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• ESX 4.0 space: DASD, NAS, or ?

  - by thormj

  I put together an ESX box for better management, but its performance is a WTF item; I'm a noob at dealing with ESX, so I'm looking for a laundry-list of reading material to help me straighten this out so I can go back to .NET programming. Current storage system: We're running Raid5+Hotspare (8x500 GB spindles) on a PERC6i on a Dell 2910. Due to ESX limitatios, the PERC is showing the storage as 1x2TB + 1x800GB "partitions." I'm not sure of the setup's configuration (stride / stripe / ???) at all. Our Applications We have a SBS server as well as a minor (2x50 GB, but growing at 10GB/month) database server... Our application that lives on the database VM is CPU and I/O insense; it's a database churning excercise mixed in with a lot of computation on the data (fixing that performance is what I'm supposed to be working on)... Perfomance Issue When I do a backup, restore, or worse (copy a backup from 1 vm to another to move it to the QA VM), the entire system slows to a crawl (even "unrelated" VMs). I originally thought a DASD situation would be quite good since you had PCI-x bandwidth, but the systemwide slowdown is killing productivity. Questions What should I do to make an intelligent decision about NAS vs RAID vs SAN vs DASD? Are there sweet spots/ugly spots in the storage setup? Can you use a SSD PCI-X card in ESX for the tempdb? Good/Bad idea? Is there any way to "share" some image in a copy-on-write fashion? Most of the "Backup-Copy-Restore" is to "put a clean image on the dev boxes"; if I could have them "share" the master image, the "big copy" (2x50 GB) would only need to be done once per week instead of once per dev per week...[runtime performance isn't a concern with the dev boxes, but the backup/copy/restore kills production, SBS, and everything else on the box]

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• How can I recover my system after running 'mkfs' on the system partition?

  - by Filip Podgórny

  I am not a Linux user, and was doing some homework, I blindly typed sudo mkfs ext3 dev/sda2 (I had Ubuntu as Windows installation). I've done few more things, and turned Ubuntu off to switch on Windows back. No operating system installed - this is the message I'm getting. I plugged my HDD onto another computer and all my files are still there. What should I do to get my windows installation back? df -l (before mkfs) /dev/loop0 29G 2,0G 27G 8% / udev 3,0G 4,0K 3,0G 1% /dev tmpfs 1,2G 900K 1,2G 1% /run none 5,0M 0 5,0M 0% /run/lock none 3,0G 1,3M 3,0G 1% /run/shm /dev/sda3 455G 123G 333G 27% /host /dev/sdb1 1,9G 820M 1,1G 43% /media/PHONE CARD mkfs output (polish, sorry) mke2fs 1.41.14 (22-Dec-2010) Etykieta systemu plików= Typ OS: Linux Rozmiar bloku=1024 (log=0) Rozmiar fragmentu=1024 (log=0) Stride=0 bloków, szerokosc Stripe=0 bloków 25688 i-wezlów, 102400 bloków 5120 bloków (5.00%) zarezerwowanych dla superuzytkownika Pierwszy blok danych=1 Maksymalna liczba bloków systemu plików=67371008 13 grup bloków 8192 bloków w grupie, 8192 fragmentów w grupie 1976 i-wezlów w grupie Kopie zapasowe superbloku zapisane w blokach: 8193, 24577, 40961, 57345, 73729 Zapis tablicy i-wezlów: zakonczono Tworzenie kroniki (4096 bloków): wykonano Zapis superbloków i podsumowania systemu plików: wykonano Ten system plików bedzie automatycznie sprawdzany co kazde 30 montowan lub co 180 dni, zaleznie co nastapi pierwsze. Mozna to zmienic poprzez tune2fs -c lub -i.

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• How do I make wallpaper fit both monitors in dual monitor setup?

  - by Ben

  I am deploying some custom corporate wallpaper as part of a Windows 7 rollout. Some people will be using dual monitors, and the additional monitors may be either 4:3 or widescreen. I want to use the same wallpaper on both screens (i.e. 2 copies of the same wallpaper, not stretched across both.) If I set the background to "stretch", it uses the aspect ratio of the primary monitor to stretch the wallpaper on both monitors. So, for example, if I have a dual monitor setup using a 4:3 TFT as primary and my (widescreen) laptop LCD as secondary - the image shows on the laptop LCD in 4:3, with a black stripe down either side. I've only noticed this as an issue with my "custom" wallpaper. Both the default MS wallpaper and the built in Lenovo wallpaper don't seem to have this issue. Is this by using "trickery" such as using an image larger than the largest resolution you will have and centering it? (i.e. so you crop out part of the image.) Or can this be done "properly"? I don't want to use 3rd party software to do this, but would happily do a bit of Powershell scripting if this would solve the issue. Thanks in advance, Ben

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• mkfs Operation Takes Very Long on Linux Software Raid 5

  - by Elmar Weber

  I've set-up a Linux software raid level 5 consisting of 4 * 2 TB disks. The disk array was created with a 64k stripe size and no other configuration parameters. After the initial rebuild I tried to create a filesystem and this step takes very long (about half an hour or more). I tried to create an xfs and ext3 filesystem, both took a long time, with mkfs.ext3 I observed the following behaviour, which might be helpful: writing inode tables runs fast until it reaches 1053 (~ 1 second), then it writes about 50, waits for two seconds, then the next 50 are written (according to the console display) when I try to cancel the operation with Control+C it hangs for half a minute before it is really canceled The performance of the disks individually is very good, I've run bonnie++ on each one separately with write / read values of around 95 / 110MB/s. Even when I run bonnie++ on every drive in parallel the values are only reduced by about 10 MB. So I'm excluding hardware / I/O scheduling in general as a problem source. I tried different configuration parameters for stripe_cache_size and readahead size without success, but I don't think they are that relevant for the file system creation operation. The server details: Linux server 2.6.35-27-generic #48-Ubuntu SMP x86_64 GNU/Linux mdadm - v2.6.7.1 Does anyone has a suggestion on how to further debug this?

