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• Are You an IT Geek? Why Not Write for How-To Geek?

  - by The Geek

  Are you a geek in the IT field that wants to share your skills with the world? We’re looking for an experienced Sysadmin / IT Admin / Webmaster geek with writing skills that wants to join our team on a part-time basis. Please apply if you have the following qualities: You must be a geek at heart, willing to try and make the boring world of IT sound glamorous and sexy. If that’s not possible, at least be willing to share your wisdom and skills to help other IT geeks save time and become better at what they do. You must be able to write articles that are easy to understand. Either Windows or Linux writers are welcome to apply. You must be able to follow our style guide. You must be creative. You must generate ideas for articles on your own, and take suggestions like a pro. You’re ambitious, looking to build your skills and your name, and are prepared to work hard. If you aren’t willing to work hard, put some dedication and pride into your work, or aren’t really interested in the topic, this job might not be for you. We’re looking for serious individuals that want to grow with us, and as we grow, you’ll grow as well. How To Apply If you think this job is a good fit for you, send an email to [email protected] and include some background information about yourself, why you’d be a good fit, some topic areas you are familiar with, and hopefully some examples of your work. Bonus points if you have a ninja costume and a keyboard strapped to your back. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips What Topics Should The How-To Geek Write About?Got Awesome Skills? Why Not Write for How-To Geek?Got Awesome Geek Skills? The How-To Geek is Looking for WritersAbout the GeekThe How-To Geek Bounty Program TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 QuicklyCode Provides Cheatsheets & Other Programming Stuff Download Free MP3s from Amazon Awe inspiring, inter-galactic theme (Win 7) Case Study – How to Optimize Popular Wordpress Sites Restore Hidden Updates in Windows 7 & Vista Iceland an Insurance Job?

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• Database Security: The First Step in Pre-Emptive Data Leak Prevention

  - by roxana.bradescu

  With WikiLeaks raising awareness around information leaks and the harm they can cause, many organization are taking stock of their own information leak protection (ILP) strategies in 2011. A report by IDC on data leak prevention stated: Increasing database security is one of the most efficient and cost-effective measures an organization can take to prevent data leaks. By utilizing the data protection, access control, account management, encryption, log management, and other security controls inherent in the database management system, entities can institute first-level control over the widest range of protected information. As a central repository for unstructured data, which is growing at leaps and bounds, the database should be the first layer providing information leakage protection. Unfortunately, most organizations are not taking sufficient steps to protect their databases according to a survey of the Independent Oracle User Group. For example, any operating system administrator or database administrator can access the all the data stored in the database in most organizations. Without any kind of auditing or monitoring. And it's not just administrators, database users can typically access the database with ad-hoc query tools from their desktop and by-pass any application level controls. Despite numerous regulations calling for controls to limit the powers of insiders, most organizations still put too many privileges in the hands of their employees. Time and time again these excess privileges have backfired. Internal agents were implicated in almost half of data breaches according to the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report and the rate is rising. Hackers also took advantage of these excess privileges very successfully using stolen credentials and SQL injection attacks. But back to the insiders. Who are these insiders and why do they do it? In 2002, the U.S. Secret Service (USSS) behavioral psychologists and CERT information security experts formed the Insider Threat Study team to examine insider threat cases that occurred in US critical infrastructure sectors, and examined them from both a technical and a behavioral perspective. A series of fascinating reports has been published as a result of this work. You can learn more by watching the ISSA Insider Threat Web Conference. So as your organization starts to look at data leak prevention over the coming year, start off by protecting your data at the source - your databases. IDC went on to say: Any enterprise looking to improve its competitiveness, regulatory compliance, and overall data security should consider Oracle's offerings, not only because of their database management capabilities but also because they provide tools that are the first layer of information leak prevention. Learn more about Oracle Database Security solutions and get the whitepapers, demos, tutorials, and more that you need to protect data privacy from internal and external threats.

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• Less Can Be More In E-Commerce

  - by Michael Hylton

  Today’s consumers are inundated with product choices and vendors. Visit your favorite electronics retailer and see the vast assortment of flat panel televisions. Or the variety of detergents at the supermarket. All of this can be daunting for the average consumer who is looking for the products and services that interest them.  In a study titled “Choice is Demotivating: Can One Desire Too Much of a Good Thing”, the author, Sheena Iyengar found that participants actually reported greater subsequent satisfaction with their selections and wrote better essays when their original set of options had been limited. The same can be said for e-commerce and your website. Being able to quickly convert shoppers into buyers with effective merchandising is what makes leading businesses successful. You want to engage each individual visitor with the most-relevant content to drive higher conversions and order values while decreasing abandonment, but predicting what will resonate with each customer is difficult. In a world of choices, online merchandizing tools can help personalize, streamline, and refine what your customers view when they browse your online catalog. The key to being effective is to align your products and content as closely as possible with the customer’s needs. The goal on the home page is to promote your brand and push visitors farther into the site. The home page is often the starting point for repeat customers as well as for new visitors hoping to address their current product needs. As the customer selects different filters and narrows the choices, valuable information is being provided to the retailer about the customer’s current need—regardless of previous search behavior or what other customers with a similar demographic profile have purchased. Together with search pages, category browse pages are among the primary options available to customers as a means of finding products on your site. Once a customer reaches the product detail page, it is clear what that person desires, regardless of the segment the customer falls into. However, don’t disregard campaign-based promotions completely. A campaign targeted to all customers but featuring rule-driven promotions tied to the product can be effective. Click here to learn more about merchandizing techniques so what your customer sees if half full and not half empty.

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• Less Can Be More In E-Commerce

  - by Michael Hylton

  Today’s consumers are inundated with product choices and vendors. Visit your favorite electronics retailer and see the vast assortment of flat panel televisions. Or the variety of detergents at the supermarket. All of this can be daunting for the average consumer who is looking for the products and services that interest them.  In a study titled “Choice is Demotivating: Can One Desire Too Much of a Good Thing”, the author, Sheena Iyengar found that participants actually reported greater subsequent satisfaction with their selections and wrote better essays when their original set of options had been limited. The same can be said for e-commerce and your website. Being able to quickly convert shoppers into buyers with effective merchandising is what makes leading businesses successful. You want to engage each individual visitor with the most-relevant content to drive higher conversions and order values while decreasing abandonment, but predicting what will resonate with each customer is difficult. In a world of choices, online merchandizing tools can help personalize, streamline, and refine what your customers view when they browse your online catalog. The key to being effective is to align your products and content as closely as possible with the customer’s needs. The goal on the home page is to promote your brand and push visitors farther into the site. The home page is often the starting point for repeat customers as well as for new visitors hoping to address their current product needs. As the customer selects different filters and narrows the choices, valuable information is being provided to the retailer about the customer’s current need—regardless of previous search behavior or what other customers with a similar demographic profile have purchased. Together with search pages, category browse pages are among the primary options available to customers as a means of finding products on your site. Once a customer reaches the product detail page, it is clear what that person desires, regardless of the segment the customer falls into. However, don’t disregard campaign-based promotions completely. A campaign targeted to all customers but featuring rule-driven promotions tied to the product can be effective. Click here to learn more about merchandizing techniques so what your customer sees if half full and not half empty.

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• Negamax implementation doesn't appear to work with tic-tac-toe

  - by George Jiglau

  I've implemented Negamax as it can be found on wikipedia, which includes alpha/beta pruning. However, it seems to favor a losing move, which should be an invalid result. The game is Tic-Tac-Toe, I've abstracted most of the game play so it should be rather easy to spot an error within the algorithm. Here is the code, nextMove, negamax or evaluate are probably the functions that contain the fault: #include <list> #include <climits> #include <iostream> //#define DEBUG 1 using namespace std; struct Move { int row, col; Move(int row, int col) : row(row), col(col) { } Move(const Move& m) { row = m.row; col = m.col; } }; struct Board { char player; char opponent; char board[3][3]; Board() { } void read(istream& stream) { stream >> player; opponent = player == 'X' ? 'O' : 'X'; for(int row = 0; row < 3; row++) { for(int col = 0; col < 3; col++) { char playa; stream >> playa; board[row][col] = playa == '_' ? 0 : playa == player ? 1 : -1; } } } void print(ostream& stream) { for(int row = 0; row < 3; row++) { for(int col = 0; col < 3; col++) { switch(board[row][col]) { case -1: stream << opponent; break; case 0: stream << '_'; break; case 1: stream << player; break; } } stream << endl; } } void do_move(const Move& move, int player) { board[move.row][move.col] = player; } void undo_move(const Move& move) { board[move.row][move.col] = 0; } bool isWon() { if (board[0][0] != 0) { if (board[0][0] == board[0][1] && board[0][1] == board[0][2]) return true; if (board[0][0] == board[1][0] && board[1][0] == board[2][0]) return true; } if (board[2][2] != 0) { if (board[2][0] == board[2][1] && board[2][1] == board[2][2]) return true; if (board[0][2] == board[1][2] && board[1][2] == board[2][2]) return true; } if (board[1][1] != 0) { if (board[0][1] == board[1][1] && board[1][1] == board[2][1]) return true; if (board[1][0] == board[1][1] && board[1][1] == board[1][2]) return true; if (board[0][0] == board[1][1] && board[1][1] == board[2][2]) return true; if (board[0][2] == board [1][1] && board[1][1] == board[2][0]) return true; } return false; } list<Move> getMoves() { list<Move> moveList; for(int row = 0; row < 3; row++) for(int col = 0; col < 3; col++) if (board[row][col] == 0) moveList.push_back(Move(row, col)); return moveList; } }; ostream& operator<< (ostream& stream, Board& board) { board.print(stream); return stream; } istream& operator>> (istream& stream, Board& board) { board.read(stream); return stream; } int evaluate(Board& board) { int score = board.isWon() ? 100 : 0; for(int row = 0; row < 3; row++) for(int col = 0; col < 3; col++) if (board.board[row][col] == 0) score += 1; return score; } int negamax(Board& board, int depth, int player, int alpha, int beta) { if (board.isWon() || depth <= 0) { #if DEBUG > 1 cout << "Found winner board at depth " << depth << endl; cout << board << endl; #endif return player * evaluate(board); } list<Move> allMoves = board.getMoves(); if (allMoves.size() == 0) return player * evaluate(board); for(list<Move>::iterator it = allMoves.begin(); it != allMoves.end(); it++) { board.do_move(*it, -player); int val = -negamax(board, depth - 1, -player, -beta, -alpha); board.undo_move(*it); if (val >= beta) return val; if (val > alpha) alpha = val; } return alpha; } void nextMove(Board& board) { list<Move> allMoves = board.getMoves(); Move* bestMove = NULL; int bestScore = INT_MIN; for(list<Move>::iterator it = allMoves.begin(); it != allMoves.end(); it++) { board.do_move(*it, 1); int score = -negamax(board, 100, 1, INT_MIN + 1, INT_MAX); board.undo_move(*it); #if DEBUG cout << it->row << ' ' << it->col << " = " << score << endl; #endif if (score > bestScore) { bestMove = &*it; bestScore = score; } } if (!bestMove) return; cout << bestMove->row << ' ' << bestMove->col << endl; #if DEBUG board.do_move(*bestMove, 1); cout << board; #endif } int main() { Board board; cin >> board; #if DEBUG cout << "Starting board:" << endl; cout << board; #endif nextMove(board); return 0; } Giving this input: O X__ ___ ___ The algorithm chooses to place a piece at 0, 1, causing a guaranteed loss, do to this trap(nothing can be done to win or end in a draw): XO_ X__ ___ Perhaps it has something to do with the evaluation function? If so, how could I fix it?

