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What is the Oracle Utilities Application Framework?

- by Anthony Shorten

The Oracle Utilities Application Framework is a reusable, scalable and flexible java based framework which allows other products to be built, configured and implemented in a standard way. Note: Even though the Framework is built in java it can be integrated with COBOL based extensions for backward compatibility. When Oracle Utilities Customer Care & Billing was migrated from V1 to V2, it was decided that the technical aspects of that product be separated to allow for reuse and independence from technical issues. The idea was that all the technical aspects would be concentrated in this separate product (i.e. a framework) and allow all products using the framework to concentrate on delivering superior functionality. The product was named the Oracle Utilities Application Framework (oufw is the product code). The technical components are contained in the Oracle Utilities Application Framework which can be summarized as follows: Metadata - The Oracle Utilities Application Framework is responsible for defining and using the metadata to define the runtime behavior of the product. All the metadata definition and management is contained within the Oracle Utilities Application Framework. UI Management - The Oracle Utilities Application Framework is responsible for defining and rendering the pages and responsible for ensuring the pages are in the appropriate format for the locale. Integration - The Oracle Utilities Application Framework is responsible for providing the integration points to the architecture. Refer to the Oracle Utilities Application Framework Integration Overview for more details Tools - The Oracle Utilities Application Framework provides a common set of facilities and tools that can be used across all products. Technology - The Oracle Utilities Application Framework is responsible for all technology standards compliance, platform support and integration. There are a number of products from the Tax and Utilities Global Business Unit as well as from the Financial Services Global Business Unit that are built upon the Oracle Utilities Application Framework. These products require the Oracle Utilities Application Framework to be installed first and then the product itself installed onto the framework to complete the installation process. There are a number of key benefits that the Oracle Utilities Application Framework provides to these products: Common facilities - The Oracle Utilities Application Framework provides a standard set of technical facilities that mean that products can concentrate in the unique aspects of their markets rather than making technical decisions. Common methods of configuration - The Oracle Utilities Application Framework standardizes the technical configuration process for a product. Customers can effectively reuse the configuration process across products. Multi-lingual and Multi-platform - The Oracle Utilities Application Framework allows the products to be offered in more markets and across multiple platforms for maximized flexibility. Common methods of implementation - The Oracle Utilities Application Framework standardizes the technical aspects of a product implementation. Customers can effectively reuse the technical implementation process across products. Quicker adoption of new technologies - As new technologies and standards are identified as being important for the product line, they can be integrated centrally benefiting multiple products. Cross product reuse - As enhancements to the Oracle Utilities Application Framework are identified by a particular product, all products can potentially benefit from the enhancement. Note: Use of the Oracle Utilities Application Framework does not preclude the introduction of product specific technologies or facilities to satisfy market needs. The framework minimizes the need and assists in the quick integration of a new product specific piece of technology (if necessary). The Framework is not available as a product itself and is bundled with Tax and Utilities Global Business Unit prodicts. At the present time the following products are on the Framework: Oracle Utilities Customer Care And Billing (V2 and above) Oracle Enterprise Taxation Management (V2 and above) Oracle Utilities Business Intelligence (V2 and above) Oracle Utilities Mobile Workforice Management (V2 and above)

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Windows Phone 7 Prototype 001: Speech Recognition on WP7

At some point in the future it will be awesome when you can just tell your computer what to do and it does it - without typing to help those of us with a blistering 11 WPM hunk and peck technique. Siri, a mobile digital assistant using speech recognition was voted best tech at SXSW. I dont know about that one. Although, I'm sure it will get better when Apple rebuilds it and bundles on iPhone 5. So how would you do that on WP7? There have been some videos floating around showing Bing with some voice control so obviously the phone has speech recognition. So what options are there: System.Speech? Not included in WP7/SL Nuance software like Siri? No WP7/SL version yet. Invoking the SAPI dlls on the phone? No automation factory in WP7 SL. Web services using System.Speech and mic on the phone? YES! The last one was my least favorite but that works for now. I built a quick sample app to show how to do text-to-speech and speech recognition on WP7. @eklimczak will not be happy with the developer designed UI. In this sample there is web service with provides access to the system.speech APIs in .NET. Basically its just passing around byte arrays. On the phone its using the XNA audio frameworks to play the text-to-speech stream and to record using the microphone. The code is pretty simple and you can download from the link at the end of this post. The only things to note are adjusting the WCF config to handle larger byte uploads and the Microphone API is a little weird with that 1 second buffer. It would be nice if you could just to mic.start and mic.end which would return an array of bytes instead of managing your own stream inside the buffer ready callback. Couple of downsides to this approach: Recoding from the phone has some static. Could be my code or the my mic is bad / not calibrated right. Having to make web service calls instead of local access is not ideal (Microsoft, please add an API for the SAPI dlls) Although in the context of an app like Siri its not so bad since you need to do web service lookups to get data back Speech recognition quality really depends on either a) a limited grammar set like that pizza grammar in the sample or b) training the recognizer. For the latter it would be annoying to have users train the system. Using the System.Speech stuff youd have to have a profile for each user. So until Microsoft adds some speech client APIs on the phone or Nuance releases a wp7 product, this is a decent workaround. In the future Id like to build something similar to Siri. I shall call it Iris in homage. Im a big fan of mobile speech apps because frankly its just not safe to Google while driving. Since some of my designer co-workers have been posting UI sketches for WP7, Id like to start posting some code prototypes for things I try out on the phone. That will probably last 2 weeks, but for the moment I have like 10 posts in the queue. Sample Code 100% guaranteed to work on my emulatorDid you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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DESIGNING FOR WIN PHONE 7

Designing applications for the Win Phone 7 is very similar to designing for print. In my opinion, it feels like a cross between a tri-fold brochure and a poster. I based my prototype designs on Microsofts Metro style guide, with typography as the main focus and stunning imagery for support. Its nice to have fixed factors regulating the design, making it a fun and fresh design experience. Microsoft provides a UI Design Guidelines document that outlines layout sizes, background image size, recommended typefaces and spacing. You know what you are designing for and you know how it will look and act on the win phone 7 platform. Although applications are not required to strictly adhere to the Metro style guide I feel it makes the best use of the panorama view and navigation. With strong examples of this UI concept in place like their Zune-like music + videos hub, I found it fairly easy to put together a few quick app mockups (see below). In addition to design guidelines, using a ready built design templates, or a win phone 7 specific panorama control like the one by Clarity Consulting will make the process of bringing your designs to life much more efficient. Likes, Dislikes, and Challenges I think the idea of the hub is completely intuitive. This concept clearly breaks down info into more manageable pieces, and greatly helps with organization when designing for the phone. I like the chromeless appearance, allowing the core functionality of the application to take precedence over gradients, textures, bevels, drop shadows, and the complicated animations you see on the web. Although I understand the Win Phone 7 guidelines are a work in progress, I found a few contradictions. I also noticed that certain design specifications did not translate well to the phone emulator . If you use their guidelines as suggested best practices and not as fixed definitions you will have more success. Multi-directional vs Linear The main challenge I had was stepping away from familiar navigational examples seen in other mobile phones. I had to keep reminding myself that the content to the right and to the left of what I was working on didnt necessarily have to have a direct link to one another. I started thinking multi-directional as opposed to linear. Win phone 7 vs IPhone The Metro styling of the Win Phone 7 is similar to the Zune HD and the Windows Media Center UI and offers a different interface paradigm than the IPhone. When navigating an application it feels like you are panning a long seamless page of information in contrast to the multiple panels of an IPhone. I think there is less of an opportunity to overdesign your application, which happens often with IPhone applications. While both interfaces are simple and sleek, win phone 7 really gets down to the basics. IPhone sets a high standard for designing for touch, designing for win phone 7 could improve on that user experience with a consistent and strategic use of white space and staying away from a menu and icon heavy UI. Design Examples for Win Phone 7 Applications Here are some concepts for both generic and brand specific applications for Win Phone 7: View Full Album Resources to get you going with your own Win Phone 7 design: Helpful design templates for Win Phone 7 http://www.shazaml.com/archives/windows-phone-7-ui-templates Here is the interaction design guide for Win Phone 7 http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9713252 Windows has a project template for Blend 4 and Visual Studio 2010 RC1 http://developer.windowsphone.com/ Clarity Consulting developed a panorama control for Win Phone 7 http://blogs.claritycon.com/blogs/design/archive/2010/03/30/building-the-elusive-windows-phone-panorama-control.aspxDid you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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DESIGNING FOR WIN PHONE 7

