solaris tips - Page 225

Possible to create "fake" forum (for prototyping) using html, javascript, jquery, css? [closed]

- by htmlNewbie

I am trying to figure out if it might be possible to create a small forum without any use of a database and php coding. I have created a small (local and will only be local) webpage with a couple of menus. I have a forum button which will take me to another .html location. Here i would like to create something that looks like a forum and which you somewhat could interact with like a forum, without any database or PHP. I would probably want/need a form with a heading and text input. When i have given some input, i want it to be displayed as a thread, probably on top of the other threads (which will have to be created beforehand). When I refresh the forum will obviously be set to default, without saving what i just entered since I'm not using a database to save any data. So the new posts will not be saved, just displayed, neatly, when submitted. I'm doing this webpage with forum just as a prototype, and that is why it doesn't have to work as a professional forum. :) Would be very thankful for some tips, tricks, ideas or links to helpful threads.

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what is standard approach to create a responsive website using javascript,php ajax and perhaps zend framework [closed]

- by shawndreck

I am working on a web system currently and plans to heavily use javascript with ajax to make the user interface more friendlier, not fancy as such. The javascript will be used for client side form validation, data loading from server and creating proper content with the result, also to for floating windows during add/edit or external references. Here is a scenerio that could clearify my question. A user wants to update card but instead of jumping to another page to verify the available colors,size and prizes of product, those information are shown in a floating window and changes in the floating window can affect the underlying one. My question is : 1. What are some of the approaches to encounter this situation? 2. Are there any helpful tips, tricks and links on this subject? I am comfortable with js,php and zend. I would appreciate any advice,tip and tricks, problem solving approach to handle a situation like this! Thanks in advance. Hope this make sense.

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WHY Google does not ban these sites using this SEO pattern? [on hold]

- by saddam.bg

I have seen some sites using a different kind of SEO to promote copyrighted materials such as movies. They also have submitted their site to Google webmaster tools but still now did not get banned. Their Alexa ranks are 7000 or less. On the other hand I have run 5 movie affiliate sites and all of them got banned by Google within a short period of time. I have copied the url of the homepage of solarmovie.me and pasted it on the google search and instead of the homepage url I have seen that their category or tag shows as the homepage (www.solarmovie.me/watch-category/hollyw... Now is solarmovie.me publishing its posts as a single page or something else? I tried to find out what kind of SEO or coding that was, but I couldn't since I have very little knowledge about coding. Also I have seen the same thing with ALLUC.TO in google search (www.alluc.to/popular-links.html). Could anyone please help with the SEO of this kind so that I don't get banned by google frequently or index removed. All SEO webmaster i need your help!!!! Please give me some good tips for this type of SEO. Thank You Very Much

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Club Platinum 2010 ??! ~???:???????~

- by Urakawa

?????Platinum Club??????????Platinum Club???ORACLE MASTER Platinum??????????????????????????????????????Platinum Club?????????????Club Platinum?(????????)????5?19??????????! ??????Oracle Database?????????????????????????? ?????????? ?????????? ?????? ?? ???????????Platinum????????????????????????? ???????????????????3?????????(?????????? ?? ????? ????? ?????????????!)????Oracle?????! DB????????Oracle Database/Exadata ??7???????????3???????!?????????????????????????????? ???????Oracle Database 11g R2?????????ASM????????????(ACFS)???RAC One Node??????????????????????????USB???????????ACFS???????????!????????!????????!????????????????????? ???????Oracle Exadata??Exadata Smart Flash Cache???Data Loading?????US?Oracle Corporation???????????????????????Smart Flash Cache??????DB?Flash Cache?????Data Loading????????????????????????????????????!??Tips???!?????????????????????????????????????????????????Oracle??????????????????????????!Oracle?????? Inside the Oracle Optimizer Kevin Closson's Oracle Blog ???????????Oracle Exadata??Exadata Smart Scan???Exadata Hybrid Columnar Compression?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????·?????????????IT?????????????????????????????????????????????????Oracle Database 11g: Real-Time SQL Monitoring?SQL Monitor active report?????????????!????????? ????????!???????????????!????????????????????Platinum Club????????????????????????????Oracle Exadata??????????????????????????????????????????????????????m(_ _)m?????? Oracle Database 11g R2 ??????(PDF) (Platinum Club????) ???????ORACLE MASTER??????????ORACLE MASTER?????????????????? ??????? ?????????????????ORACLE MASTER???update????????????Oracle Exadata?????????????!?Oracle Database 11g???????????????ORACLE MASTER Expert????Oracle E-Business Suite???DBA??????????????????????????????????????????Blog???????????????????????????? ????1????????????????????????????????Platinum of the Year????!~???~

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???????????Java SE 7??????! ?Java SE 7 ?????? ?????? ???!

- by rika.tokumichi

2006?Java SE6???????5????????????????????Java SE 7???????????????????????????????????????????2011?7?7???Java SE 7 ?????? ?????????????? ???????????????????????Java SE 7????????????????????????????????????????????Java????????????????1??????????????????? ????????????????????????????????? ?????????????Java SE 7????????Java SE8?????????????????????Java??????????????????HotSpot???JRockit??????Java???????????????????????????? ?????????????Java SE 7???????????Project Coin??InvokeDynamic??NIO.2??JSR-166y????????????????????????????????????? ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ???????????? Java SE 7 ??????????????????????????????Tips??????????????Java SE7????????????????????????????????????????????????? ??????????????????????Ustream?????????????????????! ???? Java SE 7 ?????? ?????? ??:2011?7?7?14?~ ??:?????????? 13F S3?S4 ?????(??) (????) 14:00 - 14:20????? 14:20 - 15:10Java SE 7?8??? 15:15 - 16:05HotRockit?Java?????????? 16:05 - 16:20?? (????) 16:20 - 17:05NetBeans 7.0?Project Coin??? 17:05 - 17:50InvokeDynamic??? 17:50 - 18:05?? 18:05 - 18:35NIO.2??? 18:35 - 19:05JSR 166y??? 19:05 -??? * ????????????????????????? ??????????????? ????????????

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???????????Java SE 7??????! ?Java SE 7 ?????? ?????? ???!

- by rika.tokumichi

2006?Java SE6???????5????????????????????Java SE 7???????????????????????????????????????????2011?7?7???Java SE 7 ?????? ?????????????? ???????????????????????Java SE 7????????????????????????????????????????????Java????????????????1??????????????????? ????????????????????????????????? ?????????????Java SE 7????????Java SE8?????????????????????Java??????????????????HotSpot???JRockit??????Java???????????????????????????? ?????????????Java SE 7???????????Project Coin??InvokeDynamic??NIO.2??JSR-166y????????????????????????????????????? ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ???????????? Java SE 7 ??????????????????????????????Tips??????????????Java SE7????????????????????????????????????????????????? ??????????????????????Ustream?????????????????????! ???? Java SE 7 ?????? ?????? ??:2011?7?7?14?~ ??:?????????? 13F S3?S4 ?????(??) (????) 14:00 - 14:20????? 14:20 - 15:10Java SE 7?8??? 15:15 - 16:05HotRockit?Java?????????? 16:05 - 16:20?? (????) 16:20 - 17:05NetBeans 7.0?Project Coin??? 17:05 - 17:50InvokeDynamic??? 17:50 - 18:05?? 18:05 - 18:35NIO.2??? 18:35 - 19:05JSR 166y??? 19:05 -??? * ????????????????????????? ??????????????? ????????????

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How to avoid the Portlet Skin mismatch

- by Martin Deh

here are probably many on going debates whether to use portlets or taskflows in a WebCenter custom portal application. Usually the main battle on which side to take in these debates are centered around which technology enables better performance. The good news is that both of my colleagues, Maiko Rocha and George Maggessy have posted their respective views on this topic so I will not have to further the discussion. However, if you do plan to use portlets in a WebCenter custom portal application, this post will help you not have the "portlet skin mismatch" issue. An example of the presence of the mismatch can be view from the applications log: The skin customsharedskin.desktop specified on the requestMap will be used even though the consumer's skin's styleSheetDocumentId on the requestMap does not match the local skin's styleSheetDocument's id. This will impact performance since the consumer and producer stylesheets cannot be shared. The producer styleclasses will not be compressed to avoid conflicts. A reason the ids do not match may be the jars are not identical on the producer and the consumer. For example, one might have trinidad-skins.xml's skin-additions in a jar file on the class path that the other does not have. Notice that due to the mismatch the portlet's CSS will not be able to be compressed, which will most like impact performance in the portlet's consuming portal. The first part of the blog will define the portlet mismatch and cover some debugging tips that can help you solve the portlet mismatch issue. Following that I will give a complete example of the creating, using and sharing a shared skin in both a portlet producer and the consumer application. Portlet Mismatch Defined In general, when you consume/render an ADF page (or task flow) using the ADF Portlet bridge, the portlet (producer) would try to use the skin of the consumer page - this is called skin-sharing. When the producer cannot match the consumer skin, the portlet would generate its own stylesheet and reference it from its markup - this is called mismatched-skin. This can happen because: The consumer and producer use different versions of ADF Faces, or The consumer has additional skin-additions that the producer doesn't have or vice-versa, or The producer does not have the consumer skin For case (1) & (2) above, the producer still uses the consumer skin ID to render its markup. For case (3), the producer would default to using portlet skin. If there is a skin mis-match then there may be a performance hit because: The browser needs to fetch this extra stylesheet (though it should be cached unless expires caching is turned off) The generated portlet markup uses uncompressed styles resulting in a larger markup It is often not obvious when a skin mismatch occurs, unless you look for either of these indicators: The log messages in the producer log, for example: The skin blafplus-rich.desktop specified on the requestMap will not be used because the styleSheetDocument id on the requestMap does not match the local skin's styleSheetDocument's id. It could mean the jars are not identical. For example, one might have trinidad-skins.xml's skin-additions in a jar file on the class path that the other does not have. View the portlet markup inside the iframe, there should be a <link> tag to the portlet stylesheet resource like this (note the CSS is proxied through consumer's resourceproxy): <link rel=\"stylesheet\" charset=\"UTF-8\" type=\"text/css\" href=\"http:.../resourceproxy/portletId...252525252Fadf%252525252Fstyles%252525252Fcache%252525252Fblafplus-rich-portlet-d1062g-en-ltr-gecko.css... Using HTTP monitoring tool (eg, firebug, httpwatch), you can see a request is made to the portlet stylesheet resource (see URL above) There are a number of reasons for mismatched-skin. For skin to match the producer and consumer must match the following configurations: The ADF Faces version (different versions may have different style selectors) Style Compression, this is defined in the web.xml (default value is false, i.e. compression is ON) Tonal styles or themes, also defined in the web.xml via context-params The same skin additions (jars with skin) are available for both producer and consumer. Skin additions are defined in the trinidad-skins.xml, using the <skin-addition> tags. These are then aggregated from all the jar files in the classpath. If there's any jar that exists on the producer but not the consumer, or vice veras, you get a mismatch. Debugging Tips Ensure the style compression and tonal styles/themes match on the consumer and producer, by looking at the web.xml documents for the consumer & producer applications It is bit more involved to determine if the jars match. However, you can enable the Trinidad logging to show which skin-addition it is processing. To enable this feature, update the logging.xml log level of both the producer and consumer WLS to FINEST. For example, in the case of the WebLogic server used by JDeveloper: $JDEV_USER_DIR/system<version number>/DefaultDomain/config/fmwconfig/servers/DefaultServer/logging.xml Add a new entry: <logger name="org.apache.myfaces.trinidadinternal.skin.SkinUtils" level="FINEST"/> Restart WebLogic. Run the consumer page, you should see the following logging in both the consumer and producer log files. Any entries that don't match is the cause of the mismatch. The following is an example of what the log will produce with this setting: [SRC_CLASS: org.apache.myfaces.trinidadinternal.skin.SkinUtils] [APP: WebCenter] [SRC_METHOD: _getMetaInfSkinsNodeList] Processing skin URL:zip:/tmp/_WL_user/oracle.webcenter.skin/in1ar8/APP-INF/lib/announcement-skin.jar!/META-INF/trinidad-skins.xml Processing skin URL:zip:/tmp/_WL_user/oracle.webcenter.skin/in1ar8/APP-INF/lib/calendar-skin.jar!/META-INF/trinidad-skins.xml Processing skin URL:zip:/tmp/_WL_user/oracle.webcenter.skin/in1ar8/APP-INF/lib/custComps-skin.jar!/META-INF/trinidad-skins.xml Processing skin URL:zip:/tmp/_WL_user/oracle.webcenter.skin/in1ar8/APP-INF/lib/forum-skin.jar!/META-INF/trinidad-skins.xml Processing skin URL:zip:/tmp/_WL_user/oracle.webcenter.skin/in1ar8/APP-INF/lib/page-service-skin.jar!/META-INF/trinidad-skins.xml Processing skin URL:zip:/tmp/_WL_user/oracle.webcenter.skin/in1ar8/APP-INF/lib/peopleconnections-kudos-skin.jar!/META-INF/trinidad-skins.xml Processing skin URL:zip:/tmp/_WL_user/oracle.webcenter.skin/in1ar8/APP-INF/lib/peopleconnections-wall-skin.jar!/META-INF/trinidad-skins.xml Processing skin URL:zip:/tmp/_WL_user/oracle.webcenter.skin/in1ar8/APP-INF/lib/portlet-client-adf-skin.jar!/META-INF/trinidad-skins.xml Processing skin URL:zip:/tmp/_WL_user/oracle.webcenter.skin/in1ar8/APP-INF/lib/rtc-skin.jar!/META-INF/trinidad-skins.xml Processing skin URL:zip:/tmp/_WL_user/oracle.webcenter.skin/in1ar8/APP-INF/lib/serviceframework-skin.jar!/META-INF/trinidad-skins.xml Processing skin URL:zip:/tmp/_WL_user/oracle.webcenter.skin/in1ar8/APP-INF/lib/smarttag-skin.jar!/META-INF/trinidad-skins.xml Processing skin URL:zip:/tmp/_WL_user/oracle.webcenter.skin/in1ar8/APP-INF/lib/spaces-service-skins.jar!/META-INF/trinidad-skins.xml Processing skin URL:zip:/tmp/_WL_user/oracle.webcenter.composer/3yo7j/WEB-INF/lib/custComps-skin.jar!/META-INF/trinidad-skins.xml Processing skin URL:zip:/tmp/_WL_user/adf.oracle.domain.webapp/q433f9/WEB-INF/lib/adf-richclient-impl-11.jar!/META-INF/trinidad-skins.xml Processing skin URL:zip:/tmp/_WL_user/adf.oracle.domain.webapp/q433f9/WEB-INF/lib/dvt-faces.jar!/META-INF/trinidad-skins.xml Processing skin URL:zip:/tmp/_WL_user/adf.oracle.domain.webapp/q433f9/WEB-INF/lib/dvt-trinidad.jar!/META-INF/trinidad-skins.xml The Complete Example The first step is to create the shared library. The WebCenter documentation covering this is located here in section 15.7. In addition, our ADF guru Frank Nimphius also covers this in hes blog. Here are my steps (in JDeveloper) to create the skin that will be used as the shared library for both the portlet producer and consumer. Create a new Generic Application Give application name (i.e. MySharedSkin) Give a project name (i.e. MySkinProject) Leave Project Technologies blank (none selected), and click Finish Create the trinidad-skins.xml Right-click on the MySkinProject node in the Application Navigator and select "New" In the New Galley, click on "General", select "File" from the Items, and click OK In the Create File dialog, name the file trinidad-skins.xml, and (IMPORTANT) give the directory path to MySkinProject\src\META-INF In the trinidad-skins.xml, complete the skin entry. for example: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1252" ?> <skins xmlns="http://myfaces.apache.org/trinidad/skin"> <skin> <id>mysharedskin.desktop</id> <family>mysharedskin</family> <extends>fusionFx-v1.desktop</extends> <style-sheet-name>css/mysharedskin.css</style-sheet-name> </skin> </skins> Create CSS file In the Application Navigator, right click on the META-INF folder (where the trinidad-skins.xml is located), and select "New" In the New Gallery, select Web-Tier-> HTML, CSS File from the the Items and click OK In the Create Cascading Style Sheet dialog, give the name (i.e. mysharedskin.css) Ensure that the Directory path is the under the META-INF (i.e. MySkinProject\src\META-INF\css) Once the new CSS opens in the editor, add in a style selector. For example, this selector will style the background of a particular panelGroupLayout: af|panelGroupLayout.customPGL{ background-color:Fuchsia; } Create the MANIFEST.MF (used for deployment JAR) In the Application Navigator, right click on the META-INF folder (where the trinidad-skins.xml is located), and select "New" In the New Galley, click on "General", select "File" from the Items, and click OK In the Create File dialog, name the file MANIFEST.MF, and (IMPORTANT) ensure that the directory path is to MySkinProject\src\META-INF Complete the MANIFEST.MF, where the extension name is the shared library name Manifest-Version: 1.1 Created-By: Martin Deh Implementation-Title: mysharedskin Extension-Name: mysharedskin.lib.def Specification-Version: 1.0.1 Implementation-Version: 1.0.1 Implementation-Vendor: MartinDeh Create new Deployment Profile Right click on the MySkinProject node, and select New From the New Gallery, select General->Deployment Profiles, Shared Library JAR File from Items, and click OK In the Create Deployment Profile dialog, give name (i.e.mysharedskinlib) and click OK In the Edit JAR Deployment dialog, un-check Include Manifest File option Select Project Output->Contributors, and check Project Source Path Select Project Output->Filters, ensure that all items under the META-INF folder are selected Click OK to exit the Project Properties dialog Deploy the shared lib to WebLogic (start server before steps) Right click on MySkin Project and select Deploy For this example, I will deploy to JDeverloper WLS In the Deploy dialog, select Deploy to Weblogic Application Server and click Next Choose IntegratedWebLogicServer and click Next Select Deploy to selected instances in the domain radio, select Default Server (note: server must be already started), and ensure Deploy as a shared Library radio is selected Click Finish Open the WebLogic console to see the deployed shared library The following are the steps to create a simple test Portlet Create a new WebCenter Portal - Portlet Producer Application In the Create Portlet Producer dialog, select default settings and click Finish Right click on the Portlets node and select New IIn the New Gallery, select Web-Tier->Portlets, Standards-based Java Portlet (JSR 286) and click OK In the General Portlet information dialog, give portlet name (i.e. MyPortlet) and click Next 2 times, stopping at Step 3 In the Content Types, select the "view" node, in the Implementation Method, select the Generate ADF-Faces JSPX radio and click Finish Once the portlet code is generated, open the view.jspx in the source editor Based on the simple CSS entry, which sets the background color of a panelGroupLayout, replace the <af:form/> tag with the example code <af:form> <af:panelGroupLayout id="pgl1" styleClass="customPGL"> <af:outputText value="background from shared lib skin" id="ot1"/> </af:panelGroupLayout> </af:form> Since this portlet is to use the shared library skin, in the generated trinidad-config.xml, remove both the skin-family tag and the skin-version tag In the Application Resources view, under Descriptors->META-INF, double-click to open the weblogic-application.xml Add a library reference to the shared skin library (note: the library-name must match the extension-name declared in the MANIFEST.MF): <library-ref> <library-name>mysharedskin.lib.def</library-name> </library-ref> Notice that a reference to oracle.webcenter.skin exists. This is important if this portlet is going to be consumed by a WebCenter Portal application. If this tag is not present, the portlet skin mismatch will happen. Configure the portlet for deployment Create Portlet deployment WAR Right click on the Portlets node and select New In the New Gallery, select Deployment Profiles, WAR file from Items and click OK In the Create Deployment Profile dialog, give name (i.e. myportletwar), click OK Keep all of the defaults, however, remember the Context Root entry (i.e. MyPortlet4SharedLib-Portlets-context-root, this will be needed to obtain the producer WSDL URL) Click OK, then OK again to exit from the Properties dialog Since the weblogic-application.xml has to be included in the deployment, the portlet must be deployed as a WAR, within an EAR In the Application dropdown, select Deploy->New Deployment Profile... By default EAR File has been selected, click OK Give Deployment Profile (EAR) a name (i.e. MyPortletProducer) and click OK In the Properties dialog, select Application Assembly and ensure that the myportletwar is checked Keep all of the other defaults and click OK For this demo, un-check the Auto Generate ..., and all of the Security Deployment Options, click OK Save All In the Application dropdown, select Deploy->MyPortletProducer In the Deployment Action, select Deploy to Application Server, click Next Choose IntegratedWebLogicServer and click Next Select Deploy to selected instances in the domain radio, select Default Server (note: server must be already started), and ensure Deploy as a standalone Application radio is selected The select deployment type (identifying the deployment as a JSR 286 portlet) dialog appears. Keep default radio "Yes" selection and click OK Open the WebLogic console to see the deployed Portlet The last step is to create the test portlet consuming application. This will be done using the OOTB WebCenter Portal - Framework Application. Create the Portlet Producer Connection In the JDeveloper Deployment log, copy the URL of the portlet deployment (i.e. http://localhost:7101/MyPortlet4SharedLib-Portlets-context-root Open a browser and paste in the URL. The Portlet information page should appear. Click on the WSRP v2 WSDL link Copy the URL from the browser (i.e. http://localhost:7101/MyPortlet4SharedLib-Portlets-context-root/portlets/wsrp2?WSDL) In the Application Resources view, right click on the Connections folder and select New Connection->WSRP Connection Give the producer a name or accept the default, click Next Enter (paste in) the WSDL URL, click Next If connection to Portlet is succesful, Step 3 (Specify Additional ...) should appear. Accept defaults and click Finish Add the portlet to a test page Open the home.jspx. Note in the visual editor, the orange dashed border, which identifies the panelCustomizable tag. From the Application Resources. select the MyPortlet portlet node, and drag and drop the node into the panelCustomizable section. A Confirm Portlet Type dialog appears, keep default ADF Rich Portlet and click OK Configure the portlet to use the shared skin library Open the weblogic-application.xml and add the library-ref entry (mysharedskin.lib.def) for the shared skin library. See create portlet example above for the steps Since by default, the custom portal using a managed bean to (dynamically) determine the skin family, the default trinidad-config.xml will need to be altered Open the trinidad-config.xml in the editor and replace the EL (preferenceBean) for the skin-family tag, with mysharedskin (this is the skin-family named defined in the trinidad-skins.xml) Remove the skin-version tag Right click on the index.html to test the application Notice that the JDeveloper log view does not have any reporting of a skin mismatch. In addition, since I have configured the extra logging outlined in debugging section above, I can see the processed skin jar in both the producer and consumer logs: <SkinUtils> <_getMetaInfSkinsNodeList> Processing skin URL:zip:/JDeveloper/system11.1.1.6.38.61.92/DefaultDomain/servers/DefaultServer/upload/mysharedskin.lib.def/[email protected]/app/mysharedskinlib.jar!/META-INF/trinidad-skins.xml

