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• The Oscar of Java Programming

  - by Tori Wieldt

  Why bother nominating a peer, yourself or your company for a Duke's Choice Award? I asked Duke's Choice Award winner Fabiane Nardon, whose team won in 2005 for the Healthcare Information System they created for the Brazilian government, what it was like winning the award and if it had any impact on her career. Here's what she told me: 1) What was it like to win a Duke's Choice Award? For me it was like winning an Oscar or a Grammy :-) I think that for a Java developer, a Duke's Choice Award is probably the highest award you can get, so it was really an honor. We had an amazing team working on that project and the team really deserved it. We were all very happy when we got that email with the announcement. That moment was one of the most important moments of my career. 2) What benefits have you gotten from being a "Duke's Choice Award Winner?" I think the most important benefit you get from winning a Duke is the fact that you become known by your peers. This opens many doors, since you are approached by more people, get invitations to speak in more conferences, you meet people with the same technical interests you have and so on. I certainly benefited a lot from it. We were lucky that in 2005, when we got our award, the winners were featured in the JavaOne keynote, with short documentaries produced about each one. So, we could be on the stage and talk a little about the project. We got lots of press at the time. We see  today's winners benefiting a lot from the press coverage. 3) How is the the Brazilian Healthcare Information System project doing today? Still running and getting new features every year. I'm not involved on the project anymore, but there are good people taking care of it. We opened the code since the beginning, so different cities could use and add features to it. There are many new developers working on that code base right now and I hope they can take the whole system to a new level. 4) What are you up to these days? I worked in the healthcare field for many years and a few years ago I decided that it was time to move on and take the experience I got designing large scale and mission critical systems to other fields. Since then I have been working with high access internet applications. I also co-founded ToolsCloud, a company that provides a development environment with open source tools in the cloud. We just launched ToolsCloud in USA, so other companies can get the same bundle of tools, hassle free, that several companies are successfully using in Brazil. Besides that, right now I'm personally working on the coolest project I ever worked on. It combines several technical challenges with a good dose of social impact. We should launch it in the second semester and I should keep it as a secret for now. Hopefully it will be useful to many people and disruptive enough to maybe get us a new Duke's Choice Award. Who knows? Read more about Fabiane in the "Heroes of Java" series by Markus Eisele. Her Twitter handle is @FabianeNardon. The Duke's Choice Awards celebrate extreme innovation in the world of Java technology. Nominate an individual, a group or company who show the best in Java innovation. Nominate via the easy online form at www.Java.net/dukeschoice. Nominations are open until June 15, 2012.

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• Archiving SQLHelp tweets

  - by jamiet

  #SQLHelp is a Twitter hashtag that can be used by any Twitter user to get help from the SQL Server community. I think its fair to say that in its first year of being it has proved to be a very useful resource however Kendra Little (@kendra_little) made a very salient point yesterday when she tweeted: Is there a way to search the archives of #sqlhelp Trying to remember answer to a question I know I saw a couple months ago http://twitter.com/#!/Kendra_Little/status/15538234184441856 This highlights an inherent problem with Twitter’s search capability – it simply does not reach far enough back in time. I have made steps to remedy that situation by putting into place two initiatives to archive Tweets that contain the #sqlhelp hashtag. The Archivist http://archivist.visitmix.com/ is a free service that, quite simply, archives a history of tweets that contain a given search term by periodically polling Twitter’s search service with that search term and subsequently displaying a dashboard providing an aggregate view of those tweets for things like tweet volume over time, top users and top words (Archivist FAQ). I have set up an archive on The Archivist for “sqlhelp” which you can view at http://archivist.visitmix.com/jamiet/7. Here is a screenshot of the SQLHelp dashboard 36 minutes after I set it up: There is lots of good information in there, including the fact that Jonathan Kehayias (@SQLSarg) is the most active SQLHelp tweeter (I suspect as an answerer rather than a questioner ) and that SSIS has proven to be a rather (ahem) popular subject!! Datasift The Archivist has its uses though for our purposes it has a couple of downsides. For starters you cannot search through an archive (which is what Kendra was after) and nor can you export the contents of the archive for offline analysis. For those functions we need something a bit more heavyweight and for that I present to you Datasift. Datasift is a tool (currently an alpha release) that allows you to search for tweets and provide them through an object called a Datasift stream. That sounds very similar to normal Twitter search though it has one distinct advantage that other Twitter search tools do not – Datasift has access to Twitter’s Streaming API (aka the Twitter Firehose). In addition it has access to a lot of other rather nice features: It provides the Datasift API that allows you to consume the output of a Datasift stream in your tool of choice (bring on my favourite ultimate mashup tool J ) It has a query language (called Filtered Stream Definition Language – FSDL for short) A Datasift stream can consume (and filter) other Datasift streams Datasift can (and does) consume services other than Twitter If I refer to Datasift as “ETL for tweets” then you may get some sort of idea what it is all about. Just as I did with The Archivist I have set up a publicly available Datasift stream for “sqlhelp” at http://datasift.net/stream/1581/sqlhelp. Here is the FSDL query that provides the data: twitter.text contains "sqlhelp" Pretty simple eh? At the current time it provides little more than a rudimentary dashboard but as Datasift is currently an alpha release I think this may be worth keeping an eye on. The real value though is the ability to consume the output of a stream via Datasift’s RESTful API, observe: http://api.datasift.net/stream.xml?stream_identifier=c7015255f07e982afdeebdf1ae6e3c0d&username=jamiet&api_key=XXXXXXX (Note that an api_key is required during the alpha period so, given that I’m not supplying my api_key, this URI will not work for you) Just to prove that a Datasift stream can indeed consume data from another stream I have set up a second stream that further filters the first one for tweets containing “SSIS”. That one is at http://datasift.net/stream/1586/ssis-sqlhelp and here is the FSDL query: rule "414c9845685ff8d2548999cf3162e897" and (interaction.content contains "ssis") When Datasift moves beyond alpha I’ll re-assess how useful this is going to be and post a follow-up blog. @Jamiet

