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  • where are the default ulimit values set? (linux, centos)

    - by nomercysir
    I have two CentOS (5) servers with nearly identical specs. When I login and do: ulimit -u on one machine, I get unlimited and on the other, 77824 When I run a cron like * * * * * ulimit -u > ulimit.txt I get the same results (unlimited, 77824). I am trying to determine where these are set so that I can alter them. They are not set in any of my profiles (.bashrc, /etc/profile, etc .. these wouldn't affect cron anyway) nor in /etc/security/limits.conf (which is empty). I have scoured google and even gone so far as to do grep -Ir 77824 / but nothing has turned up so far. I don't understand how these machines could have come preset with different limits. I am actually wondering not for these machines, but for a different (CentOS 6) machine which has a limit of 1024, which is far too small. I need to run cron jobs with a higher limit and the only way I know how to set that is in the cron job itself. That's ok, but I'd rather set it system wide so it's not as hacky. Thanks for any help. This seems like it should be easy (NOT) EDIT -- SOLVED Ok, I figured this out. It seems to be an issue either with CentOS 6 or perhaps my machine configuration. On the CentOS 5 configuration, I can set in /etc/security/limits.conf: * - nproc unlimited and that would effectively update the accounts and cron limits. However, this does not work in my CentOS 6 box. Instead, I must do: myname1 - nproc unlimited myname2 - nproc unlimited ... And things work as expected. Maybe the UID specification works to, but the wildcard (*) definitely DOES NOT here. Oddly, wildcards DO work for the 'nofile' limit. I still would love to know where the default values are actually coming from, because by default, this file is empty and I couldn't see why I had different defaults for the two CentOS boxes, which had identical hardware and were from the same provider.

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  • Introducing Oracle VM Server for SPARC

    - by Honglin Su
    As you are watching Oracle's Virtualization Strategy Webcast and exploring the great virtualization offerings of Oracle VM product line, I'd like to introduce Oracle VM Server for SPARC --  highly efficient, enterprise-class virtualization solution for Sun SPARC Enterprise Systems with Chip Multithreading (CMT) technology. Oracle VM Server for SPARC, previously called Sun Logical Domains, leverages the built-in SPARC hypervisor to subdivide supported platforms' resources (CPUs, memory, network, and storage) by creating partitions called logical (or virtual) domains. Each logical domain can run an independent operating system. Oracle VM Server for SPARC provides the flexibility to deploy multiple Oracle Solaris operating systems simultaneously on a single platform. Oracle VM Server also allows you to create up to 128 virtual servers on one system to take advantage of the massive thread scale offered by the CMT architecture. Oracle VM Server for SPARC integrates both the industry-leading CMT capability of the UltraSPARC T1, T2 and T2 Plus processors and the Oracle Solaris operating system. This combination helps to increase flexibility, isolate workload processing, and improve the potential for maximum server utilization. Oracle VM Server for SPARC delivers the following: Leading Price/Performance - The low-overhead architecture provides scalable performance under increasing workloads without additional license cost. This enables you to meet the most aggressive price/performance requirement Advanced RAS - Each logical domain is an entirely independent virtual machine with its own OS. It supports virtual disk mutipathing and failover as well as faster network failover with link-based IP multipathing (IPMP) support. Moreover, it's fully integrated with Solaris FMA (Fault Management Architecture), which enables predictive self healing. CPU Dynamic Resource Management (DRM) - Enable your resource management policy and domain workload to trigger the automatic addition and removal of CPUs. This ability helps you to better align with your IT and business priorities. Enhanced Domain Migrations - Perform domain migrations interactively and non-interactively to bring more flexibility to the management of your virtualized environment. Improve active domain migration performance by compressing memory transfers and taking advantage of cryptographic acceleration hardware. These methods provide faster migration for load balancing, power saving, and planned maintenance. Dynamic Crypto Control - Dynamically add and remove cryptographic units (aka MAU) to and from active domains. Also, migrate active domains that have cryptographic units. Physical-to-virtual (P2V) Conversion - Quickly convert an existing SPARC server running the Oracle Solaris 8, 9 or 10 OS into a virtualized Oracle Solaris 10 image. Use this image to facilitate OS migration into the virtualized environment. Virtual I/O Dynamic Reconfiguration (DR) - Add and remove virtual I/O services and devices without needing to reboot the system. CPU Power Management - Implement power saving by disabling each core on a Sun UltraSPARC T2 or T2 Plus processor that has all of its CPU threads idle. Advanced Network Configuration - Configure the following network features to obtain more flexible network configurations, higher performance, and scalability: Jumbo frames, VLANs, virtual switches for link aggregations, and network interface unit (NIU) hybrid I/O. Official Certification Based On Real-World Testing - Use Oracle VM Server for SPARC with the most sophisticated enterprise workloads under real-world conditions, including Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC). Affordable, Full-Stack Enterprise Class Support - Obtain worldwide support from Oracle for the entire virtualization environment and workloads together. The support covers hardware, firmware, OS, virtualization, and the software stack. SPARC Server Virtualization Oracle offers a full portfolio of virtualization solutions to address your needs. SPARC is the leading platform to have the hard partitioning capability that provides the physical isolation needed to run independent operating systems. Many customers have already used Oracle Solaris Containers for application isolation. Oracle VM Server for SPARC provides another important feature with OS isolation. This gives you the flexibility to deploy multiple operating systems simultaneously on a single Sun SPARC T-Series server with finer granularity for computing resources.  For SPARC CMT processors, the natural level of granularity is an execution thread, not a time-sliced microsecond of execution resources. Each CPU thread can be treated as an independent virtual processor. The scheduler is naturally built into the CPU for lower overhead and higher performance. Your organizations can couple Oracle Solaris Containers and Oracle VM Server for SPARC with the breakthrough space and energy savings afforded by Sun SPARC Enterprise systems with CMT technology to deliver a more agile, responsive, and low-cost environment. Management with Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center The Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center Virtualization Management Pack provides full lifecycle management of virtual guests, including Oracle VM Server for SPARC and Oracle Solaris Containers. It helps you streamline operations and reduce downtime. Together, the Virtualization Management Pack and the Ops Center Provisioning and Patch Automation Pack provide an end-to-end management solution for physical and virtual systems through a single web-based console. This solution automates the lifecycle management of physical and virtual systems and is the most effective systems management solution for Oracle's Sun infrastructure. Ease of Deployment with Configuration Assistant The Oracle VM Server for SPARC Configuration Assistant can help you easily create logical domains. After gathering the configuration data, the Configuration Assistant determines the best way to create a deployment to suit your requirements. The Configuration Assistant is available as both a graphical user interface (GUI) and terminal-based tool. Oracle Solaris Cluster HA Support The Oracle Solaris Cluster HA for Oracle VM Server for SPARC data service provides a mechanism for orderly startup and shutdown, fault monitoring and automatic failover of the Oracle VM Server guest domain service. In addition, applications that run on a logical domain, as well as its resources and dependencies can be controlled and managed independently. These are managed as if they were running in a classical Solaris Cluster hardware node. Supported Systems Oracle VM Server for SPARC is supported on all Sun SPARC Enterprise Systems with CMT technology. UltraSPARC T2 Plus Systems ·   Sun SPARC Enterprise T5140 Server ·   Sun SPARC Enterprise T5240 Server ·   Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 Server ·   Sun Netra T5440 Server ·   Sun Blade T6340 Server Module ·   Sun Netra T6340 Server Module UltraSPARC T2 Systems ·   Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 Server ·   Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 Server ·   Sun Netra T5220 Server ·   Sun Blade T6320 Server Module ·   Sun Netra CP3260 ATCA Blade Server Note that UltraSPARC T1 systems are supported on earlier versions of the software.Sun SPARC Enterprise Systems with CMT technology come with the right to use (RTU) of Oracle VM Server, and the software is pre-installed. If you have the systems under warranty or with support, you can download the software and system firmware as well as their updates. Oracle Premier Support for Systems provides fully-integrated support for your server hardware, firmware, OS, and virtualization software. Visit oracle.com/support for information about Oracle's support offerings for Sun systems. For more information about Oracle's virtualization offerings, visit oracle.com/virtualization.

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  • SQL Azure Reporting Limited CTP Arrived

    - by Shaun
    It’s about 3 months later when I registered the SQL Azure Reporting CTP on the Microsoft Connect after TechED 2010 China. Today when I checked my mailbox I found that the SQL Azure team had just accepted my request and sent the activation code over to me. So let’s have a look on the new SQL Azure Reporting.   Concept The SQL Azure Reporting provides cloud-based reporting as a service, built on SQL Server Reporting Services and SQL Azure technologies. Cloud-based reporting solutions such as SQL Azure Reporting provide many benefits, including rapid provisioning, cost-effective scalability, high availability, and reduced management overhead for report servers; and secure access, viewing, and management of reports. By using the SQL Azure Reporting service, we can do: Embed the Visual Studio Report Viewer ADO.NET Ajax control or Windows Form control to view the reports deployed on SQL Azure Reporting Service in our web or desktop application. Leverage the SQL Azure Reporting SOAP API to manage and retrieve the report content from any kinds of application. Use the SQL Azure Reporting Service Portal to navigate and view the reports deployed on the cloud. Since the SQL Azure Reporting was built based on the SQL Server 2008 R2 Reporting Service, we can use any tools we are familiar with, such as the SQL Server Integration Studio, Visual Studio Report Viewer. The SQL Azure Reporting Service runs as a remote SQL Server Reporting Service just on the cloud rather than on a server besides us.   Establish a New SQL Azure Reporting Let’s move to the windows azure deveploer portal and click the Reporting item from the left side navigation bar. If you don’t have the activation code you can click the Sign Up button to send a requirement to the Microsoft Connect. Since I already recieved the received code mail I clicked the Provision button. Then after agree the terms of the service I will select the subscription for where my SQL Azure Reporting CTP should be provisioned. In this case I selected my free Windows Azure Pass subscription. Then the final step, paste the activation code and enter the password of our SQL Azure Reporting Service. The user name of the SQL Azure Reporting will be generated by SQL Azure automatically. After a while the new SQL Azure Reporting Server will be shown on our developer portal. The Reporting Service URL and the user name will be shown as well. We can reset the password from the toolbar button.   Deploy Report to SQL Azure Reporting If you are familiar with SQL Server Reporting Service you will find this part will be very similar with what you know and what you did before. Firstly we open the SQL Server Business Intelligence Development Studio and create a new Report Server Project. Then we will create a shared data source where the report data will be retrieved from. This data source can be SQL Azure but we can use local SQL Server or other database if it opens the port up. In this case we use a SQL Azure database located in the same data center of our reporting service. In the Credentials tab page we entered the user name and password to this SQL Azure database. The SQL Azure Reporting CTP only available at the North US Data Center now so that the related SQL Server and hosted service might be better to select the same data center to avoid the external data transfer fee. Then we create a very simple report, just retrieve all records from a table named Members and have a table in the report to list them. In the data source selection step we choose the shared data source we created before, then enter the T-SQL to select all records from the Member table, then put all fields into the table columns. The report will be like this as following In order to deploy the report onto the SQL Azure Reporting Service we need to update the project property. Right click the project node from the solution explorer and select the property item. In the Target Server URL item we will specify the reporting server URL of our SQL Azure Reporting. We can go back to the developer portal and select the reporting node from the left side, then copy the Web Service URL and paste here. But notice that we need to append “/reportserver” after pasted. Then just click the Deploy menu item in the context menu of the project, the Visual Studio will compile the report and then upload to the reporting service accordingly. In this step we will be prompted to input the user name and password of our SQL Azure Reporting Service. We can get the user name from the developer portal, just next to the Web Service URL in the SQL Azure Reporting page. And the password is the one we specified when created the reporting service. After about one minute the report will be deployed succeed.   View the Report in Browser SQL Azure Reporting allows us to view the reports which deployed on the cloud from a standard browser. We copied the Web Service URL from the reporting service main page and appended “/reportserver” in HTTPS protocol then we will have the SQL Azure Reporting Service login page. After entered the user name and password of the SQL Azure Reporting Service we can see the directories and reports listed. Click the report will launch the Report Viewer to render the report.   View Report in a Web Role with the Report Viewer The ASP.NET and Windows Form Report Viewer works well with the SQL Azure Reporting Service as well. We can create a ASP.NET Web Role and added the Report Viewer control in the default page. What we need to change to the report viewer are Change the Processing Mode to Remote. Specify the Report Server URL under the Server Remote category to the URL of the SQL Azure Reporting Web Service URL with “/reportserver” appended. Specify the Report Path to the report which we want to display. The report name should NOT include the extension name. For example my report was in the SqlAzureReportingTest project and named MemberList.rdl then the report path should be /SqlAzureReportingTest/MemberList. And the next one is to specify the SQL Azure Reporting Credentials. We can use the following class to wrap the report server credential. 1: private class ReportServerCredentials : IReportServerCredentials 2: { 3: private string _userName; 4: private string _password; 5: private string _domain; 6:  7: public ReportServerCredentials(string userName, string password, string domain) 8: { 9: _userName = userName; 10: _password = password; 11: _domain = domain; 12: } 13:  14: public WindowsIdentity ImpersonationUser 15: { 16: get 17: { 18: return null; 19: } 20: } 21:  22: public ICredentials NetworkCredentials 23: { 24: get 25: { 26: return null; 27: } 28: } 29:  30: public bool GetFormsCredentials(out Cookie authCookie, out string user, out string password, out string authority) 31: { 32: authCookie = null; 33: user = _userName; 34: password = _password; 35: authority = _domain; 36: return true; 37: } 38: } And then in the Page_Load method, pass it to the report viewer. 1: protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) 2: { 3: ReportViewer1.ServerReport.ReportServerCredentials = new ReportServerCredentials( 4: "<user name>", 5: "<password>", 6: "<sql azure reporting web service url>"); 7: } Finally deploy it to Windows Azure and enjoy the report.   Summary In this post I introduced the SQL Azure Reporting CTP which had just available. Likes other features in Windows Azure, the SQL Azure Reporting is very similar with the SQL Server Reporting. As you can see in this post we can use the existing and familiar tools to build and deploy the reports and display them on a website. But the SQL Azure Reporting is just in the CTP stage which means It is free. There’s no support for it. Only available at the North US Data Center. You can get more information about the SQL Azure Reporting CTP from the links following SQL Azure Reporting Limited CTP at MSDN SQL Azure Reporting Samples at TechNet Wiki You can download the solutions and the projects used in this post here.   Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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  • Intermittent wired network issues in 14.04

