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• Enterprise Manager 12c: New DSS Demos Available

  - by Javier Puerta

  Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c Application Replay Demo Now Available! User Experience Monitoring with Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c and Real User Experience Insight 12R1 Now Available! Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c: Database Management Packs demo upgrade     Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c Application Replay Demo Now Available! We are pleased to announce the availability of the Oracle Application Replay demo that showcases some of the key capabilities of performing realistic, production scale testing of your web and packaged Oracle applications. This demo specifically focuses on capturing production web traffic from an E-Business Suite application and replaying the captured workload on a test E-Business Suite application to assess the impact of an application infrastructure change on the workload. The target audiences are application developers, quality assurance teams, IT managers and production control staff that deal in day-to-day change management activities and trouble shooting of production environments. Demo Highlights: Enterprise Manager 12c workflows for capturing application workload Seamless integration of Application Replay with Real User Experience Insight for application workload capture Enterprise Manager 12c centralized workflows for replaying captured application workloads in a test environment Demonstrates how to minimize risk when deploying a complex EBusiness Suite application infrastructure change. Rich reporting capability for performance analysis and problem detection User Experience Monitoring with Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c and Real User Experience Insight 12R1 Now Available! We are pleased to announce the availability of the Oracle Real User Experience Insight demo that showcases some of the key capabilities of user experience monitoring. This demo specifically focuses on business reporting, integrated performance diagnostics, tracking of customer journey’s through RUEI’s userflow tracking capabilities and it’s Key Performance Indicators tracking and configuration. Demo Highlights: Application-centric dashboard Integration with Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c – JVMD, ADP and BTM Session diagnostics and user session replay Monitoring through “Key Performance Indicators” (KPI) --- create alerts/incidents FUSION Application centric dashboards & integrated BI Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c: Database Management Packs demo upgrade DSS is pleased to announce an upgrade to the Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c: Database Management Packs demo. While retaining the content from the initial release of the demo—Diagnostic and Tuning Packs, Test Data Management and Data Masking, and Real Application Testing—the demo now includes a new Data Masking for Real Application Testing scenario. Demo Features: Diagnostic and Tuning Packs SQL Performance Analyzer Database Replay Data Masking Masking Real Application Testing workloads Testing pending Optimizer statistics Test Data Management

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• Data Virtualization: Federated and Hybrid

  - by Krishnamoorthy

  Data becomes useful when it can be leveraged at the right time. Not only enterprises application stores operate on large volume, velocity and variety of data. Mobile and social computing are in the need of operating in foresaid data. Replicating and transferring large swaths of data is one challenge faced in the field of data integration. However, smaller chunks of data aggregated from a variety of sources presents and even more interesting challenge in the industry. Over the past few decades, technology trends focused on best user experience, operating systems, high performance computing, high performance web sites, analysis of warehouse data, service oriented architecture, social computing, cloud computing, and big data. Operating on the ‘dark data’ becomes mandatory in the future technology trend, although, no solution can make dark data useful data in a single day. Useful data can be quantified by the facts of contextual, personalized and on time delivery. In most cases, data from a single source may not be complete the picture. Data has to be combined and computed from various sources, where data may be captured as hybrid data, meaning the combination of structured and unstructured data. Since related data is often found across disparate sources, effectively integrating these sources determines how useful this data ultimately becomes. Technology trends in 2013 are expected to focus on big data and private cloud. Consumers are not merely interested in where data is located or how data is retrieved and computed. Consumers are interested in how quick and how the data can be leveraged. In many cases, data virtualization is the right solution, and is expected to play a foundational role for SOA, Cloud integration, and Big Data. The Oracle Data Integration portfolio includes a data virtualization product called ODSI (Oracle Data Service Integrator). Unlike other data virtualization solutions, ODSI can perform both read and write operations on federated/hybrid data (RDBMS, Webservices,  delimited file and XML). The ODSI Engine is built on XQuery, hence ODSI user can perform computations on data either using XQuery or SQL. Built in data and query caching features, which reduces latency in repetitive calls. Rightly positioning ODSI, can results in a highly scalable model, reducing spend on additional hardware infrastructure.

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• Data Model Dissonance

  - by Tony Davis

  So often at the start of the development of database applications, there is a premature rush to the keyboard. Unless, before we get there, we’ve mapped out and agreed the three data models, the Conceptual, the Logical and the Physical, then the inevitable refactoring will dog development work. It pays to get the data models sorted out up-front, however ‘agile’ you profess to be. The hardest model to get right, the most misunderstood, and the one most neglected by the various modeling tools, is the conceptual data model, and yet it is critical to all that follows. The conceptual model distils what the business understands about itself, and the way it operates. It represents the business rules that govern the required data, its constraints and its properties. The conceptual model uses the terminology of the business and defines the most important entities and their inter-relationships. Don’t assume that the organization’s understanding of these business rules is consistent or accurate. Too often, one department has a subtly different understanding of what an entity means and what it stores, from another. If our conceptual data model fails to resolve such inconsistencies, it will reduce data quality. If we don’t collect and measure the raw data in a consistent way across the whole business, how can we hope to perform meaningful aggregation? The conceptual data model has more to do with business than technology, and as such, developers often regard it as a worthy but rather arcane ceremony like saluting the flag or only eating fish on Friday. However, the consequences of getting it wrong have a direct and painful impact on many aspects of the project. If you adopt a silo-based (a.k.a. Domain driven) approach to development), you are still likely to suffer by starting with an incomplete knowledge of the domain. Even when you have surmounted these problems so that the data entities accurately reflect the business domain that the application represents, there are likely to be dire consequences from abandoning the goal of a shared, enterprise-wide understanding of the business. In reading this, you may recall experiences of the consequence of getting the conceptual data model wrong. I believe that Phil Factor, for example, witnessed the abandonment of a multi-million dollar banking project due to an inadequate conceptual analysis of how the bank defined a ‘customer’. We’d love to hear of any examples you know of development projects poleaxed by errors in the conceptual data model. Cheers, Tony

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• Seven Accounting Changes for 2010

