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• Rendering LaTeX on third-party websites?

  - by A. Rex

  There are some sites on the web that render LaTeX into some more readable form, such as Wikipedia, some Wordpress blogs, and MathOverflow. They may use images, MathML, jsMath, or something like that. There are other sites on the web where LaTeX appears inline and is not rendered, such as the arXiv, various math forums, or my email. In fact, it is quite common to see an arXiv paper's abstract with raw LaTeX in it, e.g. this paper. Is there a plugin available for Firefox, or would it be possible to write one, that renders LaTeX within pages that do not provide a rendering mechanism themselves? (The LaTeX would be enclosed within dollar signs, e.g. $\pi$. See the arXiv link above.) Some notes: It may be impossible to render some of the code, because authors often copy-paste code directly from their source TeX files, which may contain things like "\cite{foo}" or undefined commands. These should be left alone. This question is a repost of a question from MathOverflow that was closed for not being related to math. There is one answer there, which is helpful, but perhaps Stack Overflow can provide better answers. I program a lot, but Javascript is not my specialty, so comments along the lines of "look at this library" are not particularly helpful to me (but may be to others).

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• How do I create a good evaluation function for a new board game?

  - by A. Rex

  I write programs to play board game variants sometimes. The basic strategy is standard alpha-beta pruning or similar searches, sometimes augmented by the usual approaches to endgames or openings. I've mostly played around with chess variants, so when it comes time to pick my evaluation function, I use a basic chess evaluation function. However, now I am writing a program to play a completely new board game. How do I choose a good or even decent evaluation function? The main challenges are that the same pieces are always on the board, so a usual material function won't change based on position, and the game has been played less than a thousand times or so, so humans don't necessarily play it enough well yet to give insight. (PS. I considered a MoGo approach, but random games aren't likely to terminate.) Any ideas? Game details: The game is played on a 10-by-10 board with a fixed six pieces per side. The pieces have certain movement rules, and interact in certain ways, but no piece is ever captured. The goal of the game is to have enough of your pieces in certain special squares on the board. The goal of the computer program is to provide a player which is competitive with or better than current human players.

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• java - producing charts in PDF form

  - by Rex Posadas

  I'm looking for suggestions on the easiest way to create chars/reports and have them printed out as PDFs. This has to be done in Java. I was looking at something like: http://jcckit.sourceforge.net/index.html But I don't see how to turn those charts into PDFs. Any ideas?

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• Best way to test if a generic type is a string? (c#)

  - by Rex M

  I have a generic class that should allow any type, primitive or otherwise. The only problem with this is using default(T). When you call default on a value type or a string, it initializes it to a reasonable value (such as empty string). When you call default(T) on an object, it returns null. For various reasons we need to ensure that if it is not a primitive type, then we will have a default instance of the type, not null. Here is attempt 1: T createDefault() { if(typeof(T).IsValueType) { return default(T); } else { return Activator.CreateInstance<T>(); } } Problem - string is not a value type, but it does not have a parameterless constructor. So, the current solution is: T createDefault() { if(typeof(T).IsValueType || typeof(T).FullName == "System.String") { return default(T); } else { return Activator.CreateInstance<T>(); } } But this feels like a kludge. Is there a nicer way to handle the string case?

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• What algorithms compute directions from point A to point B on a map?

  - by A. Rex

  How do map providers (such as Google or Yahoo! Maps) suggest directions? I mean, they probably have real-world data in some form, certainly including distances but also perhaps things like driving speeds, presence of sidewalks, train schedules, etc. But suppose the data were in a simpler format, say a very large directed graph with edge weights reflecting distances. I want to be able to quickly compute directions from one arbitrary point to another. Sometimes these points will be close together (within one city) while sometimes they will be far apart (cross-country). Graph algorithms like Dijkstra's algorithm will not work because the graph is enormous. Luckily, heuristic algorithms like A* will probably work. However, our data is very structured, and perhaps some kind of tiered approach might work? (For example, store precomputed directions between certain "key" points far apart, as well as some local directions. Then directions for two far-away points will involve local directions to a key points, global directions to another key point, and then local directions again.) What algorithms are actually used in practice? PS. This question was motivated by finding quirks in online mapping directions. Contrary to the triangle inequality, sometimes Google Maps thinks that X-Z takes longer and is farther than using an intermediate point as in X-Y-Z. But maybe their walking directions optimize for another parameter, too? PPS. Here's another violation of the triangle inequality that suggests (to me) that they use some kind of tiered approach: X-Z versus X-Y-Z. The former seems to use prominent Boulevard de Sebastopol even though it's slightly out of the way. (Edit: this example doesn't work anymore, but did at the time of the original post. The one above still works as of early November 2009.)

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• Get client timezone (not GMT offset amount) in JS

  - by Rex M

  I need to determine the client timezone (e.g. CET, GMT, EST) in JS. Getting the offset is straightforward, but doesn't have all the info necessary to determine the TZ, at least not easily. I have a feeling it might be possible to use a combination of offset, whether DST is in use and in effect, etc. but I'm hoping someone else has done the work already, especially considering the weird exceptions when dealing with time. This question is similar but both the question and the answer are based on the (incorrect) assumption every browser's DateString format includes the name of the timezone - which it does not. That is an implementation detail. So, with that I am currently stuck.

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• how to start writing a very simple programming language

  - by Rex Homming

  Recently, I was going around looking for ideas on what I can build using C this summer and I came across this post: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1257376/interesting-project-to-learn-c Implement a programming language. This doesn't have to be terribly hard - I did the language that must not be named - but it will force you to learn a lot of the important parts of C. If you don't want to write a lexer and/or parser yourself, you can use lex/flex and yacc/bison, but if you plan on that you might want to start with a somewhat smaller project. I was kinda intrigued about the implementing a programming language answer and I'm wondering how do I go about starting this? I've gone through the whole K&R book and I've done some of the exercises as well. I also have a bit of experience in C++ and Java if that matters. Any tips? Thanks!

