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• Vitality of Product Information Management Showcased at OpenWorld 2012

  - by Mala Narasimharajan

   By Sachin Patel Can you hear the countdown clock ticking!! OpenWorld 2012 is almost here and as I write this Oracle is buzzing with fresh new ideas and solutions that will be showcased this year. What an exciting time for all of us to be in midst of a digital revolution. Whether it is Apple fans clamoring to find every new feature that has been added to the iPhone 5 or a startup launching a new digital thermostat (has anyone looked at the new one from Nest ), product information is a vital for companies to grow and compete in this cut-throat market. Customer today struggle to aggregate and enrich this product data from the myriad of systems they have in place to run their businesses and operations. Having a product information strategy is paramount to align your sales channels and operations with the most accurate and upto date product data. We have a number of sessions this year at OpenWorld where you can gain more insight into how Oracle’s next generation of Fusion Applications, in this case Fusion Product Hub can provide you with a solution to streamline and get control of your Product Master Data. Enabling Trusted Enterprise Product Data with Oracle Fusion Product HubTuesday, October 2nd 11:45 am, Moscone West 2022 Join me Sachin Patel, Director of Product Strategy and Milan Bhatia, VP of Development as we discuss how you can enable trusted product master data in your enterprise. In this session we plan to cover the challenges companies face today in mastering product data. The discussion will also include how Fusion Product Hub brings new and innovative features to empower your product data owners to create a holistic and rich product definition that can be leveraged across your enterprise. We will also be joined by Pawel Fidelus from Fideltronik an Early Adopter for Fusion Product Hub who will showcase their plans to implement Fusion Product Hub and the value it will bring to Fideltronik Multichannel Fulfillment Excellence in Direct-to-Consumer Market Thursday, October 4th, 12:45 am, Moscone West 2024 Do you have multiple order capture systems? Do you have difficulty in fulfilling orders for your customers across various channels and suppliers? Mark Carson, Director, Fusion DOO and Brad Kerr, Director, AGSS will be showcasing the Fusion Distributed Order Orchestration solution and how companies can orchestrate orders from multiple order capture systems and route them to the appropriate fulfillment system. Sachin Patel, Director Product Strategy for Product MDM will highlight the business pain points in consolidating and commercializing data from a Multi Channel Commerce point of view and how Fusion Product Hub helps in allowing you to provide a single source of truth to drive a singular and rich customer experience. Oracle Fusion Supply Chain Management: Customer Adoption and Experiences                                                Wednesday, October 3rd 10:15 am, Moscone West 2003 This is a great session to attend to learn about how Fusion Supply Chain Management and Fusion Product Hub Early Adopters, including Boeing and Fideltronik are leveraging Fusion Applications to improve their Supply Chain operations. Have a great OpenWorld and see you soon!!

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• How to check if a Webcam is broken?

  - by user84812

  I just bought an Acer Aspire 3830TG, it comes with an integrated 1.3M HD Webcam. Before buying it i tried with a bootable Lubuntu usb stick, everything worked well except for the webcam, which i thought I had to tweak. The thing is that it seems the camera should work with no problems in ubuntu. The driver is detected, I try dmesg | grep uvcvideo and the output is [ 12.226174] uvcvideo: Found UVC 1.00 device 1.3M HD WebCam (058f:b002) [ 12.245553] usbcore: registered new interface driver uvcvideo I've also tried using different software (guvcview is black when camera output is MJPG and turns to funny colors when YU12 or YV12, cheese is always black, camorama is always with funny colors...). I should have checked that it was working properly with the default os (windows) but now it's too late for that. I even booted with a official Ubuntu Quantal distro from the usb pen, and the results are the same. so, my question is: is there any way to check that the camera is righmt or broken? So, if it's broken, at least i can go to the shop, show them that it's really broken and get an external webcam for free, or st like that. cheers. UPDATE 1 Thanks, jrp. I run sudo lsinput, and the output info about my video is the following: /dev/input/event6 bustype : BUS_USB vendor : 0x58f product : 0xb002 version : 2 name : "1.3M HD WebCam" phys : "usb-0000:00:1a.0-1.3/button" bits ev : EV_SYN EV_KEY /dev/input/event7 bustype : BUS_HOST vendor : 0x0 product : 0x6 version : 0 name : "Video Bus" phys : "LNXVIDEO/video/input0" bits ev : EV_SYN EV_KEY With this info, i'm not pretty sure about running the luvcview command. If I run luvcview -d /dev/video0 -L, the output is the following: SDL information: Video driver: x11 A window manager is available Device information: Device path: /dev/video0 { pixelformat = 'YUYV', description = 'YUV 4:2:2 (YUYV)' } { discrete: width = 640, height = 480 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 160, height = 120 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 176, height = 144 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 320, height = 240 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 352, height = 288 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 720 } Time interval between frame: 1/7, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 800 } Time interval between frame: 1/7, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 960 } Time interval between frame: 1/7, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 1024 } Time interval between frame: 1/7, 1/5, { pixelformat = 'MJPG', description = 'MJPEG' } { discrete: width = 640, height = 480 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 160, height = 120 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 176, height = 144 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 320, height = 240 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 352, height = 288 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 720 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 800 } Time interval between frame: 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 960 } Time interval between frame: 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 1024 } Time interval between frame: 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { pixelformat = 'RGB3', description = 'RGB3' } { discrete: width = 640, height = 480 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 160, height = 120 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 176, height = 144 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 320, height = 240 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 352, height = 288 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 720 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 800 } Time interval between frame: 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 960 } Time interval between frame: 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 1024 } Time interval between frame: 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { pixelformat = 'BGR3', description = 'BGR3' } { discrete: width = 640, height = 480 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 160, height = 120 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 176, height = 144 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 320, height = 240 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 352, height = 288 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 720 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 800 } Time interval between frame: 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 960 } Time interval between frame: 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 1024 } Time interval between frame: 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { pixelformat = 'YU12', description = 'YU12' } { discrete: width = 640, height = 480 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 160, height = 120 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 176, height = 144 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 320, height = 240 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 352, height = 288 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 720 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 800 } Time interval between frame: 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 960 } Time interval between frame: 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 1024 } Time interval between frame: 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { pixelformat = 'YV12', description = 'YV12' } { discrete: width = 640, height = 480 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 160, height = 120 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 176, height = 144 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 320, height = 240 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 352, height = 288 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 720 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 800 } Time interval between frame: 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 960 } Time interval between frame: 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 1024 } Time interval between frame: 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, if i run luvcview by itself, the image is funny (blue and red colors, mainly, with myself in negative state). tx

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• SQL SERVER – Simple Demo of New Cardinality Estimation Features of SQL Server 2014

  - by Pinal Dave

  SQL Server 2014 has new cardinality estimation logic/algorithm. The cardinality estimation logic is responsible for quality of query plans and majorly responsible for improving performance for any query. This logic was not updated for quite a while, but in the latest version of SQL Server 2104 this logic is re-designed. The new logic now incorporates various assumptions and algorithms of OLTP and warehousing workload. Cardinality estimates are a prediction of the number of rows in the query result. The query optimizer uses these estimates to choose a plan for executing the query. The quality of the query plan has a direct impact on improving query performance. ~ Souce MSDN Let us see a quick example of how cardinality improves performance for a query. I will be using the AdventureWorks database for my example. Before we start with this demonstration, remember that even though you have SQL Server 2014 to see the effect of new cardinality estimates, you will need your database compatibility mode set to 120 which is for SQL Server 2014. If your server instance of SQL Server 2014 but you have set up your database compatibility mode to 110 or any other earlier version, you will get performance from your query like older version of SQL Server. Now we will execute following query in two different compatibility mode and see its performance. (Note that my SQL Server instance is of version 2014). USE AdventureWorks2014 GO -- ------------------------------- -- NEW Cardinality Estimation ALTER DATABASE AdventureWorks2014 SET COMPATIBILITY_LEVEL = 120 GO EXEC [dbo].[uspGetManagerEmployees] 44 GO -- ------------------------------- -- Old Cardinality Estimation ALTER DATABASE AdventureWorks2014 SET COMPATIBILITY_LEVEL = 110 GO EXEC [dbo].[uspGetManagerEmployees] 44 GO Result of Statistics IO Compatibility level 120 Table ‘Person’. Scan count 0, logical reads 6, physical reads 0, read-ahead reads 0, lob logical reads 0, lob physical reads 0, lob read-ahead reads 0. Table ‘Employee’. Scan count 2, logical reads 7, physical reads 0, read-ahead reads 0, lob logical reads 0, lob physical reads 0, lob read-ahead reads 0. Table ‘Worktable’. Scan count 0, logical reads 0, physical reads 0, read-ahead reads 0, lob logical reads 0, lob physical reads 0, lob read-ahead reads 0. Table ‘Worktable’. Scan count 2, logical reads 7, physical reads 0, read-ahead reads 0, lob logical reads 0, lob physical reads 0, lob read-ahead reads 0. Compatibility level 110 Table ‘Worktable’. Scan count 2, logical reads 7, physical reads 0, read-ahead reads 0, lob logical reads 0, lob physical reads 0, lob read-ahead reads 0. Table ‘Person’. Scan count 0, logical reads 137, physical reads 0, read-ahead reads 0, lob logical reads 0, lob physical reads 0, lob read-ahead reads 0. Table ‘Employee’. Scan count 2, logical reads 7, physical reads 0, read-ahead reads 0, lob logical reads 0, lob physical reads 0, lob read-ahead reads 0. Table ‘Worktable’. Scan count 0, logical reads 0, physical reads 0, read-ahead reads 0, lob logical reads 0, lob physical reads 0, lob read-ahead reads 0. You will notice in the case of compatibility level 110 there 137 logical read from table person where as in the case of compatibility level 120 there are only 6 physical reads from table person. This drastically improves the performance of the query. If we enable execution plan, we can see the same as well. I hope you will find this quick example helpful. You can read more about this in my latest Pluralsight Course. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com)Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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• A Guide to Fusion SCM at Oracle OpenWorld 2012

