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Playing NSF music in FMOD.net

- by Tesserex

So, as the title says, I want to be able to play NSF files using FMOD, because my project already uses FMOD and I'd rather not replace it. This will involve figuring out how existing players and emulators work and porting it. I haven't yet found an existing player that uses FMOD. My starting point is the MyNes source from http://sourceforge.net/projects/mynes/. There are two big steps between here and what I'm looking for. MyNes plays from a ROM, not NSF. So, I have to rip out the APU and get it to play NSF files. The MyNes APU uses SlimDX, so I have to convert that to FMOD.NET. I am really stuck about how to go about either of these, because I'm not that familiar with audio formats and it's hard finding resources online. So here are a few questions: From what I can tell from the NSF spec at http://kevtris.org/nes/nsfspec.txt, it's just contains the relevant memory section of the ROM, plus the header. If anyone can verify or correct this that would be great. The emulator APU uses data from the rest of the emulator to play, including things like cycle counts. I'm not sure what replaces this in a standalone player. Can't I just load all the music data at once into a stream and play it? Joining #1 and #2, does the header data from the NSF substitute for some of the ROM data in the emulator code? Using FMOD, will I be following the usercreatedsound example for loading a stream? And does this format count as PCM? Specifically MyNes says PCM8. Any tips on loading / playing the stream in FMOD are appreciated. As an aside, I don't really understand the loading / playing sections of the spec I linked at all. It seems to apply to 6502 systems / emulators only and not to my situation. I know it's a long shot for anyone here to have enough experience in this area to help, but anything you can provide is definitely appreciated. A link to an existing .NET library that does this would be even better, but I don't believe one exists.

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Oracle Big Data Software Downloads

- by Mike.Hallett(at)Oracle-BI&EPM

Companies have been making business decisions for decades based on transactional data stored in relational databases. Beyond that critical data, is a potential treasure trove of less structured data: weblogs, social media, email, sensors, and photographs that can be mined for useful information. Oracle offers a broad integrated portfolio of products to help you acquire and organize these diverse data sources and analyze them alongside your existing data to find new insights and capitalize on hidden relationships. Oracle Big Data Connectors Downloads here, includes: Oracle SQL Connector for Hadoop Distributed File System Release 2.1.0 Oracle Loader for Hadoop Release 2.1.0 Oracle Data Integrator Companion 11g Oracle R Connector for Hadoop v 2.1 Oracle Big Data Documentation The Oracle Big Data solution offers an integrated portfolio of products to help you organize and analyze your diverse data sources alongside your existing data to find new insights and capitalize on hidden relationships. Oracle Big Data, Release 2.2.0 - E41604_01 zip (27.4 MB) Integrated Software and Big Data Connectors User's Guide HTML PDF Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) Application Adapter for Hadoop Apache Hadoop is designed to handle and process data that is typically from data sources that are non-relational and data volumes that are beyond what is handled by relational databases. Typical processing in Hadoop includes data validation and transformations that are programmed as MapReduce jobs. Designing and implementing a MapReduce job usually requires expert programming knowledge. However, when you use Oracle Data Integrator with the Application Adapter for Hadoop, you do not need to write MapReduce jobs. Oracle Data Integrator uses Hive and the Hive Query Language (HiveQL), a SQL-like language for implementing MapReduce jobs. Employing familiar and easy-to-use tools and pre-configured knowledge modules (KMs), the application adapter provides the following capabilities: Loading data into Hadoop from the local file system and HDFS Performing validation and transformation of data within Hadoop Loading processed data from Hadoop to an Oracle database for further processing and generating reports Oracle Database Loader for Hadoop Oracle Loader for Hadoop is an efficient and high-performance loader for fast movement of data from a Hadoop cluster into a table in an Oracle database. It pre-partitions the data if necessary and transforms it into a database-ready format. Oracle Loader for Hadoop is a Java MapReduce application that balances the data across reducers to help maximize performance. Oracle R Connector for Hadoop Oracle R Connector for Hadoop is a collection of R packages that provide: Interfaces to work with Hive tables, the Apache Hadoop compute infrastructure, the local R environment, and Oracle database tables Predictive analytic techniques, written in R or Java as Hadoop MapReduce jobs, that can be applied to data in HDFS files You install and load this package as you would any other R package. Using simple R functions, you can perform tasks such as: Access and transform HDFS data using a Hive-enabled transparency layer Use the R language for writing mappers and reducers Copy data between R memory, the local file system, HDFS, Hive, and Oracle databases Schedule R programs to execute as Hadoop MapReduce jobs and return the results to any of those locations Oracle SQL Connector for Hadoop Distributed File System Using Oracle SQL Connector for HDFS, you can use an Oracle Database to access and analyze data residing in Hadoop in these formats: Data Pump files in HDFS Delimited text files in HDFS Hive tables For other file formats, such as JSON files, you can stage the input in Hive tables before using Oracle SQL Connector for HDFS. Oracle SQL Connector for HDFS uses external tables to provide Oracle Database with read access to Hive tables, and to delimited text files and Data Pump files in HDFS. Related Documentation Cloudera's Distribution Including Apache Hadoop Library HTML Oracle R Enterprise HTML Oracle NoSQL Database HTML Recent Blog Posts Big Data Appliance vs. DIY Price Comparison Big Data: Architecture Overview Big Data: Achieve the Impossible in Real-Time Big Data: Vertical Behavioral Analytics Big Data: In-Memory MapReduce Flume and Hive for Log Analytics Building Workflows in Oozie

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Future of Active FoxPro Pages - secured

Finally some official news about Active FoxPro Pages, aka AFP. The German company BvL Bürosysteme Vertriebs GmbH bought all rights of Active FoxPro Pages from the insolvency stock. Being a former customer and intensive user of AFP since version 2.0 BvL has own interest in the continuation of AFP on current and future web servers. Together with their partners Christof Wollenhaupt (Foxpert Software Development & Consulting) and Jochen Kirstätter (IOS Indian Ocean Software Ltd) BvL will continue with development, support and marketing of AFP in the upcoming weeks. There will be an updated version of AFP, the relaunch of the website, re-enabling of activation server, re-establishment of support channel, and much more... Personally, I am relieved that this superb product made its way out of the dust of the past years. And of course, to be involved (again) in the development and support of Active FoxPro Pages gives me a big smile. Rest assured that there will be more articles on AFP soon! Here is the original announcement of 27th September 2010 from the online forum of German FoxPro Usergroup (dFPUG) - section Active FoxPro Pages: Liebe AFP Anwender, liebe FoxPro Gemeinde, nach den Insolvenzen der ProLib Software GmbH und der ProLib Tools GmbH gab es einige Verunsicherung über die Zukunft der Active FoxPro Pages. Wir können euch nun mitteilen, dass eine für alle Beteiligten positive Lösung gefunden wurde. Wir, die BvL Bürosysteme Vertriebs GmbH aus Berlin, haben sämtliche Rechte an der AFP aus der Insolvenzmasse vom Insolvenzverwalter abgekauft. Bereits 1987 wurde die BvL Bürosysteme Vertriebs GmbH gegründet und hat sich seit dem erfolgreich im Markt bewährt. Wir gehören auch schon seit Foxpro2.0 zur Foxpro-Gemeinde und auch mit der AFP2.0 haben wir unseren Einstieg in die AFP-Gemeinde vollzogen. Wir wollen die AFP nicht in irgendeine Schublade packen, sondern unser Ziel ist es, die AFP weiterzuentwickeln, speziell auch auf die kommenden Serverversionen. Unter der Homepage www.active-foxpro-pages.de wird es demnächst einen neuen Auftritt geben. An den Preisen soll sich nichts groß verändern, das Handbuch soll anständig aufgelegt werden und selbstverständlich soll der Support und die Weiterentwicklung eine große Aufmerksamkeit bekommen. Mit Christof Wollenhaupt und Jochen Kirstätter haben wir zwei Partner an Bord, die sich um den Support und die Weiterentwicklung kümmern werden. Christof Wollenhaupt wird maßgeblich und federführend an der Weiterentwicklung beteiligt sein. Über Christof Wollenhaupt können auch ab sofort Lizenzen gekauft werden, Christof Wollenhaupt ist für den Online-Vertrieb zuständig, der gerade aufgebaut wird. Sollte ein AFP Server aktiviert werden müssen, können sich alle bisherigen Lizenzinhaber auch direkt an Christof Wollenhaupt wenden. In den nächsten Wochen werden wir die AFP wieder auf Touren bringen. Eine aktuelle Version, eine neue Webseite, der Aktivierungsserver, ein Überblick über das leicht geänderte Lizensierungsmodell, und vieles mehr ist gerade in Arbeit. Die Zukunft und die Weiterentwicklung der AFP sind jetzt gesichert! Mit freundlichen Grüßen Ralph-Norman von Loesch Source: http://forum.dfpug.de/bodyframe.afp?msgid=728069

