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• Oracle Announces Oracle Insurance Policy Administration for Life and Annuity 9.4

  - by helen.pitts(at)oracle.com

  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-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Today's global insurers require the ability to provide higher levels of service and quickly bring to market life insurance and annuity products that not only help them stand out from the competition, but also stay current with local legislation. To succeed, they require agile and flexible core systems that enable them to meet the unique localization requirements of the markets in which they operate, whether in North America, Asia Pacific or the Pan-European Region. The release of Oracle Insurance Policy Administration for Life and Annuity 9.4, announced today, helps insurers meet this need with expanded international market capabilities that enable them to reduce risk and profitably compete wherever their business takes them. It offers expanded multi-language along with unit-linked product and fund processing capabilities that enable regional and global insurers to rapidly configure and deliver localized products – along with providing better service for end users through a single policy admin solution. Key enhancements include: Kanji/Kana language support, pre-defined content, and imperial date processing for the Japanese market New localization flexibility for configuring and managing international mailing addresses along with regional variations for client information Enhanced capability to calculate unit-linked pricing and valuation, in addition to market-based processing and pre-configured unit linked content Expanded role-based security and masking capability to further protect sensitive customer data Enhanced capability to restrict processing specified activities based on time of day and user role, reducing exposure to market timing risks Further capability to eliminate duplicate client records, helping to reduce underwriting risks and enhance servicing through a single view of the client "The ability to leverage a single, rules-driven policy administration system for multiple global operation centers can help insurers realize significant improvements in speed to market, customer service, compliance with regional regulations, and consolidation efforts,” noted Celent's Craig Weber, senior vice president, Insurance. “We believe such initiatives are necessary to help the industry address service and distribution imperatives." Helping our customers meet these mission-critical business imperatives is a key objective for Oracle Insurance. Active, ongoing dialogue with our customers is an important part of the process to help understand how our solutions are and can continue to help them achieve success in the marketplace. I had the opportunity to meet with several of our insurance customers at the Oracle Insurance Policy Administration Client Advisory Board meeting last week in Philadelphia, Penn. (View photos on the Oracle Insurance Facebook page.)   It was a great forum for Oracle Insurance and our clients. Discussion centered on the latest business and IT trends, with opportunities to learn more about the latest release of Oracle Insurance Policy Administration for Life and Annuity and other Oracle Insurance solutions such as data warehousing / business intelligence, while exchanging best practices for product innovation and servicing customers and sales channels. Helen Pitts is senior product marketing manager for Oracle Insurance's life and annuities solutions.

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• It was worth the wait… Welcome Oracle GoldenGate 11g Release 2

  - by Irem Radzik

  v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";} v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";} It certainly was worth the wait to meet Oracle GoldenGate 11gR2, because it is full of new features on multiple fronts. In fact, this release has the longest and strongest list of new features in Oracle GoldenGate’s history. The new release brings GoldenGate closer to the Oracle Database while expanding the support for global implementations and heterogeneous systems. It is more secure, more flexible, and faster. We announced the availability of Oracle GoldenGate 11gR2 via a press release. If you haven’t seen it yet, please check it out. As covered in this announcement, there are a variety of improvements in the product: Integrated Capture for Oracle Database: brings Oracle GoldenGate’s Capture process closer to the Oracle Database engine and enables support for Advanced Compression among other benefits. Enhanced Conflict Detection & Resolution, speeds and simplifies the conflict detection and resolution process for Active-Active deployments. Globalization, meaning Oracle GoldenGate can be deployed for databases that use multi-byte/Unicode character sets. Security and Performance Improvements, includes support Federal Information Protection Standard (FIPS). Increased Extensibility by kicking off actions based on an event record in the transaction log or in the Trail file. Integration with Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c , in addition to the Oracle GoldenGate Monitor product. Expanded Heterogeneity, including capture from IBM DB2 for i on iSeries (AS/400) and delivery to Postgres We will explain these new features in more detail at our upcoming launch webcast: Harness the Power of the New Release of Oracle GoldenGate 11g- (Sept 12 8am/10am PT) In addition to learning more about these new features, the webcast will allow you to ask your questions to product management via live Q&A section. So, I hope you will not miss this opportunity to explore the new release of Oracle GoldenGate 11g and see how it can deliver enterprise-class real-time data integration solutions.. I look forward to a great webcast to unveil GoldenGate’s new capabilities.

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• C# Item system design approach, should I use abstract classes, interfaces or virutals?

  - by vexe

  I'm working on a Resident Evil 1/2/3/0/Remake type of game. Currently I've done a big part of the inventory system (here's a link if you wanna see my inventory, pretty outdated, added a lot of features and made a lot of enhancements) Now I'm thinking about how to approach the items system, If you've played any Resident Evil game or any of its likes you should be familiar with what I'm trying to achieve. Here's a very simple category I made for the items: So you have different items, with different operations you could perform on them, there are usable items that you could use, like for example herbs and first aid kits that 'using' them would affect your health, keys to unlock doors, and equipable items that you could 'equip' like weapons. Also, you can 'combine' two items together to get new one, like for example mixing a green and red herb would give you a new type of herb, or combining a lighter with a paper, would give you a burnt paper, or ammo with a gun, would reload the gun or something. etc. You know the usual RE drill. Not all items are 'transformable', in that, for example: lighter + paper = burnt paper (it's the paper that 'transforms' to burnt paper and not the lighter, the lighter is not transformable it will remain as it is) green herb + red herb = newHerb1 (both herbs will vanish and transform to this new type of herb) ammo + gun = reload gun (ammo state will remain as it is, it won't change but it will just decrease, nothing will happen to the gun it just gets reloaded) Also a key note to remember is that you can't just combine items randomly, each item has a 'mating' item(s). So to sum up, different items, and different operations on them. The question is, how to approach this, design-wise? I've been learning about interfaces, but it just doesn't quite get into my head, I mean, why not just use classes with the good old inheritance? I know the technical details of interfaces and that the cool thing about them is that they don't require an inheritance chain, but I just can't see how to use them properly, that is, if they were the right thing to use here. So should I go with just classes and inheritance? just like in the tree I showed you? or should I think more about how to use interfaces? (IUsable, IEquipable, ITransformable) - why not just use classes UsableItem, Equipable item, TransformableItem? I want something that won't give me headaches in the long run, something resilient/flexible to future changes. I'm OK using classes, but I smell something better here. The way I'm thinking is to possibly use both inheritance and interfaces, so that you have a branch like this: item - equipable - weapon. but then again, the weapon has methods like 'reload' 'examine' 'equip' some of them 'combine' so I'm thinking to make weapon implement ICombinable?... not all items get used the same way, using herbs will increase your health, using a key will open a door, so IUsable maybe? Should I use a big database (XML for example) for all the items, items names, mates, nRowsReq, nColsReq, etc? Thanks so much for your answers in advanced, note that demo 3 is coming after I'm done with items :D

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• Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) and things I were more intuitive

