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  • cVidya’s MoneyMap Achieves Oracle Exadata Optimized Status

    - by Javier Puerta
    cVidya's MoneyMap running on Oracle Exadata provides extreme performance, including 4x-16x improvement in high data load rates, 4x faster data transformation and reconciliation, and query speeds - from a 2.5 billion record index –  improved from hours to few seconds! The MoneyMap solution enables operators to reconcile information from all network, operations and business support systems and through an on-going automated process, it detects problem areas which impact profitability as a result of revenue leakage, data inconsistencies or resources that are not being used efficiently. Once detected, MoneyMap provides tools to promptly correct and manage the problems to achieve profit maximization Learn more here.

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  • Cost vs. Fun - Dilemma about learning a serverside language [closed]

    - by Ixx
    I want to learn a new server-side language. I already know Java. I'm fascinated by Scala, have read about it a lot, and want to get practical experience. But I also have some concerns of practical nature - I want to do the backend for many small, non-profit apps, and pay the lowest price for hosting possible. I also want that other people can easily contribute to these apps, if applicable. This leads me in PHP's direction. But I don't like PHP and would like to use these small projects to learn Scala instead. You see the problem, I don't want to pay more money each month, from my own pocket, for hosting. But I want to use these projects to learn Scala. Is there a practical solution for this?

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  • GNU GPL LICENSE

    - by user577616
    I develop an android application and in my app I use a libary (jar) that I download from the internet. This jar is open-source under the "GNU General Public License v2". I tried to read the text of the license but had difficulty understanding it. My question is: can I use this libary without changing nothing in the jar in a commercial application? I will be making profit from selling my app which uses this GPL-ed .jar file. If possible, I would like to avoid converting my application to open-source.

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  • Google menace de ne plus indexer la presse française si une taxe sur le référencement est votée : qu'en pensez-vous ?

    Google menace de ne plus indexer la presse française si une taxe sur le référencement venait à être votée Google vient de lancer un ultimatum à la presse française et au gouvernement en menaçant de déréférencer les contenus des éditeurs en cas d'adoption de la taxe Google. L'Association de la presse d'information politique et générale (IPG) et le Syndicat de la presse quotidienne nationale ont adressé en septembre dernier une ébauche d'un projet de loi au gouvernement français, visant à l'instauration d'une taxe Google. Ceux-ci estiment que le géant de la recherche tire profit de leurs contenus et actualités pour enrichir son moteur de recherche, permettant à celui-ci de générer de...

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  • ?????

    - by user758881
    ????lumosity.com???????“?????”????????????????????????????????????????,???????????,??????????????????????????? ??,??????????????????——?????????????????IT????????????????????????????????????,????????????????,????????????? ?????????????——????????????????????????????????????????,??????,????????????????????? ?????,“??????????????:????????????”?,76%??????,???????????????????,????????????(54%)?????IT???????????IT?????????? ????,Oracle??????????????????????,Denovo????????IT?????????2009???????????Oracle JD Edwards??????????Denovo??????????????ERP??????Oracle?????????????????????? “????????????????????,”Denovo????????????????Paul Herbka???“?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????”   ??Denovo??????????????????,??????????????????ERP?????????????????????????????????????,?????????????? “????????????????,”Herbka???“?????????????????????IT???????????????????????????????????????????,????????????????????????????????” ??????????: “?????:?????????????????????,” ???Deloitte & Touche????????????????,Irfan Saif,?????Oracle Profit Online ?? Jim Lein ?????????????Oracle??????????1999???JD Edwards,???????Oracle15?????????Evergreen,Colorado,????????????????????????????????????????,????Oracle???

