Search Results

Search found 13438 results on 538 pages for 'guidance automation tool'.

Page 445/538 | < Previous Page | 441 442 443 444 445 446 447 448 449 450 451 452  | Next Page >

• Answers to Your Common Oracle Database Lifecycle Management Questions

  - by Scott McNeil

  We recently ran a live webcast on Strategies for Managing Oracle Database's Lifecycle. There were tons of questions from our audience that we simply could not get to during the hour long presentation. Below are some of those questions along with their answers. Enjoy! Question: In the webcast the presenter talked about “gold” configuration standards, for those who want to use this technique, could you recommend a best practice to consider or follow? How do I get started? Answer:Gold configuration standardization is a quick and easy way to improve availability through consistency. Start by choosing a reference database and saving the configuration to the Oracle Enterprise Manager repository using the Save Configuration feature. Next create a comparison template using the Oracle provided template as a starting point and modify the ignored properties to eliminate expected differences in your environment. Finally create a comparison specification using the comparison template you created plus your saved gold configuration and schedule it to run on a regular basis. Don’t forget to fill in the email addresses of those you want to notify upon drift detection. Watch the database configuration management demo to learn more. Question: Can Oracle Lifecycle Management Pack for Database help with patching an Oracle Real Application Cluster (RAC) environment? Answer: Yes, Oracle Enterprise Manager supports both parallel and rolling patch application of Oracle Real Application Clusters. The use of rolling patching is recommended as there is no downtime involved. For more details watch this demo. Question: What are some of the things administrators can do to control configuration drift? Why is it important? Answer:Configuration drift is one of the main causes of instability and downtime of applications. Oracle Enterprise Manager makes it easy to manage and control drift using scheduled configuration comparisons combined with comparison templates. Question: Does Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Release 2 offer an incremental update feature for "gold" images? For instance, if the source binary has a higher PSU level, what is the best approach to update the existing "gold" image in the software library? Do you have to create a new image or can you just update the original one? Answer:Provisioning Profiles (Gold images) can contain the installation files and database configuration templates. Although it is possible to make some changes to the profile after creation (mainly to configuration), it is normally recommended to simply create a new profile after applying a patch to your reference database. Question: The webcast talked about enforcing in-house standards, does Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c offer verification of your databases and systems to those standards? For example, the initial "gold" image has been massively deployed over time, and there may be some changes to it. How can you do regular checks from Enterprise Manager to ensure the in-house standards are being enforced? Answer:There are really two methods to validate conformity to standards. The first method is to use gold standards which you compare other databases to report unwanted differences. This method uses a new comparison template technology which allows users to ignore known differences (i.e. SID, Start time, etc) which results in a report only showing important or non-conformant differences. This method is quick to setup and configure and recommended for those who want to get started validating compliance quickly. The second method leverages the new compliance framework which allows the creation of specific and robust validations. These compliance rules are grouped into standards which can be assigned to databases quickly and easily. Compliance rules allow for targeted and more sophisticated validation beyond the basic equals operation available in the comparison method. The compliance framework can be used to implement just about any internal or industry standard. The compliance results will track current and historic compliance scores at the overall and individual database targets. When the issue is resolved, the score is automatically affected. Compliance framework is the recommended long term solution for validating compliance using Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c. Check out this demo on database compliance to learn more. Question: If you are using the integration between Oracle Enterprise Manager and My Oracle Support in an "offline" mode, how do you know if you have the latest My Oracle Support metadata? Answer:In Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Release 2, you now only need to download one zip file containing all of the metadata xmls files. There is no indication that the metadata has changed but you could run a checksum on the file and compare it to the previously downloaded version to see if it has changed. Question: What happens if a patch fails while administrators are applying it to a database or system? Answer:A large portion of Oracle Enterprise Manager's patch automation is the pre-requisite checks that happen to ensure the highest level of confidence the patch will successfully apply. It is recommended you test the patch in a non-production environment and save the patch plan as a template once successful so you can create new plans using the saved template. If you are using the recommended ‘out of place’ patching methodology, there is no urgency because the database is still running as the cloned Oracle home is being patched. Users can address the issue and restart the patch procedure at the point it left off. If you are using 'in place' method, you can address the issue and continue where the procedure left off. Question: Can Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c R2 compare configurations between more than one target at the same time? Answer:Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c can compare any number of target configurations at one time. This is the basis of many important use cases including Configuration Drift Management. These comparisons can also be scheduled on a regular basis and emails notification sent should any differences appear. To learn more about configuration search and compare watch this demo. Question: How is data comparison done since changes are taking place in a live production system? Answer:There are many things to keep in mind when using the data comparison feature (as part of the Change Management ability to compare table data). It was primarily intended to be used for maintaining consistency of important but relatively static data. For example, application seed data and application setup configuration. This data does not change often but is critical when testing an application to ensure results are consistent with production. It is not recommended to use data comparison on highly dynamic data like transactional tables or very large tables. Question: Which versions of Oracle Database can be monitored through Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c? Answer:Oracle Database versions: 9.2.0.8, 10.1.0.5, 10.2.0.4, 10.2.0.5, 11.1.0.7, 11.2.0.1, 11.2.0.2, 11.2.0.3. Watch the On-Demand Webcast Stay Connected: Twitter | Facebook | YouTube | Linkedin | NewsletterDownload the Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control12c Mobile app

  Read the article

• Create a Smoother Period Close

  - by Get Proactive Customer Adoption Team

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

  Read the article

• Star rating not showing in rich snippets

  - by Danny R

  We've recently been doing a lot of work on our site's SEO (www.betterthanreviews.com). We recently did a push to update the rich snippets breadcrumb, meta description, and star rating. After giving Google some time to index the site, it has updated the breadcrumbs and meta descriptions for our review pages, but the stars are still not showing. This is currently how it appears on a Google search (link to the actual page: http://www.betterthanreviews.com/home-security/livewatch): This is what the Rich Snippets is supposed to look like, and how it appears in Google's testing tool: More context: As seen in our html, we are using schema.org language. We initially were using schema.org/Corporation for the site, but we now have the page labeled as schema.org/HomeAndConstructionBusiness because Google will not show star ratings for the Corporation language. However, in our Webmaster Tools, the Structured Data is still showing the Corporation language, which could be a potential issue. Here is a look at some of the coding that we used. But it can be looked at closer by inspecting the element: <div class="aggregate-rating" itemprop="aggregateRating" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/AggregateRating"> <div class="review row_fluid" itemprop="review" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Review"> <div class="row_fluid rating" itemprop="reviewRating" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Rating"> <meta content="4.5" itemprop="ratingValue" title="4.5 out of 5 stars" class="star-rating-readonly"> <meta content="2013-12-05" itemprop="datePublished"> <p class="review-headline" itemprop="headline">Way better than my previous system</p> <div> <p class="reviewer" itemprop="author">Scott H. </p> <span class="bullet">•</span> <p class="created_at">2 months ago</p> <p class="content" itemprop="description">I love it! The experience I have had so far is extremely positive. I had another alarm system before and I didn't like it but this one is really nice. I am telling everybody about it.</p> </div> </div> Any suggestions for how to fix this?

  Read the article

• Create USB installer from the command line?

  - by j-g-faustus

  I'm trying to create a bootable USB image to install Ubuntu on a new computer. I have done this before following the "create USB drive" instructions for Ubuntu desktop, but I don't have an Ubuntu desktop available. How can I do the same using only the command line? Things I've tried: Create bootable USB on Mac OS X following the ubuntu.com "create USB drive" instructions for Mac: Doesn't boot. usb-creator: According to apt-cache search usb-creator and Wikipedia usb-creator only exists as a graphical tool. "Create manually" instructions at help.ubuntu.com: None of the files and directories described (e.g. casper, filesystem.manifest, menu.lst) exist in the ISO image, and I don't know what has replaced them. unetbootin scripting: Requires X server (graphics support) to run, even when fully scripted. (The command sudo unetbootin lang=en method=diskimage isofile=~/ubuntu-10.10-server-amd64.iso installtype=USB targetdrive=/dev/sdg1 autoinstall=yes gives an error message unetbootin: cannot connect to X server.) Update Also tried GRUB fiddling: Merging information from pendrivelinux.com a related question on the Linux Stackexchange and a grub configuration example I was able to get halfway there - it booted from USB, displayed the grub menu and started the installation, but installation did not complete. For reference, this is the closest I got: sudo su # mount USB pen mount /dev/sd[X]1 /media/usb # install GRUB grub-install --force --no-floppy --root-directory=/media/usb /dev/sd[X] # copy ISO image to USB cp ~/ubuntu-10.10-server-amd64.iso /media/usb # mount ISO image, copy existing grub.cfg mount ~/ubuntu-10.10-server-amd64.iso /media/iso/ -o loop cp /media/iso/boot/grub/grub.cfg /media/usb/boot/grub/ I then edited /media/usb/boot/grub.cfg to add an .iso loopback, example grub entry: menuentry "Install Ubuntu Server" { set gfxpayload=keep loopback loop /ubuntu-10.10-server-amd64.iso linux (loop)/install/vmlinuz file=(loop)/preseed/ubuntu-server.seed iso-scan/filename=/ubuntu-10.10-server-amd64.iso quiet -- initrd (loop)/install/initrd.gz } When booting from USB, this would give me the Grub boot menu and start the installer, but the installer gave up after a couple of screens complaining that it couldn't find the CD-ROM drive. (Naturally, as the box I'm installing on doesn't have an optical drive.) I resolved this particular issue by giving up and doing the "create USB drive" routine using the Ubuntu Live desktop CD (on a computer that does have an optical drive), then the USB install works. But I expect that there is some way to do this from the command line of an Ubuntu system without X server and without an optical drive, so the question still stands. Does anyone know how?

