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• WebLogic Partner Community Newsletter November 2012

  - by JuergenKress

  Dear WebLogic partner community member Too many different product from Oracle, no idea how do they fit together? Get a copy of the Oracle catalog, an excellent overview of the Oracle middleware portfolio. If you have missed the Oracle OpenWorld WebLogic, Java and ExaLogic highlights - you can now watch our community webcast on-demand. To experience and learn more about WebLogic 12c, make sure you attend one of the upcoming WebLogic 12c bootcamps. We are continuously adding many more locations to our training road-show! If you like to suggest an additional location, Please feel free to write us @wlscommunity on twitter. The key presentations from Oracle OpenWorld 2012 are published at our WebLogic Community Workspace (WebLogic Community membership required): Exalogic X3-2 launch (.pptx) & ExaLogic references 2012 (ppt) & General Session Building and Managing a Private Oracle Java & Experiences building JavaEE based PaaS Platform Compressed presentation & Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Cloud Control Demo (Zip) & Coherence Past Present And Future (ppt)& Coherence Web Elastic Data on WebLogic 12c (zip) & Oracle Tuxedo What’s New in 12c (.pptx) & Tuxedo Java Services(.pptx). One of the newest product in the middleware family ADF Mobile & ADF Essentials is now available. Andrejus published an article on how to implement ADF Essentials on Glassfish. When you design mobile solutions, you might want to make use of the Oracle Fusion Applications user experience design patterns. We continue to promote and create joint partner marketing campaigns to upgrade iAS to WebLogic, please contact myself if you are interested! Critical patch updates have been also released for iAs and the whole middleware stack, please make sure that you implement them. Jürgen Kress Oracle WebLogic Partner Adoption EMEA To read the newsletter please visit http://tinyurl.com/WebLogicnewsNovember2012 (OPN Account required) To become a member of the WebLogic Partner Community please register at http://www.oracle.com/partners/goto/wls-emea ( OPN account required). If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Wiki Technorati Tags: WebLogic Community newsletter,newsletter,WebLogic,WebLogic Community,Oracle,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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• Introducing Agile development after traditional project inception

  - by Riggy

  About a year and a half ago, I entered a workplace that claimed to do Agile development. What I learned was that this place has adopted several agile practices (such as daily standups, sprint plannings and sprint reviews) but none of the principles (just in time / just good enough mentality, exposing failure early, rich communication). I've now been tasked with making the team more agile and I've been assured that I have complete buy-in from the devs and the business team. As a pilot program, they've given me a project that just completed 15 months of requirements gathering, has a 110 page Analysis & Design document (to be considered as "written in stone"), and where I have no access to the end users (only to the committee made up of the users' managers who won't actually be using the product). I started small, giving them a list of expected deliverables for the first 5 sprints (leaving the future sprints undefined), a list of goals for the first sprint, and I dissected the A&D doc to get enough user stories to meet the first sprint's goals. Since then, they've asked why we don't have all the requirements for all the sprints, why I haven't started working on stuff for the third sprint (which they consider more important but is based off of the deliverables of the first 2 sprints) and are pressing for even more documentation that my entire IT team considers busy-work or un-related to us (such as writing the user manual up-front, documenting all the data fields from all the sprints up front, and more "up-front" work). This has been pretty rough for me as a new project manager, but there are improvements I have effectively implemented such as scrumban for story management, pair programming, and having the business give us customer acceptance tests up front (as part of the requirements documentation). So my questions are: What can I do to more effectively introduce change to a resistant business? Are there other practices that I can introduce on the IT side to help show the business the benefits of agile? The burden of documentation is strangling us - the business still sees it as a risk management strategy instead of as a risk. What can we do to alleviate their documentation concerns and demands (specifically the quantity of documentation and their need for all of it up front)? We are in a separate building from our business, about 3 blocks away and they refuse to have their people on the project co-habitate b/c that person "won't be able to work on their other projects while they're at our building." They expect us to always go over there and to bundle our questions so that we can ask them all at once and not waste that person's time with "constant interruptions." What can we do to get richer communication from them? Any additional advice would also be appreciated. Thanks!

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• SQL SERVER – QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON/OFF Explanation and Example – Question on Real World Usage

  - by Pinal Dave

  This is a follow up blog post of SQL SERVER – QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON/OFF and ANSI_NULL ON/OFF Explanation. I wrote that blog six years ago and I had plans that I will write a follow up blog post of the same. Today, when I was going over my to-do list and I was surprised that I had an item there which was six years old and I never got to do that. In the earlier blog post I wrote about exploitation of the Quoted Identifier and ANSI Null. In this blog post we will see a quick example of Quoted Identifier. However, before we continue this blog post, let us see a refresh what both of Quoted Identifider do. QUOTED IDENTIFIER ON/OFF This option specifies the setting for use of double quotes. When this is on, double quotation mark is used as part of the SQL Server identifier (object name). This can be useful in situations in which identifiers are also SQL Server reserved words. In simple words when we have QUOTED IDENTIFIER ON, anything which is wrapped in double quotes becomes an object. E.g. -- The following will work SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON GO CREATE DATABASE "Test1" GO -- The following will throw an error about Incorrect syntax near 'Test2'. SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER OFF GO CREATE DATABASE "Test2" GO This feature is particularly helpful when we are working with reserved keywords in SQL Server. For example if you have to create a database with the name VARCHAR or INT or DATABASE you may want to put double quotes around your database name and turn on quoted identifiers to create a database with the such name. Personally, I do not think so anybody will ever create a database with the reserve keywords intentionally, as it will just lead to confusion. Here is another example to give you further clarity about how Quoted Idenifier setting works with SELECT statement. -- The following will throw an error about Invalid column name 'Column'. SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON GO SELECT "Column" GO -- The following will work SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER OFF GO SELECT "Column" GO Personally, I always use the following method to create database as it works irrespective of what is the quoted identifier’s status. It always creates objects with my desire name whenever I would like to create. CREATE DATABASE [Test3] I believe the future of the quoted identifier on or off is useful in the real world when we have script generated from another database where this setting was ON and we have to now execute the same script again in our environment again. Question to you - I personally have never used this feature as I mentioned earlier. I believe this feature is there to support the scripts which are generated in another SQL Database or generate the script for other database. Do you have a real world scenario where we need to turn on or off Quoted Identifiers. Click to Download Scripts Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• How do you manage extensibility in your multi-tenant systems?

