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• Speaker at the German Visual FoxPro Developer Conference 2004

  The following is an excerpt from the UniversalThread conference coverage of the German Visual FoxPro Developer Conference 2004 written by Hans-Otto Lochmann, Armin Neudert and myself. TRACK Active FoxPro Pages Back in 1996 Peter Herzog invented a FoxPro based solution to provide intranet capabilities for one of his customers. Nearly at the same time Rick Strahl had the same task and created WestWind Web Connection (WWWC). The aspect that developers have to have a full Visual FoxPro development environment to create WWWC solutions was the starting point of a "personal sportive competition" of Peter to write his own solution. But the main aspect has to be that it doesn't rely on a full VFP version in order to run. The VFP runtime should enough and the source code has to be compiled and interpreted on the fly. So, as Microsoft released Active Server Pages a name for Peter's solution was found: Active FoxPro Pages (AFP). During the years many drawbacks, design aspects as well as technological hassles forced ProLib Software to refactor the product. This way many limits like DCOM configuration, file-based information transfer between Web server and AFP, missing features (like upload forms or other Web servers than IIS) and extensibility were eliminated. As a consequence ProLib Software decided to rewrite Active FoxPro Pages in mid of 2002 completely. Christof Wollenhaupt, before his marriage known as Christof Lange, and Jochen Kirstätter had to solve this task. AFP 3.0 was officially released at German Devcon in November 2002. Today AFP has six distributors world-wide and there is a lot more information available online than before version 3.0. Directly after a short welcome speech by Rainer Becker, Jochen Kirstätter - aka JoKi - opened today's AFP track and introduced the basic concepts how Active FoxPro Pages works in general, explained the AFP terminilogy and every single component, and presented a small Walk-Through about how to write an AFP-based Web solution. Actually his presentation slides themselves were an AFP Web application. This way it was easy to integrate accompanying AFP samples on the fly. Additionally it was shown that no Visual FoxPro development environment is needed to create a Web application. A simple text editor like NotePad or any WYSIWYG editor on the market is usable to fullfil customer's requirements.Welcome at least two new speakers - Nina Schwanzer and Bernhard Reiter. Both are working at ProLib Software and this year's conference is their first time as speakers. And they did their job very well. The whole session was kind of a "ping pong" game and those two complemented each other to keep the audience in tension. First, they described typical requirements a modern desktop application should fullfil - online registration and activation, auto-update capabilities, or even frontend to administer a Web application on a remote system via internet, and explained how possible solutions like Web Services (using the SOAP interface), DCOM, and even .NET might solve those requirements. But any of those ways has different drawbacks like complicated installation or configuration, or extraordinary download sizes. Next, they introduced a technology they developed and used in a customer's project: Active FoxPro Pages Remote Procedure Call (AFP RPC). [...]   In the next session JoKi described how to extend Active FoxPro Pages. On the one hand AFP provides a plugin interface, and on the other hand any addon for Visual FoxPro might be usable as well. During the first half he spoke about the plugin interface and wrote live a new AFP extension - the Devcon plugin. Later he questioned any former step and showed that a single AFP document may solve the problem as well. So, developing extensions is only interesting if they are re-usable and generic. At the end he talked about multiple interfaces for the same business logic. For instance plain VFP class, COM server and .NET integration. Currently there are several specialized AFP extensions for sending mail, for using cryptographic routines (ie. based on .NET classes), or enhanced methods to handle HTML/XML strings.Rainer Becker and Peter Herzog introduced a new development for Visual Extend (VFX) - an AFP form builder. With this builder creating an AFP Web form designed with Visual FoxPro's form designer was a matter of seconds. The builder itself is currently in pre-release status and will be part of the VFX framework in the future. It was very impressive to see that the whole design of a form as well as most parts of its functionality were exported to a combination of HTML, JavaScript and Active FoxPro Pages. At half-time Jürgen "wOOdy" Wondzinski and JoKi changed places with Rainer and Peter, and presented some Web solutions in AFP. [...] Visual FoxPro 9.0 und Linux Is Linux still a topic for Visual FoxPro developers based on the activities during this year? In his session Jochen Kirstätter - aka JoKi - went not through the technical steps and requirements on how to setup and run FoxPro on a Linux client. Instead, he explained what Linux actually is, and talked about the high variety of distributions. In fact there are a lot of distributions around but since some several years there are some specialized ones available: Live Distributions (aka LiveCDs).The intension of LiveCDs is to run a full-featured Linux operating system on any personal computer directly from a bootable medium, like CD, DVD, or even USB memory stick, without installation on a hard disk. One of the first Linux LiveCDs was made by Klaus Knopper and is well-known as Knoppix. Today, many other LiveCDs are based on the concepts of Knoppix. During the session Jochen booted Morphix, a very light-weighted LiveCD, on his notebook, and actually showed the attendees that testing and playing around with Linux is absolutely easy. Running a text processing application swept away most of the contrary aspects the audience had. Okay, where is the part about FoxPro? Well, there are several scenarios a customer might require usage of Linux, and actually with all of them FoxPro could deal with. I guess that one of the more common ones is the situation that a customer has a heterogeneous intranet with Windows clients and Linux servers, i.e. Windows XP Professional and any Linux distribution on their servers. Even in this scenario there are two variants hidden! Why? Well, on the one hand there is a software package called Samba, that provides Windows server capabilities to a Linux system, and on the other hand there are several SQL servers for Linux, like PostgreSQL, DB2 and MySQL. Either way, FoxPro is able to deal with these scenarios, but you as developer have to know what you are talking about with your customers. And even if there's no Windows operating system, you are able to provide a FoxPro-based solution. Using the wine library - wine stands for Wine Is Not an Emulator - you are able to run your VFP applications on Linux clients, too; but not without reading VFP's EULA. Licenses were also part the session, and Jochen discussed the meaning of Open Source and its misunderstanding throughout most developers. Open Source does not mean that it's without a fee. Instead, it stands for access to the source code of an application or tool. And, VFP itself is one of the best samples to explain Open Source due to fact that since years, VFP is shipped with the xSource.zip archive. [...]

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• ASP.NET MVC 3 Hosting :: Rolling with Razor in MVC v3 Preview

  - by mbridge

  Razor is an alternate view engine for asp.net MVC.  It was introduced in the “WebMatrix” tool and has now been released as part of the asp.net MVC 3 preview 1.  Basically, Razor allows us to replace the clunky <% %> syntax with a much cleaner coding model, which integrates very nicely with HTML.  Additionally, it provides some really nice features for master page type scenarios and you don’t lose access to any of the features you are currently familiar with, such as HTML helper methods. First, download and install the ASP.NET MVC Preview 1.  You can find this at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=cb42f741-8fb1-4f43-a5fa-812096f8d1e8&displaylang=en. Now, follow these steps to create your first asp.net mvc project using Razor: 1. Open Visual Studio 2010 2. Create a new project.  Select File->New->Project (Shift Control N) 3. You will see the list of project types which should look similar to what’s shown:   4. Select “ASP.NET MVC 3 Web Application (Razor).”  Set the application name to RazorTest and the path to c:projectsRazorTest for this tutorial. If you select accidently select ASPX, you will end up with the standard asp.net view engine and template, which isn’t what you want. 5. For this tutorial, and ONLY for this tutorial, select “No, do not create a unit test project.”  In general, you should create and use a unit test project.  Code without unit tests is kind of like diet ice cream.  It just isn’t very good. Now, once we have this done, our brand new project will be created.    In all likelihood, Visual Studio will leave you looking at the “HomeController.cs” class, as shown below: Immediately, you should notice one difference.  The Index action used to look like: public ActionResult Index () { ViewData[“Message”] = “Welcome to ASP.Net MVC!”; Return View(); } While this will still compile and run just fine, ASP.Net MVC 3 has a much nicer way of doing this: public ActionResult Index() { ViewModel.Message = “Welcome to ASP.Net MVC!”; Return View(); } Instead of using ViewData we are using the new ViewModel object, which uses the new dynamic data typing of .Net 4.0 to allow us to express ourselves much more cleanly.  This isn’t a tutorial on ALL of MVC 3, but the ViewModel concept is one we will need as we dig into Razor. What comes in the box? When we create a project using the ASP.Net MVC 3 Template with Razor, we get a standard project setup, just like we did in ASP.NET MVC 2.0 but with some differences.  Instead of seeing “.aspx” view files and “.ascx” files, we see files with the “.cshtml” which is the default razor extension.  Before we discuss the details of a razor file, one thing to keep in mind is that since this is an extremely early preview, intellisense is not currently enabled with the razor view engine.  This is promised as an updated before the final release.  Just like with the aspx view engine, the convention of the folder name for a set of views matching the controller name without the word “Controller” still stands.  Similarly, each action in the controller will usually have a corresponding view file in the appropriate view directory.  Remember, in asp.net MVC, convention over configuration is key to successful development! The initial template organizes views in the following folders, located in the project under Views: - Account – The default account management views used by the Account controller.  Each file represents a distinct view. - Home – Views corresponding to the appropriate actions within the home controller. - Shared – This contains common view objects used by multiple views.  Within here, master pages are stored, as well as partial page views (user controls).  By convention, these partial views are named “_XXXPartial.cshtml” where XXX is the appropriate name, such as _LogonPartial.cshtml.  Additionally, display templates are stored under here. With this in mind, let us take a look at the index.cshtml file under the home view directory.  When you open up index.cshtml you should see 1:   @inherits System.Web.Mvc.WebViewPage 2:  @{ 3:          View.Title = "Home Page"; 4:       LayoutPage = "~/Views/Shared/_Layout.cshtml"; 5:   } 6:  <h2>@View.Message</h2> 7:  <p> 8:     To learn more about ASP.NET MVC visit <a href="http://asp.net/mvc" title="ASP.NET MVC     9:    Website">http://asp.net/mvc</a>. 10:  </p> So looking through this, we observe the following facts: Line 1 imports the base page that all views (using Razor) are based on, which is System.Web.Mvc.WebViewPage.  Note that this is different than System.Web.MVC.ViewPage which is used by asp.net MVC 2.0 Also note that instead of the <% %> syntax, we use the very simple ‘@’ sign.  The View Engine contains enough context sensitive logic that it can even distinguish between @ in code and @ in an email.  It’s a very clean markup.  Line 2 introduces the idea of a code block in razor.  A code block is a scoping mechanism just like it is in a normal C# class.  It is designated by @{… }  and any C# code can be placed in between.  Note that this is all server side code just like it is when using the aspx engine and <% %>.  Line 3 allows us to set the page title in the client page’s file.  This is a new feature which I’ll talk more about when we get to master pages, but it is another of the nice things razor brings to asp.net mvc development. Line 4 is where we specify our “master” page, but as you can see, you can place it almost anywhere you want, because you tell it where it is located.  A Layout Page is similar to a master page, but it gains a bit when it comes to flexibility.  Again, we’ll come back to this in a later installment.  Line 6 and beyond is where we display the contents of our view.  No more using <%: %> intermixed with code.  Instead, we get to use very clean syntax such as @View.Message.  This is a lot easier to read than <%:@View.Message%> especially when intermixed with html.  For example: <p> My name is @View.Name and I live at @View.Address </p> Compare this to the equivalent using the aspx view engine <p> My name is <%:View.Name %> and I live at <%: View.Address %> </p> While not an earth shaking simplification, it is easier on the eyes.  As  we explore other features, this clean markup will become more and more valuable.

