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• Vodacom Call Center Management on the NetBeans Platform

  - by Geertjan

  If you live in South Africa, you know about Vodacom. Vodacom is one of the dominant mobile communication companies in South Africa, and beyond, providing voice, messaging, data, and similar mobile services. Inside Vodacom there's an application named Helios, which is a call centre application that had its inception in 2009 and consists of two parts. Firstly, a web-based front-end that allows a call centre agent to service subscribers using a Google-like search on a knowledge base structured as a collection of FAQs. The web-based front-end uses plain-old HTML + CSS + a good helping of JQuery and JQueryUI. This is delivered via JSR-168 portlets running on a cluster of IBM Portal 6 servers. In turn, the portlets communicate via RMI with several back-end EJB's containing the business logic. These EJB's are deployed on a cluster of Weblogic Application Servers, version 10.3.6. The second part is a NetBeans Platform application used for maintaining and constructing the knowledge base, i.e., the back-end of the web-based front-end. Helios is also used for a number of other maintenance functions, such as access permissions, user maintenance, and news bulletins. Below, in the web-based front-end, call centre agents can enter search terms and are presented with a number of FAQs from the knowledge base. Upon selecting a FAQ article, the agent is presented with the article text, the process to guide the subscriber, system checks that display information specific to the subscriber, and links to related applications and articles: Below, you can see that applications are searchable and can be accessed using the same web-based front-end as shown above. And, as can be seen below, knowledge base FAQs are maintained using the Helios Maintenance Application, which is the Vodacom application built on the NetBeans Platform: Several thousand call centre agent user accounts are administered using the Helios Maintenance Application. Below the main FAQ page is shown, together with the About dialog: Vodacom is happy with the back-end NetBeans Platform application. However, the front-end stack runs on quite old technology. Ideally Vodacom would like to migrate the portlets to Oracle Weblogic Portal or Oracle WebCenter, but this hasn't been accomplished yet. Migrating makes sense as the rest of the application server environment consists entirely of Oracle products.

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• SQL SERVER – Guest Post by Sandip Pani – SQL Server Statistics Name and Index Creation

  - by pinaldave

  Sometimes something very small or a common error which we observe in daily life teaches us new things. SQL Server Expert Sandip Pani (winner of Joes 2 Pros Contests) has come across similar experience. Sandip has written a guest post on an error he faced in his daily work. Sandip is working for QSI Healthcare as an Associate Technical Specialist and have more than 5 years of total experience. He blogs at SQLcommitted.com and contribute in various forums. His social media hands are LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Once I faced following error when I was working on performance tuning project and attempt to create an Index. Mug 1913, Level 16, State 1, Line 1 The operation failed because an index or statistics with name ‘Ix_Table1_1′ already exists on table ‘Table1′. The immediate reaction to the error was that I might have created that index earlier and when I researched it further I found the same as the index was indeed created two times. This totally makes sense. This can happen due to many reasons for example if the user is careless and executes the same code two times as well, when he attempts to create index without checking if there was index already on the object. However when I paid attention to the details of the error, I realize that error message also talks about statistics along with the index. I got curious if the same would happen if I attempt to create indexes with the same name as statistics already created. There are a few other questions also prompted in my mind. I decided to do a small demonstration of the subject and build following demonstration script. The goal of my experiment is to find out the relation between statistics and the index. Statistics is one of the important input parameter for the optimizer during query optimization process. If the query is nontrivial then only optimizer uses statistics to perform a cost based optimization to select a plan. For accuracy and further learning I suggest to read MSDN. Now let’s find out the relationship between index and statistics. We will do the experiment in two parts. i) Creating Index ii) Creating Statistics We will be using the following T-SQL script for our example. IF (OBJECT_ID('Table1') IS NOT NULL) DROP TABLE Table1 GO CREATE TABLE Table1 (Col1 INT NOT NULL, Col2 VARCHAR(20) NOT NULL) GO We will be using following two queries to check if there are any index or statistics on our sample table Table1. -- Details of Index SELECT OBJECT_NAME(OBJECT_ID) AS TableName, Name AS IndexName, type_desc FROM sys.indexes WHERE OBJECT_NAME(OBJECT_ID) = 'table1' GO -- Details of Statistics SELECT OBJECT_NAME(OBJECT_ID) TableName, Name AS StatisticsName FROM sys.stats WHERE OBJECT_NAME(OBJECT_ID) = 'table1' GO When I ran above two scripts on the table right after it was created it did not give us any result which was expected. Now let us begin our test. 1) Create an index on the table Create following index on the table. CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX Ix_Table1_1 ON Table1(Col1) GO Now let us use above two scripts and see their results. We can see that when we created index at the same time it created statistics also with the same name. Before continuing to next set of demo – drop the table using following script and re-create the table using a script provided at the beginning of the table. DROP TABLE table1 GO 2) Create a statistic on the table Create following statistics on the table. CREATE STATISTICS Ix_table1_1 ON Table1 (Col1) GO Now let us use above two scripts and see their results. We can see that when we created statistics Index is not created. The behavior of this experiment is different from the earlier experiment. Clean up the table setup using the following script: DROP TABLE table1 GO Above two experiments teach us very valuable lesson that when we create indexes, SQL Server generates the index and statistics (with the same name as the index name) together. Now due to the reason if we have already had statistics with the same name but not the index, it is quite possible that we will face the error to create the index even though there is no index with the same name. A Quick Check To validate that if we create statistics first and then index after that with the same name, it will throw an error let us run following script in SSMS. Make sure to drop the table and clean up our sample table at the end of the experiment. -- Create sample table CREATE TABLE TestTable (Col1 INT NOT NULL, Col2 VARCHAR(20) NOT NULL) GO -- Create Statistics CREATE STATISTICS IX_TestTable_1 ON TestTable (Col1) GO -- Create Index CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX IX_TestTable_1 ON TestTable(Col1) GO -- Check error /*Msg 1913, Level 16, State 1, Line 2 The operation failed because an index or statistics with name 'IX_TestTable_1' already exists on table 'TestTable'. */ -- Clean up DROP TABLE TestTable GO While creating index it will throw the following error as statistics with the same name is already created. In simple words – when we create index the name of the index should be different from any of the existing indexes and statistics. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Error Messages, SQL Index, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: SQL Statistics

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• Off The Beaten Path—Three Things Growing Midsize Companies are Thankful For

