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• PMI South Florida Job Fair 2010

  - by Sam Abraham

  The South Florida Chapter of the Project Management Institute is planning a Job Fair slated for September 2010. This year has seen a significant improvement in the job market with many surveyed companies indicating their intention to add temporary or permanent staff to their workforce in the near future.   The Job Fair Initiative fits well within the chapter's message and goal for this year: "Exercising Social Responsibility" - Our responsibility as PMI volunteers at all levels towards our members and surrounding community.   Our Free-to-members Annual Job Fair will play an important role in connecting Recruiters, Exhibitors and Job Seekers together thereby helping hiring companies gain access to a large talent pool at an affordable cost (Totally free in certain cases, details to be revealed once finalized) while giving job seekers centralized access to many reputable hiring companies in the South Florida area.   My involvement in the 2010 Job Fair started with a good conversation I had with Bernie Saenz, President and CEO of the South Florida PMI Chapter, in a networking event a few months ago. I had approached him with a few ideas in line with his goal to serve the community and our members given today's difficult economic climate. Bernie indicated that the Project Manager for the 2010 Job Fair had just been appointed and invited me to participate in this important initiative as a member of her team. I simply couldn't resist and gladly accepted the invitation.   I chose an initial role as Recruiter Relations Lead which entails developing documentation and timelines for our project plan with regards to Recruiter Engagement as well as reaching out to recruiting companies to meet target representation at the Job Fair.   Being heavily involved in the local Technical community has afforded me the privilege of coming in contact with many reputable Technology Recruiting companies. (As a matter of fact, I already have 2 interested very reputable IT recruiting firms willing to join us at the fair)   The excitement for me however will be finding and reaching out to recruiters in areas of Project Management and Leadership that I might not have been exposed to before including Finance, Healthcare and Marketing, to name a few.   Keep an eye in the upcoming few weeks for official announcements on the PMI South Florida Job Fair 2010.   Environment.Exit(0);   -Sam Abraham Site Director - West Palm Beach .Net User Group Recruiter Relations Lead - PMI South Florida Job Fair 2010 Project Lead - Mentoring Programs- PMI South Florida

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• Oracle ??????????? -2012?4??: Composite Patches

  - by James Zhang

    ???????DBA?????????????bundle patches, ??Patch Set Updates(PSU)????????,??oracle??????bundle patches,??PSU,??,??????????????,???????????????????(one-off patch),????overlay patches,???????????????   Oracle?????????,???2012?4???Database PSU 11.2.0.3.2??,??????patch??Composite Patches. Composite Patches ??:    * ?????    * ?????????overlay patches???    ?????????composite patches??,???????????????:Patch Set Update : ??????Cumulative patch(????),????, EM ??????????????????Patch Conflict   : 2??????????????,???????????Cumulative Patch : ????????,?????bug???,????Cumulative Patch?????????Cumulative PatchInterim Patch    : ???????????????Overlay Patch    : ?????????????,????????,????PSU???? ?merge patch??Sub-patch        : ??composite patch??2?????sub-patches?? ???Composite Patches?Composite Patches?????????,???????cumulative patch????composite patch?????Composite Patch?????????????. Composite Patches????????,Composite Patches???PSU??Bundle Patch????????????????????Composite Patches,???Composite Patches??????patch???????????Composite Patches,?????????Composite Patches???????????patches?????????overlay patches?Composite Patches???,???????overlay patches,???????,????overlay patches,???????????Composite Patches??overlay patches. cumulative patch?composite patch??????:* Cumulative Patch1.????Cumulative Patch?,??????????Cumulative Patch.2.???????overlay patches,?????overlay patches,??overlay patches?????cumulative patch??,???????cumulative patch??overlay patches,??????cumulative patch???overlay patches* Composite Patch1.???????????composite Patch,?????????Composite Patches??????2.???????overlay patches???cumulative patch???,???????overlay patches,??????cumulative patch. ????,?????overlay patches,??????cumulative patch??overlay patches? ???????????sub-patches??composite patch????????overlay patches* 11.2.0.3.1, 11.2.0.3.2, 11.2.0.3.3, 11.2.0.3.4 (??????) ??composite patch 11.2.0.3.4(?????)????(sub-patches)?????composite patch?,??sub-patches?????,?????????Composite Patch?????????????,??composite patch??????? * Overlay patches?composite patch(????) ???,?????overlay patch,????????composite patch????overly patch * ???11.2.0.3.4 ?,Overlay patches?composite patch(??????????)??,?????overlay patch,?????11.2.0.3.4 ??overlay patches,????11.2.0.3.4???overaly patches? ???PSU 11.2.0.3.2??????composite??????PSU, ?????composite patch?????,?????????newletter???????????,??????????:    Video - Bundle Patch Improvement - Composite Patching (03:43) [Trouble seeing this video?]    * Note 1376691.1 Composite Patches for Oracle Products (includes the brief informative video above)    * Note 854428.1   Patch Set Updates for Oracle Products    * Note 1299688.1 Patch conflict resolution    * Note 1321267.1 Database Patch conflict resolution

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• Android Touch Event Collision Detection

  - by chrissb

  I'm relatively new to both Java and Android, so hopefully the problem I'm having is stemming from something pretty minor that I've overlooked. I've got a (very early stage) game that I've started working on, for Android using Java. At this stage, when the user touches the screen, if they touched a point at which there is an enemy, the enemies health is decreased and they become immobile (for the current implementation at least). The issue that I'm having is that the touch detection doesn't always seem to work. I've got a testing sprite set up that goes to the eventX and eventY coordinates of the touch down event, and it always seems to collide with the enemy object. Yet, the enemy doesn't always register as being hit, and sometimes a hit is registered when the sprite indicates the touch coordinates were outside of the enemies bounding box. I realise that this probably doesn't mean much without any code, so here's what I've got so far. Be gentle, as this is literally my first attempt at something more than basic movement etc. First off, the MainGamePanel class registers the touch event, and informs the levelmanager class (which is what I set up to monitor/handle enemies) public boolean onTouchEvent(MotionEvent event) { if (event.getAction() == MotionEvent.ACTION_DOWN){ levelManager.handleActionDown((int)event.getX(), (int)event.getY()); targetX=event.getX(); targetY=event.getY(); } if (event.getAction() == MotionEvent.ACTION_MOVE) { //the gestures } if (event.getAction() == MotionEvent.ACTION_UP) { //touch was released } return true; } From there, in the levelmanager class the touch event is passed on to all of the enemies within a list array: public static void handleActionDown(int eventX,int eventY){ hit=false; for (enemy1 en : enemy1array){ en.handleActionDown(eventX, eventY); } } The rest of the collision code is handled within the enemies handleActionDown function: public void handleActionDown(int eventX, int eventY) { if(eventX>this.x-enemy1bitmap.getWidth() && eventX<this.x+enemy1bitmap.getWidth() && eventY>this.y-enemy1bitmap.getHeight() && eventY<this.x+enemy1bitmap.getHeight()){ takeDamage(1); levelmanager.setHit(); } } I should probably be using getWidth()/2 and getHeight()/2 for it to be more accurate, but I expanded the area to test this - although I've noticed no improvement. At this stage, the games detection over whether or not the enemy is hit is spotty at best. Generally it takes two or three attempts before a collision is successfully registered, even though the sprite that is being used for testing and set to the eventX and eventY coordinates always indicates that the collision should have worked. Hopefully someone can steer me in the right direction here, and if more information is needed, ask away! Cheers, -Chris

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• Random thoughts on Monday

  - by user10760339

  I know that it has been a long time since my last post, just though that I would update you my latest thoughts of Governance. I just recently completed an executive round table series on EA and Cloud in Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia. The response was phenomenal. The key point of the session was that Enterprise is the key enabler of innovation - All companies want to drive to be market leaders, EA can lay the foundation for the path to deliver that at innovation. When it comes to innovation, I see two distinct types: (a) Passive innovation is where a company creates innovation thought increments improvement over time. A great example is when airlines went from paper tickets to electronic ticket. Next logical progression is to do the same with boarding passes. There are a lot of examples to choose from, thought the thing to keep in mind, is that passive innovation will only keep you in the lead, it won’t allow you to create new markets or jump from #3 to #1 in one go. For that we need another type of innovation. (b) Disruptive innovation is where you create market where none existed before. Thought very difficult to do and requires significant investment in research, product and software development and not least of all, visionary thinking and timing, if done correctly, can turn the world on it’s ear. A great example is Apple iTunes. Some might say that this is incremental innovation, but only in one aspect, the downloading of music. Other then that, it’s all disruptive innovation. Being able to buy a single song rather then the album fundamentally changed the way we get out music. Behind all of these types of innovation is Enterprise Architecture. EA creates the infrastructure foundation, then delivery systems and the end-user experience to deliver this innovation. At Oracle, we are driving that EA innovation with our private cloud offerings from “bolt-to-glass” as I like to say. For more on what Oracle has to offer in EA and cloud, have a look at Cloud Computing | Oracle and Enterprise Architecture - OracleI am working on new material that I will be posting in a couple of weeks, so check back regularly for new updates or feel free to subscript for updates.

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• 2011 - ALMs for your development team and the people they work with.

