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• Silverlight Cream for March 30, 2010 -- #825

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Jeremy Likness, Tim Greenfield, Tim Heuer, ondrejsv, XAML Ninja, Nikhil Kothari, Sergey Barskiy, Shawn Oster, smartyP, Christian Schormann(-2-), and John Papa And Glenn Block. Shoutouts: Victor Gaudioso produced a RefCard for DZone: Getting Started with Silverlight and Expression Blend Way to go Victor... it looks great! Gavin Wignall announced Metia launch FourSquare and Bing maps mash up – called Near.me Cheryl Simmons talks about VS2010 and the design surface: Changing Templates with the Silverlight Designer (and seeing the changes immediately) Michael S. Scherotter posted that New York Times Silverlight Kit Updated for Windows Phone 7 Series Jaime Rodriguez posted about 2 free chapters in his new book (with Yochay Kiriaty): A Journey Into Silverlight On Windows Phone -Via Learning WIndows PHone Programming Did you know there was "MSDN Radio"?? Tim Heuer posted follow-up answers to this morning's show: MSDN Radio follow-up answers: Prism for Silverlight, DomainServices and relationships Michael Klucher posted a great set of links for WP7 game development this morning: Great Game Development Tutorials for Windows Phone Zhiming Xue has 3 pages of synopsis and links for everything Windows Phone at MIX. This is the 1st, but at the top of the pages are links to the other two: Windows Phone 7 Content From MIX10 – Part I From SilverlightCream.com: Using WriteableBitmap to Simplify Animations with Clones Jeremy Likness takes a break from his LOB posts to demonstrate a page flip animation using WriteableBitmap to simplify the animation using clones. SAX-like Xml parsing Want some experience or fun with Rx? Tim Greenfield has a post up on building an observable XmlReader. nstalling Silverlight applications without the browser involved Last night I blogged Mike Taulty's take on the "Silent Install" for an OOB app, tonight, I'm posting Tim Heuer's insight on the topic. How to: Create computed/custom properties for sample data in Blend/Sketchflow ondrejsv posted an example of digging into the files that control the sample data for Blend to get what you really want. PathListBox Adventures – radial layout Check out the radial layout XAML Ninja did using the PathListBox ... and all code available. RIA Services and Validation Nikhil Kothari has a great (duh!) post up that follows his Silverlight TV on the same subject: RIA Services and validation... lots of good external links also. Windows Phone 7 Application with OData Sergey Barskiy did an OData to WP7 app by using the feed from MIX10. You can see a list of sessions, and click on one to see details. Getting Blur And DropShadow to work in the Windows Phone Emulator Shawn Oster responds to some forum questions about Blur and DropShadow effects not showing up in the WP7 emulator, and gives the code trick we have to do for now. Metro Icons for Windows Phone 7 We all got the other icon set for WP7 from MSDN, but smartyP pulled the Metro Icons from the PPT deck of the MIX10 presentations... good job! Fonts in SketchFlow Christian Schormann talks about fonts in Sketchflow, where they live on your machine, and how you can use them. Blend 4: About Path Layout, Part III Christian Schormann also has Part III of his epic tutorial up on Path Layout and Blend. This one is on dynamic resizing layouts, and he has links back to the other two if you missed them... or you can find them with a search at SilverlightCream... :) Simple ViewModel Locator for MVVM: The Patients Have Left the Asylum John Papa And Glenn Block teamed up to solve the View First model only without the maintenance involved with the ViewModel locator by using MEF. It only took these guys and hour... sigh... :) Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• SQL SERVER – Understanding XML – Contest Win Joes 2 Pros Combo (USD 198) – Day 5 of 5

  - by pinaldave

  August 2011 we ran a contest where every day we give away one book for an entire month. The contest had extreme success. Lots of people participated and lots of give away. I have received lots of questions if we are doing something similar this month. Absolutely, instead of running a contest a month long we are doing something more interesting. We are giving away USD 198 worth gift every day for this week. We are giving away Joes 2 Pros 5 Volumes (BOOK) SQL 2008 Development Certification Training Kit every day. One copy in India and One in USA. Total 2 of the giveaway (worth USD 198). All the gifts are sponsored from the Koenig Training Solution and Joes 2 Pros. The books are available here Amazon | Flipkart | Indiaplaza How to Win: Read the Question Read the Hints Answer the Quiz in Contact Form in following format Question Answer Name of the country (The contest is open for USA and India residents only) 2 Winners will be randomly selected announced on August 20th. Question of the Day: Is following XML a well formed XML Document? <?xml version=”1.0″?> <address> <firstname>Pinal</firstname> <lastname>Dave</lastname> <title>Founder</title> <company>SQLAuthority.com</company> </address> a) Yes b) No c) I do not know Query Hints: BIG HINT POST A common observation by people seeing an XML file for the first time is that it looks like just a bunch of data inside a text file. XML files are text-based documents, which makes them easy to read.  All of the data is literally spelled out in the document and relies on a just a few characters (<, >, =) to convey relationships and structure of the data.  XML files can be used by any commonly available text editor, like Notepad. Much like a book’s Table of Contents, your first glance at well-formed XML will tell you the subject matter of the data and its general structure. Hints appearing within the data help you to quickly identify the main theme (similar to book’s subject), its headers (similar to chapter titles or sections of a book), data elements (similar to a book’s characters or chief topics), and so forth. We’ll learn to recognize and use the structural “hints,” which are XML’s markup components (e.g., XML tags, root elements). The XML Raw and Auto modes are great for displaying data as all attributes or all elements – but not both at once. If you want your XML stream to have some of its data shown in attributes and some shown as elements, then you can use the XML Path mode. If you are using an XML Path stream, then by default all values will be shown as elements. However, it is possible to pick one or more elements to be shown with an attribute(s) as well. Additional Hints: I have previously discussed various concepts from SQL Server Joes 2 Pros Volume 5. SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – OpenXML Options SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Preparing XML in Memory SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Shredding XML SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Using Root With Auto XML Mode SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Using Root With Auto XML Mode SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – What is XML? SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – What is XML? – 2 Next Step: Answer the Quiz in Contact Form in following format Question - Answer Name of the country (The contest is open for USA and India) Bonus Winner Leave a comment with your favorite article from the “additional hints” section and you may be eligible for surprise gift. There is no country restriction for this Bonus Contest. Do mention why you liked it any particular blog post and I will announce the winner of the same along with the main contest. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Joes 2 Pros, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Puzzle, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• New Release of Oracle EPM (Enterprise Performance Management)

  - by Theresa Hickman

  I'm a huge fan of Hyperion products and consider Hyperion to be one of the best acquisitions Oracle has made in terms of applications. So I am really excited to talk about their latest release, Release 11.1.2 of the Oracle EPM System. This is EPM's largest release in 2 years, and it's jam-packed with new modules and features. In terms of brand new products, there are three: 1. Public Sector Planning and Budgeting meets the needs of public sector agencies, higher education, governments, etc. that have complex budget requirements. It supports position or employee-based budgeting and integrates with MS Office and your ERP ledgers to perform commitment control. 2. Hyperion Financial Close Management is a complete financial close solution that orchestrates the entire close process from subledgers and general ledger to financial reporting and disclosure submissions. And of course, it is integrated with GL systems and consolidation systems. I saw a demo of this and it looked pretty slick. They have this unified close calendar that looks like a regular calendar that gives each person participating in the close process a task list. It comes with a Gantt chart that shows the relationships and dependencies among closing tasks. There are dashboards to allow you to track the close progress and completion of tasks as well as perform trend analysis and see how much time is being spent on different activities in the close process. This gives you visibility that you never had before to understand where the bottlenecks are and where improvements could be made. I think what I liked best about this product was that it provides a central place for all participants to communicate their progress. When I worked as an Accountant, we used ad hoc tools, such as spreadsheets, Word documents, emails, and phone calls during the close process. I like the idea of having a central system to track the overall progress as well as automate the entire financial close process. Who knows, maybe Accountants won't have to revolve their lives around the month end close anymore with a tool like this. Those periodic fire drills can become predictable, well managed processes. 3. Disclosure Management is an out-of-the-box, pre-packaged XBRL solution to meet statutory reporting requirements. This product is really going to help companies improve the timeliness of producing financial reports. Reports can be authored using MS Word and Excel and then XBRL instance documents can be produced with its embedded XBRL tags. It even supports footnotes and disclosures of non-financial information. With a product like this, companies no longer have to outsource their XBRL filing; they can bring it back in house to save costs and time. In terms of other enhancements, they have ERP Integrator that provides integration and drill downs from Hyperion products to source systems, such as Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, and SAP. No other vendor offers this level of integration. There's also a new product that links Oracle Essbase directly to Hyperion Financial Management for internal financial reporting, and new integrations between Hyperion Financial Management and Oracle's GRC products. They also improved the usability of Oracle Hyperion Planning. They made it much easier for end users to use the system via the web or via MS Excel when submitting plans and budgets. It is also integrated with intelligent approval workflows that are data-driven, user-configurable, and scenario-specific to efficiently streamline the budgeting process. Here's the press release from April 7, 2010. Here's the pre-recorded web cast where you can see the demos. Just register and watch the hour long presentation. And finally, here's the newsletter

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• Unreal Tournament 3 vs UDK: What Should I Choose?

