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• Elastic PaaS with WebLogic and OpenStack, part I

  - by Jernej Kaše

  In my previous blog I described the steps to get OpenStack on Solaris up and running. Now we'll explore how WebLogic and OpenStack can work together to deliver truly elastic Middleware Platform as a Service. Middleware / Platform as a Service goals First, let's define what PaaS should be : PaaS offerings facilitate the deployment of applications without the complexity of managing the underlying hardware and software and provisioning hosting capabilities. To break it down: - PaaS provides a complete platform for hosting solutions (Java EE, SOA, BPM, ...) - Infrastructure provisioning (virtual machine, OS, platform) and managing is hidden from the PaaS user [administrator or developer] - Additionally, PaaS could / should define target SLAs, and the platform should ensure the SLAs are meet automatically. PaaS use case To make it more tangible, we have an IT Administrator who has the requirement to deploy a Java EE enterprise application. The application is used by external users who need to submit reports by the end of each month. As a result, the number of concurrent users will fluctuate, with expected huge spikes around the end of each month. The SLA agreed by the management is that no more than 100 requests should be waiting to be processes at any given time. In addition, the IT admin has no more than 3 days to have the platform and the application operational. The Challenges Some of the challenges the IT Administrator is facing are: - how are we going to ensure the processing power? - how are we going to provision the (virtual) machines, Java EE platform and deploy the application? - how are we going to monitor the SLA? - how are we going to react to SLA, and increase capacity?  The Ideal Solution Ideally, the whole process should be automated, "set it and forget" and require no human interaction: - The vendor packages the solution as deployable image(s) - The images are deployed to the IaaS - From there, automated processes take care of SLA  Solution Architecture with WebLogic 12c, Dynamic Clusters, OpenStack & Solaris OracleSolaris provides OS and virtualisation through Solaris Zones OpenStack is a part of Solaris 11.2 and provides Cloud Management (console and API) WebLogic 12c with Dynamic Clusters provides the Platform Trafic Manager provides load balancing On top of out that, we are going to implement a small control script - Cloud Manager - which is going to monitor SLA through WebLogic Diagnostic Framework. In case there are more than 100 pending requests, the script will: - provision a new virtual machine based on image which is configured for the WebLogic domain - add the machine to WebLogic domain - Increase the number of servers in dynamic cluster - Start the newly provisioned server  Stay tuned for part II The hole solution with working demo will be presented in one of our Partner WebCasts in June, exact date TBA. Jernej Kaše is a Fusion Middleware Specialist working closely with Oracle Partners in the ECEMEA region to grow their business by leveraging Oracle technology.

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• Part 1: What are EBS Customizations?

  - by volker.eckardt(at)oracle.com

  Everything what is not shipped as Oracle standard may be called customization. And very often we differentiate between setup and customization, although setup can also be required when working with customizations.This highlights one of the first challenges, because someone needs to track setup brought over with customizations and this needs to be synchronized with the (standard) setup done manually. This is not only a tracking issue, but also a documentation issue. I will cover this in one of the following blogs in more detail.But back to the topic itself. Mainly our code pieces (java, pl/sql, sql, shell scripts), custom objects (tables, views, packages etc.) and application objects (concurrent programs, lookups, forms, reports, OAF pages etc.) are treated as customizations. In general we define two types: customization by extension and customization by modification. For sure we like to minimize standard code modifications, but sometimes it is just not possible to provide a certain functionality without doing it.Keep in mind that the EBS provides a number of alternatives for modifications, just to mention some:Files in file system    add your custom top before the standard top to the pathBI Publisher Report    add a custom layout and disable the standard layout, automatically yours will be taken.Form /OAF Change    use personalization or substitutionUsing such techniques you are on the safe site regarding standard patches, but for sure a retest is always required!Many customizations are growing over the time, initially it was just one file, but in between we have 5, 10 or 15 files in our customization pack. The more files you have, the more important is the installation order.Last but not least also personalization's are treated as customizations, although you may not use any deployment pack to transfer such personalisation's (but you can). For OAF personalization's you can use iSetup, I have also enabled iSetup to allow Forms personalizations to transport.Interfaces and conversion objects are quite often also categorized as customizations and I promote this decision. Your development standards are related to all these kinds of custom code whether we are exchanging data with users (via form or report) or with other systems (via inbound or outbound interface).To cover all these types of customizations two acronyms have been defined: RICE and CEMLI.RICE = Reports, Interfaces, Conversions, and ExtensionsCEMLI = Customization, Extension, Modification, Localization, IntegrationThe word CEMLI has been introduced by Oracle On Demand and is used within Oracle projects quite often, but also RICE is well known as acronym.It doesn't matter which acronym you are using, the main task here is to classify and categorize your customizations to allow everyone to understand when you talk about RICE- 211, CEMLI XXFI_BAST or XXOM_RPT_030.Side note: Such references are not automatically objects prefixes, but they are often used as such. I plan also to address this point in one other blog.Thank you!Volker

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• Oracle Utilities Application Framework V4.2.0.0.0 Released

  - by ACShorten

  The Oracle Utilities Application Framework V4.2.0.0.0 has been released with Oracle Utilities Customer Care And Billing V2.4. This release includes new functionality and updates to existing functionality and will be progressively released across the Oracle Utilities applications. The release is quite substantial with lots of new and exciting changes. The release notes shipped with the product includes a summary of the changes implemented in V4.2.0.0.0. They include the following: Configuration Migration Assistant (CMA) - A new data management capability to allow you to export and import Configuration Data from one environment to another with support for Approval/Rejection of individual changes. Database Connection Tagging - Additional tags have been added to the database connection to allow database administrators, Oracle Enterprise Manager and other Oracle technology the ability to monitor and use individual database connection information. Native Support for Oracle WebLogic - In the past the Oracle Utilities Application Framework used Oracle WebLogic in embedded mode, and now, to support advanced configuration and the ExaLogic platform, we are adding Native Support for Oracle WebLogic as configuration option. Native Web Services Support - In the past the Oracle Utilities Application Framework supplied a servlet to handle Web Services calls and now we offer an alternative to use the native Web Services capability of Oracle WebLogic. This allows for enhanced clustering, a greater level of Web Service standards support, enchanced security options and the ability to use the Web Services management capabilities in Oracle WebLogic to implement higher levels of management including defining additional security rules to control access to individual Web Services. XML Data Type Support - Oracle Utilities Application Framework now allows implementors to define XML Data types used in Oracle in the definition of custom objects to take advantage of XQuery and other XML features. Fuzzy Operator Support - Oracle Utilities Application Framework supports the use of the fuzzy operator in conjunction with Oracle Text to take advantage of the fuzzy searching capabilities within the database. Global Batch View - A new JMX based API has been implemented to allow JSR120 compliant consoles the ability to view batch execution across all threadpools in the Coherence based Named Cache Cluster. Portal Personalization - It is now possible to store the runtime customizations of query zones such as preferred sorting, field order and filters to reuse as personal preferences each time that zone is used. These are just the major changes and there are quite a few more that have been delivered (and more to come in the service packs!!). Over the next few weeks we will be publishing new whitepapers and new entries in this blog outlining new facilities that you want to take advantage of.