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  • Trouble with a query

    - by Mark Allison
    Hi there, I'm having trouble with a query in SQL Server 2008 on some forex trading data. I have a trades table and an orders table. A trade needs to comprise of 2 or more orders. DDL schema and sample data below. What I want to do is write a query that shows the profit/loss in pips for each trade. A pip is 1/1000th of a currency. So the difference between USD 1.3441 and 1.3442 is 1 pip in forex-speak. A trade usually has one entry order and multiple exit orders. So for example if I buy 3 lots of the currency pair GBP/USD at the exchange rate of 1.6100 and then sell 1 lot at 1.6150, 1 lot at 1.6200 and 1 lot at 1.6250 then the profit is (1.6150 - 1.6100) + (1.6200 - 1.6100) + (1.6250 - 1.6100), or 50 + 100 + 150 = 300 pips profit. The trade could also go the other way (Shorting). For example the currency pair can be sold first before it's bought back later at a cheaper price. I would like a query that returns the following: tradeId, currencyPair, profitInPips It seems like a pretty straightforward query, but it's eluding me right now. Here's my DDL and sample data: CREATE TABLE [dbo].[trades]( [tradeId] [int] IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL, [currencyPair] [char](6) NOT NULL, CONSTRAINT [PK_trades] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED ( [tradeId] ASC )WITH (PAD_INDEX = OFF, STATISTICS_NORECOMPUTE = OFF, IGNORE_DUP_KEY = OFF, ALLOW_ROW_LOCKS = ON, ALLOW_PAGE_LOCKS = ON) ON [PRIMARY] ) ON [PRIMARY] GO SET ANSI_PADDING OFF GO SET IDENTITY_INSERT [dbo].[trades] ON INSERT [dbo].[trades] ([tradeId], [currencyPair]) VALUES (1, N'GBPUSD') INSERT [dbo].[trades] ([tradeId], [currencyPair]) VALUES (2, N'GBPUSD') INSERT [dbo].[trades] ([tradeId], [currencyPair]) VALUES (3, N'GBPUSD') INSERT [dbo].[trades] ([tradeId], [currencyPair]) VALUES (4, N'GBPUSD') INSERT [dbo].[trades] ([tradeId], [currencyPair]) VALUES (5, N'GBPUSD') INSERT [dbo].[trades] ([tradeId], [currencyPair]) VALUES (6, N'GBPUSD') INSERT [dbo].[trades] ([tradeId], [currencyPair]) VALUES (7, N'GBPUSD') INSERT [dbo].[trades] ([tradeId], [currencyPair]) VALUES (8, N'GBPUSD') INSERT [dbo].[trades] ([tradeId], [currencyPair]) VALUES (9, N'GBPUSD') INSERT [dbo].[trades] ([tradeId], [currencyPair]) VALUES (10, N'GBPUSD') SET IDENTITY_INSERT [dbo].[trades] OFF GO CREATE TABLE [dbo].[orders]( [orderId] [int] IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL, [tradeId] [int] NOT NULL, [amount] [decimal](18, 1) NOT NULL, [buySell] [char](1) NOT NULL, [rate] [decimal](18, 6) NOT NULL, [orderDateTime] [datetime] NOT NULL, CONSTRAINT [PK_orders] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED ( [orderId] ASC )WITH (PAD_INDEX = OFF, STATISTICS_NORECOMPUTE = OFF, IGNORE_DUP_KEY = OFF, ALLOW_ROW_LOCKS = ON, ALLOW_PAGE_LOCKS = ON) ON [PRIMARY] ) ON [PRIMARY] GO SET ANSI_PADDING OFF GO SET IDENTITY_INSERT [dbo].[orders] ON INSERT [dbo].[orders] ([orderId], [tradeId], [amount], [buySell], [rate], [orderDateTime]) VALUES (1, 1, CAST(3.0 AS Decimal(18, 1)), N'S', CAST(1.606500 AS Decimal(18, 6)), CAST(0x00009CF40083D600 AS DateTime)) INSERT [dbo].[orders] ([orderId], [tradeId], [amount], [buySell], [rate], [orderDateTime]) VALUES (2, 1, CAST(3.0 AS Decimal(18, 1)), N'B', CAST(1.615500 AS Decimal(18, 6)), CAST(0x00009CF400A4CB80 AS DateTime)) INSERT [dbo].[orders] ([orderId], [tradeId], [amount], [buySell], [rate], [orderDateTime]) VALUES (3, 2, CAST(3.0 AS Decimal(18, 1)), N'S', CAST(1.608000 AS Decimal(18, 6)), CAST(0x00009CF500000000 AS DateTime)) INSERT [dbo].[orders] ([orderId], [tradeId], [amount], [buySell], [rate], [orderDateTime]) VALUES (4, 2, CAST(1.0 AS Decimal(18, 1)), N'B', CAST(1.603000 AS Decimal(18, 6)), CAST(0x00009CF50083D600 AS DateTime)) INSERT [dbo].[orders] ([orderId], [tradeId], [amount], [buySell], [rate], [orderDateTime]) VALUES (5, 2, CAST(2.0 AS Decimal(18, 1)), N'B', CAST(1.605500 AS Decimal(18, 6)), CAST(0x00009CF50107AC00 AS DateTime)) INSERT [dbo].[orders] ([orderId], [tradeId], [amount], [buySell], [rate], [orderDateTime]) VALUES (6, 3, CAST(3.0 AS Decimal(18, 1)), N'S', CAST(1.595500 AS Decimal(18, 6)), CAST(0x00009CF70083D600 AS DateTime)) INSERT [dbo].[orders] ([orderId], [tradeId], [amount], [buySell], [rate], [orderDateTime]) VALUES (7, 3, CAST(1.0 AS Decimal(18, 1)), N'B', CAST(1.590500 AS Decimal(18, 6)), CAST(0x00009CF700C5C100 AS DateTime)) INSERT [dbo].[orders] ([orderId], [tradeId], [amount], [buySell], [rate], [orderDateTime]) VALUES (8, 3, CAST(2.0 AS Decimal(18, 1)), N'B', CAST(1.594500 AS Decimal(18, 6)), CAST(0x00009CF701499700 AS DateTime)) INSERT [dbo].[orders] ([orderId], [tradeId], [amount], [buySell], [rate], [orderDateTime]) VALUES (9, 4, CAST(3.0 AS Decimal(18, 1)), N'B', CAST(1.611000 AS Decimal(18, 6)), CAST(0x00009CFB0083D600 AS DateTime)) INSERT [dbo].[orders] ([orderId], [tradeId], [amount], [buySell], [rate], [orderDateTime]) VALUES (10, 4, CAST(1.0 AS Decimal(18, 1)), N'S', CAST(1.616000 AS Decimal(18, 6)), CAST(0x00009CFB00A4CB80 AS DateTime)) INSERT [dbo].[orders] ([orderId], [tradeId], [amount], [buySell], [rate], [orderDateTime]) VALUES (11, 4, CAST(2.0 AS Decimal(18, 1)), N'S', CAST(1.611500 AS Decimal(18, 6)), CAST(0x00009CFB0107AC00 AS DateTime)) INSERT [dbo].[orders] ([orderId], [tradeId], [amount], [buySell], [rate], [orderDateTime]) VALUES (12, 5, CAST(3.0 AS Decimal(18, 1)), N'B', CAST(1.613000 AS Decimal(18, 6)), CAST(0x00009CFC0083D600 AS DateTime)) INSERT [dbo].[orders] ([orderId], [tradeId], [amount], [buySell], [rate], [orderDateTime]) VALUES (13, 5, CAST(1.0 AS Decimal(18, 1)), N'S', CAST(1.618000 AS Decimal(18, 6)), CAST(0x00009CFC0107AC00 AS DateTime)) INSERT [dbo].[orders] ([orderId], [tradeId], [amount], [buySell], [rate], [orderDateTime]) VALUES (14, 5, CAST(1.0 AS Decimal(18, 1)), N'S', CAST(1.623000 AS Decimal(18, 6)), CAST(0x00009CFC0083D600 AS DateTime)) INSERT [dbo].[orders] ([orderId], [tradeId], [amount], [buySell], [rate], [orderDateTime]) VALUES (15, 5, CAST(1.0 AS Decimal(18, 1)), N'S', CAST(1.628000 AS Decimal(18, 6)), CAST(0x00009CFD00C5C100 AS DateTime)) INSERT [dbo].[orders] ([orderId], [tradeId], [amount], [buySell], [rate], [orderDateTime]) VALUES (16, 6, CAST(3.0 AS Decimal(18, 1)), N'B', CAST(1.632000 AS Decimal(18, 6)), CAST(0x00009D020083D600 AS DateTime)) INSERT [dbo].[orders] ([orderId], [tradeId], [amount], [buySell], [rate], [orderDateTime]) VALUES (17, 6, CAST(1.0 AS Decimal(18, 1)), N'S', CAST(1.637000 AS Decimal(18, 6)), CAST(0x00009D0200A4CB80 AS DateTime)) INSERT [dbo].[orders] ([orderId], [tradeId], [amount], [buySell], [rate], [orderDateTime]) VALUES (18, 6, CAST(2.0 AS Decimal(18, 1)), N'S', CAST(1.630000 AS Decimal(18, 6)), CAST(0x00009D0200C5C100 AS DateTime)) INSERT [dbo].[orders] ([orderId], [tradeId], [amount], [buySell], [rate], [orderDateTime]) VALUES (19, 7, CAST(3.0 AS Decimal(18, 1)), N'B', CAST(1.634500 AS Decimal(18, 6)), CAST(0x00009D0201499700 AS DateTime)) INSERT [dbo].[orders] ([orderId], [tradeId], [amount], [buySell], [rate], [orderDateTime]) VALUES (20, 7, CAST(1.0 AS Decimal(18, 1)), N'S', CAST(1.639500 AS Decimal(18, 6)), CAST(0x00009D0300000000 AS DateTime)) INSERT [dbo].[orders] ([orderId], [tradeId], [amount], [buySell], [rate], [orderDateTime]) VALUES (21, 7, CAST(1.0 AS Decimal(18, 1)), N'S', CAST(1.644500 AS Decimal(18, 6)), CAST(0x00009D030083D600 AS DateTime)) INSERT [dbo].[orders] ([orderId], [tradeId], [amount], [buySell], [rate], [orderDateTime]) VALUES (22, 7, CAST(1.0 AS Decimal(18, 1)), N'S', CAST(1.637500 AS Decimal(18, 6)), CAST(0x00009D0300C5C100 AS DateTime)) INSERT [dbo].[orders] ([orderId], [tradeId], [amount], [buySell], [rate], [orderDateTime]) VALUES (23, 8, CAST(3.0 AS Decimal(18, 1)), N'S', CAST(1.625000 AS Decimal(18, 6)), CAST(0x00009D0400C5C100 AS DateTime)) INSERT [dbo].[orders] ([orderId], [tradeId], [amount], [buySell], [rate], [orderDateTime]) VALUES (24, 8, CAST(1.0 AS Decimal(18, 1)), N'B', CAST(1.620000 AS Decimal(18, 6)), CAST(0x00009D050083D600 AS DateTime)) INSERT [dbo].[orders] ([orderId], [tradeId], [amount], [buySell], [rate], [orderDateTime]) VALUES (25, 8, CAST(1.0 AS Decimal(18, 1)), N'B', CAST(1.615000 AS Decimal(18, 6)), CAST(0x00009D0500A4CB80 AS DateTime)) INSERT [dbo].[orders] ([orderId], [tradeId], [amount], [buySell], [rate], [orderDateTime]) VALUES (26, 8, CAST(1.0 AS Decimal(18, 1)), N'S', CAST(1.623000 AS Decimal(18, 6)), CAST(0x00009D050107AC00 AS DateTime)) INSERT [dbo].[orders] ([orderId], [tradeId], [amount], [buySell], [rate], [orderDateTime]) VALUES (27, 9, CAST(3.0 AS Decimal(18, 1)), N'S', CAST(1.618000 AS Decimal(18, 6)), CAST(0x00009D0600C5C100 AS DateTime)) INSERT [dbo].[orders] ([orderId], [tradeId], [amount], [buySell], [rate], [orderDateTime]) VALUES (28, 9, CAST(1.0 AS Decimal(18, 1)), N'B', CAST(1.613000 AS Decimal(18, 6)), CAST(0x00009D0600D63BC0 AS DateTime)) INSERT [dbo].[orders] ([orderId], [tradeId], [amount], [buySell], [rate], [orderDateTime]) VALUES (29, 9, CAST(1.0 AS Decimal(18, 1)), N'B', CAST(1.608000 AS Decimal(18, 6)), CAST(0x00009D0600E6B680 AS DateTime)) INSERT [dbo].[orders] ([orderId], [tradeId], [amount], [buySell], [rate], [orderDateTime]) VALUES (30, 9, CAST(1.0 AS Decimal(18, 1)), N'B', CAST(1.613300 AS Decimal(18, 6)), CAST(0x00009D0601391C40 AS DateTime)) INSERT [dbo].[orders] ([orderId], [tradeId], [amount], [buySell], [rate], [orderDateTime]) VALUES (31, 10, CAST(3.0 AS Decimal(18, 1)), N'B', CAST(1.614500 AS Decimal(18, 6)), CAST(0x00009D090083D600 AS DateTime)) INSERT [dbo].[orders] ([orderId], [tradeId], [amount], [buySell], [rate], [orderDateTime]) VALUES (32, 10, CAST(1.0 AS Decimal(18, 1)), N'S', CAST(1.619500 AS Decimal(18, 6)), CAST(0x00009D090107AC00 AS DateTime)) INSERT [dbo].[orders] ([orderId], [tradeId], [amount], [buySell], [rate], [orderDateTime]) VALUES (33, 10, CAST(1.0 AS Decimal(18, 1)), N'S', CAST(1.624500 AS Decimal(18, 6)), CAST(0x00009D0901499700 AS DateTime)) INSERT [dbo].[orders] ([orderId], [tradeId], [amount], [buySell], [rate], [orderDateTime]) VALUES (34, 10, CAST(1.0 AS Decimal(18, 1)), N'S', CAST(1.619000 AS Decimal(18, 6)), CAST(0x00009D0A0083D600 AS DateTime)) SET IDENTITY_INSERT [dbo].[orders] OFF /****** Object: ForeignKey [FK_orders_trades] Script Date: 04/02/2010 15:05:31 ******/ ALTER TABLE [dbo].[orders] WITH CHECK ADD CONSTRAINT [FK_orders_trades] FOREIGN KEY([tradeId]) REFERENCES [dbo].[trades] ([tradeId]) GO ALTER TABLE [dbo].[orders] CHECK CONSTRAINT [FK_orders_trades] GO Thanks in advance for any help!

