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• New OFM versions released SOA Suite 11.1.1.4 &amp; BPM 11.1.1.4 &amp; JDeveloper 11.1.1.4 WebLogic on JRockit 10.3.4 feedback from the community

  - by Jürgen Kress

  Oracle SOA Suite 11g Installations This is the latest release of the Oracle SOA Suite 11g. Please see the Documentation tab for Release Notes, Installation Guides and other release specific information. Please also see the List of New Features and Samples provided for this release. Release 11gR1 (11.1.1.4.0) Microsoft Windows (32-bit JVM) Linux (32-bit JVM) Generic Oracle JDeveloper 11g Rel 1 (11.1.1.x) (JDeveloper + ADF) Integrated development environment certified on Windows, Linux, and Macintosh. License is free (read the Pricing FAQ). Studio Edition for Windows (1.2 GB) | Studio Edition for Linux (1.3 GB) | See All See Additional Development Tools Oracle WebLogic Server 11g Rel 1 (10.3.4) Installers The WebLogic Server installers include Oracle Coherence and Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse and supports development with other Fusion Middleware products . The zip includes WebLogic Server only and is intended for WebLogic Server development only. Linux x86 (1.1 GB) | Windows x86 (1 GB) Zip for Windows x86, Linux x86, Mac OS X (316 MB) | See All Oracle WebLogic Server 11gR1 (10.3.4) on JRockit Virtual Edition Download For additional downloads please visit the Oracle Fusion Middleware Products Update Center Share your feedback with the @soacommunity on twitter SOASimone Simone Geib SOA Suite 11gR1 (11.1.1.4.0) has just been released: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/soasuite/downloads/index.html gschmutz gschmutz My new blog post: WebLogic Server, JDev, SOA, BPM, OSB and CEP 11.1.1.4 (PS3) available! - http://tinyurl.com/4negnpn simon_haslam Simon Haslam I'm very pleased to see WLS 10.3.4 for JRockit VE launched at the same time as the rest of PS3 http://j.mp/gl1nQm (32bit anyway) lucasjellema Lucas Jellema See http://www.oracle.com/ocom/groups/public/@otn/documents/webcontent/156082.xml for PS3 extension downloads BPM, SOA Editor, WebCenter demed demed List of new features in @OracleSOA 11gR1 PS3: http://bit.ly/fVRwsP is not extremely long but huge release by # of bugs fixed. Go! biemond Edwin Biemond WebLogic 10.3.4 new features http://bit.ly/f7L1Eu Exalogic Elastic Cloud , JPA2 , Maven plugin, OWSM policies on WebLogic SCA applications JDeveloper JDeveloper & ADF JDeveloper and Oracle ADF 11g Release 1 Patch Set 3 (11.1.1.4.0): New Features and Bug Fixes http://bit.ly/feghnY simon_haslam Simon Haslam WebLogic Server 10.3.4 (i.e. 11gR1 PS3) available now too http://bit.ly/eeysZ2 JDeveloper JDeveloper & ADF Share your impressions on the new JDeveloper 11g Patchset 3 release that came out today! Download it here: http://bit.ly/dogRN8 VikasAatOracle Vikas Anand SOA Suite 11gR1PS3 is Hotpluggable ...see list of features that @Demed posted..#soa #soacommunity   New versions of Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g R1 (11.1.1.4.x)  include: Oracle WebLogic Server 11g R1 (10.3.4) Oracle SOA Suite 11g R1 (11.1.1.4.0) Oracle Business Process Management 11g R1 (11.1.1.4.0) Oracle Complex Event Processing 11g R1 (11.1.1.4.0) Oracle Application Integration Architecture Foundation Pack 11g R1 (11.1.1.4.0) Oracle Service Bus 11g R1 (11.1.1.4.0) Oracle Enterprise Repository 11g R1 (11.1.1.4.0) Oracle Identity Management 11g R1 (11.1.1.4.0) Oracle Enterprise Content Management 11g R1 (11.1.1.4.0) Oracle WebCenter 11g R1 (11.1.1.4.0) - coming soon Oracle Forms, Reports, Portal & Discoverer 11g R1 (11.1.1.4.0) Oracle Repository Creation Utility 11g R1 (11.1.1.4.0) Oracle JDeveloper & Application Development Runtime 11g R1 (11.1.1.4.0) Resources Download  (OTN) Certification Documentation   New Features in Oracle SOA Suite 11g Release 1 (11.1.1.4.0) Updated: January, 2011 Go to Oracle SOA Suite 11g Doc Introduction Oracle SOA Suite 11gR1 (11.1.1.4.0) includes both bug fixes as well as new features listed below - click on the title of each feature for more details. Downloads, documentation links and more information on the Oracle SOA Suite available on the SOA Suite OTN page and as always, we welcome your feedback on the SOA OTN forum. New in Oracle SOA Suite in this release BPEL Component BPEL 2.0 support in JDeveloper The BPEL editor in JDeveloper now generates BPEL 2.0 code and introduces several new activities. Augmented XML variables auto-initialization capabilities The XML variable auto-initialization capabilities have been enhanced to support two need additional use cases: to initialize the to-spec node if it doesn't exist during the rule and to initialize array elements. New Assign Activity dialog The new Assign Activity supports the same drag & drop paradigm used for the XSLT mapper, greatly streamlining the task of assigning multiple variables. Mediator Component Time window parameter for the resequencer This new parameter lets users initiate a best-effort resequencing based on a time window rather than a number of messages. Support for attachments in the Mediator assign dialog The Mediator assign dialog now supports attachment, enabling usage of the Mediator to transmit attachments even if source and target schemas are different. Adapters & Bindings ChunkSize property added to the File Adapter header properties The ChunkSize property of the File Adapter is now available as a header property, allowing in-process modification of the value for this property. Improved support for distributed WLS JMS topics though automatic rebalancing of listeners The JMS Adapter has been enhanced to subscribe to administrative events from WLS JMS. Based on these events, it dynamically rebalances listeners when there are changes to the members of a local or remote WLS JMS distributed destination. JDeveloper configuration wizard for custom JCA adapters A new wizard is available in JDeveloper to configure custom-built adapters Administration & Enterprise Manager Enhanced purging capabilities to manage database growth Historical instance data can now be purged using three different strategies: batch script, scheduled batch script or data partitioning. Asynchronous bulk instance deletion in Enterprise Manager Bulk deletion of instances in Enterprise Manager now executes as an asynchronous operation in Enterprise Manager, returning control to the user as soon as the action has been submitted and acknowledged. B2B Ability to schedule partner downtime This feature allows trading partners to notify each other about planned downtime and to delay delivery of messages during that period. Message sequencing B2B now supports both inbound and outbound message sequencing. Simplified BAM integration with B2B B2B ships with various pre-configured artifacts to simplify monitoring in BAM. Instance Message Java API for B2B The new instance message Java API supports programmatic access to B2B instance message data. Oracle Service Bus (OSB) Certification of the File and FTP JCA Adapters The File and FTP JCA adapters are now certified for use with Oracle Service Bus (in addition to the native transports). Security enhancements Oracle Service Bus now supports SAML 2.0 as well as the OWSM authorization policies. Check the Oracle Service Bus 11.1.1.4 Release Notes for a complete list of new features. Installation, Hot-Pluggability & Certifications Ability to run Oracle SOA Suite on IBM WebSphere Application Server Oracle SOA Suite can now be deployed on IBM WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment (ND) 7.0.11 and IBM WebSphere Application Server 7.0.11. Single JVM developer installation template Oracle SOA Suite can now be targeted to the WebLogic admin server - there is no requirement to also have a managed server. This topology is intended to minimize the memory foorprint of development environments. This is in addition to the list of supported browsers, operating systems and databases already certified in prior releases. Complex Event Processing (CEP) IDE enhancements This release introduces several enhancements to the development IDE, such as adapter wizards and event-type repository. CQL enhancements CQL enhancements include JDBC data cartridges and parametrized queries. Tracing and injecting events in the Event Processing Network (EPN) In the development environment you can now trace and inject events. Check the Oracle CEP 11.1.1.4 Release Notes for a complete list of new features. SOA Suite page on OTN For more information on SOA Specialization and the SOA Partner Community please feel free to register at www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Wiki Website Technorati Tags: SOA Suite 11.1.1.4,JDeveloper 11.1.1.4,WebLogic 10.3.4,JRockit 10.3.4,SOA Community,Oracle,OPN,SOA,Simone Geib,Guido Schmutz,Edwin Biemond,Lucas Jellema,Simon Haslam,Demed,Vikas Anand,Jürgen Kress

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• User Guide to Dropbox Shared Folders

  - by Matthew Guay

  Dropbox is an incredibly useful tool for keeping all your files synced between your computers and the cloud.  Here we’re going to look at how you can keep all of your team on the same page with Dropbox shared folders. Creating a Shared Folder Setting up a shared folder in Dropbox is easy.  Add the files you want to share to a folder in Dropbox on your computer, then right-click in the folder, select Dropbox, and then choose Share This Folder.   Alternately, log into your Dropbox account online, click the drop-down menu beside the folder you want to share, and click Share this folder. Now, enter the email addresses of the people you want to share the folder with, and optionally enter a message explaining why you’re sharing the folder. The people you invite will receive an email inviting them to view and join the shared folder.  If they haven’t signed up for Dropbox, they can directly signup; otherwise, they can simply log into their Dropbox account and start adding or editing files. Shared folders have a slightly different icon in your Dropbox.  Notice the shared folder on the left has an icon with 2 people, while the folder on the right that is not shared, shows previews of its contents. See Your Shared Folder’s History Whenever your collaborators with your shared folders add or change files, you will see a tooltip notification telling you what changed. You can also view the changes online.  Log into your Dropbox account in your browser and select the Events tab.  This shows all changes to your Dropbox, but you can view only the changes in your shared folder by selecting its name on the left sidebar. Now you can see all recent changes to your folder, and can also see who added or removed each file.   On the bottom of the page, you can even add a comment that all the collaborators will see. If someone deleted a file you still need, you can restore it by clicking its link in this online history.  Or, you can view any deleted files by right-clicking in your Dropbox folder in Explorer.  Select Dropbox, and then click Show Deleted Files.   Get Notified When a Change is Made You’re not always in front of your computer; you’ve got a life beyond your projects, after all (at least hopefully).  If you really want to stay connected to what’s happening with your project, though, you can easily do that no matter where you are. Your shared Dropbox folder’s history page offers an RSS feed of all changes to the folder.  Click  the Subscribe to this feed hyperlink. Now, in the popup that opens, click “Copy to clipboard” so you can use this RSS feed. You can subscribe to RSS feeds through many web browsers, email clients, dedicated feed readers, and more.  In Firefox, Internet Explorer 7/8, or Opera, you can paste the feed address into your address bar and subscribe to the feed directly in your browser.   However, subscribing to the feed in a desktop application won’t help you much when you’re away from your computer.  One great option is to subscribe in the popular Google Reader.  Then you can check your feed from any browser, on any computer or mobile device. To add your Dropbox feed to Google Reader, log into Google Reader (link below), click Add a subscription on the top left, paste your RSS feed from Dropbox, and click Add.   Now you can see any changes to files or folders in Google Reader. You can even add your feed to your iGoogle homepage.  Click the Add it Now button on the right in the front page of Google Reader to add your feeds to iGoogle.   Now you can see updates on your files from your homepage.  If you’re using a different computer, just login to your Google account to see what’s happening. You can also access your Google Reader feeds from many programs and apps for most major Smartphones including iPhone, Windows Phone, and Blackberry. Receive a Tweet or Text When Changes are Made If you’re a hyper-connected individual, chances are you send and receive tweets on the go.  If so, this might be the best way for you to get notified when changes are made to your Dropbox shared folder.  To do this, first create a new Twitter account to publish your changes through.  If you don’t want the whole world to see your updates, click Settings and set your new Twitter account to Private. Once the new account is created, follow it with your normal Twitter account so you’ll see updates. Now, let’s publish our Dropbox RSS feed to Twitter.  Create an account with Twitterfeed (link below). Once your account is setup, add your feed to it.  Name your feed, and enter your Feed address from Dropbox.  Click Advanced Settings to make your feed work just like you want. In Advanced Settings, change the frequency to “Every 30 mins” to make sure you’re updated on changes as quick as possible.  You can also change other settings if you like. Click “Continue to Step 2”, and then click Twitter under the available services to add your account. Make sure your signed into your new Twitter account, and then click Authenticate Twitter. Allow the application. Now, finally, click Create Service. Whenever a change is made, you will receive a tweet via your new Twitter account.  And since you can receive tweets via text message or many mobile applications, you’ll never be very far away from your Dropbox changes!   Conclusion Dropbox shared folders are a great way to keep your whole team working together on the same files in a project.  And with these handy tricks, you can keep up with your shared files wherever you are! There are a lot of cool things you can do with Dropbox make sure to check out our posts on adding Dropbox to the Windows 7 Start menu, Accessing Dropbox files from Chrome, and Syncing your Pidgin Profile Across Multiple PCs. Links Signup or access your Dropbox account Google Reader Tweet your feed with Twitterfeed Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How to Add and Manage Shared Folders on Windows Home ServerManage User Accounts in Windows Home ServerAdd "My Dropbox" to Your Windows 7 Start MenuComplete Guide to Networking Windows 7 with XP and VistaMoving Your Personal Data Folders in Windows Vista the Easy Way TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Office 2010 reviewed in depth by Ed Bott FoxClocks adds World Times in your Statusbar (Firefox) Have Fun Editing Photo Editing with Citrify Outlook Connector Upgrade Error Gadfly is a cool Twitter/Silverlight app Enable DreamScene in Windows 7

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• Use Autoruns to Manually Clean an Infected PC

  - by Mark Virtue

  There are many anti-malware programs out there that will clean your system of nasties, but what happens if you’re not able to use such a program?  Autoruns, from SysInternals (recently acquired by Microsoft), is indispensable when removing malware manually. There are a few reasons why you may need to remove viruses and spyware manually: Perhaps you can’t abide running resource-hungry and invasive anti-malware programs on your PC You might need to clean your mom’s computer (or someone else who doesn’t understand that a big flashing sign on a website that says “Your computer is infected with a virus – click HERE to remove it” is not a message that can necessarily be trusted) The malware is so aggressive that it resists all attempts to automatically remove it, or won’t even allow you to install anti-malware software Part of your geek credo is the belief that anti-spyware utilities are for wimps Autoruns is an invaluable addition to any geek’s software toolkit.  It allows you to track and control all programs (and program components) that start automatically with Windows (or with Internet Explorer).  Virtually all malware is designed to start automatically, so there’s a very strong chance that it can be detected and removed with the help of Autoruns. We have covered how to use Autoruns in an earlier article, which you should read if you need to first familiarize yourself with the program. Autoruns is a standalone utility that does not need to be installed on your computer.  It can be simply downloaded, unzipped and run (link below).  This makes is ideally suited for adding to your portable utility collection on your flash drive. When you start Autoruns for the first time on a computer, you are presented with the license agreement: After agreeing to the terms, the main Autoruns window opens, showing you the complete list of all software that will run when your computer starts, when you log in, or when you open Internet Explorer: To temporarily disable a program from launching, uncheck the box next to it’s entry.  Note:  This does not terminate the program if it is running at the time – it merely prevents it from starting next time.  To permanently prevent a program from launching, delete the entry altogether (use the Delete key, or right-click and choose Delete from the context-menu)).  Note:  This does not remove the program from your computer – to remove it completely you need to uninstall the program (or otherwise delete it from your hard disk). Suspicious Software It can take a fair bit of experience (read “trial and error”) to become adept at identifying what is malware and what is not.  Most of the entries presented in Autoruns are legitimate programs, even if their names are unfamiliar to you.  Here are some tips to help you differentiate the malware from the legitimate software: If an entry is digitally signed by a software publisher (i.e. there’s an entry in the Publisher column) or has a “Description”, then there’s a good chance that it’s legitimate If you recognize the software’s name, then it’s usually okay.  Note that occasionally malware will “impersonate” legitimate software, but adopting a name that’s identical or similar to software you’re familiar with (e.g. “AcrobatLauncher” or “PhotoshopBrowser”).  Also, be aware that many malware programs adopt generic or innocuous-sounding names, such as “Diskfix” or “SearchHelper” (both mentioned below). Malware entries usually appear on the Logon tab of Autoruns (but not always!) If you open up the folder that contains the EXE or DLL file (more on this below), an examine the “last modified” date, the dates are often from the last few days (assuming that your infection is fairly recent) Malware is often located in the C:\Windows folder or the C:\Windows\System32 folder Malware often only has a generic icon (to the left of the name of the entry) If in doubt, right-click the entry and select Search Online… The list below shows two suspicious looking entries:  Diskfix and SearchHelper These entries, highlighted above, are fairly typical of malware infections: They have neither descriptions nor publishers They have generic names The files are located in C:\Windows\System32 They have generic icons The filenames are random strings of characters If you look in the C:\Windows\System32 folder and locate the files, you’ll see that they are some of the most recently modified files in the folder (see below) Double-clicking on the items will take you to their corresponding registry keys: Removing the Malware Once you’ve identified the entries you believe to be suspicious, you now need to decide what you want to do with them.  Your choices include: Temporarily disable the Autorun entry Permanently delete the Autorun entry Locate the running process (using Task Manager or similar) and terminating it Delete the EXE or DLL file from your disk (or at least move it to a folder where it won’t be automatically started) or all of the above, depending upon how certain you are that the program is malware. To see if your changes succeeded, you will need to reboot your machine, and check any or all of the following: Autoruns – to see if the entry has returned Task Manager (or similar) – to see if the program was started again after the reboot Check the behavior that led you to believe that your PC was infected in the first place.  If it’s no longer happening, chances are that your PC is now clean Conclusion This solution isn’t for everyone and is most likely geared to advanced users. Usually using a quality Antivirus application does the trick, but if not Autoruns is a valuable tool in your Anti-Malware kit. Keep in mind that some malware is harder to remove than others.  Sometimes you need several iterations of the steps above, with each iteration requiring you to look more carefully at each Autorun entry.  Sometimes the instant that you remove the Autorun entry, the malware that is running replaces the entry.  When this happens, we need to become more aggressive in our assassination of the malware, including terminating programs (even legitimate programs like Explorer.exe) that are infected with malware DLLs. Shortly we will be publishing an article on how to identify, locate and terminate processes that represent legitimate programs but are running infected DLLs, in order that those DLLs can be deleted from the system. Download Autoruns from SysInternals Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Using Autoruns Tool to Track Startup Applications and Add-onsHow To Get Detailed Information About Your PCSUPERAntiSpyware Portable is the Must-Have Spyware Removal Tool You NeedQuick Tip: Windows Vista Temp Files DirectoryClear Recent Commands From the Run Dialog in Windows XP TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional 15 Great Illustrations by Chow Hon Lam Easily Sync Files & Folders with Friends & Family Amazon Free Kindle for PC Download Stretch popurls.com with a Stylish Script (Firefox) OldTvShows.org – Find episodes of Hitchcock, Soaps, Game Shows and more Download Microsoft Office Help tab

