patterns practices - Page 332

Adventures in Scrum: Lesson 1 – The failed Sprint

- by Martin Hinshelwood

I recently had a conversation with a product owner that wanted to have the Scrum team broken up into smaller units so that less time was wasted on the Scrum Ceremonies! Their complaint was around the need in Scrum to have the entire “Team” (7+-2) involved in the sizing of the work during the “Sprint Planning Meeting”. The standard flippant answer of all Scrum professionals, “Well that's not Scrum”, does not get you any brownie points in these situations. The response could be “Well we are not doing Scrum then” which in turn leads to “We are doing Scrum…But, we have split the scrum team into units of 2/3 so that they can concentrate on a specific area of work”. While this may work, it is not Scrum and should not be called so… It is just a form of Agile. Don’t get me wrong at this stage, there is nothing wrong with Agile, just don’t call it Scrum. The reason that the Product Owner wants to do this is that, in effect, through a number of miscommunications and failings in our implementation of Scrum, there was NO unit of potentially Shippable software at the end of the first sprint. It does not matter to them that most Scrum teams will fail the first Sprint, even those that are high performing teams. Remember it is the product owners their money! We should NOT break up scrum teams into smaller units for the purpose of having less people tied up in the Scrum Ceremonies. The amount of backlog the Team selects is solely up to the Team… Only the Team can assess what it can accomplish over the upcoming Sprint. - Scrum Guide, Scrum.org The entire team must accept the work and in order to understand what they can accept they must be free to size it as a team. This both encourages common understanding and increases visibility on why team members think a task is of a particular size. This has the benefit of increasing the knowledge of the entire team in the problem domain. A new Team often first realizes that it will either sink or swim as a Team, not individually, in this meeting. The Team realizes that it must rely on itself. As it realizes this, it starts to self-organize to take on the characteristics and behaviour of a real Team. - Scrum Guide, Scrum.org This paragraph goes to the why of having the whole team at the meeting; The goal of Scrum it to produce a unit of potentially shippable software at the end of every Sprint. In order to achieve this we need high performing teams and this is what Scrum as a framework has been optimised to produce. I think that our Product Owner is understandably upset over loosing two weeks work and is losing sight the end goal of Scrum in the failures of the moment. As the man spending the money, I completely understand his perspective and I think that we should not have started Scrum on an internal project, but selected a customer that is open to the ideas and complications of Scrum. So, what should we have NOT done on our first Scrum project: Should not have had 3 interns as the only on site resource – This lead to bad practices as the experienced guys were not there helping and correcting as they usually would. Should not have had the only experienced guys offsite – With both the experienced technical guys in completely different time zones it was difficult to get time for questions. Helping the guys on site was just plain impossible. Should not have used a part time ScrumMaster – Although the ScrumMaster attended all of the Ceremonies, because they are only in 2 full days of the week it makes it difficult for the team to raise impediments as they go. Should not have used a proxy product owner. – This was probably the worst decision that was made. Mainly because the proxy product owner did not have the same vision as the product owner. While Scrum does not explicitly reject the idea of a Proxy Product Owner, I do not think it works very well in practice. The “single wringable neck” needs to contain both the Money and the Vision as well as attending the required meetings. I will be brining all of these things up at the Sprint Retrospective and we will learn from our mistakes and move on. Do, Inspect then Adapt… Technorati Tags: Scrum,Sprint Planing,Sprint Retrospective,Scrum.org,Scrum Guide,Scrum Ceremonies,Scrummaster,Product Owner Need Help? Professional Scrum Developer Training SSW has six Professional Scrum Developer Trainers who specialise in training your developers in implementing Scrum with Microsoft's Visual Studio ALM tools.

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Configuration "diff" across Oracle WebCenter Sites instances

- by Mark Fincham-Oracle

Problem Statement With many Oracle WebCenter Sites environments - how do you know if the various configuration assets and settings are in sync across all of those environments? Background At Oracle we typically have a "W" shaped set of environments. For the "Production" environments we typically have a disaster recovery clone as well and sometimes additional QA environments alongside the production management environment. In the case of www.java.com we have 10 different environments. All configuration assets/settings (CSElements, Templates, Start Menus etc..) start life on the Development Management environment and are then published downstream to other environments as part of the software development lifecycle. Ensuring that each of these 10 environments has the same set of Templates, CSElements, StartMenus, TreeTabs etc.. is impossible to do efficiently without automation. Solution Summary The solution comprises of two components. A JSON data feed from each environment. A simple HTML page that consumes these JSON data feeds. Data Feed: Create a JSON WebService on each environment. The WebService is no more than a SiteEntry + CSElement. The CSElement queries various DB tables to obtain details of the assets/settings returning this data in a JSON feed. Report: Create a simple HTML page that uses JQuery to fetch the JSON feed from each environment and display the results in a table. Since all assets (CSElements, Templates etc..) are published between environments they will have the same last modified date. If the last modified date of an asset is different in the JSON feed or is mising from an environment entirely then highlight that in the report table. Example Solution Details Step 1: Create a Site Entry + CSElement that outputs JSON Site Entry & CSElement Setup The SiteEntry should be uncached so that the most recent configuration information is returned at all times. In the CSElement set the contenttype accordingly: Step 2: Write the CSElement Logic The basic logic, that we repeat for each asset or setting that we are interested in, is to query the DB using <ics:sql> and then loop over the resultset with <ics:listloop>. For example: <ics:sql sql="SELECT name,updateddate FROM Template WHERE status != 'VO'" listname="TemplateList" table="Template" /> "templates": [ <ics:listloop listname="TemplateList"> {"name":"<ics:listget listname="TemplateList" fieldname="name"/>", "modified":"<ics:listget listname="TemplateList" fieldname="updateddate"/>"}, </ics:listloop> ], A comprehensive list of SQL queries to fetch each configuration asset/settings can be seen in the appendix at the end of this article. For the generation of the JSON data structure you could use Jettison (the library ships with the 11.1.1.8 version of the product), native Java 7 capabilities or (as the above example demonstrates) you could roll-your-own JSON output but that is not advised. Step 3: Create an HTML Report The JavaScript logic looks something like this.. 1) Create a list of JSON feeds to fetch: ENVS['dev-mgmngt'] = 'http://dev-mngmnt.example.com/sites/ContentServer?d=&pagename=settings.json'; ENVS['dev-dlvry'] = 'http://dev-dlvry.example.com/sites/ContentServer?d=&pagename=settings.json'; ENVS['test-mngmnt'] = 'http://test-mngmnt.example.com/sites/ContentServer?d=&pagename=settings.json'; ENVS['test-dlvry'] = 'http://test-dlvry.example.com/sites/ContentServer?d=&pagename=settings.json'; 2) Create a function to get the JSON feeds: function getDataForEnvironment(url){ return $.ajax({ type: 'GET', url: url, dataType: 'jsonp', beforeSend: function (jqXHR, settings){ jqXHR.originalEnv = env; jqXHR.originalUrl = url; }, success: function(json, status, jqXHR) { console.log('....success fetching: ' + jqXHR.originalUrl); // store the returned data in ALLDATA ALLDATA[jqXHR.originalEnv] = json; }, error: function(jqXHR, status, e) { console.log('....ERROR: Failed to get data from [' + url + '] ' + status + ' ' + e); } }); } 3) Fetch each JSON feed: for (var env in ENVS) { console.log('Fetching data for env [' + env +'].'); var promisedData = getDataForEnvironment(ENVS[env]); promisedData.success(function (data) {}); } 4) For each configuration asset or setting create a table in the report For example, CSElements: 1) Get a list of unique CSElement names from all of the returned JSON data. 2) For each unique CSElement name, create a row in the table 3) Select 1 environment to represent the master or ideal state (e.g. "Everything should be like Production Delivery") 4) For each environment, compare the last modified date of this envs CSElement to the master. Highlight any differences in last modified date or missing CSElements. 5) Repeat... Appendix This section contains various SQL statements that can be used to retrieve configuration settings from the DB. Templates <ics:sql sql="SELECT name,updateddate FROM Template WHERE status != 'VO'" listname="TemplateList" table="Template" /> CSElements <ics:sql sql="SELECT name,updateddate FROM CSElement WHERE status != 'VO'" listname="CSEList" table="CSElement" /> Start Menus <ics:sql sql="select sm.id, sm.cs_name, sm.cs_description, sm.cs_assettype, sm.cs_assetsubtype, sm.cs_itemtype, smr.cs_rolename, p.name from StartMenu sm, StartMenu_Sites sms, StartMenu_Roles smr, Publication p where sm.id=sms.ownerid and sm.id=smr.cs_ownerid and sms.pubid=p.id order by sm.id" listname="startList" table="Publication,StartMenu,StartMenu_Roles,StartMenu_Sites"/> Publishing Configurations <ics:sql sql="select id, name, description, type, dest, factors from PubTarget" listname="pubTargetList" table="PubTarget" /> Tree Tabs <ics:sql sql="select tt.id, tt.title, tt.tooltip, p.name as pubname, ttr.cs_rolename, ttsect.name as sectname from TreeTabs tt, TreeTabs_Roles ttr, TreeTabs_Sect ttsect,TreeTabs_Sites ttsites LEFT JOIN Publication p on p.id=ttsites.pubid where p.id is not null and tt.id=ttsites.ownerid and ttsites.pubid=p.id and tt.id=ttr.cs_ownerid and tt.id=ttsect.ownerid order by tt.id" listname="treeTabList" table="TreeTabs,TreeTabs_Roles,TreeTabs_Sect,TreeTabs_Sites,Publication" /> Filters <ics:sql sql="select name,description,classname from Filters" listname="filtersList" table="Filters" /> Attribute Types <ics:sql sql="select id,valuetype,name,updateddate from AttrTypes where status != 'VO'" listname="AttrList" table="AttrTypes" /> WebReference Patterns <ics:sql sql="select id,webroot,pattern,assettype,name,params,publication from WebReferencesPatterns" listname="WebRefList" table="WebReferencesPatterns" /> Device Groups <ics:sql sql="select id,devicegroupsuffix,updateddate,name from DeviceGroup" listname="DeviceList" table="DeviceGroup" /> Site Entries <ics:sql sql="select se.id,se.name,se.pagename,se.cselement_id,se.updateddate,cse.rootelement from SiteEntry se LEFT JOIN CSElement cse on cse.id = se.cselement_id where se.status != 'VO'" listname="SiteList" table="SiteEntry,CSElement" /> Webroots <ics:sql sql="select id,name,rooturl,updatedby,updateddate from WebRoot" listname="webrootList" table="WebRoot" /> Page Definitions <ics:sql sql="select pd.id, pd.name, pd.updatedby, pd.updateddate, pd.description, pdt.attributeid, pa.name as nameattr, pdt.requiredflag, pdt.ordinal from PageDefinition pd, PageDefinition_TAttr pdt, PageAttribute pa where pd.status != 'VO' and pa.id=pdt.attributeid and pdt.ownerid=pd.id order by pd.id,pdt.ordinal" listname="pageDefList" table="PageDefinition,PageAttribute,PageDefinition_TAttr" /> FW_Application <ics:sql sql="select id,name,updateddate from FW_Application where status != 'VO'" listname="FWList" table="FW_Application" /> Custom Elements <ics:sql sql="select elementname from ElementCatalog where elementname like 'CustomElements%'" listname="elementList" table="ElementCatalog" />

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Limiting Audit Exposure and Managing Risk – Q&A and Follow-Up Conversation

