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  • Workshops, online content show how Oracle infuses simplicity, mobility, extensibility into user experience

    - by mvaughan
    By Kathy Miedema & Misha Vaughan, Oracle Applications User Experience Oracle has made a huge investment into the user experience of its many different software product families, and recent releases showcase big changes and features that aim to promote end user engagement and efficiency by streamlining navigation and simplifying the user interface. But making Oracle’s enterprise software great-looking and usable doesn’t stop when Oracle products go out the door. The Applications User Experience (UX) team recognizes that our customers may need to customize software to fit their work processes. And that’s why we provide tools such as user experience design patterns to help you maintain the Oracle user experience as you tailor your application to fit your business needs. Often, however, customers may need some context around user experience. How has the Oracle user experience been designed and constructed? Why is a good user experience important for users? How does understanding what goes into the user experience benefit the people who purchase the software for users? There’s a short answer to these questions, and you can read about it on Usable Apps. But truly understanding Oracle’s investment and seeing how it applies across product families occasionally requires a deeper dive into the Oracle user experience, especially if you’re an influencer or decision-maker about Oracle products. To help frame these decisions, the Communications & Outreach team has developed several targeted workshops that explore what Oracle means when it talks about user experience, and provides a roadmap into where the Oracle user experience is going. These workshops require non-disclosure agreements, and have been delivered to Oracle sales folks, Oracle partners, Oracle ACE Directors and ACEs, and a few customers. Some of these audience members have been developers or have a technical background; just as many did not. Here’s a breakdown of the kind of training you can get around the Oracle user experience from the OAUX Communications & Outreach team.For Partners: George Papazzian, Principal, Naviscent with Joyce Ohgi, Oracle Oracle Fusion Applications HCM Pre-Sales Seminar:  In concert with Worldwide Alliances  and  Channels under Applications Partner Enablement Director Jonathan Vinoskey’s guidance, the Applications User Experience team delivers a two-day workshop.  Day one focuses on Oracle Fusion Applications HCM and pre-sales strategy, and Day two focuses on positioning and leveraging Oracle’s investment in the Oracle Fusion Applications user experience.  The next workshops will occur on the following dates: December 4-5, 2013 @ Manchester, UK January 29-30, 2014 @ Reston, Virginia February 2014 @ Guadalajara, Mexico (email: Shannon Whiteman) March 11-12, 2014 @ Dubai, United Arab Emirates April 1-2, 2014 @ Chicago, Illinois Partner Advisory Board: A two-day board meeting in the U.S. and U.K. to discuss four main user experience areas for Oracle Fusion Applications: simplicity, visualization & analytics, mobility, & futures. This event is limited to Oracle Diamond Partners, UX bloggers, and key UX influencers and requires legal documentation.  We will be talking about the Oracle applications UX strategy and roadmap. Partner Implementation Training on User Interface: How to Build Great-Looking, Usable Apps:  In this two-day, hands-on workshop built around Oracle’s Application Development Framework, learn how to build desktop and mobile user interfaces and mobile user interfaces based on Oracle’s experience with Fusion Applications. This workshop is for partners with a technology background who are looking for ways to tailor Fusion Applications using ADF, or have built their own custom solutions using ADF. It includes an introduction to UX design patterns and provides tools to build usability-tested UX designs. Nov 5-6, 2013 @ Redwood Shores, CA, USA January 28-29th, 2014 @ Reston, Virginia, USA February 25-26, 2014 @ Guadalajara, Mexico March 9-10, 2014 @ Dubai, United Arab Emirates To register, contact [email protected] Simplified UI Customization & Extensibility:  Pilot workshop:  We will be reviewing the proposed content for communicating the user experience tool kit available with the next release of Oracle Fusion Applications.  Our core focus will be on what toolkit components our system implementors and independent software vendors will need to respond to customer demand, whether they are extending Fusion Applications, or building custom applications, that will need to leverage the simplified UI. Dec 11th, 2013 @ Reading, UK For information: contact [email protected] Private lab tour and demos: Interested in seeing what’s going on in the Apps UX Labs?  If you are headed to the San Francisco Bay Area, let us know. We can arrange a spin through our usability labs at headquarters. OAUX Expo: This open-house forum gives partners a look at what the UX team is working on, and showcases the next-generation user experiences in a demo environment where attendees can see and touch the applications. UX Direct: Use the same methods that Oracle uses to develop its own user experiences. We help you define your users and their needs, and then provide direction on how to tailor the best user experience you can for them. For CustomersAngela Johnston, Gozel Aamoth, Teena Singh, and Yen Chan, Oracle Lab tours: See demos of soon-to-be-released products, and take a spin on usability research equipment such as our eye-tracker. Watch this video to get an idea of what you’ll see. Get our newsletter: Learn about newly released products and see where you can meet us at user group conferences. Participate in a feedback session: Join a focus group or customer feedback session to get an early look at user experience designs for the next generation of software, and provide your thoughts on how well it will work. Join the OUAB: The Oracle Usability Advisory Board meets several times a year to discuss trends in the workforce and provide direction on user experience designs. UX Direct: Use the same methods that Oracle uses to develop its own user experiences. We help you define your users and their needs, and then provide direction on how to tailor the best user experience you can for them. For Developers (customers, partners, and consultants): Plinio Arbizu, SP Solutions, Richard Bingham, Oracle, Balaji Kamepalli, EiSTechnoogies, Praveen Pillalamarri, EiSTechnologies How to Build Great-Looking, Usable Apps: This workshop is for attendees with a strong technology background who are looking for ways to tailor customer software using ADF. It includes an introduction to UX design patterns and provides tools to build usability-tested UX designs.  See above for dates and times. UX design patterns web site: Cut the length of your project down by months. Use these patterns to build out the task flow you need to develop for your users. The patterns have already been usability-tested and represent the best practices that the Oracle UX research team has found in its studies. UX Direct: Use the same methods that Oracle uses to develop its own user experiences. We help you define your users and their needs, and then provide direction on how to tailor the best user experience you can for them. For Oracle Sales Mike Klein, Jeremy Ashley, Brent White, Oracle Contact your local sales person for more information about the Oracle user experience and the training available from the Applications User Experience Communications & Outreach team. See customer-friendly user experience collateral ranging from the new simplified UI in Oracle Fusion Applications Release 7, to E-Business Suite user experience highlights, to Siebel, PeopleSoft, and JD Edwards user experience highlights.   Receive access to the same pre-sales and implementation training we provide to partners. For Oracle Sales only: Oracle-only training on the Oracle Fusion Applications UX Innovation Sales Kit.

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  • Avoid the “Social Silo” - Learn Why and How

    - by Brian Dayton
    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;} I’m not going to spend any more real estate than needed on this—social media is big. Facebook hit the Billion user mark in October, that’s 1 out of every 7 humans on the planet. This past Summer (in the Northern hemisphere) Twitter passed the 400 Million Tweet/day mark. The list of social properties and data points goes on and on. 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;} With social your customer, prospect, or constituent has pervasive access—through mobile—to a global audience, the ability to influence friends, friends of friends, and even people they will never meet. They also have the unique opportunity to forge a deeper relationship with your business—telling you what they like, what they don’t like, how you can help, and what they’d like to see more of. Are you listening? 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;} What’s the Bottom Line for Business? Businesses need to be where their customers are—on social properties. They need to be available and responsive in those channels—24x7x365. They need to engage and communicate in new ways—sometimes in less than 140 characters and with empathy, not a 1-way megaphone. Finally, businesses need to look at social as an extension of their existing business practices. Not as a silo’d communication channel limited to marketing. Social Can’t Be a Silo – Learn Why @ Oracle CloudWorld When a business is on social networks they represent the whole business. That’s how a customer, constituent, partner or potential candidate sees it. Those organizations that have moved on the opportunity to build closer relationships through social marketing have already made the first step. Social Selling, Service, eCommerce, and Recruiting are external-facing opportunities that leading organizations are moving on right now. This strategy, one of weaving social into and across your business processes—and leveraging social concepts and technologies for internal collaboration—is something you can learn about during an Oracle CloudWorld event in a city near you. You’ll hear and see social relationship management concepts, best-practices, and recommendations woven into topics, discussions, and demonstrations throughout the event—from Marketing and Sales to Service and Human Resources. Stay Tuned and Avoid Potholes By all indications social is here to stay but it’s moving fast and social business strategies are evolving rapidly. At Oracle CloudWorld you’ll also get the opportunity to learn how to avoid some of the potholes on the road to #socialbusiness. Stay tuned to this blog. In future posts I’ll cover some of those potholes including the challenges of Social@Scale and Parallel Processes. Jump-start your social business strategy or learn how to refine and expand what you’re doing already at Oracle CloudWorld. Want to learn more about what Oracle is doing in social? Check out www.oracle.com/social or, if you're looking for a quick read my co-worker, Pat Ma, has a great post on this blog summarizing some popular Social Relationship Management use cases.

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  • Five Ways Enterprise 2.0 Can Transform Your Business - Q&A from the Webcast

    - by [email protected]
    A few weeks ago, Vince Casarez and I presented with KMWorld on the Five Ways Enterprise 2.0 Can Transform Your Business. It was an enjoyable, interactive webcast in which Vince and I discussed the ways Enterprise 2.0 can transform your business and more importantly, highlighted key customer examples of how to do so. If you missed the webcast, you can catch a replay here. We had a lot of audience participation in some of the polls we conducted and in the Q&A session. We weren't able to address all of the questions during the broadcast, so we attempted to answer them here: Q: Which area within your firm focuses on Web 2.0? Meaning, do you find new departments developing just to manage the web 2.0 (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) user experience or are you structuring current departments? A: There are three distinct efforts within Oracle. The first is around delivery of these Web 2.0 services for enterprise deployments. This is the focus of the WebCenter team. The second effort is injecting these Web 2.0 services into use cases that drive the different enterprise applications. This effort is focused on how to manage these external services and bring them into a cohesive flow for marketing programs, customer care, and purchasing. The third effort is how we consume these services internally to enhance Oracle's business delivery. It leverages the technologies and use cases of the first two but also pushes the envelope with regards to future directions of these other two areas. Q: In a business, Web 2.0 is mostly like action logs. How can we leverage the official process practice versus the logs of a recent action? Example: a system configuration modified last night on a call out versus the official practice that everybody would use in the morning.A: The key thing to remember is that most Web 2.0 actions / activity streams today are based on collaboration and communication type actions. At least with public social sites like Facebook and Twitter. What we're delivering as part of the WebCenter Suite are not just these types of activities but also enterprise application activities. These enterprise application activities come from different application modules: purchasing, HR, order entry, sales opportunity, etc. The actions within these systems are normally tied to a business object or process: purchase order/customer, employee or department, customer and supplier, customer and product, respectively. Therefore, the activities or "logs" as you name them are able to be "typed" so that as a viewer, you can filter or decide to see only certain types of information. In your example, you could have a view that only showed you recent "configuration" changes and this could be right next to a view that showed off the items to be watched every morning. Q: It's great to hear about customers using the software but is there any plan for future webinars to show what the products/installs look like? That would be very helpful.A: We don't have a webinar planned to show off the install process. However, we have a viewlet that's posted on Oracle Technology Network. You can see it here:http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/testcontent/wcs-install-098014.htmlAnd we've got excellent documentation that walks you through the steps here:http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E14571_01/install.1111/e12001/install.htmAnd there's a whole set of demos and examples of what WebCenter can do at this URL:http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/webcenter/release11-demos-097468.html Q: How do you anticipate managing metadata across the enterprise to make content findable?A: We need to first make sure we are all talking about the same thing when we use a word like "metadata". Here's why...  For a developer, metadata means information that describes key elements of the portal or application and what the portal or application can do. For content systems, metadata means key terms that provide a taxonomy or folksonomy about the information that is being indexed, ordered, and managed. For business intelligence systems, metadata means key terms that provide labels to groups of data that most non-mathematicians need to understand. And for SOA, metadata means labels for parts of the processes that business owners should understand that connect development terminology. There are also additional requirements for metadata to be available to the team building these new solutions as well as requirements to make this metadata available to the running system. These requirements are often separated by "design time" and "run time" respectively. So clearly, a general goal of managing metadata across the enterprise is very challenging. We've invested a huge amount of resources around Oracle Metadata Services (MDS) to be able to provide a more generic system for all of these elements. No other vendor has anything like this technology foundation in their products. This provides a huge benefit to our customers as they will now be able to find content, processes, people, and information from a common set of search interfaces with consistent enterprise wide results. Q: Can you give your definition of terms as to document and content, please?A: Content applies to a broad category of information from Word documents, presentations and reports through attachments to invoices and/or purchase orders. Content is essentially any type of digital asset including images, video, and voice. A document is just one type of content. Q: Do you have special integration tools to realize an interaction between UCM and WebCenter Spaces/Services?A: Yes, we've dedicated a whole team of engineers to exploit the key features of Oracle UCM within WebCenter.  While ensuring that WebCenter can connect to other non-Oracle systems, we've made sure that with the combined set of Oracle technology, no other solution can match the combined power and integration.  This is part of the Oracle Fusion Middleware strategy which is to provide best in class capabilities for Content and Portals.  When combined together, the synergy between the two products enables users to quickly add capabilities when they are needed.  For example, simple document sharing is part of the combined product offering, but if legal discovery or archiving is required, Oracle UCM product includes these capabilities that can be quickly added.  There's no need to move content around or add another system to support this, it's just a feature that gets turned on within Oracle UCM. Q: All customers have some interaction with their applications and have many older versions, how do you see some of these new Enterprise 2.0 capabilities adding value to existing enterprise application deployments?A: Just as Service Oriented Architectures allowed for connecting the processes of different applications systems to work together, there's a need for a similar approach with regards to these enterprise 2.0 capabilities. Oracle WebCenter is built on a core architecture that allows for SOA of these Enterprise 2.0 services so that one set of scalable services can be used and integrated directly into any type of application. In this way, users can get immediate value out of the Enterprise 2.0 capabilities without having to wait for the next major release or upgrade. These centrally managed WebCenter services expose a set of standard interfaces that make it extremely easy to add them into existing applications no matter what technology the application has been implemented. Q: We've heard about Oracle Next Generation applications called "Fusion Applications", can you tell me how all this works together?A: Oracle WebCenter powers the core collaboration and social computing services found within Fusion Applications. It is the core user experience technology for how all the application screens have been implemented. And the core concept of task flows allows for all the Fusion Applications modules to be adaptable and composable by business users and IT without needing to be a professional developer. Oracle WebCenter is at the heart of the new Fusion Applications. In addition, the same patterns and technologies are now being added to the existing applications including JD Edwards, Siebel, Peoplesoft, and eBusiness Suite. The core technology enables all these customers to have a much smoother upgrade path to Fusion Applications. They get immediate benefits of injecting new user interactions into their existing applications without having to completely move to Fusion Applications. And then when the time comes, their users will already be well versed in how the new capabilities work. Q: Does any of this work with non Oracle software? Other databases? Other application servers? etc.A: We have made sure that Oracle WebCenter delivers the broadest set of development choices so that no matter what technology you developers are using, WebCenter capabilities can be quickly and easily added to the site or application. In addition, we have certified Oracle WebCenter to run against non-Oracle databases like DB2 and SQLServer. We have stated plans for certification against MySQL as well. Later in CY 2011, Oracle will provide certification on non-Oracle application servers such as WebSphere and JBoss. Q: How do we balance User and IT requirements in regards to Enterprise 2.0 technologies?A: Wrong decisions are often made because employee knowledge is not tapped efficiently and opportunities to innovate are often missed because the right people do not work together. Collaboration amongst workers in the right business context is critical for success. While standalone Enterprise 2.0 technologies can improve collaboration for collaboration's sake, using social collaboration tools in the context of business applications and processes will improve business responsiveness and lead companies to a more competitive position. As these systems become more mission critical it is essential that they maintain the highest level of performance and availability while scaling to support larger communities. Q: What are the ways in which Enterprise 2.0 can improve business responsiveness?A: With a wide range of Enterprise 2.0 tools in the marketplace, CIOs need to deploy solutions that will meet the requirements from users as well as address the requirements from IT. Workers want a next-generation user experience that is personalized and aggregates their daily tools and tasks, while IT needs to ensure the solution is secure, scalable, flexible, reliable and easily integrated with existing systems. An open and integrated approach to deploying portals, content management, and collaboration can enhance your business by addressing both the needs of knowledge workers for better information and the IT mandate to conserve resources by simplifying, consolidating and centralizing infrastructure and administration.  

