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• Oracle Systems and Solutions at OpenWorld Tokyo 2012

  - by ferhat

  Oracle OpenWorld Tokyo and JavaOne Tokyo will start next week April 4th. We will cover Oracle systems and Oracle Optimized Solutions in several keynote talks and general sessions. Full schedule can be found here. Come by the DemoGrounds to learn more about mission critical integration and optimization of complete Oracle stack. Our Oracle Optimized Solutions experts will be at hand to discuss 1-1 several of Oracle's systems solutions and technologies. Oracle Optimized Solutions are proven blueprints that eliminate integration guesswork by combing best in class hardware and software components to deliver complete system architectures that are fully tested, and include documented best practices that reduce integration risks and deliver better application performance. And because they are highly flexible by design, Oracle Optimized Solutions can be implemented as an end-to-end solution or easily adapted into existing environments. Oracle Optimized Solutions, Servers,  Storage, and Oracle Solaris  Sessions, Keynotes, and General Session Talks DAY TIME TITLE Notes Session Wednesday  April 4 9:00 - 11:15 Keynote: ENGINEERED FOR INNOVATION - Engineered Systems Mark Hurd,  President, Oracle Takao Endo, President & CEO, Oracle Corporation Japan John Fowler, EVP of Systems, Oracle Ed Screven, Chief Corporate Architect, Oracle English Session K1-01 11:50 - 12:35 Simplifying IT: Transforming the Data Center with Oracle's Engineered Systems Robert Shimp, Group VP, Product Marketing, Oracle English Session S1-01 15:20 - 16:05 Introducing Tiered Storage Solution for low cost Big Data Archiving S1-33 16:30 - 17:15 Simplifying IT - IT System Consolidation that also Accelerates Business Agility S1-42 Thursday  April 5 9:30 - 11:15 Keynote: Extreme Innovation Larry Ellison, Chief Executive Officer, Oracle English Session K2-01 11:50 - 13:20 General Session: Server and Storage Systems Strategy John Fowler, EVP of Systems, Oracle English Session G2-01 16:30 - 17:15 Top 5 Reasons why ZFS Storage appliance is "The cloud storage" by SAKURA Internet Inc L2-04 16:30 - 17:15 The UNIX based Exa* Performance IT Integration Platform - SPARC SuperCluster S2-42 17:40 - 18:25 Full stack solutions of hardware and software with SPARC SuperCluster and Oracle E-Business Suite  to minimize the business cost while maximizing the agility, performance, and availability S2-53 Friday April 6 9:30 - 11:15 Keynote: Oracle Fusion Applications & Cloud Robert Shimp, Group VP, Product Marketing Anthony Lye, Senior VP English Session K3-01 11:50 - 12:35 IT at Oracle: The Art of IT Transformation to Enable Business Growth English Session S3-02 13:00-13:45 ZFS Storagge Appliance: Architecture of high efficient and high performance S3-13 14:10 - 14:55 Why "Niko Niko doga" chose ZFS Storage Appliance to support their growing requirements and storage infrastructure By DWANGO Co, Ltd. S3-21 15:20 - 16:05 Osaka University: Lower TCO and higher flexibility for student study by Virtual Desktop By Osaka University S3-33 Oracle Developer Sessions with Oracle Systems and Oracle Solaris DAY TIME TITLE Notes LOCATION Friday April 6 13:00 - 13:45 Oracle Solaris 11 Developers D3-03 13:00 - 14:30 Oracle Solaris Tuning Contest Hands-On Lab D3-04 14:00 - 14:35 How to build high performance and high security Oracle Database environment with Oracle SPARC/Solaris English Session D3-13 15:00 - 15:45 IT Assets preservation and constructive migration with Oracle Solaris virtualization D3-24 16:00 - 17:30 The best packaging system for cloud environment - Creating an IPS package D3-34 Follow Oracle Infrared at Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn  to catch the latest news, developments, announcements, and inside views from  Oracle Optimized Solutions.

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• Can you Trust Search?

  - by David Dorf

  An awful lot of referrals to e-commerce sites come from web searches. Retailers rely on search engine optimization (SEO) to correctly position their website so they can be found. Search on "blue jeans" and the results are determined by a semi-secret algorithm -- in my case Levi.com, Banana Republic, and ShopStyle show up. The NY Times recently uncovered a situation where JCPenney, via third-parties hired to help with SEO, was caught manipulating search results so they were erroneously higher in page rankings. No doubt this helped drive additional sales during this part Christmas. The article, The Dirty Little Secrets of Search, is well worth reading. My friend Ron Kleinman started an interesting discussion at the ARTS Linkedin forum. He posed the question: The ability of a single company to "punish" any retailer (by significantly impacting their on-line sales volume) who does not play by their rules ... is this a good thing or a bad thing? Clearly JCP was in the wrong and needed to be punished, but should that decision lie with Google alone? Don't get me wrong -- I'm certainly not advocating we create a Department of Search where bureaucrats think of ways to spend money, but Google wields an awful lot of power in this situation, and it makes me feel uncomfortable. Now Google is incorporating more social aspects into their search results. For example, when Google knows its me (i.e. I'm logged in when using Google) search results will be influenced by my Twitter network. In an effort to increase relevance, the blogs and re-tweeted articles from my network will be higher in the search results than they otherwise would be. So in the case of product searches, things discussed in my network will rise to the top. Continuing my blue jean example, if someone in my network had been discussing Macy's perhaps they would now be higher in the result set. soapbox: I already have lots of spammers posting bogus comments to this blog in an effort to create additional links to their sites and thus increase their search ranking. Should I expect a similar situation in Twitter and eventually Facebook? Now retailers need to expand their SEO efforts to incorporate social media as well, but do us all a favor and please don't cheat.

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• Talking JavaOne with Rock Star Adam Bien

  - by Janice J. Heiss

  Among the most celebrated developers in recent years, especially in the domain of Java EE and JavaFX, is consultant Adam Bien, who, in addition to being a JavaOne Rock Star for Java EE sessions given in 2009 and 20011, is a Java Champion, the winner of Oracle Magazine’s 2011 Top Java Developer of the Year Award, and recently won a 2012 JAX Innovation Award as a top Java Ambassador. Bien will be presenting the following sessions: TUT3907 - Java EE 6/7: The Lean Parts CON3906 - Stress-Testing Java EE 6 Applications Without Stress CON3908 - Building Serious JavaFX 2 Applications CON3896 - Interactive Onstage Java EE Overengineering I spoke with Bien to get his take on Java today. He expressed excitement that the smallest companies and startups are showing increasing interest in Java EE. “This is a very good sign,” said Bien. “Only a few years ago J2EE was mostly used by larger companies -- now it becomes interesting even for one-person shows. Enterprise Java events are also extremely popular. On the Java SE side, I'm really excited about Project Nashorn.” Nashorn is an upcoming JavaScript engine, developed fully in Java by Oracle, and based on the Da Vinci Machine (JSR 292) which is expected to be available for Java 8.   Bien expressed concern about a common misconception regarding Java's mediocre productivity. “The problem is not Java,” explained Bien, “but rather systems built with ancient patterns and approaches. Sometimes it really is ‘Cargo Cult Programming.’ Java SE/EE can be incredibly productive and lean without the unnecessary and hard-to-maintain bloat. The real problems are ‘Ivory Towers’ and not Java’s lack of productivity.” Bien remarked that if there is one thing he wanted Java developers to understand it is that, "Premature optimization is the root of all evil. Or at least of some evil. Modern JVMs and application servers are hard to optimize upfront. It is far easier to write simple code and measure the results continuously. Identify the hotspots first, then optimize.” He advised Java EE developers to, “Rethink everything you know about Enterprise Java. Before you implement anything, ask the question: ‘Why?’ If there is no clear answer -- just don't do it. Most well known best practices are outdated. Focus your efforts on the domain problem and not the technology.” Looking ahead, Bien said, “I would like to see open source application servers running directly on a hypervisor. Packaging the whole runtime in a single file would significantly simplify the deployment and operations.”Check out a recent Java Magazine interview with Bien about his Java EE 6 stress monitoring tool here. Originally published on blogs.oracle.com/javaone.

