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• Five Ways Enterprise 2.0 Can Transform Your Business - Q&A from the Webcast

  - by [email protected]

  A few weeks ago, Vince Casarez and I presented with KMWorld on the Five Ways Enterprise 2.0 Can Transform Your Business. It was an enjoyable, interactive webcast in which Vince and I discussed the ways Enterprise 2.0 can transform your business and more importantly, highlighted key customer examples of how to do so. If you missed the webcast, you can catch a replay here. We had a lot of audience participation in some of the polls we conducted and in the Q&A session. We weren't able to address all of the questions during the broadcast, so we attempted to answer them here: Q: Which area within your firm focuses on Web 2.0? Meaning, do you find new departments developing just to manage the web 2.0 (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) user experience or are you structuring current departments? A: There are three distinct efforts within Oracle. The first is around delivery of these Web 2.0 services for enterprise deployments. This is the focus of the WebCenter team. The second effort is injecting these Web 2.0 services into use cases that drive the different enterprise applications. This effort is focused on how to manage these external services and bring them into a cohesive flow for marketing programs, customer care, and purchasing. The third effort is how we consume these services internally to enhance Oracle's business delivery. It leverages the technologies and use cases of the first two but also pushes the envelope with regards to future directions of these other two areas. Q: In a business, Web 2.0 is mostly like action logs. How can we leverage the official process practice versus the logs of a recent action? Example: a system configuration modified last night on a call out versus the official practice that everybody would use in the morning.A: The key thing to remember is that most Web 2.0 actions / activity streams today are based on collaboration and communication type actions. At least with public social sites like Facebook and Twitter. What we're delivering as part of the WebCenter Suite are not just these types of activities but also enterprise application activities. These enterprise application activities come from different application modules: purchasing, HR, order entry, sales opportunity, etc. The actions within these systems are normally tied to a business object or process: purchase order/customer, employee or department, customer and supplier, customer and product, respectively. Therefore, the activities or "logs" as you name them are able to be "typed" so that as a viewer, you can filter or decide to see only certain types of information. In your example, you could have a view that only showed you recent "configuration" changes and this could be right next to a view that showed off the items to be watched every morning. Q: It's great to hear about customers using the software but is there any plan for future webinars to show what the products/installs look like? That would be very helpful.A: We don't have a webinar planned to show off the install process. However, we have a viewlet that's posted on Oracle Technology Network. You can see it here:http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/testcontent/wcs-install-098014.htmlAnd we've got excellent documentation that walks you through the steps here:http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E14571_01/install.1111/e12001/install.htmAnd there's a whole set of demos and examples of what WebCenter can do at this URL:http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/webcenter/release11-demos-097468.html Q: How do you anticipate managing metadata across the enterprise to make content findable?A: We need to first make sure we are all talking about the same thing when we use a word like "metadata". Here's why...  For a developer, metadata means information that describes key elements of the portal or application and what the portal or application can do. For content systems, metadata means key terms that provide a taxonomy or folksonomy about the information that is being indexed, ordered, and managed. For business intelligence systems, metadata means key terms that provide labels to groups of data that most non-mathematicians need to understand. And for SOA, metadata means labels for parts of the processes that business owners should understand that connect development terminology. There are also additional requirements for metadata to be available to the team building these new solutions as well as requirements to make this metadata available to the running system. These requirements are often separated by "design time" and "run time" respectively. So clearly, a general goal of managing metadata across the enterprise is very challenging. We've invested a huge amount of resources around Oracle Metadata Services (MDS) to be able to provide a more generic system for all of these elements. No other vendor has anything like this technology foundation in their products. This provides a huge benefit to our customers as they will now be able to find content, processes, people, and information from a common set of search interfaces with consistent enterprise wide results. Q: Can you give your definition of terms as to document and content, please?A: Content applies to a broad category of information from Word documents, presentations and reports through attachments to invoices and/or purchase orders. Content is essentially any type of digital asset including images, video, and voice. A document is just one type of content. Q: Do you have special integration tools to realize an interaction between UCM and WebCenter Spaces/Services?A: Yes, we've dedicated a whole team of engineers to exploit the key features of Oracle UCM within WebCenter.  While ensuring that WebCenter can connect to other non-Oracle systems, we've made sure that with the combined set of Oracle technology, no other solution can match the combined power and integration.  This is part of the Oracle Fusion Middleware strategy which is to provide best in class capabilities for Content and Portals.  When combined together, the synergy between the two products enables users to quickly add capabilities when they are needed.  For example, simple document sharing is part of the combined product offering, but if legal discovery or archiving is required, Oracle UCM product includes these capabilities that can be quickly added.  There's no need to move content around or add another system to support this, it's just a feature that gets turned on within Oracle UCM. Q: All customers have some interaction with their applications and have many older versions, how do you see some of these new Enterprise 2.0 capabilities adding value to existing enterprise application deployments?A: Just as Service Oriented Architectures allowed for connecting the processes of different applications systems to work together, there's a need for a similar approach with regards to these enterprise 2.0 capabilities. Oracle WebCenter is built on a core architecture that allows for SOA of these Enterprise 2.0 services so that one set of scalable services can be used and integrated directly into any type of application. In this way, users can get immediate value out of the Enterprise 2.0 capabilities without having to wait for the next major release or upgrade. These centrally managed WebCenter services expose a set of standard interfaces that make it extremely easy to add them into existing applications no matter what technology the application has been implemented. Q: We've heard about Oracle Next Generation applications called "Fusion Applications", can you tell me how all this works together?A: Oracle WebCenter powers the core collaboration and social computing services found within Fusion Applications. It is the core user experience technology for how all the application screens have been implemented. And the core concept of task flows allows for all the Fusion Applications modules to be adaptable and composable by business users and IT without needing to be a professional developer. Oracle WebCenter is at the heart of the new Fusion Applications. In addition, the same patterns and technologies are now being added to the existing applications including JD Edwards, Siebel, Peoplesoft, and eBusiness Suite. The core technology enables all these customers to have a much smoother upgrade path to Fusion Applications. They get immediate benefits of injecting new user interactions into their existing applications without having to completely move to Fusion Applications. And then when the time comes, their users will already be well versed in how the new capabilities work. Q: Does any of this work with non Oracle software? Other databases? Other application servers? etc.A: We have made sure that Oracle WebCenter delivers the broadest set of development choices so that no matter what technology you developers are using, WebCenter capabilities can be quickly and easily added to the site or application. In addition, we have certified Oracle WebCenter to run against non-Oracle databases like DB2 and SQLServer. We have stated plans for certification against MySQL as well. Later in CY 2011, Oracle will provide certification on non-Oracle application servers such as WebSphere and JBoss. Q: How do we balance User and IT requirements in regards to Enterprise 2.0 technologies?A: Wrong decisions are often made because employee knowledge is not tapped efficiently and opportunities to innovate are often missed because the right people do not work together. Collaboration amongst workers in the right business context is critical for success. While standalone Enterprise 2.0 technologies can improve collaboration for collaboration's sake, using social collaboration tools in the context of business applications and processes will improve business responsiveness and lead companies to a more competitive position. As these systems become more mission critical it is essential that they maintain the highest level of performance and availability while scaling to support larger communities. Q: What are the ways in which Enterprise 2.0 can improve business responsiveness?A: With a wide range of Enterprise 2.0 tools in the marketplace, CIOs need to deploy solutions that will meet the requirements from users as well as address the requirements from IT. Workers want a next-generation user experience that is personalized and aggregates their daily tools and tasks, while IT needs to ensure the solution is secure, scalable, flexible, reliable and easily integrated with existing systems. An open and integrated approach to deploying portals, content management, and collaboration can enhance your business by addressing both the needs of knowledge workers for better information and the IT mandate to conserve resources by simplifying, consolidating and centralizing infrastructure and administration.  

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• Can Microsoft Build Appliances?

  - by andrewbrust

  Billy Hollis, my Visual Studio Live! colleague and fellow Microsoft Regional Director said recently, and I am paraphrasing, that the computing world, especially on the consumer side, has shifted from one of building hardware and software that makes things possible to do, to building products and technologies that make things easy to do.  Billy crystalized things perfectly, as he often does. In this new world of “easy to do,” Apple has done very well and Microsoft has struggled.  In the old world, customers wanted a Swiss Army Knife, with the most gimmicks and gadgets possible.  In the new world, people want elegantly cutlery.  They may want cake cutters and utility knives too, but they don’t want one device that works for all three tasks.  People don’t want tools, they want utensils.  People don’t want machines.  They want appliances. Microsoft Appliances: They Do Exist Microsoft has built a few appliance-like devices.  I would say XBox 360 is an appliance,  It’s versatile, mind you, but it’s the kind of thing you plug in, turn on and use, as opposed to set-up, tune, and open up to upgrade the internals.  Windows Phone 7 is an appliance too.  It’s a true smartphone, unlike Windows Mobile which was a handheld computer with a radio stack.  Zune is an appliance too, and a nice one.  It hasn’t attained much traction in the market, but that’s probably because the seminal consumer computing appliance -- the iPod – got there so much more quickly. In the embedded world, Mediaroom, Microsoft’s set-top product for the cable industry (used by AT&T U-Verse and others) is an appliance.  So is Microsoft’s Sync technology, used in Ford automobiles.  Even on the enterprise side, Microsoft has an appliance: SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse Edition (PDW) combines Microsoft software with select OEMs’ server, networking and storage hardware.  You buy the appliance units from the OEMs, plug them in, connect them and go. I would even say that Bing is an appliance.  Not in the hardware sense, mind you.  But from the software perspective, it’s a single-purpose product that you visit or run, use and then move on.  You don’t have to install it (except the iOS and Android native apps where it’s pretty straightforward), you don’t have to customize it, you don’t have to program it.  Basically, you just use it. Microsoft Appliances that Should Exist But Microsoft builds a bunch of things that are not appliances.  Media Center is not an appliance, and it most certainly should be.  Instead, it’s an app that runs on Windows 7.  It runs full-screen and you can use this configuration to conceal the fact that Windows is under it, but eventually something will cause you to abandon that masquerade (like Patch Tuesday). The next version of Windows Home Server won’t, in my opinion, be an appliance either.  Now that the Drive Extender technology is gone, and users can’t just add and remove drives into and from a single storage pool, the product is much more like a IT server and less like an appliance-premised one.  Much has been written about this decision by Microsoft.  I’ll just sum it up in one word: pity. Microsoft doesn’t have anything remotely appliance-like in the tablet category, either.  Until it does, it likely won’t have much market share in that space either.  And of course, the bulk of Microsoft’s product catalog on the business side is geared to enterprise machines and not personal appliances. Appliance DNA: They Gotta Have It. The consumerization of IT is real, because businesspeople are consumers too.  They appreciate the fit and finish of appliances at home, and they increasingly feel entitled to have it at work too.  Secure and reliable push email in a smartphone is necessary, but it isn’t enough.  People want great apps and a pleasurable user experience too.  The full Microsoft Office product is needed at work, but a PC with a keyboard and mouse, or maybe a touch screen that uses a stylus (or requires really small fingers), to run Office isn’t enough either.  People want a flawless touch experience available for the times they want to read and take quick notes.  Until Microsoft realizes this fully and internalizes it, it will suffer defeats in the consumer market and even setbacks in the business market.  Think about how slow the Office upgrade cycle is…now imagine if the next version of Office had a first-class alternate touch UI and consider the possible acceleration in adoption rates. Can Microsoft make the appliance switch?  Can the appliance mentality become pervasive at the company?  Can Microsoft hasten its release cycles dramatically and shed the “some assembly required” paradigm upon which many of its products are based?  Let’s face it, the chances that Microsoft won’t make this transition are significant. But there are also encouraging signs, and they should not be ignored.  The appliances we have already discussed, especially Xbox, Zune and Windows Phone 7, are the most obvious in this regard.  The fact that SQL Server has an appliance SKU now is a more subtle but perhaps also more significant outcome, because that product sits so smack in the middle of Microsoft’s enterprise stack.  Bing is encouraging too, especially given its integrated travel, maps and augmented reality capabilities.  As Bing gains market share, Microsoft has tangible proof that it can transform and win, even when everyone outside the company, and many within it, would bet otherwise. That Great Big Appliance in the Sky Perhaps the most promising (and evolving) proof points toward the appliance mentality, though, are Microsoft’s cloud offerings -- Azure and BPOS/Office 365.  While the cloud does not represent a physical appliance (quite the opposite in fact) its ability to make acquisition, deployment and use of technology simple for the user is absolutely an embodiment of the appliance mentality and spirit.  Azure is primarily a platform as a service offering; it doesn’t just provide infrastructure.  SQL Azure does likewise for databases.  And Office 365 does likewise for SharePoint, Exchange and Lync. You don’t administer, tune and manage servers; instead, you create databases or site collections or mailboxes and start using them. Upgrades come automatically, and it seems like releases will come more frequently.  Fault tolerance and content distribution is just there.  No muss.  No fuss.  You use these services; you don’t have to set them up and think about them.  That’s how appliances work.  To me, these signs point out that Microsoft has the full capability of transforming itself.  But there’s a lot of work ahead.  Microsoft may say they’re “all in” on the cloud, but the majority of the company is still oriented around its old products and models.  There needs to be a wholesale cultural transformation in Redmond.  It can happen, but product management, program management, the field and executive ranks must unify in the effort. So must partners, and even customers.  New leaders must rise up and Microsoft must be able to see itself as a winner.  If Microsoft does this, it could lock-in decades of new success, and be a standard business school case study for doing so.  If not, the company will have missed an opportunity, and may see its undoing.

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• Get Information to Your Blog with Microsoft Broadcaster

  - by Matthew Guay

  Do you often have people ask you for advice about technology, or do you write tech-focused blog or newsletter?  Here’s how you can get information to share with your readers about Microsoft technology with Microsoft Broadcaster. Microsoft Broadcaster is a new service from Microsoft to help publishers, bloggers, developers, and other IT professionals find relevant information and resources from Microsoft.  You can use it to help discover things to write about, or simply discover new information about the technology you use.  Broadcaster will also notify you when new resources are available about the topics that interest you.  Let’s look at how you could use this to expand your blog and help your users. Getting Started Head over to the Microsoft Broadcaster site (link below), and click Join to get started. Sign in with your Windows Live ID, or create a new account if you don’t already have one. Near the bottom of the page, add information about your blog, newsletter, or group that you want to share Broadcaster information with.  Click Add when you’re done entering information.  You can enter as many sites or groups as you wish. When you’ve entered all of your information, click the Apply button at the bottom of the page.  Broadcaster will then let you know your information has been submitted, but you’ll need to wait several days to see if you are approved or not. Our application was approved about 2 days after applying, though this may vary.  When you’re approved, you’ll receive an email letting you know.  Return to the Broadcaster website (link below), but this time, click Sign in. Accept the terms of use by clicking I Accept at the bottom of the page. Confirm that your information entered previously is correct, and then click Configure my keywords at the bottom of the page. Now you can pick the topics you want to stay informed about.  Type keywords in the textbox, and it will bring up relevant topics with IntelliSense. Here we’ve added several topics to keep up with. Next select the Microsoft Products you want to keep track of.  If the product you want to keep track of is not listed, make sure to list it in the keywords section as above. Finally, select the types of content you wish to see, including articles, eBooks, webcasts, and more. Finally, when everything’s entered, click Configure My Alerts at the bottom of the page. Broadcaster can automatically email you when new content is found.  If you would like this, click Subscribe.  Otherwise, simply click Access Dashboard to go ahead and find your personalized content. If you choose to receive emails of new content, you’ll have to configure it with Windows Live Alerts.  Click Continue to set this up. Select if you want to receive Messenger alerts, emails, and/or text messages when new content is available.  Click Save when you’re finished. Finally, select how often you want to be notified, and then click Access Dashboard to view the content currently available. Finding Content For Your Blog, Site, or Group Now you can find content specified for your interests from the dashboard.  To access the dashboard in the future, simply go to the Broadcaster site and click Sign In. Here you can see available content, and can search for different topics or customize the topics shown. You’ll see snippets of information from various Microsoft videos, articles, whitepapers, eBooks, and more, depending on your settings.  Click the link at the top of the snippet to view the content, or right-click and copy the link to use in emails or on social networks like Twitter. If you’d like to add this snippet to your website or blog, click the Download content link at the bottom.   Now you can preview what the snippet will look like on your site, and change the width or height to fit your site.  You can view and edit the source code of the snippet from the box at the bottom, and then copy it to use on your site. Copy the code, and paste it in the HTML of a blog post, email, webpage, or anywhere else you wish to share it.  Here we’re pasting it into the HTML editor in Windows Live Writer so we can post it to a blog. After adding a title and opening paragraph, we have a nice blog post that only took a few minutes to put together but should still be useful for our readers.  You can check out the blog post we created at the link below. Readers can click on the links, which will direct them to the content on Microsoft’s websites. Conclusion If you frequently need to find educational and informative content about Microsoft products and services, Broadcaster can be a great service to keep you up to date.  The service worked quite good in our tests, and generally found relevant content to our keywords.  We had difficulty embedding links to eBooks that were listed by Broadcaster, but everything else worked for us.  Now you can always have high quality content to help your customers, coworkers, friends, and more, and you just might find something that will help you, too! Link Microsoft Broadcaster (registration required) Example Post at Techinch.com with Content from Microsoft Broadcaster Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Create An Electronic Business Card In Outlook 2007Mysticgeek Blog: A Look at Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 on Windows XPAnnouncing the How-To Geek BlogsNew Vista Syntax for Opening Control Panel Items from the Command-lineHow To Create and Publish Blog Posts in Word 2010 & 2007 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips HippoRemote Pro 2.2 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Fix Common Inkjet Printer Errors Dual Boot Ubuntu and Windows 7 What is HTML5? 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• New Features and Changes in OIM11gR2