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• What is your favorite Project Euler question?

  - by A. Rex

  I was searching around for questions related to Project Euler on Stack Overflow, and it seems that there were plenty of people asking about it, and even more people recommending it, whether for fun, to learn a new language, or to practice for interview questions. All this seems to imply to me that there are lots of people on SO that solve Project Euler problems now and then. I just started, so I was wondering: What was your favorite Project Euler question? Why? Did you think of a clever trick, or did you learn some new math, or did you discover a feature of a new programming language? (If possible, please include the actual question in your answer.)

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• Minimal framework in Scala for collections with inheriting return type

  - by Rex Kerr

  Suppose one wants to build a novel generic class, Novel[A]. This class will contain lots of useful methods--perhaps it is a type of collection--and therefore you want to subclass it. But you want the methods to return the type of the subclass, not the original type. In Scala 2.8, what is the minimal amount of work one has to do so that methods of that class will return the relevant subclass, not the original? For example, class Novel[A] /* What goes here? */ { /* Must you have stuff here? */ def reverse/* What goes here instead of :Novel[A]? */ = //... def revrev/*?*/ = reverse.reverse } class ShortStory[A] extends Novel[A] /* What goes here? */ { override def reverse: /*?*/ = //... } val ss = new ShortStory[String] val ss2 = ss.revrev // Type had better be ShortStory[String], not Novel[String] Does this minimal amount change if you want Novel to be covariant? (The 2.8 collections do this among other things, but they also play with return types in more fancy (and useful) ways--the question is how little framework one can get away with if one only wants this subtypes-always-return-subtypes feature.)

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• How can I optimize this or is there a better way to do it?(HTML Syntax Highlighter)

  - by Tanner

  Hello every one, I have made a HTML syntax highlighter in C# and it works great, but there's one problem. First off It runs pretty fast because it syntax highlights line by line, but when I paste more than one line of code or open a file I have to highlight the whole file which can take up to a minute for a file with only 150 lines of code. I tried just highlighting visible lines in the richtextbox but then when I try to scroll I can't it to highlight the new visible text. Here is my code:(note: I need to use regex so I can get the stuff in between < & characters) Highlight Whole File: public void AllMarkup() { int selectionstart = richTextBox1.SelectionStart; Regex rex = new Regex("<html>|</html>|<head.*?>|</head>|<body.*?>|</body>|<div.*?>|</div>|<span.*?>|</span>|<title.*?>|</title>|<style.*?>|</style>|<script.*?>|</script>|<link.*?/>|<meta.*?/>|<base.*?/>|<center.*?>|</center>|<a.*?>|</a>"); foreach (Match m in rex.Matches(richTextBox1.Text)) { richTextBox1.Select(m.Index, m.Value.Length); richTextBox1.SelectionColor = Color.Blue; richTextBox1.Select(selectionstart, -1); richTextBox1.SelectionColor = Color.Black; } richTextBox1.SelectionStart = selectionstart; } private void pasteToolStripMenuItem_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { try { LockWindowUpdate(richTextBox1.Handle);//Stops text from flashing flashing richTextBox1.Paste(); AllMarkup(); }finally { LockWindowUpdate(IntPtr.Zero); } } I want to know if there's a better way to highlight this and make it faster or if someone can help me make it highlight only the visible text. Please help. :) Thanks, Tanner.

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• Identity R2 - Experts Podcast Series

  - by Tanu Sood

  To follow up on the Identity Management R2 launch, a series of podcasts were recorded with subject matter experts from customer organizations, our partners and Oracle’s PM team to discuss key trends, R2 capabilities, implementation best practices and more. Below is a roll-up of the podcast series that is available on Fusion Middleware radio. R2 Podcasts:   ·         Designing the Next-Generation Identity Platform Vadim Lander, Oracle Highlights: Common architecture model, integration, interoperability and the driving factors behind R2 innovation IT Departments are shifting their Identity Management strategy to be able to support mobile, cloud and social applications. Oracle has anticipated this shift and has built a product roadmap to take advantage of this focus. Join Vadim as he discusses the design strategy behind the latest 11gR2 release and talks about how IDM services have to evolve to meet this new challenge.   ·         BETA Customer Perspective on R2 Ravi Meduri, Kaiser Permanente Highlights: R2 scalability and high availability In this podcast Ravi discusses the new features in 11gR2 that he is most interested in, including High Availability options for Access Management, multi-datacenter architecture, and what it was like working with the Oracle product team during the BETA program.   ·         Partner Perspective on R2 Rex Thexton, PricewaterhouseCoopers Highlights: Usability Enhancements for Users and Administrators A lot of new usability features went into the 11gR2 release making this the most business friendly IDM release to date. In this podcast Rex Thexton, Managing Director from PwC, talks about some of the new UI changes for both end users and administrators, and also about the new connector creation framework.   Access Request Updates in R2 Marc Boroditsky, Oracle Highlights: Access request User Interface innovations A lot of changes have been made to the Access Request user interface in the latest version of Oracle Identity Manager 11gR2. A real focus has been put on making the request process more business user friendly, and a lot of new customization capability has been added for the IT administrators. Hear Marc discuss the updated UI, and explain how administrators will be able to customize OIM to meet their company's requirements   ·         Oracle Optimized System for Oracle Unified Directory (OOS4OUD) Nick Kloski, Oracle Highlights: New Optimized System configuration for Unified Directory One of the new features in 11gR2 is the availability of an Optimized System configuration for Oracle Unified Directory. Oracle engineers installed the OUD software onto off the shelf hardware and then created a performance tuned configuration. Join us as we talk to Nick Kloski, Infrastructure Solutions Manager, all about the testing process and the resulting performance metrics.   Privileged Account Management Mark Wilcox, Oracle Highlights: Oracle Privileged Account Manager key capabilities, use cases The new release of Oracle Identity Management 11g R2 includes the capability to manage privileged accounts. Privileged accounts, if compromised, create a risk for fraud in the enterprise and as a result controlling access to privileged accounts is critical. Hear what Mark Wilcox, Principal Product Manager of Oracle Privileged Account Manager has to say about the capabilities of the offering in this podcast.   ·         Browser-based User Interface (UI) Customization Clayton Donley, Oracle Highlights: Benefits of Durable UI Configuration framework Business users need user interfaces that are not only friendly but also easily customizable. However the downside of any customization project is the cost and complexity involved in developing, testing, deploying and managing custom code. In this podcast, we examine how a new capability in Oracle Identity Management around browser based UI customization can reduce costs and complexity of customization while simplifying self service integration with corporate portal strategies.   ·         Simplifying Mobile and Social Sign-On Dan Killmer, Oracle Highlights: Secure mobile sign-on and consumption of social identities with Oracle Access Management The proliferation of mobile devices has spurred a new trend where employees tend to bring their own mobile devices to work and access corporate applications the same way they would access from a desktop or laptop. In this podcast, we examine how Oracle's latest innovation in Identity Management around Mobile and Social Sign On can simplify security and access management challenges posed by the widespread adoption of mobile devices in the enterprise. ·         Enabling Your Business with IDM R2 Scott Bonnell, Oracle Highlights: Self service, mobile access, personalization Gone are the days when Identity Management was just about stopping unauthorized users in their tracks. Identity Management if done right, can also enable your business. Join Scott Bonnell as he discusses how the IDM 11gR2 release enables the enterprise by providing self service, personalization and mobile access to corporate resources.