  - by Christine Randle

  By: Jim Lein, Senior Director, Oracle Accelerate Last Sunday I went on a walkabout.  That’s when I just step out the door of my Colorado home and hike through the mountains for hours with no predetermined destination. I favor “social trails”, the unmapped routes pioneered by both animal and human explorers.  These tracks  are usually more challenging than established, marked routes and you can’t be 100% sure of where you’re going to end up. But I’ve found the rewards to be much greater. For awhile, I pondered on how—depending upon your perspective—the current economic situation worldwide could be viewed as either a classic “the glass is half empty” or a “the glass is half full” scenario. Midsize companies buy Oracle to grow and so I’m continually amazed and fascinated by the success stories our customers relate to me.  Oracle’s successful midsize companies are growing via innovation, agility, and opportunity. For them, the glass isn’t half full—it’s overflowing. Growing Midsize Companies are Thankful for: Innovation The sun angling through the pine trees reminded me of a conversation with a European customer a year ago May.  You might not recognize the name but, chances are, your local evening weather report relies on this company’s weather observation, monitoring and measurement products.  For decades, the company was recognized in its industry for product innovation, but its recent rapid growth comes from tailoring end to end product and service solutions based on the needs of distinctly different customer groups across industrial, public sector, and defense sectors.  Hours after that phone call I was walking my dog in a local park and came upon a small white plastic box sprouting short antennas and dangling by a nylon cord from a tree branch.  I cut it down. The name of that customer’s company was stamped on the housing. “It’s a radiosonde from a high altitude weather balloon,” he told me the next day. “Keep it as a souvenir.”  It sits on my fireplace mantle and elicits many questions from guests. Growing Midsize Companies are Thankful for: Agility In July, I had another interesting discussion with the CFO of an Asia-Pacific company which owns and operates a large portfolio of leisure assets. They are best known for their epic outdoor theme parks. However, their primary growth today is coming from a chain of indoor amusement centers in the USA where billiards, bowling, and laser tag take the place of roller coasters, kiddy rides, and wave pools. With mountains and rivers right out my front door, I’m not much for theme parks, but I’ll take a spirited game of laser tag any day.  This company has grown dramatically since first implementing Oracle ERP more than a decade ago. Their profitable expansion into a completely foreign market is derived from the ability to replicate proven and efficient best business practices across diverse operating environments.  They recently went live on Oracle’s Fusion HCM and Taleo. Their CFO explained to me how, with thousands of employees in three countries, Fusion HCM and Taleo would enable them to remain incredibly agile by acting on trends linking individual employee performance to their management, establishing and maintaining those best practices. Growing Midsize Companies are Thankful for: Opportunity I have three GPS apps on my iPhone. I use them mainly to keep track of my stats—distance, time, and vertical gain. However, every once in awhile I need to find the most efficient route back home before dark from my current location (notice I didn’t use the word “lost”). In August I listened in on an interview with the CFO of another European company that designs and delivers telematics solutions—the integrated use of telecommunications and informatics—for managing the mobile workforce. These solutions enable customers to achieve evolutionary step-changes in their performance and service delivery. Forgive the overused metaphor, but this is route optimization on steroids.  The company’s executive team saw an opportunity in this emerging market and went “all in”. Consequently, they are being rewarded with tremendous growth results and market domination by providing the ability for their clients to collect and analyze performance information related to fuel consumption, service workforce safety, and asset productivity. This Thanksgiving, I’m thankful for health, family, friends, and a career with an innovative company that helps companies leverage top tier software to drive and manage growth. And I’m thankful to have learned the lesson that good things happen when you get off the beaten path—both when hiking and when forging new routes through a complex world economy. Halfway through my walkabout on Sunday, after scrambling up a long stretch of scree-covered hill, I crested a ridge with an obstructed view of 14,265 ft Mt Evans just a few miles to the west.  There, nowhere near a house or a trail, someone had placed a wooden lounge chair. Its wood was worn and faded but it was sturdy. I had lunch and a cold drink in my pack. Opportunity knocked and I seized it. Happy Thanksgiving.  

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• OWB 11gR2 &ndash; Degenerate Dimensions

  - by David Allan

  Ever wondered how to build degenerate dimensions in OWB and get the benefits of slowly changing dimensions and cube loading? Now its possible through some changes in 11gR2 to make the dimension and cube loading much more flexible. This will let you get the benefits of OWB's surrogate key handling and slowly changing dimension reference when loading the fact table and need degenerate dimensions (see Ralph Kimball's degenerate dimensions design tip). Here we will see how to use the cube operator to load slowly changing, regular and degenerate dimensions. The cube and cube operator can now work with dimensions which have no surrogate key as well as dimensions with surrogates, so you can get the benefit of the cube loading and incorporate the degenerate dimension loading. What you need to do is create a dimension in OWB that is purely used for ETL metadata; the dimension itself is never deployed (its table is, but has not data) it has no surrogate keys has a single level with a business attribute the degenerate dimension data and a dummy attribute, say description just to pass the OWB validation. When this degenerate dimension is added into a cube, you will need to configure the fact table created and set the 'Deployable' flag to FALSE for the foreign key generated to the degenerate dimension table. The degenerate dimension reference will then be in the cube operator and used when matching. Create the degenerate dimension using the regular wizard. Delete the Surrogate ID attribute, this is not needed. Define a level name for the dimension member (any name). After the wizard has completed, in the editor delete the hierarchy STANDARD that was automatically generated, there is only a single level, no need for a hierarchy and this shouldn't really be created. Deploy the implementing table DD_ORDERNUMBER_TAB, this needs to be deployed but with no data (the mapping here will do a left outer join of the source data with the empty degenerate dimension table). Now, go ahead and build your cube, use the regular TIMES dimension for example and your degenerate dimension DD_ORDERNUMBER, can add in SCD dimensions etc. Configure the fact table created and set Deployable to false, so the foreign key does not get generated. Can now use the cube in a mapping and load data into the fact table via the cube operator, this will look after surrogate lookups and slowly changing dimension references.   If you generate the SQL you will see the ON clause for matching includes the columns representing the degenerate dimension columns. Here we have seen how this use case for loading fact tables using degenerate dimensions becomes a whole lot simpler using OWB 11gR2. I'm sure there are other use cases where using this mix of dimensions with surrogate and regular identifiers is useful, Fact tables partitioned by date columns is another classic example that this will greatly help and make the cube operator much more useful. Good to hear any comments.

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• Tom Cruise: Meet Fusion Apps UX and Feel the Speed

  - by ultan o'broin

  Unfortunately, I am old enough to remember, and now to admit that I really loved, the movie Top Gun. You know the one - Tom Cruise, US Navy F-14 ace pilot, Mr Maverick, crisis of confidence, meets woman, etc., etc. Anyway, one of more memorable lines (there were a few) was: "I feel the need, the need for speed." I was reminded of Tom Cruise recently. Paraphrasing a certain Senior Vice President talking about Oracle Fusion Applications and user experience at an all-hands meeting, I heard that: Applications can never be too easy to use. Performance can never be too fast. Developers, assume that your code is always "on". Perfect. You cannot overstate the user experience importance of application speed to users, or at least their perception of speed. We all want that super speed of execution and performance, and increasingly so as enterprise users bring the expectations of consumer IT into the work environment. Sten Vesterli (@stenvesterli), an Oracle Fusion Applications User Experience Advocate, also addressed the speed point artfully at an Oracle Usability Advisory Board meeting in Geneva. Sten asked us that when we next Googled something, to think about the message we see that Google has found hundreds of thousands or millions of results for us in a split second (for example, About 8,340,000 results (0.23 seconds)). Now, how many results can we see and how many can we use immediately? Yet, this simple message communicating the total results available to us works a special magic about speed, delight, and excitement that Google has made its own in the search space. And, guess what? The Oracle Application Development Framework table component relies on a similar "virtual performance boost", says Sten, when it displays the first 50 records in a table, and uses a scrollbar indicating the total size of the data record set. The user scrolls and the application automatically retrieves more records as needed. Application speed and its perception by users is worth bearing in mind the next time you're at a customer site and the IT Department demands that you retrieve every record from the database. Just think of... Dave Ensor: I'll give you all the rows you ask for in one second. If you promise to use them. (Again, hat tip to Sten.) And then maybe think of... Tom Cruise. And if you want to read about the speed of Oracle Fusion Applications, and what that really means in terms of user productivity for your entire business, then check out the Oracle Applications User Experience Oracle Fusion Applications white papers on the usable apps website.

