Search Results

Search found 7277 results on 292 pages for 'operating room analytics'.

Page 257/292 | < Previous Page | 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264  | Next Page >

• IPgallery banks on Solaris SPARC

  - by Frederic Pariente

  IPgallery is a global supplier of converged legacy and Next Generation Networks (NGN) products and solutions, including: core network components and cloud-based Value Added Services (VAS) for voice, video and data sessions. IPgallery enables network operators and service providers to offer advanced converged voice, chat, video/content services and rich unified social communications in a combined legacy (fixed/mobile), Over-the-Top (OTT) and Social Community (SC) environments for home and business customers. Technically speaking, this offer is a scalable and robust telco solution enabling operators to offer new services while controlling operating expenses (OPEX). In its solutions, IPgallery leverages the following Oracle components: Oracle Solaris, Netra T4 and SPARC T4 in order to provide a competitive and scalable solution without the price tag often associated with high-end systems. Oracle Solaris Binary Application Guarantee A unique feature of Oracle Solaris is the guaranteed binary compatibility between releases of the Solaris OS. That means, if a binary application runs on Solaris 2.6 or later, it will run on the latest release of Oracle Solaris.  IPgallery developed their application on Solaris 9 and Solaris 10 then runs it on Solaris 11, without any code modification or rebuild. The Solaris Binary Application Guarantee helps IPgallery protect their long-term investment in the development, training and maintenance of their applications. Oracle Solaris Image Packaging System (IPS) IPS is a new repository-based package management system that comes with Oracle Solaris 11. It provides a framework for complete software life-cycle management such as installation, upgrade and removal of software packages. IPgallery leverages this new packaging system in order to speed up and simplify software installation for the R&D and production environments. Notably, they use IPS to deliver Solaris Studio 12.3 packages as part of the rapid installation process of R&D environments, and during the production software deployment phase, they ensure software package integrity using the built-in verification feature. Solaris IPS thus improves IPgallery's time-to-market with a faster, more reliable software installation and deployment in production environments. Extreme Network Performance IPgallery saw a huge improvement in application performance both in CPU and I/O, when running on SPARC T4 architecture in compared to UltraSPARC T2 servers.  The same application (with the same activation environment) running on T2 consumes 40%-50% CPU, while it consumes only 10% of the CPU on T4. The testing environment comprised of: Softswitch (Call management), TappS (Telecom Application Server) and Billing Server running on same machine and initiating various services in capacity of 1000 CAPS (Call Attempts Per Second). In addition, tests showed a huge improvement in the performance of the TCP/IP stack, which reduces network layer processing and in the end Call Attempts latency. Finally, there is a huge improvement within the file system and disk I/O operations; they ran all tests with maximum logging capability and it didn't influence any benchmark values. "Due to the huge improvements in performance and capacity using the T4-1 architecture, IPgallery has engineered the solution with less hardware.  This means instead of deploying the solution on six T2-based machines, we will deploy on 2 redundant machines while utilizing Oracle Solaris Zones and Oracle VM for higher availability and virtualization" Shimon Lichter, VP R&D, IPgallery In conclusion, using the unique combination of Oracle Solaris and SPARC technologies, IPgallery is able to offer solutions with much lower TCO, while providing a higher level of service capacity, scalability and resiliency. This low-OPEX solution enables the operator, the end-customer, to deliver a high quality service while maintaining high profitability.

  Read the article

• Trigger Happy

  - by Tim Dexter

  Its been a while, I know, we’ll say no more OK? I’ll just write …In the latest BIP 11.1.1.6 release and if I’m really honest; the release before this (we'll call it dot 5 for brevity.) The boys and gals in the engine room have been real busy enhancing BIP with some new functionality. Those of you that use the scheduling engine in OBIEE may already know and use the ‘conditional scheduling’ feature. This allows you to be more intelligent about what reports get run and sent to folks on a scheduled basis. You create a ‘trigger’ analysis (answer) that is executed at schedule time prior to the main report. When the schedule rolls around, the trigger is run, if it returns rows, then the main report is run and delivered. If there are no rows returned, then the main report is not run. Useful right? Your users are not bombarded with 20 reports in their inbox every week that they need to wade throu. They get a handful that they know they need to look at. If you ensure you use conditional formatting in the report then they can find the anomalous data in the reports very quickly and move on to the rest of their day more quickly. You could even think of OBIEE as a virtual team member, scouring the data on your behalf 24/7 and letting you know when its found an issue.BI Publisher, wanting the team t-shirt and the khaki pants, has followed suit. You can now set up ‘triggers’ for it to execute before it runs the main report. Just like its big brother, if the scheduled report trigger returns rows of data; it then executes the main report. Otherwise, the report is skipped until the next schedule time rolls around. Sound familiar?BIP differs a little, in that you only need to construct a query to act as the trigger rather than a complete report. Let assume we have a monthly wage by department report on a schedule. We only want to send the report to managers if their departmental wages reach and/or exceed a certain amount. The toughest part about this is coming up with the SQL to test the business rule you want to implement. For my example, its not that tough: select d.department_name, sum(e.salary) as wage_total from employees e, departments d where d.department_id = e.department_id group by d.department_name having sum(e.salary) > 230000 We're looking for departments where the wage cost is greater than 230,000 Dexter Dollars! With a bit of messing I found out you can parametrize the query. Users can then set a value at schedule time if they need to. To create the trigger is straightforward enough. You can create multiple triggers for users to select at schedule time. Notice I also used a parameter in the query, :wamount. Note the matching parameter in the tree on the left. You also dont need to return multiple columns, one is fine, the key is if there are rows returned. You can build the rest of your report as usual. At scheduling time the Schedule tab has a bit more on it. If your users want to set the trigger, they check the Use Trigger box. The page will then pop fields to pick the appropriate trigger they want to use, even a trigger on another data model if needed. Note it will also ask for the parameter value associated with the trigger. At this point you should note that the data model does not make a distinction between trigger and data model (extract) parameters. So users will see the parameters on the General and Schedule tabs. If per chance you do need to just have a trigger parameters. You can just hide them from the report using the Parameters popup in the report designer, just un-check the 'Show' box I have tested the opposite case where you do not want main report parameters seen in the trigger section. BIP handles that for you! Once the report hits its allotted schedule time, the trigger is executed. Based on the results the report will either run or be 'skipped.' Now, you have a smarter scheduler that will only deliver reports when folks need to see them and take action on the contents. More official info here for developers and here for users.

  Read the article

• Building dynamic OLAP data marts on-the-fly

  - by DrJohn

  At the forthcoming SQLBits conference, I will be presenting a session on how to dynamically build an OLAP data mart on-the-fly. This blog entry is intended to clarify exactly what I mean by an OLAP data mart, why you may need to build them on-the-fly and finally outline the steps needed to build them dynamically. In subsequent blog entries, I will present exactly how to implement some of the techniques involved. What is an OLAP data mart? In data warehousing parlance, a data mart is a subset of the overall corporate data provided to business users to meet specific business needs. Of course, the term does not specify the technology involved, so I coined the term "OLAP data mart" to identify a subset of data which is delivered in the form of an OLAP cube which may be accompanied by the relational database upon which it was built. To clarify, the relational database is specifically create and loaded with the subset of data and then the OLAP cube is built and processed to make the data available to the end-users via standard OLAP client tools. Why build OLAP data marts? Market research companies sell data to their clients to make money. To gain competitive advantage, market research providers like to "add value" to their data by providing systems that enhance analytics, thereby allowing clients to make best use of the data. As such, OLAP cubes have become a standard way of delivering added value to clients. They can be built on-the-fly to hold specific data sets and meet particular needs and then hosted on a secure intranet site for remote access, or shipped to clients' own infrastructure for hosting. Even better, they support a wide range of different tools for analytical purposes, including the ever popular Microsoft Excel. Extension Attributes: The Challenge One of the key challenges in building multiple OLAP data marts based on the same 'template' is handling extension attributes. These are attributes that meet the client's specific reporting needs, but do not form part of the standard template. Now clearly, these extension attributes have to come into the system via additional files and ultimately be added to relational tables so they can end up in the OLAP cube. However, processing these files and filling dynamically altered tables with SSIS is a challenge as SSIS packages tend to break as soon as the database schema changes. There are two approaches to this: (1) dynamically build an SSIS package in memory to match the new database schema using C#, or (2) have the extension attributes provided as name/value pairs so the file's schema does not change and can easily be loaded using SSIS. The problem with the first approach is the complexity of writing an awful lot of complex C# code. The problem of the second approach is that name/value pairs are useless to an OLAP cube; so they have to be pivoted back into a proper relational table somewhere in the data load process WITHOUT breaking SSIS. How this can be done will be part of future blog entry. What is involved in building an OLAP data mart? There are a great many steps involved in building OLAP data marts on-the-fly. The key point is that all the steps must be automated to allow for the production of multiple OLAP data marts per day (i.e. many thousands, each with its own specific data set and attributes). Now most of these steps have a great deal in common with standard data warehouse practices. The key difference is that the databases are all built to order. The only permanent database is the metadata database (shown in orange) which holds all the metadata needed to build everything else (i.e. client orders, configuration information, connection strings, client specific requirements and attributes etc.). The staging database (shown in red) has a short life: it is built, populated and then ripped down as soon as the OLAP Data Mart has been populated. In the diagram below, the OLAP data mart comprises the two blue components: the Data Mart which is a relational database and the OLAP Cube which is an OLAP database implemented using Microsoft Analysis Services (SSAS). The client may receive just the OLAP cube or both components together depending on their reporting requirements.  So, in broad terms the steps required to fulfil a client order are as follows: Step 1: Prepare metadata Create a set of database names unique to the client's order Modify all package connection strings to be used by SSIS to point to new databases and file locations. Step 2: Create relational databases Create the staging and data mart relational databases using dynamic SQL and set the database recovery mode to SIMPLE as we do not need the overhead of logging anything Execute SQL scripts to build all database objects (tables, views, functions and stored procedures) in the two databases Step 3: Load staging database Use SSIS to load all data files into the staging database in a parallel operation Load extension files containing name/value pairs. These will provide client-specific attributes in the OLAP cube. Step 4: Load data mart relational database Load the data from staging into the data mart relational database, again in parallel where possible Allocate surrogate keys and use SSIS to perform surrogate key lookup during the load of fact tables Step 5: Load extension tables & attributes Pivot the extension attributes from their native name/value pairs into proper relational tables Add the extension attributes to the views used by OLAP cube Step 6: Deploy & Process OLAP cube Deploy the OLAP database directly to the server using a C# script task in SSIS Modify the connection string used by the OLAP cube to point to the data mart relational database Modify the cube structure to add the extension attributes to both the data source view and the relevant dimensions Remove any standard attributes that not required Process the OLAP cube Step 7: Backup and drop databases Drop staging database as it is no longer required Backup data mart relational and OLAP database and ship these to the client's infrastructure Drop data mart relational and OLAP database from the build server Mark order complete Start processing the next order, ad infinitum. So my future blog posts and my forthcoming session at the SQLBits conference will all focus on some of the more interesting aspects of building OLAP data marts on-the-fly such as handling the load of extension attributes and how to dynamically alter the structure of an OLAP cube using C#.

