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Release 17 is here!

- by Cheryl

Our training development team has been busy updating courses to keep pace with the new release of CRM On Demand. Release 17 is here! And I heard recently that it's one of our biggest releases ever. A lot of new features and functionality for you to take advantage of - too much for me to cover in this blog post. But, I thought I'd tell you about a few of my favorites - be sure to take a look at the What's New in Release 17 recording to see the full list, though...because I'm only going to touch on a few. Create your own look - okay, I'm starting with the fun stuff. But, there is a new customizable themes feature so that you can change the look of the application; colors, logo, the shape of the tabs. And it's really easy. There's also a whole new library of ready-made themes for you to pick from if you just want to go with one of those. Use this new feature to match the look of your company logo and color scheme. Or blaze new trails. You can create the look for the whole company, or a different look for each CRM On Demand role. This might especially come in handy if you're using the Partner Relationship Management (PRM) capabilities of CRM On Demand - you can create themes for your partner-facing roles to provide branded partner portals. Speaking of PRM - there are enhancements in this release to help companies better manage their partner relationships. A new Deal Registration object, which is separate from the Opportunity record, and better Special Pricing Request and Marketing Development Fund Request processes, give a lot more flexibility in how companies can build and manage their relationships with partners. Some new options for Forecasts in in Release 17, too. You can now have more than one type of forecast generated each forecast period. For example, you might need to see a forecast of the total opportunity revenue for your sales team, as well as on that breaks down revenue by product. The forecast definition now lets you do that. Other options allow you to make submitting forecasts easier, split opportunity revenue across the team and forecast that split appropriately. And - look for the new Forecast subject area in Answers, for building custom forecast reports. Ever wish you could use Workflow Rules to automatically reassign leads if they haven't been followed up on...or to email a manager if the status of a service request isn't changed after a specified period of time? Then check out the new Wait action for workflows. I think you'll be happy. Ok, enough for today. There is a lot to Release 17 that I didn't mention - a lot has been added for our Life Science industry edition, some new data visibility options, a new Data Loader tool, and more. Stay tuned for more blog posts about these and other Release 17 features in the coming weeks. In the meantime, don't forget about all of the resources we have for you to learn more (see my Learning About Release 17 blog post for details).

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Simple task framework - building software from reusable pieces

- by RuslanD

I'm writing a web service with several APIs, and they will be sharing some of the implementation code. In order not to copy-paste, I would like to ideally implement each API call as a series of tasks, which are executed in a sequence determined by the business logic. One obvious question is whether that's the best strategy for code reuse, or whether I can look at it in a different way. But assuming I want to go with tasks, several issues arise: What's a good task interface to use? How do I pass data computed in one task to another task in the sequence that might need it? In the past, I've worked with task interfaces like: interface Task<T, U> { U execute(T input); } Then I also had sort of a "task context" object which had getters and setters for any kind of data my tasks needed to produce or consume, and it gets passed to all tasks. I'm aware that this suffers from a host of problems. So I wanted to figure out a better way to implement it this time around. My current idea is to have a TaskContext object which is a type-safe heterogeneous container (as described in Effective Java). Each task can ask for an item from this container (task input), or add an item to the container (task output). That way, tasks don't need to know about each other directly, and I don't have to write a class with dozens of methods for each data item. There are, however, several drawbacks: Each item in this TaskContext container should be a complex type that wraps around the actual item data. If task A uses a String for some purpose, and task B uses a String for something entirely different, then just storing a mapping between String.class and some object doesn't work for both tasks. The other reason is that I can't use that kind of container for generic collections directly, so they need to be wrapped in another object. This means that, based on how many tasks I define, I would need to also define a number of classes for the task items that may be consumed or produced, which may lead to code bloat and duplication. For instance, if a task takes some Long value as input and produces another Long value as output, I would have to have two classes that simply wrap around a Long, which IMO can spiral out of control pretty quickly as the codebase evolves. I briefly looked at workflow engine libraries, but they kind of seem like a heavy hammer for this particular nail. How would you go about writing a simple task framework with the following requirements: Tasks should be as self-contained as possible, so they can be composed in different ways to create different workflows. That being said, some tasks may perform expensive computations that are prerequisites for other tasks. We want to have a way of storing the results of intermediate computations done by tasks so that other tasks can use those results for free. The task framework should be light, i.e. growing the code doesn't involve introducing many new types just to plug into the framework.

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MySQL and Hadoop Integration - Unlocking New Insight

- by Mat Keep

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

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Real-time Big Data Analytics is a reality for StubHub with Oracle Advanced Analytics

- by Mark Hornick

What can you use for a comprehensive platform for real-time analytics? How can you process big data volumes for near-real-time recommendations and dramatically reduce fraud? Learn in this video what Stubhub achieved with Oracle R Enterprise from the Oracle Advanced Analytics option to Oracle Database, and read more on their story here. Advanced analytics solutions that impact the bottom line of a business are challenging due to the range of skills and individuals involved in realizing such solutions. While we hear a lot about the role of the data scientist, that role is but one piece of the puzzle. Advanced analytics solutions also have an operationalization aspect that also requires close proximity to where the transactional activity occurs. The data scientist needs access to the right data with which to model the business problem. This involves IT for data collection, management, and administration, as well as ensuring zero downtime (a website needs to be up 24x7). This also involves working with the data scientist to keep predictive models refreshed with the latest scripts. Integrating advanced analytics solutions into enterprise apps involves not just generating predictions, but supporting the whole life-cycle from data collection, to model building, model assessment, and then outcome assessment and feedback to the model building process again. Application and web interface designers need to take into account how end users will see and use the advanced analytics results, e.g., supporting operations staff that need to handle the potentially fraudulent transactions. As just described, advanced analytics projects can be "complicated" from just a human perspective. The extent to which software can simplify the interactions among users and systems will increase the likelihood of project success. The ability to quickly operationalize advanced analytics projects and demonstrate measurable value, means the difference between a successful project and just a nice research report. By standardizing on Oracle Database and SQL invocation of R, along with in-database modeling as found in Oracle Advanced Analytics, expedient model deployment and zero downtime for refreshing models becomes a reality. Meanwhile, data scientists are also able to explore leading edge techniques available in open source. The Oracle solution propels the entire organization forward to realize the value of advanced analytics.

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SharePoint 2010 Hosting :: Setting Default Column Values on a Folder Programmatically

- by mbridge

The reason I write this post today is because my initial searches on the Internet provided me with nothing on the topic. I was hoping to find a reference to the SDK but I didn’t have any luck. What I want to do is set a default column value on an existing folder so that new items in that folder automatically inherit that value. It’s actually pretty easy to do once you know what the class is called in the API. I did some digging and discovered that class is MetadataDefaults. It can be found in Microsoft.Office.DocumentManagement.dll. Note: if you can’t find it in the GAC, this DLL is in the 14/CONFIG/BIN folder and not the 14/ISAPI folder. Add a reference to this DLL in your project. In my case, I am building a console application, but you might put this in an event receiver or workflow. In my example today, I have simple custom folder and document content types. I have one shared site column called DocumentType. I have a document library which each of these content types registered. In my document library, I have a folder named Test and I want to set its default column values using code. Here is what it looks like. Start by getting a reference to the list in question. This assumes you already have a SPWeb object. In my case I have created it and it is called site. SPList customDocumentLibrary = site.Lists["CustomDocuments"]; You then pass the SPList object to the MetadataDefaults constructor. MetadataDefaults columnDefaults = new MetadataDefaults(customDocumentLibrary); Now I just need to get my SPFolder object in question and pass it to the meethod SetFieldDefault. This takes a SPFolder object, a string with the name of the SPField to set the default on, and finally the value of the default (in my case “Memo”). SPFolder testFolder = customDocumentLibrary.RootFolder.SubFolders["Test"]; columnDefaults.SetFieldDefault(testFolder, "DocumentType", "Memo"); You can set multiple defaults here. When you’re done, you will need to call .Update(). columnDefaults.Update(); Here is what it all looks like together. using (SPSite siteCollection = new SPSite("http://sp2010/sites/ECMSource")) { using (SPWeb site = siteCollection.OpenWeb()) { SPList customDocumentLibrary = site.Lists["CustomDocuments"]; MetadataDefaults columnDefaults = new MetadataDefaults(customDocumentLibrary); SPFolder testFolder = customDocumentLibrary.RootFolder.SubFolders["Test"]; columnDefaults.SetFieldDefault(testFolder, "DocumentType", "Memo"); columnDefaults.Update(); } } You can verify that your property was set correctly on the Change Default Column Values page in your list This is something that I could see used a lot on an ItemEventReceiver attached to a folder to do metadata inheritance. Whenever, the user changed the value of the folder’s property, you could have it update the default. Your code might look something columnDefaults.SetFieldDefault(properties.ListItem.Folder, "MyField", properties.ListItem[" This is a great way to keep the child items updated any time the value a folder’s property changes. I’m also wondering if this can be done via CAML. I tried saving a site template, but after importing I got an error on the default values page. I’ll keep looking and let you know what I find out.

