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• Introducing Oracle Retail Mobile Point-of-Service

  - by user801960

  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:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; 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;} Oracle recently announced the introduction of Oracle Retail Mobile Point-of-Service, a mobile extension to the Oracle Retail Point-of-Service (POS) used by many retailers internationally. Oracle Retail Mobile POS offers wide ranging cost and efficiency benefits by allowing staff resource to be used more effectively whilst also reducing spend associated with fixed POS solutions. For retailers utilising Oracle Retail Stores Solutions, additional benefits can be realised. Oracle Retail Mobile POS works with these solutions to allow store personnel to check in-store inventory, access product information and specifications, and perform tasks such as the printing or emailing of receipts and the activation of gift cards.  As Oracle Retail Mobile POS is an extension of Oracle Retail Point-of-Service, retailers can benefit from seamless integration with existing systems, simple upgrade procedures and seamless delivery across the business. However, the solution’s scalable and flexible architecture also supports multiple mobile operators and systems, so retailers are not locked into particular vendors. As well as being popular with retailers, Mobile POS has also proved to be well liked by consumers as it facilitates improved customer service levels. Retail staff are able to spend more time with consumers on the shop floor, access requested inventory information, and perform tasks that would traditionally have needed to be completed at a fixed cash register. Additional information can be accessed on Oracle Retail Point-of-Service or read the press announcement Oracle Introduces Mobile Point-of-Service for Retailers. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE

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• Data Structures usage and motivational aspects

  - by Aubergine

  For long student life I was always wondering why there are so many of them yet there seems to be lack of usage at all in many of them. The opinion didn't really change when I got a job. We have brilliant books on what they are and their complexities, but I never encounter resources which would actually give a good hint of practical usage. I perfectly understand that I have to look at problem , analyse required operations, look for data structure that does them efficiently. However in practice I never do that, not because of human laziness syndrome, but because when it comes to work I acknowledge time priority over self-development. Over time I thought that when I would be better developer I will automatically use more of them - that didn't happen at all or maybe I just didn't. Then I found that the colleagues usually in the same plate as me - knowing more or less some three of data structures and being totally happy about it and refusing to discuss this matter further with me, coming back to conversations about 'cool new languages' 'libraries that do jobs for you' and the joy to work under scrumban etc. I am stuck with ArrayLists, Arrays and SortedMap , which no matter what I do always suffice or either I tweak them to be capable of fulfilling my task. Yes, it might be inefficient but do we really have to care if Intel increases performance over years no matter if we improve our skills? Does new Xeon or IBM machines really care what we use? What if I like build things, but I am not particularly excited whether it is n log(n) or just n? Over twenty years the processing power increased enormously, which gives us freedom of not being critical about which one to use? On top of that new more optimized languages appear which support multiple cores more efficiently. To be more specific: I would like to find motivational material on complex real areas/cases of possible effective usages of data structures. I would be really grateful if you would provide relevant resources. There is similar question ,but in the end the links again mostly describe or do dumb example(vehicles, students or holy grail quest - yes, very relevant) them and people keep referring to the "scenario decides the data structure to use". I want to know these complex scenarios to be able to identify similarities to my scenario and then use them. The complex scenarios where it really matters and not necessarily of quantitive nature. It seems that data structures only concern is efficiency and nothing else? There seems to be no particular convenience for developer in use one over another. (only when I found scientific resources on why exactly simple carbohydrates are evil I stopped eating sugar and candies completely replacing it with less harmful fruits - I hope you can see the analogy)

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• SQLAuthority News – Download Whitepaper – SQL Server Analysis Services to Hive

  - by pinaldave

  The SQL Server Analysis Service is a very interesting subject and I always have enjoyed learning about it. You can read my earlier article over here. Big Data is my new interest and I have been exploring it recently. During this weekend this blog post caught my attention and I enjoyed reading it. Big Data is the next big thing. The growth is predicted to be 60% per year till 2016. There is no single solution to the growing need of the big data available in the market right now as well there is no one solution in the business intelligence eco-system available as well. However, the need of the solution is ever increasing. I am personally Klout user. You can see my Klout profile over. I do understand what Klout is trying to achieve – a single place to measure the influence of the person. However, it works a bit mysteriously. There are plenty of social media available currently in the internet world. The biggest problem all the social media faces is that everybody opens an account but hardly people logs back in. To overcome this issue and have returned visitors Klout has come up with the system where visitors can give 5/10 K+ to other users in a particular area. Looking at all the activities Klout is doing it is indeed big consumer of the Big Data as well it is early adopter of the big data and Hadoop based system.  Klout has to 1 trillion rows of data to be analyzed as well have nearly thousand terabyte warehouse. Hive the language used for Big Data supports Ad-Hoc Queries using HiveQL there are always better solutions. The alternate solution would be using SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) along with HiveQL. As there is no direct method to achieve there are few common workarounds already in place. A new ODBC driver from Klout has broken through the limitation and SQL Server Relation Engine can be used as an intermediate stage before SSAS. In this white paper the same solutions have been discussed in the depth. The white paper discusses following important concepts. The Klout Big Data solution Big Data Analytics based on Analysis Services Hadoop/Hive and Analysis Services integration Limitations of direct connectivity Pass-through queries to linked servers Best practices and lessons learned This white paper discussed all the important concepts which have enabled Klout to go go to the next level with all the offerings as well helped efficiency by offering a few out of the box solutions. I personally enjoy reading this white paper and I encourage all of you to do so. SQL Server Analysis Services to Hive Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL White Papers, T SQL, Technology

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• The Social Business Thought Leaders

