Search Results

Search found 1160 results on 47 pages for 'ibm infosphere datastage'.

Page 45/47 | < Previous Page | 41 42 43 44 45 46 47  | Next Page >

• Implications of Java 6 End of Public Updates for EBS Users

  - by Steven Chan (Oracle Development)

  The Support Roadmap for Oracle Java is published here: Oracle Java SE Support Roadmap The latest updates to that page (as of Sept. 19, 2012) state (emphasis added): Java SE 6 End of Public Updates Notice After February 2013, Oracle will no longer post updates of Java SE 6 to its public download sites. Existing Java SE 6 downloads already posted as of February 2013 will remain accessible in the Java Archive on Oracle Technology Network. Developers and end-users are encouraged to update to more recent Java SE versions that remain available for public download. For enterprise customers, who need continued access to critical bug fixes and security fixes as well as general maintenance for Java SE 6 or older versions, long term support is available through Oracle Java SE Support . What does this mean for Oracle E-Business Suite users? EBS users fall under the category of "enterprise users" above.  Java is an integral part of the Oracle E-Business Suite technology stack, so EBS users will continue to receive Java SE 6 updates after February 2013. In other words, nothing will change for EBS users after February 2013.  EBS users will continue to receive critical bug fixes and security fixes as well as general maintenance for Java SE 6. These Java SE 6 updates will be made available to EBS users for the Extended Support periods documented in the Oracle Lifetime Support policy document for Oracle Applications (PDF): EBS 11i Extended Support ends November 2013 EBS 12.0 Extended Support ends January 2015 EBS 12.1 Extended Support ends December 2018 Will EBS users be forced to upgrade to JRE 7 for Windows desktop clients? No. This upgrade will be highly recommended but currently remains optional. JRE 6 will be available to Windows users to run with EBS for the duration of your respective EBS Extended Support period.  Updates will be delivered via My Oracle Support, where you can continue to receive critical bug fixes and security fixes as well as general maintenance for JRE 6 desktop clients.  The certification of Oracle E-Business Suite with JRE 7 (for desktop clients accessing EBS Forms-based content) is in its final stages.  If you plan to upgrade your EBS desktop clients to JRE 7 when that certification is released, you can get a head-start on that today. Coexistence of JRE 6 and JRE 7 on Windows desktops The upgrade to JRE 7 will be highly recommended for EBS users, but some users may need to run both JRE 6 and 7 on their Windows desktops for reasons unrelated to the E-Business Suite. Most EBS configurations with IE and Firefox use non-static versioning by default. JRE 7 will be invoked instead of JRE 6 if both are installed on a Windows desktop. For more details, see "Appendix B: Static vs. Non-static Versioning and Set Up Options" in Notes 290801.1 and 393931.1. Applying Updates to JRE 6 and JRE 7 to Windows desktops Auto-update will keep JRE 7 up-to-date for Windows users with JRE 7 installed. Auto-update will only keep JRE 7 up-to-date for Windows users with both JRE 6 and 7 installed.  JRE 6 users are strongly encouraged to apply the latest Critical Patch Updates as soon as possible after each release. The Jave SE CPUs will be available via My Oracle Support.  EBS users can find more information about JRE 6 and 7 updates here: Information Center: Installation & Configuration for Oracle Java SE (Note 1412103.2) The dates for future Java SE CPUs can be found on the Critical Patch Updates, Security Alerts and Third Party Bulletin.  An RSS feed is available on that site for those who would like to be kept up-to-date. What will Mac users need? Oracle will provide updates to JRE 7 for Mac OS X users. EBS users running Macs will need to upgrade to JRE 7 to receive JRE updates. The certification of Oracle E-Business Suite with JRE 7 for Mac-based desktop clients accessing EBS Forms-based content is underway. Mac users waiting for that certification may find this article useful: How to Reenable Apple Java 6 Plug-in for Mac EBS Users Will EBS users be forced to upgrade to JDK 7 for EBS application tier servers? No. This upgrade will be highly recommended but will be optional for EBS application tier servers running on Windows, Linux, and Solaris.  You can choose to remain on JDK 6 for the duration of your respective EBS Extended Support period.  If you remain on JDK 6, you will continue to receive critical bug fixes and security fixes as well as general maintenance for JDK 6. The certification of Oracle E-Business Suite with JDK 7 for EBS application tier servers on Windows, Linux, and Solaris as well as other platforms such as IBM AIX and HP-UX is planned.  Customers running platforms other than Windows, Linux, and Solaris should refer to their Java vendors's sites for more information about their support policies. Related Articles Planning Bulletin for JRE 7: What EBS Customers Can Do Today EBS 11i and 12.1 Support Timeline Changes Frequently Asked Questions about Latest EBS Support Changes Critical Patch Updates During EBS 11i Exception to Sustaining Support Period

  Read the article

• Changing the Game: Why Oracle is in the IT Operations Management Business

  - by DanKoloski

  v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} 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:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Next week, in Orlando, is the annual Gartner IT Operations Management Summit. Oracle is a premier sponsor of this annual event, which brings together IT executives for several days of high level talks about the state of operational management of enterprise IT. This year, Sushil Kumar, VP Product Strategy and Business Development for Oracle’s Systems & Applications Management, will be presenting on the transformation in IT Operations required to support enterprise cloud computing. IT Operations transformation is an important subject, because year after year, we hear essentially the same refrain – large enterprises spend an average of two-thirds (67%!) of their IT resources (budget, energy, time, people, etc.) on running the business, with far too little left over to spend on growing and transforming the business (which is what the business actually needs and wants). In the thirtieth year of the distributed computing revolution (give or take, depending on how you count it), it’s amazing that we have still not moved the needle on the single biggest component of enterprise IT resource utilization. Oracle is in the IT Operations Management business because when management is engineered together with the technology under management, the resulting efficiency gains can be truly staggering. To put it simply – what if you could turn that 67% of IT resources spent on running the business into 50%? Or 40%? Imagine what you could do with those resources. It’s now not just possible, but happening. This seems like a simple idea, but it is a radical change from “business as usual” in enterprise IT Operations. For the last thirty years, management has been a bolted-on afterthought – we pick and deploy our technology, then figure out how to manage it. This pervasive dysfunction is a broken cycle that guarantees high ongoing operating costs and low agility. If we want to break the cycle, we need to take a more tightly-coupled approach. As a complete applications-to-disk platform provider, Oracle is engineering management together with technology across our stack and hooking that on-premise management up live to My Oracle Support. Let’s examine the results with just one piece of the Oracle stack – the Oracle Database. Oracle began this journey with the Oracle Database 9i many years ago with the introduction of low-impact instrumentation in the database kernel (“tell me what’s wrong”) and through Database 10g, 11g and 11gR2 has successively added integrated advisory (“tell me how to fix what’s wrong”) and lifecycle management and automated self-tuning (“fix it for me, and do it on an ongoing basis for all my assets”). When enterprises take advantage of this tight-coupling, the results are game-changing. Consider the following (for a full list of public references, visit this link): British Telecom improved database provisioning time 1000% (from weeks to minutes) which allows them to provide a new DBaaS service to their internal customers with no additional resources Cerner Corporation Saved $9.5 million in CapEx and OpEx AND launched a brand-new cloud business at the same time Vodafone Group plc improved response times 50% and reduced maintenance planning times 50-60% while serving 391 million registered mobile customers Or the recent Database Manageability and Productivity Cost Comparisons: Oracle Database 11g Release 2 vs. SAP Sybase ASE 15.7, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 and IBM DB2 9.7 as conducted by independent analyst firm ORC. In later entries, we’ll discuss similar results across other portions of the Oracle stack and how these efficiency gains are required to achieve the agility benefits of Enterprise Cloud. Stay Connected: Twitter |  Face book |  You Tube |  Linked in |  Newsletter

  Read the article

• Session Report - Modern Software Development Anti-Patterns

  - by Janice J. Heiss

  In this standing-room-only session, building upon his 2011 JavaOne Rock Star “Diabolical Developer” session, Martijn Verburg, this time along with Ben Evans, identified and explored common “anti-patterns” – ways of doing things that keep developers from doing their best work. They emphasized the importance of social interaction and team communication, along with identifying certain psychological pitfalls that lead developers astray. Their emphasis was less on technical coding errors and more how to function well and to keep one’s focus on what really matters. They are the authors of the highly regarded The Well-Grounded Java Developer and are both movers and shakers in the London JUG community and on the Java Community Process. The large room was packed as they gave a fast-moving, witty presentation with lots of laughs and personal anecdotes. Below are a few of the anti-patterns they discussed.Anti-Pattern One: Conference-Driven DeliveryThe theme here is the belief that “Real pros hack code and write their slides minutes before their talks.” Their response to this anti-pattern is an expression popular in the military – PPPPPP, which stands for, “Proper preparation prevents piss-poor performance.”“Communication is very important – probably more important than the code you write,” claimed Verburg. “The more you speak in front of large groups of people the easier it gets, but it’s always important to do dry runs, to present to smaller groups. And important to be members of user groups where you can give presentations. It’s a great place to practice speaking skills; to gain new skills; get new contacts, to network.”They encouraged attendees to record themselves and listen to themselves giving a presentation. They advised them to start with a spouse or friends if need be. Learning to communicate to a group, they argued, is essential to being a successful developer. The emphasis here is that software development is a team activity and good, clear, accessible communication is essential to the functioning of software teams. Anti-Pattern Two: Mortgage-Driven Development The main theme here was that, in a period of worldwide recession and economic stagnation, people are concerned about keeping their jobs. So there is a tendency for developers to treat knowledge as power and not share what they know about their systems with their colleagues, so when it comes time to fix a problem in production, they will be the only one who knows how to fix it – and will have made themselves an indispensable cog in a machine so you cannot be fired. So developers avoid documentation at all costs, or if documentation is required, put it on a USB chip and lock it in a lock box. As in the first anti-pattern, the idea here is that communicating well with your colleagues is essential and documentation is a key part of this. Social interactions are essential. Both Verburg and Evans insisted that increasingly, year by year, successful software development is more about communication than the technical aspects of the craft. Developers who understand this are the ones who will have the most success. Anti-Pattern Three: Distracted by Shiny – Always Use the Latest Technology to Stay AheadThe temptation here is to pick out some obscure framework, try a bit of Scala, HTML5, and Clojure, and always use the latest technology and upgrade to the latest point release of everything. Don’t worry if something works poorly because you are ahead of the curve. Verburg and Evans insisted that there need to be sound reasons for everything a developer does. Developers should not bring in something simply because for some reason they just feel like it or because it’s new. They recommended a site run by a developer named Matt Raible with excellent comparison spread sheets regarding Web frameworks and other apps. They praised it as a useful tool to help developers in their decision-making processes. They pointed out that good developers sometimes make bad choices out of boredom, to add shiny things to their CV, out of frustration with existing processes, or just from a lack of understanding. They pointed out that some code may stay in a business system for 15 or 20 years, but not all code is created equal and some may change after 3 or 6 months. Developers need to know where the code they are contributing fits in. What is its likely lifespan? Anti-Pattern Four: Design-Driven Design The anti-pattern: If you want to impress your colleagues and bosses, use design patents left, right, and center – MVC, Session Facades, SOA, etc. Or the UML modeling suite from IBM, back in the day… Generate super fast code. And the more jargon you can talk when in the vicinity of the manager the better.Verburg shared a true story about a time when he was interviewing a guy for a job and asked him what his previous work was. The interviewee said that he essentially took patterns and uses an approved book of Enterprise Architecture Patterns and applied them. Verburg was dumbstruck that someone could have a job in which they took patterns from a book and applied them. He pointed out that the idea that design is a separate activity is simply wrong. He repeated a saying that he uses, “You should pay your junior developers for the lines of code they write and the things they add; you should pay your senior developers for what they take away.”He explained that by encouraging people to take things away, the code base gets simpler and reflects the actual business use cases developers are trying to solve, as opposed to the framework that is being imposed. He told another true story about a project to decommission a very long system. 98% of the code was decommissioned and people got a nice bonus. But the 2% remained on the mainframe so the 98% reduction in code resulted in zero reduction in costs, because the entire mainframe was needed to run the 2% that was left. There is an incentive to get rid of source code and subsystems when they are no longer needed. The session continued with several more anti-patterns that were equally insightful.

