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• EMEA Oracle PartnerNetwork Days - Virtual Event

  - by [email protected]

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• Cloud Builder Event Series Continues Around the World

  - by Sandra Cheevers

  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:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Are you building an enterprise Cloud?  Make sure you attend a Cloud Builder Summit at one of many worldwide locations.  Designed for executives, cloud architects, and IT operations professionals, this event will eventually reach over 100 cities around the globe. This free, live event features demonstrations of how to build an enterprise cloud.  Learn how to fast-track applications to the Cloud with Oracle, and support every aspect of architecting, planning, deploying, monitoring and managing enterprise clouds.    Here's a photo from one of the CloudBuilder events in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

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• Tuxedo Load Balancing

  - by Todd Little

  A question I often receive is how does Tuxedo perform load balancing.  This is often asked by customers that see an imbalance in the number of requests handled by servers offering a specific service. First of all let me say that Tuxedo really does load or request optimization instead of load balancing.  What I mean by that is that Tuxedo doesn't attempt to ensure that all servers offering a specific service get the same number of requests, but instead attempts to ensure that requests are processed in the least amount of time.   Simple round robin "load balancing" can be employed to ensure that all servers for a particular service are given the same number of requests.  But the question I ask is, "to what benefit"?  Instead Tuxedo scans the queues (which may or may not correspond to servers based upon SSSQ - Single Server Single Queue or MSSQ - Multiple Server Single Queue) to determine on which queue a request should be placed.  The scan is always performed in the same order and during the scan if a queue is empty the request is immediately placed on that queue and request routing is done.  However, should all the queues be busy, meaning that requests are currently being processed, Tuxedo chooses the queue with the least amount of "work" queued to it where work is the sum of all the requests queued weighted by their "load" value as defined in the UBBCONFIG file.  What this means is that under light loads, only the first few queues (servers) process all the requests as an empty queue is often found before reaching the end of the scan.  Thus the first few servers in the queue handle most of the requests.  While this sounds non-optimal, in fact it capitalizes on the underlying operating systems and hardware behavior to produce the best possible performance.  Round Robin scheduling would spread the requests across all the available servers and thus require all of them to be in memory, and likely not share much in the way of hardware or memory caches.  Tuxedo's system maximizes the various caches and thus optimizes overall performance.  Hopefully this makes sense and now explains why you may see a few servers handling most of the requests.  Under heavy load, meaning enough load to keep all servers that can handle a request busy, you should see a relatively equal number of requests processed.  Next post I'll try and cover how this applies to servers in a clustered (MP) environment because the load balancing there is a little more complicated. Regards,Todd LittleOracle Tuxedo Chief Architect

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• New Oracle.com global navigation

  - by tim.bonnemann

  This is a guest post by Michal Kopec, Senior User Experience Architect her at Oracle Marketing Brand and Creative. We have just refreshed the Oracle.com global navigation to serve you better with Oracle related information and news. Highlights 1. Updated, user-oriented and business information balanced navigational categories. Say hello to the new categories: Downloads, Education and Oracle Technology Network. Oracle Partner Network navigation received a facelift too. 2. Brand new flyout based navigation - mouse over Partners for instance - providing both a high level content overview as well as shortcut links for most popular website destinations 3. Introducing audience based - I'm a... - and - I want to... - task-based navigation. Now you can navigate based on who you are or what is you want to accomplish. Please note this is an initial step - we want to build out those based on your opinions and feedback. 4. Adjusted Oracle Technology Network horizontal navigation to match Oracle.com. Oracle Technology Network users can now benefit from OTN content being accessible from anywhere during their Oracle.com and OTN visits of course :) 5. Last but not least - we applied the same refreshed global navigation to a couple of country sites - starting with Oracle Brazil and Oracle China. More to come. The project internal code name is Mosaic. It is an effort to provide you with unified user and brand experience during your Oracle websites visit. Every time you hear Mosaic expect great things to happen. With that - please let us know what you think. We value your opinion.

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• Reaching the Pinnacle of Customer Experience : Customer Concepts WebTV #2

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  The challenge has never been greater – globalization increases consumer choice and quickly converts products into mere commodities. Leading companies understand that delivering exceptional customer experiences and building brand equity are vital for success. Please join us for an exclusive Web TV broadcast to hear how companies are enriching interactions differently with their customers to drive measurable business value. Our panel of experts including customers, industry thought leaders and Oracle executives will discuss how to refine the customer experience and build a digital experience to win new clients and maximise customer retention. Register now for this pan-European interactive Web TV show on Friday, July 6 at 10 a.m. BST / 11 a.m. CET. Watch and share the teaser video  REPLAY Fusion CRM Sales - Performance Management on demand: Watch and share the teaser video and replay.

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• How to ensure custom serverListener events fires before action events

  - by frank.nimphius

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} Using JavaScript in ADF Faces you can queue custom events defined by an af:serverListener tag. If the custom event however is queued from an af:clientListener on a command component, then the command component's action and action listener methods fire before the queued custom event. If you have a use case, for example in combination with client side integration of 3rd party technologies like HTML, Applets or similar, then you want to change the order of execution. The way to change the execution order is to invoke the command item action from the client event method that handles the custom event propagated by the af:serverListener tag. The following four steps ensure your successful doing this 1.       Call cancel() on the event object passed to the client JavaScript function invoked by the af:clientListener tag 2.       Call the custom event as an immediate action by setting the last argument in the custom event call to true function invokeCustomEvent(evt){   evt.cancel();          var custEvent = new AdfCustomEvent(                         evt.getSource(),                         "mycustomevent",                                                                                                                    {message:"Hello World"},                         true);    custEvent.queue(); } 3.       When handling the custom event on the server, lookup the command item, for example a button, to queue its action event. This way you simulate a user clicking the button. Use the following code ActionEvent event = new ActionEvent(component); event.setPhaseId(PhaseId.INVOKE_APPLICATION); event.queue(); The component reference needs to be changed with the handle to the command item which action method you want to execute. 4.       If the command component has behavior tags, like af:fileDownloadActionListener, or af:setPropertyListener, defined, then these are also executed when the action event is queued. However, behavior tags, like the file download action listener, may require a full page refresh to be issued to work, in which case the custom event cannot be issued as a partial refresh. File download action tag: http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E17904_01/apirefs.1111/e12419/tagdoc/af_fileDownloadActionListener.html " Since file downloads must be processed with an ordinary request - not XMLHttp AJAX requests - this tag forces partialSubmit to be false on the parent component, if it supports that attribute." To issue a custom event as a non-partial submit, the previously shown sample code would need to be changed as shown below function invokeCustomEvent(evt){   evt.cancel();          var custEvent = new AdfCustomEvent(                         evt.getSource(),                         "mycustomevent",                                                                                                                    {message:"Hello World"},                         true);    custEvent.queue(false); } To learn more about custom events and the af:serverListener, please refer to the tag documentation: http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E17904_01/apirefs.1111/e12419/tagdoc/af_serverListener.html

