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• Strange Recurrent Excessive I/O Wait

  - by Chris

  I know quite well that I/O wait has been discussed multiple times on this site, but all the other topics seem to cover constant I/O latency, while the I/O problem we need to solve on our server occurs at irregular (short) intervals, but is ever-present with massive spikes of up to 20k ms a-wait and service times of 2 seconds. The disk affected is /dev/sdb (Seagate Barracuda, for details see below). A typical iostat -x output would at times look like this, which is an extreme sample but by no means rare: iostat (Oct 6, 2013) tps rd_sec/s wr_sec/s avgrq-sz avgqu-sz await svctm %util 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 16.00 0.00 156.00 9.75 21.89 288.12 36.00 57.60 5.50 0.00 44.00 8.00 48.79 2194.18 181.82 100.00 2.00 0.00 16.00 8.00 46.49 3397.00 500.00 100.00 4.50 0.00 40.00 8.89 43.73 5581.78 222.22 100.00 14.50 0.00 148.00 10.21 13.76 5909.24 68.97 100.00 1.50 0.00 12.00 8.00 8.57 7150.67 666.67 100.00 0.50 0.00 4.00 8.00 6.31 10168.00 2000.00 100.00 2.00 0.00 16.00 8.00 5.27 11001.00 500.00 100.00 0.50 0.00 4.00 8.00 2.96 17080.00 2000.00 100.00 34.00 0.00 1324.00 9.88 1.32 137.84 4.45 59.60 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 22.00 44.00 204.00 11.27 0.01 0.27 0.27 0.60 Let me provide you with some more information regarding the hardware. It's a Dell 1950 III box with Debian as OS where uname -a reports the following: Linux xx 2.6.32-5-amd64 #1 SMP Fri Feb 15 15:39:52 UTC 2013 x86_64 GNU/Linux The machine is a dedicated server that hosts an online game without any databases or I/O heavy applications running. The core application consumes about 0.8 of the 8 GBytes RAM, and the average CPU load is relatively low. The game itself, however, reacts rather sensitive towards I/O latency and thus our players experience massive ingame lag, which we would like to address as soon as possible. iostat: avg-cpu: %user %nice %system %iowait %steal %idle 1.77 0.01 1.05 1.59 0.00 95.58 Device: tps Blk_read/s Blk_wrtn/s Blk_read Blk_wrtn sdb 13.16 25.42 135.12 504701011 2682640656 sda 1.52 0.74 20.63 14644533 409684488 Uptime is: 19:26:26 up 229 days, 17:26, 4 users, load average: 0.36, 0.37, 0.32 Harddisk controller: 01:00.0 RAID bus controller: LSI Logic / Symbios Logic MegaRAID SAS 1078 (rev 04) Harddisks: Array 1, RAID-1, 2x Seagate Cheetah 15K.5 73 GB SAS Array 2, RAID-1, 2x Seagate ST3500620SS Barracuda ES.2 500GB 16MB 7200RPM SAS Partition information from df: Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/sdb1 480191156 30715200 425083668 7% /home /dev/sda2 7692908 437436 6864692 6% / /dev/sda5 15377820 1398916 13197748 10% /usr /dev/sda6 39159724 19158340 18012140 52% /var Some more data samples generated with iostat -dx sdb 1 (Oct 11, 2013) Device: rrqm/s wrqm/s r/s w/s rsec/s wsec/s avgrq-sz avgqu-sz await svctm %util sdb 0.00 15.00 0.00 70.00 0.00 656.00 9.37 4.50 1.83 4.80 33.60 sdb 0.00 0.00 0.00 2.00 0.00 16.00 8.00 12.00 836.00 500.00 100.00 sdb 0.00 0.00 0.00 3.00 0.00 32.00 10.67 9.96 1990.67 333.33 100.00 sdb 0.00 0.00 0.00 4.00 0.00 40.00 10.00 6.96 3075.00 250.00 100.00 sdb 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 4.00 0.00 0.00 100.00 sdb 0.00 0.00 0.00 2.00 0.00 16.00 8.00 2.62 4648.00 500.00 100.00 sdb 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 2.00 0.00 0.00 100.00 sdb 0.00 0.00 0.00 1.00 0.00 16.00 16.00 1.69 7024.00 1000.00 100.00 sdb 0.00 74.00 0.00 124.00 0.00 1584.00 12.77 1.09 67.94 6.94 86.00 Characteristic charts generated with rrdtool can be found here: iostat plot 1, 24 min interval: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/600/yqm3.png/ iostat plot 2, 120 min interval: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/407/griw.png/ As we have a rather large cache of 5.5 GBytes, we thought it might be a good idea to test if the I/O wait spikes would perhaps be caused by cache miss events. Therefore, we did a sync and then this to flush the cache and buffers: echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches and directly afterwards the I/O wait and service times virtually went through the roof, and everything on the machine felt like slow motion. During the next few hours the latency recovered and everything was as before - small to medium lags in short, unpredictable intervals. Now my question is: does anybody have any idea what might cause this annoying behaviour? Is it the first indication of the disk array or the raid controller dying, or something that can be easily mended by rebooting? (At the moment we're very reluctant to do this, however, because we're afraid that the disks might not come back up again.) Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance, Chris. Edited to add: we do see one or two processes go to 'D' state in top, one of which seems to be kjournald rather frequently. If I'm not mistaken, however, this does not indicate the processes causing the latency, but rather those affected by it - correct me if I'm wrong. Does the information about uninterruptibly sleeping processes help us in any way to address the problem? @Andy Shinn requested smartctl data, here it is: smartctl -a -d megaraid,2 /dev/sdb yields: smartctl 5.40 2010-07-12 r3124 [x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu] (local build) Copyright (C) 2002-10 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net Device: SEAGATE ST3500620SS Version: MS05 Serial number: Device type: disk Transport protocol: SAS Local Time is: Mon Oct 14 20:37:13 2013 CEST Device supports SMART and is Enabled Temperature Warning Disabled or Not Supported SMART Health Status: OK Current Drive Temperature: 20 C Drive Trip Temperature: 68 C Elements in grown defect list: 0 Vendor (Seagate) cache information Blocks sent to initiator = 1236631092 Blocks received from initiator = 1097862364 Blocks read from cache and sent to initiator = 1383620256 Number of read and write commands whose size <= segment size = 531295338 Number of read and write commands whose size > segment size = 51986460 Vendor (Seagate/Hitachi) factory information number of hours powered up = 36556.93 number of minutes until next internal SMART test = 32 Error counter log: Errors Corrected by Total Correction Gigabytes Total ECC rereads/ errors algorithm processed uncorrected fast | delayed rewrites corrected invocations [10^9 bytes] errors read: 509271032 47 0 509271079 509271079 20981.423 0 write: 0 0 0 0 0 5022.039 0 verify: 1870931090 196 0 1870931286 1870931286 100558.708 0 Non-medium error count: 0 SMART Self-test log Num Test Status segment LifeTime LBA_first_err [SK ASC ASQ] Description number (hours) # 1 Background short Completed 16 36538 - [- - -] # 2 Background short Completed 16 36514 - [- - -] # 3 Background short Completed 16 36490 - [- - -] # 4 Background short Completed 16 36466 - [- - -] # 5 Background short Completed 16 36442 - [- - -] # 6 Background long Completed 16 36420 - [- - -] # 7 Background short Completed 16 36394 - [- - -] # 8 Background short Completed 16 36370 - [- - -] # 9 Background long Completed 16 36364 - [- - -] #10 Background short Completed 16 36361 - [- - -] #11 Background long Completed 16 2 - [- - -] #12 Background short Completed 16 0 - [- - -] Long (extended) Self Test duration: 6798 seconds [113.3 minutes] smartctl -a -d megaraid,3 /dev/sdb yields: smartctl 5.40 2010-07-12 r3124 [x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu] (local build) Copyright (C) 2002-10 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net Device: SEAGATE ST3500620SS Version: MS05 Serial number: Device type: disk Transport protocol: SAS Local Time is: Mon Oct 14 20:37:26 2013 CEST Device supports SMART and is Enabled Temperature Warning Disabled or Not Supported SMART Health Status: OK Current Drive Temperature: 19 C Drive Trip Temperature: 68 C Elements in grown defect list: 0 Vendor (Seagate) cache information Blocks sent to initiator = 288745640 Blocks received from initiator = 1097848399 Blocks read from cache and sent to initiator = 1304149705 Number of read and write commands whose size <= segment size = 527414694 Number of read and write commands whose size > segment size = 51986460 Vendor (Seagate/Hitachi) factory information number of hours powered up = 36596.83 number of minutes until next internal SMART test = 28 Error counter log: Errors Corrected by Total Correction Gigabytes Total ECC rereads/ errors algorithm processed uncorrected fast | delayed rewrites corrected invocations [10^9 bytes] errors read: 610862490 44 0 610862534 610862534 20470.133 0 write: 0 0 0 0 0 5022.480 0 verify: 2861227413 203 0 2861227616 2861227616 100872.443 0 Non-medium error count: 1 SMART Self-test log Num Test Status segment LifeTime LBA_first_err [SK ASC ASQ] Description number (hours) # 1 Background short Completed 16 36580 - [- - -] # 2 Background short Completed 16 36556 - [- - -] # 3 Background short Completed 16 36532 - [- - -] # 4 Background short Completed 16 36508 - [- - -] # 5 Background short Completed 16 36484 - [- - -] # 6 Background long Completed 16 36462 - [- - -] # 7 Background short Completed 16 36436 - [- - -] # 8 Background short Completed 16 36412 - [- - -] # 9 Background long Completed 16 36404 - [- - -] #10 Background short Completed 16 36401 - [- - -] #11 Background long Completed 16 2 - [- - -] #12 Background short Completed 16 0 - [- - -] Long (extended) Self Test duration: 6798 seconds [113.3 minutes]

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• SOA PARTNER COMMUNITY NEWSLETTER JULY 2012

