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

  - by swalker

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

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• Master Note for Generic Data Warehousing

  - by lajos.varady(at)oracle.com

  ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The complete and the most recent version of this article can be viewed from My Oracle Support Knowledge Section. Master Note for Generic Data Warehousing [ID 1269175.1] ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++In this Document   Purpose   Master Note for Generic Data Warehousing      Components covered      Oracle Database Data Warehousing specific documents for recent versions      Technology Network Product Homes      Master Notes available in My Oracle Support      White Papers      Technical Presentations Platforms: 1-914CU; This document is being delivered to you via Oracle Support's Rapid Visibility (RaV) process and therefore has not been subject to an independent technical review. Applies to: Oracle Server - Enterprise Edition - Version: 9.2.0.1 to 11.2.0.2 - Release: 9.2 to 11.2Information in this document applies to any platform. Purpose Provide navigation path Master Note for Generic Data Warehousing Components covered Read Only Materialized ViewsQuery RewriteDatabase Object PartitioningParallel Execution and Parallel QueryDatabase CompressionTransportable TablespacesOracle Online Analytical Processing (OLAP)Oracle Data MiningOracle Database Data Warehousing specific documents for recent versions 11g Release 2 (11.2)11g Release 1 (11.1)10g Release 2 (10.2)10g Release 1 (10.1)9i Release 2 (9.2)9i Release 1 (9.0)Technology Network Product HomesOracle Partitioning Advanced CompressionOracle Data MiningOracle OLAPMaster Notes available in My Oracle SupportThese technical articles have been written by Oracle Support Engineers to provide proactive and top level information and knowledge about the components of thedatabase we handle under the "Database Datawarehousing".Note 1166564.1 Master Note: Transportable Tablespaces (TTS) -- Common Questions and IssuesNote 1087507.1 Master Note for MVIEW 'ORA-' error diagnosis. For Materialized View CREATE or REFRESHNote 1102801.1 Master Note: How to Get a 10046 trace for a Parallel QueryNote 1097154.1 Master Note Parallel Execution Wait Events Note 1107593.1 Master Note for the Oracle OLAP OptionNote 1087643.1 Master Note for Oracle Data MiningNote 1215173.1 Master Note for Query RewriteNote 1223705.1 Master Note for OLTP Compression Note 1269175.1 Master Note for Generic Data WarehousingWhite Papers Transportable Tablespaces white papers Database Upgrade Using Transportable Tablespaces:Oracle Database 11g Release 1 (February 2009) Platform Migration Using Transportable Database Oracle Database 11g and 10g Release 2 (August 2008) Database Upgrade using Transportable Tablespaces: Oracle Database 10g Release 2 (April 2007) Platform Migration using Transportable Tablespaces: Oracle Database 10g Release 2 (April 2007)Parallel Execution and Parallel Query white papers Best Practices for Workload Management of a Data Warehouse on the Sun Oracle Database Machine (June 2010) Effective resource utilization by In-Memory Parallel Execution in Oracle Real Application Clusters 11g Release 2 (Feb 2010) Parallel Execution Fundamentals in Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (November 2009) Parallel Execution with Oracle Database 10g Release 2 (June 2005)Oracle Data Mining white paper Oracle Data Mining 11g Release 2 (March 2010)Partitioning white papers Partitioning with Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (September 2009) Partitioning in Oracle Database 11g (June 2007)Materialized Views and Query Rewrite white papers Oracle Materialized Views  and Query Rewrite (May 2005) Improving Performance using Query Rewrite in Oracle Database 10g (December 2003)Database Compression white papers Advanced Compression with Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (September 2009) Table Compression in Oracle Database 10g Release 2 (May 2005)Oracle OLAP white papers On-line Analytic Processing with Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (September 2009) Using Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition with the OLAP Option to Oracle Database 11g (July 2008)Generic white papers Enabling Pervasive BI through a Practical Data Warehouse Reference Architecture (February 2010) Optimizing and Protecting Storage with Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (November 2009) Oracle Database 11g for Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence (August 2009) Best practices for a Data Warehouse on Oracle Database 11g (September 2008)Technical PresentationsA selection of ObE - Oracle by Examples documents: Generic Using Basic Database Functionality for Data Warehousing (10g) Partitioning Manipulating Partitions in Oracle Database (11g Release 1) Using High-Speed Data Loading and Rolling Window Operations with Partitioning (11g Release 1) Using Partitioned Outer Join to Fill Gaps in Sparse Data (10g) Materialized View and Query Rewrite Using Materialized Views and Query Rewrite Capabilities (10g) Using the SQLAccess Advisor to Recommend Materialized Views and Indexes (10g) Oracle OLAP Using Microsoft Excel With Oracle 11g Cubes (how to analyze data in Oracle OLAP Cubes using Excel's native capabilities) Using Oracle OLAP 11g With Oracle BI Enterprise Edition (Creating OBIEE Metadata for OLAP 11g Cubes and querying those in BI Answers) Building OLAP 11g Cubes Querying OLAP 11g Cubes Creating Interactive APEX Reports Over OLAP 11g CubesSelection of presentations from the BIWA website:Extreme Data Warehousing With Exadata  by Hermann Baer (July 2010) (slides 2.5MB, recording 54MB)Data Mining Made Easy! Introducing Oracle Data Miner 11g Release 2 New "Work flow" GUI   by Charlie Berger (May 2010) (slides 4.8MB, recording 85MB )Best Practices for Deploying a Data Warehouse on Oracle Database 11g  by Maria Colgan (December 2009)  (slides 3MB, recording 18MB, white paper 3MB )

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• My ASP.NET news sources

  - by Jon Galloway

  I just posted about the ASP.NET Daily Community Spotlight. I was going to list a bunch of my news sources at the end, but figured this deserves a separate post. I've been following a lot of development blogs for a long time - for a while I subscribed to over 1500 feeds and read them all. That doesn't scale very well, though, and it's really time consuming. Since the community spotlight requires an interesting ASP.NET post every day of the year, I've come up with a few sources of ASP.NET news. Top Link Blogs Chris Alcock's The Morning Brew is a must-read blog which highlights each day's best blog posts across the .NET community. He covers the entire Microsoft development, but generally any of the top ASP.NET posts I see either have already been listed on The Morning Brew or will be there soon. Elijah Manor posts a lot of great content, which is available in his Twitter feed at @elijahmanor, on his Delicious feed, and on a dedicated website - Web Dev Tweets. While not 100% ASP.NET focused, I've been appreciating Joe Stagner's Weekly Links series, partly since he includes a lot of links that don't show up on my other lists. Twitter Over the past few years, I've been getting more and more of my information from my Twitter network (as opposed to RSS or other means). Twitter is as good as your network, so if getting good information off Twitter sounds crazy, you're probably not following the right people. I already mentioned Elijah Manor (@elijahmanor). I follow over a thousand people on Twitter, so I'm not going to try to pick and choose a list, but one good way to get started building out a Twitter network is to follow active Twitter users on the ASP.NET team at Microsoft: @scottgu (well, not on the ASP.NET team, but their great grand boss, and always a great source of ASP.NET info) @shanselman @haacked @bradwilson @davidfowl @InfinitiesLoop @davidebbo @marcind @DamianEdwards @stevensanderson @bleroy @humancompiler @osbornm @anurse I'm sure I'm missing a few, and I'll update the list. Building a Twitter network that follows topics you're interested in allows you to use other tools like Cadmus to automatically summarize top content by leveraging the collective input of many users. Twitter Search with Topsy You can search Twitter for hashtags (like #aspnet, #aspnetmvc, and #webmatrix) to get a raw view of what people are talking about on Twitter. Twitter's search is pretty poor; I prefer Topsy. Here's an example search for the #aspnetmvc hashtag: http://topsy.com/s?q=%23aspnetmvc You can also do combined queries for several tags: http://topsy.com/s?q=%23aspnetmvc+OR+%23aspnet+OR+%23webmatrix Paper.li Paper.li is a handy service that builds a custom daily newspaper based on your social network. They've turned a lot of people off by automatically tweeting "The SuperDevFoo Daily is out!!!" messages (which can be turned off), but if you're ignoring them because of those message, you're missing out on a handy, free service. My paper.li page includes content across a lot of interests, including ASP.NET: http://paper.li/jongalloway When I want to drill into a specific tag, though, I'll just look at the Paper.li post for that hashtag. For example, here's the #aspnetmvc paper.li page: http://paper.li/tag/aspnetmvc Delicious I mentioned previously that I use Delicious for managing site links. I also use their network and search features. The tag based search is pretty good: Even better, though, is that I can see who's bookmarked these links, and add them to my Delicious network. After having built out a network, I can optimize by doing less searching and more leaching leveraging of collective intelligence. Community Sites I scan DotNetKicks, the weblogs.asp.net combined feed, and the ASP.NET Community page, CodeBetter, Los Techies,  CodeProject,  and DotNetSlackers from time to time. They're hit and miss, but they do offer more of an opportunity for finding original content which others may have missed. Terms of Enrampagement When someone's on a tear, I just manually check their sites more often. I could use RSS for that, but it changes pretty often. I just keep a mental note of people who are cranking out a lot of good content and check their sites more often. What works for you?

