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• Oracle ADF Coverage at OOW

  - by Frank Nimphius

  Below is the schedule for all ADF related sessions at a glance. Note the Meet and greet session added for Wednesday Octiber 3rd from 4.30 pm to 5:30. Oracle ADF and Fusion Development General Session Mon 1 Oct, 2012 Time Title Location 10:45 AM - 11:45 AM General Session: The Future of Development for Oracle Fusion—From Desktop to Mobile to Cloud Marriott Marquis - Salon 8 12:15 PM - 1:15 PM General Session: Extend Oracle Fusion Apps to Tablets/Smartphones with Oracle Mobile Technology Moscone West - 3014 1:45 PM - 2:45 PM General Session: Extend Oracle Applications to Mobile Devices with Oracle’s Mobile Technologies Moscone West - 3002/3004 4:45 PM - 5:45 PM General Session: Building Mobile Applications with Oracle Cloud Moscone West - 2002/2004 Conference Session Mon 1 Oct, 2012 Time Title Location 12:15 PM - 1:15 PM Understanding Oracle ADF and Its Role in Oracle Fusion Moscone South - 306 1:45 PM - 2:45 PM Building Performant Oracle ADF Business Components to Meet Tomorrow’s Needs Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate C3 3:15 PM - 4:15 PM End-to-End Oracle ADF Development in Eclipse Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate C3 4:45 PM - 5:45 PM Classic Mistakes with Oracle Application Development Framework Marriott Marquis - Salon 7 Tues 2 Oct, 2012 Time Title Location 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM One Size Doesn’t Fit All: Oracle ADF Architecture Fundamentals Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate C2 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM Oracle Business Process Management/Oracle ADF Integration Best Practices Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate C3 11:45 AM - 12:45 PM Mobile-Enable Oracle Fusion Middleware and Enterprise Applications with Oracle ADF Moscone South - 306 11:45 AM - 12:45 PM Secrets of Successful Projects with Oracle Application Development Framework Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate C2 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM Develop On-Device iPhone and iPad Apps Without Writing Any Objective-C Code Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate C2 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM BPM, SOA, and Oracle ADF Combined: Patterns Learned from Oracle Fusion Applications Moscone West - 3003 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM The Future of Forms Is … Oracle Forms (and Friends) Moscone South - 306 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM Best Practices for Integrating SOAP and REST Service into Oracle ADF Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate C2 Wed 3 Oct, 2012 Time Title Location 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM Mobile Apps for Oracle E-Business Suite with Oracle ADF Mobile and Oracle SOA Suite Moscone West - 3001 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM Visualize This! Best Practices for Data Visualization in Desktop and Mobile Apps Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate C3 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM Set Up Your Oracle ADF Project and Development Team for Productivity: Seven Essential Tips Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate C2 11:45 AM - 12:45 PM How to Migrate an Oracle Forms Application to Oracle ADF Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate C2 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM Oracle ADF: Lessons Learned in Real-World Implementations Moscone South - 309 3:30 PM - 4:30 PM Oracle ADF Implementations Around the Globe: Best Practices Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate C2 3:30 PM - 4:30 PM Oracle Developer Cloud Services Marriott Marquis - Salon 7 4:30 PM - 5:30 PM Oracle JDeveloper and Oracle ADF: What’s New Hilton San Francisco - Continental Ballroom 5 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM Mobile Solutions for Oracle E-Business Suite Applications: Technical Insight Moscone West - 2020 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM Extending Social into Enterprise Applications and Business Processes Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate C3 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM The Tie That Binds: An Introduction to Oracle ADF Bindings Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate C2 Thur 4 Oct, 2012 Time Title Location 11:15 AM - 12:15 PM Using Oracle ADF with Oracle E-Business Suite: The Full Integration View Moscone West - 3003 11:15 AM - 12:15 PM Deep Dive into Oracle ADF: Advanced Techniques Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate C2 12:45 PM - 1:45 PM Monitor, Analyze, and Troubleshoot Your Oracle ADF Application Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate C2 2:15 PM - 3:15 PM Oracle WebCenter Portal: Creating and Using Content Presenter Templates Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate C2 HOL (Hands-on Lab) Mon 1 Oct, 2012 Time Title Location 10:45 AM - 11:45 AM Developing Applications for Mobile iOS and Android Devices with Oracle ADF Mobile: Hands-on Lab Marriott Marquis - Salon 10A 1:45 PM - 2:45 PM Build Mobile Applications for Oracle E-Business Suite Marriott Marquis - Salon 10A 3:15 PM - 4:15 PM Developing Applications for Mobile iOS and Android Devices with Oracle ADF Mobile: Hands-on Lab Marriott Marquis - Salon 10A 3:15 PM - 4:15 PM Introduction to Oracle ADF: Hands-on Lab Marriott Marquis - Salon 3/4 4:45 PM - 5:45 PM Application Lifecycle Management with Oracle JDeveloper: Hands-on Lab Marriott Marquis - Salon 3/4 Tues 2 Oct, 2012 Time Title Location 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM Developing Applications for Mobile iOS and Android Devices with Oracle ADF Mobile: Hands-on Lab Marriott Marquis - Salon 10A 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM Developing Applications for Mobile iOS and Android Devices with Oracle ADF Mobile: Hands-on Lab Marriott Marquis - Salon 10A Wed 3 Oct, 2012 Time Title Location 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM Introduction to Oracle ADF: Hands-on Lab Marriott Marquis - Salon 3/4 11:45 AM - 12:45 PM Developing Applications for Mobile iOS and Android Devices with Oracle ADF Mobile: Hands-on Lab Marriott Marquis - Salon 10A 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM Build Mobile Applications for Oracle E-Business Suite Marriott Marquis - Salon 10A 3:30 PM - 4:30 PM Developing Applications for Mobile iOS and Android Devices with Oracle ADF Mobile: Hands-on Lab Marriott Marquis - Salon 10A 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM Developing Applications for Mobile iOS and Android Devices with Oracle ADF Mobile: Hands-on Lab Marriott Marquis - Salon 10A Thur 4 Oct, 2012 Time Title Location 11:15 AM - 12:15 PM Developing Applications for Mobile iOS and Android Devices with Oracle ADF Mobile: Hands-on Lab Marriott Marquis - Salon 10A 11:15 AM - 12:15 PM Introduction to Oracle ADF: Hands-on Lab Marriott Marquis - Salon 3/4 12:45 PM - 1:45 PM Oracle ADF for Java EE Developers with Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse Marriott Marquis - Salon 3/4 BOF (Birds-of-a-Feather) Mon 1 Oct, 2012 Time Title Location 6:15 PM - 7:00 PM How to Get Started with Oracle ADF Marriott Marquis - Club Room 7:15 PM - 8:00 PM Building Next-Generation Applications with Oracle ADF and Oracle BPM Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate C3 7:15 PM - 8:00 PM The Future of Oracle Forms: Upgrade, Modernize, or Migrate? Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate C2 7:15 PM - 8:00 PM Oracle ADF Faces: One Site for Many Devices Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate C1 - User Group Forum (Sunday Only) Sun 30 Sept, 2012 Time Title Location 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM Oracle ADF Immersion: How an Oracle Forms Developer Immersed Himself in the Oracle ADF World Moscone South - 305 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM Deploy with Joy: Using Hudson to Build and Deploy Your Oracle ADF Applications Moscone South - 305 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM ADF EMG User Group: A Peek into the Oracle ADF Architecture of Oracle Fusion Applications Moscone South - 305 12:45 PM - 3:45 PM ADF EMG User Group: Oracle Fusion Middleware Live Application Development Demo Moscone South - 305 3:15 PM - 4:15 PM Mobile Development with Oracle JDeveloper and Oracle ADF Moscone West - 2010 Demos Demo Location Developer Moscone North, Upper Lobby - N-002 Oracle ADF Mobile Development Moscone North, Upper Lobby - N-001 Oracle Eclipse Projects Hilton San Francisco, Grand Ballroom - HHJ-008 Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse Moscone South, Right - S-208 Oracle JDeveloper and Oracle ADF Moscone South, Right - S-207 Exhibits 0 Exhibitor Location Accenture Moscone South - 1813 Moscone South - 2221 Infosys Moscone South - 1701 Moscone South - SMR-005 Innowave Technology Moscone South - 2309 ODTUG Moscone West, Level 2 Lobby - Kiosk in the User Groups Pavilion Oracle ADF Developers Meet Up Wednesday, Oct 03 Time Activity Location 4:30 PM - 5:30 PM Stop by the OTN Lounge and meet other Oracle ADF & Fusion developers as well as product managers and engineers who work on Oracle ADF, ADF Mobile and ADF Essentials. Feedback and questions welcome, or simply stop by and say ‘hi!’ and enjoy free beer. OTN Lounge

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• C#: System.Lazy&lt;T&gt; and the Singleton Design Pattern

  - by James Michael Hare

  So we've all coded a Singleton at one time or another.  It's a really simple pattern and can be a slightly more elegant alternative to global variables.  Make no mistake, Singletons can be abused and are often over-used -- but occasionally you find a Singleton is the most elegant solution. For those of you not familiar with a Singleton, the basic Design Pattern is that a Singleton class is one where there is only ever one instance of the class created.  This means that constructors must be private to avoid users creating their own instances, and a static property (or method in languages without properties) is defined that returns a single static instance. 1: public class Singleton 2: { 3: // the single instance is defined in a static field 4: private static readonly Singleton _instance = new Singleton(); 5:  6: // constructor private so users can't instantiate on their own 7: private Singleton() 8: { 9: } 10:  11: // read-only property that returns the static field 12: public static Singleton Instance 13: { 14: get 15: { 16: return _instance; 17: } 18: } 19: } This is the most basic singleton, notice the key features: Static readonly field that contains the one and only instance. Constructor is private so it can only be called by the class itself. Static property that returns the single instance. Looks like it satisfies, right?  There's just one (potential) problem.  C# gives you no guarantee of when the static field _instance will be created.  This is because the C# standard simply states that classes (which are marked in the IL as BeforeFieldInit) can have their static fields initialized any time before the field is accessed.  This means that they may be initialized on first use, they may be initialized at some other time before, you can't be sure when. So what if you want to guarantee your instance is truly lazy.  That is, that it is only created on first call to Instance?  Well, there's a few ways to do this.  First we'll show the old ways, and then talk about how .Net 4.0's new System.Lazy<T> type can help make the lazy-Singleton cleaner. Obviously, we could take on the lazy construction ourselves, but being that our Singleton may be accessed by many different threads, we'd need to lock it down. 1: public class LazySingleton1 2: { 3: // lock for thread-safety laziness 4: private static readonly object _mutex = new object(); 5:  6: // static field to hold single instance 7: private static LazySingleton1 _instance = null; 8:  9: // property that does some locking and then creates on first call 10: public static LazySingleton1 Instance 11: { 12: get 13: { 14: if (_instance == null) 15: { 16: lock (_mutex) 17: { 18: if (_instance == null) 19: { 20: _instance = new LazySingleton1(); 21: } 22: } 23: } 24:  25: return _instance; 26: } 27: } 28:  29: private LazySingleton1() 30: { 31: } 32: } This is a standard double-check algorithm so that you don't lock if the instance has already been created.  However, because it's possible two threads can go through the first if at the same time the first time back in, you need to check again after the lock is acquired to avoid creating two instances. Pretty straightforward, but ugly as all heck.  Well, you could also take advantage of the C# standard's BeforeFieldInit and define your class with a static constructor.  It need not have a body, just the presence of the static constructor will remove the BeforeFieldInit attribute on the class and guarantee that no fields are initialized until the first static field, property, or method is called.   1: public class LazySingleton2 2: { 3: // because of the static constructor, this won't get created until first use 4: private static readonly LazySingleton2 _instance = new LazySingleton2(); 5:  6: // Returns the singleton instance using lazy-instantiation 7: public static LazySingleton2 Instance 8: { 9: get { return _instance; } 10: } 11:  12: // private to prevent direct instantiation 13: private LazySingleton2() 14: { 15: } 16:  17: // removes BeforeFieldInit on class so static fields not 18: // initialized before they are used 19: static LazySingleton2() 20: { 21: } 22: } Now, while this works perfectly, I hate it.  Why?  Because it's relying on a non-obvious trick of the IL to guarantee laziness.  Just looking at this code, you'd have no idea that it's doing what it's doing.  Worse yet, you may decide that the empty static constructor serves no purpose and delete it (which removes your lazy guarantee).  Worse-worse yet, they may alter the rules around BeforeFieldInit in the future which could change this. So, what do I propose instead?  .Net 4.0 adds the System.Lazy type which guarantees thread-safe lazy-construction.  Using System.Lazy<T>, we get: 1: public class LazySingleton3 2: { 3: // static holder for instance, need to use lambda to construct since constructor private 4: private static readonly Lazy<LazySingleton3> _instance 5: = new Lazy<LazySingleton3>(() => new LazySingleton3()); 6:  7: // private to prevent direct instantiation. 8: private LazySingleton3() 9: { 10: } 11:  12: // accessor for instance 13: public static LazySingleton3 Instance 14: { 15: get 16: { 17: return _instance.Value; 18: } 19: } 20: } Note, you need your lambda to call the private constructor as Lazy's default constructor can only call public constructors of the type passed in (which we can't have by definition of a Singleton).  But, because the lambda is defined inside our type, it has access to the private members so it's perfect. Note how the Lazy<T> makes it obvious what you're doing (lazy construction), instead of relying on an IL generation side-effect.  This way, it's more maintainable.  Lazy<T> has many other uses as well, obviously, but I really love how elegant and readable it makes the lazy Singleton.

