Search Results

Search found 7107 results on 285 pages for 'processing efficiency'.

Page 155/285 | < Previous Page | 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162  | Next Page >

• Partner Webcast – More out of ODA with DB Options - 19 July 2012

  - by Thanos

  The Simple, Reliable, Affordable Path to High-Availability Databases Critical business data needs to be available 24/7 for users and customers, but it can be a struggle to find the time and resources to build a highly available database system that’s reliable and affordable. That’s why Oracle created the new Oracle Database Appliance—a complete package of software, server, storage, and networking. The Oracle Database Appliance integrates the world’s most popular database - Oracle Database 11g  - with system software, servers, storage and networking in a single box. Business gets the benefit of a reliable, secure and highly available database to support applications and maintain continuity – as well as groundbreaking ease of use. But that is not all, with the support for all Oracle Database Options, Oracle Database Appliance can be the ideal solution for many use cases. The benefits?   Unmatched performance, reliability & security for your data that’s there when you need it – which is all the time. Fast installation, simple deployment, easy management. Out of the box. Significant cost savings & reduced risk and complexity compared to integrating all the elements yourself. Ongoing lower total cost of ownership with multiple automated support, detection & correction functions that also save you time.   Discover the Oracle Database Appliance Value Proposition and learn how to position and combine it with database options to capture new business and easily roll out solutions safely and with maximum cost efficiency. Agenda: Oracle Database& Engineered Systems Innovation. What’s the Oracle Database Appliance ? Oracle Database Appliance Value Proposition. Oracle Database Appliance with Database Options Oracle Database Appliance Partners Business Delivery Format This FREE online LIVE eSeminar will be delivered over the Web. Registrations received less than 24hours prior to start time may not receive confirmation to attend. Duration: 1 hour Register Now! For any questions please contact us at partner.imc-AT-beehiveonline.oracle-DOT-com Visit regularly our ISV Migration Center blog Or Follow us @oracleimc to learn more on Oracle Technologies as well as upcoming partner webcasts and events.

  Read the article

• SSIS: Deploying OLAP cubes using C# script tasks and AMO

  - by DrJohn

  As part of the continuing series on Building dynamic OLAP data marts on-the-fly, this blog entry will focus on how to automate the deployment of OLAP cubes using SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) and Analysis Services Management Objects (AMO). OLAP cube deployment is usually done using the Analysis Services Deployment Wizard. However, this option was dismissed for a variety of reasons. Firstly, invoking external processes from SSIS is fraught with problems as (a) it is not always possible to ensure SSIS waits for the external program to terminate; (b) we cannot log the outcome properly and (c) it is not always possible to control the server's configuration to ensure the executable works correctly. Another reason for rejecting the Deployment Wizard is that it requires the 'answers' to be written into four XML files. These XML files record the three things we need to change: the name of the server, the name of the OLAP database and the connection string to the data mart. Although it would be reasonably straight forward to change the content of the XML files programmatically, this adds another set of complication and level of obscurity to the overall process. When I first investigated the possibility of using C# to deploy a cube, I was surprised to find that there are no other blog entries about the topic. I can only assume everyone else is happy with the Deployment Wizard! SSIS "forgets" assembly references If you build your script task from scratch, you will have to remember how to overcome one of the major annoyances of working with SSIS script tasks: the forgetful nature of SSIS when it comes to assembly references. Basically, you can go through the process of adding an assembly reference using the Add Reference dialog, but when you close the script window, SSIS "forgets" the assembly reference so the script will not compile. After repeating the operation several times, you will find that SSIS only remembers the assembly reference when you specifically press the Save All icon in the script window. This problem is not unique to the AMO assembly and has certainly been a "feature" since SQL Server 2005, so I am not amazed it is still present in SQL Server 2008 R2! Sample Package So let's take a look at the sample SSIS package I have provided which can be downloaded from here: DeployOlapCubeExample.zip  Below is a screenshot after a successful run. Connection Managers The package has three connection managers: AsDatabaseDefinitionFile is a file connection manager pointing to the .asdatabase file you wish to deploy. Note that this can be found in the bin directory of you OLAP database project once you have clicked the "Build" button in Visual Studio TargetOlapServerCS is an Analysis Services connection manager which identifies both the deployment server and the target database name. SourceDataMart is an OLEDB connection manager pointing to the data mart which is to act as the source of data for your cube. This will be used to replace the connection string found in your .asdatabase file Once you have configured the connection managers, the sample should run and deploy your OLAP database in a few seconds. Of course, in a production environment, these connection managers would be associated with package configurations or set at runtime. When you run the sample, you should see that the script logs its activity to the output screen (see screenshot above). If you configure logging for the package, then these messages will also appear in your SSIS logging. Sample Code Walkthrough Next let's walk through the code. The first step is to parse the connection string provided by the TargetOlapServerCS connection manager and obtain the name of both the target OLAP server and also the name of the OLAP database. Note that the target database does not have to exist to be referenced in an AS connection manager, so I am using this as a convenient way to define both properties. We now connect to the server and check for the existence of the OLAP database. If it exists, we drop the database so we can re-deploy. svr.Connect(olapServerName); if (svr.Connected) { // Drop the OLAP database if it already exists Database db = svr.Databases.FindByName(olapDatabaseName); if (db != null) { db.Drop(); } // rest of script } Next we start building the XMLA command that will actually perform the deployment. Basically this is a small chuck of XML which we need to wrap around the large .asdatabase file generated by the Visual Studio build process. // Start generating the main part of the XMLA command XmlDocument xmlaCommand = new XmlDocument(); xmlaCommand.LoadXml(string.Format("<Batch Transaction='false' xmlns='http://schemas.microsoft.com/analysisservices/2003/engine'><Alter AllowCreate='true' ObjectExpansion='ExpandFull'><Object><DatabaseID>{0}</DatabaseID></Object><ObjectDefinition/></Alter></Batch>", olapDatabaseName));  Next we need to merge two XML files which we can do by simply using setting the InnerXml property of the ObjectDefinition node as follows: // load OLAP Database definition from .asdatabase file identified by connection manager XmlDocument olapCubeDef = new XmlDocument(); olapCubeDef.Load(Dts.Connections["AsDatabaseDefinitionFile"].ConnectionString); // merge the two XML files by obtain a reference to the ObjectDefinition node oaRootNode.InnerXml = olapCubeDef.InnerXml;   One hurdle I had to overcome was removing detritus from the .asdabase file left by the Visual Studio build. Through an iterative process, I found I needed to remove several nodes as they caused the deployment to fail. The XMLA error message read "Cannot set read-only node: CreatedTimestamp" or similar. In comparing the XMLA generated with by the Deployment Wizard with that generated by my code, these read-only nodes were missing, so clearly I just needed to strip them out. This was easily achieved using XPath to find the relevant XML nodes, of which I show one example below: foreach (XmlNode node in rootNode.SelectNodes("//ns1:CreatedTimestamp", nsManager)) { node.ParentNode.RemoveChild(node); } Now we need to change the database name in both the ID and Name nodes using code such as: XmlNode databaseID = xmlaCommand.SelectSingleNode("//ns1:Database/ns1:ID", nsManager); if (databaseID != null) databaseID.InnerText = olapDatabaseName; Finally we need to change the connection string to point at the relevant data mart. Again this is easily achieved using XPath to search for the relevant nodes and then replace the content of the node with the new name or connection string. XmlNode connectionStringNode = xmlaCommand.SelectSingleNode("//ns1:DataSources/ns1:DataSource/ns1:ConnectionString", nsManager); if (connectionStringNode != null) { connectionStringNode.InnerText = Dts.Connections["SourceDataMart"].ConnectionString; } Finally we need to perform the deployment using the Execute XMLA command and check the returned XmlaResultCollection for errors before setting the Dts.TaskResult. XmlaResultCollection oResults = svr.Execute(xmlaCommand.InnerXml);  // check for errors during deployment foreach (Microsoft.AnalysisServices.XmlaResult oResult in oResults) { foreach (Microsoft.AnalysisServices.XmlaMessage oMessage in oResult.Messages) { if ((oMessage.GetType().Name == "XmlaError")) { FireError(oMessage.Description); HadError = true; } } } If you are not familiar with XML programming, all this may all seem a bit daunting, but perceiver as the sample code is pretty short. If you would like the script to process the OLAP database, simply uncomment the lines in the vicinity of Process method. Of course, you can extend the script to perform your own custom processing and to even synchronize the database to a front-end server. Personally, I like to keep the deployment and processing separate as the code can become overly complex for support staff.If you want to know more, come see my session at the forthcoming SQLBits conference.

  Read the article

• links for 2011-03-08

  - by Bob Rhubart

  The Empowered Business "Someone needs to be the enterprise parent that asks the question, “do you really need that?” It may be a shiny new thing, but does it make a difference in the ability to accomplish the strategy and goals?" - Enterprise Architect Todd Biske (tags: enterprisearchitecture) Knowledge Workers in the British Raj "While we’ve used technology to change business, business has also evolved to the point that it’s changing how we think about and use technology." - Peter Evans Greenwood (tags: enterprisearchitecture enterprise2.0) Arun Gupta, Miles to go ...: OTN Developer Day Boston 2011 - Slides & Trip Report Arun Gupta shares slides from his Developer Day presentations. (tags: oracle otn java) Use WLST to Delete All JMS Messages From a Destination (James Bayer's Blog) James Bayer responds to a question. (tags: oracle otn weblogic jms) Triangle Circle Square: Apex in the Amazon Cloud Scott Wesley shares several links to resources covering Oracle Apex on an Amazon EC2 instance. (tags: oracle apex ec2 amazon cloud) William Vambenepe: Reading IBM's proposed standard for Cloud Architecture The always entertaining William Vambenepe gives IBM's proposed Cloud standards the full Ebert. (tags: oracle cloud ibm standards) Government Information Group Cloud Computing Research Study "The twin pressures of reduced budgets and the need for greater efficiency have led the federal government to strongly promote cloud computing as a solution whenever possible." (tags: cloudcomputing cloud) The Ron Batra Blog: Technology Whispers: Top 10 Reasons to go ExaData "Continuing my exploration of ExaData, I thought I'd take a minute to consolidate my thoughts into key reasons for which Oracle ExaData could be a good fit for your needs." - Oracle ACE Director Ron Batra (tags: oracle oracleace exadata) Oracle WebCenter: Composite Applications & Mash-Ups (Oracle Enterprise 2.0 Blog) "The new Business Mash-up editor allows business users to take any Oracle Application or 3rd party application and wire the backend data sources or APIs to a rich set of visualizations and reuse them in mashups." (tags: oracle webcenter enterprise2.0) Antonio Romero: Great Discussion of ETL and ELT Tooling in TDWI Linkedin Group Antonio says: "There’s a great discussion of ETL and ELT tooling going on in the official TDWI Linkedin group, under the heading 'How Sustainable is SQL for ETL?' It delves into a wide range of topics." (tags: oracle linkedin etl elt) YouTube - Bunny Inc. - Episode 1. Mr. CIO meets Mr. Executive Manager Yes, it's a commercial. But it's well done and it's funny. (tags: e20 enterprise2.0 webcenter) Markus Eisele: Both Weblogic and Glassfish are strategic products for Oracle Oracle ACE Director Markus Eisele shares selected quotes pulled from the recent TechCast Live interview with Oracle's Anil Gaur and Adam Leftik (tags: oracle java weblogic glassfish) How to become an Oracle SOA expert? (SOA Partner Community Blog) Jurgan Kress shares info and links for those interested in capitalizing on SOA. (tags: oracle soa)

