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• Restyling RadDataPager for WPF and Silverlight

    A small but powerful control has joined the great family of Telerik XAML controls with the recent release. RadDataPager is a result of an increasing demand from our customers who needed to work with large amounts of server data presented in small portions at the client side.  The primary goal was to make a powerful data paging control to be used in any scenarios requiring getting and presenting portions of data. How good is RadDataPager in working with paged data you can see in Rossen's announcement. Yet being a XAML control it challenged us with making one more visually appealing and highly customizable control. It offers a slick look in all available WPF/Silverlight Telerik themes:     As you can see the default design is targeting mainly business scenarios. At the same time being an example for a truly lookless XAML control RadDataPager allows restyling with minimal efforts this way widening the possible range of applications.  Lets see what we can doo with a few lines of XAML : <Style x:Key="buttonStyle" TargetType="ButtonBase" > <Setter Property="Template"> <Setter.Value> <ControlTemplate TargetType="ButtonBase"> <Grid Width="40" Background="Black"> <Ellipse StrokeThickness="2" VerticalAlignment="Center" Width="15" Height="15" HorizontalAlignment="Center" Fill="Gray" /> <Ellipse Visibility="{Binding IsCurrent, Converter={StaticResource VisibilityConverter}}" VerticalAlignment="Center" Height="16" Fill="White" HorizontalAlignment="Center" Width="16"/> </Grid> </ControlTemplate> </Setter.Value> </Setter> </Style> ... <telerik:RadDataPager NumericButtonStyle="{StaticResource buttonStyle}" ... And the result: The IPhone-style-thing bellow the RadCoverFlow is actually our RadDataPager.       With a few more lines of XAML we may get  almost any imaginable look of the pager control including the fascinating result demonstrated in the short video on the top.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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• Book &ldquo;Team Foundation Server 2012 Starter&rdquo; published!

  - by Jakob Ehn

  During the summer and fall this year, me and my colleague Terje Sandstrøm has worked together on a book project that has now finally hit the stores! The title of the book is Team Foundation Server 2012 Starter and is published by Packt Publishing. You can find it at http://www.packtpub.com/team-foundation-server-2012-starter/book or from Amazon http://www.amazon.com/dp/1849688389                          The book is part of a concept that Packt have with starter-books, intended for people new to Team Foundation Server 2012 and who want a quick guideline to get it up and working. It covers the fundamentals, from installing and configuring it, and how to use it with source control, work items and builds. It is done as a step-by-step guide, but also includes best practices advice in the different areas. It covers the use of both the on-premises and the TFS Services version. It also has a list of links and references in the end to the most relevant Visual Studio 2012 ALM sites. Our good friend and fellow ALM MVP Mathias Olausson have done the review of the book, thanks again Mathias! We hope the book fills the gap between the different online guide sites and the more advanced books that are out. Check it out and please let us know what you think of the book! Book Description Your quick start guide to TFS 2012, top features, and best practices with hands on examples Overview Install TFS 2012 from scratch Get up and running with your first project Streamline release cycles for maximum productivity In Detail Team Foundation Server 2012 is Microsoft's leading ALM tool, integrating source control, work item and process handling, build automation, and testing. This practical "Team Foundation Server 2012 Starter Guide" will provide you with clear step-by-step exercises covering all major aspects of the product. This is essential reading for anyone wishing to set up, organize, and use TFS server. This hands-on guide looks at the top features in Team Foundation Server 2012, starting with a quick installation guide and then moving into using it for your software development projects. Manage your team projects with Team Explorer, one of the many new features for 2012. Covering all the main features in source control to help you work more efficiently, including tools for branching and merging, we will delve into the Agile Planning Tools for planning your product and sprint backlogs. Learn to set up build automation, allowing your team to become faster, more streamlined, and ultimately more productive with this "Team Foundation Server 2012 Starter Guide". What you will learn from this book Install TFS 2012 on premise Access TFS Services in the cloud Quickly get started with a new project with product backlogs, source control, and build automation Work efficiently with source control using the top features Understand how the tools for branching and merging in TFS 2012 help you isolate work and teams Learn about the existing process templates, such as Visual Studio Scrum 2.0 Manage your product and sprint backlogs using the Agile planning tools Approach This Starter guide is a short, sharp introduction to Team Foundation Server 2012, covering everything you need to get up and running. Who this book is written for If you are a developer, project lead, tester, or IT administrator working with Team Foundation Server 2012 this guide will get you up to speed quickly and with minimal effort.

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• BizTalk Server Monitoring &ndash; SharePoint Web Part

  - by SURESH GIRIRAJAN

  I have been worked with customers using BizTalk as shared infrastructure in the enterprise, where we have two or more BizTalk apps running on it for different Business groups. Also these customers are not using BizTalk ESB portal even though they are using BizTalk ESB exception framework. So main issue with all these Business groups are they don’t have visibility into the BizTalk apps running in prod, even though they are using SCOM and other monitoring stuff in place. So I am trying to address few issues I am going to list below and how I try to mitigate them, first one on the list is how to get visibility into prod, how to provision those access to the BizTalk resources with minimal activity and how can we take advantage of the resources we have today. So I was working on creating REST data services for BizTalk RFID a year ago and available on codeplex. I thought to extend that idea to take advantage of BizTalk Data Services available in codeplex. I extended the BizTalk data services I will upload the updated service soon. So let me start thru how my solution works, so first step I am using the BizTalk data service (REST service) which expose most of the BizTalk artifacts as resources such as Applications, Orchestrations, Send ports, Receive ports, Host instances and In process instances etc. BizTalk Server Monitoring – SharePoint Web Part I am hosting the BizTalk data service in IIS with application pool configured to run under BizTalk administrator credentials. So with this setup I am making the service to make accessible anonymous. Next step of this solution I have created a SharePoint Visual web part which consumes the BizTalk data service and display all the BizTalk Application and Platform settings in read only mode. Even though BizTalk data services offers to browse resources as well perform actions like starting, stopping Orchestrations, Send ports, Receive locations, Host instances etc. Host Instances BizTalk Applications BizTalk Running / Suspended Instances So having this BizTalk Monitoring SharePoint web part, will be added to the SharePoint. This eliminates the need for granting access to the BizTalk users explicitly, so when you have BizTalk contractor or BizTalk application user need to have access to the BizTalk environment all the need is have access to the SharePoint website. You can configure the web part point to different end point based on your environment. I am making this as read only as part of this to make easier for the users and in terms of provisioning. This removes the dependency of BizTalk admin at least for viewing the BizTalk application status and errors etc. If we need to make any changes to the BizTalk application then its application owner responsibility to co-ordinate with BizTalk admins. There are options like BizTalk ESB portal, BizTalk 360 etc… but this one of the approach to reduce number of steps required to give access to BizTalk application users and also to maximize the resource we have in enterprise today. Also you can expose this data service thru Azure Service Bus and access from other apps like mobile devices or create a web site hosted in Azure etc. One last thing I have tested only with BizTalk Server 2010 on x64 VM only, but it should work on other version. I will try to upload the code shortly with instructions how to setup etc.… I welcome thoughts and suggestions… Hope this helps….

