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• Healthcare and Distributed Data Don't Mix

  - by [email protected]

  How many times have you heard the story?  Hard disk goes missing, USB thumb drive goes missing, laptop goes missing...Not a week goes by that we don't hear about our data going missing...  Healthcare data is a big one, but we hear about credit card data, pricing info, corporate intellectual property...  When I have spoken at Security and IT conferences part of my message is "Why do you give your users data to lose in the first place?"  I don't suggest they can't have access to it...in fact I work for the company that provides the premiere data security and desktop solutions that DO provide access.  Access isn't the issue.  'Keeping the data' is the issue.We are all human - we all make mistakes... I fault no one for having their car stolen or that they dropped a USB thumb drive. (well, except the thieves - I can certainly find some fault there)  Where I find fault is in policy (or lack thereof sometimes) that allows users to carry around private, and important, data with them.  Mr. Director of IT - It is your fault, not theirs.  Ms. CSO - Look in the mirror.It isn't like one can't find a network to access the data from.  You are on a network right now.  How many Wireless ones (wifi, mifi, cellular...) are there around you, right now?  Allowing employees to remove data from the confines of (wait for it... ) THE DATA CENTER is just plain indefensible when it isn't required.  The argument that the laptop had a password and the hard disk was encrypted is ridiculous.  An encrypted drive tells thieves that before they sell the stolen unit for $75, they should crack the encryption and ascertain what the REAL value of the laptop is... credit card info, Identity info, pricing lists, banking transactions... a veritable treasure trove of info people give away on an 'encrypted disk'.What started this latest rant on lack of data control was an article in Government Health IT that was forwarded to me by Denny Olson, an Oracle Principal Sales Consultant in Minnesota.  The full article is here, but the point was that a couple laptops went missing in a couple different cases, and.. well... no one knows where the data is, and yes - they were loaded with patient info.  What were you thinking?Obviously you can't steal data form a Sun Ray appliance... since it has no data, nor any storage to keep the data on, and Secure Global Desktop allows access from Macs, Linux and Windows client devices...  but in all cases, there is no keeping the data unless you explicitly allow for it in your policy.   Since you can get at the data securely from any network, why would you want to take personal responsibility for it?  Both Sun Rays and Secure Global Desktop are widely used in Healthcare... but clearly not widely enough.We need to do a better job of getting the message out -  Healthcare (or insert your business type here) and distributed data don't mix. Then add Hot Desking and 'follow me printing' and you have something that Clinicians (and CSOs) love.Thanks for putting up my blood pressure, Denny.

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• Playing HTML5 Video with fall back for IE8/IE7 and earlier versions of other browsers using Silverlight

  - by Harish Ranganathan

  One of the popular HTML5 tags is the video tag.  The ability to play videos without depending on a plugin is something that excites web developers to a great extent and no wonder you end up seeing video demos in all HTML5 conferences. Now, coming to HTML5 Video, the tag itself is simply <video id=”ID” src=”FILENAME.mp4/ogv/webm” > in the simplest form.  This also means that the video needs to be H.256 encoded MP4 format or some of the other formats as mentioned above.  For a detailed specification on this, check this Wikipedia article HTML5 video is supported by all the modern browsers such as IE9 (currently in RC stage), Mozilla Firefox 4 and Chrome latest versions.  Here below is a simple example of a HTML5 video tag and the screen shot of how it looks like in IE9 RC <!DOCTYPE html> <head></head> <body> <h1>This is a sample of an HTML5 Video</h1> <video src="video.mp4" id="myvideo">Your browser doesn’t support this currently</video> </body> </html> You can add attributes to the video tag such as “autoplay” which will automatically start playing the video.  Also, you can specify “poster” to display an initial picture before the video starts playing etc., but I am not going into those for now. This would play well in the modern browsers as mentioned above.  However, if the end users are viewing this page from an earlier version of browsers such as IE8/IE7 or IE6, this video wouldn’t play.  Whatever text that is specified between the video tags, would just show up. Note: for demo purposes, I went to the IE9 developer toolbar and chose IE8 as Browser Mode to exhibit this legacy behaviour.  However, in the interest of serving the larger community of users who visit the site, we would like to have a fall back mechanism for playing videos on older version of browsers. Now, Silverlight is supported in IE6/7 & 8 and other browsers too.  If we can have the same video encoded for Silverlight, we can put the fall-back code, as follows:- <video src="videos/video.mp4" id="myvideo">     <object height="252" type="application/x-silverlight-2" width="448">         <param name="source" value="resources/player.xap">         <param name="initParams" value="deferredLoad=true, duration=0, m=http://localhost/DemoSite/videos/video.mp4, autostart=false, autohide=true, showembed=true, postid=0" />         <param name="background" value="#00FFFFFF" />     </object> </video>   Note, this sample uses a Silverlight XAP file with the same video and uses the object tag to embed it instead of the HTML5 video tag. So, when I now run this sample and switch to IE8 (using the IE9 Developer toolbar’s Browser Mode), I get and when clicking on the “Play” icon, Note, there are multiple ways to play videos in Silverlight and this is one of the ways.  For a complete list of Silverlight samples, visit http://www.silverlight.net/learn/  Also, we can use Flash to play video in the fall-back mechanism as well. Thus, we can create a fall-back mechanism for playing HTML5 videos for the older browsers and hence ensure that the end users get to experience the same. Cheers !!!

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• Tech Ed/BI Conference 2010: A Recovering Industry in a Recovering City

  - by andrewbrust

  I tried writing a post for this blog last night, while at the this year’s Microsoft Tech Ed and Business Intelligence conferences, in New Orleans. But I literally fell asleep while writing it.  That’s probably a sign that my readers might have done the same while reading it. Why the writer’s block? This was a very good show for me, but I think I was having trouble figuring out exactly why.  Now that I’m on the flight home, I’m starting to piece it together. One reason, for sure, was that I’ve spent years in both the developer and the BI worlds, and a show that combined the two was really enjoyable for me.  Typically, the subject matter, the attendees, the Microsoft execs and managers, and even the social circles have been separate.  This year’s Tech Ed facilitated a fusion of each of these previously segregated groups.  That was good for me as a speaker; for example, I facilitated a Birds of a Feather session on PowerPivot (Microsoft’s new self-service BI offering) which was well-attended, and by a large number of non-BI pros.  The fusion was good for me as an attendee too, as Microsoft BI, in the form of a new Pivot Viewer control, made it into the Day 1 keynote, demoed by Microsoft’s key BI champion, Amir Netz.  And it was good for me socially, as I was able to meet with peers in both camps, and at one location. Speaking of meeting with industry colleagues, I did a lot of that at this show.  Probably for the first time ever, I carefully scheduled and conducted a series of meetings with friends and business acquaintances in the developer tools, data visualization, utilities, publishing and training areas of the Microsoft ecosystem.  Beside the time efficiencies in conducting so many meetings, I discovered another benefit. I got a real handle on the tech industry’s economic health. The news here is good.  First of all, 2010 has been a great year for just about everyone I spoke to.  The mood is positive, energy is high, and people are working really hard.  This is, of course, refreshing to see, and it’s a huge relief.  Add to that the fact that this year’s Tech Ed was about 2.5 times larger in headcount than last year’s (based on numbers from unofficial, but reliable, sources), and the economic prognosis seems excellent.  But there’s more to it than that. Here’s the thing: everyone I talked to seems to be working, and succeeding, at changing their business models to adapt to changes in the industry.  Whether it’s the Internet’s impact on publishing and training, the increased importance of the developer audience in South Asia, the shift of affordable developer and business talent to unfamiliar locales abroad, or even lapses in Microsoft’s performance in the market, partner companies aren’t just rolling with the punches; they’re welcoming the changes and working them to their advantage.  No one seemed downtrodden, or even fatigued.  Even for businesses who have seen core revenue streams become commoditized, everyone seems to be changing their market strategy and winning.  Even Microsoft, of whom I have been critical recently, showed signs of successful hard work and playbook change, in the maturing of their cloud strategy, their commitment to it and their excitement around it.  And the embedded, managed, self-service BI strategy that Microsoft has been touting looks like it’s already being embraced by customers, even though PowerPivot, and other new Microsoft BI products, were released only recently. The collective optimism I have witnessed, and that I have felt, tells me good things about this industry and the economy.  The stock market had huge mood swings during my stay, and that may yet subdue the industry recovery I have seen this week.  Nonetheless, I am convinced that a strong foundation of hard work, innovative thinking and, if I may,  true renaissance is underlying this industry’s success. That kind of strength will generate a strong recovery, I am certain, whether now or once we’re past another round of choppy weather in the broader economy.  The fundamentals are good.

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• Red Gate's on the road in 2012 - Will you catch us?

