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• Using ext4 in VMware machine

  First of all, using a journaling filesystems like NTFS, ext4, XFS, or JFS (not to name all of them) is a very good idea and nowadays unthinkable not to do. Linux offers a good variety of different option as journaling filesystem for your system. Since years I am using SGI's XFS and I am pretty confident with stability, performance and liability of the system. In earlier years I had to struggle with incompatibilities between XFS and the boot loader. Using an ext2 formatted /boot solved this issue. But, wow, that is ages ago! Lately, I had to setup a fresh Lucid Lynx (Ubuntu 10.04 LTS) system for a change of our internal groupware / messaging system. Therefore, I fired up a new virtual machine with almost standard configuration in VMware Server and run through our network-based PXE boot and installation procedure. At a certain step in this process, Ubuntu asks you about the partitioning of your hard drive(s). Honestly, I have to say that only out of curiousity I sticked to the "default" suggestion and gave my faith and trust into the Ubuntu installation routine... Resulting to have an ext4 based root mount point ( / ). The rest of the installation went on without further concerns or worries. Note:I really can't remember why I chose to go away from my favourite... Well, it should turn out to be the wrong decision after all. Ok, let's continue the story about ext4 in a VMware based virtual machine. After some hours installing additional packages and configuring the new system using LDAP for general authentication and login, I had an "out-of-the-box" usable enterprise messaging system based on Zarafa 6.40 Community Edition inclusive proper SSL-based Webaccess interface and Z-Push extension for ActiveSync with my Nokia mobile. Straightforward and pretty nice for the time spent on the setup. Having priority on other tasks I let the system just running and didn't pay any further attention at all. Until I run into an upgrade of "Mail for Exchange" on Symbian OS. My mobile did not bother me at all with the upgrade and everything went smooth, but trying to re-establish the ActiveSync connection to the Zarafa messaging system resulted in a frustating situation. So, I shifted my focus back to the Linux system and I was amazed to figure out that the root had been remounted readonly due to hard drive failures or at least ext4 reported errors. Firing up Google only confirmed my concerns and it seems that using ext4 for VMware based virtual machines does not look like a stable and reliable candidate to me. You might consider reading those external resources: ext4 fs corruption under VMWare Server 2.01Bug #389555 - ext4 filesystem corruption Well, I learned my lesson and ext{2|3|4} based filesystems are not going to be used on any of my Linux systems or customer installations in the future. Addendum: I did not try this setup in other virtualization environments like VirtualBox, qemu, kvm, Xen, etc.

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• Internships available in Oracle Netherlands - this summer

  - by jessica.ebbelaar

  I am Jannie Minnema, Director of Business Operations for Oracle in the Benelux. My career at Oracle started at Oracle Headquartes in San Francisco as a Project Manager, building Computer Based Training Products. After spending 3 years in Dubai, my husband and I moved to the USA as he wanted to study a MBA there. This move kick started my career as I was working in Silicon Valley during a time of great opportunity. After the USA, I fulfilled numerous roles at Oracle ranging from Project Management to Sales and Marketing. I currently work in the Netherlands were I am now Director of Business Operations for Oracle in the Benelux and a member of the Dutch Management Team. Business Operations advises the Benelux Management Team and focuses on topics such as Corporate Social Responsibility, Customer Satisfaction, Internal Communication, Internal training and effective usage of Sales Tools and Systems. We are currently also working on how best to introduce a “New way of Working”. The move to our new office building in 2011 aides in creating the right environment for this. Our goal is to continually improve the organisation. I enjoy working for Oracle because there is never a dull moment, and I am continuously challenged to improve. The environment that I work in changes constantly. Look at all the recent acquisitions; over 60 in the past 3 years! If you, as an Oracle employee, see something that can be done better, like a new service or tool, then combine it with some enthusiasm, motivate it further and the (Oracle) world changes! Internships This summer we have a number of Internships available, coordinated by the Business Operations team. We very much look forward to welcoming Students in our Dutch office. We look at it as an opportunity for both Oracle and the Interns to learn from each other. It will definitely result in both parties improving, growing and achieving results! We offer Internships related to Sales, Marketing and New Technology. You can find the assignments here. During the Internship you will experience what is like to work for an international and dynamic company, where we work and play hard. Our customers are major Dutch companies and our employees are professionals that compare working at Oracle with playing a Soccer World Cup final. We offer several Internships at the same time, so you will learn and share your experiences with a group of fellow students. If you have any questions related to this article feel free to contact [email protected].  You can find our job opportunities via http://campus.oracle.com

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• More Quick Interview Tips

  - by Ajarn Mark Caldwell

  In the last couple of years I have conducted a lot of interviews for application and database developers for my company, and I can tell you that the little things can mean a lot.  Here are a few quick tips to help you make a good first impression. A year ago I gave you my #1 interview tip: Do some basic research!  And a year later, I am still stunned by how few technical people do the most basic of research.  I can only guess that it is because it is so engrained in our psyche that technical competence is everything (see How to Manage Technical Employees for more on this idea) that we forget or ignore the importance of soft skills and the art of the interview.  Or maybe it is because we have heard the stories of the uber-geek who has zero personal skills but still makes a fortune working for Microsoft.  Well, here’s another quick tip:  You’re probably not as good as he is; and a large number of companies actually run small to medium sized teams and can’t really afford to have the social outcast in the group.  In a small team, everyone has to get along well, and that’s an important part of what I’m evaluating during the interview process. My #2 tip is to act alive!  I typically conduct screening interviews by phone before I bring someone in for an in-person.  I don’t care how laid-back you are or if you have a “quiet personality”, when we are talking, ACT like you are happy I called and you are interested in getting the job.  If you sound like you are bored-to-death and that you would be perfectly happy to never work again, I am perfectly happy to help you attain that goal, and I’ll move on to the next candidate. And closely related to #2, perhaps we’ll call it #2.1 is this tip:  When I call you on the phone for the interview, don’t answer your phone by just saying, “Hello”.  You know that the odds are about 999-to-1 that it is me calling for the interview because we have specifically arranged this time slot for the call.  And you can see on the caller ID that it is not one of your buddies calling, so identify yourself.  Don’t make me question whether I dialed the right number.  Answer your phone with a, “Hello, this is ___<your full name preferred, but at least your first name>___.”.  And when I say, “Hi, <your name>, this is Mark from <my company>” it would be really nice to hear you say, “Hi, Mark, I have been expecting your call.”  This sets the perfect tone for our conversation.  I know I have the right person; you are professional enough and interested enough in the job or contract to remember your appointments; and now we can move on to a little intro segment and get on with the reason for our call. As crazy as it sounds, I’ve actually had phone interviews that went like this: <Ring…> You:  “Hello?” Me:  “Hi, this is Mark from _______” You:  “Yeah?” Me:  “Is this <your name>?” You:  “Yeah.” Me:  “I had this time in my calendar for us to talk…were you expecting my call?” You:  “Oh, yeah, sure…” I used to be nice and would try to go ahead with the interview even after this bad start, thinking I was giving the candidate the benefit of the doubt…a second chance…but more often than not it was a struggle and 10 minutes into what was supposed to be a 45-minute call, I’m looking for a way to hang up without being rude myself.  It never worked out.  I never brought that person in for an in-person interview, much less offered them the job or contract.  Who knows, maybe they were some sort of wunderkind that we missed out on.  What I know is that they would never fit in with the rest of the team, and around here that is absolutely critical. So, in conclusion… Act alive!  Identify yourself!  And do at least the very basic of research.