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Install Oracle Configuration Manager's Standalone Collector

- by Get Proactive Customer Adoption Team

Untitled Document The Why and the How If you have heard of Oracle Configuration Manager (OCM), but haven’t installed it, I’m guessing this is for one of two reasons. Either you don’t know how it helps you or you don’t know how to install it. I’ll address both of those reasons today. First, let’s take a quick look at how My Oracle Support and the Oracle Configuration Manager work together to gain a good understanding of what their differences and roles are before we tackle the install. Oracle Configuration Manger is the tool that actually performs the data collection task. You deploy this lightweight piece of software into your system to collect configuration information about the system and OCM uploads that data to Oracle’s customer configuration repository. Oracle Support Engineers then have the configuration data available when you file a service request. You can also view the data through My Oracle Support. The real value is that the data Oracle Configuration Manager collects can help you avoid problems and get your Service Requests solved more quickly. When you view the information in My Oracle Support’s user interface to OCM, it may help you avoid situations that create problems. The proactive tools included in Oracle Configuration Manager help you avoid issues before they occur. You also save time because you didn’t need to open a service request. For example, you can use this capability when you need to compare your system configuration at two points in time, or monitor the system health. If you make the configuration data available to Oracle Support Engineers, when you need to open a Service Request the data helps them diagnose and resolve your critical system issues more quickly, which means you get answers more quickly too. Quick Installation Process Overview Before we dive into the step-by-step details, let me provide a quick overview. For some of you, this will be all you need. Log in to My Oracle Support and download the data collector from Collector tab. If you don’t see the Collector tab, click the More tab gain access. On the Collector tab, you will find a drop-down list showing which platforms are available. You can also see more ways to the Collector can help you if you click through the carousel of benefits. After you download the software for your platform, use FTP to move that file (.zip) from your PC to the server that hosts the Oracle software. Once you have that file on the server, locate the $ORACLE_HOME directory, and unzip the file within that directory. You can then use the command line tool to start the installation process. The installation process requires the My Oracle Support credential (Support Identifier, username, and password) Proxy specification (Host IP Address, Port number, username and password) Installation Step-by-Step Download the collector zip file from My Oracle Support and place it into your $Oracle_Home Unzip the zip file you downloaded from My Oracle Support – this will create a directory named CCR with several subdirectories Using the command line go to “$ORACLE_HOME/CCR/bin” and run the following command “setupCCR” Provide your My Oracle Support credential: login, password, and Support Identifier The installer will start deploying the collector application You have installed the Collector Post Installation Now that you have installed successfully, the scheduler is ready to collect configuration information for the software available in your Oracle Home. By default, the first collection will take place the day after the installation. If you want to run an instrumentation script to start the configuration collection of your Oracle Database server, E-Business Suite, or Enterprise Manager, you will find more details on that in the Installation and Administration Guide for My Oracle Support Configuration Manager. Related documents available on My Oracle Support Oracle Configuration Manager Installation and Administration Guide [ID 728989.5] Oracle Configuration Manager Prerequisites [ID 728473.5] Oracle Configuration Manager Network Connectivity Test [ID 728970.5] Oracle Configuration Manager Collection Overview [ID 728985.5] Oracle Configuration Manager Security Overview [ID 728982.5] Oracle Software Configuration Manager: Disconnected Mode Collection [ID 453412.1]

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Text Trimming in Silverlight 4

- by dwahlin

Silverlight 4 has a lot of great features that can be used to build consumer and Line of Business (LOB) applications. Although Webcam support, RichTextBox, MEF, WebBrowser and other new features are pretty exciting, I’m actually enjoying some of the more simple features that have been added such as text trimming, built-in wheel scrolling with ScrollViewer and data binding enhancements such as StringFormat. In this post I’ll give a quick introduction to a simple yet productive feature called text trimming and show how it eliminates a lot of code compared to Silverlight 3. The TextBlock control contains a new property in Silverlight 4 called TextTrimming that can be used to add an ellipsis (…) to text that doesn’t fit into a specific area on the user interface. Before the TextTrimming property was available I used a value converter to trim text which meant passing in a specific number of characters that I wanted to show by using a parameter: public class StringTruncateConverter : IValueConverter { #region IValueConverter Members public object Convert(object value, Type targetType, object parameter, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture) { int maxLength; if (int.TryParse(parameter.ToString(), out maxLength)) { string val = (value == null) ? null : value.ToString(); if (val != null && val.Length > maxLength) { return val.Substring(0, maxLength) + ".."; } } return value; } public object ConvertBack(object value, Type targetType, object parameter, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture) { throw new NotImplementedException(); } #endregion } To use the StringTruncateConverter I'd define the standard xmlns prefix that referenced the namespace and assembly, add the class into the application’s Resources section and then use the class while data binding as shown next: <TextBlock Grid.Column="1" Grid.Row="3" ToolTipService.ToolTip="{Binding ReportSummary.ProjectManagers}" Text="{Binding ReportSummary.ProjectManagers, Converter={StaticResource StringTruncateConverter},ConverterParameter=16}" Style="{StaticResource SummaryValueStyle}" /> With Silverlight 4 I can define the TextTrimming property directly in XAML or use the new Property window in Visual Studio 2010 to set it to a value of WordEllipsis (the default value is None): <TextBlock Grid.Column="1" Grid.Row="4" ToolTipService.ToolTip="{Binding ReportSummary.ProjectCoordinators}" Text="{Binding ReportSummary.ProjectCoordinators}" TextTrimming="WordEllipsis" Style="{StaticResource SummaryValueStyle}"/> The end result is a nice trimming of the text that doesn’t fit into the target area as shown with the Coordinator and Foremen sections below. My data binding statements are now much smaller and I can eliminate the StringTruncateConverter class completely. For more information about onsite, online and video training, mentoring and consulting solutions for .NET, SharePoint or Silverlight please visit http://www.thewahlingroup.com.

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Cutting Paper through Visualization and Collaboration

- by [email protected]

It's hard not to hear about "Going Green" these days. Many are working to be more environmentally conscious in their personal lives, and this has extended to the corporate world as well. I know I'm always looking for new ways. Environmental responsibility is important at Oracle too, and we have an entire section of our website dedicated to our solutions around the Eco-Enterprise. You can check it out here: http://www.oracle.com/green/index.html Perhaps the biggest and most obvious challenge in the world of business is the fact that we use so much paper. There are many good reasons why we print today too. For example: Printing off a document, spreadsheet, or CAD design that will be reviewed and marked up while on a plane Having a printout of a facility when a field engineer performs on-site maintenance During a multi-party design review where a number of people will review a drawing in a meeting room, scribbling onto a large scale drawing print to provide their collaborative comments These are just a few potential use cases, and they're valid ones. However, there's a way in which you can turn these paper processes into digital ones. AutoVue allows you to view, mark-up, and collaborate on all the data you would print. Indeed, this is the core of what AutoVue does. So if we take the examples above, we could address each as follows: Allow you to view the document, spreadsheet, or CAD drawing in AutoVue on your laptop. Even if you originally had this data vaulted in some time of system of record (like an ECM solution) and view your data from there, AutoVue allows you to "Work Offline" and take the documents you need to review on your laptop. From there, the many annotation tools in AutoVue will give you what you need to comment upon the documents that you are reviewing. The challenge with the mobile workforce is always access to information. People who perform maintenance and repair operations often are in locations with little to no Internet connectivity. However, technology is coming to these people in the form of laptops, tablet PCs, and other portable devices too. AutoVue can address situations with limited bandwidth through our streaming technology for viewing, meaning that the most up to date information can be pulled up from the central server - without the need for large data transfer. When there is no connectivity at all, the "Work Offline" option will handle this. For a design review session, the Real-Time Collaboration capabilities of AutoVue will let all the participants view the same document in a synchronized view, allowing each person to be able to mark-up the document at the same time. Since this is done in a web-based manner, not only is it not necessary to print the document, but you benefit by reducing the travel needed for these sessions. Not only are trees spared, but jet fuel as well. There are many steps involved with "Going Green", but each step is a necessary one. What we do today will directly influence our future generations, and we're looking to help.