  Read the article

• XNA Notes 001

  - by George Clingerman

  Just a quick recap of things I noticed going on in or around the XNA community this past week. I’m sure there’s a lot I missed (it’s a pretty big community with lots of different parts to it) but these where the things I caught that I thought were pretty cool. The XNA Team Michael Klucher gave a list of books every gamer should read. http://twitter.com/#!/mklucher/status/22313041135673344 Shawn Hargreaves posted Nelxon Studio posting about a cheatsheet for converting 3.1 to 4.0 http://blogs.msdn.com/b/shawnhar/archive/2011/01/04/xna-3-1-to-4-0-cheat-sheet.aspx?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter XNA Game Studio won the Frontline award for Programming Tool by GameDev magazine! Congrats to the XNA team! http://www.gdmag.com/homepage.htm XNA MVPs In January several MVPs were up for re-election, Jim Perry, Andy ‘The ZMan’ Dunn, Glenn Wilson and myself were all re-award a Microsoft MVP award for their contributions to the XNA/DirectX communities. https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/communities/mvp.aspx?product=1&competency=XNA%2fDirectX A movement to get Michael McLaughlin an MVP award has started and you can join in too! http://twitter.com/#!/theBigDaddio/status/22744458621620224 http://www.xnadevelopment.com/MVP/MichaelMcLaughlinMVP.txt Don’t forget you can nominate ANYONE for a MVP award, that’s how they work. https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/gp/mvpbecoming  XNA Developers James Silva of Ska Studios hit 9,200 sales of ZP2KX and recommends you listen to Infected Mushroom. http://twitter.com/#!/Jamezila/status/22538865357094912 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infected_Mushroom Noogy creator of the upcoming XBLA title Dust an Elysian tail posts some details into his art creation. http://noogy.com/image/statue/statue.html Xbox LIVE Indie Game News Microsoft posts acknowledging there was an issue with the sales data that has been addressed and apologized for not posting about it sooner. http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/71347/436154.aspx#436154 Winter Uprising sales still chugging along and being updated by Xalterax (by those developers willing to actually share sales numbers. Thanks for sharing guys, much appreciated!) http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/t/70147.aspx Don’t forget about Dream Build Play coming up in February! http://www.dreambuildplay.com/Main/Home.aspx The Best Xbox LIVE Indie Games December Edition comes out on NeoGaf http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=414485 The Greatest XBox LIVE Indie Games of 2010 on DealSpwn – Congrats to DrMistry and MStarGames for his #1 spot with his massive XBLIG Space Pirates From Tomorrow! http://www.dealspwn.com/xbligoty-2010/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Dealspwn+%28Dealspwn%29 XNA Game Development The future of XACT and WP7 has finally been confirmed and we finally know what our options are for looping audio seamlessly on WP7. http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/61826/436639.aspx#436639  Super Mario 3 Design Notes is an interesting read for XBLIG developers, giving some insight to the training that natural occurs for players as they start playing the game. Good things for XBLIG developers to think about. http://www.significant-bits.com/super-mario-bros-3-level-design-lessons

  Read the article

• To Serve Man?

  - by Dave Convery

  Since the announcement of Windows 8 and its 'Metro' interface, the .NET community has wondered if the skills they've spent so long developing might be swept aside,in favour of HTML5 and JavaScript. Mercifully, that only seems to be true of SilverLight (as Simon Cooper points out), but it did leave me thinking how easy it is to impose a technology upon people without directly serving their needs. Case in point: QR codes. Once, probably, benign in purpose, they seem to have become a marketer's tool for determining when someone has engaged with an advert in the real world, with the same certainty as is possible online. Nobody really wants to use QR codes - it's far too much hassle. But advertisers want that data - they want to know that someone actually read their billboard / poster / cereal box, and so this flawed technology is suddenly everywhere, providing little to no value to the people who are actually meant to use it. What about 3D cinema? Profits from the film industry have been steadily increasing throughout the period that digital piracy and mass sharing has been possible, yet the industry cinema chains have forced 3D films upon a broadly uninterested audience, as a way of providing more purpose to going to a cinema, rather than watching it at home. Despite advances in digital projection, 3D cinema is scarcely more immersive to us than were William Castle's hoary old tricks of skeletons on wires and buzzing chairs were to our grandparents. iTunes - originally just a piece of software that catalogued and ripped music for you, but which is now multi-purpose bloatware; a massive, system-hogging behemoth. If it was being built for the people that used it, it would have been split into three or more separate pieces of software long ago. But as bloatware, it serves Apple primarily rather than us, stuffed with Music, Video, Various stores and phone / iPad management all bolted into one. Why? It's because, that way, you're more likely to bump into something you want to buy. You can't even buy a new laptop without finding that a significant chunk of your hard drive has been sold to 'select partners' - advertisers, suppliers of virus-busting software, and endless bloatware-flogging pop-ups that make using a new laptop without reformatting the hard drive like stepping back in time. The product you want is not the one you paid for. This is without even looking at services like Facebook and Klout, who provide a notional service with the intention of slurping up as much data about you as possible (in Klout's case, whether you create an account with them or not). What technologies do you find annoying or intrusive, and who benefits from keeping them around?

  Read the article

• New hidden parameters in Oracle 11.2

  - by Mike Dietrich

  We really welcome every external review of our slides. And also recommendations from customers visiting our workshops. So it happened to me more than a week ago that Marco Patzwahl, the owner of MuniqSoft GmbH, had a very lengthy train ride in Germany (as the engine drivers go on strike this week it could have become even worse) and nothing better to do then reviewing our slide set. And he had plenty of recommendations. Besides that he pointed us to something at least I was not aware of and added it to the slides: In patch set 11.2.0.2 a new behaviour for datafile write errors has been implemented. With this release ANY write error to a datafile will cause the instance to abort. Before 11.2.0.2 those errors usually led to an offline datafile if the database operates in archivelog mode (your production database do, don’t they?!) and the datafile does not belong to the SYSTEM tablespace. Internal discussion found this behaviour not up-to-date and alligned with RAC systems and modern storages. Therefore it has been changed and a new underscore parameter got introduced. _DATAFILE_WRITE_ERRORS_CRASH_INSTANCE=TRUE This is the default setting´and the new behaviour beginning with Oracle 11.2.0.2 If you would like to revert to the pre-11.2.0.2 behaviour you’ll have to set in your init.ora/spfile this parameter to false. But keep in mind that there’s a reason why this has been changed. You’ll find more info in MOS Note: 7691270.8 and this topic in the current version of the slides on slide 255. Thanks to Marco for the review!!   And then I received an email from Kurt Van Meerbeeck today. Kurt is pretty well known in the Oracle community. And he’s the owner of jDUL/DUDE, a database unloading tool which bypasses the Oracle database engine and access data direclty from the blocks. Kurt visited the upgrade workshop two weeks ago in Belgium and did highlight to me that since Oracle 11.2.0.1 even though you haven’t set neither SGA_TARGET nor MEMORY_TARGET the database might still do resize operations. Reason why this behaviour has been changed: Prevention of ORA-4031 errors. But on databases with extremly high loads this can cause trouble. Further information can be found in MOS Note:1269139.1 . And the parameter set to TRUE by default is called _MEMORY_IMM_MODE_WITHOUT_AUTOSGA=TRUE This can be found now in the slide set as well on slide number 240. And thanks to Kurt for this information!!