  - by Brian MacKay

  I've got a few big web based multi-tenant products now, and very soon I can see that there will be a lot of customizations that are tenant specific. An extra field here or there, maybe an extra page or some extra logic in the middle of a workflow - that sort of thing. Some of these customizations can be rolled into the core product, and that's great. Some of them are highly specific and would get in everyone else's way. I have a few ideas in mind for managing this, but none of them seem to scale well. The obvious solution is to introduce a ton of client-level settings, allowing various 'features' to be enabled on per-client basis. The downside with that, of course, is massive complexity and clutter. You could introduce a truly huge number of settings, and over time various types of logic (presentation, business) could get way out of hand. Then there's the problem of client-specific fields, which begs for something cleaner than just adding a bunch of nullable fields to the existing tables. So what are people doing to manage this? Force.com seems to be the master of extensibility; obviously they've created a platform from the ground up that is super extensible. You can add on to almost anything with their web-based UI. FogBugz did something similiar where they created a robust plugin model that, come to think of it, might have actually been inspired by Force. I know they spent a lot of time and money on it and if I'm not mistaken the intention was to actually use it internally for future product development. Sounds like the kind of thing I could be tempted to build but probably shouldn't. :) Is a massive investment in pluggable architecture the only way to go? How are you managing these problems, and what kind of results are you seeing? EDIT: It does look as though FogBugz handled the problem by building a fairly robust platform and then using that to put together their screens. To extend it you create a DLL containing classes that implement interfaces like ISearchScreenGridColumn, and that becomes a module. I'm sure it was tremendously expensive to build considering that they have a large of devs and they worked on it for months, plus their surface area is perhaps 5% of the size of my application. Right now I am seriously wondering if Force.com is the right way to handle this. And I am a hard core ASP.Net guy, so this is a strange position to find myself in.

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• Ubuntu Sluggish and Graphics Problem after Nvidia Driver Update

  - by iam

  I just recently started using Ubuntu (12.04) since a few weeks ago and noticed that the interface is very slow and sluggish: On Dash, I have to type the entire app name and wait a few seconds before it shows up in the search box, and a bit later before it displays search result Opening new files or applications takes also quite long and awkward Dragging icons or moving app windows around is not very spontaneous too: I have to take extra attention in moving the mouse otherwise Ubuntu would not do a correct movement or might ends up doing something incorrect instead e.g. opening the windows to full screen options or move the file to different folders, which is frustrating My PC is a few years old already (1.7 GB RAM) so this could be a reason too but when I checked in System Monitor it's hardly ever consuming much memory. Plus web-surfing on Firefox is actually lightning fast (much more than Windows), so I suspect there might be something wrong with the graphics driver (mine is GeForce 7050). I checked around System Settings and found an option to update the Nvidia driver. So I tried it and restarted, as instructed. Now, I got into a big problem upon restart... as the login-screen windows (where I have to type in the password) would take several attempts to display and finally did not manage to (it'd freeze for several seconds before there's any movement again). The background screen also kept reloading several times too and at some point the screen turned black with pixelated color strips running on the bottom 1/3 of the screen, and after a long while the background screen would come up again. Eventually I'd manage to be able to access the desktop but the launcher, top menu bar and app windows border would not disappear. I searched around and found many other people have this similar problem after updating Nvidia driver too, and on some threads the suggestion is to use "killall -u $USER" in command line (it's the only thing among various online suggestions I could do, as at that point I could not access Terminal without the launcher - Ctrl-Alt-T doesn't work for me). So I did that and was able to access the desktop correctly again with launchee/menu by creating a new account. But I would still have the same problem if logging into my original account. So I just finally tried upgrading to 12.10 and now can access my original account with fully-functional desktop - the launcher, menu and windows border are all back now. However, the problem with sluggishness still remains. And now I get scared of ever having to update the Nvidia driver again! I wonder if anyone knows what's the reason that updating the Nvidia driver is causing this problem and is there a way I can update it safely in the future? I'm still not sure how to solve the problem with the sluggishness too and not sure where else to look to find a solution.

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• ADF Mobile @ Oracle Open World 2012 - A Look Back...

  - by Joe Huang

  Hi, everyone: It's been a little over two weeks since the end of Oracle Open World 2012, and hope everyone has recovered sufficiently.  We have seen a tremendous amount of coverage on Oracle ADF Mobile during this Oracle Open World.  For starters, ADF Mobile demo booth was positioned in the Oracle Red Lounge in Moscone North, where all new and innovative technologies are being demonstrated.  The booth is liternally out front and the first booth in the area, and we had a lot of interested attendees talking to us.  It feels like ADF Mobile has finally arrived on the big stage. There are numerous sessions and hands on labs that covers ADF Mobile.  Details can be found in Oracle Open World page.   The Oracle Cloud: Oracle's Cloud Platofrm and Application Strategy by Thomas Kurian (Keynote) Near the beginning of the keynote, showing a great analytics application built using ADF Mobile  Oracle Fusion Middleware Strategies Driving Business Innovation by Hasan Rizvi (Keynote) The Future of Development for Oracle Fusion—From Desktop to Mobile to Cloud by Chris Tonas (General Session) Co-presented with Accenture, an ADF Mobile Beta Partner Extend Oracle Fusion Apps to Tablets/Smartphones with Oracle Mobile Technology (General Session) Extend Oracle Applications to Mobile Devices with Oracle’s Mobile Technologies (General Session) Building Mobile Applications with Oracle Cloud (General Session) Mobile-Enable Oracle Fusion Middleware and Enterprise Applications with Oracle ADF (Conference Session) Co-presented with Infosys, an ADF Mobile Beta Partner Develop On-Device iPhone and iPad Apps Without Writing Any Objective-C Code (Oracle Develop Session) Mobile Apps for Oracle E-Business Suite with Oracle ADF Mobile and Oracle SOA Suite (Conference Session) Developing Applications for Mobile iOS and Android Devices with Oracle ADF Mobile (Hands on Lab) This lab was repeated 8 (!) times Build Mobile Applications for Oracle E-business Suite (Hands on Lab) It was an extremely busy Open World for the team, and we were in the middle of trying to release ADF Mobile!   By far, the most memorable event during Open World was the ADF Meett Up at the OTN Lounge, where beers were flowing (for a little while) and familiar names are finally matched with faces.  We also appreciate the opportunity to interview the attendees from New Caledonia - sorry we probably surprised you with the video record, and many thanks for coming through for us. I also want to thank my fellow ADF Mobile and Fusion Middleware team members - from product managers, engineers, and product marketing, everyone worked extremely hard to make this Open World a great success for ADF Mobile. I really enjoyed meeting everyone at Oracle Open World, at the booth, sessions, etc.   Now it's on to release ADF Mobile - for real! Thanks, Joe Huang PS: If this thread shows up on your RSS feed, please keep watching...

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• Best practice while marking a bug as resolved with Bugzilla (versioning of product and components)

  - by Vincent B.

