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  • Dynamic Forms: Pattern or AntiPattern?

    - by Segfault
    I'm sure you've seen it. The database has a bunch of tables called Forms, Controls,FormsControls, ControlSets, Actions and the program that queries these tables has a dynamically generated user interface. It will read all the forms, load a home page that has links to them all, or embed them in some tabbed or paged home page, and for each of those forms it will read the various text boxes, check boxes, radio buttons, submit buttons, combo boxes, labels and whatnot from the controls and form-to-control join tables, lay those elements out according to the database and link all the controls to logic according to other rules in the database. To me, this is an anti-pattern. It actually make the application more difficult to maintain because the design of it is now spread out into multiple different systems. Also, the database is not source controlled. Sure, it may make one or two changes go more quickly, after you've analyzed the program anyway to understand how to change the data and as long as you don't stray from the sort of changes that were anticipated and accounted for, but that's often just not sustainable. What say you?

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  • Promoting Organizational Visibility for SOA and SOA Governance Initiatives – Part I by Manuel Rosa and André Sampaio

    - by JuergenKress
    The costs of technology assets can become significant and the need to centralize, monitor and control the contribution of each technology asset becomes a paramount responsibility for many organizations. Through the implementation of various mechanisms, it is possible to obtain a holistic vision and develop synergies between different assets, empowering their re-utilization and analyzing the impact on the organization caused by IT changes. When the SOA domain is considered, the issue of governance should therefore always come into play. Although SOA governance is mandatory to achieve any measure of SOA success, its value still passes incognito in most organizations, mostly due to the lack of visibility and the detached view of the SOA initiatives. There are a number of problems that jeopardize the visibility of these initiatives: Understanding and measuring the value of SOA governance and its contribution – SOA governance tools are too technical and isolated from other systems. They are inadequate for anyone outside of the domain (Business Analyst, Project Managers, or even some Enterprise Architects), and are especially harsh at the CxO level. Lack of information exchange with the business, other operational areas and project management – It is not only a matter of lack of dialog but also the question of using a common vocabulary (textual or graphic) that is adequate for all the stakeholders. We need to generate information that can be useful for a wider scope of stakeholders like Business and enterprise architectures. In this article we describe how an organization can leverage from the existing best practices, and with the help of adequate exploration and communication tools, achieve and maintain the level of quality and visibility that is required for SOA and SOA governance initiatives. Introduction Understanding and implementing effective SOA governance has become a corporate imperative in order to ensure coherence and the attainment of the basic objectives of SOA initiatives: develop the correct services control costs and risks bound to the development process reduce time-to-market Read the full article here. SOA & BPM Partner Community For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Wiki Mix Forum Technorati Tags: SOA Governance,Link Consulting,SOA Community,Oracle SOA,Oracle BPM,Community,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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  • Attention NYC Area Marketers: Don't Miss This Executive Breakfast on Brand Building in the Digital Era

    - by Christie Flanagan
    Presenting and Managing Digital Content – A New Approach Reach Your Audiences Where They Are with Multi-Channel Marketing Attention marketers in the greater New York City area! Oracle Platinum Partner, Bluenog, invites you to an executive breakfast seminar on brand building in the digital era. In an age where consumers are spending increasing amounts of their time online, interacting, communicating and being influenced by other brands, you too must go online with a coordinated plan. And, given the hundreds, if not thousands, of places that might be relevant, having the right content and the right tools are critical. This two-part presentation will focus on the growing need for content and connection in building and maintaining your brand, as well as the role of technology in helping you maintain brand consistency, reach and interaction while simplifying delivery to web, tablet, mobile, and social audiences. Location Oracle Offices 520 Madison Ave, 30th Floor New York, NY  10022 Day/Time Thursday, May 3, 2012 9:30 AM to 11:30 AM About the Speakers Agenda: Michelle Pujadas, is an award-winning marketer and communicator, who has worked with more than 125 companies to help them package, launch and expand their brand presence, online and off. Michelle is the Founder and co-CEO of Zer0 to 5ive, a strategic marketing and communications firm that focuses on B2B and B2C technology companies, with offices in NY, Philadelphia and Chicago. Peter Conrad, the E 2.0 Practice Director for Bluenog, focuses on translating exciting visions for user experiences into well executed technical implementations leveraging advanced WebCenter technology from Oracle. Bluenog provides the systems and professional services today's forward-looking marketing organizations need to convert content, business capabilities, and communications into productive interactions with customers and prospects. 09:30am Arrival, Registration & Breakfast 10:00am Brand Building through Content and Connection, presented by Michelle Pujadas, Founder and co-CEO of Zer0 to 5ive 10:30am Leveraging Technology for Brand Reach, Consistency and Interaction, presented by Peter Conrad, E2.0 Practice Director at Bluenog 11:15am Q&A 11:30am Adjourn

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  • ASP.NET 4.0- CompressionEnabled Property in session state 4.0

    - by Jalpesh P. Vadgama
    Hello Guys, This blog has been quite for few days. Because i was busy with some personal and professional work both and that’s why i am not able to work on writing blog posts which i have discovered in last few days. Here is one features of asp.net 4.0 that I am going to explain. As a web developer we all know about session. Without the use of session any database driven web application is incomplete. As we all know unlike windows form web forms are state less so when user interacts with web application we need to maintain state amongst web pages and we are using session for maintaining state between web pages for each users. ASP.NET is also provide same kind of session state functionalities. ASP.Net Session state identify request coming for same user and same browser for specific session time out interval and its preserves values in session for that specific time intervals and that’s help us in maintaining state amongst web pages for a specific user. ASP.NET Session state allows us to store session in three way 1. IncProc 2. Session State Service 3. SQL Server. In SQL Server mode it will store session in SQL Server tables instead of storing it in Server Memory. ASP.NET 4.0 provides a new property called Compression Enabled that means when we store values in serialized form in SQL Server with GZip Compression and that results in better performance. For that you need to store property in web.config like following. <sessionState allowCustomSqlDatabase="true" sqlConnectionString="data source=Server;Initial Catalog=aspnetsessionstatedb" compressionEnabled="true" /> That’s it now with the use of this property you can have better performance when you are storing large amount of data in session.But still you need to decide that why you want to stored large amount of data in session because its against best practices. Technorati Tags: Session,ASP.NET 4.0

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  • Debugging .NET 2.0 assembly from unmanaged code in VS2010?

