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  • Oracle at TDWI World Conference in Boston, MA

    - by Mandy Ho
    Join Oracle, September 16-21 in Boston, MA at the TDWI World Conference Series. The TDWI is the premier provider of in-depth, high quality education and research in the Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing industry. This conference series focus on Agile BI. Learn how BI/DW teams are building on the four pillars of agile development- analytics, organizations, environments and architectures- to make their business more nimble, intelligent and ultimately, more profitable.  Oracle will be hosting  a workshop, Wednesday, Sept 19, 2012 - "Data Discovery: Beyond Dashboards and Scorecards" from 7:00pm to 9:00pm, in Back Bay-B.  For more information, visit the TDWI website: http://events.tdwi.org/events/boston-world-conference-2012/home.aspx

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  • SQLAuthority News – Download Pre-configured VHD – SQL Server 2008 R2 Standard on Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Standard

    - by pinaldave
    It is extremely simple to test out latest SQL Server 2008 R2. You can even get pre-configured ready to use VHD, which you can download and use it. This becomes very easy as one does not have to do anything besides downloading VHD and installing it on Hyper-V. Download Pre-configured VHD – SQL Server 2008 R2 Standard provides a trusted, productive and intelligent data platform that enables you to run your most demanding mission-critical applications, reduce time and cost of development and management of applications, and deliver actionable insight to your entire organization. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Documentation, SQL Download, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

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  • Top Reasons You Need A User Engagement Platform

    - by Michael Snow
    Guest post by: Amit Sircar, Senior Sales Consultant, Oracle Deliver complex enterprise functionality through a simple intuitive and unified User Interface (UI) The modern enterprise contains a wide range of applications that are used to manage the business and drive competitive advantages. Organizations respond by creating a complex structure that results in a functional and management grouping of users. Each of these groups of users requires access to multiple applications and information sources in order to perform their job functions. This leads to the lack of a unified view of enterprise information, inconsistent user interfaces and disjointed security. To be effective, portals must be designed from the end-user perspective, enabling the user to accomplish as many tasks as possible while visiting the fewest number of portals. This requires rethinking the way that portals are built, moving from a functional business unit perspective to a user-focused, process-oriented point of view. Oracle WebCenter provides the Common User Experience Architecture that allows organizations to seamlessly present a unified view of enterprise information tailored to a particular user’s role and preferences. This architecture provides the best practices, design patterns and delivery mechanism for myriad services, applications, and data sources.  In order to serve as a primary system of access, Oracle WebCenter also provides access to unstructured content and to other users via integrated search, service-oriented artifacts, content management, and collaboration tools. Provide a modern and engaging experience without modifying the core business application Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs, wikis, forums or social media sites are having a profound impact in the public internet.  These technologies can be leveraged by enterprises to add significant value to the business. Organizations need to integrate these technologies directly into their business applications while continuing to meet their security and governance needs. To deliver richer connections and become a more agile and intelligent business, WebCenter provides an enterprise portal platform that contains pre-integrated, standards-based Enterprise 2.0 services. These Enterprise 2.0 services can be easily accessed, integrated and utilized by users. By giving users the ability to use and integrate Enterprise 2.0 services such as tags, links, wikis, activities, blogs or social networking directly with their portals and applications, they are empowered to make richer connections, optimize their productivity, and ultimately increase the value of their applications. Foster a collaborative experience The organizational workplace has undergone a major change in the last decade. With increasing globalization and a distributed workforce, project teams may be physically separated by large distances. Online collaboration technologies are becoming a critical resource to enable virtual teams to share information and work together effectively. Oracle WebCenter delivers dynamic business communities with rich Services to empower teams to quickly and efficiently manage their information, applications, projects, and people without requiring IT assistance. It brings together the latest technology around Enterprise 2.0 and social computing, communities, personal productivity, and ad-hoc team interactions without any development effort. It enables the sharing and collaboration on team content, focusing an organization’s valuable resources on solving business problems, tapping into new ideas, and reducing time-to-market. Mobile Support The traditional workplace dynamics that required employees to access their work applications from their desktops have undergone a fundamental shift. Employees were used to primarily working from company offices and utilized an IT-issued computer for performing their job functions. With the introduction of flexible work hours and the growth of remote workers, more and more employees need the ability to remain productive even when they do not have access to a computer via the use of tablets and smartphones.  In addition, customers and citizens have come to expect 24x7 access to resources and websites from wherever they are located. Tablets and smartphones have empowered everyone to quickly access services they need anytime and from any place.  WebCenter provides out of the box capabilities to deliver the mobile experience in a seamless manner. Seeded device profiles and toolkits within WebCenter can be used to render the same web pages into multiple target devices such iPads, iPhones and android devices. Web designers can preview the portal using the built in simulator, make necessary updates and then deploy their UI design for the targeted device. Conclusion The competitive economy and resource constraints facing organizations today require them to find ways to make their applications, portals and Web sites more agile and intelligent and their knowledge workers more productive no matter where they are located. Organizations need to provide faster access to relevant information and resources, enhance existing applications and business processes with rich Enterprise 2.0 services, and seamlessly deliver content to mobile platforms. Oracle WebCenter successfully meets these challenges by providing the modern user experience platform for the enterprise and the Web.

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  • SDL to SFML simple question

    - by ultifinitus
    Hey! I've been working on a game in c++ for about a week and a half, and I've been using SDL. However, my current engine only needs the following from whatever library I use: enable double buffering load an image from path into something that I can apply to the screen apply an image to the screen with a certain x,y enable transparency on an image (possibly) image clipping, for sprite sheets. I am fairly sure that SFML has all of this functionality, I'm just not positive. Will someone confirm my suspicions? Also I have one or two questions regarding SFML itself. Do I have to do anything to enable hardware accelerated rendering? How quick is SFML at blending alpha values? (sorry for the less than intelligent question!)

