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• When to use Aspect Oriented Architecture (AOA/AOD)

  When is it appropriate to use aspect oriented architecture? I think the only honest answer to this question is that it depends on the context for which the question is being asked. There really are no hard and fast rules regarding the selection of an architectural model(s) for a project because each model provides good and bad benefits. Every system is built with a unique requirements and constraints. This context will dictate when to use one type of architecture over another or in conjunction with others. To me aspect oriented architecture models should be a sub-phase in the architectural modeling and design process especially when creating enterprise level models. Personally, I like to use this approach to create a base architectural model that is defined by non-functional requirements and system quality attributes.   This general model can then be used as a starting point for additional models because it is targets all of the business key quality attributes required by the system.Aspect oriented architecture is a method for modeling non-functional requirements and quality attributes of a system known as aspects. These models do not deal directly with specific functionality. They do categorize functionality of the system. This approach allows a system to be created with a strong emphasis on separating system concerns into individual components. These cross cutting components enables a systems to create with compartmentalization in regards to non-functional requirements or quality attributes.  This allows for the reduction in code because an each component maintains an aspect of a system that can be called by other aspects. This approach also allows for a much cleaner and smaller code base during the implementation and support of a system. Additionally, enabling developers to develop systems based on aspect-oriented design projects will be completed faster and will be more reliable because existing components can be shared across a system; thus, the time needed to create and test the functionality is reduced.   Example of an effective use of Aspect Oriented ArchitectureIn my experiences, aspect oriented architecture can be very effective with large or more complex systems. Typically, these types of systems have a large number of concerns so the act of defining them is very beneficial for reducing the system’s complexity because components can be developed to address each concern while exposing functionality to the other system components. The benefits to using the aspect oriented approach as the starting point for a system is that it promotes communication between IT and the business due to the fact that the aspect oriented models are quality attributes focused so not much technical understanding is needed to understand the model.An example of this can be in developing a new intranet website. Common Intranet Concerns: Error Handling Security Logging Notifications Database connectivity Example of a not as effective use of Aspect Oriented ArchitectureAgain in my experiences, aspect oriented architecture is not as effective with small or less complex systems in comparison.  There is no need to model concerns for a system that has a limited amount of them because the added overhead would not be justified for the actual benefits of creating the aspect oriented architecture model.  Furthermore, these types of projects typically have a reduced time schedule and a limited budget.  The creation of the Aspect oriented models would increase the overhead of a project and thus increase the time needed to implement the system. An example of this is seen by creating a small application to poll a network share for new files and then FTP them to a new location.  The two primary concerns for this project is to monitor a network drive and FTP files to a new location.  There is no need to create an aspect model for this system because there will never be a need to share functionality amongst either of these concerns.  To add to my point, this system is so small that it could be created with just a few classes so the added layer of componentizing the concerns would be complete overkill for this situation. References:Brichau, Johan; D'Hondt, Theo. (2006) Aspect-Oriented Software Development (AOSD) - An Introduction. Retreived from: http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/~jbrichau/courses/introductionToAOSD.pdf

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• Access Denied

  - by Tony Davis

  When Microsoft executives wake up in the night screaming, I suspect they are having a nightmare about their own version of Frankenstein's monster. Created with the best of intentions, without thinking too hard of the long-term strategy, and having long outlived its usefulness, the monster still lives on, occasionally wreaking vengeance on the innocent. Its name is Access; a living synthesis of disparate body parts that is resistant to all attempts at a mercy-killing. In 1986, Microsoft had no database products, and needed one for their new OS/2 operating system, the successor to MSDOS. In 1986, they bought exclusive rights to Sybase DataServer, and were also intent on developing a desktop database to capture Ashton-Tate's dominance of that market, with dbase. This project, first called 'Omega' and later 'Cirrus', eventually spawned two products: Visual Basic in 1991 and Access in late 1992. Whereas Visual Basic battled with PowerBuilder for dominance in the client-server market, Access easily won the desktop database battle, with Dbase III and DataEase falling away. Access did an excellent job of abstracting and simplifying the task of building small database applications in a short amount of time, for a small number of departmental users, and often for a transient requirement. There is an excellent front end and forms generator. We not only see it in Access but parts of it also reappear in SSMS. It's good. A business user can pull together useful reports, without relying on extensive technical support. A skilled Access programmer can deliver a fairly sophisticated application, whilst the traditional client-server programmer is still sharpening his pencil. Even for the SQL Server programmer, the forms generator of Access is useful for sketching out application designs. So far, so good, but here's where the problems start; Access ties together two different products and the backend of Access is the bugbear. The limitations of Jet/ACE are well-known and documented. They range from MDB files that are prone to corruption, especially as they grow in size, pathetic security, and "copy and paste" Backups. The biggest problem though, was an infamous lack of scalability. Because Microsoft never realized how long the product would last, they put little energy into improving the beast. Microsoft 'ate their own dog food' by using Access for Microsoft Exchange and Outlook. They choked on it. For years, scalability and performance problems with Exchange Server have been laid at the door of the Jet Blue engine on which it relies. Substantial development work in Exchange 2010 was required, just in order to improve the engine and storage schema so that it more efficiently handled the reading and writing of mails. The alternative of using SQL Server just never panned out. The Jet engine was designed to limit concurrent users to a small number (10-20). When Access applications outgrew this, bitter experience proved that there really is no easy upgrade path from Access to SQL Server, beyond rewriting the whole lot from scratch. The various initiatives to do this never quite bridged the cultural gulf between Access and a true relational database So, what are the obvious alternatives for small, strategic database applications? I know many users who, for simple 'list maintenance' requirements are very happy using Excel databases. Surely, now that PowerPivot has led the way, it is time for Microsoft to offer a new RAD package for database application development; namely an Excel-based front end for SQL Server Express. In that way, we'll have a powerful and familiar front end, to a scalable database, and a clear upgrade path when an app takes off and needs to go enterprise. Cheers, Tony.

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• MEB: Taking Incremental Backup using last successful backup

  - by Sagar Jauhari

  Introduction In MySQL Enterprise Backup v3.7.0 (MEB 3.7.0) a new option '–incremental-base' was introduced. Using this option a user can take in incremental backup without specifying the '–start-lsn' option. Description of this option can be found here. Instead of '–start-lsn' the user can provide the location of the last full backup or incremental backup using the 'dir:' prefix. MEB would extract the end LSN of this backup from the mysql.backup_history table as well as the backup_variables.txt file (for verification) to use it as the start LSN of the incremental backup. Because of popular demand, in MEB 3.7.1 the option '-incremental-base' has been extended further. The idea is to allow the user to take an incremental backup as easily as possible using the '–incremental-base' option. With the new option MEB queries the backup_history table for the last successful backup and uses its end LSN as the start LSN for the new incremental backup. It should be noted that the last successful backup is used irrespective of the location of the backup. Details A new prefix 'history:' has been introduced for the –incremental-base option and currently the only permissible value is the string "last_backup". So using the new option an incremental backup can be taken with the following command: $ mysqlbackup --incremental --incremental-backup-dir=/media/mysqlbackup-repo/ --incremental-base=history:last_backup backup When MEB attempts to extract the end LSN of the last successful backup from the mysql.backup_history table, it also scans the corresponding backup destination for the old backup and tries to read the meta files at this backup destination. If a valid backup still exists at the backup destination and the meta files can be read, MEB compares the end LSN found in the mysql.backup_history table with the end LSN found in the backup meta files of the old backup. Assuming that the host MySQL server is alive and mysql.backup_history can be accessed by MEB, the behaviour of MEB with respect to verification of the old end LSN can be summarized as follows: If 'BD' is the backup destination of the last successful backup in mysql.backup_history table and 'BHT' is the mysql.backup_history table if can_read_files_at_BD:     if end_lsn_found_at_BD == end_lsn_of_last_backup_in_BHT:         continue_with_backup()     else         return_with_error() else     continue_with_backup() Advantages Apart from ease of usability an important advantage of this option is that the user can do repeated incremental backups without changing the command line. This is possible using the '–with-timestamp' option along with this new option. For example, the following command $ mysqlbackup --with-timestamp --incremental --incremental-backup-dir=/media/mysqlbackup-repo/ --incremental-base=history:last_backup backup  can be used to perform successive incremental backups in the directory /media/mysqlbackup-repo . Limitations The option '--incremental-base=history:last_backup' should not be used when the user takes different kinds of concurrent backups on the same MySQL server (say different partial backups at multiple locations). should not be used after any temporary or experimental backups performed on the server (which where successful!). needs to be used with precaution since any intermediate successful backup without the –no-connection will be used as the base backup for the next incremental backup.  will give an error in case a valid backup exists at the location of the last successful backup and whose end LSN is different from that of the last successful backup found in the backup_history table. Date: 2012-06-19 HTML generated by org-mode 6.33x in emacs 23