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• Talking JavaOne with Rock Star Charles Nutter

  - by Janice J. Heiss

  JavaOne Rock Stars, conceived in 2005, are the top rated speakers from the JavaOne Conference. They are awarded by their peers who through conference surveys recognize them for their outstanding sessions and speaking ability. Over the years many of the world’s leading Java developers have been so recognized.We spoke with distinguished Rock Star, Charles Nutter. A JRuby Update from Charles NutterCharles Nutter of Red Hat is well known as a lead developer of JRuby, a Ruby implementation of Java that is tightly integrated with Java to allow for the embedding of the interpreter into any Java application with full two-way access between the Java and the Ruby code. Nutter is giving the following sessions at this year’s JavaOne: CON7257 – “JVM Bytecode for Dummies (and the Rest of Us Too)” CON7284 – “Implementing Ruby: The Long, Hard Road” CON7263 – “JVM JIT for Dummies” BOF6682 – “I’ve Got 99 Languages, but Java Ain’t One” CON6575 – “Polyglot for Dummies” (Both with Thomas Enebo) I asked Nutter, to give us the latest on JRuby. “JRuby seems to have hit a tipping point this past year,” he explained, “moving from ‘just another Ruby implementation’ to ‘the best Ruby implementation for X,’ where X may be performance, scaling, big data, stability, reliability, security, and a number of other features important for today's applications. We're currently wrapping up JRuby 1.7, which improves support for Ruby 1.9 APIs, solves a number of user issues and concurrency challenges, and utilizes invokedynamic to outperform all other Ruby implementations by a wide margin. JRuby just gets better and better.” When asked what he thought about the rapid growth of alternative languages for the JVM, he replied, “I'm very intrigued by efforts to bring a high-performance JavaScript runtime to the JVM. There's really no reason the JVM couldn't be the fastest platform for running JavaScript with the right implementation, and I'm excited to see that happen.”And what is Nutter working on currently? “Aside from JRuby 1.7 wrap-up,” he explained, “I'm helping the Hotspot developers investigate invokedynamic performance issues and test-driving their new invokedynamic code in Java 8. I'm also starting to explore ways to improve the general state of dynamic languages on the JVM using JRuby as a guide, and to help the JVM become a better platform for all kinds of languages.”

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• Oracle Open World 2012 is Here!

  - by thatjeffsmith

  Just a quick post today and then probably not much more until next week. Speaking, running hands on labs, meets and greets, and trying to keep up with folks like @oraclenerd means I won’t have much time to write until I get home from San Francisco. Wanted to give a quick shout out to my co-worker and partner-in-Product Management-crime, Ashley Chen this morning. She signed me up for a run across the Golden Gate and back with @bamcgill a few months ago…mostly with my permission. The only thing was, I didn’t run at the time, and that’s basically a 5k. But having goals is good. And yesterday I met a big goal of mine – not looking stupid trying to run across the Golden Gate Bridge. Ok, I did the run and mabye looked a little bit stupid. Ashley, Barry, and I Pre-Run Perfect weather and no fog to cloud the view! So the pre-show fun is over and now it’s time for the show fun to begin. At Oracle Open World? Come by our demo pods. We’re with the other Database folks in the back right-hand corner. We’ll have folks on hand to talk and show Oracle SQL Developer, Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler, Migrations, and Oracle APEX Listener. Oracle SQL Developer Demo Pod I have the full schedule of SQL Developer presentations and hands on labs here. I know there’s a lot of news on tap this week in the world of Oracle, and we’ll start talking more about it soon. So be sure to subscribe to my feed if you don’t want to miss any of my posts. And I promise not to post any more pictures me. Speaking of pictures, thanks to @dmcghan – or as I call him, ‘Dan the Man’ for running with us and being our official portrait photographer! If you don’t follow him, he’s a great fountain of knowledge in the Oracle APEX world and is one of our ACEs.