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• What’s the Difference Between Succession Management and Talent Reviews?

  - by HCM-Oracle

  By Marcie Van Houten Is there a difference or are they pieces of one holistic strategic talent process? And can you have one without the other?  First, let me give a quick definition of each.  Succession planning (or management) is about creating succession slates or talent pools in support of a critical job or position or sets thereof. And then using those plans to help mitigate risk and plan talent needs for the organization.  Talent reviews (known by other names often) are sets of meetings where managers and executives come together to review, discuss and often heatedly debate the merits and potential of their employees, and then place and sometimes calibrate that talent on a performance to potential matrix.  These are some of the most strategic conversations happening in conference rooms across the globe. I speak with a lot of organizations about their practices in this area and the answers to these questions are as varied and nuanced as there are organizations thinking about them.  Some are passionate about their talent review processes and have a very evolved and thoughtful approach.  They really know their people, where their talent is, and the opportunities they plan to offer them.  And to them that is their succession process.  They may never create a slate of named candidates for a job or assign employees to formal talent pools.   On the flip side there are other organizations that create slates and slates and often multiple talent pools to support their strategic positions.  Through these, they are able to mitigate the risk associated with having a key player leave their organization.  And for them, that is their succession process.  Some will start from the lower levels of their organization and roll up their succession plans, while other organizations only cover their top 200 executives and key positions with plans.  And then there are organizations that leverage some of all of these.  Ultimately, the goals are to increase employee engagement, reduce talent-related risk, ensure the right talent is aligned to the strategic initiatives and to drive business value.  The approaches are as unique as the organizations they represent and the business opportunities they are looking to seize upon.   And that's ok.  It's great in fact. Because one thing that is common is the recognition that the need to know your people and align your top talent to the future needs of the organization is mission critical. Sure, there are a set of commonly recognized best practices and guiding principles for all of this.  There is no one right or perfect answer.  And that is what makes this all so much darn fun.  With Talent Review and Succession Management from Oracle HCM Cloud, we’ve blended the ability to support your strategic talent review conversations with both succession plans and talent pools allowing for one very seamless and interactive process. So whether you create a lot of succession plans, only focus on talent pools, have a robust talent review process, or all of the above, Oracle has you covered. I’m looking forward to spending time with our customers at the upcoming OHUG Global Conference 2014 happening June 9-13 in Las Vegas.  It’s an opportunity for me to talk to customers about their business and how they are doing strategic talent processes like talent reviews and succession.  I hope to see you there. Marcie Van Houten brings over 20 years of management consulting, information systems and human capital management experience to her role as director of product strategy at Oracle. Ms. Van Houten has spent the past several years at Oracle working closely with customers to help drive the direction of the company's talent and succession management applications. Additionally, she spent nine years at PeopleSoft as Director of Information Systems leading human capital management implementation projects. Marcie Van Houten lives in Walnut Creek, California, and holds a MBA from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.  You can follow her on Twitter: @MarcieVH

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• What I've Gained from being a Presenter at Tech Events