Designing applications for the Win Phone 7 is very similar to designing for print. In my opinion, it feels like a cross between a tri-fold brochure and a poster. I based my prototype designs on Microsofts Metro style guide, with typography as the main focus and stunning imagery for support. Its nice to have fixed factors regulating the design, making it a fun and fresh design experience. Microsoft provides a UI Design Guidelines document that outlines layout sizes, background image size, recommended typefaces and spacing. You know what you are designing for and you know how it will look and act on the win phone 7 platform. Although applications are not required to strictly adhere to the Metro style guide I feel it makes the best use of the panorama view and navigation. With strong examples of this UI concept in place like their Zune-like music + videos hub, I found it fairly easy to put together a few quick app mockups (see below). In addition to design guidelines, using a ready built design templates, or a win phone 7 specific panorama control like the one by Clarity Consulting will make the process of bringing your designs to life much more efficient. Likes, Dislikes, and Challenges I think the idea of the hub is completely intuitive. This concept clearly breaks down info into more manageable pieces, and greatly helps with organization when designing for the phone. I like the chromeless appearance, allowing the core functionality of the application to take precedence over gradients, textures, bevels, drop shadows, and the complicated animations you see on the web. Although I understand the Win Phone 7 guidelines are a work in progress, I found a few contradictions. I also noticed that certain design specifications did not translate well to the phone emulator . If you use their guidelines as suggested best practices and not as fixed definitions you will have more success. Multi-directional vs Linear The main challenge I had was stepping away from familiar navigational examples seen in other mobile phones. I had to keep reminding myself that the content to the right and to the left of what I was working on didnt necessarily have to have a direct link to one another. I started thinking multi-directional as opposed to linear. Win phone 7 vs IPhone The Metro styling of the Win Phone 7 is similar to the Zune HD and the Windows Media Center UI and offers a different interface paradigm than the IPhone. When navigating an application it feels like you are panning a long seamless page of information in contrast to the multiple panels of an IPhone. I think there is less of an opportunity to overdesign your application, which happens often with IPhone applications. While both interfaces are simple and sleek, win phone 7 really gets down to the basics. IPhone sets a high standard for designing for touch, designing for win phone 7 could improve on that user experience with a consistent and strategic use of white space and staying away from a menu and icon heavy UI. Design Examples for Win Phone 7 Applications Here are some concepts for both generic and brand specific applications for Win Phone 7: View Full Album Resources to get you going with your own Win Phone 7 design: Helpful design templates for Win Phone 7 http://www.shazaml.com/archives/windows-phone-7-ui-templates Here is the interaction design guide for Win Phone 7 http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9713252 Windows has a project template for Blend 4 and Visual Studio 2010 RC1 http://developer.windowsphone.com/ Clarity Consulting developed a panorama control for Win Phone 7 http://blogs.claritycon.com/blogs/design/archive/2010/03/30/building-the-elusive-windows-phone-panorama-control.aspxDid you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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Silverlight Cream for April 29, 2010 -- #851

- by Dave Campbell

In this Issue: Carlos Figueira(-2-), Subodh Pushpak, Gergely Orosz, John Papa, Mike Snow(-2-), Rishi, Tim Heuer, Stefan Olson, and David Anson. Shoutouts: Josh Holmes blogged about a cool app the City of Miami has up: Miami 311: Built on Windows Azure Gergely Orosz reports on the state of a bug he found pre SL4: Silverlight 4 still displays large elements incorrectly Laura Foy and Charlie Kindel discuss WP7 on Channel 9: Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools Refresh Announced Charlie Kindel has an announcement, good instructions, and what's new notes on the Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP Refresh! Tim Heuer mentioned the workaround for this in his post (below), but I thought you might like to read Brandon Watson's debrief of what it's all about: Signed Assemblies Bug in the Windows Phone Tools CTP Refresh Laurent Bugnion posted about interrelations between versions of Blend and WP7 code... read it closely: Be careful when installing the Blend Windows Phone 7 Add-In From SilverlightCream.com: Consuming REST/POX services in Silverlight 4 Carlos Figueira has a pair of posts up about consuming services in Silverlight 4. This first one is about consuming REST/POX services. He provides a Service Contract that can be used with either and the full project code is available as well. Consuming REST/JSON services in Silverlight 4 In the second post, Carlos Figueira provides the code to allow WCF and Silverlight 4 to consume strongly-typed REST/JSON... and again, all the code is available. Silverlight and WCF caching Subodh Pushpak has a post up discussing caching in WCF, and has code demonstrating turning caching on at run-time. Detecting Silverlight Version Installed Gergely Orosz said it right when he said "Detecting the Silverlight version installed on a client machine isn’t entirely straightforward." ... and after reading this post, if you take the link to his ScottLogic blog, you'll get a full break-out of how it's done. Silverlight TV 22: Tim Heuer on Extending the SMF It's Thursday, and that means Silverlight TV! ... this week, John Papa has on Tim Heuer who has always been out there pushing media... and he's talking about SMF or Silverlight Media Framework for the uninitiated, and also extending it. Silverlight Tip of the Day #7 – Localized Resources Mike Snow has Tip Number 7 up and it's about localization... good end-to-end discussion and demonstration. Just thought I should use that to prove to my daughter that the tatoo she had put on the back of her neck actually reads "Eat More Broccoli" :) Silverlight Tip of the Day #8 – Detecting Alt, Shift, Control, Window & Apple Keys Combinations I just realized Mike Snow's site logo reads "Silverlight Tips of the Day" (bolding mine) ... that answers why I'm seeing more than one -- sorry Mike, couldn't pass it up :) ... Mike's second tip today and number 8 in the series is on detecting all the mouse button and ctl/alt/shift combinations in Silverlight. nRoute: More Wholesomeness, with SL 4 and .NET 4.0 Rishi has a post up announcing a new nRoute release for Silverlight 4 and .NET 4.0 He's tweaked the code to take advantages of enhancements in the new platforms, so check it out. Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools April 2010 Refresh Booya... Tim Heuer announced the release of the next drop in the WP7 tools ... dang wish I was at home today :) ... be sure to read the post for info such as the notes about Authenticode Assemblies and the release notes. Updates to Silverlight Multi-binding support Stefan Olson points up a SL4 change to Multi-binding support that he had previously blogged about. He shows the previous non-working example, and what you have to do to make it work now. Using XAML to create a custom wallpaper image for your mobile device David Anson has a solution for those pesky lost devices, and let me go on the record right now saying if anyone finds a WP7 phone laying around, just call me, it's mine :) [think that'd work??] ... ok, David's solution is a WPF app "MobileDeviceHomeScreenMaker" that you get the info set and it produces a png you then put on your device. But seriously about that lost phone... Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight Silverlight 3 Silverlight 4 Windows Phone MIX10

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BizTalk 2009 - BizTalk Benchmark Wizard: Installation

- by StuartBrierley

As previously detailed, I have completed a single server installation of BizTalk Server 2009 standard on my development laptop; a MacBook Pro Core2Duo running at 2.16Ghz with 2Gb of RAM. Following this I also posted on my use of the BizTalk Server Best Practices Anaylser and how to configure the BizTalk SQL Server Jobs. All of which means that I should have some confidence that I have a decent working BizTalk Server 2009 environment, Next I thought that it would be a good idea to try and get some idea of how this setup performs by carrying out some baseline tests that can then be replicated on the test and live servers. The aim of this would be to allow confident predictions to be made of how any solutions developed on a single "server" installation may be expected to perform when deployed to these multi-server BizTalk Server 2009 standard installations. The BizTalk Benchmark Wizard would seem to be the perfect tool for the job. The BizTalk Benchmark Wizard is a ultility that can be used to gain some validation of a BizTalk installation, giving a level of guidance on whether it is performing as might be expected. This utility should be used after BizTalk Server has been installed and before any solutions are deployed to the environment. This will ensure that you are getting consistent and clean results from the BizTalk Benchmark Wizard. The BizTalk Benchmark Wizard applies load to the BizTalk Server environment under a choice of specific scenarios. During these scenarios performance counter information is collected and assessed against statistics that are appropriate to the BizTalk Server environment: "The executed scenarios may or may not be relative to any realistic scenario, and is only intended for testing. The BizTalk Benchmark Wizard has been developed in relation to the BizTalk Server 2009 Scale Out Testing Study. More information about the study can be found here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee377068(BTS.10).aspx" After downloading and installing the wizard you will need set up the Hosts, Instances and Adapter handlers. This is done by running a script file using the “cscript” detailed below. To do this you will need to open a command prompt window and navigate to the script folder; assuming the default installation location this would be C:\Program Files\Blogical\BizTalk Benchmark Wizard\Artefacts\BizTalk. In this folder you should find an InstallHosts.vbs file which can be executed using the following parameters: NTGroupName - The name of the Windows NT group. UserName – The name of the user account running the service instances. Password – The password of the user account running the service instances. Receive Host – The name of the server where you want to run the receive host instance. Send Host - The name of the server where you want to run the sen host instance. Processing Host - The name of the server where you want to run the process host instance. By default the script is set up for 64 bit hosts, so if you are running in 32 bit environment make sure that you change the following line in the script before continuing: from: objHS.IsHost32BitOnly = False to: objHS.IsHost32BitOnly = True If you have a single box installation, your script command might look like this: cscript InstallHosts.vbs "BizTalk Application Users" “\MyUser” “MyPassword” “BtsServer1” “BtsServer1” “BtsServer1” If you have a multi server installation, your script command might look like this: cscript InstallHosts.vbs "MyDomain\BizTalk Application Users" “MyDomain\MyUser” “MyPassword” “BtsServer1” “BtsServer2” “BtsServer2” Running this script will create: Three hosts (BBW_RxHost, BBW_TxHost and BBW_PxHost) Three host instances One send and one receive adapter handler for the WCF NetTcp adapter. You will then need to import the BizTalk MSI via the BizTalk Administration Console. Open the BizTalk Administration Console, point to the “Applications” node and import the BizTalk Benchmark Wizard.msi found in the same folder as the script above. This will create a “BizTalk Benchmark Wizard” application along with all ports and orchestrations needed. To finish the installation you will need to run the BizTalk Benchmark Wizard.msi on all BizTalk servers to add the assemblies to the Global Assembly Cache (GAC). Next I will look at running the BizTalk Benchmark Wizard.