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• Do MORE with WebCenter

  - by Michael Snow

  WEBCAST THURSDAY!! 03/22/12 Do you need to lower costs? Raise Productivity? Foster Innovation? Improve Online Engagement? But you’re still stuck with Documentum? Step away from the ledge – there is hope – let us help you. Top 4 Content Imperatives · Lower Costs - Reduce labor, maintenance fees, storage and electrical consumption · Raise Productivity - Automation and integration, communication, findability · Foster Innovation - Enable collaboration, expertise location · Improve Online Engagement – enable user-driven, dynamic marketing initiatives With the coming technology wave we see four content imperatives. Every organization has had to reduce costs, cost cutting has become a way of life. Everyone is working three jobs as positions are eliminated. And so we have to reduce labor, reduce maintenance, and reduce money we are wasting on things like storing content that is redundant or no longer useful. We also, to fill that gap, need to raise productivity. Knowledge workers represent the fastest growing segment of the workforce, accounting for 40%-75% of the employees at organizations in sectors like financial services, life sciences, healthcare and retail.  What’s more, their wages total 18 percent of the United States GDP. And so we can’t afford information systems that don’t let our top performers be the best they can be. We look to automate the content processes, provide ways to integrate that content into our processes, provide communication to make decisions, and to make content more findable so people can make the right decision and move the process forward. And really to get ourselves out of the current financial status, we can only cut costs so far. We have to innovate out of economic tough times – to find new products and new markets. And to enable the innovation process, we have to enable collaboration and expertise location. So much of innovation is about building on innovations that have come before. To solve problems, we have to be able to find what our organization has already created. We find that problems we need to solve have already been solved if we can find the right document, the right person. So we have to provide systems that enable us to stand on the shoulders of our organization’s accomplishments. Good content drives great marketing. Online engagement is growing as an absolute necessity for modern growing marketing organizations that require the business users be enabled for dynamic marketing content creation, updates and targeted content creation and management. Unfortunately – if you are currently stuck with Documentum, you are really lacking in your Web Experience Management capabilities. Documentum previously used FatWire for web publishing. Now FatWire is part of Oracle. Oracle provides powerful web engagement capabilities: Increase sales and loyalty by optimizing online engagement Create, manage and moderate contextually relevant, targeted and interactive online experiences Optimize customer engagement across, web, mobile and social channels Manage large scale multichannel global online presence with integration to enterprise applications Enable business users to control their content and make their own updates Publish content from native files – enable navigation of project documents, procedures, policy information Enable content display and updates from existing web applications – one click to drag and drop content management functionality So you get the ability to self-publish information and make it navigable, to move the process of publishing from IT to business users, and the ability to address a whole new area of user engagement with web experience management. So… if you are still stuck with Documentum and don’t know what to do – contact us – not only will Oracle help you step away from the ledge, but also with the MoveOff Documentum program, we are offering you a way – trade-in your Documentum licenses for a 100% credit on Oracle WebCenter. How’s that for a nice bonus? It’s time to stop maintaining Documentum, and to start innovating with Oracle WebCenter. Learn More Here! To learn more about what Oracle WebCenter can offer you today – join us for a webcast – your eyes will be opened to all that’s possible. Do More with WebCenter: Extend Beyond Content Management

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• Productivity vs Security [closed]

  - by nerijus

  Really do not know is this right place to ask such a questions. But it is about programming in a different light. So, currently contracting with company witch pretends to be big corporation. Everyone is so important that all small issues like developers are ignored. Give you a sample: company VPN is configured so that if you have VPN then HTTP traffic is banned. Bearing this in mind can you imagine my workflow: Morning. Ok time to get latest source. Ups, no VPN. Let’s connect. Click-click. 3 sec. wait time. Ok getting source. Do I have emails? Ups. VPN is on, can’t check my emails. Need to wait for source to come up. Finally here it is! Ok Click-click VPN is gone. What is in my email. Someone reported a bug. Good, let’s track it down. It is in TFS already. Oh, dam, I need VPN. Click-click. Ok, there is description. Yea, I have seen this issue in stachoverflow.com. Let’s go there. Ups, no internet. Click-click. No internet. What? IPconfig… DHCP server kicked me out. Dam. Renew ip. 1..2..3. Ok internet is back. Google: site: stachoverflow.com 3 min. I have solution. Great I love stackoverflow.com. Don’t want to remember days where there was no stackoveflow.com. Ok. Copy paste this like to studio. Dam, studio is stalled, can’t reach files on TFS. Click-click. VPN is back. Get source out, paste my code. Grand. Let’s see what other comments about an issue in stackoverflow.com tells. Hmm.. There is a link. Click. Dammit! No internet. Click-click. No internet. DHCP kicked me out. Dammit. Now it is even worse: this happens 3-4 times a day. After certain amount of VPN connections open\closed my internet goes down solid. Only way to get internet back is reboot. All my browser tabs/SQL windows/studio will be gone. This happened just now when I am typing this. Back to issue I am solving right now: I am getting frustrated - I do not care about better solution for this issue. Let’s do it somehow and forget. This Click-click barrier between internet and TFS kills me… Sounds familiar? You could say there are VPN settings to change. No! This is company laptop, not allowed to do changes. I am very very lucky to have admin privileges on my machine. Most of developers don’t. So just learned to live with this frustration. It takes away 40-60 minutes daily. Tried to email company support, admins. They are too important ant too busy with something that just ignored my little man’s problem. Politely ignored. Question is: Is this normal in corporate world? (Have been in States, Canada, Germany. Never seen this.)

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• So You Want to Be a Social Media Director

  - by Mike Stiles

  Do you want to be a Social Media Director? Some say the title is already losing its relevance; that social should be a basic skill that is required and used no matter what your position is inside the enterprise. I suppose that’s visionary, and a fun thing for thought leaders to say. But in the vast majority of business organizations, we’re so far away from that reality that the thought of not having someone driving social’s implementation and guiding its proper usage conjures up images of anarchy. That said, social media has become so broad, so catch-all, and so extended across business functions, that today’s Social Media Director, depending on the size of their staff, must make jacks-of-all-trades look like one-trick-ponies. Just as the purview of the CMO has grown all-encompassing, the disciplines required of their heads of social are stacking up. Master of Content Every social pipeline you build must stay filled, with quantity and quality. Content takes time, and the job never stops. Never. And no, it’s not true that anybody can write. Master of Customer Experience You must have a passion for hearing from customers and making them really happy. Master of PR You must know how to communicate and leverage the trust you’ve built when crises strike. Couldn’t hurt to be a Master of Politics. Master of Social Technology So many social management tools on the market. You have to know what social tech ecosystem makes sense and avoid piecemeal point solutions. Master of Business Development Social for selling and prospecting is hot, and you have to know how to use social to do it. Master of Analytics Nothing else matters if you can’t prove social is helping the brand. That’s right, creative content guy has to also be a math and stats geek. Good luck with that. Master of Paid Media You’ve got to learn the language, learn the tactics, learn the vendors and learn how to measure results. Master of Education Guess who gets to teach everyone who has no clue how to use social for business. Master of Personal Likability You’ll be leading the voice, tone, image and personality of the brand. If you don’t instinctively know how to be liked by actual people, the brand will be starting from a deficit. How deep must you go in this parade of masteries? Again, that depends on your employer’s maturity level in social. Serious players recognize these as distinct disciplines requiring true experts for maximum effect. Less serious players will need you to execute personally in many of these areas. Do the best you can, and try to grow quickly at each. If you’re the sole person executing all social…well…you’re in the game of managing expectations and trying to socially educate your employer. The good news is, you should be making a certifiable killing. If you’re alone and your salary is modest, time to understand how many brands out there crave what you’ve mastered. Not to push back against thought leaders, but the need for brand social leadership has not gone away…not even a little bit. @mikestiles @oraclesocialPhoto: Stefan Wagner, freeimages.com

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• Interview with Geoff Bones, developer on SQL Storage Compress

  - by red(at)work

  How did you come to be working at Red Gate? I've been working at Red Gate for nine months; before that I had been at a multinational engineering company. A number of my colleagues had left to work at Red Gate and spoke very highly of it, but I was happy in my role and thought, 'It can't be that great there, surely? They'll be back!' Then one day I visited to catch up them over lunch in the Red Gate canteen. I was so impressed with what I found there, that, three days later, I'd applied for a role as a developer. And how did you get into software development? My first job out of university was working as a systems programmer on IBM mainframes. This was quite a while ago: there was a lot of assembler and loading programs from tape drives and that kind of stuff. I learned a lot about how computers work, and this stood me in good stead when I moved over the development in the 90s. What's the best thing about working as a developer at Red Gate? Where should I start? One of the great things as a developer at Red Gate is the useful feedback and close contact we have with the people who use our products, either directly at trade shows and other events or through information coming through the product managers. The company's whole ethos is built around assisting the user, and this is in big contrast to my previous development roles. We aim to produce tools that people really want to use, that they enjoy using, and, as a developer, this is a great thing to aim for and a great feeling when we get it right. At Red Gate we also try to cut out the things that distract and stop us doing our jobs. As a developer, this means that I can focus on the code and the product I'm working on, knowing that others are doing a first-class job of making sure that the builds are running smoothly and that I'm getting great feedback from the testers. We keep our process light and effective, as we want to produce great software more than we want to produce great audit trails. Tell us a bit about the products you are currently working on. You mean HyperBac? First let me explain a bit about what HyperBac is. At heart it's a compression and encryption technology, but with a few added features that open up a wealth of really exciting possibilities. Right now we have the HyperBac technology in just three products: SQL HyperBac, SQL Virtual Restore and SQL Storage Compress, but we're only starting to develop what it can do. My personal favourite is SQL Virtual Restore; for example, I love the way you can use it to run independent test databases that are all backed by a single compressed backup. I don't think the market yet realises the kind of things you do once you are using these products. On the other hand, the benefits of SQL Storage Compress are straightforward: run your databases but use only 20% of the disk space. Databases are getting larger and larger, and, as they do, so does your ROI. What's a typical day for you? My days are pretty varied. We have our daily team stand-up meeting and then sometimes I will work alone on a current issue, or I'll be pair programming with one of my colleagues. From time to time we give half a day up to future planning with the team, when we look at the long and short term aims for the product and working out the development priorities. I also get to go to conferences and events, which is unusual for a development role and gives me the chance to meet and talk to our customers directly. Have you noticed anything different about developing tools for DBAs rather than other IT kinds of user? It seems to me that DBAs are quite independent minded; they know exactly what the problem they are facing is, and often have a solution in mind before they begin to look for what's on the market. This means that they're likely to cherry-pick tools from a range of vendors, picking the ones that are the best fit for them and that disrupt their environments the least. When I've met with DBAs, I've often been very impressed at their ability to summarise their set up, the issues, the obstacles they face when implementing a tool and their plans for their environment. It's easier to develop products for this audience as they give such a detailed overview of their needs, and I feel I understand their problems.