- by Tanu Sood

Thanks to all who attended the live ISACA webcast on Limiting Audit Exposure and Managing Risk with Metrics-Driven Identity Analytics. We were really fortunate to have Don Sparks from ISACA moderate the webcast featuring Stuart Lincoln, Vice President, IT P&L Client Services, BNP Paribas, North America and Neil Gandhi, Principal Product Manager, Oracle Identity Analytics. Stuart’s insights given the team’s role in providing IT for P&L Client Services and his tremendous experience in identity management and establishing sustainable compliance programs were true value-add at yesterday’s webcast. And if you are a healthcare organization looking to solve your compliance and security challenges, we recommend you join us for a live webcast on Tuesday, November 29 at 10 am PT. The webcast will feature experts from Kaiser Permanente, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Oracle and the focus of the discussion will be around the compliance challenges a healthcare organization faces and best practices for tackling those. Here are the details: Healthcare IT News Webcast: Managing Risk and Enforcing Compliance in Healthcare with Identity Analytics Tuesday, November 29, 201110:00 a.m. PT / 1:00 p.m. ET Register Today The ISACA webcast replay is now available on-demand and the slides are also available for download. Since we didn’t have time to address all the questions we received during the live Q&A portion of the webcast, we have captured responses to the remaining questions here. Please continue to provide us your feedback and insights from your experience in deploying identity compliance solutions. Q. Can you please clarify the mechanism utilized to populate the Identity Warehouse from each individual application's access management function / files? A. Oracle Identity Analytics (OIA) supports direct imports from applications. Data collection is based on Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) that eliminates the need to write connectors to different applications. Oracle Identity Analytics’ import engine supports complex entitlement feeds saved as either text files or XML. The imports can be scheduled on a periodic basis or triggered as needed. If the applications are synchronized with a user provisioning solution like Oracle Identity Manager, Oracle Identity Analytics has a seamless integration to pull in data from Oracle Identity Manager. Q. Can you provide a short summary of the new features in your latest release of Oracle Identity Analytics? A. Oracle recently announced availability of enhanced Oracle Identity Analytics. This release focused on easing the certification process by offering risk analytics driven certification, advanced certification screens, business centric views and significant improvement in performance including 3X faster data imports, 3X faster certification campaign generation and advanced auto-certification features, that will allow organizations to improve user productivity by up to 80%. Closed-loop risk feedback and IT policy monitoring with Oracle Identity Manager, a leading user provisioning solution, allows for more accurate certification reviews. And, OIA's improved performance enables customers to scale compliance initiatives supporting millions of user entitlements across thousands of applications, whether on premise or in the cloud, without compromising speed or integrity. Q. Will ISACA grant a CPE credit for attending this ISACA-sponsored webinar today? A. From ISACA: Hello and thank you for your interest in the 2011 ISACA Webinar Program! Unfortunately, there are no CPEs offered for this program, archived or live. We will be looking into the feasibility of offering them in the future. Q. Would you be able to use this to help manage licenses for software? That is to say - could it track software that is not used by a user, thus eliminating the software license? A. OIA’s integration with Oracle Identity Manager, a leading user provisioning solution, allows organizations to detect ghost accounts or unused accounts via account reconciliation. Based on company’s policies, this could trigger an automated workflow for account deletion or asking for further investigation. Closed-loop feedback between the two solutions would then allow visibility into the complete audit trail of when the account was detected, the action taken, by whom, when and the current status. Q. We have quarterly attestations and .xls mechanisms are not working. Once the identity data is correlated in Identity Analytics, do you then automate access certification? A. OIA’s identity warehouse analyzes and correlates identity data across various resources that allows OIA to determine a user’s risk profile, who the access review request should go to, along with all the relevant access details of the user. The access certification manager gets notification on what to review, when and the relevant data is presented in a business friendly screen. Based on the result of the access certification process, actions are triggered and results recorded and archived. Access review managers have visual risk indicators that also allow them to prioritize access certification tasks and efforts. Q. How does Oracle Identity Analytics work with Cloud Security? A. For enterprises looking to build their own cloud(s), Oracle offers a set of security services that cloud developers can leverage including Oracle Identity Analytics. For enterprises looking to manage their compliance requirements but without hosting those in-house and instead having a hosting provider offer managed Identity Management services to the organizations, Oracle Identity Analytics can be leveraged much the same way as you’d in an on-premise (within the enterprise) environment. In fact, organizations today are leveraging Oracle Identity Analytics to manage identity compliance in both these ways. Q. Would you recommend this as a cost effective solution for a smaller organization with @ 2,500 users? A. The key return-on-investment (ROI) on Oracle Identity Analytics is derived from automating compliance processes thereby eliminating administrative overhead, minimizing errors, maintaining cost- and time-effective sustainable compliance processes and minimizing audit exposures and penalties. Of course, there are other tangible benefits that are derived from an Oracle Identity Analytics implementation as outlined in the webcast. For a quantitative analysis of your requirements and potential ROI calculation, we recommend you refer to the Forrester Study on Total Economic Impact of Oracle Identity Analytics. For an in-person discussion, please email Richard Caldwell.

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Alternative Grid Layout for Silverlight suggestion

- by brainbox

I've proposed a suggestion to create alternative grid layout for Silverlight. Please vote for it if also faced the same problems. As i write before current Silverlight Grid Layout breakes best practices of HTML and Adobe Flex Grid layouts. Current defention based approach have following disadvantages that makes xaml coding very hard: 1. It is very hard to create new row. In that case you should rewriteall Grid.Row and Grid.Columns for all rows inserted below.2. Defenitions are static by their nature and because of it, it isimpossible to use grid for dynamic forms. Currently even in toolkit DataFormMicrosoft is using StackPanel. But StackPanel is not designed for multicolumn layout that have dataform. Here is a sample code of AdobeFlex datagrid, which incorporates bestpractices of HTML. <mx:Grid id="myGrid">  <mx:GridRow id="row1">  <mx:GridItem> <mx:Button label="Button 1"/> </mx:GridItem>  <mx:GridItem> <mx:Button label="2"/> </mx:GridItem>  <mx:GridItem> <mx:Button label="Button 3"/> </mx:GridItem> </mx:GridRow>  <mx:GridRow id="row2">  <mx:GridItem colSpan="3" horizontalAlign="center"> <mx:Button label="Long-Named Button 4"/> </mx:GridItem> </mx:GridRow>  <mx:GridRow id="row3">  <mx:GridItem/>  <mx:GridItem colSpan="2" horizontalAlign="center"> <mx:Button label="Button 5"/> </mx:GridItem> </mx:GridRow> </mx:Grid>

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Master Data Management Implementation Styles

- by david.butler(at)oracle.com

In any Master Data Management solution deployment, one of the key decisions to be made is the choice of the MDM architecture. Gartner and other analysts describe some different Hub deployment styles, which must be supported by a best of breed MDM solution in order to guarantee the success of the deployment project. Registry Style: In a Registry Style MDM Hub, the various source systems publish their data and a subscribing Hub stores only the source system IDs, the Foreign Keys (record IDs on source systems) and the key data values needed for matching. The Hub runs the cleansing and matching algorithms and assigns unique global identifiers to the matched records, but does not send any data back to the source systems. The Registry Style MDM Hub uses data federation capabilities to build the "virtual" golden view of the master entity from the connected systems. Consolidation Style: The Consolidation Style MDM Hub has a physically instantiated, "golden" record stored in the central Hub. The authoring of the data remains distributed across the spoke systems and the master data can be updated based on events, but is not guaranteed to be up to date. The master data in this case is usually not used for transactions, but rather supports reporting; however, it can also be used for reference operationally. Coexistence Style: The Coexistence Style MDM Hub involves master data that's authored and stored in numerous spoke systems, but includes a physically instantiated golden record in the central Hub and harmonized master data across the application portfolio. The golden record is constructed in the same manner as in the consolidation style, and, in the operational world, Consolidation Style MDM Hubs often evolve into the Coexistence Style. The key difference is that in this architectural style the master data stored in the central MDM system is selectively published out to the subscribing spoke systems. Transaction Style: In this architecture, the Hub stores, enhances and maintains all the relevant (master) data attributes. It becomes the authoritative source of truth and publishes this valuable information back to the respective source systems. The Hub publishes and writes back the various data elements to the source systems after the linking, cleansing, matching and enriching algorithms have done their work. Upstream, transactional applications can read master data from the MDM Hub, and, potentially, all spoke systems subscribe to updates published from the central system in a form of harmonization. The Hub needs to support merging of master records. Security and visibility policies at the data attribute level need to be supported by the Transaction Style hub, as well. Adaptive Transaction Style: This is similar to the Transaction Style, but additionally provides the capability to respond to diverse information and process requests across the enterprise. This style emerged most recently to address the limitations of the above approaches. With the Adaptive Transaction Style, the Hub is built as a platform for consolidating data from disparate third party and internal sources and for serving unified master entity views to operational applications, analytical systems or both. This approach delivers a real-time Hub that has a reliable, persistent foundation of master reference and relationship data, along with all the history and lineage of data changes needed for audit and compliance tracking. On top of this persistent master data foundation, the Hub can dynamically aggregate transaction data on demand from different source systems to deliver the unified golden view to downstream systems. Data can also be accessed through batch interfaces, published to a message bus or served through a real-time services layer. New data sources can be readily added in this approach by extending the data model and by configuring the new source mappings and the survivorship rules, meaning that all legacy data hubs can be leveraged to contribute their records/rules into the new transaction hub. Finally, through rich user interfaces for data stewardship, it allows exception handling by business analysts to keep it current with business rules/practices while maintaining the reliability of best-of-breed master records. Confederation Style: In this architectural style, several Hubs are maintained at departmental and/or agency and/or territorial level, and each of them are connected to the other Hubs either directly or via a central Super-Hub. Each Domain level Hub can be implemented using any of the previously described styles, but normally the Central Super-Hub is a Registry Style one. This is particularly important for Public Sector organizations, where most of the time it is practically or legally impossible to store in a single central hub all the relevant constituent information from all departments. Oracle MDM Solutions can be deployed according to any of the above MDM architectural styles, and have been specifically designed to fully support the Transaction and Adaptive Transaction styles. Oracle MDM Solutions provide strong data federation and integration capabilities which are key to enabling the use of the Confederated Hub as a possible architectural style approach. Don't lock yourself into a solution that cannot evolve with your needs. With Oracle's support for any type of deployment architecture, its ability to leverage the outstanding capabilities of the Oracle technology stack, and its open interfaces for non-Oracle technology stacks, Oracle MDM Solutions provide a low TCO and a quick ROI by enabling a phased implementation strategy.

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Breaking up the Workday– Overcoming the Workaholic Syndrome

- by dwahlin

Hi, my name’s Dan Wahlin and I’m a workaholic – I admit it. It’s good from the standpoint that I get a lot done but it also has a lot of cons associated with it as well that I’m not proud of. I literally can’t watch TV without feeling like I should be doing something more productive (although I have no problem going to see movies at a theater or watching sporting events – that’s my escape I guess). On vacation it’s sometimes difficult the first few days to just “let go” of work and enjoy the time with my family. I always feel like I should be checking email and following up with different business projects. Fortunately, my wife knows me really well after 17 years of marriage and “gently” restricts my usage of laptops and other gadgets while we’re out. She also reminds me that constantly burying my face in gadgets just isn’t cool and shows a distinct lack of self control. On a given day I typically put in between 12 (at a minimum) up to 16-18 hours working on projects. My company does .NET consulting (ASP.NET/jQuery, SharePoint and Silverlight) but we also do a lot in the training space so there’s always a client project, some new courseware or some other deliverable that has to be worked on. My normal process for handling that is to just work my butt off and see how much I can get done. That process has worked well for a long time but when you start realizing that your happiness comes from how much work you accomplished that day then you have a problem. That’s especially true if you have kids (which I do….two awesome boys). It’s almost as if working more hours feels like I’m more successful or something which is of course ridiculous. It may actually mean that I’m too distracted or disorganized. Lately I’ve realized that while I’m still productive and always meet my deadlines, I’m really burnt out by the afternoon and have lost some of the excitement I used to have. Part of that’s normal I think given that I’ve been doing this for close to 15 years now, but in thinking through it more I realized that I just need to get away from the desk and take a break. By far, the happiest time of my life was my childhood. Part of that was due to having awesome parents, having far less responsibility (a big factor I suspect), being able to hang-out with friends at school, playing sports, games, etc. but I think a big part of the overall happiness came from being outside a lot. I lived on my bike as a little kid and as I grew up I shared time between riding an ATV all over the place, shooting hoops on the basketball court, playing golf and working on a golf course (all outside work of course). Being a software developer and trainer I generally spend 95% or more of my day indoors and only see the sun when driving from place to place or by looking out the window (that’s sad because I live in a suburb of Phoenix, AZ where it’s nearly always sunny). I haven’t looked into any scientific studies on the matter, but I’d be willing to bet there’s a direct correlation between overall productivity/happiness and being outside some throughout the day (sunny or not). But, I wasn’t sure what to do about it since I do have a lot of deadlines I need to meet after all. While talking with my wife last night I mentioned how I feel like I’m in a rut and want to get the “fun” back that I used to have. She immediately said that I need to start making time for breaks (a real quick fact – she’s a lot smarter than me and nearly always right). Of course my first thought was that I’d be less productive taking breaks. If I spend 2 hours just relaxing then I’m losing 2 hours of work. But, I thought about it more and realized that I’m probably less productive when I work 10+ hours and only take less than 30 minutes for a lunch break to relax a little. I bet my brain is screaming, “Please let me relax a little so I can figure out these problems you’re trying to resolve!”. So, starting today I’m going to try to break the workaholic habit and spend time outside of the office. That could mean sitting around outside, working out, golfing, or whatever. I’ve decided that no gadgets are allowed during that time and that I shouldn’t work for more than 4 hours straight without taking a break. I have no idea how my little “break the workaholic syndrome” experiment will go or how long it will last, but I’d be very interested in hearing from others on how they keep fresh and focused without working yourself to death. If you have any specific ideas, techniques or practices you follow please share them. There’s a lot more to life than work and some of us (and I’m thinking of myself specifically) need to take a long, hard look at what kind of balance we currently have. I’d hate to look back at my life when I’m 80 years old and say, “The only thing I did was work – I missed out on life!”.