  - by Matt Christian

  Many people in the mod community were very excited to see the release of the Unreal Developer Kit (UDK) a few months ago.  Along with generating excitement into a very dedicated community, it also introduced many new modders into a flourishing area of indie-development.  However, since UDK is free, most beginners jump right into UDK, which is OK though you might just benefit more from purchasing a shelf-copy of Unreal Tournament 3. UDK UDK is a free full version of UnrealEd (the editor environment used to create games like Gears of War 1/2, Bioshock 1/2, and of course Unreal Tournament 3).  The editor gives you all the features of the editor from the shelf-copy of the game plus some refinements in many of the tools.  (One of the first things you'll find about UnrealEd is that it's a collection of tools grouped into the same editor so it really isn't a single 'tool') Interestingly enough, Epic is allowing you to sell any game made in UDK with a few catches.  First off, you must purchase a liscense for your game (which, I THINK is aproximately $99 starting).  Secondly, you must pay 25% of all profits for the first $5,000 of your game revenue to them (about $1250).  Finally, you cannot use any of the 'media' provided in UDK for your game.  UDK provides sample meshes, textures, materials, sounds, and other sample pieces of media pulled (mostly) from Unreal Tournament 3. The final point here will really determine whether you should use UDK.  There is a very small amount of media provided in UDK for someone to go in and begin creating levels without first developing your own meshes, textures, and other media.  Sure, you can slap together a few unique levels, though you will end up finding yourself restriced to the same items over and over and over.  This is absolutely how professional game development is; you are 'given' (typically liscensed or built in-house) an engine/editor and you begin creating all the content for the game and placing it.  UDK is aimed toward those who really want to build their game content from scratch with a currently existing engine.  It is not suited for someone who would like to simply build levels and quick mods without learning external 3D programs and image editing software. Unreal Tournament 3 Unless you have a serious grudge against FPS's, Epic, or your computer sucks, there really is no reason not to own this game for PC.  You can pick it up on Steam or Amazon for around $20 brand new.  Not only are you provided with a full single-player and multiplayer game, but you are given the entire UnrealEd 3.0 including all of the content used to build UT3.  If you want to start building levels and mods quickly for UT3, you should absolutely pick up a shelf-copy. However, as off-the-shelf UT3 is a few years old now, the tools have not been updated for quite a while.  Compared to UDK, the menus are more difficult to navigate through and take more time getting used to.  Since UDK is updated almost every month, there are new inclusions to the editor that may not be in UT3 (including the future addition of 3D!).  I haven't worked enough with shelf UT3 to see if there are more features in UDK or if they both feature the same stuff in different forms, however you should remember that the Unreal Engine 3.0 has undergone numerous upgrades between it's launch and Gears of War 2 (in fact, Epic had a conference to show off what changed just between the Gears of Wars games). Since UT3 has much more core content, someone who wants to focus on level editing or modding the core UT3 game may find their needs better suited with an off-the-shelf copy of UT3.  If that level designer has a team that is generating custom assets, they may be better off with UDK. The choice is now yours...

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• What’s the Difference Between Succession Management and Talent Reviews?

  - by HCM-Oracle

  By Marcie Van Houten Is there a difference or are they pieces of one holistic strategic talent process? And can you have one without the other?  First, let me give a quick definition of each.  Succession planning (or management) is about creating succession slates or talent pools in support of a critical job or position or sets thereof. And then using those plans to help mitigate risk and plan talent needs for the organization.  Talent reviews (known by other names often) are sets of meetings where managers and executives come together to review, discuss and often heatedly debate the merits and potential of their employees, and then place and sometimes calibrate that talent on a performance to potential matrix.  These are some of the most strategic conversations happening in conference rooms across the globe. I speak with a lot of organizations about their practices in this area and the answers to these questions are as varied and nuanced as there are organizations thinking about them.  Some are passionate about their talent review processes and have a very evolved and thoughtful approach.  They really know their people, where their talent is, and the opportunities they plan to offer them.  And to them that is their succession process.  They may never create a slate of named candidates for a job or assign employees to formal talent pools.   On the flip side there are other organizations that create slates and slates and often multiple talent pools to support their strategic positions.  Through these, they are able to mitigate the risk associated with having a key player leave their organization.  And for them, that is their succession process.  Some will start from the lower levels of their organization and roll up their succession plans, while other organizations only cover their top 200 executives and key positions with plans.  And then there are organizations that leverage some of all of these.  Ultimately, the goals are to increase employee engagement, reduce talent-related risk, ensure the right talent is aligned to the strategic initiatives and to drive business value.  The approaches are as unique as the organizations they represent and the business opportunities they are looking to seize upon.   And that's ok.  It's great in fact. Because one thing that is common is the recognition that the need to know your people and align your top talent to the future needs of the organization is mission critical. Sure, there are a set of commonly recognized best practices and guiding principles for all of this.  There is no one right or perfect answer.  And that is what makes this all so much darn fun.  With Talent Review and Succession Management from Oracle HCM Cloud, we’ve blended the ability to support your strategic talent review conversations with both succession plans and talent pools allowing for one very seamless and interactive process. So whether you create a lot of succession plans, only focus on talent pools, have a robust talent review process, or all of the above, Oracle has you covered. I’m looking forward to spending time with our customers at the upcoming OHUG Global Conference 2014 happening June 9-13 in Las Vegas.  It’s an opportunity for me to talk to customers about their business and how they are doing strategic talent processes like talent reviews and succession.  I hope to see you there. Marcie Van Houten brings over 20 years of management consulting, information systems and human capital management experience to her role as director of product strategy at Oracle. Ms. Van Houten has spent the past several years at Oracle working closely with customers to help drive the direction of the company's talent and succession management applications. Additionally, she spent nine years at PeopleSoft as Director of Information Systems leading human capital management implementation projects. Marcie Van Houten lives in Walnut Creek, California, and holds a MBA from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.  You can follow her on Twitter: @MarcieVH

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• How to Set Up Your Enterprise Social Organization

  - by Mike Stiles

  The rush for business organizations to establish, grow, and adopt social was driven out of necessity and inevitability. The result, however, was a sudden, booming social presence creating touch points with customers, partners and influencers, but without any corporate social organization or structure in place to effectively manage it. Even today, many business leaders remain uncertain as to how to corral this social media thing so that it makes sense for their enterprise. Imagine their panic when they hear one of the most beneficial approaches to corporate use of social involves giving up at least some hierarchical control and empowering employees to publicly engage customers. And beyond that, they should also be empowered, regardless of their corporate status, to engage and collaborate internally, spurring “off the grid” innovation. An HBR blog points out that traditionally, enterprise organizations function from the top down, and employees work end-to-end, structured around business processes. But the social enterprise opens up structures that up to now have not exactly been embraced by turf-protecting executives and managers. The blog asks, “What if leaders could create a future where customers, associates and suppliers are no longer seen as objects in the system but as valued sources of innovation, ideas and energy?” What if indeed? The social enterprise activates internal resources without the usual obsession with position. It is the dawn of mass collaboration. That does not, however, mean this mass collaboration has to lead to uncontrolled chaos. In an extended interview with Oracle, Altimeter Group analyst Jeremiah Owyang and Oracle SVP Reggie Bradford paint a complete picture of today’s social enterprise, including internal organizational structures Altimeter Group has seen emerge. One sign of a mature social enterprise is the establishing of a social Center of Excellence (CoE), which serves as a hub for high-level social strategy, training and education, research, measurement and accountability, and vendor selection. This CoE is led by a corporate Social Strategist, most likely from a Marketing or Corporate Communications background. Reporting to them are the Community Managers, the front lines of customer interaction and engagement; business unit liaisons that coordinate the enterprise; and social media campaign/product managers, social analysts, and developers. With content rising as the defining factor for social success, Altimeter also sees a Content Strategist position emerging. Across the enterprise, Altimeter has seen 5 organizational patterns. Watching the video will give you the pros and cons of each. Decentralized - Anyone can do anything at any time on any social channel. Centralized – One central groups controls all social communication for the company. Hub and Spoke – A centralized group, but business units can operate their own social under the hub’s guidance and execution. Most enterprises are using this model. Dandelion – Each business unit develops their own social strategy & staff, has its own ability to deploy, and its own ability to engage under the central policies of the CoE. Honeycomb – Every employee can do social, but as opposed to the decentralized model, it’s coordinated and monitored on one platform. The average enterprise has a whopping 178 social accounts, nearly ¼ of which are usually semi-idle and need to be scrapped. The last thing any C-suite needs is to cope with fragmented technologies, solutions and platforms. It’s neither scalable nor strategic. The prepared, effective social enterprise has a technology partner that can quickly and holistically integrate emerging platforms and technologies, such that whatever internal social command structure you’ve set up can continue efficiently executing strategy without skipping a beat. @mikestiles

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• SOA Community Newsletter June 2013