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  • FileMaker Pro vs CiviCRM

    - by Silvana Procopio
    Hello, I would like some input about these two softwares since we are trying to change our current Access database, which has brought many problems and is completely outdated (it was built 10 years ago). These are the 2 options we have in mind and being a non-profit organization (20 employees), it's quite a big decision in particular in terms of costs. Due to the type of business, we will need several hours of development too. Any feedback will be greatly appreciated. Thank you so much in advance, Silvana

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  • If I register a domain name using a service like A Small Orange, how can I know they are registering

    - by Sergio Tapia
    I have a great name for a website and it's available, but I don't really know how to register a domain name using a barebones website; that's why I want to use A Small Orange-like service. My question is, is it standard procedure to register the name on YOUR(the costumers) behalf, or do companies set it up on their name so they can profit from hits if in the future you stop paying for the hosting?

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  • Licensing and commercial use

    - by Avoid Trouble
    I found a really cool piece of software under the AGPL license. I haven't heard of this before, so excuse the ignorance... But is it legal for me to simply bundle and use this product directly within my app (no modification) and resell for commercial use? Speaking of which, is there a simple table available that shows the implication of each open source license and whether or not it can be used by closed source, for-profit, $$$ type software?

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  • PeopleSoft Upgrades, Fusion, & BI for Leading European PeopleSoft Applications Customers

    - by Mark Rosenberg
    With so many industry-leading services firms around the globe managing their businesses with PeopleSoft, it’s always an adventure setting up times and meetings for us to keep in touch with them, especially those outside of North America who often do not get to join us at Oracle OpenWorld. Fortunately, during the first two weeks of May, Nigel Woodland (Oracle’s Service Industries Director for the EMEA region) and I successfully blocked off our calendars to visit seven different customers spanning four countries in Western Europe. We met executives and leaders at four Staffing industry firms, two Professional Services firms that engage in consulting and auditing, and a Financial Services firm. As we shared the latest information regarding product capabilities and plans, we also gained valuable insight into the hot technology topics facing these businesses. What we heard was both informative and inspiring, and I suspect other Oracle PeopleSoft applications customers can benefit from one or more of the following observations from our trip. Great IT Plans Get Executed When You Respect the Users Each of our visits followed roughly the same pattern. After introductions, Nigel outlined Oracle’s product and technology strategy, including a discussion of how we at Oracle invest in each layer of the “technology stack” to provide customers with unprecedented business management capabilities and choice. Then, I provided the specifics of the PeopleSoft product line’s investment strategy, detailing the dramatic number of rich usability and functionality enhancements added to release 9.1 since its general availability in 2009 and the game-changing capabilities slated for 9.2. What was most exciting about each of these discussions was that shortly after my talking about what customers can do with release 9.1 right now to drive up user productivity and satisfaction, I saw the wheels turning in the minds of our audiences. Business analyst and end user-configurable tools and technologies, such as WorkCenters and the Related Action Framework, that provide the ability to tailor a “central command center” to the exact needs of each recruiter, biller, and every other role in the organization were exactly what each of our customers had been looking for. Every one of our audiences agreed that these tools which demonstrate a respect for the user would finally help IT pole vault over the wall of resistance that users had often raised in the past. With these new user-focused capabilities, IT is positioned to definitively partner with the business, instead of drag the business along, to unlock the value of their investment in PeopleSoft. This topic of respecting the user emerged during our very first visit, which was at Vital Services Group at their Head Office “The Mill” in Manchester, England. (If you are a student of architecture and are ever in Manchester, you should stop in to see this amazingly renovated old mill building.) I had just finished explaining our PeopleSoft 9.2 roadmap, and Mike Code, PeopleSoft Systems Manager for this innovative staffing company, said, “Mark, the new features you’ve shown us in 9.1/9.2 are very relevant to our business. As we forge ahead with the 9.1 upgrade, the ability to configure a targeted user interface with WorkCenters, Related Actions, Pivot Grids, and Alerts will enable us to satisfy the business that this upgrade is for them and will deliver tangible benefits. In fact, you’ve highlighted that we need to start talking to the business to keep up the momentum to start reviewing the 9.2 upgrade after we get to 9.1, because as much as 9.1 and PeopleTools 8.52 offers, what you’ve shown us for 9.2 is what we’ve envisioned was ultimately possible with our investment in PeopleSoft applications.” We also received valuable feedback about our investment for the Staffing industry when we visited with Hans Wanders, CIO of Randstad (the second largest Staffing company in the world) in the Netherlands. After our visit, Hans noted, “It was very interesting to see how the PeopleSoft applications have developed. I was truly impressed by many of the new developments.” Hans and Mike, sincere thanks for the validation that our team’s hard work and dedication to “respecting the users” is worth the effort! Co-existence of PeopleSoft and Fusion Applications Just Makes Sense As a “product person,” one of the most rewarding things about visiting customers is that they actually want to talk to me. Sometimes, they want to discuss a product area that we need to enhance; other times, they are interested in learning how to extract more value from their applications; and still others, they want to tell me how they are using the applications to drive real value for the business. During this trip, I was very pleased to hear that several of our customers not only thought the co-existence of Fusion applications alongside PeopleSoft applications made sense in theory, but also that they were aggressively looking at how to deploy one or more Fusion applications alongside their PeopleSoft HCM and FSCM applications. The most common deployment plan in the works by three of the organizations is to upgrade to PeopleSoft 9.1 or 9.2, and then adopt one of the new Fusion HCM applications, such as Fusion Performance Management or the full suite of  Fusion Talent Management. For example, during an applications upgrade planning discussion with the staffing company Hays plc., Mark Thomas, who is Hays’ UK IT Director, commented, “We are very excited about where we can go with the latest versions of the PeopleSoft applications in conjunction with Fusion Talent Management.” Needless to say, this news was very encouraging, because it reiterated that our applications investment strategy makes good business sense for our customers. Next Generation Business Intelligence Is the Key to the Future The third, and perhaps most exciting, lesson I learned during this journey is that our audiences already know that the latest generation of Business Intelligence technologies will be the “secret sauce” for organizations to transform business in radical ways. While a number of the organizations we visited on the trip have deployed or are deploying Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition and the associated analytics applications to provide dashboards of easy-to-understand, user-configurable metrics that help optimize business performance according to current operating procedures, what’s most exciting to them is being able to use Business Intelligence to change the way an organization does business, grows revenue, and makes a profit. In particular, several executives we met asked whether we can help them minimize the need to have perfectly structured data and at the same time generate analytics that improve order fulfillment decision-making. To them, the path to future growth lies in having the ability to analyze unstructured data rapidly and intuitively and leveraging technology’s ability to detect patterns that a human cannot reasonably be expected to see. For illustrative purposes, here is a good example of a business problem where analyzing a combination of structured and unstructured data can produce better results. If you have a resource manager trying to decide which person would be the best fit for an assignment in terms of ensuring (a) client satisfaction, (b) the individual’s satisfaction with the work, (c) least travel distance, and (d) highest margin, you traditionally compare resource qualifications to assignment needs, calculate margins on past work with the client, and measure distances. To perform these comparisons, you are likely to need the organization to have profiles setup, people ranked against profiles, margin targets setup, margins measured, distances setup, distances measured, and more. As you can imagine, this requires organizations to plan and implement data setup, capture, and quality management initiatives to ensure that dependable information is available to support resourcing analysis and decisions. In the fast-paced, tight-budget world in which most organizations operate today, the effort and discipline required to maintain high-quality, structured data like those described in the above example are certainly not desirable and in some cases are not feasible. You can imagine how intrigued our audiences were when I informed them that we are ready to help them analyze volumes of unstructured data, detect trends, and produce recommendations. Our discussions delved into examples of how the firms could leverage Oracle’s Secure Enterprise Search and Endeca technologies to keyword search against, compare, and learn from unstructured resource and assignment data. We also considered examples of how they could employ Oracle Real-Time Decisions to generate statistically significant recommendations based on similar resourcing scenarios that have produced the desired satisfaction and profit margin results. --- Although I had almost no time for sight-seeing during this trip to Europe, I have to say that it may have been one of the most energizing and engaging trips of my career. Showing these dedicated customers how they can give every user a uniquely tailored set of tools and address business problems in ways that have to date been impossible made the journey across the Atlantic more than worth it. If any of these three topics intrigue you, I’d recommend you contact your Oracle applications representative to arrange for more detailed discussions with the appropriate members of our organization.