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• Xsigo and Oracle's Storage

  - by Philippe Deverchère

  Xsigo, a virtual network infrastructure provider, has recently been acquired by Oracle. Following this acquisition, one might ask ourselves why it is important to Oracle and how Oracle's storage is going to benefit on the long term from this virtualized infrastructure layer. Well, the first thing to understand is that Virtual Networking addresses both network and storage connectivity. Oracle Virtual Networking, as the Xsigo technology is now called, connects any server to any network and storage, so this is not just about connecting servers to the Internet or Intranet. It is also for a large part connecting servers to NAS and SAN storage. Connecting servers to storage has become increasingly complex in the past few years because of the strong emergence of virtualization at the Operating System level. 50% of enterprise workloads are now virtualized, up from 18% in 2009, resulting in a strong consolidation of various applications in a high density server footprint. At the same time, server I/O capability increased 8x in the last 8 years. All this has pushed IT administrators to multiply the number of I/O connections in the back-end of their physical servers, resulting in a messy and very hard to manage networking infrastructure. Here is a typical view of a rack back-end when no virtual networking is used. We consider that today: - 75% of users have ten or more Ethernet ports per server - 85% of users have two or more SAN ports per server - 58% have had to add connectivity to a server specifically for VMs - 65% consider cable reduction a priority The average is 12 or more ports per server, resulting in an extremely complex infrastructure to manage. What Oracle wants to achieve with its Oracle Virtual Networking offering is pretty simple. The objective is to eliminate the complexity through a dramatic reduction of cabling between servers and storage/networks. It is also to provide a software based management system so that any server can be connected to any network or any storage, on demand, and without physical intervention on the infrastructure. At the end of the day, the picture on the left shows what one wants to get for the back-end of customer's racks: just a couple of connections on each physical server to provide a simple, agile and fast network infrastructure for both storage and networking access. This is exactly what the Oracle Virtual Networking solution does. It transforms a complex, error-prone, difficult to manage and expensive networking infrastructure into a simple, high performance and agile solution for the data center. Practically speaking, and for the sake of simplicity, imagine that each server just hosts a minimal number of physical InfiniBand HCAs (Host Channel Adapter) with two links (for redundancy) onto the Oracle Fabric Interconnect director. Using the Oracle Fabric Manager software, you'll then be able to create virtual NICs and HBAs (called vNIC and vHBA) that will be seen by the servers as standard NICs and HBAs and associate them to networks and storage systems which are physically connected to the back-end of the director through standard Fibre Channel and Ethernet GbE/10GbE ports. In addition to this incredibly simple "at-a-click" connectivity capability, the Oracle Virtual Networking solution offers powerful features such as network isolation, Quality of Service, advanced performance monitoring and non-disruptive reconfiguration, migration and scalability of networking infrastructure. So let's go back now to our initial question: why is Oracle Virtual Networking especially important to Oracle's storage solutions? After all, one could connect any storage in the back-end of the Oracle Fabric Interconnect directors, right? The answer is pretty simple: since Oracle owns both the virtualized networking infrastructure and the storage (ZFS-SA, Pillar Axiom and tape), it is possible to imagine several ways in the future to add value when it comes to connect storage to a virtualized storage network: enhanced storage capabilities, converged management between storage and network, improved diagnostic capabilities and optimized integration resulting in higher performance and unique features/functions. Of course, all this is not going to be done overnight, and future will tell us is which evolutions come first. But there is little doubt that the integration of Xsigo within Oracle is going to create opportunities for Oracle's storage!

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• Create a Smoother Period Close

  - by Get Proactive Customer Adoption Team

  Untitled Document Do You Use Oracle E-Business Suite Products Involved in Accounting Period Closes? We understand that closing the periods in your system at the end of an accounting period enables your company to make the right business decisions. We also know this requires prior preparation, good procedures, and quality data. To help you meet that need, Oracle E-Business Suite’s proactive support team developed the Period Close Advisor to help your organization conduct a smooth period close for its Oracle E-Business Suite 12 products. The Period Close Advisor is composed of logical steps you can follow, aligned by the business requirement flow. It will help with an orderly close of the product sub-ledgers before posting to the General Ledger. It combines recommendations and industry best practices with tips from subject matter experts for troubleshooting. You will find patches needed and references to assist you during each phase. Get to know the E-Business Suite Period Close Advisor The Period Close Advisor does more than help the users of Oracle E-Business Suite products close their period. You can use it before and throughout the period to stay on track. Proactively it assists you as you set up your company’s period close process. During the period, it helps evaluate your system’s readiness for initiating the period close procedures and prepare the system for a smooth period close experience. The Period Close Advisor gets you to answers when you have questions and gives you the latest news from us on Oracle E-Business Suite’s period close. The Period Close Advisor is the right place to start. How to Use the E-Business Suite Period Close The Period Close Advisor graphically guides you through your period close. The tabs show you the products (also called applications or sub-ledgers) covered, and the product order required for the processing to handle any dependencies between the products. Users of all the products it covers can benefit from the information it contains. Structure of the Period Close Advisor Clicking on a tab gives you the details for that particular step in the process. This includes an overview, showing how the products fit into the overall period close process, and step-by-step information on each phase needed to complete the period close for the tab. You will also find multimedia training and related resources you can access if you need more information. Once you click on any of the phases, you see guidance for that phase. This can include: Tips from the subject-matter experts—here are examples from a Cash Management specialist: “For organizations with high transaction volumes bank statements should be loaded and reconciled on a daily basis.” “The automatic reconciliation process can be set up to create miscellaneous transactions automatically.” References to useful Knowledge Base documents: Information Centers for the products and features FAQs on functionality Known Issues and patches with both the errors and their solutions How-to documents that explain in detail how to use a feature or complete a process White papers that give overview of a feature, list setup required to use the feature, etc. Links to diagnosticsthat help debug issues you may find in a process Additional information and alerts about a process or reports that can help you prevent issues from surfacing This excerpt from the “Process Transaction” phase for the Receivables product lists documents you’ll find helpful. How to Get Started with the Period Close Advisor The Period Close Advisor is a great resource that can be used both as a proactive tool (while setting up your period end procedures) and as the first document to refer to when you encounter an issue during the period close procedures! As mentioned earlier, the order of the product tabs in the Period Close Advisor gives you the recommended order of closing. The first thing to do is to ensure that you are following the prescribed order for closing the period, if you are using more than one sub-ledger. Next, review the information shared in the Evaluate and Prepare and Process Transactions phases. Make sure that you are following the recommended best practices; you have applied the recommended patches, etc. The Reconcile phase gives you the recommended steps to follow for reconciling a sub-ledger with the General Ledger. Ensure that your reconciliation procedure aligns with those steps. At any stage during the period close processing, if you encounter an issue, you can revisit the Period Close Advisor. Choose the product you have an issue with and then select the phase you are in. You will be able to review information that can help you find a solution to the issue you are facing. Stay Informed Oracle updates the Period Close Advisor as we learn of new issues and information. Bookmark the Oracle E-Business Suite Period Close Advisor [ID 335.1] and keep coming back to it for the latest information on period close

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• Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g next launch phase - what a week of product releases! Feedback from our

  - by Jürgen Kress

    Product releases: SOA Suite 11gR1 Patch Set 2 (PS2) BPM Suite 11gR1 Released Oracle JDeveloper 11g (11.1.1.3.0) (Build 5660) Oracle WebLogic Server 11gR1 (10.3.3) Oracle JRockit (4.0) Oracle Tuxedo 11gR1 (11.1.1.1.0) Enterprise Manager 11g Grid Control Release 1 (11.1.0.1.0) for Linux x86/x86-64 All Oracle Fusion Middleware 11gR1 Software Download   BPM Suite 11gR1 Released by Manoj Das Oracle BPM Suite 11gR1 became available for download from OTN and eDelivery. If you have been following our plans in this area, you know that this is the release unifying BEA ALBPM product, which became Oracle BPM10gR3, with the Oracle stack. Some of the highlights of this release are: BPMN 2.0 modeling and simulation Web based Process Composer for BPMN and Rules authoring Zero-code environment with full access to Oracle SOA Suite’s rich set of application and other adapters Process Spaces – Out-of-box integration with Web Center Suite Process Analytics – Native process cubes as well as integration with Oracle BAM You can learn more about this release from the documentation. Notes about downloading and installing Please note that Oracle BPM Suite 11gR1 is delivered and installed as part of SOA 11.1.1.3.0, which is a sparse release (only incremental patch). To install: Download and install SOA 11.1.1.2.0, which is a full release (you can find the bits at the above location) Download and install SOA 11.1.1.3.0 During configure step (using the Fusion Middleware configuration wizard), use the Oracle Business Process Management template supplied with the SOA Suite11g (11.1.1.3.0) If you plan to use Process Spaces, also install Web Center 11.1.1.3.0, which also is delivered as a sparse release and needs to be installed on top of Web Center 11.1.1.2.0   SOA Suite 11gR1 Patch Set 2 (PS2) released by Demed L'Her We just released SOA Suite 11gR1 Patch Set 2 (PS2)! You can download it as usual from: OTN (main platforms only) eDelivery (all platforms) 11gR1 PS2 is delivered as a sparse installer, that is to say that it is meant to be applied on the latest full install (11gR1 PS1). That’s great for existing PS1 users who simply need to apply the patch and run the patch assistant – but an extra step for new users who will first need to download SOA Suite 11gR1 PS1 (in addition to the PS2 patch). What’s in that release? Bug fixes of course but also several significant new features. Here is a short selection of the most significant ones: Spring component (for native Java extensibility and integration) SOA Partitions (to organize and manage your composites) Direct Binding (for transactional invocations to and from Oracle Service Bus) HTTP binding (for those of you trying to do away with SOAP and looking for simple GET and POST) Resequencer (for ordering out-of-order messages) WS Atomic Transactions (WS-AT) support (for propagation of transactions across heterogeneous environments) Check out the complete list of new features in PS2 for more (including links to the documentation for the above)! But maybe even more importantly we are also releasing Oracle Service Bus 11gR1 and BPM Suite 11gR1 at the same time – all on the same base platform (WebLogic Server 10.3.3)! (NB: it might take a while for all pages and caches to be updated with the new content so if you don’t find what you need today, try again soon!)   Are you Systems Integrations and Independent Software Vendors ready to adopt and to deliver? Make sure that you become trained: Local training calendars Register for the SOA Partner Community & Webcast www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa What is your feedback?  Who installed the software? please feel free to share your experience at http://twitter.com/soacommunity #soacommunity Technorati Tags: SOA partner community ACE Directoris SOA Suite PS2 BPM11g First feedback from our ACE Directors and key Partners:   Now, these are great times to start the journey into BPM! Hajo Normann Reuse of components across the Oracle 11G Fusion Middleware stack, BPM just is one of the components plugging into the stack and reuses all other components. Mr. Leon Smiers With BPM11g, Oracle offers a very competitive product which will have a big effect on the IT market. Guido Schmutz We have real BPMN 2.0, which get's executed. No more transformation from business models to executable models - just press the run button... Torsten Winterberg Oracle BPM Suite 11g brings Out-of-box integration with WebCenter Suite and Oracle ADF development framework. Andrejus Baranovskis With the release of BPM Suite 11g, Oracle has defined new standards for Business Process platforms. Geoffroy de Lamalle With User Messaging Service you can let Soa Suite 11g do all your Messaging Edwin Biemond