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  • Commémoration du centenaire d'Alan Turing, "il était l'un des premiers à établir ce qu'était un ordinateur" pour le directeur de Microsoft Research

    Commémoration du centenaire d'Alan Turing « il était l'un des premiers à établir ce qu'était un ordinateur » pour le directeur de Microsoft Research Ce samedi 23 juin 2012 marquera le centième anniversaire d'Alan Turing, un pionnier de l'informatique moderne. Considéré comme « le père de l'ordinateur », Alan Turing est un mathématicien britannique né en 1912. Il est connu pour avoir percé le code de l'encodeuse Enigma utilisée par les nazis lors de la Seconde Guerre mondiale pour chiffrer les messages. En 1950, il créa le célèbre « Test de Turing », qu'il formula dans l'article « Computing Machinery and Intelligence », dans lequel il qualifie un ordinateur d'intelligent si celui-ci...

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  • What are the most common AI systems implemented in Tower Defense Games

    - by the_Dan
    I'm currently in the middle of researching on the various types of AI techniques used in tower defense type games. If someone could be help me in understanding the different types of techniques and their associated advantages. Using Google I already found several techniques. Random Map traversal Path finding e.g. Cost based Traversing Algorithms i.e. A* I have already found a great answer to this type of question with the below link, but I feel that this answer is tailored to FPS. If anyone could add to this and make it specific to tower defense games then I would be truly great-full. How is AI most commonly implemented in popular games? Example of such games would be: Radiant Defense Plant Vs Zombies - Not truly Intelligent, but there must be an AI system used right? Field Runners Edit: After further research I found an interesting book that may be useful: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0123747317/?tag=stackoverfl08-20

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  • Forbes Article on Big Data and Java Embedded Technology

    - by hinkmond
    Whoa, cool! Forbes magazine has an online article about what I've been blogging about all this time: Big Data and Java Embedded Technology, tying it all together with a big bow, connecting small devices to the data center. See: Billions of Java Embedded Devices Here's a quote: By the end of the decade we could see tens of billions of new Internet-connected devices... with billions of Internet- connected devices generating Big Data, are the next big thing. ... That’s why Oracle has put together an ecosystem of solutions for this new, Big Data-oriented device-to-data center world: secure, powerful, and adaptable embedded Java for intelligent devices, integrated middleware... This is the next big thing. Java SE Embedded Technology is something to watch for in the new year. Start developing for it now to get a head-start... Hinkmond

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  • Extending the Value of Your Oracle Financials Applications Investment with Document Capture, Imaging and Workflow

    Learn how Oracles end-to-end document imaging system extends the value and increases the automation of your Oracle Financials applications by using intelligent capture and imaging technologies to streamline high volume operations like accounts payable. Oracle Imaging and Process Management 11g (Oracle I/PM 11g) offers an integrated system that digitizes paper invoices, intelligently extracts header information and line item details, initiates automated workflows, and enables in-context access to imaged invoices directly from Oracle Applications, including Oracle E-Business Suite Financials and PeopleSoft Enterprise Financial Management. Come hear more about these certfied, standards-based application integrations as well as how document imaging can help your organization achieve quick, measurable ROI, by increasing efficiencies across financial departments, and reducing costs related to paper storage and handling.

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  • Designing a simple snake A.I

    - by DillPixel
    I've looked at some stuff online regarding this specific topic, and a lot of the info that I read involved graphs and path finding. I really don't want to get involved in something too complex & out of my level, and also I don't need my snake to be that intelligent (it will be a large board with the snake not growing in size on every munch). How could you structure a simpler AI for the snake that gets the job done relatively well? I would be able to get the snake to move towards the food item correctly, but my issue is that I'm not sure how to deal with the snake colliding with itself. Say the snake has a look ahead, and it finds that its tail is in the way, it could change direction, but what happens next? Any ideas on how to tackle this? Should the snake build an instruction set from every square, or should it think on the go?

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  • Ubuntu 12.04 LTS : la beta 2 de "Precise Pangolin" améliore HUD, Ubuntu One et intègre de nouvelles versions d'applications

    Ubuntu 12.04 LTS : la beta 2 de "Precise Pangolin" améliore HUD Ubuntu One et intègre de nouvelles versions d'applications Mise à jour du 09/04/2012 À quelques semaines de la publication de la version finale de Precise Pangolin, la prochaine version du système d'exploitation fondé sur Linux, Canonical publie la dernière beta de l'OS. La beta 2 d'Ubuntu 12.04 LTS apporte des corrections de bugs et quelques nouvelles fonctionnalités, dont l'ajout du noyau Linux 3.2.0-20.33 qui est basé sur la version stable 3.2.12 du Kernel. HUD, le nouveau menu intelligent pour les applications Unity dont un premier aperç...

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  • What is the best way to work with large databases in Java depending on context?

    - by user19000
    We are trying to figure out the best practice for working with very large DBs in Java. What we do is a kind of BI (business Intelligence), i.e analyzing very large DBs, and using them to create intermediate DBs that represent intelligent knowledge of the DBs. We are currently using JDBC, and just preforming queries using a ResultSet. As more and more data is being created, we are wondering whether more appropriate ways exist for parsing and manipulating these large DBs: We need to support 'chunk' manipulation and not an entire DB at once(e.g. limit in JDBC, very poor performance) We do not need to be constantly connected since we are just pulling results and creating new tables of our own. We want to understand JDBC alternatives, with respect to advantages and disadvantages. Whether you think JDBC is the way to go or not, what are the best practices to go by depending on context (e.g. for large DBs queried in chunks)?

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  • What's New in JMS 2 - Part 1

    - by reza_rahman
    JMS 2 is one of the most significant parts of Java EE 7. One of the principal goals of the JMS 2 API is improving developer productivity by reducing the amount of code to work with JMS by adopting programming paradigms like higher level abstractions, dependency injection, annotations, runtime exceptions, the builder pattern and intelligent defaults. In a recent OTN article, JMS 2 specification lead Nigel Deakin covers the ease-of-use changes in detail. The article is the first of a two part series on JMS 2. For more visual folks, there is my JMS 2 slide deck: What’s New in Java Message Service 2 from Reza Rahman You can also check out the official specification yourself or try things out with the newly released Java EE 7 SDK.