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• NRF Big Show 2011 -- Part 2

  - by David Dorf

  One of the things I love about attending NRF is visiting the smaller booths to see what new innovative ideas have sprung up. After all, by watching emerging technologies we can get a sense of how the retail experience might change. After NRF I'm hoping to write a post on what I found, if anything, so be sure to check back. At the Oracle Retail booth we'll be demonstrating some of the aspects of the changing retail experience. These demos use a mix of GA and experimental components. Here are some highlights: 1. Checkin We wrote a consumer iPhone app we call Store Gateway that lets consumers access information from the store. They'll start by doing a checkin when they arrive that will alert the store manager via another iPhone app we wrote called Mobile Manager. Additionally, we display a welcome messaging using Starmount's digital sign. 2. Receive Offers There are three interaction points where a store can easily make an offer to a consumer: checkin, product scans, and checkout. For this demo we're calling our Universal Offer Engine at checkin to determine the best offer for this particular consumer. This offer is then displayed on the consumer's phone as well as on the digital sign. 3. Scan Products To thwart consumers from scanning product barcodes, we used Store Inventory Management to print QRCodes on shelf label then provided access to a scanner in the Store Gateway iphone app. When the consumer scans the shelf label they are shown product information provided by the retailer. 4. Checkout While we don't have a NFC-enabled mobile phone, we have a NFC chip that can attach to a phone. We're using this to checkout using a reader provided by ViVOTech. Tap the phone on the reader, and the POS accesses the customer#, coupons, and payment information. This really speeds the checkout process. 5. Digital Receipt After the transaction is complete, a digital copy of the receipt is sent to Intuit's QuickReceipts where consumers to store all their digital receipts. There's even an iPhone app that provides easy access to the receipts. This covers about half of what what we'll be showing, so be sure to stop by. I'll also be talking about how mobile is impacting the retail experience at the Wednesday morning session NRF Mobile Retail Initiative: a Blueprint for Action. See you at the Big Show!

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• AdventureWorks 2014 Sample Databases Are Now Available

  - by aspiringgeek

    Where in the World is AdventureWorks? Recently, SQL Community feedback from twitter prompted me to look in vain for SQL Server 2014 versions of the AdventureWorks sample databases we’ve all grown to know & love. I searched Codeplex, then used the bing & even the google in an effort to locate them, yet all I could find were samples on different sites highlighting specific technologies, an incomplete collection inconsistent with the experience we users had learned to expect.  I began pinging internally & learned that an update to AdventureWorks wasn’t even on the road map.  Fortunately, SQL Marketing manager Luis Daniel Soto Maldonado (t) lent a sympathetic ear & got the update ball rolling; his direct report Darmodi Komo recently announced the release of the shiny new sample databases for OLTP, DW, Tabular, and Multidimensional models to supplement the extant In-Memory OLTP sample DB.  What Success Looks Like In my correspondence with the team, here’s how I defined success: 1. Sample AdventureWorks DBs hosted on Codeplex showcasing SQL Server 2014’s latest-&-greatest features, including:  In-Memory OLTP (aka Hekaton) Clustered Columnstore Online Operations Resource Governor IO 2. Where it makes sense to do so, consolidate the DBs (e.g., showcasing Columnstore likely involves a separate DW DB) 3. Documentation to support experimenting with these features As Microsoft Senior SDE Bonnie Feinberg (b) stated, “I think it would be great to see an AdventureWorks for SQL 2014.  It would be super helpful for third-party book authors and trainers.  It also provides a common way to share examples in blog posts and forum discussions, for example.”  Exactly.  We’ve established a rich & robust tradition of sample databases on Codeplex.  This is what our community & our customers expect.  The prompt response achieves what we all aim to do, i.e., manifests the Service Design Engineering mantra of “delighting the customer”.  Kudos to Luis’s team in SQL Server Marketing & Kevin Liu’s team in SQL Server Engineering for doing so. Download AdventureWorks 2014 Download your copies of SQL Server 2014 AdventureWorks sample databases here.

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• Devoxx 2011: Java EE 6 Hands-on Lab Delivered

  - by arungupta

  I, along with Alexis's help, delivered a Java EE 6 hands-on lab to a packed room of about 40+ attendees at Devoxx 2011. The lab was derived from the OTN Developer Days 2012 version but added lot more content to showcase several Java EE 6 technologies. The problem statement from the lab document states: This hands-on lab builds a typical 3-tier Java EE 6 Web application that retrieves customer information from a database and displays it in a Web page. The application also allows new customers to be added to the database as well. The string-based and type-safe queries are used to query and add rows to the database. Each row in the database table is published as a RESTful resource and is then accessed programmatically. Typical design patterns required by a Web application like validation, caching, observer, partial page rendering, and cross-cutting concerns like logging are explained and implemented using different Java EE 6 technologies. The lab covered Java Persistence API 2, Servlet 3, Enterprise JavaBeans 3.1, JavaServer Faces 2, Java API for RESTful Web Services 1.1, Contexts and Dependency Injection 1.0, and Bean Validation 1.0 over 47 pages of detailed self-paced instructions. Here is the complete Table of Contents: The lab can be downloaded from here and requires only NetBeans IDE "All" or "Java EE" version, which includes GlassFish anyway. All the feedback received from the lab has been incorporated in the instructions and bugs filed (Updated 49559, 205232, 205248, 205256). 80% of the attendees could easily complete the lab and some even completed in much less than 3 hours. That indicates that either more content needs to be added to the lab or the intellectual level of the attendees at the conference was pretty high. I think the lab has enough content for 3 hours but we moved at a much more faster pace so I conclude on the latter. Truly a joy to conduct a lab to 40 Devoxxians! Another related lab that might be handy for folks is "Develop, Deploy, and Monitor your Java EE 6 applications using GlassFish 3.1 Cluster". It explains how: Create a 2-instance GlassFish cluster Front-end with a Web server and a load balancer Demonstrate session replication and fail over Monitor the application using JavaScript The complete lab instructions and source code are available and you can try them. I plan to continue evolving the contents for the Java EE 6 hands-on lab to cover more technologies and features and will announce them on this blog. Let me know on what else would you like to see in the future versions.