  - by mseika

  SOA PARTNER COMMUNITY NEWSLETTER JULY 2012 Dear SOA partner community member To provide our community members the best of our knowledge, we want your feedback on our SOA Partner community. Thus we are organizing SOA Partner Community Survey 2012. We request you to participate in the survey and give your valuable feedback on various areas of marketing, sales and education. To continue our successful BPM Suite, Oracle is launching together with you Process Accelerators initiative. It’s your opportunity to co-develop and market predefined processes. Oracle Fusion Applications Design Patterns are a great tool to develop your SOA or BPM solution or process accelerators. To promote your SOA & BPM Specialization we continue to offer several benefits. This month we would like to highlight our Specialization Plaques - make sure you request one for your office! Our Fusion Middleware Summer Camps are booked out, if could not get a seat you can attend the SOA & BPM track @ Virtual Developer Day: Oracle Fusion Development Oracle demo systems offer´s two new demos: Business Driven Development based on BPM Suite & SOA Lifecycle Management. Jürgen KressOracle SOA & BPM Partner Adoption EMEA NEW CONTENT Community SurveyProcess Accelerators KitPlaques SOA & BPM SpecializedSOA & BPM at Virtual Developer Day News from our Partners & CommunityOverview of SOA Diagnostics in 11.1.1.6 Business driven development(BDD) demo now available! SOA Lifecycle Management Oracle Fusion applications design patterns Updated material by Oracle Connect and Network SOA Blogs SOA on Facebook SOA on LinkedIn SOA on Twitter Mix SOA Forum COMMUNITY SURVEY Like every year we would like to get your feedback in our SOA Partner Community Survey 2012. Make sure that You attend to further develop our community and support our planning! It is key for us to get your feedback to prepare for the next fiscal year. Back to top PROCESS ACCELERATORS KIT Oracle is very interested to co-develop and market with you, our partners, pre-defined processes for BPM Suite.I am very happy to announce a new program called “Oracle BPM Partner Solution Catalog”. This program will provide a one-stop shop for our customers looking for Oracle BPM partner solutions available in the market today.The Oracle BPM Solution Catalog will be hosted on our very popular Oracle Technology Network (OTN). To give you an idea of the scale of customer visibility, OTN today receives over 1Million hits per day from our business and developer community. We would like to invite you to list your Oracle BPM 11g solutions available today.In order to participate in this program, you need to do the following: Fill in the attached slide templates - #3 and #4 for each Oracle BPM 11g solution you would like to list on OTN.Please add links to whitepapers , videos, references to the specific solution in the template slide. We recommend that you create a landing page on your website for these linked artifacts and just point to the same from within the PowerPoint template. This will give you the flexibility to update the information as frequently as needed. If you have the particular solution in production or a reference available, please list them as well. Send the PowerPoint template slides (1 set of slides for each Oracle BPM solution) to [email protected]. In addition to having the opportunity to list your solutions on OTN for Oracle customers, you will have the chance to advertise your new wins/implementations/solutions in an Oracle Sponsored PM Webinar held every quarter. This program is targeted to go live by the end of summer 2012. At this point, we are targeting a soft launch in July end 2012 so send on your BPM solutions information as soon as possible. We would love to have your solution(s) listed in the “Oracle BPM Partner Solution Catalog” at the time of the launch. This will be a live repository so you can keep adding more solutions as they become available. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us [email protected], Product Strategy Director, Oracle BPM , Phone +1 650.506.5486.Thank you and look forward to hearing from you. Oracle BPM team Process Accelerators Overview.pdf ProcessAcceleratorsDataSheet.pdf Demos draUPK.zip & trmUPK.zip BPM Solution repository slides.ppt Additional BPM material BPM Process Development Lifecycle Document that describes recommended approach to collaborative process modeling across business and IT tools ADF 11g PS5 Application with Customized BPM Worklist Task Flow (MDS Seeded Customization) by Andrejus Baranovskis BPMN process editor problems in 11.1.1.6 by Mark Nelson BPM – Disable DBMS job to refresh B2B Materialized View by Mark Nelson For the complete kit please visit the BPM folder at our SOA Community Workspace (SOA Community membership required). For the complete presentation please visit our SOA Community Workspace (SOA Community membership required). Information is Oracle and Partner confidential! Back to top PLAQUES SOA & BPM SPECIALIZED We continue to offer you a nice SOA & BPM Specialization plaque with your logo to proof your success. If you are a SOA or BPM Specialized partner and would like to request the plaque please send Brigitte an e-mail with the following information: Partner Name Partner logo (preferred eps file) Partner Status gold or platinum Your shipping address Your Specialization: SOA or BPM We recommend to mount the plaque at your office reception in addition you can use the SOA Specialization logos at your website download Logo: Gold & Platinum or the BPM logos Gold & Platinum Back to top SOA & BPM AT VIRTUAL DEVELOPER DAY Register now for this FREE hands-on online workshop Get up to date and learn everything you wanted to know about Oracle ADF & Fusion Development plus live Q&A chats with Oracle technical staffOracle Application Development Framework (ADF) is the standards based, strategic framework for Oracle Fusion Applications and Oracle Fusion Middleware. Oracle ADF’s integration with the Oracle SOA Suite, Oracle WebCenter and Oracle BI creates a complete productive development platform for your custom applications.Join us at this FREE virtual event and learn the latest in Fusion Development including: Is Oracle ADF development faster and simpler than Forms, Apex or .Net? Mobile Application Development with ADF Mobile Oracle ADF development with Eclipse Oracle WebCenter Portal and ADF Development Application Lifecycle Management with ADF Building Process Centric Applications with ADF and BPM Oracle Business Intelligence and ADF Integration Live Q&A chats with Oracle technical staff Developer lead, manager or architect - this event has something for everyone. Don’t miss this opportunity.Tuesday, July 10, 2012. 9:00 a.m. PT -1:00 p.m. PT 11:00 a.m. CT - 3:00 p.m. CT 12:00 p.m. ET - 4:00 p.m. ET 1:00 p.m. BRT - 5:00 p.m. BRT Register online now! for this FREE event. Agenda: 09:00 am Opening 09:30 am Keynote: Oracle Fusion Development Track1Introduction to Fusion Development Track2What's New in Fusion Development Track3Fusion Development in the Enterprise 10:00 am Is Oracle ADF Development Faster and Simpler than Oracle Forms, APEX or .Net? Mobile Application Development with ADF Mobile Oracle WebCenter Portal and ADF Development 11:00 am Rich Web UI made simple - an ADF Faces Overview Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse - ADF Development Building Process Centric Applications with ADF and BPM 12:00 noon Next Generation Controller for JSF Application Lifecycle Management for ADF Oracle Business Intelligence and ADF Integration *Hands On Lab – WebCenter and ADF Lab w/ JDeveloper - Lab materials will be provided ahead of the event to give you ample time to work through the lab and increase the productivity of the live chat sessions the day of the event. Sessions abstractsRegister online now! for this FREE event Read more on Community Events and post your comment here. Back to top NEWS FROM OUR PARTNERS AND COMMUNITY Send your tweets @soacommunity #soacommunity and follow us at http://twitter.com/soacommunity JDeveloper & ADF?Troubleshooting BPMN process editor problems in 11.1.1.6http://dlvr.it/1p0FfS SOA Community?SOA & BPM @ Virtual Developer Day: Oracle Fusion Development - July 10th 2012https://soacommunity.wordpress.com/2012/07/02/soa-bpm-virtual-developer-day- oracle-fusion-developmentjuly-10th-2012/#soacommunity #soa #bom #education orclateamsoa ?A-Team Blog #ateam: BAM design pointers - In working recently with a large Oracle customer on SOA and BAM, I discove.http://ow.ly/1kYqES SOA CommunitySOA Community Newsletter June 2012http://wp.me/p10C8u-qw SOA CommunityBPMN process editor problems in 11.1.1.6 by Mark Nelsonhttp://redstack.wordpress.com/2012/06/27/ bpmn-process-editor-problems-in-11-1-1-6 #soacommunity #bpm OTNArchBeat ?SOA Learning Library: free short, topic-focused training on Oracle SOA & BPM products | @SOACommunity http://pub.vitrue.com/NE1G Andrejus Baranovskis ?ADF 11g PS5 Application with Customized BPM Worklist Task Flow (MDS Seeded Customization)http://fb.me/1coX4r1X1 SOA CommunitySOA Learning Library provides a comprehensive curriculum for the SOA and BPM product suites https://soacommunity.wordpress.com/2012/06/27/soa-learning-library #soacommunity #soa #bpm OTNArchBeat ?A Universal JMX Client for Weblogic - Part 1: Monitoring BPEL Thread Pools in SOA 11g | Stefan Koserhttp://pub.vitrue.com/mQVZ OTNArchBeat ?BPM - Disable DBMS job to refresh B2B Materialized View | Mark Nelson http://pub.vitrue.com/3PR0Oracle SOA ?Learn how Choice Hotels Implements Innovative Google Maps Solution with #OracleSOA http://bit.ly/MTwIJ3 SOA Communitytop Tweets SOA Partner Community - June 2012 Send your tweets @soacommunity #soacommunity https://soacommunity.wordpress.com/2012/06/25/top-tweets-soa-partner-community-june-2012 Torsten Winterberg#OPITZ is pushing Oracle commitment to the next level: New Specializations done: ADF, BPM, WLS, Exadatahttp://bit.ly/KX1WVS ServiceTechSymposium ?Only 8 more days left until Super Early Bird Registration Discount expires! http://www.servicetechsymposium.com OracleBlogsSOA Management in 3 minutes - Video explainerhttp://ow.ly/1kN5pn SOA Community ?SOA, Cloud & Service Technology Symposium 2012 London - Enter Promo Code: Djmxz370https://soacommunity.wordpress.com/2012/06/22/soa-cloud-service-technology-symposium-2012-london #soasymposium #soacommunity #soa Heidi BuelowGreat course! w David Read RT @soacommunity: product management ADF for BPM training 5 seats left https://soacommunity.wordpress.com/2012/06/12/fusion-middleware-summer-campsadvanced-partner-trainings/ #bpm #soacommunity SOA Community ?product management ADF for BPM training 5 seats lefthttps://soacommunity.wordpress.com/2012/06/12/fusion-middleware-summer-campsadvanced-partner-trainings/ #bpm #soacommunity OTNArchBeat ?Oacle Fusion Applications Design Patterns Now Available For Developers | Ultan O'Broinhttp://pub.vitrue.com/UEiF OTNArchBeat ?SOA, Cloud & Service Technology Symposium 2012London - Special Oracle Discounthttp://pub.vitrue.com/8E0J SOA CommunityBecome a facebook fan of soacommunity http://www.facebook.com/soacommunity #soacommunity SOA Community ?SOA Suite HealthCare Integration Architecture https://blogs.oracle.com/SOAForHealthcare/entry/soa_suite_healthcare_integration_architecture #soacommunity #soa Andrejus Baranovskis ?Running Pre-built Virtual Machine for SOA Suite and BPM Suite 11g PS5 on Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6http://fb.me/vB8nO0Vg OracleBlogsPrinciples of Service-Oriented Architecture by Douwe P. van den Bos http://ow.ly/1kIcOP OTNArchBeatOracle Public Cloud Architecture | @TylerJewell http://ow.ly/bHAcL The SOA Network ?Business Process Management, Service-Oriented Architecture, and Web 2.0: Business Transformation or.http://bit.ly/LBgREL #ITNews #SOA OracleBlogs ?Oracle SOA Foundation Practitioner Certificationhttp://ow.ly/1kGYYg Frank Nimphius ?Learn Advanced ADF. ORACLE Fusion Middleware Summer Camps in Lisbon - July 9th - 13thhttp://bit.ly/KGCl3i SOA CommunityTransform Your Application Integration with Best Practices from Oracle Customershttps://blogs.oracle.com/SOA/entry/transform_your_application_integration_with #soacommunity #soa #bpm Simone GeibWhat you always wanted to know about #oraclesoa diagnostics: Shawn Bailey, Overview of SOA Diagnostics in 11.1.1.6,http://ow.ly/bxK0M Oracle SOA ?Save the date: Jun 21 10AM, SOA & BPM Customer Insight Series. Hear how Choice Hotels went from legacy to #oraclesoa http://bit.ly/LsNDGl OTNArchBeat ?New VirtualBox images for Oracle SOA Suite & Oracle BPM Suite 11.1.1.6.0http://ow.ly/bwDAl OracleBlogs ?Process development lifecycle in Oracle BPM 11g http://ow.ly/1ktesY Daniel AmadeiNew post: Oracle BPEL 11g Message Delivery & Recovery.http://amadei.com.br/blog/index.php /oracle-bpel-11g-message-delivery SOA Community ?Sending out the June edition of the #soacommunity newsletter - read it or become a member http://www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa!#soa #bpm Arun Pareek ?For the past six months Ahmed Aboulnaga and me have been working on Oracle SOA Suite 11g Administrator's Handbook.http://lnkd.in/CAvpUQ SOA CommunitySun shine all day no clouds - solar eclipse is over... #sunshine #cloud http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Swarm-Computing Michel SchildmeijerWatch my blog Oracle Service Bus 11g: listing projects and services with WLST - part 1 http://lnkd.in/B7f3GQ @TITAN_GS @wlscommunity OTNArchBeatBook Review: Oracle Application Integration Architecture (AIA) Foundation Pack 11gR1: Essentials | Rajesh Rahejahttp://ow.ly/bn2cc OTNArchBeat ?Driving from Business Architecture to Business Process Services | @vghariharan http://ow.ly/bn5UB OTNArchBeat ?SOA Analysis within the Department of Defense Architecture Framework (DoDAF) 2.0 - Part II | Dawit Lessanu http://ow.ly/bn6sX Simone Geib ?Contact me directly for ideas how to improvehttp://bit.ly/advancedsoasuite and additional posts, presentations, white papers, ... #soasuite Simone Geib ?