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• Mobile BI Comes of Age

  - by rich.clayton(at)oracle.com

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-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-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-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-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} 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-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} One of the hot topics in the Business Intelligence industry is mobility.  More specifically the question is how business can be transformed by the iPhone and the iPad.  In June 2003, Gartner predicted that Mobile BI would be obsolete and that the technology was headed for the 'trough of disillusionment'.  I agreed with them at that time.  Many vendors like MicroStrategy and Business Objects jumped into the fray attempting to show how PDA's like Palm Pilots could be integrated with BI.  Their investments resulted in interesting demos with no commercial traction.  Why, because wireless networks and mobile operating systems were primitive, immature and slow. In my opinion, Apple's iOS has changed everything in Mobile BI.  Yes Blackberry, Android and Symbian and all the rest have their place in the market but I believe that increasingly consumers (not IT departments) influence BI decision making processes.  Consumers are choosing the iPhone and the iPad. The number of iPads I see in business meetings now is staggering.  Some use it for email and note taking and others are starting to use corporate applications.  The possibilities for Mobile BI are countless and I would expect to see iPads enterprise-wide over the next few years.   These new devices will provide just-in-time access to critical business information.  Front-line managers interacting with customers, suppliers, patients or citizens will have information literally at their fingertips. I've experimented with several mobile BI tools.  They look cool but like their Executive Information System (EIS) predecessors of the 1990's these tools lack a backbone and a plausible integration strategy.  EIS was a viral technology in the early 1990's.  Executives from every industry and job function were showcasing their dashboards to fellow co-workers and colleagues at the country club.  Just like the iPad, every senior manager wanted one.  EIS wasn't a device however, it was a software application.   EIS quickly faded into the software sunset as it lacked integration with corporate information systems.  BI servers  replaced EIS because the technology focused on the heavy data lifting of integrating, normalizing, aggregating and managing large, complex data volumes.  The devices are here to stay. The cute stand-alone mobile BI tools, not so much. If all you're looking to do is put Excel files on your iPad, there are plenty of free tools on the market.  You'll look cool at your next management meeting but after a few weeks, the cool factor will fade away and you'll be wondering how you will ever maintain it.  If however you want secure, consistent, reliable information on your iPad, you need an integration strategy and a way to model the data.  BI Server technologies like the Oracle BI Foundation is a market leading approach to tackle that issue. I liken the BI mobility frenzy to buying classic cars.  Classic Cars have two buying groups - teenagers and middle-age folks looking to tinker.  Teenagers look at the pin-stripes and the paint job while middle-agers (like me)  kick the tires a bit and look under the hood to check out the quality and reliability of the engine.  Mobile BI tools sure look sexy but don't go very far without an engine and a transmission or an integration strategy. The strategic question in Mobile BI is can these startups build a motor and transmission faster than Oracle can re-paint the car?  Oracle has a great engine and a transmission that connects to all enterprise information assets.  We're working on the new paint job and are excited about the possibilities.  Just as vertical integration worked in the automotive business, it too works in the technology industry.

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• JCP Awards 10 Year Retrospective

  - by Heather VanCura

  As we celebrate 10 years of JCP Program Award recognition in 2012,  take a look back in the Retrospective article covering the history of the JCP awards.  Most recently, the JCP awards were  celebrated at JavaOne Latin America in Brazil, where SouJava was presented the JCP Member of the Year Award for 2012 (won jointly with the London Java Community) for their contributions and launch of the Global Adopt-a-JSR Program. This is also a good time to honor the JCP Award Nominees and Winners who have been designated as Star Spec Leads.  Spec Leads are key to the Java Community Process (JCP) program. Without them, none of the Java Specification Requests (JSRs) would have begun, much less completed and become implemented in shipping products.  Nominations for 2012 Start Spec Leads are now open until 31 December. The Star Spec Lead program recognizes Spec Leads who have repeatedly proven their merit by producing high quality specifications, establishing best practices, and mentoring others. The point of such honor is to endorse the good work that they do, showcase their methods for other Spec Leads to emulate, and motivate other JCP program members and participants to get involved in the JCP program. Ed Burns – A Star Spec Lead for 2009, Ed first got involved with the JCP program when he became co-Spec Lead of JSR 127, JavaServer Faces (JSF), a role he has continued through JSF 1.2 and now JSF 2.0, which is JSR 314. Linda DeMichiel – Linda thus involved in the JCP program from its very early days. She has been the Spec Lead on at least three JSRs and an EC member for another three. She holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University. Gavin King – Nominated as a JCP Outstanding Spec Lead for 2010, for his work with JSR 299. His endorsement said, “He was not only able to work through disputes and objections to the evolving programming model, but he resolved them into solutions that were more technically sound, and which gained support of its pundits.” Mike Milikich –  Nominated for his work on Java Micro Edition (ME) standards, implementations, tools, and Technology Compatibility Kits (TCKs), Mike was a 2009 Star Spec Lead for JSR 271, Mobile Information Device Profile 3. David Nuescheler – Serving as the CTO for Day Software, acquired by Adobe Systems, David has been a key player in the growth of the company’s global content management solution. In 2002, he became Spec Lead for JSR 170, Content Repository for Java Technology API, continuing for the subsequent version, JSR 283. Bill Shannon – A well-respected name in the Java community, Bill came to Oracle from Sun as a Distinguished Engineer and is still performing at full speed as Spec Lead for JSR 342, Java EE 7,  as an alternate EC member, and hands-on problem solver for the Java community as a whole. Jim Van Peursem – Jim holds a PhD in Computer Engineering. He was part of the Motorola team that worked with Sun labs on the Spotless VM that became the KVM. From within Motorola, Jim has been responsible for many aspects of Java technology deployment, from an independent Connected Limited Device Configuration (CLDC) and Mobile Information Device Profile (MIDP) implementations, to handset development, to working with the industry in defining many related standards. Participation in the JCP Program goes well beyond technical proficiency. The JCP Awards Program is an attempt to say “Thank You” to all of the JCP members, Expert Group Members, Spec Leads, and EC members who give their time to contribute to the evolution of Java technology.

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• Where Facebook Stands Heading Into 2013