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• MIXing it Up a Bit

  - by andrewbrust

  Another March, another MIX.  For the fifth year running now, Microsoft has chosen to put on a conference aimed less at software development, per se, and more at the products, experiences and designs that software development can generate.  In all four prior MIX events, the focus of the show, its keynotes and breakout sessions has been on Web products.  On day 1 of MIX 2010 that focus shifted to Windows Phone 7 Series (WP7). What little we had seen of WP7 had been shown to us in a keynote presentation, given by Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain last month.  And today, Mr. Belfiore reprised his showmanship for the MIX 2010 audience.  Joe showed us the ins and outs of WP7 and, in a breakout session, even gave us a sneak peek of Office (specifically, Excel) on WP7.  We didn’t get to see that one month ago in Barcelona, nor did get to see email messages opened for reading, which we saw today. But beyond a tour of the phone itself, impressive though that is, we got to see apps running on it.  Those apps included Associated Press news, Seesmic (a major Twitter client) and Foursquare (a social media darling).  All three ran, ran well, and looked markedly different and better from their corresponding versions on iPhone and Android.  And the games we saw looked even better. To me though, the best demos involved the creation of WP7 apps, using Silverlight in Visual Studio and Expression Blend.  These demos were so effective because they showed important apps being built in very few steps, and by Microsoft executives to boot.  Scott Guthrie showed us how to build a Twitter API app in Visual Strudio.   Jon Harris showed us how to build a photo management and viewer application in Expression Blend, using virtually no code.  Demos of apps built from scratch to F5 without the benefit of a teacher, could be challenging.  But they went off fine, without a hitch and without a ton of opaque, generated code.  Everything written, be it C# or XAML, was easily understood, and the results were impressive. That means lots of developers can do this, and I think it means a lot will.  What I’ve seen, thus far, of iPhone and Android development looks very tedious by comparison.  Development for those platforms involve a collection of tools that integrate only to a point.  Dev work for WP7 involves use of Visual Studio, Silverlight and the same debugging experience .NET developers already know.  This was very exciting for me. All the demos harkened back to days of building apps for with Visual Basic…design the front-end, put in code-behind and then hit F5.  And that makes sense, because the phone platform, and the PC of the early 90s are both, essentially, client OS machines.  The Web was minimal and the “device” was everything. Same is true of this phone.  It’s a client app contraption that fits in your pocket. And if the platforms are comparable, hopefully so too will be the draw of ease-of-development.   WP7 has the potential to make mobile developers want to switch over, and to convince enterprise developers to get into the phone scene.  Will this propel the new phone platform to new heights, and restore Microsoft’s competiveness in the mobile arena? I hope so.  I think so.  And if Microsoft uses developers to build themselves a victory, that would be beneficial and would show that Microsoft has learned from its failures, as well as its successes.  Today I saw a few beautiful apps.  Tomorrow I hope I see a slew of others; maybe not as polished, but plentiful, attractive and stable.  That would be a victory for Microsoft, and for developers.  And it would show everyone else that developers are the kingmakers.  They need cheap, efficient dev tools and lots of respect.  Microsoft has always been the company to provide that.  Hopefully, with WP7, they will return to that persona and see how very timeless it is.

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• Oracle and Partners release CAMP specification for PaaS Management

  - by macoracle

  Cloud Application Management for Platforms The public release of the Cloud Application Management for Platforms (CAMP) specification, an initial draft of what is expected to become an industry standard self service interface specification for Platform as a Service (PaaS) management, represents a significant milestone in cloud standards development. Created by several players in the emerging cloud industry, including Oracle, the specification is being submitted to the OASIS standards organization (draft charter) where it will be finalized in an open development process. CAMP is targeted at application developers and deployers for self service management of their application on a Platform-as-a-Service cloud. It is closely aligned with the application development process where applications are typically developed in an Application Development Environment (ADE) and then deployed into a private or public platform cloud. CAMP standardizes the model behind an application’s dependencies on platform components and provides a standardized format for moving applications between the ADE and the cloud, and if and when desirable, between clouds. Once an application is deployed, CAMP provides users with a standardized self service interface to the PaaS offering, allowing the cloud consumer to manage the lifecycle of the application on that platform and the use of the underlying platform services. The CAMP interface includes a RESTful binding of the CAMP model onto the standard HTTP protocol, using JSON as the encoding for the model resources. The model for CAMP includes resources that represent the Application, its Components and any Platform Components that they depend on. It's important PaaS Cloud consumers understand that for a PaaS cloud, these are the abstractions that the user would prefer to work with, not Virtual Machines and the various resources such as compute power, storage and networking. PaaS cloud consumers would also not like to become system administrators for the infrastructure that is hosting their applications and component services. CAMP works on this more abstract level, and yet still accommodates platforms that are built using an underlying infrastructure cloud. With CAMP, it is up to the cloud provider whether or not this underlying infrastructure is exposed to the consumer. One major challenge addressed by the CAMP specification is that of ensuring that application deployment on a new platform is as seamless and error free as possible. This becomes even more difficult when the application may have been developed for a different platform and is now moving to a new one. In CAMP this is accomplished by matching the requirements of the application and its components to the specific capabilities of the underlying platform. This needs to be done regardless of whether there are existing pools of virtualized platform resources (such as a database pool) which are provisioned(on the basis of a schema for example), or whether the platform component is really just a set of virtual machines drawn from an infrastructure pool. The interoperability between platform clouds that CAMP offers means that a CAMP client such as an ADE can target multiple clouds with a single common interface. Applications can even be spread across multiple platform clouds and then managed without needing to create a specialized adapter to manage the components running in each cloud. The development of CAMP has been an effort by a small set of companies, but there are significant advantages to this approach. For example, the way that each of these companies creates their platforms is different enough, to ensure that CAMP can cover a wide range of actual deployments. CAMP is now entering the next phase of development under the guidance of an open standards organization, OASIS, which will likely broaden it’s capabilities. We hope is to keep it concise and minimal, however, to ease implementation and adoption. Over time there will be many different types of platform components that applications can use and which need management. CAMP at this point only includes one example of this (in an appendix) – DataBase as a Service. I am looking forward to the start of the CAMP Technical Committee in OASIS and will do my best to ensure a successful development process. Hope to see you there.

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• Old School Wizardry Tip: Batch File Comments

  - by jkauffman

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

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• 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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• The theory of evolution applied to software

  - by Michel Grootjans

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

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• Expanding the Partner Ecosystem with Third-Party Plug-ins

  - by Joe Diemer

  Oracle Enterprise Manager’s extensibility capabilities are designed to allow customers and partners to adapt Enterprise Manager for management of heterogeneous environments with Plug-ins and Connectors.  Third-party developers continue to take advantage of Oracle Enterprise Manager’s Extensibility Development Kit (EDK) to build plug-ins to Enterprise Manager 12c, such as F5’s BIG IP Plug-in and Entuity’s Eye of the Storm Network Management Plug-In.  Partners can also validate their plug-ins through the Oracle Validated Integration (OVI) program, which assures customers that the plug-in has been tested and is functionally and technically sound, is designed in a reliable and standardized manner, and operates and performs as documented.   Two very recent examples of partners which have beta versions of their plug-ins are Blue Medora's VMware vSphere plug-in and the NetApp Storage plug-in.  VMware vSphere Plug-in by Blue Medora Blue Medora, an Oracle Partner Network (OPN) “Gold” member, which just announced that it is now signing up customers to try a beta version of their new VMware vSphere plug-in for Enterprise Manager 12c.  According to Blue Medora, the vSphere plug-in monitors critical VMware metrics (CPU, Memory, Disk, Network, etc) at the Host, VM, Cluster and Resource Pool levels.  It has minimal performance impact via an “agentless” approach that requires no installation directly on VMware servers.  It has discovery capabilities for VMware Datacenters, ESX Hosts, Clusters, Virtual Machines, and Datastores.  It offers integration of native VMware Events into Enterprise Manager, and it provides over 300 VMware-related health, availability, performance, and configuration metrics.  It comes with more than 30 out-of-the-box pre-defined thresholds and can manage VMware via a series of jobs split between cluster, host and VM target types.The company reports that the Enterprise Manager 12c plug-in supports vSphere versions 4.0, 4.5 and 5.0.  Platforms supported include Linux 64-bit, Windows, AIX and Solaris SPARC and x86.  Information about the plug-in, including how to sign up for the beta, is available at their web site at http://bluemedora.com after selecting the "Products" tab. NetApp Storage Plug-in NetApp believes the combination of storage system monitoring with comprehensive management of Oracle systems with Enterprise Manager will help customers reduce the cost and complexity of managing applications that rely on NetApp storage and Oracle technologies.  So, NetApp built a plug-in and reports that it has comprehensive availability and performance information for NetApp storage systems.  Using the plug-in, Oracle Enterprise Manager customers with NetApp storage solutions can track the association between databases and storage components and thereby respond to faults and IO performance bottlenecks quickly. With the latest configuration management capabilities, one can also perform drift analysis to make sure all storage systems are configured as per established gold standards. The company is also now signing up beta customers, which can be done at the NetApp Communities site at https://communities.netapp.com/groups/netapp-storage-system-plug-in-for-oem12c-beta. Learn More about Enterprise Manager Extensibility More plug-ins from other partners are soon to come, which I'll be reporting on them here.  To learn more about Enterprise Manager and how customers and partners can build plug-ins using the EDK to manage a multi-vendor data center, go to http://oracle.com/enterprisemanager in the Heterogeneous Management solution area.  The site also lists the plug-ins available with information on how to obtain them.  More info about the Oracle Validated Integration program can be found at the OPN Enterprise Manager Knowledge Zone in the "Develop" tab.

