 2012 to be core-based, so now it's like 4 times as expensive!  It almost makes you want to go with Oracle.  That, and a desire to have Larry Ellison do things to your orifices. And since they've introduced Availability Groups, and marked database mirroring as deprecated, you'd think they'd make make mirroring available in all editions.  Alas…they don't…officially anyway.  Thanks to my constant poking around in places I'm not "supposed" to, I've discovered the low-level code that implements database mirroring, and found that it's available in all editions! It turns out that the query processor in all SQL Server editions prepends a simple check before every edition-specific DDL statement: IF CAST(SERVERPROPERTY('Edition') as nvarchar(max)) NOT LIKE '%e%e%e% Edition%' print 'Lame' else print 'Cool' If that statement returns true, it fails. (the print statements are just placeholders)  Go ahead and test it on Standard, Workgroup, and Express editions compared to an Enterprise or Developer edition instance (which support everything). Once again thanks to Argenis Fernandez (b | t) and his awesome sessions on using Sysinternals, I was able to watch the exact process SQL Server performs when setting up a mirror.  Surprisingly, it's not actually implemented in SQL Server!  Some of it is, but that's something of a smokescreen, the real meat of it is simple filesystem primitives. The NTFS filesystem supports links, both hard links and symbolic, so that you can create two entries for the same file in different directories and/or different names.  You can create them using the MKLINK command in a command prompt: mklink /D D:\SkyDrive\Data D:\Data mklink /D D:\SkyDrive\Log D:\Log This creates a symbolic link from my data and log folders to my Skydrive folder.  Any file saved in either location will instantly appear in the other.  And since my Skydrive will be automatically synchronized with the cloud, any changes I make will be copied instantly (depending on my internet bandwidth of course). So what does this have to do with database mirroring?  Well, it seems that the mirroring endpoint that you have to create between mirror and principal servers is really nothing more than a Skydrive link.  Although it doesn't actually use Skydrive, it performs the same function.  So in effect, the following statement: ALTER DATABASE Mir SET PARTNER='TCP://MyOtherServer.domain.com:5022' Is turned into: mklink /D "D:\Data" "\\MyOtherServer.domain.com\5022$" The 5022$ "port" is actually a hidden system directory on the principal and mirror servers. I haven't quite figured out how the log files are included in this, or why you have to SET PARTNER on both principal and mirror servers, except maybe that mklink has to do something special when linking across servers.  I couldn't get the above statement to work correctly, but found that doing mklink to a local Skydrive folder gave me similar functionality. To wrap this up, all you have to do is the following: Install Skydrive on both SQL Servers (principal and mirror) and set the local Skydrive folder (D:\SkyDrive in these examples) On the principal server, run mklink /D on the data and log folders to point to SkyDrive: mklink /D D:\SkyDrive\Data D:\Data On the mirror server, run the complementary linking: mklink /D D:\Data D:\SkyDrive\Data Create your database and make sure the files map to the principal data and log folders (D:\Data and D:\Log) Viola! Your databases are kept in sync on multiple servers! One wrinkle you will encounter is that the mirror server will show the data and log files, but you won't be able to attach them to the mirror SQL instance while they are attached to the principal. I think this is a bug in the Skydrive, but as it turns out that's fine: you can't access a mirror while it's hosted on the principal either.  So you don't quite get automatic failover, but you can attach the files to the mirror if the principal goes offline.  It's also not exactly synchronous, but it's better than nothing, and easier than either replication or log shipping with a lot less latency. I will end this with the obvious "not supported by Microsoft" and "Don't do this in production without an updated resume" spiel that you should by now assume with every one of my blog posts, especially considering the date.

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• 24 Hours of PASS: Whine, Whine, Whine

  - by Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)

  24 Hours of Pass (or 24HOP) is a great program offered by PASS to provide free, online training for anyone who wants to learn more about SQL Server.  They routinely have the best SQL Server presenters available for these sessions, and attract hundreds, perhaps even a thousand attendees from around the world.  This is definitely one of the best things they've started doing in the past few years, and every session I've attended has been excellent. So why am I so grumpy about it? I'm not really, pretty much everything here is a minor annoyance that I can deal with.  However since they're so minor they seem to be things that can be easily corrected and would make the process much better. First off, this is my biggest gripe, the registration page: https://www323.livemeeting.com/lrs/8000181573/Registration.aspx?pageName=lj6378f4fhf5hpdm What grinds my gears about this?  I have to scroll alllllllllllllllllllllllllllll the way to bottom to actually register for the sessions.  This wouldn't be so bad except all the details of the session, including the presenter, is in a separate list at the top.  Both lists contain info the other does not, and scrolling between them to determine "Should I make time to listen to this?  Who is speaking at this time anyway?" is really unnecessary. My preference would be to keep the top list and add the checkboxes and schedule info in separate columns.  This is a full-width design, so there's plenty of space for this data, which is pretty small anyway.  The other huge benefit is halving the size of the page, which improves performance and lowers bandwidth usage considerably.  And if you know HTML/ASP.Net, and you view the page source, you can find PLENTY of other things that can be reduced even further.  (not just viewstate) One nice thing that PASS does is send iCal reminders to your email address so you can accept them to your calendar.  Again, they leave off the presenter in the appointment details, while still duplicating the meeting title in the body.  Sometimes I make decisions based on speaker rather than content (Natalie Portman is reading the Yellow Pages??? I'M THERE!) and having the speaker in the iCal is helpful. Next minor annoyances are the necessity for providing a company name, and the survey questions.  I know PASS needs to market themselves effectively, and they need information to do that, and since this is a free event it's really not worth complaining about, but why ask the survey question twice? (once at registration, once again when joining the LiveMeeting)  Same thing for the company name.  All of this should be tied to email address, so that's all I should need to enter when joining the LiveMeeting. The last one is also minor, but it irks me in this day and age of multiple browsers and the decline of Internet Explorer as a dominant platform.  The registration page was originally created in Visual Studio 2003, and has a lot of IE-specific crud representative of the browser situation of 2003. (IE5 references? really? and is the aforementioned viewstate big enough?)  This causes some grief with other browsers like Firefox, Chrome, and sometimes IE8 or 9.  And don't get me started on using the page on a Mac or in Safari. My main point is that PASS is an international organization, welcoming everyone from all levels of SQL Server proficiency, and in that spirit I think it would help to accommodate a wider range of browser software, especially since the registration page is extremely simple.  I recognize that this page is not hosted on the PASS website and may be maintained by some division of Microsoft, but to me that's even worse if MS can't update their own pages.  They've deprecated IE6, so they don't need to maintain support on their own websites anymore. OK, I'll shut up now. #sqlpass #24HOP

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• TechEd Israel 2010 may only accept speakers from sponsors

  - by RoyOsherove

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

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• T-SQL Tuesday - the swag

  - by Rob Farley

  This month’s T-SQL Tuesday is hosted by Kendal van Dyke (@SQLDBA), and is on the topic of swag. He asks about the best SQL Server swag that we’ve ever received from a conference. I can’t say I ever focus on getting the swag at conferences, as I see some people doing. I know there are plenty of people that get around all the sponsors as soon as they’ve arrived, collecting whatever goodies they can, sometimes as token gifts for those at home, sometimes as giveaways for the user groups they attend. I remember a few years ago at my first PASS Summit, the SQLCAT team gave me a large pile of leftover SQL Server swag to give away to my user group – piles of branded things to stop your phone sliding off your car dashboard, and other things. The user group members thought it was great, and over the course of a few months, happily cleared me out of it all. I tend to consider swag to be something that you haven’t earned except by being at a conference, and there was no winning associated with it, it was simply a giveaway item at a sponsor booth. That means I don’t include the HP Mini laptop that was given away at TechEd Australia a few years ago to every attendee, or the SQL Server bag and Camelbak bottle that I was given as a thank-you for writing a guest blog post (which I use as my regular laptop bag and water bottle for work). I don’t even include the copy of Midtown Madness that I got as a door prize at my vey first TechEd event in 1999 (that was a really good game, and even meant that when I went to Chicago last year, I felt a strange familiarity about the place). I don’t want to include shirts in the mix either. I was given a nice SQL Server shirt about five years ago TechEd Australia. It’s a business shirt (buttons, cuffs, pocket on the chest), black with the SQL Server logo on it. It was such a nice shirt that I commented about it to the Product Marketing Manager for Australia (Christine, at the time), who unexpectedly arranged for me to get another one. That was certainly an improvement on the tent I was given at one of the MVP conference I attended. So when I consider these ‘rules’, two pieces of swag come to mind, and I think both were at PASS Summits (although I can’t be sure). One was a hand-warmer from HP, one of the “crystallisation-type” ones, which proved extremely popular when I got home, until one day when it didn’t survive being recharged – not overly SQL related, but still it was good swag. The other was an umbrella, from expressor, which was from the PASS Summit in 2010, my first PASS Summit. I remember it well – Blythe Morrow (now Gietz) (@blythemorrow) was working the booth, having stopped working for PASS some time before, but she’d been on my list of people to meet, as I’d had plenty of contact with her while she’d worked at PASS, my being a chapter leader and general volunteer. There had been an expressor dinner on one of the first evenings, which I’d been asked to be at, which is when I’d met lots of SQL people in person for the first time, including Ted Krueger (@onpnt), Jessica Moss (@jessicamoss) and Blythe. Anyway, at some point the next day I swung by their booth to say hello and thank them for the dinner, and Blythe says “Oh, we have the best swag – here!” and handed me an umbrella. And she was right. It’s excellent. @rob_farley