  - by Abhishek Tripathi

  WEB CONSOLEs in OIM 11gR2 ** In 11gR1 there were 3 Admin Web Consoles : ·         Self Service Console ·         Administration Console and ·         Advanced Administration Console accessible Whereas in OIM 11gR2 , Self Service and Administration Console have are now combined and now called as Identity Self Service Console http://host:port/identity  This console has 3 features in it for managing self profile (My Profile), Managing Requests like requesting for App Instances and Approving requests (Requests) and General Administration tasks of creating/managing users, roles, organization, attestation etc (Administration) ** In OIM 11gR2 – new console sysadmin has been added Administrators which includes some of the design console functions apart from general administrations features. http://host:port/sysadmin   Application Instances Application instance is the object that is to be provisioned to a user. Application Instances are checked out in the catalog and user can request for application instances via catalog. ·         In OIM 11gR2 resources and entitlements are bundled in Application Instance which user can select and request from catalog.  ·         Application instance is a combination of IT Resource and RO. So, you cannot create another App Instance with the same RO & IT Resource if it already exists for some other App Instance. One of these ( RO or IT Resource) must have a different name. ·         If you want that users of a particular Organization should be able to request for an Application instances through catalog then App Instances must be attached to that particular Organization. ·         Application instance can be associated with multiple organizations. ·         An application instance can also have entitlements associated with it. Entitlement can include Roles/Groups or Responsibility. ·         Application Instance are published to the catalog by a scheduled task “Catalog Synchronization Job” ·         Application Instance can have child/ parent application instance where child application instance inherits all attributes of parent application instance. Important point to remember with Application Instance If you delete the application Instance in OIM 11gR2 and create a new one with the same name, OIM will not allow doing so. It throws error saying Application Instance already exists with same Resource Object and IT resource. This is because there is still some reference that is not removed in OIM for deleted application Instance.  So to completely delete your application Instance from OIM, you must: 1. Delete the app Instance from sysadmin console. 2. Run the App Instance Post Delete Processing Job in Revoke/Delete mode. 3. Run the Catalog Synchronization job. Once done, you should be able to create a new App instance with the previous RO & IT Resouce name.   Catalog  Catalog allows users to request Roles, Application Instance, and Entitlements in an Application. Catalog Items – Roles, Application Instance and Entitlements that can be requested via catalog are called as catalog items. Detailed Information ( attributes of Catalog item)  Category – Each catalog item is associated with one and only one category. Catalog Administrators can provide a value for catalog item. ·         Tags – are search keywords helpful in searching Catalog. When users search the Catalog, the search is performed against the tags. To define a tag, go to Catalog->Search the resource-> select the resource-> update the tag field with custom search keyword. Tags are of three types: a) Auto-generated Tags: The Catalog synchronization process auto-tags the Catalog Item using the Item Type, Item Name and Item Display Name b) User-defined Tags: User-defined Tags are additional keywords entered by the Catalog Administrator. c) Arbitrary Tags: While defining a metadata if user has marked that metadata as searchable, then that will also be part of tags.   Sandbox  Sanbox is a new feature introduced in OIM11gR2. This serves as a temporary development environment for UI customizations so that they don’t affect other users before they are published and linked to existing OIM UI. All UI customizations should be done inside a sandbox, this ensures that your changes/modifications don’t affect other users until you have finalized the changes and customization is complete. Once UI customization is completed, the Sandbox must be published for the customizations to be merged into existing UI and available to other users. Creating and activating a sandbox is mandatory for customizing the UI by .Without an active sandbox, OIM does not allow to customize any page. a)      Before you perform any activity in OIM (like Create/Modify Forms, Custom Attribute, creating application instances, adding roles/attributes to catalog) you must create a Sand Box and activate it. b)      One can create multiple sandboxes in OIM but only one sandbox can be active at any given time. c)      You can export/import the sandbox to move the changes from one environment to the other. Creating Sandbox To create sandbox, login to identity manager self service (/identity) or System Administration (/sysadmin) and click on top right of link “Sandboxes” and then click on Create SandBox. Publishing Sandbox Before you publish a sandbox, it is recommended to backup MDS. Use /EM to backup MDS by following the steps below : Creating MDS Backup 1.      Login to Oracle Enterprise Manager as the administrator. 2.      On the landing page, click oracle.iam.console.identity.self-service.ear(V2.0). 3.      From the Application Deployment menu at the top, select MDS configuration. 4.      Under Export, select the Export metadata documents to an archive on the machine where this web browser is running option, and then click Export. All the metadata is exported in a ZIP file.   Creating Password Policy through Admin Console : In 11gR1 and previous versions password policies could be created & applied via OIM Design Console only. From OIM11gR2 onwards, Password Policies can be created and assigned using Admin Console as well.  

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• PowerShell Script to Enumerate SharePoint 2010 or 2013 Permissions and Active Directory Group Membership

  - by Brian T. Jackett

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/bjackett/archive/2013/07/01/powershell-script-to-enumerate-sharepoint-2010-or-2013-permissions-and.aspx   In this post I will present a script to enumerate SharePoint 2010 or 2013 permissions across the entire farm down to the site (SPWeb) level.  As a bonus this script also recursively expands the membership of any Active Directory (AD) group including nested groups which you wouldn’t be able to find through the SharePoint UI.   History     Back in 2009 (over 4 years ago now) I published one my most read blog posts about enumerating SharePoint 2007 permissions.  I finally got around to updating that script to remove deprecated APIs, supporting the SharePoint 2010 commandlets, and fixing a few bugs.  There are 2 things that script did that I had to remove due to major architectural or procedural changes in the script. Indenting the XML output Ability to search for a specific user    I plan to add back the ability to search for a specific user but wanted to get this version published first.  As for indenting the XML that could be added but would take some effort.  If there is user demand for it (let me know in the comments or email me using the contact button at top of blog) I’ll move it up in priorities.    As a side note you may also notice that I’m not using the Active Directory commandlets.  This was a conscious decision since not all environments have them available.  Instead I’m relying on the older [ADSI] type accelerator and APIs.  It does add a significant amount of code to the script but it is necessary for compatibility.  Hopefully in a few years if I need to update again I can remove that legacy code.   Solution    Below is the script to enumerate SharePoint 2010 and 2013 permissions down to site level.  You can also download it from my SkyDrive account or my posting on the TechNet Script Center Repository. SkyDrive TechNet Script Center Repository http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/Enumerate-SharePoint-2010-35976bdb   001 002 003 004 005 006 007 008 009 010 011 012 013 014 015 016 017 018 019 020 021 022 023 024 025 026 027 028 029 030 031 032 033 034 035 036 037 038 039 040 041 042 043 044 045 046 047 048 049 050 051 052 053 054 055 056 057 058 059 060 061 062 063 064 065 066 067 068 069 070 071 072 073 074 075 076 077 078 079 080 081 082 083 084 085 086 087 088 089 090 091 092 093 094 095 096 097 098 099 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 ########################################################### #DisplaySPWebApp8.ps1 # #Author: Brian T. Jackett #Last Modified Date: 2013-07-01 # #Traverse the entire web app site by site to display # hierarchy and users with permissions to site. ########################################################### function Expand-ADGroupMembership {     Param     (         [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,                    Position=0)]         [string]         $ADGroupName,         [Parameter(Position=1)]         [string]         $RoleBinding     )     Process     {         $roleBindingText = ""         if(-not [string]::IsNullOrEmpty($RoleBinding))         {             $roleBindingText = " RoleBindings=`"$roleBindings`""         }         Write-Output "<ADGroup Name=`"$($ADGroupName)`"$roleBindingText>"         $domain = $ADGroupName.substring(0, $ADGroupName.IndexOf("\") + 1)         $groupName = $ADGroupName.Remove(0, $ADGroupName.IndexOf("\") + 1)                                     #BEGIN - CODE ADAPTED FROM SCRIPT CENTER SAMPLE CODE REPOSITORY         #http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/scripts/powershell/search/users/srch106.mspx         #GET AD GROUP FROM DIRECTORY SERVICES SEARCH         $strFilter = "(&(objectCategory=Group)(name="+($groupName)+"))"         $objDomain = New-Object System.DirectoryServices.DirectoryEntry         $objSearcher = New-Object System.DirectoryServices.DirectorySearcher         $objSearcher.SearchRoot = $objDomain         $objSearcher.Filter = $strFilter         # specify properties to be returned         $colProplist = ("name","member","objectclass")         foreach ($i in $colPropList)         {             $catcher = $objSearcher.PropertiesToLoad.Add($i)         }         $colResults = $objSearcher.FindAll()         #END - CODE ADAPTED FROM SCRIPT CENTER SAMPLE CODE REPOSITORY         foreach ($objResult in $colResults)         {             if($objResult.Properties["Member"] -ne $null)             {                 foreach ($member in $objResult.Properties["Member"])                 {                     $indMember = [adsi] "LDAP://$member"                     $fullMemberName = $domain + ($indMember.Name)                                         #if($indMember["objectclass"]                         # if child AD group continue down chain                         if(($indMember | Select-Object -ExpandProperty objectclass) -contains "group")                         {                             Expand-ADGroupMembership -ADGroupName $fullMemberName                         }                         elseif(($indMember | Select-Object -ExpandProperty objectclass) -contains "user")                         {                             Write-Output "<ADUser>$fullMemberName</ADUser>"                         }                 }             }         }                 Write-Output "</ADGroup>"     } } #end Expand-ADGroupMembership # main portion of script if((Get-PSSnapin -Name microsoft.sharepoint.powershell) -eq $null) {     Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell } $farm = Get-SPFarm Write-Output "<Farm Guid=`"$($farm.Id)`">" $webApps = Get-SPWebApplication foreach($webApp in $webApps) {     Write-Output "<WebApplication URL=`"$($webApp.URL)`" Name=`"$($webApp.Name)`">"     foreach($site in $webApp.Sites)     {         Write-Output "<SiteCollection URL=`"$($site.URL)`">"                 foreach($web in $site.AllWebs)         {             Write-Output "<Site URL=`"$($web.URL)`">"             # if site inherits permissions from parent then stop processing             if($web.HasUniqueRoleAssignments -eq $false)             {                 Write-Output "<!-- Inherits role assignments from parent -->"             }             # else site has unique permissions             else             {                 foreach($assignment in $web.RoleAssignments)                 {                     if(-not [string]::IsNullOrEmpty($assignment.Member.Xml))                     {                         $roleBindings = ($assignment.RoleDefinitionBindings | Select-Object -ExpandProperty name) -join ","                         # check if assignment is SharePoint Group                         if($assignment.Member.XML.StartsWith('<Group') -eq "True")                         {                             Write-Output "<SPGroup Name=`"$($assignment.Member.Name)`" RoleBindings=`"$roleBindings`">"                             foreach($SPGroupMember in $assignment.Member.Users)                             {                                 # if SharePoint group member is an AD Group                                 if($SPGroupMember.IsDomainGroup)                                 {                                     Expand-ADGroupMembership -ADGroupName $SPGroupMember.Name                                 }                                 # else SharePoint group member is an AD User                                 else                                 {                                     # remove claim portion of user login                                     #Write-Output "<ADUser>$($SPGroupMember.UserLogin.Remove(0,$SPGroupMember.UserLogin.IndexOf("|") + 1))</ADUser>"                                     Write-Output "<ADUser>$($SPGroupMember.UserLogin)</ADUser>"                                 }                             }                             Write-Output "</SPGroup>"                         }                         # else an indivdually listed AD group or user                         else                         {                             if($assignment.Member.IsDomainGroup)                             {                                 Expand-ADGroupMembership -ADGroupName $assignment.Member.Name -RoleBinding $roleBindings                             }                             else                             {                                 # remove claim portion of user login                                 #Write-Output "<ADUser>$($assignment.Member.UserLogin.Remove(0,$assignment.Member.UserLogin.IndexOf("|") + 1))</ADUser>"                                                                 Write-Output "<ADUser RoleBindings=`"$roleBindings`">$($assignment.Member.UserLogin)</ADUser>"                             }                         }                     }                 }             }             Write-Output "</Site>"             $web.Dispose()         }         Write-Output "</SiteCollection>"         $site.Dispose()     }     Write-Output "</WebApplication>" } Write-Output "</Farm>"      The output from the script can be sent to an XML which you can then explore using the [XML] type accelerator.  This lets you explore the XML structure however you see fit.  See the screenshot below for an example.      If you do view the XML output through a text editor (Notepad++ for me) notice the format.  Below we see a SharePoint site that has a SharePoint group Demo Members with Edit permissions assigned.  Demo Members has an AD group corp\developers as a member.  corp\developers has a child AD group called corp\DevelopersSub with 1 AD user in that sub group.  As you can see the script recursively expands the AD hierarchy.   Conclusion    It took me 4 years to finally update this script but I‘m happy to get this published.  I was able to fix a number of errors and smooth out some rough edges.  I plan to develop this into a more full fledged tool over the next year with more features and flexibility (copy permissions, search for individual user or group, optional enumerate lists / items, etc.).  If you have any feedback, feature requests, or issues running it please let me know.  Enjoy the script!         -Frog Out

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• Dell Studio 1737 Overheating

  - by Sean

  I am using a Dell Studio 1737 laptop. I have been running Linux and have ran Windows recently for a very long time. I upgraded to the 10.10 distribution and since that distro, it seems that for some reason all Linuxes want to push my laptop to extremes. I have recently upgraded to Ubuntu 12.04 since I heart that it contains kernel fixes for overheating issues. 12.04 will actually eventually cool the system, but that is after the fans run to the point it sounds like a jet aircraft taking off and the laptop makes my hands sweat. In trying to combat the heat problems I have done the following: I installed the propriatery driver for my ATI Mobility HD 3600. I have tried both the one in the Additional Drivers and also tried ATI's latest greatest version. If I don't install this my laptop will overheat and shut off in minutes. Both seem to perform similarly, but the heat problem remains. I have tried limiting the CPU by installing the CPUFreq Indicator. This does help keep the machine from shutting off, but the heat is still uncomfortable to be around the machine. I usually run in power saver mode or run the cpu at 1.6 GHZ just to error on safety. I ran sensors-detect and here are the results: sean@sean-Studio-1737:~$ sudo sensors-detect # sensors-detect revision 5984 (2011-07-10 21:22:53 +0200) # System: Dell Inc. Studio 1737 (laptop) # Board: Dell Inc. 0F237N This program will help you determine which kernel modules you need to load to use lm_sensors most effectively. It is generally safe and recommended to accept the default answers to all questions, unless you know what you're doing. Some south bridges, CPUs or memory controllers contain embedded sensors. Do you want to scan for them? This is totally safe. (YES/no): y Module cpuid loaded successfully. Silicon Integrated Systems SIS5595... No VIA VT82C686 Integrated Sensors... No VIA VT8231 Integrated Sensors... No AMD K8 thermal sensors... No AMD Family 10h thermal sensors... No AMD Family 11h thermal sensors... No AMD Family 12h and 14h thermal sensors... No AMD Family 15h thermal sensors... No AMD Family 15h power sensors... No Intel digital thermal sensor... Success! (driver `coretemp') Intel AMB FB-DIMM thermal sensor... No VIA C7 thermal sensor... No VIA Nano thermal sensor... No Some Super I/O chips contain embedded sensors. We have to write to standard I/O ports to probe them. This is usually safe. Do you want to scan for Super I/O sensors? (YES/no): y Probing for Super-I/O at 0x2e/0x2f Trying family `National Semiconductor/ITE'... No Trying family `SMSC'... No Trying family `VIA/Winbond/Nuvoton/Fintek'... No Trying family `ITE'... No Probing for Super-I/O at 0x4e/0x4f Trying family `National Semiconductor/ITE'... Yes Found `ITE IT8512E/F/G Super IO' (but not activated) Some hardware monitoring chips are accessible through the ISA I/O ports. We have to write to arbitrary I/O ports to probe them. This is usually safe though. Yes, you do have ISA I/O ports even if you do not have any ISA slots! Do you want to scan the ISA I/O ports? (YES/no): y Probing for `National Semiconductor LM78' at 0x290... No Probing for `National Semiconductor LM79' at 0x290... No Probing for `Winbond W83781D' at 0x290... No Probing for `Winbond W83782D' at 0x290... No Lastly, we can probe the I2C/SMBus adapters for connected hardware monitoring devices. This is the most risky part, and while it works reasonably well on most systems, it has been reported to cause trouble on some systems. Do you want to probe the I2C/SMBus adapters now? (YES/no): y Using driver `i2c-i801' for device 0000:00:1f.3: Intel ICH9 Module i2c-i801 loaded successfully. Module i2c-dev loaded successfully. Now follows a summary of the probes I have just done. Just press ENTER to continue: Driver `coretemp': * Chip `Intel digital thermal sensor' (confidence: 9) To load everything that is needed, add this to /etc/modules: #----cut here---- # Chip drivers coretemp #----cut here---- If you have some drivers built into your kernel, the list above will contain too many modules. Skip the appropriate ones! Do you want to add these lines automatically to /etc/modules? (yes/NO)y Successful! Monitoring programs won't work until the needed modules are loaded. You may want to run 'service module-init-tools start' to load them. Unloading i2c-dev... OK Unloading i2c-i801... OK Unloading cpuid... OK sean@sean-Studio-1737:~$ sudo service module-init-tools start module-init-tools stop/waiting I also tried installing i8k but that didn't work since it didn't seem to be able to communicate with the hardware (probably for different kind of device). Also I ran acpi -V and here are the results: Battery 0: Full, 100% Battery 0: design capacity 613 mAh, last full capacity 260 mAh = 42% Adapter 0: on-line Thermal 0: ok, 49.0 degrees C Thermal 0: trip point 0 switches to mode critical at temperature 100.0 degrees C Thermal 1: ok, 48.0 degrees C Thermal 1: trip point 0 switches to mode critical at temperature 100.0 degrees C Thermal 2: ok, 51.0 degrees C Thermal 2: trip point 0 switches to mode critical at temperature 100.0 degrees C Cooling 0: LCD 0 of 15 Cooling 1: Processor 0 of 10 Cooling 2: Processor 0 of 10 I have hit a wall and don't know what to do now. Any advice is appreciated.

