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  • Wisdom Lies in Collaborative Power and Intelligence

    - by kellsey.ruppel
    By Alakh Verma, Director, Platform Technology Solutions   In my recent blog posts, I shared insights on Predictive Analytics (Will Predictive Analytics at 'Speed of Thoughts' Help Businesses?), Real Time Decisions (How critical are Real Time decisions in business today?) and their significance in our lives in general and in businesses today. In the current business paradigm shift- with evolutionary social business, it is paramount that businesses look for wisdom in collaborative power and intelligence and equip their employees with the tools to engage with one another. There is an old time saying that 5 sticks tied together are stronger and unable to break as opposed to an individual stick. We have recently witnessed the power of ordinary people uniting together and fought collaboratively using Facebook and Twitter to topple down dictators in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya—and are threatening absolute rule in Syria. And an India one man’s (Anna Hazare) campaign against corruption went viral, bringing thousands to the streets in support. As anyone who has worked in a sizeable organization knows, there is no guarantee that the organization as a whole will perform efficiently and achieve its goals, even if each employee is individually efficient and every team has a high level of productivity. To achieve enterprise productivity, it is necessary not only for individuals and groups to “do things right” by working productively but also for the enterprise as a whole to “do the right things” - form the right teams, make the right decisions, allocate resources correctly, and effectively coordinate activities across the entire organization. Most organizations fall short of the optimal level of enterprise productivity because of one or more of these reasons, all at a great cost to the business.  They are disconnected from themselves with various parts of the organization unintentionally working at cross-purposes with each other.  Information that exists is not getting shared or reused.  Human talent is not being applied where it is most needed.  The same problems are being solved repeatedly by multiple groups. Intelligent collaboration through automated business processes has the ability to alter the course of any important business activity, with a potentially dramatic impact on the financial performance of the business. Whether it is a simple email exchange, a physical or virtual meeting, a task force, or a large-scale project, the activity is inherently collaborative.  In fact, collaboration can be defined as the work that takes place among people when a business process is not pre-determining how the work should take place. Collaboration is many things: information sharing, brainstorming, problem solving, best practice negotiation, innovation, coordination of activity, alignment of purpose, and so forth.  Collaboration is the “white space” between the business processes; it is the glue that holds an organization together, and the lubricant that allows the machinery to keep running.  Real time search and collaborative capabilities of the right people with the right content supported by defined processes will provide unparallel wisdom in the organization in the most competitive business environment today. Interestingly, technologies such as Oracle WebCenter offer these capabilities in our Web based business transactions and compliment in the overall collaborative intelligence and power to truly transform organizations to social businesses. Looking to learn more about engaging your employees to collaborate together and providing a complete user experience for your customers? You won't want to miss our webcast today! Drive Online Engagement with Intuitive Portals and Websites

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  • ArchBeat Link-o-Rama Top 10 for December 9-15, 2012

    - by Bob Rhubart
    You click, we listen. The following list reflects the Top 10 most popular items posted on the OTN ArchBeat Facefbook page for the week of December 9-15, 2012. DevOps Basics II: What is Listening on Open Ports and Files – WebLogic Essentials | Dr. Frank Munz "Can you easily find out which WebLogic servers are listening to which port numbers and addresses?" asks Dr. Frank Munz. The good doctor has an answer—and a tech tip. Using OBIEE against Transactional Schemas Part 4: Complex Dimensions | Stewart Bryson "Another important entity for reporting in the Customer Tracking application is the Contact entity," says Stewart Bryson. "At first glance, it might seem that we should simply build another dimension called Dim – Contact, and use analyses to combine our Customer and Contact dimensions along with our Activity fact table to analyze Customer and Contact behavior." SOA 11g Technology Adapters – ECID Propagation | Greg Mally "Many SOA Suite 11g deployments include the use of the technology adapters for various activities including integration with FTP, database, and files to name a few," says Oracle Fusion Middleware A-Team member Greg Mally. "Although the integrations with these adapters are easy and feature rich, there can be some challenges from the operations perspective." Greg's post focuses on technical tips for dealing with one of these challenges. Podcast: DevOps and Continuous Integration In Part 1 of a 3-part program, panelists Tim Hall (Senior Director of product management for Oracle Enterprise Repository and Oracle’s Application Integration Architecture), Robert Wunderlich (Principal Product Manager for Oracle’s Application Integration Architecture Foundation Pack) and Peter Belknap (Director of product management for Oracle SOA Integration) discuss why DevOps matters and how it changes development methodologies and organizational structure. Good To Know - Conflicting View Objects and Shared Entity | Andrejus Baranovskis Oracle ACE Director Andrejus Baranovskis shares his thoughts -- and a sample application -- dealing with an "interesting ADF behavior" encountered over the weekend. Cloud Deployment Models | B. R. Clouse Looking out for the cloud newbies... "As the cloud paradigm grows in depth and breadth, more readers are approaching the topic for the first time, or from a new perspective," says B. R. Clouse. "This blog is a basic review of cloud deployment models, to help orient newcomers and neophytes." Service governance morphs into cloud API management | David Linthicum "When building and using clouds, the ability to manage APIs or services is the single most important item you can provide to ensure the success of the project," says David Linthicum. "But most organizations driving a cloud project for the first time have no experience handling a service-based architecture and don't see the need for API management until after deployment. By then, it's too late." Oracle Fusion Middleware Security: Password Policy in OAM 11g R2 | Rob Otto Rob Otto continues the Oracle Fusion Middleware A-Team "Oracle Access Manager Academy" series with a detailed look at OAM's ability to support "a subset of password management processes without the need to use Oracle Identity Manager and LDAP Sync." Understanding the JSF Lifecycle and ADF Optimized Lifecycle | Steven Davelaar Could you call that a surprise ending? Oracle WebCenter & ADF Architecture Team (A-Team) member learned a lot more than he expected while creating a UKOUG presentation entitled "What you need to know about JSF to be succesful with ADF." Expanding on requestaudit - Tracing who is doing what...and for how long | Kyle Hatlestad "One of the most helpful tracing sections in WebCenter Content (and one that is on by default) is the requestaudit tracing," says Oracle Fusion Middleware A-Team architect Kyle Hatlestad. Get up close and technical in his post. Thought for the Day "There is no code so big, twisted, or complex that maintenance can't make it worse." — Gerald Weinberg Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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  • Oracle Announces Release of PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 Feature Pack 2

    - by Jay Zuckert
    Big things sometimes come in small packages.  Today Oracle announced the availability of PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 Feature Pack 2 which delivers a new HR self service user experience that fundamentally changes the way managers and employees interact with the HCM system.  Earlier this year we reviewed a number of new concept designs with our Customer Advisory Boards.  With the accelerated feature pack development cycle we have adopted, these innovations are  now available to all 9.1 customers without the need for an upgrade.   There are no new products that need to be licensed for the capabilities below. For more details on Feature Pack 2, please see the Oracle press release. Included in Feature Pack 2 is a new search-based menu-free navigation that allows managers to search for employees by name and take actions directly from the secure search results.  For example, a manager can now simply type in part of an employee’s first or last name and receive meaningful results from documents related to performance, compensation, learning, recruiting, career planning and more.   Delivered actions can be initiated directly from these search results and the actions are securely tied to HCM security and user role.  The feature pack also includes new pages that will enable managers to be more productive by aggregating key employee data into a single page.  The new Manager Dashboard and Talent Summary provide a consolidated view of data related to a manager’s team and individual team members, respectively.   The Manager Dashboard displays information relevant to their direct reports including team learning, objective alignment, alerts, and pending approvals requiring their attention.  The Talent Summary provides managers with an aggregated view of talent management-related data for an individual employee including performance history, salary history, succession options, total rewards, and competencies.   The information displayed in both the Manager Dashboard and Talent Summary is configurable by system administrators and can be personalized by each of your managers. Other Feature Pack 2 enhancements allow organizations to administer Matrix or Dotted-Line Relationship Management, which addresses the challenge of tracking and maintaining project-based organizations that cut across the enterprise and geographic regions.  From within the Company Directory and Org Viewer organization charts, managers now have access to manager self-service transactions from related actions.  More than 70 manager and employee self-service transactions have been tied into the related action framework accessible from Org Viewer, Manager Dashboard, Talent Summary and Secure Enterprise Search (SES) results.  In addition to making it easier to access manager self-service transactions, the feature pack delivers streamlined transaction pages making everyday tasks such as promoting an employee faster and more efficient. With the delivery of PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 Feature Pack 2, Oracle continues to deliver on its commitment to our PeopleSoft customers.  With this feature pack, HCM 9.1 customers will be able to deploy the newest functionality quickly, without a major release upgrade, and realize added value from their existing PeopleSoft investment.    For customers newly deploying 9.1, a new download with all of Feature Pack 2  will be available early next year.   This will aslo include recertified upgrade paths from 8.8, 8.9 and 9.0, for customers in the upgrade process.