  Read the article

• A Complete Customer Experience Solution (3 of 3 in 'No Customer Left Behind' Series)

  - by Kathryn Perry

  A guest post by David Vap, Group Vice President, Oracle Applications Product Development In my previous post, I talked about taking three concrete steps to improve your customers' overall experiences: 1) understand your customer, 2) empower your ecosystem, and 3) adapt your business. To do these effectively and efficiently, it's important to find the right technology that can bridge the gaps across your channels, interactions, departments, and repositories. Oracle has spent the past three years and more than six billion dollars acquiring and developing some of the world's best-of-breed applications. The result is the most comprehensive customer experience (CX) portfolio offering in the World - bar none: ATG Best in Class Selling Experiences Fatwire Best in Class Marketing Experiences Inquira Best in Class Support Experiences Endecca Best in Class Search Experiences RightNow Best in Class Service Experiences Vitrue & Involver Best in Class Social Marketing Collective Intellect Best In Class Social Listening We don't expect organizations to eat the CX elephant in one bite, nor should they try to. There are key strategic initiatives within each of the four main pillars of our customer experience offering for which we deliver solutions: 1. Customer Experience for Marketing Social Listening and Engagement Social Marketing Marketing Websites Demand Generation and Lead Management Marketing and Loyalty Management 2. Customer Experience for Commerce Search, Navigation & Content Delivery Cross-Channel Commerce Targeting & Product Recommendations Social Commerce Order Management & Fulfillment Retail Store Operations 3. Customer Experience for Sales Sales Force Automation Social Selling Territory & Quota Management Revenue Forecasting Partner Relationship Management Quote to Cash Incentive Compensation 4. Customer Experience for Service Cross-Channel Customer Service Knowledge Management Social Customer Service Eligibility Management Contracts, Assets, and Entitlements Industry-Specific Solutions eBilling Oracle's customer experience portfolio is socially infused at each layer of our pillars rather than simply bolted on as a side process. This combines with the power of the Cloud to run the parts of the solution that need the access, efficiency, and agility from a managed infrastructure. You can get the compliance control from on-premise backbone infrastructure systems that run your business and don't change that often. Please take advantage of our teams of Oracle customer experience professionals and our key agency and technology partner ecosystem. They can help you develop strategic solution roadmaps that build and deliver customer experience and that are tailored to your business needs and objectives. No one has built a better customer service portfolio to manage the entire customer journey than Oracle. It is backed by CX thought leadership programs, a commitment from our executives, and a worldview that your technology decisions must be driven by your customer experiences to succeed. If you’d like to follow up on this conversation, please leave a comment or contact me at [email protected]. You can get more information on Oracle’s complete customer experience solution here.

  Read the article

• Package management fails in update-manager with gzip problems and compilation errors. U12.04LTS

  - by HarveyP

  Similar to but not the same as Package management system corrupted. Cannot install or remove packages. U12.04LTS (an earlier problem) with package management system. Followed all of L. D. James suggestions in his answer to no avail. This time as well as the gzip error I am also getting compilation errors. The difference may be due to a lack of compilation in my earlier problem so it may be the same error. The packages concerned are enumerated in the output from update-manager below. Also included below that is the output from apt-get -f install apt-get autoremove gives same output. Tried update without SSL updates - 9 to install and got "Unhandled Error in aptdaemon". Output number 3 below. One at a time - output 4 - is for firefox, first in the list of packages. Falls over at libssl1.0.0 despite deselection of it from update ... Tried apt-get install --reinstall dpkg which succeeded, apt-get install --reinstall tar and apt-get install --reinstall gzip both of which failed at libssl1.0.0 as ever. (as suggested by Subv3rsion elsewhere in this forum) Now cannot apt-get update with complete success even after changing server and apt-get clean - output number 5 below ... 1). Output from update-manager The following packages will be upgraded:<> firefox firefox-globalmenu firefox-locale-en libavcodec-extra-53 libavformat53 libavutil-extra-51 libjson0 libpostproc52 libssl1.0.0 libswscale2 openssl 11 to upgrade, 0 to newly install, 0 to remove and 0 not to upgrade.<br> Need to get 0 B/46.5 MB of archives. After this operation, 1,416 kB of additional disk space will be used.<br> Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y debconf: Perl may be unconfigured (Bareword "gensym" not allowed while "strict subs" in use at /usr/lib/perl/5.14/IO/Handle.pm line 67. BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted at /usr/lib/perl/5.14/IO/Handle.pm line 366. Compilation failed in require at /usr/lib/perl/5.14/IO/Seekable.pm line 9. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/lib/perl/5.14/IO/Seekable.pm line 9. Compilation failed in require at /usr/lib/perl/5.14/IO/File.pm line 11. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/lib/perl/5.14/IO/File.pm line 11. Compilation failed in require at /usr/share/perl/5.14/FileHandle.pm line 9. Compilation failed in require at (eval 1) line 3. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at (eval 1) line 3. ) -- aborting (Reading database ... 160575 files and directories currently installed.) Preparing to replace libssl1.0.0 1.0.1-4ubuntu5.14 (using .../libssl1.0.0_1.0.1-4ubuntu5.15_i386.deb) ... Unpacking replacement libssl1.0.0 ... dpkg-deb (subprocess): data: internal gzip read error: '<fd:4>: data error' dpkg-deb: error: subprocess <decompress> returned error exit status 2 dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/libssl1.0.0_1.0.1-4ubuntu5.15_i386.deb (--unpack):<br> subprocess dpkg-deb --fsys-tarfile returned error exit status 2 No apport report written because MaxReports has already been reached Bareword "gensym" not allowed while "strict subs" in use at /usr/lib/perl/5.14/IO/Handle.pm line 67. BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted at /usr/lib/perl/5.14/IO/Handle.pm line 366. Compilation failed in require at /usr/lib/perl/5.14/IO/Seekable.pm line 9. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/lib/perl/5.14/IO/Seekable.pm line 9. Compilation failed in require at /usr/lib/perl/5.14/IO/File.pm line 11. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/lib/perl/5.14/IO/File.pm line 11. Compilation failed in require at /usr/share/perl/5.14/FileHandle.pm line 9. Compilation failed in require at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/Template.pm line 8. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/Template.pm line 8. Compilation failed in require at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/Question.pm line 8. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/Question.pm line 8. Compilation failed in require at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/Config.pm line 7. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/Config.pm line 7. Compilation failed in require at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/Log.pm line 10. Compilation failed in require at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/Db.pm line 7. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/Db.pm line 7. Compilation failed in require at /usr/share/debconf/frontend line 6. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/share/debconf/frontend line 6. dpkg: error whale cleanang up: subprgcess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 2 Errors were encountered while processing: /var/cache/apt/archives/libssl1.0.0_1.0.1-4ubuntu5.15_i386.deb E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) 2). Output from install -f harveyp@harveyp:~$ sudo apt-get -f install [sudo] password for harveyp: Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done 0 to upgrade, 0 to newly install, 0 to remove and 11 not to upgrade. 1 not fully installed or removed.<br> After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used. E: Internal Error, No file name for libssl1.0.0 3). Unhandled error from aptdaemon Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/aptdaemon/worker.py", line 1045, in _simulate trans.unauthenticated = self.__simulate(trans) File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/aptdaemon/worker.py", line 1160, in __simulate unauthenticated = self._get_unauthenticated() File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/aptdaemon/worker.py", line 347, in _get_unauthenticated for pkg in self._iterate_packages(): File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/aptdaemon/worker.py", line 1356, in _iterate_packages for enum, pkg in enumerate(self._cache): File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apt/cache.py", line 216, in __iter__ yield self[pkgname] File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apt/cache.py", line 201, in __getitem__ pkg = self._weakref[key] = Package(self, self._cache[key]) KeyError: 'librqrcode-rubq-doc 4). output from update of firefox installArchives() failed: Error in function: < Setting up libssl1.0.0 (1.0.1-4ubuntu5.14) ... Bareword "gensym" not allowed while "strict subs" in use at /usr/lib/perl/5.14/IO/Handle.pm line 67. BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted at /usr/lib/perl/5.14/IO/Handle.pm line 366. Compilation failed in require at /usr/lib/perl/5.14/IO/Seekable.pm line 9. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/lib/perl/5.14/IO/Seekable.pm line 9. Compilation failed in require at /usr/lib/perl/5.14/IO/File.pm line 11. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/lib/perl/5.14/IO/File.pm line 11. Compilation failed in require at /usr/share/perl/5.14/FileHandle.pm line 9. Compilation failed in require at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/Template.pm line 8. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/Template.pm line 8. Compilation failed in require at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/Question.pm line 8. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/Question.pm line 8. Compilation failed in require at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/Config.pm line 7. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/Config.pm line 7. Compilation failed in require at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/Log.pm line 10. 5. output from apt-get update ...snip ... Hit http://ubuntu-archive.mirrors.free.org precise-security/multiverse Translation-en Hit http://ubuntu-archive.mirrors.free.org precise-security/restricted Translation-en Hit http://ubuntu-archive.mirrors.free.org precise-security/universe Translation-en Fetched 368 kB in 6s (59.5 kB/s) W: Failed to fetch gzip:/var/lib/apt/lists/partial/ubuntu-archive.mirrors.free.org_ubuntu_dists_precise_universe_source_Sources Hash Sum mismatch E: Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead.

