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• The Latest Major Release of AutoVue is Now Available!

  - by Pam Petropoulos

  Click here to read the full press release. To learn more about AutoVue 20.2, check out the What's New in AutoVue 20.2 Datasheet AutoVue 20.2 continues to set the standard for enterprise level visualization with Augmented Business Visualization, a new paradigm which reconciles information and business data from multiple sources into a single view, providing rich and actionable visual decision-making environments. The release also includes; capabilities that enhance end-to-end approval workflow; solutions to visually enable the mobile workforce; and support for the latest manufacturing and high tech formats.     New capabilities in release 20.2 include: ·         Enhancements to the Augmented Business Visualization framework o    Creation of 2D hotspots has been extended in 2D drawings, PDF and image files and can now be defined as regional boxes, rather than just text strings o    New 3D Hotspot links in models and drawings. Parts or components of 3D models can be selected to create hotspot links. ·         Enhanced end-to-end approval workflows with digital stamping and batch stamping improvements ·         Solutions that visually enable the mobile workforce and extend enterprise visualization to mobile devices, including iPads through OVDI (Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) ·         Enhancements to AutoVue enterprise readiness: reliability and performance improvements, as well as security enhancements which adhere to Oracle’s Software Security Assurance standards ·         Timely support for new MCAD, ECAD, and Office formats ·         New 20.2 versions of AutoVue Document Print Services and Integration SDK (iSDK) ·         New Dutch language availability   The press release also contains terrific supporting quotes from AutoVue customers and partners.        “AutoVue’s stamping enhancements will greatly benefit our building permit management processes,” said Ties Kremer, Information Manager, Noordenveld Municipality, Netherlands. “The ability to batch stamp documents will speed up our approval processes, enable us to save time and money, and help us meet our regulatory compliance obligations.”          “AutoVue provides our non-technical teams in marketing and sales with access to customer order requirements and supporting CAD documents and drawings,” said James Lim, Regional Technical Systems Manager at Molex Incorporated. “AutoVue 20.2 has enabled us to refine our quotation process, and reduce order errors.”         “We are excited about our use of AutoVue’s Augmented Business Visualization framework, which will offer Meridian users enhanced access to related technical documentation,” said Edwin van Dijk, Director of Product Management, BlueCielo.  “By including AutoVue’s new regional hotspot capabilities within BlueCielo Meridian Enterprise, the context of engineering information is carried over into the visual representation of complex assets, thereby helping us to improve productivity and operational excellence.”    

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• WebCenter Customer Spotlight: Hyundai Motor Company

  - by me

  Author: Peter Reiser - Social Business Evangelist, Oracle WebCenter  Solution SummaryHyundai Motor Company is one of the world’s fastest-growing car manufacturers, ranked as the fifth-largest in 2011. The company also operates the world’s largest integrated automobile manufacturing facility in Ulsan, Republic of Korea, which can produce 1.6 million units per year. They  undertook a project to improve business efficiency and reinforce data security by centralizing the company’s sales, financial, and car manufacturing documents into a single repository. Hyundai Motor Company chose Oracle Exalogic, Oracle Exadata, Oracle WebLogic Sever, and Oracle WebCenter Content 11g, as they provided better performance, stability, storage, and scalability than their competitors.  Hyundai Motor Company cut the overall time spent each day on document-related work by around 85%, saved more than US$1 million in paper and printing costs, laid the foundation for a smart work environment, and supported their future growth in the competitive car industry. Company OverviewHyundai Motor Company is one of the world’s fastest-growing car manufacturers, ranked as the fifth-largest in 2011. The company also operates the world’s largest integrated automobile manufacturing facility in Ulsan, Republic of Korea, which can produce 1.6 million units per year. The company strives to enhance its brand image and market recognition by continuously improving the quality and design of its cars. Business Challenges To maximize the company’s growth potential, Hyundai Motor Company undertook a project to improve business efficiency and reinforce data security by centralizing the company’s sales, financial, and car manufacturing documents into a single repository. Specifically, they wanted to: Introduce a smart work environment to improve staff productivity and efficiency, and take advantage of rapid company growth due to new, enhanced car designs Replace a legacy document system managed by individual staff to improve collaboration, the visibility of corporate documents, and sharing of work-related files between employees Improve the security and storage of documents containing corporate intellectual property, and prevent intellectual property loss when staff leaves the company Eliminate delays when downloading files from the central server to a PC Build a large, single document repository to more efficiently manage and share data between 30,000 staff at the company’s headquarters Establish a scalable system that can be extended to Hyundai offices around the world Solution DeployedAfter conducting a large-scale benchmark test, Hyundai Motor Company chose Oracle Exalogic, Oracle Exadata, Oracle WebLogic Sever, and Oracle WebCenter Content 11g, as they provided better performance, stability, storage, and scalability than their competitors. Business Results Lowered the overall time spent each day on all document-related work by approximately 85%—from 4.5 hours to around 42 minutes on an average day Saved more than US$1 million per year in printer, paper, and toner costs, and laid the foundation for a completely paperless environment Reduced staff’s time spent requesting and receiving documents about car sales or designs from supervisors by 50%, by storing and managing all documents across the corporation in a single repository Cut the time required to draft new-car manufacturing, sales, and design documents by 20%, by allowing employees to reference high-quality data, such as marketing strategy and product planning documents already in the system Enhanced staff productivity at company headquarters by 9% by reducing the document-related tasks of 30,000 administrative and research and development staff Ensured the system could scale to hold 3 petabytes of car sales, manufacturing, and design data by 2013 and be deployed at branches worldwide We chose Oracle Exalogic, Oracle Exadata, and Oracle WebCenter Content to support our new document-centralization system over their competitors as Oracle offers stable storage for petabytes of data and high processing speeds. We have cut the overall time spent each day on document-related work by around 85%, saved more than US$1 million in paper and printing costs, laid the foundation for a smart work environment, and supported our future growth in the competitive car industry. Kang Tae-jin, Manager, General Affairs Team, Hyundai Motor Company Additional Information Hyundai Motor Company Customer Snapshot Oracle WebCenter Content

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• Social Targeting: This One's Just for You