  - by RedAndTheCommunity

  Annabel Bradford, our Communities and Events Manager, tells all about her experience of our 1st SQL Saturday of the year. The first stop this year was SQL Saturday #104 Colorado Springs, back in early January. I made the trip across from the UK just for this SQL Saturday event, and I'm so glad I did. I picked up Max from Red Gate's Pasadena office and we flew into Colorado Springs airport late on Friday evening to be greeted by freezing temperatures, which was quite a shock after the California sunshine. Rising before the sun, we arrived at Mr Biggs, the venue for the event, in the darkness. It was great to see so many smiling attendees so bright and early on a Saturday morning. Everyone was eager to learn more about SQL Server, and hundreds of people came and chatted with us at the table, saw demos and learnt more about Red Gate tools. The event highlights for the attendees were definitely the unlimited lazer quest, bowling and pool available during the break times. For Max, Grant Fritchey and I on the Red Gate table, the highlights have to be meeting customers and getting the opportunity to meet attendees who'd heard of, but wanted to know more about, Red Gate. We were delighted to hear lots of valuable feedback that we took back to share with the team. As a thank you for sharing insights about their work lives and how they use SQL Server and Red Gate tools, attendees are able to take away Red Gate SQL Server books. We aim to have a range of titles available when we exhibit, so that attendees can choose a book that's going to be most interesting to them, and that they can use as a reference back at the office. Every time I meet a Red Gate user or a member of the SQL community, I'm always overwhelmed by the enthusiasm they have for their industry. Everyone who gives up their time to learn more about their job should be rewarded, and at Red Gate we like to do just that. Red Gate has long supported the SQL community through sponsorship to facilitate user group meetings and community events, but it's only though face-to-face contact that we really get a chance to see the impact of our support. I hope we'll have the chance to see you on the road at some point this year. We'll be at a range of events, including free SQL Saturdays, one day free events 'the Red Gate way', two-day Rallys, and full-week conferences. Next stop is SQL Saturday #109 Silicon Valley on March 3rd where you'll meet Jeff and Arneh, two of our US-based SQL team members. Be sure to ask them any questions you've got about the Red Gate tools, as these guys will be delighted to hear your questions, show you the options, and will make a note of your feedback to send through to the development team. Until the next time. Happy learning! Annabel                         Grant, Max and Annabel at SQL Saturday #104 Colorado Springs

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• T-SQL Tuesday - the swag

  - by Rob Farley

  This month’s T-SQL Tuesday is hosted by Kendal van Dyke (@SQLDBA), and is on the topic of swag. He asks about the best SQL Server swag that we’ve ever received from a conference. I can’t say I ever focus on getting the swag at conferences, as I see some people doing. I know there are plenty of people that get around all the sponsors as soon as they’ve arrived, collecting whatever goodies they can, sometimes as token gifts for those at home, sometimes as giveaways for the user groups they attend. I remember a few years ago at my first PASS Summit, the SQLCAT team gave me a large pile of leftover SQL Server swag to give away to my user group – piles of branded things to stop your phone sliding off your car dashboard, and other things. The user group members thought it was great, and over the course of a few months, happily cleared me out of it all. I tend to consider swag to be something that you haven’t earned except by being at a conference, and there was no winning associated with it, it was simply a giveaway item at a sponsor booth. That means I don’t include the HP Mini laptop that was given away at TechEd Australia a few years ago to every attendee, or the SQL Server bag and Camelbak bottle that I was given as a thank-you for writing a guest blog post (which I use as my regular laptop bag and water bottle for work). I don’t even include the copy of Midtown Madness that I got as a door prize at my vey first TechEd event in 1999 (that was a really good game, and even meant that when I went to Chicago last year, I felt a strange familiarity about the place). I don’t want to include shirts in the mix either. I was given a nice SQL Server shirt about five years ago TechEd Australia. It’s a business shirt (buttons, cuffs, pocket on the chest), black with the SQL Server logo on it. It was such a nice shirt that I commented about it to the Product Marketing Manager for Australia (Christine, at the time), who unexpectedly arranged for me to get another one. That was certainly an improvement on the tent I was given at one of the MVP conference I attended. So when I consider these ‘rules’, two pieces of swag come to mind, and I think both were at PASS Summits (although I can’t be sure). One was a hand-warmer from HP, one of the “crystallisation-type” ones, which proved extremely popular when I got home, until one day when it didn’t survive being recharged – not overly SQL related, but still it was good swag. The other was an umbrella, from expressor, which was from the PASS Summit in 2010, my first PASS Summit. I remember it well – Blythe Morrow (now Gietz) (@blythemorrow) was working the booth, having stopped working for PASS some time before, but she’d been on my list of people to meet, as I’d had plenty of contact with her while she’d worked at PASS, my being a chapter leader and general volunteer. There had been an expressor dinner on one of the first evenings, which I’d been asked to be at, which is when I’d met lots of SQL people in person for the first time, including Ted Krueger (@onpnt), Jessica Moss (@jessicamoss) and Blythe. Anyway, at some point the next day I swung by their booth to say hello and thank them for the dinner, and Blythe says “Oh, we have the best swag – here!” and handed me an umbrella. And she was right. It’s excellent. @rob_farley

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• Developer Profile: Marcelo Quinta

  - by Tori Wieldt

  As the Java developer community lead for Oracle, the best part of my job is going to conferences and meeting Java developers. I’ve had the pleasure to meet men and women who are smart, fun and passionate about Java—they make the Java community happen. The current issue of Java Magazine provides profiles of other young Java developers around the world. Subscribe to read them! Marcelo Quinta Age: 24Occupation: Professor, Federal University of GoiasLocation: Goias, Brazil Twitter: @mrquinta Marcelo (white polo shirt, center) and class OTN: When did you realize that you were good at programming? When I was in graduate school, I developed a Java system that displayed worked out the logics of getting the maximum coverage using the fewest resources (for example, the minimum number of soldiers [and positions] needed for a battlefield. It may seems not difficult, but it's a hard problem to solve, mathematically. Here I was, a freshman, who came up with an app  "solving" it. Some Master's students use my software today. It was then I began to believe in what I could do.OTN: What most inspires you about programming?I'm really inspired by the challenges and tension that comes from solving a complicated problems. Lately, I've been doing a new system focused on education and digital inclusion and was very gratifying to see it working and the results. I felt useful for the community. OTN: What are some things you would like to accomplish using Java?Java is a very strong platform and that gives us power to develop applications for different devices and purposes, from home automation with little microcontrollers to systems in big servers. I would like to build more systems that integrate the people life or different business contexts, from PCs to cell phones and tablets, ubiquitously. I think IT has reached a level where the current challenge is to make systems that leverage existing technologies that are present in daily life. Java gives us a very interesting set of options to put it into practice, especially in systems that require more strength.OTN: What technical insights into Java technology have been most important to you?I have really enjoyed the way that Java has evolved with Oracle, with new features added, many of them which were suggested by the community. Java 7 came with substantial improvements in the language syntax and it seems that Java 8 takes it even further. I also made some applications in JavaFX and liked the new version. The Java GUI is on a higher level than is offered out there. I saw some JavaFX prototypes running in modern tablets and I got excited. OTN: What would you like to be doing 10 years from now?I want my work to make a difference for individuals or an institution. It would be interesting to be improving one of the systems that I am making today. Recently I've been mixing my hobbies and work, playing with Arduino and home automation. The JHome project, winner of the Duke's Choice Award in 2011, is very interesting to me.OTN: Do you listen to music when you write code? If so, what kind?Absolutely! I usually listen to electronic music (Prodigy, Fatboy Slim and Paul Oakenfold), rock (Metallica, Strokes, The Black Keys) and a bit of local alternative music. I live in Goiânia, "The Brazilian Seattle" and I profit from it very well. OTN: What do you do when you're not programming?I like to play guitar and to fish. Last year I sold my economy car and bought a old jeep. Some people called me crazy, but since then I've been having a great time and having adventures on the backroads of Brazil. Once I broke my glasses in a funny game involving my car's suspension and the airbags. OTN: Does your girlfriend think you are crazy?Crazy is someone who doesn't have courage to do strange things! My girlfriend likes my style. =D Subscribe to the free Java Magazine to read profiles of other young Java developers. Visit the Java channel on YouTube to see a video of Marcelo in action.