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• Express your personality and potential @ Oracle

  - by jessica.ebbelaar(at)oracle.com

  Ciao, my name is Michel and I am a 24 year old guy from Forlì, Italy, working as a Business Intelligence Business Development Consultant in Rome. After I completed the Bachelor's Degree in Business Administration at Bologna University, I took a Multiple Master of Science in International Management organized by three European Universities: Bologna University (IT), ICN Business School of Nancy (FR) and Uppsala University (SE).I therefore had the chance to travel a lot and, most important, to study and meet hundreds of people from all over the world. This experience enhanced the passion I foster for international environments, different cultures and countries; not to mention the learning of foreign languages. Working for such a structured multinational as Oracle totally reflects my desire to be surrounded by a multicultural and international atmosphere, having the opportunity to grow from the personal point of view and to endlessly boost my career path. Demand Generation My department is responsible for demand generation activities. That implies, for instance, the implementation of various strategies aimed to feed the pipeline for Business Intelligence products in the Italian market. Organization of marketing campaigns, events, providing ideas or contacts to the sales force is just a few examples of our work. I like to define the role of the business development as something that translates the marketing insights into tools to increase the sales, accounting the differences amongst countries, companies and industries. Furthermore, it is an important feature to collaborate with the EMEA team to share knowledge and best practices. My initial lack of an IT background has been constantly covered by the managers and my personal mentor. The thing I appreciated most is indeed the fact I always feel to be a growing potential, becoming essential day after day. I am surprised by the trust and confidence people have on me and how they proudly encourage my personal initiative and always spur me to contribute. Career Ambitions If your ambitions are to work within an international but extremely people focused environment, to contribute to the growth of one of the most successful companies in the world, to deal with a fast-paced industry and highly competitive market, to have the chance to fully express your personality and potential and to satisfy your career ambitions over the years, then Oracle is right for YOU. Looking forward to having YOU aboard! Do you want to find out more about the open roles within Oracle? Follow us on http://campus.oracle.com.

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• Learn programming backwards, or "so I failed the FizzBuzz test. Now what?"

  - by moraleida

  A Little Background I'm 28 today, and I've never had any formal training in software development, but I do have two higher education degrees equivalent to a B.A in Public Relations and an Executive MBA focused on Project Management. I've worked on those fields for about 6 years total an then, 2,5 years ago I quit/lost my job and decided to shift directions. After a month thinking things through I decided to start freelancing developing small websites in WordPress. I self-learned my way into it and today I can say I run a humble but successful career developing themes and plugins from scratch for my clients - mostly agencies outsourcing some of their dev work for medium/large websites. But sometimes I just feel that not having studied enough math, or not having a formal understanding of things really holds me behind when I have to compete or work with more experienced developers. I'm constantly looking for ways to learn more but I seem to lack the basics. Unfortunately, spending 4 more years in Computer Science is not an option right now, so I'm trying to learn all I can from books and online resources. This method is never going to have NASA employ me but I really don't care right now. My goal is to first pass the bar and to be able to call myself a real programmer. I'm currently spending my spare time studying Java For Programmers (to get a hold on a language everyone says is difficult/demanding), reading excerpts of Code Complete (to get hold of best practices) and also Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software (to grasp the inner workings of computers). TL;DR So, my current situation is this: I'm basically capable of writing any complete system in PHP (with the help of Google and a few books), integrating Ajax, SQL and whatnot, and maybe a little slower than an experienced dev would expect due to all the research involved. But I was stranded yesterday trying to figure out (not Google) a solution for the FizzBuzz test because I didn't have the if($n1 % $n2 == 0) method modulus operator memorized. What would you suggest as a good way to solve this dilemma? What subjects/books should I study that would get me solving problems faster and maybe more "in a programmers way"? EDIT - Seems that there was some confusion about what did I not know to solve FizzBuzz. Maybe I didn't express myself right: I knew the steps needed to solve the problem. What I didn't memorize was the modulus operator. The problem was in transposing basic math to the program, not in knowing basic math. I took the test for fun, after reading about it on Coding Horror. I just decided it was a good base-comparison line between me and formally-trained devs. I just used this as an example of how not having dealt with math in a computer environment before makes me lose time looking up basic things like modulus operators to be able to solve simple problems.

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• Pay in the future should make you think in the present

  - by BuckWoody

  Distributed Computing - and more importantly “-as-a-Service” models of computing have a different cost model. This is something that sounds obvious on the surface but it’s often forgotten during the design and coding phase of a project. In on-premises computing, we’re used to purchasing a server and all of the hardware infrastructure and software licenses needed not only for one project, but several. This is an up-front or “sunk” cost that we consume by running code the organization needs to perform its function. Using a direct connection over wires you’ve already paid for, we don’t often have to think about bandwidth, hits on the data store or the amount of compute we use - we just know more is better. In a pay-as-you-go model, however, each of these architecture decisions has a potential cost impact. The amount of data you store, the number of times you access it, and the amount you send back all come with a charge. The offset is that you don’t buy anything at all up-front, so that sunk cost is freed up. And financial professionals know that money now is worth more than money later. Saving that up-front cost allows you to invest it in other things. It’s not just that you’re using things that now cost money - it’s that the design itself in distributed computing has a cost impact. That can be a really good thing, such as when you dynamically add capacity for paying customers. If you can tie back the cost of a series of clicks to what a user will pay to do so, you can set a profit margin that is easy to track. Here’s a case in point: Assume you are using a large instance in Windows Azure to compute some data that you retrieve from a SQL Azure database. If you don’t monitor the path of the application, you may not know what you are really using. Since you’re paying by the size of the instance, it’s best to maximize it all the time. Recently I evaluated just this situation, and found that downsizing the instance and adding another one where needed, adding a caching function to the application, moving part of the data into Windows Azure tables not only increased the speed of the application, but reduced the cost and more closely tied the cost to the profit. The key is this: from the very outset - the design - make sure you include metrics to measure for the cost/performance (sometimes these are the same) for your application. Windows Azure opens up awesome new ways of doing things, so make sure you study distributed systems architecture before you try and force in the application design you have on premises into your new application structure.

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• When someone deletes a shared data source in SSRS

  - by Rob Farley

  SQL Server Reporting Services plays nicely. You can have things in the catalogue that get shared. You can have Reports that have Links, Datasets that can be used across different reports, and Data Sources that can be used in a variety of ways too. So if you find that someone has deleted a shared data source, you potentially have a bit of a horror story going on. And this works for this month’s T-SQL Tuesday theme, hosted by Nick Haslam, who wants to hear about horror stories. I don’t write about LobsterPot client horror stories, so I’m writing about a situation that a fellow MVP friend asked me about recently instead. The best thing to do is to grab a recent backup of the ReportServer database, restore it somewhere, and figure out what’s changed. But of course, this isn’t always possible. And it’s much nicer to help someone with this kind of thing, rather than to be trying to fix it yourself when you’ve just deleted the wrong data source. Unfortunately, it lets you delete data sources, without trying to scream that the data source is shared across over 400 reports in over 100 folders, as was the case for my friend’s colleague. So, suddenly there’s a big problem – lots of reports are failing, and the time to turn it around is small. You probably know which data source has been deleted, but getting the shared data source back isn’t the hard part (that’s just a connection string really). The nasty bit is all the re-mapping, to get those 400 reports working again. I know from exploring this kind of stuff in the past that the ReportServer database (using its default name) has a table called dbo.Catalog to represent the catalogue, and that Reports are stored here. However, the information about what data sources these deployed reports are configured to use is stored in a different table, dbo.DataSource. You could be forgiven for thinking that shared data sources would live in this table, but they don’t – they’re catalogue items just like the reports. Let’s have a look at the structure of these two tables (although if you’re reading this because you have a disaster, feel free to skim past). Frustratingly, there doesn’t seem to be a Books Online page for this information, sorry about that. I’m also not going to look at all the columns, just ones that I find interesting enough to mention, and that are related to the problem at hand. These fields are consistent all the way through to SQL Server 2012 – there doesn’t seem to have been any changes here for quite a while. dbo.Catalog The Primary Key is ItemID. It’s a uniqueidentifier. I’m not going to comment any more on that. A minor nice point about using GUIDs in unfamiliar databases is that you can more easily figure out what’s what. But foreign keys are for that too… Path, Name and ParentID tell you where in the folder structure the item lives. Path isn’t actually required – you could’ve done recursive queries to get there. But as that would be quite painful, I’m more than happy for the Path column to be there. Path contains the Name as well, incidentally. Type tells you what kind of item it is. Some examples are 1 for a folder and 2 a report. 4 is linked reports, 5 is a data source, 6 is a report model. I forget the others for now (but feel free to put a comment giving the full list if you know it). Content is an image field, remembering that image doesn’t necessarily store images – these days we’d rather use varbinary(max), but even in SQL Server 2012, this field is still image. It stores the actual item definition in binary form, whether it’s actually an image, a report, whatever. LinkSourceID is used for Linked Reports, and has a self-referencing foreign key (allowing NULL, of course) back to ItemID. Parameter is an ntext field containing XML for the parameters of the report. Not sure why this couldn’t be a separate table, but I guess that’s just the way it goes. This field gets changed when the default parameters get changed in Report Manager. There is nothing in dbo.Catalog that describes the actual data sources that the report uses. The default data sources would be part of the Content field, as they are defined in the RDL, but when you deploy reports, you typically choose to NOT replace the data sources. Anyway, they’re not in this table. Maybe it was already considered a bit wide to throw in another ntext field, I’m not sure. They’re in dbo.DataSource instead. dbo.DataSource The Primary key is DSID. Yes it’s a uniqueidentifier... ItemID is a foreign key reference back to dbo.Catalog Fields such as ConnectionString, Prompt, UserName and Password do what they say on the tin, storing information about how to connect to the particular source in question. Link is a uniqueidentifier, which refers back to dbo.Catalog. This is used when a data source within a report refers back to a shared data source, rather than embedding the connection information itself. You’d think this should be enforced by foreign key, but it’s not. It does allow NULLs though. Flags this is an int, and I’ll come back to this. When a Data Source gets deleted out of dbo.Catalog, you might assume that it would be disallowed if there are references to it from dbo.DataSource. Well, you’d be wrong. And not because of the lack of a foreign key either. Deleting anything from the catalogue is done by calling a stored procedure called dbo.DeleteObject. You can look at the definition in there – it feels very much like the kind of Delete stored procedures that many people write, the kind of thing that means they don’t need to worry about allowing cascading deletes with foreign keys – because the stored procedure does the lot. Except that it doesn’t quite do that. If it deleted everything on a cascading delete, we’d’ve lost all the data sources as configured in dbo.DataSource, and that would be bad. This is fine if the ItemID from dbo.DataSource hooks in – if the report is being deleted. But if a shared data source is being deleted, you don’t want to lose the existence of the data source from the report. So it sets it to NULL, and it marks it as invalid. We see this code in that stored procedure. UPDATE [DataSource]    SET       [Flags] = [Flags] & 0x7FFFFFFD, -- broken link       [Link] = NULL FROM    [Catalog] AS C    INNER JOIN [DataSource] AS DS ON C.[ItemID] = DS.[Link] WHERE    (C.Path = @Path OR C.Path LIKE @Prefix ESCAPE '*') Unfortunately there’s no semi-colon on the end (but I’d rather they fix the ntext and image types first), and don’t get me started about using the table name in the UPDATE clause (it should use the alias DS). But there is a nice comment about what’s going on with the Flags field. What I’d LIKE it to do would be to set the connection information to a report-embedded copy of the connection information that’s in the shared data source, the one that’s about to be deleted. I understand that this would cause someone to lose the benefit of having the data sources configured in a central point, but I’d say that’s probably still slightly better than LOSING THE INFORMATION COMPLETELY. Sorry, rant over. I should log a Connect item – I’ll put that on my todo list. So it sets the Link field to NULL, and marks the Flags to tell you they’re broken. So this is your clue to fixing it. A bitwise AND with 0x7FFFFFFD is basically stripping out the ‘2’ bit from a number. So numbers like 2, 3, 6, 7, 10, 11, etc, whose binary representation ends in either 11 or 10 get turned into 0, 1, 4, 5, 8, 9, etc. We can test for it using a WHERE clause that matches the SET clause we’ve just used. I’d also recommend checking for Link being NULL and also having no ConnectionString. And join back to dbo.Catalog to get the path (including the name) of broken reports are – in case you get a surprise from a different data source being broken in the past. SELECT c.Path, ds.Name FROM dbo.[DataSource] AS ds JOIN dbo.[Catalog] AS c ON c.ItemID = ds.ItemID WHERE ds.[Flags] = ds.[Flags] & 0x7FFFFFFD AND ds.[Link] IS NULL AND ds.[ConnectionString] IS NULL; When I just ran this on my own machine, having deleted a data source to check my code, I noticed a Report Model in the list as well – so if you had thought it was just going to be reports that were broken, you’d be forgetting something. So to fix those reports, get your new data source created in the catalogue, and then find its ItemID by querying Catalog, using Path and Name to find it. And then use this value to fix them up. To fix the Flags field, just add 2. I prefer to use bitwise OR which should do the same. Use the OUTPUT clause to get a copy of the DSIDs of the ones you’re changing, just in case you need to revert something later after testing (doing it all in a transaction won’t help, because you’ll just lock out the table, stopping you from testing anything). UPDATE ds SET [Flags] = [Flags] | 2, [Link] = '3AE31CBA-BDB4-4FD1-94F4-580B7FAB939D' /*Insert your own GUID*/ OUTPUT deleted.Name, deleted.DSID, deleted.ItemID, deleted.Flags FROM dbo.[DataSource] AS ds JOIN dbo.[Catalog] AS c ON c.ItemID = ds.ItemID WHERE ds.[Flags] = ds.[Flags] & 0x7FFFFFFD AND ds.[Link] IS NULL AND ds.[ConnectionString] IS NULL; But please be careful. Your mileage may vary. And there’s no reason why 400-odd broken reports needs to be quite the nightmare that it could be. Really, it should be less than five minutes. @rob_farley