  - by Theresa Hickman

  I read a very interesting article called Seven Accounting Changes That Will Affect Your 2010 Annual Report from SmartPros that nicely summarized how 2010 annual financial statements will be impacted.  Here’s a Reader’s Digest version of the changes: 1.  Changes to revenue recognition if you sell bundled products with multiple deliverables: Old Rule: You needed to objectively establish the “fair value” of each bundled item. So if you sold a dishwasher plus installation and could not establish the fair value of the installation, you might have to delay recognizing revenue of the dishwasher days or weeks later until it was installed. New Rule (ASU 2009-13): “Objective” proof of each service or good is no longer required; you can simply estimate the selling price of the installation and warranty. So the dishwasher vendor can recognize the dishwasher revenue immediately at the point of sale without waiting a few weeks for the installation. Then they can recognize the estimated value of the installation after it is complete. 2.  Changes to revenue recognition for devices with embedded software: Old Rule: Hardware devices with embedded software, such as the iPhone, had to follow stringent software revrec rules. This forced Apple to recognize iPhone revenues over two years, the period of time that software updates were provided. New Rule (ASU 2009-14): Software revrec rules no longer apply to these devices with embedded software; these devices can now follow ASU 2009-13. This allows vendors, such as Apple, to recognize revenue sooner. 3.  Fair value disclosures: Companies (both public and private) now need to spend extra time gathering, summarizing, and disclosing information about items measured at fair value, such as significant transfers in and out of Level 1(quoted market price), Level 2 (valuation based on observable markets), and Level 3 (valuations based on internal information). 4.  Consolidation of variable interest entities (a.k.a special purpose entities): Consolidation rules for variable interest entities now require a qualitative, not quantitative, analysis to determine the primary beneficiary. Instead of simply looking at the percentage of voting interests, the primary beneficiary could have less than the majority interests as long as it has the power to direct the activities and absorb any losses.  5.  XBRL: Starting in June 2011, all U.S. public companies are required to file financial statements to the SEC using XBRL. Note: Oracle supports XBRL reporting. 6.  Non-GAAP financial disclosures: Companies that report non-GAAP measures of performance, such as EBITDA in SEC filings, have more flexibility.  The new interpretations can be found here: http://www.sec.gov/divisions/corpfin/guidance/nongaapinterp.htm.  7.  Loss contingencies disclosures: Companies should expect additional scrutiny of their loss disclosures, such as those from litigation losses, in their annual financial statements. The SEC wants more disclosures about loss contingencies sooner instead of after the cases are settled.

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• UK Oracle User Group Event: Trends in Identity Management

  - by B Shashikumar

  As threat levels rise and new technologies such as cloud and mobile computing gain widespread acceptance, security is occupying more and more mindshare among IT executives. To help prepare for the rapidly changing security landscape, the Oracle UK User Group community and our partners at Enline/SENA have put together an User Group event in London on Apr 19 where you can learn more from your industry peers about upcoming trends in identity management. Here are some of the key trends in identity management and security that we predicted at the beginning of last year and look how they have turned out so far. You have to admit that we have a pretty good track record when it comes to forecasting trends in identity management and security. Threat levels will grow—and there will be more serious breaches:   We have since witnessed breaches of high value targets like RSA and Epsilon. Most organizations have not done enough to protect against insider threats. Organizations need to look for security solutions to stop user access to applications based on real-time patterns of fraud and for situations in which employees change roles or employment status within a company. Cloud computing will continue to grow—and require new security solutions: Cloud computing has since exploded into a dominant secular trend in the industry. Cloud computing continues to present many opportunities like low upfront costs, rapid deployment etc. But Cloud computing also increases policy fragmentation and reduces visibility and control. So organizations require solutions that bridge the security gap between the enterprise and cloud applications to reduce fragmentation and increase control. Mobile devices will challenge traditional security solutions: Since that time, we have witnessed proliferation of mobile devices—combined with increasing numbers of employees bringing their own devices to work (BYOD) — these trends continue to dissolve the traditional boundaries of the enterprise. This in turn, requires a holistic approach within an organization that combines strong authentication and fraud protection, externalization of entitlements, and centralized management across multiple applications—and open standards to make all that possible.  Security platforms will continue to converge: As organizations move increasingly toward vendor consolidation, security solutions are also evolving. Next-generation identity management platforms have best-of-breed features, and must also remain open and flexible to remain viable. As a result, developers need products such as the Oracle Access Management Suite in order to efficiently and reliably build identity and access management into applications—without requiring security experts. Organizations will increasingly pursue "business-centric compliance.": Privacy and security regulations have continued to increase. So businesses are increasingly look for solutions that combine strong security and compliance management tools with business ready experience for faster, lower-cost implementations.  If you'd like to hear more about the top trends in identity management and learn how to empower yourself, then join us for the Oracle UK User Group on Thu Apr 19 in London where Oracle and Enline/SENA product experts will come together to share security trends, best practices, and solutions for your business. Register Here.

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• Arçelik A.S. Uses Advanced Analytics to Improve Product Development

  - by Sylvie MacKenzie, PMP

  "Oracle’s Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management’s advanced analytics gives us better insight into the product development process by helping us to identify potential roadblocks.” – Iffet Iyigun Meydanli, Innovation and System Development Manager, R&D Center, Arçelik A.S. Founded in 1955, Arçelik A.S. is now the leading household appliance manufacturer in Turkey, and the third-largest household appliance company in Europe. It operates 14 production facilities in five countries (Turkey, Romania, Russia, China, and South Africa), with international sales and marketing offices in 20 countries. Additionally, the company manages 10 brands (Arçelik, Beko, Grundig, Blomberg, Elektrabregenz, Arctic, Leisure, Flavel, Defy, and Altus). The company has a household presence in more than 100 countries, including China and the United States. Arçelik’s Beko brand is among the top-10 household appliance brands in world, as a market leader for refrigerators, freezers, and washing machines in the United Kingdom. Arçelik implemented Oracle’s Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management for improved management of its design and manufacturing projects. With the solution, Arelik has improved its research and development (R&D) with the ability to evaluate technology risks when planning its projects. Also, it is now more easy to make plans for several locations, monitor all resources, and plan for future projects.  Challenges Improve monitoring of R&D resources?including human resources and critical laboratory equipment?to optimize management of the company’s R&D project portfolio Establish a transparent project platform to enable better product and process planning, gain insight into product performance, and facilitate advanced analytics that support R&D and overall business decisions Identify potential roadblocks for better risk management Solutions Worked with Oracle Partner PRM to implement Oracle’s Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management to manage the entire household-appliance, R&D project portfolio lifecycle, enabling managers and project leaders to better track and monitor resources and deliverables in real time Improved risk analysis and evaluation abilities for R&D projects Supported long-term planning needs Used advanced reporting features to capture data needed for budgeting and other project details, including employee performance evaluations Improved monitoring abilities and insight into the overall performance of products postproduction Enabled flexible, fast, and customized reporting with the P6 dashboard on a centralized platform to meet custom reporting needs for project leaders and support on-time and on-budget deliverables Integrated with other corporate departments, such as accounts payable, to upload project invoice data into the Primavera solution and the company’s e-mail system, so that project leaders will be alerted about milestones and other project related information Partner“Oracle Partner PRM provided us with a quick, reliable, and solution-focused approach to its support,” said Iffet Iyigun Meydanli, innovation and system development manager, R&D Center, Arçelik A.S. “The company’s service covered the entire spectrum of our needs, including implementation, training, configuration, problem solving, and integration.”

