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  • SQL 2008 Mirroring, how to failover from the mirror database?

    - by Luis
    I have configured a database mirroring setup in SQL 2008 using the High-safety, Synchronous mode, without automatic failover. I don't have a Witness instance. Regarding high availability, I understand Mirroring is a better strategy than Log Shipping (faster and smoother failover), and cheaper than Clustering (because of license and hardware costs). According to the MS docs, to do the failover you need to access to the Principal database and in the "Mirror" options click the "Failover" button. But I want to do this from the Mirror database, because what would be the benefit as all this setup is being done in case the Principal server knocks down? Evidently I am missing something. If Mirroring is not a solution for server downtime (as would be Clustering, if I understand correctly), then which practical (i.e. real world examples) cases would benefit from Mirroring for high-availability purposes? Thank you very much for your response! I really need some enlightment.

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  • Join performance on MyISAM and InnoDB tables

    - by j0nes
    I am thinking about converting some tables from MyISAM to InnoDB in my mysql server. The tables will certainly benefit from the change because a lot of write requests come to these tables, while there are also quite a lot of read request at the same time. However, they are often joined together with some tables that almost don't get any writes. Is there a performance penalty when joining together MyISAM and InnoDB tables or should everything work fine? Second question: During backups at night, I am copying data from the InnoDB tables to MyISAM tables for archiving purposes. In these backups, a lot of write-requests happen, however there is almost no read from these archive tables. Would these tables also benefit from using InnoDB or is this just a waste of space and RAM?

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  • Should you archive documents before backing up to the cloud?

    - by gabbsmo
    I'm planning to add a cloud storage to my personal backup strategy. But now I wonder if it really is worth the trouble of compressing my documents and photos. The Open XML-format already have zip-compression and JPEG is a lossy image format. So there really isn't much benefit in compressing. 20Mb of documents become about 17Mb at the ULTRA preset of 7-zip. One benefit I can imagine is that you can shorten upload time by archiving the folders since it minimizes the number of requests that is needed to be sent to the server at upload and download. So what are your thoughts and experience in this issue? Should you archive your documents before backing them up to the cloud?

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  • Partner Webcast – More out of Database Appliance with DB Options - 13 September 2012

    - by Thanos
    The Oracle Database Appliance is a new way to take advantage of the world's most popular database—Oracle Database 11g —in a single, easy-to-deploy and manage system. It's a complete package of software, server, storage, and networking that's engineered for simplicity; saving time and money by simplifying deployment, maintenance, and support of database workloads. But that is not all, with the support for all Oracle Database Options, Oracle Database Appliance can be the ideal solution for many use cases. Feature Benefit Simplifies deployment, maintenance, and support of high-availability database workloads Saves significant time and effort throughout the database administration lifecycle An engineered system of software, server, storage, and networking High availability for a wide range of custom and packaged OLTP and data warehousing application databases Simple one-button Installation, full-stack integrated patching and diagnostics Reduces planned and unplanned downtime by automatically monitoring and logging service requests with Oracle Support Built using the world’s #1 database Protects databases from server and storage failures with Oracle Real Application Clusters and Automatic Storage Management Unique Pay-As-You-Grow software licensing Reduces cost with flexibility to adjust your software spend as your business grows without the need for any hardware upgrades Discover the Oracle Database Appliance Value Proposition and learn how to position and combine it with database options to capture new business and easily roll out solutions safely and with maximum cost efficiency. This webcast is repeated once again for your benefit. Agenda: Oracle Database& Engineered Systems Innovation. What’s the Oracle Database Appliance ? Oracle Database Appliance Value Proposition. Oracle Database Appliance with Database Options Oracle Database Appliance Partners Business Delivery FormatThis FREE online LIVE eSeminar will be delivered over the Web. Registrations received less than 24hours prior to start time may not receive confirmation to attend. Duration: 1 hour Register Now! Oracle Database Appliance is available for purchase at the Oracle Store under Engineered Systems. For any questions please contact us at partner.imc-AT-beehiveonline.oracle-DOT-com Visit regularly our ISV Migration Center blog Or Follow us @oracleimc to learn more on Oracle Technologies as well as upcoming partner webcasts and events.

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  • Visual Studio ALM MVP of the Year 2011

    - by Martin Hinshelwood
    For some reason this year some of my peers decided to vote for me as a contender for Visual Studio ALM MVP of the year. I am not sure what I did to deserve this, but a number of people have commented that I have a rather useful blog. I feel wholly unworthy to join the ranks of previous winners: Ed Blankenship (2010) Martin Woodward (2009) Thank you to everyone who voted regardless of who you voted for. If there was a prize for the best group of MVP’s then the Visual Studio ALM MVP would be a clear winner, as would the product group of product groups that is Visual Studio ALM Group. To use a phrase that I have learned since moving to Seattle and probably use too much: you guys are all just awesome. I have tried my best in the last year to document not only every problem that I have had with Team Foundation Server (TFS), but also to document as many of the things I am doing as possible. I have taken some of Adam Cogan’s rules to heart and when a customer asks me a question I always blog the answer and send them a link. This allows both my blog and my understanding of TFS to grow while creating a useful bank of content. The idea is that if one customer asks, all benefit. I try, when writing for my blog, to capture both the essence and the context for a problem being solved. This allows more people to benefit as they do not need to understand the specifics of an environment to gain value. I have a number of goals for this year that I think will help increase value in the community: persuade my new colleagues at Northwest Cadence to do more blogging (Steve, Jeff, Shad and Rennie) Rangers Project – TFS Iteration Automation with Willy-Peter Schaub, Bill Essary, Martin Hinshelwood, Mike Fourie, Jeff Bramwell and Brian Blackman Write a book on the Team Foundation Server API with Willy-Peter Schaub, Mike Fourie and Jeff Bramwell write more useful blog posts I do not think that these things are beyond the realms of do-ability, but we will see…

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  • Fix: Azure Disabled over 49 cents? Beware of using a Java Virtual Machine on Microsoft Azure

    - by Ken Cox [MVP]
    I love my MSDN Azure account. I can spin up a demo/dev app or VM in seconds. In fact, it is so easy to create a virtual machine that Azure shut down my whole account! Last night I spun up a Java Virtual Machine to play with some Android stuff. My mistake was that I didn’t read the Virtual Machine pricing warning: “I have a MSDN Azure Benefit subscription. Can I use my monthly Azure credits to purchase Oracle software?” “No, Azure credits in our MSDN offers are not applicable to Oracle software. In order to purchase Oracle software in the MSDN Azure Benefit subscription, customers need to turn off their {0} spending limit and pay at the regular pay-as-you-go rate. Otherwise, Oracle usage will hit the {1} spending limit and the subscription will be immediately disabled.”  Immediately disabled? Yup. Everything connected to the subscription was shut off, deallocated, rendered useless - even the free Web sites and the free Sendgrid email service.  The fix? I had to remove the spending limit from my account so I could pay $0.49 (49 cents) for the JVM usage. I still had $134.10 in credits remaining for regular usage with 6 days left in the billing month.  Now the restoration/clean-up begins… figuring out how to get the web sites and services back online.  To me, the preferable way would be for Azure to warn me when setting up a JVM that I had no way of paying for the service. In the alternative, shut down just the offending services – the ones that can’t be covered by the regular credits. What a mess.