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LexisNexis and Oracle Join Forces to Prevent Fraud and Identity Abuse

- by Tanu Sood

Author: Mark Karlstrand About the Writer:Mark Karlstrand is a Senior Product Manager at Oracle focused on innovative security for enterprise web and mobile applications. Over the last sixteen years Mark has served as director in a number of tech startups before joining Oracle in 2007. Working with a team of talented architects and engineers Mark developed Oracle Adaptive Access Manager, a best of breed access security solution.The world’s top enterprise software company and the world leader in data driven solutions have teamed up to provide a new integrated security solution to prevent fraud and misuse of identities. LexisNexis Risk Solutions, a Gold level member of Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN), today announced it has achieved Oracle Validated Integration of its Instant Authenticate product with Oracle Identity Management.Oracle provides the most complete Identity and Access Management platform. The only identity management provider to offer advanced capabilities including device fingerprinting, location intelligence, real-time risk analysis, context-aware authentication and authorization makes the Oracle offering unique in the industry. LexisNexis Risk Solutions provides the industry leading Instant Authenticate dynamic knowledge based authentication (KBA) service which offers customers a secure and cost effective means to authenticate new user or prove authentication for password resets, lockouts and such scenarios. Oracle and LexisNexis now offer an integrated solution that combines the power of the most advanced identity management platform and superior data driven user authentication to stop identity fraud in its tracks and, in turn, offer significant operational cost savings. The solution offers the ability to challenge users with dynamic knowledge based authentication based on the risk of an access request or transaction thereby offering an additional level to other authentication methods such as static challenge questions or one-time password when needed. For example, with Oracle Identity Management self-service, the forgotten password reset workflow utilizes advanced capabilities including device fingerprinting, location intelligence, risk analysis and one-time password (OTP) via short message service (SMS) to secure this sensitive flow. Even when a user has lost or misplaced his/her mobile phone and, therefore, cannot receive the SMS, the new integrated solution eliminates the need to contact the help desk. The Oracle Identity Management platform dynamically switches to use the LexisNexis Instant Authenticate service for authentication if the user is not able to authenticate via OTP. The advanced Oracle and LexisNexis integrated solution, thus, both improves user experience and saves money by avoiding unnecessary help desk calls. Oracle Identity and Access Management secures applications, Juniper SSL VPN and other web resources with a thoroughly modern layered and context-aware platform. Users don't gain access just because they happen to have a valid username and password. An enterprise utilizing the Oracle solution has the ability to predicate access based on the specific context of the current situation. The device, location, temporal data, and any number of other attributes are evaluated in real-time to determine the specific risk at that moment. If the risk is elevated a user can be challenged for additional authentication, refused access or allowed access with limited privileges. The LexisNexis Instant Authenticate dynamic KBA service plugs into the Oracle platform to provide an additional layer of security by validating a user's identity in high risk access or transactions. The large and varied pool of data the LexisNexis solution utilizes to quiz a user makes this challenge mechanism even more robust. This strong combination of Oracle and LexisNexis user authentication capabilities greatly mitigates the risk of exposing sensitive applications and services on the Internet which helps an enterprise grow their business with confidence.Resources:Press release: LexisNexis® Achieves Oracle Validated Integration with Oracle Identity Management Oracle Access Management (HTML)Oracle Adaptive Access Manager (pdf)

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ETPM Environment Health Monitoring Tools

- by Paula Speranza-Hadley

This post is to provide some useful information about the tools typically used by Oracle ETPM implementations for performance tuning and analysis. This includes tools to monitor and gather performance information and statistics on the Database, Application Server, and Client (browser). Enterprise Monitoring Tools Oracle Enterprise Manager - OEM Grid Control comes with a comprehensive set of performance and health metrics that allow monitoring of key components in your environment such as applications, application servers, databases, as well as the back-end components on which they rely, such as hosts, operating systems and storage. Tools for the Database Oracle Diagnostics Pack Automatic Workload Repository (AWR) - this tool gets statistics from memory abut the Time Model or DB Time, Wait Events, Active Session History and High Load SWL queries Automatic Database Diagnostic Monitor (ADDM) - This self-diagnostic software is built into the database. It examines and analyzes data captured in AWR to dertermine possible performance issues. It locates the root cause of the issue, provides recommendations for correcting the issues and qualifies the expected benefit. Oracle Database Tuning Pack SQL Tuning Advisor - This enables you to submit one or more SQL statements as input and receive output in the form of specific advice or recommendations on how to tune statements. The recommendation relates to collection of statistics on objects, creation on new indexes and restructuring of SQL statements. SQL Access Advisor - This enables you to optimize data access paths of SQL queries by recommending a proper set of materialized views, indexes and partitions for a given SQL workload. Tools for the Application Server Weblogic Console - is a web-based, user interface used to configure and control a set of WebLogic servers or clusters (i.e. a "domain"). In any logical group of WebLogic servers there must exist one admin server, which hosts the WebLogic Admin console application and manages the associated configuratoin files. WebLogic Administrators will use the Administration Console for a number of tasks, including: Starting and stopping WebLogic servers or entire clusters. Configuring server parameters, security, database connections and deployed applications. Viewing server status, health and metrics. Yourkit for Profiling - helps analyze synchronization issues, including: Which threads were calling wait(), and for how long Which threads were blocked on attempt to acquire a monitor held by another thread (synchronized methods/blocks), and for how long Tools for the Client Fiddler - allows you to inspect traffic logs, debug and set breakpoints. Firebug – allows you to inspect and edit HTML, monitor network activity and debug JavaScript

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Inspiring a co-worker to adopt better coding practices?

- by Aaronaught

In the Handling my antiquated coworker question, various people discussed strategies for dealing with coworkers who are unwilling to integrate their workflow with the team's. I'd like, if possible, to learn some strategies for "teaching" a coworker who is merely ignorant of modern techniques and tools, and possibly a little apathetic. I've started working with a programmer who until recently has been working in relative isolation, in a different part of the company. He has extensive domain knowledge and most importantly he has demonstrated good problem-solving skills, something which many candidates seem to lack. However, the actual (C#) code I've seen is a throwback to the VB6 days. Procedural structure, Hungarian notation, global variables (abuse of static), no interfaces, no tests, non-use of Generics, throwing System.Exception... you get the idea. This programmer is a fair bit older than I am and, by first impressions at least, doesn't actively seek positive change. I'm not going to say resistant to change, because I think that is largely an issue of how the topic gets broached, and I want to be prepared. Programmers tend to be stubborn people, and going in with guns blazing and instituting rip-it-to-shreds code reviews and strictly-enforced policies is very likely not going to produce the end result that I want. If this were a new hire, a junior programmer, I wouldn't think twice about taking a "mentor" stance, but I'm extremely wary of treating an experienced employee as a clueless newbie (which he's not - he just hasn't kept pace with certain advancements in the field). How might I go about raising this developer's code quality standard the Dale Carnegie way, through gentle persuasion and non-material incentives? What would be the best strategy for effecting subtle, gradual changes, without creating an adversarial situation? Have other people - especially lead developers - been in this type of situation before? Which strategies were successful at stimulating interest and creating a positive group dynamic? Which strategies weren't successful and would be better to avoid? Clarifications: I really feel that several people are answering based on personal feelings without actually reading all of the details of the question. Please note the following, which should have been implied but I am now making explicit: This coworker is only my "senior" by virtue of age. I never said that his title, sphere of influence, or years at the organization exceed mine, and in fact, none of those things are true. He's a LOB programmer who's been absorbed into the main development shop. That's it. I am not a new hire, junior programmer, or other naïve idiot with grand plans to transform the company overnight. I am basically in charge of the software process, but as many who've worked as "leads" will know, responsibilities don't always correlate precisely with the org chart. I'm not asking people how to get my way, come hell or high water. I could do that if I wanted to, with the net result being that this person would become resentful and/or quit. Please try to understand that I am looking for a social, cooperative method of driving change. The mention of "...global variables... no tests... throwing System.Exception" was intended to demonstrate that the problems are not just superficial or aesthetic. Practices that may work for relatively small CRUD apps do not necessarily work for large enterprise apps, and in fact, none of the code so far has actually passed the integration tests. Please, try to take the question at face value, accept that I actually know what I'm talking about, and either answer the question that I actually asked or move on. P.S. My sincerest gratitude to those who -did- offer constructive advice rather than arguing with the premise. I'm going to leave this open for a while longer as I'm hoping to hear more in the way of real-world experiences.