  - by Mike Stiles

  Think of social targeting in terms of the archery competition we just saw in the Olympics. If someone loaded up 5 arrows and shot them straight up into the air all at once, hoping some would land near the target, the world would have united in laughter. But sadly for hysterical YouTube video viewing, that’s not what happened. The archers sought to maximize every arrow by zeroing in on the spot that would bring them the most points. Marketers have always sought to do the same. But they can only work with the tools that are available. A firm grasp of the desired target does little good if the ad products aren’t there to deliver that target. On the social side, both Facebook and Twitter have taken steps to enhance targeting for marketers. And why not? As the demand to monetize only goes up, they’re quite motivated to leverage and deliver their incredible user bases in ways that make economic sense for advertisers. You could target keywords on Twitter with promoted accounts, and get promoted tweets into search. They would surface for your followers and some users that Twitter thought were like them. Now you can go beyond keywords and target Twitter users based on 350 interests in 25 categories. How does a user wind up in one of these categories? Twitter looks at that user’s tweets, they look at whom they follow, and they run data through some sort of Twitter secret sauce. The result is, you have a much clearer shot at Twitter users who are most likely to welcome and be responsive to your tweets. And beyond the 350 interests, you can also create custom segments that find users who resemble followers of whatever Twitter handle you give it. That means you can now use boring tweets to sell like a madman, right? Not quite. This ad product is still quality-based, meaning if you’re not putting out tweets that lead to interest and thus, engagement, that tweet will earn a low quality score and wind up costing you more under Twitter’s auction system to maintain. That means, as the old knight in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” cautions, “choose wisely” when targeting based on these interests and categories to make sure your interests truly do line up with theirs. On the Facebook side, they’re rolling out ad targeting that uses email addresses, phone numbers, game and app developers’ user ID’s, and eventually addresses for you bigger brands. Why? Because you marketers asked for it. Here you were with this amazing customer list but no way to reach those same customers should they be on Facebook. Now you can find and communicate with customers you gathered outside of social, and use Facebook to do it. Fair to say such users are a sensible target and will be responsive to your message since they’ve already bought something from you. And no you’re not giving your customer info to Facebook. They’ll use something called “hashing” to make sure you don’t see Facebook user data (beyond email, phone number, address, or user ID), and Facebook can’t see your customer data. The end result, social becomes far more workable and more valuable to marketers when it delivers on the promise that made it so exciting in the first place. That promise is the ability to move past casting wide nets to the masses and toward concentrating marketing dollars efficiently on the targets most likely to yield results.

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• Head in the Clouds

  - by Tony Davis

  We're just past the second anniversary of the launch of Windows Azure. A couple of years' experience with Azure in the industry has provided some obvious success stories, but has deflated some of the initial marketing hyperbole. As a general principle, Azure seems to work well in providing a Service-Oriented Architecture for services in enterprises that suffer wide fluctuations in demand. Instead of being obliged to provide hardware sufficient for the occasional peaks in demand, one can hire capacity only when it is needed, and the cost of hosting an application is no longer a capital cost. It enables companies to avoid having to scale out hardware for peak periods only to see it underused for the rest of the time. A customer-facing application such as a concert ticketing system, which suffers high demand in short, predictable bursts of activity, is a great example of an application that would work well in Azure. However, moving existing applications to Azure isn't something to be done on impulse. Unless your application is .NET-based, and consists of 'stateless' components that communicate via queues, you are probably in for a lot of redevelopment work. It makes most sense for IT departments who are already deep in this .NET mindset, and who also want 'grown-up' methods of staging, testing, and deployment. Azure fits well with this culture and offers, as a bonus, good Visual Studio integration. The most-commonly stated barrier to porting these applications to Azure is the problem of reconciling the use of the cloud with legislation for data privacy and security. Putting databases in the cloud is a sticky issue for many and impossible for some due to compliance and security issues, the need for direct control over data, and so on. In the face of feedback from the early adopters of Azure, Microsoft has broadened the architectural choices to cater for a wide range of requirements. As well as SQL Azure Database (SAD) and Azure storage, the unstructured 'BLOB and Entity-Attribute-Value' NoSQL storage alternative (which equates more closely with folders and files than a database), Windows Azure offers a wide range of storage options including use of services such as oData: developers who are programming for Windows Azure can simply choose the one most appropriate for their needs. Secondly, and crucially, the Windows Azure architecture allows you the freedom to produce hybrid applications, where only those parts that need cloud-based hosting are deployed to Azure, whereas those parts that must unavoidably be hosted in a corporate datacenter can stay there. By using a hybrid architecture, it will seldom, if ever, be necessary to move an entire application to the cloud, along with personal and financial data. For example that we could port to Azure only put those parts of our ticketing application that capture and process tickets orders. Once an order is captured, the financial side can be processed in our own data center. In short, Windows Azure seems to be a very effective way of providing services that are subject to wide but predictable fluctuations in demand. Have you come to the same conclusions, or do you think I've got it wrong? If you've had experience with Azure, would you recommend it? It would be great to hear from you. Cheers, Tony.

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• What Color is your Jetpack ?

  - by JoshReuben

  I’m a programmer, Im approaching 40, and I’m fairly decent at my job – I’ll keep doing what I’m doing for as long as they let me!   So what are your career options if you know how to code? A Programmer could be ..   An Algorithm developer Pros Interesting High barriers of entry, potential for startup competitive factor Cons Do you have the skill, qualifications? What are working conditions n this mystery niche ? micro-focus An Academic Pros Low pressure Job security – or is this an illusion ? Cons Low Pay Need a PhD A Software Architect Pros: strategic, rather than tactical Setting technology platform and high level vision You say how it should work, others have to figure out why its not working the way its supposed to ! broad view – you are paid to learn (how do you con people into paying for you to learn ??) Cons: Glorified developer – more often than not! competitive – everyone wants to do it ! loose touch with underlying tech in tough times, first guy to get the axe ! A Software Engineer Pros: interesting, always more to learn fun I can do it Fallback Cons: Nothing new under the sun – been there, done that Dealing with poor requirements, deadlines, other peoples code, overtime C#, XAML, Web - Low barriers of entry –> à race to the bottom A Team leader Pros: Setting code standards and proposing technology choices Cons: Glorified developer – more often than not! Inspecting other peoples code and debugging the problems they cannot fix Dealing with mugbies and prima donas Responsible for QA of others A Project Manager Pros No need for debugging other peoples code Cons Low barrier of entry High pressure Responsible for QA of others Loosing touch with technology A lot of bullshit meetings Have to be an asshole A Product Manager Pros No need for debugging other peoples code Learning new skillset of sales and marketing Cons Travel (I'm a family man) May need to know the bs details of an uninteresting product things I want to work with: AI, algorithms, Numerical Computing, Mathematica, C++ AMP – unfortunately, the work here is few & far between. VS & TFS Extensibility, DSLs (Workflow , Lightswitch), Code Generation – one day, code will write code ! Unity3D, WebGL – fun, fun, fun ! Modern Web – Knockout, SignalR, MVC, Node.Js ??? (tentative – I'll wait until things stabilize as this area is undergoing a pre-Cambrian explosion) Things I don’t want to work with: (but will if I'm asked to !) C# – same old, same old – not learning anything new here Old code – blech ! Environment with code & fix mentality , ad hoc requirements, excessive overtime Pc support, System administration – even after 20 years, people still ask you to do this sometimes ! debugging – my skills are just not there yet Oracle Old tech: VB 6, XSLT, WinForms, Net 3.51 or less Old style Web dev Information Systems: ASP.NET webforms, Reporting services / crystal reports, SQL Server CRUD with manual data layer, XAML MVVM – variations of the same concept, ad nauseaum. Low barriers of entry –> race to the bottom.  Metro – an elegant API coupled to a horrendous UX – I'll wait for market penetration viability before investing further in this.   Conclusion So if you are in a slump, take heart: Programming is a great career choice compared to every other job !