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• SQL SERVER – SSIS Look Up Component – Cache Mode – Notes from the Field #028

  - by Pinal Dave

  [Notes from Pinal]: Lots of people think that SSIS is all about arranging various operations together in one logical flow. Well, the understanding is absolutely correct, but the implementation of the same is not as easy as it seems. Similarly most of the people think lookup component is just component which does look up for additional information and does not pay much attention to it. Due to the same reason they do not pay attention to the same and eventually get very bad performance. Linchpin People are database coaches and wellness experts for a data driven world. In this 28th episode of the Notes from the Fields series database expert Tim Mitchell (partner at Linchpin People) shares very interesting conversation related to how to write a good lookup component with Cache Mode. In SQL Server Integration Services, the lookup component is one of the most frequently used tools for data validation and completion.  The lookup component is provided as a means to virtually join one set of data to another to validate and/or retrieve missing values.  Properly configured, it is reliable and reasonably fast. Among the many settings available on the lookup component, one of the most critical is the cache mode.  This selection will determine whether and how the distinct lookup values are cached during package execution.  It is critical to know how cache modes affect the result of the lookup and the performance of the package, as choosing the wrong setting can lead to poorly performing packages, and in some cases, incorrect results. Full Cache The full cache mode setting is the default cache mode selection in the SSIS lookup transformation.  Like the name implies, full cache mode will cause the lookup transformation to retrieve and store in SSIS cache the entire set of data from the specified lookup location.  As a result, the data flow in which the lookup transformation resides will not start processing any data buffers until all of the rows from the lookup query have been cached in SSIS. The most commonly used cache mode is the full cache setting, and for good reason.  The full cache setting has the most practical applications, and should be considered the go-to cache setting when dealing with an untested set of data. With a moderately sized set of reference data, a lookup transformation using full cache mode usually performs well.  Full cache mode does not require multiple round trips to the database, since the entire reference result set is cached prior to data flow execution. There are a few potential gotchas to be aware of when using full cache mode.  First, you can see some performance issues – memory pressure in particular – when using full cache mode against large sets of reference data.  If the table you use for the lookup is very large (either deep or wide, or perhaps both), there’s going to be a performance cost associated with retrieving and caching all of that data.  Also, keep in mind that when doing a lookup on character data, full cache mode will always do a case-sensitive (and in some cases, space-sensitive) string comparison even if your database is set to a case-insensitive collation.  This is because the in-memory lookup uses a .NET string comparison (which is case- and space-sensitive) as opposed to a database string comparison (which may be case sensitive, depending on collation).  There’s a relatively easy workaround in which you can use the UPPER() or LOWER() function in the pipeline data and the reference data to ensure that case differences do not impact the success of your lookup operation.  Again, neither of these present a reason to avoid full cache mode, but should be used to determine whether full cache mode should be used in a given situation. Full cache mode is ideally useful when one or all of the following conditions exist: The size of the reference data set is small to moderately sized The size of the pipeline data set (the data you are comparing to the lookup table) is large, is unknown at design time, or is unpredictable Each distinct key value(s) in the pipeline data set is expected to be found multiple times in that set of data Partial Cache When using the partial cache setting, lookup values will still be cached, but only as each distinct value is encountered in the data flow.  Initially, each distinct value will be retrieved individually from the specified source, and then cached.  To be clear, this is a row-by-row lookup for each distinct key value(s). This is a less frequently used cache setting because it addresses a narrower set of scenarios.  Because each distinct key value(s) combination requires a relational round trip to the lookup source, performance can be an issue, especially with a large pipeline data set to be compared to the lookup data set.  If you have, for example, a million records from your pipeline data source, you have the potential for doing a million lookup queries against your lookup data source (depending on the number of distinct values in the key column(s)).  Therefore, one has to be keenly aware of the expected row count and value distribution of the pipeline data to safely use partial cache mode. Using partial cache mode is ideally suited for the conditions below: The size of the data in the pipeline (more specifically, the number of distinct key column) is relatively small The size of the lookup data is too large to effectively store in cache The lookup source is well indexed to allow for fast retrieval of row-by-row values No Cache As you might guess, selecting no cache mode will not add any values to the lookup cache in SSIS.  As a result, every single row in the pipeline data set will require a query against the lookup source.  Since no data is cached, it is possible to save a small amount of overhead in SSIS memory in cases where key values are not reused.  In the real world, I don’t see a lot of use of the no cache setting, but I can imagine some edge cases where it might be useful. As such, it’s critical to know your data before choosing this option.  Obviously, performance will be an issue with anything other than small sets of data, as the no cache setting requires row-by-row processing of all of the data in the pipeline. I would recommend considering the no cache mode only when all of the below conditions are true: The reference data set is too large to reasonably be loaded into SSIS memory The pipeline data set is small and is not expected to grow There are expected to be very few or no duplicates of the key values(s) in the pipeline data set (i.e., there would be no benefit from caching these values) Conclusion The cache mode, an often-overlooked setting on the SSIS lookup component, represents an important design decision in your SSIS data flow.  Choosing the right lookup cache mode directly impacts the fidelity of your results and the performance of package execution.  Know how this selection impacts your ETL loads, and you’ll end up with more reliable, faster packages. If you want me to take a look at your server and its settings, or if your server is facing any issue we can Fix Your SQL Server. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: Notes from the Field, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: SSIS

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• The Birth of a Method - Where did OUM come from?

  - by user702549

  It seemed fitting to start this blog entry with the OUM vision statement. The vision for the Oracle® Unified Method (OUM) is to support the entire Enterprise IT lifecycle, including support for the successful implementation of every Oracle product.  Well, it’s that time of year again; we just finished testing and packaging OUM 5.6.  It will be released for general availability to qualifying customers and partners this month.  Because of this, I’ve been reflecting back on how the birth of Oracle’s Unified method - OUM came about. As the Release Director of OUM, I’ve been honored to package every method release.  No, maybe you’d say it’s not so special.  Of course, anyone can use packaging software to create an .exe file.  But to me, it is pretty special, because so many people work together to make each release come about.  The rich content that results is what makes OUM’s history worth talking about.   To me, professionally speaking, working on OUM, well it’s been “a labor of love”.  My youngest child was just 8 years old when OUM was born, and she’s now in High School!  Watching her grow and change has been fascinating, if you ask her, she’s grown up hearing about OUM.  My son would often walk into my home office and ask “How is OUM today, Mom?”  I am one of many people that take care of OUM, and have watched the method “mature” over these last 6 years.  Maybe that makes me a "Method Mom" (someone in one of my classes last year actually said this outloud) but there are so many others who collaborate and care about OUM Development. I’ve thought about writing this blog entry for a long time just to reflect on how far the Method has come. Each release, as I prepare the OUM Contributors list, I see how many people’s experience and ideas it has taken to create this wealth of knowledge, process and task guidance as well as templates and examples.  If you’re wondering how many people, just go into OUM select the resources button on the top of most pages of the method, and on that resources page click the ABOUT link. So now back to my nostalgic moment as I finished release 5.6 packaging.  I reflected back, on all the things that happened that cause OUM to become not just a dream but to actually come to fruition.  Here are some key conditions that make it possible for each release of the method: A vision to have one method instead of many methods, thereby focusing on deeper, richer content People within Oracle’s consulting Organization  willing to contribute to OUM providing Subject Matter Experts who are willing to write down and share what they know. Oracle’s continued acquisition of software companies, the need to assimilate high quality existing materials from these companies The need to bring together people from very different backgrounds and provide a common language to support Oracle Product implementations that often involve multiple product families What came first, and then what was the strategy? Initially OUM 4.0 was based on Oracle’s J2EE Custom Development Method (JCDM), it was a good “backbone”  (work breakdown structure) it was Unified Process based, and had good content around UML as well as custom software development.  But it needed to be extended in order to achieve the OUM Vision. What happened after that was to take in the “best of the best”, the legacy and acquired methods were scheduled for assimilation into OUM, one release after another.  We incrementally built OUM.  We didn’t want to lose any of the expertise that was reflected in AIM (Oracle’s legacy Application Implementation Method), Compass (People Soft’s Application implementation method) and so many more. When was OUM born? OUM 4.1 published April 30, 2006.  This release allowed Oracles Advanced Technology groups to begin the very first implementations of Fusion Middleware.  In the early days of the Method we would prepare several releases a year.  Our iterative release development cycle began and continues to be refined with each Method release.  Now we typically see one major release each year. The OUM release development cycle is not unlike many Oracle Implementation projects in that we need to gather requirements, prioritize, prepare the content, test package and then go production.  Typically we develop an OUM release MoSCoW (must have, should have, could have, and won’t have) right after the prior release goes out.   These are the high level requirements.  We break the timeframe into increments, frequent checkpoints that help us assess the content and progress is measured through frequent checkpoints.  We work as a team to prioritize what should be done in each increment. Yes, the team provides the estimates for what can be done within a particular increment.  We sometimes have Method Development workshops (physically or virtually) to accelerate content development on a particular subject area, that is where the best content results. As the written content nears the final stages, it goes through edit and evaluation through peer reviews, and then moves into the release staging environment.  Then content freeze and testing of the method pack take place.  This iterative cycle is run using the OUM artifacts that make sense “fit for purpose”, project plans, MoSCoW lists, Test plans are just a few of the OUM work products we use on a Method Release project. In 2007 OUM 4.3, 4.4 and 4.5 were published.  With the release of 4.5 our Custom BI Method (Data Warehouse Method FastTrack) was assimilated into OUM.  These early releases helped us align Oracle’s Unified method with other industry standards Then in 2008 we made significant changes to the OUM “Backbone” to support Applications Implementation projects with that went to the OUM 5.0 release.  Now things started to get really interesting.  Next we had some major developments in the Envision focus area in the area of Enterprise Architecture.  We acquired some really great content from the former BEA, Liquid Enterprise Method (LEM) along with some SMEs who were willing to work at bringing this content into OUM.  The Service Oriented Architecture content in OUM is extensive and can help support the successful implementation of Fusion Middleware, as well as Fusion Applications. Of course we’ve developed a wealth of OUM training materials that work also helps to improve the method content.  It is one thing to write “how to”, and quite another to be able to teach people how to use the materials to improve the success of their projects.  I’ve learned so much by teaching people how to use OUM. What's next? So here toward the end of 2012, what’s in store in OUM 5.6, well, I’m sure you won’t be surprised the answer is Cloud Computing.   More details to come in the next couple of weeks!  The best part of being involved in the development of OUM is to see how many people have “adopted” OUM over these six years, Clients, Partners, and Oracle Consultants.  The content just gets better with each release.   I’d love to hear your comments on how OUM has evolved, and ideas for new content you’d like to see in the upcoming releases.

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• The Internet of Things Is Really the Internet of People

  - by HCM-Oracle

  By Mark Hurd - Originally Posted on LinkedIn As I speak with CEOs around the world, our conversations invariably come down to this central question: Can we change our corporate cultures and the ways we train and reward our people as rapidly as new technology is changing the work we do, the products we make and how we engage with customers? It’s a critical consideration given today’s pace of disruption, which already is straining traditional management models and HR strategies. Winning companies will bring innovation and vision to their employees and partners by attracting people who will thrive in this emerging world of relentless data, predictive analytics and unlimited what-if scenarios. So, where are we going to find employees who are as familiar with complex data as I am with orderly financial statements and business plans? I’m not just talking about high-end data scientists who most certainly will sit at or near the top of the new decision-making pyramid. Global organizations will need creative and motivated people who will devote their time to manipulating, reviewing, analyzing, sorting and reshaping data to drive business and delight customers. This might seem evident, but my conversations with business people across the globe indicate that only a small number of companies get it. In the past few years, executives have been busy keeping pace with seismic upheavals, including the rise of social customer engagement, the rapid acceleration of product-development cycles and the relentless move to mobile-first. But all of that, I think, is the start of an uphill climb to the top of a roller-coaster. Today, about 10 billion devices across the globe are connected to the Internet. In a couple of years, that number will probably double, and not because we will have bought 10 billion more computers, smart phones and tablets. This unprecedented explosion of Big Data is being triggered by the Internet of Things, which is another way of saying that the numerous intelligent devices touching our everyday lives are all becoming interconnected. Home appliances, food, industrial equipment, pets, pharmaceutical products, pallets, cars, luggage, packaged goods, athletic equipment, even clothing will be streaming data. Some data will provide important information about how to run our businesses and lead healthier lives. Much of it will be extraneous. How does a CEO cope with this unimaginable volume and velocity of data, much less harness it to excite and delight customers? Here are three things CEOs must do to tackle this challenge: 1) Take care of your employees, take care of your customers. Larry Ellison recently noted that the two most important priorities for any CEO today revolve around people: Taking care of your employees and taking care of your customers. Companies in today’s hypercompetitive business environment simply won’t be able to survive unless they’ve got world-class people at all levels of the organization. CEOs must demonstrate a commitment to employees by becoming champions for HR systems that empower every employee to fully understand his or her job, how it ties into the corporate framework, what’s expected of them, what training is available, and how they can use an embedded social network to communicate, collaborate and excel. Over the next several years, many of the world’s top industrialized economies will see a turnover in the workforce on an unprecedented scale. Across the United States, Europe, China and Japan, the “baby boomer” generation will be retiring and, by 2020, we’ll see turnovers in those regions ranging from 10 to 30 percent. How will companies replace all that brainpower, experience and know-how? How will CEOs perpetuate the best elements of their corporate cultures in the midst of this profound turnover? The challenge will be daunting, but it can be met with world-class HR technology. As companies begin replacing up to 30 percent of their workforce, they will need thousands of new types of data-native workers to exploit the Internet of Things in the service of the Internet of People. The shift in corporate mindset here can’t be overstated. The CEO has to be at the forefront of this new way of recruiting, training, motivating, aligning and developing truly 21-century talent. 2) Start thinking today about the Internet of People. Some forward-looking companies have begun pursuing the “democratization of data.” This allows more people within a company greater access to data that can help them make better decisions, move more quickly and keep pace with the changing interests and demands of their customers. As a result, we’ve seen organizations flatten out, growing numbers of well-informed people authorized to make decisions without corporate approval and a movement of engagement away from headquarters to the point of contact with the customer. These are profound changes, and I’m a huge proponent. As I think about what the next few years will bring as companies become deluged with unprecedented streams of data, I’m convinced that we’ll need dramatically different organizational structures, decision-making models, risk-management profiles and reward systems. For example, if a car company’s marketing department mines incoming data to determine that customers are shifting rapidly toward neon-green models, how many layers of approval, review, analysis and sign-off will be needed before the factory starts cranking out more neon-green cars? Will we continue to have organizations where too many people are empowered to say “No” and too few are allowed to say “Yes”? If so, how will those companies be able to compete in a world in which customers have more choices, instant access to more information and less loyalty than ever before? That’s why I think CEOs need to begin thinking about this problem right now, not in a year or two when competitors are already reshaping their organizations to match the marketplace’s new realities. 3) Partner with universities to help create a new type of highly skilled workers. Several years ago, universities introduced new undergraduate as well as graduate-level programs in analytics and informatics as the business need for deeper insights into the booming world of data began to explode. Today, as the growth rate of data continues to soar, we know that the Internet of Things will only intensify that growth. Moreover, as Big Data fuels insights that can be shaped into products and services that generate revenue, the demand for data scientists and data specialists will go on unabated. Beyond that top-level expertise, companies are going to need data-native thinkers at all levels of the organization. Where will this new type of worker come from? I think it’s incumbent on the business community to collaborate with universities to develop new curricula designed to turn out graduates who can capitalize on the data-driven world that the Internet of Things is surely going to create. These new workers will create opportunities to help their companies in fields as diverse as product design, customer service, marketing, manufacturing and distribution. They will become innovative leaders in fashioning an entirely new type of workforce and organizational structure optimized to fully exploit the Internet of Things so that it becomes a high-value enabler of the Internet of People. Mark Hurd is President of Oracle Corporation and a member of the company's Board of Directors. He joined Oracle in 2010, bringing more than 30 years of technology industry leadership, computer hardware expertise, and executive management experience to his role with the company. As President, Mr. Hurd oversees the corporate direction and strategy for Oracle's global field operations, including marketing, sales, consulting, alliances and channels, and support. He focuses on strategy, leadership, innovation, and customers.