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• XNA Notes 007

  - by George Clingerman

  Every week I keep wondering if there’s going to be enough activity in the community to keep doing these notes on a weekly basis and every week I’m reminded of just how awesome and active the XNA community is. There’s engines being made, tutorials being created, games being crafted. There’s information being shared, questions being answered and then there’s another whole community around the Xbox LIVE Indie Games themselves. It’s really incredibly to just watch all that’s going on and I’m glad I’m playing a small part in all of this. So here’s what I noticed happening in the XNA community last week. If there’s things I’m missing, always feel free to let me know. I love learning about new corners of the XNA community that I wasn’t aware of or just have been missing! XNA Developers: Uditha Bandara held an XNA Game Development Workshops at Singapore Universities http://uditha.wordpress.com/2011/02/18/xna-game-development-workshops-at-singapore-universities-event-update/ Binary Tweed gives his talks about Indie City and gives his opinion on the false promise of digital distribution http://www.develop-online.net/news/37053/OPINION-The-false-promise-of-digital-distribution Kris Steele posts his Trivia or Die postmortem http://www.krissteele.net/blogdetails.aspx?id=246 @MadNinjaSkills (James Johnston) posts his feelings on testing for XBLIG http://www.ezmuze.co.uk/101 Simon (@DDReaper) posts hints and tips for XNA developers to help get the size of their projects down http://twitter.com/#!/DDReaper/status/38279440924545024 http://xna-uk.net/blogs/darkgenesis/archive/2011/02/17/look-at-the-size-of-that-thing.aspx Michael B. McLaughlin proving why he should be an XNA MVP posts the list of commonly used value types in XNA games http://geekswithblogs.net/mikebmcl/archive/2011/02/17/list-of-commonly-used-value-types-in-xna-games.aspx http://twitter.com/#!/mikebmcl/status/38166541354811392 Paul Powell (@ITSligoPaul) posts about a common sprite batch as a game service http://itspaulsblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/xna-common-sprite-batch-as-game-service.html @SigilXNA (John Defenbaugh) posts his new level editor video for the sequel to Opac’s Journey http://twitter.com/SigilXNA/statuses/36548174373982209 http://twitter.com/#!/SigilXNA/status/36548174373982209 http://youtu.be/QHbmxB_2AW8 @jwatte updates kW Animation for XNA 4.0 http://www.enchantedage.com/xna-animation @DSebJ posts Blender to SunBurn http://twitter.com/#!/DSebJ/status/36564920224976896 http://dsebj.evolvingsoftware.com/?p=187 Ads and WP7 Games - @mechaghost shares his revenue data for his ad based games http://www.occasionalgamer.com/2011/02/09/ads-and-wp7-games/ Xbox LIVE Indie Games (XBLIG): Steven Hurdle posts day 100 of his quest to find a fantastic XBLIG purchase every day http://writingsofmassdeduction.com/2011/02/17/day-100-radiangames-ballistic/ Xbox 360 Indie Game Buying Guide - 12 games for $60 including several Xbox LIVE Indie games! (although if the XNA community was asked we could have recommended 60 games for $60...) http://www.indiegamemag.com/xbox360-indie-games-buying-guide/ The best selling Xbox LIVE Indie games of 2010 http://www.1up.com/news/xbox-live-most-popular-games I’d buy that for a dollar! - the California Literary Review points out a few gems on the XBLIG marketplace (and other places) where you can game on the cheap. http://calitreview.com/14125 Armless Octopus Episode 39 - The Indie Gem Octocast http://www.armlessoctopus.com/2011/02/17/armless-octocast-episode-39-the-indie-gem-octocast/ Ska Studios posts a plethora of updates http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/02/11/good-morning-gato-49/ http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/02/14/vampire-smile-valentines/ http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/02/16/the-dishwasher-vs-finds-a-home/ Kotaku posts about the Xbox LIVE Indie Game that makes you go Pew Pew Pew Pew Pew Pew http://kotaku.com/#!5760632/the-game-that-makes-you-go-pew-pew-pew-pew-pew-pew-pew GameMarx continues to be active and doing a ton for the XBLIG community reviews and Top 5 indie games of the week 2/4-2/10 http://www.gamemarx.com/video/the-show/22/ep-9-february-11-2010.aspx a new podcast Xbox Indie New Releases http://twitter.com/#!/gamemarx/status/36888849107910656 http://www.gamemarx.com/news/2011/02/13/a-new-podcast-xbox-indie-new-releases.aspx @MasterBlud uploads Indocalypse XBLIG Collections #2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzCZSv075mc&feature=youtu.be&a http://twitter.com/#!/MasterBlud/status/37100029697064960 Just Press Start interviews Michael Hicks from MichaelArts, 18 year old creator of Honor in Vengeance http://justpressstart.net/?p=465 Achievement Locked interviews Kris Steele of FunInfused Games http://xboxindies.wordpress.com/2011/02/11/interview-fun-infused-games/ XNA Game Development: XNA -UK launches their XAP test service to help the XNA community http://xna-uk.net/blogs/news/archive/2011/02/18/xna-uk-xap-test-service-now-live.aspx Transmute shows off a video of the standard character editor http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqH6gErG948&feature=youtu.be Microsoft Tech Student introduces their first tech student of the month.  Meet Daniel Van Tassel from the University of Utah and learn how he created an Xbox LIVE Indie Game using XNA Studio http://blogs.msdn.com/b/techstudent/archive/2010/12/22/introducing-our-first-tech-student-of-the-month-daniel-van-tassel.aspx XNA for Silverlight Developers Part 3 - Animation (transforms) http://www.silverlightshow.net/items/XNA-for-Silverlight-developers-Part-3-Animation-transforms.aspx XNA for Silverlight Developers Part 4 - Animation (frame based) http://www.silverlightshow.net/items/XNA-for-Silverlight-developers-Part-4-Animation-frame-based.aspx @suhinini tweets about an XNA Sprite Font generation tool http://twitter.com/#!/suhinini/status/36841370131890176 http://www.nubik.com/SpriteFont/ XNATouch 1.5 is out and in it’s words is faster, simpler, more reliable and has the XNA 4.0 API http://monogame.codeplex.com/releases/view/60815 IndieCity is hosting marketing workshops for Indie Developers (UK and US) http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/75197/457654.aspx#457654 New York Students - Learn XNA and Silverlight for Xbox 360 and Windows Phone 7 http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/72753/456964.aspx#456964 http://blogs.msdn.com/b/andrewparsons/archive/2011/01/13/learn-to-build-your-own-games-for-xbox-360-and-windows-phone-7.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/andrewparsons/archive/2011/01/13/build-a-game-in-48-hours-win-a-kinect-or-windows-phone-7.aspx Extra Credits: Videogame Music http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2019-Videogame-Music Steve Pavlina posts an article with useful information for all XNA/XBLIG developers http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2011/02/completion-vs-perfection/

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• Managing Database Clusters - A Whole Lot Simpler

  - by mat.keep(at)oracle.com

  Clustered computing brings with it many benefits: high performance, high availability, scalable infrastructure, etc.  But it also brings with it more complexity.Why ?  Well, by its very nature, there are more "moving parts" to monitor and manage (from physical, virtual and logical hosts) to fault detection and failover software to redundant networking components - the list goes on.  And a cluster that isn't effectively provisioned and managed will cause more downtime than the standalone systems it is designed to improve upon.  Not so great....When it comes to the database industry, analysts already estimate that 50% of a typical database's Total Cost of Ownership is attributable to staffing and downtime costs.  These costs will only increase if a database cluster is to hard to properly administer.Over the past 9 months, monitoring and management has been a major focus in the development of the MySQL Cluster database, and on Tuesday 12th January, the product team will be presenting the output of that development in a new webinar.Even if you can't make the date, it is still worth registering so you will receive automatic notification when the on-demand replay is availableIn the webinar, the team will cover:    * NDBINFO: released with MySQL Cluster 7.1, NDBINFO presents real-time status and usage statistics, providing developers and DBAs with a simple means of pro-actively monitoring and optimizing database performance and availability.    * MySQL Cluster Manager (MCM): available as part of the commercial MySQL Cluster Carrier Grade Edition, MCM simplifies the creation and management of MySQL Cluster by automating common management tasks, delivering higher administration productivity and enhancing cluster agility. Tasks that used to take 46 commands can be reduced to just one!    * MySQL Cluster Advisors & Graphs: part of the MySQL Enterprise Monitor and available in the commercial MySQL Cluster Carrier Grade Edition, the Enterprise Advisor includes automated best practice rules that alert on key performance and availability metrics from MySQL Cluster data nodes.You'll also learn how you can get started evaluating and using all of these tools to simplify MySQL Cluster management.This session will last round an hour and will include interactive Q&A throughout. You can learn more about MySQL Cluster Manager from this whitepaper and on-line demonstration.  You can also download the packages from eDelivery (just select "MySQL Database" as the product pack, select your platform, click "Go" and then scroll down to get the software).While managing clusters will never be easy, the webinar will show hou how it just got a whole lot simpler !

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• New MySQL Cluster 7.3 Previews: Foreign Keys, NoSQL Node.js API and Auto-Tuned Clusters

