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• OOW 2013 Summary for Fusion Middleware Architects & Administrators by Simon Haslam

  - by JuergenKress

  OOW 2013 Summary for Fusion Middleware Architects & Administrators by Simon Haslam This September during Oracle OpenWorld 2013 the weather in San Francisco, as you see can from the photo, was exceptionally sunny. The dramatic final few days of the Americas Cup sailing competition, being held every day in the bay, coincided with the conference and meant that there was almost a holiday feel to the whole event. Here's my annual round-up of what I think was most interesting at OpenWorld 2013 for Fusion Middleware architects and administrators; I hope you find it useful and if you think I've missed something please add a comment! WebLogic and Cloud Application Foundation (CAF) The big WebLogic release of the year has already happened a few months ago with 12.1.2 so I won't duplicate that here. Will Lyons discussed the WebLogic and Coherence roadmap which essentially is that 12.1.3 will probably be released to coincide with SOA 12c next year and that 12.1.4, the next feature-rich WebLogic release, is more likely to be in 2015. This latter release will probably include full Java EE 7 support, have enhancements for multi-tenancy and further auto-scaling features to support increased density (i.e. more WebLogic usage for the same amount of hardware). There's a new Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder (OVAB) out already and an Oracle Traffic Director (OTD) 12c release round the corner too. Also of relevance to administrators is that Oracle has increased the support lifetime for Fusion Middleware 11g (e.g. WebLogic 10.3.6) so that Premier Support will now run to the end of 2018 and Extended Support until 2021 - this should remove any Oracle-driven pressure to upgrade at least. Java Mission Control Java Mission Control (JMC) is the HotSpot Java 7 version of JRockit 6 Mission Control, a very nice performance monitoring tool from Oracle's BEA acquisition. Flight Recorder is a feature built into the JVM which records diagnostic events into, typically, a circular buffer which can then be used for historical analysis, particularly in the case of a JVM crash or hang. It's been available separately for WebLogic only for perhaps a year now but, more significantly, it now includes JVM events and was bundled in with JDK7 Update 40 a few weeks ago. I attended a couple of interesting Java One sessions on JMC/Flight Recorder and have to say it's looking really good - it has all the previous JRMC features except for memory leak detector, plus some enhancements around operative sets and ECID filtering I think. Marcus also showed how you could add your own events into flight recorder by building your own event class - they are then available for graphing alongside all the other events in JMC. This uses a currently an unsupported/undocumented API, but it's also the same one that WebLogic uses for WLDF events so I imagine it is stable. I'm not sure quite whether this would be useful to custom applications, as opposed to infrastructure services or ISV packaged applications, but it was a very nice demonstration. I've been testing JMC / FR enabling on several environments recently and my confidence is growing - it feels robust and I think could very soon be part of my standard builds. Read the full article here. WebLogic Partner Community For regular information become a member in the WebLogic Partner Community please visit: http://www.oracle.com/partners/goto/wls-emea ( OPN account required). If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Wiki Technorati Tags: OOW,Simon Haslam,Oracle OpenWorld,WebLogic,WebLogic Community,Oracle,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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• SpaceX’s Falcon 9 Launch Success And Reusable Rockets Test Partially Successful

  - by Gopinath

  Elon Musk’s SpaceX is closing on the dream of developing reusable rockets and likely in an year or two space launch rockets will be reusable just like flights, ships and cars. Today SpaceX launched an upgraded Falcon 9 rocket in to space to deliver satellites as well as to test their reusable rocket launching technology. All on board satellites were released on to the orbit and the first stage of rocket partially succeeded in returning back to Earth. This is a huge leap in space technology.   Couple of years ago reusable rockets were considered as impossible. NASA, Russian Space Agency, China, India or for that matter any other space agency never even attempted to build reusable rockets. But SpaceX’s revolutionary technology partially succeeded in doing the impossible! Elon Musk founded SpaceX with the goal of building reusable rockets and transporting humans to & from other planets like Mars. He says If one can figure out how to effectively reuse rockets just like airplanes, the cost of access to space will be reduced by as much as a factor of a hundred.  A fully reusable vehicle has never been done before. That really is the fundamental breakthrough needed to revolutionize access to space. Normally the first stage of a rocket falls back to Earth after burning out and is destroyed. But today SpaceX reignited first stage rocket after its separation and attempted to descend smoothly on to ocean’s surface. Though it did not fully succeed, the test was partially successful and SpaceX was able to recovers portions of first stage. Rocket booster relit twice (supersonic retro & landing), but spun up due to aero torque, so fuel centrifuged & we flamed out — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 29, 2013 With the partial success of recovering first stage, SpaceX gathered huge amount of information and experience it can use to improve Falcon 9 and build a fully reusable rocket. In post launch press conference Musk said if things go "super well", could refly a Falcon 9 1st stage by the end of next year. Falcon 9 Launch Video Next reusable first tests delayed by at least two launches SpaceX has a busy schedule for next several months with more than 50 missions scheduled using the new Falcon 9 rocket. Ten of those missions are to fly cargo to the International Space Shuttle for NASA.  SpaceX announced that they will not attempt to recover the first stage of Falcon 9 in next two missions. The next test will be conducted on  the fourth mission of Falcon 9 which is planned to carry cargo to Internation Space Station sometime next year. This will give time required for SpaceX to analyze the information gathered from today’s mission and improve first stage reentry systems. More reading Here are few interesting sources to read more about today’s SpaceX launch SpaceX post mission press conference details and discussion on Reddit Giant Leaps for Space Firms Orbital, SpaceX Hacker News community discussion on SpaceX launch SpaceX Launches Next-Generation Private Falcon 9 Rocket on Big Test Flight

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• User Group Meeting Summary - April 2010

  - by Michael Stephenson

  Thanks to everyone who could make it to what turned out to be an excellent SBUG event.  First some thanks to:  Speakers: Anthony Ross and Elton Stoneman Host: The various people at Hitachi who helped to organise and arrange the venue.   Session 1 - Getting up and running with Windows Mobile and the Windows Azure Service Bus In this session Anthony discussed some considerations for using Windows Mobile and the Windows Azure Service Bus from a real-world project which Hitachi have been working on with EasyJet.  Anthony also walked through a simplified demo of the concepts which applied on the project.   In addition to the slides and demo it was also very interesting to discuss with the guys involved on this project to hear about their real experiences developing with the Azure Service Bus and some of the limitations they have had to work around in Windows Mobiles ability to interact with the service bus.   On the back of this session we will look to do some further activities around this topic and the guys offered to share their wish list of features for both Windows Mobile and Windows Azure which we will look to share for user group discussion.   Another interesting point was the cost aspects of using the ISB which were very low.   Session 2 - The Enterprise Cache In the second session Elton used a few slides which are based around one of his customer scenario's where they are looking into the concept of an Enterprise Cache within the organisation.  Elton discusses this concept and also a codeplex project he is putting together which allows you to take advantage of a cache with various providers such as Memcached, AppFabric Caching and Ncache.   Following the presentation it was interesting to hear peoples thoughts on various aspects such as the enterprise cache versus an out of process application cache.  Also there was interesting discussion around how people would like to search the cache in the future.   We will again look to put together some follow-up activity on this   Meeting Summary Following the meeting all slide decks are saved in the skydrive location where we keep content from all meetings: http://cid-40015ea59a1307c8.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/.Public/SBUG/SBUG%20Meetings/2010%20April   Remember that the details of all previous events are on the following page. http://uksoabpm.org/Events.aspx   Competition We had three copies of the Windows Identity Foundation Patterns and Practices book that were raffles on the night, it would be great to hear any feedback on the book from those who won it.   Recording The user group meeting was recorded and we will look to make this available online sometime soon.   UG Business The following things were discussed as general UG topics:   We will change the name of the user group to the UK Connected Systems User Group to we are more inline with other user groups who cover similar topics and we believe this will help us to attract more members.  The content or focus of the user group is not expected to change.   The next meeting is 26th May and can be registered at the following link: http://sbugmay2010.eventbrite.com/