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• Web Developer - How to enhance my skillset?

  - by atif089

  First of all pardon my English. I am not a native English speaker I have been a Web Developer for the past 4 years. In these 4 years I have spent my time on the internet to learn things. My current skillset comprises of HTML CSS PHP MySQL jQuery (I would not say js and rather say jQuery because I am good at using jQuery and bad with plain javascript.) The above things seemed like an easier part of my life as I quickly learned them. But now I would really like to enhance my skillset and I am pretty confused which way to move ahead considering that I have to learn things using the web and references on my own. Design My first option is towards design. Shall I get started with design and start using Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, Flash, Flex. Designing along with my previous skills looks like a money maker to me. As both are co-related to each other when web design is considered. And its easier to learn the first 2 and I hope I can get tutorials for the last 2 as well. Marketing A lot of my existing clients asked me if I do SEO. So this looked as a good field to me as well. I cannot estimate the scope of SEO but I assume it has a long future. Since I am business minded as well and there are a lot of tutorials around, should I start with SEO, SEM, Social Media, PPC or whatever it consists of. Software Development The complex plight and hardest thing (perhaps) but the easiest way to find a decent job in my location. If I go for software development what platform should be that I should be ideally going after? Should it be C# for windows development, or ASP.NET (once again enhances my skill set), J2EE (there are a lot of jobs for J2EE developers here) or plain C and C++. Also I think it is difficult to learn software languages right from Hello World, using internet? I have no clue how I learned PHP but I am sort of a pro now, but these other languages seems like a disaster to me? I cant figure out the reason if its because PHP is easier or there was a lot of tutorials around for PHP. Anyways is it also possible to learn software development right from Hello World using the web? Database / Server (Linux) / Network Administration Seems like a job with a decent pay but less number of jobs and a bit harder to learn online. (not sure) What should be the right track I should move ahead. P.S - Age is not a constraint for me as I am between 20-21, and I come from an IT background. I know quite little basics about C (upto structures) C++ (upto objects, I was not able to understand templates) Core Java (some basics and OOP concept) RDBMS Visual Basic 6 (used to do this long back) UNIX (a bunch of commands like who, finger, chmod, ls and a bit of #bash) Or is there anything else that I left out? I need you guys to please give me a feedback and the reason why I should select that field.

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• Test your internet connection - Emtel Fixed Broadband

  Already at the begin of April, I had a phone conversation with my representative at Emtel Ltd. about some upcoming issues due to the ongoing construction work in my neighbourhood. Unfortunately, they finally raised the house two levels above ours, and of course this has to have a negative impact on the visibility between the WiMAX outdoor unit on the roof and the aimed access point at Medine. So, today I had a technical team here to do a site survey and to come up with potential solutions. Short version: It doesn't look good after all. The site survey Well, the two technicians did their work properly, even re-arranged the antenna to check the connection with another end point down at La Preneuse. But no improvements. Looks like we are out of luck since the construction next door hasn't finished yet and at the moment, it even looks like they are planning to put at least one more level on top. I really wonder about the sanity of the responsible bodies at the local district council. But that's another story. Anyway, the outdoor unit was once again pointed towards Medine and properly fixed with new cable guides (air from the sea and rust...). Both of them did a good job and fine-tuned the reception signal to a mere 3 over 9; compared to the original 7 over 9 I had before the daily terror started. The site survey has been done, and now it's up to Emtel to come up with (better) solutions. Well, I wouldn't mind to have an unlimited, symmetric 3G/UMTS or even LTE connection. Let's see what they can do... Testing the connection There are several online sites available which offer you to check certain aspects of your internet connection. Personally, I'm used to speedtest.net and it works very well. I think it is good and necessary to check your connection from time to time, and only a couple of days ago, I posted the following on Emtel's wall at Facebook (21.05.2013 - 14:06 hrs): Dear Emtel, could you eventually provide an answer on the miserable results of SpeedTest? I chose Rose Hill (Hosted by Emtel Ltd.) as testing endpoint... Sadly, no response to this. Seems that the marketing department is not willing to deal with customers on Facebook. Okay, over at speedtest.net you can use their Flash-based test suite to check your connection to quite a number of servers of different providers world-wide. It's actually very interesting to see the results for different end points and to compare them to each other. The results Following are the results of Rose Hill (hosted by Emtel) and respectively Frankfurt, Germany (hosted by Vodafone DE): Speedtest.net result of 30.05.2013 between Flic en Flac and Rose Hill, Mauritius (Emtel - Fixed Broadband) Speedtest.net result of 30.05.2013 between Flic en Flac and Frankfurt, Germany (Emtel - Fixed Broadband) Luckily, the results are quite similar in terms of connection speed; which is good. I'm currently on a WiMAX tariff called 'Classic Browsing 2', or Fixed Broadband as they call it now, which provides a symmetric line of 768 Kbps (or roughly 0.75 Mbps). In terms of downloads or uploads this means that I would be able to transfer files in either direction with approximately 96 KB/s. Frankly speaking, thanks to compression, my choice of browser and operating system I usually exceed this value and I have download rates up to 120 KB/s - not too bad after all. Only the ping times are a little bit of concern. Due to the difference in distance, or better said based on the number of hubs between the endpoints, they indicate the amount of time that it takes to send a package from your machine to the remote server and get a response back. A lower value is better, and usually the ping is less than 300 ms between Mauritius and Europe. The alternatives in Mauritius Not sure whether I should note this done because for my requirements there are no alternatives to Emtel WiMAX at the moment. It would be great to have your opinion on the situation of internet connectivity in Mauritius. Are there really alternatives? And if so, what are the conditions?

