enterprise architect - Page 235

One user sometimes gets an unknown certificate error opening Outlook

- by Chris

Let me clarify a little. This isn't an unknown certificate error it's an unknown certificate error in so much as I can't figure out where the certificate comes from. This happens on a Win 7 Enterprise machine connecting to Exchange 2010 with Outlook 2010. The error he gets is that the root is not trusted because it's a self-signed cert. Take a look at this screenshot because even if I had generated this myself I wouldn't have put "SomeOrganizationalUnit" or "SomeCity" or "SomeState", etc. (Red block covers our domain name.) I'm a little concerned this is a symptom of a security breach. Exchange 2010 has three certificates installed but none of them are this certificate. They all have different expiration dates (one is expired) and different meta-data. edit: There are two scenarios that I see the certificate warning and one of them I can reliably repeat. When the user leaves his computer on over night Outlook pops the Security Warning window. I don't know what time this happens. Using Outlook Anywhere if I connect to Exchange externally via a cellular USB modem the Security Warning window will appear every time I close and reopen Outlook. Whether I say Yes or No does not make a difference on whether or not I can connect to Exchange and send/receive email. In other words, I can always connect to Exchange. I've checked my two Exchange servers and my Cisco router for a certificate that matches this one and I can't find it. edit 2: Here is a screenshot of the Security Alert window. (I've been calling it Security Warning... My mistake.) edit 3: I stopped seeing this error several weeks ago but I can't tie it to any single event (because I just sort of realized that warning had stopped showing up) but I think I found the source of the certificate. Last week I found out that the certificate on our website DomainA.com was invalid. I knew that our web admin had installed a valid certificate so when I look into the problem I found out I was being presented with the invalid certificate that this posting is in regards to. The Exchange server's domain is mail.DomainA.com so I can only guess that Outlook was passing this invalid certificate through as it did some kind of check on DomainA.com. This issue is still a mystery because the certificate warning stopped appearing several weeks ago whereas the invalid certificate issue on the website was only fixed last week. It ended up being a problem with the website control panel. The valid certificate was installed but not being served for some reason and instead the self-signed cert was being served.

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Linux bonded Interfaces hanging periodically

- by David

I've several hosts that are showing problems with connectivity. When working from the command line, for example, typing is frozen for a second or so, then recovers - then it does it again. The most egregious example host would freeze (input) for 15-30 seconds, then recover and go out 5 seconds later. Switching cables didn't do anything - but removing one of the physical cables caused everything to clear up instantly (which why I think this is a network problem). Looking at the network I couldn't see any packets floating that would explain this. These ethernet interfaces (Gigabit Dell) were working normally previously, but since we moved the systems - and put them on a new set of switches - this has been a problem on multiple theoretically identically-configured hosts. The original switches were an HP Procurve 1810-24G and an HP Procurve 1800-24G connected with LLDP; the new switches are both Cisco SG 200-26, which I understand are rebranded Linksys switches. Is this caused by a problem with the switches? Is it the switch configurations? Are the Cisco switches incapable of handling this? I don't see where the configuration is located; I searched the usual /etc/sysconfig/network/devices but there's nothing in there about options (like mii polling) and nothing about the method of balancing the two. Searching scripts, I can't find anything in /etc/init.d/network either. The hosts are almost all Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.x systems (5.6, 5.7) but some are Ubuntu Server 10.04.3 Lucid Lynx. I need help with both if it comes to that. UPDATE: We're also seeing some problems with servers on the original switches. The HP switches and the Cisco switches are also interconnected (temporarily); there is a cable run from one switch to the next. Pings on any of these hosts show about one ICMP packet out of every 5-6 getting dropped (timed out). Could there be an interaction between the two switches? Oh, and the hosts are using bonding with Balance-RR as the method.

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linux disk usage report inconsistancy after removing file. cpanel inaccurate disk usage report

- by brando

relevant software: Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 6.3 (Santiago) cpanel installed 11.34.0 (build 7) background and problem: I was getting a disk usage warning (via cpanel) because /var seemed to be filling up on my server. The assumption would be that there was a log file growing too large and filling up the partition. I recently removed a large log file and changed my syslog config to rotate the log files more regularly. I removed something like /var/log/somefile and edited /etc/rsyslog.conf. This is the reason I was suspicious of the disk usage report warning issued by cpanel that I was getting because it didn't seem right. This is what df was reporting for the partitions: $ [/var]# df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda2 9.9G 511M 8.9G 6% / tmpfs 5.9G 0 5.9G 0% /dev/shm /dev/sda1 99M 53M 42M 56% /boot /dev/sda8 883G 384G 455G 46% /home /dev/sdb1 9.9G 151M 9.3G 2% /tmp /dev/sda3 9.9G 7.8G 1.6G 84% /usr /dev/sda5 9.9G 9.3G 108M 99% /var This is what du was reporting for /var mount point: $ [/var]# du -sh 528M . clearly something funky was going on. I had a similar kind of reporting inconsistency in the past and I restarted the server and df reporting seemed to be correct after that. I decided to reboot the server to see if the same thing would happpen. This is what df reports now: $ [~]# df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda2 9.9G 511M 8.9G 6% / tmpfs 5.9G 0 5.9G 0% /dev/shm /dev/sda1 99M 53M 42M 56% /boot /dev/sda8 883G 384G 455G 46% /home /dev/sdb1 9.9G 151M 9.3G 2% /tmp /dev/sda3 9.9G 7.8G 1.6G 84% /usr /dev/sda5 9.9G 697M 8.7G 8% /var This looks more like what I'd expect to get. For consistency this is what du reports for /var: $ [/var]# du -sh 638M . question: This is a nuisance. I'm not sure where the disk usage reports issued by cpanel get their info but it clearly isn't correct. How can I avoid this inaccurate reporting in the future? It seems like df reporting wrong disk usage is a strong indicator of the source problem but I'm not sure. Is there a way to 'refresh' the filesystem somehow so that the df report is accurate without restarting the server? Any other ideas for resolving this issue?

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Pushing Large Files to 500+ Computers [closed]

- by WMIF

I work with a team to manage 500-600 rented Windows 7 computers for an annual conference. We have a large amount of data that needs to be synced to these computers, up to 1 TiB. The computers are divided into rooms and connected through unmanaged gigabit switches. We prepare these computers ahead of time with the Windows installation and configuration, plus any files that we have available to us before we send the base image in for replication by the rental company. Every year, we have presenters approach on site with up to gigs of data that need to be pushed to the room that they will be presenting in. Sometimes they only have a few files that are small sizes, such as a slide PDF, but can sometimes be much larger 5 GiB. Our current strategy for pushing these files is using batch scripts and RoboCopy. For the large pushes, we actually use a BitTorrent client to generate a torrent file, and then we use the batch-RoboCopy to push the torrent into a folder on the remote machines that is being monitored by an installed BT client. Often times, this data needs to be pushed immediately with a small time window. We have several machines in a control room that are identical to the machines on the floor that we use for these pushes. We occasionally have a need to execute a program on the remote machines, and we currently use batch and PSexec to handle this task. We would love to be able to respond to these last minute pushes with "sorry, your own fault", but it won't happen. The BT method has allowed us to have a much faster response time, but the whole batch process can get messy when there are multiple jobs being pushed. We use Enterprise Ghost for other processes, and it doesn't work well in this large of scale, plus it is really quite expensive for a once-a-year task like this. EDIT: There is a hard requirement that the remote machines on the floor are running Windows. The control machines do not have a hard OS requirement. I would really like to stay away from Multicast because of complications with upstream routers. Is Multicast or BitTorrent the better way to go on this? Is there another protocol that might work better?

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Install XP Mode with VirtualBox Using the VMLite Plugin

- by Mysticgeek

Would you like to run XP Mode, but prefer Sun’s VirtualBox for virtualization? Thanks to the free VMLite plugin, you can quickly and easily run XP Mode in or alongside VirtualBox. Yesterday we showed you one method to install XP Mode in VirtualBox, unfortunately in that situation you lose XP’s activation, and it isn’t possible to reactivate it. Today we show you a tried and true method for running XP mode in VirtualBox and integrating it seamlessly with Windows 7. Note: You need to have Windows 7 Professional or above to use XP Mode in this manner. Install XP Mode Make sure you’re logged in with Administrator rights for the entire process. The first thing you’ll want to do is install XP Mode on your system (link below). You don’t need to install Windows Virtual PC. Go through and install XP Mode using the defaults. Install VirtualBox Next you’ll need to install VirtualBox 3.1.2 or higher if it isn’t installed already. If you have an older version of VirtualBox installed, make sure to update it. During setup you’re notified that your network connection will be reset. Check the box next to Always trust software from “Sun Microsystems, Inc.” then click Install. Setup only takes a couple of minutes, and does not require a reboot…which is always nice. Install VMLite XP Mode Plugin The next thing we’ll need to install is the VMLite XP Mode Plugin. Again Installation is simple following the install wizard. During the install like with VirtualBox you’ll be asked to install the device software. After it’s installed go to the Start menu and run VMLite Wizard as Administrator. Select the location of the XP Mode Package which by default should be in C:\Program Files\Windows XP Mode. Accept the EULA…and notice that it’s meant for Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate editions. Next, name the machine, choose the install folder, and type in a password. Select if you want Automatic Updates turned on or not. Wait while the process completes then click Finish. The VMLite XP Mode will set up to run the first time. That is all there is to this section. You can run XP Mode from within the VMLite Workstation right away. XP Mode is fully activated already, and the Guest Additions are already installed, so there’s nothing else you need to do! XP Mode is the whole way ready to use. Integration with VirtualBox Since we installed the VMLite Plugin, when you open VirtualBox you’ll see it listed as one of your machines and you can start it up from here. Here we see VMLite XP Mode running in Sun VirtualBox. Integrate with Windows 7 To integrate it with Windows 7 click on Machine \ Seamless Mode… Here you can see the XP menu and Taskbar will be placed on top of Windows 7. From here you can access what you need from XP Mode. Here we see XP running on Virtual Box in Seamless Mode. We have the old XP WordPad sitting next to the new Windows 7 version of WordPad. This works so seamlessly you forget if your working in XP or Windows 7. In this example we have Windows Home Server Console running in Windows 7, while installing MSE from IE 6 in XP Mode. At the top of the screen you will still have access to the VMs controls. You can click the button to exit Seamless Mode, or simply hit the right “CTRL+L” Conclusion This is a very slick way to run XP Mode in VirtualBox on any machine that doesn’t have Hardware Virtualization. This method also doesn’t lose the XP Mode activation and is actually extremely easy to set up. If you prefer VMware (like we do), Check out how to run XP Mode on machines without Hardware Virtualization capability, and also how to create an XP Mode for Vista and Windows 7 Home Premium. Links Download XP Mode Download VirtualBox Download VMLite XP Mode Plugin for VirtualBox (Site Registration Required) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Search for Install Packages from the Ubuntu Command LineHow To Run XP Mode in VirtualBox on Windows 7 (sort of)Install and Use the VLC Media Player on Ubuntu LinuxInstall Monodevelop on Ubuntu LinuxInstall Flash Plugin Manually in Firefox on Vista 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 Enable Check Box Selection in Windows 7 OnlineOCR – Free OCR Service Betting on the Blind Side, a Vanity Fair article 30 Minimal Logo Designs that Say More with Less LEGO Digital Designer – Free Create a Personal Website Quickly using Flavors.me

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Install XP Mode with VirtualBox Using the VMLite Plugin