  - by kellsey.ruppel

  Enterprise Gamification, Big Data, Social Support, Total Customer Experience, Pull Organizations, Social Business. Are these purely the latest buzzwords to enter the market or significant trends that companies should keep an eye on? Oracle recently sponsored and presented at the 5th Social Business Forum, one of the largest European events on the use of social media as a business tool and accelerator. Through the participation of dozens of practitioners, experts and customer success stories, the conference demonstrated how a perfect storm of technology, management and cultural change is pushing peer-to-peer conversations deep into business processes. It is clear that Social Business is serving as a new propellant of agility, efficiency and reactivity. According to Deloitte and MIT what we have learned to call Social Business is considered important in the next 3 years by 86% of managers (see Social Business: What Are Companies Really Doing?, MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte). McKinsey further estimates the value that can be unlocked in terms of knowledge-worker productivity, consumer insights, product co-creation, improved sales, marketing and customer service up to $1300B (See The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies, McKinsey Global Institute). This impacts any industry, with the strongest effects seen in Media & Entertainment, Technology, Telcos and Education. For those not able to attend the Social Business Forum and also for the many friends that joined us in Milan, we decided to keep the conversation going by extracting some golden nuggets from the perspective of five of the most well-known thought-leaders in this space. Starting this week you will have the chance to view: John Hagel (Author of the Power of Pull and Co-Chairman Center for the Edge at Deloitte & Touche) Christian Finn (Senior Director, WebCenter Evangelist at Oracle) Steve Denning (Author of The Radical Management and Independent Management Consulting Professional) Esteban Kolsky (Principal & Founder at ThinkJar) Ray Wang (Principal Analyst & CEO at Constellation Research) Stay tuned to hear: How pull organizations are addressing some of the deepest challenges impacting the market. How to integrate social into existing infrastructure and processes. How to apply radical management to become more agile and profitable. About the importance of gamification as an engagement lever. The first interview with John Hagel will be published tomorrow. Don't miss it and the entire series!

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• links for 2010-12-22

  - by Bob Rhubart

  @hajonormann: BPM: Top Seven Architectural Topics in 2010 Oracle ACE Director Hajo Normann offers details on how to design a BPM/SOA solution including: modeling human interaction, improving BPM models, orchestrating composed services, central task management, new approaches for business-IT alignment, solutions for non-deterministic processes, and choreography. (tags: oracle otn soasymposium infoq soa bpm) InfoQ: Simplicity, The Way of the Unusual Architect Dan North talks about the tendency developers-becoming-architects have to create bigger and more complex systems. Without trying to be simplistic, North argues for simplicity, offering strategies to extract the simple essence from complex situations. (tags: ping.fm) Fun with Sun Ray, 3D, Oracle VM x86 and SRIOV (Wim Coekaerts Blog) "One of the things I like about my job is that I get to play around with stuff and make use of the technologies we work on in my teams. Sort of my own little playground." - Wim Coekaerts (tags: oracle otn virtualization oraclevm) Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.0.0 Released! (Oracle's Virtualization Blog) And you were worried about what to get that special someone for Christmas... (tags: oracle otn virtualization virtualbox) Virtual Developer Day: Oracle WebLogic Server & Java EE (#OTNVDD) (Oracle Technology Network Blog (aka TechBlog)) "Virtual Developer Day is back with a vengeance! On Feb. 1, login to learn how Oracle WebLogic Server enables a whole new level of productivity for enterprise developers." Registration is open. (tags: oracle otn events webinar java) New Coherence 3.6 Oracle University Course (Cristóbal Soto's Blog) Cristóbal Soto shares information on the "Oracle Coherence 3.6: Share and Manage Data in Clusters" course now available through Oracle University. (tags: oracle otn grid coherence) The Aquarium: Oracle WebLogic Server & Java EE developer day "Oracle WebLogic is well on its way to contribute to the general Java EE 6 momentum and the OTN Blog has just announced a Virtual Developer Day for Oracle WebLogic." (tags: oracle otn weblogic java) Enterprise 2.0 Use Cases for Semantic Web (Reiser 2.0) "How can an enterprise improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their Knowledge and Community model leveraging semantic technologies and social networking dynamics?" - Peter Reiser (tags: oracle otn enterprise2.0 semanticweb) John Gøtze: European Interoperability Framework 2.0 "This week, the European Commission announced an updated interoperability policy in the EU. The Commission has committed itself to adopt a Communication that introduces the European Interoperability Strategy (EIS) and an update to the European Interoperability Framework (EIF)..." - John Gøtze (tags: entarch Interoperability) Andy Mulholland: Maybe Web 3.0 is quite understandable – and a natural result "The idea of Web 1.0 = content, Web 2.0 = people and Web 3.0 = services has a nice symmetrical feel to it, in fact it feels basically right as such a definition would include the two other major definitions as well. So if we put these things all together what picture do we see?" - Andy Mulholland (tags: web2.0 web3.0) Ken Downs: A Working Definition of Business Logic, with Implications for CRUD Code "The Wikipedia entry on 'Business Logic' has a wonderfully honest opening sentence stating that 'Business logic, or domain logic, is a non-technical term...'"  (tags: businesslogic crud)

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• How Big Data and Social Won the Election

  - by Mike Stiles

  The story of big data’s influence on the outcome of the US Presidential election is worth a good look, because a) it’s a harbinger of things to come, and b) it’s an example of similar successes available to any enterprise seriously resourcing integrated big data, modeling, and data-driven execution on all assets, including social. Obama campaign manager Jim Messina fielded a data and analytics brain trust 5 times larger than 2008. At that time, there were numerous databases from various sources, few of them talking to each other. This time, the mission was to be metrics-centered and measure everything measurable, and in context with all the other data. Big data showed them exactly what they needed to know and told them what to do about it. It showed them women 40-49 on the west coast would donate big money if they got to eat with George Clooney. Women on the east coast would pony up to hang out with Sarah Jessica Parker. Extensive daily modeling showed them what kinds of email appeals, from who, and to whom, would prove most successful in raising cash, recruiting volunteers, and getting out the vote. Swing state voters were profiled and approached with more customized targeting that at any time in history. Ads were purchased on specific shows watched by the targets, increasing efficiency 14% over traditional media buys. For all the criticism of the candidate’s focus on appearing on comedy and entertainment shows, and local radio morning shows, that’s where the data sent them to reach the voters most likely to turn out for them. And then there was social. Again, more than in any other election, Facebook was used for virtual, highly efficient door-to-door canvasing. Facebook fans got pictures of friends in swing states and were asked to encourage them to act. Using that approach, 1 in 5 peer-to-peer appeals led to the desired action. Assumptions, gut, intuition, campaign experience, all took a backseat to strategy shifts solidly backed up by data. Zeroing in on demographics likely to back the President and tracking their mood daily literally changed the voter landscape. The Romney team watched Obama voters appear seemingly out of thin air. One Obama campaign aide said, “We ran the election 66,000 times every night.” Which brings us to your organization. If you’re starting to feel like the battle-cry of “but this is the way we’ve always done it” is starting to put you in an extremely vulnerable position, you’re right. Social has become a key communication tool of the 21st century. Failing to use it, or failing to invest in a deep understanding of who your customers and prospects are so the content you post there will achieve desired actions and results, will leave you waking up one morning wondering, “What happened?”@mikestilesPhoto stock.xchng

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• Which is the most practical way to add functionality to this piece of code?

