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  • SPARC T4-2 Produces World Record Oracle Essbase Aggregate Storage Benchmark Result

    - by Brian
    Significance of Results Oracle's SPARC T4-2 server configured with a Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array and running Oracle Solaris 10 with Oracle Database 11g has achieved exceptional performance for the Oracle Essbase Aggregate Storage Option benchmark. The benchmark has upwards of 1 billion records, 15 dimensions and millions of members. Oracle Essbase is a multi-dimensional online analytical processing (OLAP) server and is well-suited to work well with SPARC T4 servers. The SPARC T4-2 server (2 cpus) running Oracle Essbase 11.1.2.2.100 outperformed the previous published results on Oracle's SPARC Enterprise M5000 server (4 cpus) with Oracle Essbase 11.1.1.3 on Oracle Solaris 10 by 80%, 32% and 2x performance improvement on Data Loading, Default Aggregation and Usage Based Aggregation, respectively. The SPARC T4-2 server with Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array and Oracle Essbase running on Oracle Solaris 10 achieves sub-second query response times for 20,000 users in a 15 dimension database. The SPARC T4-2 server configured with Oracle Essbase was able to aggregate and store values in the database for a 15 dimension cube in 398 minutes with 16 threads and in 484 minutes with 8 threads. The Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array provides more than a 20% improvement out-of-the-box compared to a mid-size fiber channel disk array for default aggregation and user-based aggregation. The Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array with Oracle Essbase provides the best combination for large Oracle Essbase databases leveraging Oracle Solaris ZFS and taking advantage of high bandwidth for faster load and aggregation. Oracle Fusion Middleware provides a family of complete, integrated, hot pluggable and best-of-breed products known for enabling enterprise customers to create and run agile and intelligent business applications. Oracle Essbase's performance demonstrates why so many customers rely on Oracle Fusion Middleware as their foundation for innovation. Performance Landscape System Data Size(millions of items) Database Load(minutes) Default Aggregation(minutes) Usage Based Aggregation(minutes) SPARC T4-2, 2 x SPARC T4 2.85 GHz 1000 149 398* 55 Sun M5000, 4 x SPARC64 VII 2.53 GHz 1000 269 526 115 Sun M5000, 4 x SPARC64 VII 2.4 GHz 400 120 448 18 * – 398 mins with CALCPARALLEL set to 16; 484 mins with CALCPARALLEL threads set to 8 Configuration Summary Hardware Configuration: 1 x SPARC T4-2 2 x 2.85 GHz SPARC T4 processors 128 GB memory 2 x 300 GB 10000 RPM SAS internal disks Storage Configuration: 1 x Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array 40 x 24 GB flash modules SAS HBA with 2 SAS channels Data Storage Scheme Striped - RAID 0 Oracle Solaris ZFS Software Configuration: Oracle Solaris 10 8/11 Installer V 11.1.2.2.100 Oracle Essbase Client v 11.1.2.2.100 Oracle Essbase v 11.1.2.2.100 Oracle Essbase Administration services 64-bit Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (11.2.0.3) HP's Mercury Interactive QuickTest Professional 9.5.0 Benchmark Description The objective of the Oracle Essbase Aggregate Storage Option benchmark is to showcase the ability of Oracle Essbase to scale in terms of user population and data volume for large enterprise deployments. Typical administrative and end-user operations for OLAP applications were simulated to produce benchmark results. The benchmark test results include: Database Load: Time elapsed to build a database including outline and data load. Default Aggregation: Time elapsed to build aggregation. User Based Aggregation: Time elapsed of the aggregate views proposed as a result of tracked retrieval queries. Summary of the data used for this benchmark: 40 flat files, each of size 1.2 GB, 49.4 GB in total 10 million rows per file, 1 billion rows total 28 columns of data per row Database outline has 15 dimensions (five of them are attribute dimensions) Customer dimension has 13.3 million members 3 rule files Key Points and Best Practices The Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array has been used to accelerate the application performance. Setting data load threads (DLTHREADSPREPARE) to 64 and Load Buffer to 6 improved dataloading by about 9%. Factors influencing aggregation materialization performance are "Aggregate Storage Cache" and "Number of Threads" (CALCPARALLEL) for parallel view materialization. The optimal values for this workload on the SPARC T4-2 server were: Aggregate Storage Cache: 32 GB CALCPARALLEL: 16   See Also Oracle Essbase Aggregate Storage Option Benchmark on Oracle's SPARC T4-2 Server oracle.com Oracle Essbase oracle.com OTN SPARC T4-2 Server oracle.com OTN Oracle Solaris oracle.com OTN Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Enterprise Edition oracle.com OTN Disclosure Statement Copyright 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. Results as of 28 August 2012.

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  • SQL SERVER – Clustered Index and Primary Key – Contest Win Joes 2 Pros Combo (USD 198) – Day 3 of 5

    - by pinaldave
    August 2011 we ran a contest where every day we give away one book for an entire month. The contest had extreme success. Lots of people participated and lots of give away. I have received lots of questions if we are doing something similar this month. Absolutely, instead of running a contest a month long we are doing something more interesting. We are giving away USD 198 worth gift every day for this week. We are giving away Joes 2 Pros 5 Volumes (BOOK) SQL 2008 Development Certification Training Kit every day. One copy in India and One in USA. Total 2 of the giveaway (worth USD 198). All the gifts are sponsored from the Koenig Training Solution and Joes 2 Pros. The books are available here Amazon | Flipkart | Indiaplaza How to Win: Read the Question Read the Hints Answer the Quiz in Contact Form in following format Question Answer Name of the country (The contest is open for USA and India residents only) 2 Winners will be randomly selected announced on August 20th. Question of the Day: Which of the following datatype is usually NOT the best choice for Primary Key and Clustered Index? a) INT b) BIGINT c) GUID d) SMALLINT Query Hints: BIG HINT POST The clustered index is the placement order of a table’s records in memory pages. When you insert new records, then each record will be inserted into the memory page in the order it belongs. In the figure below we see another new record (Major Disarray) being inserted, in sequence, between Jonny and Rick. Since there is no room in this memory page, some records will need to shift around. The page split occurs when Irenes’ record moves to the second page. Page splits are considered very bad for performance, and there are a number of techniques to reduce, or even eliminate, the risk of page splits. You can create a clustered index on the table on any field you choose. Sometime SQL will create a clustered index for you. Often times the field having the Primary Key makes a great candidate for the clustered index. Additional Hints: I have previously discussed various concepts from SQL Server Joes 2 Pros Volume 3. SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – All about SQL Statistics SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Introduction to Page Split SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – The Clustered Index – Simple Understanding SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Geography Data Type – Calculating Distance Between Two Points on the Earth SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Sparse Data and Space Used by Sparse Data SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – System and Time Data Types SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Data Row Space Usage and NULL Storage Next Step: Answer the Quiz in Contact Form in following format Question Answer Name of the country (The contest is open for USA and India) Bonus Winner Leave a comment with your favorite article from the “additional hints” section and you may be eligible for surprise gift. There is no country restriction for this Bonus Contest. Do mention why you liked it any particular blog post and I will announce the winner of the same along with the main contest. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Joes 2 Pros, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Puzzle, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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  • ArchBeat Facebook Friday: Top 10 Shared Links - May 30- June 5, 2014

    - by OTN ArchBeat
    The list below is comprised of the Top 10 most popular articles, blog posts, videos, and other content shared over the last seven days with the more than 5,100 people fans of the OTN ArchBeat Facebook Page. What is REST? | Maarten Smeets "Most Middleware developers will encounter RESTful services," says Oracle SOA / BPM / Java integration specialist Maarten Smeets. "It is good to understand what they are, what they should be and how they work." His extensive post will help you achieve that understanding. Integrating with Fusion Applications using SOAP web services and REST APIs | Arvind Srinivasamoorth This article, part one of Arvind Srinivasamoorth's two-part series on Integrating with Fusion Applications using SOAP web services and REST APIs, shows you how to identify the Fusion Applications SOAP web service to be invoked. Oracle Technology Network | Architect Community Have you visited the OTN Solution Architect homepage lately? I've just updated it with information about the big OTN Virtual Tech Summit on July 9, plus the latest OTN tech articles, and a fresh list of community videos and podcasts. Check it out! Starting and Stopping a Java EE Environment when using Oracle WebLogic | Rene van Wijk Oracle ACE Director and Oracle Fusion Middleware specialist Rene van Wijk explores ways to simplify the life-cycle management of a Java EE environment through the use of scripts developed with WebLogic Scripting Tool and Linux Bash. Application Composer Series: Where and When to use Groovy | Richard Bingham Richard Bingham describes his post as "more of a reference than an article." The post is comprised of a table that highlights where you can add your own custom logic via Groovy code and when you might use the various features. Kscope 2014: HFM Metadata Diagnostics | Eric Erikson Oracle Certified Hyperion Financial Management Specialist Eric Erikson will present three sessions at ODTUG Kscope 2014, June 22-26 in Seattle. Why should you care? Watch the video. Tuning Asynchronous Web Services in Fusion Applications | Jian Liang This article, the fourth in solution architect Jian Liang's five-part series on Fusion Applications and asynchronous Web Services, shows you how to conduct performance tuning of the asynchronous web services in relation to Fusion Applications. IDM FA Integration Flows | Thiago Leoncio Fusion Applications uses the Oracle Identity Management for its identity store and policy store by default. This article by solution architect Thiago Leoncio explains how user and role flows work from different points of view, using key IDM products for each flow in detail. GoldenGate and Oracle Data Integrator - A Perfect Match in 12c... Part 1: Getting Started | Michael Rainey Michael Rainey has already written extensively about about integration between Oracle Data Integrator and GoldenGate -- but he's not done. "With the release of the 12c versions of ODI and GoldenGate last October, and a soon-to-be-updated reference architecture, it’s time to write a few posts on the subject again, " he says. Here's the first of those posts. Video: Kscope 2014 Preview: Tim Tow on Essbase Java API and ODTUG Community Oracle ACE Director and ODTUG board member Tim Tow talks about his Kscope 2014 sessions focused on the Essbase Java API in this short video interview.