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, July 25, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, July 25, 2013Popular ReleasesEnglish Practice Helper: English Practice Helper Demo v1.0: The first demoTweetinvi a friendly C# Twitter API: Alpha 0.8.0.1: This is the first release of Tweetinvi. Please report any issue in the discussion or issues. Sincerely, LinviKartris E-commerce: Kartris v2.5003: This fixes an issue where search engines appear to identify as IE and so trigger the noIE page if there is not a non-responsive skin specified.VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: VG-Ripper 2.9.45: changes NEW: Added Support for "ImgBabes.com" links NEW: Added Support for "ImagesIon.com" linksMagelia WebStore Open-source Ecommerce software: Magelia WebStore 2.4: Magelia WebStore version 2.4 introduces new and improved features: Basket and order calculation have been redesigned with a more modular approach geographic zone algorithms for tax and shipping calculations have been re-developed. The Store service has been split in three services (store, basket, order). Product start and end dates have been added. For variant products a unique code has been introduced for the top (variable) product, product attributes can now be defined at the top ...LogicCircuit: LogicCircuit 2.13.07.22: Logic Circuit - is educational software for designing and simulating logic circuits. Intuitive graphical user interface, allows you to create unrestricted circuit hierarchy with multi bit buses, debug circuits behavior with oscilloscope, and navigate running circuits hierarchy. Changes of this versionYou can make visual elements of the circuit been visible on its symbols. This way you can build composite displays, keyboards and reuse them. Please read about displays for more details http://ww...LINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter v2.1.08: Supports .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, .NET 4.5, Silverlight 4.0, Windows Phone 7.1, Windows Phone 8, Client Profile, Windows 8, and Windows Azure. 100% Twitter API coverage. Also supports Twitter API v1.1! Also on NuGet.AcDown?????: AcDown????? v4.4.3: ??●AcDown??????????、??、??、???????。????，????，?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。 ●??????AcPlay?????，??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ??v4.4.3 ?? ??Bilibili????????????? ???????????? ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7/8 ???? 32??64? ???Linux ????(1)????????Windows XP???，????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)，?????"?????????"??? (2)???????????Linux???，????????Mono?? ??2.10?...Magick.NET: Magick.NET 6.8.6.601: Magick.NET linked with ImageMagick 6.8.6.6. These zip files are also available as a NuGet package: https://nuget.org/profiles/dlemstra/C# Intellisense for Notepad++: Initial release: Members auto-complete Integration with native Notepad++ Auto-Completion Auto "open bracket" for methods Right-arrow to accept suggestions51Degrees.mobi - Mobile Device Detection and Redirection: 2.1.19.4: One Click Install from NuGet This release introduces the 51Degrees.mobi IIS Vary Header Fix. When Compression and Caching is used in IIS, the Vary header is overwritten, making intelligent caching with dynamic content impossible. Find out more about installing the Vary Header fix. Changes to Version 2.1.19.4Handlers now have a ‘Count’ property. This is an integer value that shows how many devices in the dataset that use that handler. 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If set to False it will use different coordinates handling that helps to soften vertex drag issues to the top and left area sides. + Added GraphArea.Translation property. It is needed to get correct translation coordinates when determining object position from the mouse coordinates. + Added new VertexControl.PositionChanged event along wit....NET Code Migrator for Dynamics CRM: v1.0.12: Combined the main macros, generated macros from a sample organization, and the CreateVisualStudioMacros utility into a single package.Player Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows and WP (v1.3 beta 2): Includes all changes in v1.3 beta 1 Additional support for Windows 8.1 Preview New API (JS): addTextTrack New API (JS): msKeys New API (JS): msPlayToPreferredSourceUri New API (JS): msSetMediaKeys New API (JS): onmsneedkey New API (Xaml): SetMediaStreamSource method New API (Xaml): Stretch property New API (Xaml): StretchChanged event New API (Xaml): AreTransportControlsEnabled property New API (Xaml): IsFullWindow property New API (Xaml): PlayToPreferredSourceUri proper...CodeGen Code Generator: CodeGen 4.2.11: Changes in this release include: Added several new alternate forms of the <FIELD_SELWND> token to provide template developers better control over the case of field selection window names. Also added a new token <FIELD_SELWND_ORIGINAL> to preserve the case of selection window names in the same way that <FIELD_SELWND> used to. Enhanced UI Toolkit window script selection window processing (-ws) so that selection window names are no longer case sensitive (they aren't in UI Toolkit). Also the -w...Outlook 2013 Add-In: Multiple Calendars: As per popular request, this new version includes: - Support for multiple calendars. This can be enabled in the configuration by choosing which ones to show/hide appointments from. In some cases (public folders) it may time out and crash, and so far it only supports "My Calendars", so not shared ones yet. Also they're currently shown in the same font/color so there are no confusions with color categories, but please drop me a line on any suggestions you'd like to see implemented. - Added fri...New ProjectsActive Directory Web App Availability Monitor for SCOM 2012: Extend the web application availability monitoring in System Center Operations Manager 2012 with the ability to monitor Active Directory Authenticated Web SitesArgoWinform: ArgoWinform ASP.NET Routing Optional Parameters in body of Urls: This library allows ASP.NET MVC developers to have custom parameters in the body of Urls. Routes that are defined by this library accepts a LookupService that wAutomate Variations in SharePoint 2013 using C#: Automating variations settings and configuration so whenever a deployment is needed, you will be ready with your PowerShell scripts.Automate Variations in SharePoint 2013 using PowerShell: Automating variations settings and configuration so whenever a deployment is needed, you will be ready with your PowerShell scripts.BingosoftSwimming: ?????????ContentCreator for Orchard: Orchard Module that is suposed to replace the Orchard.ContentPicker module by letting you create contentItems directlyGET - General Emitter Templates: GET: General Emitter Templates. Language: C# Given a data file (in xml format), it models the data according with the directives specified in the template file.GTS Project: This project is a private personal educational project to study and learn DNN and ASP.NET MVCJustCompare: Just Compare is human made tool to help humans to compare two digital files. We are now concentrating on source code files only. Media Tool: A collection of tool to manage media files (Pictures and videos)MVVMlight Navigation Service for Windows Phone 8: A simple project to make navigation in MVVMlight on windows phone faster.Qibla Compass for Windows Phone: Qibla compass is one of the mostly used community applications/utility among Muslims. It allows users to determine the correct location / direction of Ka’aba.QuickWebLauncherWP: Una aplicación para windows phone para leer fuentes de sindicación y coleccionar enlaces a los artículos que se desean leerSimpleBingWallpaper: It's a simple project for get bingwallpaper. if you like it. please +1.. ThanksStyrApp: Template Application for technology testingTataFm: Tata FM for Windows 8 app.TimeZoneInfoForm: Exercises timezone related classes and methods in .NET. It can be used as sample code or to troubleshoot suspected timezone issues in .NET.Wix Test: *WIX Test Solution* - is a simple WIX solution for learning some new features. This project is currently in setup mode and free.

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• Certification Notes: 70-583 Designing and Developing Windows Azure Applications

  - by BuckWoody

  Last Updated: 02/01/2011 It’s time for another certification, and we’ve just release the 70-583 exam on Windows Azure. I’ve blogged my “study plans” here before on other certifications, so I thought I would do the same for this one. I’ll also need to take exam 70-513 and 70-516; but I’ll post my notes on those separately. None of these are “brain dumps” or any questions from the actual tests - just the books, links and notes I have from my studies. I’ll update these references as I’m studying, so bookmark this site and watch my Twitter and Facebook posts for when I’ll update them, or just subscribe to the RSS feed. A “Green” color on the check-block means I’ve done that part so far, red means I haven’t. First, I need to refresh my memory on some basic coding, so along with the Azure-specific information I’m reading the following general programming books: Introducing Microsoft .NET (Pro-Developer): link   Head First C#, 2E: A Learner's Guide to Real-World Programming with Visual C# and .NET: link Microsoft Visual C# 2008 Step by Step: link  c The first place to start is at the official site for the certification. link c On that page you’ll find several resources, and the first you should follow is the “Save to my learning” so you have a place to track everything. Then click the “Related Learning Plans” link and follow the videos and read the documentation in each of those bullets. There are six areas on the learning plan that you should focus on - make sure you open the learning plan to drill into the specifics. c Designing Data Storage Architecture (18%) Books I’m Reading: Links: My Notes: c Optimizing Data Access and Messaging (17%) Books I’m Reading: Links: My Notes: c Designing the Application Architecture (19%) Books I’m Reading: Applied Architecture Patterns on the Microsoft Platform: link Links: My Notes: c Preparing for Application and Service Deployment (15%) Books I’m Reading: Links: My Notes: c Investigating and Analyzing Applications (16%) Books I’m Reading: Links: My Notes: c Designing Integrated Solutions (15%) Books I’m Reading: Applied Architecture Patterns on the Microsoft Platform (2nd mention) Links: My Notes:

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• Oracle Partner Architects Training

  - by mseika

  Dear Oracle Partner, There is a lot more to Oracle technology than meets the eye. Sure, you already belong to a small circle of our most experienced and committed partners. But are you making the best use possible of our technology solutions? Put it to the test.  Join the “Oracle Partner Architects Training”. It is aimed at providing your experts, architects and consultants with in-depth architectural knowledge about Oracle technology. Here is your chance to learn from the best. Seasoned speakers, exclusive content and no product marketing. Oracle technology beyond the obvious. Choose from any of the 40 recorded training sessions. Topics include:  • Security• Service integration • Database and options• Data integration • BI and applications• Applications and infrastructure• Hardware and software combinations The market and Oracle value specialized partners More information about specialization can be found on opn.oracle.com. Click through to OPN Program/Specialize “What’s in it for us?” Quite simply: the opportunity to gain the differentiation and competitive edge you need to stand out in the marketplace. • Differentiate your company through expertise in leading Oracle IT solutions;• Get your experts, architects and consultants up to speed on specialized services and solutions;• Make our customers’ shortlists. They are looking for value-added solutions for their business.   Recordings All sessions are recorded. After registering for a session in oraevents, you will receive the info to access the webex recording. Your timing, your tempo.  Registration and more information Visit architects.oraevents.eu to sign up for the recorded sessions. NOTE: Looking to get your consultants Oracle certified? One more reason to join the Oracle Partner Architects Training. It is the fast track to getting their expertise validated with an Oracle certificate. Training schedule  Choose from any of the 40 recorded training sessions: SECURITY THE PRACTICAL APPROACH •  Identity governance• Access management• Data privacy and protection• End-to-end security, layers of exposures•  Identity & access management, why and where to start?• Data security, how? SERVICE INTEGRATION A NEW ROADTO ENTERPRISE-WIDE SERVICE INTEGRATION • Oracle RUEI: maximize business value by insight into real end-user experiences•  Governance challenges in the services landscape•  Creating an agile enterprise (by Jeff Davies)• Oracle’s approach to SOA (by Jeff Davies) - guiding and accelerating SOA success• Technical case study – the SOA challenge• Oracle’s unified business process management suite 11g (incl. demo) DATABASE DATABASE AND OPTIONS, GOINGWIDE •  Understanding service level agreements for databases• Database lifecycle management• Data centric information lifecycle management DATA INTEGRATION  DIS FOR ARCHITECTS • Data integration solutions: an overview• ODI and goldengate• Data quality