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• The 2010 Life Insurance Conference - Washington, DC

  - by [email protected]

  How ironic to be in Washington, DC on April 15 - TAX DAY! Fortunately, I avoided IRS offices and attended the much more enjoyable 2010 Life Insurance Conference, presented by LIMRA, LOMA SOA and ACLI. This year's conference offered a variety of tracks focused on the Life Industry including Distribution/Marketing Marketing, Administration, Actuarial/Product Development, Regulatory, Reinsurance and Strategic Management. President and CEO of the ACLI, Frank Keating, opened the event by moderating a session titled "Executive Viewpoint on new Opportunities." Guest speakers included Ted Mathas, President and CEO of NY Life, and John Walters, President and CEO of Hartford Life. Both speakers were insightful as they shared the challenges and opportunities each company faces and the key role life insurance companies play in our society and the global economy. There were several key themes that were reiterated in multiple sessions throughout the conference - the economy is on the rebound, optimism is growing, consumer spending is up and an uptick in employment is likely to follow. The threat of a double dip recession has seemed to passed. Good news for our industry, and welcomed by all in attendance. Of special interest to me, given my background, was some research shared by both The Nolan Group and Novarica in separate sessions. Both firms indicate that policy administration upgrades/replacement projects remain a top priority in 2010. Carriers continue to invest in modern technology. Modern ultra-configurable systems enable carriers to switch from a waterfall to an agile project methodology, which often entails a "culture change" within an organization. Other themes heard throughout the two-day event: Virtually all sessions focused on People, Process and Technology! Product innovation, agility and speed to market are as important as ever. Social Networks and Twitter are becoming more popular ways of communicating with both field and dispersed staff. Several sessions focused on the application, new business and underwriting process. Companies continue looking for ways to increase market agility, accelerate speed to market, address cost issues and improve service levels across the process. They recognize the need to ease the way to do business with both producers and consumers. Author and economic futurist Jeff Thredgold presented an entertaining, informative and humorous general session on Wednesday afternoon that focused on the US and global economies, financial markets and retirement outlook. Thredgold did not disappoint anyone with his message! The Thursday morning general session was keynoted by Therese Vaughan (CEO - NAIC) and Thomas Crawford (President of C2 Group). Both speakers gave a poignant view of the recent financial crisis and discussed "Putting the Pieces Back Together." Therese spoke of the recent financial turmoil and likely changes to regulations to the financial services sector. Tom's topics focused on economic recovery and the political environment in Washington, and how that impacts our industry. Next year's event will be April 11-13, 2011 in Las Vegas. Roger A.Soppe, CLU, LUTCF, is the Senior Director of Insurance Strategy, Oracle Insurance.

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• Innovation and the Role of Social Media

  - by Brian Dirking

  A very interesting post by Andy Mulholland of CAP Gemini this week – “The CIO is trapped between the CEO wanting innovation and the CFO needing compliance” – had many interesting points: “A successful move in one area won’t be recognized and rapidly implemented in other areas to multiply the benefits, or worse unsuccessful ideas will get repeated adding to the cost and time wasted. That’s where the need to really address the combination of social networking, collaboration, knowledge management and business information is required.” Without communicating what works and what doesn’t, the innovations of our organization may be lost, and the failures repeated. That makes sense. If you liked Andy Mulholland’s blog post, you need to hear Howard Beader’s presentation at Enterprise 2.0 Conference on innovation and the role of social media. (Howard will be speaking in the Market Leaders Session at 1 PM on Wednesday June 22nd). Some of the thoughts Howard will share include: • Innovation is more than just ideas, it’s getting ideas to market, and removing the obstacles that stand in the way • Innovation is about parallel processing – you can’t remove the obstacles one by one because you will get to market too late • Innovation can be about product innovation, but it can also be about process innovation This brings us to Andy’s second issue he raises: "..the need for integration with, and visibility of, processes to understand exactly how the enterprise functions and delivers on its policies…" Andy goes on to talk about this from the perspective of compliance and the CFO’s concerns. And it’s true: innovation can come both in product innovation, but also internal process innovation. And process innovation can have as much impact as product innovation.  New supply chain models can disrupt an industry overnight. Many people ignore process innovation as a benefit of social business, because it is perceived as a bottom line rather than top line impact. But it can actually impact your top line by changing your entire business model. Oracle WebCenter sits at this crossroads between product innovation and process innovation, enabling you to drive go-to-market innovations through internal social media tools, removing obstacles in parallel, and also providing you deep insight into your processes so you can identify bottlenecks and realize whole new ways of doing business. Learn more about how at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference, where Oracle will be in booth #213 showing Oracle WebCenter and Oracle Fusion Applications.

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• How to Write an E-Book

  A few days ago my attention was drawn to a tweet spat between Karl Seguin and Scott Hanselman around the relaunch of ASP.NET and the title element in HTML. Tempest in a teapot of course, but worthwhile as I did some googling on Karl and found his blog at codebetter.com. From there it was a short jump to his free e-book, The Foundations of Programming. This short book is distinguished by its orientation, opinionated, its tone, mentoring and its honesty, which is refreshing. In Foundations, Karl covers what he considers the basics of programming and good design, including test driven development, dependency injection and domain driven design. Karl is opinionated, as the topics suggest, and doesnt bother to pretend that he doesnt think what hes suggesting is the better way, not just another way. He is aligned with ALT.NET, and gives an excellent overview of what that means; an overview more enlightening than the ALT.NET site. ALT.NET has its critics, but presenting a strong opinion grabbed my attention as a reader. It is a short walk from opinionated to hectoring,  but Karl held my attention without insulting me. He takes the time to explain, with examples, from the ground up, the problems that test driven development and dependency injection solve. So for dependency injection he builds it up from no DI, to a hand crafted approach, to a full fledged DI framework. This approach is more persuasive than just proscriptive and engaged me as the reader to follow along with his train of thought. Foundations is not as pedantic as I am making it sound. The final ingredient in Karls mix is honesty. He acknowledges that sometimes unit testing does cost more up front and take more time. He admits that sometimes he designs something a certain way just to be testable. He also warns that focusing too much on DI and loose coupling can lead to the poor design you are trying to avoid. These points add depth to his argument as I could tell hes speaking from experience, with some hard won lessons. I enjoyed The Foundations of Programming. When I was done with it, I was amazed how much I got a lot out of its 80 some pages. It is a rarity to come across something worthwhile that is longer then a tweet, but shorter than a tome these days. Well done Karl.   -- Relevant Links -- The now titled and newly relaunched page in question: http://www.asp.net/ The pleasantly confusing ALT.NET homepage: http://altdotnet.org/ A longer review, with details, chapter listings and all that important stuff: http://accidentaltechnologist.com/book-reviews/book-review-foundations-of-programming-by-karl-seguin/Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Plan Operator Tuesday round-up

