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• Whitepaper list for the application framework

  - by Rick Finley

  We're reposting the list of technical whitepapers for the Oracle ETPM framework (called OUAF, Oracle Utilities Application Framework).  These are are available from My Oracle Support at the Doc Id's mentioned below. Some have been updated in the last few months to reflect new advice and new features.  This is reposted from the OUAF blog:  http://blogs.oracle.com/theshortenspot/entry/whitepaper_list_as_at_november Doc Id Document Title Contents 559880.1 ConfigLab Design Guidelines This whitepaper outlines how to design and implement a data management solution using the ConfigLab facility. This whitepaper currently only applies to the following products: Oracle Utilities Customer Care And Billing Oracle Enterprise Taxation Management Oracle Enterprise Taxation and Policy Management           560367.1 Technical Best Practices for Oracle Utilities Application Framework Based Products Whitepaper summarizing common technical best practices used by partners, implementation teams and customers. 560382.1 Performance Troubleshooting Guideline Series A set of whitepapers on tracking performance at each tier in the framework. The individual whitepapers are as follows: Concepts - General Concepts and Performance Troublehooting processes Client Troubleshooting - General troubleshooting of the browser client with common issues and resolutions. Network Troubleshooting - General troubleshooting of the network with common issues and resolutions. Web Application Server Troubleshooting - General troubleshooting of the Web Application Server with common issues and resolutions. Server Troubleshooting - General troubleshooting of the Operating system with common issues and resolutions. Database Troubleshooting - General troubleshooting of the database with common issues and resolutions. Batch Troubleshooting - General troubleshooting of the background processing component of the product with common issues and resolutions. 560401.1 Software Configuration Management Series  A set of whitepapers on how to manage customization (code and data) using the tools provided with the framework. The individual whitepapers are as follows: Concepts - General concepts and introduction. Environment Management - Principles and techniques for creating and managing environments. Version Management - Integration of Version control and version management of configuration items. Release Management - Packaging configuration items into a release. Distribution - Distribution and installation of releases across environments Change Management - Generic change management processes for product implementations. Status Accounting - Status reporting techniques using product facilities. Defect Management - Generic defect management processes for product implementations. Implementing Single Fixes - Discussion on the single fix architecture and how to use it in an implementation. Implementing Service Packs - Discussion on the service packs and how to use them in an implementation. Implementing Upgrades - Discussion on the the upgrade process and common techniques for minimizing the impact of upgrades. 773473.1 Oracle Utilities Application Framework Security Overview A whitepaper summarizing the security facilities in the framework. Now includes references to other Oracle security products supported. 774783.1 LDAP Integration for Oracle Utilities Application Framework based products Updated! A generic whitepaper summarizing how to integrate an external LDAP based security repository with the framework. 789060.1 Oracle Utilities Application Framework Integration Overview A whitepaper summarizing all the various common integration techniques used with the product (with case studies). 799912.1 Single Sign On Integration for Oracle Utilities Application Framework based products A whitepaper outlining a generic process for integrating an SSO product with the framework. 807068.1 Oracle Utilities Application Framework Architecture Guidelines This whitepaper outlines the different variations of architecture that can be considered. Each variation will include advice on configuration and other considerations. 836362.1 Batch Best Practices for Oracle Utilities Application Framework based products This whitepaper outlines the common and best practices implemented by sites all over the world. 856854.1 Technical Best Practices V1 Addendum Addendum to Technical Best Practices for Oracle Utilities Customer Care And Billing V1.x only. 942074.1 XAI Best Practices This whitepaper outlines the common integration tasks and best practices for the Web Services Integration provided by the Oracle Utilities Application Framework. 970785.1 Oracle Identity Manager Integration Overview This whitepaper outlines the principals of the prebuilt intergration between Oracle Utilities Application Framework Based Products and Oracle Identity Manager used to provision user and user group security information. For Fw4.x customers use whitepaper 1375600.1 instead. 1068958.1 Production Environment Configuration Guidelines A whitepaper outlining common production level settings for the products based upon benchmarks and customer feedback. 1177265.1 What's New In Oracle Utilities Application Framework V4? Whitepaper outlining the major changes to the framework since Oracle Utilities Application Framework V2.2. 1290700.1 Database Vault Integration Whitepaper outlining the Database Vault Integration solution provided with Oracle Utilities Application Framework V4.1.0 and above. 1299732.1 BI Publisher Guidelines for Oracle Utilities Application Framework Whitepaper outlining the interface between BI Publisher and the Oracle Utilities Application Framework 1308161.1 Oracle SOA Suite Integration with Oracle Utilities Application Framework based products This whitepaper outlines common design patterns and guidelines for using Oracle SOA Suite with Oracle Utilities Application Framework based products. 1308165.1 MPL Best Practices Oracle Utilities Application Framework This is a guidelines whitepaper for products shipping with the Multi-Purpose Listener. This whitepaper currently only applies to the following products: Oracle Utilities Customer Care And Billing Oracle Enterprise Taxation Management Oracle Enterprise Taxation and Policy Management 1308181.1 Oracle WebLogic JMS Integration with the Oracle Utilities Application Framework This whitepaper covers the native integration between Oracle WebLogic JMS with Oracle Utilities Application Framework using the new Message Driven Bean functionality and real time JMS adapters. 1334558.1 Oracle WebLogic Clustering for Oracle Utilities Application Framework New! This whitepaper covers process for implementing clustering using Oracle WebLogic for Oracle Utilities Application Framework based products. 1359369.1 IBM WebSphere Clustering for Oracle Utilities Application Framework New! This whitepaper covers process for implementing clustering using IBM WebSphere for Oracle Utilities Application Framework based products 1375600.1 Oracle Identity Management Suite Integration with the Oracle Utilities Application Framework New! This whitepaper covers the integration between Oracle Utilities Application Framework and Oracle Identity Management Suite components such as Oracle Identity Manager, Oracle Access Manager, Oracle Adaptive Access Manager, Oracle Internet Directory and Oracle Virtual Directory. 1375615.1 Advanced Security for the Oracle Utilities Application Framework New! This whitepaper covers common security requirements and how to meet those requirements using Oracle Utilities Application Framework native security facilities, security provided with the J2EE Web Application and/or facilities available in Oracle Identity Management Suite.

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• PeopleSoft 9.2 Financial Management Training – Now Available

  - by Di Seghposs

  A guest post from Oracle University.... Whether you’re part of a project team implementing PeopleSoft 9.2 Financials for your company or a partner implementing for your customer, you should attend some of the new training courses.  Everyone knows project team training is critical at the start of a new implementation, including configuration training on the core application modules being implemented. Oracle offers these courses to help customers and partners understand the functionality most relevant to complete end-to-end business processes, to identify any additional development work that may be necessary to customize applications, and to ensure integration between different modules within the overall business process. Training will provide you with the skills and knowledge needed to ensure a smooth, rapid and successful implementation of your PeopleSoft applications in support of your organization’s financial management processes - including step-by-step instruction for implementing, using, and maintaining your applications. It will also help you understand the application and configuration options to make the right implementation decisions. Courses vary based on your role in the implementation and on-going use of the application, and should be a part of every implementation plan, whether it is for an upgrade or a new rollout. Here’s some of the roles that should consider training: · Configuration or functional implementers · Implementation Consultants (Oracle partners) · Super Users · Business Analysts · Financial Reporting Specialists · Administrators PeopleSoft Financial Management Courses: New Features Course: · PeopleSoft Financial Solutions Rel 9.2 New Features Functional Training: · PeopleSoft General Ledger Rel 9.2 · PeopleSoft Payables Rel 9.2 · PeopleSoft Receivables Rel 9.2 · PeopleSoft Asset Management Rel 9.2 · Expenses Rel 9.2 · PeopleSoft Project Costing Rel 9.2 · PeopleSoft Billing Rel 9.2 · PeopleSoft PS / nVision for General Ledger Rel 9.2 Accelerated Courses (include content from two courses for more experienced team members): · PeopleSoft General Ledger Foundation Accelerated Rel 9.2 · PeopleSoft Billing / Receivables Accelerated Rel 9.2 · PeopleSoft Purchasing / Payable Accelerated Rel 9.2 View PeopleSoft Training Overview Video