  Read the article

• Securing Flexfield Value Sets in EBS 12.2

  - by Sara Woodhull

  Release 12.2 includes a new feature: flexfield value set security. This new feature gives you additional options for ensuring that different administrators have non-overlapping responsibilities, which in turn provides checks and balances for sensitive activities.  Separation of Duties (SoD) is one of the key concepts of internal controls and is a requirement for many regulations including: Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) European Union Data Protection Directive. Its primary intent is to put barriers in place to prevent fraud or theft by an individual acting alone. Implementing Separation of Duties requires minimizing the possibility that users could modify data across application functions where the users should not normally have access. For flexfields and report parameters in Oracle E-Business Suite, values in value sets can affect functionality such as the rollup of accounting data, job grades used at a company, and so on. Controlling access to the creation or modification of value set values can be an important piece of implementing Separation of Duties in an organization. New Flexfield Value Set Security feature Flexfield value set security allows system administrators to restrict users from viewing, adding or updating values in specific value sets. Value set security enables role-based separation of duties for key flexfields, descriptive flexfields, and report parameters. For example, you can set up value set security such that certain users can view or insert values for any value set used by the Accounting Flexfield but no other value sets, while other users can view and update values for value sets used for any flexfields in Oracle HRMS. You can also segregate access by Operating Unit as well as by role or responsibility.Value set security uses a combination of data security and role-based access control in Oracle User Management. Flexfield value set security provides a level of security that is different from the previously-existing and similarly-named features in Oracle E-Business Suite: Function security controls whether a user has access to a specific page or form, as well as what operations the user can do in that screen. Flexfield value security controls what values a user can enter into a flexfield segment or report parameter (by responsibility) during routine data entry in many transaction screens across Oracle E-Business Suite. Flexfield value set security (this feature, new in Release 12.2) controls who can view, insert, or update values for a particular value set (by flexfield, report, or value set) in the Segment Values form (FNDFFMSV). The effect of flexfield value set security is that a user of the Segment Values form will only be able to view those value sets for which the user has been granted access. Further, the user will be able to insert or update/disable values in that value set if the user has been granted privileges to do so.  Flexfield value set security affects independent, dependent, and certain table-validated value sets for flexfields and report parameters. Initial State of the Feature upon Upgrade Because this is a new security feature, it is turned on by default.  When you initially install or upgrade to Release 12.2.2, no users are allowed to view, insert or update any value set values (users may even think that their values are missing or invalid because they cannot see the values).  You must explicitly set up access for specific users by enabling appropriate grants and roles for those users.We recommend using flexfield value set security as part of a comprehensive Separation of Duties strategy. However, if you choose not to implement flexfield value set security upon upgrading to or installing Release 12.2, you can enable backwards compatibility--users can access any value sets if they have access to the Values form--after you upgrade. The feature does not affect day-to-day transactions that use flexfields.  However, you must either set up specific grants and roles or enable backwards compatibility before users can create new values or update or disable existing values. For more information, see: Release 12.2 Flexfield Value Set Security Documentation Update for Patch 17305947:R12.FND.C (Document 1589204.1) R12.2 TOI: Implement and Use Application Object Library (AOL) - Flexfields Security and Separation of Duties for Value Sets (recorded training)

  Read the article

• Copy New Files Only in .NET

  - by psheriff

  Recently I had a client that had a need to copy files from one folder to another. However, there was a process that was running that would dump new files into the original folder every minute or so. So, we needed to be able to copy over all the files one time, then also be able to go back a little later and grab just the new files. After looking into the System.IO namespace, none of the classes within here met my needs exactly. Of course I could build it out of the various File and Directory classes, but then I remembered back to my old DOS days (yes, I am that old!). The XCopy command in DOS (or the command prompt for you pure Windows people) is very powerful. One of the options you can pass to this command is to grab only newer files when copying from one folder to another. So instead of writing a ton of code I decided to simply call the XCopy command using the Process class in .NET. The command I needed to run at the command prompt looked like this: XCopy C:\Original\*.* D:\Backup\*.* /q /d /y What this command does is to copy all files from the Original folder on the C drive to the Backup folder on the D drive. The /q option says to do it quitely without repeating all the file names as it copies them. The /d option says to get any newer files it finds in the Original folder that are not in the Backup folder, or any files that have a newer date/time stamp. The /y option will automatically overwrite any existing files without prompting the user to press the "Y" key to overwrite the file. To translate this into code that we can call from our .NET programs, you can write the CopyFiles method presented below. C# using System.Diagnostics public void CopyFiles(string source, string destination){  ProcessStartInfo si = new ProcessStartInfo();  string args = @"{0}\*.* {1}\*.* /q /d /y";   args = string.Format(args, source, destination);   si.FileName = "xcopy";  si.Arguments = args;  Process.Start(si);} VB.NET Imports System.Diagnostics Public Sub CopyFiles(source As String, destination As String)  Dim si As New ProcessStartInfo()  Dim args As String = "{0}\*.* {1}\*.* /q /d /y"   args = String.Format(args, source, destination)   si.FileName = "xcopy"  si.Arguments = args  Process.Start(si)End Sub The CopyFiles method first creates a ProcessStartInfo object. This object is where you fill in name of the command you wish to run and also the arguments that you wish to pass to the command. I created a string with the arguments then filled in the source and destination folders using the string.Format() method. Finally you call the Start method of the Process class passing in the ProcessStartInfo object. That's all there is to calling any command in the operating system. Very simple, and much less code than it would have taken had I coded it using the various File and Directory classes. Good Luck with your Coding,Paul Sheriff ** SPECIAL OFFER FOR MY BLOG READERS **Visit http://www.pdsa.com/Event/Blog for a free video on Silverlight entitled Silverlight XAML for the Complete Novice - Part 1.  

  Read the article

• The SPARC SuperCluster

  - by Karoly Vegh

  Oracle has been providing a lead in the Engineered Systems business for quite a while now, in accordance with the motto "Hardware and Software Engineered to Work Together." Indeed it is hard to find a better definition of these systems.  Allow me to summarize the idea. It is:  Build a compute platform optimized to run your technologies Develop application aware, intelligently caching storage components Take an impressively fast network technology interconnecting it with the compute nodes Tune the application to scale with the nodes to yet unseen performance Reduce the amount of data moving via compression Provide this all in a pre-integrated single product with a single-pane management interface All these ideas have been around in IT for quite some time now. The real Oracle advantage is adding the last one to put these all together. Oracle has built quite a portfolio of Engineered Systems, to run its technologies - and run those like they never ran before. In this post I'll focus on one of them that serves as a consolidation demigod, a multi-purpose engineered system.  As you probably have guessed, I am talking about the SPARC SuperCluster. It has many great features inherited from its predecessors, and it adds several new ones. Allow me to pick out and elaborate about some of the most interesting ones from a technological point of view.  I. It is the SPARC SuperCluster T4-4. That is, as compute nodes, it includes SPARC T4-4 servers that we learned to appreciate and respect for their features: The SPARC T4 CPUs: Each CPU has 8 cores, each core runs 8 threads. The SPARC T4-4 servers have 4 sockets. That is, a single compute node can in parallel, simultaneously  execute 256 threads. Now, a full-rack SPARC SuperCluster has 4 of these servers on board. Remember the keyword demigod.  While retaining the forerunner SPARC T3's exceptional throughput, the SPARC T4 CPUs raise the bar with single performance too - a humble 5x better one than their ancestors.  actually, the SPARC T4 CPU cores run in both single-threaded and multi-threaded mode, and switch between these two on-the-fly, fulfilling not only single-threaded OR multi-threaded applications' needs, but even mixed requirements (like in database workloads!). Data security, anyone? Every SPARC T4 CPU core has a built-in encryption engine, that is, encryption algorithms cast into silicon.  A PCI controller right on the chip for customers who need I/O performance.  Built-in, no-cost Virtualization:  Oracle VM for SPARC (the former LDoms or Logical Domains) is not a server-emulation virtualization technology but rather a serverpartitioning one, the hypervisor runs in the server firmware, and all the VMs' HW resources (I/O, CPU, memory) are accessed natively, without performance overhead.  This enables customers to run a number of Solaris 10 and Solaris 11 VMs separated, independent of each other within a physical server II. For Database performance, it includes Exadata Storage Cells - one of the main reasons why the Exadata Database Machine performs at diabolic speed. What makes them important? They provide DB backend storage for your Oracle Databases to run on the SPARC SuperCluster, that is what they are built and tuned for DB performance.  These storage cells are SQL-aware.  That is, if a SPARC T4 database compute node executes a query, it doesn't simply request tons of raw datablocks from the storage, filters the received data, and throws away most of it where the statement doesn't apply, but provides the SQL query to the storage node too. The storage cell software speaks SQL, that is, it is able to prefilter and through that transfer only the relevant data. With this, the traffic between database nodes and storage cells is reduced immensely. Less I/O is a good thing - as they say, all the CPUs of the world do one thing just as fast as any other - and that is waiting for I/O.  They don't only pre-filter, but also provide data preprocessing features - e.g. if a DB-node requests an aggregate of data, they can calculate it, and handover only the results, not the whole set. Again, less data to transfer.  They support the magical HCC, (Hybrid Columnar Compression). That is, data can be stored in a precompressed form on the storage. Less data to transfer.  Of course one can't simply rely on disks for performance, there is Flash Storage included there for caching.  III. The low latency, high-speed backbone network: InfiniBand, that interconnects all the members with: Real High Speed: 40 Gbit/s. Full Duplex, of course. Oh, and a really low latency.  RDMA. Remote Direct Memory Access. This technology allows the DB nodes to do exactly that. Remotely, directly placing SQL commands into the Memory of the storage cells. Dodging all the network-stack bottlenecks, avoiding overhead, placing requests directly into the process queue.  You can also run IP over InfiniBand if you please - that's the way the compute nodes can communicate with each other.  IV. Including a general-purpose storage too: the ZFSSA, which is a unified storage, providing NAS and SAN access too, with the following features:  NFS over RDMA over InfiniBand. Nothing is faster network-filesystem-wise.  All the ZFS features onboard, hybrid storage pools, compression, deduplication, snapshot, replication, NFS and CIFS shares Storageheads in a HA-Cluster configuration providing availability of the data  DTrace Live Analytics in a web-based Administration UI Being a general purpose application data storage for your non-database applications running on the SPARC SuperCluster over whichever protocol they prefer, easily replicating, snapshotting, cloning data for them.  There's a lot of great technology included in Oracle's SPARC SuperCluster, we have talked its interior through. As for external scalability: you can start with a half- of full- rack SPARC SuperCluster, and scale out to several racks - that is, stacking not separate full-rack SPARC SuperClusters, but extending always one large instance of the size of several full-racks. Yes, over InfiniBand network. Add racks as you grow.  What technologies shall run on it? SPARC SuperCluster is a general purpose scaleout consolidation/cloud environment. You can run Oracle Databases with RAC scaling, or Oracle Weblogic (end enjoy the SPARC T4's advantages to run Java). Remember, Oracle technologies have been integrated with the Oracle Engineered Systems - this is the Oracle on Oracle advantage. But you can run other software environments such as SAP if you please too. Run any application that runs on Oracle Solaris 10 or Solaris 11. Separate them in Virtual Machines, or even Oracle Solaris Zones, monitor and manage those from a central UI. Here the key takeaways once again: The SPARC SuperCluster: Is a pre-integrated Engineered System Contains SPARC T4-4 servers with built-in virtualization, cryptography, dynamic threading Contains the Exadata storage cells that intelligently offload the burden of the DB-nodes  Contains a highly available ZFS Storage Appliance, that provides SAN/NAS storage in a unified way Combines all these elements over a high-speed, low-latency backbone network implemented with InfiniBand Can grow from a single half-rack to several full-rack size Supports the consolidation of hundreds of applications To summarize: All these technologies are great by themselves, but the real value is like in every other Oracle Engineered System: Integration. All these technologies are tuned to perform together. Together they are way more than the sum of all - and a careful and actually very time consuming integration process is necessary to orchestrate all these for performance. The SPARC SuperCluster's goal is to enable infrastructure operations and offer a pre-integrated solution that can be architected and delivered in hours instead of months of evaluations and tests. The tedious and most importantly time and resource consuming part of the work - testing and evaluating - has been done.  Now go, provide services.   -- charlie  