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• Why it may be good to be confused: Mary Lo Verde’s Motivational Discussion at Oracle

  - by user769227

  Why it may be good to be confused: Mary Lo Verde’s Motivational Discussion at Oracle by Olivia O'Connell Last week, we were treated to a call with Mary LoVerde, a renowned Life-Balance and Motivational Speaker. This was one of many events organized by Oracle Women’s Leadership (OWL). Mary made some major changes to her life when she decided to free herself of material positions and take each day as it came. Her life balance strategies have led her from working with NASA to appearing on Oprah. Mary’s MO is “cold turkey is better than dead duck!”, in other words, knowing when to quit. It is a surprising concept that flies in the face of the “winners don’t quit” notion and focuses on how we limit our capabilities and satisfaction levels by doing something that we don’t feel passionately about. Her arguments about quitting were based on the conception that ‘“it” is in the way of you getting what you really want’ and that ‘quitting makes things easier in the long run’. Of course, it is often difficult to quit, and though we know that things would be better if we did quit certain negative things in our lives, we are often ashamed to do so. A second topic centred on the perception of Confusion Endurance. Confusion Endurance is based around the idea that it is often good to not know exactly what you are doing and that it is okay to admit you don’t know something when others ask you; essentially, that humility can be a good thing. This concept was supposed to have to Leonardo Da Vinci, because he apparently found liberation in not knowing. Mary says, this allows us to “thrive in the tension of not knowing to unleash our creative potential” An anecdote about an interviewee at NASA was used to portray how admitting you don’t know can be a positive thing. When NASA asked the candidate a question with no obvious answer and he replied “I don’t know”, the candidate thought he had failed the interview; actually, the interviewers were impressed with his ability to admit he did not know. If the interviewee had guessed the answer in a real-life situation, it could have cost the lives of fellow astronauts. The highlight of the webinar for me? Mary told how she had a conversation with Capt. Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger who recalled the US Airways Flight 1549 / Miracle on the Hudson incident. After making its descent and finally coming to rest in the Hudson after falling 3,060 feet in 90 seconds, Sully and his co-pilot both turned to each other and said “well...that wasn’t as bad as we thought”. Confusion Endurance at its finest! Her discussion certainly gave food for thought, although personally, I was inclined to take some of it with a pinch of salt. Mary Lo Verde is the author of The Invitation, and you can visit her website and view her other publications at www.maryloverde.com. For details on the Professional Business Women of California visit: http://www.pbwc.org/

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• E 2.0 Value Metaphors

  - by Tom Tonkin

  I guess I have been doing this too long. I can easily see the value of Enterprise 2.0 technology for an organization, but find it a challenge at times to convey that same value to others. I also know that I'm not the only one that has that issue. Others, that have that same passion, also suffer from being, perhaps, too close to the market. I was having this same discussion with a few colleagues when one of them suggested that metaphors might be a good vehicle to communicate the value to those that are not as familiar.  One such metaphor was discussed.Apparently,back in the early 50's, there was a great Air Force aviator and military strategist by the name of John Boyd.  Without going into a ton of detail (you can search him on the internet), what made Colonel Boyd great was that he never lost a dog fight.  As a matter of fact, they called him 'Forty-Second Boyd' since he claimed to be able to beat anyone in any type of aircraft in less than forty seconds, even if his aircraft was inferior to his opponents.His approach as was unique.  He observed over time that there was a pattern on how aviators  engaged in a dogfight.  He called this method OODA.   It describes how a person or, in our case, an organization, would react to an event.  OODA is an acrostic for Observation, Orientation, Decision and Action.  Again, there is a lot more on the internet about this.A pilot would go through this loop several times during a dogfight and Boyd would try to predict this loop and interrupt it by changing the landscape of the actual dogfight.  This would give Boyd an advantage and be able to predict what his opponent would do and then counterattack.Boyd went on to say that many companies have a similar reaction loop and that by understanding that loop, organizations would be able to adjust better to market conditions, predict what the competition is doing and reposition themselves to gain competitive advantages. So, our metaphor would be that Enterprise 2.0 provides companies greater visibility of their business by connecting to employees, customers and partners in a collaborative fashion.  This, in turn, helps them navigate through the tough times and provide lines of sight to more innovative ideas.  Innovation is that last tool for companies to achieve competitive advantage (maybe a discusion for another post).Perhaps this is more wordy than some other metaphor, but it does allow for an interesting  dialogue to start and maybe even a framwork to fullfill the promise of E 2.0. So, I'm sure there are many more metaphors for the value that E 2.0 brings to organzaitons. Do you have one to share? Please comment below and thanks for stopping by.

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• SQL SERVER – Validating Spatial Object as NULL using IsNULL

  - by pinaldave

  Follow up questions are the most fun part of writing a blog post. Earlier I wrote about SQL SERVER – Validating Spatial Object with IsValidDetailed Function and today I received a follow up question on the same subject. The question was mainly about how NULL is handled by spatial functions. Well, NULL is NULL. It is very easy to work with NULL. There are two different ways to validate if the passed in the value is NULL or not. 1) Using IsNULL Function IsNULL function validates if the object is null or not, if object is not null it will return you value 0 and if object is NULL it will return you the value NULL. DECLARE @p GEOMETRY = 'Polygon((2 2, 3 3, 4 4, 5 5, 6 6, 2 2))' SELECT @p.ISNULL ObjIsNull GO DECLARE @p GEOMETRY = NULL SELECT @p.ISNULL ObjIsNull GO 2) Using IsValidDetailed Function IsValidateDetails function validates if the object is valid or not. If the object is valid it will return 24400: Valid but if the object is not valid it will give message with the error number. In case object is NULL it will return the value as NULL. DECLARE @p GEOMETRY = 'Polygon((2 2, 3 3, 4 4, 5 5, 6 6, 2 2))' SELECT @p.IsValidDetailed() IsValid GO DECLARE @p GEOMETRY = NULL SELECT @p.IsValidDetailed() IsValid GO When to use what? Now you can see that there are two different ways to validate the NULL values. I personally have no preference about using one over another. However, there is one clear difference between them. In case of the IsValidDetailed Function the return value is nvarchar(max) and it is not always possible to compare the value with nvarchar(max). Whereas the ISNULL function returns the bit value of 0 when the object is null and it is easy to determine if the object is null or not in the case of ISNULL function. Additionally, ISNULL function does not check if the object is valid or not and will return the value 0 if the object is not NULL. Now you know even though either of the function can be used in place of each other both have very specific use case. Use the one which fits your business case. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Function, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Spatial Database, SQL Spatial

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• Is 4-5 years the “Midlife Crisis” for a programming career?

  - by Jeff

  I’ve been programming C# professionally for a bit over 4 years now. For the past 4 years I’ve worked for a few small/medium companies ranging from “web/ads agencies”, small industry specific software shops to a small startup. I've been mainly doing "business apps" that involves using high-level programming languages (garbage collected) and my overall experience was that all of the works I’ve done could have been more professional. A lot of the things were done incorrectly (in a rush) mainly due to cost factor that people always wanted something “now” and with the smallest amount of spendable money. I kept on thinking maybe if I could work for a bigger companies or a company that’s better suited for programmers, or somewhere that's got the money and time to really build something longer term and more maintainable I may have enjoyed more in my career. I’ve never had a “mentor” that guided me through my 4 years career. I am pretty much blog / google / self taught programmer other than my bachelor IT degree. I’ve also observed another issue that most so called “senior” programmer in “my working environment” are really not that senior skill wise. They are “senior” only because they’ve been a long time programmer, but the code they write or the decisions they make are absolutely rubbish! They don't want to learn, they don't want to be better they just want to get paid and do what they've told to do which make sense and most of us are like that. Maybe that’s why they are where they are now. But I don’t want to become like them I want to be better. I’ve run into a mental state that I no longer intend to be a programmer for my future career. I started to think maybe there are better things out there to work on. The more blogs I read, the more “best practices” I’ve tried the more I feel I am drifting away from “my reality”. But I am not a great programmer otherwise I don't think I am where I am now. I think 4-5 years is a stage that can be a step forward career wise or a step out of where you are. I just wanted to hear what other have to say about what I’ve mentioned above and whether you’ve experienced similar situation in your past programming career and how you dealt with it. Thanks.

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• From Trailer to Cloud: Skire acquisition expands Oracle’s on-demand project management options.