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  • An unexpected pleasure from Windows 8

    - by eddraper
    This post is certainly on the more nuanced side of all the goodness that is Windows 8, but it’s about something that’s really changed my PC usage experience for the better. Besides being a geek and the enjoying all the techno-thrills and chills that go along with sitting in front of a keyboard all day, I really love the forest.  Trees have always been special to me.  The feeling of being in the forest with all the sounds and ambiance, the broken light, the fragrance of the air… it’s paradise to me. As I can’t get there often, due to work, and quite often the heat here in Texas, I’ve found something that can at least partially fill the gap…  When you install Windows 8, you’ll have an app called “Naturespace” from http://www.naturespace.com/ .  It boasts a number of predefined loops in what they call “holographic audio.”  They’re essentially high-tech 3D sound fields recorded in natural environments. After checking them out, I really liked the sound of the “Daybreak” selection: A great benefit is that you don’t have to be in Metro/Modern/Windows App Store mode, in order to keep the sound playing.  To start the day, I click on Daybreak, start it, then go back to the desktop and fire up VS, Chrome, etc. As I work and play, I’m surrounded by this delightful background ambiance which relaxes me and puts my mind at ease. Give it a try.  I think you’ll like it.  And no, you don’t need ear buds or headphones to get the benefit.

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  • Very Cool &ndash; Miami 311 System for tracking citizen service requests (Windows Azure, Silverlight

    - by Jim Duffy
    Having grown up in South Florida this short, but very enlightening, video explaining how the City of Miami has implemented a 311 citizen service request system using Windows Azure, Silverlight and Bing Maps definitely caught my attention. Miami311 The Miami311 System is a Windows Azure/Silverlight-based solution which enables City of Miami citizens report and track issues reported to city management. The system uses Bing Maps to plot the location and relevant information about each issue reported. Citizens now have the ability to easily see the status of the issue without having to call the city office. What I found interesting were a couple of benefits that a metropolitan area such as Miami can take advantage of in Windows Azure cloud-based solution. For the city of Miami, both benefits center around the weather. Of course the threat of a hurricane is a real issue in South Florida and what better way to make sure your site stays up during a hurricane then to have the site hosted far away from the eye of the storm. Using a Windows Azure cloud-based architecture the City of Miami is able to host the application within the Microsoft data centers safely away from any hurricane passing through South Florida. The second benefit is the inherent scalability of a Windows Azure based solution. During a severe weather event like thunderstorms or even worse, a hurricane, downed trees and power lines are a commonly reported problem. Being able to quickly scale up the computing resources required to handle the spike in citizens reporting these types of problems on the site is a huge benefit. Once the weather event has passed and downed tree reports begin to subside they can quickly reverse the process and scale the system back down to pre-storm levels. It’s kind of day-to-day kind of stuff but very cool stuff nonetheless. Have a day. :-|

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  • Three Fusion Applications Communities are Now Live

    - by cwarticki
    The Fusion Application Support Team (FAST) launched three communities on the My Oracle Support Community.  These communities provide another channel for customers to get the information about Fusion Applications that they need. The three Fusion Applications communities are: ·     Technical - FA community -- covers all the Fusion Applications technology stack and technical questions from users. ·      Applications and Business Processes community -- covers all the functional questions and issues raised by users for all Fusion Applications except HCM. ·      Fusion Applications HCM community -- covers the functional questions and issues raised by users for Fusion HCM product family. Good for Our Customers Customers participating in these communities can ask questions and get timely responses from Oracle Fusion Applications experts who monitor the communities. The customers can search the Fusion Applications Community contents for information and answers. They also can collaborate with other customers and benefit from the collective experience of the community -- especially from people like you. All customers and partners are invited to join My Oracle Support Community for Fusion Applications. We believe that participating in the Fusion Applications communities can be a win-win option for everyone. We invite you to become an active part of the thriving Fusion Applications communities and experience how this interesting and insightful dialog can benefit you. How to Join the Community Navigate to http://communities.oracle.com. Click the Profile Tab to register yourself and edit your profile. ·         You can subscribe to the Fusion Applications communities by editing your Community Subscriptions. ·         You can get RSS feeds for each of your subscribed communities from the same section.

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  • Amazon AMIs and Oracle VM templates

    - by llaszews
    I have worked with Oracle VM templates and most recently with Amazon Machine Images (AMI). The similarities in the functionality and capabilities they provide are striking. Just take a look a the definitions: An Amazon Machine Image (AMI) is a special type of pre-configured operating system and virtual application software which is used to create a virtual machine within the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). It serves as the basic unit of deployment for services delivered using EC2. AWS AMIs Oracle VM Templates provide an innovative approach to deploying a fully configured software stack by offering pre-installed and pre-configured software images. Use of Oracle VM Templates eliminates the installation and configuration costs, and reduces the ongoing maintenance costs helping organizations achieve faster time to market and lower cost of operations. Oracle VM Templates Other things they have in common: 1. Both have 35 Oracle images or templates: AWS AMI pre-built images Oracle pre-built VM Templates 2. Both allow to build your own images or templates: A. OVM template builder - OVM Template Builder - Oracle VM Template Builder, an open source, graphical utility that makes it easy to use Oracle Enterprise Linux “Just enough OS” (JeOS)–based scripts for developing pre-packaged virtual machines for Oracle VM. B. AMI 'builder' - AMI builder However, AWS has the added feature/benefit of adding your own AMI to the AWS AMI catalog: AMI - Adding to the AWS AMI catalog Another plus with AWS and AMI is there are hundreds of MySQL AMIs (AWS MySQL AMIs ). A benefit of Oracle VM templates is they can run on any public or private cloud environment, not just AWS EC2. However, with Oracle VM templates they first need to be images as AMIs before they can run in the AWS cloud.