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  • JDeveloper 11g R1 (11.1.1.4.0) - New Features on ADF Desktop Integration Explained

    - by juan.ruiz
    One of the areas that introduced many new features on the latest release (11.1.1.4.0)  of JDeveloper 11g R1 is ADF Desktop integration - in this article I’ll provide an overview of these new features. New ADF Desktop Integration Ribbon in Excel - After installing the ADF desktop integration add-in and depending on the mode in which you open the desktop integration workbook, the ADF Desktop integration ribbon for design time and runtime are displayed as a separate tab within Excel. In previous version the ADF Desktop integration environment used to be placed inside the add-ins tab. Above you can see both, design time ribbon as well as runtime ribbon. On the design time ribbon you can manage the workbook and worksheet properties, worksheet component properties, diagnostics, execution and publication of the workbook. The runtime version of the ribbon is totally customizable and represents what it used to be the runtime menu on the spreadsheet, in this ribbon you can include all the operations and actions that could be executed by the end user while working with the spreadsheet data. Diagnostics - A very important aspect for developers is how to debug or verify the interactions of the client with the server, for that ADF desktop integration has provided since day one a series of diagnostics tools. In this release the diagnostics tools are more visible and are really easy to configure. You can access the client console while testing the workbook, or you can simple dump all the messages to a log file – having the ability of setting the output level for both. Security - There are a number of enhancements on security but the one with more impact for developers is tha security now is optional when using ADF Desktop Integration. Until this version every time that you wanted to work with ADFdi it was a must that the application was previously secured. In this release security is optional which means that if you have previously defined security on your application, then you must secure the ADFdi servlet as explained in one of my previous (ADD LINK) posts. In the other hand, if but the time that you start working with ADFdi you have not defined security, you can test and publish your workbooks without adding security. Support for Continuous Integration - In this release we have added tooling for continuous integration building. in the ADF desktop integration space, the concept translates to adding functionality that developers can use to publish ADFdi workbooks as part of their entire application build. For that purpose, we have a publish tool that can be easily invoke from an ANT task such that all the design time workbooks are re-published into the latest version of the application building process. Key Column - At runtime, on any worksheet containing editable tables you will notice a new additional column called the key column. The purpose of this column is to make the end user aware that all rows on the table need to be selected at the time of sorting. The users cannot alter the value of this column. From the developers points of view there are no steps required in order to have the key column included into the worksheets. Installation and Creation of New Workbooks - Both use cases can be executed now directly from JDeveloper. As part of the Tools menu options the developer can install the ADF desktop integration designer. Also, creating new workbooks that previously was done through that convert tool shipped with JDeveloper is now automatic done from the New Gallery. Creating a new ADFdi workbook adds metadata information information to the Excel workbook so you can work in design time. Other Enhancements Support for Excel 2010 and the ADF components ready-only enabled don’t allow to change its value – the cell in Excel is automatically protected, this could cause confusion among customers of previous releases.

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  • Yammer, Berkeley DB, and the 3rd Platform

    - by Eric Jensen
    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:"Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:major-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:major-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:major-bidi; mso-bidi-language:EN-US;} If you read the news, you know that the latest high-profile social media acquisition was just confirmed. Microsoft has agreed to acquire Yammer for 1.2 billion. Personally, I believe that Yammer’s amazing success can be mainly attributed to their wise decision to use Berkeley DB Java Edition as their backend data store. :-) I’m only kidding, of course. However, as Ryan Kennedy points out in the video I recently blogged about, BDB JE did provide the right feature set that allowed them to reliably grow their business. Which in turn allowed them to focus on their core value add. As it turns out, their ‘add’ is quite valuable! This actually makes sense to me, a lot more sense than certain other recent social acquisitions, and here’s why. Last year, IDC declared that we are entering a new computing era, the era of the “3rd Platform.” In case you’re curious, the first 2 were terminal computing and client/server computing, IIRC. Anyway, this 3rd one is more complicated. This year, IDC refined the concept further. It now involves 4 distinct buzzwords: cloud, social, mobile, and big data. Yammer is a social media platform that runs in the cloud, designed to be used from mobile devices. Their approach, using Berkeley DB Java Edition with High Availability, qualifies as big data. This means that Yammer is sitting right smack in the center if IDC’s new computing era. Another way to put it is: the folks at Yammer were prescient enough to predict where things were headed, and get there first. They chose Berkeley DB to handle their data. Maybe you should too!

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  • Wireless is detected, but not connecting. Ethernet works. How to correct the wireless address?

    - by Lucas
    I am running Ubuntu 14.04 with cable internet, and my wireless is detected and connected, but I cannot connect to the internet. I know the problem is with my machine because other machines are connecting to the same router just fine. I can connect via ethernet just fine as well. Here are some notable tests: ping 192.168.0.105 works with 0% packet loss, but ping 192.168.0.1 has 100% packet loss. When I plug in my ethernet, ping 192.168.0.1 works with 0% packet loss. My wireless name is tg, and the router ip is 192.168.0.1 (where I can enter username and password). I suspect that I need to change my wireless address from 192.168.0.105 to 192.168.0.1. Any suggestions on how to proceed? extra info: [lucas@lucas-ThinkPad-W520]/home/lucas$ iwconfig eth0 no wireless extensions. lo no wireless extensions. wlan0 IEEE 802.11abgn ESSID:"tg" Mode:Managed Frequency:2.462 GHz Access Point: 00:02:6F:83:F8:F4 Bit Rate=1 Mb/s Tx-Power=15 dBm Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Power Management:off Link Quality=62/70 Signal level=-48 dBm Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0 Tx excessive retries:52 Invalid misc:166 Missed beacon:0 [lucas@lucas-ThinkPad-W520]/home/lucas$ ifconfig eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr f0:de:f1:b2:53:53 inet addr:192.168.0.100 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::f2de:f1ff:feb2:5353/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:980003 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:498384 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:1320506168 (1.3 GB) TX bytes:59780591 (59.7 MB) Interrupt:20 Memory:f3a00000-f3a20000 lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:65536 Metric:1 RX packets:21927 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:21927 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:1781719 (1.7 MB) TX bytes:1781719 (1.7 MB) wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 24:77:03:29:8f:dc inet addr:192.168.0.105 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::2677:3ff:fe29:8fdc/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:11828 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:15444 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:4855662 (4.8 MB) TX bytes:2250585 (2.2 MB) [lucas@lucas-ThinkPad-W520]/home/lucas$ lspci -nn | grep 0280 03:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Intel Corporation Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 [8086:4238] (rev 3e) [lucas@lucas-ThinkPad-W520]/home/lucas$ rfkill list 0: hci0: Bluetooth Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no 1: tpacpi_bluetooth_sw: Bluetooth Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no 2: phy0: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no with ethernet unplugged: [lucas@lucas-ThinkPad-W520]/home/lucas$ route -n | grep UG 0.0.0.0 192.168.0.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 wlan0 with ethernet plugged in: [lucas@lucas-ThinkPad-W520]/home/lucas$ route -n | grep UG 0.0.0.0 192.168.0.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0 [lucas@lucas-ThinkPad-W520]/home/lucas$ nm-tool NetworkManager Tool State: connected (global) - Device: wlan0 [tg] ---------------------------------------------------------- Type: 802.11 WiFi Driver: iwlwifi State: connected Default: no HW Address: 24:77:03:29:8F:DC Capabilities: Speed: 52 Mb/s Wireless Properties WEP Encryption: yes WPA Encryption: yes WPA2 Encryption: yes Wireless Access Points (* = current AP) tatum: Infra, 40:8B:07:D8:A5:04, Freq 2437 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 42 W PA WPA2 ums: Infra, 00:20:A6:72:52:BF, Freq 2437 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 59 Alpha 40: Infra, 28:CF:E9:86:59:5D, Freq 5260 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 30 W PA WPA2 thepromiselan: Infra, 58:6D:8F:51:E5:54, Freq 2452 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 34 $ PA WPA2 xfinitywifi: Infra, 06:1D:D5:84:27:A0, Freq 2437 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 52 *tg: Infra, 00:02:6F:83:F8:F4, Freq 2462 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 73 W PA2 ums: Infra, 00:20:A6:A1:9F:25, Freq 2452 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 44 BRIAN-PC_Network:Infra, 20:AA:4B:DD:93:D6, Freq 2462 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 35 W PA2 HOME-C0F8: Infra, 44:32:C8:D2:C0:F8, Freq 2412 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 40 W PA WPA2 abcsexy: Infra, 28:28:5D:27:5D:85, Freq 2412 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 27 W PA WPA2 IPv4 Settings: Address: 192.168.0.105 Prefix: 24 (255.255.255.0) Gateway: 192.168.0.1 DNS: 192.168.0.1 - Device: eth0 [Wired connection 1] ------------------------------------------- Type: Wired Driver: e1000e State: connected Default: yes HW Address: F0:DE:F1:B2:53:53 Capabilities: Carrier Detect: yes Speed: 100 Mb/s Wired Properties Carrier: on IPv4 Settings: Address: 192.168.0.100 Prefix: 24 (255.255.255.0) Gateway: 192.168.0.1 DNS: 192.168.0.1