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Add Bookmarks and Notes to Delicious in IE 8

- by Asian Angel

Are you constantly adding bookmarks to your Delicious account while browsing but want to keep UI use to a minimum? Add bookmarks directly to your account from the context menu using the Share with Delicious accelerator. Share with Delicious in Action To add the accelerator click on Add to Internet Explorer and confirm the installation when the secondary window appears. This is going to be much better than having the Favorites Bar or a new toolbar taking up precious UI room. When you find a webpage that you would like to bookmark right click within the page, go to All Accelerators and select Share with Delicious. The form for the new bookmark will open in a new tab with the URL and title filled in. All that you need to do is add any desired notes/tags and save the bookmark. Suppose that you want notes from the page added to the bookmark. Highlight the desired text, right click on it, then go to All Accelerators and select Share with Delicious. As before the form will open in a new tab…you can see the highlighted text was entered into the notes section for the new bookmark. All that is left to do is add an appropriate tag and save. Once you save your new bookmark the tab will auto navigate to the webpage that you just saved. Returning to our account showed the new bookmark ready for future use along with a the notes for later reference. Conclusion If you add bookmarks to your Delicious account but want to save UI room, then the Share with Delicious accelerator will make a nice addition to Internet Explorer. Links Add the Share with Delicious accelerator to Internet Explorer 8 Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Access and Manage Your Delicious Bookmarks the Easy WayQuickly Add Bookmarks to Delicious in FirefoxAutomate Adding Bookmarks to del.icio.usHow Many Times Has an Article Been Bookmarked on del.icio.us?Add Social Bookmarking (Digg This!) Links to your Wordpress Blog 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 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 Use ILovePDF To Split and Merge PDF Files TimeToMeet is a Simple Online Meeting Planning Tool Easily Create More Bookmark Toolbars in Firefox Filevo is a Cool File Hosting & Sharing Site Get a free copy of WinUtilities Pro 2010 World Cup Schedule

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ASP.NET Localization: Enabling resource expressions with an external resource assembly

- by Brian Schroer

I have several related projects that need the same localized text, so my global resources files are in a shared assembly that’s referenced by each of those projects. It took an embarrassingly long time to figure out how to have my .resx files generate “public” properties instead of “internal” so I could have a shared resources assembly (apparently it was pretty tricky pre-VS2008, and my “googling” bogged me down some out-of-date instructions). It’s easy though – Just change the “Custom Tool” to “PublicResXFileCodeGenerator”: …which can be done via the “Access Modifier” dropdown of the resource file designer window: A reference to my shared resources DLL gives me the ability to use the resources in code, but by default, the ASP.NET resource expression syntax: <asp:Button ID="BeerButton" runat="server" Text="<%$ Resources:MyResources, Beer %>" /> …assumes that your resources are in your web site project. To make resource expressions work with my shared resources assembly, I added two classes to the resources assembly: 1) a custom IResourceProvider implementation: 1: using System; 2: using System.Web.Compilation; 3: using System.Globalization; 4: 5: namespace DuffBeer 6: { 7: public class CustomResourceProvider : IResourceProvider 8: { 9: public object GetObject(string resourceKey, CultureInfo culture) 10: { 11: return MyResources.ResourceManager.GetObject(resourceKey, culture); 12: } 13: 14: public System.Resources.IResourceReader ResourceReader 15: { 16: get { throw new NotSupportedException(); } 17: } 18: } 19: } 2) and a custom factory class inheriting from the ResourceProviderFactory base class: 1: using System; 2: using System.Web.Compilation; 3: 4: namespace DuffBeer 5: { 6: public class CustomResourceProviderFactory : ResourceProviderFactory 7: { 8: public override IResourceProvider CreateGlobalResourceProvider(string classKey) 9: { 10: return new CustomResourceProvider(); 11: } 12: 13: public override IResourceProvider CreateLocalResourceProvider(string virtualPath) 14: { 15: throw new NotSupportedException(String.Format( 16: "{0} does not support local resources.", 17: this.GetType().Name)); 18: } 19: } 20: } In the “system.web / globalization” section of my web.config file, I point the “resourceProviderFactoryType" property to my custom factory: <system.web> <globalization culture="auto:en-US" uiCulture="auto:en-US" resourceProviderFactoryType="DuffBeer.CustomResourceProviderFactory, DuffBeer" /> This simple approach met my needs for these projects , but if you want to create reusable resource provider and factory classes that allow you to specify the assembly in the resource expression, the instructions are here.

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The Oscar of Java Programming

- by Tori Wieldt

Why bother nominating a peer, yourself or your company for a Duke's Choice Award? I asked Duke's Choice Award winner Fabiane Nardon, whose team won in 2005 for the Healthcare Information System they created for the Brazilian government, what it was like winning the award and if it had any impact on her career. Here's what she told me: 1) What was it like to win a Duke's Choice Award? For me it was like winning an Oscar or a Grammy :-) I think that for a Java developer, a Duke's Choice Award is probably the highest award you can get, so it was really an honor. We had an amazing team working on that project and the team really deserved it. We were all very happy when we got that email with the announcement. That moment was one of the most important moments of my career. 2) What benefits have you gotten from being a "Duke's Choice Award Winner?" I think the most important benefit you get from winning a Duke is the fact that you become known by your peers. This opens many doors, since you are approached by more people, get invitations to speak in more conferences, you meet people with the same technical interests you have and so on. I certainly benefited a lot from it. We were lucky that in 2005, when we got our award, the winners were featured in the JavaOne keynote, with short documentaries produced about each one. So, we could be on the stage and talk a little about the project. We got lots of press at the time. We see today's winners benefiting a lot from the press coverage. 3) How is the the Brazilian Healthcare Information System project doing today? Still running and getting new features every year. I'm not involved on the project anymore, but there are good people taking care of it. We opened the code since the beginning, so different cities could use and add features to it. There are many new developers working on that code base right now and I hope they can take the whole system to a new level. 4) What are you up to these days? I worked in the healthcare field for many years and a few years ago I decided that it was time to move on and take the experience I got designing large scale and mission critical systems to other fields. Since then I have been working with high access internet applications. I also co-founded ToolsCloud, a company that provides a development environment with open source tools in the cloud. We just launched ToolsCloud in USA, so other companies can get the same bundle of tools, hassle free, that several companies are successfully using in Brazil. Besides that, right now I'm personally working on the coolest project I ever worked on. It combines several technical challenges with a good dose of social impact. We should launch it in the second semester and I should keep it as a secret for now. Hopefully it will be useful to many people and disruptive enough to maybe get us a new Duke's Choice Award. Who knows? Read more about Fabiane in the "Heroes of Java" series by Markus Eisele. Her Twitter handle is @FabianeNardon. The Duke's Choice Awards celebrate extreme innovation in the world of Java technology. Nominate an individual, a group or company who show the best in Java innovation. Nominate via the easy online form at www.Java.net/dukeschoice. Nominations are open until June 15, 2012.

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Oracle at The Forrester Customer Intelligence and Marketing Leadership Forums

- by Christie Flanagan

The Forrester Customer Intelligence Forum and the Forrester Marketing Leadership Forums will soon be here. This year’s events will be co-located on April 18-19 at the J.W. Marriott at the L.A. Live entertainment complex in downtown Los Angeles. Last year’s Marketing Forum was quite memorable for me. You see, while Forrester analysts and business marketers were busy mingling over at the Marriott, another marketing powerhouse was taking up residence a few feet away at The Staples Center. That’s right folks. Lada Gaga was coming to town. And, as I came to learn, it made perfect sense for Lady Gaga and her legions of fans to be sharing a small patch of downtown L.A. with marketing leaders from all over the world. After all, whether you like Lady Gaga or not, what pop star in recent memory has done more to build herself into a brand and to create an engaging, social and interactive customer experience for her Little Monsters? While Lady Gaga won’t be back in town for this year’s Forrester events, there are still plenty of compelling reasons to make the trip out to Los Angeles. The theme for The Forrester Customer Intelligence and Marketing Leadership Forums this year is “From Cool To Critical: Creating Engagement In The Age Of The Customer” and will tackle the important questions about how marketers can survive and thrive in the age of the empowered customer: • How can you assess consumer uptake of new innovations?• How do you build deep customer knowledge to drive competitive advantage?• How do you drive deep, personalized customer engagement?• What is more valuable — eyeballs or engagement?• How do business customers engage in new media types?• How can you tie social data to corporate data?• Who should lead the movement to customer obsession?• How should you shift your planning and measurement approaches to accommodate more data and a higher signal-to-noise ratio?• What role does technology play in customizing and synchronizing marketing efforts across channels?As a platinum sponsor of the event, there will be a numbers of ways to interact with Oracle while you’re attending the Forums. Here are some of the highlights:Oracle Speaking SessionThursday, April 19, 9:15am – 9:55amMaximize Customer Engagement and Retention with Integrated Marketing & LoyaltyMelissa Boxer, Vice President, Oracle CRM Marketing & LoyaltyCustomers expect to interact with your company, brand and products in more ways than ever before. New devices and channels, such as mobile, social and web, are creating radical shifts in the customer buying process and the ways your company can reach and communicate with existing and potential customers. While Marketing's objectives (attract, convert, retain) remain fundamentally the same, your approach and tools must adapt quickly to succeed in this more complex, cross-channel world. Hear how leading brands are using Oracle's integrated marketing and loyalty solutions to maximize customer engagement and retention through better planning, execution, and measurement of synchronized cross-channel marketing initiatives.Solution ShowcaseWednesday, April 1810:20am – 11:50am 12:30pm – 1:30pm2:55pm – 3:40pmThursday, April 199:55am – 10:40am12:00pm – 1:00pmSolution Showcase & Networking ReceptionWednesday, April 185:10pm – 6:20pmBe sure to follow the #webcenter hashtag for updates on these events. And for a more considered perspective on what Lady Gaga can teach businesses about branding and customer experience, check out Denise Lee Yohn’s post, Lessons from Lady Gaga from the Brand as Business Bites blog.

