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• Open World Day 1 Continued

  - by Antony Reynolds

  A Day in the Life of an Oracle OpenWorld Attendee Part II A couple of things I forgot to mention about yesterdays OpenWorld. First I attended a presentation on SOA Suite and Virtualization which explained how Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder (OVAB) can be used to accelerate the deployment of an Enterprise Deployment Guide (EDG) compliant SOA Suite infrastructure.  OVAB provides the ability to introspect a deployed software component such as WebLogic Server, SOA Suite or other components and extract the configuration and package it up for rapid deployment into an Oracle Virtual Machine.  OVAB allows multiple machines to be configured and connections made between the machines and outside resources such as databases.  That by itself is pretty cool and has been available for a while in OVAB.  What is new is that Oracle has done this for an EDG compliant installations and made it available as an OVAB assembly for customers to use, significantly accelerating the deployment of an EDG deployment.  A real help for customers standing up EDG environments, particularly in test, dev and QA environments. The other thing I forgot to mention was the most memorable demo I saw at OpenWorld.  This was done by my co-author Matt Wright who was showcasing the products of his company Rubicon Red.  They showed a really cool application called OneSpot which puts all the information about a single users business processes in one spot!  Apparently a customer suggested the name.  It allows business flows to be defined that map onto events.  As events occur the status of the business flow is updated to reflect the change.  The interface is strongly reminiscent of social media sites and provides a graphical view of business flows.  So how does this differ from BPEL and BPM process flows?  The OneSpot process flow is more like a BAM process flow, it is based on events arriving from multiple sources, and is focused on the clients view of the process, not the actual business process.  This is important because it allows an end user to get a view of where his current business flow is and what actions, if any, are required of him.  This by itself is great, but better still is that OneSpot has a real time updating view of events that have occurred (BAM style no need to refresh the browser).  This means that as new events occur the end user can see them and jump to the business flow or take other appropriate actions.  Under the covers OneSpot makes use of Oracle Human Workflow to provide a forms interface, but this is not the HWF GUI you know!  The HWF GUI screens are much prettier and have more of a social media feel about them due to their use of images and pulling in relevant related information.  If you are at OOW I strongly recommend you visit Matt or John at the Rubicon Red stand and ask, no demand a demo of OneSpot!

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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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• Algorithm to Find the Aggregate Mass of "Granola Bar"-Like Structures?

  - by Stuart Robbins

  I'm a planetary science researcher and one project I'm working on is N-body simulations of Saturn's rings. The goal of this particular study is to watch as particles clump together under their own self-gravity and measure the aggregate mass of the clumps versus the mean velocity of all particles in the cell. We're trying to figure out if this can explain some observations made by the Cassini spacecraft during the Saturnian summer solstice when large structures were seen casting shadows on the nearly edge-on rings. Below is a screenshot of what any given timestep looks like. (Each particle is 2 m in diameter and the simulation cell itself is around 700 m across.) The code I'm using already spits out the mean velocity at every timestep. What I need to do is figure out a way to determine the mass of particles in the clumps and NOT the stray particles between them. I know every particle's position, mass, size, etc., but I don't know easily that, say, particles 30,000-40,000 along with 102,000-105,000 make up one strand that to the human eye is obvious. So, the algorithm I need to write would need to be a code with as few user-entered parameters as possible (for replicability and objectivity) that would go through all the particle positions, figure out what particles belong to clumps, and then calculate the mass. It would be great if it could do it for "each" clump/strand as opposed to everything over the cell, but I don't think I actually need it to separate them out. The only thing I was thinking of was doing some sort of N2 distance calculation where I'd calculate the distance between every particle and if, say, the closest 100 particles were within a certain distance, then that particle would be considered part of a cluster. But that seems pretty sloppy and I was hoping that you CS folks and programmers might know of a more elegant solution? Edited with My Solution: What I did was to take a sort of nearest-neighbor / cluster approach and do the quick-n-dirty N2 implementation first. So, take every particle, calculate distance to all other particles, and the threshold for in a cluster or not was whether there were N particles within d distance (two parameters that have to be set a priori, unfortunately, but as was said by some responses/comments, I wasn't going to get away with not having some of those). I then sped it up by not sorting distances but simply doing an order N search and increment a counter for the particles within d, and that sped stuff up by a factor of 6. Then I added a "stupid programmer's tree" (because I know next to nothing about tree codes). I divide up the simulation cell into a set number of grids (best results when grid size ˜7 d) where the main grid lines up with the cell, one grid is offset by half in x and y, and the other two are offset by 1/4 in ±x and ±y. The code then divides particles into the grids, then each particle N only has to have distances calculated to the other particles in that cell. Theoretically, if this were a real tree, I should get order N*log(N) as opposed to N2 speeds. I got somewhere between the two, where for a 50,000-particle sub-set I got a 17x increase in speed, and for a 150,000-particle cell, I got a 38x increase in speed. 12 seconds for the first, 53 seconds for the second, 460 seconds for a 500,000-particle cell. Those are comparable speeds to how long the code takes to run the simulation 1 timestep forward, so that's reasonable at this point. Oh -- and it's fully threaded, so it'll take as many processors as I can throw at it.

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• Silverlight Cream for April 05, 2010 -- #831

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Rénald Nollet, Davide Zordan(-2-, -3-), Scott Barnes, Kirupa, Christian Schormann, Tim Heuer, Yavor Georgiev, and Bea Stollnitz. Shoutouts: Yavor Georgiev posted the material for his MIX 2010 talk: what’s new in WCF in Silverlight 4 Erik Mork and crew posted their This Week in Silverlight 4.1.2010 Tim Huckaby and MSDN Bytes interviewed Erik Mork: Silverlight Consulting Life – MSDN Bytes Interview From SilverlightCream.com: Home Loan Application for Windows Phone Rénald Nollet has a WP7 app up, with source, for calculating Home Loan application information. He also discusses some control issues he had with the emulator. Experiments with Multi-touch: A Windows Phone Manipulation sample Davide Zordan has updated the multi-touch project on CodePlex, and added a WP7 sample using multi-touch. Silverlight 4, MEF and MVVM: EventAggregator, ImportingConstructor and Unit Tests Davide Zordan has a second post up on MEF, MVVM, and Prism, oh yeah, and also Unit Testing... the code is available, so take a look at what he's all done with this. Silverlight 4, MEF and MVVM: MEFModules, Dynamic XAP Loading and Navigation Applications Davide Zordan then builds on the previous post and partitions the app into several XAPs put together at runtime with MEF. Silverlight Installation/Preloader Experience - BarnesStyle Scott Barnes talks about the install experience he wanted to get put into place... definitely a good read and lots of information. Changing States using GoToStateAction Kirupa has a quick run-through of Visual States, and then demonstrates using GoToStateAction and a note for a Blend 4 addition. Blend 4: About Path Layout, Part IV Christian Schormann has the next tutorial up in his series on Path Layout, and he's explaining Motion Path and Text on a Path. Managing service references and endpoint configurations for Silverlight applications Helping solve a common and much reported problem of managing service references, Tim Heuer details his method of resolving it and additional tips and tricks to boot. Some known WCF issues in Silverlight 4 Yavor Georgiev, a Program Manager for WCF blogged about the issues that they were not able to fix due to scheduling of the release How can I update LabeledPieChart to use the latest toolkit? Bea Stollnitz revisits some of her charting posts to take advantage of the unsealing of toolkit classes in labeling the Chart and PieSeries Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• Subscribable World Cup 2010 Calendar

