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  • Silverlight Cream for February 22, 2011 -- #1050

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this Issue: Robby Ingebretsen, Victor Gaudioso, Andrea Boschin(-2-), Rudi Grobler(-2-), Michael Crump, Deborah Kurata, Dennis Delimarsky, Pete Vickers, Yochay Kiriaty, Peter Kuhn, WindowsPhoneGeek, and Jesse Liberty(-2-). Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Silverlight Simple MVVM Printing" Deborah Kurata WP7: "Creating theme friendly UI in WP7 using OpacityMask" WindowsPhoneGeek Tools: "KAXAML v1.8" Robby Ingebretsen Shoutouts: Peter Foot posted Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit–Feb 2011 Rudi Grobler posts his top requested features for WP7, Silverlight, and WCF: vNext ... see you in Seattle, Rudi! From SilverlightCream.com: KAXAML v1.8 Robby Ingebretsen just posted KAXML v1.8 that now supports .NET 4.0, WPF, and Silferlight4 ... go grab it. Learn how to use Blend to create a Data Store, Add Properties to it, etc... Victor Gaudioso has 3 new Silverlight and/or Expression Blend video tutorials up... first is this one on Creating a Data store, adding properties to it, oh... read the title :), Next up is: Send async messages across UserControls or even applications, followed by the latest: Create a Sketchflow Animation using the Sketchflow Animation Panel A base class for threaded Application Services Andrea Boschin continues his IApplicationServices series with this one on a base class he created to develop Application Services that runs a thread. Windows Phone 7 - Part #6: Taking advantage of the phone Andrea Boschin also has part 6 of his series at SilverlightShow on WP7... this one is covering a bunch of items... Capabilities, Launchers/Choosers, and gestures... plus the source for a fun game. {homebrew} Skype for WP7 Rudi Grobler posted about the availability of (some features of) Skype for WP7 being available. The XDA guys have working contacts and the ability to chat going, plus they're looking for poeple to join in... Follow Rudi's link, and let them know you're up for it! Simple menu for your WP7 application Rudi Grobler has another post up about a very simple menu control for WP7 that he produced that is also very easy to use. Attaching a Command to the WP7 Application Bar Michael Crump shows how to bind the application bar to a Relay Command with the use of MVVMLight in 7 Easy Steps :) Silverlight Simple MVVM Printing Deborah Kurata continues her MVVM series with this one on printing what your user sees on the page... but doing so within the MVVM pattern. Enhancing the general Zune experience on Windows Phone 7 with Zune web API Dennis Delimarsky apparently likes the Zune as much as I do, and has ratted out tons of information about the Zune API for use in WP7 apps... and lots of code... Validating input forms in Windows Phone 7 Pete Vickers takes a great detailed spin through validation on the WP7... the rules have changed, but Pete explains with some code examples. Windows Phone Shake Gestures Library Yochay Kiriaty discusses Shake Gestures for the WP7 device and then describes the "Windows Phone Shake Gesture Library" that detects shake gestures in 3D space... and after a great description has the link for downloading. What difference does a sprite sheet make? Peter Kuhn is writing a series at SilverlightShow on XNA for Silverlight Devs that I've highlighted. An outshoot of that is this discussion of the use of sprite sheets and game development. Creating theme friendly UI in WP7 using OpacityMask WindowsPhoneGeek has a new post up today on using Opacity Masks in WP7 to enable using one set of icons for either the dark or light theme.. too cool, you'll wanna check this out! Linq to XML Jesse Liberty continues with Linq with regard to WP7 with this post on Linq to XML... and why XML? crap... I was just saving/loading XML today! :) Lambda–Not as weird as it sounds Jesse Liberty then jumps into Lambda expressions... maybe it's a chance for me to learn WTF the lambdas really do that I use all the time! Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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  • Silverlight Cream for April 16, 2010 -- #838

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this Issue: Alan Beasley(-2-, -3-, -4-, -5-), Brian, Rishi, Pete Brown, Yavor Georgiev, and David Anson. Shoutouts: As usual, Tim Heuer has all the scoop on all the hot-off-the-presses releases: Silverlight 4 released. Availability of tools announcement. He covers all the main parts of interest. Tim Heuer also discusses Backward Compatibility with Silverlight 4 applications And before you ask, Tim Heuer announced the Silverlight Client for Facebook updated for Silverlight 4 release If you're having trouble with the install, Peter Bromberg has a post up to help bail you out: Get Silverlight 4 Installed: Tips and Tricks Christian Schormann has a link to probably the fastest intro to SketchFlow I've seen: Video: SketchFlow in 90 seconds, with Jon Harris Chris Rouw has a Summary of Silverlight at DevConnections on his site. I had the opportunity to spend some time with Chris and we had some good discussions. Rene Schulte describes how to get started with the new final Silverlight 4 RTW build and announces that he updated his samples and open source projects. He also shares what he wishes for the next Silverlight version: Silverlight 4 Up and Running From SilverlightCream.com: Building Better Buttons in Expression Blend and Silverlight I generally end up missing articles embedded at CodeProject, so Alan Beasley emailed me a link to these, they were new to me. In this first one, he's got a very nice tutorial up on making some awesome buttons in Expression Blend Arcade Button in Expression Blend and Silverlight Alan Beasley's second Expression Blend Button tutorial is the classic 'arcade button' ... this is great stuff.. check it out. Picture Frame Control in Expression Blend and Silverlight I wasn't going to do the full list Alan Beasley had sent me in one post, but they're all so good! This third takes an excursion away from buttons to do a Picture Frame control. Styled to the max, and another great Blend tutorial! The last building buttons article (Part1), in Expression Blend and Silverlight Alan Beasley finishes what may be a definitive work on buttons in Blend... even if you don't want to follow the tutorials (and why wouldn't you??) ... he's got 10 buttons you can download! ListBox Styling (Part1-ScrollBars) in Expression Blend & Silverlight In Alan Beasley's 5th post at Code Project, He has a great long tutorial on Styling Listbox Scrollbars in Expression Blend ... the ScrollBars are Part 1 of a series. Some Notes on DRM in Silverlight 4 Brian at Silverlight SDK has a post up on DRM ... WMDRM and PlayReady. If you're planning on utilizing this, Brian's post looks like a good starting point. nRoute: Now, More Wholesome Rishi has a detailed post up explaining the latest nRoute release now supporting Silverlight 4, WP7, and WPF. What a piece of work! Scanning an Image from Silverlight 4 using WIA Automation Pete Brown demonstrates using VS2010 and SL4 to lash up to his scanner. Lots of code and external links... all good stuff, Pete! Dealing with those pesky WCF CommunicationException “NotFound” errors in Silverlight Yavor Georgiev has a quick post up discussing WCF CommunicationException errors in Silverlight with a couple external links to explain the solution. New Silverlight 4 Toolkit released with today's Silverlight 4 RTW! David Anson blogged about the new Toolkit release that is live right now along with the Silverlight 4 Release, and has some release notes up on the Toolkit. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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  • BizTalk Server Monitoring &ndash; SharePoint Web Part

