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• Silverlight Cream for November 16, 2011 -- #1167

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Michael Crump, Andrea Boschin, Michael Sync, WindowsPhoneGeek(-2-), Erno de Weerd, Jesse Liberty, Derik Whittaker, Antoni Dol, Walter Ferrari, and Jeff Blankenburg(-2-). Above the Fold: Silverlight: "10 Laps around Silverlight 5 (Part 6 of 10)" Michael Crump WP7: "31 Days of Mango | Day #2: Device Status" Jeff Blankenburg Metro/WinRT/W8: "Lighting up your C# Metro apps by being a Share Target" Derik Whittaker Shoutouts: Michael Palermo's latest Desert Mountain Developers is up Michael Washington's latest Visual Studio #LightSwitch Daily is up SilverlightShow has announced a webinar you probably don't want to miss: Webinar – Introduction to XAML Development on Windows 8 Check out the top 5 from last week at SilverlightShow: SilverlightShow for November 07 - 13, 2011 From SilverlightCream.com: 10 Laps around Silverlight 5 (Part 6 of 10) Michael Crump covers a lot of territory in this Part 6 of his Silverlight 5 Beta series at SilverlightShow: P/Invoke, Multiple Windows, and Full Trust Windows Phone 7.5 - Manipulating camera stream Andrea Boschin has Part 4 of his Mango series up at SilverlightShow. He's discussing accessing the raw stream from the camera and saving it to a file. Blend 4 + VS 2011 (Preview) = Problem? Michael Sync reports a problem with Blend 4 and the VS2011 preview... followed up by a set of scripts that were posted on Connect to make the problem go away (at least for Michael) Windows Phone Toolkit MultiselectList in depth | Part1: key concepts and API WindowsPhoneGeek begins a series on the MultiselectList in the Phone Toolkit... if you've seen his tutorials, you know they're great... this one is no exception.. lots of code, info and notes getting you on-board with the features Getting Started with Windows Phone Alarms WindowsPhoneGeek next takes a sidestep from his new series and has this post on Alarms in WP7 apps .. one of the type of scheduled actions in WP7.1 ... good write-up, pictures and code Using AppHarbor, Bitbucket and Mercurial with ASP.NET and Silverlight – Part 3 Membership and Role Provider in SQL Server Erno de Weerd's part 3 of his series is up... adding Role and Membership to his application... check it out in this 17-step tutorial Yet Another Podcast #51–Shawn Wildermuth: //build, Xaml Programming & Beyond Jesse Liberty has another of his Yet Another Podcasts up and he's talking with Jon Galloway and Shawn Wildermuth... hear what *that* trio has to say about post //BUILD, and all things XAML Lighting up your C# Metro apps by being a Share Target Derik Whittaker continues to work with Metro... evidenced by this post on wiring your app up to be a Share Target .. allowing your app to consume data from other apps Photoshop in METRO style 2: Filters Antoni Dol follows up his Photoshop in Metro post with this one on filters... he's got some great screenshots... was hoping to see a link to the code... maybe I missed it! Silverlight and Sharepoint working together: a Silverlight menu for Sharepoint - Part 1 Walter Ferrari has part 1 of a series up at SilverlightShow talking about Sharepoint and Silverlight, and using Silverlight Navigation in place of what Sharepoint offers up. 31 Days of Mango | Day #2: Device Status Jeff Blankenburg is motoring along on his 31 Days of Mango. This is his Day 2 post and all about DeviceStatus, or just about everything you would like to know about your user's phone 31 Days of Mango | Day #3: Alarms and Reminders Day 3 of Jeff Blankenburg's series is about Alarms and Reminders... a way to alert your user that something needs to be done... you can create, edit, and delete them as needed Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• Virtual Box - How to open a .VDI Virtual Machine

  - by [email protected]

  TUESDAY, APRIL 27, 2010 How to open a .VDI Virtual MachineSometimes someone share with us one Virtual machine with extension .VDI, after that we can wonder how and what with?Well the answer is... It is a VirtualBox - Virtual Machine. If you have not downloaded it you can do this easily just follow this post.http://listeningoracle.blogspot.com/2010/04/que-es-virtualbox.htmlorhttp://oracleoforacle.wordpress.com/2010/04/14/ques-es-virtualbox/Ok, Now with VirtualBox Installed open it and proceed with the following:1. Open the Virtual File Manager.2. Click on Actions ? Add and select the .VDI fileClick "Ok"3. Now we can register the new Virtual Machine - Click New, and Click Next4. Write down a Name for the virtual Machine a proceed to select a Operating System and Version. (In this case it is a Linux (Oracle Enterprise Linux or RedHat)Click Next5. Select the memory amount base for the Virtual Machine(Minimal 1280 for our case) - Click Next6. Select the Disk 11GR2_OEL5_32GB.vdi it was added in the virtual media manager in the step 2.Dont forget let selected Boot hard Disk (Primary Master) . Given it is the only disk assigned to the virtual machine.Click Next7. Click Finish8. This step is important. Once you have click on the settings Button. 9. On General option click the advanced settings. Here you must change the default directory to save your Snapshots; my recommendation set it to the same directory where the .Vdi file is. Otherwise you can have the same Virtual Machine and its snapshots in different paths.10. Now Click on System, and proceed to assign the correct memory (If you did not before)Note: Enable "Enable IO APIC" if you are planning to assign more than one CPU to the Virtual Machine.Define the processors for the Virtual machine. If you processor is dual core choose 211. Select the video memory amount you want to assign to the Virtual Machine12. Associated more storage disk to the Virtual machine, if you have more VDI files.(Not our case)The disk must be selected as IDE Primary Master.13. Well you can verify the other options, but with these changes you will be able to start the VM.Note: Sometime the VM owner may share some instructions, if so follow his instructions.14. Finally Start the Virtual Machine (Click > Start)

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• Old School Wizardry Tip: Batch File Comments

  - by jkauffman

  Johnny, the Endangered Keyboard-Driven Windows User Some of my proudest, obscure Windows tricks are losing their relevance. I know I’m not alone. Keyboard shortcuts are going the way of the dodo. I used to induce fearful awe by slapping Ctrl+Shift+Esc in front of the lowly, pedestrian Windows users. No windows key on the keyboard? No problem: Ctrl+Esc. No menu key on the keyboard: Shift+F10. I am also firmly planted in the habit of closing windows with the Alt+Space menu (Alt+Space, C); and I harbor a brooding, slow=growing list of programs that fail to support this correctly (that means you, Paint.NET). Every time a new version of windows comes out, the support for some of these minor time-saving habits get pared out. Will I complain publicly? Nope, I know my old ways should be axed to conserve precious design energy. In fact, I disapprove of fierce un-intuitiveness for the sake of alleged productivity. Like vim, for example. If you approach a program after being away for 5 years, having to recall encyclopedic knowledge is a flaw. The RTFM disciples have lost. Anyway, some of the items in my arsenal of goofy time-saving tricks are still relevant today. I wanted to draw attention to one that’s stood the test of time. Remember Batch Files? Yes, it’s true, batch files are fading faster than the world of print. But they're not dead yet. I still run into some situations where I opt to use batch files. They are still relevant for build processes, or just various development workflow tools. Sure, there’s powershell, but there’s that stupid Set-ExecutionPolicy speed bump standing in your way; can you really spare the time to A) hunt down that setting on all machines affected and/or B) make futile efforts to convince your coworkers/boss that the hassle was worth it? When possible, I prefer the batch file wild card. And whenever I return to batch files, I end up researching some of the unintuitive aspects such as parameters, quote handling, and ERRORLEVEL. But I never have to remember to use “REM” for comment lines, because there’s a cleaner way to do them! Double Colon For Eye-Friendly Comments Here is a very simple batch file, with pretty much minimal content: @ECHO OFF SETLOCAL REM This is a comment ECHO This batch file doesn’t do much If you code on a daily basis, this may be more suitable to your eyes: @ECHO OFF SETLOCAL :: This is a comment ECHO This batch file doesn’t do much Works great! I imagine I find it preferable due to the similarity to comments in other situations: // or ;  or # I’ve often make visual pseudo-line breaks in my code, and this colon-based syntax works wonders: @ECHO OFF SETLOCAL :: Do stuff ECHO Doing Stuff :::::::::::::::::::::::::::: :: Do more stuff ECHO This batch file doesn’t do much Not only is it more readable, but there’s a slight performance benefit. The batch file engine sees this as an invalid line label and immediately reads the following line. Use that fact to your advantage if this trick leads you into heated nerd debate. Two Pitfalls to Avoid Be aware of that there are a couple situations where this hack will fail you. It most likely won’t be a problem unless you’re getting really sophisticated with your batch files. Pitfall #1: Inline comments @ECHO OFF SETLOCAL IF EXIST C:\SomeFile.txt GOTO END ::This will fail :END Unfortunately, this fails. You can only have whitespace to the left of your comments. Pitfall #2: Code Blocks @ECHO OFF SETLOCAL IF EXIST C:\SomeFile.txt (         :: This will fail         ECHO HELLO ) Code blocks, such as if statements and for loops, cannot contain these comments. This is ultimately due to the fact that entire code blocks are processed as a single line. I originally learned this from Rob van der Woude’s site. He goes into more depth about the behavior of the pitfalls as well, if you are interested in further details. I hope this trick earns you serious geek rep!