  Read the article

• Pace Layering Comes Alive

  - by Tanu Sood

  v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} 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:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Rick Beers is Senior Director of Product Management for Oracle Fusion Middleware. Prior to joining Oracle, Rick held a variety of executive operational positions at Corning, Inc. and Bausch & Lomb. With a professional background that includes senior management positions in manufacturing, supply chain and information technology, Rick brings a unique set of experiences to cover the impact that technology can have on business models, processes and organizations. Rick hosts the IT Leaders Editorial on a monthly basis. By now, readers of this column are quite familiar with Oracle AppAdvantage, a unified framework of middleware technologies, infrastructure and applications utilizing a pace layered approach to enterprise systems platforms. 1. Standardize and Consolidate core Enterprise Applications by removing invasive customizations, costly workarounds and the complexity that multiple instances creates. 2. Move business specific processes and applications to the Differentiate Layer, thus creating greater business agility with process extensions and best of breed applications managed by cross- application process orchestration. 3. The Innovate Layer contains all the business capabilities required for engagement, collaboration and intuitive decision making. This is the layer where innovation will occur, as people engage one another in a secure yet open and informed way. 4. Simplify IT by minimizing complexity, improving performance and lowering cost with secure, reliable and managed systems across the entire Enterprise. But what hasn’t been discussed is the pace layered architecture that Oracle AppAdvantage adopts. What is it, what are its origins and why is it relevant to enterprise scale applications and technologies? It’s actually a fascinating tale that spans the past 20 years and a basic understanding of it provides a wonderful context to what is evolving as the future of enterprise systems platforms. It all begins in 1994 with a book by noted architect Stewart Brand, of ’Whole Earth Catalog’ fame. In his 1994 book How Buildings Learn, Brand popularized the term ‘Shearing Layers’, arguing that any building is actually a hierarchy of pieces, each of which inherently changes at different rates. In 1997 he produced a 6 part BBC Series adapted from the book, in which Part 6 focuses on Shearing Layers. In this segment Brand begins to introduce the concept of ‘pace’. Brand further refined this idea in his subsequent book, The Clock of the Long Now, which began to link the concept of Shearing Layers to computing and introduced the term ‘pace layering’, where he proposes that: “An imperative emerges: an adaptive [system] has to allow slippage between the differently-paced systems … otherwise the slow systems block the flow of the quick ones and the quick ones tear up the slow ones with their constant change. Embedding the systems together may look efficient at first but over time it is the opposite and destructive as well.” In 2000, IBM architects Ian Simmonds and David Ing published a paper entitled A Shearing Layers Approach to Information Systems Development, which applied the concept of Shearing Layers to systems design and development. It argued that at the time systems were still too rigid; that they constrained organizations by their inability to adapt to changes. The findings in the Conclusions section are particularly striking: “Our starting motivation was that enterprises need to become more adaptive, and that an aspect of doing that is having adaptable computer systems. The challenge is then to optimize information systems development for change (high maintenance) rather than stability (low maintenance). Our response is to make it explicit within software engineering the notion of shearing layers, and explore it as the principle that systems should be built to be adaptable in response to the qualitatively different rates of change to which they will be subjected. This allows us to separate functions that should legitimately change relatively slowly and at significant cost from that which should be changeable often, quickly and cheaply.” The problem at the time of course was that this vision of adaptable systems was simply not possible within the confines of 1st generation ERP, which were conceived, designed and developed for standardization and compliance. It wasn’t until the maturity of open, standards based integration, and the middleware innovation that followed, that pace layering became an achievable goal. And Oracle is leading the way. Oracle’s AppAdvantage framework makes pace layering come alive by taking a strategic vision 20 years in the making and transforming it to a reality. It allows enterprises to retain and even optimize their existing ERP systems, while wrapping around those ERP systems three layers of capabilities that inherently adapt as needed, at a pace that’s optimal for the enterprise.

  Read the article

• Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c Release 2 (12.1.0.2) is Available Now !

  - by Anand Akela

  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:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} Oracle today announced the availability of Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c Release 2 (12.1.0.2). It is now available for download on OTN on ALL platforms. This is the first major release since the launch of Enterprise Manager 12c in October of 2011. This is the first time when Enterprise Manager release is available on all platforms simultaneously. This is primarily a stability release which incorporates many of issues and feedback reported by early adopters. In addition, this release contains many new features and enhancements in areas across the board. New Capabilities and Features Enhanced management capabilities for enterprise private clouds: Introduces new capabilities to allow customers to build and manage a Java Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) cloud based on Oracle Weblogic Server. The new capabilities include guided set up of PaaS Cloud, self-service provisioning, automatic scale out and metering and chargeback. Enhanced lifecycle management capabilities for Oracle WebLogic Server environments: Combining in-context multiple domain, patching and configuration file synchronizations. Integrated Hardware-Software management for Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud through features such as rack schematics visualization and integrated monitoring of all hardware and software components. The latest management capabilities for business-critical applications include: Business Application Management: A new Business Application (BA) target type and dashboard with flexible definitions provides a logical view of an application’s business transactions, end-user experiences and the cloud infrastructure the monitored application is running on. Enhanced User Experience Reporting: Oracle Real User Experience Insight has been enhanced to provide reporting capabilities on client-side issues for applications running in the cloud and has been more tightly coupled with Oracle Business Transaction Management to help ensure that real-time user experience and transaction tracing data is provided to users in context. Several key improvements address ease of administration, reporting and extensibility for massively scalable cloud environments including dynamic groups, self-updateable monitoring templates, bulk operations against many events, etc. New and Revised Plug-Ins: Several plug-Ins have been updated as a part of this release resulting in either new versions or revisions. Revised plug-ins contain only bug-fixes and while new plug-ins incorporate both bug fixes as well as new functionality. Plug-In Name Version Enterprise Manager for Oracle Database 12.1.0.2 (revision) Enterprise Manager for Oracle Fusion Middleware 12.1.0.3 (new) Enterprise Manager for Chargeback and Capacity Planning 12.1.0.3 (new) Enterprise Manager for Oracle Fusion Applications 12.1.0.3 (new) Enterprise Manager for Oracle Virtualization 12.1.0.3 (new) Enterprise Manager for Oracle Exadata 12.1.0.3 (new) Enterprise Manager for Oracle Cloud 12.1.0.4 (new) Installation and Upgrade: All major platforms have been released simultaneously (Linux 32 / 64 bit, Solaris (SPARC), Solaris x86-64, IBM AIX 64-bit, and Windows x86-64 (64-bit) ) Enterprise Manager 12.1.0.2 is a complete release that includes both the EM OMS and Agent versions of 12.1.0.2. Installation options available with EM 12.1.0.2: User can do fresh Install or an upgrade from versions EM 10.2.0.5, 11.1, or 12.1.0.2 ( Bundle Patch 1 not mandatory). Upgrading to EM 12.1.0.2 from EM 12.1.0.1 is not a patch application (similar to Bundle Patch 1) but is achieved through a 1-system upgrade. Documentation: Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control Introduction Document provides a broad overview of capabilities and highlights"What's New" in EM 12.1.0.2. All updated Oracle Enterprise Manager documentation can be found on OTN Upgrade Guide Please feel free to ask questions related to the new Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c Release 2 (12.1.0.2) at the Oracle Enterprise Manager Forum . You could also share your feedback at twitter  using hash tag #em12c or at Facebook . Stay Connected: Twitter |  Face book |  You Tube |  Linked in |  Newsletter

  Read the article

• Spring JMS MQJE001: Completion Code '2', Reason '2042'.

  - by john

  My setup is Spring 3 JMS, MVC + Websphere MQ + Websphere 7 <!-- this is the Message Driven POJO (MDP) --> <bean id="messageListener" class="com.SomeListener" /> <!-- and this is the message listener container --> <bean id="jmsContainer" class="org.springframework.jms.listener.DefaultMessageListenerContainer"> <property name="connectionFactory" ref="xxxCF" /> <property name="destination" ref="someQueue" /> <property name="messageListener" ref="messageListener" /> </bean> When I start up the server, the listener seems to start correctly since it receives the messages that are on the queue as I put them. However, once I run any simple controller/action that doesn't even have anything to do with JMS it gives me the message below over and over... DefaultMessag W org.springframework.jms.listener.DefaultMessageListenerContainer handleListenerSetupFailure Setup of JMS message listener invoker failed for destination 'queue:///ABCDEF.EFF.OUT?persistence=-1' - trying to recover. Cause: MQJMS2008: failed to open MQ queue ''.; nested exception is com.ibm.mq.MQException: MQJE001: Completion Code '2', Reason '2042'. DefaultMessag I org.springframework.jms.listener.DefaultMessageListenerContainer refreshConnectionUntilSuccessful Successfully refreshed JMS Connection ConnectionEve W J2CA0206W: A connection error occurred. To help determine the problem, enable the Diagnose Connection Usage option on the Connection Factory or Data Source. ConnectionEve A J2CA0056I: The Connection Manager received a fatal connection error from the Resource Adapter for resource JMS$XXXQCF$JMSManagedConnection@2. The exception is: javax.jms.JMSException: MQJMS2008: failed to open MQ queue ''. ConnectionEve W J2CA0206W: A connection error occurred. To help determine the problem, enable the Diagnose Connection Usage option on the Connection Factory or Data Source. ConnectionEve A J2CA0056I: The Connection Manager received a fatal connection error from the Resource Adapter for resource jms/XXXQCF. The exception is: javax.jms.JMSException: MQJMS2008: failed to open MQ queue ''. The original listener seems to be still running correctly...but I think the controller is somehow triggering off another connection? Does anyone know what I should check for or what might cause this issue? thanks

  Read the article

• Why do many software projects fail today?

  - by TomTom

  As long as there are software projects, the world is wondering why they fail so often. I would like to know if there is a list or something equivalent which shows how many software projects fail today. Would be nice if there would be a comparison over the last 20 - 30 years. You can also add your top reason why a software project fails. Mine is "Requirements are poor or not even existing." which includes also "No (real) customer / user involved". EDIT: It is nearly impossible to clearly define the term "fail". Let's say that fail means: The project was more than 10% over budget and time. In my opinion the 10% + / - is a good range for an offer / tender. EDIT: Until now (Feb 11) it seems that most posters agree that a fail of the project is basically a failure of the project management (whatever fail means). But IMHO it comes out, that most developers are not happy with this situation. Perhaps because not the manager get penalized when a project was not successful, but the lazy, incompetent developer teams? When I read the posts I can also hear-out that there is a big "gap" between the developer side and the managment side. The expectations (perhaps also the requirements) seem to be so different, that a project cannot be successful in the end (over time / budget; users are not happy; not all first-prio features implemented; too many bugs because developers were forced to implement in too short timeframes ...) I',m asking myself: How can we improve it? Or do we have the possibility to improve it? Everybody seems to be unsatisfied with the way it goes now. Can we close the gap between these two worlds? Should we (the developers) go on strike and fight for "high quality reqiurements" and "realistic / iteration based time shedules"? EDIT: Ralph Westphal and Stefan Lieser have founded a new "community" called: Clean-Code-Developer. The aim of the group is to bring more professionalism into software engineering. Independently if a developer has a degree or tons of years of experience you can be part of this movement. Clean Code Developers live principles like SOLID every day. A professional developer is the biggest reviewer of his own work. And he has an internal value system which helps him to improve and become better. Check it out on: Clean Code Developer EDIT: Our company is doing at the moment a thing called "Application Development and Maintenance Benchmarking". This is a service offered by IBM to get a feedback from someone external on your software engineering process quality etc. When we get the results, I will tell you more about it.