    - by Rick Strahl
    I’ve run into a serious snag trying to debug a .NET 2.0 assembly that is called from unmanaged code in Visual Studio 2010. I maintain a host of components that using COM interop and custom .NET runtime hosting and ever since installing Visual Studio 2010 I’ve been utterly blocked by VS 2010’s inability to apparently debug .NET 2.0 assemblies when launching through unmanaged code. Here’s what I’m actually doing (simplified scenario to demonstrate): I have a .NET 2.0 assembly that is compiled for COM Interop Compile project with .NET 2.0 target and register for COM Interop Set a breakpoint in the .NET component in one of the class methods Instantiate the .NET component via COM interop and call method The result is that the COM call works fine but the debugger never triggers on the breakpoint. If I now take that same assembly and target it at .NET 4.0 without any other changes everything works as expected – the breakpoint set in the assembly project triggers just fine. The easy answer to this problem seems to be “Just switch to .NET 4.0” but unfortunately the application and the way the runtime is actually hosted has a few complications. Specifically the runtime hosting uses .NET 2.0 hosting and apparently the only reliable way to host the .NET 4.0 runtime is to use the new hosting APIs that are provided only with .NET 4.0 (which all by itself is lame, lame, lame as once again the promise of backwards compatibility is broken once again by .NET). So for the moment I need to continue using the .NET 2.0 hosting APIs due to application requirements. I’ve been searching high and low and experimenting back and forth, posted a few questions on the MSDN forums but haven’t gotten any hints on what might be causing the apparent failure of Visual Studio 2010 to debug my .NET 2.0 assembly properly when called from un-managed code. Incidentally debugging .NET 2.0 targeted assemblies works fine when running with a managed startup application – it seems the issue is specific to the unmanaged code starting up. My particular issue is with custom runtime hosting which at first I thought was the problem. But the same issue manifests when using COM Interop against a .NET 2.0 assembly, so the hosting is probably not the issue. Curious if anybody has any ideas on what could be causing the lack of debugging in this scenario?© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010

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  • Partner Infoline & Service Portal

    - by uwes
    As an EMEA-wide team we're supporting the daily work of our partners. Our team consists of 24 sales consultants, one third is specialized on the Partner Infoline. Partner Infoline's main focus is to deliver actively and reactively technical pre sales knowledge about the Oracle hardware portfolio to our partners.With infoline we assist our partners in their daily work, furthermore we help to educate our partners to be self sufficient in all aspects and questions about hardware configurations and hardware quotes. For our Infoline Service we use a ticketing system called Service Portal which is widely used within Oracle and delivers a good and stable functionality and availability. Our Infoline-Service provides answers to questions concerning technical pre-sales matters that are related to hardware and the corresponding hardware related software.* You can address these types of questions by sending them to our mailing list: [email protected] The serviceportal will send you an auto-reply including a unique reference number, which will be the identification for your request until it is closed. Depending on the complexity of the request, it might be necessary to forward it to our specialists (servers, storage, tape, Solaris etc.) located whole over Europe. In order to make the whole process smooth here are some recommendations: write your request in English; saves translation-time, when it has to be forwarded to the specialists stating clearly in the title your interest area, like for example "memory in M4000 server". one request/one subject; makes it easier to maintain and keep the correspondence clear and simple. The rule of the service is to provide an answer quick, which means the vast majority of the requests are answered within a couple of hours. However please keep in mind that some requests may need extra work by involving the appropriate person within Europe or even in US. Therefore there is no official SLA for this service. * This excludes Oracle "classic" products and post-sales support. The latter should still be addressed through MOS (http://support.oracle.com)

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  • Multi MVC processing vs Single MVC process

    - by lordg
    I've worked fairly extensively with the MVC framework cakephp, however I'm finding that I would rather have my pages driven by the multiple MVC than by just one MVC. My reason is primarily to maintain an a more DRY principle. In CakePHP MVC: you call a URL which calls a single MVC, which then calls the layout. What I want is: you call a URL, it processes a layout, which then calls multiple MVC's per component/block of html on the page. When you compare JavaScript components, AJAX, and server side HTML rendering, it seems the most consistent method for building pages is through blocks of components or HTML views. That way, the view block could be situated either on the server or the client. This is technically my ONLY disagreement with the MVC model. Outside of this, IMHO MVC rocks! My question is: What other RAD frameworks follow the same principles as MVC but are driven rather by the View side of MVC? I've looked at Django and Ruby on Rails, yet they seems to be more Controller driven. Lift/Scala appears to be somewhat of a good fit, but i'm interested to see what others exist.