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  • Setting environment variables in OS X

    - by Percival Ulysses
    Despite the warning that questions that can be answered are preferred, this question is more a request for comments. I apologize for this, but I feel that it is valuable nonetheless. The problem to set up environment variables such that they are available for GUI applications has been around since the dawn of Mac OS X. The solution with ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist never satisfied me because it was not reliable, and bash style globbing wasn't available. Another solution is the use of Login Hooks with a suitable shell script, but these are deprecated. The Apple approved way for such functionality as provided by login hooks is the use of Launch Agents. I provided a launch agent that is located in /Library/LaunchAgents/: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"> <plist version="1.0"> <dict> <key>Label</key> <string>user.conf.launchd</string> <key>Program</key> <string>/Users/Shared/conflaunchd.sh</string> <key>ProgramArguments</key> <array> <string>~/.conf.launchd</string> </array> <key>EnableGlobbing</key> <true/> <key>RunAtLoad</key> <true/> <key>LimitLoadToSessionType</key> <array> <string>Aqua</string> <string>StandardIO</string> </array> </dict> </plist> The real work is done in the shell script /Users/Shared/conflaunchd.sh, which reads ~/.conf.launchd and feeds it to launchctl: #! /bin/bash #filename="$1" filename="$HOME/.conf.launchd" if [ ! -r "$filename" ]; then exit fi eval $(/usr/libexec/path_helper -s) while read line; do # skip lines that only contain whitespace or a comment if [ ! -n "$line" -o `expr "$line" : '#'` -gt 0 ]; then continue; fi eval launchctl $line done <"$filename" exit 0 Notice the call of path_helper to get PATH set up right. Finally, ~/.conf.launchd looks like that setenv PATH ~/Applications:"${PATH}" setenv TEXINPUTS .:~/Documents/texmf//: setenv BIBINPUTS .:~/Documents/texmf/bibtex//: setenv BSTINPUTS .:~/Documents/texmf/bibtex//: # Locale setenv LANG en_US.UTF-8 These are launchctl commands, see its manpage for further information. Works fine for me (I should mention that I'm still a Snow Leopard guy), GUI applications such as texstudio can see my local texmf tree. Things that can be improved: The shell script has a #filename="$1" in it. This is not accidental, as the file name should be feeded to the script by the launch agent as an argument, but that doesn't work. It is possible to put the script in the launch agent itsself. I am not sure how secure this solution is, as it uses eval with user provided strings. It should be mentioned that Apple intended a somewhat similar approach by putting stuff in ~/launchd.conf, but it is currently unsupported as to this date and OS (see the manpage of launchd.conf). I guess that things like globbing would not work as they do in this proposal. Finally, I would mention the sources I used as information on Launch Agents, but StackExchange doesn't let me [1], [2], [3]. Again, I am sorry that this is not a real question, I still hope it is useful.

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  • Optimise Apache for EC2 micro instance

    - by Shiyu Sekam
    I'm running apache2 on a EC2 micro instance with ~600 mb RAM. The instance was running for almost a year without problems, but in the last weeks it just keeps crashing, because the server reached MaxClients. The server basically runs few websites, one wordpress blog(not often used), company website(most used) and 2 small sites, which are just internal. The database for the blog runs on RDS, so there's no Mysql running on this web server. When I came to the company, the server already was setup and is running apache + mod_php + prefork. We want to migrate that in the future to a nginx + php-fpm, but it still needs further testing. So for now I have to stick with the old setup. I also use CloudFlare DDOS protection in front of the server, because it was attacked a couple of the times in the last weeks. My company don't want to pay money for a better web server at this point, so I have to stick with the micro instance also. Additionally the code for the website we run is really bad and slow and sometimes a single page load can take up to 15 seconds. The whole website is dynamic and written in PHP, so caching isn't really an option here. It's a customized search for users. I've already turned off KeepAlive, which improved the performance a little bit. My prefork config looks like the following: StartServers 2 MinSpareServers 2 MaxSpareServers 5 ServerLimit 10 MaxClients 10 MaxRequestsPerChild 100 The server just becomes unresponsive after a while running and I've run the following command to see how many connections there are: netstat | grep http | wc -l 75 Trying to restart apache helps for a short moment, but after that a while the apache process(es) become unresponsive again. I've the following modules enabled(output of apache2ctl -M) Loaded Modules: core_module (static) log_config_module (static) logio_module (static) version_module (static) mpm_prefork_module (static) http_module (static) so_module (static) alias_module (shared) authz_host_module (shared) deflate_module (shared) dir_module (shared) expires_module (shared) mime_module (shared) negotiation_module (shared) php5_module (shared) rewrite_module (shared) setenvif_module (shared) ssl_module (shared) status_module (shared) Syntax OK apache2.conf # Security ServerTokens OS ServerSignature On TraceEnable On ServerName "web.example.com" ServerRoot "/etc/apache2" PidFile ${APACHE_PID_FILE} Timeout 30 KeepAlive off User www-data Group www-data AccessFileName .htaccess <Files ~ "^\.ht"> Order allow,deny Deny from all Satisfy all </Files> <Directory /> Options FollowSymLinks AllowOverride None </Directory> DefaultType none HostnameLookups Off ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/error.log LogLevel warn EnableSendfile On #Listen 80 Include /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/*.load Include /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/*.conf Include /etc/apache2/ports.conf LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\"" combined LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b" common LogFormat "%{Referer}i -> %U" referer LogFormat "%{User-agent}i" agent Include /etc/apache2/conf.d/*.conf Include /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/*.conf Vhost of main site <VirtualHost *:80> ServerName www.example.com ## Vhost docroot DocumentRoot /srv/www/jenkins/Web ## Directories, there should at least be a declaration for /srv/www/jenkins/Web <Directory /srv/www/jenkins/Web> AllowOverride All Order allow,deny Allow from all </Directory> ## Load additional static includes ## Logging ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/www.example.com.error.log LogLevel warn ServerSignature Off CustomLog /var/log/apache2/www.example.com.access.log combined ## Rewrite rules RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.example.com$ RewriteRule ^.*$ http://www.example.com%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L] ## Server aliases ServerAlias www.example.invalid ServerAlias example.com ## Custom fragment <Location /srv/www/jenkins/Web/library> Order Deny,Allow Deny from all </Location> <Files ~ "^\.(.+)"> Order deny,allow deny from all </Files> </VirtualHost>