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• PTLQueue : a scalable bounded-capacity MPMC queue

  - by Dave

  Title: Fast concurrent MPMC queue -- I've used the following concurrent queue algorithm enough that it warrants a blog entry. I'll sketch out the design of a fast and scalable multiple-producer multiple-consumer (MPSC) concurrent queue called PTLQueue. The queue has bounded capacity and is implemented via a circular array. Bounded capacity can be a useful property if there's a mismatch between producer rates and consumer rates where an unbounded queue might otherwise result in excessive memory consumption by virtue of the container nodes that -- in some queue implementations -- are used to hold values. A bounded-capacity queue can provide flow control between components. Beware, however, that bounded collections can also result in resource deadlock if abused. The put() and take() operators are partial and wait for the collection to become non-full or non-empty, respectively. Put() and take() do not allocate memory, and are not vulnerable to the ABA pathologies. The PTLQueue algorithm can be implemented equally well in C/C++ and Java. Partial operators are often more convenient than total methods. In many use cases if the preconditions aren't met, there's nothing else useful the thread can do, so it may as well wait via a partial method. An exception is in the case of work-stealing queues where a thief might scan a set of queues from which it could potentially steal. Total methods return ASAP with a success-failure indication. (It's tempting to describe a queue or API as blocking or non-blocking instead of partial or total, but non-blocking is already an overloaded concurrency term. Perhaps waiting/non-waiting or patient/impatient might be better terms). It's also trivial to construct partial operators by busy-waiting via total operators, but such constructs may be less efficient than an operator explicitly and intentionally designed to wait. A PTLQueue instance contains an array of slots, where each slot has volatile Turn and MailBox fields. The array has power-of-two length allowing mod/div operations to be replaced by masking. We assume sensible padding and alignment to reduce the impact of false sharing. (On x86 I recommend 128-byte alignment and padding because of the adjacent-sector prefetch facility). Each queue also has PutCursor and TakeCursor cursor variables, each of which should be sequestered as the sole occupant of a cache line or sector. You can opt to use 64-bit integers if concerned about wrap-around aliasing in the cursor variables. Put(null) is considered illegal, but the caller or implementation can easily check for and convert null to a distinguished non-null proxy value if null happens to be a value you'd like to pass. Take() will accordingly convert the proxy value back to null. An advantage of PTLQueue is that you can use atomic fetch-and-increment for the partial methods. We initialize each slot at index I with (Turn=I, MailBox=null). Both cursors are initially 0. All shared variables are considered "volatile" and atomics such as CAS and AtomicFetchAndIncrement are presumed to have bidirectional fence semantics. Finally T is the templated type. I've sketched out a total tryTake() method below that allows the caller to poll the queue. tryPut() has an analogous construction. Zebra stripping : alternating row colors for nice-looking code listings. See also google code "prettify" : https://code.google.com/p/google-code-prettify/ Prettify is a javascript module that yields the HTML/CSS/JS equivalent of pretty-print. -- pre:nth-child(odd) { background-color:#ff0000; } pre:nth-child(even) { background-color:#0000ff; } border-left: 11px solid #ccc; margin: 1.7em 0 1.7em 0.3em; background-color:#BFB; font-size:12px; line-height:65%; " // PTLQueue : Put(v) : // producer : partial method - waits as necessary assert v != null assert Mask = 1 && (Mask & (Mask+1)) == 0 // Document invariants // doorway step // Obtain a sequence number -- ticket // As a practical concern the ticket value is temporally unique // The ticket also identifies and selects a slot auto tkt = AtomicFetchIncrement (&PutCursor, 1) slot * s = &Slots[tkt & Mask] // waiting phase : // wait for slot's generation to match the tkt value assigned to this put() invocation. // The "generation" is implicitly encoded as the upper bits in the cursor // above those used to specify the index : tkt div (Mask+1) // The generation serves as an epoch number to identify a cohort of threads // accessing disjoint slots while s-Turn != tkt : Pause assert s-MailBox == null s-MailBox = v // deposit and pass message Take() : // consumer : partial method - waits as necessary auto tkt = AtomicFetchIncrement (&TakeCursor,1) slot * s = &Slots[tkt & Mask] // 2-stage waiting : // First wait for turn for our generation // Acquire exclusive "take" access to slot's MailBox field // Then wait for the slot to become occupied while s-Turn != tkt : Pause // Concurrency in this section of code is now reduced to just 1 producer thread // vs 1 consumer thread. // For a given queue and slot, there will be most one Take() operation running // in this section. // Consumer waits for producer to arrive and make slot non-empty // Extract message; clear mailbox; advance Turn indicator // We have an obvious happens-before relation : // Put(m) happens-before corresponding Take() that returns that same "m" for T v = s-MailBox if v != null : s-MailBox = null ST-ST barrier s-Turn = tkt + Mask + 1 // unlock slot to admit next producer and consumer return v Pause tryTake() : // total method - returns ASAP with failure indication for auto tkt = TakeCursor slot * s = &Slots[tkt & Mask] if s-Turn != tkt : return null T v = s-MailBox // presumptive return value if v == null : return null // ratify tkt and v values and commit by advancing cursor if CAS (&TakeCursor, tkt, tkt+1) != tkt : continue s-MailBox = null ST-ST barrier s-Turn = tkt + Mask + 1 return v The basic idea derives from the Partitioned Ticket Lock "PTL" (US20120240126-A1) and the MultiLane Concurrent Bag (US8689237). The latter is essentially a circular ring-buffer where the elements themselves are queues or concurrent collections. You can think of the PTLQueue as a partitioned ticket lock "PTL" augmented to pass values from lock to unlock via the slots. Alternatively, you could conceptualize of PTLQueue as a degenerate MultiLane bag where each slot or "lane" consists of a simple single-word MailBox instead of a general queue. Each lane in PTLQueue also has a private Turn field which acts like the Turn (Grant) variables found in PTL. Turn enforces strict FIFO ordering and restricts concurrency on the slot mailbox field to at most one simultaneous put() and take() operation. PTL uses a single "ticket" variable and per-slot Turn (grant) fields while MultiLane has distinct PutCursor and TakeCursor cursors and abstract per-slot sub-queues. Both PTL and MultiLane advance their cursor and ticket variables with atomic fetch-and-increment. PTLQueue borrows from both PTL and MultiLane and has distinct put and take cursors and per-slot Turn fields. Instead of a per-slot queues, PTLQueue uses a simple single-word MailBox field. PutCursor and TakeCursor act like a pair of ticket locks, conferring "put" and "take" access to a given slot. PutCursor, for instance, assigns an incoming put() request to a slot and serves as a PTL "Ticket" to acquire "put" permission to that slot's MailBox field. To better explain the operation of PTLQueue we deconstruct the operation of put() and take() as follows. Put() first increments PutCursor obtaining a new unique ticket. That ticket value also identifies a slot. Put() next waits for that slot's Turn field to match that ticket value. This is tantamount to using a PTL to acquire "put" permission on the slot's MailBox field. Finally, having obtained exclusive "put" permission on the slot, put() stores the message value into the slot's MailBox. Take() similarly advances TakeCursor, identifying a slot, and then acquires and secures "take" permission on a slot by waiting for Turn. Take() then waits for the slot's MailBox to become non-empty, extracts the message, and clears MailBox. Finally, take() advances the slot's Turn field, which releases both "put" and "take" access to the slot's MailBox. Note the asymmetry : put() acquires "put" access to the slot, but take() releases that lock. At any given time, for a given slot in a PTLQueue, at most one thread has "put" access and at most one thread has "take" access. This restricts concurrency from general MPMC to 1-vs-1. We have 2 ticket locks -- one for put() and one for take() -- each with its own "ticket" variable in the form of the corresponding cursor, but they share a single "Grant" egress variable in the form of the slot's Turn variable. Advancing the PutCursor, for instance, serves two purposes. First, we obtain a unique ticket which identifies a slot. Second, incrementing the cursor is the doorway protocol step to acquire the per-slot mutual exclusion "put" lock. The cursors and operations to increment those cursors serve double-duty : slot-selection and ticket assignment for locking the slot's MailBox field. At any given time a slot MailBox field can be in one of the following states: empty with no pending operations -- neutral state; empty with one or more waiting take() operations pending -- deficit; occupied with no pending operations; occupied with one or more waiting put() operations -- surplus; empty with a pending put() or pending put() and take() operations -- transitional; or occupied with a pending take() or pending put() and take() operations -- transitional. The partial put() and take() operators can be implemented with an atomic fetch-and-increment operation, which may confer a performance advantage over a CAS-based loop. In addition we have independent PutCursor and TakeCursor cursors. Critically, a put() operation modifies PutCursor but does not access the TakeCursor and a take() operation modifies the TakeCursor cursor but does not access the PutCursor. This acts to reduce coherence traffic relative to some other queue designs. It's worth noting that slow threads or obstruction in one slot (or "lane") does not impede or obstruct operations in other slots -- this gives us some degree of obstruction isolation. PTLQueue is not lock-free, however. The implementation above is expressed with polite busy-waiting (Pause) but it's trivial to implement per-slot parking and unparking to deschedule waiting threads. It's also easy to convert the queue to a more general deque by replacing the PutCursor and TakeCursor cursors with Left/Front and Right/Back cursors that can move either direction. Specifically, to push and pop from the "left" side of the deque we would decrement and increment the Left cursor, respectively, and to push and pop from the "right" side of the deque we would increment and decrement the Right cursor, respectively. We used a variation of PTLQueue for message passing in our recent OPODIS 2013 paper. ul { list-style:none; padding-left:0; padding:0; margin:0; margin-left:0; } ul#myTagID { padding: 0px; margin: 0px; list-style:none; margin-left:0;} -- -- There's quite a bit of related literature in this area. I'll call out a few relevant references: Wilson's NYU Courant Institute UltraComputer dissertation from 1988 is classic and the canonical starting point : Operating System Data Structures for Shared-Memory MIMD Machines with Fetch-and-Add. Regarding provenance and priority, I think PTLQueue or queues effectively equivalent to PTLQueue have been independently rediscovered a number of times. See CB-Queue and BNPBV, below, for instance. But Wilson's dissertation anticipates the basic idea and seems to predate all the others. Gottlieb et al : Basic Techniques for the Efficient Coordination of Very Large Numbers of Cooperating Sequential Processors Orozco et al : CB-Queue in Toward high-throughput algorithms on many-core architectures which appeared in TACO 2012. Meneghin et al : BNPVB family in Performance evaluation of inter-thread communication mechanisms on multicore/multithreaded architecture Dmitry Vyukov : bounded MPMC queue (highly recommended) Alex Otenko : US8607249 (highly related). John Mellor-Crummey : Concurrent queues: Practical fetch-and-phi algorithms. Technical Report 229, Department of Computer Science, University of Rochester Thomasson : FIFO Distributed Bakery Algorithm (very similar to PTLQueue). Scott and Scherer : Dual Data Structures I'll propose an optimization left as an exercise for the reader. Say we wanted to reduce memory usage by eliminating inter-slot padding. Such padding is usually "dark" memory and otherwise unused and wasted. But eliminating the padding leaves us at risk of increased false sharing. Furthermore lets say it was usually the case that the PutCursor and TakeCursor were numerically close to each other. (That's true in some use cases). We might still reduce false sharing by incrementing the cursors by some value other than 1 that is not trivially small and is coprime with the number of slots. Alternatively, we might increment the cursor by one and mask as usual, resulting in a logical index. We then use that logical index value to index into a permutation table, yielding an effective index for use in the slot array. The permutation table would be constructed so that nearby logical indices would map to more distant effective indices. (Open question: what should that permutation look like? Possibly some perversion of a Gray code or De Bruijn sequence might be suitable). As an aside, say we need to busy-wait for some condition as follows : "while C == 0 : Pause". Lets say that C is usually non-zero, so we typically don't wait. But when C happens to be 0 we'll have to spin for some period, possibly brief. We can arrange for the code to be more machine-friendly with respect to the branch predictors by transforming the loop into : "if C == 0 : for { Pause; if C != 0 : break; }". Critically, we want to restructure the loop so there's one branch that controls entry and another that controls loop exit. A concern is that your compiler or JIT might be clever enough to transform this back to "while C == 0 : Pause". You can sometimes avoid this by inserting a call to a some type of very cheap "opaque" method that the compiler can't elide or reorder. On Solaris, for instance, you could use :"if C == 0 : { gethrtime(); for { Pause; if C != 0 : break; }}". It's worth noting the obvious duality between locks and queues. If you have strict FIFO lock implementation with local spinning and succession by direct handoff such as MCS or CLH,then you can usually transform that lock into a queue. Hidden commentary and annotations - invisible : * And of course there's a well-known duality between queues and locks, but I'll leave that topic for another blog post. * Compare and contrast : PTLQ vs PTL and MultiLane * Equivalent : Turn; seq; sequence; pos; position; ticket * Put = Lock; Deposit Take = identify and reserve slot; wait; extract & clear; unlock * conceptualize : Distinct PutLock and TakeLock implemented as ticket lock or PTL Distinct arrival cursors but share per-slot "Turn" variable provides exclusive role-based access to slot's mailbox field put() acquires exclusive access to a slot for purposes of "deposit" assigns slot round-robin and then acquires deposit access rights/perms to that slot take() acquires exclusive access to slot for purposes of "withdrawal" assigns slot round-robin and then acquires withdrawal access rights/perms to that slot At any given time, only one thread can have withdrawal access to a slot at any given time, only one thread can have deposit access to a slot Permissible for T1 to have deposit access and T2 to simultaneously have withdrawal access * round-robin for the purposes of; role-based; access mode; access role mailslot; mailbox; allocate/assign/identify slot rights; permission; license; access permission; * PTL/Ticket hybrid Asymmetric usage ; owner oblivious lock-unlock pairing K-exclusion add Grant cursor pass message m from lock to unlock via Slots[] array Cursor performs 2 functions : + PTL ticket + Assigns request to slot in round-robin fashion Deconstruct protocol : explication put() : allocate slot in round-robin fashion acquire PTL for "put" access store message into slot associated with PTL index take() : Acquire PTL for "take" access // doorway step seq = fetchAdd (&Grant, 1) s = &Slots[seq & Mask] // waiting phase while s-Turn != seq : pause Extract : wait for s-mailbox to be full v = s-mailbox s-mailbox = null Release PTL for both "put" and "take" access s-Turn = seq + Mask + 1 * Slot round-robin assignment and lock "doorway" protocol leverage the same cursor and FetchAdd operation on that cursor FetchAdd (&Cursor,1) + round-robin slot assignment and dispersal + PTL/ticket lock "doorway" step waiting phase is via "Turn" field in slot * PTLQueue uses 2 cursors -- put and take. Acquire "put" access to slot via PTL-like lock Acquire "take" access to slot via PTL-like lock 2 locks : put and take -- at most one thread can access slot's mailbox Both locks use same "turn" field Like multilane : 2 cursors : put and take slot is simple 1-capacity mailbox instead of queue Borrow per-slot turn/grant from PTL Provides strict FIFO Lock slot : put-vs-put take-vs-take at most one put accesses slot at any one time at most one put accesses take at any one time reduction to 1-vs-1 instead of N-vs-M concurrency Per slot locks for put/take Release put/take by advancing turn * is instrumental in ... * P-V Semaphore vs lock vs K-exclusion * See also : FastQueues-excerpt.java dice-etc/queue-mpmc-bounded-blocking-circular-xadd/ * PTLQueue is the same as PTLQB - identical * Expedient return; ASAP; prompt; immediately * Lamport's Bakery algorithm : doorway step then waiting phase Threads arriving at doorway obtain a unique ticket number Threads enter in ticket order * In the terminology of Reed and Kanodia a ticket lock corresponds to the busy-wait implementation of a semaphore using an eventcount and a sequencer It can also be thought of as an optimization of Lamport's bakery lock was designed for fault-tolerance rather than performance Instead of spinning on the release counter, processors using a bakery lock repeatedly examine the tickets of their peers --

