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• iPad Impressions

  - by Aaron Lazenby

  So, I spent some quality time with my new iPad on Saturday. Here are things I like/don't like: -- Don't like that it has to sync with iTunes before you use it: I was traveling and left my laptop at home thinking I'd use this iPad thing instead. But the first thing it asked me to do is connect it to a laptop. Ugh. Had to borrow my mother-in-law's MacBook Pro just to get the iPad rolling. -- Like that magazines and newspapers are forever changed: And I think for the better...it's why I bought this thing in the first place. I spent significant time with The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine and Popular Science on the iPad. Sliding stories around, jumping from section to section, enlarging images = all excellent experiences. Actually prefer iPad magazine to print, which will require a major shift in editorial strategy, summed up by Popular Science's Mark Jannot in his editor's note "What defines a magazine? Curated expertise--not paper." -- Don't like the screwy human factors: I actually enjoy the virtual keyboard (although I think I'm in the minority), but you have to hunch over to look down at what you're typing. Bad technology ergonomics have already jacked my body in various ways. The iPad just introduced a new one.-- Like the multitouch: In fact, it's awesome. Hands down. Probably will have the most lasting impact on the personal computing industry as a whole.   -- Don't like that it's heavy: If you plan to read in bed, you'd better double up on the creatine and curls. Holding this thing up on your own gets pretty uncomfortable. -- Like the Netfilx app: I wanted to watch "The Big Lebowski," so I did. That is all. -- Don't like that people feel 3G is necessary: For $30 a month? Please. I'm already accustomed to limiting my laptop internet use to readily available free wi-fi. Why do I expect anything different with the iPad? Most anyplace I have time to sit and read/use a computer (cafe, airport, you house, library, etc.) has free wi-fi. I can live without web surfing in your car. That's what the iPhone is for. -- Don't like that not everyone was ready in day one: I'm looking at you Facebook. No iPad app for launch? Lame. iPhone apps scaled-up to work on the iPad look grainy and cheap. Not a quality befitting this beautiful $700 piece of glass.Verdict: I'm bringing it to COLLABORATE 08 and seeing if I can go the whole week using only the iPad. If I can trade this thing for my laptop, I know it's a winner. For now, I'm enjoying Popular Science.

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• Visual Studio 2010 SP1

  - by ScottGu

  Last week we shipped Service Pack 1 of Visual Studio 2010 and the Visual Studio Express Tools.  In addition to bug fixes and performance improvements, SP1 includes a number of feature enhancements.  This includes improved local help support, IntelliTrace support for 64-bit applications and SharePoint, built-in Silverlight 4 Tooling support in the box, unit testing support when targeting .NET 3.5, a new performance wizard for Silverlight, IIS Express and SQL CE Tooling support for web projects, HTML5 Intellisense for ASP.NET, and more.  TFS 2010 SP1 was also released last week, together with a new TFS Project Server Integration Pack and Load Test Feature Pack.  Brian Harry has a good blog post about the TFS updates here. VS 2010 SP1 Download Click here to download and install SP1 for all versions of Visual Studio (including express).  This installer examines what you have installed on your machine, and only downloads the servicing downloads necessary to update them to SP1.  The time it takes to download and update will consequently depend on what all you have installed.  Jon Galloway has a good blog post on tips to speed up the SP1 install by uninstalling unused components. Web Platform Installer Bundles In addition to the core VS 2010 SP1 installer, we have also put together two Web Platform Installer (WebPI) bundles that automate installing SP1 together with additional web-specific components: VS 2010 SP1 WebPI Bundle Visual Web Developer 2010 SP1 WebPI Bundle The above WebPI bundles automate installing: VS 2010/VWD 2010 SP1 ASP.NET MVC 3 (runtime + tools support) IIS 7.5 Express SQL Server Compact Edition 4.0 (runtime + tools support) Web Deployment 2.0 Only the components that are not already installed on your machine will be downloaded when you use the above WebPI bundles.  This means that you can run the WebPI bundle at any time (even if you have already installed SP1 or ASP.NET MVC 3) and not have to worry about wasting time downloading/installing these components again. Earlier this year I did two posts that discussed how to use IIS Express and SQL CE with ASP.NET projects in SP1.  Read the below posts to learn more about how to use them after you run the above bundles: Visual Studio 2010 SP1 and IIS Express Visual Studio 2010 SP1 and SQL CE for ASP.NET The above feature additions work with any web project type – including both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC. Additional SP1 Notes Two additional notes about VS 2010 SP1: 1) One change we made between RTM and SP1 is that by default Visual Studio now uses software rendering instead of hardware acceleration when running on Windows XP.  We made this change because we’ve seen reports of (often inconsistent) performance issues caused by older video drivers.  Running in software mode eliminates these and delivers consistent speeds.  You can optionally re-enable hardware acceleration with SP1 using Visual Studio’s Tools->Options menu command – we did not remove support for HW acceleration on XP, we simply changed the default setting for it.  Jason Zander has written more details on the change and how to re-enable HW acceleration inside VS here. 2) We have discovered an issue where installing SP1 can cause TSQL intellisense within SQL Server Management Studio 2008 R2 to stop working (typing still works – but intellisense doesn’t show up).  The SQL team is investigating this now and I’ll post an update on how to fix this once more details are known.  Hope this helps, Scott P.S. I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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• Oracle Fusion Procurement Designed for User Productivity

  - by Applications User Experience

  Sean Rice, Manager, Applications User Experience Oracle Fusion Procurement Design Goals In Oracle Fusion Procurement, we set out to create a streamlined user experience based on the way users do their jobs. Oracle has spent hundreds of hours with customers to get to the heart of what users need to do their jobs. By designing a procurement application around user needs, Oracle has crafted a user experience that puts the tools that people need at their fingertips. In Oracle Fusion Procurement, the user experience is designed to provide the user with information that will drive navigation rather than requiring the user to find information. One of our design goals for Oracle Fusion Procurement was to reduce the number of screens and clicks that a user must go through to complete frequently performed tasks. The requisition process in Oracle Fusion Procurement (Figure 1) illustrates how we have streamlined workflows. Oracle Fusion Self-Service Procurement brings together billing metrics, descriptions of the order, justification for the order, a breakdown of the components of the order, and the amount—all in one place. Previous generations of procurement software required the user to navigate to several different pages to gather all of this information. With Oracle Fusion, everything is presented on one page. The result is that users can complete their tasks in less time. The focus is on completing the work, not finding the work. Figure 1. Creating a requisition in Oracle Fusion Self-Service Procurement is a consumer-like shopping experience. Will Oracle Fusion Procurement Increase Productivity? To answer this question, Oracle sought to model how two experts working head to head—one in an existing enterprise application and another in Oracle Fusion Procurement—would perform the same task. We compared Oracle Fusion designs to corresponding existing applications using the keystroke-level modeling (KLM) method. This method is based on years of research at universities such as Carnegie Mellon and research labs like Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. The KLM method breaks tasks into a sequence of operations and uses standardized models to evaluate all of the physical and cognitive actions that a person must take to complete a task: what a user would have to click, how long each click would take (not only the physical action of the click or typing of a letter, but also how long someone would have to think about the page when taking the action), and user interface changes that result from the click. By applying standard time estimates for all of the operators in the task, an estimate of the overall task time is calculated. Task times from the model enable researchers to predict end-user productivity. For the study, we focused on modeling procurement business process task flows that were considered business or mission critical: high-frequency tasks and high-value tasks. The designs evaluated encompassed tasks that are currently performed by employees, professional buyers, suppliers, and sourcing professionals in advanced procurement applications. For each of these flows, we created detailed task scenarios that provided the context for each task, conducted task walk-throughs in both the Oracle Fusion design and the existing application, analyzed and documented the steps and actions required to complete each task, and applied standard time estimates to the operators in each task to estimate overall task completion times. The Results The KLM method predicted that the Oracle Fusion Procurement designs would result in productivity gains in each task, ranging from 13 percent to 38 percent, with an overall productivity gain of 22.5 percent. These performance gains can be attributed to a reduction in the number of clicks and screens needed to complete the tasks. For example, creating a requisition in Oracle Fusion Procurement takes a user through only two screens, while ordering the same item in a previous version requires six screens to complete the task. Modeling user productivity has resulted not only in advances in Oracle Fusion applications, but also in advances in other areas. We leveraged lessons learned from the KLM studies to establish products like Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS). New user experience features in EBS 12.1.3, such as navigational improvements to the main menu, a Google-type search using auto-suggest, embedded analytics, and an in-context list of values tool help to reduce clicks and improve efficiency. For more information about KLM, refer to the Measuring User Productivity blog.

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• Why Haven’t NFC Payments Taken Off?