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  • Move a SQL Azure server between subscriptions

    - by jamiet
    In September 2011 I published a blog post SSIS Reporting Pack v0.2 now available in which I made available the credentials of a sample database that one could use to test SSIS Reporting Pack. That database was sitting on a paid-for Azure subscription and hence was costing me about £5 a month - not a huge amount but when I later got a free Azure subscription through my MSDN Subscription in January 2012 it made sense to migrate the database onto that subscription. Since then I have been endeavouring to make that move but a few failed attempts combined with lack of time meant that I had not yet gotten round to it.That is until this morning when I heard about a new feature available in the Azure Management Portal that enables one to move a SQL Azure server from one subscription to another. Up to now I had been attempting to use a combination of SSIS packages and/or scripts to move the data but, as I alluded, I ran into a few roadblocks hence the ability to move a SQL Azure server was a godsend to me. I fired up the Azure Management Portal and a few clicks later my server had been successfully migrated, moreover the name of the server doesn't change and neither do any credentials so I have no need to go and update my original blog post either. Its easy to be cynical about SQL Azure (and I maintain a healthy scepticism myself) but that, my friends, is cool!You can read more about the ability to move SQL Azure servers between subscriptions from the official blog post Moving SQL Azure Servers Between Subscriptions.@Jamiet

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  • DTLoggedExec 1.0 Stable Released!

    - by Davide Mauri
    After serveral years of development I’ve finally released the first non-beta version of DTLoggedExec! I’m now very confident that the product is stable and solid and has all the feature that are important to have (at least for me). DTLoggedExec 1.0 http://dtloggedexec.codeplex.com/releases/view/44689 Here’s the release notes: FIRST NON-BETA RELEASE! :) Code cleaned up Added SetPackageInfo method to ILogProvider interface to make easier future improvements Deprecated the arguments 'ProfileDataFlow', 'ProfilePath', 'ProfileFileName' Added the new argument 'ProfileDataFlowFileName' that replaces the old 'ProfileDataFlow', 'ProfilePath', 'ProfileFileName' arguments Updated database scripts to support new reports Split releases in three different packages for easier maintenance and updates: DTLoggedExec Executable, Samples & Reports Fixed Issue #25738 (http://dtloggedexec.codeplex.com/WorkItem/View.aspx?WorkItemId=25738) Fixed Issue #26479 (http://dtloggedexec.codeplex.com/WorkItem/View.aspx?WorkItemId=26479) To make things easier to maintain I’ve divided the original package in three different releases. One is the DTLoggedExec executable; samples and reports are now available in separate packages so that I can update them more frequently without having to touch the engine. Source code of everything is available through Source Code Control: http://dtloggedexec.codeplex.com/SourceControl/list/changesets As usual, comments and feebacks are more than welcome! (Just use Codeplex, please, so it will be easier for me to keep track of requests and issues) Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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  • Instructor Insight: Using the Container Database in Oracle Database 12 c

    - by Breanne Cooley
    The first time I examined the Oracle Database 12c architecture, I wasn’t quite sure what I thought about the Container Database (CDB). In the current release of the Oracle RDBMS, the administrator now has a choice of whether or not to employ a CDB. Bundling Databases Inside One Container In today’s IT industry, consolidation is a common challenge. With potentially hundreds of databases to manage and maintain, an administrator will require a great deal of time and resources to upgrade and patch software. Why not consider deploying a container database to streamline this activity? By “bundling” several databases together inside one container, in the form of a pluggable database, we can save on overhead process resources and CPU time. Furthermore, we can reduce the human effort required for periodically patching and maintaining the software. Minimizing Storage Most IT professionals understand the concept of storage, as in solid state or non-rotating. Let’s take one-to-many databases and “plug” them into ONE designated container database. We can minimize many redundant pieces that would otherwise require separate storage and architecture, as was the case in previous releases of the Oracle RDBMS. The data dictionary can be housed and shared in one CDB, with individual metadata content for each pluggable database. We also won’t need as many background processes either, thus reducing the overhead cost of the CPU resource. Improve Security Levels within Each Pluggable Database  We can now segregate the CDB-administrator role from that of the pluggable-database administrator as well, achieving improved security levels within each pluggable database and within the CDB. And if the administrator chooses to use the non-CDB architecture, everything is backwards compatible, too.  The bottom line: it's a good idea to at least consider using a CDB. -Christopher Andrews, Senior Principal Instructor, Oracle University

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  • If not gamedev, what do I do !

    - by brainydexter
    Hi, I am a game dev who was working in the game-industry and then..got laid off. Ever since then, life couldn't get less stressful! During this time, I have met so many other devs who have also been laid off irrespective of the number of years they have been in the game. Now, the problem really gets worse, since I am not a US citizen (yes, I am in US) , and am on an international visa here, I might have to soon pack my bags and go back to my native country. Going back is not bad at all, apart from the fact, that gamedev is still in a very nascent stage there. There just aren't many opportunities. So, employment is the key to maintain a valid visa status. After giving it a lot of thought, I am thinking of staying away from gamedev jobs for the time being, given its job unstablity. This brings me to my current problem. I can't think of a domain/place where I can use my game development skills. I know graphics/simulation/visualization is huge, but I can't think straight and am left clueless where to go from here. What are some of the domains/companies where I can use my skills ? I'd appreciate any insight on this (and I apologize if this is not the place to post this kind of a question).

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  • Does TDD really work for complex projects?

    - by Amir Rezaei
    I’m asking this question regarding problems I have experienced during TDD projects. I have noticed the following challenges when creating unit tests. Generating and maintaining mock data It’s hard and unrealistic to maintain large mock data. It’s is even harder when database structure undergoes changes. Testing GUI Even with MVVM and ability to test GUI, it takes a lot of code to reproduce the GUI scenario. Testing the business I have experience that TDD works well if you limit it to simple business logic. However complex business logic is hard to test since the number of combinations of tests (test space) is very large. Contradiction in requirements In reality it’s hard to capture all requirements under analysis and design. Many times one note requirements lead to contradiction because the project is complex. The contradiction is found late under implementation phase. TDD requires that requirements are 100% correct. In such cases one could expect that conflicting requirements would be captured during creating of tests. But the problem is that this isn’t the case in complex scenarios. I have read this question: Why does TDD work? Does TDD really work for complex enterprise projects, or is it practically limit to project type?