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• Using R to Analyze G1GC Log Files

  - by user12620111

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  Using R to Analyze G1GC Log Files   Using R to Analyze G1GC Log Files Introduction Working in Oracle Platform Integration gives an engineer opportunities to work on a wide array of technologies. My team’s goal is to make Oracle applications run best on the Solaris/SPARC platform. When looking for bottlenecks in a modern applications, one needs to be aware of not only how the CPUs and operating system are executing, but also network, storage, and in some cases, the Java Virtual Machine. I was recently presented with about 1.5 GB of Java Garbage First Garbage Collector log file data. If you’re not familiar with the subject, you might want to review Garbage First Garbage Collector Tuning by Monica Beckwith. The customer had been running Java HotSpot 1.6.0_31 to host a web application server. I was told that the Solaris/SPARC server was running a Java process launched using a commmand line that included the following flags: -d64 -Xms9g -Xmx9g -XX:+UseG1GC -XX:MaxGCPauseMillis=200 -XX:InitiatingHeapOccupancyPercent=80 -XX:PermSize=256m -XX:MaxPermSize=256m -XX:+PrintGC -XX:+PrintGCTimeStamps -XX:+PrintHeapAtGC -XX:+PrintGCDateStamps -XX:+PrintFlagsFinal -XX:+DisableExplicitGC -XX:+UnlockExperimentalVMOptions -XX:ParallelGCThreads=8 Several sources on the internet indicate that if I were to print out the 1.5 GB of log files, it would require enough paper to fill the bed of a pick up truck. Of course, it would be fruitless to try to scan the log files by hand. Tools will be required to summarize the contents of the log files. Others have encountered large Java garbage collection log files. There are existing tools to analyze the log files: IBM’s GC toolkit The chewiebug GCViewer gchisto HPjmeter Instead of using one of the other tools listed, I decide to parse the log files with standard Unix tools, and analyze the data with R. Data Cleansing The log files arrived in two different formats. I guess that the difference is that one set of log files was generated using a more verbose option, maybe -XX:+PrintHeapAtGC, and the other set of log files was generated without that option. Format 1 In some of the log files, the log files with the less verbose format, a single trace, i.e. the report of a singe garbage collection event, looks like this: {Heap before GC invocations=12280 (full 61): garbage-first heap total 9437184K, used 7499918K [0xfffffffd00000000, 0xffffffff40000000, 0xffffffff40000000) region size 4096K, 1 young (4096K), 0 survivors (0K) compacting perm gen total 262144K, used 144077K [0xffffffff40000000, 0xffffffff50000000, 0xffffffff50000000) the space 262144K, 54% used [0xffffffff40000000, 0xffffffff48cb3758, 0xffffffff48cb3800, 0xffffffff50000000) No shared spaces configured. 2014-05-14T07:24:00.988-0700: 60586.353: [GC pause (young) 7324M->7320M(9216M), 0.1567265 secs] Heap after GC invocations=12281 (full 61): garbage-first heap total 9437184K, used 7496533K [0xfffffffd00000000, 0xffffffff40000000, 0xffffffff40000000) region size 4096K, 0 young (0K), 0 survivors (0K) compacting perm gen total 262144K, used 144077K [0xffffffff40000000, 0xffffffff50000000, 0xffffffff50000000) the space 262144K, 54% used [0xffffffff40000000, 0xffffffff48cb3758, 0xffffffff48cb3800, 0xffffffff50000000) No shared spaces configured. } A simple grep can be used to extract a summary: $ grep "\[ GC pause (young" g1gc.log 2014-05-13T13:24:35.091-0700: 3.109: [GC pause (young) 20M->5029K(9216M), 0.0146328 secs] 2014-05-13T13:24:35.440-0700: 3.459: [GC pause (young) 9125K->6077K(9216M), 0.0086723 secs] 2014-05-13T13:24:37.581-0700: 5.599: [GC pause (young) 25M->8470K(9216M), 0.0203820 secs] 2014-05-13T13:24:42.686-0700: 10.704: [GC pause (young) 44M->15M(9216M), 0.0288848 secs] 2014-05-13T13:24:48.941-0700: 16.958: [GC pause (young) 51M->20M(9216M), 0.0491244 secs] 2014-05-13T13:24:56.049-0700: 24.066: [GC pause (young) 92M->26M(9216M), 0.0525368 secs] 2014-05-13T13:25:34.368-0700: 62.383: [GC pause (young) 602M->68M(9216M), 0.1721173 secs] But that format wasn't easily read into R, so I needed to be a bit more tricky. I used the following Unix command to create a summary file that was easy for R to read. $ echo "SecondsSinceLaunch BeforeSize AfterSize TotalSize RealTime" $ grep "\[GC pause (young" g1gc.log | grep -v mark | sed -e 's/[A-SU-z\(\),]/ /g' -e 's/->/ /' -e 's/: / /g' | more SecondsSinceLaunch BeforeSize AfterSize TotalSize RealTime 2014-05-13T13:24:35.091-0700 3.109 20 5029 9216 0.0146328 2014-05-13T13:24:35.440-0700 3.459 9125 6077 9216 0.0086723 2014-05-13T13:24:37.581-0700 5.599 25 8470 9216 0.0203820 2014-05-13T13:24:42.686-0700 10.704 44 15 9216 0.0288848 2014-05-13T13:24:48.941-0700 16.958 51 20 9216 0.0491244 2014-05-13T13:24:56.049-0700 24.066 92 26 9216 0.0525368 2014-05-13T13:25:34.368-0700 62.383 602 68 9216 0.1721173 Format 2 In some of the log files, the log files with the more verbose format, a single trace, i.e. the report of a singe garbage collection event, was more complicated than Format 1. Here is a text file with an example of a single G1GC trace in the second format. As you can see, it is quite complicated. It is nice that there is so much information available, but the level of detail can be overwhelming. I wrote this awk script (download) to summarize each trace on a single line. #!/usr/bin/env awk -f BEGIN { printf("SecondsSinceLaunch IncrementalCount FullCount UserTime SysTime RealTime BeforeSize AfterSize TotalSize\n") } ###################### # Save count data from lines that are at the start of each G1GC trace. # Each trace starts out like this: # {Heap before GC invocations=14 (full 0): # garbage-first heap total 9437184K, used 325496K [0xfffffffd00000000, 0xffffffff40000000, 0xffffffff40000000) ###################### /{Heap.*full/{ gsub ( "\\)" , "" ); nf=split($0,a,"="); split(a[2],b," "); getline; if ( match($0, "first") ) { G1GC=1; IncrementalCount=b[1]; FullCount=substr( b[3], 1, length(b[3])-1 ); } else { G1GC=0; } } ###################### # Pull out time stamps that are in lines with this format: # 2014-05-12T14:02:06.025-0700: 94.312: [GC pause (young), 0.08870154 secs] ###################### /GC pause/ { DateTime=$1; SecondsSinceLaunch=substr($2, 1, length($2)-1); } ###################### # Heap sizes are in lines that look like this: # [ 4842M->4838M(9216M)] ###################### /\[ .*]$/ { gsub ( "\\[" , "" ); gsub ( "\ \]" , "" ); gsub ( "->" , " " ); gsub ( "\\( " , " " ); gsub ( "\ \)" , " " ); split($0,a," "); if ( split(a[1],b,"M") > 1 ) {BeforeSize=b[1]*1024;} if ( split(a[1],b,"K") > 1 ) {BeforeSize=b[1];} if ( split(a[2],b,"M") > 1 ) {AfterSize=b[1]*1024;} if ( split(a[2],b,"K") > 1 ) {AfterSize=b[1];} if ( split(a[3],b,"M") > 1 ) {TotalSize=b[1]*1024;} if ( split(a[3],b,"K") > 1 ) {TotalSize=b[1];} } ###################### # Emit an output line when you find input that looks like this: # [Times: user=1.41 sys=0.08, real=0.24 secs] ###################### /\[Times/ { if (G1GC==1) { gsub ( "," , "" ); split($2,a,"="); UserTime=a[2]; split($3,a,"="); SysTime=a[2]; split($4,a,"="); RealTime=a[2]; print DateTime,SecondsSinceLaunch,IncrementalCount,FullCount,UserTime,SysTime,RealTime,BeforeSize,AfterSize,TotalSize; G1GC=0; } } The resulting summary is about 25X smaller that the original file, but still difficult for a human to digest. SecondsSinceLaunch IncrementalCount FullCount UserTime SysTime RealTime BeforeSize AfterSize TotalSize ... 2014-05-12T18:36:34.669-0700: 3985.744 561 0 0.57 0.06 0.16 1724416 1720320 9437184 2014-05-12T18:36:34.839-0700: 3985.914 562 0 0.51 0.06 0.19 1724416 1720320 9437184 2014-05-12T18:36:35.069-0700: 3986.144 563 0 0.60 0.04 0.27 1724416 1721344 9437184 2014-05-12T18:36:35.354-0700: 3986.429 564 0 0.33 0.04 0.09 1725440 1722368 9437184 2014-05-12T18:36:35.545-0700: 3986.620 565 0 0.58 0.04 0.17 1726464 1722368 9437184 2014-05-12T18:36:35.726-0700: 3986.801 566 0 0.43 0.05 0.12 1726464 1722368 9437184 2014-05-12T18:36:35.856-0700: 3986.930 567 0 0.30 0.04 0.07 1726464 1723392 9437184 2014-05-12T18:36:35.947-0700: 3987.023 568 0 0.61 0.04 0.26 1727488 1723392 9437184 2014-05-12T18:36:36.228-0700: 3987.302 569 0 0.46 0.04 0.16 1731584 1724416 9437184 Reading the Data into R Once the GC log data had been cleansed, either by processing the first format with the shell script, or by processing the second format with the awk script, it was easy to read the data into R. g1gc.df = read.csv("summary.txt", row.names = NULL, stringsAsFactors=FALSE,sep="") str(g1gc.df) ## 'data.frame': 8307 obs. of 10 variables: ## $ row.names : chr "2014-05-12T14:00:32.868-0700:" "2014-05-12T14:00:33.179-0700:" "2014-05-12T14:00:33.677-0700:" "2014-05-12T14:00:35.538-0700:" ... ## $ SecondsSinceLaunch: num 1.16 1.47 1.97 3.83 6.1 ... ## $ IncrementalCount : int 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 ... ## $ FullCount : int 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ... ## $ UserTime : num 0.11 0.05 0.04 0.21 0.08 0.26 0.31 0.33 0.34 0.56 ... ## $ SysTime : num 0.04 0.01 0.01 0.05 0.01 0.06 0.07 0.06 0.07 0.09 ... ## $ RealTime : num 0.02 0.02 0.01 0.04 0.02 0.04 0.05 0.04 0.04 0.06 ... ## $ BeforeSize : int 8192 5496 5768 22528 24576 43008 34816 53248 55296 93184 ... ## $ AfterSize : int 1400 1672 2557 4907 7072 14336 16384 18432 19456 21504 ... ## $ TotalSize : int 9437184 9437184 9437184 9437184 9437184 9437184 9437184 9437184 9437184 9437184 ... head(g1gc.df) ## row.names SecondsSinceLaunch IncrementalCount ## 1 2014-05-12T14:00:32.868-0700: 1.161 0 ## 2 2014-05-12T14:00:33.179-0700: 1.472 1 ## 3 2014-05-12T14:00:33.677-0700: 1.969 2 ## 4 2014-05-12T14:00:35.538-0700: 3.830 3 ## 5 2014-05-12T14:00:37.811-0700: 6.103 4 ## 6 2014-05-12T14:00:41.428-0700: 9.720 5 ## FullCount UserTime SysTime RealTime BeforeSize AfterSize TotalSize ## 1 0 0.11 0.04 0.02 8192 1400 9437184 ## 2 0 0.05 0.01 0.02 5496 1672 9437184 ## 3 0 0.04 0.01 0.01 5768 2557 9437184 ## 4 0 0.21 0.05 0.04 22528 4907 9437184 ## 5 0 0.08 0.01 0.02 24576 7072 9437184 ## 6 0 0.26 0.06 0.04 43008 14336 9437184 Basic Statistics Once the data has been read into R, simple statistics are very easy to generate. All of the numbers from high school statistics are available via simple commands. For example, generate a summary of every column: summary(g1gc.df) ## row.names SecondsSinceLaunch IncrementalCount FullCount ## Length:8307 Min. : 1 Min. : 0 Min. : 0.0 ## Class :character 1st Qu.: 9977 1st Qu.:2048 1st Qu.: 0.0 ## Mode :character Median :12855 Median :4136 Median : 12.0 ## Mean :12527 Mean :4156 Mean : 31.6 ## 3rd Qu.:15758 3rd Qu.:6262 3rd Qu.: 61.0 ## Max. :55484 Max. :8391 Max. :113.0 ## UserTime SysTime RealTime BeforeSize ## Min. :0.040 Min. :0.0000 Min. : 0.0 Min. : 5476 ## 1st Qu.:0.470 1st Qu.:0.0300 1st Qu.: 0.1 1st Qu.:5137920 ## Median :0.620 Median :0.0300 Median : 0.1 Median :6574080 ## Mean :0.751 Mean :0.0355 Mean : 0.3 Mean :5841855 ## 3rd Qu.:0.920 3rd Qu.:0.0400 3rd Qu.: 0.2 3rd Qu.:7084032 ## Max. :3.370 Max. :1.5600 Max. :488.1 Max. :8696832 ## AfterSize TotalSize ## Min. : 1380 Min. :9437184 ## 1st Qu.:5002752 1st Qu.:9437184 ## Median :6559744 Median :9437184 ## Mean :5785454 Mean :9437184 ## 3rd Qu.:7054336 3rd Qu.:9437184 ## Max. :8482816 Max. :9437184 Q: What is the total amount of User CPU time spent in garbage collection? sum(g1gc.df$UserTime) ## [1] 6236 As you can see, less than two hours of CPU time was spent in garbage collection. Is that too much? To find the percentage of time spent in garbage collection, divide the number above by total_elapsed_time*CPU_count. In this case, there are a lot of CPU’s and it turns out the the overall amount of CPU time spent in garbage collection isn’t a problem when viewed in isolation. When calculating rates, i.e. events per unit time, you need to ask yourself if the rate is homogenous across the time period in the log file. Does the log file include spikes of high activity that should be separately analyzed? Averaging in data from nights and weekends with data from business hours may alias problems. If you have a reason to suspect that the garbage collection rates include peaks and valleys that need independent analysis, see the “Time Series” section, below. Q: How much garbage is collected on each pass? The amount of heap space that is recovered per GC pass is surprisingly low: At least one collection didn’t recover any data. (“Min.