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  • What are some good questions (and good/bad answers) to ask at an interview to gauge the competency of the company/team?

    - by Wayne M
    I'm already familiar with the Joel Test, but it's been my experience that some of the questions there have the answers "massaged" to make the company seem better than it is. I've had several jobs in the past that, for instance, claimed they had a QA process and did unit testing, and what they really meant is "The programmers test the app, and test with the debugger and via trial-and-error."; they said they used SVN but they just lumped everything into one giant repository and had no concept of branching/merging or anything more complicated than updating and committing; said they can build in one step and what they really mean is it's "one step" to copy dozens of files by hand from the programmer's PC to the live server. How do you go about properly gauging a company's environment to make sure that it's a well-evolved company and not stuck on doing things a certain way because they've done it for years and they're ignorant of change? You can almost never ask to see their source code, so you're stuck trying to figure out if the interviewer's answer is accurate or BS to make the company seem good. Besides the Joel Test what are some other good questions to get the proper feel for a company, and more importantly what are some good and bad answers that could indicate a good or bad company? I mean something like (take at face value, please, it's all I could think of at short notice): Question: How does the software team apply the SOLID principles and Inversion of Control to their code? Good Answer: We adhere to SOLID wherever possible; we use TDD so it kind of forces us to write abstract, testable code. We use Ninject for our IoC container because it's fairly easy to configure - it was that or StructureMap but I find Ninject a bit more intuitive, and who doesn't like ninjas? You're not a pirate, are you? Bad Answer: Our code is pretty secure, yeah. And what's this Inversion of Control thing? I've never heard of it before. You see what I did there. The "good" answer uses facts to back it up and has a bit of "in crowd" humor; the bad answer shows complete ignorance of the question - not necessarily a bad thing if you are interviewing for a manger/director position, but a terrible answer and a huge red flag if you're interviewing as a developer and talking to a senior developer or manager! My biggest problem at the moment is being able to take a generic response and gauge whether it's the good or bad answer; more often than not it's the bad kind and I find myself frustrated almost from day one at the new job. I suppose I could name drop if I ask about specific things (e.g. "Do you write unit tests?" and if the answer is yes, ask if they use NUnit, MbUnit or something else; if they mention data access ask if they use a clean ORM like NHibernate or something more coupled like EF or Linq) but is there another way short of being resolute to actually call the interview on things (which will almost certainly result in not getting the job, but if they are skirting the question it's probably not a job I want).

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  • Open source adventures with... wait for it... Microsoft

    - by Jeff
    Last week, Microsoft announced that it was going to open source the rest of the ASP.NET MVC Web stack. The core MVC framework has been open source for a long time now, but the other pieces around it are also now out in the wild. Not only that, but it's not what I call "big bang" open source, where you release the source with each version. No, they're actually committing in real time to a public repository. They're also taking contributions where it makes sense. If that weren't exciting enough, CodePlex, which used to be a part of the team I was on, has been re-org'd to a different part of the company where it is getting the love and attention (and apparently money) that it deserves. For a period of several months, I lobbied to get a PM gig with that product, but got nowhere. A year and a half later, I'm happy to see it finally treated right. In any case, I found a bug in Razor, the rendering engine, before the beta came out. I informally sent the bug info to some people, but it wasn't fixed for the beta. Now, with the project being developed in the open, I was able to submit the issue, and went back and forth with the developer who wrote the code (I met him once at a meet up in Bellevue, I think), and he committed a fix. I tried it a day later, and the bug was gone. There's a lot to learn from all of this. That open source software is surprisingly efficient and often of high quality is one part of it. For me the win is that it demonstrates how open and collaborative processes, as light as possible, lead to better software. In other words, even if this were a project being developed internally, at a bank or something, getting stakeholders involved early and giving people the ability to respond leads to awesomeness. While there is always a place for big thinking, experience has shown time and time again that trying to figure everything out up front takes too long, and rarely meets expectations. This is a lesson that probably half of Microsoft has yet to learn, including the team I was on before I split. It's the reason that team still hasn't shipped anything to general availability. But I've seen what an open and iterative development style can do for teams, at Microsoft and other places that I've worked. When you can have a conversation with people, and take ideas and turn them into code quickly, you're winning. So why don't people like winning? I think there are a lot of reasons, and they can generally be categorized into fear, skepticism and bad experiences. I can't give the Web stack teams enough credit. Not only did they dream big, but they changed a culture that often seems immovable and hopelessly stuck. This is a very public example of this culture change, but it's starting to happen at every scale in Microsoft. It's really interesting to see in a company that has been written off as dead the last decade.

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  • How to ace Skype Interviews

    - by FelixWehmeyer
    Many companies these days opt to include a Skype interview in the recruitment process, as it comes close to a face-to-face interview without the time and costs involved for both the company and the candidate. In some cases during the recruitment process at Oracle you also might be asked to conduct a Skype interview. To help you get started with this, we researched some websites to give you several tips and tricks. What most of the bloggers say about this topic is collected in this article to help you prepare. It is all about Technology The bit that can make a Skype interview more complicated than a face-to-face or phone interview is the fact you are using additional technology. Always check the video and audio capabilities of your computer to make sure they work properly. Be prepared for connections to be limited during the interview. Using a webcam can also be confusing, if you do not have a lot of experience using it. Make sure you look at the camera and not the monitor to avoid the impression you are looking away. Practice If you do not feel comfortable using the camera, do a mock interview with a friend or family member before you have the actual interview. Be aware that facial impressions or reactions come across differently on a monitor, so make sure to practice how you  come across during the interview. Good lighting in the room also helps you make you look the best for the interviewer. You and your room Dress code, as in any face-to-face interview,is important to think about. Dress the same way as you would for face-to-face interviews and avoid patterns or informal clothing. Another tip,is to be aware of your surroundings. Make sure the room you use looks good on camera, making sure it is neat and tidy, also think about how the walls look behind you. Also make sure you do not get distracted during the interview by anyone or anything, as this will directly have an impact on your interview and your ability to focus and concentrate. What is in a name What goes for any account that you share during the recruitment process, either your email address or Skype name, is to make sure it comes across as professional. Try to avoid using nicknames or strange words in your accounts, stick to using a first name – last name or an abbreviation of the same. If you would like to read more about this topic, have a look at the links below which we used as inspiration for this blog article. 7 Deadly Skype Interview Sins is fun to read and to gives you some good advice to keep in mind. ·         http://www.inc.com/guides/201103/4-tips-for-conducting-a-job-interview-using-skype.html ·         http://blog.simplyhired.com/2012/05/5-tips-to-a-great-skype-interview.html ·         http://www.cnn.com/2011/LIVING/07/11/skype.interview.tips.cb/index.html http://www.ehow.com/how_5648281_prepare-skype-interview.html

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  • Sunshine after the iCloud release?