  - by Adam Arold

  I'm writing an open source library which handles hexagonal grids. It mainly revolves around the HexagonalGrid and the Hexagon class. There is a HexagonalGridBuilder class which builds the grid which contains Hexagon objects. What I'm trying to achieve is to enable the user to add arbitrary data to each Hexagon. The interface looks like this: public interface Hexagon extends Serializable { // ... other methods not important in this context <T> void setSatelliteData(T data); <T> T getSatelliteData(); } So far so good. I'm writing another class however named HexagonalGridCalculator which adds some fancy pieces of computation to the library like calculating the shortest path between two Hexagons or calculating the line of sight around a Hexagon. My problem is that for those I need the user to supply some data for the Hexagon objects like the cost of passing through a Hexagon, or a boolean flag indicating whether the object is transparent/passable or not. My question is how should I implement this? My first idea was to write an interface like this: public interface HexagonData { void setTransparent(boolean isTransparent); void setPassable(boolean isPassable); void setPassageCost(int cost); } and make the user implement it but then it came to my mind that if I add any other functionality later all code will break for those who are using the old interface. So my next idea is to add annotations like @PassageCost, @IsTransparent and @IsPassable which can be added to fields and when I'm doing the computation I can look for the annotations in the satelliteData supplied by the user. This looks flexible enough if I take into account the possibility of later changes but it uses reflection. I have no benchmark of the costs of using annotations so I'm a bit in the dark here. I think that in 90-95% of the cases the efficiency is not important since most users wont't use a grid where this is significant but I can imagine someone trying to create a grid with a size of 5.000.000.000 X 5.000.000.000. So which path should I start walking on? Or are there some better alternatives? Note: These ideas are not implemented yet so I did not pay too much attention to good names.

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• A "First" at Oracle OpenWorld

  - by Kathryn Perry

  A guest post by Adam May, Director, Fusion CRM, Oracle Applications Development There are always firsts at OpenWorld. These firsts keep the conference fresh and are the reason people come back year after year. An important first this year is our Fusion CRM customers who are using the product and deriving real benefit from Fusion CRM. Everyone can learn from and interact with them -- including us!  We love talking to customers, especially those who are using our solutions in unexpected ways because they challenge us! At previous OpenWorlds, we presented our overall Fusion vision and our plans for Fusion CRM. Those presentations helped customers plan their strategies and map out their new release uptakes. Fast forward to March of this year when the first Fusion CRM customer went live. Since then we've watched the pace of go-lives accelerate every single month. Now we're at the threshold of another OpenWorld -- with over 45,000 attendees, 2,500 sessions and LOTS of other activities. To avoid having our customers curl into a ball with sensory overload, we designed a Focus On Document to outline the most important Fusion CRM activities. Here are some of the highlights: Anthony Lye's "Oracle Fusion Customer Relationship Management: Overview/Strategy/Customer Experiences/Roadmap" on Monday at 3:15 p.m. The CRM Pavilion, open in Moscone West from Monday through Wednesday; features our strategic Fusion CRM partners and provides live demonstrations of their capabilities General Session: "Oracle Fusion CRM--Improving Sales Effectiveness, Efficiency, and Ease of Use" on Tuesday at 11:45 a.m.; features Anthony Lye and Deloitte "Meet the Fusion CRM Experts" on Tuesday at 5:00 p.m.; this session gives customers the opportunity to interact one-on-one with Fusion experts divided into eight categories of expertise CRM Social Reception on Tuesday from 6-8 p.m.; there's no better way to spend the early evening than discussing Fusion CRM with Oracle experts and strategic partners over appetizers and drinks Wednesday night is Oracle's Customer Appreciation event; enjoy Pearl Jam, Kings of Leon, etc. beginning at 7:30 p.m. at Treasure Island Be sure to drink plenty of water before sleeping Wednesday night and don't stay out too late because we have lots of great content on Thursday; at the top of the list is "Oracle Fusion Social CRM Strategy and Roadmap: Future of Collaboration and Social Engagement" at 11:15 a.m. We hope you have a fantastic experience at OpenWorld 2012! And here's a little video treat to whet your appetite: http://www.youtube.com/user/FusionAppsAtOracle

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• Started wrong with a project. Should I start over?

  - by solidsnake

  I'm a beginner web developer (one year of experience). A couple of weeks after graduating, I got offered a job to build a web application for a company whose owner is not much of a tech guy. He recruited me to avoid theft of his idea, the high cost of development charged by a service company, and to have someone young he can trust onboard to maintain the project for the long run (I came to these conclusions by myself long after being hired). Cocky as I was back then, with a diploma in computer science, I accepted the offer thinking I can build anything. I was calling the shots. After some research I settled on PHP, and started with plain PHP, no objects, just ugly procedural code. Two months later, everything was getting messy, and it was hard to make any progress. The web application is huge. So I decided to check out an MVC framework that would make my life easier. That's where I stumbled upon the cool kid in the PHP community: Laravel. I loved it, it was easy to learn, and I started coding right away. My code looked cleaner, more organized. It looked very good. But again the web application was huge. The company was pressuring me to deliver the first version, which they wanted to deploy, obviously, and start seeking customers. Because Laravel was fun to work with, it made me remember why I chose this industry in the first place - something I forgot while stuck in the shitty education system. So I started working on small projects at night, reading about methodologies and best practice. I revisited OOP, moved on to object-oriented design and analysis, and read Uncle Bob's book Clean Code. This helped me realize that I really knew nothing. I did not know how to build software THE RIGHT WAY. But at this point it was too late, and now I'm almost done. My code is not clean at all, just spaghetti code, a real pain to fix a bug, all the logic is in the controllers, and there is little object oriented design. I'm having this persistent thought that I have to rewrite the whole project. However, I can't do it... They keep asking when is it going to be all done. I can not imagine this code deployed on a server. Plus I still know nothing about code efficiency and the web application's performance. On one hand, the company is waiting for the product and can not wait anymore. On the other hand I can't see myself going any further with the actual code. I could finish up, wrap it up and deploy, but god only knows what might happen when people start using it. What do you think I should do?