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• Luxottica Delivers an Elevated Customer Experience

  - by user801960

  Luxottica Group is a global leader in premium, luxury and sports eyewear with nearly 6,250 stores worldwide. The Group’s strong brand portfolio comprises ten house brands including Oakley, Ray-Ban, Percol and Arnette, and 20 licensed brands such as Bulgari, Chanel and Versace. In January at the Oracle Retail Exchange in New York, Luca Del Din, Luxottica Group’s IT Manager – Global Retail Demand and Integration and Irven Cassio, Digital Experience Director for Luxottica Retail introduced our REx delegates to their flagship Sunglass Hut store on Fifth Avenue. This store showcase provided the opportunity to explore this fantastic retail space incorporating the store’s interactive retail concept, the Sunglass Hut Social Sun station. I invite you to hear from Luca and Irven as we explore some of the innovative technologies and concepts that Luxottica deployed in this store and how these deliver an elevated customer experience.

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• links for 2011-01-05

  - by Bob Rhubart

  A Role-Based Approach to Automated Provisioning and Personalized Portals Authors Rex Thexton (Managing Dir, PricewaterhouseCoopers), Nishidhdha Shah (Sr. Associate at PwC Consulting) and Harish Gaur (Dir. Product Management, Oracle Fusion Middleware) bring you the final article in the Fusion Middleware Patterns series. (tags: Oracle otn entarch enterprise2.0) 13 Jan 2011 - New York, NY - Coherence Special Interest Group - Oracle Coherence Knowledge Base The world's largest enterprise software company, Oracle is the only vendor to offer solutions for every tier of your business -- database, middleware, business intelligence, business applications, and collaboration. With Oracle, you get information that helps you measure results, improve business processes, and communicate a single truth to your constituents. (tags: ping.fm) Marc Kelderman: Exporting the SOA MDS Marc Kelderman show you how in this brief tutorial. (tags: oracle otn soa mds)

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• Language-independent sources on collision detection

  - by Phazyck

  While making a Pong clone with a friend, we had to implement some collision detection. For research purposes, my friend dug up a book called "AdvancED Game Design with Flash" by Rex Van Der Spuy. This book was clearly targeted at implementing collision detection in ActionScript, and I also have some problems with how the concepts are presented, e.g. presenting one method as better than another, without explaining that decision. Can anyone recommend some good material on collision detection? I'd prefer it if kept the implementation details as language-independent as possible, e.g. by implementing the concepts in pseudo-code. Language-specific materials are not completely unwelcome though, though I'd prefer those to be in either Java, C#, F# or Python or similar languages, as those are the ones I'm most familiar with. :-) Lastly, is there perhaps widely known and used book on collision detection that most people should know about, like a 'the book on collision detection'?

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• Language-independent sources on 2D collision detection [on hold]

  - by Phazyck

  While making a Pong clone with a friend, we had to implement some 2D collision detection. For research purposes, my friend dug up a book called "AdvancED Game Design with Flash" by Rex Van Der Spuy. This book was clearly targeted at implementing 2D collision detection in ActionScript, and I also have some problems with how the concepts are presented, e.g. presenting one method as better than another, without explaining that decision. Can anyone recommend some good material on 2D collision detection? I'd prefer it if it kept the implementation details as language-independent as possible, e.g. by implementing the concepts in pseudo-code. Language-specific materials are not completely unwelcome though, though I'd prefer those to be in either Java, C#, F# or Python or similar languages, as those are the ones I'm most familiar with. :-) Lastly, is there perhaps widely known and used book on collision detection that most people should know about, like a 'the book on 2D collision detection'?

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• preg_replace on xss code

  - by proyb2

  Can this code help to sanitize malicious code in user submit form? function rex($string) { $patterns = array(); $patterns[0] = '/=/i'; $patterns[1] = '/javascript:/i'; $replacements = array(); $replacements[0] = ''; $replacements[1] = ''; return preg_replace($patterns, $replacements, $string); I have included htmlentities() to prevent XSS on client side, is all the code shown is safe enough to prevent attack?