  Read the article

• Architect Day: Boston - Agenda Update

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Here's the latest information on the session schedule and content for Oracle Technology Network Architect Day in Boston, MA on September 12, 2012. Registration is open, but seating is limited. When: September 12, 2012 8:30am – 5:00pm Where: Boston Marriott Burlington One Burlington Mall Road Burlington, MA 01803 Register now Agenda Time Session Title Room 8:30 am - 9:00 am Registration and Continental Breakfast Salon E Foyer 9:00 am - 9:15 am Welcome and Opening Comments | Bob Rhubart Salon E 9:15 am - 10:00 am Engineered Systems: Oracle's Vision for the Future | Ralf Dossmann Oracle's Exadata and Exalogic are impressive products in their own right. But working in combination they deliver unparalleled transaction processing performance with up to a 30x increase over existing legacy systems, with the lowest cost of ownership over a 3 or 5 year basis than any other hardware. In this session you'll learn how to leverage Oracle's Engineered Systems within your enterprise to deliver record-breaking performance at the lowest TCO. Salon E 10:00 am - 10:30 am Securing Public and Private Clouds | Anton Nielsen Long before the term "Cloud Computing" existed, Oracle technologies supported and promoted the concept. Centralized data with remote users has been at the core of these technologies for decades. The public cloud, and extending private clouds to the internet, though, has added security challenges never imagined decades ago. This presentation will examine a real life security breach and introduce architecture, technologies and policies to secure public and private clouds.  Salon E 10:30 am - 10:45 am Break 10:45 am - 11:30 am Breakout Sessions (pick one) Cloud Computing - Making IT Simple | Scott Mattoon The road to Cloud Computing is not without a few bumps. This session will help to smooth out your journey by tackling some of the potential complications. We'll examine whether standardization is a prerequisite for the Cloud. We'll look at why refactoring isn't just for application code. We'll check out deployable entities and their simplification via higher levels of abstraction. And we'll close out the session with a look at engineered systems and modular clouds. Salon E Innovations in Grid Computing with Oracle Coherence | Rob Misek Learn how Coherence can increase the availability, scalability and performance of your existing applications with its advanced low-latency data-grid technologies. Also hear some interesting industry-specific use cases that customers had implemented and how Oracle is integrating Coherence into its Enterprise Java stack. Salon C 11:30 am - 12:15 pm Breakout Sessions (pick one) Enterprise Strategy for Cloud Security | Dave Chappelle Security is high on the list of concerns for many organizations as they evaluate their cloud computing options. This session will examine security in the context of the various forms of cloud computing. We'll consider technical and non-technical aspects of security, and discuss several strategies for cloud computing, from both the consumer and producer perspectives. Salon E Oracle Enterprise Manager | Avi Huber Much more than a DB management tool, Oracle Enterprise Manager provides management and monitoring coverage for the entire Oracle stack, and beyond. This session will concentrate on the middleware management functionality in OEM, starting with Real User Experience monitoring, through AppServer management, and into deep-dive Java diagnostics. We’ll discuss Business Driven Application Management (BDAM) and the benefits of top-down monitoring. Lastly, we’ll demonstrate how to trace a specific user experience problem, through a multitier SOA application, to its root cause, deep in the JVM. Salon C 12:15 pm - 1:15 pm Lunch Salon E Foyer 1:15 pm - 2:00 pm Panel Discussion - Q&A with session speakers Salon E 2:00 pm - 2:45 pm Breakout Sessions (pick one) Oracle Cloud Reference Architecture | Anbu Krishnaswamy Cloud initiatives are beginning to dominate enterprise IT roadmaps. Successful adoption of Cloud and the subsequent governance challenges warrant a Cloud reference architecture that is applied consistently across the enterprise. This presentation will answer the important questions: What exactly is a Cloud, why you need it, what changes it will bring to the enterprise, and what are the key capabilities of a Cloud infrastructure are - using Oracle's Cloud Reference Architecture, which is part of the IT Strategies from Oracle (ITSO) Cloud Enterprise Technology Strategy (ETS). Salon E 21st Century SOA | Peter Belknap Service Oriented Architecture has evolved from concept to reality in the last decade. The right methodology coupled with mature SOA technologies has helped customers demonstrate success in both innovation and ROI. In this session you will learn how Oracle SOA Suite's orchestration, virtualization, and governance capabilities provide the infrastructure to run mission critical business and system applications. And we'll take a special look at the convergence of SOA & BPM using Oracle's Unified technology stack. Salon C 2:45 pm - 3:00 pm Break 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm Roundtable Discussion Salon E 4:00 pm - 4:15 pm Closing Comments & Readouts from Roundtables Salon E 4:15 pm - 5:00 pm Networking / Reception Salon E Foyer Note: Session schedule and content subject to change.

  Read the article

• Create and Track Your Own License Keys with PowerShell

  - by BuckWoody

  SQL Server used to have  cool little tool that would let you track your licenses. Microsoft didn’t use it to limit your system or anything, it was just a place on the server where you could put that this system used this license key. I miss those days – we don’t track that any more, and I want to make sure I’m up to date on my licensing, so I made my own. Now, there are a LOT of ways you could do this. You could add an extended property in SQL Server, add a table to a tracking database, use a text file, track it somewhere else, whatever. This is just the route I chose; if you want to use some other method, feel free. Just sharing here. Warning Serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly by using Registry Editor or by using another method. These problems might require that you reinstall the operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that these problems can be solved. Modify the registry at your own risk. And this is REALLY important. I include a disclaimer at the end of my scripts, but in this case you’re modifying your registry, and that could be EXTREMELY dangerous – only do this on a test server – and I’m just showing you how I did mine. It isn’t an endorsement or anything like that, and this is a “Buck Woody” thing, NOT a Microsoft thing. See this link first, and then you can read on. OK, here’s my script: # Track your own licenses # Write a New Key to be the License Location mkdir HKCU:\SOFTWARE\Buck   # Write the variables - one sets the type, the other sets the number, and the last one holds the key New-ItemProperty HKCU:\SOFTWARE\Buck -name "SQLServerLicenseType" -value "Processor" # Notice the Dword value here - this one is a number so it needs that. Keep this on one line! New-ItemProperty HKCU:\SOFTWARE\Buck -name "SQLServerLicenseNumber" -propertytype DWord -value 4 New-ItemProperty HKCU:\SOFTWARE\Buck -name "SQLServerLicenseKey" -value "ABCD1234"   # Read them all $LicenseKey = Get-Item HKCU:\Software\Buck $Licenses = Get-ItemProperty $LicenseKey.PSPath foreach ($License in $LicenseKey.Property) { $License + "=" + $Licenses.$License }   Script Disclaimer, for people who need to be told this sort of thing: Never trust any script, including those that you find here, until you understand exactly what it does and how it will act on your systems. Always check the script on a test system or Virtual Machine, not a production system. Yes, there are always multiple ways to do things, and this script may not work in every situation, for everything. It’s just a script, people. All scripts on this site are performed by a professional stunt driver on a closed course. Your mileage may vary. Void where prohibited. Offer good for a limited time only. Keep out of reach of small children. Do not operate heavy machinery while using this script. If you experience blurry vision, indigestion or diarrhea during the operation of this script, see a physician immediately. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

  Read the article

• MCM Lab exam this week

  - by Rob Farley

  In two days I’ll’ve finished the MCM Lab exam, 88-971. If you do an internet search for 88-971, it’ll tell you the answer is –883. Obviously. It’ll also give you a link to the actual exam page, which is useful too, once you’ve finished being distracted by the calculator instead of going to the thing you’re actually looking for. (Do people actually search the internet for the results of mathematical questions? Really?) The list of Skills Measured for this exam is quite short, but can essentially be broken down into one word “Anything”. The Preparation Materials section is even better. Classroom Training – none available. Microsoft E-Learning – none available. Microsoft Press Books – none available. Practice Tests – none available. But there are links to Readiness Videos and a page which has no resources listed, but tells you a list of people who have already qualified. Three in Australia who have MCM SQL Server 2008 so far. The list doesn’t include some of the latest batch, such as Jason Strate or Tom LaRock. I’ve used SQL Server for almost 15 years. During that time I’ve been awarded SQL Server MVP seven times, but the MVP award doesn’t actually mean all that much when considering this particular certification. I know lots of MVPs who have tried this particular exam and failed – including Jason and Tom. Right now, I have no idea whether I’ll pass or not. People tell me I’ll pass no problem, but I honestly have no idea. There’s something about that “Anything” aspect that worries me. I keep looking at the list of things in the Readiness Videos, and think to myself “I’m comfortable with Resource Governor (or whatever) – that should be fine.” Except that then I feel like I maybe don’t know all the different things that can go wrong with Resource Governor (or whatever), and I wonder what kind of situations I’ll be faced with. And then I find myself looking through the stuff that’s explained in the videos, and wondering what kinds of things I should know that I don’t, and then I get amazingly bored and frustrated (after all, I tell people that these exams aren’t supposed to be studied for – you’ve been studying for the last 15 years, right?), and I figure “What’s the worst that can happen? A fail?” I’m told that the exam provides a list of scenarios (maybe 14 of them?) and you have 5.5 hours to complete them. When I say “complete”, I mean complete – you don’t get to leave them unfinished, that’ll get you ‘nil points’ for that scenario. Apparently no-one gets to complete all of them. Now, I’m a consultant. I get called on to fix the problems that people have on their SQL boxes. Sometimes this involves fixing corruption. Sometimes it’s figuring out some performance problem. Sometimes it’s as straight forward as getting past a full transaction log; sometimes it’s as tricky as recovering a database that has lost its metadata, without backups. Most situations aren’t a problem, but I also have the confidence of being able to do internet searches to verify my maths (in case I forget it’s –883). In the exam, I’ll have maybe twenty minutes per scenario (but if I need longer, I’ll have to take longer – no point in stopping half way if it takes more than twenty minutes, unless I don’t see an end coming up), so I’ll have time constraints too. And of course, I won’t have any of my usual tools. I can’t take scripts in, I can’t take staff members. Hopefully I can use the coffee machine that will be in the room. I figure it’s going to feel like one of those days when I’ve gone into a client site, and found that the problems are way worse than I expected, and that the site is down, with people standing over me needing me to get things right first time... ...so it should be fine, I’ve done that before. :) If I do fail, it won’t make me any less of a consultant. It won’t make me any less able to help all of my clients (including you if you get in touch – hehe), it’ll just mean that the particular problem might’ve taken me more than the twenty minutes that the exam gave me. @rob_farley PS: Apparently the done thing is to NOT advertise that you’re sitting the exam at a particular time, only that you’re expecting to take it at some point in the future. I think it’s akin to the idea of not telling people you’re pregnant for the first few months – it’s just in case the worst happens. Personally, I’m happy to tell you all that I’m going to take this exam the day after tomorrow (which is the 19th in the US, the 20th here). If I end up failing, you can all commiserate and tell me that I’m not actually as unqualified as I feel.