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• LibPCL issues on Ubuntu 13.10

  - by user254885

  i wanted to install the Point Cloud Library but it does not work i use an ODROID board(ARM processor) Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable distribution that some required packages have not yet been created or been moved out of Incoming. The following information may help to resolve the situation: The following packages have unmet dependencies: libpcl-all : Depends: libpcl-1.7-all but it is not going to be installed E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages. by compiling v1.7 , i get these errors : /usr/lib/gcc/arm-linux-gnueabihf/4.8/../../../arm-linux-gnueabihf/libpthread.a(ptw-fcntl.o): In function `__fcntl_nocancel': /build/buildd/eglibc-2.17/nptl/../sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/i386/fcntl.c:37: undefined reference to `__libc_do_syscall' /usr/lib/gcc/arm-linux-gnueabihf/4.8/../../../arm-linux-gnueabihf/libpthread.a(ptw-fcntl.o): In function `__libc_fcntl': /build/buildd/eglibc-2.17/nptl/../sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/i386/fcntl.c:53: undefined reference to `__libc_do_syscall' /build/buildd/eglibc-2.17/nptl/../sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/i386/fcntl.c:57: undefined reference to `__libc_do_syscall' /usr/lib/gcc/arm-linux-gnueabihf/4.8/../../../arm-linux-gnueabihf/libpthread.a(ptw-open64.o): In function `__libc_open64': /build/buildd/eglibc-2.17/nptl/../sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/open64.c:41: undefined reference to `__libc_do_syscall' /build/buildd/eglibc-2.17/nptl/../sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/open64.c:45: undefined reference to `__libc_do_syscall' /usr/lib/gcc/arm-linux-gnueabihf/4.8/../../../arm-linux-gnueabihf/libpthread.a(cancellation.o):/build/buildd/eglibc-2.17/nptl/cancellation.c:96: more undefined references to `__libc_do_syscall' follow collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status make[2]: *** [bin/pcl_convert_pcd_ascii_binary] Error 1 make[1]: *** [io/tools/CMakeFiles/pcl_convert_pcd_ascii_binary.dir/all] Error 2 make: *** [all] Error 2 i could not find anything in google to solve these errors i believe some packages were not ported for ARM processors any help would be appreciated $ dpkg --list | grep headers ii linux-headers-3.0.63-odroidx2 20130215 ii linux-headers-3.0.71-odroidx2 20130415 ii linux-headers-3.0.74-odroidx2 20130417 ii linux-headers-3.0.75-odroidx2 20130426 ii linux-headers-3.1.10-6 3.1.10-6.10 ii linux-headers-3.1.10-6-ac100 3.1.10-6.10 ii linux-headers-ac100 3.1.10.6.2 installing packages did'nt do well sudo apt-get install linux-generic [sudo] password for odroid: Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required: debugedit libasound2-dev libestools2.1-dev librpmbuild3 librpmsign1 thunderbird-locale-en thunderbird-locale-en-gb thunderbird-locale-en-us thunderbird-locale-ko Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them. The following extra packages will be installed: linux-headers-3.11.0-17 linux-headers-3.11.0-17-generic linux-headers-generic linux-image-3.11.0-17-generic linux-image-generic Suggested packages: fdutils linux-doc-3.11.0 linux-source-3.11.0 linux-tools The following NEW packages will be installed: linux-generic linux-headers-3.11.0-17 linux-headers-3.11.0-17-generic linux-headers-generic linux-image-3.11.0-17-generic linux-image-generic 0 upgraded, 6 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. Need to get 58.2 MB of archives. After this operation, 203 MB of additional disk space will be used. Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y Get:1 http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/ saucy-updates/main linux-image-3.11.0-17-generic armhf 3.11.0-17.31 [44.5 MB] Get:2 http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/ saucy-updates/main linux-image-generic armhf 3.11.0.17.18 [2,356 B] Get:3 http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/ saucy-updates/main linux-headers-3.11.0-17 all 3.11.0-17.31 [12.6 MB] Get:4 http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/ saucy-updates/main linux-headers-3.11.0-17-generic armhf 3.11.0-17.31 [1,128 kB] Get:5 http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/ saucy-updates/main linux-headers-generic armhf 3.11.0.17.18 [2,350 B] Get:6 http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/ saucy-updates/main linux-generic armhf 3.11.0.17.18 [1,726 B] Fetched 58.2 MB in 13s (4,379 kB/s) Selecting previously unselected package linux-image-3.11.0-17-generic. (Reading database ... 258618 files and directories currently installed.) Unpacking linux-image-3.11.0-17-generic (from .../linux-image-3.11.0-17-generic_3.11.0-17.31_armhf.deb) ... Examining /etc/kernel/preinst.d/ Done. Selecting previously unselected package linux-image-generic. Unpacking linux-image-generic (from .../linux-image-generic_3.11.0.17.18_armhf.deb) ... Selecting previously unselected package linux-headers-3.11.0-17. Unpacking linux-headers-3.11.0-17 (from .../linux-headers-3.11.0-17_3.11.0-17.31_all.deb) ... Selecting previously unselected package linux-headers-3.11.0-17-generic. Unpacking linux-headers-3.11.0-17-generic (from .../linux-headers-3.11.0-17-generic_3.11.0-17.31_armhf.deb) ... Selecting previously unselected package linux-headers-generic. Unpacking linux-headers-generic (from .../linux-headers-generic_3.11.0.17.18_armhf.deb) ... Selecting previously unselected package linux-generic. Unpacking linux-generic (from .../linux-generic_3.11.0.17.18_armhf.deb) ... Setting up linux-image-3.11.0-17-generic (3.11.0-17.31) ... Running depmod. update-initramfs: deferring update (hook will be called later) cp: cannot stat ‘/boot/initrd.img-3.11.0-17-generic’: No such file or directory Failed to copy /boot/initrd.img-3.11.0-17-generic to /boot/initrd.img at /var/lib/dpkg/info/linux-image-3.11.0-17-generic.postinst line 730. dpkg: error processing linux-image-3.11.0-17-generic (--configure): subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 2 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of linux-image-generic: linux-image-generic depends on linux-image-3.11.0-17-generic; however: Package linux-image-3.11.0-17-generic is not configured yet. dpkg: error processing linux-image-generic (--configure): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured Setting up linux-headers-3.11.0-17 (3.11.0-17.31) ... No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already Setting up linux-headers-3.11.0-17-generic (3.11.0-17.31) ... Examining /etc/kernel/header_postinst.d. Setting up linux-headers-generic (3.11.0.17.18) ... dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of linux-generic: linux-generic depends on linux-image-generic (= 3.11.0.17.18); however: Package linux-image-generic is not configured yet. dpkg: error processing linux-generic (--configure): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already Errors were encountered while processing: linux-image-3.11.0-17-generic linux-image-generic linux-generic E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) i had to uninstall these cos they were messing up other packages installation(buildessentials were already installed)

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• Taking the training wheels off: Accelerating the Business with Oracle IAM by Brian Mozinski (Accenture)

  - by Greg Jensen

  Today, technical requirements for IAM are evolving rapidly, and the bar is continuously raised for high performance IAM solutions as organizations look to roll out high volume use cases on the back of legacy systems.  Existing solutions were often designed and architected to support offline transactions and manual processes, and the business owners today demand globally scalable infrastructure to support the growth their business cases are expected to deliver. To help IAM practitioners address these challenges and make their organizations and themselves more successful, this series we will outline the: • Taking the training wheels off: Accelerating the Business with Oracle IAM The explosive growth in expectations for IAM infrastructure, and the business cases they support to gain investment in new security programs. • "Necessity is the mother of invention": Technical solutions developed in the field Well proven tricks of the trade, used by IAM guru’s to maximize your solution while addressing the requirements of global organizations. • The Art & Science of Performance Tuning of Oracle IAM 11gR2 Real world examples of performance tuning with Oracle IAM • No Where to go but up: Extending the benefits of accelerated IAM Anything is possible, compelling new solutions organizations are unlocking with accelerated Oracle IAM Let’s get started … by talking about the changing dynamics driving these discussions. Big Companies are getting bigger everyday, and increasingly organizations operate across state lines, multiple times zones, and in many countries or continents at the same time.  No longer is midnight to 6am a safe time to take down the system for upgrades, to run recon’s and import or update user accounts and attributes.  Further IT organizations are operating as shared services with SLA’s similar to telephone carrier levels expected by their “clients”.  Workers are moved in and out of roles on a weekly, daily, or even hourly rate and IAM is expected to support those rapid changes.  End users registering for services during business hours in Singapore are expected their access to be green-lighted in custom apps hosted in Portugal within the hour.  Many of the expectations of asynchronous systems and batched updates are not adequate and the number and types of users is growing. When organizations acted more like independent teams at functional or geographic levels it was manageable to have processes that relied on a handful of people who knew how to make things work …. Knew how to get you access to the key systems to get your job done.  Today everyone is expected to do more with less, the finance administrator previously supporting their local Atlanta sales office might now be asked to help close the books for the Johannesburg team, and access certification process once completed monthly by Joan on the 3rd floor is now done by a shared pool of resources in Sao Paulo.   Fragmented processes that rely on institutional knowledge to get access to systems and get work done quickly break down in these scenarios.  Highly robust processes that have automated workflows for connected or disconnected systems give organizations the dynamic flexibility to share work across these lines and cut costs or increase productivity. As the IT industry computing paradigms continue to change with the passing of time, and as mature or proven approaches become clear, it is normal for organizations to adjust accordingly. Businesses must manage identity in an increasingly hybrid world in which legacy on-premises IAM infrastructures are extended or replaced to support more and more interconnected and interdependent services to a wider range of users. The old legacy IAM implementation models we had relied on to manage identities no longer apply. End users expect to self-request access to services from their tablet, get supervisor approval over mobile devices and email, and launch the application even if is hosted on the cloud, or run by a partner, vendor, or service provider. While user expectations are higher, they are also simpler … logging into custom desktop apps to request approvals, or going through email or paper based processes for certification is unacceptable.  Users expect security to operate within the paradigm of the application … i.e. feel like the application they are using. Citizen and customer facing applications have evolved from every where, with custom applications, 3rd party tools, and merging in from acquired entities or 3rd party OEM’s resold to expand your portfolio of services.  These all have their own user stores, authentication models, user lifecycles, session management, etc.  Often the designers/developers are no longer accessible and the documentation is limited.  Bringing together underlying directories to scale for growth, and improve user experience is critical for revenue … but also for operations. Job functions are more dynamic.... take the Olympics for example.  Endless organizations from corporations broadcasting, endorsing, or marketing through the event … to non-profit athletic foundations and public/government entities for athletes and public safety, all operate simultaneously on the world stage.  Each organization needs to spin up short-term teams, often dealing with proprietary information from hot ads to racing strategies or security plans.  IAM is expected to enable team’s to spin up, enable new applications, protect privacy, and secure critical infrastructure.  Then it needs to be disabled just as quickly as users go back to their previous responsibilities. On a more technical level … Optimized system directory; tuning guidelines and parameters are needed by businesses today. Business’s need to be making the right choices (virtual directories) and considerations via choosing the correct architectural patterns (virtual, direct, replicated, and tuning), challenge is that business need to assess and chose the correct architectural patters (centralized, virtualized, and distributed) Today's Business organizations have very complex heterogeneous enterprises that contain diverse and multifaceted information. With today's ever changing global landscape, the strategic end goal in challenging times for business is business agility. The business of identity management requires enterprise's to be more agile and more responsive than ever before. The continued proliferation of networking devices (PC, tablet, PDA's, notebooks, etc.) has caused the number of devices and users to be granted access to these devices to grow exponentially. Business needs to deploy an IAM system that can account for the demands for authentication and authorizations to these devices. Increased innovation is forcing business and organizations to centralize their identity management services. Access management needs to handle traditional web based access as well as handle new innovations around mobile, as well as address insufficient governance processes which can lead to rouge identity accounts, which can then become a source of vulnerabilities within a business’s identity platform. Risk based decisions are providing challenges to business, for an adaptive risk model to make proper access decisions via standard Web single sign on for internal and external customers,. Organizations have to move beyond simple login and passwords to address trusted relationship questions such as: Is this a trusted customer, client, or citizen? Is this a trusted employee, vendor, or partner? Is this a trusted device? Without a solid technological foundation, organizational performance, collaboration, constituent services, or any other organizational processes will languish. A Single server location presents not only network concerns for distributed user base, but identity challenges. The network risks are centered on latency of the long trip that the traffic has to take. Other risks are a performance around availability and if the single identity server is lost, all access is lost. As you can see, there are many reasons why performance tuning IAM will have a substantial impact on the success of your organization.  In our next installment in the series we roll up our sleeves and get into detailed tuning techniques used everyday by thought leaders in the field implementing Oracle Identity & Access Management Solutions.

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• MySQL Cluster 7.3 Labs Release – Foreign Keys Are In!

  - by Mat Keep

  0 0 1 1097 6254 Homework 52 14 7337 14.0 Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-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:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-ansi-language:EN-US;} Summary (aka TL/DR): Support for Foreign Key constraints has been one of the most requested feature enhancements for MySQL Cluster. We are therefore extremely excited to announce that Foreign Keys are part of the first Labs Release of MySQL Cluster 7.3 – available for download, evaluation and feedback now! (Select the mysql-cluster-7.3-labs-June-2012 build) In this blog, I will attempt to discuss the design rationale, implementation, configuration and steps to get started in evaluating the first MySQL Cluster 7.3 Labs Release. Pace of Innovation It was only a couple of months ago that we announced the General Availability (GA) of MySQL Cluster 7.2, delivering 1 billion Queries per Minute, with 70x higher cross-shard JOIN performance, Memcached NoSQL key-value API and cross-data center replication.  This release has been a huge hit, with downloads and deployments quickly reaching record levels. The announcement of the first MySQL Cluster 7.3 Early Access lab release at today's MySQL Innovation Day event demonstrates the continued pace in Cluster development, and provides an opportunity for the community to evaluate and feedback on new features they want to see. What’s the Plan for MySQL Cluster 7.3? Well, Foreign Keys, as you may have gathered by now (!), and this is the focus of this first Labs Release. As with MySQL Cluster 7.2, we plan to publish a series of preview releases for 7.3 that will incrementally add new candidate features for a final GA release (subject to usual safe harbor statement below*), including: - New NoSQL APIs; - Features to automate the configuration and provisioning of multi-node clusters, on premise or in the cloud; - Performance and scalability enhancements; - Taking advantage of features in the latest MySQL 5.x Server GA. Design Rationale MySQL Cluster is designed as a “Not-Only-SQL” database. It combines attributes that enable users to blend the best of both relational and NoSQL technologies into solutions that deliver web scalability with 99.999% availability and real-time performance, including: Concurrent NoSQL and SQL access to the database; Auto-sharding with simple scale-out across commodity hardware; Multi-master replication with failover and recovery both within and across data centers; Shared-nothing architecture with no single point of failure; Online scaling and schema changes; ACID compliance and support for complex queries, across shards. Native support for Foreign Key constraints enables users to extend the benefits of MySQL Cluster into a broader range of use-cases, including: - Packaged applications in areas such as eCommerce and Web Content Management that prescribe databases with Foreign Key support. - In-house developments benefiting from Foreign Key constraints to simplify data models and eliminate the additional application logic needed to maintain data consistency and integrity between tables. Implementation The Foreign Key functionality is implemented directly within MySQL Cluster’s data nodes, allowing any client API accessing the cluster to benefit from them – whether using SQL or one of the NoSQL interfaces (Memcached, C++, Java, JPA or HTTP/REST.) The core referential actions defined in the SQL:2003 standard are implemented: CASCADE RESTRICT NO ACTION SET NULL In addition, the MySQL Cluster implementation supports the online adding and dropping of Foreign Keys, ensuring the Cluster continues to serve both read and write requests during the operation. An important difference to note with the Foreign Key implementation in InnoDB is that MySQL Cluster does not support the updating of Primary Keys from within the Data Nodes themselves - instead the UPDATE is emulated with a DELETE followed by an INSERT operation. Therefore an UPDATE operation will return an error if the parent reference is using a Primary Key, unless using CASCADE action, in which case the delete operation will result in the corresponding rows in the child table being deleted. The Engineering team plans to change this behavior in a subsequent preview release. Also note that when using InnoDB "NO ACTION" is identical to "RESTRICT". In the case of MySQL Cluster “NO ACTION” means “deferred check”, i.e. the constraint is checked before commit, allowing user-defined triggers to automatically make changes in order to satisfy the Foreign Key constraints. Configuration There is nothing special you have to do here – Foreign Key constraint checking is enabled by default. If you intend to migrate existing tables from another database or storage engine, for example from InnoDB, there are a couple of best practices to observe: 1. Analyze the structure of the Foreign Key graph and run the ALTER TABLE ENGINE=NDB in the correct sequence to ensure constraints are enforced 2. Alternatively drop the Foreign Key constraints prior to the import process and then recreate when complete. Getting Started Read this blog for a demonstration of using Foreign Keys with MySQL Cluster.  You can download MySQL Cluster 7.3 Labs Release with Foreign Keys today - (select the mysql-cluster-7.3-labs-June-2012 build) If you are new to MySQL Cluster, the Getting Started guide will walk you through installing an evaluation cluster on a singe host (these guides reflect MySQL Cluster 7.2, but apply equally well to 7.3) Post any questions to the MySQL Cluster forum where our Engineering team will attempt to assist you. Post any bugs you find to the MySQL bug tracking system (select MySQL Cluster from the Category drop-down menu) And if you have any feedback, please post them to the Comments section of this blog. Summary MySQL Cluster 7.2 is the GA, production-ready release of MySQL Cluster. This first Labs Release of MySQL Cluster 7.3 gives you the opportunity to preview and evaluate future developments in the MySQL Cluster database, and we are very excited to be able to share that with you. Let us know how you get along with MySQL Cluster 7.3, and other features that you want to see in future releases. * Safe Harbor Statement This information is intended to outline our general product direction. It is intended for information purposes only, and may not be incorporated into any contract. It is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions. The development, release, and timing of any features or functionality described for Oracle’s products remains at the sole discretion of Oracle.