    - by SURESH GIRIRAJAN
    I have been worked with customers using BizTalk as shared infrastructure in the enterprise, where we have two or more BizTalk apps running on it for different Business groups. Also these customers are not using BizTalk ESB portal even though they are using BizTalk ESB exception framework. So main issue with all these Business groups are they don’t have visibility into the BizTalk apps running in prod, even though they are using SCOM and other monitoring stuff in place. So I am trying to address few issues I am going to list below and how I try to mitigate them, first one on the list is how to get visibility into prod, how to provision those access to the BizTalk resources with minimal activity and how can we take advantage of the resources we have today. So I was working on creating REST data services for BizTalk RFID a year ago and available on codeplex. I thought to extend that idea to take advantage of BizTalk Data Services available in codeplex. I extended the BizTalk data services I will upload the updated service soon. So let me start thru how my solution works, so first step I am using the BizTalk data service (REST service) which expose most of the BizTalk artifacts as resources such as Applications, Orchestrations, Send ports, Receive ports, Host instances and In process instances etc. BizTalk Server Monitoring – SharePoint Web Part I am hosting the BizTalk data service in IIS with application pool configured to run under BizTalk administrator credentials. So with this setup I am making the service to make accessible anonymous. Next step of this solution I have created a SharePoint Visual web part which consumes the BizTalk data service and display all the BizTalk Application and Platform settings in read only mode. Even though BizTalk data services offers to browse resources as well perform actions like starting, stopping Orchestrations, Send ports, Receive locations, Host instances etc. Host Instances BizTalk Applications BizTalk Running / Suspended Instances So having this BizTalk Monitoring SharePoint web part, will be added to the SharePoint. This eliminates the need for granting access to the BizTalk users explicitly, so when you have BizTalk contractor or BizTalk application user need to have access to the BizTalk environment all the need is have access to the SharePoint website. You can configure the web part point to different end point based on your environment. I am making this as read only as part of this to make easier for the users and in terms of provisioning. This removes the dependency of BizTalk admin at least for viewing the BizTalk application status and errors etc. If we need to make any changes to the BizTalk application then its application owner responsibility to co-ordinate with BizTalk admins. There are options like BizTalk ESB portal, BizTalk 360 etc… but this one of the approach to reduce number of steps required to give access to BizTalk application users and also to maximize the resource we have in enterprise today. Also you can expose this data service thru Azure Service Bus and access from other apps like mobile devices or create a web site hosted in Azure etc. One last thing I have tested only with BizTalk Server 2010 on x64 VM only, but it should work on other version. I will try to upload the code shortly with instructions how to setup etc.… I welcome thoughts and suggestions… Hope this helps….

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  • Bind Variable and SQL error during statement preparation

    - by Abhishek Dwivedi
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-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;}  I was getting the following exception at run-time. JBO-27122: SQL error during statement preparation. Statement: SELECT AxEO.A_ID, AxEO.B_ID, AxEO.C_ID, ByEO.A_ID, ByEO.B_ID, ByEO.C_ID, Cz.A_ID, Cz.B_ID, Cz.C_ID FROM ABC_x AxEO, ABC_y ByEO, ABC_z CzEO WHERE AxEO.A_ID = ByEO.A_ID AND  CzEO.A_ID = :Bind_PId I copied and pasted the query on SQL worksheet, replaced :Bind_PId with a valid id, and executed the query. The query worked alright, implying the query was alright. I tried to connect to different DBs but the issue persisted, meaning it was not a DB issue either. Finally, the root cause was found to be in the concerned VO; one of the bind variables (say Bind_TId) was marked "Required". De-selecting the Required check-box resolved the issue. In retrospect, the issue looks to be rather straight-forward. However, the error message is not very helpful, if not misleading. Besides, it's counter-intuitive to think that a bind variable which is not being used in a query can cause error while statement preparation. The other bind variable - Bind_TId - was being used in other view criteria, not the view criteria involved in the given query. Still, it was required.

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  • Oracle VM Deep Dives

    - by rickramsey
    "With IT staff now tasked to deliver on-demand services, datacenter virtualization requirements have gone beyond simple consolidation and cost reduction. Simply provisioning and delivering an operating environment falls short. IT organizations must rapidly deliver services, such as infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS), and software-as-a-service (SaaS). Virtualization solutions need to be application-driven and enable:" "Easier deployment and management of business critical applications" "Rapid and automated provisioning of the entire application stack inside the virtual machine" "Integrated management of the complete stack including the VM and the applications running inside the VM." Application Driven Virtualization, an Oracle white paper That was published in August of 2011. The new release of Oracle VM Server delivers significant virtual networking performance improvements, among other things. If you're not sure how virtual networks work or how to use them, these two articles by Greg King and friends might help. Looking Under the Hood at Virtual Networking by Greg King Oracle VM Server for x86 lets you create logical networks out of physical Ethernet ports, bonded ports, VLAN segments, virtual MAC addresses (VNICs), and network channels. You can then assign channels (or "roles") to each logical network so that it handles the type of traffic you want it to. Greg King explains how you go about doing this, and how Oracle VM Server for x86 implements the network infrastructure you configured. He also describes how the VM interacts with paravirtualized guest operating systems, hardware virtualized operating systems, and VLANs. Finally, he provides an example that shows you how it all looks from the VM Manager view, the logical view, and the command line view of Oracle VM Server for x86. Fundamental Concepts of VLAN Networks by Greg King and Don Smerker Oracle VM Server for x86 supports a wide range of options in network design, varying in complexity from a single network to configurations that include network bonds, VLANS, bridges, and multiple networks connecting the Oracle VM servers and guests. You can create separate networks to isolate traffic, or you can configure a single network for multiple roles. Network design depends on many factors, including the number and type of network interfaces, reliability and performance goals, the number of Oracle VM servers and guests, and the anticipated workload. The Oracle VM Manager GUI presents four different ways to create an Oracle VM network: Bonds and ports VLANs Both bond/ports and VLANS A local network This article focuses the second option, designing a complex Oracle VM network infrastructure using only VLANs, and it steps through the concepts needed to create a robust network infrastructure for your Oracle VM servers and guests. More Resources Virtual Networking for Dummies Download Oracle VM Server for x86 Find technical resources for Oracle VM Server for x86 -Rick Follow me on: Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Personal Twitter | YouTube | The Great Peruvian Novel

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  • Hello World - My Name is Christian Finn and I'm a WebCenter Evangelist

    - by Michael Snow
    12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}  Good Morning World! I'd like to introduce a new member of the Oracle WebCenter Team, Christian Finn. We decided to let him do his own intros today. Look for his guest posts next week and he'll be a frequent contributor to WebCenter blog and voice of the community. Hello (Oracle) World! Hi everyone, my name is Christian Finn. It’s a coder’s tradition to have “hello world” be the first output from a new program or in a new language. While I have left my coding days far behind, it still seems fitting to start my new role here at Oracle by saying hello to all of you—our customers, partners and my colleagues. So by way of introduction, a little background about me. I am the new senior director for evangelism on the WebCenter product management team. Not only am I new to Oracle, but the evangelism team is also brand new. Our mission is to raise the profile of Oracle in all of the markets/conversations in which WebCenter competes—social business, collaboration, portals, Internet sites, and customer/audience engagement. This is all pretty familiar turf for me because, as some of you may know, until recently I was the director of product management at Microsoft for Microsoft SharePoint Server and several other SharePoint products. And prior to that, I held management roles at Microsoft in marketing, channels, learning, and enterprise sales. Before Microsoft, I got my start in the industry as a software trainer and Lotus Notes consultant. I am incredibly excited to be joining Oracle at this time because of the tremendous opportunity that lies ahead to improve how people and businesses work. Of all the vendors offering a vision for social business, Oracle is unique in having best of breed strength in market (or coming soon) in all three critical areas: customer experience management; the middleware and back-end applications that run your business; and in the social, collaboration, and content technologies that are the connective tissue between them. Everyone else can offer one or two of the above, but not all three unified together. So it is a great time to come board and there’s a fantastic team of people hard at work on building great products for you. In the coming weeks and months you’ll be hearing much more from us. For now, we’ll kick things off with some blog posts here on the WebCenter blog. Enjoy the reads and please share your thoughts with me over Twitter on @cfinn.