    - by Tommy Brunn
    Since yesterday, my wired network connection has been dropping for a couple of seconds every 30 seconds or so. To my knowledge, I had not made any changes to my network. Output of ifconfig -a: ? ~ ifconfig -a eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 6c:f0:49:b9:b1:7f inet addr:192.168.0.16 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::6ef0:49ff:feb9:b17f/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:11597 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:9783 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:10101682 (10.1 MB) TX bytes:1215142 (1.2 MB) Interrupt:48 Base address:0x8000 lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:65536 Metric:1 RX packets:96691 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:96691 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:13594355 (13.5 MB) TX bytes:13594355 (13.5 MB) lspci |grep Ethernet: 04:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 03) Pinging my router: ? ~ ping 192.168.0.1 PING 192.168.0.1 (192.168.0.1) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from 192.168.0.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.435 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.0.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.571 ms ping: sendmsg: Network is unreachable ping: sendmsg: Network is unreachable ping: sendmsg: Network is unreachable ping: sendmsg: Network is unreachable ping: sendmsg: Network is unreachable 64 bytes from 192.168.0.1: icmp_seq=8 ttl=64 time=1.03 ms And the output of route: ? ~ route Kernel IP routing table Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface default 192.168.0.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0 192.168.0.0 * 255.255.255.0 U 1 0 0 eth0 Some messages from /var/logs/syslog: ? ~ tail -f /var/log/syslog Jun 6 10:37:34 lolbox dhclient: RCV: Advertise message on eth0 from fe80::120d:7fff:fe97:9d54. Jun 6 10:37:34 lolbox dhclient: IA_NA status code NoAddrsAvail. Jun 6 10:37:37 lolbox dnsmasq[1138]: Maximum number of concurrent DNS queries reached (max: 150) Jun 6 10:37:37 lolbox dnsmasq[1362]: Maximum number of concurrent DNS queries reached (max: 150) Jun 6 10:37:39 lolbox dhclient: XMT: Solicit on eth0, interval 8660ms. Jun 6 10:37:39 lolbox dhclient: RCV: Advertise message on eth0 from fe80::120d:7fff:fe97:9d54. Jun 6 10:37:39 lolbox dhclient: IA_NA status code NoAddrsAvail. Jun 6 10:37:47 lolbox dhclient: XMT: Solicit on eth0, interval 16820ms. Jun 6 10:37:47 lolbox dhclient: RCV: Advertise message on eth0 from fe80::120d:7fff:fe97:9d54. Jun 6 10:37:47 lolbox dhclient: IA_NA status code NoAddrsAvail. Jun 6 10:38:04 lolbox dhclient: XMT: Solicit on eth0, interval 34410ms. Jun 6 10:38:04 lolbox dhclient: RCV: Advertise message on eth0 from fe80::120d:7fff:fe97:9d54. Jun 6 10:38:04 lolbox dhclient: IA_NA status code NoAddrsAvail. Jun 6 10:38:16 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <warn> (eth0): DHCPv6 request timed out. Jun 6 10:38:16 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> (eth0): canceled DHCP transaction, DHCP client pid 13045 Jun 6 10:38:16 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> Activation (eth0) Stage 4 of 5 (IPv6 Configure Timeout) scheduled... Jun 6 10:38:16 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> Activation (eth0) Stage 4 of 5 (IPv6 Configure Timeout) started... Jun 6 10:38:16 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> (eth0): device state change: activated -> failed (reason 'ip-config-unavailable') [100 120 5] Jun 6 10:38:16 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> NetworkManager state is now DISCONNECTED Jun 6 10:38:16 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <warn> Activation (eth0) failed for connection 'Wired connection 1' Jun 6 10:38:16 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> Activation (eth0) Stage 4 of 5 (IPv6 Configure Timeout) complete. Jun 6 10:38:16 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> (eth0): device state change: failed -> disconnected (reason 'none') [120 30 0] Jun 6 10:38:16 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> (eth0): deactivating device (reason 'none') [0] Jun 6 10:37:34 lolbox whoopsie[1133]: online Jun 6 10:38:16 lolbox whoopsie[1133]: offline Jun 6 10:38:16 lolbox dbus[485]: [system] Activating service name='org.freedesktop.nm_dispatcher' (using servicehelper) Jun 6 10:38:16 lolbox dbus[485]: [system] Successfully activated service 'org.freedesktop.nm_dispatcher' Jun 6 10:38:16 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> (eth0): canceled DHCP transaction, DHCP client pid 13044 Jun 6 10:38:16 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <warn> DNS: plugin dnsmasq update failed Jun 6 10:38:16 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> Removing DNS information from /sbin/resolvconf Jun 6 10:38:16 lolbox avahi-daemon[619]: Withdrawing address record for fe80::6ef0:49ff:feb9:b17f on eth0. Jun 6 10:38:16 lolbox avahi-daemon[619]: Leaving mDNS multicast group on interface eth0.IPv6 with address fe80::6ef0:49ff:feb9:b17f. Jun 6 10:38:16 lolbox avahi-daemon[619]: Interface eth0.IPv6 no longer relevant for mDNS. Jun 6 10:38:16 lolbox avahi-daemon[619]: Withdrawing address record for 192.168.0.16 on eth0. Jun 6 10:38:16 lolbox avahi-daemon[619]: Leaving mDNS multicast group on interface eth0.IPv4 with address 192.168.0.16. Jun 6 10:38:16 lolbox avahi-daemon[619]: Interface eth0.IPv4 no longer relevant for mDNS. Jun 6 10:38:16 lolbox dnsmasq[1362]: setting upstream servers from DBus Jun 6 10:38:17 lolbox avahi-daemon[619]: Joining mDNS multicast group on interface eth0.IPv6 with address fe80::6ef0:49ff:feb9:b17f. Jun 6 10:38:17 lolbox avahi-daemon[619]: New relevant interface eth0.IPv6 for mDNS. Jun 6 10:38:17 lolbox avahi-daemon[619]: Registering new address record for fe80::6ef0:49ff:feb9:b17f on eth0.*. Jun 6 10:38:18 lolbox dnsmasq[1138]: no servers found in /var/run/dnsmasq/resolv.conf, will retry Jun 6 10:38:18 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> Auto-activating connection 'Wired connection 1'. Jun 6 10:38:18 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> Activation (eth0) starting connection 'Wired connection 1' Jun 6 10:38:18 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> (eth0): device state change: disconnected -> prepare (reason 'none') [30 40 0] Jun 6 10:38:18 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> NetworkManager state is now CONNECTING Jun 6 10:38:18 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> Activation (eth0) Stage 1 of 5 (Device Prepare) scheduled... Jun 6 10:38:18 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> Activation (eth0) Stage 1 of 5 (Device Prepare) started... Jun 6 10:38:18 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> Activation (eth0) Stage 2 of 5 (Device Configure) scheduled... Jun 6 10:38:18 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> Activation (eth0) Stage 1 of 5 (Device Prepare) complete. Jun 6 10:38:18 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> Activation (eth0) Stage 2 of 5 (Device Configure) starting... Jun 6 10:38:18 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> (eth0): device state change: prepare -> config (reason 'none') [40 50 0] Jun 6 10:38:18 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> Activation (eth0) Stage 2 of 5 (Device Configure) successful. Jun 6 10:38:18 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> Activation (eth0) Stage 3 of 5 (IP Configure Start) scheduled. Jun 6 10:38:18 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> Activation (eth0) Stage 2 of 5 (Device Configure) complete. Jun 6 10:38:18 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> Activation (eth0) Stage 3 of 5 (IP Configure Start) started... Jun 6 10:38:18 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> (eth0): device state change: config -> ip-config (reason 'none') [50 70 0] Jun 6 10:38:18 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> Activation (eth0) Beginning DHCPv4 transaction (timeout in 45 seconds) Jun 6 10:38:18 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> dhclient started with pid 13160 Jun 6 10:38:18 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> Activation (eth0) Beginning DHCPv6 transaction (timeout in 45 seconds) Jun 6 10:38:18 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> dhclient started with pid 13161 Jun 6 10:38:18 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> Activation (eth0) Stage 3 of 5 (IP Configure Start) complete. Jun 6 10:38:18 lolbox avahi-daemon[619]: Withdrawing address record for fe80::6ef0:49ff:feb9:b17f on eth0. Jun 6 10:38:18 lolbox avahi-daemon[619]: Leaving mDNS multicast group on interface eth0.IPv6 with address fe80::6ef0:49ff:feb9:b17f. Jun 6 10:38:18 lolbox avahi-daemon[619]: Interface eth0.IPv6 no longer relevant for mDNS. Jun 6 10:38:18 lolbox dhclient: Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client 4.2.4 Jun 6 10:38:18 lolbox dhclient: Copyright 2004-2012 Internet Systems Consortium. Jun 6 10:38:18 lolbox dhclient: All rights reserved. Jun 6 10:38:18 lolbox dhclient: For info, please visit https://www.isc.org/software/dhcp/ Jun 6 10:38:18 lolbox dhclient: Jun 6 10:38:19 lolbox dhclient: Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client 4.2.4 Jun 6 10:38:19 lolbox dhclient: Copyright 2004-2012 Internet Systems Consortium. Jun 6 10:38:19 lolbox dhclient: All rights reserved. Jun 6 10:38:19 lolbox dhclient: For info, please visit https://www.isc.org/software/dhcp/ Jun 6 10:38:19 lolbox dhclient: Jun 6 10:38:19 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> (eth0): DHCPv4 state changed nbi -> preinit Jun 6 10:38:19 lolbox dhclient: Bound to *:546 Jun 6 10:38:19 lolbox dhclient: Listening on Socket/eth0 Jun 6 10:38:19 lolbox dhclient: Sending on Socket/eth0 Jun 6 10:38:19 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> (eth0): DHCPv6 state changed nbi -> preinit6 Jun 6 10:38:19 lolbox dhclient: Listening on LPF/eth0/6c:f0:49:b9:b1:7f Jun 6 10:38:19 lolbox dhclient: Sending on LPF/eth0/6c:f0:49:b9:b1:7f Jun 6 10:38:19 lolbox dhclient: Sending on Socket/fallback Jun 6 10:38:19 lolbox dhclient: DHCPREQUEST of 192.168.0.16 on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 (xid=0x3fc9376d) Jun 6 10:38:19 lolbox dhclient: XMT: Solicit on eth0, interval 1020ms. Jun 6 10:38:19 lolbox dhclient: send_packet6: Cannot assign requested address Jun 6 10:38:19 lolbox dhclient: dhc6: send_packet6() sent -1 of 77 bytes Jun 6 10:38:20 lolbox dhclient: DHCPACK of 192.168.0.16 from 192.168.0.1 Jun 6 10:38:20 lolbox dhclient: bound to 192.168.0.16 -- renewal in 41481 seconds. Jun 6 10:38:20 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> (eth0): DHCPv4 state changed preinit -> reboot Jun 6 10:38:20 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> address 192.168.0.16 Jun 6 10:38:20 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> prefix 24 (255.255.255.0) Jun 6 10:38:20 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> gateway 192.168.0.1 Jun 6 10:38:20 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> nameserver '83.255.245.11' Jun 6 10:38:20 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> nameserver '193.150.193.150' Jun 6 10:38:20 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> Activation (eth0) Stage 5 of 5 (IPv4 Configure Commit) scheduled... Jun 6 10:38:20 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> Activation (eth0) Stage 5 of 5 (IPv4 Commit) started... Jun 6 10:38:20 lolbox avahi-daemon[619]: Joining mDNS multicast group on interface eth0.IPv4 with address 192.168.0.16. Jun 6 10:38:20 lolbox avahi-daemon[619]: New relevant interface eth0.IPv4 for mDNS. Jun 6 10:38:20 lolbox avahi-daemon[619]: Registering new address record for 192.168.0.16 on eth0.IPv4. Jun 6 10:38:20 lolbox dhclient: XMT: Solicit on eth0, interval 2110ms. Jun 6 10:38:20 lolbox dhclient: send_packet6: Cannot assign requested address Jun 6 10:38:20 lolbox dhclient: dhc6: send_packet6() sent -1 of 77 bytes Jun 6 10:38:20 lolbox avahi-daemon[619]: Joining mDNS multicast group on interface eth0.IPv6 with address fe80::6ef0:49ff:feb9:b17f. Jun 6 10:38:20 lolbox avahi-daemon[619]: New relevant interface eth0.IPv6 for mDNS. Jun 6 10:38:20 lolbox avahi-daemon[619]: Registering new address record for fe80::6ef0:49ff:feb9:b17f on eth0.*. Jun 6 10:38:21 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> (eth0): device state change: ip-config -> secondaries (reason 'none') [70 90 0] Jun 6 10:38:21 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> Activation (eth0) Stage 5 of 5 (IPv4 Commit) complete. Jun 6 10:38:21 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> (eth0): device state change: secondaries -> activated (reason 'none') [90 100 0] Jun 6 10:38:21 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> NetworkManager state is now CONNECTED_GLOBAL Jun 6 10:38:21 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> Policy set 'Wired connection 1' (eth0) as default for IPv4 routing and DNS. Jun 6 10:38:21 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> Writing DNS information to /sbin/resolvconf Jun 6 10:38:21 lolbox dnsmasq[1362]: setting upstream servers from DBus Jun 6 10:38:21 lolbox dnsmasq[1362]: using nameserver 127.0.0.1#53 Jun 6 10:38:21 lolbox dnsmasq[1362]: using nameserver 193.150.193.150#53 Jun 6 10:38:21 lolbox dnsmasq[1362]: using nameserver 83.255.245.11#53 Jun 6 10:38:21 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> Activation (eth0) successful, device activated. Jun 6 10:38:21 lolbox whoopsie[1133]: message repeated 2 times: [ offline] Jun 6 10:38:21 lolbox whoopsie[1133]: online Jun 6 10:38:21 lolbox ntpdate[13217]: Can't find host ntp.ubuntu.com: Name or service not known (-2) Jun 6 10:38:21 lolbox ntpdate[13217]: no servers can be used, exiting Jun 6 10:38:22 lolbox dnsmasq[1138]: reading /var/run/dnsmasq/resolv.conf Jun 6 10:38:22 lolbox dnsmasq[1138]: using nameserver 127.0.1.1#53 Jun 6 10:38:22 lolbox dhclient: XMT: Solicit on eth0, interval 4080ms. Jun 6 10:38:22 lolbox dhclient: RCV: Advertise message on eth0 from fe80::120d:7fff:fe97:9d54. Jun 6 10:38:22 lolbox dhclient: IA_NA status code NoAddrsAvail. Jun 6 10:38:26 lolbox dhclient: XMT: Solicit on eth0, interval 8450ms. Jun 6 10:38:26 lolbox dhclient: RCV: Advertise message on eth0 from fe80::120d:7fff:fe97:9d54. Jun 6 10:38:26 lolbox dhclient: IA_NA status code NoAddrsAvail. Jun 6 10:38:35 lolbox dhclient: XMT: Solicit on eth0, interval 16630ms. Jun 6 10:38:35 lolbox dhclient: RCV: Advertise message on eth0 from fe80::120d:7fff:fe97:9d54. Jun 6 10:38:35 lolbox dhclient: IA_NA status code NoAddrsAvail. Jun 6 10:38:51 lolbox dhclient: XMT: Solicit on eth0, interval 34860ms. Jun 6 10:38:51 lolbox dhclient: RCV: Advertise message on eth0 from fe80::120d:7fff:fe97:9d54. Jun 6 10:38:51 lolbox dhclient: IA_NA status code NoAddrsAvail. Jun 6 10:38:58 lolbox dnsmasq[1138]: Maximum number of concurrent DNS queries reached (max: 150) Jun 6 10:38:58 lolbox dnsmasq[1362]: Maximum number of concurrent DNS queries reached (max: 150) Jun 6 10:39:04 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <warn> (eth0): DHCPv6 request timed out. Jun 6 10:39:04 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> (eth0): canceled DHCP transaction, DHCP client pid 13161 Jun 6 10:39:04 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> Activation (eth0) Stage 4 of 5 (IPv6 Configure Timeout) scheduled... Jun 6 10:39:04 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> Activation (eth0) Stage 4 of 5 (IPv6 Configure Timeout) started... Jun 6 10:39:04 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> (eth0): device state change: activated -> failed (reason 'ip-config-unavailable') [100 120 5] Jun 6 10:39:04 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> NetworkManager state is now DISCONNECTED Jun 6 10:39:04 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <warn> Activation (eth0) failed for connection 'Wired connection 1' Jun 6 10:38:22 lolbox whoopsie[1133]: online Jun 6 10:39:04 lolbox whoopsie[1133]: offline Jun 6 10:39:04 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> Activation (eth0) Stage 4 of 5 (IPv6 Configure Timeout) complete. Jun 6 10:39:04 lolbox dbus[485]: [system] Activating service name='org.freedesktop.nm_dispatcher' (using servicehelper) Jun 6 10:39:04 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> (eth0): device state change: failed -> disconnected (reason 'none') [120 30 0] Jun 6 10:39:04 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> (eth0): deactivating device (reason 'none') [0] Jun 6 10:39:04 lolbox dbus[485]: [system] Successfully activated service 'org.freedesktop.nm_dispatcher' Jun 6 10:39:04 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> (eth0): canceled DHCP transaction, DHCP client pid 13160 Jun 6 10:39:04 lolbox avahi-daemon[619]: Withdrawing address record for fe80::6ef0:49ff:feb9:b17f on eth0. Jun 6 10:39:04 lolbox avahi-daemon[619]: Leaving mDNS multicast group on interface eth0.IPv6 with address fe80::6ef0:49ff:feb9:b17f. Jun 6 10:39:04 lolbox avahi-daemon[619]: Interface eth0.IPv6 no longer relevant for mDNS. Jun 6 10:39:04 lolbox avahi-daemon[619]: Withdrawing address record for 192.168.0.16 on eth0. Jun 6 10:39:04 lolbox avahi-daemon[619]: Leaving mDNS multicast group on interface eth0.IPv4 with address 192.168.0.16. Jun 6 10:39:04 lolbox avahi-daemon[619]: Interface eth0.IPv4 no longer relevant for mDNS. Jun 6 10:39:04 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <warn> DNS: plugin dnsmasq update failed Jun 6 10:39:04 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> Removing DNS information from /sbin/resolvconf Jun 6 10:39:04 lolbox dnsmasq[1362]: setting upstream servers from DBus Jun 6 10:39:05 lolbox avahi-daemon[619]: Joining mDNS multicast group on interface eth0.IPv6 with address fe80::6ef0:49ff:feb9:b17f. Jun 6 10:39:05 lolbox avahi-daemon[619]: New relevant interface eth0.IPv6 for mDNS. Jun 6 10:39:05 lolbox avahi-daemon[619]: Registering new address record for fe80::6ef0:49ff:feb9:b17f on eth0.*. Jun 6 10:39:06 lolbox dnsmasq[1138]: no servers found in /var/run/dnsmasq/resolv.conf, will retry Jun 6 10:39:07 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> Auto-activating connection 'Wired connection 1'. Jun 6 10:39:07 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> Activation (eth0) starting connection 'Wired connection 1' Jun 6 10:39:07 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> (eth0): device state change: disconnected -> prepare (reason 'none') [30 40 0] Jun 6 10:39:07 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> NetworkManager state is now CONNECTING Jun 6 10:39:07 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> Activation (eth0) Stage 1 of 5 (Device Prepare) scheduled... Jun 6 10:39:07 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> Activation (eth0) Stage 1 of 5 (Device Prepare) started... Jun 6 10:39:07 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> Activation (eth0) Stage 2 of 5 (Device Configure) scheduled... Jun 6 10:39:07 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> Activation (eth0) Stage 1 of 5 (Device Prepare) complete. Jun 6 10:39:07 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> Activation (eth0) Stage 2 of 5 (Device Configure) starting... Jun 6 10:39:07 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> (eth0): device state change: prepare -> config (reason 'none') [40 50 0] Jun 6 10:39:07 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> Activation (eth0) Stage 2 of 5 (Device Configure) successful. Jun 6 10:39:07 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> Activation (eth0) Stage 3 of 5 (IP Configure Start) scheduled. Jun 6 10:39:07 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> Activation (eth0) Stage 2 of 5 (Device Configure) complete. Jun 6 10:39:07 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> Activation (eth0) Stage 3 of 5 (IP Configure Start) started... Jun 6 10:39:07 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> (eth0): device state change: config -> ip-config (reason 'none') [50 70 0] Jun 6 10:39:07 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> Activation (eth0) Beginning DHCPv4 transaction (timeout in 45 seconds) Jun 6 10:39:07 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> dhclient started with pid 13270 Jun 6 10:39:07 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> Activation (eth0) Beginning DHCPv6 transaction (timeout in 45 seconds) Jun 6 10:39:07 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> dhclient started with pid 13271 Jun 6 10:39:07 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> Activation (eth0) Stage 3 of 5 (IP Configure Start) complete. Jun 6 10:39:07 lolbox avahi-daemon[619]: Withdrawing address record for fe80::6ef0:49ff:feb9:b17f on eth0. Jun 6 10:39:07 lolbox avahi-daemon[619]: Leaving mDNS multicast group on interface eth0.IPv6 with address fe80::6ef0:49ff:feb9:b17f. Jun 6 10:39:07 lolbox avahi-daemon[619]: Interface eth0.IPv6 no longer relevant for mDNS. Jun 6 10:39:07 lolbox dhclient: Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client 4.2.4 Jun 6 10:39:07 lolbox dhclient: Copyright 2004-2012 Internet Systems Consortium. Jun 6 10:39:07 lolbox dhclient: All rights reserved. Jun 6 10:39:07 lolbox dhclient: For info, please visit https://www.isc.org/software/dhcp/ Jun 6 10:39:07 lolbox dhclient: Jun 6 10:39:08 lolbox dhclient: Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client 4.2.4 Jun 6 10:39:08 lolbox dhclient: Copyright 2004-2012 Internet Systems Consortium. Jun 6 10:39:08 lolbox dhclient: All rights reserved. Jun 6 10:39:08 lolbox dhclient: For info, please visit https://www.isc.org/software/dhcp/ Jun 6 10:39:08 lolbox dhclient: Jun 6 10:39:08 lolbox dhclient: Bound to *:546 Jun 6 10:39:08 lolbox dhclient: Listening on Socket/eth0 Jun 6 10:39:08 lolbox dhclient: Sending on Socket/eth0 Jun 6 10:39:08 lolbox kernel: [ 1446.098590] type=1400 audit(1402043948.002:75): apparmor="DENIED" operation="signal" profile="/usr/lib/NetworkManager/nm-dhcp-client.action" pid=13273 comm="nm-dhcp-client." requested_mask="send" denied_mask="send" signal=term peer="/sbin/dhclient" Jun 6 10:39:08 lolbox kernel: [ 1446.098599] type=1400 audit(1402043948.002:76): apparmor="DENIED" operation="signal" profile="/sbin/dhclient" pid=13273 comm="nm-dhcp-client." requested_mask="receive" denied_mask="receive" signal=term peer="/usr/lib/NetworkManager/nm-dhcp-client.action" Jun 6 10:39:08 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> (eth0): DHCPv4 state changed nbi -> preinit Jun 6 10:39:08 lolbox dhclient: Listening on LPF/eth0/6c:f0:49:b9:b1:7f Jun 6 10:39:08 lolbox dhclient: Sending on LPF/eth0/6c:f0:49:b9:b1:7f Jun 6 10:39:08 lolbox dhclient: Sending on Socket/fallback Jun 6 10:39:08 lolbox dhclient: DHCPREQUEST of 192.168.0.16 on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 (xid=0x3e0183b9) Jun 6 10:39:08 lolbox dhclient: XMT: Solicit on eth0, interval 1050ms. Jun 6 10:39:08 lolbox dhclient: send_packet6: Cannot assign requested address Jun 6 10:39:08 lolbox dhclient: dhc6: send_packet6() sent -1 of 77 bytes Jun 6 10:39:09 lolbox dhclient: DHCPACK of 192.168.0.16 from 192.168.0.1 Jun 6 10:39:09 lolbox dhclient: bound to 192.168.0.16 -- renewal in 35498 seconds. Jun 6 10:39:09 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> (eth0): DHCPv4 state changed preinit -> reboot Jun 6 10:39:09 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> address 192.168.0.16 Jun 6 10:39:09 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> prefix 24 (255.255.255.0) Jun 6 10:39:09 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> gateway 192.168.0.1 Jun 6 10:39:09 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> nameserver '83.255.245.11' Jun 6 10:39:09 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> nameserver '193.150.193.150' Jun 6 10:39:09 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> Activation (eth0) Stage 5 of 5 (IPv4 Configure Commit) scheduled... Jun 6 10:39:09 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> Activation (eth0) Stage 5 of 5 (IPv4 Commit) started... Jun 6 10:39:09 lolbox avahi-daemon[619]: Joining mDNS multicast group on interface eth0.IPv4 with address 192.168.0.16. Jun 6 10:39:09 lolbox avahi-daemon[619]: New relevant interface eth0.IPv4 for mDNS. Jun 6 10:39:09 lolbox avahi-daemon[619]: Registering new address record for 192.168.0.16 on eth0.IPv4. Jun 6 10:39:09 lolbox avahi-daemon[619]: Joining mDNS multicast group on interface eth0.IPv6 with address fe80::6ef0:49ff:feb9:b17f. Jun 6 10:39:09 lolbox avahi-daemon[619]: New relevant interface eth0.IPv6 for mDNS. Jun 6 10:39:09 lolbox avahi-daemon[619]: Registering new address record for fe80::6ef0:49ff:feb9:b17f on eth0.*. Jun 6 10:39:10 lolbox dhclient: XMT: Solicit on eth0, interval 2180ms. Jun 6 10:39:10 lolbox dhclient: RCV: Advertise message on eth0 from fe80::120d:7fff:fe97:9d54. Jun 6 10:39:10 lolbox dhclient: IA_NA status code NoAddrsAvail. Jun 6 10:39:10 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> (eth0): device state change: ip-config -> secondaries (reason 'none') [70 90 0] Jun 6 10:39:10 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> Activation (eth0) Stage 5 of 5 (IPv4 Commit) complete. Jun 6 10:39:10 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> (eth0): device state change: secondaries -> activated (reason 'none') [90 100 0] Jun 6 10:39:10 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> NetworkManager state is now CONNECTED_GLOBAL Jun 6 10:39:10 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> Policy set 'Wired connection 1' (eth0) as default for IPv4 routing and DNS. Jun 6 10:39:10 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> Writing DNS information to /sbin/resolvconf Jun 6 10:39:10 lolbox dnsmasq[1362]: setting upstream servers from DBus Jun 6 10:39:10 lolbox dnsmasq[1362]: using nameserver 127.0.0.1#53 Jun 6 10:39:10 lolbox dnsmasq[1362]: using nameserver 193.150.193.150#53 Jun 6 10:39:10 lolbox dnsmasq[1362]: using nameserver 83.255.245.11#53 Jun 6 10:39:10 lolbox NetworkManager[862]: <info> Activation (eth0) successful, device activated. Jun 6 10:39:10 lolbox whoopsie[1133]: message repeated 2 times: [ offline] Jun 6 10:39:10 lolbox whoopsie[1133]: online Jun 6 10:39:10 lolbox ntpdate[13339]: Can't find host ntp.ubuntu.com: Name or service not known (-2) Jun 6 10:39:10 lolbox ntpdate[13339]: no servers can be used, exiting Jun 6 10:39:11 lolbox dnsmasq[1138]: reading /var/run/dnsmasq/resolv.conf Jun 6 10:39:11 lolbox dnsmasq[1138]: using nameserver 127.0.1.1#53 Jun 6 10:39:12 lolbox dhclient: XMT: Solicit on eth0, interval 4350ms. Jun 6 10:39:12 lolbox dhclient: RCV: Advertise message on eth0 from fe80::120d:7fff:fe97:9d54. Jun 6 10:39:12 lolbox dhclient: IA_NA status code NoAddrsAvail. Jun 6 10:39:16 lolbox dhclient: XMT: Solicit on eth0, interval 8740ms. Jun 6 10:39:16 lolbox dhclient: RCV: Advertise message on eth0 from fe80::120d:7fff:fe97:9d54. Jun 6 10:39:16 lolbox dhclient: IA_NA status code NoAddrsAvail. Jun 6 10:39:17 lolbox dnsmasq[1138]: Maximum number of concurrent DNS queries reached (max: 150) Jun 6 10:39:17 lolbox dnsmasq[1362]: Maximum number of concurrent DNS queries reached (max: 150) Jun 6 10:39:25 lolbox dhclient: XMT: Solicit on eth0, interval 17610ms. Jun 6 10:39:25 lolbox dhclient: RCV: Advertise message on eth0 from fe80::120d:7fff:fe97:9d54. Jun 6 10:39:25 lolbox dhclient: IA_NA status code NoAddrsAvail.