  - by David V. Corbin

  Welcome to 2011, it is already shaping up to be a very exciting year. The title of the post is not about charitable giving, although that is also a great topic. Application Lifecycle Management and the Systems that support the environment is, and 2011 will be a year where I expect many teams to invest heavily in this area. For those not familiar with ALM, it can be simplified down to "A comprehensive view of all of the iteas, requirements, activities and artifacts that impact an application over the course of its lifecycle, from concept until decommissioning". Obviously, this encompases a large number of different areas even for relatively small and medium sized projects. In recent years, many teams have adapted methodoligies which address individual aspects of this; but the majority of this adoption has resulted in "islands of improvement" rather than the desired comprehensive outcome...Until now! Last year Microsoft released Team Foundation Server 2010 along with Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Edition, and with these two in combination the situation has drastically changed. At last there is a single environment that is capable of handling all aspects of ALM, and is also capable of dealing with migration and integration with existing systems to make the transition to a single solution much easier. Thse possibilities (and practicalities) are nothing short of amazing, Architecture thru Testing integration? YES. Being able to correlate specific requirement items (and their history) to actual code (and code history)? YES. Identification of which tests will be potentially impacted by a given code change? YES. Resiliant Automated Testing of User Interfaces? YES. Automatic Deployment Management? YES. Integraton Level testing as part of (designated) Builds? YES. I could easily double or triple the above list, but these items should be enough to get you thinking about the "pain points" your team and organization currently face and the fact that there IS a way to relieve the pain. Over the course of the year, I am hoping to bring together some of the "best of breed" information, along with hosting (and participating in) discussions with various experts in the field. There are already a number of groups (including many on LinkedIn) that have an ALM focus, and I encourage everyone out to check them out. I will be posting a list of the ones I find most helpful in the not too distant future. As I said at the beginning, 2011 is shaping up to be a very interesting (and productive) year. Why wait to start investigating and adopting ALM? ps: For those interested in becoming an "Alms Giver" in the charitable sense, I highly recommend checking out GiveCamp. A group of developers, designers and others get together to create a solution for a charity in just under 48 hours. I will be attending the GiveCamp in New York City on Jan 14-16, more information is available at nycgivecamp.org/

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• ASMLib

  - by wcoekaer

  Oracle ASMlib on Linux has been a topic of discussion a number of times since it was released way back when in 2004. There is a lot of confusion around it and certainly a lot of misinformation out there for no good reason. Let me try to give a bit of history around Oracle ASMLib. Oracle ASMLib was introduced at the time Oracle released Oracle Database 10g R1. 10gR1 introduced a very cool important new features called Oracle ASM (Automatic Storage Management). A very simplistic description would be that this is a very sophisticated volume manager for Oracle data. Give your devices directly to the ASM instance and we manage the storage for you, clustered, highly available, redundant, performance, etc, etc... We recommend using Oracle ASM for all database deployments, single instance or clustered (RAC). The ASM instance manages the storage and every Oracle server process opens and operates on the storage devices like it would open and operate on regular datafiles or raw devices. So by default since 10gR1 up to today, we do not interact differently with ASM managed block devices than we did before with a datafile being mapped to a raw device. All of this is without ASMLib, so ignore that one for now. Standard Oracle on any platform that we support (Linux, Windows, Solaris, AIX, ...) does it the exact same way. You start an ASM instance, it handles storage management, all the database instances use and open that storage and read/write from/to it. There are no extra pieces of software needed, including on Linux. ASM is fully functional and selfcontained without any other components. In order for the admin to provide a raw device to ASM or to the database, it has to have persistent device naming. If you booted up a server where a raw disk was named /dev/sdf and you give it to ASM (or even just creating a tablespace without asm on that device with datafile '/dev/sdf') and next time you boot up and that device is now /dev/sdg, you end up with an error. Just like you can't just change datafile names, you can't change device filenames without telling the database, or ASM. persistent device naming on Linux, especially back in those days ways to say it bluntly, a nightmare. In fact there were a number of issues (dating back to 2004) : Linux async IO wasn't pretty persistent device naming including permissions (had to be owned by oracle and the dba group) was very, very difficult to manage system resource usage in terms of open file descriptors So given the above, we tried to find a way to make this easier on the admins, in many ways, similar to why we started working on OCFS a few years earlier - how can we make life easier for the admins on Linux. A feature of Oracle ASM is the ability for third parties to write an extension using what's called ASMLib. It is possible for any third party OS or storage vendor to write a library using a specific Oracle defined interface that gets used by the ASM instance and by the database instance when available. This interface offered 2 components : Define an IO interface - allow any IO to the devices to go through ASMLib Define device discovery - implement an external way of discovering, labeling devices to provide to ASM and the Oracle database instance This is similar to a library that a number of companies have implemented over many years called libODM (Oracle Disk Manager). ODM was specified many years before we introduced ASM and allowed third party vendors to implement their own IO routines so that the database would use this library if installed and make use of the library open/read/write/close,.. routines instead of the standard OS interfaces. PolyServe back in the day used this to optimize their storage solution, Veritas used (and I believe still uses) this for their filesystem. It basically allowed, in particular, filesystem vendors to write libraries that could optimize access to their storage or filesystem.. so ASMLib was not something new, it was basically based on the same model. You have libodm for just database access, you have libasm for asm/database access. Since this library interface existed, we decided to do a reference implementation on Linux. We wrote an ASMLib for Linux that could be used on any Linux platform and other vendors could see how this worked and potentially implement their own solution. As I mentioned earlier, ASMLib and ODMLib are libraries for third party extensions. ASMLib for Linux, since it was a reference implementation implemented both interfaces, the storage discovery part and the IO part. There are 2 components : Oracle ASMLib - the userspace library with config tools (a shared object and some scripts) oracleasm.ko - a kernel module that implements the asm device for /dev/oracleasm/* The userspace library is a binary-only module since it links with and contains Oracle header files but is generic, we only have one asm library for the various Linux platforms. This library is opened by Oracle ASM and by Oracle database processes and this library interacts with the OS through the asm device (/dev/asm). It can install on Oracle Linux, on SuSE SLES, on Red Hat RHEL,.. The library itself doesn't actually care much about the OS version, the kernel module and device cares. The support tools are simple scripts that allow the admin to label devices and scan for disks and devices. This way you can say create an ASM disk label foo on, currently /dev/sdf... So if /dev/sdf disappears and next time is /dev/sdg, we just scan for the label foo and we discover it as /dev/sdg and life goes on without any worry. Also, when the database needs access to the device, we don't have to worry about file permissions or anything it will be taken care of. So it's a convenience thing. The kernel module oracleasm.ko is a Linux kernel module/device driver. It implements a device /dev/oracleasm/* and any and all IO goes through ASMLib - /dev/oracleasm. This kernel module is obviously a very specific Oracle related device driver but it was released under the GPL v2 so anyone could easily build it for their Linux distribution kernels. Advantages for using ASMLib : A good async IO interface for the database, the entire IO interface is based on an optimal ASYNC model for performance A single file descriptor per Oracle process, not one per device or datafile per process reducing # of open filehandles overhead Device scanning and labeling built-in so you do not have to worry about messing with udev or devlabel, permissions or the likes which can be very complex and error prone. Just like with OCFS and OCFS2, each kernel version (major or minor) has to get a new version of the device drivers. We started out building the oracleasm kernel module rpms for many distributions, SLES (in fact in the early days still even for this thing called United Linux) and RHEL. The driver didn't make sense to get pushed into upstream Linux because it's unique and specific to the Oracle database. As it takes a huge effort in terms of build infrastructure and QA and release management to build kernel modules for every architecture, every linux distribution and every major and minor version we worked with the vendors to get them to add this tiny kernel module to their infrastructure. (60k source code file). The folks at SuSE understood this was good for them and their customers and us and added it to SLES. So every build coming from SuSE for SLES contains the oracleasm.ko module. We weren't as successful with other vendors so for quite some time we continued to build it for RHEL and of course as we introduced Oracle Linux end of 2006 also for Oracle Linux. With Oracle Linux it became easy for us because we just added the code to our build system and as we churned out Oracle Linux kernels whether it was for a public release or for customers that needed a one off fix where they also used asmlib, we didn't have to do any extra work it was just all nicely integrated. With the introduction of Oracle Linux's Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel and our interest in being able to exploit ASMLib more, we started working on a very exciting project called Data Integrity. Oracle (Martin Petersen in particular) worked for many years with the T10 standards committee and storage vendors and implemented Linux kernel support for DIF/DIX, data protection in the Linux kernel, note to those that wonder, yes it's all in mainline Linux and under the GPL. This basically gave us all the features in the Linux kernel to checksum a data block, send it to the storage adapter, which can then validate that block and checksum in firmware before it sends it over the wire to the storage array, which can then do another checksum and to the actual DISK which does a final validation before writing the block to the physical media. So what was missing was the ability for a userspace application (read: Oracle RDBMS) to write a block which then has a checksum and validation all the way down to the disk. application to disk. Because we have ASMLib we had an entry into the Linux kernel and Martin added support in ASMLib (kernel driver + userspace) for this functionality. Now, this is all based on relatively current Linux kernels, the oracleasm kernel module depends on the main kernel to have support for it so we can make use of it. Thanks to UEK and us having the ability to ship a more modern, current version of the Linux kernel we were able to introduce this feature into ASMLib for Linux from Oracle. This combined with the fact that we build the asm kernel module when we build every single UEK kernel allowed us to continue improving ASMLib and provide it to our customers. So today, we (Oracle) provide Oracle ASMLib for Oracle Linux and in particular on the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel. We did the build/testing/delivery of ASMLib for RHEL until RHEL5 but since RHEL6 decided that it was too much effort for us to also maintain all the build and test environments for RHEL and we did not have the ability to use the latest kernel features to introduce the Data Integrity features and we didn't want to end up with multiple versions of asmlib as maintained by us. SuSE SLES still builds and comes with the oracleasm module and they do all the work and RHAT it certainly welcome to do the same. They don't have to rebuild the userspace library, it's really about the kernel module. And finally to re-iterate a few important things : Oracle ASM does not in any way require ASMLib to function completely. ASMlib is a small set of extensions, in particular to make device management easier but there are no extra features exposed through Oracle ASM with ASMLib enabled or disabled. Often customers confuse ASMLib with ASM. again, ASM exists on every Oracle supported OS and on every supported Linux OS, SLES, RHEL, OL withoutASMLib Oracle ASMLib userspace is available for OTN and the kernel module is shipped along with OL/UEK for every build and by SuSE for SLES for every of their builds ASMLib kernel module was built by us for RHEL4 and RHEL5 but we do not build it for RHEL6, nor for the OL6 RHCK kernel. Only for UEK ASMLib for Linux is/was a reference implementation for any third party vendor to be able to offer, if they want to, their own version for their own OS or storage ASMLib as provided by Oracle for Linux continues to be enhanced and evolve and for the kernel module we use UEK as the base OS kernel hope this helps.