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  • Tree Surgeon 2.0 - The future on the T4 Express

    - by Malcolm Anderson
    If you've never been a fan of TreeSurgeon (http://treesurgeon.codeplex.com/) then skip this post.However, if have been there have been some interesting developments over the last couple of years.The biggest one is T4Recently Bill Simser wrote a detailed post about the potential future of tree surgeon, called "Tree Surgeon - Alive and Kicking or Dead and Buried" He raised the question:Times have changed. Since that last release in 2008 so much has changed for .NET developers. The question is, today is the project still viable? Do we still need a tool to generate a project tree given that we have things like scaffolding systems, NuGet, and T4 templates. Or should we just give the project its rightful and respectful send off as its had a good life and has outlived its usefulness.For myself, the answer is, keep it.I've spent the last couple of years doing agile engineering coaching and architecture and from my experience, I can tell you, there are a lot of shops out there that would benefit from having Tree Surgeon as a viable product.  Many would benefit simply from having the software engineering information that is embedded in the tree surgeon site be floating around their conversation.Little things like, keep all of your software needed to run the build, with the build in the version control system.Have your developers and the build system using the same build.Have a one-touch buildSeparate your code from your interfacePut unit tests in first, not lastI've seen companies with great developers suffer from the problems that naturally come from builds taking 3 and 4 hours to run.  It takes work to get that build down to 10 minutes, but the benefits are always worth it.  Tree Surgeon gives you a leg up, by starting you off with a project that you can drop into your Continuous Integration system, right out of the box.Well, it used to be right out of the box.  Today, you have to play with the project to make it work for you, but even with the issues (it hasn't been updated since 2008) it still gives you a framework, with logical separations that you can build from.If you have used Tree Surgeon in the past, take a few minutes and drop a comment about what difference it made in your development style, and what you are doing differently today because of it.

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  • How to monetize and protect a engine's and its framework's copyrights and patents?

    - by Arthur Wulf White
    I created a game engine that handles: Rendering levels with 2d textured curved surfaces Collisions with curved surfaces Animationn paths on and navigation in 2d-sapce I have also made a framework for: Procedural organic level generation with round surfaces Level editing Light weight sprite design The engine and framework are written in AS3 and I am in the process of translating the code into HaXe to better support other platforms. I am also interested in adding Animated curved platforms More advanced level editing features Currently, I have a part time job and any time I spend on this engine is either taken out of my limited free time (I'm a student working to support myself through school) or out my time working at my job. I really believe this engine can make life much easier for people designing Tower Defence games, Shooters and and Platformers while also possibly improving their results. It could also support RTS, RPGs and racing games very well. It continains original algorithms that could be used for procedural generation of organic round and smooth levels. The algorithms I used are new and are not available in any other level editor I've seen. In order to constantly improve the Engine and have it tested thoroughly I think the best route is releasing it to the public. What are the best ways to benefit myself and others with my new framework? I want to have some lisence, allowing me to share the framework and still benefit from it. Any advice would be appreciated. This issue has been on my mind a lot this year. I am hoping to find a solution that will bring me some relief. I am thinking of designing three sample games, releasing them and starting a kickstarter, any advice and thoughts on the matter would be valuable. My goal is like Markus von Broady suggested, to get people involved in developing the engine and let people use it for games for either a symbolic fee or for free and charge for support. That or use some form of croud sourcing. Do I need to hire a lawyer to get some sort of legal document to protect my work?

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  • Session Tracking - Advantages and Disadvantages

    I use to work for a major internet company that sold Dental Plans to customers through their large customer-driven websiteto consumers. They start tracking their users as soon as they hit their web servers, and then they log everything they can about the user. There are a lot of benefits for using session tracking for both the user and the website. Users can benefit from session tracking due to the fact that a website can retain pertaining information for the user so that they do not have to re-enter the same information repeatedly. In addition, websites can hold specific items in a cart for each user so that they can pay for all of their  items at once when they are ready to complete their purchases. Websites can also benefit from session tracking because they can determine where a specific user came from and which advertising partner gave them a sale. This information is very useful when deciding on where to spend an advertising budget. There is only one real disadvantage when it comes to session tracking, Users can not really control what is actually tracked by a website. Yes, they can disable cookies and this will help, but that means that no tracking can be done at all. Most sites require users to have cookies enabled in order for users to make purchases or login to their accounts.  

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  • Modular Database Structures

    - by John D
    I have been examining the code base we use in work and I am worried about the size the packages have grown to. The actual code is modular, procedures have been broken down into small functional (and testable) parts. The issue I see is that we have 100 procedures in a single package - almost an entire domain model. I had thought of breaking these packages down - to create sub domains that are centered around the procedure relationships to other objects. Group a bunch of procedures that have 80% of their relationships to three tables etc. The end result would be a lot more packages, but the packages would be smaller and I feel the entire code base would be more readable - when procedures cross between two domain models it is less of a struggle to figure which package it belongs to. The problem I now have is what the actual benefit of all this would really be. I looked at the general advantages of modularity: 1. Re-usability 2. Asynchronous Development 3. Maintainability Yet when I consider our latest development, the procedures within the packages are already reusable. At this advanced stage we rarely require asynchronous development - and when it is required we simply ladder the stories across iterations. So I guess my question is if people know of reasons why you would break down classes rather than just the methods inside of classes? Right now I do believe there is an issue with these mega packages forming but the only benefit I can really pin down to break them down is readability - something that experience gained from working with them would solve.

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  • How to make the members of my Data Access Layer object aware of their siblings

    - by Graham
    My team currently has a project with a data access object composed like so: public abstract class DataProvider { public CustomerRepository CustomerRepo { get; private set; } public InvoiceRepository InvoiceRepo { get; private set; } public InventoryRepository InventoryRepo { get; private set; } // couple more like the above } We have non-abstract classes that inherit from DataProvider, and the type of "CustomerRepo" that gets instantiated is controlled by that child class. public class FloridaDataProvider { public FloridaDataProvider() { CustomerRepo = new FloridaCustomerRepo(); // derived from base CustomerRepository InvoiceRepo = new InvoiceRespository(); InventoryRepo = new InventoryRepository(); } } Our problem is that some of the methods inside a given repo really would benefit from having access to the other repo's. Like, a method inside InventoryRepository needs to get to Customer data to do some determinations, so I need to pass in a reference to a CustomerRepository object. Whats the best way for these "sibling" repos to be aware of each other and have the ability to call each other's methods as-needed? Virtually all the other repos would benefit from having the CustomerRepo, for example, because it is where names/phones/etc are selected from, and these data elements need to be added to the various objects that are returned out of the other repos. I can't just new-up a plain "CustomerRepository" object inside a method within a different repo, because it might not be the base CustomerRepository that actually needs to run.

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  • 724% Return on an SFA project with Oracle Sales Cloud and Marketing Cloud combined!