  - by Pam Petropoulos

  Are you attending next week’s Oracle OpenWorld 2012 conference? Then you won’t want to miss the Fusion SCM activities and customer presenters from leading companies like Boeing and Fideltronik. Below you’ll find a day by day guide of the various Fusion SCM sessions, demos and activities during OpenWorld 2012, September 30 – October 4 in San Francisco, CA. Tuesday, October 2 All of the Fusion SCM sessions during OpenWorld will take place in various rooms at Moscone West, a convenience you are sure to appreciate, as will your feet.   The first session at 10:15 – 11:15 am (Moscone West, Room 2006), entitled “Oracle Fusion Supply Chain Management: Overview, Strategy, Customer Experiences, and Roadmap”, provides an overview of Fusion Supply Chain Management applications and will discuss Fusion SCM strategy, future roadmap, and highlights of customer examples. The next session at 11:45 am – 12:45 pm (Moscone West, Room 2022), entitled “Enabling Trusted Enterprise Product Data with Oracle Fusion Product Hub”, may be the session for you if you’re struggling with achieving consistent, high-quality product data that provides significant business value. This session will discuss how Oracle Fusion Product Hub and Oracle Enterprise Data Quality can help you to achieve this vision. A customer presenter from Fideltronik will share their experiences with Oracle Fusion Product Hub. At the end of the day unwind at the Supply Chain Management customer reception from 6:00 – 8:00 pm at the Roe Lounge, located at 651 Howard Street. Registration is required. Click here for details. Wednesday, October 3 Wednesday is a busy day with three Fusion SCM sessions on the agenda. Start your day at 10:15 am at the “Oracle Fusion Supply Chain Management: Customer Adoption and Experiences” session (Moscone West, Room 2003).  This must see session will showcase customer speakers from The Boeing Company and Fideltronik, each of whom will share their company’s experiences in selecting and implementing Fusion SCM applications. If you’re wondering how Fusion SCM applications can co-exist with your existing Oracle applications, then you’ll want to sit in on the 3:30 pm session entitled “Oracle Fusion Supply Chain Management: Coexistence with Other Oracle Applications” (Moscone West, Room 2003). Stick around until 5:00 pm for the final Fusion SCM session of the day entitled “Responsive Fulfillment with Oracle Fusion Supply Chain Management” (Moscone West, Room 2001).  This session will showcase Oracle Fusion Distributed Order Orchestration and Oracle Fusion Global Order Promising and how they are changing the way companies manage order fulfillment in environments. In addition to discussing the current business challenges, product capabilities, value propositions, industry applicability, and future roadmap this session will also feature a customer presenter from The Boeing Company. Thursday, October 4 If you are a retail customer we highly recommend that you attend the final Fusion SCM session of the week at 12:45 pm, entitled “Multichannel Fulfillment Excellence in the Direct-to-Consumer Market” (Moscone West, Room 2024).  Retailers will learn how they can transform their supply chains to meet the ever-increasing demands of buy anywhere/get anywhere cross-channel requirements with Fusion Distributed Order Orchestration and Oracle Fusion Product Hub. Throughout the week, you’ll also want to visit the Fusion SCM demo pods at the Demogrounds in Moscone West so you can see demos of these Fusion applications. Visit pod W-005 for Fusion Distributed Order Orchestration, W-008 for Fusion Inventory and Cost Management, and W-006 for Fusion Product Hub. Click here for the Demogrounds map. A reminder that you can also pre-register for these sessions to secure your spot. Visit the Schedule Builder to pre-enroll for these sessions. Finally, you'll also want to check out the Fusion SCM FocusOn document which includes additional keynote and general sessions that you may want to attend throughout the week.   We look forward to seeing you in San Francisco next week.

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• A View from the Top – Jan Ackerman (VP APAC Recruiting)

  - by user769227

  This week, Headhunt Magazine in Singapore, took the opportunity to publish an interview with Jan Ackerman who is Vice President for Recruitment for Asia Pacific here at Oracle. The link to the online interview can be found here. Below is the interview in full that was published in Headhunt Magazine.  A View from the Top – Jan Ackerman Written by HeadHunt on August 16, 2012 · Leave a Comment By Susheela Menon Jan Ackerman is the Vice President for Recruiting in Asia Pacific and Japan at Oracle. Which particular personal trait do you attribute your professional success to? Perseverance has been the most important trait that has attributed to my professional success. Endurance and perseverance combined to win in the end has always been a great credo. I find that this trait carries through in my professional as well as my personal life. I enjoy sport fishing and find that perseverance with a great deal of patience in this hobby is critical to the overall enjoyment and success in this sporting activity. In the same way, this doggedness – steadfastness with persistence – and tenacity toward an unyielding course of action has served me well in reaching goals and thus greater success. What’s the biggest challenge you have faced in your career so far? I have to constantly keep pace with ever changing technology in my career. The industry changes rapidly and requires me to stay on top of the latest trends and advancements. Outside of work, I like to develop software as a hobby and in order to ensure that what I am developing will meet what the business needs, I have to continually innovate and stay current on the latest trends in the industry to deliver a solution that will delight the end- user. Best career advice you have ever received. Always be forthright and honest with your customers and peers; mixed with a “Can Do” attitude, a great and fulfilling career can be yours to have and hold. What makes Oracle a great place to be in? The freedom to innovate and pave new avenues of success is one of the greatest things about working here at Oracle. We are always looking to grow and improve our business for our customers and we are always adapting to present and future industry demands. This means we are always looking to change, to perform better and to do things differently. All these create a culture and spirit of innovation and success. What motivates you to be in the HR sector? I really like working with and helping people. HR is all about “the people” in the organisation, and staying focused every day on making things better for the Oracle team gives me a great deal of happiness. Describe your leadership style. I am very direct and goal- oriented. I provide ideas and guidance and then give the team all the freedom they need to reach a successful outcome. I can also be a very “roll up your sleeves” kind of manager when the task needs a bit of a push. What’s the biggest business challenge you see in your industry right now? The ability to keep pace with all the convergence in the industry and to continue to stay focused on delivering top talent to serve Oracle’s customers well. Our unique Recruiting Model has served us well in meeting these needs. We are well-placed in this goal and look forward to maintain Oracle’s leadership role in the industry.

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• Database – Beginning with Cloud Database As A Service

  - by Pinal Dave

  I love my weekend projects. Everybody does different activities in their weekend – like traveling, reading or just nothing. Every weekend I try to do something creative and different in the database world. The goal is I learn something new and if I enjoy my learning experience I share with the world. This weekend, I decided to explore Cloud Database As A Service – Morpheus. In my career I have managed many databases in the cloud and I have good experience in managing them. I should highlight that today’s applications use multiple databases from SQL for transactions and analytics, NoSQL for documents, In-Memory for caching to Indexing for search.  Provisioning and deploying these databases often require extensive expertise and time.  Often these databases are also not deployed on the same infrastructure and can create unnecessary latency between the application layer and the databases.  Not to mention the different quality of service based on the infrastructure and the service provider where they are deployed. Moreover, there are additional problems that I have experienced with traditional database setup when hosted in the cloud: Database provisioning & orchestration Slow speed due to hardware issues Poor Monitoring Tools High network latency Now if you have a great software and expert network engineer, you can continuously work on above problems and overcome them. However, not every organization have the luxury to have top notch experts in the field. Now above issues are related to infrastructure, but there are a few more problems which are related to software/application as well. Here are the top three things which can be problems if you do not have application expert: Replication and Clustering Simple provisioning of the hard drive space Automatic Sharding Well, Morpheus looks like a product build by experts who have faced similar situation in the past. The product pretty much addresses all the pain points of developers and database administrators. What is different about Morpheus is that it offers a variety of databases from MySQL, MongoDB, ElasticSearch to Reddis as a service.  Thus users can pick and chose any combination of these databases.  All of them can be provisioned in a matter of minutes with a simple and intuitive point and click user interface.  The Morpheus cloud is built on Solid State Drives (SSD) and is designed for high-speed database transactions.  In addition it offers a direct link to Amazon Web Services to minimize latency between the application layer and the databases. Here are the few steps on how one can get started with Morpheus. Follow along with me.  First go to http://www.gomorpheus.com and register for a new and free account. Step 1: Signup It is very simple to signup for Morpheus. Step 2: Select your database   I use MySQL for my daily routine, so I have selected MySQL. Upon clicking on the big red button to add Instance, it prompted a dialogue of creating a new instance.   Step 3: Create User Now we just have to create a user in our portal which we will use to connect to a database hosted at Morpheus. Click on your database instance and it will bring you to User Screen. Over here you will notice once again a big red button to create a new user. I created a user with my first name.   Step 4: Configure your MySQL client I used MySQL workbench and connected to MySQL instance, which I had created with an IP address and user.   That’s it! You are connecting to MySQL instance. Now you can create your objects just like you would create on your local box. You will have all the features of the Morpheus when you are working with your database. Dashboard While working with Morpheus, I was most impressed with its dashboard. In future blog posts, I will write more about this feature.  Also with Morpheus you use the same process for provisioning and connecting with other databases: MongoDB, ElasticSearch and Reddis. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: MySQL, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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• Oracle WebCenter: Extending Oracle Applications & Oracle Fusion Applications

  - by kellsey.ruppel(at)oracle.com

  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";} -- 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";}We’ve talked in previous weeks about the key goals of the new release of WebCenter are providing a Modern User Experience, unparalleled Application Integration, converging all the best of the existing portal platforms into WebCenter and delivering a Common User Experience Architecture.  We’ve provided an overview of Oracle WebCenter and discussed some of the other key goals in previous weeks, and this week, we’ll focus on how the new release of Oracle WebCenter extends Oracle Applications and Fusion Applications.When we talk about the new release of Oracle WebCenter, we really emphasize to customers that they can leverage their existing investments and benefit from WebCenter’s Complete, Open and Integrated platform. To summarize what we mean here, Oracle WebCenter is:COMPLETEComprehensive platform for Portals/Websites, Composite Applications with integrated Social/Collaboration services and Content Management infrastructureOPENStandards support improves reuse of existing resources and extends the value of existing systemsINTEGRATEDImplicit integration with Oracle Applications, Oracle Fusion Applications & other enterprise applicationsWith all the existing enterprise applications in Oracle’s application portfolio, in the new release of WebCenter we’ve got a set of pre-built catalogs that customers can use directly to get at all the portlet resources certified and available from Oracle.  It provides customers with a ready-to-use view of their application resources.  And since WebCenter provides seamless support for building these portlets/components in a professional IDE like JDeveloper or from within a Browser, developers and business analysts can quickly assemble the information they require for their existing application investment.  In addition, we’ve taken all the user flows and patterns that we’ve learned in building Fusion Applications and focused on making it dramatically easier to use tools to create reusable application UI components. In this way, one team in the organization using an application can share their components with other teams.  And more importantly, the new team can make changes to the component without breaking the original component.  When tied to enterprise applications, this capability is extremely powerful.  This is what Oracle means when they talk about Enterprise Mashups.  And finally, we’ve provided an innovative way to go well beyond traditional “on the glass” integration by enabling business transactions for the existing applications direct integration using activity streams. This delivers aggregated and “on time” delivery of information to the business users based on what‘s happening in the enterprise that is relevant to their particular job function.  Most importantly, it ties into the personalization interactions discussed earlier so that it can help target information to you directly based on past interactions.  Application integration is key to making businesses function more efficiently with these new Enterprise 2.0 technologies.Keep checking back this week as we share more information on how WebCenter is the most complete, open and integrated modern user experience platform and show key ways WebCenter can extend Oracle Applications & Oracle Fusion Applications.