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• BIDS Helper 1.6 Beta Release (now with SQL 2012 support!)

  - by Darren Gosbell

  The beta for BIDS Helper 1.6 was just released. We have not updated the version notification just yet as we would like to get some feedback on people's experiences with the SQL 2012 version. So if you are using SQL 2012, go grab it and let us know how you go (you can post a comment on this blog post or on the BIDS Helper site itself). This is the first release that supports SQL 2012 and consequently also the first release that runs in Visual Studio 2010. A big thanks to Greg Galloway for doing the bulk of the work on this release. Please note that if you are doing an xcopy deploy that you will need to unblock the files you download or you will get a cryptic error message. This appears to be caused by a security update to either Visual Studio or the .Net framework – the xcopy deploy instructions have been updated to show you how to do this. Below are the notes from the release page. ====== This beta release is the first to support SQL Server 2012 (in addition to SQL Server 2005, 2008, and 2008 R2). Since it is marked as a beta release, we are looking for bug reports in the next few months as you use BIDS Helper on real projects. In addition to getting all existing BIDS Helper functionality working appropriately in SQL Server 2012 (SSDT), the following features are new... Analysis Services Tabular Smart Diff Tabular Actions Editor Tabular HideMemberIf Tabular Pre-Build Fixes and Updates The Unused Datasets feature for Reporting Services now accounts for new features in Reporting Services 2008 R2 like Lookups and new features in Reporting Services 2012. SSIS: emit an informational message when a variable has an expression defined and EvaluateAsExpression = False SSAS: roles reports points to wrong server SSIS - Variable Copy / Move broken in v1.5 "Unused DataSets Report" not showing up in Context menu on VS2005 if Solution Folders used SSAS Tabular: Create a UI for managing actions SSAS Tabular: Smart Diff improvements for new schema and Tabular models SSIS: Copy/Move Variable Erroring due to custom Control Flow item Icon SSIS Performance Visualization Index out of range fixing bugs in AggManager when aggregation design IDs don't match names The exe downloads are a self extracting installer, the zip downloads allow for an xcopy deploy. Make sure to note the updated xcopy deploy instructions for SQL Server 2012.

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• How do we provide valid time estimates during Sprint Planning without doing "too much" design?

  - by Michael Edenfield

  My team is getting up to speed with Scrum, but most of us are more familiar with non-agile or "pseudo-"agile methodologies. The part that is the biggest hurdle for us is running an efficient Sprint Planning meeting where we break our backlog items into tasks, and estimate hours. (I'm using the terminology from the VS2010 Scrum Template; apologies if I use the wrong word somewhere.) When we try to figure out how long a task is going to take, we often fall into the trap of designing the feature at the code level -- table layout, interfaces, etc -- in order to figure out how long that's going to take. I'm pretty sure this is not the appropriate place to be doing that kind of design. We should be scheduling tasks for these design meetings during the sprint. However, we are having trouble figuring out how else to come up with meaningful estimates for the tasks. Are there any practical habits/techniques/etc. for making a judgement call about how long a feature is going to take, without knowing how you plan to implement it? If our time estimates are going to change significantly once the design has been completed, how can we properly budget our Sprint backlog ahead of time? EDIT: Just to clarify, since some of the comments/answers are very valid but I think addressing the wrong question. We know that what we're doing is not right, and that we should be building time into the sprint for this design. Conceptually all of the developers understand that. We also also bringing in a team member with Scrum experience to keep us on track if we start going off into the weeds. The problem is that, without going through this design process, we are finding it difficult to provide concrete time estimates for anything. We are constantly saying things like "well if we design it this way it might take 8 hours but if we end up having to do this other way instead that will take about 32 but it might not be as bad once we start trying to write it...". I also assume that this process will get better once we have some historical velocity to work from, but many of the technologies and architectural patterns we are using are new to us. But if potentially-wildly-wrong estimates are just a natural part of adapting this process then we will just need to recondition ourselves to accept that :)

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• More on Map Testing

  - by Michael Stephenson

  I have been chatting with Maurice den Heijer recently about his codeplex project for the BizTalk Map Testing Framework (http://mtf.codeplex.com/). Some of you may remember the article I did for BizTalk 2009 and 2006 about how to test maps but with Maurice's project he is effectively looking at how to improve productivity and quality by building some useful testing features within the framework to simplify the process of testing maps. As part of our discussion we realized that we both had slightly different approaches to how we validate the output from the map. Put simple Maurice does some xpath validation of the data in various nodes where as my approach for most standard cases is to use serialization to allow you to validate the output using normal MSTest assertions. I'm not really going to go into the pro's and con's of each approach because I think there is a place for both and also I'm sure others have various approaches which work too. What would be great is for the map testing framework to provide support for different ways of testing which can cover everything from simple cases to some very specialized scenarios. So as agreed with Maurice I have done the sample which I will talk about in the rest of this article to show how we can use the serialization approach to create and compare the input and output from a map in normal development testing. Prerequisites One of the common patterns I usually implement when developing BizTalk solutions is to use xsd.exe to create .net classes for most of the schemas used within the solution. In the testing pattern I will take advantage of these .net classes. The Map In this sample the map we will use is very simple and just concatenates some data from the input message to the output message. Hopefully the below picture illustrates this well. The Test In the test I'm basically taking the following actions: Use the .net class generated from the schema to create an input message for the map Serialize the input object to a file Run the map from .net using the standard BizTalk test method which was generated for running the map Deserialize the output file from the map execution to a .net class representing the output schema Use MsTest assertions to validate things about the output message The below picture shows this: As you can see the code for this is pretty simple and it's all strongly typed which means changes to my schema which can affect the tests can be easily picked up as compilation errors. I can then chose to have one test which validates most of the output from the map, or to have many specific tests covering individual scenarios within the map. Summary Hopefully this post illustrates a powerful yet simple way of effectively testing many BizTalk mapping scenarios. I will probably have more conversations with Maurice about these approaches and perhaps some of the above will be included in the mapping test framework.   The sample can be downloaded from here: http://cid-983a58358c675769.office.live.com/self.aspx/Blog%20Samples/More%20Map%20Testing/MapTestSample.zip

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• Independent Research on 1500 Companies Reveals Challenges in Performance Visibility – Part 1