  - by David Dorf

  With the EMV 2015 milestone approaching rapidly, there’s been renewed interest in smartcards, those credit cards with an embedded computer chip.  Back in 1996 I was working for a vendor helping Visa introduce a stored-value smartcard to the US.  Visa Cash was debuted at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, and I firmly believed it was the beginning of a cashless society.  (I later worked on MasterCard’s system called Mondex, from the UK, which debuted the following year in Manhattan). But since you don’t have a Visa Cash card in your wallet, it’s obvious the project never took off.  It was convenient for consumers, faster for merchants, and more cost-effective for banks, so why did it fail?  All emerging payment systems suffer from the chicken-and-egg dilemma.  Consumers won’t carry the cards if few merchants accept them, and merchants won’t install the terminals if few consumers have cards. Today’s emerging payment providers are in a similar pickle.  There has to be enough value for all three constituents – consumers, merchants, banks – to change the status quo.  And it’s not enough to exceed the value, it’s got to be a leap in value, because people generally resist change.  ATMs and transit cards are great examples of this, and airline kiosks and self-checkout systems are to a lesser extent. Although Google Wallet and ISIS, the two leading NFC payment platforms in the US, have shown strong commitment, there’s been very little traction.  Yes, I can load my credit card number into my phone then tap to pay, but what was the incremental value over swiping my old card?  For it to be a leap in value, it has to offer more than just payment, which I can do very easily today.  The other two ingredients are thought to be loyalty programs and digital coupons, but neither Google nor ISIS really did them well. Of course a large portion of the mobile phone market doesn’t even support NFC thanks to Apple, and since it’s not in their best interest that situation is unlikely to change.  Another issue is getting access to the “secure element,” the chip inside the phone where accounts numbers can be held securely.  Telco providers and handset manufacturers own that area, and they’re not willing to share with banks.  (Host Card Emulation, which has been endorsed by MasterCard and Visa, might be a solution.) Square recently gave up on its wallet, and MCX (the group of retailers trying to create a mobile payment platform) is very slow out of the gate.  That leaves PayPal and a slew of smaller companies trying to introduce easier ways to pay. But is it really so cumbersome to carry and swipe (soon to insert) a credit card?  Aren’t there more important problems to solve in the retail customer experience?  Maybe Apple will come up with some novel way to use iBeacons and fingerprint identification to make payments, but for now I think we need to focus on upgrading to Chip-and-PIN and tightening security.  In the meantime, NFC payments will continue to struggle.

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• Don&rsquo;t Kill the Password

  - by Anthony Trudeau

  A week ago Mr. Honan from Wired.com penned an article on security he titled “Kill the Password: Why a String of Characters Can’t Protect Us Anymore.” He asserts that the password is not effective and a new solution is needed. Unfortunately, Mr. Honan was a victim of hacking. As a result he has a victim’s vendetta. His conclusion is ill conceived even though there are smatterings of truth and good advice. The password is a security barrier much like a lock on your door. In of itself it’s not guaranteeing protection. You can have a good password akin to a steel reinforced door with the best lock money can buy, or you can have a poor password like “password” which is like a sliding lock like on a bathroom stall. But, just like in the real world a lock isn’t always enough. You can have a lock, security system, video cameras, guard dogs, and even armed security guards; but none of that guarantees your protection. Even top secret government agencies can be breached by someone who is just that good (as dramatized in movies like Mission Impossible). And that’s the crux of it. There are real hackers out there that are that good. Killer coding ninja monkeys do exist! We still have locks on our doors, because they still serve their role. Passwords are no different. Security doesn’t end with the password. Most people would agree that stuffing your mattress with your life savings isn’t a good idea even if you have the best locks and security system. Most people agree its safest to have the money in a bank. Essentially this is compartmentalization. Compartmentalization extends to the online world as well. You’re at risk if your online banking accounts are linked to the same account as your social networks. This is especially true if you’re lackadaisical about linking those social networks to outside sources including apps. The object here is to minimize the damage that can be done. An attacker should not be able to get into your bank account, because they breached your Twitter account. It’s time to prioritize once you’ve compartmentalized. This simply means deciding how much security you want for the different compartments which I’ll call security zones. Social networking applications like Facebook provide a lot of security features. However, security features are almost always a compromise with privacy and convenience. It’s similar to an engineering adage, but in this case it’s security, convenience, and privacy – pick two. For example, you might use a safe instead of bank to store your money, because the convenience of having your money closer or the privacy of not having the bank records is more important than the added security. The following are lists of security do’s and don’ts (these aren’t meant to be exhaustive and each could be an article in of themselves): Security Do’s: Use strong passwords based on a phrase Use encryption whenever you can (e.g. HTTPS in Facebook) Use a firewall (and learn to use it properly) Configure security on your router (including port blocking) Keep your operating system patched Make routine backups of important files Realize that if you’re not paying for it, you’re the product Security Don’ts Link accounts if at all possible Reuse passwords across your security zones Use real answers for security questions (e.g. mother’s maiden name) Trust anything you download Ignore message boxes shown by your system or browser Forget to test your backups Share your primary email indiscriminately Only you can decide your comfort level between convenience, privacy, and security. Attackers are going to find exploits in software. Software is complex and depends on other software. The exploits are the responsibility of the software company. But your security is always your responsibility. Complete security is an illusion. But, there is plenty you can do to minimize the risk online just like you do in the physical world. Be safe and enjoy what the Internet has to offer. I expect passwords to be necessary just as long as locks.

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• Add Spell Checking to Your Favorite Windows Apps

  - by Asian Angel

  Some but not all Windows apps have built-in spell checking of some sort. If you want to add spell checking to all of your apps (or a select group) then join us as we look at tinySpell. Note: There is a paid version of this software (tinySpell+) available as well for those who want extra functionality. tinySpell in Action The installation process is simple and straightforward…as soon as you have finished installing tinySpell you will see your new “System Tray Icon”. You can see tinySpell’s “Context Menu” here. Before going any further you may want to have a look through the settings to make any desired display modifications. During our tests we found it very helpful to modify the Spelling Tip options…it will make for a much nicer and easier to read display when you have a spelling error. Clicking on the Applications… Command in the Context Menu will bring up the following window. You can really finesse how active tinySpell will be here: Create a special list of apps that tinySpell will not monitor Create a custom list of apps that tinySpell will monitor If you have any particular or unique words that you would like to add to tinySpell’s Dictionary ahead of time you can do that by clicking on the Dictionary… Command in the Context Menu. Want to check the spelling of a word ahead of time or find that you are just curious about how it is spelled? Click on Open spelling window in the Context Menu to access a special spell check window. For our example we misspelled “spelling” on purpose…notice that the word has turned red. Clicking on the Check Mark Button will open a drop-down list with suggested spellings for the word that you are inquiring about. Click on the appropriate listing if you intend to copy and paste the word. Next we moved on to Notepad. As we were typing tinySpell alerted us when we typed the word “app”. You will hear a small default system sound and see a small popup as shown here if tinySpell thinks a word has been misspelled. The System Tray Icon will also change to a yellow color. You can access the list of suggested spellings by either left clicking on the small popup or the System Tray Icon. If the word is a properly spelled “abbreviation” (or special/custom) like our word here you can select Add to dictionary. Going further in our text document we once again purposely misspelled “spelling”… Left clicking on the popup gave us access to the drop-down list of suggested spellings… And clicking on the correct spelling automatically inserted it into our document in place of the misspelled word. As you can see here tinySpell was even monitoring file names when we went to save the document. Very thorough indeed. Conclusion If your favorite app does not have built-in spell checking, then tinySpell will definitely be a welcome (and very helpful) addition to your Windows system. They offer a portable version as well so you can take it with you to any PC. Links Download tinySpell *Note: The download link is located approximately half-way down the page. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Quick Tip: Spell Check Firefox Text Input FieldsEdit the Windows Live Writer Custom DictionaryAccess Your Favorite Google Services in Chrome the Easy WayLaunch External Apps from FirefoxNinite Makes Installing Software Incredibly Simple TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 VMware Workstation 7 OpenDNS Guide Google TV The iPod Revolution Ultimate Boot CD can help when disaster strikes Windows Firewall with Advanced Security – How To Guides Sculptris 1.0, 3D Drawing app

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• SQLAuthority News – Top 5 Latest Microsoft Certifications of 2013 – Guest Post