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  • Java Spotlight Episode 138: Paul Perrone on Life Saving Embedded Java

    - by Roger Brinkley
    Interview with Paul Perrone, founder and CEO of Perrone Robotics, on using Java Embedded to test autonomous vehicle operations for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety that will save lives. Right-click or Control-click to download this MP3 file. You can also subscribe to the Java Spotlight Podcast Feed to get the latest podcast automatically. If you use iTunes you can open iTunes and subscribe with this link: Java Spotlight Podcast in iTunes. Show Notes News JDK 8 is Feature Complete Java SE 7 Update 25 Released What should the JCP be doing? 2013 Duke's Choice Award Nominations Another Quick update to Code Signing Article on OTN Events June 24, Austin JUG, Austin, TX June 25, Virtual Developer Day - Java, EMEA, 10AM CEST Jul 16-19, Uberconf, Denver, USA Jul 22-24, JavaOne Shanghai, China Jul 29-31, JVM Summit Language, Santa Clara Sep 11-12, JavaZone, Oslo, Norway Sep 19-20, Strange Loop, St. Louis Sep 22-26 JavaOne San Francisco 2013, USA Feature Interview Paul J. Perrone is founder/CEO of Perrone Robotics. Paul architected the Java-based general-purpose robotics and automation software platform known as “MAX”. Paul has overseen MAX’s application to rapidly field self-driving robotic cars, unmanned air vehicles, factory and road-side automation applications, and a wide range of advanced robots and automaton applications. He fielded a self-driving autonomous robotic dune buggy in the historic 2005 Grand Challenge race across the Mojave desert and a self-driving autonomous car in the 2007 Urban Challenge through a city landscape. His work has been featured in numerous televised and print media including the Discovery Channel, a theatrical documentary, scientific journals, trade magazines, and international press. Since 2008, Paul has also been working as the chief software engineer, CTO, and roboticist automating rock star Neil Young’s LincVolt, a 1959 Lincoln Continental retro-fitted as a fully autonomous extended range electric vehicle. Paul has been an engineer, author of books and articles on Java, frequent speaker on Java, and entrepreneur in the robotics and software space for over 20 years. He is a member of the Java Champions program, recipient of three Duke Awards including a Gold Duke and Lifetime Achievement Award, has showcased Java-based robots at five JavaOne keynotes, and is a frequent JavaOne speaker and show floor participant. He holds a B.S.E.E. from Rutgers University and an M.S.E.E. from the University of Virginia. What’s Cool Shenandoah: A pauseless GC for OpenJDK

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  • Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse (OEPE) 11.1.1.7 adds Oracle ADF Tooling Support

    - by greg.stachnick
    Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse (OEPE) 11.1.1.7 is now available and includes first-time support for Oracle ADF development in Eclipse. Installers for OEPE 11.1.1.7 as well as Eclipse Update instructions can be found on the OEPE downloads page. Here is an overview of the new features of OEPE 11.1.1.7: Support for Oracle ADF Faces Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse (OEPE) 11.1.1.7 now provides support for development with Oracle ADF 11.1.1.4. These features focus on enablement and configuration of the ADF Runtime with Eclipse and WebLogic Server 10.3.4 as well as design time tools for ADF Faces. A new OEPE 11.1.1.7 installer bundles WebLogic Server 10.3.4, Coherence 3.6, and Oracle ADF 11.1.1.4. New Server Extensions allow you to download and install the ADF Runtime libraries into an existing WebLogic Server from within Eclipse. New Project Templates and Facets are available for ADF Faces development (ADF Web). New ADF validators with QuickFix options will check common descriptors for the appropriate ADF configurations. ADF-enabled JSP templates supporting multiple layouts are available under the New menu. New Remote and Local run/deploy support for ADF applications to WebLogic Server 10.3.4 The Palette now supports drag and drop of ADF Faces and Data Visualization Tools (DVT) tags and includes editors for eash tag configuration. The Eclipse Property Sheet has been enhanced to provide advanced ADF tag configuration. AppXRay dependency engine provides improved validation, code completion, and hyperlink navigation for ADF Faces and DVT Tags The Eclipse Web Page Editor enables a more productive source editing experience for ADF Faces. UI Consolidation for WebLogic Server Tools Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse 11.1.1.7 includes a more streamlined UI for WebLogic Server development. You can now view deployments within the Servers view to understand which modules have been deployed to the domain. The MBean Browser View has been merged with the Servers view enabling easier access to MBean values while still allowing Drag and Drop to WLST scripts. WebLogic Server configuration options have been moved to the Properties window, right-click a server configuration and select Properties.

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  • Microsoft Contributing More to OSS

    - by Josh Holmes
    I’m all excited – Microsoft has signed the Joomla! Contributor Agreement. You can read about that on the official Joomla! blog – Microsoft signs the Joomla! Contributor Agreement. There’s a couple of fairly momentous things about that statement. Read more at Microsoft Contributing More to OSS | Josh Holmes

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  • The Internet of Things & Commerce: Part 2 -- Interview with Brian Celenza, Commerce Innovation Strategist