  - by MOSSLover

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/MOSSLover/archive/2014/06/12/what-ive-gained-from-being-a-presenter-at-tech-events.aspxI know I fail at blogging lately.  As I've said before life happens and it gets in the way of best laid out plans.  I thought about creating some type of watch with some app that basically dictates using dragon naturally speaking to Wordpress, but alas no time and the write processing capabilities just don't exist yet.So to get to my point Alison Gianotto created this blog post: http://www.snipe.net/2014/06/why-you-should-stop-stalling-and-start-presenting/.  I like the message she has stated in this post and I want to share something personal.It was around 2007 that I was seriously looking into leaving the technology field altogether and going back to school.  I was calling places like Washington University in Saint Louis and University of Missouri Kansas City asking them how I could go about getting into some type of post graduate medical school program.  My entire high school career was based on Medical Explorers and somehow becoming a doctor.  I did not want to take my hobby and continue using it as a career mechanism.  I was unhappy, but I didn't realize why I was unhappy at the time.  It was really a lot of bad things involving the lack of self confidence and self esteem.  Overall I was not in a good place and it took me until 2011 to realize that I still was not in a good place in life.So in about April 2007 or so I started this blog that you guys have been reading or occasionally read.  I kind of started passively stalking people by reading their blogs in the SharePoint and .Net communities.  I also started listening to .Net Rocks & watching videos on their corresponding training for SharePoint, WCF, WF, and a bunch of other technologies.  I wanted more knowledge, so someone suggested I go to a user group.  I've told this story before about how I met Jeff Julian & John Alexander, so that point I will spare you the details.  You know how I got to my first user group presentation and how I started getting involved with events, so I'll also spare those details.The point I want to touch on is that I went out I started speaking and that path I took helped me gain the self confidence and self respect I needed.  When I first moved to NYC I couldn't even ride a subway by myself or walk alone without getting lost.  Now I feel like I can go out and solve any problem someone throws at me.  So you see what Alison states in her blog post is true and I am a great example to that point.  I stood in front of 800 or so people at SharePoint Conference in 2011 and spoke about a topic.  In 2007 I would have hidden or stuttered the entire time.  I have now spoken at over 70 events and user groups.  I am a top 25 influencer in my technology.  I was a most valued professional for years in a row in Microsoft SharePoint.  People are constantly trying to gain my time, so that they can pick my brain for solutions and other life problems.  I went from maybe five or six friends to over hundreds of friends in various cities across the globe.  I'm not saying it's an instant fame and it doesn't take a ton of work, but I have never looked back once at my life and regretted the choice I made in 2007.  It has lead me to a lot of other things in my life, including more positivity and happiness.  If anyone ever wants to contact me and pick my brain on a presentation go ahead.  If you want me to help you find the best meetup that suits you for that presentation I can try to help too (I might be a little more helpful in the Microsoft or iOS arenas though).  The best thing I can state is don't be scared just do it.  If you need an audience I can try to pencil it in my schedule.  I can't promise anything, but if you are in NYC I can at least try.

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• PHP Web Services - Nice try

  Thanks to the membership in the O'Reilly User Group Programme the Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community (short: MSCC) recently received a welcome package with several book titles. Among them is the latest publication of Lorna Jane Mitchell - 'PHP Web Services: APIs for the Modern Web'. Following is the book review I put on Amazon: Nice try! Initially, I was astonished that a small book like 'PHP Web Services' would be able to cover all the interesting topics about APIs and Web Services, independently whether they are written in PHP or not. And unfortunately, the title isn't able to stand up to the readers (or at least my) expectations. Maybe as a light defense, there is no usual paragraph about the intended audience of that book, but still I have to admit that the first half (chapters 1 to 8) are well written and Lorna has her points on the various technologies. Also, the code samples in PHP are clean and easy to understand. With chapter 'Debugging Web Services' the book started to change my mind about the clarity of advice and the instructions on designing and developing good APIs. Eventually, this might be related to the fact that I'm used to other tools since years, like Telerik Fiddler as HTTP proxy in order to trace and inspect any kind of request/response handling. Including localhost monitoring, SSL certification acceptance, and the ability to debug mobile devices, especially iOS-based ones. Compared to Charles, Fiddler is available for free. What really got me off the hook is the following statement in chapter 10 about Service Type Decisions: "For users who have larger systems using technology stacks such as Java, C++, or .NET, it may be easier for them to integrate with a SOAP service." WHAT? A couple of pages earlier the author recommends to stay away from 'old-fashioned' API styles like SOAP (if possible). And on top of that I wonder why there are tons of documentation towards development of RESTful Web Services based on WebAPI. The ASP.NET stack clearly moves away from SOAP to JSON and REST since years! Honestly, as a software developer on the .NET stack this leaves a mixed feeling after all. As for the remaining chapters I simply consider them as 'blah blah' without any real value and lots of theoretical advice. Related to the chapter 13 about 'Documentation', I just had the 'pleasure' to write a C#-based client against a Java-based SOAP Web Service. Personally, I take the WSDL as the master reference in the first place and Visual Studio generates all the stub types involved in the communication. During the implementation and testing I came across a 'java.lang.NullPointerException' in various methods and for various method parameters. The WSDL and the generated types were declared as Nullable, so nothing to worry about, or? Well, I logged in a support ticket, and guess what was the response to that scenario? "The service definition in the WSDL is wrong, please refer to the documentation in order to use the methods and parameters correctly" - No comment! Lorna's title is a quick read and in some areas she has good advice on designing and implementing Web Services and APIs. But roughly 100 pages aren't enough to cover a vast topic like that. After all, nice try and I'm looking forward to an improved second edition. Honestly, I never thought that I would come across a poor review. In general, it's a good book but it clearly has a lack of depth, the PHP code samples are incomplete (closing tags missing), and there are too many assumptions and theoretical statements.

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• The Oracle Retail Week Awards - most exciting awards yet?

