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• Highlights From Interact '12 - Healthcare Industry User Group

  - by John Webb

  Last week the Oracle team traveled to Orlando for the 18th annual Healthcare Industry User Group (HIUG) conference, Interact '12.   HIUG has over 3,000 members representing 180 organizations.  While we now know the result on the SCOTUS ruling yesterday, the consensus at the conference last week was summed up well in the welcome note from HIUG President, Chris Ryzewski:    "Regardless of the legal ruling on this administration's  Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act we will undoubtedly be called upon to further reduce costs and be more efficient in every aspect of our business processes."    Well put!   Attendance exceeded previous years with several hundred attendees, over 100 sessions, and a trade show that numbered 40 booths.    Most of the HIUG members use PeopleSoft applications and they tend to be full suite customers who use PeopleSoft broadly from HCM to Financials and Supply Chain. For many customers who have licensed PeopleSoft in the last year, it was their first experience with a very strong and collaborative user group.   I had dinner with a provider who is rolling out PeopleSoft HCM and ERP to a nationwide system of forty hospitals.  A key driver for this organization and others is how to leverage PeopleSoft applications to meet the cost reduction goals mentioned above.   In the area of procurement, the topic of Supplier Contract Management attracted a lot of attention.  Contract pricing and adherence to contracts throughout the procure to pay life cycle are key to meeting cost containment objectives.  Customers were excited to see the new faceted search capabilities and usability of  the upcoming PeopleSoft eProcurement release.     The new Work Center concept was discussed in several areas including the Cost Reconciliation Work Center and the Supply Demand Work Center which enables healthcare specific functions around PAR counts and related replenishment activities.  The latest Feature Pack of HCM 9.1 was demonstrated with the Talent Summary and Manager Dashboard.   Customers were excited to see the major advances in self service available today.    The Grants Special Interest Group focused quite a bit on the usage of PeopleSoft's Project Costing "Funds Distribution" feature, which can be used to manage capital projects funded by multiple agencies and sources.  Along with the latest release of the Mobile Inventory solution that several hospitals have now implemented, a preview of new mobile applications for expenses and approvals drew a lot of attention.   The PeopleSoft focus on assisting these companies in their goals to contain costs and create new efficiencies continues forward.   We look foward to Interact '13!     

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• Stumbling Through: Visual Studio 2010 (Part II)

  I would now like to expand a little on what I stumbled through in part I of my Visual Studio 2010 post and touch on a few other features of VS 2010.  Specifically, I want to generate some code based off of an Entity Framework model and tie it up to an actual data source.  Im not going to take the easy way and tie to a SQL Server data source, though, I will tie it to an XML data file instead.  Why?  Well, why not?  This is purely for learning, there are probably much better ways to get strongly-typed classes around XML but it will force us to go down a path less travelled and maybe learn a few things along the way.  Once we get this XML data and the means to interact with it, I will revisit data binding to this data in a WPF form and see if I cant get reading, adding, deleting, and updating working smoothly with minimal code.  To begin, I will use what was learned in the first part of this blog topic and draw out a data model for the MFL (My Football League) - I dont want the NFL to come down and sue me for using their name in this totally football-related article.  The data model looks as follows, with Teams having Players, and Players having a position and statistics for each season they played: Note that when making the associations between these entities, I was given the option to create the foreign key but I only chose to select this option for the association between Player and Position.  The reason for this is that I am picturing the XML that will contain this data to look somewhat like this: <MFL> <Position/> <Position/> <Position/> <Team>     <Player>         <Statistic/>     </Player> </Team> </MFL> Statistic will be under its associated Player node, and Player will be under its associated Team node no need to have an Id to reference it if we know it will always fall under its parent.  Position, however, is more of a lookup value that will not have any hierarchical relationship to the player.  In fact, the Position data itself may be in a completely different xml file (something Id like to play around with), so in any case, a player will need to reference the position by its Id. So now that we have a simple data model laid out, I would like to generate two things based on it:  A class for each entity with properties corresponding to each entity property An IO class with methods to get data for each entity, either all instances, by Id or by parent. Now my experience with code generation in the past has consisted of writing up little apps that use the code dom directly to regenerate code on demand (or using tools like CodeSmith).  Surely, there has got to be a more fun way to do this given that we are using the Entity Framework which already has built-in code generation for SQL Server support.  Lets start with that built-in stuff to give us a base to work off of.  Right click anywhere in the canvas of our model and select Add Code Generation Item: So just adding that code item seemed to do quite a bit towards what I was intending: It apparently generated a class for each entity, but also a whole ton more.  I mean a TON more.  Way too much complicated code was generated now that code is likely to be a black box anyway so it shouldnt matter, but we need to understand how to make this work the way we want it to work, so lets get ready to do some stumbling through that text template (tt) file. When I open the .tt file that was generated, right off the bat I realize there is going to be trouble there is no color coding, no intellisense no nothing!  That is going to make stumbling through more like groping blindly in the dark while handcuffed and hopping on one foot, which was one of the alternate titles I was considering for this blog.  Thankfully, the community comes to my rescue and I wont have to cast my mind back to the glory days of coding in VI (look it up, kids).  Using the Extension Manager (Available under the Tools menu), I did a quick search for tt editor in the Online Gallery and quickly found the Tangible T4 Editor: Downloading and installing this was a breeze, and after doing so I got some color coding and intellisense while editing the tt files.  If you will be doing any customizing of tt files, I highly recommend installing this extension.  Next, well see if that is enough help for us to tweak that tt file to do the kind of code generation that we wantDid you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• How customers view and interact with a company

  The Harvard Business Review article written by Rayport and Jaworski is aptly titled “Best Face Forward” because it sheds light on how customers view and interact with a company. In the past most business interaction between customers was performed in a face to face meeting where one party would present an item for sale and then the other would decide whether to purchase the item. In addition, if there was a problem with a purchased item then they would bring the item back to the person who sold the item for resolution. One of my earliest examples of witnessing this was when I was around 6 or 7 years old and I was allowed to spend the summer in Tennessee with my Grandparents. My Grandfather had just written a book about the local history of his town and was selling them to his friends and local bookstores. I still remember he offered to pay me a small commission for every book I helped him sell because I was carrying the books around for him. Every sale he made was face to face with his customers which allowed him to share his excitement for the book with everyone. In today’s modern world there is less and less human interaction as the use of computers and other technologies allow us to communicate within seconds even though both parties may be across the globe or just next door. That being said, customers view a company through multiple access points called faces that represent the ability to interact without actually seeing a human face. As a software engineer this is a good and a bad thing because direct human interaction and technology based interaction have both good and bad attributes based on the customer. How organizations coordinate business and IT functions, to provide quality service varies based on each individual business and the goals and directives put in place by its management. According to Rayport and Jaworski, the type of interaction used through a particular access point may lend itself to be people-dominate, machine-dominate, or a combination of both. The method by which a company communicates information through an access point is a strategic choice that relates costs and customer outcomes. To simplify this, the choice is based on what can give the customer the best experience interacting with the company when the cost of the interaction is also a factor. I personally see examples of this every day at work. The company website is machine-dominate with people updating and maintaining information, our groups department is people dominate because most of the customer interaction is done at the customers location and is backed up by machine based data sources, and our sales/member service department is a hybrid because employees work in tandem with machines in order for them to assist customers with signing up or any other issue they may have. The positive and negative aspects of human and machine interfaces are a key aspect in deciding which interface to use when allowing customers to access a company or a combination of the two. Rayport and Jaworski also used MIT professor Erik Brynjolfsson preliminary catalog of human and machine strengths. He stated that humans outperform machines in judgment, pattern recognition, exception processing, insight, and creativity. I have found this to be true based on the example of how sales and member service reps at my company handle a multitude of questions and various situations with a lot of unknown variables. A machine interface could never effectively be able to handle these scenarios because there are too many variables to consider and would not have the built-in logic to process each customer’s claims and needs. In addition, he also stated that machines outperform humans in collecting, storing, transmitting and routine processing. An example of this would be my employer’s website. Customers can simply go online and purchase a product without even talking to a sales or member services representative. The information is then stored in a database so that the customer can always go back and review there order, and access their selected services. A human, no matter how smart they are would never be able to keep track of hundreds of thousands of customers let alone know what they purchased or how much they paid. In today’s technology driven economy every company must offer their customers multiple methods of accessibly in order to survive. The more of an opportunity a company has to create a positive experience for their customers, in my opinion, they more likely the customer will return to that company again. I have noticed this with my personal shopping habits and experiences. References Rayport, J., & Jaworski, B. (2004). Best Face Forward. Harvard Business Review, 82(12), 47-58. Retrieved from Business Source Complete database.