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• Windows Azure Recipe: Software as a Service (SaaS)

  - by Clint Edmonson

  The cloud was tailor built for aspiring companies to create innovative internet based applications and solutions. Whether you’re a garage startup with very little capital or a Fortune 1000 company, the ability to quickly setup, deliver, and iterate on new products is key to capturing market and mind share. And if you can capture that share and go viral, having resiliency and infinite scale at your finger tips is great peace of mind. Drivers Cost avoidance Time to market Scalability Solution Here’s a sketch of how a basic Software as a Service solution might be built out: Ingredients Web Role – this hosts the core web application. Each web role will host an instance of the software and as the user base grows, additional roles can be spun up to meet demand. Access Control – this service is essential to managing user identity. It’s backed by a full blown implementation of Active Directory and allows the definition and management of users, groups, and roles. A pre-built ASP.NET membership provider is included in the training kit to leverage this capability but it’s also flexible enough to be combined with external Identity providers including Windows LiveID, Google, Yahoo!, and Facebook. The provider model provides extensibility to hook into other industry specific identity providers as well. Databases – nearly every modern SaaS application is backed by a relational database for its core operational data. If the solution is sold to organizations, there’s a good chance multi-tenancy will be needed. An emerging best practice for SaaS applications is to stand up separate SQL Azure database instances for each tenant’s proprietary data to ensure isolation from other tenants. Worker Role – this is the best place to handle autonomous background processing such as data aggregation, billing through external services, and other specialized tasks that can be performed asynchronously. Placing these tasks in a worker role frees the web roles to focus completely on user interaction and data input and provides finer grained control over the system’s scalability and throughput. Caching (optional) – as a web site traffic grows caching can be leveraged to keep frequently used read-only, user specific, and application resource data in a high-speed distributed in-memory for faster response times and ultimately higher scalability without spinning up more web and worker roles. It includes a token based security model that works alongside the Access Control service. Blobs (optional) – depending on the nature of the software, users may be creating or uploading large volumes of heterogeneous data such as documents or rich media. Blob storage provides a scalable, resilient way to store terabytes of user data. The storage facilities can also integrate with the Access Control service to ensure users’ data is delivered securely. Training & Examples These links point to online Windows Azure training labs and examples where you can learn more about the individual ingredients described above. (Note: The entire Windows Azure Training Kit can also be downloaded for offline use.) Windows Azure (16 labs) Windows Azure is an internet-scale cloud computing and services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers, which provides an operating system and a set of developer services which can be used individually or together. It gives developers the choice to build web applications; applications running on connected devices, PCs, or servers; or hybrid solutions offering the best of both worlds. New or enhanced applications can be built using existing skills with the Visual Studio development environment and the .NET Framework. With its standards-based and interoperable approach, the services platform supports multiple internet protocols, including HTTP, REST, SOAP, and plain XML SQL Azure (7 labs) Microsoft SQL Azure delivers on the Microsoft Data Platform vision of extending the SQL Server capabilities to the cloud as web-based services, enabling you to store structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data. Windows Azure Services (9 labs) As applications collaborate across organizational boundaries, ensuring secure transactions across disparate security domains is crucial but difficult to implement. Windows Azure Services provides hosted authentication and access control using powerful, secure, standards-based infrastructure. Developing Applications for the Cloud, 2nd Edition (eBook) This book demonstrates how you can create from scratch a multi-tenant, Software as a Service (SaaS) application to run in the cloud using the latest versions of the Windows Azure Platform and tools. The book is intended for any architect, developer, or information technology (IT) professional who designs, builds, or operates applications and services that run on or interact with the cloud. Fabrikam Shipping (SaaS reference application) This is a full end to end sample scenario which demonstrates how to use the Windows Azure platform for exposing an application as a service. We developed this demo just as you would: we had an existing on-premises sample, Fabrikam Shipping, and we wanted to see what it would take to transform it in a full subscription based solution. The demo you find here is the result of that investigation See my Windows Azure Resource Guide for more guidance on how to get started, including more links web portals, training kits, samples, and blogs related to Windows Azure.

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• Windows Phone 7 Series - Tools and Resources

  - by TechTwaddle

  Unless you've been living in the caves of Lascaux for the past couple of days, you probably know what's happening in the world of Windows Phone. Microsoft unveiled the developer tools required to develop applications and games for Windows Phone 7 at MIX10 a couple of days back. Silverlight and XNA being the major frameworks, no big surprise there. And the best news of all is that all the development tools are free! So if you are planning to develop apps for Windows Phone 7, read on. The first place, or more appropriately hub, for you is the Windows Phone Developer Portal. It has most of the information you need to get you started. Now there is a ton of information available at other places too. In this post, I take time to put all the information that I found useful at one place, and I'll keep updating this as and when I find new stuff.   Setting up the development environment 1. Install Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP (Community Technology Preview) This will install Visual Studio 2010 Express, Silverlight, XNA framework and emulator for Windows Phone 7. It also installs a few support tools. 2. Expression Blend 4 for Windows Phone:     - Install Expression Blend 4 beta     - Install Expression Blend Add-in Preview for Windows Phone     - Install Expression Blend SDK Preview for Windows Phone Installing the above tools should set your machine up for development. I installed the tools on my Windows Vista SP1 machine and the process went smoothly without running into any major hitch. Note that the tools won't install on Windows XP, read the release notes of the CTP. Resources and Documentation 1. Microsoft Windows Phone 7 Series Developer Training Kit 2. Programming Windows Phone 7 Series by Charles Petzold. Contains few chapters only. Gives a good preview. 3. MSDN documentation for Windows Phone 7 Development 4. A sample chapter from Learning Windows Phone Programming [PDF] by Yochay Kiriaty and Jaime Rodriguez. Complete book will be available at a later time. 5. Windows Phone 7 Developer Forum - where you can ask questions and problems you run into and the experts are there to help you. 6. For Silverlight visit silverlight.net and for XNA game development, the XNA Creators Club is the place to go, also make sure you follow Michael Klutcher's and Shawn Hargreaves' blog. 7. And finally the MIX'10 website. Most of the sessions will be available for download later (some are already available). Click on the Windows Phone tag to get all the session details and downloads.   If you are completely new to Silverlight and XNA (like me), and C# makes some sense to you then I suggest you go through the Developer Training Kit. It gives a good start and ramps you up pretty quickly.

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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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• Automated SSRS deployment with the RS utility