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• Easily Add Facebook Chat to Pidgin

  - by Matthew Guay

  Want to keep in touch with your Facebook friends throughout the day?  Here we’ll show you how to easily add Facebook chat to the popular multi-protocol chat client Pidgin. Facebook has recently added support for XMPP chat, which means you can easily add it to popular chat clients such as Pidgin.  Previously you could only add Facebook chat to Pidgin through a plug-in that didn’t always work correctly.  Here we’ll walk you through setting up your Facebook account in Pidgin. Getting Started First, make sure you have a username for your Facebook account (link below).  This is a relatively new feature for Facebook, so if you’ve had your account for a while you may need to choose one.    If you already have one, you should see it listed instead. Now, open Pidgin, and click Manage Accounts. Click Add… Then select XMPP from the Protocol list. Now, enter your Facebook username without the facebook.com part (e.g your.facebook.username, not http://www.facebook.com/your.user.name).  Then, enter chat.facebook.com for the Domain, and enter your standard Facebook password.  You can check the “Remember password” box if you’d like Pidgin to automatically sign in to Facebook chat. Now, click on the Advanced tab, and uncheck the “Require SSL/TLS” box.  Also, make sure the Connect port is 5222.  Click Add, and your Facebook account is added to Pidgin. Now Facebook will show up in your list of accounts, with the username [email protected]. Your Facebook friends will show up directly in your Buddy list, complete with their full name and Facebook profile picture.  Any users that are not in a group will show under your standard list, while ones in a Facebook group will be shown in a separate group.  You can move which groups your Facebook friends show up in, just like you can with other chat contacts.   And no matter if your friend is logged in on the standard Facebook website or through another chat application, it will work the same as always.   This is a great way to keep in touch with your Facebook friends throughout the day.  If you like Facebook chat and already use Pidgin, now you can keep from switching between programs and just chat with all your friends from a central location. Links: Download Pidgin Set your Facebook username Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips The How-To Geek is No Longer on FacebookWin a Free iPod Touch in the How-To Geek Facebook Giveaway!Block Those Irritating Facebook Quiz & Application MessagesPut Your Pidgin Buddy List into the Windows Vista SidebarHow to Lock Down Your Facebook Account 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 Make your Joomla & Drupal Sites Mobile with OSMOBI Integrate Twitter and Delicious and Make Life Easier Design Your Web Pages Using the Golden Ratio Worldwide Growth of the Internet How to Find Your Mac Address Use My TextTools to Edit and Organize Text

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• Call Webservices&hellip;Maybe!?

  - by MOSSLover

  So I have been doing preliminary work for my iOS talk for a while, but did not get into the meat of the project until recently.  One day I envision my talk uploading pictures from a camera on an iPhone or iPad into SharePoint and telling people how I did it.  As you know with my Silverlight talk and any new technology, building new talks with new technologies always ends up with some pain points that you must jump over just to grab data.  So step 1 always starts out with how do we even access a webservice using the new technology. I started out watching every single SPC video available on oAuth and Rest Webservices in SharePoint 2013.  I also sent an email to Eric Shupps about some REST and 2013 examples.  The videos further confused me, because all the videos were on SharePoint hosted apps (provider and autohosted).  I did not want to create a SharePoint hosted app, but instead a mobile app outside of the SharePoint context altogether.  Nick Swan sent me his code and it was great for a starting point on how the JSON calls would look like on iOS, but I was still missing a piece.  Nick does a great job on showing how to use the REST/JSON calls in a non-MS tech, however his presentation uses the SharePoint context and can grab the SPAppToken.  At this point I had to ask the question how do you grab the SAML token outside of SharePoint 2013 in iOS using Objective-C?  After reading all the MSDN documentation, some documentation on Restkit and Objective-C/oAuth calls, and some SharePoint 2013 blog post my head was swimming.  I was dreaming about REST and iOS in SharePoint 2013.  SAML tokens were taunting me.  I was nowhere near understanding 2013. I started talking to my friend, Pedro Jimenez, who is also playing with Objective-C and went to SPC.  He found me a couple good MSDN posts with REST/JSON calls that basically showed the accessToken was all I needed (at this point I was still thinking iOS needed to be a provider hosted app which is wrong).  So then again I had to ask the SAML token question…How do you get a SAML token outside of SharePoint without the TokenHelper class? So then I started talking to people and thinking why do I need to completely avoid TokenHelper…The solution in concept is basically create a webservice in Azure wrapped into a Provider Hosted App in SharePoint.  Wictor Wilen created a helper webservice in the following blog post: http://www.wictorwilen.se/Post/How-to-do-active-authentication-to-Office-365-and-SharePoint-Online.aspx. So now I have to basically stand up the webservice, the SharePoint app wrapper, and then use Restkit to call the first webservice to grab the token and then the second webservice to pass in the token and grab some SharePoint data.  What this means is that you can no longer just pass credentials into SharePoint webservices and get data back.  You have to pass in a SAML token with every single webservice call to SharePoint.  The theory is that this token is associated with the permissions the app can handle (read, write, whatever).  It seems like a ton of pain and a lot of work, but this is step 1 in my crusade to pull some piece of data into iOS from SharePoint and show people how to do it themselves.  In the upcoming months hopefully I can get halfway to my end goal. Technorati Tags: SharePoint 2013,REST,oAuth,Objective-C,iOS

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• Take,Skip and Reverse Operator in Linq

  - by Jalpesh P. Vadgama

  I have found three more new operators in Linq which is use full in day to day programming stuff. Take,Skip and Reverse. Here are explanation of operators how it works. Take Operator: Take operator will return first N number of element from entities. Skip Operator: Skip operator will skip N number of element from entities and then return remaining elements as a result. Reverse Operator: As name suggest it will reverse order of elements of entities. Here is the examples of operators where i have taken simple string array to demonstrate that. C#, using GeSHi 1.0.8.6 using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text;     namespace ConsoleApplication1 {     class Program     {         static void Main(string[] args)         {             string[] a = { "a", "b", "c", "d" };                           Console.WriteLine("Take Example");             var TkResult = a.Take(2);             foreach (string s in TkResult)             {                 Console.WriteLine(s);             }               Console.WriteLine("Skip Example");             var SkResult = a.Skip(2);             foreach (string s in SkResult)             {                 Console.WriteLine(s);             }               Console.WriteLine("Reverse Example");             var RvResult = a.Reverse();             foreach (string s in RvResult)             {                 Console.WriteLine(s);             }                       }     } } Parsed in 0.020 seconds at 44.65 KB/s Here is the output as expected. hope this will help you.. Technorati Tags: Linq,Linq-To-Sql,ASP.NET,C#.NET

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• Java Spotlight Episode 57: Live From #Devoxx - Ben Evans and Martijn Verburg of the London JUG with Yara Senger of SouJava

  - by Roger Brinkley

  Tweet Live from Devoxx 11,  an interview with Ben Evans and Martijn Verburg from the London JUG along with  Yara Senger from the SouJava JUG on the JCP Executive Committee Elections, JSR 248, and Adopt-a-JSR program. Both the London JUG and SouJava JUG are JCP Standard Edition Executive Committee Members. Joining us this week on the Java All Star Developer Panel are Geertjan Wielenga, Principal Product Manger in Oracle Developer Tools; Stephen Chin, Java Champion and Java FX expert; and Antonio Goncalves, Paris JUG leader. Right-click or Control-click to download this MP3 file. You can also subscribe to the Java Spotlight Podcast Feed to get the latest podcast automatically. If you use iTunes you can open iTunes and subscribe with this link: Java Spotlight Podcast in iTunes. Show Notes News Netbeans 7.1 JDK 7 upgrade tools Netbeans First Patch Program OpenJFX approved as an OpenJDK project Devoxx France April 18-20, 2012 Events Nov 22-25, OTN Developer Days in the Nordics Nov 22-23, Goto Conference, Prague Dec 6-8, Java One Brazil, Sao Paulo Feature interview Ben Evans has lived in "Interesting Times" in technology - he was the lead performance testing engineer for the Google IPO, worked on the initial UK trials of 3G networks with BT, built award-winning websites for some of Hollywood's biggest hits of the 90s, rearchitected and reimagined technology helping some of the most vulnerable people in the UK and has worked on everything from some of the UKs very first ecommerce sites, through to multi-billion dollar currency trading systems. He helps to run the London Java Community, and represents the JUG on the Java SE/EE Executive Committee. His first book "The Well-Grounded Java Developer" (with Martijn Verburg) has just been published by Manning. Martijn Verburg (aka 'the Diabolical Developer') herds Cats in the Java/open source communities and is constantly humbled by the creative power to be found there. Currently he resides in London where he co-leads the London JUG (a JCP EC member), runs a couple of open source projects & drinks too much beer at his local pub. You can find him online moderating at the Javaranch or discussing (ranting?) subjects on the Prgorammers Stack Exchange site. Most recently he's become a regular speaker at conferences on Java, open source and software development and has recently wrapped up his first Manning title - "The Well-Grounded Java Developer" with his co-author Ben Evans. Yara Senger is the partner and director of teacher education and Globalcode, graduated from the University of Sao Paulo, Sao Carlos, has significant experience in Brazil and abroad in developing solutions to critical Java. She is the co-creator of Java programs Academy and Academy of Web Developer, accumulating over 1000 hours in the classroom teaching Java. She currently serves as the President of Sou Java. In this interview Ben, Martijn, and Yara talk about the JCP Executive Committee Elections, JSR 348, and the Adopt-a-JSR program. Mail Bag What's Cool Show Transcripts Transcript for this show is available here when available.

