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• Question SpeechSynthesizer.SetOutputToAudioStream audio format problem

  - by Chris Kugler

  Hi, I'm currently working on an application which requires transmission of speech encoded to a specific audio format. System.Speech.AudioFormat.SpeechAudioFormatInfo synthFormat = new System.Speech.AudioFormat.SpeechAudioFormatInfo(System.Speech.AudioFormat.EncodingFormat.Pcm, 8000, 16, 1, 16000, 2, null); This states that the audio is in PCM format, 8000 samples per second, 16 bits per sample, mono, 16000 average bytes per second, block alignment of 2. When I attempt to execute the following code there is nothing written to my MemoryStream instance; however when I change from 8000 samples per second up to 11025 the audio data is written successfully. SpeechSynthesizer synthesizer = new SpeechSynthesizer(); waveStream = new MemoryStream(); PromptBuilder pbuilder = new PromptBuilder(); PromptStyle pStyle = new PromptStyle(); pStyle.Emphasis = PromptEmphasis.None; pStyle.Rate = PromptRate.Fast; pStyle.Volume = PromptVolume.ExtraLoud; pbuilder.StartStyle(pStyle); pbuilder.StartParagraph(); pbuilder.StartVoice(VoiceGender.Male, VoiceAge.Teen, 2); pbuilder.StartSentence(); pbuilder.AppendText("This is some text."); pbuilder.EndSentence(); pbuilder.EndVoice(); pbuilder.EndParagraph(); pbuilder.EndStyle(); synthesizer.SetOutputToAudioStream(waveStream, synthFormat); synthesizer.Speak(pbuilder); synthesizer.SetOutputToNull(); There are no exceptions or errors recorded when using a sample rate of 8000 and I couldn't find anything useful in the documentation regarding SetOutputToAudioStream and why it succeeds at 11025 samples per second and not 8000. I have a workaround involving a wav file that I generated and converted to the correct sample rate using some sound editing tools, but I would like to generate the audio from within the application if I can. One particular point of interest was that the SpeechRecognitionEngine accepts that audio format and successfully recognized the speech in my synthesized wave file... Update: Recently discovered that this audio format succeeds for certain installed voices, but fails for others. It fails specifically for LH Michael and LH Michelle, and failure varies for certain voice settings defined in the PromptBuilder.

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• Time required for a process to complete

  - by yelkawar

  I am new to C# world. I am attempting to calculate time taken by a algorithum for the purpose of comparison. Following code measures the elapsed time from when a subroutine is called until the subroutine returns to the main program.This example is taken from "Data structures through C#" by Michael McMillan. After running this program the output is Time=0, which is incorrect. The program appears to be logically correct. Can anybody help me. Following is the code using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Collections; using System.Linq; using System.Text; namespace Chap1 { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { int num1 = 100; int num2 = 200; Console.WriteLine("num1: " + num1); Console.WriteLine("num2: " + num2); Swap<int>(ref num1, ref num2); Console.WriteLine("num1: " + num1); Console.WriteLine("num2: " + num2); string str1 = "Sam"; string str2 = "Tom"; Console.WriteLine("String 1: " + str1); Console.WriteLine("String 2: " + str2); Swap<string>(ref str1, ref str2); Console.WriteLine("String 1: " + str1); Console.WriteLine("String 2: " + str2); Console.ReadKey(); } static void Swap<T>(ref T val1, ref T val2) { T temp; temp = val1; val1 = val2; val2 = temp; } } class Timing { TimeSpan StartTiming; TimeSpan duration; public Timing() { StartTiming = new TimeSpan(0); duration = new TimeSpan(0); } public TimeSpan startTime() { GC.Collect(); GC.WaitForPendingFinalizers(); StartTiming = Process.GetCurrentProcess().Threads[0].UserProcessorTime; return StartTiming; } public void stopTime() { duration = Process.GetCurrentProcess().Threads[0].UserProcessorTime.Subtract(StartTiming); } public TimeSpan result() { return duration; } } }

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• Parsing secure entries XML file with jquery

  - by user573131

  Apologies if this is elementary. I'm primarily a front end designer/dev. I have webform through a form service called wufoo. Wufoo generates a lovely XML (or json) file that can be grabed and parsed. I'm trying to grab the entries xml feed that is associated with the form and parse it via jquery to show who has entered. Im using the following code (which works with a local xml file). http://bostonwebsitemakeover.com/2/test <script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3.2/jquery.js"></script> <script> $(document).ready(function () { $.ajax({ type: "GET", url: "people.xml", dataType: "xml", success: xmlParser }); }); function xmlParser(xml) { $('#load').fadeOut(); $(xml).find("Entry").each(function () { $(".main").append('<div class="entry">' + $(this).find("Field1").text() + ' ' + $(this).find("Field2").text() + ' http://twitter.com/' + $(this).find("Field17").text() + '</div>'); $(".entry").fadeIn(1000); }); } </script> My XML file contains the following: <?xml version="1.0"?> <Entries> <Entry> <EntryId>1</EntryId> <Field1>Meaghan</Field1> <Field2>Severson</Field2> <Field17/> </Entry> <Entry> <EntryId>2</EntryId> <Field1>Michael</Field1> <Field2>Flint</Field2> <Field17>michaelflint</Field17> </Entry> <Entry> <EntryId>3</EntryId> <Field1>Niki</Field1> <Field2>Brown</Field2> <Field17>nikibrown</Field17> </Entry> <Entry> <EntryId>4</EntryId> <Field1>Niki</Field1> <Field2>Brown</Field2> <Field17>nikibrown</Field17> </Entry> </Entries> I'm wondering how I would do this with the xml file hosted on the wufoo (which is https) So I guess Im asking how do I authenticate the feed via jquery? Or do i need to do this via json? Could someone explain how?

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• passing data from a client form via jquery ajax dinamicly

  - by quantum62

  i wanna insert specification of members that enter in textboxs of form in the database .i do this operation with jquery ajax when i call webmetod with static value the operation do successfully.for example this code is ok. $.ajax({ type: "POST", url:"MethodInvokeWithJQuery.aspx/executeinsert", data: '{ "username": "user1", "name":"john","family":"michael","password":"123456","email": "[email protected]", "tel": "123456", "codemeli": "123" }', contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8", dataType: "json", async: true, cache: false, success: function (msg) { $('#myDiv2').text(msg.d); }, error: function (x, e) { alert("The call to the server side failed. " + x.responseText); } } ); but when i wanna use of values that enter in textboxes dynamically error occur.whats problem?i try this two code <script type="text/javascript"> $(document).ready( function () { $("#Button1").click( function () { var username, family, name, email, tel, codemeli, password; username = $('#<%=TextBox1.ClientID%>').val(); name = $('#<%=TextBox2.ClientID%>').val(); family = $('#<%=TextBox3.ClientID%>').val(); password = $('#<%=TextBox4.ClientID%>').val(); email = $('#<%=TextBox5.ClientID%>').val(); tel = $('#<%=TextBox6.ClientID%>').val(); codemeli = $('#<%=TextBox7.ClientID%>').val(); $.ajax( { type: "POST", url: "WebApplication20.aspx/executeinsert", data: "{'username':'username','name':name, 'family':family,'password':password, 'email':email,'tel':tel, 'codemeli':codemeli}", contentType: "application/json;charset=utf-8", dataType: "json", async: true, cache: false, success: function(msg) { alert(msg); }, error: function (x, e) { alert("The call to the server side failed. " + x.responseText); } } ); } ) }) </script> or $(document).ready( function () { $("#Button1").click( function () { var username, family, name, email, tel, codemeli, password; username = $('#<%=TextBox1.ClientID%>').val(); name = $('#<%=TextBox2.ClientID%>').val(); family = $('#<%=TextBox3.ClientID%>').val(); password = $('#<%=TextBox4.ClientID%>').val(); email = $('#<%=TextBox5.ClientID%>').val(); tel = $('#<%=TextBox6.ClientID%>').val(); codemeli = $('#<%=TextBox7.ClientID%>').val(); $.ajax( { type: "POST", url: "WebApplication20.aspx/executeinsert", data: '{"username" : '+username+', "name": '+name+', "family": '+family+', "password": '+password+', "email": '+email+', "tel": '+tel+' , "codemeli": '+codemeli+'}', contentType: "application/json;charset=utf-8", dataType: "json", async: true, cache: false, success: function(msg) { alert(msg); }, error: function (x, e) { alert("The call to the server side failed. " + x.responseText); } } ); } ) })

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• Working with friends. Poor career choice?

  - by a_person

  Hi all, Hope you can help me solve somewhat of a moral dilemma. Some time ago, after just a few years of living in U.S. and having to take any job I could get my hands on a friend of mine submitted recommended me for an open position at the company that he was working for. I could have not been happier. I do not have a degree of any sort, however, by being passionate about CS and with constant drive for self education I've became a somewhat of a strong generalist. Every place I worked for recognized me for that quality and used me on various projects where set of technology in hand had no overlap with set of knowledge of the team members. Rapidly I've advanced to Sr. Programmer position and the trend of me following a friend from one place to another have started and continued on for a few years. My friend's goal always been to become an IT Director, mine is to become the best programmer I can be. To my knowledge I've accommodated his goals as much as I could by taking a back seat, and letting him take the lead. Fast forward to today. He's a manager, and I am on his team. I am unhappy and I in considerable amount of suffering. I am not being utilized to my potential, it's almost exact opposite, I am being micromanaged to an unhealthy extent, my decisions, and suggestions are constantly met with negative connotation. Last week I had to hear about how my friend is a better programmer than I am. My ego was ecstatic about this one /s. In addition to that working in the field of BI have exhausted itself for most parts. The only pleasure of my work is being derived from making everything as dynamic and parameter driven as possible. This is the only area where a friend of mine does not feel competent enough to actually micromanage. Because of my situation I feel a fair amount of guilt and ever growing resentment. I need your advice, maybe you've dealt with this expression of ego before, needs of self vs the needs of your friend. Is working with a friend a poor choice? Thank you for reading in.

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• Rails Tutorial Chapter 4 2nd Ed. Title Helper not being called with out argument.

  - by SuddenlyAwakened

  I am running through the Rails Tutorial by Michael Hartl (Screen Cast). Ran into the and issue in chapter 4 on the title helper. I have been putting my own twist on the code as I go to make sure I understand it all. However on this one I it is very similar and I am not quite sure why it is acting the way it is. Here is the code: Application.html.erb <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <%- Rails.logger.info("Testing: #{yield(:title)}") %> <title><%= full_title(yield(:title)) %></title> <%= stylesheet_link_tag "application", :media => "all" %> <%= javascript_include_tag "application" %> <%= csrf_meta_tags %> </head> <body> <%= yield %> </body> </html> Application_helper.rb module ApplicationHelper def full_title(page_title) full_title = "Ruby on Rails Tutorial App" full_title += " | #{page_title}" unless page_title.blank? end end Home.html.erb <h1><%= t(:sample_app) %></h1> <p> This is the home page for the <a href="http://railstutorial.org/">Ruby on Rails Tutorial</a> sample application </p> about.html.erb <% provide(:title, t(:about_us)) %> <h1><%= t(:about_us) %></h1> <p> The <a href="http://railstutorial.org/">Ruby on Rails Tutorial</a> is a project to make a book and screencast to teach web development with <a href="http://railstutorial.org/">Ruby on Rails</a>. This is the sample application for the tutorial. </p> What Happens: The code works fine when I set the provide method like on the about page. However when I do not it does not seem to even call the helper. I am assuming that because no title is passed back. Any ideas on what I am doing wrong? Thank you all for your help.