  - by Stacy Vicknair

  If you’re familiar with SSRS and development you are probably aware of the SSRS web services. The RS utility is a tool that comes with SSRS that allows for scripts to be executed against against the SSRS web service without needing to create an application to consume the service. One of the better benefits of using this format rather than writing an application is that the script can be modified by others who might be involved in the creation and addition of scripts or management of the SSRS environment.   Reporting Services Scripter Jasper Smith from http://www.sqldbatips.com created Reporting Services Scripter to assist with the created of a batch process to deploy an entire SSRS environment. The helper scripts below were created through the modification of his generated scripts. Why not just use this tool? You certainly can. For me, the volume of scripts generated seems less maintainable than just using some common methods extracted from these scripts and creating a deployment in a single script file. I would, however, recommend this as a product if you do not think that your environment will change drastically or if you do not need to deploy with a higher level of control over the deployment. If you just need to replicate, this tool works great. Executing with RS.exe Executing a script against rs.exe is fairly simple. The Script Half the battle is having a starting point. For the scripting I needed to do the below is the starter script. A few notes: This script assumes integrated security. This script assumes your reports have one data source each. Both of the above are just what made sense for my scenario and are definitely modifiable to accommodate your needs. If you are unsure how to change the scripts to your needs, I recommend Reporting Services Scripter to help you understand how the differences. The script has three main methods: CreateFolder, CreateDataSource and CreateReport. Scripting the server deployment is just a process of recreating all of the elements that you need through calls to these methods. If there are additional elements that you need to deploy that aren’t covered by these methods, again I suggest using Reporting Services Scripter to get the code you would need, convert it to a repeatable method and add it to this script! Public Sub Main() CreateFolder("/", "Data Sources") CreateFolder("/", "My Reports") CreateDataSource("/Data Sources", "myDataSource", _ "Data Source=server\instance;Initial Catalog=myDatabase") CreateReport("/My Reports", _ "MyReport", _ "C:\myreport.rdl", _ True, _ "/Data Sources", _ "myDataSource") End Sub   Public Sub CreateFolder(parent As String, name As String) Dim fullpath As String = GetFullPath(parent, name) Try RS.CreateFolder(name, parent, GetCommonProperties()) Console.WriteLine("Folder created: {0}", name) Catch e As SoapException If e.Detail.Item("ErrorCode").InnerText = "rsItemAlreadyExists" Then Console.WriteLine("Folder {0} already exists and cannot be overwritten", fullpath) Else Console.WriteLine("Error : " + e.Detail.Item("ErrorCode").InnerText + " (" + e.Detail.Item("Message").InnerText + ")") End If End Try End Sub   Public Sub CreateDataSource(parent As String, name As String, connectionString As String) Try RS.CreateDataSource(name, parent,False, GetDataSourceDefinition(connectionString), GetCommonProperties()) Console.WriteLine("DataSource {0} created successfully", name) Catch e As SoapException Console.WriteLine("Error : " + e.Detail.Item("ErrorCode").InnerText + " (" + e.Detail.Item("Message").InnerText + ")") End Try End Sub   Public Sub CreateReport(parent As String, name As String, location As String, overwrite As Boolean, dataSourcePath As String, dataSourceName As String) Dim reportContents As Byte() = Nothing Dim warnings As Warning() = Nothing Dim fullpath As String = GetFullPath(parent, name)   'Read RDL definition from disk Try Dim stream As FileStream = File.OpenRead(location) reportContents = New [Byte](stream.Length-1) {} stream.Read(reportContents, 0, CInt(stream.Length)) stream.Close()   warnings = RS.CreateReport(name, parent, overwrite, reportContents, GetCommonProperties())   If Not (warnings Is Nothing) Then Dim warning As Warning For Each warning In warnings Console.WriteLine(Warning.Message) Next warning Else Console.WriteLine("Report: {0} published successfully with no warnings", name) End If   'Set report DataSource references Dim dataSources(0) As DataSource   Dim dsr0 As New DataSourceReference dsr0.Reference = dataSourcePath Dim ds0 As New DataSource ds0.Item = CType(dsr0, DataSourceDefinitionOrReference) ds0.Name=dataSourceName dataSources(0) = ds0     RS.SetItemDataSources(fullpath, dataSources)   Console.Writeline("Report DataSources set successfully")       Catch e As IOException Console.WriteLine(e.Message) Catch e As SoapException Console.WriteLine("Error : " + e.Detail.Item("ErrorCode").InnerText + " (" + e.Detail.Item("Message").InnerText + ")") End Try End Sub     Public Function GetCommonProperties() As [Property]() 'Common CatalogItem properties Dim descprop As New [Property] descprop.Name = "Description" descprop.Value = "" Dim hiddenprop As New [Property] hiddenprop.Name = "Hidden" hiddenprop.Value = "False"   Dim props(1) As [Property] props(0) = descprop props(1) = hiddenprop Return props End Function   Public Function GetDataSourceDefinition(connectionString as String) Dim definition As New DataSourceDefinition definition.CredentialRetrieval = CredentialRetrievalEnum.Integrated definition.ConnectString = connectionString definition.Enabled = True definition.EnabledSpecified = True definition.Extension = "SQL" definition.ImpersonateUser = False definition.ImpersonateUserSpecified = True definition.Prompt = "Enter a user name and password to access the data source:" definition.WindowsCredentials = False definition.OriginalConnectStringExpressionBased = False definition.UseOriginalConnectString = False Return definition End Function   Private Function GetFullPath(parent As String, name As String) As String If parent = "/" Then Return parent + name Else Return parent + "/" + name End If End Function

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• The Spotlight is on You

  - by Claudia McDonald

  On the field or off the field, in ballet slippers or singing your heart out on stage, offering a stellar performance every time is key to holding the attention of your audience and having them come back hungry for more. Similarly, showing up to a new business meeting wearing pink tights and a tutu might be one way to holding the attention of your customer, but offering them an unmatched and ground-breaking software solution certainly will get their attention! Simply put, the Oracle Exastack program enables both ISV's and OEM's to rapidly build and deliver faster, more reliable applications. It comes as no surprise that the success of the Oracle Exastack program is centered on establishing Oracle Exadata Database Machine and Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud as the highest performance, lowest cost platforms available in the industry today.  But here is where the real standing-ovation-worthy facts come in. The Oracle Exadata Database Machine is the only database machine that provides extreme performance for both data warehousing and online transaction processing (OLTP) workloads, making it the ideal platform for consolidating onto private clouds. Whereas the Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud is an engineered hardware and software system tested and tuned by Oracle to provide the best foundation for cloud computing, while allowing Java applications, Oracle Applications and other enterprise applications to run with extreme performance. – And the crowd goes wild, ladies and gentlemen! In just four months alone, our partners have already achieved over 150 Oracle Exastack Ready milestones for Oracle Solaris, Oracle Linux, Oracle Database and Oracle WebLogic Server.  As Judson has said, “With the Oracle Exastack program, Oracle is helping partners test, tune and optimize their applications to deliver optimal performance and reliability, accelerating innovation and delivering superior value to customers." And get this, not only are their applications running faster and more efficiently, they are actually being delivered at a lower cost to customers than ever before – extreme performance well deserving of 3 consecutive arabesques! If you haven’t already, check out what some of our partners are saying about the Oracle Exastack program in this video, and find out all that is available to you today. By participating in the Oracle Exastack program, partners now have the ability to achieve Oracle Exadata Optimized, Oracle Exalogic Optimized, Oracle Exadata Ready and Oracle Exalogic Ready status for their solutions. New Oracle Exastack labs, provide OPN members with access to Oracle technical resources, on-premise facilities and remote lab environments. With Oracle Exastack Optimized, partners experience faster and more reliable applications to run on the Oracle Exadata Database Machine, as well as the long awaited Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud. Savvy OPN members are leveraging the Oracle Exastack Optimized program toward their advancement to Platinum or Diamond level in OPN. Partners are achieving Oracle Exadata Ready and Oracle Exalogic Ready giving them a competitive advantage and signaling to customers that their applications readily support Oracle Exadata Database Machine or Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud to deliver extreme performance. Get your dancing shoes on, The OPN Communications Team

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 2012-06-22

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Guide to integration architecture | Stephanie Mann "The landscape of integration architecture is shifting as service-oriented and cloud-based architecture take the fore," says Stephanie Mann. "To ensure success, enterprise architects and developers are turning to lighter-weight infrastructure to support more complex integration projects." FY13 Oracle PartnerNetwork Kickoff - Tues June 26, 2012 Join us for a one-hour live online event hosted by the Oracle PartnerNetwork team as we kickoff FY13. Other dates/times for EMEA/LAD/JAPAN/APAC. Click the link for details. Why should you choose Oracle WebLogic 12c instead of JBoss EAP 6? | Ricardo Ferreira Okay, you would expect an Oracle guy to make this argument. But Ferreira takes a very deep, very detailed technical dive into the issue. So hear the man out, will ya? Hibernate4 and Coherence | Rene van Wijk According to Oracle ACE Rene van Wijk, "there are two ways to integrate Hibernate and Coherence." In this post he illustrates one of them. Simple Made Easy | Rich Hickey Rich Hickey discusses simplicity, why it is important, how to achieve it in design and how to recognize its absence in the tools, language constructs and libraries in this presentation from QCon London 2012. Starting a cluster | Mark Nelson Fusion Middleware A-Team blogger Mark Nelson looks at Oracle SOA Suite, Oracle BPM, and Oracle Coherence, three products that are " commonly clustered, and which have somewhat different requirements." Why building SaaS well means giving up your servers | GigaOM The biggest benefit to PaaS, reports GigaOM's Derrick Harris, "might be a better product because the company is able to focus on building the app rather than managing servers." Personas - what, why & how | Mascha van Oosterhout "To be able to create a successful, user-friendly website or application," says Mascha van Oosterhout, "every decision you take, whether you are part of the marketing team, the design team or the development team, should be based on what you know about the user." Thought for the Day "Machines take me by surprise with great frequency." — Alan Turing(June 23, 1912 - June 7, 1954) Source: Brainy Quote

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• ResourceSerializable: an alternate to ORM and ActiveRecord

  - by Levi Morrison

  A few opinionated reasons I don't like the traditional ORM and ActiveRecord patterns: They work only with a database. Sometimes I'm dealing with objects from an API and other objects from a database. All the implementations I have seen don't allow for that. Feel free to clue me in if I'm wrong on this. They are brittle. Changes in the database will likely break your implemenation. Some implementations can help reduce this, but a few of the ones I've seen don't. Their very design is influenced by the database. If I want to switch to using an API, I'll have to redesign the object to get it to work (likely). It seems to violate the single-responsibility pattern. They know what they are and how they act, but they also know how they are created, destroyed and saved? Seems a bit much. What about an approach that is somewhat more familiar in PHP: implementing an interface? In php 5.4, we'll have the JsonSerializable interface that defines the data to be json_encoded, so users will become accustomed to this type of thing. What if there was a ResourceSerializable interface? This is still an ORM by name, but certainly not by tradition. interface ResourceSerializable { /** * Returns the id that identifies the resource. */ function resourceId(); /** * Returns the 'type' of the resource. */ function resourceType(); /** * Returns the data to be serialized. */ function resourceSerialize(); } Things might be poorly named, I'll take suggestions. Notes: ResourceId will work for API's and databases. As long as your primary key in the database is the same as the resource ID in the API, there is no conflict. All of the API's I've worked with have a unique ID for the resource, so I don't see any issues there. ResourceType is the group or type associated with the resource. You can use this to map the resource to an API call or a database table. If the ResourceType was person, it could map to /api/1/person/{resourceId} and the table persons (or people, if it's smart enough). resourceSerialize() returns the data to be stored. Keys would identify API parameters and database table columns. This also seems easier to test than ActiveRecord / Orm implemenations. I haven't done much automated testing on traditional ActiveRecord/ORM implemenations, so this is merely a guess. But it seems that I being able to create objects independently of the library helps me. I don't have to use load() to get an existing resource, I can simply create one and set all the right properties. This is not so easy in the ActiveRecord / Orm implemenations I've dealt with. Downsides: You need another object to serialize it. This also means you have more code in general as you have to use more objects. You have to map resource types to API calls and database tables. This is even more work, but some ORMs and ActiveRecord implementations require you to map objects to table names anyway. Are there other downsides that you see? Does this seem feasible to you? How would you improve it? Note: I almost asked this on StackOverflow because it might be too vague for their standards, but I'm still not really familiar with programmers.stackexchange.com, so please help me improve my question if it doesn't shape up to standards here.