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  • Why Fusion Middleware matters to Oracle Applications and Fusion Applications customers?

    - by Harish Gaur
    Did you miss this general session on Monday morning presented by Amit Zavery, VP of Oracle Fusion Middleware Product Management? There will be a recording made available shortly and in the meanwhile, here is a recap. Amit presented 5 strategies customers can leverage today to extend their applications. Figure 1: 5 Oracle Fusion Middleware strategies to extend Oracle Applications & Oracle Fusion Apps 1. Engage Everyone – Provide intuitive and social experience for application users using Oracle WebCenter 2. Extend Enterprise – Extend Oracle Applications to mobile devices using Oracle ADF Mobile 3. Orchestrate Processes – Automate key organization processes across on-premise & cloud applications using Oracle BPM Suite & Oracle SOA Suite 4. Secure the core – Provide single sign-on and self-service provisioning across multiple apps using Oracle Identity Management 5. Optimize Performance – Leverage Exalogic stack to consolidate multiple instance and improve performance of Oracle Applications Session included 3 demonstrations to illustrate these strategies. 1. First demo highlighted significance of mobile applications for unlocking existing investment in Applications such as EBS. Using a native iPhone application interacting with e-Business Suite, demo showed how expense approval can be mobile enabled with enhanced visibility using BI dashboards. 2. Second demo showed how you can extend a banking process in Siebel and Oracle Policy Automation with Oracle BPM Suite.Process starts in Siebel with a customer requesting a loan, and then jumps to OPA for loan recommendations and decision making and loan processing with approvals in handled in BPM Suite. Once approvals are completed Siebel is updated to complete the process. 3. Final demo showcased FMW components inside Fusion Applications, specifically WebCenter. Boeing, Underwriter Laboratories and Electronic Arts joined this quest and discussed 3 different approaches of leveraging Fusion Middleware stack to maximize their investment in Oracle Applications and/or Fusion Applications technology. Let’s briefly review what these customers shared during the session: 1. Extend Fusion Applications We know that Oracle Fusion Middleware is the underlying technology infrastructure for Oracle Fusion Applications. Architecturally, Oracle Fusion Apps leverages several components of Oracle Fusion Middleware from Oracle WebCenter for rich collaborative interface, Oracle SOA Suite & Oracle BPM Suite for orchestrating key underlying processes to Oracle BIEE for dash boarding and analytics. Boeing talked about how they are using Oracle BPM Suite 11g, a key component of Oracle Fusion Middleware with Oracle Fusion Apps to transform their supply chain. Tim Murnin, Director of Supply Chain talked about Boeing’s 5 year supply chain transformation journey. Boeing’s Integrated and Information Management division began with automation of critical RFQ process using Oracle BPM Suite. This 1st phase resulted in 38% reduction in labor costs for RFP. As a next step in this effort, Boeing is now creating a platform to enable electronic Order Management. Fusion Apps are playing a significant role in this phase. Boeing has gone live with Oracle Fusion Product Hub and efforts are underway with Oracle Fusion Distributed Order Orchestration (DOO). So, where does Oracle BPM Suite 11g fit in this equation? Let me explain. Business processes within Fusion Apps are designed using 2 standards: Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) and Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN). These processes can be easily configured using declarative set of tools. Boeing leverages Oracle BPM Suite 11g (which supports BPMN 2.0) and Oracle SOA Suite (which supports BPEL) to “extend” these applications. Traditionally, customizations are done within an app using native technologies. But, instead of making process changes within Fusion Apps, Boeing has taken an approach of building “extensions” layer on top of the application. Fig 2: Boeing’s use of Oracle BPM Suite to orchestrate key supply chain processes across Fusion Apps 2. Maximize Oracle Applications investment Fusion Middleware appeals not only to Fusion Apps customers, but is also leveraged by Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, Siebel and JD Edwards customers significantly. Using Oracle BPM Suite and Oracle SOA Suite is the recommended extension strategy for Oracle Fusion Apps and Oracle Applications Unlimited customers. Electronic Arts, E-Business Suite customer, spoke about their strategy to transform their order-to-cash process using Oracle SOA Suite, Oracle Foundation Packs and Oracle BAM. Udesh Naicker, Sr Director of IT at Elecronic Arts (EA), discussed how growth of social and digital gaming had started to put tremendous pressure on EA’s existing IT infrastructure. He discussed the challenge with millions of micro-transactions coming from several sources – Microsoft Xbox, Paypal, several service providers. EA found Order-2-Cash processes stretched to their limits. They lacked visibility into these transactions across the entire value chain. EA began by consolidating their E-Business Suite R11 instances into single E-Business Suite R12. EA needed to cater to a variety of service requirements, connectivity methods, file formats, and information latency. Their integration strategy was tactical, i.e., using file uploads, TIBCO, SQL scripts. After consolidating E-Business suite, EA standardized their integration approach with Oracle SOA Suite and Oracle AIA Foundation Pack. Oracle SOA Suite is the platform used to extend E-Business Suite R12 and standardize 60+ interfaces across several heterogeneous systems including PeopleSoft, Demantra, SF.com, Workday, and Managed EDI services spanning on-premise, hosted and cloud applications. EA believes that Oracle SOA Suite 11g based extension strategy has helped significantly in the followings ways: - It helped them keep customizations out of E-Business Suite, thereby keeping EBS R12 vanilla and upgrade safe - Developers are now proficient in technology which is also leveraged by Fusion Apps. This has helped them prepare for adoption of Fusion Apps in the future Fig 3: Using Oracle SOA Suite & Oracle e-Business Suite, Electronic Arts built new platform for order processing 3. Consolidate apps and improve scalability Exalogic is an optimal platform for customers to consolidate their application deployments and enhance performance. Underwriter Laboratories talked about their strategy to run their mission critical applications including e-Business Suite on Exalogic. Christian Anschuetz, CIO of Underwriter Laboratories (UL) shared how UL is on a growth path - $1B to $2.5B in 5 years- and planning a significant business transformation from a not-for-profit to a for-profit business. To support this growth, UL is planning to simplify its IT environment and the deployment complexity associated with ERP applications and technology it runs on. Their current applications were deployed on variety of hardware platforms and lacked comprehensive disaster recovery architecture. UL embarked on a mission to deploy E-Business Suite on Exalogic. UL’s solution is unique because it is one of the first to deploy a large number of Oracle applications and related Fusion Middleware technologies (SOA, BI, Analytical Applications AIA Foundation Pack and AIA EBS to Siebel UCM prebuilt integration) on the combined Exalogic and Exadata environment. UL is planning to move to a virtualized architecture toward the end of 2012 to securely host external facing applications like iStore Fig 4: Underwrites Labs deployed e-Business Suite on Exalogic to achieve performance gains Key takeaways are: - Fusion Middleware platform is certified with major Oracle Applications Unlimited offerings. Fusion Middleware is the underlying technological infrastructure for Fusion Apps - Customers choose Oracle Fusion Middleware to extend their applications (Apps Unlimited or Fusion Apps) to keep applications upgrade safe and prepare for Fusion Apps - Exalogic is an optimum platform to consolidate applications deployments and enhance performance

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  • Why Fusion Middleware matters to Oracle Applications and Fusion Applications customers?