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• La Universidad Estatal de California estandariza 23 campus a través de Oracle PeopleSoft

  - by Noelia Gomez

  Normal 0 21 false false false ES 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-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} El sistema universitario más grande de los Estados Unidos consolida la Gestión Financiera y consolidará la gestión del capital humano para mejorar la eficiencia y reducir los costes. Normal 0 21 false false false ES 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-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} La Universidad Estatal de California (CSU) está estandarizando su sistema de 23 campus y la Oficina del Rector con las aplicaciones de Oracle PeopleSoft. La CSU es el mayor sistema universitario público en los Estados Unidos. Los premios CSU con 90.000 grados por año y desde su creación en 1961, ha otorgado casi 2,6 millones. Como parte de su plan estratégico, “Acces to Excellence”, la CSU se ha comprometido a tomar ventaja de la tecnología para satisfacer las futuras necesidades de educación y ha creado los Sistemas Comunes de Gestión (CMS). La misión de CMS es brindar un servicio de calidad eficiente, eficaz y de calidad a los estudiantes, profesores y personal de los 23 campus de la CSU y la Oficina del Decanato. En un esfuerzo por mejorar la eficiencia y reducir los costes de todo el sistema, la CSU ha consolidado sus procesos de gestión financiera y los sistemas a través de PeopleSoft Financial Management. Para proporcionar una visión unificada de las operaciones financieras, CSU ha consolidado 22 campus en un mismo sistema a través de PeopleSoft Financials. Estas aplicaciones incluyen: Contabilidad, Facturación, Cuentas a Pagar, Cuentas a Cobrar y Compras. CSU también utiliza Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition para el análisis y presentación de informes. CSU está consolidando en PeopleSoft Human Capital Management (HCM) en pos de varios objetivos estratégicos como, entre otros: atraer y retener al personal superior y de la facultad. El sistema financiero consolidad de la CSU es ahora el mayor despliegue único de educación superior de PeopleSoft Financials en los Estados Unidos. Una centralización de esta envergadura no tiene precedentes, y sin embargo todavía se completó a tiempo y dentro del presupuesto. Una vez completado, la CSU también será el mayor despliegue de educación superior de PeopleSoft HCM. CSU también utiliza PeopleSoft Campus Solutions para gestionar sus operaciones académicas de los estudiantes, incluyendo la programación y registro de clases, cálculo y recaudación de las tasas, la concesión de la ayuda financiera y la evaluación y el progreso académico de los estudiantes. Las aplicaciones de Oracle PeopleSoft están diseñadas para atender las necesidades de negocio más complejas. Estas proveen soluciones integrales de negocios y de industria, permitiendo a las organizaciones aumentar la productividad, acelerar el rendimiento del negocio y un menor coste total de propiedad.PeopleSoft de Oracle Campus Solutions es una completa suite de software diseñado para las necesidades cambiantes de las instituciones de educación superior. Oracle sigue colaborando con la CSU y los colegios y universidades de todo el mundo para ofrecer los sistemas de administración y desarrollo de estudiantes más sensible y comprensivo y disponibles en la actualidad. Unisys está implantando aplicaciones PeopleSoft CSU y facilitando el acceso a los estudiantes, profesores y personal de las universidades a través de la solución de Unisys Hosted Secure Private Cloud. Unisys es un miembro de nivel Platino de Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN). "Con el fin de seguir cumpliendo los objetivos de nuestro plan estratégico, creemos que es fundamental para estandarizar nuestros procesos operativos - tanto en el back office como allí donde lleguen nuestros estudiantes todos los días - maximizar nuestra inversión en tecnología y reducir costes", dijo Larry Furukawa-Schlereth, Director de Finanzas, Sonoma State University, y presidente del Comité Global Ejecutivo de Gestión de la CSU, California State University. "Contar con una vista única de toda la información importante en un sistema ayuda a la Universidad Estatal de California a continuar ofreciendo excelentes oportunidades de educación a un coste asequible mientras ayudamos a dar forma a la futura calidad de vida cívica y económica en California". Conozca más sobre Peoplesoft aquí: Normal 0 21 false false false ES 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-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Oracle’s PeopleSoft Applications Oracle in Higher Education Oracle’s PeopleSoft Financial Management Oracle’s PeopleSoft Human Capital Management Oracle’s PeopleSoft Campus Solutions Oracle Human Capital Management Blog Oracle HCM on Twitter Oracle Higher Education on Facebook Oracle Higher Education on Diigo

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• Using Node.js as an accelerator for WCF REST services

  - by Elton Stoneman

  Node.js is a server-side JavaScript platform "for easily building fast, scalable network applications". It's built on Google's V8 JavaScript engine and uses an (almost) entirely async event-driven processing model, running in a single thread. If you're new to Node and your reaction is "why would I want to run JavaScript on the server side?", this is the headline answer: in 150 lines of JavaScript you can build a Node.js app which works as an accelerator for WCF REST services*. It can double your messages-per-second throughput, halve your CPU workload and use one-fifth of the memory footprint, compared to the WCF services direct.   Well, it can if: 1) your WCF services are first-class HTTP citizens, honouring client cache ETag headers in request and response; 2) your services do a reasonable amount of work to build a response; 3) your data is read more often than it's written. In one of my projects I have a set of REST services in WCF which deal with data that only gets updated weekly, but which can be read hundreds of times an hour. The services issue ETags and will return a 304 if the client sends a request with the current ETag, which means in the most common scenario the client uses its local cached copy. But when the weekly update happens, then all the client caches are invalidated and they all need the same new data. Then the service will get hundreds of requests with old ETags, and they go through the full service stack to build the same response for each, taking up threads and processing time. Part of that processing means going off to a database on a separate cloud, which introduces more latency and downtime potential.   We can use ASP.NET output caching with WCF to solve the repeated processing problem, but the server will still be thread-bound on incoming requests, and to get the current ETags reliably needs a database call per request. The accelerator solves that by running as a proxy - all client calls come into the proxy, and the proxy routes calls to the underlying REST service. We could use Node as a straight passthrough proxy and expect some benefit, as the server would be less thread-bound, but we would still have one WCF and one database call per proxy call. But add some smart caching logic to the proxy, and share ETags between Node and WCF (so the proxy doesn't even need to call the servcie to get the current ETag), and the underlying service will only be invoked when data has changed, and then only once - all subsequent client requests will be served from the proxy cache.   I've built this as a sample up on GitHub: NodeWcfAccelerator on sixeyed.codegallery. Here's how the architecture looks:     The code is very simple. The Node proxy runs on port 8010 and all client requests target the proxy. If the client request has an ETag header then the proxy looks up the ETag in the tag cache to see if it is current - the sample uses memcached to share ETags between .NET and Node. If the ETag from the client matches the current server tag, the proxy sends a 304 response with an empty body to the client, telling it to use its own cached version of the data. If the ETag from the client is stale, the proxy looks for a local cached version of the response, checking for a file named after the current ETag. If that file exists, its contents are returned to the client as the body in a 200 response, which includes the current ETag in the header. If the proxy does not have a local cached file for the service response, it calls the service, and writes the WCF response to the local cache file, and to the body of a 200 response for the client. So the WCF service is only troubled if both client and proxy have stale (or no) caches.   The only (vaguely) clever bit in the sample is using the ETag cache, so the proxy can serve cached requests without any communication with the underlying service, which it does completely generically, so the proxy has no notion of what it is serving or what the services it proxies are doing. The relative path from the URL is used as the lookup key, so there's no shared key-generation logic between .NET and Node, and when WCF stores a tag it also stores the "read" URL against the ETag so it can be used for a reverse lookup, e.g:   Key Value /WcfSampleService/PersonService.svc/rest/fetch/3 "28cd4796-76b8-451b-adfd-75cb50a50fa6" "28cd4796-76b8-451b-adfd-75cb50a50fa6" /WcfSampleService/PersonService.svc/rest/fetch/3    In Node we read the cache using the incoming URL path as the key and we know that "28cd4796-76b8-451b-adfd-75cb50a50fa6" is the current ETag; we look for a local cached response in /caches/28cd4796-76b8-451b-adfd-75cb50a50fa6.body (and the corresponding .header file which contains the original service response headers, so the proxy response is exactly the same as the underlying service). When the data is updated, we need to invalidate the ETag cache – which is why we need the reverse lookup in the cache. In the WCF update service, we don't need to know the URL of the related read service - we fetch the entity from the database, do a reverse lookup on the tag cache using the old ETag to get the read URL, update the new ETag against the URL, store the new reverse lookup and delete the old one.   Running Apache Bench against the two endpoints gives the headline performance comparison. Making 1000 requests with concurrency of 100, and not sending any ETag headers in the requests, with the Node proxy I get 102 requests handled per second, average response time of 975 milliseconds with 90% of responses served within 850 milliseconds; going direct to WCF with the same parameters, I get 53 requests handled per second, mean response time of 1853 milliseconds, with 90% of response served within 3260 milliseconds. Informally monitoring server usage during the tests, Node maxed at 20% CPU and 20Mb memory; IIS maxed at 60% CPU and 100Mb memory.   Note that the sample WCF service does a database read and sleeps for 250 milliseconds to simulate a moderate processing load, so this is *not* a baseline Node-vs-WCF comparison, but for similar scenarios where the  service call is expensive but applicable to numerous clients for a long timespan, the performance boost from the accelerator is considerable.     * - actually, the accelerator will work nicely for any HTTP request, where the URL (path + querystring) uniquely identifies a resource. In the sample, there is an assumption that the ETag is a GUID wrapped in double-quotes (e.g. "28cd4796-76b8-451b-adfd-75cb50a50fa6") – which is the default for WCF services. I use that assumption to name the cache files uniquely, but it is a trivial change to adapt to other ETag formats.

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• Running Solaris 11 as a control domain on a T2000

  - by jsavit

  There is increased adoption of Oracle Solaris 11, and many customers are deploying it on systems that previously ran Solaris 10. That includes older T1-processor based systems like T1000 and T2000. Even though they are old (from 2005) and don't have the performance of current SPARC servers, they are still functional, stable servers that customers continue to operate. One reason to install Solaris 11 on them is that older machines are attractive for testing OS upgrades before updating current, production systems. Normally this does not present a challenge, because Solaris 11 runs on any T-series or M-series SPARC server. One scenario adds a complication: running Solaris 11 in a control domain on a T1000 or T2000 hosting logical domains. Solaris 11 pre-installed Oracle VM Server for SPARC incompatible with T1 Unlike Solaris 10, Solaris 11 comes with Oracle VM Server for SPARC preinstalled. The ldomsmanager package contains the logical domains manager for Oracle VM Server for SPARC 2.2, which requires a SPARC T2, T2+, T3, or T4 server. It does not work with T1-processor systems, which are only supported by LDoms Manager 1.2 and earlier. The following screenshot shows what happens (bold font) if you try to use Oracle VM Server for SPARC 2.x commands in a Solaris 11 control domain. The commands were issued in a control domain on a T2000 that previously ran Solaris 10. We also display the version of the logical domains manager installed in Solaris 11: root@t2000 psrinfo -vp The physical processor has 4 virtual processors (0-3) UltraSPARC-T1 (chipid 0, clock 1200 MHz) # prtconf|grep T SUNW,Sun-Fire-T200 # ldm -V Failed to connect to logical domain manager: Connection refused # pkg info ldomsmanager Name: system/ldoms/ldomsmanager Summary: Logical Domains Manager Description: LDoms Manager - Virtualization for SPARC T-Series Category: System/Virtualization State: Installed Publisher: solaris Version: 2.2.0.0 Build Release: 5.11 Branch: 0.175.0.8.0.3.0 Packaging Date: May 25, 2012 10:20:48 PM Size: 2.86 MB FMRI: pkg://solaris/system/ldoms/[email protected],5.11-0.175.0.8.0.3.0:20120525T222048Z The 2.2 version of the logical domains manager will have to be removed, and 1.2 installed, in order to use this as a control domain. Preparing to change - create a new boot environment Before doing anything else, lets create a new boot environment: # beadm list BE Active Mountpoint Space Policy Created -- ------ ---------- ----- ------ ------- solaris NR / 2.14G static 2012-09-25 10:32 # beadm create solaris-1 # beadm activate solaris-1 # beadm list BE Active Mountpoint Space Policy Created -- ------ ---------- ----- ------ ------- solaris N / 4.82M static 2012-09-25 10:32 solaris-1 R - 2.14G static 2012-09-29 11:40 # init 0 Normally an init 6 to reboot would have been sufficient, but in the next step I reset the system anyway in order to put the system in factory default mode for a "clean" domain configuration. Preparing to change - reset to factory default There was a leftover domain configuration on the T2000, so I reset it to the factory install state. Since the ldm command is't working yet, it can't be done from the control domain, so I did it by logging onto to the service processor: $ ssh -X admin@t2000-sc Copyright (c) 2010, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Oracle Advanced Lights Out Manager CMT v1.7.9 Please login: admin Please Enter password: ******** sc> showhost Sun-Fire-T2000 System Firmware 6.7.10 2010/07/14 16:35 Host flash versions: OBP 4.30.4.b 2010/07/09 13:48 Hypervisor 1.7.3.c 2010/07/09 15:14 POST 4.30.4.b 2010/07/09 14:24 sc> bootmode config="factory-default" sc> poweroff Are you sure you want to power off the system [y/n]? y SC Alert: SC Request to Power Off Host. SC Alert: Host system has shut down. sc> poweron SC Alert: Host System has Reset At this point I rebooted into the new Solaris 11 boot environment, and Solaris commands showed it was running on the factory default configuration of a single domain owning all 32 CPUs and 32GB of RAM (that's what it looked like in 2005.) # psrinfo -vp The physical processor has 8 cores and 32 virtual processors (0-31) The core has 4 virtual processors (0-3) The core has 4 virtual processors (4-7) The core has 4 virtual processors (8-11) The core has 4 virtual processors (12-15) The core has 4 virtual processors (16-19) The core has 4 virtual processors (20-23) The core has 4 virtual processors (24-27) The core has 4 virtual processors (28-31) UltraSPARC-T1 (chipid 0, clock 1200 MHz) # prtconf|grep Mem Memory size: 32640 Megabytes Note that the older processor has 4 virtual CPUs per core, while current processors have 8 per core. Remove ldomsmanager 2.2 and install the 1.2 version The Solaris 11 pkg command is now used to remove the 2.2 version that shipped with Solaris 11: # pkg uninstall ldomsmanager Packages to remove: 1 Create boot environment: No Create backup boot environment: No Services to change: 2 PHASE ACTIONS Removal Phase 130/130 PHASE ITEMS Package State Update Phase 1/1 Package Cache Update Phase 1/1 Image State Update Phase 2/2 Finally, LDoms 1.2 installed via its install script, the same way it was done years ago: # unzip LDoms-1_2-Integration-10.zip # cd LDoms-1_2-Integration-10/Install/ # ./install-ldm Welcome to the LDoms installer. You are about to install the Logical Domains Manager package that will enable you to create, destroy and control other domains on your system. Given the capabilities of the LDoms domain manager, you can now change the security configuration of this Solaris instance using the Solaris Security Toolkit. ... ... normal install messages omitted ... The Solaris Security Toolkit applies to Solaris 10, and cannot be used in Solaris 11 (in which several things hardened by the Toolkit are already hardened by default), so answer b in the choice below: You are about to install the Logical Domains Manager package that will enable you to create, destroy and control other domains on your system. Given the capabilities of the LDoms domain manager, you can now change the security configuration of this Solaris instance using the Solaris Security Toolkit. Select a security profile from this list: a) Hardened Solaris configuration for LDoms (recommended) b) Standard Solaris configuration c) Your custom-defined Solaris security configuration profile Enter a, b, or c [a]: b ... other install messages omitted for brevity... After install I ensure that the necessary services are enabled, and verify the version of the installed LDoms Manager: # svcs ldmd STATE STIME FMRI online 22:00:36 svc:/ldoms/ldmd:default # svcs vntsd STATE STIME FMRI disabled Aug_19 svc:/ldoms/vntsd:default # ldm -V Logical Domain Manager (v 1.2-debug) Hypervisor control protocol v 1.3 Using Hypervisor MD v 1.1 System PROM: Hypervisor v. 1.7.3. @(#)Hypervisor 1.7.3.c 2010/07/09 15:14\015 OpenBoot v. 4.30.4. @(#)OBP 4.30.4.b 2010/07/09 13:48 Set up control domain and domain services At this point we have a functioning LDoms 1.2 environment that can be configured in the usual fashion. One difference is that LDoms 1.2 behavior had 'delayed configuration mode (as expected) during initial configuration before rebooting the control domain. Another minor difference with a Solaris 11 control domain is that you define virtual switches using the 'vanity name' of the network interface, rather than the hardware driver name as in Solaris 10. # ldm list ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Notice: the LDom Manager is running in configuration mode. Configuration and resource information is displayed for the configuration under construction; not the current active configuration. The configuration being constructed will only take effect after it is downloaded to the system controller and the host is reset. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ NAME STATE FLAGS CONS VCPU MEMORY UTIL UPTIME primary active -n-c-- SP 32 32640M 3.2% 4d 2h 50m # ldm add-vdiskserver primary-vds0 primary # ldm add-vconscon port-range=5000-5100 primary-vcc0 primary # ldm add-vswitch net-dev=net0 primary-vsw0 primary # ldm set-mau 2 primary # ldm set-vcpu 8 primary # ldm set-memory 4g primary # ldm add-config initial # ldm list-spconfig factory-default initial [current] That's it, really. After reboot, we are ready to install guest domains. Summary - new wine in old bottles This example shows that (new) Solaris 11 can be installed on (old) T2000 servers and used as a control domain. The main activity is to remove the preinstalled Oracle VM Server for 2.2 and install Logical Domains 1.2 - the last version of LDoms to support T1-processor systems. I tested Solaris 10 and Solaris 11 guest domains running on this server and they worked without any surprises. This is a viable way to get further into Solaris 11 adoption, even on older T-series equipment.