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• CAM v2.0 ships – all new foundation version

  - by drrwebber

  The latest release of the CAM editor toolset is now available on Sourceforge.net – search NIEM. In this all new version the support from Oracle has enabled a transformation of the editor underpinning Java framework and results in 3x performance improvement and 50% better memory utilization. The result of nearly six months of improvements are catalogued in the release notes. http://sourceforge.net/projects/camprocessor/files/CAM%20Editor/Releases/2.0/CAM_Editor_2-0_Release_Notes.pdf/download However here I’d like to talk about the strategic vision and highlight specific new go to features that make a difference for exchange schema designers and with a focus on the NIEM community. So why is this a foundation version? Basically the new drag and drop designer tool allows you to tailor your own dictionary collection of components and then simply select and position those into your resulting exchange structure. This is true global reuse enabled from a canonical domain dictionary collection. So instead of grappling with XSD Schema syntax, or UML model nuances – this is straightforward direct WYSIWYG visual engineering – using familiar sets of business components. Then the toolkit writes the complex XSD Schema for you, along with test samples, documentation, XMI/UML models, Mindmaps and more. So how do you get a set of business components? The toolkit allows you to harvest these from existing schema collections or enterprise data models, or as in the case of NIEM, existing domain dictionary collections. I’ve been using this for the latest IEEE/OASIS/NIST initiative on a Common Data Format (CDF) for elections management systems. So you can download those from OASIS and see how this can transform how you build actual business exchanges – improving the quality, consistency and usability – and dramatically allowing automated generation of artifacts you only dreamed of before – such as a model of your entire major exchange collection components. http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/documents.php?wg_abbrev=election So what we have here is a foundation version – setting the scene and the basis for changing how people can generate and manage information exchanges. A foundation built using the OASIS CAM standard combined with aspects of the NIEM Naming and Design Rules and the UN/CEFACT Core Components specifications and emerging work on OASIS CIQ name and address and ANSI/ISO code list schema. We still have a raft of work to do to integrate this into SOA best practices and extend the dictionary capabilities to assist true community development. Answering questions such as: - How good is my canonical component collection? - How much reuse is really occurring? - What inconsistencies and extensions are there in the dictionary components? Expect us to begin tackling these areas now that the foundation is in place. The immediate need is to develop training and self-start materials – so we will be focusing there for the next couple of months and especially leading up to the IJIS industry event in July in New Jersey, and the NIEM NTE event in August in Philadelphia. http://sourceforge.net/projects/camprocessor

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• Partners, Start your Engines

  - by Kristin Rose

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Hello speed racer - OPN here to inform you that in case you missed it, our ISV Focused PartnerCast took place last week in Oracle’s Redwood Shores studio. Without a roadblock in site, Oracle’s key drivers discussed topics like Optimized and Oracle’s Cloud offerings; even OPN partner MSC took it to the next level by stopping by to share with us their first hand experience with the Oracle Exastack Optimized program. By stepping into Oracle’s ”Motor Speedway”, better known as the Exastack lab, MSC was able to fine tune, test and optimize their application on Oracle Exadata, as well as gain outstanding expertise on several technical areas such as optimizing multithreaded applications and database tuning. By optimizing their solution, MSC has “decreased their deployment time and saw a 30 percent performance improvement in database.” Sounds like someone’s gearing up for an “Oracle Indy 500.” By achieving Oracle Exadata Optimized status, MSC is putting performance in the driver’s seat, and their customers at the front of the race by delivering a solution that is tuned for performance, scalability and reliability. So go ahead and let the Oracle Exastack Optimized pit crew take you to the finish line. Learn how to go from 0-60 by watching MSC’s segment of the ISV Focused PartnerCast below. Ready… Set… Optimize! The OPN Communications Team

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• What is the difference between development and R&D?

  - by MainMa

  I was asked by a colleague to explain clearly the difference between ordinary development and research and development (R&D) and was unable to do it. After reading Wikipedia, I still don't have the precise answer. According to Wikipedia (slightly modified): There are two primary models: In one model, the primary function is to develop new products; in the other model, the primary function is to discover and create new knowledge about scientific and technological topics for the purpose of uncovering and enabling development of valuable new products, processes, and services. The first model is confusing. Does it mean that development (not R&D) consists exclusively in adding new features to a product, solving bugs and doing maintenance? What if something which was previously developed as a new feature becomes a separate product? The second model is less confusing, but still, how to qualify whether something is new knowledge or existent knowledge which is just rediscovered? Later, Wikipedia adds that ordinary development is different from R&D because of its: nearly immediate profit or immediate improvement. It's still not clear enough. How to qualify "nearly immediate profit"? What if a task has an immediate profit but requires heavy research? Or if it is basic but has uncertain profit, like the enforcement of a common style over the codebase? For example, does it belong to development or R&D to: Develop an engine which abstracts the access to the database, simplifying and shortening enormously the code of other applications (existent or ones which will be written in future) which should access to the database? Establish a new service-oriented architecture for the entire organization of company resources, in order to move from a bunch of separate and autonomous applications to a set of well-organized, interconnected web services, like what is used by Amazon? Design a new communication protocol to allow faster replication of data between two data centers of the company? Conceive a new type of software testing while working on a specific product, knowing that this type of testing will improve/simplify the testing process? Prove that Functional programming is more appropriate than OOP for a specific application, based on evidence, logic and previous experience? Enhance the existent application by adding gestures on tactile screens, after doing studies and testing that shows that those gestures improve the productivity of the users by a ratio of at least 1.4 for a precise set of tasks? Find a way to strongly enhance the Power usage effectiveness (PUE) of a data center? Create a Domain-Specific Language (DSL)? In short, how could I determine whether I'm doing R&D while working on something?

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• Oracle Solaris Zones Physical to virtual (P2V)