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• Oracle OpenWorld Update: Oracle GoldenGate for High Availability

  - by Doug Reid

  0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false /* 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-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:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} One of our primary themes this year for the Oracle OpenWorld Sessions featuring Oracle GoldenGate is High Availability. This is a pretty wide theme, but the focus will be on ways of maximizing uptime for critical systems during planned and unplanned events. We have a number of very informative sessions dedicated to exploring this theme in detail; from deep product implementation strategies up to lessons learned by our customers when using Oracle GoldenGate to meet strict SLAs. We kick this track off with our Customer Panel on Zero Downtime Operations on Monday, which I overviewed in my last posting. This is followed by Comcast, who will be hosting a sessions at 1:45PM in Moscone West 3014. Their session will discuss using Oracle GoldenGate to reduce downtime during a database upgrade. Here’s an overview: CON8571 - Oracle Database Upgrade with Oracle GoldenGate: Best Practices from Comcast Does your business demand high availability? In this session, Comcast, among the largest telecom firms in the world, shares tips on how to achieve zero downtime while upgrading to Oracle Database 11g Release 2, using a combination of Oracle technologies: Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC), Oracle Database’s Grid Infrastructure and Oracle Recovery Manager (Oracle RMAN) features, Oracle GoldenGate, and Oracle Active Data Guard. This successful upgrade took place on a mission-critical system that handles more than 60 million business requests and service calls a day. You’ll also hear how Comcast leverages Oracle Advanced Customer Support Services, including an Oracle Solution Support Center, to maximize performance and availability of its Oracle technologies. On Tuesday, Joydip Kundu (Director of Software Development) will be presenting “Oracle GoldenGate and Oracle Data Guard: Working Together Seamlessly” at 10:15AM in Moscone South 3005. This session focuses on how both modes of Oracle GoldenGate extract (Classic and Integrated Capture) can be used with Oracle Data Guard for disaster recovery purposes or to offload extract processing. That afternoon at 1:15PM Comcast takes the stage again to discuss firsthand lessons learned implementing Oracle GoldenGate in a heterogeneous, highly available environment. Here’s a rundown of their session: CON8750 - High-Volume OLTP with Oracle GoldenGate: Best Practices from Comcast Does your business demand high availability in a mission-critical environment? In this session, Comcast, one of the largest telecom firms, shares best practices for leveraging Oracle GoldenGate to replicate high-volume online transaction processing data from Tandem NSK SQL/MX to Teradata. Hear critical success factors from Comcast for overall platform and component architectures as well as configuration and tuning techniques. Learn how it met the challenges of replication in a complex heterogeneous environment. You’ll also hear how Comcast leverages Oracle Advanced Customer Support Services, including an Oracle Solution Support Center, to provide mission-critical support for maximized performance and availability of its Oracle environment. The final session on the high availability track will be hosted by Patricia Mcelroy (Distinguished Product Manager) and Stephan Haisly (Principle Member of Technical Staff). Their session (CON8401 - Tuning and Troubleshooting Oracle GoldenGate on Oracle Database) covers techniques for performance tuning and troubleshooting of Oracle GoldenGate on Oracle Database. Using various types of workloads (OLTP, batch, Oracle’s PeopleSoft Enterprise), the presentation steps through the process of monitoring and troubleshooting the configuration to maximize performance and replication throughput within and between Oracle clouds. Join us at our sessions or stop by our demo pods in Moscone south and meet the product management and development teams.

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• SQL SERVER – Performance Tuning Resolution

  - by pinaldave

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

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• Where's My Windows Azure Subscriptions

  - by Shaun

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/shaunxu/archive/2013/11/03/wheres-my-windows-azure-subscriptions.aspxYesterday when I opened Windows Azure manage portal I found some resources were missed. I checked the website for those missed cloud service and they are still live. Then I checked my billing history but didn't found any problem. When I back to the portal I found that all of those resource are under my MSDN subscription. So I remembered that if this is related with the recently Windows Azure platform update.   This feature named "Enterprise Management", which provides the ability to manage your organization in a directory which is hosted entirely in the cloud, or alternatively kept in sync with an on-premises Windows Server Active Directory solution. By default, all existing windows azure account would have a default Windows Azure Active Directory (a.k.a. WAAD) associated. In the address bar I can find the default login WAAD of my account, which is "microsoft.onmicrosoft.com". To change the WAAD we can click "subscriptions" on top of the manage portal, select the active directory from the list of "filter by directory" and select the subscription we want to see, then press "apply". As you can see, the subscription under my MSDN was located in a WAAD named "beijingtelecom.onmicrosoft.com". This is because when Microsoft applied this feature, they will check if you have an existing WAAD in your subscription. If not, it will create a new one, otherwise it will use your WAAD and move your subscription into this directory. Since I created a WAAD for test several months ago, this subscription was moved to this directory.   To change the subscription's directory is simple. First we need to create a new WAAD with the name we preferred. As below I created a new directory named "shaunxu". Then select "settings" from the left navigation bar, select the subscription we wanted to change and click "edit directory". You don't have the permission to edit/change directory unless your Microsoft Account is the service administrator of this subscription. Then in the popup window, select the WAAD you want to change and press "next". All done. You need to log off and log in the portal then your subscription will be in the directory you wanted. And after these steps I can view my resources in this subscription.   Summary In this post I described how to change subscriptions into a new directory. With this new feature we can manage our Windows Azure subscription more flexible. But there are something we need keep in mind. 1. Only the service administrator could be able to move subscription. 2. Currently there's no way for us to see our Windows Azure services in more than one directory at the same time. Like me, I can see my services under "shaunxu.onmicrosoft.com" and I must change the filter directory from the "subscriptions" menu to see other services under "microsoft.onmicrosoft.com". 3. Currently we cannot delete an existing WAAD.   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 OpenWorld 2012: The Best Just Gets Better