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Install of AppFabric RC stops AppFabric Monitoring (some traps for young players)

- by Rob Addis

I uninstalled AppFabric Beta 2 and installed AppFabric RC. The AppFabricEventCollection Service is started (runs under Local Service which is a dbo_owner on the Monitoring Database to prove this wasn’t the issue). The SQLServerAgent Service is started. Nothing is being written to the Monitoring DB Staging Table and thus nothing is being written to the Event tables or seen in the AppFabric Dashboard. Nothing has been written to the following event logs - Microsoft-Windows-Application Server-System Services\Admin - Microsoft-Windows-Application Server-System Services\Operational The Microsoft-Windows-Application Server-System Services\Debug event log is not shown in the event viewer. The WCF configuration appears fine the connection string to the Monitoring DB is correct. Monitoring is set to “Trouble Shooting” and no errors are shown on the “Configure WCF and WF for Application” dialog. So the problem seems to lie with either AppFabric which writes to the event log or the AppFabricEventCollection Service. I thought I was flummoxed... However one of my colleagues said have you checked the etwProviderId? I was using a config which was created under AppFabric Beta 2 which had a different etwProviderId. So I deleted the following section and all other references to AppFabric monitoring from the web.config and then recreated them using IIS the “Configure WCF and WF for Application” dialog and set the level to TroubleShooting. <diagnostics etwProviderId="6b44a7ff-9db4-4723-b8cf-1b584bf1591b"> <endToEndTracing propagateActivity="true" messageFlowTracing="true" /> </diagnostics> I then called a service to create some log entries. Still nothing was written to the Monitoring DB Staging Table... I checked the Microsoft-Windows-Application Server-System Services\Admin event log. It had the following entry... Configuration error. Please see the details to correct the problem. \rDetailed information:\r Filename: \\?\C:\Users\xxx\Documents\dotnetdev\Frameworks\SOA\xxx.SOA.Framework\xxx.SOA.Framework.MockServices\SimpleServiceParent\web.config Error: Cannot read configuration file due to insufficient permissions System.UnauthorizedAccessException: Filename: \\?\C:\Users\xxx\Documents\dotnetdev\Frameworks\SOA\xxx.SOA.Framework\IAG.SOA.Framework.MockServices\SimpleServiceParent\web.config Error: Cannot read configuration file due to insufficient permissions And guess who the user was... Local Service yes yes I should have used a better User in the AppFabric RC setup to run the AppFabricEventCollection Service under! So I changed the user to a more appropriate one and removed Local Service as a DBO and hay presto!

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Project Euler 18: (Iron)Python

- by Ben Griswold

In my attempt to learn (Iron)Python out in the open, here’s my solution for Project Euler Problem 18. As always, any feedback is welcome. # Euler 18 # http://projecteuler.net/index.php?section=problems&id=18 # By starting at the top of the triangle below and moving # to adjacent numbers on the row below, the maximum total # from top to bottom is 23. # # 3 # 7 4 # 2 4 6 # 8 5 9 3 # # That is, 3 + 7 + 4 + 9 = 23. # Find the maximum total from top to bottom of the triangle below: # 75 # 95 64 # 17 47 82 # 18 35 87 10 # 20 04 82 47 65 # 19 01 23 75 03 34 # 88 02 77 73 07 63 67 # 99 65 04 28 06 16 70 92 # 41 41 26 56 83 40 80 70 33 # 41 48 72 33 47 32 37 16 94 29 # 53 71 44 65 25 43 91 52 97 51 14 # 70 11 33 28 77 73 17 78 39 68 17 57 # 91 71 52 38 17 14 91 43 58 50 27 29 48 # 63 66 04 68 89 53 67 30 73 16 69 87 40 31 # 04 62 98 27 23 09 70 98 73 93 38 53 60 04 23 # NOTE: As there are only 16384 routes, it is possible to solve # this problem by trying every route. However, Problem 67, is the # same challenge with a triangle containing one-hundred rows; it # cannot be solved by brute force, and requires a clever method! ;o) import time start = time.time() triangle = [ [75], [95, 64], [17, 47, 82], [18, 35, 87, 10], [20, 04, 82, 47, 65], [19, 01, 23, 75, 03, 34], [88, 02, 77, 73, 07, 63, 67], [99, 65, 04, 28, 06, 16, 70, 92], [41, 41, 26, 56, 83, 40, 80, 70, 33], [41, 48, 72, 33, 47, 32, 37, 16, 94, 29], [53, 71, 44, 65, 25, 43, 91, 52, 97, 51, 14], [70, 11, 33, 28, 77, 73, 17, 78, 39, 68, 17, 57], [91, 71, 52, 38, 17, 14, 91, 43, 58, 50, 27, 29, 48], [63, 66, 04, 68, 89, 53, 67, 30, 73, 16, 69, 87, 40, 31], [04, 62, 98, 27, 23, 9, 70, 98, 73, 93, 38, 53, 60, 04, 23]] # Loop through each row of the triangle starting at the base. for a in range(len(triangle) - 1, -1, -1): for b in range(0, a): # Get the maximum value for adjacent cells in current row. # Update the cell which would be one step prior in the path # with the new total. For example, compare the first two # elements in row 15. Add the max of 04 and 62 to the first # position of row 14.This provides the max total from row 14 # to 15 starting at the first position. Continue to work up # the triangle until the maximum total emerges at the # triangle's apex. triangle [a-1][b] += max(triangle [a][b], triangle [a][b+1]) print triangle [0][0] print "Elapsed Time:", (time.time() - start) * 1000, "millisecs" a=raw_input('Press return to continue')

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Today at Oracle OpenWorld 2012