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  • The softer side of BPM

    - by [email protected]
    BPM and RTD are great complementary technologies that together provide a much higher benefit than each of them separately. BPM covers the need for automating processes, making sure that there is uniformity, that rules and regulations are complied with and that the process runs smoothly and quickly processes the units flowing through it. By nature, this automation and unification can lead to a stricter, less flexible process. To avoid this problem it is common to encounter process definition that include multiple conditional branches and human input to help direct processing in the direction that best applies to the current situation. This is where RTD comes into play. The selection of branches and conditions and the optimization of decisions is better left in the hands of a system that can measure the results of its decisions in a closed loop fashion and make decisions based on the empirical knowledge accumulated through observing the running of the process.When designing a business process there are key places in which it may be beneficial to introduce RTD decisions. These are:Thresholds - whenever a threshold is used to determine the processing of a unit, there may be an opportunity to make the threshold "softer" by introducing an RTD decision based on predicted results. For example an insurance company process may have a total claim threshold to initiate an investigation. Instead of having that threshold, RTD could be used to help determine what claims to investigate based on the likelihood they are fraudulent, cost of investigation and effect on processing time.Human decisions - sometimes a process will let the human participants make decisions of flow. For example, a call center process may leave the escalation decision to the agent. While this has flexibility, it may produce undesired results and asymetry in customer treatment that is not based on objective functions but subjective reasoning by the agent. Instead, an RTD decision may be introduced to recommend escalation or other kinds of treatments.Content Selection - a process may include the use of messaging with customers. The selection of the most appropriate message to the customer given the content can be optimized with RTD.A/B Testing - a process may have optional paths for which it is not clear what populations they work better for. Rather than making the arbitrary selection or selection by committee of the option deeped the best, RTD can be introduced to dynamically determine the best path for each unit.In summary, RTD can be used to make BPM based process automation more dynamic and adaptable to the different situations encountered in processing. Effectively making the automation softer, less rigid in its processing.

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  • It's not just “Single Sign-on” by Steve Knott (aurionPro SENA)

    - by Greg Jensen
    It is true that Oracle Enterprise Single Sign-on (Oracle ESSO) started out as purely an application single sign-on tool but as we have seen in the previous articles in this series the product has matured into a suite of tools that can do more than just automated single sign-on and can also provide rapidly deployed, cost effective solution to many demanding password management problems. In the last article of this series I would like to discuss three cases where customers faced password scenarios that required more than just single sign-on and how some of the less well known tools in the Oracle ESSO suite “kitbag” helped solve these challenges. Case #1 One of the issues often faced by our customers is how to keep their applications compliant. I had a client who liked the idea of automated single sign-on for most of his applications but had a key requirement to actually increase the security for one specific SOX application. For the SOX application he wanted to secure access by using two-factor authentication with a smartcard. The problem was that the application did not support two-factor authentication. The solution was to use a feature from the Oracle ESSO suite called authentication manager. This feature enables you to have multiple authentication methods for the same user which in this case was a smartcard and the Windows password.  Within authentication manager each authenticator can be configured with a security grade so we gave the smartcard a high grade and the Windows password a normal grade. Security grading in Oracle ESSO can be configured on a per application basis so we set the SOX application to require the higher grade smartcard authenticator. The end result for the user was that they enjoyed automated single sign-on for most of the applications apart from the SOX application. When the SOX application was launched, the user was required by ESSO to present their smartcard before being given access to the application. Case #2 Another example solving compliance issues was in the case of a large energy company who had a number of core billing applications. New regulations required that users change their password regularly and use a complex password. The problem facing the customer was that the core billing applications did not have any native user password change functionality. The customer could not replace the core applications because of the cost and time required to re-develop them. With a reputation for innovation aurionPro SENA were approached to provide a solution to this problem using Oracle ESSO. Oracle ESSO has a password expiry feature that can be triggered periodically based on the timestamp of the users’ last password creation therefore our strategy here was to leverage this feature to provide the password change experience. The trigger can launch an application change password event however in this scenario there was no native change password feature that could be launched therefore a “dummy” change password screen was created that could imitate the missing change password function and connect to the application database on behalf of the user. Oracle ESSO was configured to trigger a change password event every 60 days. After this period if the user launched the application Oracle ESSO would detect the logon screen and invoke the password expiry feature. Oracle ESSO would trigger the “dummy screen,” detect it automatically as the application change password screen and insert a complex password on behalf of the user. After the password event had completed the user was logged on to the application with their new password. All this was provided at a fraction of the cost of re-developing the core applications. Case #3 Recent popular initiatives such as the BYOD and working from home schemes bring with them many challenges in administering “unmanaged machines” and sometimes “unmanageable users.” In a recent case, a client had a dispersed community of casual contractors who worked for the business using their own laptops to access applications. To improve security the around password management the security goal was to provision the passwords directly to these contractors. In a previous article we saw how Oracle ESSO has the capability to provision passwords through Provisioning Gateway but the challenge in this scenario was how to get the Oracle ESSO agent to the casual contractor on an unmanaged machine. The answer was to use another tool in the suite, Oracle ESSO Anywhere. This component can compile the normal Oracle ESSO functionality into a deployment package that can be made available from a website in a similar way to a streamed application. The ESSO Anywhere agent does not actually install into the registry or program files but runs in a folder within the user’s profile therefore no local administrator rights are required for installation. The ESSO Anywhere package can also be configured to stay persistent or disable itself at the end of the user’s session. In this case the user just needed to be told where the website package was located and download the package. Once the download was complete the agent started automatically and the user was provided with single sign-on to their applications without ever knowing the application passwords. Finally, as we have seen in these series Oracle ESSO not only has great utilities in its own tool box but also has direct integration with Oracle Privileged Account Manager, Oracle Identity Manager and Oracle Access Manager. Integrated together with these tools provides a complete and complementary platform to address even the most complex identity and access management requirements. So what next for Oracle ESSO? “Agentless ESSO available in the cloud” – but that will be a subject for a future Oracle ESSO series!                                                                                                                               