  - by Rob Farley

  Eighteen posts for T-SQL Tuesday #43 this month, discussing Plan Operators. I put them together and made the following clickable plan. It’s 1000px wide, so I hope you have a monitor wide enough. Let me explain this plan for you (people’s names are the links to the articles on their blogs – the same links as in the plan above). It was clearly a SELECT statement. Wayne Sheffield (@dbawayne) wrote about that, so we start with a SELECT physical operator, leveraging the logical operator Wayne Sheffield. The SELECT operator calls the Paul White operator, discussed by Jason Brimhall (@sqlrnnr) in his post. The Paul White operator is quite remarkable, and can consume three streams of data. Let’s look at those streams. The first pulls data from a Table Scan – Boris Hristov (@borishristov)’s post – using parallel threads (Bradley Ball – @sqlballs) that pull the data eagerly through a Table Spool (Oliver Asmus – @oliverasmus). A scalar operation is also performed on it, thanks to Jeffrey Verheul (@devjef)’s Compute Scalar operator. The second stream of data applies Evil (I figured that must mean a procedural TVF, but could’ve been anything), courtesy of Jason Strate (@stratesql). It performs this Evil on the merging of parallel streams (Steve Jones – @way0utwest), which suck data out of a Switch (Paul White – @sql_kiwi). This Switch operator is consuming data from up to four lookups, thanks to Kalen Delaney (@sqlqueen), Rick Krueger (@dataogre), Mickey Stuewe (@sqlmickey) and Kathi Kellenberger (@auntkathi). Unfortunately Kathi’s name is a bit long and has been truncated, just like in real plans. The last stream performs a join of two others via a Nested Loop (Matan Yungman – @matanyungman). One pulls data from a Spool (my post – @rob_farley) populated from a Table Scan (Jon Morisi). The other applies a catchall operator (the catchall is because Tamera Clark (@tameraclark) didn’t specify any particular operator, and a catchall is what gets shown when SSMS doesn’t know what to show. Surprisingly, it’s showing the yellow one, which is about cursors. Hopefully that’s not what Tamera planned, but anyway...) to the output from an Index Seek operator (Sebastian Meine – @sqlity). Lastly, I think everyone put in 110% effort, so that’s what all the operators cost. That didn’t leave anything for me, unfortunately, but that’s okay. Also, because he decided to use the Paul White operator, Jason Brimhall gets 0%, and his 110% was given to Paul’s Switch operator post. I hope you’ve enjoyed this T-SQL Tuesday, and have learned something extra about Plan Operators. Keep your eye out for next month’s one by watching the Twitter Hashtag #tsql2sday, and why not contribute a post to the party? Big thanks to Adam Machanic as usual for starting all this. @rob_farley

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• New Release of Oracle EPM (Enterprise Performance Management)

  - by Theresa Hickman

  I'm a huge fan of Hyperion products and consider Hyperion to be one of the best acquisitions Oracle has made in terms of applications. So I am really excited to talk about their latest release, Release 11.1.2 of the Oracle EPM System. This is EPM's largest release in 2 years, and it's jam-packed with new modules and features. In terms of brand new products, there are three: 1. Public Sector Planning and Budgeting meets the needs of public sector agencies, higher education, governments, etc. that have complex budget requirements. It supports position or employee-based budgeting and integrates with MS Office and your ERP ledgers to perform commitment control. 2. Hyperion Financial Close Management is a complete financial close solution that orchestrates the entire close process from subledgers and general ledger to financial reporting and disclosure submissions. And of course, it is integrated with GL systems and consolidation systems. I saw a demo of this and it looked pretty slick. They have this unified close calendar that looks like a regular calendar that gives each person participating in the close process a task list. It comes with a Gantt chart that shows the relationships and dependencies among closing tasks. There are dashboards to allow you to track the close progress and completion of tasks as well as perform trend analysis and see how much time is being spent on different activities in the close process. This gives you visibility that you never had before to understand where the bottlenecks are and where improvements could be made. I think what I liked best about this product was that it provides a central place for all participants to communicate their progress. When I worked as an Accountant, we used ad hoc tools, such as spreadsheets, Word documents, emails, and phone calls during the close process. I like the idea of having a central system to track the overall progress as well as automate the entire financial close process. Who knows, maybe Accountants won't have to revolve their lives around the month end close anymore with a tool like this. Those periodic fire drills can become predictable, well managed processes. 3. Disclosure Management is an out-of-the-box, pre-packaged XBRL solution to meet statutory reporting requirements. This product is really going to help companies improve the timeliness of producing financial reports. Reports can be authored using MS Word and Excel and then XBRL instance documents can be produced with its embedded XBRL tags. It even supports footnotes and disclosures of non-financial information. With a product like this, companies no longer have to outsource their XBRL filing; they can bring it back in house to save costs and time. In terms of other enhancements, they have ERP Integrator that provides integration and drill downs from Hyperion products to source systems, such as Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, and SAP. No other vendor offers this level of integration. There's also a new product that links Oracle Essbase directly to Hyperion Financial Management for internal financial reporting, and new integrations between Hyperion Financial Management and Oracle's GRC products. They also improved the usability of Oracle Hyperion Planning. They made it much easier for end users to use the system via the web or via MS Excel when submitting plans and budgets. It is also integrated with intelligent approval workflows that are data-driven, user-configurable, and scenario-specific to efficiently streamline the budgeting process. Here's the press release from April 7, 2010. Here's the pre-recorded web cast where you can see the demos. Just register and watch the hour long presentation. And finally, here's the newsletter

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• Sites To Download Free eBooks For Kindle

  - by Gopinath

  Amazon Kindle is the top selling gadget of this holiday season and many of you would have received it as a gift. For those who got a Amazon Kindle here are few websites that offer free eBooks to fulfil reading appetite at no cost. 1. Free Kindle Books – Amazon Website – This page on Amazon lists nice collection of free books available for Kindle that includes Serial by Jack Kiborn, The Wild’s Call by Jeri Smith, Star Wars by John Jackson MIller and several other books from a list of 40 books. 2. Project Gutenberg: This site as 33,000 + free books that not work let you read on Kindle but also on iPad, PCs and smart phones.  This site is very popular for free ebooks. 3. Google E-Bookstore: Google’s eBookStore has thousands of free ebooks for Kindle in their free books section. 4. Internet Archive: Here you find millions of rare print works that are especially useful for academic research. Multiple language books are also available for Kindle. 5. Open Library: This site is sort of Wikipedia for eBooks with over 20 million user-contributed books and magazines. They are all Kindle friendly. 6. ManyBooks.net: Nearly 30,000 titles, many of which have been pulled from Project Gutenberg. Has a good collection of little-known Creative Commons works. 7. Freebooks.com – the public domain section of this site contains many free ebooks that are perfect for your Kindle. 8. freecomputerbooks.com, freetechbooks.com and onlinecomputerbooks.com - if you are geek and looking for technology books, this is the site you should visit to grab free books. Image credit: bike/flickr This article titled,Sites To Download Free eBooks For Kindle, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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• Willy Rotstein on Supply Chain Planning

  - by sarah.taylor(at)oracle.com

  Each time a merchandiser, buyer or planner in Retail makes a business decision around assortment, inventory, pricing and promotions there is an opportunity to improve both Profitability and Customer Service. Improving decision making, however, has always been a tricky business for retailers.  I have worked in this space for more than 15 years. I began my career as an academic, at Imperial College London, and then broadened this interest with Retailers, aiming to optimize their merchandising and supply chain decisions. Planning the business and optimizing profit is a complex process. The complexity arises from the variety of people involved, the large number of decisions to take across all business processes, the uncertainty intrinsic to the retail environment as well as the volume of data available for analysis.  Things are not getting any easier either. The advent of multi-channel, social media and mobile is taking these complexities to a new level and presenting additional opportunities for those willing to exploit them. I guess it is due to the complexities of the decision making process that, over the last couple of years working with Oracle Retail, I have witnessed a clear trend around the deployment of planning systems. Retailers are aiming to simplify their decision making processes. They want to use one joined up planning platform across the business and enhance it with "actionable" data mining and optimization techniques. At Oracle Retail, we have a vibrant community of international retailers who regularly come together to discuss the big issues in retail planning. It is a combination of fashion, grocery and speciality retailers, all sharing their best practice vision for planning and optimizing merchandise decisions. As part of the Retail Exchange program, at the recent National Retail Federation event in New York, I jointly hosted a Planning dinner with Peter Fitzgerald from Google UK, Retail Division. Those retailers from our international planning community who were in New York for the annual NRF event were able to attend. The group comprised some of Europe's great International Retail brands.  All sectors were represented by organisations like Mango, LVMH, Ahold, Morrisons, Shop Direct and River Island. They confirmed the current importance of engaging with Planning and Optimization issues. In particular the impact of the internet was a key topic. We had a great debate about new retail initiatives.  Peter highlighted how mobility is changing retail - in particular with the new "local availability search" initiative. We also had an exciting discussion around the opportunities to improve merchandising using the new data that is becoming available from search, social media and ecommerce sites. It will be our focus to continue to help retailers translate this data into better results while keeping their business operations simple. New developments in "actionable" analytics and computing capacity make this a very exciting area today. Watch this space for my contributions on these topics which will be made available through this blog. Oracle Retail has a strong Planning community. if you are a category manager, a planner, a buyer, a merchandiser, a retail supplier or any retail executive with a keen interest in planning then you would be very welcome to join Oracle Retail's Planning Community. As part of our community you will be able to join our in-person and virtual events, download topical white papers and best practice information specifically tailored to your area of interest.  If anyone would like to register their interest in joining our community of retailers discussing planning then please contact me at [email protected]   Willy Rotstein, Oracle Retail