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Text Expansion Awareness for UX Designers: Points to Consider

- by ultan o'broin

Awareness of translated text expansion dynamics is important for enterprise applications UX designers (I am assuming all source text for translation is in English, though apps development can takes place in other natural languages too). This consideration goes beyond the standard 'character multiplication' rule and must take into account the avoidance of other layout tricks that a designer might be tempted to try. Follow these guidelines. For general text expansion, remember the simple rule that the shorter the word is in the English, the longer it will need to be in English. See the examples provided by Richard Ishida of the W3C and you'll get the idea. So, forget the 30 percent or one inch minimum expansion rule of the old Forms days. Unfortunately remembering convoluted text expansion rules, based as a percentage of the US English character count can be tough going. Try these: Up to 10 characters: 100 to 200% 11 to 20 characters: 80 to 100% 21 to 30 characters: 60 to 80% 31 to 50 characters: 40 to 60% 51 to 70 characters: 31 to 40% Over 70 characters: 30% (Source: IBM) So it might be easier to remember a rule that if your English text is less than 20 characters then allow it to double in length (200 percent), and then after that assume an increase by half the length of the text (50%). (Bear in mind that ADF can apply truncation rules on some components in English too). (If your text is stored in a database, developers must make sure the table column widths can accommodate the expansion of your text when translated based on byte size for the translated character and not numbers of characters. Use Unicode. One character does not equal one byte in the multilingual enterprise apps world.) Rely on a graceful transformation of translated text. Let all pages to resize dynamically so the text wraps and flow naturally. ADF pages supports this already. Think websites. Don't hard-code alignments. Use Start and End properties on components and not Left or Right. Don't force alignments of components on the page by using texts of a certain length as spacers. Use proper label positioning and anchoring in ADF components or other technologies. Remember that an increase in text length means an increase in vertical space too when pages are resized. So don't hard-code vertical heights for any text areas. Don't be tempted to manually create text or printed reports this way either. They cannot be translated successfully, and are very difficult to maintain in English. Use XML, HTML, RTF and so on. Check out what Oracle BI Publisher offers. Don't force wrapping by using tricks such as /n or /t characters or HTML BR tags or forced page breaks. Once the text is translated the alignment will be destroyed. The position of the breaking character or tag would need to be moved anyway, or even removed. When creating tables, then use table components. Don't use manually created tables that reply on word length to maintain column and row alignment. For example, don't use codeblock elements in HTML; use the proper table elements instead. Once translated, the alignment of manually formatted tabular data is destroyed. Finally, if there is a space restriction, then don't use made-up acronyms, abbreviations or some form of daft text speak to save space. Besides being incomprehensible in English, they may need full translations of the shortened words, even if they can be figured out. Use approved or industry standard acronyms according to the UX style rules, not as a space-saving device. Restricted Real Estate on Mobile Devices On mobile devices real estate is limited. Using shortened text is fine once it is comprehensible. Users in the mobile space prefer brevity too, as they are on the go, performing three-minute tasks, with no time to read lengthy texts. Using fragments and lightning up on unnecessary articles and getting straight to the point with imperative forms of verbs makes sense both on real estate and user experience grounds.

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Error while installing emacs23 from Software Center

- by vrcmr

Trying to install emacs in Software Center Ubuntu 12.04 got this error. installArchives() failed: Selecting previously unselected package emacs23. (Reading database ... (Reading database ... 5% (Reading database ... 10% (Reading database ... 15% (Reading database ... 20% (Reading database ... 25% (Reading database ... 30% (Reading database ... 35% (Reading database ... 40% (Reading database ... 45% (Reading database ... 50% (Reading database ... 55% (Reading database ... 60% (Reading database ... 65% (Reading database ... 70% (Reading database ... 75% (Reading database ... 80% (Reading database ... 85% (Reading database ... 90% (Reading database ... 95% (Reading database ... 100% (Reading database ... 182385 files and directories currently installed.) Unpacking emacs23 (from .../emacs23_23.3+1-1ubuntu9_i386.deb) ... Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils ... Processing triggers for bamfdaemon ... Rebuilding /usr/share/applications/bamf.index... Processing triggers for gnome-menus ... Processing triggers for man-db ... Setting up emacs23 (23.3+1-1ubuntu9) ... update-alternatives: using /usr/bin/emacs23-x to provide /usr/bin/emacs (emacs) in auto mode. emacs-install emacs23 install/dictionaries-common: Byte-compiling for emacsen flavour emacs23 Warning: Lisp directory `/usr/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp' does not exist. Warning: Lisp directory `/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp' does not exist. Warning: Lisp directory `/usr/share/emacs/23.3/leim' does not exist. Warning: Lisp directory `/usr/share/emacs/23.3/lisp' does not exist. Warning: Lisp directory `/usr/share/emacs/23.3/leim' does not exist. Error: charsets directory (/usr/share/emacs/23.3/etc/charsets) does not exist. Emacs will not function correctly without the character map files. Please check your installation! Warning: Could not find simple.el nor simple.elc Cannot open load file: bytecomp emacs-install: /usr/lib/emacsen-common/packages/install/dictionaries-common emacs23 failed at /usr/lib/emacsen-common/emacs-install line 28, <TSORT> line 3. dpkg: error processing emacs23 (--configure): subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 255 No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already Errors were encountered while processing: emacs23 Error in function: Setting up emacs23 (23.3+1-1ubuntu9) ... emacs-install emacs23 install/dictionaries-common: Byte-compiling for emacsen flavour emacs23 Warning: Lisp directory `/usr/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp' does not exist. Warning: Lisp directory `/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp' does not exist. Warning: Lisp directory `/usr/share/emacs/23.3/leim' does not exist. Warning: Lisp directory `/usr/share/emacs/23.3/lisp' does not exist. Warning: Lisp directory `/usr/share/emacs/23.3/leim' does not exist. Error: charsets directory (/usr/share/emacs/23.3/etc/charsets) does not exist. Emacs will not function correctly without the character map files. Please check your installation! Warning: Could not find simple.el nor simple.elc Cannot open load file: bytecomp emacs-install: /usr/lib/emacsen-common/packages/install/dictionaries-common emacs23 failed at /usr/lib/emacsen-common/emacs-install line 28, <TSORT> line 3. dpkg: error processing emacs23 (--configure): subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 255

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Enable Full Screen Mode in Media Center Without Trapping the Mouse

- by DigitalGeekery

If you have a dual monitor setup and use Windows Media Center, you’re probably aware that when WMC is in full screen mode, it traps the mouse so you can’t work on a second monitor. Here we look at how to solve the annoyance. The Maxifier is an application that allows you to open Media Center in full screen mode without restricting the mouse. It relieves the annoyance of WMC capturing your mouse on a dual monitor setup. Note: If you don’t have two monitors attached, most of The Maxifier’s functions won’t work. Installation and Use Download, extract, and install The Maxifier. (See the download link below) The Maxifier runs minimized in the system tray and you access the options by right-clicking on the icon. If Media Center is not already open, you can choose Start Media Center to start WMC on the main start screen. Or, choose one of the other selections to open another area of Media Center. By default, Maxifier opens Media Center in full screen mode on the secondary monitor. When Media Center is open in full screen mode, you’ll notice you can now freely move your mouse around your multi-monitor setup. When Media Center is open, you’ll see five additional options. The Fit Screen options simply fits Media Center to the full screen, but still show the Windows borders. Full screen options put WMC in full screen mode. The Maxifier Options allow you to choose from the various start up options. Selecting Watch for Media Center starting will prompt Maxifier to open WMC to the main start page in full screen mode on the secondary monitor automatically, even if you open Media Center without using The Maxifier. (You may need to restart for this to take effect) If you have more than 2 monitors, you can define on which monitor to open Media Center, and which monitor you consider to be the main screen. You can also define a number of Hotkeys in The Maxifier settings. First, select the Enable Hotkeys checkbox. To create a Hotkey, click in the text field and then press the keys to use as the Hotkey. To remove a Hotkey, click in the field and press the Delete key. Conclusion The Maxifier is a simple program that enables Media Center users to take full advantage of a multi-monitor workspace. It works with both Vista and Windows 7. Version 1.4 is a stable application for Vista, and Version 1.5b is a beta application for Windows 7. Looking for more Media Center tips and tweaks? Check out some startup customizations for Windows 7 Media Center, how to automatically mount and view ISO’s in WMC, and how to add background images and themes to Windows 7 Media Center. Link Download the Maxifier Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Startup Customizations for Media Center in Windows 7Using Netflix Watchnow in Windows Vista Media Center (Gmedia)Lock The Screen While in Full-Screen Mode in Windows Media PlayerSwitch Windows by Hovering the Mouse Over a Window in Windows 7 or VistaIntegrate Boxee with Media Center in Windows 7 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips HippoRemote Pro 2.2 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Steve Jobs’ iPhone 4 Keynote Video Watch World Cup Online On These Sites Speed Up Windows With ReadyBoost Awesome World Cup Soccer Calendar Nice Websites To Watch TV Shows Online 24 Million Sites

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MP3 player mpman TS300 not recognized