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  • What Makes a Good Design Critic? CHI 2010 Panel Review

    - by Applications User Experience
    Author: Daniel Schwartz, Senior Interaction Designer, Oracle Applications User Experience Oracle Applications UX Chief Evangelist Patanjali Venkatacharya organized and moderated an innovative and stimulating panel discussion titled "What Makes a Good Design Critic? Food Design vs. Product Design Criticism" at CHI 2010, the annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. The panelists included Janice Rohn, VP of User Experience at Experian; Tami Hardeman, a food stylist; Ed Seiber, a restaurant architect and designer; Jonathan Kessler, a food critic and writer at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution; and Larry Powers, Chef de Cuisine at Shaun's restaurant in Atlanta, Georgia. Building off the momentum of his highly acclaimed panel at CHI 2009 on what interaction design can learn from food design (for which I was on the other side as a panelist), Venkatacharya brought together new people with different roles in the restaurant and software interaction design fields. The session was also quite delicious -- but more on that later. Criticism, as it applies to food and product or interaction design, was the tasty topic for this forum and showed that strong parallels exist between food and interaction design criticism. Figure 1. The panelists in discussion: (left to right) Janice Rohn, Ed Seiber, Tami Hardeman, and Jonathan Kessler. The panelists had great insights to share from their respective fields, and they enthusiastically discussed as if they were at a casual collegial dinner. Jonathan Kessler stated that he prefers to have one professional critic's opinion in general than a large sampling of customers, however, "Web sites like Yelp get users excited by the collective approach. People are attracted to things desired by so many." Janice Rohn added that this collective desire was especially true for users of consumer products. Ed Seiber remarked that while people looked to the popular view for their target tastes and product choices, "professional critics like John [Kessler] still hold a big weight on public opinion." Chef Powers indicated that chefs take in feedback from all sources, adding, "word of mouth is very powerful. We also look heavily at the sales of the dishes to see what's moving; what's selling and thus successful." Hearing this discussion validates our design work at Oracle in that we listen to our users (our diners) and industry feedback (our critics) to ensure an optimal user experience of our products. Rohn considers that restaurateur Danny Meyer's book, Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business, which is about creating successful restaurant experiences, has many applicable parallels to user experience design. Meyer actually argues that the customer is not always right, but that "they must always feel heard." Seiber agreed, but noted "customers are not designers," and while designers need to listen to customer feedback, it is the designer's job to synthesize it. Seiber feels it's the critic's job to point out when something is missing or not well-prioritized. In interaction design, our challenges are quite similar, if not parallel. Software tasks are like puzzles that are in search of a solution on how to be best completed. As a food stylist, Tami Hardeman has the demanding and challenging task of presenting food to be as delectable as can be. To present food in its best light requires a lot of creativity and insight into consumer tastes. It's no doubt then that this former fashion stylist came up with the ultimate catch phrase to capture the emotion that clients want to draw from their users: "craveability." The phrase was a hit with the audience and panelists alike. Sometime later in the discussion, Seiber remarked, "designers strive to apply craveability to products, and I do so for restaurants in my case." Craveabilty is also very applicable to interaction design. Creating straightforward and smooth workflows for users of Oracle Applications is a primary goal for my colleagues. We want our users to really enjoy working with our products where it makes them more efficient and better at their jobs. That's our "craveability." Patanjali Venkatacharya asked the panel, "if a design's "craveability" appeals to some cultures but not to others, then what is the impact to the food or product design process?" Rohn stated that "taste is part nature and part nurture" and that the design must take the full context of a product's usage into consideration. Kessler added, "good design is about understanding the context" that the experience necessitates. Seiber remarked how important seat comfort is for diners and how the quality of seating will add so much to the complete dining experience. Sometimes if these non-food factors are not well executed, they can also take away from an otherwise pleasant dining experience. Kessler recounted a time when he was dining at a restaurant that actually had very good food, but the photographs hanging on all the walls did not fit in with the overall décor and created a negative overall dining experience. While the tastiness of the food is critical to a restaurant's success, it is a captivating complete user experience, as in interaction design, which will keep customers coming back and ultimately making the restaurant a hit. Figure 2. Patnajali Venkatacharya enjoyed the Sardian flatbread salad. As a surprise Chef Powers brought out a signature dish from Shaun's restaurant for all the panelists to sample and critique. The Sardinian flatbread dish showcased Atlanta's taste for fresh and local produce and cheese at its finest as a salad served on a crispy flavorful flat bread. Hardeman said it could be photographed from any angle, a high compliment coming from a food stylist. Seiber really enjoyed the colors that the dish brought together and thought it would be served very well in a casual restaurant on a summer's day. The panel really appreciated the taste and quality of the different components and how the rosemary brought all the flavors together. Seiber remarked that "a lot of effort goes into the appearance of simplicity." Rohn indicated that the same notion holds true with software user interface design. A tremendous amount of work goes into crafting straightforward interfaces, including user research, prototyping, design iterations, and usability studies. Design criticism for food and software interfaces clearly share many similarities. Both areas value expert opinions and user feedback. Both areas understand the importance of great design needing to work well in its context. Last but not least, both food and interaction design criticism value "craveability" and how having users excited about experiencing and enjoying the designs is an important goal. Now if we can just improve the taste of software user interfaces, people may choose to dine on their enterprise applications over a fresh organic salad.

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  • People, Process & Engagement: WebCenter Partner Keste

    - by Michael Snow
    v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Within the WebCenter group here at Oracle, discussions about people, process and engagement cross over many vertical industries and products. Amidst our growing partner ecosystem, the community provides us insight into great customer use cases every day. Such is the case with our partner, Keste, who provides us a guest post on our blog today with an overview of their innovative solution for a customer in the transportation industry. Keste is an Oracle software solutions and development company headquartered in Dallas, Texas. As a Platinum member of the Oracle® PartnerNetwork, Keste designs, develops and deploys custom solutions that automate complex business processes. Seamless Customer Self-Service Experience in the Trucking Industry with Oracle WebCenter Portal  Keste, Oracle Platinum Partner Customer Overview Omnitracs, Inc., a Qualcomm company provides mobility solutions for trucking fleets to companies in the transportation industry. Omnitracs’ mobility services include basic communications such as text as well as advanced monitoring services such as GPS tracking, temperature tracking of perishable goods, load tracking and weighting distribution, and many others. Customer Business Needs Already the leading provider of mobility solutions for large trucking fleets, they chose to target smaller trucking fleets as new customers. However their existing high-touch customer support method would not be a cost effective or scalable method to manage and service these smaller customers. Omnitracs needed to provide several self-service features to make customer support more scalable while keeping customer satisfaction levels high and the costs manageable. The solution also had to be very intuitive and easy to use. The systems that Omnitracs sells to these trucking customers require professional installation and smaller customers need to track and schedule the installation. Information captured in Oracle eBusiness Suite needed to be readily available for new customers to track these purchases and delivery details. Omnitracs wanted a high impact User Interface to significantly improve customer experience with the ability to integrate with EBS, provisioning systems as well as CRM systems that were already implemented. Omnitracs also wanted to build an architecture platform that could potentially be extended to other Portals. Omnitracs’ stated goal was to deliver an “eBay-like” or “Amazon-like” experience for all of their customers so that they could reach a much broader market beyond their large company customer base. Solution Overview In order to manage the increased complexity, the growing support needs of global customers and improve overall product time-to-market in a cost-effective manner, IT began to deliver a self-service model. This self service model not only transformed numerous business processes but is also allowing the business to keep up with the growing demands of the (internal and external) customers. This solution was a customer service Portal that provided self service capabilities for large and small customers alike for Activation of mobility products, managing add-on applications for the devices (much like the Apple App Store), transferring services when trucks are sold to other companies as well as deactivation all without the involvement of a call service agent or sending multiple emails to different Omnitracs contacts. This is a conceptual view of the Customer Portal showing the details of the components that make up the solution. 12.00 The portal application for transactions was entirely built using ADF 11g R2. Omnitracs’ business had a pressing requirement to have a portal available 24/7 for its customers. Since there were interactions with EBS in the back-end, the downtimes on the EBS would negate this availability. Omnitracs devised a decoupling strategy at the database side for the EBS data. The decoupling of the database was done using Oracle Data Guard and completely insulated the solution from any eBusiness Suite down time. The customer has no knowledge whether eBS is running or not. Here are two sample screenshots of the portal application built in Oracle ADF. Customer Benefits The Customer Portal not only provided the scalability to grow the business but also provided the seamless integration with other disparate applications. Some of the key benefits are: Improved Customer Experience: With a modern look and feel and a Portal that has the aspects of an App Store, the customer experience was significantly improved. Page response times went from several seconds to sub-second for all of the pages. Enabled new product launches: After successfully dominating the large fleet market, Omnitracs now has a scalable solution to sell and manage smaller fleet customers giving them a huge advantage over their nearest competitors. Dozens of new customers have been acquired via this portal through an onboarding process that now takes minutes Seamless Integrations Improves Customer Support: ADF 11gR2 allowed Omnitracs to bring a diverse list of applications into one integrated solution. This provided a seamless experience for customers to route them from Marketing focused application to a customer-oriented portal. Internally, it also allowed Sales Representatives to have an integrated flow for taking a prospect through the various steps to onboard them as a customer. Key integrations included: Unity Core Salesforce.com Merchant e-Solution for credit card Custom Omnitracs Applications like CUPS and AUTO Security utilizing OID and OVD Back end integration with EBS (Data Guard) and iQ Database Business Impact Significant business impacts were realized through the launch of customer portal. It not only allows the business to push through in underserved segments, but also reduces the time it needs to spend on customer support—allowing the business to focus more on sales and identifying the market for new products. Some of the Immediate Benefits are The entire onboarding process is now completely automated and now completes in minutes. This represents an 85% productivity improvement over their previous processes. And it was 160 times faster! With the success of this self-service solution, the business is now targeting about 3X customer growth in the next five years. This represents a tripling of their overall customer base and significant downstream revenue for the ongoing services. 90%+ improvement of customer onboarding and management process by utilizing, single sign on integration using OID/OAM solution, performance improvements and new self-service functionality Unified login for all Customers, Partners and Internal Users enables login to a common portal and seamless access to all other integrated applications targeted at the respective audience Significantly improved customer experience with a better look and feel with a more user experience focused Portal screens. Helped sales of the new product by having an easy way of ordering and activating the product. Data Guard helped increase availability of the Portal to 99%+ and make it independent of EBS downtime. This gave customers the feel of high availability of the portal application. Some of the anticipated longer term Benefits are: Platform that can be leveraged to launch any new product introduction and enable all product teams to reach new customers and new markets Easy integration with content management to allow business owners more control of the product catalog Overall reduced TCO with standardization of the Oracle platform Managed IT support cost savings through optimization of technology skills needed to support and modify this solution ------------------------------------------------------------ 12.00 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-family:"Times New Roman","serif";}

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  • ASP.NET WebAPI Security 3: Extensible Authentication Framework

    - by Your DisplayName here!
    In my last post, I described the identity architecture of ASP.NET Web API. The short version was, that Web API (beta 1) does not really have an authentication system on its own, but inherits the client security context from its host. This is fine in many situations (e.g. AJAX style callbacks with an already established logon session). But there are many cases where you don’t use the containing web application for authentication, but need to do it yourself. Examples of that would be token based authentication and clients that don’t run in the context of the web application (e.g. desktop clients / mobile). Since Web API provides a nice extensibility model, it is easy to implement whatever security framework you want on top of it. My design goals were: Easy to use. Extensible. Claims-based. ..and of course, this should always behave the same, regardless of the hosting environment. In the rest of the post I am outlining some of the bits and pieces, So you know what you are dealing with, in case you want to try the code. At the very heart… is a so called message handler. This is a Web API extensibility point that gets to see (and modify if needed) all incoming and outgoing requests. Handlers run after the conversion from host to Web API, which means that handler code deals with HttpRequestMessage and HttpResponseMessage. See Pedro’s post for more information on the processing pipeline. This handler requires a configuration object for initialization. Currently this is very simple, it contains: Settings for the various authentication and credential types Settings for claims transformation Ability to block identity inheritance from host The most important part here is the credential type support, but I will come back to that later. The logic of the message handler is simple: Look at the incoming request. If the request contains an authorization header, try to authenticate the client. If this is successful, create a claims principal and populate the usual places. If not, return a 401 status code and set the Www-Authenticate header. Look at outgoing response, if the status code is 401, set the Www-Authenticate header. Credential type support Under the covers I use the WIF security token handler infrastructure to validate credentials and to turn security tokens into claims. The idea is simple: an authorization header consists of two pieces: the schema and the actual “token”. My configuration object allows to associate a security token handler with a scheme. This way you only need to implement support for a specific credential type, and map that to the incoming scheme value. The current version supports HTTP Basic Authentication as well as SAML and SWT tokens. (I needed to do some surgery on the standard security token handlers, since WIF does not directly support string-ified tokens. The next version of .NET will fix that, and the code should become simpler then). You can e.g. use this code to hook up a username/password handler to the Basic scheme (the default scheme name for Basic Authentication). config.Handler.AddBasicAuthenticationHandler( (username, password) => username == password); You simply have to provide a password validation function which could of course point back to your existing password library or e.g. membership. The following code maps a token handler for Simple Web Tokens (SWT) to the Bearer scheme (the currently favoured scheme name for OAuth2). You simply have to specify the issuer name, realm and shared signature key: config.Handler.AddSimpleWebTokenHandler(     "Bearer",     http://identity.thinktecture.com/trust,     Constants.Realm,     "Dc9Mpi3jaaaUpBQpa/4R7XtUsa3D/ALSjTVvK8IUZbg="); For certain integration scenarios it is very useful if your Web API can consume SAML tokens. This is also easily accomplishable. The following code uses the standard WIF API to configure the usual SAMLisms like issuer, audience, service certificate and certificate validation. Both SAML 1.1 and 2.0 are supported. var registry = new ConfigurationBasedIssuerNameRegistry(); registry.AddTrustedIssuer( "d1 c5 b1 25 97 d0 36 94 65 1c e2 64 fe 48 06 01 35 f7 bd db", "ADFS"); var adfsConfig = new SecurityTokenHandlerConfiguration(); adfsConfig.AudienceRestriction.AllowedAudienceUris.Add( new Uri(Constants.Realm)); adfsConfig.IssuerNameRegistry = registry; adfsConfig.CertificateValidator = X509CertificateValidator.None; // token decryption (read from configuration section) adfsConfig.ServiceTokenResolver = FederatedAuthentication.ServiceConfiguration.CreateAggregateTokenResolver(); config.Handler.AddSaml11SecurityTokenHandler("SAML", adfsConfig); Claims Transformation After successful authentication, if configured, the standard WIF ClaimsAuthenticationManager is called to run claims transformation and validation logic. This stage is used to transform the “technical” claims from the security token into application claims. You can either have a separate transformation logic, or share on e.g. with the containing web application. That’s just a matter of configuration. Adding the authentication handler to a Web API application In the spirit of Web API this is done in code, e.g. global.asax for web hosting: protected void Application_Start() {     AreaRegistration.RegisterAllAreas();     ConfigureApis(GlobalConfiguration.Configuration);     RegisterGlobalFilters(GlobalFilters.Filters);     RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes);     BundleTable.Bundles.RegisterTemplateBundles(); } private void ConfigureApis(HttpConfiguration configuration) {     configuration.MessageHandlers.Add( new AuthenticationHandler(ConfigureAuthentication())); } private AuthenticationConfiguration ConfigureAuthentication() {     var config = new AuthenticationConfiguration     {         // sample claims transformation for consultants sample, comment out to see raw claims         ClaimsAuthenticationManager = new ApiClaimsTransformer(),         // value of the www-authenticate header, // if not set, the first scheme added to the handler collection is used         DefaultAuthenticationScheme = "Basic"     };     // add token handlers - see above     return config; } You can find the full source code and some samples here. In the next post I will describe some of the samples in the download, and then move on to authorization. HTH

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  • Finally, upgrade from Nokia X3 to Samsung Galaxy S III

    This time, something slightly different but nonetheless not less interesting, hopefully. Living on a remote island like Mauritius, ill-praised 'Cyber Island' in the Indian Ocean, has its advantages in life style and relaxed environment to life in but in terms of technological aspects it can be quite a nightmare. Well, I guess this might be different story to report about... one day. Cyber Island Mauritius Despite it's shiny advertisement as Cyber Island and business in ICT hub to Africa, Mauritius is not on the latest track of available models in computer hardware or, in the context of this article, cellulars or smart-phone, or communication technology in general. Okay, I have to admit that this statement is only partly true. Money can buy, even here in Mauritius. Luckily, there are ways and ways to deal with this outcry of modern, read: technological, civilisation issues. Online shopping you might think? Yes, for sure, until you discover in your checkout procedure that a small island in the Indian Ocean isn't a preferred destination for delivery and the precious time you spent on putting your items into your cart and feeding your personal level of anticipation gets ruined on the last stint. Ordering from abroad saves you money Anyway, I got in touch with my personal courier and luckily there were some extra-kilos left in the luggage. First obstacle sorted, we have a Transporter! Okay, on the next occasion off to Amazon online and using their Prime service for fast delivery. Actually, the order was placed on Saturday evening and everything got delivered on Tuesday morning - nice job in less than 72 hours. Okay, among the items of that shopping rush I ordered a shiny Samsung Galaxy S III 16GB in oceanic blue - did I mention, that you hardly get a blue model in Mauritius? - for my BWE. Interesting side-notes: First, Amazon Germany dropped the prices for roughly 30% on the S3, and we got the 16GB model for less than 500 Euro (or approx. Rs. 19.500,-) compared to the usual Rs. 27.000,- on the local market. It even varies whether the local price is inclusive or exclusive VAT (15%). Second, since a while she was bothering me to get an iPhone and an iPad for her, fair enough I thought, decent hardware, posh design and reliable services. Until we watched the 'magical' introduction of Samsung's new models at the IFA exhibition, she read the bashing comments on Google+ on the iPhone 5 and I gave her a brief summary on the law suit between Apple and Samsung in the USA. So, yes, Samsung USA is right, the next big thing is already here - literally. My BWE loves the look and touch of the Galaxy S3. And for me it was more cost-effective in terms of purchases done at the App Store, ups, Play Store. Transfer of contacts, text messages and media files Okay, now that the hardware is in place, how to transfer all those contacts, text messages, media files, etc. between those two devices? In the past, I used to use the Nokia Communication Suite between various models but now for Android? Well, as usual Google and Bing are reliable friends and among the first hits I came across an article about How to Transfer Contacts from Nokia to Android. Couldn't be easier, right? Well, sort of... my main Windows systems are already running on Windows 8, and this actually caused problems with the mobile/smart-phone device drivers. The article provides the download for an older version 1.10 which upgrades to 2.11 (as time of writing this entry) but both couldn't get the Galaxy S3 and the Nokia connected. Shame on me... the product page clearly doesn't mention Windows 8 (for now) and Windows 8 isn't available for the general audience at all... After I took a spare machine running on Windows Vista everything went smooth. Software installed, upgrade done, device drivers for Android automatically downloaded and installed, and the same painless routine for the Nokia part. I think, I rebooted the system twice during the whole setup procedure but hey, it was more or less a distraction while coding some stuff in ASP.NET MVC and Telerik Kendo UI. The transfer of contacts and text messages was done via Wondershare MobileGo for Android, and all media files by moving the additional microSD card from one device to the other. But even without an external SD card, it would have been very easy to copy the files via Windows Explorer directly. Little catch and excellent service Fine, we are almost done and the only step left is to shift the SIM card... Ouch, gotcha! The X3 uses a standard size SIM card while the S III only accepts microSIM form factor. What an irony, bigger smartphone needs smaller SIM card. Luckily, the next showroom of Emtel is just 5 mins away up the road, and the service staff over there know their job. Finally, after roughly 10 mins of paper work, activation and small chit-chat, the S3 came to life on the mobile network. Owning a smart-phone now and knowing that my BWE would like to interact more on social networks away from home, especially to upload pictures and provide local 'check-ins', I activated a data package for her in advance, too. Even that it is Saturday, everything was already done and ready to be used. Nice bonus: The Emtel clerk directly offered me to set up the configuration for the Emtel data services, yes sure, go ahead, this saves me to search for that in the settings. Okay, spoiler-alert here, setting a static APN to access the Emtel network and the internet wouldn't be a challenge. But hey, she already had the phone in her hands and I could keep my eyes on the children. Well done, Emtel! Resume Thanks to the useful software package by Wondershare is was a hands-free experience to transfer all the data from a Nokia mobile on Symbian S60 to a Samsung Galaxy S III on Android Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS). In the future, this wont be a serious issue at all anymore thanks to synchronisation services and cloud storage. And for now, I'm only waiting for the official upgrades for Jelly Bean.