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• SQL SERVER – What is SSRS and Why SSRS is asked for in many Job Opening?

  - by Pinal Dave

  This example is from the Beginning SSRS by Kathi Kellenberger. Supporting files are available with a free download from the www.Joes2Pros.com web site. This will be a 5 day blog post in getting started with SSRS. Today will show the importance of SSRS in the business. Why is SSRS asked for in so many job openings? If you talk to an SSRS expert it’s very clear to them exactly why companies really need this invention and how it saves time and adds business value. You don’t have to be an SSRS expert to know its value or to start using it. For example you don’t have to be an airline pilot to know the usefulness of modern transportation. Even the people who don’t know how to run SSRS but need the reports can tell you why that is needed. This blog post will go into why SSRS is an important invention by showing how it improves the usage of information in your company. Before SSRS there has always been a need for a company to benefit from the use of its own information. Excel spreadsheets have been a popular way to do this for a long time. With SSRS you can still use this solution and gain many other options too. A friend of mine told me a story about doing database work in the 90s for a major company and how he wished SSRS was available back then. The Vice President of the marketing channel would often come to him just before an important meeting with the board of directors. He often needed to show how certain product sales were performing over time. All this information was in the database so it was my friend’s job to get the information out and organized into a medium the VP could use. This medium was usually Excel. The VP often had meetings all over the world where he showcased this Excel report. The solution to get the VP to him anywhere he was in the world was an Excel file attached to an e-mail. This worked pretty well but with some drawbacks. One time my friend sent the wrong file in the e-mail. A few minutes later my friend realized his mistake and sent another frantic e-mail to VP. This one was saying to ignore the last e-mail and use this newer one. Would the VP see the correct e-mail in time? If SSRS had been available, my friend could have created a solution that let the VP run the report any time he wished. The report could have been published to the company intranet where the VP could run it from any of the offices he happened to be traveling to that month. There is a fair amount of work up front to develop and publish the report, but once that work is completed, the report can be reused as many times as needed. My friend could even be on vacation for the first day of the monthly and the VP can get his real-time report. Not only could the report show the most recent data, the VP could choose to view reports of previous months with just a few clicks. The deployed SSRS is user friendly, and can also be configured to protect reports from being run by the wrong people. Tomorrow’s Post Tomorrow’s blog post will show how to know if you already have SSRS installed. If you want to learn SSRS in easy to simple words – I strongly recommend you to get Beginning SSRS book from Joes 2 Pros. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: Reporting Services, SSRS

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• SharePoint OCR image files indexing

  Introduction This article describes how to setup indexing of the image files (including TIFF, PDF, JPEG, BMP...) using OCR technology. The indexing described below utilizes Microsoft IFilter technology and as such is not specific to SharePoint, but can be used with any product that uses Microsoft indexing: Microsoft Search, Desktop search, SQL Server search, and through the plug-ins with Google desktop search. I however use it with Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 2003. For those other products, the registration may need to be slightly different. Background  One of the projects I was working on required a storage of old documents scanned into PDF files. Then there was a separate team of people responsible for providing a tags for a search engine so those image documents could be found. The whole process was clumsy, labor intensive, and error prone. That was what started me on my exploration path. OCR The first search I fired was for the Open Source OCR products. Pretty quickly, I narrowed it down to TESSERACT (http://code.google.com/p/tesseract-ocr/). Tesseract is an orphaned brain child of HP that worked on it from 1985 to 1995. Then it was moved to the Open Source, and now if I understand it correctly, Google is working on it. With credentials like that, it's no wonder that Tesseract scores one of the highest marks on OCR recognition and accuracy. After downloading and struggling just a bit, I got Tesseract to work. The struggling part was that the home page claims that its base input format is a TIFF file. May be my TIFFs were bad, but I was able to get it to work only for BMP files. Image files conversion So now that I have an OCR that can convert BMP files into text, how do I get text out of the image PDF files? One more search, and I settled down on ImageMagic (http://www.imagemagick.org/). This is another wonderful Open Source utility that can convert any file into image. It did work out of the box, converting any TIFF files into bitmaps, but to get PDF files converted, it requires a GhostScript (http://mirror.cs.wisc.edu/pub/mirrors/ghost/GPL/gs864/gs864w32.exe). Dealing with text PDFs With that utility installed, I was cooking - I can convert any file (in particular PDF and TIFF) into bitmap, and then I can extract the text out of the bitmap. The only consideration was to somehow treat PDF files containing text differently - after all, OCR is very computation intensive and somewhat error prone even with perfect image quality and resolution. So another quick search, and I have a PDFTOTEXT (ftp://ftp.foolabs.com/pub/xpdf/xpdf-3.02pl4-win32.zip) - thank God for Open Source! With these guys, I can pull text out of PDF in an eye blink. However, I would get nothing for pure image PDFs, but I already have a solution for that! Batch process It took another 15 minutes to setup a batch script to automate the process: Check the file extension If file is a PDF file try to extract text out of it if there is more than certain amount of text in the file - done! if there is no text, convert first page into bitmap run OCR on the bitmap For any other file type, convert file into bitmap Run OCR on the bitmap Once you unzip the attached project, check out the bin\OCR.BAT file. It will create a temporary file in the directory where your source file is with the same name + the '.txt' extension.Continue span.fullpost {display:none;}

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• Book Reviews: Art of Community and Eyetracking Web Usability

  - by ultan o'broin

  Holidays time offers a chance to catch up on some user experience and user assistance related material. So, two short book reviews (which I considered using my new Tumblr blog for. More about that another time) coming up. The Art of Community by Jono Bacon Excellent starting point for anyone wanting to get going in the community software (FLOSS, for example) space or understand how to set up, manage, and leverage the collective intelligence of communities for whatever ends. The book is a little too long in my opinion, and of course, usage of what Jono is recommending needs to be nuanced and adapted for enterprise applications space (hardly surprising there is a lot about Ubuntu, Lug Radio, and so on given Jono's interests). Shame there wasn't more information on international, non-English community considerations too. Still, some great ideas and insight into setting up and managing communities that I will leverage (watch out for the results on this blog, later in 2011). One section, on collaborative writing really jumped out. It reinforced the whole idea that to successful community initiatives are based on instigators knowing what makes the community tick in the first place. How about this for insight into user profiles for people who write community user assistance (OK then, "doc") and what tools they might use (in this case, we're talking about Jokosher): "Most people who write documentation for open source software projects would fall into the category of power user. They are technology enthusiasts who are not interested in the super-technical avenues of programming, but want to help out. Many of these people have good writing skills and a good knowledge of using the software, so the documentation fit is natural. With Jokosher we wanted to acknowledge this profile of user. As such, instead of focussing on complex text processing tools, we encouraged our documentation contributors to use a wiki." The book is available for free here, and well as being available from usual sources. Eyetracking Web Usability by Jakob Nielsen and Kara Prentice Another fine book by established experts. I have some field experience of eyetracking studies myself --in the user assistance for enterprise applications space--though Jakob and Kara concentrate on websites for their research here. I would caution how much about websites transfers easily to the applications space, especially enterprise applications, as claimed in the book too. However, Jakob and Kara do make the case very well that understanding design goals (for example, productivity improvement in the case of applications) and the context of the software use is critical. Executing a study using eyetracking technology requires that you know what you want to test, can set up realistic tasks for testing by representative testers, and then analyze the results. Be precise, as lots of data will be generated (I think the authors underplay the effort in analyzing data too). What I found disappointing was the lack of emphasis on eyetracking as only part of the usability solution. It's really for fine-tuning designs in my opinion, and should be used after other design reviews. I also wasn't that crazy about the level of disengagement between the qualitative and quantitative side of this kind of testing that the book indicated. I think it is useful to have testers verbalize their thoughts and for test engineers to prompt, intervene, or guide as necessary. More on cultural or international aspects to usability testing might have been included too (websites are available to everyone). To conclude, I enjoyed the book, took on board some key takeaways about methodologies and found the recommendations sensible and easy to follow (for example about Forms layouts). Applying enterprise applications requirements such as those relating to user profiles, design goals, and overall context of use in conjunction with what's in this book would be the way to go here. It also made me think of how interesting it would be to compare eyetracking findings between website and enterprise applications usage.