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• JavaOne Rock Star – Adam Bien

  - by Janice J. Heiss

  Among the most celebrated developers in recent years, especially in the domain of Java EE and JavaFX, is consultant Adam Bien, who, in addition to being a JavaOne Rock Star for Java EE sessions given in 2009 and 2011, is a Java Champion, the winner of Oracle Magazine’s 2011 Top Java Developer of the Year Award, and recently won a 2012 JAX Innovation Award as a top Java Ambassador. Bien will be presenting the following sessions: TUT3907 - Java EE 6/7: The Lean Parts CON3906 - Stress-Testing Java EE 6 Applications Without Stress CON3908 - Building Serious JavaFX 2 Applications CON3896 - Interactive Onstage Java EE Overengineering I spoke with Bien to get his take on Java today. He expressed excitement that the smallest companies and startups are showing increasing interest in Java EE. “This is a very good sign,” said Bien. “Only a few years ago J2EE was mostly used by larger companies -- now it becomes interesting even for one-person shows. Enterprise Java events are also extremely popular. On the Java SE side, I'm really excited about Project Nashorn.” Nashorn is an upcoming JavaScript engine, developed fully in Java by Oracle, and based on the Da Vinci Machine (JSR 292) which is expected to be available for Java 8.    Bien expressed concern about a common misconception regarding Java's mediocre productivity. “The problem is not Java,” explained Bien, “but rather systems built with ancient patterns and approaches. Sometimes it really is ‘Cargo Cult Programming.’ Java SE/EE can be incredibly productive and lean without the unnecessary and hard-to-maintain bloat. The real problems are ‘Ivory Towers’ and not Java’s lack of productivity.” Bien remarked that if there is one thing he wanted Java developers to understand it is that, "Premature optimization is the root of all evil. Or at least of some evil. Modern JVMs and application servers are hard to optimize upfront. It is far easier to write simple code and measure the results continuously. Identify the hotspots first, then optimize.”   He advised Java EE developers to, “Rethink everything you know about Enterprise Java. Before you implement anything, ask the question: ‘Why?’ If there is no clear answer -- just don't do it. Most well known best practices are outdated. Focus your efforts on the domain problem and not the technology.” Looking ahead, Bien remarked, “I would like to see open source application servers running directly on a hypervisor. Packaging the whole runtime in a single file would significantly simplify the deployment and operations.” Check out a recent Java Magazine interview with Bien about his Java EE 6 stress monitoring tool here.