  - by kellsey.ruppel

  For almost 30 years, Oracle OpenWorld has been the world's premier learning event for Oracle customers, developers, and partners. With more than 2,000 sessions providing best practices; demos; tips and tricks; and product insight from Oracle, customers, partners, and industry experts, Oracle OpenWorld provides more educational and networking opportunities than any other event in the world. 2011 Facts Attendees from 117 Countries Used Filtered Tap Water to Eliminate 22 Tons of Plastic Bottles Diverted Enough Trash to Fill 37 Dump Trucks 45,000+ Total Registered Attendees Oracle OpenWorld 2012: The Best Just Gets Better What's New? What's Different?  This year Oracle OpenWorld will include the Executive Edge @ OpenWorld (replacing Leaders Circle), the Customer Experience Summit @ OpenWorld, JavaOne, MySQL Connect, and the expanded Oracle PartnerNetwork Exchange @ OpenWorld. More than 50,000 customers and partners will attend OpenWorld to see Oracle's newest hardware and software products at work, and learn more about our server and storage, database, middleware, industry, and applications solutions.  New This Year: The Executive Edge @ Oracle OpenWorld (Oct 1 - 2) New at Oracle OpenWorld this year, the Executive Edge @ OpenWorld (replacing Leaders Circle) will bring together customer, partner and Oracle executives for two days of keynote presentations, summits targeted to customer industries and organizational roles, roundtable discussions, and great new networking opportunities. The Customer Experience Revolution Is Here!Customer Experience Summit @ Oracle OpenWorld (Oct 3 - 5) This dynamic new program offers more than 60 keynotes, roundtables and networking sessions exploring trends, innovations and best practices to help companies succeed with a customer experience-driven business strategy.  All Things Java -- JavaOne (Sep 30 - Oct 4) JavaOne is the world's most important event for the Java developer community. Technical sessions cover topics that span the breadth of the Java universe, with keynotes from the foremost Java visionaries and expert-led hands-on learning opportunities.  Are you innovating with Oracle Fusion Middleware?  If you are, then you need to know that the Call for Nominations for the 2012 Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation Awards is open now through July 17, 2012. Jointly sponsored by Oracle, AUSOUG, IOUG, OAUG, ODTUG, QUEST, and UKOUG, the Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation Awards honor organizations creatively using Oracle Fusion Middleware to deliver unique value to their enterprise.  Winning customers and partners will be hosted at Oracle OpenWorld 2012, where they can connect with Oracle executives, network with peers, and be featured in an upcoming edition of Oracle Magazine. Be sure to submit your WebCenter use case today! Oracle Music Festival his year, the first-ever Oracle Music Festival will debut, running from September 30 to October 4. In the tradition of great live music events like Coachella and SXSW, the streets of San Francisco—from 7:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. for five nights-into-days—will vibrate with the music of some of today’s hottest name acts, emerging and local bands, and scratching DJs. Outdoor venues and clubs near Moscone Center and the Zone (including 111 Minna, DNA, Mezzanine, Roe, Ruby Skye, Slim’s, the Taylor Street Café, Temple, Union Square, and Yerba Buena Gardens) will showcase acts that range from reggae to rock, punk to ska, R&B to country, indie to honky-tonk. After a full day of sessions and networking, you'll be primed for some late-night relaxation and rocking out at one or more of these sets.  Please note that with awesome acts, thousands of music devotees, and a limited number of venues each night, access to Festival events is on a first-come, first-served basis. Join us at the Oracle Music Festival--it's going to be epic! Save $500 on Registration with Early Bird Pricing Early Bird pricing ends July 13! Save up to $500 on registration fees by registering by Friday. Will you be attending Oracle OpenWorld 2012? We hope to see you there! Be sure to follow @oraclewebcenter on Twitter for more information and use hashtags #webcenter and #oow!

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• Duke's Choice Award Ceremony

  - by Tori Wieldt

  The 2012 Duke's Choice Awards winners and their creative, Java-based technologies and Java community contributions were honored after the Sunday night JavaOne keynotes. Sharat Chander, Group Director for Java Technology Outreach, presented the awards. "Having the community participate directly in both submission and selection truly shows how we are driving exposure of the innovation happening in the Java community," he said. Apache Software Foundation Hadoop Project The Apache Software Foundation’s Hadoop project, written in Java, provides a framework for distributed processing of big data sets across clusters of computers, ranging from a few servers to thousands of machines. This harnessing of large data pools allows organizations to better understand and improve their business. AgroSense Project Improving farming methods to feed a hungry world is the goal of AgroSense, an open source farm information management system built in Java and the NetBeans platform. AgroSense enables farmers, agribusinesses, suppliers and others to develop modular applications that will easily exchange information through a common underlying NetBeans framework. JDuchess Rather than focus on a specific geographic area like most Java User Groups (JUGs), JDuchess fosters the participation of women in the Java community worldwide. The group has more than 500 members in 60 countries, and provides a platform through which women can connect with each other and get involved in all aspects of the Java community. Jelastic, Inc. Moving existing Java applications to the cloud can be a daunting task, but startup Jelastic, Inc. offers the first all-Java platform-as-a-service (PaaS) that enables existing Java applications to be deployed in the cloud without code changes or lock-in. Liquid Robotics Robotics – Liquid Robotics is an ocean data services provider whose Wave Glider technology collects information from the world’s oceans for application in government, science and commercial applications. The organization features the “father of Java” James Gosling as its chief software architect. London Java Community The second user group receiving a Duke’s Choice Award this year, the London Java Community (LJC) and its users have been active in the OpenJDK, the Java Community Process (JCP) and other efforts within the global Java community. NATO The first-ever Community Choice Award goes to the MASE Integrated Console Environment (MICE) in use at NATO. Built in Java on the NetBeans platform, MICE provides a high-performance visualization environment for conducting air defense and battle-space operations. Parleys.com E-learning specialist Parleys.com, based in Brussels, Belgium, uses Java technologies to bring online classes and full IT conferences to desktops, laptops, tablets and mobile devices. Parleys.com has hosted more than 1,700 conferences—including Devoxx and JavaOne—for more than 800,000 unique visitors. Student Nokia Developer Group This year’s student winner, Ram Kashyap, is the founder and president of the Nokia Student Network, and was profiled in the “The New Java Developers” feature in the March/April 2012 issue of Java Magazine. Since then, Ram has maintained a hectic pace, graduating from the People’s Education Society Institute of Technology in Bangalore, India, while working on a Java mobile startup and training students on Java ME. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is on the front lines of crises around the world, from civil wars to natural disasters. To help facilitate its mission of humanitarian relief, the UNHCR has developed a light-client Java application on the NetBeans platform. The Level One registration tool enables the UNHCR to collect information on the number of refugees and their water, food, housing, health, and other needs in the field, and combines that with geocoding information from various sources. This enables the UNHCR to deliver the appropriate kind and amount of assistance where it is needed. You can read more about the winners in the current issue of Java Magazine.

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• SOA Community Newsletter October 2013

  - by JuergenKress

  Dear SOA & BPM Partner Community member, Our October newsletter edition focuses on Oracle OpenWorld 2013, highlights, keynotes and all presentations. Thanks to all partners who made the conference a huge success. If you could not come to San Francisco you will find all the details within this newsletter. As the newsletter edition contains a lot of content thus we have three sections - SOA, BPM & ACM, and AppAdvantage & UX. Make sure you share your content with the community, best via twitter @soacommunity #soacommunity! What is new in SOA Suite 12c? At OOW the product management team demonstrated some of the key features of the upcoming version. The important SOA topics are mobile integration and cloud integration - make sure you re-use your existing SOA platform! Bruce Tierney showcased the Agilent mobile integration and you try the new Mobile Order Management for EBS GSE Demo using middleware technology. On cloud integration the product management team presented several OOW sessions and published two whitepapers. As SOA becomes mature the awareness for SOA Governance continues to raise, Introducing Oracle Enterprise Repository Express Workflows and watch Luis Weir: Challenges to Implementing SOA Governance. Thanks to Ronald for the SOA Made Simple | Introduction to SOA series, the next article in the Industrial SOA series is SOA and User Interfaces (UI). Have you achieved successful BPM implementation? Nominate your customer references for the Gartner Business Process Management Excellence Awards 2014. Do you want to showcase the latest BPM Suite? Make sure you use the hosted BPM PS6 (11.1.1.7) demo. Do you want to become an expert in BPM Suite? Attend one of our BPM Bootcamps in Germany, Netherland, Spain or UK! If you can not make it – we offer plenty of on-demand content Advanced BPM Scenarios & BPM Architecture Topics & Process Modeling and Life Cycle & Adaptive Case Management & Smart Application Extensibility with Oracle Process Accelerators. I would also recommend to watch great introduction to Adaptive Case Management the on-demand webcast with Bruce Silver & Ajay Khanna. Thanks to Mark Foster from the A-team for the ACM article series & Leon Smiers for their blog posts. If you accomplished a SOA Suite or BPM Suite project and want to become a certified SOA or BPM expert, we are offering again free vouchers to become a certified SOA & BPM expert (limited to partners in Europe Middle East and Africa). Don't miss this opportunity and become Specialized! Best regards, Jürgen Kress To read the newsletter please visit http://tinyurl.com/soaNewsOctober2013 (OPN Account required) To become a member of the SOA Partner Community please register at http://www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Wiki Mix Forum Technorati Tags: newsletter,SOA Community newsletter,SOA Community,Oracle,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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• New Rapid Install StartCD 12.2.0.48 for EBS 12.2 Now Available