    - by Richard Lefebvre
    Oracle Sales Cloud and Marketing Cloud customer Apex IT gained just that?a 724% return on investment (ROI) when it implemented these Oracle Cloud solutions in its fast-moving, rapidly-growing business. Apex IT was just announced as a winner of the Nucleus Research 11th annual Technology ROI Awards. The award, given by the analyst firm, highlights organizations that have successfully leveraged IT deployments to maximize value per dollar spent. Fast Facts: Return on Investment – 724% Payback – 2 months Average annual benefit – $91,534 Cost : Benefit Ratio – 1:48 Business Benefits In addition to the ROI and cost metrics the award calls out improvements in Apex IT’s business operations—across both Sales and Marketing teams: Improved ability to identify new opportunities and focus sales resources on higher-probability deals Reduced administration and manual lead tracking—resulting in more time selling and a net new client increase of 46% Increased campaign productivity for both Marketing and Sales, including Oracle Marketing Cloud’s automation of campaign tracking and nurture programs Improved margins with more structured and disciplined sales processes—resulting in more effective deal negotiations Read the full Apex IT ROI Case Study. You also can learn more about Apex IT’s business, including the company’s work with Oracle Sales and Marketing Cloud on behalf of its clients. You can point your prospects and customers to the CX blog for a similar recap of the Apex IT award and a link to the Case Study.

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  • Ternary and Artificial Intelligence

    - by user2957844
    Not much of a programmer myself, however I have been thinking about the future of AI. If a fully functional AI is programmed in a binary environment as is used in current computing, would that create a bit of a black and white personality? As in just yes/no, on/off, 1/0? I will use the Skynet computer from the Terminator series as a bad analogy; it is brought online and comes to the conclusion that humanity should just be destroyed so the problem is resolved, basically its only options were; fire the missiles or not. (The films do not really go into what its moves would be after doing such a thing, but that goes into the realms of AI evolution so does not really fit with this question.) It may also have been badly programmed. Now, the human mind has been akin to a ternary system which allows our "out of the box" thinking along with all the other wonderful things our minds can do. So, would it not be more prudent to create a functional ternary system and program an AI using it so the resulting personality would be able to benefit from the third "maybe" (so to speak) option? I understand that in binary there are ways to get around the whole yes/no etc. way of things, however the basic operations are still just 1's and 0's. Again with using the above bad Skynet analogy; if it could have had that third "maybe" option as part of its core system, it may have decided to not launch due to being able to make sense of the intricacies of human nature and the politics of such a move etc. In effect, my question is; Would an AI benefit more from ternary computing as opposed to binary due to the inclusion of -1, or 2, dependent on the system ("maybe," as I call it)?

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  • My work isn't being used... what can/ should I do?

    - by Matt
    Several months ago I was approached by a small business, who had seen my work previously and asked me to create a website for them. Since then, the website hasn't changed one bit and I haven't heard a word from them. This sucks for them as they paid for a website and haven't used it. It''s frustrating for me because I spent a huge amount of time on the website and feel that all of that effort has been wasted, furthermore, I don't feel I can use the website on my portfolio/ CV. I was thinking of offering to go round to their office for one day, and update the website for them then and there; but I'd need their support whilst there (to get the content for the about page, to get information for on their products etc.) and I don't want to disrupt their work day, nor do I want to sit there like a spare tyre and get nowhere. Furthermore, if I were to do this, should I expect to receive money for it? It's a day of my life, but I'm doing it for my benefit rather than theirs (but they benefit as well). Has anyone else had experience of a client not using their product; how did you handle it? Additional background for those who want it: The company is a local travel agent, and the website lets them CRUD offers and locations, and has several other static pages (about, contact, etc.) At the time of creating the website, I filled the static pages with lipsum, and the offers and locations with fake information, so that I could give the business an idea about what the final pages would look like; during the hand over, I guided them through the CRUD forms (they made notes) and said if they sent me the text for the pages, I'd update it.

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  • If the bug is 5+ years old, then is it a feature?

    - by Job
    Allow me to add details: I work at an institutional place with many coders, testers, QA analysts, product owners, etc. and here is something that bugs me: We have been able to sell crappy (albeit pretty functional) software for over a decade. It has many features and the product is competitive, but there are a some serious bugs out there, as well as thousands of "paper cuts" - little annoyances that clients need to get used to. It pains me to look at some of the things because I firmly believe that if computers do not help to make our lives easier, then we should not use them. I have confidence in my colleagues - they are smart, able, and can improve things when the focus is on doing that. But, it can be difficult to file bugs against some old functionality without seeing them closed or forgotten. "It worked like that for ions" is a typical answer. Also, when QA does regression, they tend to look for anything that is different as much as anything that does not seem right. So, a fix to an old problem can be written up as a bug, because "it has been like that before even my time". The young coder in me thinks: rewrite this freaking thing! As someone who had the opportunity to be close to sales, clients, I want to give a benefit of a doubt to this approach. I am interested in your opinion/experience as well. Please try to consider risk, cost-to-benefit, and other non-technical factors.

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  • Cloud Computing = Elasticity * Availability