#soasuite advanced OTN page has become too cluttered. Broke it into separate pages to start with. http://bit.ly/advancedsoasuite OracleBlogs ?June Webcast: SOA Gateway Implementation and Troubleshooting (2 sessions) http://ow.ly/1kbRFA ServiceTechSymposium ?New session just posted to calendar: "NoSQL for Data Services, Data Virtualization & Big Data" by Guido Schmutz, Trivadis AG ://ow.ly/bjjOeDebra Lilley ?looks good - real proof people are using the apps ! RT @fteter: Very cool Fusion Applications Help site: http://bit.ly/L3nvOR #FusionApps demed ?rapid proliferation of cloud computing will drive convergence of SOA and cloud paradigms" http://ovum.com/2012/05/18/soa-paves-the-way-for-cloud/ SOA CommunityMiddleware Oracle Excellence Awards 2012-HAPPY NEW YEAR! https://soacommunity.wordpress.com/2012/05/31/middleware-oracle-excellence-awards-2012happy-new-year/ #soacommunity #opn #opnaward #specialization #oracle SOA CommunityHappy New Year #soacommunity thanks for the business! Time for a drink http://pic.twitter.com/zkK08KWB OTNArchBeat ?Who should ‘own’ the Enterprise Architecture? | Michael Glas http://bit.ly/K0ge0Q SOA Communitytop Tweets SOA Partner Community &ndash; May 2012 http://wp.me/p10C8u-pP ServiceTechSymposiumNew session just posted to Symposium calendar: "Elastic SOA in the Cloud" by Steve Millidge, C2B2 Consulting http://www.servicetechsymposium.com/agenda2012.php #elastic_soa_in_the_cloud orclateamsoa ?A-Team Blog #ateam: How to Set JVM Parameters in Oracle SOA 11Ghttp://ow.ly/1k2cnl ServiceTechSymposium ?New session just posted to Symposium calendar: "SOA Governance at EDP: A Global Energy Company" by Manuel Rosa, Linkhttp://www.servicetechsymposium.com/agenda2012.php#soa_governance_at_edp SOA Community ?VirtualBox image SOA Suite & BPM Suite 11.1.1.6.0&ndash;Your feedback?http://wp.me/p10C8u-qh Oracle MiddlewareSave the date: Jun 21 10AM, SOA & BPM Customer Insight Series. Hear how Choice Hotels went from legacy to#oraclesoa http://bit.ly/LU1y5N OTNArchBeat ?Goodbye, Silos. Hello SOA. | @stephanieoverbyhttp://pub.vitrue.com/NJJO SOA CommunityBPM Standard Edition - to start your BPM project http://wp.me/p10C8u-qj Please feel free to send us your news! And add your blog to our SOA blog wiki. Back to top OVERVIEW OF SOA DIAGNOSTICS IN 11.1.1.6 What tools are available for diagnosing SOA Suite issues? There are a variety of tools available to help you and Support diagnose SOA Suite issues in 11g but it can be confusing as to which tool is appropriate for a particular situation and what their relationships are. This blog post will introduce the various tools and attempt to clarify what each is for and how they are related. Let's first list the tools we'll be addressing: RDA: Remote Diagnostic Agent DFW: Diagnostic Framework Selective Tracing DMS: Dynamic Monitoring Service ODL: Oracle Diagnostic Logging ADR: Automatic Diagnostics Repository ADRCI: Automatic Diagnostics Repository Command Interpreter WLDF: WebLogic Diagnostic Framework This overview is not mean to be a comprehensive guide on using all of these tools, however, extensive reference materials are included that will provide many more details on their execution. Another point to note is that all of these tools are applicable for Fusion Middleware as a whole but specific products may or may not have implemented features to leverage them. A couple of the tools have a WebLogic Scripting Tool or 'WLST' interface. WLST is a command interface for executing pre-built functions and custom scripts against a domain. A detailed WLST tutorial is beyond the scope of this post but you can find general information here. There are more specific resources in the below sections.In this post when we refer to 'Enterprise Manager' or 'EM' we are referring to Enterprise Manager Fusion Middleware Control. read the full blog post here. Read more on Oracle and post your comment here. Back to top BUSINESS DRIVEN DEVELOPMENT (BDD) DEMO NOW AVAILABLE! For access to the Oracle demo systems please visit OPN and talk to your Partner Expert DSS is pleased to announce the availability of the demo “Business Driven Development“. This innovative demonstration uses a case-study approach to show business users how they can easily streamline their Business Processes - delivering greater efficiency, agility, visibility and collaboration with Oracle BPM and WebCenter. The BDD demonstration uses a case study-based approach to highlight a business problem at a fictional company, Avitek Corporation, and uses Oracle BPM and Oracle WebCenter to solve the business problem. This holistic approach has specifically been used to appeal to a non-technical business analyst user. This demo is NOT focused on product features, but aims to guide users through a complete BPM lifecycle. The scenario is based on improving a simple order process (scenario details are in the demo script). Avitek Corporation is sufferinng from a manual email-driven ordering process. Sales reps don’t know where the customer orders are stuck (no visibility) and finance users are unable to manually approve every order (no automation). There are several areas where this process can be improved with Business Process Management technology. This demo shows how improving following areas will ignificantly help resolve the business problems Avitek Corporation is facing. Areas for improvement include: Utilizing BPM for process management, rather than an unregulated, email-based process. Utilizing automated services, rather than requiring a human to key into a system. For example, Finance checking the customer’s credit rating is something that could be automated. Centralizing business rules that can be integrated into a business process, rather than requiring a human to process them. For example, Finance must determine when orders can be automatically approved. Provide insight and visibility into the process. For example, Sales Rep needs to know the status of their customer’s orders. The BDD Demo uses the following products. Oracle BPM Suite 11g PS4FP Oracle WebCenter 11g PS4FP (for Process Spaces) Oracle Business Activity Monitoring 11g Oracle Database 11g Back to top SOA LIFECYCLE MANAGEMENT For access to the Oracle demo systems please visit OPN and talk to your Partner Expert We are pleased to announce the availability of the SOA Management demo that showcases some of the key provisioning and lifecycle management capabilities of SOA Management Pack Enterprise Edition (EE). This demo specifically focuses on some of the lifecycle management solutions for Oracle SOA Suite and Oracle Service Bus (OSB). Demo Highlights The demo showcases the following capabilities. Provisioning of SOA Composites Provisioning of OSB Projects Provision SOA and OSB artifacts in a future maintenance window Back to top ORACLE FUSION APPLICATIONS DESIGN PATTERNS The Oracle Fusion Applications user experience design patterns are published! These new, reusable usability solutions and best-practices, which will join the Oracle dashboard patterns and guidelines that are already available online, are used by Oracle to artfully bring to life a new standard in the user experience, or UX, of enterprise applications. Now, the Oracle applications development community can benefit from the science behind the Oracle Fusion Applications user experience, too. These Oracle Fusion Applications UX Design Patterns, or blueprints, enable Oracle applications developers and system implementers everywhere to leverage professional usability insight when: tailoring an Oracle Fusion application, creating coexistence solutions that existing users will be delighted with, thus enabling graceful user transitions to Oracle Fusion Applications down the road, or designing exciting, new, highly usable applications in the cloud or on-premise. Based on the Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF) components, the Oracle Fusion Applications patterns and guidelines are proven with real users and in the Applications UX usability labs, so you can get right to work coding productivity-enhancing designs that provide an advantage for your entire business. What’s the best way to get started? We’ve made that easy, too. The Design Filter Tool (DeFT) selects the best pattern for your user type and task. Simply adapt your selection for your own task flow and content, and you’re on your way to a really great applications user experience. More Oracle applications design patterns and training are coming your way in the future. To provide feedback on the sets that are currently available, let me know in the comments! Read more on Fusionapps and post your comment here. Back to top UPDATED ORACLE MATERIAL Integrated SOA Gateway Documentation - Implementation Guide | Developer’s Guide Webcast Series: Oracle’s SOA and Oracle Business Process Management Solutions (Choice Hotels, Eaton, Farmers Insurance) BAM design pointers By Kavitha Srinivasan Seeking Oracle Fusion Middleware Go Live StoriesOracle Fusion Middleware product management is looking for recent go live stories to share with the Oracle sales team, sales consulting, product management and other internal groups. Customer contact details may remain anonymous. Your successful implementation will be featured in a quarterly report. The chance to present on an internal webcast is also available. Contact Maria Forney ([email protected]) if you have a noteworthy implementation success story. This is a good opportunity for partners interested in showcasing Oracle Fusion Middleware implementations, and gaining more exposure within Oracle. Performance tuning resources. All in one: docs, blogs, WPs, ppts: http://bit.ly/soa_resources Back to top HAVE YOU MISSED OUR LAST SOA PARTNER COMMUNITY WEBCASTS? UPK Webcast Business Driven Application Management & BPM11g & Application Grid & GoldenGate & Fusion Middleware Pricing & OC4J to WebLogic & Next Generation SOA & Fusion Middleware in Utility & Fusion Middleware in Communications & Fusion Middleware in Public Services & Fusion Middleware in Financial Services Please check your local OPN trainings calendar for additional training dates and locations. Back to top SOA PARTNER COMMUNITY CALENDAR On-Demand Trainings Event Name Language Type SOA Virtual Developers Day English Tech In-Class Trainings Date Event name Location / Country Contact person Type 09-13.07.2012 BPM Suite 11g advanced training by David Read Lisbon, Portugal Jürgen Kress Tech 09-13.07.2012 ADF 11g advanced training by Grant Ronald and Frank Nimphius Lisbon, Portugal Jürgen Kress Tech 09-13.07.2012 WebCenter Portal advanced training by Stefan Krantz and Angelo Santagata Lisbon, Portugal Jürgen Kress Tech 10.07.2012 Fusion Middleware Virtual Developer Day Online OTN Tech 10- 12.07.2012 WebLogic 12c training by Cosmin Tudor Lisbon, Portugal Jürgen Kress Tech 16-18.07.2012 SOA Suite 11g advanced training by Niall Commiskey Munich, Germany Jürgen Kress Tech 16-18.07.2012 ADF for BPM Suite 11g advanced training by David Read Munich, Germany Jürgen Kress Tech 16-18.07.2012 WebCenter Sites 11g advanced training by Product Management Munich, Germany Jürgen Kress Tech 17-20.07.2012 Oracle BPM 11g Implementation Bootcamp Live Virtual Class Oracle University Tech 23-26.07.2012 Oracle BPM 11g Implementation Bootcamp Utrecht, Netherlands Oracle University Tech 29-31.08.2012 Oracle BPM 11g Implementation Bootcamp Live Virtual Class Oracle University Tech 02-05.10.2012 Oracle BPM 11g Implementation Bootcamp Utrecht, Netherlands Oracle University Tech 15-18.10.2012 Oracle BPM 11g Implementation Bootcamp Utrecht, Netherlands Oracle University Tech 28-30.11.2012 Oracle AIA 11g Implementation Bootcamp Live Virtual Class Oracle University Tech 11-14.12.2012 Oracle BPM 11g Implementation Bootcamp Live Virtual Class Oracle University Tech 20-22.2.2013 Oracle AIA 11g Implementation Bootcamp Utrecht, Netherlands Oracle University Tech 14-17.1.2013 Oracle BPM 11g Implementation Bootcamp Utrecht, Netherlands Oracle University Tech 15-18.3.2013 Oracle BPM 11g Implementation Bootcamp Utrecht, Netherlands Oracle University Tech Please check your local OPN Training Calendar for additional training and locations here. Back to top SOASCHOOL.COM - SOA CERTIFIED PROFESSIONAL(SOACP) PROGRAM The SOASchool.com - SOA Certified Professional (SOACP) program is dedicated to excellence in the field of SOA and service-oriented computing. Through a series of seasoned course modules and exams, IT professionals have the opportunity to obtain a number of different certifications to recognize their accomplishment of gaining "project ready" SOA proficiency. This comprehensive and strictly vendor-neutral program was developed in cooperation with best-selling SOA author Thomas Erl and several major SOA organizations and academic institutions. Through the involvement of the SOA Education Committee, course contents and certification requirements are constantly reviewed and revised to stay current with developments in the service-oriented computing industry. The program is currently comprised of 12 course modules and 5 certifications and is expanding to 18 course modules and 8 certifications throughout 2009. For more information, visit www.soaschool.com and www.soacp.com. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Wiki Back to top YOUR CONTENT ON THE NEWSLETTER AND ON THE SOA COMMUNITY PORTAL Publishing Your StoriesWe would like to invite our partners to publish information in the newsletter or on our SOA Community portal. Especially we are looking for your real life experience with our SOA technology. Please send your documents to Jürgen Kress. We look forward to getting your suggestions! Back to top SOA DISCUSSION FORUM BECOMES INTERACTIVE AT THE SOA COMMUNITY! Do you want to chat to experts, including partners and Oracle SOA Product Development? Do you want to get the latest information about our SOA solutions and events?Attend our private online SOA Discussion Forum at OTN. Please send your OTN forums user name to Brigitte Felisaz. You must be a registered user to access the SOA Discussion Forum. Back to top INVITE YOUR COLLEAGUES TO JOIN THE SOA COMMUNITY Please feel free to invite your colleagues to join the SOA Community and to participate in the SOA Assessment tests. For registration please login the Oracle PartnerNetwork and go to: www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa For any questions on the above or concerning SOA and Oracle in general please contact the Oracle EMEA Alliances & Channels SOA Team. Best regardsOracle EMEA SOA TeamJürgen Kress Jürgen KressSOA Partner Adoption EMEATel. +49 89 1430 1479E-Mail: [email protected]