  Read the article

• Cool Enhancements Everyone Can Enjoy

  - by Ruth

  With Release 17, we have a few visual and functional enhancements that make using CRM On Demand that much better for us all. I'll mention a few here, but to get the full outline of these upgrades, I recommend taking 10 minutes to view the Release 17 Usability Transfer of Information course. First and foremost, I find the ability to customize your theme (or skin) pretty cool, but I've said that before. Take a look at the Selecting Your Theme and the Themes - Create Your CRM Style blog articles for more information. My next favorite is the resizeable user interface (UI). CRM On Demand will dynamically fit the device and screen resolution you're using, which includes the resizing of fields, field editors and pop-ups. If you have a wide screen like me, you should appreciate that one very much. To make it easier to see that resized UI, the detail pages got a little face lift. New horizontal lines and other subtle changes make those pages easier to read. Also, those things you need to know, like error messages and inline help are highlighted with a little icon to show the message type. You may not think every change to the detail pages are particularly exciting, but I'm sure you'll enjoy the new Head Up Display, which saves you scrolling time by adding links to related information sections. I like that the head up display travels with me as I move up and down the page...it's like a little friend that takes me where I want to go as fast as possible. You may also really like the fact that the copy record feature is now available for all record types from both detail pages and lists. Your company administrator can choose which fields get copied, so you can maximize your efficiency when creating new records. Lists also got a face lift. Alternating colors in rows make it easier to see your data. Also, the Favorite Lists icon is now on the list itself, so you can save your most useful lists with one click. If you've ever tried to create a new list with 10 columns or more, you'll be happy to hear that the maximum number of columns in a list has increased from 9 to 20. This is great news, but doesn't mean you should include the kitchen sink in your list...excess columns can slow list performance. So choose your columns wisely. Again, these are just a few of my favorite things. Let us know what you think about the new usability features. What are your favorite things?

  Read the article

• XNA 2D line-of-sight check

  - by bionicOnion

  I'm working on a top-down shooter in XNA, and I need to implement line-of-sight checking. I've come up with a solution that seems to work, but I get the nagging feeling that it won't be efficient enough to do every frame for multiple calls (the game already hiccups slightly at about 10 calls per frame). The code is below, but my general plan was to create a series of rectangles with a width and height of zero to act as points along the sight line, and then check to see if any of these rectangles intersects a ClutterObject (an interface I defined for things like walls or other obstacles) after first screening for any that can't possibly be in the line of sight (i.e. behind the viewer) or are too far away (a concession I made for efficiency). public static bool LOSCheck(Vector2 pos1, Vector2 pos2) { Vector2 currentPos = pos1; Vector2 perMove = (pos2 - pos1); perMove.Normalize(); HashSet<ClutterObject> clutter = new HashSet<ClutterObject>(); foreach (Room r in map.GetRooms()) { if (r != null) { foreach (ClutterObject c in r.GetClutter()) { if (c != null &&!(c.GetRectangle().X * perMove.X < 0) && !(c.GetRectangle().Y * perMove.Y < 0)) { Vector2 cVector = new Vector2(c.GetRectangle().X, c.GetRectangle().Y); if ((cVector - pos1).Length() < 1500) clutter.Add(c); } } } } while (currentPos != pos2 && ((currentPos - pos1).Length() < 1500)) { Rectangle position = new Rectangle((int)currentPos.X, (int)currentPos.Y, 0, 0); foreach (ClutterObject c in clutter) { if (position.Intersects(c.GetRectangle())) return false; } currentPos += perMove; } return true; } I'm sure that there's a better way to do this (or at least a way to make this method more efficient), but I'm not too used to XNA yet, so I figured it couldn't hurt to bring it here. At the very least, is there an efficient to determine which objects may be in front of the viewer with greater precision than the rather broad 90 degree window I've given myself?

  Read the article

• SQL SERVER – SSIS Look Up Component – Cache Mode – Notes from the Field #028

  - by Pinal Dave

  [Notes from Pinal]: Lots of people think that SSIS is all about arranging various operations together in one logical flow. Well, the understanding is absolutely correct, but the implementation of the same is not as easy as it seems. Similarly most of the people think lookup component is just component which does look up for additional information and does not pay much attention to it. Due to the same reason they do not pay attention to the same and eventually get very bad performance. Linchpin People are database coaches and wellness experts for a data driven world. In this 28th episode of the Notes from the Fields series database expert Tim Mitchell (partner at Linchpin People) shares very interesting conversation related to how to write a good lookup component with Cache Mode. In SQL Server Integration Services, the lookup component is one of the most frequently used tools for data validation and completion.  The lookup component is provided as a means to virtually join one set of data to another to validate and/or retrieve missing values.  Properly configured, it is reliable and reasonably fast. Among the many settings available on the lookup component, one of the most critical is the cache mode.  This selection will determine whether and how the distinct lookup values are cached during package execution.  It is critical to know how cache modes affect the result of the lookup and the performance of the package, as choosing the wrong setting can lead to poorly performing packages, and in some cases, incorrect results. Full Cache The full cache mode setting is the default cache mode selection in the SSIS lookup transformation.  Like the name implies, full cache mode will cause the lookup transformation to retrieve and store in SSIS cache the entire set of data from the specified lookup location.  As a result, the data flow in which the lookup transformation resides will not start processing any data buffers until all of the rows from the lookup query have been cached in SSIS. The most commonly used cache mode is the full cache setting, and for good reason.  The full cache setting has the most practical applications, and should be considered the go-to cache setting when dealing with an untested set of data. With a moderately sized set of reference data, a lookup transformation using full cache mode usually performs well.  Full cache mode does not require multiple round trips to the database, since the entire reference result set is cached prior to data flow execution. There are a few potential gotchas to be aware of when using full cache mode.  First, you can see some performance issues – memory pressure in particular – when using full cache mode against large sets of reference data.  If the table you use for the lookup is very large (either deep or wide, or perhaps both), there’s going to be a performance cost associated with retrieving and caching all of that data.  Also, keep in mind that when doing a lookup on character data, full cache mode will always do a case-sensitive (and in some cases, space-sensitive) string comparison even if your database is set to a case-insensitive collation.  This is because the in-memory lookup uses a .NET string comparison (which is case- and space-sensitive) as opposed to a database string comparison (which may be case sensitive, depending on collation).  There’s a relatively easy workaround in which you can use the UPPER() or LOWER() function in the pipeline data and the reference data to ensure that case differences do not impact the success of your lookup operation.  Again, neither of these present a reason to avoid full cache mode, but should be used to determine whether full cache mode should be used in a given situation. Full cache mode is ideally useful when one or all of the following conditions exist: The size of the reference data set is small to moderately sized The size of the pipeline data set (the data you are comparing to the lookup table) is large, is unknown at design time, or is unpredictable Each distinct key value(s) in the pipeline data set is expected to be found multiple times in that set of data Partial Cache When using the partial cache setting, lookup values will still be cached, but only as each distinct value is encountered in the data flow.  Initially, each distinct value will be retrieved individually from the specified source, and then cached.  To be clear, this is a row-by-row lookup for each distinct key value(s). This is a less frequently used cache setting because it addresses a narrower set of scenarios.  Because each distinct key value(s) combination requires a relational round trip to the lookup source, performance can be an issue, especially with a large pipeline data set to be compared to the lookup data set.  If you have, for example, a million records from your pipeline data source, you have the potential for doing a million lookup queries against your lookup data source (depending on the number of distinct values in the key column(s)).  Therefore, one has to be keenly aware of the expected row count and value distribution of the pipeline data to safely use partial cache mode. Using partial cache mode is ideally suited for the conditions below: The size of the data in the pipeline (more specifically, the number of distinct key column) is relatively small The size of the lookup data is too large to effectively store in cache The lookup source is well indexed to allow for fast retrieval of row-by-row values No Cache As you might guess, selecting no cache mode will not add any values to the lookup cache in SSIS.  As a result, every single row in the pipeline data set will require a query against the lookup source.  Since no data is cached, it is possible to save a small amount of overhead in SSIS memory in cases where key values are not reused.  In the real world, I don’t see a lot of use of the no cache setting, but I can imagine some edge cases where it might be useful. As such, it’s critical to know your data before choosing this option.  Obviously, performance will be an issue with anything other than small sets of data, as the no cache setting requires row-by-row processing of all of the data in the pipeline. I would recommend considering the no cache mode only when all of the below conditions are true: The reference data set is too large to reasonably be loaded into SSIS memory The pipeline data set is small and is not expected to grow There are expected to be very few or no duplicates of the key values(s) in the pipeline data set (i.e., there would be no benefit from caching these values) Conclusion The cache mode, an often-overlooked setting on the SSIS lookup component, represents an important design decision in your SSIS data flow.  Choosing the right lookup cache mode directly impacts the fidelity of your results and the performance of package execution.  Know how this selection impacts your ETL loads, and you’ll end up with more reliable, faster packages. If you want me to take a look at your server and its settings, or if your server is facing any issue we can Fix Your SQL Server. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: Notes from the Field, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: SSIS