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• Exploring the Excel Services REST API

  - by jamiet

  Over the last few years Analysis Services guru Chris Webb and I have been on something of a crusade to enable better access to data that is locked up in countless Excel workbooks that litter the hard drives of enterprise PCs. The most prominent manifestation of that crusade up to now has been a forum thread that Chris began on Microsoft Answers entitled Excel Web App API? Chris began that thread with: I was wondering whether there was an API for the Excel Web App? Specifically, I was wondering if it was possible (or if it will be possible in the future) to expose data in a spreadsheet in the Excel Web App as an OData feed, in the way that it is possible with Excel Services? Up to recently the last 10 words of that paragraph "in the way that it is possible with Excel Services" had completely washed over me however a comment on my recent blog post Thoughts on ExcelMashup.com (and a rant) by Josh Booker in which Josh said: Excel Services is a service application built for sharepoint 2010 which exposes a REST API for excel documents. We're looking forward to pros like you giving it a try now that Office365 makes sharepoint more easily accessible.  Can't wait for your future blog about using REST API to load data from Excel on Offce 365 in SSIS. made me think that perhaps the Excel Services REST API is something I should be looking into and indeed that is what I have been doing over the past few days. And you know what? I'm rather impressed with some of what Excel Services' REST API has to offer. Unfortunately Excel Services' REST API also has one debilitating aspect that renders this blog post much less useful than it otherwise would be; namely that it is not publicly available from the Excel Web App on SkyDrive. Therefore all I can do in this blog post is show you screenshots of what the REST API provides in Sharepoint rather than linking you directly to those REST resources; that's a great shame because one of the benefits of a REST API is that it is easily and ubiquitously demonstrable from a web browser. Instead I am hosting a workbook on Sharepoint in Office 365 because that does include Excel Services' REST API but, again, all I can do is show you screenshots. N.B. If anyone out there knows how to make Office-365-hosted spreadsheets publicly-accessible (i.e. without requiring a username/password) please do let me know (because knowing which forum on which to ask the question is an exercise in futility). In order to demonstrate Excel Services' REST API I needed some decent data and for that I used the World Tourism Organization Statistics Database and Yearbook - United Nations World Tourism Organization dataset hosted on Azure Datamarket (its free, by the way); this dataset "provides comprehensive information on international tourism worldwide and offers a selection of the latest available statistics on international tourist arrivals, tourism receipts and expenditure" and you can explore the data for yourself here. If you want to play along at home by viewing the data as it exists in Excel then it can be viewed here. Let's dive in.   The root of Excel Services' REST API is the model resource which resides at: http://server/_vti_bin/ExcelRest.aspx/Documents/TourismExpenditureInMillionsOfUSD.xlsx/model Note that this is true for every workbook hosted in a Sharepoint document library - each Excel workbook is a RESTful resource. (Update: Mark Stacey on Twitter tells me that "It's turned off by default in onpremise Sharepoint (1 tickbox to turn on though)". Thanks Mark!) The data is provided as an ATOM feed but I have Firefox's feed reading ability turned on so you don't see the underlying XML goo. As you can see there are four top level resources, Ranges, Charts, Tables and PivotTables; exploring one of those resources is where things get interesting. Let's take a look at the Tables Resource: http://server/_vti_bin/ExcelRest.aspx/Documents/TourismExpenditureInMillionsOfUSD.xlsx/model/Tables Our workbook contains only one table, called ‘Table1’ (to reiterate, you can explore this table yourself here). Viewing that table via the REST API is pretty easy, we simply append the name of the table onto our previous URI: http://server/_vti_bin/ExcelRest.aspx/Documents/TourismExpenditureInMillionsOfUSD.xlsx/model/Tables('Table1') As you can see, that quite simply gives us a representation of the data in that table. What you cannot see from this screenshot is that this is pure HTML that is being served up; that is all well and good but actually we can do more interesting things. If we specify that the data should be returned not as HTML but as: http://server/_vti_bin/ExcelRest.aspx/Documents/TourismExpenditureInMillionsOfUSD.xlsx/model/Tables('Table1')?$format=image then that data comes back as a pure image and can be used in any web page where you would ordinarily use images. This is the thing that I really like about Excel Services’ REST API – we can embed an image in any web page but instead of being a copy of the data, that image is actually live – if the underlying data in the workbook were to change then hitting refresh will show a new image. Pretty cool, no? The same is true of any Charts or Pivot Tables in your workbook - those can be embedded as images too and if the underlying data changes, boom, the image in your web page changes too. There is a lot of data in the workbook so the image returned by that previous URI is too large to show here so instead let’s take a look at a different resource, this time a range: http://server/_vti_bin/ExcelRest.aspx/Documents/TourismExpenditureInMillionsOfUSD.xlsx/model/Ranges('Data!A1|C15') That URI returns cells A1 to C15 from a worksheet called “Data”: And if we ask for that as an image again: http://server/_vti_bin/ExcelRest.aspx/Documents/TourismExpenditureInMillionsOfUSD.xlsx/model/Ranges('Data!A1|C15')?$format=image Were this image resource not behind a username/password then this would be a live image of the data in the workbook as opposed to one that I had to copy and upload elsewhere. Nonetheless I hope this little wrinkle doesn't detract from the inate value of what I am trying to articulate here; that an existing image in a web page can be changed on-the-fly simply by inserting some data into an Excel workbook. I for one think that that is very cool indeed! I think that's enough in the way of demo for now as this shows what is possible using Excel Services' REST API. Of course, not all features work quite how I would like and here is a bulleted list of some of my more negative feedback: The URIs are pig-ugly. Are "_vti_bin" & "ExcelRest.aspx" really necessary as part of the URI? Would this not be better: http://server/Documents/TourismExpenditureInMillionsOfUSD.xlsx/Model/Tables(‘Table1’) That URI provides the necessary addressability and is a lot easier to remember. Discoverability of these resources is not easy, we essentially have to handcrank a URI ourselves. Take the example of embedding a chart into a blog post - would it not be better if I could browse first through the document library to an Excel workbook and THEN through the workbook to the chart/range/table that I am interested in? Call it a wizard if you like. That would be really cool and would, I am sure, promote this feature and cut down on the copy-and-paste disease that the REST API is meant to alleviate. The resources that I demonstrated can be returned as feeds as well as images or HTML simply by changing the format parameter to ?$format=atom however for some inexplicable reason they don't return OData and no-one on the Excel Services team can tell me why (believe me, I have asked). $format is an OData parameter however other useful parameters such as $top and $filter are not supported. It would be nice if they were. Although I haven't demonstrated it here Excel Services' REST API does provide a makeshift way of altering the data by changing the value of specific cells however what it does not allow you to do is add new data into the workbook. Google Docs allows this and was one of the motivating factors for Chris Webb's forum post that I linked to above. None of this works for Excel workbooks hosted on SkyDrive This blog post is as long as it needs to be for a short introduction so I'll stop now. If you want to know more than I recommend checking out a few links: Excel Services REST API documentation on MSDNSo what does REST on Excel Services look like??? by Shahar PrishExcel Services in SharePoint 2010 REST API Syntax by Christian Stich. Any thoughts? Let's hear them in the comments section below! @Jamiet 

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• Integrate Google Wave With Your Windows Workflow

  - by Matthew Guay

  Have you given Google Wave a try, only to find it difficult to keep up with?  Here’s how you can integrate Google Wave with your desktop and workflow with some free and simple apps. Google Wave is an online web app, and unlike many Google services, it’s not easily integrated with standard desktop applications.  Instead, you’ll have to keep it open in a browser tab, and since it is one of the most intensive HTML5 webapps available today, you may notice slowdowns in many popular browsers.  Plus, it can be hard to stay on top of your Wave conversations and collaborations by just switching back and forth between the website and whatever else you’re working on.  Here we’ll look at some tools that can help you integrate Google Wave with your workflow, and make it feel more native in Windows. Use Google Wave Directly in Windows What’s one of the best ways to make a web app feel like a native application?  By making it into a native application, of course!  Waver is a free Air powered app that can make the mobile version of Google Wave feel at home on your Windows, Mac, or Linux desktop.  We found it to be a quick and easy way to keep on top of our waves and collaborate with our friends. To get started with Waver, open their homepage on the Adobe Air Marketplace (link below) and click Download From Publisher. Waver is powered by Adobe Air, so if you don’t have Adobe Air installed, you’ll need to first download and install it. After clicking the link above, Adobe Air will open a prompt asking what you wish to do with the file.  Click Open, and then install as normal. Once the installation is finished, enter your Google Account info in the window.   After a few moments, you’ll see your Wave account in miniature, running directly in Waver.  Click a Wave to view it, or click New wave to start a new Wave message.  Unfortunately, in our tests the search box didn’t seem to work, but everything else worked fine. Google Wave works great in Waver, though all of the Wave features are not available since it is running the mobile version of Wave. You can still view content from plugins, including YouTube videos, directly in Waver.   Get Wave Notifications From Your Windows Taskbar Most popular email and Twitter clients give you notifications from your system tray when new messages come in.  And with Google Wave Notifier, you can now get the same alerts when you receive a new Wave message. Head over to the Google Wave Notifier site (link below), and click the download link to get started.  Make sure to download the latest Binary zip, as this one will contain the Windows program rather than the source code. Unzip the folder, and then run GoogleWaveNotifier.exe. On first run, you can enter your Google Account information.  Notice that this is not a standard account login window; you’ll need to enter your email address in the Username field, and then your password below it. You can also change other settings from this dialog, including update frequency and whether or not to run at startup.  Click the value, and then select the setting you want from the dropdown menu. Now, you’ll have a new Wave icon in your system tray.  When it detects new Waves or unread updates, it will display a popup notification with details about the unread Waves.  Additionally, the icon will change to show the number of unread Waves.  Click the popup to open Wave in your browser.  Or, if you have Waver installed, simply open the Waver window to view your latest Waves. If you ever need to change settings again in the future, right-click the icon and select Settings, and then edit as above. Get Wave Notifications in Your Email  Most of us have Outlook or Gmail open all day, and seldom leave the house without a Smartphone with push email.  And thanks to a new Wave feature, you can still keep up with your Waves without having to change your workflow. To activate email notifications from Google Wave, login to your Wave account, click the arrow beside your Inbox, and select Notifications. Select how quickly you want to receive notifications, and choose which email address you wish to receive the notifications.  Click Save when you’re finished. Now you’ll receive an email with information about new and updated Waves in your account.  If there were only small changes, you may get enough info directly in the email; otherwise, you can click the link and open that Wave in your browser. Conclusion Google Wave has great potential as a collaboration and communications platform, but by default it can be hard to keep up with what’s going on in your Waves.  These apps for Windows help you integrate Wave with your workflow, and can keep you from constantly logging in and checking for new Waves.  And since Google Wave registration is now open for everyone, it’s a great time to give it a try and see how it works for yourself. Links Signup for Google Wave (Google Account required) Download Waver from the Adobe Air Marketplace Download Google Wave Notifier Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips We Have 20 Google Wave Invites. Want One?Tired of Waiting for Google Wave? Try ShareFlow NowIntegrate Google Docs with Outlook the Easy WayAwesome Desktop Wallpapers: The Windows 7 EditionWeek in Geek: The Stupid Geek Tricks to Hide Extra Windows Edition 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 HippoRemote Pro 2.2 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Default Programs Editor – One great tool for Setting Defaults Convert BMP, TIFF, PCX to Vector files with RasterVect Free Identify Fonts using WhatFontis.com Windows 7’s WordPad is Actually Good Greate Image Viewing and Management with Zoner Photo Studio Free Windows Media Player Plus! – Cool WMP Enhancer