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• 5 Ways to Celebrate the Release of Internet Explorer 9

  - by David Wesst

  The day has finally come: Microsoft has released a web browser that is awesome. On Monday night, Microsoft officially introduced the world to the latest edition to its product family: Internet Explorer 9. That makes March 14, 2011 (also known as PI day) the official birthday of Microsoft’s rebirth in the world of web browsing. Just like any big event, you take some time to celebrate. Here are a few things that you can do to celebrate the return of Internet Explorer. 1. Download It If you’re not a big partier, that’s fine. The one thing you can do (and definitely should) is download it and give it a shot. Sure, IE may have disappointed you in the past, but believe me when I say they really put the effort in this time. The absolute least you can do is give it a shot to see how it stands up against your favourite browser. 2. Get yourself an HTML5 Shirt One of the coolest, if not best parts of IE9 being released is that it officially introduces HTML5 as a fully supported platform from Microsoft. IE9 supports a lot of what is already defined in the HTML5 technical spec, which really demonstrates Microsoft’s support of the new standard. Since HTML5 is cool on the web, it means that it is cool to wear it too. Head over to html5shirt.com and get yourself, or your staff, or your whole family, an HTML5 shirt to show the real world that you are ready for the future of the web. 3. HTML5-ify Something Okay, so maybe a shirt isn’t enough for you. Maybe you need start using HTML5 for real. If you have a blog, or a website, or anything out there on the web, celebrate IE9 adding some HTML5 to your site. Whether that is updating old code, adding something new, or just changing your WordPress theme, definitely take a look at what HTML5 can do for you. 4. Help Kill Old IE and Upgrade your Organization See this? This is sad. Upgrading web browsers in an large enterprise or organization is not a trivial task. A lot of companies will use the excuse of not having the resources to upgrade legacy web applications they were built for a specific version of IE and it doesn’t render correctly in legacy browsers. Well, it’s time to stop the excuses. IE9 allows you to define what version of Internet Explorer you would like it to emulate. It takes minimal effort for the developer, and will get rid of the excuses. Show your IT manager or software development team this link and show them how easy it is to make old code render right in the latest and greatest from the IE team. 5. Submit an Entry for DevUnplugged So, you’ve made it to number five eh? Well then, you must be pretty hardcore to make it this far down the list. Fine, let’s take it to the next level and build an HTML5 game. That’s right. A game. Like a video game. HTML5 introduces some amazing new features that can let you build working video games using HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. Plus, Microsoft is celebrating the launch of IE9 with a contest where you can submit an HTML5 game (or audio application) and have a chance to win a whack of cash and other prizes. Head here for the full scoop and rules for the DevUnplugged. This post also appears at http://david.wes.st

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• Educational, well-written FOSS projects to read, study or discuss

  - by Godot

  Before you say it: yes, this "question" has been asked other times. However, I could not fine many of such questions and not that easily, and those I found had similar results. What I'm trying to say that there are no comprehensive lists of well written Open Source projects, so I decided to set some requirements for the entries (one or possibly more): Idiomatic use of the language in which they are written The project should be lightweight. Not as in "a few kbs", as in "clean" and possibly following the UNIX philosophy, making an efficient use of resources and performing its duty and nothing more. No code bloat, most importantly. Projects like Firefox and GNOME wouldn't qualify, for example. Minimal reliance on external, non-standard libraries, with exceptions for some common FOSS libraries (curses, Xlib, OpenGL and possibly "usual suspects" like gtk+, webkit and Boost). Reliance on well-written libraries is welcome. No reliance on proprietary software - for obvious reasons (programs that rely on XNA, DirectX, Cocoa and similar, for example). Well-documented code is welcome. Include link to web interfaces to their repositories if possible. Here are some sample projects that often pop up in these threads: Operating Systems Plan 9 from Bell Labs: More or less, the official "sequel" to UNIX. Written in C by the same people who invented C! NetBSD: The most portable BSD implementation, written in C and also a good example of portable and organized code. Network and Databases Sqlite: Extremely lightweight and extremely efficient, one of the best pieces of C software I've seen. Count the lines yourself! Lighttpd: A small but pretty reliable web server written in C. Programming languages and VMs Lua: extremely lightweight multi-paradigm programming language. Written in C. Tiny C Compiler: Really tiny C compiler. Not really comparable to GCC or Clang but does its job. PyPy: A Python implementation written in Python. Pharo: OK, I admit it, I'm not really a Smalltalk expert but Pharo is a fork of Squeak and looked rather interesting. Stackless Python - An implementation of Python that doesn't rely on the C call stack - written in C (with some parts in Python) Games and 3D: Angband: One of the most accessible roguelike codebases around here, written in C. Ogre3D: Cross-platform 3D engine. Gets bloated if you don't skip the platform-specific implementation code, otherwise is a pretty solid example of good C++ OO. Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection: Title says it all. Other - dwm: Lightweight window manager. Written in C. Emulation and Reverse Engineering - Bochs: x86 emulator, written in C++ and tiny enough. - MAME: If you want to see C at one of its lowest levels, MAME is for you. May not be as clean as the other projects but it can teach you A LOT. Before you ask: I didn't mention Linux because it has become quite bloated in the last few years, Linus has also confirmed it. Nonetheless, it'd be a great educational read the same, even if for other reasons. Same for GCC. Feel free to edit or wikify my post. I hope you won't lock my question, I'm only trying to organize a little community effort for the good of all those people who want to enhance their coding skills.

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• DISA Cross Domain Enterprise Solutions on the NetBeans Platform

  - by Geertjan

  Bray 2.0 is a tool based on the NetBeans Platform that assists in creating valid Data Flow Configuration (DFC) files. The DFC Specification was developed to provide a standardized way for defining, validating, and approving data flows for use on cross-domain guarding solutions. A DFC document specifies key entities such as security domains, guards that facilitate data between security domains, data flows that describe how data travels between security domains, filters that transform and validate the data and more. Related info: http://www.disa.mil/Services/Information-Assurance/Cross-Domain-Solutions The Bray product is in development at Fulcrum IT (http://www.fulcrumco.com). The DFC Specification and Bray were developed in support of the US Department of Defense. Bray 2.0 marks the first release of Bray on the NetBeans Platform and utilizes a number of features that are core to the NetBeans Platform: Modular plugability. Bray consumers can integrate their own tools, file types, and more into the product with relative ease. Robust UI. The NetBeans Platform intuitive UI makes it easy to access and manipulate multiple aspects of a DFC. Explorer. The Explorer is a key component that makes the DFC XML easy to traverse, edit, and find errors. Context-sensitive help. JavaHelp can be readily integrated for the product as well as all the UI within. Editors. Any external file can be added to a DFC. Users can register their own editors or use the provided NetBeans editors to edit files. Printing. The NetBeans Platform Print API makes it easy to determine what should be printed and how.   A screenshot: Bray 2.0 provides a lot of key features in developing valid, robust DFC files:  XML validation. A DFC can be validated against the DFC schema specification. DFC Check List. An interactive, minimal guide for creating a complete DFC. Summary Window. The Summary Window functions like the Navigator in NetBeans IDE. The current "item of interest" is checked against various business rules and provides the ability to quickly find and fix errors. Change Log. Bray audits every change to a DFC and places them in a change log for users to peruse. Comments. Users can optionally add comments for other users to see. Digital signatures. DFC files can be digitally signed. A signature history and signature validation is provided in Bray. Pluggable security schemes. Bray ships with plain text and IC-ISM security schemes. If needed, users can integrate additional ones.  ...and more to come! New features for Bray are constantly in development including use of the NetBeans Visual Library, language support, and more. More screenshots:

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• VirtualBox 3.2 is released! A Red Letter Day?