  Read the article

• Server side Xforms form validation and integration into ASP.NET

  - by Nigel

  I have recently been investigating methods of creating web-based forms for an ASP.NET web application that can be edited and managed at runtime. For example an administrator might wish to add a new validation rule or a new set of fields. The holy grail would provide a means of specifying a form along with (potentially very complex) arbitrary validation rules, and allocation of data sources for each field. The specification would then be used to update the deployed form in the web application which would then validate submissions both on the client side and on the server side. My investigations led me to Xforms and a number of technologies that support it. One solution appears to be IBM Lotus Forms, but this requires a very large investment in terms of infrastructure, which makes it infeasible, although the forms designer may be useful as a stand-alone tool for creating the forms. I have also discounted browser plug-ins as the form must be publicly visible and cross-browser compliant. I have noticed that there are numerous javascript libraries that provide client side implementations given an Xforms schema. These would provide a partial solution but server side validation is still a requirement. Another option seems to involve the use of server side solutions such as the Java application Orbeon. Orbeon provides a tool for specifying the forms (although not as rich as Lotus Forms Designer), but the most interesting point is that it can translate an XForms schema into an XHTML form complete with validation. The fact that it is written in Java is not a big problem if it is possible to integrate with the existing ASP.NET application. So my question is whether anyone has done this before. It sounds like a problem that should have been solved but is inherently very complex. It seems possible to use an off-the-shelf tool to design the form and export it to an Xforms schema and xhtml form, and it seems possible to take that xforms schema and form and publish it using a client side library. What seems to be difficult is providing a means of validating the form submission on the server side and integrating the process nicely with .NET (although it seems the .NET community doesn't involve themselves with XForms; please correct me if I'm wrong on this count). I would be more than happy if a product provided something simple like a web service that could validate a submission against a schema. Maybe Orbeon does this but I'd be grateful if somebody in the know could point me in the right direction before I research it further. Many thanks.

  Read the article

• Soon to be PhD in Computer Science - Which Path to Follow?

  - by mttr

  I am going to submit my PhD thesis within the next six months. My PhD is on managing the availabiity of large-scale distributed systems, so I have some experience actually building non-trivial systems (+ I have four years experience working as a programmer). I am now trying to figure out what I should do following the PhD. I enjoy research (a quick definition: identify problem, come up with solution, ask interesting questions, find ways to answer them, build system, experiment, contribute some new knowledge and publish). I also like teaching and supervising students. It would seem that a career in academia is the ideal thing to do (can work on non-trivial problems and contribute something of use to some or more people). However, a career in academia has two significant drawbacks. First, it can be difficult to gain access to real systems with real users which then display real problems. This creates the danger that you do work that seems important (to you and maybe to some of your colleagues), but is not really relevant to anything or anyone. Second, the pay is pretty sad. Apparently, you have to sacrifice this for the privilege of doing research. I enjoy programming, but don't just want to hack some web-based system for the rest of my life. That is, working in IT for a bank is not a future I see myself enjoying. I want to work on interesting problms (that's difficult to define clearly): things where you don't know how to start, that take some time to figure out and attack, that require a rigorous approach to demonstrate that the problem has been solved, and problems that need a solution in the real world. Give the experience of people on stackoverflow, what do you think suitable options are and why (or alternatively, what gaps in my thinking does the above reveal)? Is industrial research (aka IBM Research, Microsoft Research) the only alternative avenue to a career in academia? What other areas, companies, occupations, etc. could provide me with stimulating, inspiring work? Which regions, countries am I most likely to find such work? Please share your experience.

  Read the article

• How to integrate Purify into Hudson CI?

  - by Martin

  Hello everybody! I have a Hudson CI system set up and for the moment it is used for building a project and running some unit tests. My next step is to integrate the memory leak detector Purify into the build cycle. Now I want to start the unit tests also inside purify and for this I have created a new batch task which runs following command: purify.exe /SaveTextData MyExecutable.exe --test TestLibrary.dll --output xml As I read in the Purify documentation the /SaveTextData option is used in order to run purify not in GUI mode. If I run this command on my local workstation in the command line it works perfectly. But in case it is started by Hudson, nothing happens. Unfortunetly there are no logs of purify... Has someone ever tried to start purify either by Hudson or any other CI system? Thanks in advance. Best regards Martin EDIT: I forgot to tell you, that I have Hudson running as master and slave on different computers. On the master I have configured a task which should start the unit tests within purify on the slave. I am running the slave via JNLP. EDIT 18.03.2010: Ok, so finally I am a bit closer the source of the problem. I have discovered, that running my unit tests in purify locally the log file EngineCmdLine.log contains three commands. I am starting purify with following command: purify.exe /SaveTextData TestRunnerConsoleWD.exe --test TestDemoWD.dll Output of EngineCmdLine.log when starting purify manually: File: D:\workspace\hudson\workspace\Purify_TestFW_CommonsCoreTest_Cpp_msvs9\TestRunnerConsoleWD.exe File: C:\WINDOWS\system32\ws2_32.dll File: D:\workspace\hudson\workspace\Purify_TestFW_CommonsCoreTest_Cpp_msvs9\TestDemoWD.dll Output when starting via Hudson: File: D:\workspace\hudson\workspace\Purify_TestFW_CommonsCoreTest_Cpp_msvs9\TestRunnerConsoleWD.exe File: C:\WINDOWS\system32\ws2_32.dll File: D:\workspace\hudson\workspace\Purify_TestFW_CommonsCoreTest_Cpp_msvs9\TestDemoWD.dll File: D:\workspace\hudson\workspace\Purify_TestFW_CommonsCoreTest_Cpp_msvs9\TestDemoWD.dll The error output of purify: Instrumenting: BtcTestDemoWD.dll 313856 bytes Purify: While processing file D:\workspace\hudson\workspace\Purify_TestFW_CommonsCoreTest_Cpp_msvs9\TESTFWWD.DLL: Error: Cannot replace file c:\Programme\IBM\RationalPurifyPlus\PurifyPlus\cache\BTCTESTFWWD$Purify_D_workspace_hudson_workspace_Purify_TestFW_CommonsCoreTest_Cpp_msvs9.DLL. Is it in use? TESTFWWD.DLL 505344 bytes Unable to instrument D:\workspace\hudson\workspace\Purify_TestFW_CommonsCoreTest_Cpp_msvs9\TestDemoWD.dll (0x1) Question is, why is purify starting twice a command with the TestDemoWD.dll library?

  Read the article

• With EJB 2.1, is declaring references to resources in ejb-jar.xml required?

  - by zwerd328

  I'm using Weblogic 9.2 with a lot of MDBs. These MDBs access JDBC DataSources and write to both locally and externally managed JMS Destinations using local and foreign XAConnectionFactorys, respectively. Each MDB demarcates a container-managed JTA transaction that should be distributed amongst all of these resources. Below is an excerpt from my ejb-jar.xml for an MDB that consumes from a local Queue called "MyDestination" and produces to an IBM Websphere MQ Queue called "MyOtherDestination". These logical names are linked to physical objects in my weblogic-ejb-jar.xml file. Is it required to use the <resource-ref> and <message-destination-ref> tags to expose the ConnectionFactory and Queue to the MDB? If so, is it required by Weblogic or is it required by the J2EE spec? And for what purpose? For example, is it required to support XA transactionality? I'm already aware of the benefit of decoupling the administered objects from my MDB using names exposed to the naming context of the MDB. Is this the only value added when specifying these tags? In other words, is it acceptable to just reference these objects from my MDB using the InitialContext and the objects' fully-qualified names? <enterprise-bean> <message-driven> <ejb-name>MyMDB</ejb-name> <ejb-class>com.mycompany.MyMessageDrivenBean</ejb-class> <transaction-type>Container</transaction-type> <message-destination-type>javax.jms.Queue</message-destination> <message-destination-link>MyDestination</message-destination-link> <resource-ref> <res-ref-name>jms/myQCF</res-ref-name> <res-type>javax.jms.XAConnectionFactory</res-type> <res-auth>Container</res-auth> </resource-ref> <message-destination-ref> <message-destination-ref-name>jms/myOtherDestination</message-destination-ref-name> <message-destination-type>javax.jms.Queue</message-destination-type> <message-destination-usage>Produces</message-destination-usage> <message-destination-link>MyOtherDestination</message-destination-link> </message-destination-ref> </message-driven> <enterprise-bean>

  Read the article

• JSF inner datatable not respecting rendered condition of outer table.

  - by Marc

  <h:dataTable cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" styleClass="list_table" id="OuterItems" value="#{valueList.values}" var="item" border="0"> <h:column rendered="#{item.typeA"> <h:dataTable cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" styleClass="list_table" id="InnerItems" value="#{item.options}" var="option" border="0"> <h:column > <h:outputText value="Option: #{option.displayValue}"/> </h:column> </h:dataTable> </h:column> <h:column rendered="#{item.typeB"> <h:dataTable cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" styleClass="list_table" id="InnerItems" value="#{item.demands}" var="demand" border="0"> <h:column > <h:outputText value="Demand: #{demand.displayValue}"/> </h:column> </h:dataTable> </h:column> </h:dataTable> public class Item{ ... public boolean isTypeA(){ return this instanceof TypeA; } public boolean isTypeB(){ return this instanceof TypeB; } ... } public class typeA extends Item(){ ... public List getOptions(){ .... } ... } public class typeB extends Item(){ ... public List getDemands(){ ... } .... } I'm having an issue with JSF. I've abstracted the problem out here, and I'm hoping someone can help me understand how what I'm doing fails. I'm looping over a list of Items. These Items are actually instances of the subclasses TypeA and TypeB. For Type A, I want to display the options, for Type B I want to display the demands. When rendering the page for the first time, this works fine. However, when I post back to the page for some action, I get an error: [3/26/10 12:52:32:781 EST] 0000008c SystemErr R javax.faces.FacesException: Error getting property 'options' from bean of type TypeB at com.sun.faces.lifecycle.ApplyRequestValuesPhase.execute(ApplyRequestValuesPhase.java:89) at com.sun.faces.lifecycle.LifecycleImpl.phase(LifecycleImpl.java(Compiled Code)) at com.sun.faces.lifecycle.LifecycleImpl.execute(LifecycleImpl.java:91) at com.ibm.faces.portlet.FacesPortlet.processAction(FacesPortlet.java:193) My grasp on the JSF lifecyle is very rough. At this point, i understand there is an error in the ApplyRequestValues Phases which is very early and so the previous state is restored and nothing changes. What I don't understand is that in order to fufill the condition for rendering "item.typeA" that object has to be an instance of TypeA. But here, it looks like that object passed the condition even though it was an instance of TypeB. It is like it is evaluating the inner dataTable (InnerItems) before evaluating the outer (outerItems). My working assumption is that I just don't understand how/when the rendered attribute is actually evaluated.