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• mkfs Operation Takes Very Long on Linux Software Raid 5

  - by Elmar Weber

  I've set-up a Linux software raid level 5 consisting of 4 * 2 TB disks. The disk array was created with a 64k stripe size and no other configuration parameters. After the initial rebuild I tried to create a filesystem and this step takes very long (about half an hour or more). I tried to create an xfs and ext3 filesystem, both took a long time, with mkfs.ext3 I observed the following behaviour, which might be helpful: writing inode tables runs fast until it reaches 1053 (~ 1 second), then it writes about 50, waits for two seconds, then the next 50 are written (according to the console display) when I try to cancel the operation with Control+C it hangs for half a minute before it is really canceled The performance of the disks individually is very good, I've run bonnie++ on each one separately with write / read values of around 95 / 110MB/s. Even when I run bonnie++ on every drive in parallel the values are only reduced by about 10 MB. So I'm excluding hardware / I/O scheduling in general as a problem source. I tried different configuration parameters for stripe_cache_size and readahead size without success, but I don't think they are that relevant for the file system creation operation. The server details: Linux server 2.6.35-27-generic #48-Ubuntu SMP x86_64 GNU/Linux mdadm - v2.6.7.1 Does anyone has a suggestion on how to further debug this?

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• Flash drive suddenly died. Why? Can I recover it?

  - by mg

  Hi, I have a flash drive that I used not too much but, after few month of inactivity, it died. I know that flash drives have a limited write cycles but I am sure that this is not the problem. I tried to create a new partition table and format the drive nothing worked. This is the output of mkfs.ext2. marco@pinguina:~$ sudo LANG=en.UTF-8 mkfs.ext2 -v -c /dev/sdc1 [sudo] password for marco: mke2fs 1.41.11 (14-Mar-2010) fs_types for mke2fs.conf resolution: 'ext2', 'default' Calling BLKDISCARD from 0 to 4001431552 failed. Filesystem label= OS type: Linux Block size=4096 (log=2) Fragment size=4096 (log=2) Stride=0 blocks, Stripe width=0 blocks 244320 inodes, 976912 blocks 48845 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user First data block=0 Maximum filesystem blocks=1002438656 30 block groups 32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group 8144 inodes per group Superblock backups stored on blocks: 32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736 Running command: badblocks -b 4096 -X -s /dev/sdc1 976911 badblocks: Input/output error during ext2fs_sync_device Checking for bad blocks (read-only test): done Block 0 in primary superblock/group descriptor area bad. Blocks 0 through 2 must be good in order to build a filesystem. Aborting.... Is there something I can do to recover it?

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• Should I use "Raid 5 + spare" or "Raid 6"?

  - by Trevor Boyd Smith

  What is "Raid 5 + Spare" (excerpt from User Manual, Sect 4.17.2, P.54): RAID5+Spare: RAID 5+Spare is a RAID 5 array in which one disk is used as spare to rebuild the system as soon as a disk fails (Fig. 79). At least four disks are required. If one physical disk fails, the data remains available because it is read from the parity blocks. Data from a failed disk is rebuilt onto the hot spare disk. When a failed disk is replaced, the replacement becomes the new hot spare. No data is lost in the case of a single disk failure, but if a second disk fails before the system can rebuild data to the hot spare, all data in the array will be lost. What is "Raid 6" (excerpt from User Manual, Sect 4.17.2, P.54): RAID6: In RAID 6, data is striped across all disks (minimum of four) and a two parity blocks for each data block (p and q in Fig. 80) is written on the same stripe. If one physical disk fails, the data from the failed disk can be rebuilt onto a replacement disk. This Raid mode can support up to two disk failures with no data loss. RAID 6 provides for faster rebuilding of data from a failed disk. Both "Raid 5 + spare" and "Raid 6" are SO similar ... I can't tell the difference. When would "Raid 5 + Spare" be optimal? And when would "Raid 6" be optimal"? The manual dumbs down the different raid with 5 star ratings. "Raid 5 + Spare" only gets 4 stars but "Raid 6" gets 5 stars. If I were to blindly trust the manual I would conclude that "Raid 6" is always better. Is "Raid 6" always better?

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• Array on servers which receive several hundred GB of data a day

  - by Matthew

  This is hopefully a simple question. Right now we are deploying servers which will serve as data warehouses. I know with raid 5 the best practice is 6 disks per raid 5. However, our plan is to use RAID 10 (both for performance and safety). We have a total of 14 disks (16 actually, but two are being used for OS). Keeping in mind that performance is very much an issue, which is better - doing several raid 1's? Do one large raid 10? One large raid 10 had been our original plan, but I want to see if anyone has any opinions I haven't thought of. Please note: This system was designed for using Raid 1+0, so losing half of the raw storage capacity is not an issue. Sorry i hadn't mentioned that initially. The concern is more whether or not we want to use one large Raid 1+0 containing all 14 disks, or several smaller raid 1+0's and then stripe across them using LVM. I know the best practice for higher raid levels is to never use more than 6 disks in an array.