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  • Answers to Your Common Oracle Database Lifecycle Management Questions

    - by Scott McNeil
    We recently ran a live webcast on Strategies for Managing Oracle Database's Lifecycle. There were tons of questions from our audience that we simply could not get to during the hour long presentation. Below are some of those questions along with their answers. Enjoy! Question: In the webcast the presenter talked about “gold” configuration standards, for those who want to use this technique, could you recommend a best practice to consider or follow? How do I get started? Answer:Gold configuration standardization is a quick and easy way to improve availability through consistency. Start by choosing a reference database and saving the configuration to the Oracle Enterprise Manager repository using the Save Configuration feature. Next create a comparison template using the Oracle provided template as a starting point and modify the ignored properties to eliminate expected differences in your environment. Finally create a comparison specification using the comparison template you created plus your saved gold configuration and schedule it to run on a regular basis. Don’t forget to fill in the email addresses of those you want to notify upon drift detection. Watch the database configuration management demo to learn more. Question: Can Oracle Lifecycle Management Pack for Database help with patching an Oracle Real Application Cluster (RAC) environment? Answer: Yes, Oracle Enterprise Manager supports both parallel and rolling patch application of Oracle Real Application Clusters. The use of rolling patching is recommended as there is no downtime involved. For more details watch this demo. Question: What are some of the things administrators can do to control configuration drift? Why is it important? Answer:Configuration drift is one of the main causes of instability and downtime of applications. Oracle Enterprise Manager makes it easy to manage and control drift using scheduled configuration comparisons combined with comparison templates. Question: Does Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Release 2 offer an incremental update feature for "gold" images? For instance, if the source binary has a higher PSU level, what is the best approach to update the existing "gold" image in the software library? Do you have to create a new image or can you just update the original one? Answer:Provisioning Profiles (Gold images) can contain the installation files and database configuration templates. Although it is possible to make some changes to the profile after creation (mainly to configuration), it is normally recommended to simply create a new profile after applying a patch to your reference database. Question: The webcast talked about enforcing in-house standards, does Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c offer verification of your databases and systems to those standards? For example, the initial "gold" image has been massively deployed over time, and there may be some changes to it. How can you do regular checks from Enterprise Manager to ensure the in-house standards are being enforced? Answer:There are really two methods to validate conformity to standards. The first method is to use gold standards which you compare other databases to report unwanted differences. This method uses a new comparison template technology which allows users to ignore known differences (i.e. SID, Start time, etc) which results in a report only showing important or non-conformant differences. This method is quick to setup and configure and recommended for those who want to get started validating compliance quickly. The second method leverages the new compliance framework which allows the creation of specific and robust validations. These compliance rules are grouped into standards which can be assigned to databases quickly and easily. Compliance rules allow for targeted and more sophisticated validation beyond the basic equals operation available in the comparison method. The compliance framework can be used to implement just about any internal or industry standard. The compliance results will track current and historic compliance scores at the overall and individual database targets. When the issue is resolved, the score is automatically affected. Compliance framework is the recommended long term solution for validating compliance using Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c. Check out this demo on database compliance to learn more. Question: If you are using the integration between Oracle Enterprise Manager and My Oracle Support in an "offline" mode, how do you know if you have the latest My Oracle Support metadata? Answer:In Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Release 2, you now only need to download one zip file containing all of the metadata xmls files. There is no indication that the metadata has changed but you could run a checksum on the file and compare it to the previously downloaded version to see if it has changed. Question: What happens if a patch fails while administrators are applying it to a database or system? Answer:A large portion of Oracle Enterprise Manager's patch automation is the pre-requisite checks that happen to ensure the highest level of confidence the patch will successfully apply. It is recommended you test the patch in a non-production environment and save the patch plan as a template once successful so you can create new plans using the saved template. If you are using the recommended ‘out of place’ patching methodology, there is no urgency because the database is still running as the cloned Oracle home is being patched. Users can address the issue and restart the patch procedure at the point it left off. If you are using 'in place' method, you can address the issue and continue where the procedure left off. Question: Can Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c R2 compare configurations between more than one target at the same time? Answer:Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c can compare any number of target configurations at one time. This is the basis of many important use cases including Configuration Drift Management. These comparisons can also be scheduled on a regular basis and emails notification sent should any differences appear. To learn more about configuration search and compare watch this demo. Question: How is data comparison done since changes are taking place in a live production system? Answer:There are many things to keep in mind when using the data comparison feature (as part of the Change Management ability to compare table data). It was primarily intended to be used for maintaining consistency of important but relatively static data. For example, application seed data and application setup configuration. This data does not change often but is critical when testing an application to ensure results are consistent with production. It is not recommended to use data comparison on highly dynamic data like transactional tables or very large tables. Question: Which versions of Oracle Database can be monitored through Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c? Answer:Oracle Database versions: 9.2.0.8, 10.1.0.5, 10.2.0.4, 10.2.0.5, 11.1.0.7, 11.2.0.1, 11.2.0.2, 11.2.0.3. Watch the On-Demand Webcast Stay Connected: Twitter | Facebook | YouTube | Linkedin | NewsletterDownload the Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control12c Mobile app

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  • Agile Testing Days 2012 – Day 3 – Agile or agile?

    - by Chris George
    Another early start for my last Lean Coffee of the conference, and again it was not wasted. We had some really interesting discussions around how to determine what test automation is useful, if agile is not faster, why do it? and a rather existential discussion on whether unicorns exist! First keynote of the day was entitled “Fast Feedback Teams” by Ola Ellnestam. Again this relates nicely to the releasing faster talk on day 2, and something that we are looking at and some teams are actively trying. Introducing the notion of feedback, Ola describes a game he wrote for his eldest child. It was a simple game where every time he clicked a button, it displayed “You’ve Won!”. He then changed it to be a Win-Lose-Win-Lose pattern and watched the feedback from his son who then twigged the pattern and got his younger brother to play, alternating turns… genius! (must do that with my children). The idea behind this was that you need that feedback loop to learn and progress. If you are not getting the feedback you need to close that loop. An interesting point Ola made was to solve problems BEFORE writing software. It may be that you don’t have to write anything at all, perhaps it’s a communication/training issue? Perhaps the problem can be solved another way. Writing software, although it’s the business we are in, is expensive, and this should be taken into account. He again mentions frequent releases, and how they should be made as soon as stuff is ready to be released, don’t leave stuff on the shelf cause it’s not earning you anything, money or data. I totally agree with this and it’s something that we will be aiming for moving forwards. “Exceptions, Assumptions and Ambiguity: Finding the truth behind the story” by David Evans started off very promising by making references to ‘Grim up North’ referring to the north of England. Not sure it was appreciated by most of the audience, but it made me laugh! David explained how there are always risks associated with exceptions, giving the example of a one-way road near where he lives, with an exception sign giving rights to coaches to go the wrong way. Therefore you could merrily swing around the corner of the one way road straight into a coach! David showed the danger in making assumptions with lyrical quotes from Lola by The Kinks “I’m glad I’m a man, and so is Lola” and with a picture of a toilet flush that needed instructions to operate the full and half flush. With this particular flush, you pulled the handle all the way down to half flush, and half way down to full flush! hmmm, a bit of a crappy user experience methinks! Then through a clever use of a passage from the Jabberwocky, David then went onto show how mis-translation/ambiguity is the can completely distort the original meaning of something, and this is a real enemy of software development. This was all helping to demonstrate that the term Story is often heavily overloaded in the Agile world, and should really be stripped back to what it is really for, stating a business problem, and offering a technical solution. Therefore a story could be worded as “In order to {make some improvement}, we will { do something}”. The first ‘in order to’ statement is stakeholder neutral, and states the problem through requesting an improvement to the software/process etc. The second part of the story is the verb, the doing bit. So to achieve the ‘improvement’ which is not currently true, we will do something to make this true in the future. My PM is very interested in this, and he’s observed some of the problems of overloading stories so I’m hoping between us we can use some of David’s suggestions to help clarify our stories better. The second keynote of the day (and our last) proved to be the most entertaining and exhausting of the conference for me. “The ongoing evolution of testing in agile development” by Scott Barber. I’ve never had the pleasure of seeing Scott before… OMG I would love to have even half of the energy he has! What struck me during this presentation was Scott’s explanation of how testing has become the role/job that it is (largely) today, and how this has led to the need for ‘methodologies’ to make dev and test work! The argument that we should be trying to converge the roles again is a very valid one, and one that a couple of the teams at work are actively doing with great results. Making developers as responsible for quality as testers is something that has been lost over the years, but something that we are now striving to achieve. The idea that we (testers) should be testing experts/specialists, not testing ‘union members’, supports this idea so the entire team works on all aspects of a feature/product, with the ‘specialists’ taking the lead and advising/coaching the others. This leads to better propagation of information around the team, a greater holistic understanding of the project and it allows the team to continue functioning if some of it’s members are off sick, for example. Feeling somewhat drained from Scott’s keynote (but at the same time excited that alot of the points he raised supported actions we are taking at work), I headed into my last presentation for Agile Testing Days 2012 before having to make my way to Tegel to catch the flight home. “Thinking and working agile in an unbending world” with Pete Walen was a talk I was not going to miss! Having spoken to Pete several times during the past few days, I was looking forward to hearing what he was going to say, and I was not disappointed. Pete started off by trying to separate the definitions of ‘Agile’ as in the methodology, and ‘agile’ as in the adjective by pronouncing them the ‘english’ and ‘american’ ways. So Agile pronounced (Ajyle) and agile pronounced (ajul). There was much confusion around what the hell he was talking about, although I thought it was quite clear. Agile – Software development methodology agile – Marked by ready ability to move with quick easy grace; Having a quick resourceful and adaptable character. Anyway, that aside (although it provided a few laughs during the presentation), the point was that many teams that claim to be ‘Agile’ but are not, in fact, ‘agile’ by nature. Implementing ‘Agile’ methodologies that are so prescriptive actually goes against the very nature of Agile development where a team should anticipate, adapt and explore. Pete made a valid point that very few companies intentionally put up roadblocks to impede work, so if work is being blocked/delayed, why? This is where being agile as a team pays off because the team can inspect what’s going on, explore options and adapt their processes. It is through experimentation (and that means trying and failing as well as trying and succeeding) that a team will improve and grow leading to focussing on what really needs to be done to achieve X. So, that was it, the last talk of our conference. I was gutted that we had to miss the closing keynote from Matt Heusser, as Matt was another person I had spoken too a few times during the conference, but the flight would not wait, and just as well we left when we did because the traffic was a nightmare! My Takeaway Triple from Day 3: Release often and release small – don’t leave stuff on the shelf Keep the meaning of the word ‘agile’ in mind when working in ‘Agile Look at testing as more of a skill than a role  

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  • Emtel Knowledge Series - Q2/2014

    From Cyber Island to Smart Mauritius Cyber Island? Smart Mauritius? - What is Emtel talking about? "With the majority of the population living in urban environments today, the concept of "Smart Cities" has become an urgent necessity. "Smart Cities" refer to an urban transformation which, by using latest ICT technologies makes cities more efficient. Many Governments are setting out ambitious plans to build the cities of the future based on massive connectivity, high bandwidth communications, intelligent sensors and analysis of huge volumes of data. Various researches have shown four key enablers for smart city success - Government leadership, suitable technology infrastructure, solid public-private partnerships and engaged citizens. It is around these enabling factors that telecoms companies can play a vital role in assisting governments to deliver on the smart city vision." The Emtel Knowledge Series goes in compliance with Emtel's 25th anniversary celebrations throughout the year and the master of ceremony, Kim Andersen, mentioned that there will be more upcoming events on a quarterly base. As a representative of the Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community (MSCC) there was absolutely no hesitation to join in again. Following my visit to the first Emtel Knowledge Series workshop back in February this year, it was great to have another opportunity to meet and exchange with technology experts. But quite frankly what is it with those buzz words... As far as I remember and how it was mentioned "Cyber Island" is an old initiative from around 2005/2006 which has been refreshed in 2010. It implies the empowerment of Information & Communication Technologies (ICT) as an essential factor of growth by the government here in Mauritius. Actually, the first promotional period of Cyber Island brought me here but that's another story. The venue and its own problems Like last time the event was organised and held at the Conference Hall at Cyber Tower I in Ebene. As I've been working there for some years, I know about the frustrating situation of finding a proper parking. So, does Smart Island include better solutions for the search of parking spaces? Maybe, let's see whether I will be able to answer that question at the end of the article. Anyway, after circling around the tower almost two times, I finally got a decent space to put the car, without risking to get a ticket or damage actually. International speakers and their experience Once again, Emtel did a great job to get international expertise onto the stage to share their experience and vision on this kind of embarkment. Personally, I really appreciated the fact they were speakers of global reach and could provide own-experience knowledge. Johan Gott spoke about the fundamental change that the Swedish government ignited in order to move their society and workers' environment away from heavy industry towards a knowledge-based approach. Additionally, we spoke about the effort and transformation of New York City into a greener and more efficient Smart City. Given modern technology he also advised that any kind of available Big Data should be opened to the general public - this openness would provide a playground for anyone to garner new ideas and most probably solid solutions of which no one else thought about before. Emtel Knowledge Series on moving from Cyber Island to Smart Mauritus Later during the afternoon that exact statement regarding openness to and transparency of government-owned Big Data has been emphasised again by the Danish speaker Kim Andersen and his former colleague Mika Jantunen from Finland. Mika continued to underline the important role of the government to provide a solid foundation for a knowledge-based society and mentioned that Finnish citizens have a constitutional right to broadband connectivity. Next to free higher (tertiary) education Finland already produced a good number of innovations, among them are: First country to grant voting rights to women Free higher education Constitutional right to broadband connectivity Nokia Linux Angry Birds Sauna and others...  General access to internet via broadband and/or mobile connectivity is surely a key factor towards Smart Cities, or better said Smart Mauritius given the area dimensions and size of population. CTO Paul Valette gave the audience a brief overview of the essential role that Emtel will have to move Mauritius forward towards a knowledge-based and innovation-driven environment for its citizen. What I have seen looks really promising and with recently published information that Mauritians have 127% of mobile capacity - meaning more than 1 mobile, smartphone or tablet per person - it will be crucial to have the right infrastructure for these connected devices. How would it be possible to achieve a knowledge-based society? YouTube to the rescue!Seriously, gaining more knowledge will require to have fast access to educational course material as explained by Dr Kaviraj Sukon, General Director of the Open University of Mauritius. According to him a good number of high-profile universities in the world have opened their course libraries to the general public, among them EDX, Coursera and Open University. Nowadays, you're actually able and enabled to learn for and earn a BSc or even MSc certification on your own pace - no need to attend classed on campus. It was really impressive to see the number of available hours - more than enough for a life-long learning experience! {loadposition content_adsense} Networking in the name of MSCC As briefly mentioned above I was about to combine two approaches for this workshop. Of course, getting latest information and updates on Emtel services available, especially for my business here on the west coast of the island, but also to meet and greet new people for the MSCC. And I think it was very positive on both sides. Let me quickly describe some of the key aspects that happened during the day: Met with Arnaud Meslier and Kellie, both Microsoft to swap latest information on IT events. Hereby, I got an invite to Microsoft Windows Phone 8.1 Dev Camp. Got in touch with Arvin Lockee, Emtel to check our options to meet with the data team, and seizing the opportunity to have a visiting tour at the Emtel Data Centre. Had a great chat with Avinash Meetoo, Knowledge 7, Kim Andersen and Mika Jantunen about the situation of teaching and learning in general and specifically in the private sector here in Mauritius. Additionally, a number of various other interesting chats... Once again, I'm catching up on a couple of business cards in order to provide more background information about the MSCC, and to create a better awareness of MSCC within the local IT businesses. There is more to come soon!  Resume of the day The number of attendees during this event has been doubled or even tripled this time. The whole organisation has been improved massively and the combination of presentation and summarizing panel discussions was better than during the previous workshop back in February. Overall, once again a well-organised workshop and I'm already looking forward to join the next workshop in Q3. Update End of July we finally managed to visit the Emtel Data Centre in Arsenal. It was an interesting opportunity for some of our MSCC members.