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• Patterns & Practices: Composite Services CTP2 is Public

  - by HernanDL

  Finally the last CTP and pre-release version for the Composite Services is out. There were quite a lot of changes since CTP1. We added many new samples and many enhancements to the repository (DB) which is now called Inventory in sync with SOA Patterns. Here is a brief list of the main changes according to the included documentations.   Changes and additions in this release This CTP release contains reusable source code and samples to illustrate implementation for the following patterns and scenarios: Repair and Resubmit – this pattern is implemented in ESB Toolkit 2.0 as part of Exception Management Framework (EMF). This code drop provides code sample how to implement this pattern for Windows AppFabric workflow service, using Exceptions Web Service and workflow activities to create fault message, which will be created in EMF database.  Analytic Tracing – this code drop contains reusable code and samples for implementing ETW tracing: event collector service and database that store collected events. This capability may be used for scenarios that need flexibility on how collected events are decoded and processed via extensibility points you can configure and implement:  plugins and event decoders with leveraging ETW tracing capabilities provided by the event collector service.   Inventory Centralization – this code drop contains service catalog database, web services and samples to show how to implement Metadata Centralization, Schema Centralization and Policy Centralization patterns.  Service Virtualization – we included sample for implementing this pattern using WCF routing service( which is part of .NET framework) and service metadata centralization capabilities to define routing service metadata in service catalog. Termination Notification – we included sample for implementing this pattern using sample WCF service and policy centralization capabilities provided by this CTP release.   You will also find many new videos that will be uploaded to the home page any time soon. Stay tunned for new posts regarding implemetation details and advanced customizations for custom policy exporters/importers and monitoring.

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• BUILD 2013 Session&ndash;Alive With Activity

  - by Tim Murphy

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/tmurphy/archive/2013/06/27/build-2013-sessionndashalive-with-activity.aspx Live tiles are what really add a ton of value to both Windows 8 and Windows Phone.  As a developer it is important that you leverage this capability in order to make your apps more informative and give your users a reason to keep opening the app to find out details hinted at by tile updates. In this session Kraig Brockschmidt cover a wide array of dos and don’ts for implementing live tiles.  I was actually worried whether I would get much out of this session when Kraig started it off with the fact that his background is in HTML5 based apps which I have little interest in, but the subject almost didn’t come up during his talk.  It focused on things like making sure you have all the right size graphics and implementing all of the tile event handlers.  The session went on to discuss the message format for push notification and implementing lock screen notification and badges. As with the other day 1 sessions it was like drinking from a fire hose, but it was good stuff.  Check it out when they post it on Channel 9. del.icio.us Tags: BUILD 2013,Live Tiles,Windows 8.1

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• Agile Database Techniques: Effective Strategies for the Agile Software Developer – book review

  - by DigiMortal

     Agile development expects mind shift and developers are not the only ones who must be agile. Every chain is as strong as it’s weakest link and same goes also for development teams. Agile Database Techniques: Effective Strategies for the Agile Software Developer by Scott W. Ambler is book that calls also data professionals to be part of agile development. Often are DBA-s in situation where they are not part of application development and later they have to survive large set of applications that all use databases different way. Of course, only some of these applications are not problematic when looking what database server has to do to serve them. I have seen many applications that rape database servers because developers have no clue what is going on in database (~3K queries to database per web application request – have you seen something like this? I have…) Agile Database Techniques covers some object and database design technologies and gives suggestions to development teams about topics they need help or assistance by DBA-s. The book is also good reading for DBA-s who usually are not very strong in object technologies. You can take this book as bridge between these two worlds. I think teams that build object applications that use databases should buy this book and try at least one or two projects out with Ambler’s suggestions. Table of contents Foreword by Jon Kern. Foreword by Douglas K. Barry. Acknowledgments. Introduction. About the Author. Part One: Setting the Foundation. Chapter 1: The Agile Data Method. Chapter 2: From Use Cases to Databases — Real-World UML. Chapter 3: Data Modeling 101. Chapter 4: Data Normalization. Chapter 5: Class Normalization. Chapter 6: Relational Database Technology, Like It or Not. Chapter 7: The Object-Relational Impedance Mismatch. Chapter 8: Legacy Databases — Everything You Need to Know But Are Afraid to Deal With. Part Two: Evolutionary Database Development. Chapter 9: Vive L’ Évolution. Chapter 10: Agile Model-Driven Development (AMDD). Chapter 11: Test-Driven Development (TDD). Chapter 12: Database Refactoring. Chapter 13: Database Encapsulation Strategies. Chapter 14: Mapping Objects to Relational Databases. Chapter 15: Performance Tuning. Chapter 16: Tools for Evolutionary Database Development. Part Three: Practical Data-Oriented Development Techniques. Chapter 17: Implementing Concurrency Control. Chapter 18: Finding Objects in Relational Databases. Chapter 19: Implementing Referential Integrity and Shared Business Logic. Chapter 20: Implementing Security Access Control. Chapter 21: Implementing Reports. Chapter 22: Realistic XML. Part Four: Adopting Agile Database Techniques. Chapter 23: How You Can Become Agile. Chapter 24: Bringing Agility into Your Organization. Appendix: Database Refactoring Catalog. References and Suggested Reading. Index.

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• How to Implement an Interface that Requires Duplicate Member Names?

  - by Will Marcouiller

  I often have to implement some interfaces such as IEnumerable<T> in my code. Each time, when implementing automatically, I encounter the following: public IEnumerator<T> GetEnumerator() { // Code here... } public IEnumerator GetEnumerator1() { // Code here... } Though I have to implement both GetEnumerator() methods, they impossibly can have the same name, even if we understand that they do the same, somehow. The compiler can't treat them as one being the overload of the other, because only the return type differs. When doing so, I manage to set the GetEnumerator1() accessor to private. This way, the compiler doesn't complaint about not implementing the interface member, and I simply throw a NotImplementedException within the method's body. However, I wonder whether it is a good practice, or if I shall proceed differently, as perhaps a method alias or something like so. What is the best approach while implementing an interface such as IEnumerable<T> that requires the implementation of two different methods with the same name? EDIT #1 Does VB.NET reacts differently from C# while implementing interfaces, since in VB.NET it is explicitly implemented, thus forcing the GetEnumerator1(). Here's the code: Public Function GetEnumerator() As System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerator(Of T) Implements System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable(Of T).GetEnumerator // Code here... End Function Public Function GetEnumerator1() As System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerator Implements System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable.GetEnumerator // Code here... End Function Both GetEnumerator() methods are explicitly implemented, and the compile will refuse them to have the same name. Why?