  I am wondering what is the best way to handle the situation of marking a bug as resolved and providing a version of component/product in which this fix can be found. Context For a project I am working on, we are using Bugzilla for issue tracking, and we have the following: A product "A" with a version number like vA.B.C.D, This product "A" have the following components: Component "C1" with a version number like vA.B.C.D, Component "C2" with a version number like vA.B.C.D, Component "C3" with a version number like vA.B.C.D. Internally we keep track of which component versions have been used to generate the product A version vA.B.C.D. Example: Product "A" version v1.0.0.0 has been produced from component "C1" v1.0.0.3, component "C2" v1.3.0.0 and component "C3" v2.1.3.5. And Product "A" version v1.0.1.0 has been produced from component "C1" v1.0.0.4, component "C2" v1.3.0.0 and component "C3" v2.1.3.5. Each component is a SVN repository. The person in charge of generating the product "A" have only access to the different components tags folder in SVN, and not the trunk of each component repository. Problem Now the problem is the following, when a bug is found in the product "A", and that the bug is related to Component "C1", the version of product "A" is chosen (e.g. v1.0.0.0), and this version allow the developer to know which version of component "C1" has the bug (here it will be v1.0.0.3). A bug report is created. Now let's say that the developer responsible for component "C1" corrects the bug, then when the bug seems to be fixed and after some test and validation, the developer generates a new tag for component "C1", with the version v1.0.0.4. At this time, the developer of component "C1" needs to update the bug report, but what is the best to do: Mark the bug as resolved/fixed and add a comment saying "This bug has been fixed in the tags v1.0.0.4 of C1 component" ? Keep the bug as assigned, add a comment saying "This bug has been fixed in the tags v1.0.0.4 of C1 component, update this bug status to resolved for the next version of the product that will be generated with the newest version (v1.0.0.4 of C1)" ? Another possible way to deal with this problem. Right now the problem is that when a product component CX is fixed, it is not sure in which future version of the product A it will be included, so it is for me not possible to say in which version of the product it will be solved, but it is possible to say in which version of the Component CX it has been solved. So when do we need to mark a bug as solved, when the product A version include the fixed version of CX, or only when CX component has been fixed ? Thanks for your personal feedback and ideas about this !

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• C++ Accelerated Massive Parallelism

  - by Daniel Moth

  At AMD's Fusion conference Herb Sutter announced in his keynote session a technology that our team has been working on that we call C++ Accelerated Massive Parallelism (C++ AMP) and during the keynote I showed a brief demo of an app built with our technology. After the keynote, I go deeper into the technology in my breakout session. If you read both those abstracts, you'll get some information about what C++ AMP is, without being too explicit since we published the abstracts before the technology was announced. You can find the official online announcement at Soma's blog post. Here, I just wanted to capture the key points about C++ AMP that can serve as an introduction and an FAQ. So, in no particular order… C++ AMP lowers the barrier to entry for heterogeneous hardware programmability and brings performance to the mainstream, without sacrificing developer productivity or solution portability. is designed not only to help you address today's massively parallel hardware (i.e. GPUs and APUs), but it also future proofs your code investments with a forward looking design. is part of Visual C++. You don't need to use a different compiler or learn different syntax. is modern C++. Not C or some other derivative. is integrated and supported fully in Visual Studio vNext. Editing, building, debugging, profiling and all the other goodness of Visual Studio work well with C++ AMP. provides an STL-like library as part of the existing concurrency namespace and delivered in the new amp.h header file. makes it extremely easy to work with large multi-dimensional data on heterogeneous hardware; in a manner that exposes parallelization. introduces only one core C++ language extension. builds on DirectX (and DirectCompute in particular) which offers a great hardware abstraction layer that is ubiquitous and reliable. The architecture is such, that this point can be thought of as an implementation detail that does not surface to the API layer. Stay tuned on my blog for more over the coming months where I will switch from just talking about C++ AMP to showing you how to use the API with code examples… Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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• SCVMM – Round 2 – How to create a Private Cloud using PowerShell

  - by Waclaw Chrabaszcz

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/Wchrabaszcz/archive/2013/06/28/scvmm--round-2--how-to-create-a-private.aspxHave you ever seen "A Bridge too far" movie? To not to wake up a click too far, it is good to script some tasks. Yes of course we can follow wizards, but some of us want to be warriorsJ. A small tip, take a look on credentials and system GUID examples. I don't know how about you, but for me it will be really useful in the future.    # credents$credential = Get-CredentialNew-SCRunAsAccount -Name "TESTDOMAIN\Administrator" -Credential $credential #storage $opsMgrServerCredential = Get-SCRunAsAccount -Name "TESTDOMAIN\Administrator"New-SCStorageClassification -Name "Bronze" -Description "" –RunAsynchronouslyNew-SCStorageClassification -Name "Silver" -Description "" –RunAsynchronouslyNew-SCStorageClassification -Name "Gold" -Description "" –RunAsynchronously # add a shared storageFind-SCComputer -ComputerName "dc.TESTDOMAIN.net"Add-SCStorageProvider -AddWindowsNativeWmiProvider -Name "dc.TESTDOMAIN.net" -RunAsAccount $opsMgrServerCredential -ComputerName "dc.TESTDOMAIN.net"$fileServer = Get-SCStorageFileServer "dc.TESTDOMAIN.net"$fileShares = @()$fileShares += Get-SCStorageFileShare -Name "VMMLibrary"Set-SCStorageFileServer -StorageFileServer $fileServer -AddStorageFileShareToManagement $fileShares –RunAsynchronously #fabric network$logicalNetwork = New-SCLogicalNetwork -Name "TESTDOMAIN-Service-Network" -LogicalNetworkDefinitionIsolation $false -EnableNetworkVirtualization $true -UseGRE $true -IsPVLAN $false$allHostGroups = @()$allHostGroups += Get-SCVMHostGroup -Name "All Hosts"$allSubnetVlan = @()$allSubnetVlan += New-SCSubnetVLan -Subnet "10.0.0.0/24" -VLanID 0New-SCLogicalNetworkDefinition -Name "TESTDOMAIN-Service-Network_0" -LogicalNetwork $logicalNetwork -VMHostGroup $allHostGroups -SubnetVLan $allSubnetVlan #IP pool$logicalNetwork = Get-SCLogicalNetwork -Name "TESTDOMAIN-Service-Network"$logicalNetworkDefinition = Get-SCLogicalNetworkDefinition -LogicalNetwork $logicalNetwork -Name "TESTDOMAIN-Service-Network_0" # Gateways$allGateways = @()$allGateways += New-SCDefaultGateway -IPAddress "10.0.0.1" –Automatic# DNS servers $allDnsServer = @("10.0.0.1")# DNS suffixes$allDnsSuffixes = @("TESTDOMAIN.net")# WINS servers$allWinsServers = @()New-SCStaticIPAddressPool -Name "TESTDOMAIN-Service-Network" -LogicalNetworkDefinition $logicalNetworkDefinition -Subnet "10.0.0.0/24" -IPAddressRangeStart "10.0.0.51" -IPAddressRangeEnd "10.0.0.75" -DefaultGateway $allGateways -DNSServer $allDnsServer -DNSSuffix "" -DNSSearchSuffix $allDnsSuffixes –RunAsynchronously #Hyper-V Virtual Networks$logicalNetwork = Get-SCLogicalNetwork -Name "TESTDOMAIN-Service-Network" $vmNetwork = New-SCVMNetwork -Name "TESTDOMAIN-VMN" -LogicalNetwork $logicalNetwork -IsolationType "WindowsNetworkVirtualization" -CAIPAddressPoolType "IPV4" -PAIPAddressPoolType "IPV4"Write-Output $vmNetwork$subnet = New-SCSubnetVLan -Subnet "10.0.0.0/24"New-SCVMSubnet -Name "Con-SN" -VMNetwork $vmNetwork -SubnetVLan $subnet # bind VLAN with the Network Adapter$vmHost = Get-SCVMHost -ComputerName "VMM01.TESTDOMAIN.net"$vmHostNetworkAdapter = Get-SCVMHostNetworkAdapter -VMHost $vmHost #-Name "Intel 21140-Based PCI Fast Ethernet Adapter (Emulated)"Set-SCVMHostNetworkAdapter -VMHostNetworkAdapter $vmHostNetworkAdapter -Description "" -AvailableForPlacement $true -UsedForManagement $true $logicalNetwork = Get-SCLogicalNetwork -Name "TESTDOMAIN-Service-Network" Set-SCVMHostNetworkAdapter -VMHostNetworkAdapter $vmHostNetworkAdapter -AddOrSetLogicalNetwork $logicalNetworkSet-SCVMHost -VMHost $vmHost -RunAsynchronously -NumaSpanningEnabled $true #Create a Private Cloud$Guid = [System.Guid]::NewGuid()Set-SCCloudCapacity -JobGroup $Guid -UseCustomQuotaCountMaximum $false -UseMemoryMBMaximum $false -UseCPUCountMaximum $false -UseStorageGBMaximum $false -UseVMCountMaximum $false -CustomQuotaCount 10 -MemoryMB 10240 -CPUCount 10 -StorageGB 386 -VMCount 10$resources = @()$resources += Get-SCLogicalNetwork -Name "TESTDOMAIN-Service-Network"$resources += Get-SCLoadBalancer -Manufacturer "Microsoft"$readonlyLibraryShares = @()$readonlyLibraryShares += Get-SCLibraryShare | where { $_.LibraryServer.Name -eq "dc.TESTDOMAIN.net" -and $_.Name -eq "VMMLibrary" }$addCapabilityProfiles = @()$addCapabilityProfiles += Get-SCCapabilityProfile -Name "Hyper-V"$Guid2 = [System.Guid]::NewGuid()Set-SCCloud -JobGroup $Guid2 -RunAsynchronously -AddCloudResource $resources -AddReadOnlyLibraryShare $readonlyLibraryShares -AddCapabilityProfile $addCapabilityProfiles$hostGroups = @()$hostGroups += Get-SCVMHostGroup -Name "TESTDOMAIN"New-SCCloud -VMHostGroup $hostGroups -Name "TESTDOMAIN-Cloud" -Description "" –RunAsynchronously