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• If conditon showing alert even when the condition is false

  - by Adrian

  I have problem with if condition. I write a script who should showing alert when value from field #customer-age is less than 21 (the calculated age of person). The problem is - the alert is showing every time - when the value is less and greater than 21. My html code is: <div class="type-text"> <label for="birthday">Date1:</label> <input type="text" size="20" id="birthday" name="birthday" value="" readonly="readonly" /> </div> <div class="type-text"> <span id="customer-age" readonly="readonly"></span> </div> <span id="date_from_start">23/11/2012</span> and script looks like: function getAge() { var sday = $('#date_from_start').html(); var split_date1 = sday.split("/"); var todayDate = new Date(split_date1[2],split_date1[1] - 1,split_date1[0]); var bday = $('#birthday').val(); var split_date2 = bday.split("/"); var birthDate = new Date(split_date2[2],split_date2[1] - 1,split_date2[0]); var age = todayDate.getFullYear() - birthDate.getFullYear(); var m = todayDate.getMonth() - birthDate.getMonth(); if (m < 0 || (m === 0 && todayDate.getDate() < birthDate.getDate())) { age--; } return age; } var startDate = new Date("1935,01,01"); $('#birthday').datepicker({ dateFormat: 'dd/mm/yy', dayNamesMin: ['Nie', 'Pon', 'Wt', 'Sr', 'Czw', 'Pt', 'Sob'], dayNames: ['Niedziela','Poniedzialek','Wtorek','Sroda','Czwartek','Piatek','Sobota'], monthNamesShort: ['Sty', 'Lut', 'Mar', 'Kwi', 'Maj', 'Cze', 'Lip', 'Sie', 'Wrz', 'Paz', 'Lis', 'Gru'], changeMonth: true, changeYear: true, numberOfMonths: 1, constrainInput: true, firstDay: 1, dateFormat: 'dd/mm/yy', yearRange: '-77:-18', defaultDate: startDate, onSelect: function(dateText, inst) { $('#customer-age').html(getAge(new Date(dateText))); var cage = $('#customer-age').val(); if (cage < 21) { alert('< 21 year'); } else { } }, maxDate: +0 }); The workin code you can check on http://jsfiddle.net/amarcinkowski/DmYBt/

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• stxxl Assertion `it != root_node_.end()' failed

  - by Fabrizio Silvestri

  I am receiving this assertion failed error when trying to insert an element in a stxxl map. The entire assertion error is the following: resCache: /usr/include/stxxl/bits/containers/btree/btree.h:470: std::pair , bool stxxl::btree::btree::insert(const value_type&) [with KeyType = e_my_key, DataType = unsigned int, CompareType = comp_type, unsigned int RawNodeSize = 16384u, unsigned int RawLeafSize = 131072u, PDAllocStrategy = stxxl::SR, stxxl::btree::btree::value_type = std::pair]: Assertion `it != root_node_.end()' failed. Aborted Any idea? Edit: Here's the code fragment void request_handler::handle_request(my_key& query, reply& rep) { c_++; strip(query.content); std::cout << "Received query " << query.content << " by thread " << boost::this_thread::get_id() << ". It is number " << c_ << "\n"; strcpy(element.first.content, query.content); element.second = c_; testcache_.insert(element); STXXL_MSG("Records in map: " << testcache_.size()); } Edit2 here's more details (I omit constants, e.g. MAX_QUERY_LEN) struct comp_type : std::binary_function<my_key, my_key, bool> { bool operator () (const my_key & a, const my_key & b) const { return strncmp(a.content, b.content, MAX_QUERY_LEN) < 0; } static my_key max_value() { return max_key; } static my_key min_value() { return min_key; } }; typedef stxxl::map<my_key, my_data, comp_type> cacheType; cacheType testcache_; request_handler::request_handler() :testcache_(NODE_CACHE_SIZE, LEAF_CACHE_SIZE) { c_ = 0; memset(max_key.content, (std::numeric_limits<unsigned char>::max)(), MAX_QUERY_LEN); memset(min_key.content, (std::numeric_limits<unsigned char>::min)(), MAX_QUERY_LEN); testcache_.enable_prefetching(); STXXL_MSG("Records in map: " << testcache_.size()); }

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• boostrap 3.1.1 navbar - toggle button does not appear on page

  - by PST

  I am trying to use bootstrap nav bar with toggle functionality. With sample code as below, my page is not showing toggle button on the header bar. NavHeader (NavBarMenuCaption) and 1st menu item appears on the same line. Bootply link http://www.bootply.com/123050# what could be wrong in below code? <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <title>Bootstap menu demo</title> <link rel="stylesheet" href="vendor/bootstrap-3.1.1-dist/css/bootstrap.min.css"> </head> <body> <h2>This is bootstap navbar demo</h2> <nav class="navbar navbar-default"> <div class="navbar-header"> <button type="button" class="navbar-toggle" data-toggle="collapse" data-target="#example-navbar-collapse"> <span class="sr-only">Toggle navigation</span> <span class="icon-bar">-</span> <span class="icon-bar">-</span> <span class="icon-bar">-</span> </button> <a class="navbar-brand" href="#">NavBarMenuCaption</a> </div> <div class="navbar-collapse collapse" id="example-navbar-collapse"> <ul class="nav nav-pills nav-stacked"> <li ><a href="#">Home</a></li> <li class="active"><a href="#">About</a></li> <li><a href="#">Products</a></li> <li><a href="#">Contact</a></li> </ul> </div> </nav> <script type="text/javascript" src="vendor/jquery-2.1.0/jquery-2.1.0.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="vendor/bootstrap-3.1.1-dist/js/bootstrap.min.js"></script> </body>

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• HTML Language question

  - by Mike

  Note my code below. I am trying to figure out why my data is not changing to Spanish. I understand it to be one line of code and that is all within the HTML attribute lang=”es”. Any help would be greatly appreciated. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xlmns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang=”es” xml:lang="en"> <head> <title>JavaJam Coffee House</title> <link href="javajam.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> </head> <body bgcolor="brown"> <h1>JavaJam Coffee House</h1> <ul> <li>Specialty Coffee and Tea</li> <li>Bagels, Muffins, and Organic Snacks</li> <li>Music and Poetry Readings</li> <li>Usability Studies</li> <li>Open Mic Night</li> </ul> <br></br> <p>12312 Main Street<br> Mountain Home, CA 93923<br> 1-888-555-5555</br> </p> <p> <em> <small>Copyright &copy; 2008 JavaJam Coffee House</em></p> E-Mail <a href="mailto;[email protected]"> Michael J. Crawley</a> </body> </html>

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• How do I remove a root kit from Windows XP?

  - by Chloe

  I was looking for root kits following these instructions http://computersight.com/software/how-to-manually-remove-rootkit/ and saw this in my boot log: Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\awhk9fmc.SYS I tried to search for that filename in Google but there was absolutely nothing found. I tried to look at the file on the disk but could not find it. Nearly every other file is there. I even tried to boot in Windows 98 and mount the NTFS and see the file, but it still wasn't there. I ran a full scan with Microsoft Security Essentials but it found nothing. When I rebooted, I saw this line instead: Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\a6n163gl.SYS How can I remove this? How can I find out what it does? How can I find out when it was put in? How can I find out who wrote it? Here is my full boot log: Service Pack 3 10 31 2012 17:35:36.500 Loaded driver \WINDOWS\system32\ntoskrnl.exe Loaded driver \WINDOWS\system32\hal.dll Loaded driver \WINDOWS\system32\KDCOM.DLL Loaded driver \WINDOWS\system32\BOOTVID.dll Loaded driver sptd.sys Loaded driver ACPI.sys Loaded driver \WINDOWS\system32\DRIVERS\WMILIB.SYS Loaded driver pci.sys Loaded driver isapnp.sys Loaded driver pciide.sys Loaded driver \WINDOWS\system32\DRIVERS\PCIIDEX.SYS Loaded driver MountMgr.sys Loaded driver ftdisk.sys Loaded driver PartMgr.sys Loaded driver VolSnap.sys Loaded driver atapi.sys Loaded driver disk.sys Loaded driver \WINDOWS\system32\DRIVERS\CLASSPNP.SYS Loaded driver fltmgr.sys Loaded driver sr.sys Loaded driver MpFilter.sys Loaded driver KSecDD.sys Loaded driver WudfPf.sys Loaded driver Ntfs.sys Loaded driver NDIS.sys Loaded driver uagp35.sys Loaded driver Mup.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\amdk7.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\sisgrp.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\i8042prt.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\mouclass.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\kbdclass.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\imapi.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\cdrom.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\redbook.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\GEARAspiWDM.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\drivers\cmuda.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\usbohci.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\usbehci.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\sisnicxp.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\avzk9sf5.SYS Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\fdc.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\serial.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\serenum.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\parport.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\gameenum.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\serscan.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\drivers\DrmCAudio.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\audstub.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\rasl2tp.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\ndistapi.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\ndiswan.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\raspppoe.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\raspptp.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\msgpc.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\psched.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\ptilink.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\raspti.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\tap0901.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\termdd.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\swenum.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\update.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\mssmbios.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\dtsoftbus01.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\NDProxy.SYS Did not load driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\NDProxy.SYS Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\usbhub.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\flpydisk.sys Did not load driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\lbrtfdc.SYS Did not load driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\Sfloppy.SYS Did not load driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\i2omgmt.SYS Did not load driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\Changer.SYS Did not load driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\Cdaudio.SYS Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\Fs_Rec.SYS Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\Null.SYS Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\Beep.SYS Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\drivers\vga.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\mnmdd.SYS Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\DRIVERS\RDPCDD.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\Msfs.SYS Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\Npfs.SYS Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\rasacd.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\ipsec.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\tcpip.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\netbt.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\drivers\afd.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\netbios.sys Did not load driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\PCIDump.SYS Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\srvkp.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\rdbss.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\mrxsmb.sys Loaded driver Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\ipnat.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\wanarp.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\Fips.SYS Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\ctxusbm.sys Loaded driver \??\C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\cbfs3.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\Fastfat.SYS Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\Cdfs.SYS Did not load driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\rdbss.sys Did not load driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\mrxsmb.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\drivers\wdmaud.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\drivers\sysaudio.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\drivers\splitter.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\drivers\aec.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\drivers\swmidi.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\drivers\DMusic.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\drivers\kmixer.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\drivers\drmkaud.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\mrxdav.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\ParVdm.SYS Did not load driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\StarOpen.SYS Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\srv.sys Did not load driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\ipnat.sys Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\HTTP.sys

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• Connecting debian and windows via IPsec VPN with Racoon and ipsec-tools

  - by Michi Qne

  I've some trouble with the IPsec configuration on my debian server (6 squeeze). This server should connect via IPsec VPN to an windows server, which is protected by an firewall. I've used racoon and ipsec-tools and this tutorial http://wiki.debian.org/IPsec. However, I am not quite sure, if this tutorial fits to my purpose, because of some differences: my Host and my gateway are the same server. So I don't have two different ip addresses. I guess, that's not a problem the other server is an windows system behind a firewall. Hopefully, not a problem the subnet of the windows system is /32 not /24. So I change it to /32. I worked through the tutorial step by step, but I wasn't able to route the ip. The following command didn't work for me: ip route add to 172.16.128.100/32 via XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX src XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX So I tried the following instead: ip route add to 172.16.128.100 .., which obviously not solved the problem. The next problem is the compression. The windows doesn't use a compression, but 'compression_algorithm none;' doesn't work with my racoon. So the current value is 'compression_algorithm deflate;' So my current result looks like this: When I am trying to ping the windows host (ping 172.16.128.100), I receive the following error message from ping: ping: sendmsg: Operation not permitted And racoon logs: racoon: ERROR: failed to get sainfo. After googling for a while I came to no conclusion, what's the solution. Does this error message mean that the first phase of IPsec works? I am thankful for any advice. I guess my configs might be helpful. My racoon.conf looks like this: path pre_shared_key "/etc/racoon/psk.txt"; remote YYY.YYY.YYY.YYY { exchange_mode main; proposal { lifetime time 8 hour; encryption_algorithm 3des; hash_algorithm sha1; authentication_method pre_shared_key; dh_group 2; } } sainfo address XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX/32 any address 172.16.128.100/32 any { pfs_group 2; lifetime time 8 hour; encryption_algorithm aes 256; authentication_algorithm hmac_sha1; compression_algorithm deflate; } And my ipsec-tools.conf looks like this: flush; spdflush; spdadd XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX/32 172.16.128.100/32 any -P out ipsec esp/tunnel/XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX-YYY.YYY.YYY.YYY/require; spdadd 172.16.128.100/32 XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX/32 any -P in ipsec esp/tunnel/YYY.YYY.YYY.YYY-XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX/require; If anyone has an advice, that would be awesome. Thanks in Advance. Greets, Michael It was a simple copy-and-paste error in an ip address.