  - by Max Arderius

  A new Rapid Install startCD (Patch 18086193) for Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.2 is now available. We recommend that all EBS customers installing or upgrading to EBS 12.2 use this latest update. The startCD updates are distributed to customers via My Oracle Support Patch which can be uncompressed on top of any previous 12.2 startCD under the main staging area. This patch replaces any previous startCDs. What's New in This Update? This new startCD version 12.2.0.48 includes important fixes for multi-node Installs, RAC, pre-install checks, platform specific issues, and upgrade scenario failures: 18703814 - QREP:122:RI:ISSUE WITH CHECKOS.CMD 18689527 - QREP:122:RI:ISSUE WITH FNDCORE.DLL SHIPPED AS PART OF R122 PACKAGE 18548485 - QREP1224:4:JAR SIGNER ISSUE DUE TO THE RI UPGRADE AUTOCONFIG CHANGES 18535812 - QREP:1220.48_4: 12.2.0 UPGRADE FILE SYSTEM LAY OUT IS AFFECTING THE DB TABLES 18507545 - WIN: UNABLE TO LAY DOWN FS PRIOR TO 12.2 UPGRADE WITHOUT AFFECTING RUNNING DB 18476041 - UNABLE TO LAY DOWN FS PRIOR TO 12.2 UPGRADE WITHOUT AFFECTING PRODUCTION DB 18459887 - R12.2 INSTALLATION FAILURE - OPMNCTL: NOT FOUND 18436053 - START CD 48_4 - ISSUES WITH TEMP SPACE CHECK 18424747 - QREP1224.3:ADD SERVER BROWSE BUTTON NOT WORKING 18421132 - *RW-50010: ERROR: - SCRIPT HAS RETURNED AN ERROR: 1 18403700 - QREP122.48:RI:UPGRADE RI PRECHECK HUNG IN SPLIT TIER APPS NODE ( NO SILENT ) 18383075 - ADD VERBOSE OPTION TO RAC VALIDATION 18363584 - UPTAKE INSTALL SCRIPTS FOR XB48_4 18336093 - QREP:122:RI:PATCH FS ADMIN SERVICE RUNNING AFTER RI UPGRADE CONFIGURE MODE 18320278 - QREP:1224.3:PLATFORM SPECIFIC SYNTAX ERRORS WITH DATE COMMAND IN DB CHECKER 18314643 - DISABLE SID=DB_NAME FOR RI UPGRADE FLOW IN RAC 18298977 - RI: EXCEPTION WHILE CLICKING RAC NODES BUTTON ON A NON-RAC SERVER 18286816 - QREP122:STARTCD48_3:TRAVERSING FROM VISION PASSW SCREEN TO PROD 18286371 - QREP122:STARTCD48_3:AMBIGUOUS MESSAGE DURING STAGE AREA CHECK ON HP 18275403 - QREP122:48:RI UPGRADE WITH EOH POST CHECKS HANGS IN SPLIT TIER DB NODE 18270631 - QREP122.48:MULTI-NODE RI USING NON-DEFAULT PASSWORDS NOT WORKING 18266046 - QREP122:48:RI NOT ALLOWING TO IGNORE THE RAC PRE-CHECK FAILURE 18242201 - UPTAKE TXK INSTALL SCRIPTS AND PLATFORMS.ZIP INTO STARTCD XB48_3 18236428 - QREP122.47:RI UPGRADE EXISTING OH FOR NON-DEFAULT APPS PASSWORD NOT WORKING 18220640 - INCONSISTENT DATABASE PORTS DURING EBS 12.2 INSTALLATION FOR STARTCD 12.2.0.47 18138796 - QREP122:47:RI 10.1.2 TECHSTACK NOT WORKING IF WE RUN RI FROM NEW STARTCD LOC 18138396 - TST1220: CONTROL FILE NAMING IN RAPID INSTALL SEEMS TO HAVE ISSUES 18124144 - IMPROVE HANDLING ERRORS FOUND IN CLUVFY LOG DURING PREINSTALL CHECKS 18111361 - VALIDATE ASM DB DATA FILES PATH AS +<DATA GROUP>/<PATH> 18102504 - QREP1220.47_5: UNZIP PANEL DOES NOT CREATE THE CORRECT STAGE 18083342 - 12.2 UPGRADE JAVA.NET.BINDEXCEPTION: CANNOT ASSIGN REQUESTED ADDRESS 18082140 - QREP122:47:RAC DB VALIDATION IS FAILS WITH EXIT STATUS IS 6 18062350 - 12.2.3 UPG: 12.2.0 INSTALLATION LOGS 18050840 - RI: UPGRADE WITH EXISTING RAC OH:SECONDARY DB NODE NAME IS BLANK 18049813 - RAC LOV DEFAULTS NOT SAVED UNLESS "SELECT" IS CLICKED 18003592 - TST1220:ADDITIONAL FREE SPACE CHECK FOR RI NEEDS TO BE CHECKED 17981471 - REMOVE ASM SPACE CHECK FROM RACVALIDATIONS.SH 17942179 - R12.2 INSTALL FAILING AT ADRUN11G.SH WITH ERRORS RW-50004 & RW-50010 17893583 - QREP1220.47:VALIDATION OF O.S IN RAPIDWIZ IN THE DB NODE CONFIGURATION SCREEN 17886258 - CLEANUP FND_NODES DURING UPGRADE FLOW 17858010 - RI POST INSTALL CHECKS (SSH VERIFICATION) STEP IS FAILING 17799807 - GEOHR: 12.2.0 - ERRORS IN RAPIDWIZ AND ADCONFIG LOGS 17786162 - QREP1223.4:RI:SERVICE_NAMES IS PRINTED AS SERVICE_NAME IN RI SCREEN 17782455 - RI: CONFIRM DEFAULT APPS PASSWORD IN SILENT MODE KICKOFF 17778130 - RI:ADMIN SERVER TO BE UP ON PRIMARY MID-TIER IN MULTI-NODE UPGRADE FS CREATION 17773989 - UN-SUPPORTED PLATFORM SHOWS 32 BIT AS HARD-CODED 17772655 - RELEVANT MESSAGE DURING THE RAPDIWIZ -TECHSTACK 17759279 - VERIFICATION PANEL DOES NOT EXPAND TECHNOLOGY STACK 17759183 - BUILDSTAGE SCRIPT MENU NEEDS TO BE ADJUSTED 17737186 - DATABASE PRE-REQ CHECK INCORRECTLY REPORTS SUCCESS ON AIX 17708082 - 12.2 INSTALLATION - OS PRE-REQUISITES CHECK 17701676 - TST122: GENERATE WRONG S_DBSID FOR PATCH FILE SYSTEM AT PHASE PREPARE 17630972 - /TMP PRE-REQ INSTALLATION CHECK 17617245 - 12.2 VISION INSTALL FAILS ON AIX 17603342 - OMCS: DB STAGING COMPLAINS WHILE MOVING IT TO FINAL LOCATION 17591171 - OMCS: DB STAGING FAILS WITH FRESH INSTALL R12.2 17588765 - CHECKER VERSION AND PLUGIN VERSION 17561747 - BUILDSTAGE.SH FAILS WITH ERROR WHEN STAGE HOSTED ON 32BIT LINUX 17539198 - RAPID INSTALL NEEDS TO IGNORE NON-REQUIRED STAGE ELEMENTS 17272808 - APPS USERS THAT HAVE DEFAULT PASSWORD AFTER 12.2 RAPID INSTALL References 12.2 Documentation Library 1581299.1 : EBS 12.2 Product Information Center 1320300.1 : Oracle E-Business Suite Release Notes, Release 12.2 1606170.1 : Oracle E-Business Suite Technology Stack and Applications DBA Release Notes for Release 12.2.3 1624423.1 : Oracle E-Business Suite Technology Stack and Applications DBA Release Notes for R12.TXK.C.Delta.4 and R12.AD.C.Delta.4 1594274.1 : Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.2: Consolidated List of Patches and Technology Bug Fixes Related Articles Oracle E-Business Suite 12.2 Now Available startCD options to install Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.2

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• Windows 8 Camp&ndash;Ways to Prepare