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• How to detect which edges of a rectange touch when they collide in iOS

  - by Mike King

  I'm creating a basic "game" in iOS 4.1. The premise is simple, there is a green rectangle ("disk") that moves/bounces around the screen, and red rectangle ("bump") that is stationary. The user can move the red "bump" by touching another coordinate on the screen, but that's irrelevant to this question. Each rectangle is a UIImageView (I will replace them with some kind of image/icon once I get the mechanics down). I've gotten as far as detecting when the rectangles collide, and I'm able to reverse the direction of the green "disk" on the Y axis if they do. This works well when the green "disk" approaches the red "bump" from top or bottom, it bounces off in the other direction. But when it approaches from the side, the bounce is incorrect; I need to reverse the X direction instead. Here's the timer I setup: - (void)viewDidLoad { xSpeed = 3; ySpeed = -3; gameTimer = [NSTimer scheduledTimerWithTimeInterval:0.05 target:self selector:@selector(mainGameLoop:) userInfo:nil repeats:YES]; [super viewDidLoad]; } Here's the main game loop: - (void) mainGameLoop:(NSTimer *)theTimer { disk.center = CGPointMake(disk.center.x + xSpeed, disk.center.y + ySpeed); // make sure the disk does not travel off the edges of the screen // magic number values based on size of disk's frame // startAnimating causes the image to "pulse" if (disk.center.x < 55 || disk.center.x > 265) { xSpeed = xSpeed * -1; [disk startAnimating]; } if (disk.center.y < 55 || disk.center.y > 360) { ySpeed = ySpeed * -1; [disk startAnimating]; } // check to see if the disk collides with the bump if (CGRectIntersectsRect(disk.frame, bump.frame)) { NSLog(@"Collision detected..."); if (! [disk isAnimating]) { ySpeed = ySpeed * -1; [disk startAnimating]; } } } So my question is: how can I detect whether I need to flip the X speed or the Y speed? ie: how can I calculate which edge of the bump was collided with?

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• How to handle updated configuration when it's already been cloned for editing

  - by alexrussell

  Really sorry about the title that probably doesn't make much sense. Hopefully I can explain myself better here as it's something that's kinda bugged me for ages, and is now becoming a pressing concern as I write a bit of software with configuration. Most software comes with default configuration options stored in the app itself, and then there's a configuration file (let's say) that a user can edit. Once created/edited for the first time, subsequent updates to the application can not (easily) modify this configuration file for fear of clobbering the user's own changes to the default configuration. So my question is, if my application adds a new configurable parameter, what's the best way to aid discoverability of the setting and allow the user (developer) to override it as nicely as possible given the following constraints: I actually don't have a canonical default config in the application per se, it's more of a 'cascading filesystem'-like affair - the config template is stored in default/config.json and when the user wishes to edit the configuration, it's copied to user/config.json. If a user config is found it is used - there is no automatic overriding of a subset of keys, the whole new file is used and that's that. If there's no user config the default config is used. When a user wishes to edit the config they run a command to 'generate' it for them (which simply copies the config.json file from the default to the user directory). There is no UI for the configuration options as it's not appropriate to the userbase (think of my software as a library or something, the users are developers, the config is done in the user/config.json file). Due to my software being library-like there's no simple way to, on updating of the software, run some tasks automatically (so any ideas of look at the current config, compare to template config, add ing missing keys) aren't appropriate. The only solution I can think of right now is to say "there's a new config setting X" in release notes, but this doesn't seem ideal to me. If you want any more information let me know. The above specifics are not actually 100% true to my situation, but they represent the problem equally well with lower complexity. If you do want specifics, however, I can explain the exact setup. Further clarification of the type of configuration I mean: think of the Atom code editor. There appears to be a default 'template' config file somewhere, but as soon as a configuration option is edited ~/.atom/config.cson is generated and the setting goes in there. From now on is Atom is updated and gets a new configuration key, this file cannot be overwritten by Atom without a lot of effort to ensure that the addition/modification of the key does not clobber. In Atom's case, because there is a GUI for editing settings, they can get away with just adding the UI for the new setting into the UI to aid 'discoverability' of the new setting. I don't have that luxury. Clarification of my constraints and what I'm actually looking for: The software I'm writing is actually a package for a larger system. This larger system is what provides the configuration, and the way it works is kinda fixed - I just do a config('some.key') kinda call and it knows to look to see if the user has a config clone and if so use it, otherwise use the default config which is part of my package. Now, while I could make my application edit the user's configuration files (there is a convention about where they're stored), it's generally not done, so I'd like to live with the constraints of the system I'm using if possible. And it's not just about discoverability either, one large concern is that the addition of a configuration key won't actually work as soon as the user has their own copy of the original template. Adding the key to the template won't make a difference as that file is never read. As such, I think this is actually quite a big flaw in the design of the configuration cascading system and thus needs to be taken up with my upstream. So, thinking about it, based on my constraints, I don't think there's going to be a good solution save for either editing the user's configuration or using a new config file every time there are updates to the default configuration. Even the release notes idea from above isn't doable as, if the user does not follow the advice, suddenly I have a config key with no value (user-defined or default). So the new question is this: what is the general way to solve the problem of having a default configuration in template config files and allowing a user to make user-specific version of these in order to override the defaults? A per-key cascade (rather than per-file cascade) where the user only specifies their overrides? In this case, what happens if a configuration value is an array - do we replace or append to the default (or, more realistically, how does the user specify whether they wish to replace or append to)? It seems like configuration is kinda hard, so how is it solved in the wild?

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• links for 2011-01-12

  - by Bob Rhubart

  WebCenter Spaces 11g PS2 Template Customization (Javier Ductor's Blog) "Recently, we have been involved in a WebCenter Spaces customization project. A customer sent us a prototype website in HTML, and we had to transform Spaces to set the same look and feel as in the prototype..." Javier Ductor (tags: oracle otn webcenter enteprise2.0) Matt Carter: Risky Business "Incorporating risk detection and mitigation capabilities into apps is becoming all the rage. There are plenty of real-life examples of cases where prevention of cyber-security threats and fraudsters might have kept governments and companies out of the news, and with more money in their accounts." (tags: oracle otn security middleware) John Brunswick: 5 Surprisingly Good Benefits of Corporate Blogs "Some may still propose that not all corporations are going to be able to provide the five benefits above and are more focused around shameless self promotion of products and services.  If that is the case, that corporation is most likely not producing something of high value." - John Brunswick (tags: oracle otn enterprise2.0 blogging) InfoQ: IT And Architecture: Inside-Out Perspectives The software industry is in disarray, costs are escalating, and quality is diminishing. Promises of newer technologies and processes and methodologies in IT are still far from materializing on any significant scale. Bruce Laidlaw and Michael Poulin - each with more than 30 years of experience compared notes on the past and present of IT and provide insights on what IT needs to make progress. (tags: ping.fm) SOA & Middleware: Canceling a running composite instance - example Useful tips from Niall Commiskey. (tags: soa middleware oracle) BPEL 11.1.1.2 Certified for Prebuilt E-Business Suite 12.1.3 SOA Integrations (Oracle E-Business Suite Technology) "A new certification was released simultaneously with the E-Business Suite 12.1.3 Maintenance Pack late last year: the use of BPEL 11g Version 11.1.1.2 with E-Business Suite 12.1.3." -- Steven Chan (tags: oracle bpel) Marc Kelderman: OSB: Deploy Service Level Agreement (SLA), aka Alert Rule "The big issue with these SLAs is the deployment. If you have dozens of services, with multiple operations, and you have a lot of environments it takes a while to create them...[But] I have a nice workaround." - Mark Kelderman  (tags: oracle otn soa osb sla) @myfear: Java EE 7 - what's coming up for 2012? First hints. "Even if the actual Java EE 6 version is still not too widespread, we already have seen the first signs of the next EE 7 version written to the sky." -- Markus "myfear" Eisele (tags: oracle otn oracleace java)

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• Learn programming backwards, or "so I failed the FizzBuzz test. Now what?"