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Old School Wizardry Tip: Batch File Comments

- by jkauffman

Johnny, the Endangered Keyboard-Driven Windows User Some of my proudest, obscure Windows tricks are losing their relevance. I know I’m not alone. Keyboard shortcuts are going the way of the dodo. I used to induce fearful awe by slapping Ctrl+Shift+Esc in front of the lowly, pedestrian Windows users. No windows key on the keyboard? No problem: Ctrl+Esc. No menu key on the keyboard: Shift+F10. I am also firmly planted in the habit of closing windows with the Alt+Space menu (Alt+Space, C); and I harbor a brooding, slow=growing list of programs that fail to support this correctly (that means you, Paint.NET). Every time a new version of windows comes out, the support for some of these minor time-saving habits get pared out. Will I complain publicly? Nope, I know my old ways should be axed to conserve precious design energy. In fact, I disapprove of fierce un-intuitiveness for the sake of alleged productivity. Like vim, for example. If you approach a program after being away for 5 years, having to recall encyclopedic knowledge is a flaw. The RTFM disciples have lost. Anyway, some of the items in my arsenal of goofy time-saving tricks are still relevant today. I wanted to draw attention to one that’s stood the test of time. Remember Batch Files? Yes, it’s true, batch files are fading faster than the world of print. But they're not dead yet. I still run into some situations where I opt to use batch files. They are still relevant for build processes, or just various development workflow tools. Sure, there’s powershell, but there’s that stupid Set-ExecutionPolicy speed bump standing in your way; can you really spare the time to A) hunt down that setting on all machines affected and/or B) make futile efforts to convince your coworkers/boss that the hassle was worth it? When possible, I prefer the batch file wild card. And whenever I return to batch files, I end up researching some of the unintuitive aspects such as parameters, quote handling, and ERRORLEVEL. But I never have to remember to use “REM” for comment lines, because there’s a cleaner way to do them! Double Colon For Eye-Friendly Comments Here is a very simple batch file, with pretty much minimal content: @ECHO OFF SETLOCAL REM This is a comment ECHO This batch file doesn’t do much If you code on a daily basis, this may be more suitable to your eyes: @ECHO OFF SETLOCAL :: This is a comment ECHO This batch file doesn’t do much Works great! I imagine I find it preferable due to the similarity to comments in other situations: // or ; or # I’ve often make visual pseudo-line breaks in my code, and this colon-based syntax works wonders: @ECHO OFF SETLOCAL :: Do stuff ECHO Doing Stuff :::::::::::::::::::::::::::: :: Do more stuff ECHO This batch file doesn’t do much Not only is it more readable, but there’s a slight performance benefit. The batch file engine sees this as an invalid line label and immediately reads the following line. Use that fact to your advantage if this trick leads you into heated nerd debate. Two Pitfalls to Avoid Be aware of that there are a couple situations where this hack will fail you. It most likely won’t be a problem unless you’re getting really sophisticated with your batch files. Pitfall #1: Inline comments @ECHO OFF SETLOCAL IF EXIST C:\SomeFile.txt GOTO END ::This will fail :END Unfortunately, this fails. You can only have whitespace to the left of your comments. Pitfall #2: Code Blocks @ECHO OFF SETLOCAL IF EXIST C:\SomeFile.txt ( :: This will fail ECHO HELLO ) Code blocks, such as if statements and for loops, cannot contain these comments. This is ultimately due to the fact that entire code blocks are processed as a single line. I originally learned this from Rob van der Woude’s site. He goes into more depth about the behavior of the pitfalls as well, if you are interested in further details. I hope this trick earns you serious geek rep!

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Upgrades in 5 Easy Pieces

- by Anne R.

Even though there are a few select tasks that I have to do once or twice a year, I can’t remember how to do them! Or where to find the bits and pieces to complete the task. So I love it when someone consolidates everything under one spot. That’s what the CRM On Demand team has done with the upgrade information. Specifically, they have: Provided a “one-stop” area for managing upgrades at your company. Broken down the upgrade process into 5 (yes, 5) steps. Explained when and how to perform each step with dates specific to your pod. Included details about each step, visible by expanding the step. Translated the steps into 11 languages. Added a list of release-specific resources with links from the page. Now, just head for the Training and Support portal, click the Release Info tab, and walk through the “5 Essential Steps to a Successful Upgrade.” Before you continue, though, select your language from the drop-down list on the Release Info page. CRM On Demand now has the upgrade steps translated into 11 languages. On the Step page, you can expand each section in sequence and follow the more detailed instructions that appear. This will ensure that you’ve covered all your bases for each upgrade. Here’s a shortened version of the information that you’ll find: 1. Verify your Primary Contact Information. Have you checked your primary contact information to make sure you’re being notified of all upgrade information? Or do you want more users to receive upgrade announcements? This section provides you with the navigation path to do that in CRM On Demand. 2. Review your Key Upgrade Dates. If you expand this step, a nice table appears with your critical dates for the various milestones. IMPORTANT: When your CRM On Demand pod has been officially added to the upgrade schedule, closer to the release date itself, this table will display your specific timetable. 3. Migrate your Customizations from the Staging Environment before the Snapshot Date. Oracle refreshes the Staging data with a copy of your Production data made on the Production Snapshot Date. So this section lists considerations relevant to this step. It also reminds you of the 2-week period when you should not be making any changes in your Staging environment. 4. Conduct your Upgrade Validation on the Staging Environment. When the Customer Validation Testing period begins, you need to log in to your Staging Environment to validate that your key business processes and customizations continue to behave as expected. If your company utilizes Web Services, Web Links, Web Applets or Workflow, focus on testing these first. You generally have about two weeks for testing. If you run into problems during this time, follow the instructions shown in this section for logging a service request. It describes exactly how to fill out the fields in the SR for the fastest resolution. 5. Conduct "White Glove" Testing in your Upgraded Production Environment. Before users start using the upgrade, you should access a few tabs and reports. Doing this actually warms up the cache so that frequently used pages and reports will come up at normal speed on Monday morning, when users log in to the upgraded system. Resources listed under this step help you in further preparing for the upgrade. Now there’s also a new Documentation section on the right with links to these release-specific resources. Very nice, I commented, when discussing these improvements with the “responsible party.” She confirmed that, yes, they tried to consolidate the upgrade information, translate it for better communication, simplify it into 5 easy pieces, and drive admins responsible for handling upgrades to this one site instead of sending out elaborate emails. Yes, I just love it when someone practically reaches out and holds my hand through a process. Next best thing to a wizard!