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Highlights from the Oracle Customer Experience Summit @ OpenWorld

- by Kathryn Perry

A guest post by David Vap, Group Vice President, Oracle Applications Product Development The Oracle Customer Experience Summit was the first-ever event covering the full breadth of Oracle's CX portfolio -- Marketing, Sales, Commerce, and Service. The purpose of the Summit was to articulate the customer experience imperative and to showcase the suite of Oracle products that can help our customers create the best possible customer experience. This topic has always been a very important one, but now that there are so many alternative companies to do business with and because people have such public ways to voice their displeasure, it's necessary for vendors to have multiple listening posts in place to gauge consumer sentiment. They need to know what is going on in real time and be able to react quickly to turn negative situations into positive ones. Those can then be shared in a social manner to enhance the brand and turn the customer into a repeat customer. The Summit was focused on Oracle's portfolio of products and entirely dedicated to customers who are committed to building great customer experiences within their businesses. Rather than DBAs, the attendees were business people looking to collaborate with other like-minded experts and find out how Oracle can help in terms of technology, best practices, and expertise. The event was at the Westin St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco as part of Oracle OpenWorld. We had eight hundred people attend, which was great for the first year. Next year, there's no doubt in my mind, we can raise that number to 5,000. Alignment and Logic Oracle's Customer Experience portfolio is made up of a combination of acquired and organic products owned by many people who are new to Oracle. We include homegrown Fusion CRM, as well as RightNow, Inquira, OPA, Vitrue, ATG, Endeca, and many others. The attendees knew of the acquisitions, so naturally they wanted to see how the products all fit together and hear the logic behind the portfolio. To tell them about our alignment, we needed to be aligned. To accomplish that, a cross functional team at Oracle agreed on the messaging so that every single Oracle presenter could cover the big picture before going deep into a product or topic. Talking about the full suite of products in one session produced overflow value for other products. And even though this internal coordination was a huge effort, everyone saw the value for our customers and for our long-term cooperation and success. Keynotes, Workshops, and Tents of Innovation We scored by having Seth Godin as our keynote speaker ? always provocative and popular. The opening keynote was a session orchestrated by Mark Hurd, Anthony Lye, and me. Mark set the stage by giving real-world examples of bad customer experiences, Anthony clearly articulated the business imperative for addressing these experiences, and I brought it all to life by taking the audience around the Customer Lifecycle and showing demos and videos, with partners included at each of the stops around the lifecycle. Brian Curran, a VP for RightNow Product Strategy, presented a session that was in high demand called The Economics of Customer Experience. People loved hearing how to build a business case and justify the cost of building a better customer experience. John Kembel, another VP for RightNow Product Strategy, held a workshop that customers raved about. It was based on the journey mapping methodology he created, which is a way to talk to customers about where they want to make improvements to their customers' experiences. He divided the audience into groups led by facilitators. Each person had the opportunity to engage with experts and peers and construct some real takeaways. From left to right: Brian Curran, John Kembel, Seth Godin, and George Kembel The conference hotel was across from Union Square so we used that space to set up Innovation Tents. During the day we served lunch in the tents and partners showed their different innovative ideas. It was very interesting to see all the technologies and advancements. It also gave people a place to mix and mingle and to think about the fringe of where we could all take these ideas. Product Portfolio Plus Thought Leadership Of course there is always room for improvement, but the feedback on the format of the conference was positive. Ninety percent of the sessions had either a partner or a customer teamed with an Oracle presenter. The presentations weren't dry, one-way information dumps, but more interactive. I just followed up with a CEO who attended the conference with his Head of Marketing. He told me that they are using John Kembel's journey mapping methodology across the organization to pull people together. This sort of thought leadership in these highly competitive areas gives Oracle permission to engage around the technology. We have to differentiate ourselves and it's harder to do on the product side because everyone looks the same on paper. But on thought leadership ? we can, and did, take some really big steps. David VapGroup Vice PresidentOracle Applications Product Development

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The Virtues and Challenges of Implementing Basel III: What Every CFO and CRO Needs To Know

- by Jenna Danko

The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) is a group tasked with providing thought-leadership to the global banking industry. Over the years, the BCBS has released volumes of guidance in an effort to promote stability within the financial sector. By effectively communicating best-practices, the Basel Committee has influenced financial regulations worldwide. Basel regulations are intended to help banks: More easily absorb shocks due to various forms of financial-economic stress Improve risk management and governance Enhance regulatory reporting and transparency In June 2011, the BCBS released Basel III: A global regulatory framework for more resilient banks and banking systems. This new set of regulations included many enhancements to previous rules and will have both short and long term impacts on the banking industry. Some of the key features of Basel III include: A stronger capital base More stringent capital standards and higher capital requirements Introduction of capital buffers Additional risk coverage Enhanced quantification of counterparty credit risk Credit valuation adjustments Wrong way risk Asset Value Correlation Multiplier for large financial institutions Liquidity management and monitoring Introduction of leverage ratio Even more rigorous data requirements To implement these features banks need to embark on a journey replete with challenges. These can be categorized into three key areas: Data, Models and Compliance. Data Challenges Data quality - All standard dimensions of Data Quality (DQ) have to be demonstrated. Manual approaches are now considered too cumbersome and automation has become the norm. Data lineage - Data lineage has to be documented and demonstrated. The PPT / Excel approach to documentation is being replaced by metadata tools. Data lineage has become dynamic due to a variety of factors, making static documentation out-dated quickly. Data dictionaries - A strong and clean business glossary is needed with proper identification of business owners for the data. Data integrity - A strong, scalable architecture with work flow tools helps demonstrate data integrity. Manual touch points have to be minimized. Data relevance/coverage - Data must be relevant to all portfolios and storage devices must allow for sufficient data retention. Coverage of both on and off balance sheet exposures is critical. Model Challenges Model development - Requires highly trained resources with both quantitative and subject matter expertise. Model validation - All Basel models need to be validated. This requires additional resources with skills that may not be readily available in the marketplace. Model documentation - All models need to be adequately documented. Creation of document templates and model development processes/procedures is key. Risk and finance integration - This integration is necessary for Basel as the Allowance for Loan and Lease Losses (ALLL) is calculated by Finance, yet Expected Loss (EL) is calculated by Risk Management – and they need to somehow be equal. This is tricky at best from an implementation perspective. Compliance Challenges Rules interpretation - Some Basel III requirements leave room for interpretation. A misinterpretation of regulations can lead to delays in Basel compliance and undesired reprimands from supervisory authorities. Gap identification and remediation - Internal identification and remediation of gaps ensures smoother Basel compliance and audit processes. However business lines are challenged by the competing priorities which arise from regulatory compliance and business as usual work. Qualification readiness - Providing internal and external auditors with robust evidence of a thorough examination of the readiness to proceed to parallel run and Basel qualification In light of new regulations like Basel III and local variations such as the Dodd Frank Act (DFA) and Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review (CCAR) in the US, banks are now forced to ask themselves many difficult questions. For example, executives must consider: How will Basel III play into their Risk Appetite? How will they create project plans for Basel III when they haven’t yet finished implementing Basel II? How will new regulations impact capital structure including profitability and capital distributions to shareholders? After all, new regulations often lead to diminished profitability as well as an assortment of implementation problems as we discussed earlier in this note. However, by requiring banks to focus on premium growth, regulators increase the potential for long-term profitability and sustainability. And a more stable banking system: Increases consumer confidence which in turn supports banking activity Ensures that adequate funding is available for individuals and companies Puts regulators at ease, allowing bankers to focus on banking Stability is intended to bring long-term profitability to banks. Therefore, it is important that every banking institution takes the steps necessary to properly manage, monitor and disclose its risks. This can be done with the assistance and oversight of an independent regulatory authority. A spectrum of banks exist today wherein some continue to debate and negotiate with regulators over the implementation of new requirements, while others are simply choosing to embrace them for the benefits I highlighted above. Do share with me how your institution is coping with and embracing these new regulations within your bank. Dr. Varun Agarwal is a Principal in the Banking Practice for Capgemini Financial Services. He has over 19 years experience in areas that span from enterprise risk management, credit, market, and to country risk management; financial modeling and valuation; and international financial markets research and analyses.

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My First Weeks at Red Gate

- by Jess Nickson

Hi, my name’s Jess and early September 2012 I started working at Red Gate as a Software Engineer down in The Agency (the Publishing team). This was a bit of a shock, as I didn’t think this team would have any developers! I admit, I was a little worried when it was mentioned that my role was going to be different from normal dev. roles within the company. However, as luck would have it, I was placed within a team that was responsible for the development and maintenance of Simple-Talk and SQL Server Central (SSC). I felt rather unprepared for this role. I hadn’t used many of the technologies involved and of those that I had, I hadn’t looked at them for quite a while. I was, nevertheless, quite excited about this turn of events. As I had predicted, the role has been quite challenging so far. I expected that I would struggle to get my head round the large codebase already in place, having never used anything so much as a fraction of the size of this before. However, I was perhaps a bit naive when it came to how quickly things would move. I was required to start learning/remembering a number of different languages and technologies within time frames I would never have tried to set myself previously. Having said that, my first week was pretty easy. It was filled with meetings that were designed to get the new starters up to speed with the different departments, ideals and rules within the company. I also attended some lightning talks being presented by other employees, which were pretty useful. These occur once a fortnight and normally consist of around four speakers. In my spare time, we set up the Simple-Talk codebase on my computer and I started exploring it and worked on my first feature – redirecting requests for URLs that used incorrect casing! It was also during this time that I was given my first introduction to test-driven development (TDD) with Michael via a code kata. Although I had heard of the general ideas behind TDD, I had definitely never tried it before. Indeed, I hadn’t really done any automated testing of code before, either. The session was therefore very useful and gave me insights as to some of the coding practices used in my team. Although I now understand the importance of TDD, it still seems odd in my head and I’ve yet to master how to sensibly step up the functionality of the code a bit at a time. The second week was both easier and more difficult than the first. I was given a new project to work on, meaning I was no longer using the codebase already in place. My job was to take some designs, a WordPress theme, and some initial content and build a page that allowed users of the site to read provided resources and give feedback. This feedback could include their thoughts about the resource, the topics covered and the page design itself. Although it didn’t sound the most challenging of projects when compared to fixing bugs in our current codebase, it nevertheless provided a few sneaky problems that had me stumped. I really enjoyed working on this project as it allowed me to play around with HTML, CSS and JavaScript; all things that I like working with but rarely have a chance to use. I completed the aims for the project on time and was happy with the final outcome – though it still needs a good designer to take a look at it! I am now into my third week at Red Gate and I have temporarily been pulled off the website from week 2. I am again back to figuring out the Simple-Talk codebase. Monday provided me with the chance to learn a bunch of new things: system level testing, Selenium and Python. I was set the challenge of testing a bug fix dealing with the search bars in Simple-Talk. The exercise was pretty fun, although Mike did have to point me in the right direction when I started making the tests a bit too complex. The rest of the week looks set to be focussed on pair programming with Mike as we work together on a new feature. I look forward to the challenges that still face me and hope that I will be able to get up to speed quickly. *fingers crossed*

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Closing the gap between strategy and execution with Oracle Business Intelligence 11g

- by manan.goel(at)oracle.com

Wikipedia defines strategy as a plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal. An example of this is General Electric's acquisitions and divestiture strategy (plan) designed to propel GE to number 1 or 2 place (goal) in every business segment that it operated in. Execution on the other hand can be defined as the actions taken to getting things done. In GE's case execution will be steps followed for mergers/acquisitions or divestiture. Business press has written extensively about the importance of both strategy and execution in achieving desired business objectives. Perhaps the quote from Thomas Edison says it best - "vision without execution is hallucination". Conversely, it can be said that "execution without vision" is well may be "wishful thinking". Research overwhelmingly point towards the wide gap between strategy and execution. According to a published study, 49% of surveyed executives perceive a gap between their organizations' ability to develop and communicate sound strategies and their ability to implement those strategies. Further, of these respondents, 64% don't have full confidence that their companies will be able to close the gap. Having established the severity and importance of the problem let's talk about the reasons for the strategy-execution gap. The common reasons include: - Lack of clearly defined goals - Lack of consistent measure of success - Lack of ownership - Lack of alignment - Lack of communication - Lack of proper execution - Lack of monitoring There are multiple approaches to solving the problem including organizational development practices, technology enablement etc. In most cases a combination of approaches is required to achieve the desired result. For the purposes of this discussion, I'll focus on technology. Imagine an integrated closed loop technology platform that automates the entire management cycle from defining strategy to assigning ownership to communicating goals to achieving alignment to collaboration to taking actions to monitoring progress and achieving mid course corrections. Besides, for best ROI and lowest TCO such a system should also have characteristics like: Complete - Full functionality - Rich end user access Open - Any data source - Any business application - Any technology stack Integrated - Common metadata - Common security - Common system management From a capabilities perspective the system should provide the following capabilities: Define - Strategy - Objectives - Ownership - KPI's Communicate - Pervasive - Collaborative - Role based - Secure Execute - Integrated - Intuitive - Secure - Ubiquitous Monitor - Multiple styles and formats - Exception based - Push & Pull Having talked about the business problem and outlined the blueprint for a technology solution, let's talk about how Oracle Business Intelligence 11g can help. Oracle Business Intelligence is a comprehensive business intelligence solution for reporting, ad hoc query and analysis, OLAP, dashboards and scorecards. Oracle's best in class BI platform is based on an architecturally integrated technology foundation that provides a unified end user experience and features a Common Enterprise Information Model, with common security, query request generation and optimization, and system management. The BI platform is · Complete - meaning it delivers all modes and styles of BI including reporting, ad hoc query and analysis, OLAP, dashboards and scorecards with a rich end user experience that includes visualization, collaboration, alerts and notifications, search and mobile access. · Open - meaning the BI platform integrates with any data source, ETL tool, business application, application server, security infrastructure, portal technology as well as any ODBC compliant third party analytical tool. The suite accesses data from multiple heterogeneous sources--including popular relational and multidimensional data sources and major ERP and CRM applications from Oracle and SAP. · Integrated - meaning the BI platform is based on an architecturally integrated technology foundation built on an open, standards based service oriented architecture. The platform features a common enterprise information model, common security model and a common configuration, deployment and systems management framework. To summarize, Oracle Business Intelligence is a comprehensive, integrated BI platform that lets you define strategy, identify objectives, assign ownership, define KPI's, collaborate, take action, monitor, report and do course corrections all form a single interface and a single system. The platform's integrated metadata model and task based design ensures that the entire workflow from defining strategy to execution to monitoring is completely integrated delivering end to end visibility, transparency and agility. Click here to learn more about Oracle BI 11g.