    - by Katrina Gosek, Director | Commerce Product Strategy-Oracle
    Internet of Things & Commerce Series: Part 2 (of 3) Welcome back to the second installation of my three part series on the Internet of Things & Commerce. A few weeks ago, I wrote “The Next 7,000 Days” about how we’ve become embedded in a digital architecture in the last 7,000 days since the birth of the internet – an architecture that everyday ties the massive expanse of the internet evermore closely with our physical lives. This blog series explores how this new blend of virtual and material will change how we shop and how businesses sell. Now enjoy reading my interview with Brian Celenza, one of the chief strategists in our Oracle Commerce innovation group. He comments on the past, present, and future of the how the growing Internet of Things relates and will relate to the buying and selling of goods on and offline. -------------------------------------------- QUESTION: You probably have one of the coolest jobs on our team, Brian – and frankly, one of the coolest jobs in our industry. As part of the innovation team for Oracle Commerce, you’re regularly working on bold features and groundbreaking commerce-focused experiences for our vision demos. As you look back over the past couple of years, what is the biggest trend (or trends) you’ve seen in digital commerce that started to bring us closer to this idea of what people are calling an “Internet of Things”? Brian: Well as you look back over the last couple of years, the speed at which change in our industry has moved looks like one of those blurred movement photos – you know the ones where the landscape blurs because the observer is moving so quickly your eye focus can’t keep up. But one thing that is absolutely clear is that the biggest catalyst for that speed of change – especially over the last three years – has been mobile. Mobile technology changed everything. Over the last three years the entire thought process of how to sell on (and offline) has shifted because of mobile technology advances. Particularly for eCommerce professionals who have started to move past the notion of “channels” for selling goods to this notion of “Mobile First”… then the Web site. Or more accurately, that everything – smartphones, web, store, tablet – is just one channel or has to act like one singular access point to the same product catalog, information and content. The most innovative eCommerce professionals realized some time ago that it’s not ideal to build an eCommerce Web site and then build everything on top of or off of it. Rather, they want to build an eCommerce API and then integrate it will all other systems. To accomplish this, they are leveraging all the latest mobile technologies or possibilities mobile technology has opened up: 4G and LTE, GPS, bluetooth, touch screens, apps, html5… How has this all started to come together for shopping experiences on and offline? Well to give you a personal example, I remember visiting an Apple store a few years ago and being amazed that I didn’t have to wait in line because a store associate knew everything about me from my ID – right there on the sales floor – and could check me out anywhere. Then just a few months later (when like any good addict) I went back to get the latest and greatest new gadget, I felt like I was stealing it because I could check myself out with my smartphone. I didn’t even need to see a sales associate OR go to a cash register. Amazing. And since then, all sort sorts of companies across all different types of industries – from food service to apparel –  are starting to see mobile payments in the billions of dollars now thanks not only to the convenience factor but to smart loyalty rewards programs as well. These are just some really simple current examples that come to mind. So many different things have happened in the last couple of years, it’s hard to really absorb all of the quickly – because as soon as you do, everything changes again! Just like that blurry speed photo image. For eCommerce, however, this type of new environment underscores the importance of building an eCommerce API – a platform that has services you can tap in to and build on as the landscape changes at a fever pitch. It’s a mobile first perspective. A web service perspective – particularly if you are thinking of how to engage customers across digital and physical spaces. —— QUESTION: Thanks for bringing us into the present – some really great examples you gave there to put things into perspective. So what do you see as the biggest trend right now around the “Internet of Things” – and what’s coming next few years? Brian: Honestly, even sitting where I am in the innovation group – it’s hard to look out even 12 months because, well, I don’t even think we’ve fully caught up with what is possible now. But I can definitely say that in the last 12 months and in the coming 12 months, in the technology and eCommerce world it’s all about iBeacons. iBeacons are awesome tools we have right now to tie together physical and digital shopping experiences. They know exactly where you are as a shopper and can communicate that to businesses. Currently there seem to be two camps of thought around iBeacons. First, many people are thinking of them like an “indoor GPS”, which to be fair they literally are. The use case this first camp envisions for iBeacons is primarily for advertising and marketing. So they use iBeacons to push location-based promotions to customers if they are close to a store or in a store. You may have seen these types of mobile promotions start to pop up occasionally on your smart phone as you pass by a store you’ve bought from in the past. That’s the work of iBeacons. But in my humble opinion, these promotions probably come too early in the customer journey and although they may be well timed and work to “convert” in some cases, I imagine in most they are just eroding customer trust because they are kind of a “one-size-fits-all” solution rather than one that is taking into account what exactly the customer might be looking for in that particular moment. Maybe they just want more information and a promotion is way too soon for that type of customer. The second camp is more in line with where my thinking falls. In this case, businesses take a more sensitive approach with iBeacons to customers’ needs. Instead of throwing out a “one-size-fits-all” to any passer by with iBeacons, the use case is more around looking at the physical proximity of a customer as an opportunity to provide a service: show expert reviews on a product they may be looking at in a particular aisle of a store, offer the opportunity to compare prices (and then offer a promotion), signal an in-store associate if a customer has been in the store for more than 10 minutes in one place. These are all less intrusive more value-driven uses of iBeacons. And they are more about building customer trust through service. To take this example a bit further into the future realm of “Big Data” and “Internet of Things” businesses could actually use the Oracle Commerce Platform and iBeacons to “silently” track customer movement w/in the store to provide higher quality service. And this doesn’t have to be creepy or intrusive. Simply if a customer has been in a particular department or aisle for more than a 5 or 10 minutes, an in-store associate could come over an offer some assistance already knowing customer preferences from their online profile and maybe even seeing the items in a shopping cart they started at home. None of this has to be revealed to the customer, but it certainly could boost the level of service an in-store sales associate could provide. Or, in another futuristic example, stores could use the digital footprint of the physical store transmitted by iBeacons to generate heat maps of the store that could be tracked over time. Imagine how much you could find out about which parts of the store are more busy during certain parts of the day or seasons. This could completely revolutionize how physical merchandising is deployed or where certain high value / new items are placed. And / or this use of iBeacons could also help businesses figure out if customers are getting held up in certain parts of the store during busy days like Black Friday. If long lines are causing customers to bounce from a physical store and leave those holiday gifts behind, maybe having employees with mobile check as an option could remove the cash register bottleneck. But going to back to my original statement, it’s all still very early in the story for iBeacons. The hardware manufacturers are still very new and there is still not one clear standard.  Honestly, it all goes back to building and maintaining an extensible and flexible platform for anywhere engagement. What you’re building today should allow you to rapidly take advantage of whatever unimaginable use cases wait around the corner. ------------------------------------------------------ I hope you enjoyed the brief interview with Brian. It’s really awesome to have such smart and innovation-minded individuals on our Oracle Commerce innovation team. Please join me again in a few weeks for Part 3 of this series where I interview one of the product managers on our team about how the blending of digital and in-store selling in influencing our product development and vision.

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  • OPN Exchange @ OpenWorld – Don’t Forget…

    - by Kristin Rose
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} Mark your calendar because we’re less than a week away from kicking off our first ever Oracle PartnerNetwork Exchange @ OpenWorld program, and do we have a lot in store for you!  So don’t forget to attend these great partner events! Sunday, 9/30: The Global Partner Keynote with Judson Althoff and other senior executives @ 1:00pm OPN Exchange General Sessions  to discuss the overview of each OPN Exchange track including, Cloud, Engineered Systems, Industries, Technology and Applications @ 3:30pm The exclusive OPN Exchange AfterDark Reception complete with the smooth sounds of Macy Gray @ 7:30pm. Don’t worry, there is plenty to come after Sunday! Be sure to take part in all the exciting activity taking place during the week, including: Over 40 + OPN Exchange Sessions taking place at the Marriott Marquis throughout the week “Test Fest” exams for OPN Specialist Certifications,  taking place throughout the week The 5k Partner Fun Run- Meet at the W Hotel lobby on Monday 10/1 at 6 a.m. PT – No registration necessary! Led by Judson Althoff, SVP of WWA&C. Social Media Rally Station- Join us in the OPN Lounge on Monday to become social savvy and leverage social media tools for your business Ice Cream Social- Monday October 1st, from 3-5:30 p.m. in the OPN Lounge. Hosted by Oracle Advanced Customer Support Services. Endless Networking Opportunities at the OPN Lounge, the Howard Street Tent for lunch, the ‘It’s a Wrap Reception’, and much more! We can’t wait to see you there! The OPN Communications Team

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  • A Reusable Builder Class for Ruby Testing