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• Fast Data: Go Big. Go Fast.

  - by J Swaroop

  Cross-posting Dain Hansen's excellent recap of the Big Data/Fast Data announcement during OOW: For those of you who may have missed it, today’s second full day of Oracle OpenWorld 2012 started with a rumpus. Joe Tucci, from EMC outlined the human face of big data with real examples of how big data is transforming our world. And no not the usual tried-and-true weblog examples, but real stories about taxi cab drivers in Singapore using big data to better optimize their routes as well as folks just trying to get a better hair cut. Next we heard from Thomas Kurian who talked at length about the important platform characteristics of Oracle’s Cloud and more specifically Oracle’s expanded Cloud Services portfolio. Especially interesting to our integration customers are the messaging support for Oracle’s Cloud applications. What this means is that now Oracle’s Cloud applications have a lightweight integration fabric that on-premise applications can communicate to it via REST-APIs using Oracle SOA Suite. It’s an important element to our strategy at Oracle that supports this idea that whether your requirements are for private or public, Oracle has a solution in the Cloud for all of your applications and we give you more deployment choice than any vendor. If this wasn’t enough to get the juices flowing, later that morning we heard from Hasan Rizvi who outlined in his Fusion Middleware session the four most important enterprise imperatives: Social, Mobile, Cloud, and a brand new one: Fast Data. Today, Rizvi made an important step in the definition of this term to explain that he believes it’s a convergence of four essential technology elements: Event Processing for event filtering, business rules – with Oracle Event Processing Data Transformation and Loading - with Oracle Data Integrator Real-time replication and integration – with Oracle GoldenGate Analytics and data discovery – with Oracle Business Intelligence Each of these four elements can be considered (and architect-ed) together on a single integrated platform that can help customers integrate any type of data (structured, semi-structured) leveraging new styles of big data technologies (MapReduce, HDFS, Hive, NoSQL) to process more volume and variety of data at a faster velocity with greater results.  Fast data processing (and especially real-time) has always been our credo at Oracle with each one of these products in Fusion Middleware. For example, Oracle GoldenGate continues to be made even faster with the recent 11g R2 Release of Oracle GoldenGate which gives us some even greater optimization to Oracle Database with Integrated Capture, as well as some new heterogeneity capabilities. With Oracle Data Integrator with Big Data Connectors, we’re seeing much improved performance by running MapReduce transformations natively on Hadoop systems. And with Oracle Event Processing we’re seeing some remarkable performance with customers like NTT Docomo. Check out their upcoming session at Oracle OpenWorld on Wednesday to hear more how this customer is using Event processing and Big Data together. If you missed any of these sessions and keynotes, not to worry. There's on-demand versions available on the Oracle OpenWorld website. You can also checkout our upcoming webcast where we will outline some of these new breakthroughs in Data Integration technologies for Big Data, Cloud, and Real-time in more details.

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• Go for the Deep Dive on Oracle Products and Technology

  - by Oracle OpenWorld Blog Team

  by Karen Shamban Oracle University gives you more learning for your conference investment. It’s easier than ever before to get in-depth Oracle product and technology training if you’re attending any of the Oracle conferences this fall, including Oracle OpenWorld, the Oracle Customer Experience Summit @ OpenWorld, the Oracle PartnerNetwork Exchange @ OpenWorld, and MySQL Connect. Why is it easier? Because Oracle University preconference training takes place on Sunday, September 30 from 8:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. And you’re going to be in town for the conference anyway, right? The training ends early enough in the afternoon that you’ll still be able to get good seats for conference opening keynotes and get psyched for the welcome reception that follows. Each session will be taught by an expert Oracle University instructor and will be fact-packed with demos and tips to help you do more than ever before with your Oracle product and technology investment. The training sessions being offered include: Applications:·             PeopleSoft Test Framework Script Creation and Optimization·             New Integration Technologies for PeopleTools 8.52·             Oracle Fusion Applications: Security Fundamentals Database and Systems:·             Certification Exam Cram: Oracle Database 11g: New Features for Administrators·             Exadata Database Machine Administration Workshop·             Introduction to Big Data·             Using Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c·             Using Java - for PL/SQL and Database Developers Fusion Middleware:·             Developing Portable Java EE Applications with the Enterprise JavaBeans 3.1 API and Java Persistence API 2.0·             Developing Secure Java Web Services·             How The Latest Java EE and SOA Help in Architecting and Designing Robust Enterprise Applications·             Oracle Business Intelligence 11g: Overview to Analyses and Dashboards·             Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g: Build Applications with ADF I·             Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g Administer Forms Services·             Oracle SOA Suite 11g Administration·             WebLogic Server Administration Essentials Don’t miss this great opportunity to maximize your Oracle OpenWorld experience and investment. Learn more about Oracle University training sessions.

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• SQL Server MVP Deep Dives 2. The Awesome Returns.

  - by Mladen Prajdic

  Two years ago 59 SQL Server MVP's came together and helped make one of the best book on SQL Server out there. Each chapter was written by an MVP about a part of SQL Server they loved working with. This resulted in superb quality content and excellent ratings from the readers. To top it off all earnings went to a good cause, the War Child International organization. That book was SQL Server MVP Deep Dives. This year 63 SQL Server MVPs, me included, decided it was time do repeat the success of the first book. Let me introduce you the: SQL Server MVP Deep Dives 2 The topics in 60 chapters are grouped in 5 groups: Architecture, Database Administration, Database Development, Performance Tuning and Optimization, Business Intelligence. They represent over 1000 years of daily experience in various areas of SQL Server. I have contributed chapter 28 in Database Development group titled Getting asynchronous with Service Broker. In it I show you the Service Broker template you can use for secure communication between two or more SQL server instances for whatever purpose you may have. If you haven't heard of Service Broker it's a part of the database engine that enables you to do completely async operations in the database itself or between databases and instances. The official release of the book will be next week at PASS where there will be 2 slots where most of the authors will be there signing the books you bring. This is also a great opportunity to meet everyone and ask about any problems you may have. So definitely come say hi. Again we decided on a charity that will be supported by this book. It's called Operation Smile. They provide free surgeries to repair cleft lip, cleft palate and other facial deformities for children around the globe. You can also help them by donating. You can preorder it on at Manning Publications website or on Amazon. By having it you not only get to learn a lot, improve your skills and have fun but you also help a child have a normal life. If that's not a good cause then I don't know what it is.

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• Should I be an algorithm developer, or java web frameworks type developer?

  - by Derek

  So - as I see it, there are really two kinds of developers. Those that do frameworks, web services, pretty-making front ends, etc etc. Then there are developers that write the algorithms that solve the problem. That is, unless the problem is "display this raw data in some meaningful way." In that case, the framework/web developer guy might be doing both jobs. So my basic problem is this. I have been an algorithms kind of software developer for a few years now. I double majored in Math and Computer science, and I have a master's in systems engineering. I have never done any web-dev work, with the exception of a couple minor jobs, and some hobby level stuff. I have been job interviewing lately, and this is what happens: Job is listed as "programmer- 5 years of experience with the following: C/C++, Java,Perl, Ruby, ant, blah blah blah" Recruiter calls me, says they want me to come in for interview In the interview, find out they have some webservices development, blah blah blah When asked in the interview, talk about my experience doing algorithms, optimization, blah blah..but very willing to learn new languages, frameworks, etc Get a call back saying "we didn't think you were a fit for the job you interviewed wtih, but our algorithm team got wind of you and wants to bring you on" This has happened to me a couple times now - see a vague-ish job description looking for a "programmer" Go in, find out they are doing some sort of web-based tool, maybe with some hardcore algorithms running in the background. interview with people for the web-based tool, but get an offer from the algorithms people. So the question is - which job is the better job? I basically just want to get a wide berth of experience at this level of my career, but are algorithm developers so much in demand? Even more so than all these supposed hot in demand web developer guys? Will I be ok in the long run if I go into the niche of math based algorithm development, and just little to no, or hobby level web-dev experience? I basically just don't want to pigeon hole myself this early. My salary is already starting to get pretty high - and I can see a company later on saying "we really need a web developer, but we'll hire this 50k/year college guy, instead of this 100k/year experience algorithm guy" Cliffs notes: I have been doing algorithm development. I consider myself to be a "good programmer." I would have no problem picking up web technologies and those sorts of frameworks. During job interviews, I keep getting "we think you've got a good skillset - talk to our algorithm team" instead of wanting me to learn new skills on the job to do their web services or whhatever other new technology they are doing. Edit: Whenever I am talking about algorithm development here - I am talking about the code that produces the answer. Typically I think of more math-based algorithms: solving a financial problem, solving a finite element method, image processing, etc