- by Scott McNeil

We have another full day of great Oracle OpenWorld keynotes, sessions, demos and customer presentations in the Seen and Be Heard threater. Here's a quick run down of what's happening today with Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c: Download the Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c OpenWorld schedule (PDF) Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c (and Private Cloud) General Session Tues 2 Oct, 2012 Time Title Location 11:45 AM - 12:45 PM General Session: Using Oracle Enterprise Manager to Manage Your Own Private Cloud Moscone South - 103* 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM General Session: Breakthrough Efficiency in Private Cloud Infrastructure Moscone West - 3014 Conference Session Tues 2 Oct, 2012 Time Title Location 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM Oracle Exadata/Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c: Journey into Oracle Database Cloud Moscone West - 3018 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM Bulletproof Your Application Upgrades with Secure Data Masking and Subsetting Moscone West - 3020 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c: Architecture Deep Dive, Tips, and Techniques Moscone South - 303 11:45 AM - 12:45 PM RDBMS Forensics: Troubleshooting with Active Session History Moscone West - 3018 11:45 AM - 12:45 PM Building and Operationalizing Your Data Center Environment with Oracle Exalogic Moscone South - 309 11:45 AM - 12:45 PM Securely Building a National Electronic Health Record: Singapore Case Study Westin San Francisco - Concordia 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM Managing Heterogeneous Environments with Oracle Enterprise Manager Moscone West - 3018 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM Complete Oracle WebLogic Server Management with Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Moscone South - 309 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM Database Lifecycle Management with Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Moscone West - 3020 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM Best Practices, Key Features, Tips, Techniques for Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Upgrade Moscone South - 307 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM Enterprise Cloud with CSC’s Foundation Services for Oracle and Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Moscone South - 236 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM Deep Dive 3-D on Oracle Exadata Management: From Discovery to Deployment to Diagnostics Moscone West - 3018 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM Everything You Need to Know About Monitoring and Troubleshooting Oracle GoldenGate Moscone West - 3005 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c: The Nerve Center of Oracle Cloud Moscone West - 3020 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM Advanced Management of Oracle E-Business Suite with Oracle Enterprise Manager Moscone West - 2016 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Cloud Control Performance Pages: Falling in Love Again Moscone West - 3014 Hands-on Labs Tues 2 Oct, 2012 Time Title Location 10:15 AM - 12:45 PM Managing the Cloud with Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Marriott Marquis - Salon 5/6 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM Database Performance Tuning Hands-on Lab Marriott Marquis - Salon 5/6 Scene and Be Heard Theater Session Tues 2 Oct, 2012 Time Title Location 10:30 AM - 10:50 AM Start Small, Grow Big: Hands-On Oracle Private Cloud—A Step-by-Step Guide Moscone South Exhibition Hall - Booth 2407 12:30 PM - 12:50 PM Blue Medora’s Oracle Enterprise Manager Plug-in for VMware vSphere Monitoring Moscone South Exhibition Hall - Booth 2407 Demos Demo Location Application and Infrastructure Testing Moscone West - W-092 Automatic Application and SQL Tuning Moscone South, Left - S-042 Automatic Fault Diagnostics Moscone South, Left - S-036 Automatic Performance Diagnostics Moscone South, Left - S-033 Complete Care for Oracle Using My Oracle Support Moscone South, Left - S-031 Complete Cloud Lifecycle Management Moscone North, Upper Lobby - N-019 Complete Database Lifecycle Management Moscone South, Left - S-030 Comprehensive Infrastructure as a Service via Oracle Enterprise Manager Moscone South, Left - S-045 Data Masking and Data Subsetting Moscone South, Left - S-034 Database Testing with Oracle Real Application Testing Moscone South, Left - S-041 Identity Management Monitoring with Oracle Enterprise Manager Moscone South, Right - S-212 Mission-Critical, SPARC-Powered Infrastructure as a Service Moscone South, Center - S-157 Oracle E-Business Suite, Siebel, JD Edwards, and PeopleSoft Management Moscone West - W-084 Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c Overview Moscone South, Left - S-039 Oracle Enterprise Manager: Complete Data Center Management Moscone South, Left - S-040 Oracle Exadata Management Moscone South, Center - Oracle Exalogic Management Moscone South, Center - Oracle Fusion Applications Management Moscone West - W-018 Oracle Real User Experience Insight Moscone South, Right - S-226 Oracle WebLogic Server Management and Java Diagnostics Moscone South, Right - S-206 Platform as a Service Using Oracle Enterprise Manager Moscone North, Upper Lobby - N-020 SOA Management Moscone South, Right - S-225 Self-Service Application Testing on Private and Public Clouds Moscone West - W-110 Oracle OpenWorld Music Festival New this year is Oracle’s first annual Oracle OpenWorld Musical Festival, featuring some of today's breakthrough musicians from around the country and the world. It's five nights of back-to-back performances in the heart of San Francisco—free to registered attendees. See the lineup Not Heading to OpenWorld—Watch it Live! Stay Connected: Twitter | Facebook | YouTube | Linkedin | Newsletter Download the Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control12c Mobile app

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Change default language settings in Visual Studio 2012

- by sreejukg

The first thing you need to do after the installation of Visual Studio 2012 is to choose the IDE preferences. Once you select your preferred collection of settings, the IDE will always choose dialogs and other options according to your selection. Nowadays developer’s needs to work with different programming environments and due to this, developers might need to reset the default settings. In this article, I am going to demonstrate how you can change the default settings in Visual Studio 2012. For the purpose of this demonstration, I have installed Visual Studio 2012 and selected C++ as my default environment settings. So now when I go to file -> new project, it will give me C++ templates by default as follows. If you want to select another language, you need to expand Other Languages section and select C# or VB. Now I am going to change these default settings. I am going to change the default language preference to C#. In Visual Studio 2012, go to tools menu and select Import and Export Settings. Here you have 3 options; one is to export the current settings so that the settings are saved for future use. Also you can import previously saved settings. The last option available is to reset it to default. It is a good Idea to export your settings and import it as you need in later stages. To reset the settings to default select the Reset option and click next. Now Visual Studio will ask you to whether you would like to save the settings, which can be used in future to restore. Select any one option and click next. For the purpose of this demo, I have selected not to save the settings. Click Next button to continue. Now Visual Studio will bring you the similar dialog that appears just after installation to select your IDE settings. Select the required settings from the available list and click Finish button. Click Finish once you are done. If everything OK, you will see the success message as below. Now go to file -> new Project, you will see the selected language appear by default. I selected C# in the previous step and the new project dialog appears as follows. Changing IDE settings in Visual Studio 2012 is very easy and straight forward.

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Oracle Announces Oracle Insurance Policy Administration for Life and Annuity 9.4

- by helen.pitts(at)oracle.com

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Today's global insurers require the ability to provide higher levels of service and quickly bring to market life insurance and annuity products that not only help them stand out from the competition, but also stay current with local legislation. To succeed, they require agile and flexible core systems that enable them to meet the unique localization requirements of the markets in which they operate, whether in North America, Asia Pacific or the Pan-European Region. The release of Oracle Insurance Policy Administration for Life and Annuity 9.4, announced today, helps insurers meet this need with expanded international market capabilities that enable them to reduce risk and profitably compete wherever their business takes them. It offers expanded multi-language along with unit-linked product and fund processing capabilities that enable regional and global insurers to rapidly configure and deliver localized products – along with providing better service for end users through a single policy admin solution. Key enhancements include: Kanji/Kana language support, pre-defined content, and imperial date processing for the Japanese market New localization flexibility for configuring and managing international mailing addresses along with regional variations for client information Enhanced capability to calculate unit-linked pricing and valuation, in addition to market-based processing and pre-configured unit linked content Expanded role-based security and masking capability to further protect sensitive customer data Enhanced capability to restrict processing specified activities based on time of day and user role, reducing exposure to market timing risks Further capability to eliminate duplicate client records, helping to reduce underwriting risks and enhance servicing through a single view of the client "The ability to leverage a single, rules-driven policy administration system for multiple global operation centers can help insurers realize significant improvements in speed to market, customer service, compliance with regional regulations, and consolidation efforts,” noted Celent's Craig Weber, senior vice president, Insurance. “We believe such initiatives are necessary to help the industry address service and distribution imperatives." Helping our customers meet these mission-critical business imperatives is a key objective for Oracle Insurance. Active, ongoing dialogue with our customers is an important part of the process to help understand how our solutions are and can continue to help them achieve success in the marketplace. I had the opportunity to meet with several of our insurance customers at the Oracle Insurance Policy Administration Client Advisory Board meeting last week in Philadelphia, Penn. (View photos on the Oracle Insurance Facebook page.) It was a great forum for Oracle Insurance and our clients. Discussion centered on the latest business and IT trends, with opportunities to learn more about the latest release of Oracle Insurance Policy Administration for Life and Annuity and other Oracle Insurance solutions such as data warehousing / business intelligence, while exchanging best practices for product innovation and servicing customers and sales channels. Helen Pitts is senior product marketing manager for Oracle Insurance's life and annuities solutions.

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Steps to deploying on Windows Azure

- by Vincent Grondin

Alright, these steps might be a little detailed and of few might not be necessary but still it's a pretty accurate road map to deploying on azure... 1) Open you solution 2) Rebuild ALL 3) Right click on your Azure project and click "Publish" 4) It should open a windows explorer window with your package to be uploaded (.cspkg ) and its associated configuration (.cscfg) to be uploaded too. Keep it open, you'll need that path later on... 5) It should also open a browser asking you to login to your passport account, please do so. 6) After this you will be redirected to the Azure Portal where you will see your Azure Project Name below the « Projet Name » section. Click on it. 7) Then you should be redirected to a detailed view of your account on Azure where you will create a new service by clicking the hyperlink on the top right corner. 8) Choose the right service type for you, most likely the "Hosted Service" type 9) Choose a « Label » name and click « next » 10) Choose a name for your service and validate that the name is available in the cloud by clicking the "Check Availability" button 11) At the bottom of this same page, you can choose to create a group for your service, use no group or join an existing group. Creating a group means that all applications that belong to the same group will see no cost to exchanging data between other applications of the same group. Most of the time when you create a single application, creating a group is not necessary. You should choose a region that's close to your own region. 12) On the next window, you should see a "Production" environment and a "Staging" environment. Beware because "Staging" and "Production" are two different environments in the cloud and applications in "Staging" even when not runing do continue to rack in charges... Choose an environment and click "Deploy". 13) In the following window, browse to the path where your cspkg resides and then do the same thing with your cscfg file. Choose a name for your Label, and click "Deploy"... 14) From now on, the clock is ticking and unless you have free Azure hours, your credit card is being billed… 15) Click on the « Run » button to start your application 16) Be patient.... be very patient… 17) Once your application has finished starting, you should see a GREEN circle on the left side of the screen indicating that your application is READY. Click the URL to test your application and remember that if your application is a service, you have to hit the "svc" class behind the link you see there. Something in the likes of http://testvince2.cloudapp.net/service1.svc (this is a fictional link) 18) Hopefully your application will show up or in the case of a service, you will see your service's wsdl meaning that everything is working fine. Happy cloud computing all!