- by Nick Lemaire

I just received a mpman ts300 mp3 player for Christmas. But when I try to connect it to ubuntu (10.10) through usb it doesn't seem to be recognized. I searched for a linuxdriver but came up with nothing. I even tried installing mpman manager from the software center, but still the same problem... Has anybody got any ideas about how to fix this? Thank you edit: some additional information When I plug it in, it doesn't show up under /dev. And it is not listed in the result of 'lsusb' This is the output of 'dmesg' [19571.732541] usb 1-4: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2 [19571.889154] scsi7 : usb-storage 1-4:1.0 [19572.883155] scsi 7:0:0:0: Direct-Access TS300 USB DISK 1.00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0 [19572.885856] sd 7:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0 [19572.887266] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] 7868416 512-byte logical blocks: (4.02 GB/3.75 GiB) [19573.012547] usb 1-4: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2 [19573.292550] usb 1-4: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2 [19573.572565] usb 1-4: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2 [19573.725019] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] Test WP failed, assume Write Enabled [19573.725024] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through [19573.728521] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk [19575.333015] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] 7868416 512-byte logical blocks: (4.02 GB/3.75 GiB) [19575.452547] usb 1-4: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2 [19580.603253] usb 1-4: device descriptor read/all, error -110 [19580.722560] usb 1-4: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2 [19595.842579] usb 1-4: device descriptor read/64, error -110 [19611.072656] usb 1-4: device descriptor read/64, error -110 [19611.302540] usb 1-4: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2 [19616.332568] usb 1-4: device descriptor read/8, error -110 [19621.462692] usb 1-4: device descriptor read/8, error -110 [19621.692551] usb 1-4: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2 [19626.722567] usb 1-4: device descriptor read/8, error -110 [19631.852802] usb 1-4: device descriptor read/8, error -110 [19631.962587] usb 1-4: USB disconnect, address 2 [19631.962587] sd 7:0:0:0: Device offlined - not ready after error recovery [19631.962840] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through [19631.965104] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] READ CAPACITY failed [19631.965109] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] Result: hostbyte=DID_NO_CONNECT driverbyte=DRIVER_OK [19631.965112] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] Sense not available. [19631.965125] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through [19631.965130] sdb: detected capacity change from 4028628992 to 0 [19632.130042] usb 1-4: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3 [19647.242550] usb 1-4: device descriptor read/64, error -110 [19662.472560] usb 1-4: device descriptor read/64, error -110 [19662.702566] usb 1-4: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 4 [19677.822587] usb 1-4: device descriptor read/64, error -110 [19693.052575] usb 1-4: device descriptor read/64, error -110 [19693.282582] usb 1-4: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 5 [19698.312600] usb 1-4: device descriptor read/8, error -110 [19703.442594] usb 1-4: device descriptor read/8, error -110 [19703.672548] usb 1-4: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 6 [19708.702581] usb 1-4: device descriptor read/8, error -110 [19713.840077] usb 1-4: device descriptor read/8, error -110 [19713.942555] hub 1-0:1.0: unable to enumerate USB device on port 4 [19714.262545] usb 4-2: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 2 [19729.382549] usb 4-2: device descriptor read/64, error -110 [19744.612534] usb 4-2: device descriptor read/64, error -110 [19744.842543] usb 4-2: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 3 [19759.962714] usb 4-2: device descriptor read/64, error -110 [19775.200047] usb 4-2: device descriptor read/64, error -110 [19775.422630] usb 4-2: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 4 [19780.444498] usb 4-2: device descriptor read/8, error -110 [19785.574491] usb 4-2: device descriptor read/8, error -110 [19785.802547] usb 4-2: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 5 [19790.824490] usb 4-2: device descriptor read/8, error -110 [19795.961473] usb 4-2: device descriptor read/8, error -110 [19796.062556] hub 4-0:1.0: unable to enumerate USB device on port 2

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SQLAuthority News – Amazon Gift Card Raffle for Beta Tester Feedback for NuoDB

- by pinaldave

As regular readers know I’ve been spending some time working with the NuoDB beta software. They contacted me last week and asked if I would give you a chance to try their new web-based console for their scalable, SQL-compliant database. They have just put out their final beta release, Beta 9. It contains a preview of a new web-based “NuoConsole” that will replace and extend the functionality of their current desktop version. I haven’t spent any time with the new console yet but a really quick look tells me it should make it easier to do deeper monitoring than the older one. It also looks like they have added query-level reporting through the console. I will try to play with it soon. NuoDB is doing a last, big push to get some more feedback from developers before they release their 1.0 product sometime in the next several weeks. Since the console is new, they are especially interested in some quick feedback on it before general availability. For SQLAuthority readers only, NuoDB will raffle off three $50 Amazon gift cards in exchange for your feedback on the NuoConsole preview. Here’s how to Enter Download NuoDBeta 9 here You must build a domain before you can start the console. Launch the Web Console. Windows Code: start java -jar jarnuodbwebconsole.jar Mac, Linux, Solaris, Unix Code: java -jar jar/nuodbwebconsole.jar Access the Web Console: Code: http://localhost:8080 When you have tried it out, go to a short (8 question) survey to enter the raffle Click here for the survey You must complete the survey before midnight EDT on October 17, 2012. Here’s what else they are saying about this last beta before general availability: Beta 9 now supports the Zend PHP framework so that PHP developers can directly integrate web applications with NuoDB. Multi-threaded HDFS support – NuoDB Storage Managers can now be configured to persist data to the high performance Hadoop distributed file system (HDFS). Beta 9 optimizes for multi-thread I/O streams at maximum performance. This enhancement allows users to make Hadoop their core storage with no extra effort which is a pretty cool idea. Improved Performance –On a single transaction node, Beta 9 offers performance comparable with MySQL and MariaDB. As additional nodes are added, NuoDB performance improves significantly at near linear scale. Query & Explain Plan Logging – Beta 9 introduces SQL explain plans for your queries. Qualify queries with the word “EXPLAIN” and NuoDB will respond with the details of the execution plan allowing performance optimization to SQL. Through the NuoConsole, you can now kill hung or long running queries. Java App Server Support – Beta 9 now supports leading Web JEE app servers including JBoss, Tomcat, and ColdFusion. They’ve also reported: Improved PHP/PDO drivers Support for Drupal Faster Ruby on Rails driver The Hibernate Dialect supports version 4.1 And good news for my readers: numerous SQL enhancements They will share the results of the web console feedback with me. I’ll let you know how it goes. Also the winner of their last contest was Jaime Martínez Lafargue! Do leave a comment here once you complete the survey. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: SQL Authority Tagged: NuoDB

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FTP Upload ftpWebRequest Proxy

- by Rodney Vinyard

Searchable: FTP Upload ftpWebRequest Proxy FTP command is not supported when using HTTP proxy In the article below I will cover 2 topics 1. C# & Windows Command-Line FTP Upload with No Proxy Server 2. C# & Windows Command-Line FTP Upload with Proxy Server Not covered here: Secure FTP / SFTP Sample Attributes: · UploadFilePath = “\\servername\folder\file.name” · Proxy Server = “ftp://proxy.server/” · FTP Target Server = ftp.target.com · FTP User = “User” · FTP Password = “Password” with No Proxy Server · Windows Command-Line > ftp ftp.target.com > ftp User: User > ftp Password: Password > ftp put \\servername\folder\file.name > ftp dir (result: file.name listed) > ftp del file.name > ftp dir (result: file.name deleted) > ftp quit · C# //----------------- //Start FTP via _TargetFtpProxy //----------------- string relPath = Path.GetFileName(\\servername\folder\file.name); //result: relPath = “file.name” FtpWebRequest ftpWebRequest = (FtpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create("ftp.target.com/file.name); ftpWebRequest.Method = WebRequestMethods.Ftp.UploadFile; //----------------- //user - password //----------------- ftpWebRequest.Credentials = new NetworkCredential("user, "password"); //----------------- // set proxy = null! //----------------- ftpWebRequest.Proxy = null; //----------------- // Copy the contents of the file to the request stream. //----------------- StreamReader sourceStream = new StreamReader(“\\servername\folder\file.name”); byte[] fileContents = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(sourceStream.ReadToEnd()); sourceStream.Close(); ftpWebRequest.ContentLength = fileContents.Length; //----------------- // transer the stream stream. //----------------- Stream requestStream = ftpWebRequest.GetRequestStream(); requestStream.Write(fileContents, 0, fileContents.Length); requestStream.Close(); //----------------- // Look at the response results //----------------- FtpWebResponse response = (FtpWebResponse)ftpWebRequest.GetResponse(); Console.WriteLine("Upload File Complete, status {0}", response.StatusDescription); with Proxy Server · Windows Command-Line > ftp proxy.server > ftp User: [email protected] > ftp Password: Password > ftp put \\servername\folder\file.name > ftp dir (result: file.name listed) > ftp del file.name > ftp dir (result: file.name deleted) > ftp quit · C# //----------------- //Start FTP via _TargetFtpProxy //----------------- string relPath = Path.GetFileName(\\servername\folder\file.name); //result: relPath = “file.name” FtpWebRequest ftpWebRequest = (FtpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create("ftp://proxy.server/" + relPath); ftpWebRequest.Method = WebRequestMethods.Ftp.UploadFile; //----------------- //user - password //----------------- ftpWebRequest.Credentials = new NetworkCredential("[email protected], "password"); //----------------- // set proxy = null! //----------------- ftpWebRequest.Proxy = null; //----------------- // Copy the contents of the file to the request stream. //----------------- StreamReader sourceStream = new StreamReader(“\\servername\folder\file.name”); byte[] fileContents = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(sourceStream.ReadToEnd()); sourceStream.Close(); ftpWebRequest.ContentLength = fileContents.Length; //----------------- // transer the stream stream. //----------------- Stream requestStream = ftpWebRequest.GetRequestStream(); requestStream.Write(fileContents, 0, fileContents.Length); requestStream.Close(); //----------------- // Look at the response results //----------------- FtpWebResponse response = (FtpWebResponse)ftpWebRequest.GetResponse(); Console.WriteLine("Upload File Complete, status {0}", response.StatusDescription);

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Next Generation Mobile Clients for Oracle Applications & the role of Oracle Fusion Middleware