  - by moraleida

  A Little Background I'm 28 today, and I've never had any formal training in software development, but I do have two higher education degrees equivalent to a B.A in Public Relations and an Executive MBA focused on Project Management. I've worked on those fields for about 6 years total an then, 2,5 years ago I quit/lost my job and decided to shift directions. After a month thinking things through I decided to start freelancing developing small websites in WordPress. I self-learned my way into it and today I can say I run a humble but successful career developing themes and plugins from scratch for my clients - mostly agencies outsourcing some of their dev work for medium/large websites. But sometimes I just feel that not having studied enough math, or not having a formal understanding of things really holds me behind when I have to compete or work with more experienced developers. I'm constantly looking for ways to learn more but I seem to lack the basics. Unfortunately, spending 4 more years in Computer Science is not an option right now, so I'm trying to learn all I can from books and online resources. This method is never going to have NASA employ me but I really don't care right now. My goal is to first pass the bar and to be able to call myself a real programmer. I'm currently spending my spare time studying Java For Programmers (to get a hold on a language everyone says is difficult/demanding), reading excerpts of Code Complete (to get hold of best practices) and also Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software (to grasp the inner workings of computers). TL;DR So, my current situation is this: I'm basically capable of writing any complete system in PHP (with the help of Google and a few books), integrating Ajax, SQL and whatnot, and maybe a little slower than an experienced dev would expect due to all the research involved. But I was stranded yesterday trying to figure out (not Google) a solution for the FizzBuzz test because I didn't have the if($n1 % $n2 == 0) method modulus operator memorized. What would you suggest as a good way to solve this dilemma? What subjects/books should I study that would get me solving problems faster and maybe more "in a programmers way"? EDIT - Seems that there was some confusion about what did I not know to solve FizzBuzz. Maybe I didn't express myself right: I knew the steps needed to solve the problem. What I didn't memorize was the modulus operator. The problem was in transposing basic math to the program, not in knowing basic math. I took the test for fun, after reading about it on Coding Horror. I just decided it was a good base-comparison line between me and formally-trained devs. I just used this as an example of how not having dealt with math in a computer environment before makes me lose time looking up basic things like modulus operators to be able to solve simple problems.

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• Cookbook: SES and UCM setup

  - by George Maggessy

  The purpose of this post is to guide you setting up the integration between UCM and SES. On my next post I’ll show different approaches to integrate WebCenter Portal, UCM and SES based on some common scenarios. Let’s get started. WebCenter Content Configuration WebCenter Content has a component that adds functionality to the content server to allow it to be searched via the Oracle SES. To enable the component installation, go to Administration -&gt; Admin Server and select SESCrawlerExport. Click the update button and restart UCM_server1 managed server. Once the managed server is back, we’ll configure the component. In the menu, under Administration you should see SESCrawlerExport. Click on the link. You’ll see the window below. Click on Configure SESCrawlerExport. Configure the values below: Hostname: SES hostname. Feed Location: Directory where data feeds will be saved. Metadata List: List of metadata that will be searchable by SES. After updating the values click on the Update button. Come back to the SESCrawlerExport Administration UI and click on Take Snapshot button. It will create the data feeds in the specified Feed Location. To check if the correct configuration was done, please access the following URL http://&lt;ucm_server&gt;:&lt;port&gt;/cs/idcplg?IdcService=SES_CRAWLER_DOWLOAD_CONFIG&amp;source=default. It should download config file in the format below: &lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt; &lt;rsscrawler xmlns="http://xmlns.oracle.com/search/rsscrawlerconfig"&gt; &lt;feedLocation&gt;&lt;![CDATA[http://adc6160699.us.oracle.com:16200/cs/idcplg?IdcService=SES_CRAWLER_DOWNLOAD_CONTROL&amp;source=default]]&gt;&lt;/feedLocation&gt; &lt;errorFileLocation&gt;&lt;![CDATA[http://adc6160699.us.oracle.com:16200/cs/idcplg?IdcService=SES_CRAWLER_STATUS&amp;IsJava=1&amp;source=default&amp;StatusFeed=]]&gt;&lt;/errorFileLocation&gt; &lt;feedType&gt;controlFeed&lt;/feedType&gt; &lt;sourceName&gt;default&lt;/sourceName&gt; &lt;securityType&gt;attributeBased&lt;/securityType&gt; &lt;securityAttribute name="Account" grant="true"/&gt; &lt;securityAttribute name="DocSecurityGroup" grant="true"/&gt; &lt;securityAttribute name="Collab" grant="true"/&gt; &lt;/rsscrawler&gt; Make sure Account and DocSecurityGroup values are true. SES Configuration Let’s start by configuring the Identity Plug-ins in SES. Go to Global Settings -&gt; System -&gt; Identity Management Setup. Select Oracle Content Server and click the Activate button. We’ll populate the following values: HTTP endpoint for authentication: URL to WebCenter Content. Notice that /cs/idcplg was added at the end of the URL. Admin User: UCM Admin user. This user must have access to all CPOE content. Password: Password to Admin user. Authentication Type: NATIVE. Go back to the Home tab and click on Sources on the top left. Select Oracle Content Server on the right and click the Create button. Configuration URL: URL that point to the configuration file. Example: http://&lt;ucm_hostname&gt;:&lt;port&gt;/cs/idcplg?IdcService=SES_CRAWLER_DOWNLOAD_CONFIG&amp;source=default. User ID: UCM Admin user. Password: Password to Admin user. Click on the Authorization tab and add the appropriate values to the fields below. Make sure you see the ACCOUNT and DOCSECURITYGROUP security attributes at the end of the page. HTTP endpoint for authorization: http://&lt;ucm_hostname&gt;:&lt;port&gt;/cs/idcplg. Display URL prefix: http://&lt;ucm_hostname&gt;:&lt;port&gt;/cs. Administrator user: UCM Admin user. Administrator password. On the Document Types tab, add the documents that should be indexed by SES. As our last step, we’ll configure the Federation Trusted Entities under Global Settings. Entity Name: The user must be present in both the identity management server configured for your WebCenter application and the identity management server configured for Oracle SES. For instance, I used weblogic in my sample. Password: Entity user password.\ Now you are ready to test the integration on the SES UI: http://&lt;ses hostname&gt;:&lt;port&gt;/search/query/.

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• Games at Work Part 1: Introduction to Gamification and Applications

  - by ultan o'broin

  Games Are Everywhere How many of you (will admit to) remember playing Pong? OK then, do you play Angry Birds on your phone during work hours? Thought about why we keep playing online, video, and mobile games and what this "gamification" business we're hearing about means for the enterprise applications user experience? In Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World, Jane McGonigal says that playing computer and online games now provides more rewards for people than their real lives do. Games offer intrinsic rewards and happiness to the players as they pursue more satisfying work and the success, social connection, and meaning that goes with it. Yep, Gran Turismo, Dungeons & Dragons, Guitar Hero, Mario Kart, Wii Boxing, and the rest are all forms of work it seems. Games are, in fact, work taken so seriously that governments now move to limit the impact of virtual gaming currencies on the real financial system. Anyone who spends hours harvesting crops on FarmVille realizes it’s hard work too. Yet games evoke a positive emotion in players who voluntarily stay engaged with games for hours, day after day. Some 183 million active gamers in the United States play on average 13 hours per week. Weekly, 5 million of those gamers play for longer than a working week (45 hours). So why not harness the work put into games to solve real-world problems? Or, in the case of our applications users, real-world work problems? What’s a Game? Jane explains that all games have four defining traits: a goal, rules, a feedback system, and voluntary participation. We need to look at what motivational ideas behind the dynamics of the game—what we call gamification—are appropriate for our users. Typically, these motivators are achievement, altruism, competition, reward, self-expression, and status). Common game techniques for leveraging these motivations include: Badging and avatars Points and awards Leader boards Progress charts Virtual currencies or goods Gifting and giving Challenges and quests Some technology commentators argue for a game layer on top of everything, but this layer is already part of our daily lives in many instances. We see gamification working around us already: the badging and kudos offered on My Oracle Support or other Oracle community forums, becoming a Dragon Slayer implementor of Atlassian applications, being made duke of your favorite coffee shop on Yelp, sharing your workout details with Nike+, or donating to Japanese earthquake relief through FarmVille, for example. And what does all this mean for the applications that you use in your work? Read on in part two...

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• Partner Webcast – Oracle SOA Suite 12c: Connect 4 Cloud, Mobile, IoT with On-premise - August 28th 2014

  - by JuergenKress

  Thursday August 28th 2014 SOA Suite 12c Webcast The pace of new business projects continues to grow from increasing customer self-service to seamlessly connecting all your back office and in-the-field applications. At the same time increased integration complexity may seem inevitable as organizations are suddenly faced with the requirement to support three new integration challenges: » Cloud Integration - integrate with the cloud, rapidly integrate a growing list of cloud applications with existing applications » Mobile Integration - the urgency to mobile-enable existing applications » IoT Integration - begin development on the latest trend of connecting Internet of Things (IoT) devices to your existing infrastructure. Join this webcast to get an overview of what is in Java 8 from a business perspective and how with Java 8, you are uniquely positioned to extend innovation in your solutions through the largest, open, standards-based, community-driven platform. Oracle SOA Suite 12c Oracle SOA Suite 12c, the latest version of the industry’s most complete and unified application integration and SOA solution, aims to simplify, accelerate and optimize integrations. Oracle SOA Suite 12c and its associated products, Oracle Managed File Transfer, Oracle Cloud and Application Adapters, B2B and healthcare integration, offer the industry’s most highly integrated platform for solving the increased integration challenges. Oracle SOA Suite 12c is a complete, integrated and best-of-breed platform. It enables next generation integration capabilities through A unified toolset for the development of services and composite applications. A standards-based platform that is service enabled and easily consumable by modern web applications, allowing enterprises to quickly and easily adapt to changes in their business and IT environments. Greater visibility, controls and analytics to govern how services and processes are deployed, reused and changed across their entire lifecycle. Join us to find out more about the new features of Oracle SOA Suite 12c and how it enables you to reduce time to market for new project integration and to reduce integration cost and complexity. Oracle SOA Suite is the ability to simplify by integrating the disparate requirements of cloud, mobile, and IoT devices with existing on-premise applications. Agenda: Oracle SOA Suite 12c new Features Cloud Integration Mobile Enablement Interent of Things (IoT) Summary - Q&A For details please visit our registration page here. Thursday, Aug 28th 2014 10am CET  (9am GMT / 11am EEST SOA & BPM Partner Community For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Wiki Technorati Tags: SOA Suite 12c,Community,Oracle SOA,Oracle BPM,OPN,Jürgen Kress,SOA