    - by Herve Roggero
    What is cloud computing? Is hosting the same thing as cloud computing? Are you running a cloud if you already use virtual machines? What is the difference between Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and a cloud provider? And the list goes on… these questions keep coming up and all try to fundamentally explain what “cloud” means relative to other concepts. At the risk of over simplification, answering these questions becomes simpler once you understand the primary foundations of cloud computing: Elasticity and Availability.   Elasticity The basic value proposition of cloud computing is to pay as you go, and to pay for what you use. This implies that an application can expand and contract on demand, across all its tiers (presentation layer, services, database, security…).  This also implies that application components can grow independently from each other. So if you need more storage for your database, you should be able to grow that tier without affecting, reconfiguring or changing the other tiers. Basically, cloud applications behave like a sponge; when you add water to a sponge, it grows in size; in the application world, the more customers you add, the more it grows. Pure IaaS providers will provide certain benefits, specifically in terms of operating costs, but an IaaS provider will not help you in making your applications elastic; neither will Virtual Machines. The smallest elasticity unit of an IaaS provider and a Virtual Machine environment is a server (physical or virtual). While adding servers in a datacenter helps in achieving scale, it is hardly enough. The application has yet to use this hardware.  If the process of adding computing resources is not transparent to the application, the application is not elastic.   As you can see from the above description, designing for the cloud is not about more servers; it is about designing an application for elasticity regardless of the underlying server farm.   Availability The fact of the matter is that making applications highly available is hard. It requires highly specialized tools and trained staff. On top of it, it's expensive. Many companies are required to run multiple data centers due to high availability requirements. In some organizations, some data centers are simply on standby, waiting to be used in a case of a failover. Other organizations are able to achieve a certain level of success with active/active data centers, in which all available data centers serve incoming user requests. While achieving high availability for services is relatively simple, establishing a highly available database farm is far more complex. In fact it is so complex that many companies establish yearly tests to validate failover procedures.   To a certain degree certain IaaS provides can assist with complex disaster recovery planning and setting up data centers that can achieve successful failover. However the burden is still on the corporation to manage and maintain such an environment, including regular hardware and software upgrades. Cloud computing on the other hand removes most of the disaster recovery requirements by hiding many of the underlying complexities.   Cloud Providers A cloud provider is an infrastructure provider offering additional tools to achieve application elasticity and availability that are not usually available on-premise. For example Microsoft Azure provides a simple configuration screen that makes it possible to run 1 or 100 web sites by clicking a button or two on a screen (simplifying provisioning), and soon SQL Azure will offer Data Federation to allow database sharding (which allows you to scale the database tier seamlessly and automatically). Other cloud providers offer certain features that are not available on-premise as well, such as the Amazon SC3 (Simple Storage Service) which gives you virtually unlimited storage capabilities for simple data stores, which is somewhat equivalent to the Microsoft Azure Table offering (offering a server-independent data storage model). Unlike IaaS providers, cloud providers give you the necessary tools to adopt elasticity as part of your application architecture.    Some cloud providers offer built-in high availability that get you out of the business of configuring clustered solutions, or running multiple data centers. Some cloud providers will give you more control (which puts some of that burden back on the customers' shoulder) and others will tend to make high availability totally transparent. For example, SQL Azure provides high availability automatically which would be very difficult to achieve (and very costly) on premise.   Keep in mind that each cloud provider has its strengths and weaknesses; some are better at achieving transparent scalability and server independence than others.    Not for Everyone Note however that it is up to you to leverage the elasticity capabilities of a cloud provider, as discussed previously; if you build a website that does not need to scale, for which elasticity is not important, then you can use a traditional host provider unless you also need high availability. Leveraging the technologies of cloud providers can be difficult and can become a journey for companies that build their solutions in a scale up fashion. Cloud computing promises to address cost containment and scalability of applications with built-in high availability. If your application does not need to scale or you do not need high availability, then cloud computing may not be for you. In fact, you may pay a premium to run your applications with cloud providers due to the underlying technologies built specifically for scalability and availability requirements. And as such, the cloud is not for everyone.   Consistent Customer Experience, Predictable Cost With all its complexities, buzz and foggy definition, cloud computing boils down to a simple objective: consistent customer experience at a predictable cost.  The objective of a cloud solution is to provide the same user experience to your last customer than the first, while keeping your operating costs directly proportional to the number of customers you have. Making your applications elastic and highly available across all its tiers, with as much automation as possible, achieves the first objective of a consistent customer experience. And the ability to expand and contract the infrastructure footprint of your application dynamically achieves the cost containment objectives.     Herve Roggero is a SQL Azure MVP and co-author of Pro SQL Azure (APress).  He is the co-founder of Blue Syntax Consulting (www.bluesyntax.net), a company focusing on cloud computing technologies helping customers understand and adopt cloud computing technologies. For more information contact herve at hroggero @ bluesyntax.net .

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  • Design for complex ATG applications

    - by Glen Borkowski
    Overview Needless to say, some ATG applications are more complex than others.  Some ATG applications support a single site, single language, single catalog, single currency, have a single development staff, single business team, and a relatively simple business model.  The real complex applications have to support multiple sites, multiple languages, multiple catalogs, multiple currencies, a couple different development teams, multiple business teams, and a highly complex business model (and processes to go along with it).  While it's still important to implement a proper design for simple applications, it's absolutely critical to do this for the complex applications.  Why?  It's all about time and money.  If you are unable to manage your complex applications in an efficient manner, the cost of managing it will increase dramatically as will the time to get things done (time to market).  On the positive side, your competition is most likely in the same situation, so you just need to be more efficient than they are. This article is intended to discuss a number of key areas to think about when designing complex applications on ATG.  Some of this can get fairly technical, so it may help to get some background first.  You can get enough of the required background information from this post.  After reading that, come back here and follow along. Application Design Of all the various types of ATG applications out there, the most complex tend to be the ones in the telecommunications industry - especially the ones which operate in multiple countries.  To get started, let's assume that we are talking about an application like that.  One that has these properties: Operates in multiple countries - must support multiple sites, catalogs, languages, and currencies The organization is fairly loosely-coupled - single brand, but different businesses across different countries There is some common functionality across all sites in all countries There is some common functionality across different sites within the same country Sites within a single country may have some unique functionality - relative to other sites in the same country Complex product catalog (mostly in terms of bundles, eligibility, and compatibility) At this point, I'll assume you have read through the required reading and have a decent understanding of how ATG modules work... Code / configuration - assemble into modules When it comes to defining your modules for a complex application, there are a number of goals: Divide functionality between the modules in a way that maps to your business Group common functionality 'further down in the stack of modules' Provide a good balance between shared resources and autonomy for countries / sites Now I'll describe a high level approach to how you could accomplish those goals...  Let's start from the bottom and work our way up.  At the very bottom, you have the modules that ship with ATG - the 'out of the box' stuff.  You want to make sure that you are leveraging all the modules that make sense in order to get the most value from ATG as possible - and less stuff you'll have to write yourself.  On top of the ATG modules, you should create what we'll refer to as the Corporate Foundation Module described as follows: Sits directly on top of ATG modules Used by all applications across all countries and sites - this is the foundation for everyone Contains everything that is common across all countries / all sites Once established and settled, will change less frequently than other 'higher' modules Encapsulates as many enterprise-wide integrations as possible Will provide means of code sharing therefore less development / testing - faster time to market Contains a 'reference' web application (described below) The next layer up could be multiple modules for each country (you could replace this with region if that makes more sense).  We'll define those modules as follows: Sits on top of the corporate foundation module Contains what is unique to all sites in a given country Responsible for managing any resource bundles for this country (to handle multiple languages) Overrides / replaces corporate integration points with any country-specific ones Finally, we will define what should be a fairly 'thin' (in terms of functionality) set of modules for each site as follows: Sits on top of the country it resides in module Contains what is unique for a given site within a given country Will mostly contain configuration, but could also define some unique functionality as well Contains one or more web applications The graphic below should help to indicate how these modules fit together: Web applications As described in the previous section, there are many opportunities for sharing (minimizing costs) as it relates to the code and configuration aspects of ATG modules.  Web applications are also contained within ATG modules, however, sharing web applications can be a bit more difficult because this is what the end customer actually sees, and since each site may have some degree of unique look & feel, sharing becomes more challenging.  One approach that can help is to define a 'reference' web application at the corporate foundation layer to act as a solid starting point for each site.  Here's a description of the 'reference' web application: Contains minimal / sample reference styling as this will mostly be addressed at the site level web app Focus on functionality - ensure that core functionality is revealed via this web application Each individual site can use this as a starting point There may be multiple types of web apps (i.e. B2C, B2B, etc) There are some techniques to share web application assets - i.e. multiple web applications, defined in the web.xml, and it's worth investigating, but is out of scope here. Reference infrastructure In this complex environment, it is assumed that there is not a single infrastructure for all countries and all sites.  It's more likely that different countries (or regions) could have their own solution for infrastructure.  In this case, it will be advantageous to define a reference infrastructure which contains all the hardware and software that make up the core environment.  Specifications and diagrams should be created to outline what this reference infrastructure looks like, as well as it's baseline cost and the incremental cost to scale up with volume.  Having some consistency in terms of infrastructure will save time and money as new countries / sites come online.  Here are some properties of the reference infrastructure: Standardized approach to setup of hardware Type and number of servers Defines application server, operating system, database, etc... - including vendor and specific versions Consistent naming conventions Provides a consistent base of terminology and understanding across environments Defines which ATG services run on which servers Production Staging BCC / Preview Each site can change as required to meet scale requirements Governance / organization It should be no surprise that the complex application we're talking about is backed by an equally complex organization.  One of the more challenging aspects of efficiently managing a series of complex applications is to ensure the proper level of governance and organization.  Here are some ideas and goals to work towards: Establish a committee to make enterprise-wide decisions that affect all sites Representation should be evenly distributed Should have a clear communication procedure Focus on high level business goals Evaluation of feature / function gaps and how that relates to ATG release schedule / roadmap Determine when to upgrade & ensure value will be realized Determine how to manage various levels of modules Who is responsible for maintaining corporate / country / site layers Determine a procedure for controlling what goes in the corporate foundation module Standardize on source code control, database, hardware, OS versions, J2EE app servers, development procedures, etc only use tested / proven versions - this is something that should be centralized so that every country / site does not have to worry about compatibility between versions Create a innovation team Quickly develop new features, perform proof of concepts All teams can benefit from their findings Summary At this point, it should be clear why the topics above (design, governance, organization, etc) are critical to being able to efficiently manage a complex application.  To summarize, it's all about competitive advantage...  You will need to reduce costs and improve time to market with the goal of providing a better experience for your end customers.  You can reduce cost by reducing development time, time allocated to testing (don't have to test the corporate foundation module over and over again - do it once), and optimizing operations.  With an efficient design, you can improve your time to market and your business will be more flexible  and agile.  Over time, you'll find that you're becoming more focused on offering functionality that is new to the market (creativity) and this will be rewarded - you're now a leader. In addition to the above, you'll realize soft benefits as well.  Your staff will be operating in a culture based on sharing.  You'll want to reward efforts to improve and enhance the foundation as this will benefit everyone.  This culture will inspire innovation, which can only lend itself to your competitive advantage.