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

  - by Lance Shaw

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

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• NEW: Oracle Certification Exam Preparation Seminars

  - by Harold Green

  Hi Everyone, I am really excited about a new offering that we are announcing this week - Oracle Certification Exam Preparation Seminars. These are something that will make a big difference for many of you in your efforts to become certified and move your career forward. They are also something that have previously only been available (but very popular) to the limited number of customers who have attended our annual conferences in San Francisco (Oracle OpenWorld and JavaOne). These are the first in a series of offerings that we are releasing over the next few months. So for those of you either preparing or considering Oracle certification - keep watching here on the blog, Facebook, Twitter and the Oracle Certification website for additional announcements related to our most popular certification areas. Details of the new Exam Preparation Seminars are found below: NEW: ORACLE CERTIFICATION EXAM PREPARATION SEMINARS Becoming Oracle certified is a great way to build your career, gain additional credibility and improve your earning power. We know that the decision to become certified is not trivial. Our surveys indicate that people consider their time investment a critical factor in their decision to become certified. Your time is important. In order to help candidates maximize the efficiency of their study time we are releasing a new series of video-based seminars called Exam Preparation Seminars. These seminars are patterned after the extremely popular Exam Cram sessions that until now have only been available at our annual customer conferences (Oracle Open World and JavaOne). Beginning today they are now available to anyone, anywhere as a part of this Exam Prep Seminar series. Features: Fast-paced objective by objective review of the exam topics - led by top Oracle University instructors 24/7 access through Oracle University's training on demand platform. Ability to re-watch all or part of the the seminar. All the conveniences of video-based training: start, stop, fast-forward, skip, rewind, review. Tips that will help you better understand what you need to know to pass the exam. The Exam Preparation Seminars are meant to help anyone with a working knowledge of the technology get that extra boost to help them finalize their preparation, and will help anyone who wants a better understanding of the the depth and breadth of the exam topics and objectives. Benefits: Save time by understanding what you should study. Makes you efficient because you will understand the breadth and depth of each of the exam topics. Helps you create a better, more efficient study plan. Improves your confidence in your skills and ability to pass the certification exam. Exam Preparation Seminars are available individually, or in convenient Value Packages (which include the Exam Preparation Seminar, and an exam voucher which includes one free-retake if you need it). Currently we are releasing two seminars - one for DBA SQL and one for DBA Administration I. Additional offerings are in process. Find out more: General WEB: Oracle Certification Exam Preparation Seminars VIDEO: Exam Preparation Seminars Promo (1:27) Oracle Database Administration I (11g, 10g) VIDEO: Instructor Introduction (1:08) VIDEO: Sample Video (2:16) Oracle Database SQL VIDEO: Instructor Introduction (1:08) VIDEO: Sample Video (2:16)

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• Manic Monday - More OpenWorld Solaris Sessions: Developers, Cloud, Customer Insights, Hardware Optimization

  - by Larry Wake

  We're overflowing with Monday sessions; literally more than one person can take in. Learn more about what's new in Oracle Solaris Studio, hear about the latest x86 and SPARC hardware optimizations, get some insights on cloud deployment strategies, and find out from your peers what they're doing with Oracle Solaris. If you're an OpenWorld attendee, go to to Schedule Builder to guarantee your space in any session or lab. See yesterday's blog post and the "Focus on Oracle Solaris" guide for even more sessions. Monday, October 1st: 10:45 AM - Maximizing Your SPARC T4 Oracle Solaris Application Performance(CON6382,  Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate C3) Hear how customers and commercial software partners have reached peak performance on SPARC T4 servers and engineered systems with Oracle Solaris Studio and its latest tools for analyzing, reporting, and improving runtime performance: Autoparallelizing, high-performance compilers Performance Analyzer (used to find performance hotspots) Thread Analyzer (to expose data races and deadlocks) Code Analyzer (used to discover latent memory corruption issues) 10:45 Cloud Formation: Implementing IaaS in Practice with Oracle Solaris(CON8787, Moscone South 302) Decisions, decisions--at the same time, we've got a session that covers why Oracle Solaris is the ideal OS for public or private clouds, IaaS or PaaS, with built-in features for elastic infrastructure, unrivaled security, superfast installation and deployment, nonstop availability, and crystal-clear observability. This session will include a customer study on how Oracle Solaris is used in the cloud today to implement the Oracle stack. 12:15 PM - Customer Insight: Oracle Solaris on Oracle Exadata, Oracle Exalogic, and SPARC SuperCluster(CON8760, Moscone South 270) Hear from customers what benefits they have realized from using the Oracle stack on Oracle Exadata and Oracle’s SPARC SuperCluster and from using Oracle Solaris on those engineered systems, taking advantage of built-in lightweight OS virtualization (Zones), enterprise reliability and scale, and other key features. 1:45 PM - Case Study: Mobile Tornado Uses Oracle Technology for Better RAS and TCO?(CON4281, Moscone West 2005) Mobile Tornado develops and markets instant communication platforms, replacing traditional radio networks with cellular networks. Its critical concern is uptime. Find out how they've used Oracle Solaris, Netra SPARC T4, and Oracle Solaris Cluster, including Oracle Solaris ZFS and Zones, for their Oracle Database deployments to improve reliability and drive down cost. 3:15 PM - Technical Panel: Developing High Performance Applications on Oracle Solaris(CON7196, Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate C2) Engineers from the Oracle Solaris, Oracle Database, and Oracle Tuxedo development teams, and Oracle ISV Engineering discuss how they develop high-performance enterprise applications that take advantage of Oracle's SPARC and x86 servers, with Oracle Solaris Studio and new Oracle Solaris 11 features. Topics will include developer tools, parallel frameworks, best practices, and methodologies, as well as insights and case studies on parallelizing and optimizing application performance on Oracle Solaris. Bring your best questions! 3:15 PM -  x86 Power Management with Oracle Solaris: Current State, Opportunities, and Future(CON6271, Moscone West 2012) Another option for this time slot: learn about how Intel Xeon and Oracle Solaris work together to reduce server power consumption. This presentation addresses some of the recent power management improvements in Oracle Solaris, opportunities to further improve energy efficiency, and some future directions for Oracle Solaris power management.