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• Applications: The Mathematics of Movement, Part 3

  - by TechTwaddle

  Previously: Part 1, Part 2 As promised in the previous post, this post will cover two variations of the marble move program. The first one, Infinite Move, keeps the marble moving towards the click point, rebounding it off the screen edges and changing its direction when the user clicks again. The second version, Finite Move, is the same as first except that the marble does not move forever. It moves towards the click point, rebounds off the screen edges and slowly comes to rest. The amount of time that it moves depends on the distance between the click point and marble. Infinite Move This case is simple (actually both cases are simple). In this case all we need is the direction information which is exactly what the unit vector stores. So when the user clicks, you calculate the unit vector towards the click point and then keep updating the marbles position like crazy. And, of course, there is no stop condition. There’s a little more additional code in the bounds checking conditions. Whenever the marble goes off the screen boundaries, we need to reverse its direction.  Here is the code for mouse up event and UpdatePosition() method, //stores the unit vector double unitX = 0, unitY = 0; double speed = 6; //speed times the unit vector double incrX = 0, incrY = 0; private void Form1_MouseUp(object sender, MouseEventArgs e) {     double x = e.X - marble1.x;     double y = e.Y - marble1.y;     //calculate distance between click point and current marble position     double lenSqrd = x * x + y * y;     double len = Math.Sqrt(lenSqrd);     //unit vector along the same direction (from marble towards click point)     unitX = x / len;     unitY = y / len;     timer1.Enabled = true; } private void UpdatePosition() {     //amount by which to increment marble position     incrX = speed * unitX;     incrY = speed * unitY;     marble1.x += incrX;     marble1.y += incrY;     //check for bounds     if ((int)marble1.x < MinX + marbleWidth / 2)     {         marble1.x = MinX + marbleWidth / 2;         unitX *= -1;     }     else if ((int)marble1.x > (MaxX - marbleWidth / 2))     {         marble1.x = MaxX - marbleWidth / 2;         unitX *= -1;     }     if ((int)marble1.y < MinY + marbleHeight / 2)     {         marble1.y = MinY + marbleHeight / 2;         unitY *= -1;     }     else if ((int)marble1.y > (MaxY - marbleHeight / 2))     {         marble1.y = MaxY - marbleHeight / 2;         unitY *= -1;     } } So whenever the user clicks we calculate the unit vector along that direction and also the amount by which the marble position needs to be incremented. The speed in this case is fixed at 6. You can experiment with different values. And under bounds checking, whenever the marble position goes out of bounds along the x or y direction we reverse the direction of the unit vector along that direction. Here’s a video of it running;   Finite Move The code for finite move is almost exactly same as that of Infinite Move, except for the difference that the speed is not fixed and there is an end condition, so the marble comes to rest after a while. Code follows, //unit vector along the direction of click point double unitX = 0, unitY = 0; //speed of the marble double speed = 0; private void Form1_MouseUp(object sender, MouseEventArgs e) {     double x = 0, y = 0;     double lengthSqrd = 0, length = 0;     x = e.X - marble1.x;     y = e.Y - marble1.y;     lengthSqrd = x * x + y * y;     //length in pixels (between click point and current marble pos)     length = Math.Sqrt(lengthSqrd);     //unit vector along the same direction as vector(x, y)     unitX = x / length;     unitY = y / length;     speed = length / 12;     timer1.Enabled = true; } private void UpdatePosition() {     marble1.x += speed * unitX;     marble1.y += speed * unitY;     //check for bounds     if ((int)marble1.x < MinX + marbleWidth / 2)     {         marble1.x = MinX + marbleWidth / 2;         unitX *= -1;     }     else if ((int)marble1.x > (MaxX - marbleWidth / 2))     {         marble1.x = MaxX - marbleWidth / 2;         unitX *= -1;     }     if ((int)marble1.y < MinY + marbleHeight / 2)     {         marble1.y = MinY + marbleHeight / 2;         unitY *= -1;     }     else if ((int)marble1.y > (MaxY - marbleHeight / 2))     {         marble1.y = MaxY - marbleHeight / 2;         unitY *= -1;     }     //reduce speed by 3% in every loop     speed = speed * 0.97f;     if ((int)speed <= 0)     {         timer1.Enabled = false;     } } So the only difference is that the speed is calculated as a function of length when the mouse up event occurs. Again, this can be experimented with. Bounds checking is same as before. In the update and draw cycle, we reduce the speed by 3% in every cycle. Since speed is calculated as a function of length, speed = length/12, the amount of time it takes speed to reach zero is directly proportional to length. Note that the speed is in ‘pixels per 40ms’ because the timeout value of the timer is 40ms.  The readability can be improved by representing speed in ‘pixels per second’. This would require you to add some more calculations to the code, which I leave out as an exercise. Here’s a video of this second version,

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• Problem with deleting table rows using ctrl+a for row selection

  - by Frank Nimphius

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} The following code is commonly shown and documented for how to access the row key of selected table rows in an ADF Faces table configured for multi row selection. public void onRemoveSelectedTableRows(ActionEvent actionEvent) {    RichTable richTable = … get access to your table instance …    CollectionModel cm =(CollectionModel)richTable.getValue();    RowKeySet rowKeySet = (RowKeySet)richTable.getSelectedRowKeys();             for (Object key : rowKeySet) {       richTable.setRowKey(key);       JUCtrlHierNodeBinding rowData = (JUCtrlHierNodeBinding)cm.getRowData();       // do something with rowData e.g.update, print, copy   }    //optional, if you changed data, refresh the table         AdfFacesContext adfFacesContext = AdfFacesContext.getCurrentInstance(); adfFacesContext.addPartialTarget(richTable);   return null; } The code shown above works for 99.5 % of all use cases that deal with multi row selection enabled ADF Faces tables, except for when users use the ctrl+a key to mark all rows for delete. Just to make sure I am clear: if you use ctrl+a to mark rows to perform any other operation on them – like bulk updating all rows for a specific attribute – then this works with the code shown above. Even for bulk row delete, any other mean of row selection (shift+click and multiple ctrl+click) works like a charm and the rows are deleted. So apparently it is the use of ctrl+a that causes the problem when deleting multiple rows of an ADF Faces table. To implement code that works for all table selection use cases, including the one to delete all table rows in one go, you use the code shown below. public void onRemoveSelectedTableRows(ActionEvent actionEvent) {   RichTable richTable = … get access to your table instance …   CollectionModel cm = (CollectionModel)richTable.getValue();   RowKeySet rowKeySet = (RowKeySet)richTable.getSelectedRowKeys();   Object[] rowKeySetArray = rowKeySet.toArray();      for (Object key : rowKeySetArray){               richTable.setRowKey(key);     JUCtrlHierNodeBinding rowData = (JUCtrlHierNodeBinding)cm.getRowData();                              rowData.getRow().remove();   }   AdfFacesContext adfFacesContext = AdfFacesContext.getCurrentInstance();          adfFacesContext.addPartialTarget(richTable); }

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• What's the best way to create a static utility class in python? Is using metaclasses code smell?