  Read the article

• SQLAuthority News – Great Time Spent at Great Indian Developers Summit 2014

  - by Pinal Dave

  The Great Indian Developer Conference (GIDS) is one of the most popular annual event held in Bangalore. This year GIDS is scheduled on April 22, 25. I will be presented total four sessions at this event and each session is very different from each other. Here are the details of four of my sessions, which I presented there. Pluralsight Shades This event was a great event and I had fantastic fun presenting a technology over here. I was indeed very excited that along with me, I had many of my friends presenting at the event as well. I want to thank all of you to attend my session and having standing room every single time. I have already sent resources in my newsletter. You can sign up for the newsletter over here. Indexing is an Art I was amazed with the crowd present in the sessions at GIDS. There was a great interest in the subject of SQL Server and Performance Tuning. Audience at GIDS I believe event like such provides a great platform to meet and share knowledge. Pinal at Pluralsight Booth Here are the abstract of the sessions which I had presented. They were recorded so at some point in time they will be available, but if you want the content of all the courses immediately, I suggest you check out my video courses on the same subject on Pluralsight. Indexes, the Unsung Hero Relevant Pluralsight Course Slow Running Queries are the most common problem that developers face while working with SQL Server. While it is easy to blame SQL Server for unsatisfactory performance, the issue often persists with the way queries have been written, and how Indexes has been set up. The session will focus on the ways of identifying problems that slow down SQL Server, and Indexing tricks to fix them. Developers will walk out with scripts and knowledge that can be applied to their servers, immediately post the session. Indexes are the most crucial objects of the database. They are the first stop for any DBA and Developer when it is about performance tuning. There is a good side as well evil side to indexes. To master the art of performance tuning one has to understand the fundamentals of indexes and the best practices associated with the same. We will cover various aspects of Indexing such as Duplicate Index, Redundant Index, Missing Index as well as best practices around Indexes. SQL Server Performance Troubleshooting: Ancient Problems and Modern Solutions Relevant Pluralsight Course Many believe Performance Tuning and Troubleshooting is an art which has been lost in time. However, truth is that art has evolved with time and there are more tools and techniques to overcome ancient troublesome scenarios. There are three major resources that when bottlenecked creates performance problems: CPU, IO, and Memory. In this session we will focus on High CPU scenarios detection and their resolutions. If time permits we will cover other performance related tips and tricks. At the end of this session, attendees will have a clear idea as well as action items regarding what to do when facing any of the above resource intensive scenarios. Developers will walk out with scripts and knowledge that can be applied to their servers, immediately post the session. To master the art of performance tuning one has to understand the fundamentals of performance, tuning and the best practices associated with the same. We will discuss about performance tuning in this session with the help of Demos. Pinal Dave at GIDS MySQL Performance Tuning – Unexplored Territory Relevant Pluralsight Course Performance is one of the most essential aspects of any application. Everyone wants their server to perform optimally and at the best efficiency. However, not many people talk about MySQL and Performance Tuning as it is an extremely unexplored territory. In this session, we will talk about how we can tune MySQL Performance. We will also try and cover other performance related tips and tricks. At the end of this session, attendees will not only have a clear idea, but also carry home action items regarding what to do when facing any of the above resource intensive scenarios. Developers will walk out with scripts and knowledge that can be applied to their servers, immediately post the session. To master the art of performance tuning one has to understand the fundamentals of performance, tuning and the best practices associated with the same. You will also witness some impressive performance tuning demos in this session. Hidden Secrets and Gems of SQL Server We Bet You Never Knew Relevant Pluralsight Course SQL Trio Session! It really amazes us every time when someone says SQL Server is an easy tool to handle and work with. Microsoft has done an amazing work in making working with complex relational database a breeze for developers and administrators alike. Though it looks like child’s play for some, the realities are far away from this notion. The basics and fundamentals though are simple and uniform across databases, the behavior and understanding the nuts and bolts of SQL Server is something we need to master over a period of time. With a collective experience of more than 30+ years amongst the speakers on databases, we will try to take a unique tour of various aspects of SQL Server and bring to you life lessons learnt from working with SQL Server. We will share some of the trade secrets of performance, configuration, new features, tuning, behaviors, T-SQL practices, common pitfalls, productivity tips on tools and more. This is a highly demo filled session for practical use if you are a SQL Server developer or an Administrator. The speakers will be able to stump you and give you answers on almost everything inside the Relational database called SQL Server. I personally attended the session of Vinod Kumar, Balmukund Lakhani, Abhishek Kumar and my favorite Govind Kanshi. Summary If you have missed this event here are two action items 1) Sign up for Resource Newsletter 2) Watch my video courses on Pluralsight Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: MySQL, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Author Visit, SQLAuthority News, T SQL Tagged: GIDS

  Read the article

• SQL Sentry Truth-Telling and Disk Configuration

  - by AjarnMark

  Recently, SQL Sentry told me something about my SQL Server disk configurations that I just didn’t want to believe, but alas, it was true. Several days ago I posted my First Impressions of the SQL Sentry Power Suite.  Today’s post could fall into the category of, “Hey, as long as you have that fancy tool…”  Unfortunately, it also falls into the category of an overloaded worker taking someone else’s word for the truth, not verifying it with independent fact-checking, and then making decisions based on that.  Here’s my story… I’m not exactly an Accidental DBA (or Involuntary DBA as Paul Randal calls it).  I came to this company five years ago as a lead application developer with extensive experience in database design and development.  I worked my way into management, and along the way, took over the DBA responsibilities.  Fortunately, our systems run pretty smoothly most of the time, but I’m always looking for ways to make them better and to fit into my understanding of best practices.  When I took over as DBA, I inherited a SQL 2000 server with about 30 databases on it supporting our main systems, and a SQL 2005 server with multiple instances.  Both of these servers were configured with the Operating System and Application files on the C drive, data files on a different drive letter, and log files on a third drive letter.  Even before I took over as DBA, I verified that this was true with a previous server administrator, and that these represented actual separate disks.  He stated that they did, and I thought that all was well. Then one day, I’m poking around inside the SQL Sentry Performance Advisor, checking out features as I am evaluating whether to purchase the product, and I come across a Disk Configuration section.  The first thing I notice is that the drives do not have the proper partition offset, which was not at all surprising to me given the age of the installation and the relative newness of that topic.  But what threw me for a loop was that the graphic display appeared to be telling me that I did not in fact have three separate drives (or arrays) but rather had two, and that the log files were merely on a separate volume on the same physical array as the OS.  I figured that I must be reading it wrong so I scanned the Help file, but that just seemed to confirm my interpretation.  Then I thought, “there must be something wrong with the demo version of the software!  This can’t be right!”  But just to double-check, I went to our current server admin to talk it over with him, and sure enough, SQL Sentry was telling the truth! I was stunned!  I quickly went through the grieving process…denial…anger…reconciliation.  Here was something that I thought was such a basic truth that was turned upside down.  OK, granted, this wasn’t disastrous.  Our databases didn’t suddenly grind to a halt.  I didn’t get calls late at night inquiring about the sudden downturn in performance.  But it was a bit of a shock to the system, in a good way, to jolt me out of taking what I had believed as the truth for granted, and instead to Trust, but Verify! Yes, before someone else points it out, I know that there are”free” disk management tools built-in to Windows that would have told me the same thing if I had only looked at them; I did not have to buy a fancy tool to tell me that, but the fact is, until I was evaluating the tool, I had just gone with what I was told, and never bothered to check what was actually there. So, what things do you believe to be true but you actually never verified?

  Read the article

• Threading Overview

  - by ACShorten

  One of the major features of the batch framework is the ability to support multi-threading. The multi-threading support allows a site to increase throughput on an individual batch job by splitting the total workload across multiple individual threads. This means each thread has fine level control over a segment of the total data volume at any time. The idea behind the threading is based upon the notion that "many hands make light work". Each thread takes a segment of data in parallel and operates on that smaller set. The object identifier allocation algorithm built into the product randomly assigns keys to help ensure an even distribution of the numbers of records across the threads and to minimize resource and lock contention. The best way to visualize the concept of threading is to use a "pie" analogy. Imagine the total workset for a batch job is a "pie". If you split that pie into equal sized segments, each segment would represent an individual thread. The concept of threading has advantages and disadvantages: Smaller elapsed runtimes - Jobs that are multi-threaded finish earlier than jobs that are single threaded. With smaller amounts of work to do, jobs with threading will finish earlier. Note: The elapsed runtime of the threads is rarely proportional to the number of threads executed. Even though contention is minimized, some contention does exist for resources which can adversely affect runtime. Threads can be managed individually – Each thread can be started individually and can also be restarted individually in case of failure. If you need to rerun thread X then that is the only thread that needs to be resubmitted. Threading can be somewhat dynamic – The number of threads that are run on any instance can be varied as the thread number and thread limit are parameters passed to the job at runtime. They can also be configured using the configuration files outlined in this document and the relevant manuals.Note: Threading is not dynamic after the job has been submitted Failure risk due to data issues with threading is reduced – As mentioned earlier individual threads can be restarted in case of failure. This limits the risk to the total job if there is a data issue with a particular thread or a group of threads. Number of threads is not infinite – As with any resource there is a theoretical limit. While the thread limit can be up to 1000 threads, the number of threads you can physically execute will be limited by the CPU and IO resources available to the job at execution time. Theoretically with the objects identifiers evenly spread across the threads the elapsed runtime for the threads should all be the same. In other words, when executing in multiple threads theoretically all the threads should finish at the same time. Whilst this is possible, it is also possible that individual threads may take longer than other threads for the following reasons: Workloads within the threads are not always the same - Whilst each thread is operating on the roughly the same amounts of objects, the amount of processing for each object is not always the same. For example, an account may have a more complex rate which requires more processing or a meter has a complex amount of configuration to process. If a thread has a higher proportion of objects with complex processing it will take longer than a thread with simple processing. The amount of processing is dependent on the configuration of the individual data for the job. Data may be skewed – Even though the object identifier generation algorithm attempts to spread the object identifiers across threads there are some jobs that use additional factors to select records for processing. If any of those factors exhibit any data skew then certain threads may finish later. For example, if more accounts are allocated to a particular part of a schedule then threads in that schedule may finish later than other threads executed. Threading is important to the success of individual jobs. For more guidelines and techniques for optimizing threading refer to Multi-Threading Guidelines in the Batch Best Practices for Oracle Utilities Application Framework based products (Doc Id: 836362.1) whitepaper available from My Oracle Support