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• How to display/define Mirror/Stripping pairs with mdadm

  - by Chris

  I want to make a standard linux software Raid10 over 4 HDD. The server has 4HDDs, 2 pairs from different vendors in order to avoid batch problems. I want to have the mirror over two different Vendors, and then the Stripe over the mirror pairs. I could do that by manually creating Raid1/0, but mdadm supports Raid level 10. I just cant figure out how the Raid10 is then handled and how the data is distributed. mdadm --detail /dev/md10 /dev/md10: Version : 1.2 Creation Time : Wed May 28 11:06:23 2014 Raid Level : raid10 Array Size : 1953260544 (1862.77 GiB 2000.14 GB) Used Dev Size : 976630272 (931.39 GiB 1000.07 GB) Raid Devices : 4 Total Devices : 4 Persistence : Superblock is persistent Update Time : Wed May 28 11:06:23 2014 State : clean, resyncing (PENDING) Active Devices : 4 Working Devices : 4 Failed Devices : 0 Spare Devices : 0 Layout : near=2 Chunk Size : 512K Name : pdwhost:10 (local to host pdwhost) UUID : a3de0ad5:9e694ee1:addc6786:c4449e40 Events : 0 Number Major Minor RaidDevice State 0 8 1 0 active sync /dev/sda1 1 8 81 1 active sync /dev/sdf1 2 8 97 2 active sync /dev/sdg1 3 8 113 3 active sync /dev/sdh1 does not really give any information about that. How it should be: Raid 1 / Mirror over /dev/sda1 /dev/sdf1 and /dev/sdg1 /dev/sdh1 Raid 0 over the two Raid 1 pairs Is it possible to do that with the built in "level=10", how can I see what pairs are mirrored? Thanks a lot for you help

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• mdadm lvm and ext4 slowness - How can I speed it up?

  - by beatbreaker

  I can't figure out why I'm getting such terrible times out of my mdadm and in particular the lvm partitions in it. I made the raid: mdadm --create --verbose /dev/md0 --level=5 --chunk=1024 --raid-devices=4 /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1 /dev/sdd1 # cat /proc/mdstat Personalities : [raid6] [raid5] [raid4] md0 : active raid5 sda1[0] sdd1[3] sdc1[2] sdb1[1] 2930279424 blocks level 5, 1024k chunk, algorithm 2 [4/4] [UUUU] I then created the physical volume, volume group, and logical volumes, I then formatted the logical volumes to ext4 using the following commands I got from here: http://busybox.net/~aldot/mkfs_stride.html mkfs.ext3 -b 4096 -E stride=256,stripe-width=768 /dev/datavg/blah Now I'm confused, I had these lvs running real quick before in mdadm but now that I've 'optimized' everything it's slower, eg, before: /dev/datavg/lv_audio: Timing buffered disk reads: 598 MB in 3.01 seconds = 198.85 MB/sec but now after: /dev/datavg/audio: Timing buffered disk reads: 198 MB in 3.00 seconds = 65.96 MB/sec That's pitiful! What's happened here? Did I not follow the instructions correctly? Can i reshape the ext4 partitons to default back to what they were? (I used defaults before and they were fine!)

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• ADNOC talks about 50x increase in performance

  - by KLaker

  If you are still wondering about how Exadata can revolutionise your business then I would recommend watching this great video which was recorded at this year's OpenWorld. First a little background...The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company for Distribution (ADNOC) is an integrated energy company that was founded in 1973. ADNOC Distribution markets and distributes petroleum products and services within the United Arab Emirates and internationally. As one of the largest and most innovative government-owned petroleum companies in the Arab Gulf, ADNOC Distribution is renowned and respected for the exceptional quality and reliability of its products and services. Its five corporate divisions include more than 200 filling stations (a number that is growing at 8% annually), more than 150 convenience stores, 10 vehicle inspection stations, as well as wholesale and retail sales of bulk fuel, gas, oil, diesel, and lubricants. ADNOC selected Oracle Exadata Database Machine after extensive research because it provided them with a single platform that can run mixed workloads in a single unified machine: "We chose Oracle Exadata Database Machine because it.offered a fully integrated and highly engineered system that was ready to deploy. With our infrastructure running all the same technology, we can operate any type of Oracle Database without restrictions and be prepared for business growth," said Ali Abdul Aziz Al-Ali, IT division manager, ADNOC Distribution. ".....we could consolidate our transaction processing and business intelligence onto one platform. Competing solutions are just not capable of doing that." - Awad Ahmed Ali El-Sidiq, Senior Database Administrator, ADNOC Distribution In this new video Awad Ahmen Ali El Sidddig, Senior DBA at ADNOC, talks about the impact that Exadata has had on his team and the whole business. ADNOC is using our engineered systems to drive and manage all their workloads: from transaction systems to payments system to data warehouse to BI environment. A true Disk-to-Dashboard revolution using Engineered Systems. This engineered approach is delivering 50x improvement in performance with one queries running 100x faster! The IT has even revolutionised some of their data warehouse related processes with the help of Exadata and now jobs that were taking over 4 hours now run in a few minutes.  To watch the video click on the image below which will take you to our Oracle YouTube page: (if the above link does not work, click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcRpxc6u5Ic) Now that queries are running 100x faster and jobs are completing in minutes not hours, what is next for the IT team at ADNOC? Like many of our customers ADNOC is now looking to take advantage of big data to help them better align their business operations with customer behaviour and customer insights. To help deliver this next level of insight the IT team is looking at the new features in Oracle Database 12c such as the new in-memory feature to deliver even more performance gains.  The great news is that Awad Ahmen Ali El Sidddig was awarded DBA of the Year - EMEA within our Data Warehouse Global Leaders programme and you can see the badge for this award pop-up at the start of video. Well done to everyone at ADNOC and thanks for spending the time with us at OOW to create this great video.