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Thou shalt not put code on a piedestal - Code is a tool, no more, no less

- by Ralf Westphal

“Write great code and everything else becomes easier” is what Paul Pagel believes in. That´s his version of an adage by Brian Marick he cites: “treat code as an end, not just a means.” And he concludes: “My post-Agile world is software craftsmanship.” I wonder, if that´s really the way to go. Will “simply” writing great code lead the software industry into the light? He´s alluding to the philosopher Kant who proposed, a human beings should never be treated as a means, but always as an end. But should we transfer this ethical statement into the world of software? I doubt it. Reason #1: Human beings are categorially different from code. They are autonomous entities who need to find a way of living happily together. To Kant it seemed this goal could only be reached if nobody (ab)used a human being for his/her purposes. Because using a human being, i.e. treating it as a means, would contradict the fundamental autonomy and freedom of human beings. People should hold up a symmetric view of their relationships: Since nobody wants to be (ab)used, nobody should (ab)use anybody else. If you want to be treated decently, with respect, in accordance with your own free will - which means as an end - then do the same to other people. Code is dead, it´s a product, it´s a tool for people to reach their goals. No company spends any money on code other than to save money or earn money in the long run. Code is not a puppy. Enterprises do not commission software development to just feel good in its company. Code is not a buddy. Code is a slave, if you will. A mechanical slave, a non-tangible robot. Code is a tool, is a tool. And if we start to treat it differently, if we elevate its status unduely… I guess that will contort our relationship in a contraproductive way. Please get me right: Just because something is “just a tool”, “just a product” does not mean we should not be careful while designing, building, using it. Right to the contrary. We should be very careful when writing code – but not for the code´s sake! We should be careful because we respect our customers who are fellow human beings who should be treated as an end. If we are careless, neglectful, ignorant when producing code on their behalf, then we´re using them. Being sloppy means you´re caring more for yourself that for your customer. You´re then treating the customer as a means to fulfill some of your own needs. That´s plain unethical behavior. Reason #2: The focus should always be on your purpose, not on any tool. But if code is treated as an end, then the focus is on the code. That might sound right, because where else should be your focus as a software developer? But, well, I´d say, your focus should be on delivering value to your customer. Because in the end your customer does not care if you write a single line of code. She just wants her problem to be solved. Solving problems is the purpose of any contractor. Code must be treated just as a means, a tool we know how to handle very well. But if we´re really trying to be craftsmen then we should be conscious about exactly that and act ethically. That means we must never be so focused on our tool as to be unable to suggest better solutions to the problems of our customers than code. I´m all with Paul when he urges us to “Write great code”. Sure, if you need to write code, then by all means do so. Write the best code you can think of – and then try to improve it. Paul has all the best intentions when he signs Brians “treat code as an end” - but as we all know: “The road to hell is paved with best intentions” ;-) Yes, I can imagine a “hell of code focus”. In fact, I don´t need to imagine it, I´m seeing it quite often. Because code hell is whereever two developers stand together and are so immersed in talking about all sorts of coding tricks, design patterns, code smells, technologies, platforms, tools that they lose sight of the big picture. Talking about TDD or SOLID or refactoring is a sign of consciousness – relative to the “cowboy coders” view of the world. But from yet another point of view TDD, SOLID, and refactoring are just cures for ailments within a system. And I fear, if “Writing great code” is the only focus or the main focus of software development, then we as an industry lose the ability to see that. Focus draws a line around something, it defines a horizon for perceptions and thinking. So if we focus on code our horizon ends where “the land of code” ends. I don´t think that should be our professional attitude. So what about Software Craftsmanship as the next big thing after Agility? I think Software Craftsmanship has an important message for all software developers and beyond. But to make it the successor of the Agility movement seems to miss a point. Agility never claimed to solve all software development problems, I´d say. So to blame it for having missed out on certain aspects of it is wrong. If I had to summarize Agility in one word I´d say “Value”. Agility put value for the customer back in software development. Focus on delivering value early and often – that´s Agility´s mantra. All else follows from that. And I ask you: Is that obsolete? Is delivering value not hip anymore? No, sure not. That´s our very purpose as software developers. So how can Agility become obsolete and need to be replaced? We need to do away with this “either/or”-thinking. It´s either Agility or Lean or Software Craftsmanship or whatnot. Instead we should start integrating concepts and movements. Think “both/and”. Think Agility plus Software Craftsmanship plus Lean plus whatnot. We don´t neet to tear down anything from a piedestal and replace it with a new idol. Instead we should do away with piedestals and arrange whatever is helpful is a circle. Then we can turn to concepts, movements for whatever they are best. After 10 years of Agility we should be able to identify what it was good at – and keep that. Keep Agility around and add whatever Agility was lacking or never concerned with. Add whatever is at the core of Software Craftsmanship. Add whatever is at the core of Lean etc. But don´t call out the age of Post-Agility. Because it better never will end. Because once we start to lose Agility´s core we´re losing focus of the customer.

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Columnstore Case Study #2: Columnstore faster than SSAS Cube at DevCon Security

- by aspiringgeek

Preamble This is the second in a series of posts documenting big wins encountered using columnstore indexes in SQL Server 2012 & 2014. Many of these can be found in my big deck along with details such as internals, best practices, caveats, etc. The purpose of sharing the case studies in this context is to provide an easy-to-consume quick-reference alternative. See also Columnstore Case Study #1: MSIT SONAR Aggregations Why Columnstore? As stated previously, If we’re looking for a subset of columns from one or a few rows, given the right indexes, SQL Server can do a superlative job of providing an answer. If we’re asking a question which by design needs to hit lots of rows—DW, reporting, aggregations, grouping, scans, etc., SQL Server has never had a good mechanism—until columnstore. Columnstore indexes were introduced in SQL Server 2012. However, they're still largely unknown. Some adoption blockers existed; yet columnstore was nonetheless a game changer for many apps. In SQL Server 2014, potential blockers have been largely removed & they're going to profoundly change the way we interact with our data. The purpose of this series is to share the performance benefits of columnstore & documenting columnstore is a compelling reason to upgrade to SQL Server 2014. The Customer DevCon Security provides home & business security services & has been in business for 135 years. I met DevCon personnel while speaking to the Utah County SQL User Group on 20 February 2012. (Thanks to TJ Belt (b|@tjaybelt) & Ben Miller (b|@DBADuck) for the invitation which serendipitously coincided with the height of ski season.) The App: DevCon Security Reporting: Optimized & Ad Hoc Queries DevCon users interrogate a SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services cube via SSRS. In addition, the SQL Server 2012 relational back end is the target of ad hoc queries; this DW back end is refreshed nightly during a brief maintenance window via conventional table partition switching. SSRS, SSAS, & MDX Conventional relational structures were unable to provide adequate performance for user interaction for the SSRS reports. An SSAS solution was implemented requiring personnel to ramp up technically, including learning enough MDX to satisfy requirements. Ad Hoc Queries Even though the fact table is relatively small—only 22 million rows & 33GB—the table was a typical DW table in terms of its width: 137 columns, any of which could be the target of ad hoc interrogation. As is common in DW reporting scenarios such as this, it is often nearly to optimize for such queries using conventional indexing. DevCon DBAs & developers attended PASS 2012 & were introduced to the marvels of columnstore in a session presented by Klaus Aschenbrenner (b|@Aschenbrenner) The Details Classic vs. columnstore before-&-after metrics are impressive. Scenario Conventional Structures Columnstore ? SSRS via SSAS 10 - 12 seconds 1 second >10x Ad Hoc 5-7 minutes (300 - 420 seconds) 1 - 2 seconds >100x Here are two charts characterizing this data graphically. The first is a linear representation of Report Duration (in seconds) for Conventional Structures vs. Columnstore Indexes. As is so often the case when we chart such significant deltas, the linear scale doesn’t expose some the dramatically improved values corresponding to the columnstore metrics. Just to make it fair here’s the same data represented logarithmically; yet even here the values corresponding to 1 –2 seconds aren’t visible. The Wins Performance: Even prior to columnstore implementation, at 10 - 12 seconds canned report performance against the SSAS cube was tolerable. Yet the 1 second performance afterward is clearly better. As significant as that is, imagine the user experience re: ad hoc interrogation. The difference between several minutes vs. one or two seconds is a game changer, literally changing the way users interact with their data—no mental context switching, no wondering when the results will appear, no preoccupation with the spinning mind-numbing hurry-up-&-wait indicators. As we’ve commonly found elsewhere, columnstore indexes here provided performance improvements of one, two, or more orders of magnitude. Simplified Infrastructure: Because in this case a nonclustered columnstore index on a conventional DW table was faster than an Analysis Services cube, the entire SSAS infrastructure was rendered superfluous & was retired. PASS Rocks: Once again, the value of attending PASS is proven out. The trip to Charlotte combined with eager & enquiring minds let directly to this success story. Find out more about the next PASS Summit here, hosted this year in Seattle on November 4 - 7, 2014. DevCon BI Team Lead Nathan Allan provided this unsolicited feedback: “What we found was pretty awesome. It has been a game changer for us in terms of the flexibility we can offer people that would like to get to the data in different ways.” Summary For DW, reports, & other BI workloads, columnstore often provides significant performance enhancements relative to conventional indexing. I have documented here, the second in a series of reports on columnstore implementations, results from DevCon Security, a live customer production app for which performance increased by factors of from 10x to 100x for all report queries, including canned queries as well as reducing time for results for ad hoc queries from 5 - 7 minutes to 1 - 2 seconds. As a result of columnstore performance, the customer retired their SSAS infrastructure. I invite you to consider leveraging columnstore in your own environment. Let me know if you have any questions.

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Updated Agenda for OTN Architect Day Los Angeles (Oct 25)

- by Bob Rhubart

Here's the latest information on the session schedule and content for Oracle Technology Network Architect Day in Los Angeles on October 25, 2012. Registration is open, but seating is limited. When: Thursday October 25 12, 2012 8:30am – 5:00pm Where: Sofitel Los Angeles 8555 Beverly Boulevard Los Angeles, CA 90048 Agenda Time Session Title Room 8:30 am - 9:00 am Registration and Continental Breakfast 9:00 am - 9:15 am Welcome and Opening Comments | Bob Rhubart Beverly Ballroom 9:15 am - 10:00 am Engineered Systems: Oracle's Vision for the Future | Ralf Dossmann Oracle's Exadata and Exalogic are impressive products in their own right. But working in combination they deliver unparalleled transaction processing performance with up to a 30x increase over existing legacy systems, with the lowest cost of ownership over a 3 or 5 year basis than any other hardware. In this session you'll learn how to leverage Oracle's Engineered Systems within your enterprise to deliver record-breaking performance at the lowest TCO. Beverly Ballroom 10:00 am - 10:30 am Monitoring and Managing Applications in the Cloud | Basheer Khan Oracle offers a broad portfolio of software and hardware products and services to enable public, private and hybrid clouds to power the enterprise. However, enterprise cloud computing presents new management challenges, that need to be addressed to realize the economic benefits of cloud computing. In this session you will learn about the methods and tools you can use to proactively monitor your end-to-end Oracle Applications environment in the cloud, define service-level objectives, gain insight into your end users, and troubleshoot performance problems from a single console. Beverly Ballroom 10:30 am - 10:45 am Break 10:45 am - 11:30 am Breakout Sessions (pick one) Cloud Computing - Making IT Simple | Dr. James Baty The road to Cloud Computing is not without a few bumps. This session will help to smooth out your journey by tackling some of the potential complications. We'll examine whether standardization is a prerequisite for the Cloud. We'll look at why refactoring isn't just for application code. We'll check out deployable entities and their simplification via higher levels of abstraction. And we'll close out the session with a look at engineered systems and modular clouds. Beverly Ballroom Innovations in Grid Computing with Oracle Coherence | Ashok Aletty Learn how Oracle Coherence can increase the availability, scalability and performance of your existing applications with its advanced low-latency data-grid technologies. Also hear some interesting industry-specific use cases that customers had implemented and how Oracle is integrating Coherence into its Enterprise Java stack. Hollywood Room 11:30 am - 12:15 pm Breakout Sessions (pick one) Enterprise Strategy for Cloud Security | Dave Chappelle Security is high on the list of concerns for many organizations as they evaluate their cloud computing options. This session will examine security in the context of the various forms of cloud computing. We'll consider technical and non-technical aspects of security, and discuss several strategies for cloud computing, from both the consumer and producer perspectives. Beverly Ballroom Oracle Enterprise Manager | Perren Walker This session examines new Oracle Enterprise Manager monitoring, administration, and management features for Oracle Exalogic. It focuses on two management themes: cloud management related to virtualization and applications-to-disk management. For private cloud management, it discusses virtualization management features providing an enhanced set of application deployment capabilities enabling IaaS as well as PaaS interactions. Then from an end-to-end perspective, it covers the specific capabilities and—where applicable—best practices for machine, cloud, middleware, and application administration. Hollywood Room 12:15 pm - 1:15 pm Lunch Beverly Ballroom Lounge 1:15 pm - 2:00 pm Panel Discussion - Q&A with session speakers Beverly Ballroom 2:00 pm - 2:45 pm Breakout Sessions (pick one) Oracle Cloud Reference Architecture | Anbu Krishnaswamy Cloud initiatives are beginning to dominate enterprise IT roadmaps. Successful adoption of Cloud and the subsequent governance challenges warrant a Cloud reference architecture that is applied consistently across the enterprise. This presentation will answer the important questions: What exactly is a Cloud, why you need it, what changes it will bring to the enterprise, and what are the key capabilities of a Cloud infrastructure are - using Oracle's Cloud Reference Architecture, which is part of the IT Strategies from Oracle (ITSO) Cloud Enterprise Technology Strategy ETS). Beverly Ballroom 21st Century SOA | Jeff Davies Service Oriented Architecture has evolved from concept to reality in the last decade. The right methodology coupled with mature SOA technologies has helped customers demonstrate success in both innovation and ROI. In this session you will learn how Oracle SOA Suite's orchestration, virtualization, and governance capabilities provide the infrastructure to run mission critical business and system applications. We'll also take a special look at the convergence of SOA & BPM using Oracle's Unified technology stack. Hollywood Room 2:45 pm - 3:00 pm Break 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm Roundtable Discussion Beverly Ballroom 4:00 pm - 4:15 pm Closing Comments & Readouts from Roundtables Beverly Ballroom 4:15 pm - 5:00 pm Networking / Reception Beverly Ballroom Lounge Note: Session schedule and content subject to change.