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• Massive Silverlight Giveaway! DevExpress , Syncfusion, Crypto Obfuscator and SL Spy!

  - by mbcrump

  Oh my, have we grown! Maybe I should change the name to Multiple Silverlight Giveaways. So far, my Silverlight giveaways have been such a success that I’m going to be able to give away more than one Silverlight product every month. Last month, we gave away 3 great products. 1) ComponentOne Silverlight Controls 2)  ComponentOne XAP Optimizer (with obfuscation) and 3) Silverlight Spy. This month, we will give away 4 great Silverlight products and have 4 different winners. This way the Silverlight community can grow with more than just one person winning all the prizes. This month we will be giving away: DevExpress Silverlight Controls – Over 50+ Silverlight Controls Syncfusion User Interface Edition - Create stunning line of business silverlight applications with a wide range of components including a high performance grid, docking manager, chart, gauge, scheduler and much more. Crypto Obfuscator – Works for all .NET including Silverlight/Windows Phone 7. Silverlight Spy – provides a license EVERY month for this giveaway. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Win a FREE developer’s license of one of the products listed above! 4 winners will be announced on April 1st, 2011! To be entered into the contest do the following things: Subscribe to my feed. – Use Google Reader, email or whatever is best for you.  Leave a comment below with a valid email account (I WILL NOT share this info with anyone.) Retweet the following : I just entered to win free #Silverlight controls from @mbcrump . Register here: http://mcrump.me/fTSmB8 ! Don’t change the URL because this will allow me to track the users that Tweet this page. Don’t forget to visit each of the vendors sites because they made this possible. MichaelCrump.Net provides Silverlight Giveaways every month. You can also see the latest giveaway by bookmarking http://giveaways.michaelcrump.net . ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DevExpress Silverlight Controls Let’s take a quick look at some of the software that is provided in this giveaway. Before we get started with the Silverlight Controls, here is a couple of links to bookmark for the DevExpress Silverlight Controls: The Live Demos of the Silverlight Controls is located here. Great Video Tutorials of the Silverlight Controls are here. One thing that I liked about the DevExpress is how easy it was to find demos of each control. After you install the controls the following Program Group appears complete with “demos” that include full-source.   So, the first question that you may ask is, “What is included?” Here is the official list below. I wanted to show several of the controls that I think developers will use the most. The Book – Very rich animation between switching pages. Very easy to add your own images and custom text. The Menu – This is another control that just looked great. You can easily add images to the menu items with a few lines of XAML. The Window / Dialog Box – You can use this control to make a very beautiful “Wizard” to help your users navigate between pages. This is useful in setup or installation. Calculator – This would be useful for any type of Banking app. Also a first that I’ve seen from a 3rd party Control company. DatePicker – This controls feels a lot smoother than the one provided by Microsoft. It also provides the ability to “Clear” the selection. Overall the DevExpress Silverlight Controls feature a lot of quality controls that you should check out. You can go ahead and download a trial version of it right now by clicking here. If you win the contest you can simply enter your registration key and continue using the product without reinstalling. Syncfusion User Interface Edition Before we get started with the Syncfusion User Interface Edition, here is a couple of links to bookmark. The Live Demos can be found here. You can download a demo of it now at http://www.syncfusion.com/downloads/evalstart. After you install the Syncfusion, you can view the dashboard to run locally installed samples. You may also download the documentation to your local machine if needed. Since the name of the package is “User Interface Edition”, I decided to share several samples that struck me as “awesome”. Dashboard Gauges – I was very impressed with the various gauges they have included. The digital clock also looks very impressive. Diagram – The diagrams are also very easy to build. In the sample project below you can drag/drop the shapes onto the content pane. More complex lines like the Bezier lines are also easy to create using Syncfusion. Scheduling – Another strong component was the Scheduling with built-in support for Themes. Tools – If all of that wasn’t enough, it also comes with a nice pack of essential tools. Syncfusion has a nice variety of Silverlight Controls that you should check out. You can go ahead and download a trial version of it right now by clicking here. Crypto Obfuscator The following feature set is what is important to me in an Obfuscator since I am a Silverlight/WP7 Developer: And thankfully this is what you get in Crypto Obfuscator. You can download a trial version right now if you want to go ahead and play with it. Let’s spend a few moments taking a look at the application. After you have installed Crypto Obfuscator you will see the following screen: After you click on Assemblies you have the option to add your .XAP file in: I went ahead and loaded my .xap file from a Silverlight Application. At this point, you can simply save your project and hit “Obfuscate” and your done. You don’t have to mess with any of the other settings if you don’t want too. Of course, you can change the settings and add obfuscation rules, watermarks and signing if you wish.  After Obfuscation, it looks like this in .NET Reflector: I was trying to browse through methods and it actually crashed Reflector. This confirms the level of protection the obfuscator is providing. If this were a commercial application that my team built, I would have a huge smile on my face right now. Crypto Obfuscator is a great product and I hope you will spend the time learning more about it. Silverlight Spy Silverlight Spy is a runtime inspector tool that will tell you pretty much everything that is going on with the application. Basically, you give it a URL that contains a Silverlight application and you can explore the element tree, events, xaml and so much more. This has already been reviewed on MichaelCrump.net. _________________________________________________________________________________________ Thanks for reading and don’t forget to leave a comment below in order to win one of the four prizes available! Subscribe to my feed

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• ASP.NET MVC: Using ProfileRequiredAttribute to restrict access to pages

  - by DigiMortal

  If you are using AppFabric Access Control Services to authenticate users when they log in to your community site using Live ID, Google or some other popular identity provider, you need more than AuthorizeAttribute to make sure that users can access the content that is there for authenticated users only. In this posting I will show you hot to extend the AuthorizeAttribute so users must also have user profile filled. Semi-authorized users When user is authenticated through external identity provider then not all identity providers give us user name or other information we ask users when they join with our site. What all identity providers have in common is unique ID that helps you identify the user. Example. Users authenticated through Windows Live ID by AppFabric ACS have no name specified. Google’s identity provider is able to provide you with user name and e-mail address if user agrees to publish this information to you. They both give you unique ID of user when user is successfully authenticated in their service. There is logical shift between ASP.NET and my site when considering user as authorized. For ASP.NET MVC user is authorized when user has identity. For my site user is authorized when user has profile and row in my users table. Having profile means that user has unique username in my system and he or she is always identified by this username by other users. My solution is simple: I created my own action filter attribute that makes sure if user has profile to access given method and if user has no profile then browser is redirected to join page. Illustrating the problem Usually we restrict access to page using AuthorizeAttribute. Code is something like this. [Authorize] public ActionResult Details(string id) {     var profile = _userRepository.GetUserByUserName(id);     return View(profile); } If this page is only for site users and we have user profiles then all users – the ones that have profile and all the others that are just authenticated – can access the information. It is okay because all these users have successfully logged in in some service that is supported by AppFabric ACS. In my site the users with no profile are in grey spot. They are on half way to be users because they have no username and profile on my site yet. So looking at the image above again we need something that adds profile existence condition to user-only content. [ProfileRequired] public ActionResult Details(string id) {     var profile = _userRepository.GetUserByUserName(id);     return View(profile); } Now, this attribute will solve our problem as soon as we implement it. ProfileRequiredAttribute: Profiles are required to be fully authorized Here is my implementation of ProfileRequiredAttribute. It is pretty new and right now it is more like working draft but you can already play with it. public class ProfileRequiredAttribute : AuthorizeAttribute {     private readonly string _redirectUrl;       public ProfileRequiredAttribute()     {         _redirectUrl = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["JoinUrl"];         if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(_redirectUrl))             _redirectUrl = "~/";     }              public override void OnAuthorization(AuthorizationContext filterContext)     {         base.OnAuthorization(filterContext);           var httpContext = filterContext.HttpContext;         var identity = httpContext.User.Identity;           if (!identity.IsAuthenticated || identity.GetProfile() == null)             if(filterContext.Result == null)                 httpContext.Response.Redirect(_redirectUrl);          } } All methods with this attribute work as follows: if user is not authenticated then he or she is redirected to AppFabric ACS identity provider selection page, if user is authenticated but has no profile then user is by default redirected to main page of site but if you have application setting with name JoinUrl then user is redirected to this URL. First case is handled by AuthorizeAttribute and the second one is handled by custom logic in ProfileRequiredAttribute class. GetProfile() extension method To get user profile using less code in places where profiles are needed I wrote GetProfile() extension method for IIdentity interface. There are some more extension methods that read out user and identity provider identifier from claims and based on this information user profile is read from database. If you take this code with copy and paste I am sure it doesn’t work for you but you get the idea. public static User GetProfile(this IIdentity identity) {     if (identity == null)         return null;       var context = HttpContext.Current;     if (context.Items["UserProfile"] != null)         return context.Items["UserProfile"] as User;       var provider = identity.GetIdentityProvider();     var nameId = identity.GetNameIdentifier();       var rep = ObjectFactory.GetInstance<IUserRepository>();     var profile = rep.GetUserByProviderAndNameId(provider, nameId);       context.Items["UserProfile"] = profile;       return profile; } To avoid round trips to database I cache user profile to current request because the chance that profile gets changed meanwhile is very minimal. The other reason is maybe more tricky – profile objects are coming from Entity Framework context and context has also HTTP request as lifecycle. Conclusion This posting gave you some ideas how to finish user profiles stuff when you use AppFabric ACS as external authentication provider. Although there was little shift between us and ASP.NET MVC with interpretation of “authorized” we were easily able to solve the problem by extending AuthorizeAttribute to get all our requirements fulfilled. We also write extension method for IIdentity that returns as user profile based on username and caches the profile in HTTP request scope.