  Read the article

• The Faces in the Crowdsourcing

  - by Applications User Experience

  By Jeff Sauro, Principal Usability Engineer, Oracle Imagine having access to a global workforce of hundreds of thousands of people who can perform tasks or provide feedback on a design quickly and almost immediately. Distributing simple tasks not easily done by computers to the masses is called "crowdsourcing" and until recently was an interesting concept, but due to practical constraints wasn't used often. Enter Amazon.com. For five years, Amazon has hosted a service called Mechanical Turk, which provides an easy interface to the crowds. The service has almost half a million registered, global users performing a quarter of a million human intelligence tasks (HITs). HITs are submitted by individuals and companies in the U.S. and pay from $.01 for simple tasks (such as determining if a picture is offensive) to several dollars (for tasks like transcribing audio). What do we know about the people who toil away in this digital crowd? Can we rely on the work done in this anonymous marketplace? A rendering of the actual Mechanical Turk (from Wikipedia) Knowing who is behind Amazon's Mechanical Turk is fitting, considering the history of the actual Mechanical Turk. In the late 1800's, a mechanical chess-playing machine awed crowds as it beat master chess players in what was thought to be a mechanical miracle. It turned out that the creator, Wolfgang von Kempelen, had a small person (also a chess master) hiding inside the machine operating the arms to provide the illusion of automation. The field of human computer interaction (HCI) is quite familiar with gathering user input and incorporating it into all stages of the design process. It makes sense then that Mechanical Turk was a popular discussion topic at the recent Computer Human Interaction usability conference sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery in Atlanta. It is already being used as a source for input on Web sites (for example, Feedbackarmy.com) and behavioral research studies. Two papers shed some light on the faces in this crowd. One paper tells us about the shifting demographics from mostly stay-at-home moms to young men in India. The second paper discusses the reliability and quality of work from the workers. Just who exactly would spend time doing tasks for pennies? In "Who are the crowdworkers?" University of California researchers Ross, Silberman, Zaldivar and Tomlinson conducted a survey of Mechanical Turk worker demographics and compared it to a similar survey done two years before. The initial survey reported workers consisting largely of young, well-educated women living in the U.S. with annual household incomes above $40,000. The more recent survey reveals a shift in demographics largely driven by an influx of workers from India. Indian workers went from 5% to over 30% of the crowd, and this block is largely male (two-thirds) with a higher average education than U.S. workers, and 64% report an annual income of less than $10,000 (keeping in mind $1 has a lot more purchasing power in India). This shifting demographic certainly has implications as language and culture can play critical roles in the outcome of HITs. Of course, the demographic data came from paying Turkers $.10 to fill out a survey, so there is some question about both a self-selection bias (characteristics which cause Turks to take this survey may be unrepresentative of the larger population), not to mention whether we can really trust the data we get from the crowd. Crowds can perform tasks or provide feedback on a design quickly and almost immediately for usability testing. (Photo attributed to victoriapeckham Flikr While having immediate access to a global workforce is nice, one major problem with Mechanical Turk is the incentive structure. Individuals and companies that deploy HITs want quality responses for a low price. Workers, on the other hand, want to complete the task and get paid as quickly as possible, so that they can get on to the next task. Since many HITs on Mechanical Turk are surveys, how valid and reliable are these results? How do we know whether workers are just rushing through the multiple-choice responses haphazardly answering? In "Are your participants gaming the system?" researchers at Carnegie Mellon (Downs, Holbrook, Sheng and Cranor) set up an experiment to find out what percentage of their workers were just in it for the money. The authors set up a 30-minute HIT (one of the more lengthy ones for Mechanical Turk) and offered a very high $4 to those who qualified and $.20 to those who did not. As part of the HIT, workers were asked to read an email and respond to two questions that determined whether workers were likely rushing through the HIT and not answering conscientiously. One question was simple and took little effort, while the second question required a bit more work to find the answer. Workers were led to believe other factors than these two questions were the qualifying aspect of the HIT. Of the 2000 participants, roughly 1200 (or 61%) answered both questions correctly. Eighty-eight percent answered the easy question correctly, and 64% answered the difficult question correctly. In other words, about 12% of the crowd were gaming the system, not paying enough attention to the question or making careless errors. Up to about 40% won't put in more than a modest effort to get paid for a HIT. Young men and those that considered themselves in the financial industry tended to be the most likely to try to game the system. There wasn't a breakdown by country, but given the demographic information from the first article, we could infer that many of these young men come from India, which makes language and other cultural differences a factor. These articles raise questions about the role of crowdsourcing as a means for getting quick user input at low cost. While compensating users for their time is nothing new, the incentive structure and anonymity of Mechanical Turk raises some interesting questions. How complex of a task can we ask of the crowd, and how much should these workers be paid? Can we rely on the information we get from these professional users, and if so, how can we best incorporate it into designing more usable products? Traditional usability testing will still play a central role in enterprise software. Crowdsourcing doesn't replace testing; instead, it makes certain parts of gathering user feedback easier. One can turn to the crowd for simple tasks that don't require specialized skills and get a lot of data fast. As more studies are conducted on Mechanical Turk, I suspect we will see crowdsourcing playing an increasing role in human computer interaction and enterprise computing. References: Downs, J. S., Holbrook, M. B., Sheng, S., and Cranor, L. F. 2010. Are your participants gaming the system?: screening mechanical turk workers. In Proceedings of the 28th international Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Atlanta, Georgia, USA, April 10 - 15, 2010). CHI '10. ACM, New York, NY, 2399-2402. Link: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1753326.1753688 Ross, J., Irani, L., Silberman, M. S., Zaldivar, A., and Tomlinson, B. 2010. Who are the crowdworkers?: shifting demographics in mechanical turk. In Proceedings of the 28th of the international Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Atlanta, Georgia, USA, April 10 - 15, 2010). CHI EA '10. ACM, New York, NY, 2863-2872. Link: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1753846.1753873

  Read the article

• Xorg.conf (nvidia) Second Monitor getting settings of first

  - by HennyH

  I've been spending the weekend (and some time before that) trying to set up my Korean QHD270 and Benq G2222HDL monitors with Ubuntu 13.10. With the nouveau drivers install both monitor function perfectly fine. After installing the nvidia drivers the Benq works but the QHD270 does not. Now, after days of struggling I managed to get the QHD270 to work following a mixture of blogs, particularly; this one and learnitwithme. Now, unfortunatly my G2222HDL does not work. I fixed the QHD270 by supplying a custom EDID, my xorg.conf looks like so (excluding keyboard and mouse): Section "ServerLayout" Identifier "Layout0" Screen "Default Screen" 0 0 InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard" InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer" EndSection Section "Monitor" Identifier "Configured Monitor" EndSection Section "Device" Identifier "Configured Video Device" Driver "nvidia" Option "CustomEDID" "DFP:/etc/X11/edid-shimian.bin" EndSection Section "Screen" Identifier "Default Screen" Device "Configured Video Device" Monitor "Configured Monitor" EndSection Now, I tried defining a new Device,Monitor and Screen then in ServerLayout adding Screen "Second Screen" RightOf "Default Screen", but after doing so neither monitor worked. Hoping to fix the issue using a GUI based tool I opened up NVIDIA X Server Settings, which shows my current layout as: It seems that something is being output to the monitor, as suggested by my print screen: Any help would be greatly appreciated. Output of xrandr: Screen 0: minimum 8 x 8, current 5120 x 1440, maximum 16384 x 16384 DVI-I-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) DVI-I-1 connected primary 2560x1440+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 597mm x 336mm 2560x1440 60.0*+ HDMI-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) DP-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) DVI-D-0 connected 2560x1440+2560+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 597mm x 336mm 2560x1440 60.0*+ DP-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) And an extract from my log file (perhaps this is relevant?) [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): Valid display device(s) on GeForce GTX 680 at PCI:2:0:0 [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): CRT-0 [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): ACB QHD270 (DFP-0) (boot, connected) [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): DFP-1 [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): DFP-2 [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): DFP-3 [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): DFP-4 [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): CRT-0: 400.0 MHz maximum pixel clock [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): ACB QHD270 (DFP-0): 330.0 MHz maximum pixel clock [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): ACB QHD270 (DFP-0): Internal Dual Link TMDS [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): DFP-1: 165.0 MHz maximum pixel clock [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): DFP-1: Internal Single Link TMDS [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): DFP-2: 165.0 MHz maximum pixel clock [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): DFP-2: Internal Single Link TMDS [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): DFP-3: 330.0 MHz maximum pixel clock [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): DFP-3: Internal Single Link TMDS [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): DFP-4: 960.0 MHz maximum pixel clock [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): DFP-4: Internal DisplayPort

  Read the article

• Internships available in Oracle Netherlands - this summer

  - by jessica.ebbelaar

  I am Jannie Minnema, Director of Business Operations for Oracle in the Benelux. My career at Oracle started at Oracle Headquartes in San Francisco as a Project Manager, building Computer Based Training Products. After spending 3 years in Dubai, my husband and I moved to the USA as he wanted to study a MBA there. This move kick started my career as I was working in Silicon Valley during a time of great opportunity. After the USA, I fulfilled numerous roles at Oracle ranging from Project Management to Sales and Marketing. I currently work in the Netherlands were I am now Director of Business Operations for Oracle in the Benelux and a member of the Dutch Management Team. Business Operations advises the Benelux Management Team and focuses on topics such as Corporate Social Responsibility, Customer Satisfaction, Internal Communication, Internal training and effective usage of Sales Tools and Systems. We are currently also working on how best to introduce a “New way of Working”. The move to our new office building in 2011 aides in creating the right environment for this. Our goal is to continually improve the organisation. I enjoy working for Oracle because there is never a dull moment, and I am continuously challenged to improve. The environment that I work in changes constantly. Look at all the recent acquisitions; over 60 in the past 3 years! If you, as an Oracle employee, see something that can be done better, like a new service or tool, then combine it with some enthusiasm, motivate it further and the (Oracle) world changes! Internships This summer we have a number of Internships available, coordinated by the Business Operations team. We very much look forward to welcoming Students in our Dutch office. We look at it as an opportunity for both Oracle and the Interns to learn from each other. It will definitely result in both parties improving, growing and achieving results! We offer Internships related to Sales, Marketing and New Technology. You can find the assignments here. During the Internship you will experience what is like to work for an international and dynamic company, where we work and play hard. Our customers are major Dutch companies and our employees are professionals that compare working at Oracle with playing a Soccer World Cup final. We offer several Internships at the same time, so you will learn and share your experiences with a group of fellow students. If you have any questions related to this article feel free to contact [email protected].  You can find our job opportunities via http://campus.oracle.com