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  • SQL Sentry Truth-Telling and Disk Configuration

    - by AjarnMark
    Recently, SQL Sentry told me something about my SQL Server disk configurations that I just didn’t want to believe, but alas, it was true. Several days ago I posted my First Impressions of the SQL Sentry Power Suite.  Today’s post could fall into the category of, “Hey, as long as you have that fancy tool…”  Unfortunately, it also falls into the category of an overloaded worker taking someone else’s word for the truth, not verifying it with independent fact-checking, and then making decisions based on that.  Here’s my story… I’m not exactly an Accidental DBA (or Involuntary DBA as Paul Randal calls it).  I came to this company five years ago as a lead application developer with extensive experience in database design and development.  I worked my way into management, and along the way, took over the DBA responsibilities.  Fortunately, our systems run pretty smoothly most of the time, but I’m always looking for ways to make them better and to fit into my understanding of best practices.  When I took over as DBA, I inherited a SQL 2000 server with about 30 databases on it supporting our main systems, and a SQL 2005 server with multiple instances.  Both of these servers were configured with the Operating System and Application files on the C drive, data files on a different drive letter, and log files on a third drive letter.  Even before I took over as DBA, I verified that this was true with a previous server administrator, and that these represented actual separate disks.  He stated that they did, and I thought that all was well. Then one day, I’m poking around inside the SQL Sentry Performance Advisor, checking out features as I am evaluating whether to purchase the product, and I come across a Disk Configuration section.  The first thing I notice is that the drives do not have the proper partition offset, which was not at all surprising to me given the age of the installation and the relative newness of that topic.  But what threw me for a loop was that the graphic display appeared to be telling me that I did not in fact have three separate drives (or arrays) but rather had two, and that the log files were merely on a separate volume on the same physical array as the OS.  I figured that I must be reading it wrong so I scanned the Help file, but that just seemed to confirm my interpretation.  Then I thought, “there must be something wrong with the demo version of the software!  This can’t be right!”  But just to double-check, I went to our current server admin to talk it over with him, and sure enough, SQL Sentry was telling the truth! I was stunned!  I quickly went through the grieving process…denial…anger…reconciliation.  Here was something that I thought was such a basic truth that was turned upside down.  OK, granted, this wasn’t disastrous.  Our databases didn’t suddenly grind to a halt.  I didn’t get calls late at night inquiring about the sudden downturn in performance.  But it was a bit of a shock to the system, in a good way, to jolt me out of taking what I had believed as the truth for granted, and instead to Trust, but Verify! Yes, before someone else points it out, I know that there are”free” disk management tools built-in to Windows that would have told me the same thing if I had only looked at them; I did not have to buy a fancy tool to tell me that, but the fact is, until I was evaluating the tool, I had just gone with what I was told, and never bothered to check what was actually there. So, what things do you believe to be true but you actually never verified?

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  • What is the right way to process inconsistent data files?

    - by Tahabi
    I'm working at a company that uses Excel files to store product data, specifically, test results from products before they are shipped out. There are a few thousand spreadsheets with anywhere from 50-100 relevant data points per file. Over the years, the schema for the spreadsheets has changed significantly, but not unidirectionally - in the sense that, changes often get reverted and then re-added in the space of a few dozen to few hundred files. My project is to convert about 8000 of these spreadsheets into a database that can be queried. I'm using MongoDB to deal with the inconsistency in the data, and Python. My question is, what is the "right" or canonical way to deal with the huge variance in my source files? I've written a data structure which stores the data I want for the latest template, which will be the final template used going forward, but that only helps for a few hundred files historically. Brute-forcing a solution would mean writing similar data structures for each version/template - which means potentially writing hundreds of schemas with dozens of fields each. This seems very inefficient, especially when sometimes a change in the template is as little as moving a single line of data one row down or splitting what used to be one data field into two data fields. A slightly more elegant solution I have in mind would be writing schemas for all the variants I can find for pre-defined groups in the source files, and then writing a function to match a particular series of files with a series of variants that matches that set of files. This is because, more often that not, most of the file will remain consistent over a long period, only marred by one or two errant sections, but inside the period, which section is inconsistent, is inconsistent. For example, say a file has four sections with three data fields, which is represented by four Python dictionaries with three keys each. For files 7000-7250, sections 1-3 will be consistent, but section 4 will be shifted one row down. For files 7251-7500, 1-3 are consistent, section 4 is one row down, but a section five appears. For files 7501-7635, sections 1 and 3 will be consistent, but section 2 will have five data fields instead of three, section five disappears, and section 4 is still shifted down one row. For files 7636-7800, section 1 is consistent, section 4 gets shifted back up, section 2 returns to three cells, but section 3 is removed entirely. Files 7800-8000 have everything in order. The proposed function would take the file number and match it to a dictionary representing the data mappings for different variants of each section. For example, a section_four_variants dictionary might have two members, one for the shifted-down version, and one for the normal version, a section_two_variants might have three and five field members, etc. The script would then read the matchings, load the correct mapping, extract the data, and insert it into the database. Is this an accepted/right way to go about solving this problem? Should I structure things differently? I don't know what to search Google for either to see what other solutions might be, though I believe the problem lies in the domain of ETL processing. I also have no formal CS training aside from what I've taught myself over the years. If this is not the right forum for this question, please tell me where to move it, if at all. Any help is most appreciated. Thank you.

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  • Enterprise Integration: Can Companies Afford It?

    - by Ralph Wheaton
    Each year, my company holds a global sales conference where employees and partners from around the world some together to collaborate, share knowledge and ideas and learn about future plans.  As a member of the professional services division, several of us had been asked to make a presentation, an elevator pitch in 3 minutes or less that relates to a success we have worked on or directly relates to our tag (that is, our primary technology focus).  Mine happens to be Enterprise Integration as it relates Business Intelligence.  I found it rather difficult to present that pitch in a short amount of time and had to pare it down.  At any rate, in just a little over 3 minutes, this is the presentation I submitted.  Here is a link to the full presentation video in WMV format.   Many companies today subscribe to a buy versus build mentality in an attempt to drive down costs and improve time to implementation. Sometimes this makes sense, especially as it relates to specialized software or software that performs a small number of tasks extremely well. However, if not carefully considered or planned out, this oftentimes leads to multiple disparate systems with silos of data or multiple versions of the same data. For instance, client data (contact information, addresses, phone numbers, opportunities, sales) stored in your CRM system may not play well with Accounts Receivables. Employee data may be stored across multiple systems such as HR, Time Entry and Payroll. Other data (such as member data) may not originate internally, but be provided by multiple outside sources in multiple formats. And to top it all off, some data may have to be manually entered into multiple systems to keep it all synchronized. When left to grow out of control like this, overall performance is lacking, stability is questionable and maintenance is frequent and costly. Worse yet, in many cases, this topology, this hodgepodge of data creates a reporting nightmare. Decision makers are forced to try to put together pieces of the puzzle attempting to find the information they need, wading through multiple systems to find what they think is the single version of the truth. More often than not, they find they are missing pieces, pieces that may be crucial to growing the business rather than closing the business. across applications. Master data owners are defined to establish single sources of data (such as the CRM system owns client data). Other systems subscribe to the master data and changes are replicated to subscribers as they are made. This can be one way (no changes are allowed on the subscriber systems) or bi-directional. But at all times, the master data owner is current or up to date. And all data, whether internal or external, use the same processes and methods to move data from one place to another, leveraging the same validations, lookups and transformations enterprise wide, eliminating inconsistencies and siloed data. Once implemented, an enterprise integration solution improves performance and stability by reducing the number of moving parts and eliminating inconsistent data. Overall maintenance costs are mitigated by reducing touch points or the number of places that require modification when a business rule is changed or another data element is added. Most importantly, however, now decision makers can easily extract and piece together the information they need to grow their business, improve customer satisfaction and so on. So, in implementing an enterprise integration solution, companies can position themselves for the future, allowing for easy transition to data marts, data warehousing and, ultimately, business intelligence. Along this path, companies can achieve growth in size, intelligence and complexity. Truly, the question is not can companies afford to implement an enterprise integration solution, but can they afford not to.   Ralph Wheaton Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist Microsoft Certified Professional Developer Microsoft VTS-P BizTalk, .Net