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• BizTalk 2009 - Custom Functoid Categories

  - by StuartBrierley

  I recently had cause to code a number of custom functoids to aid with some maps that I was writing. Once these were developed and deployed to C:\Program Files\Microsoft BizTalk Server 2009\Developer Tools\Mapper Extensions a quick refresh allowed them to appear in toolbox.  After dropping these on a map and configuring the appropriate inputs I tested the map to check that they worked as expected.  All but one of the functoids worked as expecetd, but the final functoid appeared not to be firing at all. I had already tested the code used in a simple test harness application, so I was confident in the code used, but I still needed to figure out what the problem might be. Debugging the map helped me on the way; for some reason the functoid in question was not shown correctly - the functoid definition was wrong. After some investigations I found that the functoid type you assign when coding a custom functoid affects more than just the category it appears in; different functoid types have different capabilities, including what they can link too.  For example, a logical functoid can not provide content for an output element, it can only say whether the element exists.  Map this via a Value Mapping functoid and the value of true or false can be seen in the output element. The functoid I was having problems with was one whare I had used the XPath functoid type, this had seemed to be a good fit as I was looking up content in a config file using xpath and I wanted it to appear the advanced area.  From the table below you can see that this functoid type is marked as "Internal Only", preventing it from being used for custom functoids.  Changing my type to String allowed the functoid to function as expected. Category Description Toolbox Group Assert Internal Use Only Advanced Conversion Converts characters to and from numerics and converts numbers from one base to another. Conversion Count Internal Use Only Advanced Cumulative Performs accumulations of the value of a field that occurs multiple times in a source document and outputs a single output. Cumulative DatabaseExtract Internal Use Only Database DatabaseLookup Internal Use Only Database DateTime Adds date, time, date and time, or add days to a specified date, in output data. Date/Time ExistenceLooping Internal Use Only Advanced Index Internal Use Only Advanced Iteration Internal Use Only Advanced Keymatch Internal Use Only Advanced Logical Controls conditional behavior of other functoids to determine whether particular output data is created. Logical Looping Internal Use Only Advanced MassCopy Internal Use Only Advanced Math Performs specific numeric calculations such as addition, multiplication, and division. Mathematical NilValue Internal Use Only Advanced Scientific Performs specific scientific calculations such as logarithmic, exponential, and trigonometric functions. Scientific Scripter Internal Use Only Advanced String Manipulates data strings by using well-known string functions such as concatenation, length, find, and trim. String TableExtractor Internal Use Only Advanced TableLooping Internal Use Only Advanced Unknown Internal Use Only Advanced ValueMapping Internal Use Only Advanced XPath Internal Use Only Advanced Links http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.biztalk.basefunctoids.functoidcategory(BTS.20).aspx http://blog.eliasen.dk/CommentView,guid,d33b686b-b059-4381-a0e7-1c56e808f7f0.aspx

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• Filtering option list values based on security in UCM

  - by kyle.hatlestad

  Fellow UCM blog writer John Sim recently posted a comment asking about filtering values based on the user's security. I had never dug into that detail before, but thought I would take a look. It ended up being tricker then I originally thought and required a bit of insider knowledge, so I thought I would share. The first step is to create the option list table in Configuration Manager. You want to define the column for the option list value and any other columns desired. You then want to have a column which will store the security attribute to apply to the option list value. In this example, we'll name the column 'dGroupName'. Next step is to create a View based on the new table. For the Internal and Visible column, you can select the option list column name. Then click on the Security tab, uncheck the 'Publish view data' checkbox and select the 'Use standard document security' radio button. Click on the 'Edit Values...' button and add the values for the option list. In the dGroupName field, enter the Security Group (or Account if you use Accounts for security) to apply to that value. Create the custom metadata field and apply the View just created. The next step requires file system access to the server. Open the file [ucm directory]\data\schema\views\[view name].hda in a text editor. Below the line '@Properties LocalData', add the line: schSecurityImplementorColumnMap=dGroupName:dSecurityGroup The 'dGroupName' value designates the column in the table which stores the security value. 'dSecurityGroup' indicates the type of security to check against. It would be 'dDocAccount' if using Accounts. Save the file and restart UCM. Now when a user goes to the check-in page, they will only see the options for which they have read and write privileges to the associated Security Group. And on the Search page, they will see the options for which they have just read access. One thing to note is if a value that a user normally can't view on Check-in or Search is applied to a document, but the document is viewable by the user, the user will be able to see the value on the Content Information screen.

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• Java Spotlight Episode 111: Bruno Souza @brjavaman and Fabiane Nardon @fabianenardonon StoryTroop @storytroop