    - by Laila
    "Why should I believe them? They're the ones that brought us MobileMe? It was not our finest hour, but we learned a lot." Steve Jobs June 6th 2011 Apple's new cloud service has been met with uncritical excitement by industry commentators.  It is wonderful what a rename can do.  Apple has had a 'cloud' offering for three years called MobileMe, successor to .MAC and  iTools, so iCloud is now the fourth internet service Apple have attempted. If this had been Microsoft, there would have been catcalls all around the blogosphere.  I'll admit that there is a lot more functionality announced for iCloud than MobileMe has ever managed to achieve, but then almost anything has more functionality than MobileMe.  It's an expensive service (£120 a year in the UK, $90 in the states), launched as far back as  June 9, 2008, that has delivered very little and suffered a string of technical problems; the documentation was mainly  a community effort, built up gradually by the frustrated and angry users. It was supposed to synchronise PC Outlook calendars but couldn't manage Microsoft Exchange (Google could, of course). It used WebDAV to allow Windows users to attach to the filestore, but didn't document how to do it. The method for downloading and uploading files to the cloud-based filestore was ridiculously clunky. It allowed you to post photos on a public site, but forgot to include a way of deleting photos. I could go on with the list, but you can explore the many sites that have flourished to inhabit the support-vacuum left by Apple. MobileMe should have had all the bright new clever things announced for iCloud. Apple dropped the ball, and allowed services such as Flickr to fill the void. However, their PR skills are such that, a name-change later (the .ME.com email address remains), it has turned a rout into a victory, and hundreds of earnest bloggers have been extolling Apple's expertise in cloud matters. This must be frustrating for the other cloud providers who have quietly got the technology working right. I wish iCloud well, even though I resent the expensive mess they made of MobileMe. Apple promise that iCloud will sync files, apps, app data, and media across all the different iOS5 devices, Macs, and PCs. It also hopes to sync music across devices, but not video content. They've offered existing MobileMe users free use of the MobileMe service for a year as the product is morphed, and they will be able to transfer to iCloud when it is launched in the autumn.  On June 30, 2012, MobileMe will die, and Apple's iWeb is also soon to join iTools and .MAC in the hereafter. So why get excited about iCloud? That all depends on the level of PC integration. Whereas iOS5 machines will be full participants in the new world of data-sharing (Sorry iPod Touch users) what about .NET libraries? There is talk of synchronising 'My Pictures' libraries with iOS5 and iMac machines, but little more detail as yet. Apple has a lot to prove with iCloud and anyone with actual experience of their past attempts to get into cloud services will be wary.

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  • A story of Murphy&ndash;my technical issues at TechDays Switzerland #chtd

    - by Laurent Bugnion
    I had two sessions at the recent Swiss TechDays. While the first one (Advanced Development for Windows Phone 8) went extremely well (I think), I had a very annoying technical issue in the beginning of my second session. First let me add that I talked to Microsoft about that and I hope they will change a few things in the room assignment for next year. My two sessions were one right after the other, with only 15 minutes break to change room. I don’t mind having two sessions so close from each other, but I would really like them to be in the same room in order to avoid having to move my laptops (plural, that will become important later) and redoing the tech check. That being said, I am guilty of not checking where my talks would be before the day before the conference, and when I did notice, it was too late to change it. After my first session, I quickly moved to the other room and setup my main laptop, a Dell Precision. We tested the video output (VGA) and didn’t notice anything special. The projectors are using a fairly high resolution (kudos to the Basel conference center for not having old school 1024x768 projectors anymore, that makes Blend really hard to demo ;) but since everything went great during the first talk, I was not worried. In fact I even had some time to chat with some early attendees about my Microsoft Surface and the Samsung Slate 7, which I had carried with me in addition to the Precision. I just thought it would be nice to show the hardware that Windows 8 can run on, without thinking any further. When the session started, I immediately noticed that the main screen was not showing anything. I thought I had just forgotten to switch to “duplicate” for the video output, and did that with a quick Win-P. However it didn’t “hold”. After 2 seconds, it reverted back to a black display for my attendees. Then I started to really worry. We tried everything, switching from VGA to HDMI, changing the resolution, setting the projector as primary display, but nothing did the trick. The projector was just refusing to show my screen. Now, to show you how despaired I started to be, I even considered using the “extend” setting (which worked just fine), and to use one of the feedback monitors on the floor but really it was super cumbersome. Eventually, my last resort arrived: I started my Samsung Slate 7, which by chance has Visual Studio 12 and Blend 5 installed, plugged the HDMI projector in the dock (yes, I had the dock with me, which I usually don’t!), connected it to internet (had to enter a long password for that), loaded the source code from my main machine using a USB stick and…. finally started to give my presentation. All in all I think we lost about 10 minutes. Amongst the most horrible minutes of my whole life, truly (yes I am blessed, I didn’t have that many horrible minutes in my life ;) I really want to apologize to my attendees. We joked a bit during the attempts to resolve the issue, the reactions I had after the session were all very nice and sympathetic. Only a handful of people left my session while I was having the issues, and I really don’t blame them (who knew how long the problem would last!!). But still, I probably talked at more than 60 sessions over the years, and this was by far my most painful moment. What did I learn? So what did I learn from this? Well from now on I will always have my slate ready with the latest source code, internet connection and every tool I might need during the presentation. This way, if I detect even a hint that the Precision might not work, I will just switch to the Slate. The experience of presenting on the slate is actually not bad at all, it is just a bit slow for my taste, but it does work. By the way, I will be posting the code and slides for my sessions very soon, I just need to “clean it and zip it”. Stay tuned, and thanks again for your patience in that horrible circumstance. Cheers Laurent   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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  • Chalk Talk with John: How Does SOA Add Value to Your Enterprise?

    - by John Brunswick
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} In this episode of Chalk Talk with John we revisit our town of Middleware Fields from What Does User Experience Mean to You? to look at demystifying the business value of SOA. Middleware fields is an extremely eco-conscious community and has been trying to setup a commuting program for their employees. Though a good idea, they soon run into challenges ensuring that people are able to use the commuting services easily.  Take a look below to see how SOA is like a transit pass for your enterprise and how it addresses common issues you may have with your enterprise systems. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} About me: Hi, I am John Brunswick, an Oracle Enterprise Architect. As an Oracle Enterprise Architect, I focus on the alignment of technical capabilities in support of business vision and objectives, as well as the overall business value of technology.  Before coming to Oracle, I was a Practice Manager within BEA System's Business Interaction Division consulting organization, orchestrating enterprise systems in support of line of business goals. Follow me on Twitter and visit my site for Oracle Fusion Middleware related tips.

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  • Delivering SOA Governance with EAMS and Oracle Enterprise Repository by Link Consulting Team

    - by JuergenKress
    In the last 12 years Link Consulting has been making its presence in specific areas such as Governance and Architecture, both in terms of practices and methodologies, products, know-how and technological expertise. The Enterprise Architecture Management System - Oracle Enterprise Edition (EAMS - OER Edition) is the result of this experience and combines the architecture management solution with OER in order to deliver a product specialized for SOA Governance that gathers the better of two worlds in solution that enables SOA Governance projects, initiatives and programs. Enterprise Architecture Management System Enterprise Architecture Management System (EAMS), is an automation based solution that enables the efficient management of Enterprise Architectures. The solution uses configured enterprise repositories and takes advantages of its features to provide automation capabilities to the users. EAMS provides capabilities to create/customize/analyze repository data, architectural blueprints, reports and analytic charts. Oracle Enterprise Repository Oracle Enterprise Repository (OER) is one of the major and central elements of the Oracle SOA Governance solution. Oracle Enterprise Repository provides the tools to manage and govern the metadata for any type of software asset, from business processes and services to patterns, frameworks, applications, components, and models. OER maps the relationships and inter-dependencies that connect those assets to improve impact analysis, promote and optimize their reuse, and measure their impact on the bottom line. It provides the visibility, feedback, controls, and analytics to keep your SOA on track to deliver business value. The intense focus on automation helps to overcome barriers to SOA adoption and streamline governance throughout the lifecycle. Core capabilities of the OER include: Asset Management Asset Lifecycle Management Usage Tracking Service Discovery Version Management Dependency Analysis Portfolio Management EAMS - OER Edition The solution takes the advantages and features from both products and combines them in a symbiotic tool that enhances the quality of SOA Governance Initiatives and Programs. EAMS is able to produce a vast number of outputs by combining its analytical engine, SOA-specific configurations and the assets in OER and other related tools, catalogs and repositories. The configurations encompass not only the extendable parametrization of the metadata but also fully configurable blueprints, PowerPoint reports, charts and queries. The SOA blueprints The solution comes with a set of predefined architectural representations that help the organization better perceive their SOA landscape. More blueprints can be easily created in order to accommodate the organizations needs in terms of detail, audience and metadata. Charts & Dashboards The solution encompasses a set of predefined charts and dashboards that promote a more agile way to control and explore the assets. Time Based Visualization All representations are time bound, and with EAMS - OER you can truly govern SOA with a complete view of the Past, Present and Future; The solution delivers Gap Analysis, a project oriented approach while taking into consideration the As-Was, As-Is an To-Be. Time based visualization differentiating factors: Extensive automation and maintenance of architectural representations Organization wide solution. Easy access and navigation to and between all architectural artifacts and representations. Flexible meta-model, customization and extensibility capabilities. Lifecycle management and enforcement of the time dimension over all the repository content. Profile based customization. Comprehensive visibility Architectural alignment Friendly and striking user interfaces For more information on EAMS visit us here. For more information on SOA visit us here. SOA & BPM Partner Community For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit  www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Technorati Tags: Link Consulting,OER,OSR,SOA Governance,SOA Community,Oracle SOA,Oracle BPM,BPM Community,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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  • To SYNC or not to SYNC – Part 4