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• Partner Blog Series: PwC Perspectives Part 2 - Jumpstarting your IAM program with R2

  - by Tanu Sood

  Identity and access management (IAM) isn’t a new concept. Over the past decade, companies have begun to address identity management through a variety of solutions that have primarily focused on provisioning. . The new age workforce is converging at a rapid pace with ever increasing demand to use diverse portfolio of applications and systems to interact and interface with their peers in the industry and customers alike. Oracle has taken a significant leap with their release of Identity and Access Management 11gR2 towards enabling this global workforce to conduct their business in a secure, efficient and effective manner. As companies deal with IAM business drivers, it becomes immediately apparent that holistic, rather than piecemeal, approaches better address their needs. When planning an enterprise-wide IAM solution, the first step is to create a common framework that serves as the foundation on which to build the cost, compliance and business process efficiencies. As a leading industry practice, IAM should be established on a foundation of accurate data for identity management, making this data available in a uniform manner to downstream applications and processes. Mature organizations are looking beyond IAM’s basic benefits to harness more advanced capabilities in user lifecycle management. For any organization looking to embark on an IAM initiative, consider the following use cases in managing and administering user access. Expanding the Enterprise Provisioning Footprint Almost all organizations have some helpdesk resources tied up in handling access requests from users, a distraction from their core job of handling problem tickets. This dependency has mushroomed from the traditional acceptance of provisioning solutions integrating and addressing only a portion of applications in the heterogeneous landscape Oracle Identity Manager (OIM) 11gR2 solves this problem by offering integration with third party ticketing systems as “disconnected applications”. It allows for the existing business processes to be seamlessly integrated into the system and tracked throughout its lifecycle. With minimal effort and analysis, an organization can begin integrating OIM with groups or applications that are involved with manually intensive access provisioning and de-provisioning activities. This aspect of OIM allows organizations to on-board applications and associated business processes quickly using out of box templates and frameworks. This is especially important for organizations looking to fold in users and resources from mergers and acquisitions. Simplifying Access Requests Organizations looking to implement access request solutions often find it challenging to get their users to accept and adopt the new processes.. So, how do we improve the user experience, make it intuitive and personalized and yet simplify the user access process? With R2, OIM helps organizations alleviate the challenge by placing the most used functionality front and centre in the new user request interface. Roles, application accounts, and entitlements can all be found in the same interface as catalog items, giving business users a single location to go to whenever they need to initiate, approve or track a request. Furthermore, if a particular item is not relevant to a user’s job function or area inside the organization, it can be hidden so as to not overwhelm or confuse the user with superfluous options. The ability to customize the user interface to suit your needs helps in exercising the business rules effectively and avoiding access proliferation within the organization. Saving Time with Templates A typical use case that is most beneficial to business users is flexibility to place, edit, and withdraw requests based on changing circumstances and business needs. With OIM R2, multiple catalog items can now be added and removed from the shopping cart, an ecommerce paradigm that many users are already familiar with. This feature can be especially useful when setting up a large number of new employees or granting existing department or group access to a newly integrated application. Additionally, users can create their own shopping cart templates in order to complete subsequent requests more quickly. This feature saves the user from having to search for and select items all over again if a request is similar to a previous one. Advanced Delegated Administration A key feature of any provisioning solution should be to empower each business unit in managing their own access requests. By bringing administration closer to the user, you improve user productivity, enable efficiency and alleviate the administration overhead. To do so requires a federated services model so that the business units capable of shouldering the onus of user life cycle management of their business users can be enabled to do so. OIM 11gR2 offers advanced administrative options for creating, managing and controlling business logic and workflows through easy to use administrative interface and tools that can be exposed to delegated business administrators. For example, these business administrators can establish or modify how certain requests and operations should be handled within their business unit based on a number of attributes ranging from the type of request or the risk level of the individual items requested. Closed-Loop Remediation Security continues to be a major concern for most organizations. Identity management solutions bolster security by ensuring only the right users have the right access to the right resources. To prevent unauthorized access and where it already exists, the ability to detect and remediate it, are key requirements of an enterprise-grade proven solution. But the challenge with most solutions today is that some of this information still exists in silos. And when changes are made to systems directly, not all information is captured. With R2, oracle is offering a comprehensive Identity Governance solution that our customer organizations are leveraging for closed loop remediation that allows for an automated way for administrators to revoke unauthorized access. The change is automatically captured and the action noted for continued management. Conclusion While implementing provisioning solutions, it is important to keep the near term and the long term goals in mind. The provisioning solution should always be a part of a larger security and identity management program but with the ability to seamlessly integrate not only with the company’s infrastructure but also have the ability to leverage the information, business models compiled and used by the other identity management solutions. This allows organizations to reduce the cost of ownership, close security gaps and leverage the existing infrastructure. And having done so a multiple clients’ sites, this is the approach we recommend. In our next post, we will take a journey through our experiences of advising clients looking to upgrade to R2 from a previous version or migrating from a different solution. Meet the Writers:   Praveen Krishna is a Manager in the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  Over the last decade Praveen has helped clients plan, architect and implement Oracle identity solutions across diverse industries.  His experience includes delivering security across diverse topics like network, infrastructure, application and data where he brings a holistic point of view to problem solving. Dharma Padala is a Director in the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has been implementing medium to large scale Identity Management solutions across multiple industries including utility, health care, entertainment, retail and financial sectors.   Dharma has 14 years of experience in delivering IT solutions out of which he has been implementing Identity Management solutions for the past 8 years. Scott MacDonald is a Director in the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has consulted for several clients across multiple industries including financial services, health care, automotive and retail.   Scott has 10 years of experience in delivering Identity Management solutions. John Misczak is a member of the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has experience implementing multiple Identity and Access Management solutions, specializing in Oracle Identity Manager and Business Process Engineering Language (BPEL). Jenny (Xiao) Zhang is a member of the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  She has consulted across multiple industries including financial services, entertainment and retail. Jenny has three years of experience in delivering IT solutions out of which she has been implementing Identity Management solutions for the past one and a half years.

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• The True Cost of a Solution