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• Sun Ray Hardware Last Order Dates & Extension of Premier Support for Desktop Virtualization Software

  - by Adam Hawley

  In light of the recent announcement  to end new feature development for Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Software (VDI), Oracle Sun Ray Software (SRS), Oracle Virtual Desktop Client (OVDC) Software, and Oracle Sun Ray Client hardware (3, 3i, and 3 Plus), there have been questions and concerns regarding what this means in terms of customers with new or existing deployments.  The following updates clarify some of these commonly asked questions. Extension of Premier Support for Software Though there will be no new feature additions to these products, customers will have access to maintenance update releases for Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure and Sun Ray Software, including Oracle Virtual Desktop Client and Sun Ray Operating Software (SROS) until Premier Support Ends.  To ensure that customer investments for these products are protected, Oracle  Premier Support for these products has been extended by 3 years to following dates: Sun Ray Software - November 2017 Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure - March 2017 Note that OVDC support is also extended to the above dates since OVDC is licensed by default as part the SRS and VDI products.   As a reminder, this only affects the products listed above.  Oracle Secure Global Desktop and Oracle VM VirtualBox will continue to be enhanced with new features from time-to-time and, as a result, they are not affected by the changes detailed in this message. The extension of support means that customers under a support contract will still be able to file service requests through Oracle Support, and Oracle will continue to provide the utmost level of support to our customers as expected,  until the published Premier Support end date.  Following the end of Premier Support, Sustaining Support remains an 'indefinite' period of time.   Sun Ray 3 Series Clients - Last Order Dates For Sun Ray Client hardware, customers can continue to purchase Sun Ray Client devices until the following last order dates: Product Marketing Part Number Last Order Date Last Ship Date Sun Ray 3 Plus TC3-P0Z-00, TC3-PTZ-00 (TAA) September 13, 2013 February 28, 2014 Sun Ray 3 Client TC3-00Z-00 February 28, 2014 August 31, 2014 Sun Ray 3i Client TC3-I0Z-00 February 28, 2014 August 31, 2014 Payflex Smart Cards X1403A-N, X1404A-N February 28, 2014 August 31, 2014 Note the difference in the Last Order Date for the Sun Ray 3 Plus (September 13, 2013) compared to the other products that have a Last Order Date of February 28, 2014. The rapidly approaching date for Sun Ray 3 Plus is due to a supplier phasing-out production of a key component of the 3 Plus.   Given September 13 is unfortunately quite soon, we strongly encourage you to place your last time buy as soon as possible to maximize Oracle's ability fulfill your order. Keep in mind you can schedule shipments to be delivered as late as the end of February 2014, but the last day to order is September 13, 2013. Customers wishing to purchase other models - Sun Ray 3 Clients and/or Sun Ray 3i Clients - have additional time (until February 28, 2014) to assess their needs and to allow fulfillment of last time orders.  Please note that availability of supply cannot be absolutely guaranteed up to the last order dates and we strongly recommend placing last time buys as early as possible.  Warranty replacements for Sun Ray Client hardware for customers covered by Oracle Hardware Systems Support contracts will be available beyond last order dates, per Oracle's policy found on Oracle.com here.  Per that policy, Oracle intends to provide replacement hardware for up to 5 years beyond the last ship date, but hardware may not be available beyond the 5 year period after the last ship date for reasons beyond Oracle's control. In any case, by design, Sun Ray Clients have an extremely long lifespan  and mean time between failures (MTBF) - much longer than PCs, and over the years we have continued to see first- and second generations of Sun Rays still in daily use.  This is no different for the Sun Ray 3, 3i, and 3 Plus.   Because of this, and in addition to Oracle's continued support for SRS, VDI, and SROS, Sun Ray and Oracle VDI deployments can continue to expand and exist as a viable solution for some time in the future. Continued Availability of Product Licenses and Support Oracle will continue to offer all existing software licenses, and software and hardware support including: Product licenses and Premier Support for Sun Ray Software and Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Premier Support for Operating Systems (for Sun Ray Operating Software maintenance upgrades/support)  Premier Support for Systems (for Sun Ray Operating Software maintenance upgrades/support and hardware warranty) Support renewals For More Information For more information, please refer to the following documents for specific dates and policies associated with the support of these products: Document 1478170.1 - Oracle Desktop Virtualization Software and Hardware Lifetime Support Schedule Document 1450710.1 - Sun Ray Client Hardware Lifetime schedule Document 1568808.1 - Document Support Policies for Discontinued Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, Sun Ray Software and Hardware and Oracle Virtual Desktop Client Development For Sales Orders and Questions Please contact your Oracle Sales Representative or Saurabh Vijay ([email protected])

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• The Oracle Graduate Experience...A Graduates Perspective by Angelie Tierney

  - by david.talamelli

  [Note: Angelie has just recently joined Oracle in Australia in our 2011 Graduate Program. Last week I shared my thoughts on our 2011 Graduate Program, this week Angelie took some time to share her thoughts of our Graduate Program. The notes below are Angelie's overview from her experience with us starting with our first contact last year - David Talamelli] How does the 1 year program work? It consists of 3 weeks of training, followed by 2 rotations in 2 different Lines of Business (LoB's). The first rotation goes for 4 months, while your 2nd rotation goes for 7, when you are placed into your final LoB for the program. The interview process: After sorting through the many advertised graduate jobs, submitting so many resumes and studying at the same time, it can all be pretty stressful. Then there is the interview process. David called me on a Sunday afternoon and I spoke to him for about 30 minutes in a mini sort of phone interview. I was worried that working at Oracle would require extensive technical experience, but David stressed that even the less technical, and more business-minded person could, and did, work at Oracle. I was then asked if I would like to attend a group interview in the next weeks, to which I said of course! The first interview was a day long, consisting of a brief introduction, a group interview where we worked on a business plan with a group of other potential graduates and were marked by 3 Oracle employees, on our ability to work together and presentation. After lunch, we then had a short individual interview each, and that was the end of the first round. I received a call a few weeks later, and was asked to come into a second interview, at which I also jumped at the opportunity. This was an interview based purely on your individual abilities and would help to determine which Line of Business you would go to, should you land a graduate position. So how did I cope throughout the interview stages? I believe the best tool to prepare for the interview, was to research Oracle and its culture and to see if I thought I could fit into that. I personally found out about Oracle, its partners as well as competitors and along the way, even found out about their part (or Larry Ellison's specifically) in the Iron Man 2 movie. Armed with some Oracle information and lots of enthusiasm, I approached the Oracle Graduate Interview process. Why did I apply for an Oracle graduate position? I studied a Bachelor of Business/Bachelor of Science in IT, and wanted to be able to use both my degrees, while have the ability to work internationally in the future. Coming straight from university, I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to do in terms of my career. With the program, you are rotated across various lines of business, to not only expose you to different parts of the business, but to also help you to figure out what you want to achieve out of your career. As a result, I thought Oracle was the perfect fit. So what can an Oracle ANZ Graduate expect? First things first, you can expect to line up for your visitor pass. Really. Next you enter a room full of unknown faces, graduates just like you, and then you realise you're in this with 18 other people, going through the same thing as you. 3 weeks later you leave with many memories, colleagues you can call your friends, and a video of your presentation. Vanessa, the Graduate Manager, will also take lots of photos and keep you (well) fed. Well that's not all you leave with, you are also equipped with a wealth of knowledge and contacts within Oracle, both that will help you throughout your career there. What training is involved? We started our Oracle experience with 3 weeks of training, consisting of employee orientation, extensive product training, presentations on the various lines of business (LoB's), followed by sales and presentation training. While there was potential for an information overload, maybe even death by Powerpoint, we were able to have access to the presentations for future reference, which was very helpful. This period also allowed us to start networking, not only with the graduates, but with the managers who presented to us, as well as through the monthly chinwag, HR celebrations and even with the sharing of tea facilities. We also had a team bonding day when we recorded a "commercial" within groups, and learned how to play an Irish drum. Overall, the training period helped us to learn about Oracle, as well as ourselves, and to prepare us for our transition into our rotations. Where to now? I'm now into my 2nd week of my first graduate rotation. It has been exciting to finally get out into the work environment and utilise that knowledge we gained from training. My manager has been a great mentor, extremely knowledgeable, and it has been good being able to participate in meetings, conference calls and make a contribution towards the business. And while we aren't necessarily working directly with the other graduates, they are still reachable via email, Pidgin and lunch and they are important as a resource and support, after all, they are going through a similar experience to you. While it is only the beginning, there is a lot more to learn and a lot more to experience along the way, especially because, as we learned during training, at Oracle, the only constant is change.