  - by Lori Lalonde

  When Windows 8 was announced at the BUILD conference back in September, it created quite a buzz among the developer community. By the spring of 2012,  Windows 8 Developer Camps started popping up everywhere imaginable. I received a lot of questions from CTTDNUG members about whether or not we would be hosting one locally. If you recall my post about the Windows Phone/Azure Developer Workshop that CTTDNUG hosted back in March, you’ll remember that the biggest hurdle to overcome when planning this type of event was finding the right venue. It took some time, but I finally found a venue that was available and provided the prerequisites needed to ensure this camp is a success. I am very excited that CTTDNUG will be hosting a Windows 8 Camp this summer in the Kitchener/Waterloo area. In fact, it’s coming up in less than 2 weeks. Clearly other developers are excited as well, because our registration numbers show that the event is already 70% full! On top of that, I was fortunate enough to also book two well-known evangelists to present and teach at this full day developer camp: Andrei Marukovich and Atley Hunter. This was the icing on the cake. With the content provided by Microsoft, and two local experts that live and breathe Windows 8 development, I know that I, along with other developers that attend this event, will have the opportunity to maximize our learning potential and hit the ground running. If you plan on attending a Windows 8 Developer Camp soon, and want to ensure you get the most “bang for your buck” (figuratively speaking, since these camps are free), there are some things you can do to prepare before the big day: 1) Install the prerequisites on your own device before the big day I can’t stress this enough. Otherwise, you will be spending valuable time during the hands-on period downloading and installing what is needed, rather than digging into the development and using that time to ask the experts on-hand about programming challenges, issues, questions you may have with respect to your development. Prerequisites: Windows 8 Release Preview Visual Studio 2012 RC Download the Windows 8 SDK Samples 2) Purchase, download, and read Charles Petzold’s newest book:  Programming Windows 6th Edition This is a great introduction to the type of content you will be learning about during the camp. Doing some light reading beforehand might raise some questions about the concepts discussed in the book, which will give you the opportunity to write them down and bring them with you to the camp. The experts on hand will be able to answer them for you. 3) Make use of the freebies that are available Telerik has recently released a preview of their RadControls for Metro. You can sign up to receive a license code to give you access to install the preview for free and start playing around with it. Syncfusion also offers a free download of their Metro Studio package, which is a collection of metro style icons that you can customize and use in your own applications. Last but not least, once you’ve installed the Windows 8 Release Preview on your own device, go to the Windows 8 Store and download a handful of the free apps that are available. Testing out other Metro apps may give you ideas of what you can do in your own apps and analyze what features you like: application flow, type of animations used, concepts that were leveraged, how live tiles were used, etc. I hope you found these tips to be useful as you embark on a new development journey! Although this post focused on how to prepare for a Windows 8 camp, the same ideas are there whichever developer camp/workshop/event you attend. Learning does not begin and end on the day of the event. Attending a developer camp is just one step of many to master whatever technology you are interested in. It is a continuous process, which is fully maximized when you do your homework beforehand, actively participate during,  and follow up by putting what you learned to practice afterwards. Happy coding!

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• Unlocking High Performance with Policy Administration Replacement

  - by helen.pitts(at)oracle.com

  Normal 0 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:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language:EN-CA; mso-fareast-language:EN-CA;} Normal 0 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:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language:EN-CA; mso-fareast-language:EN-CA;} It is clear the insurance industry is undergoing significant changes as it consolidates and prepares for growth. The increasing focus on customer centricity, enhanced and speedier product development capabilities, and compliance with regulatory changes has forced companies to rethink well-entrenched policy administration processes. In previous Oracle Insurance blogs I’ve highlighted industry research pointing to policy administration replacement as a top IT priority for carriers. It is predicted that by 2013, the global IT spend on policy administration alone is likely to be almost 22 percentage of the total insurance IT spend. To achieve growth, insurers are adopting new pricing models, enhancing distribution reach, and quickly launching new products and services—all of which depend on agile and effective policy administration processes and technologies. Next month speakers from Oracle Insurance and Capgemini Financial Services will discuss how insurers can competitively drive high performance through policy administration replacement during a free, one-hour webcast hosted by LOMA. Roger Soppe, Oracle senior director, Insurance Strategy, together with Capgemini’s Lars Ernsting, leader, Life & Pensions COE, and Scott Mampre, vice president, Insurance, will be the speakers. Specifically, they’ll be highlighting: How replacing a legacy policy administration system with a modern, flexible platform optimizes IT and operations costs, creates consistent processes and eliminates resource redundancies How selecting the right partner with the best blend of technology, operational, and consulting capabilities, is an important pre-requisite to unlock high performance from policy administration transformation to achieve product, operational, and cost leadership  The value of outsourcing closed block operations We look forward to your participation on Thursday, July 14, 11:00 a.m. ET. Please register now. Helen Pitts is senior product marketing manager for Oracle Insurance's life and annuities solutions.

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• Announcing the Winnipeg VS.NET 2012 Community Launch Event!

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  Back in May 2010 the local Winnipeg technical community got together and put on a launch event for VS.NET 2010. That event was such a good time that we’re doing it again this year for the VS.NET 2012 launch! On December 6th, the Winnipeg .NET User Group is hosting a full day VS.NET 2012 Community Launch Event at the Imax theatre in Portage Place! We have 4 sessions planned covering dev tools, ALM/TFS, web development, and cloud development, presented by Dylan Smith, Tyler Doerksen, and myself. You can get all the details and register on our Eventbrite site: http://wpgvsnet2012launch.eventbrite.ca/ I’ve included the details below as well for convenience: Winnipeg VS.NET 2012 Community Launch Event Join us for a full day of sessions highlighting the new features and capabilities of Visual Studio .NET 2012 and the .NET 4.5 Framework! Hosted by the Winnipeg .NET User Group, this community event is FREE thanks to the generous support from our event sponsors: Imaginet Online Business Systems Prairie Developer Conference Event Details When: Thursday, Decemer 6th from 8:00 AM - 4:00 PM Where: IMAX Theatre, Portage Place Cost: *FREE!* Agenda 8:00 - 9:00 Continental Breakfast and Registration 9:00 - 9:15 Welcome 9:15 - 10:30 End-To-End Application Lifecycle Management with TFS 2012 10:30 - 10:45 Break 10:45 - 12:00 Improving Developer Productivity with Visual Studio 2012 12:00 - 1:00 Lunch Break (Lunch Not Provided) 1:00 - 2:15 Web Development in Visual Studio 2012 and .NET 4.5 2:15 - 2:30  Break 2:30 - 3:45 Microsoft Cloud Development with Azure and Visual Studio 2012 3:45 - 4:00 Prizes and Thanks Session Abstracts End-To-End Application Lifecycle Management with TFS 2012 Dylan Smith, Imaginet In this session we'll walk through the application development lifecycle from end-to-end and see how some of the new capabilities in TFS 2012 help streamline the software delivery process. There are some exciting new capabilities around Agile Project Management, Gathering Feedback, Code Reviews, Unit Testing, Version Control, Storyboarding, etc. During this session we’ll follow a fictional software development team through the process of planning, developing, testing, and deployment focusing on where the new functionality in VS/TFS 2012 fits in to make teams more effective. Improving Developer Productivity with Visual Studio 2012 Dylan Smith, Imaginet Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 enables developers to take full advantage of the capability of Windows using the skills and technologies developers already know and love to deliver exceptional and compelling apps.  Whether working individually or in a small, medium or large development team Visual Studio 2012 sets a new standard for development tools, helping teams deliver superior results for their customers that help set them apart from their competitors.  In this session we’ll walk through new features in Visual Studio 2012 specifically focusing on how these improve Developer Productivity. Web Development in Visual Studio 2012 and .NET 4.5 D’Arcy Lussier, Online Business Systems It’s an exciting time to be a web developer in the Microsoft ecosystem! The launch of Visual Studio 2012 and .NET 4.5 brings new tooling and features, and the ASP.NET team is continually releasing updates for MVC, SignalR, Web API, and other platform features. In this session we’ll take a tour of the new features and technologies available for Microsoft web developers here in 2012! Microsoft Cloud Development with Azure and Visual Studio 2012 Tyler Doerksen, Imaginet Microsoft’s public cloud platform is nearing its third year of public availability, supporting web site/service hosting, storage, relational databases, virtual machines, virtual networks and much more. Windows Azure provides both power and flexibility.  But to capture this power you need to have the right tools!  This session will demonstrate the primary ways you can harness Windows Azure with the .NET platform.  We’ll explain cloud service development, packaging, deployment, testing and show how Visual Studio 2012 with the Windows Azure SDK and other Microsoft tools can be used to develop for and manage Windows Azure.Harness the power of the cloud from the comfort of Visual Studio 2012!

