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  • Writing a "Hello World" Device Driver for kernel 2.6 using Eclipse

    - by Isaac
    Goal I am trying to write a simple device driver on Ubuntu. I want to do this using Eclipse (or a better IDE that is suitable for driver programming). Here is the code: #include <linux/module.h> static int __init hello_world( void ) { printk( "hello world!\n" ); return 0; } static void __exit goodbye_world( void ) { printk( "goodbye world!\n" ); } module_init( hello_world ); module_exit( goodbye_world ); My effort After some research, I decided to use Eclipse CTD for developing the driver (while I am still not sure if it supports multi-threading debugging tools). So I: Installed Ubuntu 11.04 desktop x86 on a VMWare virtual machine, Installed eclipse-cdt and linux-headers-2.6.38-8 using Synaptic Package Manager, Created a C Project named TestDriver1 and copy-pasted above code to it, Changed the default build command, make, to the following customized build command: make -C /lib/modules/2.6.38-8-generic/build M=/home/isaac/workspace/TestDriver1 The problem I get an error when I try to build this project using eclipse. Here is the log for the build: **** Build of configuration Debug for project TestDriver1 **** make -C /lib/modules/2.6.38-8-generic/build M=/home/isaac/workspace/TestDriver1 all make: Entering directory '/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.38-8-generic' make: *** No rule to make target vmlinux', needed byall'. Stop. make: Leaving directory '/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.38-8-generic' Interestingly, I get no error when I use shell instead of eclipse to build this project. To use shell, I just create a Makefile containing obj-m += TestDriver1.o and use the above make command to build. So, something must be wrong with the eclipse Makefile. Maybe it is looking for the vmlinux architecture (?) or something while current architecture is x86. Maybe it's because of VMWare? As I understood, eclipse creates the makefiles automatically and modifying it manually would cause errors in the future OR make managing makefile difficult. So, how can I compile this project on eclipse?

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  • The emergence of Atlassian's Bamboo (and a free SQL Source Control license offer!)

    - by David Atkinson
    The rise in demand for database continuous integration has forced me to skill-up in various new tools and technologies, particularly build servers. We have been using JetBrain's TeamCity here at Red Gate for a couple of years now, having replaced the ageing CruiseControl.NET, so it was a natural choice for us to use this for our database CI demos. Most of our early adopter customers have also transitioned away from CruiseControl, the majority to TeamCity and Microsoft's TeamBuild. However, more recently, for reasons we've yet to fully comprehend, we've observed a significant surge in the number of evaluators for Atlassian's Bamboo. I installed this a couple of weeks back to satisfy myself that it works seamlessly with Red Gate tools. As you would expect Bamboo's UI has the same clean feel found in any Atlassian tool (we use JIRA extensively here at Red Gate). In the coming weeks I will post a short step-by-step guide to setting up SQL Server continuous integration using the Red Gate command lines. To help us further optimize the integration between these tools I'd be very keen to hear from any Bamboo users who also use Red Gate tools who might be willing to participate in usability tests and other similar research in exchange for Amazon vouchers. If you are interested in helping out please contact me at David dot Atkinson at red-gate.com I recently spoke with Sarah, the product marketing manager for Bamboo, and we ended up having a detailed conversation about database CI, which has been meticulously documented in the form of a blog post on Atlassian's website: http://blogs.atlassian.com/2012/05/database-continuous-integration-redgate/ We've also managed to persuade Red Gate marketing to provide a great free-tool offer, provide a free SQL Source Control or SQL Connect license to Atlassian users provided it is claimed before the end of June! Full details are at the bottom of the post. Technorati Tags: sql server

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  • Oracle Linux Partner Pavilion Spotlight

    - by Ted Davis
    With the first day of Oracle OpenWorld starting in less than a week, we wanted to showcase some of our premier partners exhibiting in the Oracle Linux Partner Pavilion ( Booth #1033) this year. We have Independent Hardware Vendors, Independent Software Vendors and Systems Integrators that show the breadth of support in the Oracle Linux and Oracle VM ecosystem. We'll be highlighting partners all week so feel free to come back check us out. Centrify delivers integrated software and cloud-based solutions that centrally control, secure and audit access to cross-platform systems, mobile devices and applications by leveraging the infrastructure organizations already own. From the data center and into the cloud, more than 4,500 organizations, including 40 percent of the Fortune 50 and more than 60 Federal agencies, rely on Centrify's identity consolidation and privilege management solutions to reduce IT expenses, strengthen security and meet compliance requirements. Visit Centrify at Oracle OpenWorld 2102 for a look at Centrify Suite and see how you can streamline security management on Oracle Linux.  Unify identities across the enterprise and remove the pain and security issues associated with managing local user accounts by leveraging Active Directory Implement a least-privilege security model with flexible, role-based controls that protect privileged operations while still granting users the privileges they need to perform their job Get a central, global view of audited user sessions across your Oracle Linux environment  "Data Intensity's cloud infrastructure leverages Oracle VM and Oracle Linux to provide highly available enterprise application management solutions.  Engineers will be available to answer questions about and demonstrate the technology, including management tools, configuration do's and don'ts, high availability, live migration, integrating the technology with Oracle software, and how the integrated support process works."    Mellanox’s end-to-end InfiniBand and Ethernet server and storage interconnect solutions deliver the highest performance, efficiency and scalability for enterprise, high-performance cloud and web 2.0 applications. Mellanox’s interconnect solutions accelerate Oracle RAC query throughput performance to reach 50Gb/s compared to TCP/IP based competing solutions that cap off at less than 12Gb/s. Mellanox solutions help Oracle’s Exadata to deliver 10X performance boost at 50% Hardware cost making it the world’s leading database appliance. Thanks for reviewing today's Partner spotlight. We will highlight new partners each day this week leading up to Oracle OpenWorld.

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  • FIX: Visual Studio Post Build Event Returns &ndash;1 when it should not.

    - by ChrisD
    I had written a Console Application that I run as part of my post build for other projects..  The Console application logs a series of messages to the console as it executes.  I use the Environment.ExitCode value to specify an error or success condition.  When the application executes without issue, the ExitCode is 0, when there is a problem its –1. As part of my logging, I log the value of the exit code right before the application terminates.  When I run this executable from the command line, it behaves as it should; error scenarios return –1 and success scenarios return 0.   When I run the same command line as part of the post-build event, Visual Studio reports the exit code as –1, even when the application reports the exit code as 0.   A snippet of the build output follows: Verbose: Exiting with ExitCode=0 C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.5\Microsoft.Common.targets(3397,13): error MSB3073: The command ""MGC.exe" "-TargetPath=C:\TFS\Solutions\Research\Source\Framework\Services\Identity\STS\_STSBuilder\bin\Debug\_STSBuilder.dll" C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.5\Microsoft.Common.targets(3397,13): error MSB3073:  C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.5\Microsoft.Common.targets(3397,13): error MSB3073: " exited with code -1. The Application returns a 0 exit code.  But visual studio is reporting an error.  Why? The answer is in the way I format my log messages.  Apparently Visual Studio watches the messages that get streamed to the the output console.  If those messages match a pattern used by visual studio to communicate errors, Visual Studio assumes an error has occurred in the executable and returns a –1.  This post details the formats used by Visual Studio to determine error conditions. In my case, the presence of the colon was tripping up Visual studio.  I Replaced all occurrences of colon with an equal sign and Visual Studio once again respected the exit code of the application. Verbose= Exiting with ExitCode=0 ========== Build: 3 succeeded or up-to-date, 0 failed, 0 skipped ==========