  - by Mike Stiles

  In our last blog, we looked at how Twitter is positioned heading into 2013. Now it’s time to take a similar look at Facebook. 2012, for a time at least, seemed to be the era of Facebook-bashing. Between a far-from-smooth IPO, subsequent stock price declines, and anxiety over privacy, the top social network became a target for comedians, politicians, business journalists, and of course those who were prone to Facebook-bash even in the best of times. But amidst the “this is the end of Facebook” headlines, the company kept experimenting, kept testing, kept innovating, and pressing forward, committed as always to the user experience, while concurrently addressing monetization with greater urgency. Facebook enters 2013 with over 1 billion users around the world. Usage grew 41% in Brazil, Russia, Japan, South Korea and India in 2012. In the Middle East and North Africa, an average 21 new signups happen per minute. Engagement and time spent on the site would impress the harshest of critics. Facebook, while not bulletproof, has become such an integrated daily force in users’ lives, it’s getting hard to imagine any future mass rejection. You want to see a company recognizing weaknesses and shoring them up. Mobile was a weakness in 2012 as Facebook was one of many caught by surprise at the speed of user migration to mobile. But new mobile interfaces, better mobile ads, speed upgrades, standalone Messenger and Pages mobile apps, and the big dollar acquisition of Instagram, were a few indicators Facebook won’t play catch-up any more than it has to. As a user, the cool thing about Facebook is, it knows you. The uncool thing about Facebook is, it knows you. The company’s walking a delicate line between the public’s competing desires for customized experiences and privacy. While the company’s working to make privacy options clearer and easier, Facebook’s Paul Adams says data aggregation can move from acting on what a user is engaging with at the moment to a more holistic view of what they’re likely to want at any given time. To help learn about you, there’s Open Graph. Embedded through diverse partnerships, the idea is to surface what you’re doing and what you care about, and help you discover things via your friends’ activities. Facebook’s Director of Engineering, Mike Vernal, says building mobile social apps connected to Facebook in such ways is the next wave of big innovation. Expect to see that fostered in 2013. The Facebook site experience is always evolving. Some users like that about Facebook, others can’t wait to complain about it…on Facebook. The Facebook focal point, the News Feed, is not sacred and is seeing plenty of experimentation with the insertion of modules. From upcoming concerts, events, suggested Pages you might like, to aggregated “most shared” content from social reader apps, plenty could start popping up between those pictures of what your friends had for lunch.  As for which friends’ lunches you see, that’s a function of the mythic EdgeRank…which is also tinkered with. When Facebook changed it in September, Page admins saw reach go down and the high anxiety set in quickly. Engagement, however, held steady. The adjustment was about relevancy over reach. (And oh yeah, reach was something that could be charged for). Facebook wants users to see what they’re most likely to like, based on past usage and interactions. Adding to the “cream must rise to the top” philosophy, they’re now even trying out ordering post comments based on the engagement the comments get. Boy, it’s getting competitive out there for a social engager. Facebook has to make $$$. To do that, they must offer attractive vehicles to marketers. There are a myriad of ad units. But a key Facebook marketing concept is the Sponsored Story. It’s key because it encourages content that’s good, relevant, and performs well organically. If it is, marketing dollars can amplify it and extend its reach. Brands can expect the rollout of a search product and an ad network. That’s a big deal. It takes, as Open Graph does, the power of Facebook’s user data and carries it beyond the Facebook environment into the digital world at large. No one could target like Facebook can, and some analysts think it could double their roughly $5 billion revenue stream. As every potential revenue nook and cranny is explored, there are the users themselves. In addition to Gifts, Facebook thinks users might pay a few bucks to promote their own posts so more of their friends will see them. There’s also word classifieds could be purchased in News Feeds, though they won’t be called classifieds. And that’s where Facebook stands; a wildly popular destination, a part of our culture, with ever increasing functionalities, the biggest of big data, revenue strategies that appeal to marketers without souring the user experience, new challenges as a now public company, ongoing privacy concerns, and innovations that carry Facebook far beyond its own borders. Anyone care to write a “this is the end of Facebook” headline? @mikestilesPhoto via stock.schng

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

  - by Christopher Karl Chan

  So this blog will focus on BPM Swimlane roles and users from a ADF context.So we have an ADF Task Details Form and we are in the process of making it richer and dynamic in functionality. A common requirement could be to dynamically show different areas based on the user logged into the workspace. Perhaps even we want to know even what swim-lane role the user belongs to.It is is a little bit harder to achieve then one thinks unless you know the trick. [Read More]

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

  - by Christopher Karl Chan

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

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• The Virtues and Challenges of Implementing Basel III: What Every CFO and CRO Needs To Know

  - by Jenna Danko

  The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) is a group tasked with providing thought-leadership to the global banking industry.  Over the years, the BCBS has released volumes of guidance in an effort to promote stability within the financial sector.  By effectively communicating best-practices, the Basel Committee has influenced financial regulations worldwide.  Basel regulations are intended to help banks: More easily absorb shocks due to various forms of financial-economic stress Improve risk management and governance Enhance regulatory reporting and transparency In June 2011, the BCBS released Basel III: A global regulatory framework for more resilient banks and banking systems.  This new set of regulations included many enhancements to previous rules and will have both short and long term impacts on the banking industry.  Some of the key features of Basel III include: A stronger capital base More stringent capital standards and higher capital requirements Introduction of capital buffers  Additional risk coverage Enhanced quantification of counterparty credit risk Credit valuation adjustments  Wrong  way risk  Asset Value Correlation Multiplier for large financial institutions Liquidity management and monitoring Introduction of leverage ratio Even more rigorous data requirements To implement these features banks need to embark on a journey replete with challenges. These can be categorized into three key areas: Data, Models and Compliance. Data Challenges Data quality - All standard dimensions of Data Quality (DQ) have to be demonstrated.  Manual approaches are now considered too cumbersome and automation has become the norm. Data lineage - Data lineage has to be documented and demonstrated.  The PPT / Excel approach to documentation is being replaced by metadata tools.  Data lineage has become dynamic due to a variety of factors, making static documentation out-dated quickly.  Data dictionaries - A strong and clean business glossary is needed with proper identification of business owners for the data.  Data integrity - A strong, scalable architecture with work flow tools helps demonstrate data integrity.  Manual touch points have to be minimized.   Data relevance/coverage - Data must be relevant to all portfolios and storage devices must allow for sufficient data retention.  Coverage of both on and off balance sheet exposures is critical.   Model Challenges Model development - Requires highly trained resources with both quantitative and subject matter expertise. Model validation - All Basel models need to be validated. This requires additional resources with skills that may not be readily available in the marketplace.  Model documentation - All models need to be adequately documented.  Creation of document templates and model development processes/procedures is key. Risk and finance integration - This integration is necessary for Basel as the Allowance for Loan and Lease Losses (ALLL) is calculated by Finance, yet Expected Loss (EL) is calculated by Risk Management – and they need to somehow be equal.  This is tricky at best from an implementation perspective.  Compliance Challenges Rules interpretation - Some Basel III requirements leave room for interpretation.  A misinterpretation of regulations can lead to delays in Basel compliance and undesired reprimands from supervisory authorities. Gap identification and remediation - Internal identification and remediation of gaps ensures smoother Basel compliance and audit processes.  However business lines are challenged by the competing priorities which arise from regulatory compliance and business as usual work.  Qualification readiness - Providing internal and external auditors with robust evidence of a thorough examination of the readiness to proceed to parallel run and Basel qualification  In light of new regulations like Basel III and local variations such as the Dodd Frank Act (DFA) and Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review (CCAR) in the US, banks are now forced to ask themselves many difficult questions.  For example, executives must consider: How will Basel III play into their Risk Appetite? How will they create project plans for Basel III when they haven’t yet finished implementing Basel II? How will new regulations impact capital structure including profitability and capital distributions to shareholders? After all, new regulations often lead to diminished profitability as well as an assortment of implementation problems as we discussed earlier in this note.  However, by requiring banks to focus on premium growth, regulators increase the potential for long-term profitability and sustainability.  And a more stable banking system: Increases consumer confidence which in turn supports banking activity  Ensures that adequate funding is available for individuals and companies Puts regulators at ease, allowing bankers to focus on banking Stability is intended to bring long-term profitability to banks.  Therefore, it is important that every banking institution takes the steps necessary to properly manage, monitor and disclose its risks.  This can be done with the assistance and oversight of an independent regulatory authority.  A spectrum of banks exist today wherein some continue to debate and negotiate with regulators over the implementation of new requirements, while others are simply choosing to embrace them for the benefits I highlighted above. Do share with me how your institution is coping with and embracing these new regulations within your bank. Dr. Varun Agarwal is a Principal in the Banking Practice for Capgemini Financial Services.  He has over 19 years experience in areas that span from enterprise risk management, credit, market, and to country risk management; financial modeling and valuation; and international financial markets research and analyses.

