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• What Problems Are Better Solved By SOAP Over REST?

  In the battle for web service supremacy SOAP and REST have been battling for years. In my personal opinion this debate should have never existed. Yes, both forms can be used to create an interactive web service, but each form of a service was developed independent of each other to solve two different yet similar problems. Based my research and experience I would have to say that REST should be the preferred web service methodology and SOAP should only be used in specific situations. Note, I did not say that I was against SOAP, and in fact I actually like to use SOAP when it is needed. Criteria for using SOAP: Does the service need a guaranteed level of reliability and security? Did the provider and consumer of the service agreed on a standardized data exchange format? Does the service need data context and state management? If you answer yes to any of these questions, then you may want to consider SOAP as the format for the web service. Another way to look at the relationship between REST and SOAP is to look at the medical field.  For most things a general doctor or you family health care provider can acceptably treat most conditions from the case of a common cold to a broken bone. A general doctor more aligns with REST in my opinion because for most service requirements REST fulfills a projects needs, but what happens if you need more of an advanced examination, you would go to a specialist. A specialist would already have experience dealing with specific issues that you are experiencing giving them specific context to how best treat you going forward. SOAP acts more like a specialist doctor giving that they understand the context of an issue and can treat it based on the state of other patients they have already treated. An example of where I would use SOAP over REST in real life would be a single sign-on application. I n these cases I need to check validate a username and password for authentication and authorization of a web page request. This service would need to maintain state while it authenticated a user and while it validated access to a web page on a subsequent request. This service must process every request for access and not allow caching to ensure that every request is processed and the appropriate users are allowed to view selected web pages. References: Rozlog, M. (2010). REST and SOAP: When Should I Use Each (or Both)? Retrieved 11 20, 2011, from Infoq.com: http://www.infoq.com/articles/rest-soap-when-to-use-each

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• Achieving Zero Downtime Deployment

  - by MattW

  I am trying to achieve zero downtime deployments so I can deploy less during off hours and more during "slower" hours - or anytime, in theory. My current setup, somewhat simplified: Web Server A (.NET App) Web Server B (.NET App) Database Server (SQL Server) My current deployment process: "Stop" the sites on both Web Server A and B Upgrade the database schema for the version of the app being deployed Update Web Server A Update Web Server B Bring everything back online Current Problem This leads to a small amount of downtime each month - about 30 mins. I do this during off hours, so it isn't a huge problem - but it is something I'd like to get away from. Also - there is no way to really go 'back'. I don't generally make rollback DB scripts - only upgrade scripts. Leveraging The Load Balancer I'd love to be able to upgrade one Web Server at a time. Take Web Server A out of the load balancer, upgrade it, put it back online, then repeat for Web Server B. The problem is the database. Each version of my software will need to execute against a different version of the database - so I am sort of "stuck". Possible Solution A current solution I am considering is adopting the following rules: Never delete a database table. Never delete a database column. Never rename a database column. Never reorder a column. Every stored procedure must be versioned. Meaning - 'spFindAllThings' will become 'spFindAllThings_2' when it is edited. Then it becomes 'spFindAllThings_3' when edited again. Same rule applies to views. While, this seems a bit extreme - I think it solves the problem. Each version of the application will be hitting the DB in a non breaking way. The code expects certain results from the views/stored procedures - and this keeps that 'contract' valid. The problem is - it just seeps sloppy. I know I can clean up old stored procedures after the app is deployed for awhile, but it just feels dirty. Also - it depends on all of the developers following these rule, which will mostly happen, but I imagine someone will make a mistake. Finally - My Question Is this sloppy or hacky? Is anybody else doing it this way? How are other people solving this problem?

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• K2 4.5 Quick Thoughts

  I just finished attending a webcast on K2 4.5 and I thought Id share a few quick thoughts. Power User Story Improved Given it is just a presentation and I havent actually played with it, the story seemed improved and more believable that real world power users would be able to define workflows in SharePoint.  Power users who would be comfortable with Excel functions may be able to do some more worthwhile workflows since there is new support for inline functions and conditions.  The new SilverLight K2 designer seems pretty user friendly, though the dialog windows can really stack up which may get confusing.  I thought the neatest part was that the workflow can be defined just by starting with a SharePoint Lists settings which may be okay for some organizations and simpler workflows that dont need to define the workflow and push it through lots of testing in different environments.  The standalone K2 Studio is back.  In K2 2003 it was required because Visual Studio integration didnt exist.  Its back now for use by power users who need functionality up to the point of code.  Not sure if this Administration/Installation Installation is supposed to be simplified, with unattended install and other details I didnt catch.  Install and configuration has always seemed daunting to me so anything to improve that is good.  Related to that there is a new tool that is meant to help diagnose issues in your installation.  That may include figuring out missing permissions or services that arent running.  Also, now all K2 SharePoint features deployed as solutions. Dynamic SQL Service Broker Create a smart object to go against a table that you created, NOT the SmartBox.  This seems promising and something that maybe should have been there all along. Reference Event Allows you to call functionally that youve referenced, in the sample showing it was calling a web service that was referenced.  It seemed odd because it was really like writing code using dialogs (call constructor, set timeout, call web service method).  Seemed a little odd to me. Help We were reminded that help.k2.com site is newish site that is supposed to be the MSDN of K2 for partners and customers. VS 2010 Support Still no hard date on this, but what we were told is approximately 90 days after VS 2010 is officially released.Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Should I be put off a junior role that uses an online development test?