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Jolicloud is a Nifty New OS for Your Netbook

- by Matthew Guay

Want to breathe new life into your netbook? Here’s a quick look at Jolicloud, a unique new Linux based OS that lets you use your netbook in a whole new way. Netbooks have been an interesting category of computers. When they were first released, most netbooks came with a stripped down Linux based operating system designed to let you easily access the internet first and foremost. Consumers wanted more from their netbooks, so full OSes such as Windows XP and Ubuntu became the standard on netbooks. Microsoft worked hard to get Windows 7 working great on netbooks, and today most netbooks run Windows 7 great. But the Linux community hasn’t stood still either, and Jolicloud is proof of that. Jolicloud is a unique OS designed to bring the best of both webapps and standard programs to your netbook. Keep reading to see if this is the perfect netbook OS for you. Getting Started Installing Jolicloud on your netbook is easy thanks to a the Jolicloud Express installer for Windows. Since many netbooks run Windows by default, this makes it easy to install Jolicloud. Plus, your Windows install is left untouched, so you can still easily access all your Windows files and programs. Download and run the roughly 700Mb installer (link below) just as a normal installer in Windows. This will first extract the needed files. Click Get started to install Jolicloud on your netbook. Enter a username, password, and nickname for your computer. Please note that the username must be all lowercase, and the nickname should not contain spaces or special characters. Now you can review the default installation settings. By default it will take up 39Gb and install on your C:\ drive in English. If you wish to change this, click Change. We chose to install it on the D: drive on this netbook, as its harddrive was already partitioned into two parts. Click Save when your settings are all correct, and then click Next in the previous window. Jolicloud will prepare for the installation. This took about 5 minutes in our test. Click Next when this is finished. Click Restart now to install and run Jolicloud. When your netbook reboots, it will initialize the Jolicloud setup. It will then automatically finish the installation. Just sit back and wait; there’s nothing for you to do right now. The installation took about 20 minutes in our test. Jolicloud will automatically reboot when the setup is finished. Once it’s rebooted, you’re ready to go! Enter the username, then the password, that you chose earlier when you were installing Jolicloud from Windows. Welcome to your Jolicloud desktop! Hardware Support We installed Jolicloud on a Samsung N150 netbook with an Atom N450 processor, 1Gb Ram, 250Gb harddrive, and WiFi b/g/n with Bluetooth. Amazingly, once Jolicloud was installed, everything was ready to use. No drivers to install, no settings to hassle with, it was all installed and set up perfectly. Power settings worked great, and closing the netbook put it to sleep just like in Windows. WiFi drivers have typically been difficult to find and install on Linux, but Jolicloud had our netbook’s wifi working immediately. To get online, simply click the Wireless icon on the top right, and select the wireless network you want to connect to. Jolicloud will let you know when it is signed on. Wired Lan networking was also seamless; simply connect your cable and you’re ready to go. The webcam and touchpad also worked perfectly directly. The only thing missing was multitouch; this touchpad has two finger scroll, pinch zoom, and other nice multitouch features in Windows, but in Julicloud it only functioned as a standard touchpad. It did have tap to click activated by default, as well as right-side scrolling, which is nice. Jolicloud also supported our video card without any extra work. The native resolution was already selected, and the only problem we had with the screen was that there was no apparent way to change the brightness. This is not a major problem, but would be nice to have. The Samsung N150 has Intel GMA3150 integrated graphics, and Jolicloud promises 1080p HD video on it. It did playback 720p H.264 video flawlessly without installing anything extra, but it stuttered on full 1080p HD (which is the exact same as this netbook’s video playback in Windows 7 – 720p works great, but it stutters on 1080p). We would be excited to see full HD on this netbook, but 720p is definitely fine for most stuff. Jolicloud supports a wide range of netbooks, and based on our experience we would expect it to work as good on any supported hardware. Check out the list of supported netbooks to see if your netbook is supported; if not, it still may work but you may have to install special drivers. Jolicloud’s performance was very similar to Windows 7 on our netbook. It boots in about 30 seconds, and apps load fairly quickly. In general, we couldn’t tell much difference in performance between Jolicloud and Windows 7, though this isn’t a problem since Windows 7 runs great on the current generation of netbooks. Using Jolicloud Ready to start putting Jolicloud to use? Your fresh Jolicloud install you can run several built-in apps, such as Firefox, a calculator, and the chat client Pidgin. It also has a media player and file viewer installed, so you can play MP3s or MPG videos, or read PDF ebooks without installing anything extra. It also has Flash player installed so you can watch videos online easily. You can also directly access all of your files from the right side of your home screen. You can even access your Windows files; in our test, the 116.9 GB Media was C: from Windows. Select it to browse and open any file you had saved in Windows. You may need to enter your password to access it. Once you’re authenticated it, you’ll see all of your Windows files and folders. Your User files (Documents, Music, Videos, etc.) will be in the Users folder. And, you can easily add files from removable media such as USB flash drives and memory cards. Jolicloud recognized a flash drive we tested with no trouble at all. Add new apps But, the best part about Jolicloud is that it makes it very easy to install new apps. Click the Get Started button on your homescreen. You’ll first need to create an account. You can then use this same account on another netbook if you wish, and your settings will automatically be synced between the two. You can either signup using your Facebook account, …or you can sign up the traditional way with your email address, name, and password. If you sign up this way, you will need to confirm your email address before your account will be finished. Now, choose your netbook model from the list, and enter a name for your computer. And that’s it! You’ll now see the Jolicloud dashboard, which will show you updates and notifications from friends who also use Jolicloud. Click the App directory to find new apps for your netbook. Here you will find a variety of webapps, such as Gmail, along with native applications, such as Skype, that you can install on your netbook. Simply click the Install button on the right to add the app to your netbook. You will be prompted to enter your system password, and then the app will install without any further input. Once an app is installed, a check mark will appear beside its name. You can remove it by clicking the Remove button, and it will uninstall seamlessly. Webapps, such as Gmail, actually run in in a Chrome-powered window that lets the webapp run full screen. This gives the webapps a native feel, but actually they’re just running the same as they would in a standard web browser. The Jolicloud Interface Most apps run maximized, and there is no way to run them smaller. This in general works good, since with small screens most apps need to run full-screen anyhow. Smaller apps, such as a calculator or the Pidgin chat client, run in a window just like they do on other operating systems. You can switch to another app that’s running by selecting it’s icon on the top left, or you can go back to the home screen by clicking the home screen. If you’re finished with an program, simply click the red X button on the top right of the window when you’re running it. Or, you can switch between programs using standard keyboard shortcuts such as Alt-tab. The default page on the home screen is the favorites page, and all of your other programs are orginized in their own sections on the left hand side. But, if you want to add one of these to your favorites page, simply right-click on it and select Add to Favorites. When you’re done for the day, you can simply close your netbook to put it to sleep. Or, if you want to shut down, just press the Quit button on the bottom right of the home screen and then select Shut Down. Booting Jolicloud When you install Jolicloud, it will set itself as the default operating system. Now, when you boot your netbook, it will show you a list of installed operating systems. You can select either Windows or Jolicloud, but if you don’t make a selection it will boot into Jolicloud after waiting 10 seconds. If you’d perfer to boot into Windows by default, you can easily change this. First, boot your netbook in to Windows. Open the start menu, right-click on the Computer button, and select Properties. Click the “Advanced system settings” link on the left side. Click the Settings button in the Startup and Recovery section. Now, select Windows as the default operating system, and click Ok. Your netbook will now boot into Windows by default, but will give you 10 seconds to choose to boot into Jolicloud when you start your computer. Or, if you decided you don’t want Jolicloud, you can easily uninstall it from within Windows. Please note that this will also remove any files you may have saved in Jolicloud, so be sure to copy them to your Windows drive before uninstalling. To uninstall Jolicloud from within Windows, open Control Panel, and select Uninstall a Program. Scroll down to select Jolicloud, and click Uninstall/Change. Click Yes to confirm that you want to uninstall Jolicloud. After a few moments, it will let you know that Jolicloud has been uninstalled. You’re netbook is now back the same as it was before you installed Jolicloud, with only Windows installed. Closing Whether you’re wanting to replace your current OS on your netbook or would simply like to try out a fresh new Linux version on your netbook, Jolicloud is a great option for you. We were very impressed by it’s solid hardware support and the ease of installing new apps in Jolicloud. Rather than simply giving us a standard OS, Jolicloud offers a unique way to use your netbook with native programs and webapps. And whether you’re an IT pro or are a new computer user, Jolicloud was easy enough to use that anyone can do it. Give it a try, and let us know what your favorite netbook OS is! Link Download Jolicloud for your netbook Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How To Change XSplash Themes in Ubuntu 9.10Verify the Integrity of Windows Vista System FilesMonitor Multiple Logs in a Single Shell with MultiTail for LinuxHide Some or All of the GUI Bars in FirefoxAsk the Readers: Do You Use a Laptop, Desktop, or Both? 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 Stop In The Name Of Love (Firefox addon) Chitika iPad Labs Gives Live iPad Sale Stats Heaven & Hell Finder Icon Using TrueCrypt to Secure Your Data Quickly Schedule Meetings With NeedtoMeet Share Flickr Photos On Facebook Automatically