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• Q&A: Oracle's Paul Needham on How to Defend Against Insider Attacks

  - by Troy Kitch

  Source: Database Insider Newsletter: The threat from insider attacks continues to grow. In fact, just since January 1, 2014, insider breaches have been reported by a major consumer bank, a major healthcare organization, and a range of state and local agencies, according to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse.  We asked Paul Needham, Oracle senior director, product management, to shed light on the nature of these pernicious risks—and how organizations can best defend themselves against the threat from insider risks. Q. First, can you please define the term "insider" in this context? A. According to the CERT Insider Threat Center, a malicious insider is a current or former employee, contractor, or business partner who "has or had authorized access to an organization's network, system, or data and intentionally exceeded or misused that access in a manner that negatively affected the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of the organization's information or information systems."  Q. What has changed with regard to insider risks? A. We are actually seeing the risk of privileged insiders growing. In the latest Independent Oracle Users Group Data Security Survey, the number of organizations that had not taken steps to prevent privileged user access to sensitive information had grown from 37 percent to 42 percent. Additionally, 63 percent of respondents say that insider attacks represent a medium-to-high risk—higher than any other category except human error (by an insider, I might add). Q. What are the dangers of this type of risk? A. Insiders tend to have special insight and access into the kinds of data that are especially sensitive. Breaches can result in long-term legal issues and financial penalties. They can also damage an organization's brand in a way that directly impacts its bottom line. Finally, there is the potential loss of intellectual property, which can have serious long-term consequences because of the loss of market advantage.  Q. How can organizations protect themselves against abuse of privileged access? A. Every organization has privileged users and that will always be the case. The questions are how much access should those users have to application data stored in the database, and how can that default access be controlled? Oracle Database Vault (See image) was designed specifically for this purpose and helps protect application data against unauthorized access.  Oracle Database Vault can be used to block default privileged user access from inside the database, as well as increase security controls on the application itself. Attacks can and do come from inside the organization, and they are just as likely to come from outside as attempts to exploit a privileged account.  Using Oracle Database Vault protection, boundaries can be placed around database schemas, objects, and roles, preventing privileged account access from being exploited by hackers and insiders.  A new Oracle Database Vault capability called privilege analysis identifies privileges and roles used at runtime, which can then be audited or revoked by the security administrators to reduce the attack surface and increase the security of applications overall.  For a more comprehensive look at controlling data access and restricting privileged data in Oracle Database, download Needham's new e-book, Securing Oracle Database 12c: A Technical Primer. 

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• Archiving SQLHelp tweets

  - by jamiet

  #SQLHelp is a Twitter hashtag that can be used by any Twitter user to get help from the SQL Server community. I think its fair to say that in its first year of being it has proved to be a very useful resource however Kendra Little (@kendra_little) made a very salient point yesterday when she tweeted: Is there a way to search the archives of #sqlhelp Trying to remember answer to a question I know I saw a couple months ago http://twitter.com/#!/Kendra_Little/status/15538234184441856 This highlights an inherent problem with Twitter’s search capability – it simply does not reach far enough back in time. I have made steps to remedy that situation by putting into place two initiatives to archive Tweets that contain the #sqlhelp hashtag. The Archivist http://archivist.visitmix.com/ is a free service that, quite simply, archives a history of tweets that contain a given search term by periodically polling Twitter’s search service with that search term and subsequently displaying a dashboard providing an aggregate view of those tweets for things like tweet volume over time, top users and top words (Archivist FAQ). I have set up an archive on The Archivist for “sqlhelp” which you can view at http://archivist.visitmix.com/jamiet/7. Here is a screenshot of the SQLHelp dashboard 36 minutes after I set it up: There is lots of good information in there, including the fact that Jonathan Kehayias (@SQLSarg) is the most active SQLHelp tweeter (I suspect as an answerer rather than a questioner ) and that SSIS has proven to be a rather (ahem) popular subject!! Datasift The Archivist has its uses though for our purposes it has a couple of downsides. For starters you cannot search through an archive (which is what Kendra was after) and nor can you export the contents of the archive for offline analysis. For those functions we need something a bit more heavyweight and for that I present to you Datasift. Datasift is a tool (currently an alpha release) that allows you to search for tweets and provide them through an object called a Datasift stream. That sounds very similar to normal Twitter search though it has one distinct advantage that other Twitter search tools do not – Datasift has access to Twitter’s Streaming API (aka the Twitter Firehose). In addition it has access to a lot of other rather nice features: It provides the Datasift API that allows you to consume the output of a Datasift stream in your tool of choice (bring on my favourite ultimate mashup tool J ) It has a query language (called Filtered Stream Definition Language – FSDL for short) A Datasift stream can consume (and filter) other Datasift streams Datasift can (and does) consume services other than Twitter If I refer to Datasift as “ETL for tweets” then you may get some sort of idea what it is all about. Just as I did with The Archivist I have set up a publicly available Datasift stream for “sqlhelp” at http://datasift.net/stream/1581/sqlhelp. Here is the FSDL query that provides the data: twitter.text contains "sqlhelp" Pretty simple eh? At the current time it provides little more than a rudimentary dashboard but as Datasift is currently an alpha release I think this may be worth keeping an eye on. The real value though is the ability to consume the output of a stream via Datasift’s RESTful API, observe: http://api.datasift.net/stream.xml?stream_identifier=c7015255f07e982afdeebdf1ae6e3c0d&username=jamiet&api_key=XXXXXXX (Note that an api_key is required during the alpha period so, given that I’m not supplying my api_key, this URI will not work for you) Just to prove that a Datasift stream can indeed consume data from another stream I have set up a second stream that further filters the first one for tweets containing “SSIS”. That one is at http://datasift.net/stream/1586/ssis-sqlhelp and here is the FSDL query: rule "414c9845685ff8d2548999cf3162e897" and (interaction.content contains "ssis") When Datasift moves beyond alpha I’ll re-assess how useful this is going to be and post a follow-up blog. @Jamiet

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• TDC: The Developer's Conference Day One

  - by Tori Wieldt

  The Developer's Conference (TDC) kicked off Wednesday in São Paulo, Brazil. With over 3000 developers in attendance over five days, it is the premier multi-community developer conference in Brazil, organized by Globalcode. Yara Senger, one of the organizers said, "We like to say multi-community rather than multi-technology because it is interesting and benefical when various communities get together. They learn so much from each other!" TDC includes tracks on Java and several other technologies, including SOA, Python, Ruby, mobile and digital TV. In the mobile track, developers who create a Java ME app will get a Nokia S40 phone!New this year at TDC is the Java University track, sponsored by Oracle.  It is aimed at university students and professionals who are new to Java. The lectures are introductory level, with an educational focus and practical exercises. The Java track and other tracks, such as SOA, mobile and Digital TV, are getting lots of help from the expertise of Brazilian JUGS members. Thanks to GoJava, JavaBahia, JavaNoroeste and SouJava!Carlos Fernando, one of the coordinators on the Digital TV track, said "My goal is to teach developers the basics of digital TV, and show them the tools used to build interactive TV applications." Fernando explained the concept of "the second screen:" that many people watch TV and have second smart device (tablet or smartphone) with them, and this creates many opportunities for developers. For example, while watching TV, a viewer can get extra content (interviews, behind the scenes) on their tablet. More interestingly, while watching their favorite TV show a viewer likes an outfit one of the actors is wearing, their smartphone can tell them where they can buy it nearby, or they can order it online immediately. Fernando exclaimed, "The opportunities for developers are nearly infinite in the area of digital TV!" At the TDC opening keynote, Debora Palermo, Oracle University country manager for Brazil, reminded attendees that Java is present in many devices, from simple to complex, and knowledge of this platform can open many doors in the labor market. She explained Oracle's Workforce Development Program (WDP), managed by Oracle University, which allows educational institutions to deliver Oracle training. WDP allows for easy and low-cost access to Oracle training in local communities across the world. "Oracle University is committed to creating the next generation of Java developers, and WDP can make that happen," Palermo said. As of March 2012, Oracle University is partnering with Globalcode to offer WDP. Students can earn official Oracle Course Certifications, a great way to learn Java.Brazilian developers that cannot attend TDC can watch live streaming.