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• Apache config that uses two document roots based on whether the requested resource exists in the first [closed]

  - by mattalexx

  Background I have a client site that consists of a CakePHP installation and a Magento installation: /web/example.com/ /web/example.com/app/ <== CakePHP /web/example.com/app/webroot/ <== DocumentRoot /web/example.com/app/webroot/store/ <== Magento /web/example.com/config/ <== Site-wide config /web/example.com/vendors/ <== Site-wide libraries The server runs Apache 2.2.3. The problem The whole company has FTP access and got used to clogging up the /web/example.com/, /web/example.com/app/webroot/, and /web/example.com/app/webroot/store/ directories with their own files. Sometimes these files need HTTP access and sometimes they don't. In any case, this mess makes my job harder when it comes to maintaining the site. Code merges, tarring the live code, etc, is very complicated and usually requires a bunch of filters. Abandoned solution At first, I thought I would set up a new subdomain on the same server, move all of their files there, and change their FTP chroot. But that wouldn't work for these reasons: Firstly, I have no idea (and neither do they remember) what marketing materials they've sent out that contain URLs to certain resources they've uploaded to the server, using the main domain, and also using abstract subdomains that use the main virtual host because it has ServerAlias *.example.com. So suddenly having them only use static.example.com isn't feasible. Secondly, The PHP scripts in their projects are potentially very non-portable. I want their files to stay in as similar an environment as they were built as I can. Also, I do not want to debug their code to make it portable. Half-baked solution After some thought, I decided to find a way to section off the actual website files into another directory that they would not touch. The company's uploaded files would stay where they were. This would ensure that I didn't break any of their projects that needed HTTP access. It would look something like this: /web/example.com/ <== A bunch of their files are in here /web/example.com/app/webroot/ <== 1st DocumentRoot; A bunch of their files are in here /web/example.com/app/webroot/store/ <== Some more are in here /web/example.com/site/ <== New dir; Contains only site files /web/example.com/site/app/ <== CakePHP /web/example.com/site/app/webroot/ <== 2nd DocumentRoot /web/example.com/site/app/webroot/store/ <== Magento /web/example.com/site/config/ <== Site-wide config /web/example.com/site/vendors/ <== Site-wide libraries After I made this change, I would not need to pay attention to anything except for the stuff within /web/example.com/site/ and my job would be a lot easier. I would be the only one changing stuff in there. So here's where the Apache magic would happen: I need an HTTP request to http://www.example.com/ to first use /web/example.com/app/webroot/ as the document root. If nothing is found (no miscellaneous uploaded company projects are found), try finding something within /web/example.com/site/app/webroot/. Another thing to keep in mind is, the site might have some problems if the $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] variable reads /web/example.com/app/webroot/ but the actual files are within /web/example.com/site/app/webroot/. It would be better if the DOCUMENT_ROOT environment variable could be /web/example.com/site/app/webroot/ for anything within the /web/example.com/site/app/webroot/ directory. Conclusion Is my half-baked solution possible with Apache 2.2.3? Is there a better way to solve this problem?

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• 4 Key Ingredients for the Cloud

  - by Kellsey Ruppel

  It's a short week here with the US Thanksgiving Holiday. So, before we put on our stretch pants and get ready to belly up to the dinner table for turkey, stuffing and mashed potatoes, let's spend a little time this week talking about the Cloud (kind of like the feathery whipped goodness that tops the infamous Thanksgiving pumpkin pie!) But before we dive into the Cloud, let's do a side by side comparison of the key ingredients for each. Cloud Whipped Cream  Application Integration  1 cup heavy cream  Security  1/4 cup sugar  Virtual I/O  1 teaspoon vanilla  Storage  Chilled Bowl It’s no secret that millions of people are connected to the Internet. And it also probably doesn’t come as a surprise that a lot of those people are connected on social networking sites.  Social networks have become an excellent platform for sharing and communication that reflects real world relationships and they play a major part in the everyday lives of many people. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google+ and hundreds of others have transformed the way we interact and communicate with one another.Social networks are becoming more than just an online gathering of friends. They are becoming a destination for ideation, e-commerce, and marketing. But it doesn’t just stop there. Some organizations are utilizing social networks internally, integrated with their business applications and processes and the possibility of social media and cloud integration is compelling. Forrester alone estimates enterprise cloud computing to grow to over $240 billion by 2020. It’s hard to find any current IT project today that is NOT considering cloud-based deployments. Security and quality of service concerns are no longer at the forefront; rather, it’s about focusing on the right mix of capabilities for the business. Cloud vs. On-Premise? Policies & governance models? Social in the cloud? Cloud’s increasing sophistication, security in applications, mobility, transaction processing and social capabilities make it an attractive way to manage information. And Oracle offers all of this through the Oracle Cloud and Oracle Social Network. Oracle Social Network is a secure private network that provides a broad range of social tools designed to capture and preserve information flowing between people, enterprise applications, and business processes. By connecting you with your most critical applications, Oracle Social Network provides contextual, real-time communication within and across enterprises. With Oracle Social Network, you and your teams have the tools you need to collaborate quickly and efficiently, while leveraging the organization’s collective expertise to make informed decisions and drive business forward. Oracle Social Network is available as part of a portfolio of application and platform services within the Oracle Cloud. Oracle Cloud offers self-service business applications delivered on an integrated development and deployment platform with tools to rapidly extend and create new services. Oracle Social Network is pre-integrated with the Fusion CRM Cloud Service and the Fusion HCM Cloud Service within the Oracle Cloud. If you are looking for something to watch as you veg on the couch in a post-turkey dinner hangover, you might consider watching these how-to videos! And yes, it is perfectly ok to have that 2nd piece of pie

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• Faster Trip to Innovation with Simplified Data Integration: Sabre Holdings Case Study

  - by Tanu Sood

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Author: Irem Radzik, Director of Product Marketing, Data Integration, Oracle In today’s fast-paced, competitive environment, IT teams are under pressure to deliver technology solutions for many critical business initiatives as fast as possible. When the focus is on speed, it can be easy to continue to use old style, point-to-point custom scripts that grow organically to the point where they are unmanageable and too costly to maintain. As data volumes, data sources, and end users grow, uncoordinated data integration efforts create significant inefficiencies for both IT and business users. In addition to losing IT productivity due to maintaining spaghetti architecture, data integrity becomes a concern as well. Errors caused by inconsistent, data and manual data entry can prove very costly for companies and disrupt business activities. Many industry leaders recognize now that data should be moved in an automated and reliable manner across all platforms to have one version of the truth. By simplifying their data integration architecture and standardizing on a centralized approach, IT teams now accelerate time to market. Especially, using a centralized, shared-service approach brings agility, increases IT productivity, and frees up resources for innovation. One such industry leader that simplified its data integration architecture is Sabre Holdings. Sabre Holdings provides distribution and technology solutions for the travel industry, and is a winner of Oracle Excellence Awards for Fusion Middleware in 2011 in the data integration category. I had the pleasure to host Sabre Holdings on a public webcast and discuss their data integration best practices for data warehousing. In this webcast Sabre’s Amjad Saeed, presented how the company reduced complexity by consolidating systems and standardizing development on Oracle Data Integrator and Oracle GoldenGate for its global data warehouse development team. With Oracle’s complete real-time data integration solution, Sabre also streamlined support and maintenance operations, achieved real-time view in the execution of the integration processes, and can manage the data warehouse and business intelligence solution performance on demand. By reducing complexity and leveraging timely market insights, the company was able to decrease time to market by 40%. You can now listen to the webcast on demand: Sabre Holdings Case Study: Accelerating Innovation using Oracle Data Integration I invite you to hear directly from Sabre how to use advanced data integration capabilities to enable accelerated innovation. To learn more about Oracle’s data integration offering you can download our free resources.