  - by JuergenKress

  Dear SOA partner community member Thanks for showing us your interest to rerun the Fusion Middleware Summer Camps! After knowing your suggestions we are happy to announce the 3rd edition of our advanced Fusion Middleware training. The camps will take place from August 26th - 30th 2013 in Lisbon Portugal. Topics will include Adaptive Case Management (ACM) as part of BPM Suite, b2b, Advanced SOA and SOA Governance. Please make sure you plan and book your seat in advance - (Booking is on the basis of first come first seat!). Thanks for all your efforts to become certified and Specialized. For all the experts who achieved the SOA Suite 11g Essentials or BPM Suite 11g Certified Implementation Specialist, you can download a logo for your blog or business card at the Competence Center. For all the companies who achieved a SOA or BPM specialization you can request a nice Plaques for your office. As part of our Industrial SOA article services we published “Canonizing a Language for Architecture” in the Service Technology Magazine and on Oracle Technology Network. If you write books or a blog - make sure you share it with us! Cloud Computing is the hottest topic in IT, specially as an architect you should be aware of the concepts and technology, therefore I highly recommend you Thomas Erl’s latest book named “Cloud Computing”. In the BPM space, Adaptive Case Management (ACM) is the hottest topic, with BPM PS6 the backend ACM functionality and an ACM sample application are available. You can even combine this hype with Customer Experience. The BPM section in this newsletter reflects the high importance of the topic and includes BPM PS6 video showing process lifecycle,BPM Resource Kit, Functional Testing, Introduction to Web Forms, Customized Workspace Application and Instance Patching Demo. B2B also become more and more popular in the Oracle SOA Suite. If you could not attend the training organized in the month May, we offer you an additional B2B training as a part of the Summer Camps or you can download the B2B training material from our SOA Community Workspace (SOA Community membership required). Thanks to all for sharing the valuable SOA content with our community! Special thanks to ec4u for the new reference of SOA Suite and AIA Foundation Pack at a Swiss insurance company. It is time to submit a SOA and BPM  reference request today! In this edition of the newsletter you will see Guido and Ronald's second part of OSB article series and Kathiravan Udayakumar's published an exclusive article on SOA Suite best practice. If you want to submit your content for the next edition of the Newsletter then please feel free to submit it to myself. The A-Team is an excellent contributor to the best practice - make sure you visit the new A-Team page and read their articles such as Getting to know Maven. Also on the SOA side, we have published many new articles from the community Oracle SOA Suite for the Busy IT Professional by Frank Munz, SOA Suite Knowledge - Polyglot Service Implementation with Groovy by Alexander Suchier, QA82 Analyzer - Automated Quality Assurance for Oracle SOA Suite Projects, Verifying the Target by Anthony Reynolds and a new book called Oracle SOA Governance 11g Implementation book by Luis Augusto Weir. Two new SOA on-demand training courses NEW - Oracle Business Rules Self-Study Course & Introduction Human Workflow online course are available now! Make use of the Summer Time and get trained - hope to see you in Lisbon for the Summer Camps! Jürgen Kress Oracle SOA & BPM Partner Adoption EMEA To read the newsletter please visit http://tinyurl.com/soanewsJune2013 (OPN Account required) To become a member of the SOA Partner Community please register at http://www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Technorati Tags: SOA Community newsletter,SOA Community,Oracle,OPN,Jürgen Kress,SOA,BPM

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• Q&A: Oracle's Paul Needham on How to Defend Against Insider Attacks

  - by Troy Kitch

  Source: Database Insider Newsletter: The threat from insider attacks continues to grow. In fact, just since January 1, 2014, insider breaches have been reported by a major consumer bank, a major healthcare organization, and a range of state and local agencies, according to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse.  We asked Paul Needham, Oracle senior director, product management, to shed light on the nature of these pernicious risks—and how organizations can best defend themselves against the threat from insider risks. Q. First, can you please define the term "insider" in this context? A. According to the CERT Insider Threat Center, a malicious insider is a current or former employee, contractor, or business partner who "has or had authorized access to an organization's network, system, or data and intentionally exceeded or misused that access in a manner that negatively affected the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of the organization's information or information systems."  Q. What has changed with regard to insider risks? A. We are actually seeing the risk of privileged insiders growing. In the latest Independent Oracle Users Group Data Security Survey, the number of organizations that had not taken steps to prevent privileged user access to sensitive information had grown from 37 percent to 42 percent. Additionally, 63 percent of respondents say that insider attacks represent a medium-to-high risk—higher than any other category except human error (by an insider, I might add). Q. What are the dangers of this type of risk? A. Insiders tend to have special insight and access into the kinds of data that are especially sensitive. Breaches can result in long-term legal issues and financial penalties. They can also damage an organization's brand in a way that directly impacts its bottom line. Finally, there is the potential loss of intellectual property, which can have serious long-term consequences because of the loss of market advantage.  Q. How can organizations protect themselves against abuse of privileged access? A. Every organization has privileged users and that will always be the case. The questions are how much access should those users have to application data stored in the database, and how can that default access be controlled? Oracle Database Vault (See image) was designed specifically for this purpose and helps protect application data against unauthorized access.  Oracle Database Vault can be used to block default privileged user access from inside the database, as well as increase security controls on the application itself. Attacks can and do come from inside the organization, and they are just as likely to come from outside as attempts to exploit a privileged account.  Using Oracle Database Vault protection, boundaries can be placed around database schemas, objects, and roles, preventing privileged account access from being exploited by hackers and insiders.  A new Oracle Database Vault capability called privilege analysis identifies privileges and roles used at runtime, which can then be audited or revoked by the security administrators to reduce the attack surface and increase the security of applications overall.  For a more comprehensive look at controlling data access and restricting privileged data in Oracle Database, download Needham's new e-book, Securing Oracle Database 12c: A Technical Primer. 

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• SQL SERVER – Identity Fields – Contest Win Joes 2 Pros Combo (USD 198) – Day 2 of 5

  - by pinaldave

  August 2011 we ran a contest where every day we give away one book for an entire month. The contest had extreme success. Lots of people participated and lots of give away. I have received lots of questions if we are doing something similar this month. Absolutely, instead of running a contest a month long we are doing something more interesting. We are giving away USD 198 worth gift every day for this week. We are giving away Joes 2 Pros 5 Volumes (BOOK) SQL 2008 Development Certification Training Kit every day. One copy in India and One in USA. Total 2 of the giveaway (worth USD 198). All the gifts are sponsored from the Koenig Training Solution and Joes 2 Pros. The books are available here Amazon | Flipkart | Indiaplaza How to Win: Read the Question Read the Hints Answer the Quiz in Contact Form in following format Question Answer Name of the country (The contest is open for USA and India residents only) 2 Winners will be randomly selected announced on August 20th. Question of the Day: Which of the following statement is incorrect? a) Identity value can be negative. b) Identity value can have negative interval. c) Identity value can be of datatype VARCHAR d) Identity value can have increment interval larger than 1 Query Hints: BIG HINT POST A simple way to determine if a table contains an identity field is to use the SSMS Object Explorer Design Interface. Navigate to the table, then right-click it and choose Design from the pop-up window. When your design tab opens, select the first field in the table to view its list of properties in the lower pane of the tab (In this case the field is ProductID). Look to see if the Identity Specification property in the lower pane is set to either yes or no. SQL Server will allow you to utilize IDENTITY_INSERT with just one table at a time. After you’ve completed the needed work, it’s very important to reset the IDENTITY_INSERT back to OFF. Additional Hints: I have previously discussed various concepts from SQL Server Joes 2 Pros Volume 2. SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Output Clause in Simple Examples SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Ranking Functions – Advanced NTILE in Detail SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Ranking Functions – RANK( ), DENSE_RANK( ), and ROW_NUMBER( ) SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Advanced Aggregates with the Over Clause SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Aggregates with the Over Clause SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Overriding Identity Fields – Tricks and Tips of Identity Fields SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Many to Many Relationships Next Step: Answer the Quiz in Contact Form in following format Question Answer Name of the country (The contest is open for USA and India) Bonus Winner Leave a comment with your favorite article from the “additional hints” section and you may be eligible for surprise gift. There is no country restriction for this Bonus Contest. Do mention why you liked it any particular blog post and I will announce the winner of the same along with the main contest. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Joes 2 Pros, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Puzzle, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Gamify your Web