  - by Ninefingers

  I've applied for a junior development role, or rather been found by a recruiter looking for a developer. In order to get to a telephone interview stage I've been asked to sit one of those online coding assessments. This wasn't quite what I expected. I consider myself a fairly good developer for my age and experience, but I've no illusions about being Don Knuth or anything. The test was a series of incredibly obtuse questions asking about the results of various obscure evaluations. About 30 minutes in I was thinking to myself I hadn't intended to enter an obfuscated code contest/code golf exercise. After my last telephone interview I was asked to build something. I did. That seemed fair. Go away and work this out is more my in office experience of programming than "please evaluate this combination of lambdas, filters, maps, lists, tuples etc". So I'm a little put off, to be honest. I never claimed to know the language inside out or all the little corner cases. My questions, then: Should I be put off? Why? Why not? Are these kinds of tests what I should be expecting for junior roles? Should I learn stuff exam style? That seems to be the objective of these tests, for which you are timed and not supposed to use references or books? Normally, in the course of development I have a fairly good idea of basic types, rules, flow control and whatever. Occasionally I'll come up on something I need to use a regex for and have to go and remind myself of the exact piece of syntax I need if trying what I think should work doesn't. Or I'll come up against a module I've not used before and go and look it up. For example, if I wanted to write a server using sockets in C right now, I'd probably check the last piece of code I wrote doing that (and or the various books I have) and work from there. Chances are I probably couldn't do it exactly from scratch and from memory, although I can tell you you'd need a socket(), bind(), listen() and accept() call and you might also want select() depending on whether you intend to pthread_create or not. So I know what the calls are, but not their specific parameter list. What are your experiences if you are a recruiting manager? Are you after programmers who can quote you the API or do you not mind if your programmers have a few books on their desk and google function calls every so often?

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• Where are my sub templates?

  - by Tim Dexter

  This one is for standalone/BIEE uses of Publisher. All the ERP/CRM/HCM folks are already catered for and can tuck into a nut cutlet and arugala salad. Sorry, I have just watched Food Inc and even if only half of it is true; Im still on a crusade in my house against mass produced food. Wake up World! If you have ventured into the world of sub templating, you'll be reaping some development benefit. In terms of shared report components and calculations they are very useful. Just exporting all of your report headers and footers to a single sub template can potentially save you hours and hours of work and make you look like a star. If someone in management gets it into their head that they would like Comic San Serif font rather than Arial in their report headers, its a 10 min job rather than 100 hours! What about the rest of the report content? I hear you cry. Its coming in 11g, full master template support. Your management wants bright blue borders with yellow backgrounds for all the tables in your reports, 5 minute job! Getting back to sub templates and my comment about all the ERP/CRM/HCM folks be catered for. In the standalone release there is no out of the box directory for you to drop your sub templates. Dropping them into the main report directory would make sense but they are not accessible there via a URL. An oversight on our part and something that will be addressed in 11g. Sub templates are now a first class citizen in the world of BIP, you can upload them and BIP will know what to do with them. But what do you do right now? The easiest place to put them where BIP can 'see' them is to create a directory under the xmlpserver install directory in the J2EE container e.g. $J2EE_HOME/xmlpserver/xmlpserver/subtemplates You can call it whatever you want but when the server is started up, that directory is accessible via a URL i.e. http://tdexter:9704/xmlpserver/subtemplates/mysub.rtf. You can therefore put it into the top of your main templates and call the sub template. <?import: http://tdexter:9704/xmlpserver/subtemplates/mysub.rtf?> Of course, you can drop them anywhere you want, they just need to be in a web server mountable directory. Enjoy the arugala!

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• MySQL and Hadoop Integration - Unlocking New Insight

  - by Mat Keep

  “Big Data” offers the potential for organizations to revolutionize their operations. With the volume of business data doubling every 1.2 years, analysts and business users are discovering very real benefits when integrating and analyzing data from multiple sources, enabling deeper insight into their customers, partners, and business processes. As the world’s most popular open source database, and the most deployed database in the web and cloud, MySQL is a key component of many big data platforms, with Hadoop vendors estimating 80% of deployments are integrated with MySQL. The new Guide to MySQL and Hadoop presents the tools enabling integration between the two data platforms, supporting the data lifecycle from acquisition and organisation to analysis and visualisation / decision, as shown in the figure below The Guide details each of these stages and the technologies supporting them: Acquire: Through new NoSQL APIs, MySQL is able to ingest high volume, high velocity data, without sacrificing ACID guarantees, thereby ensuring data quality. Real-time analytics can also be run against newly acquired data, enabling immediate business insight, before data is loaded into Hadoop. In addition, sensitive data can be pre-processed, for example healthcare or financial services records can be anonymized, before transfer to Hadoop. Organize: Data is transferred from MySQL tables to Hadoop using Apache Sqoop. With the MySQL Binlog (Binary Log) API, users can also invoke real-time change data capture processes to stream updates to HDFS. Analyze: Multi-structured data ingested from multiple sources is consolidated and processed within the Hadoop platform. Decide: The results of the analysis are loaded back to MySQL via Apache Sqoop where they inform real-time operational processes or provide source data for BI analytics tools. So how are companies taking advantage of this today? As an example, on-line retailers can use big data from their web properties to better understand site visitors’ activities, such as paths through the site, pages viewed, and comments posted. This knowledge can be combined with user profiles and purchasing history to gain a better understanding of customers, and the delivery of highly targeted offers. Of course, it is not just in the web that big data can make a difference. Every business activity can benefit, with other common use cases including: - Sentiment analysis; - Marketing campaign analysis; - Customer churn modeling; - Fraud detection; - Research and Development; - Risk Modeling; - And more. As the guide discusses, Big Data is promising a significant transformation of the way organizations leverage data to run their businesses. MySQL can be seamlessly integrated within a Big Data lifecycle, enabling the unification of multi-structured data into common data platforms, taking advantage of all new data sources and yielding more insight than was ever previously imaginable. Download the guide to MySQL and Hadoop integration to learn more. I'd also be interested in hearing about how you are integrating MySQL with Hadoop today, and your requirements for the future, so please use the comments on this blog to share your insights.