  - by user939057

  IntroductionThis document describes the process of creating and installing a Solaris 10 image build from physical system and migrate it into a virtualized operating system environment using the Oracle Solaris 10 Zones Physical-to-Virtual (P2V) capability.Using an example and various scenarios, this paper describes how to take advantage of theOracle Solaris 10 Zones Physical-to-Virtual (P2V) capability with other Oracle Solaris features to optimize performance using the Solaris 10 resource management advanced storage management using Solaris ZFS plus improving operating system visibility with Solaris DTrace. The most common use for this tool is when performing consolidation of existing systems onto virtualization enabled platforms, in addition to that we can use the Physical-to-Virtual (P2V) capability  for other tasks for example backup your physical system and move them into virtualized operating system environment hosted on the Disaster Recovery (DR) site another option can be building an Oracle Solaris 10 image repository with various configuration and a different software packages in order to reduce provisioning time.Oracle Solaris ZonesOracle Solaris Zones is a virtualization and partitioning technology supported on Oracle Sun servers powered by SPARC and Intel processors.This technology provides an isolated and secure environment for running applications. A zone is a virtualized operating system environment created within a single instance of the Solaris 10 Operating System.Each virtual system is called a zone and runs a unique and distinct copy of the Solaris 10 operating system.Oracle Solaris Zones Physical-to-Virtual (P2V)A new feature for Solaris 10 9/10.This feature provides the ability to build a Solaris 10 images from physical system and migrate it into a virtualized operating system environmentThere are three main steps using this tool1. Image creation on the source system, this image includes the operating system and optionally the software in which we want to include within the image. 2. Preparing the target system by configuring a new zone that will host the new image.3. Image installation on the target system using the image we created on step 1. The host, where the image is built, is referred to as the source system and the host, where theimage is installed, is referred to as the target system. Benefits of Oracle Solaris Zones Physical-to-Virtual (P2V)Here are some benefits of this new feature:  Simple- easy build process using Oracle Solaris 10 built-in commands.  Robust- based on Oracle Solaris Zones a robust and well known virtualization technology.  Flexible- support migration between V series servers into T or -M-series systems.For the latest server information, refer to the Sun Servers web page. PrerequisitesThe target Oracle Solaris system should be running the latest version of the patching patch cluster. and the minimum Solaris version on the target system should be Solaris 10 9/10.Refer to the latest Administration Guide for Oracle Solaris for a complete procedure on how todownload and install Oracle Solaris. NOTE: If the source system that used to build the image is an older version then the targetsystem, then during the process, the operating system will be upgraded to Solaris 10 9/10(update on attach).Creating the Image Used to distribute the software.We will create an image on the source machine. We can create the image on the local file system and then transfer it to the target machine, or build it into a NFS shared storage andmount the NFS file system from the target machine.Optional  before creating the image we need to complete the software installation that we want to include with the Solaris 10 image.An image is created by using the flarcreate command:Source # flarcreate -S -n s10-system -L cpio /var/tmp/solaris_10_up9.flarThe command does the following:  -S specifies that we skip the disk space check and do not write archive size data to the archive (faster).  -n specifies the image name.  -L specifies the archive format (i.e cpio). Optionally, we can add descriptions to the archive identification section, which can help to identify the archive later.Source # flarcreate -S -n s10-system -e "Oracle Solaris with Oracle DB10.2.0.4" -a "oracle" -L cpio /var/tmp/solaris_10_up9.flarYou can see example of the archive identification section in Appendix A: archive identification section.We can compress the flar image using the gzip command or adding the -c option to the flarcreate commandSource # gzip /var/tmp/solaris_10_up9.flarAn md5 checksum can be created for the image in order to ensure no data tamperingSource # digest -v -a md5 /var/tmp/solaris_10_up9.flar Moving the image into the target system.If we created the image on the local file system, we need to transfer the flar archive from the source machine to the target machine.Source # scp /var/tmp/solaris_10_up9.flar target:/var/tmpConfiguring the Zone on the target systemAfter copying the software to the target machine, we need to configure a new zone in order to host the new image on that zone.To install the new zone on the target machine, first we need to configure the zone (for the full zone creation options see the following link: http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E18752_01/html/817-1592/index.html  )ZFS integrationA flash archive can be created on a system that is running a UFS or a ZFS root file system.NOTE: If you create a Solaris Flash archive of a Solaris 10 system that has a ZFS root, then bydefault, the flar will actually be a ZFS send stream, which can be used to recreate the root pool.This image cannot be used to install a zone. You must create the flar with an explicit cpio or paxarchive when the system has a ZFS root.Use the flarcreate command with the -L archiver option, specifying cpio or pax as themethod to archive the files. (For example, see Step 1 in the previous section).Optionally, on the target system you can create the zone root folder on a ZFS file system inorder to benefit from the ZFS features (clones, snapshots, etc...).Target # zpool create zones c2t2d0 Create the zone root folder:Target # chmod 700 /zones Target # zonecfg -z solaris10-up9-zonesolaris10-up9-zone: No such zone configuredUse 'create' to begin configuring a new zone.zonecfg:solaris10-up9-zone> createzonecfg:solaris10-up9-zone> set zonepath=/zoneszonecfg:solaris10-up9-zone> set autoboot=truezonecfg:solaris10-up9-zone> add netzonecfg:solaris10-up9-zone:net> set address=192.168.0.1zonecfg:solaris10-up9-zone:net> set physical=nxge0zonecfg:solaris10-up9-zone:net> endzonecfg:solaris10-up9-zone> verifyzonecfg:solaris10-up9-zone> commitzonecfg:solaris10-up9-zone> exit Installing the Zone on the target system using the imageInstall the configured zone solaris10-up9-zone by using the zoneadm command with the install -a option and the path to the archive.The following example shows how to create an Image and sys-unconfig the zone.Target # zoneadm -z solaris10-up9-zone install -u -a/var/tmp/solaris_10_up9.flarLog File: /var/tmp/solaris10-up9-zone.install_log.AJaGveInstalling: This may take several minutes...The following example shows how we can preserve system identity.Target # zoneadm -z solaris10-up9-zone install -p -a /var/tmp/solaris_10_up9.flar Resource management Some applications are sensitive to the number of CPUs on the target Zone. You need tomatch the number of CPUs on the Zone using the zonecfg command:zonecfg:solaris10-up9-zone>add dedicated-cpuzonecfg:solaris10-up9-zone> set ncpus=16DTrace integrationSome applications might need to be analyzing using DTrace on the target zone, you canadd DTrace support on the zone using the zonecfg command:zonecfg:solaris10-up9-zone>setlimitpriv="default,dtrace_proc,dtrace_user" Exclusive IP stack An Oracle Solaris Container running in Oracle Solaris 10 can have a shared IP stack with the global zone, or it can have an exclusive IP stack (which was released in Oracle Solaris 10 8/07). An exclusive IP stack provides a complete, tunable, manageable and independent networking stack to each zone. A zone with an exclusive IP stack can configure Scalable TCP (STCP), IP routing, IP multipathing, or IPsec. For an example of how to configure an Oracle Solaris zone with an exclusive IP stack, see the following example zonecfg:solaris10-up9-zone set ip-type=exclusivezonecfg:solaris10-up9-zone> add netzonecfg:solaris10-up9-zone> set physical=nxge0 When the installation completes, use the zoneadm list -i -v options to list the installedzones and verify the status.Target # zoneadm list -i -vSee that the new Zone status is installedID NAME STATUS PATH BRAND IP0 global running / native shared- solaris10-up9-zone installed /zones native sharedNow boot the ZoneTarget # zoneadm -z solaris10-up9-zone bootWe need to login into the Zone order to complete the zone set up or insert a sysidcfg file beforebooting the zone for the first time see example for sysidcfg file in Appendix B: sysidcfg filesectionTarget # zlogin -C solaris10-up9-zoneTroubleshootingIf an installation fails, review the log file. On success, the log file is in /var/log inside the zone. Onfailure, the log file is in /var/tmp in the global zone.If a zone installation is interrupted or fails, the zone is left in the incomplete state. Use uninstall -F to reset the zone to the configured state.Target # zoneadm -z solaris10-up9-zone uninstall -FTarget # zonecfg -z solaris10-up9-zone delete -FConclusionOracle Solaris Zones P2V tool provides the flexibility to build pre-configuredimages with different software configuration for faster deployment and server consolidation.In this document, I demonstrated how to build and install images and to integrate the images with other Oracle Solaris features like ZFS and DTrace.Appendix A: archive identification sectionWe can use the head -n 20 /var/tmp/solaris_10_up9.flar command in order to access theidentification section that contains the detailed description.Target # head -n 20 /var/tmp/solaris_10_up9.flarFlAsH-aRcHiVe-2.0section_begin=identificationarchive_id=e4469ee97c3f30699d608b20a36011befiles_archived_method=cpiocreation_date=20100901160827creation_master=mdet5140-1content_name=s10-systemcreation_node=mdet5140-1creation_hardware_class=sun4vcreation_platform=SUNW,T5140creation_processor=sparccreation_release=5.10creation_os_name=SunOScreation_os_version=Generic_142909-16files_compressed_method=nonecontent_architectures=sun4vtype=FULLsection_end=identificationsection_begin=predeploymentbegin 755 predeployment.cpio.ZAppendix B: sysidcfg file sectionTarget # cat sysidcfgsystem_locale=Ctimezone=US/Pacificterminal=xtermssecurity_policy=NONEroot_password=HsABA7Dt/0sXXtimeserver=localhostname_service=NONEnetwork_interface=primary {hostname= solaris10-up9-zonenetmask=255.255.255.0protocol_ipv6=nodefault_route=192.168.0.1}name_service=NONEnfs4_domain=dynamicWe need to copy this file before booting the zoneTarget # cp sysidcfg /zones/solaris10-up9-zone/root/etc/

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• Gauging Maturity of your BPM Strategy - part 1 / 2

  - by Sanjeev Sharma

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} In this post I will discuss the essence of maturity assessment and the business imperative for doing the same in the context of BPM. Social psychology purports that an individual progresses from being a beginner to an expert in a given activity or task along four stages of self-awareness: Unconscious Incompetence where the individual does not understand or know how to do something and does not necessarily recognize the deficit and may even deny the usefulness of the skill. Conscious Incompetence where the individual recognizes the deficit, as well as the value of a new skill in addressing the deficit. Conscious Competence where the individual understands or knows how to do something but demonstrating the skill requires explicit concentration. Unconscious Competence where the individual has had so much practice with a skill that it has become "second nature" and serves as a basis of developing other complementary skills. We can extend the above thinking to an organization as a whole by measuring an organization’s level of competence in a specific area or capability, as an aggregate of the competence levels of individuals it is comprised of. After all organizations too like individuals, evolve through experience, develop “memory” and capabilities that are shaped through a constant cycle of learning, un-learning and re-learning. Hence the key to organizational success lies in developing these capabilities to enable execution of its strategy in-line with the external environment i.e. demand, competition, economy etc. However developing a capability merits establishing a base line in order to Assess the magnitude of improvement from past investments Identify gaps and short-comings Prioritize future investments in the right areas A maturity assessment is essentially an organizational self-awareness check that is aimed at depicting the “as-is” snapshot of an existing capability in-order to guide future investments to develop that capability in-line with business goals. This effectively is the essence of a maturity Organizational capabilities stem through its architecture, routines, culture and intellectual resources that are implicitly and explicitly embedded in its business processes. Given that business processes underpin realization of organizational capabilities, is what has prompted business transformation and process management efforts. Thus, the BPM capability of an organization needs to be measured on an on-going basis to ensure delivery of its planned benefits. In my next post I will describe Oracle’s BPM Maturity assessment methodology.

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• Why is Double.Parse so slow?

  - by alexhildyard

  I was recently investigating a bottleneck in one of my applications, which read a CSV file from disk using a TextReader a line at a time, split the tokens, called Double.Parse on each one, then shunted the results into an object list. I was surprised to find it was actually the Double.Parse which seemed to be taking up most of the time.Googling turned up this, which is a little unfocused in places but throws out some excellent ideas:It makes more sense to work with binary format directly, rather than coerce strings into doublesThere is a significant performance improvement in composing doubles directly from the byte stream via long intermediariesString.Split is inefficient on fixed length recordsIn fact it turned out that my problem was more insidious and also more mundane -- a simple case of bad data in, bad data out. Since I had been serialising my Doubles as strings, when I inadvertently divided by zero and produced a "NaN", this of course was serialised as well without error. And because I was reading in using Double.Parse, these "NaN" fields were also (correctly) populating real Double objects without error. The issue is that Double.Parse("NaN") is incredibly slow. In fact, it is of the order of 2000x slower than parsing a valid double. For example, the code below gave me results of 357ms to parse 1000 NaNs, versus 15ms to parse 100,000 valid doubles.            const int invalid_iterations = 1000;            const int valid_iterations = invalid_iterations * 100;            const string invalid_string = "NaN";            const string valid_string = "3.14159265";            DateTime start = DateTime.Now;                        for (int i = 0; i < invalid_iterations; i++)            {                double invalid_double = Double.Parse(invalid_string);            }            Console.WriteLine(String.Format("{0} iterations of invalid double, time taken (ms): {1}",                invalid_iterations,                ((TimeSpan)DateTime.Now.Subtract(start)).Milliseconds            ));            start = DateTime.Now;            for (int i = 0; i < valid_iterations; i++)            {                double valid_double = Double.Parse(valid_string);            }            Console.WriteLine(String.Format("{0} iterations of valid double, time taken (ms): {1}",                valid_iterations,                ((TimeSpan)DateTime.Now.Subtract(start)).Milliseconds            )); I think the moral is to look at the context -- specifically the data -- as well as the code itself. Once I had corrected my data, the performance of Double.Parse was perfectly acceptable, and while clearly it could have been improved, it was now sufficient to my needs.