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• Commerce, Anyway You Want It

  - by David Dorf

  I believe our industry is finally starting to realize the importance of letting consumers determine how, when, and where to interact with retailers.  Over the last few months I've seen several articles discussing the importance of removing the barriers between existing channels. Paula Rosenblum of RSR first brought the term omni-channel to my attention back in September. She stated, "omni-channel retail isn’t the merging of channels – rather, it’s the use of all possible channels (present and future) to enhance the customer experience in a profitable way." I added to her thoughts in this blog posting in which I said, "For retailers to provide an omni-channel experience, there needs to be one logical representation of products, prices, promotions, and customers across all channels. The only thing that varies is the presentation of the content based on the delivery mechanism (e.g. shelf labels, mobile phone, web site, print, etc.) and often these mechanisms can be combined in various ways." More recently Brian Walker of Gartner suggested we stop using the term multi-channel and begin thinking more about consumer touch-points. "It is time for organizations to leave their channel-oriented ways behind, and enter the era of agile commerce--optimizing their people, processes and technology to serve today's empowered, ever-connected customers across this rapidly evolving set of customer touch points." Now Jason Goldberg, better known as RetailGeek, says we should start breaking down the channel silos by re-casting the VP of E-Commerce as the VP of Digital Marketing, and change his/her focus to driving sales across all channels using digital media. This logic is based on the fact that consumers switch between channels, or touch-points as Brian prefers, as part of their larger buying process. Today's smart consumer leverages the Web, mobile, and stores to provide the best shopping experience, so retailers need to make this easier. Regardless of what we call it, the key take-away is that "multi-channel" is not only an antiquated term but also an idea who's time has passed.  Today, retailers must look at e-commerce, m-commerce, f-commerce, catalogs, and traditional store sales collectively and through the consumers' eyes.  The goal is not to drive sales through each channel but rather to just drive sales -- using whatever method the customer prefers.  There really should be just one cart.

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• How to use TFS as a query tracking system?

  - by deostroll

  We already use tfs for managing defects in code etc, etc. We additionally need a way to "understand the domain & requirements of the products". Normally, without tfs we exchange emails with the consultants and have the questions/queries answered. If it is a feature implementation we sometimes "find" conflicts in the implementation itself. And when that happens the userstory is modified and the enhancement/bug as per that is raised in TFS. Sometimes it is critical we come back to decisions we made or questions we wanted answers to. Hence we need to be able to track how that "requirement idea" or that "query in concern" evolved. Hence how is it that we can use TFS to track all of this? Do we raise an "issue" item for this? Or do we raise a "bug" item? The main things we'd ideally look in a query tracking system are as follows: Area: Can be a module, submodule, domain. Sometimes this may be "General" - to address domain related stuff, or, event more granular to address modules, sub-modules. Take the case for the latter, if we were tracking this in excel sheets, we'd just write module1,submodule2; i.e. in a comma separated fashion. The things I would like here is to be able search for all queries relating to submodule2 sometime in the future. Responses: This is a record of conversations between the consultant and any other stakeholder. For a simple case, it would just be paragraphs. Each para would start with a name and date enclosed in brackets and the response following that...each para would be like a thread - much like a forum thread Action taken: We'd want to know how the query was closed, what was the input given, what were the changes that took place because of that, etc etc. These are fields I think I would need in such a system apart from some obvious ones like status, address to, resovled by, etc. I am open for any other fields which are sort of important. To summarise my question: how can we manage "queries" in the system? Where should we ideally store data pertaining to those three fields I have mentioned above (for e.g. is it wise to store responses in the history tag assuming we are opening a bug for the query)?