  - by Pinal Dave

  With the IT job market getting more and more competent by the day, certifications are a must for anyone who wishes to get a strong foothold in the industry. Microsoft community comes up with regular updates and enhancements in its existing products to keep up with the rapidly evolving requirements of the ICT industry. We bring you a list of five latest Microsoft certifications that you must consider acquiring this year. MCSE: SharePoint Learn all about Windows Server 2012 and Microsoft SharePoint 2013, which brings an advanced set of features to the fore in this latest version. It introduces new capabilities for business intelligence, social media, branding, search, identity management, mobile device among other features. Enjoy a great user experience with sharing and collaboration in community forum, within a pixel-perfect SharePoint website. Data connectivity and business intelligence tools allow users to process and access data, analyze reports, share and collaborate with each other more conveniently. Microsoft Specialist: Microsoft Project 2013 The only project management system that works seamlessly with other applications and cloud solutions of Microsoft, MS Project 2013 offers more than what meets the eye.  It provides for easier management and monitoring of projects so that users can ensure timely delivery while improving the productivity significantly. So keep all your projects on track and collaborate with your team like never before with this enhanced release! This one’s a must for all project managers. MCSE Messaging Another one of Microsoft gems is its messaging environment which has also launched the latest release Microsoft Exchange Server 2013. Messaging administrators can take up this training and validate their expertise in Unified Messaging, Exchange Online, PowerShell and Virtualization strategies, through MCSE Messaging certification in Exchange Server. If you wish to enhance productivity and data security of your organization while being flexible and extremely efficient, this is the right certification for you. MCSE Communication An enterprise can function optimally on the strength of its information flow and communication systems. With Lync Server 2013, you can introduce a whole new world of unified communications which consists of audio/video conferencing, dial-in, Persistent Chat, instant chat, and EDGE services in your organization. Utilize IT to serve and support business objectives by mastering this UC technology with this latest MCSE Communication course on using Microsoft Lync Server 2013. MCSE: SQL Server 2012 BI Platform The decision making process is largely influenced by underlying enterprise information used by the management for business intelligence. Therefore, a robust business intelligence platform that anchors enterprise IT and transform it to operational efficiencies is the need of the hour. SQL Server 2012 BI Platform certification helps professionals implement, manage and maintain a BI database infrastructure effectively. IT professionals with BI skills are highly sought after these days. MCSD: Windows Store Apps A Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer certification in Windows Store Apps validates your potential in designing interactive apps. Learn The Essentials of Developing Windows Store Apps using HTML5 and JavaScript and establish yourself as an ace developer capable of creating fast and fluid Metro style apps for Windows 8 that are accessible on a variety of devices. You can also go ahead and Learn Essentials of Developing Windows Store Apps using C# mode if you’re already familiar and working with C# programming language. Hence the developers are free to choose their own favorite development stream which opens doors for them to get ready for the latest and exciting application development platform called Windows store apps. Software developers with these skills are in great demand in the industry today. In order to continue being competitive in your respective fields, it is imperative that IT personnel update their knowledge on a regular basis. Certifications are a means to achieve this goal. Not considered to be an optional pre-requisite anymore, major IT certifications such as these are now essential to stay afloat in a cut-throat industry where technologies change on a daily basis. This blog is written by Aruneet Anand of Koenig Solutions. Koenig Solutions does training for all of the above courses. For more information, visit the website. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Microsoft Certifications

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• Guest (and occasional co-host) on Jesse Liberty's Yet Another Podcast

  - by Jon Galloway

  I was a recent guest on Jesse Liberty's Yet Another Podcast talking about the latest Visual Studio, ASP.NET and Azure releases. Download / Listen: Yet Another Podcast #75–Jon Galloway on ASP.NET/ MVC/ Azure Co-hosted shows: Jesse's been inviting me to co-host shows and I told him I'd show up when I was available. It's a nice change to be a drive-by co-host on a show (compared with the work that goes into organizing / editing / typing show notes for Herding Code shows). My main focus is on Herding Code, but it's nice to pop in and talk to Jesse's excellent guests when it works out. Some shows I've co-hosted over the past year: Yet Another Podcast #76–Glenn Block on Node.js & Technology in China Yet Another Podcast  #73 - Adam Kinney on developing for Windows 8 with HTML5 Yet Another Podcast #64 - John Papa & Javascript Yet Another Podcast #60 - Steve Sanderson and John Papa on Knockout.js Yet Another Podcast #54–Damian Edwards on ASP.NET Yet Another Podcast #53–Scott Hanselman on Blogging Yet Another Podcast #52–Peter Torr on Windows Phone Multitasking Yet Another Podcast #51–Shawn Wildermuth: //build, Xaml Programming & Beyond And some more on the way that haven't been released yet. Some of these I'm pretty quiet, on others I get wacky and hassle the guests because, hey, not my podcast so not my problem. Show notes from the ASP.NET / MVC / Azure show: What was just released Visual Studio 2012 Web Developer features ASP.NET 4.5 Web Forms Strongly Typed data controls Data access via command methods Similar Binding syntax to ASP.NET MVC Some context: Damian Edwards and WebFormsMVP Two questions from Jesse: Q: Are you making this harder or more complicated for Web Forms developers? Short answer: Nothing's removed, it's just a new option History of SqlDataSource, ObjectDataSource Q: If I'm using some MVC patterns, why not just move to MVC? Short answer: This works really well in hybrid applications, doesn't require a rewrite Allows sharing models, validation, other code between Web Forms and MVC ASP.NET MVC Adaptive Rendering (oh, also, this is in Web Forms 4.5 as well) Display Modes Mobile project template using jQuery Mobile OAuth login to allow Twitter, Google, Facebook, etc. login Jon (and friends') MVC 4 book on the way: Professional ASP.NET MVC 4 Windows 8 development Jesse and Jon announce they're working on a new book: Pro Windows 8 Development with XAML and C# Jon and Jesse agree that it's nice to be able to write Windows 8 applications using the same skills they picked up for Silverlight, WPF, and Windows Phone development. Compare / contrast ASP.NET MVC and Windows 8 development Q: Does ASP.NET and HTML5 development overlap? Jon thinks they overlap in the MVC world because you're writing HTML views without controls Jon describes how his web development career moved from a preoccupation with server code to a focus on user interaction, which occurs in the browser Jon mentions his NDC Oslo presentation on Learning To Love HTML as Beautiful Code Q: How do you apply C# / XAML or HTML5 skills to Windows 8 development? Q: If I'm a XAML programmer, what's the learning curve on getting up to speed on ASP.NET MVC? Jon describes the difference in application lifecycle and state management Jon says it's nice that web development is really interactive compared to application development Q: Can you learn MVC by reading a book? Or is it a lot bigger than that? What is Azure, and why would I use it? Jon describes the traditional Azure platform mode and how Azure Web Sites fits in Q: Why wouldn't Jesse host his blog on Azure Web Sites? Domain names on Azure Web Sites File hosting options Q: Is Azure just another host? How is it different from any of the other shared hosting options? A: Azure gives you the ability to scale up or down whenever you want A: Other services are available if or when you want them

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• Introducing functional programming constructs in non-functional programming languages

  - by Giorgio

  This question has been going through my mind quite a lot lately and since I haven't found a convincing answer to it I would like to know if other users of this site have thought about it as well. In the recent years, even though OOP is still the most popular programming paradigm, functional programming is getting a lot of attention. I have only used OOP languages for my work (C++ and Java) but I am trying to learn some FP in my free time because I find it very interesting. So, I started learning Haskell three years ago and Scala last summer. I plan to learn some SML and Caml as well, and to brush up my (little) knowledge of Scheme. Well, a lot of plans (too ambitious?) but I hope I will find the time to learn at least the basics of FP during the next few years. What is important for me is how functional programming works and how / whether I can use it for some real projects. I have already developed small tools in Haskell. In spite of my strong interest for FP, I find it difficult to understand why functional programming constructs are being added to languages like C#, Java, C++, and so on. As a developer interested in FP, I find it more natural to use, say, Scala or Haskell, instead of waiting for the next FP feature to be added to my favourite non-FP language. In other words, why would I want to have only some FP in my originally non-FP language instead of looking for a language that has a better support for FP? For example, why should I be interested to have lambdas in Java if I can switch to Scala where I have much more FP concepts and access all the Java libraries anyway? Similarly: why do some FP in C# instead of using F# (to my knowledge, C# and F# can work together)? Java was designed to be OO. Fine. I can do OOP in Java (and I would like to keep using Java in that way). Scala was designed to support OOP + FP. Fine: I can use a mix of OOP and FP in Scala. Haskell was designed for FP: I can do FP in Haskell. If I need to tune the performance of a particular module, I can interface Haskell with some external routines in C. But why would I want to do OOP with just some basic FP in Java? So, my main point is: why are non-functional programming languages being extended with some functional concept? Shouldn't it be more comfortable (interesting, exciting, productive) to program in a language that has been designed from the very beginning to be functional or multi-paradigm? Don't different programming paradigms integrate better in a language that was designed for it than in a language in which one paradigm was only added later? The first explanation I could think of is that, since FP is a new concept (it isn't new at all, but it is new for many developers), it needs to be introduced gradually. However, I remember my switch from imperative to OOP: when I started to program in C++ (coming from Pascal and C) I really had to rethink the way in which I was coding, and to do it pretty fast. It was not gradual. So, this does not seem to be a good explanation to me. Or can it be that many non-FP programmers are not really interested in understanding and using functional programming, but they find it practically convenient to adopt certain FP-idioms in their non-FP language? IMPORTANT NOTE Just in case (because I have seen several language wars on this site): I mentioned the languages I know better, this question is in no way meant to start comparisons between different programming languages to decide which is better / worse. Also, I am not interested in a comparison of OOP versus FP (pros and cons). The point I am interested in is to understand why FP is being introduced one bit at a time into existing languages that were not designed for it even though there exist languages that were / are specifically designed to support FP.