  - by pjohnson

  I've started using Windows Workflow Foundation, and so far ran into a few things that aren't incredibly obvious. Microsoft did a good job of providing a ton of samples, which is handy because you need them to get anywhere with WF. The docs are thin, so I've been bouncing between samples and downloadable labs to figure out how to implement various activities in a workflow. Code separation or not? You can create a workflow and activity in Visual Studio with or without code separation, i.e. just a .cs "Component" style object with a Designer.cs file, or a .xoml XML markup file with code behind (beside?) it. Absence any obvious advantage to one or the other, I used code separation for workflows and any complex custom activities, and without code separation for custom activities that just inherit from the Activity class and thus don't have anything special in the designer. So far, so good. Service - In the WF world, this is simply a class that talks to the workflow about things outside the workflow, not to be confused with how the term "service" is used in every other context I've seen in the Windows and .NET world, i.e. an executable that waits for events or requests from a client and services them (Windows service, web service, WCF service, etc.). ListenActivity - Such a great concept, yet so unintuitive. It seems you need at least two branches (EventDrivenActivity instances), one for your positive condition and one for a timeout. The positive condition has a HandleExternalEventActivity, and the timeout has a DelayActivity followed by however you want to handle the delay, e.g. a ThrowActivity. The timeout is simple enough; wiring up the HandleExternalEventActivity is where things get fun. You need to create a service (see above), and an interface for that service (this seems more complex than should be necessary--why not have activities just wire to a service directly?). And you need to create a custom EventArgs class that inherits from ExternalDataEventArgs--you can't create an ExternalDataEventArgs event handler directly, even if you don't need to add any more information to the event args, despite ExternalDataEventArgs not being marked as an abstract class, nor a compiler error nor warning nor any other indication that you're doing something wrong, until you run it and find that it always times out and get to check every place mentioned here to see why. Your interface and service need an event that consumes your custom EventArgs class, and a method to fire that event. You need to call that method from somewhere. Then you get to hope that you did everything just right, or that you can step through code in the debugger before your Delay timeout expires. Yes, it's as much fun as it sounds. TransactionScopeActivity - I had the bright idea of putting one in as a placeholder, then filling in the database updates later. That caused this error: The workflow hosting environment does not have a persistence service as required by an operation on the workflow instance "[GUID]". ...which is about as helpful as "Object reference not set to an instance of an object" and even more fun to debug. Google led me to this Microsoft Forums hit, and from there I figured out it didn't like that the activity had no children. Again, a Validator on TransactionScopeActivity would have pointed this out to me at design time, rather than handing me a nearly useless error at runtime. Easily enough, I disabled the activity and that fixed it. I still see huge potential in my work where WF could make things easier and more flexible, but there are some seriously rough edges at the moment. Maybe I'm just spoiled by how much easier and more intuitive development elsewhere in the .NET Framework is.

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• Stuck due to "knowing too much"

  - by Ran Biron

  Note more discussion at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4037794 Welcome Hacker News Visitors! While HN is a fine forum for discussion and debate, Programmers - Stack Exchange is not. From the FAQ: If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about ____”, then you should not be asking here. However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain ____ to me”, then you are probably OK. (Discussions are of course welcome in our real time web chat.) Currently, this question is viewed by the membership of Programmers.SE as more likely to provoke unproductive discussion than constructive answers; while debates on its form and future are conducted, it will be locked to prevent arguments and vandalism. -- Shog9 I have a relatively simple development task, but every time I try to attack it, I end up spiraling in deep thoughts - how could it extending the future, what are the 2nd generation clients going to need, how does it affect "non functional" aspects (e.g. Performance, authorization...), how would it best be architectured to allow change... I remember myself a while ago, younger and, perhaps, more eager. The "me" I was then wouldn't have given a thought about all that - he would've gone ahead and wrote something, then rewrote it, then rewrote it again (and again...). The "me" today is more hesitant, more careful. I find it much easier today to sit and plan and instruct other people on how to do things than to actually go ahead and do them myself - not because I don't like to code - the opposite, I love to! - but because every time I sit at the keyboard, I end up in that same annoying place. Is this wrong? Is this a natural evolution, or did I drive myself into a rut? Fair disclosure - in the past I was a developer, today my job title is a "system architect". Good luck figuring what it means - but that's the title. Wow. I honestly didn't expect this question to generate that many responses. I'll try to sum it up. Reasons: Analysis paralysis / Over engineering / gold plating / (any other "too much thinking up-front can hurt you"). Too much experience for the given task. Not focusing on what's important. Not enough experience (and realizing that). Solutions (not matched to reasons): Testing first. Start coding (+ for fun) One to throw away (+ one API to throw away). Set time constraints. Strip away the fluff, stay with the stuff. Make flexible code (kinda opposite to "one to throw away", no?). Thanks to everyone - I think the major benefit here was to realize that I'm not alone in this experience. I have, actually, already started coding and some of the too-big things have fallen off, naturally. Since this question is closed, I'll accept the answer with most votes as of today. When/if it changes - I'll try to follow.

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• Part 9: EBS Customizations, how to track

  - by volker.eckardt(at)oracle.com

  In the previous blogs we were concentrating on the preparation tasks. We have defined standards, we know about the tools and techniques we will start with. Additionally, we have defined the modification strategy, and how to handle such topics best. Now we are ready to take the requirements! Such requirements coming over in spreadsheets, word files (like GAP documents), or in any other format. As we have to assign some attributes, we start numbering all that and assign a short name to each of these requirements (=CEMLI reference). We may also have already a Functional person assigned, and we might involve someone from the tech team to estimate, and we like to assign a status such as 'planned', 'estimated' etc. All these data are usually kept in spreadsheets, but I would put them into a database (yes, I am from Oracle :). If you don't have any good looking and centralized application already, please give a try with Oracle APEX. It should be up and running in a day and the imported sheets are than manageable concurrently!  For one of my clients I have created this CEMLI-DB; in between enriched with a lot of additional functionality, but initially it was just a simple centralized CEMLI tracking application. Why I am pointing out again the centralized method to manage such data? Well, your data quality will dramatically increase, if you let your project members see (also review and update) "your" data.  APEX allows you to filter, sort, print, and also export. And if you can spend some time to define proper value lists, everyone will gain from. APEX allows you to work in 'agile' mode, means you can improve your application step by step. Let's say you like to reference a document, or even upload the same, you can do that. Or, you need to classify the CEMLIs by release, just add this release field, same for business area or CEMLI type. One CEMLI record may then look like this: Prepare one or two (online) reports, to be ready to present your "workload" to the project management. Use such extracts also when you work offline (to prioritize etc.). But as soon as you are again connected, feed the data back into the central application. Note: I have combined this application with an additional issue tracker.  Here the most important element is the CEMLI reference, which acts as link to any other application (if you are not using APEX also as issue tracker :).  Please spend a minute to define such a reference (see blog Part 8: How to name Customizations).   Summary: Building the bridge from Gap analyse to the development has to be done in a controlled way. Usually the information is provided differently, but it is suggested to collect all requirements centrally. Oracle APEX is a great solution to enter and maintain such information in a structured, but flexible way. APEX helped me a lot to work with distributed development teams during the complete development cycle.

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• Big Data – Operational Databases Supporting Big Data – Key-Value Pair Databases and Document Databases – Day 13 of 21

  - by Pinal Dave

  In yesterday’s blog post we learned the importance of the Relational Database and NoSQL database in the Big Data Story. In this article we will understand the role of Key-Value Pair Databases and Document Databases Supporting Big Data Story. Now we will see a few of the examples of the operational databases. Relational Databases (Yesterday’s post) NoSQL Databases (Yesterday’s post) Key-Value Pair Databases (This post) Document Databases (This post) Columnar Databases (Tomorrow’s post) Graph Databases (Tomorrow’s post) Spatial Databases (Tomorrow’s post) Key Value Pair Databases Key Value Pair Databases are also known as KVP databases. A key is a field name and attribute, an identifier. The content of that field is its value, the data that is being identified and stored. They have a very simple implementation of NoSQL database concepts. They do not have schema hence they are very flexible as well as scalable. The disadvantages of Key Value Pair (KVP) database are that they do not follow ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) properties. Additionally, it will require data architects to plan for data placement, replication as well as high availability. In KVP databases the data is stored as strings. Here is a simple example of how Key Value Database will look like: Key Value Name Pinal Dave Color Blue Twitter @pinaldave Name Nupur Dave Movie The Hero As the number of users grow in Key Value Pair databases it starts getting difficult to manage the entire database. As there is no specific schema or rules associated with the database, there are chances that database grows exponentially as well. It is very crucial to select the right Key Value Pair Database which offers an additional set of tools to manage the data and provides finer control over various business aspects of the same. Riak Rick is one of the most popular Key Value Database. It is known for its scalability and performance in high volume and velocity database. Additionally, it implements a mechanism for collection key and values which further helps to build manageable system. We will further discuss Riak in future blog posts. Key Value Databases are a good choice for social media, communities, caching layers for connecting other databases. In simpler words, whenever we required flexibility of the data storage keeping scalability in mind – KVP databases are good options to consider. Document Database There are two different kinds of document databases. 1) Full document Content (web pages, word docs etc) and 2) Storing Document Components for storage. The second types of the document database we are talking about over here. They use Javascript Object Notation (JSON) and Binary JSON for the structure of the documents. JSON is very easy to understand language and it is very easy to write for applications. There are two major structures of JSON used for Document Database – 1) Name Value Pairs and 2) Ordered List. MongoDB and CouchDB are two of the most popular Open Source NonRelational Document Database. MongoDB MongoDB databases are called collections. Each collection is build of documents and each document is composed of fields. MongoDB collections can be indexed for optimal performance. MongoDB ecosystem is highly available, supports query services as well as MapReduce. It is often used in high volume content management system. CouchDB CouchDB databases are composed of documents which consists fields and attachments (known as description). It supports ACID properties. The main attraction points of CouchDB are that it will continue to operate even though network connectivity is sketchy. Due to this nature CouchDB prefers local data storage. Document Database is a good choice of the database when users have to generate dynamic reports from elements which are changing very frequently. A good example of document usages is in real time analytics in social networking or content management system. Tomorrow In tomorrow’s blog post we will discuss about various other Operational Databases supporting Big Data. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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• Creating shapes on the fly