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• Answers to Your Common Oracle Database Lifecycle Management Questions

  - by Scott McNeil

  We recently ran a live webcast on Strategies for Managing Oracle Database's Lifecycle. There were tons of questions from our audience that we simply could not get to during the hour long presentation. Below are some of those questions along with their answers. Enjoy! Question: In the webcast the presenter talked about “gold” configuration standards, for those who want to use this technique, could you recommend a best practice to consider or follow? How do I get started? Answer:Gold configuration standardization is a quick and easy way to improve availability through consistency. Start by choosing a reference database and saving the configuration to the Oracle Enterprise Manager repository using the Save Configuration feature. Next create a comparison template using the Oracle provided template as a starting point and modify the ignored properties to eliminate expected differences in your environment. Finally create a comparison specification using the comparison template you created plus your saved gold configuration and schedule it to run on a regular basis. Don’t forget to fill in the email addresses of those you want to notify upon drift detection. Watch the database configuration management demo to learn more. Question: Can Oracle Lifecycle Management Pack for Database help with patching an Oracle Real Application Cluster (RAC) environment? Answer: Yes, Oracle Enterprise Manager supports both parallel and rolling patch application of Oracle Real Application Clusters. The use of rolling patching is recommended as there is no downtime involved. For more details watch this demo. Question: What are some of the things administrators can do to control configuration drift? Why is it important? Answer:Configuration drift is one of the main causes of instability and downtime of applications. Oracle Enterprise Manager makes it easy to manage and control drift using scheduled configuration comparisons combined with comparison templates. Question: Does Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Release 2 offer an incremental update feature for "gold" images? For instance, if the source binary has a higher PSU level, what is the best approach to update the existing "gold" image in the software library? Do you have to create a new image or can you just update the original one? Answer:Provisioning Profiles (Gold images) can contain the installation files and database configuration templates. Although it is possible to make some changes to the profile after creation (mainly to configuration), it is normally recommended to simply create a new profile after applying a patch to your reference database. Question: The webcast talked about enforcing in-house standards, does Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c offer verification of your databases and systems to those standards? For example, the initial "gold" image has been massively deployed over time, and there may be some changes to it. How can you do regular checks from Enterprise Manager to ensure the in-house standards are being enforced? Answer:There are really two methods to validate conformity to standards. The first method is to use gold standards which you compare other databases to report unwanted differences. This method uses a new comparison template technology which allows users to ignore known differences (i.e. SID, Start time, etc) which results in a report only showing important or non-conformant differences. This method is quick to setup and configure and recommended for those who want to get started validating compliance quickly. The second method leverages the new compliance framework which allows the creation of specific and robust validations. These compliance rules are grouped into standards which can be assigned to databases quickly and easily. Compliance rules allow for targeted and more sophisticated validation beyond the basic equals operation available in the comparison method. The compliance framework can be used to implement just about any internal or industry standard. The compliance results will track current and historic compliance scores at the overall and individual database targets. When the issue is resolved, the score is automatically affected. Compliance framework is the recommended long term solution for validating compliance using Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c. Check out this demo on database compliance to learn more. Question: If you are using the integration between Oracle Enterprise Manager and My Oracle Support in an "offline" mode, how do you know if you have the latest My Oracle Support metadata? Answer:In Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Release 2, you now only need to download one zip file containing all of the metadata xmls files. There is no indication that the metadata has changed but you could run a checksum on the file and compare it to the previously downloaded version to see if it has changed. Question: What happens if a patch fails while administrators are applying it to a database or system? Answer:A large portion of Oracle Enterprise Manager's patch automation is the pre-requisite checks that happen to ensure the highest level of confidence the patch will successfully apply. It is recommended you test the patch in a non-production environment and save the patch plan as a template once successful so you can create new plans using the saved template. If you are using the recommended ‘out of place’ patching methodology, there is no urgency because the database is still running as the cloned Oracle home is being patched. Users can address the issue and restart the patch procedure at the point it left off. If you are using 'in place' method, you can address the issue and continue where the procedure left off. Question: Can Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c R2 compare configurations between more than one target at the same time? Answer:Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c can compare any number of target configurations at one time. This is the basis of many important use cases including Configuration Drift Management. These comparisons can also be scheduled on a regular basis and emails notification sent should any differences appear. To learn more about configuration search and compare watch this demo. Question: How is data comparison done since changes are taking place in a live production system? Answer:There are many things to keep in mind when using the data comparison feature (as part of the Change Management ability to compare table data). It was primarily intended to be used for maintaining consistency of important but relatively static data. For example, application seed data and application setup configuration. This data does not change often but is critical when testing an application to ensure results are consistent with production. It is not recommended to use data comparison on highly dynamic data like transactional tables or very large tables. Question: Which versions of Oracle Database can be monitored through Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c? Answer:Oracle Database versions: 9.2.0.8, 10.1.0.5, 10.2.0.4, 10.2.0.5, 11.1.0.7, 11.2.0.1, 11.2.0.2, 11.2.0.3. Watch the On-Demand Webcast Stay Connected: Twitter | Facebook | YouTube | Linkedin | NewsletterDownload the Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control12c Mobile app

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• Oracle Partner Store (OPS) New Enhancements

  - by Kristin Rose

  Effective June 29th, Oracle Partner Store (OPS) will release the enhancements listed below to improve your overall ordering experience. v Online Transactional Oracle Master Agreement (Online TOMA) The Online TOMA enables end users to execute a transactional end user license agreement with Oracle. The new Online TOMA in OPS will replace the need for you to obtain a signed hard copy of the TOMA from the end user. You will now initiate the Online TOMA via OPS. Navigation: OPS Home > Order Tools > Online TOMA Query > Request Online TOMA> End User Contact, click “Select for TOMA” > Select Language > Submit (an automated email is sent immediately to the requestor and the end user) Ø The Online TOMA can also be initiated from the ‘My OPS’ tab. Under the Online TOMA Query section partners can track Online TOMA request details submitted to end users. The status of the Online TOMA request and the OMA Key generated (once Ts&Cs of the Online TOMA are accepted by an end user) are also displayed in this table. There is also the ability to resend pending Online TOMA requests by clicking ‘Resend’. Navigation: OPS Home > Order Tools > Online TOMA Query For more details on the Transactional OMA, please click here. v Convert Deals to Carts The partner deal registration system within OPS will now allow you to convert approved deals into carts with a simple click of a button. VADs can use Deal to Cart on all of their partners' registrations, regardless of whether they submitted on their partner's behalf, or the partner submitted themselves. Navigation: Login > Deal Registrations > Deal Registration List > Open the approved deal > Click Deal Reg ID number link to open > Click on 'Create Cart' link You can locate your newly created cart in the Saved Carts section of OPS. Links are also available from within an open deal or from the Deal Registration List. Click on the cart number to proceed. v Partner Opportunity Management: Deal Registration on OPS now allows you to see updated information on your opportunities from Oracle’s Fusion CRM opportunity management system.  Key fields such as close date, sales stage, products and status can be viewed by clicking the opportunity ID associated with the deal registration.  This new feature allows you to see regular updates to your opportunities after registrations are approved.  Through ongoing communication with Oracle Channel Managers and Sales Reps, you can ensure that Oracle has the latest information on your active registered deals. v Product Recommendations: When adding products to the Deal Registrations tab, OPS will now show additional products that you can try to include to maximize your sale and rebate. v Advanced Customer Support(ACS) Services Note: This will be available from July 9th. Initiate the purchase of the complete stack (HW/SW/Services) online with one single OPS order. More ACS services now supported online with exception of Start-Up Pack: · New SW installation services for Standard Configurations & stand alone System Software. · New Pre-production & Go-live services for Standard & Engineered Systems · New SW configuration & Platinum Pre-Production & Go-Live services for Engineered Systems · New Travel & Expenses Estimate included · New Partner & VAD volume discount supported v Software as a Service (SaaS) for Independent Software Vendors (ISVs): Oracle SaaS ISVs can now use OPS to submit their monthly usage reports to Oracle within 20 days after the end of every month. Navigation: OPS Home > Cart > Transaction Type: Partner SaaS for ISV’s > Add Eligible Products > Check out v Existing Approvals: In an effort to reduce the processing time of discount approvals, we have added a new section in the Request Approval page for you to communicate pre-existing approvals without having to attach the DAT. Just enter the Approval ID and submit your request. In case of existing software approvals, you will be required to submit the DAT with the Contact Information section filled out. v Additional data for Shipping Box Labels and Packing Slips OPS now has additional fields in the Shipping Notes section for you to add PO details. This will help you easily identify shipments as they arrive. Partners will have an End User PO field, whereas VADs will have VAR and End User PO fields. v Shipping Notes on OPS Hardware delivery Shipping Notes will now have multiple options to better suit your requirements. v Reminders for Royalty Reporting Partners: If you have not submitted your royalty report online, OPS will now send an automated alert to remind you. v Order Tracker Changes: · Order Tracker will now have a deal reg flag (Yes/No). You can now clearly distinguish between orders that have registered opportunities. · All lines of the order will be visible in the order details list. v Changes in Terminology · You will notice textual changes on some of our labels and messages relating to approval requests. “Discount Requests” has been replaced with “Approval Requests” to cater to some of our other offerings. · First Line Support (FLS) transaction type has been renamed to Support Provider Partner (SPP). OPS Support For more details on these enhancements, please request a training here. For assistance on the Oracle Partner Store, please contact the OPS support team in your region. NAMER: [email protected] LAD: [email protected] EMEA : [email protected] APAC: [email protected] Japan: [email protected] You can even call us on our Hotline! Find your local number here.     Thank you, Oracle Partner Store Support Team      

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• Disaster, or Migration?