  - by Fat Bloke

  Big news today! A new release of VirtualBox packed full of innovation and improvements. Over the next few weeks we'll take a closer look at some of these new features in a lot more depth, but today we'll whet your appetite with the headline descriptions. To start with, we should point out that this is the first Oracle-branded version which makes today a real Red-letter day ;-)  Oracle VM VirtualBox 3.2 Version 3.2 moves VirtualBox forward in 3 main areas ( handily, all beginning with "P" ) : performance, power and supported guest operating system platforms.  Let's take a look: Performance New Latest Intel hardware support - Harnessing the latest in chip-level support for virtualization, VirtualBox 3.2 supports new Intel Core i5 and i7 processor and Intel Xeon processor 5600 Series support for Unrestricted Guest Execution bringing faster boot times for everything from Windows to Solaris guests; New Large Page support - Reducing the size and overhead of key system resources, Large Page support delivers increased performance by enabling faster lookups and shorter table creation times. New In-hypervisor Networking - Significant optimization of the networking subsystem has reduced context switching between guests and host, increasing network throughput by up to 25%. New New Storage I/O subsystem - VirtualBox 3.2 offers a completely re-worked virtual disk subsystem which utilizes asynchronous I/O to achieve high-performance whilst maintaining high data integrity; New Remote Video Acceleration - The unique built-in VirtualBox Remote Display Protocol (VRDP), which is primarily used in virtual desktop infrastructure deployments, has been enhanced to deliver video acceleration. This delivers a rich user experience coupled with reduced computational expense, which is vital when servers are running hundreds of virtual machines; Power New Page Fusion - Traditional Page Sharing techniques have suffered from long and expensive cache construction as pages are scrutinized as candidates for de-duplication. Taking a smarter approach, VirtualBox Page Fusion uses intelligence in the guest virtual machine to determine much more rapidly and accurately those pages which can be eliminated thereby increasing the capacity or vm density of the system; New Memory Ballooning- Ballooning provides another method to increase vm density by allowing the memory of one guest to be recouped and made available to others; New Multiple Virtual Monitors - VirtualBox 3.2 now supports multi-headed virtual machines with up to 8 virtual monitors attached to a guest. Each virtual monitor can be a host window, or be mapped to the hosts physical monitors; New Hot-plug CPU's - Modern operating systems such Windows Server 2008 x64 Data Center Edition or the latest Linux server platforms allow CPUs to be dynamically inserted into a system to provide incremental computing power while the system is running. Version 3.2 introduces support for Hot-plug vCPUs, allowing VirtualBox virtual machines to be given more power, with zero-downtime of the guest; New Virtual SAS Controller - VirtualBox 3.2 now offers a virtual SAS controller, enabling it to run the most demanding of high-end guests; New Online Snapshot Merging - Snapshots are powerful but can eat up disk space and need to be pruned from time to time. Historically, machines have needed to be turned off to delete or merge snapshots but with VirtualBox 3.2 this operation can be done whilst the machines are running. This allows sophisticated system management with minimal interruption of operations; New OVF Enhancements - VirtualBox has supported the OVF standard for virtual machine portability for some time. Now with 3.2, VirtualBox specific configuration data is also stored in the standard allowing richer virtual machine definitions without compromising portability; New Guest Automation - The Guest Automation APIs allow host-based logic to drive operations in the guest; Platforms New USB Keyboard and Mouse - Support more guests that require USB input devices; New Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.5 - Support for the latest version of Oracle's flagship Linux platform; New Ubuntu 10.04 ("Lucid Lynx") - Support for both the desktop and server version of the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution; And as a man once said, "just one more thing" ... New Mac OS X (experimental) - On Apple hardware only, support for creating virtual machines run Mac OS X. All in all this is a pretty powerful release packed full of innovation and speedups. So what are you waiting for?  -FB 

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• Review&ndash;Build Android and iOS apps in Visual Studio with Nomad

  - by Bill Osuch

  Nomad is a Visual Studio extension that allows you build apps for both Android and iOS platforms in Visual Studio using HTML5. There is no need to switch between .Net, Java and Objective-C to target different platforms - write your code once in HTML5 and build for all common mobile platforms and tablets. You have access to the native hardware functions (such as camera and GPS) through the PhoneGap library, UI libraries such as jQuery mobile allow you to create an impressive UI with minimal work. Nomad is still in an early access beta stage, so the documentation is a bit sparse. In fact, the only documentation is a simple series of steps on how to install the plug-in, set up a project, build and deploy it. You're going to want to be a least a little familiar with the PhoneGap library and jQuery mobile to really tap into the power of this. The sample project included with the download shows you just how simple it is to create projects in Visual Studio. The sample solution comes with an index.html file containing the HTML5 code, the Cordova (PhoneGap) library, jQuery libraries, and a JQuery style sheet: The html file is pretty straightforward. If you haven't experimented with JQuery mobile before, some of the attributes (such as data-role) might be new to you, but some quick Googling will fill in everything you need to know. The first part of the file builds a simple (but attractive) list with some links in it: The second part of the file is where things get interesting and it taps into the PhoneGap library. For instance, it gets the geolocation position by calling position.coords.latitude and position.coords.longitude: ...and then displays it in a simple span: Building is pretty simple, at least for Android (I'm not an iOS developer so I didn't look at that feature) - just configure the display name, version number, and package ID. There's no need to specify Android version; Nomad supports 2.2 and later. Enter these bits of information, click the new "Build for Android" button (not the regular Visual Studio Build link...) and you get a dialog box saying that your code is being built by their cloud build service (so no building while away from a WiFi signal apparently). After a couple minutes you wind up with a .apk file that can be copied over to your device. Applications built with Nomad for Android currently use a temporary certificate, so you can test the app on your devices but you cannot publish them in the Google Play Store (yet). And I love the "success" dialog box: Since Nomad is still in Beta, no pricing plans have been announced yet, so I'll be curious to see if this becomes a cost-effective solution to mobile app development. If it is, I may even be tempted to spring for the $99 iOS membership fee! In the meantime, I plan to work on porting some of my apps over to it and seeing how they work. My only quibble at this time is the lack of a centralized documentation location - I'd like to at least see which (if any) features of JQuery and PhoneGap are limited or not supported. Also, some notes on targeting different Android screen sizes would be nice, but it's relatively easy to find jQuery examples out on the InterWebs. Oh well, trial and error! You can download the Nomad extension for Visual Studio by going to their web site: www.vsnomad.com. Technorati Tags: Android, Nomad

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• Incomplete upgrade 12.04 to 12.10