  - by ndwyouell

  At the end of May I was joined by Professor Andy Neely of Cambridge University on a webinar, with an audience of over 700, to discuss the results of this extensive study which covered 13 countries and nearly every commercial and industrial sector.  What stunned both of us was not so much the number listening but the 100 questions they asked in just 1 hour.  This certainly represents a record in my experience and for those that organized the webinar. So what was all the fuss about?  Well, to begin with this was a pretty big sample and it represented organizations with over $100m sales across the USA, Europe, Africa and the Middle East. It also delivered some pretty interesting results across a wide range of EPM subjects such as profitability, planning and reporting.  Let’s look at some of those findings. We kicked off with profitability, one of the key factors in driving performance, or that is what you would think, but in fact 82% of our respondents said they did not have complete visibility into the profitability of their organization. 91% of these went further to say that, not surprisingly, this lack of knowledge into the profitability has implications with over half citing 3 or more implications.  Implications cited included misallocated resources, revenue opportunities not maximized, erroneous decisions made and impaired financial performance.  Quite a list of implications, especially given the difficult economic circumstances many organizations are operating in at this time. So why is this?  Well other results in the study point to some of the potential reasons.  Firstly 59% of respondents that use spreadsheets use them for monitoring profitability and 93% of all managers responding to the study use spreadsheets to gather and analyze information.  This is an enormous proportion given the problems with using spreadsheets based performance management systems that have been widely talked about for many years.  For profitability analysis this is particularly important when you consider the typical requirement will be to allocate cost and revenue across 6+ dimensions based on many different allocation methods.  Not something that can be done easily in spreadsheets plus it gets to be a nightmare once you want to change allocations, run different scenarios and then change the basis of your planning and budgeting! It is no wonder so many organizations have challenges in performance visibility. My next blog will look at the fragmented nature of many organizations’ planning.  In the meantime if you want to read the complete report on the research go to: http://www.oracle.com/webapps/dialogue/ns/dlgwelcome.jsp?p_ext=Y&p_dlg_id=10077790&src=7038701&Act=29

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• Oracle PeopleSoft PeopleTools 8.53 Release Value Proposition (RVP) published

  - by Greg Kelly

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} The Oracle PeopleSoft PeopleTools 8.53 Release Value Proposition (RVP) can be found at: https://supporthtml.oracle.com/epmos/faces/ui/km/DocumentDisplay.jspx?id=1473194.1 The PeopleSoft PeopleTools 8.53 release continues Oracle’s commitment to protect and extend the value of your PeopleSoft implementation, provide additional technology options and enhancements that reduce ongoing operating costs and provide the applications user a dramatically improved experience. Across the PeopleSoft product development organization we have defined three design principles: Simplicity, Productivity and Total Cost of Ownership. These development principles have directly influenced the PeopleTools product direction during the past few releases. The scope for the PeopleTools 8.53 release again builds additional functionality into the product as a result of direct customer input, industry analysis and internal feature design. New features, bug fixes and new certifications found in PeopleTools 8.53 combine to offer customers improved application user experience, page interaction, and cost-effectiveness. Key PeopleTools 8.53 features include: · PeopleSoft Styles and User Interaction Model · PeopleSoft Data Migration Workbench · PeopleSoft Update Manager · Secure by Default Initiative Be sure to check out the PeopleSoft Update Manager. Many other things are also happening in this time frame. · See the posting on the PeopleSoft Interaction Hub https://blogs.oracle.com/peopletools/entry/introducing_the_peoplesoft_interaction_hub · The application 9.2 RVPs will also be published over the next few months · If you haven't seen it, check out John Webb's posting on the PeopleSoft Information Portal https://blogs.oracle.com/peoplesoft/entry/peoplesoft_information_find_it_quickly

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• Think Before You Leap - Life is Dangerous for Change Agents

  - by technodrone

  So you want to introduce agile methods to your team... The following are some "lessons learned" when from someone who advocated agile/scrum to a group that was not ready for it. "Change agents, in my experience, face negative consequences. Sometimes, most of the time at the beginning, it's painful. This is the question you might have to ask yourself. Do you want to be a developer in scrum project or do you want be a scrum master managing the process? I think with proper mentoring/training, you can become good scrum master. But is that what you want? if yes, you can go ahead, take the training. if you want to be a developer, you may not need to be certified  as scrum master. You can just pick up from a book such as Mike Cohn new book Succeeding with Agile, I am reading it now. It's good. In my experience, I did waste my resources by trying to change the culture. It cost me lot. Instead, I should have focused on technical practices that are core to agile. Then look for teams that are good at agile. I would have saved lot of energy, and time. Try baby steps first yourself in the company, and next with the team, starting with technical practices like writing unit tests, SOLID principles, patterns, refactoring, continuous integration, pairing, and peer code reviews. These have inherent pull that can bring collaboration from a team.  Once you see team adaption in core practices, then you can introduce scrum concepts like user stories/task board etc.  This idea of Leading by example seems to be working for most of the agile folks. You can pitch core practices to the manager, and the team, and start showing them how you are doing.  You can put a road map for agile adaption and you can pitch to your manager. I would include need for scrum master training as part of the road map. " I thought about his advice for a couple of weeks and read about the pitfalls of technical debt and the team not having prior awareness of agile methods. The more I read and think about it the more I think he was right.  What do you think?

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• ATG Live Webcast Dec. 6th: Minimizing EBS Maintenance Downtimes

  - by Bill Sawyer

  This webcast provides an overview of the plans and decisions you can make, and the actions you can take, that will help you minimize maintenance downtimes for your E-Business Suite instances. It is targeted to system administrators, DBAs, developers, and implementers. This session, led by Elke Phelps, Senior Principal Product Manager, and Santiago Bastidas, Principal Product Manager, will cover best practices, tools, utilities, and tasks to minimize your maintenance downtimes during the four key maintenance phases. Topics will include: Pre-Patching: Reviewing the list of patches and analyzing their impact Patching Trials: Testing the patch prior to actual production deployment Patch Deployment: Applying patching to your system Post Patching Analysis: Validating the patch application Date:                Thursday, December 6, 2012Time:               8:00 AM - 9:00 AM Pacific Standard TimePresenters:   Elke Phelps, Senior Principal Product Manager                         Santiago Bastidas, Principal Product Manager Webcast Registration Link (Preregistration is optional but encouraged) To hear the audio feed:    Domestic Participant Dial-In Number:           877-697-8128    International Participant Dial-In Number:      706-634-9568    Additional International Dial-In Numbers Link:    Dial-In Passcode:                                              103200To see the presentation:    The Direct Access Web Conference details are:    Website URL: https://ouweb.webex.com    Meeting Number:  595757500 If you miss the webcast, or you have missed any webcast, don't worry -- we'll post links to the recording as soon as it's available from Oracle University.  You can monitor this blog for pointers to the replay. And, you can find our archive of our past webcasts and training here. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to email Bill Sawyer (Senior Manager, Applications Technology Curriculum) at BilldotSawyer-AT-Oracle-DOT-com.