  - by Bertrand Le Roy

  Most Orchard shapes get created from part drivers, but they are a lot more versatile than that. They can actually be created from pretty much anywhere, including from templates. One example can be found in the Layout.cshtml file of the ThemeMachine theme: WorkContext.Layout.Footer .Add(New.BadgeOfHonor(), "5"); .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } What this is really doing is create a new shape called BadgeOfHonor and injecting it into the Footer global zone (that has not yet been defined, which in itself is quite awesome) with an ordering rank of "5". We can actually come up with something simpler, if we want to render the shape inline instead of sending it into a zone: @Display(New.BadgeOfHonor()) Now let's try something a little more elaborate and create a new shape for displaying a date and time: @Display(New.DateTime(date: DateTime.Now, format: "d/M/yyyy")) For the moment, this throws a "Shape type DateTime not found" exception because the system has no clue how to render a shape called "DateTime" yet. The BadgeOfHonor shape above was rendering something because there is a template for it in the theme: Themes/ThethemeMachine/Views/BadgeOfHonor.cshtml. We need to provide a template for our new shape to get rendered. Let's add a DateTime.cshtml file into our theme's Views folder in order to make the exception go away: Hi, I'm a date time shape. Now we're just missing one thing. Instead of displaying some static text, which is not very interesting, we can display the actual time that got passed into the shape's dynamic constructor. Those parameters will get added to the template's Model, so they are easy to retrieve: @(((DateTime)Model.date).ToString(Model.format)) Now that may remind you a little of WebForm's user controls. That's a fair comparison, except that these shapes are much more flexible (you can add properties on the fly as necessary), and that the actual rendering is decoupled from the "control". For example, any theme can override the template for a shape, you can use alternates, wrappers, etc. Most importantly, there is no lifecycle and protocol abstraction like there was in WebForms. I think this is a real improvement over previous attempts at similar things.

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• Implementing features in an Entity System

  - by Bane

  After asking two questions on Entity Systems (1, 2), and reading some articles on them, I think that I understand them much better than before. But, I still have some uncertainties, and mainly they are about building a Particle Emitter, an Input system, and a Camera. I obviously still have some problems understanding Entity Systems, and they might apply to a whole other range of objects, but I chose these three because they are very different concepts and should cover a pretty big ground, and help me understand Entity Systems and how to handle problems like these myself, as they come along. I am building an engine in Javascript, and I've implemented most of the core features, which include: input handling, flexible animation system, particle emitter, math classes and functions, scene handling, a camera and a render, and a whole bunch of other things that engines usually support. Then, I read Byte56's answer that got me interested into making the engine into an Entity System one. It would still remain an HTML5 game engine with the basic Scene philosophy, but it should support dynamic creation of entities from components. These are some of the definitions from the previous questions, updated: An Entity is an identifier. It doesn't have any data, it's not an object, it's a simple id that represents an index in the Scene's list of all entities (which I actually plan to implement as a component matrix). A Component is a data holder, but with methods that can operate on that data. The best example is a Vector2D, or a "Position" component. It has data: x and y, but also some methods that make operating on the data a bit easier: add(), normalize(), and so on. A System is something that can operate on a set of entities that meet the certain requirements, usually they (the entities) need to have a specified (by the system itself) set of components to be operated upon. The system is the "logic" part, the "algorithm" part, all the functionality supplied by components is purely for easier data management. The problem that I have now is fitting my old engine concept into this new programming paradigm. Lets start with the simplest one, a Camera. The camera has a position property (Vector2D), a rotation property and some methods for centering it around a point. Each frame, it is fed to a renderer, along with a scene, and all the objects are translated according to it's position. Then the scene is rendered. How could I represent this kind of an object in an Entity System? Would the camera be an entity or simply a component? A combination (see my answer)? Another issues that is bothering me is implementing a Particle Emitter. For what exactly I mean by that, you can check out my video of it: http://youtu.be/BObargIMQsE. The problem I have with this is, again, what should be what. I'm pretty sure that particles themselves shouldn't be entities, as I want to support 10k+ of them, and creating that much entities would be a heavy blow on my performance, I believe. Or maybe not? Depends on the implementation, but anyone with experience: please, do answer. The last bit I wan't to talk about, which is also bugging me the most, is how input should be handled. In my current version of the engine, there is a class called Input. It's a handler that subscribes to browser's events, such as keypresses, and mouse position changes, and also it maintains an internal state. Then, the player class has a react() method, which accepts an input object as an argument. The advantage of this is that the input object could be serialized into JSON and then shared over the network, allowing for smooth multiplayer simulations. But how does this translate into an Entity System?

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• Thoughts on Thoughts on TDD

  Brian Harry wrote a post entitled Thoughts on TDD that I thought I was going to let lie, but I find that I need to write a response. I find myself in agreement with Brian on many points in the post, but I disagree with his conclusion. Not surprisingly, I agree with the things that he likes about TDD. Focusing on the usage rather than the implementation is really important, and this is important whether you use TDD or not. And YAGNI was a big theme in my Seven Deadly Sins of Programming series. Now, on to what he doesnt like. He says that he finds it inefficient to have tests that he has to change every time he refactors. Here is where we part company. If you are having to do a lot of test rewriting (say, more than a couple of minutes work to get back to green) *often* when you are refactoring your code, I submit that either you are testing things that you dont need to test (internal details rather than external implementation), your code perhaps isnt as decoupled as it could be, or maybe you need a visit to refactorers anonymous. I also like to refactor like crazy, but as we all know, the huge downside of refactoring is that we often break things. Important things. Subtle things. Which makes refactoring risky. *Unless* we have a set of tests that have great coverage. And TDD (or Example-based Design, which I prefer as a term) gives those to us. Now, I dont know what sort of coverage Brian gets with the unit tests that he writes, but I do know that for the majority of the developers Ive worked with and I count myself in that bucket the coverage of unit tests written afterwards is considerably inferior to the coverage of unit tests that come from TDD. For me, it all comes down to the answer to the following question: How do you ensure that your code works now and will continue to work in the future? Im willing to put up with a little efficiency on the front side to get that benefit later. Its not the writing of the code thats the expensive part, its everything else that comes after. I dont think that stepping through test cases in the debugger gets you what you want. You can verify what the current behavior is, sure, and do it fairly cheaply, but you dont help the guy in the future who doesnt know what conditions were important if he has to change your code. His second part that he doesnt like backing into an architecture (go read to see what he means). Ive certainly had to work with code that was like this before, and its a nightmare the code that nobody wants to touch. But thats not at all the kind of code that you get with TDD, because if youre doing it right youre doing the write a failing tests, make it pass, refactor approach. Now, you may miss some useful refactorings and generalizations for this, but if you do, you can refactor later because you have the tests that make it safe to do so, and your code tends to be easy to refactor because the same things that make code easy to write unit tests for make it easy to refactor. I also think Brian is missing an important point. We arent all as smart as he is. Im reminded a bit of the lesson of Intentional Programming, Charles Simonyis paradigm for making programming easier. I played around with Intentional Programming when it was young, and came to the conclusion that it was a pretty good thing if you were as smart as Simonyi is, but it was pretty much a disaster if you were an average developer. In this case, TDD gives you a way to work your way into a good, flexible, and functional architecture when you dont have somebody of Brians talents to help you out. And thats a good thing.Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• InfoPath 2010 Form Design and Web Part Deployment