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• The Social Content Conundrum

  - by Mike Stiles

  Here’s the social content conundrum: people who are not entertainers are being asked to entertain. Despite a world of skilled MBAs, marketing savants, technological innovators, analysts, social strategists and consultants, every development in social for brands keeps boomeranging right back to the same unavoidable truth. Success hinges on having content creators who know how to entertain the target audience. You can’t make this all about business-processes. You can’t make this all about technology, though data is critical and helps inform content. This is about having human beings who know the audience, know what they’d love to see, and can create the magic that will draw and hold them. Since showing up in the News Feed is critical for exposition and engagement, and since social ads primarily serve to amplify content that’s performing well, I’m comfortable saying content creators are becoming exponentially recruited and valued. They will no longer be commodities. They’ll be your stars. Social has fundamentally changed the relationship between brand and consumer. No longer can the customer be told to sit down, shut up, and listen to our ads. It’s now all about what consumers are willing to watch or read. Their patience for subjecting themselves to material they aren’t interested in is waning. Therefore, brands must now be producers of entertainment and information content, not merely placers of ads within someone else’s content. Social has given you a huge stage, with an audience sitting out there waiting to see what you’re going to do. What are you putting on that stage? For most corporate environments, entertaining is alien. It’s risky and subjective. Most operate around two foundational principles: control and fear. To entertain and inform with branded content, some control has to go. You control the product. Past that, control is being transferred into the hands of the consumer. The “fear first” culture also has to yield. If you strive to never make waves, you will move absolutely nothing. Because most corporations don’t house entertainers, they must be found then trusted. They’re usually a little weird. The ideas they’ll bring may seem “out there.” But like any business professional, they’ve gone through the training and experiences that make them uniquely good at what they do, even if you don’t quite understand them. It’s okay. It’s what the audience thinks that matters. Get it right, and you’ll be generating one ambassador after another who’s proud to be identified with the brand and will regularly consume and share your content. Entertainment entities are able to shape our culture and succeed beyond their wildest dreams by being beholden to one thing…what the public likes and wants. When brands put the same emphasis on crowd-pleasing content, they too will enjoy brand fame the likes of which they’ve never seen. The stage is yours. Now get out there and go for that applause.

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• Is Your Company Social on the Inside?

  - by Mike Stiles

  As we talk about the extension of social from an outbound-facing marketing tool to a platform that will reach across the entire enterprise, servicing multiple functions of that enterprise, it might be time to take a look at how social can be effectively employed for internal communications. Remember the printed company newsletter? Yeah, nobody reads it. Remember the emailed company newsletter? Yeah, nobody reads it. Why not? Shouldn’t your employees care about the company more than anything else in life and be voraciously hungry for any information related to it? The more realistic prospect is that a company’s employees don’t behave much differently at work where information is concerned than they do in their personal lives. They “tune in” to information that’s immediately relevant to them, that peaks their interest, and/or that’s presented in a visually engaging way. That currently makes an internal social platform the most ideal way to communicate within the organization. It not only facilitates more immediate, more targeted (and thus more relevant) messaging from the company out to employees, it sets a stage for employees to communicate with each other and efficiently get answers to questions from peers. It’s a collaboration tool on steroids. If you build such an internal social portal and you do it right, will employees use it? Considering social media has officially been declared more addictive than cigarettes, booze and sex…probably. But what does it mean to do an internal social platform “right”? The bar has been set pretty high. Your employees are used to Twitter and Facebook, and would roll their eyes at anything less simple or harder to navigate than those. All the Facebook best practices would apply to your internal social as well, including the importance of managing posting frequency, using photos and video, moderation & response, etc. And don’t worry, you won’t be the first to jump in. WPP's global digital agency Possible has its own social network called Colab. Nestle has “The Nest.” Red Robin’s got one. I myself got an in-depth look at McGraw-Hill’s internal social platform at Blogwell NYC. Some of these companies are building their own platforms, others are buying them off the shelf or customizing readymade solutions. But you won’t be the last either. Prescient Digital Media and the IABC learned 39% of companies don’t offer employees any social tools. Not a social network, not discussion forums, not even IM. And a great many continue to ban the use of Facebook and Twitter on the premises. That’s pretty astonishing since social has become as essential a modern day communications tool as the telephone. But such holdouts will pay a big price for being mired in fear while competitors exploit social connections unchallenged. Fish where the fish are. If social has become the way people communicate and take in information, let that be the way communication is trafficked in the organization.

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• Does *every* project benefit from written specifications?

  - by nikie

  I know this is holy war territory, so please read the question to the end before answering. There are many cases where written specifications make a lot of sense. For example, if you're a contractor and you want to get paid, you need written specs. If you're working in a team with 20 persons, you need written specs. If you're writing a programming language compiler or interpreter (and it's not perl), you'll usually write a formal specification. I don't doubt that there are many more cases where written specifications are a really good idea. I just think that there are cases where there's so little benefit in written specs, that it doesn't outweigh the costs of writing and maintaining them. EDIT: The close votes say that "it is difficult to say what is asked here", so let me clarify: The usefulness of written, detailed specifications is often claimed like a dogma. (If you want examples, look at the comments.) But I don't see the use of them for the kind of development I'm doing. So what is asked here is: How would written specifications help me? Background information: I work for a small company that's developing vertical market software. If our product is easier to use and has better performance than the competition, it sells. If it's harder to use, even if it behaves 100% as the specification says, it doesn't sell. So there are no "external forces" for having written specs. The advantage would have to be somewhere in the development process. Now, I can see how frozen specifications would make a developer's life easier. But we'll never have frozen specs. If we see in the middle of development that feature X is not intuitive to use the way it's specified, then we can only choose between changing the specification or developing a product that won't sell. You'll probably ask by now: How do you know when you're done? Well, we're continually improving our product. The competition does the same. So (hopefully) we're never done. We keep improving the software, and when we reach a point when the benefits of the improvements we've added since the last release outweigh the costs of an update, we create a new release that is then tested, localized, documented and deployed. This also means that there's rarely any schedule pressure. Nobody has to do overtime to make a deadline. If the feature isn't done by the time we want to release the next version, it'll simply go into the next version. The next question might be: How do your developers know what they're supposed to implement? The answer is: They have a lot of domain knowledge. They know the customers business well enough, so a high-level description of the feature (or even just the problem that the customer needs solved) is enough to implement it. If it's not clear, the developer creates a few fake screens to get feedback from marketing/management or customers, but this is nowhere near the level of detail of actual specifications. This might be inefficient for larger teams, but for a small team with low turnover it works quite well. It has the additional benefit that the developer in question often comes up with a better solution than the person writing the specs might have. This question is already getting very long, but let me address one last point: Testing. Like I said in the beginning, if our software behaves 100% like the spec says, it still can be crap. In fact, if it's so unintuitive that you need a spec to know how to test it, it probably is crap. It makes sense to have fixed, written tests for some core functionality and for regression bugs, but again, this is nowhere near a full written spec of how the software should behave when. The main test is: hand the software to a user who doesn't know it yet and tell him to use the new feature X. If she can figure out how to use it and it works, it works.