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  • Finally, upgrade from Nokia X3 to Samsung Galaxy S III

    This time, something slightly different but nonetheless not less interesting, hopefully. Living on a remote island like Mauritius, ill-praised 'Cyber Island' in the Indian Ocean, has its advantages in life style and relaxed environment to life in but in terms of technological aspects it can be quite a nightmare. Well, I guess this might be different story to report about... one day. Cyber Island Mauritius Despite it's shiny advertisement as Cyber Island and business in ICT hub to Africa, Mauritius is not on the latest track of available models in computer hardware or, in the context of this article, cellulars or smart-phone, or communication technology in general. Okay, I have to admit that this statement is only partly true. Money can buy, even here in Mauritius. Luckily, there are ways and ways to deal with this outcry of modern, read: technological, civilisation issues. Online shopping you might think? Yes, for sure, until you discover in your checkout procedure that a small island in the Indian Ocean isn't a preferred destination for delivery and the precious time you spent on putting your items into your cart and feeding your personal level of anticipation gets ruined on the last stint. Ordering from abroad saves you money Anyway, I got in touch with my personal courier and luckily there were some extra-kilos left in the luggage. First obstacle sorted, we have a Transporter! Okay, on the next occasion off to Amazon online and using their Prime service for fast delivery. Actually, the order was placed on Saturday evening and everything got delivered on Tuesday morning - nice job in less than 72 hours. Okay, among the items of that shopping rush I ordered a shiny Samsung Galaxy S III 16GB in oceanic blue - did I mention, that you hardly get a blue model in Mauritius? - for my BWE. Interesting side-notes: First, Amazon Germany dropped the prices for roughly 30% on the S3, and we got the 16GB model for less than 500 Euro (or approx. Rs. 19.500,-) compared to the usual Rs. 27.000,- on the local market. It even varies whether the local price is inclusive or exclusive VAT (15%). Second, since a while she was bothering me to get an iPhone and an iPad for her, fair enough I thought, decent hardware, posh design and reliable services. Until we watched the 'magical' introduction of Samsung's new models at the IFA exhibition, she read the bashing comments on Google+ on the iPhone 5 and I gave her a brief summary on the law suit between Apple and Samsung in the USA. So, yes, Samsung USA is right, the next big thing is already here - literally. My BWE loves the look and touch of the Galaxy S3. And for me it was more cost-effective in terms of purchases done at the App Store, ups, Play Store. Transfer of contacts, text messages and media files Okay, now that the hardware is in place, how to transfer all those contacts, text messages, media files, etc. between those two devices? In the past, I used to use the Nokia Communication Suite between various models but now for Android? Well, as usual Google and Bing are reliable friends and among the first hits I came across an article about How to Transfer Contacts from Nokia to Android. Couldn't be easier, right? Well, sort of... my main Windows systems are already running on Windows 8, and this actually caused problems with the mobile/smart-phone device drivers. The article provides the download for an older version 1.10 which upgrades to 2.11 (as time of writing this entry) but both couldn't get the Galaxy S3 and the Nokia connected. Shame on me... the product page clearly doesn't mention Windows 8 (for now) and Windows 8 isn't available for the general audience at all... After I took a spare machine running on Windows Vista everything went smooth. Software installed, upgrade done, device drivers for Android automatically downloaded and installed, and the same painless routine for the Nokia part. I think, I rebooted the system twice during the whole setup procedure but hey, it was more or less a distraction while coding some stuff in ASP.NET MVC and Telerik Kendo UI. The transfer of contacts and text messages was done via Wondershare MobileGo for Android, and all media files by moving the additional microSD card from one device to the other. But even without an external SD card, it would have been very easy to copy the files via Windows Explorer directly. Little catch and excellent service Fine, we are almost done and the only step left is to shift the SIM card... Ouch, gotcha! The X3 uses a standard size SIM card while the S III only accepts microSIM form factor. What an irony, bigger smartphone needs smaller SIM card. Luckily, the next showroom of Emtel is just 5 mins away up the road, and the service staff over there know their job. Finally, after roughly 10 mins of paper work, activation and small chit-chat, the S3 came to life on the mobile network. Owning a smart-phone now and knowing that my BWE would like to interact more on social networks away from home, especially to upload pictures and provide local 'check-ins', I activated a data package for her in advance, too. Even that it is Saturday, everything was already done and ready to be used. Nice bonus: The Emtel clerk directly offered me to set up the configuration for the Emtel data services, yes sure, go ahead, this saves me to search for that in the settings. Okay, spoiler-alert here, setting a static APN to access the Emtel network and the internet wouldn't be a challenge. But hey, she already had the phone in her hands and I could keep my eyes on the children. Well done, Emtel! Resume Thanks to the useful software package by Wondershare is was a hands-free experience to transfer all the data from a Nokia mobile on Symbian S60 to a Samsung Galaxy S III on Android Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS). In the future, this wont be a serious issue at all anymore thanks to synchronisation services and cloud storage. And for now, I'm only waiting for the official upgrades for Jelly Bean.

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, July 15, 2013

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, July 15, 2013Popular ReleasesMVC Forum: MVC Forum v1.0: Finally version 1.0 is here! We have been fixing a few bugs, and making sure the release is as stable as possible. We have also changed the way configuration of the application works, mostly how to add your own code or replace some of the standard code with your own. If you download and use our software, please give us some sort of feedback, good or bad!SharePoint 2013 TypeScript Definitions: Release 1.1: TypeScript 0.9 support SharePoint TypeScript Definitions are now compliant with the new version of TypeScript TypeScript generics are now used for defining collection classes (derivatives of SP.ClientCollection object) Improved coverage Added mQuery definitions (m$) Added SPClientAutoFill definitions SP.Utilities namespace is now fully covered SP.UI modal dialog definitions improved CSR definitions improved, added some missing methods and context properties, mostly related to list ...GoAgent GUI: GoAgent GUI ??? 1.0.0: ????GoAgent GUI????,???????????.Net Framework 4.0 ???????: Windows 8 x64 Windows 8 x86 Windows 7 x64 Windows 7 x86 ???????: Windows 8.1 Preview (x86/x64) ???????: Windows XP ????: ????????GoAgent????,????????,?????????????,???????????????????,??????????,????。PiGraph: PiGraph 2.0.8.13: C?p nh?t:Các l?i dã s?a: S?a l?i không nh?p du?c s? âm. L?i tabindex trong giao di?n Thêm hàm Các l?i chua kh?c ph?c: L?i ghi chú nh?p nháy màu. L?i khung ghi chú vu?t ra kh?i biên khi luu file. Luu ý:N?u không kh?i d?ng duoc chuong trình, b?n nên c?p nh?t driver card d? h?a phiên b?n m?i nh?t: AMD Graphics Drivers NVIDIA Driver Xem yêu c?u h? th?ngD3D9Client: D3D9Client R12 for Orbiter Beta: D3D9Client release for orbiter BetaVidCoder: 1.4.23: New in 1.4.23 Added French translation. Fixed non-x264 video encoders not sticking in video tab. New in 1.4 Updated HandBrake core to 0.9.9 Blu-ray subtitle (PGS) support Additional framerates: 30, 50, 59.94, 60 Additional sample rates: 8, 11.025, 12 and 16 kHz Additional higher bitrates for audio Same as Source Constant Framerate 24-bit FLAC encoding Added Windows Phone 8 and Apple TV 3 presets Introduced process isolation for encodes. Now if HandBrake crashes, VidCoder will ...Project Server 2013 Event Handler Admin Tool: PSI Event Admin Tool: Download & exract the File. Use LoggerAdmin to upload the event handlers in project server 2013. PSIEventLogger\LoggerAdmin\bin\DebugGherkin editor: Gherkin Editor Beta 2: Fix issue #7 and add some refactoring and code cleanupNew-NuGetPackage PowerShell Script: New-NuGetPackage.ps1 PowerShell Script v1.2: Show nuget gallery to push to when prompting user if they want to push their package.Site Templates By Steve: SharePoint 2010 CORE Site Theme By Steve WSP: Great Site Theme to start with from Steve. See project home page for install instructions. This is a nice centered, mega-menu, fixed width masterpage with styles. Remember to update the mega menu lists.SharePoint Solution Installer: SharePoint Solution Installer V1.2.8: setup2013.exe now supports CompatibilityLevel to target specific hive Use setup.exe for SP2007 & SP2010. Use setup2013.exe for SP2013.TBox - tool to make developer's life easier.: TBox 1.021: 1)Add console unit tests runner, to run unit tests in parallel from console. Also this new sub tool can save valid xml nunit report. It can help you in continuous integration. 2)Fix build scripts.LifeInSharepoint Modern UI Update: Version 2: Some minor improvements, including Audience Targeting support for quick launch links. Also removing all NextDocs references.Virtual Photonics: VTS MATLAB Package 1.0.13 Beta: This is the beta release of the MATLAB package with examples of using the VTS libraries within MATLAB. Changes for this release: Added two new examples to vts_solver_demo.m that: 1) generates and plots R(lambda) at a given rho, and chromophore concentrations assuming a power law for scattering, and 2) solves inverse problem for R(lambda) at given rho. This example solves for concentrations of HbO2, Hb and H20 given simulated measurements created using Nurbs scaled Monte Carlo and inverted u...Advanced Resource Tab for Blend: Advanced Resource Tab: This is the first alpha release of the advanced resource tab for Blend for Visual Studio 2012.Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.96: Fix for issue #19957: EXE should output the name of the file(s) being minified. Discussion #449181: throw a Sev-2 warning when trailing commas are detected on an Array literal. Perfectly legal to do so, but the behavior ends up working differently on different browsers, so throw a cross-browser warning. Add a few more known global names for improved ES6 compatibility update Nuget package to version 2.5 and automatically add the AjaxMin.targets to your project when you update the package...Outlook 2013 Add-In: Categories and Colors: This new version has a major change in the drawing of the list items: - Using owner drawn code to format the appointments using GDI (some flickering may occur, but it looks a little bit better IMHO, with separate sections). - Added category color support (if more than one category, only one color will be shown). Here, the colors Outlook uses are slightly different than the ones available in System.Drawing, so I did a first approach matching. ;-) - Added appointment status support (to show fr...Columbus Remote Desktop: 2.0 Sapphire: Added configuration settings Added update notifications Added ability to disable GPU acceleration Fixed connection bugsLINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter v2.1.07: Supports .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, .NET 4.5, Silverlight 4.0, Windows Phone 7.1, Windows Phone 8, Client Profile, Windows 8, and Windows Azure. 100% Twitter API coverage. Also supports Twitter API v1.1! Also on NuGet.DotNetNuke® Community Edition CMS: 06.02.08: Major Highlights Fixed issue where the application throws an Unhandled Error and an HTTP Response Code of 200 when the connection to the database is lost. Security FixesNone Updated Modules/Providers ModulesNone ProvidersNoneNew Projects[.Net Intl] harroc_c;mallar_a;olouso_f: The goal of this project is to create a web crawler and a web front who allows you to search in your index. You will create a mini (or large!) search engine basButterfly Storage: Butterfly Storage is a data access technology based on object-oriented database model for Windows Store applications.KaveCompany: KaveCompleave that girl alone: a team project!MyClrProfiler: This project helps you learn about and develop your own CLR profiler.NETDeob: Deobfuscate obfuscated .NET files easilyProgram stomatologie: SummarySimple Graph Library: Simple portable class library for graphs data structures. .NET, Silverlight 4/5, Windows Phone, Windows RT, Xbox 360T6502 Emulator: T6502 is a 6502 emulator written in TypeScript using AngularJS. The goal is well-organized, readable code over performance.WP8 File Access Webserver: C# HTTP server and web application on Windows Phone 8. Implements file access, browsing and downloading.wpadk: wpadk????wp7?????? ?????????,?????、SDK、wpadk?????????????。??????????????????。??????????????????,????wpadk?????????????????????????????????????。xlmUnit: xlmUnit, Unit Testing

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  • Agilist, Heal Thyself!

    - by Dylan Smith
    I’ve been meaning to blog about a great experience I had earlier in the year at Prairie Dev Con Calgary.  Myself and Steve Rogalsky did a session that we called “Agilist, Heal Thyself!”.  We used a format that was new to me, but that Steve had seen used at another conference.  What we did was start by asking the audience to give us a list of challenges they had had when adopting agile.  We wrote them all down, then had everybody vote on the most interesting ones.  Then we split into two groups, and each group was assigned one of the agile challenges.  We had 20 minutes to discuss the challenge, and suggest solutions or approaches to improve things.  At the end of the 20 minutes, each of the groups gave a brief summary of their discussion and learning's, then we mixed up the groups and repeated with another 2 challenges. The 2 groups I was part of had some really interesting discussions, and suggestions: Unfinished Stories at the end of Sprints The first agile challenge we tackled, was something that every single Scrum team I have worked with has struggled with.  What happens when you get to the end of a Sprint, and there are some stories that are only partially completed.  The team in question was getting very de-moralized as they felt that every Sprint was a failure as they never had a set of fully completed stories. How do you avoid this? and/or what do you do when it happens? There were 2 pieces of advice that were well received: 1. Try to bring stories to completion before starting new ones.  This is advice I give all my Scrum teams.  If you have a 3-week sprint, what happens all too often is you get to the end of week 2, and a lot of stories are almost done; but almost none are completely done.  This is a Bad Thing.  I encourage the teams I work with to only start a new story as a very last resort.  If you finish your task look at the stories in progress and see if there’s anything you can do to help before moving onto a new story.  In the daily standup, put a focus on seeing what stories got completed yesterday, if a few days go by with none getting completed, be sure this fact is visible to the team and do something about it.  Something I’ve been doing recently is introducing WIP (Work In Progress) limits while using Scrum.  My current team has 2-week sprints, and we usually have about a dozen or stories in a sprint.  We instituted a WIP limit of 4 stories.  If 4 stories have been started but not finished then nobody is allowed to start new stories.  This made it obvious very quickly that our QA tasks were our bottleneck (we have 4 devs, but only 1.5 testers).  The WIP limit forced the developers to start to pickup QA tasks before moving onto the next dev tasks, and we ended our sprints with many more stories completely finished than we did before introducing WIP limits. 2. Rather than using time-boxed sprints, why not just do away with them altogether and go to a continuous flow type approach like KanBan.  Limit WIP to keep things under control, but don’t have a fixed time box at the end of which all tasks are supposed to be done.  This eliminates the problem almost entirely.  At some points in the project (releases) you need to be able to burn down all the half finished stories to get a stable release build, but this probably occurs less often than every sprint, and there are alternative approaches to achieve it using branching strategies rather than forcing your team to try to get to Zero WIP every 2-weeks (e.g. when you are ready for a release, create a new branch for any new stories, but finish all existing stories in the current branch and release it). Trying to Introduce Agile into a team with previous Bad Agile Experiences One of the agile adoption challenges somebody described, was he was in a leadership role on a team he had recently joined – lets call him Dave.  This team was currently very waterfall in their ALM process, but they were about to start on a new green-field project.  Dave wanted to use this new project as an opportunity to do things the “right way”, using an Agile methodology like Scrum, adopting TDD, automated builds, proper branching strategies, etc.  The problem he was facing is everybody else on the team had previously gone through an “Agile Adoption” that was a horrible failure.  Dave blamed this failure on the consultant brought in previously to lead this agile transition, but regardless of the reason, the team had very negative feelings towards agile, and was very resistant to trying it out again.  Dave possibly had the authority to try to force the team to adopt Agile practices, but we all know that doesn’t work very well.  What was Dave to do? Ultimately, the best advice was to question *why* did Dave want to adopt all these various practices. Rather than trying to convince his team that these were the “right way” to run a dev project, and trying to do a Big Bang approach to introducing change.  He would be better served by identifying problems the team currently faces, have a discussion with the team to get everybody to agree that specific problems existed, then have an open discussion about ways to address those problems.  This way Dave could incrementally introduce agile practices, and he doesn’t even need to identify them as “agile” practices if he doesn’t want to.  For example, when we discussed with Dave, he said probably the teams biggest problem was long periods without feedback from users, then finding out too late that the software is not going to meet their needs.  Rather than Dave jumping right to introducing Scrum and all it entails, it would be easier to get buy-in from team if he framed it as a discussion of existing problems, and brainstorming possible solutions.  And possibly most importantly, don’t try to do massive changes all at once with a team that has not bought-into those changes.  Taking an incremental approach has a greater chance of success. I see something similar in my day job all the time too.  Clients who for one reason or another claim to not be fans of agile (or not ready for agile yet).  But then they go on to ask me to help them get shorter feedback cycles, quicker delivery cycles, iterative development processes, etc.  It’s kind of funny at times, sometimes you just need to phrase the suggestions in terms they are using and avoid the word “agile”. PS – I haven’t blogged all that much over the past couple of years, but in an attempt to motivate myself, a few of us have accepted a blogger challenge.  There’s 6 of us who have all put some money into a pool, and the agreement is that we each need to blog at least once every 2-weeks.  The first 2-week period that we miss we’re eliminated.  Last person standing gets the money.  So expect at least one blog post every couple of weeks for the near future (I hope!).  And check out the blogs of the other 5 people in this blogger challenge: Steve Rogalsky: http://winnipegagilist.blogspot.ca Aaron Kowall: http://www.geekswithblogs.net/caffeinatedgeek Tyler Doerkson: http://blog.tylerdoerksen.com David Alpert: http://www.spinthemoose.com Dave White: http://www.agileramblings.com (note: site not available yet.  should be shortly or he owes me some money!)