  - by David

  Everything was running smoothly. Everything had been downloaded from Internet, packages had been installed and a prompt asked for some obsolete programs/files to be removed or kept. After that the computer crashed and and to manually force a shutdown. I turned it on again and surprise I was on 12.10! Still the upgrade was not finished! How can I properly finish that upgrade? Here's the output I got in the command line after following posted instructions: i astrill - Astrill VPN client software i dayjournal - Simple, minimal, digital journal. i gambas2-gb-form - A gambas native form component i gambas2-gb-gtk - The Gambas gtk component i gambas2-gb-gtk-ext - The Gambas extended gtk GUI component i gambas2-gb-gui - The graphical toolkit selector component i gambas2-gb-qt - The Gambas Qt GUI component i gambas2-gb-settings - Gambas utilities class i A gambas2-runtime - The Gambas runtime i google-chrome-stable - The web browser from Google i google-talkplugin - Google Talk Plugin i indicator-keylock - Indicator for Lock Keys i indicator-ubuntuone - Indicator for Ubuntu One synchronization s i A language-pack-kde-zh-hans - KDE translation updates for language Simpl i language-pack-kde-zh-hans-base - KDE translations for language Simplified C i libapt-inst1.4 - deb package format runtime library idA libattica0.3 - a Qt library that implements the Open Coll idA libbabl-0.0-0 - Dynamic, any to any, pixel format conversi idA libboost-filesystem1.46.1 - filesystem operations (portable paths, ite idA libboost-program-options1.46.1 - program options library for C++ idA libboost-python1.46.1 - Boost.Python Library idA libboost-regex1.46.1 - regular expression library for C++ i libboost-serialization1.46.1 - serialization library for C++ idA libboost-signals1.46.1 - managed signals and slots library for C++ idA libboost-system1.46.1 - Operating system (e.g. diagnostics support idA libboost-thread1.46.1 - portable C++ multi-threading i libcamel-1.2-29 - Evolution MIME message handling library i libcmis-0.2-0 - CMIS protocol client library i libcupsdriver1 - Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - Driver l i libdconf0 - simple configuration storage system - runt i libdvdcss2 - Simple foundation for reading DVDs - runti i libebackend-1.2-1 - Utility library for evolution data servers i libecal-1.2-10 - Client library for evolution calendars i libedata-cal-1.2-13 - Backend library for evolution calendars i libedataserver-1.2-15 - Utility library for evolution data servers i libexiv2-11 - EXIF/IPTC metadata manipulation library i libgdu-gtk0 - GTK+ standard dialog library for libgdu i libgdu0 - GObject based Disk Utility Library idA libgegl-0.0-0 - Generic Graphics Library idA libglew1.5 - The OpenGL Extension Wrangler - runtime en i libglew1.6 - OpenGL Extension Wrangler - runtime enviro i libglewmx1.6 - OpenGL Extension Wrangler - runtime enviro i libgnome-bluetooth8 - GNOME Bluetooth tools - support library i libgnomekbd7 - GNOME library to manage keyboard configura idA libgsoap1 - Runtime libraries for gSOAP i libgweather-3-0 - GWeather shared library i libimobiledevice2 - Library for communicating with the iPhone i libkdcraw20 - RAW picture decoding library i libkexiv2-10 - Qt like interface for the libexiv2 library i libkipi8 - library for apps that want to use kipi-plu i libkpathsea5 - TeX Live: path search library for TeX (run i libmagickcore4 - low-level image manipulation library i libmagickwand4 - image manipulation library i libmarblewidget13 - Marble globe widget library idA libmusicbrainz4-3 - Library to access the MusicBrainz.org data i libnepomukdatamanagement4 - Basic Nepomuk data manipulation interface i libnux-2.0-0 - Visual rendering toolkit for real-time app i libnux-2.0-common - Visual rendering toolkit for real-time app i libpoppler19 - PDF rendering library i libqt3-mt - Qt GUI Library (Threaded runtime version), i librhythmbox-core5 - support library for the rhythmbox music pl i libusbmuxd1 - USB multiplexor daemon for iPhone and iPod i libutouch-evemu1 - KernelInput Event Device Emulation Library i libutouch-frame1 - Touch Frame Library i libutouch-geis1 - Gesture engine interface support i libutouch-grail1 - Gesture Recognition And Instantiation Libr idA libx264-120 - x264 video coding library i libyajl1 - Yet Another JSON Library i linux-headers-3.2.0-29 - Header files related to Linux kernel versi i linux-headers-3.2.0-29-generic - Linux kernel headers for version 3.2.0 on i linux-image-3.2.0-29-generic - Linux kernel image for version 3.2.0 on 64 i mplayerthumbs - video thumbnail generator using mplayer i myunity - Unity configurator i A openoffice.org-calc - office productivity suite -- spreadsheet i A openoffice.org-writer - office productivity suite -- word processo i python-brlapi - Python bindings for BrlAPI i python-louis - Python bindings for liblouis i rts-bpp-dkms - rts-bpp driver in DKMS format. i system76-driver - Universal driver for System76 computers. i systemconfigurator - Unified Configuration API for Linux Instal i systemimager-client - Utilities for creating an image and upgrad i systemimager-common - Utilities and libraries common to both the i systemimager-initrd-template-am - SystemImager initrd template for amd64 cli i touchpad-indicator - An indicator for the touchpad i ubuntu-tweak - Ubuntu Tweak i A unity-lens-utilities - Unity Utilities lens i A unity-scope-calculator - Calculator engine i unity-scope-cities - Cities engine i unity-scope-rottentomatoes - Unity Scope Rottentomatoes

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• Best Practices - Core allocation

  - by jsavit

  This post is one of a series of "best practices" notes for Oracle VM Server for SPARC (also called Logical Domains) Introduction SPARC T-series servers currently have up to 4 CPU sockets, each of which has up to 8 or (on SPARC T3) 16 CPU cores, while each CPU core has 8 threads, for a maximum of 512 dispatchable CPUs. The defining feature of Oracle VM Server for SPARC is that each domain is assigned CPU threads or cores for its exclusive use. This avoids the overhead of software-based time-slicing and emulation (or binary rewriting) of system state-changing privileged instructions used in traditional hypervisors. To create a domain, administrators specify either the number of CPU threads or cores that the domain will own, as well as its memory and I/O resources. When CPU resources are assigned at the individual thread level, the logical domains constraint manager attempts to assign threads from the same cores to a domain, and avoid "split core" situations where the same CPU core is used by multiple domains. Sometimes this is unavoidable, especially when domains are allocated and deallocated CPUs in small increments. Why split cores can matter Split core allocations can silenty reduce performance because multiple domains with different address spaces and memory contents are sharing the core's Level 1 cache (L1$). This is called false cache sharing since even identical memory addresses from different domains must point to different locations in RAM. The effect of this is increased contention for the cache, and higher memory latency for each domain using that core. The degree of performance impact can be widely variable. For applications with very small memory working sets, and with I/O bound or low-CPU utilization workloads, it may not matter at all: all machines wait for work at the same speed. If the domains have substantial workloads, or are critical to performance then this can have an important impact: This blog entry was inspired by a customer issue in which one CPU core was split among 3 domains, one of which was the control and service domain. The reported problem was increased I/O latency in guest domains, but the root cause might be higher latency servicing the I/O requests due to the control domain being slowed down. What to do about it Split core situations are easily avoided. In most cases the logical domain constraint manager will avoid it without any administrative action, but it can be entirely prevented by doing one of the several actions: Assign virtual CPUs in multiples of 8 - the number of threads per core. For example: ldm set-vcpu 8 mydomain or ldm add-vcpu 24 mydomain. Each domain will then be allocated on a core boundary. Use the whole core constraint when assigning CPU resources. This allocates CPUs in increments of entire cores instead of virtual CPU threads. The equivalent of the above commands would be ldm set-core 1 mydomain or ldm add-core 3 mydomain. Older syntax does the same thing by adding the -c flag to the add-vcpu, rm-vcpu and set-vcpu commands, but the new syntax is recommended. When whole core allocation is used an attempt to add cores to a domain fails if there aren't enough completely empty cores to satisfy the request. See https://blogs.oracle.com/sharakan/entry/oracle_vm_server_for_sparc4 for an excellent article on this topic by Eric Sharakan. Don't obsess: - if the workloads have minimal CPU requirements and don't need anywhere near a full CPU core, then don't worry about it. If you have low utilization workloads being consolidated from older machines onto a current T-series, then there's no need to worry about this or to assign an entire core to domains that will never use that much capacity. In any case, make sure the most important domains have their own CPU cores, in particular the control domain and any I/O or service domain, and of course any important guests. Summary Split core CPU allocation to domains can potentially have an impact on performance, but the logical domains manager tends to prevent this situation, and it can be completely and simply avoided by allocating virtual CPUs on core boundaries.

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• Company wants to write custom project management tool, rather then use third party product.

  - by Jason Evans

  At the company I work, we are really wanting to get into the agile methodology for developing software. One thing that I'm not excited about is the fact that management wants us to build a custom project management feature inside the company's Intranet. I think this is a total waste of time. There are many great third party tools available (e.g. Axosoft OnTime) that can do everything we need, and more. For how much development time it would cost us to build our own project management module, we could buy numerous licences for a third party product. One concern is that, whilst we are writing code for a client, and using our custom Intranet project management module, we find bugs in the module that need fixing ASAP. That means having to stop work on the client code to fix the Intranet. That just puts shivers down my spine. Another worry I have is lack of functionality. This custom module is going to be so basic, that it will just feel really crap to use. That might sound a bit snooty, but for goodness sake, many third party tools are so feature rich, that the idea of having to write our own tool makes feel very uneasy. In fact, I can't be bothered. What do you guys think? I'm going to raise this issue with my boss, since I feel it's such an important topic to talk about. EDIT: Thanks for the great responses, much appreciated. To summarize some of them: Money Naturally my boss does want to save money, by not forking out a few hundred £'s for licences. However, for us to write a custom tool, it will take x number of days, multiplied by approx £500, which is our costs. I don't see the business value in this. Management have mentioned that they want to sell the Intranet as a product in the future, but it's so custom to our needs (and downright basic), that in order to give it to another client, I can see us having to fork a version of the code and rebuild the majority of it anyway. So it's not like we're gaining anything there in reuse. Features Having our own custom module means not feature bloat - only the functionality we require will be in the product. My issue is that there are plenty of free, open-source project management tools out there with minimal features already. So even if cost is an issue, we could look into open-source. Again it all boils down to the fact that I don't see the point in writing a project management tool in this day and age. It's a bit like writing your own web browser - why?, what's the point? Although management are asking for this tool, just because they are, it does not mean I'm going to please them and do it just because they asked for it. If something does not make sense, then I will raise it as a concern. At the end of the day, it's the developers who write the code, it's the developers who make money for a business. Thus, as far I'm concerned, the devs have a very big role in deciding how a company should manage projects and what tools are used. "I am Spartan, argh!" :) Hmm, I've not been able to make this question a wiki for some reason, thus I'm going to have to pick an answer to accept. Cheers. Jas.