  - by Mat Keep

  At this weeks MySQL Connect conference, Oracle previewed an exciting new wave of developments for MySQL Cluster, further extending its simplicity and flexibility by expanding the range of use-cases, adding new NoSQL options, and automating configuration. What’s new: Development Release 1: MySQL Cluster 7.3 with Foreign Keys Early Access “Labs” Preview: MySQL Cluster NoSQL API for Node.js Early Access “Labs” Preview: MySQL Cluster GUI-Based Auto-Installer In this blog, I'll introduce you to the features being previewed. Review the blogs listed below for more detail on each of the specific features discussed. Save the date!: A live webinar is scheduled for Thursday 25th October at 0900 Pacific Time / 1600UTC where we will discuss each of these enhancements in more detail. Registration will be open soon and published to the MySQL webinars page MySQL Cluster 7.3: Development Release 1 The first MySQL Cluster 7.3 Development Milestone Release (DMR) previews Foreign Keys, bringing powerful new functionality to MySQL Cluster while eliminating development complexity. Foreign Key support has been one of the most requested enhancements to MySQL Cluster – enabling users to simplify their data models and application logic – while extending the range of use-cases for both custom projects requiring referential integrity and packaged applications, such as eCommerce, CRM, CMS, etc. Implementation The Foreign Key functionality is implemented directly within the MySQL Cluster data nodes, allowing any client API accessing the cluster to benefit from them – whether they are SQL or one of the NoSQL interfaces (Memcached, C++, Java, JPA, HTTP/REST or the new Node.js API - discussed later.) The core referential actions defined in the SQL:2003 standard are implemented: CASCADE RESTRICT NO ACTION SET NULL In addition, the MySQL Cluster implementation supports the online adding and dropping of Foreign Keys, ensuring the Cluster continues to serve both read and write requests during the operation.  This represents a further enhancement to MySQL Cluster's support for on0line schema changes, ie adding and dropping indexes, adding columns, etc.  Read this blog for a demonstration of using Foreign Keys with MySQL Cluster.  Getting Started with MySQL Cluster 7.3 DMR1: Users can download either the source or binary and evaluate the MySQL Cluster 7.3 DMR with Foreign Keys now! (Select the Development Release tab). MySQL Cluster NoSQL API for Node.js Node.js is hot! In a little over 3 years, it has become one of the most popular environments for developing next generation web, cloud, mobile and social applications. Bringing JavaScript from the browser to the server, the design goal of Node.js is to build new real-time applications supporting millions of client connections, serviced by a single CPU core. Making it simple to further extend the flexibility and power of Node.js to the database layer, we are previewing the Node.js Javascript API for MySQL Cluster as an Early Access release, available for download now from http://labs.mysql.com/. Select the following build: MySQL-Cluster-NoSQL-Connector-for-Node-js Alternatively, you can clone the project at the MySQL GitHub page.  Implemented as a module for the V8 engine, the new API provides Node.js with a native, asynchronous JavaScript interface that can be used to both query and receive results sets directly from MySQL Cluster, without transformations to SQL. Figure 1: MySQL Cluster NoSQL API for Node.js enables end-to-end JavaScript development Rather than just presenting a simple interface to the database, the Node.js module integrates the MySQL Cluster native API library directly within the web application itself, enabling developers to seamlessly couple their high performance, distributed applications with a high performance, distributed, persistence layer delivering 99.999% availability. The new Node.js API joins a rich array of NoSQL interfaces available for MySQL Cluster. Whichever API is chosen for an application, SQL and NoSQL can be used concurrently across the same data set, providing the ultimate in developer flexibility.  Get started with MySQL Cluster NoSQL API for Node.js tutorial MySQL Cluster GUI-Based Auto-Installer Compatible with both MySQL Cluster 7.2 and 7.3, the Auto-Installer makes it simple for DevOps teams to quickly configure and provision highly optimized MySQL Cluster deployments – whether on-premise or in the cloud. Implemented with a standard HTML GUI and Python-based web server back-end, the Auto-Installer intelligently configures MySQL Cluster based on application requirements and auto-discovered hardware resources Figure 2: Automated Tuning and Configuration of MySQL Cluster Developed by the same engineering team responsible for the MySQL Cluster database, the installer provides standardized configurations that make it simple, quick and easy to build stable and high performance clustered environments. The auto-installer is previewed as an Early Access release, available for download now from http://labs.mysql.com/, by selecting the MySQL-Cluster-Auto-Installer build. You can read more about getting started with the MySQL Cluster auto-installer here. Watch the YouTube video for a demonstration of using the MySQL Cluster auto-installer Getting Started with MySQL Cluster If you are new to MySQL Cluster, the Getting Started guide will walk you through installing an evaluation cluster on a singe host (these guides reflect MySQL Cluster 7.2, but apply equally well to 7.3 and the Early Access previews). Or use the new MySQL Cluster Auto-Installer! Download the Guide to Scaling Web Databases with MySQL Cluster (to learn more about its architecture, design and ideal use-cases). Post any questions to the MySQL Cluster forum where our Engineering team and the MySQL Cluster community will attempt to assist you. Post any bugs you find to the MySQL bug tracking system (select MySQL Cluster from the Category drop-down menu) And if you have any feedback, please post them to the Comments section here or in the blogs referenced in this article. Summary MySQL Cluster 7.2 is the GA, production-ready release of MySQL Cluster. The first Development Release of MySQL Cluster 7.3 and the Early Access previews give you the opportunity to preview and evaluate future developments in the MySQL Cluster database, and we are very excited to be able to share that with you. Let us know how you get along with MySQL Cluster 7.3, and other features that you want to see in future releases, by using the comments of this blog.

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• Desktop Fun: Merry Christmas Fonts

  - by Asian Angel

  Christmas will soon be here and there are lots of cards, invitations, gift tags, photos, and more to prepare beforehand. To help you get ready we have gathered together a great collection of fun holiday fonts to help turn those ordinary looking holiday items into extraordinary looking ones. Note: To manage the fonts on your Windows 7, Vista, & XP systems see our article here. Oldchristmas Download Holly Download Christmas Flakes *includes two font types Download Frosty Download Kingthings Christmas Download Candy Time Download BodieMF Holly Download Snowfall Download Snowflake Letters Download Hultog Snowdrift Download AlphaShapes Xmas Trees Download Christmas Tree Download PF Wreath Download Snowy Caps Download PF Snowman *includes three font types Note: Shown in all capital letters here. Download BJF Holly Bells Download Christbaumkugeln Download Xmas Lights Download XmasDings *includes 62 individual characters Note: This group represents A – Z in all capital letters. Note: This group represents A – Z in all lower case letters. Note: This group represents the numbers 0 – 9. Download WWFlakes *includes 62 individual characters Note: This group represents A – Z in all capital letters. Note: This group represents A – Z in all lower case letters. Note: This group represents the numbers 0 – 9. Download For Christmas Card creating fun and a great way to use your new fonts see our MS Word Christmas Card project series here. Design and Print Your Own Christmas Cards in MS Word, Part 1 Design and Print Your Own Christmas Cards in MS Word, Part 2: How to Print Want more great ways to customize your computer? Then be certain to look through our Desktop Fun section. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The How-To Geek Holiday Gift Guide (Geeky Stuff We Like) LCD? LED? Plasma? The How-To Geek Guide to HDTV Technology The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 8: Filters Improve Digital Photography by Calibrating Your Monitor Our Favorite Tech: What We’re Thankful For at How-To Geek The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 7: Design and Typography Happy Snow Bears Theme for Chrome and Iron [Holiday] Download Full Command and Conquer: Tiberian Sun Game for Free Scorched Cometary Planet Wallpaper Quick Fix: Add the RSS Button Back to the Firefox Awesome Bar Dropbox Desktop Client 1.0.0 RC for Windows, Linux, and Mac Released Hang in There Scrat! – Ice Age Wallpaper

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• Using linked servers, OPENROWSET and OPENQUERY

  - by BuckWoody

  SQL Server has a few mechanisms to reach out to another server (even another server type) and query data from within a Transact-SQL statement. Among them are a set of stored credentials and information (called a Linked Server), a statement that uses a linked server called called OPENQUERY, another called OPENROWSET, and one called OPENDATASOURCE. This post isn’t about those particular functions or statements – hit the links for more if you’re new to those topics. I’m actually more concerned about where I see these used than the particular method. In many cases, a Linked server isn’t another Relational Database Management System (RDMBS) like Oracle or DB2 (which is possible with a linked server), but another SQL Server. My concern is that linked servers are the new Data Transformation Services (DTS) from SQL Server 2000 – something that was designed for one purpose but which is being morphed into something much more. In the case of DTS, most of us turned that feature into a full-fledged job system. What was designed as a simple data import and export system has been pressed into service doing logic, routing and timing. And of course we all know how painful it was to move off of a complex DTS system onto SQL Server Integration Services. In the case of linked servers, what should be used as a method of running a simple query or two on another server where you have occasional connection or need a quick import of a small data set is morphing into a full federation strategy. In some cases I’ve seen a complex web of linked servers, and when credentials, names or anything else changes there are huge problems. Now don’t get me wrong – linked servers and other forms of distributing queries is a fantastic set of tools that we have to move data around. I’m just saying that when you start having lots of workarounds and when things get really complicated, you might want to step back a little and ask if there’s a better way. Are you able to tolerate some latency? Perhaps you’re able to use Service Broker. Would you like to be platform-independent on the data source? Perhaps a middle-tier might make more sense, abstracting the queries there and sending them to the proper server. Designed properly, I’ve seen these systems scale further and be more resilient than loading up on linked servers. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• An Open Letter from Lyle Ekdahl, Group Vice President and General Manager, Oracle's JD Edwards

  - by Brian Dayton

  From Lyle Ekdahl, Group Vice President and General Manager, Oracle's JD Edwards As you may have heard, we recently announced some changes to the way Oracle will offer licensing of technology products with JD Edwards EnterpriseOne. Specifically, we have withdrawn from new sales the product known as JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Technology Foundation ("Blue Stack"). Our motivation for this change is simply to streamline licensing for our customers. Going forward, customers will license Oracle products from Oracle and IBM products from IBM. Customers who are currently licensed for Technology Foundation will continue to receive support--unchanged--through September 30, 2016. This announcement affects how customers license these IBM products; it does not affect Oracle's certification roadmap for IBM products with JD Edwards EnterpriseOne. Customers who are currently running their JD Edwards EnterpriseOne infrastructure using IBM platform components can continue to do so regardless of whether they license these components via Technology Foundation or directly from IBM. New customers choosing to run JD Edwards EnterpriseOne on IBM technology should license JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Core Tools from Oracle while licensing Infrastructure and any licenses of IBM products from IBM. For more information about this announcement, customers should refer to My Oracle Support article 1232453.1 Questions included in the "Frequently Asked Questions" document on My Oracle Support: Is Oracle dropping support for IBM DB2 and IBM WebSphere with JD Edwards EnterpriseOne? No. This announcement affects how customers license these IBM products; it does not affect Oracle's certification roadmap for these products. The JD Edwards EnterpriseOne matrix of supported databases, web servers, and portals remains unchanged, including planned support for IBM DB2, IBM WebSphere Application Server, and IBM WebSphere Portal. Customers who are currently running their JD Edwards EnterpriseOne infrastructure using IBM platform components can continue to do so regardless of whether they license these components via Technology Foundation or directly from IBM. As always, the timing and versions of such third-party certifications remain at Oracle's discretion. Does this announcement mean that Oracle is withdrawing support for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne on the IBM i platform? Absolutely not. JD Edwards EnterpriseOne support on the IBM i platform remains unchanged. This announcement simply states that customers will acquire Oracle products from Oracle and IBM products from IBM. In fact, as evidenced by the recent "IBM i Solution Edition for JD Edwards" offering, IBM and the JD Edwards product teams continue to innovate and offer attractive, cost-competitive solutions to the ERP marketplace. For more information about this offering see: http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/i/advantages/oracle/. I hope this clarifies any concerns. Let me know if you have any additional questions or concerns. -Lyle