  Read the article

• Adventures in Lab Management Configuration: Part 2 of 3

  - by Enrique Lima

  The first post was the high level overview. Now it is time for the details on what was done to the existing CMMI Project based on CMMI v 4.2. The first step was to go into Visual Studio, then from the Team Project Collection Settings and then to the Process Template Manager.  Once there, it was a matter of selecting the appropriate template (MSF for CMMI Process Improvement v5.0) and download to a point I could reference later (for example C:\Templates). Then on to using the steps from the guidance post. Since I was using an x64 deployment, I will make reference to the path as <toolpath>, however the actual path to reference in a 64-bit environment is “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE”. As I mentioned on the previous post, make sure to first perform a backup of the Configuration, Collection and Warehouse DBs.  If you did not apply any changes to the names and such, then you will find those as tfs_Configuration, tfs_DefaultCollection and tfs_Warehouse. Now, the work needed with the witadmin tool: That includes the uploading of the structures that differ from v4.2 to v5.0 There is likely going to be an issue with the naming of some fields. For example, TFS 2010 likes something along the lines of “Area ID”, whereas TFS 2008 would have had it as “AreaID”.  So, this will need to be corrected.  Some posts will have you go through this after the errors pop up.  I would recommend doing this process prior to executing the importwitd process.  witadmin listfields /collection:<path to collection> > c:\ListFields.txt Review the following fields: AreaID, review the Name property and validate if it states “AreaID”, the you will need to rename the Name field to reflect “Area ID”. ExternalLinkCount, RelatedLinkCount, HyperLinkCount, AttachedFileCount and IterationID would be the other fields to check. To correct the issue, then execute the following: witadmin changefield /collection:<path to collection> /n:"System.ExternalLinkCount" /name:"External Link Count" Repeat for Area ID, Related Link Count, Hyperlink Count, Attached File Count and Iteration ID.  Once this is done, proceed with the commands below. witadmin importwitd /collection:<path to collection> /p:<project> /f:"<path to downloaded template>\MSF for CMMI Process Improvement v5.0\WorkItem Tracking\TypeDefinitions\TestCase.xml" witadmin importwitd /collection:<path to collection> /p:<project> /f:"<path to downloaded template>\MSF for CMMI Process Improvement v5.0\WorkItem Tracking\TypeDefinitions\SharedStep.xml" witadmin importcategories /collection:<path to collection> /p:<project> /f:"<path to downloaded template>\MSF for CMMI Process Improvement v5.0\WorkItem Tracking\categories.xml" Modifications to the Bug Definition: First step is to export the existing definition. witadmin exportwitd /collection<path to collection> /p:<project> /n:bug /f:"<path to downloaded template>\MSF for CMMI Process Improvement v5.0\MyBug.xml" Make modifications to recently exported MyBug.xml file.  Details for the modification are here:  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff452591.aspx#ModifyTask Once the changes are done, proceed with the import command witadmin importwitd /collection:<path to collection> /p: <project> /f:"<path to downloaded template>\MSF for CMMI Process Improvement v5.0\MyBug.xml" Repeat the process for the the Scenario or Requirement Type Definition witadmin exportwitd /collection<path to collection> /p:<project> /n:requirement /f:"<path to downloaded template>\MSF for CMMI Process Improvement v5.0\MyRequirement.xml" Make modifications to recently exported MyRequirement.xml file.  Details for the modification are here:  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff452591.aspx#ModifyTask Once the changes are done, proceed with the import command witadmin importwitd /collection:<path to collection> /p: <project> /f:"<path to downloaded template>\MSF for CMMI Process Improvement v5.0\MyRequirement.xml" Provide the Bug Field Mapping definition, after creating the file as specified here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff452591.aspx#TCMBugFieldMapping tcm bugfieldmapping /import /mappingfile:"<path to downloaded template>\MSF for CMMI Process Improvement v5.0\bugfieldmappings.xml" /collection:<path to collection> /teamproject:<project name>

  Read the article

• Agile Testing Days 2012 – Day 3 – Agile or agile?

  - by Chris George

  Another early start for my last Lean Coffee of the conference, and again it was not wasted. We had some really interesting discussions around how to determine what test automation is useful, if agile is not faster, why do it? and a rather existential discussion on whether unicorns exist! First keynote of the day was entitled “Fast Feedback Teams” by Ola Ellnestam. Again this relates nicely to the releasing faster talk on day 2, and something that we are looking at and some teams are actively trying. Introducing the notion of feedback, Ola describes a game he wrote for his eldest child. It was a simple game where every time he clicked a button, it displayed “You’ve Won!”. He then changed it to be a Win-Lose-Win-Lose pattern and watched the feedback from his son who then twigged the pattern and got his younger brother to play, alternating turns… genius! (must do that with my children). The idea behind this was that you need that feedback loop to learn and progress. If you are not getting the feedback you need to close that loop. An interesting point Ola made was to solve problems BEFORE writing software. It may be that you don’t have to write anything at all, perhaps it’s a communication/training issue? Perhaps the problem can be solved another way. Writing software, although it’s the business we are in, is expensive, and this should be taken into account. He again mentions frequent releases, and how they should be made as soon as stuff is ready to be released, don’t leave stuff on the shelf cause it’s not earning you anything, money or data. I totally agree with this and it’s something that we will be aiming for moving forwards. “Exceptions, Assumptions and Ambiguity: Finding the truth behind the story” by David Evans started off very promising by making references to ‘Grim up North’ referring to the north of England. Not sure it was appreciated by most of the audience, but it made me laugh! David explained how there are always risks associated with exceptions, giving the example of a one-way road near where he lives, with an exception sign giving rights to coaches to go the wrong way. Therefore you could merrily swing around the corner of the one way road straight into a coach! David showed the danger in making assumptions with lyrical quotes from Lola by The Kinks “I’m glad I’m a man, and so is Lola” and with a picture of a toilet flush that needed instructions to operate the full and half flush. With this particular flush, you pulled the handle all the way down to half flush, and half way down to full flush! hmmm, a bit of a crappy user experience methinks! Then through a clever use of a passage from the Jabberwocky, David then went onto show how mis-translation/ambiguity is the can completely distort the original meaning of something, and this is a real enemy of software development. This was all helping to demonstrate that the term Story is often heavily overloaded in the Agile world, and should really be stripped back to what it is really for, stating a business problem, and offering a technical solution. Therefore a story could be worded as “In order to {make some improvement}, we will { do something}”. The first ‘in order to’ statement is stakeholder neutral, and states the problem through requesting an improvement to the software/process etc. The second part of the story is the verb, the doing bit. So to achieve the ‘improvement’ which is not currently true, we will do something to make this true in the future. My PM is very interested in this, and he’s observed some of the problems of overloading stories so I’m hoping between us we can use some of David’s suggestions to help clarify our stories better. The second keynote of the day (and our last) proved to be the most entertaining and exhausting of the conference for me. “The ongoing evolution of testing in agile development” by Scott Barber. I’ve never had the pleasure of seeing Scott before… OMG I would love to have even half of the energy he has! What struck me during this presentation was Scott’s explanation of how testing has become the role/job that it is (largely) today, and how this has led to the need for ‘methodologies’ to make dev and test work! The argument that we should be trying to converge the roles again is a very valid one, and one that a couple of the teams at work are actively doing with great results. Making developers as responsible for quality as testers is something that has been lost over the years, but something that we are now striving to achieve. The idea that we (testers) should be testing experts/specialists, not testing ‘union members’, supports this idea so the entire team works on all aspects of a feature/product, with the ‘specialists’ taking the lead and advising/coaching the others. This leads to better propagation of information around the team, a greater holistic understanding of the project and it allows the team to continue functioning if some of it’s members are off sick, for example. Feeling somewhat drained from Scott’s keynote (but at the same time excited that alot of the points he raised supported actions we are taking at work), I headed into my last presentation for Agile Testing Days 2012 before having to make my way to Tegel to catch the flight home. “Thinking and working agile in an unbending world” with Pete Walen was a talk I was not going to miss! Having spoken to Pete several times during the past few days, I was looking forward to hearing what he was going to say, and I was not disappointed. Pete started off by trying to separate the definitions of ‘Agile’ as in the methodology, and ‘agile’ as in the adjective by pronouncing them the ‘english’ and ‘american’ ways. So Agile pronounced (Ajyle) and agile pronounced (ajul). There was much confusion around what the hell he was talking about, although I thought it was quite clear. Agile – Software development methodology agile – Marked by ready ability to move with quick easy grace; Having a quick resourceful and adaptable character. Anyway, that aside (although it provided a few laughs during the presentation), the point was that many teams that claim to be ‘Agile’ but are not, in fact, ‘agile’ by nature. Implementing ‘Agile’ methodologies that are so prescriptive actually goes against the very nature of Agile development where a team should anticipate, adapt and explore. Pete made a valid point that very few companies intentionally put up roadblocks to impede work, so if work is being blocked/delayed, why? This is where being agile as a team pays off because the team can inspect what’s going on, explore options and adapt their processes. It is through experimentation (and that means trying and failing as well as trying and succeeding) that a team will improve and grow leading to focussing on what really needs to be done to achieve X. So, that was it, the last talk of our conference. I was gutted that we had to miss the closing keynote from Matt Heusser, as Matt was another person I had spoken too a few times during the conference, but the flight would not wait, and just as well we left when we did because the traffic was a nightmare! My Takeaway Triple from Day 3: Release often and release small – don’t leave stuff on the shelf Keep the meaning of the word ‘agile’ in mind when working in ‘Agile Look at testing as more of a skill than a role  