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• UPK Hands-on Labs at OHUG

  - by Karen Rihs

  Going to OHUG, June 18-22? Be sure to attend one or more UPK hands-on labs! Choose from Basic, Advanced, What's New, and Prebuilt Content!   Oracle User Productivity Kit 11.1 Workshop – Basic Stephen Armbruster, Oracle Corporation June 19, 2012, 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. June 20, 2012, 4:30 – 5:30 p.m. The User Productivity Kit (UPK) is a comprehensive, cost-effective, customizable solution that helps your organization quickly create the critical documentation, training, and support materials needed to drive project team and user productivity throughout the lifecycle of your software. The User Productivity Kit provides system process documentation, user acceptance test scripts, comprehensive instructor-led training materials, web-based training materials, role-based performance support, and complete documentation. Also provided is the UPK Developer, which serves as a single-source development and customization tool to enable rapid content creation and customization. The User Productivity Kit delivers: Business process documentation for fit-gap analysis - providing time and cost savings that jump-start your implementation or upgrade User Acceptance test scripts to help test applications prior to go-live State-of-the-art instructional design tools to rapidly build and tailor documentation, instructor-led training materials, and web-based training to fit organizational needs Live-application performance support with transactional and procedural information to maximize user efficiency. By registering for this hands-on UPK workshop, participants will use UPK to build an application job aid and simulation that can be used as performance support for the application. But hurry, space is limited! Oracle User Productivity Kit 11.1 Workshop – Advanced Stephen Armbruster, Oracle Corporation June 20, 2012, 1:30 – 2:30 p.m. This special workshop is for those already familiar with UPK and will cover advanced concepts. In this workshop, you will gain an in-depth knowledge of working with the UPK Developer. Following this workshop, you will be able to: Create publishing categories Add a logo to a publishing project Publish using the newly created category Configure your own library view Manage topic history in a multi-user environment Oracle User Productivity Kit 11.1 Workshop – What’s NEW! Stephen Armbruster, Oracle Corporation June 19, 2012, 1:30 – 2:30 p.m. June 21, 2012, 1:00 – 2:00 p.m. This special workshop is for those already familiar with UPK and will focus on the new features included in the latest version 11.1. In this workshop, you will review most of the new features included in the UPK Developer. Oracle User Productivity Kit 11.1 Workshop – Prebuilt Content Stephen Armbruster, Oracle Corporation June 19, 2012, 4:30 – 5:30 p.m. June 21, 2012, 2:15 – 3:15 p.m. This special workshop is for those already familiar with UPK and will focus on the latest version 11.1. At the end of this workshop, you will be able to demonstrate how to: Import prebuilt content Modify content frames Add a decision frame Translate a topic into Spanish Stephen Armbruster is a principal sales consultant, specializing in HCM and UPK applications for Oracle over the past twelve years. In addition to his current role, he serves as an ambassador for the Fusion User Experience (UX) team and is tasked with evangelizing the UX for end users across all Oracle brands (Fusion, PSFT, JDE, and EBS).  He is also a trusted advisor to Oracle’s Product Management teams related to Learning Management Systems (LMS). Prior to joining Oracle, he was an instructor as well as an instructional technologist working in the medical diagnostics, high tech, and information management industries. As an expert in both LMS and UPK, he regularly speaks at Oracle conferences including Oracle OpenWorld and OHUG on topics that span using Oracle solutions to accomplish employee training, certification, and user adoption. His presentations are both entertaining and engaging.

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• T-SQL in Chicago – the LobsterPot teams with DataEducation

  - by Rob Farley

  In May, I’ll be in the US. I have board meetings for PASS at the SQLRally event in Dallas, and then I’m going to be spending a bit of time in Chicago. The big news is that while I’m in Chicago (May 14-16), I’m going to teach my “Advanced T-SQL Querying and Reporting: Building Effectiveness” course. This is a course that I’ve been teaching since the 2005 days, and have modified over time for 2008 and 2012. It’s very much my most popular course, and I love teaching it. Let me tell you why. For years, I wrote queries and thought I was good at it. I was a developer. I’d written a lot of C (and other, more fun languages like Prolog and Lisp) at university, and then got into the ‘real world’ and coded in VB, PL/SQL, and so on through to C#, and saw SQL (whichever database system it was) as just a way of getting the data back. I could write a query to return just about whatever data I wanted, and that was good. I was better at it than the people around me, and that helped. (It didn’t help my progression into management, then it just became a frustration, but for the most part, it was good to know that I was good at this particular thing.) But then I discovered the other side of querying – the execution plan. I started to learn about the translation from what I’d written into the plan, and this impacted my query-writing significantly. I look back at the queries I wrote before I understood this, and shudder. I wrote queries that were correct, but often a long way from effective. I’d done query tuning, but had largely done it without considering the plan, just inferring what indexes would help. This is not a performance-tuning course. It’s focused on the T-SQL that you read and write. But performance is a significant and recurring theme. Effective T-SQL has to be about performance – it’s the biggest way that a query becomes effective. There are other aspects too though – such as using constructs better. For example – I can write code that modifies data nicely, but if I haven’t learned about the MERGE statement and the way that it can impact things, I’m missing a few tricks. If you’re going to do this course, a good place to be is the situation I was in a few years before I wrote this course. You’re probably comfortable with writing T-SQL queries. You know how to make a SELECT statement do what you need it to, but feel there has to be a better way. You can write JOINs easily, and understand how to use LEFT JOIN to make sure you don’t filter out rows from the first table, but you’re coding blind. The first module I cover is on Query Execution. Take a look at the Course Outline at Data Education’s website. The first part of the first module is on the components of a SELECT statement (where I make you think harder about GROUP BY than you probably have before), but then we jump straight into Execution Plans. Some stuff on indexes is in there too, as is simplification and SARGability. Some of this is stuff that you may have heard me present on at conferences, but here you have me for three days straight. I’m sure you can imagine that we revisit these topics throughout the rest of the course as well, and you’d be right. In the second and third modules we look at a bunch of other aspects, including some of the T-SQL constructs that lots of people don’t know, and various other things that can help your T-SQL be, well, more effective. I’ve had quite a lot of people do this course and be itching to get back to work even on the first day. That’s not a comment about the jokes I tell, but because people want to look at the queries they run. LobsterPot Solutions is thrilled to be partnering with Data Education to bring this training to Chicago. Visit their website to register for the course. @rob_farley

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• When is your interview?

  - by Rob Farley

  Sometimes it’s tough to evaluate someone – to figure out if you think they’d be worth hiring. These days, since starting LobsterPot Solutions, I have my share of interviews, on both sides of the desk. Sometimes I’m checking out potential staff members; sometimes I’m persuading someone else to get us on board for a project. Regardless of who is on which side of the desk, we’re both checking each other out. The world is not how it was some years ago. I’m pretty sure that every time I walk into a room for an interview, I’ve searched for them online, and they’ve searched for me. I suspect they usually have the easier time finding me, although there are obviously other Rob Farleys in the world. They may have even checked out some of my presentations from conferences, read my blog posts, maybe even heard me tell jokes or sing. I know some people need me to explain who I am, but for the most part, I think they’ve done plenty of research long before I’ve walked in the room. I remember when this was different (as it could be for you still). I remember a time when I dealt with recruitment agents, looking for work. I remember sitting in rooms having been giving a test designed to find out if I knew my stuff or not, and then being pulled into interviews with managers who had to find out if I could communicate effectively. I’d need to explain who I was, what kind of person I was, what my value-system involved, and so on. I’m sure you understand what I’m getting at. (Oh, and in case you hadn’t realised, it’s a T-SQL Tuesday post, this month about interviews.) At TechEd Australia some years ago (either 2009 or 2010 – I forget which), I remember hearing a comment made during the ‘locknote’, the closing session. The presenter described a conversation he’d heard between two girls, discussing a guy that one of them had just started dating. The other girl expressed horror at the fact that her friend had met this guy in person, rather than through an online dating agency. The presenter pointed out that people realise that there’s a certain level of safety provided through the checks that those sites do. I’m not sure I completely trust this, but I’m sure it’s true for people’s technical profiles. If I interview someone, I hope they have a profile. I hope I can look at what they already know. I hope I can get samples of their work, and see how they communicate. I hope I can get a feel for their sense of humour. I hope I already know exactly what kind of person they are – their value system, their beliefs, their passions. Even their grammar. I can work out if the person is a good risk or not from who they are online. If they don’t have an online presence, then I don’t have this information, and the risk is higher. So if you’re interviewing with me, your interview started long before the conversation. I hope it started before I’d ever heard of you. I know the interview in which I’m being assessed started before I even knew there was a product called SQL Server. It’s reflected in what I write. It’s in the way I present. I have spent my life becoming me – so let’s talk! @rob_farley

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• Get Exchange Online Mailbox Size in GB