- by Mysticgeek

Would you like to run XP Mode, but prefer Sun’s VirtualBox for virtualization? Thanks to the free VMLite plugin, you can quickly and easily run XP Mode in or alongside VirtualBox. Yesterday we showed you one method to install XP Mode in VirtualBox, unfortunately in that situation you lose XP’s activation, and it isn’t possible to reactivate it. Today we show you a tried and true method for running XP mode in VirtualBox and integrating it seamlessly with Windows 7. Note: You need to have Windows 7 Professional or above to use XP Mode in this manner. Install XP Mode Make sure you’re logged in with Administrator rights for the entire process. The first thing you’ll want to do is install XP Mode on your system (link below). You don’t need to install Windows Virtual PC. Go through and install XP Mode using the defaults. Install VirtualBox Next you’ll need to install VirtualBox 3.1.2 or higher if it isn’t installed already. If you have an older version of VirtualBox installed, make sure to update it. During setup you’re notified that your network connection will be reset. Check the box next to Always trust software from “Sun Microsystems, Inc.” then click Install. Setup only takes a couple of minutes, and does not require a reboot…which is always nice. Install VMLite XP Mode Plugin The next thing we’ll need to install is the VMLite XP Mode Plugin. Again Installation is simple following the install wizard. During the install like with VirtualBox you’ll be asked to install the device software. After it’s installed go to the Start menu and run VMLite Wizard as Administrator. Select the location of the XP Mode Package which by default should be in C:\Program Files\Windows XP Mode. Accept the EULA…and notice that it’s meant for Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate editions. Next, name the machine, choose the install folder, and type in a password. Select if you want Automatic Updates turned on or not. Wait while the process completes then click Finish. The VMLite XP Mode will set up to run the first time. That is all there is to this section. You can run XP Mode from within the VMLite Workstation right away. XP Mode is fully activated already, and the Guest Additions are already installed, so there’s nothing else you need to do! XP Mode is the whole way ready to use. Integration with VirtualBox Since we installed the VMLite Plugin, when you open VirtualBox you’ll see it listed as one of your machines and you can start it up from here. Here we see VMLite XP Mode running in Sun VirtualBox. Integrate with Windows 7 To integrate it with Windows 7 click on Machine \ Seamless Mode… Here you can see the XP menu and Taskbar will be placed on top of Windows 7. From here you can access what you need from XP Mode. Here we see XP running on Virtual Box in Seamless Mode. We have the old XP WordPad sitting next to the new Windows 7 version of WordPad. This works so seamlessly you forget if your working in XP or Windows 7. In this example we have Windows Home Server Console running in Windows 7, while installing MSE from IE 6 in XP Mode. At the top of the screen you will still have access to the VMs controls. You can click the button to exit Seamless Mode, or simply hit the right “CTRL+L” Conclusion This is a very slick way to run XP Mode in VirtualBox on any machine that doesn’t have Hardware Virtualization. This method also doesn’t lose the XP Mode activation and is actually extremely easy to set up. If you prefer VMware (like we do), Check out how to run XP Mode on machines without Hardware Virtualization capability, and also how to create an XP Mode for Vista and Windows 7 Home Premium. Links Download XP Mode Download VirtualBox Download VMLite XP Mode Plugin for VirtualBox (Site Registration Required) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Search for Install Packages from the Ubuntu Command LineHow To Run XP Mode in VirtualBox on Windows 7 (sort of)Install and Use the VLC Media Player on Ubuntu LinuxInstall Monodevelop on Ubuntu LinuxInstall Flash Plugin Manually in Firefox on Vista 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 Enable Check Box Selection in Windows 7 OnlineOCR – Free OCR Service Betting on the Blind Side, a Vanity Fair article 30 Minimal Logo Designs that Say More with Less LEGO Digital Designer – Free Create a Personal Website Quickly using Flavors.me

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Aggregate SharePoint Event/Items into your Calendar view using Calendar Overlay

- by eJugnoo

One of the most common features I have seen in common use for SharePoint (prior to 2010) in Intranet environments for Team site is Calendar’s. Not only the Calendar list type, but also the ability to add a Calendar view to any list that has the desired columns to construct a Calendar – such as Start, End, Title etc. While this was all great for a single site/calendar, the problem of having to track numerous calendar’s remained. With introduction of Outlook 2007 bi-directional integration with SharePoint, and particularly the ability of Outlook to overlay calendar helped bridge the gap. Now one could connect to number of team sites, and setup Calendar overlays in Outlook using varying colours, to easily identify event source and yet benefit from the plotting of events on single Calendar view. This was all good, but each user in your Enterprise was supposed to setup in a “pull” fashion. This is good for flexibility, not so good when you need to “push” consistency and productivity (re-use). So, what was missing on SharePoint is the ability to have server-side overlay’s that everyone can see – in a single place, aggregating multiple sources. Until SharePoint 2010 arrived! Calendars Overlay in SharePoint 2010 There are Calendar lists and Calendar views. View can be created for almost all lists, as far as you have desired column’s in a list like Start, End, Title etc. to be able to describe and plot an item in a Calendar format. In SharePoint 2010, create a new Calendar list. Go to Calendar ribbon tab, and click Calendar Overlay. You get the screen with list of existing Overlay’s associated with current Calendar (list – in our case). Click on “New Calendar”… Notice the breadcrumb! You are adding Overlay to existing list (Team Calendar – in our case). You have choice of “pulling” Calendar info from an existing Calendar (list/view) in SharePoint or even from Exchange! Set standard info like a name, description and decide the colour you want for the items in aggregated Calendar overlay. Select the source site/list/view, anywhere in farm. When you select Exchange as source of Calendar, you get option to add OWA and Exchange Web Service url. I will cover details of connecting with Exchange in another post, and focus on Overlay’s with SharePoint for this one. Once you have added a new Calendar overlay to existing Calendar veiw, you get something like below for Day view, Week view, and Month view respectively Notice the Overlay colours: Now, if you decide to connect this Calendar to Outlook to sync the items, it will only sync items from main view, and not from Overlay source. So such Overlay of calendar’s is server-side aggregation only. That increases my curiosity, so I try adding the Calendar list view as a web-part on a new page. As you see, this instance of view didn’t include item from source that we had added to default Calendar view. This is – probably – due to the fact that this is a new web-part view for the page. If you want to add overlay to this one, you have to redo that from Ribbon. This also means, subject to purpose and context you get the flexibility to decide what overlay is suited. Also you can only add 10 Overlay’s to an existing view instance. Conclusion Calendar Overlay is clearly a very useful feature that fills a gap of not being able to aggregate information from multiple sources into a Calendar view within context of current items. Source of items can be existing SharePoint calendar views on any site, or even Exchange (via OWA/Exchange web services). List type for source doesn’t matter, it just need a Calendar view type available. You can have 10 overlays. Overlays are for the specific view only, and are server-side only – which means they do not get synced in Outlook. While you can drag-drop current list items, you cannot edit overlay items as they are read-only within scope of current Calendar view. You can of course click on source Overlay item to edit at the source. I’d like to hear, how you think Overlay’s will help you in your case, or how you are already using them... Enjoy SharePoint! --Sharad

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OBIEE 11.1.1 - OBIEE 11g Full Sample App on VMware Player 4

- by user809526

The Full Sample App is designed to run on Virtual Box. Let's describe how to run it on VMware Player 4. Open Virtualization Format Tool http://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/server/vsphere/automationtools/ovf VMware Player Documentation https://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/player_pubs.html Full Sample App Deployment Guide sampleapp107-vbimage-deployguide-453583.pdf INSTALL VMplayer 4.0.0 as root LINUX # sh VMware-Player-4.0.0-471780.x86_64.bundle (A new VM is not needed and can be deleted later after that installation is completed. "I will install OS later" - blank hard disk Guest: linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5-64bits => rename to RHEL target: eg /a/root/vmware/ Max disk size: 5 GB (will be deleted) Disk: Single file Dummy RHEL.vmk, RHEL.vmdk is generated. "Delete VM from Disk" in VM Player.) Copy Full Sample App files to target /a/root/vmware/ WARNING: Select a target eg /a/root/vmware/ with lots of free space, 95 GB. Check checksums (md5sum). Please do it! ff85c7eacf7fb8c382e98da875e879e1 Sampleapp_v107_GA-disk1.vmdk 973258cb3c7d64ab03ae853278cf2233 Sampleapp_v107_GA-disk2.vmdk e576be16e36d810479736bfb15d050f5 Sampleapp_v107_GA-disk3.vmdk 3455df77279e53e07d5fee6712f1597d Sampleapp_v107_GA-disk4.vmdk OVF FILE Sampleapp_v107_GA.ovf CONVERSION $ cd /a/root/vmware/ LINUX $ /usr/bin/ovftool -tt=ovf --compress=1 -dm=monolithicSparse Sampleapp_v107_GA.ovf . [dot] Opening OVF source: Sampleapp_v107_GA.ovf Warning: No manifest file Opening OVF target: . Writing OVF package: Sampleapp_v107_GA/Sampleapp_v107_GA.ovf Disk Transfer Completed Completed successfully WINDOWS CYGWIN $ /cygdrive/c/VMwarePlayer/OVFTool/ovftool.exe -tt=ovf --compress=1 -dm=monolithicSparse Sampleapp_v107_GA.ovf . [dot] Opening OVF source: Sampleapp_v107_GA.ovf Warning: No manifest file Opening OVF target: . Writing OVF package: Sampleapp_v107_GA\Sampleapp_v107_GA.ovf Disk Transfer Completed Completed successfully /a/root/vmware$ du -sk 49095328 . [50 GB already occupied] IMPORT - First start of VM Player 4: /usr/bin/vmplayer "Open a Virtual Machine" Browse to /a/root/vmware/Sampleapp_v107_GA/Sampleapp_v107_GA.ovf [the new generated .ovf] "Import Virtual Machine" dialog Name: Sampleapp_v107_GA Location: /a/root/vmware/Sampleapp_v107_GA/storage [was /home/tdubois/vmware/Sampleapp_v107_GA] "Import" "The import failed because /a/root/vmware/Sampleapp_v107_GA/Sampleapp_v107_GA.ovf did not pass OVF specification conformance or virtual hardware compliance checks. Click Retry to relax OVF specification..." "Retry" ; Long import /a/root/vmware/Sampleapp_v107_GA/storage/Sampleapp_v107_GA.vmx and new .vmdk files are created. /a/root/vmware$ du -sk 95551384 . [95 GB occupied] Full Sample App GUEST SETUP "Edit VM settings" min 3GB, 2+ processors, network bridged. For OBIEE + Essbase testing use 8 GB RAM hardware. At first time lauch of Full Sample App, leave OEL booting for several minutes undisturbed. Problem with X display server may occur [/usr/bin/Xorg ; man Xorg]. "Failed to start the X server.... Would you like to view the X server output to diagnose the problem?" "No" [tab key] "Would you like to try to configure the X server? Note that you will need the root password for this." "Yes" [oracle] X Display Settings 800x600 saved in /etc/X11/xorg.conf "Trying to restart the X server" Login as root/oracle in guest OEL. In guest OEL, Virtual Machine > Install VMware Tools... Extract archive VMwareTools-8.8.0-471268.tar.gz all files in writable local directory eg /root In Terminal run Perl script # cd /root/vmware-tools-distrib ; ./vmware-install.pl [keep all default answers] Set keyboard layout System > Preferences > Keyboard > Layouts Restart X server eg System > Log Out root... , relogin Modify X resolution System > Preferences > Screen Resolution Full Sample App OEL login: oracle/oracle ; root/oracle [default US keyboard layout] Credentials are described in the 'sampleapp107-vbimage-deployguide-453583.pdf' The large files in /a/root/vmware/ /a/root/vmware/Sampleapp_v107_GA/ may be removed. FAILURE REMARK: Adding the 4 original Sampleapp_v107_GA-disks[1234].vmdk to VM Player does NOT work as described below. "Edit VM settings" "Remove" "Hard Disk" "Edit VM settings" "Add" "Hard Disk" "Next" "Use an existing virtual disk" "Browse" "Finish" "Keep existing format" "Ok" for each 4 disks settings one by one. Start VM Player 4. "You do not have write access to a partition" Allow all Sampleapp_v107 OEL linux launches. OEL stalls silently after 'Checking filesystems'.

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Oracle Announces New Oracle Exastack Program for ISV Partners