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• High Load mysql on Debian server

  - by Oleg Abrazhaev

  I have Debian server with 32 gb memory. And there is apache2, memcached and nginx on this server. Memory load always on maximum. Only 500m free. Most memory leak do MySql. Apache only 70 clients configured, other services small memory usage. When mysql use all memory it stops. And nothing works, need mysql reboot. Mysql configured use maximum 24 gb memory. I have hight weight InnoDB bases. (400000 rows, 30 gb). And on server multithread daemon, that makes many inserts in this tables, thats why InnoDB. There is my mysql config. [mysqld] # # * Basic Settings # default-time-zone = "+04:00" user = mysql pid-file = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid socket = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock port = 3306 basedir = /usr datadir = /var/lib/mysql tmpdir = /tmp language = /usr/share/mysql/english skip-external-locking default-time-zone='Europe/Moscow' # # Instead of skip-networking the default is now to listen only on # localhost which is more compatible and is not less secure. # # * Fine Tuning # #low_priority_updates = 1 concurrent_insert = ALWAYS wait_timeout = 600 interactive_timeout = 600 #normal key_buffer_size = 2024M #key_buffer_size = 1512M #70% hot cache key_cache_division_limit= 70 #16-32 max_allowed_packet = 32M #1-16M thread_stack = 8M #40-50 thread_cache_size = 50 #orderby groupby sort sort_buffer_size = 64M #same myisam_sort_buffer_size = 400M #temp table creates when group_by tmp_table_size = 3000M #tables in memory max_heap_table_size = 3000M #on disk open_files_limit = 10000 table_cache = 10000 join_buffer_size = 5M # This replaces the startup script and checks MyISAM tables if needed # the first time they are touched myisam-recover = BACKUP #myisam_use_mmap = 1 max_connections = 200 thread_concurrency = 8 # # * Query Cache Configuration # #more ignored query_cache_limit = 50M query_cache_size = 210M #on query cache query_cache_type = 1 # # * Logging and Replication # # Both location gets rotated by the cronjob. # Be aware that this log type is a performance killer. #log = /var/log/mysql/mysql.log # # Error logging goes to syslog. This is a Debian improvement :) # # Here you can see queries with especially long duration log_slow_queries = /var/log/mysql/mysql-slow.log long_query_time = 1 log-queries-not-using-indexes # # The following can be used as easy to replay backup logs or for replication. # note: if you are setting up a replication slave, see README.Debian about # other settings you may need to change. #server-id = 1 #log_bin = /var/log/mysql/mysql-bin.log server-id = 1 log-bin = /var/lib/mysql/mysql-bin #replicate-do-db = gate log-bin-index = /var/lib/mysql/mysql-bin.index log-error = /var/lib/mysql/mysql-bin.err relay-log = /var/lib/mysql/relay-bin relay-log-info-file = /var/lib/mysql/relay-bin.info relay-log-index = /var/lib/mysql/relay-bin.index binlog_do_db = 24avia expire_logs_days = 10 max_binlog_size = 100M read_buffer_size = 4024288 innodb_buffer_pool_size = 5000M innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit = 2 innodb_thread_concurrency = 8 table_definition_cache = 2000 group_concat_max_len = 16M #binlog_do_db = gate #binlog_ignore_db = include_database_name # # * BerkeleyDB # # Using BerkeleyDB is now discouraged as its support will cease in 5.1.12. #skip-bdb # # * InnoDB # # InnoDB is enabled by default with a 10MB datafile in /var/lib/mysql/. # Read the manual for more InnoDB related options. There are many! # You might want to disable InnoDB to shrink the mysqld process by circa 100MB. #skip-innodb # # * Security Features # # Read the manual, too, if you want chroot! # chroot = /var/lib/mysql/ # # For generating SSL certificates I recommend the OpenSSL GUI "tinyca". # # ssl-ca=/etc/mysql/cacert.pem # ssl-cert=/etc/mysql/server-cert.pem # ssl-key=/etc/mysql/server-key.pem [mysqldump] quick quote-names max_allowed_packet = 500M [mysql] #no-auto-rehash # faster start of mysql but no tab completition [isamchk] key_buffer = 32M key_buffer_size = 512M # # * NDB Cluster # # See /usr/share/doc/mysql-server-*/README.Debian for more information. # # The following configuration is read by the NDB Data Nodes (ndbd processes) # not from the NDB Management Nodes (ndb_mgmd processes). # # [MYSQL_CLUSTER] # ndb-connectstring=127.0.0.1 # # * IMPORTANT: Additional settings that can override those from this file! # The files must end with '.cnf', otherwise they'll be ignored. # !includedir /etc/mysql/conf.d/ Please, help me make it stable. Memory used /etc/mysql # free total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 32930800 32766424 164376 0 139208 23829196 -/+ buffers/cache: 8798020 24132780 Swap: 33553328 44660 33508668 Maybe my problem not in memory, but MySQL stops every day. As you can see, cache memory free 24 gb. Thank to Michael Hampton? for correction. Load overage on server 3.5. Maybe hdd or another problem? Maybe my config not optimal for 30gb InnoDB ?

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• Exchange Server 2007 Setup

  - by AlamedaDad

  Hi, I'm working on a upgrade to Exchange 2007 and I wanted to get some advise on hardware choices. We currently have an Exchange 2003 STD server with 400 users split between 6 AD Sites, that is housed on a single server. We need to move to a redundant, fault tolerant system to support our users. I'm planning on installing 2 Dell 1950 servers with W2k8-std to act as CAS and Hub servers, with NLB to allow abstraction of the actual server name to the users. There won't be an edge system since we have a Barracuda box already that will handle in/out spam/virus filtering. Backend I'm planning on 2 mailbox servers which will be Dell 2950s with 16GB RAM, 2 either dual-core or quad-core CPUs and 6 300GB SAS drives in some RAID config. These systems will be clustered using W2k8 Ent clustering and running CCR in Exchange. My questions are as follows: Is 16GB enough RAM for serving that many mailboxes along with the windows clustering and ccr? I'm trying to figure out disk layouts and I'm unsure of whether to use all local disk or some local and some SAN, via an OpenFiler iSCSI server. The SAN would be a Dell 2850 with 6 - 300GB SCSI drives and a PERC controller to slice as I want, with 8GB RAM. Option 1: 2 drives, RAID 1 - OS 2 drives, RAID 1 - Logs 2 drives, RAID 1 - Mail stores Option 2: 2 drives, RAID 1 - OS and logs 4 drives, RAID 5 - Mail Stores and scratch space for eseutil. Option 3: 2 drives, RAID 1 - OS 2 drives, RAID 1 - Logs 2 drives, RAID 0 - scratch space ~300GB iSCSI volume for mail stores Option 4: 2 drives, RAID 1 - OS 4 drives, RAID 5 - scratch space ~300GB iSCSI volume for mail stores ~300GB iSCSI volume for logs I have 2 sockets for CPUs and need to chose between dual and quad cores. The dual core have faster clocks but less cache and I'm thinking older architecture. Am I better off with more cores and cache while sacraficing clock speed? I am planning on adding the new E2K7 cluster to the E2K3 server and then move each mailbox over, all at once, then remove the old server. This seems more complicated than simply getting rid of the 2003 server and then adding the 2007 cluster and restoring the mailboxes using PowerControls or exmerge. The migration option lets me do this on my time, where a cutover means it all needs to work at once. If I go with the cutover method, how can I prebuild the servers and add them to the domain right after removing the 2003 server, or can't I? I think the answer is no and the migration is my only real option if I want to prebuild. I need to also migrate about 30GB of Public Folders. Is there anything special about this, other than specifying in the E2K7 install that I want older Outlook clients and PF's setup? I guess I could even keep the E2K3 server to host just the PFs? Lastly, if I have a mix of Outlook 200, 2003 and 2007 what do I need to do to make sure they all have access to the GAL and OAB? At time of cutover, we'll be at like 90% 2007, but we will have some older stuff around. My plan is to use Outlook Anywhere on laptops that are used outside the physical network. Are there any gotchas involved in that? I'm even thinking about using is for all Outlook clients, does anyone do that? The reason I'm considering it is that our WAN is really VPN tunnels over internet connections, so not a fully messhed, stable WAN. Thank you all very much for the assistance in advance and I look forward to discussion of these points! Regards...Michael

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• XenServer Converting HVM to Paravirtualised