  Read the article

• The Oracle Graduate Experience...A Graduates Perspective by Angelie Tierney

  - by david.talamelli

  [Note: Angelie has just recently joined Oracle in Australia in our 2011 Graduate Program. Last week I shared my thoughts on our 2011 Graduate Program, this week Angelie took some time to share her thoughts of our Graduate Program. The notes below are Angelie's overview from her experience with us starting with our first contact last year - David Talamelli] How does the 1 year program work? It consists of 3 weeks of training, followed by 2 rotations in 2 different Lines of Business (LoB's). The first rotation goes for 4 months, while your 2nd rotation goes for 7, when you are placed into your final LoB for the program. The interview process: After sorting through the many advertised graduate jobs, submitting so many resumes and studying at the same time, it can all be pretty stressful. Then there is the interview process. David called me on a Sunday afternoon and I spoke to him for about 30 minutes in a mini sort of phone interview. I was worried that working at Oracle would require extensive technical experience, but David stressed that even the less technical, and more business-minded person could, and did, work at Oracle. I was then asked if I would like to attend a group interview in the next weeks, to which I said of course! The first interview was a day long, consisting of a brief introduction, a group interview where we worked on a business plan with a group of other potential graduates and were marked by 3 Oracle employees, on our ability to work together and presentation. After lunch, we then had a short individual interview each, and that was the end of the first round. I received a call a few weeks later, and was asked to come into a second interview, at which I also jumped at the opportunity. This was an interview based purely on your individual abilities and would help to determine which Line of Business you would go to, should you land a graduate position. So how did I cope throughout the interview stages? I believe the best tool to prepare for the interview, was to research Oracle and its culture and to see if I thought I could fit into that. I personally found out about Oracle, its partners as well as competitors and along the way, even found out about their part (or Larry Ellison's specifically) in the Iron Man 2 movie. Armed with some Oracle information and lots of enthusiasm, I approached the Oracle Graduate Interview process. Why did I apply for an Oracle graduate position? I studied a Bachelor of Business/Bachelor of Science in IT, and wanted to be able to use both my degrees, while have the ability to work internationally in the future. Coming straight from university, I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to do in terms of my career. With the program, you are rotated across various lines of business, to not only expose you to different parts of the business, but to also help you to figure out what you want to achieve out of your career. As a result, I thought Oracle was the perfect fit. So what can an Oracle ANZ Graduate expect? First things first, you can expect to line up for your visitor pass. Really. Next you enter a room full of unknown faces, graduates just like you, and then you realise you're in this with 18 other people, going through the same thing as you. 3 weeks later you leave with many memories, colleagues you can call your friends, and a video of your presentation. Vanessa, the Graduate Manager, will also take lots of photos and keep you (well) fed. Well that's not all you leave with, you are also equipped with a wealth of knowledge and contacts within Oracle, both that will help you throughout your career there. What training is involved? We started our Oracle experience with 3 weeks of training, consisting of employee orientation, extensive product training, presentations on the various lines of business (LoB's), followed by sales and presentation training. While there was potential for an information overload, maybe even death by Powerpoint, we were able to have access to the presentations for future reference, which was very helpful. This period also allowed us to start networking, not only with the graduates, but with the managers who presented to us, as well as through the monthly chinwag, HR celebrations and even with the sharing of tea facilities. We also had a team bonding day when we recorded a "commercial" within groups, and learned how to play an Irish drum. Overall, the training period helped us to learn about Oracle, as well as ourselves, and to prepare us for our transition into our rotations. Where to now? I'm now into my 2nd week of my first graduate rotation. It has been exciting to finally get out into the work environment and utilise that knowledge we gained from training. My manager has been a great mentor, extremely knowledgeable, and it has been good being able to participate in meetings, conference calls and make a contribution towards the business. And while we aren't necessarily working directly with the other graduates, they are still reachable via email, Pidgin and lunch and they are important as a resource and support, after all, they are going through a similar experience to you. While it is only the beginning, there is a lot more to learn and a lot more to experience along the way, especially because, as we learned during training, at Oracle, the only constant is change.

  Read the article

• Xsigo and Oracle's Storage

  - by Philippe Deverchère

  Xsigo, a virtual network infrastructure provider, has recently been acquired by Oracle. Following this acquisition, one might ask ourselves why it is important to Oracle and how Oracle's storage is going to benefit on the long term from this virtualized infrastructure layer. Well, the first thing to understand is that Virtual Networking addresses both network and storage connectivity. Oracle Virtual Networking, as the Xsigo technology is now called, connects any server to any network and storage, so this is not just about connecting servers to the Internet or Intranet. It is also for a large part connecting servers to NAS and SAN storage. Connecting servers to storage has become increasingly complex in the past few years because of the strong emergence of virtualization at the Operating System level. 50% of enterprise workloads are now virtualized, up from 18% in 2009, resulting in a strong consolidation of various applications in a high density server footprint. At the same time, server I/O capability increased 8x in the last 8 years. All this has pushed IT administrators to multiply the number of I/O connections in the back-end of their physical servers, resulting in a messy and very hard to manage networking infrastructure. Here is a typical view of a rack back-end when no virtual networking is used. We consider that today: - 75% of users have ten or more Ethernet ports per server - 85% of users have two or more SAN ports per server - 58% have had to add connectivity to a server specifically for VMs - 65% consider cable reduction a priority The average is 12 or more ports per server, resulting in an extremely complex infrastructure to manage. What Oracle wants to achieve with its Oracle Virtual Networking offering is pretty simple. The objective is to eliminate the complexity through a dramatic reduction of cabling between servers and storage/networks. It is also to provide a software based management system so that any server can be connected to any network or any storage, on demand, and without physical intervention on the infrastructure. At the end of the day, the picture on the left shows what one wants to get for the back-end of customer's racks: just a couple of connections on each physical server to provide a simple, agile and fast network infrastructure for both storage and networking access. This is exactly what the Oracle Virtual Networking solution does. It transforms a complex, error-prone, difficult to manage and expensive networking infrastructure into a simple, high performance and agile solution for the data center. Practically speaking, and for the sake of simplicity, imagine that each server just hosts a minimal number of physical InfiniBand HCAs (Host Channel Adapter) with two links (for redundancy) onto the Oracle Fabric Interconnect director. Using the Oracle Fabric Manager software, you'll then be able to create virtual NICs and HBAs (called vNIC and vHBA) that will be seen by the servers as standard NICs and HBAs and associate them to networks and storage systems which are physically connected to the back-end of the director through standard Fibre Channel and Ethernet GbE/10GbE ports. In addition to this incredibly simple "at-a-click" connectivity capability, the Oracle Virtual Networking solution offers powerful features such as network isolation, Quality of Service, advanced performance monitoring and non-disruptive reconfiguration, migration and scalability of networking infrastructure. So let's go back now to our initial question: why is Oracle Virtual Networking especially important to Oracle's storage solutions? After all, one could connect any storage in the back-end of the Oracle Fabric Interconnect directors, right? The answer is pretty simple: since Oracle owns both the virtualized networking infrastructure and the storage (ZFS-SA, Pillar Axiom and tape), it is possible to imagine several ways in the future to add value when it comes to connect storage to a virtualized storage network: enhanced storage capabilities, converged management between storage and network, improved diagnostic capabilities and optimized integration resulting in higher performance and unique features/functions. Of course, all this is not going to be done overnight, and future will tell us is which evolutions come first. But there is little doubt that the integration of Xsigo within Oracle is going to create opportunities for Oracle's storage!

  Read the article

• MSCC: Career & IT Fair 2014

  Already a couple of weeks ago, I've been addressed by Ibraahim and Yunus to see whether it would be interesting to participate in the 1st Career & IT Fair organised by the UoM Computer Club. Well, luckily we met at the Global Windows Azure Bootcamp and I wasn't too sure whether it would be possible for me to attend after all. The main reason is given because of work demand and furthermore due to the fact that the Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community currently has no advertising material at all. Here's the brief statement of the event: "The UOM Students' Computer Club in collaboration with the UOM Students' Union and UOM CSE Department is organising a 'Career & IT Fair' on the 23rd and 24th April 2014. This event has for objective to provide a platform to tertiary students, secondary students as well as vocational students, the opportunity to meet job recruiters." Luckily, I was reminded that the 23rd is a Wednesday, and therefore I decided that it might be interesting to move our weekly Code & Coffee session to the university and hence be able to attend the career fair. As it turned out it was a great choice and thankfully Pritvi, Nadim as well as Ishwon volunteered to be around at the "community booth". Thankfully, the computer club gave us - the MSCC and the LUGM - one of their spaces in the lobby area of the Paul Octave Wiéhé Auditorium. My impression about the event Very well and professionally organised. Seriously, the lads over at the UoM Computer Club did a great job in organising their 2 days event, and felt very comfortable at any time. Actually, it was kind of amusing to some of the members constantly running around and checking everything. Even though that the whole process went smooth and easy off the hand. There were a couple of interesting pieces of information and announcements during the opening ceremony. For example, the Computer Science faculty is a very young one and has been initiated back in 1988 only - just by 4 staff members at that time. Now, after 25 years they have achieved quite a lot and there are currently 1.000+ active students attending the numerous lectures and courses. But there is no room to rest on previous achievements, and I was kind of surprised to hear that there are plans to extend the campus, and offer new lectures in the fields of nanotechnology, big data handling, and - crossing fingers - the introduction and establishment of a space control centre. Mauritius is already part of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) and hopefully there will be more activities into that direction in the near future. Community - Awareness and collaboration As stated earlier, I could only spent one morning but luckily other members of the MSCC and the LUGM stayed during the whole two days and provided answers to any interested person. As for me, I took the opportunity to get in touch with the other companies in the lobby. Mainly, to create some awareness about our IT communities but also to see whether there might be options for future engagement in common activities, too. So far, I was able to speak to representatives of the following companies: ACCA Mauritius Business at Work Infomil LinkByNet Microsoft Indian Ocean Islands & French Pacific Spherinity Training Institute Spoon Consulting Ltd. State Informatics Ltd. Unfortunately, I only had a quick chat with an HR representative of LinkByNet but I fully count on our MSCC members like Nitin or LUGM member Ronny to spread our intentions over there.  So far, all of the representatives were really interested in our concepts and activities and I'm currently catching up with an introduction flyer for the MSCC that I'm going to send out to all those contacts via mail. It would be great to have more craftsmen as well as professional support on board. Some pictures from the event MSCC: Fantastic outlook for the near future. Announcements were made on Big data, nanotechnology, and space control centre in Mauritius. Interesting! MSCC: The lobby area was cramped with students. Great way to exchange and network. Good luck to all candidates! Passing the relay staff to... I recommend you to continue to read about the first Career & IT Fair on Ish's blog. He has a great summary and more details on those two days of IT activities than I have. Thanks and feel free to leave a comment (or two)... 