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• Beginner’s Guide to Flock, the Social Media Browser

  - by Asian Angel

  Are you wanting a browser that can work as a social hub from the first moment that you start it up? If you love the idea of a browser that is ready to go out of the box then join us as we look at Flock. During the Install Process When you are installing Flock there are two install windows that you should watch for. The first one lets you choose between the “Express Setup & Custom Setup”. We recommend the “Custom Setup”. Once you have selected the “Custom Setup” you can choose which of the following options will enabled. Notice the “anonymous usage statistics” option at the bottom…you can choose to leave this enabled or disable it based on your comfort level. The First Look When you start Flock up for the first time it will open with three tabs. All three are of interest…especially if this is your first time using Flock. With the first tab you can jump right into “logging in/activating” favorite social services within Flock. This page is set to display each time that you open Flock unless you deselect the option in the lower left corner. The second tab provides a very nice overview of Flock and its’ built-in social management power. The third and final page can be considered a “Personal Page”. You can make some changes to the content displayed for quick and easy access and/or monitoring “Twitter Search, Favorite Feeds, Favorite Media, Friend Activity, & Favorite Sites”. Use the “Widget Menu” in the upper left corner to select the “Personal Page Components” that you would like to use. In the upper right corner there is a built-in “Search Bar” and buttons for “Posting to Your Blog & Uploading Media”. To help personalize the “My World Page” just a bit more you can even change the text to your name or whatever best suits your needs. The Flock Toolbar The “Flock Toolbar” is full of social account management goodness. In order from left to right the buttons are: My World (Homepage), Open People Sidebar, Open Media Bar, Open Feeds Sidebar, Webmail, Open Favorites Sidebar, Open Accounts and Services Sidebar, Open Web Clipboard Sidebar, Open Blog Editor, & Open Photo Uploader. The buttons will be “highlighted” with a blue background to help indicate which area you are in. The first area will display a listing of people that you are watching/following at the services shown here. Clicking on the “Media Bar Button” will display the following “Media Slider Bar” above your “Tab Bar”. Notice that there is a built-in “Search Bar” on the right side. Any photos, etc. clicked on will be opened in the currently focused tab below the “Media Bar”. Here is a listing of the “Media Streams” available for viewing. By default Flock will come with a small selection of pre-subscribed RSS Feeds. You can easily unsubscribe, rearrange, add custom folders, or non-categorized feeds as desired. RSS Feeds subscribed to here can be viewed combined together as a single feed (clickable links) in the “My World Page”. or can be viewed individually in a new tab. Very nice! Next on the “Flock Toolbar is the “Webmail Button”. You can set up access to your favorite “Yahoo!, Gmail, & AOL Mail” accounts from here. The “Favorites Sidebar” combines your “Browser History & Bookmarks” into one convenient location. The “Accounts and Services Sidebar” gives you quick and easy access to get logged into your favorite social accounts. Clicking on any of the links will open that particular service’s login page in a new tab. Want to store items such as photos, links, and text to add into a blog post or tweet later on? Just drag and drop them into the “Web Clipboard Sidebar” for later access. Clicking on the “Blog Editor Button” will open up a separate blogging window to compose your posts in. If you have not logged into or set up an account yet in Flock you will see the following message window. The “Blogging Window”…nice, simple, and straightforward. If you are not already logged into your photo account(s) then you will see the following message window when you click on the “Photo Uploader Button”. Clicking “OK” will open the “Accounts and Services Sidebar” with compatible photo services highlighted in a light yellow color. Log in to your favorite service to start uploading all those great images. After Setting Up Here is what our browser looked like after setting up some of our favorite services. The Twitter feed is certainly looking nice and easy to read through… Some tweaking in the “RSS Feeds Sidebar” makes for a perfect reading experience. Keeping up with our e-mail is certainly easy to do too. A look back at the “Accounts and Services Sidebar” shows that all of our accounts are actively logged in (green dot on the right side). Going back to our “My World Page” you can see how nice everything looks for monitoring our “Friend Activity & Favorite Feeds”. Moving on to regular browsing everything is looking very good… Flock is a perfect choice for anyone wanting a browser and social hub all built into a single app. Conclusion Anyone who loves keeping up with their favorite social services while browsing will find using Flock to be a wonderful experience. You literally get the best of both worlds with this browser. Links Download Flock The Official Flock Extensions Homepage The Official Flock Toolbar Homepage Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Add Color Coding to Windows 7 Media Center Program GuideAdd Social Bookmarking (Digg This!) Links to your Wordpress BlogHow to use an ISO image on Ubuntu LinuxAdvertise on How-To GeekFixing When Windows Media Player Library Won’t Let You Add Files TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Have Fun Editing Photo Editing with Citrify Outlook Connector Upgrade Error Gadfly is a cool Twitter/Silverlight app Enable DreamScene in Windows 7 Microsoft’s “How Do I ?” Videos Home Networks – How do they look like & the problems they cause

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• Recap: Oracle Fusion Middleware Strategies Driving Business Innovation

  - by Harish Gaur

  Hasan Rizvi, Executive Vice President of Oracle Fusion Middleware & Java took the stage on Tuesday to discuss how Oracle Fusion Middleware helps enable business innovation. Through a series of product demos and customer showcases, Hassan demonstrated how Oracle Fusion Middleware is a complete platform to harness the latest technological innovations (cloud, mobile, social and Fast Data) throughout the application lifecycle. Fig 1: Oracle Fusion Middleware is the foundation of business innovation This Session included 4 demonstrations to illustrate these strategies: 1. Build and deploy native mobile applications using Oracle ADF Mobile 2. Empower business user to model processes, design user interface and have rich mobile experience for process interaction using Oracle BPM Suite PS6. 3. Create collaborative user experience and integrate social sign-on using Oracle WebCenter Portal, Oracle WebCenter Content, Oracle Social Network & Oracle Identity Management 11g R2 4. Deploy and manage business applications on Oracle Exalogic Nike, LA Department of Water & Power and Nintendo joined Hasan on stage to share how their organizations are leveraging Oracle Fusion Middleware to enable business innovation. Managing Performance in the Wrld of Social and Mobile How do you provide predictable scalability and performance for an application that monitors active lifestyle of 8 million users on a daily basis? Nike’s answer is Oracle Coherence, a component of Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle Exadata. Fig 2: Oracle Coherence enabled data grid improves performance of Nike+ Digital Sports Platform Nicole Otto, Sr. Director of Consumer Digital Technology discussed the vision of the Nike+ platform, a platform which represents a shift for NIKE from a  "product"  to  a "product +" experience.  There are currently nearly 8 million users in the Nike+ system who are using digitally-enabled Nike+ devices.  Once data from the Nike+ device is transmitted to Nike+ application, users access the Nike+ website or via the Nike mobile applicatoin, seeing metrics around their daily active lifestyle and even engage in socially compelling experiences to compare, compete or collaborate their data with their friends. Nike expects the number of users to grow significantly this year which will drive an explosion of data and potential new experiences. To deal with this challenge, Nike envisioned building a shared platform that would drive a consumer-centric model for the company. Nike built this new platform using Oracle Coherence and Oracle Exadata. Using Coherence, Nike built a data grid tier as a distributed cache, thereby provide low-latency access to most recent and relevant data to consumers. Nicole discussed how Nike+ Digital Sports Platform is unique in the way that it utilizes the Coherence Grid.  Nike takes advantage of Coherence as a traditional cache using both cache-aside and cache-through patterns.  This new tier has enabled Nike to create a horizontally scalable distributed event-driven processing architecture. Current data grid volume is approximately 150,000 request per minute with about 40 million objects at any given time on the grid. Improving Customer Experience Across Multiple Channels Customer experience is on top of every CIO's mind. Customer Experience needs to be consistent and secure across multiple devices consumers may use.  This is the challenge Matt Lampe, CIO of Los Angeles Department of Water & Power (LADWP) was faced with. Despite being the largest utilities company in the country, LADWP had been relying on a 38 year old customer information system for serving its customers. Their prior system  had been unable to keep up with growing customer demands. Last year, LADWP embarked on a journey to improve customer experience for 1.6million LA DWP customers using Oracle WebCenter platform. Figure 3: Multi channel & Multi lingual LADWP.com built using Oracle WebCenter & Oracle Identity Management platform Matt shed light on his efforts to drive customer self-service across 3 dimensions – new website, new IVR platform and new bill payment service. LADWP has built a new portal to increase customer self-service while reducing the transactions via IVR. LADWP's website is powered Oracle WebCenter Portal and is accessible by desktop and mobile devices. By leveraging Oracle WebCenter, LADWP eliminated the need to build, format, and maintain individual mobile applications or websites for different devices. Their entire content is managed using Oracle WebCenter Content and secured using Oracle Identity Management. This new portal automated their paper based processes to web based workflows for customers. This includes automation of Self Service implemented through My Account -  like Bill Pay, Payment History, Bill History and Usage Analysis. LADWP's solution went live in April 2012. Matt indicated that LADWP's Self-Service Portal has greatly improved customer satisfaction.  In a JD Power Associates website satisfaction survey, results indicate rankings have climbed by 25+ points, marking a remarkable increase in user experience. Bolstering Performance and Simplifying Manageability of Business Applications Ingvar Petursson, Senior Vice Preisdent of IT at Nintendo America joined Hasan on-stage to discuss their choice of Exalogic. Nintendo had significant new requirements coming their way for business systems, both internal and external, in the years to come, especially with new products like the WiiU on the horizon this holiday season. Nintendo needed a platform that could give them performance, availability and ease of management as they deploy business systems. Ingvar selected Engineered Systems for two reasons: 1. High performance  2. Ease of management Figure 4: Nintendo relies on Oracle Exalogic to run ATG eCommerce, Oracle e-Business Suite and several business applications Nintendo made a decision to run their business applications (ATG eCommerce, E-Business Suite) and several Fusion Middleware components on the Exalogic platform. What impressed Ingvar was the "stress” testing results during evaluation. Oracle Exalogic could handle their 3-year load estimates for many functions, which was better than Nintendo expected without any hardware expansion. Faster Processing of Big Data Middleware plays an increasingly important role in Big Data. Last year, we announced at OpenWorld the introduction of Oracle Data Integrator for Hadoop and Oracle Loader for Hadoop which helps in the ability to move, transform, load data to and from Big Data Appliance to Exadata.  This year, we’ve added new capabilities to find, filter, and focus data using Oracle Event Processing. This product can natively integrate with Big Data Appliance or runs standalone. Hasan briefly discussed how NTT Docomo, largest mobile operator in Japan, leverages Oracle Event Processing & Oracle Coherence to process mobile data (from 13 million smartphone users) at a speed of 700K events per second before feeding it Hadoop for distributed processing of big data. Figure 5: Mobile traffic data processing at NTT Docomo with Oracle Event Processing & Oracle Coherence    

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• Microsoft Business Intelligence Seminar 2011

  - by DavidWimbush

  I was lucky enough to attend the maiden presentation of this at Microsoft Reading yesterday. It was pretty gripping stuff not only because of what was said but also because of what could only be hinted at. Here's what I took away from the day. (Disclaimer: I'm not a BI guru, just a reasonably experienced BI developer, so I may have misunderstood or misinterpreted a few things. Particularly when so much of the talk was about the vision and subtle hints of what is coming. Please comment if you think I've got anything wrong. I'm also not going to even try to cover Master Data Services as I struggled to imagine how you would actually use it.) I was a bit worried when I learned that the whole day was going to be presented by one guy but Rafal Lukawiecki is a very engaging speaker. He's going to be presenting this about 20 times around the world over the coming months. If you get a chance to hear him speak, I say go for it. No doubt some of the hints will become clearer as Denali gets closer to RTM. Firstly, things are definitely happening in the SQL Server Reporting and BI world. Traditionally IT would build a data warehouse, then cubes on top of that, and then publish them in a structured and controlled way. But, just as with many IT projects in general, by the time it's finished the business has moved on and the system no longer meets their requirements. This not sustainable and something more agile is needed but there has to be some control. Apparently we're going to be hearing the catchphrase 'Balancing agility with control' a lot. More users want more access to more data. Can they define what they want? Of course not, but they'll recognise it when they see it. It's estimated that only 28% of potential BI users have meaningful access to the data they need, so there is a real pent-up demand. The answer looks like: give them some self-service tools so they can experiment and see what works, and then IT can help to support the results. It's estimated that 32% of Excel users are comfortable with its analysis tools such as pivot tables. It's the power user's preferred tool. Why fight it? That's why PowerPivot is an Excel add-in and that's why they released a Data Mining add-in for it as well. It does appear that the strategy is going to be to use Reporting Services (in SharePoint mode), PowerPivot, and possibly something new (smiles and hints but no details) to create reports and explore data. Everything will be published and managed in SharePoint which gives users the ability to mash-up, share and socialise what they've found out. SharePoint also gives IT tools to understand what people are looking at and where to concentrate effort. If PowerPivot report X becomes widely used, it's time to check that it shows what they think it does and perhaps get it a bit more under central control. There was more SharePoint detail that went slightly over my head regarding where Excel Services and Excel Web Application fit in, the differences between them, and the suggestion that it is likely they will one day become one (but not in the immediate future). That basic pattern is set to be expanded upon by further exploiting Vertipaq (the columnar indexing engine that enables PowerPivot to store and process a lot of data fast and in a small memory footprint) to provide scalability 'from the desktop to the data centre', and some yet to be detailed advances in 'frictionless deployment' (part of which is about making the difference between local and the cloud pretty much irrelevant). Excel looks like becoming Microsoft's primary BI client. It already has: the ability to consume cubes strong visualisation tools slicers (which are part of Excel not PowerPivot) a data mining add-in PowerPivot A major hurdle for self-service BI is presenting the data in a consumable format. You can't just give users PowerPivot and a server with a copy of the OLTP database(s). Building cubes is labour intensive and doesn't always give the user what they need. This is where the BI Semantic Model (BISM) comes in. I gather it's a layer of metadata you define that can combine multiple data sources (and types of data source) into a clear 'interface' that users can work with. It comes with a new query language called DAX. SSAS cubes are unlikely to go away overnight because, with their pre-calculated results, they are still the most efficient way to work with really big data sets. A few other random titbits that came up: Reporting Services is going to get some good new stuff in Denali. Keep an eye on www.projectbotticelli.com for the slides. You can also view last year's seminar sessions which covered a lot of the same ground as far as the overall strategy is concerned. They plan to add more material as Denali's features are publicly exposed. Check out the PASS keynote address for a showing of Yahoo's SQL BI servers. Apparently they wheeled the rack out on stage still plugged in and running! Check out the Excel 2010 Data Mining Add-Ins. 32 bit only at present but 64 bit is on the way. There are lots of data sets, many of them free, at the Windows Azure Marketplace Data Market (where you can also get ESRI shape files). If you haven't already seen it, have a look at the Silverlight Pivot Viewer (http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/06/29/silverlight-pivotviewer-now-available.aspx). The Bing Maps Data Connector is worth a look if you're into spatial stuff (http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/maps/archive/2010/07/13/data-connector-sql-server-2008-spatial-amp-bing-maps.aspx).  