- by pfolgado

Oracle Exastack Program Enables ISV Partners to Leverage a Scalable, Integrated Infrastructure to Deliver Their Applications Tuned and Optimized for High-Performance News Facts Enabling Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) and other members of Oracle Partner Network (OPN) to rapidly build and deliver faster, more reliable applications to end customers, Oracle today introduced Oracle Exastack Ready, available now, and Oracle Exastack Optimized, available in fall 2011 through OPN. The Oracle Exastack Program focuses on helping ISVs run their solutions on Oracle Exadata Database Machine and Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud -- integrated systems in which the software and hardware are engineered to work together. These products provide partners with a lower cost and high performance infrastructure for database and application workloads across on-premise and cloud based environments. Leveraging the new Oracle Exastack Program in which applications can qualify as Oracle Exastack Ready or Oracle Exastack Optimized, partners can use available OPN resources to optimize their applications to run faster and more reliably -- providing increased performance to their end users. By deploying their applications on Oracle Exadata Database Machine and Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud, ISVs can reduce the cost, time and support complexities typically associated with building and maintaining a disparate application infrastructure -- enabling them to focus more on their core competencies, accelerating innovation and delivering superior value to customers. After qualifying their applications as Oracle Exastack Ready, partners can note to customers that their applications run on and support Oracle Exadata Database Machine and Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud component products including Oracle Solaris, Oracle Linux, Oracle Database and Oracle WebLogic Server. Customers can be confident when choosing a partner's Oracle Exastack Optimized application, knowing it has been tuned by the OPN member on Oracle Exadata Database Machine or Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud with a goal of delivering optimum speed, scalability and reliability. Partners participating in the Oracle Exastack Program can also leverage their Oracle Exastack Ready and Oracle Exastack Optimized applications to advance to Platinum or Diamond level in OPN. Oracle Exastack Programs Provide ISVs a Reliable, High-Performance Application Infrastructure With the Oracle Exastack Program ISVs have several options to qualify and tune their applications with Oracle Exastack, including: Oracle Exastack Ready: Oracle Exastack Ready provides qualifying partners with specific branding and promotional benefits based on their adoption of Oracle products. If a partner application supports the latest major release of one of these products, the partner may use the corresponding logo with their product marketing materials: Oracle Solaris Ready, Oracle Linux Ready, Oracle Database Ready, and Oracle WebLogic Ready. Oracle Exastack Ready is available to OPN members at the Gold level or above. Additionally, OPN members participating in the program can leverage their Oracle Exastack Ready applications toward advancement to the Platinum or Diamond levels in the OPN Specialized program and toward achieving Oracle Exastack Optimized status. Oracle Exastack Optimized: When available, for OPN members at the Gold level or above, Oracle Exastack Optimized will provide direct access to Oracle technical resources and dedicated Oracle Exastack lab environments so OPN members can test and tune their applications to deliver optimal performance and scalability on Oracle Exadata Database Machine or Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud. Oracle Exastack Optimized will provide OPN members with specific branding and promotional benefits including the use of the Oracle Exastack Optimized logo. OPN members participating in the program will also be able to leverage their Oracle Exastack Optimized applications toward advancement to Platinum or Diamond level in the OPN Specialized program. Oracle Exastack Labs and ISV Enablement: Dedicated Oracle Exastack lab environments and related technical enablement resources (including Guided Learning Paths and Boot Camps) will be available through OPN for OPN members to further their knowledge of Oracle Exastack offerings, and qualify their applications for Oracle Exastack Optimized or Oracle Exastack Ready. Oracle Exastack labs will be available to qualifying OPN members at the Gold level or above. Partners are eligible to participate in the Oracle Exastack Ready program immediately, which will help them meet the requirements to attain Oracle Exastack Optimized status in the future. Guidelines for Oracle Exastack Optimized, as well as Oracle Exastack Labs will be available in fall 2011. Supporting Quotes "In order to effectively differentiate their software applications in the marketplace, ISVs need to rapidly deliver new capabilities and performance improvements," said Judson Althoff, Oracle senior vice president of Worldwide Alliances and Channels and Embedded Sales. "With Oracle Exastack, ISVs have the ability to optimize and deploy their applications with a complete, integrated and cloud-ready infrastructure that will help them accelerate innovation, unlock new features and functionality, and deliver superior value to customers." "We view performance as absolutely critical and a key differentiator," said Tom Stock, SVP of Product Management, GoldenSource. "As a leading provider of enterprise data management solutions for securities and investment management firms, with Oracle Exadata Database Machine, we see an opportunity to notably improve data processing performance -- providing high quality 'golden copy' data in a reduced timeframe. Achieving Oracle Exastack Optimized status will be a stamp of approval that our solution will provide the performance and scalability that our customers demand." "As a leading provider of Revenue Intelligence solutions for telecommunications, media and entertainment service providers, our customers continually demand more readily accessible, enriched and pre-analyzed information to minimize their financial risks and maximize their margins," said Alon Aginsky, President and CEO of cVidya Networks. "Oracle Exastack enables our solutions to deliver the power, infrastructure, and innovation required to transform our customers' business operations and stay ahead of the game." Supporting Resources Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) Oracle Exastack Oracle Exastack Datasheet Judson Althoff blog Connect with the Oracle Partner community at OPN on Facebook, OPN on LinkedIn, OPN on YouTube, or OPN on Twitter

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SQL SERVER – Database Dynamic Caching by Automatic SQL Server Performance Acceleration

- by pinaldave

My second look at SafePeak’s new version (2.1) revealed to me few additional interesting features. For those of you who hadn’t read my previous reviews SafePeak and not familiar with it, here is a quick brief: SafePeak is in business of accelerating performance of SQL Server applications, as well as their scalability, without making code changes to the applications or to the databases. SafePeak performs database dynamic caching, by caching in memory result sets of queries and stored procedures while keeping all those cache correct and up to date. Cached queries are retrieved from the SafePeak RAM in microsecond speed and not send to the SQL Server. The application gets much faster results (100-500 micro seconds), the load on the SQL Server is reduced (less CPU and IO) and the application or the infrastructure gets better scalability. SafePeak solution is hosted either within your cloud servers, hosted servers or your enterprise servers, as part of the application architecture. Connection of the application is done via change of connection strings or adding reroute line in the c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file on all application servers. For those who would like to learn more on SafePeak architecture and how it works, I suggest to read this vendor’s webpage: SafePeak Architecture. More interesting new features in SafePeak 2.1 In my previous review of SafePeak new I covered the first 4 things I noticed in the new SafePeak (check out my article “SQLAuthority News – SafePeak Releases a Major Update: SafePeak version 2.1 for SQL Server Performance Acceleration”): Cache setup and fine-tuning – a critical part for getting good caching results Database templates Choosing which database to cache Monitoring and analysis options by SafePeak Since then I had a chance to play with SafePeak some more and here is what I found. 5. Analysis of SQL Performance (present and history): In SafePeak v.2.1 the tools for understanding of performance became more comprehensive. Every 15 minutes SafePeak creates and updates various performance statistics. Each query (or a procedure execute) that arrives to SafePeak gets a SQL pattern, and after it is used again there are statistics for such pattern. An important part of this product is that it understands the dependencies of every pattern (list of tables, views, user defined functions and procs). From this understanding SafePeak creates important analysis information on performance of every object: response time from the database, response time from SafePeak cache, average response time, percent of traffic and break down of behavior. One of the interesting things this behavior column shows is how often the object is actually pdated. The break down analysis allows knowing the above information for: queries and procedures, tables, views, databases and even instances level. The data is show now on all arriving queries, both read queries (that can be cached), but also any types of updates like DMLs, DDLs, DCLs, and even session settings queries. The stats are being updated every 15 minutes and SafePeak dashboard allows going back in time and investigating what happened within any time frame. 6. Logon trigger, for making sure nothing corrupts SafePeak cache data If you have an application with many parts, many servers many possible locations that can actually update the database, or the SQL Server is accessible to many DBAs or software engineers, each can access some database directly and do some changes without going thru SafePeak – this can create a potential corruption of the data stored in SafePeak cache. To make sure SafePeak cache is correct it needs to get all updates to arrive to SafePeak, and if a DBA will access the database directly and do some changes, for example, then SafePeak will simply not know about it and will not clean SafePeak cache. In the new version, SafePeak brought a new feature called “Logon Trigger” to solve the above challenge. By special click of a button SafePeak can deploy a special server logon trigger (with a CLR object) on your SQL Server that actually monitors all connections and informs SafePeak on any connection that is coming not from SafePeak. In SafePeak dashboard there is an interface that allows to control which logins can be ignored based on login names and IPs, while the rest will invoke cache cleanup of SafePeak and actually locks SafePeak cache until this connection will not be closed. Important to note, that this does not interrupt any logins, only informs SafePeak on such connection. On the Dashboard screen in SafePeak you will be able to see those connections and then decide what to do with them. Configuration of this feature in SafePeak dashboard can be done here: Settings -> SQL instances management -> click on instance -> Logon Trigger tab. Other features: 7. User management ability to grant permissions to someone without changing its configuration and only use SafePeak as performance analysis tool. 8. Better reports for analysis of performance using 15 minute resolution charts. 9. Caching of client cursors 10. Support for IPv6 Summary SafePeak is a great SQL Server performance acceleration solution for users who want immediate results for sites with performance, scalability and peak spikes challenges. Especially if your apps are packaged or 3rd party, since no code changes are done. SafePeak can significantly increase response times, by reducing network roundtrip to the database, decreasing CPU resource usage, eliminating I/O and storage access. SafePeak team provides a free fully functional trial www.safepeak.com/download and actually provides a one-on-one assistance during such trial. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: About Me, Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Utility, T SQL, Technology

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Ich bin jetzt Oracle Certified Associate!

- by britta.wolf

Jan Peuker, Absolvent der Hochschule Augsburg und University of Melbourne, hat vor kurzem das Zertifikat Oracle Database 10g Administrator Certified Associate erworben. Er hat uns netterweise mit diesem kleinen Text versorgt: "Die Oracle Zertifizierung beginnt üblicherweise mit dem Oracle Certified Associate. Für diese Zertifizierung ist noch keine tiefgehende Praxiserfahrung notwendig. Um den Titel des Oracle Database 11g Administrator Certified Associate zu erlangen, muss man eine Prüfung zu SQL (z.B. 1Z0-051) sowie eine Prüfung zur Administration (1Z0-045) ablegen. Beide Prüfungen dauern 2 Stunden und haben ca. 80 Fragen von denen etwa drei Viertel richtig beantwortet werden müssen, um zu bestehen. Eine Note gibt es nicht. Die Prüfungen finden immer elektronisch statt, die Software erlaubt das Überspringen und Markieren von Fragen. Während meiner Arbeitszeit nach meinem ersten Studium hatte ich häufig mit dem Oracle Datenbanksystem zu tun. Als ich mein Aufbaustudium an der University of Melbourne absolvierte, wurde mir von der Studienberaterin vorgeschlagen, den Kurs „Advanced Database Administration" zu belegen. Dieser beruht vollständig auf den offiziellen Oracle Trainings-Unterlagen zur Prüfung in Oracle Administration und erlaubt daher die Teilnahme an der offiziellen Zertifizierung. Im Gegensatz zur SQL Prüfung, deren Inhalt man sich gut selbst aneignen kann, hilft bei der Administrator-Zertifizierung ein echter Kurs mit Seminar ungemein. Viele Konzepte lassen sich schwer aus einem Buch lernen. Die Bestandteile der SGA oder das Anlegen von Benutzern mögen leicht zugänglich sein, Redo- und Undo-Management sowie Backup und Recovery kann man nur verstehen, wenn man Beispiele hat und diese an einem Testsystem (keine "kleine" XE-Datenbank, sondern eine "richtige" Datenbank mit Enterprise Manager) ausprobieren kann. Übermäßig viel Zeit habe ich keinesfalls investiert, weil das Grundsystem sehr logisch ist. Für die weniger nachvollziehbaren Bereiche, besonders die neuen Features, habe ich mir Fachbegriffe auf Lernkarten geschrieben und die Trainingsunterlagen am System durchgespielt. Die Prüfung war für mich überraschend schwer, weil das einfache "Tagesgeschäft" deutlich unterrepräsentiert ist. In den Multiple-Choice-Fragen werden viele Besonderheiten und Use-Cases abgefragt (online findet man viele Beispielfragen). Da beide Tests in Englisch sind, sollte man nicht nur in der Terminologie des Oracle Datenbanksystems sondern auch in Fachbegriffen der Datenbankwelt allgemein bewandert sein. Oft machen einzelne Wörter (z.B. redundant oder synchronized, redo log oder redo log buffer) die richtige Antwort aus, ein signifikanter Anteil der Fragen beruht auf Zeichnungen oder Diagrammen, die beschrieben werden müssen. So muss man z.B. anhand eines Log-Auszugs beurteilen, warum die Datenbank nicht sauber geschlossen wurde. Allgemeines Wissen über Datenbanksysteme hilft leider nicht viel, da überproportional viele Fragen zu Oracle-spezifischen Themen gestellt werden, wie z.B. Optimierungs-Dienste (ADDM), Flashback, SQL Loader und ein wenig PL/SQL. Die SQL Prüfung ist dagegen sehr geradlinig - was aber nicht einfacher heißt. Hier kommt es mehr auf Auswendiglernen von Syntax an, was mir persönlich nicht liegt. Vor allem als Anwendungsprogrammierer kennt man oft proprietäre SQL-Funktionen nicht, es fällt schwer, sich einzelne Datumsberechnungsfunktionen, Typkonvertierungen, Namespaces oder krude Join-Methoden zu merken. Auf all dies wird in der Prüfung aber sehr viel Wert gelegt. Auch hier wird man wieder mit zweideutigen Multiple-Choice Fragen konfrontiert, bei denen sich z.B. nur die Reihenfolge der Parameter unterscheidet. Zudem sind die Parameter auch nicht ausgeschrieben, sondern in einem Entity-Relationship-Diagramm gegeben, wobei man auf die richtigen Datentypen achten muss. Mir persönlich war die Zeit fast zu knapp bemessen, weil man bei vielen Fragen erst ein Diagramm, einen Datenauszug oder einen längeren Text lesen muss, um dann die richtigen Statements zu finden. Hier helfen Lernkarten also nur bedingt - stattdessen üben, üben, üben. Durch den relativ niedrigen Pass-Score von 70% kann man es sich leisten, unsichere Fragen zuerst zu überspringen und erst nachdem alle sicheren beantwortet sind, zu überdenken. Die Prüfung ist auf jeden Fall fair. Ich habe durch das Oracle-Zertifizierungsprogramm viel gelernt. Die Datenbanken unter meiner Aufsicht laufen deutlich performanter und liefern höhere Verfügbarkeit, weil ich Probleme eliminieren konnte, die mir vorher nicht klar waren. Eine klassische Misskonfiguration, volle Archive Logs, weil diese mit zu lange gehaltenem Flashback-Speicher kollidieren, konnte ich bereits in einer der ersten Stunden meines Kurses an der Uni Melbourne mit Hilfe meines Professors klären. Beide Prüfungen waren problemlos parallel zu anderen Prüfungen zu absolvieren. Empfehlen kann ich eine gründliche Online-Recherche aber auch die Oracle Press-Bücher, welche mit Prüfungsfragen am Ende jedes Kapitels aufwarten. So spart man sich Zeit und ist trotzdem gut vorbereitet. Auch wenn ich keine Laufbahn als Administrator einschlagen werde, bin ich froh die zugrundeliegende Technologie vieler Anwendungen besser zu verstehen. Für meine tägliche Arbeit als Anwendungsentwickler hat es mir vor allem geholfen, Oracle-Konzepte z.B. im Bereich der Transaktionssteuerung und Wiederherstellung zu verstehen und damit viele Open Source Produkte jetzt sinnvoller bewerten und empfehlen zu können." Eine Übersicht der Zertifizierungspfade finden Sie auf der Oracle University Webseite (dann einfach "Deutschland""auswählen und anschließend auf den Punkt "Zertifizierungen" klicken).