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• Atmospheric scattering sky from space artifacts

  - by ollipekka

  I am in the process of implementing atmospheric scattering of a planets from space. I have been using Sean O'Neil's shaders from http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPUGems2/gpugems2_chapter16.html as a starting point. I have pretty much the same problem related to fCameraAngle except with SkyFromSpace shader as opposed to GroundFromSpace shader as here: http://www.gamedev.net/topic/621187-sean-oneils-atmospheric-scattering/ I get strange artifacts with sky from space shader when not using fCameraAngle = 1 in the inner loop. What is the cause of these artifacts? The artifacts disappear when fCameraAngle is limtied to 1. I also seem to lack the hue that is present in O'Neil's sandbox (http://sponeil.net/downloads.htm) Camera position X=0, Y=0, Z=500. GroundFromSpace on the left, SkyFromSpace on the right. Camera position X=500, Y=500, Z=500. GroundFromSpace on the left, SkyFromSpace on the right. I've found that the camera angle seems to handled very differently depending the source: In the original shaders the camera angle in SkyFromSpaceShader is calculated as: float fCameraAngle = dot(v3Ray, v3SamplePoint) / fHeight; Whereas in ground from space shader the camera angle is calculated as: float fCameraAngle = dot(-v3Ray, v3Pos) / length(v3Pos); However, various sources online tinker with negating the ray. Why is this? Here is a C# Windows.Forms project that demonstrates the problem and that I've used to generate the images: https://github.com/ollipekka/AtmosphericScatteringTest/ Update: I have found out from the ScatterCPU project found on O'Neil's site that the camera ray is negated when the camera is above the point being shaded so that the scattering is calculated from point to the camera. Changing the ray direction indeed does remove artifacts, but introduces other problems as illustrated here: Furthermore, in the ScatterCPU project, O'Neil guards against situations where optical depth for light is less than zero: float fLightDepth = Scale(fLightAngle, fScaleDepth); if (fLightDepth < float.Epsilon) { continue; } As pointed out in the comments, along with these new artifacts this still leaves the question, what is wrong with the images where camera is positioned at 500, 500, 500? It feels like the halo is focused on completely wrong part of the planet. One would expect that the light would be closer to the spot where the sun should hits the planet, rather than where it changes from day to night. The github project has been updated to reflect changes in this update.

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• Naming Convention for Dedicated Thread Locking objects

  - by Chris Sinclair

  A relatively minor question, but I haven't been able to find official documentation or even blog opinion/discussions on it. Simply put: when I have a private object whose sole purpose is to serve for private lock, what do I name that object? class MyClass { private object LockingObject = new object(); void DoSomething() { lock(LockingObject) { //do something } } } What should we name LockingObject here? Also consider not just the name of the variable but how it looks in-code when locking. I've seen various examples, but seemingly no solid go-to advice: Plenty of usages of SyncRoot (and variations such as _syncRoot). Code Sample: lock(SyncRoot), lock(_syncRoot) This appears to be influenced by VB's equivalent SyncLock statement, the SyncRoot property that exists on some of the ICollection classes and part of some kind of SyncRoot design pattern (which arguably is a bad idea) Being in a C# context, not sure if I'd want to have a VBish naming. Even worse, in VB naming the variable the same as the keyword. Not sure if this would be a source of confusion or not. thisLock and lockThis from the MSDN articles: C# lock Statement, VB SyncLock Statement Code Sample: lock(thisLock), lock(lockThis) Not sure if these were named minimally purely for the example or not Kind of weird if we're using this within a static class/method. Several usages of PadLock (of varying casing) Code Sample: lock(PadLock), lock(padlock) Not bad, but my only beef is it unsurprisingly invokes the image of a physical "padlock" which I tend to not associate with the abstract threading concept. Naming the lock based on what it's intending to lock Code Sample: lock(messagesLock), lock(DictionaryLock), lock(commandQueueLock) In the VB SyncRoot MSDN page example, it has a simpleMessageList example with a private messagesLock object I don't think it's a good idea to name the lock against the type you're locking around ("DictionaryLock") as that's an implementation detail that may change. I prefer naming around the concept/object you're locking ("messagesLock" or "commandQueueLock") Interestingly, I very rarely see this naming convention for locking objects in code samples online or on StackOverflow. Question: What's your opinion generally about naming private locking objects? Recently, I've started naming them ThreadLock (so kinda like option 3), but I'm finding myself questioning that name. I'm frequently using this locking pattern (in the code sample provided above) throughout my applications so I thought it might make sense to get a more professional opinion/discussion about a solid naming convention for them. Thanks!

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• Say goodbye to System.Reflection.Emit (any dynamic proxy generation) in WinRT

  - by mbrit

  tl;dr - Forget any form of dynamic code emitting in Metro-style. It's not going to happen.Over the past week or so I've been trying to get Moq (the popular open source TDD mocking framework) to work on WinRT. Irritatingly, the day before Release Preview was released it was actually working on Consumer Preview. However in Release Preview (RP) the System.Reflection.Emit namespace is gone. Forget any form of dynamic code generation and/or MSIL injection.This kills off any project based on the popular Castle Project Dynamic Proxy component, of which Moq is one example. You can at this point in time not perform any form of mocking using dynamic injection in your Metro-style unit testing endeavours.So let me take you through my journey on this, so that other's don't have to...The headline fact is that you cannot load any assembly that you create at runtime. WinRT supports one Assembly.Load method, and that takes the name of an assembly. That has to be placed within the deployment folder of your app. You cannot give it a filename, or stream. The methods are there, but private. Try to invoke them using Reflection and you'll be met with a caspol exception.You can, in theory, use Rotor to replace SRE. It's all there, but again, you can't load anything you create.You can't write to your deployment folder from within your Metro-style app. But, can you use another service on the machine to move a file that you create into the deployment folder and load it? Not really.The networking stack in Metro-style is intentionally "damaged" to prevent socket communication from Metro-style to any end-point on the local machine. (It just times out.) This militates against an approach where your Metro-style app can signal a properly installed service on the machine to create proxies on its behalf. If you wanted to do this, you'd have to route the calls through a C&C server somewhere. The reason why Microsoft has done this is obvious - taking out SRE know means they don't have to do it in an emergency later. The collateral damage in removing SRE is that you can't do mocking in test mode, but you also can't do any form of injection in production mode. There are plenty of reasons why enterprise apps might want to do this last point particularly. At CP, the assumption was that their inspection tools would prevent SRE being used as a malware vector - it now seems they are less confident about that. (For clarity, the risk here is in allowing a nefarious program to download instructions from a C&C server and make up executable code on the fly to run, getting around the marketplace restrictions.)So, two things:- System.Reflection.Emit is gone in Metro-style/WinRT. Get over it - dynamic, on-the-fly code generation is not going to to happen.- I've more or less got a version of Moq working in Metro-style. This is based on the idea of "baking" the dynamic proxies before you use them. You can find more information here: https://github.com/mbrit/moqrt

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• SQL Saturday #162 Cambridge

  - by Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)