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• John Hitchcock of Pace Describes the Oracle Agile PLM Customer Experience

  John Hitchcock, Senior Manager of Configuration Management at Pace (formerly 2Wire, Inc.), sat down for an interview during Oracle's Innovation Summit with Kerrie Foy, Manager of PLM Product Marketing at Oracle. Learn why his organization upgraded to the latest version of Agile and expanded the footprint to achieve impressive savings and productivity gains across the global, networked product value-chain.

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• John Hitchcock of Pace Describes the Oracle Agile PLM Customer Experience

  John Hitchcock, Senior Manager of Configuration Management at Pace (formerly 2Wire, Inc.), sat down for an interview during Oracle's Innovation Summit with Kerrie Foy, Manager of PLM Product Marketing at Oracle. Learn why his organization upgraded to the latest version of Agile and expanded the footprint to achieve impressive savings and productivity gains across the global, networked product value-chain.

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• Oracle Magazine: Getting started with SQL Analytics

  - by KLaker

  I am currently working on a series of podcasts covering the broad categories of our SQL analytical functions and features and while I was doing some research I came across of series of four articles in the Oracle Magazine. This series of article is written by Melanie Caffrey who is a senior development manager at Oracle. She is a coauthor of Expert PL/SQL Practices for Oracle Developers and DBAs (Apress, 2011) and Expert Oracle Practices: Oracle Database Administration from the Oak Table (Apress, 2010). The four articles are under the banner "Technology: SQL 101" and parts 9, 10, 11 and 12 cover SQL analytics. Here are the links to the four articles: Jan 2013 Having Sums, Averages, and Other Grouped Data March 2013 A Window into the World of Analytic Functions May 2013 Leading Ranks and Lagging Percentages: Analytic Functions, Continued July 2013 Pivotal Access to Your Data: Analytic Functions, Concluded The articles cover topics such as GROUP BY, SUM, AVG, HAVING, window functions, RANK, FIRST, LAST, LAG, LEAD etc.   The great news is that  you can try out the examples in this series. All you need is access to an Oracle Database instance. All the schemas, data sets and SQL statements that you will need can be downloaded from a link included in the January article.    I hope you find this series of articles useful.

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• John Hitchcock of Pace Describes the Oracle Agile PLM Customer Experience

  John Hitchcock, Senior Manager of Configuration Management at Pace (formerly 2Wire, Inc.), sat down for an interview during Oracle's Innovation Summit with Kerrie Foy, Manager of PLM Product Marketing at Oracle. Learn why his organization upgraded to the latest version of Agile and expanded the footprint to achieve impressive savings and productivity gains across the global, networked product value-chain.

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• John Hitchcock of Pace Describes the Oracle Agile PLM Customer Experience

  John Hitchcock, Senior Manager of Configuration Management at Pace (formerly 2Wire, Inc.), sat down for an interview during Oracle's Innovation Summit with Kerrie Foy, Manager of PLM Product Marketing at Oracle. Learn why his organization upgraded to the latest version of Agile and expanded the footprint to achieve impressive savings and productivity gains across the global, networked product value-chain.

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama Top 10 - September 16-22, 2012