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  • CERN Announces the Discovery of a Higgs-Boson-like Particle

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    CERN scientists dropped a press release today indicating they’ve found a particle consistent with the long sought after Higgs Boson particle–the “God” particle, that could help radically refine our understanding of Standard Model of Particle Physics. For years scientists at CERN have been harnessing the power of the Large Hadron Collider to answer fundamental questions about the nature of particles and the universe around us. In the above video John Ellis, a theoretical physicist, answers the question “What is the Higgs Boson?” The video pairs nicely with the CERN press release: “We observe in our data clear signs of a new particle, at the level of 5 sigma, in the mass region around 126 GeV. The outstanding performance of the LHC and ATLAS and the huge efforts of many people have brought us to this exciting stage,” said ATLAS experiment spokesperson Fabiola Gianotti, “but a little more time is needed to prepare these results for publication.” “The results are preliminary but the 5 sigma signal at around 125 GeV we’re seeing is dramatic. This is indeed a new particle. We know it must be a boson and it’s the heaviest boson ever found,” said CMS experiment spokesperson Joe Incandela. “The implications are very significant and it is precisely for this reason that we must be extremely diligent in all of our studies and cross-checks.” “It’s hard not to get excited by these results,” said CERN Research Director Sergio Bertolucci. “ We stated last year that in 2012 we would either find a new Higgs-like particle or exclude the existence of the Standard Model Higgs. With all the necessary caution, it looks to me that we are at a branching point: the observation of this new particle indicates the path for the future towards a more detailed understanding of what we’re seeing in the data.” How to Use an Xbox 360 Controller On Your Windows PC Download the Official How-To Geek Trivia App for Windows 8 How to Banish Duplicate Photos with VisiPic

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  • Red Sand – An Awesome Fan Made Mass Effect Prequel [Short Movie]

    - by Asian Angel
    Welcome to Mars where humanity has just discovered the Prothean Ruins and Element Zero, but danger abounds as the Red Sand terrorist group seeks to claim Mars for themselves! If you love the Mass Effect game series, then you will definitely want to watch this awesome fan made prequel set 35 years before the events of the first game. Synopsis From YouTube: Serving as a prequel to the MASS EFFECT game series,”Red Sand” is set 35 years before the time of Commander Shepard and tells the story of the discovery of ancient ruins on Mars. Left behind by the mysterious alien race known as the Protheans, the ruins are a treasure trove of advanced technology and the powerful Element Zero, an energy source beyond humanity’s wildest dreams. As the Alliance research team led by Dr. Averroes (Ayman Samman) seeks to unlock the secrets of the ruins, a band of marauders living in the deserts of Mars wants the ruins for themselves. Addicted to refined Element Zero in the form of a narcotic nicknamed “Red Sand” which gives them telekinetic “biotic” powers, these desert-dwelling terrorists will stop at nothing to control the ruins and the rich vein of Element Zero at its core. Standing between them and their goal are Colonel Jon Grissom (Mark Meer), Colonel Lily Sandhurst (Amy Searcy), and a team of Alliance soldiers tasked with defending the ruins at all costs. At stake – the future of humanity’s exploration of the galaxy, and the set up for the MASS EFFECT storyline loved by millions of gamers worldwide. RED SAND: a Mass Effect fan film – starring MARK MEER [via Geeks are Sexy] 7 Ways To Free Up Hard Disk Space On Windows HTG Explains: How System Restore Works in Windows HTG Explains: How Antivirus Software Works

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  • Open Source Security packages for Rails

    - by Edwin
    I'm currently creating a complete web application using Rails 3 to familiarize myself with its inner workings and to gain a better appreciation of a working web application's moving parts. (Plus, since I'm still working on my degree, I hope that it will give me a better idea of what's BS in my education requirements and which weaknesses/skills I should focus on.) The example application I'm working on is an ecommerce site, and I've already configured the backend, routes, controllers, and so on. As part of the application, I'd like to integrate a second layer of security on top of the one Rails already provides for user authentication. However, I've been unable to find any on Google, with the exception of OAuth - which, from my understanding, is meant to secure API calls. While I could roll my own secure authentication system, I'm only in my second year of college and recognize that A) I know little about security, and B) there are developers that know much more about security that are working on open-source projects. What are some actively developed open-source security packages or frameworks that can be easily added to Rails? Pros and cons are not necessary, as I can do the research myself. P.S. I'm not sure whether I posted this in the right SE site; please migrate to SO or Security if it is more appropriate there.

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  • US GAAP and IFRS Convergence May Be Delayed Even More

    - by Theresa Hickman
    Yesterday, on March 10, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) met to discuss the changes in financial statement presentation. Over the last six months, the FASB and IASB have been working feverishly to converge US GAAP and IFRS standards to meet the 2011 deadline. In March alone, the standards-setters met eight times. Many people fear that this accelerated pace is compromising the quality of the end product and that maybe they should slow down and do their due diligence. According to WG&L Accounting & Compliance Alert Checkpoint 3/10/2010, (which requires a subscription to view the full article) "Some statement preparers and investors who advise the FASB believe that the process would be better served if it was slowed down so that more attention could be paid to quality." "Should 2011 be looked at as a line in the sand?" asked Joan Amble, executive vice president and corporate comptroller for American Express Co. "We don't think that due process should be compromised for the due date," concurred Lewis Dulitz, vice president of accounting policies and research for medical products supplier Covidien plc. I personally have mixed emotions about this. On one hand, I have been growing impatient with how slow the US has jumped on the IFRS band wagon. On the other hand, being the conservative that I am and knowing this convergence will be costly and disruptive to businesses, I would prefer to be safe than sorry and get it right the first time.

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  • "Are You There?".. India Tops Logistics List of Emerging Nations

    - by [email protected]
    It's just amazing how far, wide and deep modern supply chains are extending. AMR reported on 15 Apr (M.Burkett, A.Reese) in a SCM webcast that 'Penetrating Emerging Markets" was the top priotiy for organizations based on a recent survey. I took this as both adding new consumers to their prospect-list as well as leveraging 'lower cost labor arbitrage". (Read '3 Billion Capitalists") Supply Chain Quarterly reports that India and Brazil received the highest ranking of the logistics markets in developing nations India tops the list of emerging nations that scores the attractiveness of logistics markets to foreign investors. Developed by the UK-based research firm Transport Intelligence, the new  Emerging Market Logistics Index rated 38 developing countries on 3 factors. 1. "Market size and growth attractiveness," considered a country's economic output, projected growth rate, and population size.  2. "Market compatibility," which examined how well-matched a nation was with the services offered by global logistics providers. This includes a country's security levels, market accessibility, foreign direct investment, distribution of wealth and population, and development of its service sector. 3. "Connectedness," which rated the efficiency of customs and border controls, liner shipping connections, and transportation infrastructure. India claimed the top spot due to its market size and growth prospects. Brazil is second because of its economic performance, good levels of market accessibility, and improving domestic and international transport connections. Are you there? For more information see www.transportintelligence.com/articles_papers. The top 10 emerging countries India Brazil Indonesia Mexico Russia Turkey United Arab Emirates Egypt Saudi Arabia Malaysia Source: Transport Intelligence, The Emerging Markets Logistics Index, March 2010

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  • When is type testing OK?