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• People, Process & Engagement: WebCenter Partner Keste

  - by Michael Snow

  v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Within the WebCenter group here at Oracle, discussions about people, process and engagement cross over many vertical industries and products. Amidst our growing partner ecosystem, the community provides us insight into great customer use cases every day. Such is the case with our partner, Keste, who provides us a guest post on our blog today with an overview of their innovative solution for a customer in the transportation industry. Keste is an Oracle software solutions and development company headquartered in Dallas, Texas. As a Platinum member of the Oracle® PartnerNetwork, Keste designs, develops and deploys custom solutions that automate complex business processes. Seamless Customer Self-Service Experience in the Trucking Industry with Oracle WebCenter Portal  Keste, Oracle Platinum Partner Customer Overview Omnitracs, Inc., a Qualcomm company provides mobility solutions for trucking fleets to companies in the transportation industry. Omnitracs’ mobility services include basic communications such as text as well as advanced monitoring services such as GPS tracking, temperature tracking of perishable goods, load tracking and weighting distribution, and many others. Customer Business Needs Already the leading provider of mobility solutions for large trucking fleets, they chose to target smaller trucking fleets as new customers. However their existing high-touch customer support method would not be a cost effective or scalable method to manage and service these smaller customers. Omnitracs needed to provide several self-service features to make customer support more scalable while keeping customer satisfaction levels high and the costs manageable. The solution also had to be very intuitive and easy to use. The systems that Omnitracs sells to these trucking customers require professional installation and smaller customers need to track and schedule the installation. Information captured in Oracle eBusiness Suite needed to be readily available for new customers to track these purchases and delivery details. Omnitracs wanted a high impact User Interface to significantly improve customer experience with the ability to integrate with EBS, provisioning systems as well as CRM systems that were already implemented. Omnitracs also wanted to build an architecture platform that could potentially be extended to other Portals. Omnitracs’ stated goal was to deliver an “eBay-like” or “Amazon-like” experience for all of their customers so that they could reach a much broader market beyond their large company customer base. Solution Overview In order to manage the increased complexity, the growing support needs of global customers and improve overall product time-to-market in a cost-effective manner, IT began to deliver a self-service model. This self service model not only transformed numerous business processes but is also allowing the business to keep up with the growing demands of the (internal and external) customers. This solution was a customer service Portal that provided self service capabilities for large and small customers alike for Activation of mobility products, managing add-on applications for the devices (much like the Apple App Store), transferring services when trucks are sold to other companies as well as deactivation all without the involvement of a call service agent or sending multiple emails to different Omnitracs contacts. This is a conceptual view of the Customer Portal showing the details of the components that make up the solution. 12.00 The portal application for transactions was entirely built using ADF 11g R2. Omnitracs’ business had a pressing requirement to have a portal available 24/7 for its customers. Since there were interactions with EBS in the back-end, the downtimes on the EBS would negate this availability. Omnitracs devised a decoupling strategy at the database side for the EBS data. The decoupling of the database was done using Oracle Data Guard and completely insulated the solution from any eBusiness Suite down time. The customer has no knowledge whether eBS is running or not. Here are two sample screenshots of the portal application built in Oracle ADF. Customer Benefits The Customer Portal not only provided the scalability to grow the business but also provided the seamless integration with other disparate applications. Some of the key benefits are: Improved Customer Experience: With a modern look and feel and a Portal that has the aspects of an App Store, the customer experience was significantly improved. Page response times went from several seconds to sub-second for all of the pages. Enabled new product launches: After successfully dominating the large fleet market, Omnitracs now has a scalable solution to sell and manage smaller fleet customers giving them a huge advantage over their nearest competitors. Dozens of new customers have been acquired via this portal through an onboarding process that now takes minutes Seamless Integrations Improves Customer Support: ADF 11gR2 allowed Omnitracs to bring a diverse list of applications into one integrated solution. This provided a seamless experience for customers to route them from Marketing focused application to a customer-oriented portal. Internally, it also allowed Sales Representatives to have an integrated flow for taking a prospect through the various steps to onboard them as a customer. Key integrations included: Unity Core Salesforce.com Merchant e-Solution for credit card Custom Omnitracs Applications like CUPS and AUTO Security utilizing OID and OVD Back end integration with EBS (Data Guard) and iQ Database Business Impact Significant business impacts were realized through the launch of customer portal. It not only allows the business to push through in underserved segments, but also reduces the time it needs to spend on customer support—allowing the business to focus more on sales and identifying the market for new products. Some of the Immediate Benefits are The entire onboarding process is now completely automated and now completes in minutes. This represents an 85% productivity improvement over their previous processes. And it was 160 times faster! With the success of this self-service solution, the business is now targeting about 3X customer growth in the next five years. This represents a tripling of their overall customer base and significant downstream revenue for the ongoing services. 90%+ improvement of customer onboarding and management process by utilizing, single sign on integration using OID/OAM solution, performance improvements and new self-service functionality Unified login for all Customers, Partners and Internal Users enables login to a common portal and seamless access to all other integrated applications targeted at the respective audience Significantly improved customer experience with a better look and feel with a more user experience focused Portal screens. Helped sales of the new product by having an easy way of ordering and activating the product. Data Guard helped increase availability of the Portal to 99%+ and make it independent of EBS downtime. This gave customers the feel of high availability of the portal application. Some of the anticipated longer term Benefits are: Platform that can be leveraged to launch any new product introduction and enable all product teams to reach new customers and new markets Easy integration with content management to allow business owners more control of the product catalog Overall reduced TCO with standardization of the Oracle platform Managed IT support cost savings through optimization of technology skills needed to support and modify this solution ------------------------------------------------------------ 12.00 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:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";}

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• Guide to MySQL & NoSQL, Webinar Q&A

  - by Mat Keep

  0 0 1 959 5469 Homework 45 12 6416 14.0 Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* 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-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-ansi-language:EN-US;} Yesterday we ran a webinar discussing the demands of next generation web services and how blending the best of relational and NoSQL technologies enables developers and architects to deliver the agility, performance and availability needed to be successful. Attendees posted a number of great questions to the MySQL developers, serving to provide additional insights into areas like auto-sharding and cross-shard JOINs, replication, performance, client libraries, etc. So I thought it would be useful to post those below, for the benefit of those unable to attend the webinar. Before getting to the Q&A, there are a couple of other resources that maybe useful to those looking at NoSQL capabilities within MySQL: - On-Demand webinar (coming soon!) - Slides used during the webinar - Guide to MySQL and NoSQL whitepaper  - MySQL Cluster demo, including NoSQL interfaces, auto-sharing, high availability, etc.  So here is the Q&A from the event  Q. Where does MySQL Cluster fit in to the CAP theorem? A. MySQL Cluster is flexible. A single Cluster will prefer consistency over availability in the presence of network partitions. A pair of Clusters can be configured to prefer availability over consistency. A full explanation can be found on the MySQL Cluster & CAP Theorem blog post.  Q. Can you configure the number of replicas? (the slide used a replication factor of 1) Yes. A cluster is configured by an .ini file. The option NoOfReplicas sets the number of originals and replicas: 1 = no data redundancy, 2 = one copy etc. Usually there's no benefit in setting it >2. Q. Interestingly most (if not all) of the NoSQL databases recommend having 3 copies of data (the replication factor).    Yes, with configurable quorum based Reads and writes. MySQL Cluster does not need a quorum of replicas online to provide service. Systems that require a quorum need > 2 replicas to be able to tolerate a single failure. Additionally, many NoSQL systems take liberal inspiration from the original GFS paper which described a 3 replica configuration. MySQL Cluster avoids the need for a quorum by using a lightweight arbitrator. You can configure more than 2 replicas, but this is a tradeoff between incrementally improved availability, and linearly increased cost. Q. Can you have cross node group JOINS? Wouldn't that run into the risk of flooding the network? MySQL Cluster 7.2 supports cross nodegroup joins. A full cross-join can require a large amount of data transfer, which may bottleneck on network bandwidth. However, for more selective joins, typically seen with OLTP and light analytic applications, cross node-group joins give a great performance boost and network bandwidth saving over having the MySQL Server perform the join. Q. Are the details of the benchmark available anywhere? According to my calculations it results in approx. 350k ops/sec per processor which is the largest number I've seen lately The details are linked from Mikael Ronstrom's blog The benchmark uses a benchmarking tool we call flexAsynch which runs parallel asynchronous transactions. It involved 100 byte reads, of 25 columns each. Regarding the per-processor ops/s, MySQL Cluster is particularly efficient in terms of throughput/node. It uses lock-free minimal copy message passing internally, and maximizes ID cache reuse. Note also that these are in-memory tables, there is no need to read anything from disk. Q. Is access control (like table) planned to be supported for NoSQL access mode? Currently we have not seen much need for full SQL-like access control (which has always been overkill for web apps and telco apps). So we have no plans, though especially with memcached it is certainly possible to turn-on connection-level access control. But specifically table level controls are not planned. Q. How is the performance of memcached APi with MySQL against memcached+MySQL or any other Object Cache like Ecache with MySQL DB? With the memcache API we generally see a memcached response in less than 1 ms. and a small cluster with one memcached server can handle tens of thousands of operations per second. Q. Can .NET can access MemcachedAPI? Yes, just use a .Net memcache client such as the enyim or BeIT memcache libraries. Q. Is the row level locking applicable when you update a column through memcached API? An update that comes through memcached uses a row lock and then releases it immediately. Memcached operations like "INCREMENT" are actually pushed down to the data nodes. In most cases the locks are not even held long enough for a network round trip. Q. Has anyone published an example using something like PHP? I am assuming that you just use the PHP memcached extension to hook into the memcached API. Is that correct? Not that I'm aware of but absolutely you can use it with php or any of the other drivers Q. For beginner we need more examples. Take a look here for a fully worked example Q. Can I access MySQL using Cobol (Open Cobol) or C and if so where can I find the coding libraries etc? A. There is a cobol implementation that works well with MySQL, but I do not think it is Open Cobol. Also there is a MySQL C client library that is a standard part of every mysql distribution Q. Is there a place to go to find help when testing and/implementing the NoSQL access? If using Cluster then you can use the [email protected] alias or post on the MySQL Cluster forum Q. Are there any white papers on this?  Yes - there is more detail in the MySQL Guide to NoSQL whitepaper If you have further questions, please don’t hesitate to use the comments below!

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• Self-signed certificates for a known community

  - by costlow

  Recently announced changes scheduled for Java 7 update 51 (January 2014) have established that the default security slider will require code signatures and the Permissions Manifest attribute. Code signatures are a common practice recommended in the industry because they help determine that the code your computer will run is the same code that the publisher created. This post is written to help users that need to use self-signed certificates without involving a public Certificate Authority. The role of self-signed certificates within a known community You may still use self-signed certificates within a known community. The difference between self-signed and purchased-from-CA is that your users must import your self-signed certificate to indicate that it is valid, whereas Certificate Authorities are already trusted by default. This works for known communities where people will trust that my certificate is mine, but does not scale widely where I cannot actually contact or know the systems that will need to trust my certificate. Public Certificate Authorities are widely trusted already because they abide by many different requirements and frequent checks. An example would be students in a university class sharing their public certificates on a mailing list or web page, employees publishing on the intranet, or a system administrator rolling certificates out to end-users. Managed machines help this because you can automate the rollout, but they are not required -- the major point simply that people will trust and import your certificate. How to distribute self-signed certificates for a known community There are several steps required to distribute a self-signed certificate to users so that they will properly trust it. These steps are: Creating a public/private key pair for signing. Exporting your public certificate for others Importing your certificate onto machines that should trust you Verify work on a different machine Creating a public/private key pair for signing Having a public/private key pair will give you the ability both to sign items yourself and issue a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) to a certificate authority. Create your public/private key pair by following the instructions for creating key pairs.Every Certificate Authority that I looked at provided similar instructions, but for the sake of cohesiveness I will include the commands that I used here: Generate the key pair.keytool -genkeypair -alias erikcostlow -keyalg EC -keysize 571 -validity 730 -keystore javakeystore_keepsecret.jks Provide a good password for this file. The alias "erikcostlow" is my name and therefore easy to remember. Substitute your name of something like "mykey." The sigalg of EC (Elliptical Curve) and keysize of 571 will give your key a good strong lifetime. All keys are set to expire. Two years or 730 days is a reasonable compromise between not-long-enough and too-long. Most public Certificate Authorities will sign something for one to five years. You will be placing your keys in javakeystore_keepsecret.jks -- this file will contain private keys and therefore should not be shared. If someone else gets these private keys, they can impersonate your signature. Please be cautious about automated cloud backup systems and private key stores. Answer all the questions. It is important to provide good answers because you will stick with them for the "-validity" days that you specified above.What is your first and last name?  [Unknown]:  First LastWhat is the name of your organizational unit?  [Unknown]:  Line of BusinessWhat is the name of your organization?  [Unknown]:  MyCompanyWhat is the name of your City or Locality?  [Unknown]:  City NameWhat is the name of your State or Province?  [Unknown]:  CAWhat is the two-letter country code for this unit?  [Unknown]:  USIs CN=First Last, OU=Line of Business, O=MyCompany, L=City, ST=CA, C=US correct?  [no]:  yesEnter key password for <erikcostlow>        (RETURN if same as keystore password): Verify your work:keytool -list -keystore javakeystore_keepsecret.jksYou should see your new key pair. Exporting your public certificate for others Public Key Infrastructure relies on two simple concepts: the public key may be made public and the private key must be private. By exporting your public certificate, you are able to share it with others who can then import the certificate to trust you. keytool -exportcert -keystore javakeystore_keepsecret.jks -alias erikcostlow -file erikcostlow.cer To verify this, you can open the .cer file by double-clicking it on most operating systems. It should show the information that you entered during the creation prompts. This is the file that you will share with others. They will use this certificate to prove that artifacts signed by this certificate came from you. If you do not manage machines directly, place the certificate file on an area that people within the known community should trust, such as an intranet page. Import the certificate onto machines that should trust you In order to trust the certificate, people within your known network must import your certificate into their keystores. The first step is to verify that the certificate is actually yours, which can be done through any band: email, phone, in-person, etc. Known networks can usually do this Determine the right keystore: For an individual user looking to trust another, the correct file is within that user’s directory.e.g. USER_HOME\AppData\LocalLow\Sun\Java\Deployment\security\trusted.certs For system-wide installations, Java’s Certificate Authorities are in JAVA_HOMEe.g. C:\Program Files\Java\jre8\lib\security\cacerts File paths for Mac and Linux are included in the link above. Follow the instructions to import the certificate into the keystore. keytool -importcert -keystore THEKEYSTOREFROMABOVE -alias erikcostlow -file erikcostlow.cer In this case, I am still using my name for the alias because it’s easy for me to remember. You may also use an alias of your company name. Scaling distribution of the import The easiest way to apply your certificate across many machines is to just push the .certs or cacerts file onto them. When doing this, watch out for any changes that people would have made to this file on their machines. Trusted.certs: When publishing into user directories, your file will overwrite any keys that the user has added since last update. CACerts: It is best to re-run the import command with each installation rather than just overwriting the file. If you just keep the same cacerts file between upgrades, you will overwrite any CAs that have been added or removed. By re-importing, you stay up to date with changes. Verify work on a different machine Verification is a way of checking on the client machine to ensure that it properly trusts signed artifacts after you have added your signing certificate. Many people have started using deployment rule sets. You can validate the deployment rule set by: Create and sign the deployment rule set on the computer that holds the private key. Copy the deployment rule set on to the different machine where you have imported the signing certificate. Verify that the Java Control Panel’s security tab shows your deployment rule set. Verifying an individual JAR file or multiple JAR files You can test a certificate chain by using the jarsigner command. jarsigner -verify filename.jar If the output does not say "jar verified" then run the following command to see why: jarsigner -verify -verbose -certs filename.jar Check the output for the term “CertPath not validated.”