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• Improving Manageability of Virtual Environments

  - by Jeff Victor

  Boot Environments for Solaris 10 Branded Zones Until recently, Solaris 10 Branded Zones on Solaris 11 suffered one notable regression: Live Upgrade did not work. The individual packaging and patching tools work correctly, but the ability to upgrade Solaris while the production workload continued running did not exist. A recent Solaris 11 SRU (Solaris 11.1 SRU 6.4) restored most of that functionality, although with a slightly different concept, different commands, and without all of the feature details. This new method gives you the ability to create and manage multiple boot environments (BEs) for a Solaris 10 Branded Zone, and modify the active or any inactive BE, and to do so while the production workload continues to run. Background In case you are new to Solaris: Solaris includes a set of features that enables you to create a bootable Solaris image, called a Boot Environment (BE). This newly created image can be modified while the original BE is still running your workload(s). There are many benefits, including improved uptime and the ability to reboot into (or downgrade to) an older BE if a newer one has a problem. In Solaris 10 this set of features was named Live Upgrade. Solaris 11 applies the same basic concepts to the new packaging system (IPS) but there isn't a specific name for the feature set. The features are simply part of IPS. Solaris 11 Boot Environments are not discussed in this blog entry. Although a Solaris 10 system can have multiple BEs, until recently a Solaris 10 Branded Zone (BZ) in a Solaris 11 system did not have this ability. This limitation was addressed recently, and that enhancement is the subject of this blog entry. This new implementation uses two concepts. The first is the use of a ZFS clone for each BE. This makes it very easy to create a BE, or many BEs. This is a distinct advantage over the Live Upgrade feature set in Solaris 10, which had a practical limitation of two BEs on a system, when using UFS. The second new concept is a very simple mechanism to indicate the BE that should be booted: a ZFS property. The new ZFS property is named com.oracle.zones.solaris10:activebe (isn't that creative? ). It's important to note that the property is inherited from the original BE's file system to any BEs you create. In other words, all BEs in one zone have the same value for that property. When the (Solaris 11) global zone boots the Solaris 10 BZ, it boots the BE that has the name that is stored in the activebe property. Here is a quick summary of the actions you can use to manage these BEs: To create a BE: Create a ZFS clone of the zone's root dataset To activate a BE: Set the ZFS property of the root dataset to indicate the BE To add a package or patch to an inactive BE: Mount the inactive BE Add packages or patches to it Unmount the inactive BE To list the available BEs: Use the "zfs list" command. To destroy a BE: Use the "zfs destroy" command. Preparation Before you can use the new features, you will need a Solaris 10 BZ on a Solaris 11 system. You can use these three steps - on a real Solaris 11.1 server or in a VirtualBox guest running Solaris 11.1 - to create a Solaris 10 BZ. The Solaris 11.1 environment must be at SRU 6.4 or newer. Create a flash archive on the Solaris 10 system s10# flarcreate -n s10-system /net/zones/archives/s10-system.flar Configure the Solaris 10 BZ on the Solaris 11 system s11# zonecfg -z s10z Use 'create' to begin configuring a new zone. zonecfg:s10z create -t SYSsolaris10 zonecfg:s10z set zonepath=/zones/s10z zonecfg:s10z exit s11# zoneadm list -cv ID NAME STATUS PATH BRAND IP 0 global running / solaris shared - s10z configured /zones/s10z solaris10 excl Install the zone from the flash archive s11# zoneadm -z s10z install -a /net/zones/archives/s10-system.flar -p You can find more information about the migration of Solaris 10 environments to Solaris 10 Branded Zones in the documentation. The rest of this blog entry demonstrates the commands you can use to accomplish the aforementioned actions related to BEs. New features in action Note that the demonstration of the commands occurs in the Solaris 10 BZ, as indicated by the shell prompt "s10z# ". Many of these commands can be performed in the global zone instead, if you prefer. If you perform them in the global zone, you must change the ZFS file system names. Create The only complicated action is the creation of a BE. In the Solaris 10 BZ, create a new "boot environment" - a ZFS clone. You can assign any name to the final portion of the clone's name, as long as it meets the requirements for a ZFS file system name. s10z# zfs snapshot rpool/ROOT/zbe-0@snap s10z# zfs clone -o mountpoint=/ -o canmount=noauto rpool/ROOT/zbe-0@snap rpool/ROOT/newBE cannot mount 'rpool/ROOT/newBE' on '/': directory is not empty filesystem successfully created, but not mounted You can safely ignore that message: we already know that / is not empty! We have merely told ZFS that the default mountpoint for the clone is the root directory. List the available BEs and active BE Because each BE is represented by a clone of the rpool/ROOT dataset, listing the BEs is as simple as listing the clones. s10z# zfs list -r rpool/ROOT NAME USED AVAIL REFER MOUNTPOINT rpool/ROOT 3.55G 42.9G 31K legacy rpool/ROOT/zbe-0 1K 42.9G 3.55G / rpool/ROOT/newBE 3.55G 42.9G 3.55G / The output shows that two BEs exist. Their names are "zbe-0" and "newBE". You can tell Solaris that one particular BE should be used when the zone next boots by using a ZFS property. Its name is com.oracle.zones.solaris10:activebe. The value of that property is the name of the clone that contains the BE that should be booted. s10z# zfs get com.oracle.zones.solaris10:activebe rpool/ROOT NAME PROPERTY VALUE SOURCE rpool/ROOT com.oracle.zones.solaris10:activebe zbe-0 local Change the active BE When you want to change the BE that will be booted next time, you can just change the activebe property on the rpool/ROOT dataset. s10z# zfs get com.oracle.zones.solaris10:activebe rpool/ROOT NAME PROPERTY VALUE SOURCE rpool/ROOT com.oracle.zones.solaris10:activebe zbe-0 local s10z# zfs set com.oracle.zones.solaris10:activebe=newBE rpool/ROOT s10z# zfs get com.oracle.zones.solaris10:activebe rpool/ROOT NAME PROPERTY VALUE SOURCE rpool/ROOT com.oracle.zones.solaris10:activebe newBE local s10z# shutdown -y -g0 -i6 After the zone has rebooted: s10z# zfs get com.oracle.zones.solaris10:activebe rpool/ROOT rpool/ROOT com.oracle.zones.solaris10:activebe newBE local s10z# zfs mount rpool/ROOT/newBE / rpool/export /export rpool/export/home /export/home rpool /rpool Mount the original BE to see that it's still there. s10z# zfs mount -o mountpoint=/mnt rpool/ROOT/zbe-0 s10z# ls /mnt Desktop export platform Documents export.backup.20130607T214951Z proc S10Flar home rpool TT_DB kernel sbin bin lib system boot lost+found tmp cdrom mnt usr dev net var etc opt Patch an inactive BE At this point, you can modify the original BE. If you would prefer to modify the new BE, you can restore the original value to the activebe property and reboot, and then mount the new BE to /mnt (or another empty directory) and modify it. Let's mount the original BE so we can modify it. (The first command is only needed if you haven't already mounted that BE.) s10z# zfs mount -o mountpoint=/mnt rpool/ROOT/zbe-0 s10z# patchadd -R /mnt -M /var/sadm/spool 104945-02 Note that the typical usage will be: Create a BE Mount the new (inactive) BE Use the package and patch tools to update the new BE Unmount the new BE Reboot Delete an inactive BE ZFS clones are children of their parent file systems. In order to destroy the parent, you must first "promote" the child. This reverses the parent-child relationship. (For more information on this, see the documentation.) The original rpool/ROOT file system is the parent of the clones that you create as BEs. In order to destroy an earlier BE that is that parent of other BEs, you must first promote one of the child BEs to be the ZFS parent. Only then can you destroy the original BE. Fortunately, this is easier to do than to explain: s10z# zfs promote rpool/ROOT/newBE s10z# zfs destroy rpool/ROOT/zbe-0 s10z# zfs list -r rpool/ROOT NAME USED AVAIL REFER MOUNTPOINT rpool/ROOT 3.56G 269G 31K legacy rpool/ROOT/newBE 3.56G 269G 3.55G / Documentation This feature is so new, it is not yet described in the Solaris 11 documentation. However, MOS note 1558773.1 offers some details. Conclusion With this new feature, you can add and patch packages to boot environments of a Solaris 10 Branded Zone. This ability improves the manageability of these zones, and makes their use more practical. It also means that you can use the existing P2V tools with earlier Solaris 10 updates, and modify the environments after they become Solaris 10 Branded Zones.

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• The Birth of a Method - Where did OUM come from?

  - by user702549

  It seemed fitting to start this blog entry with the OUM vision statement. The vision for the Oracle® Unified Method (OUM) is to support the entire Enterprise IT lifecycle, including support for the successful implementation of every Oracle product.  Well, it’s that time of year again; we just finished testing and packaging OUM 5.6.  It will be released for general availability to qualifying customers and partners this month.  Because of this, I’ve been reflecting back on how the birth of Oracle’s Unified method - OUM came about. As the Release Director of OUM, I’ve been honored to package every method release.  No, maybe you’d say it’s not so special.  Of course, anyone can use packaging software to create an .exe file.  But to me, it is pretty special, because so many people work together to make each release come about.  The rich content that results is what makes OUM’s history worth talking about.   To me, professionally speaking, working on OUM, well it’s been “a labor of love”.  My youngest child was just 8 years old when OUM was born, and she’s now in High School!  Watching her grow and change has been fascinating, if you ask her, she’s grown up hearing about OUM.  My son would often walk into my home office and ask “How is OUM today, Mom?”  I am one of many people that take care of OUM, and have watched the method “mature” over these last 6 years.  Maybe that makes me a "Method Mom" (someone in one of my classes last year actually said this outloud) but there are so many others who collaborate and care about OUM Development. I’ve thought about writing this blog entry for a long time just to reflect on how far the Method has come. Each release, as I prepare the OUM Contributors list, I see how many people’s experience and ideas it has taken to create this wealth of knowledge, process and task guidance as well as templates and examples.  If you’re wondering how many people, just go into OUM select the resources button on the top of most pages of the method, and on that resources page click the ABOUT link. So now back to my nostalgic moment as I finished release 5.6 packaging.  I reflected back, on all the things that happened that cause OUM to become not just a dream but to actually come to fruition.  Here are some key conditions that make it possible for each release of the method: A vision to have one method instead of many methods, thereby focusing on deeper, richer content People within Oracle’s consulting Organization  willing to contribute to OUM providing Subject Matter Experts who are willing to write down and share what they know. Oracle’s continued acquisition of software companies, the need to assimilate high quality existing materials from these companies The need to bring together people from very different backgrounds and provide a common language to support Oracle Product implementations that often involve multiple product families What came first, and then what was the strategy? Initially OUM 4.0 was based on Oracle’s J2EE Custom Development Method (JCDM), it was a good “backbone”  (work breakdown structure) it was Unified Process based, and had good content around UML as well as custom software development.  But it needed to be extended in order to achieve the OUM Vision. What happened after that was to take in the “best of the best”, the legacy and acquired methods were scheduled for assimilation into OUM, one release after another.  We incrementally built OUM.  We didn’t want to lose any of the expertise that was reflected in AIM (Oracle’s legacy Application Implementation Method), Compass (People Soft’s Application implementation method) and so many more. When was OUM born? OUM 4.1 published April 30, 2006.  This release allowed Oracles Advanced Technology groups to begin the very first implementations of Fusion Middleware.  In the early days of the Method we would prepare several releases a year.  Our iterative release development cycle began and continues to be refined with each Method release.  Now we typically see one major release each year. The OUM release development cycle is not unlike many Oracle Implementation projects in that we need to gather requirements, prioritize, prepare the content, test package and then go production.  Typically we develop an OUM release MoSCoW (must have, should have, could have, and won’t have) right after the prior release goes out.   These are the high level requirements.  We break the timeframe into increments, frequent checkpoints that help us assess the content and progress is measured through frequent checkpoints.  We work as a team to prioritize what should be done in each increment. Yes, the team provides the estimates for what can be done within a particular increment.  We sometimes have Method Development workshops (physically or virtually) to accelerate content development on a particular subject area, that is where the best content results. As the written content nears the final stages, it goes through edit and evaluation through peer reviews, and then moves into the release staging environment.  Then content freeze and testing of the method pack take place.  This iterative cycle is run using the OUM artifacts that make sense “fit for purpose”, project plans, MoSCoW lists, Test plans are just a few of the OUM work products we use on a Method Release project. In 2007 OUM 4.3, 4.4 and 4.5 were published.  With the release of 4.5 our Custom BI Method (Data Warehouse Method FastTrack) was assimilated into OUM.  These early releases helped us align Oracle’s Unified method with other industry standards Then in 2008 we made significant changes to the OUM “Backbone” to support Applications Implementation projects with that went to the OUM 5.0 release.  Now things started to get really interesting.  Next we had some major developments in the Envision focus area in the area of Enterprise Architecture.  We acquired some really great content from the former BEA, Liquid Enterprise Method (LEM) along with some SMEs who were willing to work at bringing this content into OUM.  The Service Oriented Architecture content in OUM is extensive and can help support the successful implementation of Fusion Middleware, as well as Fusion Applications. Of course we’ve developed a wealth of OUM training materials that work also helps to improve the method content.  It is one thing to write “how to”, and quite another to be able to teach people how to use the materials to improve the success of their projects.  I’ve learned so much by teaching people how to use OUM. What's next? So here toward the end of 2012, what’s in store in OUM 5.6, well, I’m sure you won’t be surprised the answer is Cloud Computing.   More details to come in the next couple of weeks!  The best part of being involved in the development of OUM is to see how many people have “adopted” OUM over these six years, Clients, Partners, and Oracle Consultants.  The content just gets better with each release.   I’d love to hear your comments on how OUM has evolved, and ideas for new content you’d like to see in the upcoming releases.

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• The SPARC SuperCluster

  - by Karoly Vegh

  Oracle has been providing a lead in the Engineered Systems business for quite a while now, in accordance with the motto "Hardware and Software Engineered to Work Together." Indeed it is hard to find a better definition of these systems.  Allow me to summarize the idea. It is:  Build a compute platform optimized to run your technologies Develop application aware, intelligently caching storage components Take an impressively fast network technology interconnecting it with the compute nodes Tune the application to scale with the nodes to yet unseen performance Reduce the amount of data moving via compression Provide this all in a pre-integrated single product with a single-pane management interface All these ideas have been around in IT for quite some time now. The real Oracle advantage is adding the last one to put these all together. Oracle has built quite a portfolio of Engineered Systems, to run its technologies - and run those like they never ran before. In this post I'll focus on one of them that serves as a consolidation demigod, a multi-purpose engineered system.  As you probably have guessed, I am talking about the SPARC SuperCluster. It has many great features inherited from its predecessors, and it adds several new ones. Allow me to pick out and elaborate about some of the most interesting ones from a technological point of view.  I. It is the SPARC SuperCluster T4-4. That is, as compute nodes, it includes SPARC T4-4 servers that we learned to appreciate and respect for their features: The SPARC T4 CPUs: Each CPU has 8 cores, each core runs 8 threads. The SPARC T4-4 servers have 4 sockets. That is, a single compute node can in parallel, simultaneously  execute 256 threads. Now, a full-rack SPARC SuperCluster has 4 of these servers on board. Remember the keyword demigod.  While retaining the forerunner SPARC T3's exceptional throughput, the SPARC T4 CPUs raise the bar with single performance too - a humble 5x better one than their ancestors.  actually, the SPARC T4 CPU cores run in both single-threaded and multi-threaded mode, and switch between these two on-the-fly, fulfilling not only single-threaded OR multi-threaded applications' needs, but even mixed requirements (like in database workloads!). Data security, anyone? Every SPARC T4 CPU core has a built-in encryption engine, that is, encryption algorithms cast into silicon.  A PCI controller right on the chip for customers who need I/O performance.  Built-in, no-cost Virtualization:  Oracle VM for SPARC (the former LDoms or Logical Domains) is not a server-emulation virtualization technology but rather a serverpartitioning one, the hypervisor runs in the server firmware, and all the VMs' HW resources (I/O, CPU, memory) are accessed natively, without performance overhead.  This enables customers to run a number of Solaris 10 and Solaris 11 VMs separated, independent of each other within a physical server II. For Database performance, it includes Exadata Storage Cells - one of the main reasons why the Exadata Database Machine performs at diabolic speed. What makes them important? They provide DB backend storage for your Oracle Databases to run on the SPARC SuperCluster, that is what they are built and tuned for DB performance.  These storage cells are SQL-aware.  That is, if a SPARC T4 database compute node executes a query, it doesn't simply request tons of raw datablocks from the storage, filters the received data, and throws away most of it where the statement doesn't apply, but provides the SQL query to the storage node too. The storage cell software speaks SQL, that is, it is able to prefilter and through that transfer only the relevant data. With this, the traffic between database nodes and storage cells is reduced immensely. Less I/O is a good thing - as they say, all the CPUs of the world do one thing just as fast as any other - and that is waiting for I/O.  They don't only pre-filter, but also provide data preprocessing features - e.g. if a DB-node requests an aggregate of data, they can calculate it, and handover only the results, not the whole set. Again, less data to transfer.  They support the magical HCC, (Hybrid Columnar Compression). That is, data can be stored in a precompressed form on the storage. Less data to transfer.  Of course one can't simply rely on disks for performance, there is Flash Storage included there for caching.  III. The low latency, high-speed backbone network: InfiniBand, that interconnects all the members with: Real High Speed: 40 Gbit/s. Full Duplex, of course. Oh, and a really low latency.  RDMA. Remote Direct Memory Access. This technology allows the DB nodes to do exactly that. Remotely, directly placing SQL commands into the Memory of the storage cells. Dodging all the network-stack bottlenecks, avoiding overhead, placing requests directly into the process queue.  You can also run IP over InfiniBand if you please - that's the way the compute nodes can communicate with each other.  IV. Including a general-purpose storage too: the ZFSSA, which is a unified storage, providing NAS and SAN access too, with the following features:  NFS over RDMA over InfiniBand. Nothing is faster network-filesystem-wise.  All the ZFS features onboard, hybrid storage pools, compression, deduplication, snapshot, replication, NFS and CIFS shares Storageheads in a HA-Cluster configuration providing availability of the data  DTrace Live Analytics in a web-based Administration UI Being a general purpose application data storage for your non-database applications running on the SPARC SuperCluster over whichever protocol they prefer, easily replicating, snapshotting, cloning data for them.  There's a lot of great technology included in Oracle's SPARC SuperCluster, we have talked its interior through. As for external scalability: you can start with a half- of full- rack SPARC SuperCluster, and scale out to several racks - that is, stacking not separate full-rack SPARC SuperClusters, but extending always one large instance of the size of several full-racks. Yes, over InfiniBand network. Add racks as you grow.  What technologies shall run on it? SPARC SuperCluster is a general purpose scaleout consolidation/cloud environment. You can run Oracle Databases with RAC scaling, or Oracle Weblogic (end enjoy the SPARC T4's advantages to run Java). Remember, Oracle technologies have been integrated with the Oracle Engineered Systems - this is the Oracle on Oracle advantage. But you can run other software environments such as SAP if you please too. Run any application that runs on Oracle Solaris 10 or Solaris 11. Separate them in Virtual Machines, or even Oracle Solaris Zones, monitor and manage those from a central UI. Here the key takeaways once again: The SPARC SuperCluster: Is a pre-integrated Engineered System Contains SPARC T4-4 servers with built-in virtualization, cryptography, dynamic threading Contains the Exadata storage cells that intelligently offload the burden of the DB-nodes  Contains a highly available ZFS Storage Appliance, that provides SAN/NAS storage in a unified way Combines all these elements over a high-speed, low-latency backbone network implemented with InfiniBand Can grow from a single half-rack to several full-rack size Supports the consolidation of hundreds of applications To summarize: All these technologies are great by themselves, but the real value is like in every other Oracle Engineered System: Integration. All these technologies are tuned to perform together. Together they are way more than the sum of all - and a careful and actually very time consuming integration process is necessary to orchestrate all these for performance. The SPARC SuperCluster's goal is to enable infrastructure operations and offer a pre-integrated solution that can be architected and delivered in hours instead of months of evaluations and tests. The tedious and most importantly time and resource consuming part of the work - testing and evaluating - has been done.  Now go, provide services.   -- charlie  