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• A little primer on using TFS with a small team

  - by johndoucette

  The scenario; A small team of 3 developers mostly in maintenance mode with traditional ASP.net, classic ASP, .Net integration services and utilities with the company’s third party packages, and a bunch of java-based Coldfusion web applications all under Visual Source Safe (VSS). They are about to embark on a huge SharePoint 2010 new construction project and wanted to use subversion instead VSS. TFS was a foreign word and smelled of “high cost” and of an “over complicated process”. Since they had no preconditions about the old TFS versions (‘05 & ‘08), it was fun explaining how simple it was to install a TFS server and get the ball rolling, with or without all the heavy stuff one sometimes associates with such a huge and powerful application management lifecycle product. So, how does a small team begin using TFS? 1. Start by using source control and migrate current VSS source trees into TFS. You can take the latest version or migrate the entire version history. It’s up to you on whether you want a clean start or need quick access to all the version notes and history of the bits. 2. Since most shops are mainly in maintenance mode with existing applications, begin using bug workitems for everything. When you receive an issue/bug from your current tracking system, manually enter the workitem in TFS right through Visual Studio. You can automate the integration to the current tracking system later or replace it entirely. Believe me, this thing is powerful and can handle even the largest of help desks. 3. With new construction, begin work with requirements and task workitems and follow the traditional sprint-based development lifecycle. Obviously, some minor training will be needed, but don’t fear, this is very intuitive and MSDN has a ton of lesson based labs and videos. 4. For the java developers, use the new Team Explorer Everywhere 2010 plugin (recently known as Teamprise). There is a seamless interface in Eclipse, but also a good command-line utility for other environments such as Dreamweaver. 5. Wait to fully integrate the whole workitem/project management/testing process until your team is familiar with the integrated workitems for bugs and code. After a while, you will see the team wanting more transparency into the work they are all doing and naturally, everyone will want workitems to help them organize the chaos! 6. Management will be limited in the value of the reports until you have a fully blown implementation of project planning, construction, build, deployment and testing. However, there are some basic “bug rate” reports and current backlog listings that can provide good information. Some notable explanations of TFS; Work Item Tracking and Project Management - A workitem represents the unit of work within the system which enables tracking of all activities produced by a user, whether it is a developer, business user, project manager or tester. The properties of a workitem such as linked changesets (checked-in code), who updated the data and when, the states and reasons for change, are all transitioned to a data warehouse within TFS for reporting purposes. A workitem can be defines as a "bug", "requirement", test case", or a "change request". They drive the work effort by the individual assigned to it and also provide a key role in defining what needs to be done. Workitems are the things the team needs to do to accomplish a goal. Test Case Management - Starting with a workitem known as a "test case", a tester (or developer) can now author and manage test cases within a formal test plan subsystem. Although TFS supports the test case workitem type, there is a new product known as the VS Test Professional 2010 which allows a tester to facilitate manual tests including fast forwarding steps in the process to arrive at the assertion point quickly. This repeatable process provides quick regression tests and can be conducted by the business user to ensure completeness during UAT. In addition, developers no longer can provide a response to a bug with the line "cannot reproduce". With every test run, attachments including the recorded session, captured environment configurations and settings, screen shots, intellitrace (debugging history), and in some cases if the lab manager is being used, a snapshot of the tested environment is available. Version Control - A modern system allowing shared check-in/check-out, excellent merge conflict resolution, Shelvesets (personal check-ins), branching/merging visualization, public workspaces, gated check-ins, security hierarchy capabilities, and changeset/workitem tracking. Knowing what was done with the code by any developer has become much easier to picture and resolve issues. Team Build - Automate the compilation process whether you need it to be whenever a developer checks-in code, periodically such as nightly builds for testers in the morning, or manual builds to be deployed into production. Each build can run through pre-determined tests, perform code analysis to see if the developer conforms to the team standards, and reject the build if either fails. Project Portal & Reporting - Provide management with a dashboard with insight into the project(s). "Where are we" in each step of the way including past iterations and the current burndown rate. Enabling this feature is easy as it seamlessly interfaces with existing SharePoint implementations.

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• SOA Community Newsletter October 2013

  - by JuergenKress

  Dear SOA & BPM Partner Community member, Our October newsletter edition focuses on Oracle OpenWorld 2013, highlights, keynotes and all presentations. Thanks to all partners who made the conference a huge success. If you could not come to San Francisco you will find all the details within this newsletter. As the newsletter edition contains a lot of content thus we have three sections - SOA, BPM & ACM, and AppAdvantage & UX. Make sure you share your content with the community, best via twitter @soacommunity #soacommunity! What is new in SOA Suite 12c? At OOW the product management team demonstrated some of the key features of the upcoming version. The important SOA topics are mobile integration and cloud integration - make sure you re-use your existing SOA platform! Bruce Tierney showcased the Agilent mobile integration and you try the new Mobile Order Management for EBS GSE Demo using middleware technology. On cloud integration the product management team presented several OOW sessions and published two whitepapers. As SOA becomes mature the awareness for SOA Governance continues to raise, Introducing Oracle Enterprise Repository Express Workflows and watch Luis Weir: Challenges to Implementing SOA Governance. Thanks to Ronald for the SOA Made Simple | Introduction to SOA series, the next article in the Industrial SOA series is SOA and User Interfaces (UI). Have you achieved successful BPM implementation? Nominate your customer references for the Gartner Business Process Management Excellence Awards 2014. Do you want to showcase the latest BPM Suite? Make sure you use the hosted BPM PS6 (11.1.1.7) demo. Do you want to become an expert in BPM Suite? Attend one of our BPM Bootcamps in Germany, Netherland, Spain or UK! If you can not make it – we offer plenty of on-demand content Advanced BPM Scenarios & BPM Architecture Topics & Process Modeling and Life Cycle & Adaptive Case Management & Smart Application Extensibility with Oracle Process Accelerators. I would also recommend to watch great introduction to Adaptive Case Management the on-demand webcast with Bruce Silver & Ajay Khanna. Thanks to Mark Foster from the A-team for the ACM article series & Leon Smiers for their blog posts. If you accomplished a SOA Suite or BPM Suite project and want to become a certified SOA or BPM expert, we are offering again free vouchers to become a certified SOA & BPM expert (limited to partners in Europe Middle East and Africa). Don't miss this opportunity and become Specialized! Best regards, Jürgen Kress To read the newsletter please visit http://tinyurl.com/soaNewsOctober2013 (OPN Account required) To become a member of the SOA Partner Community please register at http://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 Facebook Wiki Mix Forum Technorati Tags: newsletter,SOA Community newsletter,SOA Community,Oracle,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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• Stuck with Documentum Still? Do MORE with Oracle WebCenter!

  - by Michael Snow

  WEBCAST TODAY!! 03/22/12 Do you need to lower costs? Raise Productivity? Foster Innovation? Improve Online Engagement? But you’re still stuck with Documentum? Step away from the ledge – there is hope – let us help you. Top 4 Content Imperatives · Lower Costs - Reduce labor, maintenance fees, storage and electrical consumption · Raise Productivity - Automation and integration, communication, findability · Foster Innovation - Enable collaboration, expertise location · Improve Online Engagement – enable user-driven, dynamic marketing initiatives With the coming technology wave we see four content imperatives. Every organization has had to reduce costs, cost cutting has become a way of life. Everyone is working three jobs as positions are eliminated. And so we have to reduce labor, reduce maintenance, and reduce money we are wasting on things like storing content that is redundant or no longer useful. We also, to fill that gap, need to raise productivity. Knowledge workers represent the fastest growing segment of the workforce, accounting for 40%-75% of the employees at organizations in sectors like financial services, life sciences, healthcare and retail.  What’s more, their wages total 18 percent of the United States GDP. And so we can’t afford information systems that don’t let our top performers be the best they can be. We look to automate the content processes, provide ways to integrate that content into our processes, provide communication to make decisions, and to make content more findable so people can make the right decision and move the process forward. And really to get ourselves out of the current financial status, we can only cut costs so far. We have to innovate out of economic tough times – to find new products and new markets. And to enable the innovation process, we have to enable collaboration and expertise location. So much of innovation is about building on innovations that have come before. To solve problems, we have to be able to find what our organization has already created. We find that problems we need to solve have already been solved if we can find the right document, the right person. So we have to provide systems that enable us to stand on the shoulders of our organization’s accomplishments. Good content drives great marketing. Online engagement is growing as an absolute necessity for modern growing marketing organizations that require the business users be enabled for dynamic marketing content creation, updates and targeted content creation and management. Unfortunately – if you are currently stuck with Documentum, you are really lacking in your Web Experience Management capabilities. Documentum previously used FatWire for web publishing. Now FatWire is part of Oracle. Oracle provides powerful web engagement capabilities: Increase sales and loyalty by optimizing online engagement Create, manage and moderate contextually relevant, targeted and interactive online experiences Optimize customer engagement across, web, mobile and social channels Manage large scale multichannel global online presence with integration to enterprise applications Enable business users to control their content and make their own updates Publish content from native files – enable navigation of project documents, procedures, policy information Enable content display and updates from existing web applications – one click to drag and drop content management functionality So you get the ability to self-publish information and make it navigable, to move the process of publishing from IT to business users, and the ability to address a whole new area of user engagement with web experience management. So… if you are still stuck with Documentum and don’t know what to do – contact us – not only will Oracle help you step away from the ledge, but also with the MoveOff Documentum program, we are offering you a way – trade-in your Documentum licenses for a 100% credit on Oracle WebCenter. How’s that for a nice bonus? It’s time to stop maintaining Documentum, and to start innovating with Oracle WebCenter. Learn More Here! To learn more about what Oracle WebCenter can offer you today – join us for a webcast – your eyes will be opened to all that’s possible. Do More with WebCenter: Extend Beyond Content Management