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Easing the Journey to the Private Cloud with Oracle Consulting

- by MichaelM-Oracle

By Sanjai Marimadaiah, Senior Director, Strategy & Business Development – Cloud Solutions, Oracle Consulting Services Business leaders are now leading the charge on how their firms can profit from cloud solutions. Agility and innovation are becoming the primary drivers of the business case for the cloud, even more than the anticipated cost savings. Leaders need to find the right strategy and optimize the use of cloud-based applications across their enterprise-computing infrastructure. The Problem – Current State With prevalent IT practices, many organizations find that they run multiple IT solutions serving similar business needs. This has led to the proliferation of technology stacks, for example: Oracle 10g on Sun T4 running Solaris 9; Oracle 11g on Exadata running Linux; or Oracle 12c on commodity x86 servers. This variance has a huge impact on an organization’s agility and expenses, and requires IT professionals with varied skills as well as on-going training for different systems and tools. Fortunately there is a practical business strategy to overcome this unneeded redundancy. Thus begins a journey to the right cloud computing solution. The Solution – Cloud Services from Oracle Consulting Services (OCS) Oracle Consulting Services (OCS ) works closely with our clients as trusted advisors to proactively respond to business needs and IT concerns. OCS understands that making the transition to cloud solutions begins with a strategic conversation, based on its deep expertise for successfully completing private cloud service engagements with several companies. For a journey to the cloud, Oracle Consulting Services leads the client through four phases– standardization, consolidation, service delivery, and enterprise cloud – to achieve optimal returns. Phase 1 - Standardization Oracle Consulting Services (OCS) works with clients to evaluate their business requirements and propose a set of standard solutions stacks for various IT solutions. This is an opportune time to evaluate cloud ready solutions, such as Oracle 12c, Oracle Exadata, and the Oracle Database Appliance (ODA). The OCS consultants, together with the delivery team, then turn to upgrading and migrating existing solution stacks to standardized offerings. OCS has the expertise and tools to complete this stage in a fraction of the time required by other IT services companies. Clients quickly realize cost savings in tools, processes, and type/number of resources required. This standardization also improves agility of the IT organizations and their abilities to respond to the needs of various business units. Phase 2 - Consolidation During the consolidation phase, OCS consultants programmatically consolidate hundreds of databases into a smaller number of servers to improve utilization, reduce floor space, and optimize maintenance costs. Consolidation helps clients realize huge savings in CapEx investments and shrink OpEx costs. The use of engineered systems, such as Oracle Exadata, greatly reduces the client’s risk of moving to a new solution stack. OCS recommends clients to pursue Phase 1 (Standardization) and Phase 2 (Consolidation) simultaneously to reduce the overall time, effort, and expense of the cloud journey. Phase 3 - Service Delivery Once a client is on a path of standardization and consolidation, OCS consultants create Service Catalogues based on the SLAs requirements and the criticality of the solutions. The number and types of Service Catalogues (Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze, etc.) vary from client to client. OCS consultants also implement a variety of value-added cloud solutions, including monitoring, metering, and charge-back solutions. At this stage, clients are able to achieve a high level of understanding in their cloud journey. Their IT organizations are operating efficiently and are more agile in responding to the needs of business units. Phase 4 - Enterprise Cloud In the final phase of the cloud journey, the economics of the IT organizations change. Business units can request services on-demand; applications can be deployed and consumed on a pay-as-you-go model. OCS has the expertise and capabilities to establish processes, programs, and solutions required for IT organizations to transform how they interact with business units. The Promise of Cloud Solutions Depending the size and complexity of their business model, some clients are able to abbreviate some phases of their cloud journey. Cloud solutions are still evolving and there is rapid pace of innovation to transform how IT organizations operate. The lesson is clear. Cloud solutions hold a lot of promise for business agility. Business leaders can now leverage an additional set of capabilities and services. They can ramp up their pace of innovation. With cloud maturity, they can compete more effectively in their respective markets. But there are certainly challenges ahead. A skilled consulting services partner can play a pivotal role as a trusted advisor in the successful adoption of cloud solutions. Oracle Consulting Services has expertise and a portfolio of services to help clients succeed on their journey to the cloud.

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Many Different Things Rolled into a Ball

- by MOSSLover

Yeah I know I don’t blog much anymore, because life has taken me places that don’t involve the interwebs unfortunately. I am in the midst of planning two events, starting a non for profit, creating more sessions for various conferences, submitting to various conferences, working a 40 hour a week job, attempting to hang out with boyfriend/friends/family. So you can see that list does not include this blog sadly that’s how it goes sometimes. The bottom piece very important over any of the top pieces. I haven’t seen St. Louis in a while and I get to go back. I was gone from home for MVP Summit and Best Practices Conference, so the boyfriend and cat didn’t get to see me either for a bit. Then you have to add in the whole toilet being broken fiasco this week. Maintenance really thought it would be cool to turn off the ability to flush. I mean who does that? Then when we call the owner he comes by turns it on and we figure it was an accident, because well the next day no one came by to tell us there was a leak. It was all kinds of strangeness and involved me running to other people’s toilets. As Dan Usher would say, I was a sad panda for a few days. So I guess I wanted to post a few thoughts here just because I can. I do not like multiple content editor webparts embedded with html files in numerous pages doing the same thing. I will tell you why I don’t like these particular webparts and the way they are being used. First off if you have a bunch of pages with script includes it’s about time you should just dump them into the masterpage. Why bother finding all 20 pages and changing those pages when you can just use a single masterpage that already exists? The other thing that is bothering me days is screen scraping. Just don’t do it, because in 2010 you will find the UI is substantially slower. I understand you are new and you have no idea what to do. You are also using 2007 am I right? So then you need to go to codeplex.com and type in a search for SPServices. Download it, use it, love it and then have it’s babies (well maybe don’t go so far this is not the GRID in Tron). If you have a ton of constants in your code why did you not go in and create a webpart with a bunch of properties and/or link to a configuration list hidden in the browser? This type of property and list could help you out in the long run. The power users and administrators can now change the control without you having to compile it over and over again. It’s good stuff. Also, you can change the control without compiling it, especially in 2007 where you have to do a farm solution. In 2010 you can do a sandbox solution I guess, but shouldn’t you make it as easy and supportable as possible for other users? In conclusion I’m an angry person when it comes to viewing something repeatedly and analyzing it in a system. Now we will move on to the next topic…MVP Summit…So yeah I can’t really talk about particulars, but I can talk about my experience as a person. Don’t build something up to be cooler than it is only to be dropped from your 10,000 foot perch. My experience was great, but the content overall was something to be desired. It’s ok I got to meet a lot of people I would not have met if I had not gone. Some of it was surreal, such as product group members showing up and talking to us. It was pretty neat. Plus I never had the chance to get to that mythical MS Office in Redmond. Prior to Summit it was like Rainbow Brites unicorn trying taunting me on television when I was a kid. So I guess with all that said I give it a B. It was awesome in some way, but lacking in other ways. The cool part is that I got to go. Would I have lived without going? Yes, but it was still cool. I could prattle on about other things and make this post massive, but I’m going to pass and give myself a piece of Sunday to play Rockband and do 800 other things. I hope the two of you who read this blog are well. I’ll catch you all at another juncture. Have a good weekend and varying holidays in between. Technorati Tags: SharePoint,MVP Summit,JQuery,Javascript

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Five Key Strategies in Master Data Management

- by david.butler(at)oracle.com

Here is a very interesting Profit Magazine article on MDM: A recent customer survey reveals the deleterious effects of data fragmentation. by Trevor Naidoo, December 2010 Across industries and geographies, IT organizations have grown in complexity, whether due to mergers and acquisitions, or decentralized systems supporting functional or departmental requirements. With systems architected over time to support unique, one-off process needs, they are becoming costly to maintain, and the Internet has only further added to the complexity. Data fragmentation has become a key inhibitor in delivering flexible, user-friendly systems. The Oracle Insight team conducted a survey assessing customers' master data management (MDM) capabilities over the past two years to get a sense of where they are in terms of their capabilities. The responses, by 27 respondents from six different industries, reveal five key areas in which customers need to improve their data management in order to get better financial results. 1. Less than 15 percent of organizations surveyed understand the sources and quality of their master data, and have a roadmap to address missing data domains. Examples of the types of master data domains referred to are customer, supplier, product, financial and site. Many organizations have multiple sources of master data with varying degrees of data quality in each source -- customer data stored in the customer relationship management system is inconsistent with customer data stored in the order management system. Imagine not knowing how many places you stored your customer information, and whether a customer's address was the most up to date in each source. In fact, more than 55 percent of the respondents in the survey manage their data quality on an ad-hoc basis. It is important for organizations to document their inventory of data sources and then profile these data sources to ensure that there is a consistent definition of key data entities throughout the organization. Some questions to ask are: How do we define a customer? What is a product? How do we define a site? The goal is to strive for one common repository for master data that acts as a cross reference for all other sources and ensures consistent, high-quality master data throughout the organization. 2. Only 18 percent of respondents have an enterprise data management strategy to ensure that data is treated as an asset to the organization. Most respondents handle data at the department or functional level and do not have an enterprise view of their master data. The sales department may track all their interactions with customers as they move through the sales cycle, the service department is tracking their interactions with the same customers independently, and the finance department also has a different perspective on the same customer. The salesperson may not be aware that the customer she is trying to sell to is experiencing issues with existing products purchased, or that the customer is behind on previous invoices. The lack of a data strategy makes it difficult for business users to turn data into information via reports. Without the key building blocks in place, it is difficult to create key linkages between customer, product, site, supplier and financial data. These linkages make it possible to understand patterns. A well-defined data management strategy is aligned to the business strategy and helps create the governance needed to ensure that data stewardship is in place and data integrity is intact. 3. Almost 60 percent of respondents have no strategy to integrate data across operational applications. Many respondents have several disparate sources of data with no strategy to keep them in sync with each other. Even though there is no clear strategy to integrate the data (see #2 above), the data needs to be synced and cross-referenced to keep the business processes running. About 55 percent of respondents said they perform this integration on an ad hoc basis, and in many cases, it is done manually with the help of Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. For example, a salesperson needs a report on global sales for a specific product, but the product has different product numbers in different countries. Typically, an analyst will pull all the data into Excel, manually create a cross reference for that product, and then aggregate the sales. The exact same procedure has to be followed if the same report is needed the following month. A well-defined consolidation strategy will ensure that a central cross-reference is maintained with updates in any one application being propagated to all the other systems, so that data is synchronized and up to date. This can be done in real time or in batch mode using integration technology. 4. Approximately 50 percent of respondents spend manual efforts cleansing and normalizing data. Information stored in various systems usually follows different standards and formats, making it difficult to match the data. A customer's address can be stored in different ways using a variety of abbreviations -- for example, "av" or "ave" for avenue. Similarly, a product's attributes can be stored in a number of different ways; for example, a size attribute can be stored in inches and can also be entered as "'' ". These types of variations make it difficult to match up data from different sources. Today, most customers rely on manual, heroic efforts to match, cleanse, and de-duplicate data -- clearly not a scalable, sustainable model. To solve this challenge, organizations need the ability to standardize data for customers, products, sites, suppliers and financial accounts; however, less than 10 percent of respondents have technology in place to automatically resolve duplicates. It is no wonder, therefore, that we get communications about products we don't own, at addresses we don't reside, and using channels (like direct mail) we don't like. An all-too-common example of a potential challenge follows: Customers end up receiving duplicate communications, which not only impacts customer satisfaction, but also incurs additional mailing costs. Cleansing, normalizing, and standardizing data will help address most of these issues. 5. Only 10 percent of respondents have the ability to share data that was mastered in a master data hub. Close to 60 percent of respondents have efforts in place that profile, standardize and cleanse data manually, and the output of these efforts are stored in spreadsheets in various parts of the organization. This valuable information is not easily shared with the rest of the organization and, more importantly, this enriched information cannot be sent back to the source systems so that the data is fixed at the source. A key benefit of a master data management strategy is not only to clean the data, but to also share the data back to the source systems as well as other systems that need the information. Aside from the source systems, another key beneficiary of this data is the business intelligence system. Having clean master data as input to business intelligence systems provides more accurate and enhanced reporting. Characteristics of Stellar MDM When deciding on the right master data management technology, organizations should look for solutions that have four main characteristics: enterprise-grade MDM performance complete technology that can be rapidly deployed and addresses multiple business issues end-to-end MDM process management with data quality monitoring and assurance pre-built MDM business relevant applications with data stores and workflows These master data management capabilities will aid in moving closer to a best-practice maturity level, delivering tremendous efficiencies and savings as well as revenue growth opportunities as a result of better understanding your customers. Trevor Naidoo is a senior director in Industry Strategy and Insight at Oracle.