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• Get to Know a Candidate (9 of 25): Gary Johnson&ndash;Libertarian Party

  - by Brian Lanham

  DISCLAIMER: This is not a post about “Romney” or “Obama”. This is not a post for whom I am voting. Information sourced for Wikipedia. Johnson served as the 29th Governor of New Mexico from 1995 to 2003, as a member of the Republican Party, and is known for his low-tax libertarian views and his strong emphasis on personal health and fitness. While a student at the University of New Mexico in 1974, Johnson sustained himself financially by working as a door-to-door handyman. In 1976 he founded Big J Enterprises, which grew from this one-person venture to become one of New Mexico's largest construction companies. He entered politics for the first time by running for Governor of New Mexico in 1994 on a fiscally conservative, low-tax, anti-crime platform. Johnson won the Republican Party of New Mexico's gubernatorial nomination, and defeated incumbent Democratic governor Bruce King by 50% to 40%. He cut the 10% annual growth in the budget: in part, due to his use of the gubernatorial veto 200 times during his first six months in office, which gained him the nickname "Governor Veto". Johnson sought re-election in 1998, winning by 55% to 45%. In his second term, he concentrated on the issue of school voucher reforms, as well as campaigning for marijuana decriminalization and opposition to the War on Drugs. During his tenure as governor, Johnson adhered to a stringent anti-tax and anti-bureaucracy policy driven by a cost–benefit analysis rationale, setting state and national records for his use of veto powers: more than the other 49 contemporary governors put together. Term-limited, Johnson could not run for re-election at the end of his second term. As a fitness enthusiast, Johnson has taken part in several Ironman Triathlons, and he climbed Mount Everest in May 2003. After leaving office, Johnson founded the non-profit Our America Initiative in 2009, a political advocacy committee seeking to promote policies such as free enterprise, foreign non-interventionism, limited government and privatization. The Libertarian Party is the third largest political party in the United States. It is also identified by many as the fastest growing political party in the United States. The political platform of the Libertarian Party reflects the ideas of libertarianism, favoring minimally regulated markets, a less powerful state, strong civil liberties (including support for Same-sex marriage and other LGBT rights), cannabis legalization and regulation, separation of church and state, open immigration, non-interventionism and neutrality in diplomatic relations (i.e., avoiding foreign military or economic entanglements with other nations), freedom of trade and travel to all foreign countries, and a more responsive and direct democracy. Members of the Libertarian Party have also supported the repeal of NAFTA, CAFTA, and similar trade agreements, as well as the United States' exit from the United Nations, WTO, and NATO. Although there is not an officially labeled political position of the party, it is considered by many to be more right-wing than the Democratic Party but more left-wing than the Republican Party when comparing the parties' positions to each other, placing it at or above the center. In the 30 states where voters can register by party, there are over 282,000 voters registered as Libertarians. Hundreds of Libertarian candidates have been elected or appointed to public office, and thousands have run for office under the Libertarian banner. The Libertarian Party has many firsts in its credit, such as being the first party to get an electoral vote for a woman in a United States presidential election. Learn more about Gary Johnson and Libertarian Party on Wikipedia.

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• Hidden exceptions

  - by user12617285

  Occasionally you may find yourself in a Java application environment where exceptions in your code are being caught by the application framework and either silently swallowed or converted into a generic exception. Either way, the potentially useful details of your original exception are inaccessible. Wouldn't it be nice if there was a VM option that showed the stack trace for every exception thrown, whether or not it's caught? In fact, HotSpot includes such an option: -XX:+TraceExceptions. However, this option is only available in a debug build of HotSpot (search globals.hpp for TraceExceptions). And based on a quick skim of the HotSpot source code, this option only prints the exception class and message. A more useful capability would be to have the complete stack trace printed as well as the code location catching the exception. This is what the various TraceException* options in in Maxine do (and more). That said, there is a way to achieve a limited version of the same thing with a stock standard JVM. It involves the use of the -Xbootclasspath/p non-standard option. The trick is to modify the source of java.lang.Exception by inserting the following: private static final boolean logging = System.getProperty("TraceExceptions") != null; private void log() { if (logging && sun.misc.VM.isBooted()) { printStackTrace(); } } Then every constructor simply needs to be modified to call log() just before returning: public Exception(String message) { super(message); log(); } public Exception(String message, Throwable cause) { super(message, cause); log(); } // etc... You now need to compile the modified Exception.java source and prepend the resulting class to the boot class path as well as add -DTraceExceptions to your java command line. Here's a console session showing these steps: % mkdir boot % javac -d boot Exception.java % java -DTraceExceptions -Xbootclasspath/p:boot -cp com.oracle.max.vm/bin test.output.HelloWorld java.util.zip.ZipException: error in opening zip file at java.util.zip.ZipFile.open(Native Method) at java.util.zip.ZipFile.(ZipFile.java:127) at java.util.jar.JarFile.(JarFile.java:135) at java.util.jar.JarFile.(JarFile.java:72) at sun.misc.URLClassPath$JarLoader.getJarFile(URLClassPath.java:646) at sun.misc.URLClassPath$JarLoader.access$600(URLClassPath.java:540) at sun.misc.URLClassPath$JarLoader$1.run(URLClassPath.java:607) at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method) at sun.misc.URLClassPath$JarLoader.ensureOpen(URLClassPath.java:599) at sun.misc.URLClassPath$JarLoader.(URLClassPath.java:583) at sun.misc.URLClassPath$3.run(URLClassPath.java:333) at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method) at sun.misc.URLClassPath.getLoader(URLClassPath.java:322) at sun.misc.URLClassPath.getLoader(URLClassPath.java:299) at sun.misc.URLClassPath.getResource(URLClassPath.java:168) at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:194) at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method) at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:190) at sun.misc.Launcher$ExtClassLoader.findClass(Launcher.java:229) at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:306) at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:295) at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Launcher.java:301) at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:247) java.security.PrivilegedActionException at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method) at sun.misc.URLClassPath$JarLoader.ensureOpen(URLClassPath.java:599) at sun.misc.URLClassPath$JarLoader.(URLClassPath.java:583) at sun.misc.URLClassPath$3.run(URLClassPath.java:333) at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method) at sun.misc.URLClassPath.getLoader(URLClassPath.java:322) ... It's worth pointing out that this is not as useful as direct VM support for tracing exceptions. It has (at least) the following limitations: The trace is shown for every exception, whether it is thrown or not. It only applies to subclasses of java.lang.Exception as there appears to be bootstrap issues when the modification is applied to Throwable.java. It does not show you where the exception was caught. It involves overriding a class in rt.jar, something should never be done in a non-development environment.

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• My Take on Hadoop World 2011

  - by Jean-Pierre Dijcks

  I’m sure some of you have read pieces about Hadoop World and I did see some headlines which were somewhat, shall we say, interesting? I thought the keynote by Larry Feinsmith of JP Morgan Chase & Co was one of the highlights of the conference for me. The reason was very simple, he addressed some real use cases outside of internet and ad platforms. The following are my notes, since the keynote was recorded I presume you can go and look at Hadoopworld.com at some point… On the use cases that were mentioned: ETL – how can I do complex data transformation at scale Doing Basel III liquidity analysis Private banking – transaction filtering to feed [relational] data marts Common Data Platform – a place to keep data that is (or will be) valuable some day, to someone, somewhere 360 Degree view of customers – become pro-active and look at events across lines of business. For example make sure the mortgage folks know about direct deposits being stopped into an account and ensure the bank is pro-active to service the customer Treasury and Security – Global Payment Hub [I think this is really consolidation of data to cross reference activity across business and geographies] Data Mining Bypass data engineering [I interpret this as running a lot of a large data set rather than on samples] Fraud prevention – work on event triggers, say a number of failed log-ins to the website. When they occur grab web logs, firewall logs and rules and start to figure out who is trying to log in. Is this me, who forget his password, or is it someone in some other country trying to guess passwords Trade quality analysis – do a batch analysis or all trades done and run them through an analysis or comparison pipeline One of the key requests – if you can say it like that – was for vendors and entrepreneurs to make sure that new tools work with existing tools. JPMC has a large footprint of BI Tools and Big Data reporting and tools should work with those tools, rather than be separate. Security and Entitlement – how to protect data within a large cluster from unwanted snooping was another topic that came up. I thought his Elephant ears graph was interesting (couldn’t actually read the points on it, but the concept certainly made some sense) and it was interesting – when asked to show hands – how the audience did not (!) think that RDBMS and Hadoop technology would overlap completely within a few years. Another interesting session was the session from Disney discussing how Disney is building a DaaS (Data as a Service) platform and how Hadoop processing capabilities are mixed with Database technologies. I thought this one of the best sessions I have seen in a long time. It discussed real use case, where problems existed, how they were solved and how Disney planned some of it. The planning focused on three things/phases: Determine the Strategy – Design a platform and evangelize this within the organization Focus on the people – Hire key people, grow and train the staff (and do not overload what you have with new things on top of their day-to-day job), leverage a partner with experience Work on Execution of the strategy – Implement the platform Hadoop next to the other technologies and work toward the DaaS platform This kind of fitted with some of the Linked-In comments, best summarized in “Think Platform – Think Hadoop”. In other words [my interpretation], step back and engineer a platform (like DaaS in the Disney example), then layer the rest of the solutions on top of this platform. One general observation, I got the impression that we have knowledge gaps left and right. On the one hand are people looking for more information and details on the Hadoop tools and languages. On the other I got the impression that the capabilities of today’s relational databases are underestimated. Mostly in terms of data volumes and parallel processing capabilities or things like commodity hardware scale-out models. All in all I liked this conference, it was great to chat with a wide range of people on Oracle big data, on big data, on use cases and all sorts of other stuff. Just hope they get a set of bigger rooms next time… and yes, I hope I’m going to be back next year!