  - by Isabel F. Peñuelas

  Yesterday Valencia welcomed the Gamification World Congress that I follow virtually through #GWC2012. BBVA, Iberia, Ligeresa, Axe, Wayra, ESADE, GlaxoSmithKline, Macmillan, Gamisfaction, Nomaders, Blaffin were among the companies presenting success stories on gaming. It has been proved that people remember things easily when an emotion is created. The marketing expectations around Gamification techniques have a lot to do with Neuromarketing theories. There are a lot of expectations on internal enterprise Gamification. In the public Web some sectors are taking the lead on following the trend. The Gartner Analyst Brian Burke opened another Gamification recent event in Madrid remembering that “Gamification is mostly about Engagement”, and this can be applied both to customers or employees. Gamification and Banking The experience of the Spanish Financial Group BBVA that just launched BBVA Game was also presented a week ago at the BBVA Innovation Centre during the event “Gamification & Banking: a fad or a serious business?” . One of the objectives of the BBVA Game was to double the name of registered users. “People like the efficiency of the online channel want to keep a one-to-one contact with the brand”-explained Bernardo Crespo. Another interested data coming out the BBVA presentation was that “only 20% of Spanish users –out of the total holders of Bank Accounts in the country- is familiar with the use of a Web Site to consult their bank accounts”, the project aims also to reverse this situation helping people to learn making a heavy use of the Video in the gaming context. In general Banking presenters seem to agree that Gamification techniques are helping to increase the time spent on the Web. Gamification and Health Using Gamification techniques for chronic illness rehabilitation was another topic of the World Congress. Here you can find some ideas and experiences What can games do for the health (In Spanish) I have personally started my own mental-health gaming project at http://www.lumosity.com/ Gamification in the Enterprise I really recommend Reading this excellent post of Ultan ÓBroin my Introduction to Gamification and Applications. Employee´s motivation and learning are experiencing a 360º turn and it looks than some of us will become soon the Dragon of the year instead of the Employee of the Year. Using Web 2.0 Tools for Gamification Projects  What type of tools do we need for a quick-win Gamification project? To certain extend Gamification can be considered an evolution of the participative Web. Badging, avatars, points and awards, leader boards, progress charts, virtual currencies, gifting and giving challenges and quests are common components and elements. The Web is offering new development frameworks to that purpose as this Avatar Framework from Paypal or Badgeville to include in web applications. Besides, tools to create communities around a game are required to comment, share and vote players as well as for an efficient multimedia management. Due to its entirely open architecture, its community features, and its multimedia and imaging solutions is were I see WebCenter as a tool helping brands to success. Link to Sources & Recommended Readings YouTube Video of BBVAGame presentation Where To Apply Gamification In Your Incentive Jim Calhoun Cancer Challenge Ride and Walkh For my Spanish Readers El aburrimiento es el enemigo número uno del éxito

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• SQL SERVER – Expanding Views – Contest Win Joes 2 Pros Combo (USD 198) – Day 4 of 5

  - by pinaldave

  August 2011 we ran a contest where every day we give away one book for an entire month. The contest had extreme success. Lots of people participated and lots of give away. I have received lots of questions if we are doing something similar this month. Absolutely, instead of running a contest a month long we are doing something more interesting. We are giving away USD 198 worth gift every day for this week. We are giving away Joes 2 Pros 5 Volumes (BOOK) SQL 2008 Development Certification Training Kit every day. One copy in India and One in USA. Total 2 of the giveaway (worth USD 198). All the gifts are sponsored from the Koenig Training Solution and Joes 2 Pros. The books are available here Amazon | Flipkart | Indiaplaza How to Win: Read the Question Read the Hints Answer the Quiz in Contact Form in following format Question Answer Name of the country (The contest is open for USA and India residents only) 2 Winners will be randomly selected announced on August 20th. Question of the Day: Which of the following key word will force the query to use indexes created on views? a) ENCRYPTION b) SCHEMABINDING c) NOEXPAND d) CHECK OPTION Query Hints: BIG HINT POST Usually, the assumption is that Index on the table will use Index on the table and Index on view will be used by view. However, that is the misconception. It does not happen this way. In fact, if you notice the image, you will find the both of them (table and view) use both the index created on the table. The index created on the view is not used. The reason for the same as listed in BOL. The cost of using the indexed view may exceed the cost of getting the data from the base tables, or the query is so simple that a query against the base tables is fast and easy to find. This often happens when the indexed view is defined on small tables. You can use the NOEXPAND hint if you want to force the query processor to use the indexed view. This may require you to rewrite your query if you don’t initially reference the view explicitly. You can get the actual cost of the query with NOEXPAND and compare it to the actual cost of the query plan that doesn’t reference the view. If they are close, this may give you the confidence that the decision of whether or not to use the indexed view doesn’t matter. Additional Hints: I have previously discussed various concepts from SQL Server Joes 2 Pros Volume 4. SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Structured Error Handling SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – SQL Server Error Messages SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Table-Valued Functions SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Table-Valued Store Procedure Parameters SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Easy Introduction to CHECK Options SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Introduction to Views SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – All about SQL Constraints Next Step: Answer the Quiz in Contact Form in following format Question Answer Name of the country (The contest is open for USA and India) Bonus Winner Leave a comment with your favorite article from the “additional hints” section and you may be eligible for surprise gift. There is no country restriction for this Bonus Contest. Do mention why you liked it any particular blog post and I will announce the winner of the same along with the main contest. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Joes 2 Pros, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Puzzle, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• How to Set Up Your Enterprise Social Organization?

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  By Mike Stiles on Dec 04, 2012 The rush for business organizations to establish, grow, and adopt social was driven out of necessity and inevitability. The result, however, was a sudden, booming social presence creating touch points with customers, partners and influencers, but without any corporate social organization or structure in place to effectively manage it. Even today, many business leaders remain uncertain as to how to corral this social media thing so that it makes sense for their enterprise. Imagine their panic when they hear one of the most beneficial approaches to corporate use of social involves giving up at least some hierarchical control and empowering employees to publicly engage customers. And beyond that, they should also be empowered, regardless of their corporate status, to engage and collaborate internally, spurring “off the grid” innovation. An HBR blog points out that traditionally, enterprise organizations function from the top down, and employees work end-to-end, structured around business processes. But the social enterprise opens up structures that up to now have not exactly been embraced by turf-protecting executives and managers. The blog asks, “What if leaders could create a future where customers, associates and suppliers are no longer seen as objects in the system but as valued sources of innovation, ideas and energy?” What if indeed? The social enterprise activates internal resources without the usual obsession with position. It is the dawn of mass collaboration. That does not, however, mean this mass collaboration has to lead to uncontrolled chaos. In an extended interview with Oracle, Altimeter Group analyst Jeremiah Owyang and Oracle SVP Reggie Bradford paint a complete picture of today’s social enterprise, including internal organizational structures Altimeter Group has seen emerge. One sign of a mature social enterprise is the establishing of a social Center of Excellence (CoE), which serves as a hub for high-level social strategy, training and education, research, measurement and accountability, and vendor selection. This CoE is led by a corporate Social Strategist, most likely from a Marketing or Corporate Communications background. Reporting to them are the Community Managers, the front lines of customer interaction and engagement; business unit liaisons that coordinate the enterprise; and social media campaign/product managers, social analysts, and developers. With content rising as the defining factor for social success, Altimeter also sees a Content Strategist position emerging. Across the enterprise, Altimeter has seen 5 organizational patterns. Watching the video will give you the pros and cons of each. Decentralized - Anyone can do anything at any time on any social channel. Centralized – One central groups controls all social communication for the company. Hub and Spoke – A centralized group, but business units can operate their own social under the hub’s guidance and execution. Most enterprises are using this model. Dandelion – Each business unit develops their own social strategy & staff, has its own ability to deploy, and its own ability to engage under the central policies of the CoE. Honeycomb – Every employee can do social, but as opposed to the decentralized model, it’s coordinated and monitored on one platform. The average enterprise has a whopping 178 social accounts, nearly ¼ of which are usually semi-idle and need to be scrapped. The last thing any C-suite needs is to cope with fragmented technologies, solutions and platforms. It’s neither scalable nor strategic. The prepared, effective social enterprise has a technology partner that can quickly and holistically integrate emerging platforms and technologies, such that whatever internal social command structure you’ve set up can continue efficiently executing strategy without skipping a beat. @mikestiles

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• SQL SERVER – Query Hint – Contest Win Joes 2 Pros Combo (USD 198) – Day 1 of 5

  - by pinaldave

  August 2011 we ran a contest where every day we give away one book for an entire month. The contest had extreme success. Lots of people participated and lots of give away. I have received lots of questions if we are doing something similar this month. Absolutely, instead of running a contest a month long we are doing something more interesting. We are giving away USD 198 worth gift every day for this week. We are giving away Joes 2 Pros 5 Volumes (BOOK) SQL 2008 Development Certification Training Kit every day. One copy in India and One in USA. Total 2 of the giveaway (worth USD 198). All the gifts are sponsored from the Koenig Training Solution and Joes 2 Pros. The books are available here Amazon | Flipkart | Indiaplaza How to Win: Read the Question Read the Hints Answer the Quiz in Contact Form in following format Question Answer Name of the country (The contest is open for USA and India residents only) 2 Winners will be randomly selected announced on August 20th. Question of the Day: Which of the following queries will return dirty data? a) SELECT * FROM Table1 (READUNCOMMITED) b) SELECT * FROM Table1 (NOLOCK) c) SELECT * FROM Table1 (DIRTYREAD) d) SELECT * FROM Table1 (MYLOCK) Query Hints: BIG HINT POST Most SQL people know what a “Dirty Record” is. You might also call that an “Intermediate record”. In case this is new to you here is a very quick explanation. The simplest way to describe the steps of a transaction is to use an example of updating an existing record into a table. When the insert runs, SQL Server gets the data from storage, such as a hard drive, and loads it into memory and your CPU. The data in memory is changed and then saved to the storage device. Finally, a message is sent confirming the rows that were affected. For a very short period of time the update takes the data and puts it into memory (an intermediate state), not a permanent state. For every data change to a table there is a brief moment where the change is made in the intermediate state, but is not committed. During this time, any other DML statement needing that data waits until the lock is released. This is a safety feature so that SQL Server evaluates only official data. For every data change to a table there is a brief moment where the change is made in this intermediate state, but is not committed. During this time, any other DML statement (SELECT, INSERT, DELETE, UPDATE) needing that data must wait until the lock is released. This is a safety feature put in place so that SQL Server evaluates only official data. Additional Hints: I have previously discussed various concepts from SQL Server Joes 2 Pros Volume 1. SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Dirty Records and Table Hints SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Row Constructors SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Finding un-matching Records SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Efficient Query Writing Strategy SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Finding Apostrophes in String and Text SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Wildcard – Querying Special Characters SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Wildcard Basics Recap Next Step: Answer the Quiz in Contact Form in following format Question Answer Name of the country (The contest is open for USA and India) Bonus Winner Leave a comment with your favorite article from the “additional hints” section and you may be eligible for surprise gift. There is no country restriction for this Bonus Contest. Do mention why you liked it any particular blog post and I will announce the winner of the same along with the main contest. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Joes 2 Pros, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Puzzle, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Windows Azure Recipe: Mobile Computing