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• Tuning Red Gate: #3 of Lots

  - by Grant Fritchey

  I'm drilling down into the metrics about SQL Server itself available to me in the Analysis tab of SQL Monitor to see what's up with our two problematic servers. In the previous post I'd noticed that rg-sql01 had quite a few CPU spikes. So one of the first things I want to check there is how much CPU is getting used by SQL Server itself. It's possible we're looking at some other process using up all the CPU Nope, It's SQL Server. I compared this to the rg-sql02 server: You can see that there is a more, consistently low set of CPU counters there. I clearly need to look at rg-sql01 and capture more specific data around the queries running on it to identify which ones are causing these CPU spikes. I always like to look at the Batch Requests/sec on a server, not because it's an indication of a problem, but because it gives you some idea of the load. Just how much is this server getting hit? Here are rg-sql01 and rg-sql02: Of the two, clearly rg-sql01 has a lot of activity. Remember though, that's all this is a measure of, activity. It doesn't suggest anything other than what it says, the number of requests coming in. But it's the kind of thing you want to know in order to understand how the system is used. Are you seeing a correlation between the number of requests and the CPU usage, or a reverse correlation, the number of requests drops as the CPU spikes? See, it's useful. Some of the details you can look at are Compilations/sec, Compilations/Batch and Recompilations/sec. These give you some idea of how the cache is getting used within the system. None of these showed anything interesting on either server. One metric that I like (even though I know it can be controversial) is the Page Life Expectancy. On the average server I expect see a series of mountains as the PLE climbs then drops due to a data load or something along those lines. That's not the case here: Those spikes back in January suggest that the servers weren't really being used much. The PLE on the rg-sql01 seems to be somewhat consistent growing to 3 hours or so then dropping, but the rg-sql02 PLE looks like it might be all over the map. Instead of continuing to look at this high level gathering data view, I'm going to drill down on rg-sql02 and see what it's done for the last week: And now we begin to see where we might have an issue. Memory on this system is getting flushed every 1/2 hour or so. I'm going to check another metric, scans: Whoa! I'm going back to the system real quick to look at some disk information again for rg-sql02. Here is the average disk queue length on the server: and the transfers Right, I think I have a guess as to what's up here. We're seeing memory get flushed constantly and we're seeing lots of scans. The disks are queuing, especially that F drive, and there are lots of requests that correspond to the scans and the memory flushes. In short, we've got queries that are scanning the data, a lot, so we either have bad queries or bad indexes. I'm going back to the server overview for rg-sql02 and check the Top 10 expensive queries. I'm modifying it to show me the last 3 days and the totals, so I'm not looking at some maintenance routine that ran 10 minutes ago and is skewing the results: OK. I need to look into these queries that are getting executed this much. They're generating a lot of reads, but which queries are generating the most reads: Ow, all still going against the same database. This is where I'm going to temporarily leave SQL Monitor. What I want to do is connect up to the server, validate that the Warehouse database is using the F:\ drive (which I'll put money down it is) and then start seeing what's up with these queries. Part 1 of the Series Part 2 of the Series

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• Thinktecture.IdentityModel: Comparing Strings without leaking Timinig Information

  - by Your DisplayName here!

  Paul Hill commented on a recent post where I was comparing HMACSHA256 signatures. In a nutshell his complaint was that I am leaking timing information while doing so – or in other words, my code returned faster with wrong (or partially wrong) signatures than with the correct signature. This can be potentially used for timing attacks like this one. I think he got a point here, especially in the era of cloud computing where you can potentially run attack code on the same physical machine as your target to do high resolution timing analysis (see here for an example). It turns out that it is not that easy to write a time-constant string comparer due to all sort of (unexpected) clever optimization mechanisms in the CLR. With the help and feedback of Paul and Shawn I came up with this: Structure the code in a way that the CLR will not try to optimize it In addition turn off optimization (just in case a future version will come up with new optimization methods) Add a random sleep when the comparison fails (using Shawn’s and Stephen’s nice Random wrapper for RNGCryptoServiceProvider). You can find the full code in the Thinktecture.IdentityModel download. [MethodImpl(MethodImplOptions.NoOptimization)] public static bool IsEqual(string s1, string s2) {     if (s1 == null && s2 == null)     {         return true;     }       if (s1 == null || s2 == null)     {         return false;     }       if (s1.Length != s2.Length)     {         return false;     }       var s1chars = s1.ToCharArray();     var s2chars = s2.ToCharArray();       int hits = 0;     for (int i = 0; i < s1.Length; i++)     {         if (s1chars[i].Equals(s2chars[i]))         {             hits += 2;         }         else         {             hits += 1;         }     }       bool same = (hits == s1.Length * 2);       if (!same)     {         var rnd = new CryptoRandom();         Thread.Sleep(rnd.Next(0, 10));     }       return same; }

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• Walking to the North Pole to raise money to protect children from cruelty.

  - by jessica.ebbelaar

  Hi, my name is Luca. I joined Oracle in 2005 and I am currently working as a Dell EMEA Channel Manager UK, Ireland and Iberia and I am responsible for the Oracle Dell relationship for the above 3 countries. On the 31st of March 2011 I will set out to complete the ultimate challenge. I will walk and ski across the frozen Arctic to the Top of The World: the GEOGRAPHIC North Pole. While dragging all my supplies over 60 Nautical miles of moving sea ice, in temperatures as low as minus 30 degrees Celsius. I will spend 8 to 10 days preparing, working, living and travelling to the North Pole to 90 degree north. In November I spent a full week of training for this trip.( watch my video). This gave me the opportunity to meet the rest of the team, testing all the gear and carrying an 18inch tyre around the country side for 8 hours per day. I am honored to embark this challenging journey to support the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC). The NSPCC helped more than 750,000 young people to speak out for the first time about abuse they had suffered. I am a firm believer that in order to build a stronger, healthier and wiser society we need to support and help future generations from the beginning of their life journey. This is why cruelty to children must stop. FULL STOP.   Through Virgin Money Giving, you can sponsor me and donations will be quickly processed and passed to NSPCC. Virgin Money Giving is a non-profit organization and will claim gift aid on a charity's behalf where the donor is eligible for this. If you are a UK tax payer please don't forget to select Gift Aid. Gift Aid is great because it means charities get extra money added to their donations at no extra cost to the donor. For every £1 donated, the charity currently receives £1.28 when you add Gift Aid. Anyone who would like to find out more can visit my Facebook page ‘Luca North Pole charity fundraising trip’ I really appreciate all your support and thank you for supporting the NSPCC. Tags van Technorati: Channel Manager,challenge,Arctic,North Pole,NSPCC,cruelty to children,Luca North Pole charity fundraising trip. If fou have any questions related to this article contact [email protected].