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  • SQL SERVER – Extending SQL Azure with Azure worker role – Guest Post by Paras Doshi

    - by pinaldave
    This is guest post by Paras Doshi. Paras Doshi is a research Intern at SolidQ.com and a Microsoft student partner. He is currently working in the domain of SQL Azure. SQL Azure is nothing but a SQL server in the cloud. SQL Azure provides benefits such as on demand rapid provisioning, cost-effective scalability, high availability and reduced management overhead. To see an introduction on SQL Azure, check out the post by Pinal here In this article, we are going to discuss how to extend SQL Azure with the Azure worker role. In other words, we will attempt to write a custom code and host it in the Azure worker role; the aim is to add some features that are not available with SQL Azure currently or features that need to be customized for flexibility. This way we extend the SQL Azure capability by building some solutions that run on Azure as worker roles. To understand Azure worker role, think of it as a windows service in cloud. Azure worker role can perform background processes, and to handle processes such as synchronization and backup, it becomes our ideal tool. First, we will focus on writing a worker role code that synchronizes SQL Azure databases. Before we do so, let’s see some scenarios in which synchronization between SQL Azure databases is beneficial: scaling out access over multiple databases enables us to handle workload efficiently As of now, SQL Azure database can be hosted in one of any six datacenters. By synchronizing databases located in different data centers, one can extend the data by enabling access to geographically distributed data Let us see some scenarios in which SQL server to SQL Azure database synchronization is beneficial To backup SQL Azure database on local infrastructure Rather than investing in local infrastructure for increased workloads, such workloads could be handled by cloud Ability to extend data to different datacenters located across the world to enable efficient data access from remote locations Now, let us develop cloud-based app that synchronizes SQL Azure databases. For an Introduction to developing cloud based apps, click here Now, in this article, I aim to provide a bird’s eye view of how a code that synchronizes SQL Azure databases look like and then list resources that can help you develop the solution from scratch. Now, if you newly add a worker role to the cloud-based project, this is how the code will look like. (Note: I have added comments to the skeleton code to point out the modifications that will be required in the code to carry out the SQL Azure synchronization. Note the placement of Setup() and Sync() function.) Click here (http://parasdoshi1989.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/code-snippet-1-for-extending-sql-azure-with-azure-worker-role1.pdf ) Enabling SQL Azure databases synchronization through sync framework is a two-step process. In the first step, the database is provisioned and sync framework creates tracking tables, stored procedures, triggers, and tables to store metadata to enable synchronization. This is one time step. The code for the same is put in the setup() function which is called once when the worker role starts. Now, the second step is continuous (or on demand) synchronization of SQL Azure databases by propagating changes between databases. This is done on a continuous basis by calling the sync() function in the while loop. The code logic to synchronize changes between SQL Azure databases should be put in the sync() function. Discussing the coding part step by step is out of the scope of this article. Therefore, let me suggest you a resource, which is given here. Also, note that before you start developing the code, you will need to install SYNC framework 2.1 SDK (download here). Further, you will reference some libraries before you start coding. Details regarding the same are available in the article that I just pointed to. You will be charged for data transfers if the databases are not in the same datacenter. For pricing information, go here Currently, a tool named DATA SYNC, which is built on top of sync framework, is available in CTP that allows SQL Azure <-> SQL server and SQL Azure <-> SQL Azure synchronization (without writing single line of code); however, in some cases, the custom code shown in this blogpost provides flexibility that is not available with Data SYNC. For instance, filtering is not supported in the SQL Azure DATA SYNC CTP2; if you wish to have such a functionality now, then you have the option of developing a custom code using SYNC Framework. Now, this code can be easily extended to synchronize at some schedule. Let us say we want the databases to get synchronized every day at 10:00 pm. This is what the code will look like now: (http://parasdoshi1989.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/code-snippet-2-for-extending-sql-azure-with-azure-worker-role.pdf) Don’t you think that by writing such a code, we are imitating the functionality provided by the SQL server agent for a SQL server? Think about it. We are scheduling our administrative task by writing custom code – in other words, we have developed a “Light weight SQL server agent for SQL Azure!” Since the SQL server agent is not currently available in cloud, we have developed a solution that enables us to schedule tasks, and thus we have extended SQL Azure with the Azure worker role! Now if you wish to track jobs, you can do so by storing this data in SQL Azure (or Azure tables). The reason is that Windows Azure is a stateless platform, and we will need to store the state of the job ourselves and the choice that you have is SQL Azure or Azure tables. Note that this solution requires custom code and also it is not UI driven; however, for now, it can act as a temporary solution until SQL server agent is made available in the cloud. Moreover, this solution does not encompass functionalities that a SQL server agent provides, but it does open up an interesting avenue to schedule some of the tasks such as backup and synchronization of SQL Azure databases by writing some custom code in the Azure worker role. Now, let us see one more possibility – i.e., running BCP through a worker role in Azure-hosted services and then uploading the backup files either locally or on blobs. If you upload it locally, then consider the data transfer cost. If you upload it to blobs residing in the same datacenter, then no transfer cost applies but the cost on blob size applies. So, before choosing the option, you need to evaluate your preferences keeping the cost associated with each option in mind. In this article, I have shown that Azure worker role solution could be developed to synchronize SQL Azure databases. Moreover, a light-weight SQL server agent for SQL Azure can be developed. Also we discussed the possibility of running BCP through a worker role in Azure-hosted services for backing up our precious SQL Azure data. Thus, we can extend SQL Azure with the Azure worker role. But remember: you will be charged for running Azure worker roles. So at the end of the day, you need to ask – am I willing to build a custom code and pay money to achieve this functionality? I hope you found this blog post interesting. If you have any questions/feedback, you can comment below or you can mail me at Paras[at]student-partners[dot]com Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Azure, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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  • It's not just “Single Sign-on” by Steve Knott (aurionPro SENA)

    - by Greg Jensen
    It is true that Oracle Enterprise Single Sign-on (Oracle ESSO) started out as purely an application single sign-on tool but as we have seen in the previous articles in this series the product has matured into a suite of tools that can do more than just automated single sign-on and can also provide rapidly deployed, cost effective solution to many demanding password management problems. In the last article of this series I would like to discuss three cases where customers faced password scenarios that required more than just single sign-on and how some of the less well known tools in the Oracle ESSO suite “kitbag” helped solve these challenges. Case #1 One of the issues often faced by our customers is how to keep their applications compliant. I had a client who liked the idea of automated single sign-on for most of his applications but had a key requirement to actually increase the security for one specific SOX application. For the SOX application he wanted to secure access by using two-factor authentication with a smartcard. The problem was that the application did not support two-factor authentication. The solution was to use a feature from the Oracle ESSO suite called authentication manager. This feature enables you to have multiple authentication methods for the same user which in this case was a smartcard and the Windows password.  Within authentication manager each authenticator can be configured with a security grade so we gave the smartcard a high grade and the Windows password a normal grade. Security grading in Oracle ESSO can be configured on a per application basis so we set the SOX application to require the higher grade smartcard authenticator. The end result for the user was that they enjoyed automated single sign-on for most of the applications apart from the SOX application. When the SOX application was launched, the user was required by ESSO to present their smartcard before being given access to the application. Case #2 Another example solving compliance issues was in the case of a large energy company who had a number of core billing applications. New regulations required that users change their password regularly and use a complex password. The problem facing the customer was that the core billing applications did not have any native user password change functionality. The customer could not replace the core applications because of the cost and time required to re-develop them. With a reputation for innovation aurionPro SENA were approached to provide a solution to this problem using Oracle ESSO. Oracle ESSO has a password expiry feature that can be triggered periodically based on the timestamp of the users’ last password creation therefore our strategy here was to leverage this feature to provide the password change experience. The trigger can launch an application change password event however in this scenario there was no native change password feature that could be launched therefore a “dummy” change password screen was created that could imitate the missing change password function and connect to the application database on behalf of the user. Oracle ESSO was configured to trigger a change password event every 60 days. After this period if the user launched the application Oracle ESSO would detect the logon screen and invoke the password expiry feature. Oracle ESSO would trigger the “dummy screen,” detect it automatically as the application change password screen and insert a complex password on behalf of the user. After the password event had completed the user was logged on to the application with their new password. All this was provided at a fraction of the cost of re-developing the core applications. Case #3 Recent popular initiatives such as the BYOD and working from home schemes bring with them many challenges in administering “unmanaged machines” and sometimes “unmanageable users.” In a recent case, a client had a dispersed community of casual contractors who worked for the business using their own laptops to access applications. To improve security the around password management the security goal was to provision the passwords directly to these contractors. In a previous article we saw how Oracle ESSO has the capability to provision passwords through Provisioning Gateway but the challenge in this scenario was how to get the Oracle ESSO agent to the casual contractor on an unmanaged machine. The answer was to use another tool in the suite, Oracle ESSO Anywhere. This component can compile the normal Oracle ESSO functionality into a deployment package that can be made available from a website in a similar way to a streamed application. The ESSO Anywhere agent does not actually install into the registry or program files but runs in a folder within the user’s profile therefore no local administrator rights are required for installation. The ESSO Anywhere package can also be configured to stay persistent or disable itself at the end of the user’s session. In this case the user just needed to be told where the website package was located and download the package. Once the download was complete the agent started automatically and the user was provided with single sign-on to their applications without ever knowing the application passwords. Finally, as we have seen in these series Oracle ESSO not only has great utilities in its own tool box but also has direct integration with Oracle Privileged Account Manager, Oracle Identity Manager and Oracle Access Manager. Integrated together with these tools provides a complete and complementary platform to address even the most complex identity and access management requirements. So what next for Oracle ESSO? “Agentless ESSO available in the cloud” – but that will be a subject for a future Oracle ESSO series!                                                                                                                               

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  • SQL – Migrate Database from SQL Server to NuoDB – A Quick Tutorial

    - by Pinal Dave
    Data is growing exponentially and every organization with growing data is thinking of next big innovation in the world of Big Data. Big data is a indeed a future for every organization at one point of the time. Just like every other next big thing, big data has its own challenges and issues. The biggest challenge associated with the big data is to find the ideal platform which supports the scalability and growth of the data. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you must be familiar with NuoDB. I have been working with NuoDB for a while and their recent release is the best thus far. NuoDB is an elastically scalable SQL database that can run on local host, datacenter and cloud-based resources. A key feature of the product is that it does not require sharding (read more here). Last week, I was able to install NuoDB in less than 90 seconds and have explored their Explorer and Admin sections. You can read about my experiences in these posts: SQL – Step by Step Guide to Download and Install NuoDB – Getting Started with NuoDB SQL – Quick Start with Admin Sections of NuoDB – Manage NuoDB Database SQL – Quick Start with Explorer Sections of NuoDB – Query NuoDB Database Many SQL Authority readers have been following me in my journey to evaluate NuoDB. One of the frequently asked questions I’ve received from you is if there is any way to migrate data from SQL Server to NuoDB. The fact is that there is indeed a way to do so and NuoDB provides a fantastic tool which can help users to do it. NuoDB Migrator is a command line utility that supports the migration of Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, and PostgreSQL schemas and data to NuoDB. The migration to NuoDB is a three-step process: NuoDB Migrator generates a schema for a target NuoDB database It loads data into the target NuoDB database It dumps data from the source database Let’s see how we can migrate our data from SQL Server to NuoDB using a simple three-step approach. But before we do that we will create a sample database in MSSQL and later we will migrate the same database to NuoDB: Setup Step 1: Build a sample data CREATE DATABASE [Test]; CREATE TABLE [Department]( [DepartmentID] [smallint] NOT NULL, [Name] VARCHAR(100) NOT NULL, [GroupName] VARCHAR(100) NOT NULL, [ModifiedDate] [datetime] NOT NULL, CONSTRAINT [PK_Department_DepartmentID] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED ( [DepartmentID] ASC ) ) ON [PRIMARY]; INSERT INTO Department SELECT * FROM AdventureWorks2012.HumanResources.Department; Note that I am using the SQL Server AdventureWorks database to build this sample table but you can build this sample table any way you prefer. Setup Step 2: Install Java 64 bit Before you can begin the migration process to NuoDB, make sure you have 64-bit Java installed on your computer. This is due to the fact that the NuoDB Migrator tool is built in Java. You can download 64-bit Java for Windows, Mac OSX, or Linux from the following link: http://java.com/en/download/manual.jsp. One more thing to remember is that you make sure that the path in your environment settings is set to your JAVA_HOME directory or else the tool will not work. Here is how you can do it: Go to My Computer >> Right Click >> Select Properties >> Click on Advanced System Settings >> Click on Environment Variables >> Click on New and enter the following values. Variable Name: JAVA_HOME Variable Value: C:\Program Files\Java\jre7 Make sure you enter your Java installation directory in the Variable Value field. Setup Step 3: Install JDBC driver for SQL Server. There are two JDBC drivers available for SQL Server.  Select the one you prefer to use by following one of the two links below: Microsoft JDBC Driver jTDS JDBC Driver In this example we will be using jTDS JDBC driver. Once you download the driver, move the driver to your NuoDB installation folder. In my case, I have moved the JAR file of the driver into the C:\Program Files\NuoDB\tools\migrator\jar folder as this is my NuoDB installation directory. Now we are all set to start the three-step migration process from SQL Server to NuoDB: Migration Step 1: NuoDB Schema Generation Here is the command I use to generate a schema of my SQL Server Database in NuoDB. First I go to the folder C:\Program Files\NuoDB\tools\migrator\bin and execute the nuodb-migrator.bat file. Note that my database name is ‘test’. Additionally my username and password is also ‘test’. You can see that my SQL Server database is running on my localhost on port 1433. Additionally, the schema of the table is ‘dbo’. nuodb-migrator schema –source.driver=net.sourceforge.jtds.jdbc.Driver –source.url=jdbc:jtds:sqlserver://localhost:1433/ –source.username=test –source.password=test –source.catalog=test –source.schema=dbo –output.path=/tmp/schema.sql The above script will generate a schema of all my SQL Server tables and will put it in the folder C:\tmp\schema.sql . You can open the schema.sql file and execute this file directly in your NuoDB instance. You can follow the link here to see how you can execute the SQL script in NuoDB. Please note that if you have not yet created the schema in the NuoDB database, you should create it before executing this step. Step 2: Generate the Dump File of the Data Once you have recreated your schema in NuoDB from SQL Server, the next step is very easy. Here we create a CSV format dump file, which will contain all the data from all the tables from the SQL Server database. The command to do so is very similar to the above command. Be aware that this step may take a bit of time based on your database size. nuodb-migrator dump –source.driver=net.sourceforge.jtds.jdbc.Driver –source.url=jdbc:jtds:sqlserver://localhost:1433/ –source.username=test –source.password=test –source.catalog=test –source.schema=dbo –output.type=csv –output.path=/tmp/dump.cat Once the above command is successfully executed you can find your CSV file in the C:\tmp\ folder. However, you do not have to do anything manually. The third and final step will take care of completing the migration process. Migration Step 3: Load the Data into NuoDB After building schema and taking a dump of the data, the very next step is essential and crucial. It will take the CSV file and load it into the NuoDB database. nuodb-migrator load –target.url=jdbc:com.nuodb://localhost:48004/mytest –target.schema=dbo –target.username=test –target.password=test –input.path=/tmp/dump.cat Please note that in the above script we are now targeting the NuoDB database, which we have already created with the name of “MyTest”. If the database does not exist, create it manually before executing the above script. I have kept the username and password as “test”, but please make sure that you create a more secure password for your database for security reasons. Voila!  You’re Done That’s it. You are done. It took 3 setup and 3 migration steps to migrate your SQL Server database to NuoDB.  You can now start exploring the database and build excellent, scale-out applications. In this blog post, I have done my best to come up with simple and easy process, which you can follow to migrate your app from SQL Server to NuoDB. Download NuoDB I strongly encourage you to download NuoDB and go through my 3-step migration tutorial from SQL Server to NuoDB. Additionally here are two very important blog post from NuoDB CTO Seth Proctor. He has written excellent blog posts on the concept of the Administrative Domains. NuoDB has this concept of an Administrative Domain, which is a collection of hosts that can run one or multiple databases.  Each database has its own TEs and SMs, but all are managed within the Admin Console for that particular domain. http://www.nuodb.com/techblog/2013/03/11/getting-started-provisioning-a-domain/ http://www.nuodb.com/techblog/2013/03/14/getting-started-running-a-database/ Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: NuoDB

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  • Why Fusion Middleware matters to Oracle Applications and Fusion Applications customers?