  Read the article

• links for 2011-02-16

  - by Bob Rhubart

  On the Software Architect Trail Software architect is the #1 job, according to a 2010 CNN-Money poll. In this article in Oracle Magazine, several members of the OTN architect community talk about the career paths that led them to this lucrative role.  (tags: oracle oraclemagazine softwarearchitect) Oracle Technology Network Architect Day: Denver Registration opens soon for this event to be held in Denver on March 23, 2011.  (tags: oracle otn entarch) How the Internet Gets Inside Us : The New Yorker "It isn’t just that we’ve lived one technological revolution among many; it’s that our technological revolution is the big social revolution that we live with." - Adam Gopnik (tags: internet progress technology innovation) The Insider Threat: Understand and Mitigate Your Risks: CSO Webcast February 23, 2011 at 1:00 PM EST/ 10:00 AM PST .  Speakers: Randy Trzeciak, lead for the CERT Insider Threat research team, and  Roxana Bradescu, Director of Database Security at Oracle. (tags: oracle CERT security) The Tom Kyte Blog: An Interesting Read... Tom looks at "an internet security firm brought down by not following the most *basic* of security principals." (tags: security oracle) Jason Williamson: Oracle as a Service in the Cloud "It is not trivial to migrate large amounts of pre-relational or 'devolved' relational data. To do this, we again must revert back to a tight roadmap to migration and leverage the growing tools and services that we have." - Jason Williamson (tags: oracle cloud soa) Edwin Biemond: Java / Oracle SOA blog: Building an asynchronous web service with JAX-WS "Building an asynchronous web service can be complex especially when you are used to synchronous Web services where you can wait for the response in your favorite tool." - Oracle ACE Edwin Biemond (tags: oracle oracleace java soa) Shared Database Servers (The SaaS Report) "Outside the virtualization world, there are capabilities of Oracle Database which can be used to prevent resource contention and guarantee SLA." - Shivanshu Upadhyay (tags: oracle database cloud SaaS) White Paper: Experiencing the New Social Enterprise "Increasingly organizations recognize the mandate to create a modern user experience that transforms existing business processes and increases business efficiency and agility." (tags: e20 enterprise2.0 socialcomputing oracle) Clusterware 11gR2 - Setting up an Active/Passive failover configuration Gilles Haro illustrates the steps necessary to achieve "a fully operational 11gR2 database protected by automatic failover capabilities." (tags: oracle clusterware) Oracle ERP: How to overcome local hurdles in a global implementation "The corporate world becomes a global village as many companies expand their business and offices around different countries and even continents. And this number keeps increasing. This globalization raises interesting questions..." - Jan Verhallen (tags: oracle capgemini entarch erp) Webcast: Successful Strategies for Optimizing Your Data Warehouse. March 3. 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET Thursday, March 3, 2011. 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET. Speakers: Mala Narasimharajan (Senior Product Marketing Manager, Oracle Data Integration) and Denis Gray (Principal Product Manager, Oracle Data Integration) (tags: oracle dataintegration datawarehousing)

  Read the article

• Building dynamic OLAP data marts on-the-fly

  - by DrJohn

  At the forthcoming SQLBits conference, I will be presenting a session on how to dynamically build an OLAP data mart on-the-fly. This blog entry is intended to clarify exactly what I mean by an OLAP data mart, why you may need to build them on-the-fly and finally outline the steps needed to build them dynamically. In subsequent blog entries, I will present exactly how to implement some of the techniques involved. What is an OLAP data mart? In data warehousing parlance, a data mart is a subset of the overall corporate data provided to business users to meet specific business needs. Of course, the term does not specify the technology involved, so I coined the term "OLAP data mart" to identify a subset of data which is delivered in the form of an OLAP cube which may be accompanied by the relational database upon which it was built. To clarify, the relational database is specifically create and loaded with the subset of data and then the OLAP cube is built and processed to make the data available to the end-users via standard OLAP client tools. Why build OLAP data marts? Market research companies sell data to their clients to make money. To gain competitive advantage, market research providers like to "add value" to their data by providing systems that enhance analytics, thereby allowing clients to make best use of the data. As such, OLAP cubes have become a standard way of delivering added value to clients. They can be built on-the-fly to hold specific data sets and meet particular needs and then hosted on a secure intranet site for remote access, or shipped to clients' own infrastructure for hosting. Even better, they support a wide range of different tools for analytical purposes, including the ever popular Microsoft Excel. Extension Attributes: The Challenge One of the key challenges in building multiple OLAP data marts based on the same 'template' is handling extension attributes. These are attributes that meet the client's specific reporting needs, but do not form part of the standard template. Now clearly, these extension attributes have to come into the system via additional files and ultimately be added to relational tables so they can end up in the OLAP cube. However, processing these files and filling dynamically altered tables with SSIS is a challenge as SSIS packages tend to break as soon as the database schema changes. There are two approaches to this: (1) dynamically build an SSIS package in memory to match the new database schema using C#, or (2) have the extension attributes provided as name/value pairs so the file's schema does not change and can easily be loaded using SSIS. The problem with the first approach is the complexity of writing an awful lot of complex C# code. The problem of the second approach is that name/value pairs are useless to an OLAP cube; so they have to be pivoted back into a proper relational table somewhere in the data load process WITHOUT breaking SSIS. How this can be done will be part of future blog entry. What is involved in building an OLAP data mart? There are a great many steps involved in building OLAP data marts on-the-fly. The key point is that all the steps must be automated to allow for the production of multiple OLAP data marts per day (i.e. many thousands, each with its own specific data set and attributes). Now most of these steps have a great deal in common with standard data warehouse practices. The key difference is that the databases are all built to order. The only permanent database is the metadata database (shown in orange) which holds all the metadata needed to build everything else (i.e. client orders, configuration information, connection strings, client specific requirements and attributes etc.). The staging database (shown in red) has a short life: it is built, populated and then ripped down as soon as the OLAP Data Mart has been populated. In the diagram below, the OLAP data mart comprises the two blue components: the Data Mart which is a relational database and the OLAP Cube which is an OLAP database implemented using Microsoft Analysis Services (SSAS). The client may receive just the OLAP cube or both components together depending on their reporting requirements.  So, in broad terms the steps required to fulfil a client order are as follows: Step 1: Prepare metadata Create a set of database names unique to the client's order Modify all package connection strings to be used by SSIS to point to new databases and file locations. Step 2: Create relational databases Create the staging and data mart relational databases using dynamic SQL and set the database recovery mode to SIMPLE as we do not need the overhead of logging anything Execute SQL scripts to build all database objects (tables, views, functions and stored procedures) in the two databases Step 3: Load staging database Use SSIS to load all data files into the staging database in a parallel operation Load extension files containing name/value pairs. These will provide client-specific attributes in the OLAP cube. Step 4: Load data mart relational database Load the data from staging into the data mart relational database, again in parallel where possible Allocate surrogate keys and use SSIS to perform surrogate key lookup during the load of fact tables Step 5: Load extension tables & attributes Pivot the extension attributes from their native name/value pairs into proper relational tables Add the extension attributes to the views used by OLAP cube Step 6: Deploy & Process OLAP cube Deploy the OLAP database directly to the server using a C# script task in SSIS Modify the connection string used by the OLAP cube to point to the data mart relational database Modify the cube structure to add the extension attributes to both the data source view and the relevant dimensions Remove any standard attributes that not required Process the OLAP cube Step 7: Backup and drop databases Drop staging database as it is no longer required Backup data mart relational and OLAP database and ship these to the client's infrastructure Drop data mart relational and OLAP database from the build server Mark order complete Start processing the next order, ad infinitum. So my future blog posts and my forthcoming session at the SQLBits conference will all focus on some of the more interesting aspects of building OLAP data marts on-the-fly such as handling the load of extension attributes and how to dynamically alter the structure of an OLAP cube using C#.