  - by jamiet

  I bang on quite a lot on this blog about ways in which data can get published over the web and one of the most interesting ways, in my opinion, of publishing data in a structured manner that is well understood is to use the iCalendar specification. There isn’t much information in the world that doesn’t have some concept of “when” so iCalendar is a great way of distributing that information. You have probably used iCalendar at some point without even knowing about it. All files with a .ics suffix are iCalendar format files and that is why you can happily import them into Outlook, Hotmail Calendar, Google Calendar etc… where they can be parsed and have the semantic data (when, where and who) extracted from them. Importing of iCalendar format data is really only half the trick though; in my opinion the real value of iCalendar-formatted calendar is the ability to subscribe to them. Subscribing has a simple benefit over importing but that single benefit is of massive importance: a subscriber to an iCalendar calendar can periodically check to see if any updates have been made and, if they have, automatically update the local copy. The real benefit to the user is the productivity gain – a single update to an iCalendar means that all subscribers are automatically made aware of the change and there is zero effort on the part of the subscriber; as my former colleague Howard van Rooijen is fond of saying, “work smarter not harder” – nowhere is this edict more ably demonstrated than subscribing versus importing of calendars. If you want to read some more thoughts about iCalendar then go and read my past blog post Calendar syndication - My big hope for 2009's breakthrough technology or better still go and seek out Jon Udell who speaks very authoritatively on the issue of iCalendar. With this subject of iCalendar on my mind I was interested to discover (via Steve Clayton’s blog post Download the world cup fixtures) that the BBC had made a .ics file available containing all of the matches in the upcoming World Cup. As you can probably guess this was a file that was made available so that it could be imported into your calendar of choice. It had one obvious downside though, right now nobody knows who is going to be playing in the knock-out stages so the calendar looks like this: with no teams being named after 25th June. How much more useful would this calendar have been if the BBC had made it possible to subscribe to the calendar instead, thus the calendar could be updated with the teams for the knock out stages when they are known and every subscriber would have a permanently up-to-date record of all the fixtures in their calendar. Better still, the calendar could be updated with match results as well or perhaps even post a match report from the BBC sport pages; when calendars are made subscribable a sea of opportunity opens up for distribution of information. So with that in mind I have decided to go one better than the BBC. I have imported their .ics into a brand new Hotmail calendar and made it publicly available at the following URLs: HTML http://cid-dc1ed121af0476be.calendar.live.com/calendar/World+Cup+2010/index.html iCalendar webcal://cid-dc1ed121af0476be.calendar.live.com/calendar/World+Cup+2010/calendar.ics The link you’re really interested in is the second one - click on that and it should open up in your calendar software of choice. Or, if you want to view it in an online calendar such as Hotmail Calendar or Google Calendar, copy and paste that URL into the appropriate place. I shall endeavour to keep the calendar updated throughout the World Cup and even if I don’t you’re no worse off than if you had imported the BBC’s .ics file so why not give it a try? If I do keep it up to date then you will have a permanent record of the 2010 World Cup available in your calendar. Forever. If you have your calendar synced to your smartphone then you’ll be carrying match reports around with you without you having to do a single thing. Surely that’s worth a quick click isn’t it?   If you have any thoughts let me have them in the comments below. Thanks for reading. @Jamiet Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Computer / Software Engineering vs Other Engineering Disciplines [closed]

  - by Mohammad Yaseen

  Since this was a rather specific question, I have tried my best to present this question in a format which fits the style of this site. Please comment if it can be improved further. I have to choose the Engineering discipline on 6th Nov. My interest is in Robotics, hardware-level programming, Artificial Intelligence and back-end programming. I am currently working as a freelance developer using mainly PHP and occasionally working with GWT.I am somewhat familiar with C# and Python too. I am not super good at programming but I do like it. I am thinking to choose Computer and Information Systems Engineering as this is what I love but all the eggheads of my city are going to Mechanical Engineering and when I ask one of them Why are you choosing this? They say It's my interest and for job and the money. Basically I am confused between CIS and Mechanical Engineering, specifically the job market for both. Since this is a programmers' site I think following questions will be relevant . I am asking this because I want to take advice from professionals in this field before diving too deep . Are you happy with your job / work and pay. Are you satisfied with the work environment and career growth Do you feel OK (or great?) about the near and/or distant future of your industry. Why should a person choose Computer if he has other choices i.e what this industry has to offer in particular which other fields of work don't This industry is subject to rapid changes and you have to learn continuously throughout your entire career. Does this learning and constant hard work pay off ? In my country there is no hardware manufacturing. So most of CIS graduates (like Software Engineers) work in Software Houses. What is the scenario in your country. Is a degree titled 'Software' necessary or companies will take Computer Engineers too if they have relevant experience. I am asking this because I plan to move abroad for work. This is going to be something which I'll do for the rest of my life so I am a bit confused about the right choice. You can view the course outline for both programmes below. Computer and Information Systems Engineering. Mechanical Engineering

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• The Jack LaLanne School of Sysadmins

  - by rickramsey

  Two of my childhood heroes were Tarzan and Jack LaLanne. Tarzan was an obvious choice: what boy wouldn't want to spend his days bungee jumping through the jungle with his own pack of gorillas? Jack Lalanne had a disturbing habit of wearing stretch pants, but he was so damn fit for an old guy that you couldn't help but be impressed. Especially back then, when nobody knew what a dumb bell was, much less Cross-Fit. Here's what he did to celebrate his 70th birthday. Sooner or later we all face a choice in our careers: surrender to the life of a has-been like Bruce Sprinsteen's baseball player or become an unstoppable sysadmin like Jack Lalanne. If you'd rather keep on fighting like Jack, give these resources a look. Brian Bream's blog provides specific suggestions for keeping your skills up to date. The video interviews describe the types of technologies that are challenging what you used to know. Blog: The Old School Sysadmin - A Dying Breed? by Brian Bream "The sysadmin role has been far too dependent on performing repetitive tasks and working in a reactionary mode ... the sysadmin must grow a much larger skill set to be successful. Don’t grow vertically in one technology, grow horizontally amongst many technologies." Just one of the suggestions Brian Bream provides in this excellent blog post. Video: Freeing the Sysadmin From Repetitive Tasks Interview with Marshall Choy Marshall Choy, Director of Optimized Solutions at Oracle was once a sysadmin. And a Solaris engineer. He explains what optimized solutions are, how they are developed and tested, how they handle patching, and how these vertically integrated systems impact the job and duties of a sysadmin. Video: The Oracle Database Appliance Interview with Bob Thome Bob Thome, Senior Director of Product Management, explains what makes the Database Appliance simple, reliable, and affordable, and how it could change the economies and processes of the data center. Video: Why Pinellas County Chose Oracle Exalytics Interview with Gautham Gautham (pronounced like Batman's Gotham) recently led an effort to refresh the Pinellas County hardware systems. He'll explain what they were looking for, why they chose Oracle Exalytics, how they became convinced it was the right decision, and how it changed the way they managed their data center. Video: DTrace for System Administrators Interview with Brendan Gregg This video interview will give you an idea of some of the value-add tasks you can perform when you are freed from the reactive mode that Brian Bream describes in his blog. Brendan Gregg describes the best ways for sysadmins to tune deployed applications to get more performance out of them in their particular computing environment photograph of Ford Mustang GT 500 taken at Gateway Museum copyright by Rick Ramsey -Rick Follow me on: Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Personal Twitter | YouTube | The Great Peruvian Novel

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• IT Admin for Thrill Seekers