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Working with PivotTables in Excel

- by Mark Virtue

PivotTables are one of the most powerful features of Microsoft Excel. They allow large amounts of data to be analyzed and summarized in just a few mouse clicks. In this article, we explore PivotTables, understand what they are, and learn how to create and customize them. Note: This article is written using Excel 2010 (Beta). The concept of a PivotTable has changed little over the years, but the method of creating one has changed in nearly every iteration of Excel. If you are using a version of Excel that is not 2010, expect different screens from the ones you see in this article. A Little History In the early days of spreadsheet programs, Lotus 1-2-3 ruled the roost. Its dominance was so complete that people thought it was a waste of time for Microsoft to bother developing their own spreadsheet software (Excel) to compete with Lotus. Flash-forward to 2010, and Excel’s dominance of the spreadsheet market is greater than Lotus’s ever was, while the number of users still running Lotus 1-2-3 is approaching zero. How did this happen? What caused such a dramatic reversal of fortunes? Industry analysts put it down to two factors: Firstly, Lotus decided that this fancy new GUI platform called “Windows” was a passing fad that would never take off. They declined to create a Windows version of Lotus 1-2-3 (for a few years, anyway), predicting that their DOS version of the software was all anyone would ever need. Microsoft, naturally, developed Excel exclusively for Windows. Secondly, Microsoft developed a feature for Excel that Lotus didn’t provide in 1-2-3, namely PivotTables. The PivotTables feature, exclusive to Excel, was deemed so staggeringly useful that people were willing to learn an entire new software package (Excel) rather than stick with a program (1-2-3) that didn’t have it. This one feature, along with the misjudgment of the success of Windows, was the death-knell for Lotus 1-2-3, and the beginning of the success of Microsoft Excel. Understanding PivotTables So what is a PivotTable, exactly? Put simply, a PivotTable is a summary of some data, created to allow easy analysis of said data. But unlike a manually created summary, Excel PivotTables are interactive. Once you have created one, you can easily change it if it doesn’t offer the exact insights into your data that you were hoping for. In a couple of clicks the summary can be “pivoted” – rotated in such a way that the column headings become row headings, and vice versa. There’s a lot more that can be done, too. Rather than try to describe all the features of PivotTables, we’ll simply demonstrate them… The data that you analyze using a PivotTable can’t be just any data – it has to be raw data, previously unprocessed (unsummarized) – typically a list of some sort. An example of this might be the list of sales transactions in a company for the past six months. Examine the data shown below: Notice that this is not raw data. In fact, it is already a summary of some sort. In cell B3 we can see $30,000, which apparently is the total of James Cook’s sales for the month of January. So where is the raw data? How did we arrive at the figure of $30,000? Where is the original list of sales transactions that this figure was generated from? It’s clear that somewhere, someone must have gone to the trouble of collating all of the sales transactions for the past six months into the summary we see above. How long do you suppose this took? An hour? Ten? Probably. If we were to track down the original list of sales transactions, it might look something like this: You may be surprised to learn that, using the PivotTable feature of Excel, we can create a monthly sales summary similar to the one above in a few seconds, with only a few mouse clicks. We can do this – and a lot more too! How to Create a PivotTable First, ensure that you have some raw data in a worksheet in Excel. A list of financial transactions is typical, but it can be a list of just about anything: Employee contact details, your CD collection, or fuel consumption figures for your company’s fleet of cars. So we start Excel… …and we load such a list… Once we have the list open in Excel, we’re ready to start creating the PivotTable. Click on any one single cell within the list: Then, from the Insert tab, click the PivotTable icon: The Create PivotTable box appears, asking you two questions: What data should your new PivotTable be based on, and where should it be created? Because we already clicked on a cell within the list (in the step above), the entire list surrounding that cell is already selected for us ($A$1:$G$88 on the Payments sheet, in this example). Note that we could select a list in any other region of any other worksheet, or even some external data source, such as an Access database table, or even a MS-SQL Server database table. We also need to select whether we want our new PivotTable to be created on a new worksheet, or on an existing one. In this example we will select a new one: The new worksheet is created for us, and a blank PivotTable is created on that worksheet: Another box also appears: The PivotTable Field List. This field list will be shown whenever we click on any cell within the PivotTable (above): The list of fields in the top part of the box is actually the collection of column headings from the original raw data worksheet. The four blank boxes in the lower part of the screen allow us to choose the way we would like our PivotTable to summarize the raw data. So far, there is nothing in those boxes, so the PivotTable is blank. All we need to do is drag fields down from the list above and drop them in the lower boxes. A PivotTable is then automatically created to match our instructions. If we get it wrong, we only need to drag the fields back to where they came from and/or drag new fields down to replace them. The Values box is arguably the most important of the four. The field that is dragged into this box represents the data that needs to be summarized in some way (by summing, averaging, finding the maximum, minimum, etc). It is almost always numerical data. A perfect candidate for this box in our sample data is the “Amount” field/column. Let’s drag that field into the Values box: Notice that (a) the “Amount” field in the list of fields is now ticked, and “Sum of Amount” has been added to the Values box, indicating that the amount column has been summed. If we examine the PivotTable itself, we indeed find the sum of all the “Amount” values from the raw data worksheet: We’ve created our first PivotTable! Handy, but not particularly impressive. It’s likely that we need a little more insight into our data than that. Referring to our sample data, we need to identify one or more column headings that we could conceivably use to split this total. For example, we may decide that we would like to see a summary of our data where we have a row heading for each of the different salespersons in our company, and a total for each. To achieve this, all we need to do is to drag the “Salesperson” field into the Row Labels box: Now, finally, things start to get interesting! Our PivotTable starts to take shape…. With a couple of clicks we have created a table that would have taken a long time to do manually. So what else can we do? Well, in one sense our PivotTable is complete. We’ve created a useful summary of our source data. The important stuff is already learned! For the rest of the article, we will examine some ways that more complex PivotTables can be created, and ways that those PivotTables can be customized. First, we can create a two-dimensional table. Let’s do that by using “Payment Method” as a column heading. Simply drag the “Payment Method” heading to the Column Labels box: Which looks like this: Starting to get very cool! Let’s make it a three-dimensional table. What could such a table possibly look like? Well, let’s see… Drag the “Package” column/heading to the Report Filter box: Notice where it ends up…. This allows us to filter our report based on which “holiday package” was being purchased. For example, we can see the breakdown of salesperson vs payment method for all packages, or, with a couple of clicks, change it to show the same breakdown for the “Sunseekers” package: And so, if you think about it the right way, our PivotTable is now three-dimensional. Let’s keep customizing… If it turns out, say, that we only want to see cheque and credit card transactions (i.e. no cash transactions), then we can deselect the “Cash” item from the column headings. Click the drop-down arrow next to Column Labels, and untick “Cash”: Let’s see what that looks like…As you can see, “Cash” is gone. Formatting This is obviously a very powerful system, but so far the results look very plain and boring. For a start, the numbers that we’re summing do not look like dollar amounts – just plain old numbers. Let’s rectify that. A temptation might be to do what we’re used to doing in such circumstances and simply select the whole table (or the whole worksheet) and use the standard number formatting buttons on the toolbar to complete the formatting. The problem with that approach is that if you ever change the structure of the PivotTable in the future (which is 99% likely), then those number formats will be lost. We need a way that will make them (semi-)permanent. First, we locate the “Sum of Amount” entry in the Values box, and click on it. A menu appears. We select Value Field Settings… from the menu: The Value Field Settings box appears. Click the Number Format button, and the standard Format Cells box appears: From the Category list, select (say) Accounting, and drop the number of decimal places to 0. Click OK a few times to get back to the PivotTable… As you can see, the numbers have been correctly formatted as dollar amounts. While we’re on the subject of formatting, let’s format the entire PivotTable. There are a few ways to do this. Let’s use a simple one… Click the PivotTable Tools/Design tab: Then drop down the arrow in the bottom-right of the PivotTable Styles list to see a vast collection of built-in styles: Choose any one that appeals, and look at the result in your PivotTable: Other Options We can work with dates as well. Now usually, there are many, many dates in a transaction list such as the one we started with. But Excel provides the option to group data items together by day, week, month, year, etc. Let’s see how this is done. First, let’s remove the “Payment Method” column from the Column Labels box (simply drag it back up to the field list), and replace it with the “Date Booked” column: As you can see, this makes our PivotTable instantly useless, giving us one column for each date that a transaction occurred on – a very wide table! To fix this, right-click on any date and select Group… from the context-menu: The grouping box appears. We select Months and click OK: Voila! A much more useful table: (Incidentally, this table is virtually identical to the one shown at the beginning of this article – the original sales summary that was created manually.) Another cool thing to be aware of is that you can have more than one set of row headings (or column headings): …which looks like this…. You can do a similar thing with column headings (or even report filters). Keeping things simple again, let’s see how to plot averaged values, rather than summed values. First, click on “Sum of Amount”, and select Value Field Settings… from the context-menu that appears: In the Summarize value field by list in the Value Field Settings box, select Average: While we’re here, let’s change the Custom Name, from “Average of Amount” to something a little more concise. Type in something like “Avg”: Click OK, and see what it looks like. Notice that all the values change from summed totals to averages, and the table title (top-left cell) has changed to “Avg”: If we like, we can even have sums, averages and counts (counts = how many sales there were) all on the same PivotTable! Here are the steps to get something like that in place (starting from a blank PivotTable): Drag “Salesperson” into the Column Labels Drag “Amount” field down into the Values box three times For the first “Amount” field, change its custom name to “Total” and it’s number format to Accounting (0 decimal places) For the second “Amount” field, change its custom name to “Average”, its function to Average and it’s number format to Accounting (0 decimal places) For the third “Amount” field, change its name to “Count” and its function to Count Drag the automatically created field from Column Labels to Row Labels Here’s what we end up with: Total, average and count on the same PivotTable! Conclusion There are many, many more features and options for PivotTables created by Microsoft Excel – far too many to list in an article like this. To fully cover the potential of PivotTables, a small book (or a large website) would be required. Brave and/or geeky readers can explore PivotTables further quite easily: Simply right-click on just about everything, and see what options become available to you. There are also the two ribbon-tabs: PivotTable Tools/Options and Design. It doesn’t matter if you make a mistake – it’s easy to delete the PivotTable and start again – a possibility old DOS users of Lotus 1-2-3 never had. We’ve included an Excel that should work with most versions of Excel, so you can download to practice your PivotTable skills. Download Our Practice Excel File Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Magnify Selected Cells In Excel 2007Share Access Data with Excel in Office 2010Make Excel 2007 Print Gridlines In Workbook FileMake Excel 2007 Always Save in Excel 2003 FormatConvert Older Excel Documents to Excel 2007 Format 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 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Ben & Jerry’s Free Cone Day, 3/23/10 New Stinger from McAfee Helps Remove ‘FakeAlert’ Threats Google Apps Marketplace: Tools & Services For Google Apps Users Get News Quick and Precise With Newser Scan for Viruses in Ubuntu using ClamAV Replace Your Windows Task Manager With System Explorer