  Read the article

• Announcing: Improvements to the Windows Azure Portal

  - by ScottGu

  Earlier today we released a number of enhancements to the new Windows Azure Management Portal.  These new capabilities include: Service Bus Management and Monitoring Support for Managing Co-administrators Import/Export support for SQL Databases Virtual Machine Experience Enhancements Improved Cloud Service Status Notifications Media Services Monitoring Support Storage Container Creation and Access Control Support All of these improvements are now live in production and available to start using immediately.  Below are more details on them: Service Bus Management and Monitoring The new Windows Azure Management Portal now supports Service Bus management and monitoring. Service Bus provides rich messaging infrastructure that can sit between applications (or between cloud and on-premise environments) and allow them to communicate in a loosely coupled way for improved scale and resiliency. With the new Service Bus experience, you can now create and manage Service Bus Namespaces, Queues, Topics, Relays and Subscriptions. You can also get rich monitoring for Service Bus Queues, Topics and Subscriptions. To create a Service Bus namespace, you can now select the “Service Bus” tab in the Windows Azure portal and then simply select the CREATE command: Doing so will bring up a new “Create a Namespace” dialog that allows you to name and create a new Service Bus Namespace: Once created, you can obtain security credentials associated with the Namespace via the ACCESS KEY command. This gives you the ability to obtain the connection string associated with the service namespace. You can copy and paste these values into any application that requires these credentials: It is also now easy to create Service Bus Queues and Topics via the NEW experience in the portal drawer.  Simply click the NEW command and navigate to the “App Services” category to create a new Service Bus entity: Once you provision a new Queue or Topic it can be managed in the portal.  Clicking on a namespace will display all queues and topics within it: Clicking on an item in the list will allow you to drill down into a dashboard view that allows you to monitor the activity and traffic within it, as well as perform operations on it. For example, below is a view of an “orders” queue – note how we now surface both the incoming and outgoing message flow rate, as well as the total queue length and queue size: To monitor pub/sub subscriptions you can use the ADD METRICS command within a topic and select a specific subscription to monitor. Support for Managing Co-Administrators You can now add co-administrators for your Windows Azure subscription using the new Windows Azure Portal. This allows you to share management of your Windows Azure services with other users. Subscription co-administrators share the same administrative rights and permissions that service administrator have - except a co-administrator cannot change or view billing details about the account, nor remove the service administrator from a subscription. In the SETTINGS section, click on the ADMINISTRATORS tab, and select the ADD button to add a co-administrator to your subscription: To add a co-administrator, you specify the email address for a Microsoft account (formerly Windows Live ID) or an organizational account, and choose the subscription you want to add them to: You can later update the subscriptions that the co-administrator has access to by clicking on the EDIT button, and then select or deselect the subscriptions to which they belong. Import/Export Support for SQL Databases The Windows Azure administration portal now supports importing and exporting SQL Databases to/from Blob Storage.  Databases can be imported/exported to blob storage using the same BACPAC file format that is supported with SQL Server 2012.  Among other benefits, this makes it easy to copy and migrate databases between on-premise and cloud environments. SQL Databases now have an EXPORT command in the bottom drawer that when pressed will prompt you to save your database to a Windows Azure storage container: The UI allows you to choose an existing storage account or create a new one, as well as the name of the BACPAC file to persist in blob storage: You can also now import and create a new SQL Database by using the NEW command.  This will prompt you to select the storage container and file to import the database from: The Windows Azure Portal enables you to monitor the progress of import and export operations. If you choose to log out of the portal, you can come back later and check on the status of all of the operations in the new history tab of the SQL Database server – this shows your entire import and export history and the status (success/fail) of each: Enhancements to the Virtual Machine Experience One of the common pain-points we have heard from customers using the preview of our new Virtual Machine support has been the inability to delete the associated VHDs when a VM instance (or VM drive) gets deleted. Prior to today’s release the VHDs would continue to be in your storage account and accumulate storage charges. You can now navigate to the Disks tab within the Virtual Machine extension, select a VM disk to delete, and click the DELETE DISK command: When you click the DELETE DISK button you have the option to delete the disk + associated .VHD file (completely clearing it from storage).  Alternatively you can delete the disk but still retain a .VHD copy of it in storage. Improved Cloud Service Status Notifications The Windows Azure portal now exposes more information of the health status of role instances.  If any of the instances are in a non-running state, the status at the top of the dashboard will summarize the status (and update automatically as the role health changes): Clicking the instance hyperlink within this status summary view will navigate you to a detailed role instance view, and allow you to get more detailed health status of each of the instances.  The portal has been updated to provide more specific status information within this detailed view – giving you better visibility into the health of your app: Monitoring Support for Media Services Windows Azure Media Services allows you to create media processing jobs (for example: encoding media files) in your Windows Azure Media Services account. In the Windows Azure Portal, you can now monitor the number of encoding jobs that are queued up for processing as well as active, failed and queued tasks for encoding jobs. On your media services account dashboard, you can visualize the monitoring data for last 6 hours, 24 hours or 7 days. Storage Container Creation and Access Control Support You can now create Windows Azure Storage storage containers from within the Windows Azure Portal.  After selecting a storage account, you can navigate to the CONTAINERS tab and click the ADD CONTAINER command: This will display a dialog that lets you name the new container and control access to it: You can also update the access setting as well as container metadata of existing containers by selecting one and then using the new EDIT CONTAINER command: This will then bring up the edit container dialog that allows you to change and save its settings: In addition to creating and editing containers, you can click on them within the portal to drill-in and view blobs within them.  Summary The above features are all now live in production and available to use immediately.  If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using them today.  Visit the Windows Azure Developer Center to learn more about how to build apps with it. We’ll have even more new features and enhancements coming later this month – including support for the recent Windows Server 2012 and .NET 4.5 releases (we will enable new web and worker role images with Windows Server 2012 and .NET 4.5, and support .NET 4.5 with Websites).  Keep an eye out on my blog for details as these new features become available. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

  Read the article

• Don Knuth and MMIXAL vs. Chuck Moore and Forth -- Algorithms and Ideal Machines -- was there cross-pollination / influence in their ideas / work?

  - by AKE

  Question: To what extent is it known (or believed) that Chuck Moore and Don Knuth had influence on each other's thoughts on ideal machines, or their work on algorithms? I'm interested in citations, interviews, articles, links, or any other sort of evidence. It could also be evidence of the form of A and B here suggest that Moore might have borrowed or influenced C and D from Knuth here, or vice versa. (Opinions are of course welcome, but references / links would be better!) Context: Until fairly recently, I have been primarily familiar with Knuth's work on algorithms and computing models, mostly through TAOCP but also through his interviews and other writings. However, the more I have been using Forth, the more I am struck by both the power of a stack-based machine model, and the way in which the spareness of the model makes fundamental algorithmic improvements more readily apparent. A lot of what Knuth has done in fundamental analysis of algorithms has, it seems to me, a very similar flavour, and I can easily imagine that in a parallel universe, Knuth might perhaps have chosen Forth as his computing model. That's the software / algorithms / programming side of things. When it comes to "ideal computing machines", Knuth in the 70s came up with the MIX computer model, and then, collaborating with designers of state-of-the-art RISC chips through the 90s, updated this with the modern MMIX model and its attendant assembly language MMIXAL. Meanwhile, Moore, having been using and refining Forth as a language, but using it on top of whatever processor happened to be in the computer he was programming, began to imagine a world in which the efficiency and value of stack-based programming were reflected in hardware. So he went on in the 80s to develop his own stack-based hardware chips, defining the term MISC (Minimal Instruction Set Computers) along the way, and ending up eventually with the first Forth chip, the MuP21. Both are brilliant men with keen insight into the art of programming and algorithms, and both work at the intersection between algorithms, programs, and bare metal hardware (i.e. hardware without the clutter of operating systems). Which leads me to the headlined question... Question:To what extent is it known (or believed) that Chuck Moore and Don Knuth had influence on each other's thoughts on ideal machines, or their work on algorithms?

  Read the article

• Enterprise MDM: Rationalizing Reference Data in a Fast Changing Environment

  - by Mala Narasimharajan

  By Rahul Kamath Enterprises must move at a rapid pace to establish and retain global market leadership by continuously focusing on operational efficiency, customer intimacy and relentless execution. Reference Data Management    As multi-national companies with a presence in multiple industry categories, market segments, and geographies, their ability to proactively manage changes and harness them to align their front office with back-office operations and performance management initiatives is critical to make the proverbial elephant dance. Managing reference data including types and codes, business taxonomies, complex relationships as well as mappings represent a key component of the broader agenda for enabling flexibility and agility, without sacrificing enterprise-level consistency, regulatory compliance and control. Financial Transformation  Periodically, companies find that processes implemented a decade or more ago no longer mirror the way of doing business and seek to proactively transform how they operate their business and underlying processes. Financial transformation often begins with the redesign of one’s chart of accounts. The ability to model and redesign one’s chart of accounts collaboratively, quickly validate against historical transaction bases and secure business buy-in across multiple line of business stakeholders, while continuing to manage changes within the legacy general ledger systems and downstream analytical applications while piloting the in-flight transformation can mean the difference between controlled success and project failure. Attend the session titled CON8275 - Oracle Hyperion Data Relationship Management: Enabling Enterprise Transformation at Oracle Openworld on Monday, October 1, 2012 at 4:45pm in Ballroom A of the InterContinental Hotel to learn how Oracle’s Data Relationship Management solution can help you stay ahead of the competition and proactively harness master (and reference) data changes to transform your enterprise. Hear in-depth customer testimonials from GE Healthcare and Old Mutual South Africa to learn how others have harnessed this technology effectively to build enduring competitive advantage through business process innovation and investments in master data governance. Hear GE Healthcare discuss how DRM has enabled financial transformation, ERP consolidation, mergers and acquisitions, and the alignment reference data across financial and management reporting applications. Also, learn how Old Mutual SA has upgraded to EBS R12 Financials and is transforming the management of chart of accounts for corporate reporting. Separately, an esteemed panel of DRM customers including Cisco Systems, Nationwide Insurance, Ralcorp Holdings and Mentor Graphics will discuss their perspectives on how DRM has helped them address business challenges associated with enterprise MDM including major change management initiatives including financial transformations, corporate restructuring, mergers & acquisitions, and the rationalization of financial and analytical master reference data to support alternate business perspectives for the alignment of EPM/BI initiatives. Attend the session titled CON9377 - Customer Showcase: Success with Oracle Hyperion Data Relationship Management at Openworld on Thursday, October 4, 2012 at 12:45pm in Ballroom of the InterContinental Hotel to interact with our esteemed speakers first hand.

  Read the article

• Oracle Leader in Transportation Management

  - by John Murphy

  Oracle Named a Leader in the Transportation Management Systems Market by Leading Analyst Firm Redwood Shores, Calif. – October 15, 2012 News Facts Gartner, Inc. has placed Oracle Transportation Management in the Leaders Quadrant of its 2012 report, “Magic Quadrant for Transportation Management Systems (TMS).” (1) Gartner Magic Quadrants position vendors within a particular market segment based on their completeness of vision and ability to execute on that vision. According to the report, “Multiple subcomponents make up a comprehensive TMS across planning (for example, load consolidation, routing, mode selection and carrier selection) and execution (for example, tendering loads to carriers, shipment track and trace, and freight audit and payment).” Built on modern, flexible, Internet based architecture, Oracle Transportation Management is a global transportation and logistics operations system that allows companies to minimize cost, optimize service levels, support sustainability initiatives, and create flexible business process automation within their transportation and logistics networks. With a share of 26% of worldwide software revenue for 2011, Oracle is also number one in TMS vendor share according to Gartner’s report, “Market Trends: A Golden Opportunity in the Transportation Management System Market, 2012 – 2016.” (2) Supporting Quote “Shippers and logistics service providers face increasingly complex challenges as they try to reduce costs, secure capacity and improve overall freight efficiency,” said Derek Gittoes, vice president, logistics product strategy, Oracle. “We believe our high standing in both Gartner reports is a reflection of Oracle’s commitment to addressing these challenges by delivering the industry’s broadest and deepest transportation management platform. With a flexible and modern platform, we are able to support customers with both basic transportation needs, as well as those with highly complex logistics requirements.” Supporting Resources Magic Quadrant for Transportation Management Systems Market Trends: A Golden Opportunity in the Transportation Management System Market, 2012 – 2016 Oracle Transportation Management (1) Gartner, Inc., “Magic Quadrant for Transportation Management Systems,” by C. Dwight Klappich, August 23, 2012 (2) Gartner, Inc., “Market Trends: A Golden Opportunity in the Transportation Management System Market, 2012 – 2016,” by Chad Eschinger and C. Dwight Klappich, September 24, 2012. About Oracle Applications Over 65,000 customers worldwide rely on Oracle's complete, open and integrated enterprise applications to achieve superior results. Oracle provides a secure path for customers to benefit from the latest technology advances that improve the customer software experience and drive better business performance. Oracle Applications Unlimited is Oracle's commitment to customer choice through continuous investment and innovation in current applications offerings. Oracle's next-generation Fusion Applications build upon that commitment, and are designed to work with and evolve Oracle's Applications Unlimited offerings. Oracle's lifetime support policy helps ensure customers will continue to have a choice in upgrade paths, based on their enterprise needs. For more information on the latest Oracle Applications releases go towww.oracle.com/applications About Oracle Oracle engineers hardware and software to work together in the cloud and in your data center. For more information about Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL), visit www.oracle.com. Trademarks Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. ###   Karen [email protected] Simon JonesBlanc & [email protected]

  Read the article

• Why no more macro languages?