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  • Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Integration With Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center 11g

    - by Scott Elvington
    In a blog entry earlier this year, we announced the availability of the Ops Center 11g plug-in for Enterprise Manager 12c. In this article I will walk you through the process of deploying the plug-in on your existing Enterprise Manager agents and show you some of the capabilities the plug-in provides. We'll also look at the integration from the Ops Center perspective. I will show you how to set up the connection to Enterprise Manager and give an overview of the information that is available. Installing and Configuring the Ops Center Plug-in The plug-in is available for download from the Self Update page (Setup ? Extensibility ? Self Update). The plug-in name is “Ops Center Infrastructure stack”. Once you have downloaded the plug-in you can navigate to the Plug-In management page (Setup ? Extensibility ? Plug-ins) to begin deployment. The plug-in must first be deployed on the Management Server. You will need to provide the repository password of the SYS user in order to deploy the plug-in to the Management Server. There are a few pre-requisites that need to be completed on the Ops Center side before the plug-in can be deployed and configured on the desired Enterprise Manager agents. Any servers, whether physical or virtual, for which you wish to see metrics and alerts need to be managed by Ops Center. This means that the Operating System needs to have an Ops Center management agent installed as a minimum. The plug-in can provide even more value when Ops Center is also managing the other “layers of the stack”, for example the service processor, the blade chassis or the XSCF of an M-Series server. The more information that Ops Center has about the stack, the more information that will be visible within Enterprise Manager via the plug-in. In order to access the information within Ops Center, the plug-in requires a user to connect as. This user does not require any particular Ops Center permissions or roles, it simply needs to exist. You can create a specific “EMPlugin” user within Ops Center or use an existing user. Oracle recommends creating a specific, non-privileged user account within Ops Center for this purpose. From the Ops Center Administration section, select Enterprise Controller, click the Users tab and finally click the Add User icon to create the desired user account. For the purpose of this article I have discovered and managed the OS and service processor of the server where my Enterprise Manager 12c installation is hosted. With the plug-in deployed to the Management Server and the setup done within Ops Center, we're now ready to deploy the plug-in to the agents and configure the targets to communicate with the Ops Center Enterprise Controller. From the Setup menu select Add Targets then Add Targets Manually. Select the bottom radio button “Add Targets Manually by Specifying Target Monitoring Properties”, select Infrastructure Stack from the Target Type dropdown and finally, select the Monitoring Agent where you wish to deploy the plug-in. Click the Add Manually.... button and fill in the details for the new target using the appropriate hostname for your Enterprise Controller and the user and password details for the plug-in access user. After the target has been added to the agent you will need to allow a few minutes for the initial data collection to complete. Once completed you can see the new target in the All Targets list. All metric collections are enabled by default except one. To enable Infrastructure Stack Alarms collection, navigate to the newly added target and then to Target ? Monitoring ? Metric and Collection Settings. There you can click the “Disabled” link under Collection Schedule to enable collection and set your desired collection frequency. By default, a Warning level alert in Ops Center will equate to a Warning level event in Enterprise Manager and a Critical alert will equate to a Critical event. This mapping can be altered in the Metric and Collection Settings also. The default incident rules in Enterprise Manager only create incidents from Critical events so keep this in mind in case you want to see incidents generated for Warning or Info level alerts from Ops Center. Also, because Enterprise Manager already monitors the OS through it's Host target type, the plug-in does not pull OS alerts from Ops Center so as to prevent duplication. In addition to alert propagation, the plug-in also provides data for several reports detailing the topology and configuration of the stack as well as any hardware sensor data that is available. These are available from the Information Publisher Reports. Navigate there from the Enterprise ? Reports menu or directly from the Infrastructure Stack target of interest. As an example, here is a sample of the Hardware Sensors report showing some of the available sensor data. The report can also be exported to a CSV file format if desired. Connecting Ops Center to Enterprise Manager Repository For an Enterprise Manager user, the plug-in provides a deeper visibility to the state of the infrastructure underlying the databases and middleware. On the Ops Center side, there is also a greater visibility to the targets running on the infrastructure. To set up the Ops Center data collection, just navigate to the Administration section and select the Grid Control link. Select the Configure/Connect action from the right-hand menu and complete the wizard forms to enable the connection to the Enterprise Manager repository and UI. Be sure to use the sysman account when configuring the database connection. Once the job completes and the initial data synchronization is done you will see new Target tabs on your OS assets. The new tab lists all the Enterprise Manager targets and any alerts, availability and performance data specific to the selected target. It is also possible to use the GoTo icon to launch the Enterprise Manager BUI in context of the specific target or alert to drill into more detail. Hopefully this brief overview of the integration between Enterprise Manager and Ops Center has provided a jumpstart to getting a more complete view of the full stack of your enterprise systems.