  - by sarah.taylor(at)oracle.com

  Last night's annual Oracle Retail Week Awards saw the UK's top retailers come together to celebrate the very best of our industry over the last year.  The Grosvenor House Hotel on Park Lane in London was the setting for an exciting ceremony which this year marked several significant milestones in British - and global - retail.  Check out our videos about the event at our Oracle Retail YouTube channel, and see if you were snapped by our photographer on our Oracle Retail Facebook page. There were some extremely hot contests for many of this year's awards - and all very deserving winners.  The entries have demonstrated beyond doubt that retailers have striven to push their standards up yet again in all areas over the past year.  The judging panel includes some of the most prestigious names in the retail industry - to impress the panel enough to win an award is a substantial achievement.  This year the panel included the likes of Andy Clarke - Chief Executive of ASDA Group; Mark Newton Jones - CEO of Shop Direct Group; Richard Pennycook - the finance director at Morrisons; Rob Templeman - Chief Executive of Debenhams; and Stephen Sunnucks - the president of Gap Europe.  These are retail veterans  who have each helped to shape the British High Street over the last decade.  It was great to chat with many of them in the Oracle VIP area last night.  For me, last night's highlight was honouring both Sir Stuart Rose and Sir Terry Leahy for their contributions to the retail industry.  Both have set the standards in retailing over the last twenty years and taken their respective businesses from strength to strength, demonstrating that there is always a need for innovation even in larger businesses, and that a business has to adapt quickly to new technology in order to stay competitive.  Sir Terry Leahy's retirement this year marks the end of an era of global expansion for the Tesco group and a milestone in the progression of British retail.  Sir Terry has helped steer Tesco through nearly 20 years of change, with 14 years as Chief Executive.  During this time he led the drive for international expansion and an aggressive campaign to increase market share.  He has led the way for High Street retailers in adapting to the rise of internet retailing and nurtured a very successful home delivery service.  More recently he has pioneered the notion of cross-channel retailing with the introduction of Tesco apps for the iPhone and Android mobile phones allowing customers to scan barcodes of items to add to a shopping list which they can then either refer to in store or order for delivery.  John Lewis Partnership was a very deserving winner of The Oracle Retailer of the Year award for their overall dedication to excellent retailing practices.  The business was also named the American Express Marketing/Advertising Campaign of the Year award for their memorable 'Never Knowingly Undersold' advert series, which included a very successful viral video and radio campaign with Fyfe Dangerfield's cover of Billy Joel's 'She's Always a Woman' used for the adverts.  Store Design of the Year was another exciting category with Topshop taking the accolade for its flagship Oxford Street store in London, which combines boutique concession-style stalls with high fashion displays and exclusive collections from leading designers.  The store even has its own hairdressers and food hall, making it a truly all-inclusive fashion retail experience and a global landmark for any self-respecting international fashion shopper. Over the next few weeks we'll be exploring some of the winning entries in more detail here on the blog, so keep an eye out for some unique insights into how the winning retailers have made such remarkable achievements. 

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• CSV Anyone?

  - by Tim Dexter

  CSV, a dead format? With today's abilities to generate Excel output (Im working on some posts for the shiny new Excel templates) and the sophistication of the eText outputs, do you really need CSV? I guess so seeing as it was added after the base product was released as an enhancement. But I'd be interested in hearing use cases? I used to think the same of text output. But now Im working in the public sector where older technologies abound I can see a use for text output. Its also used as a machine readable format, etc. BIP still does not support a text format from its RTF templates but its very doable using XSL templates. Back to CSV, I noticed an enhancement in the big list of new stuff in the 10.1.3.4.1 rollup. You can now generate CSV from structured data ie a data template or a SQL XML query. This piqued my interest so I ran off a data template to CSV. Its interesting, in a geeky kinda way, I guess Im that way inclined.Here's my data structure:<EMPLOYEES> <LIST_G_DEPT> <G_DEPT>  <DEPARTMENT_ID>10</DEPARTMENT_ID>  <DEPARTMENT_NAME>Administration</DEPARTMENT_NAME>  <LIST_G_EMP>   <G_EMP>     <EMPLOYEE_ID>200</EMPLOYEE_ID>     <EMP_NAME>Jennifer Whalen</EMP_NAME>     <EMAIL>JWHALEN</EMAIL>     <PHONE_NUMBER>515.123.4444</PHONE_NUMBER>     <HIRE_DATE>1987-09-17T00:00:00.000-06:00</HIRE_DATE>     <SALARY>4400</SALARY>    </G_EMP>   </LIST_G_EMP>  <TOTAL_EMPS>1</TOTAL_EMPS>  <TOTAL_SALARY>4400</TOTAL_SALARY>  <AVG_SALARY>4400</AVG_SALARY>  <MAX_SALARY>4400</MAX_SALARY>  <MIN_SALARY>4400</MIN_SALARY> </G_DEPT>Poor ol Jennifer, she needs some help in the Admin department :0)Pushing this to CSV and BP completely flattens the data out so you get a completely denormalized data output in the CSV.TOTAL_SALARY,DEPARTMENT_ID,DEPARTMENT_NAME,MIN_SALARY,AVG_SALARY,MAX_SALARY,EMPLOYEE_ID,SALARY,PHONE_NUMBER,HIRE_DATE,EMP_NAME,EMAIL,TOTAL_EMPS4400,10,Administration,4400,4400,4400,200,4400,515.123.4444,1987-09-17T00:00:00.000-06:00,"Jennifer Whalen",JWHALEN,119000,20,Marketing,6000,9500,13000,201,13000,515.123.5555,1996-02-17T00:00:00.000-07:00,"Michael Hartstein",MHARTSTE,219000,20,Marketing,6000,9500,13000,202,6000,603.123.6666,1997-08-17T00:00:00.000-06:00,"Pat Fay",PFAY,2Useful? Its a little confusing to start with but it is completely de-normalized so there is lots of repetition. But if it floats your boat, you got it!