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• career in Mobile sw/Application Development [closed]

  - by pramod

  i m planning to do a course on Wireless & mobile computing.The syllabus are given below.Please check & let me know whether its worth to do.How is the job prospects after that.I m a fresher & from electronic Engg.The modules are- *Wireless and Mobile Computing (WiMC) – Modules* C, C++ Programming and Data Structures 100 Hours C Revision C, C++ programming tools on linux(Vi editor, gdb etc.) OOP concepts Programming constructs Functions Access Specifiers Classes and Objects Overloading Inheritance Polymorphism Templates Data Structures in C++ Arrays, stacks, Queues, Linked Lists( Singly, Doubly, Circular) Trees, Threaded trees, AVL Trees Graphs, Sorting (bubble, Quick, Heap , Merge) System Development Methodology 18 Hours Software life cycle and various life cycle models Project Management Software: A Process Various Phases in s/w Development Risk Analysis and Management Software Quality Assurance Introduction to Coding Standards Software Project Management Testing Strategies and Tactics Project Management and Introduction to Risk Management Java Programming 110 Hours Data Types, Operators and Language Constructs Classes and Objects, Inner Classes and Inheritance Inheritance Interface and Package Exceptions Threads Java.lang Java.util Java.awt Java.io Java.applet Java.swing XML, XSL, DTD Java n/w programming Introduction to servlet Mobile and Wireless Technologies 30 Hours Basics of Wireless Technologies Cellular Communication: Single cell systems, multi-cell systems, frequency reuse, analog cellular systems, digital cellular systems GSM standard: Mobile Station, BTS, BSC, MSC, SMS sever, call processing and protocols CDMA standard: spread spectrum technologies, 2.5G and 3G Systems: HSCSD, GPRS, W-CDMA/UMTS,3GPP and international roaming, Multimedia services CDMA based cellular mobile communication systems Wireless Personal Area Networks: Bluetooth, IEEE 802.11a/b/g standards Mobile Handset Device Interfacing: Data Cables, IrDA, Bluetooth, Touch- Screen Interfacing Wireless Security, Telemetry Java Wireless Programming and Applications Development(J2ME) 100 Hours J2ME Architecture The CLDC and the KVM Tools and Development Process Classification of CLDC Target Devices CLDC Collections API CLDC Streams Model MIDlets MIDlet Lifecycle MIDP Programming MIDP Event Architecture High-Level Event Handling Low-Level Event Handling The CLDC Streams Model The CLDC Networking Package The MIDP Implementation Introduction to WAP, WML Script and XHTML Introduction to Multimedia Messaging Services (MMS) Symbian Programming 60 Hours Symbian OS basics Symbian OS services Symbian OS organization GUI approaches ROM building Debugging Hardware abstraction Base porting Symbian OS reference design porting File systems Overview of Symbian OS Development – DevKits, CustKits and SDKs CodeWarrior Tool Application & UI Development Client Server Framework ECOM STDLIB in Symbian iPhone Programming 80 Hours Introducing iPhone core specifications Understanding iPhone input and output Designing web pages for the iPhone Capturing iPhone events Introducing the webkit CSS transforms transitions and animations Using iUI for web apps Using Canvas for web apps Building web apps with Dashcode Writing Dashcode programs Debugging iPhone web pages SDK programming for web developers An introduction to object-oriented programming Introducing the iPhone OS Using Xcode and Interface builder Programming with the SDK Toolkit OS Concepts & Linux Programming 60 Hours Operating System Concepts What is an OS? Processes Scheduling & Synchronization Memory management Virtual Memory and Paging Linux Architecture Programming in Linux Linux Shell Programming Writing Device Drivers Configuring and Building GNU Cross-tool chain Configuring and Compiling Linux Virtual File System Porting Linux on Target Hardware WinCE.NET and Database Technology 80 Hours Execution Process in .NET Environment Language Interoperability Assemblies Need of C# Operators Namespaces & Assemblies Arrays Preprocessors Delegates and Events Boxing and Unboxing Regular Expression Collections Multithreading Programming Memory Management Exceptions Handling Win Forms Working with database ASP .NET Server Controls and client-side scripts ASP .NET Web Server Controls Validation Controls Principles of database management Need of RDBMS etc Client/Server Computing RDBMS Technologies Codd’s Rules Data Models Normalization Techniques ER Diagrams Data Flow Diagrams Database recovery & backup SQL Android Application 80 Hours Introduction of android Why develop for android Android SDK features Creating android activities Fundamental android UI design Intents, adapters, dialogs Android Technique for saving data Data base in Androids Maps, Geocoding, Location based services Toast, using alarms, Instant messaging Using blue tooth Using Telephony Introducing sensor manager Managing network and wi-fi connection Advanced androids development Linux kernel security Implement AIDL Interface. Project 120 Hours

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• Manage Your Favorite Social Accounts in Chrome and Iron with Seesmic

  - by Asian Angel

  Are you looking for a way to manage your Twitter, Facebook, Google Buzz, LinkedIn, and Foursquare accounts all in one place? Using the Seesmic Web App for Chrome and Iron you can access your favorite accounts and manage them in a single, simple-to-use interface. A feature that we loved from the start was the ability to access Twitter without creating a special Seesmic account. And in these days of multiple accounts who needs another one to complicate things up? All that you need to do is to sign in with your user name/e-mail along with your password. You do have to authorize access for Seesmic to connect with your account but the whole process (login & authorization) is handled in a single window instance. Now on to a quick look at some of the UI features… The sidebar allows you to add additional columns to the main interface, set your favorite location for Trends, and tie in additional social services as desired. You can also access additional options and controls in the upper right corner. When you are ready to start tweeting click in the blank at the top and enter your text, etc. in the convenient drop-down window that appears. Another nice perk is the ability to switch to a black and grey theme if the white is too bright for your needs. The Seesmic web app provides a simple-to-use, highly efficient way to manage your Twitter account and other favorite social services in a single tab interface. Seesmic [Chrome Web Store] Latest Features How-To Geek ETC Should You Delete Windows 7 Service Pack Backup Files to Save Space? What Can Super Mario Teach Us About Graphics Technology? Windows 7 Service Pack 1 is Released: But Should You Install It? How To Make Hundreds of Complex Photo Edits in Seconds With Photoshop Actions How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 How to Use Google Chrome as Your Default PDF Reader (the Easy Way) Manage Your Favorite Social Accounts in Chrome and Iron with Seesmic E.T. II – Extinction [Fake Movie Sequel Video] Remastered King’s Quest Games Offer Classic Gaming on Modern Machines Compare Your Internet Cost and Speed to Global Averages [Infographic] Orbital Battle for Terra Wallpaper WizMouse Enables Mouse Over Scrolling on Any Window

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• SBUG Session: The Enterprise Cache

  - by EltonStoneman

  [Source: http://geekswithblogs.net/EltonStoneman] I did a session on "The Enterprise Cache" at the UK SOA/BPM User Group yesterday which generated some useful discussion. The proposal was for a dedicated caching layer which all app servers and service providers can hook into, sharing resources and common data. The architecture might end up like this: I'll update this post with a link to the slide deck once it's available. The next session will have Udi Dahan walking through nServiceBus, register on EventBrite if you want to come along. Synopsis Looked at the benefits and drawbacks of app-centric isolated caches, compared to an enterprise-wide shared cache running on dedicated nodes; Suggested issues and risks around caching including staleness of data, resource usage, performance and testing; Walked through a generic service cache implemented as a WCF behaviour – suitable for IIS- or BizTalk-hosted services - which I'll be releasing on CodePlex shortly; Listed common options for cache providers and their offerings. Discussion Cache usage. Different value propositions for utilising the cache: improved performance, isolation from underlying systems (e.g. service output caching can have a TTL large enough to cover downtime), reduced resource impact – CPU, memory, SQL and cost (e.g. caching results of paid-for services). Dedicated cache nodes. Preferred over in-host caching provided latency is acceptable. Depending on cache provider, can offer easy scalability and global replication so cache clients always use local nodes. Restriction of AppFabric Caching to Windows Server 2008 not viewed as a concern. Security. Limited security model in most cache providers. Options for securing cache content suggested as custom implementations. Obfuscating keys and serialized values may mean additional security is not needed. Depending on security requirements and architecture, can ensure cache servers only accessible to cache clients via IPsec. Staleness. Generally thought to be an overrated problem. Thinking in line with eventual consistency, that serving up stale data may not be a significant issue. Good technical arguments support this, although I suspect business users will be harder to persuade. Providers. Positive feedback for AppFabric Caching – speed, configurability and richness of the distributed model making it a good enterprise choice. .NET port of memcached well thought of for performance but lack of replication makes it less suitable for these shared scenarios. Replicated fork – repcached – untried and less active than memcached. NCache also well thought of, but Express version too limited for enterprise scenarios, and commercial versions look costly compared to AppFabric.