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  • Amazon Web Services (AWS) Plug-in for Oracle Enterprise Manager

    - by Anand Akela
    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 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-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Contributed by Sunil Kunisetty and Daniel Chan Introduction and ArchitectureAs more and more enterprises deploy some of their non-critical workload on Amazon Web Services (AWS), it’s becoming critical to monitor those public AWS resources along side with their on-premise resources. Oracle recently announced Oracle Enterprise Manager Plug-in for Amazon Web Services (AWS) allows you to achieve that goal. The on-premise Oracle Enterprise Manager (EM12c) acts as a single tool to get a comprehensive view of your public AWS resources as well as your private cloud resources.  By deploying the plug-in within your Cloud Control environment, you gain the following management features: Monitor EBS, EC2 and RDS instances on Amazon Web Services Gather performance metrics and configuration details for AWS instances Raise alerts and violations based on thresholds set on monitoring Generate reports based on the gathered data Users of this Plug-in can leverage the rich Enterprise Manager features such as system promotion, incident generation based on thresholds, integration with 3rd party ticketing applications etc. AWS Monitoring via this Plug-in is enabled via Amazon CloudWatch API and the users of this Plug-in are responsible for supplying credentials for accessing AWS and the CloudWatch API. This Plug-in can only be deployed on an EM12C R2 platform and agent version should be at minimum 12c R2.Here is a pictorial view of the overall architecture: Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) Here are a few key features: Rich and exhaustive list of metrics. Metrics can be gathered from an Agent running outside AWS. Critical configuration information. Custom Home Pages with charts and AWS configuration information. Generate incidents based on thresholds set on monitoring data. Discovery and Monitoring AWS instances can be added to EM12C either via the EM12c User Interface (UI) or the EM12c Command Line Interface ( EMCLI)  by providing the AWS credentials (Secret Key and Access Key Id) as well as resource specific properties as target properties. Here is a quick mapping of target types and properties for each AWS resources AWS Resource Type Target Type Resource specific properties EBS Resource Amazon EBS Service CloudWatch base URI, EC2 Base URI, Period, Volume Id, Proxy Server and Port EC2 Resource Amazon EC2 Service CloudWatch base URI, EC2 Base URI, Period, Instance  Id, Proxy Server and Port RDS Resource Amazon RDS Service CloudWatch base URI, RDS Base URI, Period, Instance  Id, Proxy Server and Port Proxy server and port are optional and are only needed if the agent is within the firewall. Here is an emcli example to add an EC2 target. Please read the Installation and Readme guide for more details and step-by-step instructions to deploy  the plugin and adding the AWS the instances. ./emcli add_target \       -name="<target name>" \       -type="AmazonEC2Service" \       -host="<host>" \       -properties="ProxyHost=<proxy server>;ProxyPort=<proxy port>;EC2_BaseURI=http://ec2.<region>.amazonaws.com;BaseURI=http://monitoring.<region>.amazonaws.com;InstanceId=<EC2 instance Id>;Period=<data point periond>"  \     -subseparator=properties="=" ./emcli set_monitoring_credential \                 -set_name="AWSKeyCredentialSet"  \                 -target_name="<target name>"  \                 -target_type="AmazonEC2Service" \                 -cred_type="AWSKeyCredential"  \                 -attributes="AccessKeyId:<access key id>;SecretKey:<secret key>" Emcli utility is found under the ORACLE_HOME of EM12C install. Once the instance is discovered, the target will show up under the ‘All Targets’ list under “Amazon EC2 Service’. Once the instances are added, one can navigate to the custom homepages for these resource types. The custom home pages not only include critical metrics, but also vital configuration parameters and incidents raised for these instances.  By mapping the configuration parameters as instance properties, we can slice-and-dice and group various AWS instance by leveraging the EM12C Config search feature. The following configuration properties and metrics are collected for these Resource types. Resource Type Configuration Properties Metrics EBS Resource Volume Id, Volume Type, Device Name, Size, Availability Zone Response: Status Utilization: QueueLength, IdleTime Volume Statistics: ReadBrandwith, WriteBandwidth, ReadThroughput, WriteThroughput Operation Statistics: ReadSize, WriteSize, ReadLatency, WriteLatency EC2 Resource Instance ID, Owner Id, Root Device type, Instance Type. Availability Zone Response: Status CPU Utilization: CPU Utilization Disk I/O:  DiskReadBytes, DiskWriteBytes, DiskReadOps, DiskWriteOps, DiskReadRate, DiskWriteRate, DiskIOThroughput, DiskReadOpsRate, DiskWriteOpsRate, DiskOperationThroughput Network I/O : NetworkIn, NetworkOut, NetworkInRate, NetworkOutRate, NetworkThroughput RDS Resource Instance ID, Database Engine Name, Database Engine Version, Database Instance Class, Allocated Storage Size, Availability Zone Response: Status Disk I/O:  ReadIOPS, WriteIOPS, ReadLatency, WriteLatency, ReadThroughput, WriteThroughput DB Utilization:  BinLogDiskUsage, CPUUtilization, DatabaseConnections, FreeableMemory, ReplicaLag, SwapUsage Custom Home Pages As mentioned above, we have custom home pages for these target types that include basic configuration information,  last 24 hours availability, top metrics and the incidents generated. Here are few snapshots. EBS Instance Home Page: EC2 Instance Home Page: RDS Instance Home Page: Further Reading: 1)      AWS Plugin download 2)      Installation and  Read Me. 3)      Screenwatch on SlideShare 4)      Extensibility Programmer's Guide 5)      Amazon Web Services

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  • Database continuous integration step by step