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• Know Your Audience, And/Or Your Customer

  - by steve.diamond

  Yesterday I gave an internal presentation to about 20 Oracle employees on "messaging," not messaging technology, but embarking on the process of building messages. One of the elements I covered was the importance of really knowing and understanding your audience. As a humorous reference I included two side-by-side photos of Oakland A's fans and Oakland Raiders fans. The Oakland A's fans looked like happy-go-lucky drunk types. The Oakland Raiders fans looked like angry extras from a low budget horror flick. I then asked my presentation attendees what these two groups had in common. Here's what I heard. --They're human (at least I THINK they're human). --They're from Oakland. --They're sports fans. After that, it was anyone's guess. A few days earlier we were putting the finishing touches on a sales presentation for one of our product lines. We had included an upfront "lead in" addressing how the economy is improving, yet that doesn't mean sales executives will have any more resources to add to their teams, invest in technology, etc. This "lead in" included miscellaneous news article headlines and statistics validating the slowly improving economy. When we subjected this presentation to internal review two days ago, this upfront section in particular was scrutinized. "Is the economy really getting better? I (exclamation point) don't think it's really getting better. Haven't you seen the headlines coming out of Greece and Europe?" Then the question TO ME became, "Who will actually be in the audience that sees and hears this presentation? Will s/he be someone like me? Or will s/he be someone like the critic who didn't like our lead-in?" We took the safe route and removed that lead in. After all, why start a "pitch" with a component that is arguably subjective? What if many of our audience members are individuals at organizations still facing a strong headwind? For reasons I won't go into here, it was the right decision to make. The moral of the story: Make sure you really know your audience. Harness the wisdom of the information your organization's CRM systems collect to get that fully informed "customer view." Conduct formal research. Conduct INFORMAL research. Ask lots of questions. Study industries and scenarios that have nothing to do with yours to see "how they do it." Stop strangers in coffee shops and on the street...seriously. Last week I caught up with an old friend from high school who recently retired from a 25 year career with the USMC. He said, "I can learn something from every single person I come into contact with." What a great way of approaching the world. Then, think about and write down what YOU like and dislike as a customer. But also remember that when it comes to your company's products, you are most likely NOT the customer, so don't go overboard in superimposing your own world view. Approaching the study of customers this way adds rhyme, reason and CONTEXT to lengthy blog posts like this one. Know your audience.

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• New Release Overview Part 2

  - by brian.harrison

  To continue our discussion of the next release of WCI, lets take a look at a few other new features that have been developed and tested. Password Management With customer implementations starting to go more external, we were finding that these customers wanted to use the native users within the portal because the customer did not want to provide an LDAP server that is externally facing. However, the portal does not provide anything close to the same level of password policy that a standard LDAP environment would provide. With that being the case, we made the decision to provide the same kind of password policies directly within WCI that a standard LDAP environment would have. Password Expiration - In how many days will a password expire which will force the user to change their password? Also, in how many days prior to expiration with the user be notified that their password is about the expire? Password Rotation - How many of your previous passwords will you not be able to use when changing your password? Password Policies - What are the requirements for the password that is being created by the user? Number of Characters Numbers Required Symbols Required Capitalization Required Easily Configurable - Configuration is handled through the Portal Settings utility within Administration. All options are available on the main page of the utility. In addition to the configuration options that were mention above, there has also been a complete rewrite of the Change Password screen to provide better information to the user when they are changing their password. The Change Password will now provide a red light/green light listing of all the policies the user must meet for the changed password to be successful. As the user is typing the password, the red lights will change to green lights as the policies as met. In addition, text will show next to the password text box stating what policy has not been met yet. NOTE: The password policy functionality is not held within the User Editor page within Administration. We did not want to remove the option for Administrators to change a user's password on the fly in the case of a password reset situation. Miscellaneous Features In addition to the Password Management feature, there are a few other features that are related to WCI that should be mentioned. Consolidated Installer - Instead of having up to 12 or 13 different installers, one for each of the main products and separate services, we are going to only provide two installers. One that will be used for Collaboration and its respective images. The second will contain WCI and all of the relevant services required for a WCI architecture as well as the IDK, .NET App Accelerator, SharePoint Console as well as all Content Web Services and Identity Services. Updated Documentation - Most of us are aware that the documentation hasn't been properly kept up to date with the last couple of releases. We are doing everything that we can to remedy this with the next release by consolidating and reviewing everything that is available. We are making sure to fill in the gaps that are already there, add in all documentation for the functionality as well as clearing anything that is no longer valid based on the newly released version. I hope that you enjoyed reading through this new release information. Next time we will start to talk about the new functionality that will be available within the next release of Collaboration. If there is anything in particular that you would like to get more detail about, then please don't hesitate to send me a comment.

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• The Hunger Games for Aspiring IT Professionals

  - by Dain C. Hansen

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} It seems that no one can escape the buzz around Hunger Games. And who could? Stephen King said it best in his review when he referred to the Collins’ novel as “a violent, jarring speed-rap of a novel that generates nearly constant suspense and may also generate a fair amount of controversy”. So what’s the tie in for IT? Let’s leave the dystopia of District 12 and come back to today’s reality. This is the world of radical IT paradigm shifts that haven’t been seen since Java was introduced in 1995. Everything you learned in school is probably outdated as of Friday. And everything you learned on Friday will probably change when you get to work on Monday. Nevertheless, we’re eager, we’re aspiring, we’re hungry to learn. While the challenges upon us may not rival the venomous bees (or ‘tracker jackers’) seen in this blockbuster, there are certainly obstacles to be found. In preparation, I leave you two pieces of advice - aside from avoiding werewolves… Learn the Cloud If you had asked me what to learn in 1995, I would have said, “Go learn Java”. But now my advice is “Go learn Java and then learn Cloud”. Cloud computing and Java go hand in hand. This is especially true for Oracle’s own Public Cloud which uses Java (via WebLogic 12c) as well as Oracle Database at its core foundation. Understanding the connotations of elasticity, scale, virtualization, and multi-tenancy, (to name just a few) requires a strong foundation in computer science and especially Java to get it right. Without Java, the Cloud is nothing more than a brittle application meagerly deployed on the internet. Get Social and Actively Participate And at all levels. Socializing your ideas internally is dreadfully important. And this means socializing and communicating your good ideas to lines of business, to architects, business analysts, developers, DBAs and Operations. But don’t forget to go external. Stay current by being on the lookout for blogs, tweets, webcasts, papers, podcasts and videos for your technology area. Be not just a subscriber but a participant in these channels as well. Attend industry and vendor sponsored events to learn from the experts – and seek out opportunities to stay connected with those that are smarter than you. You’ll gain more understanding if you participate actively. At the same time you’ll make friends (and allies) and you’ll be glad you did. Tell help you get social and actively participate [while learning the Cloud] here are a couple of pointers for you: See our website on Cloud and Fusion Middleware Subscribe to our regular Fusion Middleware Newsletter Follow us on Twitter and Facebook Find us at one of our key events Meanwhile, happy IT hunger games!

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• Session Update from IASA 2010

  - by [email protected]

  Below: Tom Kristensen, senior vice president at Marsh US Consumer, and Roger Soppe, CLU, LUTCF, senior director of insurance strategy, Oracle Insurance. Tom and Roger participated in a panel discussion on policy administration systems this week at IASA 2010. This week was the 82nd Annual IASA Educational Conference & Business Show held in Grapevine, Texas. While attending the conference, I had the pleasure of serving as a panelist in one of many of the outstanding sessions conducted this year. The session - entitled "Achieving Business Agility and Promoting Growth with a Modern Policy Administration System" - included industry experts Steve Forte from OneShield, Mike Sciole of IFG Companies, and Tom Kristensen, senior vice president at Marsh US Consumer. The session was conducted as a panel discussion and focused on how insurers can leverage best practices to mitigate risk while enabling rapid product innovation through a modern policy administration system. The panelists offered insight into business and technical challenges for both Life & Annuity and Property & Casualty carriers. The session had three primary learning objectives: Identifying how replacing a legacy system with a more modern policy administration solution can deliver agility and growth Identifying how processes and system should be re-engineered or replaced in order to improve speed-to-market and product support Uncovering how to leverage best practices to mitigate risk during a migration to a new platform Tom Kristensen, who is an industry veteran with over 20 years of experience, was able was able to offer a unique perspective as a business process outsourcer (BPO). Marsh US Consumer is currently implementing both the Oracle Insurance Policy Administration solution and the Oracle Revenue Management and Billing platform while at the same time implementing a new BPO customer. Tom offered insight on the need to replace their aging systems and Marsh's ability to drive new products and processes with a modern solution. As a best practice, their current project has empowered their business users to play a major role in both the requirements gathering and configuration phases. Tom stated that working with a modern solution has also enabled his organization to use a more agile implementation methodology and get hands-on experience with the software earlier in the project. He also indicated that Marsh was encouraged by how quickly it will be able to implement new products, which is another major advantage of a modern rules-based system. One of the more interesting issues was raised by an audience member who asked, "With all the vendor solutions available in North American and across Europe, what is going to make some of them more successful than others and help ensure their long term success?" Panelist Mike Sciole, IFG Companies suggested that carriers do their due diligence and follow a structured evaluation process focusing on vendors who demonstrate they have the "cash to invest in long term R&D" and evaluate audited annual statements for verification. Other panelists suggested that the vendor space will continue to evolve and those with a strong strategy focused on the insurance industry and a solid roadmap will likely separate themselves from the rest. The session concluded with the panelists offering advice about not being afraid to evaluate new modern systems. While migrating to a new platform can be challenging and is typically only undertaken every 15+ years by carriers, the ability to rapidly deploy and manage new products, create consistent processes to better service customers, and the ability to manage their business more effectively, transparently and securely are well worth the effort. Roger A.Soppe, CLU, LUTCF, is the Senior Director of Insurance Strategy, Oracle Insurance.