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OpenWorld Day 1

- by Antony Reynolds

A Day in the Life of an OpenWorld Attendee Part I Lots of people are blogging insightfully about OpenWorld so I thought I would provide some non-insightful remarks to buck the trend! With 50,000 attendees I didn’t expect to bump into too many people I knew, boy was I wrong! I walked into the registration area and immediately was hailed by a couple of customers I had worked with a few months ago. Moving to the employee registration area in a different hall I bumped into a colleague from the UK who was also registering. As soon as I got my badge I bumped into a friend from Ireland! So maybe OpenWorld isn’t so big after all! First port of call was Larrys Keynote. As always Larry was provocative and thought provoking. His key points were announcing the Oracle cloud offering in IaaS, PaaS and SaaS, pointing out that Fusion Apps are cloud enabled and finally announcing the 12c Database, making a big play of its new multi-tenancy features. His contention was that multi-tenancy will simplify cloud development and provide better security by providing DB level isolation for applications and customers. Next day, Monday, was my first full day at OpenWorld. The first session I attended was on monitoring of OSB, very interesting presentation on the benefits achieved by an Illinois area telco – US Cellular. Great discussion of why they bought the SOA Management Packs and the benefits they are already seeing from their investment in terms of improved provisioning and time to market, as well as better performance insight and assistance with capacity planning. Craig Blitz provided a nice walkthrough of where Coherence has been and where it is going. Last night I attended the BOF on Managed File Transfer where Dave Berry replayed Oracles thoughts on providing dedicated Managed File Transfer as part of the 12c SOA release. Dave laid out the perceived requirements and solicited feedback from the audience on what if anything was missing. He also demoed an early version of the functionality that would simplify setting up MFT in SOA Suite and make tracking activity much easier. So much for Day 1. I also ran into scores of old friends and colleagues and had a pleasant dinner with my friend from Ireland where I caught up on the latest news from Oracle UK. Not bad for Day 1!

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Commandline Purge in AS11

- by Dheeraj Kumar

AS11 - B2B offering consists of numerous features that have been made available via commandline approach. Most of these are supplement to the already available User Interface based approach. One such is purging of runtime data. The commandline purge option enables the users to purge the runtime data, based on various criteria. This is an ANT based command, provides the flexibility to selectively set the criteria to purge the runtime data. Providing the command line option also enables the administrator to purge in bulk, without visiting the B2B UI, which can also be used for automation purpose By default archival is turned on for purge activity. As a pre-requisite, the respective folder needs to be configured in database with the proper permission. When no filename is provided for archived data, the sysdate will be considered for filename. Below are the various options to purge the runtime data Normal 0 Option ANT option Message state -Dmsgstate Date range -Dfromdate, -Dtodate Format : dd/mm/yyyy hh:mm AM/PM Trading partner -Dtp Direction -Ddirection Message Type -Dmsgtype Agreement Name -Dagreement IdType/ value -Didtype, -Didvalue Archive -Darchive True/false By default true Archive file name -Darchivename File name (optional), will be used when archive is set to true. Normal 0 Note: When using -Darchivename the value must be a unique file name. An existing file name used with -Darchivename throws an exception v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 Below are the few of ant commands and various options. Purge based on date range and message state: Normal 0 ant -f ant-b2b-util.xml b2bpurge -Dmode=RT -Dfromdate="19/12/2009 1:04 AM" -Dtodate="19/12/2009 1:05 AM" -Dmsgstate=MSG_COMPLETE -Darchivename="filename.dmp" Purge based on direction: Normal 0 ant -f ant-b2b-util.xml b2bpurge -Dmode=RT -Ddirection="OUTBOUND" Normal 0 Purge based on agreement Name: Normal 0 ant -f ant-b2b-util.xml b2bpurge -Dmode=RT -Dagreement="agreement_name" Normal 0 Purge based on Trading partner Name: Normal 0 ant -f ant-b2b-util.xml b2bpurge -Dmode=RT -Dtp=GlobalChips Normal 0 Purge based on Message State: Normal 0 ant -f ant-b2b-util.xml b2bpurge -Dmode=RT -Dmsgstate="MSG_COMPLETE" Normal 0 ant -f ant-b2b-util.xml b2bpurge -Dmode=RT -Ddirection="OUTBOUND" -Dmsgstate="MSG_COMPLETE"

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Breakfast Keynote, More at Gartner IAM Summit This Week

- by Tanu Sood

Gartner Identity and Access Management Conference We look forward to seeing you at the.... Gartner Identity and Access Management Conference Oracle is proud to be a Silver Sponsor of the Gartner Identity and Access Management Summit happening December 3 - 5 in Las Vegas, NV. Don’t miss the opportunity to hear Oracle Senior VP of Identity Management, Amit Jasuja, present Trends in Identity Management at our keynote presentation and breakfast on Tuesday, December 4th at 7:30 a.m. Everyone that attends is entered into a raffle to win a free JAWBONE JAMBOX wireless speaker system. Also, don’t forget to visit the Oracle Booth to mingle with your peers and speak to Oracle experts. Learn how Oracle Identity Management solutions are enabling the Social, Mobile, and Cloud (SoMoClo) environments. Visit Oracle Booth #S15 to: View a demonstration of our latest release - Oracle Identity Management 11g R2 Visit our virtual collateral rack and download useful resources Enter to win a JAWBONE JAMBOX Wireless Speaker System Exhibit Hall Hours Monday, December 3 — 11:45 a.m. – 1:45 p.m. and 6:15 p.m. – 8:15 p.m. Tuesday, December 4 — 11:45 a.m. – 2:45 p.m. To schedule a meeting with Oracle Identity Management executives and experts at Gartner IAM, please email us or speak to your account representative. We look forward to seeing you at the Gartner Identity and Access Management Summit! Visit Oracle at Booth #S15 Gartner IAM SummitDecember 3 - 5, 2012 Caesars Palace Attend our Keynote Breakfast Trends in Identity Management Tuesday, December 4, 2012 7:15 a.m. - 8:00 a.m., Octavius 16 Speakers: Amit Jasuja, Senior Vice President, Identity Management Oracle Ranjan Jain, Enterprise Architect, Cisco As enterprises embrace mobile and social applications, security and audit have moved into the foreground. The way we work and connect with our customers is changing dramatically and this means re-thinking how we secure the interaction and enable the experience. Work is an activity not a place - mobile access enables employees to work from any device anywhere and anytime. Organizations are utilizing "flash teams" - instead of a dedicated group to solve problems, organizations utilize more cross-functional teams. Work is now social - email collaboration will be replaced by dynamic social media style interaction. In this session, we will examine these three secular trends and discuss how organizations can secure the work experience and adapt audit controls to address the "new work order". Stay Connected: For more information, please visit www.oracle.com/identity. Copyright © 2012, Oracle. All rights reserved. Contact Us | Legal Notices and Terms of Use | Privacy Statement SEO100120175 Oracle Corporation - Worldwide Headquarters, 500 Oracle Parkway, OPL - E-mail Services, Redwood Shores, CA 94065, United States Your privacy is important to us. You can login to your account to update your e-mail subscriptions or you can opt-out of all Oracle Marketing e-mails at any time.Please note that opting-out of Marketing communications does not affect your receipt of important business communications related to your current relationship with Oracle such as Security Updates, Event Registration notices, Account Management and Support/Service communications.