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  • Organization &amp; Architecture UNISA Studies &ndash; Chap 4

    - by MarkPearl
    Learning Outcomes Explain the characteristics of memory systems Describe the memory hierarchy Discuss cache memory principles Discuss issues relevant to cache design Describe the cache organization of the Pentium Computer Memory Systems There are key characteristics of memory… Location – internal or external Capacity – expressed in terms of bytes Unit of Transfer – the number of bits read out of or written into memory at a time Access Method – sequential, direct, random or associative From a users perspective the two most important characteristics of memory are… Capacity Performance – access time, memory cycle time, transfer rate The trade off for memory happens along three axis… Faster access time, greater cost per bit Greater capacity, smaller cost per bit Greater capacity, slower access time This leads to people using a tiered approach in their use of memory   As one goes down the hierarchy, the following occurs… Decreasing cost per bit Increasing capacity Increasing access time Decreasing frequency of access of the memory by the processor The use of two levels of memory to reduce average access time works in principle, but only if conditions 1 to 4 apply. A variety of technologies exist that allow us to accomplish this. Thus it is possible to organize data across the hierarchy such that the percentage of accesses to each successively lower level is substantially less than that of the level above. A portion of main memory can be used as a buffer to hold data temporarily that is to be read out to disk. This is sometimes referred to as a disk cache and improves performance in two ways… Disk writes are clustered. Instead of many small transfers of data, we have a few large transfers of data. This improves disk performance and minimizes processor involvement. Some data designed for write-out may be referenced by a program before the next dump to disk. In that case the data is retrieved rapidly from the software cache rather than slowly from disk. Cache Memory Principles Cache memory is substantially faster than main memory. A caching system works as follows.. When a processor attempts to read a word of memory, a check is made to see if this in in cache memory… If it is, the data is supplied, If it is not in the cache, a block of main memory, consisting of a fixed number of words is loaded to the cache. Because of the phenomenon of locality of references, when a block of data is fetched into the cache, it is likely that there will be future references to that same memory location or to other words in the block. Elements of Cache Design While there are a large number of cache implementations, there are a few basic design elements that serve to classify and differentiate cache architectures… Cache Addresses Cache Size Mapping Function Replacement Algorithm Write Policy Line Size Number of Caches Cache Addresses Almost all non-embedded processors support virtual memory. Virtual memory in essence allows a program to address memory from a logical point of view without needing to worry about the amount of physical memory available. When virtual addresses are used the designer may choose to place the cache between the MMU (memory management unit) and the processor or between the MMU and main memory. The disadvantage of virtual memory is that most virtual memory systems supply each application with the same virtual memory address space (each application sees virtual memory starting at memory address 0), which means the cache memory must be completely flushed with each application context switch or extra bits must be added to each line of the cache to identify which virtual address space the address refers to. Cache Size We would like the size of the cache to be small enough so that the overall average cost per bit is close to that of main memory alone and large enough so that the overall average access time is close to that of the cache alone. Also, larger caches are slightly slower than smaller ones. Mapping Function Because there are fewer cache lines than main memory blocks, an algorithm is needed for mapping main memory blocks into cache lines. The choice of mapping function dictates how the cache is organized. Three techniques can be used… Direct – simplest technique, maps each block of main memory into only one possible cache line Associative – Each main memory block to be loaded into any line of the cache Set Associative – exhibits the strengths of both the direct and associative approaches while reducing their disadvantages For detailed explanations of each approach – read the text book (page 148 – 154) Replacement Algorithm For associative and set associating mapping a replacement algorithm is needed to determine which of the existing blocks in the cache must be replaced by a new block. There are four common approaches… LRU (Least recently used) FIFO (First in first out) LFU (Least frequently used) Random selection Write Policy When a block resident in the cache is to be replaced, there are two cases to consider If no writes to that block have happened in the cache – discard it If a write has occurred, a process needs to be initiated where the changes in the cache are propagated back to the main memory. There are several approaches to achieve this including… Write Through – all writes to the cache are done to the main memory as well at the point of the change Write Back – when a block is replaced, all dirty bits are written back to main memory The problem is complicated when we have multiple caches, there are techniques to accommodate for this but I have not summarized them. Line Size When a block of data is retrieved and placed in the cache, not only the desired word but also some number of adjacent words are retrieved. As the block size increases from very small to larger sizes, the hit ratio will at first increase because of the principle of locality, which states that the data in the vicinity of a referenced word are likely to be referenced in the near future. As the block size increases, more useful data are brought into cache. The hit ratio will begin to decrease as the block becomes even bigger and the probability of using the newly fetched information becomes less than the probability of using the newly fetched information that has to be replaced. Two specific effects come into play… Larger blocks reduce the number of blocks that fit into a cache. Because each block fetch overwrites older cache contents, a small number of blocks results in data being overwritten shortly after they are fetched. As a block becomes larger, each additional word is farther from the requested word and therefore less likely to be needed in the near future. The relationship between block size and hit ratio is complex, and no set approach is judged to be the best in all circumstances.   Pentium 4 and ARM cache organizations The processor core consists of four major components: Fetch/decode unit – fetches program instruction in order from the L2 cache, decodes these into a series of micro-operations, and stores the results in the L2 instruction cache Out-of-order execution logic – Schedules execution of the micro-operations subject to data dependencies and resource availability – thus micro-operations may be scheduled for execution in a different order than they were fetched from the instruction stream. As time permits, this unit schedules speculative execution of micro-operations that may be required in the future Execution units – These units execute micro-operations, fetching the required data from the L1 data cache and temporarily storing results in registers Memory subsystem – This unit includes the L2 and L3 caches and the system bus, which is used to access main memory when the L1 and L2 caches have a cache miss and to access the system I/O resources