    - by AshishRay
    This is Part 4 of a multi-part blog article where we are discussing various aspects of setting up Data Guard synchronous redo transport (SYNC). In Part 1 of this article, I debunked the myth that Data Guard SYNC is similar to a two-phase commit operation. In Part 2, I discussed the various ways that network latency may or may not impact a Data Guard SYNC configuration. In Part 3, I talked in details regarding why Data Guard SYNC is a good thing, and the distance implications you have to keep in mind. In this final article of the series, I will talk about how you can nicely complement Data Guard SYNC with the ability to failover in seconds. Wait - Did I Say “Seconds”? Did I just say that some customers do Data Guard failover in seconds? Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. Data Guard has an automatic failover capability, aptly called Fast-Start Failover. Initially available with Oracle Database 10g Release 2 for Data Guard SYNC transport mode (and enhanced in Oracle Database 11g to support Data Guard ASYNC transport mode), this capability, managed by Data Guard Broker, lets your Data Guard configuration automatically failover to a designated standby database. Yes, this means no human intervention is required to do the failover. This process is controlled by a low footprint Data Guard Broker client called Observer, which makes sure that the primary database and the designated standby database are behaving like good kids. If something bad were to happen to the primary database, the Observer, after a configurable threshold period, tells that standby, “Your time has come, you are the chosen one!” The standby dutifully follows the Observer directives by assuming the role of the new primary database. The DBA or the Sys Admin doesn’t need to be involved. And - in case you are following this discussion very closely, and are wondering … “Hmmm … what if the old primary is not really dead, but just network isolated from the Observer or the standby - won’t this lead to a split-brain situation?” The answer is No - It Doesn’t. With respect to why-it-doesn’t, I am sure there are some smart DBAs in the audience who can explain the technical reasons. Otherwise - that will be the material for a future blog post. So - this combination of SYNC and Fast-Start Failover is the nirvana of lights-out, integrated HA and DR, as practiced by some of our advanced customers. They have observed failover times (with no data loss) ranging from single-digit seconds to tens of seconds. With this, they support operations in industry verticals such as manufacturing, retail, telecom, Internet, etc. that have the most demanding availability requirements. One of our leading customers with massive cloud deployment initiatives tells us that they know about server failures only after Data Guard has automatically completed the failover process and the app is back up and running! Needless to mention, Data Guard Broker has the integration hooks for interfaces such as JDBC and OCI, or even for custom apps, to ensure the application gets automatically rerouted to the new primary database after the database level failover completes. Net Net? To sum up this multi-part blog article, Data Guard with SYNC redo transport mode, plus Fast-Start Failover, gives you the ideal triple-combo - that is, it gives you the assurance that for critical outages, you can failover your Oracle databases: very fast without human intervention, and without losing any data. In short, it takes the element of risk out of critical IT operations. It does require you to be more careful with your network and systems planning, but as far as HA is concerned, the benefits outweigh the investment costs. So, this is what we in the MAA Development Team believe in. What do you think? How has your deployment experience been? We look forward to hearing from you!

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  • PowerShell: Read Excel to Create Inserts

    - by BuckWoody
    I’m writing a series of articles on how to migrate “departmental” data into SQL Server. I also hold workshops on the entire process – from discovering that the data exists to the modeling process and then how to design the Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) process. Finally I write about (and teach) a few methods on actually moving the data. One of those options is to use PowerShell. There are a lot of ways even with that choice, but the one I show is to read two columns from the spreadsheet and output statements that would insert the data using a stored procedure. Of course, you could re-write this as INSERT statements, out to a text file for bcp, or even use a database connection in the script to move the data directly from Excel into SQL Server. This snippet won’t run on your system, of course – it assumes a Microsoft Office Excel 2007 spreadsheet located at c:\temp called VendorList.xlsx. It looks for a tab in that spreadsheet called Vendors. The statement that does the writing just uses one column: Vendor Code. Here’s the breakdown of what I’m doing: In the first block, I connect to Microsoft Office Excel. That connection string is specific to Excel 2007, so if you need a different version you’ll need to look that up. In the second block I set up a selection from the entire spreadsheet based on that tab. Note that if you’re only after certain data you shouldn’t get the whole spreadsheet – that’s just good practice. In the next block I create the text I want, inserting the Vendor Code field as I go. Finally I close the connection. Enjoy! $ExcelConnection= New-Object -com "ADODB.Connection" $ExcelFile="c:\temp\VendorList.xlsx" $ExcelConnection.Open("Provider=Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0;` Data Source=$ExcelFile;Extended Properties=Excel 12.0;") $strQuery="Select * from [Vendors$]" $ExcelRecordSet=$ExcelConnection.Execute($strQuery) do { Write-Host "EXEC sp_InsertVendors '" $ExcelRecordSet.Fields.Item("Vendor Code").Value "'" $ExcelRecordSet.MoveNext()} Until ($ExcelRecordSet.EOF) $ExcelConnection.Close() Script Disclaimer, for people who need to be told this sort of thing: Never trust any script, including those that you find here, until you understand exactly what it does and how it will act on your systems. Always check the script on a test system or Virtual Machine, not a production system. All scripts on this site are performed by a professional stunt driver on a closed course. Your mileage may vary. Void where prohibited. Offer good for a limited time only. Keep out of reach of small children. Do not operate heavy machinery while using this script. If you experience blurry vision, indigestion or diarrhea during the operation of this script, see a physician immediately. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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  • Good DBAs Do Baselines

    - by Louis Davidson
    One morning, you wake up and feel funny. You can’t quite put your finger on it, but something isn’t quite right. What now? Unless you happen to be a hypochondriac, you likely drag yourself out of bed, get on with the day and gather more “evidence”. You check your symptoms over the next few days; do you feel the same, better, worse? If better, then great, it was some temporal issue, perhaps caused by an allergic reaction to some suspiciously spicy chicken. If the same or worse then you go to the doctor for some health advice, but armed with some data to share, and having ruled out certain possible causes that are fixed with a bit of rest and perhaps an antacid. Whether you realize it or not, in comparing how you feel one day to the next, you have taken baseline measurements. In much the same way, a DBA uses baselines to gauge the gauge health of their database servers. Of course, while SQL Server is very willing to share data regarding its health and activities, it has almost no idea of the difference between good and bad. Over time, experienced DBAs develop “mental” baselines with which they can gauge the health of their servers almost as easily as their own body. They accumulate knowledge of the daily, natural state of each part of their database system, and so know instinctively when one of their databases “feels funny”. Equally, they know when an “issue” is just a passing tremor. They see their SQL Server with all of its four CPU cores running close 100% and don’t panic anymore. Why? It’s 5PM and every day the same thing occurs when the end-of-day reports, which are very CPU intensive, are running. Equally, they know when they need to respond in earnest when it is the first time they have heard about an issue, even if it has been happening every day. Nevertheless, no DBA can retain mental baselines for every characteristic of their systems, so we need to collect physical baselines too. In my experience, surprisingly few DBAs do this very well. Part of the problem is that SQL Server provides a lot of instrumentation. If you look, you will find an almost overwhelming amount of data regarding user activity on your SQL Server instances, and use and abuse of the available CPU, I/O and memory. It seems like a huge task even to work out which data you need to collect, let alone start collecting it on a regular basis, managing its storage over time, and performing detailed comparative analysis. However, without baselines, though, it is very difficult to pinpoint what ails a server, just by looking at a single snapshot of the data, or to spot retrospectively what caused the problem by examining aggregated data for the server, collected over many months. It isn’t as hard as you think to get started. You’ve probably already established some troubleshooting queries of the type SELECT Value FROM SomeSystemTableOrView. Capturing a set of baseline values for such a query can be as easy as changing it as follows: INSERT into BaseLine.SomeSystemTable (value, captureTime) SELECT Value, SYSDATETIME() FROM SomeSystemTableOrView; Of course, there are monitoring tools that will collect and manage this baseline data for you, automatically, and allow you to perform comparison of metrics over different periods. However, to get yourself started and to prove to yourself (or perhaps the person who writes the checks for tools) the value of baselines, stick something similar to the above query into an agent job, running every hour or so, and you are on your way with no excuses! Then, the next time you investigate a slow server, and see x open transactions, y users logged in, and z rows added per hour in the Orders table, compare to your baselines and see immediately what, if anything, has changed!