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  • SQL analytical mash-ups deliver real-time WOW! for big data

    - by KLaker
    One of the overlooked capabilities of SQL as an analysis engine, because we all just take it for granted, is that you can mix and match analytical features to create some amazing mash-ups. As we move into the exciting world of big data these mash-ups can really deliver those "wow, I never knew that" moments. While Java is an incredibly flexible and powerful framework for managing big data there are some significant challenges in using Java and MapReduce to drive your analysis to create these "wow" discoveries. One of these "wow" moments was demonstrated at this year's OpenWorld during Andy Mendelsohn's general keynote session.  Here is the scenario - we are looking for fraudulent activities in our big data stream and in this case we identifying potentially fraudulent activities by looking for specific patterns. We using geospatial tagging of each transaction so we can create a real-time fraud-map for our business users. Where we start to move towards a "wow" moment is to extend this basic use of spatial and pattern matching, as shown in the above dashboard screen, to incorporate spatial analytics within the SQL pattern matching clause. This will allow us to compute the distance between transactions. Apologies for the quality of this screenshot….hopefully below you see where we have extended our SQL pattern matching clause to use location of each transaction and to calculate the distance between each transaction: This allows us to compare the time of the last transaction with the time of the current transaction and see if the distance between the two points is possible given the time frame. Obviously if I buy something in Florida from my favourite bike store (may be a new carbon saddle for my Trek) and then 5 minutes later the system sees my credit card details being used in Arizona there is high probability that this transaction in Arizona is actually fraudulent (I am fast on my Trek but not that fast!) and we can flag this up in real-time on our dashboard: In this post I have used the term "real-time" a couple of times and this is an important point and one of the key reasons why SQL really is the only language to use if you want to analyse  big data. One of the most important questions that comes up in every big data project is: how do we do analysis? Many enlightened customers are now realising that using Java-MapReduce to deliver analysis does not result in "wow" moments. These "wow" moments only come with SQL because it is offers a much richer environment, it is simpler to use and it is faster - which makes it possible to deliver real-time "Wow!". Below is a slide from Andy's session showing the results of a comparison of Java-MapReduce vs. SQL pattern matching to deliver our "wow" moment during our live demo.  You can watch our analytical mash-up "Wow" demo that compares the power of 12c SQL pattern matching + spatial analytics vs. Java-MapReduce  here: You can get more information about SQL Pattern Matching on our SQL Analytics home page on OTN, see here http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/bi-datawarehousing/sql-analytics-index-1984365.html.  You can get more information about our spatial analytics here: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database-options/spatialandgraph/overview/index.html If you would like to watch the full Database 12c OOW presentation see here: http://medianetwork.oracle.com/video/player/2686974264001

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  • Problems with texture orientation in space

    - by frankie
    I am currently drawing texture in 3D space and have some problems with it's orientation. I'd like me textures always to be oriented with front face to user. My desirable result looks like Note, that text size stay without changes when we rotating world and stay oriented with front face to user. Now I can draw text in 3D space, but it is not oriented with front but rotating with world. Such results I got with following shaders: Vertex Shader uniform vec3 Position; void main() { gl_Position = vec4(Position, 1.0); } Geometry Shader layout(points) in; layout(triangle_strip, max_vertices = 4) out; out vec2 fsTextureCoordinates; uniform mat4 projectionMatrix; uniform mat4 modelViewMatrix; uniform sampler2D og_texture0; uniform float og_highResolutionSnapScale; uniform vec2 u_originScale; void main() { vec2 halfSize = vec2(textureSize(og_texture0, 0)) * 0.5 * og_highResolutionSnapScale; vec4 center = gl_in[0].gl_Position; center.xy += (u_originScale * halfSize); vec4 v0 = vec4(center.xy - halfSize, center.z, 1.0); vec4 v1 = vec4(center.xy + vec2(halfSize.x, -halfSize.y), center.z, 1.0); vec4 v2 = vec4(center.xy + vec2(-halfSize.x, halfSize.y), center.z, 1.0); vec4 v3 = vec4(center.xy + halfSize, center.z, 1.0); gl_Position = projectionMatrix * modelViewMatrix * v0; fsTextureCoordinates = vec2(0.0, 0.0); EmitVertex(); gl_Position = projectionMatrix * modelViewMatrix * v1; fsTextureCoordinates = vec2(1.0, 0.0); EmitVertex(); gl_Position = projectionMatrix * modelViewMatrix * v2; fsTextureCoordinates = vec2(0.0, 1.0); EmitVertex(); gl_Position = projectionMatrix * modelViewMatrix * v3; fsTextureCoordinates = vec2(1.0, 1.0); EmitVertex(); } Fragment Shader in vec2 fsTextureCoordinates; out vec4 fragmentColor; uniform sampler2D og_texture0; uniform vec3 u_color; void main() { vec4 color = texture(og_texture0, fsTextureCoordinates); if (color.a == 0.0) { discard; } fragmentColor = vec4(color.rgb * u_color.rgb, color.a); } Any ideas how to get my desirable result? EDIT 1: I make edit in my geometry shader and got part of lable drawn on screen at corner. But it is not rotating. .......... vec4 centerProjected = projectionMatrix * modelViewMatrix * center; centerProjected /= centerProjected.w; vec4 v0 = vec4(centerProjected.xy - halfSize, 0.0, 1.0); vec4 v1 = vec4(centerProjected.xy + vec2(halfSize.x, -halfSize.y), 0.0, 1.0); vec4 v2 = vec4(centerProjected.xy + vec2(-halfSize.x, halfSize.y), 0.0, 1.0); vec4 v3 = vec4(centerProjected.xy + halfSize, 0.0, 1.0); gl_Position = og_viewportOrthographicMatrix * v0; ..........

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  • Oracle Database Upcoming Event dates to know

    - by mandy.ho
    February may be a short month, but it's not short of exciting Oracle events. From information packed "Real Performance Days" to participation in one of the biggest IT Security events - look out for Oracle Database and let us know if you are there with us! Feb 13-18, 2011 - Las Vegas, NV TDWI World Conference Series Join Oracle in highlighting Exadata x2-2 and x2-8, along with Oracle Business Intelligence, Enterprise Performance management and Data Warehousing solutions. Oracle will be presenting a workshop - Oracle Data Integration: Best-of-Breed Solutions for the Enterprise Wednesday, February 16, 2011 7p.m - 9p.m Glen Goodrich, Director of Product Management Christophe Dupupet, Director of Product Management, Data Integration http://events.tdwi.org/events/las-vegas-world-conference-2011/sessions/session-list.aspx Feb 14-17, 2011 - Barcelona, Spain Mobile World Congress MWC is an event where Oracle showcases the near complete breadth and depth of value that our Communications Industry strategy and Hardware and Software Solutions can deliver. Oracle supports Communications Service Providers today and delivers platforms and flexibility primed for the future. Oracle will have a two story Pavilion, along with an Oracle Java and Embedded Solutions Center - App Planet. The Exhibition times are Monday, 14th February 09.00 - 19.00 Tuesday, 15th February 09.00 - 19.00 Wednesday, 16th February 09.00 - 19.00 Thursday, 17th February 09.00 - 16.00 Have questions? Meet with Oracle Sales representatives at the Oracle Café. Open every day from 9am to 17:00pm. http://eventreg.oracle.com/webapps/events/ns/EventsDetail.jsp?p_eventId=109912&src=6973382&src=6973382&Act=4 Feb 14-18, 2011 - San Francisco, CA RSA Conference As the world's most complete, open, integrated business software and hardware systems provider, Oracle can uniquely safeguard your information throughout its entire lifecycle. Learn more by attending these sessions: Cloud Computing: A Brave New World for Security and Privacy (CLD-201) Wednesday, February 16 at 8:30 a.m. Databases Under Attack - Securing Heterogeneous Database Infrastructures (DAS-301) Thursday, February 17, 2011 at 8:30 a.m. Seven Steps to Protecting Databases (DAS-402) Friday, February 18 at 10:10 a.m. RSA Conference Attendees will also have the opportunity to meet with Oracle Security Solution experts, see live product demos and more by visiting booth # 1559. Hours: Monday, February 14, 6:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m., Tuesday, February 15, 11:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. - 6:00p.m., Wednesday, February 16, 11:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m., and Thursday, February 17, 11:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m. http://eventreg.oracle.com/webapps/events/ns/EventsDetail.jsp?p_eventId=127657&src=6967733&src=6967733&Act=12 Feb 21-25, 2011 - Various Locations IOUG Presents - A Day of Real World Performance with Tom Kyte, Andrew Holdsworth and Graham Wood These Oracle experts will debate, discuss and delineate the best practices for designing hardware architectures, deploying Oracle databases, and developing applications that deliver the fastest possible performance for your business.Topics are covered in a conversational format - with all three chiming in where appropriate. Each presenter has their own screen projector to demonstrate their individual points to the participants. Customers will have the opportunity to get their specific performance/tuning questions answered and learn how to balance all the different environmental requirements for their applications to improve performance. Register today for the following dates and locations • February 21 in San Diego, CA • February 22 in Los Angeles, CA • February 23 in Seattle, WA • February 25 in Phoenix, AZ http://www.ioug.org/tabid/194/Default.aspx Feb 8-24 - Various Oracle Enterprise Cloud Summit This series of full-day events with cloud experts, sharing real-world best practices, reference architectures and more continues during the month of February. Attend the Oracle Enterprise Cloud Summit to learn how to: • Build a state-of-the-art cloud architecture • Leverage your existing IT investments • Optimize your IT management processes Whether you are considering a move to cloud computing or have already adopted a cloud model, this event offers you the insights you need to take full advantage of cloud computing. Check below to see if the event is coming to a city near you. http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/events/cloud-events-214342.html