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• Toorcon14

  - by danx

  Toorcon 2012 Information Security Conference San Diego, CA, http://www.toorcon.org/ Dan Anderson, October 2012 It's almost Halloween, and we all know what that means—yes, of course, it's time for another Toorcon Conference! Toorcon is an annual conference for people interested in computer security. This includes the whole range of hackers, computer hobbyists, professionals, security consultants, press, law enforcement, prosecutors, FBI, etc. We're at Toorcon 14—see earlier blogs for some of the previous Toorcon's I've attended (back to 2003). This year's "con" was held at the Westin on Broadway in downtown San Diego, California. The following are not necessarily my views—I'm just the messenger—although I could have misquoted or misparaphrased the speakers. Also, I only reviewed some of the talks, below, which I attended and interested me. MalAndroid—the Crux of Android Infections, Aditya K. Sood Programming Weird Machines with ELF Metadata, Rebecca "bx" Shapiro Privacy at the Handset: New FCC Rules?, Valkyrie Hacking Measured Boot and UEFI, Dan Griffin You Can't Buy Security: Building the Open Source InfoSec Program, Boris Sverdlik What Journalists Want: The Investigative Reporters' Perspective on Hacking, Dave Maas & Jason Leopold Accessibility and Security, Anna Shubina Stop Patching, for Stronger PCI Compliance, Adam Brand McAfee Secure & Trustmarks — a Hacker's Best Friend, Jay James & Shane MacDougall MalAndroid—the Crux of Android Infections Aditya K. Sood, IOActive, Michigan State PhD candidate Aditya talked about Android smartphone malware. There's a lot of old Android software out there—over 50% Gingerbread (2.3.x)—and most have unpatched vulnerabilities. Of 9 Android vulnerabilities, 8 have known exploits (such as the old Gingerbread Global Object Table exploit). Android protection includes sandboxing, security scanner, app permissions, and screened Android app market. The Android permission checker has fine-grain resource control, policy enforcement. Android static analysis also includes a static analysis app checker (bouncer), and a vulnerablity checker. What security problems does Android have? User-centric security, which depends on the user to grant permission and make smart decisions. But users don't care or think about malware (the're not aware, not paranoid). All they want is functionality, extensibility, mobility Android had no "proper" encryption before Android 3.0 No built-in protection against social engineering and web tricks Alternative Android app markets are unsafe. Simply visiting some markets can infect Android Aditya classified Android Malware types as: Type A—Apps. These interact with the Android app framework. For example, a fake Netflix app. Or Android Gold Dream (game), which uploads user files stealthy manner to a remote location. Type K—Kernel. Exploits underlying Linux libraries or kernel Type H—Hybrid. These use multiple layers (app framework, libraries, kernel). These are most commonly used by Android botnets, which are popular with Chinese botnet authors What are the threats from Android malware? These incude leak info (contacts), banking fraud, corporate network attacks, malware advertising, malware "Hackivism" (the promotion of social causes. For example, promiting specific leaders of the Tunisian or Iranian revolutions. Android malware is frequently "masquerated". That is, repackaged inside a legit app with malware. To avoid detection, the hidden malware is not unwrapped until runtime. The malware payload can be hidden in, for example, PNG files. Less common are Android bootkits—there's not many around. What they do is hijack the Android init framework—alteering system programs and daemons, then deletes itself. For example, the DKF Bootkit (China). Android App Problems: no code signing! all self-signed native code execution permission sandbox — all or none alternate market places no robust Android malware detection at network level delayed patch process Programming Weird Machines with ELF Metadata Rebecca "bx" Shapiro, Dartmouth College, NH https://github.com/bx/elf-bf-tools @bxsays on twitter Definitions. "ELF" is an executable file format used in linking and loading executables (on UNIX/Linux-class machines). "Weird machine" uses undocumented computation sources (I think of them as unintended virtual machines). Some examples of "weird machines" are those that: return to weird location, does SQL injection, corrupts the heap. Bx then talked about using ELF metadata as (an uintended) "weird machine". Some ELF background: A compiler takes source code and generates a ELF object file (hello.o). A static linker makes an ELF executable from the object file. A runtime linker and loader takes ELF executable and loads and relocates it in memory. The ELF file has symbols to relocate functions and variables. ELF has two relocation tables—one at link time and another one at loading time: .rela.dyn (link time) and .dynsym (dynamic table). GOT: Global Offset Table of addresses for dynamically-linked functions. PLT: Procedure Linkage Tables—works with GOT. The memory layout of a process (not the ELF file) is, in order: program (+ heap), dynamic libraries, libc, ld.so, stack (which includes the dynamic table loaded into memory) For ELF, the "weird machine" is found and exploited in the loader. ELF can be crafted for executing viruses, by tricking runtime into executing interpreted "code" in the ELF symbol table. One can inject parasitic "code" without modifying the actual ELF code portions. Think of the ELF symbol table as an "assembly language" interpreter. It has these elements: instructions: Add, move, jump if not 0 (jnz) Think of symbol table entries as "registers" symbol table value is "contents" immediate values are constants direct values are addresses (e.g., 0xdeadbeef) move instruction: is a relocation table entry add instruction: relocation table "addend" entry jnz instruction: takes multiple relocation table entries The ELF weird machine exploits the loader by relocating relocation table entries. The loader will go on forever until told to stop. It stores state on stack at "end" and uses IFUNC table entries (containing function pointer address). The ELF weird machine, called "Brainfu*k" (BF) has: 8 instructions: pointer inc, dec, inc indirect, dec indirect, jump forward, jump backward, print. Three registers - 3 registers Bx showed example BF source code that implemented a Turing machine printing "hello, world". More interesting was the next demo, where bx modified ping. Ping runs suid as root, but quickly drops privilege. BF modified the loader to disable the library function call dropping privilege, so it remained as root. Then BF modified the ping -t argument to execute the -t filename as root. It's best to show what this modified ping does with an example: $ whoami bx $ ping localhost -t backdoor.sh # executes backdoor $ whoami root $ The modified code increased from 285948 bytes to 290209 bytes. A BF tool compiles "executable" by modifying the symbol table in an existing ELF executable. The tool modifies .dynsym and .rela.dyn table, but not code or data. Privacy at the Handset: New FCC Rules? "Valkyrie" (Christie Dudley, Santa Clara Law JD candidate) Valkyrie talked about mobile handset privacy. Some background: Senator Franken (also a comedian) became alarmed about CarrierIQ, where the carriers track their customers. Franken asked the FCC to find out what obligations carriers think they have to protect privacy. The carriers' response was that they are doing just fine with self-regulation—no worries! Carriers need to collect data, such as missed calls, to maintain network quality. But carriers also sell data for marketing. Verizon sells customer data and enables this with a narrow privacy policy (only 1 month to opt out, with difficulties). The data sold is not individually identifiable and is aggregated. But Verizon recommends, as an aggregation workaround to "recollate" data to other databases to identify customers indirectly. The FCC has regulated telephone privacy since 1934 and mobile network privacy since 2007. Also, the carriers say mobile phone privacy is a FTC responsibility (not FCC). FTC is trying to improve mobile app privacy, but FTC has no authority over carrier / customer relationships. As a side note, Apple iPhones are unique as carriers have extra control over iPhones they don't have with other smartphones. As a result iPhones may be more regulated. Who are the consumer advocates? Everyone knows EFF, but EPIC (Electrnic Privacy Info Center), although more obsecure, is more relevant. What to do? Carriers must be accountable. Opt-in and opt-out at any time. Carriers need incentive to grant users control for those who want it, by holding them liable and responsible for breeches on their clock. Location information should be added current CPNI privacy protection, and require "Pen/trap" judicial order to obtain (and would still be a lower standard than 4th Amendment). Politics are on a pro-privacy swing now, with many senators and the Whitehouse. There will probably be new regulation soon, and enforcement will be a problem, but consumers will still have some benefit. Hacking Measured Boot and UEFI Dan Griffin, JWSecure, Inc., Seattle, @JWSdan Dan talked about hacking measured UEFI boot. First some terms: UEFI is a boot technology that is replacing BIOS (has whitelisting and blacklisting). UEFI protects devices against rootkits. TPM - hardware security device to store hashs and hardware-protected keys "secure boot" can control at firmware level what boot images can boot "measured boot" OS feature that tracks hashes (from BIOS, boot loader, krnel, early drivers). "remote attestation" allows remote validation and control based on policy on a remote attestation server. Microsoft pushing TPM (Windows 8 required), but Google is not. Intel TianoCore is the only open source for UEFI. Dan has Measured Boot Tool at http://mbt.codeplex.com/ with a demo where you can also view TPM data. TPM support already on enterprise-class machines. UEFI Weaknesses. UEFI toolkits are evolving rapidly, but UEFI has weaknesses: assume user is an ally trust TPM implicitly, and attached to computer hibernate file is unprotected (disk encryption protects against this) protection migrating from hardware to firmware delays in patching and whitelist updates will UEFI really be adopted by the mainstream (smartphone hardware support, bank support, apathetic consumer support) You Can't Buy Security: Building the Open Source InfoSec Program Boris Sverdlik, ISDPodcast.com co-host Boris talked about problems typical with current security audits. "IT Security" is an oxymoron—IT exists to enable buiness, uptime, utilization, reporting, but don't care about security—IT has conflict of interest. There's no Magic Bullet ("blinky box"), no one-size-fits-all solution (e.g., Intrusion Detection Systems (IDSs)). Regulations don't make you secure. The cloud is not secure (because of shared data and admin access). Defense and pen testing is not sexy. Auditors are not solution (security not a checklist)—what's needed is experience and adaptability—need soft skills. Step 1: First thing is to Google and learn the company end-to-end before you start. Get to know the management team (not IT team), meet as many people as you can. Don't use arbitrary values such as CISSP scores. Quantitive risk assessment is a myth (e.g. AV*EF-SLE). Learn different Business Units, legal/regulatory obligations, learn the business and where the money is made, verify company is protected from script kiddies (easy), learn sensitive information (IP, internal use only), and start with low-hanging fruit (customer service reps and social engineering). Step 2: Policies. Keep policies short and relevant. Generic SANS "security" boilerplate policies don't make sense and are not followed. Focus on acceptable use, data usage, communications, physical security. Step 3: Implementation: keep it simple stupid. Open source, although useful, is not free (implementation cost). Access controls with authentication & authorization for local and remote access. MS Windows has it, otherwise use OpenLDAP, OpenIAM, etc. Application security Everyone tries to reinvent the wheel—use existing static analysis tools. Review high-risk apps and major revisions. Don't run different risk level apps on same system. Assume host/client compromised and use app-level security control. Network security VLAN != segregated because there's too many workarounds. Use explicit firwall rules, active and passive network monitoring (snort is free), disallow end user access to production environment, have a proxy instead of direct Internet access. Also, SSL certificates are not good two-factor auth and SSL does not mean "safe." Operational Controls Have change, patch, asset, & vulnerability management (OSSI is free). For change management, always review code before pushing to production For logging, have centralized security logging for business-critical systems, separate security logging from administrative/IT logging, and lock down log (as it has everything). Monitor with OSSIM (open source). Use intrusion detection, but not just to fulfill a checkbox: build rules from a whitelist perspective (snort). OSSEC has 95% of what you need. Vulnerability management is a QA function when done right: OpenVas and Seccubus are free. Security awareness The reality is users will always click everything. Build real awareness, not compliance driven checkbox, and have it integrated into the culture. Pen test by crowd sourcing—test with logging COSSP http://www.cossp.org/ - Comprehensive Open Source Security Project What Journalists Want: The Investigative Reporters' Perspective on Hacking Dave Maas, San Diego CityBeat Jason Leopold, Truthout.org The difference between hackers and investigative journalists: For hackers, the motivation varies, but method is same, technological specialties. For investigative journalists, it's about one thing—The Story, and they need broad info-gathering skills. J-School in 60 Seconds: Generic formula: Person or issue of pubic interest, new info, or angle. Generic criteria: proximity, prominence, timeliness, human interest, oddity, or consequence. Media awareness of hackers and trends: journalists becoming extremely aware of hackers with congressional debates (privacy, data breaches), demand for data-mining Journalists, use of coding and web development for Journalists, and Journalists busted for hacking (Murdock). Info gathering by investigative journalists include Public records laws. Federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is good, but slow. California Public Records Act is a lot stronger. FOIA takes forever because of foot-dragging—it helps to be specific. Often need to sue (especially FBI). CPRA is faster, and requests can be vague. Dumps and leaks (a la Wikileaks) Journalists want: leads, protecting ourselves, our sources, and adapting tools for news gathering (Google hacking). Anonomity is important to whistleblowers. They want no digital footprint left behind (e.g., email, web log). They don't trust encryption, want to feel safe and secure. Whistleblower laws are very weak—there's no upside for whistleblowers—they have to be very passionate to do it. Accessibility and Security or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Halting Problem Anna Shubina, Dartmouth College Anna talked about how accessibility and security are related. Accessibility of digital content (not real world accessibility). mostly refers to blind users and screenreaders, for our purpose. Accessibility is about parsing documents, as are many security issues. "Rich" executable content causes accessibility to fail, and often causes security to fail. For example MS Word has executable format—it's not a document exchange format—more dangerous than PDF or HTML. Accessibility is often the first and maybe only sanity check with parsing. They have no choice because someone may want to read what you write. Google, for example, is very particular about web browser you use and are bad at supporting other browsers. Uses JavaScript instead of links, often requiring mouseover to display content. PDF is a security nightmare. Executible format, embedded flash, JavaScript, etc. 15 million lines of code. Google Chrome doesn't handle PDF correctly, causing several security bugs. PDF has an accessibility checker and PDF tagging, to help with accessibility. But no PDF checker checks for incorrect tags, untagged content, or validates lists or tables. None check executable content at all. The "Halting Problem" is: can one decide whether a program will ever stop? The answer, in general, is no (Rice's theorem). The same holds true for accessibility checkers. Language-theoretic Security says complicated data formats are hard to parse and cannot be solved due to the Halting Problem. W3C Web Accessibility Guidelines: "Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust" Not much help though, except for "Robust", but here's some gems: * all information should be parsable (paraphrasing) * if not parsable, cannot be converted to alternate formats * maximize compatibility in new document formats Executible webpages are bad for security and accessibility. They say it's for a better web experience. But is it necessary to stuff web pages with JavaScript for a better experience? A good example is The Drudge Report—it has hand-written HTML with no JavaScript, yet drives a lot of web traffic due to good content. A bad example is Google News—hidden scrollbars, guessing user input. Solutions: Accessibility and security problems come from same source Expose "better user experience" myth Keep your corner of Internet parsable Remember "Halting Problem"—recognize false solutions (checking and verifying tools) Stop Patching, for Stronger PCI Compliance Adam Brand, protiviti @adamrbrand, http://www.picfun.com/ Adam talked about PCI compliance for retail sales. Take an example: for PCI compliance, 50% of Brian's time (a IT guy), 960 hours/year was spent patching POSs in 850 restaurants. Often applying some patches make no sense (like fixing a browser vulnerability on a server). "Scanner worship" is overuse of vulnerability scanners—it gives a warm and fuzzy and it's simple (red or green results—fix reds). Scanners give a false sense of security. In reality, breeches from missing patches are uncommon—more common problems are: default passwords, cleartext authentication, misconfiguration (firewall ports open). Patching Myths: Myth 1: install within 30 days of patch release (but PCI §6.1 allows a "risk-based approach" instead). Myth 2: vendor decides what's critical (also PCI §6.1). But §6.2 requires user ranking of vulnerabilities instead. Myth 3: scan and rescan until it passes. But PCI §11.2.1b says this applies only to high-risk vulnerabilities. Adam says good recommendations come from NIST 800-40. Instead use sane patching and focus on what's really important. From NIST 800-40: Proactive: Use a proactive vulnerability management process: use change control, configuration management, monitor file integrity. Monitor: start with NVD and other vulnerability alerts, not scanner results. Evaluate: public-facing system? workstation? internal server? (risk rank) Decide:on action and timeline Test: pre-test patches (stability, functionality, rollback) for change control Install: notify, change control, tickets McAfee Secure & Trustmarks — a Hacker's Best Friend Jay James, Shane MacDougall, Tactical Intelligence Inc., Canada "McAfee Secure Trustmark" is a website seal marketed by McAfee. A website gets this badge if they pass their remote scanning. The problem is a removal of trustmarks act as flags that you're vulnerable. Easy to view status change by viewing McAfee list on website or on Google. "Secure TrustGuard" is similar to McAfee. Jay and Shane wrote Perl scripts to gather sites from McAfee and search engines. If their certification image changes to a 1x1 pixel image, then they are longer certified. Their scripts take deltas of scans to see what changed daily. The bottom line is change in TrustGuard status is a flag for hackers to attack your site. Entire idea of seals is silly—you're raising a flag saying if you're vulnerable.