  Read the article

• How To Disable Individual Plug-ins in Google Chrome

  - by The Geek

  Have you ever wondered how to disable useless or insecure browser plug-ins in Google Chrome? Here’s the lowdown on how to get rid of Java, Acrobat, Silverlight, and the rest of the plugins you probably want to get rid of. Disabling Plugins in Google Chrome If you head to about:plugins in your address bar, you’ll probably see a list of plugins, but won’t be able to disable them yet. What you’ll need to do is switch over to the Dev channel of Chrome, which gives you access to all the latest features—though you might be warned that sometimes the dev channel might be less stable than the release or beta channels. Ready to proceed? Head to the Dev Channel page, and then click the link to run the installer. You’ll be prompted to restart Chrome when you’re done. Note that Mac and Windows users can both run an installer to switch. Linux users will have to install a package. Note: Once you’ve switched to the Dev channel, you can’t really switch to the stable channel. You’ll have to uninstall Chrome and then reinstall the regular version. Now that you’ve switched to the dev channel and restarted your browser, head to about:plugins in the address bar, and then just disable each plugin you really don’t need. Plugins you can generally live without?  Java, Acrobat, Microsoft Office, Windows Presentation Foundation, Silverlight. These will be on a case-by-case basis, of course, but the vast majority of large websites don’t require any of those. When it comes right down to it, the only plugin that most people require is Flash… and leave the “Default Plug-in” alone too. Special thanks to @jordanconway for pointing out the solution. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Disable YouTube Comments while using ChromeHow to Make Google Chrome Your Default BrowserSubscribe to RSS Feeds in Chrome with a Single ClickAdd Notes to Google Notebook from ChromeAccess Google Chrome’s Special Pages the Easy Way TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Office 2010 Product Guides Google Maps Place marks – Pizza, Guns or Strip Clubs Monitor Applications With Kiwi LocPDF is a Visual PDF Search Tool Download Free iPad Wallpapers at iPad Decor Get Your Delicious Bookmarks In Firefox’s Awesome Bar

  Read the article

• links for 2011-01-04

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Webcasts (tags: ping.fm) Five Key Trends in Enterprise 2.0 for 2011 (Oracle Enterprise 2.0 Blog) Kellsey Ruppel shares insight from Oracle's Andy MacMillan. (tags: oracle otn enterprise2.0) Victor Bax: Lost in Service Oriented Architecture? "SOA is a concept, no more, no less. SOA is not a technology, or a piece of software. It is an architecture, a model." - Victor Bax (tags: oracle soa) Jan-Leendert: Oracle 11g SOA Suite read multi record data from csv file with the file adapter (master-detail) "The file adapter is a very powerlful tool to read files with structured data. Most of the time you will read simple csv files with one record per row. But what if your csv file contains multiple records with different types?" - Jan-Leendert (tags: oracle soa soasuite) @myfear: Five ways to know how your data looked in the past. Entity Auditing. "Whatever requirements you have. I can promise you, that it will never be a simple solution. In general it's best to evaluate your purpose for auditing in detail." - Oracle ACE Director Markus Eisele (tags: oracle otn oracleace java) @fteter: Buffing Up The Crystal Ball "While I'm already tired of seeing these types of posts (I'm writing on New Year's Day), I'm also feeling guilty about not making my own set of predictions." - Oracle ACE Director Floyd Teter (tags: oracle otn oracleace ec2 cloud fusionmiddleware) @bex: ECM New Year's Resolutions "Happy new year! Most people use the first post of the year to go over their own blog statistics of popular posts... but since my blog's fiscal year ends in April, I decided to do new years resolutions instead." - Oracle ACE Director Bex Huff (tags: oracle otn oracleace ecm enterprise2.0) Izaak de Hullu: Embedded Java in a 11g BPEL process "In an earlier blog my colleague Peter Ebell explained how you can create an extension of com.collaxa.cube.engine.ext.BPELXExecLet to do your coding in a regular Java environment so you have code completion and validation..." - Izaak de Hullu (tags: oracle otn bpel java soa) @gschmutz: Cannot access EM console after installing SOA Suite 11g PS2 Oracle ACE Director Guido Schmutz encounters a problem and shares the solution. (tags: oracle otn oracleace soa soasuite)

  Read the article

• GParted detects entire disk as UNALLOCATED SPACE + hd0 out of disk

  - by msPeachy

  Good day to everyone. I hope someone can help me with my problem. I have a dual boot Windows and Ubuntu system. I recently encountered an hd0 out of disk error and wasn't able to boot Ubuntu. So I booted into Windows. After 2 to 3 times of booting and rebooting Windows, I tried booting Ubuntu again but still I get the same hd0 out of disk error. I decided to run Ubuntu from LIVEUSB to try to fix my Ubuntu partition using GParted, but when I run GParted, it shows my entire disk as UNALLOCATED SPACE! The strange thing is that Nautilus still shows and mounts my partitions. Also every time I boot into Windows , my partitions exists and I am able to read and write to them. I have no idea what is wrong. Please help! I can't stand using Windows since most of the tools I use are in Ubuntu. I don't mind reinstalling Ubuntu. In fact I already tried reinstalling using the LIVEUSB but since GParted or the Ubuntu installer itself does not recognize my partitions and shows the entire disk as unallocated space, I decided not to continue. I am currently running Ubuntu from LIVEUSB. Here's the outpuf of sudo fdisk -l Disk /dev/sda: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders, total 625142448 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0xb30ab30a Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 * 2048 104869887 52433920 83 Linux /dev/sda2 104869888 105074687 102400 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT /dev/sda3 105074688 156149759 25537536 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT /dev/sda4 156151800 625153409 234500805 f W95 Ext'd (LBA) /dev/sda5 156151808 169156591 6502392 82 Linux swap / Solaris /dev/sda6 169158656 294991871 62916608 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT /dev/sda7 294993920 471037944 88022012+ 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT /dev/sda8 471041928 625121152 77039612+ 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT When I run, sudo parted -l, I got this error message: ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo parted -l Error: Can't have a partition outside the disk! UPDATE I think I might know the problem. The total sectors of sda is 625142448 but the extended partition (sda4) ends at 625153409. Now, my question is, how do I fix this or modify the extended partition (sda4) to matched the total number of sectors? Anyone, please??? UPDATE I was able to fix the unallocated space issue with the help of Rod Smith's tool called fixparts I am now able to view my partitions via GParted in LiveUSB. But the error: hd0 out of disk. Press any key to continue... still persists on reboot. I still can't boot into Ubuntu. Can someone help me please???

  Read the article

• Web Experience Management: Segmentation & Targeting - Chalk Talk with John

  - by Michael Snow

  Today's post comes from our WebCenter friend, John Brunswick.  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Having trouble getting your arms around the differences between Web Content Management (WCM) and Web Experience Management (WEM)?  Told through story, the video below outlines the differences in an easy to understand manner. By following the journey of Mr. and Mrs. Smith on their adventure to find the best amusement park in two neighboring towns, we can clearly see what an impact context and relevancy play in our decision making within online channels.  Just as when we search to connect with the best products and services for our needs, the Smiths have their grandchildren coming to visit next week and finding the best park is essential to guarantee a great family vacation.  One town effectively Segments and Targets visitors to enhance their experience, reducing the effort needed to learn about their park. Have a look below to join the Smiths in their search.    Learn MORE about how you might measure up: Deliver Engaging Digital Experiences Drive Digital Marketing SuccessAccess Free Assessment Tool

  Read the article

• Oracle at ASMC PDI 2012

  - by jeffrey.waterman

  Recently, I had the pleasure of representing Oracle at the American Society of Military Comptrollers National Professional Development Institute (PDI).  The PDI is the premier training event for resource managers in the Department of Defense and US Coast Guard.  Each year they assemble top presenters and key note speakers to convey their experiences and share the upcoming goals and vision for the Defense Department's financial and resource management community.  This year, the common themes were centered around 'auditability' and 'efficiency'.   What is auditability?  There were many definitions/themes tossed around, but to summarize my notes, it boiled down to:- the proper tracking of funds- audit readiness- proper controls- proper documentation There were sessions regarding entire programs focused on the need for auditability.  For example, FIAR: Financial Improvement and Audit Readiness (http://comptroller.defense.gov/fiar/index.html)   The FIAR stresses the "...improve(ment of) the Department's financial processes, controls and information." The entire conference, one set of solutions kept popping into my head around, "how can Oracle's solutions assist the Department of Defense", or any other Federal Agency, improve their financial processes and controls?   One answer came to mind:  Oracle Governance, Risk, and Compliance Management. Commonly referred to as "GRC". Let me summarize the main components around Oracle's GRC solution: GRC Manager: This solution is the central repository for documenting business processes, policies, and established controls.  All identified risks and issues are documented within the repository as well as action plans necessary for mitigation. GRC Controls:  This solution consists of a set of tools which are embedded with your ERP (financial, human resource, supply chain, etc.) applications to detect, prevent, and/or enforce the policies and procedures established by your Agency.  Components of the solution include:- Application Access Control Governor: a robust tool for managing application roles and responsibilities; simplify segregation of duty maintenance- Configuration Controls Governor: complete audit trail for changes made to configurations- Transactions Control Governor: track violations of internal controls; alert management to suspicious activities; be warned when high dollar transactions are occurring on an irregular basis; - Preventative Controls Governor: prevent sensitive information from being viewed by unauthorized parties; enforce field, block, and form change control If you are in the financial or resource management community and are concerned about auditability within your organization I suggest you follow up this post by reading about Oracle's GRC solutions.  www.oracle.com/grc Please feel free to follow up with thought and questions in the comments section below.  Also, if you have a topic you would like addressed in this blog, just drop me a note at [email protected]  or leave the suggestion in the comment section as well. Thank you for reading.