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• Unleash the Power of Cryptography on SPARC T4

  - by B.Koch

  by Rob Ludeman Oracle’s SPARC T4 systems are architected to deliver enhanced value for customer via the inclusion of many integrated features.  One of the best examples of this approach is demonstrated in the on-chip cryptographic support that delivers wire speed encryption capabilities without any impact to application performance.  The Evolution of SPARC Encryption SPARC T-Series systems have a long history of providing this capability, dating back to the release of the first T2000 systems that featured support for on-chip RSA encryption directly in the UltraSPARC T1 processor.  Successive generations have built on this approach by support for additional encryption ciphers that are tightly coupled with the Oracle Solaris 10 and Solaris 11 encryption framework.  While earlier versions of this technology were implemented using co-processors, the SPARC T4 was redesigned with new crypto instructions to eliminate some of the performance overhead associated with the former approach, resulting in much higher performance for encrypted workloads. The Superiority of the SPARC T4 Approach to Crypto As companies continue to engage in more and more e-commerce, the need to provide greater degrees of security for these transactions is more critical than ever before.  Traditional methods of securing data in transit by applications have a number of drawbacks that are addressed by the SPARC T4 cryptographic approach. 1. Performance degradation – cryptography is highly compute intensive and therefore, there is a significant cost when using other architectures without embedded crypto functionality.  This performance penalty impacts the entire system, slowing down performance of web servers (SSL), for example, and potentially bogging down the speed of other business applications.  The SPARC T4 processor enables customers to deliver high levels of security to internal and external customers while not incurring an impact to overall SLAs in their IT environment. 2. Added cost – one of the methods to avoid performance degradation is the addition of add-in cryptographic accelerator cards or external offload engines in other systems.  While these solutions provide a brute force mechanism to avoid the problem of slower system performance, it usually comes at an added cost.  Customers looking to encrypt datacenter traffic without the overhead and expenditure of extra hardware can rely on SPARC T4 systems to deliver the performance necessary without the need to purchase other hardware or add-on cards. 3. Higher complexity – the addition of cryptographic cards or leveraging load balancers to perform encryption tasks results in added complexity from a management standpoint.  With SPARC T4, encryption keys and the framework built into Solaris 10 and 11 means that administrators generally don’t need to spend extra cycles determining how to perform cryptographic functions.  In fact, many of the instructions are built-in and require no user intervention to be utilized.  For example, For OpenSSL on Solaris 11, SPARC T4 crypto is available directly with a new built-in OpenSSL 1.0 engine, called the "t4 engine."  For a deeper technical dive into the new instructions included in SPARC T4, consult Dan Anderson’s blog. Conclusion In summary, SPARC T4 systems offer customers much more value for applications than just increased performance. The integration of key virtualization technologies, embedded encryption, and a true Enterprise Operating System, Oracle Solaris, provides direct business benefits that supersedes the commodity approach to data center computing.   SPARC T4 removes the roadblocks to secure computing by offering integrated crypto accelerators that can save IT organizations in operating cost while delivering higher levels of performance and meeting objectives around compliance. For more on the SPARC T4 family of products, go to here.

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• Reg Gets a Job at Red Gate (and what happens behind the scenes)

  - by red(at)work

  Mr Reg Gater works at one of Cambridge’s many high-tech companies. He doesn’t love his job, but he puts up with it because... well, it could be worse. Every day he drives to work around the Red Gate roundabout, wondering what his boss is going to blame him for today, and wondering if there could be a better job out there for him. By late morning he already feels like handing his notice in. He got the hacky look from his boss for being 5 minutes late, and then they ran out of tea. Again. He goes to the local sandwich shop for lunch, and picks up a Red Gate job menu and a Book of Red Gate while he’s waiting for his order. That night, he goes along to Cambridge Geek Nights and sees some very enthusiastic Red Gaters talking about the work they do; it sounds interesting and, of all things, fun. He takes a quick look at the job vacancies on the Red Gate website, and an hour later realises he’s still there – looking at videos, photos and people profiles. He especially likes the Red Gate’s Got Talent page, and is very impressed with Simon Johnson’s marathon time. He thinks that he’d quite like to work with such awesome people. It just so happens that Red Gate recently decided that they wanted to hire another hot shot team member. Behind the scenes, the wheels were set in motion: the recruitment team met with the hiring manager to understand exactly what they’re looking for, and to decide what interview tests to do, who will do the interviews, and to kick-start any interview training those people might need. Next up, a job description and job advert were written, and the job was put on the market. Reg applies, and his CV lands in the Recruitment team’s inbox and they open it up with eager anticipation that Reg could be the next awesome new starter. He looks good, and in a jiffy they’ve arranged an interview. Reg arrives for his interview, and is greeted by a smiley receptionist. She offers him a selection of drinks and he feels instantly relaxed. A couple of interviews and an assessment later, he gets a job offer. We make his day and he makes ours by accepting, and becoming one of the 60 new starters so far this year. Behind the scenes, things start moving all over again. The HR team arranges for a “Welcome” goodie box to be whisked out to him, prepares his contract, sends an email to Information Services (Or IS for short - we’ll come back to them), keeps in touch with Reg to make sure he knows what to expect on his first day, and of course asks him to fill in the all-important wiki questionnaire so his new colleagues can start to get to know him before he even joins. Meanwhile, the IS team see an email in SupportWorks from HR. They see that Reg will be starting in the sales team in a few days’ time, and they know exactly what to do. They pull out a new machine, and within minutes have used their automated deployment software to install every piece of software that a new recruit could ever need. They also check with Reg’s new manager to see if he has any special requirements that they could help with. Reg starts and is amazed to find a fully configured machine sitting on his desk, complete with stationery and all the other tools he’ll need to do his job. He feels even more cared for after he gets a workstation assessment, and realises he’d be comfier with an ergonomic keyboard and a footstool. They arrive minutes later, just like that. His manager starts him off on his induction and sales training. Along with job-specific training, he’ll also have a buddy to help him find his feet, and loads of pre-arranged demos and introductions. Reg settles in nicely, and is great at his job. He enjoys the canteen, and regularly eats one of the 40,000 meals provided each year. He gets used to the selection of teas that are available, develops a taste for champagne launch parties, and has his fair share of the 25,000 cups of coffee downed at Red Gate towers each year. He goes along to some Feel Good Fund events, and donates a little something to charity in exchange for a turn on the chocolate fountain. He’s looking a little scruffy, so he decides to get his hair cut in between meetings, just in time for the Red Gate birthday company photo. Reg starts a new project: identifying existing customers to up-sell to new bundles. He talks with the web team to generate lists of qualifying customers who haven’t recently been sent marketing emails, and sends emails out, using a new in-house developed tool to schedule follow-up calls in CRM for the same group. The customer responds, saying they’d like to upgrade but are having a licensing problem – Reg sends the issue to Support, and it gets routed to the web team. The team identifies a workaround, and the bug gets scheduled into the next maintenance release in a fortnight’s time (hey; they got lucky). With all the new stuff Reg is working on, he realises that he’d be way more efficient if he had a third monitor. He speaks to IS and they get him one - no argument. He also needs a test machine and then some extra memory. Done. He then thinks he needs an iPad, and goes to ask for one. He gets told to stop pushing his luck. Some time later, Reg’s wife has a baby, so Reg gets 2 weeks of paid paternity leave and a bunch of flowers sent to his house. He signs up to the childcare scheme so that he doesn’t have to pay National Insurance on the first £243 of his childcare. The accounts team makes it all happen seamlessly, as they did with his Give As You Earn payments, which come out of his wages and go straight to his favorite charity. Reg’s sales career is going well. He’s grateful for the help that he gets from the product support team. How do they answer all those 900-ish support calls so effortlessly each month? He’s impressed with the patches that are sent out to customers who find “interesting behavior” in their tools, and to the customers who just must have that new feature. A little later in his career at Red Gate, Reg decides that he’d like to learn about management. He goes on some management training specially customised for Red Gate, joins the Management Book Club, and gets together with other new managers to brainstorm how to get the most out of one to one meetings with his team. Reg decides to go for a game of Foosball to celebrate his good fortune with his team, and has to wait for Finance to finish. While he’s waiting, he reflects on the wonderful time he’s had at Red Gate. He can’t put his finger on what it is exactly, but he knows he’s on to a good thing. All of the stuff that happened to Reg didn’t just happen magically. We’ve got teams of people working relentlessly behind the scenes to make sure that everyone here is comfortable, safe, well fed and caffeinated to the max.

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• Windows Azure Recipe: Mobile Computing