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Test Drive Windows 7 Online with Virtual Labs

- by Matthew Guay

Did you miss out on the Windows 7 public beta and want to try it out before you actually make the leap and upgrade? Maybe you want to learn how to deploy new features in a business environment. Here’s how you can test drive Windows 7 directly from your browser. Whether you manage 10,000 desktops or simply manage your own laptop, it’s usually best to test out a new OS before installing it. If you’re upgrading from Windows XP you may find many things unfamiliar. Microsoft has setup a special Windows 7 Test Drive website with resources to help IT professionals test and deploy Windows 7 in their workplaces. This is a great resource to try out Windows 7 from the comfort of your browser, and look at some of the new features without even installing it. Please note that the online version is not nearly as responsive as a full standard install of Windows 7. It also does not run the full Aero interface or desktop effects, and may refresh slowly depending on your Internet connection. So don’t judge Windows 7’s performance based on this virtual lab, but use it as a way to learn more about Windows 7 without installing it. Getting Started To test drive Windows 7, visit Microsoft’s Windows 7 Test Drive website (link below). You will need to run the Windows 7 Test Drive in Internet Explorer, as it requires Active X support. We received this error when attempting to run the Test Drive in Firefox: Now, click the “Take a Test Drive” link on the bottom left of the page. This site includes several test drives to demonstrate different features of Windows 7 and its related ecosystem of products including Windows Server 2008 R2, some of which, including the XP Mode test drive, are not yet ready. For this test, we selected the MED-V Test drive, as this includes Office 2007 and 2010 so you can test them in Windows 7 as well. Simply select the test drive you want, and click “Try it now!” If you haven’t run a Windows test drive before, you will be asked to install an ActiveX control. Click the link to install. Click the yellow bar at the top of the page in Internet Explorer, and select to Install the add-on. You may have to approve a UAC prompt to finish the install. Once this is finished, click the link on the bottom of the page to return to your test drive. The test drive page should automatically refresh; if it doesn’t, click refresh to reload it. Now the test drive will load the components. Once its fully loaded, click the link to launch Windows 7 in a new window. You may see a prompt warning that the server may have been impersonated. Simply click Yes to proceed. The test lab will give you some getting started directions; click Close Window when you’re ready to try out Windows 7. Here’s the default desktop in the Windows 7 test drive. You can use it just like a normal Windows computer, but do note that it may function slowly depending on your internet connection. This test drive includes both Office 2007 and Office 2010 Tech Preview, so you can try out both in Windows 7 as well. You can try out the new Windows 7 applications such as the reworked Paint with the Ribbon interface from Office. Or you can even test the newest version of Media Center, though it will warn you that it may not function good with the down-scaled graphics in the test drive. Most importantly, you can try out the new features in Windows 7, such as Jumplists and even Aero Snap. Once again, these features will not function the quickest, but it does let you test them out. While working with the Virtual Lab, there are different tasks it walks you through. You can also download a copy of the lab manual in PDF format to help you navigate through the various objectives. The test drive system is running Microsoft Forefront Security, the enterprise security solution from which Microsoft Security Essentials has adapted components from. Conclusion These virtual labs are great for tech students, or those of you who want to get a first-hand trial of the new features. Also, if you’re not sure on how to deploy something and want to practice in a virtual environment, these labs are quite valuable.While these labs are geared toward IT professionals, it’s a good way for anyone to try out Windows 7 features from the comfort of your current computer. Test Drive Windows 7 Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Mount Multiple ISO Images Using Virtual CloneDriveHow To Delete a VHD in Windows 7Keyboard Shortcuts for VMware WorkstationMount an ISO image in Windows 7 or VistaHow To Turn a Physical Computer Into A Virtual Machine with Disk2vhd 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 If it were only this easy SyncToy syncs Files and Folders across Computers on a Network (or partitions on the same drive) 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

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SQL Developer at Oracle Open World 2012

- by thatjeffsmith

We have a lot going on in San Francisco this fall. One of the most personal exciting bits, for what will be my 4th or 5th Open World, is that this will be my FIRST as a member of Team Oracle. I’ve presented once before, but most years it was just me pressing flesh at the vendor booths. After 3-4 days of standing and talking, you’re ready to just go home and not do anything for a few weeks. This time I’ll have a chance to walk around and talk with our users and get a good idea of what’s working and what’s not. Of course it will be a great opportunity for you to find us and get to know your SQL Developer team! 3.4 miles across and back – thanks Ashley for signing me up for the run! This year is going to be a bit crazy. Work wise I’ll be presenting twice, working a booth, and proctoring several of our Hands-On Labs. The fun parts will be equally crazy though – running across the Bay Bridge (I don’t run), swimming the Bay (I don’t swim), having my wife fly out on Wednesday for the concert, and then our first WhiskyFest on Friday (I do drink whisky though.) But back to work – let’s talk about EVERYTHING you can expect from the SQL Developer team. Booth Hours We’ll have 2 ‘demo pods’ in the Exhibition Hall over at Moscone South. Look for the farm of Oracle booths, we’ll be there under the signs that say ‘SQL Developer.’ There will be several people on hand, mostly developers (yes, they still count as people), who can answer your questions or demo the latest features. Come by and say ‘Hi!’, and let us know what you like and what you think we can do better. Seriously. Monday 10AM – 6PM Tuesday 9:45AM – 6PM Wednesday 9:45AM – 4PM Presentations Stop by for an hour, pull up a chair, sit back and soak in all the SQL Developer goodness. You’ll only have to suffer my bad jokes for two of the presentations, so please at least try to come to the other ones. We’ll be talking about data modeling, migrations, source control, and new features in versions 3.1 and 3.2 of SQL Developer and SQL Developer Data Modeler. Day Time Event Monday 10:454:45 What’s New in SQL Developer Why Move to Oracle Application Express Listener Tueday 10:1511:455:00 Using Subversion in Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler Oracle SQL Developer Tips & Tricks Database Design with Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler Wednesday 11:453:30 Migrating Third-Party Databases and Applications to Oracle Exadata 11g Enterprise Options and Management Packs for Developers Hands On Labs (HOLs) The Hands On Labs allow you to come into a classroom environment, sit down at a computer, and run through some exercises. We’ll provide the hardware, software, and training materials. It’s self-paced, but we’ll have several helpers walking around to answer questions and chat up any SQL Developer or database topic that comes to mind. If your employer is sending you to Open World for all that great training, the HOLs are a great opportunity to capitalize on that. They are only 60 minutes each, so you don’t have to worry about burning out. And there’s no homework! Of course, if you do want to take the labs home with you, many are already available via the Developer Day Hands-On Database Applications Developer Lab. You will need your own computer for those, but we’ll take care of the rest. Wednesday PL/SQL Development and Unit Testing with Oracle SQL Developer 10:15 Performance Tuning with Oracle SQL Developer 11:45 Thursday The Soup to Nuts of Data Modeling with Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler 11:15 Some Parting Advice Always wanted to meet your favorite Oracle authors, speakers, and thought-leaders? Don’t be shy, walk right up to them and introduce yourself. Normal social rules still apply, but at the conference everyone is open and up for meeting and talking with attendees. Just understand if there’s a line that you might only get a minute or two. It’s a LONG conference though, so you’ll have plenty of time to catch up with everyone. If you’re going to be around on Tuesday evening, head on over to the OTN Lounge from 4:30 to 6:30 and hang out for our Tweet Meet. That’s right, all the Oracle nerds on Twitter will be there in one place. Be sure to put your Twitter handle on your name tag so we know who you are!

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Seriously, It’s Time to Get Your Content Act Together

- by Mike Stiles

Branded content, content marketing, social content, brand journalism, we’re seeing those terms more and more. Why? The technology tools are coming together. We should know. We can gather big data, crunch it, listen to the public, moderate, respond, get to know the customer intimately, know what they like, know what they want, we can target, distribute, amplify, measure engagement and reaction, modify strategy and even automate a great deal of all that. An amazing machine, a sleek, smooth-running engine has been built such that all the parts can interact and work together to deliver peak performance and maximum output. But that engine isn’t going anywhere without any gas. Content is the gas. Yes, we curate other people’s content. We can siphon their gas. There’s tech to help with that too. But as for the creation of original, worthwhile content made for a specific audience, our audience, machines can’t do that…at least not yet. Curated content is great. But somebody has to originate the content for it to be curated and shared. And since the need for good, curated content is obviously large and the desire to share is there, it’s a winning proposition for a brand to be a consistent producer of original content. And yet, it feels like content is an issue we’re avoiding. There’s a reluctance to build a massive pipeline if you have no idea what you’re going to run through it. The C-suite often doesn’t know what content is, that it’s different from ads, where to get it, who makes it, how long it should be, what the point of it is if there’s no hard sell of the product, what it costs, how to use it, how to measure it, how to make sure it’s good, or how to make sure it will keep flowing. It could be the reason many brands aren’t pulling the trigger on socially enabling the enterprise. And that’s a shame, because there are a lot of creative, daring, experimental, uniquely talented entertainers and journalists chomping at the bit to execute content for brands. But for many corporate executives, content is “weird,” and the people who make it are even weirder. The content side of the equation is human. It’s art, but art that can be informed by data. The natural inclination is for brands to turn to their agencies for such creative endeavors. But agencies are falling into one of two categories. They’re failing to transition from ads to content. In “Content Era, What’s the Role of Agencies?” Alexander Jutkowitz says agencies were made for one-hit campaigns, not ongoing content. Or, they’re ready and capable but can’t get clients to do the right things. Agencies have to make money, even if it means continuing to do the wrong things because that’s all the client will agree to. So what we wind up with in the pipeline is advertising, marketing-heavy content, content that was obviously created or spearheaded by non-creative executives, random & inconsistent content, copy written for SEO bots, and other completely uninteresting nightmares. Frank Rose, author of “The Art of Immersion,” writes, “Content without story and excitement is noise pollution.” In the old days, you made an ad and inserted it into shows made by people who knew what they were doing. You could bask in that show’s success and leverage their audience. Now, you are tasked with attracting, amassing and holding your own audience. You may just want to make, advertise and sell your widgets. But now there’s a war on for a precious commodity, attention. People are busy. They have filters to keep uninteresting and irrelevant things out. They value their time and expect value back when they give it up. Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute, says, "Your customers don't care about you, your products, your services…they care about themselves, their wants and their needs." Is it worth getting serious about content and doing it right? 61% of consumers feel better about a company that delivers custom content (Custom Content Council). Interesting content is one of the top 3 reasons people follow brands on social (Content+). 78% of consumers think organizations that provide custom content want to build good relationships with them (TMG Custom Media). On the B2B side, 80% of business decision makers prefer to get company info in a series of articles vs. an ad. So what’s the hang-up? Cited barriers to content marketing are lack of human resources (42%) and lack of budget (35%). 54% of brands don’t have a single on-site, dedicated content creator. And only 38% of brands have a content marketing strategy. Tech has built the biggest, most incredible stage for brands that’s ever been built. Putting something on that stage is your responsibility. Do a bad show, or no show at all, and you’ll be the beautiful, talented actress that never got discovered. @mikestilesPhoto: Gabriella Fabbri, stock.xchng