  Despite the efforts of American Airlines, this past weekend I attended the first SQL Saturday in the UK!  Hosted by the SQLCambs Chapter of PASS and organized by Mark (b|t) & Lorraine Broadbent, ably assisted by John Martin (b|t), Mark Pryce-Maher (b|t) and other folks whose names I've unfortunately forgotten, it was held at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, which is completely surrounded by Cambridge University. On Friday, they presented 3 pre-conference sessions given by the brilliant American Cloud & DBA Guru, Buck Woody (b|t), the brilliant Danish SQL Server Internals Guru, Mark Rasmussen (b|t), and the brilliant Scottish Business Intelligence Guru and recent Outstanding Pass Volunteer, Jen Stirrup (b|t).  While I would have loved to attend any of their pre-cons (having seen them present several times already), finances and American Airlines ultimately made that impossible.  But not to worry, I caught up with them during the regular sessions and at the speaker dinner.  And I got back the money they all owed me.  (Actually I owed Mark some money) The schedule was jam-packed even with only 4 tracks, there were 8 regular slots, a lunch session for sponsor presentations, and a 15 minute keynote given by Buck Woody, who besides giving an excellent history of SQL Server at Microsoft (and before), also explained the source of the "unknown contact" image that appears in Outlook.  Hint: it's not Buck himself. Amazingly, and against all better judgment, I even got to present at SQL Saturday 162!  I did a 5 minute Lightning Talk on Regular Expressions in SSMS.  I then did a regular 50 minute session on Constraints.  You can download the content for the regular session at that link, and for the regular expression presentation here. I had a great time and had a great audience for both of my sessions.  You would never have guessed this was the first event for the organizers, everything went very smoothly, especially for the number of attendees and the relative smallness of the space.  The event sponsors also deserve a lot of credit for making themselves fit in a small area and for staying through the entire event until the giveaways at the very end. Overall this was one of the best SQL Saturdays I've ever attended and I have to congratulate Mark B, Lorraine, John, Mark P-M, and all the volunteers and speakers for making this an astoundingly hard act to follow!  Well done!

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• JWT Token Security with Fusion Sales Cloud

  - by asantaga

  When integrating SalesCloud with a 3rd party application you often need to pass the users identity to the 3rd party application so that  The 3rd party application knows who the user is The 3rd party application needs to be able to do WebService callbacks to Sales Cloud as that user.  Until recently without using SAML, this wasn't easily possible and one workaround was to pass the username, potentially even the password, from Sales Cloud to the 3rd party application using URL parameters.. With Oracle Fusion R8 we now have a proper solution and that is called "JWT Token support". This is based on the industry JSON Web Token standard , for more information see here JWT Works by allowing the user the ability to generate a token (lasts a short period of time) for a specific application. This token is then passed to the 3rd party application as a GET parameter.  The 3rd party application can then call into SalesCloud and use this token for all webservice calls, the calls will be executed as the user who generated the token in the first place, or they can call a special HR WebService (UserService-findSelfUserDetails() ) with the token and Fusion will respond with the users details. Some more details  The following will go through the scenario that you want to embed a 3rd party application within a WebContent frame (iFrame) within the opportunity screen.  1. Define your application using the topology manager in setup and maintenance  See this documentation link on topology manager 2. From within your groovy script which defines the iFrame you wish to embed, write some code which looks like this : def thirdpartyapplicationurl = oracle.topologyManager.client.deployedInfo.DeployedInfoProvider.getEndPoint("My3rdPartyApplication" )def crmkey= (new oracle.apps.fnd.applcore.common.SecuredTokenBean().getTrustToken())def url = thirdpartyapplicationurl +"param1="+OptyId+"&jwt ="+crmkeyreturn (url)  This snippet generates a URL which contains The Hostname/endpoint of the 3rd party application Two Parameters The opportunityId stored in parameter "param1" The JWT Token store in  parameter "jwt" 3. From your 3rd Party Application you now have two options Execute a webservice call by first setting the header parameter "Authentication" to the JWT token. The webservice call will be executed against Fusion Applications "As" the user who execute the process To find out "Who you are" , set the header parameter to "Authentication" and execute the special webservice call findSelfUserDetails(), in the UserDetailsService For more information  Oracle Sales Cloud Documentation , specific chapter on JWT Token OTN samples, specifically the Rich UI With JWT Token Sample Oracle Fusion Applications General Documentation

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• BPEL 11.1.1.6 Certified for Prebuilt E-Business Suite 12.1.3 SOA Integrations

  - by Steven Chan (Oracle Development)

  Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) integrations with Oracle E-Business Suite can either be custom integrations that you build yourself or prebuilt integrations from Oracle.  For more information about the differences between the two options for SOA integrations, see this previously-published certification announcement. There are five prebuilt BPEL business processes by Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 product teams: Oracle Price Protection (DPP) Complex Maintenance, Repair & Overhaul (CMRO/AHL) Oracle Transportation Management (WMS, WSH, PO) Advanced Supply Chain Planning (MSC) Product Information Management (PIM/EGO) Last year we announced the certification of BPEL 11.1.1.5 for Prebuilt E-Business Suite 12.1.3 SOA integrations.  The five prebuilt BPEL processes have now been certified with Oracle BPEL Process Manager 11g version 11.1.1.6 (in Oracle Fusion Middleware SOA Suite 11g).  These prebuilt BPEL processes are certified with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.3 and higher. Note: The Supply Chain Trading Connector (CLN) product team has opted not to support BPEL 11g with their prebuilt business processes previously certified with BPEL 10.1.3.5.  If you have a requirement for that certification, I would recommend contacting your Oracle account manager to ensure that the Supply Chain team is notified appropriately.  For additional information about prebuilt integrations with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.3, please refer to the following documentation: Integrating Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 with Oracle BPEL available in Oracle SOA Suite 11g (Note 1321776.1) Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g (11.1.1.6.0) Documentation Library Installing Oracle SOA Suite and Oracle Business Process Management Suite Release Notes for Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g (11.1.1.6) Certified Platforms Linux x86 (Oracle Linux 4, 5) Linux x86 (RHEL 5) Linux x86 (SLES 10) Linux x86-64 (Oracle Linux 4, 5, 6) Linux x86-64 (RHEL 5) Linux x86-64 (SLES 10)  Oracle Solaris on SPARC (64-bit) (9, 10, 11) HP-UX Itanium (11.23, 11.31) HP-UX PA-RISC (64-bit) (11.23, 11.31) IBM AIX on Power Systems (64-bit) (5.3, 6.1, 7) IBM: Linux on System z (RHEL 5, SLES 10) Microsoft Windows Server (32-bit) (2003, 2008)  Microsoft Windows x64 (64-bit) (2008 R2) Getting SupportIf you need support for the prebuilt EBS 12.1.3 BPEL business processes, you can log Service Requests against the Applications Technology Group product family. Related Articles BPEL 11.1.1.5 Certified for Prebuilt E-Business Suite 12.1.3 SOA Integrations Webcast Replay Available: SOA Integration Options for E-Business Suite Securing E-Business Suite Web Services with Integrated SOA Gateway