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  I had a Twitter chat recently with someone suggesting Oracle and SQL Server were losing out to OSS (Open Source Software) in the enterprise due to their issues with scaling or being too generic (one size fits all). I challenged that a bit, as my experience with enterprise sized clients has been different – adverse to OSS but receptive to an established vendor. The response I got was: Found it easier to influence change by showing how X can’t solve our problems or X is extremely costly to scale. Money talks. I think this is definitely the right approach for anyone pitching an alternate or alien technology as part of a solution: identify the issue, identify the solution, then present pros and cons including a cost/benefit analysis. What can happen though is we get tunnel vision and don’t present a full view of the costs associated with a solution. An “Acura”te Example (I’m so clever…) This is my dream vehicle, a Crystal Black Pearl coloured Acura MDX with the SH-AWD package! We’re a family of 4 (5 if my daughters ever get their wish of adding a dog), and I’ve always wanted a luxury type of vehicle, so this is a perfect replacement in a few years when our Rav 4 has hit the 8 – 10 year mark. MSRP – $62,890 But as we all know, that’s not *really* the cost of the vehicle. There’s taxes and fees added on, there’s the extended warranty if I choose to purchase it, there’s the finance rate that needs to be factored in… MSRP –   $62,890 Taxes –      $7,546 Warranty - $2,500 SubTotal – $72,936 Finance Charge – $ 1094.04 Grand Total – $74,030 Well! Glad we did that exercise – we discovered an extra $11k added on to the MSRP! Well now we have our true price…or do we? Lifetime of the Vehicle I’m expecting to have this vehicle for 7 – 10 years. While the hard cost of the vehicle is known and dealt with, the costs to run and maintain the vehicle are on top of this. I did some research, and here’s what I’ve found: Fuel and Mileage Gas prices are high as it is for regular fuel, but getting into an MDX will require that I *only* purchase premium fuel, which comes at a premium price. I need to expect my bill at the pump to be higher. Comparing the MDX to my 2007 Rav4 also shows I’ll be gassing up more often. The Rav4 has a city MPG of 21, while the MDX plummets to 16! The MDX does have a bigger fuel tank though, so all in all the number of times I hit the pumps might even out. Still, I estimate I’ll be spending approximately $8000 – $10000 more on gas over a 10 year period than my current Rav4. Service Options Limited Although I have options with my Toyota here in Winnipeg (we have 4 Toyota dealerships), I do go to my original dealer for any service work. Still, I like the fact that I have options. However, there’s only one Acura dealership in all of Winnipeg! So if, for whatever reason, I’m not satisfied with the level of service I’m stuck. Non Warranty Service Work Also let’s not forget that there’s a bulk of work required every year that is *not* covered under warranty – oil changes, tire rotations, brake pads, etc. I expect I’ll need to get new tires at the 5 years mark as well, which can easily be $1200 – $1500 (I just paid $1000 for new tires for the Rav4 and we’re at the 5 year mark). Now these aren’t going to be *new* costs that I’m not used to from our existing vehicles, but they should still be factored in. I’d budget $500/year, or $5000 over the 10 years I’ll own the vehicle. Final Assessment So let’s re-assess the true cost of my dream MDX: MSRP                    $62,890 Taxes                       $7,546 Warranty                 $2,500 Finance Charge         $1094 Gas                        $10,000 Service Work            $5000 Grand Total           $89,030 So now I have a better idea of 10 year cost overall, and I’ve identified some concerns with local service availability. And there’s now much more to consider over the original $62,890 price tag. Tying This Back to Technology Solutions The process that we just went through is no different than what organizations do when considering implementing a new system, technology, or technology based solution, within their environments. It’s easy to tout the short term cost savings of particular product/platform/technology in a vacuum. But its when you consider the wider impact that the true cost comes into play. Let’s create a scenario: A company is not happy with its current data reporting suite. An employee suggests moving to an open source solution. The selling points are: - Because its open source its free - The organization would have access to the source code so they could alter it however they wished - It provided features not available with the current reporting suite At first this sounds great to the management and executive, but then they start asking some questions and uncover more information: - The OSS product is built on a technology not used anywhere within the organization - There are no vendors offering product support for the OSS product - The OSS product requires a specific server platform to operate on, one that’s not standard in the organization All of a sudden, the true cost of implementing this solution is starting to become clearer. The company might save money on licensing costs, but their training costs would increase significantly – developers would need to learn how to develop in the technology the OSS solution was built on, IT staff must learn how to set up and maintain a new server platform within their existing infrastructure, and if a problem was found there was no vendor to contact for support. The true cost of implementing a “free” OSS solution is actually spinning up a project to implement it within the organization – no small cost. And that’s just the short-term cost. Now the organization must ensure they maintain trained staff who can make changes to the OSS reporting solution and IT staff that will stay knowledgeable in the new server platform. If those skills are very niche, then higher labour costs could be incurred if those people are hard to find or if trained employees use that knowledge as leverage for higher pay. Maybe a vendor exists that will contract out support, but then there are those costs to consider as well. And let’s not forget end-user training – in our example, anyone that runs reports will need to be trained on how to use the new system. Here’s the Point We still tend to look at software in an “off the shelf” kind of way. It’s very easy to say “oh, this product is better than vendor x’s product – and its free because its OSS!” but the reality is that implementing any new technology within an organization has a cost regardless of the retail price of the product. Training, integration, support – these are real costs that impact an organization and span multiple departments. Whether you’re pitching an improved business process, a new system, or a new technology, you need to consider the bigger picture costs of implementation. What you define as success (in our example, having better reporting functionality) might not be what others define as success if implementing your solution causes them issues. A true enterprise solution needs to consider the entire enterprise.

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• Partner Blog Series: PwC Perspectives - Looking at R2 for Customer Organizations

  - by Tanu Sood

  Welcome to the first of our partner blog series. November Mondays are all about PricewaterhouseCoopers' perespective on Identity and R2. In this series, we have identity management experts from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) share their perspective on (and experiences with) the recent identity management release, Oracle Identity Management R2. The purpose of the series is to discuss real world identity use cases that helped shape the innovations in the recent R2 release and the implementation strategies that customers are employing today with expertise from PwC. Part 1: Looking at R2 for Customer Organizations In this inaugural post, we will discuss some of the new features of the R2 release of Oracle Identity Manager that some of our customer organizations are implementing today and the business rationale for those. Oracle's R2 Security portfolio represents a solid step forward for a platform that is already market-leading.  Prior to R2, Oracle was an industry titan in security with reliable products, expansive compatibility, and a large customer base.  Oracle has taken their identity platform to the next level in their latest version, R2.  The new features include a customizable UI, a request catalog, flexible security, and enhancements for its connectors, and more. Oracle customers will be impressed by the new Oracle Identity Manager (OIM) business-friendly UI.  Without question, Oracle has invested significant time in responding to customer feedback about making access requests and related activities easier for non-IT users.  The flexibility to add information to screens, hide fields that are not important to a particular customer, and adjust web themes to suit a company's preference make Oracle's Identity Manager stand out among its peers.  Customers can also expect to carry UI configurations forward with minimal migration effort to future versions of OIM.  Oracle's flexible UI will benefit many organizations looking for a customized feel with out-of-the-box configurations. Organizations looking to extend their services to end users will benefit significantly from new usability features like OIM’s ‘Catalog.’  Customers familiar with Oracle Identity Analytics' 'Glossary' feature will be able to relate to the concept.  It will enable Roles, Entitlements, Accounts, and Resources to be requested through the out-of-the-box UI.  This is an industry-changing feature as customers can make the process to request access easier than ever.  For additional ease of use, Oracle has introduced a shopping cart style request interface that further simplifies the experience for end users.  Common requests can be setup as profiles to save time.  All of this is combined with the approval workflow engine introduced in R1 that provides the flexibility customers need to meet their compliance requirements. Enhanced security was also on the list of features Oracle wanted to deliver to its customers.  The new end-user UI provides additional granular access controls.  Common Help Desk use cases can be implemented with ease by updating the application profiles.  Access can be rolled out so that administrators can only manage a certain department or organization.  Further, OIM can be more easily configured to select which fields can be read-only vs. updated.  Finally, this security model can be used to limit search results for roles and entitlements intended for a particular department.  Every customer has a different need for access and OIM now matches this need with a flexible security model. One of the important considerations when selecting an Identity Management platform is compatibility.  The number of supported platform connectors and how well it can integrate with non-supported platforms is a key consideration for selecting an identity suite.  Oracle has a long list of supported connectors.  When a customer has a requirement for a platform not on that list, Oracle has a solution too.  Oracle is introducing a simplified architecture called Identity Connector Framework (ICF), which holds the potential to simplify custom connectors.  Finally, Oracle has introduced a simplified process to profile new disconnected applications from the web browser.  This is a useful feature that enables administrators to profile applications quickly as well as empowering the application owner to fulfill requests from their web browser.  Support will still be available for connectors based on previous versions in R2. Oracle Identity Manager's new R2 version has delivered many new features customers have been asking for.  Oracle has matured their platform with R2, making it a truly distinctive platform among its peers. In our next post, expect a deep dive into use cases for a customer considering R2 as their new Enterprise identity solution. In the meantime, we look forward to hearing from you about the specific challenges you are facing and your experience in solving those. Meet the Writers Dharma Padala is a Director in the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has been implementing medium to large scale Identity Management solutions across multiple industries including utility, health care, entertainment, retail and financial sectors.   Dharma has 14 years of experience in delivering IT solutions out of which he has been implementing Identity Management solutions for the past 8 years. Scott MacDonald is a Director in the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has consulted for several clients across multiple industries including financial services, health care, automotive and retail.   Scott has 10 years of experience in delivering Identity Management solutions. John Misczak is a member of the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has experience implementing multiple Identity and Access Management solutions, specializing in Oracle Identity Manager and Business Process Engineering Language (BPEL). Jenny (Xiao) Zhang is a member of the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  She has consulted across multiple industries including financial services, entertainment and retail. Jenny has three years of experience in delivering IT solutions out of which she has been implementing Identity Management solutions for the past one and a half years. Praveen Krishna is a Manager in the Advisory  Security practice within PwC.  Over the last decade Praveen has helped clients plan, architect and implement Oracle identity solutions across diverse industries.  His experience includes delivering security across diverse topics like network, infrastructure, application and data where he brings a holistic point of view to problem solving.