    - by Harish Gaur
    Did you miss this general session on Monday morning presented by Amit Zavery, VP of Oracle Fusion Middleware Product Management? There will be a recording made available shortly and in the meanwhile, here is a recap. Amit presented 5 strategies customers can leverage today to extend their applications. Figure 1: 5 Oracle Fusion Middleware strategies to extend Oracle Applications & Oracle Fusion Apps 1. Engage Everyone – Provide intuitive and social experience for application users using Oracle WebCenter 2. Extend Enterprise – Extend Oracle Applications to mobile devices using Oracle ADF Mobile 3. Orchestrate Processes – Automate key organization processes across on-premise & cloud applications using Oracle BPM Suite & Oracle SOA Suite 4. Secure the core – Provide single sign-on and self-service provisioning across multiple apps using Oracle Identity Management 5. Optimize Performance – Leverage Exalogic stack to consolidate multiple instance and improve performance of Oracle Applications Session included 3 demonstrations to illustrate these strategies. 1. First demo highlighted significance of mobile applications for unlocking existing investment in Applications such as EBS. Using a native iPhone application interacting with e-Business Suite, demo showed how expense approval can be mobile enabled with enhanced visibility using BI dashboards. 2. Second demo showed how you can extend a banking process in Siebel and Oracle Policy Automation with Oracle BPM Suite.Process starts in Siebel with a customer requesting a loan, and then jumps to OPA for loan recommendations and decision making and loan processing with approvals in handled in BPM Suite. Once approvals are completed Siebel is updated to complete the process. 3. Final demo showcased FMW components inside Fusion Applications, specifically WebCenter. Boeing, Underwriter Laboratories and Electronic Arts joined this quest and discussed 3 different approaches of leveraging Fusion Middleware stack to maximize their investment in Oracle Applications and/or Fusion Applications technology. Let’s briefly review what these customers shared during the session: 1. Extend Fusion Applications We know that Oracle Fusion Middleware is the underlying technology infrastructure for Oracle Fusion Applications. Architecturally, Oracle Fusion Apps leverages several components of Oracle Fusion Middleware from Oracle WebCenter for rich collaborative interface, Oracle SOA Suite & Oracle BPM Suite for orchestrating key underlying processes to Oracle BIEE for dash boarding and analytics. Boeing talked about how they are using Oracle BPM Suite 11g, a key component of Oracle Fusion Middleware with Oracle Fusion Apps to transform their supply chain. Tim Murnin, Director of Supply Chain talked about Boeing’s 5 year supply chain transformation journey. Boeing’s Integrated and Information Management division began with automation of critical RFQ process using Oracle BPM Suite. This 1st phase resulted in 38% reduction in labor costs for RFP. As a next step in this effort, Boeing is now creating a platform to enable electronic Order Management. Fusion Apps are playing a significant role in this phase. Boeing has gone live with Oracle Fusion Product Hub and efforts are underway with Oracle Fusion Distributed Order Orchestration (DOO). So, where does Oracle BPM Suite 11g fit in this equation? Let me explain. Business processes within Fusion Apps are designed using 2 standards: Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) and Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN). These processes can be easily configured using declarative set of tools. Boeing leverages Oracle BPM Suite 11g (which supports BPMN 2.0) and Oracle SOA Suite (which supports BPEL) to “extend” these applications. Traditionally, customizations are done within an app using native technologies. But, instead of making process changes within Fusion Apps, Boeing has taken an approach of building “extensions” layer on top of the application. Fig 2: Boeing’s use of Oracle BPM Suite to orchestrate key supply chain processes across Fusion Apps 2. Maximize Oracle Applications investment Fusion Middleware appeals not only to Fusion Apps customers, but is also leveraged by Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, Siebel and JD Edwards customers significantly. Using Oracle BPM Suite and Oracle SOA Suite is the recommended extension strategy for Oracle Fusion Apps and Oracle Applications Unlimited customers. Electronic Arts, E-Business Suite customer, spoke about their strategy to transform their order-to-cash process using Oracle SOA Suite, Oracle Foundation Packs and Oracle BAM. Udesh Naicker, Sr Director of IT at Elecronic Arts (EA), discussed how growth of social and digital gaming had started to put tremendous pressure on EA’s existing IT infrastructure. He discussed the challenge with millions of micro-transactions coming from several sources – Microsoft Xbox, Paypal, several service providers. EA found Order-2-Cash processes stretched to their limits. They lacked visibility into these transactions across the entire value chain. EA began by consolidating their E-Business Suite R11 instances into single E-Business Suite R12. EA needed to cater to a variety of service requirements, connectivity methods, file formats, and information latency. Their integration strategy was tactical, i.e., using file uploads, TIBCO, SQL scripts. After consolidating E-Business suite, EA standardized their integration approach with Oracle SOA Suite and Oracle AIA Foundation Pack. Oracle SOA Suite is the platform used to extend E-Business Suite R12 and standardize 60+ interfaces across several heterogeneous systems including PeopleSoft, Demantra, SF.com, Workday, and Managed EDI services spanning on-premise, hosted and cloud applications. EA believes that Oracle SOA Suite 11g based extension strategy has helped significantly in the followings ways: - It helped them keep customizations out of E-Business Suite, thereby keeping EBS R12 vanilla and upgrade safe - Developers are now proficient in technology which is also leveraged by Fusion Apps. This has helped them prepare for adoption of Fusion Apps in the future Fig 3: Using Oracle SOA Suite & Oracle e-Business Suite, Electronic Arts built new platform for order processing 3. Consolidate apps and improve scalability Exalogic is an optimal platform for customers to consolidate their application deployments and enhance performance. Underwriter Laboratories talked about their strategy to run their mission critical applications including e-Business Suite on Exalogic. Christian Anschuetz, CIO of Underwriter Laboratories (UL) shared how UL is on a growth path - $1B to $2.5B in 5 years- and planning a significant business transformation from a not-for-profit to a for-profit business. To support this growth, UL is planning to simplify its IT environment and the deployment complexity associated with ERP applications and technology it runs on. Their current applications were deployed on variety of hardware platforms and lacked comprehensive disaster recovery architecture. UL embarked on a mission to deploy E-Business Suite on Exalogic. UL’s solution is unique because it is one of the first to deploy a large number of Oracle applications and related Fusion Middleware technologies (SOA, BI, Analytical Applications AIA Foundation Pack and AIA EBS to Siebel UCM prebuilt integration) on the combined Exalogic and Exadata environment. UL is planning to move to a virtualized architecture toward the end of 2012 to securely host external facing applications like iStore Fig 4: Underwrites Labs deployed e-Business Suite on Exalogic to achieve performance gains Key takeaways are: - Fusion Middleware platform is certified with major Oracle Applications Unlimited offerings. Fusion Middleware is the underlying technological infrastructure for Fusion Apps - Customers choose Oracle Fusion Middleware to extend their applications (Apps Unlimited or Fusion Apps) to keep applications upgrade safe and prepare for Fusion Apps - Exalogic is an optimum platform to consolidate applications deployments and enhance performance

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  • Why Fusion Middleware matters to Oracle Applications and Fusion Applications customers?

    - by Harish Gaur
    Did you miss this general session on Monday morning presented by Amit Zavery, VP of Oracle Fusion Middleware Product Management? There will be a recording made available shortly and in the meanwhile, here is a recap. Amit presented 5 strategies customers can leverage today to extend their applications. Figure 1: 5 Oracle Fusion Middleware strategies to extend Oracle Applications & Oracle Fusion Apps 1. Engage Everyone – Provide intuitive and social experience for application users using Oracle WebCenter 2. Extend Enterprise – Extend Oracle Applications to mobile devices using Oracle ADF Mobile 3. Orchestrate Processes – Automate key organization processes across on-premise & cloud applications using Oracle BPM Suite & Oracle SOA Suite 4. Secure the core – Provide single sign-on and self-service provisioning across multiple apps using Oracle Identity Management 5. Optimize Performance – Leverage Exalogic stack to consolidate multiple instance and improve performance of Oracle Applications Session included 3 demonstrations to illustrate these strategies. 1. First demo highlighted significance of mobile applications for unlocking existing investment in Applications such as EBS. Using a native iPhone application interacting with e-Business Suite, demo showed how expense approval can be mobile enabled with enhanced visibility using BI dashboards. 2. Second demo showed how you can extend a banking process in Siebel and Oracle Policy Automation with Oracle BPM Suite.Process starts in Siebel with a customer requesting a loan, and then jumps to OPA for loan recommendations and decision making and loan processing with approvals in handled in BPM Suite. Once approvals are completed Siebel is updated to complete the process. 3. Final demo showcased FMW components inside Fusion Applications, specifically WebCenter. Boeing, Underwriter Laboratories and Electronic Arts joined this quest and discussed 3 different approaches of leveraging Fusion Middleware stack to maximize their investment in Oracle Applications and/or Fusion Applications technology. Let’s briefly review what these customers shared during the session: 1. Extend Fusion Applications We know that Oracle Fusion Middleware is the underlying technology infrastructure for Oracle Fusion Applications. Architecturally, Oracle Fusion Apps leverages several components of Oracle Fusion Middleware from Oracle WebCenter for rich collaborative interface, Oracle SOA Suite & Oracle BPM Suite for orchestrating key underlying processes to Oracle BIEE for dash boarding and analytics. Boeing talked about how they are using Oracle BPM Suite 11g, a key component of Oracle Fusion Middleware with Oracle Fusion Apps to transform their supply chain. Tim Murnin, Director of Supply Chain talked about Boeing’s 5 year supply chain transformation journey. Boeing’s Integrated and Information Management division began with automation of critical RFQ process using Oracle BPM Suite. This 1st phase resulted in 38% reduction in labor costs for RFP. As a next step in this effort, Boeing is now creating a platform to enable electronic Order Management. Fusion Apps are playing a significant role in this phase. Boeing has gone live with Oracle Fusion Product Hub and efforts are underway with Oracle Fusion Distributed Order Orchestration (DOO). So, where does Oracle BPM Suite 11g fit in this equation? Let me explain. Business processes within Fusion Apps are designed using 2 standards: Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) and Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN). These processes can be easily configured using declarative set of tools. Boeing leverages Oracle BPM Suite 11g (which supports BPMN 2.0) and Oracle SOA Suite (which supports BPEL) to “extend” these applications. Traditionally, customizations are done within an app using native technologies. But, instead of making process changes within Fusion Apps, Boeing has taken an approach of building “extensions” layer on top of the application. Fig 2: Boeing’s use of Oracle BPM Suite to orchestrate key supply chain processes across Fusion Apps 2. Maximize Oracle Applications investment Fusion Middleware appeals not only to Fusion Apps customers, but is also leveraged by Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, Siebel and JD Edwards customers significantly. Using Oracle BPM Suite and Oracle SOA Suite is the recommended extension strategy for Oracle Fusion Apps and Oracle Applications Unlimited customers. Electronic Arts, E-Business Suite customer, spoke about their strategy to transform their order-to-cash process using Oracle SOA Suite, Oracle Foundation Packs and Oracle BAM. Udesh Naicker, Sr Director of IT at Elecronic Arts (EA), discussed how growth of social and digital gaming had started to put tremendous pressure on EA’s existing IT infrastructure. He discussed the challenge with millions of micro-transactions coming from several sources – Microsoft Xbox, Paypal, several service providers. EA found Order-2-Cash processes stretched to their limits. They lacked visibility into these transactions across the entire value chain. EA began by consolidating their E-Business Suite R11 instances into single E-Business Suite R12. EA needed to cater to a variety of service requirements, connectivity methods, file formats, and information latency. Their integration strategy was tactical, i.e., using file uploads, TIBCO, SQL scripts. After consolidating E-Business suite, EA standardized their integration approach with Oracle SOA Suite and Oracle AIA Foundation Pack. Oracle SOA Suite is the platform used to extend E-Business Suite R12 and standardize 60+ interfaces across several heterogeneous systems including PeopleSoft, Demantra, SF.com, Workday, and Managed EDI services spanning on-premise, hosted and cloud applications. EA believes that Oracle SOA Suite 11g based extension strategy has helped significantly in the followings ways: - It helped them keep customizations out of E-Business Suite, thereby keeping EBS R12 vanilla and upgrade safe - Developers are now proficient in technology which is also leveraged by Fusion Apps. This has helped them prepare for adoption of Fusion Apps in the future Fig 3: Using Oracle SOA Suite & Oracle e-Business Suite, Electronic Arts built new platform for order processing 3. Consolidate apps and improve scalability Exalogic is an optimal platform for customers to consolidate their application deployments and enhance performance. Underwriter Laboratories talked about their strategy to run their mission critical applications including e-Business Suite on Exalogic. Christian Anschuetz, CIO of Underwriter Laboratories (UL) shared how UL is on a growth path - $1B to $2.5B in 5 years- and planning a significant business transformation from a not-for-profit to a for-profit business. To support this growth, UL is planning to simplify its IT environment and the deployment complexity associated with ERP applications and technology it runs on. Their current applications were deployed on variety of hardware platforms and lacked comprehensive disaster recovery architecture. UL embarked on a mission to deploy E-Business Suite on Exalogic. UL’s solution is unique because it is one of the first to deploy a large number of Oracle applications and related Fusion Middleware technologies (SOA, BI, Analytical Applications AIA Foundation Pack and AIA EBS to Siebel UCM prebuilt integration) on the combined Exalogic and Exadata environment. UL is planning to move to a virtualized architecture toward the end of 2012 to securely host external facing applications like iStore Fig 4: Underwrites Labs deployed e-Business Suite on Exalogic to achieve performance gains Key takeaways are: - Fusion Middleware platform is certified with major Oracle Applications Unlimited offerings. Fusion Middleware is the underlying technological infrastructure for Fusion Apps - Customers choose Oracle Fusion Middleware to extend their applications (Apps Unlimited or Fusion Apps) to keep applications upgrade safe and prepare for Fusion Apps - Exalogic is an optimum platform to consolidate applications deployments and enhance performance TAGS: Fusion Apps, Exalogic, BPM Suite, SOA Suite, e-Business Suite Integration

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  • Windows Azure Virtual Machine Readiness and Capacity Assessment for SQL Server

    - by SQLOS Team
    Windows Azure Virtual Machine Readiness and Capacity Assessment for Windows Server Machine Running SQL Server With the release of MAP Toolkit 8.0 Beta, we have added a new scenario to assess your Windows Azure Virtual Machine Readiness. The MAP 8.0 Beta performs a comprehensive assessment of Windows Servers running SQL Server to determine you level of readiness to migrate an on-premise physical or virtual machine to Windows Azure Virtual Machines. The MAP Toolkit then offers suggested changes to prepare the machines for migration, such as upgrading the operating system or SQL Server. MAP Toolkit 8.0 Beta is available for download here Your participation and feedback is very important to make the MAP Toolkit work better for you. We encourage you to participate in the beta program and provide your feedback at [email protected] or through one of our surveys. Now, let’s walk through the MAP Toolkit task for completing the Windows Azure Virtual Machine assessment and capacity planning. The tasks include the following: Perform an inventory View the Windows Azure VM Readiness results and report Collect performance data for determine VM sizing View the Windows Azure Capacity results and report Perform an inventory: 1. To perform an inventory against a single machine or across a complete environment, choose Perform an Inventory to launch the Inventory and Assessment Wizard as shown below: 2. After the Inventory and Assessment Wizard launches, select either the Windows computers or SQL Server scenario to inventory Windows machines. HINT: If you don’t care about completely inventorying a machine, just select the SQL Server scenario. Click Next to Continue. 3. On the Discovery Methods page, select how you want to discover computers and then click Next to continue. Description of Discovery Methods: Use Active Directory Domain Services -- This method allows you to query a domain controller via the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) and select computers in all or specific domains, containers, or OUs. Use this method if all computers and devices are in AD DS. Windows networking protocols --  This method uses the WIN32 LAN Manager application programming interfaces to query the Computer Browser service for computers in workgroups and Windows NT 4.0–based domains. If the computers on the network are not joined to an Active Directory domain, use only the Windows networking protocols option to find computers. System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) -- This method enables you to inventory computers managed by System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM). You need to provide credentials to the System Center Configuration Manager server in order to inventory the managed computers. When you select this option, the MAP Toolkit will query SCCM for a list of computers and then MAP will connect to these computers. Scan an IP address range -- This method allows you to specify the starting address and ending address of an IP address range. The wizard will then scan all IP addresses in the range and inventory only those computers. Note: This option can perform poorly, if many IP addresses aren’t being used within the range. Manually enter computer names and credentials -- Use this method if you want to inventory a small number of specific computers. Import computer names from a files -- Using this method, you can create a text file with a list of computer names that will be inventoried. 4. On the All Computers Credentials page, enter the accounts that have administrator rights to connect to the discovered machines. This does not need to a domain account, but needs to be a local administrator. I have entered my domain account that is an administrator on my local machine. Click Next after one or more accounts have been added. NOTE: The MAP Toolkit primarily uses Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) to collect hardware, device, and software information from the remote computers. In order for the MAP Toolkit to successfully connect and inventory computers in your environment, you have to configure your machines to inventory through WMI and also allow your firewall to enable remote access through WMI. The MAP Toolkit also requires remote registry access for certain assessments. In addition to enabling WMI, you need accounts with administrative privileges to access desktops and servers in your environment. 5. On the Credentials Order page, select the order in which want the MAP Toolkit to connect to the machine and SQL Server. Generally just accept the defaults and click Next. 6. On the Enter Computers Manually page, click Create to pull up at dialog to enter one or more computer names. 7. On the Summary page confirm your settings and then click Finish. After clicking Finish the inventory process will start, as shown below: Windows Azure Readiness results and report After the inventory progress has completed, you can review the results under the Database scenario. On the tile, you will see the number of Windows Server machine with SQL Server that were analyzed, the number of machines that are ready to move without changes and the number of machines that require further changes. If you click this Azure VM Readiness tile, you will see additional details and can generate the Windows Azure VM Readiness Report. After the report is generated, select View | Saved Reports and Proposals to view the location of the report. Open up WindowsAzureVMReadiness* report in Excel. On the Windows tab, you can see the results of the assessment. This report has a column for the Operating System and SQL Server assessment and provides a recommendation on how to resolve, if there a component is not supported. Collect Performance Data Launch the Performance Wizard to collect performance information for the Windows Server machines that you would like the MAP Toolkit to suggest a Windows Azure VM size for. Windows Azure Capacity results and report After the performance metrics are collected, the Azure VM Capacity title will display the number of Virtual Machine sizes that are suggested for the Windows Server and Linux machines that were analyzed. You can then click on the Azure VM Capacity tile to see the capacity details and generate the Windows Azure VM Capacity Report. Within this report, you can view the performance data that was collected and the Virtual Machine sizes.   MAP Toolkit 8.0 Beta is available for download here Your participation and feedback is very important to make the MAP Toolkit work better for you. We encourage you to participate in the beta program and provide your feedback at [email protected] or through one of our surveys. Useful References: Windows Azure Homepage How to guides for Windows Azure Virtual Machines Provisioning a SQL Server Virtual Machine on Windows Azure Windows Azure Pricing     Peter Saddow Senior Program Manager – MAP Toolkit Team

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  • MySQL Cluster 7.3 Labs Release – Foreign Keys Are In!