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• Cutting Subscriber Churn with Media Intelligence

  - by Oracle M&E

  There's lots of talk in media and entertainment companies about using "big data".  But it's often hard to see through the hype and understand how big data brings benefits in the real world.  How about being able to predict with 92% accuracy which subscribers intend to cancel their subscription - and put in place a renewal strategy to dramatically reduce that churn?  That's what Belgian media company De Persgroep has achieved with Oracle's Media Intelligence solution.  "One of the areas in which we're able to achieve beautiful results using big data is the churn prediction," De Persgroep's CIO Luc Verbist explains in a new Oracle video.  "Based on all the data that we collect on websites and all your behavior, payment behavior and so on, we're able to make a prediction model, which, with an accuracy of 92 percent, is able to predict that you probably won't renew your newspaper, anymore. So our approach to renewal is completely different to the people in that segment than towards the other people. And this has brought us a lot of value and a lot of customers who didn't stop their newspaper where else they would have done so." De Persgroep is using Oracle's Big Data Appliance, along with software from Oracle partner NGDATA to build up a detailed "DNA profile" of each individual customer, based on every interaction, in real time.  This means that any change in behavior - a drop in content consumption, a late subscription payment, a negative social media comment - is captured.  Applying advanced data modeling techniques automatically converts those raw interactions into data with real business meaning - like that customer's risk of churning. The very same data profile - comprising hundreds if individual dimensions - can simultaneously drive targeted marketing campaigns - informing audience about new content that's most relevant and encouraging them to subscribe.  It can power content recommendations and personalization right in the content sites and apps. And it can link directly into digital advertising networks via platforms like Oracle's BlueKai data management platform (DMP), to drive increased advertising CPMs. Using Oracle's Media Intelligence solution enables this across De Persgroep's business - comprising eight newspapers and 25 magazines published in Belgium and The Netherlands, and digital properties including websites with 6m daily unique visitors, along with TV and radio stations. "The company strategy is in fact a customer-centric strategy, so we want to get a 360-view about our customers, about our prospects. And the big data project helped us to achieve that goal," says Verbist. Using Oracle's Big Data Appliance to underpin the solution created huge savings.   "The selection of the Big Data Appliance was quite easy.  It was very quick to install, very easy to install, as well. And it was far cheaper than building our own Hadoop cluster. So it was in fact a non-brainer," Verbist explains. Applying Media Intelligence approach has yielded incredible results for De Persgroep, including: Improved products - with a new understanding of how readers are consuming print and digital content across the day Improved customer segmentation - driving a 6X improvement in customer prospecting and acquisition when contacting a specific segment Having the project up and running in three months And that has led to competitive benefits for De Persgroep, as Luc Verbist explains: "one of the results we saw since we started using big data is that we're able to increase the gap between we as the market leader, and the second [by] more than 20 percent."

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• Master Data Management for Location Data - Oracle Site Hub

  - by david.butler(at)oracle.com

  Most MDM discussions cover key domains such as customer, supplier, product, service, and reference data. It is usually understood that these domains have complex structures and hundreds if not thousands of attributes that need governing. Location, on the other hand, strikes most people as address data. How hard can that be? But for many industries, locations are complex, and site information is critical to efficient operations and relevant analytics. Retail stores and malls, bank branches, construction sites come to mind. But one of the best industries for illustrating the power of a site mastering application is Oil & Gas.   Oracle's Master Data Management solution for location data is the Oracle Site Hub. It is a location mastering solution that enables organizations to centralize site and location specific information from heterogeneous systems, creating a single view of site information that can be leveraged across all functional departments and analytical systems.   Let's take a look at the location entities the Oracle Site Hub can manage for the Oil & Gas industry: organizations, property, land, buildings, roads, oilfield, service center, inventory site, real estate, facilities, refineries, storage tanks, vendor locations, businesses, assets; project site, area, well, basin, pipelines, critical infrastructure, offshore platform, compressor station, gas station, etc. Any site can be classified into multiple hierarchies, like organizational hierarchy, operational hierarchy, geographic hierarchy, divisional hierarchies and so on. Any site can also be associated to multiple clusters, i.e. collections of sites, and these can be used as a foundation for driving reporting, analysis, organize daily work, etc. Hierarchies can also be used to model entities which are structured or non-structured collections of nodes, like for example routes, pipelines and more. The User Defined Attribute Framework provides the needed infrastructure to add single row attributes groups like well base attributes (well IDs, well type, well structure and key characterizing measures, and more) and well geometry, and multi row attribute groups like well applications, permits, production data, activities, operations, logs, treatments, tests, drills, treatments, and KPIs. Site Hub can also model areas, lands, fields, basins, pools, platforms, eco-zones, and stratigraphic layers as specific sites, tracking their base attributes, aliases, descriptions, subcomponents and more. Midstream entities (pipelines, logistic sites, pump stations) and downstream entities (cylinders, tanks, inventories, meters, partner's sites, routes, facilities, gas stations, and competitor sites) can also be easily modeled, together with their specific attributes and relationships. Site Hub can store any type of unstructured data associated to a site. This could be stored directly or on an external content management solution, like Oracle Universal Content Management. Considering a well, for example, Site Hub can store any relevant associated multimedia file such as: CAD drawings of the well profile, structure and/or parts, engineering documents, contracts, applications, permits, logs, pictures, photos, videos and more. For any site entity, Site Hub can associate all the related assets and equipments at the site, as well as all relationships between sites, between a site and multiple parties, and between a site and any purchasable or sellable item, over time. Items can be equipment, instruments, facilities, services, products, production entities, production facilities (pipelines, batteries, compressor stations, gas plants, meters, separators, etc.), support facilities (rigs, roads, transmission or radio towers, airstrips, etc.), supplier products and services, catalogs, and more. Items can just be associated to sites using standard Site Hub features, or they can be fully mastered by implementing Oracle Product Hub. Site locations (addresses or geographical coordinates) are also managed with out-of-the-box address geo-coding capabilities coupled with Google Maps integration to deliver powerful mapping capabilities and spatial data analysis. Locations can be shared between different sites. Centered on the site location, any site can also have associated areas. Site Hub can master any site location specific information, like for example cadastral, ownership, jurisdictional, geological, seismic and more, and any site-centric area specific information, like for example economical, political, risk, weather, logistic, traffic information and more. Now if anyone ever asks you why locations need MDM, think about how all these Oil & Gas entities and attributes would translate into your business locations. To learn more about Oracle's full MDM solution for the digital oil field, here is a link to Roberto Negro's outstanding whitepaper: Oracle Site Master Data Management for mastering wells and other PPDM entities in a digital oilfield context  

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• WebCenter Customer Spotlight: Los Angeles Department of Water and Power

  - by me

  Author: Peter Reiser - Social Business Evangelist, Oracle WebCenter  Solution Summary Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) is the largest public utility company in the United States with over 1.6 million customers. LADWP provides water and power for millions of residential & commercial customers in Southern California. The goal of the project was to implement a newly designed web portal to increase customer self-service while reducing transactions via IVR and automate many of the paper based processes to web based workflows for their 1.6 million customers. LADWP implemented a Self Service Portal using Oracle WebCenter Portal & Oracle WebCenter Content and Oracle SOA Suite for the integration of their complex back-end systems infrastructure. The new portal has received extremely positive feedback from not only the customers and users of the portal, but also other utilities. At Oracle OpenWorld 2012, LADWP won the prestigious WebCenter innovation award for their innovative solution. Company OverviewLos Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) is the largest public utility company in the United States with over 1.6 million customers. LADWP provides water and power for millions of residential & commercial customers in Southern California. LADWP also bills most of these customers for sanitation services provided by another department in the city of Los Angeles.  Business ChallengesThe goal of the project was to implement a newly designed web portal that is easy to navigate from a web browser and mobile devices, as well as be the platform for surfacing internet and intranet applications at LADWP. The primary objective of the new portal was to increase customer self-service while reducing the transactions via IVR and walk-up and to automate many of the paper based processes to web based workflows for customers. This includes automation of Self Service implemented through My Account (Bill Pay, Payment History, Bill History, Usage analysis, Service Request Management) Financial Assistance Programs Customer Rebate Programs Turn Off/Turn On/Transfer of Services Outage Reporting eNotification (SMS, email) Solution DeployedLADWP implemented a Self Service Portal using Oracle WebCenter Portal & Oracle WebCenter Content. Using Oracle SOA Suite they integrated various back-end systems including Oracle Siebel CRM IBM Mainframe based CIS FILENET for document management EBP Eletronic Bill Payment System HP Imprint System for BillXML data Other systems including outage reporting systems, SMS service, etc. The new portal’s features include: Complete Graphical redesign based on best practices in UI Design for high usability Customer Self Service implemented through MyAccount (Bill Pay, Payment History, Bill History, Usage Analysis, Service Request Management) Financial Assistance Programs (CRM, WebCenter) Customer Rebate Programs (CRM, WebCenter) Turn On/Off/Transfer of services (Commercial & Residential) Outage Reporting eNotification (SMS, email) Multilingual (English & Spanish) – using WebCenter multi-language support Section 508 (ADA) Compliant Search – Using WebCenter SES (Secured Enterprise Search) Distributed Authorship in WebCenter Content Mobile Access (any Mobile Browser) Business ResultsThe new portal has received extremely positive feedback from not only customers and users of the portal, but also other utilities. At Oracle OpenWorld 2012, LADWP won the prestigious WebCenter innovation award for their innovative solution. Additional Information LADWP OpenWorld presentation Oracle WebCenter Portal Oracle WebCenter Content Oracle SOA Suite