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• Goodbye, Spreadsheets and Hello Modern ERP

  - by Christine Randle

  By: Steve Cox, Vice President, Oracle Accelerate for Midsize Companies     Signs of the resurging economy continue to sprout, with green shoots rising across different sectors and industries. With the economy on the rebound, businesses are increasing their investment in technology to keep up with growth and evolving demands; as proof, Gartner recently increased its worldwide IT spending forecast for 2012 to $3.6 trillion, anticipating a 3 percent increase from 2011 spending.   One of the segments most reliant on technology to catapult growth is midsize companies – established businesses leveraging every competitive efficiency and advantage to compete with much larger enterprises. We find that to compete against the big guys, they need to create an internal technology infrastructure to fuel that growth. Goodbye, spreadsheets and hello modern ERP.   While many businesses postponed upgrading or replacing financial and HR management systems during the recession, now some have started dusting off RFPs and revisiting technology options. Years ago, midsize organizations used spreadsheet-based systems and processes to manage employees, customers, partners, products and revenue. We’ve found that as companies scale up, they are apt to avoid heavily customizing their existing systems, and instead are more prone to standardize on a modern, enterprise-class ERP system.   Modern ERP platforms enable growing companies to immediately address the most pressing challenges – accounting, talent management, customer retention, et. al. Midsize companies implement these systems and processes to help them earn more, go public or expand globally.   And today, choice is a primary factor when selecting an ERP solution. Businesses have more deployment options now than ever before, depending on their unique structures and needs. Whether the preference is on demand, cloud, hosted or on premise, a modular, scalable deployment is available to meet the need.   With modern ERP systems, business that once struggled to do more with fewer resources have access to the same quality tools as larger competitors. By adopting top tier ERP systems tailored to individual business needs, midsize companies can support business operations while creating an enterprise system that seamlessly scales up to fuel future growth. Meaning that the ERP decision that your company makes today, will have legs to serve your business for years to come.

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• Managing Regulated Content in WebCenter: USDM and Oracle Offer a New Part 11 Compliant Solution for Life Sciences

  - by Michael Snow

  Guest post today provided by Oracle partner, USDM  Regulated Content in WebCenterUSDM and Oracle offer a new Part 11 compliant solution for Life Sciences (White Paper) Life science customers now have the ability to take advantage of all of the benefits of Oracle’s WebCenter Content, a global leader in Enterprise Content Management.   For the past year, USDM has been developing best practice compliance solutions to meet regulated content management requirements for 21 CFR Part 11 in WebCenter Content. USDM has been an expert in ECM for life sciences since 1999 and in 2011, certified that WebCenter was a 21CFR Part 11 compliant content management platform (White Paper).  In addition, USDM has built Validation Accelerators Packs for WebCenter to enable life science organizations to quickly and cost effectively validate this world class solution.With the Part 11 certification, Oracle’s WebCenter now provides regulated life science organizations  the ability to manage REGULATORY content in WebCenter, as well as the ability to take advantage of ALL of the additional functionality of WebCenter, including  a complete, open, and integrated portfolio of portal, web experience management, content management and social networking technology.  Here are a few screen shot examples of Part 11 functionality included in the product: E-Sign, E-Sign Rendor, Meta Data History, Audit Trail Report, and Access Reporting. Gone are the days that life science companies have to spend millions of dollars a year to implement, maintain, and validate ECM systems that no longer meet the ever changing business and regulatory requirements.  Life science companies now have the ability to use WebCenter Content, an ECM system with a substantially lower cost of ownership and unsurpassed functionality.Oracle has been #1 in life sciences because of their ability to develop cost effective, easy-to-use, scalable solutions which help increase insight and efficiency to drive growth for their customers.  Adding a world class ECM solution to this product portfolio allows life science organizations the chance to get rid of costly ECM systems that no longer meet their needs and use WebCenter, part of the Oracle Fusion Technology stack, with their other leading enterprise applications.USDM provides:•    Expertise in Life Science ECM Business Processes•    Prebuilt Life Science Configuration in WebCenter •    Validation Accelerator Packs for WebCenterUSDM is very proud to support Oracle’s expanding commitment to Life Sciences…. For more information please contact:  [email protected] Oracle will be exhibiting at DIA 2012 in Philadelphia on June 25-27. Stop by our booth (#2825) to learn more about the advantages of a centralized ECM strategy and see the Oracle WebCenter Content solution, our 21 CFR Part 11 compliant content management platform.

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• Oracle OpenWorld - Events of Interest

  - by Larry Wake

  I mentioned the "Focus On Oracle Solaris" document the other day, which lists many of the Solaris-related events at Oracle OpenWorld this year; today I thought I'd highlight a few sessions you might find interesting. Monday, October 1st: 4:45 PM - Get Proactive: Best Practices for Maintaining and Upgrading Oracle Solaris (Moscone South 252) This session covers best practices for upgrading and patching and how to take advantage of unique technologies in Oracle Solaris 10 and 11. Learn how to get maximum value from My Oracle Support for both reactive and proactive requirements. Understand the benefits of secure remote access and how Oracle Support experts use collaborative shared sessions combined with Oracle Solaris technologies such as DTrace. Tuesday, October 2nd: 10:15 AM -  How to Increase Performance and Agility with an Open Data Center Fabric (Moscone South 200) If you haven't had a chance to hear about Xsigo Systems, this is a golden opportunity while you're at OpenWorld. Now part of Oracle, Xsigo's network virtualization technology is designed to increase both application performance and management efficiency, through a combination of software-defined network technology and the industry’s fastest fabric, allowing data center to converge Ethernet and Fibre Channel connectivity to a single fabric, to reduce complexity by 70 percent and CapEx by 50 percent while providing more I/O bandwidth to your applications. Wednesday, October 3rd: 10:15 AM - General Session: Oracle Solaris 11 Strategy, Engineering Insights, and Roadmap (Moscone South 103) Markus Flierl, head of Oracle Solaris Core Engineering, will outline the strategy and roadmap for Oracle Solaris,  how Oracle Solaris 11 is being deployed in cloud computing and the unique optimizations in Oracle Solaris 11 for the Oracle stack. The session also offers a sneak peek at the latest technology under development in Oracle Solaris, and what customers can expect to see in the coming updates. Plus, there are several Hands-On Labs: Monday, October 1st: 10:45 AM - 11:45 AM - Reduce Risk with Oracle Solaris Access Control to Restrain Users and Isolate Applications (Marriott Marquis - Salon 14/15) 4:45 PM - 5:45 PM - Managing Your Data with Built-In Oracle Solaris ZFS Data Services in Release 11  (Marriott Marquis - Salon 14/15) Tuesday, October 2nd: 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM - Virtualizing Your Oracle Solaris 11 Environment  (Marriott Marquis - Salon 10/11) Wednesday, October 3rd: 3:30 PM - 4:30 PM - Large-Scale Installation and Deployment of Oracle Solaris 11 (Marriott Marquis - Salon 14/15) There's plenty more--see the "Focus On Oracle Solaris" guide. See you next week in San Francisco!