  - by rsimp

  Ok so I need to create a bunch of utility classes in python. Normally I would just use a simple module for this but I need to be able to inherit in order to share common code between them. The common code needs to reference the state of the module using it so simple imports wouldn't work well. I don't like singletons, and classes that use the classmethod decorator do not have proper support for python properties. One pattern I see used a lot is creating an internal python class prefixed with an underscore and creating a single instance which is then explicitly imported or set as the module itself. This is also used by fabric to create a common environment object (fabric.api.env). I've realized another way to accomplish this would be with metaclasses. For example: #util.py class MetaFooBase(type): @property def file_path(cls): raise NotImplementedError def inherited_method(cls): print cls.file_path #foo.py from util import * import env class MetaFoo(MetaFooBase): @property def file_path(cls): return env.base_path + "relative/path" def another_class_method(cls): pass class Foo(object): __metaclass__ = MetaFoo #client.py from foo import Foo file_path = Foo.file_path I like this approach better than the first pattern for a few reasons: First, instantiating Foo would be meaningless as it has no attributes or methods, which insures this class acts like a true single interface utility, unlike the first pattern which relies on the underscore convention to dissuade client code from creating more instances of the internal class. Second, sub-classing MetaFoo in a different module wouldn't be as awkward because I wouldn't be importing a class with an underscore which is inherently going against its private naming convention. Third, this seems to be the closest approximation to a static class that exists in python, as all the meta code applies only to the class and not to its instances. This is shown by the common convention of using cls instead of self in the class methods. As well, the base class inherits from type instead of object which would prevent users from trying to use it as a base for other non-static classes. It's implementation as a static class is also apparent when using it by the naming convention Foo, as opposed to foo, which denotes a static class method is being used. As much as I think this is a good fit, I feel that others might feel its not pythonic because its not a sanctioned use for metaclasses which should be avoided 99% of the time. I also find most python devs tend to shy away from metaclasses which might affect code reuse/maintainability. Is this code considered code smell in the python community? I ask because I'm creating a pypi package, and would like to do everything I can to increase adoption.

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• SharePoint Thoughts

  - by Tim Murphy

  I was listening to .NET Rocks episode #713 and it got me thinking about a number of SharePoint related topics. I have been working with SharePoint since the 2001 product came out and have watched it evolve over the years.  Today SharePoint is one of the most powerful and flexible products in the market.  Of course that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement (a lot of improvement in fact) and with much power comes much responsibility. My main gripe these days is that you have to develop on a server instance.  This adds a real barrier to entry for developers.  You either have to run VMWare or Hyper-V on your developer machine or actually develop on your dev server for most tasks.  Yes, there is a way to setup a Windows 7 machine with the SharePoint components but it is very hackish. Beyond that the tools in VS2010 are a great leap forward from past generations.  Not requiring a separate package creation tool is not the least of the improvements.  Better workflow and web part development have also eased the burden of many developers. The other thing the show brought up in my thoughts was more around usage.  Users want to be able to self server everything without regard to what affect that has on leveraging their data from a corporate perspective.  My coworkers who work on Lotus Notes ask why the user can’t just do what ever they want? Part of the reason is that those features have not been built, but the other part is that giving them those features is often like giving an infant a loaded hand gun.  You can do it but it doesn’t make it the smart thing to do. As with any tool that is going to be used in the enterprise it should be subject to governance.  If controls are not in place as they said in the episode of DNR the document libraries and I believe SharePoint in general starts to look as disarrayed and unusable as a shared drive.  Consider these factors before giving into every whim of the users.  You should be able to explain to them the tradeoffs of giving them full control versus being able to leverage the information they collect to the benefit of the organization. These are just a couple of the thoughts that were triggered by the show.  I’m sure there are more discussions that can be had.  Feel free to leave your comments about the pros and cons of SharePoint. del.icio.us Tags: .NET Rocks,SharePoint,software development

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• What Counts for a DBA: Passion

  - by drsql

  One of my first questions, when interviewing for a DBA/Programmer position, is always: “Why do you want this job?” The answers I receive range from cheesy hyperbole (“I want to enhance your services with my vast knowledge”) to deadpan realism (“I have N kids who all have a hole in the front of their face where food goes"). Both answers are fine in their own way, at least displaying some self-confidence, humour and honesty, but once in a while, I'll hear the answer that is music to me ears... “I LOVE DATABASES!” Whenever I hear it, my nerves tingle in hopeful anticipation; have I found someone for whom working with database isn't just a job, but a passion? Inevitably, I'm often disappointed. What initially seemed like passion turns out to be rather shallow enthusiasm; the person is enthusiastic about working with databases in the same way he or she might be about eating a bag of Cajun spiced kettle chips; enjoyable, but not something to think about too deeply or take too seriously. Enthusiasm comes, and enthusiasm goes. I've seen countless technical forum users burst onto the scene in a blaze of frantic question-answering, only to fade away within days, never to be heard from again. Passion, however, is more of a longstanding commitment. The biographies of the great technologists and authors of the recent past are full of the sort of passion and engrossment that lead a person to write a novel non-stop for a fortnight with no sleep and only dog food to eat (Philip K. Dick), or refuse to leave the works of the first tunnel under the Thames, even though it was flooded (Brunel). In a similar (though more modest) way, my passion for working with databases has led me to acts that might cause someone for whom it was "just a job" to roll their eyes in disbelief. Most evenings you're more likely to find me reading a database book than watching TV. I've spent hundreds of hours of my spare time writing blogs and articles (some of which are only read by tens of people); I've spent hundreds of dollars travelling to conferences, paying my own flight and hotel expenses, so that I can share a little of what I know, and mix with some like-minded people. And I know I'm far from alone in this, in the SQL Server community. Passion isn't everything, of course, and it isn't always accompanied by any great skill, but in almost every case, that skill can be cultivated over time. If you are doing what you are passionate about, work turns into more than just a way to feed your kids; it becomes your hobby, entertainment, and preoccupation. And it is this passion that gives a DBA the obsessive stubbornness, the refusal to be beaten by even the most difficult problem, which is often so crucial. A final word of warning though: passion without limits can turn weird. Never let it get in the way of your wife, kids, bills, or personal hygiene.

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• Using Definition of Done to Drive Agile Maturity

  - by Dylan Smith

  I’ve been an Agile Coach at a lot of different clients over the years, and I want to share an approach I use to help them adopt and mature over time. It’s important to realize that “Agile” is not a black/white yes/no thing. Teams can be varying degrees of agile. I think of this as their agile maturity level. When I coach teams I want them to start out being a little agile, and get more agile as they mature. The approach I teach them is to use the definition of done as a technique to continuously improve their agile maturity over time. We’re probably all familiar with the concept of “Done Done” that represents what *actually* being done a feature means. Not just when a developer says he’s done right after he writes that last line of code that makes the feature kind-of work. Done Done means the coding is done, it’s been tested, installers and deployment packages have been created, user manuals have been updated, architecture docs have been updated, etc. To enable teams to internalize the concept of “Done Done”, they usually get together and come up with their Definition of Done (DoD) that defines all the activities that need to be completed before a feature is considered Done Done. The Done Done technique typically is applied only to features (aka User Stories). What I do is extend this to apply to several concepts such as User Stories, Sprints, Releases (and sometimes Check-Ins). During project kick-off I’ll usually sit down with the team and go through an exercise of creating DoD’s for each of these concepts (Stories/Sprints/Releases). We’ll usually start by just brainstorming a bunch of activities that could end up in these various DoD’s. Here’s some examples: Code Reviews StyleCop FxCop User Manuals Updated Architecture Docs Updated Tested by QA Tested by UAT Installers Created Support Knowledge Base Updated Deployment Instructions (for Ops) written Automated Unit Tests Run Automated Integration Tests Run Then we start by arranging these activities into the place they occur today (e.g. Do you do UAT testing only once per release? every sprint? every feature?). If the team was previously Waterfall most of these activities probably end up in the Release DoD. An extremely mature agile team would probably have most of these activities in the DoD for the User Stories (because an extremely mature agile team will probably do continuous deployment and release every story). So what we need to do as a team, is work to move these activities from their current home (Release DoD) down into the Sprint DoD and eventually into the User Story DoD (and maybe into the lower-level Check-In DoD if we decide to use that). We don’t have to move them all down to User Story immediately, but as a team we figure out what we think we’re capable of moving down to the Sprint cycle, and Story cycle immediately, and that becomes our starting DoD’s. Over time the team makes an effort to continue moving activities down from Release->Sprint->Story as they become more agile and more mature. I try to encourage them to envision a world in which they deploy to production as each User Story is completed. They would need to be updating User Manuals, creating installers, doing UAT testing (typical Release cycle activities) on every single User Story. They may never actually reach that point, but they should envision that, and strive to keep driving the activities down closer to the User Story cycle s they mature. This is a great technique to give a team an easy-to-follow roadmap to mature their agile practices over time. Sure there’s other aspects to maturity outside of this, but it’s a great technique, that’s easy to visualize, to drive agility into the team. Just keep moving those activities (aka “gates”) down the board from Release->Sprint->Story. I’ll try to give an example of what a recent client of mine had for their DoD’s (this is from memory, so probably not 100% accurate): Release Create/Update deployment Instructions For Ops Instructional Videos Updated Run manual regression test suite UAT Testing In this case that meant deploying to an environment shared across the enterprise that mirrored production and asking other business groups to test their own apps to ensure we didn’t break anything outside our system Sprint Deploy to UAT Environment But not necessarily actually request UAT testing occur User Guides updated Sprint Features Video Created In this case we decided to create a video each sprint showing off the progress (video version of Sprint Demo) User Story Manual Test scripts developed and run Tested by BA Deployed in shared QA environment Using automated deployment process Peer Code Review Code Check-In Compiled (warning-free) Passes StyleCop Passes FxCop Create installer packages Run Automated Tests Run Automated Integration Tests PS – One of my clients had a great question when we went through this activity. They said that if a Sprint is by definition done when the end-date rolls around (time-boxed), isn’t a DoD on a sprint meaningless – it’s done on the end-date regardless of whether those other activities are complete or not? My answer is that while that statement is true – the sprint is done regardless when the end date rolls around – if the DoD activities haven’t been completed I would consider the Sprint a failure (similar to not completing what was committed/planned – failure may be too strong a word but you get the idea). In the Retrospective that will become an agenda item to discuss and understand why we weren’t able to complete the activities we agreed would need to be completed each Sprint.