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  • Join us on our Journey to be #1 in SaaS!

    - by jessica.ebbelaar(at)oracle.com
    WHY ORACLE? Oracle is a robust organization that has proven to maintain growth and innovation at all levels with a constant evolving attitude. The main ingredient of Oracles success is the 105.000 talented employees who constantly amaze each other in building a better and more innovative organization. Oracle is a company where YOU can make a difference. What is OD? Oracle Direct is a state-of-the-art, multi-channel EMEA sales operation bringing to life the benefits of Oracle’s complete technology stack. It offers you the unique opportunity to work with the most talented and like-minded sales professionals in the industry.  You will have access to world class training and structured career development programmes allowing you to accelerate your Solution Sales career across a multitude of product lines and a choice of attractive locations. What positions are OD Hiring?   Oracle is on a journey to be the #1 SaaS vendor in EMEA.  Due to recent expansion and acquisitions within our Cloud Business, we are now growing our EMEA Cloud Applications Sales Group in Dublin. We have many exciting NEW opportunities across our CRM and HCM SaaS Sales teams. As a SaaS Sales Account Manager, you will proactively manage an assigned territory / vertical with responsibility for the full sales cycle. This role requires strong business development, solution selling, account management and closing skills. WHY ORACLE? Oracle is a robust organization that has proven to maintain growth and innovation at all levels with a constant evolving attitude. The main ingredient of Oracles success is the 105.000 talented employees who constantly amaze each other in building a better and more innovative organization. Oracle is a company where YOU can make a difference. What is OD? Oracle Direct is a state-of-the-art, multi-channel EMEA sales operation bringing to life the benefits of Oracle’s complete technology stack. It offers you the unique opportunity to work with the most talented and like-minded sales professionals in the industry.  You will have access to world class training and structured career development programmes allowing you to accelerate your Solution Sales career across a multitude of product lines and a choice of attractive locations. What positions are OD Hiring? Oracle is on a journey to be the #1 SaaS vendor in EMEA.  Due to recent expansion and acquisitions within our Cloud Business, we are now growing our EMEA Cloud Applications Sales Group in Dublin. We have many exciting NEW opportunities across our CRM and HCM SaaS Sales teams. As a SaaS Sales Account Manager, you will proactively manage an assigned territory / vertical with responsibility for the full sales cycle. This role requires strong business development, solution selling, account management and closing skills. What is the Business Development Group (BDG) The Business Development Group is the key entry point in Oracle for the future Sales and Management talent of the organisation. We are the Demand Generation engine for Oracle in EMEA. We provide revenue generating, quality sales pipeline to our Inside and Field Sales professionals as well as to our Channel Partners. Our current focus is to provide an agile and flexible service offering to our customers and stakeholders to meet ever changing business needs, whilst constantly striving to improve the customer experience, quality of our pipeline, market coverage and penetration. As a SaaS Business Development Consultant (BDC) you will be the first touch point with new customers. Your goal is to proactively identify and qualify business opportunities leading to revenue for Oracle. You will work closely with your Inside Sales colleagues who will progress your qualified pipeline and opportunities. Work for us Work for the only multi-pillar SaaS vendor in the market Be part of a FUN, fast paced and truly International sales team  Develop you solution sales EXPERTISE Drive your CAREER development within a structured and supportive environment The Profile You have a passion for selling cutting-edge technology You thrive in a fast paced and dynamic work environment where being the best is paramount Your priority is always the customer You live for a challenge and you love to win Join us on our Journey to be #1 in SaaS and be part of our Cloud Success Story! You will find more information about open roles here

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  • SQL Authority News – Presenting at SQL Bangalore on May 3, 2014 – Performing an Effective Presentation

    - by Pinal Dave
    SQL Bangalore is a wonderful community and we always have a great response when we present on technology. It is SQL User Group and we discuss everything SQL there. This month we have SQL Server 2014 theme and we are going to have a community launch on this subject. We have the best of the best speakers presenting on SQL Server 2014 technology. Looking at the whole line of celebrity speakers, I have decided not to present on SQL Server. I will be presenting on the performance tuning subject, but with the twist of soft skills. I will be presenting on “Performing an Effective Presentation“. Trust me, you do not want to miss this presentation, I will be presenting on how to present effectively when presenting SQL Server topics. What this session will NOT have I personally believe that we all are good presenters most of the time. We can all easily call out if someone is bad presenter. There is no point talking about basics like bigger bullet points, talk loudly, talk with confidence, use better analogies etc. In simple words – this is not going to some philosophy session and boring notes. What this session will have Well, this session will tell stories of my life. It will tell how we can present about technology and SQL Server with the help of stories and personal experience. I am going to tell stories about two legends  who have inspired me. Right after that we will be doing two exercises together where we will learn quickly and effectively, how to become better speaker – instantly! There is no video recording of this session. If you want to get resources from this session, please sign up my newsletter at http://bit.ly/sqllearn Here are few of the slides from this presentation: Here is the details about the event and location Venue:Microsoft Corporation, Signature Building,Embassy Golf Links Business Park, Intermediate Ring Road, Domlur, Bangalore – 560071 The agenda is amazing – we have top line SQL Speakers. Everyone is welcome and don’t forget to get your friend along for this event. Loads to learn and tons to share !!! Keynote (20 mins) by Anupam Tiwari – Business Program Manager – GTSC Backup Enhancements with SQL Server 2014 by Amit Banerjee – PFE Microsoft Performance Enhancements with SQL Server 2014 by Sourabh Agarwal - PFE Microsoft LUNCH BREAK Performing an effective Presentation by Pinal Dave – Community Member (SQLAuthority.com) InMemory Enhancements with SQL Server 2014 by Balmukund Lakhani – Support Escalation Engg. Microsoft Some more lesser known enhancements with SQL Server 2014 by Vinod Kumar – Technical Architect Microsoft MTC Power Packed – Power BI with SQL Server by Kane Conway – Support Escalation Engg. Microsoft I am very big fan of Amit, Balmukund and Vinod – I have always watched their session and this time, I am going to once again attend their session without missing a single min. They are SQL legends, I am going to be there and learn when they are sharing their knowledge.  Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Author Visit, T SQL

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  • Find Rules and Defaults using the PowerShell for SQL Server 2008 Provider

    - by BuckWoody
    I ran into an issue the other day where I couldn't set up some features in SQL Server 2008 because they ddon't support the use of Rules or Defaults. Let me explain a little more about that. In older versions of SQL Server, you could decalre a "Rule" or "Default" just like you do with a Table Constraint today. You would then "bind" these rules or defaults to the tables you wanted them to apply to. Sure, there are advantages and disadvantages to this approach, but it certainly isn't standard Data Definition Language (DDL), so they are deprecated and many features don't work with them any more. Honestly, it's been so long since I've seen them in use I had forgotten to even check for them. My suspicion is that this was a new database created with an older script. Nevertheless, the feature failed when it ran into one. Immediately I thought that I had better build some logic into my process to try and catch those - but how? Lots of choices here, but since I was using PowerShell to do the rest of the work, I thought I would investigate how easy it would be just to do it there. And using the SQL Server 2008 provider, this could not be simpler. I won't show all of the scrupt here, because I was testing for these as a condition and then bailing out of the script and sending a notification, but all it is using is the DIR command! Here's an example on my "UNIVAC" computer for the "pubs" database: Find Rules using PowerShell: dir SQLSERVER:\SQL\UNIVAC\DEFAULT\Databases\pubs\Rulesdir SQLSERVER:\SQL\UNIVAC\DEFAULT\Databases\pubs\Defaults And this one will look in all databases:  #All Databases:dir SQLSERVER:\SQL\UNIVAC\DEFAULT\Databases | select-object -property Name, Rules, Defaults Awesome. Love me some PowerShell. Script Disclaimer, for people who need to be told this sort of thing: Never trust any script, including those that you find here, until you understand exactly what it does and how it will act on your systems. Always check the script on a test system or Virtual Machine, not a production system. Yes, there are always multiple ways to do things, and this script may not work in every situation, for everything. It’s just a script, people. All scripts on this site are performed by a professional stunt driver on a closed course. Your mileage may vary. Void where prohibited. Offer good for a limited time only. Keep out of reach of small children. Do not operate heavy machinery while using this script. If you experience blurry vision, indigestion or diarrhea during the operation of this script, see a physician immediately.       Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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  • what differs a computer scientist/software engineer to regular people who learn programming language and APIs?