  - by Clint Edmonson

  A while back, mashups were all the rage. The idea was to compose solutions that provided aggregation and integration across applications and services to make information more available, useful, and personal. Mashups ushered in the era of Web 2.0 in all it’s socially connected goodness. They taught us that to be successful, we needed to add web service APIs to our web applications. Web and client based mashups met with great success and have evolved even further with the introduction of the internet connected smartphone. Nothing is more available, useful, or personal than our smartphones. The current generation of cloud connected mobile computing mashups allow our mobilized workforces to receive, process, and react to information from disparate sources faster than ever before. Drivers Integration Reach Time to market Solution Here’s a sketch of a prototypical mobile computing solution using Windows Azure: Ingredients Web Role – with the phone running a dedicated client application, the web role is responsible for serving up backend web services that implement the solution’s core connected functionality. Database – used to store core operational and workflow data for the solution’s web services. Access Control – this service is used to authenticate and manage users identity, roles, and groups, possibly in conjunction with 3rd identity providers such as Windows LiveID, Google, Yahoo!, and Facebook. Worker Role – this role is used to handle the orchestration of long-running, complex, asynchronous operations. While much of the integration and interaction with other services can be handled directly by the mobile client application, it’s possible that the backend may need to integrate with 3rd party services as well. Offloading this work to a worker role better distributes computing resources and keeps the web roles focused on direct client interaction. Queues – these provide reliable, persistent messaging between applications and processes. They are an absolute necessity once asynchronous processing is involved. Queues facilitate the flow of distributed events and allow a solution to send push notifications back to mobile devices at appropriate times. Training & Resources 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. Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone The Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone is designed to make it easier for you to build mobile applications that leverage cloud services running in Windows Azure. The toolkit includes Visual Studio project templates for Windows Phone and Windows Azure, class libraries optimized for use on the phone, sample applications, and documentation Windows Azure Toolkit for iOS The Windows Azure Toolkit for iOS is a toolkit for developers to make it easy to access Windows Azure storage services from native iOS applications. The toolkit can be used for both iPhone and iPad applications, developed using Objective-C and XCode. Windows Azure Toolkit for Android The Windows Azure Toolkit for Android is a toolkit for developers to make it easy to work with Windows Azure from native Android applications. The toolkit can be used for native Android applications developed using Eclipse and the Android SDK. 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.

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• Are there too many qualified software development engineers chasing too few jobs?

  - by T Gregory

  I am trying to write this question in a non-argumentative way, but it is quite emotionally charged for some, so please bear with me. In the U.S., we hear constantly from CEOs that they cannot find enough qualified software engineers. In fact, it is the position of the U.S. government that demand for software engineering talent outpaces supply. This position can be clearly seen in the granting of tens of thousands of H1B visas, but also in the following excerpt from the official 2010-11 Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook: Employment of computer software engineers is expected to increase by 32 percent from 2008-2018, which is much faster than the average for all occupations. In addition, this occupation will see a large number of new jobs, with more than 295,000 created between 2008 and 2018. Demand for computer software engineers will increase as computer networking continues to grow. For example, expanding Internet technologies have spurred demand for computer software engineers who can develop Internet, intranet, and World Wide Web applications. Likewise, electronic data-processing systems in business, telecommunications, healthcare, government, and other settings continue to become more sophisticated and complex. Implementing, safeguarding, and updating computer systems and resolving problems will fuel the demand for growing numbers of systems software engineers. New growth areas will also continue to arise from rapidly evolving technologies. The increasing uses of the Internet, the proliferation of Web sites, and mobile technology such as the wireless Internet have created a demand for a wide variety of new products. As more software is offered over the Internet, and as businesses demand customized software to meet their specific needs, applications and systems software engineers will be needed in greater numbers. In addition, the growing use of handheld computers will create demand for new mobile applications and software systems. As these devices become a larger part of the business environment, it will be necessary to integrate current computer systems with this new, more mobile technology. However, from the the employee side of the equation, we often hear the opposite. Many of the stories of SDEs with graduate degrees and decades of experience on the unemployment line, or the big tech interview war stories, are anecdotal, for sure. But, there is one piece of data that is neither anecdotal nor transitory, and that is the aggregate decisions of millions of undergraduates of what degree to pursue. Here, a different picture emerges from the data, and that picture is not good for the software profession. According the most recent Taulbee Survey from Computer Research Association, undergrad degree production in CS and CE has fallen nearly 60% since 2004. (Undergrad enrollments have ticked up in the past two years, but only modestly). Here we see that a basic disconnect between what corporate CEOs and the US government are saying and what potential employees really think about job prospects in software engineering. So my questions are these. Who are we to believe? Is there an acute talent shortage, or is there a long-term structural oversupply in the SDE labor market? Can anyone provide reliable data on long-term unemployment among SDEs? How many are leaving the profession due to lack of work? Real data is most helpful. Thanks.

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• Bridging Two Worlds: Big Data and Enterprise Data

  - by Dain C. Hansen

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} The big data world is all the vogue in today’s IT conversations. It’s a world of volume, velocity, variety – tantalizing us with its untapped potential. It’s a world of transformational game-changing technologies that have already begun to alter the information management landscape. One of the reasons that big data is so compelling is that it’s a universal challenge that impacts every one of us. Whether it is healthcare, financial, manufacturing, government, retail - big data presents a pressing problem for many industries: how can so much information be processed so quickly to deliver the ‘bigger’ picture? With big data we’re tapping into new information that didn’t exist before: social data, weblogs, sensor data, complex content, and more. What also makes big data revolutionary is that it turns traditional information architecture on its head, putting into question commonly accepted notions of where and how data should be aggregated processed, analyzed, and stored. This is where Hadoop and NoSQL come in – new technologies which solve new problems for managing unstructured data. And now for some worst practices that I'd recommend that you please not follow: Worst Practice Lesson 1: Throw away everything that you already know about data management, data integration tools, and start completely over. One shouldn’t forget what’s already running in today’s IT. Today’s Business Analytics, Data Warehouses, Business Applications (ERP, CRM, SCM, HCM), and even many social, mobile, cloud applications still rely almost exclusively on structured data – or what we’d like to call enterprise data. This dilemma is what today’s IT leaders are up against: what are the best ways to bridge enterprise data with big data? And what are the best strategies for dealing with the complexities of these two unique worlds? Worst Practice Lesson 2: Throw away all of your existing business applications … because they don’t run on big data yet. Bridging the two worlds of big data and enterprise data means considering solutions that are complete, based on emerging Hadoop technologies (as well as traditional), and are poised for success through integrated design tools, integrated platforms that connect to your existing business applications, as well as and support real-time analytics. Leveraging these types of best practices translates to improved productivity, lowered TCO, IT optimization, and better business insights. Worst Practice Lesson 3: Separate out [and keep separate] your big data sandboxes from all the current enterprise IT systems. Don’t mix sand among playgrounds. We didn't tell you that you wouldn't get dirty doing this. Correlation between the two worlds is key. The real advantage to analyzing big data comes when you can correlate it with the existing data in your data warehouse or your current applications to make sense of the larger patterns. If you have not followed these worst practices 1-3 then you qualify for the first step of our journey: bridging the two worlds of enterprise data and big data. Over the next several weeks we’ll be discussing this topic along with several others around big data as it relates to data integration. We welcome you to join us in the conversation by following us on twitter on #BridgingBigData or download our latest white paper and resource kit: Big Data and Enterprise Data: Bridging Two Worlds.