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• Monitoring Your Servers

  - by Grant Fritchey

  If you are the DBA in a large scale enterprise, you’re probably already monitoring your servers for up-time and performance. But if you work for a medium-sized business, a small shop, or even a one-man operation, chances are pretty good that you’re not doing that sort of monitoring. You know that you’re supposed to be doing it, but other things, more important at-the-moment things, keep getting in the way. After all, which is more important, some monitoring or backup testing?  Backup testing, of course. Monitoring is frequently one of those things that you do when can get around to it.  Well, as you can see at the right, I have your round tuit ready to go. What if I told you that you could get monitoring on your servers for up-time, job completion, performance, all the standard stuff? And what if I told you that you wouldn’t need to install and configure another server in your environment to get it done? And what if I told you that you’d be able to set up and customize your alerts so you could know if your server was offline or a drive was full? Almost nothing for you to do, and you’ll have a full-blown monitoring process. Sounds to good to be true doesn’t it? Well, it’s coming. We’re creating an online, remote, monitoring system here at Red Gate. You’ll be able to use our SQL Monitor tool (which you can see here, monitoring SQL Server Central in real time) to keep track of your systems, but without having to set up a server and a database for storing the information collected. Instead, we’re taking advantage of services available through the internet to enable collection and storage of this information remotely, off your systems. All you have to do is install a piece of software that will communicate between our service and your servers and you’ll be off and running. It’s that easy. Before you get too excited, let me break the news that this is the near future I’m talking about. We’re setting up the program and there’s a sign-up you can use to get in on the initial tests.

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• Am 10.02. startet WebCast-Serie für Java Entwickler und WebLogic Interessenten: WebLogic Developer - Get the latest on Oracle WebLogic Server and Java EE 6

  - by Thomas Leopold

  v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 21 false false false DE 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:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Accelerate Your Development with Oracle WebLogic Suite Many organisations are reducing travel, conference, and training budgets for their developers without any change to the results expected of those developers. So how can you keep up with the latest developments?By receiving training, delivered free of charge, at your desk!Join us during February and March for a series of online events designed and run by the development team at Oracle. Learn how Oracle WebLogic Suite enables a whole new level of productivity for enterprise developers.Virtual Developer Day - 10th FebruaryStarting with our Virtual Developer Day on 10th February, join us for a blend of hands-on labs, live chat and presentations covering the latest on WebLogic, Java EE 6 and the programming tenets that have made it a true platform breakthrough.Weekly WebLogic Webcasts from 17th February to 17th MarchAfterwards, join us every week from 17th February to 17th March for our weekly one-hour webcasts where we will show you how to build an application from the ground up using Java and JEE technologies. Presented by the engineering team for WebLogic, these webcasts will be of great value to developers and architects, not just those already using WebLogic.For registration, full session abstracts and schedule please click here. Don't miss out! Register now to join our virtual events and keep up with all the latest developments. Find out more and register now Copyright © 2011, Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates.All rights reserved. Contact Us | Legal Notices and Terms of Use | Privacy Statement

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• 2013 Predictions for Retail

  - by David Dorf

  Its that time of year to roll out the predictions for next year.  I can't say I've really nailed it in the past, but feel free to look back at my 2012, 2011, and 2010 predictions.  I'm not expecting anything earth-shattering this year; just continued maturation of several technologies that are finally taking hold. 1. Next day delivery -- Amazon finally decided it wasn't worth fighting state taxes and instead decided to place distribution centers everywhere so they can potentially offer next-day deliveries.  Not to be outdone, Walmart is looking to leverage its huge physical presence to offer the same.  Clubs like ShopRunner are pushing delivery barriers as well, so the norm is shifting to free shipping in a few days or relatively cheap shipping overnight.  Retailers need be thinking about how to ship from physical stores. 2. Bring your own device -- Earlier this year Intuit bought AisleBuyer, a mobile self-checkout start-up, at least somewhat validating the BYOD approach.  Grocery stores, especially in Europe, have been supporting in-aisle self-scanning for a while and I'm betting it will find a home in certain verticals in the US too.  There's also the BYOD concept for employees.  Some retailers are considering issuing mobile devices at hiring along side the shirt and name-tag.  Employees become responsible for the hardware until they leave. 3. TV shopping -- Will Apple finally release a TV product in 2013?  Who knows?  But the industry isn't standing still. Companies like QVC and HSN are already successfully combining the TV and online experiences for shopping.  Comcast is partnering with Tivo to allow viewers to interact with ads with Paypal handing payment.  This will be a slow maturation, but expect TVs to get smarter and eventually become a new selling channel (pun intended) for retailers. 4. Privacy backlash -- It only takes one big incident to stir the public, and I'm betting we have one in 2013.  Facebook, Google, or Apple will test the boundaries of what the public is willing to accept.  It could involve a retailer using geo-location technology, or possibly video analytics.  And as is always the case, the offender will apologize, temporarily remove the technology, and wait 2-3 years for it to be generally accepted.  Privacy is a moving target. 5. More NFC -- I've come to the conclusion that adoption of any banking technology is going to be slow.  It was slow for credit cards, ATMs, and online billpay so why should it be any different for NFC?  Maybe, just maybe the iPhone 5S will have an NFC chip, but we're not going to see mainstream uptake for years.  Next year we'll continue to see incremental improvements from Isis, Google, and Paypal and a plethora of new startups, but don't toss your magstripe cards just yet. 6. In-store location -- The technologies for tracking people inside stores is really improving.  Retailers can track people using video cameras, infrared, and by the WiFi radios in mobile phones.  We're getting closer to the point where accuracy could be a shelf-facing, which will help retailers understand how people shop, where they spend time, and what displays attract them.  Expect CPG companies to get involved and partner with retailers, since the data benefits both parties.  Consumers will benefit by being directed right to the products they seek.  (In 2013 ARTS is forming a workteam to develop new standards in this area.) 7. M&A -- Looking back at 2012 there were some really big deals involving IBM, Oracle, JDA, and NCR and I expect that trend will likely continue as vendors add assets to bolster their portfolios.  Many retailers are due for an IT transformation to support anywhere, anytime shoppers, and one-stop-vendors can minimize complexity and costs. Predictions from other sources: Independent Retailer Stores Magazine IDC Insights Mobile Commerce Daily

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• The theory of evolution applied to software

  - by Michel Grootjans

  I recently realized the many parallels you can draw between the theory of evolution and evolving software. Evolution is not the proverbial million monkeys typing on a million typewriters, where one of them comes up with the complete works of Shakespeare. We would have noticed by now, since the proverbial monkeys are now blogging on the Internet ;-) One of the main ideas of the theory of evolution is the balance between random mutations and natural selection. Random mutations happen all the time: millions of mutations over millions of years. Most of them are totally useless. Some of them are beneficial to the evolved species. Natural selection favors the beneficially mutated species. Less beneficial mutations die off. The mutated rabbit doesn't have to be faster than the fox. It just has to be faster than the other rabbits.   Theory of evolution Evolving software Random mutations happen all the time. Most of these mutations are so bad, the new species dies off, or cannot reproduce. Developers write new code all the time. New ideas come up during the act of writing software. The really bad ones don't get past the stage of idea. The bad ones don't get committed to source control. Natural selection favors the beneficial mutated species Good ideas and new code gets discussed in group during informal peer review. Less than good code gets refactored. Enhanced code makes it more readable, maintainable... A good set of traits makes the species superior to others. It becomes widespread A good design tends to make it easier to add new features, easier to understand the current implementations, easier to optimize for performance...thus superior. The best designs get carried over from project to project. They appear in blogs, articles and books about principles, patterns and practices.   Of course the act of writing software is deliberate. This can hardly be called random mutations. Though it sometimes might seem that code evolves through a will of its own ;-) Does this mean that evolving software (evolution) is better than a big design up front (creationism)? Not necessarily. It's a false idea to think that a project starts from scratch and everything evolves from there. Everyone carries his experience of what works and what doesn't. Up front design is necessary, but is best kept simple and minimal, just enough to get you started. Let the good experiences and ideas help to drive the process, whether they come from you or from others, from past experience or from the most junior developer on your team. Once again, balance is the keyword. Balance design up front with evolution on a daily basis. How do you know what balance is right? Through your own experience of what worked and what didn't (here's evolution again). Notes: The evolution of software can quickly degenerate without discipline. TDD is a discipline that leaves little to chance on that part. Write your test to describe the new behavior. Write just enough code to make it behave as specified. Refactor to evolve the code to a higher standard. The responsibility of good design rests continuously on each developers' shoulders. Promiscuous pair programming helps quickly spreading the design to the whole team.