    - by Mat Keep
    0 0 1 1097 6254 Homework 52 14 7337 14.0 Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-ansi-language:EN-US;} Summary (aka TL/DR): Support for Foreign Key constraints has been one of the most requested feature enhancements for MySQL Cluster. We are therefore extremely excited to announce that Foreign Keys are part of the first Labs Release of MySQL Cluster 7.3 – available for download, evaluation and feedback now! (Select the mysql-cluster-7.3-labs-June-2012 build) In this blog, I will attempt to discuss the design rationale, implementation, configuration and steps to get started in evaluating the first MySQL Cluster 7.3 Labs Release. Pace of Innovation It was only a couple of months ago that we announced the General Availability (GA) of MySQL Cluster 7.2, delivering 1 billion Queries per Minute, with 70x higher cross-shard JOIN performance, Memcached NoSQL key-value API and cross-data center replication.  This release has been a huge hit, with downloads and deployments quickly reaching record levels. The announcement of the first MySQL Cluster 7.3 Early Access lab release at today's MySQL Innovation Day event demonstrates the continued pace in Cluster development, and provides an opportunity for the community to evaluate and feedback on new features they want to see. What’s the Plan for MySQL Cluster 7.3? Well, Foreign Keys, as you may have gathered by now (!), and this is the focus of this first Labs Release. As with MySQL Cluster 7.2, we plan to publish a series of preview releases for 7.3 that will incrementally add new candidate features for a final GA release (subject to usual safe harbor statement below*), including: - New NoSQL APIs; - Features to automate the configuration and provisioning of multi-node clusters, on premise or in the cloud; - Performance and scalability enhancements; - Taking advantage of features in the latest MySQL 5.x Server GA. Design Rationale MySQL Cluster is designed as a “Not-Only-SQL” database. It combines attributes that enable users to blend the best of both relational and NoSQL technologies into solutions that deliver web scalability with 99.999% availability and real-time performance, including: Concurrent NoSQL and SQL access to the database; Auto-sharding with simple scale-out across commodity hardware; Multi-master replication with failover and recovery both within and across data centers; Shared-nothing architecture with no single point of failure; Online scaling and schema changes; ACID compliance and support for complex queries, across shards. Native support for Foreign Key constraints enables users to extend the benefits of MySQL Cluster into a broader range of use-cases, including: - Packaged applications in areas such as eCommerce and Web Content Management that prescribe databases with Foreign Key support. - In-house developments benefiting from Foreign Key constraints to simplify data models and eliminate the additional application logic needed to maintain data consistency and integrity between tables. Implementation The Foreign Key functionality is implemented directly within MySQL Cluster’s data nodes, allowing any client API accessing the cluster to benefit from them – whether using SQL or one of the NoSQL interfaces (Memcached, C++, Java, JPA or HTTP/REST.) The core referential actions defined in the SQL:2003 standard are implemented: CASCADE RESTRICT NO ACTION SET NULL In addition, the MySQL Cluster implementation supports the online adding and dropping of Foreign Keys, ensuring the Cluster continues to serve both read and write requests during the operation. An important difference to note with the Foreign Key implementation in InnoDB is that MySQL Cluster does not support the updating of Primary Keys from within the Data Nodes themselves - instead the UPDATE is emulated with a DELETE followed by an INSERT operation. Therefore an UPDATE operation will return an error if the parent reference is using a Primary Key, unless using CASCADE action, in which case the delete operation will result in the corresponding rows in the child table being deleted. The Engineering team plans to change this behavior in a subsequent preview release. Also note that when using InnoDB "NO ACTION" is identical to "RESTRICT". In the case of MySQL Cluster “NO ACTION” means “deferred check”, i.e. the constraint is checked before commit, allowing user-defined triggers to automatically make changes in order to satisfy the Foreign Key constraints. Configuration There is nothing special you have to do here – Foreign Key constraint checking is enabled by default. If you intend to migrate existing tables from another database or storage engine, for example from InnoDB, there are a couple of best practices to observe: 1. Analyze the structure of the Foreign Key graph and run the ALTER TABLE ENGINE=NDB in the correct sequence to ensure constraints are enforced 2. Alternatively drop the Foreign Key constraints prior to the import process and then recreate when complete. Getting Started Read this blog for a demonstration of using Foreign Keys with MySQL Cluster.  You can download MySQL Cluster 7.3 Labs Release with Foreign Keys today - (select the mysql-cluster-7.3-labs-June-2012 build) If you are new to MySQL Cluster, the Getting Started guide will walk you through installing an evaluation cluster on a singe host (these guides reflect MySQL Cluster 7.2, but apply equally well to 7.3) Post any questions to the MySQL Cluster forum where our Engineering team will attempt to assist you. Post any bugs you find to the MySQL bug tracking system (select MySQL Cluster from the Category drop-down menu) And if you have any feedback, please post them to the Comments section of this blog. Summary MySQL Cluster 7.2 is the GA, production-ready release of MySQL Cluster. This first Labs Release of MySQL Cluster 7.3 gives you the opportunity to preview and evaluate future developments in the MySQL Cluster database, and we are very excited to be able to share that with you. Let us know how you get along with MySQL Cluster 7.3, and other features that you want to see in future releases. * Safe Harbor Statement This information is intended to outline our general product direction. It is intended for information purposes only, and may not be incorporated into any contract. It is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions. The development, release, and timing of any features or functionality described for Oracle’s products remains at the sole discretion of Oracle.

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  • Cloud Computing = Elasticity * Availability

    - by Herve Roggero
    What is cloud computing? Is hosting the same thing as cloud computing? Are you running a cloud if you already use virtual machines? What is the difference between Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and a cloud provider? And the list goes on… these questions keep coming up and all try to fundamentally explain what “cloud” means relative to other concepts. At the risk of over simplification, answering these questions becomes simpler once you understand the primary foundations of cloud computing: Elasticity and Availability.   Elasticity The basic value proposition of cloud computing is to pay as you go, and to pay for what you use. This implies that an application can expand and contract on demand, across all its tiers (presentation layer, services, database, security…).  This also implies that application components can grow independently from each other. So if you need more storage for your database, you should be able to grow that tier without affecting, reconfiguring or changing the other tiers. Basically, cloud applications behave like a sponge; when you add water to a sponge, it grows in size; in the application world, the more customers you add, the more it grows. Pure IaaS providers will provide certain benefits, specifically in terms of operating costs, but an IaaS provider will not help you in making your applications elastic; neither will Virtual Machines. The smallest elasticity unit of an IaaS provider and a Virtual Machine environment is a server (physical or virtual). While adding servers in a datacenter helps in achieving scale, it is hardly enough. The application has yet to use this hardware.  If the process of adding computing resources is not transparent to the application, the application is not elastic.   As you can see from the above description, designing for the cloud is not about more servers; it is about designing an application for elasticity regardless of the underlying server farm.   Availability The fact of the matter is that making applications highly available is hard. It requires highly specialized tools and trained staff. On top of it, it's expensive. Many companies are required to run multiple data centers due to high availability requirements. In some organizations, some data centers are simply on standby, waiting to be used in a case of a failover. Other organizations are able to achieve a certain level of success with active/active data centers, in which all available data centers serve incoming user requests. While achieving high availability for services is relatively simple, establishing a highly available database farm is far more complex. In fact it is so complex that many companies establish yearly tests to validate failover procedures.   To a certain degree certain IaaS provides can assist with complex disaster recovery planning and setting up data centers that can achieve successful failover. However the burden is still on the corporation to manage and maintain such an environment, including regular hardware and software upgrades. Cloud computing on the other hand removes most of the disaster recovery requirements by hiding many of the underlying complexities.   Cloud Providers A cloud provider is an infrastructure provider offering additional tools to achieve application elasticity and availability that are not usually available on-premise. For example Microsoft Azure provides a simple configuration screen that makes it possible to run 1 or 100 web sites by clicking a button or two on a screen (simplifying provisioning), and soon SQL Azure will offer Data Federation to allow database sharding (which allows you to scale the database tier seamlessly and automatically). Other cloud providers offer certain features that are not available on-premise as well, such as the Amazon SC3 (Simple Storage Service) which gives you virtually unlimited storage capabilities for simple data stores, which is somewhat equivalent to the Microsoft Azure Table offering (offering a server-independent data storage model). Unlike IaaS providers, cloud providers give you the necessary tools to adopt elasticity as part of your application architecture.    Some cloud providers offer built-in high availability that get you out of the business of configuring clustered solutions, or running multiple data centers. Some cloud providers will give you more control (which puts some of that burden back on the customers' shoulder) and others will tend to make high availability totally transparent. For example, SQL Azure provides high availability automatically which would be very difficult to achieve (and very costly) on premise.   Keep in mind that each cloud provider has its strengths and weaknesses; some are better at achieving transparent scalability and server independence than others.    Not for Everyone Note however that it is up to you to leverage the elasticity capabilities of a cloud provider, as discussed previously; if you build a website that does not need to scale, for which elasticity is not important, then you can use a traditional host provider unless you also need high availability. Leveraging the technologies of cloud providers can be difficult and can become a journey for companies that build their solutions in a scale up fashion. Cloud computing promises to address cost containment and scalability of applications with built-in high availability. If your application does not need to scale or you do not need high availability, then cloud computing may not be for you. In fact, you may pay a premium to run your applications with cloud providers due to the underlying technologies built specifically for scalability and availability requirements. And as such, the cloud is not for everyone.   Consistent Customer Experience, Predictable Cost With all its complexities, buzz and foggy definition, cloud computing boils down to a simple objective: consistent customer experience at a predictable cost.  The objective of a cloud solution is to provide the same user experience to your last customer than the first, while keeping your operating costs directly proportional to the number of customers you have. Making your applications elastic and highly available across all its tiers, with as much automation as possible, achieves the first objective of a consistent customer experience. And the ability to expand and contract the infrastructure footprint of your application dynamically achieves the cost containment objectives.     Herve Roggero is a SQL Azure MVP and co-author of Pro SQL Azure (APress).  He is the co-founder of Blue Syntax Consulting (www.bluesyntax.net), a company focusing on cloud computing technologies helping customers understand and adopt cloud computing technologies. For more information contact herve at hroggero @ bluesyntax.net .

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  • People, Process & Engagement: WebCenter Partner Keste

    - by Michael Snow
    v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Within the WebCenter group here at Oracle, discussions about people, process and engagement cross over many vertical industries and products. Amidst our growing partner ecosystem, the community provides us insight into great customer use cases every day. Such is the case with our partner, Keste, who provides us a guest post on our blog today with an overview of their innovative solution for a customer in the transportation industry. Keste is an Oracle software solutions and development company headquartered in Dallas, Texas. As a Platinum member of the Oracle® PartnerNetwork, Keste designs, develops and deploys custom solutions that automate complex business processes. Seamless Customer Self-Service Experience in the Trucking Industry with Oracle WebCenter Portal  Keste, Oracle Platinum Partner Customer Overview Omnitracs, Inc., a Qualcomm company provides mobility solutions for trucking fleets to companies in the transportation industry. Omnitracs’ mobility services include basic communications such as text as well as advanced monitoring services such as GPS tracking, temperature tracking of perishable goods, load tracking and weighting distribution, and many others. Customer Business Needs Already the leading provider of mobility solutions for large trucking fleets, they chose to target smaller trucking fleets as new customers. However their existing high-touch customer support method would not be a cost effective or scalable method to manage and service these smaller customers. Omnitracs needed to provide several self-service features to make customer support more scalable while keeping customer satisfaction levels high and the costs manageable. The solution also had to be very intuitive and easy to use. The systems that Omnitracs sells to these trucking customers require professional installation and smaller customers need to track and schedule the installation. Information captured in Oracle eBusiness Suite needed to be readily available for new customers to track these purchases and delivery details. Omnitracs wanted a high impact User Interface to significantly improve customer experience with the ability to integrate with EBS, provisioning systems as well as CRM systems that were already implemented. Omnitracs also wanted to build an architecture platform that could potentially be extended to other Portals. Omnitracs’ stated goal was to deliver an “eBay-like” or “Amazon-like” experience for all of their customers so that they could reach a much broader market beyond their large company customer base. Solution Overview In order to manage the increased complexity, the growing support needs of global customers and improve overall product time-to-market in a cost-effective manner, IT began to deliver a self-service model. This self service model not only transformed numerous business processes but is also allowing the business to keep up with the growing demands of the (internal and external) customers. This solution was a customer service Portal that provided self service capabilities for large and small customers alike for Activation of mobility products, managing add-on applications for the devices (much like the Apple App Store), transferring services when trucks are sold to other companies as well as deactivation all without the involvement of a call service agent or sending multiple emails to different Omnitracs contacts. This is a conceptual view of the Customer Portal showing the details of the components that make up the solution. 12.00 The portal application for transactions was entirely built using ADF 11g R2. Omnitracs’ business had a pressing requirement to have a portal available 24/7 for its customers. Since there were interactions with EBS in the back-end, the downtimes on the EBS would negate this availability. Omnitracs devised a decoupling strategy at the database side for the EBS data. The decoupling of the database was done using Oracle Data Guard and completely insulated the solution from any eBusiness Suite down time. The customer has no knowledge whether eBS is running or not. Here are two sample screenshots of the portal application built in Oracle ADF. Customer Benefits The Customer Portal not only provided the scalability to grow the business but also provided the seamless integration with other disparate applications. Some of the key benefits are: Improved Customer Experience: With a modern look and feel and a Portal that has the aspects of an App Store, the customer experience was significantly improved. Page response times went from several seconds to sub-second for all of the pages. Enabled new product launches: After successfully dominating the large fleet market, Omnitracs now has a scalable solution to sell and manage smaller fleet customers giving them a huge advantage over their nearest competitors. Dozens of new customers have been acquired via this portal through an onboarding process that now takes minutes Seamless Integrations Improves Customer Support: ADF 11gR2 allowed Omnitracs to bring a diverse list of applications into one integrated solution. This provided a seamless experience for customers to route them from Marketing focused application to a customer-oriented portal. Internally, it also allowed Sales Representatives to have an integrated flow for taking a prospect through the various steps to onboard them as a customer. Key integrations included: Unity Core Salesforce.com Merchant e-Solution for credit card Custom Omnitracs Applications like CUPS and AUTO Security utilizing OID and OVD Back end integration with EBS (Data Guard) and iQ Database Business Impact Significant business impacts were realized through the launch of customer portal. It not only allows the business to push through in underserved segments, but also reduces the time it needs to spend on customer support—allowing the business to focus more on sales and identifying the market for new products. Some of the Immediate Benefits are The entire onboarding process is now completely automated and now completes in minutes. This represents an 85% productivity improvement over their previous processes. And it was 160 times faster! With the success of this self-service solution, the business is now targeting about 3X customer growth in the next five years. This represents a tripling of their overall customer base and significant downstream revenue for the ongoing services. 90%+ improvement of customer onboarding and management process by utilizing, single sign on integration using OID/OAM solution, performance improvements and new self-service functionality Unified login for all Customers, Partners and Internal Users enables login to a common portal and seamless access to all other integrated applications targeted at the respective audience Significantly improved customer experience with a better look and feel with a more user experience focused Portal screens. Helped sales of the new product by having an easy way of ordering and activating the product. Data Guard helped increase availability of the Portal to 99%+ and make it independent of EBS downtime. This gave customers the feel of high availability of the portal application. Some of the anticipated longer term Benefits are: Platform that can be leveraged to launch any new product introduction and enable all product teams to reach new customers and new markets Easy integration with content management to allow business owners more control of the product catalog Overall reduced TCO with standardization of the Oracle platform Managed IT support cost savings through optimization of technology skills needed to support and modify this solution ------------------------------------------------------------ 12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 -"/ /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";}

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  • Spacewalk 2.0 provided to manage Oracle Linux systems

    - by wcoekaer
    Oracle Linux customers have a few options to manage and provision their servers. We provide a license to use Oracle Enterprise Manager's Linux OS management, monitoring and provisioning features without additional cost for every server that has an Oracle Linux support subscription. So there is no additional pack to license and no additional per server cost, it's all included in our Basic, Premier and Systems support subscriptions. The nice thing with Oracle Enterprise Manager is that you end up with a single management product that can manage all aspects of your software stack. You have complete insight into the applications running, you have roles and responsibilities, you have third party connectors for storage or other products and it makes it very easy and convenient to correlate data and events when something happens. If you use Oracle VM as well, you end up with a complete cloud portal with selfservice, chargeback, etc... Another, much simpler option, is just using yum. It is very easy to take a server and create directories and expose these through apache as repositories. You can have a simple yum config on each server pointing to a few specific repositories. It requires some manual effort in terms of creating directories, downloading packages and creating local repo files but it's easy to do and for many people a preferred solution. There are also a good number of customers that just connect their servers directly to ULN or to our free update server public-yum. Just to re-iterate, our public-yum servers have all the errata and updates available for free. Now we added another option. Many of our customers have switched from a competing Linux vendor and they had familiarity with their management tools. Switching to Oracle for support is very easy since we don't require changes to the installed servers but we also want to make sure there is a very easy and almost transparent switch for the management tools as well. While Oracle Enterprise Manager is our preferred way of managing systems, we now are offering Spacewalk 2.0 to our customers. The community project can be found here. We have made a few changes to ensure easy and complete support for Oracle Linux, tested it with public-yum, etc.. You can find the rpms in our public-yum repos at http://public-yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleLinux/OL6/. There are repositories for spacewalk server and then for each version (OL5,OL6) and architecture (x86 and x86-64) we have the client repositories as well. Spacewalk itself is only made available for OL6 x86-64. Documentation can be found here. I set it up myself and here are some quick steps on how you can get going in just a matter of minutes: Spacewalk Server Installation : 1) Installing an Oracle Database Use an existing Oracle Database or install a new Oracle Database (Standard or Enterprise Edition) [at this time use 11g, we will add support for 12c in the near future]. This database can be installed on the spacewalk server or on a separate remote server. While Oracle XE might work to create a small sample POC, we do not support the use of Oracle XE, spacewalk repositories can become large and create a significant database workload. Customers can use their existing database licenses, they can download the database with a trial licence from http://edelivery.oracle.com or Oracle Linux subscribers (customers) will be allowed to use the Oracle Database as a spacewalk repository as part of their Oracle Linux subscription at no additional cost. |NOTE : spacewalk requires the database to be configured with the UTF8 characterset. |Installation will fail if your database does not use UTF8. |To verify if your database is configured correctly, run the following command in sqlplus: | |select value from nls_database_parameters where parameter='NLS_CHARACTERSET'; |This should return 'AL32UTF8' 2) Configure the database schema for spacewalk Ideally, create a tablespace in the database to hold the spacewalk schema tables/data; create tablespace spacewalk datafile '/u01/app/oracle/oradata/orcl/spacewalk.dbf' size 10G autoextend on; Create the database user spacewalk (or use some other schema name) in sqlplus. example : create user spacewalk identified by spacewalk; grant connect, resource to spacewalk; grant create table, create trigger, create synonym, create view, alter session to spacewalk; grant unlimited tablespace to spacewalk; alter user spacewalk default tablespace spacewalk; 4) Spacewalk installation and configuration Spacewalk server requires an Oracle Linux 6 x86-64 system. Clients can be Oracle Linux 5 or 6, both 32- and 64bit. The server is only supported on OL6/64bit. The easiest way to get started is to do a 'Minimal' install of Oracle Linux on a server and configure the yum repository to include the spacewalk repo from public-yum. Once you have a system with a minimal install, modify your yum repo to include the spacewalk repo. Example : edit /etc/yum.repos.d/public-yum-ol.repo and add the following lines at the end of the file : [spacewalk] name=spacewalk baseurl=http://public-yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleLinux/OL6/spacewalk20/server/$basearch/ gpgkey=http://public-yum.oracle.com/RPM-GPG-KEY-oracle-ol6 gpgcheck=1 enabled=1 Install the following pre-requisite packages on your spacewalk server : oracle-instantclient11.2-basic-11.2.0.3.0-1.x86_64 oracle-instantclient11.2-sqlplus-11.2.0.3.0-1.x86_64 rpm -ivh oracle-instantclient11.2-basic-11.2.0.3.0-1.x86_64 rpm -ivh oracle-instantclient11.2-sqlplus-11.2.0.3.0-1.x86_64 The above RPMs can be found on the Oracle Technology Network website : http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/linuxx86-64soft-092277.html As the root user, configure the library path to include the Oracle Instant Client libraries : cd /etc/ld.so.conf.d echo /usr/lib/oracle/11.2/client64/lib oracle-instantclient11.2.conf ldconfig Install spacewalk : # yum install spacewalk-oracle The above yum command should download and install all required packages to run spacewalk on your local server. | NOTE : if you did a full, desktop or workstation installation, | you have to remove the JTA package | BEFORE installing spacewalk-oracle (rpm -e --nodeps jta) Once the installation completes, simply run the spacewalk configuration tool and you are all set. (make sure to run the command with the 2 arguments) spacewalk-setup --disconnected --external-db Answer the questions during the setup, ensure you provide the current database user (example : spacewalk) and password (example : spacewalk) and database server hostname (the standard hostname of the server on which you have deployed the Oracle database) At the end of the setup script, your spacewalk server should be fully configured and you can log into the web portal. Use your favorite browser to connect to the website : http://[spacewalkserverhostname] The very first action will be to create the main admin account.