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• Asterisk Dial() - passing URL to softphone

  - by Giuc

  According to https://wiki.asterisk.org/wiki/display/AST/Asterisk+11+Application_Dial the Dial() application is capable of sending an URL to the extension being called. I suppose there are softphones implementing this, maybe popping up a browser pointing to the given URL - perfect to open up automatically a CRM customer page when receiving a call by identifying his caller id. Do you know of any softphone implementing this functionality?

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• Creating a common selector class with UITableView or UIPicker

  - by trevrosen

  I have several places in my app where I need to select a Foo for further processing from a list of Foo objects. I'd like to do this as a modal view, but neither UIPicker nor UITableView seems to lend itself to the standard approach, since the usual way to do a modal view controller involves setting the parent view controller up as the delegate, and both of those classes need to implement data source protocols, etc. Implementing the data source and selection protocol methods in my parent view controller defeats the purpose of trying to use one common class for implementing this modal selector screen all over my app. Does anyone have any solutions to this problem or am I effectively stuck implementing this selector class over and over again?

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• Should tests be self written in TDD?

  - by martin

  We run a project, which we want to solve with test driven development. I thought about some questions that came up, when initiating the project. One question was, who should write the unit-test for a feature. Should the unit-test be written by the feature-implementing programmer? Or should the unit test be written by another programmer, who defines what a method should do and the feature-implementing programmer implements the method until the tests runs? If i understand the concept of TDD in the right way. The feature-implementing programmer has to write the test by himself, because TDD is procedure with mini-iterations. So it would be too complex to have the tests written by another programmer? What would you say, should the tests in TDD written by the programmer himself or should another programmer write the tests that describes what a method can do?

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• Propietary modules within GPL and BSD kernels

  - by Francisco Garcia

  Since the Linux kernel is GPL and not LGPL I suppose that it is illegal to link proprietary code to it. How does the industry circumvents this? I would expect that the GPL license will force any developer to release under GPL driver and/or kernel module. Maybe I am confused and implementing a new module is not really linking against the kernel code ??? How do companies deal with this? Maybe linking the other way around (from kernel to their binaries)? On the other hand there is the BSD kernel. Where you are free to link protected IP. Can you get a better design implementing your drivers within a BSD kernel? Is there any design restriction when implementing drivers for GPL kernels?

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• Modules and custom routes

  - by Dennis Haarbrink

  I'm building a website using Zend Framework and having trouble implementing modules and custom routes. There are basically two rules: Select a module based on the domain (multiple domains can select a single module) Regardless of domain, select one specific module based on path Examples: domain1.com selects module domain1 domain1.net selects module domain1 domain2.com selects module domain2 both domain1.com/admin and domain2.com/admin select module admin This is the first project where I use ZF, so my experience with the framework is basically non-existent. I have done some dirty hacking in my bootstrapper where I check the domain and than execute Zend_Layout::startMVC() to get the correct layout, but that is messed up when I'm implementing custom routes. So I was wondering what is the best way to go about implementing this?

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• In TDD, should tests be written by the person who implemented the feature under test?

  - by martin

  We run a project in which we want to solve with test driven development. I thought about some questions that came up when initiating the project. One question was: Who should write the unit-test for a feature? Should the unit-test be written by the feature-implementing programmer? Or should the unit test be written by another programmer, who defines what a method should do and the feature-implementing programmer implements the method until the tests runs? If I understand the concept of TDD in the right way, the feature-implementing programmer has to write the test by himself, because TDD is procedure with mini-iterations. So it would be too complex to have the tests written by another programmer? What would you say? Should the tests in TDD be written by the programmer himself or should another programmer write the tests that describes what a method can do?