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• From the Tips Box: Pre-installation Prep Work Makes Service Pack Upgrades Smoother

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  Last month Microsoft rolled out Windows 7 Service Pack 1 and, like many SP releases, quite a few people are hanging back to see what happens. If you want to update but still error on the side of caution, reader Ron Troy  offers a step-by-step guide. Ron’s cautious approach does an excellent job minimizing the number of issues that could crop up in a Service Pack upgrade by doing a thorough job updating your driver sets and clearing out old junk before you roll out the update. Read on to see how he does it: Just wanted to pass on a suggestion for people worried about installing Service Packs.  I came up with a ‘method’ a couple years back that seems to work well. Run Windows / Microsoft Update to get all updates EXCEPT the Service Pack. Use Secunia PSI to find any other updates you need. Use CCleaner or the Windows disk cleanup tools to get rid of all the old garbage out there.  Make sure that you include old system updates. Obviously, back up anything you really care about.  An image backup can be real nice to have if things go wrong. Download the correct SP version from Microsoft.com; do not use Windows / Microsoft Update to get it.  Make sure you have the 64 bit version if that’s what you have installed on your PC. Make sure that EVERYTHING that affects the OS is up to date.  That includes all sorts of drivers, starting with video and audio.  And if you have an Intel chipset, use the Intel Driver Utility to update those drivers.  It’s very quick and easy.  For the video and audio drivers, some can be updated by Intel, some by utilities on the vendor web sites, and some you just have to figure out yourself.  But don’t be lazy here; old drivers and Windows Service Packs are a poor mix. If you have 3rd party software, check to see if they have any updates for you.  They might not say that they are for the Service Pack but you cut your risk of things not working if you do this. Shut off the Antivirus software (especially if 3rd party). Reboot, hitting F8 to get the SafeMode menu.  Choose SafeMode with Networking. Log into the Administrator account to ensure that you have the right to install the SP. Run the SP.  It won’t be very fancy this way.  Maybe 45 minutes later it will reboot and then finish configuring itself, finally letting you log in. Total installation time on most of my PC’s was about 1 hour but that followed hours of preparation on each. On a separate note, I recently got on the Nvidia web site and their utility told me I had a new driver available for my GeForce 8600M GS.  This laptop had come with Vista, now has Win 7 SP1.  I had a big surprise from this driver update; the Windows Experience Score on the graphics side went way up.  Kudo’s to Nvidia for doing a driver update that actually helps day to day usage.  And unlike ATI’s updates (which I need for my AGP based system), this update was fairly quick and very easy.  Also, Nvidia drivers have never, as I can recall, given me BSOD’s, many of which I’ve gotten from ATI (TDR errors).How to Enable Google Chrome’s Secret Gold IconHTG Explains: What’s the Difference Between the Windows 7 HomeGroups and XP-style Networking?Internet Explorer 9 Released: Here’s What You Need To Know

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• Value of SOA Specialization interview with Thomas Schaller IPT - part III

  - by Jürgen Kress

  Recognized by Oracle, Preferred by Customers. We had the great opportunity to interview Thomas Schaller – Partner from our SOA Specialized Partner IPT Innovation Process Technology from Switzerland Why did IPT decide to become SOA Specialized? " SOA Specialization is a great branding for IPT. We are the SOA Specialists in the Swiss market, as we focus all our services around SOA. With 65 Swiss consultants focused on SOA Security & SOA Testing & BPM – Business Process Management & BSM – Business Service Modeling the partnership with Oracle as the technology leader in SOA is key, therefore it was important to us to become the first SOA Specialized company in Switzerland. As a result IPT is mentioned by Gartner as one of eight European SOA Consulting Firms and included in „Guide to SOA Consulting and System Integration Service Providers“ Can you describe the marketing activities with Oracle? Once a year we organize the largest SOA Conference in Switzerland “SOA, BPM & Integration Forum 2011“ Oracle is much more than a sponsor for the conference. Jointly we invite our customer base to attend this key event. The sales teams address jointly their most important prospects and customers. Oracle supports us with key speakers who present future directions of the Oracle SOA portfolio like Clemens Utschig-Utschig who presented details about the Complex Event Processing (CEP) solution in 2009 and James Allerton-Austin who presented details about the social BPM solution (BPM) in 2010. Additional our key customers presented their Oracle SOA success stories. How did you team with Oracle around the sales activities? "Sales alignment is key for the successful partnership. When we achieved! SOA Specialization we celebrated jointly with the Oracle and IPT middleware sales team. At the Aperol may interesting discussions resulted in joint opportunities and business. A key section of our joint business planning are marketing and sales activities. Together we define campaign topics and target customers. Matthias Breitschmid our superb Oracle partner manager ensures that the defined sales teams align and start the joint business. Regular we review our joint business plan with the joint management teams and Jürgen Kress our EMEA Oracle Sponsor. It is great to see that both companies profit from each other and we receive leads from Oracle!” Did you get Oracle support to train your consultants in the Oracle SOA Suite? “Enablement is key for us to deliver successful SOA projects. Together with Ralph Bellinghausen from the Oracle Enablement team we defined an Oracle trainings plan for our consultants. The monthly SOA Partner Community newsletter is a great resource to get the latest product updates, webcasts and trainings. As a SOA Specialized partner we get also invited to the SOA Blackbelt trainings, this trainings are hosted by Oracle product management where we get not only first hand information we get also direct access to the developers who can support us in critical project phases. Driven by the customer success we have increased our Oracle SOA practice by more than 200% in the last years!” Why did the customer decide for the IPT SOA offering? “SOA Specialization becomes a brand for customers, it proofs that we have the certified SOA skills and that IPT has delivered successful Oracle SOA projects. Jointly with Oracle and all the support we get from marketing, sales, enablement, support and product management we can ensure our customers to deliver their SOA project successful!” What are the next steps for IPT? “SOA Specialization is a super beneficial for IPT. We are looking forward to our upcoming SOA, BPM & Integration Forum 2011 and prepare to become BPM Specialized. part I Torsten Winterberg, Opitz Consulting & part II Debra Lilley, Fujitsu For more information on SOA Specialization and the SOA Partner Community please feel free to register at www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Wiki Website

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• Welcome to the SOA &amp; E2.0 Partner Community Forum

  - by Jürgen Kress

  With more than 200 registrations the SOA & E2.0 Partner Community Forum is a huge success!   Conference program Is available online: http://tinyurl.com/soaforumagenda Agenda Tuesday March 15th 2011 12:15 Welcome & Introduction – Hans Blaas & Jürgen Kress, Oracle 12:30 Oracle Middleware Strategy and Information on Application Grid and Exalogic - Andrew Sutherland, Oracle 13:15 Managing Online Customer, Partner and Employee Engagement Oracle E2.0 Solutions - Andrew Gilboy, Oracle 14:00 Coffee Break 14:30 Partner SOA/ BPM Reference Case – Leon Smiers, Capgemini 15:15 Partner WebCenter/ UCM Reference Case – Vikram Setia, Infomentum 16.00 Break 16.30 SOA and BPM 11gR1 PS3 Update – David Shaffer 17:00 Why specialization is important for Partners – Nick Kritikos, Hans Blaas & Jürgen Kress 17:45 Social Event   Wednesday March 16th 2011 09.00 Welcome & Introduction Day II 09.15 Breakout sessions Round 1 SOA Suite 11g PS3 & OSB Importance of ADF & Jdeveloper SOA Security IDM WebCenter PS3, Whats New E2.0 Sales Plays 10.30 Break 10.45 Breakout sessions Round 2 WebCenter PS3, Whats New Applications Management Enterprise Manager and Amberpoint ADF/WebCenter 11g integration with BPM Suite 11g Importance of ADF & Jdeveloper JCAPS & OC4J migration opportunities for service business 12.00 Lunch 13.00 Breakout sessions Round 3 BPM 11g, Whats New Universal Content Management! 11g SOA Security IDM E2.0 Surrounding Products: ATG, Documaker, Primavera Middleware Industry Value Propositions & Sales Plays 14.30 Break 14.45 Fusion Applications, Rajan Krishnan, Oracle 15.30 SOA & E2.0 Summary & Closing, Hans Blaas & Jürgen Kress, Oracle 15.45 Finish & Departure 16:00 Bus departure   Capgemini Nederland BV Papendorpseweg 100 3500 GN Utrecht The Netherlands Tel: +31 30 689 00 00 For a detailed routedescription by car or public transport please visit: http://www.nl.capgemini.com/pdf/Papendorp_UK.pdf Hotel In case you have not booked your hotel yet, please make your own hotel reservation. You can book your hotel room at the 'Hotel Vianen' at a special rate, by using the Oracle booking code: DDG VIA-GF41422. One night package € 110,- for a single room, including breakfast. Kindly secure your hotel room as soon as possible. The number of rooms is limited! Hotel Vianen Prins Bernhardstraat 75 4132 XE Vianen [email protected] The Netherlands [email protected] Arrival on 14th of March and staying at Hotel Vianen. On 15th of March we have arranged a transfer from Hotel Vianen to the Capgemini Offices. The bus is parked in front of the hotel and will leave at 10.15AM (UTC/GMT+1). Logistics Pass with barcode At your arrival you will receive a pass with a barcode. This pass will give you access to the conference building and the different floors within the building. Please make sure to hand in your pass at the registration desk at the end of the day. Arrival by plane Transfer from Schiphol Airport to Capgemini on 15th of March will be arranged by Oracle. A hostess will be welcoming you at the Meeting Point at Schiphol Airport (this is a red and white large cubicle situated next to Delifrance) The buses will depart from Schiphol Airport at 09.00AM, 09.45AM and 10.30AM (UTC/GMT+1).     For future SOA Partner Community Forums  become a member for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Wiki Website Technorati Tags: SOA Partner Community Forum,Community,SOA Partner Community,Utrecht 03.2011,OPN,Oracle,Jürgen Kress