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• Spotlight on Oracle Social Relationship Management. Social Enable Your Enterprise with Oracle SRM.

  - by Pat Ma

  Facebook is now the most popular site on the Internet. People are tweeting more than they send email. Because there are so many people on social media, companies and brands want to be there too. They want to be able to listen to social chatter, engage with customers on social, create great-looking Facebook pages, and roll out social-collaborative work environments within their organization. This is where Oracle Social Relationship Management (SRM) comes in. Oracle SRM is a product that allows companies to manage their presence with prospects and customers on social channels. Let's talk about two popular use cases with Oracle SRM. Easy Publishing - Companies now have an average of 178 social media accounts - with every product or geography or employee group creating their own social media channel. For example, if you work at an international hotel chain with every single hotel creating their own Facebook page for their location, that chain can have well over 1,000 social media accounts. Managing these channels is a mess - with logging in and out of every account, making sure that all accounts are on brand, and preventing rogue posts from destroying the brand. This is where Oracle SRM comes in. With Oracle Social Relationship Management, you can log into one window and post messages to all 1,000+ social channels at once. You can set up approval flows and have each account generate their own content but that content must be approved before publishing. The benefits of this are easy social media publishing, brand consistency across all channels, and protection of your brand from inappropriate posts. Monitoring and Listening - People are writing and talking about your company right now on social media. 75% of social media users have written a negative post about a brand after a poor customer service experience. Think about all the negative posts you see in your Facebook news feed about delayed flights or being on hold for 45 minutes. There is so much social chatter going on around your brand that it's almost impossible to keep up or comprehend what's going on. That's where Oracle SRM comes in. With Social Relationship Management, a company can monitor and listen to what people are saying about them on social channels. They can drill down into individual posts or get a high level view of trends and mentions. The benefits of this are comprehending what's being said about your brand and its competitors, understanding customers and their intent, and responding to negative posts before they become a PR crisis. Oracle SRM is part of Oracle Cloud. The benefits of cloud deployment for customers are faster deployments, less maintenance, and lower cost of ownership versus on-premise deployments. Oracle SRM also fits into Oracle's vision to social enable your enterprise. With Oracle SRM, social media is not just a marketing channel. Social media is also mechanism for sales, customer support, recruiting, and employee collaboration. For more information about how Oracle SRM can social enable your enterprise, please visit oracle.com/social. For more information about Oracle Cloud, please visit cloud.oracle.com.

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• No Customer Left Behind

  - by Kathryn Perry

  A guest post by David Vap, Group Vice President, Oracle Applications Product Development What does customer experience mean to you? Is it a strategy for your executives? A new buzz word and marketing term? A bunch of CRM technology with social software added on? For me, customer experience is a customer-centric worldview that produces a deeper understanding of your business and what it takes to achieve sustainable, differentiated success. It requires you to prioritize and examine the journey your customers are on with your brand, so you can answer the question, "How can we drive greater value for our business by delivering a better customer experience?" Businesses that embrace a customer-centric worldview understand their business at a much deeper level than most. They know who their customers are, what their value is, what they do, what they say, what they want, and ultimately what that means to their business. "Why Isn't Everyone Doing It?" We're all consumers who have our own experiences with many brands. Good or bad, some of those experiences stay with us. So viscerally we understand the concept of customer experience from the stories we share. One that stands out in my mind happened as I was preparing to leave for a 12-month job assignment in Europe. I wanted to put my cable television subscription on hold. I wasn't leaving for another vendor. I wasn't upset. I just had a situation where it made sense to put my $180 per month account on pause until I returned. Unfortunately, there was no way for this cable company to acknowledge that I was a loyal customer with a logical request - and to respond accordingly. So, ultimately, they lost my business. Research shows us that it costs six to seven times more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one. Heavily funding the efforts of getting new customers and underfunding the efforts of serving the needs of your existing (who are your greatest advocates) is a vicious and costly cycle. "Hey, These Guys Suck!" I love my Apple iPad because it's so easy to use. The explosion of these types of technologies, combined with new media channels, has raised our expectations and made us hyperaware of what's going on and what's available. In addition, social media has given us a megaphone to share experiences both positive and negative with greater impact. We are now an always-on culture that thrives on our ability to access, connect, and share anywhere anytime. If we don't get the service, product, or value we expect, it is easy to tell many people about it. We also can quickly learn where else to get what we want. Consumers have the power of influence and choice at a global scale. The businesses that understand this principle are able to leverage that power to their advantage. The ones that don't, suffer from it. Which camp are you in?Note: This is Part 1 in a three-part series. Stop back for Part 2 on November 19.

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• Building Enterprise Smartphone App &ndash; Part 1: Why Build Smart Phone Apps

  - by Tim Murphy

  This is part 1 in a series of post based on a talk I gave recently at the Chicago Information Technology Architects Group.  Feel free to leave feedback. Intro Most of us already carry smartphones. We play games on them. We keep up with what is going on with our friends and our favorite teams. We take pictures of our kids at their events. But the question is if that is all they are good for. Many companies have aspects of their business that lend themselves to being performed by mobile devices. Some of them lean toward larger device such as tablets, but many can be executed on smartphones. This and the following articles will discuss some of the possible applications of smartphone technology for businesses, the platforms that are available and the considerations you need to make when building them. I'll take a look at some specific scenarios and wrap up with a couple of capabilities that are just emerging that can be used in the future. Why Build Enterprise Smartphone Applications So what are some of the ways that you can leverage smartphone technology to gain efficiency in your business or a clients business. There are a few major areas that I have seen mobile platforms being an advantage to. Your mobile sales force is a key candidate for leveraging smartphone apps.  They can visit clients in their retail location and place orders on site. It is a more personal approach which can gain you customer loyalty.  A sales person may also gather information about the way a client does business or who their target market is. This allows them you to focus marketing information or build customized support for your customer. You may also have need to track physical inventory in a store. This is something that has historically been done with laser scanners, but with the camera capabilities in today's phones and tablets it is possible to use more general multi-purpose devices.  This can save costs on both hardware and telecommunication contracts. Delivery verification is another area that historically has been the domain of specialized devices but can now be accomplished with smartphones.  This also reduces costs because it is also used for communicating with the driver and other operations.  Add to that the navigation capability of smartphones and you can see how the return on investment increases. Executives are always on the go. They spend most of their time in meetings and yet they need access to decision making information at their finger tips. With a smartphone app they can get alerts when major sales are closed or critical accounting process are completed that may need their attention. They can also answer questions by instantly pulling up BI reports. I have often heard operations support people say that they need things like VPN and RDP from their phones. If they can also have notifications of outages or critical support requests they can be react to situations without needing to be tied to their desks. These are all valid reasons to need smartphone applications.  In the next installment I will discuss platforms and features. del.icio.us Tags: Smartphones,Enterprise Smartphone Apps,Architecture

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• How to set up a centralized backup server with lots of offsite workstations, intermittent internet connectivity, and stubborn users?