  - by Karl Kloppenborg

  Recently I have been tasked with the daunting process of converting a setup of HVM enabled VMs (running on Citrix XenServer 5.6.0) into PV (paravirtualised) containers. The constraints of the project was that: The operating system must be functionally identical after the migration. minimal modification to the operating system (with exception of kernel / drive mapping) I also was allowed to change the bootloader(ie, grub) in what ever way I see fit. However, I have attempted this, I will firstly like to show you my steps I took. This at the moment is CentOS5.5 specific: Steps: yum install kernel-xen This installed: 2.6.18-194.32.1.el5xen edited: /boot/grub/menu.lst changed my specs to match: title CentOS (2.6.18-194.32.1.el5xen) root (hd0,0) kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.18-194.32.1.el5xen ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 console=xvc0 initrd /initrd-2.6.18-194.32.1.el5xen.img Then I changed my xenserver parameters to match: xe vm-param-set uuid=[vm uuid] PV-bootloader-args="--kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.18-194.32.1.el5xen --ramdisk /initrd-2.6.18-194.32.1.el5xen.img" xe vm-param-set uuid=[vm uuid] HVM-boot-policy="" xe vm-param-set uuid=[vm uuid] PV-bootloader=pygrub xe vbd-param-set uuid==[Virtual Block Device/VBD uuid] bootable=true Some things to note, I am running a VolGroup LVM ;) Anyways, after all these steps (which aren't much!) I boot the VM and it boots initial kernel just fine, however I am presented with this error: Boot Screen: device-mapper: dm-raid45: initialized v0.2594l Waiting for driver initialization. Scanning and configuring dmraid supported devices Scanning logical volumes Reading all physical volumes. This may take a while... Activating logical volumes Volume group "VolGroup00" not found Creating root device. Mounting root filesystem. mount: could not find filesystem '/dev/root' Setting up other filesystems. Setting up new root fs setuproot: moving /dev failed: No such file or directory no fstab.sys, mounting internal defaults setuproot: error mounting /proc: No such file or directory setuproot: error mounting /sys: No such file or directory Switching to new root and running init. unmounting old /dev unmounting old /proc unmounting old /sys switchroot: mount failed: No such file or directory Now my hints are that it cannot detect / because of the fact that when you change from HVM mode to PV it does something (not that obvious) When you make a SR (storage) on a HVM, you get it mounted to the guest os as /dev/hda. However in PV mode, this presents itself as /dev/xvda... Could this be the answer? and if so, how the heck to I implement it?? Update: So I have gotten a bit further in my quest, as it now detects the LVM's... To do this, I required to recompile the xen-kernel initrd image. Command: mkinitrd -v --builtin=xen_vbd --preload=xenblk initrd-2.6.18-194.32.1.el5xen.img 2.6.18-194.32.1.el5xen Now when I boot I get this: Boot Screen: Loading dm-raid45.ko module device-mapper: dm-raid45: initialized v0.2594l Scanning and configuring dmraid supported devices Scanning logical volumes Reading all physical volumes. This may take a while... Found volume group "VolGroup00" using metadata type lvm2 Activating logical volumes 3 logical volume(s) in volume group "VolGroup00" now active Creating root device. Mounting root filesystem. mount: error mounting /dev/root on /sysroot as ext3: Device or resource busy Setting up other filesystems. Setting up new root fs setuproot: moving /dev failed: No such file or directory no fstab.sys, mounting internal defaults setuproot: error mounting /proc: No such file or directory setuproot: error mounting /sys: No such file or directory Switching to new root and running init. unmounting old /dev unmounting old /proc unmounting old /sys switchroot: mount failed: No such file or directory Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!

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• SQL Server 2008 R2 Reporting Services - The Word is But a Stage (T-SQL Tuesday #006)

  - by smisner

  Host Michael Coles (blog|twitter) has selected LOB data as the topic for this month's T-SQL Tuesday, so I'll take this opportunity to post an overview of reporting with spatial data types. As part of my work with SQL Server 2008 R2 Reporting Services, I've been exploring the use of spatial data types in the new map data region. You can create a map using any of the following data sources: Map Gallery - a set of Shapefiles for the United States only that ships with Reporting Services ESRI Shapefile - a .shp file conforming to the Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc. (ESRI) shapefile spatial data format SQL Server spatial data - a query that includes SQLGeography or SQLGeometry data types Rob Farley (blog|twitter) points out today in his T-SQL Tuesday post that using the SQL geography field is a preferable alternative to ESRI shapefiles for storing spatial data in SQL Server. So how do you get spatial data? If you don't already have a GIS application in-house, you can find a variety of sources. Here are a few to get you started: US Census Bureau Website, http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/ Global Administrative Areas Spatial Database, http://biogeo.berkeley.edu/gadm/ Digital Chart of the World Data Server, http://www.maproom.psu.edu/dcw/ In a recent post by Pinal Dave (blog|twitter), you can find a link to free shapefiles for download and a tutorial for using Shape2SQL, a free tool to convert shapefiles into SQL Server data. In my post today, I'll show you how to use combine spatial data that describes boundaries with spatial data in AdventureWorks2008R2 that identifies stores locations to embed a map in a report. Preparing the spatial data First, I downloaded Shapefile data for the administrative boundaries in France and unzipped the data to a local folder. Then I used Shape2SQL to upload the data into a SQL Server database called Spatial. I'm not sure of the reason why, but I had to uncheck the option to create a spatial index to upload the data. Otherwise, the upload appeared to run successfully, but no table appeared in my database. The zip file that I downloaded contained three files, but I didn't know what was in them until I used Shape2SQL to upload the data into tables. Then I found that FRA_adm0 contains spatial data for the country of France, FRA_adm1 contains spatial data for each region, and FRA_adm2 contains spatial data for each department (a subdivision of region). Next I prepared my SQL query containing sales data for fictional stores selling Adventure Works products in France. The Person.Address table in the AdventureWorks2008R2 database (which you can download from Codeplex) contains a SpatialLocation column which I joined - along with several other tables - to the Sales.Customer and Sales.Store tables. I'll be able to superimpose this data on a map to see where these stores are located. I included the SQL script for this query (as well as the spatial data for France) in the downloadable project that I created for this post. Step 1: Using the Map Wizard to Create a Map of France You can build a map without using the wizard, but I find it's rather useful in this case. Whether you use Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) or Report Builder 3.0, the map wizard is the same. I used BIDS so that I could create a project that includes all the files related to this post. To get started, I added an empty report template to the project and named it France Stores. Then I opened the Toolbox window and dragged the Map item to the report body which starts the wizard. Here are the steps to perform to create a map of France: On the Choose a source of spatial data page of the wizard, select SQL Server spatial query, and click Next. On the Choose a dataset with SQL Server spatial data page, select Add a new dataset with SQL Server spatial data. On the Choose a connection to a SQL Server spatial data source page, select New. In the Data Source Properties dialog box, on the General page, add a connecton string like this (changing your server name if necessary): Data Source=(local);Initial Catalog=Spatial Click OK and then click Next. On the Design a query page, add a query for the country shape, like this: select * from fra_adm1 Click Next. The map wizard reads the spatial data and renders it for you on the Choose spatial data and map view options page, as shown below. You have the option to add a Bing Maps layer which shows surrounding countries. Depending on the type of Bing Maps layer that you choose to add (from Road, Aerial, or Hybrid) and the zoom percentage you select, you can view city names and roads and various boundaries. To keep from cluttering my map, I'm going to omit the Bing Maps layer in this example, but I do recommend that you experiment with this feature. It's a nice integration feature. Use the + or - button to rexize the map as needed. (I used the + button to increase the size of the map until its edges were just inside the boundaries of the visible map area (which is called the viewport). You can eliminate the color scale and distance scale boxes that appear in the map area later. Select the Embed map data in this report for faster rendering. The spatial data won't be changing, so there's no need to leave it in the database. However, it does increase the size of the RDL. Click Next. On the Choose map visualization page, select Basic Map. We'll add data for visualization later. For now, we have just the outline of France to serve as the foundation layer for our map. Click Next, and then click Finish. Now click the color scale box in the lower left corner of the map, and press the Delete key to remove it. Then repeat to remove the distance scale box in the lower right corner of the map. Step 2: Add a Map Layer to an Existing Map The map data region allows you to add multiple layers. Each layer is associated with a different data set. Thus far, we have the spatial data that defines the regional boundaries in the first map layer. Now I'll add in another layer for the store locations by following these steps: If the Map Layers windows is not visible, click the report body, and then click twice anywhere on the map data region to display it. Click on the New Layer Wizard button in the Map layers window. And then we start over again with the process by choosing a spatial data source. Select SQL Server spatial query, and click Next. Select Add a new dataset with SQL Server spatial data, and click Next. Click New, add a connection string to the AdventureWorks2008R2 database, and click Next. Add a query with spatial data (like the one I included in the downloadable project), and click Next. The location data now appears as another layer on top of the regional map created earlier. Use the + button to resize the map again to fill as much of the viewport as possible without cutting off edges of the map. You might need to drag the map within the viewport to center it properly. Select Embed map data in this report, and click Next. On the Choose map visualization page, select Basic Marker Map, and click Next. On the Choose color theme and data visualization page, in the Marker drop-down list, change the marker to diamond. There's no particular reason for a diamond; I think it stands out a little better than a circle on this map. Clear the Single color map checkbox as another way to distinguish the markers from the map. You can of course create an analytical map instead, which would change the size and/or color of the markers according to criteria that you specify, such as sales volume of each store, but I'll save that exploration for another post on another day. Click Finish and then click Preview to see the rendered report. Et voilà...c'est fini. Yes, it's a very simple map at this point, but there are many other things you can do to enhance the map. I'll create a series of posts to explore the possibilities. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• 2 Days of Share &amp; Point

  - by Mark Rackley

  Groovy man… SharePoint Saturday Ozarks is back for 2010, bigger and better than before. Join us for a far out time and learn more about SharePoint in one day than you could in a year from the man… Yes! SharePoint Saturday Ozarks is back! SharePoint Saturday Ozarks is the largest SharePoint conference in Arkansas, Southern Missouri, and the very north east tip of Oklahoma. Last year we had a great turn out with 20 speakers, 5 MVPs, and attendees coming from Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Indiana, Ohio, Alabama, Michigan, and Washington. Hey Man… what’s SharePoint Saturday anyway? Sounds like a conspiracy man… Not to worry, SharePoint Saturday is not an arm of the government bent on mind control or any attempt what-so-ever to bring you down man. SharePoint Saturday is grass roots effort started by Michael Lotter (http://www.sharepointsaturday.org/pages/about.aspx). It is a FREE one day event where the best SharePoint speakers gather to present their love, hatred, and frustrations of SharePoint to those lucky individuals who attend. Lessons are learned, contacts are made, prizes are won, food is eaten, assorted beverages are consumed until wee hours of the morning. SharePoint Saturday started with just a few sporadic one day events here and there. However, over the past year SharePoint Saturday has exploded and it’s hard to find a weekend where there is NOT a SharePoint Saturday event happing in some corner of the globe. There are even occasions where there are two SharePoint Saturdays on the same day! Many people are pleasantly surprised at the caliber of speakers at these SharePoint Saturday events. For the most part, these speakers are more eloquent, practiced, and practical than those speakers you find at the major multi-day conferences. These guys aren’t even paid to speak.. they do it out of love man… SharePoint Saturday Ozarks 2009 Alumni We had a star studded cast last year with many returning this year! Just check out the fun that they had… John Ferringer – Admin rockstar… I can still sense the awesomeness   SharePoint poster children Mike Watson & Laura Rogers     Lori Gowin spreading the SharePoint Love Eric Shupps is a little bit country and a little bit rock and roll       Cathy Dew, Sean McDonough, and JD Wade relaxing between gigs Actually, you can see real photos from last year’s SharePoint Saturday ozarks here:  picasaweb.google.com/mrackley/SharePointSaturdayOzarks#    What’s new for SharePoint Saturday Ozarks 2010 SharePoint Saturday Ozarks 2010 will totally blow your mind man. We’re getting the band back to together with many returning speakers and few new faces. Joel Oleson will be speaking this year, maybe he’ll grace us with his song stylings. Sadly, once again, Andrew Connell will not be able to attend SharePoint Saturday Ozarks, however he did feel the need to show his support in his own way. Prizes this year currently include books, software, a Zune HD, and much more! Wait Man… You said 2 days? I thought it was a one day event? Correct you are my herbal smelling friend… SharePoint Saturday Ozarks 2010 will spread the love an additional day this year. The first day will be all about the SharePoint love, on day 2 we will be taking a leisurely float down the Buffalo National River for those interested in a truly unique experience (no banjos allowed please).   Here are the details: WHAT 4 – 5 hour float down the Buffalo National River WHEN & WHERE Sunday June 13th. We will be leaving at 10am from the Parking Lot of: Gordon’s Motel & Canoe Rental Old Highway 7 Jasper, AR 72641 (870) 446-5252 Jasper is about 30 minutes south of Harrison, AR on Highway 7 South. You are responsible for bumming a ride to/from Gordon’s Motel, but they will be shuttling us to/from the river and providing canoes and a boxed lunch. WHAT ELSE? The float trip is dependent on the weather of course, we won’t be floating down the river in a thunderstorm, however I planned SPS Ozarks around a time of year ideal for floating. We aren’t talking class 5 rapids here, you don’t need any real skill, but you need to be okay with possibly tipping your canoe over once or twice. You can bring your own assorted beverages with you, but glass containers are not allowed on the river. I suggest a small cooler with extra snacks and drinks. Also bring clothing you can get wet in (these SharePoint people can get ornery). HOW DO I SIGN UP? When you register for SharePoint Saturday Ozarks, you will have the option to also sign up for the float trip. Seats are limited though! If you do not intend to go, please do not take someone else’s place.  The cost for the float trip will be about $35 dollars per person (which you are responsible for unless we find a sponsor). The price includes shuttle to/from river, canoe, life jackets, paddles, and boxed lunch. Far out man… how do I register??? You can register for SharePoint Saturday Ozarks by going to http://spsozarks.eventbrite.com/ We are limited to 200 people for the conference and 50 people for the float trip, so register today before we are sold out. Lodging for SharePoint Saturday Ozarks will once again take place at the Hotel Seville: Annex Suites are available for $103.20 This is So Groovy.. How can I help? I’m glad you asked! We are still looking for a few sponsors and one or two more speakers. If you are interested please let me know!  You can find out more information at http://www.sharepointsaturday.org/ozarks Hey… wait a minute…. what exactly IS SharePoint man??? Come to SharePoint Saturday Ozarks and find out!!  See you guys there!