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• Big Data – Is Big Data Relevant to me? – Big Data Questionnaires – Guest Post by Vinod Kumar

  - by Pinal Dave

  This guest post is by Vinod Kumar. Vinod Kumar has worked with SQL Server extensively since joining the industry over a decade ago. Working on various versions of SQL Server 7.0, Oracle 7.3 and other database technologies – he now works with the Microsoft Technology Center (MTC) as a Technology Architect. Let us read the blog post in Vinod’s own voice. I think the series from Pinal is a good one for anyone planning to start on Big Data journey from the basics. In my daily customer interactions this buzz of “Big Data” always comes up, I react generally saying – “Sir, do you really have a ‘Big Data’ problem or do you have a big Data problem?” Generally, there is a silence in the air when I ask this question. Data is everywhere in organizations – be it big data, small data, all data and for few it is bad data which is same as no data :). Wow, don’t discount me as someone who opposes “Big Data”, I am a big supporter as much as I am a critic of the abuse of this term by the people. In this post, I wanted to let my mind flow so that you can also think in the direction I want you to see these concepts. In any case, this is not an exhaustive dump of what is in my mind – but you will surely get the drift how I am going to question Big Data terms from customers!!! Is Big Data Relevant to me? Many of my customers talk to me like blank whiteboard with no idea – “why Big Data”. They want to jump into the bandwagon of technology and they want to decipher insights from their unexplored data a.k.a. unstructured data with structured data. So what are these industry scenario’s that come to mind? Here are some of them: Financials Fraud detection: Banks and Credit cards are monitoring your spending habits on real-time basis. Customer Segmentation: applies in every industry from Banking to Retail to Aviation to Utility and others where they deal with end customer who consume their products and services. Customer Sentiment Analysis: Responding to negative brand perception on social or amplify the positive perception. Sales and Marketing Campaign: Understand the impact and get closer to customer delight. Call Center Analysis: attempt to take unstructured voice recordings and analyze them for content and sentiment. Medical Reduce Re-admissions: How to build a proactive follow-up engagements with patients. Patient Monitoring: How to track Inpatient, Out-Patient, Emergency Visits, Intensive Care Units etc. Preventive Care: Disease identification and Risk stratification is a very crucial business function for medical. Claims fraud detection: There is no precise dollars that one can put here, but this is a big thing for the medical field. Retail Customer Sentiment Analysis, Customer Care Centers, Campaign Management. Supply Chain Analysis: Every sensors and RFID data can be tracked for warehouse space optimization. Location based marketing: Based on where a check-in happens retail stores can be optimize their marketing. Telecom Price optimization and Plans, Finding Customer churn, Customer loyalty programs Call Detail Record (CDR) Analysis, Network optimizations, User Location analysis Customer Behavior Analysis Insurance Fraud Detection & Analysis, Pricing based on customer Sentiment Analysis, Loyalty Management Agents Analysis, Customer Value Management This list can go on to other areas like Utility, Manufacturing, Travel, ITES etc. So as you can see, there are obviously interesting use cases for each of these industry verticals. These are just representative list. Where to start? A lot of times I try to quiz customers on a number of dimensions before starting a Big Data conversation. Are you getting the data you need the way you want it and in a timely manner? Can you get in and analyze the data you need? How quickly is IT to respond to your BI Requests? How easily can you get at the data that you need to run your business/department/project? How are you currently measuring your business? Can you get the data you need to react WITHIN THE QUARTER to impact behaviors to meet your numbers or is it always “rear-view mirror?” How are you measuring: The Brand Customer Sentiment Your Competition Your Pricing Your performance Supply Chain Efficiencies Predictive product / service positioning What are your key challenges of driving collaboration across your global business?  What the challenges in innovation? What challenges are you facing in getting more information out of your data? Note: Garbage-in is Garbage-out. Hold good for all reporting / analytics requirements Big Data POCs? A number of customers get into the realm of setting a small team to work on Big Data – well it is a great start from an understanding point of view, but I tend to ask a number of other questions to such customers. Some of these common questions are: To what degree is your advanced analytics (natural language processing, sentiment analysis, predictive analytics and classification) paired with your Big Data’s efforts? Do you have dedicated resources exploring the possibilities of advanced analytics in Big Data for your business line? Do you plan to employ machine learning technology while doing Advanced Analytics? How is Social Media being monitored in your organization? What is your ability to scale in terms of storage and processing power? Do you have a system in place to sort incoming data in near real time by potential value, data quality, and use frequency? Do you use event-driven architecture to manage incoming data? Do you have specialized data services that can accommodate different formats, security, and the management requirements of multiple data sources? Is your organization currently using or considering in-memory analytics? To what degree are you able to correlate data from your Big Data infrastructure with that from your enterprise data warehouse? Have you extended the role of Data Stewards to include ownership of big data components? Do you prioritize data quality based on the source system (that is Facebook/Twitter data has lower quality thresholds than radio frequency identification (RFID) for a tracking system)? Do your retention policies consider the different legal responsibilities for storing Big Data for a specific amount of time? Do Data Scientists work in close collaboration with Data Stewards to ensure data quality? How is access to attributes of Big Data being given out in the organization? Are roles related to Big Data (Advanced Analyst, Data Scientist) clearly defined? How involved is risk management in the Big Data governance process? Is there a set of documented policies regarding Big Data governance? Is there an enforcement mechanism or approach to ensure that policies are followed? Who is the key sponsor for your Big Data governance program? (The CIO is best) Do you have defined policies surrounding the use of social media data for potential employees and customers, as well as the use of customer Geo-location data? How accessible are complex analytic routines to your user base? What is the level of involvement with outside vendors and third parties in regard to the planning and execution of Big Data projects? What programming technologies are utilized by your data warehouse/BI staff when working with Big Data? These are some of the important questions I ask each customer who is actively evaluating Big Data trends for their organizations. These questions give you a sense of direction where to start, what to use, how to secure, how to analyze and more. Sign off Any Big data is analysis is incomplete without a compelling story. The best way to understand this is to watch Hans Rosling – Gapminder (2:17 to 6:06) videos about the third world myths. Don’t get overwhelmed with the Big Data buzz word, the destination to what your data speaks is important. In this blog post, we did not particularly look at any Big Data technologies. This is a set of questionnaire one needs to keep in mind as they embark their journey of Big Data. I did write some of the basics in my blog: Big Data – Big Hype yet Big Opportunity. Do let me know if these questions make sense?  Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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• Convert DVD to MP4 / H.264 with HD Decrypter and Handbrake

  - by DigitalGeekery

  Are you looking for a way to convert your DVD collection to high quality MP4 files? Today we are going to take a look at using DVDFab HD Decrypter along with Handbrake to convert DVDs to MP4 using the H.264 codec.  Process Overview Handbrake is a great file conversion application, but it unfortunately can’t handle DVD copy protection. For that we will use DVDFab’s HD Decrypter. HD Decrypter is the always free portion of the DVDFab application. What HD Decrypter will do, is remove the copy protection from your DVD, and copy the Video-TS and Audio-TS folders to your hard drive. Once the copy protection is gone, we will use Handbrake to convert the files to MP4 format with H.264 compression. Note: You’ll get full access to all the options in DVDFab  during the 30 trial period. However, the HD Decrypter is free and will continue to work. Ripping the DVD Install both Handbrake and DVDFab HD Decrypter. (Download links below) Once the applications are installed, place your DVD into your DVD drive and open DVDFab. On the welcome screen, click “Start DVDFab.”   You’ll be prompted to choose your region. Click “OK.” The disc is analyzed and opened… You’ll be brought to the main interface. Make sure you have the Full Disc option selected at the left panel and “Copy DVD-Video (VIDEO_TS folder) is selected. Click “Start.” Don’t be confused by the “DVD to DVD” option pop up. We won’t actually be burning to DVD. The HD Decrypter portion of the DVDFab suite is part of the DVD to DVD option. Click “OK.” The DVD will be ripped to your hard drive. When the copy process is complete, you’ll be prompted to insert media to start the write process. We aren’t going to be burning to disc, so just click Cancel then close out of DVDFab.   Converting to MP4 Now we are ready to convert Open Handbrake and click on the “Source” button at the top left. Select DVD / VIDEO_TS folder from the drop down list. Now we need to browse for the location where DVDFab HD Decrypter copied your movie. By default, that location will be the \DVDFab\Temp\FullDisc directory in your Documents folder. For example, in Windows 7, it would be: C:\Users\%username%\Documents\DVDFab\Temp\FullDisc\[Name of Your DVD] Select the folder, and click “OK.” You may be prompted to set a default path in Handbrake. This is an optional step. Click “OK.” If you’d like to set a default destination folder, Go to Tools on the top menu, select Options. On the General tab, click “Browse” to select a destination output folder. Click “Close” when Finished.   Next, click the dropdown list next to “Title.” Select the title that matches the length of the movie. It’s possible you may have see more than one title with a similar length. If so, consult the DVD information, or a site like IMDB.com, to find the proper movie title length. Select your container under Output Settings. This will be your final output file extension. We will be using MP4 for this example. You also have the option of MKV.   If you didn’t set up a default destination folder, you’ll need to select one by clicking the “Browse” button. You can manually customize the output file name and change the output file extension to .mp4 (Unless you prefer the iPod friendly .m4v extension). Settings There are a variety of custom settings that can be changed either through the tabs listed under Output Settings, or by selecting one of the Presets to the right. If converting exclusively for any of the devices listed in the preset list, simply click on that device and the settings will be automatically applied in the Output Settings tabs. For more Universal (non-Apple) devices or output, select the Normal profile.   For the most part, the presets will suit quite nicely. However, you can further customize settings if you’d like. The Picture tab allows you to tweak the size or cropping region. You must change Anamorphic to Loose or Custom to change the size.   The Video tab allows you to choose your codec. H.264 is the default. You also have the option to choose a target (output) size. The Constant Quality is recommended to be set between 59% – 63%. Anything over 70% will likely result in an output file larger than the input without any improved quality. On the Subtitles tab, you can select an available subtitle from the dropdown list and click “Add” to add it to the output file. When you’ve finished any customizations you are ready to begin the conversion process. Click “Start.” A Command window will open and you can follow the process. You’ll probably want to find something to do in the meantime as the process could take a couple of hours. When the process completes, you’re ready to watch your video.   Although it’s a time consuming process that involves a couple steps, this method will give you high quality H.264 video files. If you want to rip and burn your DVD’s to ISO check out our article on how to rip and convert DVD’s to an ISO image. Links Download DVDFab HD Decrypter (Part of the DVDFab suite) Download Handbrake Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Enjoy Quick & Easy Unit Conversion with Convert for WindowsConvert Older Excel Documents to Excel 2007 FormatCalculate with Qalculate on LinuxHow To Convert Video Files to MP3 with VLCConvert a Row to a Column in Excel the Easy Way TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Use Quick Translator to Translate Text in 50 Languages (Firefox) Get Better Windows Search With UltraSearch Scan News With NY Times Article Skimmer SpeedyFox Claims to Speed up your Firefox Beware Hover Kitties Test Drive Mobile Phones Online With TryPhone

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• Expectations + Rewards = Innovation

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  “Innovation” is a heavy word. We regard those that embrace it as “Innovators”. We describe organizations as being “Innovative”. We hold those associated with the word in high regard, even though its dictionary definition is very simple: Introducing something new. What our culture has done is wrapped Innovation in white robes and a gold crown. Innovation is rarely just introducing something new. Innovations and innovators are typically associated with other terms: groundbreaking, genius, industry-changing, creative, leading. Being a true innovator and creating innovations are a big deal, and something companies try to strive for…or at least say they strive for. There’s huge value in being recognized as an innovator in an industry, since the idea is that innovation equates to increased profitability. IBM ran an ad a few years back that showed what their view of innovation is: “The point of innovation is to make actual money.” If the money aspect makes you feel uneasy, consider it another way: the point of innovation is to <insert payoff here>. Companies that innovate will be more successful. Non-profits that innovate can better serve their target clients. Governments that innovate can better provide services to their citizens. True innovation is not easy to come by though. As with anything in business, how well an organization will innovate is reliant on the employees it retains, the expectations placed on those employees, and the rewards available to them. In a previous blog post I talked about one formula: Right Employees + Happy Employees = Productive Employees I want to introduce a new one, that builds upon the previous one: Expectations + Rewards = Innovation  The level of innovation your organization will realize is directly associated with the expectations you place on your staff and the rewards you make available to them. Expectations We may feel uncomfortable with the idea of placing expectations on our staff, mainly because expectation has somewhat of a negative or cold connotation to it: “I expect you to act this way or else!” The problem is in the or-else part…we focus on the negative aspects of failing to meet expectations instead of looking at the positive side. “I expect you to act this way because it will produce <insert benefit here>”. Expectations should not be set to punish but instead be set to ensure quality. At a recent conference I spoke with some Microsoft employees who told me that you have five years from starting with the company to reach a “Senior” level. If you don’t, then you’re let go. The expectation Microsoft placed on their staff is that they should be working towards improving themselves, taking more responsibility, and thus ensure that there is a constant level of quality in the workforce. Rewards Let me be clear: a paycheck is not a reward. A paycheck is simply the employer’s responsibility in the employee/employer relationship. A paycheck will never be the key motivator to drive innovation. Offering employees something over and above their required compensation can spur them to greater performance and achievement. Working in the food service industry, this tactic was used again and again: whoever has the highest sales over lunch will receive a free lunch/gift certificate/entry into a draw/etc. There was something to strive for, to try beyond the baseline of what our serving jobs were. It was through this that innovative sales techniques would be tried and honed, with key servers being top sellers time and time again. At a code camp I spoke at, I was amazed to see that all the employees from one company receive $100 Visa gift cards as a thank you for taking time to speak. Again, offering something over and above that can give that extra push for employees. Rewards work. But what about the fairness angle? In the restaurant example I gave, there were servers that would never win the competition. They just weren’t good enough at selling and never seemed to get better. So should those that did work at performing better and produce more sales for the restaurant not get rewarded because those who weren’t working at performing better might get upset? Of course not! Organizations succeed because of their top performers and those that strive to join their ranks. The Expectation/Reward Graph While the Expectations + Rewards = Innovation formula may seem like a simple mathematics formula, there’s much more going under the hood. In fact there are three different outcomes that could occur based on what you put in as values for Expectations and Rewards. Consider the graph below and the descriptions that follow: Disgruntled – High Expectation, Low Reward I worked at a company where the mantra was “Company First, Because We Pay You”. Even today I still hear stories of how this sentiment continues to be perpetuated: They provide you a paycheck and a means to live, therefore you should always put them as your top priority. Of course, this is a huge imbalance in the expectation/reward equation. Why would anyone willingly meet high expectations of availability, workload, deadlines, etc. when there is no reward other than a paycheck to show for it? Remember: paychecks are not rewards! Instead, you see employees be disgruntled which not only affects the level of production but also the level of quality within an organization. It also means that you see higher turnover. Complacent – Low Expectation, Low Reward Complacency is a systemic problem that typically exists throughout all levels of an organization. With no real expectations or rewards, nobody needs to excel. In fact, those that do try to innovate, improve, or introduce new things into the organization might be shunned or pushed out by the rest of the staff who are just doing things the same way they’ve always done it. The bigger issue for the organization with low/low values is that at best they’ll never grow beyond their current size (and may shrink actually), and at worst will cease to exist. Entitled – Low Expectation, High Reward It’s one thing to say you have the best people and reward them as such, but its another thing to actually have the best people and reward them as such. Organizations with Entitled employees are the former: their organization provides them with all types of comforts, benefits, and perks. But there’s no requirement before the rewards are dolled out, and there’s no short-list of who receives the rewards. Everyone in the company is treated the same and is given equal share of the spoils. Entitlement is actually almost identical with Complacency with one notable difference: just try to introduce higher expectations into an entitled organization! Entitled employees have been spoiled for so long that they can’t fathom having rewards taken from them, or having to achieve specific levels of performance before attaining them. Those running the organization also buy in to the Entitled sentiment, feeling that they must persist the same level of comforts to appease their staff…even though the quality of the employee pool may be suspect. Innovative – High Expectation, High Reward Finally we have the Innovative organization which places high expectations but also provides high rewards. This organization gets it: if you truly want the best employees you need to apply equal doses of pressure and praise. Realize that I’m not suggesting crazy overtime or un-realistic working conditions. I do not agree with the “Glengary-Glenross” method of encouragement. But as anyone who follows sports can tell you, the teams that win are the ones where the coaches push their players to be their best; to achieve new levels of performance that they didn’t know they could receive. And the result for the players is more money, fame, and opportunity. It’s in this environment that organizations can focus on innovation – true innovation that builds the business and allows everyone involved to truly benefit. In Closing Organizations love to use the word “Innovation” and its derivatives, but very few actually do innovate. For many, the term has just become another marketing buzzword to lump in with all the other business terms that get overused. But for those organizations that truly get the value of innovation, they will be the ones surging forward while other companies simply fade into the background. And they will be the organizations that expect more from their employees, and give them their just rewards.