  - by Zac B

  This might be an impossible question. Context: We have a bunch of computers across around 1000 users. We have a centralized office where 900 of the users work, most of the time. Most of the computers are laptops. They are very frequently coming on and off the network for hours at a time. Users often take their computers home and do lots of work from home. In addition, there are a handful of users who work elsewhere in the country, who are offline (no internet connection whatsoever) for more than half of the time they use their machines. All of the machines are Windows 7/XP. Problem: People are always losing data. One day someone accidentally deletes a bunch of files. The next day someone else installs a bad driver or tries to mess with something in system32 and needs a personal data backup/reinstall of Windows. Because of how many of our business operations are done without an internet connection, and how frequently computers come on- and offline, it's unfeasible to make users use network storage for all of their data. We tried giving them Dropboxes, and they stored their files elsewhere. We bought and deployed Altiris, and they uninstalled it and blamed us when they couldn't get files back that they accidentally deleted while they were offline and hadn't taken a backup in months. We tried teaching them backup best-practices, and using scheduled sync tools to upload things to the network drives, and they turned them off because they "looked like viruses". It doesn't help that many of these users are pretty high up in the business and are not amicable to any sort of "you need to do something regularly because we say so" solution. Question: Other than finding another job where IT is treated differently and users are willing to follow best practices, how would people recommend I implement a file backup solution that supports the following: Backs up to a centralized server over LAN or WAN whenever a network link becomes available, or on a schedule. Supports interrupted/resumed backups (and hopefully file-delta only backups), since connections to the network (WAN or LAN) are often slow and only open for half an hour or so. Supports relatively rapid, "I accidentally deleted the TPS reports! Oh no!" single-file recovery, ideally administered from the central backup server rather than the client PC. Supports local-to-local file delta backup on a schedule, so that users without a network connection for a few days can still retrieve accidental deletions or whatnot. Ideally, the local stored backups would be pushed up to the server whenever network link is available. Isn't configurable on the clients without certain credentials. Because the CFOs (who won't give up their admin rights on the domain) will disable it if they can. Backs up the entire hard drive. There are people who are self-righteous about storing things in C:\, or in the recycle bin, or in the C:\Windows dir (yes, I know). I'm fine integrating multiple products/solutions, or scripting different programs together myself (I'm a somewhat competent programmer), but I've been drawing a blank on where to start. Dropbox is folder-specific, Altiris doesn't cope with LAN outages or interrupted/resumed backups, Volume Shadow Copy is awesome for a local-to-local solution, but I don't know how to push days of stored shadow copies up to a server in a 2 hour window of network access. The company is fine with spending decent money on this, thousands (USD) on a server, and hundreds on clients, if necessary. I want to emphasize that this isn't a shopping list request. While I wish there was a program out there that did what I want, I've looked pretty hard, and not found anything that fits the bill. Instead, I'm hoping for ideas on where to start hacking things together from scratch/from different technologies to make something stable that works. Cheers!

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• Excel export displaying '#####...'

  - by Cypher

  I'm trying to export an Excel database into .txt (Tab Delimited), but some of my cells are quite large. When I export into a txt some of the cells are exported as '#######....' which is surprisingly useless. Has this happened to anyone else? Do you know an easy fix? Data from one cell of my column: Accounting, African Studies, Agricultural/Bioresource Engineering, Agricultural Economics, Agricultural Science, Anatomy/Cell Biology, Animal Biology, Animal Science, Anthropology, Applied Zoology, Architecture, Art History, Atmospheric/Oceanic Science, Biochemistry, Biology, Botanical Sciences, Canadian Studies, Chemical Engineering, Chemistry/Bio-Organic/Environmental/Materials,ChurchMusicPerformance, Civil Engineering/Applied Mechanics, Classics, Composition, Computer Engineering,ComputerScience, ContemporaryGerman Studies, Dietetics, Early Music Performance, Earth/Planetary Sciences, East Asian Studies, Economics, Electrical Engineering, English Literature/ Drama/Theatre/Cultural Studies, Entrepreneurship, Environment, Environmental Biology, Finance, Food Science, Foundations of Computing, French Language/Linguistics/Literature/Translation, Geography, Geography/ Urban Systems, German, German Language/Literature/Culture, Hispanic Languages/Literature/Culture,History,Humanistic Studies, Industrial Relations, Information Systems, International Business, International Development Studies, Italian Studies/Medieval/Renaissance, Jazz Performance, Jewish Studies, Keyboard Studies, Kindergarten/Elementary Education, Kindergarten/Elementary Education/Jewish Studies,Kinesiology, Labor/Management Relations, Latin American/Caribbean Studies, Linguistics, Literature/Translation, Management Science, Marketing, Materials Engineering,Mathematics,Mathematics/Statistics,Mechanical Engineering, Microbiology, Microbiology/Immunology, Middle Eastern Studies, Mining Engineering, Music, Music Education, MusicHistory,Music Technology,Music Theory,North American Studies, Nutrition,OperationsManagement,OrganizationalBehavior/Human Resources Management, Performing Arts, Philosophy, Physical Education, Physics, Physiology, Plant Sciences, Political Science, Psychology, Quebec Studies, Religious Studies/Scriptures/Interpretations/World Religions,ResourceConservation,Russian, Science for Teachers,Secondary Education, Secondary Education/Music, Secondary Education/Science, SocialWork, Sociology, Software Engineering, Soil Science, Strategic Management, Teaching of French/English as a Second Language, Theology, Wildlife Biology, Wildlife Resources, Women’s Studies.

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• Has anyone used Rational Team Concert (RTC)?

  - by FryGuy

  The company I work for is currently evaluating replacements for SourceSafe, and for various reasons, I think RTC will be chosen. I'm a little scared that we're going to end up with a solution that isn't the best for us in our situation. I've tried researching a little bit about what it is, but all I have been able to find are marketing things, but nothing about how it actually works (any of the paradigms it uses, etc). Our team is around 8 developers and 2 QA people on a single project (and 4-5 more people that would be using it for their independent project). It seems like RTC is targetted for larger teams, but our team is relatively small. Does anyone has experience using RTC in a smaller team? The project that would be using it is a .NET/WPF application, so we would be using primarily Visual Studio. Is the Visual Studio integration any good, or are we stuck having to have Eclipse open on top of Visual Studio? Personally, I have been using Bazaar as my personal source control (and checking out/into sourcesafe from a branch), as well as on personal projects. Does RTC incorporate features of "third generation" version control systems, such as first class branching/merging and changesets rather than file changes, and good visualization of where changes come from? Also, what are the general pros and cons for it?