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• Join our Marketing Intelligence Team in Dublin!

  - by jessica.ebbelaar

  Do you want to work with the brightest minds in the industry? Want to be part of a global team that’s changing the way the world does business? Then Oracle is the place for YOU. Join now as a Marketing Intelligence Representative. You will have the opportunity to develop within the role through working alongside the Business Development, Sales and Marketing teams within Oracle. The Marketing Intelligence Group is viewed as a true talent pool for the Business Development and Sales Teams. Oracle offers a structured training programme for Marketing Intelligence Representatives and Business Development Consultants including our approved sales certified training methodology along with regular product training. Miriam started her career as a Marketing Intelligence Representative six years ago, and shares what she has learned and how her career is progressing. My Career Path at Oracle: June 2005 – October 2005: Profiler in the Marketing Intelligence Team November 2005 - October 2006: Team Leader for MIT November 2006 - February 2008: Business Development Consultant Iberia March 2008 - December 2010: Lead Management Specialist Currently: Sales Program Manager for Iberia & Benelux What did you learn from your role in the Market Intelligence Team Being a Profiler helped me to understand how an organisation works, from the beginning to the end. It is like being in University but being paid! The three key things I learnt in this role are: Knowledge of customers: You are on the phone with over 70 customers daily. Not only does this give you an overview of the IT infrastructure of the customers companies but also how to manage their questions and rejections. Essentially you are learning how to convert their pain and complaints into business opportunities. Knowledge of Oracle: As a Profiler you get an excellent overview of how Oracle works internally, from Marketing to Sales, without forgetting the Operations Team. Knowledge about yourself: As a Profiler I learnt how to work outside of my comfort zone, there is a new challenge almost every day but Oracle are there to support you every step of the way. Oracle really invests in developing the MIT Team and as a Profiler you can expect product and sales training on a monthly basis. How did you progress from MIT to Business Development Group (BDG)? I made sure that my manager knew from the very beginning that I was keen to progress at Oracle and I was set very clear objectives to help me reach my goal.  My manager was very supportive and ensured I received all the training I needed. After I became a Team Leader of Profiling, I moved to an Iberia BDG position. How you feel your experience in MI has helped you in your current role? I truly believe that the MI position gives you a great overview of Oracle and this has really helped me in my current position.  I am the Sales Program Manager for IBERIA & Benelux and in my campaigns I need to target the right companies and the right job specs.  My time in the Market Intelligence team really helped me to understand how to focus and target my campaigns so I know I don’t miss any business opportunities! How would you sum up your Oracle experience? Oracle is a big organisation with big opportunities. With the right skills and with the great training programs that Oracle offer, the only limit is you! If you have any questions related to this article feel free to contact [email protected] You can find all our job opportunities via http://campus.oracle.com. Tags van Technorati: Marketing Intelligence,Benelux,Iberia,Profiler,Business Development,Sales Representatives,BDG,Business Development Group,opportunities,Oracle

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• Converting openGl code to DirectX

  - by Fredrik Boston Westman

  First of all, this is kind of a follow up question on @byte56 excellent anwser on this question concerning picking algorithms. I'm trying to convert one of his code examples to directX 11 however I have run in to some problems ( I can pick but the picking is way off), and I wanted to make sure I had done it rigth before moving on and checking the rest of my code. I am not that familiar with openGl but I can imagine openGl has diffrent coordinations systems, and functions that alters how you must implement to code abit. This is his code example: public Ray GetPickRay() { int mouseX = Mouse.getX(); int mouseY = WORLD.Byte56Game.getHeight() - Mouse.getY(); float windowWidth = WORLD.Byte56Game.getWidth(); float windowHeight = WORLD.Byte56Game.getHeight(); //get the mouse position in screenSpace coords double screenSpaceX = ((float) mouseX / (windowWidth / 2) - 1.0f) * aspectRatio; double screenSpaceY = (1.0f - (float) mouseY / (windowHeight / 2)); double viewRatio = Math.tan(((float) Math.PI / (180.f/ViewAngle) / 2.00f))* zoomFactor; screenSpaceX = screenSpaceX * viewRatio; screenSpaceY = screenSpaceY * viewRatio; //Find the far and near camera spaces Vector4f cameraSpaceNear = new Vector4f((float) (screenSpaceX * NearPlane), (float) (screenSpaceY * NearPlane), (float) (-NearPlane), 1); Vector4f cameraSpaceFar = new Vector4f((float) (screenSpaceX * FarPlane), (float) (screenSpaceY * FarPlane), (float) (-FarPlane), 1); //Unproject the 2D window into 3D to see where in 3D we're actually clicking Matrix4f tmpView = Matrix4f(view); Matrix4f invView = (Matrix4f) tmpView.invert(); Vector4f worldSpaceNear = new Vector4f(); Matrix4f.transform(invView, cameraSpaceNear, worldSpaceNear); Vector4f worldSpaceFar = new Vector4f(); Matrix4f.transform(invView, cameraSpaceFar, worldSpaceFar); //calculate the ray position and direction Vector3f rayPosition = new Vector3f(worldSpaceNear.x, worldSpaceNear.y, worldSpaceNear.z); Vector3f rayDirection = new Vector3f(worldSpaceFar.x - worldSpaceNear.x, worldSpaceFar.y - worldSpaceNear.y, worldSpaceFar.z - worldSpaceNear.z); rayDirection.normalise(); return new Ray(rayPosition, rayDirection); } All rigths reserved to him of course This is my DirectX 11 code : void GraphicEngine::pickRayVector(float mouseX, float mouseY,XMVECTOR& pickRayInWorldSpacePos, XMVECTOR& pickRayInWorldSpaceDir) { float PRVecX, PRVecY; float nearPlane = 0.1f; float farPlane = 200.0f; floar viewAngle = 0.4 * 3.14; PRVecX = ((( 2.0f * mouseX) / ClientWidth ) - 1 ) * tan((viewAngle)/2); PRVecY = (1-(( 2.0f * mouseY) / ClientHeight)) * tan((viewAngle)/2); XMVECTOR cameraSpaceNear = XMVectorSet(PRVecX * nearPlane,PRVecY * nearPlane, -nearPlane, 1.0f); XMVECTOR cameraSpaceFar = XMVectorSet(PRVecX * farPlane,PRVecY * farPlane, -farPlane, 1.0f); // Transform 3D Ray from View space to 3D ray in World space XMMATRIX invMat; XMVECTOR matInvDeter; invMat = XMMatrixInverse(&matInvDeter, cam->getCameraView()); //Inverse of View Space matrix is World space matrix XMVECTOR worldSpaceNear = XMVector3TransformCoord(cameraSpaceNear, invMat); XMVECTOR worldSpaceFar = XMVector3TransformCoord(cameraSpaceFar, invMat); pickRayInWorldSpacePos = worldSpaceNear; pickRayInWorldSpaceDir = worldSpaceFar-worldSpaceNear; pickRayInWorldSpaceDir = XMVector3Normalize(pickRayInWorldSpaceDir); } A couple of notes: The mouse coordinates are already converted so that the top left corner of the client window would be (0,0) and the bottom rigth (800,600) ( or whatever resolution you would have) I hadn't used any far or near plane before, so i just made some arbitrary number up for them. To my understanding it shouldnt matter as long as the object you are trying to pick is in between the range of thoese numbers The viewAngle is the same angle that I used when setting the camera view with XMMatrixPerspectiveFovLH , I just hadn't made it a member variable of my Camera class yet. I removed the variable aspectRation and zoomFactor because I assumed that they where related to some specific function of his game. Now I'm not sure, but I think the problems lies either withing the mouse to viewspace conversion, maby that we use diffrent coordinations systems. Either that or how i transform the matrixes in the the end, because i know order is important when it comes to matrixes. Any help is appriciated! Thanks in advance. Edit: One more note, my code is in c++

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• MaxTotalSizeInBytes - Blind spots in Usage file and Web Analytics Reports