    - by svidgen
    Assuming a language with some inherent type safety (e.g., not JavaScript): Given a method that accepts a SuperType, we know that in most cases wherein we might be tempted to perform type testing to pick an action: public void DoSomethingTo(SuperType o) { if (o isa SubTypeA) { o.doSomethingA() } else { o.doSomethingB(); } } We should usually, if not always, create a single, overridable method on the SuperType and do this: public void DoSomethingTo(SuperType o) { o.doSomething(); } ... wherein each subtype is given its own doSomething() implementation. The rest of our application can then be appropriately ignorant of whether any given SuperType is really a SubTypeA or a SubTypeB. Wonderful. But, we're still given is a-like operations in most, if not all, type-safe languages. And that seems suggests a potential need for explicit type testing. So, in what situations, if any, should we or must we perform explicit type testing? Forgive my absent mindedness or lack of creativity. I know I've done it before; but, it was honestly so long ago I can't remember if what I did was good! And in recent memory, I don't think I've encountered a need to test types outside my cowboy JavaScript.

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  • The emergence of Atlassian's Bamboo (and a free SQL Source Control license offer!)

    - by David Atkinson
    The rise in demand for database continuous integration has forced me to skill-up in various new tools and technologies, particularly build servers. We have been using JetBrain's TeamCity here at Red Gate for a couple of years now, having replaced the ageing CruiseControl.NET, so it was a natural choice for us to use this for our database CI demos. Most of our early adopter customers have also transitioned away from CruiseControl, the majority to TeamCity and Microsoft's TeamBuild. However, more recently, for reasons we've yet to fully comprehend, we've observed a significant surge in the number of evaluators for Atlassian's Bamboo. I installed this a couple of weeks back to satisfy myself that it works seamlessly with Red Gate tools. As you would expect Bamboo's UI has the same clean feel found in any Atlassian tool (we use JIRA extensively here at Red Gate). In the coming weeks I will post a short step-by-step guide to setting up SQL Server continuous integration using the Red Gate command lines. To help us further optimize the integration between these tools I'd be very keen to hear from any Bamboo users who also use Red Gate tools who might be willing to participate in usability tests and other similar research in exchange for Amazon vouchers. If you are interested in helping out please contact me at David dot Atkinson at red-gate.com I recently spoke with Sarah, the product marketing manager for Bamboo, and we ended up having a detailed conversation about database CI, which has been meticulously documented in the form of a blog post on Atlassian's website: http://blogs.atlassian.com/2012/05/database-continuous-integration-redgate/ We've also managed to persuade Red Gate marketing to provide a great free-tool offer, provide a free SQL Source Control or SQL Connect license to Atlassian users provided it is claimed before the end of June! Full details are at the bottom of the post. Technorati Tags: sql server

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  • ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 11/14/2011

    - by Bob Rhubart
    InfoQ: Developer-Driven Threat Modeling Threat modeling is critical for assessing and mitigating the security risks in software systems. In this IEEE article, author Danny Dhillon discusses a developer-driven threat modeling approach to identify threats using the dataflow diagrams. Managing the Virtual World | Philip J. Gill "The killer app for virtualization has been server consolidation," says Al Gillen, program vice president for systems software at market research firm International Data Corporation (IDC). Solaris X86 AESNI OpenSSL Engine | Dan Anderson "Having X86 AESNI hardware crypto instructions is all well and good, but how do we access it? The software is available with Solaris 11 and is used automatically if you are running Solaris x86 on a AESNI-capable processor," says Anderson. WebLogic Access Management | René van Wijk "This post is a continuation of the post WebLogic Identity Management. In this post we will present the steps involved to integrate WebLogic and Oracle Access Manager," says Oracle ACE René van Wijk. OTN Developer Days in the Nordics - Helsinki, Oslo, Stockholm, and Copenhagen OTN Developer days head for the land of the midnight sun. Podcast: Information Integration Part 2/3 In part two of a three-part program, Oracle Information Integration, Migration, and Consolidation authors Jason Williamson, Tom Laszewsk, and Marc Hebert offer examples of some of the most daunting information integration challenges. Measuring the Human Task activity in Oracle BPM | Leon Smiers Leon Smiers discusses using Oracle BPM to get answer to important questions about what's happening with business process. Architecture all day. Oracle Technology Network Architect Day - Phoenix, AZ- Dec 14 Spend the day with your peers learning from experts in Cloud computing, engineered systems, and Oracle Fusion Middleware. The Heroes of Java: Michael Hüttermann | Markus Eisele Oracle ACE Director Markus Eisele interviews Java Champion Michael Hüttermann on his role, his process, and on why he uses Java.

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  • How to enable services Discovery API in GoogleCL?

    - by Marcos
    There are bits and pieces of information all over the place but I'm trying to put it all together so that GoogleCL finally accesses more than the initial 7 services. Does anyone know of a step-by-step? Right now any attempt outside these result in the error message: google tasks list Did you specify the service correctly? Must be one of 'picasa', 'blogger', 'youtube', 'docs', 'contacts', 'calendar', 'finance' I installed GoogleCL from the Ubuntu repos, authenticated a few bundled services like contacts, docs etc. and those work great, giving me access to do certain operations like upload from the command line. I would really like to get it going to support tasks and all the other elegible Google services shown at https://code.google.com/apis/explorer/#_s=tasks Here are some guides/partial steps I've found: http://code.google.com/p/googlecl/wiki/DiscoveryManual (indicates needing to check it out updated GoogleCL from the subversion repository.) http://code.google.com/p/google-api-python-client/wiki/Installation easy_install --upgrade google-api-python-client http://code.google.com/p/googlecl/wiki/Install http://code.google.com/p/googlecl/source/checkout sudo -i cd /usr/local/src/ svn checkout http://googlecl.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ googlecl-read-only cat googlecl-read-only/INSTALL.txt cd /usr/local/src/googlecl-read-only/ python setup.py install Result: $ google discovery list Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/google", line 488, in run_interactive run_once(options, args) File "/usr/bin/google", line 540, in run_once options.config) File "/usr/bin/google", line 364, in import_service force_gdata_v1 = config.lazy_get(package.SECTION_HEADER, AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'SECTION_HEADER'

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  • Stable ubuntu distribution for a broadcom bcm4313 wireless driver and an nvidia 630 graphics adapter

    - by Vivek Pradhan
    I have been trying to completely shift to ubuntu or a linux distro for almost 2 years now. I have tried all the ubuntu distros starting from 10.04 through 11.10, but there has always been some bugs with the display drivers or the wireless cards not being recognised and the additional drivers suggested from the ubuntu community not doing the trick always. I tried a lot to fix bugs, checked a lot of forums, launch pad, got some of them fixed, but could not really get a neat and complete ubuntu machine set up till now. Now I really like the whole open source community and the linux platform, my pc at home runs ubuntu 11.04 perfectly but there have been some glitches always with ubuntu on my laptop that has forced me to stick with windows only. Now I am currently on an hp dv6 laptop that has the broadcom bcm4313 wireless driver and the nvidia 630gtm graphics(optimus) driver. Now I tried to do some research on the support of these drivers in linux machines but could not get anywhere. So I would really appreciate if you guys could suggest some linux distro that I could use that has full support of these drivers or has stable bug fixes for these kind of issues. I tried precise pangolin (LTS) through a live CD but i still see a problem with wifi networks which is a little frustrating. Please help me find the perfect match for my laptop :P I would gladly provide any other information necessary.