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• ASR / SNMP on Exadata

  - by rene.kundersma

  Recently I worked with ASR on Exadata for multiple customers. ASR is a great functionality that enables your 'systems' to alert Oracle when hardware failures occur. Sun hardware is using ASM for sometime and since 2009/2010 this is also available for Exadata. My goal is not to re-write the documentation so for general information I like to refer to this link. So, where is this note about ? Well, it is about two things I experienced around setting up ASR. I like to provide my experience so others can be successful with ASR fast as well. (It is however expected that things will be updated in the latest documentation.) First, imagine yourself configuring SNMP traps to be sent to ASR. In this situation be sure to not erase any existing SNMP Subscribers settings for example the subscription to Enterprise Manager Grid Control or whatever you already subscribed for. So, when you have documentation stating to execute "cellcli -e alter cell snmpSubscriber=(host=, port=)" be sure to add existing snmpSubscribers when they exist. The syntax allows this: snmpSubscriber= ((host=host [,port=port] [,community=community][,type=ASR]) [,(host=host[,port=port][,community=community][,type=ASR])...) Second, when configuring SnmpSubscribers using DCLI you have to work with a slash to escape the brackets. Be sure to verify your SNMP settings after setting them because you might end up with a bracket in the 'asrs.state' file stating 'public\' in stead of 'public'. Having the extra slash after the word 'public' of course doesn't help when sending SNMP-traps: dcli -g dbs_group -l root -n "/opt/oracle.cellos/compmon/exadata_mon_hw_asr.pl -validate_snmp_subscriber -type asr" cn38: Sending test trap to destination - 173.25.100.43:162 cn38: (1). count - 50 Failed to run "/usr/bin/snmptrap -v 2c -c public\ -M "+/opt/oracle.cellos/compmon/" -m SUN-HW-TRAP-MIB 173.25.100.43:162 "" SUN-HW- TRAP-MIB::sunHwTrapTestTrap sunHwTrapSystemIdentifier s " Sun Oracle Database Machine secret" sunHwTrapChassisId s "secret" sunHwTrapProductName s "SUN FIRE X4170 SERVER" sunHwTrapTestMessage s "This is a test trap. Exadata Compute Server: cn38.oracle.com "" cn38: getaddrinfo: +/opt/oracle.cellos/compmon/ Name or service not known cn38: snmptrap: Unknown host (+/opt/oracle.cellos/compmon/) All together ASR is a great addition to Exadata that I highly recommend. Some excellent documentation is written on the implementation details and available on MyOracleSupport. See "Oracle Database Machine Monitoring (Doc ID 1110675.1)" Rene Kundersma Technical Architect Oracle Technology Services

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• ASP.NET MVC 3: Razor’s @: and <text> syntax

  - by ScottGu

  This is another in a series of posts I’m doing that cover some of the new ASP.NET MVC 3 features: New @model keyword in Razor (Oct 19th) Layouts with Razor (Oct 22nd) Server-Side Comments with Razor (Nov 12th) Razor’s @: and <text> syntax (today) In today’s post I’m going to discuss two useful syntactical features of the new Razor view-engine – the @: and <text> syntax support. Fluid Coding with Razor ASP.NET MVC 3 ships with a new view-engine option called “Razor” (in addition to the existing .aspx view engine).  You can learn more about Razor, why we are introducing it, and the syntax it supports from my Introducing Razor blog post.  Razor minimizes the number of characters and keystrokes required when writing a view template, and enables a fast, fluid coding workflow. Unlike most template syntaxes, you do not need to interrupt your coding to explicitly denote the start and end of server blocks within your HTML. The Razor parser is smart enough to infer this from your code. This enables a compact and expressive syntax which is clean, fast and fun to type. For example, the Razor snippet below can be used to iterate a list of products: When run, it generates output like:   One of the techniques that Razor uses to implicitly identify when a code block ends is to look for tag/element content to denote the beginning of a content region.  For example, in the code snippet above Razor automatically treated the inner <li></li> block within our foreach loop as an HTML content block because it saw the opening <li> tag sequence and knew that it couldn’t be valid C#.  This particular technique – using tags to identify content blocks within code – is one of the key ingredients that makes Razor so clean and productive with scenarios involving HTML creation. Using @: to explicitly indicate the start of content Not all content container blocks start with a tag element tag, though, and there are scenarios where the Razor parser can’t implicitly detect a content block. Razor addresses this by enabling you to explicitly indicate the beginning of a line of content by using the @: character sequence within a code block.  The @: sequence indicates that the line of content that follows should be treated as a content block: As a more practical example, the below snippet demonstrates how we could output a “(Out of Stock!)” message next to our product name if the product is out of stock: Because I am not wrapping the (Out of Stock!) message in an HTML tag element, Razor can’t implicitly determine that the content within the @if block is the start of a content block.  We are using the @: character sequence to explicitly indicate that this line within our code block should be treated as content. Using Code Nuggets within @: content blocks In addition to outputting static content, you can also have code nuggets embedded within a content block that is initiated using a @: character sequence.  For example, we have two @: sequences in the code snippet below: Notice how within the second @: sequence we are emitting the number of units left within the content block (e.g. - “(Only 3 left!”). We are doing this by embedding a @p.UnitsInStock code nugget within the line of content. Multiple Lines of Content Razor makes it easy to have multiple lines of content wrapped in an HTML element.  For example, below the inner content of our @if container is wrapped in an HTML <p> element – which will cause Razor to treat it as content: For scenarios where the multiple lines of content are not wrapped by an outer HTML element, you can use multiple @: sequences: Alternatively, Razor also allows you to use a <text> element to explicitly identify content: The <text> tag is an element that is treated specially by Razor. It causes Razor to interpret the inner contents of the <text> block as content, and to not render the containing <text> tag element (meaning only the inner contents of the <text> element will be rendered – the tag itself will not).  This makes it convenient when you want to render multi-line content blocks that are not wrapped by an HTML element.  The <text> element can also optionally be used to denote single-lines of content, if you prefer it to the more concise @: sequence: The above code will render the same output as the @: version we looked at earlier.  Razor will automatically omit the <text> wrapping element from the output and just render the content within it.  Summary Razor enables a clean and concise templating syntax that enables a very fluid coding workflow.  Razor’s smart detection of <tag> elements to identify the beginning of content regions is one of the reasons that the Razor approach works so well with HTML generation scenarios, and it enables you to avoid having to explicitly mark the beginning/ending of content regions in about 95% of if/else and foreach scenarios. Razor’s @: and <text> syntax can then be used for scenarios where you want to avoid using an HTML element within a code container block, and need to more explicitly denote a content region. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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• Imperative Programming v/s Declarative Programming v/s Functional Programming

  - by kaleidoscope

  Imperative Programming :: Imperative programming is a programming paradigm that describes computation in terms of statements that change a program state. In much the same way as the imperative mood in natural languages expresses commands to take action, imperative programs define sequences of commands for the computer to perform. The focus is on what steps the computer should take rather than what the computer will do (ex. C, C++, Java). Declarative Programming :: Declarative programming is a programming paradigm that expresses the logic of a computation without describing its control flow. It attempts to minimize or eliminate side effects by describing what the program should accomplish, rather than describing how to go about accomplishing it. The focus is on what the computer should do rather than how it should do it (ex. SQL). A  C# example of declarative v/s. imperative programming is LINQ. With imperative programming, you tell the compiler what you want to happen, step by step. For example, let's start with this collection, and choose the odd numbers: List<int> collection = new List<int> { 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 }; With imperative programming, we'd step through this, and decide what we want: List<int> results = new List<int>(); foreach(var num in collection) {     if (num % 2 != 0)           results.Add(num); } Here’s what we are doing: *Create a result collection *Step through each number in the collection *Check the number, if it's odd, add it to the results With declarative programming, on the other hand, we write the code that describes what you want, but not necessarily how to get it var results = collection.Where( num => num % 2 != 0); Here, we're saying "Give us everything where it's odd", not "Step through the collection. Check this item, if it's odd, add it to a result collection." Functional Programming :: Functional programming is a programming paradigm that treats computation as the evaluation of mathematical functions and avoids state and mutable data. It emphasizes the application of functions.Functional programming has its roots in the lambda calculus. It is a subset of declarative languages that has heavy focus on recursion. Functional programming can be a mind-bender, which is one reason why Lisp, Scheme, and Haskell have never really surpassed C, C++, Java and COBOL in commercial popularity. But there are benefits to the functional way. For one, if you can get the logic correct, functional programming requires orders of magnitude less code than imperative programming. That means fewer points of failure, less code to test, and a more productive (and, many would say, happier) programming life. As systems get bigger, this has become more and more important. To know more : http://stackoverflow.com/questions/602444/what-is-functional-declarative-and-imperative-programming http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb669144.aspx http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperative_programming   Technorati Tags: Ranjit,Imperative Programming,Declarative programming,Functional Programming

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• Desktop Fun: Abstract Icon Packs

  - by Asian Angel

  Do you prefer a more unique, artistic, or alternative look for your desktop setup? Then you will definitely want to have a look through our Abstract Icon Packs collection. Just set your imagination loose and enjoy the wonderful desktops that these icon packs can inspire for you. Note: To customize the icon setup on your Windows 7 & Vista systems see our article here. Using Windows XP? We have you covered here. Sneak Preview For this week’s preview desktop we created an Alien Desert Planet theme using the Abstract Symbol Icons pack shown below. Note: The original, unmodified version of this wallpaper can be found here. Here is a closer look at the icons we used for our new theme… The Icon Packs Match-stick-play Icons *.ico format only Download Abstract Symbol Icons *.ico format only Download Allomantic Metals *.ico format only Download Mutated Snowflake Icon Set *.ico format only Download Shades of Geometry *.ico format only Download Starry Objects Icons *.ico format only Download New Sin – Abstract Human Icons *.ico, .png, and .psd format Note: While most of the icons in this pack look similar at first glance, there are differences when viewed at a larger size. Download Mysterious Icons *.ico format only Download Alien Icons *.ico format only Download Beads Icons *.ico format only Download Magic Flowers Icons *.ico format only Download Circle Shapes Icons *.ico format only Download geometric doc icons *.png format only Download alumina *.png format only Download Citiscape dockicons *.png format only Download Wanting more great icon sets to look through? Be certain to visit our Desktop Fun section for more icon goodness! Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Use the Avira Rescue CD to Clean Your Infected PC The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials Is Your Desktop Printer More Expensive Than Printing Services? 20 OS X Keyboard Shortcuts You Might Not Know HTG Explains: Which Linux File System Should You Choose? HTG Explains: Why Does Photo Paper Improve Print Quality? Add Falling Snow to Webpages with the Snowfall Extension for Opera [Browser Fun] Automatically Keep Up With the Latest Releases from Mozilla Labs in Firefox 4.0 A Look Back at 2010 Through Infographics Monitor the Weather with the Weather Forecast Extension for Opera Orbiting at the Edge of the Atmosphere Wallpaper Simon’s Cat Explores the Christmas Tree! [Video]

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• Q&amp;A: Can you develop for the Windows Azure Platform using Windows XP?