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Using VLOOKUP in Excel

- by Mark Virtue

VLOOKUP is one of Excel’s most useful functions, and it’s also one of the least understood. In this article, we demystify VLOOKUP by way of a real-life example. We’ll create a usable Invoice Template for a fictitious company. So what is VLOOKUP? Well, of course it’s an Excel function. This article will assume that the reader already has a passing understanding of Excel functions, and can use basic functions such as SUM, AVERAGE, and TODAY. In its most common usage, VLOOKUP is a database function, meaning that it works with database tables – or more simply, lists of things in an Excel worksheet. What sort of things? Well, any sort of thing. You may have a worksheet that contains a list of employees, or products, or customers, or CDs in your CD collection, or stars in the night sky. It doesn’t really matter. Here’s an example of a list, or database. In this case it’s a list of products that our fictitious company sells: Usually lists like this have some sort of unique identifier for each item in the list. In this case, the unique identifier is in the “Item Code” column. Note: For the VLOOKUP function to work with a database/list, that list must have a column containing the unique identifier (or “key”, or “ID”), and that column must be the first column in the table. Our sample database above satisfies this criterion. The hardest part of using VLOOKUP is understanding exactly what it’s for. So let’s see if we can get that clear first: VLOOKUP retrieves information from a database/list based on a supplied instance of the unique identifier. Put another way, if you put the VLOOKUP function into a cell and pass it one of the unique identifiers from your database, it will return you one of the pieces of information associated with that unique identifier. In the example above, you would pass VLOOKUP an item code, and it would return to you either the corresponding item’s description, its price, or its availability (its “In stock” quantity). Which of these pieces of information will it pass you back? Well, you get to decide this when you’re creating the formula. If all you need is one piece of information from the database, it would be a lot of trouble to go to to construct a formula with a VLOOKUP function in it. Typically you would use this sort of functionality in a reusable spreadsheet, such as a template. Each time someone enters a valid item code, the system would retrieve all the necessary information about the corresponding item. Let’s create an example of this: An Invoice Template that we can reuse over and over in our fictitious company. First we start Excel… …and we create ourselves a blank invoice: This is how it’s going to work: The person using the invoice template will fill in a series of item codes in column “A”, and the system will retrieve each item’s description and price, which will be used to calculate the line total for each item (assuming we enter a valid quantity). For the purposes of keeping this example simple, we will locate the product database on a separate sheet in the same workbook: In reality, it’s more likely that the product database would be located in a separate workbook. It makes little difference to the VLOOKUP function, which doesn’t really care if the database is located on the same sheet, a different sheet, or a completely different workbook. In order to test the VLOOKUP formula we’re about to write, we first enter a valid item code into cell A11: Next, we move the active cell to the cell in which we want information retrieved from the database by VLOOKUP to be stored. Interestingly, this is the step that most people get wrong. To explain further: We are about to create a VLOOKUP formula that will retrieve the description that corresponds to the item code in cell A11. Where do we want this description put when we get it? In cell B11, of course. So that’s where we write the VLOOKUP formula – in cell B11. Select cell B11: We need to locate the list of all available functions that Excel has to offer, so that we can choose VLOOKUP and get some assistance in completing the formula. This is found by first clicking the Formulas tab, and then clicking Insert Function: A box appears that allows us to select any of the functions available in Excel. To find the one we’re looking for, we could type a search term like “lookup” (because the function we’re interested in is a lookup function). The system would return us a list of all lookup-related functions in Excel. VLOOKUP is the second one in the list. Select it an click OK… The Function Arguments box appears, prompting us for all the arguments (or parameters) needed in order to complete the VLOOKUP function. You can think of this box as the function is asking us the following questions: What unique identifier are you looking up in the database? Where is the database? Which piece of information from the database, associated with the unique identifier, do you wish to have retrieved for you? The first three arguments are shown in bold, indicating that they are mandatory arguments (the VLOOKUP function is incomplete without them and will not return a valid value). The fourth argument is not bold, meaning that it’s optional: We will complete the arguments in order, top to bottom. The first argument we need to complete is the Lookup_value argument. The function needs us to tell it where to find the unique identifier (the item code in this case) that it should be retuning the description of. We must select the item code we entered earlier (in A11). Click on the selector icon to the right of the first argument: Then click once on the cell containing the item code (A11), and press Enter: The value of “A11” is inserted into the first argument. Now we need to enter a value for the Table_array argument. In other words, we need to tell VLOOKUP where to find the database/list. Click on the selector icon next to the second argument: Now locate the database/list and select the entire list – not including the header line. The database is located on a separate worksheet, so we first click on that worksheet tab: Next we select the entire database, not including the header line: …and press Enter. The range of cells that represents the database (in this case “’Product Database’!A2:D7”) is entered automatically for us into the second argument. Now we need to enter the third argument, Col_index_num. We use this argument to specify to VLOOKUP which piece of information from the database, associate with our item code in A11, we wish to have returned to us. In this particular example, we wish to have the item’s description returned to us. If you look on the database worksheet, you’ll notice that the “Description” column is the second column in the database. This means that we must enter a value of “2” into the Col_index_num box: It is important to note that that we are not entering a “2” here because the “Description” column is in the B column on that worksheet. If the database happened to start in column K of the worksheet, we would still enter a “2” in this field. Finally, we need to decide whether to enter a value into the final VLOOKUP argument, Range_lookup. This argument requires either a true or false value, or it should be left blank. When using VLOOKUP with databases (as is true 90% of the time), then the way to decide what to put in this argument can be thought of as follows: If the first column of the database (the column that contains the unique identifiers) is sorted alphabetically/numerically in ascending order, then it’s possible to enter a value of true into this argument, or leave it blank. If the first column of the database is not sorted, or it’s sorted in descending order, then you must enter a value of false into this argument As the first column of our database is not sorted, we enter false into this argument: That’s it! We’ve entered all the information required for VLOOKUP to return the value we need. Click the OK button and notice that the description corresponding to item code “R99245” has been correctly entered into cell B11: The formula that was created for us looks like this: If we enter a different item code into cell A11, we will begin to see the power of the VLOOKUP function: The description cell changes to match the new item code: We can perform a similar set of steps to get the item’s price returned into cell E11. Note that the new formula must be created in cell E11. The result will look like this: …and the formula will look like this: Note that the only difference between the two formulae is the third argument (Col_index_num) has changed from a “2” to a “3” (because we want data retrieved from the 3rd column in the database). If we decided to buy 2 of these items, we would enter a “2” into cell D11. We would then enter a simple formula into cell F11 to get the line total: =D11*E11 …which looks like this… Completing the Invoice Template We’ve learned a lot about VLOOKUP so far. In fact, we’ve learned all we’re going to learn in this article. It’s important to note that VLOOKUP can be used in other circumstances besides databases. This is less common, and may be covered in future How-To Geek articles. Our invoice template is not yet complete. In order to complete it, we would do the following: We would remove the sample item code from cell A11 and the “2” from cell D11. This will cause our newly created VLOOKUP formulae to display error messages: We can remedy this by judicious use of Excel’s IF() and ISBLANK() functions. We change our formula from this… =VLOOKUP(A11,’Product Database’!A2:D7,2,FALSE) …to this… =IF(ISBLANK(A11),”",VLOOKUP(A11,’Product Database’!A2:D7,2,FALSE)) We would copy the formulas in cells B11, E11 and F11 down to the remainder of the item rows of the invoice. Note that if we do this, the resulting formulas will no longer correctly refer to the database table. We could fix this by changing the cell references for the database to absolute cell references. Alternatively – and even better – we could create a range name for the entire product database (such as “Products”), and use this range name instead of the cell references. The formula would change from this… =IF(ISBLANK(A11),”",VLOOKUP(A11,’Product Database’!A2:D7,2,FALSE)) …to this… =IF(ISBLANK(A11),”",VLOOKUP(A11,Products,2,FALSE)) …and then copy the formulas down to the rest of the invoice item rows. We would probably “lock” the cells that contain our formulae (or rather unlock the other cells), and then protect the worksheet, in order to ensure that our carefully constructed formulae are not accidentally overwritten when someone comes to fill in the invoice. We would save the file as a template, so that it could be reused by everyone in our company If we were feeling really clever, we would create a database of all our customers in another worksheet, and then use the customer ID entered in cell F5 to automatically fill in the customer’s name and address in cells B6, B7 and B8. If you would like to practice with VLOOKUP, or simply see our resulting Invoice Template, it can be downloaded from here. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Make Excel 2007 Print Gridlines In Workbook FileMake Excel 2007 Always Save in Excel 2003 FormatConvert Older Excel Documents to Excel 2007 FormatImport Microsoft Access Data Into ExcelChange the Default Font in Excel 2007 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Classic Cinema Online offers 100’s of OnDemand Movies OutSync will Sync Photos of your Friends on Facebook and Outlook Windows 7 Easter Theme YoWindoW, a real time weather screensaver Optimize your computer the Microsoft way Stormpulse provides slick, real time weather data

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Romanian parter Omnilogic Delivers “No Limits” Scalability, Performance, Security, and Affordability through Next-Generation, Enterprise-Grade Engineered Systems

- by swalker

Omnilogic SRL is a leading technology and information systems provider in Romania and central and Eastern Europe. An Oracle Value-Added Distributor Partner, Omnilogic resells Oracle software, hardware, and engineered systems to Oracle Partner Network members and provides specialized training, support, and testing facilities. Independent software vendors (ISVs) also use Omnilogic’s demonstration and testing facilities to upgrade the performance and efficiency of their solutions and those of their customers by migrating them from competitor technologies to Oracle platforms. Omnilogic also has a dedicated offering for ISV solutions, based on Oracle technology in a hosting service provider model. Omnilogic wanted to help Oracle Partners and ISVs migrate solutions to Oracle Exadata and sell Oracle Exadata to end-customers. It installed Oracle Exadata Database Machine X2-2 Quarter Rack at its data center to create a demonstration and testing environment. Demonstrations proved that Oracle Exadata achieved processing speeds up to 100 times faster than competitor systems, cut typical back-up times from 6 hours to 20 minutes, and stored 10 times more data. Oracle Partners and ISVs learned that migrating solutions to Oracle Exadata’s preconfigured, pre-integrated hardware and software can be completed rapidly, at low cost, without business disruption, and with reduced ongoing operating costs. Challenges A word from Omnilogic “Oracle Exadata is the new killer application—the smartest solution on the market. There is no competition.” – Sorin Dragomir, Chief Operating Officer, Omnilogic SRL Enable Oracle Partners in Romania and central and eastern Europe to achieve Oracle Exadata Ready status by providing facilities to test and optimize existing applications and build real-life proofs of concept (POCs) for new solutions on Oracle Exadata Database Machine Provide technical support and demonstration facilities for ISVs migrating their customers’ solutions from competitor technologies to Oracle Exadata to maximize performance, scalability, and security; optimize hardware and datacenter space; cut maintenance costs; and improve return on investment Demonstrate power of Oracle Exadata’s high-performance, high-capacity engineered systems for customer-facing businesses, such as government organizations, telecommunications, banking and insurance, and utility companies, which typically require continuous availability to support very large data volumes Showcase Oracle Exadata’s unchallenged online transaction processing (OLTP) capabilities that cut application run times to provide unrivalled query turnaround and user response speeds while significantly reducing back-up times and eliminating risk of unplanned outages Capitalize on providing a world-class training and demonstration environment for Oracle Exadata to accelerate sales with Oracle Partners Solutions Created a testing environment to enable Oracle Partners and ISVs to test their own solutions and those of their customers on Oracle Exadata running on Oracle Enterprise Linux or Oracle Solaris Express to benchmark performance prior to migration Leveraged expertise on Oracle Exadata to offer Oracle Exadata training, migration, support seminars and to showcase live demonstrations for Oracle Partners Proved how Oracle Exadata’s pre-engineered systems, that come assembled, configured, and ready to run, reduce deployment time and cost, minimize risk, and help customers achieve the full performance potential immediately after go live Increased processing speeds 10-fold and with zero data loss for a telecommunications provider’s client-facing customer relationship management solution Achieved performance improvements of between 6 and 100 times faster for financial and utility company applications currently running on IBM, Microsoft, or SAP HANA platforms Showed how daily closure procedures carried out overnight by banks, insurance companies, and other financial institutions to analyze each day’s business, can typically be cut from around six hours to 20 minutes, some 18 times faster, when running on Oracle Exadata Simulated concurrent back-ups while running applications under normal working conditions to prove that Oracle Exadata-based solutions can be backed up during business hours without causing bottlenecks or impacting the end-user experience Demonstrated that Oracle Exadata’s built-in analytics, data mining and OLTP capabilities make it the highest-performance, lowest-cost choice for large data warehousing operations Showed how Oracle Exadata’s columnar compression and intelligent storage architecture allows 10 times more data to be stored than on competitor platforms Demonstrated how Oracle Exadata cuts hardware requirements significantly by consolidating workloads on to fewer servers which delivers greater power efficiency and lower operating costs that competing systems from IBM and other manufacturers Proved to ISVs that migrating solutions to Oracle Exadata’s preconfigured, pre-integrated hardware and software can be completed rapidly, at low cost, and with minimal business disruption Demonstrated how storage servers, database servers, and network switches can be added incrementally and inexpensively to the Oracle Exadata platform to support business expansion On track to grow revenues by 10% in year one and by 15% annually thereafter through increased business generated from Oracle Partners and ISVs

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You should NOT be writing jQuery in SharePoint if…

- by Mark Rackley

Yes… another one of these posts. What can I say? I’m a pot stirrer.. a rabble rouser *rabble rabble* jQuery in SharePoint seems to be a fairly polarizing issue with one side thinking it is the most awesome thing since Princess Leia as the slave girl in Return of the Jedi and the other half thinking it is the worst idea since Mannequin 2: On the Move. The correct answer is OF COURSE “it depends”. But what are those deciding factors that make jQuery an awesome fit or leave a bad taste in your mouth? Let’s see if I can drive the discussion here with some polarizing comments of my own… I know some of you are getting ready to leave your comments even now before reading the rest of the blog, which is great! Iron sharpens iron… These discussions hopefully open us up to understanding the entire process better and think about things in a different way. You should not be writing jQuery in SharePoint if you are not a developer… Let’s start off with my most polarizing and rant filled portion of the blog post. If you don’t know what you are doing or you don’t have a background that helps you understand the implications of what you are writing then you should not be writing jQuery in SharePoint! I truly believe that one of the biggest reasons for the jQuery haters is because of all the bad jQuery out there. If you don’t know what you are doing you can do some NASTY things! One of the best stories I’ve heard about this is from my good friend John Ferringer (@ferringer). John tells this story during our Mythbusters session we do together. One of his clients was undergoing a Denial of Service attack and they couldn’t figure out what was going on! After much searching they found that some genius jQuery developer wrote some code for an image rotator, but did not take into account what happens when there are no images to load! The code just kept hitting the servers over and over and over again which prevented anything else from getting done! Now, I’m NOT saying that I have not done the same sort of thing in the past or am immune from such mistakes. My point is that if you don’t know what you are doing, there are very REAL consequences that can have a major impact on your organization AND they will be hard to track down. Think how happy your boss will be after you copy and pasted some jQuery from a blog without understanding what it does, it brings down the farm, AND it takes them 3 days to track it back to you. :/ Good times will not be had. Like it or not JavaScript/jQuery is a programming language. While you .NET people sit on your high horses because your code is compiled and “runs faster” (also debatable), the rest of us will be actually getting work done and delivering solutions while you are trying to figure out why your widget won’t deploy. I can pick at that scab because I write .NET code too and speak from experience. I can do both, and do both well. So, I am not speaking from ignorance here. In JavaScript/jQuery you have variables, loops, conditionals, functions, arrays, events, and built in methods. If you are not a developer you just aren’t going to take advantage of all of that and use it correctly. Ahhh.. but there is hope! There is a lot of jQuery resources out there to help you learn and learn well! There are many experts on the subject that will gladly tell you when you are smoking crack. I just this minute saw a tweet from @cquick with a link to: “jQuery Fundamentals”. I just glanced through it and this may be a great primer for you aspiring jQuery devs. Take advantage of all the resources and become a developer! Hey, it will look awesome on your resume right? You should not be writing jQuery in SharePoint if it depends too much on client resources for a good user experience I’ve said it once and I’ll say it over and over until you understand. jQuery is executed on the client’s computer. Got it? If you are looping through hundreds of rows of data, searching through an enormous DOM, or performing many calculations it is going to take some time! AND if your user happens to be sitting on some old PC somewhere that they picked up at a garage sale their experience will be that much worse! If you can’t give the user a good experience they will not use the site. So, if jQuery is causing the user to have a bad experience, don’t use it. I sometimes go as far to say that you should NOT go to jQuery as a first option for external facing web sites because you have ZERO control over what the end user’s computer will be. You just can’t guarantee an awesome user experience all of the time. Ahhh… but you have no choice? (where have I heard that before?). Well… if you really have no choice, here are some tips to help improve the experience: Avoid screen scraping This is not 1999 and SharePoint is not an old green screen from a mainframe… so why are you treating it like it is? Screen scraping is time consuming and client intensive. Take advantage of tools like SPServices to do your data retrieval when possible. Fine tune your DOM searches A lot of time can be eaten up just searching the DOM and ignoring table rows that you don’t need. Write better jQuery to only loop through tables rows that you need, or only access specific elements you need. Take advantage of Element ID’s to return the one element you are looking for instead of looping through all the DOM over and over again. Write better jQuery Remember this is development. Think about how you can write cleaner, faster jQuery. This directly relates to the previous point of improving your DOM searches, but also when using arrays, variables and loops. Do you REALLY need to loop through that array 3 times? How can you knock it down to 2 times or even 1? When you have lots of calculations and data that you are manipulating every operation adds up. Think about how you can streamline it. Back in the old days before RAM was abundant, Cores were plentiful and dinosaurs roamed the earth, us developers had to take performance into account in everything we did. It’s a lost art that really needs to be used here. You should not be writing jQuery in SharePoint if you are sending a lot of data over the wire… Developer: “Awesome… you can easily call SharePoint’s web services to retrieve and write data using SPServices!” Administrator: “Crap! you can easily call SharePoint’s web services to retrieve and write data using SPServices!” SPServices may indeed be the best thing that happened to SharePoint since the invention of SharePoint Saturdays by Godfather Lotter… BUT you HAVE to use it wisely! (I REFUSE to make the Spiderman reference). If you do not know what you are doing your code will bring back EVERY field and EVERY row from a list and push that over the internet with all that lovely XML wrapped around it. That can be a HUGE amount of data and will GREATLY impact performance! Calling several web service methods at the same time can cause the same problem and can negatively impact your SharePoint servers. These problems, thankfully, are not difficult to rectify if you are careful: Limit list data retrieved Use CAML to reduce the number of rows returned and limit the fields returned using ViewFields. You should definitely be doing this regardless. If you aren’t I hope your admin thumps you upside the head. Batch large list updates You may or may not have noticed that if you try to do large updates (hundreds of rows) that the performance is either completely abysmal or it fails over half the time. You can greatly improve performance and avoid timeouts by breaking up your updates into several smaller updates. I don’t know if there is a magic number for best performance, it really depends on how much data you are sending back more than the number of rows. However, I have found that 200 rows generally works well. Play around and find the right number for your situation. Delay Web Service calls when possible One of the cool things about jQuery and SPServices is that you can delay queries to the server until they are actually needed instead of doing them all at once. This can lead to performance improvements over DataViewWebParts and even .NET code in the right situations. So, don’t load the data until it’s needed. In some instances you may not need to retrieve the data at all, so why retrieve it ALL the time? You should not be writing jQuery in SharePoint if there is a better solution… jQuery is NOT the silver bullet in SharePoint, it is not the answer to every question, it is just another tool in the developers toolkit. I urge all developers to know what options exist out there and choose the right one! Sometimes it will be jQuery, sometimes it will be .NET, sometimes it will be XSL, and sometimes it will be some other choice… So, when is there a better solution to jQuery? When you can’t get away from performance problems Sometimes jQuery will just give you horrible performance regardless of what you do because of unavoidable obstacles. In these situations you are going to have to figure out an alternative. Can I do it with a DVWP or do I have to crack open Visual Studio? When you need to do something that jQuery can’t do There are lots of things you can’t do in jQuery like elevate privileges, event handlers, workflows, or interact with back end systems that have no web service interface. It just can’t do everything. When it can be done faster and more efficiently another way Why are you spending time to write jQuery to do a DataViewWebPart that would take 5 minutes? Or why are you trying to implement complicated logic that would be simple to do in .NET? If your answer is that you don’t have the option, okay. BUT if you do have the option don’t reinvent the wheel! Take advantage of the other tools. The answer is not always jQuery… sorry… the kool-aid tastes good, but sweet tea is pretty awesome too. You should not be using jQuery in SharePoint if you are a moron… Let’s finish up the blog on a high note… Yes.. it’s true, I sometimes type things just to get a reaction… guess this section title might be a good example, but it feels good sometimes just to type the words that a lot of us think… So.. don’t be that guy! Another good buddy of mine that works for Microsoft told me. “I loved jQuery in SharePoint…. until I had to support it.”. He went on to explain that some user was making several web service calls on a page using jQuery and then was calling Microsoft and COMPLAINING because the page took so long to load… DUH! What do you expect to happen when you are pushing that much data over the wire and are making that many web service calls at once!! It’s one thing to write that kind of code and accept it’s just going to take a while, it’s COMPLETELY another issue to do that and then complain when it’s not lightning fast! Someone’s gene pool needs some chlorine. So, I think this is a nice summary of the blog… DON’T be that guy… don’t be a moron. How can you stop yourself from being a moron? Ah.. glad you asked, here are some tips: Think Is jQuery the right solution to my problem? Is there a better approach? What are the implications and pitfalls of using jQuery in this situation? Search What are others doing? Does someone have a better solution? Is there a third party library that does the same thing I need? Plan Write good jQuery. Limit calculations and data sent over the wire and don’t reinvent the wheel when possible. Test Okay, it works well on your machine. Try it on others ESPECIALLY if this is for an external site. Test with empty data. Test with hundreds of rows of data. Test as many scenarios as possible. Monitor those server resources to see the impact there as well. Ask the experts As smart as you are, there are people smarter than you. Even the experts talk to each other to make sure they aren't doing something stupid. And for the MOST part they are pretty nice guys. Marc Anderson and Christophe Humbert are two guys who regularly keep me in line. Make sure you aren’t doing something stupid. Repeat So, when you think you have the best solution possible, repeat the steps above just to be safe. Conclusion jQuery is an awesome tool and has come in handy on many occasions. I’m even teaching a 1/2 day SharePoint & jQuery workshop at the upcoming SPTechCon in Boston if you want to berate me in person. However, it’s only as awesome as the developer behind the keyboard. It IS development and has its pitfalls. Knowledge and experience are invaluable to giving the user the best experience possible. Let’s face it, in the end, no matter our opinions, prejudices, or ego providing our clients, customers, and users with the best solution possible is what counts. Period… end of sentence…