  - by Roger Brinkley

  Interview with Bruno Souza and Fabiane Nardon on StoryTroop. Right-click or Control-click to download this MP3 file. You can also subscribe to the Java Spotlight Podcast Feed to get the latest podcast automatically. If you use iTunes you can open iTunes and subscribe with this link:  Java Spotlight Podcast in iTunes. Show Notes News End of Puplic Updates for JDK 6 Bean Valdiation 1.1 public review approved Two key JSRs accepted in time for JavaEE7 Public_JCP EC_meeting_audio_and materials posted Devoxx UK and Devoxx France CFP open JPA 2.1 Schema Generation WebSocket, Java EE 7, and GlassFish Events Dec 3-5, jDays, Göteborg, Sweden Dec 4-6, JavaOne Latin America, Sao Paolo, Brazil Dec 14-15, IndicThreads, Pune, India JCP Spec Lead Call December on Developing a TCK JCP EC Face to Face Meeting, January 15-16, West Coast USA Feature InterviewBruno Souza is a Java Developer and Open Source Evangelist at Summa Technologies, and a Cloud Expert at ToolsCloud. Nurturing developer communities is a personal passion, and Bruno worked actively with Java, NetBeans, Open Solaris, OFBiz, and many other open source communities. As founder and coordinator of SouJava (The Java Users Society), one of the world's largest Java User Groups, Bruno leaded the expansion of the Java movement in Brazil. Founder of the Worldwide Java User Groups Community, Bruno helped the creation and organization of hundreds of JUGs worldwide. A Java Developer since the early days, Bruno participated in some of the largest Java projects in Brazil.Fabiane Nardon is a computer scientist who is passionate about creating software that will positively change the world we live in. She was the architect of the Brazilian Healthcare Information System, considered the largest JavaEE application in the world and winner of the 2005 Duke's Choice Award. She leaded several communities, including the JavaTools Community at java.net, where 800+ open source projects were born. She is a frequent speaker at conferences in Brazil and abroad, including JavaOne, OSCON, Jfokus, JustJava and more. She’s also the author of several technical articles and member of the program committee of several conferences as JavaOne, OSCON, TDC. She was chosen a Java Champion by Sun Microsystems as a recognition of her contribution to the Java ecosystem. Currently, she works as a tools expert at ToolsCloud and in companies she co-founded, where she is helping to shape new disruptive Internet based services.StoryTroop is a space where we combine multiple perspectives about a story. This creates an understanding of that story like never seen before. Pieces of a story are organized in time and space and anyone can add a different perspective.What’s Cool Geek Bike Ride at JavaOne LAD Devoxx UK (Mar 26, 27) and FR (Mar 27 - 29) CFP jFokus schedule is firming up Nashorn Blog 1,500 @JavaSpotlight Twitter followers

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• SQL SERVER – Concurrancy Problems and their Relationship with Isolation Level

  - by pinaldave

  Concurrency is simply put capability of the machine to support two or more transactions working with the same data at the same time. This usually comes up with data is being modified, as during the retrieval of the data this is not the issue. Most of the concurrency problems can be avoided by SQL Locks. There are four types of concurrency problems visible in the normal programming. 1)      Lost Update – This problem occurs when there are two transactions involved and both are unaware of each other. The transaction which occurs later overwrites the transactions created by the earlier update. 2)      Dirty Reads – This problem occurs when a transactions selects data that isn’t committed by another transaction leading to read the data which may not exists when transactions are over. Example: Transaction 1 changes the row. Transaction 2 changes the row. Transaction 1 rolls back the changes. Transaction 2 has selected the row which does not exist. 3)      Nonrepeatable Reads – This problem occurs when two SELECT statements of the same data results in different values because another transactions has updated the data between the two SELECT statements. Example: Transaction 1 selects a row, which is later on updated by Transaction 2. When Transaction A later on selects the row it gets different value. 4)      Phantom Reads – This problem occurs when UPDATE/DELETE is happening on one set of data and INSERT/UPDATE is happening on the same set of data leading inconsistent data in earlier transaction when both the transactions are over. Example: Transaction 1 is deleting 10 rows which are marked as deleting rows, during the same time Transaction 2 inserts row marked as deleted. When Transaction 1 is done deleting rows, there will be still rows marked to be deleted. When two or more transactions are updating the data, concurrency is the biggest issue. I commonly see people toying around with isolation level or locking hints (e.g. NOLOCK) etc, which can very well compromise your data integrity leading to much larger issue in future. Here is the quick mapping of the isolation level with concurrency problems: Isolation Dirty Reads Lost Update Nonrepeatable Reads Phantom Reads Read Uncommitted Yes Yes Yes Yes Read Committed No Yes Yes Yes Repeatable Read No No No Yes Snapshot No No No No Serializable No No No No I hope this 400 word small article gives some quick understanding on concurrency issues and their relation to isolation level. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• SQL SERVER – Script to Update a Specific Column in Entire Database

  - by Pinal Dave

  Last week, I have received a very interesting question and I find in email and I really liked the question as I had to play around with SQL Script for a while to come up with the answer he was looking for. Please read the question and I believe that all of us face this kind of situation. “Pinal, In our database we have recently introduced ModifiedDate column in all of the tables. Now onwards any update happens in the row, we are updating current date and time to that field. Now here is the issue, when we added that field we did not update it with a default value because we were not sure when we will go live with the system so we let it be NULL. Now modification to the application went live yesterday and we are now updating this field. Here is where I need your help. We need to update all the tables in our database where we have column created ModifiedDate and now want to update with current datetime. As our system is already live since yesterday there are several thousands of the rows which are already updated with real world value so we do not want to update those values. Essentially, in our entire database where ever there is a ModifiedDate column and if it is NULL we want to update that with current date time?  Do you have a script for it?” Honestly I did not have such a script. This is very specific required but I was able to come up with two different methods how he can use this method. Method 1 : Using INFORMATION_SCHEMA SELECT 'UPDATE ' + T.TABLE_SCHEMA + '.' + T.TABLE_NAME + ' SET ModifiedDate = GETDATE() WHERE ModifiedDate IS NULL;' FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES T INNER JOIN INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS C ON T.TABLE_NAME = C.TABLE_NAME AND c.COLUMN_NAME ='ModifiedDate' WHERE T.TABLE_TYPE = 'BASE TABLE' ORDER BY T.TABLE_SCHEMA, T.TABLE_NAME; Method 2: Using DMV SELECT 'UPDATE ' + SCHEMA_NAME(t.schema_id) + '.' + t.name + ' SET ModifiedDate = GETDATE() WHERE ModifiedDate IS NULL;' FROM sys.tables AS t INNER JOIN sys.columns c ON t.OBJECT_ID = c.OBJECT_ID WHERE c.name ='ModifiedDate' ORDER BY SCHEMA_NAME(t.schema_id), t.name; Above scripts will create an UPDATE script which will do the task which is asked. We can pretty much the update script to any other SELECT statement and retrieve any other data as well. Click to Download Scripts Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)  Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Joins, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• URL routing similar to Facebook (related to AJAX and the URL)