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  • 2D Tile Map files for Platformer, JSON or DB?

    - by Stephen Tierney
    I'm developing a 2D platformer with some uni friends. We've based it upon the XNA Platformer Starter Kit which uses .txt files to store the tile map. While this is simple it does not give us enough control and flexibility with level design. Some examples: for multiple layers of content multiple files are required, each object is fixed onto the grid, doesn't allow for rotation of objects, limited number of characters etc. So I'm doing some research into how to store the level data and map file. Reasoning for DB: From my perspective I see less redundancy of data using a database to store the tile data. Tiles in the same x,y position with the same characteristics can be reused from level to level. It seems like it would simple enough to write a method to retrieve all the tiles that are used in a particular level from the database. Reasoning for JSON: Visually editable files, changes can be tracked via SVN a lot easier. But there is repeated content. Do either have any drawbacks (load times, access times, memory etc) compared to the other? And what is commonly used in the industry? Currently the file looks like this: .................... .................... .................... .................... .................... .................... .................... .........GGG........ .........###........ .................... ....GGG.......GGG... ....###.......###... .................... .1................X. #################### 1 - Player start point, X - Level Exit, . - Empty space, # - Platform, G - Gem

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  • Win a Free Copy of Windows Presentation Foundation 4.5 Cookbook

    - by Ricardo Peres
    Win A free copy of the 'Windows Presentation Foundation 4.5 Cookbook', just by commenting! For the contest, Packt Publishing has two eBook copies of Windows Presentation Foundation 4.5 Cookbookto be given away to two lucky winners. How you can win: To win your copy of this book, all you need to do is come up with a comment below highlighting the reason "why you would like to win this book”. Duration of the contest & selection of winners: The contest is valid for 7 days (until November 26), and is open to everyone. Winners will be selected on the basis of their comment posted. Windows Presentation Foundation 4.5 Cookbookis written by Pavel Yosifovich, the CTO of CodeValue (http://www.codevalue.net), a software development, consulting, and training company, based in Israel. This book is written in an easy-to-read style, with a strong emphasis on real-world, practical examples. Step-by-step explanations are provided for performing important tasks. This book is the best guide for C# developer who is looking forward to increase understanding and knowledge of WPF. Using this book, readers will learn to build complex and flexible user interfaces using XAML, perform lengthy operations asynchronously while keeping the UI responsive, get well-versed with WPF features such as data binding, layout, resources, templates, and styles and also customize a control’s template to alter appearance but preserve behavior. In the next days I will post my review on this book. In the meantime, here’s the table of contents: Preface Chapter 1: Foundations Chapter 2: Resources Chapter 3: Layout and Panels Chapter 4: Using Standard Controls Chapter 5: Application and Windows Chapter 6: Data Binding Chapter 7: Commands and MVVM Chapter 8: Styles, Triggers, and Control Templates Chapter 9: Graphics and Animation Chapter 10: Custom Elements Chapter 11: Threading Index I’m waiting for your comments!

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  • The Importance of Collaboration, Analytics, and Mobile Technologies for Modern HR

    - by HCM-Oracle
    It was 17 years ago, when a McKinsey study uncovered the “war for talent”. Today, it is no point of contention that a strong talent-centric strategy maybe the most important focus for organizations. A talent-centric organization aims at recruiting, retaining and developing the best talent.  The best employees will be able to adapt responsibilities and be able to come up with solutions to solve problems, which are important skills in today’s dynamic work environment, and arguably more important in this recessionary climate.   The notion of hiring and retaining talented employees for organizational sustainability and competitive advantage is not a new concept. But can organizations consider themselves as having a “talent-centric” strategy without up-to-date collaboration tools, HR analytics and mobile technologies in pursuit of attracting, hiring and retaining the best talent? Attend the Upcoming Webcast A webcast on June 19th at 3pm EST will reveal more results of the study. Based on original research done in collaboration between Oracle HCM and HCI, we unveil new findings that explore how critical collaboration, analytic insights and mobile technology are for supporting a talent-centric work environment. You will learn: What are the benefits to being talent-centric? How does collaboration via social networks, analytics with predictive insights and mobile technologies support the talent-centric strategy of an organization? What is the state of play for these technologies? Register Here 

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  • Solaris: What comes next?