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• Oracle Tutor: Top 10 to Implement Sustainable Policies and Procedures

  - by emily.chorba(at)oracle.com

  Overview Your organization (executives, managers, and employees) understands the value of having written business process documents (process maps, procedures, instructions, reference documents, and form abstracts). Policies and procedures should be documented because they help to reduce the range of individual decisions and encourage management by exception: the manager only needs to give special attention to unusual problems, not covered by a specific policy or procedure. As more and more procedures are written to cover recurring situations, managers will begin to make decisions which will be consistent from one functional area to the next.Companies should take a project management approach when implementing an environment for a sustainable documentation program and do the following:1. Identify an Executive Champion2. Put together a winning team3. Assign ownership4. Centralize publishing5. Establish the Document Maintenance Process Up Front6. Document critical activities only7. Document actual practice8. Minimize documentation9. Support continuous improvement10. Keep it simple 1. Identify an Executive ChampionAppoint a top down driver. Select one key individual to be a mentor for the procedure planning team. The individual should be a senior manager, such as your company president, CIO, CFO, the vice-president of quality, manufacturing, or engineering. Written policies and procedures can be important supportive aids when known to express the thinking for the chief executive officer and / or the president and to have his or her full support. 2. Put Together a Winning TeamChoose a strong Project Management Leader and staff the procedure planning team with management members from cross functional groups. Make sure team members have the responsibility - and the authority - to make things happen.The winning team should consist of the Documentation Project Manager, Document Owners (one for each functional area), a Document Controller, and Document Specialists (as needed). The Tutor Implementation Guide has complete job descriptions for these roles. 3. Assign Ownership It is virtually impossible to keep process documentation simple and meaningful if employees who are far removed from the activity itself create it. It is impossible to keep documentation up-to-date when responsibility for the document is not clearly understood.Key to the Tutor methodology, therefore, is the concept of ownership. Each document has a single owner, who is responsible for ensuring that the document is necessary and that it reflects actual practice. The owner must be a person who is knowledgeable about the activity and who has the authority to build consensus among the persons who participate in the activity as well as the authority to define or change the way an activity is performed. The owner must be an advocate of the performers and negotiate, not dictate practices.In the Tutor environment, a document's owner is the only person with the authority to approve an update to that document. 4. Centralize Publishing Although it is tempting (especially in a networked environment and with document management software solutions) to decentralize the control of all documents -- with each owner updating and distributing his own -- Tutor promotes centralized publishing by assigning the Document Administrator (gate keeper) to manage the updates and distribution of the procedures library. 5. Establish a Document Maintenance Process Up Front (and stick to it) Everyone in your organization should know they are invited to suggest changes to procedures and should understand exactly what steps to take to do so. Tutor provides a set of procedures to help your company set up a healthy document control system. There are many document management products available to automate some of the document change and maintenance steps. Depending on the size of your organization, a simple document management system can reduce the effort it takes to track and distribute document changes and updates. Whether your company decides to store the written policies and procedures on a file server or in a database, the essential tasks for maintaining documents are the same, though some tasks are automated. 6. Document Critical Activities Only The best way to keep your documentation simple is to reduce the number of process documents to a bare minimum and to include in those documents only as much detail as is absolutely necessary. The first step to reducing process documentation is to document only those activities that are deemed critical. Not all activities require documentation. In fact, some critical activities cannot and should not be standardized. Others may be sufficiently documented with an instruction or a checklist and may not require a procedure. A document should only be created when it enhances the performance of the employee performing the activity. If it does not help the employee, then there is no reason to maintain the document. Activities that represent little risk (such as project status), activities that cannot be defined in terms of specific tasks (such as product research), and activities that can be performed in a variety of ways (such as advertising) often do not require documentation. Sometimes, an activity will evolve to the point where documentation is necessary. For example, an activity performed by single employee may be straightforward and uncomplicated -- that is, until the activity is performed by multiple employees. Sometimes, it is the interaction between co-workers that necessitates documentation; sometimes, it is the complexity or the diversity of the activity.7. Document Actual Practices The only reason to maintain process documentation is to enhance the performance of the employee performing the activity. And documentation can only enhance performance if it reflects reality -- that is, current best practice. Documentation that reflects an unattainable ideal or outdated practices will end up on the shelf, unused and forgotten.Documenting actual practice means (1) auditing the activity to understand how the work is really performed, (2) identifying best practices with employees who are involved in the activity, (3) building consensus so that everyone agrees on a common method, and (4) recording that consensus.8. Minimize Documentation One way to keep it simple is to document at the highest level possible. That is, include in your documents only as much detail as is absolutely necessary.When writing a document, you should ask yourself, What is the purpose of this document? That is, what problem will it solve?By focusing on this question, you can target the critical information.• What questions are the end users likely to have?• What level of detail is required?• Is any of this information extraneous to the document's purpose? Short, concise documents are user friendly and they are easier to keep up to date. 9. Support Continuous Improvement Employees who perform an activity are often in the best position to identify improvements to the process. In other words, continuous improvement is a natural byproduct of the work itself -- but only if the improvements are communicated to all employees who are involved in the process, and only if there is consensus among those employees.Traditionally, process documentation has been used to dictate performance, to limit employees' actions. In the Tutor environment, process documents are used to communicate improvements identified by employees. How does this work? The Tutor methodology requires a process document to reflect actual practice, so the owner of a document must routinely audit its content -- does the document match what the employees are doing? If it doesn't, the owner has the responsibility to evaluate the process, to build consensus among the employees, to identify "best practices," and to communicate these improvements via a document update. Continuous improvement can also be an outgrowth of corrective action -- but only if the solutions to problems are communicated effectively. The goal should be to solve a problem once and only once, which means not only identifying the solution, but ensuring that the solution becomes part of the process. The Tutor system provides the method through which improvements and solutions are documented and communicated to all affected employees in a cost-effective, timely manner; it ensures that improvements are not lost or confined to a single employee. 10. Keep it Simple Process documents don't have to be complex and unfriendly. In fact, the simpler the format and organization, the more likely the documents will be used. And the simpler the method of maintenance, the more likely the documents will be kept up-to-date. Keep it simply by:• Minimizing skills and training required• Following the established Tutor document format and layout• Avoiding technology just for technology's sake No other rule has as major an impact on the success of your internal documentation as -- keep it simple. Learn More For more information about Tutor, visit Oracle.Com or the Tutor Blog. Post your questions at the Tutor Forum.   Emily Chorba Principle Product Manager Oracle Tutor & BPM 

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• Configuration "diff" across Oracle WebCenter Sites instances

  - by Mark Fincham-Oracle

  Problem Statement With many Oracle WebCenter Sites environments - how do you know if the various configuration assets and settings are in sync across all of those environments? Background At Oracle we typically have a "W" shaped set of environments.  For the "Production" environments we typically have a disaster recovery clone as well and sometimes additional QA environments alongside the production management environment. In the case of www.java.com we have 10 different environments. All configuration assets/settings (CSElements, Templates, Start Menus etc..) start life on the Development Management environment and are then published downstream to other environments as part of the software development lifecycle. Ensuring that each of these 10 environments has the same set of Templates, CSElements, StartMenus, TreeTabs etc.. is impossible to do efficiently without automation. Solution Summary  The solution comprises of two components. A JSON data feed from each environment. A simple HTML page that consumes these JSON data feeds.  Data Feed: Create a JSON WebService on each environment. The WebService is no more than a SiteEntry + CSElement. The CSElement queries various DB tables to obtain details of the assets/settings returning this data in a JSON feed. Report: Create a simple HTML page that uses JQuery to fetch the JSON feed from each environment and display the results in a table. Since all assets (CSElements, Templates etc..) are published between environments they will have the same last modified date. If the last modified date of an asset is different in the JSON feed or is mising from an environment entirely then highlight that in the report table. Example Solution Details Step 1: Create a Site Entry + CSElement that outputs JSON Site Entry & CSElement Setup  The SiteEntry should be uncached so that the most recent configuration information is returned at all times. In the CSElement set the contenttype accordingly: Step 2: Write the CSElement Logic The basic logic, that we repeat for each asset or setting that we are interested in, is to query the DB using <ics:sql> and then loop over the resultset with <ics:listloop>. For example: <ics:sql sql="SELECT name,updateddate FROM Template WHERE status != 'VO'" listname="TemplateList" table="Template" /> "templates": [ <ics:listloop listname="TemplateList"> {"name":"<ics:listget listname="TemplateList"  fieldname="name"/>", "modified":"<ics:listget listname="TemplateList"  fieldname="updateddate"/>"}, </ics:listloop> ], A comprehensive list of SQL queries to fetch each configuration asset/settings can be seen in the appendix at the end of this article. For the generation of the JSON data structure you could use Jettison (the library ships with the 11.1.1.8 version of the product), native Java 7 capabilities or (as the above example demonstrates) you could roll-your-own JSON output but that is not advised. Step 3: Create an HTML Report The JavaScript logic looks something like this.. 1) Create a list of JSON feeds to fetch: ENVS['dev-mgmngt'] = 'http://dev-mngmnt.example.com/sites/ContentServer?d=&pagename=settings.json'; ENVS['dev-dlvry'] = 'http://dev-dlvry.example.com/sites/ContentServer?d=&pagename=settings.json';  ENVS['test-mngmnt'] = 'http://test-mngmnt.example.com/sites/ContentServer?d=&pagename=settings.json';  ENVS['test-dlvry'] = 'http://test-dlvry.example.com/sites/ContentServer?d=&pagename=settings.json';   2) Create a function to get the JSON feeds: function getDataForEnvironment(url){ return $.ajax({ type: 'GET', url: url, dataType: 'jsonp', beforeSend: function (jqXHR, settings){ jqXHR.originalEnv = env; jqXHR.originalUrl = url; }, success: function(json, status, jqXHR) { console.log('....success fetching: ' + jqXHR.originalUrl); // store the returned data in ALLDATA ALLDATA[jqXHR.originalEnv] = json; }, error: function(jqXHR, status, e) { console.log('....ERROR: Failed to get data from [' + url + '] ' + status + ' ' + e); } }); } 3) Fetch each JSON feed: for (var env in ENVS) { console.log('Fetching data for env [' + env +'].'); var promisedData = getDataForEnvironment(ENVS[env]); promisedData.success(function (data) {}); }  4) For each configuration asset or setting create a table in the report For example, CSElements: 1) Get a list of unique CSElement names from all of the returned JSON data. 2) For each unique CSElement name, create a row in the table  3) Select 1 environment to represent the master or ideal state (e.g. "Everything should be like Production Delivery") 4) For each environment, compare the last modified date of this envs CSElement to the master. Highlight any differences in last modified date or missing CSElements. 5) Repeat...    Appendix This section contains various SQL statements that can be used to retrieve configuration settings from the DB.  Templates  <ics:sql sql="SELECT name,updateddate FROM Template WHERE status != 'VO'" listname="TemplateList" table="Template" /> CSElements <ics:sql sql="SELECT name,updateddate FROM CSElement WHERE status != 'VO'" listname="CSEList" table="CSElement" /> Start Menus <ics:sql sql="select sm.id, sm.cs_name, sm.cs_description, sm.cs_assettype, sm.cs_assetsubtype, sm.cs_itemtype, smr.cs_rolename, p.name from StartMenu sm, StartMenu_Sites sms, StartMenu_Roles smr, Publication p where sm.id=sms.ownerid and sm.id=smr.cs_ownerid and sms.pubid=p.id order by sm.id" listname="startList" table="Publication,StartMenu,StartMenu_Roles,StartMenu_Sites"/>  Publishing Configurations <ics:sql sql="select id, name, description, type, dest, factors from PubTarget" listname="pubTargetList" table="PubTarget" /> Tree Tabs <ics:sql sql="select tt.id, tt.title, tt.tooltip, p.name as pubname, ttr.cs_rolename, ttsect.name as sectname from TreeTabs tt, TreeTabs_Roles ttr, TreeTabs_Sect ttsect,TreeTabs_Sites ttsites LEFT JOIN Publication p  on p.id=ttsites.pubid where p.id is not null and tt.id=ttsites.ownerid and ttsites.pubid=p.id and tt.id=ttr.cs_ownerid and tt.id=ttsect.ownerid order by tt.id" listname="treeTabList" table="TreeTabs,TreeTabs_Roles,TreeTabs_Sect,TreeTabs_Sites,Publication" />  Filters <ics:sql sql="select name,description,classname from Filters" listname="filtersList" table="Filters" /> Attribute Types <ics:sql sql="select id,valuetype,name,updateddate from AttrTypes where status != 'VO'" listname="AttrList" table="AttrTypes" /> WebReference Patterns <ics:sql sql="select id,webroot,pattern,assettype,name,params,publication from WebReferencesPatterns" listname="WebRefList" table="WebReferencesPatterns" /> Device Groups <ics:sql sql="select id,devicegroupsuffix,updateddate,name from DeviceGroup" listname="DeviceList" table="DeviceGroup" /> Site Entries <ics:sql sql="select se.id,se.name,se.pagename,se.cselement_id,se.updateddate,cse.rootelement from SiteEntry se LEFT JOIN CSElement cse on cse.id = se.cselement_id where se.status != 'VO'" listname="SiteList" table="SiteEntry,CSElement" /> Webroots <ics:sql sql="select id,name,rooturl,updatedby,updateddate from WebRoot" listname="webrootList" table="WebRoot" /> Page Definitions <ics:sql sql="select pd.id, pd.name, pd.updatedby, pd.updateddate, pd.description, pdt.attributeid, pa.name as nameattr, pdt.requiredflag, pdt.ordinal from PageDefinition pd, PageDefinition_TAttr pdt, PageAttribute pa where pd.status != 'VO' and pa.id=pdt.attributeid and pdt.ownerid=pd.id order by pd.id,pdt.ordinal" listname="pageDefList" table="PageDefinition,PageAttribute,PageDefinition_TAttr" /> FW_Application <ics:sql sql="select id,name,updateddate from FW_Application where status != 'VO'" listname="FWList" table="FW_Application" /> Custom Elements <ics:sql sql="select elementname from ElementCatalog where elementname like 'CustomElements%'" listname="elementList" table="ElementCatalog" />

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• Waterfall Model (SDLC) vs. Prototyping Model

  The characters in the fable of the Tortoise and the Hare can easily be used to demonstrate the similarities and differences between the Waterfall and Prototyping software development models. This children fable is about a race between a consistently slow moving but steadfast turtle and an extremely fast but unreliable rabbit. After closely comparing each character’s attributes in correlation with both software development models, a trend seems to appear in that the Waterfall closely resembles the Tortoise in that Waterfall Model is typically a slow moving process that is broken up in to multiple sequential steps that must be executed in a standard linear pattern. The Tortoise can be quoted several times in the story saying “Slow and steady wins the race.” This is the perfect mantra for the Waterfall Model in that this model is seen as a cumbersome and slow moving. Waterfall Model Phases Requirement Analysis & Definition This phase focuses on defining requirements for a project that is to be developed and determining if the project is even feasible. Requirements are collected by analyzing existing systems and functionality in correlation with the needs of the business and the desires of the end users. The desired output for this phase is a list of specific requirements from the business that are to be designed and implemented in the subsequent steps. In addition this phase is used to determine if any value will be gained by completing the project. System Design This phase focuses primarily on the actual architectural design of a system, and how it will interact within itself and with other existing applications. Projects at this level should be viewed at a high level so that actual implementation details are decided in the implementation phase. However major environmental decision like hardware and platform decision are typically decided in this phase. Furthermore the basic goal of this phase is to design an application at the system level in those classes, interfaces, and interactions are defined. Additionally decisions about scalability, distribution and reliability should also be considered for all decisions. The desired output for this phase is a functional  design document that states all of the architectural decisions that have been made in regards to the project as well as a diagrams like a sequence and class diagrams. Software Design This phase focuses primarily on the refining of the decisions found in the functional design document. Classes and interfaces are further broken down in to logical modules based on the interfaces and interactions previously indicated. The output of this phase is a formal design document. Implementation / Coding This phase focuses primarily on implementing the previously defined modules in to units of code. These units are developed independently are intergraded as the system is put together as part of a whole system. Software Integration & Verification This phase primarily focuses on testing each of the units of code developed as well as testing the system as a whole. There are basic types of testing at this phase and they include: Unit Test and Integration Test. Unit Test are built to test the functionality of a code unit to ensure that it preforms its desired task. Integration testing test the system as a whole because it focuses on results of combining specific units of code and validating it against expected results. The output of this phase is a test plan that includes test with expected results and actual results. System Verification This phase primarily focuses on testing the system as a whole in regards to the list of project requirements and desired operating environment. Operation & Maintenance his phase primarily focuses on handing off the competed project over to the customer so that they can verify that all of their requirements have been met based on their original requirements. This phase will also validate the correctness of their requirements and if any changed need to be made. In addition, any problems not resolved in the previous phase will be handled in this section. The Waterfall Model’s linear and sequential methodology does offer a project certain advantages and disadvantages. Advantages of the Waterfall Model Simplistic to implement and execute for projects and/or company wide Limited demand on resources Large emphasis on documentation Disadvantages of the Waterfall Model Completed phases cannot be revisited regardless if issues arise within a project Accurate requirement are never gather prior to the completion of the requirement phase due to the lack of clarification in regards to client’s desires. Small changes or errors that arise in applications may cause additional problems The client cannot change any requirements once the requirements phase has been completed leaving them no options for changes as they see their requirements changes as the customers desires change. Excess documentation Phases are cumbersome and slow moving Learn more about the Major Process in the Sofware Development Life Cycle and Waterfall Model. Conversely, the Hare shares similar traits with the prototyping software development model in that ideas are rapidly converted to basic working examples and subsequent changes are made to quickly align the project with customers desires as they are formulated and as software strays from the customers vision. The basic concept of prototyping is to eliminate the use of well-defined project requirements. Projects are allowed to grow as the customer needs and request grow. Projects are initially designed according to basic requirements and are refined as requirement become more refined. This process allows customer to feel their way around the application to ensure that they are developing exactly what they want in the application This model also works well for determining the feasibility of certain approaches in regards to an application. Prototypes allow for quickly developing examples of implementing specific functionality based on certain techniques. Advantages of Prototyping Active participation from users and customers Allows customers to change their mind in specifying requirements Customers get a better understanding of the system as it is developed Earlier bug/error detection Promotes communication with customers Prototype could be used as final production Reduced time needed to develop applications compared to the Waterfall method Disadvantages of Prototyping Promotes constantly redefining project requirements that cause major system rewrites Potential for increased complexity of a system as scope of the system expands Customer could believe the prototype as the working version. Implementation compromises could increase the complexity when applying updates and or application fixes When companies trying to decide between the Waterfall model and Prototype model they need to evaluate the benefits and disadvantages for both models. Typically smaller companies or projects that have major time constraints typically head for more of a Prototype model approach because it can reduce the time needed to complete the project because there is more of a focus on building a project and less on defining requirements and scope prior to the start of a project. On the other hand, Companies with well-defined requirements and time allowed to generate proper documentation should steer towards more of a waterfall model because they are in a position to obtain clarified requirements and have to design and optimal solution prior to the start of coding on a project.