  Read the article

• Highlights from the Oracle Customer Experience Summit @ OpenWorld

  - by Kathryn Perry

  A guest post by David Vap, Group Vice President, Oracle Applications Product Development The Oracle Customer Experience Summit was the first-ever event covering the full breadth of Oracle's CX portfolio -- Marketing, Sales, Commerce, and Service. The purpose of the Summit was to articulate the customer experience imperative and to showcase the suite of Oracle products that can help our customers create the best possible customer experience. This topic has always been a very important one, but now that there are so many alternative companies to do business with and because people have such public ways to voice their displeasure, it's necessary for vendors to have multiple listening posts in place to gauge consumer sentiment. They need to know what is going on in real time and be able to react quickly to turn negative situations into positive ones. Those can then be shared in a social manner to enhance the brand and turn the customer into a repeat customer. The Summit was focused on Oracle's portfolio of products and entirely dedicated to customers who are committed to building great customer experiences within their businesses. Rather than DBAs, the attendees were business people looking to collaborate with other like-minded experts and find out how Oracle can help in terms of technology, best practices, and expertise. The event was at the Westin St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco as part of Oracle OpenWorld. We had eight hundred people attend, which was great for the first year. Next year, there's no doubt in my mind, we can raise that number to 5,000. Alignment and Logic Oracle's Customer Experience portfolio is made up of a combination of acquired and organic products owned by many people who are new to Oracle. We include homegrown Fusion CRM, as well as RightNow, Inquira, OPA, Vitrue, ATG, Endeca, and many others. The attendees knew of the acquisitions, so naturally they wanted to see how the products all fit together and hear the logic behind the portfolio. To tell them about our alignment, we needed to be aligned. To accomplish that, a cross functional team at Oracle agreed on the messaging so that every single Oracle presenter could cover the big picture before going deep into a product or topic. Talking about the full suite of products in one session produced overflow value for other products. And even though this internal coordination was a huge effort, everyone saw the value for our customers and for our long-term cooperation and success. Keynotes, Workshops, and Tents of Innovation We scored by having Seth Godin as our keynote speaker ? always provocative and popular. The opening keynote was a session orchestrated by Mark Hurd, Anthony Lye, and me. Mark set the stage by giving real-world examples of bad customer experiences, Anthony clearly articulated the business imperative for addressing these experiences, and I brought it all to life by taking the audience around the Customer Lifecycle and showing demos and videos, with partners included at each of the stops around the lifecycle. Brian Curran, a VP for RightNow Product Strategy, presented a session that was in high demand called The Economics of Customer Experience. People loved hearing how to build a business case and justify the cost of building a better customer experience. John Kembel, another VP for RightNow Product Strategy, held a workshop that customers raved about. It was based on the journey mapping methodology he created, which is a way to talk to customers about where they want to make improvements to their customers' experiences. He divided the audience into groups led by facilitators. Each person had the opportunity to engage with experts and peers and construct some real takeaways. From left to right: Brian Curran, John Kembel, Seth Godin, and George Kembel The conference hotel was across from Union Square so we used that space to set up Innovation Tents. During the day we served lunch in the tents and partners showed their different innovative ideas. It was very interesting to see all the technologies and advancements. It also gave people a place to mix and mingle and to think about the fringe of where we could all take these ideas. Product Portfolio Plus Thought Leadership Of course there is always room for improvement, but the feedback on the format of the conference was positive. Ninety percent of the sessions had either a partner or a customer teamed with an Oracle presenter. The presentations weren't dry, one-way information dumps, but more interactive. I just followed up with a CEO who attended the conference with his Head of Marketing. He told me that they are using John Kembel's journey mapping methodology across the organization to pull people together. This sort of thought leadership in these highly competitive areas gives Oracle permission to engage around the technology. We have to differentiate ourselves and it's harder to do on the product side because everyone looks the same on paper. But on thought leadership ? we can, and did, take some really big steps. David VapGroup Vice PresidentOracle Applications Product Development

  Read the article

• Windows Azure Recipe: Social Web / Big Media

  - by Clint Edmonson

  With the rise of social media there’s been an explosion of special interest media web sites on the web. From athletics to board games to funny animal behaviors, you can bet there’s a group of people somewhere on the web talking about it. Social media sites allow us to interact, share experiences, and bond with like minded enthusiasts around the globe. And through the power of software, we can follow trends in these unique domains in real time. Drivers Reach Scalability Media hosting Global distribution Solution Here’s a sketch of how a social media application might be built out on Windows Azure: Ingredients Traffic Manager (optional) – can be used to provide hosting and load balancing across different instances and/or data centers. Perfect if the solution needs to be delivered to different cultures or regions around the world. Access Control – this service is essential to managing user identity. It’s backed by a full blown implementation of Active Directory and allows the definition and management of users, groups, and roles. A pre-built ASP.NET membership provider is included in the training kit to leverage this capability but it’s also flexible enough to be combined with external Identity providers including Windows LiveID, Google, Yahoo!, and Facebook. The provider model has extensibility points to hook into other identity providers as well. Web Role – hosts the core of the web application and presents a central social hub users. Database – used to store core operational, functional, and workflow data for the solution’s web services. Caching (optional) – as a web site traffic grows caching can be leveraged to keep frequently used read-only, user specific, and application resource data in a high-speed distributed in-memory for faster response times and ultimately higher scalability without spinning up more web and worker roles. It includes a token based security model that works alongside the Access Control service. Tables (optional) – for semi-structured data streams that don’t need relational integrity such as conversations, comments, or activity streams, tables provide a faster and more flexible way to store this kind of historical data. Blobs (optional) – users may be creating or uploading large volumes of heterogeneous data such as documents or rich media. Blob storage provides a scalable, resilient way to store terabytes of user data. The storage facilities can also integrate with the Access Control service to ensure users’ data is delivered securely. Content Delivery Network (CDN) (optional) – for sites that service users around the globe, the CDN is an extension to blob storage that, when enabled, will automatically cache frequently accessed blobs and static site content at edge data centers around the world. The data can be delivered statically or streamed in the case of rich media content. Training These links point to online Windows Azure training labs and resources where you can learn more about the individual ingredients described above. (Note: The entire Windows Azure Training Kit can also be downloaded for offline use.) Windows Azure (16 labs) Windows Azure is an internet-scale cloud computing and services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers, which provides an operating system and a set of developer services which can be used individually or together. It gives developers the choice to build web applications; applications running on connected devices, PCs, or servers; or hybrid solutions offering the best of both worlds. New or enhanced applications can be built using existing skills with the Visual Studio development environment and the .NET Framework. With its standards-based and interoperable approach, the services platform supports multiple internet protocols, including HTTP, REST, SOAP, and plain XML SQL Azure (7 labs) Microsoft SQL Azure delivers on the Microsoft Data Platform vision of extending the SQL Server capabilities to the cloud as web-based services, enabling you to store structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data. Windows Azure Services (9 labs) As applications collaborate across organizational boundaries, ensuring secure transactions across disparate security domains is crucial but difficult to implement. Windows Azure Services provides hosted authentication and access control using powerful, secure, standards-based infrastructure. See my Windows Azure Resource Guide for more guidance on how to get started, including links web portals, training kits, samples, and blogs related to Windows Azure.

  Read the article

• Social Technology and the Potential for Organic Business Networks

  - by Michael Snow

  Guest Blog Post by:  Michael Fauscette, IDCThere has been a lot of discussion around the topic of social business, or social enterprise, over the last few years. The concept of applying emerging technologies from the social Web, combined with changes in processes and culture, has the potential to provide benefits across the enterprise over a wide range of operations impacting employees, customers, partners and suppliers. Companies are using social tools to build out enterprise social networks that provide, among other things, a people-centric collaborative and knowledge sharing work environment which over time can breakdown organizational silos. On the outside of the business, social technology is adding new ways to support customers, market to prospects and customers, and even support the sales process. We’re also seeing new ways of connecting partners to the business that increases collaboration and innovation. All of the new "connectivity" is, I think, leading businesses to a business model built around the concept of the network or ecosystem instead of the old "stand-by-yourself" approach. So, if you think about businesses as networks in the context of all of the other technical and cultural change factors that we're seeing in the new information economy, you can start to see that there’s a lot of potential for co-innovation and collaboration that was very difficult to arrange before. This networked business model, or what I've started to call “organic business networks,” is the business model of the information economy.The word “organic” could be confusing, but when I use it in this context, I’m thinking it has similar traits to organic computing. Organic computing is a computing system that is self-optimizing, self-healing, self-configuring, and self-protecting. More broadly, organic models are generally patterns and methods found in living systems used as a metaphor for non-living systems.Applying an organic model, organic business networks are networks that represent the interconnectedness of the emerging information business environment. Organic business networks connect people, data/information, content, and IT systems in a flexible, self-optimizing, self-healing, self-configuring, and self-protecting system. People are the primary nodes of the network, but the other nodes — data, content, and applications/systems — are no less important.A business built around the organic business network business model would incorporate the characteristics of a social business, but go beyond the basics—i.e., use social business as the operational paradigm, but also use organic business networks as the mode of operating the business. The two concepts complement each other: social business is the “what,” and the organic business network is the “how.”An organic business network lets the business work go outside of traditional organizational boundaries and become the continuously adapting implementation of an optimized business strategy. Value creation can move to the optimal point in the network, depending on strategic influencers such as the economy, market dynamics, customer behavior, prospect behavior, partner behavior and needs, supply-chain dynamics, predictive business outcomes, etc.An organic business network driven company is the antithesis of a hierarchical, rigid, reactive, process-constrained, and siloed organization. Instead, the business can adapt to changing conditions, leverage assets effectively, and thrive in a hyper-connected, global competitive, information-driven environment.To hear more on this topic – I’ll be presenting in the next webcast of the Oracle Social Business Thought Leader Webcast Series - “Organic Business Networks: Doing Business in a Hyper-Connected World” this coming Thursday, June 21, 2012, 10:00 AM PDT – Register here

  Read the article

• Lease Accounting Closed for Comment

  - by Theresa Hickman

  December 15, 2010 marked the last day to send public comments to FASB and IASB on lease accounting. June 2011 is the deadline for the final consideration of the Leases Exposure Draft that will be given to standard setters in order to create a new lease accounting standard. Landlords, lessees, retailers, airlines industry, etc. are all worried right now about the changes to lease accounting. They feel the changes will be too costly and complex without adding significant improvement to the quality and relevance of financial statements. In a nutshell, IASB and FASB want to abolish operating leases where the lessee records the periodic payments as an expense over time. The proposed changes will mean that the accounting for leases will move from the P&L and hit both the lessee's and lessor's balance sheets. For companies that occupy a lot of property, this could significantly increase their liabilities not to mention front-load much of the costs that they were able to spread out over time before. Why are IASB and FASB doing this? Their goal is to have consistent accounting for both the lessees and lessors with higher quality financial statements. Leasing is one of four major projects being undertaken by the IASB and FASB in order to complete convergence between US GAAP and IFRS. I spoke to our resident accounting expert Seamus Moran about this to better understand how this might impact accounting software. He reminded me that the proposed changes to both US GAAP and IFRS in respect to leases are "proposed." It is still inappropriate to account for leases the way they are being proposed and we still need to account for them in accordance to the current regulations, which is what current accounting software programs, such as E-Business Suite Release 12.1 and prior and PeopleSoft Enterprise support. The FASB (US GAAP) and IASB (IFRS) exposure drafts (EDs) that outline the proposal were published. The FASB edition was published on August 17th, with comments due by December 15th. The IASB edition was published on the same date, and comments were due in London on the same date. Exposure drafts are the method both the FASB and the IASB use to solicit General Acceptance, the "GA" in GAAP. Both Boards will consider the input they have received, and perhaps revise the proposal. The proposal has come in for some criticism, both from the finance houses and the uses of the leased assets. There is, given the opposition to it, an excellent chance that the Leasing proposal will be modified or rewritten. We will know this in about six months, the usual time it takes for the FASB and IASB to digest the comments they receive. If they feel the proposal has General Acceptance, they will issue the final Standard at that time; if not, they will issue a revised proposal with another year of comment of drafting. Oracle participates in the standard setting process and is fully aware of the leasing proposal. We have designs that would reflect the proposal in hand. These designs will be finalized when the proposal is finalized. It is likely that customers will develop new financial arrangements if the proposal is finalized, and we are working with customers and partners to stay in touch with people's business responses to the proposal. The IASB and FASB are aware that ERP companies will have to revise their software, and that the companies filing results under IFRS or under US GAAP will have to implement such software. The form and timing of the release of the updated software will depend on the schedule of the take up of the new standard, the complexity of the standard, and the releases supported at the time the standard becomes effective.