    - by Liam McLennan
    My last post was about a class for building test data objects in C#. This post describes the same tool, but implemented in Ruby. The C# version was written first but I originally came up with the solution in my head using Ruby, and then I translated it to C#. The Ruby version was easier to write and is easier to use thanks to Ruby’s dynamic nature making generics unnecessary.  Here are my example domain classes: class Person attr_accessor :name, :age def initialize(name, age) @name = name @age = age end end class Property attr_accessor :street, :manager def initialize(street, manager) @street = street @manager = manager end end and the test class showing what the builder does: class Test_Builder < Test::Unit::TestCase def setup @build = Builder.new @build.configure({ Property => lambda { Property.new '127 Creek St', @build.a(Person) }, Person => lambda { Person.new 'Liam', 26 } }) end def test_create assert_not_nil @build end def test_can_get_a_person @person = @build.a(Person) assert_not_nil @person assert_equal 'Liam', @person.name assert_equal 26, @person.age end def test_can_get_a_modified_person @person = @build.a Person do |person| person.age = 999 end assert_not_nil @person assert_equal 'Liam', @person.name assert_equal 999, @person.age end def test_can_get_a_different_type_that_depends_on_a_type_that_has_not_been_configured_yet @my_place = @build.a(Property) assert_not_nil @my_place assert_equal '127 Creek St', @my_place.street assert_equal @build.a(Person).name, @my_place.manager.name end end Finally, the implementation of Builder: class Builder # defaults is a hash of Class => creation lambda def configure defaults @defaults = defaults end def a(klass) temp = @defaults[klass].call() yield temp if block_given? temp end end

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  • Deploying an ADF Secure Application using WLS Console

    - by juan.ruiz
    Last week I worked on a requirement from a customer that wanted to understand how to deploy to WLS an application with ADF Security without using JDeveloper. The main question was, what steps where needed in order to set up Enterprise Roles, Security Policies and Application Credentials. In this entry I will explain the steps taken using JDeveloper 11.1.1.2. 0 Requirements: Instead of building a sample application from scratch, we can use Andrejus 's sample application that contains all the security pieces that we need. Open and migrate the project. Also make sure you adjust the database settings accordingly. Creating the EAR file Review the Security settings of the application by going into the Application -> Secure menu and see that there are two enterprise roles as well as the ADF Policies enforcing security on the main page. Make sure the Application Module uses the Data Source instead of JDBC URL for its connection type, also take note of the data source name - in my case I have: java:comp/env/jdbc/HrDS To facilitate the access to this application once we deploy it. Go to your ViewController project properties select the Java EE Application category and give it a meaningful name to the context root as well to the Application Name Go to the ADFSecurityWL Application properties -> Deployment  and create a new EAR deployment profile. Uncheck the Auto generate and Synchronize weblogic-jdbc.xml Descriptors During Deployment Deploy the application as an EAR file. Deploying the Application to WLS using the WLS Console On the WLS console create a JNDI data source. This is the part that I found more tricky of the hole exercise given that the name should match the AM's data source name, however the naming convention that worked for me was jdbc.HrDS Now, deploy the application manually by selecting deployments ->Install look for the EAR and follow the default steps. If this is the firs time you deploy the application, once the deployment finishes you will be asked to Activate Changes on the domain, these changes contain all the security policies and application roles insertion into the WLS instance. Creating Roles and User Groups for the Application To finish the after-deployment set up, we need to create the groups that are the equivalent of the Enterprise Roles of ADF Security. For our sample we have two Enterprise Roles employeesApplication and managersApplication. After that, we create the application users and assign them into their respective groups. Now we can run the application and test the security constraints

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  • Ray Wang: Why engagement matters in an era of customer experience

    - by Michael Snow
    Why engagement matters in an era of customer experience R "Ray" Wang Principal Analyst & CEO, Constellation Research Mobile enterprise, social business, cloud computing, advanced analytics, and unified communications are converging. Armed with the art of the possible, innovators are seeking to apply disruptive consumer technologies to enterprise class uses — call it the consumerization of IT in the enterprise. The likely results include new methods of furthering relationships, crafting longer term engagement, and creating transformational business models. It's part of a shift from transactional systems to engagement systems. These transactional systems have been around since the 1950s. You know them as ERP, finance and accounting systems, or even payroll. These systems are designed for massive computational scale; users find them rigid and techie. Meanwhile, we've moved to new engagement systems such as Facebook and Twitter in the consumer world. The rich usability and intuitive design reflect how users want to work — and now users are coming to expect the same paradigms and designs in their enterprise world. ~~~ Ray is a prolific contributor to his own blog as well as others. For a sneak peak at Ray's thoughts on engagement, take a look at this quick teaser on Avoiding Social Media Fatigue Through Engagement Or perhaps you might agree with Ray on Dealing With The Real Problem In Social Business Adoption – The People! Check out Ray's post on the Harvard Business Review Blog to get his perspective on "How to Engage Your Customers and Employees." For a daily dose of Ray - follow him on Twitter: @rwang0 But MOST IMPORTANTLY.... Don't miss the opportunity to join leading industry analyst, R "Ray" Wang of Constellation Research in the latest webcast of the Oracle Social Business Thought Leaders Series as he explains how to apply the 9 C's of Engagement for both your customers and employees.

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  • Silverlight Cream for February 10, 2011 -- #1045

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this Issue: Mark Monster, Jaime Rodriguez, Mark Hopkins, WindowsPhoneGeek, David Anson, Jesse Liberty, Jeremy Likness, Martin Krüger(-2-), Beth Massi, Joost van Schaik, Laurent Bugnion, and Arik Poznanski. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Parsing the Visual Tree with LINQ" Jeremy Likness WP7: "Silverlight-ready PNG encoder implementation shows one way to use .NET IEnumerables effectively" David Anson Lightswitch: "How to Send Automated Appointments from a LightSwitch Application" Beth Massi Shoutouts: Be sure to visit SilverlightShow... check out their top hits last week: SilverlightShow for Jan 31- Feb 06, 2011 Jaime Rodriguez has a post up that all the WP7 folks will be interested in: FAQ about copy paste functionality in upcoming release From SilverlightCream.com: Make use of WCF FaultContracts in Silverlight clients Mark Monster takes a shot at answering “The remote server returned an error: NotFound” while connecting to a WCF Service problem we all see. Communication between HTML in WebBrowser and Silverlight app Jaime Rodriguez responds to questions he received about communication between HTML and SIlverlight with this post about the bi-directional communication between the control and HTML. WP7 - Real Apps, Real Code Mark Hopkins has a post up about some WP7 starter kits that you can get all the source for and actually download the app from the Marketplace first to see if it interests you! WP7 AboutPrompt in depth WindowsPhoneGeek has this cool post up about the AboutPrompt from the Coding4Fun toolkit in detail... great diagrams showing where all the elements are and code examples with images. Silverlight-ready PNG encoder implementation shows one way to use .NET IEnumerables effectively David Anson describes why he took it upon himself to write his own png encoder for Silverlight... and we all thank him for doing so and providing us with the code! Navigation 101–Cancelling Navigation Jesse Liberty's latest WP7 From Scratch episode is up (number 32), and he's talking about Navigation and how to cancel it if you need to. Parsing the Visual Tree with LINQ Jeremy Likness demonstrates using LINQ to rat out information in the visual tree of your XAML. To Quote Jeremy: "you can easily check for intersections between elements and find any type of element no matter how deep within the tree it is". SpriteAnimationBehavior Martin Krüger has a couple more fun things in the Expression Gallery that I haven't discussed. First up is a behavior that animates up to 999 images and lets you control the FramesPerSecond... great demo on the ExpressionGallery to play with. Second alternative: Storyboard should not start before the Silverlight application is loaded Martin Krüger's latest is a way to programmatically wait for the Loaded event so that you know you can let your animations fly. How to Send Automated Appointments from a LightSwitch Application Beth Massi's latest Lightswitch post follows up her Outlook automation one with sending appointments using the standard iCalendar format... all the code included of course. The case for the Bindable Application Bar for Windows Phone 7 Joost van Schaik posts about a bindable Application Bar for your WP7 apps... grab the code and don't leave home without it :) MVVM Light V4 preview (BL0014) release notes Laurent Bugnion posted an update to MVVMLight to Codeplex a couple days ago. This is an early preview of what he plans on having in version 4, so check out the post for what's new and fun. Search Digg on Windows Phone 7 Arik Poznanski followed up his RSS post from last week with this one on searching Digg on WP7... and he's discussing and providing a utility class for doing it. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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  • links for 2010-04-12