  - by Guilherme Cardoso

  In this article i'm gonna show you how i do when i have to update some content with AJAX and i have to change the URL. First, let's see an example to understand it better. If the user is reading a News with Id 1 and he clicked on another News with Id 2, if we update the content with AJAX the user is now reading the News Id 2 but the URL remains the same, for example: http://localhost/News/Read/1 Now let's see another example from Facebook. If i'm reading my profile and i click on Photos, Facebook updates it with AJAX and the URL switch to: http://www.facebook.com/guilhermegeek#!/guilhermegeek?sk=photos If we enter on that URL, it's mapped to: http://www.facebook.com/guilhermegeek?sk=photos The trick here is the parameters that we use after the #!. Those parameters are never sent to the server side, so we handle them on the client side (javascript).In the example of Facebook, he receives my profile name (guilhermegeek) and the action is to read photos. A few time ago i've written an article in my Portuguese blog explaining how to use an alternative to clients with javascript disabled. Like this: <a onclick="javascript:ReadNews(id);" href="#!News/Read/@id/">Title</a> When the user enter the link of that news, my function Read(); fills the News in the page. Then, i add the #!News/Read/@id/ to my URL. It's gonna stay something like this: http://localhost/News/Read/1#!News/Read/2 As i explained before, the News that the user is reading has the Id 2.The next step is to use javascript to check if the URL that the user typed has other News Id, because if we enter on the above URL our controller will get the Id 1 (everything after to the # isn't sent to the server side). $(document).ready(function () {             var h = window.location.hash;             if (h != null) {                 var parts = window.location.href.split('#!');                 if (parts.length > 1) {                     window.location.replace("http://localhost/" + parts[1]);                 }             }    }); It's pretty simple. I'm cutting everything after the #!, then i redirect the user to a new page. So, it's gonna stay:http://localhost/News/Read/2

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• Upgrading Code from 2007 to 2010

  - by MOSSLover

  So I’ve been doing some upgrades just to see if things will work from 2007 to 2010.  So far most of the stuff I want works, but obviously there are some things that break.  Did you guys know that in 2007 you could add a webpart to the view pages for lists and libraries without losing the toolbar?  In 2010 the ribbon disappears every time you add a webpart.  So if you are using Scot Hillier’s Codeplex project to hide buttons it will not work the same way, because the ribbon is going to disappear altogether. I have also learned another reason why standalone installations are the bane of my existence.  Nine times out of ten the installation is done using Network Service as the application pool account.  You are wondering why is this bad?  Well, let’s just say the site collection administrator with local admin rights wants to attach the IIS Worker process and debug say a webpart.  Visual Studio 2010 will throw a nasty error that tells you that you are not an administrator.  You will say, but I am an administrator?  I have all the correct group permissions on the server and on SQL and in SharePoint.  Then you will go in and decide let’s add my own admin account just to see if I can attach the debugger and you will notice that works properly.  So the morale of the story is create a separate account on your development environment to run all the SharePoint Services and such.  You don’t need to go all out and create the best practices amount of accounts if it’s just your dev environment.  I would at least create one single account to run all your SharePoint process (Services, SQL, and App Pool).  Also, don’t run a standalone install unless you want to kill kittens (this is a quote from Todd Klindt).  We love kittens they are cute and awesome.  Besides you learn more if you click Complete and just skip standalone.  You will learn how to setup SQL Server 2008 and you will learn how to configure your environment.  It will help you in the long run.  So I have ranted enough for today I figure these are enough tidbits for you this time around.  The two of you who read my blog and I know some of you are friends who don’t understand SharePoint.  I might as well have just done “wahwahwahwah” in Charlie Brown adult speak.  Thanks for reading as usual.  I’ll catch you all when I complain more about the upgrade process and share more tidbits, which will inevitably become a presentation at a conference or two. Technorati Tags: Upgrade Code SharePoint 2007 to 2010,Visuaul Studio 2010,SharePoint 2010

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• What changes were made to a document

  - by Daniel Moth

  Part of my job is writing functional specs. Due to the inevitable iterative and incremental nature of software design/development, these specs need to be updated with additions/deletions/changes over a period of time. When the time comes for a developer to implement features or update their design document (or a tester to test the feature or update their test specs) they need to be doing that against the latest spec. The problem is that if they have reviewed this document already, they need a quick way to find the delta from the last time they reviewed it to see what changes exist and how their existing plans may be affected (instead of having to read the entire document again). Doing that is very easy assuming your Word documents are hosted on SharePoint. 1. Every time you review a document note the SharePoint version and/or date (if it is a printed copy, make sure your printout includes the date in the footer – all my specs do) 2. When you need to see what changed, open the document (make sure you are not using a cached or local offline copy) and on the ribbon go to the "Review" tab and then  click on the "Compare" button. 3. Click on the "Specific Version…" option. In the dialog that pops up pick the last version you reviewed and click the "Compare" button. [TIP for authors: before checkin of your document, always compare against the "Last Version" on the SharePoint so you can add appropriate more complete check in comments] 4. What you see now is that in addition to the document you have open, two other documents just opened up. One is in the background (flashing on your task bar) – close that one as it is the old version. 5. The other document is in the foreground and contains all the changes between the old version and the latest one. Be sure not to make edits to this document, use it only for reading the changes. To find all the changes, on the ribbon under the "Review" tab, click on the "Reviewing Pane" to open the reviewing pane on the left. You can now click on each pink change to see what it is. 6. When you are done reviewing changes close the document and don't save any changes (remember if you want to make edits/additions/comments make them in the original document which is still open). And now I have a URL to point to people that keep asking about this – enjoy  :-) Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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• SQLAuthority News – Featuring in Call Me Maybe The Developer Way – Pluralsight Video

  - by pinaldave

  Is SQL boring? Not at all. SQL is fun – one has to know how to maximize the fun while working with SQL Server. Earlier I was invited to participate in the video Pluralsight. I am sure all of you know that I have authored 3 SQL Server Learning courses with Pluralsight – 1) SQL Server Q and A 2) SQL Server Performance Tuning and 3) SQL Server Indexing. Before I say anything I suggest all of you watch the following video. Make sure that you pay special attention after 0 minute and 36 seconds. What I can say about this. I am just fortunate to be part of the history in the making. There are more than 53 super cool celebrities in this video. In this just over 3 minute video there are so many story lines. I must congratulate director Megan and creative assistant Mari for excellent work. There are so many fun moments in this small video. Let me list my top five moments. @John_Papa ‘s dance at second 14 @julielerman playing with cute doggy The RACE between @josepheames and @bruthafish – the end is hilarious The black belt moment by @boedie @stwool relaxing on something strange! Well, this is indeed a great short film. This video demonstrates how cool is the culture of Pluralsight and how fun loving they are. A good organization provides an environment to its employees and partners to have maximum fun while they all become part of the success story. Hats off to Aaron Skonnard for producing this fun loving video. Well, after listening to this song for multiple times, I decided to give a call to Pluralsight. If you want, you can call them at +1 (801) 784-9032 or send an email to james-cole at pluralsight.com . What are your top five favorite moments? List it in comments and you may win Pluralsight subscription. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: About Me, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Career Advice: finding challenging work in software and web development