  - by Brian Jackett

  As mentioned in my previous post I was recently working with a customer to get started with Exchange Online PowerShell commandlets.  In this post I wanted to follow up and show one example of a difference in output from commandlets in Exchange 2010 on-premises vs. Exchange Online.   Problem    The customer was interested in getting the size of mailboxes in GB.  For Exchange on-premises this is fairly easy.  A fellow PFE Gary Siepser wrote an article explaining how to accomplish this (click here).  Note that Gary’s script will not work when remoting from a local machine that doesn’t have the Exchange object model installed.  A similar type of scenario exists if you are executing PowerShell against Exchange Online.  The data type for TotalItemSize  being returned (ByteQuantifiedSize) exists in the Exchange namespace.  If the PowerShell session doesn’t have access to that namespace (or hasn’t loaded it) PowerShell works with an approximation of that data type.    The customer found a sample script on this TechNet article that they attempted to use (minor edits by me to fit on page and remove references to deleted item size.)   Get-Mailbox -ResultSize Unlimited | Get-MailboxStatistics | Select DisplayName,StorageLimitStatus, ` @{name="TotalItemSize (MB)"; expression={[math]::Round( ` ($_.TotalItemSize.Split("(")[1].Split(" ")[0].Replace(",","")/1MB),2)}}, ` ItemCount | Sort "TotalItemSize (MB)" -Descending | Export-CSV "C:\My Documents\All Mailboxes.csv" -NoTypeInformation     The script is targeted to Exchange 2010 but fails for Exchange Online.  In Exchange Online when referencing the TotalItemSize property though it does not have a Split method which ultimately causes the script to fail.   Solution    A simple solution would be to add a call to the ToString method off of the TotalItemSize property (in bold on line 5 below).   Get-Mailbox -ResultSize Unlimited | Get-MailboxStatistics | Select DisplayName,StorageLimitStatus, ` @{name="TotalItemSize (MB)"; expression={[math]::Round( ` ($_.TotalItemSize.ToString().Split("(")[1].Split(" ")[0].Replace(",","")/1MB),2)}}, ` ItemCount | Sort "TotalItemSize (MB)" -Descending | Export-CSV "C:\My Documents\All Mailboxes.csv" -NoTypeInformation      This fixes the script to run but the numerous string replacements and splits are an eye sore to me.  I attempted to simplify the string manipulation with a regular expression (more info on regular expressions in PowerShell click here).  The result is a workable script that does one nice feature of adding a new member to the mailbox statistics called TotalItemSizeInBytes.  With this member you can then convert into any byte level (KB, MB, GB, etc.) that suits your needs.  You can download the full version of this script below (includes commands to connect to Exchange Online session). $UserMailboxStats = Get-Mailbox -RecipientTypeDetails UserMailbox ` -ResultSize Unlimited | Get-MailboxStatistics $UserMailboxStats | Add-Member -MemberType ScriptProperty -Name TotalItemSizeInBytes ` -Value {$this.TotalItemSize -replace "(.*\()|,| [a-z]*\)", ""} $UserMailboxStats | Select-Object DisplayName,@{Name="TotalItemSize (GB)"; ` Expression={[math]::Round($_.TotalItemSizeInBytes/1GB,2)}}   Conclusion    Moving from on-premises to the cloud with PowerShell (and PowerShell remoting in general) can sometimes present some new challenges due to what you have access to.  This means that you must always test your code / scripts.  I still believe that not having to physically RDP to a server is a huge gain over some of the small hurdles you may encounter during the transition.  Scripting is the future of administration and makes you more valuable.  Hopefully this script and the concepts presented help you be a better admin / developer.         -Frog Out     Links The Get-MailboxStatistics Cmdlet, the TotalitemSize Property, and that pesky little “b” http://blogs.technet.com/b/gary/archive/2010/02/20/the-get-mailboxstatistics-cmdlet-the-totalitemsize-property-and-that-pesky-little-b.aspx   View Mailbox Sizes and Mailbox Quotas Using Windows PowerShell http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/exchangelabshelp/gg576861#ViewAllMailboxes   Regular Expressions with Windows PowerShell http://www.regular-expressions.info/powershell.html   “I don’t always test my code…” image http://blogs.pinkelephant.com/images/uploads/conferences/I-dont-always-test-my-code-But-when-I-do-I-do-it-in-production.jpg   The One Thing: Brian Jackett and SharePoint 2010 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sg_h66HMP9o

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• Cutting-Edge Demos Coming to Collaborate12

  - by mvaughan

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} By Kathy Miedema, Oracle Applications User Experience Are you building your Collaborate 2012 agenda? Leave room for a stop at the demogrounds while you’re in Las Vegas from April 22-26. In addition to several presentations on the Oracle user experience, the Applications User Experience (UX) team will be on the demo grounds with a new eye-tracking tool, as well as demos that showcase new user experience designs. Check out our cutting-edge technology, which we use to obtain feedback that helps improve the user experience of Oracle applications, and see what our next-generation designs are in the HCM and FIN user experiences.  Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Photo by Martin Taylor – Oracle Applications User Experience An Apps UX team member demonstrates what happens during an eye-tracking test. The dots on the screen show were test participants were looking and how long they spent at each point in the page. The UX team will also be staffing an on-site lab at Collaborate. At on-site labs, conference participants can sign up to join customer feedback sessions on several different kinds of work flow designs, from HCM to FIN to CRM to mobile. The feedback UX team members collect helps inform and fine-tune the user experiences being designed for next-generation applications. At Collaborate12, for example, user experience designs around Help and organizational charts will be tested for usability. The Apps UX team brings on-site labs to many major user group conferences, including OpenWorld 2012 in October in San Francisco. Stay tuned to find out when our recruiters are ready to sign up participants, or leave a comment below to find out whether an on-site lab will be at your next conference. For information on the following presentations, which will be delivered by Apps UX team members, check the Usable Apps Events page. • The Fusion Applications User Experience: Transforming Work into Insight • Customizations Under the Covers – Making Fusion Applications Your Own • OAUG Fusion Middleware SIG (FMWSIG) • 18 Months with Fusion Applications – Stories From The Trenhes • PeopleTools Tips and Techniques

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• Dissing Architects, or "What's wrong with the coffee?"

  - by Bob Rhubart

  In my conversations with people in architect roles, tales of animosity, disrespect, and outright hostility aren't uncommon. And it's clear that in more than a few organizations architects regularly face a tough uphill climb. For architects with the requisite combination of technical, organizational, and people skills, that rough treatment is grossly undeserved. But tales of unqualified people in positions up and down the IT food chain are also easy to come by. So what's the other side of the architect story? Are some architects tarnishing the role and making life miserable for their more qualified colleagues? The various quotes included below were culled from a variety of sources. The criticism is harsh, and the people behind these quotes clearly have issues with architects. Still, whether based on mere opinion or actual experience, the comments shed some light on behaviors that should raise red flags for anyone pursuing a career as an architect. If you're an architect, and you've ever noticed that your coffee tastes like window cleaner, or your car is repeatedly keyed, or no one ever holds the elevator for you, maybe you need to do a little soul searching... Those Who Can, Code; Those Who Can't, Architect | Joe Winchester [May 18, 2007] "At the moment there seems to be an extremely unhealthy obsession in software with the concept of architecture. A colleague of mine, a recent graduate, told me he wished to become a software architect. He was drawn to the glamour of being able to come up with grandiose ideas - sweeping generalized designs, creating presentations to audiences of acronym addicts, writing esoteric academic papers, speaking at conferences attended by headless engineers on company expense accounts hungrily seeking out this year's grail, and creating e-mails with huge cc lists from people whose signature footer is more interesting than the content. I tried to re-orient him into actually doing some coding, to join a team that has a good product and keen users both of whom are pushing requirements forward, to no avail. Somehow the lure of being an architecture astronaut was too strong and I lost him to the dark side." Don't Let Architecture Astronauts Scare You | Joel Spolsky [April 21, 2001] "It's very hard to get them to write code or design programs, because they won't stop thinking about Architecture. They're astronauts because they are above the oxygen level, I don't know how they're breathing. They tend to work for really big companies that can afford to have lots of unproductive people with really advanced degrees that don't contribute to the bottom line. Remember that the architecture people are solving problems that they think they can solve, not problems which are useful to solve." Non Coding Architects Suck | Richard Henderson [May 24, 2010] "If a guy with a badge saying 'system architect' looks blank on low-level issues then he is not an architect, he is a business-analyst who went on a course. He will probably wax lyrical on all things high-level and 'important.' He will produce lovely object hierarchies without a clue to implementation. He will have a moustache and play golf." Architects Play Golf | Sunir Shah [August 15, 2012] "Often arrogant architects are difficult to get a hold of during the implementation phase because they no longer feel the need to stick around. Especially around midnight when most of the poor sob [sic] developers are still banging away. After all, they've already solved the problem--the rest is just an implementation exercise." Engineer vs Architect(Part of a discussion on the IT Architect Network Group on LinkedIn) "[An] architect spends his time producing white papers full of acronyms he does not understand but that impress his boss [while the] engineer keeps his head down and does the actual job." Architects Don't Code | [Author Unknown] "Faulty belief: System Architects don't need to code anymore. They know what they are talking about by virtue of the fact that they are System Architects."

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• Building a personal website using Silverlight.

  - by mbcrump

  I’ve always believed that as a developer you should always have a hobby project going on. I think a hobby project needs to contain at least one of following things: Something that you have never done before. Something that you are interested in. Something that you can work on in your spare time without affecting your *paying* job. I decided my hobby project would be an entire web application written in Silverlight that could be used as a self-promotion/marketing tool. This goal of the site is to provide information on the work that I’ve done to conferences, future employers and anyone else that wanted to learn more about me. Before I go any further, if you just want to check out the site then it is located at http://michaelcrump.info. So, what did I use to create it? MVVM Light – I’m a big fan of this software. The item and project templates plus code snippets make this a huge win for any SL/WPF/WP7 application. Jetpack Theme by Microsoft – I suck at designing so I used this template to help speed up this project. ComponentOne 3rd Party Controls – I have a license and really like several of their products. A User Control that Jeremy Likness created called DynamicXaml (used with his permission). I had created my own version of this a while back, but Jeremy’s implementation was simply better. Main Page – Designed to create my “brand”. This was built for a quick glimpse of who I am and what do I do.  Blog – The best marketing tool for a developer is their blog. I decided to go with an HTML page displaying my site and the user could pop into full-screen if desired. I also included my feed and Silverlight-Zone. (Another site I work on) Online – This page links to sites that I have been featured on as well as community involvement and awards. I also have a web service that I can update this information without re-compiling the Silverlight App. Projects – I’ve been wanting to use a CoverFlow for a really long time now. =) This page list several hobby projects as well as a few professional projects.  Resume Page – This page only exist because I got tired of sending companies my resume in e-mail. I can now provide a deep link to this page and the recruiter can print, search or save my resume. The PDF of my resume exist in a folder that I can easily update without recompiling the app. Contact Page – Just a contact page with a web service that sends the email. The Send button becomes disabled after a successful send. I thought of adding captcha to this page but in the end didn’t think it was worth it. Looking back at this app, I’m happy with how it turned out. I love Silverlight and I am already thinking of my next hobby project. (Thinking another Windows Phone 7 app or MVC3).  Subscribe to my feed