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• Assign highest priority to my local repository

  - by Anwar Shah

  Original question was : "How to assign highest priority to local repository without using sources.list file" I have setup a local repository with packages I downloaded. I use it to avoid downloading the same packages over the Internet, when I need to reinstall my Ubuntu. It is a basic repository, created with apt-ftparchive packages . > Packages. I made this a trusted repository to avoid "unauthenticated repository" warning. (When you have a untrusted repository, apt or synaptic try to download the same packages over the Internet, 'cause it is trusted). I have been using this local repository for at least 1 years. But I have to always put my local repository line at the top of the sources.list file to use this. But this is annoying, since I must open a terminal and do some typing on it every time I reinstall Ubuntu, though there is a better tool software-properties-gtk. I cannot use this tool since it place the source line at the end of `sources.list. And the real problem is that, the apt or synaptic always download a package from the source which is mentioned earlier, without inspecting whether the packages are already available in the local repository. So, I have no choice but to place the local source at the top of sources.list doing terminal (I actually don't hate terminal, but I need a solution) . I have tried this method. But this does not help me. My preference file is this in /etc/apt/preferences.d/local-pin-900 Package: * Pin: release o=Local,n=ubuntu-local Pin-Priority: 900 My release file is this Origin: Local Label: Local-Ubuntu Description: Local Ubuntu Repository Codename: ubuntu-local MD5Sum: ed43222856d18f389c637ac3d7dd6f85 1043412 Packages d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e 0 Sources When I enable the apt-preference, the apt-cache policy correctly shows the preference, e.g. It shows the local repository has the highest priority. But when I do this sudo apt-get install <package-name>, apt tries to download it from Internet. But when I place my local-repo at the top, it installs from local repository. So, My question is - 'Is it possible to force apt to use local repository when the package is available in local repository, without explicitly placing "the local source" at the top of my repository list (e.g sources.list file) ?' Edit: output of apt-cache policy $package_name is as follows nautilus-wipe: Installed: (none) Candidate: 0.1.1-2 Version table: 0.1.1-2 0 500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise/universe i386 Packages 900 file:/media/Main/Linux-Software/Ubuntu/Precise/ Packages It is showing that my local repository has higher preference, though it is not the one which comes first in sources.list file. Here is the output of apt-get install nautilus-wipe Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following NEW packages will be installed: nautilus-wipe 0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 131 not upgraded. Need to get 30.7 kB of archives. After this operation, 150 kB of additional disk space will be used. 'http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/n/nautilus-wipe/nautilus-wipe_0.1.1-2_i386.deb' nautilus-wipe_0.1.1-2_i386.deb 30730 MD5Sum:7d497b8dfcefe1c0b51a45f3b0466994 It is still trying to get the file from Internet, though I think it should be happy with the local one.

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• Oracle Data Integration 12c: Simplified, Future-Ready, High-Performance Solutions

  - by Thanos Terentes Printzios

  In today’s data-driven business environment, organizations need to cost-effectively manage the ever-growing streams of information originating both inside and outside the firewall and address emerging deployment styles like cloud, big data analytics, and real-time replication. Oracle Data Integration delivers pervasive and continuous access to timely and trusted data across heterogeneous systems. Oracle is enhancing its data integration offering announcing the general availability of 12c release for the key data integration products: Oracle Data Integrator 12c and Oracle GoldenGate 12c, delivering Simplified and High-Performance Solutions for Cloud, Big Data Analytics, and Real-Time Replication. The new release delivers extreme performance, increase IT productivity, and simplify deployment, while helping IT organizations to keep pace with new data-oriented technology trends including cloud computing, big data analytics, real-time business intelligence. With the 12c release Oracle becomes the new leader in the data integration and replication technologies as no other vendor offers such a complete set of data integration capabilities for pervasive, continuous access to trusted data across Oracle platforms as well as third-party systems and applications. Oracle Data Integration 12c release addresses data-driven organizations’ critical and evolving data integration requirements under 3 key themes: Future-Ready Solutions : Supporting Current and Emerging Initiatives Extreme Performance : Even higher performance than ever before Fast Time-to-Value : Higher IT Productivity and Simplified Solutions  With the new capabilities in Oracle Data Integrator 12c, customers can benefit from: Superior developer productivity, ease of use, and rapid time-to-market with the new flow-based mapping model, reusable mappings, and step-by-step debugger. Increased performance when executing data integration processes due to improved parallelism. Improved productivity and monitoring via tighter integration with Oracle GoldenGate 12c and Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c. Improved interoperability with Oracle Warehouse Builder which enables faster and easier migration to Oracle Data Integrator’s strategic data integration offering. Faster implementation of business analytics through Oracle Data Integrator pre-integrated with Oracle BI Applications’ latest release. Oracle Data Integrator also integrates simply and easily with Oracle Business Analytics tools, including OBI-EE and Oracle Hyperion. Support for loading and transforming big and fast data, enabled by integration with big data technologies: Hadoop, Hive, HDFS, and Oracle Big Data Appliance. Only Oracle GoldenGate provides the best-of-breed real-time replication of data in heterogeneous data environments. With the new capabilities in Oracle GoldenGate 12c, customers can benefit from: Simplified setup and management of Oracle GoldenGate 12c when using multiple database delivery processes via a new Coordinated Delivery feature for non-Oracle databases. Expanded heterogeneity through added support for the latest versions of major databases such as Sybase ASE v 15.7, MySQL NDB Clusters 7.2, and MySQL 5.6., as well as integration with Oracle Coherence. Enhanced high availability and data protection via integration with Oracle Data Guard and Fast-Start Failover integration. Enhanced security for credentials and encryption keys using Oracle Wallet. Real-time replication for databases hosted on public cloud environments supported by third-party clouds. Tight integration between Oracle Data Integrator 12c and Oracle GoldenGate 12c and other Oracle technologies, such as Oracle Database 12c and Oracle Applications, provides a number of benefits for organizations: Tight integration between Oracle Data Integrator 12c and Oracle GoldenGate 12c enables developers to leverage Oracle GoldenGate’s low overhead, real-time change data capture completely within the Oracle Data Integrator Studio without additional training. Integration with Oracle Database 12c provides a strong foundation for seamless private cloud deployments. Delivers real-time data for reporting, zero downtime migration, and improved performance and availability for Oracle Applications, such as Oracle E-Business Suite and ATG Web Commerce . Oracle’s data integration offering is optimized for Oracle Engineered Systems and is an integral part of Oracle’s fast data, real-time analytics strategy on Oracle Exadata Database Machine and Oracle Exalytics In-Memory Machine. Oracle Data Integrator 12c and Oracle GoldenGate 12c differentiate the new offering on data integration with these many new features. This is just a quick glimpse into Oracle Data Integrator 12c and Oracle GoldenGate 12c. Find out much more about the new release in the video webcast "Introducing 12c for Oracle Data Integration", where customer and partner speakers, including SolarWorld, BT, Rittman Mead will join us in launching the new release. Resource Kits Meet Oracle Data Integration 12c  Discover what's new with Oracle Goldengate 12c  Oracle EMEA DIS (Data Integration Solutions) Partner Community is available for all your questions, while additional partner focused webcasts will be made available through our blog here, so stay connected. For any questions please contact us at partner.imc-AT-beehiveonline.oracle-DOT-com Stay Connected Oracle Newsletters

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• Functional programming constructs in non-functional programming languages

  - by Giorgio

  This question has been going through my mind quite a lot lately and since I haven't found a convincing answer to it I would like to know if other users of this site have thought about it as well. In the recent years, even though OOP is still the most popular programming paradigm, functional programming is getting a lot of attention. I have only used OOP languages for my work (C++ and Java) but I am trying to learn some FP in my free time because I find it very interesting. So, I started learning Haskell three years ago and Scala last summer. I plan to learn some SML and Caml as well, and to brush up my (little) knowledge of Scheme. Well, a lot of plans (too ambitious?) but I hope I will find the time to learn at least the basics of FP during the next few years. What is important for me is how functional programming works and how / whether I can use it for some real projects. I have already developed small tools in Haskell. In spite of my strong interest for FP, I find it difficult to understand why functional programming constructs are being added to languages like C#, Java, C++, and so on. As a developer interested in FP, I find it more natural to use, say, Scala or Haskell, instead of waiting for the next FP feature to be added to my favourite non-FP language. In other words, why would I want to have only some FP in my originally non-FP language instead of looking for a language that has a better support for FP? For example, why should I be interested to have lambdas in Java if I can switch to Scala where I have much more FP concepts and access all the Java libraries anyway? Similarly: why do some FP in C# instead of using F# (to my knowledge, C# and F# can work together)? Java was designed to be OO. Fine. I can do OOP in Java (and I would like to keep using Java in that way). Scala was designed to support OOP + FP. Fine: I can use a mix of OOP and FP in Scala. Haskell was designed for FP: I can do FP in Haskell. If I need to tune the performance of a particular module, I can interface Haskell with some external routines in C. But why would I want to do OOP with just some basic FP in Java? So, my main point is: why are non-functional programming languages being extended with some functional concept? Shouldn't it be more comfortable (interesting, exciting, productive) to program in a language that has been designed from the very beginning to be functional or multi-paradigm? Don't different programming paradigms integrate better in a language that was designed for it than in a language in which one paradigm was only added later? The first explanation I could think of is that, since FP is a new concept (it isn't new at all, but it is new for many developers), it needs to be introduced gradually. However, I remember my switch from imperative to OOP: when I started to program in C++ (coming from Pascal and C) I really had to rethink the way in which I was coding, and to do it pretty fast. It was not gradual. So, this does not seem to be a good explanation to me. Also, I asked myself if my impression is just plainly wrong due to lack of knowledge. E.g., do C# and C++11 support FP as extensively as, say, Scala or Caml do? In this case, my question would be simply non-existent. Or can it be that many non-FP programmers are not really interested in using functional programming, but they find it practically convenient to adopt certain FP-idioms in their non-FP language? IMPORTANT NOTE Just in case (because I have seen several language wars on this site): I mentioned the languages I know better, this question is in no way meant to start comparisons between different programming languages to decide which is better / worse. Also, I am not interested in a comparison of OOP versus FP (pros and cons). The point I am interested in is to understand why FP is being introduced one bit at a time into existing languages that were not designed for it even though there exist languages that were / are specifically designed to support FP.