  - by Melissa Centurio Lopes

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} By Alison Weiss Whether building petrochemical facilities in the Middle East or managing mining operations in Australia, project managers face significant challenges. Local regulations and currencies, contingent labor, hybrid public/private funding sources, and more threaten project budgets and schedules. According to Mike Sicilia, senior vice president and general manager for the Oracle Primavera Global Business Unit, there will be trillions of dollars invested in industrial projects around the globe between 2012 and 2016. But even with so much at stake, project leads don’t always have time to look for new and better enterprise project portfolio management (EPPM) software solutions to manage large-scale capital initiatives across the enterprise. Oracle’s recent acquisition of Skire, a leading provider of capital program management and facilities management applications available both in the cloud and on premises, gives customers outstanding new EPPM options. By combining Skire’s cloud-based solutions for managing capital projects, real estate, and facilities with Oracle’s Primavera EPPM solutions, project managers can quickly get a solution running that is interoperable across an extended enterprise. Staff can access the EPPM solution within days, rather than waiting for corporate IT to put technology in place. “Staff can access the EPPM solution within days, rather than waiting for corporate IT to put technology in place,” says Sicilia. This applies to a problem that has, according to Sicilia, bedeviled project managers for decades: extending EPPM functionality into the field. Frequently, large-scale projects are remotely located, and the lack of communications and IT infrastructure threatened the accuracy of project reporting and scheduling. Read the full version of this article in the November 2012 edition of Oracle's Profit Magazine: Special Report on Project Management

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• Japan Welcomes Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c

  - by Anand Akela

  Following Oracle’s grand unveiling of Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c at Oracle OpenWorld 2011 in San Francisco, Oracle Japan just completed their launch for the product. Leng Tan, Oracle VP of Products, delivered the keynote with collaboration from a number of key partners in the region. From left to right: Leng Tan, VP of Products, Oracle; Shinyashiki-san, Assistant General Manager, NEC; Fuketa-san, General Manager, HITACHI; Fujii-san, General Manager, Fujitsu; Misawa-san, VP of Alliances, Oracle Japan NEC, Hitachi and Fujitsu have been among Oracle’s most active partners in the Japan region. They have received key awards from Oracle Japan for their efforts. NEC received the partner of the year award for 2010 and 2011. Hitachi received the partner of the year award for Oracle Enterprise Manager in 2011. Fujitsu received awards in the areas of Database and Oracle Exadata in 2011. All three partners were active participants in Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c beta program. According to Hirai-san, the technical lead at the event, there were over 200 attendees. “The event was so well-attended; there was no room to stand.” Said Hirai-san. Hirai-san demonstrating Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c at the Oracle Japan launch Here’s the highlight of the presentations made by the Oracle partners during this launch. NEC has developed an Oracle Enterprise Manager Plug-in for iStorage (NEC SAN Storage product). Additionally, NEC’s WebSAM Invariant Analyzer management tool is now capable of integrating with Oracle Enterprise Manager HITACHI demonstrated monitoring capabilities for Oracle Exadata through Oracle Enterprise Manager in their JP1 system management tool Fujitsu’s Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g adapter for their SystemWalker tool has now been enhanced to work with Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c. Following a very successful launch in Japan, Oracle’s Total Cloud Control road show and additional Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c launches continue in the EMEA and Asia Pacific regions. This week Sushil Kumar, VP of Product Strategy and Business Development is scheduled to deliver the keynotes at several cities in India. Also this week, Richard Sarwal, SVP of Products, is scheduled to deliver a keynote at the DOAG conference in Nuremburg, Germany. Richard is also delivering the Oracle Enterprise Manger 12c launch event keynote in Paris on November 18th. Check out our event schedule for Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c events across the globe! For more information, please go to Oracle Enterprise Manager  web page or  follow us at :  Twitter   Facebook YouTube Linkedin

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• Part 2: The Customization Lifecycle

  - by volker.eckardt(at)oracle.com

  To understand the challenges when working with Customizations better, please allow me to explain my understanding from the Customization Lifecycle.  The starting point is the functional GAP list. Any GAP can lead to a customization (but not have to). The decision is driven by priority, gain, costs, future functionality, accepted workarounds etc. Let's assume the customization has been accepted as such - including estimation. (Otherwise this blog would not have any value)Now the customization life-cycle starts and could look like this:-    Functional specification-    Technical specification-    Technical development-    Functional setup-    Module Test-    System Test-    Integration Test (if required)-    Acceptance Test-    Production mode-    Usage-    10 x Rework-    10 x Retest -    2 x Upgrade-    2 x Upgrade Test-    Usage-    10 x Rework-    10 x Retest -    1 x Upgrade-    1 x Upgrade Test-    Usage-    Review for Retirement-    Accepted Retirement-    De-installationWhat I like to highlight herewith is that any material and documentation you create upfront or during the first phases will usually be used multiple times, partial or complete, will be enhanced, reviewed, retested. The better the quality right from the beginning is, the better we can perform the next steps.What I see very often is the wish to remove a customization, our customers are upgrading and they like to get at least some of the customizations replaced with standard functionality. To be able to support this process best, the customization documentation should contain at least the following key information: What is/are the business process(es) where this customization is used or linked to?Who was involved in the different customization phases?What are the objects comprising the customization?What is the setup necessary for the customization?What setup comes with the customization, what has to be done via other tools or manually?What are the test steps and test results (in all test areas)?What are linked customizations? What is the customization complexity?How is this customization classified?Which technologies were used?How many days were needed to create/test/upgrade the customization?Etc.If all this is available, a replacement / retirement can be done much more efficient and precise, or an estimation and upgrade itself can be executed with much better support.In the following blog entries I will explain in more detail why we suggest tracking such information, by whom this task shall be done and how.Volker Eckardt

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• Guidance and Pricing for MSDN 2010

  - by John Alexander

  Sorry for the rather lengthy post here. I get asked this all the time so I decided to post it…Visual Studio 2010 editions will be available on April 12, 2010. Product Features Professional with MSDN Essentials Professional with MSDN Premium with MSDN Ultimate with MSDN Test Professional with MSDN Debugging and Diagnostics IntelliTrace (Historical Debugger)         Static Code Analysis       Code Metrics       Profiling       Debugger   Testing Tools Unit Testing   Code Coverage       Test Impact Analysis       Coded UI Test       Web Performance Testing         Load Testing1         Microsoft Test Manager 2010       Test Case Management2       Manual Test Execution       Fast-Forward for Manual Testing       Lab Management Configuration3       Integrated Development Environment Multiple Monitor Support   Multi-Targeting   One Click Web Deployment   JavaScript and jQuery Support   Extensible WPF-Based Environment Database Development Database Deployment       Database Change Management2       Database Unit Testing       Database Test Data Generation       Data Access   Development Platform Support Windows Development   Web Development   Office and SharePoint Development   Cloud Development   Customizable Development Experience   Architecture and Modeling Architecture Explorer         UML® 2.0 Compliant Diagrams (Activity, Use Case, Sequence, Class, Component)         Layer Diagram and Dependency Validation         Read-only diagrams (UML, Layer, DGML Graphs)         Lab Management Virtual environment setup & tear down3       Provision environment from template3       Checkpoint environment3       Team Foundation Server Version Control2   Work Item Tracking2   Build Automation2   Team Portal2   Reporting & Business Intelligence2   Agile Planning Workbook2   Microsoft Visual Studio Team Explorer 2010   Test Case Management2       MSDN Subscription – Software and Services for Production Use Windows Azure Platform 20 hrs/mo † 50 hrs/mo † 100 hrs/mo † 250 hrs/mo † n/a Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010   Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 CAL   1 1 1 1 Microsoft Expression Studio 3       Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010, Project Professional 2010, Visio Premium 2010 (following Office 2010 launch)       MSDN Subscription – Software for Development and Testing 4 Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 and SQL Server 2008 Toolkits, Software Development Kits, Driver Development Kits Previous versions of Windows (client and server operation systems)   Previous versions of Microsoft SQL Server   Microsoft Office       Microsoft Dynamics       All other Servers       Windows Embedded operating systems       Teamprise         MSDN Subscription – Other Benefits Technical support incidents 0 2 4 4 2 Priority support in MSDN Forums Microsoft e-learning collections (typically 10 courses or 20 hours) 0 1 2 2 1 MSDN Flash newsletter MSDN Online Concierge MSDN Magazine   System Requirements View View View View View Buy from (MSRP) $799 $1,199 $5,469 $11,899 $2,169 Renew from (MSRP) $549 (upgrade) $799 $2,299 $3,799 $899 † Availability varies by country and subscription level.  Details available on the MSDN site 1. May require one or more Microsoft Visual Studio Load Test Virtual User Pack 2010 2. Requires Team Foundation Server and a Team Foundation Server CAL 3. Requires Microsoft Visual Studio Lab Management 2010 4. Per-user license allows unlimited installations and use for designing, developing, testing, and demonstrating applications. UML is a registered trademark of Object Management Group, Inc. Windows is either a registered trademark or trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.