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  • WIF, ADFS 2 and WCF&ndash;Part 2: The Service

    - by Your DisplayName here!
    OK – so let’s first start with a simple WCF service and connect that to ADFS 2 for authentication. The service itself simply echoes back the user’s claims – just so we can make sure it actually works and to see how the ADFS 2 issuance rules emit claims for the service: [ServiceContract(Namespace = "urn:leastprivilege:samples")] public interface IService {     [OperationContract]     List<ViewClaim> GetClaims(); } public class Service : IService {     public List<ViewClaim> GetClaims()     {         var id = Thread.CurrentPrincipal.Identity as IClaimsIdentity;         return (from c in id.Claims                 select new ViewClaim                 {                     ClaimType = c.ClaimType,                     Value = c.Value,                     Issuer = c.Issuer,                     OriginalIssuer = c.OriginalIssuer                 }).ToList();     } } The ViewClaim data contract is simply a DTO that holds the claim information. Next is the WCF configuration – let’s have a look step by step. First I mapped all my http based services to the federation binding. This is achieved by using .NET 4.0’s protocol mapping feature (this can be also done the 3.x way – but in that scenario all services will be federated): <protocolMapping>   <add scheme="http" binding="ws2007FederationHttpBinding" /> </protocolMapping> Next, I provide a standard configuration for the federation binding: <bindings>   <ws2007FederationHttpBinding>     <binding>       <security mode="TransportWithMessageCredential">         <message establishSecurityContext="false">           <issuerMetadata address="https://server/adfs/services/trust/mex" />         </message>       </security>     </binding>   </ws2007FederationHttpBinding> </bindings> This binding points to our ADFS 2 installation metadata endpoint. This is all that is needed for svcutil (aka “Add Service Reference”) to generate the required client configuration. I also chose mixed mode security (SSL + basic message credential) for best performance. This binding also disables session – you can control that via the establishSecurityContext setting on the binding. This has its pros and cons. Something for a separate blog post, I guess. Next, the behavior section adds support for metadata and WIF: <behaviors>   <serviceBehaviors>     <behavior>       <serviceMetadata httpsGetEnabled="true" />       <federatedServiceHostConfiguration />     </behavior>   </serviceBehaviors> </behaviors> The next step is to add the WIF specific configuration (in <microsoft.identityModel />). First we need to specify the key material that we will use to decrypt the incoming tokens. This is optional for web applications but for web services you need to protect the proof key – so this is mandatory (at least for symmetric proof keys, which is the default): <serviceCertificate>   <certificateReference storeLocation="LocalMachine"                         storeName="My"                         x509FindType="FindBySubjectDistinguishedName"                         findValue="CN=Service" /> </serviceCertificate> You also have to specify which incoming tokens you trust. This is accomplished by registering the thumbprint of the signing keys you want to accept. You get this information from the signing certificate configured in ADFS 2: <issuerNameRegistry type="...ConfigurationBasedIssuerNameRegistry">   <trustedIssuers>     <add thumbprint="d1 … db"           name="ADFS" />   </trustedIssuers> </issuerNameRegistry> The last step (promised) is to add the allowed audience URIs to the configuration – WCF clients use (by default – and we’ll come back to this) the endpoint address of the service: <audienceUris>   <add value="https://machine/soapadfs/service.svc" /> </audienceUris> OK – that’s it – now we have a basic WCF service that uses ADFS 2 for authentication. The next step will be to set-up ADFS to issue tokens for this service. Afterwards we can explore various options on how to use this service from a client. Stay tuned… (if you want to have a look at the full source code or peek at the upcoming parts – you can download the complete solution here)

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  • iCloud stuff stops working while connected to OpenVPN

    - by Taco Bob
    I have a fairly simple OpenVPN setup on an OpenVZ VPS with Ubuntu 11.10. Client is the Viscosity client on Mac OS X 10.8.2, and after some testing, we can rule out the client as being part of the problem. Everything has been working fine except for Apple's iCloud stuff. Web surfing, email, FTP, NNTP, and Skype are all working as expected. It's ONLY the iCloud services that cease to function. If I connect to the VPN, iCloud stuff stops working. I no longer get anything in Messages, Calendar items don't get updated, and Notifications stop working. If I disconnect, the iCloud stuff all starts working. Connect again, iCloud stops working. Here's the server.conf: status openvpn-status.log log /var/log/openvpn.log verb 4 port 1194 proto udp dev tun ca /etc/openvpn/ca.crt cert /etc/openvpn/server.crt key /etc/openvpn/server.key dh /etc/openvpn/dh1024.pem server 10.9.8.0 255.255.255.0 ifconfig-pool-persist ipp.txt push "redirect-gateway def1" push “dhcp-option DNS 10.9.8.1? keepalive 10 120 duplicate-cn cipher BF-CBC comp-lzo user nobody group nogroup persist-key persist-tun tun-mtu 1500 mssfix 1400 I'm using iptables in a script, and it's also fairly simplistic. iptables -F iptables -t nat -F iptables -t mangle -F iptables -A FORWARD -i tun0 -o venet0 -j ACCEPT iptables -A FORWARD -i venet0 -o tun0 -j ACCEPT iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 22 -j ACCEPT iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 1194 -j ACCEPT iptables -A INPUT -p udp --dport 1194 -j ACCEPT iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -s 10.9.8.0/24 -j SNAT --to-source <server's public ip> echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward I tried forwarding ports as well, with no success. iptables -A FORWARD -p tcp -d 10.9.8.0/24 --dport 5222:5230 -j ACCEPT iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp --dport 5222:5230 -j DNAT --to-destination 10.9.8.6 I am also sometimes behind a double-NAT situation that I have no control over. Client -> work VPN -> my OpenVPN box -> Internet. Client -> Airport Express -> ISP (which is doing NAT) -> my OpenVPN box -> Internet. Those two situations are just the fact of life where I am, and I cannot change them. I do have full control over my client and the OpenVPN server. I am completely out of ideas. I have posted a similar query at the OpenVPN forums, but it hasn't posted yet and seems to be in their moderation queue still. Tried on freenode irc channels, but nobody is awake, so here I am. I have Googled extensively for this, and can find nothing that is related. Help me get iCloud stuff working again! (I tried serverfault, it was closed as off-topic. I'm trying here and the Unix site as well. Here because it's a more general audience that might know more about OpenVPN based on the number of questions I see asked about it) EDIT: -I have also tried upgrading to Version: 2.3-beta1-debian0 - issue persists. -Removed all iptables rules except for the ones that flush -left this rule:iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -s 10.9.8.0/24 -j SNAT --to-source (server ip) -added iptables -A FORWARD -m state --state RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT still, nothing works. I can see traffic in tcpdump on the server if i watch the tunnel: 20:03:48.702835 IP nk11p01st-courier105-bz.push.apple.com.5223 10.9.8.6.60772: Flags [F.], seq 2635, ack 1218, win 76, options [nop,nop,TS val 914984811 ecr 745921298], length 0 20:03:48.911244 IP 10.9.8.6.60772 nk11p01st-courier105-bz.push.apple.com.5223: Flags [R], seq 3621143451, win 0, length 0 But still, no push messages/notifications are ever delivered. :/ EDIT: * Further testing indicates that it might actually be the client after all.

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  • PASS Summit – looking back on my first time

    - by Fatherjack
      So I was lucky enough to get my first experience of PASS Summit this year and took some time beforehand to read some blogs and reference material to get an idea on what to do and how to get the best out of my visit. Having been to other conferences – technical and non-technical – I had a reasonable idea on the routine and what to expect in general. Here is a list of a few things that I have learned/remembered as the week has gone by. Wear comfortable shoes. This actually needs to be broadened to Take several pairs of comfortable shoes. You will be spending many many hours, for several days one after another. Having comfortable feet that can literally support you for the duration will make the week in general a whole lot better. Not only at the conference but getting to and from you could well be walking. In the evenings you will be walking around town and standing talking in various bars and clubs. Looking back, on some days I was on my feet for over 20 hours. Make friends. This is a given for the long term benefits it brings but there is also an immediate reward in being at a conference with a friend or two. Some events are bigger and more popular than others and some have the type of session that every single attendee will want to be in. This is great for those that get in but if you are in the bathroom or queuing for coffee and you miss out it sucks. Having a friend that can get in to a room and reserve you a seat is a great advantage to make sure you get the content that you want to see and still have the coffee that you need. Don’t go to every session you want to see This might sound counter intuitive and it relies on the sessions being recorded in some way to guarantee you don’t totally miss out. Both PASS Summit and SQL Bits sessions are recorded (summit is audio, SQLBits is video) and this means that if you get into a good conversation with someone over a coffee you don’t have to break it up to go to a session. Obviously there is a trade-off here and you need to decide on the tipping point for yourself but a conversation at a place like this could make a big difference to the next contract or employer you have or it might simply be great catching up with some friends you don’t see so often. Go to at least one session you don’t want to Again, this will seem to be contrary to normal logic but there is no reason why you shouldn’t learn about a part of SQL Server that isn’t part of your daily routine. Not only will you learn something new but you will also pick up on the feelings and attitudes of the people in the session. So, if you are a DBA, head off to a BI session and so on. You’ll hear BI speakers speaking to a BI audience and get to understand their point of view and reasoning for making the decisions they do. You will also appreciate the way that your decisions and instructions affect the way they have to work. This will help you a lot when you are on a project, working with multiple teams and make you all more productive. Socialise While you are at the conference venue, speak to people. Ask questions, be interested in whoever you are speaking to. You get chances to talk to new friends at breakfast, dinner and every break between sessions. The only people that might not talk to you would be speakers that are about to go and give a session, in most cases speakers like peace and quiet before going on stage. Other than that the people around you are just waiting for someone to talk to them so make the first move. There is a whole lot going on outside of the conference hours and you should make an effort to join in with some of this too. At karaoke evenings or just out for a quiet drink with a few of the people you meet at the conference. Either way, don’t be a recluse and hide in your room or be alone out in the town. Don’t talk to people Once again this sounds wrong but stay with me. I have spoken to a number of speakers since Summit 2013 finished and they have all mentioned the time it has taken them to move about the conference venue due to people stopping them for a chat or to ask a question. 45 minutes to walk from a session room to the speaker room in one case. Wow. While none of the speakers were upset about this sort of delay I think delegates should take the situation into account and possibly defer their question to an email or to a time when the person they want is clearly less in demand. Give them a chance to enjoy the conference in the same way that you are, they may actually want to go to a session or just have a rest after giving their session – talking for 75 minutes is hard work, taking an extra 45 minutes right after is unbelievable. I certainly hope that they get good feedback on their sessions and perhaps if you spoke to a speaker outside a session you can give them a mention in the ‘any other comments’ part of the feedback, just to convey your gratitude for them giving up their time and expertise for free. Say thank you I just mentioned giving the speakers a clear, visible ‘thank you’ in the feedback but there are plenty of people that help make any conference the success it is that would really appreciate hearing that their efforts are valued. People on the registration desk, volunteers giving schedule guidance and directions, people on the community zone are all volunteers giving their time to help you have the best experience possible. Send an email to PASS and convey your thoughts about the work that was done. Maybe you want to be a volunteer next time so you could enquire how you get into that position at the same time. This isn’t an exclusive list and you may agree or disagree with the points I have made, please add anything you think is good advice in the comments. I’d like to finish by saying a huge thank you to all the people involved in planning, facilitating and executing the PASS Summit 2013, it was an excellent event and I know many others think it was a totally worthwhile event to attend.

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  • Feedback on meeting of the Linux User Group of Mauritius

    Once upon a time in a country far far away... Okay, actually it's not that bad but it has been a while since the last meeting of the Linux User Group of Mauritius (LUGM). There have been plans in the past but it never really happened. Finally, Selven took the opportunity and organised a new meetup with low administrative overhead, proper scheduling on alternative dates and a small attendee's survey on the preferred option. All the pre-work was nicely executed. First, I wasn't sure whether it would be possible to attend. Luckily I got some additional information, like children should come, too, and I was sold to this community gathering. According to other long-term members of the LUGM it was the first time 'ever' that a gathering was organised outside of Quatre Bornes, and I have to admit it was great! LUGM - user group meeting on the 15.06.2013 in L'Escalier Quick overview of Linux & the LUGM With a little bit of delay the LUGM meeting officially started with a quick overview and introduction to Linux presented by Avinash. During the session he told the audience that there had been quite some activity over the island some years ago but unfortunately it had been quiet during recent times. Of course, we also spoke about the acknowledged world dominance of Linux - thanks to Android - and the interesting possibilities for countries like Mauritius. It is known that a couple of public institutions have there back-end infrastructure running on Red Hat Linux systems but the presence on the desktop is still very low. Users are simply hanging on to Windows XP and older versions of Microsoft Office. Following the introduction of the LUGM Ajay joined into the session and it quickly changed into a panel discussion with lots of interesting questions and answers, sharing of first-hand experience either on the job or in private use of Linux, and a couple of ideas about how the LUGM could promote Linux a bit more in Mauritius. It was great to get an insight into other attendee's opinion and activities. Especially taking into consideration that I'm already using Linux since around 1996/97. Frankly speaking, I bought a SuSE 4.x distribution back in those days because I couldn't achieve certain tasks on Windows NT 4.0 without spending a fortune. OpenELEC Mediacenter Next, Selven gave us decent introduction on OpenELEC: Open Embedded Linux Entertainment Center (OpenELEC) is a small Linux distribution built from scratch as a platform to turn your computer into an XBMC media center. OpenELEC is designed to make your system boot fast, and the install is so easy that anyone can turn a blank PC into a media machine in less than 15 minutes. I didn't know about it until this presentation. In the past, I was mainly attached to Video Disk Recorder (VDR) as it allows the use of satellite receiver cards very easily. Hm, somehow I'm still missing my precious HTPC that I had to leave back in Germany years ago. It was great piece of hardware and software; self-built PC in a standard HiFi-sized (43cm) black desktop casing with 2 full-featured Hauppauge DVB-s cards, an old-fashioned Voodoo graphics card, WiFi card, Pioneer slot-in DVD drive, and fully remote controlled via infra-red thanks to Debian, VDR and LIRC. With EP Guide, scheduled recordings and general multimedia centre it offered all the necessary comfort in the living room, besides a Nintendo game console; actually a GameCube at that time... But I have to admit that putting OpenELEC on a Raspberry Pi would be a cool DIY project in the near future. LUGM - our next generation of linux users (15.06.2013) Project Evil Genius (PEG) Don't be scared of the paragraph header. Ish gave us a cool explanation why he named it PEG - Project Evil Genius; it's because of the time of the day when he was scripting down his ideas to be able to build, package and provide software applications to various Linux distributions. The main influence came from openSuSE but the platform didn't cater for his needs and ideas, so he started to work out something on his own. During his passionate session he also talked about the amazing experience he had due to other Linux users from all over the world. During the next couple of days Ish promised to put his script to GitHub... Looking forward to that. Check out Ish's personal blog over at hacklog.in. Highly recommended to read. Why India? Simply because the registration fees per year for an Indian domain are approximately 20 times less than for a Mauritian domain (.mu). Exploring the beach of L'Escalier af the meeting 'After-party' at the beach of L'Escalier Puh, after such interesting sessions, ideas around Linux and good conversation during the breaks and over lunch it was time for a little break-out. Selven suggested that we all should head down to the beach of L'Escalier and get some impressions of nature down here in the south of the island. Talking about 'beach' ;-) - absolutely not comparable to the white-sanded ones here in Flic en Flac... There are no lagoons down at the south coast of Mauriitus, and watching the breaking waves is a different experience and joy after all. Unfortunately, I was a little bit worried about the thoughtless littering at such a remote location. You have to drive on natural paths through the sugar cane fields and I was really shocked by the amount of rubbish lying around almost everywhere. Sad, really sad and it concurs with Yasir's recent article on the same topic. Resumé & outlook It was a great event. I met with new people, had some good conversations, and even my children enjoyed themselves the whole day. The location was well-chosen, enough space for each and everyone, parking spaces and even a playground for the children. Also, a big "Thank You" to Selven and his helpers for the organisation and preparation of lunch. I'm kind of sure that this was an exceptional meeting of LUGM and I'm really looking forward to the next gathering of Linux geeks. Hopefully, soon. All images are courtesy of Avinash Meetoo. More pictures are available on Flickr.