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• SQL SERVER – Clustered Index and Primary Key – Contest Win Joes 2 Pros Combo (USD 198) – Day 3 of 5

  - by pinaldave

  August 2011 we ran a contest where every day we give away one book for an entire month. The contest had extreme success. Lots of people participated and lots of give away. I have received lots of questions if we are doing something similar this month. Absolutely, instead of running a contest a month long we are doing something more interesting. We are giving away USD 198 worth gift every day for this week. We are giving away Joes 2 Pros 5 Volumes (BOOK) SQL 2008 Development Certification Training Kit every day. One copy in India and One in USA. Total 2 of the giveaway (worth USD 198). All the gifts are sponsored from the Koenig Training Solution and Joes 2 Pros. The books are available here Amazon | Flipkart | Indiaplaza How to Win: Read the Question Read the Hints Answer the Quiz in Contact Form in following format Question Answer Name of the country (The contest is open for USA and India residents only) 2 Winners will be randomly selected announced on August 20th. Question of the Day: Which of the following datatype is usually NOT the best choice for Primary Key and Clustered Index? a) INT b) BIGINT c) GUID d) SMALLINT Query Hints: BIG HINT POST The clustered index is the placement order of a table’s records in memory pages. When you insert new records, then each record will be inserted into the memory page in the order it belongs. In the figure below we see another new record (Major Disarray) being inserted, in sequence, between Jonny and Rick. Since there is no room in this memory page, some records will need to shift around. The page split occurs when Irenes’ record moves to the second page. Page splits are considered very bad for performance, and there are a number of techniques to reduce, or even eliminate, the risk of page splits. You can create a clustered index on the table on any field you choose. Sometime SQL will create a clustered index for you. Often times the field having the Primary Key makes a great candidate for the clustered index. Additional Hints: I have previously discussed various concepts from SQL Server Joes 2 Pros Volume 3. SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – All about SQL Statistics SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Introduction to Page Split SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – The Clustered Index – Simple Understanding SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Geography Data Type – Calculating Distance Between Two Points on the Earth SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Sparse Data and Space Used by Sparse Data SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – System and Time Data Types SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Data Row Space Usage and NULL Storage Next Step: Answer the Quiz in Contact Form in following format Question Answer Name of the country (The contest is open for USA and India) Bonus Winner Leave a comment with your favorite article from the “additional hints” section and you may be eligible for surprise gift. There is no country restriction for this Bonus Contest. Do mention why you liked it any particular blog post and I will announce the winner of the same along with the main contest. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Joes 2 Pros, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Puzzle, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Oracle Unified Method (OUM) Release 5.6

  - by user714714

  ORACLE® UNIFIED METHOD RELEASE 5.6 Oracle’s Full Lifecycle Methodfor Deploying Oracle-Based Business Solutions About | Release | Access | Previous Announcements About Oracle is evolving the Oracle® Unified Method (OUM) to achieve the vision of supporting the entire Enterprise IT Lifecycle, including support for the successful implementation of every Oracle product. OUM replaces Legacy Methods, such as AIM Advantage, AIM for Business Flows, EMM Advantage, PeopleSoft's Compass, and Siebel's Results Roadmap. OUM provides an implementation approach that is rapid, broadly adaptive, and business-focused. OUM includes a comprehensive project and program management framework and materials to support Oracle's growing focus on enterprise-level IT strategy, architecture, and governance. Release OUM release 5.6 provides support for Application Implementation, Cloud Application Implementation, and Software Upgrade projects as well as the complete range of technology projects including Business Intelligence (BI) and Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), Enterprise Security, WebCenter, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), Application Integration Architecture (AIA), Business Process Management (BPM), Enterprise Integration, and Custom Software. Detailed techniques and tool guidance are provided, including a supplemental guide related to Oracle Tutor and UPK. This release features: Business Process Management (BPM) Project Engineering Supplemental Guide Cloud Roadmap View and Supplemental Guide Enterprise Security View and Supplemental Guide Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) Governance Implementation Supplemental Guide "Tailoring OUM for Your Project" White Paper OUM Microsoft Project Workplan Template and User's Guide Mappings: OUM to J.D. Edwards OneMethodology, OUM Roles to Task Techniques: Determining Number of Iterations, Managing an OUM Project using Scrum Templates: Scrum Workplan (WM.010), Siebel CRM Enhanced / Updated: Manage Focus Area reorganized by Activities for all Views Oracle Architecture Development Process (OADP) View updated for OADP v3.0 Oracle Support Services Supplemental Guide expanded to include guidance related to IT Change Management Oracle User Productivity Kit Professional (UPK Pro) and Tutor Supplemental Guide expanded guidance for UPK Pro Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) Application Integration Architecture (AIA) Supplemental Guide updated for SOA Tactical Project Delivery View Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) Tactical Project Delivery View expanded to include additional tasks Siebel CRM Supplemental Guide expanded task guidance and added select Siebel-specific OUM templates WebCenter View and Supplemental Guide updated for WebCenter Portal and Content Management For a comprehensive list of features and enhancements, refer to the "What's New" page of the Method Pack. Upcoming releases will provide expanded support for Oracle's Enterprise Application suites including product-suite specific materials and guidance for tailoring OUM to support various engagement types. Access Oracle Customers Oracle customers may obtain copies of the method for their internal use – including guidelines, templates, and tailored work breakdown structure – by contracting with Oracle for a consulting engagement of two weeks or longer and meeting some additional minimum criteria. Customers, who have a signed consulting contract with Oracle and meet the engagement qualification criteria, are permitted to download the current release of OUM for their perpetual use. They may also obtain subsequent releases published during a renewable, three-year access period. Training courses are also available to these customers. Contact your local Oracle Sales Representative about enrolling in the OUM Customer Program. Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) Diamond, Platinum, and Gold Partners OPN Diamond, Platinum, and Gold Partners are able to access the OUM method pack, training courses, and collateral from the OPN Portal at no additional cost: Go to the OPN Portal at partner.oracle.com. Select the "Partners (Login Required)" tab. Login. Select the "Engage with Oracle" tab. From the Engage with Oracle page, locate the "Applications" heading. From the Applications heading, locate and select the "Oracle Unified Method" link. From the Oracle Unified Method Knowledge Zone, select the "Implement" tab. From the Implement tab, select the "Tools and Resources" link. Locate and select the "Oracle Unified Method (OUM)" link. Previous Announcements Oracle Unified Method (OUM) Release 5.6 Oracle Unified Method (OUM) Release 5.5 Oracle Unified Method (OUM) Release 5.4 Oracle EMM Advantage Retired Retirement of Oracle EMM Advantage Planned for December 01, 2011

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• Announcing Oracle Knowledge 8.5: Even Superheroes Need Upgrades

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  It’s no secret that we like Iron Man here at Oracle. We've certainly got stuff in common: one of the world’s largest technology companies and one of the world’s strongest technology-driven superheroes. If you've seen the recent Iron Man movies, you might have even noticed some of our servers sitting in Tony Stark’s lab. Heck, our CEO made a cameo appearance in one of the movies. Yeah, we’re fans. Especially as Iron Man is a regular guy with some amazing technology – like us. But Like all great things even Superheroes need upgrades, whether it’s their suit, their car or their spacestation. Oracle certainly has its share of advanced technology.  For example, Oracle acquired InQuira in 2011 after years of watching the company advance the science of Knowledge Management.  And it was some extremely super technology.  At that time, Forrester’s Kate Leggett wrote about it in ‘Standalone Knowledge Management Is Dead With Oracle's Announcement To Acquire InQuira’ saying ‘Knowledge, accessible via web self-service or agent UIs, is a critical customer service component for industries fielding repetitive questions about policies, procedures, products, and solutions.’  One short sentence that amounts to a very tall order.  Since the acquisition our KM scientists have been hard at work in their labs. Today Oracle announced its first major knowledge management release since its acquisition of InQuira: Oracle Knowledge 8.5. We’ve put a massively-upgraded supersuit on our KM solution because we still have bad guys to fight. And we are very proud to say that we went way beyond our original plans. So what, exactly, did we do in Oracle Knowledge 8.5? We did what any high-tech super-scientist would do. We made Oracle Knowledge smarter, stronger and faster. First, we gave Oracle Knowledge a stronger heart: Certified on Oracle technologies, including Oracle WebLogic Server, Oracle Business Intelligence, Oracle Exadata Database Machine and Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud. Huge scaling and performance improvements. Then we gave it a better reach: Improved iConnect functionality that delivers contextualized knowledge directly into CRM applications. Better content acquisition support across disparate sources. Enhanced Language Support including Natural Language search support for 16 Languages. Enhanced Keyword Search for 23 authoring languages, as well as enhanced out-of-the-box industry ontologies covering 14 languages. And finally we made Oracle Knowledge ridiculously smarter: Improved Natural Language Search and a new Contextual Answer Delivery that understands the true intent of each inquiry to deliver the best possible answers. AnswerFlow for Guided Navigation & Answer Delivery, a new application for guided troubleshooting and answer delivery. Knowledge Analytics standardized on Oracle’s Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition. Knowledge Analytics Dashboards optimized search and content creation through targeted, actionable insights. A new three-level language model "Global - Language - Locale" that provides an improved search experience for organizations with a global footprint. We believe that Oracle Knowledge 8.5 is the most sophisticated KM solution in existence today and we’ve worked very hard to help it fulfill the promise of KM: empowering customers and employees with deep insights wherever they need them. We hope you agree it’s a suit worth wearing. We are continuing to invest in Knowledge Management as it continues to be especially relevant today with the enterprise push for peer collaboration, crowd-sourced wisdom, agile innovation, social interaction channels, applied real-time analytics, and personalization. In fact, we believe that Knowledge Management is a critical part of the Customer Experience portfolio for success. From empowering employee’s, to empowering customers, to gaining the insights from interactions across all channels, businesses today cannot efficiently scale their efforts, strengthen their customer relationships or achieve their growth goals without a solid Knowledge Management foundation to build from. And like every good superhero saga, we’re not even close to being finished. Next we are taking Oracle Knowledge into the Cloud. Yes, we’re thinking what you’re thinking: ROCKET BOOTS! Stay tuned for the next adventure… By Nav Chakravarti, Vice-President, Product Management, CRM Knowledge and previously the CTO of InQuira, a knowledge management company acquired by Oracle in 2011

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• Windows Azure Emulators On Your Desktop