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• Have Your Cake and Eat it Too: Industry Best Practices + Flexibility

  - by Oracle Accelerate for Midsize Companies

  By Richard Garraputa, VP of Sales & Marketing, brij Richard joined brij in 1996 after graduating from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro with degrees in Information Systems and Accounting. He directs brij’s overall strategies of both the business development and marketing departments. Companies looking for new ERP systems spend so much time comparing features and functions of software products but too often short change the value of their own processes.  Company managers I meet often claim that they are implementing a new ERP system so they can perform better and faster.  When asked how, the answer is often “by implementing best practices”.  But the term ‘best practices’ is frequently used to mean ‘doing things the way everyone else does them’ rather than a starting point or benchmark to build upon by adding your own value. Of course, implementing standardized processes across an enterprise is an important step in improving operational efficiencies.  But not all companies are alike.  Do you ever tell your customers “We are just like our competition and have no competitive differentiation”?  Probably not.  So why should the implementation of your business processes be just like your competitor’s?  Even within the same industry, companies differentiate themselves by leveraging their unique expertise and approach to business.  These unique aspects—the competitive differentiators that companies use to thrive in a crowded marketplace—can and should be supported by the implementation of business systems like ERP. Modern ERP systems like Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne have a broad and deep functional footprint designed to integrate a company’s core operations.  But how can a company take advantage of this footprint without blowing up their implementation budget?  Some ERP vendors claim to solve this challenge by stating that their systems come pre-configured with ‘best practices’.  Too often what they are really saying is that you will have to abandon your key operational differentiators to fit a vendor’s template for your business—or extend your implementation and postpone the realization of any benefits. Thankfully for midsize companies, there is an alternative to the undesirable options of extended implementation projects or abandoning their competitive differentiators.  Oracle Accelerate Solutions speed the time it takes to implement JD Edwards EnterpriseOne solution based on your unique business characteristics, getting your new ERP system up and running faster without forcing your business to fit a cookie-cutter solution. We’ve been a JD Edwards implementation partner since 1986 and we now leverage Oracle Business Accelerators—cloud based rapid implementation tools built and maintained by Oracle. Oracle Business Accelerators deliver the benefits of embedded industry best practices without forcing every customer in to one set of processes like many template or “clone and go” approaches do. You retain the ability to reconfigure your applications—without customization—as your business changes. Wielded by Oracle partners with industry-specific domain expertise, Oracle Accelerate Solution implementations powered by Oracle Business Accelerators help automate the application configuration to fit your business better, faster. For example, on a recent project at a manufacturing company, the project manager told me that Oracle Business Accelerators helped get them to Conference Room Pilot 20% faster than with a traditional approach. Time savings equal cost savings. And if ‘better and faster’ is your goal for your business performance, shouldn’t it be the goal for your ERP implementation as well? Established in 1986, brij has been dedicated solely to helping its customers implement Oracle’s JD Edwards solutions and to maximize the value of those customers’ IT investments. They are a Gold level member in Oracle PartnerNetwork and an Oracle Accelerate Solution provider.

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• Do MORE with WebCenter - Webcast Overview & TIES Tour

  - by Michael Snow

  Today's post is from Michelle Huff, Senior Director, Product Management, Oracle WebCenter `````````````````  In case you missed it, I presented on a webcast yesterday focused on how you can “Do More with Oracle WebCenter – Expand Beyond Content Management.” As you may remember, we rebranded Oracle’s Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Suite, which some people knew by the wonderfully techie three-letter acronyms -- UCM, URM & IPM -- to Oracle WebCenter Content last year. Since it’s a unified ECM platform, I’ve seen many customers over the years continue to expand the number of content-centric solutions and application integrations powered by WebCenter throughout their organizations. But, did you know WebCenter also provides portal, collaboration and web experience management capabilities as well? This enables you to leverage your existing investment in the WebCenter platform as well as the information you’re managing to create engaging sites, collaborative spaces, or self-service portals and composite applications. In the webcast I walked through six different ways that you can do more with WebCenter: Collaborative content contribution and sharing environment Share content across intranets and extranets Combine content in composite applications Create targeted online experiences Manage interactive social experiences Optimize multi-channel customer experiences Joining me on the call was Greg Utecht with TIES. TIES is a joint powers cooperative owned by 46 Minnesota school districts, represents 514 schools – and provides software applications, hardware and software, internet service and professional development designed by educators for education. I was having a lot of fun over the past few days talking with Greg about the TIES implementation and future plans with WebCenter. He joined me on the call for a little Q&A to explain how he’s using WebCenter today for their iContent implementation for document management, records management and archiving. And also covered how they have expanded their implementation to create a collaborative space called their HRPay System with WebCenter to facilitate collaboration and to better engage their users within the school districts. During our conversation a few questions came from the audience about their implementation. They were curious to see how the system looked – so let’s take a peak. This first screenshot shows the screen that a human resources or payroll worker in one of our member districts would see upon logging in, based on their credentials and role in their district. This shows the result of clicking on the SUBSCRIBE link on the main page. It allows the user to subscribe to parts of the portal which will e-mail him/her when those are updated in any way. This shows the screen that a human resources or payroll worker in one of our member districts would see upon clicking on the Resources link. This shows the screen that a human resources or payroll worker in one of our member districts would see upon clicking on the Finance Advisory link. It shows the discussion threads and document sharing areas. This shows the screen that appears when the forum topic on the preceding screen is clicked. This shows the screen portlet up close with shared documents. This shows the screen that appears when a shared document is clicked on. Note that there is also a download button and an update button, meaning people can work on these collaboratively. If you missed the webcast, check it out! You can watch the replay OnDemand HERE. If you attended the webcast, thanks for joining - I hoped you learned a little from the session. I learned that kids are getting digital report cards today! Wow, have times changed with technology. Uh oh, is this when I start saying “You know, back in my days…?”

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• Using Teleriks new LINQ implementation to connect to MySQL

  Last week Telerik released a new LINQ implementation that is simple to use and produces domain models very fast. Built on top of the enterprise grade OpenAccess ORM, you can connect to any database that OpenAccess can connect to such as: SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, SQL Azure, VistaDB, etc. Today I will show you how to build a domain model using MySQL as your back end. To get started, you have to download MySQL 5.x and the MySQL Workbench and also, as my colleague Alexander Filipov at Telerik reminded me, make sure you install the MySQL .NET Connector, which is available here.  I like to use Northwind, ok it gives me the warm and fuzzies, so I ran a script to produce Northwind on my MySQL server. There are many ways you can get Northwind on your MySQL database, here is a helpful blog to get your started. I also manipulated the first record to indicate that I am in MySQL and gave a look via the MySQL Workbench. Ok, time to build our model! Start up the Domain Model wizard by right clicking on the project in Visual Studio (I have a Web project) and select Add|New Item and choose Telerik OpenAccess Domain Model from the new item list. When the wizard comes up, choose MySQL as your back end and enter in the name of your saved MySQL connection. If you dont have a saved MySQL connection set up in Visual Studio, click on New Connection and enter in the proper connection information. *Note, this is where you need to have the MySQL .NET connector installed. After you set your connection to the MySQL database server, you have to choose which tables to include in your model. Just for fun, I will choose all of them. Give your model a name, like NorthwindEntities and click finish. That is it. Now lets consume the model with ASP .net. I created a simple page that also has a GridView on it. On my page load I wrote this code, by now it should look very familiar, a simple LINQ query filtering customers by country (Germany) and binding the results to the grid.  1: protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) 2: { 3: if (!IsPostBack) 4: { 5: //a reference to the data context 6: NorthwindEntities dat = new NorthwindEntities(); 7: //LINQ Statement 8: var result = from c in dat.Customers 9: where c.Country == "Germany" 10: select c; 11: //Databinding to the Gridview 12: GridView1.DataSource = result; 13: GridView1.DataBind(); 14: } 15: } .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; } F5 produces the following. Tomorrow Ill show how to take the same model and create an Astoria/OData data feed. Technorati Tags: MySQL Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Centralized Project Management Brings Needed Cost Controls to Growing Brazilian Firm

  - by Melissa Centurio Lopes

  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-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Fast growth and a significant increase in business activities were creating project management challenges for CPqD, a developer of innovative information and communication technologies for large Brazilian organizations. To bring greater efficiency and centralized project management capabilities to its operations, CPqD chose Oracle’s Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management. “Oracle Primavera is an essential tool for our day-to-day business, and I notice the effort Oracle makes to constantly innovate and to add more functionality in an increasingly shorter period of time,” says Márcio Alexandre da Silva, IT department project coordinator, CPqD. He explains that before CPqD implemented the Oracle solution, the company did not have a corporate view of projects. “Our project monitoring was decentralized and restricted to each coordinator,” the project coordinator says. “With the Oracle solution, we achieved actual shared management, more control, and budgets that stay within projections.” Among the benefits that CPqD now enjoys are The ability to more effectively identify how employees are allocated, enabling managers to increase or reduce resources based on project scope, as well as secure the resources required for unexpected projects and demands A 75 percent reduction in the time it takes to collect project data and indicators—automated and centralized collection means project coordinators no longer have to manually compile information that was spread among various systems Read the complete CPqD company snapshot Read more in the October Edition of the quarterly Information InDepth EPPM Newsletter 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-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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• Windows Phone 7 Silverlight / XNA development talk