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  • Oracle Identity Manager Role Management With API

    - by mustafakaya
    As an administrator, you use roles to create and manage the records of a collection of users to whom you want to permit access to common functionality, such as access rights, roles, or permissions. Roles can be independent of an organization, span multiple organizations, or contain users from a single organization. Using roles, you can: View the menu items that the users can access through Oracle Identity Manager Administration Web interface. Assign users to roles. Assign a role to a parent role Designate status to the users so that they can specify defined responses for process tasks. Modify permissions on data objects. Designate role administrators to perform actions on roles, such as enabling members of another role to assign users to the current role, revoke members from current role and so on. Designate provisioning policies for a role. These policies determine if a resource object is to be provisioned to or requested for a member of the role. Assign or remove membership rules to or from the role. These rules determine which users can be assigned/removed as direct membership to/from the role.  In this post, i will share some examples for role management with Oracle Identity Management API.  You can do role operations you can use Thor.API.Operations.tcGroupOperationsIntf interface. tcGroupOperationsIntf service =  getClient().getService(tcGroupOperationsIntf.class);     Assign an user to role :    public void assignRoleByUsrKey(String roleName, String usrKey) throws Exception {         Map<String, String> filter = new HashMap<String, String>();         filter.put("Groups.Role Name", roleName);         tcResultSet role = service.findGroups(filter);         String groupKey = role.getStringValue("Groups.Key");         service.addMemberUser(Long.parseLong(groupKey), Long.parseLong(usrKey));     }  Revoke an user from role:     public void revokeRoleByUsrKey(String roleName, String usrKey) throws Exception {         Map<String, String> filter = new HashMap<String, String>();         filter.put("Groups.Role Name", roleName);         tcResultSet role = service.findGroups(filter);         String groupKey = role.getStringValue("Groups.Key");         service.removeMemberUser(Long.parseLong(groupKey), Long.parseLong(usrKey));     } Get all members of a role :      public List<User> getRoleMembers(String roleName) throws Exception {         List<User> userList = new ArrayList<User>();         Map<String, String> filter = new HashMap<String, String>();         filter.put("Groups.Role Name", roleName);         tcResultSet role = service.findGroups(filter);       String groupKey = role.getStringValue("Groups.Key");         tcResultSet members = service.getAllMemberUsers(Long.parseLong(groupKey));         for (int i = 0; i < members.getRowCount(); i++) {                 members.goToRow(i);                 long userKey = members.getLongValue("Users.Key");                 User member = oimUserManager.findUserByUserKey(String.valueOf(userKey));                 userList.add(member);         }        return userList;     } About me: Mustafa Kaya is a Senior Consultant in Oracle Fusion Middleware Team, living in Istanbul. Before coming to Oracle, he worked in teams developing web applications and backend services at a telco company. He is a Java technology enthusiast, software engineer and addicted to learn new technologies,develop new ideas. Follow Mustafa on Twitter,Connect on LinkedIn, and visit his site for Oracle Fusion Middleware related tips.

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  • Translating Your Customizations

    - by Richard Bingham
    This blog post explains the basics of translating the customizations you can make to Fusion Applications products, with the inclusion of information for both composer-based customizations and the generic design-time customizations done via JDeveloper. Introduction Like most Oracle Applications, Fusion Applications installs on-premise with a US-English base language that is, in Release 7, supported by the option to add up to a total of 22 additional language packs (In Oracle Cloud production environments languages are pre-installed already). As such many organizations offer their users the option of working with their local language, and logically that should also apply for any customizations as well. Composer-based UI Customizations Customizations made in Page Composer take into consideration the session LOCALE, as set in the user preferences screen, during all customization work, and stores the customization in the MDS repository accordingly. As such the actual new or changed values used will only apply for the same language under which the customization was made, and text for any other languages requires a separate upload. See the Resource Bundles section below, which incidentally also applies to custom UI changes done in JDeveloper. You may have noticed this when you select the “Select Text Resource” menu option when editing the text on a page. Using this ensures that the resource bundles are used, whereas if you define a static value in Expression Builder it will never be available for translation. Notice in the screenshot below the “What’s New” custom value I have already defined using the ‘Select Text Resource’ feature is internally using the adfBundle groovy function to pull the custom value for my key (RT_S_1) from the ComposerOverrideBundle. Figure 1 – Page Composer showing the override bundle being used. Business Objects Customizing the Business Objects available in the Applications Composer tool for the CRM products, such as adding additional fields, also operates using the session language. Translating these additional values for these fields into other installed languages requires loading additional resource bundles, again as described below. Reports and Analytics Most customizations to Reports and BI Analytics are just essentially reorganizations and visualizations of existing number and text data from the system, and as such will use the appropriate values based on the users session language. Where a translated value or string exists for that session language, it will be used without the need for additional work. Extending through the addition of brand new reports and analytics requires another method of loading the translated strings, as part of what is known as ‘Localizing’ the BI Catalog and Metadata. This time it is via an export/import of XML data through the BI Administrators console, and is described in the OBIEE Admin Guide. Fusion Applications reports based on BI Publisher are already defined in template-per-locale, and in addition provide an extra process for getting the data for translation and reloading. This again uses the standard resource bundle format. Loading a custom report is illustrated in this video from our YouTube channel which shows the screen for both setting the template local and running an export for translation. Fusion Applications Menus Whilst the seeded Navigator and Global Menu values are fully translated when the additional language is installed, if they are customized then the change or new menu item will apply universally, not currently per language. This is set to change in a future release with the new UI Text Editor feature described below. More on Resource Bundles As mentioned above, to provide translations for most of your customizations you need to add values to a resource bundle. This is an industry open standard (OASIS) format XML file with the extension .xliff, and store translated values for the strings used by ADF at run-time. The general process is that these values are exported from the MDS repository, manually edited, and then imported back in again.This needs to be done by an administrator, via either WLST commands or through Enterprise Manager as per the screenshot below. This is detailed out in the Fusion Applications Extensibility Guide. For SaaS environments the Cloud Operations team can assist. Figure 2 – Enterprise Manager’s MDS export used getting resource bundles for manual translation and re-imported on the same screen. All customized strings are stored in an override bundle (xliff file) for each locale, suffixed with the language initials, with English ones being saved to the default. As such each language bundle can be easily identified and updated. Similarly if you used JDeveloper to create your own applications as extensions to Fusion Applications you would use the native support for resource bundles, and add them into the faces-config.xml file for inclusion in your application. An example is this ADF customization video from our YouTube channel. JDeveloper also supports automatic synchronization between your underlying resource bundles and any translatable strings you add – very handy. For more information see chapters on “Using Automatic Resource Bundle Integration in JDeveloper” and “Manually Defining Resource Bundles and Locales” in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Web User Interface Developer’s Guide for Oracle Application Development Framework. FND Messages and Look-ups FND Messages, as defined here, are not used for UI labels (they are known as ‘strings’), but are the responses back to users as a result of an action, such as from a page submit. Each ‘message’ is defined and stored in the related database table (FND_MESSAGES_B), with another (FND_MESSAGES_TL) holding any language-specific values. These come seeded with the additional language installs, however if you customize the messages via the “Manage Messages” task in Functional Setup Manager, or add new ones, then currently (in Release 7) you’ll need to repeat it for each language. Figure 3 – An FND Message defined in an English user session. Similarly Look-ups are stored in a translation table (FND_LOOKUP_VALUES_TL) where appropriate, and can be customized by setting the users session language and making the change  in the Setup and Maintenance task entitled “Manage [Standard|Common] Look-ups”. Online Help Yes, in fact all the seeded help is applied as part of each language pack install as part of the post-install provisioning process. If you are editing or adding custom online help then the Create Help screen provides a drop-down of which language your help customization will apply to. This is shown in the video below from our YouTube channel, and obviously you’ll need to it for each language in use. What is Coming for Translations? Currently planned for Release 8 is something called the User Interface (UI) Text Editor. This tool will allow the editing of all the text shown on the pages and forms of Fusion Application. This will provide a search based on a particular term or word, say “Worker”, and will allow it to be adjusted, say to “Employee”, which then updates all the Resource Bundles that contain it. In the case of multi-language environments, it will use the users session language (locale) to know which Resource Bundles to apply the change to. This capability will also support customization sandboxes, to help ensure changes can be tested and approved.  It is also interesting to note that the design currently allows any page-specific customizations done using Page Composer or Application Composer to over-write the global changes done via the UI Text Editor, allowing for special context-sensitive values to still be used. Further Reading and Resources The following short list provides the mains resources for digging into more detail on translation support for both Composer and JDeveloper customization projects. There is a dedicated chapter entitled “Translating Custom Text” in the Fusion Applications Extensibility Guide. This has good examples and steps for many tasks, especially administering resource bundles. Using localization formatting (numbers, dates etc) for design-time changes is well documented in the Fusion Applications Developer Guide. For more guidelines on general design-time globalization, see either the ‘Internationalizing and Localizing Pages’ chapter in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Web User Interface Developer’s Guide for Oracle Application Development Framework (Oracle Fusion Applications Edition) or the general Oracle Database Globalization Support Guide. The Oracle Architecture ‘A-Team’ provided a recent post on customizing the user session timeout popup, using design-time changes to resource bundles. It has detailed step-by-step examples which can be a useful illustration.

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  • Windows Azure Virtual Machine Readiness and Capacity Assessment for SQL Server

    - by SQLOS Team
    Windows Azure Virtual Machine Readiness and Capacity Assessment for Windows Server Machine Running SQL Server With the release of MAP Toolkit 8.0 Beta, we have added a new scenario to assess your Windows Azure Virtual Machine Readiness. The MAP 8.0 Beta performs a comprehensive assessment of Windows Servers running SQL Server to determine you level of readiness to migrate an on-premise physical or virtual machine to Windows Azure Virtual Machines. The MAP Toolkit then offers suggested changes to prepare the machines for migration, such as upgrading the operating system or SQL Server. MAP Toolkit 8.0 Beta is available for download here Your participation and feedback is very important to make the MAP Toolkit work better for you. We encourage you to participate in the beta program and provide your feedback at [email protected] or through one of our surveys. Now, let’s walk through the MAP Toolkit task for completing the Windows Azure Virtual Machine assessment and capacity planning. The tasks include the following: Perform an inventory View the Windows Azure VM Readiness results and report Collect performance data for determine VM sizing View the Windows Azure Capacity results and report Perform an inventory: 1. To perform an inventory against a single machine or across a complete environment, choose Perform an Inventory to launch the Inventory and Assessment Wizard as shown below: 2. After the Inventory and Assessment Wizard launches, select either the Windows computers or SQL Server scenario to inventory Windows machines. HINT: If you don’t care about completely inventorying a machine, just select the SQL Server scenario. Click Next to Continue. 3. On the Discovery Methods page, select how you want to discover computers and then click Next to continue. Description of Discovery Methods: Use Active Directory Domain Services -- This method allows you to query a domain controller via the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) and select computers in all or specific domains, containers, or OUs. Use this method if all computers and devices are in AD DS. Windows networking protocols --  This method uses the WIN32 LAN Manager application programming interfaces to query the Computer Browser service for computers in workgroups and Windows NT 4.0–based domains. If the computers on the network are not joined to an Active Directory domain, use only the Windows networking protocols option to find computers. System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) -- This method enables you to inventory computers managed by System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM). You need to provide credentials to the System Center Configuration Manager server in order to inventory the managed computers. When you select this option, the MAP Toolkit will query SCCM for a list of computers and then MAP will connect to these computers. Scan an IP address range -- This method allows you to specify the starting address and ending address of an IP address range. The wizard will then scan all IP addresses in the range and inventory only those computers. Note: This option can perform poorly, if many IP addresses aren’t being used within the range. Manually enter computer names and credentials -- Use this method if you want to inventory a small number of specific computers. Import computer names from a files -- Using this method, you can create a text file with a list of computer names that will be inventoried. 4. On the All Computers Credentials page, enter the accounts that have administrator rights to connect to the discovered machines. This does not need to a domain account, but needs to be a local administrator. I have entered my domain account that is an administrator on my local machine. Click Next after one or more accounts have been added. NOTE: The MAP Toolkit primarily uses Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) to collect hardware, device, and software information from the remote computers. In order for the MAP Toolkit to successfully connect and inventory computers in your environment, you have to configure your machines to inventory through WMI and also allow your firewall to enable remote access through WMI. The MAP Toolkit also requires remote registry access for certain assessments. In addition to enabling WMI, you need accounts with administrative privileges to access desktops and servers in your environment. 5. On the Credentials Order page, select the order in which want the MAP Toolkit to connect to the machine and SQL Server. Generally just accept the defaults and click Next. 6. On the Enter Computers Manually page, click Create to pull up at dialog to enter one or more computer names. 7. On the Summary page confirm your settings and then click Finish. After clicking Finish the inventory process will start, as shown below: Windows Azure Readiness results and report After the inventory progress has completed, you can review the results under the Database scenario. On the tile, you will see the number of Windows Server machine with SQL Server that were analyzed, the number of machines that are ready to move without changes and the number of machines that require further changes. If you click this Azure VM Readiness tile, you will see additional details and can generate the Windows Azure VM Readiness Report. After the report is generated, select View | Saved Reports and Proposals to view the location of the report. Open up WindowsAzureVMReadiness* report in Excel. On the Windows tab, you can see the results of the assessment. This report has a column for the Operating System and SQL Server assessment and provides a recommendation on how to resolve, if there a component is not supported. Collect Performance Data Launch the Performance Wizard to collect performance information for the Windows Server machines that you would like the MAP Toolkit to suggest a Windows Azure VM size for. Windows Azure Capacity results and report After the performance metrics are collected, the Azure VM Capacity title will display the number of Virtual Machine sizes that are suggested for the Windows Server and Linux machines that were analyzed. You can then click on the Azure VM Capacity tile to see the capacity details and generate the Windows Azure VM Capacity Report. Within this report, you can view the performance data that was collected and the Virtual Machine sizes.   MAP Toolkit 8.0 Beta is available for download here Your participation and feedback is very important to make the MAP Toolkit work better for you. We encourage you to participate in the beta program and provide your feedback at [email protected] or through one of our surveys. Useful References: Windows Azure Homepage How to guides for Windows Azure Virtual Machines Provisioning a SQL Server Virtual Machine on Windows Azure Windows Azure Pricing     Peter Saddow Senior Program Manager – MAP Toolkit Team

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  • Webcast Q&A: Qualcomm Provides a Seamless Experience for Customers with Oracle WebCenter