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Connecting to DB2 from SSIS

- by Christopher House

The project I'm currently working on involves moving various pieces of data from a legacy DB2 environment to some SQL Server and flat file locations. Most of the data flows are real time, so they were a natural fit for the client's MQSeries on their iSeries servers and BizTalk to handle the messaging. Some of the data flows, however, are daily batch type transmissions. For the daily batch transmissions, it was decided that we'd use SSIS to pull the data direct from DB2 to either a SQL Server or flat file. I'm not at all an SSIS guy, I've done a bit here and there, but mainly for situations were we needed to move data from a dev environment to QA, mostly informal stuff like that. And, as much as I'm not an SSIS guy, I'm even less a DB2/iSeries guy. Prior to this engagement, my knowledge of DB2 was limited to the fact that it's an IBM product and that it was probably a DBMS flatform (that's what the DB in DB2 means, right?). One of my first goals when I came onto this project was to develop of POC SSIS package to pull some data from DB2 and dump it to a flat file. It sounded like a pretty straight forward task. As always, the devil is in the details. Configuring the DB2 connection manager took a bit of trial and error. As such, I thought I'd post my experiences here in hopes that they might save someone the efforts I went through. That being said, please keep in mind, as I pointed out, I'm not at all a DB2 guy, so my terminology and explanations may not be 100% spot on. Before you get started, you need to figure out how you're going to connect to DB2. From the research I did, it looks like there are a few options. IBM has both an OLE DB and .Net data provider which can be found here. I installed their client access tools and tried to use both the .Net and OLE DB providers but I received an error message from both when attempting to connect to the iSeries that indicated I needed a license for a product called DB2 Connect. I inquired with one of my client's iSeries resources about a license for this product and it appears they didn't have one, so that meant the IBM drivers were out. The other option that I found quite a bit of discussion around was Microsoft's OLE DB Provider for DB2. This driver is part of the feature pack for SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition and can be downloaded here. As it turns out, I already had Microsoft's driver installed on my dev VM, which stuck me as odd since I hadn't installed it. I discovered that the driver is installed with the BizTalk adapter pack for host systems, which was also installed on my VM. However, it looks like the version used by the adapter pack is newer than the version provided in the SQL Server feature pack. Once you get the driver installed, create a connection manager in your package just like you normally would and select the Microsoft OLE DB Provider for DB2 from the list of available drivers. After you select the driver, you'll need to enter in your host name, login credentials and initial catalog. A couple of things to note here. First, the Initial catalog needs to be the same as your host name. Not sure why that is, but trust me, it just does. Second, for credentials, in my environment, we're using what the client's iSeries people refer to as "profiles". I guess this is similar to SQL auth in the SQL Server world. In other words, they've given me a username and password for connecting to DB, so I've entered it here. Next, click the Data Links button. On the Data Links screen, enter your package collection on the first tab. Package collection is one of those DB2 concepts I'm still trying to figure out. From the little bit I've read, packages are used to control SQL compilation and each DB2 connection needs one. The package collection, I believe, controls where your package is created. One of the iSeries folks I've been working with told me that I should always use QGPL for my package collection, as QGPL is "general purpose" and doesn't require any additional authority. Next click the ellipsis next to the Network drop-down. Here you'll want to enter your host name again. Again, not sure why you need to do this, but trust me, my connection wouldn't work until I entered my hostname here. Finally, go to the Advanced tab, select your DBMS platform and check Process binary as character. My environment is DB2 on the iSeries and iSeries is the replacement for AS/400, so I selected DB2/AS400 for my platform. Process binary as character was necessary to handle some of the DB2 data types. I had a few columns that showed all their data as "System.Byte[]". Checking Process binary as character resolved this. At this point, you should be good to go. You can go back to the Connection tab on the Data Links dialog to perform a couple of tests to validate your configuration. The Test Connection button is obvious, this just verifies you can connect to the host using the configuration data you've entered. The Packages button will attempt to connect to the host and create the packages required to execute queries. This isn't meant to be a comprehensive look SSIS and DB2, these are just some of the notes I've come up with since I've started working with DB2 and SSIS. I'm sure as I continue developing my packages, I'll find more quirks and will post them here.

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How to Modify Data Security in Fusion Applications

- by Elie Wazen

The reference implementation in Fusion Applications is designed with built-in data security on business objects that implement the most common business practices. For example, the “Sales Representative” job has the following two data security rules implemented on an “Opportunity” to restrict the list of Opportunities that are visible to an Sales Representative: Can view all the Opportunities where they are a member of the Opportunity Team Can view all the Opportunities where they are a resource of a territory in the Opportunity territory team While the above conditions may represent the most common access requirements of an Opportunity, some customers may have additional access constraints. This blog post explains: How to discover the data security implemented in Fusion Applications. How to customize data security Illustrative example. a.) How to discover seeded data security definitions The Security Reference Manuals explain the Function and Data Security implemented on each job role. Security Reference Manuals are available on Oracle Enterprise Repository for Oracle Fusion Applications. The following is a snap shot of the security documented for the “Sales Representative” Job. The two data security policies define the list of Opportunities a Sales Representative can view. Here is a sample of data security policies on an Opportunity. Business Object Policy Description Policy Store Implementation Opportunity A Sales Representative can view opportunity where they are a territory resource in the opportunity territory team Role: Opportunity Territory Resource Duty Privilege: View Opportunity (Data) Resource: Opportunity A Sales Representative can view opportunity where they are an opportunity sales team member with view, edit, or full access Role: Opportunity Sales Representative Duty Privilege: View Opportunity (Data) Resource: Opportunity Description of Columns Column Name Description Policy Description Explains the data filters that are implemented as a SQL Where Clause in a Data Security Grant Policy Store Implementation Provides the implementation details of the Data Security Grant for this policy. In this example the Opportunities listed for a “Sales Representative” job role are derived from a combination of two grants defined on two separate duty roles at are inherited by the Sales Representative job role. b.) How to customize data security Requirement 1: Opportunities should be viewed only by members of the opportunity team and not by all the members of all the territories on the opportunity. Solution: Remove the role “Opportunity Territory Resource Duty” from the hierarchy of the “Sales Representative” job role. Best Practice: Do not modify the seeded role hierarchy. Create a custom “Sales Representative” job role and build the role hierarchy with the seeded duty roles. Requirement 2: Opportunities must be more restrictive based on a custom attribute that identifies if a Opportunity is confidential or not. Confidential Opportunities must be visible only the owner of the Opportunity. Solution: Modify the (2) data security policy in the above example as follows: A Sales Representative can view opportunity where they are a territory resource in the opportunity territory team and the opportunity is not confidential. Implementation of this policy is more invasive. The seeded SQL where clause of the data security grant on “Opportunity Territory Resource Duty” has to be modified and the condition that checks for the confidential flag must be added. Best Practice: Do not modify the seeded grant. Create a new grant with the modified condition. End Date the seeded grant. c.) Illustrative Example (Implementing Requirement 2) A data security policy contains the following components: Role Object Instance Set Action Of the above four components, the Role and Instance Set are the only components that are customizable. Object and Actions for that object are seed data and cannot be modified. To customize a seeded policy, “A Sales Representative can view opportunity where they are a territory resource in the opportunity territory team”, Find the seeded policy Identify the Role, Object, Instance Set and Action components of the policy Create a new custom instance set based on the seeded instance set. End Date the seeded policies Create a new data security policy with custom instance set c-1: Find the seeded policy Step 1: 1. Find the Role 2. Open 3. Find Policies Step 2: Click on the Data Security Tab Sort by “Resource Name” Find all the policies with the “Condition” as “where they are a territory resource in the opportunity territory team” In this example, we can see there are 5 policies for “Opportunity Territory Resource Duty” on Opportunity object. Step 3: Now that we know the policy details, we need to create new instance set with the custom condition. All instance sets are linked to the object. Find the object using global search option. Open it and click on “condition” tab Sort by Display name Find the Instance set Edit the instance set and copy the “SQL Predicate” to a notepad. Create a new instance set with the modified SQL Predicate from above by clicking on the icon as shown below. Step 4: End date the seeded data security policies on the duty role and create new policies with your custom instance set. Repeat the navigation in step Edit each of the 5 policies and end date them 3. Create new custom policies with the same information as the seeded policies in the “General Information”, “Roles” and “Action” tabs. 4. In the “Rules” tab, please pick the new instance set that was created in Step 3.

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Three Steps to Becoming an Expert Oracle Linux System Administrator

- by Antoinette O'Sullivan

Oracle provides a complete system administration curriculum to take you from your initial experience of Unix to being an expert Oracle Linux system administrator. You can take these live instructor-led courses from your own desk through live-virtual events or by traveling to an education center through in-class events. Step 1: Unix and Linux Essentials This 3-day course is designed for users and administrators who are new to Oracle Linux. It will help you develop the basic UNIX skills needed to interact comfortably and confidently with the operating system. Below is a sample of the in-class events already on the schedule. Location Date Delivery Language Vivoorde, Belgium 28 October 2013 English Berlin, Germany 15 July 2013 German Utrecht, Netherlands 19 August 2013 Dutch Bucarest, Romania 12 August 2013 Romanian Ankara, Turkey 6 January 2013 Turkish Nairobi, Kenya 5 August 2013 English Kaduna, Nigeria 15 July 2013 English Woodmead, South Africa 15 July 2013 English Jakarta, Indonesia 23 September 2013 English Petaling Jaya, Malaysia 22 July 2013 English Makati City, Philippines 3 July 2013 English Bangkok, Thailand 20 November 2013 English Auckland, New Zealand 5 August 2013 English Melbourne, Australia 12 August 2013 English Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto, Canada 3 September 2013 English San Francisco and San Jose, CA, United States 15 July 2013 English Reston, VA, United States 7 August 2013 English Edison, NJ, and King of Prussia, PA, United States 3 September 2013 English Denver, CO, United States 25 September 2013 English Cambridge, MA, and Roseville MN, United States 6 November 2013 English Phoenix, AZ, and Sacramento, CA, United States 25 November 2013 English Step 2: Oracle Linux System Administration Through this 5-day course, become a knowledgeable Oracle Linux system administrator, learning how to install Oracle Linux and the benefits of Oracle's Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel and Ksplice. Below is a sample of in-class events already on the schedule. Location Date Delivery Language Vienna, Austria 1 July 2013 German Vivoorde, Belgium 18 November 2013 English Zagreb, Croatia 16 September 2013 Croatian London, England 3 September 2013 English Manchester, England 9 September 2013 English Paris, France 29 July 2013 French Budapest, Hungary 8 July 2013 Hungarian Utrecht, Netherland 2 September 2013 Dutch Warsaw, Poland 15 July 2013 Polish Bucharest, Romania 2 December 2013 Romanian Ankara, Turkey 7 October 2013 Turkish Istanbul, Turkey 9 September 2013 Turkish Nairobi, Kenya 12 August 2013 English Petaling Jaya, Malaysia 29 July 2013 English Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 21 October 2013 English Makati City, Philippines 8 July 2013 English Singapore 24 July 2013 English Bangkok, Thailand 26 July 2013 English Canberra, Australia 19 August 2013 English Melbourne, Australia 16 September 2013 English Sydney, Australia 19 August 2013 English Mississauga, Canada 26 August 2013 English Ottawa, Canada 4 November 2013 English Phoenix, AZ, United States 7 October 2013 English Belmont, CA, United States 23 September 2013 English Irvine, CA, United States 18 November 2013 English Sacramento, CA, United States 19 August 2013 English San Francisco, CA, United States 15 July 2013 English Denver, CO, United States 19 August 2013 English Schaumburg, IL, United States 26 August 2013 English Indianapolis, IN, United States 14 October 2013 English Columbia, MD, United States 30 September 2013 English Roseville, MN, United States 19 August 2013 English St Louis, MO, United States 7 October 2013 English Edison, NJ, United States 28 October 2013 English Beaverton, OR, United States 12 August 2013 English Pittsburg, PA, United States 9 December 2013 English Reston, VA, United States 12 August 2013 English Brookfield, WI, United States 30 September 2013 English Sao Paolo, Brazil 15 July 2013 Brazilian Portugese Step 3: Oracle Linux Advanced System Administration This new 3-day course is ideal for administrators who want to learn about managing resources and file systems while developing troubleshooting and advanced storage administration skills. You will learn about Linux Containers, Cgroups, btrfs, DTrace and more. Below is a sample of in-class events already on the schedule. Location Date Delivery Language Melbourne, Australia 9 October 2013 English Roseville, MN, United States 3 September 2013 English To register for or learn more about these courses, go to http://oracle.com/education/linux. Watch this video to learn more about Oracle's operating system training.