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  • CQRS &ndash; Questions and Concerns

    - by Dylan Smith
    I’ve been doing a lot of learning on CQRS and Event Sourcing over the last little while and I have a number of questions that I haven’t been able to answer. 1. What is the benefit of CQRS when compared to a typical DDD architecture that uses Event Sourcing and properly captures intent and behavior via verb-based commands? (other than Scalability) 2. When using CQRS what do you do with complex query-based logic? I’m going to elaborate on #1 in this blog post and I’ll do a follow-up post on #2. I watched through Greg Young’s video on the business benefits of CQRS + Event Sourcing and first let me say that I thought it was an excellent presentation that really drives home a lot of the benefits to this approach to architecture (I watched it twice in a row I enjoyed it so much!). But it didn’t answer some of my questions fully (I wish I had been there to ask these of Greg in person!). So let me pick apart some of the points he makes and how they relate to my first question above. I’m completely sold on the idea of event sourcing and have a clear understanding of the benefits that it brings to the table, so I’m not going to question that. But you can use event sourcing without going to a CQRS architecture, so my main question is around the benefits of CQRS + Event Sourcing vs Event Sourcing + Typical DDD architecture Architecture with Event Sourcing + Commands on Left, CQRS on Right Greg talks about how the stereotypical architecture doesn’t support DDD, but is that only because his diagram shows DTO’s coming up from the client. If we use the same diagram but allow the client to send commands doesn’t that remove a lot of the arguments that Greg makes against the stereotypical architecture? We can now introduce verbs into the system. We can capture intent now (storing it still requires event sourcing, but you can implement event sourcing without doing CQRS) We can create a rich domain model (as opposed to an anemic domain model) Scalability is obviously a benefit that CQRS brings to the table, but like Greg says, very few of the systems we create truly need significant scalability Greg talks about the ability to scale your development efforts. He says CQRS allows you to split the system into 3 parts (Client, Domain/Commands, Reads) and assign 3 teams of developers to work on them in parallel; letting you scale your development efforts by 3x with nearly linear gains. But in the stereotypical architecture don’t you already have 2 separate modules that you can split your dev efforts between: The client that sends commands/queries and receives DTO’s, and the Domain which accepts commands/queries, and generates events/DTO’s. If this is true it’s not really a 3x scaling you achieve with CQRS but merely a 1.5x scaling which while great doesn’t sound nearly as dramatic (“I can do it with 10 devs in 12 months – let me hire 5 more and we can have it done in 8 months”). Making the Query side “stupid simple” such that you can assign junior developers (or even outsource it) sounds like a valid benefit, but I have some concerns over what you do with complex query-based logic/behavior. I’m going to go into more detail on this in a follow-up blog post shortly. He also seemed to focus on how “stupid-simple” it is doing queries against the de-normalized data store, but I imagine there is still significant complexity in the event handlers that interpret the events and apply them to the de-normalized tables. It sounds like Greg suggests that because we’re doing CQRS that allows us to apply Event Sourcing when we otherwise wouldn’t be able to (~33:30 in the video). I don’t believe this is true. I don’t see why you wouldn’t be able to apply Event Sourcing without separating out the Commands and Queries. The queries would just operate against the domain model instead of the database. But you’d still get the benefits of Event Sourcing. Without CQRS the queries would only be able to operate against the current state rather than the event history, but even in CQRS the domain behaviors can only operate against the current state and I don’t see that being a big limiting factor. If some query needs to operate against something that is not captured by the current state you would just have to update the domain model to capture that information (no different than if that statement were made about a Command under CQRS). Some of the benefits I do see being applicable are that your domain model might end up being simpler/smaller since it only needs to represent the state needed to process commands and not worry about the reads (like the Deactivate Inventory Item and associated comment example that Greg provides). And also commands that can be handled in a Transaction Script style manner by the command handler simply generating events and not touching the domain model. It also makes it easier for your senior developers to focus on the command behavior and ignore the queries, which is usually going to be a better use of their time. And of course scalability. If anybody out there has any thoughts on this and can help educate me further, please either leave a comment or feel free to get in touch with me via email:

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  • OWB 11gR2 &ndash; OLAP and Simba