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• Devoxx 2011: Java EE 6 Hands-on Lab Delivered

  - by arungupta

  I, along with Alexis's help, delivered a Java EE 6 hands-on lab to a packed room of about 40+ attendees at Devoxx 2011. The lab was derived from the OTN Developer Days 2012 version but added lot more content to showcase several Java EE 6 technologies. The problem statement from the lab document states: This hands-on lab builds a typical 3-tier Java EE 6 Web application that retrieves customer information from a database and displays it in a Web page. The application also allows new customers to be added to the database as well. The string-based and type-safe queries are used to query and add rows to the database. Each row in the database table is published as a RESTful resource and is then accessed programmatically. Typical design patterns required by a Web application like validation, caching, observer, partial page rendering, and cross-cutting concerns like logging are explained and implemented using different Java EE 6 technologies. The lab covered Java Persistence API 2, Servlet 3, Enterprise JavaBeans 3.1, JavaServer Faces 2, Java API for RESTful Web Services 1.1, Contexts and Dependency Injection 1.0, and Bean Validation 1.0 over 47 pages of detailed self-paced instructions. Here is the complete Table of Contents: The lab can be downloaded from here and requires only NetBeans IDE "All" or "Java EE" version, which includes GlassFish anyway. All the feedback received from the lab has been incorporated in the instructions and bugs filed (Updated 49559, 205232, 205248, 205256). 80% of the attendees could easily complete the lab and some even completed in much less than 3 hours. That indicates that either more content needs to be added to the lab or the intellectual level of the attendees at the conference was pretty high. I think the lab has enough content for 3 hours but we moved at a much more faster pace so I conclude on the latter. Truly a joy to conduct a lab to 40 Devoxxians! Another related lab that might be handy for folks is "Develop, Deploy, and Monitor your Java EE 6 applications using GlassFish 3.1 Cluster". It explains how: Create a 2-instance GlassFish cluster Front-end with a Web server and a load balancer Demonstrate session replication and fail over Monitor the application using JavaScript The complete lab instructions and source code are available and you can try them. I plan to continue evolving the contents for the Java EE 6 hands-on lab to cover more technologies and features and will announce them on this blog. Let me know on what else would you like to see in the future versions.

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• An update on using Rosetta Stone: Studio now isn't very useful and is not great value as an add-on option

  - by Greg Low

  I had a surprisingly large number of responses from my previous posting about learning Chinese. An update for those considering Rosetta Stone (www.rosettastone.com) for Chinese, Spanish or any other language that they offer:I had to renew my "Studio" subscription today and it's now a much worse deal than it was.It's now $75 for 6 months for Studio sessions. Online classes used to be 45 mins. Recently they reduced them to 20 mins. Given how often people have connection issues, etc. that 20 mins can disappear very quickly.They've also reduced the number you can attend. You used to be able to have 2 scheduled at any point in time. Now they limit you to 2 "group sessions" per month during the period. (You can pay for additional private sessions). The combination of these two changes now makes it much less useful. Two x 20 min sessions per month is an almost meaningless amount of practice. They also now automatically change you to auto-renew when you subscribe. They tell you where to remove this auto-renewal but the first 4 or 5 times that I went into that screen, no such option appeared. Later, an option did appear and I used it.Overall, things just aren't what they used to be at Rosetta Stone. It's now pretty hard to recommend the Studio option where it was a no-brainer before.FURTHER UPDATE: <sigh>Even after I renewed, I could not even connect to their "new" service. Although the system processed the renewal, it still tells me it's expired. My online chat person "Siva S" tells me that the problem is that I've purchased all 5 levels of the program. I can't wait till they explain to me how making an extra purchase from them stops me from logging on. Siva told me that they had "renewed" the program. I'd have to speak to Customer Care; they aren't available and then disconnected himself. Impressive (not).Their website is now full of issues too. It insists that my billing address is in the USA, even though it pretends to accept changes to it.Overall, it's gone from something that could be recommended (with some limitations) to now being an app to avoid. That's a pity as I liked much of it before.

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• Writing an ASP.Net Web based TFS Client

  - by Glav

  So one of the things I needed to do was write an ASP.Net MVC based application for our senior execs to manage a set of arbitrary attributes against stories, bugs etc to be able to attribute whether the item was related to Research and Development, and if so, what kind. We are using TFS Azure and don’t have the option of custom templates. I have decided on using a string based field within the template that is not very visible and which we don’t use to write a small set of custom which will determine the research and development association. However, this string munging on the field is not very user friendly so we need a simple tool that can display attributes against items in a simple dropdown list or something similar. Enter a custom web app that accesses our TFS items in Azure (Note: We are also using Visual Studio 2012) Now TFS Azure uses your Live ID and it is not really possible to easily do this in a server based app where no interaction is available. Even if you capture the Live ID credentials yourself and try to submit them to TFS Azure, it wont work. Bottom line is that it is not straightforward nor obvious what you have to do. In fact, it is a real pain to find and there are some answers out there which don’t appear to be answers at all given they didn’t work in my scenario. So for anyone else who wants to do this, here is a simple breakdown on what you have to do: Go here and get the “TFS Service Credential Viewer”. Install it, run it and connect to your TFS instance in azure and create a service account. Note the username and password exactly as it presents it to you. This is the magic identity that will allow unattended, programmatic access. Without this step, don’t bother trying to do anything else. In your MVC app, reference the following assemblies from “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\Common7\IDE\ReferenceAssemblies\v2.0”: Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client.dll Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Common.dll Microsoft.TeamFoundation.VersionControl.Client.dll Microsoft.TeamFoundation.VersionControl.Common.dll Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WorkItemTracking.Client.DataStoreLoader.dll Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WorkItemTracking.Client.dll Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WorkItemTracking.Common.dll If hosting this in Internet Information Server, for the application pool this app runs under, you will need to enable 32 Bit support. You also have to allow the TFS client assemblies to store a cache of files on your system. If you don’t do this, you will authenticate fine, but then get an exception saying that it is unable to access the cache at some directory path when you query work items. You can set this up by adding the following to your web.config, in the <appSettings> element as shown below: <appSettings> <!-- Add reference to TFS Client Cache --> <add key="WorkItemTrackingCacheRoot" value="C:\windows\temp" /> </appSettings> With all that in place, you can write the following code: var token = new Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client.SimpleWebTokenCredential("{you-service-account-name", "{your-service-acct-password}"); var clientCreds = new Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client.TfsClientCredentials(token); var currentCollection = new TfsTeamProjectCollection(new Uri(“https://{yourdomain}.visualstudio.com/defaultcollection”), clientCreds); TfsConfigurationServercurrentCollection.EnsureAuthenticated(); In the above code, not the URL contains the “defaultcollection” at the end of the URL. Obviously replace {yourdomain} with whatever is defined for your TFS in Azure instance. In addition, make sure the service user account and password that was generated in the first step is substituted in here. Note: If something is not right, the “EnsureAuthenticated()” call will throw an exception with the message being you are not authorised. If you forget the “defaultcollection” on the URL, it will still fail but with a message saying you are not authorised. That is, a similar but different exception message. And that is it. You can then query the collection using something like: var service = currentCollection.GetService<WorkItemStore>(); var proj = service.Projects[0]; var allQueries = proj.StoredQueries; for (int qcnt = 0; qcnt < allQueries.Count; qcnt++) {     var query = allQueries[qcnt];     var queryDesc = string.format(“Query found named: {0}”,query.Name); } You get the idea. If you search around, you will find references to the ServiceIdentityCredentialProvider which is referenced in this article. I had no luck with this method and it all looked too hard since it required an extra KB article and other magic sauce. So I hope that helps. This article certainly would have helped me save a boat load of time and frustration.