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• Building Private IaaS with SPARC and Oracle Solaris

  - by ferhat

  A superior enterprise cloud infrastructure with high performing systems using built-in virtualization! We are happy to announce the expansion of Oracle Optimized Solution for Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure with Oracle's SPARC T-Series servers and Oracle Solaris.  Designed, tuned, tested and fully documented, the Oracle Optimized Solution for Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure now offers customers looking to upgrade, consolidate and virtualize their existing SPARC-based infrastructure a proven foundation for private cloud-based services which can lower TCO by up to 81 percent(1). Faster time to service, reduce deployment time from weeks to days, and can increase system utilization to 80 percent. The Oracle Optimized Solution for Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure can also be deployed at up to 50 percent lower cost over five years than comparable alternatives(2). The expanded solution announced today combines Oracle’s latest SPARC T-Series servers; Oracle Solaris 11, the first cloud OS; Oracle VM Server for SPARC, Oracle’s Sun ZFS Storage Appliance, and, Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center 12c, which manages all Oracle system technologies, streamlining cloud infrastructure management. Thank you to all who stopped by Oracle booth at the CloudExpo Conference in New York. We were also at Cloud Boot Camp: Building Private IaaS with Oracle Solaris and SPARC, discussing how this solution can maximize return on investment and help organizations manage costs for their existing infrastructures or for new enterprise cloud infrastructure design. Designed, tuned, and tested, Oracle Optimized Solution for Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure is a complete cloud infrastructure or any virtualized environment  using the proven documented best practices for deployment and optimization. The solution addresses each layer of the infrastructure stack using Oracle's powerful SPARC T-Series as well as x86 servers with storage, network, virtualization, and management configurations to provide a robust, flexible, and balanced foundation for your enterprise applications and databases.  For more information visit Oracle Optimized Solution for Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure. Solution Brief: Accelerating Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure Deployments White Paper: Reduce Complexity and Accelerate Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure Deployments Technical White Paper: Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure on SPARC (1) Comparison based on current SPARC server customers consolidating existing installations including Sun Fire E4900, Sun Fire V440 and SPARC Enterprise T5240 servers to latest generation SPARC T4 servers. Actual deployments and configurations will vary. (2) Comparison based on solution with SPARC T4-2 servers with Oracle Solaris and Oracle VM Server for SPARC versus HP ProLiant DL380 G7 with VMware and Red Hat Enterprise Linux and IBM Power 720 Express - Power 730 Express with IBM AIX Enterprise Edition and Power VM.

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• Configurable Objects - Introduction

  - by Anthony Shorten

  One of the interesting facilities in the framework is Configurable Object functionality (it is also known as Task Optimization and also known as Cool Tools). The idea is that any implementation can create their own views of the base product objects and services and implement functionality against those new views. For example, in Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing, there is a Person object. That object is used to store and manage information about individuals as well as companies. In the base product you would use the Person Maintenance screen and fill in some of the screen when you wanted to register or maintain and individual as well and fill out other parts of the screen when you wanted to register or maintain a company. This can be somewhat confusing to some customers. Using Configurable Objects this can be simplified. A business object can be created that is a view of the any object. For example, you could create a Human business object which would cover the aspects of the Person object pertaining to an individual and a Company business object to cover the aspects unique to a company. Even the tag names (i.e. Field Names) in the object can be changed to be more what the implementation is familiar with. The object can also restructure the object. For example, a common identifier for an individual in the USA is the Social Security number, this value is a Person Identifier (as this varies in each country). In the new Human object you can remap the Person Identifier as a Social Security number. To define a Business Object you use a schema editor built into the browser user interface and use a mapping language to setup the business objects. An example of the language is shown below in an extract of the schema for the Human business object. As you can see there are mapping as well as formatting and other tags. This information can be built manually or using a wizard which generates the base structure for you to alter. This is all stored as meta data when saved. Once a Business object is built it can be used as basis for code, other business objects (we support inheritance), called by a screen (called a UI Map) or even as a Web Service. This is just a start with Configurable Objects as you can also create views of base services called Business Services, Service Scripts used for non-object or complex object processing (as well as other things), UI Maps used for screens and Data Areas to reuse definitions across multiple objects. Configurable Objects are powerful and I only really touched on them here. Over the next few months I hope to add lots more entries about them.

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• Tuxedo Load Balancing

  - by Todd Little

  A question I often receive is how does Tuxedo perform load balancing.  This is often asked by customers that see an imbalance in the number of requests handled by servers offering a specific service. First of all let me say that Tuxedo really does load or request optimization instead of load balancing.  What I mean by that is that Tuxedo doesn't attempt to ensure that all servers offering a specific service get the same number of requests, but instead attempts to ensure that requests are processed in the least amount of time.   Simple round robin "load balancing" can be employed to ensure that all servers for a particular service are given the same number of requests.  But the question I ask is, "to what benefit"?  Instead Tuxedo scans the queues (which may or may not correspond to servers based upon SSSQ - Single Server Single Queue or MSSQ - Multiple Server Single Queue) to determine on which queue a request should be placed.  The scan is always performed in the same order and during the scan if a queue is empty the request is immediately placed on that queue and request routing is done.  However, should all the queues be busy, meaning that requests are currently being processed, Tuxedo chooses the queue with the least amount of "work" queued to it where work is the sum of all the requests queued weighted by their "load" value as defined in the UBBCONFIG file.  What this means is that under light loads, only the first few queues (servers) process all the requests as an empty queue is often found before reaching the end of the scan.  Thus the first few servers in the queue handle most of the requests.  While this sounds non-optimal, in fact it capitalizes on the underlying operating systems and hardware behavior to produce the best possible performance.  Round Robin scheduling would spread the requests across all the available servers and thus require all of them to be in memory, and likely not share much in the way of hardware or memory caches.  Tuxedo's system maximizes the various caches and thus optimizes overall performance.  Hopefully this makes sense and now explains why you may see a few servers handling most of the requests.  Under heavy load, meaning enough load to keep all servers that can handle a request busy, you should see a relatively equal number of requests processed.  Next post I'll try and cover how this applies to servers in a clustered (MP) environment because the load balancing there is a little more complicated. Regards,Todd LittleOracle Tuxedo Chief Architect

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• Patterns for Handling Changing Property Sets in C++

  - by Bhargav Bhat

  I have a bunch "Property Sets" (which are simple structs containing POD members). I'd like to modify these property sets (eg: add a new member) at run time so that the definition of the property sets can be externalized and the code itself can be re-used with multiple versions/types of property sets with minimal/no changes. For example, a property set could look like this: struct PropSetA { bool activeFlag; int processingCount; /* snip few other such fields*/ }; But instead of setting its definition in stone at compile time, I'd like to create it dynamically at run time. Something like: class PropSet propSetA; propSetA("activeFlag",true); //overloading the function call operator propSetA("processingCount",0); And the code dependent on the property sets (possibly in some other library) will use the data like so: bool actvFlag = propSet["activeFlag"]; if(actvFlag == true) { //Do Stuff } The current implementation behind all of this is as follows: class PropValue { public: // Variant like class for holding multiple data-types // overloaded Conversion operator. Eg: operator bool() { return (baseType == BOOLEAN) ? this->ToBoolean() : false; } // And a method to create PropValues various base datatypes static FromBool(bool baseValue); }; class PropSet { public: // overloaded[] operator for adding properties void operator()(std::string propName, bool propVal) { propMap.insert(std::make_pair(propName, PropVal::FromBool(propVal))); } protected: // the property map std::map<std::string, PropValue> propMap; }; This problem at hand is similar to this question on SO and the current approach (described above) is based on this answer. But as noted over at SO this is more of a hack than a proper solution. The fundamental issues that I have with this approach are as follows: Extending this for supporting new types will require significant code change. At the bare minimum overloaded operators need to be extended to support the new type. Supporting complex properties (eg: struct containing struct) is tricky. Supporting a reference mechanism (needed for an optimization of not duplicating identical property sets) is tricky. This also applies to supporting pointers and multi-dimensional arrays in general. Are there any known patterns for dealing with this scenario? Essentially, I'm looking for the equivalent of the visitor pattern, but for extending class properties rather than methods. Edit: Modified problem statement for clarity and added some more code from current implementation.