  - by JKenderdine

  In January I had the pleasure to speak at SharePoint Saturday Virginia Beach.  I presented a session on InfoPath 2010 forms design which included some of the basics of Forms Design, description of some of the new options with InfoPath 2010 and SharePoint 2010, and other integration possibilities.  Included below is the information presented as well as the solution to create the demo: First thing you need to understand is what the difference is between an InfoPath List form and a Form Library Form?  SharePoint List Forms:  Store data directly in a SharePoint list.  Each control (e.g. text box) in the form is bound to a column in the list. SharePoint list forms are directly connected to the list, which means that you don’t have to worry about setting up the publish and submit locations. You also do not have the option for back-end code. Form Library Forms:  Store data in XML files in a SharePoint form library.  This means they are more flexible and you can do more with them.  For example, they can be configured to save drafts and submit to different locations. However, they are more complex to work with and require more decisions to be made during configuration.  You do have the option of back-end code with these type of forms. Next steps: You need to create your File Architecture Plan.  Plan the location for the saved template – both Test and Production (This is pretty much a given, but just in case - Always make sure to have a test environment) Plan for the location of the published template Then you need to document your Form Template Design Plan.  Some questions to ask to gather your requirements: What will the form be designed to do? Will it gather user information? Will it display data from a data source? Do we need to show different views to different users? What do we base this on? How will it be implemented for the users? Browser or Client based form Site collection content type – Published through Central Admin Form Library – Published directly to form library So what are the requirements for this template?  Business Card Request Form Template Design Plan Gather user information and requirements for card Pull in as much user information as possible. Use data from the user profile web services as a data source Show and hide fields as necessary for requirements Create multiple views – one for those submitting the form and another view for the executive assistants placing the orders. Browser based form integrated into SharePoint team site Published directly to form library The form was published through Central Administration and incorporated into the site as a content type. Utilizing the new InfoPath Web part, the form is integrated into the page and the users can complete the form directly from within that page. For now, if you are interested in the final form XSN, contact me using the Contact link above.   I will post soon with the details on how the form was created and how it integrated the requirements detailed above.

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• Silverlight Cream for May 27, 2010 -- #871

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Phil Middlemiss, Max Paulousky, Jeff Wilcox, David Anson, René Schulte, Xianzhong Zhu, Jeff Handley, John Papa, Jeremy Likness, and Marlon Grech. Shoutouts: SilverLaw has a great demo at the Expression Gallery, and we're all going to look forward to the blog post explaining it: Flexible Surface Effect SilverLaw> has another use for the above in this text morphing Effect: Morphing Text Effect Matthias Shapiro contributed a chapter for a book on Visualization and it's available as a free download: Free Chapter From Beautiful Visualization Andy Beaulieu has a demo up as almost a spoiler for a future Coding4Fun app... and how cool is this: Shuffleboard: A Windows Phone 7 Sample Game From SilverlightCream.com: Separating Content and Presentation with the ContentControl Phil Middlemiss' latest is out on SilverlightShow and is all about the ContentControl and separating layout and content ... demo project source included Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Silverlight Applications. Part 1 Max Paulousky has part one of a long series he's starting on a demo project to explain a bunch of MEF, MVVM, and WCF RIA concepts. This first one contains the overview and also discusses SEO. There is a link to the app and material in the post if you read Russian :) Updated Silverlight Unit Test Framework bits for Windows Phone and Silverlight 3 Jeff Wilcox has available updated Unit Test bits for Silverlight 3 -- read that as WP7... read the rest of the information on his post. Easily animate orientation changes for any Windows Phone application with this handy source code David Anson has some code up that you're going to want if you're programming WP7 ... just watch the video ... you'll be downloading the code just like I did :) SilverShader – Introduction to Silverlight and WPF Pixel Shaders René Schulte has a post up at Coding4Fun about PixelShaders... how to write them and an application that uses them... this is a great long tutorial... a must read. Developing Freecell Game Using Silverlight 3 Part 2 Xianzhong Zhu has part 2 of his FreeCell game development posted ... lots of detailed descriptions and code, plus all the code of course! Async Validation with RIA Services Jeff Handley has a post up that is sort of a follow-on to a year-old post on async validation with RIA services and DataForm and how it's all much easier now in SL4. Learning Blend with .toolbox (Silverlight TV #29) John Papa and Arturo Toledo discuss .toolbox in Silverlight TV #29 -- have you made yourself an avatar yet? ... well go get on-board with this great learning tool! Silverlight Out of Browser Dynamic Modules in Offline Mode OOB isn't difficult, dynamic modules can become a bit more, but what if you're OOB... ok what if you're OOB and offline? ... Jeremy Likness has a possible solution for this with an OfflineCatalog. MEFedMVVM v1.0 Explained Marlon Grech has a great into to MEFedMVVM in this post. If you're trying to get your head around MEF and MVVM in either WPF or Silverlight, here's a good starting point. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• PENGUIN IS GETTING READY FOR ORACLE OPENWORLD 2012

  - by Zeynep Koch

  Are you looking for reasons to attend Oracle Openworld, how about below Oracle Linux sessions and hands-on-labs.  1. General Session: Oracle Linux Strategy and Roadmap  In this session, Oracle executives will discuss Linux strategy; the roadmap; contributions to the Linux mainline kernel; and what's in store for upcoming releases of Oracle Linux and the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel. Don’t miss this session. 2. New Features in Oracle Linux- A Technical Deep Dive Collaborating with the Linux community, Oracle engineers contribute to advancing Linux for mission-critical deployments. In this technical session, attendees will learn about the recent developments in Oracle Linux and the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel 3. Why Switch to Oracle Linux?  Oracle is the only company that provides a complete Linux solution from applications to disk, fully optimized for Oracle hardware and software, with one-stop support. In this session you will hear from two customers that have successfully implemented Oracle Linux and saved 50 to 90 percent on Linux support costs as well as the reasons to switch to Oracle Linux. 4. Debugging and Configuration Best Practices for Oracle Linux This is one of our best attended sessions and most informative. In this best practices session, learn how to save time and money while preventing headaches and hassles. Discover expert secrets to get your Linux systems up and running (and keep them running), avoid common pitfalls, prevent problems, and circumvent known issues. 5. Top Technical Tips for Automatic and Secure Oracle Linux Deployments In this session, attendees will learn about how to easily deploy and install Oracle Linux systems using various technologies like Kickstart, Oracle Enterprise Manager OpsCenter, and Oracle VM Templates for applications on Linux. Additionally, the session will share useful Linux security tips and introduce utilities to help with hardening and securely operating an Oracle Linux system. We also have a great session in Oracle Develop track: 6. DTrace for Oracle Linux Initially announced at last year's Oracle Openworld, DTrace for Oracle Linux is now available for the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel R.2. In this session held by one of the engineers working on the DTrace for Linux port, you will learn how you can use this powerful and flexible framework in your development environment. If you prefer to really have practical experience, don’t miss our two Hands-on-Labs where we will cover: HOL-1 : Oracle Linux Package Management: Configuring and Enabling Services In this session you will be Installing and configuring Oracle VM VirtualBox, importing the Oracle Linux virtual appliance. You will then use the package management on Oracle Linux using RPM and yum. You will also be able to review Ksplice, zero downtime kernel updates that enable you to apply security updates, patches and critical bug fixes without rebooting. HOL-2: Oracle Linux Storage Management with LVM and Device Mapper In this session you will learn about storage management with LVM2, the Linux Logical Volume Manager, Btrfs, preparing block devices, creating physical and logical volumes, creating file systems on top of logical volumes, and resizing file systems dynamically. You will also practice setting up software RAID devices, configuring encrypted block devices. You will also see Oracle Linux and Kpslice in the three demopods we will feature at Exhibition demogrounds. One in MySQL Connect and two in Oracle Openworld. What more do you need to come to San Francisco? Oh, I forgot to mention we also have great weather in fall.. Check out the Content Catalog and register to attend Oracle Linux sessions.