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• Do you care about your Oracle System Support experience?

  - by user12244613

  It has been a while since I blogged about Systems Support within Oracle. I want to take this opportunity to raise awareness of how Oracle is communicating out to its systems customers. Previously every item to be communicated was sent independently via an email message however, not all messages appear to be being getting the attention they require. In an effort to ensure Oracle is reaching all of our Sun and Oracle System customers, we have created the Oracle Systems Support Newsletter. This monthly newsletter will have a summary of customer support relevant information for you to use and will cover topics that impact your support experience. For example: 1. Did you know that sending explorer content to email addresses with @sun.com is going away soon? For more information, review the Document 1362484.1 2. Are you an Auto Service Request (ASR) user? If yes, here are the latest changes: · ASR Manager accepts My Oracle Support User Name (email address) and password. [Doc ID 1345484.1] · ASR IP Address for secure file transfer has changed [Doc ID 1338575.1] · ASR No Heartbeat Status - Find out how to resolve [Doc ID 1346328.1] 3. Did you notice we have changed the Service Request options for Hardware and introduced a new problem category called “Automated Diagnosis”? This service streamlines the data you send in and then automatically provides an update of known issues found in your My Oracle Support Service Request. This feature also fast tracks hardware failures by sending parts as soon as the data is analyzed. Have you used this new feature? If yes tell us about it – take the 5minute survey 4. Are you being proactive or are you still ‘fire fighting’ in the reactive mode? If you are being proactive for your Oracle System products you might have used Oracle Sun System Analysis. Did you finding this helpful? Can we improve it? You tell us, take the 5minute survey 5. Are you aware that if you attach files to your Service Request it enables the support engineer to start work straight away? For a summary of products and files review the Newsletter. 6. Are you struggling to find patches or firmware or product downloads? If yes, these types of issues are all addressed in the Newsletter. If this is the type of information you want to know about each month, then take time to read the Newsletter link and bookmark it in My Oracle Support so you can stay informed. Thanks for your time.

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• Global Perspective: Oracle AppAdvantage Does its Stage Debut in the UK

  - by Tanu Sood

  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-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Global Perspective is a monthly series that brings experiences, business needs and real-world use cases from regions across the globe. This month’s feature is a follow-up from last month’s Global Perspective note from a well known ACE Director based in EMEA. My first contribution to this blog was before Oracle Open World and I was quite excited about where this initiative would take me in my understanding of the value of Oracle Fusion Middleware. Rimi Bewtra from the Oracle AppAdvantage team came as promised to the Oracle ACE Director briefings and explained what this initiative was all about and I then asked the directors to take part in the new survey. The story was really well received and then at the SOA advisory board that many of these ACE Directors already take part in there was a further discussion on how this initiative will help customers understand the benefits of adoption. A few days later Rick Beers launched the program at a lunch of invited customer executives which included one from Pella who talked about their projects (a quick recap on that here). I wasn’t able to stay for the whole event but what really interested me was that these executives who understood the technology but where looking for how they could use them to drive their businesses. Lots of ideas were bubbling up in my head about how we can use this in user groups to help our members, and the timing was fantastic as just three weeks later we had UKOUG_Apps13, our flagship Applications conference in the UK. We had independently working with Oracle marketing in the UK on an initiative called Apps Transformation to help our members look beyond just the application they use today. We have had a Fusion community page but felt the options open are now much wider than Fusion Applications, there are acquired applications, social, mobility and of course the underlying technology, Oracle Fusion Middleware. I was really pleased to be allowed to give the Oracle AppAdvantage story as a session in our conference and we are planning a special Apps Transformation event in March where I hope the Oracle AppAdvantage team will take part and we will have the results of the survey to discuss. But, life also came full circle for me. In my first post, I talked about Andrew Sutherland and his original theory that Oracle Fusion Middleware adoption had technical drivers. Well, Andrew was a speaker at our event and he gave a potted, tech-talk free update on Oracle Open World. Andrew talked about the Prevailing Technology Winds, and what is driving this today and he talked about that in the past it was the move from simply automating processes (ERP etc), through the altering of those processes (SOA) and onto consolidation. The next drivers are around the need to predict, both faster and more accurately; how to better exploit the information that we have available. He went on to talk about The Nexus of Forces: Social, Mobile, Cloud and Information – harnessing these forces of change with Oracle technology. Gartner really likes this concept and if you want to know more you can get their paper here. All this has made me think, and I hope it will make you too. Technology can help us drive our businesses better and understanding your needs can be the first step on your journey, which was the theme of our event in the UK. I spoke to a number of the delegates and I hope to share some of their stories in later posts. If you have a story to share, the survey is at: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/P335DD3 About the Author: Debra Lilley, Fujitsu Fusion Champion, UKOUG Board Member, Fusion User Experience Advocate and ACE Director. Debra has 18 years experience with Oracle Applications, with E Business Suite since 9.4.1, moving to Business Intelligence Team Leader and then Oracle Alliance Director. She has spoken at over 100 conferences worldwide and posts at debrasoraclethoughts Editor’s Note: Debra has kindly agreed to share her musings and experience in a monthly column on the Fusion Middleware blog so do stay tuned…

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• Essbase 11.1.2 - AgtSvrConnections Essbase Configuration Setting