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• Scrum in 5 Minutes

  - by Stephen.Walther

  The goal of this blog entry is to explain the basic concepts of Scrum in less than five minutes. You learn how Scrum can help a team of developers to successfully complete a complex software project. Product Backlog and the Product Owner Imagine that you are part of a team which needs to create a new website – for example, an e-commerce website. You have an overwhelming amount of work to do. You need to build (or possibly buy) a shopping cart, install an SSL certificate, create a product catalog, create a Facebook page, and at least a hundred other things that you have not thought of yet. According to Scrum, the first thing you should do is create a list. Place the highest priority items at the top of the list and the lower priority items lower in the list. For example, creating the shopping cart and buying the domain name might be high priority items and creating a Facebook page might be a lower priority item. In Scrum, this list is called the Product Backlog. How do you prioritize the items in the Product Backlog? Different stakeholders in the project might have different priorities. Gary, your division VP, thinks that it is crucial that the e-commerce site has a mobile app. Sally, your direct manager, thinks taking advantage of new HTML5 features is much more important. Multiple people are pulling you in different directions. According to Scrum, it is important that you always designate one person, and only one person, as the Product Owner. The Product Owner is the person who decides what items should be added to the Product Backlog and the priority of the items in the Product Backlog. The Product Owner could be the customer who is paying the bills, the project manager who is responsible for delivering the project, or a customer representative. The critical point is that the Product Owner must always be a single person and that single person has absolute authority over the Product Backlog. Sprints and the Sprint Backlog So now the developer team has a prioritized list of items and they can start work. The team starts implementing the first item in the Backlog — the shopping cart — and the team is making good progress. Unfortunately, however, half-way through the work of implementing the shopping cart, the Product Owner changes his mind. The Product Owner decides that it is much more important to create the product catalog before the shopping cart. With some frustration, the team switches their developmental efforts to focus on implementing the product catalog. However, part way through completing this work, once again the Product Owner changes his mind about the highest priority item. Getting work done when priorities are constantly shifting is frustrating for the developer team and it results in lower productivity. At the same time, however, the Product Owner needs to have absolute authority over the priority of the items which need to get done. Scrum solves this conflict with the concept of Sprints. In Scrum, a developer team works in Sprints. At the beginning of a Sprint the developers and the Product Owner agree on the items from the backlog which they will complete during the Sprint. This subset of items from the Product Backlog becomes the Sprint Backlog. During the Sprint, the Product Owner is not allowed to change the items in the Sprint Backlog. In other words, the Product Owner cannot shift priorities on the developer team during the Sprint. Different teams use Sprints of different lengths such as one month Sprints, two-week Sprints, and one week Sprints. For high-stress, time critical projects, teams typically choose shorter sprints such as one week sprints. For more mature projects, longer one month sprints might be more appropriate. A team can pick whatever Sprint length makes sense for them just as long as the team is consistent. You should pick a Sprint length and stick with it. Daily Scrum During a Sprint, the developer team needs to have meetings to coordinate their work on completing the items in the Sprint Backlog. For example, the team needs to discuss who is working on what and whether any blocking issues have been discovered. Developers hate meetings (well, sane developers hate meetings). Meetings take developers away from their work of actually implementing stuff as opposed to talking about implementing stuff. However, a developer team which never has meetings and never coordinates their work also has problems. For example, Fred might get stuck on a programming problem for days and never reach out for help even though Tom (who sits in the cubicle next to him) has already solved the very same problem. Or, both Ted and Fred might have started working on the same item from the Sprint Backlog at the same time. In Scrum, these conflicting needs – limiting meetings but enabling team coordination – are resolved with the idea of the Daily Scrum. The Daily Scrum is a meeting for coordinating the work of the developer team which happens once a day. To keep the meeting short, each developer answers only the following three questions: 1. What have you done since yesterday? 2. What do you plan to do today? 3. Any impediments in your way? During the Daily Scrum, developers are not allowed to talk about issues with their cat, do demos of their latest work, or tell heroic stories of programming problems overcome. The meeting must be kept short — typically about 15 minutes. Issues which come up during the Daily Scrum should be discussed in separate meetings which do not involve the whole developer team. Stories and Tasks Items in the Product or Sprint Backlog – such as building a shopping cart or creating a Facebook page – are often referred to as User Stories or Stories. The Stories are created by the Product Owner and should represent some business need. Unlike the Product Owner, the developer team needs to think about how a Story should be implemented. At the beginning of a Sprint, the developer team takes the Stories from the Sprint Backlog and breaks the stories into tasks. For example, the developer team might take the Create a Shopping Cart story and break it into the following tasks: · Enable users to add and remote items from shopping cart · Persist the shopping cart to database between visits · Redirect user to checkout page when Checkout button is clicked During the Daily Scrum, members of the developer team volunteer to complete the tasks required to implement the next Story in the Sprint Backlog. When a developer talks about what he did yesterday or plans to do tomorrow then the developer should be referring to a task. Stories are owned by the Product Owner and a story is all about business value. In contrast, the tasks are owned by the developer team and a task is all about implementation details. A story might take several days or weeks to complete. A task is something which a developer can complete in less than a day. Some teams get lazy about breaking stories into tasks. Neglecting to break stories into tasks can lead to “Never Ending Stories” If you don’t break a story into tasks, then you can’t know how much of a story has actually been completed because you don’t have a clear idea about the implementation steps required to complete the story. Scrumboard During the Daily Scrum, the developer team uses a Scrumboard to coordinate their work. A Scrumboard contains a list of the stories for the current Sprint, the tasks associated with each Story, and the state of each task. The developer team uses the Scrumboard so everyone on the team can see, at a glance, what everyone is working on. As a developer works on a task, the task moves from state to state and the state of the task is updated on the Scrumboard. Common task states are ToDo, In Progress, and Done. Some teams include additional task states such as Needs Review or Needs Testing. Some teams use a physical Scrumboard. In that case, you use index cards to represent the stories and the tasks and you tack the index cards onto a physical board. Using a physical Scrumboard has several disadvantages. A physical Scrumboard does not work well with a distributed team – for example, it is hard to share the same physical Scrumboard between Boston and Seattle. Also, generating reports from a physical Scrumboard is more difficult than generating reports from an online Scrumboard. Estimating Stories and Tasks Stakeholders in a project, the people investing in a project, need to have an idea of how a project is progressing and when the project will be completed. For example, if you are investing in creating an e-commerce site, you need to know when the site can be launched. It is not enough to just say that “the project will be done when it is done” because the stakeholders almost certainly have a limited budget to devote to the project. The people investing in the project cannot determine the business value of the project unless they can have an estimate of how long it will take to complete the project. Developers hate to give estimates. The reason that developers hate to give estimates is that the estimates are almost always completely made up. For example, you really don’t know how long it takes to build a shopping cart until you finish building a shopping cart, and at that point, the estimate is no longer useful. The problem is that writing code is much more like Finding a Cure for Cancer than Building a Brick Wall. Building a brick wall is very straightforward. After you learn how to add one brick to a wall, you understand everything that is involved in adding a brick to a wall. There is no additional research required and no surprises. If, on the other hand, I assembled a team of scientists and asked them to find a cure for cancer, and estimate exactly how long it will take, they would have no idea. The problem is that there are too many unknowns. I don’t know how to cure cancer, I need to do a lot of research here, so I cannot even begin to estimate how long it will take. So developers hate to provide estimates, but the Product Owner and other product stakeholders, have a legitimate need for estimates. Scrum resolves this conflict by using the idea of Story Points. Different teams use different units to represent Story Points. For example, some teams use shirt sizes such as Small, Medium, Large, and X-Large. Some teams prefer to use Coffee Cup sizes such as Tall, Short, and Grande. Finally, some teams like to use numbers from the Fibonacci series. These alternative units are converted into a Story Point value. Regardless of the type of unit which you use to represent Story Points, the goal is the same. Instead of attempting to estimate a Story in hours (which is doomed to failure), you use a much less fine-grained measure of work. A developer team is much more likely to be able to estimate that a Story is Small or X-Large than the exact number of hours required to complete the story. So you can think of Story Points as a compromise between the needs of the Product Owner and the developer team. When a Sprint starts, the developer team devotes more time to thinking about the Stories in a Sprint and the developer team breaks the Stories into Tasks. In Scrum, you estimate the work required to complete a Story by using Story Points and you estimate the work required to complete a task by using hours. The difference between Stories and Tasks is that you don’t create a task until you are just about ready to start working on a task. A task is something that you should be able to create within a day, so you have a much better chance of providing an accurate estimate of the work required to complete a task than a story. Burndown Charts In Scrum, you use Burndown charts to represent the remaining work on a project. You use Release Burndown charts to represent the overall remaining work for a project and you use Sprint Burndown charts to represent the overall remaining work for a particular Sprint. You create a Release Burndown chart by calculating the remaining number of uncompleted Story Points for the entire Product Backlog every day. The vertical axis represents Story Points and the horizontal axis represents time. A Sprint Burndown chart is similar to a Release Burndown chart, but it focuses on the remaining work for a particular Sprint. There are two different types of Sprint Burndown charts. You can either represent the remaining work in a Sprint with Story Points or with task hours (the following image, taken from Wikipedia, uses hours). When each Product Backlog Story is completed, the Release Burndown chart slopes down. When each Story or task is completed, the Sprint Burndown chart slopes down. Burndown charts typically do not always slope down over time. As new work is added to the Product Backlog, the Release Burndown chart slopes up. If new tasks are discovered during a Sprint, the Sprint Burndown chart will also slope up. The purpose of a Burndown chart is to give you a way to track team progress over time. If, halfway through a Sprint, the Sprint Burndown chart is still climbing a hill then you know that you are in trouble. Team Velocity Stakeholders in a project always want more work done faster. For example, the Product Owner for the e-commerce site wants the website to launch before tomorrow. Developers tend to be overly optimistic. Rarely do developers acknowledge the physical limitations of reality. So Project stakeholders and the developer team often collude to delude themselves about how much work can be done and how quickly. Too many software projects begin in a state of optimism and end in frustration as deadlines zoom by. In Scrum, this problem is overcome by calculating a number called the Team Velocity. The Team Velocity is a measure of the average number of Story Points which a team has completed in previous Sprints. Knowing the Team Velocity is important during the Sprint Planning meeting when the Product Owner and the developer team work together to determine the number of stories which can be completed in the next Sprint. If you know the Team Velocity then you can avoid committing to do more work than the team has been able to accomplish in the past, and your team is much more likely to complete all of the work required for the next Sprint. Scrum Master There are three roles in Scrum: the Product Owner, the developer team, and the Scrum Master. I’v e already discussed the Product Owner. The Product Owner is the one and only person who maintains the Product Backlog and prioritizes the stories. I’ve also described the role of the developer team. The members of the developer team do the work of implementing the stories by breaking the stories into tasks. The final role, which I have not discussed, is the role of the Scrum Master. The Scrum Master is responsible for ensuring that the team is following the Scrum process. For example, the Scrum Master is responsible for making sure that there is a Daily Scrum meeting and that everyone answers the standard three questions. The Scrum Master is also responsible for removing (non-technical) impediments which the team might encounter. For example, if the team cannot start work until everyone installs the latest version of Microsoft Visual Studio then the Scrum Master has the responsibility of working with management to get the latest version of Visual Studio as quickly as possible. The Scrum Master can be a member of the developer team. Furthermore, different people can take on the role of the Scrum Master over time. The Scrum Master, however, cannot be the same person as the Product Owner. Using SonicAgile SonicAgile (SonicAgile.com) is an online tool which you can use to manage your projects using Scrum. You can use the SonicAgile Product Backlog to create a prioritized list of stories. You can estimate the size of the Stories using different Story Point units such as Shirt Sizes and Coffee Cup sizes. You can use SonicAgile during the Sprint Planning meeting to select the Stories that you want to complete during a particular Sprint. You can configure Sprints to be any length of time. SonicAgile calculates Team Velocity automatically and displays a warning when you add too many stories to a Sprint. In other words, it warns you when it thinks you are overcommitting in a Sprint. SonicAgile also includes a Scrumboard which displays the list of Stories selected for a Sprint and the tasks associated with each story. You can drag tasks from one task state to another. Finally, SonicAgile enables you to generate Release Burndown and Sprint Burndown charts. You can use these charts to view the progress of your team. To learn more about SonicAgile, visit SonicAgile.com. Summary In this post, I described many of the basic concepts of Scrum. You learned how a Product Owner uses a Product Backlog to create a prioritized list of tasks. I explained why work is completed in Sprints so the developer team can be more productive. I also explained how a developer team uses the daily scrum to coordinate their work. You learned how the developer team uses a Scrumboard to see, at a glance, who is working on what and the state of each task. I also discussed Burndown charts. You learned how you can use both Release and Sprint Burndown charts to track team progress in completing a project. Finally, I described the crucial role of the Scrum Master – the person who is responsible for ensuring that the rules of Scrum are being followed. My goal was not to describe all of the concepts of Scrum. This post was intended to be an introductory overview. For a comprehensive explanation of Scrum, I recommend reading Ken Schwaber’s book Agile Project Management with Scrum: http://www.amazon.com/Agile-Project-Management-Microsoft-Professional/dp/073561993X/ref=la_B001H6ODMC_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345224000&sr=1-1