  - by Bob Rhubart

  The Top 10 most popular items shared on the OTN ArchBeat Facebook Page for the week of September 16-22, 2012. The Real Architects of LA: OTN Architect Day in Los Angeles - Oct 25No gossip. No drama. No hair pulling. Just a full day of technical sessions and peer interaction focused on using Oracle technologies in today's cloud and SOA architectures. The event is free, but seating is limited, so register now. Thursday October 25, 2012. 8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. Sofitel Los Angeles, 8555 Beverly Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90048. OIM-OAM-OAAM integration using TAP – Request Flow you must understand!! | Atul KumarAtul Kumar's post addresses "key points and request flow that you must understand" when integrating three Oracle Identity Management product Oracle Identity Management, Oracle Access Management, and Oracle Adaptive Access Manager. Cloud, automation drive new growth in SOA governance market | ZDNet "SOA governance tools and processes learned over the past decade are now underpinning cloud projects as they scale across enterprises," reports Joe McKendrick. But there remains a lack of understanding about SOA Governance. DevOps Basics: Track Down High CPU Thread with ps, top and the new JDK7 jcmd Tool | Frank Munz "The approach is very generic and works for WebLogic, Glassfish or any other Java application," say Frank Munz. "UNIX commands in the example are run on CentOS, so they will work without changes for Oracle Enterprise Linux or RedHat. Creating the thread dump at the end of the video is done with the jcmd tool from JDK7." Frank has captured the process in the posted video. Oracle OpenWorld 2012 Hands-on Lab: "Leading Your Everyday Application Integration Projects with Enterprise SOA" Yet another session to squeeze into your already-jammed Oracle OpenWorld schedule. This hands-on lab focuses on how "Oracle Enterprise Repository, Oracle Application Integration Architecture (AIA) Foundation Pack, and Oracle SOA Suite work together to help you drive your enterprisewide integration projects." Loving VirtualBox 4.2… | The ORACLE-BASE Blog Is it wrong for a man to love a technology? Oracle ACE Director Tim Hall has several very good reasons for his feelings… ADF Create and CreateInsert Operations for ADF Table | Andrejus Baranovskis Oracle ACE Director Andrejus Baranovskis answers the question, "What operation is best to use to insert a new row into an ADF table, Create or CreateInsert?" Fault Handling Slides and Q&A | Ronald van Luttikhuizen Oracle ACE Director Ronald van Luttikhuizen shares the slides and a Q&A transcript from a presentation he and fellow ACE Director Guido Schmutz gave at the recent Oracle OpenWorld and JavaOne preview event organized by AMIS Technology. Why IT is a profession in 'flux' | ZDNet I usuallly don't post two items from the same person in one day, but this post from ZDNet blogger Joe McKendrick deals with some critical issues affecting those in IT. As McKendrick puts it: "IT professionals are under considerable pressure to deliver more value to the business, versus being good at coding and testing and deploying and integrating." Running RichFaces on WebLogic 12c | Markus Eisele "With all the JMS magic and the different provider checks in the showcase this has become some kind of a challenge to simply build and deploy it," says Oracle ACE Director Markus Eisele. His detailed post will help you to meet that challenge. Thought for the Day "Less is more." — Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (March 27, 1886 – August 17, 1969) Source: BrainyQuote.com

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• The Oracle VM Hall of Fame

  - by Kristin Rose

  “Take me out to the ball game, take me out to the crowd. Buy me a new Oracle VM, I want my competition to be history!”...Yes, baseball is in full swing, and as we make our way to the closing of the quarter, Oracle is ready to “knock it out of the park” with its newly updated release of Oracle VM 3.1. This home run of a server virtualization solution will let you deploy software faster, as it intelligently manages your entire infrastructure, from application to disk. As if that wasn’t enough, the competition can’t even get on base! Have a look at the final score below: Partners will be hitting grand slams left and right because management tools, application templates and single source support, have all teamed up to create one heck of a curve ball for the competition, but more importantly, an absolute first draft pick for our partners. With no license cost and an affordable enterprise support cost, crowds have gathered to see this ‘All Star’ play some hard ball. Watch as Jeff Doolan, Sr. Director of Linux and Virtualization Channel Sales at Oracle, goes into more depth on how Oracle VM is a real game changer and eliminates the competition.Adding to the line-up are two key components of Oracle VM 3.1: Enhanced Ease-of-use: The new GUI design is engineered for faster execution of workflow and to maximize ease of use and reduce deployment time. Administrators have more time to spend at the ball park or focus on the business.New Oracle VM Templates: such as the Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1.3; Oracle PeopleSoft FSCM 9.1; Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c; Oracle Linux 5.8; Oracle Linux 6.1; Oracle Solaris 11 – which add to the existing 100+ existing templates that are ready for download. Oracle VM Templates are pre-configured as an entire stack including OS and application fully tested, production ready and certified from Oracle.For more information on Oracle newest player, Oracle VM 3.1, read this press release or visit our technology information page. Batter Up,The OPN Communications Team

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• Customer Experience Management : A conversation with world experts RTD

  - by David lefranc

  A conversation with world experts in Customer Experience Management in Rome, Italy - Wed, June 20, 2012 It is our pleasure to share the registration link below for your chance to meet active members of the Oracle Real-Time Decisions Customer Advisory Board. Join us to hear how leading brands across the world have achieved tremendous return on investment through their Oracle Real-Time Decisions deployments and do not miss this unique opportunity to ask them specific questions directly during our customer roundtable. Please share this information with anyone interested in real-time decision management and cross-channel predictive process optimization.http://www.oracle.com/goto/RealTimeDecisions

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• Customer Experience Management : A conversation with world experts RTD

  - by David lefranc

  A conversation with world experts in Customer Experience Management in Rome, Italy - Wed, June 20, 2012 It is our pleasure to share the registration link below for your chance to meet active members of the Oracle Real-Time Decisions Customer Advisory Board. Join us to hear how leading brands across the world have achieved tremendous return on investment through their Oracle Real-Time Decisions deployments and do not miss this unique opportunity to ask them specific questions directly during our customer roundtable. Please share this information with anyone interested in real-time decision management and cross-channel predictive process optimization.http://www.oracle.com/goto/RealTimeDecisions

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• Project Management Helps AmeriCares Deliver International Aid