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• Be the surgeon

  - by Rob Farley

  It’s a phrase I use often, especially when teaching, and I wish I had realised the concept years earlier. (And of course, fits with this month’s T-SQL Tuesday topic, hosted by Argenis Fernandez) When I’m sick enough to go to the doctor, I see a GP. I used to typically see the same guy, but he’s moved on now. However, when he has been able to roughly identify the area of the problem, I get referred to a specialist, sometimes a surgeon. Being a surgeon requires a refined set of skills. It’s why they often don’t like to be called “Doctor”, and prefer the traditional “Mister” (the history is that the doctor used to make the diagnosis, and then hand the patient over to the person who didn’t have a doctorate, but rather was an expert cutter, typically from a background in butchering). But if you ask the surgeon about the pain you have in your leg sometimes, you’ll get told to ask your GP. It’s not that your surgeon isn’t interested – they just don’t know the answer. IT is the same now. That wasn’t something that I really understood when I got out of university. I knew there was a lot to know about IT – I’d just done an honours degree in it. But I also knew that I’d done well in just about all my subjects, and felt like I had a handle on everything. I got into developing, and still felt that having a good level of understanding about every aspect of IT was a good thing. This got me through for the first six or seven years of my career. But then I started to realise that I couldn’t compete. I’d moved into management, and was spending my days running projects, rather than writing code. The kids were getting older. I’d had a bad back injury (ask anyone with chronic pain how it affects  your ability to concentrate, retain information, etc). But most of all, IT was getting larger. I knew kids without lives who knew more than I did. And I felt like I could easily identify people who were better than me in whatever area I could think of. Except writing queries (this was before I discovered technical communities, and people like Paul White and Dave Ballantyne). And so I figured I’d specialise. I wish I’d done it years earlier. Now, I can tell you plenty of people who are better than me at any area you can pick. But there are also more people who might consider listing me in some of their lists too. If I’d stayed the GP, I’d be stuck in management, and finding that there were better managers than me too. If you’re reading this, SQL could well be your thing. But it might not be either. Your thing might not even be in IT. Find out, and then see if you can be a world-beater at it. But it gets even better, because you can find other people to complement the things that you’re not so good at. My company, LobsterPot Solutions, has six people in it at the moment. I’ve hand-picked those six people, along with the one who quit. The great thing about it is that I’ve been able to pick people who don’t necessarily specialise in the same way as me. I don’t write their T-SQL for them – generally they’re good enough at that themselves. But I’m on-hand if needed. Consider Roger Noble, for example. He’s doing stuff in HTML5 and jQuery that I could never dream of doing to create an amazing HTML5 version of PivotViewer. Or Ashley Sewell, a guy who does project management far better than I do. I could go on. My team is brilliant, and I love them to bits. We’re all surgeons, and when we work together, I like to think we’re pretty good! @rob_farley

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• SOA Community Newsletter May 2014

  - by JuergenKress

  Registration for the Fusion Middleware Summer Camps 2014 is open – Register asap for one of our bootcamps August 4th – 8th 2014 in Lisbon. Please read details and pre-requisitions careful before you register. We expect that like in the past, the conference will be booked out soon! If you can’t make it to Lisbon attend our SOA Suite 11c free on-demand Bootcamp or  Managing the Complexity of IoT online trainings. With more than 5000 customers, SOA Suite Achieves Significant Customer Adoption and Industry Recognition.Thanks to all our SOA Specialized partners for making our joins SOA customers successful! As a summary of the Industrial SOA series we published the Podcast Show Notes: SOA and Cloud - Where's This Relationship Going? Make sure you use the Oracle Demo Systems for your customer presentations. The demo systems are hosted by Oracle and include complete scenarios based on the latest Middleware version like the new B2B SOA Suite Demo System! For local presentations without fast internet use the SOA/BPM 11.1.1.7.1 Virtual Machine and Case Management Sample. At our SOA Community Workspace (SOA Community membership required) you can get new IoT presentations for Location Based Offers for Banking & Whitepaper and online Webcast & Utility presentation. In this newsletter you will find many articles about OSB: OSB 11g – A Hands-on Tutorial & Using Split-Joins in OSB Services for parallel processing of messages & OSB, Service Callouts and OQL & Working with Oracle Security Token Service. Thanks for sharing all the additional SOA articles within the community: How to configure Oracle SOA/BPM task auto release & Controlling BPEL process flow at runtime & Upgrading to Oracle SOA Suite 11g PS6 (11.1.1.7)? Do this. & BPEL and BPM's performance monitoring using DMS & SOA 11g - Create RESTful Service In Oracle SOA & Wrong timezone causes TopLink warning in SOA suite. Highlight of the BPM and ACM section is the IDC BPM vendor report. The new bundle Patch including the ACM UI is now available. If you want to learn more about ACM, get the ACM training material at our SOA Community Workspace (SOA Community membership required). A great demo for your next BPM presentation is the BPM iPad app. It’s simpleMobile BPM is Not An Option. It’s a Necessity. Thanks for sharing all the additional BPM articles within the community: BPM update adds Case Management Web Interface and REST APIs & Implementing deadline functionality with Oracle Adaptive Case Management & BPM 11g Timeout Heuristics & Humantask Assignment: Names and Expressions Assignment via Rules. In our last section Architecture, it is all about design. Usability is a key factor for customer satisfaction, worth to spend some time and read the Simplified User Experience Design Patterns eBook. Great blueprint for your project! See you in Lisbon! To read the newsletter please visit www.tinyurl.com/soaNewsMay2014 (OPN Account required) To become a member of the SOA Partner Community please register at http://www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Wiki Mix Forum Technorati Tags: newsletter,SOA Community newsletter,SOA Community,Oracle,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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• How can I best manage making open source code releases from my company's confidential research code?

  - by DeveloperDon

  My company (let's call them Acme Technology) has a library of approximately one thousand source files that originally came from its Acme Labs research group, incubated in a development group for a couple years, and has more recently been provided to a handful of customers under non-disclosure. Acme is getting ready to release perhaps 75% of the code to the open source community. The other 25% would be released later, but for now, is either not ready for customer use or contains code related to future innovations they need to keep out of the hands of competitors. The code is presently formatted with #ifdefs that permit the same code base to work with the pre-production platforms that will be available to university researchers and a much wider range of commercial customers once it goes to open source, while at the same time being available for experimentation and prototyping and forward compatibility testing with the future platform. Keeping a single code base is considered essential for the economics (and sanity) of my group who would have a tough time maintaining two copies in parallel. Files in our current base look something like this: > // Copyright 2012 (C) Acme Technology, All Rights Reserved. > // Very large, often varied and restrictive copyright license in English and French, > // sometimes also embedded in make files and shell scripts with varied > // comment styles. > > > ... Usual header stuff... > > void initTechnologyLibrary() { > nuiInterface(on); > #ifdef UNDER_RESEARCH > holographicVisualization(on); > #endif > } And we would like to convert them to something like: > // GPL Copyright (C) Acme Technology Labs 2012, Some rights reserved. > // Acme appreciates your interest in its technology, please contact [email protected] > // for technical support, and www.acme.com/emergingTech for updates and RSS feed. > > ... Usual header stuff... > > void initTechnologyLibrary() { > nuiInterface(on); > } Is there a tool, parse library, or popular script that can replace the copyright and strip out not just #ifdefs, but variations like #if defined(UNDER_RESEARCH), etc.? The code is presently in Git and would likely be hosted somewhere that uses Git. Would there be a way to safely link repositories together so we can efficiently reintegrate our improvements with the open source versions? Advice about other pitfalls is welcome.