    - by David Allan
    Oracle Warehouse Builder was the first ETL product to provide a single integrated and complete environment for managing enterprise data warehouse solutions that also incorporate multi-dimensional schemas. The OWB 11gR2 release provides Oracle OLAP 11g deployment for multi-dimensional models (in addition to support for prior releases of OLAP). This means users can easily utilize Simba's MDX Provider for Oracle OLAP (see here for details and cost) which allows you to use the powerful and popular ad hoc query and analysis capabilities of Microsoft Excel PivotTables® and PivotCharts® with your Oracle OLAP business intelligence data. The extensions to the dimensional modeling capabilities have been built on established relational concepts, with the option to seamlessly move from a relational deployment model to a multi-dimensional model at the click of a button. This now means that ETL designers can logically model a complete data warehouse solution using one single tool and control the physical implementation of a logical model at deployment time. As a result data warehouse projects that need to provide a multi-dimensional model as part of the overall solution can be designed and implemented faster and more efficiently. Wizards for dimensions and cubes let you quickly build dimensional models and realize either relationally or as an Oracle database OLAP implementation, both 10g and 11g formats are supported based on a configuration option. The wizard provides a good first cut definition and the objects can be further refined in the editor. Both wizards let you choose the implementation, to deploy to OLAP in the database select MOLAP: multidimensional storage. You will then be asked what levels and attributes are to be defined, by default the wizard creates a level bases hierarchy, parent child hierarchies can be defined in the editor. Once the dimension or cube has been designed there are special mapping operators that make it easy to load data into the objects, below we load a constant value for the total level and the other levels from a source table.   Again when the cube is defined using the wizard we can edit the cube and define a number of analytic calculations by using the 'generate calculated measures' option on the measures panel. This lets you very easily add a lot of rich analytic measures to your cube. For example one of the measures is the percentage difference from a year ago which we can see in detail below. You can also add your own custom calculations to leverage the capabilities of the Oracle OLAP option, either by selecting existing template types such as moving averages to defining true custom expressions. The 11g OLAP option now supports percentage based summarization (the amount of data to precompute and store), this is available from the option 'cost based aggregation' in the cube's configuration. Ensure all measure-dimensions level based aggregation is switched off (on the cube-dimension panel) - previously level based aggregation was the only option. The 11g generated code now uses the new unified API as you see below, to generate the code, OWB needs a valid connection to a real schema, this was not needed before 11gR2 and is a new requirement since the OLAP API which OWB uses is not an offline one. Once all of the objects are deployed and the maps executed then we get to the fun stuff! How can we analyze the data? One option which is powerful and at many users' fingertips is using Microsoft Excel PivotTables® and PivotCharts®, which can be used with your Oracle OLAP business intelligence data by utilizing Simba's MDX Provider for Oracle OLAP (see Simba site for details of cost). I'll leave the exotic reporting illustrations to the experts (see Bud's demonstration here), but with Simba's MDX Provider for Oracle OLAP its very simple to easily access the analytics stored in the database (all built and loaded via the OWB 11gR2 release) and get the regular features of Excel at your fingertips such as using the conditional formatting features for example. That's a very quick run through of the OWB 11gR2 with respect to Oracle 11g OLAP integration and the reporting using Simba's MDX Provider for Oracle OLAP. Not a deep-dive in any way but a quick overview to illustrate the design capabilities and integrations possible.

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  • The Next Wave of PeopleSoft Capabilities for the Staffing Industry Is Here

    - by Mark Rosenberg
    With the release of PeopleSoft Financials and Supply Chain Management 9.1 Feature Pack 2 in January this year, we introduced substantial new capabilities for our Staffing Industry customers. Through a co-development project with Infosys Limited, we have enriched Oracle's PeopleSoft Staffing Solution with new tools aimed at accelerating and improving the quality of job order fulfillment, increasing branch recruiter productivity, and driving profitable growth. Staffing industry firms succeed based on their ability to rapidly, cost-effectively, and continually fill their pipelines with new clients and job orders, recruit the best talent, and match orders with talent. Pressure to execute in each of these functional areas is even more acute on staffing firms as contingent labor becomes a more substantial and permanent part of the workforce mix. In an industry that creates value through speedy execution, there is little room for manual, inefficient processes and brittle, custom integrations, which throttle profitability and growth. The latest wave of investment in the PeopleSoft Staffing Solution focuses on generating efficiency and flexibility for our customers. Simplicity To operate profitably and continue growing, a Staffing enterprise needs its client management, recruiting, order fulfillment, and other processes to function in harmony. Most importantly, they need to be simple for recruiters, branch managers, and applicants to access and understand. The latest PeopleSoft Staffing Solution set of enhancements includes numerous automated defaulting mechanisms and information-rich dashboard pagelets that even a new employee can learn quickly. Pending Applicant, Agenda management, Search, and other pagelets are just a few of the newest, easy-to-use tools that not only aggregate and summarize information, but also provide instant access to applicants, tasks, and key reports for branch staff. Productivity The leading firms in the Staffing industry are those that can more efficiently orchestrate large numbers of candidates, clients, and orders than their competitors can. PeopleSoft Financials and Supply Chain Management 9.1 Feature Pack 2 delivers productivity boosters that Staffing firms can leverage to streamline tasks and processes for competitive advantage. For example, we enhanced the Recruiting Funnel, which manages the candidate on-boarding process, with a highly interactive user interface. It integrates disparate Staffing business processes and exploits new PeopleTools technologies to offer a superior on-boarding user experience. Automated creation of agenda items and assignment tasks for each candidate minimizes setup and organizes assignment steps for the on-boarding process. Mass updates of tasks and instant access to the candidate overview page (which we also expanded), candidate event status, event counts, and other key data enable recruiters to better serve clients and candidates. Lower TCO Constructing and maintaining an efficient yet flexible labor supply chain can be complicated, let alone expensive. Traditionally, Staffing firms have been challenged in controlling their technology cost of ownership because connecting candidate and client-facing tools involved building and integrating custom applications and technologies and managing staff turnover, placing heavy demands on IT and support staff. With PeopleSoft Financials and Supply Chain Management 9.1 Feature Pack 2, there are two major enhancements that aggressively tackle these challenges. First, we added another integration framework to enable cost-effective linking of the Staffing firm’s PeopleSoft applications and its job board distributors. (The first PeopleSoft 9.1 Feature Pack released in March 2011 delivered an integration framework to connect to resume parsing providers.) Second, we introduced the teaming concept to enable work to be partitioned to groups, as well as individuals. These two capabilities, combined with a host of others, position Staffing firms to configure and grow their businesses without growing their IT and overhead expenditures. For our Staffing Industry customers, PeopleSoft Financials and Supply Chain Management 9.1 Feature Pack 2 is loaded with high-value tools aimed at enabling and sustaining a flexible labor supply chain. For more information, contact [email protected] or [email protected].

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