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• Windows Azure Use Case: Fast Acquisitions

  - by BuckWoody

  This is one in a series of posts on when and where to use a distributed architecture design in your organization's computing needs. You can find the main post here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/buckwoody/archive/2011/01/18/windows-azure-and-sql-azure-use-cases.aspx  Description: Many organizations absorb, take over or merge with other organizations. In these cases, one of the most difficult parts of the process is the merging or changing of the IT systems that the employees use to do their work, process payments, and even get paid. Normally this means that the two companies have disparate systems, and several approaches can be used to have the two organizations use technology between them. An organization may choose to retain both systems, and manage them separately. The advantage here is speed, and keeping the profit/loss sheets separate. Another choice is to slowly “sunset” or stop using one organization’s system, and cutting to the other system immediately or at a later date. Although a popular choice, one of the most difficult methods is to extract data and processes from one system and import it into the other. Employees at the transitioning system have to be trained on the new one, the data must be examined and cleansed, and there is inevitable disruption when this happens. Still another option is to integrate the systems. This may prove to be as much work as a transitional strategy, but may have less impact on the users or the balance sheet. Implementation: A distributed computing paradigm can be a good strategic solution to most of these strategies. Retaining both systems is made more simple by allowing the users at the second organization immediate access to the new system, because security accounts can be created quickly inside an application. There is no need to set up a VPN or any other connections than just to the Internet. Having the users stop using one system and start with the other is also simple in Windows Azure for the same reason. Extracting data to Azure holds the same limitations as an on-premise system, and may even be more problematic because of the large data transfers that might be required. In a distributed environment, you pay for the data transfer, so a mixed migration strategy is not recommended. However, if the data is slowly migrated over time with a defined cutover, this can be an effective strategy. If done properly, an integration strategy works very well for a distributed computing environment like Windows Azure. If the Azure code is architected as a series of services, then endpoints can expose the service into and out of not only the Azure platform, but internally as well. This is a form of the Hybrid Application use-case documented here. References: Designing for Cloud Optimized Architecture: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dachou/archive/2011/01/23/designing-for-cloud-optimized-architecture.aspx 5 Enterprise steps for adopting a Platform as a Service: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/davidmcg/archive/2010/12/02/5-enterprise-steps-for-adopting-a-platform-as-a-service.aspx?wa=wsignin1.0

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• Central Banks Rely On MySQL Based Simulator

  - by bertrand.matthelie(at)oracle.com

  @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Calibri"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }@font-face { font-family: "Garamond"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }a:link, span.MsoHyperlink { color: blue; text-decoration: underline; }a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed { color: purple; text-decoration: underline; }span.description { }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } We recently published a case study describing how central banks worldwide rely on the Bank of Finland's MySQL based simulator.   The Bank of Finland (BoF) acts as Finland's central bank, national monetary authority, and member of the European System of Central Banks and the Eurosystem. The BoF developed a MySQL based versatile system for making payments and settlement simulations, used for analyzing liquidity needs, risk issues, changes in authority policies & regulations, and more. Running on Windows, the application has been widely adopted by central bank economists worldwide.   The Simulator is managing large data sets and thus needed a robust database as its foundation. Key requirements to select the database included:   ·       Low Costs ·       Performance & Scalability ·       Ease of Use   You can read more about why the Bank of Finland selected MySQL to power its economic simulator in our case study, posted here.   For more information about MySQL on Windows, check out our MySQL on Windows Resource Center, and, join today's Oracle TechCast Live: "MySQL 5.5 Does Windows" with Mike Frank at 10.00 am PT!

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• Amazon.com Cutting Off Colorado Affiliates

  - by Joe Mayo

  I received an email from Amazon.com today, essentially cutting off my affiliate status because I'm in Colorado. Colorado recently passed legislation that requires retailers to either collect sales tax for on-line transactions or engage in an onerous process that makes you wish you had collected sales tax.  After I Tweeted this, Mike Jones tweeted a link to the legislation.  Here's an excerpt from Amazon.com's email: "Dear Colorado-based Amazon Associate: We are writing from the Amazon Associates Program to inform you that the Colorado government recently enacted a law to impose sales tax regulations on online retailers. The regulations are burdensome and no other state has similar rules. The new regulations do not require online retailers to collect sales tax. Instead, they are clearly intended to increase the compliance burden to a point where online retailers will be induced to "voluntarily" collect Colorado sales tax -- a course we won't take. We and many others strongly opposed this legislation, known as HB 10-1193, but it was enacted anyway. Regrettably, as a result of the new law, we have decided to stop advertising through Associates based in Colorado. We plan to continue to sell to Colorado residents, however, and will advertise through other channels, including through Associates based in other states. There is a right way for Colorado to pursue its revenue goals, but this new law is a wrong way. As we repeatedly communicated to Colorado legislators, including those who sponsored and supported the new law, we are not opposed to collecting sales tax within a constitutionally-permissible system applied even-handedly. The US Supreme Court has defined what would be constitutional, and if Colorado would repeal the current law or follow the constitutional approach to collection, we would welcome the opportunity to reinstate Colorado-based Associates. You may express your views of Colorado's new law to members of the General Assembly and to Governor Ritter, who signed the bill. Your Associates account has been closed as of March 8, 2010, and we will no longer pay advertising fees for customers you refer to Amazon.com after that date. Please be assured that all qualifying advertising fees earned prior to March 8, 2010, will be processed and paid in accordance with our regular payment schedule. Based on your account closure date of March 8, any final payments will be paid by May 31, 2010. We have enjoyed working with you and other Colorado-based participants in the Amazon Associates Program, and wish you all the best in your future.   Best Regards,   The Amazon Associates Team"

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• Am I experienced enough to learn and develop immediately using Ruby on Rails?