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• The softer side of BPM

  - by [email protected]

  BPM and RTD are great complementary technologies that together provide a much higher benefit than each of them separately. BPM covers the need for automating processes, making sure that there is uniformity, that rules and regulations are complied with and that the process runs smoothly and quickly processes the units flowing through it. By nature, this automation and unification can lead to a stricter, less flexible process. To avoid this problem it is common to encounter process definition that include multiple conditional branches and human input to help direct processing in the direction that best applies to the current situation. This is where RTD comes into play. The selection of branches and conditions and the optimization of decisions is better left in the hands of a system that can measure the results of its decisions in a closed loop fashion and make decisions based on the empirical knowledge accumulated through observing the running of the process.When designing a business process there are key places in which it may be beneficial to introduce RTD decisions. These are:Thresholds - whenever a threshold is used to determine the processing of a unit, there may be an opportunity to make the threshold "softer" by introducing an RTD decision based on predicted results. For example an insurance company process may have a total claim threshold to initiate an investigation. Instead of having that threshold, RTD could be used to help determine what claims to investigate based on the likelihood they are fraudulent, cost of investigation and effect on processing time.Human decisions - sometimes a process will let the human participants make decisions of flow. For example, a call center process may leave the escalation decision to the agent. While this has flexibility, it may produce undesired results and asymetry in customer treatment that is not based on objective functions but subjective reasoning by the agent. Instead, an RTD decision may be introduced to recommend escalation or other kinds of treatments.Content Selection - a process may include the use of messaging with customers. The selection of the most appropriate message to the customer given the content can be optimized with RTD.A/B Testing - a process may have optional paths for which it is not clear what populations they work better for. Rather than making the arbitrary selection or selection by committee of the option deeped the best, RTD can be introduced to dynamically determine the best path for each unit.In summary, RTD can be used to make BPM based process automation more dynamic and adaptable to the different situations encountered in processing. Effectively making the automation softer, less rigid in its processing.

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• WordPress SEO Plugins to make your Blog Search Engine Friendly

  - by Vaibhav

  WordPress is the most common blogging system in use today and its use as a CMS is also wide spread. With hundreds of millions of sites using wordpress, getting correct SEO for your WordPress based Blog or Site is very important. We get regular queries from people who want Search Engine Optimisation for their site or blog which is made using wordpress. Here is a list of 16 of the best WordPress Plug-ins That can help you achieve better rankings: All in one SEO Pack This is most popular plugin among all SEO plugins for WordPress. It is easy to use and is compatible with most of the WordPress plugins. It works as a complete package of SEO plugin – automatically generating META tags and optimizing search engines for your titles and avoiding duplicate content. You can also include META tags manually (Met title, Meta description and Met keywords) for all pages and post in your website. HeadSpace2 HeasSpace2 is available in different languages , you can manage a wide range of SEO Tasks related with meta data, you can tag your posts, Custom descriptions and titles. So your page can rank the created relevancy on Search engines and you can load different settings for different pages. Platinum SEO plugin Automatic 301 redirects permalink changes, META tags generation, avoids duplicate content, and does SEO optimization of post and page titles and a lots of other features. TGFI.net SEO WordPress Plugin It’s a modified version of all-in-one SEO Pack. It has some unique feature over All-in-one SEO plugin, It generate titles, meta descriptions and meta keywords automatically when overrides are not present. Google XML Sitemaps Sitemaps Generated by this tool are supported by  Google,  Yahoo,  Bing, and Ask. We all know Sitemaps make indexing of web pages easier for web crawlers. Crawlers can retrieve complete structure of site and more information by sitemaps. They notify all major search engines about new posts every time you create a new post. Sitemap Generator You can generate highly customizable sitemap for your WordPress page. You can choose what to show and what not to show, you can list the items in your choice of orde. It supports pages and permalinks and multi-level categories. SEO Slugs They can generate more search engine friendly URLs for your site. Slugs are filename assigned to your post , this plugin removes all  common words like ‘a’, ‘the’, ‘in’, ‘what’, ‘you’ from slug which are assigned automatically to your post. SEO Post Links This is a similar plugin to SEO Slug, it removes unnecessary keywords from slug to make it short and SEO friendly and you can fix the number of characters in your post. Automatic SEO links With this tool you can create auto linking in your post. You can use this tool for inter linking or external linking too. Just select your words, anchor text target URL nature of links ( Do fallow / No follow ). This plugin will replace the matches found in post, WP Backlinks A helpful plugin for link exchange , whenever any webmaster submits a link for link exchange, the plugin will spider webmasters site for reciprocal link, and if everything is found good , your link will be exchanged. SEO Title Tag You can optimize your Title  tags of  Word press blog through this plugin . You can also override the title tag with custom titles , mass editing and title tags for 404 pages which are the main feature of this plugin. 404 SEO plugin With this Plugin you can customize 404 page of your site; you can give customized error message and links to relevant pages of your site. Redirection A powerful plugins to manage 301 redirection and logs related with redirection, with this plugin you can track 404 errors and track the log of all redirected URLs , this plugin can redirect  post automatically when URL changes for that post. AddToAny This plugin helps your readers to share, save, email and bookmark your posts and pages. It supports more than a hundred social bookmarking , networking and sharing sites. SEO Friendly Images You can make SEO friendly images available on your site with the help of this tool. It updates images with proper titles and ALT tags. Robots Meta A plugin which prevents Search engines to index comments on your post, login and admin pages. It also allows to add tags for individual pages.

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• 3 Day Level 400 SQL Tuning Workshop 15 March in London, early bird and referral offer

  - by sqlworkshops

  I want to inform you that we have organized the "3 Day Level 400 Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2005 Performance Monitoring & Tuning Hands-on Workshop" in London, United Kingdom during March 15-17, 2011.This is a truly level 400 hands-on workshop and you can find the Agenda, Prerequisite, Goal of the Workshop and Registration information at www.sqlworkshops.com/ruk. Charges are GBP 1800 (VAT excl.). Early bird discount of GBP 125 until 18 February. We are also introducing a new referral plan. If you refer someone who participates in the workshop you will receive an Amazon gift voucher for GBP 125.Feedback from one of the participants who attended our November London workshop:Andrew, Senior SQL Server DBA from UBS, UK, www.ubs.com, November 26, 2010:Rating: In a scale of 1 to 5 please rate each item below (1=Poor & 5=Excellent) Overall I was satisfied with the workshop 5 Instructor maintained the focus of the course 5 Mix of theory and practice was appropriate 5 Instructor answered the questions asked 5 The training facility met the requirement 5 How confident are you with SQL Server 2008 performance tuning 5 Additional comments from Andrew: The course was expertly delivered and backed up with practical examples. At the end of the course I felt my knowledge of SQL Server had been greatly enhanced and was eager to share with my colleagues. I felt there was one prerequisite missing from the course description, an open mind since the course changed some of my core product beliefs. For Additional workshop feedbacks refer to: www.sqlworkshops.com/feedbacks.I will be delivering the Level 300-400 1 Day Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Performance Monitoring and Tuning Seminar at Istanbul and Ankara, Turkey during March. This event is organized by Microsoft Turkey, let me know if you are in Turkey and would like to attend.During September 2010 I delivered this Level 300-400 1 Day Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Performance Monitoring and Tuning Seminar in Zurich, Switzerland organized by Microsoft Switzerland and the feedback was 4.85 out of 5, there were about 100 participants. During November 2010 when I delivered seminar in Lisbon, Portugal organized by Microsoft Portugal, the feedback was 8.30 out of 9, there were 130 participants.Our Mission: Empower customers to fully realize the Performance potential of Microsoft SQL Server without increasing the total cost of ownership (TCO) and achieve high customer satisfaction in every consulting engagement and workshop delivery.Our Business Plan: Provide useful content in webcasts, articles and seminars to get visibility for consulting engagements and workshop delivery opportunity. Help us by forwarding this email to your SQL Server friends and colleagues.Looking forwardR Meyyappan & Team @ www.SQLWorkshops.comLinkedIn: http://at.linkedin.com/in/rmeyyappan