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• Self-signed certificates for a known community

  - by costlow

  Recently announced changes scheduled for Java 7 update 51 (January 2014) have established that the default security slider will require code signatures and the Permissions Manifest attribute. Code signatures are a common practice recommended in the industry because they help determine that the code your computer will run is the same code that the publisher created. This post is written to help users that need to use self-signed certificates without involving a public Certificate Authority. The role of self-signed certificates within a known community You may still use self-signed certificates within a known community. The difference between self-signed and purchased-from-CA is that your users must import your self-signed certificate to indicate that it is valid, whereas Certificate Authorities are already trusted by default. This works for known communities where people will trust that my certificate is mine, but does not scale widely where I cannot actually contact or know the systems that will need to trust my certificate. Public Certificate Authorities are widely trusted already because they abide by many different requirements and frequent checks. An example would be students in a university class sharing their public certificates on a mailing list or web page, employees publishing on the intranet, or a system administrator rolling certificates out to end-users. Managed machines help this because you can automate the rollout, but they are not required -- the major point simply that people will trust and import your certificate. How to distribute self-signed certificates for a known community There are several steps required to distribute a self-signed certificate to users so that they will properly trust it. These steps are: Creating a public/private key pair for signing. Exporting your public certificate for others Importing your certificate onto machines that should trust you Verify work on a different machine Creating a public/private key pair for signing Having a public/private key pair will give you the ability both to sign items yourself and issue a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) to a certificate authority. Create your public/private key pair by following the instructions for creating key pairs.Every Certificate Authority that I looked at provided similar instructions, but for the sake of cohesiveness I will include the commands that I used here: Generate the key pair.keytool -genkeypair -alias erikcostlow -keyalg EC -keysize 571 -validity 730 -keystore javakeystore_keepsecret.jks Provide a good password for this file. The alias "erikcostlow" is my name and therefore easy to remember. Substitute your name of something like "mykey." The sigalg of EC (Elliptical Curve) and keysize of 571 will give your key a good strong lifetime. All keys are set to expire. Two years or 730 days is a reasonable compromise between not-long-enough and too-long. Most public Certificate Authorities will sign something for one to five years. You will be placing your keys in javakeystore_keepsecret.jks -- this file will contain private keys and therefore should not be shared. If someone else gets these private keys, they can impersonate your signature. Please be cautious about automated cloud backup systems and private key stores. Answer all the questions. It is important to provide good answers because you will stick with them for the "-validity" days that you specified above.What is your first and last name?  [Unknown]:  First LastWhat is the name of your organizational unit?  [Unknown]:  Line of BusinessWhat is the name of your organization?  [Unknown]:  MyCompanyWhat is the name of your City or Locality?  [Unknown]:  City NameWhat is the name of your State or Province?  [Unknown]:  CAWhat is the two-letter country code for this unit?  [Unknown]:  USIs CN=First Last, OU=Line of Business, O=MyCompany, L=City, ST=CA, C=US correct?  [no]:  yesEnter key password for <erikcostlow>        (RETURN if same as keystore password): Verify your work:keytool -list -keystore javakeystore_keepsecret.jksYou should see your new key pair. Exporting your public certificate for others Public Key Infrastructure relies on two simple concepts: the public key may be made public and the private key must be private. By exporting your public certificate, you are able to share it with others who can then import the certificate to trust you. keytool -exportcert -keystore javakeystore_keepsecret.jks -alias erikcostlow -file erikcostlow.cer To verify this, you can open the .cer file by double-clicking it on most operating systems. It should show the information that you entered during the creation prompts. This is the file that you will share with others. They will use this certificate to prove that artifacts signed by this certificate came from you. If you do not manage machines directly, place the certificate file on an area that people within the known community should trust, such as an intranet page. Import the certificate onto machines that should trust you In order to trust the certificate, people within your known network must import your certificate into their keystores. The first step is to verify that the certificate is actually yours, which can be done through any band: email, phone, in-person, etc. Known networks can usually do this Determine the right keystore: For an individual user looking to trust another, the correct file is within that user’s directory.e.g. USER_HOME\AppData\LocalLow\Sun\Java\Deployment\security\trusted.certs For system-wide installations, Java’s Certificate Authorities are in JAVA_HOMEe.g. C:\Program Files\Java\jre8\lib\security\cacerts File paths for Mac and Linux are included in the link above. Follow the instructions to import the certificate into the keystore. keytool -importcert -keystore THEKEYSTOREFROMABOVE -alias erikcostlow -file erikcostlow.cer In this case, I am still using my name for the alias because it’s easy for me to remember. You may also use an alias of your company name. Scaling distribution of the import The easiest way to apply your certificate across many machines is to just push the .certs or cacerts file onto them. When doing this, watch out for any changes that people would have made to this file on their machines. Trusted.certs: When publishing into user directories, your file will overwrite any keys that the user has added since last update. CACerts: It is best to re-run the import command with each installation rather than just overwriting the file. If you just keep the same cacerts file between upgrades, you will overwrite any CAs that have been added or removed. By re-importing, you stay up to date with changes. Verify work on a different machine Verification is a way of checking on the client machine to ensure that it properly trusts signed artifacts after you have added your signing certificate. Many people have started using deployment rule sets. You can validate the deployment rule set by: Create and sign the deployment rule set on the computer that holds the private key. Copy the deployment rule set on to the different machine where you have imported the signing certificate. Verify that the Java Control Panel’s security tab shows your deployment rule set. Verifying an individual JAR file or multiple JAR files You can test a certificate chain by using the jarsigner command. jarsigner -verify filename.jar If the output does not say "jar verified" then run the following command to see why: jarsigner -verify -verbose -certs filename.jar Check the output for the term “CertPath not validated.”

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• Windows Phone Developer Spotlight: Nikolai Joukov

  - by Lori Lalonde

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/lorilalonde/archive/2014/06/04/windows-phone-developer-spotlight-nikolai-joukov.aspxAs part of an ongoing series, I plan to include a spotlight post on people within the community that are stars in their field and area of expertise. For my first spotlight post, I interviewed Nikolai Joukov, who is a regular attendee at my local area .NET User Group (CTTDNUG), and has also participated in many of the Mobile and Cloud workshops we have hosted over the past few years. Nikolai stood out immediately, because of his passion for developing mobile apps, his interest in continuous learning, and his drive to publish quality apps that people will find useful and entertaining. Background: Nikolai immigrated to Canada in 1995, and has been working in IT since 1997. He moved on to become an independent contractor in 2005, and has worked at various large scale organizations over the course of his career, including BMO, Enbridge, Economical Insurance, Equitable Life, Manulife and Sun Life. Nikolai is an accomplished Windows Phone and Windows Store publisher, with 11 published Windows Phone apps, and 8 published Windows Store apps. He has almost 6000 downloads and favourable reviews. Q & A with Nikolai How many years have you been developing Windows Phone apps? 2 years When did you develop your very first Windows Phone app, and what was it about? Actually, the very first app I wrote was for the Microsoft “Smart Phone” back in 2004. This phone was given to me by Microsoft during the Developers Days Conference in Toronto. It was some kind of experimental model named Smart Phone, but you had to use VB 3 to develop the applications. Needless to say, this was not very successful at that time. My app was a Stock Trades Calculator. Very primitive, but it was working for me. The phone was heavy and the battery barely lasted 4 hours. Microsoft stopped supporting it few months later and the phone stopped working shortly after, but I still have it as a souvenir. For Windows Phone, my first app was “Trip Packing Assistant”. This is a simple trip packing check list that allows you to list items by category, set required quantity of items, and mark off the item in the list when it is packed. I designed it for me and my wife Galina, since we love to travel and this program helps manage our list for us. How did you get started in Windows Phone development? I have to say thanks to our .NET User Group for introducing me to Windows Phone development. I was intrigued and decided to give it a try. In October 2012 during a 2 day training event that ObjectSharp hosted in London, I met Bruce Johnson. On his advice, I registered for Developer Movement, and it is was a good push to actually complete the apps that I started. You have a great series of travel guide apps both for Windows Phone and Windows Store. Tell us about how you came up with the idea to develop those apps and what process you went through to put it all together. Like I said earlier, my wife and I love to travel. Before I created Trip Packing Assistant, every time we were planning to travel somewhere new, Galina would spend 3-4 weeks doing research. She would create a Word document with all of the information. We didn’t want to have to carry our laptop with us all the time, so we printed out the Word document she created, and would take it with us. After we returned from the trip, we would bring back tons of pictures and materials. Then our friends started to ask us about our materials before they planned their trips to the same places we had visited. So I decided to give it a try and started making apps for Windows Phone and for Windows 8. I hope these applications will help people who are planning to travel. So, all of the pictures used in the travel apps you created were actually taken by you during these amazing trips? Yes Do you have another Windows Store/Windows Phone project in development right now? If so, can you give us a hint at what it will be about? I want to stay with travel apps for now. But this time I will try to write an app for us (Galina and I). Usually we go on the trip, then I write the apps after we have all this beautiful pictures in our hands. We are planning a trip to Rome. This app will not have the pictures, but I want to add a map with points of interest and all information that can be useful for us. Then we will go on our trip and test it on location. As well I am planning to work on my existing apps to make them better. What learning resources would you recommend for other developers that want to get started in Window Store and Windows Phone development? I would start with dev.windowsphone.com to get all tools and samples, also links to training materials. I like MVA (Microsoft Virtual Academy). Their videos are really useful and it is free. Pluralsight is good too but it is not free and I do not have a subscription anymore. Our .NET User Group meetings give good insights too. I went to all meetings and full day training events. When you start to develop your app, you need to do research for specific questions that arise during development. The Developer Portal and Nokia Developer are good resources too. Wrap Up Thanks Nikolai for participating in my first Spotlight blog post! Shown below is Nikolai’s publisher page in the Windows Phone Store and his publisher page in the Windows Store. Simply click on it to be taken to there to check out his portfolio of apps. Be sure to download his apps and try them out! They are all free! Nikolai’s Windows Phone apps   Nikolai’s Windows Store Apps

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• Consuming the Amazon S3 service from a Win8 Metro Application

  - by cibrax

  As many of the existing Http APIs for Cloud Services, AWS also provides a set of different platform SDKs for hiding many of complexities present in the APIs. While there is a platform SDK for .NET, which is open source and available in C#, that SDK does not work in Win8 Metro Applications for the changes introduced in WinRT. WinRT offers a complete different set of APIs for doing I/O operations such as doing http calls or using cryptography for signing or encrypting data, two aspects that are absolutely necessary for consuming AWS. All the I/O APIs available as part of WinRT are asynchronous, and uses the TPL model for .NET applications (HTML and JavaScript Metro applications use a model based in promises, which is similar concept).  In the case of S3, the http Authorization header is used for two purposes, authenticating clients and make sure the messages were not altered while they were in transit. For doing that, it uses a signature or hash of the message content and some of the headers using a symmetric key (That's just one of the available mechanisms). Windows Azure for example also uses the same mechanism in many of its APIs. There are three challenges that any developer working for first time in Metro will have to face to consume S3, the new WinRT APIs, the asynchronous nature of them and the complexity introduced for generating the Authorization header. Having said that, I decided to write this post with some of the gotchas I found myself trying to consume this Amazon service. 1. Generating the signature for the Authorization header All the cryptography APIs in WinRT are available under Windows.Security.Cryptography namespace. Many of operations available in these APIs uses the concept of buffers (IBuffer) for representing a chunk of binary data. As you will see in the example below, these buffers are mainly generated with the use of static methods in a WinRT class CryptographicBuffer available as part of the namespace previously mentioned. private string DeriveAuthToken(string resource, string httpMethod, string timestamp) { var stringToSign = string.Format("{0}\n" + "\n" + "\n" + "\n" + "x-amz-date:{1}\n" + "/{2}/", httpMethod, timestamp, resource); var algorithm = MacAlgorithmProvider.OpenAlgorithm("HMAC_SHA1"); var keyMaterial = CryptographicBuffer.CreateFromByteArray(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(this.secret)); var hmacKey = algorithm.CreateKey(keyMaterial); var signature = CryptographicEngine.Sign( hmacKey, CryptographicBuffer.CreateFromByteArray(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(stringToSign)) ); return CryptographicBuffer.EncodeToBase64String(signature); } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } The algorithm that determines the information or content you need to use for generating the signature is very well described as part of the AWS documentation. In this case, this method is generating a signature required for creating a new bucket. A HmacSha1 hash is computed using a secret or symetric key provided by AWS in the management console. 2. Sending an Http Request to the S3 service WinRT also ships with the System.Net.Http.HttpClient that was first introduced some months ago with ASP.NET Web API. This client provides a rich interface on top the traditional WebHttpRequest class, and also solves some of limitations found in this last one. There are a few things that don't work with a raw WebHttpRequest such as setting the Host header, which is something absolutely required for consuming S3. Also, HttpClient is more friendly for doing unit tests, as it receives a HttpMessageHandler as part of the constructor that can fake to emulate a real http call. This is how the code for consuming the service with HttpClient looks like, public async Task<S3Response> CreateBucket(string name, string region = null, params string[] acl) { var timestamp = string.Format("{0:r}", DateTime.UtcNow); var auth = DeriveAuthToken(name, "PUT", timestamp); var request = new HttpRequestMessage(HttpMethod.Put, "http://s3.amazonaws.com/"); request.Headers.Host = string.Format("{0}.s3.amazonaws.com", name); request.Headers.TryAddWithoutValidation("Authorization", "AWS " + this.key + ":" + auth); request.Headers.Add("x-amz-date", timestamp); var client = new HttpClient(); var response = await client.SendAsync(request); return new S3Response { Succeed = response.StatusCode == HttpStatusCode.OK, Message = (response.Content != null) ? await response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync() : null }; } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } You will notice a few additional things in this code. By default, HttpClient validates the values for some well-know headers, and Authorization is one of them. It won't allow you to set a value with ":" on it, which is something that S3 expects. However, that's not a problem at all, as you can skip the validation by using the TryAddWithoutValidation method. Also, the code is heavily relying on the new async and await keywords to transform all the asynchronous calls into synchronous ones. In case you would want to unit test this code and faking the call to the real S3 service, you should have to modify it to inject a custom HttpMessageHandler into the HttpClient. The following implementation illustrates this concept, In case you would want to unit test this code and faking the call to the real S3 service, you should have to modify it to inject a custom HttpMessageHandler into the HttpClient. The following implementation illustrates this concept, public class FakeHttpMessageHandler : HttpMessageHandler { HttpResponseMessage response; public FakeHttpMessageHandler(HttpResponseMessage response) { this.response = response; } protected override Task<HttpResponseMessage> SendAsync(HttpRequestMessage request, System.Threading.CancellationToken cancellationToken) { var tcs = new TaskCompletionSource<HttpResponseMessage>(); tcs.SetResult(response); return tcs.Task; } } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } You can use this handler for injecting any response while you are unit testing the code.