  - by Ann Donahue

  AgtSvrConnections is a documented Essbase configuration setting used in conjunction with the AgentThreads and ServerThreads settings. Basically, when a user logs into Essbase, the AgentThreads connects to the ESSBASE process then the AgtSvrConnections will connect the ESSBASE process to the ESSSVR application process which then the ServerThreads are used for end user activities. In Essbase 11.1.2, the default value of the AgtSvrConnections setting was changed to 5. In previous Essbase releases, the AgtSvrConnections setting default value is 1. It is recommended that tuning the AgtSvrConnections settings be done incrementally by 1 or 2 maximum and based on the number of concurrent Set Active/Clear Active calls. In the Essbase DBA Guide and Technical Reference, the maximum setting recommended is to not exceed what is set for AgentThreads, however, we have found that most customers do not need to exceed a setting of 10. In general, it is ok to set AgtSvrConnections close to the AgentThreads setting, however, there have been customers that needed an AgentThread setting greater than 10 and we have found that the AgtSvrConnections setting higher than 5-10 could have a negative impact on Essbase due to too many TCP ports used unnecessarily. As with all Essbase.cfg settings, it is best to set values to what is needed based on process load and not arbitrarily set to high values. In order to monitor and tune the AgtSvrConnections setting, monitor the application log for logins and Set Active/Clear Active messages. If there are a lot of logins and Set Active/Clear Active messages happening in a short period of time making it appear that the login is taking longer, incrementally increase the AgtSvrConnections setting by 1 or 2, which can then help with login speed. The login performance tolerance is different from one customer environment to another since there are other factors that can impact this performance i.e. network latency. What is happening in Essbase when a user logs in: ESSBASE issues a Set Active to the ESSSVR process. Each application has its own ESSSVR process. Set Active then calls MultipleAsyncLogout and waits on the pipe connection. MultipleAsyncLogout goes back to ESSBASE. ESSBASE then needs to send the logout back to the ESSSVR process. When the AgtSvrConnections setting needs to be increased from the default of 5, it is because Essbase cannot find a connection since the previous connections are used by ESSBASE-ESSSVR. In this example, we may want to increase AgtSvrConnections from 5 to 7 to improve the login performance. Again, it is best to set Essbase settings to what is needed based on process load and not arbitrarily set to high values. In general, stress or performance testing environments using automated tools may need higher than normal settings. This is because automated processes run at high speeds for logging in and logging out. Typically, in a real life production environment, the settings are much closer to default values.

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• New Source Database Added for EBS 12 + 11gR2 Transportable Tablespaces

  - by John Abraham

  The Transportable Tablespaces (TTS) process was originally certified for the migration of E-Business Suite R12 databases going from a source database of 11gR1 or 11gR2 to a target of 11gR2. This requirement has now been expanded to include a source database of 10gR2 (10.2.0.5) - this will potentially save time for existing 10gR2 customers as they can remove on a crucial upgrade step prior to performing the platform migration. The migration process requires an updated Controlled patch delivered by the Oracle E-Business Suite Platform Engineering team, i.e. it requires a password obtainable from Oracle Support. We released the patch in this manner to gauge uptake, and help identify and monitor any customer issues due to the nature of this technology. This patch has been updated to now include supporting 10gR2 as a source database. Does it meet your requirements?Note that for migration across platforms of the same "endian" format, users are advised to use the Transportable Database (TDB) migration process instead for large databases. The "endian-ness" target platforms can be verified by querying the view V$DB_TRANSPORTABLE_PLATFORM using SQL*Plus (connected as sysdba) on the source platform:SQL>select platform_name from v$db_transportable_platform;If the intended target platform does not appear in the output, it means that it is of a different endian format from the source. Consequently. database migration will need to be performed via Transportable Tablespaces (for large databases) or export/import.The use of Transportable Tablespaces can greatly speed up the migration of the data portion of the database. However, it does not affect metadata, which must still be migrated using export/import. We recommend that users initially perform a test migration on their database, using export/import with the 'metrics=y' parameter. This will help identify the relative amounts of data and metadata, and provide a basis for assessing likely gains in timing. In general, the larger the amount of data (compared to metadata), the greater the reduction in downtime that can be expected from using TTS as a migration process. For smaller databases or for those that have relatively small data compared to metadata, TTS will not be as beneficial for cross endian migration and the use of export/import (datapump) for the whole database is recommended. Where can I find more information? Using Transportable Tablespaces to Migrate Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 Using Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Enterprise Edition (My Oracle Support Document 1311487.1) Oracle Database Administrator's Guide 11g Release 2 (11.2) Related Articles Database Migration using 11gR2 Transportable Tablespaces Now Certified for EBS 12 New Source Databases Added for Transportable Tablespaces + EBS 11i 10gR2 Transportable Tablespaces Certified for EBS 11i Migrating E-Business Suite Release 11i Databases Between Platforms Migrating E-Business Suite Release 12 Databases Between Platforms

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• New Feature in ODI 11.1.1.6: Enterprise Data Quality Integration

  - by Julien Testut

  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; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Oracle Data Integrator 11.1.1.6.0 introduces a new Open Tool called EnterpriseDataQuality which allows ODI users to invoke an Oracle Enterprise Data Quality Job from a Package. This post will give you an overview of this new feature. Oracle Enterprise Data Quality (OEDQ) provides organizations with an integrated suite of data quality tools that offer an end-to-end solution to measure, improve, and manage the quality of data from any domain, including customer and product data. The addition of the EnterpriseDataQuality Open Tool extends the inline Data Quality capabilities of Oracle Data Integrator with Oracle Enterprise Data Quality powerful data profiling, cleansing, matching, and monitoring capabilities. The EnterpriseDataQuality Open Tool can invoke any OEDQ Job stored in a Project. This Open Tool connects to an OEDQ server using a JMX (Java Management Extensions) interface. Once installed, this Open Tool will be found under Plugins in the Package Toolbox area: This EnterpriseDataQuality Open Tool takes a couple of parameters as inputs such as the Enterprise Data Quality Job and Project names, the OEDQ hostname and JMX port etc. With the EnterpriseDataQuality Open Tool, ODI customers can now incorporate their Oracle Enterprise Data Quality processes within their Data Integration workflows. You will find instructions about how to use the Enterprise Data Quality Open Tool in the Oracle Data Integrator documentation at: Using the EnterpriseDataQuality Open Tool.You can find an overview of all the new features introduced in ODI 11.1.1.6 in the following document: ODI 11.1.1.6 New Features Overview.