  - by Clint Edmonson

  A while back, mashups were all the rage. The idea was to compose solutions that provided aggregation and integration across applications and services to make information more available, useful, and personal. Mashups ushered in the era of Web 2.0 in all it’s socially connected goodness. They taught us that to be successful, we needed to add web service APIs to our web applications. Web and client based mashups met with great success and have evolved even further with the introduction of the internet connected smartphone. Nothing is more available, useful, or personal than our smartphones. The current generation of cloud connected mobile computing mashups allow our mobilized workforces to receive, process, and react to information from disparate sources faster than ever before. Drivers Integration Reach Time to market Solution Here’s a sketch of a prototypical mobile computing solution using Windows Azure: Ingredients Web Role – with the phone running a dedicated client application, the web role is responsible for serving up backend web services that implement the solution’s core connected functionality. Database – used to store core operational and workflow data for the solution’s web services. Access Control – this service is used to authenticate and manage users identity, roles, and groups, possibly in conjunction with 3rd identity providers such as Windows LiveID, Google, Yahoo!, and Facebook. Worker Role – this role is used to handle the orchestration of long-running, complex, asynchronous operations. While much of the integration and interaction with other services can be handled directly by the mobile client application, it’s possible that the backend may need to integrate with 3rd party services as well. Offloading this work to a worker role better distributes computing resources and keeps the web roles focused on direct client interaction. Queues – these provide reliable, persistent messaging between applications and processes. They are an absolute necessity once asynchronous processing is involved. Queues facilitate the flow of distributed events and allow a solution to send push notifications back to mobile devices at appropriate times. Training & Resources These links point to online Windows Azure training labs and resources where you can learn more about the individual ingredients described above. (Note: The entire Windows Azure Training Kit can also be downloaded for offline use.) Windows Azure (16 labs) Windows Azure is an internet-scale cloud computing and services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers, which provides an operating system and a set of developer services which can be used individually or together. It gives developers the choice to build web applications; applications running on connected devices, PCs, or servers; or hybrid solutions offering the best of both worlds. New or enhanced applications can be built using existing skills with the Visual Studio development environment and the .NET Framework. With its standards-based and interoperable approach, the services platform supports multiple internet protocols, including HTTP, REST, SOAP, and plain XML SQL Azure (7 labs) Microsoft SQL Azure delivers on the Microsoft Data Platform vision of extending the SQL Server capabilities to the cloud as web-based services, enabling you to store structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data. Windows Azure Services (9 labs) As applications collaborate across organizational boundaries, ensuring secure transactions across disparate security domains is crucial but difficult to implement. Windows Azure Services provides hosted authentication and access control using powerful, secure, standards-based infrastructure. Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone The Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone is designed to make it easier for you to build mobile applications that leverage cloud services running in Windows Azure. The toolkit includes Visual Studio project templates for Windows Phone and Windows Azure, class libraries optimized for use on the phone, sample applications, and documentation Windows Azure Toolkit for iOS The Windows Azure Toolkit for iOS is a toolkit for developers to make it easy to access Windows Azure storage services from native iOS applications. The toolkit can be used for both iPhone and iPad applications, developed using Objective-C and XCode. Windows Azure Toolkit for Android The Windows Azure Toolkit for Android is a toolkit for developers to make it easy to work with Windows Azure from native Android applications. The toolkit can be used for native Android applications developed using Eclipse and the Android SDK. See my Windows Azure Resource Guide for more guidance on how to get started, including links web portals, training kits, samples, and blogs related to Windows Azure.

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• ATG Live Webcast June 14: Technical Preview of EBS 12.2 Online Patching

  - by BillSawyer

  Online Patching is is one of the cornerstone new features in our upcoming Oracle E-Business Suite 12.2 release. This ground-breaking feature is based upon Edition-Based Redefinition, a new 11gR2 Database feature that was built to Oracle Applications division specifications to allow the E-Business Suite's database tier to be patched while the environment is running.  Online Patching combines the use of Edition-Based Redefinition and new E-Business Suite technologies to allow patching to the E-Business Suite's database and application tier servers while the environment is being actively used by its end-users. This webcast provides a detailed technical preview of: How this new feature works How it affects E-Business Suite end-users How it affects E-Business Suite database administrators and patching lifecycles How it affects developers and third-party software vendors responsible for E-Business Suite customizations and extensions The presenter for this event is Kevin Hudson, Senior Director and one of the Online Patching architects. There will be a special extended Q&A Session at the end of this presentation, given the nature of the materials and the questions that we expect from you. ATG Development staff supporting the Q&A session will include Elke Phelps, Santiago Bastidas, Max Arderius, and other ATG architects. Date:               Thursday, June 14, 2012Time:              8:00 AM - 10:00 AM Pacific Standard Time (Special 2-hour Time)Presenter:    Kevin Hudson, Senior Director, Applications Technology IntegrationWebcast Registration Link (Preregistration is optional but encouraged) To hear the audio feed:   Domestic Participant Dial-In Number:           877-697-8128   International Participant Dial-In Number:      706-634-9568   Dial-In Passcode:                                              100815To see the presentation:    The Direct Access Web Conference details are:    Website URL: https://ouweb.webex.com    Meeting Number:  597470987If you miss the webcast, or you have missed any webcast, don't worry -- we'll post links to the recording as soon as it's available from Oracle University.  You can monitor this blog for pointers to the replay. And, you can find our archive of our past webcasts and training here. When will Oracle E-Business Suite 12.2 be released? Oracle's Revenue Recognition rules prohibit us from discussing certification and release dates, but you're welcome to monitor or subscribe to this blog. We'll post updates here as soon as soon as they're available.    

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• Oracle Fusion CRM Implementation Bootcamp for EMEA Systems Integrators - Paris July 24-26th

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  To support partner success and increase win potential with Fusion CRM, we are organizing a unique bootcamp on Fusion CRM intended for Oracle EMEA partners on July 24th to 26th. Join us for this outstanding Bootcamp and learn from Oracle Corporation in-depth know-how on Fusion CRM. The official announcement will be forthcoming, yet we wanted you to determine the appropriate candidate to attend this workshop. Further to this we will send the actual invitation to the selected candidate. Due to the limited number of seats, we will be limiting the number of registrations per SI company and will be selecting the participants. If you are interested to have one or more representatives of your company to attend this bootcamp, please send an email to [email protected] by June 18th indicating the name and email address of the participants you would like to nominate, ranked by priority. What will we cover: This Bootcamp presents the fundamental concepts of the Oracle Fusion CRM applications. It introduces you to each functional area of the product, how it is used, and what you need to consider when implementing it for an organization. While we do examine implementation considerations, we do not address the detailed steps of implementation. Instead, we direct you to the relevant resources to learn more. Topics covered: Fusion CRM Introduction Fusion CRM Security Introduction Fusion Functional Setup Manager Introduction Customer Model Introduction Customer Center Introduction Customer Data Management Introduction Marketing & Campaigns Introduction Lead Management Introduction Territory Management Introduction Territory Modeling Introduction with Exercise Opportunity Management Introduction Forecasting Introduction Analytics Introduction CRM For Microsoft Outlook Introduction Customizing with Composers Introduction Roundtable Discussions, and time for hands-on labs (day 2, 3, 4) Next Steps, available resources, ongoing learning path, partner environments, keeping in touch and feedback Bootcamp Goals: Enable a new Fusion CRM implementation team member to: Describe the scope of Oracle Fusion CRM applications Describe the basic security model Describe the customer model Perform common sales and marketing user transactions Access and navigate the Functional Setup Manager Model territories in Fusion CRM using sample business requirements Do necessary planning before implementing the offerings and options Describe the analytics available with the Fusion CRM product Describe the basic page customizations that can be done to meet business requirements Find documentation and other courses to assist in performing setup tasks Expectations: This Bootcamp program should prime the SI organization implementation consultants to attain the basic skills necessary to support a consulting practice in the delivery, scoping, pricing, and planning of your Fusion CRM Implementations. Oracle University will begin to offer additional deep skill training, starting this summer, designed to follow the Introduction Bootcamp. Participants will be expected to participate in labs, exercises, workshops and roundtable discussions with the Oracle Product Managers. Who should attend: This class is designed for your lead CRM Implementation consultants, those who will support your Fusion CRM consulting practice as it grows. These individuals may be members of a centre of excellence, or skills leadership office. The individual who is attending the bootcamp must have prior experience implementing a CRM solution. Intended Audience: Oracle Diamond, Platinum and Gold Level SIs (Top SIs) with specialization in Oracle Applications CRM implementations, with a commitment to achieving Fusion CRM Implementation Specialization. Commitment expressed through an investment in a Center of Excellence/Innovation Center for Fusion CRM Applications. Individuals who will support the implementation practice as it is forming and will deliver Fusion CRM On Premise and Cloud Services implementations. Functional practice leaders, the future Fusion Application Wizards within the SI's organization. This Bootcamp is designed for people who: Will deliver Fusion CRM implementations Have had little or no exposure to Fusion CRM applications Are familiar with at least one other CRM application Have a business analyst level of technical background Prerequisites: Please note, that participants will be asked to take self-service-trainings (video format) and pass the related assessments prior to joining the Bootcamp. Fees: This event is FREE of charge for Oracle partners. When: 24 July – 26 July, 2012 (8:30 - 18:00 each day, including the last day; with recommended but optional evening events on all three days from 18:00 - 20:00 hrs) Where: Paris, France (Location to be defined) Travel: To make your travel hassel free, we kindly suggest you to plan your arrival to Paris on July 23rd and your departure on the 27th. Agenda: The final agenda and registration details will be issued closer to the event date.  

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• ATG Live Webcast June 28: Scrambling Sensitive Data in EBS 12 Cloned Environments

  - by BillSawyer

  Securing the Oracle E-Business Suite includes protecting the underlying E-Business data in production and non-production databases.  While steps can be taken to provide a secure configuration to limit EBS access, a better approach to protecting non-production data is simply to scramble (mask) the data in the non-production copy.   The Oracle E-Business Suite Template for Data Masking Pack can be used in situations where confidential or regulated data needs to be shared with other non-production users who need access to some of the original data, but not necessarily every table.  Examples of non-production users include internal application developers or external business partners such as offshore testing companies, suppliers or customers. The Oracle E-Business Suite Template for Data Masking Pack is applied to a non-production environment with the Enterprise Manager Grid Control Data Masking Pack.  When applied, the Oracle E-Business Suite Template for Data Masking Pack will create an irreversibly scrambled version of your production database for development and testing. This ATG Live Webcast is your chance to come learn about the Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.3 Template for Data Masking Pack from the experts. Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.3 Template for Data Masking The agenda for the Oracle E-Business Suite Template for Data Masking Pack webcast includes the following topics: What does data masking do in E-Business Suite environments? De-identify the data Mask sensitive data Maintain data validity How can EBS customers use data masking? References Join Eric Bing, Senior Director and Elke Phelps, Senior Principal Product Manager, as they discusses the Oracle E-Business Suite Template for Data Masking Pack.Date:                  Thursday, June 28, 2012Time:                 8:00AM Pacific Standard TimePresenters:     Eric Bing, Senior Director                           Elke Phelps, Senior Principal Product ManagerWebcast Registration Link (Preregistration is optional but encouraged) To hear the audio feed:    Domestic Participant Dial-In Number:           877-697-8128    International Participant Dial-In Number:      706-634-9568    Additional International Dial-In Numbers Link:    Dial-In Passcode:                                              100865To see the presentation:    The Direct Access Web Conference details are:    Website URL: https://ouweb.webex.com    Meeting Number:  599097152If you miss the webcast, or you have missed any webcast, don't worry -- we'll post links to the recording as soon as it's available from Oracle University.  You can monitor this blog for pointers to the replay. And, you can find our archive of our past webcasts and training here.If you have any questions or comments, feel free to email Bill Sawyer (Senior Manager, Applications Technology Curriculum) at BilldotSawyer-AT-Oracle-DOT-com.