    - by Amumu
    In University, we learn and reinvent the wheel a lot to truly learn the programming concepts. For example, we may learn assembly language to understand, what happens inside the box, and how the system operates, when we execute our code. This helps understanding higher level concepts deeper. For example, memory management like in C is just an abstraction of manually managed memory contents and addresses. The problem is, when we're going to work, usually productivity is required more. I could program my own containers, or string class, or date/time (using POSIX with C system call) to do the job, but then, it would take much longer time to use existing STL or Boost library, which abstract all of those thing and very easy to use. This leads to an issue, that a regular person doesn't need to get through all the low level/under the hood stuffs, who learns only one programming language and using language-related APIs. These people may eventually compete with the mainstream graduates from computer science or software engineer and call themselves programmers. At first, I don't think it's valid to call them programmers. I used to think, a real programmer needs to understand the computer deeply (but not at the electronic level). But then I changed my mind. After all, they get the job done and satisfy all the test criteria (logic, performance, security...), and in business environment, who cares if you're an expert and understand how computer works or not. You may get behind the "amateurs" if you spend to much time learning about how things work inside. It is totally valid for those people to call themselves programmers. This makes me confuse. So, after all, programming should be considered an universal skill? Does programming language and concepts matter or the problems we solve matter? For example, many C/C++ vs Java and other high level language, one of the main reason is because C/C++ features performance, as well as accessing low level facility. One of the main reason (in my opinion), is coding in C/C++ seems complex, so people feel good about it (not trolling anyone, just my observation, and my experience as well. Try to google "C hacker syndrome"). While Java on the other hand, made for simplifying programming tasks to help developers concentrate on solving their problems. Based on Java rationale, if the programing language keeps evolve, one day everyone can map their logic directly with natural language. Everyone can program. On that day, maybe real programmers are mathematicians, who could perform most complex logic (including business logic and academic logic) without worrying about installing/configuring compiler, IDEs? What's our job as a computer scientist/software engineer? To solve computer specific problems or to solve problems in general? For example, take a look at this exame: http://cm.baylor.edu/ICPCWiki/attach/Problem%20Resources/2010WorldFinalProblemSet.pdf . The example requires only basic knowledge about the programming language, but focus more on problem solving with the language. In sum, what differs a computer scientist/software engineer to regular people who learn programming language and APIs? A mathematician can be considered a programmer, if he is good enough to use programming language to implement his formula. Can we programmer do this? Probably not for most of us, since we specialize about computer, not math. An electronic engineer, who learns how to use C to program for his devices, can be considered a programmer. If the programming languages keep being simplified, may one day the software engineers, who implements business logic and create softwares, be obsolete? (Not for computer scientist though, since many of the CS topics are scientific, and science won't change, but technology will).

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  • Ubuntu keyboard shortcuts - two-part question

    - by Don
    Background: I come from a Windows background and just started dual-booting Ubuntu (my first Linux experience) about 4 days ago. So my systems are Windows 7/Ubuntu 12.04, and so far I'm loving Ubuntu. I am a dedicated mouse-abolitionist (trackpads are hell) and do most of my browsing and navigation with keyboard shortcuts. However, on switching to Ubuntu, a lot of my keyboard shortcuts are gone, and my productivity has resultantly taken a huge hit anytime I am using Ubuntu. Problem 1: My computer was designed to display on-screen notifications for a second when I hit caps-lock or num-lock, and there are no constant indicators of the lock status (LEDs, etc). In Ubuntu, the keys still worked, but the notifications were gone. Googling got me a tutorial on key-binding(Compiz) and scripts, so now I have capslock and numlock running this script: #!/bin/bash icon="/usr/share/icons/gnome/scalable/devices/keyboard.svg" case $1 in 'scrl') mask=3 key="Scroll" ;; 'num') mask=2 key="Num" ;; 'caps') mask=1 key="Caps" ;; esac value=$(xset q | grep "LED mask" | sed -r "s/.*LED mask:\s+[0-9a-fA-F]+([0-9a-fA-F]).*/\1/") if [ $(( 0x$value & 0x$mask )) == $mask ] then output="$key Lock" output2="On" else output="$key Lock" output2="Off" fi notify-send -i $icon "$output" "$output2" -t 1000 But, whether turning it off or on, the notifications always say that I have turned it on. Is there an easy fix for this, or an easier way to work it to get it do display the CORRECT notifications? Problem 2: I'm not sure if this is because of my keyboard or Ubuntu. In Windows, I use Chrome and use the ctrl+pgUp/pgDwn shortcuts quite a bit to switch between tabs. On my keyboard, I can enter pgUp and pgDwn by either disabling NumLock and hitting 9 or 3 respectively on the 10key. Alternately I can hold the fn key and hit up or down arrow. The first method is the one I very heavily relied upon, and it works in Firefox for Ubuntu, but not in Chrome nor in Chromium. The second method (ctrl + fn + up/down) works fine in Chrome. However, I'd dearly like to find a method to make the first method work. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance for your help. Update: @julien: I've checked the keyboard layout options - I didn't find anything that seemed useful for this goal. @Marty: The script runs once when the button is pressed. In Compiz, I've tied those two keys to the script, so when I press the button, it runs the script with the button pressed as a parameter. Update: @elmicha: Thanks. That one works a lot better, and it even pops an icon into the status bar when caps lock is on. There's still a very slight problem in that if I quickly tap the key twice, the image will show that it has been turned on and then turned off, and the notifaction will come and go from my status area, but the text of both notifications will be "Caps Lock on". Same with Num Lock. However, if the time between presses is long enough for the first notification to disappear, everything displays correctly. Given how quickly the notifications disappear, I don't expect this will pose too much of a problem for me.

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  • More Stuff less Fluff

    - by brendonpage
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/brendonpage/archive/2013/11/08/more-stuff-less-fluff.aspxYAGNI – "You Aren't Going To Need It". This is an acronym commonly used in software development to remind developers to only write what they need. This acronym exists because software developers have gotten into the habit of writing everything they need to solve a problem and then everything they think they're going to possibly need in the future. Since we can't predict the future this results in a large portion of the code that we write never being used. That extra code causes unnecessary complexity, which makes it harder to understand and harder to modify when we inevitably have to write something that we didn't think of. I've known about YAGNI for some time now but I never really got it. The words made sense and the idea was clear but the concept never sank in. I was one of those devs who'd happily write a ton of code in the anticipation of future needs. In my mind this was an essential part of writing high quality code. I didn't realise that in doing so I was actually writing low quality code. If you are anything like me you are probably thinking "Lies and propaganda! High quality code needs to be future proof." I agree! But what makes code future proof? If we could see into the future the answer would be simple, code that allows for or meets all future requirements. Since we can't see the future the best we can do is write code that can easily adapt to future requirements, this means writing flexible code. Flexible code is: Fast to understand. Fast to add to. Fast to modify. To be flexible code has to be simple, this means only making it as complex as it needs to be to meet those 3 criteria. That is high quality code. YAGNI! The art is in deciding where to place the seams (abstractions) that will give you flexibility without making decisions about future functionality. Robert C Martin explains it very nicely, he says a good architecture allows you to defer decisions because if you can defer a decision then you have the flexibility to change it. I've recently had a YAGNI experience which brought this all into perspective. I was working on a new project which had multiple clients that connect to a server hosted in the cloud. I was tasked with adding a feature to the desktop client that would allow users to capture items that would then be saved to the cloud. My immediate thought was "Hey we have multiple clients so I should build a web service for these items, that way we can access them from other clients", so I went to work and this is what I created.  I stood back and gazed upon what I'd created with a warm fuzzy feeling. It was beautiful! Then the time came for the team to use the design I'd created for another feature with a new entity. Let's just say that they didn't get the same warm fuzzy feeling that I did when they looked at the design. After much discussion they eventually got it through to me that I'd bloated the design based on an assumption of future functionality. After much more discussion we cut the design down to the following. This design gives us future flexibility with no extra work, it is as complex as it needs to be. It has been a couple of months since this incident and we still haven't needed to access either of the entities from other clients. Using the simpler design allowed us to do more stuff with less stuff!