  - by Muhammad Alkarouri

  In this answer to a previous question of mine about scripting languages suitability as shells, DigitalRoss identifies the difference between the macro languages and the "parsed typed" languages in terms of string treatment as the main reason that scripting languages are not suitable for shell purposes. Macro languages include nroff and m4 for example. What are the design decisions (or compromises) needed to create a macro programming language? And why are most of the mainstream languages parsed rather than macro? This very similar question (and the accepted answer) covers fairly well why the parsed typed languages, take C for example, suffer from the use of macros. I believe my question here covers different grounds: Macro languages or those working on a textual level are not wholly failures. Arguably, they include bash, Tcl and other shell languages. And they work in a specific niche such as shells as explained in my links above. Even m4 had a fairly long time of success, and some of the web template languages can be regarded as macro languages. It is quite possible that macros and parsed typing do not go well together and that is why macros "break" common languages. In the answer to the linked question, a macro like #define TWO 1+1 would have been covered by the common rules of the language rather than conflicting with those of the host language. And issues like "macros are not typed" and "code doesn't compile" are not relevant in the context of a language designed as untyped and interpreted with little concern for efficiency. The question about the design decisions needed to create a macro language pertain to a hobby project which I am currently working on on designing a new shell. Taking the previous question in context would clarify the difference between adding macros to a parsed language and my objective. I hope the clarification shows that the question linked doesn't cover this question, which is two parts: If I want to create a macro language (for a shell or a web template, for example), what limitations and compromises (and guidelines, if exist) need to be done? (Probably answerable by a link or reference) Why have no macro languages succeed in becoming mainstream except in particular niches? What makes typed languages successful in large programming, while "stringly-typed" languages succeed in shells and one-liner like environments?

  Read the article

• Oracle at ASMC PDI 2012

  - by jeffrey.waterman

  Recently, I had the pleasure of representing Oracle at the American Society of Military Comptrollers National Professional Development Institute (PDI).  The PDI is the premier training event for resource managers in the Department of Defense and US Coast Guard.  Each year they assemble top presenters and key note speakers to convey their experiences and share the upcoming goals and vision for the Defense Department's financial and resource management community.  This year, the common themes were centered around 'auditability' and 'efficiency'.   What is auditability?  There were many definitions/themes tossed around, but to summarize my notes, it boiled down to:- the proper tracking of funds- audit readiness- proper controls- proper documentation There were sessions regarding entire programs focused on the need for auditability.  For example, FIAR: Financial Improvement and Audit Readiness (http://comptroller.defense.gov/fiar/index.html)   The FIAR stresses the "...improve(ment of) the Department's financial processes, controls and information." The entire conference, one set of solutions kept popping into my head around, "how can Oracle's solutions assist the Department of Defense", or any other Federal Agency, improve their financial processes and controls?   One answer came to mind:  Oracle Governance, Risk, and Compliance Management. Commonly referred to as "GRC". Let me summarize the main components around Oracle's GRC solution: GRC Manager: This solution is the central repository for documenting business processes, policies, and established controls.  All identified risks and issues are documented within the repository as well as action plans necessary for mitigation. GRC Controls:  This solution consists of a set of tools which are embedded with your ERP (financial, human resource, supply chain, etc.) applications to detect, prevent, and/or enforce the policies and procedures established by your Agency.  Components of the solution include:- Application Access Control Governor: a robust tool for managing application roles and responsibilities; simplify segregation of duty maintenance- Configuration Controls Governor: complete audit trail for changes made to configurations- Transactions Control Governor: track violations of internal controls; alert management to suspicious activities; be warned when high dollar transactions are occurring on an irregular basis; - Preventative Controls Governor: prevent sensitive information from being viewed by unauthorized parties; enforce field, block, and form change control If you are in the financial or resource management community and are concerned about auditability within your organization I suggest you follow up this post by reading about Oracle's GRC solutions.  www.oracle.com/grc Please feel free to follow up with thought and questions in the comments section below.  Also, if you have a topic you would like addressed in this blog, just drop me a note at [email protected]  or leave the suggestion in the comment section as well. Thank you for reading.

  Read the article

• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 2012-07-11

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Is the future of retail showrooming? | GigaOm "The digital shopper isn’t just digital and she expects to be served seamlessly across all channels, physical and digital," reports GigaOm. Twenty years into the Internet era and the changes just keep coming. Solution architects take note... Agile Bureaucracy: When Practices become Principles | Jim Highsmith.com "Principles and values are a critical part of keeping individuals in organizations aligned and engaged," says Agile guru Jim Highsmith, "but the more pseudo-principles are piled on top of principles, the less and less organizations are able to adapt." Oracle Fusion Applications 11g Basics | Michel Schildmeijer "We are trying to build up a Oracle Fusion Apps environment on a Exalogic system, though still on bare metal, because officially there still is no Oracle VM available yet on Exalogic," says Michel Schildmeijer, an Oracle Fusion Middleware Architect at Qualogy. "It is a bit of a challenge, but getting to know the basics and which components the install, build and configure phase use, might bring you a step further on the way." Process Centric Banking: Loan Origination Solution | Manish Palaparthy This interesting, detailed post by Manish Palaparthy explains the process behind the execution of a proof-of-concept for a Fusion Middleware-based loan-origination solution for a bank. The solution incorporates Oracle BPM Suite, Webcenter, and ADF technolgies in a SOA infrastructure. How eBay and Facebook are Cleaning Up Data Centers | Amy Gallo - HBR The Cloud has needs! As reported by Amy Gallo in an article in the Harvard Business Review, "The electricity demand of data centers and the telecommunications network is rivaling that of most nations. If the cloud were itself a country, it would rank fifth in the world on energy demand behind the U.S., China, Russia, and Japan." Do WebLogic configuration from ANT | Edwin Biemond "With WebLogic WLST you can script the creation of all your Application DataSources or SOA Integration artifacts( like JMS etc)," says Oracle ACE Edwin Biemond. "This is necessary if your domain contains many WebLogic artifacts or you have more then one WebLogic environment. If so, you want to script this so you can configure a new WebLogic domain in minutes and you can repeat this task with always the same result." Oracle Special-Edition E-Book: Cloud Architecture for Dummies Learn how to architect and model your cloud implementation to drive efficiency and leverage economies of scale with Cloud Architecture for Dummies, a free Oracle e-book. (Registration required.) Thought for the Day "One of the best things to come out of the home computer revolution could be the general and widespread understanding of how severely limited logic really is." — Frank Herbert Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

  Read the article

• Why you need to learn async in .NET

  - by PSteele

  I had an opportunity to teach a quick class yesterday about what’s new in .NET 4.0.  One of the topics was the TPL (Task Parallel Library) and how it can make async programming easier.  I also stressed that this is the direction Microsoft is going with for C# 5.0 and learning the TPL will greatly benefit their understanding of the new async stuff.  We had a little time left over and I was able to show some code that uses the Async CTP to accomplish some stuff, but it wasn’t a simple demo that you could jump in to and understand so I thought I’d thrown one together and put it in a blog post. The entire solution file with all of the sample projects is located here. A Simple Example Let’s start with a super-simple example (WindowsApplication01 in the solution). I’ve got a form that displays a label and a button.  When the user clicks the button, I want to start displaying the current time for 15 seconds and then stop. What I’d like to write is this: lblTime.ForeColor = Color.Red; for (var x = 0; x < 15; x++) { lblTime.Text = DateTime.Now.ToString("HH:mm:ss"); Thread.Sleep(1000); } lblTime.ForeColor = SystemColors.ControlText; (Note that I also changed the label’s color while counting – not quite an ILM-level effect, but it adds something to the demo!) As I’m sure most of my readers are aware, you can’t write WinForms code this way.  WinForms apps, by default, only have one thread running and it’s main job is to process messages from the windows message pump (for a more thorough explanation, see my Visual Studio Magazine article on multithreading in WinForms).  If you put a Thread.Sleep in the middle of that code, your UI will be locked up and unresponsive for those 15 seconds.  Not a good UX and something that needs to be fixed.  Sure, I could throw an “Application.DoEvents()” in there, but that’s hacky. The Windows Timer Then I think, “I can solve that.  I’ll use the Windows Timer to handle the timing in the background and simply notify me when the time has changed”.  Let’s see how I could accomplish this with a Windows timer (WindowsApplication02 in the solution): public partial class Form1 : Form { private readonly Timer clockTimer; private int counter;   public Form1() { InitializeComponent(); clockTimer = new Timer {Interval = 1000}; clockTimer.Tick += UpdateLabel; }   private void UpdateLabel(object sender, EventArgs e) { lblTime.Text = DateTime.Now.ToString("HH:mm:ss"); counter++; if (counter == 15) { clockTimer.Enabled = false; lblTime.ForeColor = SystemColors.ControlText; } }   private void cmdStart_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { lblTime.ForeColor = Color.Red; counter = 0; clockTimer.Start(); } } Holy cow – things got pretty complicated here.  I use the timer to fire off a Tick event every second.  Inside there, I can update the label.  Granted, I can’t use a simple for/loop and have to maintain a global counter for the number of iterations.  And my “end” code (when the loop is finished) is now buried inside the bottom of the Tick event (inside an “if” statement).  I do, however, get a responsive application that doesn’t hang or stop repainting while the 15 seconds are ticking away. But doesn’t .NET have something that makes background processing easier? The BackgroundWorker Next I try .NET’s BackgroundWorker component – it’s specifically designed to do processing in a background thread (leaving the UI thread free to process the windows message pump) and allows updates to be performed on the main UI thread (WindowsApplication03 in the solution): public partial class Form1 : Form { private readonly BackgroundWorker worker;   public Form1() { InitializeComponent(); worker = new BackgroundWorker {WorkerReportsProgress = true}; worker.DoWork += StartUpdating; worker.ProgressChanged += UpdateLabel; worker.RunWorkerCompleted += ResetLabelColor; }   private void StartUpdating(object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e) { var workerObject = (BackgroundWorker) sender; for (int x = 0; x < 15; x++) { workerObject.ReportProgress(0); Thread.Sleep(1000); } }   private void UpdateLabel(object sender, ProgressChangedEventArgs e) { lblTime.Text = DateTime.Now.ToString("HH:mm:ss"); }   private void ResetLabelColor(object sender, RunWorkerCompletedEventArgs e) { lblTime.ForeColor = SystemColors.ControlText; }   private void cmdStart_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { lblTime.ForeColor = Color.Red; worker.RunWorkerAsync(); } } Well, this got a little better (I think).  At least I now have my simple for/next loop back.  Unfortunately, I’m still dealing with event handlers spread throughout my code to co-ordinate all of this stuff in the right order. Time to look into the future. The async way Using the Async CTP, I can go back to much simpler code (WindowsApplication04 in the solution): private async void cmdStart_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { lblTime.ForeColor = Color.Red; for (var x = 0; x < 15; x++) { lblTime.Text = DateTime.Now.ToString("HH:mm:ss"); await TaskEx.Delay(1000); } lblTime.ForeColor = SystemColors.ControlText; } This code will run just like the Timer or BackgroundWorker versions – fully responsive during the updates – yet is way easier to implement.  In fact, it’s almost a line-for-line copy of the original version of this code.  All of the async plumbing is handled by the compiler and the framework.  My code goes back to representing the “what” of what I want to do, not the “how”. I urge you to download the Async CTP.  All you need is .NET 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010 sp1 – no need to set up a virtual machine with the VS2011 beta (unless, of course, you want to dive right in to the C# 5.0 stuff!).  Starting playing around with this today and see how much easier it will be in the future to write async-enabled applications.