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Windows Azure Recipe: Social Web / Big Media

- by Clint Edmonson

With the rise of social media there’s been an explosion of special interest media web sites on the web. From athletics to board games to funny animal behaviors, you can bet there’s a group of people somewhere on the web talking about it. Social media sites allow us to interact, share experiences, and bond with like minded enthusiasts around the globe. And through the power of software, we can follow trends in these unique domains in real time. Drivers Reach Scalability Media hosting Global distribution Solution Here’s a sketch of how a social media application might be built out on Windows Azure: Ingredients Traffic Manager (optional) – can be used to provide hosting and load balancing across different instances and/or data centers. Perfect if the solution needs to be delivered to different cultures or regions around the world. Access Control – this service is essential to managing user identity. It’s backed by a full blown implementation of Active Directory and allows the definition and management of users, groups, and roles. A pre-built ASP.NET membership provider is included in the training kit to leverage this capability but it’s also flexible enough to be combined with external Identity providers including Windows LiveID, Google, Yahoo!, and Facebook. The provider model has extensibility points to hook into other identity providers as well. Web Role – hosts the core of the web application and presents a central social hub users. Database – used to store core operational, functional, and workflow data for the solution’s web services. Caching (optional) – as a web site traffic grows caching can be leveraged to keep frequently used read-only, user specific, and application resource data in a high-speed distributed in-memory for faster response times and ultimately higher scalability without spinning up more web and worker roles. It includes a token based security model that works alongside the Access Control service. Tables (optional) – for semi-structured data streams that don’t need relational integrity such as conversations, comments, or activity streams, tables provide a faster and more flexible way to store this kind of historical data. Blobs (optional) – users may be creating or uploading large volumes of heterogeneous data such as documents or rich media. Blob storage provides a scalable, resilient way to store terabytes of user data. The storage facilities can also integrate with the Access Control service to ensure users’ data is delivered securely. Content Delivery Network (CDN) (optional) – for sites that service users around the globe, the CDN is an extension to blob storage that, when enabled, will automatically cache frequently accessed blobs and static site content at edge data centers around the world. The data can be delivered statically or streamed in the case of rich media content. Training These links point to online Windows Azure training labs and resources where you can learn more about the individual ingredients described above. (Note: The entire Windows Azure Training Kit can also be downloaded for offline use.) Windows Azure (16 labs) Windows Azure is an internet-scale cloud computing and services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers, which provides an operating system and a set of developer services which can be used individually or together. It gives developers the choice to build web applications; applications running on connected devices, PCs, or servers; or hybrid solutions offering the best of both worlds. New or enhanced applications can be built using existing skills with the Visual Studio development environment and the .NET Framework. With its standards-based and interoperable approach, the services platform supports multiple internet protocols, including HTTP, REST, SOAP, and plain XML SQL Azure (7 labs) Microsoft SQL Azure delivers on the Microsoft Data Platform vision of extending the SQL Server capabilities to the cloud as web-based services, enabling you to store structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data. Windows Azure Services (9 labs) As applications collaborate across organizational boundaries, ensuring secure transactions across disparate security domains is crucial but difficult to implement. Windows Azure Services provides hosted authentication and access control using powerful, secure, standards-based infrastructure. See my Windows Azure Resource Guide for more guidance on how to get started, including links web portals, training kits, samples, and blogs related to Windows Azure.

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Abstraction, Politics, and Software Architecture

Abstraction can be defined as a general concept and/or idea that lack any concrete details. Throughout history this type of thinking has led to an array of new ideas and innovations as well as increased confusion and conspiracy. If one was to look back at our history they will see that abstraction has been used in various forms throughout our past. When I was growing up I do not know how many times I heard politicians say “Leave no child left behind” or “No child left behind” as a major part of their campaign rhetoric in regards to a stance on education. As you can see their slogan is a perfect example of abstraction because it only offers a very general concept about improving our education system but they do not mention how they would like to do it. If they did then they would be adding concrete details to their abstraction thus turning it in to an actual working plan as to how we as a society can help children succeed in school and in life, but then they would not be using abstraction. By now I sure you are thinking what does abstraction have to do with software architecture. You are valid in thinking this way, but abstraction is a wonderful tool used in information technology especially in the world of software architecture. Abstraction is one method of extracting the concepts of an idea so that it can be understood and discussed by others of varying technical abilities and backgrounds. One ways in which I tend to extract my architectural design thoughts is through the use of basic diagrams to convey an idea for a system or a new feature for an existing application. This allows me to generically model an architectural design through the use of views and Unified Markup Language (UML). UML is a standard method for creating a 4+1 Architectural View Models. The 4+1 Architectural View Model consists of 4 views typically created with UML as well as a general description of the concept that is being expressed by a model. The 4+1 Architectural View Model: Logical View: Models a system’s end-user functionality. Development View: Models a system as a collection of components and connectors to illustrate how it is intended to be developed. Process View: Models the interaction between system components and connectors as to indicate the activities of a system. Physical View: Models the placement of the collection of components and connectors of a system within a physical environment. Recently I had to use the concept of abstraction to express an idea for implementing a new security framework on an existing website. My concept would add session based management in order to properly secure and allow page access based on valid user credentials and last user activity. I created a basic Process View by using UML diagrams to communicate the basic process flow of my changes in the application so that all of the projects stakeholders would be able to understand my idea. Additionally I created a Logical View on a whiteboard while conveying the process workflow with a few stakeholders to show how end-user will be affected by the new framework and gaining additional input about the design. After my Logical and Process Views were accepted I then started on creating a more detailed Development View in order to map how the system will be built based on the concept of components and connections based on the previously defined interactions. I really did not need to create a Physical view for this idea because we were updating an existing system that was already deployed based on an existing Physical View. What do you think about the use of abstraction in the development of software architecture? Please let me know.

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Happy New Year! Upcoming Events in January 2011

- by mandy.ho

Oracle Database kicks off the New Year at the following events during the month of January. Hope to see you there and please send in your pictures and feedback! Jan 20, 2011 - San Francisco, CA LinkShare Symposium West 2011 Oracle is a proud Gold Sponsor at the LinkShare Symposium West 2011 January 20 in San Francisco, California. Year after year LinkShare has been bringing their network the opportunity to come to life. At the LinkShare Symposium online performance marketing leaders meet to optimize face-to-face during a full day of networking. Learn more by attending Oracle Breakout Session, "Omni - Channel Retailing, What is possible now?" on Thursday, January 20, 11:15 a.m. - 12:00 noon, Grand Ballroom. http://eventreg.oracle.com/webapps/events/ns/EventsDetail.jsp?p_eventId=128306&src=6954634&src=6954634&Act=397 Jan 24, 2011 - Cincinnati, OH Greater Cincinnati Oracle User Group Meeting "Tom Kyte Day" - Featuring a day of sessions presented by Senior Technical Architect, Tom Kyte. Sessions include "Top 10, no 11, new features of Oracle Database 11g Release 2" and "What do I really need to know when upgrading", plus more. http://www.gcoug.org/ Jan 25, 2011 - Vancouver, British Columbia Oracle Security Solutions Forum Featuring a Special Keynote Presentation from Tom Kyte - Complete Database Security Join us at this half-day event; Oracle Database Security Solutions: Complete Information Security. Learn how Oracle Database Security solutions help you: • Prevent external threats like SQL injection attacks from reaching your databases • Transparently encrypt application data without application changes • Prevent privileged database users and administrators from accessing data • Use native database auditing to monitor and report on database activity • Mask production data for safe use in nonproduction environments http://eventreg.oracle.com/webapps/events/ns/EventsDetail.jsp?p_eventId=126974&src=6958351&src=6958351&Act=97 Jan 26, 2011 - Halifax, Nova Scotia Oracle Database Security Technology Day Exclusive Seminar on Complete Information Security with Oracle Database 11g The amount of digital data within organizations is growing at unprecedented rates, as is the value of that data and the challenges of safeguarding it. Yet most IT security programs fail to address database security--specifically, insecure applications and privileged users. So how can you protect your mission-critical information? Avoid risky third-party solutions? Defend against security breaches and compliance violations? And resist costly new infrastructure investments? Join us at this half-day seminar, Oracle Database Security Solutions: Complete Information Security, to find out http://eventreg.oracle.com/webapps/events/ns/EventsDetail.jsp?p_eventId=126269&src=6958351&src=6958351&Act=93

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Does Your Customer Engagement Create an Ah Feeling?