    - by alanc
    As you probably know by now, a few months ago, we released Solaris 11 after years of development. That of course means we now need to figure out what comes next - if Solaris 11 is “The First Cloud OS”, then what do we need to make future releases of Solaris be, to be modern and competitive when they're released? So we've been having planning and brainstorming meetings, and I've captured some notes here from just one of those we held a couple weeks ago with a number of the Silicon Valley based engineers. Now before someone sees an idea here and calls their product rep wanting to know what's up, please be warned what follows are rough ideas, and as I'll discuss later, none of them have any committment, schedule, working code, or even plan for integration in any possible future product at this time. (Please don't make me force you to read the full Oracle future product disclaimer here, you should know it by heart already from the front of every Oracle product slide deck.) To start with, we did some background research, looking at ideas from other Oracle groups, and competitive OS'es. We examined what was hot in the technology arena and where the interesting startups were heading. We then looked at Solaris to see where we could apply those ideas. Making Network Admins into Socially Networking Admins We all know an admin who has grumbled about being the only one stuck late at work to fix a problem on the server, or having to work the weekend alone to do scheduled maintenance. But admins are humans (at least most are), and crave companionship and community with their fellow humans. And even when they're alone in the server room, they're never far from a network connection, allowing access to the wide world of wonders on the Internet. Our solution here is not building a new social network - there's enough of those already, and Oracle even has its own Oracle Mix social network already. What we proposed is integrating Solaris features to help engage our system admins with these social networks, building community and bringing them recognition in the workplace, using achievement recognition systems as found in many popular gaming platforms. For instance, if you had a Facebook account, and a group of admin friends there, you could register it with our Social Network Utility For Facebook, and then your friends might see: Alan earned the achievement Critically Patched (April 2012) for patching all his servers. Matt is only at 50% - encourage him to complete this achievement today! To avoid any undue risk of advertising who has unpatched servers that are easier targets for hackers to break into, this information would be tightly protected via Facebook's world-renowned privacy settings to avoid it falling into the wrong hands. A related form of gamification we considered was replacing simple certfications with role-playing-game-style Experience Levels. Instead of just knowing an admin passed a test establishing a given level of competency, these would provide recruiters with a more detailed level of how much real-world experience an admin has. Achievements such as the one above would feed into it, but larger numbers of experience points would be gained by tougher or more critical tasks - such as recovering a down system, or migrating a service to a new platform. (As long as it was an Oracle platform of course - migrating to an HP or IBM platform would cause the admin to lose points with us.) Unfortunately, we couldn't figure out a good way to prevent (if you will) “gaming” the system. For instance, a disgruntled admin might decide to start ignoring warnings from FMA that a part is beginning to fail or skip preventative maintenance, in the hopes that they'd cause a catastrophic failure to earn more points for bolstering their resume as they look for a job elsewhere, and not worrying about the effect on your business of a mission critical server going down. More Z's for ZFS Our suggested new feature for ZFS was inspired by the worlds most successful Z-startup of all time: Zynga. Using the Social Network Utility For Facebook described above, we'd tie it in with ZFS monitoring to help you out when you find yourself in a jam needing more disk space than you have, and can't wait a month to get a purchase order through channels to buy more. Instead with the click of a button you could post to your group: Alan can't find any space in his server farm! Can you help? Friends could loan you some space on their connected servers for a few weeks, knowing that you'd return the favor when needed. ZFS would create a new filesystem for your use on their system, and securely share it with your system using Kerberized NFS. If none of your friends have space, then you could buy temporary use space in small increments at affordable rates right there in Facebook, using your Facebook credits, and then file an expense report later, after the urgent need has passed. Universal Single Sign On One thing all the engineers agreed on was that we still had far too many "Single" sign ons to deal with in our daily work. On the web, every web site used to have its own password database, forcing us to hope we could remember what login name was still available on each site when we signed up, and which unique password we came up with to avoid having to disclose our other passwords to a new site. In recent years, the web services world has finally been reducing the number of logins we have to manage, with many services allowing you to login using your identity from Google, Twitter or Facebook. So we proposed following their lead, introducing PAM modules for web services - no more would you have to type in whatever login name IT assigned and try to remember the password you chose the last time password aging forced you to change it - you'd simply choose which web service you wanted to authenticate against, and would login to your Solaris account upon reciept of a cookie from their identity service. Pinning notes to the cloud We also all noted that we all have our own pile of notes we keep in our daily work - in text files in our home directory, in notebooks we carry around, on white boards in offices and common areas, on sticky notes on our monitors, or on scraps of paper pinned to our bulletin boards. The contents of the notes vary, some are things just for us, some are useful for our groups, some we would share with the world. For instance, when our group moved to a new building a couple years ago, we had a white board in the hallway listing all the NIS & DNS servers, subnets, and other network configuration information we needed to set up our Solaris machines after the move. Similarly, as Solaris 11 was finishing and we were all learning the new network configuration commands, we shared notes in wikis and e-mails with our fellow engineers. Users may also remember one of the popular features of Sun's old BigAdmin site was a section for sharing scripts and tips such as these. Meanwhile, the online "pin board" at Pinterest is taking the web by storm. So we thought, why not mash those up to solve this problem? We proposed a new BigAddPin site where users could “pin” notes, command snippets, configuration information, and so on. For instance, once they had worked out the ideal Automated Installation manifest for their app server, they could pin it up to share with the rest of their group, or choose to make it public as an example for the world. Localized data, such as our group's notes on the servers for our subnet, could be shared only to users connecting from that subnet. And notes that they didn't want others to see at all could be marked private, such as the list of phone numbers to call for late night pizza delivery to the machine room, the birthdays and anniversaries they can never remember but would be sleeping on the couch if they forgot, or the list of automatically generated completely random, impossible to remember root passwords to all their servers. For greater integration with Solaris, we'd put support right into the command shells — redirect output to a pinned note, set your path to include pinned notes as scripts you can run, or bring up your recent shell history and pin a set of commands to save for the next time you need to remember how to do that operation. Location service for Solaris servers A longer term plan would involve convincing the hardware design groups to put GPS locators with wireless transmitters in future server designs. This would help both admins and service personnel trying to find servers in todays massive data centers, and could feed into location presence apps to help show potential customers that while they may not see many Solaris machines on the desktop any more, they are all around. For instance, while walking down Wall Street it might show “There are over 2000 Solaris computers in this block.” [Note: this proposal was made before the recent media coverage of a location service aggregrator app with less noble intentions, and in hindsight, we failed to consider what happens when such data similarly falls into the wrong hands. We certainly wouldn't want our app to be misinterpreted as “There are over $20 million dollars of SPARC servers in this building, waiting for you to steal them.” so it's probably best it was rejected.] Harnessing the power of the GPU for Security Most modern OS'es make use of the widespread availability of high powered GPU hardware in today's computers, with desktop environments requiring 3-D graphics acceleration, whether in Ubuntu Unity, GNOME Shell on Fedora, or Aero Glass on Windows, but we haven't yet made Solaris fully take advantage of this, beyond our basic offering of Compiz on the desktop. Meanwhile, more businesses are interested in increasing security by using biometric authentication, but must also comply with laws in many countries preventing discrimination against employees with physical limations such as missing eyes or fingers, not to mention the lost productivity when employees can't login due to tinted contacts throwing off a retina scan or a paper cut changing their fingerprint appearance until it heals. Fortunately, the two groups considering these problems put their heads together and found a common solution, using 3D technology to enable authentication using the one body part all users are guaranteed to have - pam_phrenology.so, a new PAM module that uses an array USB attached web cams (or just one if the user is willing to spin their chair during login) to take pictures of the users head from all angles, create a 3D model and compare it to the one in the authentication database. While Mythbusters has shown how easy it can be to fool common fingerprint scanners, we have not yet seen any evidence that people can impersonate the shape of another user's cranium, no matter how long they spend beating their head against the wall to reshape it. This could possibly be extended to group users, using modern versions of some of the older phrenological studies, such as giving all users with long grey beards access to the System Architect role, or automatically placing users with pointy spikes in their hair into an easy use mode. Unfortunately, there are still some unsolved technical challenges we haven't figured out how to overcome. Currently, a visit to the hair salon causes your existing authentication to expire, and some users have found that shaving their heads is the only way to avoid bad hair days becoming bad login days. Reaction to these ideas After gathering all our notes on these ideas from the engineering brainstorming meeting, we took them in to present to our management. Unfortunately, most of their reaction cannot be printed here, and they chose not to accept any of these ideas as they were, but they did have some feedback for us to consider as they sent us back to the drawing board. They strongly suggested our ideas would be better presented if we weren't trying to decipher ink blotches that had been smeared by the condensation when we put our pint glasses on the napkins we were taking notes on, and to that end let us know they would not be approving any more engineering offsites in Irish themed pubs on the Friday of a Saint Patrick's Day weekend. (Hopefully they mean that situation specifically and aren't going to deny the funding for travel to this year's X.Org Developer's Conference just because it happens to be in Bavaria and ending on the Friday of the weekend Oktoberfest starts.) They recommended our research techniques could be improved over just sitting around reading blogs and checking our Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest accounts, such as considering input from alternate viewpoints on topics such as gamification. They also mentioned that Oracle hadn't fully adopted some of Sun's common practices and we might have to try harder to get those to be accepted now that we are one unified company. So as I said at the beginning, don't pester your sales rep just yet for any of these, since they didn't get approved, but if you have better ideas, pass them on and maybe they'll get into our next batch of planning.

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  • Webinar, June 27: Application Intelligence and Connected Devices

    - by terrencebarr
    Oracle and Beecham have recently conducted a market survey on use of Connected Devices for M2M & Internet of Things (IoT) applications and new trends. On June 27, 9 am ET the first session in this webinar series addresses intelligence in connected devices. Join Peter Utzschneider from Oracle and Robin Duke-Woolley of Beecham Research as they discuss the findings from this survey and the implications for the M2M & IoT connected devices market: What are the key business drivers of your connected devices program? To what extent do you expect the intelligence required for M2M & IoT applications to change? Would these changes occur at the network edge, at the data center, or both? What are the impacts of these changes on ISV’s and device manufacturers? What are the opportunities for other M2M & IoT players? To attend, please register for free or click on the image. Cheers, – Terrence Filed under: Embedded Tagged: Connected, devices, iot, Java Embedded, Java ME Embedded, M2M, webinar

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  • Thank You MySQL Community! MySQL 5.6.9 Release Candidate Available Now!