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• Open Your Windows - 4/Maio/10

  - by Claudia Costa

  This FREE technical briefing is designed to show ISVs/SIs how to leverage the Oracle11g Technology especially in the small to medium business. The briefing focuses on Oracle's 11g platform on Windows & Linux and gives a very comprehensive technical competitive overview to the products offered by Microsoft. The technical part covers Integration and Migration aspects of various Microsoft products such as SQL Server, .NET and Active Directory. Register Today! With Oracle11g Oracle introduced various products (ApplicationExpress, OracleExpress Edition, ADF, BPEL) and licenses (Oracle Database Standard Edition One, Application Server Java Edition) specifically targetting the small to medium business market and to show that Oracle Database and Application Server are as easy to use and costs less than Microsoft products in terms of purchase price and ongoing support & maintenance and even much much less when considering the Linux platform.. For those ISVs have already adopted Microsoft .NET framework and using SQL Server as their database layer, we will demostrate that Oracle11g Database is as easy as SQL Server to install, configure, and manage. In addition to that, their application development .NET platform does not requires dramatic changes to enable it to run on the Oracle database. Besides the standard functionalities, Oracle has enhanced some of the advanced features; such as Intermedia, Security, Ref Cursor, etc., tightly integrated with .NET framework so that .NET developers can take full advantage of the Oracle technology, without worrying or programming the complexity components. Objectives ·         Understand Oracle's strategy and commitment on Windows & Linux ·         Learn how to migrate from SQL Server to Oracle on Windows AND Linux ·         Understand that Oracle11g is easy to manage and to install on Windows & Linux ·         Learn how to integrate Windows products with the Oracle11g Platform ·         Learn how Oracle products interoperate & integrate with Microsoft .NET ·         Learn how an Oracle database on Windows will easily be ported to a lower cost Linux database platform and interoperate with a .NET application Prerequisites General Operating System expertise including MS-Windows and Linux. Agenda ·         Welcome and Intro ·         Oracle at a glance ·         Strategy; Small to Medium Business, Microsoft and Linux ·         Oracle 11g Architecture on Linux & Windows ·         Managing Oracle 11g on Linux & Windows ·         Application Development ·         Migration ·         Value propositions for ISVs & Wrap-up   ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Para mais informações/inscrições, contacte: [email protected].

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• Four New Java Champions

  - by Tori Wieldt

  Four luminaries in the Java community have been selected as new Java Champions. The are Agnes Crepet, Lars Vogel, Yara Senger and Martijn Verburg. They were selected for their technical knowledge, leadership, inspiration, and tireless work for the community. Here is how they rock the Java world: Agnes Crepet Agnes Crepet (France) is a passionate technologist with over 11 years of software engineering experience, especially in the Java technologies, as a Developer, Architect, Consultant and Trainer. She has been using Java since 1999, implementing multiple kinds of applications (from 20 days to 10000 men days) for different business fields (banking, retail, and pharmacy). Currently she is a Java EE Architect for a French pharmaceutical company, the homeopathy world leader. She is also the co-founder, with other passionate Java developers, of a software company named Ninja Squad, dedicated to Software Craftsmanship. Agnes is the leader of two Java User Groups (JUG), the Lyon JUG Duchess France and the founder of the Mix-IT Conferenceand theCast-IT Podcast, two projects about Java and Agile Development. She speaks at Java and JUG conferences around the world and regularly writes articles about the Java Ecosystem for the French print Developer magazine Programmez! and for the Duchess Blog. Follow Agnes @agnes_crepet. Lars Vogel Lars Vogel (Germany) is the founder and CEO of the vogella GmbH and works as Java, Eclipse and Android consultant, trainer and book author. He is a regular speaker at international conferences, such as EclipseCon, Devoxx, Droidcon and O'Reilly's Android Open. With more than one million visitors per month, his website vogella.com is one of the central sources for Java, Eclipse and Android programming information. Lars is committer in the Eclipse project and received in 2010 the "Eclipse Top Contributor Award" and 2012 the "Eclipse Top Newcomer Evangelist Award." Follow Lars on Twitter @vogella. Yara Senger Yara Senger (Brazil) has been a tireless Java activist in Brazil for many years. She is President of SouJava and she is an alternate representative of the group on the JCP Executive Committee. Yara has led SouJava in many initiatives, from technical events to social activities. She is co-founder and director of GlobalCode, which trains developers throughout Brazil.  Last year, she was recipient of the Duke Choice's Award, for the JHome embedded environment.  Yara is also an active speaker, giving presentations in many countries, including JavaOne SF, JavaOne Latin Ameria, JavaOne India, JFokus, and JUGs throughout Brazil. Yara is editor of InfoQ Brasil and also frequently posts at http://blog.globalcode.com.br/search/label/Yara. Follow Yara @YaraSenger. Martijn Verburg Martijn Verburg (UK) is the CTO of jClarity (a Java/JVM performance cloud tooling start-up) and has over 12 years experience as a Java/JVM technology professional and OSS mentor in a variety of organisations from start-ups to large enterprises. He is the co-leader of the London Java Community (~2800 developers) and leads the global effort for the Java User Group "Adopt a JSR" and "Adopt OpenJDK" programmes. These programmes encourage day to day Java developer involvement with OpenJDK, Java standards (JSRs), an important relationship for keeping the Java ecosystem relevant to the 9 million Java developers out there today. As a leading expert on technical team optimisation, his talks and presentations are in high demand by major conferences (JavaOne, Devoxx, OSCON, QCon) where you'll often find him challenging the industry status quo via his alter ego "The Diabolical Developer." You can read more in the OTN ariticle "Challenging the Diabolical Developer: A Conversation with JavaOne Rock Star Martijn Verburg." Follow Martijn @karianna. The Java Champions are an exclusive group of passionate Java technology and community leaders who are community-nominated and selected under a project sponsored by Oracle. Java Champions get the opportunity to provide feedback, ideas, and direction that will help Oracle grow the Java Platform. Congratulations to these new Java Champions!

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• Post MIX10 Decompression

  - by Dave Campbell

  With a big dose of reality, I walked into this place this morning and found out "yeah, I really do write .NET web apps and MS Access for a living" :( ... but it pays the bills and I've gotten *way* used to eating 3 times a day :) MIX10 was great, although the buzz didn't seem as big as MIX09, and I'm not sure why. It also seemed like a different crowd and other folks I talked to agreed with that. Of course now I can outwardly admit that the "Windows Phone 7 Series" is programmed with Silverlight ... how cool is that? I've been biting my tongue about that info for over a month! I cloistered myself in Ballroom A for the week, not counting the Keynotes. That's where the phone sessions were located. I tried to collect the full set, but ended up bailing on the last one because it was ending at the time that MIX10 was ending, and I hadn't spent a whole lot of time in 'The Commons'. I met a bunch of folks I've blogged about, or exchanged email with, and that's always fun. Renewed associations with folks I only see once or twice a year and way too long a list and don't want to mention some and leave off others... I did have an opportunity to meet Charles Petzold... wow that was interesting... I got into Windows development through Charles' Programming Windows 3.1 book 'back in the day' ... couldn't find anyone at Honeywell wanted to join my journey, so it was just me and 'Chuck' :) ... read every word of that book more than once... all marked up, tags sticking out of it. And now he's writing a WP7 book ... gotta get it: Free ebook: Programming Windows Phone 7 Series (DRAFT Preview) I went through my Big List-o-BlogsTM last night and it took over 2 hours because of all the new content since MIX10. I've got 90 posts tagged as of 9PM on 3/21. If everybody stopped right now, it would take me 9 days to push what I have now, so you'll have to be patient! I had another event on Thursday that was *extremely* tiring, so I ended up staying over another night. I drove back into the strip on Friday morning to try to find a non-cheesy souvenir for my wife, and didn't find much. Then I went to Blueberry Hill restaurant for 3 eggs, 3 strips of bacon, and 3 awesome potato pancakes. Check them out if you have time! And then hit the road. In case anyone is wondering, the 2-1/2 hour drive I took across Hoover Dam on Sunday afternoon only took 30 minutes on Friday afternoon... that was a more normal trip! I thoroughly enjoyed the time I spent with everyone. Thanks to John Papa and his crew for the great Insider's party on Monday night... the Blues Brothers were a fun surprise and they did a good job! And the swag was great... thanks to all the contributors for a fun evening at their expense! All I can say is stay tuned, go to live.visitmix.com/videos and watch everything, get the phone tools, start working... everything's different and everything's fun... jump in, it's all Silverlight! Stay in the 'Light! Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone     MIX10