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  • Windows Azure Recipe: Social Web / Big Media

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

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  • ArchBeat Link-o-Rama Top 10 - September 16-22, 2012

    - by Bob Rhubart
    The Top 10 most popular items shared on the OTN ArchBeat Facebook Page for the week of September 16-22, 2012. The Real Architects of LA: OTN Architect Day in Los Angeles - Oct 25No gossip. No drama. No hair pulling. Just a full day of technical sessions and peer interaction focused on using Oracle technologies in today's cloud and SOA architectures. The event is free, but seating is limited, so register now. Thursday October 25, 2012. 8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. Sofitel Los Angeles, 8555 Beverly Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90048. OIM-OAM-OAAM integration using TAP – Request Flow you must understand!! | Atul KumarAtul Kumar's post addresses "key points and request flow that you must understand" when integrating three Oracle Identity Management product Oracle Identity Management, Oracle Access Management, and Oracle Adaptive Access Manager. Cloud, automation drive new growth in SOA governance market | ZDNet "SOA governance tools and processes learned over the past decade are now underpinning cloud projects as they scale across enterprises," reports Joe McKendrick. But there remains a lack of understanding about SOA Governance. DevOps Basics: Track Down High CPU Thread with ps, top and the new JDK7 jcmd Tool | Frank Munz "The approach is very generic and works for WebLogic, Glassfish or any other Java application," say Frank Munz. "UNIX commands in the example are run on CentOS, so they will work without changes for Oracle Enterprise Linux or RedHat. Creating the thread dump at the end of the video is done with the jcmd tool from JDK7." Frank has captured the process in the posted video. Oracle OpenWorld 2012 Hands-on Lab: "Leading Your Everyday Application Integration Projects with Enterprise SOA" Yet another session to squeeze into your already-jammed Oracle OpenWorld schedule. This hands-on lab focuses on how "Oracle Enterprise Repository, Oracle Application Integration Architecture (AIA) Foundation Pack, and Oracle SOA Suite work together to help you drive your enterprisewide integration projects." Loving VirtualBox 4.2… | The ORACLE-BASE Blog Is it wrong for a man to love a technology? Oracle ACE Director Tim Hall has several very good reasons for his feelings… ADF Create and CreateInsert Operations for ADF Table | Andrejus Baranovskis Oracle ACE Director Andrejus Baranovskis answers the question, "What operation is best to use to insert a new row into an ADF table, Create or CreateInsert?" Fault Handling Slides and Q&A | Ronald van Luttikhuizen Oracle ACE Director Ronald van Luttikhuizen shares the slides and a Q&A transcript from a presentation he and fellow ACE Director Guido Schmutz gave at the recent Oracle OpenWorld and JavaOne preview event organized by AMIS Technology. Why IT is a profession in 'flux' | ZDNet I usuallly don't post two items from the same person in one day, but this post from ZDNet blogger Joe McKendrick deals with some critical issues affecting those in IT. As McKendrick puts it: "IT professionals are under considerable pressure to deliver more value to the business, versus being good at coding and testing and deploying and integrating." Running RichFaces on WebLogic 12c | Markus Eisele "With all the JMS magic and the different provider checks in the showcase this has become some kind of a challenge to simply build and deploy it," says Oracle ACE Director Markus Eisele. His detailed post will help you to meet that challenge. Thought for the Day "Less is more." — Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (March 27, 1886 – August 17, 1969) Source: BrainyQuote.com

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  • Get Your Enterprise Working With Oracle On Track Communication 1.0

    - by Josh Lannin
    The On Track Development team is very pleased to announce that today On Track is available for our customers to download and evaluate.  To learn more about what On Track does start with our whitepaper and datasheet.   If you are a developer, take a look at our documentation and samples posted to our OTN page. For this first blog post, I’ll be speaking to several notable points about our product. Graceful Escalation via Conversations: On Track addresses the “Collaboration Problem” through a single guiding principle – graceful escalation – within the construct of a Conversation. In On Track, collaboration is based on a context (called a “Conversation”) that gracefully escalates in form, structure, and content, as dictated by the particular needs of a given collaboration.  Within that context, On Track provides a rich set of tools to choose from.  These tools provide for communication, coordination, content management, organization, decision making, and analysis -- all essential aspects of collaboration, but not all of them are essential all of the time.  Every collaborative interaction will evolve differently.  Some will evolve to represent work spreading over the course of years and involving a large, distributed team, while others may involve few people and not evolve at all.  Regardless, all collaborative contexts are built from the same parts, utilize the same concepts, and start the same way.  The principle of graceful escalation is that you only use the tools and structure you need; so you only incur the complexity you need. Purposeful Collaboration: Through application integration, On Track Conversations bring enterprise application users the communication and collaboration capabilities required to complete business process.  By association with specific processes or business objects conversations extend the possible interactions and broaden participation to internal or external non-application users and provide a sophisticated interaction experience, all the while enhancing the data set within the owning application.  Purposeful collaboration not only needs to happen in the context of applications, it must support a full range of real-time and long-running interactions to provide the greatest value. Multi Client, Multi Modal: This On Track 1.0 product release includes the same day availability of  multiple clients, including iPhone and iPad applications which are now available on the Apple Store, a fully capable and accessible Outlook Add-In, along with our browser web client.  With each client we have sought to leverage the strengths of each unique device- our iPhone client supports picture and voice posts, the iPad is optimized for meeting room situations and document viewing, and our Outlook add-in allows you to take emails in context and bring them into On Track.  In addition to supporting a diverse array of clients, On Track provides a unified multi modal experience support starting with basic messages moving through to integrated documents with live annotations, snapshots, application sharing, and voice. Next Generation Web Architecture: We believe On Track will help move the bar higher for what users can expect from all web applications, most notably ones that involve real-time activity.  On Track is built from the ground up with an innovative, real-time architecture that leverages the extensive push capabilities of our server.  Whether you are receiving a new message, viewing where crowds of people are collaborating, or doing live annotation on a document with a set of people, that information comes to you immediately without refreshes or moving back and forth between pages.  We’ve leveraged this core architecture across the product experience and raised the user experience bar for this type of application.  As well these capabilities are based on open standards and protocols, and are fully extensible by anyone- enabling sophisticated integrations to be created with a wide variety of both legacy and next-generation applications. Agile Product Development: As a product team we operate using continuous feedback and modified agile development methodologies.  We have thousands of active internal Oracle users who have helped pilot our product for critical business functions, and the On Track product development team uses our product as our primary vehicle for all our collaboration.  Additionally we been working with early access customers who are adopting our technology and providing us valuable feedback - which our process has rapidly realized in improvements to our software.  On Track agility extends to our server as well, which is built to scale, and is very simple to install and configure. We are pleased to make this product announcement and encourage you to join us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter, as well as checking back here for the latest product information.

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  • How can I draw an arrow at the edge of the screen pointing to an object that is off screen?