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• Where's My Windows Azure Subscriptions

  - by Shaun

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/shaunxu/archive/2013/11/03/wheres-my-windows-azure-subscriptions.aspxYesterday when I opened Windows Azure manage portal I found some resources were missed. I checked the website for those missed cloud service and they are still live. Then I checked my billing history but didn't found any problem. When I back to the portal I found that all of those resource are under my MSDN subscription. So I remembered that if this is related with the recently Windows Azure platform update.   This feature named "Enterprise Management", which provides the ability to manage your organization in a directory which is hosted entirely in the cloud, or alternatively kept in sync with an on-premises Windows Server Active Directory solution. By default, all existing windows azure account would have a default Windows Azure Active Directory (a.k.a. WAAD) associated. In the address bar I can find the default login WAAD of my account, which is "microsoft.onmicrosoft.com". To change the WAAD we can click "subscriptions" on top of the manage portal, select the active directory from the list of "filter by directory" and select the subscription we want to see, then press "apply". As you can see, the subscription under my MSDN was located in a WAAD named "beijingtelecom.onmicrosoft.com". This is because when Microsoft applied this feature, they will check if you have an existing WAAD in your subscription. If not, it will create a new one, otherwise it will use your WAAD and move your subscription into this directory. Since I created a WAAD for test several months ago, this subscription was moved to this directory.   To change the subscription's directory is simple. First we need to create a new WAAD with the name we preferred. As below I created a new directory named "shaunxu". Then select "settings" from the left navigation bar, select the subscription we wanted to change and click "edit directory". You don't have the permission to edit/change directory unless your Microsoft Account is the service administrator of this subscription. Then in the popup window, select the WAAD you want to change and press "next". All done. You need to log off and log in the portal then your subscription will be in the directory you wanted. And after these steps I can view my resources in this subscription.   Summary In this post I described how to change subscriptions into a new directory. With this new feature we can manage our Windows Azure subscription more flexible. But there are something we need keep in mind. 1. Only the service administrator could be able to move subscription. 2. Currently there's no way for us to see our Windows Azure services in more than one directory at the same time. Like me, I can see my services under "shaunxu.onmicrosoft.com" and I must change the filter directory from the "subscriptions" menu to see other services under "microsoft.onmicrosoft.com". 3. Currently we cannot delete an existing WAAD.   Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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• Oracle celebrates a successful Oracle CloudWorld in Bogotá

  - by yaldahhakim

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 written by: Diana Tamayo Tovar Oracle CloudWorld Bogotá began with scattered showers, rain and strong winds, inviting Colombians to spend a whole day in the social, mobile and complete world of Oracle Cloud. The event took place on November 6th with 807 attendees, 15 media representatives and 65 partners, who gathered to share the business value of Cloud along with Oracle executives and Colombian market leaders. Line-of-business leaders in sales and marketing, customer service and support, HR and talent management, and finance and operations, shared their ideas with Colombian customers, giving them a chance to learn, discover and engage with the tools, trends and concepts of Cloud. The highlights of the event included the presence of keynote speakers such as Bob Evans, Chief Communications Officer, and a customer testimonial session with top business leaders from insurance, finances, retail, communications and health Colombian industries, who shared their innovation experiences and success stories on workforce empowerment, talent management, cloud security, social engagement and productivity, providing best case scenarios on how Oracle has helped them transform their business with technologies like cloud, social collaboration and mobile applications. The keynote session was preceded by a customer success story from one of the largest virtual network operator in the country, providing an interesting case study of mobile banking innovation and a great customer testimonial of the importance of cross industry strategies and cloud technology. The event provided five different tracks on the main trends of how companies communicate and engage with different audiences, providing a different perspective on the importance of empowering brands through their customers, trusting and investing in technology for growth, while Oracle University shared their knowledge with “Oracle Cloud Fundamentals” a training lesson regarding Java Cloud, Database Cloud and other Oracle Cloud product technologies and solutions. The rainy day scenario included sideshows of aerial acrobatics and speed painting performances to recreate the environment of modern and flexible Cloud Solutions in a colorful and creative way. Oracle CloudWorld Bogotá was a great opportunity to expose invalid cloud Myths and the main concerns of the Colombian customers towards cloud, considering IDC Latin America studies stating that 93% of Colombian business leaders are interested in cloud but only 47% understand its business value. Spending a day in the cloud with 6 demogrounds stations, conference sessions, interesting case studies and customer testimonials will surely widen the endless market opportunities for Colombian customers, leaving them amazed with how Oracle Cloud works towards integration with other environments, non oracle applications, social media and mobile devices with bulletproof security infrastructure. /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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• Improving WIF&rsquo;s Claims-based Authorization - Part 1

  - by Your DisplayName here!

  As mentioned in my last post, I made several additions to WIF’s built-in authorization infrastructure to make it more flexible and easy to use. The foundation for all this work is that you have to be able to directly call the registered ClaimsAuthorizationManager. The following snippet is the universal way to get to the WIF configuration that is currently in effect: public static ServiceConfiguration ServiceConfiguration {     get     {         if (OperationContext.Current == null)         {             // no WCF             return FederatedAuthentication.ServiceConfiguration;         }         // search message property         if (OperationContext.Current.IncomingMessageProperties. ContainsKey("ServiceConfiguration"))         {             var configuration = OperationContext.Current. IncomingMessageProperties["ServiceConfiguration"] as ServiceConfiguration;             if (configuration != null)             {                 return configuration;             }         }         // return configuration from configuration file         return new ServiceConfiguration();     } }   From here you can grab ServiceConfiguration.ClaimsAuthoriationManager which give you direct access to the CheckAccess method (and thus control over claim types and values). I then created the following wrapper methods: public static bool CheckAccess(string resource, string action) {     return CheckAccess(resource, action, Thread.CurrentPrincipal as IClaimsPrincipal); } public static bool CheckAccess(string resource, string action, IClaimsPrincipal principal) {     var context = new AuthorizationContext(principal, resource, action);     return AuthorizationManager.CheckAccess(context); } public static bool CheckAccess(Collection<Claim> actions, Collection<Claim> resources) {     return CheckAccess(new AuthorizationContext(         Thread.CurrentPrincipal.AsClaimsPrincipal(), resources, actions)); } public static bool CheckAccess(AuthorizationContext context) {     return AuthorizationManager.CheckAccess(context); } I also created the same set of methods but called DemandAccess. They internally use CheckAccess and will throw a SecurityException when false is returned. All the code is part of Thinktecture.IdentityModel on Codeplex – or via NuGet (Install-Package Thinktecture.IdentityModel).