  - by Gino Abraham

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/GinoAbraham/archive/2013/10/28/maxtotalsizeinbytes---blind-spots-in-usage-file-and-web-analytics.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sharepoint_strategery/archive/2012/04/16/usage-file-and-web-analytics-reports-with-blind-spots.aspx In my previous post (Troubleshooting SharePoint 2010 Web Analytics), I referenced a problem that can occur when exceeding the daily partition size for the LoggingDB, which generates the ULS message “[Partition] has exceeded the max bytes”. Below, I wanted to provide some additional info on this particular issue and help identify some options if this occurs. As an aside, this post only applies if you are missing portions of Usage data - think blind spots on intermittent days or user activity regularly sparse for the afternoon/evening. If this fits your scenario - read on. But if Usage logs are outright missing, go check out my Troubleshooting post first.  Background on the problem:The LoggingDB database has a default maximum size of ~6GB. However, SharePoint evenly splits this total size into fixed sized logical partitions – and the number of partitions is defined by the number of days to retain Usage data (by default 14 days). In this case, 14 partitions would be created to account for the 14 days of retention. If the retention were halved to 7 days, the LoggingDBwould be split into 7 corresponding partitions at twice the size. In other words, the partition size is generally defined as [max size for DB] / [number of retention days].Going back to the default scenario, the “max size” for the LoggingDB is 6200000000 bytes (~6GB) and the retention period is 14 days. Using our formula, this would be [~6GB] / [14 days], which equates to 444858368 bytes (~425MB) per partition per day. Again, if the retention were halved to 7 days (which halves the number of partitions), the resulting partition size becomes [~6GB] / [7 days], or ~850MB per partition.From my experience, when the partition size for any given day is exceeded, the usage logging for the remainder of the day is essentially thrown away because SharePoint won’t allow any more to be written to that day’s partition. The only clue that this is occurring (beyond truncated usage data) is an error such as the following that gets reported in the ULS:04/08/2012 09:30:04.78    OWSTIMER.EXE (0x1E24)    0x2C98    SharePoint Foundation    Health    i0m6     High    Table RequestUsage_Partition12 has 444858368 bytes that has exceeded the max bytes 444858368It’s also worth noting that the exact bytes reported (e.g. ‘444858368’ above) may slightly vary among farms. For example, you may instead see 445226812, 439123456, or something else in the ballpark. The exact number itself doesn't matter, but this error message intends to indicates that the reporting usage has exceeded the partition size for the given day.What it means:The error itself is easy to miss, which can lead to substantial gaps in the reporting data (your mileage may vary) if not identified. At this point, I can only advise to periodically check the ULS logs for this message. Down the road, I plan to explore if [Developing a Custom Health Rule] could be leveraged to identify the issue (If you've ever built Custom Health Rules, I'd be interested to hear about your experiences). Overcoming this issue also poses a challenge, with workaround options including:Lower the retentionBecause the partition size is generally defined as [max size] / [number of retention days], the first option is to lower the number of days to retain the data – the lower the retention, the lower the divisor and thus a bigger partition. For example, halving the retention from 14 to 7 days would halve the number of partitions, but double the partition size to ~850MB (e.g. [6200000000 bytes] / [7 days] = ~850GB partitions). Lowering it to 2 days would result in two ~3GB partitions… and so on.Recreate the LoggingDB with an increased sizeThe property MaxTotalSizeInBytes is exposed by OM code for the SPUsageDefinition object and can be updated with the example PowerShell snippet below. However, updating this value has no immediate impact because this size only applies when creating a LoggingDB. Therefore, you must create a newLoggingDB for the Usage Service Application. The gotcha: this effectively deletes all prior Usage databecause the Usage Service Application can only have a single LoggingDB.Here is an example snippet to update the "Page Requests" Usage Definition:$def=Get-SPUsageDefinition -Identity "page requests" $def.MaxTotalSizeInBytes=12400000000 $def.update()Create a new Logging database and attach to the Usage Service Application using the following command: Get-spusageapplication | Set-SPUsageApplication -DatabaseServer <dbServer> -DatabaseName <newDBname> Updated (5/10/2012): Once the new database has been created, you can confirm the setting has truly taken by running the following SQL Query (be sure to replace the database name in the following query with the name provided in the PowerShell above)SELECT * FROM [WSS_UsageApplication].[dbo].[Configuration] WITH (nolock) WHERE ConfigName LIKE 'Max Total Bytes - RequestUsage'

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• Simple Scripting for your Exalogic Storage

  - by Trond Strømme

  As part of my job in Oracle ACS (Advanced Customer Services) I'm handling lots of different systems and customers. Among the recent systems I worked with have been Oracle's Exalogic engineered systems. One of the things I'd never had much exposure to as a system developer/architect/middleware guy/Java dude has been storage; outside of consuming it for my photography needs.. Well, I'm always ready for a new challenge... I'd downloaded the 7000 series storage simulator when it was released in the good old Sun days, found it fun and instructive to play around with, but as I never touched storage in any way (besides consuming it..) I forgot about it. A couple of years ago when I started working with Exalogic engineered systems it again came into light as an invaluable learning and testing tool for the embedded storage in an Exalogic;  Oracle's Sun ZFS Storage 7320 Appliance.  aaaanyway... I've been "booted" into a part-time role as the interim storage/system admin/middleware/Java guy for a client and found I needed to create the occasional report or summary or whatever.. of what's using the storage in the 7320 (as default configured for an Exalogic, 40T of disk in a mirrored configuration, yielding 18T of actual space.) Reading the nice documentation and some articles on the Oracle Technology Network I saw great possibilities with the embedded ECMAScript3/JavaScript engine in the 7000 series.  In my personal opinion anyone who's dealing with Exalogic administration, or exposed to any of the 7000 series of storage appliances and servers that Oracle offers should have a VirtualBox instance of it kicking around. For development and testing it's a fantastic tool. (It can save you from explaining (most) of the embarrassing FAILS you can do if you test something in a production system to your management...) So download, and install.  A small sidestep, if after firing up the 7000 series simulator in VirtualBox you've forgotten what it's IP address is, the following will sort you out if you log in directly via the running VirtualBox VM. So in my case I can ssh to 192.168.56.101 or point a browser to https://192.168.56.101:215 to log into the storage appliance. One simple way of executing a script on the 7320 is to ssh to the device and redirecting a file with the script in it to ssh. ssh [email protected] < myscript.js One question I got from my client and the people who will take over the systems was: "how can we see the quotas and allocations for all projects/shares in one easy go so we don't have to go navigating around in the BUI for all the hundreds of shares the 7320 is hosting just to check if anything is running dry?" Easy! JavaScript time, VirtualBox and emacs! //NOTE! this script is available 'as is' It has ben run on a couple of 7320's, (running 2010.08.17.3.0,1-1.25 & // 2011.04.24.1.0,1-1.8) a 7420 and the VB image, but I personally //offer no guarantee whatsoever that it won't make your server topple, catch fire or in any way go pear shaped.. //run at your own risk or learn from my code and or mistakes.. script run('cd /'); run('shares'); //get all projects: proj = list(); function spaceToGig(bytes){ return bytes/1073741824; //convert bytes to GB } function fullInPercent(quota, space_data){ tmp = (space_data/quota)*100; return tmp; } //print header, slightly good looking printf(" %s/%-15s %8s(GB) %7s(GB) %5s(GB) %7s(GB) %3s\n","Project", "Share","Quota","Ref", "Snap", "Total","%full"); printf("-------------------------------------------------------------------------------\n") //for each project, get all shares. check for quota and calculate percentage and human readable figures.. for (i=0;i<proj.length;i++){ run('select ' + proj[i]); //get all shares for a project var pshares = list(); //for each share get quota properties for (j=0;j<pshares.length;j++){ run('select ' + pshares[j]); quota = get('quota'); //properties associated with a share or inherited from a project spaceData = get('space_data'); spaceSnap = get('space_snapshots'); spaceTotal = get('space_total'); if(quota>0){ //has quota printf(" %s/%-15s \t%4.2fGB\t%.2fGB\t%.2fGB\t%.2fGB\t%5.2f%%\n",proj[i], pshares[j],spaceToGig(quota),spaceToGig(spaceData),spaceToGig(spaceSnap),spaceToGig(spaceTotal),fullInPercent(quota,spaceTotal)); }else{ //no quota printf(" %s/%-15s \t%8s\t%.2fGB\t%.2fGB\t%.2fGB\t%s\n",proj[i],pshares[j], "N/A", spaceToGig(spaceData),spaceToGig(spaceSnap),spaceToGig(spaceTotal),"N/A"); } run('cd ..'); } run('done'); } The resulting output should look something like this: Project/Share Quota(GB) Ref(GB) Snap(GB) Total(GB) %full ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ACSExalogicSystem/domains N/A 0.04GB 0.00GB 0.04GB N/A ACSExalogicSystem/logs N/A 0.01GB 0.00GB 0.01GB N/A ACSExalogicSystem/nodemgrs N/A 0.00GB 0.00GB 0.00GB N/A ACSExalogicSystem/stores N/A 0.04GB 0.00GB 0.04GB N/A ***_dev/FMW_***_1 133GB 4.24GB 0.01GB 4.25GB 3.19% ***_dev/FMW_***_2 N/A 4.25GB 0.01GB 4.26GB N/A ***_dev/applications 10GB 0.00GB 0.00GB 0.00GB 0.00% ***_dev/domains 50GB 10.75GB 3.55GB 14.30GB 28.61% ***_dev/logs 20GB 0.32GB 0.01GB 0.33GB 1.66% ***_dev/softwaredepot 20GB 4.15GB 0.00GB 4.15GB 20.73% ***_dev/stores 20GB 0.01GB 0.00GB 0.01GB 0.05% ###_dev/FMW_###_1 400GB 17.63GB 0.12GB 17.75GB 4.44% ###_dev/applications N/A 0.00GB 0.00GB 0.00GB N/A ###_dev/domains 120GB 14.21GB 5.53GB 19.74GB 16.45% ###_dev/logs 15GB 0.00GB 0.00GB 0.00GB 0.00% ###_dev/softwaredepot 250GB 73.55GB 0.02GB 73.57GB 29.43% …snip My apologies if the output is a bit mis-aligned here and there, I only bothered making it look good, not perfect :/ I also removed some of the project names (*,#)