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• Time passage arithmetic explanation

  - by Cyber Axe

  I ported this from http://www.effectgames.com/effect/article.psp.html/joe/Old_School_Color_Cycling_with_HTML5 some time ago. However i'm now wanting to modify it for the purpose of changing it from floating point to fixed point maths for enhanced efficiency (for those who are going to talk about premature optimization and what not, i want to have my entire engine in fixed point both as a learning process for me and so i can port code more easily to systems in the future that dont have native floating points such as arm cpus) My initial conversion to fixed points just resulted in the cycling stuck on either the first or last frame of cycling. Plus it would be nice to understand better how it works so i can add more options and so forth in the future, my maths however sucks and the comments are limited so i don't really know how the maths work for determining the frame it shoud use (cycleAmount) I was also a beginner when i ported it as i had no idea between floating points and integers and what not. So in summary my question is, can anyone give an explination of the arithmatic used for determining the cycleAmount (which determings the "frame" of the cycle) This is the working floating point maths version of the code: public final void cycle(Colour[] sourceColours, double timeNow, double speedAdjust) { // Cycle all animated colour ranges in palette based on timestamp. sourceColours = sourceColours.clone(); int cycleSize; double cycleRate; double cycleAmount; Cycle cycle; for (int i = 0, len = cycles.length; i < len; ++i) { cycle = cycles[i]; cycleSize = (cycle.HIGH - cycle.LOW) + 1; cycleRate = cycle.RATE / (int) (CYCLE_SPEED / speedAdjust); cycleAmount = 0; if (cycle.REVERSE < 3) { // Standard Cycle cycleAmount = DFLOAT_MOD((timeNow / (1000 / cycleRate)), cycleSize); if (cycle.REVERSE < 1) { cycleAmount = cycleSize - cycleAmount; // If below 1 make sure its not reversed. } } else if (cycle.REVERSE == 3) { // Ping-Pong cycleAmount = DFLOAT_MOD((timeNow / (1000 / cycleRate)), cycleSize << 1); if (cycleAmount >= cycleSize) { cycleAmount = (cycleSize * 2) - cycleAmount; } } else if (cycle.REVERSE < 6) { // Sine Wave cycleAmount = DFLOAT_MOD((timeNow / (1000 / cycleRate)), cycleSize); cycleAmount = Math.sin((cycleAmount * 3.1415926 * 2) / cycleSize) + 1; if (cycle.REVERSE == 4) { cycleAmount *= (cycleSize / 4); } else if (cycle.REVERSE == 5) { cycleAmount *= (cycleSize >> 1); } } if (cycle.REVERSE == 2) { reverseColours(sourceColours, cycle); } if (USE_BLEND_SHIFT) { blendShiftColours(sourceColours, cycle, cycleAmount); } else { shiftColours(sourceColours, cycle, cycleAmount); } if (cycle.REVERSE == 2) { reverseColours(sourceColours, cycle); } } colours = sourceColours; } // This utility function allows for variable precision floating point modulus. private double DFLOAT_MOD(final double d, final double b) { return (Math.floor(d * PRECISION) % Math.floor(b * PRECISION)) / PRECISION; }

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• Why Healthcare Today Needs BPM and SOA by Avio

  - by JuergenKress

  Within the past couple years, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has led to significant changes in the healthcare industry. A highly-complex supply chain between patients, providers, buyers and insurance companies has led to a lack of overall collaboration when it comes to processes. The first open enrollment deadline for products on the Health Insurance Exchange has passed. So what now? Let’s take a brief look at how things have changed and what organizations can do to stay in (and ahead of) the game. New requirements, new processes Organizations that have not adapted processes to meet new regulatory requirements will fall further behind. New regulatory requirements effectively make some legacy applications obsolete, require batch process to move to real-time, and more. Business Process Management (BPM) can help organizations bring data processes in line while helping IT redesign processes rather than change code or replace existing applications. BPM fills in application gaps and links critical information systems for a more visible, efficient and auditable organization. Social and mobile solutions BPM technology also facilitates social and mobile solutions that can help meet new needs. Patients are dependent on a network of doctors, pharmacists, families and others. Social solutions can connect members of the patient’s community in ways never seen before - enabling real-time, relevant communication. Likewise, mobile technology supports social solutions, and BPM is the most efficient way to make processes simple and role-based. It unties medical professionals from their offices by enabling them to access timely information and alerts anywhere. Why SOA is also needed Integrating BPM with Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) also plays a critical role in the development of healthcare solutions that work. SOA can create a single end-to-end process, integrate applications and move them into a common workflow. While SOA enables the reutilization of existing IT infrastructure, BPM supports the process optimization, monitoring and social aspects. SOA and BPM applications support business analysts as they model, create and monitor processes - providing real-time insight and a unified workflow of process activities. Read “New” Solutions for a New Healthcare Landscape on our blog to learn more. SOA & BPM Partner Community For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Wiki Technorati Tags: Avio,Healthcare,SOA Community,Oracle SOA,Oracle BPM,Community,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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• Using machine learning to aim mirrors in a solar array?

  - by Buttons840

  I've been thinking about solar collectors where several independent mirrors to focus the light on a solar collector, similar to the following design from Energy Innovations. Because there will be flaws in the assembly of this solar array, I am proceeding with the following assumptions (or lack thereof): The software knows the "position" of each mirror, but doesn't know how this position relates to the real world or to other mirrors. This will account for poor mirror calibration or other environmental factors which may effect one mirror but not the others. If a mirror moves 10 units in one direction, and then 10 units in the opposite direction, it will end up where it originally started. I would like to use machine learning to position the mirrors correctly and focus the light on the collector. I expect I would approach this as an optimization problem, optimizing the mirror positions to maximize the heat inside the collector and the power output. The problem is finding a small target in a noisy high-dimensional space (considering each mirror has 2 axis of rotation). Some of the problems I anticipate are: cloudy days, even if you stumble upon the perfect mirror alignment, it might be cloudy at the time noisy sensor data the sun is a moving target, it moves along a path, and follows a different path every day - although you could calculate the exact position of the sun at any time, you wouldn't know how that position relates to your mirrors My question isn't about the solar array, but possible machine learning techniques that would help in this "small target in a noisy high dimensional-space" problem. I mentioned the solar array because it was the catalyst for this question and a good example. What machine learning techniques can find such a small target in a noisy high-dimensional space? EDIT: A few additional thoughts: Yes, you can calculate the suns position in the real world, but you don't know how the mirrors position is related to the real world (unless you've learned it somehow). You might know the suns azimuth is 220 degrees, and the suns elevation is 60 degrees, and you might know a mirror is at position (-20, 42); now tell me, is that mirror correctly aligned with the sun? You don't know. Lets assume you have some very sophisticated heat measurements, and you know "with this heat level, there must be 2 mirrors correctly aligned". Now the question is, which two mirrors (out of 25 or more) are correctly aligned? One solution I considered was to approximate the correct "alignment function" using a neural network which would take the suns azimuth and elevation as input and output a large array with 2 values for each mirror which correspond to the 2 axis of each mirror. I'm not sure what the best training method is though.

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• SceneManagers as systems in entity system or as a core class used by a system?

  - by Hatoru Hansou

  It seems entity systems are really popular here. Links posted by other users convinced me of the power of such system and I decided to try it. (Well, that and my original code getting messy) In my project, I originally had a SceneManager class that maintained needed logic and structures to organize the scene (QuadTree, 2D game). Before rendering I call selectRect() and pass the x,y of the camera and the width and height of the screen and then obtain a minimized list containing only visible entities ordered from back to front. Now with Systems, originally in my first attempt my Render system required to get added all entities it should handle. This may sound like the correct approach but I realized this was not efficient. Trying to optimize It I reused the SceneManager class internally in the Renderer system, but then I realized I needed methods such as selectRect() in others systems too (AI principally) and make the SceneManager accessible globally again. Currently I converted SceneManager to a system, and ended up with the following interface (only relevant methods): /// Base system interface class System { public: virtual void tick (double delta_time) = 0; // (methods to add and remove entities) }; typedef std::vector<Entity*> EntitiesVector; /// Specialized system interface to allow query the scene class SceneManager: public System { public: virtual EntitiesVector& cull () = 0; /// Sets the entity to be used as the camera and replaces previous ones. virtual void setCamera (Entity* entity) = 0; }; class SceneRenderer // Not a system { vitual void render (EntitiesVector& entities) = 0; }; Also I could not guess how to convert renderers to systems. My game separates logic updates from screen updates, my main class have a tick() method and a render() method that may not be called the same times. In my first attempt renderers were systems but they was saved in a separated manager, updated only in render() and not in tick() like all other systems. I realized that was silly and simply created a SceneRenderer interface and give up about converting them to systems, but that may be for another question. Then... something does not feel right, isn't it? If I understood correctly a system should not depend on another or even count with another system exposing an specific interface. Each system should care only about its entities, or nodes (as optimization, so they have direct references to relevant components without having to constantly call the component() or getComponent() method of the entity).