    - by Adam Henderson
    I am wishing to do what is described in this topic: http://www.allegro.cc/forums/print-thread/283220 I have attempted a variety of the methods mentioned here. First I tried to use the method described by Carrus85: Just take the ratio of the two triangle hypontenuses (doesn't matter which triagle you use for the other, I suggest point 1 and point 2 as the distance you calculate). This will give you the aspect ratio percentage of the triangle in the corner from the larger triangle. Then you simply multiply deltax by that value to get the x-coordinate offset, and deltay by that value to get the y-coordinate offset. But I could not find a way to calculate how far the object is away from the edge of the screen. I then tried using ray casting (which I have never done before) suggested by 23yrold3yrold: Fire a ray from the center of the screen to the offscreen object. Calculate where on the rectangle the ray intersects. There's your coordinates. I first calculated the hypotenuse of the triangle formed by the difference in x and y positions of the two points. I used this to create a unit vector along that line. I looped through that vector until either the x coordinate or the y coordinate was off the screen. The two current x and y values then form the x and y of the arrow. Here is the code for my ray casting method (written in C++ and Allegro 5) void renderArrows(Object* i) { float x1 = i->getX() + (i->getWidth() / 2); float y1 = i->getY() + (i->getHeight() / 2); float x2 = screenCentreX; float y2 = ScreenCentreY; float dx = x2 - x1; float dy = y2 - y1; float hypotSquared = (dx * dx) + (dy * dy); float hypot = sqrt(hypotSquared); float unitX = dx / hypot; float unitY = dy / hypot; float rayX = x2 - view->getViewportX(); float rayY = y2 - view->getViewportY(); float arrowX = 0; float arrowY = 0; bool posFound = false; while(posFound == false) { rayX += unitX; rayY += unitY; if(rayX <= 0 || rayX >= screenWidth || rayY <= 0 || rayY >= screenHeight) { arrowX = rayX; arrowY = rayY; posFound = true; } } al_draw_bitmap(sprite, arrowX - spriteWidth, arrowY - spriteHeight, 0); } This was relatively successful. Arrows are displayed in the bottom right section of the screen when objects are located above and left of the screen as if the locations of the where the arrows are drawn have been rotated 180 degrees around the center of the screen. I assumed this was due to the fact that when I was calculating the hypotenuse of the triangle, it would always be positive regardless of whether or not the difference in x or difference in y is negative. Thinking about it, ray casting does not seem like a good way of solving the problem (due to the fact that it involves using sqrt() and a large for loop). Any help finding a suitable solution would be greatly appreciated, Thanks Adam

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  • DallasXAML.com – A New User Group for Silverlight, WPF, XBAP, etc.

    - by vblasberg
                                     http://DallasXAML.com   I’ve devoted much of last month to starting the DallasXAML User Group.  I finally got back into user group management after 2 years away from leading the Dallas C# SIG.  Now I’m having fun getting a Silverlight/WPF user group going strong for the Dallas / Ft. Worth community.  Our first meeting was March 3rd at the Improving Enterprises offices in North Dallas.  We had about 25 to 35 attendees in the first meeting and it went well.  We covered the most important topic that everyone should understand well – data binding.   So I chose the XAML user group so we can get together for a common group improvement in the Dallas / Ft. Worth area and learn cross-technology information that we can use now.  It is not a lecture hall.  The great thing is that we’ll provide hands-on experience with most every meeting.  The goal is to get the experience that we can use the next work day.  I unfortunately broke that rule by speaking all through the first meeting, but next month is part two with more hands-on data binding.   The differentiation is this group concentrates on XAML, not Silverlight or Windows Client alone.  What we learn in one area, we gain for all areas.  That includes the Silverlight for Windows Phone 7 coming later this year.  Next year it may be Windows Phone 8, 9, or whatever.    I started developing WPF seriously almost a year ago.  I experienced the painful learning curve.  Anyone who reports that there isn’t a big learning curve either thinks in XAML before it was developed, is on the Silverlight or WPF development team, or has already conquered the learning and forgot the pain.  So I wanted to share the pain or make it easier for others – same thing.  I have found that the more I learn and use good disciplined techniques, the more interesting and rewarding development is again.   A few months ago, I was sitting in the iPhone development session at the Dallas C# SIG.  After the meeting, the audience was polled for future topics.  After a few suggestions, Silverlight got the big hands up.  That makes sense because it’s still the hot topic for many Microsoft developers.  So I surfed around and found that there aren’t enough user groups to help in this area.  I polled a few local group leaders and did the work to start the group.  This week I got a telerik controls licence and improved the site with some great controls, namely the RadHtmlPlaceholder control.  It provides a Silverlight control to show HTML in an IFrame-like area.  On DallasXAML.com, the newsletters and resource pages display in HTML because Silverlight just isn’t there yet.  I’m looking forward to a Silverlight XPS viewer with flow documents.  There are some good commercial version available, but this is a non-profit group.    The DallasXAML.com site points to many other resources such as podcasts and webcasts.  I would rather give them the credit than try to out-do them.  So check out the DallasXAML user group site and attend our meetings if you can.  We meet the first Tuesday of the month.   -Vince DallasXAML User Group Leader  

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  • Flow-Design Cheat Sheet &ndash; Part II, Translation

    - by Ralf Westphal
    In my previous post I summarized the notation for Flow-Design (FD) diagrams. Now is the time to show you how to translate those diagrams into code. Hopefully you feel how different this is from UML. UML leaves you alone with your sequence diagram or component diagram or activity diagram. They leave it to you how to translate your elaborate design into code. Or maybe UML thinks it´s so easy no further explanations are needed? I don´t know. I just know that, as soon as people stop designing with UML and start coding, things end up to be very different from the design. And that´s bad. That degrades graphical designs to just time waste on paper (or some designer). I even believe that´s the reason why most programmers view textual source code as the only and single source of truth. Design and code usually do not match. FD is trying to change that. It wants to make true design a first class method in every developers toolchest. For that the first prerequisite is to be able to easily translate any design into code. Mechanically, without thinking. Even a compiler could do it :-) (More of that in some other article.) Translating to Methods The first translation I want to show you is for small designs. When you start using FD you should translate your diagrams like this. Functional units become methods. That´s it. An input-pin becomes a method parameter, an output-pin becomes a return value: The above is a part. But a board can be translated likewise and calls the nested FUs in order: In any case be sure to keep the board method clear of any and all business logic. It should not contain any control structures like if, switch, or a loop. Boards do just one thing: calling nested functional units in proper sequence. What about multiple input-pins? Try to avoid them. Replace them with a join returning a tuple: What about multiple output-pins? Try to avoid them. Or return a tuple. Or use out-parameters: But as I said, this simple translation is for simple designs only. Splits and joins are easily done with method translation: All pretty straightforward, isn´t it. But what about wires, named pins, entry points, explicit dependencies? I suggest you don´t use this kind of translation when your designs need these features. Translating to methods is for small scale designs like you might do once you´re working on the implementation of a part of a larger design. Or maybe for a code kata you´re doing in your local coding dojo. Instead of doing TDD try doing FD and translate your design into methods. You´ll see that way it´s much easier to work collaboratively on designs, remember them more easily, keep them clean, and lessen the need for refactoring. Translating to Events [coming soon]

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  • Analytics in an Omni-Channel World

    - by David Dorf
    Retail has been around ever since mankind started bartering.  The earliest transactions were very specific to the individuals buying and selling, then someone had the bright idea to open a store.  Those transactions were a little more generic, but the store owner still knew his customers and what they wanted.  As the chains rolled out, customer intimacy was sacrificed for scale, and retailers began to rely on segments and clusters.  But thanks to the widespread availability of data and the technology to convert said data into information, retailers are getting back to details. The retail industry is following a maturity model for analytics that is has progressed through five stages, each delivering more value than the previous. Store Analytics Brick-and-mortar retailers (and pure-play catalogers as well) that collect anonymous basket-level data are able to get some sense of demand to help with allocation decisions.  Promotions and foot-traffic can be measured to understand marketing effectiveness and perhaps focus groups can help test ideas.  But decisions are influenced by the majority, using faceless customer segments and aggregated industry data points.  Loyalty programs help a little, but in many cases the cost outweighs the benefits. Web Analytics The Web made it much easier to collect data on specific, yet still anonymous consumers using cookies to track visits. Clickstreams and product searches are analyzed to understand the purchase journey, gauge demand, and better understand up-selling opportunities.  Personalization begins to allow retailers target market consumers with recommendations. Cross-Channel Analytics This phase is a minor one, but where most retailers probably sit today.  They are able to use information from one channel to bolster activities in another. However, there are technical challenges combining data silos so its not an easy task.  But for those retailers that are able to perform analytics on both sources of data, the pay-off is pretty nice.  Revenue per customer begins to go up as customers have a better brand experience. Mobile & Social Analytics Big data technologies are enabling a 360-degree view of the customer by incorporating psychographic data from social sites alongside traditional demographic data.  Retailers can track individual preferences, opinions, hobbies, etc. in order to understand a consumer's motivations.  Using mobile devices, consumers can interact with brands anywhere, anytime, accessing deep product information and reviews.  Mobile, combined with a loyalty program, presents an opportunity to put shopping into geographic context, understanding paths to the store, patterns within the store, and be an always-on advertising conduit. Omni-Channel Analytics All this data along with the proper technology represents a new paradigm in which the clock is turned back and retail becomes very personal once again.  Rich, individualized data better illuminates demand, allows for highly localized assortments, and helps tailor up-selling.  Interactions with all channels help build an accurate profile of each consumer, and allows retailers to tailor the retail experience to meet the heightened expectations of today's sophisticated shopper.  And of course this culminates in greater customer satisfaction and business profitability.