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• Becoming the well-integrated content company (and combating AIUTLVFS)

  - by Lance Shaw

  Every single day, each of us create more and more content. Sometimes it is brand new material and many times it is iterations of existing content, but no one would argue that information and content growth is growing at an almost exponential rate. With all this content being created and stored, a number of problems naturally arise. One of the most common issues that users run into is "Am I Using The Latest Version of this File Syndrome", or AIUTLVFS. This insidious syndrome is all too common and results in ineffective, poor or downright wrong business decisions being made.  When content or files are unavailable or incorrect within the scope of key business processes, the chance for erroneous and costly business decisions is magnified even further. For many companies, the ideal scenario is to be able to connect multiple business systems, both old and new, into one common content repository.  Not only does this reduce content duplication, it also helps guarantee that everyone in various departments is working off the proverbial "same page".  Sounds simple - but for many organizations, the proliferation of file shares, SharePoint sites, and other storage silos of content keep the dream of a more efficient business a distant one. We've created some online assets to help you in your evaluation and eventual improvement of your current content management and delivery systems. Take a few minutes to check out our Online Assessment Tool.  It's quick, easy and just might provide you with insights into how you can improve your current content ecosystem. While you are there, check out our new Infographic that outlines common issues faced by companies today. Feel free to save our informative Infographic PDF and share it with business colleagues and your management to help them understand the business costs and impact of inaction. Together we can stop AIUTLVFS in its tracks and run our businesses more effectively than ever. Additionally, we hope you will take a few minutes to visit our new and informative webpages dedicated to the value of a well connected, fully integrated content management system. It's a great place to learn more about how integrating WebCenter Content into your infrastructure can lower your operational costs while boosting process and worker efficiency.

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• It's All In The Cloud

  - by Natalia Rachelson

  People turned out in droves for Steve Miranda's Apps Cloud General Session. Steve, as engaging as ever, covered our Apps strategy in the cloud and reinforced that Oracle has a complete set of cloud services including: •    Human Capital Management•    Talent Management•    Sales and Marketing•    Customer Service and Support•    Financial Management•    Procurement, Sourcing, and Inventory•    Project Portfolio Management•    Governance, Risk, and Compliance... all delivered on top of the Social, Platform, and Common Infrastructure.Steve talked about Fusion being the centerpiece of our Cloud Services. The fact that Fusion is 100 percent standards based is a big, big deal! In addition, our ERP Cloud Service is the most complete cloud service on the market. And email marketing is dead -- social marketing is where the action is. It's also where Oracle is investing heavily from a Sales & Marketing Cloud perspective. Steve covered the strategic acquisitions Oracle has made to enhance our organic Cloud offering. Specifically, Oracle bought RightNow to make our Customer Service and Support Cloud service complete. We also bought Taleo to add Recruiting and Learning capabilities to our Talent Management Cloud. Steve talked about our customers and how they are benefiting from the use of a variety of our Cloud Services. Red Robin is driving lower labor and food costs with Oracle ERP Cloud Service. He used Elizabeth Arden as the profile customer for HCM and Talent Management Service, UBS for HCM and Talent Management Service, and Brocade for Talent Management. All these customers are benefiting from a comprehensive and fully integrated HR platform that aligns compensation with performance and enhances workforce motivation and retention. At the same time, Hitachi Data Systems is using Oracle Taleo Performance Management Cloud to recruit the right competencies, pinpoint areas of improvement, and develop and monitor employee goals to support the global account organization. KLM and Overstock.com are gaining the benefits of Oracle's Customer Service and Support Service from RightNow by better engaging and serving customer needs online and through call centers. And last but not least, Graco and Key Energy are leveraging mobility features and sales forecasting and territory management capabilities within the Oracle Sales and Marketing Service. They expect to gain better visibility to sales information and drive more efficient sales campaigns and empower their sales force with data they need to make sales. Overall, Oracle Apps Cloud Services are enjoying a significant momentum in the marketplace. Steve projected an air of confidence and enthusiasm highlighting Oracle's latest successes with Cloud services.

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• How exactly is Google Webmaster Tools measuring "Site Performance"?

  - by Rémi

  I've been working for two months now on improving our response time (mainly server side) on a new forum (a brand new product on a technical point of view) we've launched in Germany a few month ago and I'm a lot surprised by the results I get. I monitor our response time using Apache logs and our own implementation of Boomerang beacon. Using my stats, I can see that our new product responds in about 680 ms where our old product was responding in about 1050 ms. On the other side, Google Webmaster Tool tells us that our pages have an average reponse time of about 1500 ms today where it was 700 three months ago with our old product. I've figured that GWT was taking client side metrics into account so I've added some measures on our Boomerang beacon and everything looks just fine. I've also ran some random pages on ySlow and Google's Page Speed and everything looks better than it was before. We event have a 82% on Google's Page Speed tool which is quite cool for a site with some ads in it :) Lately, we have signed a deal with Akamai to use two of their products : CDN for our static files (we were using another CDN before but it wasn't very effective) and RMA to improve Networks routes. We have also introduced a new agressive cache mecanism to ensure that most of the pages served to crawlers are cached by our memcache grid. After checking my metrics, it seems that this changes have improved from 650ms to about 500ms, which is good (still not great but it is definitly an improvement). But webmaster tools continues to report an increasing average response time where we see it decreasing in the same time. Have you ever had the same kind of wierd behavior on your sites while doing performance improvements ? Do you have any idea how to monitor the same thing Google does with Site Performance in Google Webmaster Tools so that we could improve our site and constantly check if it is what Google wants ? Edit 2011/07/26 : Thanks for your answers guys ! Nevertheless, I was not precise enough. The main issue we have is not with the Site Performance page but with the Crawl Stats one for now. We probably found an issue on our side with some very slow pages (around 3000 ms !!) and we are trying to fix them. I'll keep you posted as soon I'll have some infos. Thanks again !

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• Building Enterprise Smartphone App &ndash; Part 4: Application Development Considerations