  - by Rob Farley

  This post is in two parts – technical and personal. And I should point out that it’s prompted in part by this month’s T-SQL Tuesday, hosted by Allen Kinsel. First, the technical: I’ve had a few conversations with people recently about migration – moving a SQL Server database from one box to another (sometimes, but not primarily, involving an upgrade). One question that tends to come up is that of downtime. Obviously there will be some period of time between the old server being available and the new one. The way that most people seem to think of migration is this: Build a new server. Stop people from using the old server. Take a backup of the old server Restore it on the new server. Reconfigure the client applications (or alternatively, configure the new server to use the same address as the old) Make the new server online. There are other things involved, such as testing, of course. But this is essentially the process that people tell me they’re planning to follow. The bit that I want to look at today (as you’ve probably guessed from my title) is the “backup and restore” section. If a SQL database is using the Simple Recovery Model, then the only restore option is the last database backup. This backup could be full or differential. The transaction log never gets backed up in the Simple Recovery Model. Instead, it truncates regularly to stay small. One that’s using the Full Recovery Model (or Bulk-Logged) won’t truncate its log – the log must be backed up regularly. This provides the benefit of having a lot more option available for restores. It’s a requirement for most systems of High Availability, because if you’re making sure that a spare box is up-and-running, ready to take over, then you have to be interested in the logs that are happening on the current box, rather than truncating them all the time. A High Availability system such as Mirroring, Replication or Log Shipping will initialise the spare machine by restoring a full database backup (and maybe a differential backup if available), and then any subsequent log backups. Once the secondary copy is close, transactions can be applied to keep the two in sync. The main aspect of any High Availability system is to have a redundant system that is ready to take over. So the similarity for migration should be obvious. If you need to move a database from one box to another, then introducing a High Availability mechanism can help. By turning on the Full Recovery Model and then taking a backup (so that the now-interesting logs have some context), logs start being kept, and are therefore available for getting the new box ready (even if it’s an upgraded version). When the migration is ready to occur, a failover can be done, letting the new server take over the responsibility of the old, just as if a disaster had happened. Except that this is a planned failover, not a disaster at all. There’s a fine line between a disaster and a migration. Failovers can be useful in patching, upgrading, maintenance, and more. Hopefully, even an unexpected disaster can be seen as just another failover, and there can be an opportunity there – perhaps to get some work done on the principal server to increase robustness. And if I’ve just set up a High Availability system for even the simplest of databases, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. :) So now the personal: It’s been an interesting time recently... June has been somewhat odd. A court case with which I was involved got resolved (through mediation). I can’t go into details, but my lawyers tell me that I’m allowed to say how I feel about it. The answer is ‘lousy’. I don’t regret pursuing it as long as I did – but in the end I had to make a decision regarding the commerciality of letting it continue, and I’m going to look forward to the days when the kind of money I spent on my lawyers is small change. Mind you, if I had a similar situation with an employer, I’d do the same again, but that doesn’t really stop me feeling frustrated about it. The following day I had to fly to country Victoria to see my grandmother, who wasn’t expected to last the weekend. She’s still around a week later as I write this, but her 92-year-old body has basically given up on her. She’s been a Christian all her life, and is looking forward to eternity. We’ll all miss her though, and it’s hard to see my family grieving. Then on Tuesday, I was driving back to the airport with my family to come home, when something really bizarre happened. We were travelling down the freeway, just pulled out to go past a truck (farm-truck sized, not a semi-trailer), when a car-sized mass of metal fell off it. It was something like an industrial air-conditioner, but from where I was sitting, it was just a mass of spinning metal, like something out of a movie (one friend described it as “holidays by Michael Bay”). Somehow, and I’m really don’t know how, the part of it nearest us bounced high enough to clear the car, and there wasn’t even a scratch. We pulled over the check, and I was just thanking God that we’d changed lanes when we had, and that we remained unharmed. I had all kinds of thoughts about what could’ve happened if we’d had something that size land on the windscreen... All this has drilled home that while I feel that I haven’t provided as well for the family as I could’ve done (like by pursuing an expensive legal case), I shouldn’t even consider that I have proper control over things. I get to live life, and make decisions based on what I feel is right at the time. But I’m not going to get everything right, and there will be things that feel like disasters, some which could’ve been in my control and some which are very much beyond my control. The case feels like something I could’ve pursued differently, a disaster that could’ve been avoided in some way. Gran dying is lousy of course. An accident on the freeway would have been awful. I need to recognise that the worst disasters are ones that I can’t affect, and that I need to look at things in context – perhaps seeing everything that happens as a migration instead. Life is never the same from one day to the next. Every event has a before and an after – sometimes it’s clearly positive, sometimes it’s not. I remember good events in my life (such as my wedding), and bad (such as the loss of my father when I was ten, or the back injury I had eight years ago). I’m not suggesting that I know how to view everything from the “God works all things for good” perspective, but I am trying to look at last week as a migration of sorts. Those things are behind me now, and the future is in God’s hands. Hopefully I’ve learned things, and will be able to live accordingly. I’ve come through this time now, and even though I’ll miss Gran, I’ll see her again one day, and the future is bright.

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• Best Practices - which domain types should be used to run applications

  - by jsavit

  This post is one of a series of "best practices" notes for Oracle VM Server for SPARC (formerly named Logical Domains) One question that frequently comes up is "which types of domain should I use to run applications?" There used to be a simple answer in most cases: "only run applications in guest domains", but enhancements to T-series servers, Oracle VM Server for SPARC and the advent of SPARC SuperCluster have made this question more interesting and worth qualifying differently. This article reviews the relevant concepts and provides suggestions on where to deploy applications in a logical domains environment. Review: division of labor and types of domain Oracle VM Server for SPARC offloads many functions from the hypervisor to domains (also called virtual machines). This is a modern alternative to using a "thick" hypervisor that provides all virtualization functions, as in traditional VM designs, This permits a simpler hypervisor design, which enhances reliability, and security. It also reduces single points of failure by assigning responsibilities to multiple system components, which further improves reliability and security. In this architecture, management and I/O functionality are provided within domains. Oracle VM Server for SPARC does this by defining the following types of domain, each with their own roles: Control domain - management control point for the server, used to configure domains and manage resources. It is the first domain to boot on a power-up, is an I/O domain, and is usually a service domain as well. I/O domain - has been assigned physical I/O devices: a PCIe root complex, a PCI device, or a SR-IOV (single-root I/O Virtualization) function. It has native performance and functionality for the devices it owns, unmediated by any virtualization layer. Service domain - provides virtual network and disk devices to guest domains. Guest domain - a domain whose devices are all virtual rather than physical: virtual network and disk devices provided by one or more service domains. In common practice, this is where applications are run. Typical deployment A service domain is generally also an I/O domain: otherwise it wouldn't have access to physical device "backends" to offer to its clients. Similarly, an I/O domain is also typically a service domain in order to leverage the available PCI busses. Control domains must be I/O domains, because they boot up first on the server and require physical I/O. It's typical for the control domain to also be a service domain too so it doesn't "waste" the I/O resources it uses. A simple configuration consists of a control domain, which is also the one I/O and service domain, and some number of guest domains using virtual I/O. In production, customers typically use multiple domains with I/O and service roles to eliminate single points of failure: guest domains have virtual disk and virtual devices provisioned from more than one service domain, so failure of a service domain or I/O path or device doesn't result in an application outage. This is also used for "rolling upgrades" in which service domains are upgraded one at a time while their guests continue to operate without disruption. (It should be noted that resiliency to I/O device failures can also be provided by the single control domain, using multi-path I/O) In this type of deployment, control, I/O, and service domains are used for virtualization infrastructure, while applications run in guest domains. Changing application deployment patterns The above model has been widely and successfully used, but more configuration options are available now. Servers got bigger than the original T2000 class machines with 2 I/O busses, so there is more I/O capacity that can be used for applications. Increased T-series server capacity made it attractive to run more vertical applications, such as databases, with higher resource requirements than the "light" applications originally seen. This made it attractive to run applications in I/O domains so they could get bare-metal native I/O performance. This is leveraged by the SPARC SuperCluster engineered system, announced a year ago at Oracle OpenWorld. In SPARC SuperCluster, I/O domains are used for high performance applications, with native I/O performance for disk and network and optimized access to the Infiniband fabric. Another technical enhancement is the introduction of Direct I/O (DIO) and Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV), which make it possible to give domains direct connections and native I/O performance for selected I/O devices. A domain with either a DIO or SR-IOV device is an I/O domain. In summary: not all I/O domains own PCI complexes, and there are increasingly more I/O domains that are not service domains. They use their I/O connectivity for performance for their own applications. However, there are some limitations and considerations: at this time, a domain using physical I/O cannot be live-migrated to another server. There is also a need to plan for security and introducing unneeded dependencies: if an I/O domain is also a service domain providing virtual I/O go guests, it has the ability to affect the correct operation of its client guest domains. This is even more relevant for the control domain. where the ldm has to be protected from unauthorized (or even mistaken) use that would affect other domains. As a general rule, running applications in the service domain or the control domain should be avoided. To recap: Guest domains with virtual I/O still provide the greatest operational flexibility, including features like live migration. I/O domains can be used for applications with high performance requirements. This is used to great effect in SPARC SuperCluster and in general T4 deployments. Direct I/O (DIO) and Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) make this more attractive by giving direct I/O access to more domains. Service domains should in general not be used for applications, because compromised security in the domain, or an outage, can affect other domains that depend on it. This concern can be mitigated by providing guests' their virtual I/O from more than one service domain, so an interruption of service in the service domain does not cause an application outage. The control domain should in general not be used to run applications, for the same reason. SPARC SuperCluster use the control domain for applications, but it is an exception: it's not a general purpose environment; it's an engineered system with specifically configured applications and optimization for optimal performance. These are recommended "best practices" based on conversations with a number of Oracle architects. Keep in mind that "one size does not fit all", so you should evaluate these practices in the context of your own requirements. Summary Higher capacity T-series servers have made it more attractive to use them for applications with high resource requirements. New deployment models permit native I/O performance for demanding applications by running them in I/O domains with direct access to their devices. This is leveraged in SPARC SuperCluster, and can be leveraged in T-series servers to provision high-performance applications running in domains. Carefully planned, this can be used to provide higher performance for critical applications.