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 2012-09-05

  - by Bob Rhubart

  OTN Architect Day - Boston - Sept 12: What to Expect If you've never attended an OTN Architect Day, here's a little preview. You start with a continental breakfast. Then you have keynotes by an Oracle expert, and a member of the Oracle ACE community. After that come the break-out sessions, so you have your choice of two sessions in each time slot. So you'll get in two breakouts before lunch. Then you eat. After that there's a panel Q&A during which the audience tosses questions at the assembled session speakers. Then it's on to another set of break-out sessions, followed by a short break. Then the audience breaks into small groups for round table discussions. After that there's a drawing for some cool prizes, followed by the cocktail reception. All that costs you absolutely zero. Register now. Starting and Stopping Fusion Applications the Right Way | Ronaldo Viscuso While the fastartstop tool that ships with Oracle Fusion Applications does most of the work to start/stop/bounce the Fusion Apps environment, it does not do it all. Oracle Fusion Applications A-Team blogger Ronaldo Viscuso's post "aims to explain all tasks involved in starting and stopping a Fusion Apps environment completely." Dodeca Customer Feedback - The Rosewood Company | Tim Tow Oracle ACE Director Tim Tow shares anecdotal comments from one of his clients, a company that is deploying Dodeca to replace an aging VBA/Essbase application. Configuring UCM cache to check for external Content Server changes | Martin Deh Oracle WebCenter and ADF A-Team blogger Martin Deh shares the background information and the solution to a recently encountered customer scenario. Proxy As Upgrade to 11g Does Not Like NQSession.User | Art of Business Intelligence "In Oracle BI 10g the application was a lot more tolerant of bad design and cavalier usage of variables," observes Oracle ACE Christian Screen. "We noticed an issue recently during an upgrade where the Proxy As configuration in Oracle BI 10g used the NQSession.User variable to identify the user logged into Presentation Servers acting as Proxy." Oracle WebLogic Server 11g: Interactive Quick Reference | Dirk Nachbar Oracle ACE Dirk Nachbar shares a quick post with information on a new interactive reference guide to Oracle WebLogic Server. "The Quick Reference shows you an architecural overview of the Oracle WebLogic Server processes, tools, configuration files, log files and so on including a short description of each section and the corresponding link to the Oracle WebLogic Server Documentation," says Nachbar. Thought for the Day "In fast moving markets, adaptation is significantly more important than optimization." — Larry Constantine Source: Quotes for Software Engineers

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• Oracle OpenWorld Call for MDM Papers

  - by david.butler(at)oracle.com

  As the MDM Track owner, I would like to invite everyone to respond to the Oracle OpenWorld (October 2-6, Moscone Center, San Francisco) Call for Papers (https://oracleus.wingateweb.com/portal/cfp/ ). The Call for Papers is open now through Sunday, March 27. This is an outstanding opportunity for organizations familiar with MDM to tell their story to a very large, knowledgeable and intensely interested community. Opportunities for feedback and networking abound.  I would love to see MDM papers on: business drivers; business benefits; quantified ROI stories; business process optimization; implementation styles; implementation lessons learned; using master data as a service; data governance best practices; end-to-end data quality experiences; support for SOA; Chart of Accounts issues fixed; how to leverage reference data; improving EPM and/or BI across the board; operationalizing a data warehouse; support for cloud computing; compliance success stories; architecture, scalability, and mixed workload RAC platform performance examples; industry specific value propositions (Financial Services; Retail, Telecom; Manufacturing, High Tech Manufacturing, Public Sector, Health Care, …); and line of business specific value propositions (CRM, ERP, PLM, SCM, …); etc. In fact, given that MDM positively impacts all areas of operations and analytics, there are no limits to the ideas you may have for an OpenWorld presentation. When you follow the submission process, be sure to use “Master Data Management” for either the Primary or Optional track. Add “Master Data Management” as an Optional track if you are adding MDM content to a presentation on one of the following tracks: Agile; Customer Relationship Management, Oracle E-Business Suite, Product Lifecycle Management, Siebel, Sourcing and Procurement, Supply Chain Management, or one of the 18 available industry tracks. If Cloud Computing is included, please add “Cloud Computing” as a Cross-Stream Track. And don’t forget to make “MDM” a Tag, along with Business Intelligence, Cloud, CRM, Data Integration, Data Migration, Data Warehousing, EPM, or Service-Oriented Architecture whenever your content includes these items. I will personally review each submission. I hope you all keep me very busy over the next few weeks.

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• Oracle JDeveloper 11gR2 Cookbook book review

  - by Chris Muir

  I recently received a free copy of Oracle JDeveloper 11gR2 Cookbook published by Packt Publishing for review. Readers of technical cookbooks would know this genre of text includes problems that developers will hit and the prescribed solutions, in this case for Oracle's Application Development Framework (ADF).  Books like this excel themselves on excellent coverage, a logical progress of solutions through out the book, and providing a readable narrative around the numerous steps and code. This book progresses well through ADF application assembly, ADF Business Components, the view layer, security, deployment and tuning.  Each recipe had a clear introduction and I especially enjoyed the "There's more" follow up sections for some recipes that leads the reader onto related ideas and issues the reader really needs to be aware of. Also worthy of comment having worked with ADF for over 5 years, there certainly was recipes and solutions I hadn't encountered before, this book gets bonus points for that. As a reviewer what negatives can I give this text? The book has cast it's net too wide by trying to cover "everything from design and construction, to deployment, testing, debugging and optimization."  ADF is such a large and sophistication technology, this book with 100 recipes barely scrapes the surface.  Don't expect all your ADF problems to be solved here. In turn there is inconsistency in the level of problems and solutions.  I felt at the beginning the book was pitching itself at advanced problems to solve (that's great for me), but then it introduces topics like building a static View Object or train.  These topics in my opinion are fairly simple and are covered by the Oracle documentation just as well, they shouldn't have been included here.  In conclusion, ADF beginners will find this book worthwhile as it will open your eyes to the wider problems and solutions required for ADF, and experts for just the fact they can point junior programmers at the book for certain problems and say "get on with it". Is there scope for more ADF tombs like this?  Yes!  I'd love to see a cookbook specializing on ADF Business Components (hint hint to budding authors).

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• Wireframing: A Day In the Life of UX Workshop at Oracle

  - by ultan o'broin

  The Oracle Applications User Experience team's Day in the Life (DITL) of User Experience (UX) event was run in Oracle's Redwood Shores HQ for Oracle Usability Advisory Board (OUAB) members. I was charged with putting together a wireframing session, together with Director of Financial Applications User Experience, Scott Robinson (@scottrobinson). Example of stunning new wireframing visuals we used on the DITL events. We put on a lively show, explaining the basics of wireframing, the concepts, what it is and isn't, considerations on wireframing tool choice, and then imparting some tips and best practices. But the real energy came when the OUAB customers and partners in the room were challenge to do some wireframing of their own. Wireframing is about bringing your business and product use cases to life in real UX visual terms, by creating a low-fidelity drawing to iterate and agree on in advance of prototyping and coding what is to be finally built and rolled out for users. All the best people wireframe. Leonardo da Vinci used "cartoons" on some great works, tracing outlines first and using red ochre or charcoal dropped through holes in the tracing parchment onto the canvas to outline the subject. (Image distributed under Wikimedia commons license) Wireframing an application's user experience design enables you to: Obtain stakeholder buy-in. Enable faster iteration of different designs. Determine the task flow navigation paths (in Oracle Fusion Applications navigation is linked with user roles). Develop a content strategy (readability, search engine optimization (SEO) of content, and so on) Lay out the pages, widgets, groups of features, and so on. Apply usability heuristics early (no replacement for usability testing, but a great way to do some heavy-lifting up front). Decide upstream which functional user experience design patterns to apply (out of the box solutions that expedite productivity). Assess which Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF) or equivalent technology components can be used (again, developer productivity is enhanced downstream). We ran a lively hands-on exercise where teams wireframed a choice of application scenarios using the time-honored tools of pen and paper. Scott worked the floor like a pro, pointing out great use of features, best practices, innovations, and making sure that the whole concept of wireframing, the gestalt, transferred. "We need more buttons!" The cry of the energized. Not quite. The winning wireframe session (online shopping scenario) from the Applications UX DITL event shown. Great fun, great energy, and great teamwork were evident in the room. Naturally, there were prizes for the best wireframe. Well, actually, prizes were handed out to the other attendees too! An exciting, slightly different aspect to delivery of this session made the wireframing event one of the highlights of the day. And definitely, something we will repeat again when we get the chance. Thanks to everyone who attended, contributed, and helped organize.