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  • “It’s only test code…”

    - by Chris George
    “Let me hack this in, it’s only test code”, “Don’t worry about getting it reviewed, it’s only test code”, “It doesn’t have to be elegant or efficient, it’s only test code”… do these phrases sound familiar? Chances are if you’ve working with test automation, at one point or other you will have heard these phrases, you have probably even used them yourself! What is certain is that code written under this “it’s only test code” mantra will come back and bite you in the arse! I’ve recently encountered a case where a test was giving a false positive, therefore hiding a real product bug because that test code was very badly written. Firstly it was very difficult to understand what the test was actually trying to achieve let alone how it was doing it, and this complexity masked a simple logic error. These issues are real and they do happen. Let’s take a step back from this and look at what we are trying to do. We are writing test code that tests product code, and we do this to create a suite of tests that will help protect our software against regressions. This test code is making sure that the product behaves as it should by employing some sort of expected result verification. The simple cases of these are generally not a problem. However, automation allows us to explore more complex scenarios in many more permutations. As this complexity increases then so does the complexity of the test code. It is at this point that code which has not been architected properly will cause problems.   Keep your friends close… So, how do we make sure we are doing it right? The development teams I have worked on have always had Test Engineers working very closely with their Software Engineers. This is something that I have always tried to take full advantage of. They are coding experts! So run your ideas past them, ask for advice on how to structure your code, help you design your data structures. This may require a shift in your teams viewpoint, as contrary to this section title and folklore, Software Engineers are not actually the mortal enemy of Test Engineers. As time progresses, and test automation becomes more and more ingrained in what we do, the two roles are converging more than ever. Over the 16 years I have spent as a Test Engineer, I have seen the grey area between the two roles grow significantly larger. This serves to strengthen the relationship and common bond between the two roles which helps to make test code activities so much easier!   Pair for the win Possibly the best thing you could do to write good test code is to pair program on the task. This will serve a few purposes. you will get the benefit of the Software Engineers knowledge and experience the Software Engineer will gain knowledge on the testing process. Sharing the love is a wonderful thing! two pairs of eyes are always better than one… And so are two brains. Between the two of you, I will guarantee you will derive more useful test cases than if it was just one of you.   Code reviews Another policy which certainly pays dividends is the practice of code reviews. By having one of your peers review your code before you commit it serves two purposes. Firstly, it forces you to explain your code. Just the act of doing this will often pick up errors in your code. Secondly, it gets yet another pair of eyes on your code! I cannot stress enough how important code reviews are. The benefits they offer apply as much to product code as test code. In short, Software and Test Engineers should all be doing them! It can be extended even further by getting test code reviewed by a Software Engineer and a Test Engineer, and likewise product code. This serves to keep both functions in the loop with changes going on within your code base.   Learn from your devs I briefly touched on this earlier but I’d like to go into more detail here. Pairing with your Software Engineers when writing your test code is such an amazing opportunity to improve your coding skills. As I sit here writing this article waiting to be called into court for jury service, it reminds me that it takes a lot of patience to be a Test Engineer, almost as much as it takes to be a juror! However tempting it is to go rushing in and start writing your automated tests, resist that urge. Discuss what you want to achieve then talk through the approach you’re going to take. Then code it up together. I find it really enlightening to ask questions like ‘is there a better way to do this?’ Or ‘is this how you would code it?’ The latter question, especially, is where I learn the most. I’ve found that most Software Engineers will be reluctant to show you the ‘right way’ to code something when writing tests because they perceive the ‘right way’ to be too complicated for the Test Engineer (e.g. not mentioning LINQ and instead doing something verbose). So by asking how THEY would code it, it unleashes their true dev-ness and advanced code usually ensues! I would like to point out, however, that you don’t have to accept their method as the final answer. On numerous occasions I have opted for the more simple/verbose solution because I found the code written by the Software Engineer too advanced and therefore I would find it unreadable when I return to the code in a months’ time! Always keep the target audience in mind when writing clever code, and in my case that is mostly Test Engineers.  

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  • Lambda&rsquo;s for .NET made easy&hellip;

    - by mbcrump
    The purpose of my blog is to explain things for a beginner to intermediate c# programmer. I’ve seen several blog post that use lambda expressions always assuming the audience is familiar with them. The purpose of this post is to make them simple and easily understood. Let’s begin with a definition. A lambda expression is an anonymous function that can contain expressions and statements, and can be used to create delegates or expression tree types. So anonymous function… delegates or expression tree types? I don’t get it??? Confused yet?   Lets break this into a few definitions and jump right into the code. anonymous function – is an "inline" statement or expression that can be used wherever a delegate type is expected. delegate - is a type that references a method. Once a delegate is assigned a method, it behaves exactly like that method. The delegate method can be used like any other method, with parameters and a return value. Expression trees - represent code in a tree-like data structure, where each node is an expression, for example, a method call or a binary operation such as x < y.   Don’t worry if this still sounds confusing, lets jump right into the code with a simple 3 line program. We are going to use a Function Delegate (all you need to remember is that this delegate returns a value.) Lambda expressions are used most commonly with the Func and Action delegates, so you will see an example of both of these. Lambda Expression 3 lines. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text;   namespace ConsoleApplication7 {     class Program     {          static void Main(string[] args)         {             Func<int, int> myfunc = x => x *x;             Console.WriteLine(myfunc(6).ToString());             Console.ReadLine();         }       } } Is equivalent to Old way of doing it. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text;   namespace ConsoleApplication7 {     class Program     {          static void Main(string[] args)         {               Console.WriteLine(myFunc(6).ToString());             Console.ReadLine();         }            static int myFunc(int x)          {              return x * x;            }       } } In the example, there is a single parameter, x, and the expression is x*x. I’m going to stop here to make sure you are still with me. A lambda expression is an unnamed method written in place of a delegate instance. In other words, the compiler converts the lambda expression to either a : A delegate instance An expression tree All lambda have the following form: (parameters) => expression or statement block Now look back to the ones we have created. It should start to sink in. Don’t get stuck on the => form, use it as an identifier of a lambda. A Lamba expression can also be written in the following form: Lambda Expression. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text;   namespace ConsoleApplication7 {     class Program     {          static void Main(string[] args)         {             Func<int, int> myFunc = x =>             {                 return x * x;             };               Console.WriteLine(myFunc(6).ToString());             Console.ReadLine();         }       } } This form may be easier to read but consumes more space. Lets try an Action delegate – this delegate does not return a value. Action Delegate example. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text;   namespace ConsoleApplication7 {     class Program     {          static void Main(string[] args)         {             Action<string> myAction = (string x) => { Console.WriteLine(x); };             myAction("michael has made this so easy");                                   Console.ReadLine();         }       } } Lambdas can also capture outer variables (such as the example below) A lambda expression can reference the local variables and parameters of the method in which it’s defined. Outer variables referenced by a lambda expression are called captured variables. Capturing Outer Variables using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text;   namespace ConsoleApplication7 {     class Program     {          static void Main(string[] args)         {             string mike = "Michael";             Action<string> myAction = (string x) => {                 Console.WriteLine("{0}{1}", mike, x);          };             myAction(" has made this so easy");                                   Console.ReadLine();         }       } } Lamba’s can also with a strongly typed list to loop through a collection.   Used w a strongly typed list. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text;   namespace ConsoleApplication7 {     class Program     {          static void Main(string[] args)         {             List<string> list = new List<string>() { "1", "2", "3", "4" };             list.ForEach(s => Console.WriteLine(s));             Console.ReadLine();         }       } } Outputs: 1 2 3 4 I think this will get you started with Lambda’s, as always consult the MSDN documentation for more information. Still confused? Hopefully you are not.

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  • Simplifying Human Capital Management with Mobile Applications

    - by HCM-Oracle
    By Aaron Green If you're starting to think 'mobility' is a recurring theme in your reading, you'd be right. For those who haven't started to build organisational capabilities to leverage it, it's fair to say you're late to the party. The good news: better late than never. Research firm eMarketer says the worldwide smartphone audience will total 1.75 billion this year, while communications technology and services provider Ericsson suggests smartphones will triple to 5.6 billion globally by 2019. It should be no surprise, smart phone adoption is reaching the farthest corners of the globe; the subsequent impact of enterprise applications enabled by these devices is driving business performance improvement and will continue to do so. Companies using advanced workforce analytics can add significantly to the bottom line, while impacting customer satisfaction, quality and productivity. It's a statement that makes most business leaders sit forward in their chairs. Achieving these three standards is like sipping The Golden Elixir for the business world. No-one would argue their importance. So what are 'advanced workforce analytics?' Simply, they're unprecedented access to workforce trends and performance markers. Many are made possible by a mobile world and the enterprise applications that come with it on smart devices. Some refer to it as 'the consumerisation of IT'. As this phenomenon has matured and become more widely appreciated it has impacted the spectrum of functional units within an enterprise differently, but powerfully. Whether it's sales, HR, marketing, IT, or operations, all have benefited from a more mobile approach. It has been the catalyst for improvement in, and management of, the employee experience. The net result of which is happier customers. The obvious benefits but the lesser realised impact Most people understand that mobility allows for greater efficiency and productivity, collaboration and flexibility, but how that translates into business outcomes within the various functional groups is lesser known. In actuality mobility has helped galvanise partnerships between cross-functional groups within the enterprise. Where in some quarters it was once feared mobility could fragment a workforce, its rallying cry of support is coming from what you might describe as an unlikely source - HR. As the bedrock of an enterprise, it is conceivable HR might contemplate the possible negative impact of a mobile workforce that no-longer sits in an office, at the same desks every day. After all, who would know what they were doing or saying? How would they collaborate? It's reasonable to see why HR might have a legitimate claim to try and retain as much 'perceived control' as possible. The reality however is mobility has emancipated human capital and its management. Mobility and enterprise applications are expediting decision making. Google calls it Zero Moment of Truth, or ZMOT. It enables smoother operation and can contribute to faster growth. From a collaborative perspective, with the growing use of enterprise social media, which in many cases is being driven by HR, workforce planning and the tangible impact of change is much easier to map. This in turn provides a platform from which individuals and teams can thrive. With more agility and ability to anticipate, staff satisfaction and retention is higher, and real time feedback constant. The management team can save time, energy and costs with more accurate data, which is then intelligently applied across the workforce to truly engage with staff, customers and partners. From a human capital management (HCM) perspective, mobility can help you close the loop on true talent management. It can enhance what managers can offer and what employees can provide in return. It can create nested relationships and powerful partnerships. IT and HR - partners and stewards of mobility One effect of enterprise mobility is an evolution in the nature of the relationship between HR and IT from one of service provision to partnership. The reason for the dynamic shift is largely due to the 'bring your own device' (BYOD) movement, which is transitioning to a 'bring your own application' (BYOA) scenario. As enterprise technology has in some ways reverse-engineered its solutions to help manage this situation, the partnership between IT (the functional owner) and HR (the strategic enabler) is deeply entrenched. And it has to be. The CIO and the HR leader are faced with compliance and regulatory issues and concerns around information security and personal privacy on a daily basis, complicated by global reach and varied domestic legislation. There are tens of thousands of new mobile apps entering the market each month and, unlike many consumer applications which get downloaded but are often never opened again after initial perusal, enterprise applications are being relied upon by functional groups, not least by HR to enhance people management. It requires a systematic approach across all applications in use within the enterprise in order to ensure they're used to best effect. No turning back, and no desire to With real time analytics on performance and the ability for immediate feedback, there is no turning back for managers. In my experience with Oracle, our customers' operational efficiency is at record levels. It's clear as a result of the combination of individual KPIs and organisational goals, CIOs have been able to give HR leaders the ability to build predictive models that feed into an enterprise organisations' evolving strategy. It also helps them ensure regulatory compliance much more easily. Once an arduous task, with mobile enabled automation and quality data, compliance is simpler. Their world has changed for the better. For the CIO, mobility also assists them to optimise performance. While it doesn't come without challenges, mobile-enabled applications and the native experience users have with them means employees don't need high-level technical expertise to train users. It reduces the training and engagement required from the IT team so they can focus on other things that deliver value to the bottom line; all the while lowering the cost of assets and related maintenance work by simplifying processes. Rewards of a mobile enterprise outweigh risks With mobile tools allowing us to increasingly integrate our personal and professional lives, terms like "office hours" are becoming irrelevant, so work/life balance is a cultural must. Enterprises are expected to offer tools that enable workers to access information from anywhere, at any time, from any device. Employees want simplicity and convenience but it doesn't stop at private enterprise. This is a societal shift. Governments, which traditionally have been known to be slower to adopt newer technology, are also offering support for local businesses to go mobile. Several state government websites have advice on how to create mobile apps and more. And as recently as last week the Victorian Minister for Technology Gordon Rich-Phillips unveiled his State government's ICT roadmap for the next two years, which details an increased use of the public cloud, as well as mobile communications, and improved access to online data-sets. Tech giants are investing significantly in solutions designed to simplify mobile deployment and enablement. The mobility trend is creating a wave of change in the industry and driving transformation in the enterprise. If you're not on that wave, the business risk continues to rise as your competitiveness drops. Aaron is the Vice President of HCM Strategy at Oracle Corporation where he is responsible for researching and identifying emerging trends in the practice of Human Resources and works to deliver industry-leading technology solutions. Other responsibilities include, ownership of Oracle's innovative HCM solutions across JAPAC and enabling organisations to transform and modernise their workforce tools. Follow him on Twitter @aaronjgreen

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  • JavaOne Session Report: “50 Tips in 50 Minutes for GlassFish Fans”

    - by Janice J. Heiss
    At JavaOne 2012 on Monday, Oracle’s Engineer Chris Kasso, and Technology Evangelist Arun Gupta, presented a head-spinning session (CON4701) in which they offered 50 tips for GlassFish fans. Kasso and Gupta alternated back and forth with each presenting 10 tips at a time. An audience of about (appropriately) 50 attentive and appreciative developers was on hand in what has to be one of the most information-packed sessions ever at JavaOne!Aside: I experienced one of the quiet joys of JavaOne when, just before the session began, I spotted Java Champion and JavaOne Rock Star Adam Bien sitting nearby – Adam is someone I have been fortunate to know for many years.GlassFish is a freely available, commercially supported Java EE reference implementation. The session prioritized quantity of tips over depth of information and offered tips that are intended for both seasoned and new users, that are meant to increase the range of functional options available to GlassFish users. The focus was on lesser-known dimensions of GlassFish. Attendees were encouraged to pursue tips that contained new information for them. All 50 tips can be accessed here.Below are several examples of more elaborate tips and a final practical tip on how to get in touch with these folks. Tip #1: Using the login Command * To execute a remote command with asadmin you must provide the admin's user name and password.* The login command allows you to store the login credentials to be reused in subsequent commands.* Can be logged into multiple servers (distinguish by host and port). Example:     % asadmin --host ouch login     Enter admin user name [default: admin]>     Enter admin password>     Login information relevant to admin user name [admin]     for host [ouch] and admin port [4848] stored at     [/Users/ckasso/.asadminpass] successfully.     Make sure that this file remains protected.     Information stored in this file will be used by     asadmin commands to manage the associated domain.     Command login executed successfully.     % asadmin --host ouch list-clusters     c1 not running     Command list-clusters executed successfully.Tip #4: Using the AS_DEBUG Env Variable* Environment variable to control client side debug output* Exposes: command processing info URL used to access the command:                           http://localhost:4848/__asadmin/uptime Raw response from the server Example:   % export AS_DEBUG=true  % asadmin uptime  CLASSPATH= ./../glassfish/modules/admin-cli.jar  Commands: [uptime]  asadmin extension directory: /work/gf-3.1.2/glassfish3/glassfish/lib/asadm      ------- RAW RESPONSE  ---------   Signature-Version: 1.0   message: Up 7 mins 10 secs   milliseconds_value: 430194   keys: milliseconds   milliseconds_name: milliseconds   use-main-children-attribute: false   exit-code: SUCCESS  ------- RAW RESPONSE  ---------Tip #11: Using Password Aliases * Some resources require a password to access (e.g. DB, JMS, etc.).* The resource connector is defined in the domain.xml.Example:Suppose the DB resource you wish to access requires an entry like this in the domain.xml:     <property name="password" value="secretp@ssword"/>But company policies do not allow you to store the password in the clear.* Use password aliases to avoid storing the password in the domain.xml* Create a password alias:     % asadmin create-password-alias DB_pw_alias     Enter the alias password>     Enter the alias password again>     Command create-password-alias executed successfully.* The password is stored in domain's encrypted keystore.* Now update the password value in the domain.xml:     <property name="password" value="${ALIAS=DB_pw_alias}"/>Tip #21: How to Start GlassFish as a Service * Configuring a server to automatically start at boot can be tedious.* Each platform does it differently.* The create-service command makes this easy.   Windows: creates a Windows service Linux: /etc/init.d script Solaris: Service Management Facility (SMF) service * Must execute create-service with admin privileges.* Can be used for the DAS or instances* Try it first with the --dry-run option.* There is a (unsupported) _delete-serverExample:     # asadmin create-service domain1     The Service was created successfully. Here are the details:     Name of the service:application/GlassFish/domain1     Type of the service:Domain     Configuration location of the service:/work/gf-3.1.2.2/glassfish3/glassfish/domains     Manifest file location on the system:/var/svc/manifest/application/GlassFish/domain1_work_gf-3.1.2.2_glassfish3_glassfish_domains/Domain-service-smf.xml.     You have created the service but you need to start it yourself. Here are the most typical Solaris commands of interest:     * /usr/bin/svcs  -a | grep domain1  // status     * /usr/sbin/svcadm enable domain1 // start     * /usr/sbin/svcadm disable domain1 // stop     * /usr/sbin/svccfg delete domain1 // uninstallTip #34: Posting a Command via REST* Use wget/curl to execute commands on the DAS.Example:  Deploying an application   % curl -s -S \       -H 'Accept: application/json' -X POST \       -H 'X-Requested-By: anyvalue' \       -F id=@/path/to/application.war \       -F force=true http://localhost:4848/management/domain/applications/application* Use @ before a file name to tell curl to send the file's contents.* The force option tells GlassFish to force the deployment in case the application is already deployed.* Use wget/curl to execute commands on the DAS.Example:  Deploying an application   % curl -s -S \       -H 'Accept: application/json' -X POST \       -H 'X-Requested-By: anyvalue' \       -F id=@/path/to/application.war \       -F force=true http://localhost:4848/management/domain/applications/application* Use @ before a file name to tell curl to send the file's contents.* The force option tells GlassFish to force the deployment in case the application is already deployed.Tip #46: Upgrading to a Newer Version * Upgrade applications and configuration from an earlier version* Upgrade Tool: Side-by-side upgrade– GUI: asupgrade– CLI: asupgrade --c– What happens ?* Copies older source domain -> target domain directory* asadmin start-domain --upgrade* Update Tool and pkg: In-place upgrade– GUI: updatetool, install all Available Updates– CLI: pkg image-update– Upgrade the domain* asadmin start-domain --upgradeTip #50: How to reach us?* GlassFish Forum: http://www.java.net/forums/glassfish/glassfish* [email protected]* @glassfish* facebook.com/glassfish* youtube.com/GlassFishVideos* blogs.oracle.com/theaquariumArun Gupta acknowledged that their method of presentation was experimental and actively solicited feedback about the session. The best way to reach them is on the GlassFish user forum.In addition, check out Gupta’s new book Java EE 6 Pocket Guide.