=0”) 25% of the passes recovered 3MB or less. (“1st Qu.=3072”) Half of the GC passes recovered 4MB or less. (“Median=4096”) The average amount recovered was 56MB. (“Mean=56390”) 75% of the passes recovered 36MB or less. (“3rd Qu.=36860”) At least one pass recovered 2GB. (“Max.=2121000”) g1gc.df$Delta = g1gc.df$BeforeSize - g1gc.df$AfterSize summary(g1gc.df$Delta) ## Min. 1st Qu. Median Mean 3rd Qu. Max. ## 0 3070 4100 56400 36900 2120000 Q: What is the maximum User CPU time for a single collection? The worst garbage collection (“Max.”) is many standard deviations away from the mean. The data appears to be right skewed. summary(g1gc.df$UserTime) ## Min. 1st Qu. Median Mean 3rd Qu. Max. ## 0.040 0.470 0.620 0.751 0.920 3.370 sd(g1gc.df$UserTime) ## [1] 0.3966 Basic Graphics Once the data is in R, it is trivial to plot the data with formats including dot plots, line charts, bar charts (simple, stacked, grouped), pie charts, boxplots, scatter plots histograms, and kernel density plots. Histogram of User CPU Time per Collection I don't think that this graph requires any explanation. hist(g1gc.df$UserTime, main="User CPU Time per Collection", xlab="Seconds", ylab="Frequency") Box plot to identify outliers When the initial data is viewed with a box plot, you can see the one crazy outlier in the real time per GC. Save this data point for future analysis and drop the outlier so that it’s not throwing off our statistics. Now the box plot shows many outliers, which will be examined later, using times series analysis. Notice that the scale of the x-axis changes drastically once the crazy outlier is removed. par(mfrow=c(2,1)) boxplot(g1gc.df$UserTime,g1gc.df$SysTime,g1gc.df$RealTime, main="Box Plot of Time per GC\n(dominated by a crazy outlier)", names=c("usr","sys","elapsed"), xlab="Seconds per GC", ylab="Time (Seconds)", horizontal = TRUE, outcol="red") crazy.outlier.df=g1gc.df[g1gc.df$RealTime > 400,] g1gc.df=g1gc.df[g1gc.df$RealTime < 400,] boxplot(g1gc.df$UserTime,g1gc.df$SysTime,g1gc.df$RealTime, main="Box Plot of Time per GC\n(crazy outlier excluded)", names=c("usr","sys","elapsed"), xlab="Seconds per GC", ylab="Time (Seconds)", horizontal = TRUE, outcol="red") box(which = "outer", lty = "solid") Here is the crazy outlier for future analysis: crazy.outlier.df ## row.names SecondsSinceLaunch IncrementalCount ## 8233 2014-05-12T23:15:43.903-0700: 20741 8316 ## FullCount UserTime SysTime RealTime BeforeSize AfterSize TotalSize ## 8233 112 0.55 0.42 488.1 8381440 8235008 9437184 ## Delta ## 8233 146432 R Time Series Data To analyze the garbage collection as a time series, I’ll use Z’s Ordered Observations (zoo). “zoo is the creator for an S3 class of indexed totally ordered observations which includes irregular time series.” require(zoo) ## Loading required package: zoo ## ## Attaching package: 'zoo' ## ## The following objects are masked from 'package:base': ## ## as.Date, as.Date.numeric head(g1gc.df[,1]) ## [1] "2014-05-12T14:00:32.868-0700:" "2014-05-12T14:00:33.179-0700:" ## [3] "2014-05-12T14:00:33.677-0700:" "2014-05-12T14:00:35.538-0700:" ## [5] "2014-05-12T14:00:37.811-0700:" "2014-05-12T14:00:41.428-0700:" options("digits.secs"=3) times=as.POSIXct( g1gc.df[,1], format="%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%OS%z:") g1gc.z = zoo(g1gc.df[,-c(1)], order.by=times) head(g1gc.z) ## SecondsSinceLaunch IncrementalCount FullCount ## 2014-05-12 17:00:32.868 1.161 0 0 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:33.178 1.472 1 0 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:33.677 1.969 2 0 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:35.538 3.830 3 0 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:37.811 6.103 4 0 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:41.427 9.720 5 0 ## UserTime SysTime RealTime BeforeSize AfterSize ## 2014-05-12 17:00:32.868 0.11 0.04 0.02 8192 1400 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:33.178 0.05 0.01 0.02 5496 1672 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:33.677 0.04 0.01 0.01 5768 2557 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:35.538 0.21 0.05 0.04 22528 4907 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:37.811 0.08 0.01 0.02 24576 7072 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:41.427 0.26 0.06 0.04 43008 14336 ## TotalSize Delta ## 2014-05-12 17:00:32.868 9437184 6792 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:33.178 9437184 3824 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:33.677 9437184 3211 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:35.538 9437184 17621 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:37.811 9437184 17504 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:41.427 9437184 28672 Example of Two Benchmark Runs in One Log File The data in the following graph is from a different log file, not the one of primary interest to this article. I’m including this image because it is an example of idle periods followed by busy periods. It would be uninteresting to average the rate of garbage collection over the entire log file period. More interesting would be the rate of garbage collect in the two busy periods. Are they the same or different? Your production data may be similar, for example, bursts when employees return from lunch and idle times on weekend evenings, etc. Once the data is in an R Time Series, you can analyze isolated time windows. Clipping the Time Series data Flashing back to our test case… Viewing the data as a time series is interesting. You can see that the work intensive time period is between 9:00 PM and 3:00 AM. Lets clip the data to the interesting period:     par(mfrow=c(2,1)) plot(g1gc.z$UserTime, type="h", main="User Time per GC\nTime: Complete Log File", xlab="Time of Day", ylab="CPU Seconds per GC", col="#1b9e77") clipped.g1gc.z=window(g1gc.z, start=as.POSIXct("2014-05-12 21:00:00"), end=as.POSIXct("2014-05-13 03:00:00")) plot(clipped.g1gc.z$UserTime, type="h", main="User Time per GC\nTime: Limited to Benchmark Execution", xlab="Time of Day", ylab="CPU Seconds per GC", col="#1b9e77") box(which = "outer", lty = "solid") Cumulative Incremental and Full GC count Here is the cumulative incremental and full GC count. When the line is very steep, it indicates that the GCs are repeating very quickly. Notice that the scale on the Y axis is different for full vs. incremental. plot(clipped.g1gc.z[,c(2:3)], main="Cumulative Incremental and Full GC count", xlab="Time of Day", col="#1b9e77") GC Analysis of Benchmark Execution using Time Series data In the following series of 3 graphs: The “After Size” show the amount of heap space in use after each garbage collection. Many Java objects are still referenced, i.e. alive, during each garbage collection. This may indicate that the application has a memory leak, or may indicate that the application has a very large memory footprint. Typically, an application's memory footprint plateau's in the early stage of execution. One would expect this graph to have a flat top. The steep decline in the heap space may indicate that the application crashed after 2:00. The second graph shows that the outliers in real execution time, discussed above, occur near 2:00. when the Java heap seems to be quite full. The third graph shows that Full GCs are infrequent during the first few hours of execution. The rate of Full GC's, (the slope of the cummulative Full GC line), changes near midnight.   plot(clipped.g1gc.z[,c("AfterSize","RealTime","FullCount")], xlab="Time of Day", col=c("#1b9e77","red","#1b9e77")) GC Analysis of heap recovered Each GC trace includes the amount of heap space in use before and after the individual GC event. During garbage coolection, unreferenced objects are identified, the space holding the unreferenced objects is freed, and thus, the difference in before and after usage indicates how much space has been freed. The following box plot and bar chart both demonstrate the same point - the amount of heap space freed per garbage colloection is surprisingly low. par(mfrow=c(2,1)) boxplot(as.vector(clipped.g1gc.z$Delta), main="Amount of Heap Recovered per GC Pass", xlab="Size in KB", horizontal = TRUE, col="red") hist(as.vector(clipped.g1gc.z$Delta), main="Amount of Heap Recovered per GC Pass", xlab="Size in KB", breaks=100, col="red") box(which = "outer", lty = "solid") This graph is the most interesting. The dark blue area shows how much heap is occupied by referenced Java objects. This represents memory that holds live data. The red fringe at the top shows how much data was recovered after each garbage collection. barplot(clipped.g1gc.z[,c("AfterSize","Delta")], col=c("#7570b3","#e7298a"), xlab="Time of Day", border=NA) legend("topleft", c("Live Objects","Heap Recovered on GC"), fill=c("#7570b3","#e7298a")) box(which = "outer", lty = "solid") When I discuss the data in the log files with the customer, I will ask for an explaination for the large amount of referenced data resident in the Java heap. There are two are posibilities: There is a memory leak and the amount of space required to hold referenced objects will continue to grow, limited only by the maximum heap size. After the maximum heap size is reached, the JVM will throw an “Out of Memory” exception every time that the application tries to allocate a new object. If this is the case, the aplication needs to be debugged to identify why old objects are referenced when they are no longer needed. The application has a legitimate requirement to keep a large amount of data in memory. The customer may want to further increase the maximum heap size. Another possible solution would be to partition the application across multiple cluster nodes, where each node has responsibility for managing a unique subset of the data. Conclusion In conclusion, R is a very powerful tool for the analysis of Java garbage collection log files. The primary difficulty is data cleansing so that information can be read into an R data frame. Once the data has been read into R, a rich set of tools may be used for thorough evaluation.