  - by acheong87

  General Question I understand that discussions revolving around questions of this form run the risk of becoming too specific to help others. So, perhaps a better, general question would be: What kind of experience, if any, translates easily to Ruby on Rails; and if none, then what's the learning curve like, in comparison to other popular languages? Background I have the opportunity to build a website using whatever technologies I wish to use. It's a fairly simple website, for listing products, taking payments, managing customer data, providing a back-end portal for employees to manage data, possibly hooking in flight information (the products are travel related), possibly integrating a blog and all the social-networking goodies. Specific Problem I have to let the client know by tonight whether I'm interested in taking up this project, before he talks to other potential developers, but I'm on the fence. I already work a full-time C++ development job, so the money doesn't do it for me. It's the opportunity to (be paid to) learn some new technologies and to have a real, running product in the end. I've heard and read great things about Ruby, and am really intrigued. I zipped through some introductory Ruby tutorials, no sweat. However I found the Rails tutorials a little overwhelming, especially not being able to try it out anywhere. And researching Rails hosts like Heroku and EngineYard makes me think that maybe I don't know what I'm getting myself into. The ship's leaving port! I wish I had more time to learn, better yet play with the language, but I have to decide soon! Should I venture or pass? Additional Details My experiences are in C/C++/Tcl/Perl/PHP/jQuery, and basic knowledge of Java/C#. I didn't study C.S. formally so I wasn't exposed to design principles, programming paradigms, etc., which is my greatest concern. Will my lack of understanding in this realm make RoR frustrating to learn? Will it be so incompatible with a C++ "way" of thinking that I'll wish I never started? Am I putting my client at risk by attempting this? If it helps, I'm quick to learn new things (self-taught so far) and care a great deal about correctness, using things for their intended purposes, and so on. I've read numerous recommendations of Agile Development with Rails and would love to read it (though perhaps, while developing in parallel, for shortness of time). Worse comes to worst, I'd give up and do the standard LAMP gig, of course, not charging the client for wasted time. But I'm hoping to avoid the project altogether if it's gonna come down to that! Thanks in advance for any tips, insights, votes of confidence, votes of discouragement (for the better), and such.

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• From Zero To Deployed Contest&ndash;Prizes Announced

  - by Robz / Fervent Coder

  Do you have what it takes to meet the challenge? We’ll make it worth it. You may have noticed at the end of my last post I threw down the community challenge to get from zero to deployed faster than me. The Challenge My time was 13:48 to be from zero to deployed. Beat my time and show it in a video response. The person with the best time by March 15th @ 11:59PM CST will receive a prize. Here are the links to the videos: #1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZIUVfHWsbc #2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7WluaXIya0 #3 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqPh7wbWsLc The Rules Let’s revisit those ground rules before I tell you what the prizes will be: Ground rules: .NET Application with a valid database connection Start from Zero Deployed with AppHarbor or an alternative A timer displayed in the video that runs during the entire process Video response published on YouTube or acceptable alternative Video(s) must be published by March 15th at 11:59PM CST. Either post the link here as a comment or on YouTube as a response (also by 11:59PM CST March 15th) The Prizes The prize package for the best time is:                      $50 Gift Card or equivalent – Provided by yours truly. AppHarbor $100 service credit – AppHarbor will provide a $100 credit for their services once they launch payments. Thank you to the folks at AppHarbor! ReSharper - Jetbrains will provide a FULL license of ReSharper Personal. This license is a $199 value. Thank you to the folks at Jetbrains! Telerik Ultimate Collection for .NET – Telerik will provide a license to pretty much every .NET tool they offer. This license is a $1999 value. A big thank you to the folks at Telerik!! This is a total value of $2348!!! The prize package for the person that has the most creative video(s) with a time better than mine (if there are at least 5 responses):           $20 Gift card or equivalent – Provided by this guy. AppHarbor $50 service credit – same deal as above. Thank you AppHarbor! Twilio T-Shirt - Twilio has donated a shirt and will ship your size to you (this may be subject to US residents only). This is a $25 value. Thank you to the folks at Twilio!

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• WebCenter Customer Spotlight: Fundação Petrobras de Seguridade Social