    - by Rob Young
    The MySQL Community continues its good work in testing and refining MySQL 5.6, and as such the next iteration of the 5.6 Release Candidate is now available for download.  You can get MySQL 5.6.9 here (look under the "Development Releases" tab).  This version is the result of feedback we have gotten since MySQL 5.6.7 was announced at MySQL Connect in late September. As iron sharpens iron, Community feedback sharpens the quality and performance of MySQL so please download 5.6.9 and let us know how we can improve it as we move toward the production-ready product release in early 2013. MySQL 5.6 is designed to meet the agility demands of the next generation of web apps and services and includes across the board improvements to the Optimizer, InnoDB performance/scale and online DDL operations, self-healing Replication, Performance Schema Instrumentation, Security and developer enabling NoSQL functionality.  You can learn all the details and follow MySQL Engineering blogs on all of the key features in this MySQL DevZone article. On a related note, plan to join this week's live webinars to learn more about MySQL 5.6 Self-Healing Replication Clusters and Building the Next Generation of Web, Cloud, SaaS, Embedded Application and Services with MySQL 5.6.  Hurry!  Seating is limited!  As always, thanks for your continued support of MySQL!

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  • Windows Azure Mobile Services: New support for iOS apps, Facebook/Twitter/Google identity, Emails, SMS, Blobs, Service Bus and more

    - by ScottGu
    A few weeks ago I blogged about Windows Azure Mobile Services - a new capability in Windows Azure that makes it incredibly easy to connect your client and mobile applications to a scalable cloud backend. Earlier today we delivered a number of great improvements to Windows Azure Mobile Services.  New features include: iOS support – enabling you to connect iPhone and iPad apps to Mobile Services Facebook, Twitter, and Google authentication support with Mobile Services Blob, Table, Queue, and Service Bus support from within your Mobile Service Sending emails from your Mobile Service (in partnership with SendGrid) Sending SMS messages from your Mobile Service (in partnership with Twilio) Ability to deploy mobile services in the West US region All of these improvements are now live in production and available to start using immediately. Below are more details on them: iOS Support This week we delivered initial support for connecting iOS based devices (including iPhones and iPads) to Windows Azure Mobile Services.  Like the rest of our Windows Azure SDK, we are delivering the native iOS libraries to enable this under an open source (Apache 2.0) license on GitHub.  We’re excited to get your feedback on this new library through our forum and GitHub issues list, and we welcome contributions to the SDK. To create a new iOS app or connect an existing iOS app to your Mobile Service, simply select the “iOS” tab within the Quick Start view of a Mobile Service within the Windows Azure Portal – and then follow either the “Create a new iOS app” or “Connect to an existing iOS app” link below it: Clicking either of these links will expand and display step-by-step instructions for how to build an iOS application that connects with your Mobile Service: Read this getting started tutorial to walkthrough how you can build (in less than 5 minutes) a simple iOS “Todo List” app that stores data in Windows Azure.  Then follow the below tutorials to explore how to use the iOS client libraries to store data and authenticate users. Get Started with data in Mobile Services for iOS Get Started with authentication in Mobile Services for iOS Facebook, Twitter, and Google Authentication Support Our initial preview of Mobile Services supported the ability to authenticate users of mobile apps using Microsoft Accounts (formerly called Windows Live ID accounts).  This week we are adding the ability to also authenticate users using Facebook, Twitter, and Google credentials.  These are now supported with both Windows 8 apps as well as iOS apps (and a single app can support multiple forms of identity simultaneously – so you can offer your users a choice of how to login). The below tutorials walkthrough how to register your Mobile Service with an identity provider: How to register your app with Microsoft Account How to register your app with Facebook How to register your app with Twitter How to register your app with Google The tutorials above walkthrough how to obtain a client ID and a secret key from the identity provider. You can then click on the “Identity” tab of your Mobile Service (within the Windows Azure Portal) and save these values to enable server-side authentication with your Mobile Service: You can then write code within your client or mobile app to authenticate your users to the Mobile Service.  For example, below is the code you would write to have them login to the Mobile Service using their Facebook credentials: Windows Store App (using C#): var user = await App.MobileService                     .LoginAsync(MobileServiceAuthenticationProvider.Facebook); iOS app (using Objective C): UINavigationController *controller = [self.todoService.client     loginViewControllerWithProvider:@"facebook"     completion:^(MSUser *user, NSError *error) {        //... }]; Learn more about authenticating Mobile Services using Microsoft Account, Facebook, Twitter, and Google from these tutorials: Get started with authentication in Mobile Services for Windows Store (C#) Get started with authentication in Mobile Services for Windows Store (JavaScript) Get started with authentication in Mobile Services for iOS Using Windows Azure Blob, Tables and ServiceBus with your Mobile Services Mobile Services provide a simple but powerful way to add server logic using server scripts. These scripts are associated with the individual CRUD operations on your mobile service’s tables. Server scripts are great for data validation, custom authorization logic (e.g. does this user participate in this game session), augmenting CRUD operations, sending push notifications, and other similar scenarios.   Server scripts are written in JavaScript and are executed in a secure server-side scripting environment built using Node.js.  You can edit these scripts and save them on the server directly within the Windows Azure Portal: In this week’s release we have added the ability to work with other Windows Azure services from your Mobile Service server scripts.  This is supported using the existing “azure” module within the Windows Azure SDK for Node.js.  For example, the below code could be used in a Mobile Service script to obtain a reference to a Windows Azure Table (after which you could query it or insert data into it):     var azure = require('azure');     var tableService = azure.createTableService("<< account name >>",                                                 "<< access key >>"); Follow the tutorials on the Windows Azure Node.js dev center to learn more about working with Blob, Tables, Queues and Service Bus using the azure module. Sending emails from your Mobile Service In this week’s release we have also added the ability to easily send emails from your Mobile Service, building on our partnership with SendGrid. Whether you want to add a welcome email upon successful user registration, or make your app alert you of certain usage activities, you can do this now by sending email from Mobile Services server scripts. To get started, sign up for SendGrid account at http://sendgrid.com . Windows Azure customers receive a special offer of 25,000 free emails per month from SendGrid. To sign-up for this offer, or get more information, please visit http://www.sendgrid.com/azure.html . One you signed up, you can add the following script to your Mobile Service server scripts to send email via SendGrid service:     var sendgrid = new SendGrid('<< account name >>', '<< password >>');       sendgrid.send({         to: '<< enter email address here >>',         from: '<< enter from address here >>',         subject: 'New to-do item',         text: 'A new to-do was added: ' + item.text     }, function (success, message) {         if (!success) {             console.error(message);         }     }); Follow the Send email from Mobile Services with SendGrid tutorial to learn more. Sending SMS messages from your Mobile Service SMS is a key communication medium for mobile apps - it comes in handy if you want your app to send users a confirmation code during registration, allow your users to invite their friends to install your app or reach out to mobile users without a smartphone. Using Mobile Service server scripts and Twilio’s REST API, you can now easily send SMS messages to your app.  To get started, sign up for Twilio account. Windows Azure customers receive 1000 free text messages when using Twilio and Windows Azure together. Once signed up, you can add the following to your Mobile Service server scripts to send SMS messages:     var httpRequest = require('request');     var account_sid = "<< account SID >>";     var auth_token = "<< auth token >>";       // Create the request body     var body = "From=" + from + "&To=" + to + "&Body=" + message;       // Make the HTTP request to Twilio     httpRequest.post({         url: "https://" + account_sid + ":" + auth_token +              "@api.twilio.com/2010-04-01/Accounts/" + account_sid + "/SMS/Messages.json",         headers: { 'content-type': 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded' },         body: body     }, function (err, resp, body) {         console.log(body);     }); I’m excited to be speaking at the TwilioCon conference this week, and will be showcasing some of the cool scenarios you can now enable with Twilio and Windows Azure Mobile Services. Mobile Services availability in West US region Our initial preview of Windows Azure Mobile Services was only supported in the US East region of Windows Azure.  As with every Windows Azure service, overtime we will extend Mobile Services to all Windows Azure regions. With this week’s preview update we’ve added support so that you can now create your Mobile Service in the West US region as well: Summary The above features are all now live in production and are available to use immediately.  If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using Mobile Services today. Visit the Windows Azure Mobile Developer Center to learn more about how to build apps with Mobile Services. We’ll have even more new features and enhancements coming later this week – including .NET 4.5 support for Windows Azure Web Sites.  Keep an eye out on my blog for details as new features become available. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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  • Email Alias [email protected] Replaced with New Oracle Certification Support Tool