  - by dianovich

  Having left my physics degree early, I started out in the realm of web design / front end web development and was able to get work quite quickly. I moved on to spend a chunk of my time on servers and gained experience with frameworks like Wordpress and Drupal, then the likes of Codeigniter and CakePHP and became comfortable in Debian-based and RHEL/CentOS environments. I ventured in to iOS development and published a couple of native apps to the app store too! I have started to spend a good deal of my time writing Python and have invested a little time in Django. The problem is, I still spend a fair chunk of my time doing more front end web development (writing markup and CSS for site themes, design-lead JavaScript, small applications for which application architecture and software engineering are relatively unimportant or too time consuming to invest in) in my job. What I want to do is really exercise the systematic/logical portion of my brain and tackle challenging problems on a daily basis. I want to have to care about big-oh running times, modularity in software, DRY, performance tuning and development methodologies. I want to work for a firm whose clients say: "Yes, these things are important to us and we'll pay you to get them right." But it is difficult: I have no formal training and am potentially becoming a jack of all trades. Not that being a jack of many trades is necessarily a bad thing, but the scope of work I find myself involved in is far too broad. And, there are only so many hours in a day outside of work! My question is: where do I go from here? I am starting to work on a few open source projects and have started to publish content to my blog. But this isn't likely to make it past the recruitment consultants and HR departments of many-a-firm. And I do not, for example, work in a team that practices agile methodologies, so how do I get work in such a team to gain experience? While I have been responsible for implementing version control and some solid working practices into our current environment, there is only so far I can go in this context. What would convince you that i'm worth taking a risk? What would convince you that i'll have caught up the other guys in your employ in next to no time?

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• BPM ADF Task forms. Checking whether the current user is in a BPM Swimlane

  - by Christopher Karl Chan

  @page { margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } --Focus So this blog entry will focus on BPM Swimlane roles and users from a ADF context. So we have an ADF Task Details Form and we are in the process of making it richer and dynamic in functionality. A common requirement could be to dynamically show different areas based on the user logged into the workspace. Perhaps even we want to know even what swim-lane role the user belongs to. It is is a little bit harder to achieve then one thinks unless you know the trick. The Challenge The tricky part here is that the ADF Task Details Form is in fact part of a separate J2EE application to the main workspace. So if you try to use Java or Expression Language to get the logged in user you will only find anonymous and none of the BPM Roles you will be expecting. So what to do? The Magic First add the BC4J Security library to your view project. Then Restart JDeveloper. Now find the web.xml file in the view project of your ADF Task Details Application and look for the JpsFilter section. Then add in the following section. <init-param> <param-name>application.name</param-name> <param-value>OracleBPMProcessRolesApp</param-value></init-param> This will link your application to that of the BPM workspace. Then in your dynamic part of your ADF form you can now check whether the user logged into the BPM Workspace belongs in a BPM swim-lane in any BPM process. The best way to do this is by using expression language in the JSF page itself. Here I am simply changing the rendered flag to either true or false and thereby hiding or showing a section. Perhaps you are re-using the same form for a task in an approver swim-lane and ordinary user swimlane. So we only want the approver to see this field. So call the built in function to check if the user is a member of the BPM swim-lane role. The name of the role must be of the syntax BPMProject.RoleName <af:outputText value="This will only be rendered when the user is part of the BPM Swimlane Role rendered="#{securityContext.userInRole['BPMProjectName.Rolename']}"/> Now you must redeploy your ADF Task Form project Now (in the image above) the text will ONLY get rendered in the Task Details Form only if the user logged into the workspace is a member of the swimlane Unsecure of the BPM project SimpleTask

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• SQL SERVER – Storing 64-bit Unsigned Integer Value in Database

  - by Pinal Dave

  Here is a very interesting question I received in an email just another day. Some questions just are so good that it makes me wonder how come I have not faced it first hand. Anyway here is the question - “Pinal, I am migrating my database from MySQL to SQL Server and I have faced unique situation. I have been using Unsigned 64-bit integer in MySQL but when I try to migrate that column to SQL Server, I am facing an issue as there is no datatype which I find appropriate for my column. It is now too late to change the datatype and I need immediate solution. One chain of thought was to change the data type of the column from Unsigned 64-bit (BIGINT) to VARCHAR(n) but that will just change the data type for me such that I will face quite a lot of performance related issues in future. In SQL Server we also have the BIGINT data type but that is Signed 64-bit datatype. BIGINT datatype in SQL Server have range of -2^63 (-9,223,372,036,854,775,808) to 2^63-1 (9,223,372,036,854,775,807). However, my digit is much larger than this number. Is there anyway, I can store my big 64-bit Unsigned Integer without loosing much of the performance of by converting it to VARCHAR.” Very interesting question, for the sake of the argument, we can ask user that there should be no need of such a big number or if you are taking about identity column I really doubt that if your table will grow beyond this table. Here the real question which I found interesting was how to store 64-bit unsigned integer value in SQL Server without converting it to String data type. After thinking a bit, I found a fairly simple answer. I can use NUMERIC data type. I can use NUMERIC(20) datatype for 64-bit unsigned integer value, NUMERIC(10) datatype for 32-bit unsigned integer value and NUMERIC(5) datatype for 16-bit unsigned integer value. Numeric datatype supports 38 maximum of 38 precision. Now here is another thing to keep in mind. Using NUMERIC datatype will indeed accept the 64-bit unsigned integer but in future if you try to enter negative value, it will also allow the same. Hence, you will need to put any additional constraint over column to only accept positive integer there. Here is another big concern, SQL Server will store the number as numeric and will treat that as a positive integer for all the practical purpose. You will have to write in your application logic to interpret that as a 64-bit Unsigned Integer. On another side if you are using unsigned integers in your application, there are good chance that you already have logic taking care of the same. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: SQL Datatype