  Read the article

• Process Rules!

  - by Ajay Khanna

  One of the key components of a process is “Business Rule”. Business rule takes many forms inside your process definition and in a way is a manifestation of your company’s business policy. Business rules inside the process are used for policy enforcement, governance, decision management, operations efficiency etc. Following are some basic types of rules that can be a part of your process. 1. Process conditions:  These are defined as the process gateways that determine a path process will take depending on the process parameters. For Example, if discount >10% go to approval path : if discount < 10% auto-approve order. 2. Data rules: These business rules are defined as facts in decision table or knowledge base. The process captures all required parameters and submits those to RETE based rules engine. Rules engine processes the data and returns the result back. For example, rules determining your insurance eligibility. 3. Event rules: Here the system is monitoring the various events and events patterns that are emerging inside the process or external to the process. You can define actions or alerts to be triggered when a certain pattern of events emerges over a specified time period. Such types of rules need Complex Event Processing and are used in applications like Credit Card Fraud detection or Utility Demand Response. 4. User Interface Rules: In order to add dynamic behavior to UI or to keep users from making mistakes and enforcing policy, another mechanism available is UI rules. They are evaluated as the end user is filling out the web forms. These may include enabling and disabling of UI as per business policy. An example could be, if the age of a user is less than 13 years, disable credit card field and enable parental approval required checkbox. Your process may include many of such rule types. Oracle OpenWorld provides a unique opportunity to listen to Oracle Business Process Management Experts and Customers.  We will discuss business rules during various sessions in Oracle OpenWorld. Two of the sessions specifically focused on business rules are listed below: Accelerating an Implementation of Complex Worldwide Business Approval Rules Wednesday, Oct 3, 10:15 AM Moscone South – 305 Oracle Business Rules Use Cases Design and Testing Wednesday, Oct 3, 3:30 PM Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate C3   Oracle Business Process Management Track covers a variety of topics, and speakers covering technology, methodology and best practices. You can see the list of Business process Management sessions here. Come back to this blog for more coverage from Oracle OpenWorld!

  Read the article

• Time passage arithmetic explanation

  - by Cyber Axe

  I ported this from http://www.effectgames.com/effect/article.psp.html/joe/Old_School_Color_Cycling_with_HTML5 some time ago. However i'm now wanting to modify it for the purpose of changing it from floating point to fixed point maths for enhanced efficiency (for those who are going to talk about premature optimization and what not, i want to have my entire engine in fixed point both as a learning process for me and so i can port code more easily to systems in the future that dont have native floating points such as arm cpus) My initial conversion to fixed points just resulted in the cycling stuck on either the first or last frame of cycling. Plus it would be nice to understand better how it works so i can add more options and so forth in the future, my maths however sucks and the comments are limited so i don't really know how the maths work for determining the frame it shoud use (cycleAmount) I was also a beginner when i ported it as i had no idea between floating points and integers and what not. So in summary my question is, can anyone give an explination of the arithmatic used for determining the cycleAmount (which determings the "frame" of the cycle) This is the working floating point maths version of the code: public final void cycle(Colour[] sourceColours, double timeNow, double speedAdjust) { // Cycle all animated colour ranges in palette based on timestamp. sourceColours = sourceColours.clone(); int cycleSize; double cycleRate; double cycleAmount; Cycle cycle; for (int i = 0, len = cycles.length; i < len; ++i) { cycle = cycles[i]; cycleSize = (cycle.HIGH - cycle.LOW) + 1; cycleRate = cycle.RATE / (int) (CYCLE_SPEED / speedAdjust); cycleAmount = 0; if (cycle.REVERSE < 3) { // Standard Cycle cycleAmount = DFLOAT_MOD((timeNow / (1000 / cycleRate)), cycleSize); if (cycle.REVERSE < 1) { cycleAmount = cycleSize - cycleAmount; // If below 1 make sure its not reversed. } } else if (cycle.REVERSE == 3) { // Ping-Pong cycleAmount = DFLOAT_MOD((timeNow / (1000 / cycleRate)), cycleSize << 1); if (cycleAmount >= cycleSize) { cycleAmount = (cycleSize * 2) - cycleAmount; } } else if (cycle.REVERSE < 6) { // Sine Wave cycleAmount = DFLOAT_MOD((timeNow / (1000 / cycleRate)), cycleSize); cycleAmount = Math.sin((cycleAmount * 3.1415926 * 2) / cycleSize) + 1; if (cycle.REVERSE == 4) { cycleAmount *= (cycleSize / 4); } else if (cycle.REVERSE == 5) { cycleAmount *= (cycleSize >> 1); } } if (cycle.REVERSE == 2) { reverseColours(sourceColours, cycle); } if (USE_BLEND_SHIFT) { blendShiftColours(sourceColours, cycle, cycleAmount); } else { shiftColours(sourceColours, cycle, cycleAmount); } if (cycle.REVERSE == 2) { reverseColours(sourceColours, cycle); } } colours = sourceColours; } // This utility function allows for variable precision floating point modulus. private double DFLOAT_MOD(final double d, final double b) { return (Math.floor(d * PRECISION) % Math.floor(b * PRECISION)) / PRECISION; }

  Read the article

• Oracle OpenWorld 2013 – Wrap up by Sven Bernhardt

  - by JuergenKress

  OOW 2013 is over and we’re heading home, so it is time to lean back and reflecting about the impressions we have from the conference. First of all: OOW was great! It was a pleasure to be a part of it. As already mentioned in our last blog article: It was the biggest OOW ever. Parallel to the conference the America’s Cup took place in San Francisco and the Oracle Team America won. Amazing job by the team and again congratulations from our side Back to the conference. The main topics for us are: Oracle SOA / BPM Suite 12c Adaptive Case management (ACM) Big Data Fast Data Cloud Mobile Below we will go a little more into detail, what are the key takeaways regarding the mentioned points: Oracle SOA / BPM Suite 12c During the five days at OOW, first details of the upcoming major release of Oracle SOA Suite 12c and Oracle BPM Suite 12c have been introduced. Some new key features are: Managed File Transfer (MFT) for transferring big files from a source to a target location Enhanced REST support by introducing a new REST binding Introduction of a generic cloud adapter, which can be used to connect to different cloud providers, like Salesforce Enhanced analytics with BAM, which has been totally reengineered (BAM Console now also runs in Firefox!) Introduction of templates (OSB pipelines, component templates, BPEL activities templates) EM as a single monitoring console OSB design-time integration into JDeveloper (Really great!) Enterprise modeling capabilities in BPM Composer These are only a few points from what is coming with 12c. We are really looking forward for the new realese to come out, because this seems to be really great stuff. The suite becomes more and more integrated. From 10g to 11g it was an evolution in terms of developing SOA-based applications. With 12c, Oracle continues it’s way – very impressive. Adaptive Case Management Another fantastic topic was Adaptive Case Management (ACM). The Oracle PMs did a great job especially at the demo grounds in showing the upcoming Case Management UI (will be available in 11g with the next BPM Suite MLR Patch), the roadmap and the differences between traditional business process modeling. They have been very busy during the conference because a lot of partners and customers have been interested Big Data Big Data is one of the current hype themes. Because of huge data amounts from different internal or external sources, the handling of these data becomes more and more challenging. Companies have a need for analyzing the data to optimize their business. The challenge is here: the amount of data is growing daily! To store and analyze the data efficiently, it is necessary to have a scalable and flexible infrastructure. Here it is important that hardware and software are engineered to work together. Therefore several new features of the Oracle Database 12c, like the new in-memory option, have been presented by Larry Ellison himself. From a hardware side new server machines like Fujitsu M10 or new processors, such as Oracle’s new M6-32 have been announced. The performance improvements, when using one of these hardware components in connection with the improved software solutions were really impressive. For more details about this, please take look at our previous blog post. Regarding Big Data, Oracle also introduced their Big Data architecture, which consists of: Oracle Big Data Appliance that is preconfigured with Hadoop Oracle Exdata which stores a huge amount of data efficently, to achieve optimal query performance Oracle Exalytics as a fast and scalable Business analytics system Analysis of the stored data can be performed using SQL, by streaming the data directly from Hadoop to an Oracle Database 12c. Alternatively the analysis can be directly implemented in Hadoop using “R”. In addition Oracle BI Tools can be used to analyze the data. Fast Data Fast Data is a complementary approach to Big Data. A huge amount of mostly unstructured data comes in via different channels with a high frequency. The analysis of these data streams is also important for companies, because the incoming data has to be analyzed regarding business-relevant patterns in real-time. Therefore these patterns must be identified efficiently and performant. To do so, in-memory grid solutions in combination with Oracle Coherence and Oracle Event Processing demonstrated very impressive how efficient real-time data processing can be. One example for Fast Data solutions that was shown during the OOW was the analysis of twitter streams regarding customer satisfaction. The feeds with negative words like “bad” or “worse” have been filtered and after a defined treshold has been reached in a certain timeframe, a business event was triggered. Cloud Another key trend in the IT market is of course Cloud Computing and what it means for companies and their businesses. Oracle announced their Cloud strategy and vision – companies can focus on their real business while all of the applications are available via Cloud. This also includes Oracle Database or Oracle Weblogic, so that companies can also build, deploy and run their own applications within the cloud. Three different approaches have been introduced: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) Platform as a Service (PaaS) Software as a Service (SaaS) Using the IaaS approach only the infrastructure components will be managed in the Cloud. Customers will be very flexible regarding memory, storage or number of CPUs because those parameters can be adjusted elastically. The PaaS approach means that besides the infrastructure also the platforms (such as databases or application servers) necessary for running applications will be provided within the Cloud. Here customers can also decide, if installation and management of these infrastructure components should be done by Oracle. The SaaS approach describes the most complete one, hence all applications a company uses are managed in the Cloud. Oracle is planning to provide all of their applications, like ERP systems or HR applications, as Cloud services. In conclusion this seems to be a very forward-thinking strategy, which opens up new possibilities for customers to manage their infrastructure and applications in a flexible, scalable and future-oriented manner. As you can see, our OOW days have been very very interresting. We collected many helpful informations for our projects. The new innovations presented at the confernce are great and being part of this was even greater! We are looking forward to next years’ conference! Links: http://www.oracle.com/openworld/index.html http://thecattlecrew.wordpress.com/2013/09/23/first-impressions-from-oracle-open-world-2013 SOA & BPM Partner Community For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Wiki Mix Forum Technorati Tags: cattleCrew,Sven Bernhard,OOW2013,SOA Community,Oracle SOA,Oracle BPM,Community,OPN,Jürgen Kress