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• Talking JavaOne with Rock Star Kirk Pepperdine

  - by Janice J. Heiss

  Kirk Pepperdine is not only a JavaOne Rock Star but a Java Champion and a highly regarded expert in Java performance tuning who works as a consultant, educator, and author. He is the principal consultant at Kodewerk Ltd. He speaks frequently at conferences and co-authored the Ant Developer's Handbook. In the rapidly shifting world of information technology, Pepperdine, as much as anyone, keeps up with what's happening with Java performance tuning. Pepperdine will participate in the following sessions: CON5405 - Are Your Garbage Collection Logs Speaking to You? BOF6540 - Java Champions and JUG Leaders Meet Oracle Executives (with Jeff Genender, Mattias Karlsson, Henrik Stahl, Georges Saab) HOL6500 - Finding and Solving Java Deadlocks (with Heinz Kabutz, Ellen Kraffmiller Martijn Verburg, Jeff Genender, and Henri Tremblay) I asked him what technological changes need to be taken into account in performance tuning. “The volume of data we're dealing with just seems to be getting bigger and bigger all the time,” observed Pepperdine. “A couple of years ago you'd never think of needing a heap that was 64g, but today there are deployments where the heap has grown to 256g and tomorrow there are plans for heaps that are even larger. Dealing with all that data simply requires more horse power and some very specialized techniques. In some cases, teams are trying to push hardware to the breaking point. Under those conditions, you need to be very clever just to get things to work -- let alone to get them to be fast. We are very quickly moving from a world where everything happens in a transaction to one where if you were to even consider using a transaction, you've lost." When asked about the greatest misconceptions about performance tuning that he currently encounters, he said, “If you have a performance problem, you should start looking at code at the very least and for that extra step, whip out an execution profiler. I'm not going to say that I never use execution profilers or look at code. What I will say is that execution profilers are effective for a small subset of performance problems and code is literally the last thing you should look at.And what is the most exciting thing happening in the world of Java today? “Interesting question because so many people would say that nothing exciting is happening in Java. Some might be disappointed that a few features have slipped in terms of scheduling. But I'd disagree with the first group and I'm not so concerned about the slippage because I still see a lot of exciting things happening. First, lambda will finally be with us and with lambda will come better ways.” For JavaOne, he is proctoring for Heinz Kabutz's lab. “I'm actually looking forward to that more than I am to my own talk,” he remarked. “Heinz will be the third non-Sun/Oracle employee to present a lab and the first since Oracle began hosting JavaOne. He's got a great message. He's spent a ton of time making sure things are going to work, and we've got a great team of proctors to help out. After that, getting my talk done, the Java Champion's panel session and then kicking back and just meeting up and talking to some Java heads."Finally, what should Java developers know that they currently do not know? “’Write Once, Run Everywhere’ is a great slogan and Java has come closer to that dream than any other technology stack that I've used. That said, different hardware bits work differently and as hard as we try, the JVM can't hide all the differences. Plus, if we are to get good performance we need to work with our hardware and not against it. All this implies that Java developers need to know more about the hardware they are deploying to.” Originally published on blogs.oracle.com/javaone.

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• Sign up Today for User Feedback Sessions at Oracle OpenWorld and JavaOne 2012

  - by Lionel Dubreuil

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 You’re Invited to Sign Up for Oracle Usability Feedback Sessions SIGN UP TODAY to get the most from your conference experience by participating in a usability feedback session where your expertise will help Oracle develop outstanding products and solutions. The Oracle User Experience team is conducting a Usability Evaluation on publishing and accessing Oracle Enterprise Repository content when building SOA projects in JDeveloper. We are asking Developers and Architects who build or integrate applications using SOA Suite to take a look at the interaction between JDeveloper with the Enterprise Repository.  We are looking for feedback on the interaction between JDeveloper and Oracle Enterprise Repository so that we may improve the User Interface in a future release. The feedback sessions will be conducted during the Oracle OpenWorld and JavaOne Conferences, at the Intercontinental Hotel in San Francisco, CA. Sessions will last 1 hour and will be held on Monday, October 1 through Wednesday, October 3, 2012. This event fills up quickly, and space is limited. If you are interested in participating, please send an email to [email protected] with the following information: Identification Name: _________________________________ Company Name:  _________________________ Job Title: Email: Phone Number (work, mobile, include country code): Which conference are you attending? _____Oracle OpenWorld _____JavaOne Have you ever participated in usability activities with Oracle or any of its subsidiaries? ____Yes; specify __________________________________________________ ____No Are you currently using JDeveloper? ____Yes ; specify version(s): _______________________________ ____No How long have you used JDeveloper? ____ Less than 1 year ____ 1 - 2 years ____ 3 - 4 years ____ 4 + years Are you currently using SOA features in JDeveloper? ____Yes ____No How long have you used SOA features in JDeveloper? ____ Less than 1 year ____ 1 - 2 years ____ 3 - 4 years ____ 4 + years How often do you use SOA features in JDeveloper? ____ Daily ____ 2 - 3 times a week ____ Once a week  ____ Once a month or less Briefly describe the types of SOA tasks you use JDeveloper to perform: _____________________________________ _____________________________________ Please list your availability If you know your availability; please let me know which day you would prefer to participate, Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. Limited sessions are available on each day, and each session lasts 1 hour. Thank you for taking the time to complete this questionnaire.  It will help us match you to the best suited feedback session. Once we receive your email, we will contact you to set up a time and day for participation. You'll find more information about our on-site lab on the VoX (Voice of User Experience) blog, and on our Events page at Usable Apps. /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";}

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• On The Road with the HR Community

  - by Kathryn Perry

  A guest post by Steve Boese, Director, Talent Strategy, Oracle One of the best ways to connect with and to get a feel for what is on the minds of Human Resources leaders is to get out of the office and hit the road. I’ve had the great honor to attend and/or present at a number of events recently, including the massive SHRM Annual Conference, the HR Florida Conference, and Taleo World in Chicago. These events, and many others, offer solution providers, talent management professionals, business leaders, and even more casual observers of the Human Resources field with tremendous opportunities to connect, to share information, and to learn from each other. Attending the conferences also give people a sense of how they can improve and enhance their skills and knowledge, learn about the latest workforce technologies, and bring new and innovative ideas back to their organizations. And sure, the parties and conference swag can be pretty nice as well! If you attend a few of these industry events, one of the most beneficial by-products that you can emerge with -- whether you are on the front lines in HR at your organization, or as we are at Oracle, in the business of developing and delivering innovative and impactful technology solutions to our customers -- is to get a larger sense of the big ideas and major trends, concerns, and challenges facing organizations all across the landscape, and to be able to better understand how your strategies and solutions can be improved with this greater perspective. So what are HR folks discussing and debating? What questions and problems keep them up at night? What are the bloggers and large community of HR social media enthusiasts buzzing about? From my perspective some of the common themes you see over and again across the HR community break down (broadly), into three main areas: Talent attraction - How can we locate, attract, recruit, and hire the best talent possible? What new strategies, approaches, and technologies can help us in this critically important area? What role do external social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter play in the increasingly competitive search for talent? Talent Retention - How can we make sure to keep that talent on our team? What engagement, development, recognition, and compensation tools can help us in this regard? How can we continue, (or become), an employer of choice? What is our unique and compelling employer value proposition? Talent Empowerment - How can we put our employees in the best position to succeed? What can we do to better align our talent with the organization’s mission and goals, while simultaneously providing the best and most driven to succeed individuals a clear path to achieve their career goals and aspirations? How can new technologies, particularly social and collaboration tools help in this area? While these are the ‘big themes’ that I know I have seen this year, certainly they are not really new, nor are they likely to fundamentally change in the next year or two. I think the reason is that at the core of any successful enterprise is a collection of smart, interested, engaged, challenged, and empowered group of people. And that was likely the case 10 or 20 years ago, and will probably be the case 10 or 20 years into the future. But what has changed, and what you can see -- evidenced by simply following the Twitter backchannel for an event and by reading some of the many fantastic HR blogs out there -- is that the HR professional's ability, along with technology solution providers like Oracle, to connect, to more openly share information with each other, and to make each other better in the process, (and to create new, improved, and more innovative solutions), has never been greater. And I think it is with this heretofore unprecedented level of opportunity to connect with other members of the community that HR professionals will be better equipped to help their organizations attract, retain, and empower their teams. We at Oracle HCM look forward to continuing to meet, engage, and connect with the HR community in the coming months. Until then -- follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

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• It’s official – Red Gate is a great place to work!