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• excel sum if string

  - by user1834348

  I have table similar to this: 102938 bob 038128 Marc 398401 Tom 298421 Jim 102938 Alex 102938 Junior 209381 Rex 398401 Oby I want to make sometthing like =sumif(A:A, 102938,B:B) and to get "bobAlexJunior" as result. But this is not working becouse sum works with numbers not strings. If i go with lookup, it works with strings but finds only first line, not all lines. Do you have an Idea on how to fix this issue? Thanx

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• Oracle OpenWorld Live 2012 Videos

  - by Chris Kawalek

  The Oracle virtualization team is back from a very successful Oracle OpenWorld! Hopefully you were able to come to the show and talk with our virtualization experts at the demo booths or in our sessions. But if you didn't, you can get a summary of what we talked about from a number of short videos. In this post, we're going to highlight the Oracle OpenWorld Live videos, and in a future post we'll cover the videos we shot ourselves (once we get them all posted!). If you missed it, Oracle OpenWorld Live carried keynotes and interviews with all kinds of folks during the show. They also archived these segments so you can watch them at your leisure. I've gone through the videos and selected some that highlight virtualization: Edward Screven on mission critical clouds. Wim Coekaerts talks virtualization. Rex Wang on Oracle Cloud. Ronen Kofman on Oracle VM Templates. Chris Kawalek on Oracle's desktop virtualization software. Chris Kawalek discusses Oracle Sun Ray Clients. If we missed you this year, we hope to see you at OpenWorld 2013! -Chris 

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• Process Oracle OER Events using a simple Web Service

  - by Bob Webster

  This post provides an example of a simple web service that processes Oracle Enterprise Repository (OER) Events. The service receives events from OER and utilizes the OER REX API to implement simple OER automations for selected event types. The web service example implements the following: When a new Asset is Submitted to OER: The Asset is automatically Accepted by a defined user. When an Asset is Accepted: The Asset is automatically assigned  to a defined user for review. If the accepted asset is of type Service The Version meta data attribute is set based on the version id contained in the suffix of the Service Namespace.      When an Asset is Registered: If the registered Asset is of type Service The related Assets ( Interface and Endpoint are also automatically registered. The sample web service is not intended to replace the out of the Box OER BPM Based workflows, but the service can be utilized in cases where only simple automation is required and the developer has a Java skill set. The service is a lightweight web application that can be easily deployed to the same server as OER or on a different server. Read the complete post here

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 2012-09-27

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Understanding Oracle BI 11g Security vs Legacy Oracle BI 10g | Christian Screen "After conducting a large amount of Oracle BI 10g to Oracle BI 11g upgrades and after writing the Oracle BI 11g book," says Oracle ACE Christian Screen, "I still continually get asked one of the most basic questions regarding security in Oracle BI 11g; How does it compare to Oracle BI 10g? The trail of questions typically goes on to what are the differences? And, how do we leverage our current Oracle BI 10g security table schema in Oracle BI 11g?" Process Oracle OER Events using a simple Web Service | Bob Webster Bob Webster's post "provides an example of a simple web service that processes Oracle Enterprise Repository (OER) Events. The service receives events from OER and utilizes the OER REX API to implement simple OER automations for selected event types." Oracle Fusion Middleware Security: Attaching OWSM policies to JRF-based web services clients | Andre Correa "OWSM (Oracle Web Services Manager) is Oracle's recommended method for securing SOAP web services," says Oracle Fusion Middleware A-Team member Andre Correa. "It provides agents that encapsulate the necessary logic to interact with the underlying software stack on both service and client sides. Such agents have their behavior driven by policies. OWSM ships with a bunch of policies that are adequate to most common real world scenarios." His detailed post shows how to make it happen. WebCenter Content (WCC) Trace Sections | ECM Architect ECM Architect Kevin Smith shares a detailed technical post covering WebCenter Content (WCC) Trace sections. Thought for the Day "A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked." — John Gall Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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• OTN ArchBeat Top 10 for September 2012