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• Facial Recognition for Retail

  - by David Dorf

  My son decided to do his science project on how the brain recognizes faces.  Faces are so complicated and important that the brain has a dedicated area for just that purpose.  During our research, we came across some emerging uses for facial recognition in the retail industry. If you believe the movies, recognizing faces as they walk by a camera is easy for computers but that's not the reality.  Huge investments are being made by the U.S. government in this area, with a focus on airport security.  Now, companies like Eye See are leveraging that research for marketing purposes.  They do things like track eyes while viewing newspaper ads to see which ads get more "eye time."  This can help marketers make better placement and color decisions. But what caught my eye (that was too easy) was their new mannequins that watch shoppers.  These mannequins, being tested at European retailers like Benetton, watch shoppers that walk by and identify their gender, race, and age.  This helps the retailer better understand the types of customers being attracted to the outfit on the mannequin.  Of course to be most accurate, the software has pictures of the employees so they can be filtered out.  Since the mannequins are closer to the shoppers and at eye-level, they are more accurate than traditional in-ceiling LP cameras. Marketing agency RedPepper is offering retailers the ability to recognize loyalty shoppers at their doors using Facedeal.  For customers that have opted into the program, when they enter the store their face is recognized and they are checked in.  Then, as a reward, they are sent an offer on their smartphone. It won't be long before retailers begin to listen to shoppers are they walk the aisles, then keywords can be collected and aggregated to give the retailer an idea of what people are saying about their stores and products.  Sentiment analysis based on what's said or even facial expressions can't be far off. Clearly retailers need to be cautions and respect customer privacy.  That's why these technologies are emerging slowly.  But since the next generation of shoppers are less concerned about privacy, I expect these technologies to appear sporadically in the next five years then go mainstream.  Time will tell.

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• JavaOne 2012: Camel, Twitter, Coherence, Wicket and GlassFish

  - by Bruno.Borges

  Before joining Oracle as Product Manager for WebLogic and GlassFish for Latin America, at the beggining of this year I proposed two talks to JavaOne USA that I had been presenting in Brazil for quite a while. One of them I presented last year at ApacheCon in Vancouver, Canada as well in JavaOne Brazil. In June I got the news that they were accepted as Alternate Sessions. Surprisingly enough, few weeks later and at the same time I joined Oracle, I received the news that they were officially accepted and put on schedule. Tomorrow I'll be flying to San Francisco, to my first JavaOne in the United States, and I wanted to share with you what I'm going to present there. My two sessions are these ones: Wed, 10/03, 4:30pm - CON2989 Leverage Enterprise Integration Patterns with Apache Camel and TwitterOn this one, you will be introducted to the Apache Camel framework that I had been talking about in Brazil at conferences, before joining Oracle, and to a component I contributed to integrate with Twitter. Also, you will have a preview of a new component I've been working on to integrate Camel with the Oracle Coherence distributed cache. Thu, 10/04, 3:30pm - CON3395 How Scala, Wicket, and Java EE Can Improve Web DevelopmentThis one I've been working on for quite a while. It was based on an idea to have an architecture that could be as agile as frameworks and technologies such as Ruby on Rails, PHP or Python, for rapid web development. You will be introduced to the Apache Wicket framework, another Apache project I enjoy working with and gave lots of talks at Brazilian conferences, including JavaOne Brazil, JustJava, QCon SP, and The Developers Conference. You will also be introduced to the Scala language and how to create nice DSLs to boost productiveness. And last but not least, the Java EE 6 platform, that offers an awesome improvement from previous versions with its CDI, JPA, EJB3 and JAX-RS features for web development. Other events I will be participating during my stay in SF: Geeks Bike Ride GlassFish Community Event GlassFish and Friends Party    If you have any other event to suggest, please do suggest! It's my first JavaOne and I'm really looking forward to enjoying everything. See you guys in a few days!!

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• Career advice: stay with PHP or start a new career in something else ( .Net?)

  - by Christian P

  I'm planning on moving to NY in 6-12 months tops, so I'm forced to find a new job. When I'm planing to start my life in another city it's also probably a good time to think about career changes. I've found a lot of different opinions about PHP vs .Net vs Java and this is not topic here. I don't want to start a new fight about which language is better. Knowing programming language is not the most important thing for being a software developer. To be a really good developer you need to know OOP, design patterns, testing... and language is just a tool to make things happen. So back to my question. I have mixed experience in IT - 1 year as an IT support guy (Windows administration and support), around 2 years of experience in embedded programming (VB.Net 2005) and for the last 2 years I'm working with PHP/MySQL. I have worked with Magento web shop, assisted in some projects in Symfony, modified few Drupal sites. My main concerns are following: Do I continue to improve my skills in PHP e.g. to start learning some major PHP framework like Zend, Symfony maybe get some PHP certification. Or do I start learning .NET or Java. I'm more familiar to .NET so I'll probably choose it if choice falls between .NET and Java ( or you could convince me to choose Java :). Career-wise, I don't know what is the best choice. Learning new framework and language is more time consuming then improving my existing skills in PHP. But with .NET you have a lot of possibilities (Windows 7 Phone development, Silverlight, WPF) and possibly bigger chances to find better jobs. PHP jobs are less payed then .NET, at least, according to my researches (correct me if I'm wrong). But if I start now with .NET I'm just a beginner and my salary will be low. I need at least 2+ years of experience in some language to even try to find some job that is paying higher than $50-60k in NY. My main goal in next 2-3 years is to try to find a job in a $60-80k category. Don't get me wrong, I'm not just chasing money, but money is an important factor when you're trying to start a family. I'm 27 years old and I feel that there isn't a lot of room for wrong decisions regarding my career, so any advice will be very welcome. Update Thank you all for spending time to help me with my problem. All of the answers and comments have been very helpful. I have decided to stick with PHP but also to learn C# and Silverlight 4. We'll see where the life will take me.

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• WebCenter Content Web Search Performance: Do you really need that folder path info?