  Read the article

• Your Next IT Job

  - by BuckWoody

  Some data professionals have worked (and plan to work) in the same place for a long time. In organizations large and small, the turnover rate just isn’t that high. This has not been my experience. About every 3-5 years I’ve changed either roles or companies. That might be due to the IT environment or my personality (or a mix of the two), but the point is that I’ve had many roles and worked for many companies large and small throughout my 27+ years in IT. At one point this might have been a detriment – a prospective employer looks at the resume and says “it seems you’ve moved around quite a bit.” But I haven’t found that to be the case all the time –in fact, in some cases the variety of jobs I’ve held has been an asset because I’ve seen what works (and doesn’t) in other environments, which can save time and money. So if you’re in the first camp – great! Stay where you are, and continue doing the work you love. but if you’re in the second, then this post might be useful. If you are planning on making a change, or perhaps you’ve hit a wall at your current location, you might start looking around for a better paying job – and there’s nothing wrong with that. We all try to make our lives better, and for some that involves more money. Money, however, isn’t always the primary motivator. I’ve gone to another job that doesn’t have as many benefits or has the same salary as the current job I’m working to gain more experience, get a better work/life balance and so on. It’s a mix of factors that only you know about. So I thought I would lay out a few advantages and disadvantages in the shops I’ve worked at. This post isn’t aimed at a single employer, but represents a mix of what I’ve experienced, and of course the opinions here are my own. You will most certainly have a different take – if so, please post a response! I also won’t mention a specific industry – I’ve worked everywhere from medical firms, legal offices, retail, billing centers, manufacturing, government, even to NASA. I’m focusing here mostly on size and composition. And I’m making some very broad generalizations here – I am fully aware that a small company might have great benefits and a large company might allow a lot of role flexibility.  your mileage may vary – and again, post those comments! Small Company To me a “small company” means around 100 people or less – sometimes a lot less. These can be really fun, frustrating places to to work. Advantages: a great deal of flexibility, a wide range of roles (often at the same time), a large degree of responsibility, immediate feedback, close relationships with co-workers, work directly with your customer. Disadvantages: Too much responsibility, little work/life balance, immature political structure, few (if any) benefits. If the business is family-owned, they can easily violate work/life boundaries. Medium Size company In my experience the next size company I would work for involves from a few hundred people to around five thousand. Advantages: Good mobility – fairly easy to get promoted, acceptable benefits, more defined responsibilities, better work/life balance, balanced load for expertise, but still the organizational structure is fairly simple to understand. Disadvantages: Pay is not always highest, rapid changes in structure as the organization grows, transient workforce. You may not be given the opportunity to work with another technology if someone already “owns” it. Politics are painful at this level as people try to learn how to do it. Large Company When you get into the tens of thousands of folks employed around the world, you’re in a large company. Advantages: Lots of room to move around – sometimes you can work (as I have) multiple jobs through the years and yet stay at the same company, building time for benefits, very defined roles, trained managers (yes, I know some of them are still awful – trust me – I DO know that), higher-end benefits, long careers possible, discounts at retailers and other “soft” benefits, prestige. For some, a higher level of politics (done professionally) is a good thing. Disadvantages: You could become another faceless name in the crowd, might not allow a great deal of flexibility,  large organizational changes might take away any control you have of your career. I’ve also seen large layoffs happen, and good people get let go while “dead weight” is retained. For some, a higher level of politics is distasteful. So what are your experiences? Share with the group! Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

  Read the article

• 2011 The Year of Awesomesauce

  - by MOSSLover

  So I was talking to one of my friends, Cathy Dew, and I’m wondering how to start out this post.  What kind of title should I put?  Somehow we’re just randomly throwing things out and this title pops into my head the one you see above. I woke up today to the buzz of a text message.  I spent New Years laying around until 3 am watching Warehouse 13 Episodes and drinking champagne.  It was one of the best New Year’s I spent with my boyfriend and my cat.  I figured I would sleep in until Noon, but ended up waking up around 11:15 to that text message buzz.  I guess my DE, Rachel Appel, had texted me “Happy New Years”, because Rachel is that kind of person.  I immediately proceeded to check my email.  I noticed my live account had a hit.  The account I rarely ever use had an email.  I sort of had that sinking suspicion I was going to get Silverlight MVP right?  So I open the email and something out of the blue happens it says “blah blah blah SharePoint Server MVP blah blah…”.  I’m sitting here a little confused what?  Really?  Just about when you give up on something the unexplained happens.  I am grateful for what I have every day. So let me tell you a story.  I was a senior in high school and it was December 31st, 1999.  A couple days prior my grandmother was complaining she had a cold and her assisted living facility was not going to let her see a doctor.  She claimed to be very sick.  New Year’s Eve Day 1999 my grandmother was rushed to the hospital sometime very early in the morning.  My uncle, my little brother, and myself were sitting in the waiting room eagerly awaiting news.  The Sydney Opera House was playing in the background as New Years 2000 for Australia was ringing in.  They come out and they tell us my grandmother has pneumonia.  She is in the ICU in critical condition.  Eventually time passes in the day and my parents take my brother and I home.  So in the car we had a huge fight that ended in the worst new years of my life.  The next 30 days were the worst 30 days of my life.  I went to the hospital every single day to do my homework and watch my grandmother.  Each day was a challenge mentally and physically as my grandmother berated me in her demented state.  On the 30th day my grandmother ended up in critical condition in the ICU maxed out on painkillers.  At approximately 3 am I hear my parents telling me they don’t want to wake me up and that my grandmother had passed away.  I must have cried more collectively that day than any other day in my life.  Every New Years Even since I have cried thinking about who she was and what she represented.  She was human looking back she wasn’t anything great, but she was one of the positive lights in my life.  Her and my dad and my other grandmother constantly tried to make me feel great when my mother was telling me the opposite.  I’d like to think since 2000 the past 11 years have been the best 11 years of my life.  I got out of a bad situation by using the tools that I had in front of me.  Good grades and getting into a college so I could aspire to be the person that I wanted to be.  I had some great people along the way to help me out. So getting to the point I like to help people further there lives somehow in the best way I can possibly help out.  This New Years was one of the great years that helped me forget the past and focus on the present.  It makes me realize how far I’ve come since high school and even since college.  The one thing I’ve been grappling with over the years is how do you feel good about making money while helping others out.  I’d to think I try really hard to give back to my community.  I could not have done what I did without other people’s help.  I sent out an email prior to even announcing I got the award today.  I can’t say I did everything on my own.  It’s not possible.  I had the help of others every step of the way.  I’m not sure if this makes sense but the award can’t just be mine.  This award is really owned by each and everyone who helped me get here.  From my dad to my grandmother to Rachel Appel to Bob Hunt to Jason Gallicchio to Cathy Dew to Mark Rackley to Johnny Ennion to Lee Brandt to Jeff Julian to John Alexander to Lori Gowin and to many others.  Thank you guys for all the help and support. Technorati Tags: SharePoint Community,MVP Award,Microsoft Community

  Read the article

• Exalytics and Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) Partner Workshop

  - by mseika

  Workshop Description Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g is the #1 application infrastructure foundation. It enables enterprises to create and run agile and intelligent business applications and maximize IT efficiency by exploiting modern hardware and software architectures. Oracle Exalytics Business Intelligence Machine is the world’s first engineered system specifically designed to deliver high performance analysis, modeling and planning. Built using industry-standard hardware, market-leading business intelligence software and in-memory database technology, Oracle Exalytics is an optimized system that delivers unmatched speed, visualizations and scalability for Business Intelligence and Enterprise Performance Management applications. This FREE hands-on, partner workshop highlights both the hardware and software components that are engineered to work together to deliver Oracle Exalytics - an optimized version of the industry-leading Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database with analytic extensions, a highly scalable Oracle server designed specifically for in-memory business intelligence, and Oracle’s proven Business Intelligence Foundation with enhanced visualization capabilities and performance optimizations. This workshop will provide hands-on experience with Oracle's latest engineered system. Topics covered will include TimesTen In-Memory Database and the new Summary Advisor for Exalytics, the technical details (including mobile features) of the latest release of visualization enhancements for OBI-EE, and technical updates on Essbase. After taking this course, you will be well prepared to architect, build, demo, and implement an end-to-end Exalytics solution. You will also be able to extend your current analytical and enterprise performance management application implementations with numerous Oracle technologies specifically enhanced to take advantage of the compute capacity and in-memory capabilities of Oracle Exalytics.If you are a BI or Data Warehouse Architect, developer or consultant, you don’t want to miss this 3-day workshop. Register Now! Presentations Exalytics Architectural Overview Upgrade and Lifecycle Management Times Ten for Exalytics Summary Advisor Utility Essbase and EPM System on Exalytics Dashboard and Analysis Interactions OBIEE 11.1.1.6 Features and Advanced Topics Lab OutlineThe labs showcase Oracle Exalytics core components and functionality and provide expertise of Oracle Business Intelligence 11.1.1.6 new features and updates from prior releases. The hands-on activities are based on an Oracle VirtualBox image with software and training samples pre-installed. Lab Environment Setup Creating and Working with Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database Running Summary Advisor Utility Working with Exalytics Visualization Features – Dashboard and Analysis Interactions Audience Oracle Partners BI and EPM Application Developers and Implementers System Integrators and Solution Consultants Data Warehouse Developers Enterprise Architects Prerequisites Experience and understanding of OBIEE 11g is required Previous attendance of Oracle Business Intelligence Foundation Suite Workshop or BIEE 11gIntroduction Workshop is highly recommended Good understanding of data warehousing and data modeling for reporting and analysis purpose Strong experience with database technologies preferred Equipment RequirementsThis workshop requires attendees to provide their own laptops for this class.Attendee laptops must meet the following minimum hardware/software requirements: Hardware Minimum 8GB RAM 60 GB free space (includes staging) USB 2.0 port (at least one available) It is strongly recommended that you bring a mouse. You will be working in a development environment and using the mouse heavily. Software One of the following operating systems: 64-bit Windows host/laptop OS 64-bit host/laptop OS with a Windows VM (XP, Server, or Win 7, BIC2g, etc.) Internet Explorer 7.x/8.x or Firefox 3.5.x WINRAR or 7ziputility to unzip workshop files: Download-able from http://www.win-rar.com/download.html Download-able from http://www.7zip.com/ Oracle VirtualBox 4.0.2 or higher Downloadable from http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads CPU virtualization mode needs to be enabled. We will provide guidance on the day of the workshop. Attendees will be given a VirtualBox image containing a pre-installed Oracle Exalytics environment. Schedule This workshop is 3 days. - Times vary by country!9:00am: Sign-in and technical setup 9:30am: Workshop starts 5:00pm: Workshop ends Oracle Exalytics and Business Intelligence (OBIEE) Workshop December 11-13, 2012: Oracle BVP, Birmingham, UK Register Here. Questions? Send email to: [email protected] Oracle Platform Technologies Enablement Services