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The Customer Experience Imperative: A Game Changer for Brands

- by Jeri Kelley

By Anthony Lye, SVP, Cloud Applications Strategy, Oracle We know that customer experience has emerged as a primary differentiator for businesses today. I’ve talked a lot about the new age of the empowered consumer. At Oracle we’ve spent a lot of time developing technologies and practices that our customers can implement to greatly improve their customer experience strategies. Of course I’m biased, but I think that we have created a portfolio of the best solutions on the planet to help organizations deal with the challenges of providing great customer experiences. We’ve done this because we started to witness some trends over the last few years. As the average person began to utilize social and mobile technologies more frequently and products commoditized, customer experience truly remained the only sustainable differentiator for businesses.In fact, we have seen that customer experience is often driving the success or the failure of a product or a brand. And as end customers have become more vocal about their experiences with companies on social and mobile channels, they now have the power to decide which brands will win and which brands will lose. To address this customer experience imperative, I believe that business today must do three things really well:Connect with your customers. You have to connect with customers whenever, wherever and however they want. Organizations must provide a great experience on their existing channels— the call center, the brick and mortar store, the field sales organizations, the websites and social properties. Businesses must also be great at managing and delivering journeys on these channels, while quickly adapting to embrace the new channels that emerge. You have to understand mobile. You have to understand social. You have to understand kiosks. These are all new routes to market, new channels where your customers may or may not show up. You have to interact with them where they are. You have to present information in a way that's meaningful to them. As well as providing what we would call a multichannel experience. We have to recognize that customers may start their experience on one channel, but end it on a different channel. It’s important that an organization’s technology solutions enable, not just a multichannel strategy, but a strategy that can power new channels and create customer journeys that cross these channels.Get to know your customers. Next, companies need to get to know the customer as intimately as the customer will allow. Today most customer interactions are anonymous, but it’s important for brands to know which customers drive value. Customers want to provide feedback. They want to share their opinions, but they want to know that those opinions are being heard and acted upon. For this to occur, we need to know much more about the customer and then reward them for their loyalty and for their advocacy.Enable connections. The last thing is to enable people to connect or transact with your brand. We've got to make it really, really simple for customers to do business with us. We can't make them repeat the steps; we can't make them tell us their identity for the fifth time as they move between organizations. These silos can no longer sustain or deliver a good customer experience. It's extremely important that companies be where customers want them to be—that we create profitable journeys for us and for them.Organizations have to make sure that there is a single source of truth that defines the customer. We have to make sure that the technology applications that we rely on understand not just the dimensions of multichannel, but of cross-channel too. We have to enable social at the very core of the overall architecture. We have to use historical analytics, real-time decisioning as well as predictive analytics to help personalize and drive an experience. And these are all technologies that IT needs, that IT is familiar with, but needs to enable for the line of business that in turn can enable for the end customer. This means that we've got to make our solutions available to the customers in the cloud.In this new age of the empowered consumer, businesses have to focus on delivery mechanisms that reduce the overall TCO, while driving a rapid rate of innovation and a more rapid rate of deployment. At the Oracle Customer Experience Summit @ OpenWorld, I’ll discuss these issues and more. I hope that you can join us for what promises to be an unforgettable experience.

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Easy Made Easier

- by dragonfly

How easy is it to deploy a 2 node, fully redundant Oracle RAC cluster? Not very. Unless you use an Oracle Database Appliance. The focus of this member of Oracle's Engineered Systems family is to simplify the configuration, management and maintenance throughout the life of the system, while offering pay-as-you-grow scaling. Getting a 2-node RAC cluster up and running in under 2 hours has been made possible by the Oracle Database Appliance. Don't take my word for it, just check out these blog posts from partners and end users. The Oracle Database Appliance Experience - Zip Zoom Zoom http://www.fuadarshad.com/2012/02/oracle-database-appliance-experience.html Off-the-shelf Oracle database servers http://normanweaver.wordpress.com/2011/10/10/off-the-shelf-oracle-database-servers/ Oracle Database Appliance – Deployment Steps http://marcel.vandewaters.nl/oracle/database-appliance/oracle-database-appliance-deployment-steps See how easy it is to deploy an Oracle Database Appliance for high availability with RAC? Now for the meat of this post, which is the first in a series of posts describing tips for making the deployment of an ODA even easier. The key to the easy deployment of an Oracle Database Appliance is the Appliance Manager software, which does the actual software deployment and configuration, based on best practices. But in order for it to do that, it needs some basic information first, including system name, IP addresses, etc. That's where the Appliance Manager GUI comes in to play, taking a wizard approach to specifying the information needed. Using the Appliance Manager GUI is pretty straight forward, stepping through several screens of information to enter data in typical wizard style. Like most configuration tasks, it helps to gather the required information before hand. But before you rush out to a committee meeting on what to use for host names, and rely on whatever IP addresses might be hanging around, make sure you are familiar with some of the auto-fill defaults for the Appliance Manager. I'll step through the key screens below to highlight the results of the auto-fill capability of the Appliance Manager GUI. Depending on which of the 2 Configuration Types (Config Type screen) you choose, you will get a slightly different set of screens. The Typical configuration assumes certain default configuration choices and has the fewest screens, where as the Custom configuration gives you the most flexibility in what you configure from the start. In the examples below, I have used the Custom config type. One of the first items you are asked for is the System Name (System Info screen). This is used to identify the system, but also as the base for the default hostnames on following screens. In this screen shot, the System Name is "oda". When you get to the next screen (Generic Network screen), you enter your domain name, DNS IP address(es), and NTP IP address(es). Next up is the Public Network screen, seen below, where you will see the host name fields are automatically filled in with default host names based on the System Name, in this case "oda". The System Name is also the basis for default host names for the extra ethernet ports available for configuration as part of a Custom configuration, as seen in the 2nd screen shot below (Other Network). There is no requirement to use these host names, as you can easily edit any of the host names. This does make filling in the configuration details easier and less prone to "fat fingers" if you are OK with these host names. Here is a full list of the automatically filled in host names. 1 2 1-vip 2-vip -scan 1-ilom 2-ilom 1-net1 2-net1 1-net2 2-net2 1-net3 2-net3 Another auto-fill feature of the Appliance Manager GUI follows a common practice of deploying IP Addresses for a RAC cluster in sequential order. In the screen shot below, I entered the first IP address (Node1-IP), then hit Tab to move to the next field. As a result, the next 5 IP address fields were automatically filled in with the next 5 IP addresses sequentially from the first one I entered. As with the host names, these are not required, and can be changed to whatever your IP address values are. One note of caution though, if the first IP Address field (Node1-IP) is filled out and you click in that field and back out, the following 5 IP addresses will be set to the sequential default. If you don't use the sequential IP addresses, pay attention to where you click that mouse. :-) In the screen shot below, by entering the netmask value in the Netmask field, in this case 255.255.255.0, the gateway value was auto-filled into the Gateway field, based on the IP addresses and netmask previously entered. As always, you can change this value. My last 2 screen shots illustrate that the same sequential IP address autofill and netmask to gateway autofill works when entering the IP configuration details for the Integrated Lights Out Manager (ILOM) for both nodes. The time these auto-fill capabilities save in entering data is nice, but from my perspective not as important as the opportunity to avoid data entry errors. In my next post in this series, I will touch on the benefit of using the network validation capability of the Appliance Manager GUI prior to deploying an Oracle Database Appliance.

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Team Foundation Server (TFS) Team Build Custom Activity C# Code for Assembly Stamping

- by Bob Hardister

For the full context and guidance on how to develop and implement a custom activity in Team Build see the Microsoft Visual Studio Rangers Team Foundation Build Customization Guide V.1 at http://vsarbuildguide.codeplex.com/ There are many ways to stamp or set the version number of your assemblies. This approach is based on the build number. namespace CustomActivities { using System; using System.Activities; using System.IO; using System.Text.RegularExpressions; using Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Build.Client; [BuildActivity(HostEnvironmentOption.Agent)] public sealed class VersionAssemblies : CodeActivity { /// <summary> /// AssemblyInfoFileMask /// </summary> [RequiredArgument] public InArgument<string> AssemblyInfoFileMask { get; set; } /// <summary> /// SourcesDirectory /// </summary> [RequiredArgument] public InArgument<string> SourcesDirectory { get; set; } /// <summary> /// BuildNumber /// </summary> [RequiredArgument] public InArgument<string> BuildNumber { get; set; } /// <summary> /// BuildDirectory /// </summary> [RequiredArgument] public InArgument<string> BuildDirectory { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Publishes field values to the build report /// </summary> public OutArgument<string> DiagnosticTextOut { get; set; } // If your activity returns a value, derive from CodeActivity<TResult> and return the value from the Execute method. protected override void Execute(CodeActivityContext context) { // Obtain the runtime value of the input arguments string sourcesDirectory = context.GetValue(this.SourcesDirectory); string assemblyInfoFileMask = context.GetValue(this.AssemblyInfoFileMask); string buildNumber = context.GetValue(this.BuildNumber); string buildDirectory = context.GetValue(this.BuildDirectory); // ** Determine the version number values ** // Note: the format used here is: major.secondary.maintenance.build // ----------------------------------------------------------------- // Obtain the build definition name int nameStart = buildDirectory.LastIndexOf(@"\") + 1; string buildDefinitionName = buildDirectory.Substring(nameStart); // Set the primary.secondary.maintenance values // NOTE: these are hard coded in this example, but could be sourced from a file or parsed from a build definition name that includes them string p = "1"; string s = "5"; string m = "2"; // Initialize the build number string b; string na = "0"; // used for Assembly and Product Version instead of build number (see versioning best practices: **TBD reference) // Set qualifying product version information string productInfo = "RC2"; // Obtain the build increment number from the build number // NOTE: this code assumes the default build definition name format int buildIncrementNumberDelimterIndex = buildNumber.LastIndexOf("."); b = buildNumber.Substring(buildIncrementNumberDelimterIndex + 1); // Convert version to integer values int pVer = Convert.ToInt16(p); int sVer = Convert.ToInt16(s); int mVer = Convert.ToInt16(m); int bNum = Convert.ToInt16(b); int naNum = Convert.ToInt16(na); // ** Get all AssemblyInfo files and stamp them ** // Note: the mapping of AssemblyInfo.cs attributes to assembly display properties are as follows: // - AssemblyVersion = Assembly Version - used for the assembly version (does not change unless p, s or m values are changed) // - AssemblyFileVersion = File Version - used for the file version (changes with every build) // - AssemblyInformationalVersion = Product Version - used for the product version (can include additional version information) // ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Version assemblyVersion = new Version(pVer, sVer, mVer, naNum); Version newAssemblyFileVersion = new Version(pVer, sVer, mVer, bNum); Version productVersion = new Version(pVer, sVer, mVer); // Setup diagnostic fields int numberOfReplacements = 0; string addedAssemblyInformationalAttribute = "No"; // Enumerate over the assemblyInfo version attributes foreach (string attribute in new[] { "AssemblyVersion", "AssemblyFileVersion", "AssemblyInformationalVersion" }) { // Define the regular expression to find in each and every Assemblyinfo.cs files (which is for example 'AssemblyVersion("1.0.0.0")' ) Regex regex = new Regex(attribute + @"$""\d+\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+""$"); foreach (string file in Directory.EnumerateFiles(sourcesDirectory, assemblyInfoFileMask, SearchOption.AllDirectories)) { string text = File.ReadAllText(file); // Read the text from the AssemblyInfo file // If the AsemblyInformationalVersion attribute is not in the file, add it as the last line of the file // Note: by default the AssemblyInfo.cs files will not contain the AssemblyInformationalVersion attribute if (!text.Contains("[assembly: AssemblyInformationalVersion(\"")) { string lastLine = Environment.NewLine + "[assembly: AssemblyInformationalVersion(\"1.0.0.0\")]"; text = text + lastLine; addedAssemblyInformationalAttribute = "Yes"; } // Search for the expression Match match = regex.Match(text); if (match.Success) { // Get file attributes FileAttributes fileAttributes = File.GetAttributes(file); // Set file to read only File.SetAttributes(file, fileAttributes & ~FileAttributes.ReadOnly); // Insert AssemblyInformationalVersion attribute into the file text if does not already exist string newText = string.Empty; if (attribute == "AssemblyVersion") { newText = regex.Replace(text, attribute + "(\"" + assemblyVersion + "\")"); numberOfReplacements++; } if (attribute == "AssemblyFileVersion") { newText = regex.Replace(text, attribute + "(\"" + newAssemblyFileVersion + "\")"); numberOfReplacements++; } if (attribute == "AssemblyInformationalVersion") { newText = regex.Replace(text, attribute + "(\"" + productVersion + " " + productInfo + "\")"); numberOfReplacements++; } // Publish diagnostics to build report (diagnostic verbosity only) context.SetValue(this.DiagnosticTextOut, " Added AssemblyInformational Attribute: " + addedAssemblyInformationalAttribute + " Number of replacements: " + numberOfReplacements + " Build number: " + buildNumber + " Build directory: " + buildDirectory + " Build definition name: " + buildDefinitionName + " Assembly version: " + assemblyVersion + " New file version: " + newAssemblyFileVersion + " Product version: " + productVersion + " AssemblyInfo.cs Text Last Stamped: " + newText); // Write the new text in the AssemblyInfo file File.WriteAllText(file, newText); // restore the file's original attributes File.SetAttributes(file, fileAttributes); } } } } } }