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• Documentation Changes in Solaris 11.1

  - by alanc

  One of the first places you can see Solaris 11.1 changes are in the docs, which have now been posted in the Solaris 11.1 Library on docs.oracle.com. I spent a good deal of time reviewing documentation for this release, and thought some would be interesting to blog about, but didn't review all the changes (not by a long shot), and am not going to cover all the changes here, so there's plenty left for you to discover on your own. Just comparing the Solaris 11.1 Library list of docs against the Solaris 11 list will show a lot of reorganization and refactoring of the doc set, especially in the system administration guides. Hopefully the new break down will make it easier to get straight to the sections you need when a task is at hand. Packaging System Unfortunately, the excellent in-depth guide for how to build packages for the new Image Packaging System (IPS) in Solaris 11 wasn't done in time to make the initial Solaris 11 doc set. An interim version was published shortly after release, in PDF form on the OTN IPS page. For Solaris 11.1 it was included in the doc set, as Packaging and Delivering Software With the Image Packaging System in Oracle Solaris 11.1, so should be easier to find, and easier to share links to specific pages the HTML version. Beyond just how to build a package, it includes details on how Solaris is packaged, and how package updates work, which may be useful to all system administrators who deal with Solaris 11 upgrades & installations. The Adding and Updating Oracle Solaris 11.1 Software Packages was also extended, including new sections on Relaxing Version Constraints Specified by Incorporations and Locking Packages to a Specified Version that may be of interest to those who want to keep the Solaris 11 versions of certain packages when they upgrade, such as the couple of packages that had functionality removed by an (unusual for an update release) End of Feature process in the 11.1 release. Also added in this release is a document containing the lists of all the packages in each of the major package groups in Solaris 11.1 (solaris-desktop, solaris-large-server, and solaris-small-server). While you can simply get the contents of those groups from the package repository, either via the web interface or the pkg command line, the documentation puts them in handy tables for easier side-by-side comparison, or viewing the lists before you've installed the system to pick which one you want to initially install. X Window System We've not had good X11 coverage in the online Solaris docs in a while, mostly relying on the man pages, and upstream X.Org docs. In this release, we've integrated some X coverage into the Solaris 11.1 Desktop Adminstrator's Guide, including sections on installing fonts for fontconfig or legacy X11 clients, X server configuration, and setting up remote access via X11 or VNC. Of course we continue to work on improving the docs, including a lot of contributions to the upstream docs all OS'es share (more about that another time). Security One of the things Oracle likes to do for its products is to publish security guides for administrators & developers to know how to build systems that meet their security needs. For Solaris, we started this with Solaris 11, providing a guide for sysadmins to find where the security relevant configuration options were documented. The Solaris 11.1 Security Guidelines extend this to cover new security features, such as Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) and Read-Only Zones, as well as adding additional guidelines for existing features, such as how to limit the size of tmpfs filesystems, to avoid users driving the system into swap thrashing situations. For developers, the corresponding document is the Developer's Guide to Oracle Solaris 11 Security, which has been the source for years for documentation of security-relevant Solaris API's such as PAM, GSS-API, and the Solaris Cryptographic Framework. For Solaris 11.1, a new appendix was added to start providing Secure Coding Guidelines for Developers, leveraging the CERT Secure Coding Standards and OWASP guidelines to provide the base recommendations for common programming languages and their standard API's. Solaris specific secure programming guidance was added via links to other documentation in the product doc set. In parallel, we updated the Solaris C Libary Functions security considerations list with details of Solaris 11 enhancements such as FD_CLOEXEC flags, additional *at() functions, and new stdio functions such as asprintf() and getline(). A number of code examples throughout the Solaris 11.1 doc set were updated to follow these recommendations, changing unbounded strcpy() calls to strlcpy(), sprintf() to snprintf(), etc. so that developers following our examples start out with safer code. The Writing Device Drivers guide even had the appendix updated to list which of these utility functions, like snprintf() and strlcpy(), are now available via the Kernel DDI. Little Things Of course all the big new features got documented, and some major efforts were put into refactoring and renovation, but there were also a lot of smaller things that got fixed as well in the nearly a year between the Solaris 11 and 11.1 doc releases - again too many to list here, but a random sampling of the ones I know about & found interesting or useful: The Privileges section of the DTrace Guide now gives users a pointer to find out how to set up DTrace privileges for non-global zones and what limitations are in place there. A new section on Recommended iSCSI Configuration Practices was added to the iSCSI configuration section when it moved into the SAN Configuration and Multipathing administration guide. The Managing System Power Services section contains an expanded explanation of the various tunables for power management in Solaris 11.1. The sample dcmd sources in /usr/demo/mdb were updated to include ::help output, so that developers like myself who follow the examples don't forget to include it (until a helpful code reviewer pointed it out while reviewing the mdb module changes for Xorg 1.12). The README file in that directory was updated to show the correct paths for installing both kernel & userspace modules, including the 64-bit variants.

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• Avoiding the Black Hole of Leads

  - by Charles Knapp

  Sales says, "Marketing doesn’t deliver enough qualified leads. So, we generate 90% of our own leads." Meanwhile, Marketing says, "We generate most of the leads. But, Sales doesn’t contact them quickly enough, while the lead is still interested." According to Sirius Decisions: Up to 90% of leads never make it to closure Sales works on only 11% of the leads supplied by Marketing Only 18% of the leads Sales accepts convert to opportunities Yet, 45% of prospects typically buy a product from someone within 12 months The root cause of these commonplace complaints is a disconnect between the funnels of marketing and sales. Unfortunately, we often see companies with an assortment of poorly integrated marketing tools. It takes too long and too many people to move the data around, scrub it, upload it from one system to another, and get it routed to the right sales teams. As a result, leads fall through the cracks, contextual information is lost, and by the time sales actually contacts a customer it may be too late. Sales automation alone is not enough. Marketing automation (including social) is not enough. Sales and Marketing must work together. It’s time to connect the silos of marketing and sales pipelines and analytics. It’s time for integrated Sales and Marketing automation. Integrated pipelines improve lead quality and timeliness. Marketing systems can track a rich set of contextual information about a prospect–self-disclosed information about interests, content viewed, and so on. This insight can equip the sales rep with rich information to make a face-to-face conversation more relevant and more likely to convert to the next stage in the sales process. Integrated lead to revenue (LTR) management provides end-to-end visibility, enabling the company to measure what is working. Marketing can measure its impact on revenue and other business outcomes, and sales can harness and redirect marketing investments to areas where they most help achieve sales objectives. It’s a win-win play. Marketing delivers more leads that are qualified, cuts cost per lead, and demonstrates a strong Return on Marketing Investment (ROMI). Sales spends more time with warm leads and less time on cold calls, achieves higher close rates, and delivers more revenue. Learn more by attending our Integrated Sales and Marketing session at the upcoming CloudWorld conferences. Or, visit our Sales and Marketing Cloud Service site for videos and other learning resources.