    - by Harish Gaur
    Did you miss this general session on Monday morning presented by Amit Zavery, VP of Oracle Fusion Middleware Product Management? There will be a recording made available shortly and in the meanwhile, here is a recap. Amit presented 5 strategies customers can leverage today to extend their applications. Figure 1: 5 Oracle Fusion Middleware strategies to extend Oracle Applications & Oracle Fusion Apps 1. Engage Everyone – Provide intuitive and social experience for application users using Oracle WebCenter 2. Extend Enterprise – Extend Oracle Applications to mobile devices using Oracle ADF Mobile 3. Orchestrate Processes – Automate key organization processes across on-premise & cloud applications using Oracle BPM Suite & Oracle SOA Suite 4. Secure the core – Provide single sign-on and self-service provisioning across multiple apps using Oracle Identity Management 5. Optimize Performance – Leverage Exalogic stack to consolidate multiple instance and improve performance of Oracle Applications Session included 3 demonstrations to illustrate these strategies. 1. First demo highlighted significance of mobile applications for unlocking existing investment in Applications such as EBS. Using a native iPhone application interacting with e-Business Suite, demo showed how expense approval can be mobile enabled with enhanced visibility using BI dashboards. 2. Second demo showed how you can extend a banking process in Siebel and Oracle Policy Automation with Oracle BPM Suite.Process starts in Siebel with a customer requesting a loan, and then jumps to OPA for loan recommendations and decision making and loan processing with approvals in handled in BPM Suite. Once approvals are completed Siebel is updated to complete the process. 3. Final demo showcased FMW components inside Fusion Applications, specifically WebCenter. Boeing, Underwriter Laboratories and Electronic Arts joined this quest and discussed 3 different approaches of leveraging Fusion Middleware stack to maximize their investment in Oracle Applications and/or Fusion Applications technology. Let’s briefly review what these customers shared during the session: 1. Extend Fusion Applications We know that Oracle Fusion Middleware is the underlying technology infrastructure for Oracle Fusion Applications. Architecturally, Oracle Fusion Apps leverages several components of Oracle Fusion Middleware from Oracle WebCenter for rich collaborative interface, Oracle SOA Suite & Oracle BPM Suite for orchestrating key underlying processes to Oracle BIEE for dash boarding and analytics. Boeing talked about how they are using Oracle BPM Suite 11g, a key component of Oracle Fusion Middleware with Oracle Fusion Apps to transform their supply chain. Tim Murnin, Director of Supply Chain talked about Boeing’s 5 year supply chain transformation journey. Boeing’s Integrated and Information Management division began with automation of critical RFQ process using Oracle BPM Suite. This 1st phase resulted in 38% reduction in labor costs for RFP. As a next step in this effort, Boeing is now creating a platform to enable electronic Order Management. Fusion Apps are playing a significant role in this phase. Boeing has gone live with Oracle Fusion Product Hub and efforts are underway with Oracle Fusion Distributed Order Orchestration (DOO). So, where does Oracle BPM Suite 11g fit in this equation? Let me explain. Business processes within Fusion Apps are designed using 2 standards: Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) and Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN). These processes can be easily configured using declarative set of tools. Boeing leverages Oracle BPM Suite 11g (which supports BPMN 2.0) and Oracle SOA Suite (which supports BPEL) to “extend” these applications. Traditionally, customizations are done within an app using native technologies. But, instead of making process changes within Fusion Apps, Boeing has taken an approach of building “extensions” layer on top of the application. Fig 2: Boeing’s use of Oracle BPM Suite to orchestrate key supply chain processes across Fusion Apps 2. Maximize Oracle Applications investment Fusion Middleware appeals not only to Fusion Apps customers, but is also leveraged by Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, Siebel and JD Edwards customers significantly. Using Oracle BPM Suite and Oracle SOA Suite is the recommended extension strategy for Oracle Fusion Apps and Oracle Applications Unlimited customers. Electronic Arts, E-Business Suite customer, spoke about their strategy to transform their order-to-cash process using Oracle SOA Suite, Oracle Foundation Packs and Oracle BAM. Udesh Naicker, Sr Director of IT at Elecronic Arts (EA), discussed how growth of social and digital gaming had started to put tremendous pressure on EA’s existing IT infrastructure. He discussed the challenge with millions of micro-transactions coming from several sources – Microsoft Xbox, Paypal, several service providers. EA found Order-2-Cash processes stretched to their limits. They lacked visibility into these transactions across the entire value chain. EA began by consolidating their E-Business Suite R11 instances into single E-Business Suite R12. EA needed to cater to a variety of service requirements, connectivity methods, file formats, and information latency. Their integration strategy was tactical, i.e., using file uploads, TIBCO, SQL scripts. After consolidating E-Business suite, EA standardized their integration approach with Oracle SOA Suite and Oracle AIA Foundation Pack. Oracle SOA Suite is the platform used to extend E-Business Suite R12 and standardize 60+ interfaces across several heterogeneous systems including PeopleSoft, Demantra, SF.com, Workday, and Managed EDI services spanning on-premise, hosted and cloud applications. EA believes that Oracle SOA Suite 11g based extension strategy has helped significantly in the followings ways: - It helped them keep customizations out of E-Business Suite, thereby keeping EBS R12 vanilla and upgrade safe - Developers are now proficient in technology which is also leveraged by Fusion Apps. This has helped them prepare for adoption of Fusion Apps in the future Fig 3: Using Oracle SOA Suite & Oracle e-Business Suite, Electronic Arts built new platform for order processing 3. Consolidate apps and improve scalability Exalogic is an optimal platform for customers to consolidate their application deployments and enhance performance. Underwriter Laboratories talked about their strategy to run their mission critical applications including e-Business Suite on Exalogic. Christian Anschuetz, CIO of Underwriter Laboratories (UL) shared how UL is on a growth path - $1B to $2.5B in 5 years- and planning a significant business transformation from a not-for-profit to a for-profit business. To support this growth, UL is planning to simplify its IT environment and the deployment complexity associated with ERP applications and technology it runs on. Their current applications were deployed on variety of hardware platforms and lacked comprehensive disaster recovery architecture. UL embarked on a mission to deploy E-Business Suite on Exalogic. UL’s solution is unique because it is one of the first to deploy a large number of Oracle applications and related Fusion Middleware technologies (SOA, BI, Analytical Applications AIA Foundation Pack and AIA EBS to Siebel UCM prebuilt integration) on the combined Exalogic and Exadata environment. UL is planning to move to a virtualized architecture toward the end of 2012 to securely host external facing applications like iStore Fig 4: Underwrites Labs deployed e-Business Suite on Exalogic to achieve performance gains Key takeaways are: - Fusion Middleware platform is certified with major Oracle Applications Unlimited offerings. Fusion Middleware is the underlying technological infrastructure for Fusion Apps - Customers choose Oracle Fusion Middleware to extend their applications (Apps Unlimited or Fusion Apps) to keep applications upgrade safe and prepare for Fusion Apps - Exalogic is an optimum platform to consolidate applications deployments and enhance performance TAGS: Fusion Apps, Exalogic, BPM Suite, SOA Suite, e-Business Suite Integration

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  • The Sensemaking Spectrum for Business Analytics: Translating from Data to Business Through Analysis