  - by Tim Murphy

  This is the final part in a series of posts based on a talk I gave recently at the Chicago Information Technology Architects Group.  Feel free to leave feedback. Application Development Considerations Now we get to the actual building of your solutions.  What are the skills and resources that will be needed in order to develop a smartphone application in the enterprise? Language Knowledge One of the first things you need to consider when you are deciding which platform language do you either have the most in house skill base or can you easily acquire.  If you already have developers who know Java or C# you may want to use either Android or Windows Phone.  You should also take into consideration the market availability of developers.  If your key developer leaves how easy is it to find a knowledgeable replacement? A second consideration when it comes to programming languages is the qualities exposed by the languages of a particular platform.  How well does that development language and its associated frameworks support things like security and access to the features of the smartphone hardware?  This will play into your overall cost of ownership if you have to create this infrastructure on your own. Manage Limited Resources Everything is limited on a smartphone: battery, memory, processing power, network bandwidth.  When developing your applications you will have to keep your footprint as small as possible in every way.  This means not running unnecessary processes in the background that will drain the battery or pulling more data over the airwaves than you have to.  You also want to keep your on device in as compact a format as possible. Mobile Design Patterns There are a number of design patterns that have either come to life because of smartphone development or have been adapted for this use.  The main pattern in the Windows Phone environment is the MVVM (Model-View-View-Model).  This is great for overall application structure and separation of concerns.  The fun part is trying to keep that separation as pure as possible.  Many of the other patterns may or may not have strict definitions, but some that you need to be concerned with are push notification, asynchronous communication and offline data storage. Real estate is limited on smartphones and even tablets. You are also limited in the type of controls that can be represented in the UI. This means rethinking how you modularize your application. Typing is also much harder to do so you want to reduce this as much as possible.  This leads to UI patterns.  While not what we would traditionally think of as design patterns the guidance each platform has for UI design is critical to the success of your application.  If user find the application difficult navigate they will not use it. Development Process Because of the differences in development tools required, test devices and certification and deployment processes your teams will need to learn new way of working together.  This will include the need to integrate service contracts of back-end systems with mobile applications.  You will also want to make sure that you present consistency across different access points to corporate data.  Your web site may have more functionality than your smartphone application, but it should have a consistent core set of functionality.  This all requires greater communication between sub-teams of your developers. Testing Process Testing of smartphone apps has a lot more to do with what happens when you lose connectivity or if the user navigates away from your application. There are a lot more opportunities for the user or the device to perform disruptive acts.  This should be your main testing concentration aside from the main business requirements.  You will need to do things like setting the phone to airplane mode and seeing what the application does in order to weed out any gaps in your handling communication interruptions. Need For Outside Experts Since this is a development area that is new to most companies the need for experts is a lot greater. Whether these are consultants, vendor representatives or just development community forums you will need to establish expert contacts. Nothing is more dangerous for your project timelines than a lack of knowledge.  Make sure you know who to call to avoid lengthy delays in your project because of knowledge gaps. Security Security has to be a major concern for enterprise applications. You aren't dealing with just someone's game standings. You are dealing with a companies intellectual property and competitive advantage. As such you need to start by limiting access to the application itself.  Once the user is in the app you need to ensure that the data is secure at all times.  This includes both local storage and across the wire.  This means if a platform doesn’t natively support encryption for these functions you will need to find alternatives to secure your data.  You also need to keep secret (encryption) keys obfuscated or locked away outside of the application. People can disassemble the code otherwise and break your encryption. Offline Capabilities As we discussed earlier one your biggest concerns is not having connectivity.  Because of this a good portion of your code may be dedicated to handling loss of connection and reconnection situations.  What do you do if you lose the network?  Back up all your transactions and store of any supporting data so that operations can continue off line. In order to support this you will need to determine the available flat file or local data base capabilities of the platform.  Any failed transactions will need to support a retry mechanism whether it is automatic or user initiated.  This also includes your services since they will need to be able to roll back partially completed transactions.  What ever you do, don’t ignore this area when you are designing your system. Deployment Each platform has different deployment capabilities. Some are more suited to enterprise situations than others. Apple's approach is probably the most mature at the moment. Prior to the current generation of smartphone platforms it would have been Windows CE. Windows Phone 7 has the limitation that the app has to be distributed through the same network as public facing applications. You mark them as private which means that they are only accessible by a direct URL. Unfortunately this does not make them undiscoverable (although it is very difficult). This will change with Windows Phone 8 where companies will be able to certify their own applications and distribute them.  Given this Windows Phone applications need to be more diligent with application access in order to keep them restricted to the company's employees. My understanding of the Android deployment schemes is that it is much less standardized then either iOS or Windows Phone. Someone would have to confirm or deny that for me though since I have not yet put the time into researching this platform further. Given my limited exposure to the iOS and Android platforms I have not been able to confirm this, but there are varying degrees of user involvement to install and keep applications updated. At one extreme the user just goes to a website to do the install and in other case they may need to download files and perform steps to install them. Future Bluetooth Today we use Bluetooth for keyboards, mice and headsets.  In the future it could be used to interrogate car computers or manufacturing systems or possibly retail machines by service techs.  This would open smartphones to greater use as a almost a Star Trek Tricorder.  You would get you all your data as well as being able to use it as a universal remote for just about any device or machine. Better corporation controlled deployment At least in the Windows Phone world the upcoming release of Windows Phone 8 will include a private certification and deployment option that is currently not available with Windows Phone 7 (Mango). We currently have to run the apps through the Marketplace certification process and use a targeted distribution method. Platform independent approaches HTML5 and JavaScript with Web Service has become a popular topic lately for not only creating flexible web site, but also creating cross platform mobile applications.  I’m not yet convinced that this lowest common denominator approach is viable in most cases, but it does have it’s place and seems to be growing.  Be sure to keep an eye on it. Summary From my perspective enterprise smartphone applications can offer a great competitive advantage to many companies.  They are not cheap to build and should be approached cautiously.  Understand the factors I have outlined in this series, do you due diligence and see if there is a portion of your business that can benefit from the mobile experience. del.icio.us Tags: Architecture,Smartphones,Windows Phone,iOS,Android

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• XNA shield effect with a Primative sphere problem

  - by Sparky41

  I'm having issue with a shield effect i'm trying to develop. I want to do a shield effect that surrounds part of a model like this: http://i.imgur.com/jPvrf.png I currently got this: http://i.imgur.com/Jdin7.png (The red likes are a simple texture a black background with a red cross in it, for testing purposes: http://i.imgur.com/ODtzk.png where the smaller cross in the middle shows the contact point) This sphere is drawn via a primitive (DrawIndexedPrimitives) This is how i calculate the pieces of the sphere using a class i've called Sphere (this class is based off the code here: http://xbox.create.msdn.com/en-US/education/catalog/sample/primitives_3d) public class Sphere { // During the process of constructing a primitive model, vertex // and index data is stored on the CPU in these managed lists. List vertices = new List(); List indices = new List(); // Once all the geometry has been specified, the InitializePrimitive // method copies the vertex and index data into these buffers, which // store it on the GPU ready for efficient rendering. VertexBuffer vertexBuffer; IndexBuffer indexBuffer; BasicEffect basicEffect; public Vector3 position = Vector3.Zero; public Matrix RotationMatrix = Matrix.Identity; public Texture2D texture; /// <summary> /// Constructs a new sphere primitive, /// with the specified size and tessellation level. /// </summary> public Sphere(float diameter, int tessellation, Texture2D text, float up, float down, float portstar, float frontback) { texture = text; if (tessellation < 3) throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException("tessellation"); int verticalSegments = tessellation; int horizontalSegments = tessellation * 2; float radius = diameter / 2; // Start with a single vertex at the bottom of the sphere. AddVertex(Vector3.Down * ((radius / up) + 1), Vector3.Down, Vector2.Zero);//bottom position5 // Create rings of vertices at progressively higher latitudes. for (int i = 0; i < verticalSegments - 1; i++) { float latitude = ((i + 1) * MathHelper.Pi / verticalSegments) - MathHelper.PiOver2; float dy = (float)Math.Sin(latitude / up);//(up)5 float dxz = (float)Math.Cos(latitude); // Create a single ring of vertices at this latitude. for (int j = 0; j < horizontalSegments; j++) { float longitude = j * MathHelper.TwoPi / horizontalSegments; float dx = (float)(Math.Cos(longitude) * dxz) / portstar;//port and starboard (right)2 float dz = (float)(Math.Sin(longitude) * dxz) * frontback;//front and back1.4 Vector3 normal = new Vector3(dx, dy, dz); AddVertex(normal * radius, normal, new Vector2(j, i)); } } // Finish with a single vertex at the top of the sphere. AddVertex(Vector3.Up * ((radius / down) + 1), Vector3.Up, Vector2.One);//top position5 // Create a fan connecting the bottom vertex to the bottom latitude ring. for (int i = 0; i < horizontalSegments; i++) { AddIndex(0); AddIndex(1 + (i + 1) % horizontalSegments); AddIndex(1 + i); } // Fill the sphere body with triangles joining each pair of latitude rings. for (int i = 0; i < verticalSegments - 2; i++) { for (int j = 0; j < horizontalSegments; j++) { int nextI = i + 1; int nextJ = (j + 1) % horizontalSegments; AddIndex(1 + i * horizontalSegments + j); AddIndex(1 + i * horizontalSegments + nextJ); AddIndex(1 + nextI * horizontalSegments + j); AddIndex(1 + i * horizontalSegments + nextJ); AddIndex(1 + nextI * horizontalSegments + nextJ); AddIndex(1 + nextI * horizontalSegments + j); } } // Create a fan connecting the top vertex to the top latitude ring. for (int i = 0; i < horizontalSegments; i++) { AddIndex(CurrentVertex - 1); AddIndex(CurrentVertex - 2 - (i + 1) % horizontalSegments); AddIndex(CurrentVertex - 2 - i); } //InitializePrimitive(graphicsDevice); } /// <summary> /// Adds a new vertex to the primitive model. This should only be called /// during the initialization process, before InitializePrimitive. /// </summary> protected void AddVertex(Vector3 position, Vector3 normal, Vector2 texturecoordinate) { vertices.Add(new VertexPositionNormal(position, normal, texturecoordinate)); } /// <summary> /// Adds a new index to the primitive model. This should only be called /// during the initialization process, before InitializePrimitive. /// </summary> protected void AddIndex(int index) { if (index > ushort.MaxValue) throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException("index"); indices.Add((ushort)index); } /// <summary> /// Queries the index of the current vertex. This starts at /// zero, and increments every time AddVertex is called. /// </summary> protected int CurrentVertex { get { return vertices.Count; } } public void InitializePrimitive(GraphicsDevice graphicsDevice) { // Create a vertex declaration, describing the format of our vertex data. // Create a vertex buffer, and copy our vertex data into it. vertexBuffer = new VertexBuffer(graphicsDevice, typeof(VertexPositionNormal), vertices.Count, BufferUsage.None); vertexBuffer.SetData(vertices.ToArray()); // Create an index buffer, and copy our index data into it. indexBuffer = new IndexBuffer(graphicsDevice, typeof(ushort), indices.Count, BufferUsage.None); indexBuffer.SetData(indices.ToArray()); // Create a BasicEffect, which will be used to render the primitive. basicEffect = new BasicEffect(graphicsDevice); //basicEffect.EnableDefaultLighting(); } /// <summary> /// Draws the primitive model, using the specified effect. Unlike the other /// Draw overload where you just specify the world/view/projection matrices /// and color, this method does not set any renderstates, so you must make /// sure all states are set to sensible values before you call it. /// </summary> public void Draw(Effect effect) { GraphicsDevice graphicsDevice = effect.GraphicsDevice; // Set our vertex declaration, vertex buffer, and index buffer. graphicsDevice.SetVertexBuffer(vertexBuffer); graphicsDevice.Indices = indexBuffer; graphicsDevice.BlendState = BlendState.Additive; foreach (EffectPass effectPass in effect.CurrentTechnique.Passes) { effectPass.Apply(); int primitiveCount = indices.Count / 3; graphicsDevice.DrawIndexedPrimitives(PrimitiveType.TriangleList, 0, 0, vertices.Count, 0, primitiveCount); } graphicsDevice.BlendState = BlendState.Opaque; } /// <summary> /// Draws the primitive model, using a BasicEffect shader with default /// lighting. Unlike the other Draw overload where you specify a custom /// effect, this method sets important renderstates to sensible values /// for 3D model rendering, so you do not need to set these states before /// you call it. /// </summary> public void Draw(Camera camera, Color color) { // Set BasicEffect parameters. basicEffect.World = GetWorld(); basicEffect.View = camera.view; basicEffect.Projection = camera.projection; basicEffect.DiffuseColor = color.ToVector3(); basicEffect.TextureEnabled = true; basicEffect.Texture = texture; GraphicsDevice device = basicEffect.GraphicsDevice; device.DepthStencilState = DepthStencilState.Default; if (color.A < 255) { // Set renderstates for alpha blended rendering. device.BlendState = BlendState.AlphaBlend; } else { // Set renderstates for opaque rendering. device.BlendState = BlendState.Opaque; } // Draw the model, using BasicEffect. Draw(basicEffect); } public virtual Matrix GetWorld() { return /*world */ Matrix.CreateScale(1f) * RotationMatrix * Matrix.CreateTranslation(position); } } public struct VertexPositionNormal : IVertexType { public Vector3 Position; public Vector3 Normal; public Vector2 TextureCoordinate; /// <summary> /// Constructor. /// </summary> public VertexPositionNormal(Vector3 position, Vector3 normal, Vector2 textCoor) { Position = position; Normal = normal; TextureCoordinate = textCoor; } /// <summary> /// A VertexDeclaration object, which contains information about the vertex /// elements contained within this struct. /// </summary> public static readonly VertexDeclaration VertexDeclaration = new VertexDeclaration ( new VertexElement(0, VertexElementFormat.Vector3, VertexElementUsage.Position, 0), new VertexElement(12, VertexElementFormat.Vector3, VertexElementUsage.Normal, 0), new VertexElement(24, VertexElementFormat.Vector2, VertexElementUsage.TextureCoordinate, 0) ); VertexDeclaration IVertexType.VertexDeclaration { get { return VertexPositionNormal.VertexDeclaration; } } } A simple call to the class to initialise it. The Draw method is called in the master draw method in the Gamecomponent. My current thoughts on this are: The direction of the weapon hitting the ship is used to get the middle position for the texture Wrap a texture around the drawn sphere based on this point of contact Problem is i'm not sure how to do this. Can anyone help or if you have a better idea please tell me i'm open for opinion? :-) Thanks.