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• What is the difference between Workcenters, Dashboards, and the Interaction Hub?

  - by Matthew Haavisto

  Oracle Open World has just concluded.  Over the course of the conference, we presented several sessions covering different aspects of the PeopleSoft user experience, including Workcenters, Dashboards, and the PeopleSoft Interaction Hub (formerly known as the PeopleSoft Applications Portal).  Although we've produced collateral on these features and covered them in sessions, it became apparent at the conference that customers still have many questions about the these products, including how they are licensed, how they are installed, what their various purposes are, and how they can be used together synergistically. Let's Start with Licensing and Installation As you may know, we've extended the restricted use license (RUL) for the Interaction Hub.  This grants customers with PeopleTools 8.52 licenses the right to install the Interaction Hub for free for use as specified in the Tools license notes.  Note that this means customers receive a restricted use license for the Interaction Hub that doesn't cost them an additional license fee, but it is a separate product, not part of PeopleTools or PeopleSoft applications, and is a separate installation.  This means customers must provide the infrastructure to install and run the Hub, just like any other application.  The benefits of using the Hub to unify your PeopleSoft user experience can be great.  PeopleSoft applications have not yet delivered instances of the Hub with their products, though they may in the future. Workcenters and Dashboards, on the other hand, are frameworks provided by PeopleTools.  No other license is required, and no additional installation of a separate product is needed (apart from PeopleTools and PeopleSoft applications).  PeopleSoft applications are delivering instances of the workcenters and dashboards with their products.  Some are available now, and more are coming in future releases.  These delivered workcenter and dashboard instances require no additional licenses, and no additional installations beyond Tools and the applications that provide them.  In addition, the workcenter and dashboard frameworks provided by PeopleTools can be used by customers to build their own workcenters and dashboards, and it's quite easy and simple to do so. What are Their Differences?  What Purposes do they Serve? Workcenters, Dashboards and the Interaction Hub appear somewhat similar.  They all contain pagelets, and have some visual characteristics in common.  However, their strengths and purposes are very different, and they were designed to provide different benefits to your PeopleSoft ecosystem. Workcenters and Dashboards have the following characteristics: Designed for specific roles Focus on the daily tasks of those roles Help to streamline the work performed most often Personal view of my work world Makes navigation and search easier and quicker, particularly for transactions and decision support Reports and data needed for day-to-day work Personalizable, but minimal Delivered by PS Apps, but can be altered by customer for their requirements Customers can create their own Workcenters can be used for guided processes  The Interaction Hub is designed to aggregate content from multiple applications, and is is used to unify the user experience of those applications.  It offers a rich, web site-based user experience, and is often used to provide access to infrequently performed activities like benefits enrollment, payroll inquiries, life event changes, onboarding, and so on. Full-featured and robust Centrally administered Pushed to large audience Broad info like Company News Infrequent activities like benefits, not day-to-day tasks Self-service, access to employer info Central launch point for other activities and can navigate to workcenters and dashboards Deployed by customers or consultants, instances not delivered by PeopleSoft (at this time) Content management Unified PS application navigation Although these products are quite different and serve different purposes in your PeopleSoft environment, they can be used together to provide a richer, more efficient and engaging user experience for your all your user communities.

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• Oracle MAA Part 1: When One Size Does Not Fit All

  - by JoeMeeks

  The good news is that Oracle Maximum Availability Architecture (MAA) best practices combined with Oracle Database 12c (see video) introduce first-in-the-industry database capabilities that truly make unplanned outages and planned maintenance transparent to users. The trouble with such good news is that Oracle’s enthusiasm in evangelizing its latest innovations may leave some to wonder if we’ve lost sight of the fact that not all database applications are created equal. Afterall, many databases don’t have the business requirements for high availability and data protection that require all of Oracle’s ‘stuff’. For many real world applications, a controlled amount of downtime and/or data loss is OK if it saves money and effort. Well, not to worry. Oracle knows that enterprises need solutions that address the full continuum of requirements for data protection and availability. Oracle MAA accomplishes this by defining four HA service level tiers: BRONZE, SILVER, GOLD and PLATINUM. The figure below shows the progression in service levels provided by each tier. Each tier uses a different MAA reference architecture to deploy the optimal set of Oracle HA capabilities that reliably achieve a given service level (SLA) at the lowest cost.  Each tier includes all of the capabilities of the previous tier and builds upon the architecture to handle an expanded fault domain. Bronze is appropriate for databases where simple restart or restore from backup is ‘HA enough’. Bronze is based upon a single instance Oracle Database with MAA best practices that use the many capabilities for data protection and HA included with every Oracle Enterprise Edition license. Oracle-optimized backups using Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN) provide data protection and are used to restore availability should an outage prevent the database from being able to restart. Silver provides an additional level of HA for databases that require minimal or zero downtime in the event of database instance or server failure as well as many types of planned maintenance. Silver adds clustering technology - either Oracle RAC or RAC One Node. RMAN provides database-optimized backups to protect data and restore availability should an outage prevent the cluster from being able to restart. Gold raises the game substantially for business critical applications that can’t accept vulnerability to single points-of-failure. Gold adds database-aware replication technologies, Active Data Guard and Oracle GoldenGate, which synchronize one or more replicas of the production database to provide real time data protection and availability. Database-aware replication greatly increases HA and data protection beyond what is possible with storage replication technologies. It also reduces cost while improving return on investment by actively utilizing all replicas at all times. Platinum introduces all of the sexy new Oracle Database 12c capabilities that Oracle staff will gush over with great enthusiasm. These capabilities include Application Continuity for reliable replay of in-flight transactions that masks outages from users; Active Data Guard Far Sync for zero data loss protection at any distance; new Oracle GoldenGate enhancements for zero downtime upgrades and migrations; and Global Data Services for automated service management and workload balancing in replicated database environments. Each of these technologies requires additional effort to implement. But they deliver substantial value for your most critical applications where downtime and data loss are not an option. The MAA reference architectures are inherently designed to address conflicting realities. On one hand, not every application has the same objectives for availability and data protection – the Not One Size Fits All title of this blog post. On the other hand, standard infrastructure is an operational requirement and a business necessity in order to reduce complexity and cost. MAA reference architectures address both realities by providing a standard infrastructure optimized for Oracle Database that enables you to dial-in the level of HA appropriate for different service level requirements. This makes it simple to move a database from one HA tier to the next should business requirements change, or from one hardware platform to another – whether it’s your favorite non-Oracle vendor or an Oracle Engineered System. Please stay tuned for additional blog posts in this series that dive into the details of each MAA reference architecture. Meanwhile, more information on Oracle HA solutions and the Maximum Availability Architecture can be found at: Oracle Maximum Availability Architecture - Webcast Maximize Availability with Oracle Database 12c - Technical White Paper

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• Planning in the Cloud - For Real