    - by Joe Lamantia
    One of the most compelling outcomes of our strategic research efforts over the past several years is a growing vocabulary that articulates our cumulative understanding of the deep structure of the domains of discovery and business analytics. Modes are one example of the deep structure we’ve found.  After looking at discovery activities across a very wide range of industries, question types, business needs, and problem solving approaches, we've identified distinct and recurring kinds of sensemaking activity, independent of context.  We label these activities Modes: Explore, compare, and comprehend are three of the nine recognizable modes.  Modes describe *how* people go about realizing insights.  (Read more about the programmatic research and formal academic grounding and discussion of the modes here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235971352_A_Taxonomy_of_Enterprise_Search_and_Discovery) By analogy to languages, modes are the 'verbs' of discovery activity.  When applied to the practical questions of product strategy and development, the modes of discovery allow one to identify what kinds of analytical activity a product, platform, or solution needs to support across a spread of usage scenarios, and then make concrete and well-informed decisions about every aspect of the solution, from high-level capabilities, to which specific types of information visualizations better enable these scenarios for the types of data users will analyze. The modes are a powerful generative tool for product making, but if you've spent time with young children, or had a really bad hangover (or both at the same time...), you understand the difficult of communicating using only verbs.  So I'm happy to share that we've found traction on another facet of the deep structure of discovery and business analytics.  Continuing the language analogy, we've identified some of the ‘nouns’ in the language of discovery: specifically, the consistently recurring aspects of a business that people are looking for insight into.  We call these discovery Subjects, since they identify *what* people focus on during discovery efforts, rather than *how* they go about discovery as with the Modes. Defining the collection of Subjects people repeatedly focus on allows us to understand and articulate sense making needs and activity in more specific, consistent, and complete fashion.  In combination with the Modes, we can use Subjects to concretely identify and define scenarios that describe people’s analytical needs and goals.  For example, a scenario such as ‘Explore [a Mode] the attrition rates [a Measure, one type of Subject] of our largest customers [Entities, another type of Subject] clearly captures the nature of the activity — exploration of trends vs. deep analysis of underlying factors — and the central focus — attrition rates for customers above a certain set of size criteria — from which follow many of the specifics needed to address this scenario in terms of data, analytical tools, and methods. We can also use Subjects to translate effectively between the different perspectives that shape discovery efforts, reducing ambiguity and increasing impact on both sides the perspective divide.  For example, from the language of business, which often motivates analytical work by asking questions in business terms, to the perspective of analysis.  The question posed to a Data Scientist or analyst may be something like “Why are sales of our new kinds of potato chips to our largest customers fluctuating unexpectedly this year?” or “Where can innovate, by expanding our product portfolio to meet unmet needs?”.  Analysts translate questions and beliefs like these into one or more empirical discovery efforts that more formally and granularly indicate the plan, methods, tools, and desired outcomes of analysis.  From the perspective of analysis this second question might become, “Which customer needs of type ‘A', identified and measured in terms of ‘B’, that are not directly or indirectly addressed by any of our current products, offer 'X' potential for ‘Y' positive return on the investment ‘Z' required to launch a new offering, in time frame ‘W’?  And how do these compare to each other?”.  Translation also happens from the perspective of analysis to the perspective of data; in terms of availability, quality, completeness, format, volume, etc. By implication, we are proposing that most working organizations — small and large, for profit and non-profit, domestic and international, and in the majority of industries — can be described for analytical purposes using this collection of Subjects.  This is a bold claim, but simplified articulation of complexity is one of the primary goals of sensemaking frameworks such as this one.  (And, yes, this is in fact a framework for making sense of sensemaking as a category of activity - but we’re not considering the recursive aspects of this exercise at the moment.) Compellingly, we can place the collection of subjects on a single continuum — we call it the Sensemaking Spectrum — that simply and coherently illustrates some of the most important relationships between the different types of Subjects, and also illuminates several of the fundamental dynamics shaping business analytics as a domain.  As a corollary, the Sensemaking Spectrum also suggests innovation opportunities for products and services related to business analytics. The first illustration below shows Subjects arrayed along the Sensemaking Spectrum; the second illustration presents examples of each kind of Subject.  Subjects appear in colors ranging from blue to reddish-orange, reflecting their place along the Spectrum, which indicates whether a Subject addresses more the viewpoint of systems and data (Data centric and blue), or people (User centric and orange).  This axis is shown explicitly above the Spectrum.  Annotations suggest how Subjects align with the three significant perspectives of Data, Analysis, and Business that shape business analytics activity.  This rendering makes explicit the translation and bridging function of Analysts as a role, and analysis as an activity. Subjects are best understood as fuzzy categories [http://georgelakoff.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/hedges-a-study-in-meaning-criteria-and-the-logic-of-fuzzy-concepts-journal-of-philosophical-logic-2-lakoff-19731.pdf], rather than tightly defined buckets.  For each Subject, we suggest some of the most common examples: Entities may be physical things such as named products, or locations (a building, or a city); they could be Concepts, such as satisfaction; or they could be Relationships between entities, such as the variety of possible connections that define linkage in social networks.  Likewise, Events may indicate a time and place in the dictionary sense; or they may be Transactions involving named entities; or take the form of Signals, such as ‘some Measure had some value at some time’ - what many enterprises understand as alerts.   The central story of the Spectrum is that though consumers of analytical insights (represented here by the Business perspective) need to work in terms of Subjects that are directly meaningful to their perspective — such as Themes, Plans, and Goals — the working realities of data (condition, structure, availability, completeness, cost) and the changing nature of most discovery efforts make direct engagement with source data in this fashion impossible.  Accordingly, business analytics as a domain is structured around the fundamental assumption that sense making depends on analytical transformation of data.  Analytical activity incrementally synthesizes more complex and larger scope Subjects from data in its starting condition, accumulating insight (and value) by moving through a progression of stages in which increasingly meaningful Subjects are iteratively synthesized from the data, and recombined with other Subjects.  The end goal of  ‘laddering’ successive transformations is to enable sense making from the business perspective, rather than the analytical perspective.Synthesis through laddering is typically accomplished by specialized Analysts using dedicated tools and methods. Beginning with some motivating question such as seeking opportunities to increase the efficiency (a Theme) of fulfillment processes to reach some level of profitability by the end of the year (Plan), Analysts will iteratively wrangle and transform source data Records, Values and Attributes into recognizable Entities, such as Products, that can be combined with Measures or other data into the Events (shipment of orders) that indicate the workings of the business.  More complex Subjects (to the right of the Spectrum) are composed of or make reference to less complex Subjects: a business Process such as Fulfillment will include Activities such as confirming, packing, and then shipping orders.  These Activities occur within or are conducted by organizational units such as teams of staff or partner firms (Networks), composed of Entities which are structured via Relationships, such as supplier and buyer.  The fulfillment process will involve other types of Entities, such as the products or services the business provides.  The success of the fulfillment process overall may be judged according to a sophisticated operating efficiency Model, which includes tiered Measures of business activity and health for the transactions and activities included.  All of this may be interpreted through an understanding of the operational domain of the businesses supply chain (a Domain).   We'll discuss the Spectrum in more depth in succeeding posts.

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  • PASS: SQLRally Thoughts

    - by Bill Graziano
    The PASS Board recently decided that we wouldn’t put another US-based SQLRally on the calendar until we had a chance to review the program. I wanted to provide some of my thinking around this. Keep in mind that this is the opinion of one Board member. The Board committed to complete two SQLRally events to determine if an event modeled between SQL Saturday and the Summit was viable. We’ve completed the two events and now it’s time to step back and review the program. This is my seventh year on the PASS Board. Over that time people have asked me why PASS does certain things. Many, many times my answer has been “Because that’s the way we did it last year”. And I am tired of giving that answer. We need to take a step back and review the US-based SQLRally before we schedule another one. It would be irresponsible for me as a Board member to commit resources to this without validating that what we’re doing makes sense for the organization and our members. I have no doubt that this was a great event for the attendees. We just need to validate it’s the best use of our resources. Please keep in mind that we haven’t cancelled the event. We’ve just said we need to review it before scheduling another one. My opinion is that some fairly serious changes are needed to the model before we consider it again – IF we do it again. I’ve come to that conclusion after speaking with the Dallas organizers, our HQ team, our Marketing team, other Board members (including one of the Orlando organizers), attendees in Orlando and Dallas and visiting other similar events. I should point out that their views aren’t unanimous on nearly any part of this event -- which is one of the reasons I want to take some time and think about this before continuing. I think it’s helpful to look at the original goals of what we were trying to accomplish. Andy Warren wrote these up in August of 2010. My summary of these goals and some thoughts on each one is below. Many of these thoughts revolve around the growth of SQL Saturdays. In the two years since that document was written these events have grown significantly. The largest SQL Saturdays are now over 500 people which mean they are nearly the same size as our recent SQLRally. Our goals included: Geographic diversity. We wanted an event in an area of the country that was away from any given Summit location. I think that’s still a valid goal. But we also have SQL Saturdays all over the country. What does SQLRally bring to this that SQLSaturday doesn’t? Speaker growth. One of the stated goals was to build a “farm club” for speakers. This gives us a way for speakers to work up to speaking at Summit by speaking in front of larger crowds. What does SQLRally bring to this that the larger SQL Saturdays aren’t providing? Pre-Conference speakers is one obvious answer here. Lower price. On a per-day basis, SQLRally is roughly 1/4th the price of the Summit. We wanted a way for people to experience something Summit-like at a lower price point. The challenge is that we are very budget constrained at that lower price point. International Event Model.  (I need to write more about this but I’m out of time.  I’ll cover it in the next installment.) There are a number of things I really like about SQLRally. I love the smaller conferences. They give me a chance to meet more people than at something the size of Summit. I like the two day format. That gives you two evenings to be at social events with people. Seeing someone a second day is a great way to build a bond with that person. That’s more difficult to do at a SQL Saturday. We also need to talk about the financial aspects of the event. Last year generated a small $17,000 profit on revenues of $200,000. Percentage-wise that’s reasonable but on an absolute basis it’s not a huge amount in our budget. We think this year will lose between $30,000 and $50,000 and take roughly 1,000 hours of HQ time. We don’t have detailed financials back yet but that’s our best guess at this point. Part of that was driven by using a convention center instead of a hotel. Until we get detailed financials back we won’t have the full picture around the financial impact. This event also takes time and mindshare from our Marketing team. This may sound like a small thing but please don’t underestimate it. Our original vision for this was something that would take very little time from our Marketing team and just a few mentions in the Connector. It turned out to need more than that. And all those mentions and emails take up space we could use to talk about other events and other programs. Last I wanted to talk about some of the things I’m thinking about. I don’t think it’s as simple as saying if we just fix “X” it all gets better. Is this that much better of an event than SQL Saturdays? What if we gave a few SQL Saturdays some extra resources? When SQL Saturdays were around 250 people that wasn’t as viable. With some of those events over 500 we need to reconsider this. We need to get back to a hotel venue. That will help with cost and networking. Is this the best use of the 1,000 HQ hours that we invested in the event? Is our price-point correct? I’m leaning toward raising our price closer to Summit on a per-day basis. I think this will let us put on a higher quality event and alleviate much of the budget pressure. Should growing speakers be a focus? Having top-line pre-conference speakers helps market the event. It will also have an impact on pricing and overall profit. We should also ask if it actually does grow speakers. How many of these people will eventually register for Summit? Attend chapters? Is SQLRally a driver into PASS or is it something that chapters, etc. drive people to? Should we have one paid day and one free instead of two paid days? This is a very interesting model that is used by SQLBits in the UK. This gives you the two day aspect as well as offering options for paid and free attendees. I’m very intrigued by this. Should we focus on a topic? Buried in the minutes is a discussion of whether PASS should have a Business Analytics conference separate from Summit. This is an interesting question to consider. Would making SQLRally be focused on a particular topic make it more attractive? Would that even be a SQLRally? Can PASS effectively manage the two events? (FYI - Probably not.) Would it help differentiate it from Summit and SQL Saturday? These are all questions that I think should be asked and answered before we do this event again. And we can’t do that if we don’t take time to have the discussion. I wanted to get this published before I take off for a few days of vacation. When I get back I’d like to write more about why the international events are different and talk about where we go from here.