    - by kellsey.ruppel
    Last Thursday we had the second webcast in our WebCenter in Action webcast series, "Qualcomm Provides a Seamless Experience for Customers with Oracle WebCenter, where customer Michael Chander from Qualcomm and Vince Casarez & Gourav Goyal from Oracle Partner Keste shared how Oracle WebCenter is powering Qualcomm’s externally facing website and providing a seamless experience for their customers. In case you missed it, here's a recap of the Q&A.   Mike Chandler, Qualcomm Q: Did you run into any issues when integrating all of the different applications together?A: Definitely, our main challenges were in the area of user provisioning and security propagation, all the standard stuff you might expect when hooking up SSO for authentication and authorization. In addition, we spent several iterations getting the UI’s in sync. While everyone was given the same digital material to build too, each team interpreted and implemented it their own way. Initially as a user navigated, if you were looking for it, you could slight variations in color or font or width , stuff like that. So we had to pull all the developers responsible for the UI together and get pixel level agreement on a lot of things so we could ensure seamless transitions across applications. Q: What has been the biggest benefit your end users have seen?A: Wow, there have been several. An SSO enabled environment was huge a win for our users. The portal application that this replaced had not really been invested in by the business. With this project, we had full business participation and backing, and it really showed in some key areas like the shopping experience. For example, while ordering in the previous site, the items did not have any pictures or really usable descriptions. A tremendous amount of work was done to try and make the site more intuitive and user friendly. Site performance has also drastically improved thanks to new hardware, improved database design, and of course the fact that ADF has made great strides in runtime performance. Q: Was there any resistance internally when implementing the solution? If so, how did you overcome that?A: Within a large company, I’m sure there is always going to be competition for large projects, as there was here. Once we got through the technical analysis and settled on the technology choices, it was actually no resistance to implementing the solution. This project was fully driven by the business with the aim of long term growth. I can confidently say that the fact that this project was given the utmost importance by both the business and IT really help put down any resistance that you would typically see while implementing a new solution. Q: Given the performance, what do you estimate to be the top end capacity of the system? A:I think our top end capacity is really only limited by our hardware. I’m comfortable saying we could grow 10x on our current hardware, both in terms of transactions and users. We can easily spin up new JVM instances if needed. We already use less JVM’s than we had planned. In addition, ADF is doing a very good job with his connection pooling and application module pooling, so we see a very good ratio of users connected to the systems vs db connections, without impacting performace. Q: What's the overview or summary of feedback from the users interacting with the site?A: Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive from both the business and our customers. They’re very happy with the new SSO environment , the new LAF, and the performance of the site. Of course, it’s not all roses. No matter what, there are always going to be people that don’t like the layout or the color scheme, etc. By and large though, customers are happy and the business is happy. Q: Can you describe the impressions about the site before and after the project within Qualcomm?A: Before the project, the site worked and people were using it, but most people were not happy with it. It was slow and tended to be a bit tempermental, for example a user would perform a transaction and the system would throw and unexpected error. The user could back up and retry the steps and things would work fine, so why didn’t work the first time?. From a UI perspective, we’d hear comments like it looked like it was built by a high school student.  Vince Casarez & Gourav Goyal, Keste Q: Did you run into any obstacles when implementing the solution?A: It's interesting some people call them "obstacles" on this project we just called them "dependencies".  There were both technical and business related dependencies that we had to work out. Mike points out the SSO dependencies and the coordination and synchronization between the teams to have a seamless login experience and a seamless end user experience.  There was also a set of dependencies on the User Acceptance testing to make sure that everyone understood the use cases for how the system would be used.  With a branching into a new market and trying to match a simple user experience as many consumer sites have today, there was always a tendency for the team members to provide their suggestions on how things could be simpler.  But with all the work up front on the user design and getting the business driving this set of experiences, this minimized the downstream suggestions that tend to distract a team.  In this case, all the work up front allowed us to enumerate the "dependencies" and keep the distractions to a minimum. Q: Was there a lot of custom work that needed to be done for this particular solution?A: The focus for this particular solution was really on the custom processes. The interesting thing is that with the data flows and the integration with applications, there are some pre-built integrations, but realistically for the process flow, we had to build those. The framework and tooling we used made things easier so we didn’t have to implement core functionality, like transitioning from screen to screen or from flow to flow. The design feature of Task Flows really helped speed the development and keep the component infrastructure in line with the dynamic processes.  Task flows and other elements like Skins are core to the infrastructure or technology stack of Oracle. This then allowed the team to center the project focus around the business flows and use cases to meet the core requirements and keep the project on time. Q: What do you think were the keys to success for rolling out WebCenter?A:  The 5 main keys to success were: 1) Sponsorship from the whole organization around this project from senior executive agreement, business owners driving functionality, and IT development alignment; 2) Upfront design planning and use case definition to clearly define the project scope and requirements; 3) Focussed development and project management aligned with the top level goals and drivers; 4) User acceptance and usability testing along the way to identify potential issues and direct resolution of the issues;  and 5) Constant prioritization of the issues for development to fix by the business.  It also helps to have great team chemistry and really smart people working on the project. If you missed the webcast, be sure to catch the replay to see a live demonstration of WebCenter in action!  Qualcomm Provides a Seamless Experience for Customers with Oracle WebCenter from Oracle WebCenter

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  • Webcast Q&A: ING on How to Scale Role Management and Compliance

    - by Tanu Sood
    Thanks to all who attended the live webcast we hosted on ING: Scaling Role Management and Access Certifications to Thousands of Applications on Wed, April 11th. Those of you who couldn’t join us, the webcast replay is now available. Many thanks to our guest speaker, Mark Robison, Enterprise Architect at ING for walking us through ING’s drivers and rationale for the platform approach, the phased implementation strategy, results & metrics, roadmap and recommendations. We greatly appreciate the insight he shared with us all on the deployment synergies between Oracle Identity Manager (OIM) and Oracle Identity Analytics (OIA) to enforce streamlined user and role management and scalable compliance. Mark was also kind enough to walk us through specific solutions features that helped ING manage the problem of role explosion and implement closed loop remediation. Our host speaker, Neil Gandhi, Principal Product Manager, Oracle rounded off the presentation by discussing common use cases and deployment scenarios we see organizations implement to automate user/identity administration and enforce closed-loop scalable compliance. Neil also called out the specific features in Oracle Identity Analytics 11gR1 that cater to expediting and streamlining compliance processes such as access certifications. While we tackled a few questions during the webcast, we have captured the responses to those that we weren’t able to get to here; our sincere thanks to Mark Robison for taking the time to respond to questions specific to ING’s implementation and strategy. Q. Did you include business friendly entitlment descriptions, or is the business seeing application descriptors A. We include very business friendly descriptions.  The OIA tool has the facility to allow this. Q. When doing attestation on job change, who is in the workflow to review and confirm that the employee should continue to have access? Is that a best practice?   A. The new and old manager  are in the workflow.  The tool can check for any Separation of Duties (SOD) violations with both having similiar accesses.  It may not be a best practice, but it is a reality of doing your old and new job for a transition period on a transfer. Q. What versions of OIM and OIA are being used at ING?   A. OIM 11gR1 and OIA 11gR1; the very latest versions available. Q. Are you using an entitlements / role catalog?   A. Yes. We use both roles and entitlements. Q. What specific unexpected benefits did the Identity Warehouse provide ING?   A. The most unanticipated was to help Legal Hold identify user ID's in the various applications.   Other benefits included providing a one stop shop for all aggregated ID information. Q. How fine grained are your application and entitlements? Did OIA, OIM support that level of granularity?   A. We have some very fine grained entitlements, but we role this up into approved Roles to allow for easier management.   For managing very fine grained entitlements, Oracle offers the Oracle Entitlement Server.  We currently do not own this software but are considering it. Q. Do you allow any individual access or is everything truly role based?   A. We are a hybrid environment with roles and individual positive and negative entitlements Q. Did you use an Agile methodology like scrum to deliver functionality during your project? A. We started with waterfall, but used an agile approach to provide benefits after the initial implementation Q. How did you handle rolling out the standard ID format to existing users? A. We just used the standard IDs for new users.  We have not taken on a project to address the existing nonstandard IDs. Q. To avoid role explosion, how do you deal with apps that require more than a couple of entitlement TYPES? For example, an app may have different levels of access and it may need to know the user's country/state to associate them with particular customers.   A. We focus on the functional user and craft the role around their daily job requirements.  The role captures the required application entitlements.  To keep role explosion down, we use role mining in OIA and also meet and interview the business.  It is an iterative process to get role consensus. Q. Great presentation! How many rounds of Certifications has ING performed so far?  A. Around 7 quarters and constant certifications on transfer. Q. Did you have executive support from the top down   A. Yes  The executive support was key to our success. Q. For your cloud instance are you using OIA or OIM as SaaS?  A. No.  We are just provisioning and deprovisioning to various Cloud providers.  (Service Now is an example) Q. How do you ensure a role owner does not get more priviliges as are intended and thus violates another role, e,g, a DBA Roles should not get tor rigt to run somethings as root, as this would affect the root role? A. We have SOD  checks.  Also all Roles are initially approved by external audit and the role owners have to certify the roles and any changes Q. What is your ratio of employees to roles?   A. We are still in process going through our various lines of business, so I do not have a final ratio.  From what we have seen, the ratio varies greatly depending on the Line of Business and the diversity of Job Functions.  For standardized lines of business such as call centers, the ratio is very good where we can have a single role that covers many employees.  For specialized lines of business like treasury, it can be one or two people per role. Q. Is ING using Oracle On Demand service ?   A. No Q. Do you have to implement or migrate to OIM in order to get the Identity Warehouse, or can OIA provide the identity warehouse as well if you haven't reached OIM yet? A. No, OIM deployment is not required to implement OIA’s Identity Warehouse but as you heard during the webcast, there are tremendous deployment synergies in deploying both OIA and OIM together. Q. When is the Security Governor product coming out? A. Oracle Security Governor for Healthcare is available today. Hope you enjoyed the webcast and we look forward to having you join us for the next webcast in the Customers Talk: Identity as a Platform webcast series: Toyota: Putting Customers First – Identity Platform as a Business Enabler Wednesday, May 16th at 10 am PST/ 1 pm EST Register Today You can also register for a live event at a city near you where Aberdeen’s Derek Brink will discuss the survey results from the recently published report “Analyzing Platform vs. Point Solution Approach in Identity”. And, you can do a quick (& free)  online assessment of your identity programs by benchmarking it against the 160 organizations surveyed  in the Aberdeen report, compliments of Oracle. Here’s the slide deck from our ING webcast: ING webcast platform View more presentations from OracleIDM

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  • Clouds Everywhere But not a Drop of Rain – Part 3

    - by sxkumar
    I was sharing with you how a broad-based transformation such as cloud will increase agility and efficiency of an organization if process re-engineering is part of the plan.  I have also stressed on the key enterprise requirements such as “broad and deep solutions, “running your mission critical applications” and “automated and integrated set of capabilities”. Let me walk you through some key cloud attributes such as “elasticity” and “self-service” and what they mean for an enterprise class cloud. I will also talk about how we at Oracle have taken a very enterprise centric view to developing cloud solutions and how our products have been specifically engineered to address enterprise cloud needs. Cloud Elasticity and Enterprise Applications Requirements Easy and quick scalability for a short-period of time is the signature of cloud based solutions. It is this elasticity that allows you to dynamically redistribute your resources according to business priorities, helps increase your overall resource utilization, and reduces operational costs by allowing you to get the most out of your existing investment. Most public clouds are offering a instant provisioning mechanism of compute power (CPU, RAM, Disk), customer pay for the instance-hours(and bandwidth) they use, adding computing resources at peak times and removing them when they are no longer needed. This type of “just-in-time” serving of compute resources is well known for mid-tiers “state less” servers such as web application servers and web servers that just need another machine to start and run on it but what does it really mean for an enterprise application and its underlying data? Most enterprise applications are not as quite as “state less” and justifiably so. As such, how do you take advantage of cloud elasticity and make it relevant for your enterprise apps? This is where Cloud meets Grid Computing. At Oracle, we have invested enormous amount of time, energy and resources in creating enterprise grid solutions. All our technology products offer built-in elasticity via clustering and dynamic scaling. With products like Real Application Clusters (RAC), Automatic Storage Management, WebLogic Clustering, and Coherence In-Memory Grid, we allow all your enterprise applications to benefit from Cloud elasticity –both vertically and horizontally - without requiring any application changes. A number of technology vendors take a rather simplistic route of starting up additional or removing unneeded VM as the "Cloud Scale-Out" solution. While this may work for stateless mid-tier servers where load balancers can handle the addition and remove of instances transparently but following a similar approach for the database tier - often called as "database sharding" - requires significant application modification and typically does not work with off the shelf packaged applications. Technologies like Oracle Database Real Application Clusters, Automatic Storage Management, etc. on the other hand bring the benefits of incremental scalability and on-demand elasticity to ANY application by providing a simplified abstraction layers where the application does not need deal with data spread over multiple database instances. Rather they just talk to a single database and the database software takes care of aggregating resources across multiple hardware components. It is the technologies like these that truly make a cloud solution relevant for enterprises.  For customers who are looking for a next generation hardware consolidation platform, our engineered systems (e.g. Exadata, Exalogic) not only provide incredible amount of performance and capacity, they also reduce the data center complexity and simplify operations. Assemble, Deploy and Manage Enterprise Applications for Cloud Products like Oracle Virtual assembly builder (OVAB) resolve the complex problem of bringing the cloud speed to complex multi-tier applications. With assemblies, you can not only provision all components of a multi-tier application and wire them together by push of a button, other aspects of application lifecycle, such as real-time application testing, scale-up/scale-down, performance and availability monitoring, etc., are also automated using Oracle Enterprise Manager.  An essential criteria for an enterprise cloud to succeed is the ability to ensure business service levels especially when business users have either full visibility on the usage cost with a “show back” or a “charge back”. With Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c, we have created the most comprehensive cloud management solution in the industry that is capable of managing business service levels “applications-to-disk” in a enterprise private cloud – all from a single console. It is the only cloud management platform in the industry that allows you to deliver infrastructure, platform and application cloud services out of the box. Moreover, it offers integrated and complete lifecycle management of the cloud - including planning and set up, service delivery, operations management, metering and chargeback, etc .  Sounds unbelievable? Well, just watch this space for more details on how Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c is the nerve center of Oracle Cloud! Our cloud solution portfolio is also the broadest and most deep in the industry  - covering public, private, hybrid, Infrastructure, platform and applications clouds. It is no coincidence therefore that the Oracle Cloud today offers the most comprehensive set of public cloud services in the industry.  And to a large part, this has been made possible thanks to our years on investment in creating cloud enabling technologies.  Summary  But the intent of this blog post isn't to dwell on how great our solutions are (these are just some examples to illustrate how we at Oracle have approached this problem space). Rather it is to help you ask the right questions before you embark on your cloud journey.  So to summarize, here are the key takeaways.       It is critical that you are clear on why you are building the cloud. Successful organizations keep business benefits as the first and foremost cloud objective. On the other hand, those who approach this purely as a technology project are more likely to fail. Think about where you want to be in 3-5 years before you get started. Your long terms objectives should determine what your first step ought to be. As obvious as it may seem, more people than not make the first move without knowing where they are headed.  Don’t make the mistake of equating cloud to virtualization and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS). Spinning a VM on-demand will give some short term relief to your IT staff but is unlikely to solve your larger business problems. As such, even if IaaS is your first step towards a more comprehensive cloud, plan the roadmap around those higher level services before you begin. And ask your vendors on how they are going to be your partners in this journey. Capabilities like self-service access and chargeback/showback are absolutely critical if you really expect your cloud to be transformational. Your business won't see the full benefits of the cloud until it empowers them with same kind of control and transparency that they are used to while using a public cloud service.  Evaluate the benefits of integration, as opposed to blindly following the best-of-breed strategy. Integration is a huge challenge and more so in a cloud environment. There are enormous costs associated with stitching a solution out of disparate components and even more in maintaining it. Hope you found these ideas helpful. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and experiences.

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  • FOUR questions to ask if you are implementing DATABASE-AS-A-SERVICE

    - by Sudip Datta
    During my ongoing tenure at Oracle, I have met all types of DBAs. Happy DBAs, unhappy DBAs, proud DBAs, risk-loving DBAs, cautious DBAs. These days, as Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) becomes more mainstream, I find some complacent DBAs who are basking in their achievement of having implemented DBaaS. Some others, however, are not that happy. They grudgingly complain that they did not have much of a say in the implementation, they simply had to follow what their cloud architects (mostly infrastructure admins) offered them. In most cases it would be a database wrapped inside a VM that would be labeled as “Database as a Service”. In other cases, it would be existing brute-force automation simply exposed in a portal. As much as I think that there is more to DBaaS than those approaches and often get tempted to propose Enterprise Manager 12c, I try to be objective. Neither do I want to dampen the spirit of the happy ones, nor do I want to stoke the pain of the unhappy ones. As I mentioned in my previous post, I don’t deny vanilla automation could be useful. I like virtualization too for what it has helped us accomplish in terms of resource management, but we need to scrutinize its merit on a case-by-case basis and apply it meaningfully. For DBAs who either claim to have implemented DBaaS or are planning to do so, I simply want to provide four key questions to ponder about: 1. Does it make life easier for your end users? Database-as-a-Service can have several types of end users. Junior DBAs, QA Engineers, Developers- each having their own skillset. The objective of DBaaS is to make their life simple, so that they can focus on their core responsibilities without having to worry about additional stuff. For example, if you are a Developer using Oracle Application Express (APEX), you want to deal with schema, objects and PL/SQL code and not with datafiles or listener configuration. If you are a QA Engineer needing database copies for functional testing, you do not want to deal with underlying operating system patching and compliance issues. The question to ask, therefore, is, whether DBaaS makes life easier for those users. It is often convenient to give them VM shells to deal with a la Amazon EC2 IaaS, but is that what they really want? Is it a productive use of a developer's time if he needs to apply RPM errata to his Linux operating system. Asking him to keep the underlying operating system current is like making a guest responsible for a restaurant's decor. 2. Does it make life easier for your administrators? Cloud, in general, is supposed to free administrators from attending to mundane tasks like provisioning services for every single end user request. It is supposed to enable a readily consumable platform and enforce standardization in the process. For example, if a Service Catalog exposes DBaaS of specific database versions and configurations, it, by its very nature, enforces certain discipline and standardization within the IT environment. What if, instead of specific database configurations, cloud allowed each end user to create databases of their liking resulting in hundreds of version and patch levels and thousands of individual databases. Therefore the right question to ask is whether the unwanted consequence of DBaaS is OS and database sprawl. And if so, who is responsible for tracking them, backing them up, administering them? Studies have shown that these administrative overheads increase exponentially with new targets, and it could result in a management nightmare. That leads us to our next question. 3. Does it satisfy your Security Officers and Compliance Auditors? Compliance Auditors need to know who did what and when. They also want the cloud platform to be secure, so that end users have little freedom in tampering with it. Dealing with VM sprawl is not the easiest of challenges, let alone dealing with them as they keep getting reconfigured and moved around. This leads to the proverbial needle in the haystack problem, and all it needs is one needle to cause a serious compliance issue in the enterprise. Bottomline is, flexibility and agility should not come at the expense of compliance and it is very important to get the balance right. Can we have security and isolation without creating compliance challenges? Instead of a ‘one size fits all approach’ i.e. OS level isolation, can we think smartly about database isolation or schema based isolation? This is where the appropriate resource modeling needs to be applied. The usual systems management vendors out there with heterogeneous common-denominator approach have compromised on these semantics. If you follow Enterprise Manager’s DBaaS solution, you will see that we have considered different models, not precluding virtualization, for different customer use cases. The judgment to use virtual assemblies versus databases on physical RAC versus Schema-as-a-Service in a single database, should be governed by the need of the applications and not by putting compliance considerations in the backburner. 4. Does it satisfy your CIO? Finally, does it satisfy your higher ups? As the sponsor of cloud initiative, the CIO is expected to lead an IT transformation project, not merely a run-of-the-mill IT operations. Simply virtualizing server resources and delivering them through self-service is a good start, but hardly transformational. CIOs may appreciate the instant benefit from server consolidation, but studies have revealed that the ROI from consolidation would flatten out at 20-25%. The question would be: what next? As we go higher up in the stack, the need to virtualize, segregate and optimize shifts to those layers that are more palpable to the business users. As Sushil Kumar noted in his blog post, " the most important thing to note here is the enterprise private cloud is not just an IT project, rather it is a business initiative to create an IT setup that is more aligned with the needs of today's dynamic and highly competitive business environment." Business users could not care less about infrastructure consolidation or virtualization - they care about business agility and service level assurance. Last but not the least, lot of CIOs get miffed if we ask them to throw away their existing hardware investments for implementing DBaaS. In Oracle, we always emphasize on freedom of choosing a platform; hence Enterprise Manager’s DBaaS solution is platform neutral. It can work on any Operating System (that the agent is certified on) Oracle’s hardware as well as 3rd party hardware. As a parting note, I urge you to remember these 4 questions. Remember that your satisfaction as an implementer lies in the satisfaction of others.