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• SQL SERVER – Create a Very First Report with the Report Wizard

  - by Pinal Dave

  This example is from the Beginning SSRS by Kathi Kellenberger. Supporting files are available with a free download from the www.Joes2Pros.com web site. What is the report Wizard? In today’s world automation is all around you. Henry Ford began building his Model T automobiles on a moving assembly line a century ago and changed the world. The moving assembly line allowed Ford to build identical cars quickly and cheaply. Henry Ford said in his autobiography “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.” Today you can buy a car straight from the factory with your choice of several colors and with many options like back up cameras, built-in navigation systems and heated leather seats. The assembly lines now use robots to perform some tasks along with human workers. When you order your new car, if you want something special, not offered by the manufacturer, you will have to find a way to add it later. In computer software, we also have “assembly lines” called wizards. A wizard will ask you a series of questions, often branching to specific questions based on earlier answers, until you get to the end of the wizard. These wizards are used for many things, from something simple like setting up a rule in Outlook to performing administrative tasks on a server. Often, a wizard will get you part of the way to the end result, enough to get much of the tedious work out of the way. Once you get the product from the wizard, if the wizard is not capable of doing something you need, you can tweak the results. Create a Report with the Report Wizard Let’s get started with your first report!  Launch SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) from the Start menu under SQL Server 2012. Once SSDT is running, click New Project to launch the New Project dialog box. On the left side of the screen expand Business Intelligence and select Reporting Services. Configure the properties as shown in . Be sure to select Report Server Project Wizard as the type of report and to save the project in the C:\Joes2Pros\SSRSCompanionFiles\Chapter3\Project folder. Click OK and wait for the Report Wizard to launch. Click Next on the Welcome screen.  On the Select the Data Source screen, make sure that New data source is selected. Type JProCo as the data source name. Make sure that Microsoft SQL Server is selected in the Type dropdown. Click Edit to configure the connection string on the Connection Properties dialog box. If your SQL Server database server is installed on your local computer, type in localhost for the Server name and select the JProCo database from the Select or enter a database name dropdown. Click OK to dismiss the Connection Properties dialog box. Check Make this a shared data source and click Next. On the Design the Query screen, you can use the query builder to build a query if you wish. Since this post is not meant to teach you T-SQL queries, you will copy all queries from files that have been provided for you. In the C:\Joes2Pros\SSRSCompanionFiles\Chapter3\Resources folder open the sales by employee.sql file. Copy and paste the code from the file into the Query string Text Box. Click Next. On the Select the Report Type screen, choose Tabular and click Next. On the Design the Table screen, you have to figure out the groupings of the report. How do you do this? Well, you often need to know a bit about the data and report requirements. I often draw the report out on paper first to help me determine the groups. In the case of this report, I could group the data several ways. Do I want to see the data grouped by Year and Month? Do I want to see the data grouped by Employee or Category? The only thing I know for sure about this ahead of time is that the TotalSales goes in the Details section. Let’s assume that the CIO asked to see the data grouped first by Year and Month, then by Category. Let’s move the fields to the right-hand side. This is done by selecting Page > Group or Details >, as shown in, and click Next. On the Choose the Table Layout screen, select Stepped and check Include subtotals and Enable drilldown, as shown in. On the Choose the Style screen, choose any color scheme you wish (unlike the Model T) and click Next. I chose the default, Slate. On the Choose the Deployment Location screen, change the Deployment folder to Chapter 3 and click Next. At the Completing the Wizard screen, name your report Employee Sales and click Finish. After clicking Finish, the report and a shared data source will appear in the Solution Explorer and the report will also be visible in Design view. Click the Preview tab at the top. This report expects the user to supply a year which the report will then use as a filter. Type in a year between 2006 and 2013 and click View Report. Click the plus sign next to the Sales Year to expand the report to see the months, then expand again to see the categories and finally the details. You now have the assembly line report completed, and you probably already have some ideas on how to improve the report. Tomorrow’s Post Tomorrow’s blog post will show how to create your own data sources and data sets in SSRS. If you want to learn SSRS in easy to simple words – I strongly recommend you to get Beginning SSRS book from Joes 2 Pros. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: Reporting Services, SSRS

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• PASS: Election Changes for 2011

  - by Bill Graziano

  Last year after the election, the PASS Board created an Election Review Committee.  This group was charged with reviewing our election procedures and making suggestions to improve the process.  You can read about the formation of the group and review some of the intermediate work on the site – especially in the forums. I was one of the members of the group along with Joe Webb (Chair), Lori Edwards, Brian Kelley, Wendy Pastrick, Andy Warren and Allen White.  This group worked from October to April on our election process.  Along the way we: Interviewed interested parties including former NomCom members, Board candidates and anyone else that came forward. Held a session at the Summit to allow interested parties to discuss the issues Had numerous conference calls and worked through the various topics I can’t thank these people enough for the work they did.  They invested a tremendous number of hours thinking, talking and writing about our elections.  I’m proud to say I was a member of this group and thoroughly enjoyed working with everyone (even if I did finally get tired of all the calls.) The ERC delivered their recommendations to the PASS Board prior to our May Board meeting.  We reviewed those and made a few modifications.  I took their recommendations and rewrote them as procedures while incorporating those changes.  Their original recommendations as well as our final document are posted at the ERC documents page.  Please take a second and read them BEFORE we start the elections.  If you have any questions please post them in the forums on the ERC site. (My final document includes a change log at the end that I decided to leave in.  If you want to know which areas to pay special attention to that’s a good start.) Many of those recommendations were already posted in the forums or in the blogs of individual ERC members.  Hopefully nothing in the ERC document is too surprising. In this post I’m going to walk through some of the key changes and talk about what I remember from both ERC and Board discussions.  I’ll pay a little extra attention to things the Board changed from the ERC.  I’d also encourage any of the Board or ERC members to blog their thoughts on this. The Nominating Committee will continue to exist.  Personally, I was curious to see what the non-Board ERC members would think about the NomCom.  There was broad agreement that a group to vet candidates had value to the organization. The NomCom will be composed of five members.  Two will be Board members and three will be from the membership at large.  The only requirement for the three community members is that you’ve volunteered in some way (and volunteering is defined very broadly).  We expect potential at-large NomCom members to participate in a forum on the PASS site to answer questions from the other PASS members. We’re going to hold an election to determine the three community members.  It will be closer to voting for Summit sessions than voting for Board members.  That means there won’t be multiple dedicated emails.  If you’re at all paying attention it will be easy to participate.  Personally I wanted it easy for those that cared to participate but not overwhelm those that didn’t care.  I think this strikes a good balance. There’s also a clause that in order to be considered a winner in this NomCom election, you must receive 10 votes.  This is something I suggested.  I have no idea how popular the NomCom election is going to be.  I just wanted a fallback that if no one participated and some random person got in with one or two votes.  Any open slots will be filled by the NomCom chair (usually the PASS Immediate Past President).  My assumption is that they would probably take the next highest vote getters unless they were throwing flames in the forums or clearly unqualified.  As a final check, the Board still approves the final NomCom. The NomCom is going to rank candidates instead of rating them.  This has interesting implications.  This was championed by another ERC member and I’m hoping they write something about it.  This will really force the NomCom to make decisions between candidates.  You can’t just rate everyone a 3 and be done with it.  It may also make candidates appear further apart than they actually are.  I’m looking forward talking with the NomCom after this election and getting their feedback on this. The PASS Board added an option to remove a candidate with a unanimous vote of the NomCom.  This was primarily put in place to handle people that lied on their application or had a criminal background or some other unusual situation and we figured it out. We list an explicit goal of three candidate per open slot. We also wanted an easy way to find the NomCom candidate rankings from the ballot.  Hopefully this will satisfy those that want a broad candidate pool and those that want the NomCom to identify the most qualified candidates. The primary spokesperson for the NomCom is the committee chair.  After the issues around the election last year we didn’t have a good communication plan in place.  We should have and that was a failure on the part of the Board.  If there is criticism of the election this year I hope that falls squarely on the Board.  The community members of the NomCom shouldn’t be fielding complaints over the election process.  That said, the NomCom is ranking candidates and we are forcing them to rank some lower than others.  I’m sure you’ll each find someone that you think should have been ranked differently.  I also want to highlight one other change to the process that we started last year and isn’t included in these documents.  I think the candidate forums on the PASS site were tremendously helpful last year in helping people to find out more about candidates.  That gives our members a way to ask hard questions of the candidates and publicly see their answers. This year we have two important groups to fill.  The first is the NomCom.  We need three people from our membership to step up and fill this role.  It won’t be easy.  You will have to make subjective rankings of your fellow community members.  Your actions will be important in deciding who the future leaders of PASS will be.  There’s a 50/50 chance that one of the people you interview will be the President of PASS someday.  This is not a responsibility to be taken lightly. The second is the slate of candidates.  If you’ve ever thought about running for the Board this is the year.  We’ve never had nine candidates on the ballot before.  Your chance of making it through the NomCom are higher than in any previous year.  Unfortunately the more of you that run, the more of you that will lose in the election.  And hopefully that competition will mean more community involvement and better Board members for PASS. Is this the end of changes to the election process?  It isn’t.  Every year that I’ve been on the Board the election process has changed.  Some years there have been small changes and some years there have been large changes.  After this election we’ll look at how the process worked and decide what steps to take – just like we do every year.

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• Mobile BI Comes of Age

  - by rich.clayton(at)oracle.com

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} One of the hot topics in the Business Intelligence industry is mobility.  More specifically the question is how business can be transformed by the iPhone and the iPad.  In June 2003, Gartner predicted that Mobile BI would be obsolete and that the technology was headed for the 'trough of disillusionment'.  I agreed with them at that time.  Many vendors like MicroStrategy and Business Objects jumped into the fray attempting to show how PDA's like Palm Pilots could be integrated with BI.  Their investments resulted in interesting demos with no commercial traction.  Why, because wireless networks and mobile operating systems were primitive, immature and slow. In my opinion, Apple's iOS has changed everything in Mobile BI.  Yes Blackberry, Android and Symbian and all the rest have their place in the market but I believe that increasingly consumers (not IT departments) influence BI decision making processes.  Consumers are choosing the iPhone and the iPad. The number of iPads I see in business meetings now is staggering.  Some use it for email and note taking and others are starting to use corporate applications.  The possibilities for Mobile BI are countless and I would expect to see iPads enterprise-wide over the next few years.   These new devices will provide just-in-time access to critical business information.  Front-line managers interacting with customers, suppliers, patients or citizens will have information literally at their fingertips. I've experimented with several mobile BI tools.  They look cool but like their Executive Information System (EIS) predecessors of the 1990's these tools lack a backbone and a plausible integration strategy.  EIS was a viral technology in the early 1990's.  Executives from every industry and job function were showcasing their dashboards to fellow co-workers and colleagues at the country club.  Just like the iPad, every senior manager wanted one.  EIS wasn't a device however, it was a software application.   EIS quickly faded into the software sunset as it lacked integration with corporate information systems.  BI servers  replaced EIS because the technology focused on the heavy data lifting of integrating, normalizing, aggregating and managing large, complex data volumes.  The devices are here to stay. The cute stand-alone mobile BI tools, not so much. If all you're looking to do is put Excel files on your iPad, there are plenty of free tools on the market.  You'll look cool at your next management meeting but after a few weeks, the cool factor will fade away and you'll be wondering how you will ever maintain it.  If however you want secure, consistent, reliable information on your iPad, you need an integration strategy and a way to model the data.  BI Server technologies like the Oracle BI Foundation is a market leading approach to tackle that issue. I liken the BI mobility frenzy to buying classic cars.  Classic Cars have two buying groups - teenagers and middle-age folks looking to tinker.  Teenagers look at the pin-stripes and the paint job while middle-agers (like me)  kick the tires a bit and look under the hood to check out the quality and reliability of the engine.  Mobile BI tools sure look sexy but don't go very far without an engine and a transmission or an integration strategy. The strategic question in Mobile BI is can these startups build a motor and transmission faster than Oracle can re-paint the car?  Oracle has a great engine and a transmission that connects to all enterprise information assets.  We're working on the new paint job and are excited about the possibilities.  Just as vertical integration worked in the automotive business, it too works in the technology industry.

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• 6 Facts About GlassFish Announcement

  - by Bruno.Borges

  Since Oracle announced the end of commercial support for future Oracle GlassFish Server versions, the Java EE world has started wondering what will happen to GlassFish Server Open Source Edition. Unfortunately, there's a lot of misleading information going around. So let me clarify some things with facts, not FUD. Fact #1 - GlassFish Open Source Edition is not dead GlassFish Server Open Source Edition will remain the reference implementation of Java EE. The current trunk is where an implementation for Java EE 8 will flourish, and this will become the future GlassFish 5.0. Calling "GlassFish is dead" does no good to the Java EE ecosystem. The GlassFish Community will remain strong towards the future of Java EE. Without revenue-focused mind, this might actually help the GlassFish community to shape the next version, and set free from any ties with commercial decisions. Fact #2 - OGS support is not over As I said before, GlassFish Server Open Source Edition will continue. Main change is that there will be no more future commercial releases of Oracle GlassFish Server. New and existing OGS 2.1.x and 3.1.x commercial customers will continue to be supported according to the Oracle Lifetime Support Policy. In parallel, I believe there's no other company in the Java EE business that offers commercial support to more than one build of a Java EE application server. This new direction can actually help customers and partners, simplifying decision through commercial negotiations. Fact #3 - WebLogic is not always more expensive than OGS Oracle GlassFish Server ("OGS") is a build of GlassFish Server Open Source Edition bundled with a set of commercial features called GlassFish Server Control and license bundles such as Java SE Support. OGS has at the moment of this writing the pricelist of U$ 5,000 / processor. One information that some bloggers are mentioning is that WebLogic is more expensive than this. Fact 3.1: it is not necessarily the case. The initial edition of WebLogic is called "Standard Edition" and falls into a policy where some “Standard Edition” products are licensed on a per socket basis. As of current pricelist, US$ 10,000 / socket. If you do the math, you will realize that WebLogic SE can actually be significantly more cost effective than OGS, and a customer can save money if running on a CPU with 4 cores or more for example. Quote from the price list: “When licensing Oracle programs with Standard Edition One or Standard Edition in the product name (with the exception of Java SE Support, Java SE Advanced, and Java SE Suite), a processor is counted equivalent to an occupied socket; however, in the case of multi-chip modules, each chip in the multi-chip module is counted as one occupied socket.” For more details speak to your Oracle sales representative - this is clearly at list price and every customer typically has a relationship with Oracle (like they do with other vendors) and different contractual details may apply. And although OGS has always been production-ready for Java EE applications, it is no secret that WebLogic has always been more enterprise, mission critical application server than OGS since BEA. Different editions of WLS provide features and upgrade irons like the WebLogic Diagnostic Framework, Work Managers, Side by Side Deployment, ADF and TopLink bundled license, Web Tier (Oracle HTTP Server) bundled licensed, Fusion Middleware stack support, Oracle DB integration features, Oracle RAC features (such as GridLink), Coherence Management capabilities, Advanced HA (Whole Service Migration and Server Migration), Java Mission Control, Flight Recorder, Oracle JDK support, etc. Fact #4 - There’s no major vendor supporting community builds of Java EE app servers There are no major vendors providing support for community builds of any Open Source application server. For example, IBM used to provide community support for builds of Apache Geronimo, not anymore. Red Hat does not commercially support builds of WildFly and if I remember correctly, never supported community builds of former JBoss AS. Oracle has never commercially supported GlassFish Server Open Source Edition builds. Tomitribe appears to be the exception to the rule, offering commercial support for Apache TomEE. Fact #5 - WebLogic and GlassFish share several Java EE implementations It has been no secret that although GlassFish and WebLogic share some JSR implementations (as stated in the The Aquarium announcement: JPA, JSF, WebSockets, CDI, Bean Validation, JAX-WS, JAXB, and WS-AT) and WebLogic understands GlassFish deployment descriptors, they are not from the same codebase. Fact #6 - WebLogic is not for GlassFish what JBoss EAP is for WildFly WebLogic is closed-source offering. It is commercialized through a license-based plus support fee model. OGS although from an Open Source code, has had the same commercial model as WebLogic. Still, one cannot compare GlassFish/WebLogic to WildFly/JBoss EAP. It is simply not the same case, since Oracle has had two different products from different codebases. The comparison should be limited to GlassFish Open Source / Oracle GlassFish Server versus WildFly / JBoss EAP. But the message now is much clear: Oracle will commercially support only the proprietary product WebLogic, and invest on GlassFish Server Open Source Edition as the reference implementation for the Java EE platform and future Java EE 8, as a developer-friendly community distribution, and encourages community participation through Adopt a JSR and contributions to GlassFish. In comparison Oracle's decision has pretty much the same goal as to when IBM killed support for Websphere Community Edition; and to when Red Hat decided to change the name of JBoss Community Edition to WildFly, simplifying and clarifying marketing message and leaving the commercial field wide open to JBoss EAP only. Oracle can now, as any other vendor has already been doing, focus on only one commercial offer. Some users are saying they will now move to WildFly, but it is important to note that Red Hat does not offer commercial support for WildFly builds. Although the future JBoss EAP versions will come from the same codebase as WildFly, the builds will definitely not be the same, nor sharing 100% of their functionalities and bug fixes. This means there will be no company running a WildFly build in production with support from Red Hat. This discussion has also raised an important and interesting information: Oracle offers a free for developers OTN License for WebLogic. For other environments this is different, but please note this is the same policy Red Hat applies to JBoss EAP, as stated in their download page and terms. Oracle had the same policy for OGS. TL;DR; GlassFish Server Open Source Edition isn’t dead. Current and new OGS 2.x/3.x customers will continue to have support (respecting LSP). WebLogic is not necessarily more expensive than OGS. Oracle will focus on one commercially supported Java EE application server, like other vendors also limit themselves to support one build/product only. Community builds are hardly supported. Commercially supported builds of Open Source products are not exactly from the same codebase as community builds. What's next for GlassFish and the Java EE community? There are conversations in place to tackle some of the community desires, most of them stated by Markus Eisele in his blog post. We will keep you posted.