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• Consuming the Amazon S3 service from a Win8 Metro Application

  - by cibrax

  As many of the existing Http APIs for Cloud Services, AWS also provides a set of different platform SDKs for hiding many of complexities present in the APIs. While there is a platform SDK for .NET, which is open source and available in C#, that SDK does not work in Win8 Metro Applications for the changes introduced in WinRT. WinRT offers a complete different set of APIs for doing I/O operations such as doing http calls or using cryptography for signing or encrypting data, two aspects that are absolutely necessary for consuming AWS. All the I/O APIs available as part of WinRT are asynchronous, and uses the TPL model for .NET applications (HTML and JavaScript Metro applications use a model based in promises, which is similar concept).  In the case of S3, the http Authorization header is used for two purposes, authenticating clients and make sure the messages were not altered while they were in transit. For doing that, it uses a signature or hash of the message content and some of the headers using a symmetric key (That's just one of the available mechanisms). Windows Azure for example also uses the same mechanism in many of its APIs. There are three challenges that any developer working for first time in Metro will have to face to consume S3, the new WinRT APIs, the asynchronous nature of them and the complexity introduced for generating the Authorization header. Having said that, I decided to write this post with some of the gotchas I found myself trying to consume this Amazon service. 1. Generating the signature for the Authorization header All the cryptography APIs in WinRT are available under Windows.Security.Cryptography namespace. Many of operations available in these APIs uses the concept of buffers (IBuffer) for representing a chunk of binary data. As you will see in the example below, these buffers are mainly generated with the use of static methods in a WinRT class CryptographicBuffer available as part of the namespace previously mentioned. private string DeriveAuthToken(string resource, string httpMethod, string timestamp) { var stringToSign = string.Format("{0}\n" + "\n" + "\n" + "\n" + "x-amz-date:{1}\n" + "/{2}/", httpMethod, timestamp, resource); var algorithm = MacAlgorithmProvider.OpenAlgorithm("HMAC_SHA1"); var keyMaterial = CryptographicBuffer.CreateFromByteArray(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(this.secret)); var hmacKey = algorithm.CreateKey(keyMaterial); var signature = CryptographicEngine.Sign( hmacKey, CryptographicBuffer.CreateFromByteArray(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(stringToSign)) ); return CryptographicBuffer.EncodeToBase64String(signature); } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } The algorithm that determines the information or content you need to use for generating the signature is very well described as part of the AWS documentation. In this case, this method is generating a signature required for creating a new bucket. A HmacSha1 hash is computed using a secret or symetric key provided by AWS in the management console. 2. Sending an Http Request to the S3 service WinRT also ships with the System.Net.Http.HttpClient that was first introduced some months ago with ASP.NET Web API. This client provides a rich interface on top the traditional WebHttpRequest class, and also solves some of limitations found in this last one. There are a few things that don't work with a raw WebHttpRequest such as setting the Host header, which is something absolutely required for consuming S3. Also, HttpClient is more friendly for doing unit tests, as it receives a HttpMessageHandler as part of the constructor that can fake to emulate a real http call. This is how the code for consuming the service with HttpClient looks like, public async Task<S3Response> CreateBucket(string name, string region = null, params string[] acl) { var timestamp = string.Format("{0:r}", DateTime.UtcNow); var auth = DeriveAuthToken(name, "PUT", timestamp); var request = new HttpRequestMessage(HttpMethod.Put, "http://s3.amazonaws.com/"); request.Headers.Host = string.Format("{0}.s3.amazonaws.com", name); request.Headers.TryAddWithoutValidation("Authorization", "AWS " + this.key + ":" + auth); request.Headers.Add("x-amz-date", timestamp); var client = new HttpClient(); var response = await client.SendAsync(request); return new S3Response { Succeed = response.StatusCode == HttpStatusCode.OK, Message = (response.Content != null) ? await response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync() : null }; } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } You will notice a few additional things in this code. By default, HttpClient validates the values for some well-know headers, and Authorization is one of them. It won't allow you to set a value with ":" on it, which is something that S3 expects. However, that's not a problem at all, as you can skip the validation by using the TryAddWithoutValidation method. Also, the code is heavily relying on the new async and await keywords to transform all the asynchronous calls into synchronous ones. In case you would want to unit test this code and faking the call to the real S3 service, you should have to modify it to inject a custom HttpMessageHandler into the HttpClient. The following implementation illustrates this concept, In case you would want to unit test this code and faking the call to the real S3 service, you should have to modify it to inject a custom HttpMessageHandler into the HttpClient. The following implementation illustrates this concept, public class FakeHttpMessageHandler : HttpMessageHandler { HttpResponseMessage response; public FakeHttpMessageHandler(HttpResponseMessage response) { this.response = response; } protected override Task<HttpResponseMessage> SendAsync(HttpRequestMessage request, System.Threading.CancellationToken cancellationToken) { var tcs = new TaskCompletionSource<HttpResponseMessage>(); tcs.SetResult(response); return tcs.Task; } } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } You can use this handler for injecting any response while you are unit testing the code.

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• Answers to Your Common Oracle Database Lifecycle Management Questions

  - by Scott McNeil

  We recently ran a live webcast on Strategies for Managing Oracle Database's Lifecycle. There were tons of questions from our audience that we simply could not get to during the hour long presentation. Below are some of those questions along with their answers. Enjoy! Question: In the webcast the presenter talked about “gold” configuration standards, for those who want to use this technique, could you recommend a best practice to consider or follow? How do I get started? Answer:Gold configuration standardization is a quick and easy way to improve availability through consistency. Start by choosing a reference database and saving the configuration to the Oracle Enterprise Manager repository using the Save Configuration feature. Next create a comparison template using the Oracle provided template as a starting point and modify the ignored properties to eliminate expected differences in your environment. Finally create a comparison specification using the comparison template you created plus your saved gold configuration and schedule it to run on a regular basis. Don’t forget to fill in the email addresses of those you want to notify upon drift detection. Watch the database configuration management demo to learn more. Question: Can Oracle Lifecycle Management Pack for Database help with patching an Oracle Real Application Cluster (RAC) environment? Answer: Yes, Oracle Enterprise Manager supports both parallel and rolling patch application of Oracle Real Application Clusters. The use of rolling patching is recommended as there is no downtime involved. For more details watch this demo. Question: What are some of the things administrators can do to control configuration drift? Why is it important? Answer:Configuration drift is one of the main causes of instability and downtime of applications. Oracle Enterprise Manager makes it easy to manage and control drift using scheduled configuration comparisons combined with comparison templates. Question: Does Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Release 2 offer an incremental update feature for "gold" images? For instance, if the source binary has a higher PSU level, what is the best approach to update the existing "gold" image in the software library? Do you have to create a new image or can you just update the original one? Answer:Provisioning Profiles (Gold images) can contain the installation files and database configuration templates. Although it is possible to make some changes to the profile after creation (mainly to configuration), it is normally recommended to simply create a new profile after applying a patch to your reference database. Question: The webcast talked about enforcing in-house standards, does Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c offer verification of your databases and systems to those standards? For example, the initial "gold" image has been massively deployed over time, and there may be some changes to it. How can you do regular checks from Enterprise Manager to ensure the in-house standards are being enforced? Answer:There are really two methods to validate conformity to standards. The first method is to use gold standards which you compare other databases to report unwanted differences. This method uses a new comparison template technology which allows users to ignore known differences (i.e. SID, Start time, etc) which results in a report only showing important or non-conformant differences. This method is quick to setup and configure and recommended for those who want to get started validating compliance quickly. The second method leverages the new compliance framework which allows the creation of specific and robust validations. These compliance rules are grouped into standards which can be assigned to databases quickly and easily. Compliance rules allow for targeted and more sophisticated validation beyond the basic equals operation available in the comparison method. The compliance framework can be used to implement just about any internal or industry standard. The compliance results will track current and historic compliance scores at the overall and individual database targets. When the issue is resolved, the score is automatically affected. Compliance framework is the recommended long term solution for validating compliance using Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c. Check out this demo on database compliance to learn more. Question: If you are using the integration between Oracle Enterprise Manager and My Oracle Support in an "offline" mode, how do you know if you have the latest My Oracle Support metadata? Answer:In Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Release 2, you now only need to download one zip file containing all of the metadata xmls files. There is no indication that the metadata has changed but you could run a checksum on the file and compare it to the previously downloaded version to see if it has changed. Question: What happens if a patch fails while administrators are applying it to a database or system? Answer:A large portion of Oracle Enterprise Manager's patch automation is the pre-requisite checks that happen to ensure the highest level of confidence the patch will successfully apply. It is recommended you test the patch in a non-production environment and save the patch plan as a template once successful so you can create new plans using the saved template. If you are using the recommended ‘out of place’ patching methodology, there is no urgency because the database is still running as the cloned Oracle home is being patched. Users can address the issue and restart the patch procedure at the point it left off. If you are using 'in place' method, you can address the issue and continue where the procedure left off. Question: Can Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c R2 compare configurations between more than one target at the same time? Answer:Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c can compare any number of target configurations at one time. This is the basis of many important use cases including Configuration Drift Management. These comparisons can also be scheduled on a regular basis and emails notification sent should any differences appear. To learn more about configuration search and compare watch this demo. Question: How is data comparison done since changes are taking place in a live production system? Answer:There are many things to keep in mind when using the data comparison feature (as part of the Change Management ability to compare table data). It was primarily intended to be used for maintaining consistency of important but relatively static data. For example, application seed data and application setup configuration. This data does not change often but is critical when testing an application to ensure results are consistent with production. It is not recommended to use data comparison on highly dynamic data like transactional tables or very large tables. Question: Which versions of Oracle Database can be monitored through Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c? Answer:Oracle Database versions: 9.2.0.8, 10.1.0.5, 10.2.0.4, 10.2.0.5, 11.1.0.7, 11.2.0.1, 11.2.0.2, 11.2.0.3. Watch the On-Demand Webcast Stay Connected: Twitter | Facebook | YouTube | Linkedin | NewsletterDownload the Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control12c Mobile app

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• Source-control 'wet-work'?

  - by Phil Factor

  When a design or creative work is flawed beyond remedy, it is often best to destroy it and start again. The other day, I lost the code to a long and intricate SQL batch I was working on. I’d thought it was impossible, but it happened. With all the technology around that is designed to prevent this occurring, this sort of accident has become a rare event.  If it weren’t for a deranged laptop, and my distraction, the code wouldn’t have been lost this time.  As always, I sighed, had a soothing cup of tea, and typed it all in again.  The new code I hastily tapped in  was much better: I’d held in my head the essence of how the code should work rather than the details: I now knew for certain  the start point, the end, and how it should be achieved. Instantly the detritus of half-baked thoughts fell away and I was able to write logical code that performed better.  Because I could work so quickly, I was able to hold the details of all the columns and variables in my head, and the dynamics of the flow of data. It was, in fact, easier and quicker to start from scratch rather than tidy up and refactor the existing code with its inevitable fumbling and half-baked ideas. What a shame that technology is now so good that developers rarely experience the cleansing shock of losing one’s code and having to rewrite it from scratch.  If you’ve never accidentally lost  your code, then it is worth doing it deliberately once for the experience. Creative people have, until Technology mistakenly prevented it, torn up their drafts or sketches, threw them in the bin, and started again from scratch.  Leonardo’s obsessive reworking of the Mona Lisa was renowned because it was so unusual:  Most artists have been utterly ruthless in destroying work that didn’t quite make it. Authors are particularly keen on writing afresh, and the results are generally positive. Lawrence of Arabia actually lost the entire 250,000 word manuscript of ‘The Seven Pillars of Wisdom’ by accidentally leaving it on a train at Reading station, before rewriting a much better version.  Now, any writer or artist is seduced by technology into altering or refining their work rather than casting it dramatically in the bin or setting a light to it on a bonfire, and rewriting it from the blank page.  It is easy to pick away at a flawed work, but the real creative process is far more brutal. Once, many years ago whilst running a software house that supplied commercial software to local businesses, I’d been supervising an accounting system for a farming cooperative. No packaged system met their needs, and it was all hand-cut code.  For us, it represented a breakthrough as it was for a government organisation, and success would guarantee more contracts. As you’ve probably guessed, the code got mangled in a disk crash just a week before the deadline for delivery, and the many backups all proved to be entirely corrupted by a faulty tape drive.  There were some fragments left on individual machines, but they were all of different versions.  The developers were in despair.  Strangely, I managed to re-write the bulk of a three-month project in a manic and caffeine-soaked weekend.  Sure, that elegant universally-applicable input-form routine was‘nt quite so elegant, but it didn’t really need to be as we knew what forms it needed to support.  Yes, the code lacked architectural elegance and reusability. By dawn on Monday, the application passed its integration tests. The developers rose to the occasion after I’d collapsed, and tidied up what I’d done, though they were reproachful that some of the style and elegance had gone out of the application. By the delivery date, we were able to install it. It was a smaller, faster application than the beta they’d seen and the user-interface had a new, rather Spartan, appearance that we swore was done to conform to the latest in user-interface guidelines. (we switched to Helvetica font to look more ‘Bauhaus’ ). The client was so delighted that he forgave the new bugs that had crept in. I still have the disk that crashed, up in the attic. In IT, we have had mixed experiences from complete re-writes. Lotus 123 never really recovered from a complete rewrite from assembler into C, Borland made the mistake with Arago and Quattro Pro  and Netscape’s complete rewrite of their Navigator 4 browser was a white-knuckle ride. In all cases, the decision to rewrite was a result of extreme circumstances where no other course of action seemed possible.   The rewrite didn’t come out of the blue. I prefer to remember the rewrite of Minix by young Linus Torvalds, or the rewrite of Bitkeeper by a slightly older Linus.  The rewrite of CP/M didn’t do too badly either, did it? Come to think of it, the guy who decided to rewrite the windowing system of the Xerox Star never regretted the decision. I’ll agree that one should often resist calls for a rewrite. One of the worst habits of the more inexperienced programmer is to denigrate whatever code he or she inherits, and then call loudly for a complete rewrite. They are buoyed up by the mistaken belief that they can do better. This, however, is a different psychological phenomenon, more related to the idea of some motorcyclists that they are operating on infinite lives, or the occasional squaddies that if they charge the machine-guns determinedly enough all will be well. Grim experience brings out the humility in any experienced programmer.  I’m referring to quite different circumstances here. Where a team knows the requirements perfectly, are of one mind on methodology and coding standards, and they already have a solution, then what is wrong with considering  a complete rewrite? Rewrites are so painful in the early stages, until that point where one realises the payoff, that even I quail at the thought. One needs a natural disaster to push one over the edge. The trouble is that source-control systems, and disaster recovery systems, are just too good nowadays.   If I were to lose this draft of this very blog post, I know I’d rewrite it much better. However, if you read this, you’ll know I didn’t have the nerve to delete it and start again.  There was a time that one prayed that unreliable hardware would deliver you from an unmaintainable mess of a codebase, but now technology has made us almost entirely immune to such a merciful act of God. An old friend of mine with long experience in the software industry has long had the idea of the ‘source-control wet-work’,  where one hires a malicious hacker in some wild eastern country to hack into one’s own  source control system to destroy all trace of the source to an application. Alas, backup systems are just too good to make this any more than a pipedream. Somehow, it would be difficult to promote the idea. As an alternative, could one construct a source control system that, on doing all the code-quality metrics, would systematically destroy all trace of source code that failed the quality test? Alas, I can’t see many managers buying into the idea. In reading the full story of the near-loss of Toy Story 2, it set me thinking. It turned out that the lucky restoration of the code wasn’t the happy ending one first imagined it to be, because they eventually came to the conclusion that the plot was fundamentally flawed and it all had to be rewritten anyway.  Was this an early  case of the ‘source-control wet-job’?’ It is very hard nowadays to do a rapid U-turn in a development project because we are far too prone to cling to our existing source-code.

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• How to Never Use iTunes With Your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch

  - by Chris Hoffman

  iTunes isn’t an amazing program on Windows. There was a time when Apple device users had to plug their devices into their PCs or Macs and use iTunes for device activation, updates, and syncing, but iTunes is no longer necessary. Apple still allows you to use iTunes for these things, but you don’t have to. Your iOS device can function independently from iTunes, so you should never be forced to plug it into a PC or Mac. Device Activation When the iPad first came out, it was touted as a device that could replace full PCs and Macs for people who only needed to perform light computing tasks. Yet, to set up a new iPad, users had to plug it into a PC or Mac running iTunes and use iTunes to activate the device. This is no longer necessary. With new iPads, iPhones, and iPod Touches, you can simply go through the setup process after turning on your new device without ever having to plug it into iTunes. Just connect to a Wi-Fi or cellular data network and log in with your Apple ID when prompted. You’ll still see an option that allows you to activate the device via iTunes, but this should only be necessary if you don’t have a wireless Internet connection available for your device. Operating System Updates You no longer have to use Apple’s iTunes software to update to a new version of Apple’s iOS operating system, either. Just open the Settings app on your device, select the General category, and tap Software Update. You’ll be able to update right from your device without ever opening iTunes. Purchased iTunes Media Apple allows you to easily access content you’ve purchased from the iTunes Store on any device. You don’t have to connect your device to your computer and sync via iTunes. For example, you can purchase a movie from the iTunes Store. Then, without any syncing, you can open the iTunes Store app on any of your iOS devices, tap the Purchased section, and see stuff you’ve downloaded. You can download the content right from the store to your device. This also works for apps — apps you purchase from the App Store can be accessed in the Purchased section on the App Store on your device later. You don’t have to sync apps from iTunes to your device, although iTunes still allows you to. You can even set up automatic downloads from the iTunes & App Store settings screen. This would allow you to purchase content on one device and have it automatically download to your other devices without any hassle. Music Apple allows you to re-download purchased music from the iTunes Store in the same way. However, there’s a good chance you have your own music you didn’t purchase from iTunes. Maybe you spent time ripping it all from your old CDs and you’ve been syncing it to your devices via iTunes ever since. Apple’s solution for this is named iTunes Match. This feature isn’t free, but it’s not a bad deal at all. For $25 per year, Apple allows you to upload all your music to your iCloud account. You can then access all your music from any iPhone, IPad, or iPod Touch. You can stream all your music — perfect if you have a huge library and little storage on your device — and choose which songs you want to download to your device for offline use. When you add additional music to your computer, iTunes will notice it and upload it using iTunes Match, making it available for streaming and downloading directly from your iOS devices without any syncing. This feature is named iTunes Match because it doesn’t just upload music — if Apple already has a song you upload, it will “match” your song with Apple’s copy. This means you may get higher-quality versions of your songs if you ripped them from CD at a lower bitrate. Podcasts You don’t have to use iTunes to subscribe to podcasts and sync them to your devices. Even if you have a lowly iPod Touch, you can install APple’s Podcasts app from the app store. Use it to subscribe to podcasts and configure them to automatically download directly to your device. You can use other podcast apps for this, too. Backups You can continue backing up your device’s data through iTunes, generating local backups that are stored on your computer. However, new iOS devices are configured to automatically back up their data to iCloud. This happens automatically in the background without you even having to think about it, and you can restore such backups when setting up a device simply by logging in with your Apple ID. Personal Data In the days of PalmPilots, people would use desktop programs like iTunes to sync their email, contacts, and calendar events with their mobile devices. You probably shouldn’t have to sync this data form your computer. Just sign into your email account — for example, a Gmail account — on your device and iOS will automatically pull your email, contacts, and calendar events from your associated account. Photos Rather than connecting your iOS device to your computer and syncing photos from it, you can use an app that automatically uploads your photos to a web service. Dropbox, Google+, and even Flickr all have this feature in their apps. You’ll be able to access your photos from any computer and have a backup copy without any syncing required. You may still need to use iTunes if you want to sync local music without paying for iTunes Match or copy local video files to your device. Copying large local files over is the only real scenario where you’d need iTunes. If you don’t need to copy such files over, you can go ahead and uninstall iTunes from your Windows PC if you like. You shouldn’t need it.     