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• WebCenter Customer Spotlight: Alberta Agriculture and Rural Developmen

  - by me

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

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• Announcing the Next AppAdvantage IT Leader Documentary

  - by Tanu Sood

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Close on the heels of the very successful launch of Oracle BPM 12c, we are so excited to be announcing the next video in the Oracle AppAdvantage IT Leaders Series. As you know, the Oracle AppAdvantage IT Leaders Series profiles a successful executive in an industry leading organization that has embarked on a business transformation or platform modernization journey by taking full advantage of the Oracle AppAdvantage pace layered architecture. Tune in on Tuesday, September 9th at 10 am Pacific/1 pm Eastern to catch our IT executive, Regis Louis in an in-depth conversation with IT executives from Siram S.p.a., a major energy services management company in Italy. The documentary will explore how the company is doing process orchestration and business process management to build inter-department collaboration, maintain data integrity and offer complete transparency throughout their Request for Proposal (RFP) process. Oracle’s technology expert will then do a comprehensive walk-through of Siram’s IT model, the various components and how Oracle Fusion Middleware technologies are enabling their Oracle E-Business Suite processes. Experts will be at hand to answer your questions live. Check out this live documentary webcast and find out how organizations like yours are building business agility leveraging existing investments in Oracle Applications. Register today. And if you are on twitter, send your questions to @OracleMiddle with #ITLeader, #AppAdvantage. We look forward to connecting with you on Tue, Sep 9. Siram Achieves Commercial Efficiency with Improved Business Process Agility Date: Tuesday, September 9, 2014 Time: 10:00 AM PT / 1:00 PM ET /* 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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• JCP.next.3: time to get to work

  - by Patrick Curran

  As I've previously reported in this blog, we planned three JSRs to improve the JCP’s processes and to meet our members’ expectations for change. The first - JCP.next.1, or more formally JSR 348: Towards a new version of the Java Community Process - was completed in October 2011. This focused on a small number of simple but important changes to make our process more transparent and to enable broader participation. We're already seeing the benefits of these changes as new and existing JSRs adopt the new requirements. However, because we wanted to complete this JSR quickly we deliberately postponed a number of more complex items, including everything that would require modifying the JSPA (the legal agreement that members sign when they join the organization) to a follow-on JSR. The second JSR (JSR 355: JCP Executive Committee Merge) is in progress now and will complete later this year. This JSR is even simpler than the first, and is focused solely on merging the two Executive Committees into one for greater efficiency and to encourage synergies between the Java ME and Java SE platforms. Continuing the momentum to move Java and the JCP forward we have just filed the third JSR (JCP.next.3) as JSR 358: A major revision of the Java Community Process. This JSR will modify the JSPA as well as the Process Document, and will tackle a large number of complex issues, many of them postponed from JSR 348. For these reasons we expect to spend a considerable amount of time working on it - at least a year, and probably more. The current version of the JSPA was created back in 2002, although some minor changes were introduced in 2005. Since then the organization and the environment in which we operate have changed significantly, and it is now time to revise our processes to ensure that they meet our current needs. We have a long list of topics to be considered, including the role of independent implementations (those not derived from the Reference Implementation), licensing and open source, ensuring that our new transparency requirements are implemented correctly, compatibility policy and TCKs, the role of individual members, patent policy, and IP flow. The Expert Group for JSR 358, as with all process-change JSRs, consists of all members of the Executive Committees. Even though the JSR has just been filed we started discussions on the various topics several months ago (see the EC's meeting minutes for details) and our EC members - including the new members who joined within the last year or two - are actively engaged. Now it's your opportunity to get involved. As required by version 2.8 of our Process (introduced with JSR 348) we will conduct all our business in the open. We have a public java.net project where you can follow and participate in our work. All of our deliberations will be copied to a public Observer mailing list, we'll track our issues on a public Issue Tracker, and all our documents (meeting agendas and minutes, task lists, working drafts) will be published in our Document Archive. We're just getting started, but we do want your input. Please visit us on java.net where you can learn how to participate. Let's get to work...

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• 13.10 upgrade dropping wifi [on hold]

  - by Daryl

  Almost a complete newb here. After my last upgrade from 12.04 to 13.10 my wifi now randomly drops. The only way I can get a signal back is a shutdown and restart otherwise it shows no network is even available to connect to. Had no problems until the upgrade. Any help would be appreciated. H/W path Device Class Description ==================================================== system h8-1534 (H2N64AA#ABA) /0 bus 2AC8 /0/0 memory 64KiB BIOS /0/4 processor AMD FX(tm)-6200 Six-Core Processor /0/4/5 memory 288KiB L1 cache /0/4/6 memory 6MiB L2 cache /0/4/7 memory 8MiB L3 cache /0/d memory 10GiB System Memory /0/d/0 memory DIMM Synchronous [empty] /0/d/1 memory 4GiB DIMM DDR3 Synchronous 1600 MHz (0.6 ns) /0/d/2 memory 2GiB DIMM DDR3 Synchronous 1600 MHz (0.6 ns) /0/d/3 memory 4GiB DIMM DDR3 Synchronous 1600 MHz (0.6 ns) /0/100 bridge RD890 PCI to PCI bridge (external gfx0 port B) /0/100/0.2 generic RD990 I/O Memory Management Unit (IOMMU) /0/100/2 bridge RD890 PCI to PCI bridge (PCI express gpp port B) /0/100/2/0 display Turks PRO [Radeon HD 7570] /0/100/2/0.1 multimedia Turks/Whistler HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 6000 Series] /0/100/5 bridge RD890 PCI to PCI bridge (PCI express gpp port E) /0/100/5/0 bus TUSB73x0 SuperSpeed USB 3.0 xHCI Host Controller /0/100/11 storage SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 SATA Controller [RAID5 mode] /0/100/12 bus SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB OHCI0 Controller /0/100/12.2 bus SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB EHCI Controller /0/100/13 bus SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB OHCI0 Controller /0/100/13.2 bus SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB EHCI Controller /0/100/14 bus SBx00 SMBus Controller /0/100/14.2 multimedia SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA) /0/100/14.3 bridge SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 LPC host controller /0/100/14.4 bridge SBx00 PCI to PCI Bridge /0/100/14.5 bus SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB OHCI2 Controller /0/100/15 bridge SB700/SB800/SB900 PCI to PCI bridge (PCIE port 0) /0/100/15.1 bridge SB700/SB800/SB900 PCI to PCI bridge (PCIE port 1) /0/100/15.2 bridge SB900 PCI to PCI bridge (PCIE port 2) /0/100/15.2/0 wlan0 network RT3290 Wireless 802.11n 1T/1R PCIe /0/100/15.2/0.1 generic RT3290 Bluetooth /0/100/15.3 bridge SB900 PCI to PCI bridge (PCIE port 3) /0/100/15.3/0 eth0 network RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller /0/100/16 bus SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB OHCI0 Controller /0/100/16.2 bus SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB EHCI Controller /0/101 bridge Family 15h Processor Function 0 /0/102 bridge Family 15h Processor Function 1 /0/103 bridge Family 15h Processor Function 2 /0/104 bridge Family 15h Processor Function 3 /0/105 bridge Family 15h Processor Function 4 /0/106 bridge Family 15h Processor Function 5 /0/1 scsi0 storage /0/1/0.0.0 /dev/sda disk 1TB WDC WD1002FAEX-0 /0/1/0.0.0/1 volume 189MiB Windows FAT volume /0/1/0.0.0/2 /dev/sda2 volume 244MiB data partition /0/1/0.0.0/3 /dev/sda3 volume 931GiB LVM Physical Volume /0/2 scsi2 storage /0/2/0.0.0 /dev/cdrom disk DVD A DH16ACSHR /0/3 scsi6 storage /0/3/0.0.0 /dev/sdb disk SCSI Disk /0/3/0.0.1 /dev/sdc disk SCSI Disk /0/3/0.0.2 /dev/sdd disk SCSI Disk /0/3/0.0.3 /dev/sde disk MS/MS-Pro /0/3/0.0.3/0 /dev/sde disk /1 power Standard Efficiency I apologize for my newbness. I hope this is enough info for the hardware. Thanks Bruno for pointing out I needed to add more info. If I am lacking anything else please let me know and I'll post it.