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  • Adding a CMS to an existing Magento shop

    - by user6341
    I am working on a project for 3 niche stores built on magento (using magento's multi-store function) that each get roughly 50k unique visitors a day. The sites don't currently have a blog or forum or any social networking aspects. Would like to add a cms to each site that can be centrally run and would like it to take over the front end content from Magento. Also would like it to maintain an online blog/publication of sorts with videos, articles, and the like with privileges to edit the content given to a dozen or so people with different privileges. Want to add a forum to each site that is fairly robust and to possibly add some social networking aspects down the road, so extandability and available plugins/mods in each cms is important. Other than shared login between the forums,blog/publication and store, would like to be able to integrate some content from the forums and blog/publication into the store as well. After researching this a bit, I am inclined towards Drupal, but I haven't found any modules to integrate it with Magento. Also, since the blog content will be done by about a dozen nontechnical people, I want something that is very easy to work with. Lastly, since the site gets a good amount of traffic, speed and security are very important. What CMS would you recommend integrating in this context? Deciding between Drupal, Wordpress and Plone. Thanks.

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  • High load (and high temp) with idle processes

    - by Nanne
    I've got a semi-old laptop (toshiba satellite a110-228), that's appointed 'laptop for the kids' by my sister. I've installed ubuntu netbook (10.10) on it because of the lack-of memory and it seems to work fine, accept from some heat-issues. These where never a problem under windows. It looks like I've got something similar to this problem: Load is generally 1 or higher, sometimes its stuck at 0.80, but its way to high. Top/htop only show a couple of percentage CPU use (which isn't too shocking, as i'm not doing anything). At this point all the software is stock, and i'd like to keep it that way because its supposed to be the easy-to-maintain kids computer. Now I'd like to find out: What could be the cause of the high load? Could it be as this thread implies, some driver, are there other options to check? How could I see what is really keeping the system hot and bothered? How to check what runs, etc etc? I'd like to pinpoint the culprint. further steps to take for debugging? The big bad internet leads me to believe that it might be the graphics drivers. The laptop has an Intel 945M chipset, but that doesn't seem to be one of the problem childs in this manner (I read a lot abotu ATI drivers that need special isntall). I'd not only welcome hints to directly solve this (duh) but also help in starting to debug what is going on. I am really hesitant in installing an older kernel, as I want it to be stock, and easy upgradeable (because I don't live near it, it should run without me ;) ) As an afterthought: to keep the whole thing cooler, can I 'amp up' the fancontrol? Its only going "airplane" mode when the computer is 95 Celcius, which is a tad late for my taste. Top: powertop:

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  • How would you refactor nested IF Statements?

    - by saunderl
    I was cruising around the programming blogosphere when I happened upon this post about GOTO's: http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com/2010/12/programmers-tabu.html Here the writer talks about how "one must come to the conclusion that there are situations where GOTOs make for more readable and more maintainable code" and then goes on to show an example similar to this: if (Check#1) { CodeBlock#1 if (Check#2) { CodeBlock#2 if (Check#3) { CodeBlock#3 if (Check#4) { CodeBlock#4 if (Check#5) { CodeBlock#5 if (Check#6) { CodeBlock#6 if (Check#7) { CodeBlock#7 } else { rest - of - the - program } } } } } } } The writer then proposes that using GOTO's would make this code much easier to read and maintain. I personally can think of at least 3 different ways to flatten it out and make this code more readable without resorting to flow-breaking GOTO's. Here are my two favorites. 1 - Nested Small Functions. Take each if and its code block and turn it into a function. If the boolean check fails, just return. If it passes, then call the next function in the chain. (Boy, that sounds a lot like recursion, could you do it in a single loop with function pointers?) 2 - Sentinal Variable. To me this is the easyest. Just use a blnContinueProcessing variable and check to see if it is still true in your if check. Then if the check fails, set the variable to false. How many different ways can this type of coding problem be refactored to reduce nesting and increase maintainability?

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  • Annotate source code with diagrams as comments

    - by Steven Lu
    I write a lot of (primarily c++ and javascript) code that touches upon computational geometry and graphics and those kinds of topics, so I have found that visual diagrams have been an indispensable part of the process of solving problems. I have determined just now that "oh, wouldn't it just be fantastic if I could somehow attach a hand-drawn diagram to a piece of code as a comment", and this would allow me to come back to something I worked on, days, weeks, months earlier and far more quickly re-grok my algorithms. As a visual learner, I feel like this has the potential to improve my productivity with almost every type of programming because simple diagrams can help with understanding and reasoning about any type of non-trivial data structure. Graphs for example. During graph theory class at university I had only ever been able to truly comprehend the graph relationships that I could actually draw diagrammatical representations of. So... No IDE to my knowledge lets you save a picture as a comment to code. My thinking was that I or someone else could come up with some reasonably easy-to-use tool that can convert an image into a base64 binary string which I can then insert into my code. If the conversion/insertion process can be streamlined enough it would allow a far better connection between the diagram and the actual code, so I no longer need to chronographically search through my notebooks. Even more awesome: plugins for the IDEs to automatically parse out and display the image. There is absolutely nothing difficult about this from a theoretical point of view. My guess is that it would take some extra time for me to actually figure out how to extend my favorite IDEs and maintain these plugins, so I'd be totally happy with a sort of code post-processor which would do the same parsing out and rendering of the images and show them side by side with the code, inside of a browser or something. Since I'm a javascript programmer by trade. What do people think? Would anyone pay for this? I would.