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  • Finding nuggets in ARC discussions

    - by alanc
    A bit over twenty years ago, Sun formed an Architecture Review Committee (ARC) that evaluates proposals to change interfaces between components in Sun software products. During the OpenSolaris days, we opened many of these discussions to the community. While they’re back behind closed doors, and at a different company now, we still continue to hold these reviews for the software from what’s now the Sun Systems Group division of Oracle. Recently one of these reviews was held (via e-mail discussion) to review a proposal to update our GNU findutils package to the latest upstream release. One of the upstream changes discussed was the addition of an “oldfind” program. In findutils 4.3, find was modified to use the fts() function to walk the directory tree, and oldfind was created to provide the old mechanism in case there were bugs in the new implementation that users needed to workaround. In Solaris 11 though, we still ship the find descended from SVR4 as /usr/bin/find and the GNU find is available as either /usr/bin/gfind or /usr/gnu/bin/find. This raised the discussion of if we should add oldfind, and if so what should we call it. Normally our policy is to only add the g* names for GNU commands that conflict with an existing Solaris command – for instance, we ship /usr/bin/emacs, not /usr/bin/gemacs. In this case however, that seemed like it would be more confusing to have /usr/bin/oldfind be the older version of /usr/bin/gfind not of /usr/bin/find. Thus if we shipped it, it would make more sense to call it /usr/bin/goldfind, which several ARC members noted read more naturally as “gold find” than as “g old find”. One of the concerns we often discuss in ARC is if a change is likely to be understood by users or if it will result in more calls to support. As we hit this part of the discussion on a Friday at the end of a long week, I couldn’t resist putting forth a hypothetical support call for this command: “Hello, Oracle Solaris Support, how may I help you?” “My admin is out sick, but he sent an email that he put the findutils package on our server, and I can run goldfind now. I tried it, but goldfind didn’t find gold.” “Did he get the binutils package too?” “No he just said findutils, do we need binutils?” “Well, gold comes in the binutils package, so goldfind would be able to find gold if you got that package.” “How much does Oracle charge for that package?” “It’s free for Solaris users.” “You mean Oracle ships packages of gold to customers for free?” “Yes, if you get the binutils package, it includes GNU gold.” “New gold? Is that some sort of alchemy, turning stuff into gold?” “Not new gold, gold from the GNU project.” “Oracle’s taking gold from the GNU project and shipping it to me?” “Yes, if you get binutils, that package includes gold along with the other tools from the GNU project.” “And GNU doesn’t mind Oracle taking their gold and giving it to customers?” “No, GNU is a non-profit whose goal is to share their software.” “Sharing software sure, but gold? Where does a non-profit like GNU get gold anyway?” “Oh, Google donated it to them.” “Ah! So Oracle will give me the gold that GNU got from Google!” “Yes, if you get the package from us.” “How do I get the package with the gold?” “Just run pkg install binutils and it will put it on your disk.” “We’ve got multiple disks here - which one will it put it on?” “The one with the system image - do you know which one that is? “Well the note from the admin says the system is on the first disk and the users are on the second disk.” “Okay, so it should go on the first disk then.” “And where will I find the gold?” “It will be in the /usr/bin directory.” “In the user’s bin? So thats on the second disk?” “No, it would be on the system disk, with the other development tools, like make, as, and what.” “So what’s on the first disk?” “Well if the system image is there the commands should all be there.” “All the commands? Not just what?” “Right, all the commands that come with the OS, like the shell, ps, and who.” “So who’s on the first disk too?” “Yes. Did your admin say when he’d be back?” “No, just that he had a massive headache and was going home after I tried to get him to explain this stuff to me.” “I can’t imagine why.” “Oh, is why a command too?” “No, _why was a Ruby programmer.” “Ruby? Do you give those away with the gold too?” “Yes, but it comes in the ruby package, not binutils.” “Oh, I’ll have to have my admin get that package too! Thanks!” Needless to say, we decided this might not be the best idea. Since the GNU package hasn’t had to release a serious bug fix in the new find in the past few years, the new GNU find seems pretty stable, and we always have the SVR4 find to use as a fallback in Solaris, so it didn’t seem that adding oldfind was really necessary, so we passed on including it when we update to the new findutils release. [Apologies to Abbott, Costello, their fans, and everyone who read this far. The Gold (linker) page on Wikipedia may explain some of the above, but can’t explain why goldfind is the old GNU find, but gold is the new GNU ld.]

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  • what appropriate "Allocation Unit Size" for an exFAT SD card with ReadyBoost

    - by Revolter
    I've brought an 4GB SD card and I'm dedicating it for use by ReadyBoost (on Windows7) Im looking to get the most profit on performance, so i've formatted it with exFAT (as recommended by Microsoft) but I have some doubts to define what best .Allocation Unit Size* I should choose. Since I can't get how ReadyBoost/SD card exactly read/seek the data, can someone tell what make choosing an Allocation Unit Size in favor of another for this scheme ? Apparently, ReadyBoost is allocating all the free space in SD card as one huge file, so a big Allocation Unit Size is advised for fastest reading time. I'm not confusing with ordinary HDD's ?

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  • Which cloud hosting should I use? [closed]

    - by Alyssa Marie Isk
    Possible Duplicate: How to find web hosting that meets my requirements? If anyone wants to get some real life karma by giving a tiny non-profit pointers, please advise! I posted a thread about our website with highly variable traffic (www.WorldOceansDay.org). The event is on June 8th, and the traffic goes from 100-400/day in the off-season, to about 200,000 trying to access the site at any one time on June 8th. It's a Wordpress site hosted on GoDaddy shared hosting and predictably crashed horribly. From the internet's feedback, we've decided to move to a cloud server to handle the traffic, but I'm a huge newbie and I don't have very reliable mentorship, so I'm turning to crowdsourcing. We're trying to decide between Amazon Web Services and RackSpace Cloud servers. Our sys admin consultant also suggested GoDaddy's new 4GH but I have had such incredibly bad experiences with GoDaddy thus far that I am hesitant. From what I've read on the internet, RackSpace might be cheaper? Would AWS totally break the bank? We don't have a ton of money to spend on hosting. We'll also be using CloudFlare to cache and serve the pages since they're dynamic. I've found a few AWS & RackSpace calculators but I am not 100% on how to find those numbers... GoDaddy? Google Analytics? AWS calc is here: http://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/calc5.html Rackspace is on the right: http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/cloud_hosting_products/servers/pricing/?0a313380 If anyone can help, or through some miracle feels like walking me through this, I would be incredibly appreciative.