    - by Bob Rhubart
    Andy Mulholland: We need innovation! What does that mean? "The most common response would seem to be ‘I will know it when I see it’, which suggests business success is based on ‘getting lucky’. As you might expect business schools don’t agree with this and as A G Lafley, author of several works on the topic comments: 'Innovation is risky, but it’s not random. Innovators have a disciplined invention process.'" Capgemini CTO blogger Andy Mulholland. (tags: entarch enterprisearchitecture innovation) @eelzinga: lEAI/Oracle Service Bus testing with Citrus Framework, part2 IT-Eye's Eric Elzinga continues his series with a test of a scenario that is part of a customer's middleware architecture. (tags: oracle otn ESB soa citrus) @fteter: Collaborate 10 - What Looks Good To Me Oracle ACE Director Floyd Teter from NASA's JPL shares quick previews of his Collaborate 10 presentations, along with a list of some sessions he plans to attend. (tags: oracle otn oracleace collaborate2010) Mark Rittman: OWB11gR2 for Windows Now Available Oracle ACE Director Mark Rittman of Rittman Mead shares insight on the recent Oracle Warehouse Builder release, along with a list of articles on the new features in Oracle Database 11gR2. (tags: oracle otn datewarehousing businessintelligence 11gr2)

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  • From Bluehost to WP Engine, My WordPress Story

    - by thatjeffsmith
    This is probably the longest blog post I’ve written in a LONG time. And if you’re used to coming here for the Oracle stuff, this post is not about that. It’s about my blog, and the stuff under the hood that makes it run, AKA WordPress. If you want to skip to the juicy stuff, then use these shortcuts: My Site Slowed Down How I Moved to WP Engine How WP Engine ‘Hooked’ Me Why WP Engine? I started thatJeffSmith.com on May 28th, 2010. I had been already been blogging for several years, but a couple of really smart people I respected (Andy, Brent – thanks again!) suggested that I take ownership of my content and begin building my personal brand. I thought that was a good idea, and so I signed up for service with bluehost. Bluehost makes setting up a WordPress site very, very easy. And, they continued to be easy to work with for the past 2 years. I would even recommend them to anyone looking to host their own WordPress install/site. For $83.40, I purchased a year’s worth of service and my domain name registration – a very good value. And then last year I paid $107.40 for another year’s services. And when that year expired I paid another $190.80 for an additional two year’s service in advance. I had been up to that point, getting my money’s worth. And then, just a few weeks ago… My Site Slowed to a Crawl That spike was from an April Fool's Day Post, I think Why? Well, when I first started blogging, I had the same problem that most beginner bloggers have – not many readers. In my first year of blogging, I think the highest number of readers on a single day was about 125. I remember that day as I was very excited to break 100! Bluehost was very reliable, serving up my content with maybe a total of 3-4 outages in the past 2 years. Support was usually very prompt with answers and solutions, and I love their ‘Chat now’ technology – much nicer than message boards only or pay-to-talk phone support. In the past 6 months however, I noticed a couple of things: daily traffic was increasing – woohoo! my service was experiencing severe CPU throttling – doh! To be honest, I wasn’t aware the throttling was occuring, but I did know that the response time of my blog was starting to lag. Average load times were approaching 20-30 seconds. Not good when good sites are loading in 5 seconds or less. And just this past week, in getting ready to launch a new website for work that sucked in an RSS feed from my blog, the new page was left waiting for more than a minute. Not good! In fact my boss asked, why aren’t you blogging on Blogger? Ugh. I tried a few things to fix the problem: I paid for a premium WordPress theme – Themify’s Grido (thanks to @SQLRockstar for the heads-up) I installed a couple of WP caching plugins I read every WP optimization blog post I could get my greedy little eyes on However, at the same time I was also getting addicted to WordPress bloggers talking about all the cool things you could do with your blog. As a result I had at one point about 30 different plugins installed. WordPress runs on MySQL, and certain queries running via these plugins were starving for CPU. Plugins that would be called every page load meant that as more people clicked on my site, the more CPU I needed. I’m not stupid, so I eventually figured out that maybe less plugins was better, and was able to go down to just 20. But still, the site was running like a dog. CPU Throttling, makes MySQL wait to run a query Bluehost runs shared servers. Your site runs on the same box that several hundred (or thousand?) other services are running on. If you take more CPU than they think you should have, they will limit your service by making you stand in line for CPU, AKA ‘throttling.’ This is not bad. This business model allows them to serve many, many users for a very fair price. It works great until, well, until it doesn’t. I noticed in the last week that for every minute of service, I was being throttled between 60 and 300 seconds. If there were 5 MySQL processes running, then every single one of them were being held in check. The blog visitor notice this as their page requests would take a minute or more to be answered. Bluehost unfortunately doesn’t offer dedicated server hosting, so there was no real upgrade path for me follow and remain one of their customers. So what was I to do? Uninstall every plugin and hope the site sped up? Ask for people to take turns on my blog? I decided to spend my way out of the problem. I signed up for service with WP Engine and moved ThatJeffSmith.com The first 2 months are free, and after that it’s about $29/month to run my site on their system. My math tells me that’s a good bit more expensive than what Bluehost was charging me – to the tune of about 300% more a month. Oh, and I should just say that my blog is a personal blog even though I talk about work stuff here. I don’t get paid for blogging, I don’t sell ads, and I don’t expense the service fees – this is my personal passion. So is it worth it? In the first 4 days, it seems to be totally worth it. Load times have gone from 20-30 seconds to less than 5 seconds. A few folks have told me via Twitter that they notice faster page loads. I anticipate this will indirectly lead to more traffic as Google penalizes you in search results if your site is too slow, and of course some folks won’t even bother waiting more than 5-10 seconds. I noticed right away that writing posts, uploading pictures, and just using the WordPress dashboard in general was much more responsive. So writing is less of a chore now, which means I won’t have a good reason not to write How I Moved to WP Engine I signed up for the service and registered my domain. I then took a full export of my ‘old’ site by doing a FTP GET of all my files, then did a MySQL database backup, exported my WordPress Theme settings to a .zip file, and then finally used the WordPress ‘Export’ feature. I then used the WordPress ‘Import’ on the new site to load up my posts. Then I uploaded the theme .zip package from Themify. Then I FTP’d the ‘wp-content’ directory up to my new server using SFTP (WP Engine only supports secure FTP – good on them!) Using a temporary URL to see my new site, I was able to confirm that everything looked mostly OK – I’ll detail the challenges and issues of fixing the content next – but then it was time to ‘flip the switch.’ I updated the IP address that the DNS lookup tables use to route traffic to my new server. In a matter of minutes the DNS servers around the world were updated and it was time to see the new site! But It Was ‘Broken’ I had never moved a website before, and in my rush to update the DNS, I had changed the records without really finding out what I was supposed to do first. After re-reading the directions provided by WP Engine and following the guidance of their support engineer, I realized I had needed to set the CNAME (Alias) ‘www’ record to point to a different URL than the ‘www.thatjeffsmith.com’ entry I had set. Once corrected the site was up and running in less than a minute. Then It Was Only Mostly Broken Many of my plugins weren’t working. Apparently just ftp’ing the wp-content directory up wasn’t the proper way to re-install the plugin. I suspect file permissions or file ownership wasn’t proper. Some plug-ins were working, many had their settings wiped to the defaults, and a few just didn’t work again. I had to delete the directory of the plug-in manually via SFTP, and then use the WP Dashboard to install it from scratch. And here was my first ‘lesson’ – don’t switch the DNS records until you’ve completely tested your new site. I wasn’t able to navigate the old WP console to review my plug-in settings. Thankfully I was able to use the Wayback Machine to reverse engineer some things, and of course most plug-ins aren’t that complicated to setup to begin with. An example of one that I had to redo from scratch is the ‘Twitter @Anywhere Plus’ plugin that I use to create the form that allows folks to tweet a post they enjoyed at the end of each story. How WP Engine ‘Hooked’ Me I actually signed up with another provider first. They ranked highly in Google searches and a few Tweeps recommended them to me. But hours after signing up and I still didn’t have sever reyady, I was ready to give up on them. They offered no chat or phone support – only mail and message boards. And the message boards were rife with posts about how the service had gone downhill in the past 6 months. To their credit, they did make it easy to cancel, although I did have to do so via email as their website ‘cancel’ button was non-existent. Within minutes of activating my WP Engine account I had received my welcome message and directions on how to get started. I was able to see my staged website right away. They also did something very cool before I even got started – they looked at my existing site and told me by how much they could improve its performance. The proof is in the web pudding. I like this for a few reasons, but primarily I liked their business model. It told me they knew what they were doing, and that they were willing to put their money where their mouth was. This was further evident by their 60-day money back guarantee. And if I understand it correctly, they don’t even take your money until after that 60 day period is over. After a day, I was welcomed by the WP Engine social media team, and was given the opportunity to subscribe to their newsletter and follow their account on Twitter. I noticed their Twitter team is sure to post regular WordPress tips several times a day. It’s not just an account that’s setup for the sake of having a Twitter presence. These little things add up and give me confidence in my decision to choose them as my hosting partner. ‘Partner’ – that’s a lot nicer word than just ‘service provider,’ isn’t it? Oh, and they offered me a t-shirt. Don’t ever doubt the power of a ‘free’ t-shirt! How awesome is this e-mail, from a customer perspective? I wasn’t really expecting any of this. Exceeding expectations before I have even handed over a single dollar seems like a pretty good business plan. This is how you treat customers. Love them to death, and they reward you with loyalty. But Jeff, You Skipped a Piece Here, Why WP Engine? I found them on one of those ‘Top 10′ list posts, and pulled up their webpage. I noticed they offered a specialized service – they host WordPress installs, and that’s it. Their servers are tuned specifically for running WordPress. They had in bolded text, things like ‘INSANELY FAST. INFINITELY SCALABLE.’ and ‘LIGHTNING SPEED.’ And then they offered insurance against hackers and they took care of automatic backups and restores. The only drawbacks I have noticed so far relate to plugins I used that have been ‘blacklisted.’ In order to guarantee that ‘lightning’ speed, they have banned the use of the CPU-suckiest plugins. One of those is the ‘Related Posts’ plugin. So if you are a subscriber and are reading this in your email, you’ll notice there’s no links back to my blog to continue reading other related stories. Since that referral traffic is very small single-digit for my site, I decided that I’m OK with that. I’d rather have the warp-speed page loads. Again, I think that will lead to higher traffic down the road. In 50+ days I will need to decide if WP Engine is a permanent solution. I’ll be sure to update this post when that time comes and let y’all know how it turns out.