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• Extend Your Applications Your Way: Oracle OpenWorld Live Poll Results

  - by Applications User Experience

  Lydia Naylor, Oracle Applications User Experience Manager At OpenWorld 2012, I attended one of our team’s very exciting sessions: “Extend Your Applications, Your Way”. It was clear that customers were engaged by the topics presented. Not only did we see many heads enthusiastically nodding in agreement during the presentation, and witness a large crowd surround our speakers Killian Evers, Kristin Desmond and Greg Nerpouni afterwards, but we can prove it…with data! Figure 1. Killian Evers, Kristin Desmond, and Greg Nerpouni of Oracle at the OOW 2012 session. At the beginning of our OOW 2012 journey, Greg Nerpouni, Fusion HCM Principal Product Manager, told me he really wanted to get feedback from the audience on our extensibility direction. Initially, we were thinking of doing a group activity at the OOW UX labs events that we hold every year, but Greg was adamant- he wanted “real-time” feedback. So, after a little tinkering, we came up with a way to use an online survey tool, a simple QR code (Quick Response code: a matrix barcode that can include information like URLs and can be read by mobile device cameras), and the audience’s mobile devices to do just that. Figure 2. Actual QR Code for survey Prior to the session, we developed a short survey in Vovici (an online survey tool), with questions to gather feedback on certain points in the presentation, as well as demographic data from our participants. We used Vovici’s feature to generate a mobile HTML version of the survey. At the session, attendees accessed the survey by simply scanning a QR code or typing in a TinyURL (a shorthand web address that is easily accessible through mobile devices). Killian, Kristin and Greg paused at certain points during the session and asked participants to answer a few survey questions about what they just presented. Figure 3. Session survey deployed on a mobile phone The nice thing about Vovici’s survey tool is that you can see the data real-time as participants are responding to questions - so we knew during the session that not only was our direction on track but we were hitting the mark and fulfilling Greg’s request. We planned on showing the live polling results to the audience at the end of the presentation but it ran just a little over time, and we were gently nudged out of the room by the session attendants. We’ve included a quick summary below and this link to the full results for your enjoyment. Figure 4. Most important extensions to Fusion Applications So what did participants think of our direction for extensibility? A total of 94% agreed that it was an improvement upon their current process. The vast majority, 80%, concurred that the extensibility model accounts for the major roles involved: end user, business systems analyst and programmer. Attendees suggested a few supporting roles such as systems administrator, data architect and integrator. Customers and partners in the audience verified that Oracle‘s Fusion Composers allow them to make changes in the most common areas they need to: user interface, business processes, reporting and analytics. Integrations were also suggested. All top 10 things customers can do on a page rated highly in importance, with all but two getting an average rating above 4.4 on a 5 point scale. The kinds of layout changes our composers allow customers to make align well with customers’ needs. The most common were adding columns to a table (94%) and resizing regions and drag and drop content (both selected by 88% of participants). We want to thank the attendees of the session for allowing us another great opportunity to gather valuable feedback from our customers! If you didn’t have a chance to attend the session, we will provide a link to the OOW presentation when it becomes available.

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• F# in ASP.NET, mathematics and testing

  - by DigiMortal

  Starting from Visual Studio 2010 F# is full member of .NET Framework languages family. It is functional language with syntax specific to functional languages but I think it is time for us also notice and study functional languages. In this posting I will show you some examples about cool things other people have done using F#. F# and ASP.NET As I am ASP/ASP.NET MVP I am – of course – interested in how people use different languages and technologies with ASP.NET. C# MVP Tomáš Petrícek writes about developing ASP.NET MVC applications using F#. He also shows how to use LINQ To SQL in F# (using F# PowerPack) and provides sample solution and Visual Studio 2010 template for F# MVC web applications. You may also find interesting how you can create controllers in F#. Excellent work, Tomáš! Vladimir Matveev has interesting example about how to use F# and ApplicationHost class to process ASP.NET requests ouside of IIS. This is simple and very straight-forward example and I strongly suggest you to take a look at it. Very cool example is project Strom in Codeplex. Storm is web services testing tool that is fully written on F#. Take a look at this site because Codeplex offers also source code besides binaries. Math Functional languages are strong in fields like mathematics and physics. When I wrote my C# example about BigInteger class I found out that recursive version of Fibonacci algorithm in C# is not performing well. In same time I made same experiment on F# and in F# there were no performance problems with recursive version. You can find F# version of Fibonacci algorithm from Bob Palmer’s blog posting Fibonacci numbers in F#. Although golden spiral is useful for solving many problems I looked for some practical code example and found one. Kean Walmsley published in his Through the Interface blog very interesting posting Creating Fibonacci spirals in AutoCAD using F#. There are also other cool examples you may be interested in. Using numerical components by Extreme Optimization  it is possible to make some numerical integration (quadrature method) using F# (also C# example is available). fsharp.it introduces factorials calculation on F#. Robert Pickering has made very good work on programming The Game of Life in Silverlight and F# – I definitely suggest you to try out this example as it is very illustrative too. Who wants something more complex may take a look at Newton basin fractal example in F# by Jonathan Birge. Testing After some searching and surfing I found out that there is almost everything available for F# to write tests and test your F# code. FsCheck - FsCheck is a port of Haskell's QuickCheck. Important parts of the manual for using FsCheck is almost literally "adapted" from the QuickCheck manual and paper. Any errors and omissions are entirely my responsibility. FsTest - This project is designed to Language Oriented Programming constructs around unit testing and behavior testing in F#. The goal of this project is to create a Domain Specific Language for testing F# code in a way that makes sense for functional programming. FsUnit - FsUnit makes unit-testing with F# more enjoyable. It adds a special syntax to your favorite .NET testing framework. xUnit.NET - xUnit.net is a developer testing framework, built to support Test Driven Development, with a design goal of extreme simplicity and alignment with framework features. It is compatible with .NET Framework 2.0 and later, and offers several runners: console, GUI, MSBuild, and Visual Studio integration via TestDriven.net, CodeRush Test Runner and Resharper. It also offers test project integration for ASP.NET MVC. Getting started Well, as a first thing you need Visual Studio 2010. Then take a look at these resources: F# samples @ MSDN Microsoft F# Developer Center @ MSDN F# Language Reference @ MSDN F# blog F# forums Real World Functional Programming: With Examples in F# and C# (Amazon) Happy F#-ing! :)

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• Willy Rotstein on Supply Chain Planning

  - by sarah.taylor(at)oracle.com

  Each time a merchandiser, buyer or planner in Retail makes a business decision around assortment, inventory, pricing and promotions there is an opportunity to improve both Profitability and Customer Service. Improving decision making, however, has always been a tricky business for retailers.  I have worked in this space for more than 15 years. I began my career as an academic, at Imperial College London, and then broadened this interest with Retailers, aiming to optimize their merchandising and supply chain decisions. Planning the business and optimizing profit is a complex process. The complexity arises from the variety of people involved, the large number of decisions to take across all business processes, the uncertainty intrinsic to the retail environment as well as the volume of data available for analysis.  Things are not getting any easier either. The advent of multi-channel, social media and mobile is taking these complexities to a new level and presenting additional opportunities for those willing to exploit them. I guess it is due to the complexities of the decision making process that, over the last couple of years working with Oracle Retail, I have witnessed a clear trend around the deployment of planning systems. Retailers are aiming to simplify their decision making processes. They want to use one joined up planning platform across the business and enhance it with "actionable" data mining and optimization techniques. At Oracle Retail, we have a vibrant community of international retailers who regularly come together to discuss the big issues in retail planning. It is a combination of fashion, grocery and speciality retailers, all sharing their best practice vision for planning and optimizing merchandise decisions. As part of the Retail Exchange program, at the recent National Retail Federation event in New York, I jointly hosted a Planning dinner with Peter Fitzgerald from Google UK, Retail Division. Those retailers from our international planning community who were in New York for the annual NRF event were able to attend. The group comprised some of Europe's great International Retail brands.  All sectors were represented by organisations like Mango, LVMH, Ahold, Morrisons, Shop Direct and River Island. They confirmed the current importance of engaging with Planning and Optimization issues. In particular the impact of the internet was a key topic. We had a great debate about new retail initiatives.  Peter highlighted how mobility is changing retail - in particular with the new "local availability search" initiative. We also had an exciting discussion around the opportunities to improve merchandising using the new data that is becoming available from search, social media and ecommerce sites. It will be our focus to continue to help retailers translate this data into better results while keeping their business operations simple. New developments in "actionable" analytics and computing capacity make this a very exciting area today. Watch this space for my contributions on these topics which will be made available through this blog. Oracle Retail has a strong Planning community. if you are a category manager, a planner, a buyer, a merchandiser, a retail supplier or any retail executive with a keen interest in planning then you would be very welcome to join Oracle Retail's Planning Community. As part of our community you will be able to join our in-person and virtual events, download topical white papers and best practice information specifically tailored to your area of interest.  If anyone would like to register their interest in joining our community of retailers discussing planning then please contact me at [email protected]   Willy Rotstein, Oracle Retail