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  • Cross-platform desktop programming: C++ vs. Python

    - by John Wells
    Alright, to start off, I have experience as an amateur Obj-C/Cocoa and Ruby w/Rails programmer. These are great, but they aren't really helpful for writing cross-platform applications (hopefully GNUStep will one day be complete enough for the first to be multi platform, but that day is not today). C++, from what I can gather, is extremely powerful but also a huge, ugly behemoth that can take half a decade or more to master. I've also read that you can very easily not only shoot yourself in the foot, but blow your entire leg off with it since memory management is all manual. Obviously, this is all quite intimidating. Is it correct? Python seems to provide most of the power of C++ and is much easier to pick up at the cost of speed. How big is this sacrifice? Is it meaningful or can it be ignored? Which will have me writing fast, stable, highly reliable applications in a reasonable amount of time? Also, is it better to use Qt for your UI or instead maintain separate, native front ends for each platform? EDIT: For extra clarity, there are two types applications I want to write: one is an extremely friendly and convenient database frontend and the other, which no doubt will come much later on, is a 3D world editor.

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  • Finding the Right Solution to Source and Manage Your Contractors

    - by mark.rosenberg(at)oracle.com
    Many of our PeopleSoft Enterprise applications customers operate in service-based industries, and all of our customers have at least some internal service units, such as IT, marketing, and facilities. Employing the services of contractors, often referred to as "contingent labor," to deliver either or both internal and external services is common practice. As we've transitioned from an industrial age to a knowledge age, talent has become a primary competitive advantage for most organizations. Contingent labor offers talent on flexible terms; it offers the ability to scale up operations, close skill gaps, and manage risk in the process of delivering services. Talent comes from many sources and the rise in the contingent worker (contractor, consultant, temporary, part time) has increased significantly in the past decade and is expected to reach 40 percent in the next decade. Managing the total pool of talent in a seamless integrated fashion not only saves organizations money and increases efficiency, but creates a better place for workers of all kinds to work. Although the term "contingent labor" is frequently used to describe both contractors and employees who have flexible schedules and relationships with an organization, the remainder of this discussion focuses on contractors. The term "contingent labor" is used interchangeably with "contractor." Recognizing the importance of contingent labor, our PeopleSoft customers often ask our team, "What Oracle vendor management system (VMS) applications should I evaluate for managing contractors?" In response, I thought it would be useful to describe and compare the three most common Oracle-based options available to our customers. They are:   The enterprise licensed software model in which you implement and utilize the PeopleSoft Services Procurement (sPro) application and potentially other PeopleSoft applications;  The software-as-a-service model in which you gain access to a derivative of PeopleSoft sPro from an Oracle Business Process Outsourcing Partner; and  The managed service provider (MSP) model in which staffing industry professionals utilize either your enterprise licensed software or the software-as-a-service application to administer your contingent labor program. At this point, you may be asking yourself, "Why three options?" The answer is that since there is no "one size fits all" in terms of talent, there is also no "one size fits all" for effectively sourcing and managing contingent workers. Various factors influence how an organization thinks about and relates to its contractors, and each of the three Oracle-based options addresses an organization's needs and preferences differently. For the purposes of this discussion, I will describe the options with respect to (A) pricing and software provisioning models; (B) control and flexibility; (C) level of engagement with contractors; and (D) approach to sourcing, employment law, and financial settlement. Option 1:  Enterprise Licensed Software In this model, you purchase from Oracle the license and support for the applications you need. Typically, you license PeopleSoft sPro as your VMS tool for sourcing, monitoring, and paying your contract labor. In conjunction with sPro, you can also utilize PeopleSoft Human Capital Management (HCM) applications (if you do not already) to configure more advanced business processes for recruiting, training, and tracking your contractors. Many customers choose this enterprise license software model because of the functionality and natural integration of the PeopleSoft applications and because the cost for the PeopleSoft software is explicit. There is no fee per transaction to source each contractor under this model. Our customers that employ contractors to augment their permanent staff on billable client engagements often find this model appealing because there are no fees to affect their profit margins. With this model, you decide whether to have your own IT organization run the software or have the software hosted and managed by either Oracle or another application services provider. Your organization, perhaps with the assistance of consultants, configures, deploys, and operates the software for managing your contingent workforce. This model offers you the highest level of control and flexibility since your organization can configure the contractor process flow exactly to your business and security requirements and can extend the functionality with PeopleTools. This option has proven very valuable and applicable to our customers engaged in government contracting because their contingent labor management practices are subject to complex standards and regulations. Customers find a great deal of value in the application functionality and configurability the enterprise licensed software offers for managing contingent labor. Some examples of that functionality are... The ability to create a tiered network of preferred suppliers including competencies, pricing agreements, and elaborate candidate management capabilities. Configurable alerts and online collaboration for bid, resource requisition, timesheet, and deliverable entry, routing, and approval for both resource and deliverable-based services. The ability to manage contractors with the same PeopleSoft HCM and Projects applications that are used to manage the permanent workforce. Because it allows you to utilize much of the same PeopleSoft HCM and Projects application functionality for contractors that you use for permanent employees, the enterprise