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, March 07, 2010

CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, March 07, 2010New ProjectsAlgorithminator: Universal .NET algorithm visualizer, which helps you to illustrate any algorithm, written in any .NET language. Still in development.ALToolkit: Contains a set of handy .NET components/classes. Currently it contains: * A Numeric Text Box (an Extended NumericUpDown) * A Splash Screen base fo...Automaton Home: Automaton is a home automation software built with a n-Tier, MVVM pattern utilzing WCF, EF, WPF, Silverlight and XBAP.Developer Controls: Developer Controls contains various controls to help build applications that can script/write code.Dynamic Reference Manager: Dynamic Reference Manager is a set (more like a small group) of classes and attributes written in C# that allows any .NET program to reference othe...indiologic: Utilities of an IndioNeural Cryptography in F#: This project is my magistracy resulting work. It is intended to be an example of using neural networks in cryptography. Hashing functions are chose...Particle Filter Visualization: Particle Filter Visualization Program for the Intel Science and Engineering FairPólya: Efficient, immutable, polymorphic collections. .Net lacks them, we provide them*. * By we, we mean I; and by efficient, I mean hopefully so.project euler solutions from mhinze: mhinze project euler solutionsSilverlight 4 and WCF multi layer: Silverlight 4 and WCF multi layersqwarea: Project for a browser-based, minimalistic, massively multiplayer strategy game. Part of the "Génie logiciel et Cloud Computing" course of the ENS (...SuperSocket: SuperSocket, a socket application framework can build FTP/SMTP/POP server easilyToast (for ASP.NET MVC): Dynamic, developer & designer friendly content injection, compression and optimization for ASP.NET MVCNew ReleasesALToolkit: ALToolkit 1.0: Binary release of the libraries containing: NumericTextBox SplashScreen Based on the VB.NET code, but that doesn't really matter.Blacklist of Providers: 1.0-Milestone 1: Blacklist of Providers.Milestone 1In this development release implemented - Main interface (Work Item #5453) - Database (Work Item #5523)C# Linear Hash Table: Linear Hash Table b2: Now includes a default constructor, and will throw an exception if capacity is not set to a power of 2 or loadToMaintain is below 1.Composure: CassiniDev-Trunk-40745-VS2010.rc1.NET4: A simple port of the CassiniDev portable web server project for Visual Studio 2010 RC1 built against .NET 4.0. The WCF tests currently fail unless...Developer Controls: DevControls: These are the version 1.0 releases of these controls. Download the individually or all together (in a .zip file). More releases coming soon!Dynamic Reference Manager: DRM Alpha1: This is the first release. I'm calling it Alpha because I intend implementing other functions, but I do not intend changing the way current functio...ESB Toolkit Extensions: Tellago SOA ESB Extenstions v0.3: Windows Installer file that installs Library on a BizTalk ESB 2.0 system. This Install automatically configures the esb.config to use the new compo...GKO Libraries: GKO Libraries 0.1 Alpha: 0.1 AlphaHome Access Plus+: v3.0.3.0: Version 3.0.3.0 Release Change Log: Added Announcement Box Removed script files that aren't needed Fixed & issue in directory path Stylesheet...Icarus Scene Engine: Icarus Scene Engine 1.10.306.840: Icarus Professional, Icarus Player, the supporting software for Icarus Scene Engine, with some included samples, and the start of a tutorial (with ...mavjuz WndLpt: wndlpt-0.2.5: New: Response to 5 LPT inputs "test i 1" New: Reaction to 12 LPT outputs "test q 8" New: Reaction to all LPT pins "test pin 15" New: Syntax: ...Neural Cryptography in F#: Neural Cryptography 0.0.1: The most simple version of this project. It has a neural network that works just like logical AND and a possibility to recreate neural network from...Password Provider: 1.0.3: This release fixes a bug which caused the program to crash when double clicking on a generic item.RoTwee: RoTwee 6.2.0.0: New feature is as next. 16649 Add hashtag for tweet of tune.Now you can tweet your playing tune with hashtag.Visual Studio DSite: Picture Viewer (Visual C++ 2008): This example source code allows you to view any picture you want in the click of a button. All you got to do is click the button and browser via th...WatchersNET CKEditor™ Provider for DotNetNuke: CKEditor Provider 1.8.00: Whats New File Browser: Folders & Files View reworked File Browser: Folders & Files View reworked File Browser: Folders are displayed as TreeVi...WSDLGenerator: WSDLGenerator 0.0.0.4: - replaced CommonLibrary.dll by CommandLineParser.dll - added better support for custom complex typesMost Popular ProjectsMetaSharpSilverlight ToolkitASP.NET Ajax LibraryAll-In-One Code FrameworkWindows 7 USB/DVD Download Toolニコ生アラートWindows Double ExplorerVirtual Router - Wifi Hot Spot for Windows 7 / 2008 R2Caliburn: An Application Framework for WPF and SilverlightArkSwitchMost Active ProjectsUmbraco CMSRawrSDS: Scientific DataSet library and toolsBlogEngine.NETjQuery Library for SharePoint Web Servicespatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryIonics Isapi Rewrite FilterFarseer Physics EngineFasterflect - A Fast and Simple Reflection APIFluent Assertions

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How to Access a Windows Desktop From Your Tablet or Phone

- by Chris Hoffman

iPads and Android tablets can’t run Windows apps locally, but they can access a Windows desktops remotely — even with a physical keyboard. In a pinch, the same tricks can be used to access a Windows desktop from a smartphone. Microsoft recently launched their own official Remote Desktop app for iOS and Android devices. Microsoft’s official apps are primarily useful for businesses — if you’re a typical home user, you’ll want to use a different remote desktop solution. Microsoft’s Remote Desktop App Microsoft now offers official Remote Desktop apps for iPad and iPhone as well as Android tablets and smartphones. The apps use Microsoft’s RDP protocol to connect to remote Windows systems. They’re essentially just new clients for the Remote Desktop feature that has been included in Windows for more than a decade. There are big problems with these apps if you’re an average home user. Microsoft’s Remote Desktop server is not available on standard or Home versions of Windows, only Professional and Enterprise editions. If you do have the appropriate edition of Windows, you’ll have to set up port-forwarding and a dynamic DNS service if you want to access your Windows desktop from outside your local network. You could also set up a VPN — either way you’ll need to do some footwork. This app is a gift to businesses who are already using Remote Desktop and enthusiasts who have the more expensive versions of Windows and don’t mind the configuration process. To set this up, follow our guide to setting up Remote Desktop for Internet access and connect using the Remote Desktop app instead of traditional Remote Desktop clients. TeamViewer If you have the standard edition of Windows or you just don’t want to mess around with port-forwarding and dynamic DNS configuration, you’ll want to skip Remote Desktop and use something else. We like TeamViewer for this. Just as it’s a great way to remotely troubleshoot your relatives’ computers, it’s also a great way to remotely access your own computer. It doesn’t have the same limitations Microsoft’s Remote Desktop system has — it’s completely free for personal use, runs on any edition of Windows, and is easy to set up. There’s no messing around with port-forwarding or dynamic DNS configuration. To get started, just download and run the TeamViewer program on your computer. You can get started with it immediately, but you’ll want to set up unattended access to connect remotely without using the codes displayed on your screen. To connect, just install the TeamViewer mobile app and log in with the details the TeamViewer window displays. TeamViewer also offers software that runs on Mac and Linux, so you can remote-control other types of computers from your tablet. Other Options Microsoft’s Remote Desktop app and TeamViewer aren’t the only options, of course. There are a variety of different apps and services built for this. Splashtop is another fairly popular remote desktop solution that some people report as being faster. Unfortunately, it’s not entirely free — the iPad and iPhone app costs $20 at regular price. To use it over the Internet, you’ll have to purchase an additional “Anywhere Access Pack.” If you’re frustrated with TeamViewer’s speed and you don’t mind spending money, you may want to try Splashtop instead. As always, you could use any VNC server along with a VNC client app. VNC is the do-it-yourself solution — it’s an open protocol. Unlike Microsoft’s RDP protocol, you can install a VNC server of your own, configure it how you like, and use any mobile VNC client app. This is more flexible because you can install a VNC server on any edition of Windows or even non-Windows operating systems, but it otherwise has all the same issues — you have to worry about port-forwarding, setting up dynamic DNS, and securing your VNC server. Keep an eye on Chrome Remote Desktop. Chrome already offers a built-in remote desktop feature that allows you to remotely control your PC from another Windows, Mac, Linux, or Chrome OS device. Google is rumored to be building an Android app for Chrome Remote Desktop, which would allow you to easily access a computer running Chrome from Android tablets. Google’s solution is much more user-friendly for average people than Microsoft’s Remote Desktop solution, which is clearly geared towards businesses. Chrome Remote Desktop just requires signing in with a Google account. Remote desktop solutions like Microsoft’s Remote Desktop app and TeamViewer are also available for Windows tablets. On Windows RT devices like the Surface RT and Surface 2, they allow you to use the full Windows desktop that’s unavailable on your tablet.

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EBS Techstack Sessions at OAUG/Collaborate 2010

- by Steven Chan

We have a large contingent of E-Business Suite Applications Technology Group staff rolling out to the OAUG/Collaborate 2010 conference in Las Vegas new week. Our Applications Technology Group staff will be appearing as guest speakers or full-speakers at the following E-Business Suite technology stack related sessions:Database Special Interest GroupSunday, April 18, 11:00 AM, Breakers FSIG Leaders: Michael Brown, Colibri; Sandra Vucinic, Vlad GroupGuest Speaker: Steven ChanCovering database upcoming and past desupport dates, and database support policies as they apply to E-Business Suite environments, general Q&A E-Business Suite Technology Stack Special Interest GroupSunday, April 18, 3:00 PM, Breakers FSIG Leaders: Elke Phelps, Paul Jackson, HumanaGuest Speaker: Steven ChanCovering the latest EBS technology stack certifications, roadmap, desupport noticesupgrade options for Discoverer, OID, SSO, Portal, general Q&A E-Business Suite Applications Technology Roadmap & VisionMonday, April 19, 8:00 AM, South Seas GOracle Speaker: Uma PrabhalaLatest developments for SOA, AOL, OAF, Web ADI, SES, AMP, ACMP, security, and other technologies Oracle E-Business Suite Applications Strategy and General Manager UpdateMonday, April 19, 2:30 PM, Mandalay Bay Ballroom DOracle Speaker: Cliff GodwinUpdate on the entire Oracle E-Business Suite product line. The session covers the value delivered by the current release of Oracle E-Business Suite applications, the momentum, and how Oracle E-Business Suite applications integrate into Oracle's overall applications strategy 10 Things You Can Do Today to Prepare for the Next Generation ApplicationsTuesday, April 20, 8:00 AM, South Seas FOracle Speaker: Nadia Bendjedou"Common sense" and "practical" steps that can be taken today to increase the value of your Oracle Applications (E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, Siebel, and JDE) investments by using the latest Oracle solutions and technologiesReducing TCO using Oracle E-Business Suite Management PacksTuesday, April 20, 10:30 AM, South Seas EOracle Speaker: Angelo RosadoLearn how you can reduce the Total Cost of Ownership by implementing Application Management Pack (AMP) and Application Change Management Pack (ACP) for E-Business Suite 11i, R12, R12.1. AMP is Oracle's next generation system manageability product offering that provides a centralized platform to manage and maintain EBS. ACP is Oracle's offering to monitor and manage E-Business Suite changes in the areas of E-Business Suite Customizations, Patches and Functional Setups. E-Business Suite Upgrade Special Interest GroupTuesday, April 20, 3:15 PM, South Seas ESIG Leaders: John Stouffer; Sandra Vucinic, Vlad GroupGuest Speaker: Steven ChanParticipating in general Q&A E-Business Suite Technology Essentials: Using the Latest Oracle Technologies with E-Business Suite Wednesday, April 21, 8:00 AM, South Seas HOracle Speaker: Lisa ParekhOracle continues to build new functionality into the Oracle Database, Fusion Middleware, and Enterprise Manager. Come see how you can enhance the value of E-Business Suite for your users and lower your costs of ownership by utilizing the latest features of these Oracle technologies with E-Business Suite. Learn about the latest advanced E-Business Suite topologies and features, including new options for security, performance, third-party integration, SOA, virtualization, clouds, systems management, and much more How to Leverage the New E-Business Suite R12.1 Solutions Without Upgrading your 11.5.10 EnvironmentWednesday, April 21, 10:30 AMOracle Speaker: Nadia Bendjedou, South Seas ELearn how you can use the latest E-Business Suite 12.1 standalone solutions without upgrading from your E-Business Suite 11.5.10 environment Web 2.0 User Experience and Oracle Fusion Middleware Integration with Oracle E-Business SuiteWednesday, April 21, 4:00 PM, South Seas FOracle Speaker: Padmaprabodh AmbaleSee the next generation Oracle E-Business Suite OA framework improvements that will provide new rich interactions in components such as LOV, Tables and Attachments. See new components like the Rich Container that allows any Web 2.0 content like Flash or OBIEE to be embedded in OA Framework pages. Advanced Technology Deployment Architectures for E-Business Suite Wednesday, April 21, 2:15 PM, South Seas EOracle Speaker: Steven ChanLearn how to take advantage of the latest version of Oracle Fusion Middleware with Oracle E-Business Suite. Learn how to utilize identity management systems and LDAP directories. In addition, come to this session for answers about advanced network deployments involving reverse proxy servers, load balancers, and DMZ's, and to see how you can take benefit from virtualization and new system management capabilities. Upgrading to Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1 - Best PracticesThursday, April 22, 11:00 AM, South Seas EOracle Speaker: Lester Gutierrez, Udayan ParvateFundamental of upgrading to Release 12.1, which includes the technology stack components and differences, the upgrade path from various releases of Oracle E-Business Suite, upgrade steps, monitoring the upgrade, hints and tips for minimizing downtime and upgrade best practices for making the upgrade to Release 12.1 a success. We look forward to seeing you there!