  - by Nicolas Montoya

  End-users want content at their fingertips at the speed of thought if possible. When running search operations in the WebCenter Conter Web Interface every second or fraction of a second improvement does matter. When doing some trace analysis on the systemdatabase tracing on a customer environment, we came across some SQL queries that were unnecessarily being triggered! These were related to determining the folder path for every entry part of the search result set. However, this folder path was not even being used as part of the displayed information in the user interface.Why was the folder path information being collected when it was not even displayed in the UI? We found that the configuration parameter 'FolderPathInSearchResults' was set to 'true' under Administration > Admin Server > General Configuration > Additional Configuration Variables as shown below:When executing a quicksearch by keyword we were getting 100 out of 2280 entries in the first page of the result set.When thera 'FolderPathInSearchResults' configuration parameter is set to 'true', the following queries appear in the systemdatabase tracing:100 executions for a query on the FolderFiles table for each of the documents displayed in the first page:>systemdatabase/6       12.13 11:17:48.188      IdcServer-199   1.45 ms. SELECT * FROM FolderFiles WHERE dDocName='SLC02VGVUSORAC140641' AND fLinkRank=0[Executed. Returned row(s): true]382 executions for a query of the folders tables - most of the documents that match the keyword criteria are at a folder depth level of three or four:>systemdatabase/6       12.13 11:17:48.114      IdcServer-199   2.57 ms. SELECT FolderFolders.*,FolderMetaDefaults.* FROM FolderFolders,FolderMetaDefaults WHERE FolderFolders.fFolderGUID=FolderMetaDefaults.fFolderGUID(+) AND((FolderFolders.fFolderGUID = '1EB8E527E19B09ED3FE82EE310AEA13A' ) )[Executed.Returned row(s): true]By setting this 'FolderPathInSearchResults' configuration parameter to 'false', the above queries were no longer reported in the Server Output System Audit Information.Now, let's consider a practical scenario:Search result set page = 100Average folder depth der document in the search result set: 5The number of folder path related queries will be: 100 + 5*500 = 600If each query takes slightly over 3 ms. You would have 2000 ms (2 seconds) spent in server time to get this information.The overall performance impact goes beyond seerver time execution, as this information needs to travel from the server to the browser. If the documents are further nested into the folder hierarchy, additional hundreds of queries may be executed. If folder path is not being displayed in the end-user interface profile, your system may be better of with the 'FolderPathInSearchResults' configuration parameter disabled.

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• Defining a service layer: the text-based adventure

  - by Stacy Vicknair

  Applications these days have more options than ever for a user interface, and it’s only going to grow. A successful product might require native applications for mobile devices, a regular web implementation, or even a gaming console. These systems often will be centralized and data driven. The solution is one that’s fairly solitary, a service layer! Simply put, take what’s shared and put it behind a physical or abstract layer that defines the boundary between the specific user interface and the shared content.   I know, I know, none of this is complicated. But some times it can be difficult to discern what belongs on which side of the line. For instance, say we’re creating a service that will provide content for both an ASP.NET MVC application and a WP7 application. Although the content served to each application is the same, there are different paradigms and patterns for displaying that data in the different environments. In ASP.NET MVC, you may create a model specific to a page that combines necessary information. In the WP7 application you might require different sets of data that you will connect via MVVM with the view. The general rule of thumb is that any shared content, business rules, or data should exist separately. Any element that is specific to the current UI implementation should be included in a separate library or with the UI implementation itself. The WP7 application doesn’t need my MVC specific model classes. My MVC application doesn’t require those INotifyPropertyChanged viewmodels that the WP7 application depends on. In both cases, there should be additional processing done above the service layer to massage the data to the application’s specific needs.   Service-ocalypse: the text based adventure What helps me the most about deciding whether or not something belongs coupled to the UI implementation or in the shared implementation is thinking of the simplest implementation you could have: a console application. You might have played a game like Peasant’s Quest: The console app is the text based adventure game version of your application. If you’re service was consumed in its simplest form, you would simply have a console based API for it that issues requests. Maybe those requests aren’t SWIM TO BOAT, but they might be CREATE USER JOHN. If I issue a request, I expect that request to be issued to the service. If the service has any exceptions or issues with my input, that business logic should be encapsulated in that service, not implemented in the UI. The service layer should be your functional application in its entirety, and anything above that layer should only assist with the display of that information.

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• PASS Summit for SQL Starters

  - by Davide Mauri

  I’ve received a buch of emails from PASS Summit “First Timers” that are also somehow new to SQL Server (for “somehow” I mean people with less than 6 month experience but with some basic knowledge of SQL Server engine) or are catching up from SQL Server 2000. The common question regards the session one should not miss to have a broad view of the entire SQL Server platform have some insight into some specific areas of SQL Server Given that I’m on (semi-)vacantion and that I have more free time (not true, I have to prepare slides & demos for several conferences, PASS Summit  - Building the Agile Data Warehouse with SQL Server 2012 - and PASS 24H - Agile Data Warehousing with SQL Server 2012 - among them…but let’s pretend it to be true), I’ve decided to make a post to answer to this common questions. Of course this is my personal point of view and given the fact that the number and quality of session that will be delivered at PASS Summit is so high that is very difficoult to make a choice, fell free to jump into the discussion and leave your feedback or – even better – answer with another post. I’m sure it will be very helpful to all the SQL Server beginners out there. I’ve imposed to myself to choose 6 session at maximum for each Track. Why 6? Because it’s the maximum number of session you can follow in one day, and given that all the session will be on the Summit DVD, they are the answer to the following question: “If I have one day to spend in training, which session I should watch?”. Of course a Summit is not like a Course so a lot of very basics concept of well-established technologies won’t be found here. Analysis Services, Integration Services, MDX are not part of the Summit this time (at least for the basic part of them). Enough with that, let’s start with the session list ideal to have a good Overview of all the SQL Server Platform: Geospatial Data Types in SQL Server 2012 Inside Unstructured Data: SQL Server 2012 FileTable and Semantic Search XQuery and XML in SQL Server: Common Problems and Best Practice Solutions Microsoft's Big Play for Big Data Dashboards: When to Choose Which MSBI Tool Microsoft BI End-User Tools 360° for what concern Database Development, I recommend the following sessions Understanding Transaction Isolation Levels What to Look for in Execution Plans Improve Query Performance by Fixing Bad Parameter Sniffing A Window into Your Data: Using SQL Window Functions Practical Uses and Optimization of New T-SQL Features in SQL Server 2012 Taking MERGE Beyond the Basics For Business Intelligence Information Delivery Analyzing SSAS Data with Excel Building Compelling Power View Reports Managed Self-Service BI PowerPivot 101  SharePoint for Business Intelligence The Best Microsoft BI Tools You've Never Heard Of and for Business Intelligence Architecture & Development BI Power Hour Building a Tabular Model Database Enterprise Information Management: Bringing Together SSIS, DQS, and MDS SSIS Design Patterns Storing Columnstore Indexes Hadoop and Its Ecosystem Components in Action Beside the listed sessions, First Timers should also take a look the the page PASS set up for them: http://www.sqlpass.org/summit/2012/Connect/FirstTimers.aspx See you at PASS Summit!