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• Travelling MVP #4: DevReach 2012

  - by DigiMortal

  Our next stop after Varna was Sofia where DevReach happens. DevReach is one of my favorite conferences in Europe because of sensible prices and strong speakers line-up. Also they have VIP-party after conference and this is good event to meet people you don’t see every day, have some discussion with speakers and find new friends. Our trip from Varna to Sofia took about 6.5 hours on bus. As I was tired from last evening it wasn’t problem for me as I slept half the trip. After smoking pause in Velike Tarnovo I watched movies from bus TV. We had supper later in city center Happy’s – place with good meat dishes and nice service. And next day it begun…. :) DevReach 2012 DevReach is held usually in Arena Mladost. It’s near airport and Telerik office. The event is organized by local MVP Martin Kulov together with Telerik. Two days of sessions with strong speakers is good reason enough for me to go to visit some event. Some topics covered by sessions: Windows 8 development web development SharePoint Windows Azure Windows Phone architecture Visual Studio Practically everybody can find some interesting session in every time slot. As the Arena is not huge it is very easy to go from one sessions to another if selected session for time slot is not what you expected. On the second floor of Arena there are many places where you can eat. There are simple chunk-food places like Burger King and also some restaurants. If you are hungry you will find something for your taste for sure. Also you can buy beer if it is too hot outside :) Weather was very good for October – practically Estonian summer – 25C and over. Sessions I visited Here is the list of sessions I visited at DevReach 2012: DevReach 2012 Opening & Welcome Messsage with Martin Kulov and Stephen Forte Principled N-Tier Solution Design with Steve Smith Data Patterns for the Cloud with Brian Randell .NET Garbage Collection Performance Tips with Sasha Goldshtein Building Secured, Scalable, Low-latency Web Applications with the Windows Azure Platform with Ido Flatow It’s a Knockout! MVVM Style Web Applications with Charles Nurse Web Application Architecture – Lessons Learned from Adobe Brackets with Brian Rinaldi Demystifying Visual Studio 2012 Performance Tools with Martin Kulov SPvNext – A Look At All the Exciting And New Features In SharePoint with Sahil Malik Portable Libraries – Why You Should Care with Lino Tadros I missed some sessions because of some death march projects that are going and that I have to coordinate but it was not big loss as I had time to walk around in session venue neighborhood and see Sofia Business Park. Next year again! I will be there again next year and hopefully more guys from Estonia will join me. I think it’s good idea to take short vacation for DevReach time and do things like we did this time – Bucharest, Varna, Sofia. It’s only good idea to plan some more free time so we are not very much in hurry and also we have no work stuff to do on the trip. This far this trip has been one of best trips I have organized and I will go and meet all those guys in this region again! :)

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• Using the Onboard VGA output with a PCIe video card. Both nVidia

  - by sebikul

  I have 2 video cards, one On board, a nVidia 6150SE nForce 430 and a PCIe nVidia GeForce GT 220 1GB DDR2 RAM I have already configured the PCIe card to use the dual monitor feature, using the VGA and HDMI ports, but now I want to add a third monitor, using the On board VGA port I have managed to enable the On board graphics processor, which is taking 400MB of ram, but I cant manage to use it, nvidia-settings does not detect it, like it's not usable (but is there) My questions are the following: How can I manage to get the On board VGA display to work together with the PCIe graphics card? If possible, how can I recover those 400 MB the on board card is taking (even without being used) or how can I get it to use the PCIe card available memory? System Details: Linux 2.6.35-28-generic i686 Ubuntu 10.10 (All updates installed) NVIDIA Driver Version: 260.19.06 (Official) If more info is needed please let me know. Here is the lspci output when the On board card is disabled: 00:00.0 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation MCP61 Memory Controller (rev a1) 00:01.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP61 LPC Bridge (rev a2) 00:01.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation MCP61 SMBus (rev a2) 00:01.2 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation MCP61 Memory Controller (rev a2) 00:01.3 Co-processor: nVidia Corporation MCP61 SMU (rev a2) 00:02.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP61 USB Controller (rev a3) 00:02.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP61 USB Controller (rev a3) 00:04.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP61 PCI bridge (rev a1) 00:05.0 Audio device: nVidia Corporation MCP61 High Definition Audio (rev a2) 00:06.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP61 IDE (rev a2) 00:07.0 Bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP61 Ethernet (rev a2) 00:08.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP61 SATA Controller (rev a2) 00:09.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP61 PCI Express bridge (rev a2) 00:0b.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP61 PCI Express bridge (rev a2) 00:0c.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP61 PCI Express bridge (rev a2) 00:0d.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation C61 [GeForce 6150SE nForce 430] (rev a2) 00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration 00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map 00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller 00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control 01:09.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82557/8/9/0/1 Ethernet Pro 100 (rev 08) 02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GT216 [GeForce GT 220] (rev a2) 02:00.1 Audio device: nVidia Corporation High Definition Audio Controller (rev a1) And this is when both are enabled: 00:00.0 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation MCP61 Memory Controller (rev a1) 00:01.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP61 LPC Bridge (rev a2) 00:01.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation MCP61 SMBus (rev a2) 00:01.2 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation MCP61 Memory Controller (rev a2) 00:01.3 Co-processor: nVidia Corporation MCP61 SMU (rev a2) 00:02.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP61 USB Controller (rev a3) 00:02.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP61 USB Controller (rev a3) 00:04.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP61 PCI bridge (rev a1) 00:05.0 Audio device: nVidia Corporation MCP61 High Definition Audio (rev a2) 00:06.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP61 IDE (rev a2) 00:07.0 Bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP61 Ethernet (rev a2) 00:08.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP61 SATA Controller (rev a2) 00:09.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP61 PCI Express bridge (rev a2) 00:0b.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP61 PCI Express bridge (rev a2) 00:0c.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP61 PCI Express bridge (rev a2) 00:0d.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation C61 [GeForce 6150SE nForce 430] (rev a2) 00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration 00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map 00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller 00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control 01:09.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82557/8/9/0/1 Ethernet Pro 100 (rev 08) 02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GT216 [GeForce GT 220] (rev a2) 02:00.1 Audio device: nVidia Corporation High Definition Audio Controller (rev a1) Output of lshw -class display: *-display description: VGA compatible controller product: GT216 [GeForce GT 220] vendor: nVidia Corporation physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:02:00.0 version: a2 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom configuration: driver=nvidia latency=0 resources: irq:18 memory:df000000-dfffffff memory:c0000000-cfffffff memory:da000000-dbffffff ioport:ef80(size=128) memory:def80000-deffffff *-display description: VGA compatible controller product: C61 [GeForce 6150SE nForce 430] vendor: nVidia Corporation physical id: d bus info: pci@0000:00:0d.0 version: a2 width: 64 bits clock: 66MHz capabilities: pm msi vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom configuration: driver=nvidia latency=0 resources: irq:22 memory:dd000000-ddffffff memory:b0000000-bfffffff memory:dc000000-dcffffff memory:deb40000-deb5ffff If what I'm looking for is not possible, please tell me, so I can disable the On board card and recover those 400MB of wasted RAM Thanks for your help!

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• Three Easy Ways of Providing Feedback to the Oracle AutoVue Team

  - by Celine Beck

  Customer feedback is essential in helping us deliver best-in-class Enterprise Visualization solutions which are centered around real-world usage. As the Oracle AutoVue Product Management team is busy prioritizing the next round of improvements, enhancements and new innovation to the AutoVue platform, I thought it would be a good idea to provide our blog-readers with a recap of how best to provide product feedback to the AutoVue Product Management team. This gives you the opportunity to help shape our future agenda and make our solutions better for you. Enterprise Visualization Special Interest Group (EV SIG): the AutoVue EV SIG is a customer-driven initiative that has recently been created to share knowledge and information between members and discuss common and best practices around Enterprise Visualization. The EV SIG also serves as a mechanism for establishing and communicating to AutoVue Product Management users’ collective priorities for the future development, direction and enhancement of the AutoVue product family with the objective of ensuring their continuous improvement. Essentially, EV SIG members meet in order to share and prioritize feedback and use this input to begin dialog with the AutoVue Product Management team on what they deem to be the most important improvements to Enterprise Visualization solutions. The AutoVue EV SIG is by far the best platform for sharing and relaying feedback to our Product Strategy / Management team regarding general product enhancements, industry-specific scenarios, new use cases, usability, support, deployability, etc, and helping us shape the future direction of Enterprise Visualization solutions. We strongly encourage ALL our customers to sign up for the SIG;  here is how you can do so: Sign up for the EVSIG mailing list b.    Visit the group’s website c.    Contact Dennis Walker at Harris Corporation directly should you have any questions: dwalke22-AT-harris-DOT-com Customer / Partner Advisory Boards: The AutoVue Product Strategy / Management team also periodically runs Customer and Partner Advisory Boards. These invitation-only events bring together individuals chosen from Oracle AutoVue’s top customers that are using AutoVue at the enterprise level, as well as strategic partners.  The idea here is to establish open lines of communication between top customers and partners and the Oracle AutoVue Product Strategy team, help us communicate AutoVue’s product direction, share perspectives on today and tomorrow’s challenges and needs for Enterprise Visualization, and validate that proposed additions to the product are valid industry solutions. Our next Customer / Partner Advisory Board will be held in San Francisco during Oracle Open World, please contact your account manager to find out more about the CAB Members’ nomination process. Enhancement Requests:  Enhancement requests are request logged by customers or partners with Product Development for a feature that is not currently available in Oracle AutoVue. Enhancement requests (ER) can be logged easily via the My Oracle Support portal. This is the best way to share feedback with us at the functionality level; for instance if you would like to see a new format supported in AutoVue or make suggestions as per how certain functionality can be improved or should behave. Once the ER is logged, it is then evaluated by Product Management based on feasibility, product adequation and business justification. Product Management then decides whether to consider this ER for future release or not. What helps accelerate the process is hearing from a large number of customers who urgently need a particular feature or configuration. Hence the importance of logging Metalink Service Requests, and describing in details your business expectations. You can include key milestones dates and justifications as to why this request is important and the benefits your organization stands to gain should this request be accepted. Again, feedback from customers and partners is critical to ensure we offer solutions that have the biggest impact on customers’ business processes and day-to-day operations. All feedback is welcome,. So please don’t be shy! 