  - by me

  Author: Peter Reiser - Social Business Evangelist, Oracle WebCenter Solution Summary Fundação Petrobras de Seguridade Social (PetroS) is a Brazilian nonprofit organization pension fund serving 152 private companies with more then 145,000 plan participants and  managing a portfolio of  US$35.9 billion in equity. PetroS business objective was to implement a robust and flexible online solution to enable the foundation to successfully compete in the pension marketplace. PetroS implemented a robust, flexible and highly available database solution based on Oracle Database 11g, Enterprise Edition and modernized the company’s Web portal using Oracle WebCenter Suite.  The solution enables PetroS to make an average of 5,000 online loans per month to its 110,000 qualifying participants and supports 2,000 online consultations daily. Company ProfileFundação Petrobras de Seguridade Social (Petrobras Social Security Foundation)—better known as PetroS—is a pension fund founded in the 1970s to pay supplementary retirement benefits to Petrobras employees. Later, the foundation expanded its market to include 152 private companies, including Sanasa, Repsol YPF and Alesat. The Foundation, a nonprofit organization, has more than 145,000 plan participants, US$35.9 billion in equity, and a loan portfolio of US$730 million. Business ChallengesPetroS business objectives were to implement a robust and flexible solution to enable the foundation to successfully compete in the pension marketplace without affecting its monthly payments to 60,000 beneficiaries and to extend service delivery through the Web to better serve the fund’s more than 145,000 participants. Solution DeployedPetroS worked with Oracle Consulting to implement a robust, flexible and high available database solution based on Oracle Database 11g, Enterprise Edition and modernized the company’s Web portal using Oracle WebCenter Suite, enabling PetroS to deliver more flexible services to pension plan participants. Business ResultsThe solution enables PetroS to make an average of 5,000 online loans per month to its 110,000 qualifying participants and supports 2,000 online consultations daily. “The combination of Oracle Database 11g and Oracle WebCenter Suite has helped us deliver faster and better service for over 130,000 clients who participate in the 96 supplementary pension plans we currently offer. It has certainly helped to fuel our growth.” Newton Carneiro da Cunha, Diretor Administrativo, Fundação Petrobrás de Seguridade Social           Additional Information PetroS Customer Snapshot Oracle WebCenter Suite Oracle Database 11g, Enterprise Edition Oracle Real Application Clusters Oracle Diagnostics Pack Oracle Tuning Pack Oracle Consulting

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• Oracle CRM For Public Sector, Commercial Business, Education

  - by michael.seback

  Chongqing Transport Commission Improves Management of Transport Projects The Chongqing Transport Commission is responsible for public passenger, road, and waterway transport in urban and rural areas of Chongqing. The commission administers the region's road and water industry; oversees the construction of transport infrastructure; and manages civil aviation, railroads, roads, waterways, ports, and wharves. "After studying the IT initiatives of other provincial transport commissions, we decided to use Siebel Public Sector to build our integrated transport service system. The Siebel software offers powerful functions that allow us to integrate information and improve the management of our road, rail, and waterway infrastructure projects." - Chen Xiaoming, Vice Director, Information Center, Chongqing Transport Commission. Read more here. Siemens Information Services Increases Productivity by 20% Siemens Information Services Pvt, Ltd. provides back-office account processing services to Siemens' vendors. The company works with Siemens' healthcare, energy, and industry divisions in Europe, the United States, and parts of the Asia-Pacific region. It approves financial services such as processing payroll, accounts data, purchase orders, invoices, and payments, and also creates service catalogs for customers and internal teams. "Oracle CRM ON Demand provides us with a complete view of each customer's data from the moment they log a request to the time we close it. This has eliminated manual requests, and improved the service we offer to our clients across the Asia-Pacific region." -Sunil Zutshi, General Manager, IT, Siemens Information Services Pvt, Ltd. Read more here. China Distance Education Holdings Improves Call Center Productivity by 24% China Distance Education Holdings Limited is a leading provider of online education. The organization offers 174 courses through 16 Web sites, including accounting, healthcare, law, and engineering. In 2010, 215,000 students were enrolled. "Online education is a fast growing sector in China. To maintain our competitiveness, we implemented Oracle Contact Center Anywhere to make it easier and faster for our call center staff to respond to student enquiries. As a result, their productivity increased by 24%." - Qin Songjiang, Chief Technology Officer, China Distance Education Holdings Limited. Read more here.

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• Tech Cast Live - Java and Oracle, One Year Later - February 15th 10AM PST

  - by Cassandra Clark

  Join us for a special live conversation with Ajay Patel, Vice President of Product Development for Application Grid Products and Justin Kestelyn, Director of the Oracle Technology Network. Justin and Ajay will discuss the changes that have come to Java and Oracle since the Sun acquisition, just over a year ago. This live broadcast conversation will include discussion on: - Highlights, challenges and what we learned over the past year - The Future of Java and its importance to Oracle and the community - Oracle's Application Grid product portfolio today Watch Live Event February 15th Watch Archived TechCast Lives You will also have the chance to submit questions to the speakers live on the show, for real-time feedback by using #techcastlive. If your question is read on air we will send you a Free I am the Future of Java t-shirt* *Promotion Details After you have submitted your question and it is read on the live TechCast held February 15th your shirt should arrive in two to four weeks while supplies last. No purchase, payments, or fees are required to receive the gift. Limit one thank you gift per person, and the offer is available only while supplies last. Oracle reserves the right to modify or terminate this offer at any time, for any reason. This offer is not available to Oracle employees or residents of countries subject to U.S. embargo (including Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria). Due to Federal Government regulations, this offer is not available to Federal Government customers. Those residing in India or Brazil will be given a substitute gift as we can not ship t-shirts to your country. You are responsible for complying with your employer's policies regarding acceptance of promotional items, and for government laws, regulations and agency policies, if you are a government employee you will not be able to participate. Must be 18 years of age or older. Void where prohibited. Neither Oracle nor any third party assisting Oracle with this offer is responsible for any problems, errors, delays, or technical malfunction related to or impacting this offer. Oracle respects your right to privacy and your information will not be distributed or used for any other purpose. For more information on Oracle's privacy policy, please review our http://www.oracle.com/html/privacy-policy.html. If you have any questions, please contact us at [email protected].