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• Employee Info Starter Kit: Project Mission

  - by Mohammad Ashraful Alam

  Employee Info Starter Kit is an open source ASP.NET project template that is intended to address different types of real world challenges faced by web application developers when performing common CRUD operations. Using a single database table ‘Employee’, it illustrates how to utilize Microsoft ASP.NET 4.0, Entity Framework 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010 effectively in that context. Employee Info Starter Kit is highly influenced by the concept ‘Pareto Principle’ or 80-20 rule. where it is targeted to enable a web developer to gain 80% productivity with 20% of effort with respect to learning curve and production. User Stories The user end functionalities of this starter kit are pretty simple and straight forward that are focused in to perform CRUD operation on employee records as described below. Creating a new employee record Read existing employee record Update an existing employee record Delete existing employee records Key Technology Areas ASP.NET 4.0 Entity Framework 4.0 T-4 Template Visual Studio 2010 Architectural Objective There is no universal architecture which can be considered as the best for all sorts of applications around the world. Based on requirements, constraints, environment, application architecture can differ from one to another. Trade-off factors are one of the important considerations while deciding a particular architectural solution. Employee Info Starter Kit is highly influenced by the concept ‘Pareto Principle’ or 80-20 rule, where it is targeted to enable a web developer to gain 80% productivity with 20% of effort with respect to learning curve and production. “Productivity” as the architectural objective typically also includes other trade-off factors as well as, such as testability, flexibility, performance etc. Fortunately Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010 includes lots of great features that have been implemented cleverly in this project to reduce these trade-off factors in the minimum level. Why Employee Info Starter Kit is Not a Framework? Application frameworks are really great for productivity, some of which are really unavoidable in this modern age. However relying too many frameworks may overkill a project, as frameworks are typically designed to serve wide range of different usage and are less customizable or editable. On the other hand having implementation patterns can be useful for developers, as it enables them to adjust application on demand. Employee Info Starter Kit provides hundreds of “connected” snippets and implementation patterns to demonstrate problem solutions in actual production environment. It also includes Visual Studio T-4 templates that generate thousands lines of data access and business logic layer repetitive codes in literally few seconds on the fly, which are fully mock testable due to language support for partial methods and latest support for mock testing in Entity Framework. Why Employee Info Starter Kit is Different than Other Open-source Web Applications? Software development is one of the rapid growing industries around the globe, where the technology is being updated very frequently to adapt greater challenges over time. There are literally thousands of community web sites, blogs and forums that are dedicated to provide support to adapt new technologies. While some are really great to enable learning new technologies quickly, in most cases they are either too “simple and brief” to be used in real world scenarios or too “complex and detailed” which are typically focused to achieve a product goal (such as CMS, e-Commerce etc) from "end user" perspective and have a long duration learning curve with respect to the corresponding technology. Employee Info Starter Kit, as a web project, is basically "developer" oriented which actually considers a hybrid approach as “simple and detailed”, where a simple domain has been considered to intentionally illustrate most of the architectural and implementation challenges faced by web application developers so that anyone can dive into deep into the corresponding new technology or concept quickly. Roadmap Since its first release by 2008 in MSDN Code Gallery, Employee Info Starter Kit gained a huge popularity in ASP.NET community and had 1, 50,000+ downloads afterwards. Being encouraged with this great response, we have a strong commitment for the community to provide support for it with respect to latest technologies continuously. Currently hosted in Codeplex, this community driven project is planned to have a wide range of individual editions, each of which will be focused on a selected application architecture, framework or platform, such as ASP.NET Webform, ASP.NET Dynamic Data, ASP.NET MVC, jQuery Ajax (RIA), Silverlight (RIA), Azure Service Platform (Cloud), Visual Studio Automated Test etc. See here for full list of current and future editions.

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• Evaluating Solutions to Manage Product Compliance? Don’t Wait Much Longer

  - by Evelyn Neumayr

  By Kerrie Foy, Director PLM Product Marketing, Oracle Depending on severity, product compliance issues can cause various problems from run-away budgets to business closures. But effective policies and safeguards can create a strong foundation for innovation, productivity, market penetration and competitive advantage. If you’ve been putting off a systematic approach to product compliance, it is time to reconsider that decision. Why now?  No matter what industry, companies face a litany of worldwide and regional regulations that require proof of product compliance and environmental friendliness for market access.  For example, Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS), a regulation that restricts the use of six dangerous materials used in the manufacture of electronic and electrical equipment, was originally adopted by the European Union in 2003 for implementation in 2006 and has evolved over time through various regional versions for North America, China, Japan, Korea, Norway and Turkey. In addition, the RoHS directive allowed for material exemptions used in Medical Devices, but that exemption ends in 2014. Additional regulations worth watching are the Battery Directive, Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE), and Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) directives. Additional regulations are expected from organizations such as the Food and Drug Administration in the US and similar organizations elsewhere. Meeting compliance requirements and also successfully investing in eco-friendly designs can be a major challenge. It may involve transforming business models, go-to-market strategies, supply networks, quality assurance policies and compliance processes.  Without a single source of truth for product data and without proper processes in place, ensuring product compliance burgeons into a crushing task that is cost-prohibitive and overwhelming.  However, the risk to consumer goodwill and satisfaction, revenue, business continuity, and market potential is too great not to solve the compliance challenge. Companies are beginning to adapt and thrive by implementing systematic approaches to product compliance that are more than functional bandages, they are revenue-generating engines. Consider working with Oracle to help you address your compliance needs. Many of the world’s most innovative leaders and pioneers are leveraging Oracle’s Agile Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) portfolio of enterprise applications to manage the product value chain, centralize product data, automate processes, and launch more eco-friendly products to market faster.   Particularly, the Agile Product Governance & Compliance (PG&C) solution provides out-of-the-box functionality to integrate actionable regulatory information into the enterprise product record from the ideation to the disposal/recycling phase.  Agile PG&C is a comprehensive solution that makes product compliance per corporate initiatives and regulations more reliable and efficient. Throughout product lifecycles, use the solution to support full material disclosures, gain rapid visibility into non-compliance issues, efficiently manage declarations with your suppliers, feed compliance data into a corrective action if a product must be changed, and swiftly satisfy audits by showing all due diligence tracked in one solution. Given the compounding regulation and consumer focus on urgent environmental issues, now is the time to act. Implementing an enterprise-wide systematic approach to product compliance is a competitive investment. From the start, Agile PG&C enables companies to confidently design for compliance and sustainability, reduce the cost of compliance, minimize the risk of business interruption, deliver responsible products, and inspire new innovation.  Don’t wait any longer! To find out more about Agile Product Governance & Compliance download the data sheet, contact your sales representative, or call Oracle at 1-800-633-0738.

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• Meet Thomas, the Most Innovational person in Oracle Direct EMEA of Q1

  - by Maria Sandu

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Thomas was voted, by his peers,  the most Innovational person in Oracle Direct EMEA of Q1, the first quarter of this fiscal! Thomas, a Business Development Consultant at Oracle Direct’s Applications Team, taught himself how to use and leverage the power of social engagement consistent with Oracle’s Social Media Policy.  From these learning's he provided both his and other applications teams in Dublin with huge amounts of training and has presented his findings to the teams on more than one occasion. It is important to recognise that this isn't just a great idea....it actually works! The results speak for themselves. Thomas is engaging with customers and prospects via their preferred channel of communication and creating a strong personal social brand. We congratulate Thomas for his efforts of raising Social Media to the next level within Business Development Group. He put a lot of work into Social Selling, as one of the first within the BDG and set the example for a new innovative approach on how to sell anno 2013. He deserves to be recognized for this. His contribution to social media has been a great inspiration for all Business Development Consultants or Business Relationship Consultants. He knows what he talks about and has great conversion rates out of his social media campaigns. And he doesn't mind sharing his knowledge with everybody. Great effort in searching for new ways of communication and social selling. Thomas has shown great initiative towards leveraging the social media and networks (twitter, linkedin) to find new business opportunities in a previously way. He has shown great out-of-the-box thinking while addressing new companies and prospects and has shared those experiences and ideas to help his colleagues use the same approach. This included a presentation, informational emails and a general helpful attitude from him. He also shared his success stories from his innovational approach.  Thomas is showing initiative with an innovative and fresh character, truly helping people to try something new  with a focus on selling across channels and working for the CRM team which is focused on selling social. We think the way Thomas positions social, by using social is innovative and inspirational. What better way to tell your clients do social, by engaging with them on a social platform? Going always the extra mile, we believe, that Thomas Brits, is an innovator from the day he walked into Oracle Direct. The way Thomas operates on the work floor by introducing new ideas to find the best opportunities as possible shows he runs the extra mile for coming up with new ideas around how to engage with customers more efficiently for instance via Social Media. Thomas also organises power hours/days for the team. He is the best! /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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• JustMock is here !!