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, March 06, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, March 06, 2011Popular ReleasesIIS Tuner: IIS Tuner 1.0: IIS and ASP.NET performance optimization toolMinemapper: Minemapper v0.1.6: Once again supports biomes, thanks to an updated Minecraft Biome Extractor, which added support for the new Minecraft beta v1.3 map format. Updated mcmap to support new biome format.CRM 2011 OData Query Designer: CRM 2011 OData Query Designer: The CRM 2011 OData Query Designer is a Silverlight 4 application that is packaged as a Managed CRM 2011 Solution. This tool allows you to build OData queries by selecting filter criteria, select attributes and order by attributes. The tool also allows you to Execute the query and view the ATOM and JSON data returned. The look and feel of this component will improve and new functionality will be added in the near future so please provide feedback on your experience. Import this solution int...AutoLoL: AutoLoL v1.6.4: It is now possible to run the clicker anyway when it can't detect the Masteries Window Fixed a critical bug in the open file dialog Removed the resize button Some UI changes 3D camera movement is now more intuitive (Trackball rotation) When an error occurs on the clicker it will attempt to focus AutoLoLYAF.NET (aka Yet Another Forum.NET): v1.9.5.5 RTW: YAF v1.9.5.5 RTM (Date: 3/4/2011 Rev: 4742) Official Discussion Thread here: http://forum.yetanotherforum.net/yaf_postsm47149_v1-9-5-5-RTW--Date-3-4-2011-Rev-4742.aspx Changes in v1.9.5.5 Rev. #4661 - Added "Copy" function to forum administration -- Now instead of having to manually re-enter all the access masks, etc, you can just duplicate an existing forum and modify after the fact. Rev. #4642 - New Setting to Enable/Disable Last Unread posts links Rev. #4641 - Added Arabic Language t...Snippet Designer: Snippet Designer 1.3.1: Snippet Designer 1.3.1 for Visual Studio 2010This is a bug fix release. Change logFixed bug where Snippet Designer would fail if you had the most recent Productivity Power Tools installed Fixed bug where "Export as Snippet" was failing in non-english locales Fixed bug where opening a new .snippet file would fail in non-english localesChiave File Encryption: Chiave 1.0: Final Relase for Chave 1.0 Stable: Application for file encryption and decryption using 512 Bit rijndael encyrption algorithm with simple to use UI. Its written in C# and compiled in .Net version 3.5. It incorporates features of Windows 7 like Jumplists, Taskbar progress and Aero Glass. Now with added support to Windows XP! Change Log from 0.9.2 to 1.0: ==================== Added: > Added Icon Overlay for Windows 7 Taskbar Icon. >Added Thumbnail Toolbar buttons to make the navigation easier...DotNetNuke® Community Edition: 05.06.02 Beta: Major HighlightsFixed issue where "My Folder" was not available in the URL control and the Telerik HTML Editor Fixed issue where HTML Editor dialogs were not displaying correctly in alternate languages Fixed issue with Regex for email validation Fixed race condition in the core scheduler Fixed issue where editing Host page settings would result in broken host menu Fixed issue where "Apply to All Modules" setting was not propogating settings correctly. Fixed issue where browser lan...DirectQ: Release 1.8.7 (RC1): Release candidate 1 of 1.8.7GoogleTrail: TrailMap Beta 1: Trailmap beta 1 release Now we have updated custom map builder. Now we have complete gpx file editor. Now we have elevation data update service for any gpx file. (currently supports only google only).Chirpy - VS Add In For Handling Js, Css, DotLess, and T4 Files: Margogype Chirpy (ver 2.0): Chirpy loves Americans. Chirpy hates Americanos.ASP.NET: Sprite and Image Optimization Preview 3: The ASP.NET Sprite and Image Optimization framework is designed to decrease the amount of time required to request and display a page from a web server by performing a variety of optimizations on the page’s images. This is the third preview of the feature and works with ASP.NET Web Forms 4, ASP.NET MVC 3, and ASP.NET Web Pages (Razor) projects. The binaries are also available via NuGet: AspNetSprites-Core AspNetSprites-WebFormsControl AspNetSprites-MvcAndRazorHelper It includes the foll...Sandcastle Help File Builder: SHFB v1.9.2.0 Release: This release supports the Sandcastle June 2010 Release (v2.6.10621.1). It includes full support for generating, installing, and removing MS Help Viewer files. This new release is compiled under .NET 4.0, supports Visual Studio 2010 solutions and projects as documentation sources, and adds support for projects targeting the Silverlight Framework. NOTE: The included help file and the online help have not been completely updated to reflect all changes in this release. A refresh will be issue...Network Monitor Open Source Parsers: Microsoft Network Monitor Parsers 3.4.2554: The Network Monitor Parsers packages contain parsers for more than 400 network protocols, including RFC based public protocols and protocols for Microsoft products defined in the Microsoft Open Specifications for Windows and SQL Server. NetworkMonitor_Parsers.msi is the base parser package which defines parsers for commonly used public protocols and protocols for Microsoft Windows. In this release, we have added 4 new protocol parsers and updated 79 existing parsers in the NetworkMonitor_Pa...Image Resizer for Windows: Image Resizer 3 Preview 1: Prepare to have your minds blown. This is the first preview of what will eventually become 39613. There are still a lot of rough edges and plenty of areas still under construction, but for your basic needs, it should be relativly stable. Note: You will need the .NET Framework 4 installed to use this version. Below is a status report of where this release is in terms of the overall goal for version 3. If you're feeling a bit technically ambitious and want to check out some of