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Stop Spinning Your Wheels… Sage Advice for Aspiring Developers

- by Mark Rackley

So… lately I’ve been tasked with helping bring some non-developers over the hump and become full-fledged, all around, SharePoint developers. Well, only time will tell if I’m successful or a complete failure. Good thing about failures though, you know what NOT to do next time! Anyway, I’ve been writing some sort of code since I was about 10 years old; so I sometimes take for granted the effort some people have to go through to learn a new technology. I guess if I had to say I was an “expert” in one thing it would be learning (and getting “stuff” done) in new technologies. Maybe that’s why I’ve embraced SharePoint and the SharePoint community. SharePoint is the first technology I haven’t been able to master or get everything done without help from other people. I KNOW I’ll never know it all and I learn something new every day. It keeps it interesting, it keeps me motivated, and keeps me involved. So, what some people may consider a downside of SharePoint, I definitely consider a plus. Crap.. I’m rambling. Where was I? Oh yeah… me trying to be helpful. Like I said, I am able to quickly and effectively pick up new languages, technology, etc. and put it to good use. Am I just brilliant? Well, my mom thinks so.. but maybe not. Maybe I’ve just been doing it for a long time…. 25 years in some form or fashion… wow I’m old… Anyway, what I lack in depth I make up for in breadth and being the “go-to” guy wherever I work when someone needs to “get stuff done”. Let’s see if I can take some of that experience and put it to practical use to help new people get up to speed faster, learn things more effectively, and become that go-to guy. First off… make sure you… Know The Basics I don’t have the time to teach new developers the basics, but you gotta know them. I’ve only been “taught” two languages.. Fortran 77 and C… everything else I’ve picked up from “doing”. I HAD to know the basics though, and all new developers need to understand the very basics of development. 97.23% of all languages will have the following: Variables Functions Arrays If statements For loops / While loops If you think about it, most development is “if this, do this… or while this, do this…”. “This” may be some unique method to your language or something you develop, but the basics are the basics. YES there are MANY other development topics you need to understand, but you shouldn’t be scratching your head trying to figure out what a ”for loop” is… (Also learn about classes and hashtables as quickly as possible). Once you have the basics down it makes it much easier to… Learn By Doing This may just apply to me and my warped brain. I don’t learn a new technology by reading or hearing someone speak about it. I learn by doing. It does me no good to try and learn all of the intricacies of a new language or technology inside-and-out before getting my hands dirty. Just show me how to do one thing… let me get that working… then show me how to do the next thing.. let me get that working… Now, let’s see what I can figure out on my own. Okay.. now it starts to make sense. I see how the language works, I can step through the code, and before you know it.. I’m productive in a new technology. Be careful here though…. make sure you… Don’t Reinvent The Wheel People have been writing code for what… 50+ years now? So, why are you trying to tackle ANYTHING without first Googling it with Bing to see what others have done first? When I was first learning C# (I had come from a Java background) I had to call a web service. Sure! No problem! I’d done this many times in Java. So, I proceeded to write an HTTP Handler, called the Web Service and it worked like a charm!!! Probably about 2.3 seconds after I got it working completely someone says to me “Why didn’t you just add a Web Reference?” Really? You can do that? oops… I just wasted a lot of time. Before undertaking the development of any sort of utility method in a new language, make sure it’s not already handled for you… Okay… you are starting to write some code and are curious about the possibilities? Well… don’t just sit there… Try It And See What Happens This is actually one of my biggest pet peeves. “So… ‘x++’ works in C#, but does it also work in JavaScript?” Really? Did you just ask me that? In the time it spent for you to type that email, press the send button, me receive the email, get around to reading it, and replying with “yes” you could have tested it 47 times and know the answer! Just TRY it! See what happens! You aren’t doing brain surgery. You aren’t going to kill anyone, and you BETTER not be developing in production. So, you are not going to crash any production systems!! Seriously! Get off your butt and just try it yourself. The extra added benefit is that it doesn’t work, the absolute best way to learn is to… Learn From Your Failures I don’t know about you… but if I screw up and something doesn’t work, I learn A LOT more debugging my problem than if everything magically worked. It’s okay that you aren’t perfect! Not everyone can be me? In the same vein… don’t ask someone else to debug your problem until you have made a valiant attempt to do so yourself. There’s nothing quite like stepping through code line by line to see what it’s REALLY doing… and you’ll never feel more stupid sometimes than when you realize WHY it’s not working.. but you realize... you learn... and you remember. There is nothing wrong with failure as long as you learn from it. As you start writing more and more and more code make sure that you ALWAYS… Develop for Production You will soon learn that the “prototype” you wrote last week to show as a “proof of concept” is going to go directly into production no matter how much you beg and plead and try to explain it’s not ready to go into production… it’s going to go straight there.. and it’s like herpes.. it doesn’t go away and there’s no fixing it once it’s in there. So, why not write ALL your code like it will be put in production? It MIGHT take a little longer, but in the long run it will be easier to maintain, get help on, and you won’t be embarrassed that it’s sitting on a production server for everyone to use and see. So, now that you are getting comfortable and writing code for production it is important to to remember the… KISS Principle… Learn It… Love It… Keep It Simple Stupid Seriously.. don’t try to show how smart you are by writing the most complicated code in history. Break your problem up into discrete steps and write each step. If it turns out you have some redundancy, you can always go back and tweak your code later. How bad is it when you write code that LOOKS cocky? I’ve seen it before… some of the most abstract and complicated classes when a class wasn’t even needed! Or the most elaborate unreadable code jammed into one really long line when it could have been written in three lines, performed just as well, and been SOOO much easier to maintain. Keep it clear and simple.. baby steps people. This will help you learn the technology, debug problems, AND it will help others help you find your problems if they don’t have to decipher the Dead Sea Scrolls just to figure out what you are trying to do…. Really.. don’t be that guy… try to curb your ego and… Keep an Open Mind No matter how smart you are… how fast you type… or how much you get paid, don’t let your ego get in the way. There is probably a better way to do everything you’ve ever done. Don’t become so cocky that you can’t think someone knows more than you. There’s a lot of brilliant, helpful people out there willing to show you tricks if you just give them a chance. A very super-awesome developer once told me “So what if you’ve been writing code for 10 years or more! Does your code look basically the same? Are you not growing as a developer?” Those 10 years become pretty meaningless if you just “know” that you are right and have not picked up new tips, tricks, methods, and patterns along the way. Learn from others and find out what’s new in development land (you know you don’t have to specifically use pointers anymore??). Along those same lines… If it’s not working, first assume you are doing something wrong. You have no idea how much it annoys people who are trying to help you when you first assume that the help they are trying to give you is wrong. Just MAYBE… you… the person learning is making some small mistake? Maybe you didn’t describe your problem correctly? Maybe you are using the wrong terminology? “I did exactly what you said and it didn’t work.” Oh really? Are you SURE about that? “Your solution doesn’t work.” Well… I’m pretty sure it works, I’ve used it 200 times… What are you doing differently? First try some humility and appreciation.. it will go much further, especially when it turns out YOU are the one that is wrong. When all else fails…. Try Professional Training Some people just don’t have the mindset to go and figure stuff out. It’s a gift and not everyone has it. If everyone could do it I wouldn’t have a job and there wouldn’t be professional training available. So, if you’ve tried everything else and no light bulbs are coming on, contact the experts who specialize in training. Be careful though, there is bad training out there. Want to know the names of some good places? Just shoot me a message and I’ll let you know. I’m boycotting endorsing Andrew Connell anymore until I get that free course dangit!! So… that’s it.. that’s all I got right now. Maybe you thought all of this is common sense, maybe you think I’m smoking crack. If so, don’t just sit there, there’s a comments section for a reason. Finally, what about you? What tips do you have to help this aspiring to learn the dark arts??

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October 2012 Critical Patch Update and Critical Patch Update for Java SE Released

- by Eric P. Maurice

Hi, this is Eric Maurice. Oracle has just released the October 2012 Critical Patch Update and the October 2012 Critical Patch Update for Java SE. As a reminder, the release of security patches for Java SE continues to be on a different schedule than for other Oracle products due to commitments made to customers prior to the Oracle acquisition of Sun Microsystems. We do however expect to ultimately bring Java SE in line with the regular Critical Patch Update schedule, thus increasing the frequency of scheduled security releases for Java SE to 4 times a year (as opposed to the current 3 yearly releases). The schedules for the “normal” Critical Patch Update and the Critical Patch Update for Java SE are posted online on the Critical Patch Updates and Security Alerts page. The October 2012 Critical Patch Update provides a total of 109 new security fixes across a number of product families including: Oracle Database Server, Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle E-Business Suite, Supply Chain Products Suite, Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise, Oracle Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Oracle Industry Applications, Oracle FLEXCUBE, Oracle Sun products suite, Oracle Linux and Virtualization, and Oracle MySQL. Out of these 109 new vulnerabilities, 5 affect Oracle Database Server. The most severe of these Database vulnerabilities has received a CVSS Base Score of 10.0 on Windows platforms and 7.5 on Linux and Unix platforms. This vulnerability (CVE-2012-3137) is related to the “Cryptographic flaws in Oracle Database authentication protocol” disclosed at the Ekoparty Conference. Because of timing considerations (proximity to the release date of the October 2012 Critical Patch Update) and the need to extensively test the fixes for this vulnerability to ensure compatibility across the products stack, the fixes for this vulnerability were not released through a Security Alert, but instead mitigation instructions were provided prior to the release of the fixes in this Critical Patch Update in My Oracle Support Note 1492721.1. Because of the severity of these vulnerabilities, Oracle recommends that this Critical Patch Update be installed as soon as possible. Another 26 vulnerabilities fixed in this Critical Patch Update affect Oracle Fusion Middleware. The most severe of these Fusion Middleware vulnerabilities has received a CVSS Base Score of 10.0; it affects Oracle JRockit and is related to Java vulnerabilities fixed in the Critical Patch Update for Java SE. The Oracle Sun products suite gets 18 new security fixes with this Critical Patch Update. Note also that Oracle MySQL has received 14 new security fixes; the most severe of these MySQL vulnerabilities has received a CVSS Base Score of 9.0. Today’s Critical Patch Update for Java SE provides 30 new security fixes. The most severe CVSS Base Score for these Java SE vulnerabilities is 10.0 and this score affects 10 vulnerabilities. As usual, Oracle reports the most severe CVSS Base Score, and these CVSS 10.0s assume that the user running a Java Applet or Java Web Start application has administrator privileges (as is typical on Windows XP). However, when the user does not run with administrator privileges (as is typical on Solaris and Linux), the corresponding CVSS impact scores for Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability are "Partial" instead of "Complete", typically lowering the CVSS Base Score to 7.5 denoting that the compromise does not extend to the underlying Operating System. Also, as is typical in the Critical Patch Update for Java SE, most of the vulnerabilities affect Java and Java FX client deployments only. Only 2 of the Java SE vulnerabilities fixed in this Critical Patch Update affect client and server deployments of Java SE, and only one affects server deployments of JSSE. This reflects the fact that Java running on servers operate in a more secure and controlled environment. As discussed during a number of sessions at JavaOne, Oracle is considering security enhancements for Java in desktop and browser environments. Finally, note that the Critical Patch Update for Java SE is cumulative, in other words it includes all previously released security fixes, including the fix provided through Security Alert CVE-2012-4681, which was released on August 30, 2012. For More Information: The October 2012 Critical Patch Update advisory is located at http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/security/cpuoct2012-1515893.html The October 2012 Critical Patch Update for Java SE advisory is located at http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/security/javacpuoct2012-1515924.html. An online video about the importance of keeping up with Java releases and the use of the Java auto update is located at http://medianetwork.oracle.com/video/player/1218969104001 More information about Oracle Software Security Assurance is located at http://www.oracle.com/us/support/assurance/index.html