  Read the article

• Walmart and Fusion Apps

  - by ultan o'broin

  Photograph: Misha Vaughan I attended Fusion Apps (yes, I know I am supposed to say "Oracle Fusion Applications", but stuffy old style guides are a turn-off in interwebs conversations) User Experience Advocate (FXA) training in Long Beach, California last week; a suitable location as ODTUG KSCOPE 11 was kicking off and key players were in the area. As a member of Oracle's Apps-UX team I know the Fusion Apps messaging, natch, and done some other Fusion Apps go-to-market content work too. For the messaging details themselves, see Lonneke Dikmans (@lonnekedikmans) great blog, by the way. However, I wanted some 'formal' training combined with the opportunity to meet and learn from people already out there delivering those messages. The idea in me reaching out to Misha Vaughan, Apps-UX FXA maven, to get me onto this training was that in addition to my UX knowledge, I could leverage my location in EMEA and hit up customer events more quickly and easily. Those local user groups do like to hear the voice of locals too you know (so I need to work on that mid-Atlantic accent). I'm looking forward to such opportunities. The training was all smashing stuff, just the right level of detail, delivered professionally and with great style and humor. I was especially honored to be paired off for my er, coaching with Debra Lilley (@debralilley), who shared with everyone all kinds of tips and insights from her experiences of delivering the message and demo. For me, that was the real power of the FXA event--the communal, conversational aspect--the meeting up with people who had done all this for real, the sharing in their experiences, while learning along with other newbies. Sorry, but that all-important social aspect doesn't work so well with remote meetings. Katie Candland (Apps-UX) gave us a great tour of the Fusion Apps demo and included some useful presentational tips too (any excuse to buy that iPad). It's clear to me that the Fusion Apps messaging and demos really come alive with real-world examples that local application users will recognize, and I picked up some "yes, that's my job made easier" scene-stealers from Debra and Karen Brownfield too, to add to the great ones already provided. This power of examples shouldn't surprise anyone, they've long been a mainstay of applications user assistance, popular with users. We'll offer customers different types of example topics in the Fusion Apps online help too (stay tuned), and we know from research how important those 3S's (stories, scenarios, and simulations) are to users when they consume and apply information. Well, we've got the simulation, now it's time for more stories and scenarios. If you get a chance to participate in an FXA event (whether you are an Oracle employee or otherwise), I'd encourage it. It's committing your time and energy for sure, but I got real bang for the buck from it for my everyday job too. Listening to the room's feedback on the application demo really brought our internal design work to life, and I picked up on some things that I need to follow up on (like how you alphabetically sort stuff in other languages). User experience is after all, about users. What will I be doing next, and what would I like to see happen? Obviously, I need to develop my story-telling links with the people I met in Long Beach and do some practicing with the materials, and then get out there and deliver them at a suitable location. The demo is what it is right now, and that's a super-rich demo that I know everyone will want to see and ask questions about. Then, as mentioned by attendees at the FXA event, follow up on those translated and localized messages for EMEA (and APAC), that deal with different statutory or reporting requirements of the target markets. Given my background I would say that, wouldn't I? However, language is part of the UX, and international revenue is greater than US-only revenue for Oracle, so yes dear, we all need to get over the fact that enterprise apps users don't all speak, or want to speak, American-English. Most importantly perhaps, the continued development of a strong messaging community between Oracle and partners and customers where we can swap and share those FXA messaging stories and scenarios about Fusion Apps in a conversational way. The more the better, a combination of online and face-to-face meetings. I must also mention the great dinner after the event at Parker's Lighthouse, and the fun myself and Andrew Gilmour (Apps-UX) had at our end of the table talking about just about everything except Fusion Apps with Ronald Van Luttikhuizen and Ben Prusinski (who now understands the difference between Cork and Dublin people. I hope). Thanks to all the Apps-UXers who helped bring the FXA training to town, and to Debra and all the others that I am too jetlagged to mention right who were instrumental in making it happen for me. Here's to the next one. And the Walmart angle? That was me doing my Robert Scoble (ScO'bilizer?)-style guerilla smart phone research in Walmart in Long Beach, before the FXA event. It's all about stories for me. You can read more about it on the appslab blog (see the comments).

  Read the article

• Resolve SRs Faster Using RDA - Find the Right Profile

  - by Daniel Mortimer

  Introduction Remote Diagnostic Agent (RDA) is an excellent command-line data collection tool that can aid troubleshooting / problem solving. The tool covers the majority of Oracle's vast product range, and its data collection capability is comprehensive. RDA collects data about the operating system and environment, including environment variable, kernel settings network o/s performance o/s patches and much more the Oracle Products installed, including patches logs and debug metrics configuration and much more In effect, RDA can obtain a snapshot of an Oracle Product and its environment. Oracle Support encourages the use of RDA because it greatly reduces service request resolution time by minimizing the number of requests from Oracle Support for more information. RDA is designed to be as unobtrusive as possible; it does not modify systems in any way. It collects useful data for Oracle Support only and a security filter is provided if required. Find and Use the Right RDA Profile One problem of any tool / utility, which covers a large range of products, is knowing how to target it against only the products you wish to troubleshoot. RDA does not have a GUI. Nor does RDA have an intelligent mechanism for detecting and automatically collecting data only for those Oracle products installed. Instead, you have to tell RDA what to do. There is a mind boggling large number of RDA data collection modules which you can configure RDA to use. It is easier, however, to setup RDA to use a "Profile". A profile consists of a list of data collection modules and predefined settings. As such profiles can be used to diagnose a problem with a particular product or combination of products. How to run RDA with a profile? ( <rda> represents the command you selected to run RDA (for example, rda.pl, rda.cmd, rda.sh, and perl rda.pl).) 1. Use the embedded spreadsheet to find the RDA profile which is appropriate for your problem / chosen Oracle Fusion Middleware products. 2. Use the following command to perform the setup <rda> -S -p <profile_name>  3. Run the data collection <rda> Run the data collection. If you want to perform setup and run in one go, then use a command such as the following: <rda> -vnSCRP -p <profile name> For more information, refer to: Remote Diagnostic Agent (RDA) 4 - Profile Manual Pages [ID 391983.1] Additional Hints / Tips: 1. Be careful! Profile names are case sensitive.2. When profiles are not used, RDA considers all existing modules by default. For example, if you have downloaded RDA for the first time and run the command <rda> -S you will see prompts for every RDA collection module many of which will be of no interest to you. Also, you may, in your haste to work through all the questions, forget to say "Yes" to the collection of data that is pertinent to your particular problem or product. Profiles avoid such tedium and help ensure the right data is collected at the first time of asking.

  Read the article

• Build 2012, some thoughts..

  - by Dennis Vroegop

  I think you probably read my rant about the logistics at Build 2012, as posted here, so I am not going into that anymore. Instead, let’s look at the content. (BTW If you did read that post and want some more info then read Nia Angelina’s post about Build. I have nothing to add to that.) As usual, there were good speakers and some speakers who could benefit from some speaker training. I find it hard to understand why Microsoft allows certain people on stage, people who speak English with such strong accents it’s hard for people, especially from abroad, to understand. Some basic training might be useful for some of them. However, it is nice to see that most speakers are project managers, program managers or even devs on the teams that build the stuff they talk about: there was a lot of knowledge on stage! And that means when you ask questions you get very relevant information. I realize I am not the average audience member here, I am regular speaker myself so I tend to look for other things when I am in a room than most audience members so my opinion might differ from others. All in all the knowledge of the speakers was above average but the presentation skills were most of the times below what I would describe as adequate. But let us look at the contents. Since the official name of the conference is Build Windows 2012 it is not surprising most of the talks were focused on building Windows 8 apps. Next to that, there was a lot of focus on Azure and of course Windows Phone 8 that launched the day before Build started. Most sessions dealt with C# and JavaScript although I did see a tendency to use C++ more. Touch. Well, that was the focus on a lot of sessions, that goes without saying. Microsoft is really betting on Touch these days and being a Touch oriented developer I can only applaud this. The term NUI is getting a bit outdated but the principles behind it certainly aren’t. The sessions did cover quite a lot on how to make your applications easy to use and easy to understand. However, not all is touch nowadays; still the majority of people use keyboard and mouse to interact with their machines (or, as I do, use keyboard, mouse AND touch at the same time). Microsoft understands this and has spend some serious thoughts on this as well. It was all about making your apps run everywhere on all sorts of devices and in all sorts of scenarios. I have seen a couple of sessions focusing on the portable class library and on sharing code between Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. You get the feeling Microsoft is enabling us devs to write software that will be ubiquitous. They want your stuff to be all over the place and they do anything they can to help. To achieve that goal they provide us with brilliant SDK’s, great tooling, a very, very good backend in the form of Windows Azure (I was particularly impressed by the Mobility part of Azure) and some fantastic hardware. And speaking of hardware: the partners such as Acer, Lenovo and Dell are making hardware that puts Apple to a shame nowadays. To illustrate: in Bellevue (very close to Redmond where Microsoft HQ is) they have the Microsoft Store located very close to the Apple Store, so it’s easy to compare devices. And I have to say: the Microsoft offerings are much, much more appealing that what the Cupertino guys have to offer. That was very visible by the number of people visiting the stores: even on the day that Apple launched the iPad Mini there were more people in the Microsoft store than in the Apple store. So, the future looks like it’s going to be fun. Great hardware (did I mention the Nokia Lumia 920? No? It’s brilliant), great software (Windows 8 is in a league of its own), the best dev tools (Visual Studio 2012 is still the champion here) and a fantastic backend (Azure.. need I say more?). It’s up to us devs to fill up the stores with applications that matches this. To summarize: it is great to be a Windows developer. PS. Did I mention Surface RT? Man….. People were drooling all over it wherever I went. It is fantastic :-) Technorati Tags: Build,Windows 8,Windows Phone,Lumia,Surface,Microsoft

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264  | Next Page >