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• A Guided Tour of Complexity

  - by JoshReuben

  I just re-read Complexity – A Guided Tour by Melanie Mitchell , protégé of Douglas Hofstadter ( author of “Gödel, Escher, Bach”) http://www.amazon.com/Complexity-Guided-Tour-Melanie-Mitchell/dp/0199798109/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1339744329&sr=8-1 here are some notes and links:   Evolved from Cybernetics, General Systems Theory, Synergetics some interesting transdisciplinary fields to investigate: Chaos Theory - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory – small differences in initial conditions (such as those due to rounding errors in numerical computation) yield widely diverging outcomes for chaotic systems, rendering long-term prediction impossible. System Dynamics / Cybernetics - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Dynamics – study of how feedback changes system behavior Network Theory - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_theory – leverage Graph Theory to analyze symmetric  / asymmetric relations between discrete objects Algebraic Topology - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algebraic_topology – leverage abstract algebra to analyze topological spaces There are limits to deterministic systems & to computation. Chaos Theory definitely applies to training an ANN (artificial neural network) – different weights will emerge depending upon the random selection of the training set. In recursive Non-Linear systems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonlinear_system – output is not directly inferable from input. E.g. a Logistic map: Xt+1 = R Xt(1-Xt) Different types of bifurcations, attractor states and oscillations may occur – e.g. a Lorenz Attractor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorenz_system Feigenbaum Constants http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feigenbaum_constants express ratios in a bifurcation diagram for a non-linear map – the convergent limit of R (the rate of period-doubling bifurcations) is 4.6692016 Maxwell’s Demon - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_demon - the Second Law of Thermodynamics has only a statistical certainty – the universe (and thus information) tends towards entropy. While any computation can theoretically be done without expending energy, with finite memory, the act of erasing memory is permanent and increases entropy. Life & thought is a counter-example to the universe’s tendency towards entropy. Leo Szilard and later Claude Shannon came up with the Information Theory of Entropy - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(information_theory) whereby Shannon entropy quantifies the expected value of a message’s information in bits in order to determine channel capacity and leverage Coding Theory (compression analysis). Ludwig Boltzmann came up with Statistical Mechanics - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_mechanics – whereby our Newtonian perception of continuous reality is a probabilistic and statistical aggregate of many discrete quantum microstates. This is relevant for Quantum Information Theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_information and the Physics of Information - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_information. Hilbert’s Problems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert's_problems pondered whether mathematics is complete, consistent, and decidable (the Decision Problem – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entscheidungsproblem – is there always an algorithm that can determine whether a statement is true).  Godel’s Incompleteness Theorems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del's_incompleteness_theorems  proved that mathematics cannot be both complete and consistent (e.g. “This statement is not provable”). Turing through the use of Turing Machines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_machine symbol processors that can prove mathematical statements) and Universal Turing Machines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Turing_machine Turing Machines that can emulate other any Turing Machine via accepting programs as well as data as input symbols) that computation is limited by demonstrating the Halting Problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem (is is not possible to know when a program will complete – you cannot build an infinite loop detector). You may be used to thinking of 1 / 2 / 3 dimensional systems, but Fractal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal systems are defined by self-similarity & have non-integer Hausdorff Dimensions !!!  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fractals_by_Hausdorff_dimension – the fractal dimension quantifies the number of copies of a self similar object at each level of detail – eg Koch Snowflake - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_snowflake Definitions of complexity: size, Shannon entropy, Algorithmic Information Content (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithmic_information_theory - size of shortest program that can generate a description of an object) Logical depth (amount of info processed), thermodynamic depth (resources required). Complexity is statistical and fractal. John Von Neumann’s other machine was the Self-Reproducing Automaton http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_machine  . Cellular Automata http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_automaton are alternative form of Universal Turing machine to traditional Von Neumann machines where grid cells are locally synchronized with their neighbors according to a rule. Conway’s Game of Life http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_Game_of_Life demonstrates various emergent constructs such as “Glider Guns” and “Spaceships”. Cellular Automatons are not practical because logical ops require a large number of cells – wasteful & inefficient. There are no compilers or general program languages available for Cellular Automatons (as far as I am aware). Random Boolean Networks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean_network are extensions of cellular automata where nodes are connected at random (not to spatial neighbors) and each node has its own rule –> they demonstrate the emergence of complex  & self organized behavior. Stephen Wolfram’s (creator of Mathematica, so give him the benefit of the doubt) New Kind of Science http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_New_Kind_of_Science proposes the universe may be a discrete Finite State Automata http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite-state_machine whereby reality emerges from simple rules. I am 2/3 through this book. It is feasible that the universe is quantum discrete at the plank scale and that it computes itself – Digital Physics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_physics – a simulated reality? Anyway, all behavior is supposedly derived from simple algorithmic rules & falls into 4 patterns: uniform , nested / cyclical, random (Rule 30 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_30) & mixed (Rule 110 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_110 localized structures – it is this that is interesting). interaction between colliding propagating signal inputs is then information processing. Wolfram proposes the Principle of Computational Equivalence - http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PrincipleofComputationalEquivalence.html - all processes that are not obviously simple can be viewed as computations of equivalent sophistication. Meaning in information may emerge from analogy & conceptual slippages – see the CopyCat program: http://cognitrn.psych.indiana.edu/rgoldsto/courses/concepts/copycat.pdf Scale Free Networks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale-free_network have a distribution governed by a Power Law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_law - much more common than Normal Distribution). They are characterized by hubs (resilience to random deletion of nodes), heterogeneity of degree values, self similarity, & small world structure. They grow via preferential attachment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferential_attachment – tipping points triggered by positive feedback loops. 2 theories of cascading system failures in complex systems are Self-Organized Criticality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-organized_criticality and Highly Optimized Tolerance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highly_optimized_tolerance. Computational Mechanics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_mechanics – use of computational methods to study phenomena governed by the principles of mechanics. This book is a great intuition pump, but does not cover the more mathematical subject of Computational Complexity Theory – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_complexity_theory I am currently reading this book on this subject: http://www.amazon.com/Computational-Complexity-Christos-H-Papadimitriou/dp/0201530821/ref=pd_sim_b_1   stay tuned for that review!