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  • Things I've noticed with DVCS

    - by Wes McClure
    Things I encourage: Frequent local commits This way you don't have to be bothered by changes others are making to the central repository while working on a handful of related tasks.  It's a good idea to try to work on one task at a time and commit all changes at partitioned stopping points.  A local commit doesn't have to build, just FYI, so a stopping point doesn't mean a build point nor a point that you can push centrally.  There should be several of these in any given day.  2 hours is a good indicator that you might not be leveraging the power of frequent local commits.  Once you have verified a set of changes works, save them away, otherwise run the risk of introducing bugs into it when working on the next task.  The notion of a task By task I mean a related set of changes that can be completed in a few hours or less.  In the same token don’t make your tasks so small that critically related changes aren’t grouped together.  Use your intuition and the rest of these principles and I think you will find what is comfortable for you. Partial commits Sometimes one task explodes or unknowingly encompasses other tasks, at this point, try to get to a stopping point on part of the work you are doing and commit it so you can get that out of the way to focus on the remainder.  This will often entail committing part of the work and continuing on the rest. Outstanding changes as a guide If you don't commit often it might mean you are not leveraging your version control history to help guide your work.  It's a great way to see what has changed and might be causing problems.  The longer you wait, the more that has changed and the harder it is to test/debug what your changes are doing! This is a reason why I am so picky about my VCS tools on the client side and why I talk a lot about the quality of a diff tool and the ability to integrate that with a simple view of everything that has changed.  This is why I love using TortoiseHg and SmartGit: they show changed files, a diff (or two way diff with SmartGit) of the current selected file and a commit message all in one window that I keep maximized on one monitor at all times. Throw away / stash commits There is extreme value in being able to throw away a commit (or stash it) that is getting out of hand.  If you do not commit often you will have to isolate the work you want to commit from the work you want to throw away, which is wasted productivity and highly prone to errors.  I find myself doing this about once a week, especially when doing exploratory re-factoring.  It's much easier if I can just revert all outstanding changes. Sync with the central repository daily The rest of us depend on your changes.  Don't let them sit on your computer longer than they have to.  Waiting increases the chances of merge conflict which just decreases productivity.  It also prohibits us from doing deploys when people say they are done but have not merged centrally.  This should be done daily!  Find a way to partition the work you are doing so that you can sync at least once daily. Things I discourage: Lots of partial commits right at the end of a series of changes If you notice lots of partial commits at the end of a set of changes, it's likely because you weren't frequently committing, nor were you watching for the size of the task expanding beyond a single commit.  Chances are this cost you productivity if you use your outstanding changes as a guide, since you would have an ever growing list of changes. Committing single files Committing single files means you waited too long and no longer understand all the changes involved.  It may mean there were overlapping changes in single files that cannot be isolated.  In either case, go back to the suggestions above to avoid this.  Committing frequently does not mean committing frequently right at the end of a day's work. It should be spaced out over the course of several tasks, not all at the end in a 5 minute window.

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  • Can't boot in Ubuntu after windows upgrade

    - by VanceAnce
    After my lastest update for Ubuntu and Windows XP, I got a Grub error on booting the next day. ls lists the following (without () ): sd0 sd1, msdos sd2 sd5 sd6 When I tried to get into one with (sd0,xy)/ it doesn't detect system or unknown file system error. I tried to boot to a live session with a Knoppix live CD and found out that all data exists. I also tried to recover with TestDisk and it finds all systems. Here is the test disk result: Start End Size in sectors 1 * HPFS - NTFS 0 1 1 7079 254 63 113740137 2 E extended LBA 7080 0 1 12161 254 63 81642330 5 L HPFS - NTFS 7080 1 1 10266 254 63 51199092 [Schule] X extended 12031 30 1 12161 254 63 2102625 6 L Linux Swap 12031 31 33 12161 254 63 2102530 I've 1 winxp-home, 1x Ubuntu (ext3+swap) and 1 winxp prof and then I wrote on mbr with TestDisk but I always get the same errors with Grub. What should I do? I need both XP and Ubuntu. Help me please. more infos in answers below - sry for thos confusing style but im working on diff live system and browsers and have to reboot always the boot info script output is also down below maybe an advanced user can correct my fail posting - after i can solve my issuse i will register here thanx and pls help me with those weired issues ! as i still cant just comment my own answer or those on top i again has to put it here as a sepperate answer..... (or even edit - maybe an browser failur using the live cds ... cause this posti can edit) here the bootinfo script output - but the result is the same as with TestDisk ... but it looks worse - cause it also doesnt detect my old ubuntu ... but there wasnt a eares process or overwrite process visibile ending the last working session output: Boot Info Script 0.61 [1 April 2012] ============================= Boot Info Summary: =============================== = Syslinux MBR (4.04 and higher) is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda. sda1: __________________________________________ File system: ntfs Boot sector type: Windows XP: NTFS Boot sector info: No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block. Operating System: Windows XP Boot files: /boot.ini /ntldr /NTDETECT.COM sda2: __________________________________________ File system: Extended Partition Boot sector type: - Boot sector info: sda5: __________________________________________ File system: ntfs Boot sector type: Windows XP: NTFS Boot sector info: According to the info in the boot sector, sda5 starts at sector 63. Operating System: Windows XP Boot files: sda6: __________________________________________ File system: swap Boot sector type: - Boot sector info: ============================ Drive/Partition Info: ============================= Drive: sda _______________________________________ Disk /dev/sda: 100.0 GB, 100030242816 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 12161 cylinders, total 195371568 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Partition Boot Start Sector End Sector # of Sectors Id System /dev/sda1 * 63 113,740,199 113,740,137 7 NTFS / exFAT / HPFS /dev/sda2 113,740,200 195,382,529 81,642,330 f W95 Extended (LBA) /dev/sda5 113,740,263 164,939,354 51,199,092 7 NTFS / exFAT / HPFS /dev/sda6 193,280,000 195,382,529 2,102,530 82 Linux swap / Solaris /dev/sda2 ends after the last sector of /dev/sda /dev/sda6 ends after the last sector of /dev/sda "blkid" output: ____________________________________ Device UUID TYPE LABEL /dev/loop0 squashfs /dev/sda1 6596D86768011128 ntfs /dev/sda5 1300D3B7744EC141 ntfs Schule /dev/sda6 5b95f2a1-4145-43a5-ac51-41d7dd32b213 swap ================================ Mount points: ================================= Device Mount_Point Type Options /dev/loop0 /rofs squashfs (ro,noatime) /dev/sr0 /cdrom iso9660 (ro,noatime) ================================ sda1/boot.ini: ================================ [boot loader] timeout=30 default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS [operating systems] multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptOut multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect [spybotsd] timeout.old=30 the last part shows that i now use the windows boot loader so that i can acces at least one OS but shouldnt i also get acces to my ubuntu partitions with live-linux-cds ? or do i have to boot with grub to get to those files only ??

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  • How Can I Start an Incognito/Private Browsing Window from a Shortcut?

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    Sometimes you just want to pop the browser open for a quick web search without reloading all your saved tabs; read on as we show a fellow reader how to make a quick private-browsing shortcut. Dear How-To Geek, I came up with a solution to my problem, but I need your help implementing it. I typically have a ton of tabs open in my web browser and, when I need to free up system resources when gaming or using a resource intense application, I shut down the web browser. The problem arises when I find myself needing to do quick web search while the browser is shut down. I don’t want to open it up, load all the tabs, and waste the resources in doing so all for a quick Google search. The perfect solution, it would seem, is to open up one of Chrome’s Incognito windows: it loads separate, it won’t open up all the old tabs, and it’s perfect for a quick Google search. Is there a way to launch Chrome with a single Incognito window open without having to open the browser in the normal mode (and load the bazillion tabs I have sitting there)? Sincerely, Tab Crazy That’s a rather clever work around to your problem. Since you’ve already done the hard work of figuring out the solution you need, we’re more than happy to help you across the finish line. The magic you seek is available via what are known as “command line options” which allow you to add additional parameters and switches onto a command.   By appending the command the Chrome shortcut uses, we can easily tell it to launch in Incognito mode. (And, for other readers following along at home, we can do the same thing with other browsers like Firefox). First, let’s look at Chrome’s default shortcut: If you right click on it and select the properties menu, you’ll see where the shortcut points: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" If you run that shortcut, you’ll open up normal browsing mode in Chrome and your saved tabs will all load. What we need to do is use the command line switches available for Chrome and tell it that we want it to launch an Incognito window instead. Doing so is as simple as appending the end of the “Target” box’s command line entry with -incognito, like so: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" -incognito We’d also recommend changing the icon to it’s easy to tell the default Chrome shortcut apart from your new Incognito shortcut. When you’re done, make sure to hit OK/Apply at the button to save the changes. You can recreate the same private-browsing-shortcut effect with other major web browsers too. Repeat shortcut editing steps we highlighted above, but change out the -incognito with -private (for Firefox and Internet Explorer) and -newprivatetab (for Opera). With just a simple command line switch applied, you can now launch a lightweight single browser window for those quick web searches without having to stop your game and load up all your saved tabs. Have a pressing tech question? Email us at [email protected] and we’ll do our best to answer it.