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• The Missing Post

  - by Joe Mayo

  It’s somewhat of a mystery how the writing process can conjure up results that weren’t initially intended. Case in point is the fact that another post was planned to be in place of this one, but it never made the light of day.  This particular post started off as an introduction to a technology I had just learned, used, and wanted to share the experience with others.  The beginning was fun and demonstrated how easy it was to get started.  One of the things I’ve been pondering over time is that the Web is filled with introductions to new technologies and quick first looks, so I set out to add more depth, share lessons learned, and generally help you avoid the problems I encountered along the way; problems being a key theme of why you aren’t reading that post at this very minute.  Problems that curiously came from nowhere to thwart my good intentions. Success was sweet when using the tool for the prototypical demo scenario. The thing is, I intended the tool to accomplish a real task.  Having embarked on the path toward getting the job done, glitches began creeping into the process.  Realizing that this was all a bit new, I had patience and found a suitable work-around, but this was to be short lived. As in marching ants to a freshly laid out picnic, the problems kept coming until I had to get up and walk away.  Not to be outdone, sheer will and brute force manual intervention led to mission accomplishment.  Though I kept a positive outlook and was pleased at the final result, the process of using the tool had somewhat soured. Regardless of a less than stellar experience with the tool, I have a great deal of respect for the company that produced it and the people who built it. Perhaps I empathize for what they might feel after reading a post that details such deficiencies in their product.  Sure, if you’re in this business, you’ve got to have a thick skin; brush it off, fix the problem, and move on to greatness. But, today I feel like they’re people and are probably already aware of any issues I would seemingly reveal.  Anyone who builds a product or provides a service takes a lot of pride in what they do.  Sometimes they screw up and if their worth a dime, they make it up. I think that will happen in this case and there’s no reason why I should post information that has the potential to sound more negative than helpful.  While no one would ever notice or care either way, I’m posting something that won’t harm. Joe

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• Demonstration VM BIC2g 2013-10 Partner Edition for Download

  - by Mike.Hallett(at)Oracle-BI&EPM

  Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 UPDATED ! The “BIC2g” demo VM (now version 2013-10) is downloadable from our BIC2g Beehive Online Workspace portal for OPN member partners. Compared to the prior version, Bic2g 2013-04, the new Bic2g 2013-10 has: OBIEE was upgraded from 11.1.1.7.0 to 11.1.1.7.1. with BI Mobile Application Designer (BIMAD) added. TimesTen was upgraded from 11.2.2.3.0 to 11.2.2.5.0 ODI Client 11.1.1.7.0 was installed, including a Standalone agent and empty repositories, and the BI Applications 11g ODI Repositories were included (BIAPPS_11g) Informatica and DAC were removed from image There are additional demos for BI-Apps and for Endeca. The compact deployment of EPM is installed and configured, including: Hyperion Foundation, Essbase, Essbase Studio, Essbase Administration Services, Provider Services, Calculation Manager, Planning, Reporting and Analysis, Financial Reporting, Web Analysis, and Workspace. The access details, for OPN member partners only, to get added to the BIC2G Beehive Online Workspace portal are shown from this page @ BI Solutions Engineering Partner Portal. This Oracle Business Intelligence Linux VM virtual appliance (“BIC2g”) was developed to support Oracle OBI, BI-Apps and EPM Hyperion sales and Oracle partners in product demonstrations, training activities and POC activities.  If you do not need BI-Apps, then there is a slightly smaller VM OBI Sample-App you can get from OTN: see @ Oracle BI and EPM Demonstration SampleApp V309 on OTN. /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;}

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• AutoVue at the Oracle Asset Lifecycle Management Summit

  - by celine.beck

  I recently had the opportunity to attend and present the integration between AutoVue and Primavera P6 during the Oracle ALM Summit, which was held in March at Redwood Shores, on Oracle Headquarters grounds. The ALM Summit brought together over 300 Oracle maintenance practitioners who endured the foggy and rainy San Francisco weather to attend the 4th edition of this Oracle-driven conference. Attendees have roles in maintenance management and IT. Following a general session, Ralph Rio from ARC Advisory Group provided a very interesting keynote session discussing Asset Management directions, both in the short and long run. An interesting point that Ralph raised is that most organizations have done a good job at improving performance at the design / build, operate and maintain and portfolio management phases by leveraging solutions like Asset Lifecycle Management and Project & Portfolio management solutions; however, there seem to be room for improvement in between those phases, when information flows from one group to the other, during the data handover phase or when time comes to update / modify drawings to reflect the reality of physical assets. This is where AutoVue comes into play. By integrating with enterprise applications like content management systems, asset lifecycle management applications and project management solutions, AutoVue can be a real-process enabler, streamlining information flows from concept/design to decommissioning and ensuring that all project stakeholders have access to asset information and engineering data throughout the asset lifecycle. AutoVue's built-in digital annotation capabilities allows maintenance workers and technicians to report changes in configuration and visually capture the delta between as-built and as-maintained versions of asset documents. This information can then be easily handed over to engineers who can identify changes and incorporate these modifications into the drawings during the next round of document revisions. PPL Power Generation, an electric utilities headquarted in Allentown, Pennsylvania discussed this usage of AutoVue during an interesting Webcast around AutoVue's role in the Utilities space. After the keynote sessions, participants broke off into product-centric tracks around Oracle's Asset Lifecycle Management solutions (E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, and JD Edwards). The second day of the conference was the occasion for us to present the integration between AutoVue and Primavera P6 to the Maintenance Summit audience. The presentation was a great success and generated much discussion with partners and customers during breaks. People seemed highly interested in learning more about our plans for integrating AutoVue and Primavera P6 with Oracle's ALM solutions...stay tune for further information on the subject!

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• Configuring Expert Search in Communicator 14 and SharePoint 2010