- by Manish Palaparthy

Oracle Enterprise Applications have been available with modern web browser based interfaces for a while now. The web browsers available in smart phones no longer require special markup language such as WML since the processing power of these handsets is quite near to that of a typical personal computer. Modern Mobile devices such as the IPhone, Android Phones, BlackBerry, Windows 8 devices can now render XHTML & HTML quite well. This means you could potentially use your mobile browser to access your favorite enterprise application. While the Mobile browser would render the UI, you might find it difficult to use it due to the formatting & Presentation of the Native UI. Smart phones offer a lot more than just a powerful web browser, they offer capabilities such as Maps, GPS, Multi touch, pinch zoom, accelerometers, vivid colors, camera with video, support for 3G, 4G networks, cloud storage, NFC, streaming media, tethering, voice based features, multi tasking, messaging, social networking web browsers with support for HTML 5 and many more features. While the full potential of Enterprise Mobile Apps is yet to be realized, Oracle has published a few of its applications that take advantage of the above capabilities and are available for the IPhone natively. Here are some of them Iphone Apps Oracle Business Approvals for Managers: Offers a highly intuitive user interface built as a native mobile application to conveniently access pending actions related to expenses, purchase requisitions, HR vacancies and job offers. You can even view BI reports related to the worklist actions. Works with Oracle E-Business Suite Oracle Business Indicators : Real-time secure access to OBI reports. Oracle Business Approvals for Sales Managers: Enables sales executives to review key targeted tasks, access relevant business intelligence reports. Works with Siebel CRM, Siebel Quote & Order Capture. Oracle Mobile Sales Assistant: CRM application that provides real-time, secure access to the information your sales organization needs, complete frequent tasks, collaborate with colleagues and customers. Works with Oracle CRMOracle Mobile Sales Forecast: Designed specifically for the mobile business user to view key opportunities. Works with Oracle CRM on demand Oracle iReceipts : Part of Oracle PeopleSoft Expenses, which allows users to create and submit expense lines for cash transactions in real-time. Works with Oracle PeopleSoft expenses Now, we have seen some mobile Apps that Oracle has published, I am sure you are intrigued as to how develop your own clients for the use-cases that you deem most fit. For that Oracle has ADF Mobile ADF Mobile You could develop Mobile Applications with the SDK available with the smart phone platforms!, but you'd really have to be a mobile ninja developer to develop apps with the rich user experience like the ones above. The challenges really multiply when you have to support multiple mobile devices. ADF Mobile framework is really handy to meet this challenge ADF Mobile can in be used to Develop Apps for the Mobile browser : An application built with ADF Mobile framework installs on a smart device, renders user interface via HTML5, and has access to device services. This means the programming model is primarily web-based, which offers consistency with other enterprise applications as well as easier migration to new platforms. Develop Apps for the Mobile Client (Native Apps): These applications have access to device services, enabling a richer experience for users than a browser alone can offer. ADF mobile enables rapid and declarative development of rich, on-device mobile applications. Developers only need to write an application once and then they can deploy the same application across multiple leading smart phone platforms. Oracle SOA Suite Although the Mobile users are using the smart phone apps, and actual transactions are being executed in the underlying app, there is lot of technical wizardry that is going under the surface. All of this key technical components to make 1. WebService calls 2. Authentication 3. Intercepting Webservice calls and adding security credentials to the request 4. Invoking the services of the enterprise application 5. Integrating with the Enterprise Application via the Adapter is all being implemented at the SOA infrastructure layer. As you can see from the above diagram. The key pre-requisites to mobile enable an Enterprise application are The core enterprise application Oracle SOA Suite ADF Mobile

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Customizing UPK outputs (Part 1)

- by [email protected]

If you are familiar with Oracle's User Productivity Kit, you are aware that UPK is a great product for rapidly developing application training. Did you know that you can also customize the UPK outputs to incorporate your company's logo, colors, and preferred styles? There are several areas that support customization: Logo - Within the developer, you can change the logo for all outputs at one time. Player - The player output uses a style sheet that can be updated to change colors, graphics and other visual branding. Documentation - The print documentation uses a Word-based template that can be modified to match your corporate standards. I'll discuss the first one today, and we'll cover the others in subsequent blogs. Before you begin: If you are working in a multi-user environment, ensure that you have "Modify" permissions for the Styles directory under the Publishing folder. Make a copy of the current styles. This recommendation is for backup purposes. If something goes wrong, you will have a way to recover. Consider creating your own category by creating a new folder under the Styles directory, and then copying the styles into your new folder. When you upgrade to future versions, the system will overwrite the standard styles with any new feature additions and updates that have been made. With your own category, all of your customizations will remain intact. To update the logos in all outputs: From the Tools Menu, choose Customize Logo. Select the category if necessary. Browse to select your logo. You can use any size logo, in any graphic format (*.bmp, *.gif, *.jpeg, *.jpg, *.png, or *.tif). The system will make a copy of your logo and add it to each of the publishing styles. Choose OK, and the update process begins. It may take a few minutes. Helpful hints: The logo you select is used "as is" - no resizing or cropping occurs during this process. The Customize Logo process automates replacing all the logo graphics for online deployment (small_logo.gif and large_logo.gif) and the headers in the documentation outputs. You can manually replace these graphics on an individual style basis if you prefer. The recommended logo size is 230 pixels wide x 44 pixels high. Prior to updating the logos, the system will display the size of the selected logo. If you use a logo that is much larger than the recommended size, the heading area will resize to fit the new logo, but that will impact the space available for your training material. If you are using a multi-user environment, the system will check out the publishing styles to you for the logo updates. After you review the styles, remember to check them in so the rest of your team can access the new changes. I'd be interested in hearing (or seeing) how you brand your UPK. Feel free to share in the comments! --Maria Cozzolino, Manager of Requirements & UI for UPK Product Development PS. For those of you who want to customize the player and documentation NOW, check out the detailed instructions in the Publishing Content chapter of the Content Development Guide.

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The Evolution of Television and Home Entertainment

- by Bill Evjen

This is a group that is focused on entertainment in the aviation industry. I am attending their conference for the first time as it relates to my job at Swank Motion Pictures and what we do for our various markets. I will post my notes here. The Evolution of Television and Home Entertainment by Patrick Cosson, Veebeam TV has been the center of living rooms for sometime. Conversations and culture evolve around the TV. The way we consume this content has dramatically been changing. After TV, we had the MTV revolution of TV. It has created shorter attention spans, it made us more materialistic, narcissistic, and not easily impressed. Then we came to the Internet. The amount of content has expanded. It contains a ton of user-generated content, provides filtering, organization, distribution. We now have a problem. We are in the age of digital excess. We can access whatever we want. In conjunction with this – we are moving. The challenge we have now is curation. The trends we see: rapid shift from scheduled to on demand consumption. A move to Internet protocols from cable Rapid fragmentation of media a transition from the TV set to a variety of screens Social connections bring mediators and amplifiers. TiVo – the shift to on demand It is because of a time-crunch Provides personal experiences Once old consumption habits are changed, there is no way back! Experiences are that people are loading up content and then bringing it with them on planes, to hotels, etc. Rapid fragmentation of media sources Many new professional content sources and channels, the rise of digital distribution, and the rise of user-generated content contribute to the wealth of content sources and abundant choice. Netflix, BBC iPlayer, hulu, Pandora, iTunes, Amazon Video, Vudu, Voddler, Spotify (these companies didn’t exist 5 years ago). People now expect this kind of consumption. People are now thinking how to deliver all these tools. Transition from the TV set to multi-screens The TV screen has traditionally been the dominant consumption screen for TV and video. Now the PC, game consoles, and various mobile devices are rapidly becoming common video devices. Multi-screens are now the norm. Social connections becoming key mediators What increasingly funnels traffic on the web, social networking enablers, will become an integral part of the discovery, consumption and sharing model for Television. The revolution will be broadcasted on Facebook and Twitter. There is business disruption There are a lot of new entrants Rapid internationalization Increasing competition from existing media players A fragmenting audience base Web browser Freedom to access any site The fight over the walled garden Most devices are not powerful enough to support a full browser PC will always be present in the living room Wireless link between PC and TV Output 1080p, plays anything, secure Key players and their challenges Services Internet media is increasingly interconnected to social media and publicly shared UGC Content delivery moving to IPTV Rights management issues are creating silos and hindering a great user experience and growth Devices Devices are becoming people’s windows into all kinds of media from all kinds of sources There won’t be a consolidation of the device landscape, rather the opposite Finding the right niche makes the most sense. We are moving to an on demand world of streaming world. People want full access to anything.

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Encode two integers into colour values and compare them in a HLSL shader

- by Ben Slinger

I am writing a 2D point and click adventure game in Monogame, and I'd like to be able to create an image mask for every room which defines which parts of the background a character can walk behind, and at which Y value a character needs to be at for the background to be drawn above the character. I haven't done any shader work before but after doing some reading I thought the following solution should work: Create a mask for the room with different walk behind areas painted in a colour that defines the baseline Y value (Walk Behind Mask) Render all objects to a RenderTarget2D (Base Texture) Render all objects to a different RenderTarget2D, but changing every pixel of each object to a colour that defines its Y value (Position Mask) Pass these two textures plus the image mask into the shader, and for each pixel compare the colour of the image mask to the colour of the Position Mask to the Walk Behind Mask - if the Position Mask pixel is larger (thus lower on the screen and closer to the camera) than the Walk Behind Mask, draw the pixel from the Base Texture, otherwise draw a transparent pixel (allowing the background to show through). I've got it mostly working, but I'm having trouble packing and unpacking the Y values into colours and retrieving them correctly in the shader. Here are some code examples of how I'm doing it so far: (When drawing to the Position Mask RenderTarget2D) Color posColor = new Color(((int)Position.Y >> 16) & 255, ((int)Position.Y >> 8) & 255, (int)Position.Y & 255); So as far as I can tell, this should be taking the first 3 bytes of the position integer and encoding them into a 4 byte colour (ignoring the alpha as the 4th byte). This seems to work fine, as when my character is at Y = 600, the resulting Color from this is: {[Color: R=0, G=2, B=88, A=255, PackedValue=4283957760]}. I then have an area in my Walk Behind Mask that I only want the character to be displayed behind if his Y value is lower than 655, so I've painted it with R=0, G=2, B=143, A=255. Now, I think I have the shader OK as well, here's what I have: sampler BaseTexture : register(s0); sampler MaskTexture : register(s1); sampler PositionTexture : register(s2); float4 mask( float2 coords : TEXCOORD0 ) : COLOR0 { float4 color = tex2D(BaseTexture, coords); float4 maskColor = tex2D(MaskTexture, coords); float4 positionColor = tex2D(PositionTexture, coords); float maskCompare = (maskColor.r * pow(2,24)) + (maskColor.g * pow(2,16)) + (maskColor.b * pow(2,8)); float positionCompare = (positionColor.r * pow(2,24)) + (positionColor.g * pow(2,16)) + (positionColor.b * pow(2,8)); return positionCompare < maskCompare ? float4(0,0,0,0) : color; } technique Technique1 { pass NoEffect { PixelShader = compile ps_3_0 mask(); } } This isn't working, however - currently all characters are displayed behind the walk behind area, regardless of their Y value. I tried printing out some debug info by grabbing the pixel from both the Position Mask and the Walk Under Mask under the current mouse position, and it seems like maybe the colours aren't being rendered to the Position Mask correctly? When calculating the colour in that code above I'm getting R=0, G=2, B=88, A=255, but when I mouseover my character I get R=0, G=0, B=30, A=255. Any ideas what I'm doing wrong? It seems like maybe I'm losing some information when rendering to the RenderTarget2D, but I'm now knowledgeable enough to figure out what's happening. Also, I should probably ask, is this an efficient way to do this? Will there be a performance impact? Edit: Whoops, turns out there was a bug that I'd introduced myself, I was drawing out the Position Mask with the position Color, left over from some early testing I was doing. So this solution is working perfectly, though I'm still interested in whether this is an efficient solution performance wise.