  Read the article

• File sizing issue in DOS/FAT

  - by Heather

  I've been tasked with writing a data collection program for a Unitech HT630, which runs a proprietary DOS operating system that can run executables compiled for 16-bit MS DOS with some restrictions. I'm using the Digital Mars C/C++ compiler, which is working well thus far. One of the application requirements is that the data file must be human-readable plain text, meaning the file can be imported into Excel or opened by Notepad. I'm using a variable length record format much like CSV that I've successfully implemented using the C standard library file I/O functions. When saving a record, I have to calculate whether the updated record is larger or smaller than the version of the record currently in the data file. If larger, I first shift all records immediately after the current record forward by the size difference calculated before saving the updated record. EOF is extended automatically by the OS to accommodate the extra data. If smaller, I shift all records backwards by my calculated offset. This is working well, however I have found no way to modify the EOF marker or file size to ignore the data after the end of the last record. Most of the time records will grow in size because the data collection program will be filling some of the empty fields with data when saving a record. Records will only shrink in size when a correction is made on an existing entry, or on a normal record save if the descriptive data in the record is longer than what the program reads in memory. In the situation of a shrinking record, after the last record in the file I'm left with whatever data was sitting there before the shift. I have been writing an EOF delimiter into the file after a "shrinking record save" to signal where the end of my records are and space-filling the remaining data, but then I no longer have a clean file until a "growing record save" extends the size of the file over the space-filled area. The truncate() function in unistd.h does not work (I'm now thinking this is for *nix flavors only?). One proposed solution I've seen involves creating a second file and writing all the data you wish to save into that file, and then deleting the original. Since I only have 4MB worth of disk space to use, this works if the file size is less than 2MB minus the size of my program executable and configuration files, but would fail otherwise. It is very likely that when this goes into production, users would end up with a file exceeding 2MB in size. I've looked at Ralph Brown's Interrupt List and the interrupt reference in IBM PC Assembly Language and Programming and I can't seem to find anything to update the file size or similar. Is reducing a file's size without creating a second file even possible in DOS?

  Read the article

• Help with strange memory behavior. Looking for leaks both in my brain and in my code.

  - by BastiBechtold

  I spent the last few days trying to find memory leaks in a program we are developing. First of all, I tried using some leak detectors. After fixing a few issues, they do not find any leaks any more. However, I am also monitoring my application using perfmon.exe. Performance Monitor reports that 'Private Bytes' and 'Working Set - Private' are steadily rising when the app is used. To me, this suggests that the program is using more and more memory the longer it runs. Internal resources seem to be stable however, so this sounds like leaking to me. The program is loading a DLL at runtime. I suspect that these leaks or whatever they are occur in that library and get purged when the library is unloaded, hence they won't get picked up by the leak detectors. I used both DevPartner BoundsChecker and Virtual Leak Detector to look for memory leaks. Both supposedly catch leaks in DLLs. Also, the memory consumption is increasing in steps and those steps roughly, but not exactly, coincide with certain GUI actions I perform in the application. If these were errors in our code, they should get triggered every single time the actions are performed and not just most of the time. Whenever I am confronted with so much strangeness, I begin to question my basic assumptions. So I turn to you, who know everything, for suggestions. Is there a flaw in my assumptions? Do you have an idea of how to go about troubleshooting a problem like this? Edit: I am currently using Microsoft Visual C++ (x86) on Windows 7 64. Edit2: I just used IBM Purify to hunt for leaks. First of all, it lists a full 30% of the program as leaked memory. This can not be true. I guess it is identifying the whole DLL as leaked or something like that. However, if I search for new leaks every few actions, it reports leaks that correspond with the size increase reported by Performance Monitor. This could be a lead to a leak. Sadly, I am only using the trial version of Purify, so it won't show me the actual location of those leaks. (These leaks only show up at runtime. When the program exits, there are no leaks whatsoever reported by any tool.)

  Read the article

• How do I do distributed UML development (à la FOSS)?

  - by James A. Rosen

  I have a UML project (built in IBM's Rational System Architect/Modeler, so stored in their XML format) that has grown quite large. Additionally, it now contains several pieces that other groups would like to re-use. I come from a software development (especially FOSS) background, and am trying to understand how to use that as an analogy here. The problem I am grappling with is similar to the Fragile Base Class problem. Let me start with how it works in an object-oriented (say, Java or Ruby) FOSS ecosystem: Group 1 publishes some "core" package, say "net/smtp version 1.0" Group 2 includes Group 1's net/smtp 1.0 package in the vendor library of their software project At some point, Group 1 creates a new 2.0 branch of net/smtp that breaks backwards compatibility (say, it removes an old class or method, or moves a class from one package to another). They tell users of the 1.0 version that it will be deprecated in one year. Group 2, when they have the time, updates to net/smtp 2.0. When they drop in the new package, their compiler (or test suite, for Ruby) tells them about the incompatibility. They do have to make some manual changes, but all of the changes are in the code, in plain text, a medium with which they are quite familiar. Plus, they can often use their IDE's (or text editor's) "global-search-and-replace" function once they figure out what the fixes are. When we try to apply this model to UML in RSA, we run into some problems. RSA supports some fairly powerful refactorings, but they seem to only work if you have write access to all of the pieces. If I rename a class in one package, RSA can rename the references, but only at the same time. It's very difficult to look at the underlying source (the XML) and figure out what's broken. To fix such a problem in the RSA editor itself means tons of clicking on things -- there is no good equivalent of "global-search-and-replace," at least not after an incomplete refactor. They real sticking point seems to be that RSA assumes that you want to do all your editing using their GUI, but that makes certain operations prohibitively difficult. Does anyone have examples of open-source UML projects that have overcome this problem? What strategies do they use for communicating changes?

  Read the article

• Generate A Simple Read-Only DAL?

  - by David

  I've been looking around for a simple solution to this, trying my best to lean towards something like NHibernate, but so far everything I've found seems to be trying to solve a slightly different problem. Here's what I'm looking at in my current project: We have an IBM iSeries database as a primary repository for a third party software suite used for our core business (a financial institution). Part of what my team does is write applications that report on or key off of a lot of this data in some way. In the past, we've been manually creating ADO .NET connections (we're using .NET 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008, by the way) and manually writing queries, etc. Moving forward, I'd like to simplify the process of getting data from there for the development team. Rather than creating connections and queries and all that each time, I'd much rather a developer be able to simply do something like this: var something = (from t in TableName select t); And, ideally, they'd just get some IQueryable or IEnumerable of generated entities. This would be done inside a new domain core that I'm building where these entities would live and the applications would interface with it through a request/response service layer. A few things to note are: The entities that correspond to the database tables should be generated once and we'd prefer to manually keep them updated over time. That is, if columns/tables are added to the database then we shouldn't have to do anything. (If some are deleted, of course, it will break, but that's fine.) But if we need to use a new column, we should be able to just add it to the necessary class(es) without having to re-gen the whole thing. The whole thing should be SELECT-only. We're not doing a full DAL here because we don't want to be able to break anything in the database (even accidentally). We don't need any kind of mapping between our domain objects and the generated entity types. The domain barely covers a fraction of the data that's in there, most of it we'll never need, and we would rather just create re-usable maps manually over time. I already have a logical separation for the DAL where my "repository" classes return domain objects, I'm just looking for a better alternative to manual ADO to be used inside the repository classes. Any suggestions? It seems like what I'm doing is just enough outside the normal demand for DAL/ORM tools/tutorials online that I haven't been able to find anything. Or maybe I'm just overlooking something obvious?

  Read the article

• How can I store large amount of data from a database to XML (speed problem, part three)?

  - by Andrija

  After getting some responses, the current situation is that I'm using this tip: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-tipbigdoc5.html (Listing 1. Turning ResultSets into XML), and XMLWriter for Java from http://www.megginson.com/downloads/ . Basically, it reads date from the database and writes them to a file as characters, using column names to create opening and closing tags. While doing so, I need to make two changes to the input stream, namely to the dates and numbers. // Iterate over the set while (rs.next()) { w.startElement("row"); for (int i = 0; i < count; i++) { Object ob = rs.getObject(i + 1); if (rs.wasNull()) { ob = null; } String colName = meta.getColumnLabel(i + 1); if (ob != null ) { if (ob instanceof Timestamp) { w.dataElement(colName, Util.formatDate((Timestamp)ob, dateFormat)); } else if (ob instanceof BigDecimal){ w.dataElement(colName, Util.transformToHTML(new Integer(((BigDecimal)ob).intValue()))); } else { w.dataElement(colName, ob.toString()); } } else { w.emptyElement(colName); } } w.endElement("row"); } The SQL that gets the results has the to_number command (e.g. to_number(sif.ID) ID ) and the to_date command (e.g. TO_DATE (sif.datum_do, 'DD.MM.RRRR') datum_do). The problems are that the returning date is a timestamp, meaning I don't get 14.02.2010 but rather 14.02.2010 00:00:000 so I have to format it to the dd.mm.yyyy format. The second problem are the numbers; for some reason, they are in database as varchar2 and can have leading zeroes that need to be stripped; I'm guessing I could do that in my SQL with the trim function so the Util.transformToHTML is unnecessary (for clarification, here's the method): public static String transformToHTML(Integer number) { String result = ""; try { result = number.toString(); } catch (Exception e) {} return result; } What I'd like to know is a) Can I get the date in the format I want and skip additional processing thus shortening the processing time? b) Is there a better way to do this? We're talking about XML files that are in the 50 MB - 250 MB filesize category.

  Read the article

• Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g Application Management Suite for Oracle E-Business Suite Now Available