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• SQL Server Developer Tools &ndash; Codename Juneau vs. Red-Gate SQL Source Control

  - by Ajarn Mark Caldwell

  So how do the new SQL Server Developer Tools (previously code-named Juneau) stack up against SQL Source Control?  Read on to find out. At the PASS Community Summit a couple of weeks ago, it was announced that the previously code-named Juneau software would be released under the name of SQL Server Developer Tools with the release of SQL Server 2012.  This replacement for Database Projects in Visual Studio (also known in a former life as Data Dude) has some great new features.  I won’t attempt to describe them all here, but I will applaud Microsoft for making major improvements.  One of my favorite changes is the way database elements are broken down.  Previously every little thing was in its own file.  For example, indexes were each in their own file.  I always hated that.  Now, SSDT uses a pattern similar to Red-Gate’s and puts the indexes and keys into the same file as the overall table definition. Of course there are really cool features to keep your database model in sync with the actual source scripts, and the rename refactoring feature is now touted as being more than just a search and replace, but rather a “semantic-aware” search and replace.  Funny, it reminds me of SQL Prompt’s Smart Rename feature.  But I’m not writing this just to criticize Microsoft and argue that they are late to the party with this feature set.  Instead, I do see it as a viable alternative for folks who want all of their source code to be version controlled, but there are a couple of key trade-offs that you need to know about when you choose which tool set to use. First, the basics Both tool sets integrate with a wide variety of source control systems including the most popular: Subversion, GIT, Vault, and Team Foundation Server.  Both tools have integrated functionality to produce objects to upgrade your target database when you are ready (DACPACs in SSDT, integration with SQL Compare for SQL Source Control).  If you regularly live in Visual Studio or the Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) then SSDT will likely be comfortable for you.  Like BIDS, SSDT is a Visual Studio Project Type that comes with SQL Server, and if you don’t already have Visual Studio installed, it will install the shell for you.  If you already have Visual Studio 2010 installed, then it will just add this as an available project type.  On the other hand, if you regularly live in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) then you will really enjoy the SQL Source Control integration from within SSMS.  Both tool sets store their database model in script files.  In SSDT, these are on your file system like other source files; in SQL Source Control, these are stored in the folder structure in your source control system, and you can always GET them to your file system if you want to browse them directly. For me, the key differentiating factors are 1) a single, unified check-in, and 2) migration scripts.  How you value those two features will likely make your decision for you. Unified Check-In If you do a continuous-integration (CI) style of development that triggers an automated build with unit testing on every check-in of source code, and you use Visual Studio for the rest of your development, then you will want to really consider SSDT.  Because it is just another project in Visual Studio, it can be added to your existing Solution, and you can then do a complete, or unified single check-in of all changes whether they are application or database changes.  This is simply not possible with SQL Source Control because it is in a different development tool (SSMS instead of Visual Studio) and there is no way to do one unified check-in between the two.  You CAN do really fast back-to-back check-ins, but there is the possibility that the automated build that is triggered from the first check-in will cause your unit tests to fail and the CI tool to report that you broke the build.  Of course, the automated build that is triggered from the second check-in which contains the “other half” of your changes should pass and so the amount of time that the build was broken may be very, very short, but if that is very, very important to you, then SQL Source Control just won’t work; you’ll have to use SSDT. Refactoring and Migrations If you work on a mature system, or on a not-so-mature but also not-so-well-designed system, where you want to refactor the database schema as you go along, but you can’t have data suddenly disappearing from your target system, then you’ll probably want to go with SQL Source Control.  As I wrote previously, there are a number of changes which you can make to your database that the comparison tools (both from Microsoft and Red Gate) simply cannot handle without the possibility (or probability) of data loss.  Currently, SSDT only offers you the ability to inject PRE and POST custom deployment scripts.  There is no way to insert your own script in the middle to override the default behavior of the tool.  In version 3.0 of SQL Source Control (Early Access version now available) you have that ability to create your own custom migration script to take the place of the commands that the tool would have done, and ensure the preservation of your data.  Or, even if the default tool behavior would have worked, but you simply know a better way then you can take control and do things your way instead of theirs. You Decide In the environment I work in, our automated builds are not triggered off of check-ins, but off of the clock (currently once per night) and so there is no point at which the automated build and unit tests will be triggered without having both sides of the development effort already checked-in.  Therefore having a unified check-in, while handy, is not critical for us.  As for migration scripts, these are critically important to us.  We do a lot of new development on systems that have already been in production for years, and it is not uncommon for us to need to do a refactoring of the database.  Because of the maturity of the existing system, that often involves data migrations or other additional SQL tasks that the comparison tools just can’t detect on their own.  Therefore, the ability to create a custom migration script to override the tool’s default behavior is very important to us.  And so, you can see why we will continue to use Red Gate SQL Source Control for the foreseeable future.

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• Projected Results

  - by Sylvie MacKenzie, PMP

  Excerpt from PROFIT - ORACLE - by Monica Mehta Yasser Mahmud has seen a revolution in project management over the past decade. During that time, the former Primavera product strategist (who joined Oracle when his company was acquired in 2008) has not only observed a transformation in the way IT systems support corporate projects but the role project portfolio management (PPM) plays in the enterprise. “15 years ago project management was the domain of project management office (PMO),” Mahmud recalls of earlier days. “But over the course of the past decade, we've seen it transform into a mission critical enterprise discipline, that has made Primavera indispensable in the board room. Now, as a senior manager, a board member, or a C-level executive you have direct and complete visibility into what’s kind of going on in the organization—at a level of detail that you're going to consume that information.” Now serving as Oracle’s vice president of product strategy and industry marketing, Mahmud shares his thoughts on how Oracle’s Primavera solutions have evolved and how best-in-class project portfolio management systems can help businesses stay competitive. Profit: What do you feel are the market dynamics that are changing project management today? Mahmud: First, the data explosion. We're generating data at twice the rate at which we can actually store it. The same concept applies for project-intensive organizations. A lot of data is gathered, but what are we really doing with it? Are we turning data into insight? Are we using that insight and turning it into foresight with analytics tools? This is a key driver that will separate the very good companies—the very competitive companies—from those that are not as competitive. Another trend is centered on the explosion of mobile computing. By the year 2013, an estimated 35 percent of the world’s workforce is going to be mobile. That’s one billion people. So the question is not if you're going to go mobile, it’s how fast you are going to go mobile. What kind of impact does that have on how the workforce participates in projects? What worked ten to fifteen years ago is not going to work today. It requires a real rethink around the interfaces and how data is actually presented. Profit: What is the role of project management in this new landscape? Mahmud: We recently conducted a PPM study with the Economist Intelligence Unit centered to determine how important project management is considered within organizations. Our target was primarily CFOs, CIOs, and senior managers and we discovered that while 95 percent of participants believed it critical to their business, only six percent were confident that projects were delivered on time and on budget. That’s a huge gap. Most organizations are looking for efficiency, especially in these volatile financial times. But senior management can’t keep track of every project in a large organization. As a result, executives are attempting to inventory the work being conducted under their watch. What is often needed is a very high-level assessment conducted at the board level to say, “Here are the 50 initiatives that we have underway. How do they line up with our strategic drivers?” This line of questioning can provide early warning that work and strategy are out of alignment; finding the gap between what the business needs to do and the actual performance scorecard. That’s low-hanging fruit for any executive looking to increase efficiency and save money. But it can only be obtained through proper assessment of existing projects—and you need a project system of record to get that done. Over the next decade or so, project management is going to transform into holistic work management. Business leaders will want make sure key projects align with corporate strategy, but also the ability to drill down into daily activity and smaller projects to make sure they line up as well. Keeping employees from working on tasks—even for a few hours—that don’t line up with corporate goals will, in many ways, become a competitive differentiator. Profit: How do all of these market challenges and shifting trends impact Oracle’s Primavera solutions and meeting customers’ needs? Mahmud: For Primavera, it’s a transformation from being a project management application to a PPM system in the enterprise. Also making that system a mission-critical application by connecting to other key applications within the ecosystem, such as the enterprise resource planning (ERP), supply chain, and CRM systems. Analytics have also become a huge component. Business analytics have made Oracle’s Primavera applications pertinent in the boardroom. Now, as a senior manager, a board member, a CXO, CIO, or CEO, you have direct visibility into what’s going on in the organization at a level that you're able to consume that information. In addition, all of this information pairs up really well with your financials and other data. Certainly, when you're an Oracle shop, you have that visibility that you didn’t have before from a project execution perspective. Profit: What new strategies and tools are being implemented to create a more efficient workplace for users? Mahmud: We believe very strongly that just because you call something an enterprise project portfolio management system doesn’t make it so—you have to get people to want to participate in the system. This can’t be mandated down from the top. It simply doesn’t work that way. A truly adoptable solution is one that makes it super easy for all types users to participate, by providing them interfaces where they live. Keeping that in mind, a major area of development has been alternative user interfaces. This is increasingly resulting in the creation of lighter weight, targeted interfaces such as iOS applications, and smartphones interfaces such as for iPhone and Android platform. Profit: How does this translate into the development of Oracle’s Primavera solutions? Mahmud: Let me give you a few examples. We recently announced the launch of our Primavera P6 Team Member application, which is a native iOS application for the iPhone. This interface makes it easier for team members to do their jobs quickly and effectively. Similarly, we introduced the Primavera analytics application, which can be consumed via mobile devices, and when married with Oracle Spatial capabilities, users can get a geographical view of what’s going on and which projects are occurring in various locations around the world. Lastly, we introduced advanced email integration that allows project team members to status work via E-mail. This functionality leverages the fact that users are in E-mail system throughout the day and allows them to status their work without the need to launch the Primavera application. It comes back to a mantra: provide as many alternative user interfaces as possible, so you can give people the ability to work, to participate, to raise issues, to create projects, in the places where they live. Do it in such a way that it’s non-intrusive, do it in such a way that it’s easy and intuitive and they can get it done in a short amount of time. If you do that, workers can get back to doing what they're actually getting paid for.