  Read the article

• TypeScript first impressions

  - by Bertrand Le Roy

  Anders published a video of his new project today, which aims at creating a superset of JavaScript, that compiles down to regular current JavaScript. Anders is a tremendously clever guy, and it always shows in his work. There is much to like in the enterprise (good code completion, refactoring and adoption of the module pattern instead of namespaces to name three), but a few things made me rise an eyebrow. First, there is no mention of CoffeeScript or Dart, but he does talk briefly about Script# and GWT. This is probably because the target audience seems to be the same as the audience for the latter two, i.e. developers who are more comfortable with statically-typed languages such as C# and Java than dynamic languages such as JavaScript. I don’t think he’s aiming at JavaScript developers. Classes and interfaces, although well executed, are not especially appealing. Second, as any code generation tool (and this is true of CoffeeScript as well), you’d better like the generated code. I didn’t, unfortunately. The code that I saw is not the code I would have written. What’s more, I didn’t always find the TypeScript code especially more expressive than what it gets compiled to. I also have a few questions. Is it possible to duck-type interfaces? For example, if I have an IPoint2D interface with x and y coordinates, can I pass any object that has x and y into a function that expects IPoint2D or do I need to necessarily create a class that implements that interface, and new up an instance that explicitly declares its contract? The appeal of dynamic languages is the ability to make objects as you go. This needs to be kept intact. More technical: why are generated variables and functions prefixed with _ rather than the $ that the EcmaScript spec recommends for machine-generated variables? In conclusion, while this is a good contribution to the set of ideas around JavaScript evolution, I don’t expect a lot of adoption outside of the devoted Microsoft developers, but maybe some influence on the language itself. But I’m often wrong. I would certainly not use it because I disagree with the central motivation for doing this: Anders explicitly says he built this because “writing application-scale JavaScript is hard”. I would restate that “writing application-scale JavaScript is hard for people who are used to statically-typed languages”. The community has built a set of good practices over the last few years that do scale quite well, and many people are successfully developing and maintaining impressive applications directly in JavaScript. You can play with TypeScript here: http://www.typescriptlang.org

  Read the article

• What if you could work on anything you wanted?

  - by red@work

  This week we've downed our tools and organised ourselves into small project teams or struck out alone. We're working on whatever we like, with whoever we like, wherever we like. We've called it Down Tools week and so far it's a blast. It all started a few months ago with an idea from Neil, our CEO. Neil wanted to capture the excitement, innovation, and productivity of Coding by the Sea and extend this to all Red Gaters working in Product Development. A brainstorm is always a good place to start for an "anything goes" project. Half of Red Gate piled into our largest meeting room (it's pretty big) armed with flip charts, post its and a heightened sense of possibility. An hour or so later our SQL Servery walls were covered in project ideas. So what would you do, if you could work on anything you wanted? Many projects are related to tools we already make, others are for internal product development use and some are, well, just something completely different. Someone suggested we point a web cam at the SQL Servery lunch queue so we can check it before heading to lunch. That one couldn't wait for Down Tools Week. It was up and running within a few days and even better, it captures the table tennis table too. Thursday is the Show and Tell - I am looking forward to seeing what everyone has come up with. Some of the projects will turn into new products or features so this probably isn't the time or place to go into detail of what is being worked on. Rest assured, you'll hear all about it! We're making a video as we go along too which will be up on our website as soon. In the meantime, all meetings are cancelled, we've got plenty of food in and people are being very creative with the £500 expenses budget (Richard, do you really need an iPad?). It's brilliant to see it all coming together from the idea stage to reality. Catch up with our progress by following #downtoolsweek on Twitter. Who knows, maybe a future Red Gate flagship tool is coming to life right now? By the way, it's business as usual for our customer facing and internal operations teams. Hmm, maybe we can all down tools for a week and ask Product Development to hold the fort? Post by: Alice Chapman

  Read the article

• JSP Precompilation for ADF Applications

  - by Duncan Mills

  A question that comes up from time to time, particularly in relation to build automation, is how to best pre-compile the .jspx and .jsff files in an ADF application. Thus ensuring that the app is ready to run as soon as it's installed into WebLogic. In the normal run of things, the first poor soul to hit a page pays the price and has to wait a little whilst the JSP is compiled into a servlet. Everyone else subsequently gets a free lunch. So it's a reasonable thing to want to do... Let Me List the Ways So forth to Google (other search engines are available)... which lead me to a fairly old article on WLDJ - Removing Performance Bottlenecks Through JSP Precompilation. Technololgy wise, it's somewhat out of date, but the one good point that it made is that it's really not very useful to try and use the precompile option in the weblogic.xml file. That's a really good observation - particularly if you're trying to integrate a pre-compile step into a Hudson Continuous Integration process. That same article mentioned an alternative approach for programmatic pre-compilation using weblogic.jspc. This seemed like a much more useful approach for a CI environment. However, weblogic.jspc is now obsoleted by weblogic.appc so we'll use that instead.  Thanks to Steve for the pointer there. And So To APPC APPC has documentation - always a great place to start, and supports usage both from Ant via the wlappc task and from the command line using the weblogic.appc command. In my testing I took the latter approach. Usage, as the documentation will show you, is superficially pretty simple.  The nice thing here, is that you can pass an existing EAR file (generated of course using OJDeploy) and that EAR will be updated in place with the freshly compiled servlet classes created from the JSPs. Appc takes care of all the unpacking, compiling and re-packing of the EAR for you. Neat.  So we're done right...? Not quite. The Devil is in the Detail  OK so I'm being overly dramatic but it's not all plain sailing, so here's a short guide to using weblogic.appc to compile a simple ADF application without pain.  Information You'll Need The following is based on the assumption that you have a stand-alone WLS install with the Application Development  Runtime installed and a suitable ADF enabled domain created. This could of course all be run off of a JDeveloper install as well 1. Your Weblogic home directory. Everything you need is relative to this so make a note.  In my case it's c:\builds\wls_ps4. 2. Next deploy your EAR as normal and have a peek inside it using your favourite zip management tool. First of all look at the weblogic-application.xml inside the EAR /META-INF directory. Have a look for any library references. Something like this: <library-ref>    <library-name>adf.oracle.domain</library-name> </library-ref>   Make a note of the library ref (adf.oracle.domain in this case) , you'll need that in a second. 3. Next open the nested WAR file within the EAR and then have a peek inside the weblogic.xml file in the /WEB-INF directory. Again  make a note of the library references. 4. Now start the WebLogic as per normal and run the WebLogic console app (e.g. http://localhost:7001/console). In the Domain Structure navigator, select Deployments. 5. For each of the libraries you noted down drill into the library definition and make a note of the .war, .ear or .jar that defines the library. For example, in my case adf.oracle.domain maps to "C:\ builds\ WLS_PS4\ oracle_common\ modules\ oracle. adf. model_11. 1. 1\ adf. oracle. domain. ear". Note the extra spaces that are salted throughout this string as it is displayed in the console - just to make it annoying, you'll have to strip these out. 6. Finally you'll need the location of the adfsharebean.jar. We need to pass this on the classpath for APPC so that the ADFConfigLifeCycleCallBack listener can be found. In a more complex app of your own you may need additional classpath entries as well.  Now we're ready to go, and it's a simple matter of applying the information we have gathered into the relevant command line arguments for the utility A Simple CMD File to Run APPC  Here's the stub .cmd file I'm using on Windows to run this. @echo offREM Stub weblogic.appc Runner setlocal set WLS_HOME=C:\builds\WLS_PS4 set ADF_LIB_ROOT=%WLS_HOME%\oracle_common\modulesset COMMON_LIB_ROOT=%WLS_HOME%\wlserver_10.3\common\deployable-libraries set ADF_WEBAPP=%ADF_LIB_ROOT%\oracle.adf.view_11.1.1\adf.oracle.domain.webapp.war set ADF_DOMAIN=%ADF_LIB_ROOT%\oracle.adf.model_11.1.1\adf.oracle.domain.ear set JSTL=%COMMON_LIB_ROOT%\jstl-1.2.war set JSF=%COMMON_LIB_ROOT%\jsf-1.2.war set ADF_SHARE=%ADF_LIB_ROOT%\oracle.adf.share_11.1.1\adfsharembean.jar REM Set up the WebLogic Environment so appc can be found call %WLS_HOME%\wlserver_10.3\server\bin\setWLSEnv.cmd CLS REM Now compile away!java weblogic.appc -verbose -library %ADF_WEBAPP%,%ADF_DOMAIN%,%JSTL%,%JSF% -classpath %ADF_SHARE% %1 endlocal Running the above on a target ADF .ear  file will zip through and create all of the relevant compiled classes inside your nested .war file in the \WEB-INF\classes\jsp_servlet\ directory (but don't take my word for it, run it and take a look!) And So... In the immortal words of  the Pet Shop Boys, Was It Worth It? Well, here's where you'll have to do your own testing. In  my case here, with a simple ADF application, pre-compilation shaved an non-scientific "3 Elephants" off of the initial page load time for the first access of each page. That's a pretty significant payback for such a simple step to add into your CI process, so why not give it a go.