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• IRM and Consumerization

  - by martin.abrahams

  As the season of rampant consumerism draws to its official close on 12th Night, it seems a fitting time to discuss consumerization - whereby technologies from the consumer market, such as the Android and iPad, are adopted by business organizations. I expect many of you will have received a shiny new mobile gadget for Christmas - and will be expecting to use it for work as well as leisure in 2011. In my case, I'm just getting to grips with my first Android phone. This trend developed so much during 2010 that a number of my customers have officially changed their stance on consumer devices - accepting consumerization as something to embrace rather than resist. Clearly, consumerization has significant implications for information control, as corporate data is distributed to consumer devices whether the organization is aware of it or not. I daresay that some DLP solutions can limit distribution to some extent, but this creates a conflict between accepting consumerization and frustrating it. So what does Oracle IRM have to offer the consumerized enterprise? First and foremost, consumerization does not automatically represent great additional risk - if an enterprise seals its sensitive information. Sealed files are encrypted, and that fundamental protection is not affected by copying files to consumer devices. A device might be lost or stolen, and the user might not think to report the loss of a personally owned device, but the data and the enterprise that owns it are protected. Indeed, the consumerization trend is another strong reason for enterprises to deploy IRM - to protect against this expansion of channels by which data might be accidentally exposed. It also enables encryption requirements to be met even though the enterprise does not own the device and cannot enforce device encryption. Moving on to the usage of sealed content on such devices, some of our customers are using virtual desktop solutions such that, in truth, the sealed content is being opened and used on a PC in the normal way, and the user is simply using their device for display purposes. This has several advantages: The sensitive documents are not actually on the devices, so device loss and theft are even less of a worry The enterprise has another layer of control over how and where content is used, as access to the virtual solution involves another layer of authentication and authorization - defence in depth It is a generic solution that means the enterprise does not need to actively support the ever expanding variety of consumer devices - the enterprise just manages some virtual access to traditional systems using something like Citrix or Remote Desktop services. It is a tried and tested way of accessing sealed documents. People have being using Oracle IRM in conjunction with Citrix and Remote Desktop for several years. For some scenarios, we also have the "IRM wrapper" option that provides a simple app for sealing and unsealing content on a range of operating systems. We are busy working on other ways to support the explosion of consumer devices, but this blog is not a proper forum for talking about them at this time. If you are an Oracle IRM customer, we will be pleased to discuss our plans and your requirements with you directly on request. You can be sure that the blog will cover the new capabilities as soon as possible.

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• Business Strategy - Google Case Study

  Business strategy defined by SMBTN.com is a term used in business planning that implies a careful selection and application of resources to obtain a competitive advantage in anticipation of future events or trends. In more general terms business strategy is positioning a company so that it has the greatest competitive advantage over others in the markets and industries that they participate in. This process involves making corporate decisions regarding which markets to provide goods and services, pricing, acceptable quality levels, and how to interact with others in the marketplace. The primary objective of business strategy is to create and increase value for all of its shareholders and stakeholders through the creation of customer value. According to InformationWeek.com, Google has a distinctive technology advantage over its competitors like Microsoft, eBay, Amazon, Yahoo. Google utilizes custom high-performance systems which are cost efficient because they can scale to extreme workloads. This hardware allows for a huge cost advantage over its competitors. In addition, InformationWeek.com interviewed Stephen Arnold who stated that Google’s programmers are 50%-100% more productive compared to programmers working for their competitors.  He based this theory on Google’s competitors having to spend up to four times as much just to keep up. In addition to Google’s technological advantage, they also have developed a decentralized management schema where employees report directly to multiple managers and team project leaders. This allows for the responsibility of the technology department to be shared amongst multiple senior level engineers and removes the need for a singular department head to oversee the activities of the department.  This is a unique approach from the standard management style. Typically a department head like a CIO or CTO would oversee the department’s global initiatives and business functionality.  This would then be passed down and administered through middle management and implemented by programmers, business analyst, network administrators and Database administrators. It goes without saying that an IT professional’s responsibilities would be directed by Google’s technological advantage and management strategy.  Simply because they work within the department, and would have to design, develop, and support the high-performance systems and would have to report multiple managers and project leaders on a regular basis. Since Google was established and driven by new and immerging technology, all other departments would be directly impacted by the technology department.  In fact, they would have to cater to the technology department since it is a huge driving for in the success of Google. Reference: http://www.smbtn.com/smallbusinessdictionary/#b http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/linux/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=192300292&pgno=1&queryText=&isPrev=

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• What if you could work on anything you wanted?

  - by red@work

  This week we've downed our tools and organised ourselves into small project teams or struck out alone. We're working on whatever we like, with whoever we like, wherever we like. We've called it Down Tools week and so far it's a blast. It all started a few months ago with an idea from Neil, our CEO. Neil wanted to capture the excitement, innovation, and productivity of Coding by the Sea and extend this to all Red Gaters working in Product Development. A brainstorm is always a good place to start for an "anything goes" project. Half of Red Gate piled into our largest meeting room (it's pretty big) armed with flip charts, post its and a heightened sense of possibility. An hour or so later our SQL Servery walls were covered in project ideas. So what would you do, if you could work on anything you wanted? Many projects are related to tools we already make, others are for internal product development use and some are, well, just something completely different. Someone suggested we point a web cam at the SQL Servery lunch queue so we can check it before heading to lunch. That one couldn't wait for Down Tools Week. It was up and running within a few days and even better, it captures the table tennis table too. Thursday is the Show and Tell - I am looking forward to seeing what everyone has come up with. Some of the projects will turn into new products or features so this probably isn't the time or place to go into detail of what is being worked on. Rest assured, you'll hear all about it! We're making a video as we go along too which will be up on our website as soon. In the meantime, all meetings are cancelled, we've got plenty of food in and people are being very creative with the £500 expenses budget (Richard, do you really need an iPad?). It's brilliant to see it all coming together from the idea stage to reality. Catch up with our progress by following #downtoolsweek on Twitter. Who knows, maybe a future Red Gate flagship tool is coming to life right now? By the way, it's business as usual for our customer facing and internal operations teams. Hmm, maybe we can all down tools for a week and ask Product Development to hold the fort? Post by: Alice Chapman

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• Paypal PDT and IPN , how does it work?