licensed software model supports the deepest level of engagement with the contingent workforce. For example, you can: fill job openings with contingent labor; guide contingent workers through essential safety and compliance training with PeopleSoft Enterprise Learning Management; and source contingent workers directly to project-based assignments in PeopleSoft Resource Management and PeopleSoft Program Management. This option enables contingent workers to collaborate closely with your permanent staff on complex, knowledge-based efforts - R&D projects, billable client contracts, architecture and engineering projects spanning multiple years, and so on. With the enterprise licensed software model, your organization maintains responsibility for the sourcing, onboarding (including adherence to employment laws), and financial settlement processes. This means your organization maintains on staff or hires the expertise in these domains to utilize the software and interact with suppliers and contractors. Option 2:  Software as a Service (SaaS) The effort involved in setting up and operating VMS software to handle a contingent workforce leads many organizations to seek a system that can be activated and configured within a few days and for which they can pay based on usage. Oracle's Business Process Outsourcing partner, Provade, Inc., provides exactly this option to our customers. Provade offers its vendor management software as a service over the Internet and usually charges your organization a fee that is a percentage of your total contingent labor spending processed through the Provade software. (Percentage of spend is the predominant fee model, although not the only one.) In addition to lower implementation costs, the effort of configuring and maintaining the software is largely upon Provade, not your organization. This can be very appealing to IT organizations that are thinly stretched supporting other important information technology initiatives. Built upon PeopleSoft sPro, the Provade solution is tailored for simple and quick deployment and administration. Provade has added capabilities to clone users rapidly and has simplified business documents, like work orders and change orders, to facilitate enterprise-wide, self-service adoption with little to no training. Provade also leverages Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) to provide integrated spend analytics and dashboards. Although pure customization is more limited than with the enterprise licensed software model, Provade offers a very effective option for organizations that are regularly on-boarding and off-boarding high volumes of contingent staff hired to perform discrete support tasks (for example, order fulfillment during the holiday season, hourly clerical work, desktop technology repairs, and so on) or project tasks. The software is very configurable and at the same time very intuitive to even the most computer-phobic users. The level of contingent worker engagement your organization can achieve with the Provade option is generally the same as with the enterprise licensed software model since Provade can automatically establish contingent labor resources in your PeopleSoft applications. Provade has pre-built integrations to Oracle's PeopleSoft and the Oracle E-Business Suite procurement, projects, payables, and HCM applications, so that you can evaluate, train, assign, and track contingent workers like your permanent employees. Similar to the enterprise licensed software model, your organization is responsible for the contingent worker sourcing, administration, and financial settlement processes. This means your organization needs to maintain the staff expertise in these domains. Option 3:  Managed Services Provider (MSP) Whether you are using the enterprise licensed model or the SaaS model, you may want to engage the services of sourcing, employment, payroll, and financial settlement professionals to administer your contingent workforce program. Firms that offer this expertise are often referred to as "MSPs," and they are typically staffing companies that also offer permanent and temporary hiring services. (In fact, many of the major MSPs are Oracle applications customers themselves, and they utilize the PeopleSoft Solution for the Staffing Industry to run their own business operations.) Usually, MSPs place their staff on-site at your facilities, and they can utilize either your enterprise licensed PeopleSoft sPro application or the Provade VMS SaaS software to administer the network of suppliers providing contingent workers. When you utilize an MSP, there is a separate fee for the MSP's service that is typically funded by the participating suppliers of the contingent labor. Also in this model, the suppliers of the contingent labor (not the MSP) usually pay the contingent labor force. With an MSP, you are intentionally turning over business process control for the advantages associated with having someone else manage the processes. The software option you choose will to a certain extent affect your process flexibility; however, the MSPs are often able to adapt their processes to the unique demands of your business. When you engage an MSP, you will want to give some thought to the level of engagement and "partnering" you need with your contingent workforce. Because the MSP acts as an intermediary, it can be very valuable in handling high volume, routine contracting for which there is a relatively low need for "partnering" with the contingent workforce. However, if your organization (or part of your organization) engages contingent workers for high-profile client projects that require diplomacy, intensive amounts of interaction, and personal trust, introducing an MSP into the process may prove less effective than handling the process with your own staff. In fact, in many organizations, it is common to enlist an MSP to handle contractors working on internal projects and to have permanent employees handle the contractor relationships that affect the portion of the services portfolio focused on customer-facing, billable projects. One of the key advantages of enlisting an MSP is that you do not have to maintain the expertise required for orchestrating the sourcing, hiring, and paying of contingent workers.  These are the domain of the MSPs. If your own staff members are not prepared to manage the essential "overhead" processes associated with contingent labor, working with an MSP can make solid business sense. Proper administration of a contingent workforce can make the difference between project success and failure, operating profit and loss, and legal compliance and fines. Concluding Thoughts There is little doubt that thoughtfully and purposefully constructing a service delivery strategy that leverages the strengths of contingent workers can lead to better projects, deliverables, and business results. What requires a bit more thinking is determining the platform (or platforms) that will enable each part of your organization to best deliver on its mission.