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Automated SSRS deployment with the RS utility

- by Stacy Vicknair

If you’re familiar with SSRS and development you are probably aware of the SSRS web services. The RS utility is a tool that comes with SSRS that allows for scripts to be executed against against the SSRS web service without needing to create an application to consume the service. One of the better benefits of using this format rather than writing an application is that the script can be modified by others who might be involved in the creation and addition of scripts or management of the SSRS environment. Reporting Services Scripter Jasper Smith from http://www.sqldbatips.com created Reporting Services Scripter to assist with the created of a batch process to deploy an entire SSRS environment. The helper scripts below were created through the modification of his generated scripts. Why not just use this tool? You certainly can. For me, the volume of scripts generated seems less maintainable than just using some common methods extracted from these scripts and creating a deployment in a single script file. I would, however, recommend this as a product if you do not think that your environment will change drastically or if you do not need to deploy with a higher level of control over the deployment. If you just need to replicate, this tool works great. Executing with RS.exe Executing a script against rs.exe is fairly simple. The Script Half the battle is having a starting point. For the scripting I needed to do the below is the starter script. A few notes: This script assumes integrated security. This script assumes your reports have one data source each. Both of the above are just what made sense for my scenario and are definitely modifiable to accommodate your needs. If you are unsure how to change the scripts to your needs, I recommend Reporting Services Scripter to help you understand how the differences. The script has three main methods: CreateFolder, CreateDataSource and CreateReport. Scripting the server deployment is just a process of recreating all of the elements that you need through calls to these methods. If there are additional elements that you need to deploy that aren’t covered by these methods, again I suggest using Reporting Services Scripter to get the code you would need, convert it to a repeatable method and add it to this script! Public Sub Main() CreateFolder("/", "Data Sources") CreateFolder("/", "My Reports") CreateDataSource("/Data Sources", "myDataSource", _ "Data Source=server\instance;Initial Catalog=myDatabase") CreateReport("/My Reports", _ "MyReport", _ "C:\myreport.rdl", _ True, _ "/Data Sources", _ "myDataSource") End Sub Public Sub CreateFolder(parent As String, name As String) Dim fullpath As String = GetFullPath(parent, name) Try RS.CreateFolder(name, parent, GetCommonProperties()) Console.WriteLine("Folder created: {0}", name) Catch e As SoapException If e.Detail.Item("ErrorCode").InnerText = "rsItemAlreadyExists" Then Console.WriteLine("Folder {0} already exists and cannot be overwritten", fullpath) Else Console.WriteLine("Error : " + e.Detail.Item("ErrorCode").InnerText + " (" + e.Detail.Item("Message").InnerText + ")") End If End Try End Sub Public Sub CreateDataSource(parent As String, name As String, connectionString As String) Try RS.CreateDataSource(name, parent,False, GetDataSourceDefinition(connectionString), GetCommonProperties()) Console.WriteLine("DataSource {0} created successfully", name) Catch e As SoapException Console.WriteLine("Error : " + e.Detail.Item("ErrorCode").InnerText + " (" + e.Detail.Item("Message").InnerText + ")") End Try End Sub Public Sub CreateReport(parent As String, name As String, location As String, overwrite As Boolean, dataSourcePath As String, dataSourceName As String) Dim reportContents As Byte() = Nothing Dim warnings As Warning() = Nothing Dim fullpath As String = GetFullPath(parent, name) 'Read RDL definition from disk Try Dim stream As FileStream = File.OpenRead(location) reportContents = New [Byte](stream.Length-1) {} stream.Read(reportContents, 0, CInt(stream.Length)) stream.Close() warnings = RS.CreateReport(name, parent, overwrite, reportContents, GetCommonProperties()) If Not (warnings Is Nothing) Then Dim warning As Warning For Each warning In warnings Console.WriteLine(Warning.Message) Next warning Else Console.WriteLine("Report: {0} published successfully with no warnings", name) End If 'Set report DataSource references Dim dataSources(0) As DataSource Dim dsr0 As New DataSourceReference dsr0.Reference = dataSourcePath Dim ds0 As New DataSource ds0.Item = CType(dsr0, DataSourceDefinitionOrReference) ds0.Name=dataSourceName dataSources(0) = ds0 RS.SetItemDataSources(fullpath, dataSources) Console.Writeline("Report DataSources set successfully") Catch e As IOException Console.WriteLine(e.Message) Catch e As SoapException Console.WriteLine("Error : " + e.Detail.Item("ErrorCode").InnerText + " (" + e.Detail.Item("Message").InnerText + ")") End Try End Sub Public Function GetCommonProperties() As [Property]() 'Common CatalogItem properties Dim descprop As New [Property] descprop.Name = "Description" descprop.Value = "" Dim hiddenprop As New [Property] hiddenprop.Name = "Hidden" hiddenprop.Value = "False" Dim props(1) As [Property] props(0) = descprop props(1) = hiddenprop Return props End Function Public Function GetDataSourceDefinition(connectionString as String) Dim definition As New DataSourceDefinition definition.CredentialRetrieval = CredentialRetrievalEnum.Integrated definition.ConnectString = connectionString definition.Enabled = True definition.EnabledSpecified = True definition.Extension = "SQL" definition.ImpersonateUser = False definition.ImpersonateUserSpecified = True definition.Prompt = "Enter a user name and password to access the data source:" definition.WindowsCredentials = False definition.OriginalConnectStringExpressionBased = False definition.UseOriginalConnectString = False Return definition End Function Private Function GetFullPath(parent As String, name As String) As String If parent = "/" Then Return parent + name Else Return parent + "/" + name End If End Function

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SQL Azure: Notes on Building a Shard Technology

- by Herve Roggero

In Chapter 10 of the book on SQL Azure (http://www.apress.com/book/view/9781430229612) I am co-authoring, I am digging deeper in what it takes to write a Shard. It's actually a pretty cool exercise, and I wanted to share some thoughts on how I am designing the technology. A Shard is a technology that spreads the load of database requests over multiple databases, as transparently as possible. The type of shard I am building is called a Vertical Partition Shard (VPS). A VPS is a mechanism by which the data is stored in one or more databases behind the scenes, but your code has no idea at design time which data is in which database. It's like having a mini cloud for records instead of services. Imagine you have three SQL Azure databases that have the same schema (DB1, DB2 and DB3), you would like to issue a SELECT * FROM Users on all three databases, concatenate the results into a single resultset, and order by last name. Imagine you want to ensure your code doesn't need to change if you add a new database to the shard (DB4). Now imagine that you want to make sure all three databases are queried at the same time, in a multi-threaded manner so your code doesn't have to wait for three database calls sequentially. Then, imagine you would like to obtain a breadcrumb (in the form of a new, virtual column) that gives you a hint as to which database a record came from, so that you could update it if needed. Now imagine all that is done through the standard SqlClient library... and you have the Shard I am currently building. Here are some lessons learned and techniques I am using with this shard: Parellel Processing: Querying databases in parallel is not too hard using the Task Parallel Library; all you need is to lock your resources when needed Deleting/Updating Data: That's not too bad either as long as you have a breadcrumb. However it becomes more difficult if you need to update a single record and you don't know in which database it is. Inserting Data: I am using a round-robin approach in which each new insert request is directed to the next database in the shard. Not sure how to deal with Bulk Loads just yet... Shard Databases: I use a static collection of SqlConnection objects which needs to be loaded once; from there on all the Shard commands use this collection Extension Methods: In order to make it look like the Shard commands are part of the SqlClient class I use extension methods. For example I added ExecuteShardQuery and ExecuteShardNonQuery methods to SqlClient. Exceptions: Capturing exceptions in a multi-threaded code is interesting... but I kept it simple for now. I am using the ConcurrentQueue to store my exceptions. Database GUID: Every database in the shard is given a GUID, which is calculated based on the connection string's values. DataTable. The Shard methods return a DataTable object which can be bound to objects. I will be sharing the code soon as an open-source project in CodePlex. Please stay tuned on twitter to know when it will be available (@hroggero). Or check www.bluesyntax.net for updates on the shard. Thanks!