the features th...JSON Toolkit: JSON Toolkit 1.1: updated GetAllJsonObjects() method and GetAllProperties() methods to JsonObject and Properties propertiesFacebook Graph Toolkit: Facebook Graph Toolkit 1.0: Refer to http://computerbeacon.net for Documentation and Tutorial New features:added FQL support added Expires property to Api object added support for publishing to a user's friend / Facebook Page added support for posting and removing comments on posts added support for adding and removing likes on posts and comments added static methods for Page class added support for Iframe Application Tab of Facebook Page added support for obtaining the user's country, locale and age in If...ASP.NET MVC Project Awesome, jQuery Ajax helpers (controls): 1.7.1: A rich set of helpers (controls) that you can use to build highly responsive and interactive Ajax-enabled Web applications. These helpers include Autocomplete, AjaxDropdown, Lookup, Confirm Dialog, Popup Form, Popup and Pager small improvements for some helpers and AjaxDropdown has Data like the Lookup except it's value gets reset and list refilled if any element from data gets changedManaged Extensibility Framework: MEF 2 Preview 3: This release aims .net 4.0 and Silverlight 4.0. Accordingly, there are two solutions files. The assemblies are named System.ComponentModel.Composition.Codeplex.dll as a way to avoid clashing with the version shipped with the 4th version of the framework. Introduced CompositionOptions to container instantiation CompositionOptions.DisableSilentRejection makes MEF throw an exception on composition errors. Useful for diagnostics Support for open generics Support for attribute-less registr...PHPExcel: PHPExcel 1.7.6 Production: DonationsDonate via PayPal via PayPal. If you want to, we can also add your name / company on our Donation Acknowledgements page. PEAR channelWe now also have a full PEAR channel! Here's how to use it: New installation: pear channel-discover pear.pearplex.net pear install pearplex/PHPExcel Or if you've already installed PHPExcel before: pear upgrade pearplex/PHPExcel The official page can be found at http://pearplex.net. Want to contribute?Please refer the Contribute page.New Projectsasp.net mvc 3 simple cms: asp.net mvc3 cms for learling purpose.C++ Mini Framework: C++ Mini Framework is a simple and easy to use class library in source format to quickly do things you commonly need to do in native projects with the purpose to get you started specifically targeting new C++ developers hopping you will be productive from the very start.Community Megaphone Helpers: Community Megaphone Helpers is a project intended as a means of sharing and accepting contributions for reusable Razor helper modules for functionality used in the Community Megaphone events web application, including Bing maps and more. Supports Microsoft WebMatrix & MVC 3CRM 2011 OData Query Designer: The CRM 2011 OData Query Designer is a Silverlight 4 application that is packaged as a Managed CRM 2011 Solution. The tool allows you to build OData REST queries by selecting filter criteria, select attributes and order by attributes. The tool also allows you to Execute the queryFaceted Search: Implementation of faceted (advanced) search with composite client side UI. Abstraction interfaces for intagration with different server side technologies, implementation for ASP.NET MVC. FileRenamePro: FileRenamePro makes it easier for users to rename files using advanced rules and regular expressions. It's developed in C#.GT5 Mobile: Gran-Turismo Remote Racing mobile site wrapper.KAT: KAT - Knowledge Assessment Tool is a Solution from IndERP in order to automate Performance and Process Management for a Technology/Job Oriented Companies. monopoly game: Monopoly is an open source project for educational purposes. The project will incorporate XNA, Silverlight, WCF technologies. The project will also show good design patterns considerations, and integration into Facebook App. The project will be written in C#.MuDB: MuDB is an embedded object-oriented database for the .NET Micro Framework which provides a simple yet useful interface for managing data.NDataStructure: A library providing a handful of useful data structures omitted from the .NET framework.Set NuGet version number: A simple command line tool that makes it easy to set the version number within a NuGet .nuspec package configuration file. This is useful for when you want to automatically update and publish a NuGet package from your build system.Sightreader: Small application to aid in the wrote learning of basic musical notation.SSAS Operations Templates: SSAS Operations Templates includes SSIS packages, scripts and code samples for automating maintenance of SSAS in a production environment. Includes operations such as backup the current state of cube designs in production, scripting paritition creation, etc.Team Run Log: Team Run LogTEDHelper: Download TED movie's subtitle. ?? TED ?????。testprojectit339: project339Ultimate Resume Repository: A class library and application for storing resumes of multiple people with the ability to export a targeted resume in various, configurable formats. Further additions may include cover letters, browser add-ons to populate applications, job search engine integration, etc...Umbraco: Inspired DataTypes: New datatypes that are not in the default install to make Umbraco have some new controls such as Content/Media Treeview, Content/Media Drop Down List with Treeview. Controls have options to restrict DocumentTypes or MediaType and the start location to retreive fromUsing different schemas in the same Orchestration Receive Port: Using different schemas in the same Orchestration Receive PortWF4Host: Examples in re-hosting Workflow 4 designer.WMP Hotkeys: WMP Hotkeys is a windows media player plugin that enable users to use VLC player like keyboard shortcuts(e.g SPACE to play/pause) in Windows Media Player.