  - by Bob Rhubart

  The results are in... Listed below are the Top 10 most popular items shared via the OTN ArchBeat Facebook Page for the month of September 2012. The Real Architects of Los Angeles - OTN Architect Day - Oct 25 No gossip. No drama. No hair pulling. Just a full day of technical sessions and peer interaction focused on using Oracle technologies in today's cloud and SOA architectures. The event is free, but seating is limited, so register now. Thursday October 25, 2012. 8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. Sofitel Los Angeles, 8555 Beverly Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90048. Oracle Fusion Middleware Security: Attaching OWSM policies to JRF-based web services clients "OWSM (Oracle Web Services Manager) is Oracle's recommended method for securing SOAP web services," says Oracle Fusion Middleware A-Team member Andre Correa. "It provides agents that encapsulate the necessary logic to interact with the underlying software stack on both service and client sides. Such agents have their behavior driven by policies. OWSM ships with a bunch of policies that are adequate to most common real world scenarios." His detailed post shows how to make it happen. Oracle 11gR2 RAC on Software Defined Network (SDN) (OpenvSwitch, Floodlight, Beacon) | Gilbert Stan "The SDN [software defined network] idea is to separate the control plane and the data plane in networking and to virtualize networking the same way we have virtualized servers," explains Gil Standen. "This is an idea whose time has come because VMs and vmotion have created all kinds of problems with how to tell networking equipment that a VM has moved and to preserve connectivity to VPN end points, preserve IP, etc." H/T to Oracle ACE Director Tim Hall for the recommendation. Process Oracle OER Events using a simple Web Service | Bob Webster Bob Webster's post "provides an example of a simple web service that processes Oracle Enterprise Repository (OER) Events. The service receives events from OER and utilizes the OER REX API to implement simple OER automations for selected event types." Understanding Oracle BI 11g Security vs Legacy Oracle BI 10g | Christian Screen "After conducting a large amount of Oracle BI 10g to Oracle BI 11g upgrades and after writing the Oracle BI 11g book,"says Oracle ACE Christian Screen, "I still continually get asked one of the most basic questions regarding security in Oracle BI 11g; How does it compare to Oracle BI 10g? The trail of questions typically goes on to what are the differences? And, how do we leverage our current Oracle BI 10g security table schema in Oracle BI 11g?" OIM-OAM-OAAM integration using TAP – Request Flow you must understand!! | Atul Kumar Atul Kumar's post addresses "key points and request flow that you must understand" when integrating three Oracle Identity Management product Oracle Identity Management, Oracle Access Management, and Oracle Adaptive Access Manager. Adding a runtime LOV for a taskflow parameter in WebCenter | Yannick Ongena Oracle ACE Yannick Ongena illustrates how to customize the parameters tab for a taskflow in WebCenter. Tips on Migrating from AquaLogic .NET Accelerator to WebCenter WSRP Producer for .NET | Scott Nelson "It has been a very winding path and this blog entry is intended to share both the lessons learned and relevant approaches that led to those learnings," says Scott Nelson. "Like most journeys of discovery, it was not a direct path, and there are notes to let you know when it is practical to skip a section if you are in a hurry to get from here to there." 15 Lessons from 15 Years as a Software Architect | Ingo Rammer In this presentation from the GOTO Conference in Copenhagen, Ingo Rammer shares 15 tips regarding people, complexity and technology that he learned doing software architecture for 15 years. WebCenter Content (WCC) Trace Sections | ECM Architect ECM Architect Kevin Smith shares a detailed technical post covering WebCenter Content (WCC) Trace Sections. Thought for the Day "Eventually everything connects - people, ideas, objects. The quality of the connections is the key to quality per se." — Charles Eames (June 17, 1907 – August 21, 1978) Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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• Why do Scala maps have poor performance relative to Java?

  - by Mike Hanafey

  I am working on a Scala app that consumes large amounts of CPU time, so performance matters. The prototype of the system was written in Python, and performance was unacceptable. The application does a lot with inserting and manipulating data in maps. Rex Kerr's Thyme was used to look at the performance of updating and retrieving data from maps. Basically "n" random Ints were stored in maps, and retrieved from the maps, with the time relative to java.util.HashMap used as a reference. The full results for a range of "n" are here. Sample (n=100,000) performance relative to java, smaller is worse: Update Read Mutable 16.06% 76.51% Immutable 31.30% 20.68% I do not understand why the scala immutable map beats the scala mutable map in update performance. Using the sizeHint on the mutable map does not help (it appears to be ignored in the tested implementation, 2.10.3). Even more surprisingly the immutable read performance is worse than the mutable read performance, more significantly so with larger maps. The update performance of the scala mutable map is surprisingly bad, relative to both scala immutable and plain Java. What is the explanation?

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• configuring slime in emacs

  - by CodeKingPlusPlus

  I am in the process of configuring slime for emacs. So far I have read about basic functionality for common lisp such as C-c C-q which invokes the command slime-close-parens-at-point which places the proper number of parens where your mouse is. Another command that seemed cool was invoked by C-c C-c and it would pass the code you are editing in a buffer to the REPL, and "compile" it. Why won't these commands work for me? Anyway, I have downloaded slime via M-x list-packages and do not seem to have this functionality (C-h w and then any of these commands tells me that these commands do note exist). So, I saw a bunch of other slime extensions such as slime-repl', 'slime-fuzzy' and 'hippie-expand-slime'. So I again usedM-x list-packages` and downloaded them. Still I did not have these commands. Here is the content of my emacs file relevant to slime: ;;;Common Lisp and Slime (add-to-list 'load-path "/home/s2s2/.emacs.d/elpa/slime-20130626.1151") (add-to-list 'load-path "/home/s2s2/.emacs.d/elpa/slime-repl-201000404") (add-to-list 'load-path "/home/s2s2/.emacs.d/elpa/hippie-expand-slime-20130226.1656") (add-to-list 'load-path "/home/s2s2/.emacs.d/elpa/slime-fuzzy-20100404") (require 'slime) (setq slime-lisp-implementations `((sbcl ("/usr/bin/sbcl")) (ecl ("/usr/bin/ecl")) (clisp ("/usr/bin/clisp" "-q -I")))) (require 'slime-repl) (require 'slime-fuzzy) (require 'hippie-expand-slime) When I execute M-x slime I get the following message in the inferior-lisp buffer where I can execute common lisp code (however, shouldn't this be the slime-repl since I required it?): STYLE-WARNING: redefining EMACS-INSPECT (#<BUILT-IN-CLASS T>) in DEFMETHOD STYLE-WARNING: Implicitly creating new generic function STREAM-READ-CHAR-WILL-HANG-P. WARNING: These Swank interfaces are unimplemented: (DISASSEMBLE-FRAME SLDB-BREAK-AT-START SLDB-BREAK-ON-RETURN) ;; Swank started at port: 46533. Then a slime-error buffer is created with the contents: Invalid protocol message: Symbol "CREATE-REPL" not found in the SWANK package. Line: 1, Column: 28, File-Position: 28 Stream: #<SB-IMPL::STRING-INPUT-STREAM {10056B9C33}> (:emacs-rex (swank:create-repl nil) "COMMON-LISP-USER" t 5) How should I modify my emacs file to give me the functionality of those commands? In my emacs file am I not loading the necessary files? Do I need to install an additional package? If you need more information let me know! All help is much appreciated!