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• Help required in adding new methods, properties into existing classes dynamically

  - by Bepenfriends

  Hi All, I am not sure whether it is possible to achieve this kind of implementation in Dot Net. Below are the information Currently we are on an application which is done in COM+, ASP, XSL, XML technologies. It is a multi tier architecture application in which COM+ acts as the BAL. The execution steps for any CRUD operation will be defined using a seperate UI which uses XML to store the information. BAL reads the XML and understands the execution steps which are defined and executes corresponding methods in DLL. Much like EDM we have our custom model (using XML) which determines which property of object is searchable, retrievable etc. Based on this information BAL constructs queries and calls procedures to get the data. In the current application both BAL and DAL are heavily customizable without doing any code change. the results will be transmitted to presentation layer in XML format which constructs the UI based on the data recieved. Now I am creating a migration project which deals with employee information. It is also going to follow the N Tier architecture in which the presentation layer communicates with BAL which connects to DAL to return the Data. Here is the problem, In our existing version we are handling every information as XML in its native form (no converstion of object etc), but in the migration project, Team is really interested in utilizing the OOP model of development where every information which is sent from BAL need to be converted to objects of its respective types (example employeeCollection, Address Collection etc). If we have the static number of data returned from BAL we can have a class which contains those nodes as properties and we can access the same. But in our case the data returned from our BAL need to be customized. How can we handle the customization in presentation layer which is converting the result to an Object. Below is an example of the XML returned <employees> <employee> <firstName>Employee 1 First Name</firstName> <lastName>Employee 1 Last Name</lastName> <addresses> <address> <addressType>1</addressType> <StreetName>Street name1</StreetName> <RegionName>Region name</RegionName> <address> <address> <addressType>2</addressType> <StreetName>Street name2</StreetName> <RegionName>Region name</RegionName> <address> <address> <addressType>3</addressType> <StreetName>Street name3</StreetName> <RegionName>Region name</RegionName> <address> <addresses> </employee> <employee> <firstName>Employee 2 First Name</firstName> <lastName>Employee 2 Last Name</lastName> <addresses> <address> <addressType>1</addressType> <StreetName>Street name1</StreetName> <RegionName>Region name</RegionName> <address> <address> <addressType>2</addressType> <StreetName>Street name2</StreetName> <RegionName>Region name</RegionName> <address> <addresses> </employee> </employees> If these are the only columns then i can write a class which is like public class Address{ public int AddressType {get;set;}; public string StreetName {get;set;}; public string RegionName {get;set;}; } public class Employee{ public string FirstName {get; set;} public string LastName {get; set;} public string AddressCollection {get; set;} } public class EmployeeCollection : List<Employee>{ public bool Add (Employee Data){ .... } } public class AddressCollection : List<Address>{ public bool Add (Address Data){ .... } } This class will be provided to customers and consultants as DLLs. We will not provide the source code for the same. Now when the consultants or customers does customization(example adding country to address and adding passport information object with employee object) they must be able to access those properties in these classes, but without source code they will not be able to do those modifications.which makes the application useless. Is there is any way to acomplish this in DotNet. I thought of using Anonymous classes but, the problem with Anonymous classes are we can not have methods in it. I am not sure how can i fit the collection objects (which will be inturn an anonymous class) Not sure about datagrid / user control binding etc. I also thought of using CODEDom to create classes runtime but not sure about the meory, performance issues. also the classes must be created only once and must use the same till there is another change. Kindly help me out in this problem. Any kind of help meterial/ cryptic code/ links will be helpful.

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• Blogging locally and globally–my experience

  - by DigiMortal

  In Baltic MVP Summit 2011 there was discussion about having two blogs - one for local and another for global audience – and how to publish once written information in these blogs. There are many ways how to optimize your blogging activities if you have more than one audience and here you can find my experiences, best practices and advices about this topic. My two blogs I have to working blogs: this one here technology and programming blog for local market My local blog is almost five years old and it makes it one of the oldest company blogs in Estonia. It is still active and I write there as much as I have time for it. This blog here is active since September 2007, so it is about 3.5 years old right now. Both of these blogs are  my major hits in my MVP carrier and they have very good web statistics too. My local blog My local blog is about programming, web and technology. It has way wider target audience then this blog here has. By example, in my local blog I blog also about local events, cool new concept phones, different webs providing some interesting services etc. But local guys can find there also my postings about how to solve one or another programming problem and postings about Microsoft technologies I am playing with. This far my local blog has a lot of readers for such a small country that Estonia is. This blog has made me a lot of cool contacts and I have had there a lot of interesting discussions about different technical topics. Why I started this blog? Living in small country is different than living in big country. In small country you have less people and therefore smaller audience so you have to target more than one technical topic to find enough readers. In a same time you are still interested in your main topics and you want to reach to more people who are sharing same interests with you. Practically one day y will grow out from local market and you go global. This is how this blog was born. Was it worth to create, promote and mess with it? Every second I have put on my time to this blog has been worth of it. Thanks to this blog I have found new good friends and without them I think it is more boring to work on different problems and solutions. Defining target audiences One thing you should always do when having more than one blog is defining target audiences. If you are just technomaniac interested in sharing your stuff and make some new friends and have something to write to your MVP nomination form then you don’t have to go through complex targeting process. You can do it simple way and same effectively. Here is how I defined target audiences to my blogs: local blog – reader of my local blog is IT professional, software developer, technology innovator or just some guy who is interested in technology,   this blog – reader of this blog is experienced professional software developer who works on Microsoft technologies or software developer who is open minded and open to new technologies and interesting solutions to development problems. You can see how local blog – due to small market with less people – has wider definition for audience while this blog is heavily targeted to Microsoft technologies and specially to software development. On practical side these decisions are also made well I think because it is very hard to build up popular common IT blog. On global level it is better to target some specific niche and find readers who are professionals on your favorite topics. Thanks to this blog I have found new friends who are professional developers and I am very happy about all the discussions I have had with them. Publishing content to different blogs My local blog and this blog have some overlapping topics like .NET, databases and SEO. Due to this overlapping there is question: when I write posting to my local blog then should I have to publish same thing in my global blog? And if I write something to my global blog then should I publish same thing also in my local blog? Well, it really depends on the definition of your target audiences. If they match then of course it is good idea to translate you post and publish it also to another blog. But if you have different audiences then you may need to modify your posting before publishing it. The questions you have to answer are: is target audience interested in this topic? is target audience expecting more specific and deeper handling of this topic or are they expecting more general handling of topic? is the problem you are discussing actual for target audience or not? You have to answer these questions and after that make your decision. If you need to modify your original posting then take some time and do it. Provide quality to all your readers because they will respect you if you respect them. Cross-posting and referencing It is tempting to save time that preparing some blog post takes and if you have are done with posting in one blog it may seem like good idea to make short posting to another blog and add reference to first one where topic is discussed longer. Well, don’t do it – all your readers expect good quality content from you and jumping from one blog post to another is disturbing for them. Of course, there is problem with differences between target audiences. You may have wider target audience and some people may be interested in more specific handling of topic. In this case feel free to refer your blog you are writing in english. This is not working very well in opposite direction because almost all my global blog readers understand english but not estonian. By example, estonian language is complex one and online translating tools make very poor translations from estonian language. This is why I don’t even plan to publish postings here that refer to my local blog for more information. I am keeping these two blogs as two different worlds and if there is posting that fits well to both blogs I will write my posting to one blog and then answer previous three questions before posting same thing to another blog. Conclusion Growing out of your local market is not anything mysterious if you are living in small country. As it is harder to find people there who are interested in same topics with you then sooner or later you will start finding these new contacts from global audience. Global audience is bigger and to be visible there you must provide high quality content to your audience. It is something you will learn over time and you will learn every day something new when you are posting to your global blog. You may ask: if global blog is much more complex thing to do then is it worth to do at all? My answer is: yes, do it for sure. It is not easy thing to do when you start but if you work on your global blog and improve it over time you will get over all obstacles pretty soon. Just don’t forget one thing – content is king and your readers expect high quality from you.

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• Netflix, jQuery, JSONP, and OData

  - by Stephen Walther

  At the last MIX conference, Netflix announced that they are exposing their catalog of movie information using the OData protocol. This is great news! This means that you can take advantage of all of the advanced OData querying features against a live database of Netflix movies. In this blog entry, I’ll demonstrate how you can use Netflix, jQuery, JSONP, and OData to create a simple movie lookup form. The form enables you to enter a movie title, or part of a movie title, and display a list of matching movies. For example, Figure 1 illustrates the movies displayed when you enter the value robot into the lookup form.   Using the Netflix OData Catalog API You can learn about the Netflix OData Catalog API at the following website: http://developer.netflix.com/docs/oData_Catalog The nice thing about this website is that it provides plenty of samples. It also has a good general reference for OData. For example, the website includes a list of OData filter operators and functions. The Netflix Catalog API exposes 4 top-level resources: Titles – A database of Movie information including interesting movie properties such as synopsis, BoxArt, and Cast. People – A database of people information including interesting information such as Awards, TitlesDirected, and TitlesActedIn. Languages – Enables you to get title information in different languages. Genres – Enables you to get title information for specific movie genres. OData is REST based. This means that you can perform queries by putting together the right URL. For example, if you want to get a list of the movies that were released after 2010 and that had an average rating greater than 4 then you can enter the following URL in the address bar of your browser: http://odata.netflix.com/Catalog/Titles?$filter=ReleaseYear gt 2010&AverageRating gt 4 Entering this URL returns the movies in Figure 2. Creating the Movie Lookup Form The complete code for the Movie Lookup form is contained in Listing 1. Listing 1 – MovieLookup.htm <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>Netflix with jQuery</title> <style type="text/css"> #movieTemplateContainer div { width:400px; padding: 10px; margin: 10px; border: black solid 1px; } </style> <script src="http://ajax.microsoft.com/ajax/jquery/jquery-1.4.2.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="App_Scripts/Microtemplates.js" type="text/javascript"></script> </head> <body> <label>Search Movies:</label> <input id="movieName" size="50" /> <button id="btnLookup">Lookup</button> <div id="movieTemplateContainer"></div> <script id="movieTemplate" type="text/html"> <div> <img src="<%=BoxArtSmallUrl %>" /> <strong><%=Name%></strong> <p> <%=Synopsis %> </p> </div> </script> <script type="text/javascript"> $("#btnLookup").click(function () { // Build OData query var movieName = $("#movieName").val(); var query = "http://odata.netflix.com/Catalog" // netflix base url + "/Titles" // top-level resource + "?$filter=substringof('" + escape(movieName) + "',Name)" // filter by movie name + "&$callback=callback" // jsonp request + "&$format=json"; // json request // Make JSONP call to Netflix $.ajax({ dataType: "jsonp", url: query, jsonpCallback: "callback", success: callback }); }); function callback(result) { // unwrap result var movies = result["d"]["results"]; // show movies in template var showMovie = tmpl("movieTemplate"); var html = ""; for (var i = 0; i < movies.length; i++) { // flatten movie movies[i].BoxArtSmallUrl = movies[i].BoxArt.SmallUrl; // render with template html += showMovie(movies[i]); } $("#movieTemplateContainer").html(html); } </script> </body> </html> The HTML page in Listing 1 includes two JavaScript libraries: <script src="http://ajax.microsoft.com/ajax/jquery/jquery-1.4.2.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="App_Scripts/Microtemplates.js" type="text/javascript"></script> The first script tag retrieves jQuery from the Microsoft Ajax CDN. You can learn more about the Microsoft Ajax CDN by visiting the following website: http://www.asp.net/ajaxLibrary/cdn.ashx The second script tag is used to reference Resig’s micro-templating library. Because I want to use a template to display each movie, I need this library: http://ejohn.org/blog/javascript-micro-templating/ When you enter a value into the Search Movies input field and click the button, the following JavaScript code is executed: // Build OData query var movieName = $("#movieName").val(); var query = "http://odata.netflix.com/Catalog" // netflix base url + "/Titles" // top-level resource + "?$filter=substringof('" + escape(movieName) + "',Name)" // filter by movie name + "&$callback=callback" // jsonp request + "&$format=json"; // json request // Make JSONP call to Netflix $.ajax({ dataType: "jsonp", url: query, jsonpCallback: "callback", success: callback }); This code Is used to build a query that will be executed against the Netflix Catalog API. For example, if you enter the search phrase King Kong then the following URL is created: http://odata.netflix.com/Catalog/Titles?$filter=substringof(‘King%20Kong’,Name)&$callback=callback&$format=json This query includes the following parameters: $filter – You assign a filter expression to this parameter to filter the movie results. $callback – You assign the name of a JavaScript callback method to this parameter. OData calls this method to return the movie results. $format – you assign either the value json or xml to this parameter to specify how the format of the movie results. Notice that all of the OData parameters -- $filter, $callback, $format -- start with a dollar sign $. The Movie Lookup form uses JSONP to retrieve data across the Internet. Because WCF Data Services supports JSONP, and Netflix uses WCF Data Services to expose movies using the OData protocol, you can use JSONP when interacting with the Netflix Catalog API. To learn more about using JSONP with OData, see Pablo Castro’s blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/pablo/archive/2009/02/25/adding-support-for-jsonp-and-url-controlled-format-to-ado-net-data-services.aspx The actual JSONP call is performed by calling the $.ajax() method. When this call successfully completes, the JavaScript callback() method is called. The callback() method looks like this: function callback(result) { // unwrap result var movies = result["d"]["results"]; // show movies in template var showMovie = tmpl("movieTemplate"); var html = ""; for (var i = 0; i < movies.length; i++) { // flatten movie movies[i].BoxArtSmallUrl = movies[i].BoxArt.SmallUrl; // render with template html += showMovie(movies[i]); } $("#movieTemplateContainer").html(html); } The movie results from Netflix are passed to the callback method. The callback method takes advantage of Resig’s micro-templating library to display each of the movie results. A template used to display each movie is passed to the tmpl() method. The movie template looks like this: <script id="movieTemplate" type="text/html"> <div> <img src="<%=BoxArtSmallUrl %>" /> <strong><%=Name%></strong> <p> <%=Synopsis %> </p> </div> </script>   This template looks like a server-side ASP.NET template. However, the template is rendered in the client (browser) instead of the server. Summary The goal of this blog entry was to demonstrate how well jQuery works with OData. We managed to use a number of interesting open-source libraries and open protocols while building the Movie Lookup form including jQuery, JSONP, JSON, and OData.