  Read the article

• Code Analysis Rule Sets in Visual Studio 2010

  - by Anthony Trudeau

  Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 introduces the concept of rule sets when configuring code analysis.  This is a valuable change from Visual Studio 2008 that I didn't even realize I wanted.  Visual Studio 2008 by default selected all rules and then you had to remove rules on an item by item basis. The rule sets fall into logical groups including "Microsoft All Rules", "Microsoft Basic Correctness Rules", "Microsoft Security Rules", et al.  And within the project properties you can select one rule set, multiple rule sets, or you can define your own rule set based upon another. Selecting a single rule set is obviously the easiest option.  The default rule set when you create a new project is the "Microsoft Minimum Recommended Rules".  However, in my opinion the recommended rules are just too permissive.  For that reason you might want to change your rule set to "Microsoft All Rules" until you get around to creating your own rule set; or alternately you can select multiple rule sets which is an option from the rule set combo box.  The Visual Studio documentation has comprehensive help on what is contained within the rule sets. Creating your own rule set is easy if not obvious.  You need to start a rule set from an existing rule set.  To get started select a rule set in the combo box within the Code Analysis tab of the project properties.  I selected the "Microsoft All Rules" for my rule set, but you may find it easier to start with the "Microsoft Minimum Recommended Rules" if your rules are on the more permissive side. Once your rule set is selected click the Open button.  This will display a dialog that is similar in composition to the rules selection from Visual Studio 2008.  Browsing through the tree view you can select or deselect individual rules within their categories; and you can indicate that the rules are flagged as errors instead of the default which is a warning.  A nice touch to the form is that you get a help pane when you select an individual rule.  That helped me considerably when I first configured my rule set. Once you have finished selecting your rules click the Save tool button, specify a location and name, and click the Save button on the Save As dialog.  Once you're back on the Code Analysis tab you'll choose the Browse option within the combo box and open the file you just created.

  Read the article

• Diagram to show code responsibility

  - by Mike Samuel

  Does anyone know how to visually diagram the ways in which the flow of control in code passes between code produced by different groups and how that affects the amount of code that needs to be carefully written/reviewed/tested for system properties to hold? What I am trying to help people visualize are arguments of the form: For property P to hold, nd developers have to write application code, Ca, without certain kinds of errors, and nm maintainers have to make sure that the code continues to not have these kinds of errors over the project lifetime. We could reduce the error rate by educating nd developers and nm maintainers. For us to be confident that the property holds, ns specialists still need to test or check |Ca| lines of code and continue to test/check the changes by nm maintainers. Alternatively, we could be confident that P holds if all code paths that could violate P went through tool code, Ct, written by our specialists. In our case, test suites alone cannot give confidence that P holdsnd » nsnm ns|Ca| » |Ct| so writing and maintaining Ct is economical, frees up our developers to worry about other things, and reduces the ongoing education commitment by our specialists. or those conditions do not hold, so focusing on education and testing is preferable. Example 1 As a concrete example, suppose we want to ensure that our web-service only produces valid JSON output. Our web-service provides several query and mutation operators that can be composed in interesting ways. We could try to educate everyone who maintains those operations about the JSON syntax, the importance of conformance, and libraries available so that when they write to an output buffer, every possible sequence of appends results in syntactically valid JSON. Alternatively, we don't expose an output stream handle to application code, and instead expose a JSON sink so that every code path that writes a response is channeled through a JSON sink that is written and maintained by a specialist who knows JSON syntax and can use well-written libraries to produce only valid output. Example 2 We need to make sure that a service that receives a URL from an untrusted source and tries to fetch its content does not end up revealing sensitive files from the file-system, like file:///etc/passwd. If there is a single standard way that any developer familiar with the application language's libraries would use to fetch URLs, which has file-system access turned off by default, then simply educating developers about the standard mechanism, and testing that file probing fails for some inputs, will probably be sufficient.

  Read the article

• Unlocking Productivity

  - by Michael Snow

  Unlocking Productivity in Life Sciences with Consolidated Content Management by Joe Golemba, Vice President, Product Management, Oracle WebCenter As life sciences organizations look to become more operationally efficient, the ability to effectively leverage information is a competitive advantage. Whether data mining at the drug discovery phase or prepping the sales team before a product launch, content management can play a key role in developing, organizing, and disseminating vital information. The goal of content management is relatively straightforward: put the information that people need where they can find it. A number of issues can complicate this; information sits in many different systems, each of those systems has its own security, and the information in those systems exists in many different formats. Identifying and extracting pertinent information from mountains of farflung data is no simple job, but the alternative—wasted effort or even regulatory compliance issues—is worse. An integrated information architecture can enable health sciences organizations to make better decisions, accelerate clinical operations, and be more competitive. Unstructured data matters Often when we think of drug development data, we think of structured data that fits neatly into one or more research databases. But structured data is often directly supported by unstructured data such as experimental protocols, reaction conditions, lot numbers, run times, analyses, and research notes. As life sciences companies seek integrated views of data, they are typically finding diverse islands of data that seemingly have no relationship to other data in the organization. Information like sales reports or call center reports can be locked into siloed systems, and unavailable to the discovery process. Additionally, in the increasingly networked clinical environment, Web pages, instant messages, videos, scientific imaging, sales and marketing data, collaborative workspaces, and predictive modeling data are likely to be present within an organization, and each source potentially possesses information that can help to better inform specific efforts. Historically, content management solutions that had 21CFR Part 11 capabilities—electronic records and signatures—were focused mainly on content-enabling manufacturing-related processes. Today, life sciences companies have many standalone repositories, requiring different skills, service level agreements, and vendor support costs to manage them. With the amount of content doubling every three to six months, companies have recognized the need to manage unstructured content from the beginning, in order to increase employee productivity and operational efficiency. Using scalable and secure enterprise content management (ECM) solutions, organizations can better manage their unstructured content. These solutions can also be integrated with enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems or research systems, making content available immediately, in the context of the application and within the flow of the employee’s typical business activity. Administrative safeguards—such as content de-duplication—can also be applied within ECM systems, so documents are never recreated, eliminating redundant efforts, ensuring one source of truth, and maintaining content standards in the organization. Putting it in context Consolidating structured and unstructured information in a single system can greatly simplify access to relevant information when it is needed through contextual search. Using contextual filters, results can include therapeutic area, position in the value chain, semantic commonalities, technology-specific factors, specific researchers involved, or potential business impact. The use of taxonomies is essential to organizing information and enabling contextual searches. Taxonomy solutions are composed of a hierarchical tree that defines the relationship between different life science terms. When overlaid with additional indexing related to research and/or business processes, it becomes possible to effectively narrow down the amount of data that is returned during searches, as well as prioritize results based on specific criteria and/or prior search history. Thus, search results are more accurate and relevant to an employee’s day-to-day work. For example, a search for the word "tissue" by a lab researcher would return significantly different results than a search for the same word performed by someone in procurement. Of course, diverse data repositories, combined with the immense amounts of data present in an organization, necessitate that the data elements be regularly indexed and cached beforehand to enable reasonable search response times. In its simplest form, indexing of a single, consolidated data warehouse can be expected to be a relatively straightforward effort. However, organizations require the ability to index multiple data repositories, enabling a single search to reference multiple data sources and provide an integrated results listing. Security and compliance Beyond yielding efficiencies and supporting new insight, an enterprise search environment can support important security considerations as well as compliance initiatives. For example, the systems enable organizations to retain the relevance and the security of the indexed systems, so users can only see the results to which they are granted access. This is especially important as life sciences companies are working in an increasingly networked environment and need to provide secure, role-based access to information across multiple partners. Although not officially required by the 21 CFR Part 11 regulation, the U.S. Food and Drug Administraiton has begun to extend the type of content considered when performing relevant audits and discoveries. Having an ECM infrastructure that provides centralized management of all content enterprise-wide—with the ability to consistently apply records and retention policies along with the appropriate controls, validations, audit trails, and electronic signatures—is becoming increasingly critical for life sciences companies. Making the move Creating an enterprise-wide ECM environment requires moving large amounts of content into a single enterprise repository, a daunting and risk-laden initiative. The first key is to focus on data taxonomy, allowing content to be mapped across systems. The second is to take advantage new tools which can dramatically speed and reduce the cost of the data migration process through automation. Additional content need not be frozen while it is migrated, enabling productivity throughout the process. The ability to effectively leverage information into success has been gaining importance in the life sciences industry for years. The rapid adoption of enterprise content management, both in operational processes as well as in scientific management, are clear indicators that the companies are looking to use all available data to be better informed, improve decision making, minimize risk, and increase time to market, to maintain profitability and be more competitive. As more and more varieties and sources of information are brought under the strategic management umbrella, the ability to divine knowledge from the vast pool of information is increasingly difficult. Simple search engines and basic content management are increasingly unable to effectively extract the right information from the mountains of data available. By bringing these tools into context and integrating them with business processes and applications, we can effectively focus on the right decisions that make our organizations more profitable. More Information Oracle will be exhibiting at DIA 2012 in Philadelphia on June 25-27. Stop by our booth Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} (#2825) to learn more about the advantages of a centralized ECM strategy and see the Oracle WebCenter Content solution, our 21 CFR Part 11 compliant content management platform.