  - by BuckWoody

  Many people feel they have to set up a full Azure subscription online to try out and develop on Windows Azure. But you don’t have to do that right away. In fact, you can download the Windows Azure Compute Emulator – a “cloud development environment” – right on your desktop. No, it’s not for production use, and no, you won’t have other people using your system as a cloud provider, and yes, there are some differences with Production Windows Azure, but you’ll be able code, run, test, diagnose, watch, change and configure code without having any connection to the Internet at all. The best thing about this approach is that when you are ready to deploy the code you’ve been testing, a few clicks deploys it to your subscription when you make one.   So what deep-magic does it take to run such a thing right on your laptop or even a Virtual PC? Well, it’s actually not all that difficult. You simply download and install the Windows Azure SDK (you can even get a free version of Visual Studio for it to run on – you’re welcome) from here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsazure/cc974146.aspx   This SDK will also install the Windows Azure Compute Emulator and the Windows Azure Storage Emulator – and then you’re all set. Right-click the icon for Visual Studio and select “Run as Administrator”:    Now open a new “Cloud” type of project:   Add your Web and Worker Roles that you want to code:   And when you’re done with your design, press F5 to start the desktop version of Azure:   Want to learn more about what’s happening underneath? Right-click the tray icon with the Azure logo, and select the two emulators to see what they are doing:          In the configuration files, you’ll see a “Use Development Storage” setting. You can call the BLOB, Table or Queue storage and it will all run on your desktop. When you’re ready to deploy everything to Windows Azure, you simply change the configuration settings and add the storage keys and so on that you need.   Want to learn more about all this?   Overview of the Windows Azure Compute Emulator: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg432968.aspx Overview of the Windows Azure Storage Emulator: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg432983.aspx January 2011 Training Kit: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=413E88F8-5966-4A83-B309-53B7B77EDF78&displaylang=en      

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• Desktop login fails, terminal works

  - by Tobias

  I have a freshly setup 12.04 LTS pc system (120 GB SSD, 1 TB HDD, 16 GiB RAM); since a few days, I can't login to the graphical desktop anymore: there is very short flashing shell window which disappears very quickly, and I'm confronted with the login screen again. I believe there is something about modprobe and vbox, but I can't read it fast enough ... I can login to a terminal (Ctrl+Alt+F1). It did not help to chown all contents of my home directory to me:my-group, like suggested here. This is what I could find in /var/log, grepping for the date and time (I inserted linebreaks after <my-hostname>; real time values preserved): auth.log: <date> 22:43:01 <my-hostname> lightdm: pam_succeed_if(lightdm:auth): requirement "user ingroup nopasswdlogin" not met by user "tobias" <date> 22:43:08 <my-hostname> lightdm: pam_unix(lightdm:session): session closed for user lightdm <date> 22:43:08 <my-hostname> lightdm: pam_unix(lightdm:session): session opened for user tobias by (uid=0) <date> 22:43:08 <my-hostname> lightdm: pam_ck_connector(lightdm:session): nox11 mode, ignoring PAM_TTY :0 <date> 22:43:08 <my-hostname> lightdm: pam_unix(lightdm:session): session closed for user tobias <date> 22:43:09 <my-hostname> lightdm: pam_unix(lightdm:session): session opened for user lightdm by (uid=0) <date> 22:43:09 <my-hostname> lightdm: pam_ck_connector(lightdm:session): nox11 mode, ignoring PAM_TTY :0 <date> 22:43:10 <my-hostname> lightdm: pam_succeed_if(lightdm:auth): requirement "user ingroup nopasswdlogin" not met by user "tobias" <date> 22:43:10 <my-hostname> dbus[756]: [system] Rejected send message, 2 matched rules; type="method_call", sender="1:43" (uid=104 pid=1639 comm="/usr/lib/indicator-datetime/indicator-datetime-ser") interface="org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties" member="GetAll" error name="(unset)" requested_reply="0" destination=":1.15" (uid=0 pid=1005 comm="/usr/sbin/console-kit-daemon --no-daemon ") kern.log: <date> 22:43:00 <my-hostname> kernel: [ 16.084525] eth0: no IPv6 routers present syslog: <date> 22:43:00 <my-hostname> kernel: [ 16.084525] eth0: no IPv6 routers present <date> 22:43:01 <my-hostname> ntpdate[1492]: adjust time server 91.189.94.4 offset -0.162831 sec <date> 22:43:08 <my-hostname> acpid: client 969[0:0] has disconnected <date> 22:43:08 <my-hostname> acpid: client connected from 1553[0:0] <date> 22:43:08 <my-hostname> acpid: 1 client rule loaded I have Virtualbox and Truecrypt installed, but I can't think of a reason why they might prevent a graphical login. I'm confused: What is this about requirement "user ingroup nopasswdlogin" not met? I do login using a password, and the password works ok when logging in to a terminal! Can I somehow read the error output, e.g. by delaying it, redirecting it to a file, or having the system prompt me for pressing a key? Has possibly any recent update caused my problem? Should I install the pending updates? How, btw, without access to the graphical UI? I have some working knowledge about the Linux shell, but I'm new to Ubuntu. Any help would be appreciated.

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• Java 6 Certified with Forms and Reports 10g for EBS 12

  - by John Abraham

  Java 6 is now certified with Oracle Application Server 10g Forms and Reports with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 (12.0.6, 12.1.1 and higher). What? Wasn't this already certified? No, but a little background might be useful in understanding why this is a new announcement. We previously certified the use of Java 6 with E-Business Suite Release 12 -- with the sole exception of Oracle Application Server 10g components in the E-Business Suite technology stack. Oracle Application Server 10g originally included Java 1.4.2 as part of its distribution.  E-Business Suite 12 uses, amongst other things, the Oracle Forms and Reports 10g components running on Java 1.4. Java 1.4 in the Oracle Application Server 10g ORACLE_HOME is used exclusively by AS 10g Forms and Reports' for Java functionality.  This version of Java is separate from the Java distribution used by other parts of EBS such as Oracle Containers for Java (OC4J). What's new about this certification? You can now upgrade the older Java 1.4 libraries used by Oracle Forms & Reports 10g to Java 6. This allows you to upgrade the Java releases within the Oracle Application Server 10g ORACLE_HOME to the the same level as the rest of your E-Business Suite technology stack components. Why upgrade? This becomes particularly important for customers as individual vendors' support lifecycle for Java 1.4 reaches End of Life: Oracle's Sun JDK Release 1.4.2's End of Extended Support: February 2013 (Sustaining Support indefinitely after) IBM SDK and JRE 1.4.2's End of Service: September 2013 HP-UX Java 1.4.2's End-of-Life : May 2012 Along with Oracle Forms, Java lies at the heart of the Oracle E-Business Suite.  Small improvements in Java can have significant effects on the performance and stability of the E-Business Suite.  As a notable side-benefit, later versions of Java have improved built-in and third-party tools for JVM performance monitoring and tuning.Our standing recommendation is that you always stay current with the latest available Java update provided by your operating system vendor.  Don't forget to upgrade Forms & Reports to 10.1.2.3 E-Business Suite 12 originally shipped with Oracle Application Server 10g Forms & Reports 10.1.2.0.2.  That version is no longer eligible for Error Correction Support. New Forms and Reports 10g patches are now being released with Forms and Reports 10.1.2.3 as the prerequisite. Forms and Reports 10.1.2.3 was certified for EBS 12 environments in November 2008. If you haven't upgraded your EBS 12 environment to Forms & Reports 10.1.2.3, this is a good opportunity to do so. References Using Latest Update of Java 6.0 with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 (My Oracle Support Document 455492.1) Overview of Using Java with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 (My Oracle Support Document 418664.1) Oracle Lifetime Support Policy (Oracle Fusion Middleware) IBM Developer Kit Lifecycle Dates HP-UX Java - End of Life Policy & Release Naming Terminology Related Articles OracleAS 10g Forms and Reports 10.1.2.3 Certified With EBS R12 Java 6 Certified with E-Business Suite Release 12

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• Use Case Actors - Primary versus Secondary