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• Java error starting with "log4j:WARN No appenders could be found for logger" in ZuckerReports SugarC

  - by Tom McDonnell

  Greetings all. I apologise for posting this problem here, but I do so in desperation after receiving no response on the SugarCRM forums. Even if a reader is unfamiliar with ZuckerReports or SugarCRM some general advice on Java may be of use to me. I have installed ZuckerReports v1.12 in SugarCRM 5.5.1. When I attempt to run a report I get the following error message. cmdline: javaw -classpath "custom/ZuckerReports/resources/;custom/ZuckerReports/resources/contact_counts_by_first_name.jasper_files/;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/ant-1.7.1.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/antlr-2.7.6.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/asm-attrs.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/asm.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/barbecue-1.5-beta1.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/barcode4j-2.0.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/batik-anim.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/batik-awt-util.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/batik-bridge.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/batik-css.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/batik-dom.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/batik-ext.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/batik-gvt.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/batik-parser.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/batik-script.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/batik-svg-dom.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/batik-svggen.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/batik-util.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/batik-xml.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/bcel-5.2.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/bsh-2.0b4.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/castor-1.2.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/cglib-2.1.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/cincom-jr-xmla.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/commons-beanutils-1.8.2.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/commons-collections-3.2.1.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/commons-dbcp-1.2.2.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/commons-digester-1.7.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/commons-javaflow-20060411.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/commons-logging-1.1.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/commons-math-1.0.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/commons-pool-1.3.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/commons-vfs-1.0.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/dom4j-1.6.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/ehcache-1.1.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/eigenbase-properties-1.1.0.10924.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/eigenbase-resgen-1.3.0.11873.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/eigenbase-xom-1.3.0.11999.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/ejb3-persistence.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/groovy-all-1.5.5.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/hibernate-annotations.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/hibernate-commons-annotations.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/hibernate3.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/hsqldb-1.8.0-10.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/iText-2.1.0.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/iTextAsian.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/jakarta-bcel-20050813.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/jasperreports-3.7.1.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/jasperreports-chart-themes-3.6.2.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/jasperreports-extensions-3.5.3.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/jasperreports-fonts-3.6.1.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/javacup.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/javassist-3.4.GA.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/jaxen-1.1.1.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/jcommon-1.0.15.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/jdt-compiler-3.1.1.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/jfreechart-1.0.12.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/jpa.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/js_activation-1.1.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/js_axis-1.4patched.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/js_commons-codec-1.3.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/js_commons-discovery-0.2.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/js_commons-httpclient-3.1.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/js_jasperserver-common-ws-3.5.0.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/js_jaxrpc.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/js_mail-1.4.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/js_saaj-api-1.3.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/js_wsdl4j-1.5.1.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/jta.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/jxl-2.6.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/log4j-1.2.15.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/mondrian-3.1.1.12687-Jaspersoft.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/mysql-connector-java-3.1.11-bin.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/olap4j-0.9.7.145.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/png-encoder-1.5.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/poi-3.2-FINAL-20081019.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/rex-20080421.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/rhino-1.7R1.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/saaj-api-1.3.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/slf4j-api.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/slf4j-log4j12.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/spring.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/sqleonardo-2007.03.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/swingx-2007_10_07.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/xml-apis-ext.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/xml-apis.jar;modules/ZuckerReports/jasper/zuckerreports-1.0.jar" at.go_mobile.zuckerreports.JasperBatchMain custom/ZuckerReports/temp/aff882c1-684b-d2de-403e-4be367bc2f5f/cmd.properties 2&1 JasperBatchMain :: loading jasper design custom/ZuckerReports/resources/contact_counts_by_first_name.jasper JasperBatchMain :: getParameterValue(REPORT_PARAMETERS_MAP, java.util.Map) = null JasperBatchMain :: getParameterValue(JASPER_REPORT, net.sf.jasperreports.engine.JasperReport) = null JasperBatchMain :: getParameterValue(REPORT_CONNECTION, java.sql.Connection) = null JasperBatchMain :: getParameterValue(REPORT_MAX_COUNT, java.lang.Integer) = null JasperBatchMain :: getParameterValue(REPORT_DATA_SOURCE, net.sf.jasperreports.engine.JRDataSource) = null JasperBatchMain :: getParameterValue(REPORT_SCRIPTLET, net.sf.jasperreports.engine.JRAbstractScriptlet) = null JasperBatchMain :: getParameterValue(REPORT_LOCALE, java.util.Locale) = null JasperBatchMain :: getParameterValue(REPORT_RESOURCE_BUNDLE, java.util.ResourceBundle) = null JasperBatchMain :: getParameterValue(REPORT_TIME_ZONE, java.util.TimeZone) = null JasperBatchMain :: getParameterValue(REPORT_FORMAT_FACTORY, net.sf.jasperreports.engine.util.FormatFactory) = null JasperBatchMain :: getParameterValue(REPORT_CLASS_LOADER, java.lang.ClassLoader) = null JasperBatchMain :: getParameterValue(REPORT_URL_HANDLER_FACTORY, java.net.URLStreamHandlerFactory) = null JasperBatchMain :: getParameterValue(REPORT_FILE_RESOLVER, net.sf.jasperreports.engine.util.FileResolver) = null JasperBatchMain :: getParameterValue(REPORT_VIRTUALIZER, net.sf.jasperreports.engine.JRVirtualizer) = null JasperBatchMain :: getParameterValue(IS_IGNORE_PAGINATION, java.lang.Boolean) = null JasperBatchMain :: getParameterValue(REPORT_TEMPLATES, java.util.Collection) = null log4j:WARN No appenders could be found for logger (net.sf.jasperreports.extensions.ExtensionsEnviron ment). log4j:WARN Please initialize the log4j system properly. Exception in thread "main" java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Null 'key' argument. at org.jfree.data.DefaultKeyedValues.setValue(Default KeyedValues.java:229) at org.jfree.data.DefaultKeyedValues2D.setValue(Defau ltKeyedValues2D.java:337) at org.jfree.data.DefaultKeyedValues2D.addValue(Defau ltKeyedValues2D.java:303) at org.jfree.data.category.DefaultCategoryDataset.add Value(DefaultCategoryDataset.java:222) at net.sf.jasperreports.charts.fill.JRFillCategoryDat aset.customIncrement(JRFillCategoryDataset.java:14 3) at net.sf.jasperreports.engine.fill.JRFillElementData set.increment(JRFillElementDataset.java:175) at net.sf.jasperreports.engine.fill.JRCalculator.calc ulateVariables(JRCalculator.java:148) at net.sf.jasperreports.engine.fill.JRVerticalFiller. fillDetail(JRVerticalFiller.java:736) at net.sf.jasperreports.engine.fill.JRVerticalFiller. fillReportContent(JRVerticalFiller.java:272) at net.sf.jasperreports.engine.fill.JRVerticalFiller. fillReport(JRVerticalFiller.java:114) at net.sf.jasperreports.engine.fill.JRBaseFiller.fill (JRBaseFiller.java:923) at net.sf.jasperreports.engine.fill.JRBaseFiller.fill (JRBaseFiller.java:826) at net.sf.jasperreports.engine.fill.JRFiller.fillRepo rt(JRFiller.java:59) at at.go_mobile.zuckerreports.JasperBatchMain.main(Ja sperBatchMain.java:126) The same report runs correctly in another SugarCRM installation on the same server. The installation in which the report runs correctly is of the same version, and has the same version of the ZuckerReports module. The report previously ran correctly on both installations. I think that the only changes that have been made on the installation in which the report now does not work since the report was last successfully run are the additions of a few custom fields in the Contacts module. These changes should have nothing to do with ZuckerReports. I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling the ZuckerReports module, but the problem remains. A google search for the warnings given in the error message ie. * log4j:WARN No appenders could be found for logger (net.sf.jasperreports.extensions.ExtensionsEnviron ment). * log4j:WARN Please initialize the log4j system properly. Returns a few links (not specific to ZuckerReports) with tips similar to the following: * log4j.properties or log4j.xml needs to be on the classpath where log4j can find it. I cannot find a file with either of those names anywhere on my server, and yet the report can be run successfully on one of my SugarCRM installations. So I figure log4j must be being configured another way. Can anyone suggest a way to solve this problem? Or explain how I might discover how log4j is configured in ZuckerReports? Or explain how I might compare the working with the non-working installation in order to help find a solution? (I have tried searching for files containing "log4j" in both installations and comparing but all I can find are .jar files (nothing I can read with a text editor), and the .jar files found in each installation appear to be the same.)