  - by Eric Nelson

  This question has come up several times recently as we take several hundred UK developers through 6 Weeks of Windows Azure training (sorry – we are full). Short answer: In the main, yes Longer answer: The question is sparked by the requirements as stated on the Windows Azure SDK download page. Namely: Supported Operating Systems: Windows 7; Windows Vista; Windows Vista 64-bit Editions Service Pack 1; Windows Vista Business; Windows Vista Business 64-bit edition; Windows Vista Enterprise; Windows Vista Enterprise 64-bit edition; Windows Vista Home Premium; Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit edition; Windows Vista Service Pack 1; Windows Vista Service Pack 2; Windows Vista Ultimate; Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit edition Notice there is no mention of Windows XP. However things are not quite that simple. The Windows Azure Platform consists of three released technologies Windows Azure SQL Azure Windows Azure platform AppFabric The Windows Azure SDK is only for one of the three technologies, Windows Azure. What about SQL Azure and AppFabric? Well it turns out that you can develop for both of these technologies just fine with Windows XP: SQL Azure development is really just SQL Server development with a few gotchas – and for local development you can simply use SQL Server 2008 R2 Express (other versions will also work). AppFabric also has no local simulation environment and the SDK will install fine on Windows XP (SDK download) Actually it is also possible to do Windows Azure development on Windows XP if you are willing to always work directly against the real Azure cloud running in Microsoft datacentres. However in practice this would be painful and time consuming, hence why the Windows Azure SDK installs a local simulation environment. Therefore if you want to develop for Windows Azure I would recommend you either upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7 or… you use a virtual machine running Windows 7. If this is a temporary requirement, then you could consider building a virtual machine using the Windows 7 Enterprise 90 day eval. Or you could download a pre-configured VHD – but I can’t quite find the link for a Windows 7 VHD. Pointers welcomed. Thanks.

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• Oracle SQL Developer is for Oracle Database

  - by thatjeffsmith

  What is Oracle SQL Developer? Well, according to this document on OTN… What is SQL Developer? Date: May 2014 Oracle SQL Developer is the Oracle Database IDE. A free graphical user interface, Oracle SQL Developer allows database users and administrators to do their database tasks in fewer clicks and keystrokes. A productivity tool, SQL Developer’s main objective is to help the end user save time and maximize the return on investment in the Oracle Database technology stack. Ok, sounds pretty straightforward. Where does the confusion lie then? Some People Use SQL Developer to Connect to 3rd Party Databases SQL Developer allows you to register 3rd party database JDBC drivers. The 3rd party being a company OTHER than Oracle that makes a database product. You know who they are (SAP, MSFT, IBM, etc.) Registering 3rd party JDBC drivers in SQL Developer But maybe you don’t understand why we support these types of connections? It’s for one driving reason. To Help You Migrate to Oracle Database Yes, you get a worksheet and a tree to query and browse those systems. But, the real meat and bones there are around our migration projects and our translation scratch editor. At the end of the day, it’s there so you can move your data from say Sybase ASE to Oracle Database. On a side note, the migration technology was previously available in a separate application, the Migration Workbench. The technology and the awesome people behind it were folded into SQL Developer. So when asked what SQL Developer is, I say it’s the Database IDE and the official 3rd party database migration to Oracle platform. So anyways, when you ask for better support for another 3rd party provider, we deliver that support based on that business driver. If another 3rd party database jdbc driver is introduced, it’s because we have a lot of customers migrating from that platform. We’re not adding it to make it easier for you to work with SQL Server on your Mac. But, if you find that useful – that is cool. It’s just not why we’ve got the support for SQL Server connections in SQL Developer.

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• Open Data, Government and Transparency

  - by Tori Wieldt

  A new track at TDC (The Developer's Conference in Sao Paulo, Brazil) is titled Open Data. It deals with open data, government and transparency. Saturday will be a "transparency hacker day" where developers are invited to create applications using open data from the Brazilian government.  Alexandre Gomes, co-lead of the track, says "I want to inspire developers to become "Civic hackers:" developers who create apps to make society better." It is a chance for developers to do well and do good. There are many opportunities for developers, including monitoring government expenditures and getting citizens involved via social networks. The open data movement is growing worldwide. One initiative, the Open Government Partnership, is working to make government data easier to find and access. Making this data easily available means that with the right applications, it will be easier for people to make decisions and suggestions about government policies based on detailed information. Last April, the Open Government Partnership held its annual meeting in Brasilia, the capitol of Brazil. It was a great success showcasing the innovative work being done in open data by governments, civil societies and individuals around the world. For example, Bulgaria now publishes daily data on budget spending for all public institutions. Alexandre Gomes Explains Open Data At TDC, the Open Data track will include a presentation of examples of successful open data projects, an introduction to the semantic web, how to handle big data sets, techniques of data visualization, and how to design APIs.The other track lead is Christian Moryah Miranda, a systems analyst for the Brazilian Government's Ministry of Planning. "The Brazilian government wholeheartedly supports this effort. In order to make our data available to the public, it forces us to be more consistent with our data across ministries, and that's a good step forward for us," he said. He explained the government knows they cannot achieve everything they would like without help from the public. "It is not the government versus the people, rather citizens are partners with the government, and together we can achieve great things!" Miranda exclaimed. Saturday at TDC will be a "transparency hacker day" where developers will be invited to create applications using open data from the Brazilian government. Attendees are invited to pitch their ideas, work in small groups, and present their project at the end of the conference. "For example," Gomes said, "the Brazilian government just released the salaries of all government employees and I can't wait to see what developers can do with that." Resources Open Government Partnership  U.S. Government Open Data ProjectBrazilian Government Open Data ProjectU.K. Government Open Data Project 2012 International Open Government Data Conference 

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• Adopting DBVCS

  - by Wes McClure

  Identify early adopters Pick a small project with a small(ish) team.  This can be a legacy application or a green-field application. Strive to find a team of early adopters that will be eager to try something new. Get the team on board! Research Research the tool(s) that you want to use.  Some tools provide all of the features you would need while some only provide a slice of the pie.  DBVCS requires the ability to manage a set of change scripts that update a database from one version to the next.  Ideally a tool can track database versions and automatically apply updates.  The change script generation process can be manual, but having diff tools available to automatically generate it can really reduce the overhead to adoption.  Finally, an automated tool to generate a script file per database object is an added bonus as your version control system can quickly identify what was changed in a commit (add/del/modify), just like with code changes. Don’t settle on just one tool, identify several.  Then work with the team to evaluate the tools.  Have the team do some tests of the following scenarios with each tool: Baseline an existing database: can the migration tool work with legacy databases?  Caution: most migration platforms do not support baselines or have poor support, especially the fad of fluent APIs. Add/drop tables Add/drop procedures/functions/views Alter tables (rename columns, add columns, remove columns) Massage data – migrations sometimes involve changing data types that cannot be implicitly casted and require you to decide how the data is explicitly cast to the new type.  This is a requirement for a migrations platform.  Think about a case where you might want to combine fields, or move a field from one table to another, you wouldn’t want to lose the data. Run the tool via the command line.  If you cannot automate the tool in Continuous Integration what is the point? Create a copy of a database on demand. Backup/restore databases locally. Let the team give feedback and decide together, what tool they would like to try out. My recommendation at this point would be to include TSqlMigrations and RoundHouse as SQL based migration platforms.  In general I would recommend staying away from the fluent platforms as they often lack baseline capabilities and add overhead to learn a new API when SQL is already a very well known DSL.  Code migrations often get messy with procedures/views/functions as these have to be created with SQL and aren’t cross platform anyways.  IMO stick to SQL based migrations. Reconciling Production If your project is a legacy application, you will need to reconcile the current state of production with your development databases.  Find changes in production and bring them down to development, even if they are old and need to be removed.  Once complete, produce a baseline of either dev or prod as they are now in sync.  Commit this to your VCS of choice. Add whatever schema changes tracking mechanism your tool requires to your development database.  This often requires adding a table to track the schema version of that database.  Your tool should support doing this for you.  You can add this table to production when you do your next release. Script out any changes currently in dev.  Remove production artifacts that you brought down during reconciliation.  Add change scripts for any outstanding changes in dev since the last production release.  Commit these to your repository.   Say No to Shared Dev DBs Simply put, you wouldn’t dream of sharing a code checkout, why would you share a development database?  If you have a shared dev database, back it up, distribute the backups and take the shared version offline (including the dev db server once all projects are using DB VCS).  Doing DB VCS with a shared database is bound to cause problems as people won’t be able to easily script out their own changes from those that others are working on.   First prod release Copy prod to your beta/testing environment.  Add the schema changes table (or mechanism) and do a test run of your changes.  If successful you can schedule this to be run on production.   Evaluation After your first release, evaluate the pain points of the process.  Try to find tools or modifications to existing tools to help fix them.  Don’t leave stones unturned, iteratively evolve your tools and practices to make the process as seamless as possible.  This is why I suggest open source alternatives.  Nothing is set in stone, a good example was adding transactional support to TSqlMigrations.  We ran into situations where an update would break a database, so I added a feature to do transactional updates and rollback on errors!  Another good example is generating change scripts.  We have been manually making these for months now.  I found an open source project called Open DB Diff and integrated this with TSqlMigrations.  These were things we just accepted at the time when we began adopting our tool set.  Once we became comfortable with the base functionality, it was time to start automating more of the process.  Just like anything else with development, never be afraid to try to find tools to make your job easier!   Enjoy -Wes

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• No sound after video card replaced (AMD Radeon HD 7770)