  - by Tony Davis

  A developer suggested to me recently that the life of the DBA was, surely, a dull one. My first reaction was indignation, but quickly followed by the thought that for many people excitement isn't necessarily the most desirable aspect of their job. It's true that some aspects of the DBA role seem guaranteed to quieten the pulse; in the days of tape backups, time must have slowed to eternity for the person whose job it was to oversee this process, placing tapes into secure containers, ensuring correct labeling, and.sorry, I drifted off there for a second. On the other hand, if you follow the adventures of the likes of Brent Ozar or Tom LaRock, you'd be forgiven for thinking that much of a database guy's time is spent, metaphorically, diving through plate glass windows in tight fitting underwear in order to extract grateful occupants from burning database applications. Alas it isn't true of the majority, but it isn't as dull as some people imagine, and is a helter-skelter ride compared with some other IT roles. Every IT department has people who toil away in shadowy corners doing quiet but mysterious tasks. When you ask them to explain what they do, you almost immediately want them to stop, but you hear enough to appreciate that these tasks are often absolutely vital to the smooth functioning of an IT organization. Compared with them, the DBAs are prima donnas. Here are a few nominations: Installation engineer - install all of the company's laptops and workstations, and software, deal with licensing, shipping and data entry.many organizations, especially those subject to tight regulation, would simply grind to a halt without their efforts. Localization engineer - Not quite software engineering, not quite translation, the job is to rebuild a product in a different language and make sure everything still works. QA Tester - firstly, I should say that the testers at Red Gate seem to me some of the most-fulfilled in the company. I refer here to the QA Tester whose job is more-or-less entirely to read a script, click some buttons and make sure the actual and expected values match. Configuration manager - for example, someone whose main job is to configure build environments so that devs can access their source code; assuredly necessary for the smooth functioning and productivity of the team, and hopefully well-paid. So what other sort of job in IT should one choose if the work of a DBA proves to be too exciting? Or are these roles secretly more exciting than many imagine? I invite you all to put forward your own suggestions. Cheers, Tony.

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• Own a KINECT for MS-XBOX before anyone does

  Following is the announced by Richik Nandi from Microsoft team. Dear Customer, We believe that our privileged customers shouldn't have to wait for good things. So, here's a special offer exclusively for you. Be one of the first in India to own and experience Kinect for XBOX 360, few days before it is even launched in stores. Introducing the new Kinect for XBOX 360®. Kinect needs no controllers. You are the controller. Kinect brings games and entertainment to life in extraordinary new ways without using a controller. The sensor recognizes your face, eyes and body movements to deliver a superb gaming experience. Easy to use and great fun, Kinect gets everyone off the couch. See a ball? Kick it. Want to join a friend in the fun? Simply jump in. Imagine controlling movies and music with the wave of a hand or the sound of your voice! Kinect is all about fun for you and your family. And the best part is Kinect works with every Xbox 360®. There are two options you can choose from: •  Kinect sensor + 4GB Xbox 360 bundle + Kinect Adventures game at Rs 22,990/-and get Dance Central game worth Rs 1999 from Redington, 20% discount voucher from Starwood on food and beverages, T-shirt from PUMA and a Kinect adventure live card absolutely free using your unique promo code : XbTXXZl2Sb •  Kinect Sensor at Rs 9,500/-and get 20% discount voucher from Starwood on food and beverages, T-shirt from PUMA and a Kinect adventure live card absolutely free using your unique promo code : lDg6o8SuYh We want you to own your Kinect before the official launch. The promotion closes by 10th November. To know more about Kinect click here. To book your Kinect PRE-ORDER now! Enter your details along with the above mentioned promo code to avail of the free gifts offer. We will have your Kinect delivered by 19th November 2010. Enjoy being the controller. Enjoy the Kinect. span.fullpost {display:none;}

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• Windows 8: Everything from design, build, and how to sell a Metro style app

  - by Thomas Mason

  For me, there are a lot of similarities between an application developed for Windows Phone and a Metro style app developed for Windows 8. A Windows Phone 7 application (rather than an XNA game) is built in .NET and XAML against a subset of the .NET framework and the application has a lifecycle which needs to be conscious of battery life and so is split out into foreground/background pieces. The application is sandboxed in terms of its interactions with the local device and is packaged with a manifest which describes those interactions. The app needs to be aware of network connectivity status and its work on the network is done asynchronously to preserve the user experience.The app is packaged and deployed to a Marketplace which the user browses to find the app, read reviews, perhaps purchase it and then install it and receive updates over time. Quite a lot of those statements are as true of a Windows 8 Metro style app as they are for a Windows Phone app and so a Windows Phone app developer already has a good head start when it comes to building Metro style apps for Windows 8. With that in mind, there is an event to help developers with a Windows Phone app in Marketplace to begin the process of looking at Windows 8 and whether you can get a quick win by bringing your Phone application onto Windows. The idea of the event was to provide a space where developers can get together over 2 days and take the time out to look at what it means to take their app from Windows Phone to Windows 8. Kicking off on Saturday 16th June at 10am, we are told they have plenty of power sockets, WiFi, whiteboards, drinks, pizza, games, prizes and some quiet space that you can work in. Including people on hand with Windows Phone and Windows 8 experience to help everything along the way. There will be an attendee-voted schedule of talks but we’ll keep these out of your way if you just want to get on and code. We’ll also provide information around submitting your app to the Windows Store If you have a Windows Phone app in Marketplace, now’s a great time to look at getting it onto Windows 8. Sign up. Bring your laptop. Bring your app. Bring Windows 8 and Visual Studio 11. And everyone will their best to help you get your app onto Windows 8. Location & Venue TBA but it will be in central London, accessible by major railway and underground transportation. Day 1 Saturday 16th June 10am – 9pm Day 2 Sunday 17th June 10am – 4pm

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• IIS Logfile Visualization with XNA

  - by BobPalmer

  In my office, I have a wall mounted monitor who's whole purpose in life is to display perfmon stats from our various servers.  And on a fairly regular basis, I have folks walk by asking what the lines mean.    After providing the requisite explaination about CPU utilization, disk I/O bottlenecks, etc. this is usually followed by some blank stares from the user in question, and a distillation of all of our engineering wizardry down to the phrase 'So when the red line goes up that's bad then?'   This of course would not do.  So I talked to my friends and our network admin about an option to show something more eye catching and visual, with which we could catch at a glance a feel for what was up with our site.    He initially pointed me out to a video showing GLTail and Chipmunk done in Ruby.  Realizing this was both awesome, and that I needed an excuse to do something in XNA, I decided to knock out a proof of concept for something very similar, but with a few tweaks.   Here's a link to a video of the current prototype:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jM_PWZbtH2I   Essentially this app opens up a log file (even an active one) and begins pulling out the lines of text.  (Here's a good Code Project link that covers how to do tail reading from an active text file: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/files/tail.aspx).   As new data is added, a bubble is generated in the application - a GET statement comes from the left, and a POST from the right.  I then run it through a series of expression checkers, and based on the kind of statement and the pattern, a bubble of an appropriate color is generated.   For example, if I get a 500, a huge red bubble pops out.  Others are based on the part of the system the page is from - i.e. green bubbles are from our claims management subsystem, and blue bubbles are from the pages our scheduling staff use to schedule patients.  Others include the purple bubbles for security and login, and yellow bubbles for some miscellaneous pages.   The little grey bubbles represent things like images, JS, CSS, etc - and their small size makes them work like grease to keep the larger page bubbles moving.   The app is also smart enough that if it is starting to bog down with handling the physics and interactions, it will suspend new bubbles until enough have dropped off that performance can resume (you can see this slight stuttering in the sample video).   The net result is that anyone will be able to look up on the wall monitor, and instantly get a quick feel for how things are going on the floor.  Website slow?  You can get a feel for both volume and utilized modules with one glance.  Website crashing?  Look for a wall of giant red bubbles.  No activity at all?  Maybe the site is down.  Now couple this with utilization within a farm, and cross referenced with a second app showing the same kind of data from your SQL database...   As for the app itself, it's a windows XNA project with the code in C#.   The physics are handled by the Farseer physicis eingine for XNA (http://www.codeplex.com/FarseerPhysics) which is just pure goodness.  The samples are great, and I had the app up and working in two evenings (half of that was fine tuning, and the other was me coding with a kid in my lap).   My next steps include wiring this to SQL (I have some ideas...), and adding a nice configuration module.  For example, you could use polygons, etc to tie to your regex - or more entertaining things like having a little human ragdoll to represent a user login.     Once that's wrapped up and I have a chance to complete some hardening, I will be releasing the whole thing into the wild as opensource.     Feel free to ping me if you have any questions! -Bob