    - by David Atkinson
    This post will describe how to set up basic database continuous integration using TeamCity to initiate the build process, SQL Source Control to put your database under source control, and the SQL Compare command line to keep a test database up to date. In my example I will be using Subversion as my source control repository. If you wish to follow my steps verbatim, please make sure you have TortoiseSVN, SQL Compare and SQL Source Control installed. Downloading and Installing TeamCity TeamCity (http://www.jetbrains.com/teamcity/index.html) is free for up to three agents, so it a great no-risk tool you can use to experiment with. 1. Download the latest version from the JetBrains website. For some reason the TeamCity executable didn't download properly for me, stalling frustratingly at 99%, so I tried again with the zip file download option (see screenshot below), which worked flawlessly. 2. Run the installer using the defaults. This results in a set-up with the server component and agent installed on the same machine, which is ideal for getting started with ease. 3. Check that the build agent is pointing to the server correctly. This has caught me out a few times before. This setting is in C:\TeamCity\buildAgent\conf\buildAgent.properties and for my installation is serverUrl=http\://localhost\:80 . If you need to change this value, if for example you've had to install the Server console to a different port number, the TeamCity Build Agent Service will need to be restarted for the change to take effect. 4. Open the TeamCity admin console on http://localhost , and specify your own designated username and password at first startup. Putting your database in source control using SQL Source Control 5. Assuming you've got SQL Source Control installed, select a development database in the SQL Server Management Studio Object Explorer and select Link Database to Source Control. 6. For the Link step you can either create your own empty folder in source control, or you can select Just Evaluating, which just creates a local subversion repository for you behind the scenes. 7. Once linked, note that your database turns green in the Object Explorer. Visit the Commit tab to do an initial commit of your database objects by typing in an appropriate comment and clicking Commit. 8. There is a hidden feature in SQL Source Control that opens up TortoiseSVN (provided it is installed) pointing to the linked repository. Keep Shift depressed and right click on the text to the right of 'Linked to', in the example below, it's the red Evaluation Repository text. Select Open TortoiseSVN Repo Browser. This screen should give you an idea of how SQL Source Control manages the object files behind the scenes. Back in the TeamCity admin console, we'll now create a new project to monitor the above repository location and to trigger a 'build' each time the repository changes. 9. In TeamCity Adminstration, select Create Project and give it a name, such as "My first database CI", and click Create. 10. Click on Create Build Configuration, and name it something like "Integration build". 11. Click VCS settings and then Create And Attach new VCS root. This is where you will tell TeamCity about the repository it should monitor. 12. In my case since I'm using the Just Evaluating option in SQL Source Control, I should select Subversion. 13. In the URL field paste your repository location. In my case this is file:///C:/Users/David.Atkinson/AppData/Local/Red Gate/SQL Source Control 3/EvaluationRepositories/WidgetDevelopment/WidgetDevelopment 14. Click on Test Connection to ensure that you can communicate with your source control system. Click Save. 15. Click Add Build Step, and Runner Type: Command Line. Should you be familiar with the other runner types, such as NAnt, MSBuild or Powershell, you can opt for these, but for the same of keeping it simple I will pick the simplest option. 16. If you have installed SQL Compare in the default location, set the Command Executable field to: C:\Program Files (x86)\Red Gate\SQL Compare 10\sqlcompare.exe 17. Flip back to SSMS briefly and add a new database to your server. This will be the database used for continuous integration testing. 18. Set the command parameters according to your server and the name of the database you have created. In my case I created database RedGateCI on server .\sql2008r2 /scripts1:. /server2:.\sql2008r2 /db2:RedGateCI /sync /verbose Note that if you pick a server instance that isn't on your local machine, you'll need the TCP/IP protocol enabled in SQL Server Configuration Manager otherwise the SQL Compare command line will not be able to connect. 19. Save and select Build Triggering / Add New Trigger / VCS Trigger. This is where you tell TeamCity when it should initiate a build. Click Save. 20. Now return to SQL Server Management Studio and make a schema change (eg add a new object) to your linked development database. A blue indicator will appear in the Object Explorer. Commit this change, typing in an appropriate check-in comment. All being good, within 60 seconds (a TeamCity default that can be changed) a build will be triggered. 21. Click on Projects in TeamCity to get back to the overview screen: The build log will show you the console output, which is useful for troubleshooting any issues: That's it! You now have continuous integration on your database. In future posts I'll cover how you can generate and test the database creation script, the database upgrade script, and run database unit tests as part of your continuous integration script. If you have any trouble getting this up and running please let me know, either by commenting on this post, or email me directly using the email address below. Technorati Tags: SQL Server

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  • Ghost team foundation build controllers

    - by Martin Hinshelwood
    Quite often after an upgrade there are things left over. Most of the time they are easy to delete, but sometimes it takes a little effort. Even rarer are those times when something just will not go away no matter how much you try. We have had a ghost team build controller hanging around for a while now, and it had defeated my best efforts to get rid of it. The build controller was from our old TFS server from before our TFS 2010 beta 2 upgrade and was really starting to annoy me. Every time I try to delete it I get the message: Controller cannot be deleted because there are build in progress -Manage Build Controller dialog   Figure: Deleting a ghost controller does not always work. I ended up checking all of our 172 Team Projects for the build that was queued, but did not find anything. Jim Lamb pointed me to the “tbl_BuildQueue” table in the team Project Collection database and sure enough there was the nasty little beggar. Figure: The ghost build was easily spotted Adam Cogan asked me: “Why did you suspect this one?” Well, there are a number of things that led me to suspect it: QueueId is very low: Look at the other items, they are in the thousands not single digits ControllerId: I know there is only one legitimate controller, and I am assuming that 6 relates to “zzUnicorn” DefinitionId: This is a very low number and I looked it up in “tbl_BuildDefinition” and it did not exist QueueTime: As we did not upgrade to TFS 2010 until late 2009 a date of 2008 for a queued build is very suspect Status: A status of 2 means that it is still queued This build must have been queued long ago when we were using TFS 2008, probably a beta, and it never got cleaned up. As controllers are new in TFS 2010 it would have created the “zzUnicorn” controller to handle any build servers that already exist. I had previously deleted the Agent, but leaving the controller just looks untidy. Now that the ghost build has been identified there are two options: Delete the row I would not recommend ever deleting anything from the database to achieve something in TFS. It is really not supported. Set the Status to cancelled (Recommended) This is the best option as TFS will then clean it up itself So I set the Status of this build to 2 (cancelled) and sure enough it disappeared after a couple of minutes and I was then able to then delete the “zzUnicorn” controller. Figure: Almost completely clean Now all I have to do is get rid of that untidy “zzBunyip” agent, but that will require rewriting one of our build scripts which will have to wait for now.   Technorati Tags: ALM,TFBS,TFS 2010

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  • Tools to simulate mobile devices on a desktop to test websites

    - by Kris
    Are there any good tools that can be run on desktop machines (Windows or Linux) that can simulate a mobile device, preferably with some options as to screen size and mobile browser (user agent if not full render engine). I know it is never going to be perfect (especially without an actual touchscreen), but having a tool on our development machines to do what testing we can that way would be very useful.