  - by Sean

  Issue: no sound System: Dual boot Windows 7 (sda) Ubuntu 12.04 (sdb) 2 harddrives Dell XPS 730 Video card: AMD Radeo HD 7770 Diamond Multimedia Sound card: Creative Labs SB X-Fi Additional info: My sound used to work. Then, my old video card (NVIDIA geforce 280) died. I bought and installed a new video card: Radeon HD 7770. After this, my sound no longer worked in ubuntu (Win7 audio still works). Everything else in ubuntu, such as video, works fine. I suspect it has something to do with the fact that the Radeon card includes sound capability. Problem Details: If I click on System Settings - Sound, the panel freezes and stops responding indefinitely. The sound volume icon at the top of the screen (by the clock) shows 3 dashes beside it "---", and an empty drop-down box shows if I click on it. (Possibly related to 1.) When I reboot my machine, I get the message: "gnome settings daemon not responding". I have to force the reboot. I reinstalled ubunbu (perserving my home directory) and the problem persists. Diagnostics info: Following procedure outlined here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SoundTroubleshooting The following is a list of terminal commands, and their output: $ aplay -l List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices There is no listing beyond that, and the command freezes until I hit control-c $ lspci -v | grep -A7 -i "audio" 00:0f.1 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation MCP55 High Definition Audio (rev a2) Subsystem: Dell Device 0224 Flags: bus master, 66MHz, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 23 Memory at dfff0000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K] Capabilities: <access denied> Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel -- 01:00.1 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI Device aab0 Subsystem: Diamond Multimedia Systems Device aab0 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 43 Memory at dfefc000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K] Capabilities: <access denied> Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel -- 03:0a.0 Audio device: Creative Labs SB X-Fi Subsystem: Creative Labs Device 6002 Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 18 Memory at dbff4000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K] Memory at dbc00000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=2M] Memory at d4000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64M] I/O ports at 8c00 [size=32] Capabilities: <access denied> Notice the Diamond Multimedia Systems Device - that seems to be my video card sound. My video card is Diamond multimedia. Also there's the weird NVIDIA device in there. That must either be a remnant of my now removed NVIDIA graphics card, or else some kind of on-board thing. Not sure which. $ killall pulseaudio This allows me to open system settings - sound. But the "Test Sound" button makes no sound And the output volume + mute controls are greyed / disabled at 0 volume. It also allows me to click on the sound control in the "task bar" (beside the clock), and a volume slider drops down, but it is disabled / greyed at 0 volume. $ find /lib/modules/uname -r | grep snd /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-88pm860x.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-tlv320aic3x.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-wm8900.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-wm8978.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-tlv320dac33.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-wm9090.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-sta32x.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-max98088.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-max9850.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-rt5631.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-wm8903.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-wm8580.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-wm8523.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-max9877.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-ads117x.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-wm8955.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-wm8804.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-sgtl5000.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-wm8750.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-wm2000.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-tlv320aic32x4.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-ak4642.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-ad193x.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-wm8753.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-ak4535.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-wm8985.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-wm8350.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-dfbmcs320.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-cs42l51.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-tlv320aic26.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-wm8737.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-uda1380.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-wm8776.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-wm8995.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-tpa6130a2.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-wm8727.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-wm5100.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-wm8991.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-wm8510.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-jz4740-codec.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-wm8400.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-lm4857.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-wm8960.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-alc5623.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-cs4270.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-tlv320aic23.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-wm8993.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-wm8961.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-wm8940.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-uda134x.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-ad1836.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-wm8994.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-wm8782.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-cs4271.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-wm8974.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-wm8983.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-wm8962.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-ak4641.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-wm-hubs.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-wm8971.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-wm8996.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-wl1273.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-adav80x.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-spdif.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-pcm3008.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-cx20442.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-ak4671.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-wm8711.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-ad73311.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-max98095.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-wm9081.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-wm8741.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-wm1250-ev1.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-wm8988.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-adau1373.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-wm8731.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-l3.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-ssm2602.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-da7210.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-ak4104.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-wm8904.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-wm8728.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-wm8770.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/codecs/snd-soc-wm8990.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/soc/snd-soc-core.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/synth/emux/snd-emux-synth.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/synth/snd-util-mem.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/core/snd-hrtimer.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/core/snd-hwdep.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/core/snd-pcm.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/core/snd-rawmidi.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/core/oss/snd-mixer-oss.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/core/snd-page-alloc.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/core/seq/snd-seq-midi.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/core/seq/snd-seq-dummy.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/core/seq/snd-seq-virmidi.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/core/seq/snd-seq-device.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/core/seq/snd-seq-midi-event.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/core/seq/snd-seq.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/core/seq/snd-seq-midi-emul.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/core/snd.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/core/snd-timer.ko 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/lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/firewire/snd-isight.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/i2c/snd-tea6330t.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/i2c/other/snd-tea575x-tuner.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/i2c/other/snd-ak4113.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/i2c/other/snd-pt2258.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/i2c/other/snd-ak4117.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/i2c/other/snd-ak4xxx-adda.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/i2c/other/snd-ak4114.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/i2c/snd-cs8427.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/i2c/snd-i2c.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/emu10k1/snd-emu10k1-synth.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/emu10k1/snd-emu10k1.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/emu10k1/snd-emu10k1x.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/korg1212/snd-korg1212.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/au88x0/snd-au8830.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/au88x0/snd-au8820.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/au88x0/snd-au8810.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/aw2/snd-aw2.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/snd-sis7019.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/snd-ens1371.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/vx222/snd-vx222.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/snd-via82xx.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/snd-es1968.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/snd-atiixp-modem.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/snd-cs4281.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/snd-sonicvibes.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/snd-intel8x0.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/snd-maestro3.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/ac97/snd-ac97-codec.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/snd-es1938.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/snd-fm801.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/nm256/snd-nm256.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/hda/snd-hda-codec-realtek.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/hda/snd-hda-codec-cmedia.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/hda/snd-hda-codec-conexant.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/hda/snd-hda-intel.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/hda/snd-hda-codec-analog.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/hda/snd-hda-codec-hdmi.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/hda/snd-hda-codec-idt.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/hda/snd-hda-codec-ca0110.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/hda/snd-hda-codec-cirrus.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/hda/snd-hda-codec-via.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/hda/snd-hda-codec-ca0132.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/hda/snd-hda-codec-si3054.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/hda/snd-hda-codec.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/riptide/snd-riptide.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/snd-ens1370.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/snd-als4000.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/snd-intel8x0m.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/ca0106/snd-ca0106.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/snd-cs5530.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/cs5535audio/snd-cs5535audio.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/snd-rme32.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/ymfpci/snd-ymfpci.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/ctxfi/snd-ctxfi.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/snd-azt3328.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/cs46xx/snd-cs46xx.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/lx6464es/snd-lx6464es.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/ice1712/snd-ice1712.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/ice1712/snd-ice17xx-ak4xxx.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/ice1712/snd-ice1724.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/mixart/snd-mixart.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/ali5451/snd-ali5451.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/lola/snd-lola.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/oxygen/snd-oxygen-lib.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/oxygen/snd-oxygen.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/oxygen/snd-virtuoso.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/snd-via82xx-modem.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/pcxhr/snd-pcxhr.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/echoaudio/snd-indigo.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/echoaudio/snd-echo3g.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/echoaudio/snd-mona.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/echoaudio/snd-layla20.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/echoaudio/snd-gina20.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/echoaudio/snd-layla24.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/echoaudio/snd-mia.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/echoaudio/snd-indigoiox.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/echoaudio/snd-darla24.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/echoaudio/snd-indigoio.ko 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/lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/pci/snd-rme96.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/isa/opti9xx/snd-miro.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/isa/opti9xx/snd-opti92x-ad1848.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/isa/opti9xx/snd-opti93x.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/isa/opti9xx/snd-opti92x-cs4231.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/isa/gus/snd-gusextreme.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/isa/gus/snd-interwave.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/isa/gus/snd-gusmax.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/isa/gus/snd-interwave-stb.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/isa/gus/snd-gus-lib.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/isa/gus/snd-gusclassic.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/isa/sb/snd-emu8000-synth.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/isa/sb/snd-sb16-dsp.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/isa/sb/snd-sbawe.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/isa/sb/snd-sb8-dsp.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/isa/sb/snd-sb-common.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/isa/sb/snd-sb16.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/isa/sb/snd-sb16-csp.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/isa/sb/snd-sb8.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/isa/sb/snd-jazz16.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/isa/snd-es18xx.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/isa/snd-azt2320.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/isa/snd-cmi8330.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/isa/snd-als100.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/isa/msnd /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/isa/msnd/snd-msnd-classic.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/isa/msnd/snd-msnd-pinnacle.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/isa/msnd/snd-msnd-lib.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/isa/cs423x/snd-cs4231.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/isa/cs423x/snd-cs4236.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/isa/es1688/snd-es1688-lib.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/isa/es1688/snd-es1688.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/isa/snd-adlib.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/isa/ad1848/snd-ad1848.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/isa/ad1816a/snd-ad1816a.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/isa/galaxy/snd-azt1605.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/isa/galaxy/snd-azt2316.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/isa/wavefront/snd-wavefront.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/isa/wss/snd-wss-lib.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/isa/snd-sc6000.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/isa/snd-sscape.ko /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/kernel/sound/isa/snd-opl3sa2.ko

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• ActAs and OnBehalfOf support in WIF

  - by cibrax

  I discussed a time ago how WIF supported a new WS-Trust 1.4 element, “ActAs”, and how that element could be used for authentication delegation.  The thing is that there is another feature in WS-Trust 1.4 that also becomes handy for this kind of scenario, and I did not mention in that last post, “OnBehalfOf”. Shiung Yong wrote an excellent summary about the difference of these two new features in this forum thread. He basically commented the following, “An ActAs RST element indicates that the requestor wants a token that contains claims about two distinct entities: the requestor, and an external entity represented by the token in the ActAs element. An OnBehalfOf RST element indicates that the requestor wants a token that contains claims only about one entity: the external entity represented by the token in the OnBehalfOf element. In short, ActAs feature is typically used in scenarios that require composite delegation, where the final recipient of the issued token can inspect the entire delegation chain and see not just the client, but all intermediaries to perform access control, auditing and other related activities based on the whole identity delegation chain. The ActAs feature is commonly used in multi-tiered systems to authenticate and pass information about identities between the tiers without having to pass this information at the application/business logic layer. OnBehalfOf feature is used in scenarios where only the identity of the original client is important and is effectively the same as identity impersonation feature available in the Windows OS today. When the OnBehalfOf is used the final recipient of the issued token can only see claims about the original client, and the information about intermediaries is not preserved. One common pattern where OnBehalfOf feature is used is the proxy pattern where the client cannot access the STS directly but is instead communicating through a proxy gateway. The proxy gateway authenticates the caller and puts information about him into the OnBehalfOf element of the RST message that it then sends to the real STS for processing. The resulting token is going to contain only claims related to the client of the proxy, making the proxy completely transparent and not visible to the receiver of the issued token.” Going back to WIF, “ActAs” and “OnBehalfOf” are both supported as extensions methods in the WCF client channel. public static class ChannelFactoryOperations {   public static T CreateChannelActingAs<T>(this ChannelFactory<T> factory,     SecurityToken actAs);     public static T CreateChannelOnBehalfOf<T>(this ChannelFactory<T> factory,     SecurityToken onBehalfOf); } Both methods receive the security token with the identity of the original caller.

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• Unstructured Data - The future of Data Administration

  Some have claimed that there is a problem with the way data is currently managed using the relational paradigm do to the rise of unstructured data in modern business. PCMag.com defines unstructured data as data that does not reside in a fixed location. They further explain that unstructured data refers to data in a free text form that is not bound to any specific structure. With the rise of unstructured data in the form of emails, spread sheets, images and documents the critics have a right to argue that the relational paradigm is not as effective as the object oriented data paradigm in managing this type of data. The relational paradigm relies heavily on structure and relationships in and between items of data. This type of paradigm works best in a relation database management system like Microsoft SQL, MySQL, and Oracle because data is forced to conform to a structure in the form of tables and relations can be derived from the existence of one or more tables. These critics also claim that database administrators have not kept up with reality because their primary focus in regards to data administration deals with structured data and the relational paradigm. The relational paradigm was developed in the 1970’s as a way to improve data management when compared to standard flat files. Little has changed since then, and modern database administrators need to know more than just how to handle structured data. That is why critics claim that today’s data professionals do not have the proper skills in order to store and maintain data for modern systems when compared to the skills of system designers, programmers , software engineers, and data designers  due to the industry trend of object oriented design and development. I think that they are wrong. I do not disagree that the industry is moving toward an object oriented approach to development with the potential to use more of an object oriented approach to data.   However, I think that it is business itself that is limiting database administrators from changing how data is stored because of the potential costs, and impact that might occur by altering any part of stored data. Furthermore, database administrators like all technology workers constantly are trying to improve their technical skills in order to excel in their job, so I think that accusing data professional is not just when the root cause of the lack of innovation is controlled by business, and it is business that will suffer for their inability to keep up with technology. One way for database professionals to better prepare for the future of database management is start working with data in the form of objects and so that they can extract data from the objects so that the stored information within objects can be used in relation to the data stored in a using the relational paradigm. Furthermore, I think the use of pattern matching will increase with the increased use of unstructured data because object can be selected, filtered and altered based on the existence of a pattern found within an object.