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  • New spreadsheet accompanying SmartAssembly 6.0 provides statistics for prioritizing bug fixes

    - by Jason Crease
    One problem developers face is how to prioritize the many voices providing input into software bugs. If there is something wrong with a function that is the darling of a particular user, he or she tends to want action - now! The developer's dilemma is how to ascertain that the problem is major or minor, and when it should be addressed. Now there is a new spreadsheet accompanying SmartAssembly that provides exactly that information in an objective manner. This might upset those used to getting their way by being the loudest or pushiest, but ultimately it will ensure that the biggest problems get the priority they deserve. Here's how it works: Feature Usage Reporting (FUR) in SmartAssembly 6.0 provides a wealth of data about how your software is used by its end-users, but in the SmartAssembly UI the data isn't mined to its full extent. The new Excel spreadsheet for FUR extracts statistics from that data and presents them in easy-to-understand forms. I developed the spreadsheet feature in Microsoft Excel, using a fair amount of VBA. The spreadsheet connects directly to the database which stores the feature-usage data, and shows a wide variety of statistics and tables extracted from that data.  You want to know what percentage of users have used the 'Export as XML' button?  No problem.  How popular is v5.3 is compared to v5.1?  There's graphs for that. You need to know whether you have more users in Russia or Brazil? There's a big pie chart for that. I recently witnessed the spreadsheet in use here at Red Gate Software. My bug is exposed as minor While testing new features in .NET Reflector, I found a usability bug in the Refresh button and filed it in the Red Gate bug-tracking system. The bug was labelled "V.NEXT MINOR," which means it would be fixed in the next point release. Although I'm a professional tester, I'm not much different than most software users when they discover a bug that affects them personally: I wanted it fixed immediately. There was an ulterior motive at play here, of course. I would get to see my colleagues put the spreadsheet to work. The Reflector team loaded up the spreadsheet to view the feature-usage statistics that SmartAssembly collected for the refresh button. The resulting statistics showed that only 8% of users have ever pressed the Refresh button, and only 2.6% of sessions involve pressing the button. When Refresh is used, it's only pressed on average 1.6 times a session, with a maximum of 8 times during a session. This was in stark contrast to what I was doing as a conscientious tester: pressing it dozens of times per session. The spreadsheet provides evidence that my bug was a minor one. On to more serious things Based on the solid evidence uncovered by the spreadsheet, the Reflector team concluded that my experience does not represent that of the vast majority of Reflector's recorded users. The Reflector team had ample data to send me back to my desk and keep the bug classified as "V.NEXT MINOR." The team then went back to fixing more serious bugs. If I'm in the shoes of the user, I might not be thoroughly happy, but I cannot deny that the evidence clearly placed me in a very small minority. Next time I'm hoping the spreadsheet will prove that my bug is more important. Find out more about Feature-Usage Reporting here. The spreadsheet is available for free download here.

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  • Big Data – ClustrixDB – Extreme Scale SQL Database with Real-time Analytics, Releases Software Download – NewSQL

    - by Pinal Dave
    There are so many things to learn and there is so little time we all have. As we have little time we need to be selective to learn whatever we learn. I believe I know quite a lot of things in SQL but I still do not know what is around SQL. I have started to learn about NewSQL recently. If you wonder what is NewSQL I encourage all of you to read my blog post about NewSQL over here Big Data – Buzz Words: What is NewSQL – Day 10 of 21. NewSQL databases are quickly becoming popular – providing the scale of NoSQL with the SQL features and transactions. As a part of learning NewSQL database, I have recently started to learn about ClustrixDB. ClustrixDB has been the most mature NewSQL database used by some of the largest internet sites in the world for over 3 years, with extensive SQL support. In addition to scale, it provides fast real-time analytics by bringing massively parallel processing (MPP), available only in warehousing databases, to the transactional database. The reason I am more intrigued about learning ClustrixDB is their recent announcement on Oct 31. ClustrixDB was only available as an appliance, but now with their software release on Oct 31, everyone can use it. It is now available as forever free for up to 12 cores with community support, and there is a 45 day trial for unlimited cluster sizes. With the forever free world, I am indeed interested in ClustrixDB now. I know that few of the leading eCommerce sites in the world uses them for their transactional database. Here are few of the details I have quickly noted for ClustrixDB. ClustrixDB allows user to: Scale by simply adding nodes to the cluster with a single command Run billions of transactions a day Run fast real-time analytics Achieve high-availability with recovery from node failure Manages itself Easily migrate from MySQL as it is nearly plug-and-play compatible, use MySQL drivers, tools and replication. While I was going through the documentation I realized that ClustrixDB also has extensive support for SQL features including complex queries involving joins on a dozen or more tables, aggregates, sorts, sub-queries. It also supports stored procedures, triggers, foreign keys, partitioned and temporary tables, and fully online schema changes. It is indeed a very matured product and SQL solution. Indeed Clusterix sound very promising solution, I decided to dig a bit deeper to understand who are current customers of the Clustrix as they exist in the industry for quite a few years. Their client list is indeed very interesting and here is my quick research about them. Twoo.com – Europe’s largest social discovery (dating) site runs 4.4 Billion Transactions a day with table sizes over a Terabyte, on a 168 core cluster. EngageBDR – Top 3 in the online advertising category uses ClustrixDB to serve 6.9 billion ads a day through real-time bidding platform. Their reports went from 4 hours to 15 seconds. NoMoreRack – Top 2 fastest growing e-commerce company in US used ClustrixDB for high availability and fast growth through Amazon cloud. MakeMyTrip – India’s leading travel site runs on ClustrixDB with two clusters running as multi-master in Chennai and Bangalore. Many enterprises such as AOL, CSC, Rakuten, Symantec use ClustrixDB when their applications need scale. I must accept that I am impressed with the information I have learned so far and now is the time to do some hand’s on experience with their product. I want to learn this technology so in future when it is about NewSQL, I know what I am talking about. Read more why Clustrix explains why you ClustrixDB might be the right database for you. Download ClustrixDB with me today and install it on your machine so in future when we discuss the technical aspects of it, we all are on the same page. The software can be downloaded here. Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com)Filed under: Big Data, MySQL, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: Clustrix

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  • History of Mobile Technology

    - by David Dorf
    Over the last ten years, mobile phones have gone through several incremental technology leaps that have added capabilities that impact the retail industry.  I've listed the six major ones below, along with their long-lasting impact. 1. Location In the US, the FCC required mobile phones to implement E911 (emergency calls) by 2006, requiring the caller to be located to within 300 meters.  Back in 2000, GPS was opened up for civilian use, and by 2004 Qualcomm had figured out how to use GPS in mobile phones.  So mobile operators moved from cell tower triangulation to GPS, principally for E911.  But then lots of other uses became apparent, especially navigation.  The earliest mobile apps from retailers made it easy to find nearby stores, and companies are looking at ways to use WiFi triangulation inside stores. 2. Computer Vision In 1997 Philippe Kahn shared a photo of his newborn using a mobile phone thus launching the popularity of instant visual communications.  Over the years the quality of the cameras got better, reaching the point where barcodes could be read around 2008.  That's when Occipital came on the scene with their Red Laser application, which was eventually acquired by eBay.  This opened up the ability for consumers to easily price compare inside stores.  Other interesting apps included Tesco's Wine Finder and Amazon's Price Checker, both allowing products to be identified by picture. 3. Augmented Reality Once the mobile phone had GPS, a video camera, and compass functionality it was suddenly possible to overlay digital information on the screen in real-time.  Yelp, which was using GPS to find nearby merchants, created a backdoor called Monocle on the iPhone that showed nearby merchants overlayed on the video camera view.  Today AR apps are mostly used by retailers for marketing, like Moosejaw's app that undresses models in their catalog. 4. Geo-Fencing So if we're able to track the location of a mobile phone, why not use that context to offer timely information?  My first experience with geo-fencing came courtesy of North Face, the outdoor enthusiast store. When a mobile phone enters a predetermined area, like near a store, a text message is sent to phone with an offer or useful information.  Of course retailers can geo-fence their competitors as well and find out which customers are aren't so loyal. 5. Digital Wallet Mobile payments leverage different technologies such as NFC, QRCodes, bluetooth, and SMS to facilitate communication between the consumers's phone and the retailer's point-of-sale. The key here is the potential to consolidate loyalty cards, coupons, and bank cards into the mobile phone and enable faster checkout.  Nobody does this better than Starbucks today, but McDonald's and Duncan Donuts aren't far behind.  Google, Isis, Paypal, Square, and MCX are all vying for leadership in this area.  If NFC does finally take off, it will be leveraged by retailers in more places than just the POS. 6. Voice Response Mobile Phones have had the ability to interpret simple voice commands for a while, but Google and Amazon were the first to use voice to allow searches for products.  Allowing searches by text, barcode, and voice makes it easy to comparison shop in the aisles.  Walmart even uses voice to build shopping lists, and if the Siri API is even opened we could see lots more innovation in this area.