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• Acr.ExtDirect &ndash; Part 1 &ndash; Method Resolvers

  - by Allan Ritchie

  One of the most important things of any open source libraries in my opinion is to be as open as possible while avoiding having your library become invasive to your code/business model design.  I personally could never stand marking my business and/or data access code with attributes everywhere.  XML also isn’t really a fav with too many people these days since it comes with a startup performance hit and requires runtime compiling.  I find that there is a whole ton of communication libraries out there currently requiring this (ie. WCF, RIA, etc).  Even though Acr.ExtDirect comes with its own set of attributes, you can piggy-back the [ServiceContract] & [OperationContract] attributes from WCF if you choose.  It goes beyond that though, there are 2 others “out-of-the-box” implementations – Convention based & XML Configuration.    Convention – I don’t actually recommend using this one since it opens up all of your public instance methods to remote execution calls. XML Configuration – This isn’t so bad but requires you enter all of your methods and there operation types into the Castle XML configuration & as I said earlier, XML isn’t the fav these days.   So what are your options if you don’t like attributes, convention, or XML Configuration?  Well, Acr.ExtDirect has its own extension base to give the API a list of methods and components to make available for remote execution.  1: public interface IDirectMethodResolver { 2:   3: bool IsServiceType(ComponentModel model, Type type); 4: string GetNamespace(ComponentModel model); 5: string[] GetDirectMethodNames(ComponentModel model); 6: DirectMethodType GetMethodType(ComponentModel model, MethodInfo method); 7: }   Now to implement our own method resolver:   1: public class TestResolver : IDirectMethodResolver { 2:   3: #region IDirectMethodResolver Members 4:   5: /// <summary> 6: /// Determine if you are calling a service 7: /// </summary> 8: /// <param name="model"></param> 9: /// <param name="type"></param> 10: /// <returns></returns> 11: public bool IsServiceType(ComponentModel model, Type type) { 12: return (type.Namespace == "MyBLL.Data"); 13: } 14:   15: /// <summary> 16: /// Return the calling name for the client side 17: /// </summary> 18: /// <param name="model"></param> 19: /// <returns></returns> 20: public string GetNamespace(ComponentModel model) { 21: return model.Name; 22: } 23:   24: public string[] GetDirectMethodNames(ComponentModel model) { 25: switch (model.Name) { 26: case "Products" : 27: return new [] { 28: "GetProducts", 29: "LoadProduct", 30: "Save", 31: "Update" 32: }; 33:   34: case "Categories" : 35: return new [] { 36: "GetProducts" 37: }; 38:   39: default : 40: throw new ArgumentException("Invalid type"); 41: } 42: } 43:   44: public DirectMethodType GetMethodType(ComponentModel model, MethodInfo method) { 45: if (method.Name.StartsWith("Save") || method.Name.StartsWith("Update")) 46: return DirectMethodType.FormSubmit; 47: 48: else if (method.Name.StartsWith("Load")) 49: return DirectMethodType.FormLoad; 50:   51: else 52: return DirectMethodType.Direct; 53: } 54:   55: #endregion 56: }   And there you have it, your own custom method resolver.  Pretty easy and pretty open ended!

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• Partner outreach on the Oracle Fusion Applications user experience begins

  - by mvaughan

  by Misha Vaughan, Architect, Applications User Experience I have been asked the question repeatedly since about December of last year: “What is the Applications User Experience group doing about partner outreach?”  My answer, at the time, was: “We are thinking about it.”  My colleagues and I were really thinking about the content or tools that the Applications UX group should be developing. What would be valuable to our partners? What will actually help grow their applications business, and fits within the applications user experience charter?In the video above, you’ll hear Jeremy Ashley, vice president of the Applications User Experience team, talk about two fundamental initiatives that our group is working on now that speaks straight to partners.  Special thanks to Joel Borellis, Kelley Greenly, and Steve Hoodmaker for helping to make this video happen so flawlessly. Steve was responsible for pulling together a day of Oracle Fusion Applications-oriented content, including David Bowin, Director, Fusion Applications Strategy, on some of the basic benefits of Oracle Fusion Applications.  Joel Borellis, Group Vice President, Partner Enablement, and David Bowin in the Oracle Studios.Nigel King, Vice President Applications Functional Architecture, was also on the list, talking about co-existence opportunities with Oracle Fusion Applications.Me and Nigel King, just before his interview with Joel. Fusion Applications User Experience 101: Basic education  Oracle has invested an enormous amount of intellectual and developmental effort in the Oracle Fusion Applications user experience. Find out more about that at the Oracle Partner Network Fusion Learning Center (Oracle ID required). What you’ll learn will help you uncover how, exactly, Oracle made Fusion General Ledger “sexy,” and that’s a direct quote from Oracle Ace Director Debra Lilley, of Fujitsu. In addition, select Applications User Experience staff members, as well as our own Fusion User Experience Advocates,  can provide a briefing to our partners on Oracle’s investment in the Oracle Fusion Applications user experience. Looking forward: Taking the best of the Fusion Applications UX to your customersBeyond a basic orientation to one of the key differentiators for Oracle Fusion Applications, we are also working on partner-oriented training.A question we are often getting right now is: “How do I help customers build applications that look like Fusion?” We also hear: “How do I help customers build applications that take advantage of the next-generation design work done in Fusion?”Our answer to this is training and a tool – our user experience design patterns – these are a set of user experience best-practices. Design patterns are re-usable, usability-tested, user experience components that make creating Fusion Applications-like experiences straightforward.  It means partners can leverage Oracle’s investment, but also gain an advantage by not wasting time solving a problem we’ve already solved. Their developers can focus on helping customers tackle the harder development challenges. Ultan O’Broin, an Apps UX team member,  and I are working with Kevin Li and Chris Venezia of the Oracle Platform Technology Services team, as well as Grant Ronald in Oracle ADF, to bring you some of the best “how-to” UX training, customized for your local area. Our first workshop will be in EMEA. Stay tuned for an assessment and feedback from the event.

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• Magento hosting on a budget

  - by spa

  I have to do a setup for Magento. My constraint is primarily ease of setup and fault tolerance/fail over. Furthermore costs are an issue. I have three identical physical servers to get the job done. Each server node has an i7 quad core, 16GB RAM, and 2x3TB HD in a software RAID 1 configuration. Each node runs Ubuntu 12.04. right now. I have an additional IP address which can be routed to any of these nodes. The Magento shop has max. 1000 products, 50% of it are bundle products. I would estimate that max. 100 users are active at once. This leads me to the conclusion, that performance is not top priority here. My first setup idea One node (lb) runs nginx as a load balancer. The additional IP is used with domain name and routed to this node by default. Nginx distributes the load equally to the other two nodes (shop1, shop2). Shop1 and shop2 are configured equally: each server runs Apache2 and MySQL. The Mysqls are configured with master/slave replication. My failover strategy: Lb fails = Route IP to shop1 (MySQL master), continue. Shop1 fails = Lb will handle that automatically, promote MySQL slave on shop2 to master, reconfigure Magento to use shop2 for writes, continue. Shop2 fails = Lb will handle that automatically, continue. Is this a sane strategy? Has anyone done a similar setup with Magento? My second setup idea Another way to do it would be to use drbd for storing the MySQL data files on shop1 and shop2. I understand that in this scenario only one node/MySQL instance can be active and the other is used as hot standby. So in case shop1 fails, I would start up MySQL on shop2, route the IP to shop2, and continue. I like that as the MySQL setup is easier and the nodes can be configured 99% identical. So in this case the load balancer becomes useless and I have a spare server. My third setup idea The third way might be master-master replication of MySQL databases. However, in my optinion this might be tricky, as Magento isn't build for this scenario (e.g. conflicting ids for new rows). I would not do that until I have heard of a working example. Could you give me an advice which route to follow? There seems not one "good" way to do it. E.g. I read blog posts which describe a MySQL master/slave setup for Magento, but elsewhere I read, that data might get duplicated when the slave lags behind the master (e.g. when an order is placed, a customer might get created twice). I'm kind of lost here.

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• First Day of Data Integration Track at Oracle OpenWorld 2012

  - by Irem Radzik

  OpenWorld started full speed for us today with a great set of sessions in the Data Integration track. After the exciting keynote session on Oracle Database 12c in the morning; Brad Adelberg, VP of Development for Data Integration products, presented Oracle’s data integration product strategy. His session highlighted the new requirements for data integration to achieve pervasive and continuous access to trusted data. The new requirements and product focus areas presented in this session are: Provide access to any data at any source On premise or on cloud Enable zero downtime operations and maximum performance Leverage real-time data for accurate business insights And ensure high quality data is used across the enterprise During the session Brad walked over how Oracle’s data integration products, Oracle Data Integrator, Oracle GoldenGate, Oracle Enterprise Data Quality, and Oracle Data Service Integrator, deliver on these requirements and how recent product releases build on this strategy. Soon after Brad’s session we heard from a panel of Oracle GoldenGate customers, St. Jude Medical, Equifax, and Bank of America, how they achieved zero downtime operations using Oracle GoldenGate. The panel presented different use cases of GoldenGate, from Active-Active replication to offloading reporting. Especially St. Jude Medical’s implementation, which involves the alert management system for patients that use their pacemakers, reminded me in some cases downtime of mission-critical systems can be a matter of life or death. It is very comforting to hear that GoldenGate delivers highly-reliable continuous availability for life-saving medical systems. In the afternoon, Nick Wagner from the Product Management team and I followed the customer panel with the review of Oracle GoldenGate 11gR2’s New Features.  Many questions we received from audience were about GoldenGate’s new Integrated Capture for Oracle Database and the enhanced Conflict Management features, as well as how GoldenGate compares to Oracle Streams. In addition to giving details on GoldenGate’s unique capability to capture changed data with a direct integration to the Oracle DBMS engine, we reminded the audience that enhancements to Oracle GoldenGate will continue, while Streams will be primarily maintained. Last but not least, Tim Garrod and Ryan Fonnett from Raymond James presented a unified real-time data integration solution using Oracle Data Integrator and GoldenGate for their operational data store (ODS). The ODS supports application services across the enterprise and providing timely data is a critical requirement. In this solution, Oracle GoldenGate does the log-based change data capture for Oracle Data Integrator’s near real-time data integration between heterogeneous systems. As Raymond James’ ODS supports mission-critical services for their advisors, the project team had to set up this integration environment to be highly available. During the session, Ryan and Tim explained how they use ODI to enable automated process execution and “always-on” integration processes. Their presentation included 2 demonstrations that focused on CDC patterns deployed with ODI and the automated multi-instance execution and monitoring. We are very grateful to Tim and Ryan for their very-well prepared presentation at OpenWorld this year. Day 2 (Tuesday) will be also a busy day in our track. In addition to the Fusion Middleware Innovation Awards ceremony at 11:45am at Moscone West 3001, we have the following DI sessions Real-World Operational Reporting Customer Panel 11:45am Moscone West- 3005 Oracle Data Integrator Product Update and Future Strategy 1:15pm Moscone West- 3005 High-volume OLTP with Oracle GoldenGate: Best Practices from Comcast 1:15pm Moscone West- 3005 Everything You need to Know about Monitoring Oracle GoldenGate 5pm Moscone West-3005 If you are at OpenWorld please join us in these sessions. For a full review of data integration track at OpenWorld please see our Focus-On document.