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• Making the most of next weeks SharePoint 2010 developer training

  - by Eric Nelson

  [you can still register if you are free on the afternoons of 9th to 11th – UK time] We have 50+ registrations with more coming in – which is fantastic. Please read on to make the most of the training. Background We have structured the training to make sure that you can still learn lots during the three days even if you do not have SharePoint 2010 installed. Additionally the course is based around a subset of the channel 9 training to allow you to easily dig deeper or look again at specific areas. Which means if you have zero time between now and next Wednesday then you are still good to go. But if you can do some pre-work you will likely get even more out of the three days. Step 1: Check out the topics and resources available on-demand The course is based around a subset of the channel 9 training to allow you to easily dig deeper or look again at specific areas. Take a lap around the SharePoint 2010 Training Course on Channel 9 Download the SharePoint Developer Training Kit Step 2: Use a pre-configured Virtual Machine which you can download (best start today – it is large!) Consider using the VM we created If you don't have access to SharePoint 2010. You will need a 64bit host OS and bare minimum of 4GB of RAM. 8GB recommended. Virtual PC can not be used with this VM – Virtual PC only supports 32bit guests. The 2010-7a Information Worker VM gives you everything you need to develop for SharePoint 2010. Watch the Video on how to use this VM Download the VM Remember you only need to download the “parts” for the 2010-7a VM. There are 3 subtly different ways of using this VM: Easiest is to follow the advice of the video and get yourself a host OS of Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V and simply use the VM Alternatively you can take the VHD and create a “Boot to VHD” if you have Windows 7 Ultimate or Enterprise Edition. This works really well – especially if you are already familiar with “Boot to VHD” (This post I did will help you get started) Or you can take the VHD and use an alternative VM tool such as VirtualBox if you have a different host OS. NB: This tends to involve some work to get everything running fine. Check out parts 1 to 3 from Rolly and if you go with Virtual Box use an IDE controller not SATA. SATA will blue screen. Note in the screenshot below I also converted the vhd to a vmdk. I used the FREE Starwind Converter to do this whilst I was fighting blue screens – not sure its necessary as VirtualBox does now work with VHDs. or Step 3 – Install SharePoint 2010 on a 64bit Windows 7 or Vista Host I haven’t tried this but it is now supported. Check out MSDN. Final notes: I am in the process of securing a number of hosted VMs for ISVs directly managed by my team. Your Architect Evangelist will have details once I have them! Else we can sort out on the Wed. Regrettably I am unable to give folks 1:1 support on any issues around Boot to VHD, 3rd party VM products etc. Related Links: Check you are fully plugged into the work of my team – have you done these simple steps including joining our new LinkedIn group?

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• IE9 and the Mystery of the Broken Video Tag

  - by David Wesst

  I was very excited when Microsoft released the Internet Explorer 9 Release Candidate. As far as I was concerned, this was another nail in the coffin for IE6 and step in the right direction for us .NET web developers as our base camp was finally starting to support the latest and greatest future-web standards. Unfortunately, my celebration was short lived as I soon hit a snag while loading up an HTML5 site I was building in Visual Studio 2010. The Mystery After updating Internet Explorer, I ran my HTML5 site that had the oh-so-lovely HTML5 video tag showing a video. Even though this worked in IE9 Beta, it appeared that IE9 RC could not load the same file. I figured that it was the video codec. Maybe IE9 RC no longer supported the video codec I used to encode my video. Here's the code I used: <video width="854" height="480" id="myOtherVideo" autoplay="" controls=""> <source src="/DemoSite1/Media/big_buck_bunny.mp4"/> <div> <p>Your browser does not support HTML5 Video.</p> </div> </video> As you can see from the code, I had the "fail-safe" code inside the video tag. The idea there being that if the video tag, or the video files themselves, are not supported by the browser my video should fail gracefully. What was even more strange was the fact that it worked in all the other HTML5 browsers that supported video. The Investigation Whoa! DJ stop the music. How can any of that make sense? Would the IE team really take such huge strides forward only to forget to include a feature that was already in the beta? I don't think so. I did plenty of searching on the web and asking around on the web, but could not seem to find anyone else having the same problem. Eventually I came across this post talking about declaring the MIME type in the .htaccess file. That got me thinking: does my web server support the video MIME type? I was using VS2010, so how do I know what kind of MIME types are supported by default? Still, my page hosted in Cassini (the web development server in VS2010) works on the other browsers. Why wouldn't it work with IE9 RC? To answer that, it was time to open up the upgraded toolbox known as the Developer's Tools in IE9 and use the new Network Tab. The Conclusion If you take a closer look at the results displayed from the Network tab, you can see that IE9 RC has interpreted the video file as text/html rather than video/mp4. To make this work, I decided to use IIS to debug my HTML5 web application by setting the web project's properties. Then, I added the MIME types that I want to support (i.e. video/mp4, video/ogg, video/webm). Et voila! The Mystery of the Broken Video Tag is solved. After Thoughts After solving the mystery, I still had the question about why my site worked in Chrome, Safari, and Firefox 3.6. After asking around, the best answer that I received was from my colleague Tyler Doerksen. He said that IE9 likely depends on the server telling it what kind of file it is downloading rather than trying to read the metadata about the data it is trying to download before doing anything. I have no facts to back this up, but it makes sense to me. In a browser war where milliseconds can make your browser fall back a few places in the race for supremacy, maybe the IE team opted to depend on the server knowing what kind of content it is serving up. Makes sense to me. In any case, that is just an educated guess. If you have any comments, feel free to post on them below. This post also appears at http://david.wes.st

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• Sprinkle Some Magik on that Java Virtual Machine

  - by Jim Connors

  GE Energy, through its Smallworld subsidiary, has been providing geospatial software solutions to the utility and telco markets for over 20 years.  One of the fundamental building blocks of their technology is a dynamically-typed object oriented programming language called Magik.  Like Java, Magik source code is compiled down to bytecodes that run on a virtual machine -- in this case the Magik Virtual Machine. Throughout the years, GE has invested considerable engineering talent in the support and maintenance of this virtual machine.  At the same time vast energy and resources have been invested in the Java Virtual Machine. The question for GE has been whether to continue to make that investment on its own or to leverage massive effort provided by the Java community? Utilizing the Java Virtual Machine instead of maintaining its own virtual machine would give GE more opportunity to focus on application solutions.   At last count, there are dozens, perhaps hundreds of examples of programming languages that have been hosted atop the Java Virtual Machine.  Prior to the release of Java 7, that effort, although certainly possible, was generally less than optimal for languages like Magik because of its dynamic nature.  Java, as a statically typed language had little use for this capability.  In the quest to be a more universal virtual machine, Java 7, via JSR-292, introduced a new bytecode called invokedynamic.  In short, invokedynamic affords a more flexible method call mechanism needed by dynamic languages like Magik. With this new capability GE Energy has succeeded in hosting their Magik environment on top of the Java Virtual Machine.  So you may ask, why would GE wish to do such a thing?  The benefits are many: Competitors to GE Energy claimed that the Magik environment was proprietary.  By utilizing the Java Virtual Machine, that argument gets put to bed.  JVM development is done in open source, where contributions are made world-wide by all types of organizations and individuals. The unprecedented wealth of class libraries and applications written for the Java platform are now opened up to Magik/JVM platform as first class citizens. In addition, the Magik/JVM solution vastly increases the developer pool to include the 9 million Java developers -- the largest developer community on the planet. Applications running on the JVM showed substantial performance gains, in some cases as much as a 5x speed up over the original Magik platform. Legacy Magik applications can still run on the original platform.  They can be seamlessly migrated to run on the JVM by simply recompiling the source code. GE can now leverage the huge Java community.  Undeniably the best virtual machine ever created, hundreds if not thousands of world class developers continually improve, poke, prod and scrutinize all aspects of the Java platform.  As enhancements are made, GE automatically gains access to these. As Magik has little in the way of support for multi-threading, GE will benefit from current and future Java offerings (e.g. lambda expressions) that aim to further facilitate multi-core/multi-threaded application development. As the JVM is available for many more platforms, it broadens the reach of Magik, including the potential to run on a class devices never envisioned just a few short years ago.  For example, Java SE compatible runtime environments are available for popular embedded ARM/Intel/PowerPC configurations that could theoretically host this software too. As compared to other JVM language projects, the Magik integration differs in that it represents a serious commercial entity betting a sizable part of its business on the success of this effort.  Expect to see announcements not only from General Electric, but other organizations as they realize the benefits of utilizing the Java Virtual Machine.