- by Richard Lefebvre

An (Oracle CX Blog) article by Christina McKeon Companies that successfully engage customers all have one thing in common. They make it seem easy for the customer to get what they need. No one would argue that brands don’t want to leave customers with this “ah” feeling. Since 94% of customers who have a low-effort service experience will buy from that company again, it makes financial sense for brands.1 Some brands are thinking differently about how they engage their customers to create ah feelings. How do they do it? Toyota is a great example of using smart assistance technology to understand customer intent and answer questions before customers hit the submit button online. What is unique in this situation is that Toyota captures intent while customers are filling out email forms. Toyota analyzes the data in the form and suggests responses before the customer sends the email. The customer gets the right answer, and the email never makes it to your contact center — which makes you and the customer happy. Most brands are fully aware of chat as a service channel, but some brands take chat to a whole new level. Beauty.com, part of the drugstore.com and Walgreens family of brands, uses live chat to replicate the personal experience that one would find at high-end department store cosmetic counters. Trained beauty advisors, all with esthetician or beauty counter experience, engage in live chat sessions with online shoppers to share immediate advice on the best products for their personal needs. Agents can watch customer activity online and determine the right time to reach out and offer help, just as help would be offered in a brick-and-mortar store. And, agents can co-browse along with the customer helping customers with online check-out. These personal chat discussions also give Beauty.com the opportunity to present products, advertise promotions, and resolve customer issues when they arise. Beauty.com converts approximately 25% of chat sessions into product orders. Photobox, the European market leader in online photo services, wanted to deliver personal and responsive service to its 24 million members. It ensures customer inquiries on personalized photo products are routed based on agent knowledge so customers get what they need from the company experts. By using a queuing system to ensure that the agent with the most appropriate knowledge handles the query, agent productivity increased while response times to 1,500 customer queries per day decreased. A real-time dashboard prevents agents from being overloaded with queries. This approach has produced financial results with a 15% increase in sales to existing customers and a 45% increase in orders from newly referred customers.

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BizTalk 2009 - SQL Server Job Configuration

- by StuartBrierley

Following the installation of Biztalk Server 2009 on my development laptop I used the BizTalk Server Best Practice Analyser which highlighted the fact that two of the SQL Server Agent jobs that BizTalk relies on were not running successfully. Upon investigation it turned out that these jobs needed to be configured before they would run successfully. To configure these jobs open SQL Server Management Studio, expand SQL Server Agent > Jobs and double click on the appropriate job. Select Steps and then edit the appropriate entries. Backup BizTalk Server (BizTalkMgmtDb) This job is comprised of three steps BackupFull, MarkAndBackupLog and ClearBackupHistory. BackupFull exec [dbo].[sp_BackupAllFull_Schedule] ‘d’ /* Frequency */,‘BTS’ /* Name */,‘<destination path>’ /* location of backup files */ The frequency here is set/left as daily The name is left as BTS You must provide a full destination path for the backup files to be stored. There are also two optional parameters: A flag that controls if the job forces a full backup if a partial backup fails A parameter to control the time of day to run the full backup; the default is midnight UTC time For example: exec [dbo].[sp_BackupAllFull_Schedule] ‘d’ /* Frequency */,‘BTS’ /* Name */,‘<destination path>’ /* location of backup files */ , 0, 22 MarkAndBackUpLog exec [dbo].[sp_MarkAll] ‘BTS’ /* Log mark name */,’<destination path>’ /*location of backup files */ You must provide a destination path for the log backups. Optionally you can also add an extra parameter that tells the procedure to use local time: exec [dbo].[sp_MarkAll] ‘BTS’ /* Log mark name */,’<destination path>’ /*location of backup files */ ,1 Clear Backup History exec [dbo].[sp_DeleteBackupHistory] @DaysToKeep=7 This will clear out the instances in the MarkLog table older than 7 days. DTA Purge and Archive (BizTalkDTADb) This job is comprised of a single step. Archive and Purge exec dtasp_BackupAndPurgeTrackingDatabase 0, --@nLiveHours tinyint, 1, --@nLiveDays tinyint = 0, 30, --@nHardDeleteDays tinyint = 0, null, --@nvcFolder nvarchar(1024) = null, null, --@nvcValidatingServer sysname = null, 0 --@fForceBackup int = 0 Any completed instance that is older than the live days plus live hours will be deleted, as will any associated data. Any data older than the HardDeleteDays will be deleted - this means that those long running orchestration instances that would otherwise never be purged will at some point have their data cleared down while allowing the instance to continue, thus preventing the DTA databse from growing indefinitely. This should always be greater than the soft purge window. The NVC folder is the path for the backup files, if this is null the job will not run failing with the error : DTA Purge and Archive (BizTalkDTADb) Job failed SQL Server Management Studio, job activity monitor, view history The @nvcFolder parameter cannot be null. Archive and Purge step How long you choose to keep instances in the Tracking Database is really up to you. For development I have set this up as: exec dtasp_BackupAndPurgeTrackingDatabase 0, 1, 30, ’<destination path>’, null, 0 On a live server you may want to adjust these figures: exec dtasp_BackupAndPurgeTrackingDatabase 0, 15, 20, ’<destination path>’, null, 0

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Create a Remote Git Repository from an Existing XCode Repository

- by codeWithoutFear

Introduction Distributed version control systems (VCS’s), like Git, provide a rich set of features for managing source code. Many development tools, including XCode, provide built-in support for various VCS’s. These tools provide simple configuration with limited customization to get you up and running quickly while still providing the safety net of basic version control. I hate losing (and re-doing) work. I have OCD when it comes to saving and versioning source code. Save early, save often, and commit to the VCS often. I also hate merging code. Smaller and more frequent commits enable me to minimize merge time and effort as well. The work flow I prefer even for personal exploratory projects is: Make small local changes to the codebase to create an incrementally improved (and working) system. Commit these changes to the local repository. Local repositories are quick to access, function even while offline, and provides the confidence to continue making bold changes to the system. After all, I can easily recover to a recent working state. Repeat 1 & 2 until the codebase contains “significant” functionality and I have connectivity to the remote repository. Push the accumulated changes to the remote repository. The smaller the change set, the less likely extensive merging will be required. Smaller is better, IMHO. The remote repository typically has a greater degree of fault tolerance and active management dedicated to it. This can be as simple as a network share that is backed up nightly or as complex as dedicated hardware with specialized server-side processing and significant administrative monitoring. XCode’s out-of-the-box Git integration enables steps 1 and 2 above. Time Machine backups of the local repository add an additional degree of fault tolerance, but do not support collaboration or take advantage of managed infrastructure such as on-premises or cloud-based storage. Creating a Remote Repository These are the steps I use to enable the full workflow identified above. For simplicity the “remote” repository is created on the local file system. This location could easily be on a mounted network volume. Create a Test Project My project is called HelloGit and is located at /Users/Don/Dev/HelloGit. Be sure to commit all outstanding changes. XCode always leaves a single changed file for me after the project is created and the initial commit is submitted. Clone the Local Repository We want to clone the XCode-created Git repository to the location where the remote repository will reside. In this case it will be /Users/Don/Dev/RemoteHelloGit. Open the Terminal application. Clone the local repository to the remote repository location: git clone /Users/Don/Dev/HelloGit /Users/Don/Dev/RemoteHelloGit Convert the Remote Repository to a Bare Repository The remote repository only needs to contain the Git database. It does not need a checked out branch or local files. Go to the remote repository folder: cd /Users/Don/Dev/RemoteHelloGit Indicate the repository is “bare”: git config --bool core.bare true Remove files, leaving the .git folder: rm -R * Remove the “origin” remote: git remote rm origin Configure the Local Repository The local repository should reference the remote repository. The remote name “origin” is used by convention to indicate the originating repository. This is set automatically when a repository is cloned. We will use the “origin” name here to reflect that relationship. Go to the local repository folder: cd /Users/Don/Dev/HelloGit Add the remote: git remote add origin /Users/Don/Dev/RemoteHelloGit Test Connectivity Any changes made to the local Git repository can be pushed to the remote repository subject to the merging rules Git enforces. Create a new local file: date > date.txt /li> Add the new file to the local index: git add date.txt Commit the change to the local repository: git commit -m "New file: date.txt" Push the change to the remote repository: git push origin master Now you can save, commit, and push/pull to your OCD hearts’ content! Code without fear! --Don

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Why I Love the Social Management Platform I Use