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  • Scheduling Jobs in SQL Server Express - Part 2

    In my previous article Scheduling Jobs in SQL Server Express we saw how to make simple job scheduling in SQL Server 2005 Express work. We limited the scheduling to one time or daily repeats. Sometimes this isn't enough. In this article we'll take a look at how to make a scheduling solution based on Service Broker worthy of the SQL Server Agent itself.

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  • Six Unusual Blogs I Like

    - by Bill Graziano
    I subscribe to and read over 100 SQL Server blogs every day.  I link to posts that I think are interesting.  I also read a fair number of non-SQL Server blogs.  Here are a few that I think are interesting. danah boyd. She is a researcher with Microsoft and writes about privacy, social media and teenagers.  I discovered her blog while looking for strategies to keep my personal and professional life separate.  (I haven’t found a good solution to that yet.)  Her stories of how teenagers use Facebook and other social media tools are fascinating. Clayton’s Web Snacks.  Steve Clayton works at Microsoft and has a variety of blogs out there.  This one focuses on … hmmm.  His latest posts are on graffiti, infographics, paper tweets, cartoons and slow motion videos.  It’s mostly visual and you never really know what you’ll get.  It’s always interesting though and I like what he posts.  It’s good creative stuff. Seth Godin.  Seth writes about Marketing.  I read him for motivation to get off my butt and get things done.  He’s a great motivator who encourages you to think big.  And do something! Ask the Pilot.  Patrick Smith is a commercial airline pilot writing about the airline industry.  He’s a great debunker of myths (no they don’t reduce oxygen in the cabin to keep you docile).  My favorite topics include the TSA, flying myths, airport reviews and flight delays. My old favorite flight blog used to be enplaned.  No one knew who wrote it.  It focused on the economics of the airline industry.  It was fascinating stuff.  One day it was gone.  The entire blog was deleted.  Someone tracked down some partial archives and put them online. The Agent’s Journal.  Jack Bechta is an NFL agent.  He writes about the business side of the NFL, the draft and free agency.  Lately he’s been writing about the potential lockout.  He has a distinct lack of hype which I find very refreshing.  xkcd.  I call this the comic for smart people.  A little math, some IT and internet privacy thrown in all make an unusual comic. Funny and intelligent.

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  • SQL Server PowerShell Provider follows the Version of PowerShell on the Host and other errata

    - by BuckWoody
    There may be some misunderstanding on how the PowerShell Provider for SQL Server works. I’ve written an article or two explaining that you can use PowerShell with SQL Server, without having the SQL Server 2008 (or higher) provider around. After all, PowerShell just uses .NET, and SQL Server “Server Management Objects” or SMO listen to that interface as well. In SQL Server 2008 and higher we created a “MiniShell” for PowerShell that gives you the ability to treat a SQL Server Instance as a drive (called a “Provider” or path or drive) and a few commands (called command-lets). Using these two simple constructs you can move around SQL Server quickly and work with the objects it holds. I read the other day where someone stated that we had “re-compiled” PowerShell, so that you would have version 1.0 from SQL Server and 2.0 on your new server. Not so! Drop to a SQLPS prompt and a PowerShell prompt and type this in each: $PSVersionTable They should return the same value. You can think of a MiniShell as simply a compiled “profile” that gives you those providers and command-lets automatically – that’s all. In fact, you can load the SMO libraries yourself without the SQL Server 2008 Provider anywhere in sight. I do this all the time, since the MiniShell also has other restrictions. Also remember that if you run a PowerShell script as a SQL Agent Job step type (in 2008 and higher) that you’re running under the context of the account that starts Agent – I think most folks know this, but it’s good to keep in mind. There’s a re-written section of Books Online that goes over working with this very nicely – also covers the question “How to I connect to another server using the SQL Server PowerShell Provider” (hint: It’s just CD) and “How do I load all the SMO stuff if I don’t want to use the Provider” and more. Be sure and check out the note at the bottom that explains the firewall exceptions you’ll need to enable to CD to that remote server. Here’s that link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc281947.aspx Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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  • Missing Indexes DMV Report, 3 billion Impact!

    - by Tara Kizer
    We’ve been having some major performance issues with one of the applications that I support.  The database is on SQL Server 2005 and is about 150GB in size.  We’ve identified a couple of issues already on the database side.  The first issue is that some query (or maybe several queries) is getting a bad execution plan at some point in time during the day.  When it occurs, database performance comes to a grinding halt.  We know it’s a bad execution plan as running DBCC FREEPROCCACHE immediately resolves the problem system-wide.  As we have not yet identified the problematic query, we’ve put a temporary solution in place that frees the procedure cache on an hourly basis via a SQL Agent job.  This is not ideal, but it is getting us through the day without a major problem.  We are actively working on identifying the problematic query and hope to disable the SQL Agent job soon. Earlier this week, we had a major slowdown for one of the processes of this application.  I was unable to find any database performance issues, but I continued to investigate it.  One of things that I typically do when investigating database performance issues is run the “Missing Indexes DMV Report” (that’s what I call it at least).  When analyzing the output of that report, I immediately dismiss anything under 1 million “Impact” as I want to target the “low-hanging fruit” initially.  When I ran the report earlier this week, I was shocked to find a suggested index with an impact of over 3 billion! Do I win a prize for the highest impact?  Has anyone seen a value higher than mine?  My exact value was 3154284120.67765. The performance issue from earlier this week ended up being an application problem, but it also brought to light a much needed index.  I had previously seen this index come up in that report but always with a much lower impact.  I had never considered it as the index’s selectivity is very low.  It’s a composite index with three columns.  The first column is not selective, the first two columns are not selective, and the three columns together are not selective.  In fact, no matter how I order it, the index will not be selective at all.  I briefly discussed this with Kimberly Tripp, and she said that this was okay for covering indexes.  Selectivity is irrelevant for a covering index.  She indicated that she’s even created indexes with gender as the first column in the index.  I’ve got lots to learn still!

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