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• Steps to deploying on Windows Azure

  - by Vincent Grondin

  Alright, these steps might be a little detailed and of few might not be necessary but still it's a pretty accurate road map to deploying on azure...     1)     Open you solution 2)      Rebuild ALL 3)      Right click on your Azure project and click "Publish" 4)      It should open a windows explorer window with your package to be uploaded (.cspkg ) and its associated configuration (.cscfg) to be uploaded too.  Keep it open, you'll need that path later on... 5)      It should also open a browser asking you to login to your passport account, please do so. 6)      After this you will be redirected to the Azure Portal where you will see your Azure Project Name below the « Projet Name » section.  Click on it. 7)      Then you should be redirected to a detailed view of your account on Azure where you will create a new service by clicking the hyperlink on the top right corner. 8)      Choose the right service type for you, most likely the "Hosted Service" type 9)      Choose a « Label » name and click « next » 10)   Choose a name for your service and validate that the name is available in the cloud by clicking the "Check Availability" button 11)   At the bottom of this same page, you can choose to create a group for your service, use no group or join an existing group.  Creating a group means that all applications that belong to the same group will see no cost to exchanging data between other applications of the same group.  Most of the time when you create a single application, creating a group is not necessary.  You should choose a region that's close to your own region. 12)   On the next window, you should see a "Production" environment and a "Staging" environment.  Beware because "Staging" and "Production" are two different environments in the cloud and applications in "Staging" even when not runing do continue to rack in charges...  Choose an environment and click "Deploy". 13)   In the following window, browse to the path where your cspkg resides and then do the same thing with your cscfg file.  Choose a name for your Label,  and click "Deploy"... 14)   From now on, the clock is ticking and unless you have free Azure hours, your credit card is being billed… 15)   Click on the « Run » button to start your application 16)   Be patient.... be very patient… 17)   Once your application has finished starting, you should see a GREEN circle on the left side of the screen indicating that your application is READY.  Click the URL to test your application and remember that if your application is a service, you have to hit the "svc" class behind the link you see there.  Something in the likes of http://testvince2.cloudapp.net/service1.svc  (this is a fictional link) 18)   Hopefully your application will show up or in the case of a service, you will see your service's wsdl meaning that everything is working fine. Happy cloud computing all!

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 2012-03-20

  - by Bob Rhubart

  SOA! SOA! SOA!; OSB 11g Recipes and Author Interviews www.oracle.com Featured this week on the OTN Architect Homepage, along with the latest articles, white papers, blogs, events, and other resources for software architects. OTN Virtual Developer Day - Java - APAC Tuesday March 27th, 2012. 9:30 am to 2:00pm IST / 12:00pm to 4.30pm SGT / 3.00pm - 7.30pm AEDT Oracle Virtualization Newsletter - March Edition www.oracle.com News, white papers, webcasts, events, blogs, and more -- all focused on Oracle Virtualization products. 7 Signs an Enterprise is getting the post-PC thing | Ron Tolido www.capgemini.com Capgemini's Ron Tolido shares "indicators for enterprises that actually understand the power of mobility and the post-PC era." Gartner: Personal Cloud Will Replace the Personal Computer as the Center of Users' Digital Lives www.gartner.com The change, says Gartner, "will require enterprises to fundamentally rethink how they deliver applications and services to users." Northeast Ohio Oracle Users Group 2 Day Seminar - May 14-15 - Cleveland, OH www.neooug.org More than 20 sessions over 4 tracks, featuring 18 speakers, including Oracle ACE Director Cary Millsap, Oracle ACE Director Rich Niemiec, and Oracle ACE Stewart Brand. Register before April 15 and save. Oracle Hardware Systems: The Extreme Performance Tour - Dates and Locations Worldwide www.oracle.com Get the inside track on Oracle's hardware strategy and product roadmap from the people who know Oracle hardware best. And be sure to meet our global experts in the Extreme Performance exhibition area. Click the link for dates and locations worldwide. Oracle's ZFS Storage Appliance Simulator | Steen Schmidt blogs.oracle.com Take a test drive. Oracle Access Manager 11g - useful links | Dmitry Nefedkin blogs.oracle.com Dmitry Nefedkin shares a list of links to useful resources for those interested in Oracle Access Manager 11g. Oracle Linux Online Forum - March 27 event.on24.com Date: Tuesday, March 27, 2012 Time: 9:30 AM PT / 12:30 PM ET Leading Innovations in Enterprise Linux hosted by Oracle Executives Edward Screven and Wim Coekaerts. Customer Presentation: How Oracle Helps Reduce Cost and Improve Performance of Database Applications at Progressive Insurance Speaker: John Dome What's New in Oracle Linux Speakers: Waseem Daher, Chris Mason, Elena Zannoni, Lenz Grimmer Get More Value from your Linux Vendor Speakers: Sergio Leunissen, Chris Mason, Monica Kumar Thought for the Day "I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when looked at in the right way, did not become still more complicated." —Poul Anderson

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• Unclaimed user group prizes, Live meeting on Monday, Next weeks UG, SQLRelay and more prizes

  - by Testas

    Hi Everyone Firstly I want to let you know that I finally found the LINQ book prize winners and the list of people at the bottom of this email are owed a LINQ book. This will be given out at next week’s UG meeting Live meeting with Carolyn Chau, Program Manager at Microsoft on Monday! It is very rare that we get the opportunity to have a Live meeting with a Program Manager in Redmond. Carolyn Chau will be presenting PowerView next Monday at 8pm. Live meeting details can be found on http://sqlserverfaq.com/events/388/Live-Meeting-on-SQL-Server-2012-PowerView-with-Carolyn-Chau-Principal-Program-Manager-in-the-Reporting-Services-in-association-with-SQLPASS-SQLServerFAQ-and-SQLBits.aspx Next week’s UG!! We welcome Mark Broadbent to Manchester next week where he will be presenting his session on SQL Server 2012 on Windows Core. We also hand out the unclaimed prizes. Register at http://sqlserverfaq.com/events/369/Thursday-night-meeting-at-BSS-with-Chris-TestaONeill-and-Mark-Broadbent.aspx Chris Webb is in Manchester!!! Chris Webb will be speaking at the Manchester SQL Server UG on 4th July. He will also be running his Real World Cube Design and Performance Tuning with Analysis Services between the 3rd – 5th July. If you want to attend then you can sign up at the link below http://www.technitrain.com/coursedetail.php?c=13&trackingcode=FAQ SQLRelay and a Special Prize and Jamie Thomson comes to Manchester!!!! SQLRelay takes place in Manchester on the 22nd. We have a special guest, after years of asking Jamie Thomson is coming to Manchester. The SSIS Junkie will be gracing us with his presence with a talk on SSIS 2012. Also we have a prize. Know a friend or colleague who would benefit from SQLRelay? Get them to register at www.sqlserverfaq.com and then register for the event http://sqlserverfaq.com/events/373/ALL-DAY-TUESDAY-EVENT-12-hours-of-SQL-Server-2012-at-the-SQLRelay-meeting-at-the-COOP-Manchester.aspx Then send an email to [email protected] with the subject of SQLFriend with the name of your friend. If you are both at the SQLRelay event on the day and your names are pulled out of the hat you will win a PASS 2011 DVD and your friend will win the “Best of PASS DVD 2011” worth  $1000 courtesy of SQLPASS. The draw will take place between 4.30pm – 5pm on the day. SQLBits feedback!!!!! Attended SQLBits? We really need to know your opinion. Please fill out the survey for the days you attended If you attended any of the days at SQLBits please can you all fill out the following survey http://www.sqlbits.com/SQLBitsX If you attended the Thursday Training day then please fill out the following survey: http://www.sqlbits.com/SQLBitsXThursday If you attended the Friday Deep Dives day then please fill out the following survey: http://www.sqlbits.com/SQLBitsXFriday If you attended the Saturday Community day then please fill out the following survey: http://www.sqlbits.com/SQLBitsXSaturday Thanks   Chris and Martin   LINQ BOOK winners Andrew Birds Chris Kennedy Dave Carpenter David Forrester Ian Ringrose James Cullen James Simpson Kevan Riley Kirsty Hunter Martin Bell Martin Croft Michael Docherty Naga Anand Ram Mangipudi Neal Atkinson Nick Colebourn Pavel Nefyodov Ralph Baines Rick Hibbert saad saleh Simon Enion Stan Venn Steve Powell Stuart Quinn