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• Oracle WebCenter @ OpenWorld 2012

  - by kellsey.ruppel

  This week, we want to focus on giving our blog readers a preview of Oracle WebCenter related events and activities happening at Oracle OpenWorld this year! Today's guest post comes from Jamie Rancourt, Senior Manager of Product Management for Oracle WebCenter. Are you registered to attend OpenWorld 2012 in San Francisco from September 30 – October 4?  If not, the conference details and registration information can be found at http://oracle.com/openworld!  Here’s a brief run down of the planned activities for Oracle WebCenter at this year’s event. WebCenter Sessions This year WebCenter will be featured in 36 sessions across the following tracks: Web Experience Management, Portals, Content Management and Social Network Middleware for Enterprise Applications Financial Management Oracle ADF and Fusion Application Development Applications Tools and Technology Applications Strategy Life Sciences Customer Relationship Management Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service Siebel Applications SOA and Business Process Management Oracle Fusion Applications Oracle Commerce Retail Social Business Cloud Computing Here are a few of the sessions to wet your appetite: Oracle WebCenter Strategy: Engaging your Customers.  Empowering your Business Oracle WebCenter Sites Strategy & Vision Oracle WebCenter Content Strategy & Vision Oracle WebCenter Portal Strategy & Vision Oracle Social Network Strategy & Vision Develop a Mobile Strategy with Oracle WebCenter: Engage Customers, Employees, and Partners Oracle WebCenter’s Cloud Strategy: From Social and Platform Services to Mash-ups We also have 4 interactive customer panels planned for the event: Using Web Experience Management to Drive Online Marketing Success Land Mines, Potholes, and Dirt Roads: Navigating the Way to ECM Nirvana Becoming a Social Business: Stories from the Front Lines of Change Building Next-Generation Portals: An Interactive Customer Panel Discussion And there are many more sessions for you to attend to learn everything there is to know about Oracle WebCenter from our product experts and partners. Make sure to visit the Content Catalog for the complete session details Labs and Demos This year’s event also features 4 WebCenter hands on labs, each focusing on a different product area including Portal, Content, Sites and Social Network.  In addition to the labs, there will be 6 demos featuring Oracle WebCenter in both the Fusion Middleware and Cloud pavilions.  Make sure you stop by to see the latest demos and meet our knowledgeable product managers! And don't forget about the Oracle WebCenter Customer Appreciation Event, which is sponsored by our Partners and will take place on Tuesday, October 2nd at The Palace Hotel. Be sure to watch the blog for more information in the coming months with how to register! We look forward to seeing you at Oracle OpenWorld 2012!

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• Set Custom Reload Times for Individual Webpages in Chrome

  - by Asian Angel

  Do you have a webpage that needs to be reloaded every so often or perhaps you have multiple webpages that each need their own individual reload time? Now you can have the best of both with the AutoReloader extension for Google Chrome. Using AutoReloader When you first look at the drop-down window everything will be in a neutral “waiting” state. You can start using the extension immediately by simply entering the desired “time frame” for reloading a webpage. Notice for the “Repeat Option” that “0 = Continuous”… You may want to have a quick look through the “Options” to see if there are any “operational changes” that you would like to make. Once you enter a time click on the “Set Link” to start the timer. Notice that you can view the time remaining on the “Toolbar Button” unless you disabled the feature in the “Options”. Clicking on the “Toolbar Button” will show a larger version of the timer in the drop-down window along with a “Cancel Current Timer Link”. Here is the best part of all with AutoReloader…you can set up your own customized list of “Reload Times” and then access them through the drop-down window. Using the two times shown here we were able to set the “Productive Geek Webpage” up for 30 second reloads and the “TinyHacker Webpage” up for 1 minute reloads at the same time. There was no conflict whatsoever in running both “reload times” simultaneously. This is a really terrific feature! Conclusion Whether you have only one webpage or multiple pages that need periodic reloading (such as tracking a Woot-Off or an Ebay auction) the AutoReloader extension is the perfect tool for the job. Running custom reload times simultaneously have never been easier. Links Download the AutoReloader extension (Google Chrome Extensions) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Set Up Automatic Timed Page Reloading on Your Webpages in FirefoxRemove Custom about:config Entries the Easy WayEnable Vista Black Style Theme for Google Chrome in XPActivate the Redesigned New-Tab Interface in Google ChromeModify Tab Ordering in Google Chrome TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional The Growth of Citibank Quickly Switch between Tabs in IE Windows Media Player 12: Tweak Video & Sound with Playback Enhancements Own a cell phone, or does a cell phone own you? Make your Joomla & Drupal Sites Mobile with OSMOBI Integrate Twitter and Delicious and Make Life Easier

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• SQL SERVER – Order By Numeric Values Formatted as String

  - by pinaldave

  When I was writing this blog post I had a hard time to come up with the title of the blog post so I did my best to come up with one. Here is the reason why? I wrote a blog post earlier SQL SERVER – Find First Non-Numeric Character from String. One of the questions was that how that blog can be useful in real life scenario. This blog post is the answer to that question. Let us first see a problem. We have a table which has a column containing alphanumeric data. The data always has first as an integer and later part as a string. The business need is to order the data based on the first part of the alphanumeric data which is an integer. Now the problem is that no matter how we use ORDER BY the result is not produced as expected. Let us understand this with example. Prepare a sample data: -- How to find first non numberic character USE tempdb GO CREATE TABLE MyTable (ID INT, Col1 VARCHAR(100)) GO INSERT INTO MyTable (ID, Col1) SELECT 1, '1one' UNION ALL SELECT 2, '11eleven' UNION ALL SELECT 3, '2two' UNION ALL SELECT 4, '22twentytwo' UNION ALL SELECT 5, '111oneeleven' GO -- Select Data SELECT * FROM MyTable GO The above query will give following result set. Now let us use ORDER BY COL1 and observe the result along with Original SELECT. -- Select Data SELECT * FROM MyTable GO -- Select Data SELECT * FROM MyTable ORDER BY Col1 GO The result of the table is not as per expected. We need the result in following format. Here is the good example of how we can use PATINDEX. -- Use of PATINDEX SELECT ID, LEFT(Col1,PATINDEX('%[^0-9]%',Col1)-1) 'Numeric Character', Col1 'Original Character' FROM MyTable ORDER BY LEFT(Col1,PATINDEX('%[^0-9]%',Col1)-1) GO We can use PATINDEX to identify the length of the digit part in the alphanumeric string (Remember: Our string has a first part as an int always. It will not work in any other scenario). Now you can use the LEFT function to extract the INT portion from the alphanumeric string and order the data according to it. You can easily clean up the script by dropping following table. DROP TABLE MyTable GO Here is the complete script so you can easily refer it. -- How to find first non numberic character USE tempdb GO CREATE TABLE MyTable (ID INT, Col1 VARCHAR(100)) GO INSERT INTO MyTable (ID, Col1) SELECT 1, '1one' UNION ALL SELECT 2, '11eleven' UNION ALL SELECT 3, '2two' UNION ALL SELECT 4, '22twentytwo' UNION ALL SELECT 5, '111oneeleven' GO -- Select Data SELECT * FROM MyTable GO -- Select Data SELECT * FROM MyTable ORDER BY Col1 GO -- Use of PATINDEX SELECT ID, Col1 'Original Character' FROM MyTable ORDER BY LEFT(Col1,PATINDEX('%[^0-9]%',Col1)-1) GO DROP TABLE MyTable GO Well, isn’t it an interesting solution. Any suggestion for better solution? Additionally any suggestion for changing the title of this blog post? Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL String, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Listen to Local FM Radio in Windows 7 Media Center