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• Logging connection strings

  If you some of the dynamic features of SSIS such as package configurations or property expressions then sometimes trying to work out were your connections are pointing can be a bit confusing. You will work out in the end but it can be useful to explicitly log this information so that when things go wrong you can just review the logs. You may wish to develop this idea further and encapsulate such logging into a custom task, but for now lets keep it simple and use the Script Task. The Script Task code below will raise an Information event showing the name and connection string for a connection. Imports System Imports Microsoft.SqlServer.Dts.Runtime Public Class ScriptMain Public Sub Main() Dim fireAgain As Boolean ' Get the connection string, we need to know the name of the connection Dim connectionName As String = "My OLE-DB Connection" Dim connectionString As String = Dts.Connections(connectionName).ConnectionString ' Format the message and log it via an information event Dim message As String = String.Format("Connection ""{0}"" has a connection string of ""{1}"".", _ connectionName, connectionString) Dts.Events.FireInformation(0, "Information", message, Nothing, 0, fireAgain) Dts.TaskResult = Dts.Results.Success End Sub End Class Building on that example it is probably more flexible to log all connections in a package as shown in the next example. Imports System Imports Microsoft.SqlServer.Dts.Runtime Public Class ScriptMain Public Sub Main() Dim fireAgain As Boolean ' Loop through all connections in the package For Each connection As ConnectionManager In Dts.Connections ' Get the connection string and log it via an information event Dim message As String = String.Format("Connection ""{0}"" has a connection string of ""{1}"".", _ connection.Name, connection.ConnectionString) Dts.Events.FireInformation(0, "Information", message, Nothing, 0, fireAgain) Next Dts.TaskResult = Dts.Results.Success End Sub End Class By using the Information event it makes it readily available in the designer, for example the Visual Studio Output window (Ctrl+Alt+O) or the package designer Execution Results tab, and also allows you to readily control the logging by choosing which events to log in the normal way. Now before somebody starts commenting that this is a security risk, I would like to highlight good practice for building connection managers. Firstly the Password property, or any other similar sensitive property is always defined as write-only, and secondly the connection string property only uses the public properties to assemble the connection string value when requested. In other words the connection string will never contain the password. I have seen a couple of cases where this is not true, but that was just bad development by third-parties, you won’t find anything like that in the box from Microsoft.   Whilst writing this code it made me wish that there was a custom log entry that you could just turn on that did this for you, but alas connection managers do not even seem to support custom events. It did however remind me of a very useful event that is often overlooked and fits rather well alongside connection string logging, the Execute SQL Task’s custom ExecuteSQLExecutingQuery event. To quote the help reference Custom Messages for Logging - Provides information about the execution phases of the SQL statement. Log entries are written when the task acquires connection to the database, when the task starts to prepare the SQL statement, and after the execution of the SQL statement is completed. The log entry for the prepare phase includes the SQL statement that the task uses. It is the last part that is so useful, how often have you used an expression to derive a SQL statement and you want to log that to make sure the correct SQL is being returned? You need to turn it one, by default no custom log events are captured, but I’ll refer you to a walkthrough on setting up the logging for ExecuteSQLExecutingQuery by Jamie.

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• Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c Release 2 (12.1.0.2) Now Available!

  - by Javier Puerta

  Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c Release 2 (12.1.0.2) is now available on OTN on ALL platforms. This is the first major release since the launch of Enterprise Manager 12c in October of 2011 and the first ever Enterprise Manager release available on all platforms simultaneously. This is primarily a stability release which incorporates many of issues and feedback reported by early adopters. In addition, this release contains many new features and enhancements in areas across the board.   New Capabilities and Features   Enhanced management capabilities for enterprise private clouds: Introduces new capabilities to allow customers to build and manage a Java Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) cloud based on Oracle Weblogic Server. The new capabilities include guided set up of PaaS Cloud, self-service provisioning, automatic scale out and metering and chargeback. Enhanced lifecycle management capabilities for Oracle WebLogic Server environments: Combining in-context multiple domain, patching and configuration file synchronizations. Integrated Hardware-Software management for Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud through features such as rack schematics visualization and integrated monitoring of all hardware and software components. The latest management capabilities for business-critical applications include: Business Application Management: A new Business Application (BA) target type and dashboard with flexible definitions provides a logical view of an application’s business transactions, end-user experiences and the cloud infrastructure the monitored application is running on. Enhanced User Experience Reporting: Oracle Real User Experience Insight has been enhanced to provide reporting capabilities on client-side issues for applications running in the cloud and has been more tightly coupled with Oracle Business Transaction Management to help ensure that real-time user experience and transaction tracing data is provided to users in context. Several key improvements address ease of administration, reporting and extensibility for massively scalable cloud environments including dynamic groups, self-updateable monitoring templates, bulk operations against many events, etc. New and Revised Plug-Ins:   Several plug-Ins have been updated as a part of this release resulting in either new versions or revisions. Revised plug-ins contain only bug-fixes and while new plug-ins incorporate both bug fixes as well as new functionality.   Plug-In Name Version Enterprise Manager for Oracle Database 12.1.0.2 (revision) Enterprise Manager for Oracle Fusion Middleware 12.1.0.3 (new) Enterprise Manager for Chargeback and Capacity Planning 12.1.0.3 (new) Enterprise Manager for Oracle Fusion Applications 12.1.0.3 (new) Enterprise Manager for Oracle Virtualization 12.1.0.3 (new) Enterprise Manager for Oracle Exadata 12.1.0.3 (new) Enterprise Manager for Oracle Cloud 12.1.0.4 (new) Installation and Upgrade:   All major platforms have been released simultaneously (Linux 32 / 64 bit, Solaris (SPARC), Solaris x86-64, IBM AIX 64-bit, and Windows x86-64 (64-bit) ) Enterprise Manager 12.1.0.2 is a complete release that includes both the EM OMS and Agent versions of 12.1.0.2. Installation options available with EM 12.1.0.2: User can do fresh Install or an upgrade from versions EM 10.2.0.5, 11.1, or 12.1.0.2 ( Bundle Patch 1 not mandatory). Upgrading to EM 12.1.0.2 from EM 12.1.0.1 is not a patch application (similar to Bundle Patch 1) but is achieved through a 1-system upgrade. Documentation:   Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control Introduction Document provides a broad overview of capabilities and highlights"What's New" in EM 12.1.0.2.   All updated Oracle Enterprise Manager documentation can be found on OTN   Customer Webcast - EM 12c Installation and Upgrade: This webcast is for customers who are interested in learning how to successfully deploy or upgrade to EM 12.1.0.2.   Customer Webcast - Installation and Upgrade - September 21(registration and info on OTN starting September 12)   Enterprise Manager 12c R2 Resources:   OTN Download Page Upgrade Guide

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• Orchestrating the Virtual Enterprise, Part II

  - by Kathryn Perry

  A guest post by Jon Chorley, Oracle's CSO & Vice President, SCM Product Strategy Almost everyone has ordered from Amazon.com at one time or another. Our orders are as likely to be fulfilled by third parties as they are by Amazon itself. To deliver the order promptly and efficiently, Amazon has to send it to the right fulfillment location and know the availability in that location. It needs to be able to track status of the fulfillment and deal with exceptions. As a virtual enterprise, Amazon's operations, using thousands of trading partners, requires a very different approach to fulfillment than the traditional 'take an order and ship it from your own warehouse' model. Amazon had no choice but to develop a complex, expensive and custom solution to tackle this problem as there used to be no product solution available. Now, other companies who want to follow similar models have a better off-the-shelf choice -- Oracle Distributed Order Orchestration (DOO).  Consider how another of our customers is using our distributed orchestration solution. This major airplane manufacturer has a highly complex business and interacts regularly with the U.S. Government and major airlines. It sits in the middle of an intricate supply chain and needed to improve visibility across its many different entities. Oracle Fusion DOO gives the company an orchestration mechanism so it could improve quality, speed, flexibility, and consistency without requiring an organ transplant of these highly complex legacy systems. Many retailers face the challenge of dealing with brick and mortar, Web, and reseller channels. They all need to be knitted together into a virtual enterprise experience that is consistent for their customers. When a large U.K. grocer with a strong brick and mortar retail operation added an online business, they turned to Oracle Fusion DOO to bring these entities together. Disturbing the Peace with Acquisitions Quite often a company's ERP system is disrupted when it acquires a new company. An acquisition can inject a new set of processes and systems -- or even introduce an entirely new business like Sun's hardware did at Oracle. This challenge has been a driver for some of our DOO customers. A large power management company is using Oracle Fusion DOO to provide the flexibility to rapidly integrate additional products and services into its central fulfillment operation. The Flip Side of Fulfillment Meanwhile, we haven't ignored similar challenges on the supply side of the equation. Specifically, how to manage complex supply in a flexible way when there are multiple trading parties involved? How to manage the supply to suppliers? How to manage critical components that need to merge in a tier two or tier three supply chain? By investing in supply orchestration solutions for the virtual enterprise, we plan to give users better visibility into their network of suppliers to help them drive down costs. We also think this technology and full orchestration process can be applied to the financial side of organizations. An example is transactions that flow through complex internal structures to minimize tax exposure. We can help companies manage those transactions effectively by thinking about the internal organization as a virtual enterprise and bringing the same solution set to this internal challenge.  The Clear Front Runner No other company is investing in solving the virtual enterprise supply chain issues like Oracle is. Oracle is in a unique position to become the gold standard in this market space. We have the infrastructure of Oracle technology. We already have an Oracle Fusion DOO application which embraces the best of what's required in this area. And we're absolutely committed to extending our Fusion solution to other use cases and delivering even more business value. Jon ChorleyChief Sustainability Officer & Vice President, SCM Product StrategyOracle Corporation