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• Windows Azure Learning Plan - Architecture

  - by BuckWoody

  This is one in a series of posts on a Windows Azure Learning Plan. You can find the main post here. This one deals with what an Architect needs to know about Windows Azure.   General Architectural Guidance Overview and general  information about Azure - what it is, how it works, and where you can learn more. Cloud Computing, A Crash Course for Architects (Video) http://www.msteched.com/2010/Europe/ARC202 Patterns and Practices for Cloud Development http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff898430.aspx Design Patterns, Anti-Patterns and Windows Azure http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ignitionshowcase/archive/2010/11/27/design-patterns-anti-patterns-and-windows-azure.aspx Application Patterns for the Cloud http://blogs.msdn.com/b/kashif/archive/2010/08/07/application-patterns-for-the-cloud.aspx Architecting Applications for High Scalability (Video) http://www.msteched.com/2010/Europe/ARC309 David Aiken on Azure Architecture Patterns (Video) http://blogs.msdn.com/b/architectsrule/archive/2010/09/09/arcast-tv-david-aiken-on-azure-architecture-patterns.aspx Cloud Application Architecture Patterns (Video) http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bobfamiliar/archive/2010/10/19/cloud-application-architecture-patterns-by-david-platt.aspx 10 Things Every Architect Needs to Know about Windows Azure http://geekswithblogs.net/iupdateable/archive/2010/10/20/slides-and-links-for-windows-azure-platform-session-at-software.aspx Key Differences Between Public and Private Clouds http://blogs.msdn.com/b/kadriu/archive/2010/10/24/key-differences-between-public-and-private-clouds.aspx Microsoft Application Platform at a Glance http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jmeier/archive/2010/10/30/microsoft-application-platform-at-a-glance.aspx Windows Azure is not just about Roles http://vikassahni.wordpress.com/2010/11/17/windows-azure-is-not-just-about-roles/ Example Application for Windows Azure http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff966482.aspx Implementation Guidance Practical applications for the architect to consider 5 Enterprise steps for adopting a Platform as a Service http://blogs.msdn.com/b/davidmcg/archive/2010/12/02/5-enterprise-steps-for-adopting-a-platform-as-a-service.aspx?wa=wsignin1.0 Performance-Based Scaling in Windows Azure http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/gg232759.aspx Windows Azure Guidance for the Development Process http://blogs.msdn.com/b/eugeniop/archive/2010/04/01/windows-azure-guidance-development-process.aspx Microsoft Developer Guidance Maps http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jmeier/archive/2010/10/04/developer-guidance-ia-at-a-glance.aspx How to Build a Hybrid On-Premise/In Cloud Application http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ignitionshowcase/archive/2010/11/09/how-to-build-a-hybrid-on-premise-in-cloud-application.aspx A Common Scenario of Multi-instances in Windows Azure http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windows-azure-support/archive/2010/11/03/a-common-scenario-of-multi_2d00_instances-in-windows-azure-.aspx Slides and Links for Windows Azure Platform Best Practices http://geekswithblogs.net/iupdateable/archive/2010/09/29/slides-and-links-for-windows-azure-platform-best-practices-for.aspx AppFabric Architecture and Deployment Topologies guide http://blogs.msdn.com/b/appfabriccat/archive/2010/09/10/appfabric-architecture-and-deployment-topologies-guide-now-available-via-microsoft-download-center.aspx Windows Azure Platform Appliance http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/appliance/ Integrating Cloud Technologies into Your Organization Interoperability with Open Source and other applications; business and cost decisions Interoperability Labs at Microsoft http://www.interoperabilitybridges.com/ Windows Azure Service Level Agreements http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/sla/

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• European e-government Action Plan all about interoperability

  - by trond-arne.undheim

  Yesterday, the European Commission released its European eGovernment Action Plan for 2011-2015. The plan includes measures on providing deeper user empowerment, enhancing the Internal Market, more efficiency and effectiveness of public administrations, and putting in place pre-conditions for developing e-government. The Good - Defines interoperability very clearly. Calls interoperability "a pre-condition for cross-border eGovernment services" (a very strong formulation) and says interoperability "is supported by open specifications". - Uses the terminology "open specifications" which, let's face it, is pretty close to "open standards" which is the term the rest of the world would use. - Confirms that Member States are fully committed to the political priorities of the Malmö Declaration (which was all about open standards) including the very strong action: by 2013: All Member States will have incorporated the political priorities of the Malmö Declaration in their national strategies. Such tight Action Plan integration between Commission and Member State priorities has seldom been attempted before, particularly not in a field where European legal competence is virtually non-existent. What we see now, is the subtle force of soft power rather than the rough force of regulation. In this case, it is the Member States who want Europe to take the lead. Very refreshing! Some quotes that show the commitment to interoperability and open specifications: "The emergence of innovative technologies such as "service-oriented architectures" (SOA), or "clouds" of services,  together with more open specifications which allow for greater sharing, re-use and interoperability reinforce the ability of ICT to play a key role in this quest for effficiency in the public sector." (p.4) "Interoperability is supported through open specifications" (p.13) 2.4.1. Open Specifications and Interoperability (p.13 has a whole section dedicated to this important topic. Open specifications and interoperability are nearly 100% interrelated): "Interoperability is the ability of systems and machines to exchange, process and correctly interpret information. It is more than just a technical challenge, as it also involves legal, organisational and semantic aspects of handling  data" (p.13) "standards and  open platforms offer opportunities for more cost-effective use of resources and delivery of services" (p.13). The Bad Shies away from defining open standards, or even open specifications, the EU's preferred term for the key enabler of interoperability. Verdict 90/100, a very respectable score.

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• Taking the fear out of a Cloud initiative through the use of security tools

  - by user736511

  Typical employees, constituents, and business owners  interact with online services at a level where their knowledge of back-end systems is low, and most of the times, there is no interest in knowing the systems' architecture.  Most application administrators, while partially responsible for these systems' upkeep, have very low interactions with them, at least at an operational, platform level.  Of greatest interest to these groups is the consistent, reliable, and manageable operation of the interfaces with which they communicate.  Introducing the "Cloud" topic in any evolving architecture automatically raises the concerns for data and identity security simply because of the perception that when owning the silicon, enterprises are not able to manage its content.  But is this really true?   In the majority of traditional architectures, data and applications that access it are physically distant from the organization that owns it.  It may reside in a shared data center, or a geographically convenient location that spans large organizations' connectivity capabilities.  In the end, very often, the model of a "traditional" architecture is fairly close to the "new" Cloud architecture.  Most notable difference is that by nature, a Cloud setup uses security as a core function, and not as a necessary add-on. Therefore, following best practices, one can say that data can be safer in the Cloud than in traditional, stove-piped environments where data access is segmented and difficult to audit. The caveat is, of course, what "best practices" consist of, and here is where Oracle's security tools are perfectly suited for the task.  Since Oracle's model is to support very large organizations, it is fundamentally concerned about distributed applications, databases etc and their security, and the related Identity Management Products, or DB Security options reflect that concept.  In the end, consumers of applications and their data are to be served more safely in a controlled Cloud environment, while realizing the many cost savings associated with it. Having very fast resources to serve them (such as the Exa* platform) makes the concept even more attractive.  Finally, if a Cloud strategy does not seem feasible, consider the pros and cons of a traditional vs. a Cloud architecture.  Using the exact same criteria and business goals/traditions, and with Oracle's technology, you might be hard pressed to justify maintaining the technical status quo on security alone. For additional information please visit Oracle's Cloud Security page at: http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/cloud/cloud-security-428855.html

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