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SQLAuthority News – Amazon Gift Card Raffle for Beta Tester Feedback for NuoDB

- by pinaldave

As regular readers know I’ve been spending some time working with the NuoDB beta software. They contacted me last week and asked if I would give you a chance to try their new web-based console for their scalable, SQL-compliant database. They have just put out their final beta release, Beta 9. It contains a preview of a new web-based “NuoConsole” that will replace and extend the functionality of their current desktop version. I haven’t spent any time with the new console yet but a really quick look tells me it should make it easier to do deeper monitoring than the older one. It also looks like they have added query-level reporting through the console. I will try to play with it soon. NuoDB is doing a last, big push to get some more feedback from developers before they release their 1.0 product sometime in the next several weeks. Since the console is new, they are especially interested in some quick feedback on it before general availability. For SQLAuthority readers only, NuoDB will raffle off three $50 Amazon gift cards in exchange for your feedback on the NuoConsole preview. Here’s how to Enter Download NuoDBeta 9 here You must build a domain before you can start the console. Launch the Web Console. Windows Code: start java -jar jarnuodbwebconsole.jar Mac, Linux, Solaris, Unix Code: java -jar jar/nuodbwebconsole.jar Access the Web Console: Code: http://localhost:8080 When you have tried it out, go to a short (8 question) survey to enter the raffle Click here for the survey You must complete the survey before midnight EDT on October 17, 2012. Here’s what else they are saying about this last beta before general availability: Beta 9 now supports the Zend PHP framework so that PHP developers can directly integrate web applications with NuoDB. Multi-threaded HDFS support – NuoDB Storage Managers can now be configured to persist data to the high performance Hadoop distributed file system (HDFS). Beta 9 optimizes for multi-thread I/O streams at maximum performance. This enhancement allows users to make Hadoop their core storage with no extra effort which is a pretty cool idea. Improved Performance –On a single transaction node, Beta 9 offers performance comparable with MySQL and MariaDB. As additional nodes are added, NuoDB performance improves significantly at near linear scale. Query & Explain Plan Logging – Beta 9 introduces SQL explain plans for your queries. Qualify queries with the word “EXPLAIN” and NuoDB will respond with the details of the execution plan allowing performance optimization to SQL. Through the NuoConsole, you can now kill hung or long running queries. Java App Server Support – Beta 9 now supports leading Web JEE app servers including JBoss, Tomcat, and ColdFusion. They’ve also reported: Improved PHP/PDO drivers Support for Drupal Faster Ruby on Rails driver The Hibernate Dialect supports version 4.1 And good news for my readers: numerous SQL enhancements They will share the results of the web console feedback with me. I’ll let you know how it goes. Also the winner of their last contest was Jaime Martínez Lafargue! Do leave a comment here once you complete the survey. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: SQL Authority Tagged: NuoDB

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SPARC T5-8 Servers EMEA Acceleration Promotion for Partners

- by mseika

Dear all We are pleased to announce the EMEA T5-8 Acceleration Promotion, a price promotion that, for a limited time, makes the T5-8 server available to our EMEA partners at a very attractive discount. Why the SPARC T5-8 server Oracle's SPARC servers running Oracle Solaris are ideal for mission-critical applications requiring high performance, best-in-class availability, and unmatched scalability on all application tiers. SPARC servers include built-in virtualization, systems management, and security at no additional cost. Designed for applications that demand the highest performance and 24x7 availability. Oracle's SPARC T5-8 server is the fastest and the most advanced, scalable midrange server in the Oracle portfolio. The Oracle SPARC T5-8 server is in the sweet spot of the UNIX midrange, and directly competing with IBM P770(+) and P780(+) systems, with a 7x price advantage (see official Oracle press release) over a similarly configured P780 system! What are we offering Effective immediately, the fully-configured T5-8 server is available to VADs with a 38% discount off price list: this is 8 additional points on top of the standard 30% contractual discount. The promo will be communicated to VADs and VARs, and VADs are expected to pass the additional discount through to the VARs. Resellers will be encouraged to use this attractive price to position T5-8 versus the competition, accelerate T5-8 sales, and use the increased margin to offer additional services to their end users - thus expanding their footprint within their customers and making the T5-8 business proposition even more compelling. This is a unique opportunity for partners to expand their base and beat the competition with a 7x price advantage over a similarly configured IBM P780. This price promotion is only available to OPN Partners, and is valid until November 30, 2013. What's in it for Partners More competitive price More customer budget available for more projects: attach migration services, training, ... Opportunity to attach Storage, and additional Software Higher win rate Additional Details The promotion is valid for the existing configurations of T5-8 with 8 CPU and different memory configurations, including all X-options that are part of the system and ordered at the same time. 8% additional discount to the VAD on full T5-8 - Including X-Options: Cat V (30% + 8% additional): System, CPU, Memory, Disks, Ethernet Cat U (22% + 8% additional): Infiniband HCA Cat W (30% + 8% additional): FC/SAS HBA / FCoE CNA Partner eligibilty criteria Standard requirements apply. Partners must: be an OPN member in good standing, at Gold level or above meet the Resale criteria in the SPARC T-Series servers Knowledge Zone have a right to distribute hardware via the Full Use Distribution Agreement, with Hardware Addendum if applicable. Order process The promotion is available until November 30, 2013. VADs place the order via Oracle Partner Store. A request for extra-discount has to be raised in advance using the standard process for available configs: input the configuration apply the suggested discounts submit the request in the request documentation, please refer to EMEA T5-8 FY14H1 Channel Promotion as approved in GDMT GT-EB2-Q413-107C This promotion is only valid for the T5-8 configurations stated in this announcement. Any change, or additional products / items not listed explicitly, can be ordered at the same time and will follow standard approval process. Key contacts Your local A&C organization For questions on EMEA Partner Programs for Servers: Giuseppe Facchetti For questions on the T5-8 product: Martin de Jong Best regards, Olivier Tordo Senior Director, Sales & Strategy, Hardware SolutionsEMEA Alliances & Channels Paul Flannery Senior Director, EMEA Servers Product Management

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SPARC T5-8 Servers EMEA Acceleration Promotion for Partners

- by mseika

Dear all We are pleased to announce the EMEA T5-8 Acceleration Promotion, a price promotion that, for a limited time, makes the T5-8 server available to our EMEA partners at a very attractive discount. Why the SPARC T5-8 server Oracle's SPARC servers running Oracle Solaris are ideal for mission-critical applications requiring high performance, best-in-class availability, and unmatched scalability on all application tiers. SPARC servers include built-in virtualization, systems management, and security at no additional cost. Designed for applications that demand the highest performance and 24x7 availability. Oracle's SPARC T5-8 server is the fastest and the most advanced, scalable midrange server in the Oracle portfolio. The Oracle SPARC T5-8 server is in the sweet spot of the UNIX midrange, and directly competing with IBM P770(+) and P780(+) systems, with a 7x price advantage (see official Oracle press release) over a similarly configured P780 system! What are we offering Effective immediately, the fully-configured T5-8 server is available to VADs with a 38% discount off price list: this is 8 additional points on top of the standard 30% contractual discount. The promo will be communicated to VADs and VARs, and VADs are expected to pass the additional discount through to the VARs. Resellers will be encouraged to use this attractive price to position T5-8 versus the competition, accelerate T5-8 sales, and use the increased margin to offer additional services to their end users - thus expanding their footprint within their customers and making the T5-8 business proposition even more compelling. This is a unique opportunity for partners to expand their base and beat the competition with a 7x price advantage over a similarly configured IBM P780. This price promotion is only available to OPN Partners, and is valid until November 30, 2013. What's in it for Partners More competitive price More customer budget available for more projects: attach migration services, training, ... Opportunity to attach Storage, and additional Software Higher win rate Additional Details The promotion is valid for the existing configurations of T5-8 with 8 CPU and different memory configurations, including all X-options that are part of the system and ordered at the same time. 8% additional discount to the VAD on full T5-8 - Including X-Options: Cat V (30% + 8% additional): System, CPU, Memory, Disks, Ethernet Cat U (22% + 8% additional): Infiniband HCA Cat W (30% + 8% additional): FC/SAS HBA / FCoE CNA Partner eligibilty criteria Standard requirements apply. Partners must: be an OPN member in good standing, at Gold level or above meet the Resale criteria in the SPARC T-Series servers Knowledge Zone have a right to distribute hardware via the Full Use Distribution Agreement, with Hardware Addendum if applicable. Order process The promotion is available until November 30, 2013. VADs place the order via Oracle Partner Store. A request for extra-discount has to be raised in advance using the standard process for available configs: input the configuration apply the suggested discounts submit the request in the request documentation, please refer to EMEA T5-8 FY14H1 Channel Promotion as approved in GDMT GT-EB2-Q413-107C This promotion is only valid for the T5-8 configurations stated in this announcement. Any change, or additional products / items not listed explicitly, can be ordered at the same time and will follow standard approval process. Key contacts Your local A&C organization For questions on EMEA Partner Programs for Servers: Giuseppe Facchetti For questions on the T5-8 product: Martin de Jong Best regards, Olivier Tordo Senior Director, Sales & Strategy, Hardware SolutionsEMEA Alliances & Channels Paul Flannery Senior Director, EMEA Servers Product Management

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SPARC T5-8 Servers EMEA Acceleration Promotion for Partners

- by mseika

Dear all We are pleased to announce the EMEA T5-8 Acceleration Promotion, a price promotion that, for a limited time, makes the T5-8 server available to our EMEA partners at a very attractive discount. Why the SPARC T5-8 server Oracle's SPARC servers running Oracle Solaris are ideal for mission-critical applications requiring high performance, best-in-class availability, and unmatched scalability on all application tiers. SPARC servers include built-in virtualization, systems management, and security at no additional cost. Designed for applications that demand the highest performance and 24x7 availability. Oracle's SPARC T5-8 server is the fastest and the most advanced, scalable midrange server in the Oracle portfolio. The Oracle SPARC T5-8 server is in the sweet spot of the UNIX midrange, and directly competing with IBM P770(+) and P780(+) systems, with a 7x price advantage (see official Oracle press release) over a similarly configured P780 system! What are we offering Effective immediately, the fully-configured T5-8 server is available to VADs with a 38% discount off price list: this is 8 additional points on top of the standard 30% contractual discount. The promo will be communicated to VADs and VARs, and VADs are expected to pass the additional discount through to the VARs. Resellers will be encouraged to use this attractive price to position T5-8 versus the competition, accelerate T5-8 sales, and use the increased margin to offer additional services to their end users - thus expanding their footprint within their customers and making the T5-8 business proposition even more compelling. This is a unique opportunity for partners to expand their base and beat the competition with a 7x price advantage over a similarly configured IBM P780. This price promotion is only available to OPN Partners, and is valid until November 30, 2013. What's in it for Partners More competitive price More customer budget available for more projects: attach migration services, training, ... Opportunity to attach Storage, and additional Software Higher win rate Additional Details The promotion is valid for the existing configurations of T5-8 with 8 CPU and different memory configurations, including all X-options that are part of the system and ordered at the same time. 8% additional discount to the VAD on full T5-8 - Including X-Options: Cat V (30% + 8% additional): System, CPU, Memory, Disks, Ethernet Cat U (22% + 8% additional): Infiniband HCA Cat W (30% + 8% additional): FC/SAS HBA / FCoE CNA Partner eligibilty criteria Standard requirements apply. Partners must: be an OPN member in good standing, at Gold level or above meet the Resale criteria in the SPARC T-Series servers Knowledge Zone have a right to distribute hardware via the Full Use Distribution Agreement, with Hardware Addendum if applicable. Order process The promotion is available until November 30, 2013. VADs place the order via Oracle Partner Store. A request for extra-discount has to be raised in advance using the standard process for available configs: input the configuration apply the suggested discounts submit the request in the request documentation, please refer to EMEA T5-8 FY14H1 Channel Promotion as approved in GDMT GT-EB2-Q413-107C This promotion is only valid for the T5-8 configurations stated in this announcement. Any change, or additional products / items not listed explicitly, can be ordered at the same time and will follow standard approval process. Key contacts Your local A&C organization For questions on EMEA Partner Programs for Servers: Giuseppe Facchetti For questions on the T5-8 product: Martin de Jong Best regards, Olivier Tordo Senior Director, Sales & Strategy, Hardware SolutionsEMEA Alliances & Channels Paul Flannery Senior Director, EMEA Servers Product Management

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SPARC T5-8 Servers EMEA Acceleration Promotion for Partners

- by mseika

Dear all We are pleased to announce the EMEA T5-8 Acceleration Promotion, a price promotion that, for a limited time, makes the T5-8 server available to our EMEA partners at a very attractive discount. Why the SPARC T5-8 server Oracle's SPARC servers running Oracle Solaris are ideal for mission-critical applications requiring high performance, best-in-class availability, and unmatched scalability on all application tiers. SPARC servers include built-in virtualization, systems management, and security at no additional cost. Designed for applications that demand the highest performance and 24x7 availability. Oracle's SPARC T5-8 server is the fastest and the most advanced, scalable midrange server in the Oracle portfolio. The Oracle SPARC T5-8 server is in the sweet spot of the UNIX midrange, and directly competing with IBM P770(+) and P780(+) systems, with a 7x price advantage (see official Oracle press release) over a similarly configured P780 system! What are we offering Effective immediately, the fully-configured T5-8 server is available to VADs with a 38% discount off price list: this is 8 additional points on top of the standard 30% contractual discount. The promo will be communicated to VADs and VARs, and VADs are expected to pass the additional discount through to the VARs. Resellers will be encouraged to use this attractive price to position T5-8 versus the competition, accelerate T5-8 sales, and use the increased margin to offer additional services to their end users - thus expanding their footprint within their customers and making the T5-8 business proposition even more compelling. This is a unique opportunity for partners to expand their base and beat the competition with a 7x price advantage over a similarly configured IBM P780. This price promotion is only available to OPN Partners, and is valid until November 30, 2013. What's in it for Partners More competitive price More customer budget available for more projects: attach migration services, training, ... Opportunity to attach Storage, and additional Software Higher win rate Additional Details The promotion is valid for the existing configurations of T5-8 with 8 CPU and different memory configurations, including all X-options that are part of the system and ordered at the same time. 8% additional discount to the VAD on full T5-8 - Including X-Options: Cat V (30% + 8% additional): System, CPU, Memory, Disks, Ethernet Cat U (22% + 8% additional): Infiniband HCA Cat W (30% + 8% additional): FC/SAS HBA / FCoE CNA Partner eligibilty criteria Standard requirements apply. Partners must: be an OPN member in good standing, at Gold level or above meet the Resale criteria in the SPARC T-Series servers Knowledge Zone have a right to distribute hardware via the Full Use Distribution Agreement, with Hardware Addendum if applicable. Order process The promotion is available until November 30, 2013. VADs place the order via Oracle Partner Store. A request for extra-discount has to be raised in advance using the standard process for available configs: input the configuration apply the suggested discounts submit the request in the request documentation, please refer to EMEA T5-8 FY14H1 Channel Promotion as approved in GDMT GT-EB2-Q413-107C This promotion is only valid for the T5-8 configurations stated in this announcement. Any change, or additional products / items not listed explicitly, can be ordered at the same time and will follow standard approval process. Key contacts Your local A&C organization For questions on EMEA Partner Programs for Servers: Giuseppe Facchetti For questions on the T5-8 product: Martin de Jong Best regards, Olivier Tordo Senior Director, Sales & Strategy, Hardware SolutionsEMEA Alliances & Channels Paul Flannery Senior Director, EMEA Servers Product Management