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• Silverlight Cream for June 01, 2010 -- #874

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Michael Washington, Alan Beasley and Michael Washington, Miroslav Miroslavov, Max Paulousky, Teresa and Ronald Burger, Laurent Duveau, Tim Heuer, Jeff Brand, Mike Snow, and John Papa. Shoutouts: To pay homage to the Advanced Options button in Expression Blend, Adam Kinney posted: Expression Blend Advanced Options square wallpaper SilverLaw stood his drag and drop ripple on it's head for this one: Silver Soccer - A Case Study for the Flexible Surface Effect (Silverlight 4) From SilverlightCream.com: Expression Blend DataStore - A Powerful Tool For Designers Michael Washington dug into the documentation and with some Microsoft assistance has figured out how to use the SetDataStoreAction in SketchFlow... good tutorial and a game to demonstrate it's use. Windows Phone 7 View Model Style Video Player Alan Beasley and Michael Washington teamed up again to produce a ViewModel-Style Video Player for WP7 ... very nice interface I might add... very detailed tutorial and all the code... oh, and did you notice it uses MVVMLight... on WP7? ... just thought I'd mention that :) Navigation in 3D world of 2D objects In part 7 of the CompleteIT code explenation, Miroslav Miroslavov is discussing some of the very cool animation they did... 3D, moving camera... cool stuff! Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Silverlight Applications. Part 2 Max Paulousky has part 2 of his Silverlight 4 and SEO series up. In part 2 he's discussing sitemaps and html content providing. He also has good links showing where to submit your sitemaps and information. Mousin’ down the PathListBox Teresa and Ronald Burger (not sure which) has a post up about the PathListBox and how they drew the path that they ended up using, and the code used to enable animation. Dynamically apply and change Theme with the Silverlight Toolkit We've all had fun playing with themes, but Laurent Duveau has an example up of letting your users change the theme at run-time. Microsoft Translator client library for Silverlight Tim Heuer has been playing with the Microsoft Translator for Silverlight and he has a "Works on My Machine" license on what he's making available .. but considering his access to resources... I'd say go for it :) Custom Per-Page Transitions in Windows Phone 7 Jeff Brand has a follow-on to his other WP7 post about page transitions and is now discussing per-page transitions Silverlight Tip of the Day #26 – Changing the Startup Class Mike Snow's latest 'tip' is a little more involved than a tip ... changing the startup class and actually removing (in his example), the page and app classes... code and xaml! I've seen this before but never explained as clean... fun stuff. Behaviors in Blend 4 (Silverlight TV #30) Episode 30 of Silverlight TV (now a tag at Silverlight Cream) finds John Papa talking to Adam Kinney about Behaviors in Blend 4... not only using them but creating a custom one. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• What's up with LDoms: Part 9 - Direct IO

  - by Stefan Hinker

  In the last article of this series, we discussed the most general of all physical IO options available for LDoms, root domains.  Now, let's have a short look at the next level of granularity: Virtualizing individual PCIe slots.  In the LDoms terminology, this feature is called "Direct IO" or DIO.  It is very similar to root domains, but instead of reassigning ownership of a complete root complex, it only moves a single PCIe slot or endpoint device to a different domain.  Let's look again at hardware available to mars in the original configuration: root@sun:~# ldm ls-io NAME TYPE BUS DOMAIN STATUS ---- ---- --- ------ ------ pci_0 BUS pci_0 primary pci_1 BUS pci_1 primary pci_2 BUS pci_2 primary pci_3 BUS pci_3 primary /SYS/MB/PCIE1 PCIE pci_0 primary EMP /SYS/MB/SASHBA0 PCIE pci_0 primary OCC /SYS/MB/NET0 PCIE pci_0 primary OCC /SYS/MB/PCIE5 PCIE pci_1 primary EMP /SYS/MB/PCIE6 PCIE pci_1 primary EMP /SYS/MB/PCIE7 PCIE pci_1 primary EMP /SYS/MB/PCIE2 PCIE pci_2 primary EMP /SYS/MB/PCIE3 PCIE pci_2 primary OCC /SYS/MB/PCIE4 PCIE pci_2 primary EMP /SYS/MB/PCIE8 PCIE pci_3 primary EMP /SYS/MB/SASHBA1 PCIE pci_3 primary OCC /SYS/MB/NET2 PCIE pci_3 primary OCC /SYS/MB/NET0/IOVNET.PF0 PF pci_0 primary /SYS/MB/NET0/IOVNET.PF1 PF pci_0 primary /SYS/MB/NET2/IOVNET.PF0 PF pci_3 primary /SYS/MB/NET2/IOVNET.PF1 PF pci_3 primary All of the "PCIE" type devices are available for SDIO, with a few limitations.  If the device is a slot, the card in that slot must support the DIO feature.  The documentation lists all such cards.  Moving a slot to a different domain works just like moving a PCI root complex.  Again, this is not a dynamic process and includes reboots of the affected domains.  The resulting configuration is nicely shown in a diagram in the Admin Guide: There are several important things to note and consider here: The domain receiving the slot/endpoint device turns into an IO domain in LDoms terminology, because it now owns some physical IO hardware. Solaris will create nodes for this hardware under /devices.  This includes entries for the virtual PCI root complex (pci_0 in the diagram) and anything between it and the actual endpoint device.  It is very important to understand that all of this PCIe infrastructure is virtual only!  Only the actual endpoint devices are true physical hardware. There is an implicit dependency between the guest owning the endpoint device and the root domain owning the real PCIe infrastructure: Only if the root domain is up and running, will the guest domain have access to the endpoint device. The root domain is still responsible for resetting and configuring the PCIe infrastructure (root complex, PCIe level configurations, error handling etc.) because it owns this part of the physical infrastructure. This also means that if the root domain needs to reset the PCIe root complex for any reason (typically a reboot of the root domain) it will reset and thus disrupt the operation of the endpoint device owned by the guest domain.  The result in the guest is not predictable.  I recommend to configure the resulting behaviour of the guest using domain dependencies as described in the Admin Guide in Chapter "Configuring Domain Dependencies". Please consult the Admin Guide in Section "Creating an I/O Domain by Assigning PCIe Endpoint Devices" for all the details! As you can see, there are several restrictions for this feature.  It was introduced in LDoms 2.0, mainly to allow the configuration of guest domains that need access to tape devices.  Today, with the higher number of PCIe root complexes and the availability of SR-IOV, the need to use this feature is declining.  I personally do not recommend to use it, mainly because of the drawbacks of the depencies on the root domain and because it can be replaced with SR-IOV (although then with similar limitations). This was a rather short entry, more for completeness.  I believe that DIO can usually be replaced by SR-IOV, which is much more flexible.  I will cover SR-IOV in the next section of this blog series.