  - by DigitalGeekery

  If you have a supported tuner card and connected FM antenna, you can listen to your favorite local over-the-air FM stations in Windows 7 Media Center. Before the FM radio option will be available in Windows Media Center, you’ll need to have a TV or Radio tuner card installed and configured. If you have a TV tuner card installed, you may already have a Radio tuner as well. Many TV tuner cards also have built in FM tuners. Open Windows Media Center, scroll the “Music” and over to “Radio.” Click on “FM Radio.”   The radio will turn on and you’ll see the current station number listed in the white box. Just below are standard “Seek” and “Tune” buttons, as well as “Preset” options. Tuning works just like a typical FM radio. Click on the (-) or (+) buttons to “Tune” or “Seek” up and down the dial. If you already know the frequency of the station, enter the numbers using the numeric keypad on the remote control or keyboard. To save the current station you’re listening to as a preset, click on the “Save as Preset” button. Type in a custom name for your preset station and click “Save.”   Once you set your presets, they will also be available on the main FM Radio screen. The transport controls at the bottom of the screen also allow you to control Volume, Pause, Play, Skip back, and Skip forward. Fast Forward and Rewind, however, are not supported.   This is a nice option if you’d like to listen to your local FM favorites on your computer, especially if those stations aren’t available online. If you don’t have an FM tuner and want to listen to thousands of online radio streams, check out our article on RadioTime in WMC. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Listen to Over 100,000 Radio Stations in Windows Media CenterListen To XM Radio with Windows Media Center in Windows 7Using Netflix Watchnow in Windows Vista Media Center (Gmedia)Schedule Updates for Windows Media CenterIntegrate Hulu Desktop and Windows Media Center in Windows 7 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional The Growth of Citibank Quickly Switch between Tabs in IE Windows Media Player 12: Tweak Video & Sound with Playback Enhancements Own a cell phone, or does a cell phone own you? Make your Joomla & Drupal Sites Mobile with OSMOBI Integrate Twitter and Delicious and Make Life Easier

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• Oracle Open World starts on Sunday, Sept 30

  - by Mike Dietrich

  Oracle Open World 2012 starts on Sunday this week - and we are really looking forward to see you in one of our presentations, especially theDatabase Upgrade on SteriodsReal Speed, Real Customers, Real Secretson Monday, Oct 1, 12:15pm in Moscone South 307(just skip the lunch - the boxed food is not healthy at all): Monday, Oct 1, 12:15 PM - 1:15 PM - Moscone South - 307 Database Upgrade on Steroids:Real Speed, Real Customers, Real Secrets Mike Dietrich - Consulting Member Technical Staff, Oracle Georg Winkens - Technical Manager, Amadeus Data Processing Carol Tagliaferri - Senior Development Manager, Oracle  Looking to improve the performance of your database upgrade and learn about other ways to reduce upgrade time? Isn’t everyone? In this session, you will learn directly from Oracle’s Upgrade Development team about what you can do to speed things up. Find out about ways to reduce upgrade downtime such as using a transient logical standby database and/or Oracle GoldenGate, and get other hints and tips. Learn about new features that improve upgrade performance and reduce downtime. Hear Georg Winkens, DB Services technical manager from Amadeus, speak about his upgrade experience, and get real-life performance measurements and advice for a successful upgrade. . And don't forget: we already start on Sunday so if you'd like to learn about the SAP database upgrades at Deutsche Messe: Sunday, Sep 30, 11:15 AM - 12:00 PM - Moscone West - 2001Oracle Database Upgrade to 11g Release 2 with SAP Applications Andreas Ellerhoff - DBA, Deutsche Messe AG Mike Dietrich - Consulting Member Technical Staff, Oracle Jan Klokkers - Sr.Director SAP Development, Oracle Deutsche Messe began to use Oracle6 Database at the end of the 1980s and has been using Oracle Database technology together with SAP applications successfully since 2002. At the end of 2010, it took the first steps of an upgrade to Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (11.2), and since mid-2011, all SAP production systems there run successfully with Oracle Database 11g. This presentation explains why Deutsche Messe uses Oracle Database together with SAP applications, discusses the many reasons for the upgrade to Release 11g, and focuses on the operational top aspects from a DBA perspective. . And unfortunately the Hands-On-Lab is sold out already ... We would like to apologize but we have absolutely ZERO influence on either the number of runs or the number of available seats.  Tuesday, Oct 2, 10:15 AM - 12:45 PM - Marriott Marquis - Salon 12/13 Hands On Lab:Upgrading an Oracle Database Instance, Using Best Practices Roy Swonger - Senior Director, Software Development, Oracle Carol Tagliaferri - Senior Development Manager, Oracle Mike Dietrich - Consulting Member Technical Staff, Oracle Cindy Lim - PMTS, Oracle Carol Palmer - Principal Product Manager, Oracle This hands-on lab gives participants the opportunity to work through a database upgrade from an older release of Oracle Database to the very latest Oracle Database release available. Participants will learn how the improved automation of the upgrade process and the generation of fix-up scripts can quickly help fix database issues prior to upgrading. The lab also uses the new parallel upgrade feature to improve performance of the upgrade, resulting in less downtime. Come get inside information about database upgrades from the Database Upgrade development team. . See you soon

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• Silverlight Cream for February 07, 2011 -- #1043

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Roy Dallal, Kevin Dockx, Gill Cleeren, Oren Gal, Colin Eberhardt, Rudi Grobler, Jesse Liberty, Shawn Wildermuth, Kirupa Chinnathambi, Jeremy Likness, Martin Krüger(-2-), Beth Massi, and Michael Crump. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "A Circular ProgressBar Style using an Attached ViewModel" Colin Eberhardt WP7: "Isolated Storage" Jesse Liberty Lightswitch: "How To Create Outlook Appointments from a LightSwitch Application" Beth Massi Shoutouts: Gergely Orosz has a summary of his 4-part series on Styles in Silverlight: Everything a Developer Needs To Know From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight Memory Leak, Part 2 Roy Dallal has part 2 of his memory leak posts up... and discusses the results of runnin VMMap and some hints on how to make best use of it. Using a Channel Factory in Silverlight (instead of adding a Service Reference). With cows. Kevin Dockx has a post up for those of you that don't like the generated code that comes about when adding a service reference, and the answer is a Channel Factory... and he has an example app in the post that populates a list of cows... honest ... check it out. Getting ready for Microsoft Silverlight Exam 70-506 (Part 4) Gill Cleeren has Part 4 of his deep-dive into studying for the Silverlight Certification exam. This time out he's got probably half a gazillion links for working with data... seriously! Sync unlimited instances of one Silverlight application How about a cross-browser sync of an unlimited number of instances of the same Silverlight app... Oren Gal has just that going on, and discusses his first two attempts and how he finally honed in on the solution. A Circular ProgressBar Style using an Attached ViewModel Wow... check out what Colin Eberhardt's done with the "Progress Bar" ... using an Attached View Model which he discussed in a post a while back... these are awesome! WP7 - Professional Audio Recorder Rudi Grobler discusses an audio recorder for WP7 that uses the NAudio audio library for not only the recording but visualization. Isolated Storage Jesse Liberty's got his 30th 'From Scratch' post up and this time he's talking about Isolated Storage. Learning OData? MSDN and Shawn Wildermuth has the videos for you! Shawn Wildermuth produced a couple series of videos for MSDN on OData: Getting Started and Consuming OData... get the link on Shawn's post. Creating Sample Data from a Class - Page 1 Kirupa Chinnathambi shows us how to use a schema of your own design in Blend... yet still have Blend produce sample data A Pivot-Style Data Grid without the DataGrid Jeremy Likness discusses the lack of an open-source grid with dynamic columns ... let him know if you've done one! ... and then he continues on to demonstrate his build-out of the same. Synchronize a freeform drawing and a real path creation Martin Krüger has a few new samples up in the Expression Gallery. This first is taking mouse movement in an InkPresenter and creating path statements from it in a canvas and playing them back. How to: use Storyboard completed behaviors Martin Krüger's next post is about Storyboards and firing one off the end of another, in Blend... so he ended up producing a behavior for doing that... and it's in the Expression Gallery How To Create Outlook Appointments from a LightSwitch Application Beth Massi has a new Lightswitch post up... her previous was email from Lightswitch... this is Outlook appointments... pretty darn cool. Quick run through of the WP7 Developer Tools January 2011 Michael Crump has a really good Quick look at the new WP7 Dev Tools that were released last week posted on his blog Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• F# and the rose-tinted reflection