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• XNA Notes 010

  - by George Clingerman

  With GDC 2011 wrapping up there were a LOT of great interviews and posts with and about XNA and XBLIG and some of our more notorious developers. Definitely worth spending many, many hours watching, listening and reading all those. Very inspiring! Also, don’t forget to get signed up for Dream Build Play! And just as an early warning reminder do NOT, I repeat do NOT wait to submit your game the last day. There are major issues submitting the last day every year and you do not want all your hard work to be hanging on whether your entry actually went through in that last day. Plan on submitting a few days if not a week before. I’m serious, you’ll thank yourself later! Now on to what’s happening in the XNA community! Time Critical XNA News: PAX East Meet Up (really wish I was going!) http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/71921/439262.aspx Want to stay panicked about the countdown to Dream Build Play? Mike McLaughlin shares his DBP countdown clock http://twitter.com/#!/mikebmcl/status/44454458960252928 XNA Team: Nick Gravelyn Only needs less than 600 new users in his unique marketing plan for Pixel Man 2 http://nickgravelyn.com/pixelman2/ And hares his ad revenue numbers with his XNA WP7 games http://theoneswiththelight.com/2011/my-results-with-ad-revenue-for-wp7-games/ XNA MVPs: Andy “The ZMan” Dunn posts his 15,000th App Hub forum post and shares a few thoughts on the MVP summit http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/t/77625.aspx Chris Williams shares his thoughts on the MVP summit http://geekswithblogs.net/cwilliams/archive/2011/03/07/144229.aspx XNA Developers: Nathan Fouts of Mommy’s Best games Wraps up GDC http://mommysbest.blogspot.com/2011/03/gdc-2011-wrapped.html And shares the wonderful screenshots from Serious Sam. (I’m so jealous people at PAX East willl be playing a demo of this game!) http://mommysbest.blogspot.com/2011/03/serious-sam-double-d.html James Silva of Ska Studios announces http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/03/09/vampire-smile-at-hotel-sierra/ http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/03/08/vengeance-begins-april-6th/ http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/03/04/good-morning-gato-52/ Michael McLaughlin writes an extremely useful set of tips for XNA WP7 developers http://geekswithblogs.net/mikebmcl/archive/2011/03/10/tips-for-xna-wp7-developers.aspx Robert Boyd “the one man XBLIG improving machine” posts his 9 tips for marketing an Xbox LIVE Indie Gam http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RobertBoyd/20110309/7183/9_Tips_for_XBLIG_Marketing.php http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/77534/470586.aspx#470586 And shares his day by day experience at GDC this year http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RobertBoyd/20110301/7118/GDC_Saves_the_World__Impressions_Day_1.php http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RobertBoyd/20110301/7123/GDC_Saves_the_World__Impressions_Day_2.php http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RobertBoyd/20110303/7129/GDC_Saves_the_World__Impressions_Day_3.php http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RobertBoyd/20110307/7133/GDC_Saves_the_World__Impressions_Day_4.php http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RobertBoyd/20110307/7160/GDC_Saves_the_World__Impressions_Day_5.php Phillipe Da Silva releases new IGF Pong Sample preview http://www.vimeo.com/20904070 Xbox LIVE Indie Games (XBLIG): Gamergeddon posts XBox Indie Game Roundup for March 6th http://www.gamergeddon.com/2011/03/06/xbox-indie-game-round-up-march-6th/ Dealspwn interviews FortressCraft developer Projector Games http://www.dealspwn.com/fortresscraft-developer-interview-minecraft-clones-venting-haters-part-1/ http://www.dealspwn.com/fortresscraft-developer-interview-part-2-trials-tribulations-indie-development/ Writings of Mass Destruction continues the Xbox LIVE Indie Game a day campaign, here’s his take on FishCraft (be sure to check out his other posts!) http://writingsofmassdeduction.com/2011/03/05/day-116-fishcraft/ Tom Ogburn shares his GDC notes on the XBLIG panel jotted quickly while attending the panel http://twitter.com/#!/TOgburn/status/44454191028125696 http://www.starlitskygames.com/blogs/site_news/archive/2011/03/06/802.aspx Dave Voyles of Armless Octopus has crazy good coverage on XNA and Xbox LIVE Indie Game developers at GDC 2011. Interviews and articles all extremely well done! http://www.armlessoctopus.com/2011/03/06/gdc-2011-successful-indie-developers-share-insight-on-microsofts-self-publishing-service/ There’s honestly so many posts and interviews you should just hit his front page and scroll down through all of the latest ones. http://www.armlessoctopus.com/ GameMarx Episode 12 http://www.gamemarx.com/video/the-show/27/ep-12-march-4-2011.aspx B.U.T.T.O.N now on Steam! http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2011/03/button_party_game_now_on_steam.php German Xbox Dashboard gets review program from GamePro http://www.armlessoctopus.com/2011/03/07/gamepo-indie-review-show-debuts-on-german-xbox-dashboard/ XboxIndies.com (one of the best XNA sites out there at this point!) continues to add review sites to it’s main review feed. (And don’t forget to play with that awesome XBLIG pivot control!) http://xboxindies.com/ Kris Steele of FunInfused Games shares early footage of his game World of Chalk http://twitter.com/#!/kriswd40/status/45007114371989504 Raymond Matthews of Darkstarmatryx reviews FunInfused Games Abduction Action http://www.darkstarmatryx.com/?p=264 TheVideoGamerRob reviews Zombie Football Carnage http://videogamerrob.wordpress.com/2011/03/08/xblig-review-zombie-football-carnage/ XBLIG Square Off Making the Jump to WP7 http://www.wp7connect.com/2011/03/08/xblig-square-off-will-make-the-jump-to-windows-phone/ Mommy’s Best Games making the news round with their Serious Sam announcement http://www.joystiq.com/2011/03/09/serious-sam-gets-serious-indie-cred-with-new-indie-series/ Most quoted and linked XBLIG article of the week with the least amount of actual facts and reporting. Shared only because it makes me sad that this is the best coverage we get. (Hey reporters, there’s LOT and LOTS of XBLIG and XNA experts you can contact if you need to check up on facts or wonder why on questions like, Why can’t XBLIGs have Nazis? There’s actually a real answer for that..) http://www.joystiq.com/2011/03/06/xblig-facts-nazi-killing-a-no-no-revenue-a-yes-yes/ XNA Development: Mort8088 has been in an XNA tutorial writing frenzy releasing 4 XNA 4.0 entry level tutorials this week! http://mort8088.com/2011/03/06/xna-4-0-tutorial-0-intro/ http://mort8088.com/2011/03/06/xna-4-0-tutorial-1-fonts/ http://mort8088.com/2011/03/06/xna-4-0-tutorial-2-sprites/ http://mort8088.com/2011/03/06/xna-4-0-tutorial-3-input-from-keyboard/ Interesting discussion on what it means to be a community (you do have to sign up to be a member of the XNA UK forums to read it...) http://twitter.com/#!/XNAUK/status/44705269254594560 Slyprid continues his incredible pace on Transmute and shares screens of his new Animation Builder http://twitter.com/#!/slyprid/status/45169271847911424 http://forgottenstarstudios.com/blog/ Philippe Da Silva wants to know who is using IGF for their games. If it’s you, drop him a note letting him know! http://twitter.com/#!/philippedasilva/status/44325893719588864 New Sunburn Video Tutorials released http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/fivesidedbarrel/archive/2011/03/07/new-documentation-video-tutorials.aspx Loading and rendering animated collada models using XNA 4.0 http://bunkernetz.wordpress.com/2011/03/09/loading-and-rendering-animated-collada-models-using-xna-4-0/ XNA for Silverlight Developers Part 6 Accelerometer Input http://buzzgamesnews.blogspot.com/2011/03/xna-for-silverlight-developers-part-6.html

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• So, how is the Oracle HCM Cloud User Experience? In a word, smokin’!

  - by Edith Mireles-Oracle

  By Misha Vaughan, Oracle Applications User Experience Oracle unveiled its game-changing cloud user experience strategy at Oracle OpenWorld 2013 (remember that?) with a new simplified user interface (UI) paradigm.  The Oracle HCM cloud user experience is about light-weight interaction, tailored to the task you are trying to accomplish, on the device you are comfortable working with. A key theme for the Oracle user experience is being able to move from smartphone to tablet to desktop, with all of your data in the cloud. The Oracle HCM Cloud user experience provides designs for better productivity, no matter when and how your employees need to work. Release 8  Oracle recently demonstrated how fast it is moving development forward for our cloud applications, with the availability of release 8.  In release 8, users will see expanded simplicity in the HCM cloud user experience, such as filling out a time card and succession planning. Oracle has also expanded its mobile capabilities with task flows for payslips, managing absences, and advanced analytics. In addition, users will see expanded extensibility with the new structures editor for simplified pages, and the with the user interface text editor, which allows you to update language throughout the UI from one place. If you don’t like calling people who work for you “employees,” you can use this tool to create a term that is suited to your business.  Take a look yourself at what’s available now. What are people saying?Debra Lilley (@debralilley), an Oracle ACE Director who has a long history with Oracle Applications, recently gave her perspective on release 8: “Having had the privilege of seeing a preview of release 8, I am again impressed with the enhancements around simplified UI. Even more so, at a user group event in London this week, an existing Cloud HCM customer speaking publically about his implementation said he was very excited about release 8 as the absence functionality was so superior and simple to use.”  In an interview with Lilley for a blog post by Dennis Howlett  (@dahowlett), we probably couldn’t have asked for a more even-handed look at the Oracle Applications Cloud and the impact of user experience. Take the time to watch all three videos and get the full picture.  In closing, Howlett’s said: “There is always the caveat that getting from the past to Fusion [from the editor: Fusion is now called the Oracle Applications Cloud] is not quite as simple as may be painted, but the outcomes are much better than anticipated in large measure because the user experience is so much better than what went before.” Herman Slange, Technical Manager with Oracle Applications partner Profource, agrees with that comment. “We use on-premise Financials & HCM for internal use. Having a simple user interface that works on a desktop as well as a tablet for (very) non-technical users is a big relief. Coming from E-Business Suite, there is less training (none) required to access HCM content.  From a technical point of view, having the abilities to tailor the simplified UI very easy makes it very efficient for us to adjust to specific customer needs.  When we have a conversation about simplified UI, we just hand over a tablet and ask the customer to just use it. No training and no explanation required.” Finally, in a story by Computer Weekly  about Oracle customer BG Group, a natural gas exploration and production company based in the UK and with a presence in 20 countries, the author states: “The new HR platform has proved to be easier and more intuitive for HR staff to use than the previous SAP-based technology.” What’s Next for Oracle’s Applications Cloud User Experiences? This is the question that Steve Miranda, Oracle Executive Vice President, Applications Development, asks the Applications User Experience team, and we’ve been hard at work for some time now on “what’s next.”  I can’t say too much about it, but I can tell you that we’ve started talking to customers and partners, under non-disclosure agreements, about user experience concepts that we are working on in order to get their feedback. We recently had a chance to talk about possibilities for the Oracle HCM Cloud user experience at an Oracle HCM Southern California Customer Success Summit. This was a fantastic event, hosted by Shane Bliss and Vance Morossi of the Oracle Client Success Team. We got to use the uber-slick facilities of Allergan, our hosts (of Botox fame), headquartered in Irvine, Calif., with a presence in more than 100 countries. Photo by Misha Vaughan, Oracle Applications User Experience Vance Morossi, left, and Shane Bliss, of the Oracle Client Success Team, at an Oracle HCM Southern California Customer Success Summit.  We were treated to a few really excellent talks around human resources (HR). Alice White, VP Human Resources, discussed Allergan's process for global talent acquisition -- how Allergan has designed and deployed a global process, and global tools, along with Oracle and Cognizant, and are now at the end of a global implementation. She shared a couple of insights about the journey for Allergan: “One of the major areas for improvement was on role clarification within the company.” She said the company is “empowering managers and deputizing them as recruiters. Now it is a global process that is nimble and efficient."  Deepak Rammohan, VP Product Management, HCM Cloud, Oracle, also took the stage to talk about pioneering modern HR. He reflected modern HR problems of getting the right data about the workforce, the importance of getting the right talent as a key strategic initiative, and other workforce insights. "How do we design systems to deal with all of this?” he asked. “Make sure the systems are talent-centric. The next piece is collaborative, engaging, and mobile. A lot of this is influenced by what users see today. The last thing is around insight; insight at the point of decision-making." Rammohan showed off some killer HCM Cloud talent demos focused on simplicity and mobility that his team has been cooking up, and closed with a great line about the nature of modern recruiting: "Recruiting is a team sport." Deepak Rammohan, left, and Jake Kuramoto, both of Oracle, debate the merits of a Google Glass concept demo for recruiters on-the-go. Later, in an expo-style format, the Apps UX team showed several concepts for next-generation HCM Cloud user experiences, including demos shown by Jake Kuramoto (@jkuramoto) of The AppsLab, and Aylin Uysal (@aylinuysal), Director, HCM Cloud user experience. We even hauled out our eye-tracker, a research tool used to show where the eye is looking at a particular screen, thanks to teammate Michael LaDuke. Dionne Healy, HCM Client Executive, and Aylin Uysal, Director, HCM Cloud user experiences, Oracle, take a look at new HCM Cloud UX concepts. We closed the day with Jeremy Ashley (@jrwashley), VP, Applications User Experience, who brought it all back together by talking about the big picture for applications cloud user experiences. He covered the trends we are paying attention to now, what users will be expecting of their modern enterprise apps, and what Oracle’s design strategy is around these ideas.   We closed with an excellent reception hosted by ADP Payroll services at Bistango. Want to read more?Want to see where our cloud user experience is going next? Read more on the UsableApps web site about our latest design initiative: “Glance, Scan, Commit.” Or catch up on the back story by looking over our Applications Cloud user experience content on the UsableApps web site.  You can also find out where we’ll be next at the Events page on UsableApps.