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• Silverlight Cream for January 16, 2011 -- #1029

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Michael Washington, Jesse Liberty, Deborah Kurata(-2-, -3-, -4-), Sergey Barskiy(-2-), Miroslav Nedyalkov, Jeff Prosise, and Matthias Shapiro(-2-). Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Building a Multi-Page Silverlight LOB Application" Deborah Kurata WP7: "Windows Phone 7 [Controls] Project" Sergey Barskiy Sketchflow: "Sketchflow To Final" Michael Washington From SilverlightCream.com: Sketchflow To Final Check out this post by Michael Washington detailing the Sketchflow he did of his app, and how the final result tracks amazingly well. Windows Phone From Scratch #19 – MVVM Light Toolkit Soup To Nuts #4 Continuing to try to catch up to Jesse Liberty is this post, number 19 in the Windows Phone series and the 4th in that series about MVVMLight, and discussing binding a collection in the ViewModel to a ListBox in the view. Building a Multi-Page Silverlight LOB Application Deborah Kurata has the first 4 parts up (in 2 days) in a 6-part tutorial series she's doing on building a Silverlight LOB app. The first post was an intro and link to the rest as they become available. This 2nd post is getting the app newed up and making sure you've got your head wrapped around multiple pages. Theming a Silverlight Application using Existing Themes Deborah Kurata's next part is about getting started with themes in your app using the themes provided in the toolkit specifically. Theming a Silverlight Application using Custom Themes Deborah Kurata's next tutorial in the series is also about themes, but this time it's about custom themes... or rather customized from a 'standard' one in this case. Adding a New Page to a Multi-Page Silverlight Application Deborah Kurata's last available post in the tutorial series is this one on adding a new page to the app. Windows Phone 7 Project Sergey Barskiy has a pair of posts up about a calendar control that he is building and has out on CodePlex... nice-looking control too! Windows Phone 7 Controls Project Update Sergey Barskiy's second post is an update to the calendar... the biggest update being the ability to use the Toolkit context menu. How to Create Ad Rotator with Telerik TransitionControl and CoverFlow control for Silverlight Miroslav Nedyalkov uses the Telerik TransitionControl and CoverFlow controls to produce a great-looking ad rotator using any ContentControl or ListBox... very nice demo on the page.... Building Touch Interfaces for Windows Phones, Part 2 Jeff Prosise has part 2 of his tutorial series on WP7 Touch Interfaces up... and he's processing touch events directly in this one. Fixing the ListPicker / ScrollViewer Problem in Windows Phone 7 Matthias Shapiro has a couple of posts out that I've missed... this one is on an issue with ListPickers in a ScrollViewer where the listpicker gets hit rather than the scroll, and of course he has a work-around... but you'll need the source for the ListPicker to do it. Embedding a Sound File in Windows Phone 7 app (Silverlight) The next post by Matthias Shapiro is an explanation of embedding a sound file in a WP7 app with 2 conditions: 1) it downloads with your app, and 2) it plays no matter what. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• My Doors - Why Standards Matter to Business

  - by Brian Dayton

  "Standards save money." "Standards accelerate projects." "Standards make better solutions."   What do these statements mean to you? You buy technology solutions like Oracle Applications but you're a business person--trying to close the quarter, get performance reviews processed, negotiate a new sourcing contract, etc.   When "standards" come up in presentations and discussions do you: -          Nod your head politely -          Tune out and check your smart phone -          Turn to your IT counterpart and say "Bob's all over this standards thing, right Bob?"   Here's why standards matter. My wife wants new external doors downstairs, ones that would get more light into the rooms. Am I OK with that? "Uhh, sure...it's a little dark in the kitchen."   -          24 hours ago - wife calls to tell me that she's going to the hardware store and may look at doors -          20 hours ago - wife pulls into driveway, informs me that two doors are in the back of her station wagon, ready for me to carry -          19 hours ago - I re-discovered the fact that it's not fun to carry a solid wood door by myself -          5 hours ago - Local handyman, who was at our house anyway, tells me that the doors we bought will likely cost 2-3x the material cost in installation time and labor...the doors are standard but our doorways aren't   We could have done more research. I could be more handy. Sure. But the fact is, my 1951 house wasn't built with me in mind. They built what worked and called it a day.   The same holds true with a lot of business applications. They were designed and architected for one-time use with one use-case in mind. Today's business climate is different. If you're going to use your processes and technology to differentiate your business you should have at least a working knowledge of: -          How standards can benefit your business -          Your IT organization's philosophy around standards -          Your vendor's track-record around standards...and watch for those who pay lip-service to standards but don't follow through   The rallying cry in most IT organizations today is "learn more about the business, drop the acronyms." I'm not advocating that you go out and learn how to code in Java. But I do believe it will help your business and your decision-making process if you meet IT ½...even ¼ of the way there.   Epilogue: The door project has been put on hold and yours truly has to return the doors to the hardware store tomorrow.