  Communicator 14 provides functionality to be able to search for contacts not just by name, but by skill.  For example a customer service agent at an airline can search for other agents with Travel Advisory experience by typing the search criteria into the Communicator search box and performing a search by keyword.  The search results will return users who have specified that skill in their profile on their SharePoint My Site.  This is actually pretty easy to configure, Ill show you how. Create Search and People Search Results Pages in SharePoint Communicator 14 Expert Search works by using the SharePoint 2010 Search Service to search SharePoint for user profiles with matching keywords.  This requires that you have an Enterprise Search site in your site collection which includes the search service and also the People Results pages.  The easiest way to do this is to create a Search Center site in your site collection. Note: I get an error when trying to create an Enterprise Search site in a Team Site in the SharePoint 2010 RTM bits, so I created it as a site collection that is evident in the URLs you see below. In the screenshots below, you can see that the URL of the SharePoint search service in the Search site collection is http://sps2010/sites/search/_vti_bin/search.asmx, and the URL of the People Search Results page is http://sps2010/sites/Search/Pages/peopleresults.aspx. Point Communications Server 14 to Search and People Search Results Pages For Communicator 14 to be able to perform an Expert Search, you need to configure Communications Server 14 to point to the Search Service and People Search Results page URLs. From a server with the OCS Core bits installed, fire up the Communications Server Management Shell and type Get-CsClientPolicy. Scroll down to the bottom of the output, were interested in setting the values of: SPSearchInternalURL SPSearchExternalURL SPSearchCenterInternalURL SPSearchCenterExternalURL SPSearchInternalURL and SPSearchExternalURL correspond to the internal and external URLs of the SharePoint search service in the Search site collection, while SPSearchCenterInternalURL and SPSearchCenterExternalURL correspond to the internal and external URLs of the people search results pages. Well use the Communications Server Management Shell to set the values of these CS policy properties. For simplicity, Im only going to set the internal URLs here. Set-CsClientPolicy SPSearchInternalURL http://sps2010/sites/search/_vti_bin/search.asmx     -SPSearchCenterInternalURL http://sps2010/sites/Search/Pages/peopleresults.aspx Log out and back into Communicator.  You can verify that these settings were applied by running the Get-CsClientPolicy cmdlet again from the Communications Server Management Shell. However, theres another super-secret ninja trick to verify that the settings were applied: Find the Communicator icon in the Windows System Tray Hold down the Ctrl button Click (left) the Communicator icon in the Windows System Tray do not depress the Ctrl button You should now see an extra menu item called Configuration Information, click it. Scroll down and locate the Expert Search URL and SharePoint Search Center URL keys and verify that their values correspond to those you set using the Set-CsClientPolicy PowerShell cmdlet. Configure a Sharepoint User Profile Import Im not going to provide detailed steps here except to say that you need to configure the SharePoint 2010 User Profile  Service Application to import user account details from Active Directory on a scheduled basis. This is a critical step because there are several user profile properties e.g. SipAddress that are only populated by a user profile import.  When performing an Expert Search, Communicator can only render results for users who have a SipAddress specified. Add Skills to User Profiles Navigate to your My Site and click on My Profile.  This page allows you to set many contact details that are searchable in SharePoint.  Were particularly interested in the Ask Me About property of a users profile.  Expert Search searches against this property to find users with matching skills. Configure a SharePoint Search Crawl Ensure that you have a scheduled job to crawl your Local SharePoint Sites content source.  Depending on how you have this configured, it will also crawl the My Site site collection and add user properties such as Ask Me About to the search index. Thats It! SharePoint 2010 provides new social and collaboration features to help users find other users with similar skills or interests. Expert Search extends this functionality directly into Microsoft Communicator 14, allowing you to interact with the users directly from the search results. 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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• Oracle WebCenter: uma nova vis&atilde;o para os Portais

  - by Denisd

  O conceito de “Portal” existe há muito tempo, mas está sempre mudando. Afinal de contas, o que é um portal? Nos primórdios da internet, o termo “portal” era utilizado para sites que guardavam muitas páginas (ou seja, muita informação). “Portal de notícias” era um termo comum, embora estes “portais” não passassem de um conjunto de páginas estáticas, que basicamente serviam conteúdo aos usuários. Com a evolução da tecnologia, os web sites passaram a ficar mais dinâmicos, permitindo uma interação maior do usuário. Sites de comunidades sociais são o melhor exemplo disso. Neste momento, o “portal” passou a ser não apenas um grupo de páginas, mas um conjunto de serviços e recursos dinâmicos, como a possibilidade de publicar fotos e vídeos, e compartilhar este conteúdo com amigos on-line. Aqui temos o que podemos chamar de “Portais Sociais”. Ao mesmo tempo, dentro das empresas, outra mudança estava acontecendo: a criação de padrões de comunicação entre aplicativos, sendo o mais famoso destes padrões a tecnologia de Web Services. Com estes padrões, as aplicações podem trocar informações e facilitar a experiência dos usuários. Desta forma, é possível desenvolver mini-aplicativos (chamados “portlets”), que publicam informações dos sistemas corporativos nas páginas dos portais internos. Estes portlets permitem interações com os sistemas, para permitir que os usuários tenham acesso rápido e fácil às informações. Podemos chamar estes portais de “Portais Transacionais”. Aqui temos 2 pontos que eu gostaria de chamar a atenção: 1 – O desenvolvimento de portlets é necessário porque eu não consigo publicar uma aplicação inteira no portal, normalmente por uma questão de padrões de desenvolvimento. Explicando de uma forma simples, a aplicação não foi feita para rodar dentro de um portal. Portanto, é necessário desenvolvimento adicional para criar mini-aplicativos que replicam (ou melhor, duplicam) a lógica do aplicativo principal, dentro do portal. 2 – Os aplicativos corporativos normalmente não incluem os recursos colaborativos de um portal (por exemplo, fóruns de discussão, lista de contatos com sensores de presença on-line, wikis, tags, etc), simplesmente porque este tipo de recurso normalmente não está disponível de forma “empacotada” para ser utilizada em um aplicativo. Desta forma, se eu quiser que a minha aplicação tenha um fórum de discussão para que os meus clientes conversem com a minha equipe técnica, eu tenho que desenvolver todo o motor do fórum de discussão dentro do meu aplicativo, o que se torna inviável, devido ao custo, tempo e ao fato de que este tipo de recurso normalmente não está no escopo da minha aplicação. O que acaba acontecendo é que os usuários fazem a parte “transacional” dentro do aplicativo, mas acabam utilizando outras interfaces para atender suas demandas de colaboração (neste caso, utilizariam um fórum fora da aplicação para discutir problemas referentes ao aplicativo). O Oracle WebCenter 11g vem para resolver estes dois pontos citados acima. O WebCenter não é simplesmente um novo portal, com alguns recursos interessantes; ele é uma nova forma de se pensar em Portais Corporativos (portais que reúnem os cenários citados acima: conteúdo, social e transacional). O WebCenter 11g é extenso demais para ser descrito em um único post, e nem é a minha intenção entrar no detalhe deste produto agora. Mas podemos definir o WebCenter 11g como sendo 3 “coisas”: - Um framework de desenvolvimento, aonde os recursos que as minhas aplicações irão utilizar (por exemplo, validação de crédito, consulta à estoque, registro de um pedido, etc), são desenvolvidos de forma a serem reutilizados por qualquer outra aplicação ou portlet que seja executado neste framework. Este tipo de componente reutilizável é chamado de “Task Flow”. - Um conjunto de serviços voltados à colaboração, como fóruns, wikis, blogs, tags, links, people connections, busca, bibliotecas de documentos, etc. Todos estes recursos colaborativos também estão disponíveis como Task Flows, desta forma, qualquer aplicação que eu desenvolva pode se beneficiar destes recursos. - Um “Portal”, do ponto de vista tradicional, aonde os usuários podem criar páginas, inserir e compartilhar conteúdo com outros usuários. Este Portal consegue utilizar os recursos desenvolvidos no Framework, garantindo o reuso. A imagem abaixo traz uma visão deste Portal. Clique para ver em tamanho maior. A grande inovação que o WebCenter traz é que a divisão entre “portal” e “aplicação” desaparece: qualquer aplicação agora pode ser desenvolvida com recursos de portal. O meu sistema de CRM, por exemplo, pode ter um fórum de discussão para os clientes. O meu sistema de suporte pode utilizar Wikis para montar FAQs de forma rápida. O sistema financeiro pode incluir uma biblioteca de documentos para que o usuário possa consultar os manuais de procedimento. Portanto, não importa se eu estou desenvolvendo uma “aplicação” ou um “portal”; o que importa é que os meus usuários agora terão em uma única interface as funcionalidades dos aplicativos e os recursos de colaboração. Este conceito, dentro da Oracle, é chamado de “Composite Applications”, e é a base para a próxima geração dos aplicativos Oracle. Nos próximos posts iremos falar (é claro) sobre como o WebCenter e o UCM se relacionam, e que tipo de recursos podem ser aproveitados nas aplicações/portais. Até breve!