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  • JPA 2.1 Schema Generation (TOTD #187)

    - by arungupta
    This blog explained some of the key features of JPA 2.1 earlier. Since then Schema Generation has been added to JPA 2.1. This Tip Of The Day (TOTD) will provide more details about this new feature in JPA 2.1. Schema Generation refers to generation of database artifacts like tables, indexes, and constraints in a database schema. It may or may not involve generation of a proper database schema depending upon the credentials and authorization of the user. This helps in prototyping of your application where the required artifacts are generated either prior to application deployment or as part of EntityManagerFactory creation. This is also useful in environments that require provisioning database on demand, e.g. in a cloud. This feature will allow your JPA domain object model to be directly generated in a database. The generated schema may need to be tuned for actual production environment. This usecase is supported by allowing the schema generation to occur into DDL scripts which can then be further tuned by a DBA. The following set of properties in persistence.xml or specified during EntityManagerFactory creation controls the behaviour of schema generation. Property Name Purpose Values javax.persistence.schema-generation-action Controls action to be taken by persistence provider "none", "create", "drop-and-create", "drop" javax.persistence.schema-generation-target Controls whehter schema to be created in database, whether DDL scripts are to be created, or both "database", "scripts", "database-and-scripts" javax.persistence.ddl-create-script-target, javax.persistence.ddl-drop-script-target Controls target locations for writing of scripts. Writers are pre-configured for the persistence provider. Need to be specified only if scripts are to be generated. java.io.Writer (e.g. MyWriter.class) or URL strings javax.persistence.ddl-create-script-source, javax.persistence.ddl-drop-script-source Specifies locations from which DDL scripts are to be read. Readers are pre-configured for the persistence provider. java.io.Reader (e.g. MyReader.class) or URL strings javax.persistence.sql-load-script-source Specifies location of SQL bulk load script. java.io.Reader (e.g. MyReader.class) or URL string javax.persistence.schema-generation-connection JDBC connection to be used for schema generation javax.persistence.database-product-name, javax.persistence.database-major-version, javax.persistence.database-minor-version Needed if scripts are to be generated and no connection to target database. Values are those obtained from JDBC DatabaseMetaData. javax.persistence.create-database-schemas Whether Persistence Provider need to create schema in addition to creating database objects such as tables, sequences, constraints, etc. "true", "false" Section 11.2 in the JPA 2.1 specification defines the annotations used for schema generation process. For example, @Table, @Column, @CollectionTable, @JoinTable, @JoinColumn, are used to define the generated schema. Several layers of defaulting may be involved. For example, the table name is defaulted from entity name and entity name (which can be specified explicitly as well) is defaulted from the class name. However annotations may be used to override or customize the values. The following entity class: @Entity public class Employee {    @Id private int id;    private String name;     . . .     @ManyToOne     private Department dept; } is generated in the database with the following attributes: Maps to EMPLOYEE table in default schema "id" field is mapped to ID column as primary key "name" is mapped to NAME column with a default VARCHAR(255). The length of this field can be easily tuned using @Column. @ManyToOne is mapped to DEPT_ID foreign key column. Can be customized using JOIN_COLUMN. In addition to these properties, couple of new annotations are added to JPA 2.1: @Index - An index for the primary key is generated by default in a database. This new annotation will allow to define additional indexes, over a single or multiple columns, for a better performance. This is specified as part of @Table, @SecondaryTable, @CollectionTable, @JoinTable, and @TableGenerator. For example: @Table(indexes = {@Index(columnList="NAME"), @Index(columnList="DEPT_ID DESC")})@Entity public class Employee {    . . .} The generated table will have a default index on the primary key. In addition, two new indexes are defined on the NAME column (default ascending) and the foreign key that maps to the department in descending order. @ForeignKey - It is used to define foreign key constraint or to otherwise override or disable the persistence provider's default foreign key definition. Can be specified as part of JoinColumn(s), MapKeyJoinColumn(s), PrimaryKeyJoinColumn(s). For example: @Entity public class Employee {    @Id private int id;    private String name;    @ManyToOne    @JoinColumn(foreignKey=@ForeignKey(foreignKeyDefinition="FOREIGN KEY (MANAGER_ID) REFERENCES MANAGER"))    private Manager manager;     . . . } In this entity, the employee's manager is mapped by MANAGER_ID column in the MANAGER table. The value of foreignKeyDefinition would be a database specific string. A complete replay of Linda's talk at JavaOne 2012 can be seen here (click on CON4212_mp4_4212_001 in Media). These features will be available in GlassFish 4 promoted builds in the near future. JPA 2.1 will be delivered as part of Java EE 7. The different components in the Java EE 7 platform are tracked here. JPA 2.1 Expert Group has released Early Draft 2 of the specification. Section 9.4 and 11.2 provide all details about Schema Generation. The latest javadocs can be obtained from here. And the JPA EG would appreciate feedback.

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  • Beyond Cloud Technology, Enabling A More Agile and Responsive Organization

    - by sxkumar
    This is the second part of the blog “Clouds, Clouds Everywhere But not a Drop of Rain”. In the first part,  I was sharing with you how a broad-based transformation makes cloud more than a technology initiative, I will describe in this section how it requires people (organizational) and process changes as well, and these changes are as critical as is the choice of right tools and technology. People: Most IT organizations have a fairly complex organizational structure. There are different groups, managing different pieces of the puzzle, and yet, they don't always work together. Provisioning a new application therefore may require a request to float endlessly through system administrators, DBAs and middleware admin worlds – resulting in long delays and constant finger pointing.  Cloud users expect end-to-end automation - which requires these silos to be greatly simplified, if not completely eliminated.  Most customers I talk to acknowledge this problem but are quick to admit that such a transformation is hard. As hard as it may be, I am afraid that the status quo is no longer an option. Sticking to an organizational structure that was created ages back will not only impede cloud adoption,  it also risks making the IT skills increasingly irrelevant in a world that is rapidly moving towards converged applications and infrastructure.   Process: Most IT organizations today operate with a mindset that they must fully "control" access to any and all types of IT services. This in turn leads to people clinging on to outdated manual approval processes .  While requiring approvals for scarce resources makes sense, insisting that every single request must be manually approved defeats the very purpose of cloud. Not only this causes delays, thereby at least partially negating the agility benefits, it also results in gross inefficiency. In a cloud environment, self-service access should be governed by policies, quotas that the administrators can define upfront . For a cloud initiative to be successful, IT organizations MUST be ready to empower users by giving them real control rather than insisting on brokering every single interaction between users and the cloud resources. Technology: From a technology perspective, cloud is about consolidation, standardization and automation. A consolidated and standardized infrastructure helps increase utilization and reduces cost. Additionally, it  enables a much higher degree of automation - thereby providing users the required agility while minimizing operational costs.  Obviously, automation is the key to cloud. Unfortunately it hasn’t received as much attention within enterprises as it should have.  Many organizations are just now waking up to the criticality of automation and it still often gets relegated to back burner in favor of other "high priority" projects. However, it is important to understand that without the right type and level of automation, cloud will remain a distant dream for most enterprises. This in turn makes the choice of the cloud management software extremely critical.  For a cloud management software to be effective in an enterprise environment, it must meet the following qualifications: Broad and Deep Solution It should offer a broad and deep solution to enable the kind of broad-based transformation we are talking about.  Its footprint must cover physical and virtual systems, as well as infrastructure, database and application tiers. Too many enterprises choose to equate cloud with virtualization. While virtualization is a critical component of a cloud solution, it is just a component and not the whole solution. Similarly, too many people tend to equate cloud with Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS). While it is perfectly reasonable to treat IaaS as a starting point, it is important to realize that it is just the first stepping stone - and on its own it can only provide limited business benefits. It is actually the higher level services, such as (application) platform and business applications, that will bring about a more meaningful transformation to your enterprise. Run and Manage Efficiently Your Mission Critical Applications It should not only be able to run your mission critical applications, it should do so better than before.  For enterprises, applications and data are the critical business assets  As such, if you are building a cloud platform that cannot run your ERP application, it isn't truly a "enterprise cloud".  Also, be wary of  vendors who try to sell you the idea that your applications must be written in a certain way to be able to run on the cloud. That is nothing but a bogus, self-serving argument. For the cloud to be meaningful to enterprises, it should adopt to your applications - and not the other way around.  Automated, Integrated Set of Cloud Management Capabilities At the root of many of the problems plaguing enterprise IT today is complexity. A complex maze of tools and technology, coupled with archaic  processes, results in an environment which is inflexible, inefficient and simply too hard to manage. Management tool consolidation, therefore, is key to the success of your cloud as tool proliferation adds to complexity, encourages compartmentalization and defeats the very purpose that you are building the cloud for. Decision makers ought to be extra cautious about vendors trying to sell them a "suite" of disparate and loosely integrated products as a cloud solution.  An effective enterprise cloud management solution needs to provide a tightly integrated set of capabilities for all aspects of cloud lifecycle management. A simple question to ask: will your environment be more or less complex after you implement your cloud? More often than not, the answer will surprise you.  At Oracle, we have understood these challenges and have been working hard to create cloud solutions that are relevant and meaningful for enterprises.  And we have been doing it for much longer than you may think. Oracle was one of the very first enterprise software companies to make our products available on the Amazon Cloud. As far back as in 2007, we created new cloud solutions such as Cloud Database Backup that are helping customers like Amazon save millions every year.  Our cloud solution portfolio is also the broadest and most deep in the industry  - covering public, private, hybrid, Infrastructure, platform and applications clouds. It is no coincidence therefore that the Oracle Cloud today offers the most comprehensive set of public cloud services in the industry.  And to a large part, this has been made possible thanks to our years on investment in creating cloud enabling technologies. I will dedicated the third and final part of the blog “Clouds, Clouds Everywhere But not a Drop of Rain” to Oracle Cloud Technologies Building Blocks and how they mapped into our vision of Enterprise Cloud. Stay Tuned.

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  • Spring security - Reach users ID without passing it through every controller

    - by nilsi
    I have a design issue that I don't know how to solve. I'm using Spring 3.2.4 and Spring security 3.1.4. I have a Account table in my database that looks like this: create table Account (id identity, username varchar unique, password varchar not null, firstName varchar not null, lastName varchar not null, university varchar not null, primary key (id)); Until recently my username was just only a username but I changed it to be the email address instead since many users want to login with that instead. I have a header that I include on all my pages which got a link to the users profile like this: <a href="/project/users/<%= request.getUserPrincipal().getName()%>" class="navbar-link"><strong><%= request.getUserPrincipal().getName()%></strong></a> The problem is that <%= request.getUserPrincipal().getName()%> returns the email now, I don't want to link the user's with thier emails. Instead I want to use the id every user have to link to the profile. How do I reach the users id's from every page? I have been thinking of two solutions but I'm not sure: Change the principal to contain the id as well, don't know how to do this and having problem finding good information on the topic. Add a model attribute to all my controllers that contain the whole user but this would be really ugly, like this. Account account = entityManager.find(Account.class, email); model.addAttribute("account", account); There are more way's as well and I have no clue which one is to prefer. I hope it's clear enough and thank you for any help on this. ====== Edit according to answer ======= I edited Account to implement UserDetails, it now looks like this (will fix the auto generated stuff later): @Entity @Table(name="Account") public class Account implements UserDetails { @Id private int id; private String username; private String password; private String firstName; private String lastName; @ManyToOne private University university; public Account() { } public Account(String username, String password, String firstName, String lastName, University university) { this.username = username; this.password = password; this.firstName = firstName; this.lastName = lastName; this.university = university; } public String getUsername() { return username; } public String getPassword() { return password; } public String getFirstName() { return firstName; } public String getLastName() { return lastName; } public void setUsername(String username) { this.username = username; } public void setPassword(String password) { this.password = password; } public void setFirstName(String firstName) { this.firstName = firstName; } public void setLastName(String lastName) { this.lastName = lastName; } public University getUniversity() { return university; } public void setUniversity(University university) { this.university = university; } public int getId() { return id; } public void setId(int id) { this.id = id; } @Override public Collection<? extends GrantedAuthority> getAuthorities() { // TODO Auto-generated method stub return null; } @Override public boolean isAccountNonExpired() { // TODO Auto-generated method stub return false; } @Override public boolean isAccountNonLocked() { // TODO Auto-generated method stub return false; } @Override public boolean isCredentialsNonExpired() { // TODO Auto-generated method stub return false; } @Override public boolean isEnabled() { // TODO Auto-generated method stub return true; } } I also added <%@ taglib prefix="sec" uri="http://www.springframework.org/security/tags" %> To my jsp files and trying to reach the id by <sec:authentication property="principal.id" /> This gives me the following org.springframework.beans.NotReadablePropertyException: Invalid property 'principal.id' of bean class [org.springframework.security.authentication.UsernamePasswordAuthenticationToken]: Bean property 'principal.id' is not readable or has an invalid getter method: Does the return type of the getter match the parameter type of the setter? ====== Edit 2 according to answer ======= I based my application on spring social samples and I never had to change anything until now. This are the files I think are relevant, please tell me if theres something you need to see besides this. AccountRepository.java public interface AccountRepository { void createAccount(Account account) throws UsernameAlreadyInUseException; Account findAccountByUsername(String username); } JdbcAccountRepository.java @Repository public class JdbcAccountRepository implements AccountRepository { private final JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate; private final PasswordEncoder passwordEncoder; @Inject public JdbcAccountRepository(JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate, PasswordEncoder passwordEncoder) { this.jdbcTemplate = jdbcTemplate; this.passwordEncoder = passwordEncoder; } @Transactional public void createAccount(Account user) throws UsernameAlreadyInUseException { try { jdbcTemplate.update( "insert into Account (firstName, lastName, username, university, password) values (?, ?, ?, ?, ?)", user.getFirstName(), user.getLastName(), user.getUsername(), user.getUniversity(), passwordEncoder.encode(user.getPassword())); } catch (DuplicateKeyException e) { throw new UsernameAlreadyInUseException(user.getUsername()); } } public Account findAccountByUsername(String username) { return jdbcTemplate.queryForObject("select username, firstName, lastName, university from Account where username = ?", new RowMapper<Account>() { public Account mapRow(ResultSet rs, int rowNum) throws SQLException { return new Account(rs.getString("username"), null, rs.getString("firstName"), rs.getString("lastName"), new University("test")); } }, username); } } security.xml <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <beans:beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/security" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:beans="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/security http://www.springframework.org/schema/security/spring-security-3.1.xsd http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.1.xsd"> <http pattern="/resources/**" security="none" /> <http pattern="/project/" security="none" /> <http use-expressions="true"> <!-- Authentication policy --> <form-login login-page="/signin" login-processing-url="/signin/authenticate" authentication-failure-url="/signin?error=bad_credentials" /> <logout logout-url="/signout" delete-cookies="JSESSIONID" /> <intercept-url pattern="/addcourse" access="isAuthenticated()" /> <intercept-url pattern="/courses/**/**/edit" access="isAuthenticated()" /> <intercept-url pattern="/users/**/edit" access="isAuthenticated()" /> </http> <authentication-manager alias="authenticationManager"> <authentication-provider> <password-encoder ref="passwordEncoder" /> <jdbc-user-service data-source-ref="dataSource" users-by-username-query="select username, password, true from Account where username = ?" authorities-by-username-query="select username, 'ROLE_USER' from Account where username = ?"/> </authentication-provider> <authentication-provider> <user-service> <user name="admin" password="admin" authorities="ROLE_USER, ROLE_ADMIN" /> </user-service> </authentication-provider> </authentication-manager> </beans:beans> And this is my try of implementing a UserDetailsService public class RepositoryUserDetailsService implements UserDetailsService { private final AccountRepository accountRepository; @Autowired public RepositoryUserDetailsService(AccountRepository repository) { this.accountRepository = repository; } @Override public UserDetails loadUserByUsername(String username) throws UsernameNotFoundException { Account user = accountRepository.findAccountByUsername(username); if (user == null) { throw new UsernameNotFoundException("No user found with username: " + username); } return user; } } Still gives me the same error, do I need to add the UserDetailsService somewhere? This is starting to be something else compared to my initial question, I should maybe start another question. Sorry for my lack of experience in this. I have to read up.

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  • Maven2 - problem with pluginManagement and parent-child relationship

    - by Newtopian
    from maven documentation pluginManagement: is an element that is seen along side plugins. Plugin Management contains plugin elements in much the same way, except that rather than configuring plugin information for this particular project build, it is intended to configure project builds that inherit from this one. However, this only configures plugins that are actually referenced within the plugins element in the children. The children have every right to override pluginManagement definitions. Now : if I have this in my parent POM <build> <pluginManagement> <plugins> <plugin> <artifactId>maven-dependency-plugin</artifactId> <version>2.0</version> <executions> Some stuff for the children </execution> </executions> </plugin> </plugins> </pluginManagement> </build> and I run mvn help:effective-pom on the parent project I get what I want, namely the plugins part directly under build (the one doing the work) remains empty. Now if I do the following : <build> <pluginManagement> <plugins> <plugin> <artifactId>maven-dependency-plugin</artifactId> <version>2.0</version> <executions> Some stuff for the children </execution> </executions> </plugin> </plugins> </pluginManagement> <plugins> <plugin> <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId> <version>2.0.2</version> <inherited>true</inherited> <configuration> <source>1.6</source> <target>1.6</target> </configuration> </plugin> </plugins> </build> mvn help:effective-pom I get again just what I want, the plugins contains just what is declared and the pluginManagement section is ignored. BUT changing with the following <build> <pluginManagement> <plugins> <plugin> <artifactId>maven-dependency-plugin</artifactId> <version>2.0</version> <executions> Some stuff for the children </execution> </executions> </plugin> </plugins> </pluginManagement> <plugins> <plugin> <artifactId>maven-dependency-plugin</artifactId> <version>2.0</version> <inherited>false</inherited> <!-- this perticular config is NOT for kids... for parent only --> <executions> some stuff for adults only </execution> </executions> </plugin> </plugins> </build> and running mvn help:effective-pom the stuff from pluginManagement section is added on top of what is declared already. as such : <build> <pluginManagement> ... </pluginManagement> <plugins> <plugin> <artifactId>maven-dependency-plugin</artifactId> <version>2.0</version> <inherited>false</inherited> <!-- this perticular config is NOT for kids... for parent only --> <executions> Some stuff for the children </execution> <executions> some stuff for adults only </execution> </executions> </plugin> </plugins> </build> Is there a way to exclude the part for children from the parent pom's section ? In effect what I want is for the pluginManagement to behave exactly as the documentation states, that is I want it to apply for children only but not for the project in which it is declared. As a corrolary, is there a way I can override the parts from the pluginManagement by declaring the plugin in the normal build section of a project ? whatever I try I get that the section is added to executions but I cannot override one that exists already. EDIT: I never did find an acceptable solution for this and as such the issue remains open. Closest solution was offered below and is currently the accepted solution for this question until something better comes up. Right now there are three ways to achieve the desired result (modulate plugin behaviour depending on where in the inheritance hierarchy the current POM is): 1 - using profiles, it will work but you must beware that profiles are not inherited, which is somewhat counter intuitive. They are (if activated) applied to the POM where declared and then this generated POM is propagated down. As such the only way to activate the profile for child POM is specifically on the command line (least I did not find another way). Property, file and other means of activation fail to activate the POM because the trigger is not in the POM where the profile is declared. 2 - (this is what I ended up doing) Declare the plugin as not inherited in the parent and re-declare (copy-paste) the tidbit in every child where it is wanted. Not ideal but it is simple and it works. 3 - Split the aggregation nature and parent nature of the parent POM. Then since the part that only applies to the parent is in a different project it is now possible to use pluginManagement as firstly intended. However this means that a new artificial project must be created that does not contribute to the end product but only serves the could system. This is clear case of conceptual bleed. Also this only applies to my specific and is hard to generalize, so I abandoned efforts to try and make this work in favor of the not-pretty but more contained cut and paste patch described in 2. If anyone coming across this question has a better solution either because of my lack of knowledge of Maven or because the tool evolved to allow this please post the solution here for future reference. Thank you all for your help :-)

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