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• Oracle Brings Java to iOS Devices (and Android too)

  - by Shay Shmeltzer

  Java developer, did you ever wish that you can take your Java skills and apply them to building applications for iOS mobile devices? Well, now you can! With the new Oracle ADF Mobile solution, Oracle has created a unique technology that allows developers to use the Java language and develop applications that install and run on both iOS and Android mobile devices. The solution is based on a thin native container that installs as part of your application. The container is able to run the same application you develop unchanged on both Android and iOS devices. One part of the container is a headless lightweight JVM based on the Java ME CDC technology. This allows the execution of Java code on your mobile device. Java is used for building business logic, accessing local SQLite encrypted database, and invoking and interacting with remote services. Java concept on the UI too To further help transition Java developers to mobile developers, ADF Mobile borrows familiar concepts from the world of JSF to make the UI development experience simpler. The user interface layer of Oracle ADF Mobile is rendered with HTML5 which delivers native user experience on the devices, including animations and gesture support. Using a set of rich components, developers can create mobile pages without needing to write low level HTML5 and JavaScript code. The components cover everything from simple controls such as text fields, date pickers, buttons and links, to advanced data visualization components such as graphs, gauges and maps, and including unique mobile UI patterns such as lists, and toggle selectors. Want to see the components in action? Access this demo instance from your mobile device. Need to further customize the look and feel? You can use CSS3 to achieve this. A controller layer - similar in functionality to the JSF controller - allows developer to simplify the way they build navigation between pages. The logic behind the pages is written in managed beans with various scopes – again similar to the JSF approach. Need to interact with device features like camera, SMS, Contacts etc? Oracle conveniently packaged access to these services in a set of services that you can just drag and drop into your pages as buttons and links, or code into your managed beans Java calls to activate. Underneath the covers this layer is implemented using the open source phonegap solution. With the new Oracle ADF Mobile solution, transferring your Java skills into the Mobile world has become much easier. Check out this development experience demo. And then go and download JDeveloper and the ADF Mobile extension and try it out on your own. For more on ADF Mobile, see the ADF Mobile OTN page.

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• Oracle Linux Partner Pavilion Spotlight - Part II

  - by Ted Davis

  As we draw closer to the first day of Oracle OpenWorld, starting in less than a week, we continue to showcase some of our premier partners exhibiting in the Oracle Linux Partner Pavilion ( Booth #1033). We have Independent Hardware Vendors, Independent Software Vendors and Systems Integrators that show the breadth of support in the Oracle Linux and Oracle VM ecosystem. In today's post we highlight three additional Oracle Linux / Oracle VM Partners from the pavilion. Micro Focus delivers mainframe solutions software and software delivery tools with its Borland products. These tools are grouped under the following solutions: Analysis and testing tools for JDeveloper Micro Focus Enterprise Analyzer is key to the success of application overhaul and modernization strategies by ensuring that they are based on a solid knowledge foundation. It reveals the reality of enterprise application portfolios and the detailed constructs of business applications. COBOL for Oracle Database, Oracle Linux, and Tuxedo Micro Focus Visual COBOL delivers the next generation of COBOL development and deployment. Itbrings the productivity of the Eclipse IDE to COBOL, and provides the ability to deploy key business critical COBOL applications to Oracle Linux both natively and under a JVM. Migration and Modernization tooling for mainframes Enterprise application knowledge, development, test and workload re-hosting tools significantly improves the efficiency of business application delivery, enabling CIOs and IT leaders to modernize application portfolios and target platforms such as Oracle Linux. When it comes to Oracle Linux database environments, supporting high transaction rates with minimal response times is no longer just a goal. It’s a strategic imperative. The “data deluge” is impacting the ability of databases and other strategic applications to access data and provide real-time analytics and reporting. As such, customer demand for accelerated application performance is increasing. Visit LSI at the Oracle Linux Pavilion, #733, to find out how LSI Nytro Application Acceleration products are designed from the ground up for database acceleration. Our intelligent solid-state storage solutions help to eliminate I/O bottlenecks, increase throughput and enable Oracle customers achieve the highest levels of DB performance. Accelerate Your Exadata Success With Teleran. Teleran’s software solutions for Oracle Exadata and Oracle Database reduce the cost, time and effort of migrating and consolidating applications on Exadata. In addition Teleran delivers visibility and control solutions for BI/data warehouse performance and user management that ensure service levels and cost efficiency.Teleran will demonstrate these solutions at the Oracle Open World Linux Pavilion: Consolidation Accelerator - Reduces the cost, time and risk ofof migrating and consolidation applications on Exadata. Application Readiness – Identifies legacy application performance enhancements needed to take advantage of Exadata performance features Workload Accelerator – Identifies and clusters workloads for faster performance on Exadata Application Visibility and Control - Improves performance, user productivity, and alignment to business objectives while reducing support and resource costs. Thanks for reading today's Partner Spotlight. Three more partners will be highlighted tomorrow. If you missed our first Partner Spotlight check it out here.

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• New RUP Patch for iSupplier Portal, Sourcing and Supplier Lifecycle Management (SLM)

  - by LuciaC

  Just released - the 12.1.3 Rollup (RUP) Patch 17525552:R12.PRC_PF.B for iSupplier Portal, Sourcing and Supplier Lifecycle Management (SLM). Who should apply this patch? Anyone that is on Release 12.1.3 and is using  iSupplier Portal, Sourcing or Supplier Lifecycle Management (SLM) functionality. The following areas have had major fixes: Prospective Supplier Guided Navigation: The train-navigation is introduced for prospective supplier registration so that prospective suppliers can see all steps needed to successfully register themselves. Supplier Registration Workflow Enhancement: With this release, provided the Approval Management Engine (AME) action required notifications for supplier approval, so that all workflow related features can be enabled. Vacation rules can be set, approvals can be forwarded and more information can be requested through the notification itself.  Additionally AME parallel Approval support for Supplier Registration approvals has been added. Reinstate Supplier Request: Allow buyer to reopen/reinstate the rejected supplier. Supplier is able to access their previously rejected registration again and make changes and resubmit request. Contact Address Association: The prospective supplier is allowed to associate addresses with contacts (including Primary) during the prospective supplier registration process. Primary Contact Enhancement: The prospective supplier can be registered without creating a user account for the primary contact. Mandatory Attributes: In the negotiation requirement creation page, the lookup meaning of 'Internal' has been changed to 'Internal Optional', and a new lookup value with meaning as 'Internal Required' has been added. The values available in the 'Type' dropdown now are Display Only, Internal Optional, Internal Required, Supplier Optional and Supplier Required.  So now during supplier evaluations, internal user response can be set as mandatory by using Internal Required type during requirement creation. Notifications to Supplier:  When the supplier saves and submits their supplier registration request, then a notification with a registration status page link will be sent for further access.  When the buyer approves, rejects or returns the request, the supplier will be notified in an email with the current status. There are also 10 major enhancements included in this RUP. For information about this RUP; including, the fixes and enhancements included, how to access and apply the patch, performing an impact analysis on your system, and testing recommendations, see Doc ID 1591198.1.  Don’t delay apply the patch today!