    - by Paul Sorensen
    All Oracle Certification customer service issues previously sent to [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], or [email protected], should now be submitted as service requests via the new request tool. Support via these email aliases ends today. Managing candidate communications via this tool will enable better issue tracking capabilities and ensure that all issues are handled quickly and efficiently. The integrated tool will also help us to more easily research historical and related issues to enable improved certification communications and business processes. For now, questions related to Java, Oracle Solaris (Cluster), MySQL, NetBeans or OpenOffice.org exam or certification, will still be sent to [email protected] and resolved via email. Questions related to the status of an Oracle Certification Success Kit, will still be sent to [email protected] and resolved via email. ?We are excited about this new offering and ?c?o?n?t?i?n?u?e? ??t?o??????? ?w?o?r?k? ?t?o?w?a?r?d ?improve?d customer ?s?e?r?v?i?c?e?? for our OCP community. Thank you for your cooperation! Quick View of Oracle Certification Customer Support Oracle Certification Support: All issues that previously would have been sent to [email protected] [email protected]: All questions on Java, Oracle Solaris (Cluster), MySQL, NetBeans, OpenOffice.org exams and certifications [email protected]: All questions on the status of your Oracle Certification Success Kit

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  • Finding the Right Solution to Source and Manage Your Contractors

    - by mark.rosenberg(at)oracle.com
    Many of our PeopleSoft Enterprise applications customers operate in service-based industries, and all of our customers have at least some internal service units, such as IT, marketing, and facilities. Employing the services of contractors, often referred to as "contingent labor," to deliver either or both internal and external services is common practice. As we've transitioned from an industrial age to a knowledge age, talent has become a primary competitive advantage for most organizations. Contingent labor offers talent on flexible terms; it offers the ability to scale up operations, close skill gaps, and manage risk in the process of delivering services. Talent comes from many sources and the rise in the contingent worker (contractor, consultant, temporary, part time) has increased significantly in the past decade and is expected to reach 40 percent in the next decade. Managing the total pool of talent in a seamless integrated fashion not only saves organizations money and increases efficiency, but creates a better place for workers of all kinds to work. Although the term "contingent labor" is frequently used to describe both contractors and employees who have flexible schedules and relationships with an organization, the remainder of this discussion focuses on contractors. The term "contingent labor" is used interchangeably with "contractor." Recognizing the importance of contingent labor, our PeopleSoft customers often ask our team, "What Oracle vendor management system (VMS) applications should I evaluate for managing contractors?" In response, I thought it would be useful to describe and compare the three most common Oracle-based options available to our customers. They are:   The enterprise licensed software model in which you implement and utilize the PeopleSoft Services Procurement (sPro) application and potentially other PeopleSoft applications;  The software-as-a-service model in which you gain access to a derivative of PeopleSoft sPro from an Oracle Business Process Outsourcing Partner; and  The managed service provider (MSP) model in which staffing industry professionals utilize either your enterprise licensed software or the software-as-a-service application to administer your contingent labor program. At this point, you may be asking yourself, "Why three options?" The answer is that since there is no "one size fits all" in terms of talent, there is also no "one size fits all" for effectively sourcing and managing contingent workers. Various factors influence how an organization thinks about and relates to its contractors, and each of the three Oracle-based options addresses an organization's needs and preferences differently. For the purposes of this discussion, I will describe the options with respect to (A) pricing and software provisioning models; (B) control and flexibility; (C) level of engagement with contractors; and (D) approach to sourcing, employment law, and financial settlement. Option 1:  Enterprise Licensed Software In this model, you purchase from Oracle the license and support for the applications you need. Typically, you license PeopleSoft sPro as your VMS tool for sourcing, monitoring, and paying your contract labor. In conjunction with sPro, you can also utilize PeopleSoft Human Capital Management (HCM) applications (if you do not already) to configure more advanced business processes for recruiting, training, and tracking your contractors. Many customers choose this enterprise license software model because of the functionality and natural integration of the PeopleSoft applications and because the cost for the PeopleSoft software is explicit. There is no fee per transaction to source each contractor under this model. Our customers that employ contractors to augment their permanent staff on billable client engagements often find this model appealing because there are no fees to affect their profit margins. With this model, you decide whether to have your own IT organization run the software or have the software hosted and managed by either Oracle or another application services provider. Your organization, perhaps with the assistance of consultants, configures, deploys, and operates the software for managing your contingent workforce. This model offers you the highest level of control and flexibility since your organization can configure the contractor process flow exactly to your business and security requirements and can extend the functionality with PeopleTools. This option has proven very valuable and applicable to our customers engaged in government contracting because their contingent labor management practices are subject to complex standards and regulations. Customers find a great deal of value in the application functionality and configurability the enterprise licensed software offers for managing contingent labor. Some examples of that functionality are... The ability to create a tiered network of preferred suppliers including competencies, pricing agreements, and elaborate candidate management capabilities. Configurable alerts and online collaboration for bid, resource requisition, timesheet, and deliverable entry, routing, and approval for both resource and deliverable-based services. The ability to manage contractors with the same PeopleSoft HCM and Projects applications that are used to manage the permanent workforce. Because it allows you to utilize much of the same PeopleSoft HCM and Projects application functionality for contractors that you use for permanent employees, the enterprise licensed software model supports the deepest level of engagement with the contingent workforce. For example, you can: fill job openings with contingent labor; guide contingent workers through essential safety and compliance training with PeopleSoft Enterprise Learning Management; and source contingent workers directly to project-based assignments in PeopleSoft Resource Management and PeopleSoft Program Management. This option enables contingent workers to collaborate closely with your permanent staff on complex, knowledge-based efforts - R&D projects, billable client contracts, architecture and engineering projects spanning multiple years, and so on. With the enterprise licensed software model, your organization maintains responsibility for the sourcing, onboarding (including adherence to employment laws), and financial settlement processes. This means your organization maintains on staff or hires the expertise in these domains to utilize the software and interact with suppliers and contractors. Option 2:  Software as a Service (SaaS) The effort involved in setting up and operating VMS software to handle a contingent workforce leads many organizations to seek a system that can be activated and configured within a few days and for which they can pay based on usage. Oracle's Business Process Outsourcing partner, Provade, Inc., provides exactly this option to our customers. Provade offers its vendor management software as a service over the Internet and usually charges your organization a fee that is a percentage of your total contingent labor spending processed through the Provade software. (Percentage of spend is the predominant fee model, although not the only one.) In addition to lower implementation costs, the effort of configuring and maintaining the software is largely upon Provade, not your organization. This can be very appealing to IT organizations that are thinly stretched supporting other important information technology initiatives. Built upon PeopleSoft sPro, the Provade solution is tailored for simple and quick deployment and administration. Provade has added capabilities to clone users rapidly and has simplified business documents, like work orders and change orders, to facilitate enterprise-wide, self-service adoption with little to no training. Provade also leverages Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) to provide integrated spend analytics and dashboards. Although pure customization is more limited than with the enterprise licensed software model, Provade offers a very effective option for organizations that are regularly on-boarding and off-boarding high volumes of contingent staff hired to perform discrete support tasks (for example, order fulfillment during the holiday season, hourly clerical work, desktop technology repairs, and so on) or project tasks. The software is very configurable and at the same time very intuitive to even the most computer-phobic users. The level of contingent worker engagement your organization can achieve with the Provade option is generally the same as with the enterprise licensed software model since Provade can automatically establish contingent labor resources in your PeopleSoft applications. Provade has pre-built integrations to Oracle's PeopleSoft and the Oracle E-Business Suite procurement, projects, payables, and HCM applications, so that you can evaluate, train, assign, and track contingent workers like your permanent employees. Similar to the enterprise licensed software model, your organization is responsible for the contingent worker sourcing, administration, and financial settlement processes. This means your organization needs to maintain the staff expertise in these domains. Option 3:  Managed Services Provider (MSP) Whether you are using the enterprise licensed model or the SaaS model, you may want to engage the services of sourcing, employment, payroll, and financial settlement professionals to administer your contingent workforce program. Firms that offer this expertise are often referred to as "MSPs," and they are typically staffing companies that also offer permanent and temporary hiring services. (In fact, many of the major MSPs are Oracle applications customers themselves, and they utilize the PeopleSoft Solution for the Staffing Industry to run their own business operations.) Usually, MSPs place their staff on-site at your facilities, and they can utilize either your enterprise licensed PeopleSoft sPro application or the Provade VMS SaaS software to administer the network of suppliers providing contingent workers. When you utilize an MSP, there is a separate fee for the MSP's service that is typically funded by the participating suppliers of the contingent labor. Also in this model, the suppliers of the contingent labor (not the MSP) usually pay the contingent labor force. With an MSP, you are intentionally turning over business process control for the advantages associated with having someone else manage the processes. The software option you choose will to a certain extent affect your process flexibility; however, the MSPs are often able to adapt their processes to the unique demands of your business. When you engage an MSP, you will want to give some thought to the level of engagement and "partnering" you need with your contingent workforce. Because the MSP acts as an intermediary, it can be very valuable in handling high volume, routine contracting for which there is a relatively low need for "partnering" with the contingent workforce. However, if your organization (or part of your organization) engages contingent workers for high-profile client projects that require diplomacy, intensive amounts of interaction, and personal trust, introducing an MSP into the process may prove less effective than handling the process with your own staff. In fact, in many organizations, it is common to enlist an MSP to handle contractors working on internal projects and to have permanent employees handle the contractor relationships that affect the portion of the services portfolio focused on customer-facing, billable projects. One of the key advantages of enlisting an MSP is that you do not have to maintain the expertise required for orchestrating the sourcing, hiring, and paying of contingent workers.  These are the domain of the MSPs. If your own staff members are not prepared to manage the essential "overhead" processes associated with contingent labor, working with an MSP can make solid business sense. Proper administration of a contingent workforce can make the difference between project success and failure, operating profit and loss, and legal compliance and fines. Concluding Thoughts There is little doubt that thoughtfully and purposefully constructing a service delivery strategy that leverages the strengths of contingent workers can lead to better projects, deliverables, and business results. What requires a bit more thinking is determining the platform (or platforms) that will enable each part of your organization to best deliver on its mission.