  - by chung.wu

  Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g Application Management Suite for Oracle E-Business Suite is now available. The management suite combines features that were available in the standalone Application Management Pack for Oracle E-Business Suite and Application Change Management Pack for Oracle E-Business Suite with Oracle's market leading real user monitoring and configuration management capabilities to provide the most complete solution for managing E-Business Suite applications. The features that were available in the standalone management packs are now packaged into Oracle E-Business Suite Plug-in 4.0, which is now fully certified with Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g Grid Control. This latest plug-in extends Grid Control with E-Business Suite specific management capabilities and features enhanced change management support. In addition, this latest release of Application Management Suite for Oracle E-Business Suite also includes numerous real user monitoring improvements. General Enhancements This new release of Application Management Suite for Oracle E-Business Suite offers the following key capabilities: Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g Grid Control Support: All components of the management suite are certified with Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g Grid Control. Built-in Diagnostic Ability: This release has numerous major enhancements that provide the necessary intelligence to determine if the product has been installed and configured correctly. There are diagnostics for Discovery, Cloning, and User Monitoring that will validate if the appropriate patches, privileges, setups, and profile options have been configured. This feature improves the setup and configuration time to be up and operational. Lifecycle Automation Enhancements Application Management Suite for Oracle E-Business Suite provides a centralized view to monitor and orchestrate changes (both functional and technical) across multiple Oracle E-Business Suite systems. In this latest release, it provides even more control and flexibility in managing Oracle E-Business Suite changes.Change Management: Built-in Diagnostic Ability: This latest release has numerous major enhancements that provide the necessary intelligence to determine if the product has been installed and configured correctly. There are diagnostics for Customization Manager, Patch Manager, and Setup Manager that will validate if the appropriate patches, privileges, setups, and profile options have been configured. Enhancing the setup time and configuration time to be up and operational. Customization Manager: Multi-Node Custom Application Registration: This feature automates the process of registering and validating custom products/applications on every node in a multi-node EBS system. Public/Private File Source Mappings and E-Business Suite Mappings: File Source Mappings & E-Business Suite Mappings can be created and marked as public or private. Only the creator/owner can define/edit his/her own mappings. Users can use public mappings, but cannot edit or change settings. Test Checkout Command for Versions: This feature allows you to test/verify checkout commands at the version level within the File Source Mapping page. Prerequisite Patch Validation: You can specify prerequisite patches for Customization packages and for Release 12 Oracle E-Business Suite packages. Destination Path Population: You can now automatically populate the Destination Path for common file types during package construction. OAF File Type Support: Ability to package Oracle Application Framework (OAF) customizations and deploy them across multiple Oracle E-Business Suite instances. Extended PLL Support: Ability to distinguish between different types of PLLs (that is, Report and Forms PLL files). Providing better granularity when managing PLL objects. Enhanced Standard Checker: Provides greater and more comprehensive list of coding standards that are verified during the package build process (for example, File Driver exceptions, Java checks, XML checks, SQL checks, etc.) HTML Package Readme: The package Readme is in HTML format and includes the file listing. Advanced Package Search Capabilities: The ability to utilize more criteria within the advanced search package (that is, Public, Last Updated by, Files Source Mapping, and E-Business Suite Mapping). Enhanced Package Build Notifications: More detailed information on the results of a package build process. Better, more detailed troubleshooting guidance in the event of build failures. Patch Manager:Staged Patches: Ability to run Patch Manager with no external internet access. Customer can download Oracle E-Business Suite patches into a shared location for Patch Manager to access and apply. Supports highly secured production environments that prohibit external internet connections. Support for Superseded Patches: Automatic check for superseded patches. Allows users to easily add superseded patches into the Patch Run. More comprehensive and correct Patch Runs. Removes many manual and laborious tasks, frees up Apps DBAs for higher value-added tasks. Automatic Primary Node Identification: Users can now specify which is the "primary node" (that is, which node hosts the Shared APPL_TOP) during the Patch Run interview process, available for Release 12 only. Setup Manager:Preview Extract Results: Ability to execute an extract in "proof mode", and examine the query results, to determine accuracy. Used in conjunction with the "where" clause in Advanced Filtering. This feature can provide better and more accurate fine tuning of extracts. Use Uploaded Extracts in New Projects: Ability to incorporate uploaded extracts in new projects via new LOV fields in package construction. Leverages the Setup Manager repository to access extracts that have been uploaded. Allows customer to reuse uploaded extracts to provision new instances. Re-use Existing (that is, historical) Extracts in New Projects: Ability to incorporate existing extracts in new projects via new LOV fields in package construction. Leverages the Setup Manager repository to access point-in-time extracts (snapshots) of configuration data. Allows customer to reuse existing extracts to provision new instances. Allows comparative historical reporting of identical APIs, executed at different times. Support for BR100 formats: Setup Manager can now automatically produce reports in the BR100 format. Native support for industry standard formats. Concurrent Manager API Support: General Foundation now provides an API for management of "Concurrent Manager" configuration data. Ability to migrate Concurrent Managers from one instance to another. Complete the setup once and never again; no need to redefine the Concurrent Managers. User Experience Management Enhancements Application Management Suite for Oracle E-Business Suite includes comprehensive capabilities for user experience management, supporting both real user and synthetic transaction based user monitoring techniques. This latest release of the management suite include numerous improvements in real user monitoring support. KPI Reporting: Configurable decimal precision for reporting of KPI and SLA values. By default, this is two decimal places. KPI numerator and denominator information. It is now possible to view KPI numerator and denominator information, and to have it available for export. Content Messages Processing: The application content message facility has been extended to distinguish between notifications and errors. In addition, it is now possible to specify matching rules that can be used to refine a selected content message specification. Note this is only available for XPath-based (not literal) message contents. Data Export: The Enriched data export facility has been significantly enhanced to provide improved performance and accessibility. Data is no longer stored within XML-based files, but is now stored within the Reporter database. However, it is possible to configure an alternative database for its storage. Access to the export data is through SQL. With this enhancement, it is now more easy than ever to use tools such as Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition to analyze correlated data collected from real user monitoring and business data sources. SNMP Traps for System Events: Previously, the SNMP notification facility was only available for KPI alerting. It has now been extended to support the generation of SNMP traps for system events, to provide external health monitoring of the RUEI system processes. Performance Improvements: Enhanced dashboard performance. The dashboard facility has been enhanced to support the parallel loading of items. In the case of dashboards containing large numbers of items, this can result in a significant performance improvement. Initial period selection within Data Browser and reports. The User Preferences facility has been extended to allow you to specify the initial period selection when first entering the Data Browser or reports facility. The default is the last hour. Performance improvement when querying the all sessions group. Technical Prerequisites, Download and Installation Instructions The Linux version of the plug-in is available for immediate download from Oracle Technology Network or Oracle eDelivery. For specific information regarding technical prerequisites, product download and installation, please refer to My Oracle Support note 1224313.1. The following certifications are in progress: * Oracle Solaris on SPARC (64-bit) (9, 10) * HP-UX Itanium (11.23, 11.31) * HP-UX PA-RISC (64-bit) (11.23, 11.31) * IBM AIX on Power Systems (64-bit) (5.3, 6.1)

  Read the article

• Database users in the Oracle Utilities Application Framework

  - by Anthony Shorten

  I mentioned the product database users fleetingly in the last blog post and they deserve a better mention. This applies to all versions of the Oracle Utilities Application Framework. The Oracle Utilities Application Framework uses up to three users initially as part of the base operations of the product. The type of database supported (the framework supports Oracle, IBM DB2 and Microsoft SQL Server) dictates the number of users used and their permissions. For publishing brevity I will outline what is available for the Oracle database and, in summary, mention where it differs for the other database supported. For Oracle database customers we ship three distinct database users: Administration User (SPLADM or CISADM by default) - This is the database user that actually owns the schema. This user is not used by the product to do any DML (Data Manipulation Language) SQL other than that is necessary for maintenance of the database. This database user performs all the DCL (Data Control Language) and DDL (Data Definition Language) against the database. It is typically reserved for Database Administration use only. Product Read Write User (SPLUSER or CISUSER by default) - This is the database user used by the product itself to execute DML (Data Manipulation Language) statements against the schema owned by the Administration user. This user has the appropriate read and write permission to objects within the schema owned by the Administration user. For databases such as DB2 and SQL Server we may not create this user but use other DCL (Data Control Language) statements and facilities to simulate this user. Product Read User (SPLREAD or CISREAD by default) - This is the database that has read only permission to the schema owned by the Administration user. It is used for reporting or any part of the product or interface that requires read permissions to the database (for example, products that have ConfigLab and Archiving use this user for remote access). For databases such as DB2 and SQL Server we may not create this user but use other DCL (Data Control Language) statements and facilities to simulate this user. You may notice the words by default in the list above. The values supplied with the installer are the default and can be changed to what the site standard or implementation wants to use (as long as they conform to the standards supported by the underlying database). You can even create multiples of each within the same database and pointing to same schema. To manage the permissions for the users, there is a utility provided with the installation (oragensec (Oracle), db2gensec (DB2) or msqlgensec (SQL Server)) that generates the security definitions for the above users. That can be executed a number of times for each schema to give users appropriate permissions. For example, it is possible to define more than one read/write User to access the database. This is a common technique used by implementations to have a different user per access mode (to separate online and batch). In fact you can also allocate additional security (such as resource profiles in Oracle) to limit the impact of specific users at the database. To facilitate users and permissions, in Oracle for example, we create a CISREAD role (read only role) and a CISUSER role (read write role) that can be allocated to the appropriate database user. When the security permissions utility, oragensec in this case, is executed it uses the role to determine the permissions. To give you a case study, my underpowered laptop has multiple installations on it of multiple products but I have one database. I create a different schema for each product and each version (with my own naming convention to help me manage the databases). I create individual users on each schema and run oragensec to maintain the permissions for each appropriately. It works fine as long I have setup the userids appropriately. This means: Creating the users with the appropriate roles. I use the common CISUSER and CISREAD role across versions and across Oracle Utilities Application Framework products. Just remember to associate the CISUSER role with the database user you want to use for read/write operations and the CISREAD role with the user you wish to use for the read only operations. The role is treated as a tag to indicate the oragensec utility which appropriate permissions to assign to the user. The utilities for the other database types essentially do the same, obviously using the technology available within those databases. Run oragensec against the read write user and read only user against the appropriate administration user (I will abbreviate the user to ADM user). This ensures the right permissions are allocated to the right users for the right products. To help me there, I use the same prefix on the user name for the same product. For example, my Oracle Utilities Application Framework V4 environment has the administration user set to FW4ADM and the associated FW4USER and FW4READ as the users for the product to use. For my MWM environment I used MWMADM for the administration user and MWMUSER and MWMREAD for my associated users. You get the picture. When I run oragensec (once for each ADM user), I know what other users to associate with it. Remember to rerun oragensec against the users if I run upgrades, service packs or database based single fixes. This assures that the users are in synchronization with the ADM user. As a side note, for those who do not understand the difference between DML, DCL and DDL: DDL (Data Definition Language) - These are SQL statements that define the database schema and the structures within. SQL Statements such as CREATE and DROP are examples of DDL SQL statements. DCL (Data Control Language) - These are the SQL statements that define the database level permissions to DDL maintained objects within the database. SQL Statements such as GRANT and REVOKE are examples of DCL SQL statements. DML (Database Manipulation Language) - These are SQL statements that alter the data within the tables. SQL Statements such as SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE are examples of DML SQL statements. Hope this has clarified the database user support. Remember in Oracle Utilities Application Framework V4 we enhanced this by also supporting CLIENT_IDENTIFIER to allow the database to still use the administration user for the main processing but make the database session more traceable.