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Computer Networks UNISA - Chap 15 – Network Management

- by MarkPearl

After reading this section you should be able to Understand network management and the importance of documentation, baseline measurements, policies, and regulations to assess and maintain a network’s health. Manage a network’s performance using SNMP-based network management software, system and event logs, and traffic-shaping techniques Identify the reasons for and elements of an asset managements system Plan and follow regular hardware and software maintenance routines Fundamentals of Network Management Network management refers to the assessment, monitoring, and maintenance of all aspects of a network including checking for hardware faults, ensuring high QoS, maintaining records of network assets, etc. Scope of network management differs depending on the size and requirements of the network. All sub topics of network management share the goals of enhancing the efficiency and performance while preventing costly downtime or loss. Documentation The way documentation is stored may vary, but to adequately manage a network one should at least record the following… Physical topology (types of LAN and WAN topologies – ring, star, hybrid) Access method (does it use Ethernet 802.3, token ring, etc.) Protocols Devices (Switches, routers, etc) Operating Systems Applications Configurations (What version of operating system and config files for serve / client software) Baseline Measurements A baseline is a report of the network’s current state of operation. Baseline measurements might include the utilization rate for your network backbone, number of users logged on per day, etc. Baseline measurements allow you to compare future performance increases or decreases caused by network changes or events with past network performance. Obtaining baseline measurements is the only way to know for certain whether a pattern of usage has changed, or whether a network upgrade has made a difference. There are various tools available for measuring baseline performance on a network. Policies, Procedures, and Regulations Following rules helps limit chaos, confusion, and possibly downtime. The following policies and procedures and regulations make for sound network management. Media installations and management (includes designing physical layout of cable, etc.) Network addressing policies (includes choosing and applying a an addressing scheme) Resource sharing and naming conventions (includes rules for logon ID’s) Security related policies Troubleshooting procedures Backup and disaster recovery procedures In addition to internal policies, a network manager must consider external regulatory rules. Fault and Performance Management After documenting every aspect of your network and following policies and best practices, you are ready to asses you networks status on an on going basis. This process includes both performance management and fault management. Network Management Software To accomplish both fault and performance management, organizations often use enterprise-wide network management software. There various software packages that do this, each collect data from multiple networked devices at regular intervals, in a process called polling. Each managed device runs a network management agent. So as not to affect the performance of a device while collecting information, agents do not demand significant processing resources. The definition of a managed devices and their data are collected in a MIB (Management Information Base). Agents communicate information about managed devices via any of several application layer protocols. On modern networks most agents use SNMP which is part of the TCP/IP suite and typically runs over UDP on port 161. Because of the flexibility and sophisticated network management applications are a challenge to configure and fine-tune. One needs to be careful to only collect relevant information and not cause performance issues (i.e. pinging a device every 5 seconds can be a problem with thousands of devices). MRTG (Multi Router Traffic Grapher) is a simple command line utility that uses SNMP to poll devices and collects data in a log file. MRTG can be used with Windows, UNIX and Linux. System and Event Logs Virtually every condition recognized by an operating system can be recorded. This is typically done using event logs. In Windows there is a GUI event log viewer. Similar information is recorded in UNIX and Linux in a system log. Much of the information collected in event logs and syslog files does not point to a problem, even if it is marked with a warning so it is important to filter your logs appropriately to reduce the noise. Traffic Shaping When a network must handle high volumes of network traffic, users benefit from performance management technique called traffic shaping. Traffic shaping involves manipulating certain characteristics of packets, data streams, or connections to manage the type and amount of traffic traversing a network or interface at any moment. Its goals are to assure timely delivery of the most important traffic while offering the best possible performance for all users. Several types of traffic prioritization exist including prioritizing traffic according to any of the following characteristics… Protocol IP address User group DiffServr VLAN tag in a Data Link layer frame Service or application Caching In addition to traffic shaping, a network or host might use caching to improve performance. Caching is the local storage of frequently needed files that would otherwise be obtained from an external source. By keeping files close to the requester, caching allows the user to access those files quickly. The most common type of caching is Web caching, in which Web pages are stored locally. To an ISP, caching is much more than just convenience. It prevents a significant volume of WAN traffic, thus improving performance and saving money. Asset Management Another key component in managing networks is identifying and tracking its hardware. This is called asset management. The first step to asset management is to take an inventory of each node on the network. You will also want to keep records of every piece of software purchased by your organization. Asset management simplifies maintaining and upgrading the network chiefly because you know what the system includes. In addition, asset management provides network administrators with information about the costs and benefits of certain types of hardware or software. Change Management Networks are always in a stage of flux with various aspects including… Software changes and patches Client Upgrades Shared Application Upgrades NOS Upgrades Hardware and Physical Plant Changes Cabling Upgrades Backbone Upgrades For a detailed explanation on each of these read the textbook (Page 750 – 761)

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SPARC T4-4 Delivers World Record Performance on Oracle OLAP Perf Version 2 Benchmark

- by Brian

Oracle's SPARC T4-4 server delivered world record performance with subsecond response time on the Oracle OLAP Perf Version 2 benchmark using Oracle Database 11g Release 2 running on Oracle Solaris 11. The SPARC T4-4 server achieved throughput of 430,000 cube-queries/hour with an average response time of 0.85 seconds and the median response time of 0.43 seconds. This was achieved by using only 60% of the available CPU resources leaving plenty of headroom for future growth. The SPARC T4-4 server operated on an Oracle OLAP cube with a 4 billion row fact table of sales data containing 4 dimensions. This represents as many as 90 quintillion aggregate rows (90 followed by 18 zeros). Performance Landscape Oracle OLAP Perf Version 2 Benchmark 4 Billion Fact Table Rows System Queries/hour Users* Response Time (sec) Average Median SPARC T4-4 430,000 7,300 0.85 0.43 * Users - the supported number of users with a given think time of 60 seconds Configuration Summary and Results Hardware Configuration: SPARC T4-4 server with 4 x SPARC T4 processors, 3.0 GHz 1 TB memory Data Storage 1 x Sun Fire X4275 (using COMSTAR) 2 x Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array (each with 80 FMODs) Redo Storage 1 x Sun Fire X4275 (using COMSTAR with 8 HDD) Software Configuration: Oracle Solaris 11 11/11 Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (11.2.0.3) with Oracle OLAP option Benchmark Description The Oracle OLAP Perf Version 2 benchmark is a workload designed to demonstrate and stress the Oracle OLAP product's core features of fast query, fast update, and rich calculations on a multi-dimensional model to support enhanced Data Warehousing. The bulk of the benchmark entails running a number of concurrent users, each issuing typical multidimensional queries against an Oracle OLAP cube consisting of a number of years of sales data with fully pre-computed aggregations. The cube has four dimensions: time, product, customer, and channel. Each query user issues approximately 150 different queries. One query chain may ask for total sales in a particular region (e.g South America) for a particular time period (e.g. Q4 of 2010) followed by additional queries which drill down into sales for individual countries (e.g. Chile, Peru, etc.) with further queries drilling down into individual stores, etc. Another query chain may ask for yearly comparisons of total sales for some product category (e.g. major household appliances) and then issue further queries drilling down into particular products (e.g. refrigerators, stoves. etc.), particular regions, particular customers, etc. Results from version 2 of the benchmark are not comparable with version 1. The primary difference is the type of queries along with the query mix. Key Points and Best Practices Since typical BI users are often likely to issue similar queries, with different constants in the where clauses, setting the init.ora prameter "cursor_sharing" to "force" will provide for additional query throughput and a larger number of potential users. Except for this setting, together with making full use of available memory, out of the box performance for the OLAP Perf workload should provide results similar to what is reported here. For a given number of query users with zero think time, the main measured metrics are the average query response time, the median query response time, and the query throughput. A derived metric is the maximum number of users the system can support achieving the measured response time assuming some non-zero think time. The calculation of the maximum number of users follows from the well-known response-time law N = (rt + tt) * tp where rt is the average response time, tt is the think time and tp is the measured throughput. Setting tt to 60 seconds, rt to 0.85 seconds and tp to 119.44 queries/sec (430,000 queries/hour), the above formula shows that the T4-4 server will support 7,300 concurrent users with a think time of 60 seconds and an average response time of 0.85 seconds. For more information see chapter 3 from the book "Quantitative System Performance" cited below. -- See Also Quantitative System Performance Computer System Analysis Using Queueing Network Models Edward D. Lazowska, John Zahorjan, G. Scott Graham, Kenneth C. Sevcik external local Oracle Database 11g – Oracle OLAP oracle.com OTN SPARC T4-4 Server oracle.com OTN Oracle Solaris oracle.com OTN Oracle Database 11g Release 2 oracle.com OTN Disclosure Statement Copyright 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. Results as of 11/2/2012.

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BizTalk: Internals: the Partner Direct Ports and the Orchestration Chains

- by Leonid Ganeline

Partner Direct Port is one of the BizTalk hidden gems. It opens simple ways to the several messaging patterns. This article based on the Kevin Lam’s blog article. The article is pretty detailed but it still leaves several unclear pieces. So I have created a sample and will show how it works from different perspectives. Requirements We should create an orchestration chain where the messages should be routed from the first stage to the second stage. The messages should not be modified. All messages has the same message type. Common artifacts Source code can be downloaded here. It is interesting but all orchestrations use only one port type. It is possible because all ports are one-way ports and use only one operation. I have added a B orchestration. It helps to test the sample, showing all test messages in channel. The Receive shape Filter is empty. A Receive Port (R_Shema1Direct) is a plain Direct Port. As you can see, a subscription expression of this direct port has only one part, the MessageType for our test schema: A Filer is empty but, as you know, a link from the Receive shape to the Port creates this MessageType expression. I use only one Physical Receive File port to send a message to all processes. Each orchestration outputs a Trace.WriteLine(“<Orchestration Name>”). Forward Binding This sample has three orchestrations: A_1, A_21 and A_22. A_1 is a sender, A_21 and A_22 are receivers. Here is a subscription of the A_1 orchestration: It has two parts A MessageType. The same was for the B orchestration. A ReceivePortID. There was no such parameter for the B orchestration. It was created because I have bound the orchestration port with Physical Receive File port. This binding means the PortID parameter is added to the subscription. How to set up the ports? All ports involved in the message exchange should be the same port type. It forces us to use the same operation and the same message type for the bound ports. This step as absolutely contra-intuitive. We have to choose a Partner Orchestration parameter for the sending orchestration, A_1. The first strange thing is it is not a partner orchestration we have to choose but an orchestration port. But the most strange thing is we have to choose exactly this orchestration and exactly this port.It is not a port from the partner, receive orchestrations, A_21 or A_22, but it is A_1 orchestration and S_SentFromA_1 port. Now we have to choose a Partner Orchestration parameter for the received orchestrations, A_21 and A_22. Nothing strange is here except a parameter name. We choose the port of the sender, A_1 orchestration and S_SentFromA_1 port. As you can see the Partner Orchestration parameter for the sender and receiver orchestrations is the same. Testing I dropped a test file in a file folder. There we go: A dropped file was received by B and by A_1 A_1 sent a message forward. A message was received by B, A_21, A_22 Let’s look at a context of a message sent by A_1 on the second step: A MessageType part. It is quite expected. A PartnerService, a ParnerPort, an Operation. All those parameters were set up in the Partner Orchestration parameter on both bound ports. Now let’s see a subscription of the A_21 and A_22 orchestrations. Now it makes sense. That’s why we have chosen such a strange value for the Partner Orchestration parameter of the sending orchestration. Inverse Binding This sample has three orchestrations: A_11, A_12 and A_2. A_11 and A_12 are senders, A_2 is receiver. How to set up the ports? All ports involved in the message exchange should be the same port type. It forces us to use the same operation and the same message type for the bound ports. This step as absolutely contra-intuitive. We have to choose a Partner Orchestration parameter for a receiving orchestration, A_2. The first strange thing is it is not a partner orchestration we have to choose but an orchestration port. But the most strange thing is we have to choose exactly this orchestration and exactly this port.It is not a port from the partner, sent orchestrations, A_11 or A_12, but it is A_2 orchestration and R_SentToA_2 port. Now we have to choose a Partner Orchestration parameter for the sending orchestrations, A_11 and A_12. Nothing strange is here except a parameter name. We choose the port of the sender, A_2 orchestration and R_SentToA_2 port. Testing I dropped a test file in a file folder. There we go: A dropped file was received by B, A_11 and by A_12 A_11 and A_12 sent two messages forward. The messages were received by B, A_2 Let’s see what was a context of a message sent by A_1 on the second step: A MessageType part. It is quite expected. A PartnerService, a ParnerPort, an Operation. All those parameters were set up in the Partner Orchestration parameter on both bound ports. Here is a subscription of the A_2 orchestration. Models I had a hard time trying to explain the Partner Direct Ports in simple terms. I have finished with this model: Forward Binding Receivers know a Sender. Sender doesn’t know Receivers. Publishers know a Subscriber. Subscriber doesn’t know Publishers. 1 –> 1 1 –> M Inverse Binding Senders know a Receiver. Receiver doesn’t know Senders. Subscribers know a Publisher. Publisher doesn’t know Subscribers. 1 –> 1 M –> 1 Notes Orchestration chain It’s worth to note, the Partner Direct Port Binding creates a chain opened from one side and closed from another. The Forward Binding: A new Receiver can be added at run-time. The Sender can not be changed without design-time changes in Receivers. The Inverse Binding: A new Sender can be added at run-time. The Receiver can not be changed without design-time changes in Senders.