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  • The UIManager Pattern

    - by Duncan Mills
    One of the most common mistakes that I see when reviewing ADF application code, is the sin of storing UI component references, most commonly things like table or tree components in Session or PageFlow scope. The reasons why this is bad are simple; firstly, these UI object references are not serializable so would not survive a session migration between servers and secondly there is no guarantee that the framework will re-use the same component tree from request to request, although in practice it generally does do so. So there danger here is, that at best you end up with an NPE after you session has migrated, and at worse, you end up pinning old generations of the component tree happily eating up your precious memory. So that's clear, we should never. ever, be storing references to components anywhere other than request scope (or maybe backing bean scope). So double check the scope of those binding attributes that map component references into a managed bean in your applications.  Why is it Such a Common Mistake?  At this point I want to examine why there is this urge to hold onto these references anyway? After all, JSF will obligingly populate your backing beans with the fresh and correct reference when needed.   In most cases, it seems that the rational is down to a lack of distinction within the application between what is data and what is presentation. I think perhaps, a cause of this is the logical separation between business data behind the ADF data binding (#{bindings}) façade and the UI components themselves. Developers tend to think, OK this is my data layer behind the bindings object and everything else is just UI.  Of course that's not the case.  The UI layer itself will have state which is intrinsically linked to the UI presentation rather than the business model, but at the same time should not be tighly bound to a specific instance of any single UI component. So here's the problem.  I think developers try and use the UI components as state-holders for this kind of data, rather than using them to represent that state. An example of this might be something like the selection state of a tabset (panelTabbed), you might be interested in knowing what the currently disclosed tab is. The temptation that leads to the component reference sin is to go and ask the tabset what the selection is.  That of course is fine in context - e.g. a handler within the same request scoped bean that's got the binding to the tabset. However, it leads to problems when you subsequently want the same information outside of the immediate scope.  The simple solution seems to be to chuck that component reference into session scope and then you can simply re-check in the same way, leading of course to this mistake. Turn it on its Head  So the correct solution to this is to turn the problem on its head. If you are going to be interested in the value or state of some component outside of the immediate request context then it becomes persistent state (persistent in the sense that it extends beyond the lifespan of a single request). So you need to externalize that state outside of the component and have the component reference and manipulate that state as needed rather than owning it. This is what I call the UIManager pattern.  Defining the Pattern The  UIManager pattern really is very simple. The premise is that every application should define a session scoped managed bean, appropriately named UIManger, which is specifically responsible for holding this persistent UI component related state.  The actual makeup of the UIManger class varies depending on a needs of the application and the amount of state that needs to be stored. Generally I'll start off with a Map in which individual flags can be created as required, although you could opt for a more formal set of typed member variables with getters and setters, or indeed a mix. This UIManager class is defined as a session scoped managed bean (#{uiManager}) in the faces-config.xml.  The pattern is to then inject this instance of the class into any other managed bean (usually request scope) that needs it using a managed property.  So typically you'll have something like this:   <managed-bean>     <managed-bean-name>uiManager</managed-bean-name>     <managed-bean-class>oracle.demo.view.state.UIManager</managed-bean-class>     <managed-bean-scope>session</managed-bean-scope>   </managed-bean>  When is then injected into any backing bean that needs it:    <managed-bean>     <managed-bean-name>mainPageBB</managed-bean-name>     <managed-bean-class>oracle.demo.view.MainBacking</managed-bean-class>     <managed-bean-scope>request</managed-bean-scope>     <managed-property>       <property-name>uiManager</property-name>       <property-class>oracle.demo.view.state.UIManager</property-class>       <value>#{uiManager}</value>     </managed-property>   </managed-bean> In this case the backing bean in question needs a member variable to hold and reference the UIManager: private UIManager _uiManager;  Which should be exposed via a getter and setter pair with names that match the managed property name (e.g. setUiManager(UIManager _uiManager), getUiManager()).  This will then give your code within the backing bean full access to the UI state. UI components in the page can, of course, directly reference the uiManager bean in their properties, for example, going back to the tab-set example you might have something like this: <af:paneltabbed>   <af:showDetailItem text="First"                disclosed="#{uiManager.settings['MAIN_TABSET_STATE'].['FIRST']}"> ...   </af:showDetailItem>   <af:showDetailItem text="Second"                      disclosed="#{uiManager.settings['MAIN_TABSET_STATE'].['SECOND']}">     ...   </af:showDetailItem>   ... </af:panelTabbed> Where in this case the settings member within the UI Manger is a Map which contains a Map of Booleans for each tab under the MAIN_TABSET_STATE key. (Just an example you could choose to store just an identifier for the selected tab or whatever, how you choose to store the state within UI Manger is up to you.) Get into the Habit So we can see that the UIManager pattern is not great strain to implement for an application and can even be retrofitted to an existing application with ease. The point is, however, that you should always take this approach rather than committing the sin of persistent component references which will bite you in the future or shotgun scattered UI flags on the session which are hard to maintain.  If you take the approach of always accessing all UI state via the uiManager, or perhaps a pageScope focused variant of it, you'll find your applications much easier to understand and maintain. Do it today!

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  • What to use for simple cross-platform games instead of Flash?

    - by jmh_gr
    In short, for simple games: Is Flash still a good option for browser-based PC clients? It still has 90%+ penetration. What is a good alternative for mobile devices? It HTML5 + JavaScript the choice for mobile? Or does one have to learn a new native language for each target platform? (Android, Apple, Windows Phone)... If you desire further background: There are more blogs about the official demise of mobile Flash than I can count, along with endless useless and vitriolic comments. I'm actually trying to do something practical: build simple games that can be served accross multiple platforms. Several months ago I plopped down $1100 for CS5.5 Web and am wading into Flash. Bummer. My question to people who actually develop simple games and apps: What platform should I use instead? Is Flash still a sensible platform for web-served PC users? For example, let's say I build a simple arcade game that I would like to serve as an app to mobile users and as a browser-based game to PC users. Should I still invest the time and effort to learn and develop in Flash for the PC users, while building a parallel code set in some other language for mobile users? My games are simple enough that it would be annoying but not inconceivable to maintain parallel code sets.

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  • w00t! First post!