  Read the article

• A Look Back at 2010 Predictions

  - by David Dorf

  Now is the time of year people make their predictions for next year, but before I start thinking about 2011 it's worth a look back to see how my predictions for 2010 fared. 1. Borders and Blockbuster bite the dust. I would have never predicted a strong brand such as Circuit City could die, but now I know it can happen to anyone. Borders has lost the battle with Barnes & Noble and Blockbuster has lost to Netflix. And just to be sure, Amazon put an extra nail in each coffin. Borders received additional investment from Bennett LeBow to keep it afloat, but the stock is down around $1.25 with no profits in sight. Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy back in September. 2. Every retailer finally has a page on Facebook... but very few figure out how to keep fans engaged. Retailer postings become noise, and fans start to unsubscribe. Twitter goes in the same direction. A few standout retailers will figure out how to use social media, and the rest will remain dumbfounded. Most retailers are on the Facebook bandwagon, and their fan bases seem to be increasing thanks to promotions like The Gap's logo redesign, Lowes' black Friday sneak peak, and Walmart's Crowd Savers. There are several examples of f-commerce advancements, including some interesting integrations from Amazon.3. Smartphones consolidate and grow. More and more people will step-up to smartphones, most of which will choose iPhone, Blackberry, and Android phones. Other smartphones will vanish, and networks will start to strain. But retailers will finally embrace mobile as the next big channel. Retail marketing departments will build mobile apps without the help of their IT department, and eventually they will get into a bind. Android has been on a tear lately stealing market share from Blackberry. Palm and Microsoft are trending down, and Apple is holding steady. Smartphone sales are up 15% and expected to continue. Retailers understand the importance of mobile, and some innovative applications have been produced this year. 4. Google helps the little guys. Google will push its Favorite Places project to help give exposure to small retailers and restaurants. They will enable small retailers to act like big ones by providing storefronts, detailed product information, and coupons for consumers. Google will find a way to bring augmented reality to the masses. I can't say I've seen much new from Google regarding Favorite Places, but they've continued to push local product search. From the PC or smartphone, consumers can search for products and see which nearby stores have it stock. Oracle Retail even productized an integration to Google to support this effort. I suppose if Google ever buys Groupon then it will bring them even closer to local shopping. Google talked about augmented humanity, but that has nothing to do with augmented reality. 5. Steve Jobs Is Bugs Bunny and Steve Ballmer is Elmer Fudd. (OK, I stole that headline from an InformationWeek article. I couldn't resist.) Both Apple and Microsoft will continue to open new stores, but only Apple will show real growth. POSReady 2009 (formerly WEPOS) will continue to share the POS market with Linux. The iPhone and iPod will continue to capture market share, but there won't be an Apple tablet. There won't be an Apple tablet? What was I thinking? While Apple has well over 300 stores, there are less than 10 Microsoft stores. Initial impressions show that even though Microsoft is locating its store near Apple Stores, they are not converting customers, with shoppers citing a lack of assortment and high prices. 6. Consolidation of e-commerce software providers. Software vendors in the areas of search, reviews, online call-centers, payments, and e-commerce will consolidate, partly driven by the success of m-commerce and SaaS. Amazon will find someone else to buy, and eBay will continue to lose momentum. Consolidation of e-commerce providers continued with IBM acquiring Sterling Commerce and CoreMetrics, and Oracle recently announcing the acquisition of ATG. Amazon grabbed Zappos, Woot, and Diapers.com to continue its dominance of online selling. While eBay's Marketplace growth may have slowed, its PayPal division is doing quite well, fueled in part by demand for mobile payments. 7. Book publishers mirror music labels. Just as the iPod brought digital downloads to the masses, the Kindle and Nook will power the e-book revolution. Books will continue to use DRM for a few more years before following the path of music. Publishers will try to preserve the margins of hardbacks by associating e-book releases with paperbacks. Amazon has done a good job providing e-reader clients for smartphones, PCs, and tablets. Competition from Barnes & Noble has forced Amazon to support book loaning, and both companies are making it easier for people to publish ebooks (with or without DRM). Progress is slow but steady. 8. NFC makes inroads, RFID treads water. Near Field Communications start to appear in mobile phones, and retailers beta test its use for payments and loyalty programs. RFID tag costs come down a bit, but not enough to spur accelerated adoption.Nokia announced plans to offer NFC-enabled phones in 2011, and rumors are swirling about NFC in the upcoming iPhone.  I think NFC is heading in the right direction, and I've heard more interest from retailers about specialized uses for RFID.9. Digital Signage goes the way of augmented reality. People use their camera phones to leave geo-tagged notes all over cities, rating stores and restaurants, and "painting" graffiti. But people get tired of holding their phones in front of their faces, so AR glasses are offered in much the same way bluetooth headsets emerged. Retailers experiement with in-store advertising using AR. Several retailers like Pizza Hut, Benetton, and Target have experimented with AR but its still somewhat of a gimmick used by marketing.  I think this prediction is a year or two too early. 10. JDA flip-flops again. After announcing their embracing of the .Net architecture, then switching to J2EE after the Manugistics acquisition, JDA will finally decide to standardize on Apple's Objective C. Everything will be ported to the iPhone and be available on the AppStore. After all, there's not much left to try. This was, of course, a joke but the sentiment is still valid.  JDA seems more supply-chain focused than retail focused, which is a an outcrop if their i2 acquisition.  Of the 10 predictions, I'm going to say I got 6 somewhat correct.  (Don't you just love grading your own paper?)  Soon I'll post my predictions for 2011 so be on the lookout.  Until then here's one more prediction:  Va Tech beats Stanford in the Orange Bowl -- count on it!

  Read the article

• Java FAQ: Tudo o que você precisa saber

  - by Bruno.Borges

  Com frequência recebo e-mails de clientes com dúvidas sobre "quando sairá a próxima versão do Java?", ou então "quando vai expirar o Java?" ou ainda "quais as mudanças da próxima versão?". Por isso resolvi escrever aqui um FAQ, respondendo estas dúvidas e muitas outras. Este post estará sempre atualizado, então se você possui alguma dúvida, envie para mim no Twitter @brunoborges. Qual a diferença entre o Oracle JDK e o OpenJDK?O projeto OpenJDK funciona como a implementação de referência Open Source do Java Standard Edition. Empresas como a Oracle, IBM, e Azul Systems suportam e investem no projeto OpenJDK para continuar evoluindo a plataforma Java. O Oracle JDK é baseado no OpenJDK, mas traz outras ferramentas como o Mission Control, e a máquina virtual traz algumas features avançadas como por exemplo o Flight Recorder. Até a versão 6, a Oracle oferecia duas máquinas virtuais: JRockit (BEA) e HotSpot (Sun). A partir da versão 7 a Oracle unificou as máquinas virtuais, e levou as features avançadas do JRockit para dentro da VM HotSpot. Leia também o OpenJDK FAQ. Onde posso obter binários beta Early Access do JDK 7, JDK 8, JDK 9 para testar?A partir do projeto OpenJDK, existe um projeto específico para cada versão do Java. Nestes projetos você pode encontrar binários beta Early Access, além do código-fonte. JDK 6 - http://jdk6.java.net/ JDK 7 - http://jdk7.java.net/ JDK 8 - http://jdk8.java.net/ JDK 9 - http://jdk9.java.net/ Quando acaba o suporte do Oracle Java SE 6, 7, 8? Somente produtos e versões com release oficial são suportados pela Oracle (exemplo: não há suporte para binários beta do JDK 7, JDK 8, ou JDK 9). Existem duas categorias de datas que o usuriário do Java deve estar ciente:  EOPU - End of Public UpdatesMomento em que a Oracle não mais disponibiliza publicamente atualizações Oracle SupportPolítica de suporte da Oracle para produtos, incluindo o Oracle Java SE O Oracle Java SE é um produto e portando os períodos de suporte são regidos pelo Oracle Lifetime Support Policy. Consulte este documento para datas atualizadas e específicas para cada versão do Java. O Oracle Java SE 6 já atingiu EOPU (End of Public Updates) e agora é mantido e atualizado somente para clientes através de contrato comercial de suporte. Para maiores informações, consulte a página sobre Oracle Java SE Support.  O mais importante aqui é você estar ciente sobre as datas de EOPU para as versões do Java SE da Oracle.Consulte a página do Oracle Java SE Support Roadmap e busque nesta página pela tabela com nome Java SE Public Updates. Nela você encontrará a data em que determinada versão do Java irá atingir EOPU. Como funciona o versionamento do Java?Em 2013, a Oracle divulgou um novo esquema de versionamento do Java para facilmente identificar quando é um release CPU e quando é um release LFR, e também para facilitar o planejamento e desenvolvimento de correções e features para futuras versões. CPU - Critical Patch UpdateAtualizações com correções de segurança. Versão será múltipla de 5, ou com soma de 1 para manter o número ímpar. Exemplos: 7u45, 7u51, 7u55. LFR - Limited Feature ReleaseAtualizações com correções de funcionalidade, melhorias de performance, e novos recursos. Versões de números pares múltiplos de 20, com final 0. Exemplos: 7u40, 7u60, 8u20. Qual a data da próxima atualização de segurança (CPU) do Java SE?Lançamentos do tipo CPU são controlados e pré-agendados pela Oracle e se aplicam a todos os produtos, inclusive o Oracle Java SE. Estes releases acontecem a cada 3 meses, sempre na Terça-feira mais próxima do dia 17 dos meses de Janeiro, Abril, Julho, e Outubro. Consulte a página Critical Patch Updates, Security Alerts and Third Party Bulleting para saber das próximas datas. Caso tenha interesse, você pode acompanhar através de recebimentos destes boletins diretamente no seu email. Veja como assinar o Boletim de Segurança da Oracle. Qual a data da próxima atualização de features (LFR) do Java SE?A Oracle reserva o direito de não divulgar estas datas, assim como o faz para todos os seus produtos. Entretanto é possível acompanhar o desenvolvimento da próxima versão pelos sites do projeto OpenJDK. A próxima versão do JDK 7 será o update 60 e binários beta Early Access já estão disponíveis para testes. A próxima versão doJDK 8 será o update 20 e binários beta Early Access já estão disponíveis para testes. Onde posso ver as mudanças e o que foi corrigido para a próxima versão do Java?A Oracle disponibiliza um changelog para cada binário beta Early Access divulgado no portal Java.net. JDK 7 update 60 changelogs JDK 8 update 20 changelogs Quando o Java da minha máquina (ou do meu usuário) vai expirar?Conheçendo o sistema de versionamento do Java e a periodicidade dos releases de CPU, o usuário pode determinar quando que um update do Java irá expirar. De todo modo, a cada novo update, a Oracle já informa quando que este update deverá expirar diretamente no release notes da versão. Por exemplo, no release notes da versão Oracle Java SE 7 update 55, está escrito na seção JRE Expiration Date o seguinte: The JRE expires whenever a new release with security vulnerability fixes becomes available. Critical patch updates, which contain security vulnerability fixes, are announced one year in advance on Critical Patch Updates, Security Alerts and Third Party Bulletin. This JRE (version 7u55) will expire with the release of the next critical patch update scheduled for July 15, 2014. For systems unable to reach the Oracle Servers, a secondary mechanism expires this JRE (version 7u55) on August 15, 2014. After either condition is met (new release becoming available or expiration date reached), the JRE will provide additional warnings and reminders to users to update to the newer version. For more information, see JRE Expiration Date.Ou seja, a versão 7u55 irá expirar com o lançamento do próximo release CPU, pré-agendado para o dia 15 de Julho de 2014. E caso o computador do usuário não possa se comunicar com o servidor da Oracle, esta versão irá expirar forçadamente no dia 15 de Agosto de 2014 (através de um mecanismo embutido na versão 7u55). O usuário não é obrigado a atualizar para versões LFR e portanto, mesmo com o release da versão 7u60, a versão atual 7u55 não irá expirar.Veja o release notes do Oracle Java SE 8 update 5. Encontrei um bug. Como posso reportar bugs ou problemas no Java SE, para a Oracle?Sempre que possível, faça testes com os binários beta antes da versão final ser lançada. Qualquer problema que você encontrar com estes binários beta, por favor descreva o problema através do fórum de Project Feebdack do JDK.Caso você encontre algum problema em uma versão final do Java, utilize o formulário de Bug Report. Importante: bugs reportados por estes sistemas não são considerados Suporte e portanto não há SLA de atendimento. A Oracle reserva o direito de manter o bug público ou privado, e também de informar ou não o usuário sobre o progresso da resolução do problema. Tenho uma dúvida que não foi respondida aqui. Como faço?Se você possui uma pergunta que não foi respondida aqui, envie para bruno.borges_at_oracle.com e caso ela seja pertinente, tentarei responder neste artigo. Para outras dúvidas, entre em contato pelo meu Twitter @brunoborges.