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• Finally, upgrade from Nokia X3 to Samsung Galaxy S III

  This time, something slightly different but nonetheless not less interesting, hopefully. Living on a remote island like Mauritius, ill-praised 'Cyber Island' in the Indian Ocean, has its advantages in life style and relaxed environment to life in but in terms of technological aspects it can be quite a nightmare. Well, I guess this might be different story to report about... one day. Cyber Island Mauritius Despite it's shiny advertisement as Cyber Island and business in ICT hub to Africa, Mauritius is not on the latest track of available models in computer hardware or, in the context of this article, cellulars or smart-phone, or communication technology in general. Okay, I have to admit that this statement is only partly true. Money can buy, even here in Mauritius. Luckily, there are ways and ways to deal with this outcry of modern, read: technological, civilisation issues. Online shopping you might think? Yes, for sure, until you discover in your checkout procedure that a small island in the Indian Ocean isn't a preferred destination for delivery and the precious time you spent on putting your items into your cart and feeding your personal level of anticipation gets ruined on the last stint. Ordering from abroad saves you money Anyway, I got in touch with my personal courier and luckily there were some extra-kilos left in the luggage. First obstacle sorted, we have a Transporter! Okay, on the next occasion off to Amazon online and using their Prime service for fast delivery. Actually, the order was placed on Saturday evening and everything got delivered on Tuesday morning - nice job in less than 72 hours. Okay, among the items of that shopping rush I ordered a shiny Samsung Galaxy S III 16GB in oceanic blue - did I mention, that you hardly get a blue model in Mauritius? - for my BWE. Interesting side-notes: First, Amazon Germany dropped the prices for roughly 30% on the S3, and we got the 16GB model for less than 500 Euro (or approx. Rs. 19.500,-) compared to the usual Rs. 27.000,- on the local market. It even varies whether the local price is inclusive or exclusive VAT (15%). Second, since a while she was bothering me to get an iPhone and an iPad for her, fair enough I thought, decent hardware, posh design and reliable services. Until we watched the 'magical' introduction of Samsung's new models at the IFA exhibition, she read the bashing comments on Google+ on the iPhone 5 and I gave her a brief summary on the law suit between Apple and Samsung in the USA. So, yes, Samsung USA is right, the next big thing is already here - literally. My BWE loves the look and touch of the Galaxy S3. And for me it was more cost-effective in terms of purchases done at the App Store, ups, Play Store. Transfer of contacts, text messages and media files Okay, now that the hardware is in place, how to transfer all those contacts, text messages, media files, etc. between those two devices? In the past, I used to use the Nokia Communication Suite between various models but now for Android? Well, as usual Google and Bing are reliable friends and among the first hits I came across an article about How to Transfer Contacts from Nokia to Android. Couldn't be easier, right? Well, sort of... my main Windows systems are already running on Windows 8, and this actually caused problems with the mobile/smart-phone device drivers. The article provides the download for an older version 1.10 which upgrades to 2.11 (as time of writing this entry) but both couldn't get the Galaxy S3 and the Nokia connected. Shame on me... the product page clearly doesn't mention Windows 8 (for now) and Windows 8 isn't available for the general audience at all... After I took a spare machine running on Windows Vista everything went smooth. Software installed, upgrade done, device drivers for Android automatically downloaded and installed, and the same painless routine for the Nokia part. I think, I rebooted the system twice during the whole setup procedure but hey, it was more or less a distraction while coding some stuff in ASP.NET MVC and Telerik Kendo UI. The transfer of contacts and text messages was done via Wondershare MobileGo for Android, and all media files by moving the additional microSD card from one device to the other. But even without an external SD card, it would have been very easy to copy the files via Windows Explorer directly. Little catch and excellent service Fine, we are almost done and the only step left is to shift the SIM card... Ouch, gotcha! The X3 uses a standard size SIM card while the S III only accepts microSIM form factor. What an irony, bigger smartphone needs smaller SIM card. Luckily, the next showroom of Emtel is just 5 mins away up the road, and the service staff over there know their job. Finally, after roughly 10 mins of paper work, activation and small chit-chat, the S3 came to life on the mobile network. Owning a smart-phone now and knowing that my BWE would like to interact more on social networks away from home, especially to upload pictures and provide local 'check-ins', I activated a data package for her in advance, too. Even that it is Saturday, everything was already done and ready to be used. Nice bonus: The Emtel clerk directly offered me to set up the configuration for the Emtel data services, yes sure, go ahead, this saves me to search for that in the settings. Okay, spoiler-alert here, setting a static APN to access the Emtel network and the internet wouldn't be a challenge. But hey, she already had the phone in her hands and I could keep my eyes on the children. Well done, Emtel! Resume Thanks to the useful software package by Wondershare is was a hands-free experience to transfer all the data from a Nokia mobile on Symbian S60 to a Samsung Galaxy S III on Android Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS). In the future, this wont be a serious issue at all anymore thanks to synchronisation services and cloud storage. And for now, I'm only waiting for the official upgrades for Jelly Bean.

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• Creating a Training Lab on Windows Azure

  - by Michael Stephenson

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/michaelstephenson/archive/2013/06/17/153149.aspxThis week we are preparing for a training course that Alan Smith will be running for the support teams at one of my customers around Windows Azure. In order to facilitate the training lab we have a few prerequisites we need to handle. One of the biggest ones is that although the support team all have MSDN accounts the local desktops they work on are not ideal for running most of the labs as we want to give them some additional developer background training around Azure. Some recent Azure announcements really help us in this area: MSDN software can now be used on Azure VM You don't pay for Azure VM's when they are no longer used  Since the support team only have limited experience of Windows Azure and the organisation also have an Enterprise Agreement we decided it would be best value for money to spin up a training lab in a subscription on the EA and then we can turn the machines off when we are done. At the same time we would be able to spin them back up when the users need to do some additional lab work once the training course is completed. In order to achieve this I wanted to create a powershell script which would setup my training lab. The aim was to create 18 VM's which would be based on a prebuilt template with Visual Studio and the Azure development tools. The script I used is described below The Start & Variables The below text will setup the powershell environment and some variables which I will use elsewhere in the script. It will also import the Azure Powershell cmdlets. You can see below that I will need to download my publisher settings file and know some details from my Azure account. At this point I will assume you have a basic understanding of Azure & Powershell so already know how to do this. Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestrictedcls $startTime = get-dateImport-Module "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Azure\PowerShell\Azure\Azure.psd1"# Azure Publisher Settings $azurePublisherSettings = '<Your settings file>.publishsettings'  # Subscription Details $subscriptionName = "<Your subscription name>" $defaultStorageAccount = "<Your default storage account>"  # Affinity Group Details $affinityGroup = '<Your affinity group>' $dataCenter = 'West Europe' # From Get-AzureLocation  # VM Details $baseVMName = 'TRN' $adminUserName = '<Your admin username>' $password = '<Your admin password>' $size = 'Medium' $vmTemplate = '<The name of your VM template image>' $rdpFilePath = '<File path to save RDP files to>' $machineSettingsPath = '<File path to save machine info to>'    Functions In the next section of the script I have some functions which are used to perform certain actions. The first is called CreateVM. This will do the following actions: If the VM already exists it will be deleted Create the cloud service Create the VM from the template I have created Add an endpoint so we can RDP to them all over the same port Download the RDP file so there is a short cut the trainees can easily access the machine via Write settings for the machine to a log file  function CreateVM($machineNo) { # Specify a name for the new VM $machineName = "$baseVMName-$machineNo" Write-Host "Creating VM: $machineName"       # Get the Azure VM Image      $myImage = Get-AzureVMImage $vmTemplate   #If the VM already exists delete and re-create it $existingVm = Get-AzureVM -Name $machineName -ServiceName $serviceName if($existingVm -ne $null) { Write-Host "VM already exists so deleting it" Remove-AzureVM -Name $machineName -ServiceName $serviceName }   "Creating Service" $serviceName = "bupa-azure-train-$machineName" Remove-AzureService -Force -ServiceName $serviceName New-AzureService -Location $dataCenter -ServiceName $serviceName   Write-Host "Creating VM: $machineName" New-AzureQuickVM -Windows -name $machineName -ServiceName $serviceName -ImageName $myImage.ImageName -InstanceSize $size -AdminUsername $adminUserName -Password $password  Write-Host "Updating the RDP endpoint for $machineName" Get-AzureVM -name $machineName -ServiceName $serviceName ` | Add-AzureEndpoint -Name RDP -Protocol TCP -LocalPort 3389 -PublicPort 550 ` | Update-AzureVM    Write-Host "Get the RDP File for machine $machineName" $machineRDPFilePath = "$rdpFilePath\$machineName.rdp" Get-AzureRemoteDesktopFile -name $machineName -ServiceName $serviceName -LocalPath "$machineRDPFilePath"   WriteMachineSettings "$machineName" "$serviceName" }    The delete machine settings function is used to delete the log file before we start re-running the process.  function DeleteMachineSettings() { Write-Host "Deleting the machine settings output file" [System.IO.File]::Delete("$machineSettingsPath"); }    The write machine settings function will get the VM and then record its details to the log file. The importance of the log file is that I can easily provide the information for all of the VM's to our infrastructure team to be able to configure access to all of the VM's    function WriteMachineSettings([string]$vmName, [string]$vmServiceName) { Write-Host "Writing to the machine settings output file"   $vm = Get-AzureVM -name $vmName -ServiceName $vmServiceName $vmEndpoint = Get-AzureEndpoint -VM $vm -Name RDP   $sb = new-object System.Text.StringBuilder $sb.Append("Service Name: "); $sb.Append($vm.ServiceName); $sb.Append(", "); $sb.Append("VM: "); $sb.Append($vm.Name); $sb.Append(", "); $sb.Append("RDP Public Port: "); $sb.Append($vmEndpoint.Port); $sb.Append(", "); $sb.Append("Public DNS: "); $sb.Append($vmEndpoint.Vip); $sb.AppendLine(""); [System.IO.File]::AppendAllText($machineSettingsPath, $sb.ToString());  } # end functions    Rest of Script In the rest of the script it is really just the bit that orchestrates the actions we want to happen. It will load the publisher settings, select the Azure subscription and then loop around the CreateVM function and create 16 VM's  Import-AzurePublishSettingsFile $azurePublisherSettings Set-AzureSubscription -SubscriptionName $subscriptionName -CurrentStorageAccount $defaultStorageAccount Select-AzureSubscription -SubscriptionName $subscriptionName  DeleteMachineSettings    "Starting creating Bupa International Azure Training Lab" $numberOfVMs = 16  for ($index=1; $index -le $numberOfVMs; $index++) { $vmNo = "$index" CreateVM($vmNo); }    "Finished creating Bupa International Azure Training Lab" # Give it a Minute Start-Sleep -s 60  $endTime = get-date "Script run time " + ($endTime - $startTime)    Conclusion As you can see there is nothing too fancy about this script but in our case of creating a small isolated training lab which is not connected to our corporate network then we can easily use this to provision the lab. Im sure if this is of use to anyone you can easily modify it to do other things with the lab environment too. A couple of points to note are that there are some soft limits in Azure about the number of cores and services your subscription can use. You may need to contact the Azure support team to be able to increase this limit. In terms of the real business value of this approach, it was not possible to use the existing desktops to do the training on, and getting some internal virtual machines would have been relatively expensive and time consuming for our ops team to do. With the Azure option we are able to spin these machines up for a temporary period during the training course and then throw them away when we are done. We expect the costing of this test lab to be very small, especially considering we have EA pricing. As a ball park I think my 18 lab VM training environment will cost in the region of $80 per day on our EA. This is a fraction of the cost of the creation of a single VM on premise.

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• Merge replication stopping without errors in SQL 2008 R2

  - by Rob Farley

  A non-SQL MVP friend of mine, who also happens to be a client, asked me for some help again last week. I was planning on writing this up even before Rob Volk (@sql_r) listed his T-SQL Tuesday topic for this month. Earlier in the year, I (well, LobsterPot Solutions, although I’d been the person mostly involved) had helped out with a merge replication problem. The Merge Agent on the subscriber was just stopping every time, shortly after it started. With no errors anywhere – not in the Windows Event Log, the SQL Agent logs, not anywhere. We’d managed to get the system working again, but didn’t have a good reason about what had happened, and last week, the problem occurred again. I asked him about writing up the experience in a blog post, largely because of the red herrings that we encountered. It was an interesting experience for me, also because I didn’t end up touching my computer the whole time – just tapping on my phone via Twitter and Live Msgr. You see, the thing with replication is that a useful troubleshooting option is to reinitialise the thing. We’d done that last time, and it had started to work again – eventually. I say eventually, because the link being used between the sites is relatively slow, and it took a long while for the initialisation to finish. Meanwhile, we’d been doing some investigation into what the problem could be, and were suitably pleased when the problem disappeared. So I got a message saying that a replication problem had occurred again. Reinitialising wasn’t going to be an option this time either. In this scenario, the subscriber having the problem happened to be in a different domain to the publisher. The other subscribers (within the domain) were fine, just this one in a different domain had the problem. Part of the problem seemed to be a log file that wasn’t being backed up properly. They’d been trying to back up to a backup device that had a corruption, and the log file was growing. Turned out, this wasn’t related to the problem, but of course, any time you’re troubleshooting and you see something untoward, you wonder. Having got past that problem, my next thought was that perhaps there was a problem with the account being used. But the other subscribers were using the same account, without any problems. The client pointed out that that it was almost exactly six months since the last failure (later shown to be a complete red herring). It sounded like something might’ve expired. Checking through certificates and trusts showed no sign of anything, and besides, there wasn’t a problem running a command-prompt window using the account in question, from the subscriber box. ...except that when he ran the sqlcmd –E –S servername command I recommended, it failed with a Named Pipes error. I’ve seen problems with firewalls rejecting connections via Named Pipes but letting TCP/IP through, so I got him to look into SQL Configuration Manager to see what kind of connection was being preferred... Everything seemed fine. And strangely, he could connect via Management Studio. Turned out, he had a typo in the servername of the sqlcmd command. That particular red herring must’ve been reflected in his cheeks as he told me. During the time, I also pinged a friend of mine to find out who I should ask, and Ted Kruger (@onpnt) ‘s name came up. Ted (and thanks again, Ted – really) reconfirmed some of my thoughts around the idea of an account expiring, and also suggesting bumping up the logging to level 4 (2 is Verbose, 4 is undocumented ridiculousness). I’d just told the client to push the logging up to level 2, but the log file wasn’t appearing. Checking permissions showed that the user did have permission on the folder, but still no file was appearing. Then it was noticed that the user had been switched earlier as part of the troubleshooting, and switching it back to the real user caused the log file to appear. Still no errors. A lot more information being pushed out, but still no errors. Ted suggested making sure the FQDNs were okay from both ends, in case the servers were unable to talk to each other. DNS problems can lead to hassles which can stop replication from working. No luck there either – it was all working fine. Another server started to report a problem as well. These two boxes were both SQL 2008 R2 (SP1), while the others, still working, were SQL 2005. Around this time, the client tried an idea that I’d shown him a few years ago – using a Profiler trace to see what was being called on the servers. It turned out that the last call being made on the publisher was sp_MSenumschemachange. A quick interwebs search on that showed a problem that exists in SQL Server 2008 R2, when stored procedures have more than 4000 characters. Running that stored procedure (with the same parameters) manually on SQL 2005 listed three stored procedures, the first of which did indeed have more than 4000 characters. Still no error though, and the problem as listed at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2539378 describes an error that should occur in the Event log. However, this problem is the type of thing that is fixed by a reinitialisation (because it doesn’t need to send the procedure change across as a transaction). And a look in the change history of the long stored procs (you all keep them, right?), showed that the problem from six months earlier could well have been down to this too. Applying SP2 (with sufficient paranoia about backups and how to get back out again if necessary) fixed the problem. The stored proc changes went through immediately after the service pack was applied, and it’s been running happily since. The funny thing is that I didn’t solve the problem. He had put the Profiler trace on the server, and had done the search that found a forum post pointing at this particular problem. I’d asked Ted too, and although he’d given some useful information, nothing that he’d come up with had actually been the solution either. Sometimes, asking for help is the most useful thing you can do. Often though, you don’t end up getting the help from the person you asked – the sounding board is actually what you need. @rob_farley

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