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• Know Your Audience, And/Or Your Customer

  - by steve.diamond

  Yesterday I gave an internal presentation to about 20 Oracle employees on "messaging," not messaging technology, but embarking on the process of building messages. One of the elements I covered was the importance of really knowing and understanding your audience. As a humorous reference I included two side-by-side photos of Oakland A's fans and Oakland Raiders fans. The Oakland A's fans looked like happy-go-lucky drunk types. The Oakland Raiders fans looked like angry extras from a low budget horror flick. I then asked my presentation attendees what these two groups had in common. Here's what I heard. --They're human (at least I THINK they're human). --They're from Oakland. --They're sports fans. After that, it was anyone's guess. A few days earlier we were putting the finishing touches on a sales presentation for one of our product lines. We had included an upfront "lead in" addressing how the economy is improving, yet that doesn't mean sales executives will have any more resources to add to their teams, invest in technology, etc. This "lead in" included miscellaneous news article headlines and statistics validating the slowly improving economy. When we subjected this presentation to internal review two days ago, this upfront section in particular was scrutinized. "Is the economy really getting better? I (exclamation point) don't think it's really getting better. Haven't you seen the headlines coming out of Greece and Europe?" Then the question TO ME became, "Who will actually be in the audience that sees and hears this presentation? Will s/he be someone like me? Or will s/he be someone like the critic who didn't like our lead-in?" We took the safe route and removed that lead in. After all, why start a "pitch" with a component that is arguably subjective? What if many of our audience members are individuals at organizations still facing a strong headwind? For reasons I won't go into here, it was the right decision to make. The moral of the story: Make sure you really know your audience. Harness the wisdom of the information your organization's CRM systems collect to get that fully informed "customer view." Conduct formal research. Conduct INFORMAL research. Ask lots of questions. Study industries and scenarios that have nothing to do with yours to see "how they do it." Stop strangers in coffee shops and on the street...seriously. Last week I caught up with an old friend from high school who recently retired from a 25 year career with the USMC. He said, "I can learn something from every single person I come into contact with." What a great way of approaching the world. Then, think about and write down what YOU like and dislike as a customer. But also remember that when it comes to your company's products, you are most likely NOT the customer, so don't go overboard in superimposing your own world view. Approaching the study of customers this way adds rhyme, reason and CONTEXT to lengthy blog posts like this one. Know your audience.

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• Building vs. Buying a Master Data Management Solution

  - by david.butler(at)oracle.com

  Many organizations prefer to build their own MDM solutions. The argument is that they know their data quality issues and their data better than anyone. Plus a focused solution will cost less in the long run then a vendor supplied general purpose product. This is not unreasonable if you think of MDM as a point solution for a particular data quality problem. But this approach carries significant risk. We now know that organizations achieve significant competitive advantages when they deploy MDM as a strategic enterprise wide solution: with the most common best practice being to deploy a tactical MDM solution and grow it into a full information architecture. A build your own approach most certainly will not scale to a larger architecture unless it is done correctly with the larger solution in mind. It is possible to build a home grown point MDM solution in such a way that it will dovetail into broader MDM architectures. A very good place to start is to use the same basic technologies that Oracle uses to build its own MDM solutions. Start with the Oracle 11g database to create a flexible, extensible and open data model to hold the master data and all needed attributes. The Oracle database is the most flexible, highly available and scalable database system on the market. With its Real Application Clusters (RAC) it can even support the mixed OLTP and BI workloads that represent typical MDM data access profiles. Use Oracle Data Integration (ODI) for batch data movement between applications, MDM data stores, and the BI layer. Use Oracle Golden Gate for more real-time data movement. Use Oracle's SOA Suite for application integration with its: BPEL Process Manager to orchestrate MDM connections to business processes; Identity Management for managing users; WS Manager for managing web services; Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition for analytics; and JDeveloper for creating or extending the MDM management application. Oracle utilizes these technologies to build its MDM Hubs.  Customers who build their own MDM solution using these components will easily migrate to Oracle provided MDM solutions when the home grown solution runs out of gas. But, even with a full stack of open flexible MDM technologies, creating a robust MDM application can be a daunting task. For example, a basic MDM solution will need: a set of data access methods that support master data as a service as well as direct real time access as well as batch loads and extracts; a data migration service for initial loads and periodic updates; a metadata management capability for items such as business entity matrixed relationships and hierarchies; a source system management capability to fully cross-reference business objects and to satisfy seemingly conflicting data ownership requirements; a data quality function that can find and eliminate duplicate data while insuring correct data attribute survivorship; a set of data quality functions that can manage structured and unstructured data; a data quality interface to assist with preventing new errors from entering the system even when data entry is outside the MDM application itself; a continuing data cleansing function to keep the data up to date; an internal triggering mechanism to create and deploy change information to all connected systems; a comprehensive role based data security system to control and monitor data access, update rights, and maintain change history; a flexible business rules engine for managing master data processes such as privacy and data movement; a user interface to support casual users and data stewards; a business intelligence structure to support profiling, compliance, and business performance indicators; and an analytical foundation for directly analyzing master data. Oracle's pre-built MDM Hub solutions are full-featured 3-tier Internet applications designed to participate in the full Oracle technology stack or to run independently in other open IT SOA environments. Building MDM solutions from scratch can take years. Oracle's pre-built MDM solutions can bring quality data to the enterprise in a matter of months. But if you must build, at lease build with the world's best technology stack in a way that simplifies the eventual upgrade to Oracle MDM and to the full enterprise wide information architecture that it enables.

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• Enterprise 2.0 - Connecting People, Processes & Content

  - by kellsey.ruppel(at)oracle.com

  With recent technological advances, the Internet is changing. When users head to the web, they are no longer just looking for information from a simple text and picture based website. Users want a more interactive experience - they want to participate, to share their views and get the feedback of others. And this is precisely what Web 2.0 technology addresses. Web 2.0 is about web applications that facilitate interactive information sharing, user-centered design and collaboration on the World Wide Web. Web 2.0 technology is everywhere on the Internet and is radically changing the speed and medium in which we interact and communicate. There are thousands of examples in the consumer world of Web 2.0 applications, technologies and solutions at work. You might be familiar with some of them...blogs, wikis (Wikipedia), Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn - these are all examples of Web 2.0. And these technologies are transforming our world into a real-time, participation-oriented, user-driven, content-centric world. With all of these Web 2.0 solutions it's about the user, the consumer and all the content they are generating. It's a world full of online communities where people share and participate. We're not talking about disseminating information top-down , nor is it a bottom-up fight. Everyone has an equal opportunity to participate and share. The more you participate, the more you share, the more valued you are in the community. The web is not just a collection of documents online. It is the social web.  For the active users in the community, staying connected becomes critically important so they can participate at anytime and from anywhere. And because feedback and interaction are so critical, time is of the essence. When everyone is providing immediate responses, you feel the urge to do the same. Hence everything needs to be done right now, together...and collaboratively. With all the content being generated online by users, there is complete information overload out there. (That's a good thing for Google). But...it's no longer just about search. Sometimes you want the information to just come to you. Recommendations and discovery engines will deliver you more applicable results than a non-contextual search. How many of you have heard about a news headline on Facebook as part of your feed before you read the paper or see it on TV? This is how the new generation of workers live their daily lives...and as they enter the workforce, these trends and technologies are showing up in the enterprise too. A lot of the Web 2.0 technologies and solutions in the consumer world are geared for just that....consumers. But the core concepts that put them into the Web 2.0 category can be applied to the enterprise as well. And that is what we mean when we talk about Enterprise 2.0. Enterprise 2.0 is the use of Web 2.0 tools and technologies in the workplace.  It provides a modern user experience by connecting the people, content and business processes inside and outside the enterprise. Enterprise 2.0 empowers users to collaborate more effectively, find and share information in the proper content and improves the overall business processes which they participate in. As we head into 2011, is your organization using Enterprise 2.0 capabilities to the fullest? Are you connecting your people, processes and content together to provide a modern user experience?