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• links for 2011-02-08

  - by Bob Rhubart

  When It Comes to Data Integration, Oracle Is the Right Choice (tags: ping.fm) When It Comes to Data Integration, Oracle Is the Right Choice (tags: ping.fm) Webcast: Webcast: Deploy Oracle VM Templates for Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise Applications. Feb 15. Event Date: 02/15/2011 9:00am PT / Noon ET. Featured Speakers: Adam Hawley (Oracle Senior Director, Product Management, Virtualization), Ivo Dujmovic (Oracle Director, Technology Integration), Greg Kelly (Oracle Product Strategy Manager - PeopleTools). (tags: oracle virtualization peoplesoft) Webcast: Managing Oracle Exadata with Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g Thursday, February 10, 2011 - 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET. Ask Oracle experts questions and learn firsthand how to efficiently manage all stages of Oracle Exadata’s lifecycle, from testing to deployment. (tags: oracle exalogic enterprisemanager) Arthur Cole: Winning the Consolidated Data Center Future | ITBusinessEdge.com "According to InformationWeek, the amount of data under management is increasing by about 20 percent per year, with some organizations having to deal with 50 percent or more. That means capacity needs to double every two or three years." - Arthur Cole (tags: dataconsolidation enterprisearchitecture) Transformation of Product Management in Telecommunications for Rapid Launch of Next Generation Products (Telecommunications Architecture Corner) Raul Goycoolea's post examines "how enterprise product management enabled by PLM-based product catalogue solutions helps to launch next generation products rapidly in the context of the Telecommunication Industry." (tags: oracle otn enterprisearchitecture) Richard Veryard on Architecture: What is an EA vendor? "Even some people who insist that enterprise architecture shouldn't be thought of as merely software architecture seem to think that 'tools' only means 'software tools.'" - Richard Veryard (tags: enterprisearchitecture) MDM for Tax Authorities (Oracle Master Data Management) "Tax Authorities face a multitude of IT challenges," says David Butler. "Compounding these issues is the fact that the IT architectures in operation at most revenue and collections agencies are very complex." (tags: oracle otn MDM ITarchitecture) Bernard Golden: How Cloud Computing Changes IT Staffs | CIO.com | CIO.com "Enterprise architects become more important" tops Bernard's list of changes. (tags: cloudcomputing staffing cio enterprisearchitecture) Martijn Linssen: Social Enterprise Magic Quadrant "Revolutions usually go wrong, where evolutions usually go right." - Martijn Linssen (tags: socialcomputing enterprise2.0) Why Do IT Roles Fail? | CIO "The roles that come up most often are the ones that are not directly building or maintaining systems. These include architecture, planning, vendor management, relationship management, PMO, and security." - Marc Cecere (tags: softwarearchitecture technologyroles) We're Hiring! - Server and Desktop Virtualization Product Management (Oracle's Virtualization Blog) Adam Hawley with information on an opportunity for qualified job seekers. (tags: oracle otn employment virtualization)

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• Solving Inbound Refinery PDF Conversion Issues, Part 1

  - by Kevin Smith

  Working with Inbound Refinery (IBR)  and PDF Conversion can be very frustrating. When everything is working smoothly you kind of forgot it is even there. Documents are cheeked into WebCenter Content (WCC), sent to IBR for conversion, converted to PDF, returned to WCC, and viola your Office documents have a nice PDF rendition available for viewing. Then a user checks in a bunch of password protected Word files, the conversions fail, your IBR queue starts backing up, users start calling asking why their document have not been released yet, and your spend a frustrating afternoon trying to recover and get things back running properly again. Password protected documents are one cause of PDF conversion failures, and I will cover those in a future blog post, but there are many other problems that can cause conversions to fail, especially when working with the WinNativeConverter and using the native applications, e.g. Word, to convert a document to PDF. There are other conversion options like PDFExportConverter which uses Oracle OutsideIn to convert documents directly to PDF without the need for the native applications. However, to get the best fidelity to the original document the native applications must be used. Many customers have tried PDFExportConverter, but have stayed with the native applications for conversion since the conversion results from PDFExportConverter were not as good as when the native applications are used. One problem I ran into recently, that at least has a easy solution, are Word documents that display a Show Repairs dialog when the document is opened. If you open the problem document yourself you will see this dialog. This will cause the conversion to time out. Any time the native application displays a dialog that requires user input the conversion will time out. The solution is to set add a setting for BulletProofOnCorruption to the registry for the user running Word on the IBR server. See this support note from Microsoft for details. The support note says to set the registry key under HKEY_CURRENT_USER, but since we are running IBR as a service the correct location is under HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT. Also since in our environment we were using Office 2007, the correct registry key to use was: HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Word\Options Once you have done this restart the IBR managed server and resubmit your problem document. It should now be converted successfully. For more details on IBR see the Oracle® WebCenter Content Administrator's Guide for Conversion.

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• Split Internet Explorer into Dual-Panes

  - by Asian Angel

  If you have a wide screen monitor then you may want to make better use of Internet Explorer’s browser window area. Now you can split the browser window into dual-panes as needed with the IE Split browser plugin. Note: Requires .NET Framework 2.0 or higher (link provided below). IE Split in Action If you are using an older version of this software here is something to keep in mind before upgrading to the 2.0 release. Once you have installed IE Split you will notice a new toolbar added to your browser. As seen here, you can condense it down tightly and access it using the drop-down bar. A closer look at the drop-down bar. Notice the address bar…this will be for the left pane when you split the browser window. Here is our browser split into dual-panes. There are two address bars and two tab/title bars each corresponding to their appropriate pane. It may look slightly backwards at first but is not hard to get used to. A better view of the left pane with the IE Split navigation & title bars showing. Note: The title bar can be hidden if desired. And the right pane. You can also have multiple “split” tabs open if needed. There is nothing quite like getting double the value for the same amount of space. When you no longer need dual-panes open just click on the “x” to close IE Split down. All back to normal again. Conclusion While might not be for everyone this can still be useful for those who need side-by-side access to websites without using multiple separate windows. Links Download IE-Split Download the Microsoft .NET Framework 4 (Standalone Installer) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Set Up Multi-Pane Viewing in FirefoxWhy Can’t I Turn the Details/Preview Panes On or Off in Windows Vista Explorer?Split a text file in half (or any percentage) on Ubuntu LinuxMysticgeek Blog: A Look at Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 on Windows XPMake Ctrl+Tab in Internet Explorer 7 Use Most Recent Order TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 Filevo is a Cool File Hosting & Sharing Site Get a free copy of WinUtilities Pro 2010 World Cup Schedule Boot Snooze – Reboot and then Standby or Hibernate Customize Everything Related to Dates, Times, Currency and Measurement in Windows 7 Google Earth replacement Icon (Icons we like)

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• SQL SERVER – A Brief Note on SET TEXTSIZE