  - by red@work

  At a glittering award ceremony last week, we found out that we’re officially the 14th best small company to work for in the whole of the UK! This is no mean feat, considering that about 1,000 companies enter the Sunday Times Top 100 best companies awards each year. Most of these are in the small companies category too. It's the fourth year in a row for us to be in the Top 100 list and we're tickled pink because the results are based on employee opinion. We’re particularly proud to be the best small company in Cambridge (in the whole of East Anglia, in fact) and the best small software development company in the entire UK. So how does it all work? Well, 90% of us took the time to answer over 70 questions on categories such as management, benefits, wellbeing, leadership, giving something back and what we think of Red Gate as a whole. It makes you think about every part of day to day working life and how you feel about it. Do you slightly or strongly agree or disagree that your manager motivates your to do your best every day, or that you have confidence in Red Gate's leaders, or that you’re not spending too much time working? It's great to see that we had one of the best scores in the country for the question "Do you think your company takes advantage of you?" We got particularly high scores for management, wellbeing and for giving something back too. A few of us got dressed up and headed to London for the awards; very excited about where we’d place but slightly nervous about having to get up on stage. There was a last minute hic up with a bow tie but the Managing Editor of the Sunday Times kindly stepped in to offer his assistance just before we had our official photo taken. We were nominated for two Special Recognition Awards. Despite not bringing them home this year, we're very proud to be nominated as there are only three nominations in each category. First we were up for the Training and Development award. Best Companies loved that we get together at lunchtimes to teach each other photography, cookery and French, as well as our book clubs and techie talks. And of course they liked our opportunities to go on training courses and to jet off to international conferences. Our other nomination was for the Wellbeing award. Best Companies loved our free food (and let’s face it, so do we). Porridge or bacon sandwiches for breakfast, a three course hot dinner, and free fruit and cereals all day long. If all that has an affect on the waistline then there are plenty of sporty activities for us all to get involved in, such as yoga, running or squash. Or if that’s not your thing then a relaxing massage helps us all to unwind every few months or so. The awards were hosted by news presenter Kate Silverton. She gave us a special mention during the ceremony for having great customer engagement as well as employee engagement, after we told her about Rodney Landrum (a Friend of Red Gate) tattooing our logo on his arm. We showed off our customised dinner jacket (thanks to Dom from Usability) with a flashing Red Gate logo on the back and she seemed suitability impressed. Back in the office the next day, we popped open the champagne and raised a glass to our success. Neil, our joint CEO, talked about how pleased he was with the award because it's based on the opinions of the people that count – us. You can read more about the Sunday Times awards here. By the way, we're still growing and are still hiring. If you’d like to keep up with our latest vacancies then why not follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/redgatecareers. Right now we're busy hiring in development, test, sales, product management, web development, and project management. Here's a link to our current job opportunities page – we'd love to hear from great people who are looking for a great place to work! After all, we're only great because of the people who work here. Post by: Alice Chapman

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• Rolling Along: PASS Board Year 2, Q2

  - by Denise McInerney

  Eighteen months into my time as a PASS Director I’m especially proud of what the Virtual Chapters have accomplished and want to share that progress with you. I'm also pleased that the organization has invested more resources to support the VCs. In this quarter I got to attend two conferences and meet more members of the SQL community. Virtual Chapters In the first six months of 2013 VCs have hosted more than 50 webinars, offering free technical education to over 6200 attendees. This is a great benefit to PASS members; thanks to the VC leaders, volunteers and speakers who contribute their time to produce these events. The Performance VC held their “Summer Performance Palooza”, an event featuring eight back-to-back sessions. Links to the session recordings can be found on the VCs web site. The new webinar platform, GoToWebinar, has been rolled out to all the VCs. This is a more stable, scalable platform and represents an important investment into the future of the VCs. A few new VCs are in the planning stages, including one focused on Security and one for Russian speakers. Visit the Virtual Chapter home page to sign up for the chapters that interest you. Each Virtual Chapter is offering a discount code for PASS Summit 2013. Be sure to ask your VC leader for the code to save $200 on Summit registration. 24 Hours of PASS The next 24HOP will be on July 31. This Summit Preview edition will feature 24 consecutive webcasts presented by experts who will be speaking at Summit in October. Registration for this free event is open now. And we will be using the GoToWebinar platform for 24HOP also. Business Analytics Conference April marked the first PASS Business Analytics Conference in Chicago. This introduced PASS to another segment of data professionals: the analysts and data scientists who work with the world’s growing collection of data. Overall the inaugural event was a success and gave us a glimpse into this increasingly important space. After Chicago the Board had several serious discussions about the lessons learned from this seven and what we should do next. We agreed to apply those lessons and continue to invest in this event; there will be a PASS Business Analytics Conference in 2014. I’m very pleased the next event will be in San Jose, CA, the heart of Silicon Valley, a place where a great deal of investment and innovation in data analytics is taking place. Global SQL Community Over the last couple of years PASS has been taking steps to become more relevant to SQL communities in different parts of the world. In May I had the opportunity to attend SQL Bits XI in Nottingham, England. It was enlightening to meet and talk with SQL professionals from around the U.K. as well as many other European countries. The many SQL Bits volunteers put on a great event and were gracious hosts. Budgets The Board passed the FY14 budget at the end of June. The  budget process can be challenging and requires the Board to make some difficult choices about where to allocate resources. Overall I’m satisfied with the decisions we made and think we are investing in the right activities and programs. Next Up The Board is meeting July 18-19 in Kansas City. We will be holding the Executive Committee election for the Exec Co that will take office in 2014. We will also be discussing plans for the next BA conference as well as the next steps for our Global Growth initiative. Applications for the upcoming Board of Directors election open on July 24. If you are considering running for the Board you can visit the PASS elections site to learn more about the election process. And I encourage anyone considering running to reach out to current and past Board members to learn about what the role entails. Plans for the next PASS Summit are in full swing. We are working on some fun new ideas to introduce attendees to the many ways to become involved in the SQL community.

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• Talking JavaOne with Rock Star Kirk Pepperdine

  - by Janice J. Heiss

  Kirk Pepperdine is not only a JavaOne Rock Star but a Java Champion and a highly regarded expert in Java performance tuning who works as a consultant, educator, and author. He is the principal consultant at Kodewerk Ltd. He speaks frequently at conferences and co-authored the Ant Developer's Handbook. In the rapidly shifting world of information technology, Pepperdine, as much as anyone, keeps up with what's happening with Java performance tuning. Pepperdine will participate in the following sessions: CON5405 - Are Your Garbage Collection Logs Speaking to You? BOF6540 - Java Champions and JUG Leaders Meet Oracle Executives (with Jeff Genender, Mattias Karlsson, Henrik Stahl, Georges Saab) HOL6500 - Finding and Solving Java Deadlocks (with Heinz Kabutz, Ellen Kraffmiller Martijn Verburg, Jeff Genender, and Henri Tremblay) I asked him what technological changes need to be taken into account in performance tuning. “The volume of data we're dealing with just seems to be getting bigger and bigger all the time,” observed Pepperdine. “A couple of years ago you'd never think of needing a heap that was 64g, but today there are deployments where the heap has grown to 256g and tomorrow there are plans for heaps that are even larger. Dealing with all that data simply requires more horse power and some very specialized techniques. In some cases, teams are trying to push hardware to the breaking point. Under those conditions, you need to be very clever just to get things to work -- let alone to get them to be fast. We are very quickly moving from a world where everything happens in a transaction to one where if you were to even consider using a transaction, you've lost." When asked about the greatest misconceptions about performance tuning that he currently encounters, he said, “If you have a performance problem, you should start looking at code at the very least and for that extra step, whip out an execution profiler. I'm not going to say that I never use execution profilers or look at code. What I will say is that execution profilers are effective for a small subset of performance problems and code is literally the last thing you should look at.And what is the most exciting thing happening in the world of Java today? “Interesting question because so many people would say that nothing exciting is happening in Java. Some might be disappointed that a few features have slipped in terms of scheduling. But I'd disagree with the first group and I'm not so concerned about the slippage because I still see a lot of exciting things happening. First, lambda will finally be with us and with lambda will come better ways.” For JavaOne, he is proctoring for Heinz Kabutz's lab. “I'm actually looking forward to that more than I am to my own talk,” he remarked. “Heinz will be the third non-Sun/Oracle employee to present a lab and the first since Oracle began hosting JavaOne. He's got a great message. He's spent a ton of time making sure things are going to work, and we've got a great team of proctors to help out. After that, getting my talk done, the Java Champion's panel session and then kicking back and just meeting up and talking to some Java heads."Finally, what should Java developers know that they currently do not know? “’Write Once, Run Everywhere’ is a great slogan and Java has come closer to that dream than any other technology stack that I've used. That said, different hardware bits work differently and as hard as we try, the JVM can't hide all the differences. Plus, if we are to get good performance we need to work with our hardware and not against it. All this implies that Java developers need to know more about the hardware they are deploying to.”