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• Will Online Learning Save Higher Education (and does it need saving)?

  - by user739873

  A lot (an awful lot) of education industry rag real estate has been devoted to the topics of online learning, MOOC’s, Udacity, edX, etc., etc. and to the uninitiated you’d think that the education equivalent of the cure for cancer had been discovered. There are certainly skeptics (whose voice is usually swiftly trampled upon by the masses) who feel we could over steer and damage or destroy something vital to teaching and learning (i.e. the classroom experience and direct interaction with human beings known as instructors), but for the most part prevailing opinion seems to be that online learning will take over the world and that higher education will never be the same. Now I’m sure that since you all know I work for a technology company you think I’m going to come down hard on the side of online learning proselytizers. Yes, I do believe that this revolution can and will provide access to massive numbers of individuals that either couldn’t afford (from a fiscal or time perspective) a traditional education, and that in some cases the online modality will actually be an improvement over certain traditional forms (such as courses taught by an adjunct or teaching assistant that has no business being a teacher). But I think several things need immediate attention or we’re likely to get so caught up in the delivery that we miss some of the real issues (and opportunities) around online learning. First and foremost, we’ve got to give some thought to how traditional information systems are going to accommodate thousands (possibly hundreds of thousands) of individual students each taking courses from many, many different “deliverers” with an expectation that successful completion of these courses will result in credit at many or most institutions. There’s also a huge opportunity to refine the delivery platform (no, LMS is not a commodity when you are talking about online delivery being your sole mode of operation) as well as the course itself by mining all kinds of data from the interactions that the students have with the material each time they take it. Social data analytics tools will be key in achieving this goal. What about accreditation (badging or competencies vs. traditional degrees)? And again, will the information systems in place today adapt to changes in this area fast enough? The type of scale that this shift in learning could drive has the potential to abruptly overwhelm just about every system in place today in higher education. I would like to (with a not so gentle reminder) refer you back to a blog entry I wrote when I first stepped into my current role at Oracle in which I talked about how higher ed needs an “Oracle” more than at any other time in it’s evolution (despite the somewhat mercantilist reputation it has in some circles). There just aren’t that many organizations that can deliver the kinds of solutions “at scale” that this brave new world of online education will demand. The future may be closer than we think. Cole

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• Should a server "be lenient" in what it accepts and "discard faulty input silently"?

  - by romkyns

  I was under the impression that by now everyone agrees this maxim was a mistake. But I recently saw this answer which has a "be lenient" comment upvoted 137 times (as of today). In my opinion, the leniency in what browsers accept was the direct cause of the utter mess that HTML and some other web standards were a few years ago, and have only recently begun to properly crystallize out of that mess. The way I see it, being lenient in what you accept will lead to this. The second part of the maxim is "discard faulty input silently, without returning an error message unless this is required by the specification", and this feels borderline offensive. Any programmer who has banged their head on the wall when something fails silently will know what I mean. So, am I completely wrong about this? Should my program be lenient in what it accepts and swallow errors silently? Or am I mis-interpreting what this is supposed to mean? The original question said "program", and I take everyone's point about that. It can make sense for programs to be lenient. What I really meant, however, is APIs: interfaces exposed to other programs, rather than people. HTTP is an example. The protocol is an interface that only other programs use. People never directly provide the dates that go into headers like "If-Modified-Since". So, the question is: should the server implementing a standard be lenient and allow dates in several other formats, in addition to the one that's actually required by the standard? I believe the "be lenient" is supposed to apply to this situation, rather than human interfaces. If the server is lenient, it might seem like an overall improvement, but I think in practice it only leads to client implementations that end up relying on the leniency and thus failing to work with another server that's lenient in slightly different ways. So, should a server exposing some API be lenient or is that a very bad idea? Now onto lenient handling of user input. Consider YouTrack (a bug tracking software). It uses a language for text entry that is reminiscent of Markdown. Except that it's "lenient". For example, writing - foo - bar - baz is not a documented way of creating a bulleted list, and yet it worked. Consequently, it ended up being used a lot throughout our internal bugtracker. Next version comes out, and this lenient feature starts working slightly differently, breaking a bunch of lists that (mis)used this (non)feature. The documented way to create bulleted lists still works, of course. So, should my software be lenient in what user inputs it accepts?

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• Proven Approach to Financial Progress Using Modern Best Practice

  - by Oracle Accelerate for Midsize Companies

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE by Larry Simcox, Sr. Director, Oracle Midsize Programs Top performing organizations generate 25 percent higher profit margins and grow at twice the rate of their competitors. How do they do it? Recently, Dr. Stephen G. Timme, President of FinListics Solutions and Adjunct Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, joined me on a webcast to answer that question. I've know Dr. Timme since my days at G-log when we worked together to help customers determine the ROI of transportation management solutions. We were also joined by Steve Cox, Vice President of Oracle Midsize Programs, who recently published an Oracle E-book, "Modern Best Practice Explained". In this webcast, Cox provides his perspective on how best performing companies are moving from best practice to modern best practice.  Watch the webcast replay and you'll learn about the easy to follow, top down approach to: Identify processes that should be targeted for improvement Leverage a modern best practice maturity model to start a path to progress Link financial performance gaps to operational KPIs Improve cash flow by benchmarking key financial metrics Develop intelligent estimates of achievable cash flow benefits Click HERE to watch a replay of the webcast. You might also be interested in the following: Video: Modern Best Practices Defined  AppCast: Modern Best Practices for Growing Companies Looking for more news and information about Oracle Solutions for Midsize Companies? Read the latest Oracle for Midsize Companies Newsletter Sign-up to receive the latest communications from Oracle’s industry leaders and experts Larry Simcox Senior Director, Oracle Midsize Programs responsible for supporting and creating marketing content ,communications, sales and partner program support for Oracle's go to market activities for midsize companies. I have over 17 years experience helping customers identify the value and ROI from their IT investment. I live in Charlotte NC with my family and my dog Dingo. The views expressed here are my own, and not necessarily those of Oracle. /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}

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• Why do old programming languages continue to be revised?

  - by SunAvatar

  This question is not, "Why do people still use old programming languages?" I understand that quite well. In fact the two programming languages I know best are C and Scheme, both of which date back to the 70s. Recently I was reading about the changes in C99 and C11 versus C89 (which seems to still be the most-used version of C in practice and the version I learned from K&R). Looking around, it seems like every programming language in heavy use gets a new specification at least once per decade or so. Even Fortran is still getting new revisions, despite the fact that most people using it are still using FORTRAN 77. Contrast this with the approach of, say, the typesetting system TeX. In 1989, with the release of TeX 3.0, Donald Knuth declared that TeX was feature-complete and future releases would contain only bug fixes. Even beyond this, he has stated that upon his death, "all remaining bugs will become features" and absolutely no further updates will be made. Others are free to fork TeX and have done so, but the resulting systems are renamed to indicate that they are different from the official TeX. This is not because Knuth thinks TeX is perfect, but because he understands the value of a stable, predictable system that will do the same thing in fifty years that it does now. Why do most programming language designers not follow the same principle? Of course, when a language is relatively new, it makes sense that it will go through a period of rapid change before settling down. And no one can really object to minor changes that don't do much more than codify existing pseudo-standards or correct unintended readings. But when a language still seems to need improvement after ten or twenty years, why not just fork it or start over, rather than try to change what is already in use? If some people really want to do object-oriented programming in Fortran, why not create "Objective Fortran" for that purpose, and leave Fortran itself alone? I suppose one could say that, regardless of future revisions, C89 is already a standard and nothing stops people from continuing to use it. This is sort of true, but connotations do have consequences. GCC will, in pedantic mode, warn about syntax that is either deprecated or has a subtly different meaning in C99, which means C89 programmers can't just totally ignore the new standard. So there must be some benefit in C99 that is sufficient to impose this overhead on everyone who uses the language. This is a real question, not an invitation to argue. Obviously I do have an opinion on this, but at the moment I'm just trying to understand why this isn't just how things are done already. I suppose the question is: What are the (real or perceived) advantages of updating a language standard, as opposed to creating a new language based on the old?