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• How to check if a cdrom is in the tray remotely (via ssh)?

  - by adempewolff

  I have a server running Ubuntu 10.04 (it's on the other side of the world and I haven't built up the wherewithal to upgrade it remotely yet) and I have been told that there is a CD in one of it's two CD drives. I want to rip an image of the cd and then download it to my local computer (I don't need help with either of these steps). However, I cannot seem to confirm whether or not there actually is a CD in the drive as I was told. It did not automatically mount anywhere (which I'm thinking might just be a result of it being a headless server not running X, nautilus, or any of the other nice user friendly things). There are two CD drives connected via SCSI: austin@austinvpn:/proc/scsi$ cat /proc/scsi/scsi Attached devices: Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 00 Vendor: ATA Model: WDC WD400EB-75CP Rev: 06.0 Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 05 Host: scsi1 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 00 Vendor: Lite-On Model: LTN486S 48x Max Rev: YDS6 Type: CD-ROM ANSI SCSI revision: 05 Host: scsi1 Channel: 00 Id: 01 Lun: 00 Vendor: SAMSUNG Model: CD-R/RW SW-248F Rev: R602 Type: CD-ROM ANSI SCSI revision: 05 However when I try mounting either of these devices (and every other device that could possibly be the cd-drive), it says no medium found: austin@austinvpn:/proc/scsi$ sudo mount -t iso9660 /dev/scd1 /cdrom mount: no medium found on /dev/sr1 austin@austinvpn:/proc/scsi$ sudo mount -t iso9660 /dev/scd0 /cdrom mount: no medium found on /dev/sr0 austin@austinvpn:/proc/scsi$ sudo mount -t iso9660 /dev/cdrom /cdrom mount: no medium found on /dev/sr1 austin@austinvpn:/proc/scsi$ sudo mount -t iso9660 /dev/cdrom1 /cdrom mount: no medium found on /dev/sr0 austin@austinvpn:/proc/scsi$ sudo mount -t iso9660 /dev/cdrw /cdrom mount: no medium found on /dev/sr1 Here are the contents of my /dev folder: austin@austinvpn:/proc/scsi$ ls /dev agpgart loop6 ram6 tty10 tty38 tty8 austinvpn loop7 ram7 tty11 tty39 tty9 block lp0 ram8 tty12 tty4 ttyS0 bsg mapper ram9 tty13 tty40 ttyS1 btrfs-control mcelog random tty14 tty41 ttyS2 bus mem rfkill tty15 tty42 ttyS3 cdrom net root tty16 tty43 urandom cdrom1 network_latency rtc tty17 tty44 usbmon0 cdrw network_throughput rtc0 tty18 tty45 usbmon1 char null scd0 tty19 tty46 usbmon2 console oldmem scd1 tty2 tty47 usbmon3 core parport0 sda tty20 tty48 usbmon4 cpu_dma_latency pktcdvd sda1 tty21 tty49 vcs disk port sda2 tty22 tty5 vcs1 dri ppp sda5 tty23 tty50 vcs2 ecryptfs psaux sg0 tty24 tty51 vcs3 fb0 ptmx sg1 tty25 tty52 vcs4 fd pts sg2 tty26 tty53 vcs5 full ram0 shm tty27 tty54 vcs6 fuse ram1 snapshot tty28 tty55 vcs7 hpet ram10 snd tty29 tty56 vcsa input ram11 sndstat tty3 tty57 vcsa1 kmsg ram12 sr0 tty30 tty58 vcsa2 log ram13 sr1 tty31 tty59 vcsa3 loop0 ram14 stderr tty32 tty6 vcsa4 loop1 ram15 stdin tty33 tty60 vcsa5 loop2 ram2 stdout tty34 tty61 vcsa6 loop3 ram3 tty tty35 tty62 vcsa7 loop4 ram4 tty0 tty36 tty63 vga_arbiter loop5 ram5 tty1 tty37 tty7 zero And here is my fstab file: austin@austinvpn:/proc/scsi$ cat /etc/fstab # /etc/fstab: static file system information. # # Use 'blkid -o value -s UUID' to print the universally unique identifier # for a device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name # devices that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5). # # <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass> proc /proc proc nodev,noexec,nosuid 0 0 /dev/mapper/austinvpn-root / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1 # /boot was on /dev/sda1 during installation UUID=ed5520ae-c690-4ce6-881e-3598f299be06 /boot ext2 defaults 0 2 /dev/mapper/austinvpn-swap_1 none swap sw 0 0 Am I missing something/doing something wrong, or is there just no CD in the drive or is the drive possibly broken? Is there any nice command to list devices with mountable media? Thanks in advance for any help!

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• Improving WIF&rsquo;s Claims-based Authorization - Part 1

  - by Your DisplayName here!

  As mentioned in my last post, I made several additions to WIF’s built-in authorization infrastructure to make it more flexible and easy to use. The foundation for all this work is that you have to be able to directly call the registered ClaimsAuthorizationManager. The following snippet is the universal way to get to the WIF configuration that is currently in effect: public static ServiceConfiguration ServiceConfiguration {     get     {         if (OperationContext.Current == null)         {             // no WCF             return FederatedAuthentication.ServiceConfiguration;         }         // search message property         if (OperationContext.Current.IncomingMessageProperties. ContainsKey("ServiceConfiguration"))         {             var configuration = OperationContext.Current. IncomingMessageProperties["ServiceConfiguration"] as ServiceConfiguration;             if (configuration != null)             {                 return configuration;             }         }         // return configuration from configuration file         return new ServiceConfiguration();     } }   From here you can grab ServiceConfiguration.ClaimsAuthoriationManager which give you direct access to the CheckAccess method (and thus control over claim types and values). I then created the following wrapper methods: public static bool CheckAccess(string resource, string action) {     return CheckAccess(resource, action, Thread.CurrentPrincipal as IClaimsPrincipal); } public static bool CheckAccess(string resource, string action, IClaimsPrincipal principal) {     var context = new AuthorizationContext(principal, resource, action);     return AuthorizationManager.CheckAccess(context); } public static bool CheckAccess(Collection<Claim> actions, Collection<Claim> resources) {     return CheckAccess(new AuthorizationContext(         Thread.CurrentPrincipal.AsClaimsPrincipal(), resources, actions)); } public static bool CheckAccess(AuthorizationContext context) {     return AuthorizationManager.CheckAccess(context); } I also created the same set of methods but called DemandAccess. They internally use CheckAccess and will throw a SecurityException when false is returned. All the code is part of Thinktecture.IdentityModel on Codeplex – or via NuGet (Install-Package Thinktecture.IdentityModel).

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• NetBeans PHP Community Council

  - by Tomas Mysik

  Hi all, today we would like to inform all of you that now you have a chance to improve NetBeans via NetBeans PHP Community Council. The author of this activity is Timur Poperecinii and he would like to tell you a few words about it. Hello passionate technical people, First of all let me introduce myself: my name is Timur, I’m a developer from Moldova (that little country between Romania and Ukraine), I develop mostly in .NET and JQuery, but I love to learn more, not being an expert I am familiar with Java (Struts2, Play), PHP (Symfony2), Ruby (Rails), Sencha Touch 2 and other technologies. I was “introduced” in PHP recently by a client of mine who requested to make the work specifically in PHP. Let me tell you a little story about my experience with open source and IDEs: when I was studying in university in 2007 I think, I did a simple little application in PHP and thought “Damn, if only there was a good IDE for PHP so I could relax and no having to remember all the function names”, then when I searched on internet pretty much everyone was using Vim or Emacs on Linux, but it had no autocomplete anyway, just syntax highlighting. I remember using some tool like Notepad++ I think. Nowadays everything changed, we have highlighting and autocomplete for about all standard things in PHP in many IDEs. I use NetBeans for PHP, and I really am happy with the experience I have there with standard PHP code, but for frameworks I still think there is lots of room for improvements. For example we have some Symfony 2 and Twig support. But I’d love to see more of that coming, for example I’m a big fan of file templates, where the main goal is to not waste time on writing over and over again something that can be generated, and it counts even more when you don’t have a lot of autocomplete. So what I thought, “Hey I know Java a little, and NetBeans has plugins, so may be it worth trying to do a file templates plugin”, and so I did, you can find details about my Unified Udevi Symfony2 Plugin for NetBeans 7.2 on my blog. It wasn’t hard, and it even was fun! Give back to open source Now think a little, NetBeans is an open source project and PHP support is just a part of it, so the resources are pretty limited in this area. But we as a community that uses this product, want to have the best possible experience with PHP and frameworks(!!!). So why don’t we GIVE BACK TO OPENSOURCE ? Imagine an IDE that can do all the things you wanted + it is free. Now how far is NetBeans from that point? I guess not so far – you might miss a little niche thing that you use on a daily basis, but then the question appears why don’t you make it happen on your own? NetBeans PHP Community Council What I proposed is to create a NetBeans PHP Community Council that will be formed of people willing to change something, willing to create plugins for their own needs and for the needs of the community, test the plugins created by them too, and basically evolve NetBeans in direction they want to reach. I already talked with the NetBeans PHP team. They are only happy to help this Council, with technical advises, opening some APIs we might need to have access to, and other things. One important thing to mention is that this Council is a Community project, so though we’ll have direct discussions with NetBeans PHP Dev team, NetBeans is not the leading force here, it is the community. You can see more details about the goals and structure I proposed at NetBeans PHP Community Council wiki page. We use this mail list: [email protected] for discussions and topics related to the Council. How can I join To join the NetBeans PHP Community Council please send an email to [email protected] with the subject of the mail starting with [Council New Member]. You can subscribe to this mail list here:http://netbeans.org/projects/php/lists. in your mail please indicate your location, age and experience both in Java and PHP. I need these data to assign you to a team. A response will be send to you with your next assignment and some people to contact. I really hope that you’ll make a step forward and try to make your everyday use of NetBeans even more fun.