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A Technique for Performing Cross-host Upgrades to FMW 11gR1

- by reza.shafii

The main tool used for the upgrade of iAS 10g mid-tier (data not stored in 10g meta-data repository schemas) environments to Fusion Middleware (FMW) 11gR1 is the FMW Upgrade Assistant (UA). This tool performs what we call an out-of-place upgrade which in a nut-shell means the following: Upgrade is performed by pointing the UA to a 10g source topology as well as an 11g destination topology. The destination topology must be created, using the standard FMW 11g installation and configuration process, prior to the execution of the UA. The UA carries over all of the required changes from the source environment to the destination. This approach has a number of advantages rooted in the fact that the source environment - which is presumably working well and serving its needs - is not disturbed during the upgrade process as the UA only performs read-only operations on it. The UA today can only perform such out-of-place upgrades when the source and destination topologies reside on the same machine. This can sometimes be an issue when the host on which the iAS 10g environment is installed is running at full capacity and installing new hardware for the purpose of the upgrade (in most cases what would be needed is extra memory) is completely infeasible. In such cases, upgrade across a different host is still possible by using the following technique: Backup your source environment and restore it on to a target machine. The backup and restore procedures for the iAS 10.1.2 components are described within this section of the release's Administration Guide. As described in the docs, the Oracle Application Server Backup and Recovery Tool provides capabilities for backing up the installation on one machine and restoring it on another which is exactly what you want to do for the purpose of cross host upgrade. Ensure that the restored environment on your target host is fully functional. Go through the upgrade steps on the target machine to perform the out-of-place upgrade using the UA. Although this process does add another big step to the overall upgrade process, it does make it possible to perform a cross-host upgrade to 11gR1 when necessary. The easiest approach would of course be to find a way of ensuring that the required hardware capacity for upgrade is available on the original 10g host. Using techniques such as scheduling the upgrade at low traffic times and/or temporarily stopping other processes running on the machine to clear up some memory might provide you the sufficient memory needed to perform the out-of-place upgrade and save you the need for using the backup/restore technique I have described in this post.

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BAM Data Control in multiple ADF Faces Components

- by [email protected]

As we know Oracle BAM data control instance sharing is not supported.When two or more ADF Faces components must display the same data, and are bound to the same Oracle BAM data control definition, we have to make sure that we wrap each ADF Faces component in an ADF task flow, and set the Data Control Scope to isolated. This blog will show a small sample to demonstrate this. In this sample we will create a Pie and Bar using same BAM DC, such that both components use same Data control but have isolated scope.This sample can be downloaded fromSample1.zip Set-up: Create a BAM data control using employees DO (sample) Steps: Right click on View Controller project and select "New->ADF Task Flow" Check "Create Bounded Task Flow" and give some meaningful name (ex:EmpPieTF.xml ) to the TaskFlow(TF) and click on "OK"CreateTF.bmpFrom the "Components Palette", drag and drop "View" into the task flow diagram. Give a meaningful name to the view. Double Click and Click "Ok" for "Create New JSF Page Fragment" From "Data Controls" drag and drop "Employees->Query" into this jsff page as "Graph->Pie" (Pie: Sales_Number and Slices: Salesperson) Repeat step 1 through 4 for another Task Flow (ex: EmpBarTF). From "Data Controls" drag and drop "Employees->Query" into this jsff page as "Graph->Bar" (Bars :Sales_Number and X-axis : Salesperson). Open the Taskflow created in step 2. In the Structure Pane, right click on "Task Flow Definition -EmpPieTF" Click "Insert inside Task Flow Definition - EmpPieTF -> ADF Task Flow -> Data Control Scope". Click "OK"TFDCScope.bmpFor the "Data Control Scope", In the Property Inspector ->General section, change data control scope from Shared to Isolated. Repeat step 8 through 11 for the 2nd Task flow created. Now create a new jspx page example: Main.jspxDrag and drop both the Task flows (ex: "EmpPieTF" and "EmpBarTF") as regions. Surround with panel components as needed.Run the page Main.jspxMainPage.bmpNow when the page runs although both components are created using same Data control the bindings are not shared and each component will have a separate instance of the data control.

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Autoscaling in a modern world…. last chapter

- by Steve Loethen

As we all know as coders, things like logging are never important. Our code will work right the first time. So, you can understand my surprise when the first time I deployed the autoscaling worker role to the actual Azure fabric, it did not scale. I mean, it worked on my machine. How dare the datacenter argue with that. So, how did I track down the problem? (turns out, it was not so much code as lack of the right certificate) When I ran it local in the developer fabric, I was able to see a wealth of information. Lots of periodic status info every time the autoscalar came around to check on my rules and decide to act or not. But that information was not making it to Azure storage. The diagnostics were not being transferred to where I could easily see and use them to track down why things were not being cooperative. After a bit of digging, I discover the problem. You need to add a bit of extra configuration code to get the correct information stored for you. I added the following to my app.config: Code Snippet <system.diagnostics> <sources> <source name="Autoscaling General"switchName="SourceSwitch" switchType="System.Diagnostics.SourceSwitch" > <listeners> <add name="AzureDiag" /> <remove name="Default"/> </listeners> </source> <source name="Autoscaling Updates"switchName="SourceSwitch" switchType="System.Diagnostics.SourceSwitch" > <listeners> <add name="AzureDiag" /> <remove name="Default"/> </listeners> </source> </sources> <switches> <add name="SourceSwitch" value="Verbose, Information, Warning, Error, Critical" /> </switches> <sharedListeners> <add type="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Diagnostics.DiagnosticMonitorTraceListener,Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Diagnostics, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral,PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" name="AzureDiag"/> </sharedListeners> <trace> <listeners> <add type="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Diagnostics.DiagnosticMonitorTraceListener,Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Diagnostics, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral,PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" name="AzureDiagnostics"> <filter type="" /> </add> </listeners> </trace> </system.diagnostics> Suddenly all the rich tracing info I needed was filling up my storage account. After a few cycles of trying to attempting to scale, I identified the cert problem, uploaded a correct certificate, and away it went. I hope this was helpful.

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Using TPL and PLINQ to raise performance of feed aggregator