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• My Experience at Oracle !!! By Ayush Gupta

  - by Nadiya

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE Hi! My name is Ayush, a Gratuate from BITS Pilani and now working and living in Bangalore. I joined Oracle in August 2013 as a Senior Consultant (SC) and would like to share my experiences over the first couple of months with you.It has been a wonderful journey so far. The last two months have been very exciting for me. First of all I would like to mention that the training program at Oracle that we went through really prepared us well. It matured us and allowed us to go from developing small applications in college to big enterprise products. Two months of initial training has had a lasting impact for me. I am also really enjoying the knowledge I have gained so far and also learning new things in the form of product training. It's really fun to work here. We are treated like adults and we are responsible for our own workloads.With that I can't keep from mentioning the fun times we as a team have in the form of Young Leadership programme in Hotel Fortune Trinity which included Luxurious buffet lunch too. Wishing it could happen more frequently.  Oracle provides one of the best opportunities to learn various technologies across different platforms. What I like best about working at Oracle is the work life balance. With the option of flexible timings, one can easily enjoy planned evenings with friends or maybe working out at the fitness centre in your building. Be it the birthday celebrations at office or the day long team outing at a resort, It’s all together a different experience. Overall, you get to take full ownership of your project and they give you a free leash on how you design your enhancements/changes.As one of the largest international companies, Oracle is obviously an expert on exploring the potential and possibility of inexperienced new hires. We were taught how to make an outstanding team work in a group training session at the first few weeks. From this experience I realized that perfect cooperation is not about where you come from or what your study background is, everyone can find his or her own role to support the team. Even though I am not that skilled in technology, my background has significantly helped me in learning new technologies in Oracle.My idea and suggestion is: for new joiners, the will to learn is be more important than what you have learnt before. Colleagues here at Oracle are professionals in their field, always friendly and glad to help. So don’t worry, all you need to do is just be confident, and have a nice attitude, Oracle will let you fully display your talent. Come and join us, here you can always find a tailor made role for you! /* 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-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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• SQL analytical mash-ups deliver real-time WOW! for big data

  - by KLaker

  One of the overlooked capabilities of SQL as an analysis engine, because we all just take it for granted, is that you can mix and match analytical features to create some amazing mash-ups. As we move into the exciting world of big data these mash-ups can really deliver those "wow, I never knew that" moments. While Java is an incredibly flexible and powerful framework for managing big data there are some significant challenges in using Java and MapReduce to drive your analysis to create these "wow" discoveries. One of these "wow" moments was demonstrated at this year's OpenWorld during Andy Mendelsohn's general keynote session.  Here is the scenario - we are looking for fraudulent activities in our big data stream and in this case we identifying potentially fraudulent activities by looking for specific patterns. We using geospatial tagging of each transaction so we can create a real-time fraud-map for our business users. Where we start to move towards a "wow" moment is to extend this basic use of spatial and pattern matching, as shown in the above dashboard screen, to incorporate spatial analytics within the SQL pattern matching clause. This will allow us to compute the distance between transactions. Apologies for the quality of this screenshot….hopefully below you see where we have extended our SQL pattern matching clause to use location of each transaction and to calculate the distance between each transaction: This allows us to compare the time of the last transaction with the time of the current transaction and see if the distance between the two points is possible given the time frame. Obviously if I buy something in Florida from my favourite bike store (may be a new carbon saddle for my Trek) and then 5 minutes later the system sees my credit card details being used in Arizona there is high probability that this transaction in Arizona is actually fraudulent (I am fast on my Trek but not that fast!) and we can flag this up in real-time on our dashboard: In this post I have used the term "real-time" a couple of times and this is an important point and one of the key reasons why SQL really is the only language to use if you want to analyse  big data. One of the most important questions that comes up in every big data project is: how do we do analysis? Many enlightened customers are now realising that using Java-MapReduce to deliver analysis does not result in "wow" moments. These "wow" moments only come with SQL because it is offers a much richer environment, it is simpler to use and it is faster - which makes it possible to deliver real-time "Wow!". Below is a slide from Andy's session showing the results of a comparison of Java-MapReduce vs. SQL pattern matching to deliver our "wow" moment during our live demo.  You can watch our analytical mash-up "Wow" demo that compares the power of 12c SQL pattern matching + spatial analytics vs. Java-MapReduce  here: You can get more information about SQL Pattern Matching on our SQL Analytics home page on OTN, see here http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/bi-datawarehousing/sql-analytics-index-1984365.html.  You can get more information about our spatial analytics here: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database-options/spatialandgraph/overview/index.html If you would like to watch the full Database 12c OOW presentation see here: http://medianetwork.oracle.com/video/player/2686974264001

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• Unlocking High Performance with Policy Administration Replacement

  - by helen.pitts(at)oracle.com

  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:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language:EN-CA; mso-fareast-language:EN-CA;} 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:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language:EN-CA; mso-fareast-language:EN-CA;} It is clear the insurance industry is undergoing significant changes as it consolidates and prepares for growth. The increasing focus on customer centricity, enhanced and speedier product development capabilities, and compliance with regulatory changes has forced companies to rethink well-entrenched policy administration processes. In previous Oracle Insurance blogs I’ve highlighted industry research pointing to policy administration replacement as a top IT priority for carriers. It is predicted that by 2013, the global IT spend on policy administration alone is likely to be almost 22 percentage of the total insurance IT spend. To achieve growth, insurers are adopting new pricing models, enhancing distribution reach, and quickly launching new products and services—all of which depend on agile and effective policy administration processes and technologies. Next month speakers from Oracle Insurance and Capgemini Financial Services will discuss how insurers can competitively drive high performance through policy administration replacement during a free, one-hour webcast hosted by LOMA. Roger Soppe, Oracle senior director, Insurance Strategy, together with Capgemini’s Lars Ernsting, leader, Life & Pensions COE, and Scott Mampre, vice president, Insurance, will be the speakers. Specifically, they’ll be highlighting: How replacing a legacy policy administration system with a modern, flexible platform optimizes IT and operations costs, creates consistent processes and eliminates resource redundancies How selecting the right partner with the best blend of technology, operational, and consulting capabilities, is an important pre-requisite to unlock high performance from policy administration transformation to achieve product, operational, and cost leadership  The value of outsourcing closed block operations We look forward to your participation on Thursday, July 14, 11:00 a.m. ET. Please register now. Helen Pitts is senior product marketing manager for Oracle Insurance's life and annuities solutions.

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• Framework 4 Features: Login Id Support

  - by Anthony Shorten

  Given that Oracle Utilities Application Framework 4 is available as part of Mobile Work Force Management and other product progressively I am preparing a number of short but sweet blog entries highlighting some of the new functionality that has been implemented. This is the first entry and it is on a new security feature called Login Id. In past releases of the Oracle Utilities Application Framework, the userid used for authentication and authorization was limited to eight (8) characters in length. This mirrored what the market required in the past with LAN userids and even legacy userids being that length. The technology market has since progressed to longer userid lengths. It is very common to hear that email addresses are being used as credentials for production systems. To achieve this in past versions of the Oracle Utilities Application Framework, sites had to introduce a short userid (8 characters in length) as an alias in your preferred security store. You then configured your J2EE Web Application Server to use the alias as credentials. This sometimes was a standard feaure of the security store and/or the J2EE Web Application Server, if you were lucky. If not, some java code has to be written to implement the solution. In Oracle Utilities Application Framework 4 we introduced a new attribute on the user object called Login Id. The Login Id can be up to 256 characters in length and is an alternative to the existing userid stored on the user object. This means the Oracle Utilities Application Framework can support both long and short userids. For backward compatibility we use the Login Id for authentication but the short userid for authorization and auditing. The user object within the Oracle Utilities Application Framework holds the translation. Backward compatibility is always a consideration in any of our designs for future or changed functionality. You will see reference to this fact in the blog entries I will be composing over the next few months. We have also thought about the flexibility in implementing this feature. The Login Id can be the same value of the Userid (the default for backward compatibility) or can be different. Both the Login Id and Userid have to be unique. This avoids sharing of credentials and is also backward compatible. You can manually enter the Login Id or provision it from Oracle Identity Manager (or other tool). If you use the Login Id only, then we will not autogenerate a short userid automatically as the rules for this can vary from site to site. You have a number of options there. Most Identity provisioning tools can generate a short userid at user creation time and this can be used. If you do not use provisioning tools, then you can write a class extension using the SDK to autoegenerate the userid based upon your sites preference. When we designed the feature there were lots of styles of generating userids (random, initial and surname, numbers etc). We could not really see a clear winner in that respect so we just allowed the extension to be inserted in if necessary. Most customers indicated to us that identity provisioning was the preferred way. This is why we released an Oracle Identity Manager integration with the framework. The Login id is case sensitive now which was not supported under userid. The introduction of the Login Id allows the product to offer flexible options when configuring security whilst maintaining backward compatibility.

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