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News you can use, PeopleTools gems at OpenWorld 2012

- by PeopleTools Strategy

Here are some of the sessions which may not have caught your eyes during your scheduling of events you would like to attend at this year's Open World! CON9183 PeopleSoft Technology Roadmap Jeff Robbins Mon, Oct 1 4:45 PM Moscone West, Room 3002/4 Jeff's session is always very well attended. Come to hear, and see, what's going to be delivered in the new release and get some thoughts on where PeopleTools and the industry is heading. CON9186 Delivering a Ground-Breaking User Interface with PeopleTools Matt Haavisto Steve Elcock Wed, Oct 3 3:30 PM Moscone West, Room 3009 This session will be wonderfully engaging for participants. As part of our demonstration, audience members will be able to interact live and real-time with our demo using their smart phones and tablets as if you are users of the system. CON9188 A Great User Experience via PeopleSoft Applications Portal Matt Haavisto Jim Marion Pramod Agrawal Mon, Oct 1 12:15 PM Moscone West, Room 3009 This session covers not only the PeopleSoft Portal, but new features like Workcenters and Dashboards, and how they all work together to form the PeopleSoft ecosystem. CON9192 Implementing a PeopleSoft Maintenance Strategy with My Update Manager Mike Thompson Mike Krajicek Tue, Oct 2 1:15 PM Moscone West, Room 3009 The LCM development team will show Oracle's My Update Manager for PeopleSoft and how it drastically simplifies deciding what updates are required for your specific environment. CON9193 Understanding PeopleSoft Maintenance Tools & How They Fit Together Mike Krajicek Wed, Oct 3 10:15 AM Moscone West, Room 3002/4 Learn about the portfolio of maintenance tools including some of the latest enhancements such as Oracle's My Update Manager for PeopleSoft, Application Data Sets, and the PeopleSoft Test Framework, and see what they can do for you. CON9200 PeopleTools Product Team Panel Discussion Jeff Robbins Willie Suh Virad Gupta Ravi Shankar Mike Krajicek Wed, Oct 3 5:00 PM Moscone West, Room 3009 Attend this session to engage in an open discussion with key members of Oracle's PeopleTools senior management team. You will be able to ask questions, hear their thoughts, and gain their insight into the PeopleTools product direction. CON9205 Securing Your PeopleSoft Integration Infrastructure Greg Kelly Keith Collins Tue, Oct 2 10:15 AM Moscone West, Room 3011 This session, with the senior integration developer, will outline Oracle's best practices for securing your integration infrastructure so that you know your web services and REST services are as secure as the rest of your PeopleSoft environment. CON9210 Performance Tuning for the PeopleSoft Administrator Tim Bower David Kurtz Mon, Oct 1 10:45 AM Moscone West, Room 3009 Meet long time technical consultants with deep knowledge of system tuning, Tim Bower of the Center of Excellence and David Kurtz, author of "PeopleSoft for the Oracle DBA". System administrators new to tuning a PeopleSoft environment as well as seasoned experts will come away with new techniques that will help them improve the performance of their PeopleSoft system. CON9055 Advanced Management of Oracle PeopleSoft with Oracle Enterprise Manager Greg Kelly Milten Garia Greg Bouras Thurs Oct 4 12:45 PM Moscone West, Room 3009 This promises to be a really interesting session as Milten Garia from CSU discusses lessons learned during the implementation of Oracle's Enterprise Manager with the PeopleSoft plug-in across a multi campus environment. There are some surprising things about Solaris 10 and the Bourne shell. Some creative work by the Unix administrators so the well tried scripts and system replication processes were largely unaffected. CON8932 New Functional PeopleTools Capabilities for the Line of Business User Jeff Robbins Tues, Oct 2 5:00 PM Moscone West, Room 3007 Using PeopleTools 8.5x capabilities like: related content, embedded help, pivot grids, hover-over, and more, Jeff will discuss how these can deliver business value and innovation which will positively impact your business without the high costs associated with upgrading your PeopleSoft applications. Check out a more detailed list here. We look forward to meeting you all there!

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Customer Spotlight - CSX: Charles Pack

- by cwarticki

A couple of weeks ago, I had the distinct privilege of facilitating a training session with CSX. CSX is a wonderful customer. They've been a dedicated Oracle customer for many years. They have quite an extensive Oracle footprint including Server Technologies, Fusion Middleware and E-Business Suite products. They also utilize Oracle's Solution Support Center offering from Advanced Customer Services, for their Database products. I'm always on the lookout for Oracle gems and I discovered one at CSX. Before my session began, I met with Charles Pack. In my view, he's an Oracle guru. Don't take my word for it, just read any of the books he's authored or co-authored and the one soon to be released. Just looking at his bookshelf, I saw titles going back to Oracle 7 & 8, as well as a Solaris 2.x book. Remember those? Anyway, Charles is a technologist and a manager (and wears numerous other hats too). I had a wonderful time talking with Charles and getting to know him. What do you consider keys to your personal success? Inability to quit. When I decide that I will accomplish something, I will, regardless of the nature of the challenge. Never quitting means a perpetual drive for change and progress and setting examples for others to follow. The reason I write OCP books is because I can provide a path for people to improve their knowledge of the product, gain a certification, and reach their professional goals. What do you consider the most important part of your job? Negotiations. We all have competing goals, incentives and finite resources, but we should all have the same common goal – progress. So finding the way for all parties to progress is the most important thing we do. What is the most important part of your relationship with Oracle? Oracle provides solutions – not just products - that are critical to our business success. So continuous communication regarding education, services, product roadmaps and shared goals is the most important part of our ongoing relationship. Charles is an Oracle loyalist. His career has been based on using our products and he's passionate about the products he works with. You can tell, just by talking with him. I appreciate Charles and other customers like him. He's an expert in his field and an Oracle evangelist. He is an asset to CSX and to their success. He's an advocate for Oracle and an asset to our customers. You can also friend and follow Charles on Twitter @charlesapack It was a pleasure meeting you Charles! -Chris Warticki Global Customer Management

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Automount of external hard disk

- by moose

I have an Intenso 6002560 1TB Memory Station - an external hard disk. This hard disk gets connected via Y-USB cable. When I connect both USB-ends to my Notebook, it gets recognized by my Ubuntu 10.04.4 LTS system: moose@pc07:~$ lsusb [...] Bus 002 Device 005: ID 13fd:1840 Initio Corporation [...] and Disk /dev/sda: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00065e10 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 * 1 37810 303704064 83 Linux /dev/sda2 37810 38914 8864769 5 Extended /dev/sda5 37810 38914 8864768 82 Linux swap / Solaris Disk /dev/sdc: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x0d6ea32a Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdc1 1 121601 976759008+ c W95 FAT32 (LBA) But it did not get mounted: moose@pc07:/dev$ mount -l /dev/sda1 on / type ext4 (rw,errors=remount-ro,user_xattr) proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev) none on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev) none on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw) none on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw) none on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw) none on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,mode=0755) none on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=0620) none on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev) none on /var/run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755) none on /var/lock type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev) none on /lib/init/rw type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755) binfmt_misc on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev) gvfs-fuse-daemon on /home/moose/.gvfs type fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=moose) However, I could mount it manually with mount -t vfat /dev/sdc1 /mnt/sdc1 as you can see here: moose@pc07:~$ mount -l /dev/sda1 on / type ext4 (rw,errors=remount-ro,user_xattr) proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev) none on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev) none on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw) none on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw) none on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw) none on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,mode=0755) none on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=0620) none on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev) none on /var/run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755) none on /var/lock type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev) none on /lib/init/rw type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755) binfmt_misc on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev) gvfs-fuse-daemon on /home/moose/.gvfs type fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=moose) /dev/sdc1 on /mnt/sdc1 type vfat (rw) edit: Another command: moose@pc07:~$ sudo blkid -o list device fs_type label mount point UUID ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /dev/sda1 ext4 / 45eb611b-517e-425b-8057-0391726cccd5 /dev/sda5 swap <swap> e9dc42f3-594c-4b62-874a-305eda5eed41 moose@pc07:~$ blkid -o list device fs_type label mount point UUID ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /dev/sda1 ext4 / 45eb611b-517e-425b-8057-0391726cccd5 /dev/sda5 swap <swap> e9dc42f3-594c-4b62-874a-305eda5eed41 /dev/sdc1 /mnt/sdc1 edit: another command: moose@pc07:~$ ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid/ total 0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2012-09-30 09:31 45eb611b-517e-425b-8057-0391726cccd5 -> ../../sda1 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2012-09-30 09:31 e9dc42f3-594c-4b62-874a-305eda5eed41 -> ../../sda5 Here is a link to a Launchpad question about this problem. But I would like it to mount automatically. What do I have to do?

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JD Edwards Apps in a Box - Update

- by Hartmut Wiese

Summary and clarification JD Edwards Apps in a box is a Partner offering to the customer. We as Oracle have a huge interest in getting a successful offering to the market and we help the Partner building their offering. We provide components like JD Edwards EnterpriseOne and the Hardware. The Business Partner adds the installation services and position this as a solution to the market for a single price. As you know JD Edwards EnterpriseOne can run on multiple hardware platforms. Linux/X-86 version As you all know we do have JD Edwards VM Templates available from Oracle for the X-86 architecture. Each Partner should or is already able to install JD Edwards EnterpriseOne using these images from our software delivery cloud. We built a master bill of material for a X3-2 Hardware configuration now. It has been uploaded on the Community Workspace now. This is a SUGGESTION and limited to 50 Users MAX. However I strongly recommend you to do a sizing as usual and verify the configuration for each opportunity individually. T4-1/X3-2 version Oracle is not providing similar images for the T4-1 SPARC / SOLARIS architecture. There is an Optimized Solution Team inside Oracle who has created an Optimized Solution for JD Edwards some time ago. They created a whitepaper which is still available to download. This whitepaper was used as a starting point however we decided to build a new version of it using the latest Software and Hardware available. This has now been finalized and we are happy to provide this to our partners. This image is more a service we provide for each partner which they can reuse and extend based on their individual offerings. It is not an official supported Oracle Product and cannot be used to deploy to customers immediately. You cannot resell “JDE in a box”. You can use these images to save time while building your own Go-to-Market offering. You might want to add functionality like Mobility. It is also not complete as also the Deployment Server needs to be configured individually at the customer site. We will create some documentation about: what this images contains (and what not)? what final installation activities needs to be provided by each VAD/Partner in this process? I will send an email to the community once we are ready to share it. You find these assets than in the Community Workspace. The Business Model with Oracle Hardware For those who have not done any Hardware business with Oracle yet: Usually a HW reseller orders the hardware through a Value Add Distributors (VAD) and not from Oracle directly. Each Partner needs to have Hardware Resell rights to do so. The VAD is assembling the boxes according to the needs of each customer. It is easily possible for them to prepare the boxes with the images we/you provide. However the final configuration is something a reseller/implementer needs to do at the customer site. This process is not the same in the EMEA region. Sometimes a VAD are taking the order but they do not see the Hardware at all. In those cases a VAD cannot provide any help with the pre-loading of any images and the reseller/implementer needs to do that. In some countries we do not have VADs at all.

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SPARC T5-4 LDoms for RAC and WebLogic Clusters