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• Investing in Servers by Intel

  - by Koushal Deshpande

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/BizTalkAndOtherTechs/archive/2013/10/31/investing-in-servers-by-intel.aspxA nice article reference from Intel, refer here. Referees to cloud as well. Choose correctly what you need. 1 Do determine right server for your company. There is no use getting a server that has redundant services but still add to the costs. 2 Do get servers that can be upgraded. A server with limited memory and storage may not be able to keep up with your business growth. The basic memory and storage options might not be sufficient. Consider at least 8GB of RAM and 1 terabyte of hard disk space. 3 Do check the server has at least one Gigabit Ethernet port. This allows high speed transferring of files and increases productivity for your employees. USB and Firewire ports may not be enough as their transfer speed is too low and will affect the productivity of your company. Infinite Technologies is ready to help perform this upgrade. Contact Infinite Technologies now View our other resellers » 4 Do verify that the server comes with documentation. Documentation allows you to make a claim when your server breaks down and is supported by a warranty. 6 Do check the support options for the server from the manufacturer. Different manufacturer has different support options such as maintenance plans and software upgrades. 5 Do always look into the warranty. Get an enhanced warranty that guarantees response and repair time to avoid disruption. 7 Do get server management tools that can be used on any computer. Server management tools should be cross compatible across different operating systems to take into account future PC replacements. 8 Do check the power usage of the servers. Get the right power supply to avoid damaging server hardware and consider the Intel® Xeon® E3 processor to help save on your electricity bills. 9 Do check what built-in security packages are available. Ensure that your server is protected. Built-in security1 helps you save on getting add on security packages.

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• VS2010 Launch Presentations

  Last week I was in Vegas to present at the DevConnections / VS2010 Launch event.  The show was well-attended and everybody I spoke to agreed it was educational and enjoyable.  My three talks were all on Wednesday, 14 April 2010, including one at 8am for which I was impressed to see a large turnout in attendance.   Pragmatic ASP.NET Tips, Tricks, and Tools My first session was on tips, tricks, and tools for ASP.NET developers.  This is a talk Ive given in past years, but which I refine every time.  I usually like to have a full session to devote to tools, and a separate talk just for Tips and Tricks, but for this show I was only given the one 75-minute slot, so I had to cut some materials to make things fit.  The talk went well, all the demos work, and the attendees seemed to enjoy it, and I like giving it, so hopefully I can continue to present on this topic in future DevConnections shows. Download the ASP.NET Tips, Tricks, and Tools slides and demos.   Whats New in ASP.NET MVC 2 My second talk of the day followed immediately after the Tips and Tricks talk, and was a brand new talk for me.  I have to throw out a thank-you to Phil for letting me see his MIX slide deck before he gave his talk, as that was a big help.  The official whats new document online is also worth checking out if youre interested in this subject.  Download the Whats New in ASP.NET MVC 2 slides and demos.   SOLIDify Your ASP.NET MVC 2 Application Just because youre using a ASP.NET MVC doesnt mean your code cant still end up being a big ball of mud.  This session describes a number of principles of software design that can help ensure applications remain loosely-coupled and malleable even as they age and increase in features and complexity.  This was my last talk of the day and did have one minor demo failure involving a database constraint.  Ive given this talk many times before, and in this case I had to fit it into a 60-minute timeslot, so Im not sure I had quite enough time to drive home all of the concepts to everyone in the audience.  That said, I did hear a number of positive comments on how the talk went, so thats encouraging. Download the SOLIDify Your ASP.NET MVC 2 Application slides and demos.   In my sessions, I promised to have these posted by the end of the weekend theyre going up at 10pm Sunday night (my time) 2 hours to spare!  Enjoy! Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• How to keep balance / Unlock items / achievement rules

  - by Mark Knol

  I'm working on an engine for a game, too learn javascript and just because its fun. I'm a flashdeveloper, I know how to build websites. Now making games is a different challenge, javascript is a challenge, but I'd love to learn how to structure code and what patterns are common. I dont mind if the game ever finish, I'm mostly interested in the programming part of it. I dont have a particular endresult in mind, so I'll see where it takes me. I currently have a system where you can buy items. The items cost a specified amount of gold, silver, diamonds etc. When you have selected and bought the item, it takes time before getting rewarded. When time is over, you are getting rewarded with other properties (gold, energy, diamonds). For example, you can buy an apple for 50gold, It takes a minute, you get rewarded with 75energy. Or if you take a run, it cost 50energy, it takes 5minutes, reward is 25gold and 25silver. These definitions is what i call actions. Currently I already have a system where this already works and I can define as much actions with as much properties as I want. The definitions I have kinda looks like this: {id:101, category:544, onInit:{gold:-75}, onComplete:{energy:75}, time:2000, name:"Apple", locked: false} {id:102, category:544, onInit:{gold:-135}, onComplete:{energy:145}, time:2000, name:"Banana", locked: false} {id:106, category:302, onInit:{energy:-50, power: -25}, onComplete:{gold:100, diamonds:2}, time:10000, name:"Run", locked: false} {id:107, category:302, onInit:{energy:-70, silver: -55}, onComplete:{gold:100}, time:10000, name:"Dance", locked: false} {id:108, category:302, onInit:{energy:-230, power: -355}, onComplete:{gold:70, silver:70}, time:10000, name:"Fitness", locked: false} Now, I would love to add a system where I can lock/unlock the actions using achievement rules. Lets say, if you buy 10 apples, you unlock a new action, like bananas which cost more, and reward more. In the future I maybe want to restrict achievements and actions to levels. I am kinda stuck how to structure this. I have 2 questions: Which patterns are used to define achievements? How/where are they defined? Should it be part of the action, or should it be a separate controller? Is it a good idea to register all completed actions to it? I think I want multiple types of achievement rules, Id love to hear some ideas how to develop it. How do you create/find a good balance, so the user does not get stuck or can cheat by repeat a pattern of actions to get too much rewards. I know there is not a simple answer and i'm lacking of a good game-concept, but I wonder if anyone created such a game and how you dealed and played with it.

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• Oracle went back to school !....

  - by Cristina Ciocoiu

  I am Georgiana, Contracts Manager for Oracle University and Advanced Customer Services in Romania. I started working for Oracle for 4 years ago as a Contracts Specialist. Two years ago I became a manager of a team of 9 Contracts Specialists. On a sunny day in March some members of my team visited the students of the Academy of Economic Studies, accompanied by Recruitment colleagues. This was part of a new initiative to raise awareness on career opportunities at Oracle. We spent approximately 2 hours illustrating and explaining different aspects of the day-to-day activities of an Oracle Contracts Specialist to the future graduates of the Academy. Role Play Since a role play is worth 1000 job descriptions, the audience witnessed an entertaining performance on the contracting process from the phase of the negotiation with the customer to actual signing of the contract. The main focus was on the role of Contracts Specialist liaising with all the groups involved and ensuring that the contract is compliant with Oracle policies while generating the expected revenue. However, the team took other roles as well i.e. Sales Representative, Customer, Business Approver and Lawyer to demonstrate their role in the process. As each of these roles only have a small slice of the big pie, it is vital to understand what happens before and after you come on stage as a Contract Specialist. Contracts Specialist Being a Contracts Specialist goes beyond simply knowing what policies apply, it means understanding Oracle’s core business model, understanding customers’ requests and addressing them in the most effective way. The job also involves connecting smaller teams that are often geographically dispersed across multiple regions so that they become a bigger, stronger and successful team. You are the expert in this key position that can facilitate the closing of a deal or stop it from happening if the risk is too high. The role play provided insights on both. Why I love this job Events of this kind are sometimes just as useful for the “recruiters” as for the “recruits”. For me, as a presenter, it was an excellent opportunity to think about the many reasons why I love what I do in the Contracts department every day and to share this with the students. I wanted to explain to the audience, who are still considering education and career possibilities, that what we do in Contracts DOES make a difference. You have the power to achieve targets that you did not think reachable before. Working in the dynamic Oracle environment shapes you as a person and there is a lot to take away from this experience. Looking back to my years in the Academy (I graduated from the Academy myself), I wish I could have listened to more people talking about their great jobs and about how I could get there. If those were Oracle people I might have been writing this article sooner. J If you are interested to join the Contracts team please click here for more information or contact lavinia.protopopescu-AT-oracle-DOT-com. You can find all openings in Romania via http://campus.oracle.com