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• Walmart's Mobile Self-Checkout

  - by David Dorf

  Reuters recently reported that Walmart was testing an iPhone-based self-checkout at a store near its headquarters.  Consumers scan items as they're placed in the physical basket, then the virtual basket is transferred to an existing self-checkout station where payment is tendered.  A very solid solution, but not exactly original. Before we go further, let's look at the possible cost savings for Walmart.  According to the article: Pushing more shoppers to scan their own items and make payments without the help of a cashier could save Wal-Mart millions of dollars, Chief Financial Officer Charles Holley said on March 7. The company spends about $12 million in cashier wages every second at its Walmart U.S. stores. Um, yeah. Using back-of-the-napkin math, I calculated Walmart's cashiers are making $157k per hour.  A more accurate statement would be saving $12M per year for each second saved on the average transaction time.  So if this self-checkout approach saves 2 seconds per transaction on average, Walmart would save $24M per year on labor.  Maybe.  Sometimes that savings will be used to do other tasks in the store, so it may not directly translate to less employees. When I saw this approach demonstrated in Sweden, there were a few differences, which may or may not be in Walmart's plans.  First, the consumers were identified based on their loyalty card.  In order to offset the inevitable shrink, retailers need to save on labor but also increase basket size, typically via in-aisle promotions.  As they scan items, retailers should target promos, and that's easier to do if you know some shopping history.  Last I checked, Walmart had no loyalty program. Second, at the self-checkout station consumers were randomly selected for an audit in which they must re-scan all the items just like you do at a typical self-checkout.  If you were found to be stealing, your ability to use the system can be revoked.  That's a tough one in the US, especially when the system goes wrong, either by mistake or by lying.  At least in my view, the Swedes are bit more trustworthy than the people of Walmart. So while I think the idea of mobile self-checkout has merit, perhaps its not right for Walmart.

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• The State of the Internet -- Retail Edition

  - by David Dorf

  Over at Business Insider, there's a great presentation on the State of the Internet done in the Mary Meeker style.  Its 138 slides so I took the liberty of condensing it down to the 15 slides that directly apply to the retail industry.  However, I strongly recommend looking at the entire deck when you have time.  And while you're at it, Business Insider just launched a retail portal that's dedicated to retail industry content.  Please check it out as well.  My take-aways are below after the slide show. &amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;span id=&amp;amp;amp;amp;quot;XinhaEditingPostion&amp;amp;amp;amp;quot;&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/span&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt; [Source: Business Insider] Here are a few things I took away from the statistics: Facebook and Twitter are in their infancy.  While all retailers should have social programs, search is still the driver and therefore should receive the lions share of investment.  Facebook referrals are up 92% year-over-year, but Google still does 80% of the referrals. E-commerce continues to grow at breakneck speed, but in-store commerce is still king. Stores are not showrooms yet.  And social commerce pure-plays like Gilt and Groupon are tiny but worthy of some attention. There are more smartphones than PCs on the internet, and the disparity will continue to grow. PC growth will be flat and Tablet use will continue to grow. Mobile accounts for 12% of all internet traffic. A quarter of smartphone sales come from China, so anyone with a presence there better have a strong mobile strategy. 38% of people have used their smartphone to make a purchase, and many use their smartphones inside stores.  Smartphones are a critical consumer tool for shopping. Mobile is starting to drive significant traffic to e-commerce sites, especially tablets.  Tablet strategies are crucial for retailers. Mobile payments from the likes of Paypal and Square are growing quickly.  It will be interesting to see how NFC plays in this area. Mobile operating systems are losing market share to iOS and Android.  I wonder in Microsoft can finally make a dent? The internet is being dominated by mobile devices, and retailers had better have a strong mobile strategy to meet consumer demand.

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• WebCenter Customer Spotlight: Regency Centers Corporation

  - by me

  Author: Peter Reiser - Social Business Evangelist, Oracle WebCenter  Solution SummaryRegency Centers Corporation, based in Jacksonville, FL, is a leading national owner, operator, and developer of grocery-anchored and community shopping centers. Regency grew rapidly over much of the last decade. To keep up with the monthly and yearly administrative processes required to manage thousands of tenants, including reconciling yearly pass-through expenses, the customer upgraded to Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Version 9.0 and deployed Oracle WebCenter Imaging, Process Management and Oracle BI Publisher, to streamline invoice processing and reporting. Using Oracle WebCenter Imaging - Regency accelerated and improved vendor invoice accuracy  which increases process integrity by identifying potential duplicate bills while enabling rapid approval of electronic invoice documents. Company Overview Regency Centers Corporation, based in Jacksonville, FL,  is a leading national owner, operator, and developer of grocery-anchored and community shopping centers. The company owns 367 centers, totaling nearly 50 million square feet, located in top markets throughout the United States. Founded in 1963 and operating as a fully integrated real estate company, Regency is a qualified real estate investment trust that is self-administered and self-managed, operating from 17 regional offices around the country.  Business Challenges Ensure continued support of vital business applications that drive the real estate developer’s key business processes, including property management and tenant payment processing Streamline year-end expense recognition and calculation, enabling faster tenant billing Move to a Web-based platform to deliver greater mobility and convenience to employees Minimize system customizations to reduce IT management costs and burden moving forward Solution DeployedRecency Centers Corporation worked with the  Oracle Partner ICS to upgrade to Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Version 9.0, migrating to a more user-friendly, Web-based platform and realizing numerous new efficiencies in property management and tenant payment processing. They accelerated and improved vendor invoice accuracy with Oracle WebCenter Imaging, which increases process integrity by identifying potential duplicate bills while enabling rapid approval of electronic invoice documents. Business Results Enabled faster and more accurate tenant billing for year-end expenses, accelerating collections of millions of dollars in revenue Gained full audit and drill-down capabilities that facilitate understanding various aspects of calculations for expense participation generation Increases process integrity by identifying potential duplicate bills while enabling rapid approval of electronic invoice documents Helped to ensure on-time payments to hundreds of vendors, including contractors and utilities "We have realized numerous efficiencies with Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.0, particularly around tenant billings. It accelerates our year-end expense reconciliation process and enables us to create and process billings more quickly.” James Chiang, Vice President of Real Estate Accounting Regency Centers Corporation Additional Information Regency Centers Corporation Customer Snapshot Oracle WebCenter Imaging JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Financials 9.0 JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Project Costing JD Edwards EnterpiseOne Real Estate Management Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher Oracle Essbase