- by DigiMortal

In this posting I will show you how to use Task Parallel Library (TPL) and PLINQ features to boost performance of simple RSS-feed aggregator. I will use here only very basic .NET classes that almost every developer starts from when learning parallel programming. Of course, we will also measure how every optimization affects performance of feed aggregator. Feed aggregator Our feed aggregator works as follows: Load list of blogs Download RSS-feed Parse feed XML Add new posts to database Our feed aggregator is run by task scheduler after every 15 minutes by example. We will start our journey with serial implementation of feed aggregator. Second step is to use task parallelism and parallelize feeds downloading and parsing. And our last step is to use data parallelism to parallelize database operations. We will use Stopwatch class to measure how much time it takes for aggregator to download and insert all posts from all registered blogs. After every run we empty posts table in database. Serial aggregation Before doing parallel stuff let’s take a look at serial implementation of feed aggregator. All tasks happen one after other. internal class FeedClient { private readonly INewsService _newsService; private const int FeedItemContentMaxLength = 255; public FeedClient() { ObjectFactory.Initialize(container => { container.PullConfigurationFromAppConfig = true; }); _newsService = ObjectFactory.GetInstance<INewsService>(); } public void Execute() { var blogs = _newsService.ListPublishedBlogs(); for (var index = 0; index <blogs.Count; index++) { ImportFeed(blogs[index]); } } private void ImportFeed(BlogDto blog) { if(blog == null) return; if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(blog.RssUrl)) return; var uri = new Uri(blog.RssUrl); SyndicationContentFormat feedFormat; feedFormat = SyndicationDiscoveryUtility.SyndicationContentFormatGet(uri); if (feedFormat == SyndicationContentFormat.Rss) ImportRssFeed(blog); if (feedFormat == SyndicationContentFormat.Atom) ImportAtomFeed(blog); } private void ImportRssFeed(BlogDto blog) { var uri = new Uri(blog.RssUrl); var feed = RssFeed.Create(uri); foreach (var item in feed.Channel.Items) { SaveRssFeedItem(item, blog.Id, blog.CreatedById); } } private void ImportAtomFeed(BlogDto blog) { var uri = new Uri(blog.RssUrl); var feed = AtomFeed.Create(uri); foreach (var item in feed.Entries) { SaveAtomFeedEntry(item, blog.Id, blog.CreatedById); } } } Serial implementation of feed aggregator downloads and inserts all posts with 25.46 seconds. Task parallelism Task parallelism means that separate tasks are run in parallel. You can find out more about task parallelism from MSDN page Task Parallelism (Task Parallel Library) and Wikipedia page Task parallelism. Although finding parts of code that can run safely in parallel without synchronization issues is not easy task we are lucky this time. Feeds import and parsing is perfect candidate for parallel tasks. We can safely parallelize feeds import because importing tasks doesn’t share any resources and therefore they don’t also need any synchronization. After getting the list of blogs we iterate through the collection and start new TPL task for each blog feed aggregation. internal class FeedClient { private readonly INewsService _newsService; private const int FeedItemContentMaxLength = 255; public FeedClient() { ObjectFactory.Initialize(container => { container.PullConfigurationFromAppConfig = true; }); _newsService = ObjectFactory.GetInstance<INewsService>(); } public void Execute() { var blogs = _newsService.ListPublishedBlogs(); var tasks = new Task[blogs.Count]; for (var index = 0; index <blogs.Count; index++) { tasks[index] = new Task(ImportFeed, blogs[index]); tasks[index].Start(); } Task.WaitAll(tasks); } private void ImportFeed(object blogObject) { if(blogObject == null) return; var blog = (BlogDto)blogObject; if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(blog.RssUrl)) return; var uri = new Uri(blog.RssUrl); SyndicationContentFormat feedFormat; feedFormat = SyndicationDiscoveryUtility.SyndicationContentFormatGet(uri); if (feedFormat == SyndicationContentFormat.Rss) ImportRssFeed(blog); if (feedFormat == SyndicationContentFormat.Atom) ImportAtomFeed(blog); } private void ImportRssFeed(BlogDto blog) { var uri = new Uri(blog.RssUrl); var feed = RssFeed.Create(uri); foreach (var item in feed.Channel.Items) { SaveRssFeedItem(item, blog.Id, blog.CreatedById); } } private void ImportAtomFeed(BlogDto blog) { var uri = new Uri(blog.RssUrl); var feed = AtomFeed.Create(uri); foreach (var item in feed.Entries) { SaveAtomFeedEntry(item, blog.Id, blog.CreatedById); } } } You should notice first signs of the power of TPL. We made only minor changes to our code to parallelize blog feeds aggregating. On my machine this modification gives some performance boost – time is now 17.57 seconds. Data parallelism There is one more way how to parallelize activities. Previous section introduced task or operation based parallelism, this section introduces data based parallelism. By MSDN page Data Parallelism (Task Parallel Library) data parallelism refers to scenario in which the same operation is performed concurrently on elements in a source collection or array. In our code we have independent collections we can process in parallel – imported feed entries. As checking for feed entry existence and inserting it if it is missing from database doesn’t affect other entries the imported feed entries collection is ideal candidate for parallelization. internal class FeedClient { private readonly INewsService _newsService; private const int FeedItemContentMaxLength = 255; public FeedClient() { ObjectFactory.Initialize(container => { container.PullConfigurationFromAppConfig = true; }); _newsService = ObjectFactory.GetInstance<INewsService>(); } public void Execute() { var blogs = _newsService.ListPublishedBlogs(); var tasks = new Task[blogs.Count]; for (var index = 0; index <blogs.Count; index++) { tasks[index] = new Task(ImportFeed, blogs[index]); tasks[index].Start(); } Task.WaitAll(tasks); } private void ImportFeed(object blogObject) { if(blogObject == null) return; var blog = (BlogDto)blogObject; if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(blog.RssUrl)) return; var uri = new Uri(blog.RssUrl); SyndicationContentFormat feedFormat; feedFormat = SyndicationDiscoveryUtility.SyndicationContentFormatGet(uri); if (feedFormat == SyndicationContentFormat.Rss) ImportRssFeed(blog); if (feedFormat == SyndicationContentFormat.Atom) ImportAtomFeed(blog); } private void ImportRssFeed(BlogDto blog) { var uri = new Uri(blog.RssUrl); var feed = RssFeed.Create(uri); feed.Channel.Items.AsParallel().ForAll(a => { SaveRssFeedItem(a, blog.Id, blog.CreatedById); }); } private void ImportAtomFeed(BlogDto blog) { var uri = new Uri(blog.RssUrl); var feed = AtomFeed.Create(uri); feed.Entries.AsParallel().ForAll(a => { SaveAtomFeedEntry(a, blog.Id, blog.CreatedById); }); } } We did small change again and as the result we parallelized checking and saving of feed items. This change was data centric as we applied same operation to all elements in collection. On my machine I got better performance again. Time is now 11.22 seconds. Results Let’s visualize our measurement results (numbers are given in seconds). As we can see then with task parallelism feed aggregation takes about 25% less time than in original case. When adding data parallelism to task parallelism our aggregation takes about 2.3 times less time than in original case. More about TPL and PLINQ Adding parallelism to your application can be very challenging task. You have to carefully find out parts of your code where you can safely go to parallel processing and even then you have to measure the effects of parallel processing to find out if parallel code performs better. If you are not careful then troubles you will face later are worse than ones you have seen before (imagine error that occurs by average only once per 10000 code runs). Parallel programming is something that is hard to ignore. Effective programs are able to use multiple cores of processors. Using TPL you can also set degree of parallelism so your application doesn’t use all computing cores and leaves one or more of them free for host system and other processes. And there are many more things in TPL that make it easier for you to start and go on with parallel programming. In next major version all .NET languages will have built-in support for parallel programming. There will be also new language constructs that support parallel programming. Currently you can download Visual Studio Async to get some idea about what is coming. Conclusion Parallel programming is very challenging but good tools offered by Visual Studio and .NET Framework make it way easier for us. In this posting we started with feed aggregator that imports feed items on serial mode. With two steps we parallelized feed importing and entries inserting gaining 2.3 times raise in performance. Although this number is specific to my test environment it shows clearly that parallel programming may raise the performance of your application significantly.

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Live CD / Live USB much faster than full install

- by user29347

I've observed it on both laptops I own! HP Compaq nx6125 and Ubuntu 11.04 x64 - somewhat solved Lenovo Thinkpad T500 and Ubuntu 11.10 x64 - help needed! I'm still struggling with the Thinkpad to get performance level similar to that of 10 y.o. laptops... All in all a really serious issue with multiple versions of Ubuntu that renders computers with perfectly compatible hardware unusable, as far as out of the box experience is concerned. Troubleshooting resultant issues seems to be a hard case even for users with some experience with installing graphics drivers. EDIT: I can't really post additional details. Two different ubuntu versions, two laptops, two different set of graph. drivers (OS vs ATI prop.) - all with the same symptoms. Also I can't stress enough how massive the performance degradation is compared to a healthy system. For that reason I ask for input from people who may know roughly what are we dealing with here. I can post more details if we were to focus on my current Thinkpad T500. In that case my current system details: Lenovo Thinkpad T500 Ubuntu 11.10 x64 ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650 (also see the "What I have already tried" section about Intel graphics tested) ATI Catalyst 11.10 drivers OCZ Agility 3 SSD but! same with the default driver for ATI the card same with the prop. driver for the ATI card from Jockey (Additional drivers applet) What I have already tried: 0. Switching to Intel integrated card (Intel GMA 4500M HD) with the default driver - same effects = may indicate not driver related problem but a problem with something of global influence like e.g. nomodeset or other I don't even know about. (What you can read above) ATI Catalyst 11.10 and radeon.modeset=0 boot parameter + disabled Wait for VBlank. Unity 2D Ubuntu 10.04 LTS tested (ubuntu-10.04.3-desktop-i386.iso): Both live USB and installed version blazing fast! (on the default drivers - without even installing the proprietary fglrx drivers). re2 a) seems to give me the only significant results (still poor) - perfect Unity elements performance with the same crawling stuttering/lagging when dragging windows around. re2 b) this happens often http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b68/Bucic/ubuntuforumsorg/Screenshotat2011-10-28083140.png re2 c) Sometimes I am able to witness a normal performance when dragging a window around but only for a second or two. When I try to shake it longer it starts to lag and it will keep lagging like that with an increased probability of what you see in the sshot in point re2 b). re2 d) I can't establish the radeon.modeset=0 influence though. Once it seems to work be smooth with it, the other time - without it. Really can't tell.