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• Contract Lifecycle Management for Public Sector

  - by jeffrey.waterman

  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-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} One thing Oracle never seems to get enough credit for is its consistent quest to improve its products, even the ones as established as its back-office solutions. Here is another example of one of the latest improvements: Contract Lifecycle Management for Public Sector, or CLM. The latest EBS module geared specifically for the Federal acquisition community. Our existing customers have been asking Oracle for years to upgrade its Advanced Procurement Suite to meet the complex procurement processes of the Federal Government. You asked; we listened. Oracle, with direct input from Federal agencies, subject matter experts, integration partners, and the Federal acquisition community, has expanded and deepened its procurement suite to meet the unique demands of the Federal acquisition community. New benefits/features include: Contract Line Item/Sub-Line Item (CLIN/SLIN) structures Configurable Document Numbering Complex Pricing Contract Types ( as per FAR Part 16) Option lines and exercising of options Incremental Funding capability Support for multiple document types (delivery orders, BPA call orders, awards, agreements, IDIQ contracts) Requisition lines to fund modifications Workload assignment and milestones Contract Action Reporting to FPDS-NG I’ve been conducting many tests over the past few months and have been quite impressed with the depth of features and the seamless integration to Federal Financials, specifically the funds control within the financials. Again, thank you for reading. If you have suggestions for future posts, please leave them in the comments section and I’ll take it from there.

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• Obtaining positional information in the IEnumerable Select extension method

  - by Kyle Burns

  This blog entry is intended to provide a narrow and brief look into a way to use the Select extension method that I had until recently overlooked. Every developer who is using IEnumerable extension methods to work with data has been exposed to the Select extension method, because it is a pretty critical piece of almost every query over a collection of objects.  The method is defined on type IEnumerable and takes as its argument a function that accepts an item from the collection and returns an object which will be an item within the returned collection.  This allows you to perform transformations on the source collection.  A somewhat contrived example would be the following code that transforms a collection of strings into a collection of anonymous objects: 1: var media = new[] {"book", "cd", "tape"}; 2: var transformed = media.Select( item => 3: { 4: Media = item 5: } ); This code transforms the array of strings into a collection of objects which each have a string property called Media. If every developer using the LINQ extension methods already knows this, why am I blogging about it?  I’m blogging about it because the method has another overload that I hadn’t seen before I needed it a few weeks back and I thought I would share a little about it with whoever happens upon my blog.  In the other overload, the function defined in the first overload as: 1: Func<TSource, TResult> is instead defined as: 1: Func<TSource, int, TResult>   The additional parameter is an integer representing the current element’s position in the enumerable sequence.  I used this information in what I thought was a pretty cool way to compare collections and I’ll probably blog about that sometime in the near future, but for now we’ll continue with the contrived example I’ve already started to keep things simple and show how this works.  The following code sample shows how the positional information could be used in an alternating color scenario.  I’m using a foreach loop because IEnumerable doesn’t have a ForEach extension, but many libraries do add the ForEach extension to IEnumerable so you can update the code if you’re using one of these libraries or have created your own. 1: var media = new[] {"book", "cd", "tape"}; 2: foreach (var result in media.Select( 3: (item, index) => 4: new { Item = item, Index = index })) 5: { 6: Console.ForegroundColor = result.Index % 2 == 0 7: ? ConsoleColor.Blue : ConsoleColor.Yellow; 8: Console.WriteLine(result.Item); 9: }

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• Visual studio Real Dark mode (2010,2012,2013)

  - by Anirudha

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/anirugu/archive/2013/11/02/visual-studio-real-dark-mode-201020122013.aspxWhen Visual studio 2010 released back in 3 year ago I soon show a demo to some people that how Dark mode of Visual studio will be great idea. Soon we got some theme plugin  which make us able to modify the look of visual studio.   http://studiostyl.es/ already provide lots of wonderful color scheme that make you able to modify the theme. These themes are also work in webmatrix 2.  Webmatrix 2 have a plugin for themes that is made by Yishai Galatzer that is awesome for webmatrix 2.   In Visual studio 2012 we got a native dark mode. This means we can configure it without any plugin or requirement of anything. In this post I have a demo to show you how to use Dark mode that is part of Windows 7 (and windows 8 too).   Few months ago I show a problem that webmatrix 2 run slow. it’s run better in windows 7 dark mode. Windows 7 dark mode simply refer to right click > personalize > High contrast theme in bottom of windows. This setting make thing a little bit faster.   When you have set this you have seen that Visual studio doesn’t react good anymore because it’s color scheme is broken now. What you need now is import any theme from http://studiostyl.es/ When you import this this will look good as this.   This is the demo look of Windows 7 phone Express 2010. It will react same for future version as 2012, 2013. Now see your VS react look dark. Everything is dark now. Your Firefox and IE will not run totally in blackish mode but you can use chrome. Chrome have less effect of dark. Now if you benchmark it then you will feel that everything that take a long time in loading now run fast.   Note :- This is experiments. Remember to have settings backup before apply new theme. All thing I do is make my VS run faster. If you have any trouble or idea please comment it.   Thanks for read my post

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• On the art of self-promotion