  - by Sylvie MacKenzie, PMP

  Excerpt from PROFIT - ORACLE - by Alison Weiss Handle with Care Sound project management helps AmeriCares bring international aid to those in need. The stakes are always high for AmeriCares. On a mission to restore health and save lives during times of disaster, the nonprofit international relief and humanitarian aid organization delivers donated medicines, medical supplies, and humanitarian aid to people in the U.S. and around the globe. Founded in 1982 with the express mission of responding as quickly and efficiently as possible to help people in need, the Stamford, Connecticut-based AmeriCares has delivered more than US$10.5 billion in aid to 147 countries over the past three decades. Launch the Slideshow “It’s critically important to us that we steward all the donations and that the medical supplies and medicines get to people as quickly as possible with no loss,” says Kate Sears, senior vice president for finance and technology at AmeriCares. “Whether we’re shipping IV solutions to victims of cholera in Haiti or antibiotics to Somali famine victims, we need to get the medicines there sooner because it means more people will be helped and lives improved or even saved.” Ten years ago, the tracking systems used by AmeriCares associates were paper-based. In recent years, staff started using spreadsheets, but the tracking processes were not standardized between teams. “Every team was tracking completely different information,” says Megan McDermott, senior associate, Sub-Saharan Africa partnerships, at AmeriCares. “It was just a few key things. For example, we tracked the date a shipment was supposed to arrive and the date we got reports from our partner that a hospital received aid on their end.” While the data was accurate, much detail was being lost in the process. AmeriCares management knew it could do a better job of tracking this enterprise data and in 2011 took a significant step by implementing Oracle’s Primavera P6 Professional Project Management. “It’s a comprehensive solution that has helped us improve the monitoring and controlling processes. It has allowed us to do our distribution better,” says Sears. In addition, the implementation effort has been a change agent, helping AmeriCares leadership rethink project management across the entire organization. Initially, much of the focus was on standardizing processes, but staff members also learned the importance of thinking proactively to prevent possible problems and evaluating results to determine if goals and objectives are truly being met. Such data about process efficiency and overall results is critical not only to AmeriCares staff but also to the donors supporting the organization’s life-saving missions. Efficiency Saves Lives One of AmeriCares’ core operations is to gather product donations from the private sector, establish where the most-urgent needs are, and solicit monetary support to send the aid via ocean cargo or airlift to welfare- and health-oriented nongovernmental organizations, hospitals, health networks, and government ministries based in areas in need. In 2011 alone, AmeriCares sent more than 3,500 shipments to 95 countries in response to both ongoing humanitarian needs and more than two dozen emergencies, including deadly tornadoes and storms in the U.S. and the devastating tsunami in Japan. When it comes to nonprofits in general, donors want to know that the charitable organizations they support are using funds wisely. Typically, nonprofits are evaluated by donors in terms of efficiency, an area where AmeriCares has an excellent reputation: 98 percent of expenses go directly to supporting programs and less than 2 percent represent administrative and fundraising costs. Donors, however, should look at more than simple efficiency, says Peter York, senior partner and chief research and learning officer at TCC Group, a nonprofit consultancy headquartered in New York, New York. They should also look at whether organizations have the systems in place to sustain their missions and continue to thrive. An expert on nonprofit organizational management, York has spent years studying sustainable charitable organizations. He defines them as nonprofits that are able to achieve the ongoing financial support to stay relevant and continue doing core mission work. In his analysis of well over 2,500 larger nonprofits, York has found that many are not sustaining, and are actually scaling back in size. “One of the biggest challenges of nonprofit sustainability is the general public’s perception that every dollar donated has to go only to the delivery of service,” says York. “What our data shows is that there are some fundamental capacities that have to be there in order for organizations to sustain and grow.” York’s research highlights the importance of data-driven leadership at successful nonprofits. “You’ve got to have the tools, the systems, and the technologies to get objective information on what you do, the people you serve, and the results you’re achieving,” says York. “If leaders don’t have the knowledge and the data, they can’t make the strategic decisions about programs to take organizations to the next level.” Historically, AmeriCares associates have used time-tested and cost-effective strategies to ship and then track supplies from donation to delivery to their destinations in designated time frames. When disaster strikes, AmeriCares ships by air and generally pulls out all the stops to deliver the most urgently needed aid within the first few days and weeks. Then, as situations stabilize, AmeriCares turns to delivering sea containers for the postemergency and ongoing aid so often needed over the long term. According to McDermott, getting a shipment out the door is fairly complicated, requiring as many as five different AmeriCares teams collaborating together. The entire process can take months—from when products are received in the warehouse and deciding which recipients to allocate supplies to, to getting customs and governmental approvals in place, actually shipping products, and finally ensuring that the products are received in-country. Delivering that aid is no small affair. “Our volume exceeds half a billion dollars a year worth of donated medicines and medical supplies, so it’s a sizable logistical operation to bring these products in and get them out to the right place quickly to have the most impact,” says Sears. “We really pride ourselves on our controls and efficiencies.” Adding to that complexity is the fact that the longer it takes to deliver aid, the more dire the human need can be. Any time AmeriCares associates can shave off the complicated aid delivery process can translate into lives saved. “It’s really being able to track information consistently that will help us to see where are the bottlenecks and where can we work on improving our processes,” says McDermott. Setting a Standard Productivity and information management improvements were key objectives for AmeriCares when staff began the process of implementing Oracle’s Primavera solution. But before configuring the software, the staff needed to take the time to analyze the systems already in place. According to Greg Loop, manager of database systems at AmeriCares, the organization received guidance from several consultants, including Rich D’Addario, consulting project manager in the Primavera Global Business Unit at Oracle, who was instrumental in shepherding the critical requirements-gathering phase. D’Addario encouraged staff to begin documenting shipping processes by considering the order in which activities occur and which ones are dependent on others to get accomplished. This exercise helped everyone realize that to be more efficient, they needed to keep track of shipments in a more standard way. “The staff didn’t recognize formal project management methodology,” says D’Addario. “But they did understand what the most important things are and that if they go wrong, an entire project can go off course.” Before, if a boatload of supplies was being sent to Haiti and there was a problem somewhere, a lot of time was taken up finding out where the problem was—because staff was not tracking things in a standard way. As a result, even more time was needed to find possible solutions to the problem and alert recipients that the aid might be delayed. “For everyone to put on the project manager hat and standardize the way every single thing is done means that now the whole organization is on the same page as to what needs to occur from the time a hurricane hits Haiti and when a boat pulls in to unload supplies,” says D’Addario. With so much care taken to put a process foundation firmly in place, configuring the Primavera solution was actually quite simple. Specific templates were set up for different types of shipments, and dashboards were implemented to provide executives with clear overviews of every project in the system. AmeriCares’ Loop reports that system planning, refining, and testing, followed by writing up documentation and training, took approximately four months. The system went live in spring 2011 at AmeriCares’ Connecticut headquarters. While the nonprofit has an international presence, with warehouses in Europe and offices in Haiti, India, Japan, and Sri Lanka, most donated medicines come from U.S. entities and are shipped from the U.S. out to the rest of the world. In addition, all shipments are tracked from the U.S. office. AmeriCares doesn’t expect the Primavera system to take months off the shipping time, especially for sea containers. However, any time saved is still important because it will allow aid to be delivered to people more quickly at a lower overall cost. “If we can trim a day or two here or there, that can translate into lives that we’re saving, especially in emergency situations,” says Sears. A Cultural Change Beyond the measurable benefits that come with IT-driven process improvement, AmeriCares management is seeing a change in culture as a result of the Primavera project. One change has been treating every shipment of aid as a project, and everyone involved with facilitating shipments as a project manager. “This is a revolutionary concept for us,” says McDermott. “Before, we were used to thinking we were doing logistics—getting a container from point A to point B without looking at it as one project and really understanding what it meant to manage it.” AmeriCares staff is also happy to report that collaboration within the organization is much more efficient. When someone creates a shipment in the Primavera system, the same shared template is used, which means anyone can log in to the system to see the status of a shipment. Knowledgeable staff can access a shipment project to help troubleshoot a problem. Management can easily check the status of projects across the organization. “Dashboards are really useful,” says McDermott. “Instead of going into the details of each project, you can just see the high-level real-time information at a glance.” The new system is helping team members focus on proactively managing shipments rather than simply reacting when problems occur. For example, when a container is shipped, documents must be included for customs clearance. Now, the shipping template has built-in reminders to prompt team members to ask for copies of these documents from freight forwarders and to follow up with partners to discover if a shipment is on time. In the past, staff may not have worked on securing these documents until they’d been notified a shipment had arrived in-country. Another benefit of capturing and adopting best practices within the Primavera system is that staff training is easier. “Capturing the processes in documented steps and milestones allows us to teach new staff members how to do their jobs faster,” says Sears. “It provides them with the knowledge of their predecessors so they don’t have to keep reinventing the wheel.” With the Primavera system already generating positive results, management is eager to take advantage of advanced capabilities. Loop is working on integrating the company’s proprietary inventory management system with the Primavera system so that when logistics or warehousing operators input data, the information will automatically go into the Primavera system. In the past, this information had to be manually keyed into spreadsheets, often leading to errors. Mining Historical Data Another feature on the horizon for AmeriCares is utilizing Primavera P6 Professional Project Management reporting capabilities. As the system begins to include more historical data, management soon will be able to draw on this information to conduct analysis that has not been possible before and create customized reports. For example, at the beginning of the shipment process, staff will be able to use historical data to more accurately estimate how long the approval process should take for a particular country. This could help ensure that food and medicine with limited shelf lives do not get stuck in customs or used beyond their expiration dates. The historical data in the Primavera system will also help AmeriCares with better planning year to year. The nonprofit’s staff has always put together a plan at the beginning of the year, but this has been very challenging simply because it is impossible to predict disasters. Now, management will be able to look at historical data and see trends and statistics as they set current objectives and prepare for future need. In addition, this historical data will provide AmeriCares management with the ability to review year-end data and compare actual project results with goals set at the beginning of the year—to see if desired outcomes were achieved and if there are areas that need improvement. It’s this type of information that is so valuable to donors. And, according to York, project management software can play a critical role in generating the data to help nonprofits sustain and grow. “It is important to invest in systems to help replicate, expand, and deliver services,” says York. “Project management software can help because it encourages nonprofits to examine program or service changes and how to manage moving forward.” Sears believes that AmeriCares donors will support the return on investment the organization will achieve with the Primavera solution. “It won’t be financial returns, but rather how many more people we can help for a given dollar or how much more quickly we can respond to a need,” says Sears. “I think donors are receptive to such arguments.” And for AmeriCares, it is all about the future and increasing results. The project management environment currently may be quite simple, but IT staff plans to expand the complexity and functionality as the organization grows in its knowledge of project management and the goals it wants to achieve. “As we use the system over time, we’ll continue to refine our best practices and accumulate more data,” says Sears. “It will advance our ability to make better data-driven decisions.”