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• 2d, Top-down map with different levels

  - by Ktash

  So, I'm creating a 2d, top down, sprite based (tiled) game, and right now I'm working on maps (well, a map editor at the moment, but it will be creating my maps, so basically the same thing). The scenario So, I'm thinking about efficiency and creating a map in pieces. In each piece, I plan on having 'layers'. Basically, I plan on rendering it down to a 'below hero' level, and an 'above hero' level, with the hero rendered in between obviously. There will likely also be a 'on level with hero' layer, but I'm not quite there yet. Not even worrying about events or interaction yet. Just looking to get a hero on the screen. Now for movement, I obviously need to know what tiles can be moved and in what direction. My plan at the moment is each tile getting 8 bits (4 'can enter in direction' bits, 4 'can leave in direction'). This will allow me to limit movement and even allow one way directional movement. The dilemma This works great for a lot of scenarios. It will allow me to store a map in essentially 3 layers, a string, and gives me flexibility going forward. However, I can't create maps that themselves have layers. A good example is a bridge where the user can go under or over the bridge without invalid moves being allowed. I can't create a platform and allow movement underneath. These are things I would like to be able to include in my game. My idea In theory, I could allow multiple hero layers and then allow multiple sets of 'below' and 'above' layers (or sandwich layers). But this complicates my system, and makes movement between maps potentially tricky (If the hero is on the third layer at the edge of a map, but that corresponds to the second layer on the other map, how can I allow or disallow movement). My question Is there a better way to manage multiple maps with multiple levels like this where a users level may be 'connected' on different levels on different maps? Or even... Am I doing this the hard way? Is there a more standard way to handle top-down 2d tiled maps that I am just not aware of? Things to note or that might be helpful This will be done in Javascript (transferred around in JSON) State will need to be transferred quickly, so a map-id and x/y/direction should be enough to get me a boolean 'can move' value Maps will not be standard sized (though they will be in a certain number of tiles) Making an editor tool so that I can have others help, so something that I can create in a tool would be helpful 'Teleportation' locations will likely need to exist to get into building maps and to and from different map sets (which will not necessarily be connected), but have not been created yet (lumping in with events at the moment).

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• Spotlight on an office - Nairobi, Kenya

  - by Maria Sandu

  Hi everyone, my name is Joash Mitei. I am a graduate Intern at Oracle Systems Kenya and I will briefly take you through our offices and the working environment here in Nairobi, Kenya. I’ve been with Oracle since February 2012 and I’m responsible for Applications Pre-sales focusing on Oracle EPM and E-Business Suite. My background is Finance and Accounting therefore joining Oracle was almost a totally a different ball game but the transition has been smooth. The Oracle offices here are located on the second floor of Mebank Towers. We moved to the 2nd floor just three months ago from the 5th floor mainly because of the growing workforce. We are covering the whole Eastern Africa region hence diversity in culture is evident. This is a plus since you get to interact with people of very different backgrounds, cultures and ways of thinking. The building itself is on the outskirts of the CBD hence free from the hustle and bustle of the town. The office is split into different sections; there is a main working area which has an open desk design that fosters interaction between colleagues, there are 4 conference rooms for meetings and presentations, there are 3 quiet rooms for a little privacy when needed and there is a dining area for meals and ‘hanging out’. The working environment is world-class, to say the least. The employees are very professional, quite smart and needless to say, very busy. There are 4 interns covering sales and pre-sales in both Tech and Apps. As an intern you get support from your supervisor but you are required to show initiative yourself and thus the need to be very pro-active and inquisitive. The local management is well structured and communicative to ensure effectiveness and efficiency in the office. Apart from the daily work, we usually have events to boost staff morale such as ‘TGIF hang -out’, football matches against each other or versus other companies, and team building retreats. All these are monumental in fostering the RED POTENTIAL. We also do numerous CSR activities in the local communities . Well, that’s the Kenyan office for you. Glad to be your tour guide. Have a superb day!

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• Agile team with no dedicated Tester members. Insane or efficient?