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• Base de Datos Oracle, su mejor opción para reducir costos de IT

  - by Ivan Hassig

  Por Victoria Cadavid Sr. Sales Cosultant Oracle Direct Uno de los principales desafíos en la administración de centros de datos es la reducción de costos de operación. A medida que las compañías crecen y los proveedores de tecnología ofrecen soluciones cada vez más robustas, conservar el equilibrio entre desempeño, soporte al negocio y gestión del Costo Total de Propiedad es un desafío cada vez mayor para los Gerentes de Tecnología y para los Administradores de Centros de Datos. Las estrategias más comunes para conseguir reducción en los costos de administración de Centros de Datos y en la gestión de Tecnología de una organización en general, se enfocan en la mejora del desempeño de las aplicaciones, reducción del costo de administración y adquisición de hardware, reducción de los costos de almacenamiento, aumento de la productividad en la administración de las Bases de Datos y mejora en la atención de requerimientos y prestación de servicios de mesa de ayuda, sin embargo, las estrategias de reducción de costos deben contemplar también la reducción de costos asociados a pérdida y robo de información, cumplimiento regulatorio, generación de valor y continuidad del negocio, que comúnmente se conciben como iniciativas aisladas que no siempre se adelantan con el ánimo de apoyar la reducción de costos. Una iniciativa integral de reducción de costos de TI, debe contemplar cada uno de los factores que  generan costo y pueden ser optimizados. En este artículo queremos abordar la reducción de costos de tecnología a partir de la adopción del que según los expertos es el motor de Base de Datos # del mercado.Durante años, la base de datos Oracle ha sido reconocida por su velocidad, confiabilidad, seguridad y capacidad para soportar cargas de datos tanto de aplicaciones altamente transaccionales, como de Bodegas de datos e incluso análisis de Big Data , ofreciendo alto desempeño y facilidades de administración, sin embrago, cuando pensamos en proyectos de reducción de costos de IT, además de la capacidad para soportar aplicaciones (incluso aplicaciones altamente transaccionales) con alto desempeño, pensamos en procesos de automatización, optimización de recursos, consolidación, virtualización e incluso alternativas más cómodas de licenciamiento. La Base de Datos Oracle está diseñada para proveer todas las capacidades que un área de tecnología necesita para reducir costos, adaptándose a los diferentes escenarios de negocio y a las capacidades y características de cada organización.Es así, como además del motor de Base de Datos, Oracle ofrece una serie de soluciones para optimizar la administración de la información a través de mecanismos de optimización del uso del storage, continuidad del Negocio, consolidación de infraestructura, seguridad y administración automática, que propenden por un mejor uso de los recursos de tecnología, ofrecen opciones avanzadas de configuración y direccionan la reducción de los tiempos de las tareas operativas más comunes. Una de las opciones de la base de datos que se pueden provechar para reducir costos de hardware es Oracle Real Application Clusters. Esta solución de clustering permite que varios servidores (incluso servidores de bajo costo) trabajen en conjunto para soportar Grids o Nubes Privadas de Bases de Datos, proporcionando los beneficios de la consolidación de infraestructura, los esquemas de alta disponibilidad, rápido desempeño y escalabilidad por demanda, haciendo que el aprovisionamiento, el mantenimiento de las bases de datos y la adición de nuevos nodos se lleve e cabo de una forma más rápida y con menos riesgo, además de apalancar las inversiones en servidores de menor costo. Otra de las soluciones que promueven la reducción de costos de Tecnología es Oracle In-Memory Database Cache que permite almacenar y procesar datos en la memoria de las aplicaciones, permitiendo el máximo aprovechamiento de los recursos de procesamiento de la capa media, lo que cobra mucho valor en escenarios de alta transaccionalidad. De este modo se saca el mayor provecho de los recursos de procesamiento evitando crecimiento innecesario en recursos de hardware. Otra de las formas de evitar inversiones innecesarias en hardware, aprovechando los recursos existentes, incluso en escenarios de alto crecimiento de los volúmenes de información es la compresión de los datos. Oracle Advanced Compression permite comprimir hasta 4 veces los diferentes tipos de datos, mejorando la capacidad de almacenamiento, sin comprometer el desempeño de las aplicaciones. Desde el lado del almacenamiento también se pueden conseguir reducciones importantes de los costos de IT. En este escenario, la tecnología propia de la base de Datos Oracle ofrece capacidades de Administración Automática del Almacenamiento que no solo permiten una distribución óptima de los datos en los discos físicos para garantizar el máximo desempeño, sino que facilitan el aprovisionamiento y la remoción de discos defectuosos y ofrecen balanceo y mirroring, garantizando el uso máximo de cada uno de los dispositivos y la disponibilidad de los datos. Otra de las soluciones que facilitan la administración del almacenamiento es Oracle Partitioning, una opción de la Base de Datos que permite dividir grandes tablas en estructuras más pequeñas. Esta aproximación facilita la administración del ciclo de vida de la información y permite por ejemplo, separar los datos históricos (que generalmente se convierten en información de solo lectura y no tienen un alto volumen de consulta) y enviarlos a un almacenamiento de bajo costos, conservando la data activa en dispositivos de almacenamiento más ágiles. Adicionalmente, Oracle Partitioning facilita la administración de las bases de datos que tienen un gran volumen de registros y mejora el desempeño de la base de datos gracias a la posibilidad de optimizar las consultas haciendo uso únicamente de las particiones relevantes de una tabla o índice en el proceso de búsqueda. Otros factores adicionales, que pueden generar costos innecesarios a los departamentos de Tecnología son: La pérdida, corrupción o robo de datos y la falta de disponibilidad de las aplicaciones para dar soporte al negocio. Para evitar este tipo de situaciones que pueden acarrear multas y pérdida de negocios y de dinero, Oracle ofrece soluciones que permiten proteger y auditar la base de datos, recuperar la información en caso de corrupción o ejecución de acciones que comprometan la integridad de la información y soluciones que permitan garantizar que la información de las aplicaciones tenga una disponibilidad de 7x24. Ya hablamos de los beneficios de Oracle RAC, para facilitar los procesos de Consolidación y mejorar el desempeño de las aplicaciones, sin embrago esta solución, es sumamente útil en escenarios dónde las organizaciones de quieren garantizar una alta disponibilidad de la información, ante fallo de los servidores o en eventos de desconexión planeada para realizar labores de mantenimiento. Además de Oracle RAC, existen soluciones como Oracle Data Guard y Active Data Guard que permiten replicar de forma automática las bases de datos hacia un centro de datos de contingencia, permitiendo una recuperación inmediata ante eventos que deshabiliten por completo un centro de datos. Además de lo anterior, Active Data Guard, permite aprovechar la base de datos de contingencia para realizar labores de consulta, mejorando el desempeño de las aplicaciones. Desde el punto de vista de mejora en la seguridad, Oracle cuenta con soluciones como Advanced security que permite encriptar los datos y los canales a través de los cueles se comparte la información, Total Recall, que permite visualizar los cambios realizados a la base de datos en un momento determinado del tiempo, para evitar pérdida y corrupción de datos, Database Vault que permite restringir el acceso de los usuarios privilegiados a información confidencial, Audit Vault, que permite verificar quién hizo qué y cuándo dentro de las bases de datos de una organización y Oracle Data Masking que permite enmascarar los datos para garantizar la protección de la información sensible y el cumplimiento de las políticas y normas relacionadas con protección de información confidencial, por ejemplo, mientras las aplicaciones pasan del ambiente de desarrollo al ambiente de producción. Como mencionamos en un comienzo, las iniciativas de reducción de costos de tecnología deben apalancarse en estrategias que contemplen los diferentes factores que puedan generar sobre costos, los factores de riesgo que puedan acarrear costos no previsto, el aprovechamiento de los recursos actuales, para evitar inversiones innecesarias y los factores de optimización que permitan el máximo aprovechamiento de las inversiones actuales. Como vimos, todas estas iniciativas pueden ser abordadas haciendo uso de la tecnología de Oracle a nivel de Base de Datos, lo más importante es detectar los puntos críticos a nivel de riesgo, diagnosticar las proporción en que están siendo aprovechados los recursos actuales y definir las prioridades de la organización y del área de IT, para así dar inicio a todas aquellas iniciativas que de forma gradual, van a evitar sobrecostos e inversiones innecesarias, proporcionando un mayor apoyo al negocio y un impacto significativo en la productividad de la organización. Más información http://www.oracle.com/lad/products/database/index.html?ssSourceSiteId=otnes 1Fuente: Market Share: All Software Markets, Worldwide 2011 by Colleen Graham, Joanne Correia, David Coyle, Fabrizio Biscotti, Matthew Cheung, Ruggero Contu, Yanna Dharmasthira, Tom Eid, Chad Eschinger, Bianca Granetto, Hai Hong Swinehart, Sharon Mertz, Chris Pang, Asheesh Raina, Dan Sommer, Bhavish Sood, Marianne D'Aquila, Laurie Wurster and Jie Zhang. - March 29, 2012 2Big Data: Información recopilada desde fuentes no tradicionales como blogs, redes sociales, email, sensores, fotografías, grabaciones en video, etc. que normalmente se encuentran de forma no estructurada y en un gran volumen

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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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• On StringComparison Values

  - by Jesse

  When you use the .NET Framework’s String.Equals and String.Compare methods do you use an overloStringComparison enumeration value? If not, you should be because the value provided for that StringComparison argument can have a big impact on the results of your string comparison. The StringComparison enumeration defines values that fall into three different major categories: Culture-sensitive comparison using a specific culture, defaulted to the Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture value (StringComparison.CurrentCulture and StringComparison.CurrentCutlureIgnoreCase) Invariant culture comparison (StringComparison.InvariantCulture and StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase) Ordinal (byte-by-byte) comparison of  (StringComparison.Ordinal and StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase) There is a lot of great material available that detail the technical ins and outs of these different string comparison approaches. If you’re at all interested in the topic these two MSDN articles are worth a read: Best Practices For Using Strings in the .NET Framework: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd465121.aspx How To Compare Strings: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc165449.aspx Those articles cover the technical details of string comparison well enough that I’m not going to reiterate them here other than to say that the upshot is that you typically want to use the culture-sensitive comparison whenever you’re comparing strings that were entered by or will be displayed to users and the ordinal comparison in nearly all other cases. So where does that leave the invariant culture comparisons? The “Best Practices For Using Strings in the .NET Framework” article has the following to say: “On balance, the invariant culture has very few properties that make it useful for comparison. It does comparison in a linguistically relevant manner, which prevents it from guaranteeing full symbolic equivalence, but it is not the choice for display in any culture. One of the few reasons to use StringComparison.InvariantCulture for comparison is to persist ordered data for a cross-culturally identical display. For example, if a large data file that contains a list of sorted identifiers for display accompanies an application, adding to this list would require an insertion with invariant-style sorting.” I don’t know about you, but I feel like that paragraph is a bit lacking. Are there really any “real world” reasons to use the invariant culture comparison? I think the answer to this question is, “yes”, but in order to understand why we should first think about what the invariant culture comparison really does. The invariant culture comparison is really just a culture-sensitive comparison using a special invariant culture (Michael Kaplan has a great post on the history of the invariant culture on his blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2004/12/29/344136.aspx). This means that the invariant culture comparison will apply the linguistic customs defined by the invariant culture which are guaranteed not to differ between different machines or execution contexts. This sort of consistently does prove useful if you needed to maintain a list of strings that are sorted in a meaningful and consistent way regardless of the user viewing them or the machine on which they are being viewed. Example: Prototype Names Let’s say that you work for a large multi-national toy company with branch offices in 10 different countries. Each year the company would work on 15-25 new toy prototypes each of which is assigned a “code name” while it is under development. Coming up with fun new code names is a big part of the company culture that everyone really enjoys, so to be fair the CEO of the company spent a lot of time coming up with a prototype naming scheme that would be fun for everyone to participate in, fair to all of the different branch locations, and accessible to all members of the organization regardless of the country they were from and the language that they spoke. Each new prototype will get a code name that begins with a letter following the previously created name using the alphabetical order of the Latin/Roman alphabet. Each new year prototype names would start back at “A”. The country that leads the prototype development effort gets to choose the name in their native language. (An appropriate Romanization system will be used for countries where the primary language is not written in the Latin/Roman alphabet. For example, the Pinyin system could be used for Chinese). To avoid repeating names, a list of all current and past prototype names will be maintained on each branch location’s company intranet site. Assuming that maintaining a single pre-sorted list is not feasible among all of the highly distributed intranet implementations, what string comparison method would you use to sort each year’s list of prototype names so that the list is both meaningful and consistent regardless of the country within which the list is being viewed? Sorting the list with a culture-sensitive comparison using the default configured culture on each country’s intranet server the list would probably work most of the time, but subtle differences between cultures could mean that two different people would see a list that was sorted slightly differently. The CEO wants the prototype names to be a unifying aspect of company culture and is adamant that everyone see the the same list sorted in the same order and there’s no way to guarantee a consistent sort across different cultures using the culture-sensitive string comparison rules. The culture-sensitive sort would produce a meaningful list for the specific user viewing it, but it wouldn’t always be consistent between different users. Sorting with the ordinal comparison would certainly be consistent regardless of the user viewing it, but would it be meaningful? Let’s say that the current year’s prototype name list looks like this: Antílope (Spanish) Babouin (French) Cahoun (Czech) Diamond (English) Flosse (German) If you were to sort this list using ordinal rules you’d end up with: Antílope Babouin Diamond Flosse Cahoun This sort is no good because the entry for “C” appears the bottom of the list after “F”. This is because the Czech entry for the letter “C” makes use of a diacritic (accent mark). The ordinal string comparison does a byte-by-byte comparison of the code points that make up each character in the string and the code point for the “C” with the diacritic mark is higher than any letter without a diacritic mark, which pushes that entry to the bottom of the sorted list. The CEO wants each country to be able to create prototype names in their native language, which means we need to allow for names that might begin with letters that have diacritics, so ordinal sorting kills the meaningfulness of the list. As it turns out, this situation is actually well-suited for the invariant culture comparison. The invariant culture accounts for linguistically relevant factors like the use of diacritics but will provide a consistent sort across all machines that perform the sort. Now that we’ve walked through this example, the following line from the “Best Practices For Using Strings in the .NET Framework” makes a lot more sense: One of the few reasons to use StringComparison.InvariantCulture for comparison is to persist ordered data for a cross-culturally identical display That line describes the prototype name example perfectly: we need a way to persist ordered data for a cross-culturally identical display. While this example is 100% made-up, I think it illustrates that there are indeed real-world situations where the invariant culture comparison is useful.