  Read the article

• Week in Geek: IPv6 Capable Smartphones Compromise User Privacy Edition

  - by Asian Angel

  This week we learned how to “clone a disk, resize static windows, and create system function shortcuts”, use 45 different services, sites, and apps to help read favorite sites, add MP3 support to Audacity (for saving in MP3 format), install a Wii game loader for easy backups and fast load times, create a Blue Screen of Death in any color, and more. Photo by legofenris. Weekly News Links Photo by The H Security. IPv6: Smartphones compromise users’ privacy Since version 4 of the iOS operating system, Apple’s iPhones, iPads and iPods have been capable of handling IPv6, and most Android devices have been capable since version 2.1. However, the operating systems transfer an ID that discloses information about their users. Dumb phones can be attacked too Much of the discussion of security threats to mobile phones revolves around smartphones, but researchers have found that less advanced “feature phones,” still used by the majority of people around the world, also are vulnerable to attack. SCADA exploit – the dragon awakes The recent publication of an exploit for KingView, a software package for visualising industrial process control systems, appears to be having an effect. Threatpost reports that both the Chinese vendor Wellintech and Chinese CERT (CN-CERT) have now reacted. Sophos: Spam to get more malicious Spam is becoming more malicious in nature as trickery tactics change in line with current user interests, according to a new report released Tuesday by Sophos. Global spam traffic rebounds as Rustock wakes Spam is on the rise after the Rustock botnet awoke from its Christmas slumber, according to Symantec. Cracking WPA keys in the cloud At the forthcoming Black Hat conference, blogger Thomas Roth plans to demonstrate how weak WPA PSKs can be cracked quickly and easily using Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service. Microsoft Security Advisory: Vulnerability in Internet Explorer could allow remote code execution Provides a link to more details about the vulnerability and shows a work-around/fix for the problem. Adobe plans to make it easier to delete Flash cookies in web browsers The new API, NPAPI:ClearSiteData, will allow Flash cookies – also known as Local Shared Objects (LSO) – to be deleted directly in the browser’s settings. Firefox beta getting new database standard The ninth beta version of Firefox is set to get support for a standard called IndexedDB that provides a database interface useful for offline data storage and other tasks needing information on a browser’s computer. MetroPCS accused of blocking certain Net content MetroPCS is violating the FCC’s recently approved Net neutrality rules by blocking certain Internet content, say several public interest groups. Server and Tools chief Muglia to leave Microsoft in summer 2011 Microsoft veteran and Server & Tools Business (STB) President Bob Muglia is leaving Microsoft, according to an email that CEO Steve Ballmer sent to employees on January 10. Report: DOJ nearing decision on Google-ITA The U.S. Department of Justice is gearing up for a possible formal antitrust investigation into whether or not Google should be allowed to purchase travel software company ITA Software, according to a report. South Korea says Google Street View broke law Police in South Korea reportedly say Google broke the country’s law when its Street View service captured personal data from unsecure Wi-Fi networks. The backlash over Google’s HTML5 video bet Choosing strategies based on what you believe to be long-term benefits is generally a good idea when running a business, but if you manage to alienate the world in the process, the long term may become irrelevant. Google answers critics on HTML5 Web video move Google responded to critics of its decision to drop support for a popular HTML5 video codec by declaring that a royalty-supported standard for Web video will hold the Web hostage. Random TinyHacker Links A Special GiveAway: a Great Book & Great Security Software The team from 7 Tutorials has a special giveaway running during the month of January. Signed copies of their latest book, full 1-year licenses of BitDefender Internet Security 2011 and free 3-month trials for everyone willing to participate. One Click Rooting For Android Phones Here’s a nice tool that helps you root your Android phone effortlessly. New Angry Birds Free version 1.0 Available in the App Store. Google Code University Learn programming at Google Code University. Capture and Share Your Favorite Part Of a YouTube Video SnipSnip.it lets you share only the part of the video that you like. Super User Questions More great questions and answers from this past week’s popular topics at Super User. What are the Windows A: and B: drives used for? Does OS X support linux-like features? What is the easiest way to make a backup of an entire hard disk? Will shifting from Wireless to Wired network result in better performance? Is it legal to install Windows 7 Home Premium Retail inside VMware virtual machine? How-To Geek Weekly Article Recap Enjoy reading through our hottest articles from this past week. The 50 Best Ways to Disable Built-in Windows Features You Don’t Want The Best of CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in 2011 How to Upgrade Windows 7 Easily (And Understand Whether You Should) The Worst of CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in 2011 The How-To Geek Guide to Audio Editing: Basic Noise Removal One Year Ago on How-To Geek More great articles from one year ago filled with helpful geeky goodness for you to enjoy. Share Text & Images the Easy Way with JustPaste.it Start Portable Firefox in Safe Mode Firefox 3.6 Release Candidate Available, Here’s How to Fix Your Incompatible Extensions Protect Your Computer from “Little Hands” with KidSafe Lock Prying Eyes Out of Your Minimized Windows Custom Crocheted Cylon-Cthulhu Hybrid What happens when you let your Cylon Centurion figure and your crocheted Cthulhu spend too many lonely nights together? A Cylon-Cthulhu hybrid, of course! You can get your own from the Cthulhu Chick store over on Etsy. Note: This is not an ad…Ruth is a friend of ours, and this Cylon-Cthulhu hybrid makes the perfect guard for the new MVP trophy in our office. The Geek Note Whether it is a geeky indoor project or just getting outside, we hope that you and your families have a terrific fun-filled weekend! Remember to keep sending those great tips in to us at [email protected]. Photo by qwrrty. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Upgrade Windows 7 Easily (And Understand Whether You Should) The How-To Geek Guide to Audio Editing: Basic Noise Removal Install a Wii Game Loader for Easy Backups and Fast Load Times The Best of CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in 2011 The Worst of CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in 2011 HTG Projects: How to Create Your Own Custom Papercraft Toy Firefox 4.0 Beta 9 Available for Download – Get Your Copy Now The Frustrations of a Computer Literate Watching a Newbie Use a Computer [Humorous Video] Season0nPass Jailbreaks Current Gen Apple TVs IBM’s Jeopardy Playing Computer Watson Shows The Pros How It’s Done [Video] Tranquil Juice Drop Abstract Wallpaper Pulse Is a Sleek Newsreader for iOS and Android Devices

  Read the article

• And What's Your Brand Worth? ...anything?

  - by [email protected]

  100 Best Global Brands from Business Week Story: The Great Trust Offensive Slide Show: Top Brands 2009 Methodology: Picking the Winners The recession has presented marketing executives around the world with the toughest test of their careers. Some brands have prospered amid the hard times--or at least held their own. Others have slipped a surprising number of places on our ninth annual ranking, compiled by consultancy Interbrand. But for seven brands, impressive performances saw them race up the charts to take their place on this year's list. Here are the numbers behind the rankings Rank 2009 Rank 2008 Employer 2009 Brand value($millions) 2008 Brand value($millions) Percent change(%) Country of Ownership 1 1 Coca-Cola  68,734  66,667  3 U.S. 2 2 IBM  60,211  59,031  2 U.S. 3 3 Microsoft  56,647  59,007  -4 U.S. 4 4 GE  47,777  53,086  -10 U.S. 5 5 Nokia  34,864  35,942  -3 Finland 6 8 McDonald's  32,275  31,049  4 U.S. 7 10 Google  31,980  25,590  25 U.S. 8 6 Toyota  31,330  34,050  -8 Japan 9 7 Intel  30,636  31,261  -2 U.S. 10 9 Disney  28,447  29,251  -3 U.S. 11 12 Hewlett-Packard  24,096  23,509  2 U.S. 12 11 Mercedes-Benz  23,867  25,577  -7 Germany 13 14 Gillette  22,841  22,069  4 U.S. 14 17 Cisco  22,030  21,306  3 U.S. 15 13 BMW  21,671  23,298  -7 Germany 16 16 Louis Vuitton  21,120  21,602  -2 France 17 18 Marlboro  19,010  21,300  -11 U.S. 18 20 Honda  17,803  19,079  -7 Japan 19 21 Samsung  17,518  17,689  -1 S. Korea 20 24 Apple  15,443  13,724  12 U.S. 21 22 H&M  15,375  13,840  11 Sweden 22 15 American Express  14,971  21,940  -32 U.S. 23 26 Pepsi  13,706  13,249  3 U.S. 24 23 Oracle  13,699  13,831  -1 U.S. 25 28 Nescafe  13,317  13,055  2 Switzerland 26 29 Nike  13,179  12,672  4 U.S. 27 31 SAP  12,106  12,228  -1 Germany 28 35 Ikea  12,004  10,913  10 Sweden 29 25 Sony  11,953  13,583  -12 Japan 30 33 Budweiser  11,833  11,438  3 Belgium 31 30 UPS  11,594  12,621  -8 U.S. 32 27 HSBC  10,510  13,143  -20 Britain 33 36 Canon  10,441  10,876  -4 Japan 34 39 Kellogg's  10,428  9,710  7 U.S. 35 32 Dell  10,291  11,695  -12 U.S. 36 19 Citi  10,254  20,174  -49 U.S. 37 37 JPMorgan  9,550  10,773  -11 U.S. 38 38 Goldman Sachs  9,248  10,331  -10 U.S. 39 40 Nintendo  9,210  8,772  5 Japan 40 44 Thomson Reuters  8,434  8,313  1 Canada 41 45 Gucci  8,182  8,254  -1 Italy 42 43 Philips  8,121  8,325  -2 Netherlands 43 58 Amazon  7,858  6,434  22 U.S. 44 51 L'Oreal  7,748  7,508  3 France 45 47 Accenture  7,710  7,948  -3 U.S. 46 46 eBay  7,350  7,991  -8 U.S. 47 48 Siemens  7,308  7,943  -8 Germany 48 56 Heinz  7,244  6,646  9 U.S. 49 49 Ford  7,005  7,896  -11 U.S. 50 62 Zara  6,789  5,955  14 Spain   Valuations do not represent a guarantee of future performance of the brands or companies. Data: Interbrand, BusinessWeek