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• Do Great Work

  - by user12601034

  Have you ever attended an online conference and actually had a desire to attend all of it?? Yesterday I attended the first day of the Great Work MBA program, sponsored by Box of Crayons and hosted by Michael Bungay Stanier. The topic of the day was “Grounding Yourself,” and the day featured five speakers on five different topics. I have to admit that I started the first session with kind of a “blech” feeling that I didn’t really want to participate, but for some reason I did. So I listened to the first session, and I was hooked. I ended up listening to all of the sessions for the day, and I had some great take-aways from the sessions – my highlights included: The opposite of bravery isn’t fear, it’s settling. In essence, you need to be brave in order to accomplish anything. If you’re settling, you’re not being brave, and your accomplishments will likely be lackluster. Bravery requires confidence and permission. You need to work at being brave by taking small wins, build them up and then take slightly larger risks. Additionally, you need to “claim your own crown.” Nobody in the business world is going to give you permission to be a guru in X – you need to give yourself permission to become a guru in X and then do it. Fall in love with obstacles. Everyone is going to face some form of failure. One way to deal with this is to fall in love with solving the puzzle of obstacles. You don’t have to hit it if you can go around it. Understanding purpose brings out the best in people and the best people. As a leader, drawing in people who are passionate and highly motivated about their work creates velocity for your organization. Being clear about purpose is the first step in doing this. You must own your own story. Everything about you creates a “unique you” that is distinct from everyone else. As you take ownership of this, it becomes part of your strength. It’s not a strength if you’re running away from it. Focus on what’s right. Be aware of your tendency to interpret a situation a certain way and differentiate between helpful and unhelpful interpretations. Three questions for how to think differently: 1) Why? 2) Who says so? 3) What would happen if? These three questions can help you build alternative perspectives and options that can increase resiliency. Even though this first day was focused on “Grounding Yourself,” I see plenty of application in the corporate environment for both individuals and leaders of teams. To apply these highlights to my work environment, I would do the following: Understand the purpose – of my company, of my team and of my role on the team. If I know the purpose, I know what I need to bring to the table to make me, my team and my company successful. Declare your goals…your BEHAGS (big, hairy, audacious goals).Have the confidence to declare what you and/or your team is going to accomplish.Sure, you might have to re-state those goals down the line, but you can learn from that as well. Get creative about achieving your goals.Break down your obstacles by asking yourself what is going to stop you from achieving your goals and then, for each obstacles, ask those three questions:Why?Who says so? What would happen if? Focus on what’s right.I had a manager who asked us to write status reports every week.“Status” consisted of 1) What did I accomplish; 2) What will I accomplish next week; 3) How can my manager help me.The focus on our status report was always “what’s right”(“what’s wrong” was always a conversation at the point in time it was needed). I’m normally a skeptic of online webcasts/conferences, and I normally expect to take away maybe one or two ideas. I’m really glad, however, that I took the time to listen to all of the sessions yesterday, and I hope that my take-aways inspire you to think about how you might do great work also. --

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• Two Weeks To Go, Still Time to Register

  - by speakjava

  Yes, it's now only two weeks to the start of the 17th JavaOne conference! This will be my ninth JavaOne, I came fairly late to this event, attending for the first time in 2002.  Since then I've missed two conferences, 2006 for the birth of my son (a reasonable excuse I think) and 2010 for reasons we'll not go into here.  I have quite the collection of show devices, I've still got the WoWee robot, the HTC phone for JavaFX, the programmable pen and the Sharp Zaurus.  The only one I didn't keep was the homePod music player (I wonder why?) JavaOne is a special conference for many reasons, some of which I list here: A great opportunity to catch up on the latest changes in the Java world.  This is not just in terms of the platform, but as much about what people are doing with Java to build new and cool applications. A chance to meet people.  We have these things called BoFs, which stands for "Birds of a Feather", as in "Birds of a feather, flock together".  The idea being to have sessions where people who are interested in the same topic don't just get to listen to a presentation, but get to talk about it.  These sessions are great, but I find that JavaOne is as much about the people I meet in the corridors and the discussions I have there as it is about the sessions I get to attend. Think outside the box.  There are a lot of sessions at JavaOne covering the full gamut of Java technologies and applications.  Clearly going to sessions that relate to your area of interest is great, but attending some of the more esoteric sessions can often spark thoughts and stimulate the imagination to go off and do new and exciting things once you get back. Get the lowdown from the Java community.  Java is as much about community as anything else and there are plenty of events where you can get involved.  The GlassFish party is always popular and for Java Champions and JUG leaders there's a couple of special events too. Not just all hard work.  Oracle knows how to throw a party and the appreciation event will be a great opportunity to mingle with peers in a more relaxed environment.  This year Pearl Jam and Kings of Leon will be playing live.  Add free beer and what more could you want? So there you have it.  Just a few reasons for why you want to attend JavaOne this year.  Oh, and of course I'll be presenting three sessions which is even more reason to go.  As usual I've gone for some mainstream ("Custom Charts" for JavaFX) and some more 'out there' ("Java and the Raspberry Pi" and "Gestural Interfaces for JavaFX").  Once again I'll be providing plenty of demos so more than half my luggage this year will consist of a Kinect, robot arm, Raspberry Pis, gamepad and even an EEG sensor. If you're a student there's one even more attractive reason for going to JavaOne: It's Free! Registration is here.  Hope to see you there!

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• What Counts for a DBA: Skill

  - by drsql

  “Practice makes perfect:” right? Well, not exactly. The reality of it all is that this saying is an untrustworthy aphorism. I discovered this in my “younger” days when I was a passionate tennis player, practicing and playing 20+ hours a week. No matter what my passion level was, without some serious coaching (and perhaps a change in dietary habits), my skill level was never going to rise to a level where I could make any money at the sport that involved something other than selling tennis balls at a sporting goods store. My game may have improved with all that practice but I had too many bad practices to overcome. Practice by itself merely reinforces what we know and what we can figure out naturally. The truth is actually closer to the expression used by Vince Lombardi: “Perfect practice makes perfect.” So how do you get to become skilled as a DBA if practice alone isn’t sufficient? Hit the Internet and start searching for SQL training and you can find 100 different sites. There are also hundreds of blogs, magazines, books, conferences both onsite and virtual. But then how do you know who is good? Unfortunately often the worst guide can be to find out the experience level of the writer. Some of the best DBAs are frighteningly young, and some got their start back when databases were stored on stacks of paper with little holes in it. As a programmer, is it really so hard to understand normalization? Set based theory? Query optimization? Indexing and performance tuning? The biggest barrier often is previous knowledge, particularly programming skills cultivated before you get started with SQL. In the world of technology, it is pretty rare that a fresh programmer will gravitate to database programming. Database programming is very unsexy work, because without a UI all you have are a bunch of text strings that you could never impress anyone with. Newbies spend most of their time building UIs or apps with procedural code in C# or VB scoring obvious interesting wins. Making matters worse is that SQL programming requires mastery of a much different toolset than most any mainstream programming skill. Instead of controlling everything yourself, most of the really difficult work is done by the internals of the engine (written by other non-relational programmers…we just can’t get away from them.) So is there a golden road to achieving a high skill level? Sadly, with tennis, I am pretty sure I’ll never discover it. However, with programming it seems to boil down to practice in applying the appropriate techniques for whatever type of programming you are doing. Can a C# programmer build a great database? As long as they don’t treat SQL like C#, absolutely. Same goes for a DBA writing C# code. None of this stuff is rocket science, as long as you learn to understand that different types of programming require different skill sets and you as a programmer must recognize the difference between one of the procedural languages and SQL and treat them differently. Skill comes from practicing doing things the right way and making “right” a habit.

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• Understanding the Value of SOA

  - by Mala Narasimharajan

  Written By: Debra Lilley, ACE Director, Fusion Applications Again I want to talk from my area of expertise of Fusion Applications and talk about their design fundamentals. If you look at the table below and start at the bottom Oracle have defined all of the business objects e.g. accounts, people, customers, invoices etc. used by Fusion Applications; each of these objects contain all of the information required and can be expanded if necessary.  That Oracle have created for each of these business objects every action that is needed for the applications e.g. all the actions to create a new customer, checking to see if it exists, credit checking with D&B (Dun & Bradstreet < http://www.dnb.co.uk/> ) , creating the record, notifying those required etc. Each of these actions is a stand-alone web service. Again you can create a new actions or subscribe to an external provided web service e.g. the D&B check. The diagram also shows that all of development of Fusion Applications is from their Fusion Middleware offerings. Then the Intelligent Business Process is the order in which you run these actions, this is Service Orientated Architecture, SOA. Not only is SOA used to orchestrate actions within Fusion Applications it is also used in the integration of Fusion Applications with the rest of the Oracle stable of applications such as EBS, PeopleSoft, JDE and Siebel. The other applications are written with propriety development tools so how do they work with SOA? It’s a very simple answer, with the introduction of the Oracle SOA platform each process within these applications was made available to be called as a web service. I won’t go into technically how that is done but what’s known as a wrapper to allow each of them to act in this way was added. Finally at the top of the diagram are the questions that each Fusion Application process must answer, and this is the ‘special’ sauce that makes them so good, the User Experience, but that is a topic for another day, or you can read about it in my blog http://debrasoracle.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/going-on-record-about-fusion-apps-cloud.html or Oracle’s own UX blog https://blogs.oracle.com/usableapps/ The concept behind AppAdvantage is not new the idea that Oracle technology can add value to your Oracle applications investments is pretty fundamental. Nishit Rao who is in AppAdvantage team provided myself and other ACE Directors with demo kits so that we could demonstrate SOA running with the applications. The example I learnt to build was that of the EBS inventory open interface. The simple concept is that request records can be added to a table and an import run that creates these as transactions in inventory. What’s SOA allows you to do is to add to the table from any source and then run this process automatically whereas traditionally you had to run the process at regular intervals because you didn’t know if the table was empty or not. This may just sound like a different way of doing the same thing but if the process is critical for your business then the interval was very small and the process run potentially many times unnecessarily. Using SOA it only happened when necessary without any delay. So in my post today I’ve talked about how SOA is used with Fusion Applications and in the linking with more traditional applications but that is only the tip of the iceberg of potential, your applications are just part of your IT systems and SOA can orchestrate your data across all of them; the beauty of open standards.  Debra Lilley, Fusion Champion, UKOUG Board Member, Fusion User Experience Advocate and ACE Director.  Lilley has 18 years experience with Oracle Applications, with E Business Suite since 9.4.1, moving to Business Intelligence Team Lead and Oracle Alliance Director. She has spoken at over 100 conferences worldwide and posts at debrasoraclethoughts