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  • Installing SharePoint 2010 and PowerPivot for SharePoint on Windows 7

    - by smisner
    Many people like me want (or need) to do their business intelligence development work on a laptop. As someone who frequently speaks at various events or teaches classes on all subjects related to the Microsoft business intelligence stack, I need a way to run multiple server products on my laptop with reasonable performance. Once upon a time, that requirement meant only that I had to load the current version of SQL Server and the client tools of choice. In today's post, I'll review my latest experience with trying to make the newly released Microsoft BI products work with a Windows 7 operating system.The entrance of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 into the BI stack complicated matters and I started using Virtual Server to establish a "suitable" environment. As part of the team that delivered a lot of education as part of the Yukon pre-launch activities (that would be SQL Server 2005 for the uninitiated), I was working with four - yes, four - virtual servers. That was a pretty brutal workload for a 2GB laptop, which worked if I was very, very careful. It could also be a finicky and unreliable configuration as I learned to my dismay at one TechEd session several years ago when I had to reboot a very carefully cached set of servers just minutes before my session started. Although it worked, it came back to life very, very slowly much to the displeasure of the audience. They couldn't possibly have been less pleased than me.At that moment, I resolved to get the beefiest environment I could afford and consolidate to a single virtual server. Enter the 4GB 64-bit laptop to preserve my sanity and my livelihood. Likewise, for SQL Server 2008, I managed to keep everything within a single virtual server and I could function reasonably well with this approach.Now we have SQL Server 2008 R2 plus Office SharePoint Server 2010. That means a 64-bit operating system. Period. That means no more Virtual Server. That means I must use Hyper-V or another alternative. I've heard alternatives exist, but my few dabbles in this area did not yield positive results. It might have been just me having issues rather than any failure of those technologies to adequately support the requirements.My first run at working with the new BI stack configuration was to set up a 64-bit 4GB laptop with a dual-boot to run Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V. However, I was generally not happy with running Windows Server 2008 R2 on my laptop. For one, I couldn't put it into sleep mode, which is helpful if I want to prepare for a presentation beforehand and then walk to the podium without the need to hold my laptop in its open state along the way (my strategy at the TechEd session long, long ago). Secondly, it was finicky with projectors. I had issues from time to time and while I always eventually got it to work, I didn't appreciate those nerve-wracking moments wondering whether this would be the time that it wouldn't work.Somewhere along the way, I learned that it was possible to load SharePoint 2010 in a Windows 7 which piqued my interest. I had just acquired a new laptop running Windows 7 64-bit, and thought surely running the BI stack natively on my laptop must be better than running Hyper-V. (I have not tried booting to Hyper-V VHD yet, but that's on my list of things to try so the jury of one is still out on this approach.) Recently, I had to build up a server with the RTM versions of SQL Server 2008 R2 and Sharepoint Server 2010 and decided to follow suit on my Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit laptop. The process is slightly different, but I'm happy to report that it IS possible, although I had some fits and starts along the way.DISCLAIMER: These products are NOT intended to be run in production mode on the Windows 7 operating system. The configuration described in this post is strictly for development or learning purposes and not supported by Microsoft. If you have trouble, you will NOT get help from them. I might be able to help, but I provide no guarantees of my ability or availablity to help. I won't provide the step-by-step instructions in this post as there are other resources that provide these details, but I will provide an overview of my approach, point you to the relevant resources, describe some of the problems I encountered, and explain how I addressed those problems to achieve my desired goal.Because my goal was not simply to set up SharePoint Server 2010 on my laptop, but specifically PowerPivot for SharePoint, I started out by referring to the installation instructions at the PowerPiovt-Info site, but mainly to confirm that I was performing steps in the proper sequence. I didn't perform the steps in Part 1 because those steps are applicable only to a server operating system which I am not running on my laptop. Then, the instructions in Part 2, won't work exactly as written for the same reason. Instead, I followed the instructions on MSDN, Setting Up the Development Environment for SharePoint 2010 on Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008. In general, I found the following differences in installation steps from the steps at PowerPivot-Info:You must copy the SharePoint installation media to the local drive so that you can edit the config.xml to allow installation on a Windows client.You also have to manually install the prerequisites. The instructions provides links to each item that you must manually install and provides a command-line instruction to execute which enables required Windows features.I will digress for a moment to save you some grief in the sequence of steps to perform. I discovered later that a missing step in the MSDN instructions is to install the November CTP Reporting Services add-in for SharePoint. When I went to test my SharePoint site (I believe I tested after I had a successful PowerPivot installation), I ran into the following error: Could not load file or assembly 'RSSharePointSoapProxy, Version=10.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=89845dcd8080cc91' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified. I was rather surprised that Reporting Services was required. Then I found an article by Alan le Marquand, Working Together: SQL Server 2008 R2 Reporting Services Integration in SharePoint 2010,that instructed readers to install the November add-in. My first reaction was, "Really?!?" But I confirmed it in another TechNet article on hardware and software requirements for SharePoint Server 2010. It doesn't refer explicitly to the November CTP but following the link took me there. (Interestingly, I retested today and there's no longer any reference to the November CTP. Here's the link to download the latest and greatest Reporting Services Add-in for SharePoint Technologies 2010.) You don't need to download the add-in anymore if you're doing a regular server-based installation of SharePoint because it installs as part of the prerequisites automatically.When it was time to start the installation of SharePoint, I deviated from the MSDN instructions and from the PowerPivot-Info instructions:On the Choose the installation you want page of the installation wizard, I chose Server Farm.On the Server Type page, I chose Complete.At the end of the installation, I did not run the configuration wizard.Returning to the PowerPivot-Info instructions, I tried to follow the instructions in Part 3 which describe installing SQL Server 2008 R2 with the PowerPivot option. These instructions tell you to choose the New Server option on the Setup Role page where you add PowerPivot for SharePoint. However, I ran into problems with this approach and got installation errors at the end.It wasn't until much later as I was investigating an error that I encountered Dave Wickert's post that installing PowerPivot for SharePoint on Windows 7 is unsupported. Uh oh. But he did want to hear about it if anyone succeeded, so I decided to take the plunge. Perseverance paid off, and I can happily inform Dave that it does work so far. I haven't tested absolutely everything with PowerPivot for SharePoint but have successfully deployed a workbook and viewed the PowerPivot Management Dashboard. I have not yet tested the data refresh feature, but I have installed. Continue reading to see how I accomplished my objective.I unintalled SQL Server 2008 R2 and started again. I had different problems which I don't recollect now. However, I uninstalled again and approached installation from a different angle and my next attempt succeeded. The downside of this approach is that you must do all of the things yourself that are done automatically when you install PowerPivot as a new server. Here are the steps that I followed:Install SQL Server 2008 R2 to get a database engine instance installed.Run the SharePoint configuration wizard to set up the SharePoint databases.In Central Administration, create a Web application using classic mode authentication as per a TechNet article on PowerPivot Authentication and Authorization.Then I followed the steps I found at How to: Install PowerPivot for SharePoint on an Existing SharePoint Server. Especially important to note - you must launch setup by using Run as administrator. I did not have to manually deploy the PowerPivot solution as the instructions specify, but it's good to know about this step because it tells you where to look in Central Administration to confirm a successful deployment.I did spot some incorrect steps in the instructions (at the time of this writing) in How To: Configure Stored Credentials for PowerPivot Data Refresh. Specifically, in the section entitled Step 1: Create a target application and set the credentials, both steps 10 and 12 are incorrect. They tell you to provide an actual Windows user name and password on the page where you are simply defining the prompts for your application in the Secure Store Service. To add the Windows user name and password that you want to associate with the application - after you have successfully created the target application - you select the target application and then click Set credentials in the ribbon.Lastly, I followed the instructions at How to: Install Office Data Connectivity Components on a PowerPivot server. However, I have yet to test this in my current environment.I did have several stops and starts throughout this process and edited those out to spare you from reading non-essential information. I believe the explanation I have provided here accurately reflect the steps I followed to produce a working configuration. If you follow these steps and get a different result, please let me know so that together we can work through the issue and correct these instructions. I'm sure there are many other folks in the Microsoft BI community that will appreciate the ability to set up the BI stack in a Windows 7 environment for development or learning purposes. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, May 04, 2010

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, May 04, 2010New ProjectsAlbum photo de club - Club's Photos Album: Un album photos permettant d'afficher les photos et le détails des membres d'un club - Photo album allowing to view photos and details of the membersBlog.Net Blogging Components: Blog.Net server-side blogging components to add a blog to your current ASP.NET website.FilePirate - Really Advanced LAN File Sharing: Really Advanced, yet super easy, LAN Party File Sharing written using the .Net Framework and C#. Ditch DirectConnect or Windows File Sharing at y...Fisiogest: Programa de gestión de una clínica de fisioterapiaIdeaNMR: An online repository of NMR experiment automated setups with wiki type documentation library and client program providing automated experiment setu...Introducción a Unity: Código de ejemplo del uso de Unity en diferentes situaciones. - Registro de clases, instancias e interfaces. - Resolución de clases, instancias e...Iowa City .NET Developers: This is the project site for the Iowa City .NET Developers.isanywhere: A command line utility to see if one or more files (given a filemask) are to be found anywhere inside a specific directory, or elsewhere inside one...LczCode: lczLog4net udp logs viewer: UdpLogViewer is a .NET 4 WinForm application that receives udp messages from log4net and shows them in a grid. It is possible to filter them or sh...New Silverlight XPS Viewer (In Sl4): New Silverlight XPS viewer Novuz: Novuz is a usenet indexer and reporter. It's developed both in Visual Studio 2010 and MonoDevelop, one of the key features of Novuz is that it sho...PodSnatch: PodSnatch is a podcast client that makes it easy to download rss-enclosures. Multiple simultaneous downloads enabled by threading. GUI is built wi...Robot Shootans: A simple top down shooter game where the player has to kill robots running at them. Written in C++ using SDL with various extentionsSharePoint Rsync List: This program will syncronize files and directories from and unc/local/sharepoint to a SharePoint 2007 or 2010 server. Supports of to 2GB files and ...SignInAndStorageLib: SignInAndStorageLib makes properly handling both sign in and storage issues in Xbox 360 XBLIG XNA games simple. Written in C#, SignInAndStorageLib...SilverBBS: ANSI-style bbs experience delivered via Silverlight. Silverlight flip-down counter: A Silverlight widget that enables you to count down towards a preconfigured event on a configured date.SmartieFly: Smartie Fly is a quiz software program written in C# using Silverlight. It uses SQL Server as a backend database. VS2010 Framework Driven Testing: CodedUITests generate a lot of code, and they break on every change to the object under test. Goals: - write new tests manually, but with as litt...WMediaCatalog: Advanced multimedia cataloguer. Allows users to keep their musical collections well organized and provides flexible methods of filtering, serarching WPathFinder: A simple path management application for windows. Functionality includes: - Add/remove/change path entries easily. - Search for all instances of a...Yasminoku: Yasminoku is an open source "Sudoku" alike game totally written in DHTML (JavaScript, CSS and HTML) that uses mouse. Includes sudoku solver. This c...New ReleasesAlbum photo de club - Club's Photos Album: App - version 0.4: version 0.4 - Critère d'affichage des membres : nom, année, ville - Navigation entre les images d'un membres - Navigation entre les membres - Affi...Album photo de club - Club's Photos Album: Code - Version 0.4: Code source de la version 0.4BigDecimal: Concept Evaluation Release 2 (BigDecimals): This in the second updates release of BigDecimals. It has the four simple arithmetic rules Addition, Subtract, Multiple and Division.CBM-Command: 2010-05-03: New features in this build Keyboard Shortcuts Panel Swapping Panel Toggling On/Off Toggling 40/80 Columns Confirming Quit Confirming GO64...Directory Linker: Directory Linker 2: This release introduces Undo Support and Symbolic File Link support. More details can be found here http://www.humblecoder.co.uk/?p=141DotNetNuke Skins Pack: DotNetNuke 80 Skins Pack: This released is the first for DNN 4 & 5 with Skin Token Design (legacy skin support on DNN 4 & 5)DTLoggedExec: 1.0.0.0: -FIRST NON-BETA RELEASE! :) -Code cleaned up -Added SetPackageInfo method to ILogProvider interface to make easier future improvements -Deprecated...GenerateTypedBamApi: Version 2.1: Changes in this release: NEW: Support for Office Data Connectivity Components 2010 NEW: Include both x86 and x64 EXE's due to lack of support in ...HobbyBrew Mobile: Beta 1 Refresh: Risolto bug circa il salvataggio di ricette (veniva impostato scorrettamente che si trattava di Mash Design "infusione" se ri-aperte con hobbyBrew)...Home Access Plus+: v4.2: Version 4.2 Added Overrides into the Booking System Some slight CSS changes to the Help Desk Updated the config tool to work anywhere on the LA...Hubble.Net - Open source full-text search database: V0.8.3.0: V0.8.3.0 Show server version in about dialog. Fix a bug of deleting querycache files. V0.8.2.9 Change sql client to support userid and password Ch...IdeaNMR: IdeaNMR Client: This is a client program with an example package.kdar: KDAR 0.0.21: KDAR - Kernel Debugger Anti Rootkit - signature's bases updated - usability increased - NDIS6 MINIPORT_BLOCK checks addedLightWeight Application Server: 0.4.1: One step further to beta - yet another release for c# developers audience only. Changes: 1. API - added a LWAS.Infrastructure.Storage service to d...Log4net udp logs viewer: UdpLogViewer 1.0: First release of UdpLogViewer, version 1.0.MDownloader: MDownloader-0.15.11.58370: Fixed minor bugs.Metabolite Enterprise Libraries for EPiServer CMS using Page Type Builder: Metabolite Enterprise Libraries 1.2 Beta 2: This is the beta release of the Metabolite Enterprise Libraries 1.2 Beta 2 for use with EPiServer 6 and Page Type Builder 1.2 Beta 2.Microsoft Silverlight Analytics Framework: Version 1.4.3 Installer: Pre-release Installer for Visual Studio 2010 and Expression Blend 4 RCSupports both Silverlight 3 and Silverlight 4 Release NotesFixed null referen...MultipointTUIO: Multipoint SDK v1.5 Release: Rebuilt against v1.5 of the Microsoft Multipoint SDK, this mean Windows 7 support (and 64bit I think!)My Notepad: My Notepad: This is the status of My Notepad until now. This is many built in features but has to undergo a lot of modifications. The release does not include ...New Silverlight XPS Viewer (In Sl4): Silverlight XPS Viewer: Background: During my development last week I was working on a Silverlight based XPS viewer. During this viewer we came to a situation in which the...NSIS Autorun: NSIS Autorun 0.1.6: This release includes source code, executable binary, files and example materials.Open Diagram: Open Diagram 5.0 Beta May 2010: This is the first beta release of Open Diagram 5.0. Select Crainiate.Diagramming.Examples.Forms as the startup project to view the current Class D...Pocket Wiki: PC Wiki (zip) 1.0.1: PC Version of Pocket Wiki. Unzip and run. Requires .NET Framework 2.0Pocket Wiki: Pocket Wiki 1.0.1 (cab): Pocket Wiki cab installation - requires DotNet 2.0 or greater. Default wiki language is "slash" - a syntax I created that is easy to type on keyboa...Pocket Wiki: Pocket Wiki.sbp: Pocket Wiki Source Code (version .72) - Basic4PPCPublish to Photo Frame: 1.0.2.0: This version adds: add borders to portrait images, for photo frames that crop them incorrectly.Reflection Studio: Reflection Studio 0.1: First download release, it contains a lot of things but allways in beta version. Hope you will like the preview.SharePoint 2010 PowerShell Scripts & Utilities: PSSP2010 Utils 0.1: This is the initial release with SPInstallUtils.psm1 module. This module includes Get-SPPrerequisites and New-SPInstallPackage cmdlets. Refer to th...Silverlight 4.0 Popup Menu: Context Menu for Silverlight 4.0 v1.1 Beta: Multilevel menus are now supported. Added design time support for the PopupMenuItem elements. The project is now under Subversion.Silverlight flip-down counter: FlipDownCounter v1.0: The final release of the Silverlight flip-down counter. Please refer to the included readme file for information on how to use the counter.Stratosphere: Stratosphere 1.0.0.1: Moved scalable block file system implementation to Stratosphere.FileSystemSystem.AddIn Pipeline Builder: Pipeline Builder 1.2: Lots of improvements from the CTP, version 1.0: - Added dialogue for possible overwrite if the file has changed: possibility of ignoring changes (p...ThoughtWorks Cruise Notification Interceptor: 1.0.1: Fixed an issue with the regex that parses the incoming notification. This issue would send failure messages when the build was "fixed".ThreadSafeControls: ThreadSafeControls v0.1: This is the first binary release of the ThreadSafeControls library. I'll call it a pre-alpha release.TracerX Logger/Viewer for .NET: 4.0: View this CodeProject article for documentation on how to use the latest version of the Logger. About the DownloadsVersion: 4.0.1005.1163 Changese...VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30503.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVisual Studio DSite: Lottery Game (Visual C++ 2008): An advanced lottery game made in visual c 2008.VivoSocial: VivoSocial 7.1.3: Version 7.1.3 of VivoSocial has been released. If you experienced any issues with the previous version, please update your modules to the 7.1.3 rel...Xrns2XMod: Xrns2XMod 1.0: Features added Conversion of all possible convertible features between Renoise and MOD / XM. FlacBox lib updated (thanks to Yuri) NAudio lib in...Most Popular ProjectsRawrWBFS ManagerAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: Databasepatterns & practices – Enterprise LibrarySilverlight ToolkitiTuner - The iTunes CompanionWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETDotNetNuke® Community EditionMost Active ProjectsIonics Isapi Rewrite Filterpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryRawrHydroServer - CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System ServerAJAX Control Frameworkpatterns & practices: Azure Security GuidanceNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModuleBlogEngine.NETTinyProjectDambach Linear Algebra Framework