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, June 15, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, June 15, 2011Popular ReleasesTerraria World Viewer: Version 1.2: Update June 15thNew User Interface Map drawing will not cause the program to freeze anymore Fixed the "Draw Symbols" (now called "Markers") checkbox not having any effectMVC Controls Toolkit: Mvc Controls Toolkit 1.1.5 RC: Added Extended Dropdown allows a prompt item to be inserted as first element. RequiredAttribute, if present, trggers if no element is chosen Client side javascript function to set/get the values of DateTimeInput, TypedTextBox, TypedEditDisplay, and to bind/unbind a "change" handler The selected page in the pager is applied the attribute selected-page="selected" that can be used in the definition of CSS rules to style the selected page items controls now interpret a null value as an empr...Umbraco CMS: Umbraco CMS 5.0 CTP 1: Umbraco 5 Community Technology Preview Umbraco 5 will be the next version of everyone's favourite, friendly ASP.NET CMS that already powers over 100,000 websites worldwide. Try out our first CTP of version 5 today! If you're new to Umbraco and would like to get a quick low-down on our popular and easy-to-learn approach to content management, check out our intro video here. What's in the v5 CTP box? This is a preview version of version 5 and includes support for the following familiar Umbr...Ribbon Browser for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: Ribbon Browser (1.0.514.30): Initial releaseTerrariViewer: TerrariViewer v3.0 [Terraria Inventory Editor]: In this version, I did an overhaul of the GUI of the program. The only pop-up window you will receive now is a warning box for for when you click on the "Delete" button. Everything has been integrated into the tabs on the form. I added every item included with v1.0.4 of Terraria and added the option to set inventory/bank slots to "No Item". This WILL work with characters that have not been opened in v1.0.4patterns & practices: Project Silk: Project Silk Community Drop 11 - June 14, 2011: Changes from previous drop: Many code changes: please see the readme.mht for details. New "Client Data Management and Caching" chapter. Updated "Application Notifications" chapter. Updated "Architecture" chapter. Updated "jQuery UI Widget" chapter. Updated "Widget QuickStart" appendix and code. Guidance Chapters Ready for Review The Word documents for the chapters are included with the source code in addition to the CHM to help you provide feedback. The PDF is provided as a separat...Orchard Project: Orchard 1.2: Build: 1.2.41 Published: 6/14/2010 How to Install Orchard To install Orchard using Web PI, follow these instructions: http://www.orchardproject.net/docs/Installing-Orchard.ashx. Web PI will detect your hardware environment and install the application. Alternatively, to install the release manually, download the Orchard.Web.1.2.41.zip file. http://orchardproject.net/docs/Manually-installing-Orchard-zip-file.ashx The zip contents are pre-built and ready-to-run. Simply extract the contents o...PowerGUI Visual Studio Extension: PowerGUI VSX 1.3.4: Changes - Got rid of suppressed exceptions on assemblies loading at project startup - Fixed Issue #28535 "No Print Support" - Enabled IntelliSence commands wich are supported by ActiPro Syntax Editor control: ToggleBookmark, NextBookmark, PreviousBookmark, ShowMemberList - Added missing Import directives in PS Script project template - Fixed exception occurring on debug start - Fixed an issue: after creating a new PS project, a debugging session hung being run for the second timeSnippet Designer: Snippet Designer 1.4.0: Snippet Designer 1.4.0 for Visual Studio 2010 Change logSnippet Explorer ChangesReworked language filter UI to work better in the side bar. Added result count drop down which lets you choose how many results to see. Language filter and result count choices are persisted after Visual Studio is closed. Added file name to search criteria. Search is now case insensitive. Snippet Editor Changes Snippet Editor ChangesAdded menu option for the $end$ symbol which indicates where the c...SizeOnDisk: 1.0.9.0: Can handle Right-To-Left languages (issue 316) About box (issue 310) New language: Deutsch (thanks to kyoka) Fix: file and folder context menuDropBox Linker: DropBox Linker 1.1: Added different popup descriptions for actions (copy/append/update/remove) Added popup timeout control (with live preview) Added option to overwrite clipboard with the last link only Notification popup closes on user click Notification popup default timeout increased to 3 sec. Added codeplex link to about .NET Framework 4.0 Client Profile requiredWCF Community Site: WCF Express Interop Bindings 1.0: Welcome to the first release of the WCF Express Interop BindingsThis project provides a starter kit for WCF service developers wishing to connect with Java clients in WebSphere, WebLogic, Metro and Apache. It supports security, MTOM and RM features. For more information see the Landing page We welcome your feedback (Topic: Interop Bindings). Please submit any feature requests / bug fixes via the issue tracker. FeaturesVSIX Installer WCF Bindings for Oracle WebLogic, Oracle Metro, IBM WebS...Mobile Device Detection and Redirection: 1.0.4.1: Stable Release 51 Degrees.mobi Foundation is the best way to detect and redirect mobile devices and their capabilities on ASP.NET and is being used on thousands of websites worldwide. We’re highly confident in our software and we recommend all users update to this version. Changes to Version 1.0.4.1Changed the BlackberryHandler and BlackberryVersion6Handler to have equal CONFIDENCE values to ensure they both get a chance at detecting BlackBerry version 4&5 and version 6 devices. Prior to thi...Kouak - HTTP File Share Server: Kouak Beta 3 - Clean: Some critical bug solved and dependecy problems There's 3 package : - The first, contains the cli server and the graphical server. - The second, only the cli server - The third, only the graphical client. It's a beta release, so don't hesitate to emmit issue ;pRawr: Rawr 4.1.06: This is the Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!For web-based version see http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php You can find the version notes at: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes Rawr AddonWe now have a Rawr Official Addon for in-game exporting and importing of character data hosted on Curse. The Addon does not perform calculations like Rawr, it simply shows your exported Rawr data in wow tooltips and lets you export your character to Rawr (including bag and bank items) like Char...AcDown????? - Anime&Comic Downloader: AcDown????? v3.0 Beta6: ??AcDown?????????????，?????????????，????、????。?????Acfun????? ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7 ????????????? ??：????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)?.NET Framework 2.0???(x64)，?????"?????????"??? ??v3.0 Beta6 ?????(imanhua.com)????? ???? ?? ??"????","?????","?????","????"?????? "????"?????"????????"?? ??????????? ?????????????? ?????????????/???? ?? ????Windows 7???????????? ????????? ?? ????????????? ???????/??????????? ???????????? ?? ?? ?????(imanh...Pulse: Pulse Beta 2: - Added new wallpapers provider http://wallbase.cc. Supports english search, multiple keywords* - Improved font rendering in Options window - Added "Set wallpaper as logon background" option* - Fixed crashes if there is no internet connection - Fixed: Rewalls downloads empty images sometimes - Added filters* Note 1: wallbase provider supports only english search. Rewalls provider supports only russian search but Pulse automatically translates your english keyword into russian using Google Tr...WPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.0.0.7: Version: 2.0.0.7 (Milestone 7): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Requirements .NET Framework 4.0 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 2010) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 2010 Professional Remark The sample applications are using Microsoft’s IoC container MEF. However, the WPF Application Framework (WAF) doesn’t force you to use the same IoC container in your application. You can use ...SimplePlanner: v2.0b: For 2011-2012 Sem 1 ???2011-2012 ????Visual Studio 2010 Help Downloader: 1.0.0.3: Domain name support for proxy Cleanup old packages bug Writing to EventLog with UAC enabled bug Small fixes & RefactoringNew Projects360U: 360UAd Configuration + Rotator for Windows Phone: Ad Configuration and Rotator for Windows Phone is a set of classes and controls which allow you to remotely manage advertising providers used inside your Windows Phone application. Advertising providers can be plugged in on an 'as needed' so application only ship with the providers being used.CommerceShopSystem: CommerceShopSystemContour strikes again: Collection of extensions for the Umbraco Contour form builderFarseer Physics & GLEED2D Link: This project includes c# files usable to implement the Farseer Physics engine in a level created using GLEED2D.FolderComparer: This DLL holds an extension of the DirectoryInfo class. It contains a logic that helps compare the contents of two folders. HierList Hierarchial Outline ASP.NET Server Control ( using UL or OL and LI ): The HierList ASP WebControl generates a hierarchial list using the UL, OL, and LI html tags. Images Organizator: A C# .Net program that organizes all pictures in a folder by date.KiggDemo: i study kiggLavieOrnamentos: LavieOrnamentos is a MVC project written in C# for a standard business website. I plan to use it as a base for a bigger project, a standard business site framework targeting small companies that just want to display their products and latest news.Multiple Choice Training Application: This is an ASP.Net (VB.Net) Web based training application. This application can be configured to ask multiple choice questions for multiple groups, score based on percentage, create completion certificates and be completely managed via a web interface,Orchard Windows Authentication: This module allows Windows domain users to be authenticated in Orchard.Party Estimator: Party Estimator is a training project based on requirements from O'Reilly's _Head First C#_, and is not intended for widespread use. SharePoint Enforcer - Ensuring large sites comply with standards: SharePoint Enforcer is a utility that aids in governance of large SharePoint sites to ensure that the sites comply with various business rules that have been created to keep the site from growing out of control.SharePoint WarmUp Tool (Claims+FBA): This tools is for warming up (waking) SharPoint sites. It addresses the issue of a 403 forbidden error when the SharePoint web app is in claims mode and FBA. It uses Windows authentication to warm up the sites and bypasses the FBA login redirection causing the 403 forbidden error.Super Mario Limitless: Super Mario Limitless is an in-production Super Mario level engine. It allows you to play your own levels and worlds, play others' levels and worlds, and even play online. With limitless features, you'll spend hours playing and creating.VB.NET ASP.NET MVC 2 - Music Store: This project is a port using the VB language with ASP.NET MVC 2 of the MusicStore application that can be found at : http://mvcmusicstore.codeplex.com/ Veni, Vedi, Velcro...: A personal phone 7 social media app that shows basic elements of design, ad model, panorama etc.XMLServiceMonitor: A Windows service (VB.Net) that allows the monitoring of failure of Servers, Services, Applications, Scheduled Tasks and SQL Jobs. The service is configurable with simple XML files and sends out email notifications of failures.

  Read the article

• Nagios notifications definitions

  - by Colin

  I am trying to monitor a web server in such a way that I want to search for a particular string on a page via http. The command is defined in command.cfg as follows # 'check_http-mysite command definition' define command { command_name check_http-mysite command_line /usr/lib/nagios/plugins/check_http -H mysite.example.com -s "Some text" } # 'notify-host-by-sms' command definition define command { command_name notify-host-by-sms command_line /usr/bin/send_sms $CONTACTPAGER$ "Nagios - $NOTIFICATIONTYPE$ :Host$HOSTALIAS$ is $HOSTSTATE$ ($OUTPUT$)" } # 'notify-service-by-sms' command definition define command { command_name notify-service-by-sms command_line /usr/bin/send_sms $CONTACTPAGER$ "Nagios - $NOTIFICATIONTYPE$: $HOSTALIAS$/$SERVICEDESC$ is $SERVICESTATE$ ($OUTPUT$)" } Now if nagios doesn't find "Some text" on the home page mysite.example.com, nagios should notify a contact via sms through the Clickatell http API which I have a script for that that I have tested and found that it works fine. Whenever I change the command definition to search for a string which is not on the page, and restart nagios, I can see on the web interface that the string was not found. What I don't understand is why isn't the notification sent though I have defined the host, hostgroup, contact, contactgroup and service and so forth. What I'm I missing, these are my definitions, In my web access through the cgi I can see that I have notifications have been defined and enabled though I don't get both email and sms notifications during hard status changes. host.cfg define host { use generic-host host_name HAL alias IBM-1 address xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx check_command check_http-mysite } *hostgroups_nagios2.cfg* # my website define hostgroup{ hostgroup_name my-servers alias All My Servers members HAL } *contacts_nagios2.cfg* define contact { contact_name colin alias Colin Y service_notification_period 24x7 host_notification_period 24x7 service_notification_options w,u,c,r,f,s host_notification_options d,u,r,f,s service_notification_commands notify-service-by-email,notify-service-by-sms host_notification_commands notify-host-by-email,notify-host-by-sms email [email protected] pager +254xxxxxxxxx } define contactgroup{ contactgroup_name site_admin alias Site Administrator members colin } *services_nagios2.cfg* # check for particular string in page via http define service { hostgroup_name my-servers service_description STRING CHECK check_command check_http-mysite use generic-service notification_interval 0 ; set > 0 if you want to be renotified contacts colin contact_groups site_admin } Could someone please tell me where I'm going wrong. Here are the generic-host and generic-service definitions *generic-service_nagios2.cfg* # generic service template definition define service{ name generic-service ; The 'name' of this service template active_checks_enabled 1 ; Active service checks are enabled passive_checks_enabled 1 ; Passive service checks are enabled/accepted parallelize_check 1 ; Active service checks should be parallelized (disabling this can lead to major performance problems) obsess_over_service 1 ; We should obsess over this service (if necessary) check_freshness 0 ; Default is to NOT check service 'freshness' notifications_enabled 1 ; Service notifications are enabled event_handler_enabled 1 ; Service event handler is enabled flap_detection_enabled 1 ; Flap detection is enabled failure_prediction_enabled 1 ; Failure prediction is enabled process_perf_data 1 ; Process performance data retain_status_information 1 ; Retain status information across program restarts retain_nonstatus_information 1 ; Retain non-status information across program restarts notification_interval 0 ; Only send notifications on status change by default. is_volatile 0 check_period 24x7 normal_check_interval 5 retry_check_interval 1 max_check_attempts 4 notification_period 24x7 notification_options w,u,c,r contact_groups site_admin register 0 ; DONT REGISTER THIS DEFINITION - ITS NOT A REAL SERVICE, JUST A TEMPLATE! } *generic-host_nagios2.cfg* define host{ name generic-host ; The name of this host template notifications_enabled 1 ; Host notifications are enabled event_handler_enabled 1 ; Host event handler is enabled flap_detection_enabled 1 ; Flap detection is enabled failure_prediction_enabled 1 ; Failure prediction is enabled process_perf_data 1 ; Process performance data retain_status_information 1 ; Retain status information across program restarts retain_nonstatus_information 1 ; Retain non-status information across program restarts max_check_attempts 10 notification_interval 0 notification_period 24x7 notification_options d,u,r contact_groups site_admin register 1 ; DONT REGISTER THIS DEFINITION - ITS NOT A REAL HOST, JUST A TEMPLATE! }

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 41 42 43 44 45 46 47  | Next Page >