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• Find a Faster DNS Server with Namebench

  - by Mysticgeek

  One way to speed up your Internet browsing experience is using a faster DNS server. Today we take a look at Namebench, which will compare your current DNS server against others out there, and help you find a faster one. Namebench Download the file and run the executable (link below). Namebench starts up and will include the current DNS server you have configured on your system. In this example we’re behind a router and using the DNS server from the ISP. Include the global DNS providers and the best available regional DNS server, then start the Benchmark. The test starts to run and you’ll see the queries it’s running through. The benchmark takes about 5-10 minutes to complete. After it’s complete you’ll get a report of the results. Based on its findings, it will show you what DNS server is fastest for your system. It also displays different types of graphs so you can get a better feel for the different results. You can export the results to a .csv file as well so you can present the results in Excel. Conclusion This is a free project that is in continuing development, so results might not be perfect, and there may be more features added in the future. If you’re looking for a method to help find a faster DNS server for your system, Namebench is a cool free utility to help you out. If you’re looking for a public DNS server that is customizable and includes filters, you might want to check out our article on helping to protect your kids from questionable content using OpenDNS. You can also check out how to speed up your web browsing with Google Public DNS. Links Download NameBench for Windows, Mac, and Linux from Google Code Learn More About the Project on the Namebench Wiki Page Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Open a Second Console Session on Ubuntu ServerShare Ubuntu Home Directories using SambaSetup OpenSSH Server on Ubuntu LinuxDisable the Annoying “This device can perform faster” Balloon Message in Windows 7Search For Rows With Special Characters in SQL Server TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 How to Add Exceptions to the Windows Firewall Office 2010 reviewed in depth by Ed Bott FoxClocks adds World Times in your Statusbar (Firefox) Have Fun Editing Photo Editing with Citrify Outlook Connector Upgrade Error Gadfly is a cool Twitter/Silverlight app

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• If unexpected database changes cause you problems – we can help!

  - by Chris Smith

  Have you ever been surprised by an unexpected difference between you database environments? Have you ever found that your Staging database is not the same as your Production database, even though it was the week before? Has an emergency hotfix suddenly appeared in Production over the weekend without your knowledge? Has your client secretly added a couple of indices to their local version of the database to aid performance? Worse still, has a developer ever accidently run a SQL script against the wrong database without noticing their mistake? If you’ve answered “Yes” to any of the above questions then you’ve suffered from ‘drift’. Database drift is where the state of a database (schema, particularly) has moved away from its expected or official state over time. The upshot is that the database is in an unknown or poorly-understood state. Even if these unexpected changes are not destructive, drift can be a big problem when it’s time to release a new version of the database. A deployment to a target database in an unexpected state can error and fail, potentially delaying a vital, time-sensitive update. A big issue with drift is that it can be hard to spot and it can be even harder to determine its provenance. So, before you can deal with an issue caused by drift, you’ll need to know exactly what change has been made, who made it, when they made it and why they made it. Those questions can take a lot of effort to answer. Then you actually need to decide what to do. Do you rollback the change because it was bad? Retrospectively apply it to the Staging environment because it is a required change? Or script the change into version control to get it back in line with your process? Red Gate’s Database Delivery Team have been talking to DBAs, database consultants and database developers to explore the problem of drift. We’ve started to get a really good idea of how big a problem it can be and what database professionals need to know and do, in order to deal with it.  It’s fair to say, we’re pretty excited at the prospect of creating a tool that will really help and we’ve got some great feedback on our initial ideas (see image below).   We’re now well underway with the development of our new drift-spotting product – SQL Lighthouse – and we hope to have a beta release out towards the end of July. What we really need is your help to shape the product into a great tool. So, if database drift is a problem that you’d like help solving and are interested in finding out more about our product, join our mailing list to register your interest in trying out the beta release. Subscribe to our mailing list

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• Fast programmatic compare of "timetable" data

  - by Brendan Green

  Consider train timetable data, where each service (or "run") has a data structure as such: public class TimeTable { public int Id {get;set;} public List<Run> Runs {get;set;} } public class Run { public List<Stop> Stops {get;set;} public int RunId {get;set;} } public class Stop { public int StationId {get;set;} public TimeSpan? StopTime {get;set;} public bool IsStop {get;set;} } We have a list of runs that operate against a particular line (the TimeTable class). Further, whilst we have a set collection of stations that are on a line, not all runs stop at all stations (that is, IsStop would be false, and StopTime would be null). Now, imagine that we have received the initial timetable, processed it, and loaded it into the above data structure. Once the initial load is complete, it is persisted into a database - the data structure is used only to load the timetable from its source and to persist it to the database. We are now receiving an updated timetable. The updated timetable may or may not have any changes to it - we don't know and are not told whether any changes are present. What I would like to do is perform a compare for each run in an efficient manner. I don't want to simply replace each run. Instead, I want to have a background task that runs periodically that downloads the updated timetable dataset, and then compares it to the current timetable. If differences are found, some action (not relevant to the question) will take place. I was initially thinking of some sort of checksum process, where I could, for example, load both runs (that is, the one from the new timetable received and the one that has been persisted to the database) into the data structure and then add up all the hour components of the StopTime, and all the minute components of the StopTime and compare the results (i.e. both the sum of Hours and sum of Minutes would be the same, and differences introduced if a stop time is changed, a stop deleted or a new stop added). Would that be a valid way to check for differences, or is there a better way to approach this problem? I can see a problem that, for example, one stop is changed to be 2 minutes earlier, and another changed to be 2 minutes later would have a net zero change. Or am I over thinking this, and would it just be simpler to brute check all stops to ensure that The updated run stops at the same stations; and Each stop is at the same time