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• Any Red5 Working Example Project for 0.9 release

  - by Daryl

  I'm trying to find 1, just 1, working sample project for Red5 that's updated to work against the latest 0.9 release without missing jars and other nonsense. Right now, it's at v0.9 and the libs are different from other versions. They have 5 pathetic examples on their website, but all were built with the older versions, and who knows which version since they don't seem to be putting any effort into updating or marketing their open source project. For these 5 old examples, I could use the Add External JARS feature to try and add libs from previous versions, they don't mention which versions they were built against and I'm not going to try each previous version to see which works (I already did and nothing works). P.S. Voted the worst documented project on the planet. It's hilarious, one of their developers posted a few videos on youtube, without bothering to attach a sample zip for the get-started project he's demoing. No offense, but that's seriously #(#$$#($!@#*. Not a good start for any tech decision maker to assess a technology for commercial use. Anyone who's more intelligent and can shed some light on behalf of these fools?

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• Best Practices for Setup and Management of an Open Source Project

  - by VirtuosiMedia

  Later this year I want to release a PHP framework that I've been working on as open source. I do use source control (SVN), but it's on an extremely limited basis. I'm self-taught, I develop by myself and don't have the experience of working with large teams. I have some ideas about what can help make a project successful, but I'm fuzzy on some of the details. Since it's not yet released, I want to do everything I can to set up the right infrastructure from the beginning. What do I need to know in order to setup and manage a successful project? Some ideas that I have to make it successful (beyond marketing it): Good documentation and tutorials Automated unit tests and builds to push update to the website A clear roadmap Bug Tracking integrated with the source control A style guide to keep the code consistent along with clear A forum for the community to get support, share ideas, etc. A good example application built with the framework A blog to keep the community informed Maintaining backwards compatibility wherever possible Some of my questions: How do I setup and automate a one step submit-test-commit-generate API docs-push update to website process? How do I handle (technically) submissions from other users? How can I ensure that those submissions must be approved before being integrated? What are some of the pitfalls that can be avoided in terms of the project community? I'd prefer to have it be as friendly and helpful as possible without a lot of drama. I'd love to learn from your experience on any of these points. If you think I'm missing anything big, please share that as well. Any resources (preferably geared toward a beginner) that you could point me towards would also be greatly appreciated.

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• Where can I find clear examples of MVC?

  - by Tom

  I've read a couple of things about MVCs but I still don't understand when they should be used and when they shouldn't be used. I am looking for clear examples that say things like "if you're developing this then you should use MVC, like this" and "if you're developing this, you shouldn't use MVC." Most of the examples I've seen rely on complex frameworks which have already implemented everything and you have to learn the framework and use it a lot to understand what's really happening. To many programmers, phrasings such as "UI business logic" sound like marketing terms — for example, the words "Instead the View binds directly to a Presentation Model" are used in this post. I am aware of the dangers that may lurk in the shadows as MVC is a concept and everyone feels like they know it best, yet nobody really knows exactly how to use it because there may be a lot of variables involved and everyone is allowed to have a different perspective on how to dissect a project into the Model, the View and the Controller. There is a lot of theory out there but very few clear examples. What I'm looking for are not "the best" ways of doing it so this should not be considered as subjective; I'm looking for different simple implementations that would allow me to decide on my own which are the best approaches. Succinctly: What are good on-line resources that present pro and con arguments to using MVC in various situations and provide clear examples to help the reader understand the concept?

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• Handling conflicting priorities and expectations in project development

  - by jasonk

  There are any number of situations in the standard day where priority conflicts exist for projects. Management wants maximum productivity from employees. Marketing wants maximum salability and fast turnaround. Ownership wants maximum profit. Customers want usability and low cost. Regardless of the origin of the demands, time and money are always the limiting factor in business. Sometimes project elements have intrinsic or goodwill benefits for which there is not a hard, fast way to measure with monetary means (e.g. arguments for an attractive UI appeal vs. functional but plain). Other elements of software may have a method of providing “mental breaks” or motivating “cool factor” for developers that can get them back on track on other bigger, complex issues. While they may sidetrack the project short term they may have greater results long term through improved job satisfaction, etc. Continued training is a must, but working it in can setup back progress. What are your suggestions for setting priorities? How do you evaluate requests/demands on your projects? What are your suggestions for communicating and passing those on to your team in a way that they stay focused?

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• Bored with CS. What can I study that will make an impact?

  - by Eric Martinez

  So I'm going to an average university, majoring in CS. I haven't learned a damn thing and am in my third year. I've come to be really bored with studying CS. Initially, I was kind of misinformed and thought majoring in CS would make me a good "product creator". I make my money combining programming and business/marketing. But I have always done programming for the love of the art. I find things like algorithms interesting and want to be able to use CS to solve real world problems. I like the idea of bioinformatics and other hybrid studies. I'm not good enough, yet I hope, to really make a significant effort in those areas but I aspire to be. What are some other fields, open problems, and otherwise cool stuff to apply CS knowledge to in the real world? I'm really looking for something that will motivate me and re-excite me to continue studying CS. Edit: Like someone mentioned below. I am very interesting in the idea of being able to use computer science to help answer fundamental questions of life and the universe. But I'm not sure what is possible or how to begin.

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• How to find Part Time development/IT work?

  - by Jonathan

  I've been working in the IT field now for 10 years. Originally trained as an Engineer, started out with C++ and have been a .Net specialist since beta. Currently seconded to a major city and working in the finance industry as freelance, I really feel like i've hit the glass ceiling. Have been contracting now for 5 years as the company politics and frustration of not being promoted and poor pay rises for excellent work but during the last decade of corporate cost cutting took its toll on my morale. Freelance made all the difference and i've had a very decorated career for good clients. What any Engineering student could ever dream of when starting out. The problem is, it doesn't particularly make me happy. It's good work, and i enjoy the problem solving aspects of it and having something to do each day. However there is always a large overhead of non-technical work and dealing with poor managers etc. I guess the Engineering was always a bit of a mistake i made the best out of, and now having 10 years behind a computer hasn't done wonders for my health or eye sight. In a nutshell i am in the process of retraining as a therapist and would like to open my own clinic. However, never having done this before, the fast pace IT skills outdate and the fact that all my experience and skills are non transferrable, i am a little worried. Any ideas how i can find part time IT work as i build up my business? (it's incredibly hard to find freelancing work that doesn't require long hours and overtime). Or other ideas to make the transition easier, and perhaps backout if it financially doesn't work/or i have enough marketing skills? I'd be interested to hear from people who have made a similar transition, successfully or unsuccessfully. Many thanks

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