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  • Cloud Backup: Getting the Users' Backs Up

    - by Tony Davis
    On Wednesday last week, Microsoft announced that as of July 1, all data transfers into its Microsoft Azure cloud will be free (though you have to pay for transferring data out). On Thursday last week, SQL Azure in Western Europe went down. It was a relatively short outage, but since SQL Azure currently provides no easy way to take a standard backup of a database and store it locally, many people had no recourse but to wait patiently for their cloud-based app to resume. It seems that Microsoft are very keen encourage developers to move their data onto their cloud, but are developers ready to do it, given that such basic backup capabilities are lacking? Recently on Simple-Talk, Mike Mooney described a perfect use case for the Microsoft Cloud. They had a simple web-based application with a SQL Server backend; they could move the application to Windows Azure, and the data into SQL Azure and in the process free themselves from much of the hassle surrounding management and scaling of the hardware, network and so on. It was a great fit and yet it nearly didn't happen; lack of support for the BACKUP command almost proved a show-stopper. Of course, backups of Azure databases are always and have always been taken automatically, for disaster recovery purposes, but these are strictly on-cloud copies and as of now it is not possible to use them to them to restore a database to a particular point in time. It seems that none of those clever Microsoft people managed to predict the need to perform basic backups of Azure databases so that copies could be stored locally, outside the Azure universe. At the very least, as Mike points out, performing a local backup before a new deployment is more or less mandatory. Microsoft did at least note the sound of gnashing teeth and, as a stop-gap measure, offered SQL Azure Database Copy which basically allows you to create an online clone of your database, but this doesn't allow for storing local archives of the data. To that end MS has provided SQL Azure Import/Export, to package up and export a database and its data, using BACPACs. These BACPACs do not guarantee transactional consistency; for example, if a child table is modified after the parent is copied, then the copied database will be in inconsistent state (meaning, to add to the fun, BACPACs need to be created from a database copy). In any event, widespread problems with BACPAC's evil cousin, the DACPAC have been well-documented, and it seems likely that many will also give BACPAC the bum's rush. Finally, in a TechEd 2011 presentation tagged "SQL Azure Advanced Administration", it was announced that "backup and restore" were coming in the next SQL Azure CTP. And yet this still doesn't mean that we'll get simple backups as DBAs know and love them. What it does mean, at least, is the ability to restore any given database to a point in time within a 2-week window. For the time being, if you want a local copy of your data and don't want to brave the BACPAC, one is left with SSIS or BCP, creative use of schema and data comparison tools, or use of SQL Azure Backup (currently in beta) in order to perform this simple but vital task. Cheers, Tony.

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  • Gartner PCC: A Shovel & Some Ah-Ha's

    - by kellsey.ruppel
    When Gartner Vice President and leading analyst Whit Andrews kicked off the Gartner Portals, Content & Collaboration Summit on Monday, March 12 at the Gaylord Palms in Orlando, FL by bringing a shovel to the stage, eyebrows raised and a few thoughts went through my head. Either this guy plans to go help the construction workers outside construct that new pool at the Gaylord or he took a wrong turn and is at the wrong conference. Oh and how did he get that shovel through airport security? As Whit explained more his objective became more clear…take everything anyone has ever told you about portals and throw it out the window, as portals have evolved and times they are most certainly changing. The future Web is here, available not only on browsers but also via a broad spectrum of access points, including automobiles, consumer electronics and more and more mobile devices. Not merely prevalent, the future Web is also multimedia-driven and operates in real time, driven by mobility, social media, streaming video and other dynamic services. Applications and user experiences are in the midst of an evolution — from the early, simple mobile Web models to today’s Web 2.0 mobile apps and, ultimately, to a world of predominantly Web apps. Additionally, cloud services will forever change how portals and user experience are designed, built, delivered, sourced and managed. So what does this mean for you? Today’s organizations need software that will enable them to not just do their jobs, but to do it in a way that is familiar and easy for them.  What does this mean for IT? Use software and technology as an enabler, not as a roadblock. Overall, we had a great week in Orlando learning about how to improve the user experience, manage content explosion, launch social initiatives, transition to mobile environments and understand cloud and SaaS options.  We had some great conversations throughout the conference and at the Oracle booth. Lots of demonstrations were given of Oracle WebCenter Sites and Oracle Social Network. And as Christie mentioned earlier this week, our Vice President of Product Management and Strategy for WebCenter Loren Weinberg presented on the topic of customer engagement and talked about how organization’s relationships with their customers have fundamentally changed today and the resulting impact that has on their priorities.  Loren also talked about the importance of customer engagement, why that matters now more than ever, and what you can do to help your company or organization succeed in this new world. The question asked in every keynote and session was a simple one: What is your “ah-ha” moment? I personally had quite a few, some of which I’ve captured below. 70% of internal social initiatives eventually fail. By 2014, refusing to communicate with consumers via social media will be as harmful as ignoring emails/phone calls is today. Customer engagement = multi-channel + social & interactive + personal & relevant + optimized. If people choose to talk about your product/company/service, it's because it's remarkable. -- Seth Godin's keynote (one of the highlights of the conference!) The Web will become the primary method used for delivering content and applications to mobile devices. By 2015, 20% of smart phone users worldwide will conduct commerce using context-enriched services on a weekly basis.  86% of customers will pay more for a better customer experience. 6 P's of Quality User Experience. Product. Enabled by: People, Patterns, Process, Profit, Priorities. Did you attend the Gartner Summit? What were your ah-ha moments?

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  • As a person getting into mobile development, what's the best mobile platform in terms of profitability? [closed]

    - by Kyle Loman
    I realize this question can range very far so would love to hear any and all opinions on this. However, I'll be honest and say that I have been thinking of this in terms of most profitable. I know how this may sound either way but this is one of my main sticking points. I realize that I'm not guaranteed a single cent and success is never guaranteed but I'm going into this with the thought of making something out of it both financially and also for my own interest. I know that iOS gets a lot of attention on this front but Android commands a lot more market share. However, I know there are drawbacks to Android too, whether it's in the actual development process and programming (though I've heard conflicting reports on this, such as how easy/difficult it is for to address screen res in different devices) or the app ecosystem being flooded. But iOS's app ecosystem has been described as too saturated and harder to compete in for that reason. Since Windows Phone has fewer apps than both of those two, that might be the best place to start in order to be closer to the ground floor of the store and be noticed more? Less saturation = better chances of sales or differentiating? Something like the gold rush during the first years of the iOS App Store (not exactly but at least in concept)? Would it be that despite fewer users on the platform, there's more exposure due to less competition so that may translate to better success at sales? Plus, I know MS is in it for the long haul so I'm not too fearful of something like WebOS going away. Obviously RIM isn't very popular nowadays but I read a recent article that says Blackberry actually has the apps that make the most money, any thoughts on that: http://gigaom.com/mobile/which-mobile-oss-apps-make-most-money-surprise-its-blackberry/ Again, this is all I've heard or known about so if there's anything to add or correct here, please do. In addition, this has actually affected my next personal phone upgrade. I'm eligible for a carrier discount now and I've had my eye on the iPhone 5. However, the Lumia 920 is the one I'm holding out for and I'm open to trying an Android but I'm not sure I can wait that long for any new Nexus or even the Razr HD. Even the new Lumia in November is making me antsy, I'm so close to just getting an iPhone 5. But when I say this has affected my phone choice, I'd want to be able to carry the apps I write with me so that I'm able to pull my phone out to show people without having to carry around a second device to do so. So that's why I'd like to make my personal phone match the main platform I'm developing for. Of course, I will likely expand to other platforms if I gain any decent success but the one I target now would serve well as my personal phone I carry around so that I can use it as a marketing tool, in a sense, showing people my apps if the opportunity presents itself. So what's the best mobile platform to choose, and especially in regards to most lucrative? As said previously, this would influence my personal phone choice greatly. Thanks in advance and I hope this isn't taken the wrong way - I understand there are trade-offs and other factors that may balance this out but making some revenue is key among that. For some background, I have done software development and know programming language concepts so I'm not entirely new to it and I do get the notion of being familiar with these things so that I can translate this skill among a variety of languages but I'm currently just having difficulty choosing my first main mobile platform based on the criteria I've outlined above.

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