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• Silverlight Cream for May 12, 2010 -- #860

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Miroslav Miroslavov(-2-), Mike Snow(-2-, -3-), Paul Sheriff, Fadi Abdelqader, Jeremy Likness, Marlon Grech, and Victor Gaudioso. Shoutouts: Andy Beaulieu has a cool WP7 game up and is looking for opinions/comments: Droppy Pop: A Windows Phone 7 Game Karl Shifflett has code and video tutorials up for the app he wrote for the WPF LOB tour he just did: Stuff – WPF Line of Business Using MVVM Video Tutorial From SilverlightCream.com: Flipping panels I had missed this 3rd part of the CompleteIT explanation. In this post Miroslav Miroslavov describes the page flipping they're doing. Great explanation and all the code included. Flying objects against you The 4th part of the CompleteIT explanation is blogged by Miroslav Miroslavov where he is discussing the screen elements 'flying toward' the user. Silverlight Tip of the Day #17 – Double Click Mike Snow's Tip of the Day 17 is showing how to implement mouse double-clicks either for an individual control or for an entire app. Silverlight Tip of the Day #18 – Elastic Scrolling In Mike Snow's Tip of the Day 18, he's talking about and showing some 'elastic' scrolling in his image viewer application. He's asking for opinions and suggestions. Silverlight Tip of the Day #19 – Using Bing Maps in Silverlight Mike Snow's Tips are getting more elaborate :) ... Number 19 is about using the BingMap control in your Silverlight app. Control to Control Binding in WPF/Silverlight Paul Sheriff demonstrates control to control binding... saving a bunch of code behind in the process. Project included. Your First Step to the Silverlight Voice/Video Chatting Client/Server Fadi Abdelqader has a post up at CodeProject using the WebCam and Mic features of Silverlight 4 to setup a voice & video chatting app. MVVM Coding by Convention (Convention over Configuration) Jeremy Likness discusses Convention over Configuration and gives up some good MVVM nuggets along the way... check out his nice long post and grab the source for the project too... and also check out the external links he has in there. MEFedMVVM changes >> from cool to cooler Marlon Grech has refactored MEFedMVVM, and in addition is working with other MVVM framework folks to use some of the same MEF techniques in theirs... code on CodePlex New Silverlight Video Tutorial: How to Create a Silverlight Paging System to Load new Pages In Victor Gaudioso's latest video tutorial he builds a ContentHolder UserControl that will load any page on demand into your MainPage.xaml Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• Collision detection when pathfinding with pathnodes, UDK

  - by Dave Voyles

  I'm trying to create a class that allows my AIController to path find using pathnodes (NOT NavMeshes). It's doing a swell job of going from point to point in a set order (although I would like for it to be a random patrol at some point), but it gets caught up on collision from time to time. I.E. He'll walk the same set path, and when he runs into the blocks in the middle of the map he continues to rub against them until they finish, and continues on his merry way to the next path node. How can I prevent this from happening, or at least have him move from the wall if he does a trace and detects that it is there? It looks like I need to use MoveToward() instead of MoveTo(), as MoveToward allows the pawn to adjust its course during movement. I'm just not sure of how to use those paramters. Mougli has a decent tutorial on it[/URL], but I can't seem to get it to work correctly with my pathnode array. class PathfindingAIController extends UDKBot; var array Waypoints; var int _PathNode; //declare it at the start so you can use it throughout the script var int CloseEnough; simulated function PostBeginPlay() { local PathNode Current; super.PostBeginPlay(); //add the pathnodes to the array foreach WorldInfo.AllActors(class'Pathnode',Current) { Waypoints.AddItem( Current ); } } simulated function Tick(float DeltaTime) { local int Distance; local Rotator DesiredRotation; super.Tick(DeltaTime); if (Pawn != None) { // Smoothly rotate the pawn towards the focal point DesiredRotation = Rotator(GetFocalPoint() - Pawn.Location); Pawn.FaceRotation(RLerp(Pawn.Rotation, DesiredRotation, 3.125f * DeltaTime, true), DeltaTime); } Distance = VSize2D(Pawn.Location - Waypoints[_PathNode].Location); if (Distance <= CloseEnough) { _PathNode++; } if (_PathNode >= Waypoints.Length) { _PathNode = 0; } GoToState('Pathfinding'); } auto state Pathfinding { Begin: if (Waypoints[_PathNode] != None) // make sure there is a pathnode to move to { MoveTo(Waypoints[_PathNode].Location); //move to it `log("STATE: Pathfinding"); } } DefaultProperties { CloseEnough=400 bIsplayer = True }

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• Hype and LINQ

  - by Tony Davis

  "Tired of querying in antiquated SQL?" I blinked in astonishment when I saw this headline on the LinqPad site. Warming to its theme, the site suggests that what we need is to "kiss goodbye to SSMS", and instead use LINQ, a modern query language! Elsewhere, there is an article entitled "Why LINQ beats SQL". The designers of LINQ, along with many DBAs, would, I'm sure, cringe with embarrassment at the suggestion that LINQ and SQL are, in any sense, competitive ways of doing the same thing. In fact what LINQ really is, at last, is an efficient, declarative language for C# and VB programmers to access or manipulate data in objects, local data stores, ORMs, web services, data repositories, and, yes, even relational databases. The fact is that LINQ is essentially declarative programming in a .NET language, and so in many ways encourages developers into a "SQL-like" mindset, even though they are not directly writing SQL. In place of imperative logic and loops, it uses various expressions, operators and declarative logic to build up an "expression tree" describing only what data is required, not the operations to be performed to get it. This expression tree is then parsed by the language compiler, and the result, when used against a relational database, is a SQL string that, while perhaps not always perfect, is often correctly parameterized and certainly no less "optimal" than what is achieved when a developer applies blunt, imperative logic to the SQL language. From a developer standpoint, it is a mistake to consider LINQ simply as a substitute means of querying SQL Server. The strength of LINQ is that that can be used to access any data source, for which a LINQ provider exists. Microsoft supplies built-in providers to access not just SQL Server, but also XML documents, .NET objects, ADO.NET datasets, and Entity Framework elements. LINQ-to-Objects is particularly interesting in that it allows a declarative means to access and manipulate arrays, collections and so on. Furthermore, as Michael Sorens points out in his excellent article on LINQ, there a whole host of third-party LINQ providers, that offers a simple way to get at data in Excel, Google, Flickr and much more, without having to learn a new interface or language. Of course, the need to be generic enough to deal with a range of data sources, from something as mundane as a text file to as esoteric as a relational database, means that LINQ is a compromise and so has inherent limitations. However, it is a powerful and beautifully compact language and one that, at least in its "query syntax" guise, is accessible to developers and DBAs alike. Perhaps there is still hope that LINQ can fulfill Phil Factor's lobster-induced fantasy of a language that will allow us to "treat all data objects, whether Word files, Excel files, XML, relational databases, text files, HTML files, registry files, LDAPs, Outlook and so on, in the same logical way, as linked databases, and extract the metadata, create the entities and relationships in the same way, and use the same SQL syntax to interrogate, create, read, write and update them." Cheers, Tony.