  - by jmorourke

  One of the hottest topics at Oracle OpenWorld 2012 this week is “the cloud”.  Over the past few years, Oracle has made major investments in cloud-based applications, including some acquisitions, and now has over 100 applications available through Oracle Cloud services.  At OpenWorld this week, Oracle announced seven new offerings delivered via the Oracle Cloud services platform, one of which is the Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service.  Based on Oracle Hyperion Planning, this service is the first of Oracle’s EPM applications to be to be offered in the Cloud.    This solution is targeted to organizations that are struggling with spreadsheets or legacy planning and budgeting applications, want to deploy a world class solution for financial planning and budgeting, but are constrained by IT resources and capital budgets. With the Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service, organizations can fast track their way to world-class financial planning, budgeting and forecasting – at cloud speed, with no IT infrastructure investments and with minimal IT resources. Oracle Hyperion Planning is a market-leading budgeting, planning and forecasting application that is used by over 3,300 organizations worldwide.  Prior to this announcement, Oracle Hyperion Planning was only offered on a license and maintenance basis.  It could be deployed on-premise, or hosted through Oracle On-Demand or third party hosting partners.  With this announcement, Oracle’s market-leading Hyperion Planning application will be available as a Cloud Service and through subscription-based pricing. This lowers the cost of entry and deployment for new customers and provides a scalable environment to support future growth. With this announcement, Oracle is the first major vendor to offer one of its core EPM applications as a cloud-based service.  Other major vendors have recently announced cloud-based EPM solutions, but these are only BI dashboards delivered via a cloud platform.   With this announcement Oracle is providing a market-leading, world-class financial budgeting, planning and forecasting as a cloud service, with the following advantages: ·                     Subscription-based pricing ·                     Available standalone or as an extension to Oracle Fusion Financials Cloud Service ·                     Implementation services available from Oracle and the Oracle Partner Network ·                     High scalability and performance ·                     Integrated financial reporting and MS Office interface ·                     Seamless integration with Oracle and non-Oracle transactional applications ·                     Provides customers with more options for their planning and budgeting deployment vs. strictly on-premise or cloud-only solution providers. The OpenWorld announcement of Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service is a preview announcement, with controlled availability expected in calendar year 2012.  For more information, check out the links below: Press Release Web site If you have any questions or need additional information, please feel free to contact me at [email protected].

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• Replicating between Cloud and On-Premises using Oracle GoldenGate

  - by Ananth R. Tiru

  Do you have applications running on the cloud that you need to connect with the on premises systems. The most likely answer to this question is an astounding YES!  If so, then you understand the importance of keep the data fresh at all times across the cloud and on-premises environments. This is also one of the key focus areas for the new GoldenGate 12c release which we announced couple of week ago via a press release. Most enterprises have spent years avoiding the data “silos” that inhibit productivity. For example, an enterprise which has adopted a CRM strategy could be relying on an on-premises based marketing application used for developing and nurturing leads. At the same time it could be using a SaaS based Sales application to create opportunities and quotes. The sales and the marketing teams which use these systems need to be able to access and share the data in a reliable and cohesive way. This example can be extended to other applications areas such as HR, Supply Chain, and Finance and the demands the users place on getting a consistent view of the data. When it comes to moving data in hybrid environments some of the key requirements include minimal latency, reliability and security: Data must remain fresh. As data ages it becomes less relevant and less valuable—day-old data is often insufficient in today’s competitive landscape. Reliability must be guaranteed despite system or connectivity issues that can occur between the cloud and on-premises instances. Security is a key concern when replicating between cloud and on-premises instances. There are several options to consider when replicating between the cloud and on-premises instances. Option 1 – Secured network established between the cloud and on-premises A secured network is established between the cloud and on-premises which enables the applications (including replication software) running on the cloud and on-premises to have seamless connectivity to other applications irrespective of where they are physically located. Option 2 – Restricted network established between the cloud and on-premises A restricted network is established between the cloud and on-premises instances which enable certain ports (required by replication) be opened on both the cloud and on the on-premises instances and white lists the IP addresses of the cloud and on-premises instances. Option 3 – Restricted network access from on-premises and cloud through HTTP proxy This option can be considered when the ports required by the applications (including replication software) are not open and the cloud instance is not white listed on the on-premises instance. This option of tunneling through HTTP proxy may be only considered when proper security exceptions are obtained. Oracle GoldenGate Oracle GoldenGate is used for major Fortune 500 companies and other industry leaders worldwide to support mission-critical systems for data availability and integration. Oracle GoldenGate addresses the requirements for ensuring data consistency between cloud and on-premises instances, thus facilitating the business process to run effectively and reliably. The architecture diagram below illustrates the scenario where the cloud and the on-premises instance are connected using GoldenGate through a secured network In the above scenario, Oracle GoldenGate is installed and configured on both the cloud and the on-premises instances. On the cloud instance Oracle GoldenGate is installed and configured on the machine where the database instance can be accessed. Oracle GoldenGate can be configured for unidirectional or bi-directional replication between the cloud and on premises instances. The specific configuration details of Oracle GoldenGate processes will depend upon the option selected for establishing connectivity between the cloud and on-premises instances. The knowledge article (ID - 1588484.1) titled ' Replicating between Cloud and On-Premises using Oracle GoldenGate' discusses in detail the options for replicating between the cloud and on-premises instances. The article can be found on My Oracle Support. To learn more about Oracle GoldenGate 12c register for our launch webcast where we will go into these new features in more detail.   You may also want to download our white paper "Oracle GoldenGate 12c Release 1 New Features Overview" I would love to hear your requirements for replicating between on-premises and cloud instances, as well as your comments about the strategy discussed in the knowledge article to address your needs. Please post your comments in this blog or in the Oracle GoldenGate public forum - https://forums.oracle.com/community/developer/english/business_intelligence/system_management_and_integration/goldengate

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• An open plea to Microsoft to fix the serializers in WCF.

  - by Scott Wojan

  I simply DO NOT understand how Microsoft can be this far along with a tool like WCF and it STILL tout it as being an "Enterprise" tool. For example... The following is a simple xsd schema with a VERY simple data contract that any enterprise would expect an "enterprise system" to be able to handle: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <xs:schema id="Sample"     targetNamespace="http://tempuri.org/Sample.xsd"     elementFormDefault="qualified"     xmlns="http://tempuri.org/Sample.xsd"     xmlns:mstns="http://tempuri.org/Sample.xsd"     xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">    <xs:element name="SomeDataElement">     <xs:annotation>       <xs:documentation>This documents the data element. This sure would be nice for consumers to see!</xs:documentation>     </xs:annotation>     <xs:complexType>       <xs:all>         <xs:element name="Description" minOccurs="0">           <xs:simpleType>             <xs:restriction base="xs:string">               <xs:minLength value="0"/>               <xs:maxLength value="255"/>             </xs:restriction>           </xs:simpleType>         </xs:element>       </xs:all>       <xs:attribute name="IPAddress" use="required">         <xs:annotation>           <xs:documentation>Another explanation!  WOW!</xs:documentation>         </xs:annotation>         <xs:simpleType>           <xs:restriction base="xs:string">             <xs:pattern value="(([1-9]?[0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])\.){3}([1-9]?[0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])"/>           </xs:restriction>         </xs:simpleType>       </xs:attribute>     </xs:complexType>  </xs:element>   </xs:schema>  An minimal example xml document would be: <?xml version="1.0"encoding="utf-8" ?> <SomeDataElementxmlns="http://tempuri.org/Sample.xsd" IPAddress="1.1.168.10"> </SomeDataElement> With the max example being:  <?xml version="1.0"encoding="utf-8" ?> <SomeDataElementxmlns="http://tempuri.org/Sample.xsd" IPAddress="1.1.168.10">  <Description>ddd</Description> </SomeDataElement> This schema simply CANNOT be exposed by WCF.  Let's list why:  svcutil.exe will not generate classes for you because it can't read an xsd with xs:annotation. Even if you remove the documentation, the DataContractSerializer DOES NOT support attributes so IPAddress would become an element this not meeting the contract xsd.exe could generate classes but it is a very legacy tool, generates legacy code, and you still suffer from the following issues: NONE of the serializers support emitting of the xs:annotation documentation.  You'd think a consumer would really like to have as much documentation as possible! NONE of the serializers support the enforcement of xs:restriction so you can forget about the xs:minLength, xs:maxLength, or xs:pattern enforcement. Microsoft... please, please, please, please look at putting the work into your serializers so that they support the very basics of designing enterprise data contracts!!