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  • Larry Ellison and Mark Hurd on Oracle Cloud

    - by arungupta
    Oracle Cloud provides Java and Database as Platform Services and Customer Relationship Management, Human Capital Management, and Social Network as Application Services. Watch a live webcast with Larry Ellison and Mark Hurd on announcements about Oracle Cloud. Date ? Wednesday, June 06, 2012 Time ? 1:00 p.m. PT – 2:30 p.m. PT Register here for the webinar. You can also attend the live event by registering here. Oracle Cloud is by invitation only at this time and you can register for access here.

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  • Ameristar Wins with Oracle GoldenGate’s Heterogeneous Real-Time Data Integration

    - by Irem Radzik
    Today we announced a press release about another successful project with Oracle GoldenGate. This time at Ameristar. Ameristar is a casino gaming company and needed a single data integration solution to connect multiple heterogeneous systems to its Teradata data warehouse. The project involves integration of Ameristar’s promotional and gaming data from 14 data sources across its 7 casino hotel properties in real time into a central Teradata data warehouse. The source systems include the Aristocrat gaming and MGT promotional management platforms running on Microsoft SQL Server 2000 databases. As you can notice, there was no Oracle Database involved in this project, but Ameristar’s IT leadership knew that  GoldenGate’s strong heterogeneous and real-time data integration capabilities is the right technology for their data warehousing project. With GoldenGate Ameristar was able to reduce data latency to the enterprise data warehouse, and use this real-time customer information for marketing teams in improving overall customer experience. Ameristar customers receive more targeted and timely campaign offers, and the company has more up-to-date visibility into financial metrics of the company. One other key benefit the company experienced with GoldenGate is in operational costs. The previous data capture solution Ameristar used was trigger based and required a lot of effort to manage. They needed dedicated IT staff to maintain it. With GoldenGate, the solution runs seamlessly without needing a fully-dedicated staff, giving the IT team at Ameristar more resources for their other IT projects. If you want to learn more about GoldenGate and the latest features for Oracle Database and non-Oracle databases, please watch our on demand webcast about Oracle GoldenGate 11g Release 2.

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  • Office add on saves you time if you use Moodle

    - by Brian Scarbeau
    Moodle is a free elearning content management software program. It does take a great deal of time to set it up because you need to upload your Office files to Moodle. Now, Microsoft has made that job easier with their new Office Add on. With it you can save directly into Moodle.   Here are the instructions on how to use. Just change the URL you use for your Moodle site. 1. Go to this site and download and install the software. http://www.educationlabs.com/projects/officeaddinformoodle/Pages/default.aspx 2. Open your Office Word in this example and then select Save to Moodle (Notice you can also open files that you have stored in moodle make changes and then save back to moodle. (WOW) 3,  Now because this is the first time you are using this feature you will see a dialog box that looks like this: Enter the moodle website exactly as you see here along with your username and password for moodle. Click the checkbox to remember you. 4. After you click on Save to Moodle you should see a dialog box like this: 5.  Click the plus on the left Lake Highland Preparatory School-Online Learning 6. You will now see the listing of your moodle classes. Now click on the class that you your file to go to and save. Now you use this file in moodle. Good luck!