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  • PASS summit 2013. We do not remember days. We remember moments.

    - by Maria Zakourdaev
      "Business or pleasure?" barked the security officer in the Charlotte International Airport. "I’m not sure, sir," I whimpered, immediately losing all courage. "I'm here for the database technologies summit called PASS”. "Sounds boring. Definitely a business trip." Boring?! He couldn’t have been more wrong. If he only knew about the countless meetings throughout the year where I waved my hands at my great boss and explained again and again how fantastic this summit is and how much I learned last year. One by one, the drops of water began eating away at the stone. He finally approved of my trip just to stop me from torturing him. Time moves as slow as a turtle when you are waiting for something. Time runs as fast as a cheetah when you are there. PASS has come...and passed. It’s been an amazing week. Enormous sqlenergy has filled the city, filled the convention center and the surrounding pubs and restaurants. There were awesome speakers, great content, and the chance to meet most inspiring database professionals from all over the world. Some sessions were unforgettable. Imagine a fully packed room with more than 500 people in awed silence, catching each and every one of Paul Randall's words. His tremendous energy and deep knowledge were truly thrilling. No words can describe Rob Farley's unique presentation style, captivating and engaging the audience. When the precious session minutes were over, I could tell that the many random puzzle pieces of information that his listeners knew had been suddenly combined into a clear, cohesive picture. I was amazed as always by Paul White's great sense of humor and his phenomenal ability to explain complicated concepts in a simple way. The keynote by the brilliant Dr. DeWitt from Microsoft in front of the full summit audience of 5000 deeply listening people was genuinely breathtaking. The entire conference throughout offered excellent speakers who inspired me to absorb the knowledge and use it when I got home. To my great surprise, I found that there are other people in this world who like replication as much I do. During the Birds of a Feather Luncheon, SQL Server MVP Ted Krueger was writing a script for replicating the food to other tables. I learned many things at PASS, and not all of them were about SQL. After three summits, this time I finally got the knack of networking. I actually went up and spoke to people, and believe me, that was not easy for an introvert. But this is what the summit is all about. Sqlpeople. They are the ones who make it such an exciting experience. I will be looking forward to the next year. Till then I have my notes and new ideas. How long was the summit? Thousands of unforgettable moments.

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  • Fun with Python

    - by dotneteer
    I am taking a class on Coursera recently. My formal education is in physics. Although I have been working as a developer for over 18 years and have learnt a lot of programming on the job, I still would like to gain some systematic knowledge in computer science. Coursera courses taught by Standard professors provided me a wonderful chance. The three languages recommended for assignments are Java, C and Python. I am fluent in Java and have done some projects using C++/MFC/ATL in the past, but I would like to try something different this time. I first started with pure C. Soon I discover that I have to write a lot of code outside the question that I try to solve because the very limited C standard library. For example, to read a list of values from a file, I have to read characters by characters until I hit a delimiter. If I need a list that can grow, I have to create a data structure myself, something that I have taking for granted in .Net or Java. Out of frustration, I switched to Python. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Python is very easy to learn. The tutorial on the official Python site has the exactly the right pace for me, someone with experience in another programming. After a couple of hours on the tutorial and a few more minutes of toying with IDEL, I was in business. I like the “battery supplied” philosophy that gives everything that I need out of box. For someone from C# or Java background, curly braces are replaced by colon(:) and tab spaces. Although I tend to miss colon from time to time, I found that the idea of tab space is actually very nice once I get use to them. I also like to feature of multiple assignment and multiple return parameters. When I need to return a by-product, I just add it to the list of returns. When would use Python? I would use Python if I need to computer anything quick. The language is very easy to use. Python has a good collection of libraries (packages). The REPL of the interpreter allows me test ideas quickly before committing them into script. Lots of computer science work have been ported from Lisp to Python. Some universities are even teaching SICP in Python. When wouldn’t I use Python? I mostly would not use it in a managed environment, such as Ironpython or Jython. Both .Net and Java already have a rich library so one has to make a choice which library to use. If we use the managed runtime library, the code will tie to the particular runtime and thus not portable. If we use the Python library, then we will face the relatively long start-up time. For this reason, I would not recommend to use Ironpython for WP7 development. The only situation that I see merit with managed Python is in a server application where I can preload Python so that the start-up time is not a concern. Using Python as a managed glue language is an over-kill most of the time. A managed Scheme could be a better glue language as it is small enough to start-up very fast.

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  • Lead, Follow, or Get out of the way

    - by Daniel Moth
    This is one of the sayings (attributed to Thomas Paine) that totally resonated with me from the first time I heard it, which was only 3 years ago during some training course at work: "Lead, Follow, or Get out of the way" You'll find many books with this title and you'll find it quoted by politicians and other leaders in various countries at various times... the quote is open to interpretation and works on many levels. To set the tone of what this means to me, I'll use a simple micro example: In any given conversation, you are either leading it or following it, at different times/snapshots of the conversation. If you are not willing or able to lead it, and you are not willing or able to follow it, then you should depart. The bad alternative which this guidance encourages you NOT to do is to stick around and obstruct progress by not following, not leading, and simply complaining or trying to derail the discussion in no particular direction. The same pattern applies at your position/role at work. Either follow your management/leadership team, or try to lead them to what you think is a better place, or change jobs. Don't stick around complaining about the direction things are going, while not actively trying to either change things or make peace with it. In the previous paragraph you can replace the word "your management" with "the people reporting to you" and the guidance still holds. Either lead your direct reports to where you think they should go, or follow their lead, or change jobs. Complaining about folks not taking direction while doing nothing is not a maintainable state. To me this quote is not about a permanent state, it is not about some people always leading and some always following: It is about a role/hat that anybody can play/wear at any given moment. One minute I am leading you, the next I am following you, and the next we are both following someone else and so on... When there is disagreement, debate the different directions for as long as it takes for you to be comfortable that you can either follow or lead. If you don't become comfortable with either of those, get out of the way. Something to remember is that it is impossible to learn how to lead well, without learning how to follow well (probably deserves its own blog entry)... Things go wrong when someone thinks that they must always be leading, or when everybody wants to follow and nobody steps up to lead... Things go wrong when more than one person wants to lead and they don't try to reach agreement on a shared direction, stubbornly sticking to their guns pulling the rest of the team in multiple directions... Things go wrong when more than one person wants to lead and after numerous and lengthy discussions, none of them decides to follow or get out of the way... Things go wrong when people don't want to lead, don't want to follow, and insist on sticking around... While there are a few ways things that can go wrong as enumerated in the previous paragraph, the most common one in my experience is the last one I mentioned. You'll recognize these folks as the ones that always complain about everything that is wrong with their company/product but do nothing about it. Every time you hear someone giving feedback on how something is wrong or suboptimal, ask them "So now that you identified the problem, what do you think the solution is and what are you doing to drive us to that solution?" The next time things start going wrong, step up and remind everyone: Lead, Follow, or Get out of the way. For more perspectives, and for input to help you form your own interpretation, search the web for this phrase to see in what contexts it is being used (bing, google). Finally, regardless of your political views, I hope you can appreciate if only as an example this perspective of someone leading by actually getting out of the way. Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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