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• New e learning course on Business Intelligence

  - by simonsabin

  I just got this from fello SQL MVP Chris Testa O'Neil   "I am pleased to announce the release of the Author Model eCourseCollection 6233 AE: Implementing and Maintaining Business Intelligence in Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008: Integration Services, Reporting Services and Analysis Services This 24-hour collection provides you with the skills and knowledge required for implementing and maintaining business intelligence solutions on SQL Server 2008. You will learn about the SQL Server technologies, such as Integration Services, Analysis Services, and Reporting Services. This collection also helps students to prepare for Exam 70-448 and can be accessed from: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/elearning/course/6233.mspx   

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• Oracle Launches New Oracle Database 12c Administrator Certifications

  - by Brandye Barrington

  Today Oracle University announces the release of new Oracle Database 12c Administrator certifications. The new Oracle Database 12c certifications emphasize the foundational and advanced skills needed by Database Administrators and will prepare DBAs to leverage powerful new management and consolidation capabilities, resulting in an even more valuable credential for customers and partners. ORACLE CERTIFIED ASSOCIATE (OCA)  The Oracle Certified Associate (OCA) for Oracle Database 12c objectives measure IT professionals' mastery of day-to-day administration skills and their ability to manage the challenges they're likely to encounter on the job. This credential focuses on SQL skills, operational administration of the Oracle Database including performance and space management, and installing, patching and upgrading the Oracle Database. Earning the OCA credential requires successful completion of two exams: 1Z0-061 - Oracle Database 12c: SQL Fundamentals and 1Z0-062 - Oracle Database 12c: Installation and Administration. The OCA certification track also allows for several alternate exams which can be substituted for 1Z0-061. ORACLE CERTIFIED PROFESSIONAL (OCP) Building on the competencies in the Oracle Database 12c OCA certification, the Oracle Certified Professional (OCP) for Oracle Database 12c certification includes advanced knowledge and skills required of top-performing database administrators. The OCP credential focuses on developing and implementing backup and recovery strategies, designing consolidation strategies to exploit multitenant container and pluggable databases, and thorough understanding how CDB/PDBs fit into the DBaaS cloud-computing model. Today, Oracle is releasing 1Z0-060 - Upgrade to Oracle Database 12c, which allows Oracle Certified Professionals with credentials in Oracle 9i, Oracle Database 10g or Oracle Database 11g to upgrade to Oracle Database 12c with a single exam. The upgrade exam focuses on designing consolidation strategies to exploit multitenant container and pluggable databases, implementing Oracle 12c feature-rich ILM support, optimizing SQL execution using dynamic swapping of sub plans, implementing real-time data redaction within databases, as well as exploiting many additional performance, backup and recovery, security and partitioning enhancements. The exam also includes a thorough review of core DBA skills. Visit the OCP certification track for more details on the new upgrade exam as well as alternate certification paths. ORACLE CERTIFIED MASTER (OCM) The Oracle Certified Master (OCM) for Oracle Database 12c - a very challenging and elite top-level certification - certifies the most highly skilled and experienced database experts. Further information on the 12c OCM level will be announced as exam development concludes. To date, there have been more than 1.6 million Oracle certifications granted worldwide. Explore these certification tracks, exam requirements and objectives, and start toward earning your exciting new Oracle Database 12c certification credentials from Oracle.

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• Customer Centricity: It's Not Easy, But Worth It

  - by tony.berk

  Defining customer centricity is relatively easy: focusing on the customer and their experiences and interactions with your company. Implementing a customer centric strategy is not so easy. We've highlighted customers who have focused on their customers and experienced great success including SJ, the Swedish rail operator, and Vopak, the world's largest provider of conditioned storage facilities for bulk liquids. In this interview with Stuart Lennie, President, Volvo IT, North America and VP, Volvo's Global Sales to Order Solutions Unit, we get the opportunity to learn from another company that is not just talking about the customer, but actually implementing the significant strategic shifts required to become customer centric. Volvo has developed a vision, a strategy and a methodology to keep existing customers by understanding what is important to them. To see other customer success stories, visit Siebel CRM Success. Click here, to learn more about Oracle's CRM products.

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• Creating a Business Intelligence Steering Committee

  Implementing BI through a committee positions all areas of a company to contribute.

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• The Importance of Customer Data Management and the Benefits of Data Hubs to an Enterprise

  Cliff talks with Peter Heller, Senior Director, Oracle's Applications Product Marketing, about the value customers have received from implementing an Oracle Data Hub.

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• Maintaining State in Mud Engine