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• 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.

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• Filtering option list values based on security in UCM

  - by kyle.hatlestad

  Fellow UCM blog writer John Sim recently posted a comment asking about filtering values based on the user's security. I had never dug into that detail before, but thought I would take a look. It ended up being tricker then I originally thought and required a bit of insider knowledge, so I thought I would share. The first step is to create the option list table in Configuration Manager. You want to define the column for the option list value and any other columns desired. You then want to have a column which will store the security attribute to apply to the option list value. In this example, we'll name the column 'dGroupName'. Next step is to create a View based on the new table. For the Internal and Visible column, you can select the option list column name. Then click on the Security tab, uncheck the 'Publish view data' checkbox and select the 'Use standard document security' radio button. Click on the 'Edit Values...' button and add the values for the option list. In the dGroupName field, enter the Security Group (or Account if you use Accounts for security) to apply to that value. Create the custom metadata field and apply the View just created. The next step requires file system access to the server. Open the file [ucm directory]\data\schema\views\[view name].hda in a text editor. Below the line '@Properties LocalData', add the line: schSecurityImplementorColumnMap=dGroupName:dSecurityGroup The 'dGroupName' value designates the column in the table which stores the security value. 'dSecurityGroup' indicates the type of security to check against. It would be 'dDocAccount' if using Accounts. Save the file and restart UCM. Now when a user goes to the check-in page, they will only see the options for which they have read and write privileges to the associated Security Group. And on the Search page, they will see the options for which they have just read access. One thing to note is if a value that a user normally can't view on Check-in or Search is applied to a document, but the document is viewable by the user, the user will be able to see the value on the Content Information screen.

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• Programming and Ubiquitous Language (DDD) in a non-English domain

  - by Sandor Drieënhuizen

  I know there are some questions already here that are closely related to this subject but none of them take Ubiquitous Language as the starting point so I think that justifies this question. For those who don't know: Ubiquitous Language is the concept of defining a (both spoken and written) language that is equally used across developers and domain experts to avoid inconsistencies and miscommunication due to translation problems and misunderstanding. You will see the same terminology show up in code, conversations between any team member, functional specs and whatnot. So, what I was wondering about is how to deal with Ubiquitous Language in non-English domains. Personally, I strongly favor writing programming code in English completely, including comments but ofcourse excluding constants and resources. However, in a non-English domain, I'm forced to make a decision either to: Write code reflecting the Ubiquitous Language in the natural language of the domain. Translate the Ubiquitous Language to English and stop communicating in the natural language of the domain. Define a table that defines how the Ubiquitous Language translates to English. Here are some of my thoughts based on these options: 1) I have a strong aversion against mixed-language code, that is coding using type/member/variable names etc. that are non-English. Most programming languages 'breathe' English to a large extent and most of the technical literature, design pattern names etc. are in English as well. Therefore, in most cases there's just no way of writing code entirely in a non-English language so you end up with mixed languages anyway. 2) This will force the domain experts to start thinking and talking in the English equivalent of the UL, something that will probably not come naturally to them and therefore hinders communication significantly. 3) In this case, the developers communicate with the domain experts in their native language while the developers communicate with each other in English and most importantly, they write code using the English translation of the UL. I'm sure I don't want to go for the first option and I think option 3 is much better than option 2. What do you think? Am I missing other options? UPDATE Today, about year later, having dealt with this issue on a daily basis, I have to say that option 3 has worked out pretty well for me. It wasn't as tedious as I initially feared and translating in real time while talking to the client wasn't a problem either. I also found the following advantages to be true, based on my experience. Translating the UL makes you pay more attention to defining the UL and even the domain itself, especially when you don't know how to translate a term and you have to start looking through dictionaries etc. This has even caused me to reconsider domain modeling decisions a few times. It helps you make your knowledge of the English language more profound. Obviously, your code is much more pleasant to look at instead of being a mind boggling obscenity.

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• Tellago releases a RESTful API for BizTalk Server business rules

  - by Charles Young

  Jesus Rodriguez has blogged recently on Tellago Devlabs' release of an open source RESTful API for BizTalk Server Business Rules.   This is an excellent addition to the BizTalk ecosystem and I congratulate Tellago on their work.   See http://weblogs.asp.net/gsusx/archive/2011/02/08/tellago-devlabs-a-restful-api-for-biztalk-server-business-rules.aspx   The Microsoft BRE was originally designed to be used as an embedded library in .NET applications. This is reflected in the implementation of the Rules Engine Update (REU) Service which is a TCP/IP service that is hosted by a Windows service running locally on each BizTalk box. The job of the REU is to distribute rules, managed and held in a central database repository, across the various servers in a BizTalk group.   The engine is therefore distributed on each box, rather than exploited behind a central rules service.   This model is all very well, but proves quite restrictive in enterprise environments. The problem is that the BRE can only run legally on licensed BizTalk boxes. Increasingly we need to deliver rules capabilities across a more widely distributed environment. For example, in the project I am working on currently, we need to surface decisioning capabilities for use within WF workflow services running under AppFabric on non-BTS boxes. The BRE does not, currently, offer any centralised rule service facilities out of the box, and hence you have to roll your own (and then run your rules services on BTS boxes which has raised a few eyebrows on my current project, as all other WCF services run on a dedicated server farm ).   Tellago's API addresses this by providing a RESTful API for querying the rules repository and executing rule sets against XML passed in the request payload. As Jesus points out in his post, using a RESTful approach hugely increases the reach of BRE-based decisioning, allowing simple invocation from code written in dynamic languages, mobile devices, etc.   We developed our own SOAP-based general-purpose rules service to handle scenarios such as the one we face on my current project. SOAP is arguably better suited to enterprise service bus environments (please don't 'flame' me - I refuse to engage in the RESTFul vs. SOAP war). For example, on my current project we use claims based authorisation across the entire service bus and use WIF and WS-Federation for this purpose.   We have extended this to the rules service. I can't release the code for commercial reasons :-( but this approach allows us to legally extend the reach of BRE far beyond the confines of the BizTalk boxes on which it runs and to provide general purpose decisioning capabilities on the bus.   So, well done Tellago.   I haven't had a chance to play with the API yet, but am looking forward to doing so.