  - by pinaldave

  Here is a small conversation I received. I thought though an old topic, indeed a thought provoking for the moment. Question: Is there any difference between LEFT function and SET TEXTSIZE? I really like this small but interesting question. The question does not specify the difference between usage or performance. Anyway we will quickly take a look at how TEXTSIZE works. You can run the following script to see how LEFT and SET TEXTSIZE works. USE TempDB GO -- Create TestTable CREATE TABLE MyTable (ID INT, MyText VARCHAR(MAX)) GO INSERT MyTable (ID, MyText) VALUES(1, REPLICATE('1234567890', 100)) GO -- Select Data SELECT ID, MyText FROM MyTable GO -- Using Left SELECT ID, LEFT(MyText, 10) MyText FROM MyTable GO -- Set TextSize SET TEXTSIZE 10; SELECT ID, MyText FROM MyTable; SET TEXTSIZE 2147483647 GO -- Clean up DROP TABLE MyTable GO Now let us see the usage result which we receive from both of the example. If you are going to ask what you should do – I really do not know. I can tell you where I will use either of the same. LEFT seems to be easy to use but again if you like to do extra work related to SET TEXTSIZE go for it. Here is how I will use SET TEXTSIZE. If I am selecting data from in my SSMS for testing or any other non production related work from a large table which has lots of columns with varchar data, I will consider using this statement to reduce the amount of the data which is retrieved in the result set. In simple word, for testing purpose I will use it. On the production server, there should be a specific reason to use the same. Here is my candid opinion – I do not think they can be directly comparable even though both of them give the exact same result. LEFT is applicable only on the column of a single SELECT statement. where it is used but it SET TEXTSIZE applies to all the columns in the SELECT and follow up SELECT statements till the SET TEXTSIZE is not modified again in the session. Uncomparable! I hope this sample example gives you idea how to use SET TEXTSIZE in your daily use. I would like to know your opinion about how and when do you use this feature. Please leave a comment. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• SQL SERVER – What is SSAS Tabular Data model and Why to use it – Part 2

  - by Pinal Dave

  In my last article, I talked about the basics of tabular data model and why use it. Then I demonstrated step by step creation of a basic tabular model project. In this part I’m going to throw some light on how to create measures and analyses in excel. If you look at the tabular project closely, you will notice that we have not defined any measure yet. So, in the first step we will define the measure first.  Open the solution and select the column you want to define as a measure. Then, click on the summation icon on the toolbar. You will see the aggregated results at the bottom of that column. You have also other choices as well like average, min, max, count and distinct count. After creating the required measures, we need to analyze our data in excel. To do this, click on the excel icon in the upper left corner of the toolbar. This will open your analysis in excel. Notice the pivot table field list here. I have highlighted the measures that we created in the earlier step. Now, we can use these measures in our analysis Now, we have to put the required fields in their respective places as column labels, row labels, Values and Report filter for analysis. See below snapshot for details, it shows region wise sales on a yearly basis You can even apply filters on the above analysis by placing the slicer field in report filter. In our example, we will take an English product name as a filter. You can use the filter as depicted in the below snapshot. Optionally, you can also use the slider to filter data more interactively. Further to improve our analysis, we can insert pivot charts That’s all for this time, in my next post I’m going to show in detail about how to create hierarchies, perspectives, KPI’s  and many more features. Author: Namita Sharma, Senior Corporate Trainer at Koenig Solutions. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com)Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: SSAS

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• Programmatically updating one update panel elements from another update panel elements

  - by Jalpesh P. Vadgama

  While taking interviews for asp.net candidate I am often asking this question but most peoples are not able to give this answer. So I decided to write a blog post about this. Here is the scenario. There are two update panels in my html code in first update panel there is textbox hello world and another update panel there is a button called btnHelloWorld. Now I want to update textbox text in button click event without post back. But in normal scenario It will not update the textbox text as both are in different update panel. Here is the code for that. <form id="form1" runat="server"> <asp:ScriptManager ID="myScriptManager" runat="server" EnableCdn="true"></asp:ScriptManager> <asp:UpdatePanel ID="firstUpdatePanel" runat="server" UpdateMode="Conditional"> <ContentTemplate> <asp:TextBox ID="txtHelloWorld" runat="server"></asp:TextBox> </ContentTemplate> </asp:UpdatePanel> <asp:UpdatePanel ID="secondUpdatePanel" runat="server" UpdateMode="Conditional"> <ContentTemplate> <asp:Button ID="btnHelloWorld" runat="server" Text="Print Hello World" onclick="btnHelloWorld_Click" /> </ContentTemplate> </asp:UpdatePanel> </form> Here comes magic!!. Lots of people don’t know that update panel are providing the Update method from which we can programmatically update the update panel elements without post back. Below is code for that. protected void btnHelloWorld_Click(object sender, System.EventArgs e) { txtHelloWorld.Text = "Hello World!!!"; firstUpdatePanel.Update(); } That’s it here I have updated the firstUpdatePanel from the code!!!. Hope you liked it.. Stay tuned for more..Happy Programming.. Technorati Tags: UpdatePanel,ASP.NET

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• Devoxx 2011: Java EE 6 Hands-on Lab Delivered

  - by arungupta

  I, along with Alexis's help, delivered a Java EE 6 hands-on lab to a packed room of about 40+ attendees at Devoxx 2011. The lab was derived from the OTN Developer Days 2012 version but added lot more content to showcase several Java EE 6 technologies. The problem statement from the lab document states: This hands-on lab builds a typical 3-tier Java EE 6 Web application that retrieves customer information from a database and displays it in a Web page. The application also allows new customers to be added to the database as well. The string-based and type-safe queries are used to query and add rows to the database. Each row in the database table is published as a RESTful resource and is then accessed programmatically. Typical design patterns required by a Web application like validation, caching, observer, partial page rendering, and cross-cutting concerns like logging are explained and implemented using different Java EE 6 technologies. The lab covered Java Persistence API 2, Servlet 3, Enterprise JavaBeans 3.1, JavaServer Faces 2, Java API for RESTful Web Services 1.1, Contexts and Dependency Injection 1.0, and Bean Validation 1.0 over 47 pages of detailed self-paced instructions. Here is the complete Table of Contents: The lab can be downloaded from here and requires only NetBeans IDE "All" or "Java EE" version, which includes GlassFish anyway. All the feedback received from the lab has been incorporated in the instructions and bugs filed (Updated 49559, 205232, 205248, 205256). 80% of the attendees could easily complete the lab and some even completed in much less than 3 hours. That indicates that either more content needs to be added to the lab or the intellectual level of the attendees at the conference was pretty high. I think the lab has enough content for 3 hours but we moved at a much more faster pace so I conclude on the latter. Truly a joy to conduct a lab to 40 Devoxxians! Another related lab that might be handy for folks is "Develop, Deploy, and Monitor your Java EE 6 applications using GlassFish 3.1 Cluster". It explains how: Create a 2-instance GlassFish cluster Front-end with a Web server and a load balancer Demonstrate session replication and fail over Monitor the application using JavaScript The complete lab instructions and source code are available and you can try them. I plan to continue evolving the contents for the Java EE 6 hands-on lab to cover more technologies and features and will announce them on this blog. Let me know on what else would you like to see in the future versions.