- by Jeff Taylor-Oracle

I wanted to use two Oracle SPARC T5-4 servers to simultaneously host both Oracle RAC and a WebLogic Server Cluster. I chose to use Oracle VM Server for SPARC to create a cluster like this: There are plenty of trade offs and decisions that need to be made, for example: Rather than configuring the system by hand, you might want to use an Oracle SuperCluster T5-8 My configuration is similar to jsavit's: Availability Best Practices - Example configuring a T5-8 but I chose to ignore some of the advice. Maybe I should have included an alternate service domain, but I decided that I already had enough redundancy Both Oracle SPARC T5-4 servers were to be configured like this: Cntl 0.25 4 64GB App LDom 2.75 CPU's 44 cores 704 GB DB LDom One CPU 16 cores 256 GB The systems started with everything in the primary domain: # ldm list NAME STATE FLAGS CONS VCPU MEMORY UTIL NORM UPTIME primary active -n-c-- UART 512 1023G 0.0% 0.0% 11m # ldm list-spconfig factory-default [current] primary # ldm list -o core,memory,physio NAME primary CORE CID CPUSET 0 (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) 1 (8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15) 2 (16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23) -- SNIP 62 (496, 497, 498, 499, 500, 501, 502, 503) 63 (504, 505, 506, 507, 508, 509, 510, 511) MEMORY RA PA SIZE 0x30000000 0x30000000 255G 0x80000000000 0x80000000000 256G 0x100000000000 0x100000000000 256G 0x180000000000 0x180000000000 256G # Give this memory block to the DB LDom IO DEVICE PSEUDONYM OPTIONS pci@300 pci_0 pci@340 pci_1 pci@380 pci_2 pci@3c0 pci_3 pci@400 pci_4 pci@440 pci_5 pci@480 pci_6 pci@4c0 pci_7 pci@300/pci@1/pci@0/pci@6 /SYS/RCSA/PCIE1 pci@300/pci@1/pci@0/pci@c /SYS/RCSA/PCIE2 pci@300/pci@1/pci@0/pci@4/pci@0/pci@c /SYS/MB/SASHBA0 pci@300/pci@1/pci@0/pci@4/pci@0/pci@8 /SYS/RIO/NET0 pci@340/pci@1/pci@0/pci@6 /SYS/RCSA/PCIE3 pci@340/pci@1/pci@0/pci@c /SYS/RCSA/PCIE4 pci@380/pci@1/pci@0/pci@a /SYS/RCSA/PCIE9 pci@380/pci@1/pci@0/pci@4 /SYS/RCSA/PCIE10 pci@3c0/pci@1/pci@0/pci@e /SYS/RCSA/PCIE11 pci@3c0/pci@1/pci@0/pci@8 /SYS/RCSA/PCIE12 pci@400/pci@1/pci@0/pci@e /SYS/RCSA/PCIE5 pci@400/pci@1/pci@0/pci@8 /SYS/RCSA/PCIE6 pci@440/pci@1/pci@0/pci@e /SYS/RCSA/PCIE7 pci@440/pci@1/pci@0/pci@8 /SYS/RCSA/PCIE8 pci@480/pci@1/pci@0/pci@a /SYS/RCSA/PCIE13 pci@480/pci@1/pci@0/pci@4 /SYS/RCSA/PCIE14 pci@4c0/pci@1/pci@0/pci@8 /SYS/RCSA/PCIE15 pci@4c0/pci@1/pci@0/pci@4 /SYS/RCSA/PCIE16 pci@4c0/pci@1/pci@0/pci@c/pci@0/pci@c /SYS/MB/SASHBA1 pci@4c0/pci@1/pci@0/pci@c/pci@0/pci@4 /SYS/RIO/NET2 Added an additional service processor configuration: # ldm add-spconfig split # ldm list-spconfig factory-default primary split [current] And removed many of the resources from the primary domain: # ldm start-reconf primary # ldm set-core 4 primary # ldm set-memory 32G primary # ldm rm-io pci@340 primary # ldm rm-io pci@380 primary # ldm rm-io pci@3c0 primary # ldm rm-io pci@400 primary # ldm rm-io pci@440 primary # ldm rm-io pci@480 primary # ldm rm-io pci@4c0 primary # init 6 Needed to add resources to the guest domains: # ldm add-domain db # ldm set-core cid=`seq -s"," 48 63` db # ldm add-memory mblock=0x180000000000:256G db # ldm add-io pci@480 db # ldm add-io pci@4c0 db # ldm add-domain app # ldm set-core 44 app # ldm set-memory 704G app # ldm add-io pci@340 app # ldm add-io pci@380 app # ldm add-io pci@3c0 app # ldm add-io pci@400 app # ldm add-io pci@440 app Needed to set up services: # ldm add-vds primary-vds0 primary # ldm add-vcc port-range=5000-5100 primary-vcc0 primary Needed to add a virtual network port for the WebLogic application domain: # ipadm NAME CLASS/TYPE STATE UNDER ADDR lo0 loopback ok -- -- lo0/v4 static ok -- ... lo0/v6 static ok -- ... net0 ip ok -- ... net0/v4 static ok -- xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/24 net0/v6 addrconf ok -- .... net0/v6 addrconf ok -- ... net8 ip ok -- -- net8/v4 static ok -- ... # dladm show-phys LINK MEDIA STATE SPEED DUPLEX DEVICE net1 Ethernet unknown 0 unknown ixgbe1 net0 Ethernet up 1000 full ixgbe0 net8 Ethernet up 10 full usbecm2 # ldm add-vsw net-dev=net0 primary-vsw0 primary # ldm add-vnet vnet1 primary-vsw0 app Needed to add a virtual disk to the WebLogic application domain: # format Searching for disks...done AVAILABLE DISK SELECTIONS: 0. c0t5000CCA02505F874d0 <HITACHI-H106060SDSUN600G-A2B0-558.91GB> /scsi_vhci/disk@g5000cca02505f874 /dev/chassis/SPARC_T5-4.AK00084038/SYS/SASBP0/HDD0/disk 1. c0t5000CCA02506C468d0 <HITACHI-H106060SDSUN600G-A2B0-558.91GB> /scsi_vhci/disk@g5000cca02506c468 /dev/chassis/SPARC_T5-4.AK00084038/SYS/SASBP0/HDD1/disk 2. c0t5000CCA025067E5Cd0 <HITACHI-H106060SDSUN600G-A2B0-558.91GB> /scsi_vhci/disk@g5000cca025067e5c /dev/chassis/SPARC_T5-4.AK00084038/SYS/SASBP0/HDD2/disk 3. c0t5000CCA02506C258d0 <HITACHI-H106060SDSUN600G-A2B0-558.91GB> /scsi_vhci/disk@g5000cca02506c258 /dev/chassis/SPARC_T5-4.AK00084038/SYS/SASBP0/HDD3/disk Specify disk (enter its number): ^C # ldm add-vdsdev /dev/dsk/c0t5000CCA02506C468d0s2 HDD1@primary-vds0 # ldm add-vdisk HDD1 HDD1@primary-vds0 app Add some additional spice to the pot: # ldm set-variable auto-boot\\?=false db # ldm set-variable auto-boot\\?=false app # ldm set-var boot-device=HDD1 app Bind the logical domains: # ldm bind db # ldm bind app At the end of the process, the system is set up like this: # ldm list -o core,memory,physio NAME primary CORE CID CPUSET 0 (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) 1 (8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15) 2 (16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23) 3 (24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31) MEMORY RA PA SIZE 0x30000000 0x30000000 32G IO DEVICE PSEUDONYM OPTIONS pci@300 pci_0 pci@300/pci@1/pci@0/pci@6 /SYS/RCSA/PCIE1 pci@300/pci@1/pci@0/pci@c /SYS/RCSA/PCIE2 pci@300/pci@1/pci@0/pci@4/pci@0/pci@c /SYS/MB/SASHBA0 pci@300/pci@1/pci@0/pci@4/pci@0/pci@8 /SYS/RIO/NET0 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ NAME app CORE CID CPUSET 4 (32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39) 5 (40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47) 6 (48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55) 7 (56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63) 8 (64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71) 9 (72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79) 10 (80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87) 11 (88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95) 12 (96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103) 13 (104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111) 14 (112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119) 15 (120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127) 16 (128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135) 17 (136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143) 18 (144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151) 19 (152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159) 20 (160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167) 21 (168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175) 22 (176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183) 23 (184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191) 24 (192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199) 25 (200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207) 26 (208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215) 27 (216, 217, 218, 219, 220, 221, 222, 223) 28 (224, 225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 231) 29 (232, 233, 234, 235, 236, 237, 238, 239) 30 (240, 241, 242, 243, 244, 245, 246, 247) 31 (248, 249, 250, 251, 252, 253, 254, 255) 32 (256, 257, 258, 259, 260, 261, 262, 263) 33 (264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271) 34 (272, 273, 274, 275, 276, 277, 278, 279) 35 (280, 281, 282, 283, 284, 285, 286, 287) 36 (288, 289, 290, 291, 292, 293, 294, 295) 37 (296, 297, 298, 299, 300, 301, 302, 303) 38 (304, 305, 306, 307, 308, 309, 310, 311) 39 (312, 313, 314, 315, 316, 317, 318, 319) 40 (320, 321, 322, 323, 324, 325, 326, 327) 41 (328, 329, 330, 331, 332, 333, 334, 335) 42 (336, 337, 338, 339, 340, 341, 342, 343) 43 (344, 345, 346, 347, 348, 349, 350, 351) 44 (352, 353, 354, 355, 356, 357, 358, 359) 45 (360, 361, 362, 363, 364, 365, 366, 367) 46 (368, 369, 370, 371, 372, 373, 374, 375) 47 (376, 377, 378, 379, 380, 381, 382, 383) MEMORY RA PA SIZE 0x30000000 0x830000000 192G 0x4000000000 0x80000000000 256G 0x8080000000 0x100000000000 256G IO DEVICE PSEUDONYM OPTIONS pci@340 pci_1 pci@380 pci_2 pci@3c0 pci_3 pci@400 pci_4 pci@440 pci_5 pci@340/pci@1/pci@0/pci@6 /SYS/RCSA/PCIE3 pci@340/pci@1/pci@0/pci@c /SYS/RCSA/PCIE4 pci@380/pci@1/pci@0/pci@a /SYS/RCSA/PCIE9 pci@380/pci@1/pci@0/pci@4 /SYS/RCSA/PCIE10 pci@3c0/pci@1/pci@0/pci@e /SYS/RCSA/PCIE11 pci@3c0/pci@1/pci@0/pci@8 /SYS/RCSA/PCIE12 pci@400/pci@1/pci@0/pci@e /SYS/RCSA/PCIE5 pci@400/pci@1/pci@0/pci@8 /SYS/RCSA/PCIE6 pci@440/pci@1/pci@0/pci@e /SYS/RCSA/PCIE7 pci@440/pci@1/pci@0/pci@8 /SYS/RCSA/PCIE8 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ NAME db CORE CID CPUSET 48 (384, 385, 386, 387, 388, 389, 390, 391) 49 (392, 393, 394, 395, 396, 397, 398, 399) 50 (400, 401, 402, 403, 404, 405, 406, 407) 51 (408, 409, 410, 411, 412, 413, 414, 415) 52 (416, 417, 418, 419, 420, 421, 422, 423) 53 (424, 425, 426, 427, 428, 429, 430, 431) 54 (432, 433, 434, 435, 436, 437, 438, 439) 55 (440, 441, 442, 443, 444, 445, 446, 447) 56 (448, 449, 450, 451, 452, 453, 454, 455) 57 (456, 457, 458, 459, 460, 461, 462, 463) 58 (464, 465, 466, 467, 468, 469, 470, 471) 59 (472, 473, 474, 475, 476, 477, 478, 479) 60 (480, 481, 482, 483, 484, 485, 486, 487) 61 (488, 489, 490, 491, 492, 493, 494, 495) 62 (496, 497, 498, 499, 500, 501, 502, 503) 63 (504, 505, 506, 507, 508, 509, 510, 511) MEMORY RA PA SIZE 0x80000000 0x180000000000 256G IO DEVICE PSEUDONYM OPTIONS pci@480 pci_6 pci@4c0 pci_7 pci@480/pci@1/pci@0/pci@a /SYS/RCSA/PCIE13 pci@480/pci@1/pci@0/pci@4 /SYS/RCSA/PCIE14 pci@4c0/pci@1/pci@0/pci@8 /SYS/RCSA/PCIE15 pci@4c0/pci@1/pci@0/pci@4 /SYS/RCSA/PCIE16 pci@4c0/pci@1/pci@0/pci@c/pci@0/pci@c /SYS/MB/SASHBA1 pci@4c0/pci@1/pci@0/pci@c/pci@0/pci@4 /SYS/RIO/NET2 Start the domains: # ldm start app LDom app started # ldm start db LDom db started Make sure to start the vntsd service that was created, above. # svcs -a | grep ldo disabled 8:38:38 svc:/ldoms/vntsd:default online 8:38:58 svc:/ldoms/agents:default online 8:39:25 svc:/ldoms/ldmd:default # svcadm enable vntsd Now use the MAC address to configure the Solaris 11 Automated Installation. Database Logical Domain # telnet localhost 5000 {0} ok devalias screen /pci@4c0/pci@1/pci@0/pci@c/pci@0/pci@7/display@0 disk7 /pci@4c0/pci@1/pci@0/pci@c/pci@0/pci@c/scsi@0/disk@p3 disk6 /pci@4c0/pci@1/pci@0/pci@c/pci@0/pci@c/scsi@0/disk@p2 disk5 /pci@4c0/pci@1/pci@0/pci@c/pci@0/pci@c/scsi@0/disk@p1 disk4 /pci@4c0/pci@1/pci@0/pci@c/pci@0/pci@c/scsi@0/disk@p0 scsi1 /pci@4c0/pci@1/pci@0/pci@c/pci@0/pci@c/scsi@0 net3 /pci@4c0/pci@1/pci@0/pci@c/pci@0/pci@4/network@0,1 net2 /pci@4c0/pci@1/pci@0/pci@c/pci@0/pci@4/network@0 virtual-console /virtual-devices/console@1 name aliases {0} ok boot net2 Boot device: /pci@4c0/pci@1/pci@0/pci@c/pci@0/pci@4/network@0 File and args: 1000 Mbps full duplex Link up Requesting Internet Address for xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx Requesting Internet Address for xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx WLS Logical Domain # telnet localhost 5001 {0} ok devalias hdd1 /virtual-devices@100/channel-devices@200/disk@0 vnet1 /virtual-devices@100/channel-devices@200/network@0 net /virtual-devices@100/channel-devices@200/network@0 disk /virtual-devices@100/channel-devices@200/disk@0 virtual-console /virtual-devices/console@1 name aliases {0} ok boot net Boot device: /virtual-devices@100/channel-devices@200/network@0 File and args: Requesting Internet Address for xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx Requesting Internet Address for xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx Repeat the process for the second SPARC T5-4, install Solaris, RAC and WebLogic Cluster, and you are ready to go. Maybe buying a SuperCluster would have been easier.

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What's up with LDoms: Part 9 - Direct IO

- by Stefan Hinker

In the last article of this series, we discussed the most general of all physical IO options available for LDoms, root domains. Now, let's have a short look at the next level of granularity: Virtualizing individual PCIe slots. In the LDoms terminology, this feature is called "Direct IO" or DIO. It is very similar to root domains, but instead of reassigning ownership of a complete root complex, it only moves a single PCIe slot or endpoint device to a different domain. Let's look again at hardware available to mars in the original configuration: root@sun:~# ldm ls-io NAME TYPE BUS DOMAIN STATUS ---- ---- --- ------ ------ pci_0 BUS pci_0 primary pci_1 BUS pci_1 primary pci_2 BUS pci_2 primary pci_3 BUS pci_3 primary /SYS/MB/PCIE1 PCIE pci_0 primary EMP /SYS/MB/SASHBA0 PCIE pci_0 primary OCC /SYS/MB/NET0 PCIE pci_0 primary OCC /SYS/MB/PCIE5 PCIE pci_1 primary EMP /SYS/MB/PCIE6 PCIE pci_1 primary EMP /SYS/MB/PCIE7 PCIE pci_1 primary EMP /SYS/MB/PCIE2 PCIE pci_2 primary EMP /SYS/MB/PCIE3 PCIE pci_2 primary OCC /SYS/MB/PCIE4 PCIE pci_2 primary EMP /SYS/MB/PCIE8 PCIE pci_3 primary EMP /SYS/MB/SASHBA1 PCIE pci_3 primary OCC /SYS/MB/NET2 PCIE pci_3 primary OCC /SYS/MB/NET0/IOVNET.PF0 PF pci_0 primary /SYS/MB/NET0/IOVNET.PF1 PF pci_0 primary /SYS/MB/NET2/IOVNET.PF0 PF pci_3 primary /SYS/MB/NET2/IOVNET.PF1 PF pci_3 primary All of the "PCIE" type devices are available for SDIO, with a few limitations. If the device is a slot, the card in that slot must support the DIO feature. The documentation lists all such cards. Moving a slot to a different domain works just like moving a PCI root complex. Again, this is not a dynamic process and includes reboots of the affected domains. The resulting configuration is nicely shown in a diagram in the Admin Guide: There are several important things to note and consider here: The domain receiving the slot/endpoint device turns into an IO domain in LDoms terminology, because it now owns some physical IO hardware. Solaris will create nodes for this hardware under /devices. This includes entries for the virtual PCI root complex (pci_0 in the diagram) and anything between it and the actual endpoint device. It is very important to understand that all of this PCIe infrastructure is virtual only! Only the actual endpoint devices are true physical hardware. There is an implicit dependency between the guest owning the endpoint device and the root domain owning the real PCIe infrastructure: Only if the root domain is up and running, will the guest domain have access to the endpoint device. The root domain is still responsible for resetting and configuring the PCIe infrastructure (root complex, PCIe level configurations, error handling etc.) because it owns this part of the physical infrastructure. This also means that if the root domain needs to reset the PCIe root complex for any reason (typically a reboot of the root domain) it will reset and thus disrupt the operation of the endpoint device owned by the guest domain. The result in the guest is not predictable. I recommend to configure the resulting behaviour of the guest using domain dependencies as described in the Admin Guide in Chapter "Configuring Domain Dependencies". Please consult the Admin Guide in Section "Creating an I/O Domain by Assigning PCIe Endpoint Devices" for all the details! As you can see, there are several restrictions for this feature. It was introduced in LDoms 2.0, mainly to allow the configuration of guest domains that need access to tape devices. Today, with the higher number of PCIe root complexes and the availability of SR-IOV, the need to use this feature is declining. I personally do not recommend to use it, mainly because of the drawbacks of the depencies on the root domain and because it can be replaced with SR-IOV (although then with similar limitations). This was a rather short entry, more for completeness. I believe that DIO can usually be replaced by SR-IOV, which is much more flexible. I will cover SR-IOV in the next section of this blog series.

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