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• Segmentation and Targeting: Your Tools for Personalizing the Online Customer Experience

  - by Christie Flanagan

  In order to deliver the kind of personalized and engaging online experiences that customers expect today, look to segmentation and targeting.  Segmentation is the practice of dividing your site visitors into distinct groups based on shared characteristics or behavior – for example, a segment may consist of site visitors who have visited pages related to certain product type, or they may consist of visitors within the same age group or geographic area.  The idea is that those within a segment are more likely to have common needs, problems or interests that can be served by your business. Targeting is the process by which the most relevant content, whether an article promotion or other piece of content, is delivered to your visitors based on their segment membership. Segmentation and targeting are used to drive greater engagement on your web presence by delivering content to your site visitors that is tailored to their interests, behavior or other attributes.  You may have a number of different goals for your segmentation and targeting efforts: Up-sell or cross-sell to your customers Conduct A/B testing on your offers and creative Offer discounts, promotions or other incentives for the time and duration that you specify Make is easier to find relevant information about products and services Create premium content model There are two different approaches you can take toward segmentation and targeting for you online customer experience initiatives. The first is more of a manual process, in which marketers manage the process of determining which segments to create and which content to target to those segments. The benefit of this approach is that it gives marketers a high level of control over the whole process which works well when you have a thorough understanding of your segments and which content is most likely to serve their needs.  Tools for marketer managed segmentation and targeting are often built right in to your WEM platform, as they are with Oracle WebCenter Sites. The downside is that the more segments and content that you have, the more time consuming and complicated in can be to manage manually.The second approach relies on predictive intelligence to automate the segmentation and targeting process.  This allows optimization of the process to occur in real time. This approach helps reduce the burden of manual segmentation and targeting and can result in new insights into segments that you may never have thought of on your own.  It also provides you with the capability to quickly test new offers and promotions on your site.  Predictive segmentation and targeting can be achieved by using Oracle WebCenter Sites and Oracle Real-Time Decisions together. *****Get a taste for how Oracle WebCenter Sites and Oracle Real-Time Decisions combine to deliver powerful capabilities for predictive segmentation and targeting by watching this on demand webcast introducing Oracle WebCenter Sites 11g or by reading IDC’s take on the latest release of Oracle’s web experience management solution.  Be sure to return to the Oracle WebCenter blog on Thursday for a closer look at how to optimize the online customer experience using these two products together.

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• Maximizing the Value of Software

  - by David Dorf

  A few years ago we decided to increase our investments in documenting retail processes and architectures.  There were several goals but the main two were to help retailers maximize the value they derive from our software and help system integrators implement our software faster.  The sale is only part of our success metric -- its actually more important that the customer realize the benefits of the software.  That's when we actually celebrate. This week many of our customers are gathered in Chicago to discuss their successes during our annual Crosstalk conference.  That provides the perfect forum to announce the release of the Oracle Retail Reference Library.  The RRL is available for free to Oracle Retail customers and partners.  It contains 1000s of hours of work and represents years of experience in the retail industry.  The Retail Reference Library is composed of three offerings: Retail Reference Model We've been sharing the RRM for several years now, with lots of accolades.  The RRM is a set of business process diagrams at varying levels of granularity. This release marks the debut of Visio documents, which should make it easier for retailers to adopt and edit the diagrams.  The processes represent an approximation of the Oracle Retail software, but at higher levels they are pretty generic and therefore usable with other software as well.  Using these processes, the business and IT are better able to communicate the expectations of the software.  They can be used to guide customization when necessary, and help identify areas for optimization in the organization. Retail Reference Architecture When embarking on a software implementation project, it can be daunting to start from a blank sheet of paper.  So we offer the RRA, a comprehensive set of documents that describe the retail enterprise in terms of logical architecture, physical deployments, and systems integration.  These documents and diagrams describe how all the systems typically found in a retailer enterprise work together.  They serve as a way to jump-start implementations using best practices we've captured over the years. Retail Semantic Glossary Have you ever seen two people argue over something because they're using misaligned terminology?  Its a huge waste and happens all the time.  The Retail Semantic Glossary is a simple application that allows retailers to define terms and metrics in a centralized database.  This initial version comes with limited content with the goal of adding more over subsequent releases.  This is the single source for defining key performance indicators, metrics, algorithms, and terms so that the retail organization speaks in a consistent language. These three offerings are downloaded from MyOracleSupport separately and linked together using the start page above.  Everything is navigated using a Web browser.  See the Oracle Retail Documentation blog for more details.

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• Any ideas on reducing lag in terrain generation?

  - by l5p4ngl312

  Ok so here's the deal. I've written an isometric engine that generates terrain based on camera values using 2D perlin noise. I planned on doing 3D but first I need to work out the lag issues I'm having. I will try to explain how I am doing this so that maybe someone can spot where I am going wrong. I know it should not be this laggy. There is the abstract class Block which right now just contains render(). BlockGrass, etc. extend this class and each has code in the render function to create a textured quad at the given position. Then there is the class Chunk which has the function Generate() and setBlocksInArea(). Generate uses 2D perlin noise to make a height map and stores the heights in a 2D array. It stores the positions of each block it generates in blockarray[x][y][z]. The chunks are 8x8x128. In the main game class there is a 3D array called blocksInArea. The blocks in this array are what gets rendered. When a chunk generates, it adds its blocks to this array at the correct index. It is like this so chunks can be saved to the hard drive (even though they aren't yet) but there can still be optimization with the rendering that you wouldn't have if you rendered each chunk separately. Here's where the laggy part comes in: When the camera moves to a new chunk, a row of chunks generates on the end of the axis that the camera moved on. But it still has to move the other chunks up/down in the blocksInArea (render) array. It does this by calculating the new position in the array and doing the Chunk.setBlocksInArea(): for(int x = 0; x < 8; x++){ for(int y = 0; y < 8; y++){ nx = x+(coordX - camCoordX)*8 ny = y+(coordY - camCoordY)*8 for(int z = 0; z < height[x][y]; z++){ blockarray[x][y][z] = Game.blocksInArea[nx][ny][z]; } } } My reasoning was that this would be much faster than doing the perlin noise all over again, but there are still little spikes of lag when you move in between chunks. Edit: Would it be possible to create a 3 dimensional array list so that shifting of chunks within the array would not be neccessary?

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• No description for any page on the website is available in Google despite robots.txt allowing crawling

  - by Abhijit

  I seem to have the weirdest issue with Search Engine Optimization, and I asked the IT folks at my university, I asked people on Joomla forums and I am trying to sort this issue out using Google Webmaster Tools for more than 2 months to little avail. I want to know if I have some blatantly wrong configuration somewhere that is causing search engines to be unable to index this site. I noticed a similar issue with another website I searched for online (ECEGSA - The University of British Columbia at gsa.ece.ubc.ca), making me believe this might be a concern that people might be looking an answer for. Here are the details: The website in question is: http://gsa.ece.umd.edu/. It runs using Joomla 2.5.x (latest). The site was up since around mid December of 2013, and I noticed right from the get go that the site was not being indexed correctly on Google. Specifically I see the following message when I search for the website on Google: A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt – learn more. The thing is in December till around March I used the default Joomla robots.txt file which is: User-agent: * Disallow: /administrator/ Disallow: /cache/ Disallow: /cli/ Disallow: /components/ Disallow: /images/ Disallow: /includes/ Disallow: /installation/ Disallow: /language/ Disallow: /libraries/ Disallow: /logs/ Disallow: /media/ Disallow: /modules/ Disallow: /plugins/ Disallow: /templates/ Disallow: /tmp/ Nothing there should stop Google from searching my website. And even more confusingly, when I go to Google Webmaster tools, under "Blocked URLs" tab, when I try many of the links on the site, they are all shown up as "Allowed". I then tried adding a sitemap, putting it in the robots.txt file. That did not help. Same exact search result, same behavior in the "Blocked URLs" tab on the webmaster tools. Now additionally, the "sitemaps" tab says for several links an error saying "URL is robotted out". I tried those exact links in the "Blocked URLs" and they are allowed! I then tried deleting the robots.txt file. No use. Same exact problem. Here is an example screenshot from Google's Webmaster Tools: At this point I cannot give a rational explanation to why this is happening and neither can anyone in the IT department here. No one on Joomla forums can seem to understand what is going on. Based on what I explained, does it seem that I have somehow set a setting in the robots.txt or in .htaccess or somewhere else, incorrectly?

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