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  • CDN on Hosted Service in Windows Azure

    - by Shaun
    Yesterday I told Wang Tao, an annoying colleague sitting beside me, about how to make the static content enable the CDN in his website which had just been published on Windows Azure. The approach would be Move the static content, the images, CSS files, etc. into the blob storage. Enable the CDN on his storage account. Change the URL of those static files to the CDN URL. I think these are the very common steps when using CDN. But this morning I found that the new Windows Azure SDK 1.4 and new Windows Azure Developer Portal had just been published announced at the Windows Azure Blog. One of the new features in this release is about the CDN, which means we can enabled the CDN not only for a storage account, but a hosted service as well. Within this new feature the steps I mentioned above would be turned simpler a lot.   Enable CDN for Hosted Service To enable the CDN for a hosted service we just need to log on the Windows Azure Developer Portal. Under the “Hosted Services, Storage Accounts & CDN” item we will find a new menu on the left hand side said “CDN”, where we can manage the CDN for storage account and hosted service. As we can see the hosted services and storage accounts are all listed in my subscriptions. To enable a CDN for a hosted service is veru simple, just select a hosted service and click the New Endpoint button on top. In this dialog we can select the subscription and the storage account, or the hosted service we want the CDN to be enabled. If we selected the hosted service, like I did in the image above, the “Source URL for the CDN endpoint” will be shown automatically. This means the windows azure platform will make all contents under the “/cdn” folder as CDN enabled. But we cannot change the value at the moment. The following 3 checkboxes next to the URL are: Enable CDN: Enable or disable the CDN. HTTPS: If we need to use HTTPS connections check it. Query String: If we are caching content from a hosted service and we are using query strings to specify the content to be retrieved, check it. Just click the “Create” button to let the windows azure create the CDN for our hosted service. The CDN would be available within 60 minutes as Microsoft mentioned. My experience is that about 15 minutes the CDN could be used and we can find the CDN URL in the portal as well.   Put the Content in CDN in Hosted Service Let’s create a simple windows azure project in Visual Studio with a MVC 2 Web Role. When we created the CDN mentioned above the source URL of CDN endpoint would be under the “/cdn” folder. So in the Visual Studio we create a folder under the website named “cdn” and put some static files there. Then all these files would be cached by CDN if we use the CDN endpoint. The CDN of the hosted service can cache some kind of “dynamic” result with the Query String feature enabled. We create a controller named CdnController and a GetNumber action in it. The routed URL of this controller would be /Cdn/GetNumber which can be CDN-ed as well since the URL said it’s under the “/cdn” folder. In the GetNumber action we just put a number value which specified by parameter into the view model, then the URL could be like /Cdn/GetNumber?number=2. 1: using System; 2: using System.Collections.Generic; 3: using System.Linq; 4: using System.Web; 5: using System.Web.Mvc; 6:  7: namespace MvcWebRole1.Controllers 8: { 9: public class CdnController : Controller 10: { 11: // 12: // GET: /Cdn/ 13:  14: public ActionResult GetNumber(int number) 15: { 16: return View(number); 17: } 18:  19: } 20: } And we add a view to display the number which is super simple. 1: <%@ Page Title="" Language="C#" MasterPageFile="~/Views/Shared/Site.Master" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewPage<int>" %> 2:  3: <asp:Content ID="Content1" ContentPlaceHolderID="TitleContent" runat="server"> 4: GetNumber 5: </asp:Content> 6:  7: <asp:Content ID="Content2" ContentPlaceHolderID="MainContent" runat="server"> 8:  9: <h2>The number is: <% 1: : Model.ToString() %></h2> 10:  11: </asp:Content> Since this action is under the CdnController the URL would be under the “/cdn” folder which means it can be CDN-ed. And since we checked the “Query String” the content of this dynamic page will be cached by its query string. So if I use the CDN URL, http://az25311.vo.msecnd.net/GetNumber?number=2, the CDN will firstly check if there’s any content cached with the key “GetNumber?number=2”. If yes then the CDN will return the content directly; otherwise it will connect to the hosted service, http://aurora-sys.cloudapp.net/Cdn/GetNumber?number=2, and then send the result back to the browser and cached in CDN. But to be notice that the query string are treated as string when used by the key of CDN element. This means the URLs below would be cached in 2 elements in CDN: http://az25311.vo.msecnd.net/GetNumber?number=2&page=1 http://az25311.vo.msecnd.net/GetNumber?page=1&number=2 The final step is to upload the project onto azure. Test the Hosted Service CDN After published the project on azure, we can use the CDN in the website. The CDN endpoint we had created is az25311.vo.msecnd.net so all files under the “/cdn” folder can be requested with it. Let’s have a try on the sample.htm and c_great_wall.jpg static files. Also we can request the dynamic page GetNumber with the query string with the CDN endpoint. And if we refresh this page it will be shown very quickly since the content comes from the CDN without MCV server side process. We style of this page was missing. This is because the CSS file was not includes in the “/cdn” folder so the page cannot retrieve the CSS file from the CDN URL.   Summary In this post I introduced the new feature in Windows Azure CDN with the release of Windows Azure SDK 1.4 and new Developer Portal. With the CDN of the Hosted Service we can just put the static resources under a “/cdn” folder so that the CDN can cache them automatically and no need to put then into the blob storage. Also it support caching the dynamic content with the Query String feature. So that we can cache some parts of the web page by using the UserController and CDN. For example we can cache the log on user control in the master page so that the log on part will be loaded super-fast. There are some other new features within this release you can find here. And for more detailed information about the Windows Azure CDN please have a look here as well.   Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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  • 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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  • The latest in the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Tools and Technology Area

    Eric Oss, Manager of Customer Operations from the Oracle JD Edwards implementation and hosting partner WTS and Gary Grieshaber, Sr. Director, Strategy discuss the latest JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Tools 8.97 release, the feedback they have been receiving from the marketplace and why customers should take advantage of this new release.

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  • SPARC64 VII+ Processor Core License Factor Reduced by 33%

    - by john.shell
    The Oracle processor core license factor has been a popular topic the last few months.  For those partners new to Oracle software licensing, the processor core license factor determines the number licensed CPUs that are required when running Oracle software (those charged on a per-CPU basis) on multi-core processors.My last entry talked about the core factor reduction for our T3 processor.  The core license factor for our newly announced SPARC64 VII+ processor is 0.5, which is a 33% reduction from the 0.75 rate used with our SPARC64 VI and VII processors.What does this mean for our partners?  Increased opportunity.  This change, similar to our T3-based systems, means that our hardware is the preferred platform for Oracle software. Still a little dizzy on the breadth of Oracle's software offering?  Do a simple scan of Oracle's software price lists. Consider this your target market.This change allows you to focus on total solution price or price/performance, not server prices or per core performance (a standard IBM sales tactic). That's the offensive side of the game.  Don't forget your defense.  One of the biggest customer benefits around the M-Series is investment protection.  The combination of a simple processor/board upgrade, along with a reduction in processor core license factor, makes upgrading one of the best financial moves for our customers.    One reminder.  The update to the processor core license factor only applies to the new VII+ processor - NOT the SPARC64 VI or VII processors.  You can find the official table here.

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