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• Is Financial Inclusion an Obligation or an Opportunity for Banks?

  - by tushar.chitra

  Why should banks care about financial inclusion? First, the statistics, I think this will set the tone for this blog post. There are close to 2.5 billion people who are excluded from the banking stream and out of this, 2.2 billion people are from the continents of Africa, Latin America and Asia (McKinsey on Society: Global Financial Inclusion). However, this is not just a third-world phenomenon. According to Federal Deposit Insurance Corp (FDIC), in the US, post 2008 financial crisis, one family out of five has either opted out of the banking system or has been moved out (American Banker). Moving this huge unbanked population into mainstream banking is both an opportunity and a challenge for banks. An obvious opportunity is the significant untapped customer base that banks can target, so is the positive brand equity a bank can build by fulfilling its social responsibilities. Also, as banks target the cost-conscious unbanked customer, they will be forced to look at ways to offer cost-effective products and services, necessitating technology upgrades and innovations. However, cost is not the only hurdle in increasing the adoption of banking services. The potential users need to be convinced of the benefits of banking and banks will also face stiff competition from unorganized players. Finally, the banks will have to believe in the viability of this business opportunity, and not treat financial inclusion as an obligation. In what ways can banks target the unbanked For financial inclusion to be a success, banks should adopt innovative business models to develop products that address the stated and unstated needs of the unbanked population and also design delivery channels that are cost effective and viable in the long run. Through business correspondents and facilitators In rural and remote areas, one of the major hurdles in increasing banking penetration is connectivity and accessibility to banking services, which makes last mile inclusion a daunting challenge. To address this, banks can avail the services of business correspondents or facilitators. This model allows banks to establish greater connectivity through a trusted and reliable intermediary. In India, for instance, banks can leverage the local Kirana stores (the mom & pop stores) to service rural and remote areas. With a supportive nudge from the central bank, the commercial banks can enlist these shop owners as business correspondents to increase their reach. Since these neighborhood stores are acquainted with the local population, they can help banks manage the KYC norms, besides serving as a conduit for remittance. Banks also have an opportunity over a period of time to cross-sell other financial products such as micro insurance, mutual funds and pension products through these correspondents. To exercise greater operational control over the business correspondents, banks can also adopt a combination of branch and business correspondent models to deliver financial inclusion. Through mobile devices According to a 2012 world bank report on financial inclusion, out of a world population of 7 billion, over 5 billion or 70% have mobile phones and only 2 billion or 30% have a bank account. What this means for banks is that there is scope for them to leverage this phenomenal growth in mobile usage to serve the unbanked population. Banks can use mobile technology to service the basic banking requirements of their customers with no frills accounts, effectively bringing down the cost per transaction. As I had discussed in my earlier post on mobile payments, though non-traditional players have taken the lead in P2P mobile payments, banks still hold an edge in terms of infrastructure and reliability. Through crowd-funding According to the Crowdfunding Industry Report by Massolution, the global crowdfunding industry raised $2.7 billion in 2012, and is projected to grow to $5.1 billion in 2013. With credit policies becoming tighter and banks becoming more circumspect in terms of loan disbursals, crowdfunding has emerged as an alternative channel for lending. Typically, these initiatives target the unbanked population by offering small loans that are unviable for larger banks. Though a significant proportion of crowdfunding initiatives globally are run by non-banking institutions, banks are also venturing into this space. The next step towards inclusive finance Banks by themselves cannot make financial inclusion a success. There is a need for a whole ecosystem that is supportive of this mission. The policy makers, that include the regulators and government bodies, must be in sync, the IT solution providers must put on their thinking caps to come out with innovative products and solutions, communication channels such as internet and mobile need to expand their reach, and the media and the public need to play an active part. The other challenge for financial inclusion is from the banks themselves. While it is true that financial inclusion will unleash a hitherto hugely untapped market, the normal banking model may be found wanting because of issues such as flexibility, convenience and reliability. The business will be viable only when there is a focus on increasing the usage of existing infrastructure and that is possible when the banks can offer the entire range of products and services to the large number of users of essential banking services. Apart from these challenges, banks will also have to quickly master and replicate the business model to extend their reach to the remotest regions in their respective geographies. They will need to ensure that the transactions deliver a viable business benefit to the bank. For tapping cross-sell opportunities, banks will have to quickly roll-out customized and segment-specific products. The bank staff should be brought in sync with the business plan by convincing them of the viability of the business model and the need for a business correspondent delivery model. Banks, in collaboration with the government and NGOs, will have to run an extensive financial literacy program to educate the unbanked about the benefits of banking. Finally, with the growing importance of retail banking and with many unconventional players eyeing the opportunity in payments and other lucrative areas of banking, banks need to understand the importance of micro and small branches. These micro and small branches can help banks increase their presence without a huge cost burden, provide bankers an opportunity to cross sell micro products and offer a window of opportunity for the large non-banked population to transact without any interference from intermediaries. These branches can also help diminish the role of the unorganized financial sector, such as local moneylenders and unregistered credit societies. This will also help banks build a brand awareness and loyalty among the users, which by itself has a cascading effect on the business operations, especially among the rural and un-banked centers. In conclusion, with the increasingly competitive banking sector facing frequent slowdowns and downturns, the unbanked population presents a huge opportunity for banks to enhance their customer base and fulfill their social responsibility.

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• No sound lenovo t60 alsa ad1981 iec958

  - by Nate

  Any help on getting the sound to come through my lenovo t60 build in speakers, headphones, or mic would greatly be appreciated. The three buttons to increase, decrease sound seem to work. Bios has sound card enabled and the buttons beep when pressed. When going to Utube or playing music, no sound is heard. Thanks Nate Feb 23 - Didn't see anything specific in the sys logs with Rhythmbox when connecting my ipod. Rhythmbox is playing, but still no sound. Here is the syslog details for today. Output is set to analog output. Feb 23 17:42:32 itgis01398 rsyslogd: [origin software="rsyslogd" swVersion="4.2.0" x-pid="824" x-info="http://www.rsyslog.com"] rsyslogd was HUPed, type 'lightweight'. Feb 23 17:42:33 itgis01398 rsyslogd: [origin software="rsyslogd" swVersion="4.2.0" x-pid="824" x-info="http://www.rsyslog.com"] rsyslogd was HUPed, type 'lightweight'. Feb 23 17:42:49 itgis01398 anacron[968]: Job `cron.daily' terminated Feb 23 17:42:49 itgis01398 anacron[968]: Job `cron.weekly' started Feb 23 17:42:49 itgis01398 anacron[12067]: Updated timestamp for job `cron.weekly' to 2011-02-23 Feb 23 17:42:53 itgis01398 anacron[968]: Job `cron.weekly' terminated Feb 23 17:42:53 itgis01398 anacron[968]: Normal exit (2 jobs run) Feb 23 18:01:19 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2731.324067] usb 1-5: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3 Feb 23 18:01:19 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2731.482879] Initializing USB Mass Storage driver... Feb 23 18:01:19 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2731.483061] usb-storage 1-5:1.0: Quirks match for vid 05ac pid 1205: 10 Feb 23 18:01:19 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2731.483116] scsi6 : usb-storage 1-5:1.0 Feb 23 18:01:19 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2731.483306] usbcore: registered new interface driver usb-storage Feb 23 18:01:19 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2731.483310] USB Mass Storage support registered. Feb 23 18:01:20 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2732.481116] scsi 6:0:0:0: Direct-Access Apple iPod 1.62 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0 Feb 23 18:01:20 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2732.482466] sd 6:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0 Feb 23 18:01:20 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2732.485095] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Adjusting the sector count from its reported value: 7999488 Feb 23 18:01:20 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2732.485110] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] 7999487 512-byte logical blocks: (4.09 GB/3.81 GiB) Feb 23 18:01:20 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2732.487933] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off Feb 23 18:01:20 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2732.487941] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 64 00 00 08 Feb 23 18:01:20 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2732.487947] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through Feb 23 18:01:20 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2732.489927] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Adjusting the sector count from its reported value: 7999488 Feb 23 18:01:20 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2732.491150] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through Feb 23 18:01:20 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2732.491163] sdb: sdb1 sdb2 Feb 23 18:01:20 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2732.510428] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Adjusting the sector count from its reported value: 7999488 Feb 23 18:01:20 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2732.511288] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through Feb 23 18:01:20 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2732.511297] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk Feb 23 18:01:21 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2733.746675] FAT: invalid media value (0x2f) Feb 23 18:01:21 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2733.746682] VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev sdb1. Feb 23 18:01:22 itgis01398 upstart-udev-bridge[330]: Env must be KEY=VALUE pairs Feb 23 18:02:07 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2780.115826] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Unhandled sense code Feb 23 18:02:07 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2780.115835] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE Feb 23 18:02:07 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2780.115844] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Sense Key : Medium Error [current] Feb 23 18:02:07 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2780.115855] Info fld=0x0 Feb 23 18:02:07 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2780.115859] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error Feb 23 18:02:07 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2780.115870] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] CDB: Read(10): 28 00 00 08 fd e9 00 00 f0 00 Feb 23 18:02:07 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2780.115892] end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 589289 Feb 23 18:02:49 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2821.351464] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Unhandled sense code Feb 23 18:02:49 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2821.351473] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE Feb 23 18:02:49 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2821.351482] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Sense Key : Medium Error [current] Feb 23 18:02:49 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2821.351493] Info fld=0x0 Feb 23 18:02:49 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2821.351497] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Add. Sense: No additional sense information Feb 23 18:02:49 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2821.351507] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] CDB: Read(10): 28 00 00 08 fe d9 00 00 10 00 Feb 23 18:02:49 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2821.351530] end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 589529 Feb 23 18:17:01 itgis01398 CRON[12709]: (root) CMD ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly) volume is all of the way up.

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