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• The Future of Project Management is Social

  - by Natalia Rachelson

  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:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} A guest post by Kazim Isfahani, Director, Product Marketing, Oracle Rapid Ascent. Breakneck Speed. Lightning Fast. Perhaps even overwhelming. No matter which set of adjectives we use to describe it, social media’s rise into the enterprise mainstream has been unprecedented. Indeed, the big 4 social media powerhouses (Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and Twitter), have nearly 2 Billion users between them. You may be asking (as you should really) “That’s all well and good for the consumer, but for me at my company, what’s your point? Beyond the fact that I can check and post updates, that is.” Good question, kind sir. Impact of Social and Collaboration on Project Management I’ll dovetail this discussion to the project management realm, since that’s what I’m writing about. Speed is a big challenge for project-driven organizations. Anything that can help speed up project delivery - be it a new product introduction effort or a geographical expansion project - fast is a good thing. So where does this whole social thing fit particularly since there are already a host of tools to help with traditional project execution? The fact is companies have seen improvements in their productivity by deploying departmental collaboration and other social-oriented solutions. McKinsey’s survey on social tools shows we have reached critical scale: 72% of respondents report that their companies use at least one and over 40% say they are using social networks and blogs. We don’t hear as much about the impact of social media technologies at the project and project manager level, but that does not mean there is none. Consider the new hire. The type of individual entering the workforce and executing on projects is a generation of worker expecting visually appealing, easy to use and easy to understand technology meshing hand-in-hand with business processes. Consider the project manager. The social era has enhanced the role that the project manager must play. Today’s project manager must be a supreme communicator, an influencer, a sympathizer, a negotiator, and still manage to keep all stakeholders in the loop on project progress. Social tools play a significant role in this effort. Now consider the impact to the project team. The way that a project team functions has changed, with newer, social oriented technologies making the process of information dissemination and team communications much more fluid. It’s clear that a shift is occurring where “social” is intersecting with project management. The Rise of Social Project Management We refer to the melding of project management and social networking as Social Project Management. Social Project Management is based upon the philosophy that the project team is one part of an integrated whole, and that valuable and unique abilities exist within the larger organization. For this reason, Social Project Management systems should be integrated into the collaborative platform(s) of an organization, allowing communication to proceed outside the project boundaries. What makes social project management "social" is an implicit awareness where distributed teams build connected links in ways that were previously restricted to teams that were co-located. Just as critical, Social Project Management embraces the vision of seamless online collaboration within a project team, but also provides for, (and enhances) the use of rigorous project management techniques. Social Project Management acknowledges that projects (particularly large projects) are a social activity - people doing work with people, for other people, with commitments to yet other people. The more people (larger projects), the more interpersonal the interactions, and the more social affects the project. The Epitome of Social - Fusion Project Portfolio Management If I take this one level further to discuss Fusion Project Portfolio Management, the notion of Social Project Management is on full display. With Fusion Project Portfolio Management, project team members have a single place for interaction on projects and access to any other resources working within the Fusion ERP applications. This allows team members the opportunity to be informed with greater participation and provide better information. The application’s the visual appeal, and highly graphical nature makes it easy to navigate information. The project activity stream adds to the intuitive user experience. The goal of productivity is pervasive throughout Fusion Project Portfolio Management. Field research conducted with Oracle customers and partners showed that users needed a way to stay in the context of their core transactions and yet easily access social networking tools. This is manifested in the application so when a user executes a business process, they not only have the transactional application at their fingertips, but also have things like e-mail, SMS, text, instant messaging, chat – all providing a number of different ways to interact with people and/or groups of people, both internal and external to the project and enterprise. But in the end, connecting people is relatively easy. The larger issue is finding a way to serve up relevant, system-generated, actionable information, in real time, which will allow for more streamlined execution on key business processes. Fusion Project Portfolio Management’s design concept enables users to create project communities, establish discussion threads, manage event calendars as well as deliver project based work spaces to organize communications within the context of a project – all within a secure business environment. We’d love to hear from you and get your thoughts and ideas about how Social Project Management is impacting your organization. To learn more about Oracle Fusion Project Portfolio Management, please visit this link

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• RIF PRD: Presentation syntax issues

  - by Charles Young

  Over Christmas I got to play a bit with the W3C RIF PRD and came across a few issues which I thought I would record for posterity. Specifically, I was working on a grammar for the presentation syntax using a GLR grammar parser tool (I was using the current CTP of ‘M’ (MGrammer) and Intellipad – I do so hope the MS guys don’t kill off M and Intellipad now they have dropped the other parts of SQL Server Modelling). I realise that the presentation syntax is non-normative and that any issues with it do not therefore compromise the standard. However, presentation syntax is useful in its own right, and it would be great to iron out any issues in a future revision of the standard. The main issues are actually not to do with the grammar at all, but rather with the ‘running example’ in the RIF PRD recommendation. I started with the code provided in Example 9.1. There are several discrepancies when compared with the EBNF rules documented in the standard. Broadly the problems can be categorised as follows: ·      Parenthesis mismatch – the wrong number of parentheses are used in various places. For example, in GoldRule, the RHS of the rule (the ‘Then’) is nested in the LHS (‘the If’). In NewCustomerAndWidgetRule, the RHS is orphaned from the LHS. Together with additional incorrect parenthesis, this leads to orphanage of UnknownStatusRule from the entire Document. ·      Invalid use of parenthesis in ‘Forall’ constructs. Parenthesis should not be used to enclose formulae. Removal of the invalid parenthesis gave me a feeling of inconsistency when comparing formulae in Forall to formulae in If. The use of parenthesis is not actually inconsistent in these two context, but in an If construct it ‘feels’ as if you are enclosing formulae in parenthesis in a LISP-like fashion. In reality, the parenthesis is simply being used to group subordinate syntax elements. The fact that an If construct can contain only a single formula as an immediate child adds to this feeling of inconsistency. ·      Invalid representation of compact URIs (CURIEs) in the context of Frame productions. In several places the URIs are not qualified with a namespace prefix (‘ex1:’). This conflicts with the definition of CURIEs in the RIF Datatypes and Built-Ins 1.0 document. Here are the productions: CURIE          ::= PNAME_LN                  | PNAME_NS PNAME_LN       ::= PNAME_NS PN_LOCAL PNAME_NS       ::= PN_PREFIX? ':' PN_LOCAL       ::= ( PN_CHARS_U | [0-9] ) ((PN_CHARS|'.')* PN_CHARS)? PN_CHARS       ::= PN_CHARS_U                  | '-' | [0-9] | #x00B7                  | [#x0300-#x036F] | [#x203F-#x2040] PN_CHARS_U     ::= PN_CHARS_BASE                  | '_' PN_CHARS_BASE ::= [A-Z] | [a-z] | [#x00C0-#x00D6] | [#x00D8-#x00F6]                  | [#x00F8-#x02FF] | [#x0370-#x037D] | [#x037F-#x1FFF]                  | [#x200C-#x200D] | [#x2070-#x218F] | [#x2C00-#x2FEF]                  | [#x3001-#xD7FF] | [#xF900-#xFDCF] | [#xFDF0-#xFFFD]                  | [#x10000-#xEFFFF] PN_PREFIX      ::= PN_CHARS_BASE ((PN_CHARS|'.')* PN_CHARS)? The more I look at CURIEs, the more my head hurts! The RIF specification allows prefixes and colons without local names, which surprised me. However, the CURIE Syntax 1.0 working group note specifically states that this form is supported…and then promptly provides a syntactic definition that seems to preclude it! However, on (much) deeper inspection, it appears that ‘ex1:’ (for example) is allowed, but would really represent a ‘fragment’ of the ‘reference’, rather than a prefix! Ouch! This is so completely ambiguous that it surely calls into question the whole CURIE specification.   In any case, RIF does not allow local names without a prefix. ·      Missing ‘External’ specifiers for built-in functions and predicates.  The EBNF specification enforces this for terms within frames, but does not appear to enforce (what I believe is) the correct use of External on built-in predicates. In any case, the running example only specifies ‘External’ once on the predicate in UnknownStatusRule. External() is required in several other places. ·      The List used on the LHS of UnknownStatusRule is comma-delimited. This is not supported by the EBNF definition. Similarly, the argument list of pred:list-contains is illegally comma-delimited. ·      Unnecessary use of conjunction around a single formula in DiscountRule. This is strictly legal in the EBNF, but redundant.   All the above issues concern the presentation syntax used in the running example. There are a few minor issues with the grammar itself. Note that Michael Kiefer stated in his paper “Rule Interchange Format: The Framework” that: “The presentation syntax of RIF … is an abstract syntax and, as such, it omits certain details that might be important for unambiguous parsing.” ·      The grammar cannot differentiate unambiguously between strategies and priorities on groups. A processor is forced to resolve this by detecting the use of IRIs and integers. This could easily be fixed in the grammar.   ·      The grammar cannot unambiguously parse the ‘->’ operator in frames. Specifically, ‘-’ characters are allowed in PN_LOCAL names and hence a parser cannot determine if ‘status->’ is (‘status’ ‘->’) or (‘status-’ ‘>’).   One way to fix this is to amend the PN_LOCAL production as follows: PN_LOCAL ::= ( PN_CHARS_U | [0-9] ) ((PN_CHARS|'.')* ((PN_CHARS)-('-')))? However, unilaterally changing the definition of this production, which is defined in the SPARQL Query Language for RDF specification, makes me uncomfortable. ·      I assume that the presentation syntax is case-sensitive. I couldn’t find this stated anywhere in the documentation, but function/predicate names do appear to be documented as being case-sensitive. ·      The EBNF does not specify whitespace handling. A couple of productions (RULE and ACTION_BLOCK) are crafted to enforce the use of whitespace. This is not necessary. It seems inconsistent with the rest of the specification and can cause parsing issues. In addition, the Const production exhibits whitespaces issues. The intention may have been to disallow the use of whitespace around ‘^^’, but any direct implementation of the EBNF will probably allow whitespace between ‘^^’ and the SYMSPACE. Of course, I am being a little nit-picking about all this. On the whole, the EBNF translated very smoothly and directly to ‘M’ (MGrammar) and proved to be fairly complete. I have encountered far worse issues when translating other EBNF specifications into usable grammars.   I can’t imagine there would be any difficulty in implementing the same grammar in Antlr, COCO/R, gppg, XText, Bison, etc. A general observation, which repeats a point made above, is that the use of parenthesis in the presentation syntax can feel inconsistent and un-intuitive.   It isn’t actually inconsistent, but I think the presentation syntax could be improved by adopting braces, rather than parenthesis, to delimit subordinate syntax elements in a similar way to so many programming languages. The familiarity of braces would communicate the structure of the syntax more clearly to people like me.  If braces were adopted, parentheses could be retained around ‘var (frame | ‘new()’) constructs in action blocks. This use of parenthesis feels very LISP-like, and I think that this is my issue. It’s as if the presentation syntax represents the deformed love-child of LISP and C. In some places (specifically, action blocks), parenthesis is used in a LISP-like fashion. In other places it is used like braces in C. I find this quite confusing. Here is a corrected version of the running example (Example 9.1) in compliant presentation syntax: Document(    Prefix( ex1 <http://example.com/2009/prd2> )    (* ex1:CheckoutRuleset *)  Group rif:forwardChaining (     (* ex1:GoldRule *)    Group 10 (      Forall ?customer such that And(?customer # ex1:Customer                                     ?customer[ex1:status->"Silver"])        (Forall ?shoppingCart such that ?customer[ex1:shoppingCart->?shoppingCart]           (If Exists ?value (And(?shoppingCart[ex1:value->?value]                                  External(pred:numeric-greater-than-or-equal(?value 2000))))            Then Do(Modify(?customer[ex1:status->"Gold"])))))      (* ex1:DiscountRule *)    Group (      Forall ?customer such that ?customer # ex1:Customer        (If Or( ?customer[ex1:status->"Silver"]                ?customer[ex1:status->"Gold"])         Then Do ((?s ?customer[ex1:shoppingCart-> ?s])                  (?v ?s[ex1:value->?v])                  Modify(?s [ex1:value->External(func:numeric-multiply (?v 0.95))]))))      (* ex1:NewCustomerAndWidgetRule *)    Group (      Forall ?customer such that And(?customer # ex1:Customer                                     ?customer[ex1:status->"New"] )        (If Exists ?shoppingCart ?item                   (And(?customer[ex1:shoppingCart->?shoppingCart]                        ?shoppingCart[ex1:containsItem->?item]                        ?item # ex1:Widget ) )         Then Do( (?s ?customer[ex1:shoppingCart->?s])                  (?val ?s[ex1:value->?val])                  (?voucher ?customer[ex1:voucher->?voucher])                  Retract(?customer[ex1:voucher->?voucher])                  Retract(?voucher)                  Modify(?s[ex1:value->External(func:numeric-multiply(?val 0.90))]))))      (* ex1:UnknownStatusRule *)    Group (      Forall ?customer such that ?customer # ex1:Customer        (If Not(Exists ?status                       (And(?customer[ex1:status->?status]                            External(pred:list-contains(List("New" "Bronze" "Silver" "Gold") ?status)) )))         Then Do( Execute(act:print(External(func:concat("New customer: " ?customer))))                  Assert(?customer[ex1:status->"New"]))))  ) )   I hope that helps someone out there :-)

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• Building an Infrastructure Cloud with Oracle VM for x86 + Enterprise Manager 12c

  - by Richard Rotter

  Cloud Computing? Everyone is talking about Cloud these days. Everyone is explaining how the cloud will help you to bring your service up and running very fast, secure and with little effort. You can find these kinds of presentations at almost every event around the globe. But what is really behind all this stuff? Is it really so simple? And the answer is: Yes it is! With the Oracle SW Stack it is! In this post, I will try to bring this down to earth, demonstrating how easy it could be to build a cloud infrastructure with Oracle's solution for cloud computing.But let me cover some basics first: How fast can you build a cloud?How elastic is your cloud so you can provide new services on demand? How much effort does it take to monitor and operate your Cloud Infrastructure in order to meet your SLAs?How easy is it to chargeback for your services provided? These are the critical success factors of Cloud Computing. And Oracle has an answer to all those questions. By using Oracle VM for X86 in combination with Enterprise Manager 12c you can build and control your cloud environment very fast and easy. What are the fundamental building blocks for your cloud? Oracle Cloud Building Blocks #1 Hardware Surprise, surprise. Even the cloud needs to run somewhere, hence you will need hardware. This HW normally consists of servers, storage and networking. But Oracles goes beyond that. There are Optimized Solutions available for your cloud infrastructure. This is a cookbook to build your HW cloud platform. For example, building your cloud infrastructure with blades and our network infrastructure will reduce complexity in your datacenter (Blades with switch network modules, splitter cables to reduce the amount of cables, TOR (Top Of the Rack) switches which are building the interface to your infrastructure environment. Reducing complexity even in the cabling will help you to manage your environment more efficient and with less risk. Of course, our engineered systems fit into the cloud perfectly too. Although they are considered as a PaaS themselves, having the database SW (for Exadata) and the application development environment (for Exalogic) already deployed on them, in general they are ideal systems to enable you building your own cloud and PaaS infrastructure. #2 Virtualization The next missing link in the cloud setup is virtualization. For me personally, it's one of the most hidden "secret", that oracle can provide you with a complete virtualization stack in terms of a hypervisor on both architectures: X86 and Sparc CPUs. There is Oracle VM for X86 and Oracle VM for Sparc available at no additional  license costs if your are running this virtualization stack on top of Oracle HW (and with Oracle Premier Support for HW). This completes the virtualization portfolio together with Solaris Zones introduced already with Solaris 10 a few years ago. Let me explain how Oracle VM for X86 works: Oracle VM for x86 consists of two main parts: - The Oracle VM Server: Oracle VM Server is installed on bare metal and it is the hypervisor which is able to run virtual machines. It has a very small footprint. The ISO-Image of Oracle VM Server is only 200MB large. It is very small but efficient. You can install a OVM-Server in less than 5 mins by booting the Server with the ISO-Image assigned and providing the necessary configuration parameters (like installing an Linux distribution). After the installation, the OVM-Server is ready to use. That's all. - The Oracle VM-Manager: OVM-Manager is the central management tool where you can control your OVM-Servers. OVM-Manager provides the graphical user interface, which is an Application Development Framework (ADF) application, with a familiar web-browser based interface, to manage Oracle VM Servers, virtual machines, and resources. The Oracle VM Manager has the following capabilities: Create virtual machines Create server pools Power on and off virtual machines Manage networks and storage Import virtual machines, ISO files, and templates Manage high availability of Oracle VM Servers, server pools, and virtual machines Perform live migration of virtual machines I want to highlight one of the goodies which you can use if you are running Oracle VM for X86: Preconfigured, downloadable Virtual Machine Templates form edelivery With these templates, you can download completely preconfigured Virtual Machines in your environment, boot them up, configure them at first time boot and use it. There are templates for almost all Oracle SW and Applications (like Fusion Middleware, Database, Siebel, etc.) available. #3) Cloud Management The management of your cloud infrastructure is key. This is a day-to-day job. Acquiring HW, installing a virtualization layer on top of it is done just at the beginning and if you want to expand your infrastructure. But managing your cloud, keeping it up and running, deploying new services, changing your chargeback model, etc, these are the daily jobs. These jobs must be simple, secure and easy to manage. The Enterprise Manager 12c Cloud provides this functionality from one management cockpit. Enterprise Manager 12c uses Oracle VM Manager to control OVM Serverpools. Once you registered your OVM-Managers in Enterprise Manager, then you are able to setup your cloud infrastructure and manage everything from Enterprise Manager. What you need to do in EM12c is: ">Register your OVM Manager in Enterprise ManagerAfter Registering your OVM Manager, all the functionality of Oracle VM for X86 is also available in Enterprise Manager. Enterprise Manager works as a "Manger" of the Manager. You can register as many OVM-Managers you want and control your complete virtualization environment Create Roles and Users for your Self Service Portal in Enterprise ManagerWith this step you allow users to logon on the Enterprise Manager Self Service Portal. Users can request Virtual Machines in this portal. Setup the Cloud InfrastructureSetup the Quotas for your self service users. How many VMs can they request? How much of your resources ( cpu, memory, storage, network, etc. etc.)? Which SW components (templates, assemblys) can your self service users request? In this step, you basically set up the complete cloud infrastructure. Setup ChargebackOnce your cloud is set up, you need to configure your chargeback mechanism. The Enterprise Manager collects the resources metrics, which are used in a very deep level. Almost all collected Metrics could be used in the chargeback module. You can define chargeback plans based on configurations (charge for the amount of cpu, memory, storage is assigned to a machine, or for a specific OS which is installed) or chargeback on resource consumption (% of cpu used, storage used, etc). Or you can also define a combination of configuration and consumption chargeback plans. The chargeback module is very flexible. Here is a overview of the workflow how to handle infrastructure cloud in EM: Summary As you can see, setting up an Infrastructure Cloud Service with Oracle VM for X86 and Enterprise Manager 12c is really simple. I personally configured a complete cloud environment with three X86 servers and a small JBOD san box in less than 3 hours. There is no magic in it, it is all straightforward. Of course, you have to have some experience with Oracle VM and Enterprise Manager. Experience in setting up Linux environments helps as well. I plan to publish a technical cookbook in the next few weeks. I hope you found this post useful and will see you again here on our blog. Any hints, comments are welcome!