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• Are your personal insecurities screwing up your internal communications?

  - by Lucy Boyes

  I do some internal comms as part of my job. Quite a lot of it involves talking to people about stuff. I’m spending the next couple of weeks talking to lots of people about internal comms itself, because we haven’t done a lot of audience/user feedback gathering, and it turns out that if you talk to people about how they feel and what they think, you get some pretty interesting insights (and an idea of what to do next that isn’t just based on guesswork and generalising from self). Three things keep coming up from talking to people about what we suck at  in terms of internal comms. And, as far as I can tell, they’re all examples where personal insecurity on the part of the person doing the communicating makes the experience much worse for the people on the receiving end. 1. Spending time telling people how you’re going to do something, not what you’re doing and why Imagine you’ve got to give an update to a lot of people who don’t work in your area or department but do have an interest in what you’re doing (either because they want to know because they’re curious or because they need to know because it’s going to affect their work too). You don’t want to look bad at your job. You want to make them think you’ve got it covered – ideally because you do*. And you want to reassure them that there’s lots of exciting work going on in your area to make [insert thing of choice] happen to [insert thing of choice] so that [insert group of people] will be happy. That’s great! You’re doing a good job and you want to tell people about it. This is good comms stuff right here. However, you’re slightly afraid you might secretly be stupid or lazy or incompetent. And you’re exponentially more afraid that the people you’re talking to might think you’re stupid or lazy or incompetent. Or pointless. Or not-adding-value. Or whatever the thing that’s the worst possible thing to be in your company is. So you open by mentioning all the stuff you’re going to do, spending five minutes or so making sure that everyone knows that you’re DOING lots of STUFF. And the you talk for the rest of the time about HOW you’re going to do the stuff, because that way everyone will know that you’ve thought about this really hard and done tons of planning and had lots of great ideas about process and that you’ve got this one down. That’s the stuff you’ve got to say, right? To prove you’re not fundamentally worthless as a human being? Well, maybe. But probably not. See, the people who need to know how you’re going to do the stuff are the people doing the stuff. And those are the people in your area who you’ve (hopefully-please-for-the-love-of-everything-holy) already talked to in depth about how you’re going to do the thing (because else how could they help do it?). They are the only people who need to know the how**. It’s the difference between strategy and tactics. The people outside of your bubble of stuff-doing need to know the strategy – what it is that you’re doing, why, where you’re going with it, etc. The people on the ground with you need the strategy and the tactics, because else they won’t know how to do the stuff. But the outside people don’t really need the tactics at all. Don’t bother with the how unless your audience needs it. They probably don’t. It might make you feel better about yourself, but it’s much more likely that Bob and Jane are thinking about how long this meeting has gone on for already than how personally impressive and definitely-not-an-idiot you are for knowing how you’re going to do some work. Feeling marginally better about yourself (but, let’s face it, still insecure as heck) is not worth the cost, which in this case is the alienation of your audience. 2. Talking for too long about stuff This is kinda the same problem as the previous problem, only much less specific, and I’ve more or less covered why it’s bad already. Basic motivation: to make people think you’re not an idiot. What you do: talk for a very long time about what you’re doing so as to make it sound like you know what you’re doing and lots about it. What your audience wants: the shortest meaningful update. Some of this is a kill your darlings problem – the stuff you’re doing that seems really nifty to you seems really nifty to you, and thus you want to share it with everyone to show that you’re a smart person who thinks up nifty things to do. The downside to this is that it’s mostly only interesting to you – if other people don’t need to know, they likely also don’t care. Think about how you feel when someone is talking a lot to you about a lot of stuff that they’re doing which is at best tangentially interesting and/or relevant. You’re probably not thinking that they’re really smart and clearly know what they’re doing (unless they’re talking a lot and being really engaging about it, which is not the same as talking a lot). You’re probably thinking about something totally unrelated to the thing they’re talking about. Or the fact that you’re bored. You might even – and this is the opposite of what they’re hoping to achieve by talking a lot about stuff – be thinking they’re kind of an idiot. There’s another huge advantage to paring down what you’re trying to say to the barest possible points – it clarifies your thinking. The lightning talk format, as well as other formats which limit the time and/or number of slides you have to say a thing, are really good for doing this. It’s incredibly likely that your audience in this case (the people who need to know some things about your thing but not all the things about your thing) will get everything they need to know from five minutes of you talking about it, especially if trying to condense ALL THE THINGS into a five-minute talk has helped you get clear in your own mind what you’re doing, what you’re trying to say about what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. The bonus of this is that by being clear in your thoughts and in what you say, and in not taking up lots of people’s time to tell them stuff they don’t really need to know, you actually come across as much, much smarter than the person who talks for half an hour or more about things that are semi-relevant at best. 3. Waiting until you’ve got every detail sorted before announcing a big change to the people affected by it This is the worst crime on the list. It’s also human nature. Announcing uncertainty – that something important is going to happen (big reorganisation, product getting canned, etc.) but you’re not quite sure what or when or how yet – is scary. There are risks to it. Uncertainty makes people anxious. It might even paralyse them. You can’t run a business while you’re figuring out what to do if you’ve paralysed everyone with fear over what the future might bring. And you’re scared that they might think you’re not the right person to be in charge of [thing] if you don’t even know what you’re doing with it. Best not to say anything until you know exactly what’s going to happen and you can reassure them all, right? Nope. The people who are going to be affected by whatever it is that you don’t quite know all the details of yet aren’t stupid***. You wouldn’t have hired them if they were. They know something’s up because you’ve got your guilty face on and you keep pulling people into meeting rooms and looking vaguely worried. Here’s the deal: it’s a lot less stressful for everyone (including you) if you’re up front from the beginning. We took this approach during a recent company-wide reorganisation and got really positive feedback. People would much, much rather be told that something is going to happen but you’re not entirely sure what it is yet than have you wait until it’s all fixed up and then fait accompli the heck out of them. They will tell you this themselves if you ask them. And here’s why: by waiting until you know exactly what’s going on to communicate, you remove any agency that the people that the thing is going to happen to might otherwise have had. I know you’re scared that they might get scared – and that’s natural and kind of admirable – but it’s also patronising and infantilising. Ask someone whether they’d rather work on a project which has an openly uncertain future from the beginning, or one where everything’s great until it gets shut down with no forewarning, and very few people are going to tell you they’d prefer the latter. Uncertainty is humanising. It’s you admitting that you don’t have all the answers, which is great, because no one does. It allows you to be consultative – you can actually ask other people what they think and how they feel and what they’d like to do and what they think you should do, and they’ll thank you for it and feel listened to and respected as people and colleagues. Which is a really good reason to start talking to them about what’s going on as soon as you know something’s going on yourself. All of the above assumes you actually care about talking to the people who work with you and for you, and that you’d like to do the right thing by them. If that’s not the case, you can cheerfully disregard the advice here, but if it is, you might want to think about the ways above – and the inevitable countless other ways – that making internal communication about you and not about your audience could actually be doing the people you’re trying to communicate with a huge disservice. So take a deep breath and talk. For five minutes or so. About the important things. Not the other things. As soon as you possibly can. And you’ll be fine.   *Of course you do. You’re good at your job. Don’t worry. **This might not always be true, but it is most of the time. Other people who need to know the how will either be people who you’ve already identified as needing-to-know and thus part of the same set as the people in you’re area you’ve already discussed this with, or else they’ll ask you. But don’t bring this stuff up unless someone asks for it, because most of the people in the audience really don’t care and you’re wasting their time. ***I mean, they might be. But let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they’re not.

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• WebCenter Customer Spotlight: Azul Brazilian Airlines

  - by me

  Author: Peter Reiser - Social Business Evangelist, Oracle WebCenter  Solution SummaryAzul Linhas Aéreas Brasileiras (Azul Brazilian Airlines) is the third-largest airline in Brazil serving  42 destinations with a fleet of 49 aircraft and employs 4,500 crew members. The company wanted to offer an innovative site with a simple purchasing process for customers to search for and buy tickets and for the company’s marketing team to more effectively conduct its campaigns. To this end, Azul implemented Oracle WebCenter Sites, succeeding in gathering all of the site’s key information onto a single platform. Azul can now complete the Web site content updating process—which used to take approximately 48 hours—in less than five minutes. Company OverviewAzul Linhas Aéreas Brasileiras (Azul Brazilian Airlines) has established itself as the third-largest airline in Brazil, based on a business model that combines low prices with a high level of service. Azul serves 42 destinations with a fleet of 49 aircraft. It operates 350 daily flights with a team of 4,500 crew members. Last year, the company transported 15 million passengers, achieving a 10% share of the Brazilian market, according to the Agência Nacional de Aviação Civil (ANAC, or the National Civil Aviation Agency). Business ChallengesThe company wanted to offer an innovative site with a simple purchasing process for customers to search for and buy tickets and for the company’s marketing team to more effectively conduct its campaigns. Provide customers with an  innovative Web site with a simple process for purchasing flight tickets Bring dynamism to the Web site’s content updating process to provide autonomy to the airline’s strategic departments, such as marketing and product development Facilitate integration among the site’s different application providers, such as ticket availability and payment process, on which ticket sales depend Solution DeployedAzul worked with the  Oracle partner TQI to implement Oracle WebCenter Sites, succeeding in gathering all of the site’s key information onto a single platform. Previously, at least three servers and corporate information environments had directed data to the portal. The single Oracle-based platform now facilitates site updates, which are daily and constant. Business Results Gained development freedom in all processes—from implementation to content editing Gathered all of the Web site’s key information onto a single platform, facilitating its daily and constant updating, whereas the information was previously spread among at least three IT environments and had to go through a complex process to be made available online to customers Reduced time needed to update banners and other Web site content from an average of 48 hours to less than five minutes Simplified the flight ticket sales process thanks to tool flexibility that enabled the company to improve Website usability “Oracle WebCenter Sites provides an easy-to-use platform that enables our marketing department to spend less time updating content and more time on innovative activities. Previously, it would take 48 hours to update content on our Web site; now it takes less than five minutes. We have shown the market that we are innovators, enabling customer convenience through an improved flight ticket purchase process.” Kleber Linhares, Information Technology and E-Commerce Director, Azul Linhas Aéreas Brasileiras Additional Information Azul Brazilian Airlines Case Study Oracle WebCenter Sites Oracle WebCenter Sites Satellite Server

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• Current State EA: Focus on the Integration!!!