  - by mehfuzh

  As announced earlier by Hristo Kosev at Telerik blogs , we have started giving out JustMock builds from today. This is the first of early builds before the official Q2 release and we are pretty excited to get your feedbacks. Its pretty early to say anything on it. It actually depends on your feedback. To add few, with JustMock we tried to build a mocking tool with simple and intuitive syntax as possible excluding more and more noises and avoiding any smell that can be made to your code [We are still trying everyday] and we want to make the tool even better with your help. JustMock can be used to mock virtually anything. Moreover, we left an option open that it can be used to reduce / elevate the features  just though a single click. We tried to make a strong API and make stuffs fluent and guided as possible so that you never have the chance to get de-railed. Our syntax is AAA (Arrange – Act – Assert) , we don’t believe in Record – Reply model which some of the smarter mocking tools are planning to remove from their coming release or even don’t have [its always fun to lean from each other]. Overall more signals equals more complexity , reminds me of 37 signals :-). Currently, here are the things you can do with JustMock ( will cover more in-depth in coming days) Proxied mode Mock interfaces and class with virtuals Mock properties that includes indexers Set raise event for specific calls Use matchers to control mock arguments Assert specific occurrence of a mocked calls. Assert using matchers Do recursive mocks Do Sequential mocking ( same method with argument returns different values or perform different tasks) Do strict mocking (by default and i prefer loose , so that i can use it as stubs) Elevated mode Mock static calls Mock final class Mock sealed classes Mock Extension methods Partially mock a  class member directly using Mock.Arrange Mock MsCorlib (we will support more and more members in coming days) , currently we support FileInfo, File and DateTime. These are few, you need to take a look at the test project that is provided with the build to find more [Along with the document]. Also, one of feature that will i will be using it for my next OS projects is the ability to run it separately in  proxied mode which makes it easy to redistribute and do some personal development in a more DI model and my option to elevate as it go.   I’ve surely forgotten tons of other features to mention that i will cover time but  don’t for get the URL : www.telerik.com/justmock   Finally a little mock code:   var lvMock = Mock.Create<ILoveJustMock>();    // set your goal  Mock.Arrange(() => lvMock.Response(Arg.Any<string>())).Returns((int result) => result);    //perform  string ret =  lvMock.Echo("Yes");    Assert.Equal(ret, "Yes");  // make sure everything is fine  Mock.Assert(() => lvMock.Echo("Yes"), Occurs.Once());   Hope that helps to get started,  will cover if not :-).

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• ArchBeat Top 10 for December 2-8, 2012

  - by Bob Rhubart

  The Top 10 most-clicked items shared on the OTN ArchBeat Facebook page for the week of December 2-8, 2012 Configure Oracle SOA JMSAdatper to Work with WLS JMS Topics Another of the four posts published on Dec 4 by the Fusion Middleware A-Team blogger identified as "fip" illlustrates "how to configure the JMS Topic, the JmsAdapter connection factory, as well as the composite so that the JMS Topic messages will be evenly distributed to same composite running off different SOA cluster nodes without causing duplication." Web Service Example - Part 3: Asynchronous Part 3 in this series from the Oracle ADF Mobile blog looks at "firing the web service asynchronously and then filling in the UI when it completes." Denis says, "This can be useful when you have data on the device in a local store and want to show that to the user while the application uses lazy loading from a web service to load more data." Advanced Oracle SOA Suite Oracle Open World 2012 SOA Presentations Oracle SOA & BPM Partner Community blogger Juergen Kress shares a list of 13 SOA presentations delivered or moderated by Oracle SOA Product Management at OOW12 in San Francisco. Oracle WebLogic Server WLS Domain Browser My colleague Jeff Davies, a frequent speaker at OTN Architect Day events and a genuinely nice guy, emailed me last night with this message: "I just came across this app on Google Play. It allows WebLogic administrators to browse WLS 12c domain information. I installed it on my phone and tried it out. Works very fast." I'm an iPhone guy, but I'm perfectly comfortable taking Jeff at his word. The app is called WLS Domain Browser. Follow the link for more info from the Google Play site. Retrieve Performance Data from SOA Infrastructure Database Another of the four blog posts published on Dec 4 by very busy Oracle Fusion Middleware A-Team member "fip," this one offers "examples of some basic SQL queries you can run against the infrastructure database of Oracle SOA Suite 11G to acquire the performance statistics for a given period of time." How to Achieve OC4J RMI Load Balancing "Having returned from a customer who faced challenges with OC4J RMI load balancing, I felt there is still some confusion in the field [about] how OC4J RMI load balancing works," says the Oracle Fusion Middleware A-Team member known only as "fip." "Hence I decide to dust off an old tech note that I wrote a few years back and share it with the general public." From XaaS to Java EE – Which damn cloud is right for me in 2012? Oracle ACE Director Markus Eisele wrestles with a timely technical issue and shares his observations on several of the alternatives. Exalogic 2.0.1 Tea Break Snippets - Creating a ModifyJeOS VirtualBox "One of the main advantages of this is that Templates can be created away from the Exalogic Environment," explains The Old Toxophilist. (BTW: I had to look it up: a toxophilist is one who collects bows and arrows.) ADF Mobile - Implementing Reusable Mobile Architecture "Reusability was always a strong part of ADF," says Oracle ACE Director Andrejus Baranovskis. "The same high reusability level is supported now in ADF Mobile." The objective of this post is "to prove technically that [the] reusable architecture concept works for ADF Mobile." Using BPEL Performance Statistics to Diagnose Performance Bottlenecks Someone had a busy day… This post, one of four published on DeC 4 by a member of the Oracle Fusion Middleware A-Team identified only as "fip," offers details on how to "enable, retrieve and interpret the performance statistics, before the future versions provides a more pleasant user experience." Thought for the Day "If you're afraid to change something it is clearly poorly designed." — Martin Fowler Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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• Ubuntu 12.04 / 12.10 Randomly Freezing - nVidia?

  - by Alix Axel

  My Ubuntu install frequently freezes, sometimes showing a black screen (not very common anymore - in my latest installs), some other times the mouse and keyboard just fail to move and respond (not even Ctrl + Alt + F1 works) and some other times I'm able to move the mouse with a huge delay (2-5 seconds) but I'm not able to do/click anything. I have a pretty strong feeling that this problem is related to my graphic card drivers because: after hard reset, I usually get error reports about X.org / jockey it's common for artifacts to appear during loading / shutdown / whenever, for instance: pattern filled with £ during log off ugly-colored squared pattern during boot windows that are partially moved (i.e.: only the top half) Firefox renderings that leave the bottom ~30% of the page black These artifacts appear right before the system freezes. I've installed Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and after several failed attempts to get my dual monitor setup to work properly I tried installing the new 12.10 version, hoping that this new version would have this problem solved... Unfortunatly, that was not the case, so I reverted to Ubuntu 12.04. I've tried all the drivers in the Additional Drivers application (even the experimental ones), I've also tried the nvidia-current package from the PPA repository ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates as well as the nouveau OSS driver. Nothing (except no driver at all with a 640*480 resolution) at all seems stable. Here is the info of my graphic card: alix@alix-E500:~$ lspci | grep VGA 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation G86 [GeForce 8400M G] (rev a1) alix@alix-E500:~$ sudo lshw -C video [sudo] password for alix: *-display description: VGA compatible controller product: G86 [GeForce 8400M G] vendor: NVIDIA Corporation physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0 version: a1 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom configuration: driver=nouveau latency=0 resources: irq:16 memory:fd000000-fdffffff memory:d0000000-dfffffff memory:fa000000-fbffffff ioport:cc00(size=128) memory:fe0e0000-fe0fffff Right now, I don't even have my 22" monitor connected as I can't even get my laptop display to work properly and without freezes. I've searched, read and tried all that I could (over several fresh reinstalls) to fix the problem, but so far, no solution has proven definitive. I'm sorry I can't precise which symptom maps to each driver but I've been trying to solve this one on my own without logging what I'm doing, perhaps someone here will be able to point me to a certain-fix solution, if not I'll keep updating this question as I go along. Please let me know if any more info is needed to pinpoint the exact problem. Trying out NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver (version 173). The scrolling, minimizing / maximizing windows takes between 2 and 5 seconds to finalize. Context menus also pop up very slowly and the typing seems delayed by ~1 second. No critical issues so far. Firefox rendering of the Save Edits button is consistently messed up (random black lines in the top). Trying out NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver (version current) [Recommended]. All the delays mentioned above and the buggy rendering of the Save Edits button are gone, but I'm noticing that the whole screen flashes black for a couple of microseconds and while I was writing this test for the first time, the bottom 30% of the screen went black and I couldn't do anything (not even Ctrl + Alt + F1 would work). Had to force a hard reset. Also, the system hanged a little for a couple of seconds with the fade out of the "Restart" menu. Trying out NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver (*experimental*beta) (version experimental-304). Same symptoms as before, it crashed once while I was trying to install Chromium and again after a hard reset when I was trying to remove the driver. The bottom of the screen did not went black and I could move my mouse both times. Ctrl + Alt + F1 didn't work. The ugly-colored pattern also showed up during the second boot. Trying out NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver (*experimental*beta) (version experimental-307). The system crashed as soon as I clicked something. Had to do a fresh re-install. Trying out Nouveau: Accelerated Open Source driver for nVidia cards. Artifacts still show up during boot but other than that this one seems stable. As soon as I connected my second monitor, the responsiveness dropped a lot, animations and video are somewhat slow. I'm gonna try this solution http://askubuntu.com/a/98871/9018 later on.

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