  - by CliveT

  We're already seeing increasing use of many cores on client desktops. It is a change that has been long predicted. It is not just a change in architecture, but our notions of efficiency in a program. No longer can we focus on the asymptotic complexity of an algorithm by counting the steps that a single core processor would take to execute it. Instead we'll soon be more concerned about the scalability of the algorithm and how well we can increase the performance as we increase the number of cores. This may even lead us to throw away our most efficient algorithms, and switch to less efficient algorithms that scale better. We might even be willing to waste cycles in order to speculatively execute at the algorithm rather than the hardware level. State is the big headache in this parallel world. At the hardware level, main memory doesn't necessarily contain the definitive value corresponding to a particular address. An update to a location might still be held in a CPU's local cache and it might be some time before the value gets propagated. To get the latest value, and the notion of "latest" takes a lot of defining in this world of rapidly mutating state, the CPUs may well need to communicate to decide who has the definitive value of a particular address in order to avoid lost updates. At the user program level, this means programmers will need to lock objects before modifying them, or attempt to avoid the overhead of locking by understanding the memory models at a very deep level. I think it's this need to avoid statefulness that has led to the recent resurgence of interest in functional languages. In the 1980s, functional languages started getting traction when research was carried out into how programs in such languages could be auto-parallelised. Sadly, the impracticality of some of the languages, the overheads of communication during this parallel execution, and rapid improvements in compiler technology on stock hardware meant that the functional languages fell by the wayside. The one thing that these languages were good at was getting rid of implicit state, and this single idea seems like a solution to the problems we are going to face in the coming years. Whether these languages will catch on is hard to predict. The mindset for writing a program in a functional language is really very different from the way that object-oriented problem decomposition happens - one has to focus on the verbs instead of the nouns, which takes some getting used to. There are a number of hybrid functional/object languages that have been becoming more popular in recent times. These half-way houses make it easy to use functional ideas for some parts of the program while still allowing access to the underlying object-focused platform without a great deal of impedance mismatch. One example is F# running on the CLR which, in Visual Studio 2010, has because a first class member of the pack. Inside Visual Studio 2010, the tooling for F# has improved to the point where it is easy to set breakpoints and watch values change while debugging at the source level. In my opinion, it is the tooling support that will enable the widespread adoption of functional languages - without this support, people will put off any transition into the functional world for as long as they possibly can. Without tool support it will make it hard to learn these languages. One tool that doesn't currently support F# is Reflector. The idea of decompiling IL to a functional language is daunting, but F# is potentially so important I couldn't dismiss the idea. As I'm currently developing Reflector 6.5, I thought it wise to take four days just to see how far I could get in doing so, even if it achieved little more than to be clearer on how much was possible, and how long it might take. You can read what happened here, and of the insights it gave us on ways to improve the tool.

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• Oracle's PeopleSoft Customer Advisory Boards Convene to Discuss Roadmap at Pleasanton Campus

  - by john.webb(at)oracle.com

  Last week we hosted all of the PeopleSoft CABs (Customer Advisory Boards) at our Pleasanton Development Center to review our detailed designs for future Feature Packs, PeopleSoft 9.2, and beyond. Over 150 customers from 79 companies attended representing a variety of industries, geographies, and company sizes. The PeopleSoft team relies heavily on this group to provide key input on our roadmap for applications as well as technology direction. A good product strategy is one part well thought out idea with many handfuls of customer validation, and very often our best ideas originate from these customer discussions. While the individual CABs have frequent interactions with our teams, it's always great to have all of them in one place and in person. Our attendance was up from last year which I attribute to two things: (1) More interest as a result of PeopleSoft 9.1 upgrade; (2) An improving economy allowing for more travel. Maybe we should index the second item meeting-to-meeting and use it as a market indicator - we'll see! We kicked off the day one session with an overview of the PeopleSoft Roadmap and I outlined our strategy around Feature Packs and PeopleSoft 9.2. Given the high adoption rate of PeopleSoft 9.1 (over 4x that of 9.0 given the same time lapse since the release date), there was a lot of interest around the 9.1 Feature Packs as a vehicle for continuous value. We provided examples of our 3 central design themes: Simplicity, Productivity, and lower TCO, including those already delivered via Feature Packs in 2010. A great example of this is the Company Directory feature in PeopleSoft HCM. The configuration capabilities and the new actionable links our CAB advised us on last Spring were made available to all customers late last year. We reviewed many more future Navigation changes that will fundamentally change the way users interact with PeopleSoft. Our old friend, the menu tree, is being relegated from center stage to a bit part, with new concepts like Activity Guides, Train Stops, Related Actions, Work Centers, Collaborative Workspaces, and Secure Enterprise Search bringing users what they need in a contextual, role based manner with fewer clicks. Paco Aubrejuan, our PeopleSoft GM, and Steve Miranda, the SVP for Fusion Applications, then discussed our plans around Oracle's Application Investment Strategy.  This included our continued investment in developing both PeopleSoft and Fusion as well as the co-existence strategy with new Fusion Apps integrating to PeopleSoft Apps. Should you want to view this presentation, a recording is available. Jeff Robbins, our lead PeopleTools Strategist, provided the roadmap for PeopleTools and discussed our continuing plan to deliver annual releases to further evolve the user experience. Numerous examples were highlighted with the Navigation techniques I mentioned previously. Jeff also provided a lot of food for thought around Lifecycle Management topics and how to remain current on releases with a  lower cost of ownership. Dennis Mesler, from Boise, was the guest speaker in this slot, who spoke about the new PeopleSoft Test Framework (PTF). Regression Testing is a key cost component when product updates are applied. This new tool (which is free to all PeopleSoft customers as part of PeopleTools 8.51) provides a meta data driven approach to recording and executing test scripts. Coupled with what our Usage Monitor enables, PTF provides our customers a powerful tool to lower costs and manage product updates more efficiently and at the time of their choosing. Beyond the general session, we broke out into the individual CABs: HCM, Financials, ESA/ALM, SRM, SCM, CRM, and PeopleTools/ Technology. A day and half of very engaging discussions around our plans took place for each product pillar. More about that to follow in future posts.      We capped the first day with a reception sponsored by our partners: InfoSys, SmartERP (represented by Doris Wong), and Grey Sparling  Solutions (represented by Chris Heller and Larry Grey). Great to see these old friends actively engaged in the very busy PeopleSoft ecosystem!   Jeff Robbins previews the roadmap for PeopleTools with the PeopleSoft CAB  