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• Capture a Query Executed By An Application Or User Against a SQL Server Database in Less Than a Minute

  - by Compudicted

  At times a Database Administrator, or even a developer is required to wear a spy’s hat. This necessity oftentimes is dictated by a need to take a glimpse into a black-box application for reasons varying from a performance issue to an unauthorized access to data or resources, or as in my most recent case, a closed source custom application that was abandoned by a deserted contractor without source code. It may not be news or unknown to most IT people that SQL Server has always provided means of back-door access to everything connecting to its database. This indispensible tool is SQL Server Profiler. This “gem” is always quietly sitting in the Start – Programs – SQL Server <product version> – Performance Tools folder (yes, it is for performance analysis mostly, but not limited to) ready to help you! So, to the action, let’s start it up. Once ready click on the File – New Trace button, or using Ctrl-N with your keyboard. The standard connection dialog you have seen in SSMS comes up where you connect the standard way: One side note here, you will be able to connect only if your account belongs to the sysadmin or alter trace fixed server role. Upon a successful connection you must be able to see this initial dialog: At this stage I will give a hint: you will have a wide variety of predefined templates: But to shorten your time to results you would need to opt for using the TSQL_Grouped template. Now you need to set it up. In some cases, you will know the principal’s login name (account) that needs to be monitored in advance, and in some (like in mine), you will not. But it is VERY helpful to monitor just a particular account to minimize the amount of results returned. So if you know it you can already go to the Event Section tab, then click the Column Filters button which would bring a dialog below where you key in the account being monitored without any mask (or whildcard):  If you do not know the principal name then you will need to poke around and look around for things like a config file where (typically!) the connection string is fully exposed. That was the case in my situation, an application had an app.config (XML) file with the connection string in it not encrypted: This made my endeavor very easy. So after I entered the account to monitor I clicked on Run button and also started my black-box application. Voilà, in a under a minute of time I had the SQL statement captured:

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• How quickly to leave contract-to-hire gig where you don't want to be hired? [closed]

  - by nono

  So you move to a big new city with tons of software development opportunity, having taken a six month contract-to-hire job. The company treats you really well and has a good team and work environment. However, the recruiter assured you when offering the gig that it would be a good position in which you can advance your learning from more senior developers (a primary concern of yours) but you're starting to realize that a job recruiter isn't going to understand that the team in question isn't very up on modern software practices (you start to sympathize with this guy and read his post over and over again: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1586166/career-killer-nhibernate-oop-design-patterns-domain-driven-design-test-driv) and that much of the company's software is very old and very very poorly architected, and the company (like so many others) seems to be only concerned with continually extending the software without investing in any structural improvements. You're absolutely dismayed at how long it takes your team (including) to fulfill simple feature requests (maybe 500-1000% longer than with better designed software that you've worked on in the past), but no one else there seems to think anything of it. You find that the work and the company's business are intensely uninteresting to you, but due to the convoluted design of their various software systems, fulfilling the work will require as much mental engagement as any other development position. You feel a bit naive about not having asked the right questions during your interview process, and for not having anticipated that your team at your former podunk company might possibly be light-years ahead of any team in Big Shiny City, but you know you don't want to stay at this place, and (were it not for your personal, after-hours studying and personal programming efforts) fear that you might actually give a worse interview after completing your 6 months than you did when you started at the place. You read about how hard of a time local companies are having filling their positions with qualified software development candidates. You read all sorts of fabulous sounding job postings online and feel like you're really missing out. In spite of the comfortable environment you feel like you would willingly accept a somewhat more demanding or aggressive lifestyle to feel like you are learning and progressing and producing something meaningful. My questions are: how quickly do you leave and how do you go about giving a polite reason for departing? The contract is written to allow them to "can" you and to allow you to leave with 2 weeks notice. Do you ethically owe the 6 months? Upon taking the position, the company told you they were not interested in candidates who were intending to only stay for 6 months and then leave (you were not intending to bail after 6 months, at that time), so perhaps they might be fine if you split now, knowing that you don't want to stick around for the full time hire?

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• In-Store Tracking Gets a Little Harder

  - by David Dorf

  Remember how Nordstrom was tracking shopper movements within their stores using the unique number, called a MAC, emitted by the WiFi radio in smartphones?  The phones didn't need to connect to the network, only have their WiFi enabled, as most people do by default.  They did this, presumably, to track shoppers' path to purchase and better understand traffic patterns.  Although there were signs explaining this at the entrances, people didn't like the notion of being tracked.  (Nevermind that there are cameras in the ceiling watching them.)  Nordstrom stopped the program. To address this concern the Future of Privacy, a Washington think tank, created Smart Store Privacy, a do-not-track service that allows consumers to register their MAC address in much the same way people register their phone numbers in the national do-not-call list.  A group of companies agreed to respect consumers' wishes and ignore smartphones listed in the database.  The database includes Bluetooth identifiers as well.  Of course you could simply turn your bluetooth and WiFi off when shopping as well. Most know that Apple prefers to use BLE beacons to contact and track smartphones within their stores.  This feature extends the typical online experience to also work in physical stores.  By identifying themselves, shoppers can expect a more tailored shopping experience much like what we've come to expect from Amazon's website, with product recommendations and offers that are (usually) relevant. But the upcoming release of iOS8 is purported to have a new feature that randomizes the WiFi MAC address of smartphones during the "probing" phase.  That is, before connecting to the WiFi network, a random MAC number is used so as to keep the smartphone's real MAC address secret.  Unless you actually connect to the store's WiFi, they won't recognize the MAC address. The details on this are still sketchy, but if the random MAC is consistent for a short period, retailers will still be able to track movements anonymously, but they won't recognize repeat visitors.  That may be sufficient for traffic analytics, but it will stymie target marketing.  In the case of marketing, using iBeacons with opt-in permission from consumers will be the way forward. There is always a battle between utility and privacy, so I expect many more changes in this area.  Incidentally, if you'd like to see where beacons are being used this site tracks them around the world.

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