  - by Eric A. Stephens

  A recent project has me at the front end of a large implementation effort covering multiple software components. In addition to the challenges of integrating 15-20 separate and new software components there is the challenge of integrating the portfolio into an existing environment. Like other clients I've worked with and other environments I've worked in for many years, this is typical. The applications are undocumented and under patched leading to a mystery for any architect leading change.  We can boil down most architecture development methodologies (ADM) into first understanding the current/baseline state and then envisioning one or more future states. Many pundits emphasize the need to focus on the future/target states. I agree since enterprise architecture (EA) is about where you are going and not so much where you have been. But to be effective in the future, I contend some focused time needs to be spent on the current state. And specifically on the integration. Integration is always the difficult part of a project (I might put it more coarsely at a cocktail party). While I don't have a case study, my anecdotal experience suggests poorly integrated application portfolios tend to cost more to operate and create entropy when trying to respond to new changes and opportunities. In the aforementioned project, I was able to get one of our EAs assigned to focus on just integration almost immediately. While we're still early in the process, this EA is uncovering all sorts of information that will greatly assist our future state planning for this solution. This information is driving early decision making that we anticipate will accelerate our efforts moving forward. #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; } #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; } #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; } #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }

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• Database Migration Scripts: Getting from place A to place B

  - by Phil Factor

  We’ll be looking at a typical database ‘migration’ script which uses an unusual technique to migrate existing ‘de-normalised’ data into a more correct form. So, the book-distribution business that uses the PUBS database has gradually grown organically, and has slipped into ‘de-normalisation’ habits. What’s this? A new column with a list of tags or ‘types’ assigned to books. Because books aren’t really in just one category, someone has ‘cured’ the mismatch between the database and the business requirements. This is fine, but it is now proving difficult for their new website that allows searches by tags. Any request for history book really has to look in the entire list of associated tags rather than the ‘Type’ field that only keeps the primary tag. We have other problems. The TypleList column has duplicates in there which will be affecting the reporting, and there is the danger of mis-spellings getting there. The reporting system can’t be persuaded to do reports based on the tags and the Database developers are complaining about the unCoddly things going on in their database. In your version of PUBS, this extra column doesn’t exist, so we’ve added it and put in 10,000 titles using SQL Data Generator. /* So how do we refactor this database? firstly, we create a table of all the tags. */IF  OBJECT_ID('TagName') IS NULL OR OBJECT_ID('TagTitle') IS NULL  BEGIN  CREATE TABLE  TagName (TagName_ID INT IDENTITY(1,1) PRIMARY KEY ,     Tag VARCHAR(20) NOT NULL UNIQUE)  /* ...and we insert into it all the tags from the list (remembering to take out any leading spaces */  INSERT INTO TagName (Tag)     SELECT DISTINCT LTRIM(x.y.value('.', 'Varchar(80)')) AS [Tag]     FROM     (SELECT  Title_ID,          CONVERT(XML, '<list><i>' + REPLACE(TypeList, ',', '</i><i>') + '</i></list>')          AS XMLkeywords          FROM   dbo.titles)g    CROSS APPLY XMLkeywords.nodes('/list/i/text()') AS x ( y )  /* we can then use this table to provide a table that relates tags to articles */  CREATE TABLE TagTitle   (TagTitle_ID INT IDENTITY(1, 1),   [title_id] [dbo].[tid] NOT NULL REFERENCES titles (Title_ID),   TagName_ID INT NOT NULL REFERENCES TagName (Tagname_ID)   CONSTRAINT [PK_TagTitle]       PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED ([title_id] ASC, TagName_ID)       ON [PRIMARY])        CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX idxTagName_ID  ON  TagTitle (TagName_ID)  INCLUDE (TagTitle_ID,title_id)        /* ...and it is easy to fill this with the tags for each title ... */        INSERT INTO TagTitle (Title_ID, TagName_ID)    SELECT DISTINCT Title_ID, TagName_ID      FROM        (SELECT  Title_ID,          CONVERT(XML, '<list><i>' + REPLACE(TypeList, ',', '</i><i>') + '</i></list>')          AS XMLkeywords          FROM   dbo.titles)g    CROSS APPLY XMLkeywords.nodes('/list/i/text()') AS x ( y )    INNER JOIN TagName ON TagName.Tag=LTRIM(x.y.value('.', 'Varchar(80)'))    END    /* That's all there was to it. Now we can select all titles that have the military tag, just to try things out */SELECT Title FROM titles  INNER JOIN TagTitle ON titles.title_ID=TagTitle.Title_ID  INNER JOIN Tagname ON Tagname.TagName_ID=TagTitle.TagName_ID  WHERE tagname.tag='Military'/* and see the top ten most popular tags for titles */SELECT Tag, COUNT(*) FROM titles  INNER JOIN TagTitle ON titles.title_ID=TagTitle.Title_ID  INNER JOIN Tagname ON Tagname.TagName_ID=TagTitle.TagName_ID  GROUP BY Tag ORDER BY COUNT(*) DESC/* and if you still want your list of tags for each title, then here they are */SELECT title_ID, title, STUFF(  (SELECT ','+tagname.tag FROM titles thisTitle    INNER JOIN TagTitle ON titles.title_ID=TagTitle.Title_ID    INNER JOIN Tagname ON Tagname.TagName_ID=TagTitle.TagName_ID  WHERE ThisTitle.title_id=titles.title_ID  FOR XML PATH(''), TYPE).value('.', 'varchar(max)')  ,1,1,'')    FROM titles  ORDER BY title_ID So we’ve refactored our PUBS database without pain. We’ve even put in a check to prevent it being re-run once the new tables are created. Here is the diagram of the new tag relationship We’ve done both the DDL to create the tables and their associated components, and the DML to put the data in them. I could have also included the script to remove the de-normalised TypeList column, but I’d do a whole lot of tests first before doing that. Yes, I’ve left out the assertion tests too, which should check the edge cases and make sure the result is what you’d expect. One thing I can’t quite figure out is how to deal with an ordered list using this simple XML-based technique. We can ensure that, if we have to produce a list of tags, we can get the primary ‘type’ to be first in the list, but what if the entire order is significant? Thank goodness it isn’t in this case. If it were, we might have to revisit a string-splitter function that returns the ordinal position of each component in the sequence. You’ll see immediately that we can create a synchronisation script for deployment from a comparison tool such as SQL Compare, to change the schema (DDL). On the other hand, no tool could do the DML to stuff the data into the new table, since there is no way that any tool will be able to work out where the data should go. We used some pretty hairy code to deal with a slightly untypical problem. We would have to do this migration by hand, and it has to go into source control as a batch. If most of your database changes are to be deployed by an automated process, then there must be a way of over-riding this part of the data synchronisation process to do this part of the process taking the part of the script that fills the tables, Checking that the tables have not already been filled, and executing it as part of the transaction. Of course, you might prefer the approach I’ve taken with the script of creating the tables in the same batch as the data conversion process, and then using the presence of the tables to prevent the script from being re-run. The problem with scripting a refactoring change to a database is that it has to work both ways. If we install the new system and then have to rollback the changes, several books may have been added, or had their tags changed, in the meantime. Yes, you have to script any rollback! These have to be mercilessly tested, and put in source control just in case of the rollback of a deployment after it has been in place for any length of time. I’ve shown you how to do this with the part of the script .. /* and if you still want your list of tags for each title, then here they are */SELECT title_ID, title, STUFF(  (SELECT ','+tagname.tag FROM titles thisTitle    INNER JOIN TagTitle ON titles.title_ID=TagTitle.Title_ID    INNER JOIN Tagname ON Tagname.TagName_ID=TagTitle.TagName_ID  WHERE ThisTitle.title_id=titles.title_ID  FOR XML PATH(''), TYPE).value('.', 'varchar(max)')  ,1,1,'')    FROM titles  ORDER BY title_ID …which would be turned into an UPDATE … FROM script. UPDATE titles SET  typelist= ThisTaglistFROM     (SELECT title_ID, title, STUFF(    (SELECT ','+tagname.tag FROM titles thisTitle      INNER JOIN TagTitle ON titles.title_ID=TagTitle.Title_ID      INNER JOIN Tagname ON Tagname.TagName_ID=TagTitle.TagName_ID    WHERE ThisTitle.title_id=titles.title_ID    ORDER BY CASE WHEN tagname.tag=titles.[type] THEN 1 ELSE 0  END DESC    FOR XML PATH(''), TYPE).value('.', 'varchar(max)')    ,1,1,'')  AS ThisTagList  FROM titles)fINNER JOIN Titles ON f.title_ID=Titles.title_ID You’ll notice that it isn’t quite a round trip because the tags are in a different order, though we’ve managed to make sure that the primary tag is the first one as originally. So, we’ve improved the database for the poor book distributors using PUBS. It is not a major deal but you’ve got to be prepared to provide a migration script that will go both forwards and backwards. Ideally, database refactoring scripts should be able to go from any version to any other. Schema synchronization scripts can do this pretty easily, but no data synchronisation scripts can deal with serious refactoring jobs without the developers being able to specify how to deal with cases like this.

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• SOA Summit - Oracle Session Replay

  - by Bruce Tierney

  If you think you missed the most recent Integration Developer News (IDN) "SOA Summit" 2013...good news, you didn't.  At least not the replay of the Oracle session titled: Three Solutionsfor Simplifying Cloud/On-Premises Integration As you will see in the reply below, this session introduces Three common reasons for integration complexity: Disparate Toolkits Lack of API Management Rigid, Brittle Infrastructure and then the Three solutions to these challenges: Unify Cloud On-premises Integration Enable Multi-channel Development with API Management Plan for the Unexpected - Future Readiness The last solution on future readiness describes how you can transition from being reactive to new trends, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), by modifying your integration strategy to enable business agility and how to recognize trends through Fast Data event processing ahead of your competition. Oracle SOA Suite customer SFpark's (San Francisco Metropolitan Transit Authority) implementation with API Management is covered as shown in the screenshot to the right This case study covers the core areas of API Management for partners to build their own applications by leveraging parking availability and real-time pricing as well as mobile enablement of data integrated by SOA Suite underneath.  Download the free SFpark app from the Apple and Android app stores to check it out. When looking into the future, the discussion starts with a historical look to better prepare for what comes next.   As shown in the image below, one of the next frontiers after mobile and cloud integration is a deeper level of direct "enterprise to customer" interaction.  Much of this relates to the Internet of Things.  Examples of IoT from the perspective of SOA and integration is also covered in the session. For example, early adopter Turkcell and their tracking of mobile phone users as they move from point A to B to C is shown in the image the right.   As you look into more "smart services" such as Location-Based Services, how "future ready" is your application infrastructure?  . . . Check out the replay by clicking the video image below to learn about these three challenges and solution including how to "future ready" your application infrastructure:

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• Java - Draw Cards and Eliminate Cards Problem

  - by Jen

  I am having a problem in this question. I want a system inside a game wherein the player draws 2 cards randomly, and the enemy draws 2 cards randomly. Then, what the program does is to print out to the console the cards the player draw and the enemy's. The cards should not conflict and must not be the same. Then lastly, the program prints out the card that was not drawn by both the player and the enemy. Here's how I did it but it was lengthy and full of errors: import java.util.Random; public class Draw { public static Random random = new Random(); public static String cards[] = {"Hall", "Kitchen", "Billiard", "Study", "Pool"}; public static int playercounter; public static int enemycounter; public static String playercardA = null; public static String playercardB = null; public static String enemycardA = null; public static String enemycardB = null; public String lastcard = null; public static void playercardAdraw() { playercounter = random.nextInt(5); playercardA = cards[playercounter]; } public static void playercardBdraw() { playercounter=random.nextInt(5); playercardB= cards[playercounter]; if (playercardB==playercardA || playercardB == enemycardA || playercardB == enemycardB) { return; } } public static void enemycardAdraw () { enemycounter = random.nextInt(5); enemycardA=cards[enemycounter]; if (enemycardA == playercardA || enemycardA == playercardB) { return; } } public static void enemycardBdraw () { enemycounter = random.nextInt(5); enemycardB=cards[enemycounter]; if (enemycardB == playercardA || enemycardB == playercardB || enemycardB == enemycardA) { return; } } public static void main (String args []) { System.out.println("Starting to draw..."); System.out.println("Player's Turn: "); playercardAdraw(); System.out.println("Player's first card: " + playercardA); playercardBdraw(); System.out.println("Player's second card: " + playercardB); System.out.println("Enemy's Turn: "); enemycardAdraw(); System.out.println("Enemy's first card: " + enemycardA); enemycardBdraw(); System.out.println("Enemy's Second card: " + enemycardB); } }

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• Alert: It is No Longer 1982, So Why is CRM Still There?