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RPi and Java Embedded GPIO: Sensor Reading using Java Code

- by hinkmond

And, now to program the Java code for reading the fancy-schmancy static electricity sensor connected to your Raspberry Pi, here is the source code we'll use: First, we need to initialize ourselves... /* * Java Embedded Raspberry Pi GPIO Input app */ package jerpigpioinput; import java.io.FileWriter; import java.io.RandomAccessFile; import java.text.DateFormat; import java.text.SimpleDateFormat; import java.util.Calendar; /** * * @author hinkmond */ public class JerpiGPIOInput { static final String GPIO_IN = "in"; // Add which GPIO ports to read here static String[] GpioChannels = { "7" }; /** * @param args the command line arguments */ public static void main(String[] args) { try { /*** Init GPIO port(s) for input ***/ // Open file handles to GPIO port unexport and export controls FileWriter unexportFile = new FileWriter("/sys/class/gpio/unexport"); FileWriter exportFile = new FileWriter("/sys/class/gpio/export"); for (String gpioChannel : GpioChannels) { System.out.println(gpioChannel); // Reset the port unexportFile.write(gpioChannel); unexportFile.flush(); // Set the port for use exportFile.write(gpioChannel); exportFile.flush(); // Open file handle to input/output direction control of port FileWriter directionFile = new FileWriter("/sys/class/gpio/gpio" + gpioChannel + "/direction"); // Set port for input directionFile.write(GPIO_IN); directionFile.flush(); } And, next we will open up a RandomAccessFile pointer to the GPIO port. /*** Read data from each GPIO port ***/ RandomAccessFile[] raf = new RandomAccessFile[GpioChannels.length]; int sleepPeriod = 10; final int MAXBUF = 256; byte[] inBytes = new byte[MAXBUF]; String inLine; int zeroCounter = 0; // Get current timestamp with Calendar() Calendar cal; DateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy/MM/dd HH:mm:ss.SSS"); String dateStr; // Open RandomAccessFile handle to each GPIO port for (int channum=0; channum Then, loop forever to read in the values to the console. // Loop forever while (true) { // Get current timestamp for latest event cal = Calendar.getInstance(); dateStr = dateFormat.format(cal.getTime()); // Use RandomAccessFile handle to read in GPIO port value for (int channum=0; channum Rinse, lather, and repeat... Compile this Java code on your host PC or Mac with javac from the JDK. Copy over the JAR or class file to your Raspberry Pi, "sudo -i" to become root, then start up this Java app in a shell on your RPi. That's it! You should see a "1" value get logged each time you bring a statically charged item (like a balloon you rub on the cat) near the antenna of the sensor. There you go. You've just seen how Java Embedded technology on the Raspberry Pi is an easy way to access sensors. Hinkmond

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links for 2010-12-23

- by Bob Rhubart

Oracle VM Virtualbox 4.0 extension packs (Wim Coekaerts Blog) Wim Coekaerts describes the the new extension pack in Oracle VM Virtualbox 4.0 and how it's different from 3.2 and earlier releases. (tags: oracle otn virtualization virtualbox) Oracle Fusion Middleware Security: Creating OES SM instances on 64 bit systems "I've already opened a bug on this against OES 10gR3 CP5, but in case anyone else runs into it before it gets fixed I wanted to blog it too. (NOTE: CP5 is when official support was introduced for running OES on a 64 bit system with a 64 bit JVM)" - Chris Johnson (tags: oracle otn fusionmiddleware security) Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control: Shared loader directory, RAC and WebLogic Clustering "RAC is optional. Even the load balancer is optional. The feed from the agents also goes to the load balancer on a different port and it is routed to the available management server. In normal case, this is ok." - Porus Homi Havewala (tags: WebLogic oracle otn grid clustering) Magic Web Doctor: Thought Process on Upgrading WebLogic Server to 11g "Upgrading to new versions can be challenging task, but it's done for linear scalability, continuous enhanced availability, efficient manageability and automatic/dynamic infrastructure provisioning at a low cost." - Chintan Patel (tags: oracle otn weblogic upgrading) InfoQ: Using a Service Bus to Connect the Supply Chain Peter Paul van de Beek presents a case study of using a service bus in a supply channel connecting a wholesale supplier with hundreds of retailers, the overall context and challenges faced – including the integration of POS software coming from different software providers-, the solution chosen and its implementation, how it worked out and the lessons learned along the way. (tags: ping.fm) Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.0 is released! - The Fat Bloke Sings The Fat Bloke spreads the news and shares some screenshots. (tags: oracle otn virtualization virtualbox) Leaks on Wikis: "Corporations...You're Next!" Oracle Desktop Virtualization Can Help. (Oracle's Virtualization Blog) "So what can you do to guard against these types of breaches where there is no outsider (or even insider) intrusion to detect per se, but rather someone with malicious intent is physically walking out the door with data that they are otherwise allowed to access in their daily work?" - Adam Hawley (tags: oracle otn virtualization security) OTN ArchBeat Podcast Guest Roster As the OTN ArchBeat Podcast enters its third year, it's time to acknowledge the invaluable contributions of the guests who have participated in ArchBeat programs. Check out this who's who of ArchBeat podcast panelists, with links to their respective interviews and more. (tags: oracle otn oracleace podcast archbeat) Show Notes: Architects in the Cloud (ArchBeat) Now available! Part 2 (of 4) of the ArchBeat interview with Stephen G. Bennett and Archie Reed, the authors of "Silver Clouds, Dark Linings: A Concise Guide to Cloud Computing." (tags: oracle otn podcast cloud) A Cautionary Tale About Multi-Source JNDI Configuration (Scott Nelson's Portal Productivity Ponderings) "I ran into this issue after reading that p13nDataSource and cgDataSource-NonXA should not be configured as multi-source. There were some issues changing them to use the basic JDBC connection string and when rolling back to the bad configuration the server went 'Boom.'" - Scott Nelson (tags: weblogic jdbc oracle jndi)

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Hyper-V Live Migration across Sites!

- by Ryan Roussel

One of the great sessions I sat in on at Tech Ed this week was stretching a Windows 2008 R2 Hyper-V Failover Cluster across sites. With this ability, you could actually implement a Hyper-V cluster where you could migrate or even Live Migrate VMs across sites. With this area’s propensity for Hurricanes, this will be a very popular topic for me over the next few months. While this technology is possible today, it’s also very complicated and can be very expensive to implement. First your WAN connection has to support the ability to trunk your VLAN across both sites in order to Live Migrate. This means you can’t use a Layer 3 routed connection like MPLS. It has to be a Metro Ethernet connection or "Dark Fiber”. Dark Fiber is unused Fiber already in the ground that can be leased from various providers. Both of these connections would allow you to trunk layer 2 across your WAN. Cisco does have the ability to trunk layer 2 across a routed connection by muxing the traffic but this is only available in their Nexus product line which has a very steep price tag. If you are stuck with MPLS or the like and Nexus switching is not a realistic possibility, you will have to implement a multi-subnet cluster in which case Live Migration won’t be possible. However you can still failover VMs to the remote site with some planning and manual intervention. The consideration here is that the VMs will be on a different subnet once migrated, so you will have to change the IP addressing of your VMs. This also has ramifications with DNS and Name resolution to control your down time. DHCP with Reservations for your VMs is the preferred method to achieve the IP changes as this will automate that part of the process. Secondly, you will have to have a mechanism to replicate your storage across both sites. Many SAN vendors natively support hardware based synchronous and asynchronous replication. Some even support cluster shared volumes which were introduced in 2008 R2. If your SANs do not support this natively, there are alternative file based replication products either software based like Double Take or hardware appliance like EMC. Be sure to check with your vendor on the support of Disk majority if you’re replicating your quorum disk between SANs. The last consideration is the ability to maintain quorum for your cluster. If your replication provider does not support Disk Majority through replication, you will have to explore Node Majority with File Share Witness. This will affect your design as a 3 node cluster with 1 node at the remote site and FSW at the production site would not have the ability to maintain quorum if the production site was lost. MS best practice for this would be to implement an even node cluster with 2 nodes at each site and the FSW at a third site. And there you have it. While some considerations and research goes into implementing this solution, even a multi-subnet solution would be invaluable to organizations in the implementations of “warm” DR sites.

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WebCenter Customer Spotlight: Textron Inc.

- by me

Author: Peter Reiser - Social Business Evangelist, Oracle WebCenter Solution SummaryTextron Inc. is one of the world's best known multi-industry companies and is a pioneer of the diversified business model. Founded in 1923, it has grown into a network of businesses—including Bell Helicopter, E-Z-GO, Cessna, and Jacobsen—with facilities and a presence in 25 countries, serving a diverse and global customer base. Textron is ranked 236th on the Fortune 500 list of the largest US companies. Textron needed a Web experience management solution to centralize control, minimize costs, and enable more efficient operations. Specifically, the company wanted to take IT out of the picture as much as possible, enabling sales and marketing leads for subsidiaries to make Website updates as they deem appropriate for their business. Textron worked with Oracle partner Element Solutions to consolidate its Website management systems onto Oracle WebCenter Sites. The implementation enables Textron’s subsidiaries to adjust more quickly to customer demands, reduced Website management cost & time to update content on a Website while allowing to integrate its Website updates more closely with social media and mobile platforms. Company OverviewTextron Inc. is one of the world's best known multi-industry companies and is a pioneer of the diversified business model. Founded in 1923, it has grown into a network of businesses—including Bell Helicopter, E-Z-GO, Cessna, and Jacobsen—with facilities and a presence in 25 countries, serving a diverse and global customer base. Textron is ranked 236th on the Fortune 500 list of the largest US companies. Business ChallengesWith numerous subsidiaries and more than 50 public Websites, Textron needed a Web experience management solution to centralize control, minimize costs, and enable more efficient operations. Specifically, the company wanted to take IT out of the picture as much as possible, enabling sales and marketing leads for subsidiaries to make Website updates as they deem appropriate for their business. Solution DeployedTextron worked with Oracle partner Element Solutions to consolidate its Website management systems onto Oracle WebCenter Sites. Specifically, Textron: Used Oracle WebCenter Sites to integrate Web experience management capabilities for all Textron brands, including Bell Helicopter, E-Z-GO, Cessna, and Jacobsen Developed Website templates to enable marketing and communications professionals to easily make updates to their Websites, without having to work with IT Reduced Website management costs, as it costs more for IT to coordinate Website updates as opposed to marketing and communications Enabled IT to concentrate on other activities to enhance overall operations for Textron, such as project workflows Acquired a platform that enables marketing teams to integrate their Websites with social media and mobile platforms, allowing subsidiaries to make updates and contact customers anytime and everywhere—including through tablets and smartphones Reduced the time it takes to update content on a Website, including press releases, by enabling communications professionals to make updates directly Developed more appealing visual designs for Websites to help enhance customer purchase Business ResultsThe implementation enabled Textron’s subsidiaries to adjust more quickly to customer demands and Textron’s IT staff to concentrate on other processes, such as writing code and developing new workflows, enabling them to enhance company processes. In addition, Textron can use Oracle WebCenter Sites to integrate its Website updates more closely with social media and mobile platforms, enabling marketing and communications teams to make updates anytime and everywhere. The initiative has enabled Textron to save money by freeing IT up to work on more important tasks, instituting new e-commerce and mobile initiatives to better engage customers, and by ensuring efficient Website management processes to quickly adjust to customer demands. “We considered a number of products, but chose Oracle WebCenter Sites because it provides the best user interface. We reviewed customer references and analyst reports, and Oracle WebCenter Sites was consistently at the top of the list,” Brad Hof, Manager, Advanced Business Solutions and Web Communications, Textron Inc. Additional Information Tectron Inc. Customer Snapshot Oracle WebCenter Sites