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• JavaOne 2012: Camel, Twitter, Coherence, Wicket and GlassFish

  - by Bruno.Borges

  Before joining Oracle as Product Manager for WebLogic and GlassFish for Latin America, at the beggining of this year I proposed two talks to JavaOne USA that I had been presenting in Brazil for quite a while. One of them I presented last year at ApacheCon in Vancouver, Canada as well in JavaOne Brazil. In June I got the news that they were accepted as Alternate Sessions. Surprisingly enough, few weeks later and at the same time I joined Oracle, I received the news that they were officially accepted and put on schedule. Tomorrow I'll be flying to San Francisco, to my first JavaOne in the United States, and I wanted to share with you what I'm going to present there. My two sessions are these ones: Wed, 10/03, 4:30pm - CON2989 Leverage Enterprise Integration Patterns with Apache Camel and TwitterOn this one, you will be introducted to the Apache Camel framework that I had been talking about in Brazil at conferences, before joining Oracle, and to a component I contributed to integrate with Twitter. Also, you will have a preview of a new component I've been working on to integrate Camel with the Oracle Coherence distributed cache. Thu, 10/04, 3:30pm - CON3395 How Scala, Wicket, and Java EE Can Improve Web DevelopmentThis one I've been working on for quite a while. It was based on an idea to have an architecture that could be as agile as frameworks and technologies such as Ruby on Rails, PHP or Python, for rapid web development. You will be introduced to the Apache Wicket framework, another Apache project I enjoy working with and gave lots of talks at Brazilian conferences, including JavaOne Brazil, JustJava, QCon SP, and The Developers Conference. You will also be introduced to the Scala language and how to create nice DSLs to boost productiveness. And last but not least, the Java EE 6 platform, that offers an awesome improvement from previous versions with its CDI, JPA, EJB3 and JAX-RS features for web development. Other events I will be participating during my stay in SF: Geeks Bike Ride GlassFish Community Event GlassFish and Friends Party    If you have any other event to suggest, please do suggest! It's my first JavaOne and I'm really looking forward to enjoying everything. See you guys in a few days!!

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• WebCenter Content Web Search Performance: Do you really need that folder path info?

  - by Nicolas Montoya

  End-users want content at their fingertips at the speed of thought if possible. When running search operations in the WebCenter Conter Web Interface every second or fraction of a second improvement does matter. When doing some trace analysis on the systemdatabase tracing on a customer environment, we came across some SQL queries that were unnecessarily being triggered! These were related to determining the folder path for every entry part of the search result set. However, this folder path was not even being used as part of the displayed information in the user interface.Why was the folder path information being collected when it was not even displayed in the UI? We found that the configuration parameter 'FolderPathInSearchResults' was set to 'true' under Administration > Admin Server > General Configuration > Additional Configuration Variables as shown below:When executing a quicksearch by keyword we were getting 100 out of 2280 entries in the first page of the result set.When thera 'FolderPathInSearchResults' configuration parameter is set to 'true', the following queries appear in the systemdatabase tracing:100 executions for a query on the FolderFiles table for each of the documents displayed in the first page:>systemdatabase/6       12.13 11:17:48.188      IdcServer-199   1.45 ms. SELECT * FROM FolderFiles WHERE dDocName='SLC02VGVUSORAC140641' AND fLinkRank=0[Executed. Returned row(s): true]382 executions for a query of the folders tables - most of the documents that match the keyword criteria are at a folder depth level of three or four:>systemdatabase/6       12.13 11:17:48.114      IdcServer-199   2.57 ms. SELECT FolderFolders.*,FolderMetaDefaults.* FROM FolderFolders,FolderMetaDefaults WHERE FolderFolders.fFolderGUID=FolderMetaDefaults.fFolderGUID(+) AND((FolderFolders.fFolderGUID = '1EB8E527E19B09ED3FE82EE310AEA13A' ) )[Executed.Returned row(s): true]By setting this 'FolderPathInSearchResults' configuration parameter to 'false', the above queries were no longer reported in the Server Output System Audit Information.Now, let's consider a practical scenario:Search result set page = 100Average folder depth der document in the search result set: 5The number of folder path related queries will be: 100 + 5*500 = 600If each query takes slightly over 3 ms. You would have 2000 ms (2 seconds) spent in server time to get this information.The overall performance impact goes beyond seerver time execution, as this information needs to travel from the server to the browser. If the documents are further nested into the folder hierarchy, additional hundreds of queries may be executed. If folder path is not being displayed in the end-user interface profile, your system may be better of with the 'FolderPathInSearchResults' configuration parameter disabled.

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• WebCenter Customer Spotlight: Alberta Agriculture and Rural Developmen

  - by me

  Author: Peter Reiser - Social Business Evangelist, Oracle WebCenter  Solution SummaryAlberta Agriculture and Rural Development is a government ministry that works with producers and consumers to create a strong, competitive, and sustainable agriculture and food industry in the province of Alberta, Canada The primary business challenge faced by the Alberta Ministry of Agriculture was that of managing the rapid growth of their information.  They needed to incorporate a system that would work across 22 different divisions within the ministry and deliver an improved and more efficient experience for Desktop, Web and Mobile users, while addressing their regulatory compliance needs as part of the Canadian government. The customer implemented a centralized Enterprise Content Management solution based on Oracle WebCenter Content and developed a strong and repeatable information life cycle management methodology across all their 22 divisions and agencies. With the implemented solution, Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development  centrally manages over 20 million documents for 22 divisions and agencies and they have improved time required to find records,  reliability of information, improved speed and accuracy of reporting and data security. Company OverviewAlberta Agriculture and Rural Development is a government ministry that works with producers and consumers to create a strong, competitive, and sustainable agriculture and food industry in the province of Alberta, Canada.  Business ChallengesThe business users were overwhelmed by growth in documents (over 20 million files across 22 divisions and agencies) and it was difficult to find and manage documents and versions. There was a strong need for a personalized easy-to-use, secure and dependable method of managing and consuming content via desktop, Web, and mobile, while improving efficiency and maintaining regulatory compliance by removing the risk of non-uniform approaches to retention and disposition. Solution DeployedAs a first step Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development developed a business case with clear defined business drivers: Reduce time required to find records Locate “lost” records Capture knowledge lost through attrition Increase the ease of retrieval Reduce personal copies Increase reliability of information Improve speed and accuracy of reporting Improve data security The customer implemented a centralized Enterprise Content Management solution based on Oracle WebCenter Content. They used an incremental implementation approach aligned with their divisional and agency structure which allowed continuous process improvement. This led to a very strong and repeatable information life cycle management methodology across all their 22 divisions and agencies. Business ResultsAlberta Agriculture and Rural Development achieved impressive business results: Centrally managing over 20 million files for 22 divisions and agencies Federated model to manage documents in SharePoint and other applications Doing records management for both paper and electronic records Reduced time required to find records Increased the ease of retrieval Increased reliability of information Improved speed and accuracy of reporting Improved data security Additional Information Oracle Open World 2012 Presentation Oracle WebCenter Content

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• Accounting for waves when doing planar reflections

  - by CloseReflector

  I've been studying Nvidia's examples from the SDK, in particular the Island11 project and I've found something curious about a piece of HLSL code which corrects the reflections up and down depending on the state of the wave's height. Naturally, after examining the brief paragraph of code: // calculating correction that shifts reflection up/down according to water wave Y position float4 projected_waveheight = mul(float4(input.positionWS.x,input.positionWS.y,input.positionWS.z,1),g_ModelViewProjectionMatrix); float waveheight_correction=-0.5*projected_waveheight.y/projected_waveheight.w; projected_waveheight = mul(float4(input.positionWS.x,-0.8,input.positionWS.z,1),g_ModelViewProjectionMatrix); waveheight_correction+=0.5*projected_waveheight.y/projected_waveheight.w; reflection_disturbance.y=max(-0.15,waveheight_correction+reflection_disturbance.y); My first guess was that it compensates for the planar reflection when it is subjected to vertical perturbation (the waves), shifting the reflected geometry to a point where is nothing and the water is just rendered as if there is nothing there or just the sky: Now, that's the sky reflecting where we should see the terrain's green/grey/yellowish reflection lerped with the water's baseline. My problem is now that I cannot really pinpoint what is the logic behind it. Projecting the actual world space position of a point of the wave/water geometry and then multiplying by -.5f, only to take another projection of the same point, this time with its y coordinate changed to -0.8 (why -0.8?). Clues in the code seem to indicate it was derived with trial and error because there is redundancy. For example, the author takes the negative half of the projected y coordinate (after the w divide): float waveheight_correction=-0.5*projected_waveheight.y/projected_waveheight.w; And then does the same for the second point (only positive, to get a difference of some sort, I presume) and combines them: waveheight_correction+=0.5*projected_waveheight.y/projected_waveheight.w; By removing the divide by 2, I see no difference in quality improvement (if someone cares to correct me, please do). The crux of it seems to be the difference in the projected y, why is that? This redundancy and the seemingly arbitrary selection of -.8f and -0.15f lead me to conclude that this might be a combination of heuristics/guess work. Is there a logical underpinning to this or is it just a desperate hack? Here is an exaggeration of the initial problem which the code fragment fixes, observe on the lowest tessellation level. Hopefully, it might spark an idea I'm missing. The -.8f might be a reference height from which to deduce how much to disturb the texture coordinate sampling the planarly reflected geometry render and -.15f might be the lower bound, a security measure.

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