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• Buy iPhone 4 Without Contract: $599 (AT&T) and $699 (Verizon)

  - by Gopinath

  Purchasing iPhone without a contract is a good option when you are planning to gift it to someone or going to use it outside US. Both AT&T and Verizon lets you iPhone 4 without a contract but this information is buried deep under blurred text in FAQs and agreements.  Here is the pricing information of AT&T and Verizon iPhone 4 without contract AT&T iPhone 4 16 GB without contract – $599.99 AT&T iPhone 4 32 GB without contract – $699.99 Verizon iPhone 4 16 GB without contract – $649.99 Verizon iPhone 4 32 GB without contract – $749.99 This information is seen on the bottom of Apple’s iPhone purchase page and on Verizon’s frequently asked questions about the iPhone 4 page. Screenshots embedded below I live in India and I’m happy to know the price at which  I can buy an authentic iPhone 4 without contract . Now I can ask my friends to gift an iPhone 4 for me iphone cc image credit: flickr/williamhook This article titled,Buy iPhone 4 Without Contract: $599 (AT&T) and $699 (Verizon), was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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• AutoVue Integrates with Primavera P6

  - by celine.beck

  Oracle's Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management is an integrated project portfolio management (PPM) application that helps select the right strategic mix of projects, balance resource capacity, manage project risk and complete projects on time and within budget. AutoVue 19.3 and later versions (release 20.0) now integrate out of the box with the Web version of Oracle Primavera P6 release 7. The integration between the two products, which was announced during Oracle Open World 2009, provides project teams with ready access to any project documents directly from within the context of P6 in support for project scope definition and project planning and execution. You can learn more about the integration between AutoVue and Primavera P6 by: Listening to the Oracle Appcast entitled Enhance Primavera Project Document Collaboration with AutoVue Enterprise Visualization Watching an Oracle Webcast about how to improve project success with document visualization and collaboration Watching a recorded demo of the integrated solution Teams involved in complex projects like construction or plant shutdown activities are highly interdependent: the decisions of one affecting the actions of many others. This coupled with increasing project complexity, a vast array of players and heavy engineering and document-intensive workflows makes it more challenging to complete jobs on time and within budget. Organizations need complete visibility into project information, as well as robust project planning, risk analysis and resource balancing capabilities similar to those featured in Primavera P6 ; they also need to make sure that all project stakeholders, even those who neither understand engineering drawings nor are interested in engineering details that go beyond their specific needs, have ready access to technically advanced project information. This is exactly what the integration between AutoVue and Primavera delivers: ready access to any project information attached to Primavera projects, tasks or activities via AutoVue. There is no need for users to waste time searching for project-related documents or disrupting engineers for printouts, users have all the context they need to make sound decisions right from within Primavera P6 with a single click of a button. We are very excited about this new integration. If you are using Primavera and / or Primavera tied with AutoVue, we would be interested in getting your feedback on this integration! Please do not hesitate to post your comments / reactions on the blog!

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• Oracle VM and JRockit Virtual Edition: Oracle Introduces Java Virtualization Solution for Oracle(R)

  - by adam.hawley

  Since the beginning, we've been talking to customers about how our approach to virtualization is different and more powerful than any other company because Oracle has the "full-stack" of software (and even hardware these days!) to work with to create more comprehensive, more powerful solutions. Having the virtualization layer, two enterprise class operating systems in Solaris and Enterprise Linux, and the leading enterprise software in nearly every layer of the data center stack, allows us to not just do virtualization for virtualization's sake but rather to provide complete virtualization solutions focused on making enterprise software easier to deploy, easier to manage, and easier to support through integration up and down the stack. Today, we announced the availability of a significant demonstration of that capability by announcing a WebLogic Suite option that permits the Oracle WebLogic Server 11g to run on a Java JVM (JRockit Virtual Edition) that itself runs directly on the Oracle VM Server for x86 / x64 without needing any operating system. Why would you want that? Better performance and better consolidation density, not to mention great security due to a lower "attack surface area". Oracle also announced the Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder product. Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder provides a framework for automatically capturing the configuration of existing software components and packaging them as self-contained building blocks known as appliances. So you know that complex application you've tweaked on your physical servers (or on other virtual environments for that matter)?  Virtual Assembly Builder will allow the automated collection of all the configuration data for the various application components that make up that multi-tier application and then use the information to create and package each component as a virtual machine so that the application can be deployed in your Oracle VM virtualization environment quickly and easily and just as it was configured it in your original environment. A slick, drag-and-drop GUI also serves as a powerful, intuitive interface for viewing and editing your assembly as needed.No one else can do complete virtualization solutions the way Oracle can and I think these offerings show what's possible when you have the right resources for elegantly solving the larger problems in the data center rather than just having to make-do with tools that are only operating at one layer of the stack. For more information, read the press release including the links to more information on various Oracle websites.

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• Oracle Desktop Virtualization at HIMSS 2011

  - by chris.kawalek(at)oracle.com

  The HIMSS Conference is an extremely important industry trade show put on by The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society. It's being held in Florida starting this Sunday, February 20th. Their slogan, "Linking people, potential, and progress" could be true of Oracle desktop virtualization as well! The Oracle desktop virtualization group has worked very closely with the Oracle healthcare business unit to have a large presence at this show, and I wanted to tell you a bit about what we're doing: - All Oracle demos are being done on Sun Ray Clients That's right, every demo pod in the large Oracle booth will have a Sun Ray Client with each demo tied to a smart card. Too many people at your demo station? Pop your card out and go to a different one. We'll also be demoing Oracle desktop virtualization at a dedicated demo station, too. This is great stuff! Find Oracle at booth #1651 Oracle's page about HIMSS - Focus Group - Caregiver Mobility with Oracle Sun Ray Clients and Desktop Virtualization Feb 22, 3:15-4:15 PM This focus group will be for customers interested in Oracle desktop virtualization. It's invitation only, but you can comment on this blog post and we can give you info on how to attend (your comment won't be made public). - Solution Session - Fast, Secure, Workflow Optimized: Inexpensive Access to Care Information is Possible Inside and Outside of the Hospital Feb 23, 4:15 PM Booth #685, Wireless and Mobility Theatre Oracle's Adam Workman will cover caregiver mobility and the benefits of Oracle desktop virtualization to healthcare organizations. - New healthcare solutions page on oracle.com We've created a page dedicated to content involving desktop virtualization and healthcare. This will be your onestop shop if looking for desktop virtualization and healthcare information. - New desktop virtualization and healthcare solution data sheet This document outlines how we define "Caregiver Mobility" and how Oracle products are used to facilitate quicker, more secure access to patient data. We'll have some more updates from the show next week. It looks like its going to be an exciting event! -Chris

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• How can I resolve gstreamer dependencies in Ubuntu

  - by michael

  Hi, Can you please tell me how can I resolve these dependencies on ubuntu: checking for GSTREAMER... configure: error: Package requirements (gstreamer-0.10 >= 0.10 gstreamer-app-0.10 gstreamer-base-0.10 gstreamer-pbutils-0.10 gstreamer-plugins-base-0.10 >= 0.10.25 gstreamer-video-0.10) were not met: No package 'gstreamer-app-0.10' found No package 'gstreamer-pbutils-0.10' found No package 'gstreamer-plugins-base-0.10' found No package 'gstreamer-video-0.10' found I have tried: $ sudo apt-get install *gstreamer-video* Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done E: Regex compilation error - Invalid preceding regular expression $ sudo apt-get install *gstreamer-app* Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done E: Regex compilation error - Invalid preceding regular expression $ sudo apt-get install *gstreamer-base* Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done E: Regex compilation error - Invalid preceding regular expression

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• Run WordPress & Other Web Apps with Windows Web Platform

  - by Matthew Guay

  Would you like to run WordPress or other web apps on your PC so you can easily test and design websites?  Here we’ll look at how you can get the latest web apps on your computer in only a few quick steps. Many web apps today, such as WordPress, MediaWiki, and more, are open source and can be run for free from any computer with even a simple local web server.  They are often very difficult to install on your computer, since they require a number of dependencies such as PHP and MySQL.  Microsoft has worked to make this easier, releasing the Windows Web Platform Installer.  This lets you install many popular web apps and free tools in Windows with only a few clicks. Here we’re going to look at how to install WordPress and the free Visual Web Developer 2010 Express to edit web code with the Web Platform Installer.  But, if you’d rather install a different web app or tool, feel free to choose those as the installations are generally similar. Getting Started Head over to Microsoft’s Web development site and download the Web Platform Installer (link below).  This will download very quick, as it is just a small loader.  When you run this loader, it will download the Web Platform Installer files.  The Web Platform Installer works on XP, Vista, and Windows 7, as well as the related versions of Windows Server. After a couple moments, the Web Platform Installer will open and load information about the latest web offerings.    Now you can choose what you want to install.  You can quickly select the recommended products for several categories such as Web Server, Database, and more. Alternately, click Customize under the category and select exactly what you want to install.  Note that items already installed on your computer will be grayed out. We wanted to install Visual Web Developer 2010 Express, so select Customize under Tools, and select Visual Web Developer 2010 Express. Or, for more preset choices, select Options on the bottom of the window. You can choose to add Multimedia, Developer, and Enterprise tools to the lists, or add a new preset list from a feed. Choose Specific Web apps to Install We wanted to install WordPress, so instead of choosing a preset, select the Web Applications tab on the left.  Now you can choose from a variety of apps based on category, or you can view them all together in an A to Z, Most Popular, or Highest Rating list. Click the checkbox beside the app you want to install to select it, or click the “i” for more information. Here’s the More Information pane for WordPress.  If you’re ready to install it, click the checkbox. Now you can go back and add more web apps or tools to the install list if you like.  The Web Platform Installer will automatically find and select prerequisite apps such as MySQL, so you won’t need to worry about finding them. Once you’ve selected everything you want to install, click the Install button on the bottom of the window. The Web Platform Installer will now show you everything that’s selected, including components that it automatically selected.  Notice we only chose to install WordPress and Visual Web Developer 2010 Express, but it also has selected MySQL and PHP automatically.  Click I Accept to proceed. Enter an administrator password for MySQL before the setup begins. Now the Web Platform Installer will take over, automatically downloading, installing, and configuring all of your web apps.  It will also activate optional Windows components that may be needed on your computer.  This may take several minutes, depending on the components you selected and your internet speed.   Setting up Your Test Site Once the installation is finished, you’ll be asked to enter some information about your site.  You can simply accept the defaults or enter your own choices, and then click Continue. Now you’ll need to enter some information for your web apps.  When installing WordPress, you’ll need to choose a database and enter administrative usernames and passwords.  You may also be asked to enter extra information for additional security, but for a local-only test site this isn’t necessary.  Click Continue when you’re finished. You’ll need to wait a few more moments as it complete the setup of your web apps.  The good thing is, once it’s finished, they’ll be ready to go with only minimal configuration. And you’re finished!  The installer will let you know everything it installed, and if there were any problems.  In our test, Visual Web Developer 2010 Express failed to install successfully.  Often the problems may be with the download, so click Finish and then reselect the apps that didn’t install and run the installer again. Now you’re ready to run WordPress from your PC.  Click the Launch WordPress link or enter http://localhost:80/wordpress in your browser to get started. You’ll only have a little more setup to do on WordPress to get it running.  Once you’ve opened your WordPress page in your browser, enter a name for your blog and your email address, and click Install WordPress.   After a few seconds, you should see a Success! page with your username and a temporary password.  Copy the password, and then click Log In. Enter admin as the Username and paste the random generated password, and click Log In. WordPress will remind you to change the default password.  Click the Yes, Take me to my profile page link to do this. Enter something easier for you to remember, and click Update Profile. Now you’re ready to enjoy your new WordPress install on Windows.  You can add plugins and themes, and everything else you’d do with a normal WordPress site.  Here’s the dashboard running from localhost. And here’s the default blog running. Setting up Visual Web Developer 2010 Express As mentioned before, Visual Web Developer 2010 Express didn’t install correctly on our first try, but the second time it installed seamlessly.  Once it’s installed, launch it from your start menu as normal.  It may take a few minutes to load on the first run as it is finishing up setup. You may notice that the splash screen displayed while the program is loading says For Evaluation Purposes Only.  This is because you still need to register the program. You have 30 days to register the program, but let’s go ahead and do it to get this step out of the way.  Click Help in the menu bar, and select Register Product. Click Obtain a registration key online in the popup window. You’ll need to sign in with your Windows Live ID, and then fill out a quick form. When you’re done, copy the registration key displayed and paste it into the registration dialog in Visual Web Developer.   Now you’ve got a registered, free web development program with full standards compliance and IntelliSense to help you work smarter and faster.  And it works great with your local web apps, so you can create, tweak, and then deploy, all from your desktop with this simple installer! Install More Apps You can always run the Web Platform Installer again in the future and add more apps if you’d like.  The install adds a link to the Installer in the Start menu; just run it and repeat the steps above with your new selections. Also, from the installer, you can cleanup the setup files downloaded during the installation if you want.  Click the Options link in the bottom of the window, and then scroll down and select Delete installer cache folder. Uninstalling the apps is not as easy, unfortunately.  If you wish to uninstall the Web Platform Installer and everything you installed with it, you’ll need to uninstall each item individually.  One easy way to see what was all installed together is to sort the entries in Uninstall Programs by date.  In our case, we also installed some other applications on the same day, but it’s easier to see what was installed together. Or if you are not a fan of using Programs and Features to uninstall them, try out a program like Revo Uninstaller Pro. Conclusion Whether you’re a full-time web developer or just enjoy testing out the latest web apps, the Web Platform Installer makes it quick and easy to get your computer loaded up with the latest bits.  In fact, it’s easier to install these tools with all their dependencies than it is to install many standard boxed programs. If you’d like to take your web server anywhere you go and not have it confined to your desktop, then check out our article on how to Turn Your Flashdrive into a Portable Webserver. Link Download the Microsoft Web Platform Installer Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Linux QuickTip: Downloading and Un-tarring in One StepQuick Tip: Set a Future Date for a Post in WordPressHow-To Geek SoftwareAdd Social Bookmarking (Digg This!) Links to your Wordpress BlogHow-To Geek Software: WordPress Comment Moderation Notifier TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 Windows Media Player Glass Icons (icons we like) How to Forecast Weather, without Gadgets Outlook Tools, one stop tweaking for any Outlook version Zoofs, find the most popular tweeted YouTube videos Video preview of new Windows Live Essentials 21 Cursor Packs for XP, Vista & 7