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• Partner Blog Series: PwC Perspectives - The Gotchas, The Do's and Don'ts for IDM Implementations

  - by Tanu Sood

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mso-table-condition:last-column; mso-style-priority:65; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-tstyle-border-top:1.0pt solid #E0301E; mso-tstyle-border-top-themecolor:accent6; mso-tstyle-border-bottom:1.0pt solid #E0301E; mso-tstyle-border-bottom-themecolor:accent6; mso-ansi-font-weight:bold; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold;} table.MsoTableMediumList1Accent6OddColumn {mso-style-name:"Medium List 1 - Accent 6"; mso-table-condition:odd-column; mso-style-priority:65; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-tstyle-shading:#F7CBC7; mso-tstyle-shading-themecolor:accent6; mso-tstyle-shading-themetint:63;} table.MsoTableMediumList1Accent6OddRow {mso-style-name:"Medium List 1 - Accent 6"; mso-table-condition:odd-row; mso-style-priority:65; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-tstyle-shading:#F7CBC7; mso-tstyle-shading-themecolor:accent6; mso-tstyle-shading-themetint:63;} It is generally accepted among business communities that technology by itself is not a silver bullet to all problems, but when it is combined with leading practices, strategy, careful planning and execution, it can create a recipe for success. This post attempts to highlight some of the best practices along with dos & don’ts that our practice has accumulated over the years in the identity & access management space in general, and also in the context of R2, in particular. Best Practices The following section illustrates the leading practices in “How” to plan, implement and sustain a successful OIM deployment, based on our collective experience. Planning is critical, but often overlooked A common approach to planning an IAM program that we identify with our clients is the three step process involving a current state assessment, a future state roadmap and an executable strategy to get there. It is extremely beneficial for clients to assess their current IAM state, perform gap analysis, document the recommended controls to address the gaps, align future state roadmap to business initiatives and get buy in from all stakeholders involved to improve the chances of success. When designing an enterprise-wide solution, the scalability of the technology must accommodate the future growth of the enterprise and the projected identity transactions over several years. Aligning the implementation schedule of OIM to related information technology projects increases the chances of success. As a baseline, it is recommended to match hardware specifications to the sizing guide for R2 published by Oracle. Adherence to this will help ensure that the hardware used to support OIM will not become a bottleneck as the adoption of new services increases. If your Organization has numerous connected applications that rely on reconciliation to synchronize the access data into OIM, consider hosting dedicated instances to handle reconciliation. Finally, ensure the use of clustered environment for development and have at least three total environments to help facilitate a controlled migration to production. If your Organization is planning to implement role based access control, we recommend performing a role mining exercise and consolidate your enterprise roles to keep them manageable. In addition, many Organizations have multiple approval flows to control access to critical roles, applications and entitlements. If your Organization falls into this category, we highly recommend that you limit the number of approval workflows to a small set. Most Organizations have operations managed across data centers with backend database synchronization, if your Organization falls into this category, ensure that the overall latency between the datacenters when replicating the databases is less than ten milliseconds to ensure that there are no front office performance impacts. Ingredients for a successful implementation During the development phase of your project, there are a number of guidelines that can be followed to help increase the chances for success. Most implementations cannot be completed without the use of customizations. If your implementation requires this, it’s a good practice to perform code reviews to help ensure quality and reduce code bottlenecks related to performance. We have observed at our clients that the development process works best when team members adhere to coding leading practices. Plan for time to correct coding defects and ensure developers are empowered to report their own bugs for maximum transparency. Many organizations struggle with defining a consistent approach to managing logs. This is particularly important due to the amount of information that can be logged by OIM. We recommend Oracle Diagnostics Logging (ODL) as an alternative to be used for logging. ODL allows log files to be formatted in XML for easy parsing and does not require a server restart when the log levels are changed during troubleshooting. Testing is a vital part of any large project, and an OIM R2 implementation is no exception. We suggest that at least one lower environment should use production-like data and connectors. Configurations should match as closely as possible. For example, use secure channels between OIM and target platforms in pre-production environments to test the configurations, the migration processes of certificates, and the additional overhead that encryption could impose. Finally, we ask our clients to perform database backups regularly and before any major change event, such as a patch or migration between environments. In the lowest environments, we recommend to have at least a weekly backup in order to prevent significant loss of time and effort. Similarly, if your organization is using virtual machines for one or more of the environments, it is recommended to take frequent snapshots so that rollbacks can occur in the event of improper configuration. Operate & sustain the solution to derive maximum benefits When migrating OIM R2 to