- by Mike Stiles

Not long ago, I asked the product heads for the various components of the Oracle Social Cloud’s SRM to say what they thought was coolest about their component. And while they did a fine job, it was recently pointed out to me that no one around here uses the platform in a real-world setting more than I do, as I not only blog and podcast my brains out, I also run Oracle Social’s own social properties. Of course I’m pro-Oracle Social’s product. Duh. But if you can get around immediately writing this off as a puff piece, there are real reasons beyond my employment that the Oracle SRM works for me as a community manager. If it didn’t, I could have simply written about something else, like how people love smartphones or something genius like that. Post Grid I like seeing what I want to see. I’m difficult that way. Post grid lets me see all posts for all channels, with custom columns showing me how posts are doing. I can filter the grid by social channel, published, scheduled, draft, suggested, etc. Then there’s a pullout side panel that shows me post details, including engagement analytics. From the pullout, I can preview the post, do a quick edit, a full edit, or (my favorite) copy a post so I can edit it and schedule it for other times so I don’t have to repeat from scratch. I’m not lazy, just time conscious. The Post Creation Environment Given our post volume, I need this to be as easy as it can be. I can highlight which streams I want the post to go out on, edit for the individual streams, maintain a media library that’s easy to upload to and attach from, tag posts, insert links that auto-shorten to an orac.le shortlink, schedule with a nice calendar visual, geo-target, drop photos inline into Twitter, and review each post. Watching My Channels The Engage component of the Oracle SRM brings in and drops into a grid the activity that’s happening on all my channels. I keep this open round-the-clock. Again, I get to see only what I want; social network, stream, unread messages, engagement by how I labeled them, and date range. I can bring up a post with a click, reply, label it, retweet it, assign it, delete it, archive it, etc. So don’t bother trying to be a troll on my channels. Analytics Social publishing and engaging 24/7 would be pretty unrewarding if I couldn’t see how our audience was responding. Frankly, I get more analytics than I know what to do with (I’m a content creator, not a data analyst). But I do know what numbers I care about, and they’re available by channel, date range, and campaigns. I’m seeing fan count, sources and demographics. I’m seeing engagement, what kinds of posts are getting engagement, and top engagers. I’m seeing my reach, both organic and paid. I’m seeing how individual posts performed in terms of engagement and virality, and posting time/date insight. Have I covered all the value propositions? I’ve covered pathetically few of them. It would be impossible in blog length to give shout-outs to the vast number of features and functionalities. From organizing teams and managing permissions with Workflow to the powerful ability to monitor topics (and your competition) across the web in Listen, it’s a major, and increasingly necessary, weapon in your social marketing arsenal. The life of a Community Manager is not for everybody. So if the Oracle SRM can actually make a Community Manager’s life easier, what’s not to love? I invite you to take a look at and participate in our Oracle Social Cloud social channels! Facebook Twitter YouTube Google Plus LinkedIn Daily Podcast on iHeartRadio @mikestiles @oraclesocial Photo: freeimages.com

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Notes from a short presentation on NodeJs

- by Aligned

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/Aligned/archive/2014/05/30/notes-from-a-short-presentation-on-nodejs.aspxI volunteered myself to give a short 30 minute presentation at a work lunch and learn on NodeJs. With my limited experience I see using Node as a great tool for build process improvement, scaffolding with yeoman, and running tests with Karma. I haven’t looked into using as a full server or development stack. I guess I’m too stuck on IIS and Visual Studio :-). Here are my notes, that aren’t very well formatted, but I wanted to share it anyways. What is it? "Node.js is a platform built on Chrome's JavaScript runtime for easily building fast, scalable network applications. Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight and efficient, perfect for data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed devices." Why should you be interested? another popular tool that can help you get the job done you can use the command prompt! can be run at build or release time to automate tasks What are some uses? https://www.npmjs.org/ - NuGet for Node packages http://bower.io/ - NuGet for UI JavaScript libraries (jQuery, Bootstrap, Angular, etc) http://yeoman.io/ "Our workflow is comprised of three tools for improving your productivity and satisfaction when building a web app: yo (the scaffolding tool), grunt (the build tool) and bower (for package management)." -> yeoman asks which components you want alternative - http://joakimbeng.eu01.aws.af.cm/slush-replacing-yeoman-with-gulp/ https://www.npmjs.org/package/generator-cg-angular - phantom js, less, // git is needed for bower http://git-scm.com/ run installer in Windows before you can use bower // select Run Git from the Windows Command Prompt in the installer // requires a reboot http://stackoverflow.com/questions/20069297/bower-git-not-in-the-path-error npm install -g git npm install -g yo npm install -g generator-cg-angular mkdir myapp cd myapp yo cg-angular npm install -g bower npm install -g grunt-cli yo bower grunt serve grunt test grunt build // there are many generators (generator-angular) is another one // I like the Nuget HotTowel-Angular from John Papa myself // needed IIS Node for Express -> prompt from WebMatrix Karma bat to startup Karma - see below image compression - https://www.npmjs.org/search?q=optimize+images, https://github.com/heldr/node-smushit - do it from the command line LESS compiling js and css combine and minification at build with Gulp for requireJS apps quick lightweight HTTP server - "Express" Build pipeline with Grunt or Gulp http://www.johnpapa.net/gulp-and-grunt-at-anglebrackets/ Gulp is the newer and improved over Grunt. Supposed to be easier to use, but Grunt is more established. https://github.com/johnpapa/ng-demos/tree/master/grunt-gulp https://github.com/assetgraph/assetgraph-builder Does a lot of the minimizing, combining, image optimization etc using Node. Looks interesting.... http://nodejs.org http://nodeschool.io/ http://sub.watchmecode.net/getting-started-with-nodejs-installing-and-writing-your-first-code/ https://stormpath.com/blog/build-a-killer-node-dot-js-client-for-your-rest-plus-json-api/ https://codio.com/ http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ItsJustASoftwareIssueEdgejsBringsNodeAndNETTogetherOnThreePlatforms.aspx run unit tests - Karma in msBuild karma-start.bat @echo off cd %~dp0\.. REM 604800 is to make sure we only update once every 7 days call npm install --cache-min 604800 -g grunt-cli call npm install --cache-min 604800 call npm install --cache-min 604800 -g karma-cli karma start UnitTests\karma.conf.js REM karma start UnitTests\karma.conf.js --single-run REM see karma-start.bat and karam.config.js REM jsHint comes from Nuget

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Antenna Aligner Part 4: Role'ing in the deep

- by Chris George

Since last time I've been trying to sort out the general workflow of the app. It's fundamentally not hard, there is a list of transmitters, you select a transmitter and it shows the compass view. Having done quite a bit of ajax/asp.net/html in the past, I immediately started off by creating two divs within my 'page', one for the list, one for the compass. Then using the onClick event in the list, this will switch the display attribute on the divs. This seemed to work, but did lead to some dodgy transitional redrawing artefacts which I was not happy with. So after some Googling I realised I was doing it all wrong! JQuery mobile has the concept of giving an object in html a data-role. By giving a div the attribute data-role="page" it is then treated as a separate page on the mobile device. Within the code, this is referenced like a html anchor in the form #mypage. Using this system, page transitions such as fade or slide are automatically applied which adds to the whole authenticity of the app! Here is a simple example: . <a href="#'compasspage">compass</a> . <div data-role="page" id="compasspage" data-add-back-btn="true"> But I don't want just a static link, I want to dynamically create my list, and get each list elements to switch to the compass page with the right information. So here is the jquery that I used to dynamically inject new <li> rows into the <ul> block. $('ul').append($('<li/>', { //here appendin `<li>` 'data-role': "list-divider" }).append($('<a/>', { //here appending `<a>` into `<li>` 'href': '#compasspage', 'data-transition': 'none', 'onclick': 'selectTx(' + i + ')', 'html': buttonHtml }))); $('ul').listview('refresh'); This is called within a for loop so the first 5 appropriate transmitters are used. There are several things of interest to note here. Firstly, I could not find a more elegant way to tell the target page which transmitter I've clicked on, so I have used the onclick event as well as the href attribute. The onclick event fires 'selectTx' which simply sets a global member variable to the specific index number I've clicked on. Yes it's not nice, but it works. Secondly, the data-transition attribute is set to 'none'. I wanted the transition between the pages to be a whooshy slidey effect. However this worked going to the compass page, but returning to the list page gave some undesirable visual artefacts (flickering, redrawing etc.). So I decided to remove the transitions all together, which was a shame. Thirdly, rather than embedding loads of html into the append command, I removed this out into a variable 'buttonHtml'. Doing this really tidied up my code. Until next time!