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• SQL SERVER – Auto Recovery File Settings in SSMS – SQL in Sixty Seconds #034 – Video

  - by pinaldave

  Every developer once in a while facing an unfortunate situation where they have not yet saved the work and their SQL Server Management Studio crashes. Well, you can minimize the loss by optimizing auto recovery settings. In this video we can see how to set the auto recovery settings. Go to SSMS >> Tools >> Options >> Environment >> AutoRecover There are two different settings: 1) Save AutoRecover Information Every Minutes This option will save the SQL Query file at certain interval. Set this option to minimum value possible to avoid loss. If you have set this value to 5, in the worst possible case, you can loose last 5 minutes of the work. 2) Keep AutoRecover Information for Days This option will preserve the AutoRecovery information for specified days. Though, I suggest in case of accident open SQL Server Management Studio right away and recover your file. Do not procrastinate this important task for future dates. Related Tips in SQL in Sixty Seconds: Manage Help Settings – CTRL + ALT + F1 SSMS 2012 Reset Keyboard Shortcuts to Default A Cool Trick – Restoring the Default SQL Server Management Studio – SSMS Color Coding SQL Server Management Studio Status Bar – SQL in Sixty Seconds #023 – Video Clear Drop Down List of Recent Connection From SQL Server Management Studio SELECT TOP Shortcut in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) What would you like to see in the next SQL in Sixty Seconds video? Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Database, Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL in Sixty Seconds, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Server Management Studio, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology, Video Tagged: Excel

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• IE9 RC fixed the “Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage” error when running an ASP.NET application in Visual Studio

  - by Jon Galloway

  One of the obstacles ASP.NET developers faced in using the Internet Explorer 9 Beta was the dreaded “Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage” error when running an ASP.NET application in Visual Studio. In the bug information on Connect (issue 601047), Eric Lawrence said that the problem was due to “caused by failure to failover from IPv6 to IPv4 when the connection is local.” Robert MacLean gives some more information as what was going wrong: “The problem is Windows, especially since it assumes IPv6 is better than IPv4. Note […] that when you ping localhost you get an IPv6 address. So what appears to be happening is when IE9 tries to go to localhost it uses IPv6, and the ASP.NET Development Server is IPv4 only and so nothing loads and we get the error.” The Simple Fix - Install IE 9 RC Internet Explorer 9 RC fixes this bug, so if you had tried IE 9 Beta and stopped using it due to problems with ASP.NET development, install the RC. The Workaround in IE 9 Beta If you're stuck on IE 9 Beta for some reason, you can follow Robert's workaround, which involves a one character edit to your hosts file. I've been using it for months, and it works great. Open notepad (running as administrator) and edit the hosts file (found in %systemroot%\system32\drivers\etc) Remove the # comment character before the line starting with 127.0.0.1 Save the file - if you have problems saving, it's probably because you weren't running as administrator When you're done, your hosts file will end with the following lines (assuming you were using a default hosts file setup beforehand): # localhost name resolution is handled within DNS itself.     127.0.0.1       localhost #    ::1             localhost Note: more information on editing your hosts file here. This causes Windows to default to IPv4 when resolving localhost, which will point to 127.0.0.1, which is right where Cassini - I mean the ASP.NET Web Development Server - is waiting for it.

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• .NET Rocks is on the Road Again!

  - by Scott Spradlin

  Carl and Richard are loading up the DotNetMobile (a 30 foot RV) and driving to our town again to show off their favorite bits of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0! Richard talks about Web load testing and Carl talks about Silverlight 4.0 and multimedia. And to make the night even more fun, they are going to bring a mystery rock star from the Visual Studio world to the event and interview them for a special .NET Rocks Road Trip show series. Along the way we’ll be giving away some great prizes, showing off some awesome technology and having a ton of laughs. So come out to the most fun you can have in a geeky evening - and learn a few things along the way about web load testing and Silverlight 4! And one lucky person at the event will win "Ride Along with Carl and Richard" and get to board the RV and ride with the boys to the next town on the tour -- Chicago. (don’t worry, they will get you home again!) So come out to the most fun you can have in a geeky evening – and find out what’s new and cool in Visual Studio 2010! To get insure we have sufficient food for everyone, please register for this event at http://stlnet.eventbrite.com This registration information will only be used to obtain accurate counts for food preparation. All other answers are optional and will be used for purely statistical analysis. No information will be shared outside the St. Louis .NET User Group. Here is a list of prizes to be given away at the event: Telerik Premium Collection Pre-Emptive One Year Commercial Runtime Intelligence license Red Gate ANTS Memory Profiler Quest Toad Extension for Visual Studio DevExpress Code Rush and Refactor Pro Grape City Active Report/BI Suite Grape City Spread 5.0 JetBrains Resharper Component One Studio for ASP.NET Component One Studio for Silverlight Please check out the event sponsors: Visit http://www.dotnetrocks.com/roadtrip for more information! Thursday, April 29, 2010 6:00 pm - Food and social 6:30 pm - .NET Rocks Interview 7:15 pm - Richard Campbell 8:00 pm - Carl Franklin 8:45 pm - prizes!

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• SQLAuthority News – Public Training Classes In Hyderabad 12-14 May – Microsoft SQL Server 2005/2008

  - by pinaldave

  After successfully delivering many corporate trainings as well as the private training Solid Quality Mentors, India is launching the Public Training in Hyderabad for SQL Server 2008 and SharePoint 2010. This is going to be one of the most unique and one-of-a-kind events in India where Solid Quality Mentors are offering public classes. I will be leading the training on Microsoft SQL Server 2005/2008 Query Optimization & Performance Tuning. This intensive, 3-day course intends to give attendees an in-depth look at Query Optimization and Performance Tuning in SQL Server 2005 and 2008. Designed to prepare SQL Server developers and administrators for a transition into SQL Server 2005 or 2008, the course covers the best practices for a variety of essential tasks in order to maximize the performance. At the end of the course, there would be daily discussions about your real-world problems and find appropriate solutions. Note: Scroll down for course fees, discount, dates and location. Do not forget to take advantage of Discount code ‘SQLAuthority‘. The training premises are very well-equipped as they will be having 1:1 computers. Every participant will be provided with printed course materials. I will pick up your entire lunch tab and we will have lots of SQL talk together. The best participant will receive a special gift at the end of the course. Even though the quality of the material to be delivered together with the course will be of extremely high standard, the course fees are set at a very moderate rate. The fee for the course is INR 14,000/person for the whole 3-day convention. At the rate of 1 USD = 44 INR, this fee converts to less than USD 300. At this rate, it is totally possible to fly from anywhere from the world to India and take the training and still save handsome pocket money. It would be even better if you register using the discount code “SQLAuthority“, for you will instantly get an INR 3000 discount, reducing the total cost of the training to INR 11,000/person for whole 3 days course. This is a onetime offer and will not be available in the future. Please note that there will be a 10.3% service tax on course fees. To register, either send an email to [email protected] or call +91 95940 43399. Feel free to drop me an email at [email protected] for any additional information and clarification. Training Date and Time: May 12-14, 2010 10 AM- 6 PM. Training Venue: Abridge Solutions, #90/B/C/3/1, Ganesh GHR & MSY Plaza, Vittalrao Nagar, Near Image Hospital, Madhapur, Hyderabad – 500 081. The details of the course is as listed below. Day 1 : Strengthen the basics along with SQL Server 2005/2008 New Features Module 01: Subqueries, Ranking Functions, Joins and Set Operations Module 02: Table Expressions Module 03: TOP and APPLY Module 04: SQL Server 2008 Enhancements Day 2: Query Optimization & Performance Tuning 1 Module 05: Logical Query Processing Module 06: Query Tuning Module 07:  Introduction to the Query Processor Module 08:  Review of common query coding which causes poor performance Day 3: Query Optimization & Performance Tuning 2 Module 09:  SQL Server Indexing and index maintenance Module 10:  Plan Guides, query hints, UDFs, and Computed Columns Module 11:  Understanding SQL Server Execution Plans Module 12: Real World Index and Optimization Tips Download the complete PDF brochure. We are also going to have SharePoint 2010 training by Joy Rathnayake on 10-11 May. All the details for discount applies to the same as well. Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Training, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

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• Google privacy concerns: trustworthy alternatives for migration?

  - by Markos Fragkakis

  I have come to realize the tremendous amount of information Google has on its users. I am a typical Google user, using Gmail, Google Reader. This means that right now Google now has the following information at its disposal: Who my friends are (Gmail) What we talk about (Gmail, Google Talk) What news sources I follow (Google Reader) How frequently I check them and which ones I consider important enough to share (Google Reader) A lot of other stuff What I search about and when (if I search when logged in) (Web search) I have no reason to believe that this information is used for reasons other than adjusting what ads I am displayed when I visit a site with Google Ads. However, I have realised that I am in no position to be certain that this is absolutely true, or that it always will be. On the other hand, I don't want to reach the uber-privacy-maniac state of maintaining my own email server and installing a desktop RSS reader in all my machines. So, I am asking for your opinions: What services constitute a good set of alternatives to the Google services, promising better privacy? Pros: Privacy Free Powerful Usable

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• You Can't Win on Price

  - by David Dorf

  This year I did the majority of my Christmas shopping from the comfort of my home office. There aren't many things in stores you can't find online these days. I find it easier to search, research, and compare products online rather than walking the mall anyway. But there's a segment of the population that likes to be in the store, touching the products. For those people, smartphones avail them some of the e-commerce features I mentioned right there in the aisles. First it was RedLaser, then TheFind, ShopSavvy and many others. But the one that should be scaring retailers is Amazon's PriceCheck application. It lets you scan the product barcode, take a picture of the product, or speak the product's name. Once the product is identified, it shows the online prices, with Amazon at the top of the list. Within 10 seconds you can order the item and Amazon Prime members get free 2-day shipping too. I don't think fashion and grocery retailers need to worry much, but I have to believe smartphones are helping Amazon win a little more of the brand-name hardgoods market. So what's a retailer to do? Best Buy has begun to put QR Codes on their shelf labels that are easily scanned by smartphones and take the consumer to a Best Buy Web page where they can get extended information about the product. The consumer is getting the additional information they want, and Best Buy avoids the price comparisons. Of course if a consumer chooses to use the Amazon PriceCheck app, then all bets are off. That's when Best Buy has to hope the in-store experience and customer service will save the sale. My point is that the internet makes information available to everyone, and smartphones make it available anywhere. Unless you want your store to be Amazon's local showroom, you need to be price-competitive but differentiate on other aspects of the shopping experience. With the cost of running a physical store, you can't win on price.