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• ADF Business Components

  - by Arda Eralp

  ADF Business Components and JDeveloper simplify the development, delivery, and customization of business applications for the Java EE platform. With ADF Business Components, developers aren't required to write the application infrastructure code required by the typical Java EE application to: Connect to the database Retrieve data Lock database records Manage transactions   ADF Business Components addresses these tasks through its library of reusable software components and through the supporting design time facilities in JDeveloper. Most importantly, developers save time using ADF Business Components since the JDeveloper design time makes typical development tasks entirely declarative. In particular, JDeveloper supports declarative development with ADF Business Components to: Author and test business logic in components which automatically integrate with databases Reuse business logic through multiple SQL-based views of data, supporting different application tasks Access and update the views from browser, desktop, mobile, and web service clients Customize application functionality in layers without requiring modification of the delivered application The goal of ADF Business Components is to make the business services developer more productive.   ADF Business Components provides a foundation of Java classes that allow your business-tier application components to leverage the functionality provided in the following areas: Simplifying Data Access Design a data model for client displays, including only necessary data Include master-detail hierarchies of any complexity as part of the data model Implement end-user Query-by-Example data filtering without code Automatically coordinate data model changes with business services layer Automatically validate and save any changes to the database   Enforcing Business Domain Validation and Business Logic Declaratively enforce required fields, primary key uniqueness, data precision-scale, and foreign key references Easily capture and enforce both simple and complex business rules, programmatically or declaratively, with multilevel validation support Navigate relationships between business domain objects and enforce constraints related to compound components   Supporting Sophisticated UIs with Multipage Units of Work Automatically reflect changes made by business service application logic in the user interface Retrieve reference information from related tables, and automatically maintain the information when the user changes foreign-key values Simplify multistep web-based business transactions with automatic web-tier state management Handle images, video, sound, and documents without having to use code Synchronize pending data changes across multiple views of data Consistently apply prompts, tooltips, format masks, and error messages in any application Define custom metadata for any business components to support metadata-driven user interface or application functionality Add dynamic attributes at runtime to simplify per-row state management   Implementing High-Performance Service-Oriented Architecture Support highly functional web service interfaces for business integration without writing code Enforce best-practice interface-based programming style Simplify application security with automatic JAAS integration and audit maintenance "Write once, run anywhere": use the same business service as plain Java class, EJB session bean, or web service   Streamlining Application Customization Extend component functionality after delivery without modifying source code Globally substitute delivered components with extended ones without modifying the application   ADF Business Components implements the business service through the following set of cooperating components: Entity object An entity object represents a row in a database table and simplifies modifying its data by handling all data manipulation language (DML) operations for you. These are basically your 1 to 1 representation of a database table. Each table in the database will have 1 and only 1 EO. The EO contains the mapping between columns and attributes. EO's also contain the business logic and validation. These are you core data services. They are responsible for updating, inserting and deleting records. The Attributes tab displays the actual mapping between attributes and columns, the mapping has following fields: Name : contains the name of the attribute we expose in our data model. Type : defines the data type of the attribute in our application. Column : specifies the column to which we want to map the attribute with Column Type : contains the type of the column in the database   View object A view object represents a SQL query. You use the full power of the familiar SQL language to join, filter, sort, and aggregate data into exactly the shape required by the end-user task. The attributes in the View Objects are actually coming from the Entity Object. In the end the VO will generate a query but you basically build a VO by selecting which EO need to participate in the VO and which attributes of those EO you want to use. That's why you have the Entity Usage column so you can see the relation between VO and EO. In the query tab you can clearly see the query that will be generated for the VO. At this stage we don't need it and just use it for information purpose. In later stages we might use it. Application module An application module is the controller of your data layer. It is responsible for keeping hold of the transaction. It exposes the data model to the view layer. You expose the VO's through the Application Module. This is the abstraction of your data layer which you want to show to the outside word.It defines an updatable data model and top-level procedures and functions (called service methods) related to a logical unit of work related to an end-user task. While the base components handle all the common cases through built-in behavior, customization is always possible and the default behavior provided by the base components can be easily overridden or augmented. When you create EO's, a foreign key will be translated into an association in our model. It defines the type of relation and who is the master and child as well as how the visibility of the association looks like. A similar concept exists to identify relations between view objects. These are called view links. These are almost identical as association except that a view link is based upon attributes defined in the view object. It can also be based upon an association. Here's a short summary: Entity Objects: representations of tables Association: Relations between EO's. Representations of foreign keys View Objects: Logical model View Links: Relationships between view objects Application Model: interface to your application  

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• BIDS Helper 1.6 Beta Release (now with SQL 2012 support!)

  - by Darren Gosbell

  The beta for BIDS Helper 1.6 was just released. We have not updated the version notification just yet as we would like to get some feedback on people's experiences with the SQL 2012 version. So if you are using SQL 2012, go grab it and let us know how you go (you can post a comment on this blog post or on the BIDS Helper site itself). This is the first release that supports SQL 2012 and consequently also the first release that runs in Visual Studio 2010. A big thanks to Greg Galloway for doing the bulk of the work on this release. Please note that if you are doing an xcopy deploy that you will need to unblock the files you download or you will get a cryptic error message. This appears to be caused by a security update to either Visual Studio or the .Net framework – the xcopy deploy instructions have been updated to show you how to do this. Below are the notes from the release page. ====== This beta release is the first to support SQL Server 2012 (in addition to SQL Server 2005, 2008, and 2008 R2). Since it is marked as a beta release, we are looking for bug reports in the next few months as you use BIDS Helper on real projects. In addition to getting all existing BIDS Helper functionality working appropriately in SQL Server 2012 (SSDT), the following features are new... Analysis Services Tabular Smart Diff Tabular Actions Editor Tabular HideMemberIf Tabular Pre-Build Fixes and Updates The Unused Datasets feature for Reporting Services now accounts for new features in Reporting Services 2008 R2 like Lookups and new features in Reporting Services 2012. SSIS: emit an informational message when a variable has an expression defined and EvaluateAsExpression = False SSAS: roles reports points to wrong server SSIS - Variable Copy / Move broken in v1.5 "Unused DataSets Report" not showing up in Context menu on VS2005 if Solution Folders used SSAS Tabular: Create a UI for managing actions SSAS Tabular: Smart Diff improvements for new schema and Tabular models SSIS: Copy/Move Variable Erroring due to custom Control Flow item Icon SSIS Performance Visualization Index out of range fixing bugs in AggManager when aggregation design IDs don't match names The exe downloads are a self extracting installer, the zip downloads allow for an xcopy deploy. Make sure to note the updated xcopy deploy instructions for SQL Server 2012.

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• Professional immigration

  - by etranger

  Hello all, Does anyone here have a practical advice on professional relocation from Russia to Europe? The reasons behind making such a decision are far beyond the subject, perhaps, so I'll stick to the practical part. Having done some of the "common stuff" for finding a job, I am now facing two serious problems: I am a "dual-class" person, with university degree in marketing, and multiple years of self-studied computer competence (hence my writing here). Have professional experience in both areas. I don't currently hold a European work permit. From what I can see, this results in normal HR person throwing out my CV as either being "overqualified" or "too much trouble with making the permit". I do have the skills and character to start my own business, but it requires start-up capital that I don't have, over the last years I had to pay high bills for medical treatment of my family member, who had deceased. Now, I'm almost out of debts. As you can probably guess, English is not a problem, and I'm open to new languages, but first steps of entering the market, or the society, is the problematic part. I live close to Norway, and am trying to get some professional contacts there, but it hasn't got me any practical perspective so far. Any advice is greatly appreciated. EDIT: I am currently making my living off web site development, and occasional consulting services both in IT and marketing. For purely geographic reasons I'm dealing with clients that reside in the same city where I live, pop. 350 000. Being quite local, market requirements for web sites are simple and stable — clients need to control navigation, write articles in a word-like editor, upload illustrations and place ad banners, all with no additional programming. As many web developers do, I'm using my own content management system that fits these expectations. I have also started developing a newer version of this system that has better support for international environments, but I'm too distant from the real market demand in Europe to speak of the right track here. Technically it's based on php/mysql and uses xslt for templating. It allows for quick website deployment, and has architectural neatness, lack of which made me abandon similar opensource solutions (Joomla and the like). Deploying time from rasterized design proofs is normally under 6-8 working hours, don't know how that compares to the world practice. EDIT 2: Can anyone share what Norwegian (Scandinavian) web solutions market currently demands?