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TGIF: Engagement Wrap-up

- by Michael Snow

We've had a very busy week here at Oracle and as we build up to Oracle OpenWorld starting in less than 10 days - it doesn't look like things will be slowing down. Engagement is definitely in the air this week. Our friend, John Mancini published a great article entitled: "The World of Engagement" on his Digital Landfill blog yesterday and we hosted a great webcast with R "Ray" Wang from Constellation Research yesterday on the "9 C's of Engagement". 12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} I wanted to wrap-up the week with some key takeaways from our webcast yesterday with Ray Wang. If you missed the webcast yesterday, fear not - it is now available On-Demand. We'll leave you this week with lots of questions about how to navigate these churning waters of engagement. Stay tuned to the Oracle WebCenter Social Business Thought Leaders Webcast Series as we fuel this dialogue. 12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Company Culture Does company support a culture of putting customer satisfaction ahead of profits? Does culture promote creativity and cross functional employee collaboration? Does culture accept different views of multi-generational workforce? Does culture promote employee training and skills development Does culture support upward mobility and long term retention? Does culture support work-life balance? Does the culture provide rewards for employee for outstanding customer support? Channels What are the current primary channels for customer communications? What do you think will be the primary channels in two years? Is company developing support model for emerging channels? Do all channels consistently deliver the same level of customer support? Do you know the cost per transaction across all channels? Do you engage customers proactively across multiple channels? Do all channels have access to the same customer information? Community Does company extend customer support into virtual communities of interest? Does company facilitate educating users through its virtual communities? Does company mine its customer’s experience into useful data? Does company increase the value for customers through using data to deliver new products and services? Does company support two way interactions with its customers through communities of interest? Does company actively support social CRM, online communities and social media markets? Credibility Does company market its trustworthiness through external certificates such as business licenses, BBB certificates or other validations? Does company promote trust through customer testimonials and case studies on ethical business practices? Does company promote truthful market campaigns Does company make it easy for customers to complain? Does company build its reputation for standing behind its products with guarantees for satisfaction? Does company protect its customer data with high security measures> Content What sources do you use to create customer content? Does company mine social media and blogs for customer content? How does your company sort, store and retain its customer content? How frequently does content get updated? What external sources do you use for customer content? How many responses are typically received from a knowledge management system inquiry? Does your company use customer content to design and develop new product and services? Context Does your company market to customers in clusters or individually? Does your company customize its messages and personalize them to specific needs of each individual customer? Does your company store customer data based on their past behaviors, purchases, sentiment analysis and current activities? Does your company manage customer context according to channels used? For example identify personal use channels versus business channels? What is your frequency of collecting customer activities across various touch points? How is your customer data stored and analyzed? Is contextual data used for future customer outreach? Cadence Which channels does your company measure-web site visits, phone calls, IVR, store visits, face to face, social media? Does company make effective use of cross channel marketing to promote more frequent customer engagement? Does your company rate the patterns relevant for your product or service and monitor usage against this pattern? Does your company measure the frequency of both online and offline channels? Does your company apply metrics to the frequency of customer engagements with product or services revenues? Does your company consolidate data for customer engagement across various channels for a complete view of its customer? Catalyst Does company offer coupon discounts? Does company have a customer loyalty program or a VIP membership program? Does company mine customer data to target specific groups of buyers? Do internal employees serve as ambassadors for customer programs? Does company drive loyalty through social media loyalty programs? Does company build rewards based on using loyalty data? Does company offer an employee incentive program to drive customer loyalty?

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Highlights from the Oracle Customer Experience Summit @ OpenWorld

- by Richard Lefebvre

The Oracle Customer Experience Summit was the first-ever event covering the full breadth of Oracle's CX portfolio -- Marketing, Sales, Commerce, and Service. The purpose of the Summit was to articulate the customer experience imperative and to showcase the suite of Oracle products that can help our customers create the best possible customer experience. This topic has always been a very important one, but now that there are so many alternative companies to do business with and because people have such public ways to voice their displeasure, it's necessary for vendors to have multiple listening posts in place to gauge consumer sentiment. They need to know what is going on in real time and be able to react quickly to turn negative situations into positive ones. Those can then be shared in a social manner to enhance the brand and turn the customer into a repeat customer. The Summit was focused on Oracle's portfolio of products and entirely dedicated to customers who are committed to building great customer experiences within their businesses. Rather than DBAs, the attendees were business people looking to collaborate with other like-minded experts and find out how Oracle can help in terms of technology, best practices, and expertise. The event was at the Westin St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco as part of Oracle OpenWorld. We had eight hundred people attend, which was great for the first year. Next year, there's no doubt in my mind, we can raise that number to 5,000. Alignment and Logic Oracle's Customer Experience portfolio is made up of a combination of acquired and organic products owned by many people who are new to Oracle. We include homegrown Fusion CRM, as well as RightNow, Inquira, OPA, Vitrue, ATG, Endeca, and many others. The attendees knew of the acquisitions, so naturally they wanted to see how the products all fit together and hear the logic behind the portfolio. To tell them about our alignment, we needed to be aligned. To accomplish that, a cross functional team at Oracle agreed on the messaging so that every single Oracle presenter could cover the big picture before going deep into a product or topic. Talking about the full suite of products in one session produced overflow value for other products. And even though this internal coordination was a huge effort, everyone saw the value for our customers and for our long-term cooperation and success. Keynotes, Workshops, and Tents of Innovation We scored by having Seth Godin as our keynote speaker ? always provocative and popular. The opening keynote was a session orchestrated by Mark Hurd, Anthony Lye, and me. Mark set the stage by giving real-world examples of bad customer experiences, Anthony clearly articulated the business imperative for addressing these experiences, and I brought it all to life by taking the audience around the Customer Lifecycle and showing demos and videos, with partners included at each of the stops around the lifecycle. Brian Curran, a VP for RightNow Product Strategy, presented a session that was in high demand called The Economics of Customer Experience. People loved hearing how to build a business case and justify the cost of building a better customer experience. John Kembel, another VP for RightNow Product Strategy, held a workshop that customers raved about. It was based on the journey mapping methodology he created, which is a way to talk to customers about where they want to make improvements to their customers' experiences. He divided the audience into groups led by facilitators. Each person had the opportunity to engage with experts and peers and construct some real takeaways. The conference hotel was across from Union Square so we used that space to set up Innovation Tents. During the day we served lunch in the tents and partners showed their different innovative ideas. It was very interesting to see all the technologies and advancements. It also gave people a place to mix and mingle and to think about the fringe of where we could all take these ideas. Product Portfolio Plus Thought Leadership Of course there is always room for improvement, but the feedback on the format of the conference was positive. Ninety percent of the sessions had either a partner or a customer teamed with an Oracle presenter. The presentations weren't dry, one-way information dumps, but more interactive. I just followed up with a CEO who attended the conference with his Head of Marketing. He told me that they are using John Kembel's journey mapping methodology across the organization to pull people together. This sort of thought leadership in these highly competitive areas gives Oracle permission to engage around the technology. We have to differentiate ourselves and it's harder to do on the product side because everyone looks the same on paper. But on thought leadership ? we can, and did, take some really big steps. David Vap Group Vice President Oracle Applications Product Development

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Educause Top-Ten IT Issues - the most change in a decade or more

- by user739873

The Education IT Issue Panel has released the 2012 top-ten issues facing higher education IT leadership, and instead of the customary reshuffling of the same deck, the issues reflect much of the tumult and dynamism facing higher education generally. I find it interesting (and encouraging) that at the top of this year's list is "Updating IT Professionals' Skills and Roles to Accommodate Emerging Technologies and Changing IT Management and Service Delivery Models." This reflects, in my view, the realization that higher education IT must change in order to fully realize the potential for transforming the institution, and therefore it's people must learn new skills, understand and accept new ways of solving problems, and not be tied down by past practices or institutional inertia. What follows in the remaining 9 top issues all speak, in some form or fashion, to the need for dramatic change, but not just in the areas of "funding IT" (code for cost containment or reduction), but rather the need to increase effectiveness and efficiency of the institution through the use of technology—leveraging the wave of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) to the institution's advantage, rather than viewing it as a threat and a problem to be contained. Although it's #10 of 10, IT Governance (and establishment and implementation of the governance model throughout the institution) is key to effectively acting upon many of the preceding issues in this year's list. In the majority of cases, technology exists to meet the needs and requirements to effectively address many of the challenges outlined in top-ten issues list. Which brings me to my next point. Although I try not to sound too much like an Oracle commercial in these (all too infrequent) blog posts, I can't help but point out how much confluence there is between several of the top issues this year and what my colleagues and I have been evangelizing for some time. Starting from the bottom of the list up: 1) I'm gratified that research and the IT challenges it presents has made the cut. Big Data (or Large Data as it's phased in the report) is rapidly going to overwhelm much of what exists today even at our most prepared and well-equipped research universities. Combine large data with the significantly more stringent requirements around data preservation, archiving, sharing, curation, etc. coming from granting agencies like NSF, and you have the brewing storm that could result in a lot of "one-off" solutions to a problem that could very well be addressed collectively and "at scale." 2) Transformative effects of IT – while I see more and more examples of this, there is still much more that can be achieved. My experience tells me that culture (as the report indicates or at least poses the question) gets in the way more than technology not being up to task. We spend too much time on "context" and not "core," and get lost in the weeds on the journey to truly transforming the institution with technology. 3) Analytics as a key element in improving various institutional outcomes. In our work around Student Success, we see predictive "academic" analytics as essential to getting in front of the Student Success issue, regardless of how an institution or collections of institutions defines success. Analytics must be part of the fabric of the key academic enterprise applications, not a bolt-on. We will spend a significant amount of time on this topic during our semi-annual Education Industry Strategy Council meeting in Washington, D.C. later this month. 4) Cloud strategy for the broad range of applications in the academic enterprise. Some of the recent work by Casey Green at the Campus Computing Survey would seem to indicate that there is movement in this area but mostly in what has been termed "below the campus" application areas such as collaboration tools, recruiting, and alumni relations. It's time to get serious about sourcing elements of mature applications like student information systems, HR, Finance, etc. leveraging a model other than traditional on-campus custom. I've only selected a few areas of the list to highlight, but the unifying theme here (and this is where I run the risk of sounding like an Oracle commercial) is that these lofty goals cry out for partners that can bring economies of scale to bear on the problems married with a deep understanding of the nuances unique to higher education. In a recent piece in Educause Review on Student Information Systems, the author points out that "best of breed is back". Unfortunately I am compelled to point out that best of breed is a large part of the reason we have made as little progress as we have as an industry in advancing some of the causes outlined above. Don't confuse "integrated" and "full stack" for vendor lock-in. The best-of-breed market forces that Ron points to ensure that solutions have to be "integratable" or they don't survive in the marketplace. However, by leveraging the efficiencies afforded by adopting solutions that are pre-integrated (and possibly metered out as a service) allows us to shed unnecessary costs – as difficult as these decisions are to make and to drive throughout the organization. Cole

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