    - by blaird
    So, I busted my old blog and hadn't been keeping up with it. Decided it would be easier on me to use software that I didn't maintain, so several months ago I signed up for a GWB account. You are a witness to procrastination at its finest!  I was remarking to my friend Abby that I hadn't written anything in ages, that I've typed a bunch in the last 5 years or so, but that the typing belonged to someone else as work product, was boring technical mumbo jumbo, or was only good before it spoiled, that project/job/technology/tweet based freshness window that us geeks have to deal with. In short, I just didn't feel like it. So forgive the rambling sentences and my grammatical failures, you have Abby to thank ;) On the technology front I've been working with WPF, WCF and a whole lot of other alphabet soup in terms of patterns. I'm starting to get spoiled on Visual Studio 2010, and may have made a mistake by evaluating the ultimate version. Because I'm a .NET geek and an outdoor geek, expect a hodgepodge. It's nearly Easter, which for the garden means a whole lot of things. I've already started getting seed out, and started working soil. It feels good to get real dirt on your hands.

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  • Oracle Tutor: Learn Tutor in the comfort of your own home or office

    - by emily.chorba(at)oracle.com
    The primary challenge for companies faced with documenting policies and procedures is to realize that they can do this documentation in-house, with existing resources, using Oracle Tutor. Procedure documentation is a critical success component for supporting corporate governance or other regulatory compliance initiatives and when implementing or upgrading to a new business application. There are over 1000 Oracle Tutor customers worldwide that have used Tutor to create, distribute, and maintain their business procedures. This is easily accomplished because of Tutor's: Ease of use by those who have to write procedures (Microsoft Word based authoring) Ease of company-wide implementation (complex document management activities are centralized) Ease of use by workers who have to follow the procedures (play script format)Ease of access by remote workers (web-enabled) Oracle University is offering Live Virtual Tutor classes! The class lasts four days, starts on Tuesday and finishes on Friday. This course is an introduction to the Oracle Tutor suite of products. It focuses on the Policy and Procedure writing feature set of the Tutor applications. Participants will learn about writing procedures and maintaining these particular process document types, all using the Tutor method. The next three classes are scheduled for: April 19 - 22 May 31 - June 3 July 5 - 8 You will learn to: Write procedures Create procedure Flowcharts Write support documents Create Impact Analysis Reports Create Role-base Employee Manuals Deploy online Employee Manuals on an Intranet Enjoy learning Tutor in your local environment. Start the sign up process from this link Learn More For more information about Tutor, visit Oracle.com or the Tutor Blog. Post your questions at the Tutor Forum. Emily Chorba Principle Product Manager Oracle Tutor & BPM

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  • Cloud Computing and Data Utilization

    - by Ahsan Alam
    Someone recently asked me “is cloud computing going to change the way we perceive data?”. My first instinct was “off course”; but I restrained myself and thought for a moment. Then my answer was “no”. Why do I feel that way? Technology and business have evolved quite a bit in the past few decades; however, the need to effectively view and utilize data hasn't changed. It is not uncommon to see many organization to rely on multiple database management systems (DBMS). Applications and systems are often built to utilize information from all these data sources, and effectively present them to users. In addition to multiple DBMS, corporations are also housing their systems across numerous data centers. In fact, systems and data can reside anywhere around the world with the advent of globalization. Cloud based systems have simply provided us a different place to maintain our data, nothing more. Hosting costs, security and accessibility are different issues; however, the way we utilize and view these data remains the same.

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  • How are events in games handled?

    - by Alex
    In may games that I have played, I have seen events being triggered, such as when you walk into a certain land area while holding a specific object, it will trigger a special creature to spawn. I was wondering, how do games deal with events such as this? Not in a specific game, but in general among games. The first thought I had was that each place has a hard-coded set of events that it will call when something happens there. However, that would be too inefficient to maintain, as when something new is added, that would require modification of every part of the game that would potentially cause the event to be called. Next up, I had the idea of maybe how GUI programming works. In all of the GUI programming I've done, you create a component and a callback function, or a listener. Then, when the user interacts when the button, the callback function is called, allowing you to do something with it. So, I was thinking that in terms of a game, when a land area gets loaded the game loops over a list of all events, creating instances of them and calling public methods to bind them to the current scene. The events themselves then handle what scene it is, and if it is a scene that pertains to the event, will call the public method of the scene to bind the event to an action. Then, when the action takes place, the scene would call all events that are bound to that action. However, I'm sure that's not how games would operate either, as that would require a lot of creating of events all the time. So how to video games handle events, are either of those methods correct, or is it something completely different?

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  • The Customer Experience Revolution is Now

    - by Christie Flanagan
    To conclude this week’s focus on customer experience, I’ll end by recapping how my week began in New York City at The Experience Revolution. We all know that customers increasingly call the shots, and that winning or losing depends on how well we manage to meet their expectations. Today’s customers have a multitude of choices and are quick to jump ship following a poor experience. As a result, delivering an experience that is relevant, interactive, engaging, and consistent across channels and fostering rewarding relationships are increasingly important to business success.  It is only through exceptional customer experiences that companies can expect to acquire new customers and maintain their loyalty.  Over 400 of us gathered at Gotham Hall on Monday night to hear Oracle President Mark Hurd introduce Oracle Customer Experience, a cross-stack suite of customer experience products that include Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service, Oracle Endeca, Oracle ATG Web Commerce, Oracle WebCenter,Oracle Siebel CRM, Oracle Fusion CRM, Oracle Social Network, and Oracle Knowledge Management. I'd encourage you check out this video to hear Mark explain why having a good product isn't good enough in the wake of the customer experience revolution. The Experience Revolution event itself was designed to deliver the kind of rich experience that sticks with you, using an interactive gallery of customer experience to deliver an individualized experience to each attendee through a combination of touch screens and near field communication technology.  Over the coming weeks we’ll share some of these customer experience vignettes with you. In the interim, you can learn more about Oracle Customer Experience solutions here.

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