  - by Mike Stiles

  Hot off the heels of Oracle’s recent LinkedIn integration announcement and Oracle Marketing Cloud Interact 2014, the Oracle Social Cloud is preparing for another big event, the CRM Evolution conference and exhibition in NYC. The role of social channels in customer engagement continues to grow, and social customer engagement will be a significant theme at the conference. According to Paul Greenberg, CRM Evolution Conference Chair, author, and Managing Principal at The 56 Group, social channels have become so pervasive that there is no longer a clear reason to make a distinction between “social CRM” and traditional CRM systems. Why not? Because social is a communication hub every bit as vital and used as the phone or email. What makes social different is that if you think of it as a phone, it’s a party line. That means customer interactions are far from secret, and social connections are listening in by the hundreds, hearing whether their friend is having a positive or negative experience with your brand. According to a Mention.com study, 76% of brand mentions are neutral, neither positive nor negative. These mentions fail to get much notice. So think what that means about the remaining 24% of mentions. They’re standing out, because a verdict, about you, is being rendered in them, usually with emotion. Suddenly, where the R of CRM has been lip service and somewhat expendable in the past, “relationship” takes on new meaning, seriousness, and urgency. Remarkably, legions of brands still approach CRM as if it were 1982. Today, brands must provide customer experiences the customer actually likes (how dare they expect such things). They must intimately know not only their customers, but each customer, because technology now makes personalized experiences possible. That’s why the Oracle Social Cloud has been so mission-oriented about seamlessly integrating social with sales, marketing and customer service interactions so the enterprise can have an actionable 360-degree view of the customer. It’s the key to that customer-centricity we hear so much about these days. If you’re attending CRM Evolution, Chris Moody, Director of Product Marketing for the Oracle Marketing Cloud, will show you how unified customer experiences and enhanced customer centricity will help you attract and keep ideal customers and brand advocates (“The Pursuit of Customer-Centricity” Aug 19 at 2:45p ET) And Meg Bear, Group Vice President for the Oracle Social Cloud, will sit on a panel talking about “terms of engagement” and the ways tech can now enhance your interactions with customers (Aug 20 at 10a ET). If you can’t be there, we’ll be doing our live-tweeting thing from the @oraclesocial handle, so make sure you’re a faithful follower. You’ll notice NOBODY is writing about the wisdom of “company-centricity.” Now is the time to bring your customer relationship management into the socially connected age. @mikestilesPhoto: Sue Pizarro, freeimages.com

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• Draw Cards and Eliminate Cards Problem

  - by Jen

  I am having a problem in this question. I want a system inside a game wherein the player draws 2 cards randomly, and the enemy draws 2 cards randomly. Then, what the program does is to print out to the console the cards the player draw and the enemy's. The cards should not conflict and must not be the same. Then lastly, the program prints out the card that was not drawn by both the player and the enemy. Here's how I did it but it was lengthy and full of errors: import java.util.Random; public class Draw { public static Random random = new Random(); public static String cards[] = {"Hall", "Kitchen", "Billiard", "Study", "Pool"}; public static int playercounter; public static int enemycounter; public static String playercardA = null; public static String playercardB = null; public static String enemycardA = null; public static String enemycardB = null; public String lastcard = null; public static void playercardAdraw() { playercounter = random.nextInt(5); playercardA = cards[playercounter]; } public static void playercardBdraw() { playercounter=random.nextInt(5); playercardB= cards[playercounter]; if (playercardB==playercardA || playercardB == enemycardA || playercardB == enemycardB) { return; } } public static void enemycardAdraw () { enemycounter = random.nextInt(5); enemycardA=cards[enemycounter]; if (enemycardA == playercardA || enemycardA == playercardB) { return; } } public static void enemycardBdraw () { enemycounter = random.nextInt(5); enemycardB=cards[enemycounter]; if (enemycardB == playercardA || enemycardB == playercardB || enemycardB == enemycardA) { return; } } public static void main (String args []) { System.out.println("Starting to draw..."); System.out.println("Player's Turn: "); playercardAdraw(); System.out.println("Player's first card: " + playercardA); playercardBdraw(); System.out.println("Player's second card: " + playercardB); System.out.println("Enemy's Turn: "); enemycardAdraw(); System.out.println("Enemy's first card: " + enemycardA); enemycardBdraw(); System.out.println("Enemy's Second card: " + enemycardB); } }

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• Releasing the new Sample Browser Phone app

  - by Jialiang

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/Jialiang/archive/2014/06/05/releasing-the-new-sample-browser-phone-app.aspx Starting its journey in 2010, Sample Browser is achieving its tetralogy by releasing a Windows Phone version Sample Browser today. The new Windows Phone app is the fourth milestone of Sample Browser since we released the desktop version and the Visual Studio version in 2012 and the Windows Store version in 2013. This time, by providing a sample browser designed for a ‘walking’ platform in response to MVPs’ suggestions during last year’s MVP Global Summit, we are literally putting a world of code samples "at developers’ fingertips”. If you like to have a code gallery of over 7000 quality code samples in your pocket, then click here to download our Windows Phone Sample Browser and start a fantastic mobile experience. With Windows Phone version Sample Browser and the Internet, you can search for code samples on MSDN at anytime and anywhere you want, 24/7 and–even to bed. You can also check code sample details and share them with your friends. Compared to the other 3 pieces in the tetralogy (desktop version, Visual Studio version, and the Windows Store version), the Windows Phone version Sample Browser sells itself for convenience and instant connectivity. For those who need to reach code samples under mobile circumstances where no PCs is available, Windows Phone version Sample Browser will definitely be the right service you are seeking for. Aside from sharing samples via emails as the other 3 do, the Windows Phone version Sample Browser also allows you to share the sample via SMS and Near Field Communication (NFC).   What's Next Currently, the Windows Phone Sample Browser only supports online MSDN code searching, but we already plan to upgrade Sample Browser to allow users to do ‘Bing code search’, and add and manage their private code snippets.  We will also upgrade the app to universal app. Universal App is a new concept brought up in the Microsoft Build Developer Conference 2014. It is a new development model that allows for a single app to be deployed across multiple Windows devices such as Windows Phone, Windows 8.1, and XBox. Therefore, once we finish upgrading Sample Browser to a universal app, you can synchronize your own code snippets across different devices; You can also mark a code sample as favorite on your Windows Phone and continue to study the sample when you are on your desktop. By then, sharing data between platforms will be a piece of cake. Also, the user experience of Sample Browser on different platforms will be more consistent.  The best is yet to come!   We sincerely suggest you give Sample Browser a try (click here to download). If you love what you see in Sample Browser, please recommend it to your friends and colleagues. If you encounter any problems or have any suggestions for us, please contact us at [email protected]. Your precious opinions and comments are more than welcome.

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• OTN Virtual Technology Summit - July 9 - Middleware Track

  - by OTN ArchBeat

  The Architecture of Analytics: Big Time Big Data and Business Intelligence This four-session track, part of the free OTN Virtual Technology Summit on July 9, will present a solution architect's perspective on how business intelligence products in Oracle's Fusion Middleware family and beyond fit into an effective big data architecture, offering insight and expertise from Oracle ACE Directors and product team experts specializing in business Intelligence to help you meet your big data business intelligence challenges. Register now! Sessions Oracle Big Data Appliance Case Study: Using Big Data to Analyze Cancer-Genome Relationships Tom Plunkett, Lead Author of the Oracle Big Data Handbook What does it take to build an award winning Big Data solution? This presentation takes a deep technical dive into the use of the Oracle Big Data Appliance in a project for the National Cancer Institute's Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research. The Frederick National Laboratory and the Oracle team won several awards for analyzing relationships between genomes and cancer subtypes with big data, including the 2012 Government Big Data Solutions Award, the 2013 Excellence.Gov Finalist for Innovation, and the 2013 ComputerWorld Honors Laureate for Innovation. [30 mins] Getting Value from Big Data Variety Richard Tomlinson, Director, Product Management, Oracle Big data variety implies big data complexity. Performing analytics on diverse data typically involves mashing up structured, semi-structured and unstructured content. So how can we do this effectively to get real value? How do we relate diverse content so we can start to analyze it? This session looks at how we approach this tricky problem using Endeca Information Discovery. [30 mins] How To Leverage Your Investment In Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Within a Big Data Architecture Oracle ACE Director Kevin McGinley More and more organizations are realizing the value Big Data technologies contribute to the return on investment in Analytics. But as an increasing variety of data types reside in different data stores, organizations are finding that a unified Analytics layer can help bridge the divide in modern data architectures. This session will examine how you can enable Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) to play a role in a unified Analytics layer and the benefits and use cases for doing so. [30 mins] Oracle Data Integrator 12c As Your Big Data Data Integration Hub Oracle ACE Director Mark Rittman Oracle Data Integrator 12c (ODI12c), as well as being able to integrate and transform data from application and database data sources, also has the ability to load, transform and orchestrate data loads to and from Big Data sources. In this session, we'll look at ODI12c's ability to load data from Hadoop, Hive, NoSQL and file sources, transform that data using Hive and MapReduce processing across the Hadoop cluster, and then bulk-load that data into an Oracle Data Warehouse using Oracle Big Data Connectors. We will also look at how ODI12c enables ETL-offloading to a Hadoop cluster, with some tips and techniques on real-time capture into a Hadoop data reservoir and techniques and limitations when performing ETL on big data sources. [90 mins] Register now!

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• How to Update Remote Diagnostic Agent (RDA) to Latest Version?

  - by Daniel Mortimer

  Remote Diagnostic Agent (RDA) 4.28 was released on 12th June. Full details can be found in this My Oracle Support documentRDA 4 Release Notes [ID 414970.1]From a Fusion Middleware Core Component, Install and Administration perspective this latest release does not offer any significant new features or changes. However, despite the lack of Fusion Middleware specific new features in version 4.28, Remote Diagnostic Agent still comes as highly recommended. It is incredibly useful problem solving / troubleshooting aid. Support engineers dealing with Service Requests often request RDA output as it collects just about everything you might need to get a view of the state and configuration of the host operating system, network setup and Fusion Middleware components. To find out more take a look at Running RDA Against Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g [ID 853437.1] Getting Started With Remote Diagnostic Agent: Case Study - Oracle WebLogic Server (Video) [ID 1262157.1] Note: While the latter document looks at RDA from the perspective of WebLogic Server, much of the advice given in the videos can be applied to other Fusion Middleware products.Ok, let's get back on track with the topic suggested by the title. If you are already familiar with Remote Diagnostic Agent you may ask the question - 'How do I keep my RDA at the latest version?' The answer is in "Running RDA Against Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g [ID 853437.1]". To quote: There are two methods: 1. Upgrade RDA via OCM (Oracle Configuration Manager) Refer to the advice given in: Remote Diagnostic Agent (RDA) Upgrade README [ID 1309034.1] OR 2. Manually download and upgrade to the latest version. To quote from Remote Diagnostic Agent (RDA) 4 - FAQ [ID 330363.1] +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ How do I upgrade my RDA 4.x installation from the prior release? The most simplest and reliable way to upgrade your RDA installation is delete or move your old installation to a new location. Then install the new release into the location you had the prior release installed. If you want to reuse you old setup.cfg file, you can place the older version into the new <rda> directory and it will try to upgrade your setup.cfg to the new features. A second approach is to install the latest RDA into another directory, then if needed copy the old setup.cfg file to the new RDA directory. When the new RDA is run for the first time, it will try to upgrade your setup.cfg to the new features. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The upgrade method via Oracle Configuration Manager is nice because it allows RDA to be auto updated whenever a new release of RDA is made available (which roughly speaking is every 3 months). However, it does require you to install and configure Oracle Configuration Manager in addition to RDA. A quick guide to Fusion Middleware 11g and OCM can be found in this support document.Configuring OCM in Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g? A Quick and Easy Guide [ID 1096871.1]

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• Innovation for Retailers

  - by David Dorf

  One of my main objectives for this blog is to point out emerging technologies and how they might apply to the retail industry.  But ideas are just the beginning; retailers either have to rely on vendors or have their own lab to explore these ideas and see which ones work.  (A healthy dose of both is probably the best solution.)  The Nordstrom Innovation Lab is a fine example of dedicating resources to cultivate ideas and test prototypes. The video below, from 2011, is a case study in which the team builds an iPad app that helps customers purchase sunglasses in the store.  Customers take pictures of themselves wearing different sunglasses, then can do side-by-side comparisons. There are a few interesting take-aways from their process.  First, they are working in the store alongside employees and customers.  There's no concept of documenting all the requirements then building the product.  Instead, they work closely with those that will be using the app in order to fully understand what's needed.  When they find an issue, they change the software onsite and try again.  This iterative prototyping ensures their product hits the mark.  Feels like Extreme Programming if you recall that movement. Second, they have time-boxed the project to one week.  Either it works or it doesn't, and either way they've only expended a week's worth of resources.  Innovation always entails failure, and those that succeed are often good at detecting failure quickly then adjusting.  Fail fast and fail often. Third, its not always about technology.  I was impressed they used paper designs to walk through user stories and help understand the needs of the customer.  Pen and paper is the innovator's most powerful tool. Our Retail Applied Research (RAR) team uses some of these concepts in our development process.  (Calling it a process is probably overkill.)  We try to give life to concepts quickly so the rest of organization can help us decide if we're heading the right direction.  It takes many failures before finding a successful product.

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