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To SYNC or not to SYNC – Part 4

- by AshishRay

This is Part 4 of a multi-part blog article where we are discussing various aspects of setting up Data Guard synchronous redo transport (SYNC). In Part 1 of this article, I debunked the myth that Data Guard SYNC is similar to a two-phase commit operation. In Part 2, I discussed the various ways that network latency may or may not impact a Data Guard SYNC configuration. In Part 3, I talked in details regarding why Data Guard SYNC is a good thing, and the distance implications you have to keep in mind. In this final article of the series, I will talk about how you can nicely complement Data Guard SYNC with the ability to failover in seconds. Wait - Did I Say “Seconds”? Did I just say that some customers do Data Guard failover in seconds? Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. Data Guard has an automatic failover capability, aptly called Fast-Start Failover. Initially available with Oracle Database 10g Release 2 for Data Guard SYNC transport mode (and enhanced in Oracle Database 11g to support Data Guard ASYNC transport mode), this capability, managed by Data Guard Broker, lets your Data Guard configuration automatically failover to a designated standby database. Yes, this means no human intervention is required to do the failover. This process is controlled by a low footprint Data Guard Broker client called Observer, which makes sure that the primary database and the designated standby database are behaving like good kids. If something bad were to happen to the primary database, the Observer, after a configurable threshold period, tells that standby, “Your time has come, you are the chosen one!” The standby dutifully follows the Observer directives by assuming the role of the new primary database. The DBA or the Sys Admin doesn’t need to be involved. And - in case you are following this discussion very closely, and are wondering … “Hmmm … what if the old primary is not really dead, but just network isolated from the Observer or the standby - won’t this lead to a split-brain situation?” The answer is No - It Doesn’t. With respect to why-it-doesn’t, I am sure there are some smart DBAs in the audience who can explain the technical reasons. Otherwise - that will be the material for a future blog post. So - this combination of SYNC and Fast-Start Failover is the nirvana of lights-out, integrated HA and DR, as practiced by some of our advanced customers. They have observed failover times (with no data loss) ranging from single-digit seconds to tens of seconds. With this, they support operations in industry verticals such as manufacturing, retail, telecom, Internet, etc. that have the most demanding availability requirements. One of our leading customers with massive cloud deployment initiatives tells us that they know about server failures only after Data Guard has automatically completed the failover process and the app is back up and running! Needless to mention, Data Guard Broker has the integration hooks for interfaces such as JDBC and OCI, or even for custom apps, to ensure the application gets automatically rerouted to the new primary database after the database level failover completes. Net Net? To sum up this multi-part blog article, Data Guard with SYNC redo transport mode, plus Fast-Start Failover, gives you the ideal triple-combo - that is, it gives you the assurance that for critical outages, you can failover your Oracle databases: very fast without human intervention, and without losing any data. In short, it takes the element of risk out of critical IT operations. It does require you to be more careful with your network and systems planning, but as far as HA is concerned, the benefits outweigh the investment costs. So, this is what we in the MAA Development Team believe in. What do you think? How has your deployment experience been? We look forward to hearing from you!

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Detect Unicode Usage in SQL Column

One optimization you can make to a SQL table that is overly large is to change from nvarchar (or nchar) to varchar (or char). Doing so will cut the size used by the data in half, from 2 bytes per character (+ 2 bytes of overhead for varchar) to only 1 byte per character. However, you will lose the ability to store Unicode characters, such as those used by many non-English alphabets. If the tables are storing user-input, and your application is or might one day be used internationally, its likely that using Unicode for your characters is a good thing. However, if instead the data is being generated by your application itself or your development team (such as lookup data), and you can be certain that Unicode character sets are not required, then switching such columns to varchar/char can be an easy improvement to make. Avoid Premature Optimization If you are working with a lookup table that has a small number of rows, and is only ever referenced in the application by its numeric ID column, then you wont see any benefit to using varchar vs. nvarchar. More generally, for small tables, you wont see any significant benefit. Thus, if you have a general policy in place to use nvarchar/nchar because it offers more flexibility, do not take this post as a recommendation to go against this policy anywhere you can. You really only want to act on measurable evidence that suggests that using Unicode is resulting in a problem, and that you wont lose anything by switching to varchar/char. Obviously the main reason to make this change is to reduce the amount of space required by each row. This in turn affects how many rows SQL Server can page through at a time, and can also impact index size and how much disk I/O is required to respond to queries, etc. If for example you have a table with 100 million records in it and this table has a column of type nchar(5), this column will use 5 * 2 = 10 bytes per row, and with 100M rows that works out to 10 bytes * 100 million = 1000 MBytes or 1GB. If it turns out that this column only ever stores ASCII characters, then changing it to char(5) would reduce this to 5*1 = 5 bytes per row, and only 500MB. Of course, if it turns out that it only ever stores the values true and false then you could go further and replace it with a bit data type which uses only 1 byte per row (100MB total). Detecting Whether Unicode Is In Use So by now you think that you have a problem and that it might be alleviated by switching some columns from nvarchar/nchar to varchar/char but youre not sure whether youre currently using Unicode in these columns. By definition, you should only be thinking about this for a column that has a lot of rows in it, since the benefits just arent there for a small table, so you cant just eyeball it and look for any non-ASCII characters. Instead, you need a query. Its actually very simple: SELECT DISTINCT(CategoryName)FROM CategoriesWHERE CategoryName <> CONVERT(varchar, CategoryName) Summary Gregg Stark for the tip. Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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ArchBeat Link-o-Rama Top 10 for November 2012

- by Bob Rhubart

Every day ArchBeat searches the web for content created by and for community members, and then shares that content via social media. Here's the list of the Top 10 most popular items posted on the OTN ArchBeat Facebook Page for November 2012. One-Stop Shop for Oracle Webcasts Webcasts can be a great way to get information about Oracle products without having to go cross-eyed reading yet another document off your computer screen. Oracle's new Webcast Center offers selectable filtering to make it easy to get to the information you want. Yes, you have to register to gain access, but that process is quick, and with over 200 webcasts to choose from you know you'll find useful content. OAM/OVD JVM Tuning Vinay from the Oracle Fusion Middleware Architecture Group (otherwise known as the A-Team) shares a process for analyzing and improving performance in Oracle Virtual Directory and Oracle Access Manager. White Paper: Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud: Advanced I/O Virtualization Architecture for Consolidating High-Performance Workloads This new white paper by Adam Hawley (with contributions from Yoav Eilat) describes in great detail the incorporation into Oracle Exalogic of virtualized InfiniBand I/O interconnects using Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) technology. Architected Systems: "If you don't develop an architecture, you will get one anyway..." "Can you build a system without taking care of architecture?," asks Manuel Ricca. "You certainly can. But inevitably the system will be unbalanced, neglecting the interests of key stakeholders, and problems will soon emerge." Backup and Recovery of an Exalogic vServer via rsync "On Exalogic a vServer will consist of a number of resources from the underlying machine," says the man known only as Donald. "These resources include compute power, networking and storage. In order to recover a vServer from a failure in the underlying rack all of these components have to be thoughts about. This article only discusses the backup and recovery strategies that apply to the storage system of a vServer." This Week on the OTN Architect Community Home Page Make time to check out this week's features on the OTN Solution Architect Homepage, including: SOA Practitioner Guide: Identifying and Discovering Services Technical article by Yuli Vasiliev on Setting Up, Configuring, and Using an Oracle WebLogic Server Cluster Podcast: Are You Future Proof? Clustering ODI11g for High-Availability Part 1: Introduction and Architecture | Richard Yeardley "JEE agents can be deployed alongside, or instead of, standalone agents," says Rittman Meade's Richard Yeardley. "But there is one key advantage in using JEE agents and WebLogic – when you deploy JEE agents as part of a WebLogic cluster they can be configured together to form a high availability cluster." Learn more in Yeardley's extensive post. OIM 11g : Multi-thread approach for writing custom scheduled job | Saravanan V S Saravanan shares insight and expertise relevant to "designing and developing an OIM schedule job that uses multi threaded approach for updating data in OIM using APIs." How to Create Virtual Directory in Weblogic Server | Zeeshan Baig Oracle ACE Zeeshan Baig shows you how in six easy steps. SOA Galore: New Books for Technical Eyes Only Shake up up your technical skills with this trio of new technical books from community members covering SOA and BPM. Thought for the Day "Humans are the best value in computers -- where else can you get a non-linear computer weighing only about 160lbs, having a billion binary decision elements, that can be mass-produced by unskilled labour?" — Anonymous Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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