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  • Looking Back at MIX10

    - by WeigeltRo
    It’s the sad truth of my life that even though I’m fascinated by airplanes and flight in general since my childhood days, my body doesn’t like flying. Even the ridiculously short flights inside Germany are taking their toll on me each time. Now combine this with sitting in the cramped space of economy class for many hours on a transatlantic flight from Germany to Las Vegas and back, and factor in some heavy dose of jet lag (especially on my way eastwards), and you get an idea why after coming back home I had this question on my mind: Was it really worth it to attend MIX10? This of course is a question that will also be asked by my boss at Comma Soft (for other reasons, obviously), who decided to send me and my colleague Jens Schaller, to the MIX10 conference. (A note to my German readers: An dieser Stelle der Hinweis, dass Comma Soft noch Silverlight-Entwickler und/oder UI-Designer für den Standort Bonn sucht – aussagekräftige Bewerbungen bitte an [email protected]) Too keep things short: My answer is yes. Before I’ll go into detail, let me ask the heretical questions whether tech conferences in general still make sense. There was a time, where actually being at a tech conference gave you a head-start in regard to learning about new technologies. Nowadays this is no longer true, where every bit of information and every detail is immediately twittered, blogged and whatevered to death. In the case of MIX10 you even can download the video-taped sessions shortly after. So: Does visiting a conference still make sense? It depends on what you expect from a conference. It should be clear to everybody that you’ll neither get exclusive information, nor receive training in a small group. What a conference does offer that sitting in front of your computer does not can be summarized as follows: Focus Being away from work and home will help you to focus on the presented information. Of course there are always the poor guys who are haunted by their work (with mails and short text messages reporting the latest showstopper problem), but in general being out of your office makes a huge difference. Inspiration With the focus comes the emotional involvement. I find it much easier to absorb information if I feel that certain vibe when sitting in a session. This still means that I have put work into reviewing the information later, but it’s a better starting point. And all the impressions collected at a (good) conference combined lead to a higher motivation – be it by the buzz (“this is gonna be sooo cool!”) or by the fear to fall behind (“man, we’ll have work on this, or else…”). People At a conference it’s pretty easy to get into contact with other people during breakfast, lunch and other breaks. This is a good opportunity to get a feel for what other development teams are doing (on a very general level of course, nobody will tell you about their secret formula) and what they are thinking about specific technologies. So MIX10 did offer focus, inspiration and people, but that would have meant nothing without valuable content. When I (being a frontend developer with a strong interest in UI/UX) planned my visit to MIX10, I made the decision to focus on the "soft" topics of design, interaction and user experience. I figured that I would be bombarded with all the technical details about Silverlight 4 anyway in the weeks and months to come. Actually, I would have liked to catch a few technical sessions, but the agenda wasn’t exactly in favor of people interested in any kind of Silverlight and UI/UX/Design topics. That’s one of my few complaints about the conference – I would have liked one more day and/or more sessions per day. Overall, the quality of the workshops and sessions was pretty high. In fact, looking back at my collection of conferences I’ve visited in the past I’d say that MIX10 ranks somewhere near the top spot. Here’s an overview of the workshops/sessions I attended (I’ll leave out the keynotes): Day 0 (Workshops on Sunday) Design Fundamentals for Developers Robby Ingebretsen is the man! Great workshop in three parts with the perfect mix of examples, well-structured definition of terminology and the right dose of humor. Robby was part of the WPF team before founding his own company so he not only has a strong interest in design (and the skillz!) but also the technical background.   Design Tools and Techniques Originally announced to be held by Arturo Toledo, the Rosso brothers from ArcheType filled in for the first two parts, and Corrina Black had a pretty general part about the Windows Phone UI. The first two thirds were a mixed bag; the two guys definitely knew what they were talking about, and the demos were great, but the talk lacked the preparation and polish of a truly great presentation. Corrina was not allowed to go into too much detail before the keynote on Monday, but the session was still very interesting as it showed how much thought went into the Windows Phone UI (and there’s always a lot to learn when people talk about their thought process). Day 1 (Monday) Designing Rich Experiences for Data-Centric Applications I wonder whether there was ever a test-run for this session, but what Ken Azuma and Yoshihiro Saito delivered in the first 15 minutes of a 30-minutes-session made me walk out. A commercial for a product (just great: a video showing a SharePoint plug-in in an all-Japanese UI) combined with the most generic blah blah one could imagine. EPIC FAIL.   Great User Experiences: Seamlessly Blending Technology & Design I switched to this session from the one above but I guess I missed the interesting part – what I did catch was what looked like a “look at the cool stuff we did” without being helpful. Or maybe I was just in a bad mood after the other session.   The Art, Technology and Science of Reading This talk by Kevin Larson was very interesting, but was more a presentation of what Microsoft is doing in research (pretty impressive) and in the end lacked a bit the helpful advice one could have hoped for.   10 Ways to Attack a Design Problem and Come Out Winning Robby Ingebretsen again, and again a great mix of theory and practice. The clean and simple, yet effective, UI of the reader app resulted in a simultaneous “wow” of Jens and me. If you’d watch only one session video, this should be it. Microsoft has to bring Robby back next year! Day 2 (Tuesday) Touch in Public: Multi-touch Interaction Design for Kiosks & Architectural Experiences Very interesting session by Jason Brush, a great inspiration with many details to look out for in the examples. Exactly what I was hoping for – and then some!   Designing Bing: Heart and Science How hard can it be to design the UI for a search engine? An input field and a list of results, that should be it, right? Well, not so fast! The talk by Paul Ray showed the many iterations to finally get it right (up to the choice of a specific blue for the links). And yes, I want an eye-tracking device to play around with!   The Elephant in the Room When Nishant Kothary presented a long list of what his session was not about, I told to myself (not having the description text present) “Am I in the wrong talk? Should I leave?”. Boy, was I wrong. A great talk about human factors in the process of designing stuff.   An Hour with Bill Buxton Having seen Bill Buxton’s presentation in the keynote, I just had to see this man again – even though I didn’t know what to expect. Being more or less unplanned and intended to be more of a conversation, the session didn’t provide a wealth of immediately useful information. Nevertheless Bill Buxton was impressive with his huge knowledge of seemingly everything. But this could/should have been a session some when in the evening and not in parallel to at least two other interesting talks. Day 3 (Wednesday) Design the Ordinary, Like the Fixie This session by DL Byron and Kevin Tamura started really well and brought across the message to keep things simple. But towards the end the talk lost some of its steam. And, as a member of the audience pointed out, they kind of ignored their own advice when they used a fancy presentation software other then PowerPoint that sometimes got in the way of showing things.   Developing Natural User Interfaces Speaking of alternative presentation software, Joshua Blake definitely had the most remarkable alternative to PowerPoint, a self-written program called NaturalShow that was controlled using multi-touch on a touch screen. Not a PowerPoint-killer, but impressive nevertheless. The (excellent) talk itself was kind of eye-opening in regard to what “multi-touch support” on various platforms (WPF, Silverlight, Windows Phone) actually means.   Treat your Content Right The talk by Tiffani Jones Brown wasn’t even on my planned schedule, but somehow I ended up in that session – and it was great. And even for people who don’t necessarily have to write content for websites, some points made by Tiffani are valid in many places, notably wherever you put texts with more than a single word into your UI. Creating Effective Info Viz in Microsoft Silverlight The last session of MIX10 I attended was kind of disappointing. At first things were very promising, with Matthias Shapiro giving a brief but well-structured introduction to info graphics and interactive visualizations. Then the live-coding began and while the result was interesting, too much time was spend on wrestling to get the code working. Ending earlier than planned, the talk was a bit light on actual content, but at least it included a nice list of resources. Conclusion It could be felt all across MIX10, UIs will take a huge leap forward; in fact, there are enough examples that have already. People who both have the technical know-how and at least a basic understanding of design (“literacy” as Bill Buxton called it) are in high demand. The concept of the MIX conference and initiatives like design.toolbox shows that Microsoft understands very well that frontend developers have to acquire new knowledge besides knowing how to hack code and putting buttons on a form. There are extremely exciting times before us, with lots of opportunity for those who are eager to develop their skills, that is for sure.

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  • Social Business Forum Milano: Day 1

    - by me
    div.c50 {font-family: Helvetica;} div.c49 {position: relative; height: 0px; overflow: hidden;} span.c48 {color: #333333; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;} div.c47 {background-color: #ffffff; border-left: 1px solid rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.098); border-right: 1px solid rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.098); background-clip: padding-box;} div.c46 {color: #666666; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal} span.c45 {line-height: 14px;} div.c44 {border-width: 0px; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; margin: 0px; outline-width: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; vertical-align: baseline} div.c43 {border-width: 0px; margin: 0px; outline-width: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; vertical-align: baseline;} p.c42 {color: #666666; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif} span.c41 {line-height: 14px; font-size: 11px;} h2.c40 {font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif} p.c39 {font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif} span.c38 {font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 80%; font-weight: bold} div.c37 {color: #999999; font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 18px} div.c36 {background-clip: padding-box; background-color: #ffffff; border-bottom: 1px solid #e8e8e8; border-left: 1px solid rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.098); border-right: 1px solid rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.098); cursor: pointer; margin-left: 58px; min-height: 51px; padding: 9px 12px; position: relative; z-index: auto} div.c35 {background-clip: padding-box; background-color: #ffffff; border-bottom: 1px solid #e8e8e8; border-left: 1px solid rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.098); border-right: 1px solid rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.098); cursor: pointer; margin-left: 58px; min-height: 51px; padding: 9px 12px; position: relative} div.c34 {overflow: hidden; font-size: 12px; padding-top: 1px;} ul.c33 {padding: 0px; margin: 0px; list-style-type: none; opacity: 0;} li.c32 {display: inline;} a.c31 {color: #298500; text-decoration: none; outline-width: 0px; font-size: 12px; margin-left: 8px;} a.c30 {color: #999999; text-decoration: none; outline-width: 0px; font-size: 12px; float: left; margin-right: 2px;} strong.c29 {font-weight: normal; color: #298500;} span.c28 {color: #999999;} div.c27 {font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; margin: 0px; word-wrap: break-word} span.c26 {border-width: 0px; width: 48px; height: 48px; border-radius: 5px 5px 5px 5px; position: absolute; top: 12px; left: 12px;} small.c25 {font-size: 12px; color: #bbbbbb; position: absolute; top: 9px; right: 12px; float: right; margin-top: 1px;} a.c24 {color: #999999; text-decoration: none; outline-width: 0px; font-size: 12px;} h3.c23 {font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif} span.c22 {font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif} div.c21 {display: inline ! important; font-weight: normal} span.c20 {font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 80%} a.c19 {font-weight: normal;} span.c18 {font-weight: normal;} div.c17 {font-weight: normal;} div.c16 {margin: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;} a.c15 {color: #298500; text-decoration: none; outline-width: 0px;} strong.c14 {font-weight: normal; color: inherit;} span.c13 {color: #7eb566; text-decoration: none} span.c12 {color: #333333; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px} a.c11 {color: #999999; text-decoration: none; outline-width: 0px;} span.c10 {font-size: 12px; color: #999999; direction: ltr; unicode-bidi: embed;} strong.c9 {font-weight: normal;} span.c8 {color: #bbbbbb; text-decoration: none} strong.c7 {font-weight: bold; color: #333333;} div.c6 {font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal} div.c5 {font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 80%; font-weight: normal} p.c4 {font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 80%; font-weight: normal} h3.c3 {font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: bold} span.c2 {font-size: 80%} span.c1 {font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;} Here are my impressions of the first day of the Social Business Forum in Milano A dialogue on Social Business Manifesto - Emanuele Scotti, Rosario Sica The presentation was focusing on Thesis and Anti-Thesis around Social Business My favorite one is: Peter H. Reiser ?@peterreiser social business manifesto theses #2: organizations are conversations - hello Oracle Social Network #sbf12 Here are the Thesis (auto-translated from italian to english) From Stress to Success - Pragmatic pathways for Social Business - John Hagel John Hagel talked about challenges of deploying new social technologies. Below are some key points participant tweeted during the session. 6hRhiannon Hughes ?@Rhi_Hughes Favourite quote this morning 'We need to strengthen the champions & neutralise the enemies' John Hagel. Not a hard task at all #sbf12 Expand Reply Retweet Favorite 8hElena Torresani ?@ElenaTorresani Minimize the power of the enemies of change. Maximize the power of the champions - John Hagel #sbf12 Expand Reply Retweet Favorite 8hGaetano Mazzanti ?@mgaewsj John Hagel change: minimize the power of the enemies #sbf12 Expand Reply Retweet Favorite 8hGaetano Mazzanti ?@mgaewsj John Hagel social software as band-aid for poor leadtime/waste management? mmm #sbf12 Expand Reply Retweet Favorite 8hElena Torresani ?@ElenaTorresani "information is power. We need access to information to get power"John Hagel, Deloitte &Touche #sbf12http://instagr.am/p/LcjgFqMXrf/ View photo Reply Retweet Favorite 8hItalo Marconi ?@italomarconi Information is power and Knowledge is subversive. John Hagel#sbf12 Expand Reply Retweet Favorite 8hdanielce ?@danielce #sbf12 john Hagel: innovation is not rational. from Milano, Milano Reply Retweet Favorite 8hGaetano Mazzanti ?@mgaewsj John Hagel: change is a political (not rational) process #sbf12 Expand Reply Retweet Favorite Enterprise gamification to drive engagement - Ray Wang Ray Wang did an excellent speech around engagement strategies and gamification More details can be found on the Harvard Business Review blog Panel Discussion: Does technology matter? Understanding how software enables or prevents participation Christian Finn, Ram Menon, Mike Gotta, moderated by Paolo Calderari Below are the highlights of the panel discussions as live tweets: 2hPeter H. Reiser ?@peterreiser @cfinn Q: social silos: mega trend social suites - do we create social silos + apps silos + org silos ... #sbf12 Expand Reply Delete Favorite 2hPeter H. Reiser ?@peterreiser @cfinn A: Social will be less siloed - more integrated into application design. Analyatics is key to make intelligent decisions #sbf12 Expand Reply Delete Favorite 2hPeter H. Reiser ?@peterreiser @MikeGotta - A: its more social be design then social by layer - Better work experience using social design. #sbf12 Expand Reply Delete Favorite 2hPeter H. Reiser ?@peterreiser Ram Menon: A: Social + Mobile + consumeration is coming together#sbf12 Expand Reply Delete Favorite 2hPeter H. Reiser ?@peterreiser Q: What is the evolution for social business solution in the next 4-5 years? #sbf12 Expand Reply Delete Favorite 2hPeter H. Reiser ?@peterreiser @cfinn Adoption: A: User experience is king - no training needed - We let you participate into a conversation via mobile and email#sbf12 Expand Reply Delete Favorite 2hPeter H. Reiser ?@peterreiser @MikeGotta A:Adoption - how can we measure quality? Literacy - Are people get confident to talk to a invisible audience ? #sbf12 Expand Reply Delete Favorite 2hPeter H. Reiser ?@peterreiser Ram Meno: A:Adoption - What should I measure ? Depend on business goal you want to active? #sbf12 Expand Reply Delete Favorite 2hPeter H. Reiser ?@peterreiser Q: How can technology facilitate adoption #sbf12 Expand Reply Delete Favorite 2hPeter H. Reiser ?@peterreiser #sbf12 @cfinn @mgotta Ram Menon at panel discussion about social technology @oraclewebcenter http://pic.twitter.com/Pquz73jO View photo Reply Delete Favorite 2hPeter H. Reiser ?@peterreiser Ram Menon: 100% of data is in a system somewhere. 100% of collective intelligence is with people. Social System bridge both worlds Expand Reply Delete Favorite 2hPeter H. Reiser ?@peterreiser #sbf12 @MikeGotta Adoption is specific to the culture of the company Expand Reply Delete Favorite 2hPeter H. Reiser ?@peterreiser @cfinn - drive adoption is important @MikeGotta - activity stream + watch list is most important feature in a social system #sbf12 Expand Reply Delete Favorite 2hPeter H. Reiser ?@peterreiser @MikeGotta Why just adoption? email as 100% adoption? #sbf12 Expand Reply Delete Favorite 2hPeter H. Reiser ?@peterreiser @MikeGotta Ram Menon respond: there is only 1 questions to ask: What is the adoption? #sbf12 @socialadoption you like this ? #sbf12 Expand Reply Delete Favorite 3hPeter H. Reiser ?@peterreiser @MikeGotta - just replacing old technology (e.g. email) with new technology does not help. we need to change model/attitude #sbf12 Expand Reply Delete Favorite 3hPeter H. Reiser ?@peterreiser Ram Menon: CEO mandated to replace 6500 email aliases with Social Networking Software #sbf12 Expand Reply Delete Favorite 3hPeter H. Reiser ?@peterreiser @MikeGotta A: How to bring interface together #sbf12 . Going from point tools to platform, UI, Architecture + Eco-system is important Expand Reply Delete Favorite 3hPeter H. Reiser ?@peterreiser Q: How is technology important in Social Business #sbf12 A:@cfinn - technology is enabler , user experience -easy of use is important Expand Reply Delete Favorite 3hPeter H. Reiser ?@peterreiser @cfinn particiapte in panel "Does technology matter? Understanding how software enables or prevents participation" #sbf #webcenter

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