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• New Product: Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 – Small, Smart, Connected

  - by terrencebarr

  The Internet of Things (IoT) is coming. And, with todays launch of the Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 product, Java is going to play an even greater role in it. Java in the Internet of Things By all accounts, intelligent embedded devices are penetrating the world around us – driving industrial processes, monitoring environmental conditions, providing better health care, analyzing and processing data, and much more. And these devices are becoming increasingly connected, adding another dimension of utility. Welcome to the Internet of Things. As I blogged yesterday, this is a huge opportunity for the Java technology and ecosystem. To enable and utilize these billions of devices effectively you need a programming model, tools, and protocols which provide a feature-rich, consistent, scalable, manageable, and interoperable platform.  Java technology is ideally suited to address these technical and business problems, enabling you eliminate many of the typical challenges in designing embedded solutions. By using Java you can focus on building smarter, more valuable embedded solutions faster. To wit, Java technology is already powering around 10 billion devices worldwide. Delivering on this vision and accelerating the growth of embedded Java solutions, Oracle is today announcing a brand-new product: Oracle Java Micro Edition (ME) Embedded 3.2, accompanied by an update release of the Java ME Software Development Kit (SDK) to version 3.2. What is Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2? Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 is a complete Java runtime client, optimized for ARM architecture connected microcontrollers and other resource-constrained systems. The product provides dedicated embedded functionality and is targeted for low-power, limited memory devices requiring support for a range of network services and I/O interfaces.  What features and APIs are provided by Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2? Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 is a Java ME runtime based on CLDC 1.1 (JSR-139) and IMP-NG (JSR-228). The runtime and virtual machine (VM) are highly optimized for embedded use. Also included in the product are the following optional JSRs and Oracle APIs: File I/O API’s (JSR-75)  Wireless Messaging API’s (JSR-120) Web Services (JSR-172) Security and Trust Services subset (JSR-177) Location API’s (JSR-179) XML API’s (JSR-280)  Device Access API Application Management System (AMS) API AccessPoint API Logging API Additional embedded features are: Remote application management system Support for continuous 24×7 operation Application monitoring, auto-start, and system recovery Application access to peripheral interfaces such as GPIO, I2C, SPIO, memory mapped I/O Application level logging framework, including option for remote logging Headless on-device debugging – source level Java application debugging over IP Connection Remote configuration of the Java VM What type of platforms are targeted by Oracle Java ME 3.2 Embedded? The product is designed for embedded, always-on, resource-constrained, headless (no graphics/no UI), connected (wired or wireless) devices with a variety of peripheral I/O.  The high-level system requirements are as follows: System based on ARM architecture SOCs Memory footprint (approximate) from 130 KB RAM/350KB ROM (for a minimal, customized configuration) to 700 KB RAM/1500 KB ROM (for the full, standard configuration)  Very simple embedded kernel, or a more capable embedded OS/RTOS At least one type of network connection (wired or wireless) The initial release of the product is delivered as a device emulation environment for x86/Windows desktop computers, integrated with the Java ME SDK 3.2. A standard binary of Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 for ARM KEIL development boards based on ARM Cortex M-3/4 (KEIL MCBSTM32F200 using ST Micro SOC STM32F207IG) will soon be available for download from the Oracle Technology Network (OTN).  What types of applications can I develop with Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2? The Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 product is a full-featured embedded Java runtime supporting applications based on the IMP-NG application model, which is derived from the well-known MIDP 2 application model. The runtime supports execution of multiple concurrent applications, remote application management, versatile connectivity, and a rich set of APIs and features relevant for embedded use cases, including the ability to interact with peripheral I/O directly from Java applications. This rich feature set, coupled with familiar and best-in class software development tools, allows developers to quickly build and deploy sophisticated embedded solutions for a wide range of use cases. Target markets well supported by Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 include wireless modules for M2M, industrial and building control, smart grid infrastructure, home automation, and environmental sensors and tracking. What tools are available for embedded application development for Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2? Along with the release of Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2, Oracle is also making available an updated version of the Java ME Software Development Kit (SDK), together with plug-ins for the NetBeans and Eclipse IDEs, to deliver a complete development environment for embedded application development.  OK – sounds great! Where can I find out more? And how do I get started? There is a complete set of information, data sheet, API documentation, “Getting Started Guide”, FAQ, and download links available: For an overview of Oracle Embeddable Java, see here. For the Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 press release, see here. For the Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 data sheet, see here. For the Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 landing page, see here. For the Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 documentation page, including a “Getting Started Guide” and FAQ, see here. For the Oracle Java ME SDK 3.2 landing and download page, see here. Finally, to ask more questions, please see the OTN “Java ME Embedded” forum To get started, grab the “Getting Started Guide” and download the Java ME SDK 3.2, which includes the Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 device emulation.  Can I learn more about Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 at JavaOne and/or Java Embedded @ JavaOne? Glad you asked Both conferences, JavaOne and Java Embedded @ JavaOne, will feature a host of content and information around the new Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 product, from technical and business sessions, to hands-on tutorials, and demos. Stay tuned, I will post details shortly. Cheers, – Terrence Filed under: Mobile & Embedded Tagged: "Oracle Java ME Embedded", Connected, embedded, Embedded Java, Java Embedded @ JavaOne, JavaOne, Smart

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• SQLAuthority News – Don’t Be Afraid To Fool The World – Video by John Sonmez

  - by Pinal Dave

  Sometime some words and statements grabs your attention and it is hard to stop thinking about that after a while. Something similar happened a few days ago when I read the twitter statement of my friend and Pluralsight author John Sonmez. He twitted few days ago very interesting statement. “I don’t know a single successful person, who doesn’t deep down think that have the world fooled. #fooltheworld” by John Sonmez. When I read it, I was extremely intrigued by this statement. I read it many times, I shared with my family and I just could not stop interpreting this statement. It was indeed fun to read it again and again and there are so many different meanings one can take away from the statement. I know John very well, he is a  wonderful person and have very positive energy for the life. I just had to request him to build a video around it. Right after 5 days of my request, John created a wonderful video around this subject. I watched it multiple times as it was a wonderful video. I am not going to write about what was in the video much as I suggest you to watch the video itself. Here is one of the personal stories I want to share which is absolutely relevant to this video. I think my story 100% resonant the story of John. A Real Story from My Past Three years ago, I submitted a session in one of the SharePoint conference as a SQL Server session. My session was accepted and I prepared it very well. I put more than 2 month’s time to prepare for the session and I was very excited to present the session. I reached to the event place traveling thousands of the miles and I was very much excited to present the session. However, there was a little mixed up in the session. There were multiple session which were similar to my session title. One of the other speakers also had proposed a database related session and was selected. When the material went to print the printing team got confused and by mistake swapped the sessions. The other speaker got Performance with SQL Server session and I had received Performance with SharePoint session. IT was indeed a big mixed up but now that is how it was in the event guide and it was marketed the same way everything in the event. A Big Mix Up I had to talk with the event organizer and we come to the conclusion that we all had good intention but things just got mixed up and now was the time when “The show must go on“. I had a great amount of hesitation to go and present the session as I had personally never worked with Sharepoint so close in my life and my session abstracted talked about SharePoint tricks in depth. Two hours before the session I took the help of one of my friend and installed the SharePoint on my box. He showed me a few things here and there but it was never a good enough time to learn everything which I wanted to learn. The Moments of Confidence I was very scared and nervous to go on the stage as a SharePoint was not something I felt comfortable. However, I decided to go on stage with confidence as a SharePoint expert. Though I did not know SharePoint at the best, I had confidence that whatever I know is correct and I will not misguide people. I had no intention to fool people but I had no intention to accept that I am a fool and you all wasted your time and money to dedicate your time to attend my session. I decided to be honest but at the same time decided to take the session beyond my expertise. The sixty minutes of the session went very fine and I was able to manage all the difficult question at a satisfactory level. When the session was over my feeling was that I would have not presented or talked any different if I had more knowledge of the SharePoint at that time. I think it was one of my best sessions and it was reflected in the session feedback as well. I was the best speaker across all the track and my session had highest ranking. I was delighted and I learned a very valuable lesson. I must go beyond my limits and knowledge. I must aim higher and work harder. I should not lie but I should have confidence that I have a good heart and I put 100% in my efforts.  Lessions Learned Since this incident I have learned a lot about SharePoint and I am now a regular speaker at various SharePoint conferences along with SQL Server sessions. I am motivated and I am not afraid. I know people have lots of expectation from me but I have learned not to judge myself before I do my best. I leave the judgement of my efforts to my audience. I do not take the burden of the feedback on me, even though I know my audience have expected from me. I know what I know and I put my best. I must go out, if I fail, I learn from my mistake but I must keep my progress trajectory very high. As John said in the video, sometime success is not something we can achieve 100% but we can keep on going near to it. As long as we do not lose our focus from our goal and do not deviate from our progress path, we are doing things right. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)  Filed under: About Me, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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