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Oracle VM Templates for EBS 12.1.3 for Exalogic Now Available

- by Elke Phelps (Oracle Development)

Oracle VM Templates for Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1.3 for x86 Exalogic Platform (64 bit) are now available on the Oracle Software Delivery Cloud. The templates contain all the required elements to create an Oracle E-Business Suite R12 demonstration system on an Exalogic server. You can use these templates to quickly build an EBS 12.1.3 demonstration environment, bypassing the operating system and the software install (via the EBS Rapid Install). The Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.3 (64 bit) template for the Exalogic platform is a Oracle Virtual Server Guest template that contains a complete Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.3 Database Tier and Application Tier Installation. For additional details, please refer to the following My Oracle Support Note: Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.3 Database Tier and Application Tier Template for Oracle Exalogic Platform (Note 1499132.1) The Oracle E-Business Suite system is installed on top of Oracle Linux Version 5 update 6. The templates have been optimized for performance, including OS kernel settings and E-Business Suite configuration settings tuned specifically for the Exalogic platform. The configuration delivered with this template for a mid-tier running on Exalogic will support hundreds of concurrent users. Please refer to Section 2: Performance Analysis in My Oracle Support Note 1499132.1 for additional details. Additional Information The Oracle E-Business Suite VM templates for the Exalogic platform contain the following software versions: Operating System: Oracle Linux Version 5 Update 6 Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1.3 (Database Tier) Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1.3 (Application Tier) The following considerations were made when the Oracle E-Business Suite VM template for the Exalogic platform were designed: Templates use the hardware-virtualized architecture, supporting hardware with virtualization feature. Database Tier Template is configured to use the following configuration: 16 GB RAM 4 VCPUs 250 GB of Disk space for application installation Application Tier Template is configured to use the following configuration: 16 GB RAM 4 VCPUs 50 GB of Disk space for application installation References Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.3 Database Tier and Application Tier Template for Oracle Exalogic Platform (Note 1499132.1) Related Articles Part 1: E-Business Suite 12.1.1 Templates for Oracle VM Now Available Part 2: Using Oracle VM with Oracle E-Business Suite Virtualization Kit Part 3: On Clouds and Virtualization in EBS Environments (OpenWorld 2009 Recap) Part 4: Deploying E-Business Suite on Amazon Web Services Elastic Compute Cloud Part 5: Live Migration of EBS Services Using Oracle VM Support Policies for Virtualization Technologies and Oracle E-Business Suite Virtualization and the E-Business Suite, Redux Virtualization and E-Business Suite

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A View from the Top – Jan Ackerman (VP APAC Recruiting)

- by user769227

This week, Headhunt Magazine in Singapore, took the opportunity to publish an interview with Jan Ackerman who is Vice President for Recruitment for Asia Pacific here at Oracle. The link to the online interview can be found here. Below is the interview in full that was published in Headhunt Magazine. A View from the Top – Jan Ackerman Written by HeadHunt on August 16, 2012 · Leave a Comment By Susheela Menon Jan Ackerman is the Vice President for Recruiting in Asia Pacific and Japan at Oracle. Which particular personal trait do you attribute your professional success to? Perseverance has been the most important trait that has attributed to my professional success. Endurance and perseverance combined to win in the end has always been a great credo. I find that this trait carries through in my professional as well as my personal life. I enjoy sport fishing and find that perseverance with a great deal of patience in this hobby is critical to the overall enjoyment and success in this sporting activity. In the same way, this doggedness – steadfastness with persistence – and tenacity toward an unyielding course of action has served me well in reaching goals and thus greater success. What’s the biggest challenge you have faced in your career so far? I have to constantly keep pace with ever changing technology in my career. The industry changes rapidly and requires me to stay on top of the latest trends and advancements. Outside of work, I like to develop software as a hobby and in order to ensure that what I am developing will meet what the business needs, I have to continually innovate and stay current on the latest trends in the industry to deliver a solution that will delight the end- user. Best career advice you have ever received. Always be forthright and honest with your customers and peers; mixed with a “Can Do” attitude, a great and fulfilling career can be yours to have and hold. What makes Oracle a great place to be in? The freedom to innovate and pave new avenues of success is one of the greatest things about working here at Oracle. We are always looking to grow and improve our business for our customers and we are always adapting to present and future industry demands. This means we are always looking to change, to perform better and to do things differently. All these create a culture and spirit of innovation and success. What motivates you to be in the HR sector? I really like working with and helping people. HR is all about “the people” in the organisation, and staying focused every day on making things better for the Oracle team gives me a great deal of happiness. Describe your leadership style. I am very direct and goal- oriented. I provide ideas and guidance and then give the team all the freedom they need to reach a successful outcome. I can also be a very “roll up your sleeves” kind of manager when the task needs a bit of a push. What’s the biggest business challenge you see in your industry right now? The ability to keep pace with all the convergence in the industry and to continue to stay focused on delivering top talent to serve Oracle’s customers well. Our unique Recruiting Model has served us well in meeting these needs. We are well-placed in this goal and look forward to maintain Oracle’s leadership role in the industry.

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Running Multiple WebLogic and OSB Domains

- by jeff.x.davies

I have any number of OSB domain created on my machine at any point in time. For example, I have different domains for different version of Oracle Service Bus and Oracle SOA Suite. I also have different domains for different purposes. I have a demo domain and another domain for the projects in my blog. Starting with OSB 11g and the Apache Derby server, there is a small "gotcha" if you want to create multiple domains on a devevelopment machine. When you create a new domain for OSB 11g it will use the same database info for all databases and this will cause an error when starting the admin server of the second domain (the first domain doesn't have to be running for this error to occur). Here is an example of the error message in the server console: ####<Mar 8, 2011 2:58:48 PM PST> <Critical> <JTA> <jeff-laptop> <AdminServer> <[ACTIVE] ExecuteThread: '0' for queue: 'weblogic.kernel.Default (self-tuning)'> <<WLS Kernel>> <> <> <1299625128464> <BEA-110482> <A logging last resource failed during initialization. The server cannot boot unless all configured logging last resources (LLRs) initialize. Failing reason: weblogic.transaction.loggingresource.LoggingResourceException: java.sql.SQLException: JDBC LLR, table verify failed for table 'WL_LLR_ADMINSERVER', row 'JDBC LLR Domain//Server' record had unexpected value 'osb11gR1PS3//AdminServer' expected 'OSBCIM//AdminServer'*** ONLY the original domain and server that creates an LLR table may access it *** The solution is to create a database instance for each of your domains and this is very simple to do. After you create a domain using the Configuration Wizard, locate the wlsbjmsrpDataSource-jdbc.xml file that is found under the DOMAIN_HOME/config/jdbc directory. Near the top of the file you will see the following entry: <url>jdbc:derby://localhost:1527/osbexamples;create=true;ServerName=localhost;databaseName=osbexamples</url> You need to modify this entry with a different and unique database name. The easiest way to do this is to substiture the name of your domain. For example: <url>jdbc:derby://localhost:1527/mydomain;create=true;ServerName=localhost;databaseName=mydomain</url> will create a database named mydomain . Now, when you restart the admin server for the domain, it will create the new database for you. Do this for each domain you create on your development machine and you'll have no troubles. The process is much simpler if you are creating a domain using the Configuration Wizard. Simply name the database when you get to the Configure JDBC Component Schema step of the Configuration Wizard, select the OSB JMS Reporting Provider and set the name in the DBMS/Service field to whatever name you like, as shown in Figure 1 below. Figure 1 – Configuring the JDBC Component Schema That is all there is to it. Now you can create as many domains on your leptop or development machine as you like and not have to worry about them conflicting with each other.

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Playing NSF music in FMOD.net

- by Tesserex

So, as the title says, I want to be able to play NSF files using FMOD, because my project already uses FMOD and I'd rather not replace it. This will involve figuring out how existing players and emulators work and porting it. I haven't yet found an existing player that uses FMOD. My starting point is the MyNes source from http://sourceforge.net/projects/mynes/. There are two big steps between here and what I'm looking for. MyNes plays from a ROM, not NSF. So, I have to rip out the APU and get it to play NSF files. The MyNes APU uses SlimDX, so I have to convert that to FMOD.NET. I am really stuck about how to go about either of these, because I'm not that familiar with audio formats and it's hard finding resources online. So here are a few questions: From what I can tell from the NSF spec at http://kevtris.org/nes/nsfspec.txt, it's just contains the relevant memory section of the ROM, plus the header. If anyone can verify or correct this that would be great. The emulator APU uses data from the rest of the emulator to play, including things like cycle counts. I'm not sure what replaces this in a standalone player. Can't I just load all the music data at once into a stream and play it? Joining #1 and #2, does the header data from the NSF substitute for some of the ROM data in the emulator code? Using FMOD, will I be following the usercreatedsound example for loading a stream? And does this format count as PCM? Specifically MyNes says PCM8. Any tips on loading / playing the stream in FMOD are appreciated. As an aside, I don't really understand the loading / playing sections of the spec I linked at all. It seems to apply to 6502 systems / emulators only and not to my situation. I know it's a long shot for anyone here to have enough experience in this area to help, but anything you can provide is definitely appreciated. A link to an existing .NET library that does this would be even better, but I don't believe one exists.

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