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• How to Create a Realistic Timeline for your Projects

  - by Aditi

  Developing a Realistic project time line is a biggest and most challenging task of any team. We here at JustSkins, have learned over time that developing and adhering to a timeline isn’t easy but is not impossible. Keeping in consideration from any technical glitches to a human resource issue, unexpected complications can come up at any time during the entire project life cycle, How ever there are many things you can do in order to save the project from going off-track there. A specific timeline is very important statistic for time management planning and keeping your client informed of the progress. Have a rigid time tracking assures the client, that you are committed to achieving specific project milestones in time. The more you work on varied IT projects, the more you know about the aspects of project and you get to better develop future estimates and timelines. Make a Structure When estimating the time required to accomplish each task, consider which all team members will be involved, also assign the amount of time each individual must put in to the project. Define Scope & dependability and set deadlines for accomplishing them. Sometimes Working in Phases or modules help in doing more in lesser time. One must use a Project management tool in order to systematize the collaboration between the team members. Realistic Goal Setting One approach is to keep a bandwidth of few days to deal with delay, errors & incorrect coding issues you are likely to have in the course. It is very realistic to keep delivery date to client different then internal delivery timeline. If your resource is having hard time finishing this task in the time specified, keep some room to give him a day or two extra to accomplish his task. This does not upset client delivery and is the safe way of doing projects. Keep and Insightful Approach Identify potential problems before they delay your project. To be a great IT manager you have to be honest & diplomatic at the same time, it is essential for you to give earlier notice of potential delays or scope changes to your clients. In situation where delay is inevitable you should be in a position to provide immediate, on-demand status progress reports. Learning from past experiences if very important one must keep a track of actual time spent on all aspects of the projects, this will help you create better future estimates and timelines.

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• Sony VAIO with Insyde H2O EFI bios will not boot into GRUB EFI

  - by Rohan Dhruva

  I bought a new Sony Vaio S series laptop. It uses Insyde H2O BIOS EFI, and trying to install Linux on it is driving me crazy. root@kubuntu:~# parted /dev/sda print Model: ATA Hitachi HTS72756 (scsi) Disk /dev/sda: 640GB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B Partition Table: gpt Number Start End Size File system Name Flags 1 1049kB 274MB 273MB fat32 EFI system partition hidden 2 274MB 20.8GB 20.6GB ntfs Basic data partition hidden, diag 3 20.8GB 21.1GB 273MB fat32 EFI system partition boot 4 21.1GB 21.3GB 134MB Microsoft reserved partition msftres 5 21.3GB 342GB 320GB ntfs Basic data partition 6 342GB 358GB 16.1GB ext4 Basic data partition 7 358GB 374GB 16.1GB ntfs Basic data partition 8 374GB 640GB 266GB ntfs Basic data partition What is surprising is that there are 2 EFI system partitions on the disk. The sda2 partition is a 20gb recovery partition which loads windows with a basic recovery interface. This is accessible by pressing the "ASSIST" button as opposed to the normal power button. I presume that the sda1 EFI System Partition (ESP) loads into this recovery. The sda3 ESP has more fleshed out entries for Microsoft Windows, which actually goes into Windows 7 (as confirmed by bcdedit.exe on Windows). Ubuntu is installed on sda6, and while installation I chose sda3 as my boot partition. The installer correctly created a sda3/EFI/ubuntu/grubx64.efi application. The real problem: for the life of me, I can't set it to be the default! I tried creating a sda3/startup.nsh which called grubx64.efi, but it didn't help -- on rebooting, the system still boots into windows. I tried using efibootmgr, and that shows as it it worked: root@kubuntu:~# efibootmgr BootCurrent: 0000 BootOrder: 0000,0001 Boot0000* EFI USB Device Boot0001* Windows Boot Manager root@kubuntu:~# efibootmgr --create --gpt --disk /dev/sda --part 3 --write-signature --label "GRUB2" --loader "\\EFI\\ubuntu\\grubx64.efi" BootCurrent: 0000 BootOrder: 0002,0000,0001 Boot0000* EFI USB Device Boot0001* Windows Boot Manager Boot0002* GRUB2 root@kubuntu:~# efibootmgr BootCurrent: 0000 BootOrder: 0002,0000,0001 Boot0000* EFI USB Device Boot0001* Windows Boot Manager Boot0002* GRUB2 However, on rebooting, as you guessed, the machine rebooted directly back into Windows. The only things I can think of are: The sda1 partition is somehow being used Overwrite /EFI/Boot/bootx64.efi and /EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi with grubx64.efi [but this seems really radical]. Can anyone please help me out? Thanks -- any help is greatly appreciated, as this issue is driving me crazy!

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• SQL SERVER – CSVExpress and Quick Data Load

  - by pinaldave

  One of the newest ETL tools is CSVexpress.com.  This is a program that can quickly load any CSV file into ODBC compliant databases uses data integration.  For those of you familiar with databases and how they operate, the question that comes to mind might be what use this program will have in your life. I have written earlier article on this subject over here SQL SERVER – Import CSV into Database – Transferring File Content into a Database Table using CSVexpress. You might know that RDBMS have automatic support for loading CSV files into tables – but it is not quite as easy as one click of a button.  First of all, most databases have a command line interface and you need the file and configuration script in order to load up.  You also need to know enough to write the script – which for novices can be extremely daunting.  On top of all this, if you work with more than one type of RDBMS, you need to know the ins and outs of uploading and writing script for more than one program. So you might begin to see how useful CSVexpress.com might be!  There are many other tools that enable uploading files to a database.  They can be very fancy – some can generate configuration files automatically, others load the data directly.  Again, novices will be able to tell you why these aren’t the most useful programs in the world.  You see, these programs were created with SQL in mind, not for uploading data.  If you don’t have large amounts of data to upload, getting the configurations right can be a long process and you will have to check the code that is generated yourself.  Not exactly “easy to use” for novices. That makes CSVexpress.com one of the best new tools available for everyone – but especially people who don’t want to learn a lot of new material all at once.  CSVexpress has an easy to navigate graphical user interface and no scripting or coding is required.  There are built-in constraints and data validations, and you can configure transforms and reject records right there on the screen.  But the best thing of all – it’s free! That’s right, you can download CSVexpress for free from www.csvexpress.com and start easily uploading and configuring riles almost immediately.  If you’re currently happy with your method of data configuration, keep up with the good work.  For the rest of us, there’s CSVexpress.com. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Utility, T SQL, Technology

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• A brief introduction to BRM and architecture