  - by subodhnpushpak

  Hi, I presented on Windows Phone 7 app development using Silverlight. Here are few pics from the event Windows Phone 7 development VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL     I demonstrated the Visual studio, emulator capabilities/ features. An demo on Wp7 app communication with an OData Service, along with a demo on XNA app. There was lot of curious questions; I am listing them here because these keep on popping up again and again: 1. What tools does it takes to develop Wp7 app? Are they free? A typical WP7 app can be developed either using Silverlight or XNA. For developers, Visual Studio 2010 is a good choice as it provides an integrated development environment with lots of useful project templates; which makes the task really easy. For designers, Blend may be used to develop the UI in XAML. Both the tools are FREE (express version) to download and very intuitive to use. 2. What about the learning curve? If you know C#, (or any other programming language), learning curve is really flat. XAML (used for UI) may be new for you, but trust me; its very intuitive. Also you can use Microsoft Blend to generate the UI (XAML) for you. 3. How can I develop /test app without using actual device? How can I be sure my app runs as expected on actual device? The WP7 SDK comes along with an excellent emulator; which you can use for development/ testing on a computer. Later you can just change a setting and deploy the application on WP7. You will require Zune software for deploying the application on phone along with Developers key from WP7 marketplace. You can obtain key from marketplace by filling a form. The whole process for registering  is easy; just follow the steps on the site. 4. Which one should I use? Silverlight or XNA? Use Silverlight for enterprise/ business / utility apps. Use XNA for Games app. While each platform is capable / strong and may be used in conjunction as well; The methodologies used for development in these platforms are very different. XNA works on typical Do..While loop where as Silverlight works on event based methodology. 5. Where are the learning resources? Are they free? There is lots of stuff on WP7. Most of them are free. There is a excellent free book by Charles Petzold to download and http://www.microsoft.com/windowsphone is full of demos /todos / vidoes. All the exciting stuff was captured live and you can view it here; in case you were not able to catch it live!! @ http://livestre.am/AUfx. My talk starts from 3:19:00 timeline in the video!! Is there an app you miss on WP7? Do let me know about it and I may work on it for free !!! Keep discovering. Keep is Simple. WP7. Subodh

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• When does "proper" programming no longer matter?

  - by Kai Qing

  I've been a full time programmer for about 8 years now. Web based mostly, ranging in weird jobs for clients. Never anything I "want" to do. So my experience is limited to what I've been contracted to do, having no real incentive to master anything in particular. So here's my scenario and ultimately what I wonder about... I've been building an android game in my spare time. It's using the libgdx library so quite a bit of the heavy lifting is done for me. I don't read much of the docs cause unless it's in tutorial format I will just not care, and ultimately most of my questions have already been asked on stackoverflow. I get along fine and my game works as expected... Suspiciously well, even. So much so that I wonder why one should bother to be "proper" when coding if the end result is ultimately the same. To be more specific, I used a hashtable because I wanted something close to an associative array. Human readable key values. In other places to achieve similar things, I use a vector. I know libgdx has vector2 and vector3 classes, but I've never used them. When I come across weird problems and search stackoverflow for help, I see a lot of people just reaming the questions that use a certain datatype when another one is technically "proper." Like using an ArrayList because it does not require defined bounds versus re-defining an int[] with new known boundaries. Or even something trivial like this: for(int i = 0; i < items.length; i ++) { // do something } I know it evaluates item.length on every iteration. I just don't care. I know items will never be more than 15 to 20 items. So why bother caring if I evaluate items.length on every iteration? So I wonder - why does everyone get all up in arms over this? Who cares if I use a less efficient datatype to get the job done? I ran some tests to see how the app performs using the lazy, get it done fast and don't look back method I just described versus the proper, follow the tutorial and use the exact data types suggested by the community. The results: Same thing. Average 45 fps. I opened every app on the phone and galaxy tab. Same deal. No difference. My game is pretty graphic intensive. It's not like it's just a simple thing. I expected it to perform kind of badly since I don't care to optimize image assets or... well, you probably get the idea. I'm making the game for fun. As a joke, really. But in doing so I'm working outside the normal scope of my job, which is to always follow the rules and do it the right way. So to say, I am without bounds here and this has caused me to wonder why I ever really care to be "proper" So I guess my question to you is this: Is there a threshold when it no longer matters to be proper? Is there a lasting, longer term consequence to the lazy, get it done and don't look back route? Is it ok to say - "so long as it gets the job done, I don't care?" Disclaimer: When I program my game, I am almost always drunk. I do it to remember why I got into this stuff to begin with because the monotony of client based web work will make you hate being a programmer. I'm having a blast and my game is not crashing, tests well, performs well, looks good on all devices so far and has no noticeable negative impact on any of my testing devices. I expected failure because I was being so drunkenly careless with my code, but to my surprise, it had no noticeable impact. I am now starting to question the need to be careful. Help me regain the ability to care! ... or explain why it's not a bad thing to not care. Secondary disclaimer: I am aware of the benefits of maintainability. For myself and others. Agreed. But it's not like someone happening across my inefficient int[] loop won't know what it does. As an experienced programmer those kinds of things are just clear on sight. I document the complex stuff for myself knowing I was drunk and will probably need a reminder. Those notes would clarify any confusion for someone who might ever gaze upon my ridiculous game - though the reality is that either I maintain it myself or it fades into time. I'm ok with that. But if it doesn't slow the device down, or crash, then crossing the t's and dotting the i's might actually require more time than it's worth.

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• Customer Engagement: Are Your Customers Engaged With Your Brands?

  - by Michael Snow

  Engaging Customers is Critical for Business Growth This week we'll be spending some time looking at Customer Engagement. We all have stories about how we try to engage our customers better than ever before.  We all know that successfully engaging customers is critical to an organization’s business success. We also know that engaging our customers is more challenging today than ever before. There is so much noise to compete with for getting anyone's attention. Over the last decade and a half we’ve watched as the online channel became a primary one for conducting our business and even managing our lives. And during this whole process or evolution, the customer journey has grown increasingly complex. Customers themselves have assumed increasing power and influence over the purchase process and for setting the tone and pace of the relationships they have with brands and you see the evidence of this in the really high expectations that customers have today. They expect brand experiences that are personalized and relevant -- In other words they want experiences that demonstrate that the brand understands their interests, preferences and past interactions with them. They also expect their experience with a brand and the community surrounding it to be social and interactive – it’s no longer acceptable to have a static, one-way dialogue with your customer base or to fail to connect your customers with fellow customers, or with your employees and partners. And on top of all this, customers expect us to deliver this rich and engaging, personalized and interactive experience, in a consistent way across a variety of channels including web, mobile and social channels or even offline venues such as in-store or via a call center. And as a result, we see that delivery on these expectations and successfully engaging your customers is a great challenge today. Customers expect a personal, engaging and consistent online customer experience. Today’s consumer expects to engage with your brand and the community surrounding it in an interactive and social way. Customers have come to expect a lot for the online customer experience.  ·        They expect it to be personal: o   Accessible:  - Regardless of my device  Via my existing online identities  o   Relevant:  Content that interests me  o   Customized:  To be able to tailor my online experience  ·        They expect it to be engaging: o   Social:  So I can share content with my social networks  o   Intuitive:  To easily find what I need   o   Interactive:  So I can interact with online communities And they expect it to be consistent across the online experience – so you better have your brand and information ducks in a row. These expectations are not only limited to your customers by any means. Your employees (and partners) are also expecting to be empowered with engagement tools across their internal and external communications and interactions with customers, partners and other employees. We had a great conversation with Ted Schadler from Forrester Research entitled: "Mobile is the New Face of Engagement" that is now available On-Demand. Take a look at all the webcasts available to watch from our Social Business Thought Leader Series. Social capabilities have become so pervasive and changed customers’ expectations for their online experiences. The days of one-direction communication with customers are at an end. Today’s customers expect to engage in a dialogue with your brand and the community surrounding it in an interactive and social way. You have at a very short window of opportunity to engage a customer before they go to another site in their pursuit of information, product, or services. In fact, customers who engage with brands via social media tend to spend more that customers who don’t, between 20% and 40% more.  And your customers are also increasingly influenced by their social networks too – 40% of consumers say they factor in Facebook recommendations when making purchasing decisions.  This means a few different things for today’s businesses. Incorporating forms of social interaction such as commenting or reviews as well as tightly integrating your online experience with your customers’ social networking experiences into the online customer experience are crucial for maintaining the eyeballs on your desired pages. --- Notes/Sources: 93% - Cone Finds that Americans Expect Companies to Have a Presence in Social Media - http://www.coneinc.com/content1182 40% of consumers factor in Facebook recommendations when making decisions about purchasing (Increasing Campaign Effectiveness with Social Media, Syncapse, March 2011) 20%-40% - Customers who engage with a company via social media spend this percentage more with that company than other customers (Source: Bain & Company Report – Putting Social Media to Work)

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• Partner Blog Series: PwC Perspectives - Looking at R2 for Customer Organizations