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• Oracle VM Deep Dives

  - by rickramsey

  "With IT staff now tasked to deliver on-demand services, datacenter virtualization requirements have gone beyond simple consolidation and cost reduction. Simply provisioning and delivering an operating environment falls short. IT organizations must rapidly deliver services, such as infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS), and software-as-a-service (SaaS). Virtualization solutions need to be application-driven and enable:" "Easier deployment and management of business critical applications" "Rapid and automated provisioning of the entire application stack inside the virtual machine" "Integrated management of the complete stack including the VM and the applications running inside the VM." Application Driven Virtualization, an Oracle white paper That was published in August of 2011. The new release of Oracle VM Server delivers significant virtual networking performance improvements, among other things. If you're not sure how virtual networks work or how to use them, these two articles by Greg King and friends might help. Looking Under the Hood at Virtual Networking by Greg King Oracle VM Server for x86 lets you create logical networks out of physical Ethernet ports, bonded ports, VLAN segments, virtual MAC addresses (VNICs), and network channels. You can then assign channels (or "roles") to each logical network so that it handles the type of traffic you want it to. Greg King explains how you go about doing this, and how Oracle VM Server for x86 implements the network infrastructure you configured. He also describes how the VM interacts with paravirtualized guest operating systems, hardware virtualized operating systems, and VLANs. Finally, he provides an example that shows you how it all looks from the VM Manager view, the logical view, and the command line view of Oracle VM Server for x86. Fundamental Concepts of VLAN Networks by Greg King and Don Smerker Oracle VM Server for x86 supports a wide range of options in network design, varying in complexity from a single network to configurations that include network bonds, VLANS, bridges, and multiple networks connecting the Oracle VM servers and guests. You can create separate networks to isolate traffic, or you can configure a single network for multiple roles. Network design depends on many factors, including the number and type of network interfaces, reliability and performance goals, the number of Oracle VM servers and guests, and the anticipated workload. The Oracle VM Manager GUI presents four different ways to create an Oracle VM network: Bonds and ports VLANs Both bond/ports and VLANS A local network This article focuses the second option, designing a complex Oracle VM network infrastructure using only VLANs, and it steps through the concepts needed to create a robust network infrastructure for your Oracle VM servers and guests. More Resources Virtual Networking for Dummies Download Oracle VM Server for x86 Find technical resources for Oracle VM Server for x86 -Rick Follow me on: Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Personal Twitter | YouTube | The Great Peruvian Novel

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• SQL SERVER – Select and Delete Duplicate Records – SQL in Sixty Seconds #036 – Video

  - by pinaldave

  Developers often face situations when they find their column have duplicate records and they want to delete it. A good developer will never delete any data without observing it and making sure that what is being deleted is the absolutely fine to delete. Before deleting duplicate data, one should select it and see if the data is really duplicate. In this video we are demonstrating two scripts – 1) selects duplicate records 2) deletes duplicate records. We are assuming that the table has a unique incremental id. Additionally, we are assuming that in the case of the duplicate records we would like to keep the latest record. If there is really a business need to keep unique records, one should consider to create a unique index on the column. Unique index will prevent users entering duplicate data into the table from the beginning. This should be the best solution. However, deleting duplicate data is also a very valid request. If user realizes that they need to keep only unique records in the column and if they are willing to create unique constraint, the very first requirement of creating a unique constraint is to delete the duplicate records. Let us see how to connect the values in Sixty Seconds: Here is the script which is used in the video. USE tempdb GO CREATE TABLE TestTable (ID INT, NameCol VARCHAR(100)) GO INSERT INTO TestTable (ID, NameCol) SELECT 1, 'First' UNION ALL SELECT 2, 'Second' UNION ALL SELECT 3, 'Second' UNION ALL SELECT 4, 'Second' UNION ALL SELECT 5, 'Second' UNION ALL SELECT 6, 'Third' GO -- Selecting Data SELECT * FROM TestTable GO -- Detecting Duplicate SELECT NameCol, COUNT(*) TotalCount FROM TestTable GROUP BY NameCol HAVING COUNT(*) > 1 ORDER BY COUNT(*) DESC GO -- Deleting Duplicate DELETE FROM TestTable WHERE ID NOT IN ( SELECT MAX(ID) FROM TestTable GROUP BY NameCol) GO -- Selecting Data SELECT * FROM TestTable GO DROP TABLE TestTable GO Related Tips in SQL in Sixty Seconds: SQL SERVER – Delete Duplicate Records – Rows SQL SERVER – Count Duplicate Records – Rows SQL SERVER – 2005 – 2008 – Delete Duplicate Rows Delete Duplicate Records – Rows – Readers Contribution Unique Nonclustered Index Creation with IGNORE_DUP_KEY = ON – A Transactional Behavior What would you like to see in the next SQL in Sixty Seconds video? Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Database, Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL in Sixty Seconds, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Server Management Studio, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology, Video Tagged: Excel

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• Big Data – Buzz Words: What is NoSQL – Day 5 of 21

  - by Pinal Dave

  In yesterday’s blog post we explored the basic architecture of Big Data . In this article we will take a quick look at one of the four most important buzz words which goes around Big Data – NoSQL. What is NoSQL? NoSQL stands for Not Relational SQL or Not Only SQL. Lots of people think that NoSQL means there is No SQL, which is not true – they both sound same but the meaning is totally different. NoSQL does use SQL but it uses more than SQL to achieve its goal. As per Wikipedia’s NoSQL Database Definition – “A NoSQL database provides a mechanism for storage and retrieval of data that uses looser consistency models than traditional relational databases.“ Why use NoSQL? A traditional relation database usually deals with predictable structured data. Whereas as the world has moved forward with unstructured data we often see the limitations of the traditional relational database in dealing with them. For example, nowadays we have data in format of SMS, wave files, photos and video format. It is a bit difficult to manage them by using a traditional relational database. I often see people using BLOB filed to store such a data. BLOB can store the data but when we have to retrieve them or even process them the same BLOB is extremely slow in processing the unstructured data. A NoSQL database is the type of database that can handle unstructured, unorganized and unpredictable data that our business needs it. Along with the support to unstructured data, the other advantage of NoSQL Database is high performance and high availability. Eventual Consistency Additionally to note that NoSQL Database may not provided 100% ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) compliance.  Though, NoSQL Database does not support ACID they provide eventual consistency. That means over the long period of time all updates can be expected to propagate eventually through the system and data will be consistent. Taxonomy Taxonomy is the practice of classification of things or concepts and the principles. The NoSQL taxonomy supports column store, document store, key-value stores, and graph databases. We will discuss the taxonomy in detail in later blog posts. Here are few of the examples of the each of the No SQL Category. Column: Hbase, Cassandra, Accumulo Document: MongoDB, Couchbase, Raven Key-value : Dynamo, Riak, Azure, Redis, Cache, GT.m Graph: Neo4J, Allegro, Virtuoso, Bigdata As of now there are over 150 NoSQL Database and you can read everything about them in this single link. Tomorrow In tomorrow’s blog post we will discuss Buzz Word – Hadoop. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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• SQL Developer Data Modeler: On Notes, Comments, and Comments in RDBMS

  - by thatjeffsmith

  Ah the beautiful data model. They say a picture is worth a 1,000 words. And then we have our diagrams, how many words are they worth? Our friends from the Human Relations sample schema So our models describe how the data ‘works’ – whether that be at a logical-business level, or a technical-physical level. Developers like to say that their code is self-documenting. These would be very lazy or very bad (or both) developers. Models are the same way, you should document your models with comments and notes! I have 3 basic options: Comments Comments in RDBMS Notes So what’s the difference? Comments You’re describing the entity/table or attribute/column. This information will NOT be published in the database. It will only be available to the model, and hence, folks with access to the model. Table Comments (in the design only!) Comments in RDBMS You’re doing the same thing as above, but your words will be stored IN the data dictionary of the database. Oracle allows you to store comments on the table and column definitions. So your awesome documentation is going to be viewable to anyone with access to the database. RDBMS is an acronym for Relational Database Management System – of which Oracle is one of the first commercial examples If the DDL is produced and ran against a database, these comments WILL be stored in the data dictionary. Notes A place for you to add notes, maybe from a design meeting. Or maybe you’re using this as a to-do or requirements list. Basically it’s for anything that doesn’t literally describe the object at hand – that’s what the comments are for. I totally made these up. Now these are free text fields and you can put whatever you want here. Just make sure you put stuff here that’s worth reading. And it will live on…forever.

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