  - by Yani Miguel

  Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management (Oracle BRM) is the telcos industry´s leading solution intended for communications service providers. This post encourages to know BRM starting with the basics. History Portal was a billing and revenue managament solution to communications industry created by Portal Software. In 2006 Oracle acquired Portal Software and the solution was renamed BRM. Today Oracle BRM is the first end-to-end packaged enterprise software suite for the communications industry, however BRM is just one more product in the catalog of OSS solutions that Oracle offers. BRM can bill and manage all communications services including wireline, wireless, broadband, cable, voice over IP, IPTV, music, and video. BRM Architecture BRM´s architecture consists of 4 layers or tiers. Through these layers are the data, bussines logic and interfaces to connect graphical client tools.Application tier This layer provides GUI client tools enabling communication to other layers through open APIs. Some BRM client applications are: Customer Center Pricing Center Universal Event Loader Web Server BRM Billing Application Collections Center Permissioning Center Furthermore, this layer is where are provided real-time external events. Bussines Process Tier Although all layers are equally important, I think it deserves more atention because in this tier BRM functionality is implemented. All functions that give life to BRM are in this layer coded in C language called Opcodes (System Processes in the image). Any changes or additional functionality should be made here, so when we try to customize the product, we will most of the time programming in this layer (Business Policies in the image).Bussines Process Tier Features: Implements Portal system functionalityValidates data from the application tierModifies Portal behavior through business policies. Business policies can by customized.Triggers external systems using event notification. Object Tier This layer is responsible for transfer the BRM requests into database language and translate BRM requests into external system requests. Without it, the business logic (data from Bussines Process Tier) could not be understood by the relational database. Data tier Data tier is responsable for the storage of BRM database and other external systems databases. External systems include credit card, tax, and directory servers. Finally, It's important to note that BRM is designed to easily integrate with the following solutions:AIA 2.4 Siebel CRM E-Business Suite - G/L onlyCommunications Services Gatekeeper Oracle BI Publisher. Personally, I think that BRM could improve migrating client-server architecture to a fully web platform that works with Oracle Middleware like any product of the Fusion Middleware family. Hopefully there are already initiatives in this area.

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• 9 Ways Facebook Monetization Could Change Your Marketing

  - by Mike Stiles

  Think Facebook monetization isn’t a head game? Imagine creating something so functional, fun and addictive you literally amass about 1/7th of the planet’s population as an audience. You have 1 billion users that use it at least once a month. But analysts and marketers look at what you’ve done and say, “eh…not good enough.” What if you had a TV show that garnered 1/7 of Earth’s population as an audience? How much would a spot cost? And how fast would marketers write that check, even without the targeting and engagement analytics Facebook offers? Having already changed the marketing landscape forever, if you’re Facebook’s creator, you’d have to be scratching your head and asking, “Wow, what more does a product need to do?” Facebook’s been busy answering that very question with products and betas that will likely directly affect your brand’s strategy. Item 1: Users can send physical gifts to friends through Facebook based on suggestions from user data. A giant step toward the potential power of social commerce. Item 2: Users can pay $7 to promote posts for higher visibility. Individual users, not just marketers, are being leveraged as a revenue stream. Not impressive enough? There’s also the potential Craigslist killer Facebook Marketplace. Item 3: Mobile ads. 600 million+ access Facebook on smartphones. According to the company, half of the $1 million a day generated by Sponsored Stories as of late June was coming from mobile. Ads in News Feeds seen on mobile had click-through rates 23x higher than on desktop News Feeds or the right side panel. Item 4: App developers can buy install ads that show up in mobile News Feeds so reliance on discovery in app stores is reduced. Item 5: Want your posts seen by people who never liked your Page? A test began in August where you could appear in non-fans’ News Feeds on both web and mobile. Item 6: How about an ability to use Facebook data to buy ads outside of Facebook? A mobile ad network is being tested to get your targeted messages on non-Facebook apps and sites surfaced on devices. Item 7: Facebook Collections, Facebook’s answer to Pinterest. Users can gather images of desired products and click through to the retailer to buy. Keep focusing on your imagery. Item 8: Facebook Offers, Facebook’s answer to the Groupons and Living Socials of the world. You can send deals to your fans’ News Feeds. Item 9: Facebook Exchange lets you track what fans do on Facebook and across the entire Web. Could lead to a Facebook ad network leveraging Facebook users and data but not limiting exposure to the Facebook platform. Marketers are seeing increasing value in Facebook (and Twitter for that matter).  But as social grows and adjusts, will marketing budgets aimed in that direction grow and adjust accordingly, and within a reasonable time frame? @mikestilesPhoto Christie Merrill/stock.xchng

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• Ubuntu 12.04 / 12.10 Randomly Freezing - nVidia?

  - by Alix Axel

  My Ubuntu install frequently freezes, sometimes showing a black screen (not very common anymore - in my latest installs), some other times the mouse and keyboard just fail to move and respond (not even Ctrl + Alt + F1 works) and some other times I'm able to move the mouse with a huge delay (2-5 seconds) but I'm not able to do/click anything. I have a pretty strong feeling that this problem is related to my graphic card drivers because: after hard reset, I usually get error reports about X.org / jockey it's common for artifacts to appear during loading / shutdown / whenever, for instance: pattern filled with £ during log off ugly-colored squared pattern during boot windows that are partially moved (i.e.: only the top half) Firefox renderings that leave the bottom ~30% of the page black These artifacts appear right before the system freezes. I've installed Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and after several failed attempts to get my dual monitor setup to work properly I tried installing the new 12.10 version, hoping that this new version would have this problem solved... Unfortunatly, that was not the case, so I reverted to Ubuntu 12.04. I've tried all the drivers in the Additional Drivers application (even the experimental ones), I've also tried the nvidia-current package from the PPA repository ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates as well as the nouveau OSS driver. Nothing (except no driver at all with a 640*480 resolution) at all seems stable. Here is the info of my graphic card: alix@alix-E500:~$ lspci | grep VGA 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation G86 [GeForce 8400M G] (rev a1) alix@alix-E500:~$ sudo lshw -C video [sudo] password for alix: *-display description: VGA compatible controller product: G86 [GeForce 8400M G] vendor: NVIDIA Corporation physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0 version: a1 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom configuration: driver=nouveau latency=0 resources: irq:16 memory:fd000000-fdffffff memory:d0000000-dfffffff memory:fa000000-fbffffff ioport:cc00(size=128) memory:fe0e0000-fe0fffff Right now, I don't even have my 22" monitor connected as I can't even get my laptop display to work properly and without freezes. I've searched, read and tried all that I could (over several fresh reinstalls) to fix the problem, but so far, no solution has proven definitive. I'm sorry I can't precise which symptom maps to each driver but I've been trying to solve this one on my own without logging what I'm doing, perhaps someone here will be able to point me to a certain-fix solution, if not I'll keep updating this question as I go along. Please let me know if any more info is needed to pinpoint the exact problem. Trying out NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver (version 173). The scrolling, minimizing / maximizing windows takes between 2 and 5 seconds to finalize. Context menus also pop up very slowly and the typing seems delayed by ~1 second. No critical issues so far. Firefox rendering of the Save Edits button is consistently messed up (random black lines in the top). Trying out NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver (version current) [Recommended]. All the delays mentioned above and the buggy rendering of the Save Edits button are gone, but I'm noticing that the whole screen flashes black for a couple of microseconds and while I was writing this test for the first time, the bottom 30% of the screen went black and I couldn't do anything (not even Ctrl + Alt + F1 would work). Had to force a hard reset. Also, the system hanged a little for a couple of seconds with the fade out of the "Restart" menu. Trying out NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver (*experimental*beta) (version experimental-304). Same symptoms as before, it crashed once while I was trying to install Chromium and again after a hard reset when I was trying to remove the driver. The bottom of the screen did not went black and I could move my mouse both times. Ctrl + Alt + F1 didn't work. The ugly-colored pattern also showed up during the second boot. Trying out NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver (*experimental*beta) (version experimental-307). The system crashed as soon as I clicked something. Had to do a fresh re-install. Trying out Nouveau: Accelerated Open Source driver for nVidia cards. Artifacts still show up during boot but other than that this one seems stable. As soon as I connected my second monitor, the responsiveness dropped a lot, animations and video are somewhat slow. I'm gonna try this solution http://askubuntu.com/a/98871/9018 later on.

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