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• Devoxx 2011: Java EE 6 Hands-on Lab Delivered

  - by arungupta

  I, along with Alexis's help, delivered a Java EE 6 hands-on lab to a packed room of about 40+ attendees at Devoxx 2011. The lab was derived from the OTN Developer Days 2012 version but added lot more content to showcase several Java EE 6 technologies. The problem statement from the lab document states: This hands-on lab builds a typical 3-tier Java EE 6 Web application that retrieves customer information from a database and displays it in a Web page. The application also allows new customers to be added to the database as well. The string-based and type-safe queries are used to query and add rows to the database. Each row in the database table is published as a RESTful resource and is then accessed programmatically. Typical design patterns required by a Web application like validation, caching, observer, partial page rendering, and cross-cutting concerns like logging are explained and implemented using different Java EE 6 technologies. The lab covered Java Persistence API 2, Servlet 3, Enterprise JavaBeans 3.1, JavaServer Faces 2, Java API for RESTful Web Services 1.1, Contexts and Dependency Injection 1.0, and Bean Validation 1.0 over 47 pages of detailed self-paced instructions. Here is the complete Table of Contents: The lab can be downloaded from here and requires only NetBeans IDE "All" or "Java EE" version, which includes GlassFish anyway. All the feedback received from the lab has been incorporated in the instructions and bugs filed (Updated 49559, 205232, 205248, 205256). 80% of the attendees could easily complete the lab and some even completed in much less than 3 hours. That indicates that either more content needs to be added to the lab or the intellectual level of the attendees at the conference was pretty high. I think the lab has enough content for 3 hours but we moved at a much more faster pace so I conclude on the latter. Truly a joy to conduct a lab to 40 Devoxxians! Another related lab that might be handy for folks is "Develop, Deploy, and Monitor your Java EE 6 applications using GlassFish 3.1 Cluster". It explains how: Create a 2-instance GlassFish cluster Front-end with a Web server and a load balancer Demonstrate session replication and fail over Monitor the application using JavaScript The complete lab instructions and source code are available and you can try them. I plan to continue evolving the contents for the Java EE 6 hands-on lab to cover more technologies and features and will announce them on this blog. Let me know on what else would you like to see in the future versions.

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• Does Your Customer Engagement Create an Ah Feeling?

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  An (Oracle CX Blog) article by Christina McKeon Companies that successfully engage customers all have one thing in common. They make it seem easy for the customer to get what they need. No one would argue that brands don’t want to leave customers with this “ah” feeling. Since 94% of customers who have a low-effort service experience will buy from that company again, it makes financial sense for brands.1 Some brands are thinking differently about how they engage their customers to create ah feelings. How do they do it? Toyota is a great example of using smart assistance technology to understand customer intent and answer questions before customers hit the submit button online. What is unique in this situation is that Toyota captures intent while customers are filling out email forms. Toyota analyzes the data in the form and suggests responses before the customer sends the email. The customer gets the right answer, and the email never makes it to your contact center — which makes you and the customer happy. Most brands are fully aware of chat as a service channel, but some brands take chat to a whole new level. Beauty.com, part of the drugstore.com and Walgreens family of brands, uses live chat to replicate the personal experience that one would find at high-end department store cosmetic counters. Trained beauty advisors, all with esthetician or beauty counter experience, engage in live chat sessions with online shoppers to share immediate advice on the best products for their personal needs. Agents can watch customer activity online and determine the right time to reach out and offer help, just as help would be offered in a brick-and-mortar store. And, agents can co-browse along with the customer helping customers with online check-out. These personal chat discussions also give Beauty.com the opportunity to present products, advertise promotions, and resolve customer issues when they arise. Beauty.com converts approximately 25% of chat sessions into product orders. Photobox, the European market leader in online photo services, wanted to deliver personal and responsive service to its 24 million members. It ensures customer inquiries on personalized photo products are routed based on agent knowledge so customers get what they need from the company experts. By using a queuing system to ensure that the agent with the most appropriate knowledge handles the query, agent productivity increased while response times to 1,500 customer queries per day decreased. A real-time dashboard prevents agents from being overloaded with queries. This approach has produced financial results with a 15% increase in sales to existing customers and a 45% increase in orders from newly referred customers.

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• Using runtime checking of code contracts in Visual Studio 2010

  - by DigiMortal

  In my last posting about code contracts I introduced how to check input parameters of randomizer using static contracts checking. But you can also compile code contracts to your assemblies and use them also in runtime. In this posting I will show you simple example about runtime checking of code contracts. NB! If you want to play with code and try out things described here feel free to download example solution. if you are speaker and want to use this solution as a part of your sessions then feel free to do so, but don’t forget to refer me and this blog as source of this solution. And please let me know about your session. As a speaker I am very interested about it. :) To see how code contracts are checked at runtime we have to enable runtime checking from project properties. Make sure you have checked the box “Perform Runtime Contract Checking” and make sure you select “Full” from dropdown. These parts are in red box on the screenshot below. Visual Studio 2010 settings for code contracts. Runtime Checking is turned on and checks are made only in public surface. Click on image to see it at original size.  Save project settings. Then compile code and run it. As soon as code execution hits the call to GetRandomFromRangeContracted() exception is thrown. If you are not currently playing with solution referred above take a look at the following screenshot. Visual Studio 2010 runtime checking of code contracts. Exception of type ContractException is thrown when contract is violated. Click on image to see it at original size.  The exact type of exception is ContractException and it is defined in System.Diagnostics.Contracts.__ContractsRuntime namespace. In our example the message of exception is following: "Precondition failed: min < max  Min must be less than max" Besides the description we inserted for the case contract violation the message also contains violated contract type. In this case the type of contract is Precondition. Conclusion Using runtime checking of code contracts enables you to take code contracts with your code and have them checked every time when your methods are called. This way you can assure that all conditions are met to run method or exception is thrown and calling system has to handle the situation.

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