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• It was a figure of speech!

  - by Ratman21

  Yesterday I posted the following as attention getter / advertisement (as well as my feelings). In the groups, (I am in) on the social networking site, LinkedIn and boy did I get responses.    I am fighting mad about (a figure of speech, really) not having a job! Look just because I am over 55 and have gray hair. It does not mean, my brain is dead or I can no longer trouble shoot a router or circuit or LAN issue. Or that I can do “IT” work at all. And I could prove this if; some one would give me at job. Come on try me for 90 days at min. wage. I know you will end up keeping me (hope fully at normal pay) around. Is any one hearing me…come on take up the challenge!     This was the responses I got.   I hear you. We just need to retrain and get our skills up to speed is all. That is what I am doing. I have not given up. Just got to stay on top of the game. Experience is on our side if we have the credentials and we are reasonable about our salaries this should not be an issue.   Already on it, going back to school and have got three certifications (CompTIA A+, Security+ and Network+. I am now studying for my CISCO CCNA certification. As to my salary, I am willing to work at very reasonable rate.   You need to re-brand yourself like a product, market and sell yourself. You need to smarten up, look and feel a million dollars, re-energize yourself, regain your confidents. Either start your own business, or re-write your CV so it stands out from the rest, get the template off the internet. Contact every recruitment agent in your town, state, country and overseas, and on the web. Apply to every job you think you could do, you may not get it but you will make a contact for your network, which may lead to a job at the end of the tunnel. Get in touch with everyone you know from past jobs. Do charity work. I maintain the IT Network, stage electrical and the Telecom equipment in my church,   Again already on it. I have email the world is seems with my resume and cover letters. So far, I have rewritten or had it rewrote, my resume and cover letters; over seven times so far. Re-energize? I never lost my energy level or my self-confidents in my work (now if could get some HR personal to see the same). I also volunteer at my church, I created and maintain the church web sit.   I share your frustration. Sucks being over 50 and looking for work. Please don't sell yourself short at min wage because the employer will think that’s your worth. Keep trying!!   I never stop trying and min wage is only for 90 days. If some one takes up the challenge. Some post asked if I am keeping up technology.   Do you keep up with the latest technology and can speak the language fluidly?   Yep to that and as to speaking it also a yep! I am a geek you know. I heard from others over the 50 year mark and younger too.   I'm with you! I keep getting told that I don't have enough experience because I just recently completed a Masters level course in Microsoft SQL Server, which gave me a project-intensive equivalent of between 2 and 3 years of experience. On top of that training, I have 19 years as an applications programmer and database administrator. I can normalize rings around experienced DBAs and churn out effective code with the best of them. But my 19 years is worthless as far as most recruiters and HR people are concerned because it is not the specific experience for which they're looking. HR AND RECRUITERS TAKE NOTE: Experience, whatever the language, translates across platforms and technology! By the way, I'm also over 55 and still have "got it"!   I never lost it and I also can work rings round younger techs.   I'm 52 and female and seem to be having the same issues. I have over 10 years experience in tech support (with a BS in CIS) and can't get hired either.   Ow, I only have an AS in computer science along with my certifications.   Keep the faith, I have been unemployed since August of 2008. I agree with you...I am willing to return to the beginning of my retail career and work myself back through the ranks, if someone will look past the grey and realize the knowledge I would bring to the table.   I also would like some one to look past the gray.   Interesting approach, volunteering to work for minimum wage for 90 days. I'm in the same situation as you, being 55 & balding w/white hair, so I know where you're coming from. I've been out of work now for a year. I'm in Michigan, where the unemployment rate is estimated to be 15% (the worst in the nation) & even though I've got 30+ years of IT experience ranging from mainframe to PC desktop support, it's difficult to even get a face-to-face interview. I had one prospective employer tell me flat out that I "didn't have the energy required for this position". Mostly I never get any feedback. All I can say is good luck & try to remain optimistic.   He said WHAT! Yes remaining optimistic is key. Along with faith in God. Then there was this (for lack of better word) jerk.   Give it up already. You were too old to work in high tech 10 years ago. Scratch that, 20 years ago! Try selling hot dogs in front of Fry's Electronics. At least you would get a chance to eat lunch with your previous colleagues....   You know funny thing on this person is that I checked out his profile. He is older than I am.

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• 5 Best Practices - Laying the Foundation for WebCenter Projects

  - by Kellsey Ruppel

  Today’s guest post comes from Oracle WebCenter expert John Brunswick. John specializes in enterprise portal and content management solutions and actively contributes to the enterprise software business community and has authored a series of articles about optimal business involvement in portal, business process management and SOA development, examining ways of helping organizations move away from monolithic application development. We’re happy to have John join us today! Maximizing success with Oracle WebCenter portal requires a strategic understanding of Oracle WebCenter capabilities.  The following best practices enable the creation of portal solutions with minimal resource overhead, while offering the greatest flexibility for progressive elaboration. They are inherently project agnostic, enabling a strong foundation for future growth and an expedient return on your investment in the platform.  If you are able to embrace even only a few of these practices, you will materially improve your deployment capability with WebCenter. 1. Segment Duties Around 3Cs - Content, Collaboration and Contextual Data "Agility" is one of the most common business benefits touted by modern web platforms.  It sounds good - who doesn't want to be Agile, right?  How exactly IT organizations go about supplying agility to their business counterparts often lacks definition - hamstrung by ambiguity. Ultimately, businesses want to benefit from reduced development time to deliver a solution to a particular constituent, which is augmented by as much self-service as possible to develop and manage the solution directly. All done in the absence of direct IT involvement. With Oracle WebCenter's depth in the areas of content management, pallet of native collaborative services, enterprise mashup capability and delegated administration, it is very possible to execute on this business vision at a technical level. To realize the benefits of the platform depth we can think of Oracle WebCenter's segmentation of duties along the lines of the 3 Cs - Content, Collaboration and Contextual Data.  All three of which can have their foundations developed by IT, then provisioned to the business on a per role basis. Content – Oracle WebCenter benefits from an extremely mature content repository.  Work flow, audit, notification, office integration and conversion capabilities for documents (HTML & PDF) make this a haven for business users to take control of content within external and internal portals, custom applications and web sites.  When deploying WebCenter portal take time to think of areas in which IT can provide the "harness" for content to reside, then allow the business to manage any content items within the site, using the content foundation to ensure compliance with business rules and process.  This frees IT to work on more mission critical challenges and allows the business to respond in short order to emerging market needs. Collaboration – Native collaborative services and WebCenter spaces are a perfect match for business users who are looking to enable document sharing, discussions and social networking.  The ability to deploy the services is granular and on the basis of roles scoped to given areas of the system - much like the first C “content”.  This enables business analysts to design the roles required and IT to provision with peace of mind that users leveraging the collaborative services are only able to do so in explicitly designated areas of a site. Bottom line - business will not need to wait for IT, but cannot go outside of the scope that has been defined based on their roles. Contextual Data – Collaborative capabilities are most powerful when included within the context of business data.  The ability to supply business users with decision shaping data that they can include in various parts of a portal or portals, just as they would with content items, is one of the most powerful aspects of Oracle WebCenter.  Imagine a discussion about new store selection for a retail chain that re-purposes existing information from business intelligence services about various potential locations and or custom backend systems - presenting it directly in the context of the discussion.  If there are some data sources that are preexisting in your enterprise take a look at how they can be made into discrete offerings within the portal, then scoped to given business user roles for inclusion within collaborative activities. 2. Think Generically, Execute Specifically Constructs.  Anyone who has spent much time around me knows that I am obsessed with this word.  Why? Because Constructs offer immense power - more than APIs, Web Services or other technical capability. Constructs offer organizations the ability to leverage a platform's native characteristics to offer substantial business functionality - without writing code.  This concept becomes more powerful with the additional understanding of the concepts from the platform that an organization learns over time.  Let's take a look at an example of where an Oracle WebCenter construct can substantially reduce the time to get a subscription-based site out the door and into the hands of the end consumer. Imagine a site that allows members to subscribe to specific disciplines to access information and application data around that various discipline.  A space is a collection of secured pages within Oracle WebCenter.  Spaces are not only secured, but also default content stored within it to be scoped automatically to that space. Taking this a step further, Oracle WebCenter’s Activity Stream surfaces events, discussions and other activities that are scoped to the given user on the basis of their space affiliations.  In order to have a portal that would allow users to "subscribe" to information around various disciplines - spaces could be used out of the box to achieve this capability and without using any APIs or low level technical work to achieve this. 3. Make Governance Work for You Imagine driving down the street without the painted lines on the road.  The rules of the road are so ingrained in our minds, we often do not think about the process, but seemingly mundane lane markers are critical enablers. Lane markers allow us to travel at speeds that would be impossible if not for the agreed upon direction of flow. Additionally and more importantly, it allows people to act autonomously - going where they please at any given time. The return on the investment for mobility is high enough for people to buy into globally agreed up governance processes. In Oracle WebCenter we can use similar enablers to lane markers.  Our goal should be to enable the flow of information and provide end users with the ability to arrive at business solutions as needed, not on the basis of cumbersome processes that cannot meet the business needs in a timely fashion. How do we do this? Just as with "Segmentation of Duties" Oracle WebCenter technologies offer the opportunity to compartmentalize various business initiatives from each other within the system due to constructs and security that are available to use within the platform. For instance, when a WebCenter space is created, any content added within that space by default will be secured to that particular space and inherits meta data that is associated with a folder created for the space. Oracle WebCenter content uses meta data to support a broad range of rich ECM functionality and can automatically impart retention, workflow and other policies automatically on the basis of what has been defaulted for that space. Depending on your business needs, this paradigm will also extend to sub sections of a space, offering some interesting possibilities to enable automated management around content. An example may be press releases within a particular area of an extranet that require a five year retention period and need to the reviewed by marketing and legal before release.  The underlying content system will transparently take care of this process on the basis of the above rules, enabling peace of mind over unstructured data - which could otherwise become overwhelming. 4. Make Your First Project Your Second Imagine if Michael Phelps was competing in a swimming championship, but told right before his race that he had to use a brand new stroke.  There is no doubt that Michael is an outstanding swimmer, but chances are that he would like to have some time to get acquainted with the new stroke. New technologies should not be treated any differently.  Before jumping into the deep end it helps to take time to get to know the new approach - even though you may have been swimming thousands of times before. To quickly get a handle on Oracle WebCenter capabilities it can be helpful to deploy a sandbox for the team to use to share project documents, discussions and announcements in an effort to help the actual deployment get under way, while increasing everyone’s knowledge of the platform and its functionality that may be helpful down the road. Oracle Technology Network has made a pre-configured virtual machine available for download that can be a great starting point for this exercise. 5. Get to Know the Community If you are reading this blog post you have most certainly faced a software decision or challenge that was solved on the basis of a small piece of missing critical information - which took substantial research to discover.  Chances were also good that somewhere, someone had already come across this information and would have been excited to share it. There is no denying the power of passionate, connected users, sharing key tips around technology.  The Oracle WebCenter brand has a rich heritage that includes industry-leading technology and practitioners.  With the new Oracle WebCenter brand, opportunities to connect with these experts has become easier. Oracle WebCenter Blog Oracle Social Enterprise LinkedIn WebCenter Group Oracle WebCenter Twitter Oracle WebCenter Facebook Oracle User Groups Additionally, there are various Oracle WebCenter related blogs by an excellent grouping of services partners.

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• Experiences with learning Chinese

  - by Greg Low

  I've had a few friends asking me about learning Chinese and what I've found works and doesn't work. I was answering a question on a mailing list today and I thought I should post this info where it might be useful to many. The question that was initially asked was whether Rosetta Stone was useful but I've provided much more info on learning the language here. I’ve used Rosetta Stone with Chinese but it’s really hard to know whether to recommend it or not. Rosetta Stone works the same way in all languages. They show you photos and then let you both see and hear the target language and get you to work out what they’re talking about. The thinking is that that’s how children learn. However, at first, I found it very frustrating. I’d be staring at photos trying to work out what they were really trying to get at. Sometimes it’s far from obvious. I could not have survived without Google Translate open at the same time. The other weird thing is that the photos are from a mixture of countries. While that’s good in a way, it also means that they are endlessly showing pictures of something that would never happen in the target language and culture. For any language, constant interaction with a speaker of the target language is needed. Rosetta Stone has a “Studio” option. That’s the best part of the program. In my case, it lets me connect around twice a week to a live online class from Beijing. Classes usually have the teacher plus two to four students. You get some Studio access with the initial packages but need to purchase it for ongoing use. I find it very inexpensive. It seems to work out to about $70 (AUD/USD) for six months. That’s a real bargain. The other downside to Rosetta Stone is that they tend to teach very formal language, but as with other languages, that’s not how the locals speak. It might have been correct at one point but no-one actually says that. As an example, Rosetta Stone teach Gonggòng qìche (pronounced roughly like “gong gong chee chure” for bus. Most of my friends from areas like Taiwan would just say Gongche. Google Translate says Zongxiàn (pronounced somewhat like “dzong sheean”) instead. Mind you, the Rosetta Stone option isn't really as bad as "omnibus"; it's more like saying "public bus". If you say the option they provide, people would understand you. I also listen to ChinesePod in the car. They also have SpanishPod. Each podcast is about five minutes of spoken conversation. It is very good for providing current language. Another resource I use is local Meetup groups. Most cities have these and for a variety of languages. It’s way less structured (just standard conversation) but good for getting interaction. The obvious challenge for Asian languages is reading/writing. The input editors for Chinese that are part of Windows are excellent. Many of my Chinese friends speak fluently but cannot read or write. I was determined to learn to do both. For writing, I’m talking about on a computer, not with a pen. (Mind you, I can barely write English with a pen nowadays). When using Rosetta Stone, you can choose to have the Chinese words displayed in pinyin (Wo xihuan xuéxí zhongguó) or in Chinese characters (???????) or both. This year, I’ve been forcing myself to just use the Chinese characters. I use a pinyin input editor in Windows though, as it’s very fast.  (The character recognition input in the iPad is also amazing). Notice from the example that I provided above that the pronunciation of the pinyin isn’t that obvious to us at first either.  Since changing to only using characters, I find I can now read many more Chinese characters fluently. It’s a major challenge though. I can read about 300 now and yet you need around 2,500 to be able to read a newspaper fairly well. Tones are a major issue for some Asian languages. Mandarin has four tones (plus a neutral tone) and there is a major difference in meaning between two words that are spelled the same in pinyin but with different tones. For example, Ma (3rd tone?) is a horse, Ma (1st tone?) is like “mom”, and ma (neutral tone?) is a question mark and so on. Clearly you don’t want to mix these up. As in English, they also have words that do sound the same but mean different things in different contexts. What’s interesting is that even though we see two words that differ only by tone as very similar, to a native speaker, if you say the right words with the wrong tone, you might as well have said a completely different word. My wife’s dialect of Chinese has eight tones. It’s much worse. The reason I’m so keen to learn to read/write Chinese is that even though the different dialects are pronounced so differently that speakers of one dialect often cannot understand another dialect, the writing is generally the same. The only difference is that many years ago, the Chinese government created a simplified set of characters for some of the most commonly used ones. Older Chinese and most Cantonese speakers often struggle with the simplified characters. This is the simplified form of “three apples”: ????   This is the traditional form of the same words: ????  Note that two of the characters are the same but the middle two are quite different. For most languages, the best thing is to watch current movies in the target language but to watch them with the target language as subtitles, not your native language. You want to know what they actually said, not what it roughly means (which is what the English subtitle would give you). The difficulty with Asian languages like Chinese is that you have the added challenge of understanding the subtitles when they are written in the target language. I wish there were Mandarin Chinese movies with pinyin subtitles. For learning to read characters, I also recommend HanCard on the iPad. It is targeted at the HSK language proficiency levels. (I’m intending to take the first HSK exam as soon as I’m ready). Hope that info helps someone get started.  

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