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• I Clobbered a Leopard with a Window Last Night

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  I’ve had my 15” Mac Book Pro for a little over a year now, and its hands-down the best laptop I’ve ever owned…hardware wise. And I tried, I really really tried, to like OSX. I even bought Parallels so I could run Windows 7 and all my development tools while still trying to live in an OSX world. But in the end, I missed Windows too much. There were just too many shortcomings with OSX that kept me from being productive. For one thing, Office for Mac is *not* Office for Windows. The applications are written by different teams, and Excel on the Mac is just different enough to be painful. The VM experience was adequate, but my MBP would heat up like crazy when running it and the experience trying to get Windows apps to interact with an OSX file system was awkward. And I found I was in the VM more than I thought I’d be. iMovie is not as easy to use for doing simple movie editing as Windows Movie Maker. There’s no free blog editing software for OSX that’s on par with Windows Live Writer. And really, all I was using OSX for was Twitter (which I can use a Windows client for) and web browsing (also something Windows can provide obviously). So I had to ask myself – why am I forcing myself to use an operating system I don’t like, on a laptop that can support Windows 7? And so I paved my MBP and am happily running Windows 7 on it…and its fantastic! All the good stuff with the hardware is still there with the goodness of Win 7. Happy happy. I did run into some snags doing this though, and that’s really what this blog post is about – things to be aware of if you want to install Win 7 directly on your MBP metal. First, Ensure You Have Your Original Mac Install Disk This was a warning my buddy Dylan, who’s been running Win 7 on his MBP for a while now, gave me early on. The reason you need that original disk is that the hardware drivers you need are all located there. Apparently you can’t easily download them, so make sure you have them ahead of time. Second, Forget BootCamp The only reason you need BootCamp is if you still want the option to boot into OSX. If you don’t, then you don’t need BootCamp. In fact, you don’t even need BootCamp to install Win 7. What you *will* need though is a DVD with Win 7 burnt on it. Apple doesn’t support bootable USB drives. Well, actually they do for Mac Book Airs which don’t come with optical drives…but to get it working you’ll need to edit a system file of BootCamp so your make of MBP is included in an XML document, and even then you *still* are using BootCamp meaning you’ll be making an OSX partition. So don’t worry about BootCamp, just burn a Windows 7 disc, put it into the DVD drive, and restart your MBP. Third, Know The Secret Commands So after putting in the Windows 7 DVD and restarting your MBP, you’ll want to hold down the ‘C’ key during boot up. This tells the MBP that it should boot from the DVD drive instead of the hard drive. Interestingly, it appears you don’t have to do this if its the Mac OSX install disc (more on that in a second), but regardless – hold down C and Windows will start the install process. Next up is the partition process. You’ll notice that there’s a partition called ETI or something like that. This has to do with the drive format that Apple uses and how they partition their system drives. What I did – I blew it away! At first I didn’t, but I was told I couldn’t install Windows on the remaining space due to the different drive format. Blowing away the ETI partition (and all other partitions) allowed me to continue the Windows install. *REMEMBER –  No warranty is provided or implied, just telling you what I did and how I got it to work. Ok, so now Windows is installed and I’m rebooting. Everything looks good, but I need drivers! So I put in the OSX install DVD and run the BootCamp assistant which installs all the Windows drivers I need. Fantastic! Oh, I need to restart – no problem. OH NO, PROBLEM! I left the OSX install DVD in the drive and now the MBP wants to boot from the drive and install OSX! I’m not holding down the C key, what the heck?! Ok, well there must be a way to eject this disk…hmm…no physical button on the side…the eject button doesn’t seem to work on the keyboard…no little pin hole to insert something to force the disc out…well what the…?! It turns out, if you want to eject a disc at boot up, you need (and I kid you not) to plug a mouse into the laptop and hold down the right-click button while its booting. This ejected the disc for me. Seriously. Finally, Things You Should Be Aware Of Once you have Windows up and running there’s a few things you need to be aware of, mainly new keyboard shortcuts. For instance, on the Mac keyboard there is no Home, End, PageUp or PageDown. There’s also no obvious way to do something like select large amounts of text (like you would by holding Shift-Home at the end of a line of text for instance). So here’s some shortcuts you need to know: Home – fn + left arrow End – fn + right arrow Select a line of text as you would with the Home key – Shift + fn + left arrow Select a line of text as you would with the End key – Shift + fn + right arrow Page Up – fn + up arrow Page Down – fn + down arrow Also, you’ll notice that the awesome Mac track pad doesn’t respond to taps as clicks. No fear, this is just a setting that needs to be altered in the BootCamp control panel (that controls the Mac Hardware-specific settings within Windows, you can access it easily from the system tray icon) One other thing, battery life seems a bit lower than with OSX, but then again I’m also doing more than Twitter or web browsing on this thing now. Conclusion My laptop runs awesome now that I have Windows 7 on there. It’s obviously up to individual taste, but for me I just didn’t see benefits to living in an OSX world when everything I needed lived in Windows. And also, I finally am back to an operating system that doesn’t require me to eject a USB drive before physically removing it! It’s 2012 folks, how has this not been fixed?! D

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• How to Control Screen Layouts in LightSwitch

  - by ChrisD

  Visual Studio LightSwitch has a bunch of screen templates that you can use to quickly generate screens. They give you good starting points that you can customize further. When you add a new screen to your project you see a set of screen templates that you can choose from. These templates lay out all the related data you choose to put on a screen automatically for you. And don’t under estimate them; they do a great job of laying out controls in a smart way. For instance, a tab control will be used when you select more than one related set of data to display on a screen. However, you’re not limited to taking the layout as is. In fact, the screen designer is pretty flexible and allows you to create stacks of controls in a variety of configurations. You just need to visualize your screen as a series of containers that you can lay out in rows and columns. You then place controls or stacks of controls into these areas to align the screen exactly how you want. If you’re new in Visual Studio LightSwitch, you can see this tutorial. OK, Let’s start with a simple example. I have already designed my data entities for a simple order tracking system similar to the Northwind database. I also have added a Search Data  Screen to search my Products already. Now I will add a new Details Screen for my Products and make it the default screen via the “Add New Screen” dialog: The screen designer picks a simple layout for me based on the single entity I chose, in this case Product. Hit F5 to run the application, select a Product on the search screen to open the Product Details Screen. Notice that it’s pretty simple because my entity is simple. Click the “Customize” button in the top right of the screen so we can start tweaking it. The left side of the screen shows the containership of controls and data bindings (called the content tree) and the right side shows the live preview with data. Notice that we have a simple layout of two rows but only one row is populated (with a vertical stack of controls in this case). The bottom row is empty. You can envision the screen like this: Each container will display a group of data that you select. For instance in the above screen, the top row is set to a vertical stack control and the group of data to display is coming from Product. So when laying out screens you need to think in terms of containers of controls bound to groups of data. To change the data to which a container is bound, select the data item next to the container: You can select the “New Group” item in order to create more containers (or controls) within the current container. For instance to totally control the layout, select the Product in the top row and hit the delete key. This will delete the vertical stack and therefore all the controls on the screen. The content tree will still have two rows, but the rows are now both empty. If you want a layout of four containers (two rows and two columns) then select “New Group” for the data item and then change the vertical stack control to “Two Columns” for both of the rows as shown here: You can keep going on and on by selecting new groups and choosing between rows or columns. Here’s a layout with 8 containers, 4 rows and 2 columns: And here is a layout with 7 content areas; one row across the top of the screen and three rows with two columns below that: When you select Choose Content and select a data item like Product it will populate all the controls within the container (row or column in a vertical stack) however you have complete control on what to display within each group. You can delete fields you don’t want to display and/or change their controls. You can also change the size of controls and how they display by changing the settings in the properties window. If you are in the Screen Designer (and not the customization mode like we are here) you can also drag-drop data items from the left-hand side of the screen to the content tree. Note, however, that not all areas of the tree will allow you to drop a data item if there is a binding already set to a different set of data. For instance you can’t drop a Customer ID into the same group as a Product if they originate from different entities. To get around this, all you need to do is create a new group and content area as shown above. Let’s take a more complex example that deals with more than just product. I want to design a complex screen that displays Products and their Category, as well as all the OrderDetails for which that product is selected. This time I will create a new screen and select List and Details, select the Products screen data, and include the related OrderDetails. However I’m going to totally change the layout so that a Product grid is at the top left and below that is the selected Product detail. Below that will be the Category text fields and image in two columns below. On the right side I want the OrderDetails grid to take up the whole right side of the screen. All this can be done in customization mode while you’re debugging the application. To do this, I first deleted all the content items in the tree and then re-created the content tree as shown in the image below. I also set the image to be larger and the description textbox to be 5 rows using the property window below the live preview. I added the green lines to indicate the containers and show how it maps to the content tree (click to enlarge): I hope this demystifies the screen designer a little bit. Remember that screen templates are excellent starting points – you can take them as-is or customize them further. It takes a little fooling around with customizing screens to get them to do exactly what you want but there are a ton of possibilities once you get the hang of it. Stay tuned for more information on how to create your own screen templates that show up in the “Add New Screen” dialog. Enjoy! The tutorial that might be interested: Adding Custom Control In LightSwitch

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

  - by Tanu Sood

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

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• CSS Hidden DIV Scroll to view