  - by MetaFight

  I'm a software developer. I've been thinking a lot about the efficiency of the Software Testers I've worked with so far in my career. In fact, I've been thinking a lot about the Software Testers role in general and have reached a potentially contentious conclusion: Non-developer Software Testers staff are less efficient at software testing than developers. Now, before everyone gets upset, hear me out. This isn't mere opinion: Software Testing and Software Development both require a lot of skills in common: Problem solving Thinking about corner cases Analytical skills The ability to define clear and concise step-by-step scenarios What developers have in addition to this is the ability to automate their tests. Yes, I know non-dev testers can automate their tests too, but that often then becomes a test maintenance issue. Because automating UI tests is essentially programming, non-dev members encounter all the same difficulties software developers encounter: Copy-pasta, lack of code reusibility/maintainability, etc. So, I was wondering. Why not replace all non-dev roles with developer roles? Developers have the skills required to perform Software Testing tasks, and they have the skills to automate tests and keep them maintainable. Would the following work: Hire a bunch of developers and split them into 2 roles: Software developers Software developers doing testing (some manual, mostly automated by writing integration tests, unit tests, etc) Software developers doing application support. (I've removed this as it is probably a separate question altogether) And, in our case since we're doing Agile development, rotate the roles every sprint or two. Also, if at all possible, try to have people spend their Developer stints and Testing stints on different projects. Ideally you would want to reduce the turnover rate per rotation. So maybe you could have 2 groups and make sure the rotation cycles of the groups are elided. So, for example, if each rotation was two sprints long, the two groups would have their rotations 1 sprint apart. That way there's only a 50% turn-over rate per sprint. Am I crazy, or could this work? (Obviously a key component to this working is that all devs want to be in the 3 roles. Let's assume I'm starting a new company and I can hire these ideal people) Edit I've removed the phrase "QA", as apparently we are using it incorrectly where I work.

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• Series On Embedded Development (Part 2) - Build-Time Optionality

  - by user12612705

  In this entry on embedded development, I'm going to discuss build-time optionality (BTO). BTO is the ability to subset your software at build-time so you only use what is needed. BTO typically pertains more to software providers rather then developers of final products. For example, software providers ship source products, frameworks or platforms which are used by developers to build other products. If you provide a source product, you probably don't have to do anything to support BTO as the developers using your source will only use the source they need to build their product. If you provide a framework, then there are some things you can do to support BTO. Say you provide a Java framework which supports audio and video. If you provide this framework in a single JAR, then developers who only want audio are forced to ship their product with the video portion of your framework even though they aren't using it. In this case, support providing the framework in separate JARs...break the framework into an audio JAR and a video JAR and let the users of your framework decide which JARs to include in their product. Sometimes this is as simple as packaging, but if, for example, the video functionality is dependent on the audio functionality, it may require coding work to cleanly separate the two. BTO can also work at install-time, and this is sometimes overlooked. Let's say your building a phone application which can use Near Field Communications (NFC) if it's available on the phone, but it doesn't require NFC to work. Typically you'd write one app for all phones (saving you time)...both those that have NFC and those that don't, and just use NFC if it's there. However, for better efficiency, you can detect at install-time if the phone supports NFC and not install the NFC portion of your app if the phone doesn't support NFC. This requires that you write the app so it can run without the optional NFC code and that you write your install app so it can detect NFC and do the right thing at install-time. Supporting install-time optionality will save persistent footprint on the phone, something your customers will appreciate, your app "neighbors" will appreciate, and that you'll appreciate when they save static footprint for you. In the next article, I'll talk about runtime optionality.

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• Project and Business Document Organization

  - by dassouki

  How do you organize, maintain edits, revisions and the relationship between: Proposals Contracts Change Orders Deliverables Projects How do you organize your projects for re-usability? For example, is there a way to add tags to projects, to make them more accessible? What's a good data structure to dump all my files on an internet server for easy access? Presently, my work folder is setup as follows: (1)/work/ (2)/projects (3)/project_a (4)/final (which includes all final documents) (5)/contracts (5)/rfp_rfq (5)/change_orders (5)/communications (logs all emails, faxes, and meeting notes and minutes) (5)/financial (6)/paid (6)/unpaid (5)/reports (4)/old (include all documents that didn't make it into the project_a/final/ (3)/project_b (4) ... same as above ... (2)/references (3)/technical_references (3)/gov_regulations (3)/data_sources (3)/books (3)/topic_based (each area of my expertise has a folder with references in them) (2)/business_contacts (3)/contacts.xls (file contains all my contacts) (2)/banking (3)/banking.xls (contains a list of all paid and unpaid invoices as well as some cool stats) (3)/quicken (to do my taxes and yada yada) (4)/year (2)/education (courses I've taken (3)/webinars (3)/seminars (3)/online_courses (2)/publications (includes the publications I've made (3)/publication_id We're mostly 5 people working together part-time on this thing. Since this is a very structured approach, I find it really difficult to remember what I've done on previous projects and go back and forth easily. What are your suggestions on improving my processes? I'm open to closed and open source software (as long as the price isn't too high). I also want to implement a system where I can save most of the projects online to increase collaboration and efficiency and reduce bandwidth especially on document editing. Imagine emailing a document back and forth 5-10 times a day.

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• Are relative-path symlinks reliable on Rackspace Cloud Sites?

  - by Jakobud

  Rackspace's Cloud Sites have a lot of stupid limitations. For example, no SSH (in or out), no shell, no RSYNC, etc... (even through cron). Recently I learned that you can't reliably use symlinks in Cloud Sites. Apparently this is because the absolute path of your sites could change at any moment, since it's a shared host environment split up between many disks/servers. I guess different account's sites get moved from disk to disk whenever Rackspace decides to. Supposedly to increase efficiency across the board. So after talking with a Rackspace tech, he said they cannot guarantee that symlinks would always work. Obviously this is because if you have a symlink that use's an absolute path like this: //mnt/disk-34566/home/user34566/files/sites/www.mysite.com/mydir If you files go moved to a different disk (or whatever they do), then the absolute path would be different and the link would now be broken. That makes sense. So next, I asked the Rackspace tech if relative path symlinks were reliable. So if I have the following link: files/sites/www.mysite.com/mylink --> ../www.myothersite.com/anotherdir You can see that the symlink simply points to a nearby directory's sub-directory. He said they cannot guarantee that even those would always work either. Since it uses a relative path to another nearby directory I'm not sure how it could ever break from something Rackspace would do. Do relative symlinks somehow rely on absolute paths underneath? Or is Rackspace using some weird custom filesystem where they will break from absolute path changes? It seems like a relative-path symlink would be fine and would only break if the user did something to mess up the directories involved. But when the tech's say that they "don't officially support symlinks of any kind" that makes me hesitant to use them for large commercial websites in Cloud Sites. Can anyone with Rackspace experience give input on this topic?

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