  - by Dave Burke

  The Unified Modeling Language (UML1) defines an Actor (from UseCases) as: An actor specifies a role played by a user or any other system that interacts with the subject. In Alistair Cockburn’s book “Writing Effective Use Cases” (2) Actors are further defined as follows: Primary Actor: The primary actor of a use case is the stakeholder that calls on the system to deliver one of its services. It has a goal with respect to the system – one that can be satisfied by its operation. The primary actor is often, but not always, the actor who triggers the use case. Supporting Actors: A supporting actor in a use case in an external actor that provides a service to the system under design. It might be a high-speed printer, a web service, or humans that have to do some research and get back to us. In a 2006 article (3) Cockburn refined the definitions slightly to read: Primary Actors: The Actor(s) using the system to achieve a goal. The Use Case documents the interactions between the system and the actors to achieve the goal of the primary actor. Secondary Actors: Actors that the system needs assistance from to achieve the primary actor’s goal. Finally, the Oracle Unified Method (OUM) concurs with the UML definition of Actors, along with Cockburn’s refinement, but OUM also includes the following: Secondary actors may or may not have goals that they expect to be satisfied by the use case, the primary actor always has a goal, and the use case exists to satisfy the primary actor. Now that we are on the same “page”, let’s consider two examples: A bank loan officer wants to review a loan application from a customer, and part of the process involves a real-time credit rating check. Use Case Name: Review Loan Application Primary Actor: Loan Officer Secondary Actors: Credit Rating System A Human Resources manager wants to change the job code of an employee, and as part of the process, automatically notify several other departments within the company of the change. Use Case Name: Maintain Job Code Primary Actor: Human Resources Manager Secondary Actors: None The first example is quite straight forward; we need to define the Secondary Actor because without the “Credit Rating System” we cannot successfully complete the Use Case. In other words, the goal of the Primary Actor is to successfully complete the Loan Application, but they need the explicit “help” of the Secondary Actor (Credit Rating System) to achieve this goal. The second example is where people sometimes get confused. Within OUM we would not include the “other departments” as Secondary Actors and therefore not include them on the Use Case diagram for the following reasons: The other departments are not required for the successful completion of the Use Case We are not expecting any response from the other departments (at least within the bounds of the Use Case under discussion) Having said that, within the detail of the Use Case Specification Main Success Scenario, we would include something like: “The system sends a notification to the related department heads (ref. Business Rule BR101)” Now let’s consider one final example. A Procurement Manager wants to place a “bid” for some goods using an On-Line Trading Community (B2B version of eBay) Use Case Name: Create Bid Primary Actor: Procurement Manager Secondary Actors: On-Line Trading Community You might wonder why the Trading Community is listed as a Secondary Actor, i.e. if all we are going to do is place a bid for a specific quantity of goods at a given price and send that off to the Trading Community, then why would the Trading Community need to “assist” in that Use Case? Well, once again, it comes back to the “User Experience” and how we want to optimize that when we think about our Use Case, and ultimately, when the developer comes to assembling some code. In this final example, the Procurement Manager cannot successfully complete the “Create Bid” Use Case until they receive an affirmative confirmation back from the Trading Community that the Bid has been accepted. Therefore, the Trading Community must become a Secondary Actor and be referenced both on the Use Case diagram and Use Case Specification. Any astute readers who are wondering about the “single sitting” rule will have to wait for a follow-up Blog entry to find out how that consideration can be factored in!!! Happy Use Case writing! (1) OMG Unified Modeling LanguageTM (OMG UML), Superstructure Version 2.4.1 (2) Cockburn, A, 2000, Writing Effective Use Case, Addison-Wesley Professional; Edition 1 (3) Cockburn, A, 2006 “Use Case fundamentals” viewed 20th March 2012, http://alistair.cockburn.us/Use+case+fundamentals

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• Announcing Oracle Knowledge 8.5: Even Superheroes Need Upgrades

  - by Chris Warner

  It’s no secret that we like Iron Man here at Oracle. We've certainly got stuff in common: one of the world’s largest technology companies and one of the world’s strongest technology-driven superheroes. If you've seen the recent Iron Man movies, you might have even noticed some of our servers sitting in Tony Stark’s lab. Heck, our CEO made a cameo appearance in one of the movies. Yeah, we’re fans. Especially as Iron Man is a regular guy with some amazing technology – like us. But Like all great things even Superheroes need upgrades, whether it’s their suit, their car or their spacestation. Oracle certainly has its share of advanced technology.  For example, Oracle acquired InQuira in 2011 after years of watching the company advance the science of Knowledge Management.  And it was some extremely super technology.  At that time, Forrester’s Kate Leggett wrote about it in ‘Standalone Knowledge Management Is Dead With Oracle's Announcement To Acquire InQuira’ saying ‘Knowledge, accessible via web self-service or agent UIs, is a critical customer service component for industries fielding repetitive questions about policies, procedures, products, and solutions.’  One short sentence that amounts to a very tall order.  Since the acquisition our KM scientists have been hard at work in their labs. Today Oracle announced its first major knowledge management release since its acquisition of InQuira: Oracle Knowledge 8.5. We’ve put a massively-upgraded supersuit on our KM solution because we still have bad guys to fight. And we are very proud to say that we went way beyond our original plans. So what, exactly, did we do in Oracle Knowledge 8.5? We did what any high-tech super-scientist would do. We made Oracle Knowledge smarter, stronger and faster. First, we gave Oracle Knowledge a stronger heart: Certified on Oracle technologies, including Oracle WebLogic Server, Oracle Business Intelligence, Oracle Exadata Database Machine and Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud. Huge scaling and performance improvements. Then we gave it a better reach: Improved iConnect functionality that delivers contextualized knowledge directly into CRM applications. Better content acquisition support across disparate sources. Enhanced Language Support including Natural Language search support for 16 Languages. Enhanced Keyword Search for 23 authoring languages, as well as enhanced out-of-the-box industry ontologies covering 14 languages. And finally we made Oracle Knowledge ridiculously smarter: Improved Natural Language Search and a new Contextual Answer Delivery that understands the true intent of each inquiry to deliver the best possible answers. AnswerFlow for Guided Navigation & Answer Delivery, a new application for guided troubleshooting and answer delivery. Knowledge Analytics standardized on Oracle’s Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition. Knowledge Analytics Dashboards optimized search and content creation through targeted, actionable insights. A new three-level language model "Global - Language - Locale" that provides an improved search experience for organizations with a global footprint. We believe that Oracle Knowledge 8.5 is the most sophisticated KM solution in existence today and we’ve worked very hard to help it fulfill the promise of KM: empowering customers and employees with deep insights wherever they need them. We hope you agree it’s a suit worth wearing. We are continuing to invest in Knowledge Management as it continues to be especially relevant today with the enterprise push for peer collaboration, crowd-sourced wisdom, agile innovation, social interaction channels, applied real-time analytics, and personalization. In fact, we believe that Knowledge Management is a critical part of the Customer Experience portfolio for success. From empowering employee’s, to empowering customers, to gaining the insights from interactions across all channels, businesses today cannot efficiently scale their efforts, strengthen their customer relationships or achieve their growth goals without a solid Knowledge Management foundation to build from. And like every good superhero saga, we’re not even close to being finished. Next we are taking Oracle Knowledge into the Cloud. Yes, we’re thinking what you’re thinking: ROCKET BOOTS! Stay tuned for the next adventure… By Nav Chakravarti, Vice-President, Product Management, CRM Knowledge and previously the CTO of InQuira, a knowledge management company acquired by Oracle in 2011. 

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• Inspiring a co-worker to adopt better coding practices?

  - by Aaronaught

  In the Handling my antiquated coworker question, various people discussed strategies for dealing with coworkers who are unwilling to integrate their workflow with the team's. I'd like, if possible, to learn some strategies for "teaching" a coworker who is merely ignorant of modern techniques and tools, and possibly a little apathetic. I've started working with a programmer who until recently has been working in relative isolation, in a different part of the company. He has extensive domain knowledge and most importantly he has demonstrated good problem-solving skills, something which many candidates seem to lack. However, the actual (C#) code I've seen is a throwback to the VB6 days. Procedural structure, Hungarian notation, global variables (abuse of static), no interfaces, no tests, non-use of Generics, throwing System.Exception... you get the idea. This programmer is a fair bit older than I am and, by first impressions at least, doesn't actively seek positive change. I'm not going to say resistant to change, because I think that is largely an issue of how the topic gets broached, and I want to be prepared. Programmers tend to be stubborn people, and going in with guns blazing and instituting rip-it-to-shreds code reviews and strictly-enforced policies is very likely not going to produce the end result that I want. If this were a new hire, a junior programmer, I wouldn't think twice about taking a "mentor" stance, but I'm extremely wary of treating an experienced employee as a clueless newbie (which he's not - he just hasn't kept pace with certain advancements in the field). How might I go about raising this developer's code quality standard the Dale Carnegie way, through gentle persuasion and non-material incentives? What would be the best strategy for effecting subtle, gradual changes, without creating an adversarial situation? Have other people - especially lead developers - been in this type of situation before? Which strategies were successful at stimulating interest and creating a positive group dynamic? Which strategies weren't successful and would be better to avoid? Clarifications: I really feel that several people are answering based on personal feelings without actually reading all of the details of the question. Please note the following, which should have been implied but I am now making explicit: This coworker is only my "senior" by virtue of age. I never said that his title, sphere of influence, or years at the organization exceed mine, and in fact, none of those things are true. He's a LOB programmer who's been absorbed into the main development shop. That's it. I am not a new hire, junior programmer, or other naïve idiot with grand plans to transform the company overnight. I am basically in charge of the software process, but as many who've worked as "leads" will know, responsibilities don't always correlate precisely with the org chart. I'm not asking people how to get my way, come hell or high water. I could do that if I wanted to, with the net result being that this person would become resentful and/or quit. Please try to understand that I am looking for a social, cooperative method of driving change. The mention of "...global variables... no tests... throwing System.Exception" was intended to demonstrate that the problems are not just superficial or aesthetic. Practices that may work for relatively small CRUD apps do not necessarily work for large enterprise apps, and in fact, none of the code so far has actually passed the integration tests. Please, try to take the question at face value, accept that I actually know what I'm talking about, and either answer the question that I actually asked or move on. P.S. My sincerest gratitude to those who -did- offer constructive advice rather than arguing with the premise. I'm going to leave this open for a while longer as I'm hoping to hear more in the way of real-world experiences.

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