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Management and Monitoring Tools for Windows Azure

- by BuckWoody

With such a large platform, Windows Azure has a lot of moving parts. We’ve done our best to keep the interface as simple as possible, while giving you the most control and visibility we can. However, as with most Microsoft products, there are multiple ways to do something – and I’ve always found that to be a good strength. Depending on the situation, I might want a graphical interface, a command-line interface, or just an API so I can incorporate the management into my own tools, or have third-party companies write other tools. While by no means exhaustive, I thought I might put together a quick list of a few tools you can use to manage and monitor Windows Azure components, from our IaaS, SaaS and PaaS offerings. Some of the products focus on one area more than another, but all are available today. I’ll try and maintain this list to keep it current, but make sure you check the date of this post’s update – if it’s more than six months old, it’s most likely out of date. Things move fast in the cloud. The Windows Azure Management Portal The primary tool for managing Windows Azure is our portal – most everything you need is there, from creating new services to querying a database. There are two versions as of this writing – a Silverlight client version, and a newer HTML5 version. The latter is being updated constantly to be in parity with the Silverlight client. There’s a balance in this portal between simplicity and power – we’re following the “less is more” approach, with increasing levels of detail as you work through the portal rather than overwhelming you with a single, long “more is more” page. You can find the Portal here: http://windowsazure.com (then click “Log In” and then “Portal”) Windows Azure Management API You can also use programming tools to either write your own interface, or simply provide management functions directly within your solution. You have two options – you can use the more universal REST API’s, which area bit more complex but work with any system that can write to them, or the more approachable .NET API calls in code. You can find the reference for the API’s here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/ee460799.aspx All Class Libraries, for each part of Windows Azure: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee393295.aspx PowerShell Command-lets PowerShell is one of the most powerful scripting languages I’ve used with Windows – and it’s baked into all of our products. When you need to work with multiple servers, scripting is really the only way to go, and the Windows Azure PowerShell Command-Lets allow you to work across most any part of the platform – and can even be used within the services themselves. You can do everything with them from creating a new IaaS, PaaS or SaaS service, to controlling them and even working with security and more. You can find more about the Command-Lets here: http://wappowershell.codeplex.com/documentation (older link, still works, will point you to the new ones as well) We have command-line utilities for other operating systems as well: https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/manage/downloads/ Video walkthrough of using the Command-Lets: http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/BUILD/BUILD2011/SAC-859T System Center System Center is actually a suite of graphical tools you can use to manage, deploy, control, monitor and tune software from Microsoft and even other platforms. This will be the primary tool we’ll recommend for managing a hybrid or contiguous management process – and as time goes on you’ll see more and more features put into System Center for the entire Windows Azure suite of products. You can find the Management Pack and README for it here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=11324 SQL Server Management Studio / Data Tools / Visual Studio SQL Server has two built-in management and development, and since Version 2008 R2, you can use them to manage Windows Azure Databases. Visual Studio also lets you connect to and manage portions of Windows Azure as well as Windows Azure Databases. You can read more about Visual Studio here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/ee405484 You can read more about the SQL tools here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/ee621784.aspx Vendor-Provided Tools Microsoft does not suggest or endorse a specific third-party product. We do, however, use them, and see lots of other customers use them. You can browse to these sites to learn more, and chat with their folks directly on how they support Windows Azure. Cerebrata: Tools for managing from the command-line, graphical diagnostics, graphical storage management - http://www.cerebrata.com/ Quest Cloud Tools: Monitoring, Storage Management, and costing tools - http://communities.quest.com/community/cloud-tools Paraleap: Monitoring tool - http://www.paraleap.com/AzureWatch Cloudgraphs: Monitoring too - http://www.cloudgraphs.com/ Opstera: Monitoring for Windows Azure and a Scale-out pattern manager - http://www.opstera.com/products/Azureops/ Compuware: SaaS performance monitoring, load testing - http://www.compuware.com/application-performance-management/gomez-apm-products.html SOASTA: Penetration and Security Testing - http://www.soasta.com/cloudtest/enterprise/ LoadStorm: Load-testing tool - http://loadstorm.com/windows-azure Open-Source Tools This is probably the most specific set of tools, and the list I’ll have to maintain most often. Smaller projects have a way of coming and going, so I’ll try and make sure this list is current. Windows Azure MMC: (I actually use this one a lot) http://wapmmc.codeplex.com/ Windows Azure Diagnostics Monitor: http://archive.msdn.microsoft.com/wazdmon Azure Application Monitor: http://azuremonitor.codeplex.com/ Azure Web Log: http://www.xentrik.net/software/azure_web_log.html Cloud Ninja:Multi-Tennant billing and performance monitor - http://cnmb.codeplex.com/ Cloud Samurai: Multi-Tennant Management- http://cloudsamurai.codeplex.com/ If you have additions to this list, please post them as a comment and I’ll research and then add them. Thanks!

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Protecting offline IRM rights and the error "Unable to Connect to Offline database"

- by Simon Thorpe

One of the most common problems I get asked about Oracle IRM is in relation to the error message "Unable to Connect to Offline database". This error message is a result of how Oracle IRM is protecting the cached rights on the local machine and if that cache has become invalid in anyway, this error is thrown. Offline rights and security First we need to understand how Oracle IRM handles offline use. The way it is implemented is one of the main reasons why Oracle IRM is the leading document security solution and demonstrates our methodology to ensure that solutions address both security and usability and puts the balance of these two in your control. Each classification has a set of predefined roles that the manager of the classification can assign to users. Each role has an offline period which determines the amount of time a user can access content without having to communicate with the IRM server. By default for the context model, which is the classification system that ships out of the box with Oracle IRM, the offline period for each role is 3 days. This is easily changed however and can be as low as under an hour to as long as years. It is also possible to switch off the ability to access content offline which can be useful when content is very sensitive and requires a tight leash. So when a user is online, transparently in the background, the Oracle IRM Desktop communicates with the server and updates the users rights and offline periods. This transparent synchronization period is determined by the server and communicated to all IRM Desktops and allows for users rights to be kept up to date without their intervention. This allows us to support some very important scenarios which are key to a successful IRM solution. A user doesn't have to make any decision when going offline, they simply unplug their laptop and they already have their offline periods synchronized to the maximum values. Any solution that requires a user to make a decision at the point of going offline isn't going to work because people forget to do this and will therefore be unable to legitimately access their content offline. If your rights change to REMOVE your access to content, this also happens in the background. This is very useful when someone has an offline duration of a week and they happen to make a connection to the internet 3 days into that offline period, the Oracle IRM Desktop detects this online state and automatically updates all rights for the user. This means the business risk is reduced when setting long offline periods, because of the daily transparent sync, you can reflect changes as soon as the user is online. Of course, if they choose not to come online at all during that week offline period, you cannot effect change, but you take that risk in giving the 7 day offline period in the first place. If you are added to a NEW classification during the day, this will automatically be synchronized without the user even having to open a piece of content secured against that classification. This is very important, consider the scenario where a senior executive downloads all their email but doesn't open any of it. Disconnects the laptop and then gets on a plane. During the flight they attempt to open a document attached to a downloaded email which has been secured against an IRM classification the user was not even aware they had access to. Because their new role in this classification was automatically synchronized their experience is a good one and the document opens. More information on how the Oracle IRM classification model works can be found in this article by Martin Abrahams. So what about problems accessing the offline rights database? So onto the core issue... when these rights are cached to your machine they are stored in an encrypted database. The encryption of this offline database is keyed to the instance of the installation of the IRM Desktop and the Windows user account. Why? Well what you do not want to happen is for someone to get their rights for content and then copy these files across hundreds of other machines, therefore getting access to sensitive content across many environments. The IRM server has a setting which controls how many times you can cache these rights on unique machines. This is because people typically access IRM content on more than one computer. Their work desktop, a laptop and often a home computer. So Oracle IRM allows for the usability of caching rights on more than one computer whilst retaining strong security over this cache. So what happens if these files are corrupted in someway? That's when you will see the error, Unable to Connect to Offline database. The most common instance of seeing this is when you are using virtual machines and copy them from one computer to the next. The virtual machine software, VMWare Workstation for example, makes changes to the unique information of that virtual machine and as such invalidates the offline database. How do you solve the problem? Resolution is however simple. You just delete all of the offline database files on the machine and they will be recreated with working encryption when the Oracle IRM Desktop next starts. However this does mean that the IRM server will think you have your rights cached to more than one computer and you will need to rerequest your rights, even though you are only going to be accessing them on one. Because it still thinks the old cache is valid. So be aware, it is good practice to increase the server limit from the default of 1 to say 3 or 4. This is done using the Enterprise Manager instance of IRM. So to delete these offline files I have a simple .bat file you can use; Download DeleteOfflineDBs.bat Note that this uses pskillto stop the irmBackground.exe from running. This is part of the IRM Desktop and holds open a lock to the offline database. Either kill this from task manager or use pskillas part of the script.

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Logical Domain Modeling Made Simple

- by Knut Vatsendvik

How can logical domain modeling be made simple and collaborative? Many non-technical end-users, managers and business domain experts find it difficult to understand the visual models offered by many UML tools. This creates trouble in capturing and verifying the information that goes into a logical domain model. The tools are also too advanced and complex for a non-technical user to learn and use. We have therefore, in our current project, ended up with using Confluence as tool for designing the logical domain model with the help of a few very useful plugins. Big thanks to Ole Nymoen and Per Spilling for their expertise in this field that made this posting possible. Confluence Plugins Here is a list of Confluence plugins used in this solution. Install these before trying out the macros used below. Plugin Description Copy Space Allows a space administrator to copy a space, including the pages within the space Metadata Supports adding metadata to Wiki pages Label Manages labeling of pages Linking Contains macros for linking to templates, the dashboard and other Table Enhances the table capability in Confluence Creating a Confluence Space First we need to create a new confluence space for the domain model. Click the link Create a Space located below the list of spaces on the Dashboard. Please contact your Confluence administrator is you do not have permissions to do this. For illustrative purpose all attributes and entities in this posting are based on my imaginary project manager domain model. When a logical domain model is good enough for being implemented, do a copy of the Confluence Space (see Copy Space plugin). In this way you create a stable version of the logical domain model while further design can continue with the new copied space. Typical will the implementation phase result in a database design and/or a XSD schema design. Add Space Templates Go to the Home page of your Confluence Space. Navigate to the Browse drop-down menu and click on Advanced. Then click the Templates option in the left navigation panel. Click Add New Space Template to add the following three templates. Name: attribute {metadata-list} || Name | | || Type | | || Format | | || Description | | {metadata-list} {add-label:attribute} Name: primary-type {metadata-list} || Name | || || Type | || || Format | || || Description | || {metadata-list} {add-label:primary-type} Name: complex-type {metadata-list} || Name | || || Description | || {metadata-list} h3. Attributes || Name || Type || Format || Description || | [name] | {metadata-from:name|Type} | {metadata-from:name|Format} | {metadata-from:name|Description} | {add-label:complex-type,entity} The metadata-list macro (see Metadata plugin) will save a list of metadata values to the page. The add-label macro (see Label plugin) will automatically label the page. Primary Types Page Our first page to add will act as container for our primary types. Switch to Wiki markup when adding the following content to the page. | (+) {add-page:template=primary-type|parent=@self}Add new primary type{add-page} | {metadata-report:Name,Type,Format,Description|sort=Name|root=@self|pages=@descendents} Once the page is created, click the Add new primary type (create-page macro) to start creating a new pages. Here is an example of input to the LocalDate page. Embrace the LocalDate with square brackets [] to make the page linkable. Again switch to Wiki markup before editing. {metadata-list} || Name | [LocalDate] || || Type | Date || || Format | YYYY-MM-DD || || Description | Date in local time zone. YYYY = year, MM = month and DD = day || {metadata-list} {add-label:primary-type} The metadata-report macro will show a tabular report of all child pages. Attributes Page The next page will act as container for all of our attributes. | (+) {add-page:template=attribute|parent=@self|title=attribute}Add new attribute{add-page} | {metadata-report:Name,Type,Format,Description|sort=Name|pages=@descendants} Here is an example of input to the startDate page. {metadata-list} || Name | [startDate] || || Type | [LocalDate] || || Format | {metadata-from:LocalDate|Format} || || Description | The projects start date || {metadata-list} {add-label:attribute} Using the metadata-from macro we fetch the text from the previously created LocalDate page. Complex Types Page The last page in this example shows how attributes can be combined together to form more complex types. h3. Intro Overview of complex types in the domain model. | (+) {add-page:template=complex-type|parent=@self}Add a new complex type{add-page}\\ | {metadata-report:Name,Description|sort=Name|root=@self|pages=@descendents} Here is an example of input to the ProjectType page. {metadata-list} || Name | [ProjectType] || || Description | Represents a project || {metadata-list} h3. Attributes || Name || Type || Format || Description || | [projectId] | {metadata-from:projectId|Type} | {metadata-from:projectId|Format} | {metadata-from:projectId|Description} | | [name] | {metadata-from:name|Type} | {metadata-from:name|Format} | {metadata-from:name|Description} | | [description] | {metadata-from:description|Type} | {metadata-from:description|Format} | {metadata-from:description|Description} | | [startDate] | {metadata-from:startDate|Type} | {metadata-from:startDate|Format} | {metadata-from:startDate|Description} | {add-label:complex-type,entity} Gives us this Conclusion Using a web-based corporate Wiki like Confluence to create a logical domain model increases the collaboration between people with different roles in the enterprise. It’s my believe that this helps the domain model to be more accurate, and better documented. In our real project we have more pages than illustrated here to complete the documentation. We do also still use UML tools to create different types of diagrams that Confluence do not support. As a last tip, an ImageMap plugin can make those diagrams clickable when used in pages. Enjoy!