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  • NorthWest Arkansas TechFest

    - by dmccollough
    David Walker is taking Tulsa TechFest on the road to NorthWest Arkansas When Thursday, July 8th 2010 Where Center for Nonprofits @St. Mary’s 1200 West Walnut Street Rogers, Ar 72756 479-936-8218 Map it with Bing! What is NorthWest Arkansas TechFest ? It is a technical conference with a primary focus to provide training/teaching sessions that are immediately beneficial to the broadest range of IT professionals in their day-to-day jobs. We can accomplish this with numerous national and international speakers delivering 75 minute sessions. A charitable non-profit event organized by local area volunteers. Even though it its a free event, we ask that you support the community and PLEASE bring TWO CANS or TWO BUCKS. All canned food will be donated to the NWA Food Bank and all proceeds will be donated to the The Jones Center. Since our first event in the Tulsa area back in 1996, many other communities have been following our example by hosting their own TechFest events: Vancouver TechFest, Houston TechFest, Dallas TechFest, Alberta TechFest and Indy TechFest. We are very PROUD to now bring the event to NorthWest Arkansas! Who should Attend? Every IT Professional IT Job seekers and IT Recruiters and Hiring Managers Developers of all languages Graphic and Web Designers Infrastructure, IT and System Administrators eMarketing Professionals Project Managers Compliance Managers IT Directors and Mangers Chief Compliance Officers Chief Security Officers CIOs/CTOs CEOs/Executive Officers With this many hours of training, anyone in the or wanting to get into the IT Industry will definitely find interesting and instructional presentations by professional speakers. Want to keep informed? More information can be found here.

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  • What should JavaScript be renamed to [closed]

    - by Evan Plaice
    Background: I have been watching Douglas Crockford's series of presentation about JavaScript History (which I highly recommend) lately and a one comment of his specifically piqued my attention. The trademark for 'JavaScript' is owned by Oracle History: Due to time constraints at Netscape, the language was literally written in weeks and released in very buggy form. To make it seem more appealing, Netscape picked JavaScript to appeal to the massively growing population of Java developers. Unfortunately, this pissed off Sun and stirred up a lot of controversy between the two organizations. At some point, they came to an agreement whereby Netscape was given permission to use the name as long as Sun owned the trademark. Some people incorrectly refer to JavaScript as ECMAScript because that's where the standard for the language is registered but, aside from it's current marketing-driven label, it doesn't really have a name. Fast Forward Sun goes down only to be swallowed by Oracle, who has no reservations about litigating for profit, now owns the name. So... If Oracle decides and forces JavaScript to take on a new name, what name would best represent the language?

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  • New ACS Resell Portfolio for OPN Members

    - by swalker
    Oracle Advanced Customer Support (ACS) Services is pleased to announce availability of the ACS Resell Portfolio to Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) members on June 28, 2012. The ACS Resell Portfolio is available to Gold level OPN members and above selling to end users with valid Oracle Premier Support/End User agreements, and in countries where ACS has a local in-country presence to support the partner business. ACS provides mission critical support services for complex IT environments to help maximize performance, achieve higher availability, and reduce risk. The ACS Resell Portfolio can be leveraged to reduce time to market and drive improved end user satisfaction. Including ACS services at point of license sale can maximize your success as an Oracle partner.     On July 10, 2012, Oracle ACS is hosting a 60-minute resell portfolio training session.  Topics include: ACS Resell Portfolio objectives   Partner participation requirements ACS portfolio services enabled for partner resell ACS sales engagement and transaction processes Contracting requirements Attend the following session to hear how you can maximize your profit opportunities by including ACS services, which compliment your solutions with integrated Oracle advanced support technologies.      July 10, 2012 4:00 PM CEST Webconference Session Number: 591 988 820 Session Password: ebh12345 Int’l: 706.501.7506 US: 866.589.6202 Call ID: 95867658 Click here for a list of toll-free international numbers. Please contact [email protected] with any questions or visit the ACS website.

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  • What is the economic rationale behind programmers who work on a open source project (free) instead of a commercial project (not free)?

    - by Kim Jong Woo
    I can't understand why some people dedicate so much hour into a completely open source project without closing it and yielding greater profit from it. I don't think profiting from your code is evil, I think it's a great motivator. Why do some people feel that commercial software and generating money from it is bad? There seems to be this black and white thinking that open source = good, commercial = bad. I hardly find this convincing, and often commercial companies which are supported by sales produce very good results. An open source software in the same niche can't compete against the corporation. Of course, sometimes this is completely the other way around where private companies produce inferior product compared to open source counterparts. So help me understand, why do programmers open source their code when there is commercial prospects for it? Shouldn't the rational programmer or human being make every effort to capitalize on their opportunity cost? Working on a open source project for months when you could've spent the same number of hours at commidity wage or some other monetary compensation?

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  • Java Spotlight Episode 77: Donald Smith on the OpenJDK and Java

    - by Roger Brinkley
    Tweet An interview with Donald Smith about Java and OpenJDK. Joining us this week on the Java All Star Developer Panel are Dalibor Topic, Java Free and Open Source Software Ambassador and Arun Gupta, Java EE Guy. 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 Jersey 2.0 Milestone 2 available Oracle distribution of Eclipse (OEPE) now supports GlassFish 3.1.2 Oracle Linux 6 is now part of the certification matrix for 3.1.2 3rd part of Spring -> Java EE 6 article series published Joe Darcy - Repeating annotations in the works JEP 152: Crypto Operations with Network HSMs JEP 153: Launch JavaFX Applications OpenJDK bug database: Status update OpenJDK Governing Board 2012 Election: Results jtreg update March 2012 Take Two: Comparing JVMs on ARM/Linux The OpenJDK group at Oracle is growing App bundler project now open Events April 4-5, JavaOne Japan, Tokyo, Japan April 11, Cleveland JUG, Cleveland, OH April 12, GreenJUG, Greenville, SC April 17-18, JavaOne Russia, Moscow Russia April 18–20, Devoxx France, Paris, France April 17-20, GIDS, Bangalore April 21, Java Summit, Chennai April 26, Mix-IT, Lyon, France, May 3-4, JavaOne India, Hyderabad, India May 5, Bangalore, Pune, ?? - JUG outreach May 7, OTN Developer Day, Mumbai May 8, OTN Developer Day, Delhi Feature InterviewDonald Smith, MBA, MSc, is Director of Product Management for Oracle. He brings worldwide enterprise software experience, ranging from small "dot-com" through Fortune 500 companies. Donald speaks regularly about Java, open source, community development, business models, business integration and software development politics at conferences and events worldwide including Java One, Oracle World, Sun Tech Days, Evans Developer Relations Conference, OOPSLA, JAOO, Server Side Symposium, Colorado Software Summit and others. Prior to returning to Oracle, Donald was Director of Ecosystem Development for the Eclipse Foundation, an independent not-for-profit foundation supporting the Eclipse open source community. Mail Bag What’s Cool OpenJDK 7 port to Haiku JEP 154: Remove Serialization Goto for the Java Programming Language

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  • How to penetrate the QA industry after layoffs, next steps...

    - by Erik
    Briefly, my background is in manual black box testing of websites and applications within the Agile/waterfall context. Over the past four years I was a member of two web development firms' small QA teams dedicated to testing the deployment of websites for national/international non profits, governmental organizations, and for profit business, to name a few: -Brookings Institution -Senate -Tyco Electronics -Blue Cross/Blue Shield -National Geographic -Discover Channel I have a very strong understanding of the: -SDLC -STLC of bugs and website deployment/development -Use Case & Test Case development In March of this year, my last firm downsized and lost my job as a QA tester. I have been networking and doing a very detailed job search, but have had a very difficult time getting my next job within the QA industry, even with my background as a manual black box QA tester in the website development context. My direct question to all of you: What are some ways I can be more competitive and get hired? Options that could get me competitive: Should I go back to school and learn some more 'hard' skills in website development and client side technologies, e.g.: -HTML -CSS -JavaScript Learn programming: -PHP -C# -Ruby -SQL -Python -Perl -?? Get Certified as a QA Tester, there are a countless numbers of programs to become a Certified Tester. Most, if not all jobs, being advertised now require Automated Testing experience, in: -QTP -Loadrunner -Selenium -ETC. Should I learn, Automated testing skills, via a paid course, or teach myself? --Learn scripting languages to understand the automated testing process better? Become a Certified "Project Management Professional" (PMP) to prove to hiring managers that I 'get' the project development life cycle? At the end of the day I need to be competitive and get hired as a QA tester and want to build upon my skills within the QA web development field. How should I do this, without reinventing the wheel? Any help in this regard would be fabulous. Thanks! .erik

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