  - by Tanu Sood

  Welcome to the first of our partner blog series. November Mondays are all about PricewaterhouseCoopers' perespective on Identity and R2. In this series, we have identity management experts from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) share their perspective on (and experiences with) the recent identity management release, Oracle Identity Management R2. The purpose of the series is to discuss real world identity use cases that helped shape the innovations in the recent R2 release and the implementation strategies that customers are employing today with expertise from PwC. Part 1: Looking at R2 for Customer Organizations In this inaugural post, we will discuss some of the new features of the R2 release of Oracle Identity Manager that some of our customer organizations are implementing today and the business rationale for those. Oracle's R2 Security portfolio represents a solid step forward for a platform that is already market-leading.  Prior to R2, Oracle was an industry titan in security with reliable products, expansive compatibility, and a large customer base.  Oracle has taken their identity platform to the next level in their latest version, R2.  The new features include a customizable UI, a request catalog, flexible security, and enhancements for its connectors, and more. Oracle customers will be impressed by the new Oracle Identity Manager (OIM) business-friendly UI.  Without question, Oracle has invested significant time in responding to customer feedback about making access requests and related activities easier for non-IT users.  The flexibility to add information to screens, hide fields that are not important to a particular customer, and adjust web themes to suit a company's preference make Oracle's Identity Manager stand out among its peers.  Customers can also expect to carry UI configurations forward with minimal migration effort to future versions of OIM.  Oracle's flexible UI will benefit many organizations looking for a customized feel with out-of-the-box configurations. Organizations looking to extend their services to end users will benefit significantly from new usability features like OIM’s ‘Catalog.’  Customers familiar with Oracle Identity Analytics' 'Glossary' feature will be able to relate to the concept.  It will enable Roles, Entitlements, Accounts, and Resources to be requested through the out-of-the-box UI.  This is an industry-changing feature as customers can make the process to request access easier than ever.  For additional ease of use, Oracle has introduced a shopping cart style request interface that further simplifies the experience for end users.  Common requests can be setup as profiles to save time.  All of this is combined with the approval workflow engine introduced in R1 that provides the flexibility customers need to meet their compliance requirements. Enhanced security was also on the list of features Oracle wanted to deliver to its customers.  The new end-user UI provides additional granular access controls.  Common Help Desk use cases can be implemented with ease by updating the application profiles.  Access can be rolled out so that administrators can only manage a certain department or organization.  Further, OIM can be more easily configured to select which fields can be read-only vs. updated.  Finally, this security model can be used to limit search results for roles and entitlements intended for a particular department.  Every customer has a different need for access and OIM now matches this need with a flexible security model. One of the important considerations when selecting an Identity Management platform is compatibility.  The number of supported platform connectors and how well it can integrate with non-supported platforms is a key consideration for selecting an identity suite.  Oracle has a long list of supported connectors.  When a customer has a requirement for a platform not on that list, Oracle has a solution too.  Oracle is introducing a simplified architecture called Identity Connector Framework (ICF), which holds the potential to simplify custom connectors.  Finally, Oracle has introduced a simplified process to profile new disconnected applications from the web browser.  This is a useful feature that enables administrators to profile applications quickly as well as empowering the application owner to fulfill requests from their web browser.  Support will still be available for connectors based on previous versions in R2. Oracle Identity Manager's new R2 version has delivered many new features customers have been asking for.  Oracle has matured their platform with R2, making it a truly distinctive platform among its peers. In our next post, expect a deep dive into use cases for a customer considering R2 as their new Enterprise identity solution. In the meantime, we look forward to hearing from you about the specific challenges you are facing and your experience in solving those. Meet the Writers Dharma Padala is a Director in the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has been implementing medium to large scale Identity Management solutions across multiple industries including utility, health care, entertainment, retail and financial sectors.   Dharma has 14 years of experience in delivering IT solutions out of which he has been implementing Identity Management solutions for the past 8 years. Scott MacDonald is a Director in the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has consulted for several clients across multiple industries including financial services, health care, automotive and retail.   Scott has 10 years of experience in delivering Identity Management solutions. John Misczak is a member of the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has experience implementing multiple Identity and Access Management solutions, specializing in Oracle Identity Manager and Business Process Engineering Language (BPEL). Jenny (Xiao) Zhang is a member of the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  She has consulted across multiple industries including financial services, entertainment and retail. Jenny has three years of experience in delivering IT solutions out of which she has been implementing Identity Management solutions for the past one and a half years. Praveen Krishna is a Manager in the Advisory  Security practice within PwC.  Over the last decade Praveen has helped clients plan, architect and implement Oracle identity solutions across diverse industries.  His experience includes delivering security across diverse topics like network, infrastructure, application and data where he brings a holistic point of view to problem solving.

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• Updated SOA Documents now available in ITSO Reference Library

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Nine documents within the IT Strategies from Oracle (ITSO) reference library have recently been updated. (Access to the ITSO collection is free to registered Oracle.com members -- and that membership is free.) All nine documents fall within the Service Oriented Architecture section of the ITSO collection, and cover the following topics: SOA Practitioner Guides Creating an SOA Roadmap (PDF, 54 pages, published: February 2012) The secret to successful SOA is to build a roadmap that can be successfully executed. SOA offers an opportunity to adopt an iterative technique to deliver solutions incrementally. This document offers a structured, iterative methodology to help you stay focused on business results, mitigate technology and organizational risk, and deliver successful SOA projects. A Framework for SOA Governance (PDF, 58 pages, published: February 2012) Successful SOA requires a strong governance strategy that designs-in measurement, management, and enforcement procedures. Enterprise SOA adoption introduces new assets, processes, technologies, standards, roles, etc. which require application of appropriate governance policies and procedures. This document offers a framework for defining and building a proper SOA governance model. Determining ROI of SOA through Reuse (PDF, 28 pages, published: February 2012) SOA offers the opportunity to save millions of dollars annually through reuse. Sharing common services intuitively reduces workload, increases developer productivity, and decreases maintenance costs. This document provides an approach for estimating the reuse value of the various software assets contained in a typical portfolio. Identifying and Discovering Services (PDF, 64 pages, published: March 2012) What services should we build? How can we promote the reuse of existing services? A sound approach to answer these questions is a primary measure for the success of a SOA initiative. This document describes a pragmatic approach for collecting the necessary information for identifying proper services and facilitating service reuse. Software Engineering in an SOA Environment (PDF, 66 pages, published: March 2012) Traditional software delivery methods are too narrowly focused and need to be adjusted to enable SOA. This document describes an engineering approach for delivering projects within an SOA environment. It identifies the unique software engineering challenges faced by enterprises adopting SOA and provides a framework to remove the hurdles and improve the efficiency of the SOA initiative. SOA Reference Architectures SOA Foundation (PDF, 70 pages, published: February 2012) This document describes they key tenets for SOA design, development, and execution environments. Topics include: service definition, service layering, service types, the service model, composite applications, invocation patterns, and standards. SOA Infrastructure (PDF, 86 pages, published: February 2012) Properly architected, SOA provides a robust and manageable infrastructure that enables faster solution delivery. This document describes the role of infrastructure and its capabilities. Topics include: logical architecture, deployment views, and Oracle product mapping. SOA White Papers and Data Sheets Oracle's Approach to SOA (white paper) (PDF, 14 pages, published: February 2012) Oracle has developed a pragmatic, holistic approach, based on years of experience with numerous companies to help customers successfully adopt SOA and realize measureable business benefits. This executive datasheet and whitepaper describe Oracle's proven approach to SOA. Oracle's Approach to SOA (data sheet) (PDF, 3 pages, published: March 2012) SOA adoption is complex and success is far from assured. This is why Oracle has developed a pragmatic, holistic approach, based on years of experience with numerous companies, to help customers successfully adopt SOA and realize measurable business benefits. This data sheet provides an executive overview of Oracle's proven approach to SOA.

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• Summit reflections

  - by Rob Farley

  So far, my three PASS Summit experiences have been notably different to each other. My first, I wasn’t on the board and I gave two regular sessions and a Lightning Talk in which I told jokes. My second, I was a board advisor, and I delivered a precon, a spotlight and a Lightning Talk in which I sang. My third (last week), I was a full board director, and I didn’t present at all. Let’s not talk about next year. I’m not sure there are many options left. This year, I noticed that a lot more people recognised me and said hello. I guess that’s potentially because of the singing last year, but could also be because board elections can bring a fair bit of attention, and because of the effort I’ve put in through things like 24HOP... Yeah, ok. It’d be the singing. My approach was very different though. I was watching things through different eyes. I looked for the things that seemed to be working and the things that didn’t. I had staff there again, and was curious to know how their things were working out. I knew a lot more about what was going on behind the scenes to make various things happen, and although very little about the Summit was actually my responsibility (based on not having that portfolio), my perspective had moved considerably. Before the Summit started, Board Members had been given notebooks – an idea Tom (who heads up PASS’ marketing) had come up with after being inspired by seeing Bill walk around with a notebook. The plan was to take notes about feedback we got from people. It was a good thing, and the notebook forms a nice pair with the SQLBits one I got a couple of years ago when I last spoke there. I think one of the biggest impacts of this was that during the first keynote, Bill told everyone present about the notebooks. This set a tone of “we’re listening”, and a number of people were definitely keen to tell us things that would cause us to pull out our notebooks. PASSTV was a new thing this year. Justin, the host, featured on the couch and talked a lot of people about a lot of things, including me (he talked to me about a lot of things, I don’t think he talked to a lot people about me). Reaching people through online methods is something which interests me a lot – it has huge potential, and I love the idea of being able to broadcast to people who are unable to attend in person. I’m keen to see how this medium can be developed over time. People who know me will know that I’m a keen advocate of certification – I've been SQL certified since version 6.5, and have even been involved in creating exams. However, I don’t believe in studying for exams. I think training is worthwhile for learning new skills, but the goal should be on learning those skills, not on passing an exam. Exams should be for proving that the skills are there, not a goal in themselves. The PASS Summit is an excellent place to take exams though, and with an attitude of professional development throughout the event, why not? So I did. I wasn’t expecting to take one, but I was persuaded and took the MCM Knowledge Exam. I hadn’t even looked at the syllabus, but tried it anyway. I was very tired, and even fell asleep at one point during it. I’ll find out my result at some point in the future – the Prometric site just says “Tested” at the moment. As I said, it wasn’t something I was expecting to do, but it was good to have something unexpected during the week. Of course it was good to catch up with old friends and make new ones. I feel like every time I’m in the US I see things develop a bit more, with more and more people knowing who I am, who my staff are, and recognising the LobsterPot brand. I missed being a presenter, but I definitely enjoyed seeing many friends on the list of presenters. I won’t try to list them, because there are so many these days that people might feel sad if I don’t mention them. For those that I managed to see, I was pleased to see that the majority of them have lifted their presentation skills since I last saw them, and I happily told them as much. One person who I will mention was Paul White, who travelled from New Zealand to his first PASS Summit. He gave two sessions (a regular session and a half-day), packed large rooms of people, and had everyone buzzing with enthusiasm. I spoke to him after the event, and he told me that his expectations were blown away. Paul isn’t normally a fan of crowds, and the thought of 4000 people would have been scary. But he told me he had no idea that people would welcome him so well, be so friendly and so down to earth. He’s seen the significance of the SQL Server community, and says he’ll be back. It’ll be good to see him there. Will you be there too?

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