  - by Tony Davis

  I attended Brent Ozar’s Building the Fastest SQL Servers session at Tech Ed last week, and found myself engulfed in a ‘perfect storm’ of excellent technical and presentational skills coupled with an astute awareness of the value of promoting one’s work. I spend a lot of time at such events talking to developers and DBAs about the value of blogging and writing articles, and my impression is that some could benefit from a touch less modesty and a little more self-promotion. I sense a reticence in many would-be writers. Is what I have to say important enough? Haven’t far more qualified and established commentators, MVPs and so on, already said it? While it’s a good idea to pick reasonably fresh and interesting topics, it’s more important not to let such fears lead to writer’s block. In the eyes of any future employer, your published writing is an extension of your resume. They will not care that a certain MVP knows how to solve problem x, but they will be very interested to see that you have tackled that same problem, and solved it in your own way, and described the process in your own voice. In your current job, your writing is one of the ways you can express to your peers, and to the organization as a whole, the value of what you contribute. Many Developers and DBAs seem to rely on the idea that their work will speak for itself, and that their skill shines out from it. Unfortunately, this isn’t always true. Many Development DBAs, for example, will be painfully aware of the massive effort involved in tuning and adding resilience to rapidly developed applications. However, others in the organization who are unaware of what’s involved in getting an application that is ‘done’ ready for production may dismiss such efforts as fussiness or conservatism. At the dark end of the development cycle, chickens come home to roost, but their droppings tend to land on those trying to clear up the mess. My advice is this: next time you fix a bug or improve the resilience or performance of a database or application, make sure that you use team meetings, informal discussions and so on to ensure that people understand what the problem was and what you had to do to fix it. Use your blog to describe, generally, the process you adopted, the resources you used and the insights that came from your work. Encourage your colleagues to do the same. By spreading the art of self-promotion to everyone involved in an IT project, we get a better idea of the extent of the work and the value of the contribution of all the team members. As always, we’d love to hear what you think. This very week, Simple-talk launches its new blogging platform. If any of this has moved you to ‘throw your hat into the ring’, drop us a mail at [email protected]. Cheers, Tony.

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• On the art of self-promotion

  - by Tony Davis

  I attended Brent Ozar's Building the Fastest SQL Servers session at Tech Ed last week, and found myself engulfed in a 'perfect storm' of excellent technical and presentational skills coupled with an astute awareness of the value of promoting one's work. I spend a lot of time at such events talking to developers and DBAs about the value of blogging and writing articles, and my impression is that some could benefit from a touch less modesty and a little more self-promotion. I sense a reticence in many would-be writers. Is what I have to say important enough? Haven't far more qualified and established commentators, MVPs and so on, already said it? While it's a good idea to pick reasonably fresh and interesting topics, it's more important not to let such fears lead to writer's block. In the eyes of any future employer, your published writing is an extension of your resume. They will not care that a certain MVP knows how to solve problem x, but they will be very interested to see that you have tackled that same problem, and solved it in your own way, and described the process in your own voice. In your current job, your writing is one of the ways you can express to your peers, and to the organization as a whole, the value of what you contribute. Many Developers and DBAs seem to rely on the idea that their work will speak for itself, and that their skill shines out from it. Unfortunately, this isn't always true. Many Development DBAs, for example, will be painfully aware of the massive effort involved in tuning and adding resilience to rapidly developed applications. However, others in the organization who are unaware of what's involved in getting an application that is 'done' ready for production may dismiss such efforts as fussiness or conservatism. At the dark end of the development cycle, chickens come home to roost, but their droppings tend to land on those trying to clear up the mess. My advice is this: next time you fix a bug or improve the resilience or performance of a database or application, make sure that you use team meetings, informal discussions and so on to ensure that people understand what the problem was and what you had to do to fix it. Use your blog to describe, generally, the process you adopted, the resources you used and the insights that came from your work. Encourage your colleagues to do the same. By spreading the art of self-promotion to everyone involved in an IT project, we get a better idea of the extent of the work and the value of the contribution of all the team members. As always, we'd love to hear what you think. This very week, Simple-talk launches its new blogging platform. If any of this has moved you to 'throw your hat into the ring', drop us a mail at [email protected]. Cheers, Tony.

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• eSTEP Newsletter October 2012 now available

  - by uwes

  Dear Partners,We would like to inform you that the October '12 issue of our Newsletter is now available.The issue contains information to the following topics:News from CorpOracle Announces Oracle Solaris 11.1 at Oracle OpenWorld; Oracle Announces Oracle Exadata X3 Database In-Memory Machine; Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c introduces New Tools and Programs for Partners; Oracle Unveils First Industry-Specific Engineered System - the Oracle Networks Applications Platform,;  Oracle Unveils Expanded Oracle Cloud Offerings; Oracle Outlines Plans to Make the Future Java During JavaOne 2012 Strategy Keynote; Some interesting Java Facts and Figures; Oracle Announces MySQL 5.6 Release Candidate Technical Section What's up with LDoms (4 tech articles); Oracle SPARC T4 Systems cut Complexity, cost of Cryptographic Tasks; PeopleSoft Enterprise Financials 9.1; PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 combined online and batch benchmark,; Product Update Bulletin Oracle Solaris Cluster Oct 2012; Sun ZFS Storage 7420; SPARC Product Line Update; SPARC M-series -  New DAT 160 plus EOL of M3000 series; SPARC SuperCluster and SPARC T4 Servers Included in Enterprise Reference Architecture Sizing Tool; Oracle MagazineLearning & EventsRecently delivered Techcasts: An Update after the Oracle Open World, An Update on OVM Server for SPARC; Update to Oracle Database ApplianceReferencesBridgestone Aircraft Tire Reduces Required Disk Capacity by 50% with Virtualized Storage Solution; Fiat Group Automobiles Aligns Operational Decisions with Strategy by Using End-to-End Enterprise Performance Management System; Birkbeck, University of London Develops World-Class Computer Science Facilities While Reducing Costs with Ultrareliable and Scalable Data Infrastructure How toIntroducing Oracle System Assistant; How to Prepare a ZFS Storage Appliance to Serve as a Storage Device; Migrating Oracle Solaris 8 P2V with Oracle Database 10.2 and ASM; White paper on Best Practices for Building a Virtualized SPARC Computing Environment, How to extend the Oracle Solaris Studio IDE with NetBeans Plug-Ins; How I simplified Oracle Database 11g Installation on Oracle Linux 6You find the Newsletter on our portal under eSTEP News ---> Latest Newsletter. You will need to provide your email address and the pin below to get access. Link to the portal is shown below.URL: http://launch.oracle.com/PIN: eSTEP_2011Previous published Newsletters can be found under the Archived Newsletters section and more useful information under the Events, Download and Links tab. Feel free to explore and any feedback is appreciated to help us improve the service and information we deliver.Thanks and best regards,Partner HW Enablement EMEA

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• Stuff I learned at Innovate 2011

  - by David Dorf

  After returning from the NRF Innovate 2011 conference, I picked up few nuggets I thought I'd share here.  These thoughts are a bit random, but I hope they're useful nonetheless.Kevin Kelly opened the conference with six verbs that represent the future.  They were Screening, Interacting, Sharing, Accessing, Flowing, and Generating.  It struck me that these are all ways in which we merge the digital and physical worlds.  The internet of things continues to gain momentum.Some buzzwords:  deal economy, subscription commerce, discovery (instead of search), curationThat last one, curation, came up over and over.  Retailers, especially those in fashion, are finding value in helping their customers organize and present their own collections.  Social media has made sharing such collections easy, and mobile lets them take those ideas into the stores.  Mannequins are becoming less relevant.I heard from both HauteLook and Gilt Groupe (flash sale retailers) that a large percentage of their visits come from mobile devices, and most of those are iOS devices.  I find it interesting that even though Android has passed iPhone in units shipped (and will eventually pass iOS as a whole), its still the Apple crowd that leads the way.RadioShack mentioned their Holiday Heroes campaigned was very successful.  They asked their Foursquare users to check-in at a gym, coffee shop, and transportation hub as part of being a hero.  For this feat, customers were awarded a special badge that was worth 20% off at their next store visit. They claim a 3.5x increase in ticket size vs. regular check-in customers, and a 5x increase vs those that don't check-in at all.I also learned of RadioShack's #28 campaign, which is apparently one of the largest Twitter trends ever.  Their partnership with LIVESTRONG has gotten them followers, impressions, and credit for supporting the fight against cancer.The guys at Invodo showed the importance of video to e-commerce.  They gave compelling examples of how video can show customers the value of products better than just words.The highlight of the show was Guy Kawasaki's talk on innovation, which was not only informative but also peppered with humor and personality.  Back in the early days of the internet boom, Guy turned down the CEO position at Yahoo! because the commute was too long.  By his calculation, that was a $2B mistake.There are other good accounts of the conference at the NRF Blog.