  Read the article

• Introducing Oracle Retail Mobile Point-of-Service

  - by user801960

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE 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-qformat:yes; 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:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Oracle recently announced the introduction of Oracle Retail Mobile Point-of-Service, a mobile extension to the Oracle Retail Point-of-Service (POS) used by many retailers internationally. Oracle Retail Mobile POS offers wide ranging cost and efficiency benefits by allowing staff resource to be used more effectively whilst also reducing spend associated with fixed POS solutions. For retailers utilising Oracle Retail Stores Solutions, additional benefits can be realised. Oracle Retail Mobile POS works with these solutions to allow store personnel to check in-store inventory, access product information and specifications, and perform tasks such as the printing or emailing of receipts and the activation of gift cards.  As Oracle Retail Mobile POS is an extension of Oracle Retail Point-of-Service, retailers can benefit from seamless integration with existing systems, simple upgrade procedures and seamless delivery across the business. However, the solution’s scalable and flexible architecture also supports multiple mobile operators and systems, so retailers are not locked into particular vendors. As well as being popular with retailers, Mobile POS has also proved to be well liked by consumers as it facilitates improved customer service levels. Retail staff are able to spend more time with consumers on the shop floor, access requested inventory information, and perform tasks that would traditionally have needed to be completed at a fixed cash register. Additional information can be accessed on Oracle Retail Point-of-Service or read the press announcement Oracle Introduces Mobile Point-of-Service for Retailers. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE

  Read the article

• SQLAuthority News – Download Whitepaper – SQL Server Analysis Services to Hive

  - by pinaldave

  The SQL Server Analysis Service is a very interesting subject and I always have enjoyed learning about it. You can read my earlier article over here. Big Data is my new interest and I have been exploring it recently. During this weekend this blog post caught my attention and I enjoyed reading it. Big Data is the next big thing. The growth is predicted to be 60% per year till 2016. There is no single solution to the growing need of the big data available in the market right now as well there is no one solution in the business intelligence eco-system available as well. However, the need of the solution is ever increasing. I am personally Klout user. You can see my Klout profile over. I do understand what Klout is trying to achieve – a single place to measure the influence of the person. However, it works a bit mysteriously. There are plenty of social media available currently in the internet world. The biggest problem all the social media faces is that everybody opens an account but hardly people logs back in. To overcome this issue and have returned visitors Klout has come up with the system where visitors can give 5/10 K+ to other users in a particular area. Looking at all the activities Klout is doing it is indeed big consumer of the Big Data as well it is early adopter of the big data and Hadoop based system.  Klout has to 1 trillion rows of data to be analyzed as well have nearly thousand terabyte warehouse. Hive the language used for Big Data supports Ad-Hoc Queries using HiveQL there are always better solutions. The alternate solution would be using SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) along with HiveQL. As there is no direct method to achieve there are few common workarounds already in place. A new ODBC driver from Klout has broken through the limitation and SQL Server Relation Engine can be used as an intermediate stage before SSAS. In this white paper the same solutions have been discussed in the depth. The white paper discusses following important concepts. The Klout Big Data solution Big Data Analytics based on Analysis Services Hadoop/Hive and Analysis Services integration Limitations of direct connectivity Pass-through queries to linked servers Best practices and lessons learned This white paper discussed all the important concepts which have enabled Klout to go go to the next level with all the offerings as well helped efficiency by offering a few out of the box solutions. I personally enjoy reading this white paper and I encourage all of you to do so. SQL Server Analysis Services to Hive Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL White Papers, T SQL, Technology

  Read the article

• The Social Business Thought Leaders

  - by kellsey.ruppel

  Enterprise Gamification, Big Data, Social Support, Total Customer Experience, Pull Organizations, Social Business. Are these purely the latest buzzwords to enter the market or significant trends that companies should keep an eye on? Oracle recently sponsored and presented at the 5th Social Business Forum, one of the largest European events on the use of social media as a business tool and accelerator. Through the participation of dozens of practitioners, experts and customer success stories, the conference demonstrated how a perfect storm of technology, management and cultural change is pushing peer-to-peer conversations deep into business processes. It is clear that Social Business is serving as a new propellant of agility, efficiency and reactivity. According to Deloitte and MIT what we have learned to call Social Business is considered important in the next 3 years by 86% of managers (see Social Business: What Are Companies Really Doing?, MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte). McKinsey further estimates the value that can be unlocked in terms of knowledge-worker productivity, consumer insights, product co-creation, improved sales, marketing and customer service up to $1300B (See The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies, McKinsey Global Institute). This impacts any industry, with the strongest effects seen in Media & Entertainment, Technology, Telcos and Education. For those not able to attend the Social Business Forum and also for the many friends that joined us in Milan, we decided to keep the conversation going by extracting some golden nuggets from the perspective of five of the most well-known thought-leaders in this space. Starting this week you will have the chance to view: John Hagel (Author of the Power of Pull and Co-Chairman Center for the Edge at Deloitte & Touche) Christian Finn (Senior Director, WebCenter Evangelist at Oracle) Steve Denning (Author of The Radical Management and Independent Management Consulting Professional) Esteban Kolsky (Principal & Founder at ThinkJar) Ray Wang (Principal Analyst & CEO at Constellation Research) Stay tuned to hear: How pull organizations are addressing some of the deepest challenges impacting the market. How to integrate social into existing infrastructure and processes. How to apply radical management to become more agile and profitable. About the importance of gamification as an engagement lever. The first interview with John Hagel will be published tomorrow. Don't miss it and the entire series!

  Read the article

• Data Structures usage and motivational aspects

  - by Aubergine

  For long student life I was always wondering why there are so many of them yet there seems to be lack of usage at all in many of them. The opinion didn't really change when I got a job. We have brilliant books on what they are and their complexities, but I never encounter resources which would actually give a good hint of practical usage. I perfectly understand that I have to look at problem , analyse required operations, look for data structure that does them efficiently. However in practice I never do that, not because of human laziness syndrome, but because when it comes to work I acknowledge time priority over self-development. Over time I thought that when I would be better developer I will automatically use more of them - that didn't happen at all or maybe I just didn't. Then I found that the colleagues usually in the same plate as me - knowing more or less some three of data structures and being totally happy about it and refusing to discuss this matter further with me, coming back to conversations about 'cool new languages' 'libraries that do jobs for you' and the joy to work under scrumban etc. I am stuck with ArrayLists, Arrays and SortedMap , which no matter what I do always suffice or either I tweak them to be capable of fulfilling my task. Yes, it might be inefficient but do we really have to care if Intel increases performance over years no matter if we improve our skills? Does new Xeon or IBM machines really care what we use? What if I like build things, but I am not particularly excited whether it is n log(n) or just n? Over twenty years the processing power increased enormously, which gives us freedom of not being critical about which one to use? On top of that new more optimized languages appear which support multiple cores more efficiently. To be more specific: I would like to find motivational material on complex real areas/cases of possible effective usages of data structures. I would be really grateful if you would provide relevant resources. There is similar question ,but in the end the links again mostly describe or do dumb example(vehicles, students or holy grail quest - yes, very relevant) them and people keep referring to the "scenario decides the data structure to use". I want to know these complex scenarios to be able to identify similarities to my scenario and then use them. The complex scenarios where it really matters and not necessarily of quantitive nature. It seems that data structures only concern is efficiency and nothing else? There seems to be no particular convenience for developer in use one over another. (only when I found scientific resources on why exactly simple carbohydrates are evil I stopped eating sugar and candies completely replacing it with less harmful fruits - I hope you can see the analogy)

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162  | Next Page >