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• Page debugging got easier in UCM 11g

  - by kyle.hatlestad

  UCM is famous for it's extra parameters you can add to the URL to do different things. You can add &IsJava=1 to get all of the local data and result set information that comes back from the idc_service. You can add &IsSoap=1 and get back a SOAP message with that information. Or &IsJson=1 will send it in JSON format. There are ones that change the display like &coreContentOnly=1 which will hide the footer and navigation on the page. In 10g, you could add &ScriptDebugTrace=1 and it would display the list of resources that were called through includes or eval functions at the bottom of the page. And it would list them in nested order so you could see the order in which they were called and which components overrode each other. But in 11g, that parameter flag no longer works. Instead, you get a much more powerful one called &IsPageDebug=1. When you add that to a page, you get a small gray tab at the bottom right-hand part of the browser window. When you click it, it will expand and let you choose several pieces of information to display. You can select 'idocscript trace' and display the nested includes you used to get with ScriptDebugTrace. You can select 'initial binder' and see the local data and result sets coming back from the service, just as you would with IsJava. But in this display, it formats the results in easy to read tables (instead of raw HDA format). Then you can get the final binder which would contain all of the local data and result sets after executing all of the includes for the display of the page (and not just from the Service call). And then a 'javascript log' for reporting on the javascript functions and times being executed on the page. Together, these new data displays make page debugging much easier in 11g. *Note: This post also applies to Universal Records Management (URM).

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• Looking Back at MIX10

  - by WeigeltRo

  It’s the sad truth of my life that even though I’m fascinated by airplanes and flight in general since my childhood days, my body doesn’t like flying. Even the ridiculously short flights inside Germany are taking their toll on me each time. Now combine this with sitting in the cramped space of economy class for many hours on a transatlantic flight from Germany to Las Vegas and back, and factor in some heavy dose of jet lag (especially on my way eastwards), and you get an idea why after coming back home I had this question on my mind: Was it really worth it to attend MIX10? This of course is a question that will also be asked by my boss at Comma Soft (for other reasons, obviously), who decided to send me and my colleague Jens Schaller, to the MIX10 conference. (A note to my German readers: An dieser Stelle der Hinweis, dass Comma Soft noch Silverlight-Entwickler und/oder UI-Designer für den Standort Bonn sucht – aussagekräftige Bewerbungen bitte an [email protected]) Too keep things short: My answer is yes. Before I’ll go into detail, let me ask the heretical questions whether tech conferences in general still make sense. There was a time, where actually being at a tech conference gave you a head-start in regard to learning about new technologies. Nowadays this is no longer true, where every bit of information and every detail is immediately twittered, blogged and whatevered to death. In the case of MIX10 you even can download the video-taped sessions shortly after. So: Does visiting a conference still make sense? It depends on what you expect from a conference. It should be clear to everybody that you’ll neither get exclusive information, nor receive training in a small group. What a conference does offer that sitting in front of your computer does not can be summarized as follows: Focus Being away from work and home will help you to focus on the presented information. Of course there are always the poor guys who are haunted by their work (with mails and short text messages reporting the latest showstopper problem), but in general being out of your office makes a huge difference. Inspiration With the focus comes the emotional involvement. I find it much easier to absorb information if I feel that certain vibe when sitting in a session. This still means that I have put work into reviewing the information later, but it’s a better starting point. And all the impressions collected at a (good) conference combined lead to a higher motivation – be it by the buzz (“this is gonna be sooo cool!”) or by the fear to fall behind (“man, we’ll have work on this, or else…”). People At a conference it’s pretty easy to get into contact with other people during breakfast, lunch and other breaks. This is a good opportunity to get a feel for what other development teams are doing (on a very general level of course, nobody will tell you about their secret formula) and what they are thinking about specific technologies. So MIX10 did offer focus, inspiration and people, but that would have meant nothing without valuable content. When I (being a frontend developer with a strong interest in UI/UX) planned my visit to MIX10, I made the decision to focus on the "soft" topics of design, interaction and user experience. I figured that I would be bombarded with all the technical details about Silverlight 4 anyway in the weeks and months to come. Actually, I would have liked to catch a few technical sessions, but the agenda wasn’t exactly in favor of people interested in any kind of Silverlight and UI/UX/Design topics. That’s one of my few complaints about the conference – I would have liked one more day and/or more sessions per day. Overall, the quality of the workshops and sessions was pretty high. In fact, looking back at my collection of conferences I’ve visited in the past I’d say that MIX10 ranks somewhere near the top spot. Here’s an overview of the workshops/sessions I attended (I’ll leave out the keynotes): Day 0 (Workshops on Sunday) Design Fundamentals for Developers Robby Ingebretsen is the man! Great workshop in three parts with the perfect mix of examples, well-structured definition of terminology and the right dose of humor. Robby was part of the WPF team before founding his own company so he not only has a strong interest in design (and the skillz!) but also the technical background.   Design Tools and Techniques Originally announced to be held by Arturo Toledo, the Rosso brothers from ArcheType filled in for the first two parts, and Corrina Black had a pretty general part about the Windows Phone UI. The first two thirds were a mixed bag; the two guys definitely knew what they were talking about, and the demos were great, but the talk lacked the preparation and polish of a truly great presentation. Corrina was not allowed to go into too much detail before the keynote on Monday, but the session was still very interesting as it showed how much thought went into the Windows Phone UI (and there’s always a lot to learn when people talk about their thought process). Day 1 (Monday) Designing Rich Experiences for Data-Centric Applications I wonder whether there was ever a test-run for this session, but what Ken Azuma and Yoshihiro Saito delivered in the first 15 minutes of a 30-minutes-session made me walk out. A commercial for a product (just great: a video showing a SharePoint plug-in in an all-Japanese UI) combined with the most generic blah blah one could imagine. EPIC FAIL.   Great User Experiences: Seamlessly Blending Technology & Design I switched to this session from the one above but I guess I missed the interesting part – what I did catch was what looked like a “look at the cool stuff we did” without being helpful. Or maybe I was just in a bad mood after the other session.   The Art, Technology and Science of Reading This talk by Kevin Larson was very interesting, but was more a presentation of what Microsoft is doing in research (pretty impressive) and in the end lacked a bit the helpful advice one could have hoped for.   10 Ways to Attack a Design Problem and Come Out Winning Robby Ingebretsen again, and again a great mix of theory and practice. The clean and simple, yet effective, UI of the reader app resulted in a simultaneous “wow” of Jens and me. If you’d watch only one session video, this should be it. Microsoft has to bring Robby back next year! Day 2 (Tuesday) Touch in Public: Multi-touch Interaction Design for Kiosks & Architectural Experiences Very interesting session by Jason Brush, a great inspiration with many details to look out for in the examples. Exactly what I was hoping for – and then some!   Designing Bing: Heart and Science How hard can it be to design the UI for a search engine? An input field and a list of results, that should be it, right? Well, not so fast! The talk by Paul Ray showed the many iterations to finally get it right (up to the choice of a specific blue for the links). And yes, I want an eye-tracking device to play around with!   The Elephant in the Room When Nishant Kothary presented a long list of what his session was not about, I told to myself (not having the description text present) “Am I in the wrong talk? Should I leave?”. Boy, was I wrong. A great talk about human factors in the process of designing stuff.   An Hour with Bill Buxton Having seen Bill Buxton’s presentation in the keynote, I just had to see this man again – even though I didn’t know what to expect. Being more or less unplanned and intended to be more of a conversation, the session didn’t provide a wealth of immediately useful information. Nevertheless Bill Buxton was impressive with his huge knowledge of seemingly everything. But this could/should have been a session some when in the evening and not in parallel to at least two other interesting talks. Day 3 (Wednesday) Design the Ordinary, Like the Fixie This session by DL Byron and Kevin Tamura started really well and brought across the message to keep things simple. But towards the end the talk lost some of its steam. And, as a member of the audience pointed out, they kind of ignored their own advice when they used a fancy presentation software other then PowerPoint that sometimes got in the way of showing things.   Developing Natural User Interfaces Speaking of alternative presentation software, Joshua Blake definitely had the most remarkable alternative to PowerPoint, a self-written program called NaturalShow that was controlled using multi-touch on a touch screen. Not a PowerPoint-killer, but impressive nevertheless. The (excellent) talk itself was kind of eye-opening in regard to what “multi-touch support” on various platforms (WPF, Silverlight, Windows Phone) actually means.   Treat your Content Right The talk by Tiffani Jones Brown wasn’t even on my planned schedule, but somehow I ended up in that session – and it was great. And even for people who don’t necessarily have to write content for websites, some points made by Tiffani are valid in many places, notably wherever you put texts with more than a single word into your UI. Creating Effective Info Viz in Microsoft Silverlight The last session of MIX10 I attended was kind of disappointing. At first things were very promising, with Matthias Shapiro giving a brief but well-structured introduction to info graphics and interactive visualizations. Then the live-coding began and while the result was interesting, too much time was spend on wrestling to get the code working. Ending earlier than planned, the talk was a bit light on actual content, but at least it included a nice list of resources. Conclusion It could be felt all across MIX10, UIs will take a huge leap forward; in fact, there are enough examples that have already. People who both have the technical know-how and at least a basic understanding of design (“literacy” as Bill Buxton called it) are in high demand. The concept of the MIX conference and initiatives like design.toolbox shows that Microsoft understands very well that frontend developers have to acquire new knowledge besides knowing how to hack code and putting buttons on a form. There are extremely exciting times before us, with lots of opportunity for those who are eager to develop their skills, that is for sure.

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• How to Find Your IP Address in Ubuntu Linux

  - by Trevor Bekolay

  In Windows, we use the command-line program ipconfig to find out our IP address. How do you find it in Ubuntu? We will show you two locations easily accessible through the GUI and, of course, a terminal command that will get your IP address in no time. The first location, and the easiest in most cases, is found by right clicking the network icon in the notification area and clicking Connection Information. This brings up a window which has a bunch of information, including your IP address. The second location, which shows you more detail than this first method, is at System > Administration > Network Tools. Select the right network device, and you’ve got a ton of information at your fingertips. Finally, if you can’t tear yourself away from a terminal window, the command to type in is: ifconfig Yes, it’s only one character different than ipconfig. Who would have guessed? As it turns out, you’re always a few clicks or keystrokes away from finding your IP address in Ubuntu. Isn’t choice great? Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Change Ubuntu Desktop from DHCP to a Static IP AddressAdding extra Repositories on UbuntuClear the Auto-Complete Email Address Cache in OutlookMake Firefox Display Large Images Full SizeChange Ubuntu Server from DHCP to a Static IP Address TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows Track Daily Goals With 42Goals Video Toolbox is a Superb Online Video Editor Fun with 47 charts and graphs Tomorrow is Mother’s Day Check the Average Speed of YouTube Videos You’ve Watched OutlookStatView Scans and Displays General Usage Statistics

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• The Grenelle II Act In France: A Milestone Towards Integrated Reporting

  - by Evelyn Neumayr

  By Elena Avesani, Principal Product Strategy Manager, Oracle In July of 2010, France took a significant step towards mandating integrated sustainability and financial reporting for all large companies with a new law called Grenelle II. Article 225 of Grenelle II requires that many listed companies on the French stock exchanges incorporate information on the social and environmental consequences of their activities into their annual reports, as well as their societal commitments for sustainable development. The decree that implements Article 225 of Grenelle II was passed in April 2012. Grenelle II is the strongest governmental mandate yet in support of sustainability reporting. The law defines the phase-in process, with large listed companies expected to comply in their 2012 reports and smaller companies expected to comply with their 2014 annual reports. This extra-financial information will have to be embedded in the annual management report, approved by the Board of Directors, verified by a third-party body and given to the annual general meeting. The subjects that must be reported on are grouped into Environmental, Social, and Governance categories. Oracle solutions can help organizations integrate financial and sustainability reporting and provide a more accurate and auditable approach to collecting, consolidating, and reporting such environmental, social, and economic metrics. Through Oracle Environmental Accounting and Reporting and Oracle Hyperion Financial Management Sustainability Starter Kit organizations can collect environmental, social and governance data and collect and consolidate corporate sustainability reporting data from multiple systems and business units. For more information about these solutions please contact [email protected].

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• New Demos SOA Suite (11.1.1.6) & SOA Suite Foundation Pack (11.1.1.6)

  - by JuergenKress

  For access to the Oracle demo systems please visit OPN and talk to your Partner Expert GSE: SOA & FP (11.1.1.6) Platforms Portable Version – Available SOA 11g Platform FP 11g Platform All SOA/BPM 11g Solutions OFM Demos Corner GSE Offerings Scheduling Demos on GSE Support GSE is pleased to announce the availability of SOA and Foundation Pack 11g (11.1.1.6) Platform Portable images. Portable images now come as a VBox appliance. SOA 11.1.1.6 Platform Portable Version This portable image comes with latest SOA Suite products installed and configured. Vbox appliance facilitates easy maintenance of the image. Click here to download the portable image. FP 11.1.1.6 Platform Portable Version Foundation Pack installed and configured on SOA image and stands as a base for building cross-application integrations. Click here to download the portable image. In addition to Portable images, Global Sales Engineering would like to inform availability of Hosted version of SOA & BPM 11g (11.1.1.6) Solutions. Click here for more information. SOA Suite Foundation Pack Demo Demo Overview Business Process Artifacts Demo Architecture Bill of Materials Demo Collateral DSS Offerings OFM Demos Corner Scheduling Demos on DSS DSS Support The Foundation Pack(FP) demo showcases various tools and utilities of Foundation Pack like Project Lifecycle Workbench(PLW) JDeveloper - Service Constructor Harvesting services to PLW/ Oracle Enterprise Repository Generation of Bill of Materials (BOM) Creation of Deployment Plans / Harvestor Settings Track Foundation Pack Fusion Order demo flow in Enterprise Manager Console For more information on the demo click here. SOA & BPM Partner Community For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit  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 Mix Forum Technorati Tags: SOA DEmo System,DSS,SOA,sales,SOA Community,Oracle SOA,Oracle BPM,Community,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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