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  • Oracle Tuxedo at Oracle Open World 2012

    - by Deepak Goel
    Oracle Open World is almost here. There is quite a bit of Tuxedo to talk about at this year’s OOW. Primary focus will be on Tuxedo 12c, which was announced in August 2012 and is now generally available. Tuxedo 12c is a major release which many-many new and exciting features in almost all components of Tuxedo. You will not only hear about these features in various conference  sessions, you will also have an opportunity to see these features in action at demo grounds or play with these yourselves in hands-on-labs. Following is listing of Tuxedo related activities at OOW 2012: Conference Sessions Mon 1 Oct, 2012 10:45 AM - 11:45 AM, Oracle Tuxedo: What’s New in 12 c, Strategy, and Roadmap, Moscone South - 309 4:45 PM - 5:45 PM, Simplify Operations, Administration, and Management of Oracle Tuxedo Applications, Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate C3 Wed 3 Oct, 2012 3:30 PM - 4:30 PM, The Art and Practice of Mainframe Migration and Modernization, Moscone South - 309 Thu 4 Oct, 2012  2:15 PM - 3:15 PM, High-Performance, Scalable Enterprise Messaging for C/C++/COBOL Applications, Marriott Marquis - Salon 7 HOL (Hands-on Lab) Tues 2 Oct, 2012 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM Deploy, Manage, and Monitor Oracle Tuxedo Applications in the Enterprise Cloud, Marriott Marquis - Salon 3/4 Wed 3 Oct, 2012 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM, Develop C/C++ Applications for the Cloud with Oracle Tuxedo and Oracle Solaris Studio, Marriott Marquis - Salon 5/6 BOF (Birds-of-a-Feather) Mon 1 Oct, 2012 6:15 PM - 7:00 PM, Develop Scalable, Highly Available Enterprise Services in Java with Oracle Tuxedo, Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate C1 Demos Oracle Tuxedo: #1 Enterprise Cloud Platform for C/C++/COBOL Apps,  Moscone South, Right - S-215 Mainframe Rehost with Oracle Tuxedo Runtimes for CICS, IMS, and Batch, Moscone South, Right - S-216 Tuxedo Customer Appreciation Dinner Monday 1 Oct, 2012 7:30 PM - Please contact your Oracle Account Representative to attend. Limited seating. Deepak Goel Sr. Director, Software Development Oracle

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  • Have programmers at your work not taken up or been averse to an offer of a second monitor?

    - by Chris Knight
    I'm putting together a business case for the developers in my company to get a second monitor. After my own experiences and research, this seems a no-brainer to me in terms of increasing productivity and morale/happiness. One question which has niggled me is if I should be pushing to get all developers onto a second monitor or let folk opt-in (i.e. they get one if they want one). Thoughts on this are welcome, but my specific question relates to a snippet on this site: But when the IT manager at Thibeault's company asked other employees if they wanted dual monitors last year, few jumped at the offer. Blinded by my own pre-judgement, this surprised me. Has anyone else experienced this? I fully appreciate that some people prefer a single larger monitor, but my general experience of researching the web suggests that most programmers prefer a dual (or more) setup. I'm guessing this should be tempered with the thought that those developers who contribute to such discussions might not be considered your average developer who might not care one way or the other. Anyway, if you have experienced the above have you tried to sell the concept of dual monitors to the masses? If everyone just got 2 monitors regardless if they wanted it or not, were there adverse reactions or negative effects? UPDATE: The developers are on a mixture of 17", 22", or 24" single monitors. The desks should be able to accommodate dual 22" monitors as I am proposing, though this will take some getting used to I imagine.

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