  - by Dasa

  <DIV CLASS="fact" ID="xnews-4" > <DIV CLASS="storyheadline"> <DIV CLASS="vote up"><A ID="xvotes-4" HREF="javascript:vote(0,258160,4,'f3d3d9c1885fb8508bdbde825d0dfd6e',10)">1</A><A ID="xvote-4" HREF="javascript:vote(0,258160,4,'f3d3d9c1885fb8508bdbde825d0dfd6e',10)"><strong>Vote</strong></A> </DIV> <DIV CLASS="title" ID="title-4"><H2><A HREF="/story.php?title=this-article-is-about-the-song">This article is about the song.</A></H2> </DIV> </DIV> <DIV CLASS="storycontent subtext hidden" ID="plus4" style="display: none;"> <DIV>Posted by <A HREF="/user.php?login=fact-o-matic">fact-o-matic</A> 2 minutes ago | Source: Editorial<SPAN ID="ls_adminlinks-4" style="display:none"> </SPAN> </DIV> <DIV> <DIV CLASS="floatleft"> <A HREF="/story.php?title=this-article-is-about-the-song"> Read More</A>&nbsp;|<SPAN ID="ls_comments_url-4"> <SPAN CLASS="linksummaryDiscuss"><A HREF="/story.php?title=this-article-is-about-the-song#discuss" CLASS="comments">Discuss</A></SPAN></SPAN> <SPAN ID="xreport-4"><SPAN CLASS="linksummaryBury">| <A HREF="javascript:vote(0,258160,4,'f3d3d9c1885fb8508bdbde825d0dfd6e',-10)">Bury</A></SPAN></SPAN> |&nbsp; <span id="emailto-4" style="display:none"></span><span id="linksummaryAddLink"> <a href="javascript://" onclick="var replydisplay=document.getElementById('addto-4').style.display ? 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href="http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.factmeme.com%2Fstory.php%3Ftitle%3Dthis-article-is-about-the-song&amp;title=This article is about the song."><img src="http://www.factmeme.com/modules/social_bookmark/images/icon-stumbleupon.gif" border="0" alt="submit 'This article is about the song.' to Stumbleupon" /></a> &nbsp;&nbsp;<a title="submit 'This article is about the song.' to Windows Live" href="https://favorites.live.com/quickadd.aspx?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.factmeme.com%2Fstory.php%3Ftitle%3Dthis-article-is-about-the-song&title=This article is about the song."><img src="http://www.factmeme.com/modules/social_bookmark/images/windowslive.gif" border="0" alt="submit 'This article is about the song.' to Windows Live" /></a> &nbsp;&nbsp;<a title="submit 'This article is about the song.' to squidoo" href="http://www.squidoo.com/lensmaster/bookmark?http%3A%2F%2Fwww.factmeme.com%2Fstory.php%3Ftitle%3Dthis-article-is-about-the-song"><img src="http://www.factmeme.com/modules/social_bookmark/images/squidoo.gif" border="0" alt="submit 'This article is about the song.' to squidoo" /></a> &nbsp;&nbsp;<a title="submit 'This article is about the song.' to yahoo" href="http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.factmeme.com%2Fstory.php%3Ftitle%3Dthis-article-is-about-the-song&amp;title=This article is about the song."><img src="http://www.factmeme.com/modules/social_bookmark/images/yahoomyweb.png" border="0" alt="submit 'This article is about the song.' to yahoo" /></a> &nbsp;&nbsp;<a title="submit 'This article is about the song.' to google" href="http://www.google.com/bookmarks/mark?op=edit&bkmk=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.factmeme.com%2Fstory.php%3Ftitle%3Dthis-article-is-about-the-song&title=This article is about the song."><img src="http://www.factmeme.com/modules/social_bookmark/images/googlebookmarks.gif" border="0" alt="submit 'This article is about the song.' to google" /></a> &nbsp;&nbsp;<a title="submit 'This article is about the song.' to ask" href=" http://myjeeves.ask.com/mysearch/BookmarkIt?v=1.2&t=webpages&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.factmeme.com%2Fstory.php%3Ftitle%3Dthis-article-is-about-the-song&title=This article is about the song."><img src="http://www.factmeme.com/modules/social_bookmark/images/ask.gif" border="0" alt="submit 'This article is about the song.' to ask" /></a> <hr /> <p style="font-size:16px;font-weight:bold;margin:0px;">Story URL</p> <script type="text/javascript"> function select_all() { var text_val=eval("document.storyurl.thisurl"); text_val.focus(); text_val.select(); } </script> <form name="storyurl"><input type="text" name="thisurl" size="92" onClick="select_all();" value="http://www.factmeme.com/story.php?title=this-article-is-about-the-song"></form> </div> </span> </DIV> <DIV CLASS="floatright"> <A HREF="/index.php?category=culture">Culture</A> | <A HREF="/search.php?search=Olavi&amp;tag=true">Olavi</A> <A HREF="/search.php?search=Olavi&amp;tag=true">All</A> </DIV> </DIV></DIV> <DIV CLASS="more show"></DIV> </DIV> when I click on the add to, a box is supposed to popup with options to add the story to other websites The problem is that nothing appears to happen, even though something is actually happening, the only way to see the add too box is to click on scroll to view in inspect element in firefox and even then the box appears in the wrong place I am almost certain that it is a positioning conflict but I cant work it out How can I fix it

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• PHP/APC fatal error, apc_mmap: mmap failed

  - by Sudowned

  I'm seeing some intermittent CPU usage spikes to 100%, sort of correlated to these log entries: [27-Feb-2012 13:29:29] PHP Fatal error: PHP Startup: apc_mmap: mmap failed: in Unknown on line 0 [27-Feb-2012 13:29:30] PHP Fatal error: PHP Startup: apc_mmap: mmap failed: in Unknown on line 0 [27-Feb-2012 13:29:31] PHP Fatal error: PHP Startup: apc_mmap: mmap failed: in Unknown on line 0 [27-Feb-2012 13:29:31] PHP Fatal error: PHP Startup: apc_mmap: mmap failed: in Unknown on line 0 phpinfo() indicates that APC is set up, and as far as I can tell this error doesn't cause visible 500 errors on the live site, which is a WordPress install that gets about 600k views monthly. Google's been unhelpful so far, and I was hoping that someone here had some insight as to what's causing this and how to fix it. Curiously, this error only shows up /usr/local/apache2/logs/error_log and not the error_log for the cpanel-configured site.

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• iftop - how to generate text file with its output?

  - by mickula

  iftop is great tool to view almost live bandwidth usage distinguished by source-ip source-port destination-ip destination port. I'm using it to see which client's ip is using most bandwidth. Now I would like to store output somewhere. iftop uses ncurses so iftop > log.txt does not work as expected, result file is not readable. Is there any tool like this which can be used to pipe output to a text file? Thanks for your replies.

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• ESXi hard drive power saving

  - by Jens

  I currently have a Windows Server running beneath my desk and was considering replacing it with a ESXi layer to run both a Windows and Unix virtual machine. The ESXi is going to give me some nice advantages that I can use but I am still stuck on this issue: The server is mainly used as a fileserver/local webserver, and I use Windows tasks to hibernate/wake the machine at night. Also there is an aggressive disk spin down timeout to reduce noise. With ESXi, this will not be possible to do any more. I could live with the server running 24/7, but I would really like to spin down the disks when not in use. Is there a way to do this on ESXi?

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• “BAD” partition showing up in Partition Manager

  - by Quintin Par

  I tried to partition my primary hard disk (NTFS partitions) with qtparted and got stuck in the process. Consequently I had to kill the process and exit my knoppix live CD boot up. Even though I was expecting XP to get corrupted, it booted fine and showed up all the drives accessible. But when I opened this with partition manager 8, it shows up as “BAD”. I ran chkdsk /f without any success. My objective with qparted and partition magic was to resize my existing partitions and add some space to c: How do I fix this problem and resize my partitions? Edit: Here's how my primary drive as per windows is

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• Trying to make a custom Arch-based Linux distro with larch

  - by strangeronyourtrain

  I'm all set up with a spiffy Arch installation in a virtual machine, and now I want to turn it into a live ISO. When I heard about larch, I thought it would be the perfect tool to turn my existing installation into something I could distribute. However, I can't get larch to install properly. I followed the installation instructions on the website, which said to download and run the larch-setup script. When I run it, though, it installs the larch profiles and libraries but doesn't install the executable programs. Here's a screenshot of the errors I get when larch-setup tries to install the executables. I'd greatly appreciate any clues to what is going wrong here, or suggestions for alternative ways to turn my customized Arch installation into an ISO! Thanks!

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• Connecting Wii to router to Proxy Server via VPN to BBC iPlayer

  - by nkimber

  I live in the USA and want to be able to watch UK TV streamed over the web. The relevant services are geographically crippled. I can do this by using a VPN proxy server in the UK, connecting to the VPN service using a straight Windows VPN connection. However, this means I have to watch everything on my PC. The BBC iPlayer works on the Wii in the UK. So, I'd like to connect my Wii to a wireless router (LinkSys WRT54G2) and have that be automatically connected via VPN to my proxy service in the UK. If I can do this then I'd be able to stream UK TV direct to my TV via the Wii. I thought I could have one router act as my VPN connection, connected to a 2nd router that connects to my Cable internet access. But this bit isn't working, any thoughts?

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• Linux (or Anaconda) installation, RAID 5

  - by user48058

  I having trouble with installation of Fedora and/or Centos. On first steps of installation, on step What type of devices will your installation involve, whatever I choose, same thing happen: I get window with message An unhandled exception has occurred. This is most likely a bug. Please save a copy of the detailed exception and file a bug report. In Details window there are lots of messages. At the end there are: ERR kernel:[ 81.854179] device-mapper: table: 253:1: raid45: unknown target type WARNING kernel:[ 81.854183] device-mapper: ioctl: error adding target to table Same thing occur with several versions of Fedora (17 and 16, x64, live, etc) and with Centos distribution also. Can you please give me some advices how to avoid this messages? Thank you in advance!

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• Dual-screen Multimedia Control Suite for Linux (like Screen Monkey)

  - by samjetski

  I'm looking for some linux software to manage and control a dual monitor/multi screen setup for use in professional-like presentations (ie: monitor1=control, monitor2=projector/audience). I have the dual-monitor configured with my gnome desktop running over both monitors (that's the easy part). What I'm looking for is a neat/seamless way to switch between, say, OpenOffice Impress, DVD Player, VLC live video, Lyricue, other software on monitor2. To have monitor2 shown to the audience and run neat presentations of DVDs, Slideshows, etc. whilst controlling it from monitor1. I can run slideshows, play a DVD on monitor2 (drag & drop VLC on monitor2, and go fullscreen) etc. but this is rather messy in a presentation environment. I found this software: Screen Monkey. Looks like an excellent windows equivalent for what I want to do. Is there anything similar for linux? For Gnome, KDE, anything else X based? Thanks, SamJ

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• install red5 demos via installer or within war file manually

  - by dursunturan

  I'm using Ubuntu 10.10 and installed the red5-server package. I've also downloaded oflaDemo.war file from that address. First I tried to install the oflaDemo via installer, but I couldnt reach the goal. I see the .war file under the /tmp directory, I got stuck with this message: "This may take a couple minutes, please wait". After that, I put the downloaded war file into the /webapps directory and wait 10 minutes as mentioned in red5-common.xml. Unfortunately, nothing changed ... So I decided to extract war file manually. I did this: jar -xvf oflaDemo.war Ok, I see all of the unzipped content under the webapps directory, but how can I preview the demo via a web browser? I really need to make live stream via Red5. Please help me.

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