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• Trouble with Samba Domain

  - by Arkevius

  I'm having a bit of trouble setting up this Samba domain correctly. I'm getting an Access Denied error when trying to add a Windows XP machine to the domain. I'll go through my scenario in detail, but for those of you wanting a TLDR summary it'll be at the bottom of this post. I have HP Proliant server with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS installed. For this particular environment, I need this server to act as a PDC, file server, and print server. I began by updating and upgrading the packages (of course). Then went to install samba, gnome-desktop, wine, and cpanm. Samba was, of course, for the PDC and file/print services. The GUI was needed because a certain software has to be installed on there that needs a GUI. Wine was needed because the software is Windows-native. And cpanm was for a perl script I have running. For Samba, I went into the smb.conf file and enabled domain logons, changed the workgroup/domain name, the logon script for a per-group basis (netlogon/%g), enabled the netlogon and profiles share, and setup a couple of custom shares for the file service. The printer was added later, and seems to be working just fine. I then restarted the services, and used the net groupmap command to ensure my unix groups were mapped correctly to the Windows groups. After this, I went to a Windows box, and was able to successfully join the domain without a problem. After some fidgeting with the software to get it running on the win boxes from the server (it's a records management system program, which stores it's database files on the server), I went to add another computer to the domain. But now it's saying Access Denied. Before when I had this trouble it was because I forgot to add the group "machines" so Samba could create machine accounts. Thinking this was the case, I manually created the machine account to test this theory. However, it would still give me an Access Denied error. That must mean it has something to do with permissions now, correct? I've been fighting with this server for the past two weeks. If it's not one thing that;s wrong, then it's something else completely different. This would be the third time I've actually reinstalled everything to start over. I'll post snippets of my system settings below. If anything else is needed, just say the word and I'll gather up the info. The unix group 'domadmin' is the Domain Admins group. Samba Administrator account administrator:x:1000:1000:Administrator,,,:/home/administrator:/bin/bash Adminstrator's groups administrator adm cdrom sudo dip plugdev lpadmin sambashare domadmin crimestar Samba's Configuration FIle (a snippet anyways) [global] workgroup = CITYPD server string = BPDServer dns proxy = no log file = /var/log/samba/log.%m max log size = 1000 syslog = 0 panic action = /usr/share/samba/panic-action %d security = user encrypt passwords = true passdb backend = tdbsam obey pam restrictions = yes unix password sync = yes passwd program = /usr/bin/passwd %u passwd chat = *Enter\snew\s*\spassword:* %n\n *Retype\snew\s*\spassword:* %n\n *password\supdated\ssuccessfully* . pam password change = yes map to guest = bad user domain logons = yes logon path = \\%L\srv\samba\profiles\%U logon script = logon.bat add machine script = /usr/sbin/useradd -g machines -c "%u machine account" -d /var/lib/samba -s /bin/false %u domain master = yes usershare allow guests = yes [netlogon] comment = Network Logon Service path = /srv/samba/netlogon/%g guest ok = yes read only = yes browseable = no [profiles] comment = All Printers browseable = no path = /var/spool/samba printable = yes guest ok = no read only = yes create mask = 0700 [print$] comment = Printer Drivers path = /var/lib/samba/printers browseable = yes read only = yes guest ok = no write list = root, @lpadmin [crimestar] comment = "Crimestar DB" path = /srv/crimestar/db valid users = @domadmin, @crimestar admin users = administrator writeable = yes guest ok = no browseable = no create mask = 0666 directory mask = 0777 [crimestarfiles] path = /home/administrator/.wine/drive_c/crimestar admin users = administrator browseable = yes ls -la on /srv/samba/profiles drwxrwxrwx 2 root machines 4096 Nov 21 15:27 . drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 Nov 21 15:28 .. ls -la on /srv/samba/netlogon drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 4096 Nov 21 15:30 . drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 Nov 21 15:28 .. drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Nov 21 15:30 crimestar drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Nov 21 18:13 domadmin drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Nov 21 15:30 guests drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Nov 21 15:29 users GrouMap list Domain Users (S-1-5-21-2978508755-2341913247-928297747-513) -> users Domain Admins (S-1-5-21-2978508755-2341913247-928297747-512) -> domadmin Domain Guests (S-1-5-21-2978508755-2341913247-928297747-514) -> nogroup TLDR I'm getting an Access Denied error message while trying to join a windows box to a samba domain, even after I successfully joined another computer without a problem. System settings / files are quoted above. Anyone have any ideas or suggestions?

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• More on Map Testing

  - by Michael Stephenson

  I have been chatting with Maurice den Heijer recently about his codeplex project for the BizTalk Map Testing Framework (http://mtf.codeplex.com/). Some of you may remember the article I did for BizTalk 2009 and 2006 about how to test maps but with Maurice's project he is effectively looking at how to improve productivity and quality by building some useful testing features within the framework to simplify the process of testing maps. As part of our discussion we realized that we both had slightly different approaches to how we validate the output from the map. Put simple Maurice does some xpath validation of the data in various nodes where as my approach for most standard cases is to use serialization to allow you to validate the output using normal MSTest assertions. I'm not really going to go into the pro's and con's of each approach because I think there is a place for both and also I'm sure others have various approaches which work too. What would be great is for the map testing framework to provide support for different ways of testing which can cover everything from simple cases to some very specialized scenarios. So as agreed with Maurice I have done the sample which I will talk about in the rest of this article to show how we can use the serialization approach to create and compare the input and output from a map in normal development testing. Prerequisites One of the common patterns I usually implement when developing BizTalk solutions is to use xsd.exe to create .net classes for most of the schemas used within the solution. In the testing pattern I will take advantage of these .net classes. The Map In this sample the map we will use is very simple and just concatenates some data from the input message to the output message. Hopefully the below picture illustrates this well. The Test In the test I'm basically taking the following actions: Use the .net class generated from the schema to create an input message for the map Serialize the input object to a file Run the map from .net using the standard BizTalk test method which was generated for running the map Deserialize the output file from the map execution to a .net class representing the output schema Use MsTest assertions to validate things about the output message The below picture shows this: As you can see the code for this is pretty simple and it's all strongly typed which means changes to my schema which can affect the tests can be easily picked up as compilation errors. I can then chose to have one test which validates most of the output from the map, or to have many specific tests covering individual scenarios within the map. Summary Hopefully this post illustrates a powerful yet simple way of effectively testing many BizTalk mapping scenarios. I will probably have more conversations with Maurice about these approaches and perhaps some of the above will be included in the mapping test framework.   The sample can be downloaded from here: http://cid-983a58358c675769.office.live.com/self.aspx/Blog%20Samples/More%20Map%20Testing/MapTestSample.zip

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• Does the method of adjustment matter, or just the final calibration?

  - by Steve

  A company produces software (and hardware) that is used to both perform automatic adjustments on electronic test equipment as well as perform calibrations of the same equipment. The results of the calibrations are put onto a certificate of calibration that is sent to the customer along with the equipment. This calibration certificate states various conditions of the calibration, such as what hardware (models/serial numbers) and software (version) was used to perform the calibration, as well as things like environmental conditions, etc. Making the assumption that the software used to produce the data (and listed on the calibration certificate) used on the certificate of calibration must have gone through a "test/release" process and must be considered "released" software - does this also mean that the software used for adjustment must also be released? I believe that the method (software/environmental conditions/etc) used or present during adjustment doesn't matter, all that really matters is the end result of the calibration, the conditions present during the calibration, and whether or not the equipment was within the specifications. The real question I'm hoping to get answered: Is there a reputable source (e.g. NIST or somewhere similar) that addresses this question? (I have searched...) The thinking is that during high volume production runs, the "unreleased" system can be used to perform adjustments, as long as a released system is used to perform the calibrations, since the time required to perform the adjustments is much longer than the calibration. This unreleased system will eventually become released for use, but currently is not. Also, please not that there is a distinction between "adjustment" and "calibration". The definition from BIPM International vocabulary of metrology, 2.39: Operation that, under specified conditions, in a first step, establishes a relation between the quantity values with measurement uncertainties provided by measurement standards and corresponding indications with associated measurement uncertainties (of the calibrated instrument or secondary standard) and, in a second step, uses this information to establish a relation for obtaining a measurement result from an indication. Followed by NOTE 2 (emphasis in original text): Calibration should not be confused with adjustment of a measuring system, often mistakenly called "self-calibration", nor with verification of calibration As a side note, I'm not sure why this got down voted. It's regarding software and it's use before and after release for use. I believe there is a best practice that can be applied and this is (hopefully) not primarily opinion based.

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• Best Practices for serializing/persisting String Object Dictionary entities

  - by Mark Heath

  I'm noticing a trend towards using a dictionary of string to object (or sometimes string to string), instead of strongly typed objects. For example, the new Katana project makes heavy use of IDictionary<string,object>. This approach avoids the need to continually update your entity classes/DTOs and the database tables that persist them with new properties. It also avoids the need to create new derived entity types to support new types of entity, since the Dictionary is flexible enough to store any arbitrary properties. Here's a contrived example: class StorageDevice { public int Id { get; set; } public string Name { get; set; } } class NetworkShare : StorageDevice { public string Path { get; set; } public string LoginName { get; set; } public string Password { get; set; } } class CloudStorage : StorageDevice { public string ServerUri { get; set } public string ContainerName { get; set; } public int PortNumber { get; set; } public Guid ApiKey { get; set; } } versus: class StorageDevice { public IDictionary<string, object> Properties { get; set; } } Basically I'm on the lookout for any talks, books or articles on this approach, so I can pick up on any best practices / difficulties to avoid. Here's my main questions: Does this approach have a name? (only thing I've heard used so far is "self-describing objects") What are the best practices for persisting these dictionaries into a relational database? Especially the challenges of deserializing them successfully with strongly typed languages like C#. Does it change anything if some of the objects in the dictionary are themselves lists of strongly typed entities? Should a second dictionary be used if you want to temporarily store objects that are not to be persisted/serialized across a network, or should you use some kind of namespacing on the keys to indicate this?

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