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• Pre-rentrée Oracle Open World 2012 : à vos agendas

  - by Eric Bezille

  A maintenant moins d'un mois de l’événement majeur d'Oracle, qui se tient comme chaque année à San Francisco, fin septembre, début octobre, les spéculations vont bon train sur les annonces qui vont y être dévoilées... Et sans lever le voile, je vous engage à prendre connaissance des sujets des "Key Notes" qui seront tenues par Larry Ellison, Mark Hurd, Thomas Kurian (responsable des développements logiciels) et John Fowler (responsable des développements systèmes) afin de vous donner un avant goût. Stratégie et Roadmaps Oracle Bien entendu, au-delà des séances plénières qui vous donnerons  une vision précise de la stratégie, et pour ceux qui seront sur place, je vous engage à ne pas manquer les séances d'approfondissement qui auront lieu dans la semaine, dont voici quelques morceaux choisis : "Accelerate your Business with the Oracle Hardware Advantage" avec John Fowler, le lundi 1er Octobre, 3:15pm-4:15pm "Why Oracle Softwares Runs Best on Oracle Hardware" , avec Bradley Carlile, le responsable des Benchmarks, le lundi 1er Octobre, 12:15pm-13:15pm "Engineered Systems - from Vision to Game-changing Results", avec Robert Shimp, le lundi 1er Octobre 1:45pm-2:45pm "Database and Application Consolidation on SPARC Supercluster", avec Hugo Rivero, responsable dans les équipes d'intégration matériels et logiciels, le lundi 1er Octobre, 4:45pm-5:45pm "Oracle’s SPARC Server Strategy Update", avec Masood Heydari, responsable des développements serveurs SPARC, le mardi 2 Octobre, 10:15am - 11:15am "Oracle Solaris 11 Strategy, Engineering Insights, and Roadmap", avec Markus Flier, responsable des développements Solaris, le mercredi 3 Octobre, 10:15am - 11:15am "Oracle Virtualization Strategy and Roadmap", avec Wim Coekaerts, responsable des développement Oracle VM et Oracle Linux, le lundi 1er Octobre, 12:15pm-1:15pm "Big Data: The Big Story", avec Jean-Pierre Dijcks, responsable du développement produits Big Data, le lundi 1er Octobre, 3:15pm-4:15pm "Scaling with the Cloud: Strategies for Storage in Cloud Deployments", avec Christine Rogers,  Principal Product Manager, et Chris Wood, Senior Product Specialist, Stockage , le lundi 1er Octobre, 10:45am-11:45am Retours d'expériences et témoignages Si Oracle Open World est l'occasion de partager avec les équipes de développement d'Oracle en direct, c'est aussi l'occasion d'échanger avec des clients et experts qui ont mis en oeuvre  nos technologies pour bénéficier de leurs retours d'expériences, comme par exemple : "Oracle Optimized Solution for Siebel CRM at ACCOR", avec les témoignages d'Eric Wyttynck, directeur IT Multichannel & CRM  et Pascal Massenet, VP Loyalty & CRM systems, sur les bénéfices non seulement métiers, mais également projet et IT, le mercredi 3 Octobre, 1:15pm-2:15pm "Tips from AT&T: Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle Database, and SPARC Enterprise", avec le retour d'expérience des experts Oracle, le mardi 2 Octobre, 11:45am-12:45pm "Creating a Maximum Availability Architecture with SPARC SuperCluster", avec le témoignage de Carte Wright, Database Engineer à CKI, le mercredi 3 Octobre, 11:45am-12:45pm "Multitenancy: Everybody Talks It, Oracle Walks It with Pillar Axiom Storage", avec le témoignage de Stephen Schleiger, Manager Systems Engineering de Navis, le lundi 1er Octobre, 1:45pm-2:45pm "Oracle Exadata for Database Consolidation: Best Practices", avec le retour d'expérience des experts Oracle ayant participé à la mise en oeuvre d'un grand client du monde bancaire, le lundi 1er Octobre, 4:45pm-5:45pm "Oracle Exadata Customer Panel: Packaged Applications with Oracle Exadata", animé par Tim Shetler, VP Product Management, mardi 2 Octobre, 1:15pm-2:15pm "Big Data: Improving Nearline Data Throughput with the StorageTek SL8500 Modular Library System", avec le témoignage du CTO de CSC, Alan Powers, le jeudi 4 Octobre, 12:45pm-1:45pm "Building an IaaS Platform with SPARC, Oracle Solaris 11, and Oracle VM Server for SPARC", avec le témoignage de Syed Qadri, Lead DBA et Michael Arnold, System Architect d'US Cellular, le mardi 2 Octobre, 10:15am-11:15am "Transform Data Center TCO with Oracle Optimized Servers: A Customer Panel", avec les témoignages notamment d'AT&T et Liberty Global, le mardi 2 Octobre, 11:45am-12:45pm "Data Warehouse and Big Data Customers’ View of the Future", avec The Nielsen Company US, Turkcell, GE Retail Finance, Allianz Managed Operations and Services SE, le lundi 1er Octobre, 4:45pm-5:45pm "Extreme Storage Scale and Efficiency: Lessons from a 100,000-Person Organization", le témoignage de l'IT interne d'Oracle sur la transformation et la migration de l'ensemble de notre infrastructure de stockage, mardi 2 Octobre, 1:15pm-2:15pm Echanges avec les groupes d'utilisateurs et les équipes de développement Oracle Si vous avez prévu d'arriver suffisamment tôt, vous pourrez également échanger dès le dimanche avec les groupes d'utilisateurs, ou tous les soirs avec les équipes de développement Oracle sur des sujets comme : "To Exalogic or Not to Exalogic: An Architectural Journey", avec Todd Sheetz - Manager of DBA and Enterprise Architecture, Veolia Environmental Services, le dimanche 30 Septembre, 2:30pm-3:30pm "Oracle Exalytics and Oracle TimesTen for Exalytics Best Practices", avec Mark Rittman, de Rittman Mead Consulting Ltd, le dimanche 30 Septembre, 10:30am-11:30am "Introduction of Oracle Exadata at Telenet: Bringing BI to Warp Speed", avec Rudy Verlinden & Eric Bartholomeus - Managers IT infrastructure à Telenet, le dimanche 30 Septembre, 1:15pm-2:00pm "The Perfect Marriage: Sun ZFS Storage Appliance with Oracle Exadata", avec Melanie Polston, directeur, Data Management, de Novation et Charles Kim, Managing Director de Viscosity, le dimanche 30 Septembre, 9:00am-10am "Oracle’s Big Data Solutions: NoSQL, Connectors, R, and Appliance Technologies", avec Jean-Pierre Dijcks et les équipes de développement Oracle, le lundi 1er Octobre, 6:15pm-7:00pm Testez et évaluez les solutions Et pour finir, vous pouvez même tester les technologies au travers du Oracle DemoGrounds, (1133 Moscone South pour la partie Systèmes Oracle, OS, et Virtualisation) et des "Hands-on-Labs", comme : "Deploying an IaaS Environment with Oracle VM", le mardi 2 Octobre, 10:15am-11:15am "Virtualize and Deploy Oracle Applications in Minutes with Oracle VM: Hands-on Lab", le mardi 2 Octobre, 11:45am-12:45pm (il est fortement conseillé d'avoir suivi le "Hands-on-Labs" précédent avant d'effectuer ce Lab. "x86 Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure with Oracle VM 3.x and Sun ZFS Storage Appliance", le mercredi 3 Octobre, 5:00pm-6:00pm "StorageTek Tape Analytics: Managing Tape Has Never Been So Simple", le mercredi 3 Octobre, 1:15pm-2:15pm "Oracle’s Pillar Axiom 600 Storage System: Power and Ease", le lundi 1er Octobre, 12:15pm-1:15pm "Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure for SPARC with Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center 12c", le lundi 1er Octobre, 1:45pm-2:45pm "Managing Storage in the Cloud", le mardi 2 Octobre, 5:00pm-6:00pm "Learn How to Write MapReduce on Oracle’s Big Data Platform", le lundi 1er Octobre, 12:15pm-1:15pm "Oracle Big Data Analytics and R", le mardi 2 Octobre, 1:15pm-2:15pm "Reduce Risk with Oracle Solaris Access Control to Restrain Users and Isolate Applications", le lundi 1er Octobre, 10:45am-11:45am "Managing Your Data with Built-In Oracle Solaris ZFS Data Services in Release 11", le lundi 1er Octobre, 4:45pm-5:45pm "Virtualizing Your Oracle Solaris 11 Environment", le mardi 2 Octobre, 1:15pm-2:15pm "Large-Scale Installation and Deployment of Oracle Solaris 11", le mercredi 3 Octobre, 3:30pm-4:30pm En conclusion, une semaine très riche en perspective, et qui vous permettra de balayer l'ensemble des sujets au coeur de vos préoccupations, de la stratégie à l'implémentation... Cette semaine doit se préparer, pour tailler votre agenda sur mesure, à travers les plus de 2000 sessions dont je ne vous ai fait qu'un extrait, et dont vous pouvez retrouver l'ensemble en ligne.

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