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• EBS Accounts Payables Customer Advisory

  - by cwarticki

  Blogging to let you know of an important set of Oracle Payables patches that were released for R12.1 customers.  Accounts Payable Customer Advisory: Dear Valued Oracle Support Customer, Since the release of R12.1.3 a number of recommended Payables patches have been made available as standalone patches, to help address important business process incidents. Adoption of these patches is highly recommended. To further facilitate adoption of these Payables patches Oracle has consolidated them into a single Recommended Patch Collection (RPC). The RPC is a collection of recommended Payables patches created with the following goals in mind: Stability: Help address issues that are identified by Oracle Development and Oracle Software Support that may interfere with the normal completion of important business processes such as period close. Root Cause Fixes: Help make available root cause fix for data integrity that may delay period close, normal invoice flow and other business actions. Compact: Keep the file footprint as small as possible to help facilitate the install process and minimize testing. Granular: Collection of patches based on functional area that allows customer to apply, based on their individual needs and goals, all three RPC’s at once or in phases. Payables: -          New AP RPC (14273383:R12.AP.B) has all data corruption root cause fixes known to date plus tons of other crucial fixes (Note: 1397581.1). -          Companion must have RPCs: o   Note: 1481221.1: R12.1: Payments Recommended Patch Collection (IBY RPC), August 2012 o   Note: 1481235.1: R12.1: E-Business Tax Recommended Patch Collection (ZX RPC), August 2012 o   Note: 1481222.1: R12.1: Sub Ledger Accounting (SLA) Recommended Patch Collection (XLA RPC), August 2012 -          This time we beat the system far harder on testing and it held up remarkably well. We could not get any data corruption events in the Invoice Cancel/Discard flow (that is the #1 generator) neither we could cause Orphan Events in the system. Therefore this is very good code. Financials: -          ALL FIN modules now have RPCs: full listing is in (Note: 954704.1)

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• Traditional POS is Dead

  - by David Dorf

  Traditional POS is dead -- I've heard that one before. Here's an excerpt from Joe Skorupa's blog over at RIS where he relayed ten trends that were presented at NRF. 7. Mobile POS signals death of traditional POS. Shoppers don't love self-checkout, but they prefer it to long queues or dealing with associates. Fixed POS is expensive and bulky. Mobile POS frees floor space for other purposes and converts associates from being cashiers to being sales assistants that provide new levels of customer service and incremental basket sales. In addition to unplugging the POS, new alternatives are starting to take hold - thin client, POS as a service, and replacing POS software with e-commerce platforms. I'll grant that in some situations for some retailers there might be an opportunity to to ditch the traditional POS, but for the majority of retailers that's just not practical. Take it from a guy that had to wake up at 3am after every Thanksgiving to monitor POS systems across the US on Black Friday. If a retailer's website goes down on Black Friday, they will take a significant hit. If a retailer's chain-wide POS system goes down on Black Friday, that retailer will cease to exist. Mobile POS works great for Apple because the majority of purchases are one or two big-ticket items that don't involve cash. There's still a traditional POS in every store to fall back on (its just hidden). Try this at home: Choose your favorite e-commerce site and add an item to the cart while timing how long it takes. Now multiply that by 15 to represent the 15 items you might buy at store like Target. The user interface isn't optimized for bulk purchases, and that's how it should be. The webstore and POS are designed for different purposes. Self-checkout is a great addition to POS and so is mobile checkout. But they add capabilities to POS, not replace it. Centralized architectures, even those based in the cloud, are quite viable as long as there's resiliency in the registers. You cannot assume perfect access to the network, so a POS must always be able to sell regardless of connectivity. Clearly the different selling channels should be sharing common functionality. Things like calculating tax, accepting coupons, and processing electronic payments can be shared, usually through a service-oriented architecture. This lowers costs and providers greater consistency, both of which help retailers. On paper these technologies look really good and we should continue to push boundaries, but I'm not ready to call the patient dead just yet.

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• Certain banking pages not loading

  - by Joseph Lee

  For some unknown reason, I am suddenly unable to access my accounts at several banking and credit sites. I have been a registered user at each site for several years and know I am using the correct user ID and password. Yet, after entering the data, answering security questions, and clicking the submit button, I land on a page with an error message saying their is a technical problem preventing me from accessing my account. On one site, I end up at the sign in page repeatedly. I am never told that my ID/password are incorrect. I believe may be firewall related. Windows firewall was damaged after a recent malware attack. I am now using a third party firewall (Fort Knox). I am not seeing a pop-up indicating sites are blocked or asking me to indicate yes or no. I am using Windows 7 Home Premium. I get the same result regardless of the browser. I switched to Maxthon last night and am getting the same result. This is not happening at other sites. And I am able to access some banking sites normally. This is frustrating because I need to make payments and have gone paperless. Any feedback will be appreciated. ---- Joe ----

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