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• Five things SSIS should drop

  - by jamiet

  There’s a current SQL Server meme going round entitled Five things SQL Server should drop and, whilst no-one tagged me to write anything, I couldn’t resist doing the same for SQL Server Integration Services. So, without further ado, here are five things that I think should be dropped from SSIS.Data source connectionsSeriously, does anyone use these? I know why they’re there. Someone sat in a meeting back in the early part of the last decade and said “Ooo, Reporting Services and Analysis Services have these things called Data Sources. If we used them in Integration Services then we’d have a really cool integration story.” Errr….no.Web Service TaskDitto. If you want to do anything useful against anything but the simplest of SOAP web services steer well clear of this peculiar SSIS additionActiveX Script TaskAnother task that I suspect has never seen the light of day in a SSIS package. It was billed as a way of running upgraded DTS2000 ActiveX scripts in SSIS – sounds good except for one thing. Anytime one of those scripts would try to talk to the DTS object model (which they all do – otherwise what’s the point) then they will error out. This one has always been a real head scratcher.Slow Changing Dimension wizardI suspect I may get some push back on this one but I’m mentioning it anyway. Some people like the SCD wizard; I am not one of those people! Everything that the SCD component does can easily be reproduced using other components and from a performance point of view its much more beneficial to use those alternatives.Multifile Connection ManagerImagining buying a house that came with a set of keys that didn’t open any of the doors. Sounds ridiculous right? How about a SSIS Connection Manager that doesn’t get used by any of the tasks or components. Ah, that’ll be the Multifile Connection Manager then!Comments are of course welcome. Diatribes are assumed :)@Jamiet Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Configurable Objects - Introduction

  - by Anthony Shorten

  One of the interesting facilities in the framework is Configurable Object functionality (it is also known as Task Optimization and also known as Cool Tools). The idea is that any implementation can create their own views of the base product objects and services and implement functionality against those new views. For example, in Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing, there is a Person object. That object is used to store and manage information about individuals as well as companies. In the base product you would use the Person Maintenance screen and fill in some of the screen when you wanted to register or maintain and individual as well and fill out other parts of the screen when you wanted to register or maintain a company. This can be somewhat confusing to some customers. Using Configurable Objects this can be simplified. A business object can be created that is a view of the any object. For example, you could create a Human business object which would cover the aspects of the Person object pertaining to an individual and a Company business object to cover the aspects unique to a company. Even the tag names (i.e. Field Names) in the object can be changed to be more what the implementation is familiar with. The object can also restructure the object. For example, a common identifier for an individual in the USA is the Social Security number, this value is a Person Identifier (as this varies in each country). In the new Human object you can remap the Person Identifier as a Social Security number. To define a Business Object you use a schema editor built into the browser user interface and use a mapping language to setup the business objects. An example of the language is shown below in an extract of the schema for the Human business object. As you can see there are mapping as well as formatting and other tags. This information can be built manually or using a wizard which generates the base structure for you to alter. This is all stored as meta data when saved. Once a Business object is built it can be used as basis for code, other business objects (we support inheritance), called by a screen (called a UI Map) or even as a Web Service. This is just a start with Configurable Objects as you can also create views of base services called Business Services, Service Scripts used for non-object or complex object processing (as well as other things), UI Maps used for screens and Data Areas to reuse definitions across multiple objects. Configurable Objects are powerful and I only really touched on them here. Over the next few months I hope to add lots more entries about them.

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• Strengthening code with possibly useless exception handling

  - by rdurand

  Is it a good practice to implement useless exception handling, just in case another part of the code is not coded correctly? Basic example A simple one, so I don't loose everybody :). Let's say I'm writing an app that will display a person's information (name, address, etc.), the data being extracted from a database. Let's say I'm the one coding the UI part, and someone else is writing the DB query code. Now imagine that the specifications of your app say that if the person's information is incomplete (let's say, the name is missing in the database), the person coding the query should handle this by returning "NA" for the missing field. What if the query is poorly coded and doesn't handle this case? What if the guy who wrote the query handles you an incomplete result, and when you try to display the informations, everything crashes, because your code isn't prepared to display empty stuff? This example is very basic. I believe most of you will say "it's not your problem, you're not responsible for this crash". But, it's still your part of the code which is crashing. Another example Let's say now I'm the one writing the query. The specifications don't say the same as above, but that the guy writing the "insert" query should make sure all the fields are complete when adding a person to the database to avoid inserting incomplete information. Should I protect my "select" query to make sure I give the UI guy complete informations? The questions What if the specifications don't explicitly say "this guy is the one in charge of handling this situation"? What if a third person implements another query (similar to the first one, but on another DB) and uses your UI code to display it, but doesn't handle this case in his code? Should I do what's necessary to prevent a possible crash, even if I'm not the one supposed to handle the bad case? I'm not looking for an answer like "(s)he's the one responsible for the crash", as I'm not solving a conflict here, I'd like to know, should I protect my code against situations it's not my responsibility to handle? Here, a simple "if empty do something" would suffice. In general, this question tackles redundant exception handling. I'm asking it because when I work alone on a project, I may code 2-3 times a similar exception handling in successive functions, "just in case" I did something wrong and let a bad case come through.

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