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• RC of Entity Framework 4.1 (which includes EF Code First)

  - by ScottGu

  Last week the data team shipped the Release Candidate of Entity Framework 4.1.  You can learn more about it and download it here. EF 4.1 includes the new “EF Code First” option that I’ve blogged about several times in the past.  EF Code First provides a really elegant and clean way to work with data, and enables you to do so without requiring a designer or XML mapping file.  Below are links to some tutorials I’ve written in the past about it: Code First Development with Entity Framework 4.x EF Code First: Custom Database Schema Mapping Using EF Code First with an Existing Database The above tutorials were written against the CTP4 release of EF Code First (and so some APIs might be a little different) – but the concepts and scenarios outlined in them are the same as with the RC. Go Live License Last week’s EF 4.1 RC ships with a “go live” license that enables you to use it in production environments.  The final release of EF 4.1 will ship within the next 4 weeks and will be 100% API compatible with the RC release. Improvements with the RC The RC includes several improvements and enhancements.  The EF team has a good blog post summarizing the RC changes.  Scott Hanselman also has a nice video interview with the data team that talks more about the release. One of my favorite improvements introduced with last week’s RC is its support for medium trust security.  This enables you to use EF 4.1 (and code-first) within low-cost ASP.NET shared hosting web environments – without requiring a hoster to install anything to use it. EF 4.1 also now supports validation with not only code-first scenarios, but also model-first and database-first workflows.  Upgrading from previous releases The RC does include a few API tweaks and changes from the prior CTP builds.  Read the release notes that come with the release to get a more detailed listing of the changes. John Papa also has an excellent Upgrading to EF 4.1 RC blog post that describes the steps he took when upgrading a large project he wrote with the previous CTP5 release.  The work to upgrade is pretty straight forward and easy – use his write-up as a guide on how to quickly update projects of your own. NuGet Package Rename One of the changes that the data team made between the CTP5 and RC releases was to rename the NuGet package name from “EFCodeFirst” to “EntityFramework”. They decided to make this change since the EF 4.1 release now includes several additions above and beyond just code first. If you already have installed the “EFCodeFirst” NuGet package, you’ll want to uninstall it and then install the new “EntityFramework” NuGet package.  John Papa’s blog post details the exact steps on how to do this (it only takes ~20 seconds to do this). More EF Tutorials Julie Lerman has created some nice whitepapers and tutorials for MSDN that show using the new EF4 and EF 4.1 feature set. Click here to find links to read and watch them. Summary I’m really excited about the EF 4.1 release that will be shipping next month.  It significantly improves the Entity Framework, and makes it even easier and cleaner to work with data inside of .NET.  You can take advantage of it within all ASP.NET projects (including both Web Forms and MVC), within client projects using Windows Forms and WPF, and within other project types like WCF, Console and Services.  You can use NuGet to easily install it within all of them. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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• User connection management in Reporting Services configuration

  - by Testas

  IT professionals will use Reporting Services Configuration Manager to perform post installation tasks for SQL Server Reporting Services. Introduced in SQL Server 2005, Reporting Services Configuration Manager provides an intuitive interface to perform tasks including specifying the report server database, report manager url, and indeed one of the first post installation tasks that should be performed is backing up the encryption keys that are used to protect the sensitive information within the rdl files.  Many of the options that are selected within Reporting Services Configuration Manager are written to a number of configuration files including the rsreportserver.config file located in C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\Report Server InstanceName\Reporting Services\ReportServer folder.When opening this file you will notice that there are more configuration settings within the rsreportserver.config file than is available through the Reporting Services Configuration Manager Interface. As a result there are additional configuration options that can be defined within this file.  A customer was having a problem performing stress tests against a new Report Server that would be going live for an enterprise reporting system. One aspect of the stress test was to fire 50 connections from a single user account. When performing the stress test an error described that the maximum active request had been exceeded. Within the rsreportserver.config, there is a key that is added to the file:  <Add Key=”MaxActiveReqForOneUser” Value=”20”/>  Changing the value from 20 to 50 accommodated the needs of the stress test, however, a wider question should be asked pertaining to this setting when implementing Reporting Services to a production environment. Within an intranet environment, the default setting is appropriate when network bandwidth is high, users are known and demand for reports is particularly high from a group of users.  However, when deploying a Reporting Server solution to an extranet, or the internet, you may want to consider reducing this setting to reduce to scope of connections that can be acquired by a single user and placing unnecessary pressure on the report server. I do hope that Reporting Services Configuration Manager evolves to include an advanced page that includes an intuitive interface to change configuration settings such as the MaxActiveReqForOneUser, and also configure rendering and data extensions and define secure connection levels to the report server. All these options can be configured within the rsreportserver.config file, and these are setting that customers would like to see in Reporting Services Configuration Manager in the future.   If you think that the SQL community would benefit from this addition, you can vote on it at Microsoft Connect  https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/details/565575/extending-reporting-services-configuration-manager-rscm    

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• Using ext4 in VMware machine

  First of all, using a journaling filesystems like NTFS, ext4, XFS, or JFS (not to name all of them) is a very good idea and nowadays unthinkable not to do. Linux offers a good variety of different option as journaling filesystem for your system. Since years I am using SGI's XFS and I am pretty confident with stability, performance and liability of the system. In earlier years I had to struggle with incompatibilities between XFS and the boot loader. Using an ext2 formatted /boot solved this issue. But, wow, that is ages ago! Lately, I had to setup a fresh Lucid Lynx (Ubuntu 10.04 LTS) system for a change of our internal groupware / messaging system. Therefore, I fired up a new virtual machine with almost standard configuration in VMware Server and run through our network-based PXE boot and installation procedure. At a certain step in this process, Ubuntu asks you about the partitioning of your hard drive(s). Honestly, I have to say that only out of curiousity I sticked to the "default" suggestion and gave my faith and trust into the Ubuntu installation routine... Resulting to have an ext4 based root mount point ( / ). The rest of the installation went on without further concerns or worries. Note:I really can't remember why I chose to go away from my favourite... Well, it should turn out to be the wrong decision after all. Ok, let's continue the story about ext4 in a VMware based virtual machine. After some hours installing additional packages and configuring the new system using LDAP for general authentication and login, I had an "out-of-the-box" usable enterprise messaging system based on Zarafa 6.40 Community Edition inclusive proper SSL-based Webaccess interface and Z-Push extension for ActiveSync with my Nokia mobile. Straightforward and pretty nice for the time spent on the setup. Having priority on other tasks I let the system just running and didn't pay any further attention at all. Until I run into an upgrade of "Mail for Exchange" on Symbian OS. My mobile did not bother me at all with the upgrade and everything went smooth, but trying to re-establish the ActiveSync connection to the Zarafa messaging system resulted in a frustating situation. So, I shifted my focus back to the Linux system and I was amazed to figure out that the root had been remounted readonly due to hard drive failures or at least ext4 reported errors. Firing up Google only confirmed my concerns and it seems that using ext4 for VMware based virtual machines does not look like a stable and reliable candidate to me. You might consider reading those external resources: ext4 fs corruption under VMWare Server 2.01Bug #389555 - ext4 filesystem corruption Well, I learned my lesson and ext{2|3|4} based filesystems are not going to be used on any of my Linux systems or customer installations in the future. Addendum: I did not try this setup in other virtualization environments like VirtualBox, qemu, kvm, Xen, etc.

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• Launch 2010 Technical Readiness Unofficial Q&amp;A.

  - by mbcrump

  I had an email from one of my readers about the 2010 Technical Readiness Series. Please read below: Hi Michael, I noticed you blogged a while back that you were going to attend MS 2010 Launch event. I’m going to the session in Seattle on May 27, is it worth it to attend? Also, I’m wondering if they give any free software away like VS2010 Pro? Any decent vendors? Looking forward to hearing back from you. I decided this information would probably benefit several instead of just responding back to the reader. In case you are not aware, MS has a 2010 launch event showing VS2010, Office 2010, SharePoint 2010 and SQL Server 2008R2.  You can sign up for an event here: https://microsoft.crgevents.com/Register2010/Content/Event_Selection.aspx I’ve answered the questions asked below. Q: Is it worth going? A: It is if you have had little or no exposure to the latest 2010 products. Most people are familiar with VS2010, but have not seen SharePoint 2010 Office 2010 or Windows Phone 7. It is designed to get you up to speed very quickly. If you have watched most of the MIX videos and keep up with .NET in general, you will benefit more by having the ability to ask questions.    Q: Did you get any free software? A: No, only demos including: VS2010/Office 2010 – They give you a link to the url where you can download the trial version. Windows 7 Enterprise – You get a DVD with the trial version loaded. Q: Do they give away any cool swag? A: Just a Microsoft T-Shirt (XL). Q: What about the vendor selection? A: At the event that I went to, most vendors were pushing SharePoint products. There wasn’t a lot of variety in the selection. Most vendors were giving away the typical pens, buttons and stickers and trial software. If you have any other questions, feel free to contact me. I will answer and add to this un-official FAQ.

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