  - by Johnathon Sullinger

  I am currently working on a Mud Engine and have started implementing my state engine. One of the things that has me troubled is maintaining different states at once. For instance, lets say that the user has started a tutorial, which requires specific input. If the user types "help" I want to switch in to a help state, so they can get the help they need, then return them to the original state once exiting the help. my state system uses a State Manager to manage the state per user: public class StateManager { /// <summary> /// Gets the current state. /// </summary> public IState CurrentState { get; private set; } /// <summary> /// Gets the states available for use. /// </summary> /// <value> public List<IState> States { get; private set; } /// <summary> /// Gets the commands available. /// </summary> public List<ICommand> Commands { get; private set; } /// <summary> /// Gets the mob that this manager controls the state of. /// </summary> public IMob Mob { get; private set; } public void Initialize(IMob mob, IState initialState = null) { this.Mob = mob; if (initialState != null) { this.SwitchState(initialState); } } /// <summary> /// Performs the command. /// </summary> /// <param name="message">The message.</param> public void PerformCommand(IMessage message) { if (this.CurrentState != null) { ICommand command = this.CurrentState.GetCommand(message); if (command is NoOpCommand) { // NoOperation commands indicate that the current state is not finished yet. this.CurrentState.Render(this.Mob); } else if (command != null) { command.Execute(this.Mob); } else if (command == null) { new InvalidCommand().Execute(this.Mob); } } } /// <summary> /// Switches the state. /// </summary> /// <param name="state">The state.</param> public void SwitchState(IState state) { if (this.CurrentState != null) { this.CurrentState.Cleanup(); } this.CurrentState = state; if (state != null) { this.CurrentState.Render(this.Mob); } } } Each of the different states that the user can be in, is a Type implementing IState. public interface IState { /// <summary> /// Renders the current state to the players terminal. /// </summary> /// <param name="player">The player to render to</param> void Render(IMob mob); /// <summary> /// Gets the Command that the player entered and preps it for execution. /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> ICommand GetCommand(IMessage command); /// <summary> /// Cleanups this instance during a state change. /// </summary> void Cleanup(); } Example state: public class ConnectState : IState { /// <summary> /// The connected player /// </summary> private IMob connectedPlayer; public void Render(IMob mob) { if (!(mob is IPlayer)) { throw new NullReferenceException("ConnectState can only be used with a player object implementing IPlayer"); } //Store a reference for the GetCommand() method to use. this.connectedPlayer = mob as IPlayer; var server = mob.Game as IServer; var game = mob.Game as IGame; // It is not guaranteed that mob.Game will implement IServer. We are only guaranteed that it will implement IGame. if (server == null) { throw new NullReferenceException("LoginState can only be set to a player object that is part of a server."); } //Output the game information mob.Send(new InformationalMessage(game.Name)); mob.Send(new InformationalMessage(game.Description)); mob.Send(new InformationalMessage(string.Empty)); //blank line //Output the server MOTD information mob.Send(new InformationalMessage(string.Join("\n", server.MessageOfTheDay))); mob.Send(new InformationalMessage(string.Empty)); //blank line mob.StateManager.SwitchState(new LoginState()); } /// <summary> /// Gets the command. /// </summary> /// <param name="message">The message.</param> /// <returns>Returns no operation required.</returns> public Commands.ICommand GetCommand(IMessage message) { return new NoOpCommand(); } /// <summary> /// Cleanups this instance during a state change. /// </summary> public void Cleanup() { // We have nothing to clean up. return; } } With the way that I have my FSM set up at the moment, the user can only ever have one state at a time. I read a few different posts on here about state management but nothing regarding keeping a stack history. I thought about using a Stack collection, and just pushing new states on to the stack then popping them off as the user moves out from one. It seems like it would work, but I'm not sure if it is the best approach to take. I'm looking for recommendations on this. I'm currently swapping state from within the individual states themselves as well which I'm on the fence about if it makes sense to do there or not. The user enters a command, the StateManager passes the command to the current State and lets it determine if it needs it (like passing in a password after entering a user name), if the state doesn't need any further commands, it returns null. If it does need to continue doing work, it returns a No Operation to let the state manager know that the state still requires further input from the user. If null is returned, the state manager will then go find the appropriate state for the command entered by the user. Example state requiring additional input from the user public class LoginState : IState { /// <summary> /// The connected player /// </summary> private IPlayer connectedPlayer; private enum CurrentState { FetchUserName, FetchPassword, InvalidUser, } private CurrentState currentState; /// <summary> /// Renders the current state to the players terminal. /// </summary> /// <param name="mob"></param> /// <exception cref="System.NullReferenceException"> /// ConnectState can only be used with a player object implementing IPlayer /// or /// LoginState can only be set to a player object that is part of a server. /// </exception> public void Render(IMob mob) { if (!(mob is IPlayer)) { throw new NullReferenceException("ConnectState can only be used with a player object implementing IPlayer"); } //Store a reference for the GetCommand() method to use. this.connectedPlayer = mob as IPlayer; var server = mob.Game as IServer; // Register to receive new input from the user. mob.ReceivedMessage += connectedPlayer_ReceivedMessage; if (server == null) { throw new NullReferenceException("LoginState can only be set to a player object that is part of a server."); } this.currentState = CurrentState.FetchUserName; switch (this.currentState) { case CurrentState.FetchUserName: mob.Send(new InputMessage("Please enter your user name")); break; case CurrentState.FetchPassword: mob.Send(new InputMessage("Please enter your password")); break; case CurrentState.InvalidUser: mob.Send(new InformationalMessage("Invalid username/password specified.")); this.currentState = CurrentState.FetchUserName; mob.Send(new InputMessage("Please enter your user name")); break; } } /// <summary> /// Receives the players input. /// </summary> /// <param name="sender">The sender.</param> /// <param name="e">The e.</param> void connectedPlayer_ReceivedMessage(object sender, IMessage e) { // Be good memory citizens and clean ourself up after receiving a message. // Not doing this results in duplicate events being registered and memory leaks. this.connectedPlayer.ReceivedMessage -= connectedPlayer_ReceivedMessage; ICommand command = this.GetCommand(e); } /// <summary> /// Gets the Command that the player entered and preps it for execution. /// </summary> /// <param name="command"></param> /// <returns>Returns the ICommand specified.</returns> public Commands.ICommand GetCommand(IMessage command) { if (this.currentState == CurrentState.FetchUserName) { this.connectedPlayer.Name = command.Message; this.currentState = CurrentState.FetchPassword; } else if (this.currentState == CurrentState.FetchPassword) { // find user } return new NoOpCommand(); } /// <summary> /// Cleanups this instance during a state change. /// </summary> public void Cleanup() { // If we have a player instance, we clean up the registered event. if (this.connectedPlayer != null) { this.connectedPlayer.ReceivedMessage -= this.connectedPlayer_ReceivedMessage; } } Maybe my entire FSM isn't wired up in the best way, but I would appreciate input on what would be the best to maintain a stack of state in a MUD game engine, and if my states should be allowed to receive the input from the user or not to check what command was entered before allowing the state manager to switch states. Thanks in advance.

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• Are RSS feeds used? [closed]

  - by acidzombie24

  I was thinking about implementing RSS feeds on my site. The one thing that came to mind is Are RSS feeds ever used?! I don't use them nor know anyone who does. I know to use them it must be through an rss feed program or built in with the browser. I like my browser clean and i know many ppl dont know how to use/configure their browser. So with my thoughts i deducted that rss are not used 99.9999% of people (thats 4 decimal places which is really saying something). Now twitter on the other hand or even email may be used. But I have doubts about rss feeds. Can anyone give me statistics or change my mind on implementing it? I suspect it would be simple but i dont think i should bother if no one will ever use it. I dont even use SE/SO RSS feeds.

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• How to implement soft edge areas with particles

  - by OpherV

  My game is created using Phaser, but the question itself is engine-agnostic. In my game I have several environments, essentially polygonal areas that player characters can move into and be affected by. For example ice, fire, poison etc' The graphic element of these areas is the color filled polygon area itself, and particles of the suitable type (in this example ice shards). This is how I'm currently implementing this - with a polygon mask covering a tilesprite with the particle pattern: The hard edge looks bad. I'd like to improve by doing two things: 1. Making the polygon fill area to have a soft edge, and blend into the background. 2. Have some of the shards go out of the polygon area, so that they are not cut in the middle and the area doesn't have a straight line for example (mockup): I think 1 can be achieved with blurring the polygon, but I'm not sure how to go about with 2. How would you go about implementing this?

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• Ubuntu One API Java - how to use REST and AccessToken?

  - by Michael

  I am writing a java app in eclipse that backups data to several consumer-cloud-services encrypted and redundant. So far, I successfully implemented the authentication process, as it is described in the documentation. At this point, I do not know how to proceed. The next step would be implementing the auth with the stored AccessToken and afterwars implementing upload/download/listing functionality through the REST API. I think I have to store the String oauth.getSerialized(). How do I authenticate with this String afterwards? This does not work e.g.: AuthenticateResponse oauth = api.authenticate(serialized); api.setAuthorizer(new OAuthAuthorizer(oauth)); Can someone tell me please, how I can use the REST API with java? There is no explanation or link in the developers area as far as I saw. And btw, I wasted at least one hour trying to fix errors, because some needed libraries are listet after the example code. :/

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