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• Oracle HCM Cloud Customer Q&A with WAXIE Sanitary Supply

  - by HCM-Oracle

  At this year’s Oracle HCM User Group (OHUG) Global conference, we had the opportunity to sit down with Oracle HCM Cloud customers for a short Q&A. We got to hear about what brought them to the OHUG conference, some of the benefits they are receiving from their Oracle HCM Cloud solutions, and advice they would give other businesses looking to move to the cloud.  Below is a discussion we had with Melissa Halverson, Benefits & HRIS Manager at WAXIE Sanitary Supply.  Q: What made you attend the OHUG Global Conference this year? Halverson: The biggest reason is networking. It allows me to connect with others in the Oracle HCM Cloud community. I was able to speak at the HCM Cloud SIG (Special Interest Group) on the first day and share my experiences as well as hear the experiences of other Oracle HCM Cloud users. It also allows me to get face-time with key people within Oracle.  Q: What Oracle HCM solutions are you currently using? Halverson: Global HR, Benefits, Workforce Compensation, and Performance Management. Q: Do you plan to invest further in Oracle HCM? Halverson: Yes, we are interested in Time and Labor. We would also like to get Recruiting at some point in the future. Q: What would you say is the most significant benefit you’ve realized from your use of Oracle HCM solutions? Halverson: First and foremost would be process improvement. Before we had Oracle HCM Cloud we relied on a paper process where something as simple as an employee address change required changes to be made manually in 9 different systems. Obviously that was extremely inefficient, but also increased the likelihood of errors being made.  The other huge benefit we have seen was in making information visible to the people that need it. Prior to implementing Oracle HCM Cloud, it was very difficult for anyone to access and make use of the information in our systems. Now, we can provide this information to those who need it to make better decisions.  Q: What advice would you give an organization looking to move their HR systems to the cloud? Halverson: One thing I think many organizations don't spend enough time doing is thoroughly vetting their implementation partner. I believe you should be vetting your implementation partner as much as you did the system itself. Also, manpower is so important. Involve as large a team as possible because you don’t want to get stuck having too few bodies to help out. And set realistic time frames. Biting off more than you can chew will inevitably result in failure. Having a phased approach is always best rather than trying to do everything at once. Thanks for the tips Melissa. Enjoy the rest of the conference!

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• What is the difference between development and R&D?

  - by MainMa

  I was asked by a colleague to explain clearly the difference between ordinary development and research and development (R&D) and was unable to do it. After reading Wikipedia, I still don't have the precise answer. According to Wikipedia (slightly modified): There are two primary models: In one model, the primary function is to develop new products; in the other model, the primary function is to discover and create new knowledge about scientific and technological topics for the purpose of uncovering and enabling development of valuable new products, processes, and services. The first model is confusing. Does it mean that development (not R&D) consists exclusively in adding new features to a product, solving bugs and doing maintenance? What if something which was previously developed as a new feature becomes a separate product? The second model is less confusing, but still, how to qualify whether something is new knowledge or existent knowledge which is just rediscovered? Later, Wikipedia adds that ordinary development is different from R&D because of its: nearly immediate profit or immediate improvement. It's still not clear enough. How to qualify "nearly immediate profit"? What if a task has an immediate profit but requires heavy research? Or if it is basic but has uncertain profit, like the enforcement of a common style over the codebase? For example, does it belong to development or R&D to: Develop an engine which abstracts the access to the database, simplifying and shortening enormously the code of other applications (existent or ones which will be written in future) which should access to the database? Establish a new service-oriented architecture for the entire organization of company resources, in order to move from a bunch of separate and autonomous applications to a set of well-organized, interconnected web services, like what is used by Amazon? Design a new communication protocol to allow faster replication of data between two data centers of the company? Conceive a new type of software testing while working on a specific product, knowing that this type of testing will improve/simplify the testing process? Prove that Functional programming is more appropriate than OOP for a specific application, based on evidence, logic and previous experience? Enhance the existent application by adding gestures on tactile screens, after doing studies and testing that shows that those gestures improve the productivity of the users by a ratio of at least 1.4 for a precise set of tasks? Find a way to strongly enhance the Power usage effectiveness (PUE) of a data center? Create a Domain-Specific Language (DSL)? In short, how could I determine whether I'm doing R&D while working on something?

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• Configuring Full-Text Search for pdf and docx files

  - by Lukasz Kurylo

  I think in may I was creating a little filters module based on Full Text-Search. I have configured my dev machine, the same for two testing servers – in our company for internal testing before we deployed it to client, and then on the testing client server. Until last week this build  was still on the testing server and finally we got feedback that we can deploy it on the production one. I only say that, I lost half a day because I had not correctly remembered what I was doing to configure the FTS on the previous servers and I had no notes for that. I foolishly believed in my memory. Lesson learned.   For future reference a bunch of steps to configure the FTS for searching in *.pdf and *.docx files (and by the way in other Office files like *.xlsx).   1. From the page (link) download and install the *.pdf IFilter for FTS. 2. To the PATH global system variable add path to the catalog, where you installed the plugin. Default for this version is: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe PDF iFilter 9 for 64-bit platforms\bin 3. From the page (link) download a FilterPackx64.exe and install it. 4. Now from SSMS execute the following procedures: -sp_fulltext_service 'load_os_resources',1 -sp_fulltext_service 'verify_signature', 0 5. Restart the server 6. Now we must check if the plugins are visible: -select document_type, path from sys.fulltext_document_types where document_type = '.pdf' -select document_type, path from sys.fulltext_document_types where document_type = '.docx' 7. If we see a result, then we can assume that everything is ok*. 8. Right now we can create a catalog for FTS and indexes on appropriate columns.     *I lost a lot of hours to find out, why the plugin for the *.pdf files wasn’t indexed any file in the database, but in the sys.fulltext_document_types table there was available a line for this plugin. After the deeper investigation I found that the *.pdf files actually were indexed. At least the EOF sign was added to the indexes and nothing more for each file. In the end the problem was that, I forgot to add the /bin in the path to the plugin in PATH variable..

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