  Read the article

• The Case for Complimentary Software Copies

  - by GGBlogger

  As the Geriatric Geek you can understand that I’ve been writing and studying for over 60 years. That means that I’ve seen insane changes in the computer software industry. I’ve made the joke that I get a new college education every 6 months or so. Of course that’s an exaggeration but it doesn’t make the feeling go away. I have a long standing and strong relationship with Microsoft so I’m armed with virtually every tool they make. It also means that I have access to tons of training material. But here’s the rub… Last year I started a definitive read of Professional Visual Basic 2008. The purpose was to fill in holes in my understanding of various things. I’m currently on page 1119 of some 1400 pages. During this sojourn I’ve decided that the future is web related which is to say that the future of “thick client” applications running as Windows applications is likely to slowly disappear. To that end I’ve taken a side trip or two into the world of ASP (including XML), Silverlight and cloud development. After carefully avoiding (that’s tongue in cheek) XML for years I finally had to bite the bullet, so to speak, and start learning XML in earnest. The most recent result of that was trail downloads of Altova’s MissionKit 2010 for Software Architects and Liquid Technologies Liquid XML Studio Developer Edition. These are both beautiful products and I want to learn them and write about them. Now comes the rub… While 30 day evaluations are generous in allowing casual users to assess these technologies for purchase they are NOT long enough to allow an author to evaluate, learn and ultimately write about them. Even if I devoted the full 30 days to learning, using and writing about say Altova’s suite I wouldn’t have enough time. Liquid XML may be a little easier to learn (one product as opposed to 8).  Add to that the fact that I frequently get sidetracked to add to my kit and it really blows out. It can be extremely frustrating when I’ve devoted hours to a project and suddenly discover that to complete it I will either need to purchase a license or abandon the project. Since my life blood does not depend on the product I end up abandoning the project and moving on. So to the folks from whom I request complimentary copies… I guarantee that if I convert your product to doing paid development work I will purchase a license to do that but as long as I am using your product to study for the purpose of writing samples, teaching use or otherwise promoting your product to other paying customers I will ask that you give me a license so that I can do that without facing the dread expiration of a 30 day trial.

  Read the article

• Team Foundation Server (TFS) Team Build Custom Activity C# Code for Assembly Stamping

  - by Bob Hardister

  For the full context and guidance on how to develop and implement a custom activity in Team Build see the Microsoft Visual Studio Rangers Team Foundation Build Customization Guide V.1 at http://vsarbuildguide.codeplex.com/ There are many ways to stamp or set the version number of your assemblies. This approach is based on the build number.   namespace CustomActivities { using System; using System.Activities; using System.IO; using System.Text.RegularExpressions; using Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Build.Client; [BuildActivity(HostEnvironmentOption.Agent)] public sealed class VersionAssemblies : CodeActivity { /// <summary> /// AssemblyInfoFileMask /// </summary> [RequiredArgument] public InArgument<string> AssemblyInfoFileMask { get; set; } /// <summary> /// SourcesDirectory /// </summary> [RequiredArgument] public InArgument<string> SourcesDirectory { get; set; } /// <summary> /// BuildNumber /// </summary> [RequiredArgument] public InArgument<string> BuildNumber { get; set; } /// <summary> /// BuildDirectory /// </summary> [RequiredArgument] public InArgument<string> BuildDirectory { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Publishes field values to the build report /// </summary> public OutArgument<string> DiagnosticTextOut { get; set; } // If your activity returns a value, derive from CodeActivity<TResult> and return the value from the Execute method. protected override void Execute(CodeActivityContext context) { // Obtain the runtime value of the input arguments string sourcesDirectory = context.GetValue(this.SourcesDirectory); string assemblyInfoFileMask = context.GetValue(this.AssemblyInfoFileMask); string buildNumber = context.GetValue(this.BuildNumber); string buildDirectory = context.GetValue(this.BuildDirectory); // ** Determine the version number values ** // Note: the format used here is: major.secondary.maintenance.build // ----------------------------------------------------------------- // Obtain the build definition name int nameStart = buildDirectory.LastIndexOf(@"\") + 1; string buildDefinitionName = buildDirectory.Substring(nameStart); // Set the primary.secondary.maintenance values // NOTE: these are hard coded in this example, but could be sourced from a file or parsed from a build definition name that includes them string p = "1"; string s = "5"; string m = "2"; // Initialize the build number string b; string na = "0"; // used for Assembly and Product Version instead of build number (see versioning best practices: **TBD reference) // Set qualifying product version information string productInfo = "RC2"; // Obtain the build increment number from the build number // NOTE: this code assumes the default build definition name format int buildIncrementNumberDelimterIndex = buildNumber.LastIndexOf("."); b = buildNumber.Substring(buildIncrementNumberDelimterIndex + 1); // Convert version to integer values int pVer = Convert.ToInt16(p); int sVer = Convert.ToInt16(s); int mVer = Convert.ToInt16(m); int bNum = Convert.ToInt16(b); int naNum = Convert.ToInt16(na); // ** Get all AssemblyInfo files and stamp them ** // Note: the mapping of AssemblyInfo.cs attributes to assembly display properties are as follows: // - AssemblyVersion = Assembly Version - used for the assembly version (does not change unless p, s or m values are changed) // - AssemblyFileVersion = File Version - used for the file version (changes with every build) // - AssemblyInformationalVersion = Product Version - used for the product version (can include additional version information) // ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Version assemblyVersion = new Version(pVer, sVer, mVer, naNum); Version newAssemblyFileVersion = new Version(pVer, sVer, mVer, bNum); Version productVersion = new Version(pVer, sVer, mVer); // Setup diagnostic fields int numberOfReplacements = 0; string addedAssemblyInformationalAttribute = "No"; // Enumerate over the assemblyInfo version attributes foreach (string attribute in new[] { "AssemblyVersion", "AssemblyFileVersion", "AssemblyInformationalVersion" }) { // Define the regular expression to find in each and every Assemblyinfo.cs files (which is for example 'AssemblyVersion("1.0.0.0")' ) Regex regex = new Regex(attribute + @"\(""\d+\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+""\)"); foreach (string file in Directory.EnumerateFiles(sourcesDirectory, assemblyInfoFileMask, SearchOption.AllDirectories)) { string text = File.ReadAllText(file); // Read the text from the AssemblyInfo file // If the AsemblyInformationalVersion attribute is not in the file, add it as the last line of the file // Note: by default the AssemblyInfo.cs files will not contain the AssemblyInformationalVersion attribute if (!text.Contains("[assembly: AssemblyInformationalVersion(\"")) { string lastLine = Environment.NewLine + "[assembly: AssemblyInformationalVersion(\"1.0.0.0\")]"; text = text + lastLine; addedAssemblyInformationalAttribute = "Yes"; } // Search for the expression Match match = regex.Match(text); if (match.Success) { // Get file attributes FileAttributes fileAttributes = File.GetAttributes(file); // Set file to read only File.SetAttributes(file, fileAttributes & ~FileAttributes.ReadOnly); // Insert AssemblyInformationalVersion attribute into the file text if does not already exist string newText = string.Empty; if (attribute == "AssemblyVersion") { newText = regex.Replace(text, attribute + "(\"" + assemblyVersion + "\")"); numberOfReplacements++; } if (attribute == "AssemblyFileVersion") { newText = regex.Replace(text, attribute + "(\"" + newAssemblyFileVersion + "\")"); numberOfReplacements++; } if (attribute == "AssemblyInformationalVersion") { newText = regex.Replace(text, attribute + "(\"" + productVersion + " " + productInfo + "\")"); numberOfReplacements++; } // Publish diagnostics to build report (diagnostic verbosity only) context.SetValue(this.DiagnosticTextOut, " Added AssemblyInformational Attribute: " + addedAssemblyInformationalAttribute + " Number of replacements: " + numberOfReplacements + " Build number: " + buildNumber + " Build directory: " + buildDirectory + " Build definition name: " + buildDefinitionName + " Assembly version: " + assemblyVersion + " New file version: " + newAssemblyFileVersion + " Product version: " + productVersion + " AssemblyInfo.cs Text Last Stamped: " + newText); // Write the new text in the AssemblyInfo file File.WriteAllText(file, newText); // restore the file's original attributes File.SetAttributes(file, fileAttributes); } } } } } }

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 441 442 443 444 445 446 447 448 449 450 451 452  | Next Page >