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Using LogParser - part 2

- by fatherjack

PersonAddress.csv SalesOrderDetail.tsv In part 1 of this series we downloaded and installed LogParser and used it to list data from a csv file. That was a good start and in this article we are going to see the different ways we can stream data and choose whether a whole file is selected. We are also going to take a brief look at what file types we can interrogate. If we take the query from part 1 and add a value for the output parameter as -o:datagrid so that the query becomes LOGPARSER "SELECT top 15 * FROM C:\LP\person_address.csv" -o:datagrid and run that we get a different result. A pop-up dialog that lets us view the results in a resizable grid. Notice that because we didn't specify the columns we wanted returned by LogParser (we used SELECT *) is has added two columns to the recordset - filename and rownumber. This behaviour can be very useful as we will see in future parts of this series. You can click Next 10 rows or All rows or close the datagrid once you are finished reviewing the data. You may have noticed that the files that I am working with are different file types - one is a csv (comma separated values) and the other is a tsv (tab separated values). If you want to convert a file from one to another then LogParser makes it incredibly simple. Rather than using 'datagrid' as the value for the output parameter, use 'csv': logparser "SELECT SalesOrderID, SalesOrderDetailID, CarrierTrackingNumber, OrderQty, ProductID, SpecialOfferID, UnitPrice, UnitPriceDiscount, LineTotal, rowguid, ModifiedDate into C:\Sales_SalesOrderDetail.csv FROM C:\Sales_SalesOrderDetail.tsv" -i:tsv -o:csv Those familiar with SQL will not have to make a very big leap of faith to making adjustments to the above query to filter in/out records from the source file. Lets get all the records from the same file where the Order Quantity (OrderQty) is more than 25: logparser "SELECT SalesOrderID, SalesOrderDetailID, CarrierTrackingNumber, OrderQty, ProductID, SpecialOfferID, UnitPrice, UnitPriceDiscount, LineTotal, rowguid, ModifiedDate into C:\LP\Sales_SalesOrderDetailOver25.csv FROM C:\LP\Sales_SalesOrderDetail.tsv WHERE orderqty > 25" -i:tsv -o:csv Or we could find all those records where the Order Quantity is equal to 25 and output it to an xml file: logparser "SELECT SalesOrderID, SalesOrderDetailID, CarrierTrackingNumber, OrderQty, ProductID, SpecialOfferID, UnitPrice, UnitPriceDiscount, LineTotal, rowguid, ModifiedDate into C:\LP\Sales_SalesOrderDetailEq25.xml FROM C:\LP\Sales_SalesOrderDetail.tsv WHERE orderqty = 25" -i:tsv -o:xml All the standard comparison operators are to be found in LogParser; >, <, =, LIKE, BETWEEN, OR, NOT, AND. Input and Output file formats. LogParser has a pretty impressive list of file formats that it can parse and a good selection of output formats that will let you generate output in a format that is useable for whatever process or application you may be using. From any of these To any of these IISW3C: parses IIS log files in the W3C Extended Log File Format. NAT: formats output records as readable tabulated columns. IIS: parses IIS log files in the Microsoft IIS Log File Format. CSV: formats output records as comma-separated values text. BIN: parses IIS log files in the Centralized Binary Log File Format. TSV: formats output records as tab-separated or space-separated values text. IISODBC: returns database records from the tables logged to by IIS when configured to log in the ODBC Log Format. XML: formats output records as XML documents. HTTPERR: parses HTTP error log files generated by Http.sys. W3C: formats output records in the W3C Extended Log File Format. URLSCAN: parses log files generated by the URLScan IIS filter. TPL: formats output records following user-defined templates. CSV: parses comma-separated values text files. IIS: formats output records in the Microsoft IIS Log File Format. TSV: parses tab-separated and space-separated values text files. SQL: uploads output records to a table in a SQL database. XML: parses XML text files. SYSLOG: sends output records to a Syslog server. W3C: parses text files in the W3C Extended Log File Format. DATAGRID: displays output records in a graphical user interface. NCSA: parses web server log files in the NCSA Common, Combined, and Extended Log File Formats. CHART: creates image files containing charts. TEXTLINE: returns lines from generic text files. TEXTWORD: returns words from generic text files. EVT: returns events from the Windows Event Log and from Event Log backup files (.evt files). FS: returns information on files and directories. REG: returns information on registry values. ADS: returns information on Active Directory objects. NETMON: parses network capture files created by NetMon. ETW: parses Enterprise Tracing for Windows trace log files and live sessions. COM: provides an interface to Custom Input Format COM Plugins. So, you can query data from any of the types on the left and really easily get it into a format where it is ready for analysis by other tools. To a DBA or network Administrator with an enquiring mind this is a treasure trove. In part 3 we will look at working with multiple sources and specifically outputting to SQL format. See you there!

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SQL SERVER – Concurrency Basics – Guest Post by Vinod Kumar

- by pinaldave

This guest post is by Vinod Kumar. Vinod Kumar has worked with SQL Server extensively since joining the industry over a decade ago. Working on various versions from SQL Server 7.0, Oracle 7.3 and other database technologies – he now works with the Microsoft Technology Center (MTC) as a Technology Architect. Let us read the blog post in Vinod’s own voice. Learning is always fun when it comes to SQL Server and learning the basics again can be more fun. I did write about Transaction Logs and recovery over my blogs and the concept of simplifying the basics is a challenge. In the real world we always see checks and queues for a process – say railway reservation, banks, customer supports etc there is a process of line and queue to facilitate everyone. Shorter the queue higher is the efficiency of system (a.k.a higher is the concurrency). Every database does implement this using checks like locking, blocking mechanisms and they implement the standards in a way to facilitate higher concurrency. In this post, let us talk about the topic of Concurrency and what are the various aspects that one needs to know about concurrency inside SQL Server. Let us learn the concepts as one-liners: Concurrency can be defined as the ability of multiple processes to access or change shared data at the same time. The greater the number of concurrent user processes that can be active without interfering with each other, the greater the concurrency of the database system. Concurrency is reduced when a process that is changing data prevents other processes from reading that data or when a process that is reading data prevents other processes from changing that data. Concurrency is also affected when multiple processes are attempting to change the same data simultaneously. Two approaches to managing concurrent data access: Optimistic Concurrency Model Pessimistic Concurrency Model Concurrency Models Pessimistic Concurrency Default behavior: acquire locks to block access to data that another process is using. Assumes that enough data modification operations are in the system that any given read operation is likely affected by a data modification made by another user (assumes conflicts will occur). Avoids conflicts by acquiring a lock on data being read so no other processes can modify that data. Also acquires locks on data being modified so no other processes can access the data for either reading or modifying. Readers block writer, writers block readers and writers. Optimistic Concurrency Assumes that there are sufficiently few conflicting data modification operations in the system that any single transaction is unlikely to modify data that another transaction is modifying. Default behavior of optimistic concurrency is to use row versioning to allow data readers to see the state of the data before the modification occurs. Older versions of the data are saved so a process reading data can see the data as it was when the process started reading and not affected by any changes being made to that data. Processes modifying the data is unaffected by processes reading the data because the reader is accessing a saved version of the data rows. Readers do not block writers and writers do not block readers, but, writers can and will block writers. Transaction Processing A transaction is the basic unit of work in SQL Server. Transaction consists of SQL commands that read and update the database but the update is not considered final until a COMMIT command is issued (at least for an explicit transaction: marked with a BEGIN TRAN and the end is marked by a COMMIT TRAN or ROLLBACK TRAN). Transactions must exhibit all the ACID properties of a transaction. ACID Properties Transaction processing must guarantee the consistency and recoverability of SQL Server databases. Ensures all transactions are performed as a single unit of work regardless of hardware or system failure. A – Atomicity C – Consistency I – Isolation D- Durability Atomicity: Each transaction is treated as all or nothing – it either commits or aborts. Consistency: ensures that a transaction won’t allow the system to arrive at an incorrect logical state – the data must always be logically correct. Consistency is honored even in the event of a system failure. Isolation: separates concurrent transactions from the updates of other incomplete transactions. SQL Server accomplishes isolation among transactions by locking data or creating row versions. Durability: After a transaction commits, the durability property ensures that the effects of the transaction persist even if a system failure occurs. If a system failure occurs while a transaction is in progress, the transaction is completely undone, leaving no partial effects on data. Transaction Dependencies In addition to supporting all four ACID properties, a transaction might exhibit few other behaviors (known as dependency problems or consistency problems). Lost Updates: Occur when two processes read the same data and both manipulate the data, changing its value and then both try to update the original data to the new value. The second process might overwrite the first update completely. Dirty Reads: Occurs when a process reads uncommitted data. If one process has changed data but not yet committed the change, another process reading the data will read it in an inconsistent state. Non-repeatable Reads: A read is non-repeatable if a process might get different values when reading the same data in two reads within the same transaction. This can happen when another process changes the data in between the reads that the first process is doing. Phantoms: Occurs when membership in a set changes. It occurs if two SELECT operations using the same predicate in the same transaction return a different number of rows. Isolation Levels SQL Server supports 5 isolation levels that control the behavior of read operations. Read Uncommitted All behaviors except for lost updates are possible. Implemented by allowing the read operations to not take any locks, and because of this, it won’t be blocked by conflicting locks acquired by other processes. The process can read data that another process has modified but not yet committed. When using the read uncommitted isolation level and scanning an entire table, SQL Server can decide to do an allocation order scan (in page-number order) instead of a logical order scan (following page pointers). If another process doing concurrent operations changes data and move rows to a new location in the table, the allocation order scan can end up reading the same row twice. Also can happen if you have read a row before it is updated and then an update moves the row to a higher page number than your scan encounters later. Performing an allocation order scan under Read Uncommitted can cause you to miss a row completely – can happen when a row on a high page number that hasn’t been read yet is updated and moved to a lower page number that has already been read. Read Committed Two varieties of read committed isolation: optimistic and pessimistic (default). Ensures that a read never reads data that another application hasn’t committed. If another transaction is updating data and has exclusive locks on data, your transaction will have to wait for the locks to be released. Your transaction must put share locks on data that are visited, which means that data might be unavailable for others to use. A share lock doesn’t prevent others from reading but prevents them from updating. Read committed (snapshot) ensures that an operation never reads uncommitted data, but not by forcing other processes to wait. SQL Server generates a version of the changed row with its previous committed values. Data being changed is still locked but other processes can see the previous versions of the data as it was before the update operation began. Repeatable Read This is a Pessimistic isolation level. Ensures that if a transaction revisits data or a query is reissued the data doesn’t change. That is, issuing the same query twice within a transaction cannot pickup any changes to data values made by another user’s transaction because no changes can be made by other transactions. However, this does allow phantom rows to appear. Preventing non-repeatable read is a desirable safeguard but cost is that all shared locks in a transaction must be held until the completion of the transaction. Snapshot Snapshot Isolation (SI) is an optimistic isolation level. Allows for processes to read older versions of committed data if the current version is locked. Difference between snapshot and read committed has to do with how old the older versions have to be. It’s possible to have two transactions executing simultaneously that give us a result that is not possible in any serial execution. Serializable This is the strongest of the pessimistic isolation level. Adds to repeatable read isolation level by ensuring that if a query is reissued rows were not added in the interim, i.e, phantoms do not appear. Preventing phantoms is another desirable safeguard, but cost of this extra safeguard is similar to that of repeatable read – all shared locks in a transaction must be held until the transaction completes. In addition serializable isolation level requires that you lock data that has been read but also data that doesn’t exist. Ex: if a SELECT returned no rows, you want it to return no. rows when the query is reissued. This is implemented in SQL Server by a special kind of lock called the key-range lock. Key-range locks require that there be an index on the column that defines the range of values. If there is no index on the column, serializable isolation requires a table lock. Gets its name from the fact that running multiple serializable transactions at the same time is equivalent of running them one at a time. Now that we understand the basics of what concurrency is, the subsequent blog posts will try to bring out the basics around locking, blocking, deadlocks because they are the fundamental blocks that make concurrency possible. Now if you are with me – let us continue learning for SQL Server Locking Basics. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Concurrency

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