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• Be the surgeon

  - by Rob Farley

  It’s a phrase I use often, especially when teaching, and I wish I had realised the concept years earlier. (And of course, fits with this month’s T-SQL Tuesday topic, hosted by Argenis Fernandez) When I’m sick enough to go to the doctor, I see a GP. I used to typically see the same guy, but he’s moved on now. However, when he has been able to roughly identify the area of the problem, I get referred to a specialist, sometimes a surgeon. Being a surgeon requires a refined set of skills. It’s why they often don’t like to be called “Doctor”, and prefer the traditional “Mister” (the history is that the doctor used to make the diagnosis, and then hand the patient over to the person who didn’t have a doctorate, but rather was an expert cutter, typically from a background in butchering). But if you ask the surgeon about the pain you have in your leg sometimes, you’ll get told to ask your GP. It’s not that your surgeon isn’t interested – they just don’t know the answer. IT is the same now. That wasn’t something that I really understood when I got out of university. I knew there was a lot to know about IT – I’d just done an honours degree in it. But I also knew that I’d done well in just about all my subjects, and felt like I had a handle on everything. I got into developing, and still felt that having a good level of understanding about every aspect of IT was a good thing. This got me through for the first six or seven years of my career. But then I started to realise that I couldn’t compete. I’d moved into management, and was spending my days running projects, rather than writing code. The kids were getting older. I’d had a bad back injury (ask anyone with chronic pain how it affects  your ability to concentrate, retain information, etc). But most of all, IT was getting larger. I knew kids without lives who knew more than I did. And I felt like I could easily identify people who were better than me in whatever area I could think of. Except writing queries (this was before I discovered technical communities, and people like Paul White and Dave Ballantyne). And so I figured I’d specialise. I wish I’d done it years earlier. Now, I can tell you plenty of people who are better than me at any area you can pick. But there are also more people who might consider listing me in some of their lists too. If I’d stayed the GP, I’d be stuck in management, and finding that there were better managers than me too. If you’re reading this, SQL could well be your thing. But it might not be either. Your thing might not even be in IT. Find out, and then see if you can be a world-beater at it. But it gets even better, because you can find other people to complement the things that you’re not so good at. My company, LobsterPot Solutions, has six people in it at the moment. I’ve hand-picked those six people, along with the one who quit. The great thing about it is that I’ve been able to pick people who don’t necessarily specialise in the same way as me. I don’t write their T-SQL for them – generally they’re good enough at that themselves. But I’m on-hand if needed. Consider Roger Noble, for example. He’s doing stuff in HTML5 and jQuery that I could never dream of doing to create an amazing HTML5 version of PivotViewer. Or Ashley Sewell, a guy who does project management far better than I do. I could go on. My team is brilliant, and I love them to bits. We’re all surgeons, and when we work together, I like to think we’re pretty good! @rob_farley

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• It’s official – Red Gate is a great place to work!

  - by red@work

  At a glittering award ceremony last week, we found out that we’re officially the 14th best small company to work for in the whole of the UK! This is no mean feat, considering that about 1,000 companies enter the Sunday Times Top 100 best companies awards each year. Most of these are in the small companies category too. It's the fourth year in a row for us to be in the Top 100 list and we're tickled pink because the results are based on employee opinion. We’re particularly proud to be the best small company in Cambridge (in the whole of East Anglia, in fact) and the best small software development company in the entire UK. So how does it all work? Well, 90% of us took the time to answer over 70 questions on categories such as management, benefits, wellbeing, leadership, giving something back and what we think of Red Gate as a whole. It makes you think about every part of day to day working life and how you feel about it. Do you slightly or strongly agree or disagree that your manager motivates your to do your best every day, or that you have confidence in Red Gate's leaders, or that you’re not spending too much time working? It's great to see that we had one of the best scores in the country for the question "Do you think your company takes advantage of you?" We got particularly high scores for management, wellbeing and for giving something back too. A few of us got dressed up and headed to London for the awards; very excited about where we’d place but slightly nervous about having to get up on stage. There was a last minute hic up with a bow tie but the Managing Editor of the Sunday Times kindly stepped in to offer his assistance just before we had our official photo taken. We were nominated for two Special Recognition Awards. Despite not bringing them home this year, we're very proud to be nominated as there are only three nominations in each category. First we were up for the Training and Development award. Best Companies loved that we get together at lunchtimes to teach each other photography, cookery and French, as well as our book clubs and techie talks. And of course they liked our opportunities to go on training courses and to jet off to international conferences. Our other nomination was for the Wellbeing award. Best Companies loved our free food (and let’s face it, so do we). Porridge or bacon sandwiches for breakfast, a three course hot dinner, and free fruit and cereals all day long. If all that has an affect on the waistline then there are plenty of sporty activities for us all to get involved in, such as yoga, running or squash. Or if that’s not your thing then a relaxing massage helps us all to unwind every few months or so. The awards were hosted by news presenter Kate Silverton. She gave us a special mention during the ceremony for having great customer engagement as well as employee engagement, after we told her about Rodney Landrum (a Friend of Red Gate) tattooing our logo on his arm. We showed off our customised dinner jacket (thanks to Dom from Usability) with a flashing Red Gate logo on the back and she seemed suitability impressed. Back in the office the next day, we popped open the champagne and raised a glass to our success. Neil, our joint CEO, talked about how pleased he was with the award because it's based on the opinions of the people that count – us. You can read more about the Sunday Times awards here. By the way, we're still growing and are still hiring. If you’d like to keep up with our latest vacancies then why not follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/redgatecareers. Right now we're busy hiring in development, test, sales, product management, web development, and project management. Here's a link to our current job opportunities page – we'd love to hear from great people who are looking for a great place to work! After all, we're only great because of the people who work here. Post by: Alice Chapman

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• Oracle at HR Tech: What a Difference a Year Makes

  - by Natalia Rachelson

  Last week, I had the privilege of attending the famous HR Technology Conference (HR Tech) in my new hometown of Chicago. This annual event, which draws the who of who in the world of HR technology, was by far the biggest.  It wasn't just the highest level of attendance that was mind blowing, but also the amazing quality of attendees. Kudos go to the organizers, especially Bill Kutik for pulling together such a phenomenal conference. Conference highlights included Naomi Bloom's (http://infullbloom.us) Masters Panel and Mark Hurd's General Session on the last day of the conference. Naomi managed to do the seemingly impossible -- get all of the industry heavyweights and fierce competitors to travel to Chicago for her panel. Here are the executives she hosted: Our own Steve Miranda Sanjay Poonen, President Global Solutions, SAP Stan Swete, CTO, Workday Mike Capone, VP for Product Development and CIO, ADP John Wookey, EVP, Social Applications, Salesforce.com Adam Rogers, CTO, Ultimate Software       I bet you think "WOW" when you look at these names. Just this panel by itself would have been enough of a draw for any tech conference, so Naomi and Bill really scored. TechTarget published a great review of the conference here.  And here are a few highlights from Steve. "Steve Miranda, EVP Apps Dev Oracle, said delivering software in the cloud helps vendors shape their products to customer needs more efficiently. "As vendors, we're able to improve the software faster," he said. "We can see in real time what customers are using and not using." Miranda underscored Oracle's commitment to socializing its HCM platform,and named recruiting as an area where social has had a significant impact. "We want to make social a part of the fabric, not a separate piece," he said. "Already, if you're doing recruiting without social, it probably doesn't make any sense."" Having Mark Hurd at the conference was another real treat and everyone took notice.  The Business of HR publication covered Mark's participation at HR Tech and the full article is available here. Here is what Business of HR had to say: "In truth, the story of Oracle today is a story similar to many of the current and potential customers they faced at the conference this week. Their business is changing and growing. They've dealt with acquisitions of their own and their competitors continue to nip at their heels. They are dealing with growth (and yes, they are hiring in case you're interested). They have concerns about talent as well. If Oracle feels as strongly about their products as they seem to be, they will be getting their co-president in front of a lot more groups of current and potential customers like they did at the HR Technology Conference this year. And here's hoping this is one executive who won't stop talking about the importance of talent just because he isn't at the HR tech conference anymore." Natalia RachelsonSenior Director, Oracle Applications

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