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• Access-based Enumeration (December 04, 2009)

  - by user12612012

  Access-based Enumeration (ABE) is another recent addition to the Solaris CIFS Service - delivered into snv_124.  Designed to be compatible with Windows ABE, which was introduced in Windows Server 2003 SP1, this feature filters directory content based on the user browsing the directory.  Each user can only see the files and directories to which they have access.  This can be useful to implement an out-of-sight, out-of-mind policy or simply to reduce the number of files presented to each user - to make it easier to find files in directories containing a large number of files. ABE is managed on a per share basis by a new boolean share property called, as you might imagine, abe, which is described insharemgr(1M).  When set to true, ABE filtering is enabled on the share and directory entries to which the user has no access will be omitted from directory listings returned to the client.  When set to false or not defined, ABE filtering will not be performed on the share.  The abe property is not defined by default.Administration is straightforward, for example: # zfs sharesmb=abe=true,name=jane tank/home/jane# sharemgr show -vp    zfs       zfs/tank/home/jane nfs=() smb=()          jane=/export/home/jane     smb=(abe="true") ABE is also supported via sharemgr(1M) and on smbautohome(4) shares. Note that even though a file is visible in a share, with ABE enabled, it doesn't automatically mean that the user will always be able to open the file.  If a user has read attribute access to a file ABE will show the it but access will be denied if this user tries to open the file for reading or writing. We considered supporting ABE on NFS shares, as suggested by the name of PSARC/2009/375, but we ran into problems due to NFS client readdir caching.  NFS clients maintain a common directory entry cache for all users, which not only defeats the intent of ABE but can lead to very confusing results.  If multiple users are looking at the content of a directory with ABE enabled, the entries that get cached will depend on who looks at the directory first.  Subsequent users may see files that ABE on the server would have filtered out or files may be missing because they were filtered out for the original user. Although this issue can be resolved by disabling the NFS client readdir cache, this was deemed to be an unsuitable solution because it would create a dependency between a server share property and the configuration on all NFS clients, and there was the potential for differences in behavior across the various NFS clients.  It just seemed to add unnecessary administration complexity so we pulled it out. References for more information PSARC/2009/246 ZFS support for Access Based Enumeration PSARC/2009/375 ABE share property for NFS and SMB 6802734 Support for Access Based Enumeration 6802736 SMB share support for Access Based Enumeration Windows Access-based Enumeration

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