production, it is important to perform certain activities that will help achieve a smoother transition. At our clients, we have seen that splitting the OIM tables into their own tablespaces by categories (physical tables, indexes, etc.) can help manage database growth effectively. If we notice that a client hasn’t enabled the Oracle-recommended indexing in the applicable database, we strongly suggest doing so to improve performance. Additionally, we work with our clients to make sure that the audit level is set to fit the organization’s auditing needs and sometimes even allocate UPA tables and indexes into their own table-space for better maintenance. Finally, many of our clients have set up schedules for reconciliation tables to be archived at regular intervals in order to keep the size of the database(s) reasonable and result in optimal database performance. For our clients that anticipate availability issues with target applications, we strongly encourage the use of the offline provisioning capabilities of OIM R2. This reduces the provisioning process for a given target application dependency on target availability and help avoid broken workflows. To account for this and other abnormalities, we also advocate that OIM’s monitoring controls be configured to alert administrators on any abnormal situations. Within OIM R2, we have begun advising our clients to utilize the ‘profile’ feature to encapsulate multiple commonly requested accounts, roles, and/or entitlements into a single item. By setting up a number of profiles that can be searched for and used, users will spend less time performing the same exact steps for common tasks. We advise our clients to follow the Oracle recommended guides for database and application server tuning which provides a good baseline configuration. It offers guidance on database connection pools, connection timeouts, user interface threads and proper handling of adapters/plug-ins. All of these can be important configurations that will allow faster provisioning and web page response times. Many of our clients have begun to recognize the value of data mining and a remediation process during the initial phases of an implementation (to help ensure high quality data gets loaded) and beyond (to support ongoing maintenance and business-as-usual processes). A successful program always begins with identifying the data elements and assigning a classification level based on criticality, risk, and availability. It should finish by following through with a remediation process. Dos & Don’ts Here are the most common dos and don'ts that we socialize with our clients, derived from our experience implementing the solution. Dos Don’ts Scope the project into phases with realistic goals. Look for quick wins to show success and value to the stake holders. Avoid “boiling the ocean” and trying to integrate all enterprise applications in the first phase. Establish an enterprise ID (universal unique ID across the enterprise) earlier in the program. Avoid major UI customizations that require code changes. Have a plan in place to patch during the project, which helps alleviate any major issues or roadblocks (product and database). Avoid publishing all the target entitlements if you don't anticipate their usage during access request. Assess your current state and prepare a roadmap to address your operations, tactical and strategic goals, align it with your business priorities. Avoid integrating non-production environments with your production target systems. Defer complex integrations to the later phases and take advantage of lessons learned from previous phases Avoid creating multiple accounts for the same user on the same system, if there is an opportunity to do so. Have an identity and access data quality initiative built into your plan to identify and remediate data related issues early on. Avoid creating complex approval workflows that would negative impact productivity and SLAs. Identify the owner of the identity systems with fair IdM knowledge and empower them with authority to make product related decisions. This will help ensure overcome any design hurdles. Avoid creating complex designs that are not sustainable long term and would need major overhaul during upgrades. Shadow your internal or external consulting resources during the implementation to build the necessary product skills needed to operate and sustain the solution. Avoid treating IAM as a point solution and have appropriate level of communication and training plan for the IT and business users alike. Conclusion In our experience, Identity programs will struggle with scope, proper resourcing, and more. We suggest that companies consider the suggestions discussed in this post and leverage them to help enable their identity and access program. This concludes PwC blog series on R2 for the month and we sincerely hope that the information we have shared thus far has been beneficial. For more information or if you have questions, you can reach out to Rex Thexton, Senior Managing Director, PwC and or Dharma Padala, Director, PwC. We look forward to hearing from you. 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Praveen Krishna is a Manager in the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  Over the last decade Praveen has helped clients plan, architect and implement Oracle identity solutions across diverse industries.  His experience includes delivering security across diverse topics like network, infrastructure, application and data where he brings a holistic point of view to problem solving. Scott MacDonald is a Director in the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has consulted for several clients across multiple industries including financial services, health care, automotive and retail.   Scott has 10 years of experience in delivering Identity Management solutions. John Misczak is a member of the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has experience implementing multiple Identity and Access Management solutions, specializing in Oracle Identity Manager and Business Process Engineering Language (BPEL).

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