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• Top 5 Reasons to Invest in Enterprise 2.0 Technologies

  - by kellsey.ruppel(at)oracle.com

  In 2010, Oracle's portal, content management, and collaboration solutions evolved rapidly, supported by increasingly deep integrations across Oracle Fusion Middleware and the entire Oracle stack. In light of these developments, we asked Vince Casarez, vice president of Enterprise 2.0 product management, for his top five reasons to invest in Enterprise 2.0 (E2.0) technologies--including real-world examples of businesses already realizing the benefits of next-generation E2.0 technologies. 1. Provide a modern user experience As E2.0 technologies gain widespread adoption, customers and employees expect intuitive Web experiences that are both interactive and community-based. By partnering with Oracle, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise Group is already making that happen. With 76,000 employees and operations in more than 100 countries, the company wanted a streamlined, personalized user experience with more relevant content in fewer clicks. Working with Oracle, they created a global support portal that supports personalization and integration with Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition and Oracle E-Business Suite--and drives collaboration with tools such as wikis, blogs, and forums. Learn more about Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise Group's Global Support Portal in this Webcast. 2. Improve productivity and collaboration As E2.0 technologies mature, Oracle anticipates companies moving beyond the idea of simply creating yet another Facebook-like destination for its employees, and instead shaping work environments around specific business tasks. After rapid growth--both organic and through acquisition--construction and infrastructure services leader Balfour Beatty found itself with multiple homegrown intranet sites with very minimal content-sharing capabilities. Today, thanks to Oracle WebCenter Suite, Oracle WebCenter Spaces, Oracle WebCenter Services, and Oracle Universal Content Management, Balfour Beatty is benefiting from collaborative workspaces, a central place to use and work with documents, and unified search across content. 3. Leverage business processes and applications Modern portals are now able to integrate users, content, and business processes in unprecedented ways. To take advantage of these new possibilities, leading dairy provider Land O'Lakes has implemented a fully integrated ERP solution together with Oracle's ECM platform. As a result, Land O'Lakes has been able to achieve better information management and compliance, increased adoption rates for enterprise tools, and increased business process efficiency thanks to more effective information sharing and collaboration. 4. Enhance customer and supplier relationships Companies have begun to move beyond the idea that E2.0 simply means enabling customer reviews or embedding chat functionality. They are taking E2.0 to the next level and providing interactive experiences for their customers. For example, to enhance customer and supplier relationships, Wind River, a global leader in device software optimization, successfully partnered with Oracle to: Integrate ERP and ECM content to provide customers the latest and most relevant support information for products they own Enable customers to personalize their support experience and receive updates regarding patches, application notes, and other relevant content Enable discussions, wikis, and blogs for more efficient collaboration 5. Increase business visibility and responsiveness By strategically embedding collaboration and communication tools into specific business contexts, companies significantly increase visibility into changing business conditions--and can respond much more agilely. Texas A&M University System--one of the largest systems of higher education in the U.S.--partnered with Oracle to create a unified repository that would enable the retrieval of research and grant data from disparate systems via an Enterprise 2.0 user interface. By enabling researchers to customize their own portals with easy-to-use tools, they have also been able to significantly reduce their reliance on the IT department. Learn how other Oracle customers are leveraging Enterprise 2.0 technologies.

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• Seeking advice on tools and technology for my new game [closed]

  - by k.k. slider

  I'm a C# developer who has been programming a game in my spare time using XNA and Visual Studio. The game's logic is mostly done and I've completed a prototype that has most of the functionality of (what I envision to be) the final game. However, having heard about the uncertain future and (possibly) limited audience for XNA games, I'm looking to switch platforms... but I don't know what technology would best suit my needs. Below are some specifics about my game and what exactly I'm looking for, if you're interested: The game is a 2D turn-based tactical RPG (strategy game) for two players. It is a basic sprite and tile based game with animations and sound. 3D capabilities are not necessary. I'd like to allow players to compete with others online, and have a basic ranking/matchmaking system. I will probably need something that can interact with a server and a database (the game is turn-based and has no RNG, so cheating would be easy to detect even if most computation is done client-side and minimal data is sent to the server). Ideally, I would be able to release an early version of the game and have people give feedback as I develop additional features (similar to Minecraft). I'd prefer to have a way to release periodic updates to the game instead of releasing an absolute final product. To reach the widest possible audience, I'd prefer technology that allows me to release on PC, Android, iOS, and (maybe) Mac. This is a game with simple mouse inputs which can fit on a mobile touch screen. The game should be monetizable. If I find success with this game, then I may consider becoming a full-time indie game developer. I have several other game ideas and have learned quite a bit from my first attempt at game development. My first thought was an F2P/microtransaction model, but I'm open to other suggestions. Language isn't a primary concern of mine, since I have a decent amount of experience using several languages to program large projects. I'm willing to spend money (e.g. on a developer's license), but the more expensive it gets, the more hesitant I am to use it. I've looked into the following solutions... there are a LOT of tools out there... if anyone has experience with any of these and would like to recommend/reject any of them, it would be helpful. C#/.NET (XNA/MonoGame/SDL/SlimDX/Xamarin/ExEn/ANX?) HTML5/JS (AppMobi/PhoneGap/Marmalade/FlashCanvas/Cordova/libRocket?) Python (Pyglet/Pygame/Kivy?) Java (JavaFX/libGDX?) Unity/Construct 2/Cocos2D/NME/Corona/other game creation software? I'd like something that can do 2D and isn't limited by being too high-level. Other languages (Lua/LOVE? Moai?) Thanks for answering this rather long and tedious question...

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• Introduction to WebCenter Personalization: &ldquo;The Conductor&rdquo;

  - by Steve Pepper

  There are some new faces in the town of WebCenter with the latest 11g PS3 release.  A new component has introduced itself as "Oracle WebCenter Personalization", a.k.a WCP, to simplify delivery of a personalized experience and content to end users.  This posting reviews one of the primary components within WCP: "The Conductor". The Conductor: This ain't just an ordinary cloud... One of the founding principals behind WebCenter Personalization was to provide an open client-side API that remains independent of the technology invoking it, in addition to independence from the architecture running it.  The Conductor delivers this, and much, much more. The Conductor is the engine behind WebCenter Personalization that allows flow-based documents, called "Scenarios", to be managed and executed on the server-side through a well published and RESTful api.      The Conductor also supports an extensible model for custom provider integration that can be easily invoked within a Scenario to promote seamless integration with existing business assets. Introducing the Scenario Conductor Scenarios are declarative offline-authored documents using the custom Personalization JDeveloper bundle included with WebCenter.  A Scenario contains one (or more) statements that can: Create variables that are scoped to the current execution context Iterate over collections, or loop until a specific condition is met Execute one or more statements when a condition is met Invoke other scenarios that exist within the same namespace Invoke a data provider that integrates with custom applications Once a variable is assigned within the Scenario's execution context, it can be referenced anywhere within the same Scenario using the common Expression Language syntax used in J2EE web containers. Scenarios are then published and tested to the Integrated WebLogic Server domain, or published remotely to other domains running WebCenter Personalization. Various Client-side Models The Conductor server API is built upon RESTful services that support a wide variety of clients able to communicate over HTTP.  The Conductor supports the following client-side models: REST:  Popular browser-based languages can be used to manage and execute Conductor Scenarios.  There are other public methods to retrieve configured provider metadata that can be used by custom applications. The Conductor currently supports XML and JSON for it's API syntax. Java: WebCenter Personalization delivers a robust and light-weight java client with the popular Jersey framework as it's foundation.  It has never been easier to write a remote java client to manage remote RESTful services. Expression Language (EL): Allow the results of Scenario execution to control your user interface or embed personalized content using the session-scoped managed bean.  The EL client can also be used in straight JSP pages with minimal configuration. Extensible Provider Framework The Conductor supports a pluggable provider framework for integrating custom code with Scenario execution.  There are two types of providers supported by the Conductor: Function Provider: Function Providers are simple java annotated classes with static methods that are meant to be served as utilities.  Some common uses would include: object creation or instantiation, data transformation, and the like.  Function Providers can be invoked using the common EL syntax from variable assignments, conditions, and loops. For example:  ${myUtilityClass:doStuff(arg1,arg2))} If you are familiar with EL Functions, Function Providers are based on the same concept. Data Provider: Like Function Providers, Data Providers are annotated java classes, but they must adhere to a much more strict object model.  Data Providers have access to a wealth of Conductor services, such as: Access to namespace-scoped configuration API that can be managed by Oracle Enterprise Manager, Scenario execution context for expression resolution, and more.  Oracle ships with three out-of-the-box data providers that supports integration with: Standardized Content Servers(CMIS),  Federated Profile Properties through the Properties Service, and WebCenter Activity Graph. Useful References If you are looking to immediately get started writing your own application using WebCenter Personalization Services, you will find the following references helpful in getting you on your way: Personalizing WebCenter Applications Authoring Personalized Scenarios in JDeveloper Using Personalization APIs Externally Implementing and Calling Function Providers Implementing and Calling Data Providers

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