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Three Master Data Management Deployment Tips

- by david.butler(at)oracle.com

MDM is all about data quality and data governance. We now know that improved data quality raises all operational and analytical boats. But it's not just about deploying data quality tools. It's about deploying data quality tools within and across the IT landscape - from a thousand points of data entry to a single version of the truth. Here are three tips to deploying MDM across your applications and enterprise. #1: Identify a tactical, high-value business problem where MDM can materially help. § Support a customer acquisition and retention program with a 'customer' master data solution. § Accelerate new products and services to market with a 'product' master data solution. § Reduce supplier exceptions or support spend control initiatives with a 'supplier' master data solution. § Support new store (branch, campus, restaurant, hospital, office, well head) location analysis with a 'site' master data solution. § Fix long standing Chart of Accounts and Cost Center problems with a 'financial' master data solution. § Support M&A activity, application upgrades, an SOA initiative, a cloud computing program, or a new business intelligence deployment by implementing a mix of master data solutions. #2: Incrementally expand to a full information architecture. Quite often, the measurable return on interest from tactical MDM initiatives will fund future deployments. Over time, the MDM solution expands into its full architecture to cover the entire IT landscape. Operations and analytics are united, IT flexibility is restored, and sustainable competitive advantage is achieved. #3: Bring business into every MDM deployment. To be successful, MDM must work hand in hand with data governance. In fact, Oracle MDM incorporates data governance tools for business users. IT can insure data quality, but only after the business side has defined what quality means. The business establishes the rules for governing the master data, and then IT enforces the rules via the MDM applications. Without this business/IT collaboration, MDM initiatives seldom achieve their full potential. It is not very often that a technology comes along that can measurably assist organizations across a wide variety of top IT initiatives. Reducing costs, increasing flexibility, getting more out of existing assets, and aligning business and IT are not easy tasks for any CIO. But with MDM, success is achievable. IT can regain its place as a center for innovation. For more information on this topic, take a look at my article Master Data Management Deployment Tips in the Opinion Section of Oracle's Profit Online magazine.

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Cloud Apps News @#OOW12

- by Natalia Rachelson

All eyes were on Oracle this past week and the news cycle was in full swing. What better time to make some key announcements that were guaranteed to create buzz ... and so we did. The name of the game was Cloud! Here are the key Cloud announcements for Apps, which included Fusion Tap that enables mobility across all Cloud Apps, HCM customer momentum in the Cloud, and our very first ERP Cloud Services customer. Oracle Unveils Oracle Fusion Tap for the iPadOracle Fusion Tap - Productivity Amplified Anywhere, Anytime "Both the enterprise and technology providers must recognize the need to innovate and adapt for the increasing mobility of the workforce - not just for sales teams, but across the organization," said Carter Lusher, Research Fellow and Chief Analyst of Enterprise Applications Ecosystem, Ovum. "A mobile application that quickly and powerfully allows employees to make connections, analyze data, and complete activities at any time and wherever they may be located drives new levels of business value and enhances efficiency. Frankly, mobile access is no longer a 'nice to have' but a 'must have.'" "The mobile workforce is a business reality, and Oracle Fusion Tap is an example of how Oracle delivers mobile and cloud innovations that fundamentally improve productivity and how we work," said Chris Leone, Senior Vice President of Application Development, Oracle. "With Oracle Fusion Tap users will have an all-in-one, easily extensible app that puts mission-critical data and colleague connection at their fingertips." The entire release is available here http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/1855392 Customers Live on Oracle Fusion Human Capital ManagementOracle HCM Cloud Service Helps Power HR's Contribution to the Business "More than 25 of the 100-plus customers who have selected Oracle Fusion Human Capital Management (HCM) are already live. Ardent Leisure, Peach Aviation, Toshiba Medical Systems and Zillow have deployed Oracle HCM Cloud Service and are using it to transform their HR operations. They join companies such as Principal Financial Group and Elizabeth Arden, who are already using Oracle HCM Cloud Service to help manage international growth and deliver pervasive, role-based, configurable solutions to their employees. With these recent go-lives, Oracle takes a leading position in successfully bringing live HCM customers in the cloud." "As a technology company, Zillow looked to a partner who could scale with us. Zillow has gone live on Oracle HCM Cloud Service, which will give us the ability automate and streamline HR operations for our employees in the near future," said Sarah Bilton, Senior Director HR, Zillow. Read the entire release here http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/1859573 Lending Club Selects Oracle ERP Cloud Service to Help Increase Insight and EfficienciesOracle ERP Cloud Service Provides an Open Architecture, Best-of-Breed Decision-Making, and Scalability in the Cloud "Lending Club, the leading platform for investing in and obtaining personal loans, has selected Oracle ERP Cloud Service to help improve decision-making and workflow, implement robust reporting, and take advantage of the inherent scalability and cost savings provided by the cloud. With more than 76,000 borrowers and 90,000 investors Lending Club utilizes technology and innovation to reduce the cost of traditional banking and offer borrowers better rates and investors better returns. After an extensive search, Lending Club selected Oracle ERP Cloud Service due to the breadth and depth of capabilities and ongoing innovation of Oracle ERP Cloud Service, as well as Oracle's open architecture, industry leadership and commitment to partners." "Lending Club is an innovative, data-intensive, high-growth company and we needed a solution and partner that could match us," said Carrie Dolan, CFO, Lending Club. "We conducted a thorough review of our options, and Oracle ERP Cloud Service was the clear winner in terms of capabilities and business value as well as commitment to us as a customer." Read the entire release here http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/1859020

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Big Data – Interacting with Hadoop – What is Sqoop? – What is Zookeeper? – Day 17 of 21

- by Pinal Dave

In yesterday’s blog post we learned the importance of the Pig and Pig Latin in Big Data Story. In this article we will understand what is Sqoop and Zookeeper in Big Data Story. There are two most important components one should learn when learning about interacting with Hadoop – Sqoop and Zookper. What is Sqoop? Most of the business stores their data in RDBMS as well as other data warehouse solutions. They need a way to move data to the Hadoop system to do various processing and return it back to RDBMS from Hadoop system. The data movement can happen in real time or at various intervals in bulk. We need a tool which can help us move this data from SQL to Hadoop and from Hadoop to SQL. Sqoop (SQL to Hadoop) is such a tool which extract data from non-Hadoop data sources and transform them into the format which Hadoop can use it and later it loads them into HDFS. Essentially it is ETL tool where it Extracts, Transform and Load from SQL to Hadoop. The best part is that it also does extract data from Hadoop and loads them to Non-SQL (or RDBMS) data stores. Essentially, Sqoop is a command line tool which does SQL to Hadoop and Hadoop to SQL. It is a command line interpreter. It creates MapReduce job behinds the scene to import data from an external database to HDFS. It is very effective and easy to learn tool for nonprogrammers. What is Zookeeper? ZooKeeper is a centralized service for maintaining configuration information, naming, providing distributed synchronization, and providing group services. In other words Zookeeper is a replicated synchronization service with eventual consistency. In simpler words – in Hadoop cluster there are many different nodes and one node is master. Let us assume that master node fails due to any reason. In this case, the role of the master node has to be transferred to a different node. The main role of the master node is managing the writers as that task requires persistence in order of writing. In this kind of scenario Zookeeper will assign new master node and make sure that Hadoop cluster performs without any glitch. Zookeeper is the Hadoop’s method of coordinating all the elements of these distributed systems. Here are few of the tasks which Zookeepr is responsible for. Zookeeper manages the entire workflow of starting and stopping various nodes in the Hadoop’s cluster. In Hadoop cluster when any processes need certain configuration to complete the task. Zookeeper makes sure that certain node gets necessary configuration consistently. In case of the master node fails, Zookeepr can assign new master node and make sure cluster works as expected. There many other tasks Zookeeper performance when it is about Hadoop cluster and communication. Basically without the help of Zookeeper it is not possible to design any new fault tolerant distributed application. Tomorrow In tomorrow’s blog post we will discuss about very important components of the Big Data Ecosystem – Big Data Analytics. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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