  - by slow diver

  PDT Payment Data Transfer is getting the transaction data of the purchase that was made on paypal site and you want to fetch that on your own site and display to the user. Also you may want to store it in your database for archive and tracking purposes. But I cannot exactly follow the documentation here What I am not getting is Once you have activated PDT, every time a buyer makes a website payment and is redirected to your return URL, a transaction token will be passed along as a "GET" variable to this return URL. In order to properly use PDT and display transaction details to your customer, you should fetch the transaction token, variable name "tx", and retreive transaction details from PayPal by constructing an HTTP POST to PayPal. Your POST should be sent to https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr. You must post the transaction token using the variable "tx" and the value of the transaction token previously received (e.g. "tx=transaction_token"), and the special identity token using the variable at and the value of your PDT identity token (e.g. "at=identity_token"). You will also need to append a variable named "cmd" with the value "_notify-synch", for example "cmd=_notify-synch", to the POST string. IPN I have setup Instant Payment Notification through setting according to this documentation. This is basically logging into your paypal account and enable IPN while specifying a url where the notification will be sent. This is used to complete an order so that the product can be shipped. What I did is setup a PHP page. I have created a table and whenever that page is called (or hit), it registers an entry in the table so I know a notification came from Paypal. But it does not work either. What am I really doing wrong? The first thing I want to trouble shoot though is when the buyer pays the amount, he is automatically redirected to my site. I have enabled this but automatic redirection just does not work. Instead he is shown the url as an option after payment confirmation is shown. Can someone guide my how the PDT process goes? Where do I make the request for PDT, is it along the very first request (Buy Now button) or it is sent later? Addition I found some good sampling code of how everything should work but it still does not work. I use this code http://officetrio.com/modules/free-php-paypal-ipn-script.php for IPN. I am using this for PDT. This one uses SSL, I changed SSL to regular HTTP (copied paypal version), still does not work. http://ykyuen.wordpress.com/2010/02/17/paypal-payment-data-transfer-sample-code/

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• Managing Matrix Relationships: Organization Visualization and Navigation

  - by Nancy Estell Zoder

  v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false 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: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;} Oracle is pleased to announce the posting of our latest feature, Matrix Relationship Administration. Our continued investment in our Organization Visualization and Navigation solution is demonstrated with the release of Matrix Relationship Administration as well as the enhancements made to our Org Viewer capabilities. Some of those enhancements include the ability to export to Excel and Visio, Search, Zoom, as well as the addition of Manager Self Service transactions. Matrix relationships are relationships defined by rules or ad hoc. These relationships can include, but are not limited to, product or project affiliations, functional groups including multi dimensional relationships such as when the product, region or even the customer is the profit center. The PeopleSoft solution will enable you to configure how you work in this multi dimensional world to ensure you have the tools to be productive……. For more information, please check out the datasheet available on oracle.com, video on the feature on YouTube or contact your sales representative.

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• The challenge of giving a positive No

  - by MarkPearl

  I find it ironic that the more I am involved in the software industry, the more apparent it becomes that soft skills are just as if not more important than the technical abilities of a developer. One of the biggest challenges I have faced in my career is in managing client expectations to what one can deliver and being able to work with multiple clients. If I look at where things commonly go pear shaped, one area features a lot is where I should have said "No" to a request, but because of the way the request was made I ended up saying yes. Time and time again this has caused immense pain. Thus, when I saw on Amazon that they had a book titled "The power of a positive no" by William Ury I had to buy it and read it. In William's book he explains an approach to saying No that while extremely simple does change the way a No is presented. In essence he talks of a pattern the Yes! > No > Yes? Pattern. 1. Yes! -> positively and concretely describing your core interests and values 2. No. -> explicitly link your no to this YES! 3. Yes? -> suggest another positive outcome or agreement to the other person Let me explain how I understood it. If you are working on a really important project and someone asks you to do add a quick feature to another project, your Yes! would be to the more important project, which would mean a No to the quick feature, and an option for your Yes? may be an alternative time when you can look at it.. An example of an appropriate response would be... It is really important that I keep to the commitment that I made to this customer to finish his project on time so I cannot work on your feature right now but I am available to help you in a weeks time. William then goes on to explain the type of behaviour a person may display when the no is received. He illustrates this with a diagram called the curve of acceptance. William points out that if you are aware of the type of behaviour you can expect it empowers you to stay true to your no. Personally I think reading and having an understanding of the “soft” side of things like saying no is invaluable to a developer.

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• Can Kind People Finish First?

  - by Oracle Accelerate for Midsize Companies

  by Jim Lein, Oracle Midsize Programs In an earlier post, I expressed my undying love for KIND Snacks' products. This month's Oracle Profit magazine features an interview with KIND Healthy Snacks Founder and CEO Daniel Lubetzky entitled "Better Business". Lubetzky expresses his vision for making KIND a "not for profit only" company.  All great companies start with a good idea. In this case, that one great idea was to offer a healthy snack with ingredients you can "see and pronounce". That's one of things I really like about this company--that coupled with the fact that their snacks taste great. They compete in an over crowded playing field but I've found that it's rare to find an energy snack that both tastes good and is good for you.  A couple of interesting facts I learned from reading this article: 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;} 9 out of 10 consumers who try a KIND bar will purchase a KIND product again and recommend it to others KIND has the highest Net Promoter Score among the top 10 brands in the nutritional bar category (I confess I've never heard about this rating before but now that I have it's pretty cool) KIND's coporate mantra, "Do the Kind Thing" both encourages people to do random acts of kindness and provides easy mechanisms for doing so. Not coincidentally, I think, KIND is indeed a story about how nice guys can finish first. KIND has doubled in size every year for the last ten  years and now employees over 300 people, with sales exceeding $120M annually. Growth Applies Pressures One thing I know for certain from interacting our with fast growing customers over the last fifteen years is that growth applies myriad pressures across the organization--resources, processes, technology systems, and leadership agility. And it's easy to forget that Oracle was once an entrepreneurial startup and experienced all those same pressures that other growing companies are experiencing today. When asked by Profit Editor in Chief Aaron Lazenby, " What sort of pressure does KIND"s growth and success place on operations?", Lubetzky responded, "We have a demand planning process right now that is manual to a significant extent, and it just takes so much management time. It takes us days and sometimes weeks to produce information that is critical to our business—and by the time we get the results, we need revised data. Our sales leadership could go out selling, but instead they’re talking to our team about forecasts." Hitching Your Wagon to Oracle Lubetzky and his team selected Oracle for what I believe is our company's greatest strength: hitch your wagon to Oracle and you can trust that we will be there for the long run with the solutions you need and financial staying power. In Lubetzky's words, "The KIND philosophy requires you to have a long-term view of things; taking shortcuts may be the fastest way to get things done, but in the long term that can come back and bite you. Oracle is the type of company—and has the kind of platform—that is here for the long term. It’s not going to go away tomorrow. And Oracle is going to invest all the necessary resources into staying ahead of the game and improving." o next time you're in the supermarket or an REI (my favorite store in the world) or any of the other 80,000 locations that carry KIND, give one a try. Maybe some day you'll want to become a KIND Brand Ambassador.   Looking for more news and information about Oracle Solutions for Midsize Companies? Read the latest Oracle for Midsize Companies Newsletter Sign-up to receive the latest communications from Oracle’s industry leaders and experts Jim Lein I evangelize Oracle's enterprise solutions for growing midsize companies. I recently celebrated 15 years with Oracle, having joined JD Edwards in 1999. I'm based in Evergreen, Colorado and love relating stories about creativity and innovation whether they be about software, live music, or the mountains. The views expressed here are my own, and not necessarily those of Oracle.