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• Java Developer Days India Trip Report

  - by reza_rahman

  You are probably aware of Oracle's decision to discontinue the relatively resource intensive regional JavaOnes in favor of more Java Developer Days, virtual events and deeper involvement with independent conferences. In comparison to the regional JavaOnes, Java Developer Days are smaller, shorter (typically one full day), more focused (mostly Oracle speakers/topics) and more local (targeting cities). For those who have been around the Java ecosystem for a few years, they are basically the current incarnation of the highly popular and developer centric Sun Tech Days. October 21st through October 25th I spoke at Java Developer Days India. This was basically three separate but identical events in the cities of Pune (October 21st), Chennai (October 24th) and Bangalore (October 25th). For those with some familiarity with India, other than Hyderabad these cities are India's IT powerhouses. The events were basically focused on Java EE. I delivered five of the sessions (yes, you read that right), while my friend NetBeans Group Product Manager Ashwin Rao delivered three talks. Jagadish Ramu from the GlassFish team India helped me out in Bangalore by delivering two sessions. It was also a pleasure to introduce my co-contributor to the Cargo Tracker Java EE Blue Prints project Vijay Nair at Bangalore during the opening talk. I thought it was a great dynamic between Ashwin and I flipping between talking about the new features and demoing live code in NetBeans. The following were my sessions (source PDF and abstracts posted as usual on my SlideShare account): JavaEE.Next(): Java EE 7, 8, and Beyond Building Java HTML5/WebSocket Applications with JSR 356 What’s New in Java Message Service 2 JAX-RS 2: New and Noteworthy in the RESTful Web Services API Using NoSQL with JPA, EclipseLink and Java EE The event went well and was packed in all three cities. The Q&A was great and Indian developers were particularly generous with kind words :-). It seemed the event and our presence was appreciated in the truest sense which I must say is a rarity. The events were exhausting but very rewarding at the same time. As hectic as the three city trip was I tried to see at least some of the major sights (mostly at night) since this was my very first time to India. I think the slideshow below is a good representation of the riddle wrapped up in an enigma that is India (and the rest of the Indian sub-continent for that matter): Ironically enough what struck me the most during this trip is the woman pictured below - Shushma. My chauffeur, tour guide and friend for a day, she fluidly navigated the madness that is Mumbai traffic with skills that would make Evel Knievel blush while simultaneously pointing out sights and prompting me to take pictures (Mumbai was my stopover and gateway to/from India). In some ways she is probably the most potent symbol of the new India. When we parted ways I told her she should take solace in the fact she has won mostly without a fight a potentially hazardous battle her sisters across the Arabian sea are still fighting. I'm not sure she entirely understood the significance of what I told her. I hope that she did. I also had occasion to take a pretty cool local bus ride from Chennai to Bangalore instead of yet another boring flight. All in all I really enjoyed the trip to India and hope to return again soon. Jai Hind :-)!

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• What I've Gained from being a Presenter at Tech Events

  - by MOSSLover

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/MOSSLover/archive/2014/06/12/what-ive-gained-from-being-a-presenter-at-tech-events.aspxI know I fail at blogging lately.  As I've said before life happens and it gets in the way of best laid out plans.  I thought about creating some type of watch with some app that basically dictates using dragon naturally speaking to Wordpress, but alas no time and the write processing capabilities just don't exist yet.So to get to my point Alison Gianotto created this blog post: http://www.snipe.net/2014/06/why-you-should-stop-stalling-and-start-presenting/.  I like the message she has stated in this post and I want to share something personal.It was around 2007 that I was seriously looking into leaving the technology field altogether and going back to school.  I was calling places like Washington University in Saint Louis and University of Missouri Kansas City asking them how I could go about getting into some type of post graduate medical school program.  My entire high school career was based on Medical Explorers and somehow becoming a doctor.  I did not want to take my hobby and continue using it as a career mechanism.  I was unhappy, but I didn't realize why I was unhappy at the time.  It was really a lot of bad things involving the lack of self confidence and self esteem.  Overall I was not in a good place and it took me until 2011 to realize that I still was not in a good place in life.So in about April 2007 or so I started this blog that you guys have been reading or occasionally read.  I kind of started passively stalking people by reading their blogs in the SharePoint and .Net communities.  I also started listening to .Net Rocks & watching videos on their corresponding training for SharePoint, WCF, WF, and a bunch of other technologies.  I wanted more knowledge, so someone suggested I go to a user group.  I've told this story before about how I met Jeff Julian & John Alexander, so that point I will spare you the details.  You know how I got to my first user group presentation and how I started getting involved with events, so I'll also spare those details.The point I want to touch on is that I went out I started speaking and that path I took helped me gain the self confidence and self respect I needed.  When I first moved to NYC I couldn't even ride a subway by myself or walk alone without getting lost.  Now I feel like I can go out and solve any problem someone throws at me.  So you see what Alison states in her blog post is true and I am a great example to that point.  I stood in front of 800 or so people at SharePoint Conference in 2011 and spoke about a topic.  In 2007 I would have hidden or stuttered the entire time.  I have now spoken at over 70 events and user groups.  I am a top 25 influencer in my technology.  I was a most valued professional for years in a row in Microsoft SharePoint.  People are constantly trying to gain my time, so that they can pick my brain for solutions and other life problems.  I went from maybe five or six friends to over hundreds of friends in various cities across the globe.  I'm not saying it's an instant fame and it doesn't take a ton of work, but I have never looked back once at my life and regretted the choice I made in 2007.  It has lead me to a lot of other things in my life, including more positivity and happiness.  If anyone ever wants to contact me and pick my brain on a presentation go ahead.  If you want me to help you find the best meetup that suits you for that presentation I can try to help too (I might be a little more helpful in the Microsoft or iOS arenas though).  The best thing I can state is don't be scared just do it.  If you need an audience I can try to pencil it in my schedule.  I can't promise anything, but if you are in NYC I can at least try.

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• Silverlight Cream for May 08, 2010 -- #858

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Phil Middlemiss, Jaime Rodriguez, Senthil Kumar, Mike Snow, DaveDev, Gergely Orosz, Kirupa, Cheryl Simmons, András Velvárt, Dan Wahlin, Michael D. Brown, and Ben Rush. Shoutouts: Erik Mork and crew have their latest up: This Week In Silverlight – Where’s the Tablet? Chris Rouw has a good link post and instructions on WCF RIA services: Deploying and Configuring Silverlight 4 and WCF RIA Services From SilverlightCream.com: Quick and Easy Sscalable Rounded Bevels Phil Middlemiss duplicates some bevel-edged rectangles in Blend, and they look great. Now you don't have to import all the other PhotoShop bits to get those things looking the way you want! A transparent Windows PHONE FAQ Jaime Rodriguez combined a bunch of information into a WP7 FAQ that he's going to keep up to date, so bookmark the page. He also has links to the Training Kit, on and offline versions. Windows Phone Developer Training Kit April Refresh is now available for Download Thanks to Senthil Kumar, I found out there is an April refresh of the WP7 Training kit at Channel 9 -- go get yours now --- I'll still be here when you get back! Silverlight Tip of the Day #16 – Working with IgnoreImageCache Mike Snow's Tip of the day #16 covers IgnoreImageCache and like many other things in life, until you read Mike's post you may be surprised at how it works. DoodlePad – A fun, free, sketching application for Windows Phone 7 DaveDev has a new WP7 App up that lets you or your kids 'Doodle' on the phone... could be a note, or could be a drawing... good post with all the links you need to get this cranked up on the emulator. Printing in Silverlight: Printing Charts and Auto Scaling Gergely Orosz's latest post is a very useful one on auto-scaling charts to fit a printed page and then getting them to print. Smoothly Scrolling a ListBox Check out the smooth scrolling Kirupa has on the ListBox near the top of his post... all good stuff... you wanna know how to do that! Plus... it's dead simple and all in Blend :) http://www.sparklingclient.com/wheres-the-silverlight-tablet/ Cheryl Simmons has a great tip up at the SilverlightSDK if you haven't burned through to figure it out yet ... changing the watermark on a DatePicker control... looks great! The story of a wicked bug András Velvárt tells a story of a bug that just defied logic or being found. Read how he tracked it down and what it actually was... could save you some time. Story learned: if I have a problem that bad, I'm calling András :) Text Trimming in Silverlight 4 Dan Wahlin gives a quick run-through of what TextBox trimming is, and then by a good real example... check it out and start using it in your projects. Enterprise Patterns with WCF RIA Services Michael D. Brown has an article in MSDN Magazine on RIA Services. Great information and link-packed article, with all the source avialable for download. Building Custom Players with the Silverlight Media Framework Ben Rush has a nice long tutorial on the Silverlight Media Framework up on the MSDN Magazine site ... lots of information in there. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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