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• Oracle Unveils Oracle Social Relationship Management Suite at Oracle OpenWorld

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  New Service Enables Companies to Listen, Engage, Create, Market and Analyze Interactions across Multiple Social Platforms in Real-Time During his keynote presentation, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison announced the Oracle Social Relationship Management (SRM) Suite.   Oracle Social Relationship Management Suite is an integrated enterprise service that enables companies to listen, engage, create, market, and analyze interactions across multiple social platforms in real-time providing a holistic view of the consumer.   Oracle Social Relationship Management Suite is integrated with Oracle’s enterprise applications, including Oracle Fusion Marketing, Oracle Fusion Sales Catalog, Oracle ATG Web Commerce, and Oracle Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), allowing organizations to use social to transform their corporate business processes and systems.   Additionally, Oracle Social Relationship Management Suite is integrated with Oracle Platform Services, including Oracle Java Cloud Service and Oracle Database Cloud Service, enabling marketing teams to integrate social with their custom Web pages, landing pages and marketing tools. Unleashing the Power of Social • Providing a holistic view of consumer interactions, Oracle Social Relationship Management Suite includes: Oracle Social Network (OSN): Provides a secure collaboration platform that supports real-time collaboration and networking for users inside and outside the organization. Oracle Social Marketing: Enables marketers to centrally create, publish, moderate, manage, measure and report across multiple social campaigns and platforms. It also helps marketers publish social content, engage fans and customize their brand's look and feel. Oracle Social Engagement & Monitoring Cloud Service: Enables organizations to analyze social media interactions while also empowering customer service and sales teams to effectively engage with customers and prospects. It gives organizations the tools they need to understand customers and take the appropriate actions by monitoring, listening, learning, and responding to signals and trends across the social web. Oracle Social Sites: provides brands and agencies a powerful and rich editing experience that end users can leverage to dynamically develop and launch social sites. Oracle Data and Insights. A service that caters to a growing enterprise need for externally information by providing information, directory and insights about common business entities. Supporting Quote “By fundamentally changing the way organizations connect with their different stakeholders, social is changing the rules of business,” said Thomas Kurian, executive vice president, Oracle Product Development. “With the Oracle Social Relationship Management Suite we are empowering our customers to embrace this change by integrating the tools required to listen, engage, create, market and analyze social interactions into existing applications and services.”

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• Deployment Options for AutoVue 20.0 Users

  - by celine.beck

  AutoVue release 20.0 boasts a brand new architecture. As part of this product rearchitecture, AutoVue can now be deployed either as a desktop deployment to serve the needs of individual users in their personal productivity; or in a Client / Server deployment for those that require connections to enterprise applications / back-end systems. The most common question that we hear from our customers about this new architecture is the following: "Is AutoVue Desktop Version still part of release 20.0 and if so, what is the difference between AutoVue Desktop Version and the Desktop deployment of AutoVue release 20.0?" A detailed answer to these questions is provided in a very complete article entitled Understanding Deployment Options for AutoVue 19.3 Desktop Version users upgrading to AutoVue 20.0 (note 1058254.1) which was posted on My Oracle Support. Is AutoVue Desktop Version still part of AutoVue 20.0? Yes, AutoVue Desktop Version 20.0 is still available to customers and partners, as a maintenance release of AutoVue 19.3. As such, it will not contain any of the new capabilities featured in AutoVue release 20.0. All format enhancements and new format support have been added to release 20.0 Desktop Version though. What is the different between AutoVue Desktop Version 20.0 and the Desktop Deployment of AutoVue release 20.0? AutoVue 20.0 Desktop deployment works like the AutoVue Desktop version. It is installed as a standalone product on each user's machine and runs a local instance of AutoVue. The AutoVue 20.0 Desktop deployment includes all new features, formats and performance enhancements included in release 20.0 (walkthrough capability, improved compare, ...) What deployment options are available to AutoVue 19.3 Desktop Version customers? AutoVue Desktop Version users can evolve at their own pace to the new AutoVue platform. With release 20.0, customers can opt to: Option 1: Stay on AutoVue Desktop Version 20.0 Option 2: Migrate to AutoVue and select the desktop deployment method Option 3: Migrate to AutoVue and select the Client/Server deployment method What is the Client / Server deployment of AutoVue 20.0? The Client/Server deployment has AutoVue installed on a server, to which local client machines connect to access and view documents. AutoVue 20.0 Client Server Deployment allows users to leverage the new online/offline capabilities in release 20.0 and easily switch between online and offline modes of operation. With the Client/Server deployment, customers also get a complete, open and standards-based set of integration tools that allows them to tie AutoVue to any enterprise applications to provide users with a consistent view of data and business objects and expand workflow automation to document-based processes. Related articles: AutoVue Release 20.0 Now Available, New Walkthrough Capability in AutoVue 20.0, Watch the AutoVue 20.0 Release Webcast, April 27 at 12pm EST

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• SOA’s People Problem by Bob Rhubart

  - by JuergenKress

  Are reluctant passengers slowing down your SOA train? Based on my conversations with various experts in service-oriented architecture (SOA), the consensus is that SOA tools and technology have achieved a high level of maturity. Some even use the term industrialization to describe the current state of SOA. Given that scenario, one might assume that SOA has been wildly successful for every organization that has adopted its principles. Obviously SOA could not have achieved its current level of maturity and industrialization without having reached a tipping point in the volume of success stories to drive continued adoption. But some organizations continue to struggle with SOA. The problem, according to some experts, has little to do with tools or technologies. “One of the greatest challenges to implementing SOA has nothing to do with the intrinsic complexity behind a SOA technology platform,” says Oracle ACE Luis Augusto Weir, senior Oracle solution director at HCL AXON. “The real difficulty lies in dealing with people and processes from different parts of the business and aligning them to deliver enterprisewide solutions.” What can an organization do to meet that challenge? “Staff the right people,” says Weir. “For example, the role of a SOA architect should be as much about integrating people as it is about integrating systems. Dealing with people from different departments, backgrounds, and agendas is a huge challenge. The SOA architect role requires someone that not only has a sound architectural and technological background but also has charisma and human skills, and can communicate equally well to the business and technical teams.” The SOA architect’s communication skills are instrumental in establishing service orientation as the guiding principle across the organization. “A consistent architecture comprising both business services and IT services can comprehensively redefine the role of IT at the process level,” says Danilo Schmiedel, solution architect at Opitz Consulting. That helps to shift the focus from siloes to services and get SOA on track. To that end, Oracle ACE Director Lonneke Dikmans, a managing partner at Vennster, stresses the importance of replacing individual, uncoordinated projects with a focused program that promotes communication, cooperation, and service reuse. “Having support among lead developers and architects helps, as does having sponsors that see the business case and understand the strategic value,” she says. Read the complete article here. SOA & BPM Partner Community For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit 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 Facebook Wiki Technorati Tags: Bob Rhubard,OTN,Lonneke Dikmans,SOA Community,Oracle SOA,Oracle BPM,Community,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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• JavaOne in Brazil

  - by janice.heiss(at)oracle.com

  JavaOne in Brazil, currently taking place in Sao Paolo, is one event I'd love to attend. I once heard "father of Java" James Gosling talk about Java developers throughout the world. He observed that there were good developers everywhere. It was not the case, he said, that that the really good developers are in one place and the not-so-good developers are in another. He encountered excellent developers everywhere. Then he paused and said that the craziest developers were definitely the Brazilians. As anyone who knows James would realize, this was meant as high praise. He said the Brazilians would work through the night on projects and were very enthusiastic and spontaneous - features that Brazilian culture is known for. Brazilian developers are responsible for creating one of the most impressive uses of Java ever - the applications that run the Brazilian health services. Starting from scratch they created a system that enables an expert doctor in Rio to look at an X-Ray of a patient near the Amazon and offer advice. One of the main architects of this was Java Champion Fabinane Nardon the distinguished Brazilian Java architect and open-source evangelist. As she writes in her blog:"In 2003, I was invited to assemble a team and architect a Public Healthcare Information System for the city of São Paulo, the largest in Latin America, with 14 million inhabitants. The resulting software had 2.5 million of lines of code and it was created, from specification to production, in only 10 months. At the time, the software was considered the largest J2EE application in the world and was featured in several articles, as this one. As a result, we won the Duke's Choice Award in 2005 during JavaOne, the largest development conference in the world. At the time, Sun Microsystems make a short documentary about our work." "In 2007, a lightning struck twice and I was again invited to assemble a new team and architect an even larger information system for healthcare. And thus I became CTO and one of the founders of Zilics Healthcare Information Systems. "In 2010, I started to research and work on Cloud Computing technology and became leader of the LSI-TEC Cloud Computing group. LSI-TEC is a research laboratory in the University of Sao Paulo, one of the best in Brazil. Thus, I became one of the ghost writers behind the popular Cloud Computing Twitter @the_cloud."You can see and hear Nardon in a 4 minute documentary on Java and the Brazilian health care system produced by Sun Microsystems. And you can listen to a September 2010 podcast with Nardon and her fellow Brazilian Java Champion Bruno Souza (known in Brazil as "Java Man") here at 11:10 minutes into the podcast.Next year, I'll hope to be reporting in Brazil at JavaOne!

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• Lessons from a SAN Failure

  - by Bill Graziano

  At 1:10AM Sunday morning the main SAN at one of my clients suffered a “partial” failure.  Partial means that the SAN was still online and functioning but the LUNs attached to our two main SQL Servers “failed”.  Failed means that SQL Server wouldn’t start and the MDF and LDF files mostly showed a zero file size.  But they were online and responding and most other LUNs were available.  I’m not sure how SANs know to fail at 1AM on a Saturday night but they seem to.  From a personal standpoint this worked out poorly: I was out with friends and after more than a few drinks.  From a work standpoint this was about the best time to fail you could imagine.  Everything was running well before Monday morning.  But it was a long, long Sunday.  I started tipsy, got tired and ended up hung over later in the day. Note to self: Try not to go out drinking right before the SAN fails. This caught us at an interesting time.  We’re in the process of migrating to an entirely new set of servers so some things were partially moved.  This made it difficult to follow our procedures as cleanly as we’d like.  The benefit was that we had much better documentation of everything on the server.  I would encourage everyone to really think through the process of implementing your DR plan and document as much as possible.  Following a checklist is much easier than trying to remember at night under pressure in a hurry after a few drinks. I had a series of estimates on how long things would take.  They were accurate for any single server failure.  They weren’t accurate for a SAN failure that took two servers down.  This wasn’t bad but we should have communicated better. Don’t forget how many things are outside the database.  Logins, linked servers, DTS packages (yikes!), jobs, service broker, DTC (especially DTC), database triggers and any objects in the master database are all things you need backed up.  We’d done a decent job on this and didn’t find significant problems here.  That said this still took a lot of time.  There were many annoyances as a result of this.  Small settings like a login’s default database had a big impact on whether an application could run.  This is probably the single biggest area of concern when looking to recreate a server.  I’d encourage everyone to go through every single node of SSMS and look for user created objects or settings outside the database. Script out your logins with the proper SID and already encrypted passwords and keep it updated.  This makes life so much easier.  I used an approach based on KB246133 that worked well.  I’ll get my scripts posted over the next few days. The disaster can cause your DR process to fail in unexpected ways.  We have a job that scripts out all logins and role memberships and writes it to a file.  This runs on the DR server and pulls from the production server.  Upon opening the file I found that the contents were a “server not found” error.  Fortunately we had other copies and didn’t need to try and restore the master database.  This now runs on the production server and pushes the script to the DR site.  Soon we’ll get it pushed to our version control software. One of the biggest challenges is keeping your DR resources up to date.  Any server change (new linked server, new SQL Server Agent job, etc.) means that your DR plan (and scripts) is out of date.  It helps to automate the generation of these resources if possible. Take time now to test your database restore process.  We test ours quarterly.  If you have a large database I’d also encourage you to invest in a compressed backup solution.  Restoring backups was the single larger consumer of time during our recovery. And yes, there’s a database mirroring solution planned in our new architecture. I didn’t have much involvement in things outside SQL Server but this caused many, many things to change in our environment.  Many applications today aren’t just executables or web sites.  They are a combination of those plus network infrastructure, reports, network ports, IP addresses, DTS and SSIS packages, batch systems and many other things.  These all needed a little bit of attention to make sure they were functioning properly. Profiler turned out to be a handy tool.  I started a trace for failed logins and kept that running.  That let me fix a number of problems before people were able to report them.  I also ran traces to capture exceptions.  This helped identify problems with linked servers. Overall the thing that gave me the most problem was linked servers.  In order for a linked server to function properly you need to be pointed to the right server, have the proper login information, have the network routes available and have MSDTC configured properly.  We have a lot of linked servers and this created many failure points.  Some of the older linked servers used IP addresses and not DNS names.  This meant we had to go in and touch all those linked servers when the servers moved.

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