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• WPF Control Toolkits Comparison for LOB Apps

  In preparation for a new WPF project Ive been researching options for WPF Control toolkits.  While we want a lot of the benefits of WPF, the application is a fairly typical line of business application (LOB).  So were not focused on things like media and animations, but instead a simple, solid, intuitive, and modern user interface that allows for well architected separation of business logic and presentation layers. While WPF is mature, it hasnt lived the long life that Winforms has yet, so there is still a lot of room for third party and community control toolkits to fill the gaps between the controls that ship with the Framework.  There are two such gaps I was concerned about.  As this is an LOB app, we have needs for presenting lots of data and not surprisingly much of it is in grid format with the need for high performance, grouping, inline editing, aggregation, printing and exporting and things that weve been doing with LOB apps for a long time.  In addition we want a dashboard style for the UI in which the user can rearrange and shrink and grow tiles that house the content and functionality.  From a cost perspective, building these types of well performing controls from scratch doesnt make sense.  So I evaluated what you get from the .NET Framework along with a few different options for control toolkits.  I tried to be fairly thorough, but know that this isnt a detailed benchmarking comparison or intense evaluation.  Its just meant to be a feature set comparison to be used when thinking about building an LOB app in WPF.  I tried to list important feature differences and notes based on my experience with the trial versions and what I found in documentation and reference materials and samples.  Ive also listed the importance of the controls based on how I think they are needed in LOB apps.  There are several toolkits available, but given I dont have unlimited time, I picked just a few.  Maybe Ill add on more later.  The toolkits I compared are: Teleriks RadControls for WPF since I had heard some good things about Telerik Infragistics NetAdvantage WPF since both I and the customer have some experience with the vendors tools WPF Toolkit on codeplex since many of my colleagues have used it Blacklight codeplex project which had WPF support for the Tile View control  (with Release 4.3 WPF is not going to be supported in favor of focusing only on SilverLight controls, so I dropped that from the comparison) Click Here to Download the WPF Control Toolkits Comparison Hopefully this helps someone out there.  Feel free to post a comment on your experiences or if you think something I listed is incorrect or missing.  Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• What tools exist for assessing an organisation's development capability?

  - by Eric Smith

  I have a bit of a challenge at work at the moment. Presently (and in fact, for some time now), we have been experiencing the following problems with some in-house maintained applications: Defects (sometimes quite serious) being released into production; The Customer (that is, the relevant business unit) perpetually changing their minds (or appearing to do so) about what issue to work on next; A situation where everyone seems to be in a "fire-fighting" mode a lot of the time; Development staff responding to operational requests from business users; ("operational" here means something that needs to be done in order to continue with business, or perhaps just to make a business user's life a little less painful, as opposed to fixing a bug in the application, or enhancing the application); Now I'm sure this doesn't sound particularly new or surprising to most of the participants on this Q&A site and no prizes for identifying the "usual suspects" when it comes to root causes. My challenge is that I have to persuade the higher-ups to do uncomfortable things in order to address all of this. The folk I need to persuade come from a mixture of the following two cultures: Accounting; IT Infrastructure. I have therefore opted for a strategy that draws from things with-which folk from such a culture would be most comfortable (at least, in my estimation), namely: numbers and tangibles. Of course modern development practitioners know all too well that this sort of thing isn't easily solved using an analytical mindset (some would argue that that mindset is, in fact, entirely inappropriate). Never-the-less, this is the dichotomy with-which I am faced, so that's the stake that I've put in the ground. I would like to be able to do research and use the outputs to present findings in the form of metrics and measures. I am finding it quite difficult, though, to find an agreed-upon methodology and set of templates for assessing an organisations development capability--the only thing that seems applicable is the Software Engineering Institute's Capability Maturity Model. The latter, however, seems dated and even then rather vague. So, the question is: Do any tools or methodologies (free or commercial) exist that would assist me in completing this assessment?

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• Any suggested approaches to track bugs/defects?

  - by deostroll

  What is the best way to track defect sources in tfs? We have various teams for a project like the vulnerability team, the customer, pre-sales, etc. We give a build and these teams independently test it. They do not have access to our tfs system. So they usually send in their defects via email. It will usually be send in an excel format. Our testing team takes these up and logs them into tfs. Sometimes they modify the original defect description (in excel) and add the expected/actual results. Sometimes they miss to cite the source. I am talking about managing the various sources as such. Is there a way we can add these sources into tfs, and actually link this particular source with the defects, with individual comments associated with them (saying where in the source we can find the actual material for the defect). Edit: I don't know if there is a way to manage various sources. Consider this: the vulnerability assessment team has come out with defects/suggestions. They captured it into an excel and passed that on to the testing team (in my case). The testing team takes the responsibility of elaborating the defect and logging it in tfs. Now say that the excel has come with 20 defect items. This is my source. (It answers the question where did this defect come from). So ultimately when I am looking at a bug I know from where it came from - I'll ultimately be looking at the email sent from the VA team which has the excel or the excel file itself sent by the VA team. It may be one of the 20 items in that excel. How should the tester link to this source just once? On the contrary, it does not make sense for the tester to attach the same excel 20 times (i.e. attach the same excel for the 20 defects while logging it into tfs) right? I hope you get my point.

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• Introducing Oracle Retail Mobile Point-of-Service

  - by user801960

  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:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; 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;} Oracle recently announced the introduction of Oracle Retail Mobile Point-of-Service, a mobile extension to the Oracle Retail Point-of-Service (POS) used by many retailers internationally. Oracle Retail Mobile POS offers wide ranging cost and efficiency benefits by allowing staff resource to be used more effectively whilst also reducing spend associated with fixed POS solutions. For retailers utilising Oracle Retail Stores Solutions, additional benefits can be realised. Oracle Retail Mobile POS works with these solutions to allow store personnel to check in-store inventory, access product information and specifications, and perform tasks such as the printing or emailing of receipts and the activation of gift cards.  As Oracle Retail Mobile POS is an extension of Oracle Retail Point-of-Service, retailers can benefit from seamless integration with existing systems, simple upgrade procedures and seamless delivery across the business. However, the solution’s scalable and flexible architecture also supports multiple mobile operators and systems, so retailers are not locked into particular vendors. As well as being popular with retailers, Mobile POS has also proved to be well liked by consumers as it facilitates improved customer service levels. Retail staff are able to spend more time with consumers on the shop floor, access requested inventory information, and perform tasks that would traditionally have needed to be completed at a fixed cash register. Additional information can be accessed on Oracle Retail Point-of-Service or read the press announcement Oracle Introduces Mobile Point-of-Service for Retailers. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE

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