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• How can we improve overall Programmer Education & Training?

  - by crosenblum

  Last week, I was just viewing this amazing interview by Kevin Rose of Phillip Rosedale, of Second Life. And they had an amazing discussion about how to find, hire and identify good programmer's, and how hard it is to find good ones. Which has lead me to really think about the way we programmer's learn, are taught. For a majority of us, myself included, we are self-taught. Which is great about being a programmer, anyone can learn and develop skills. But this also means, that there is no real standards of what a good programmer is/are, and what kind of environment's encourage the growth of programming skills. This isn't so much a question, but just a desire in me, to see how we can change the culture of programming, and the manager's of programming, so that education and self-improvement is encouraged. There are a lot of avenue's for continued education, youtube videos, books, conferences, but because of the experiental nature of what we do, it isn't always clear what's important to learn and to master. Let's look at the The Joel 12 Steps. The Joel Test Do you use source control? Can you make a build in one step? Do you make daily builds? Do you have a bug database? Do you fix bugs before writing new code? Do you have an up-to-date schedule? Do you have a spec? Do programmers have quiet working conditions? Do you use the best tools money can buy? Do you have testers? Do new candidates write code during their interview? Do you do hallway usability testing? I think all of these have important value, but because of something I call the Experiential Gap, if a programmer or manager has never experienced any of the negative consequences for not having done items on the list, they will never see the need to do any of them. The Experiental Gap, is my basic theory, that each of us has different jobs and different experiences. So for some of us, that have always worked with dozens of programmer's, source control is a must have. But for people who have always been the only programmer, they can not imagine the need for source control. And it's because of this major flaw in how we learn, that we evaluate people by what best practices they do or not do, and the reason for either can start a flame war. We always evaluate people in our field by what they do, and think "Oh if this guy/gal isn't doing xyz best practice, he/she can't be a good programmer, so let's not waste time or energy talking to them." This is exactly why we have so many programming flame wars, that it becomes, because of the Experiental Gap, we can't imagine people not having made the decisions that we have had to made. So this has lead me to think, that we totally need to rethink how we train, educate and manage programmer's. For example, what percentage of you have had encouragement by your manager's to go to conferences, and even have them pay for it? For me, and a lot of people, this is extremely rare, a lot of us would love to go to conferences, to learn more, but the money ain't there to do that. So the point of this question is really to spark a lot of how can we train, learn and manage better? How can we create a new culture of learning that doesn't insult people for not having the same job experiences. Yes we all have jobs and work to do, but our ability to do our jobs well, depends on our desire, interest and support in improving our mastery of our skills. Right now, I see our culture being rather disorganized, we support the elite, but those tons of us that want to get better, just don't have enough support to learn and improve ourselves. I mean, do we as an industry, want to be perceived as just replaceable cogs? Thank you...

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• PASS Summit 2011 &ndash; Part IV

  - by Tara Kizer

  This is the final blog for my PASS Summit 2011 series.  Well okay, a mini-series, I guess. On the last day of the conference, I attended Keith Elmore’ and Boris Baryshnikov’s (both from Microsoft) “Introducing the Microsoft SQL Server Code Named “Denali” Performance Dashboard Reports, Jeremiah Peschka’s (blog|twitter) “Rewrite your T-SQL for Great Good!”, and Kimberly Tripp’s (blog|twitter) “Isolated Disasters in VLDBs”. Keith and Boris talked about the lifecycle of a session, figuring out the running time and the waiting time.  They pointed out the transient nature of the reports.  You could be drilling into it to uncover a problem, but the session may have ended by the time you’ve drilled all of the way down.  Also, the reports are for troubleshooting live problems and not historical ones.  You can use Management Data Warehouse for historical troubleshooting.  The reports provide similar benefits to the Activity Monitor, however Activity Monitor doesn’t provide context sensitive drill through. One thing I learned in Keith’s and Boris’ session was that the buffer cache hit ratio should really never be below 87% due to the read-ahead mechanism in SQL Server.  When a page is read, it will read the entire extent.  So for every page read, you get 7 more read.  If you need any of those 7 extra pages, well they are already in cache.  I had a lot of fun in Jeremiah’s session about refactoring code plus I learned a lot.  His slides were visually presented in a fun way, which just made for a more upbeat presentation.  Jeremiah says that before you start refactoring, you should look at your system.  Investigate missing or too many indexes, out-of-date statistics, and other areas that could be leading to your code running slow.  He talked about code standards.  He suggested using common abbreviations for aliases instead of one-letter aliases.  I’m a big offender of one-letter aliases, but he makes a good point.  He said that join order does not matter to the optimizer, but it does matter to those who have to read your code.  Now let’s get into refactoring! Eliminate useless things – useless/unneeded joins and columns.  If you don’t need it, get rid of it! Instead of using DISTINCT/JOIN, replace with EXISTS Simplify your conditions; use UNION or better yet UNION ALL instead of OR to avoid a scan and use indexes for each union query Branching logic – instead of IF this, IF that, and on and on…use dynamic SQL (sp_executesql, please!) or use a parameterized query in the application Correlated subqueries – YUCK! Replace with a join Eliminate repeated patterns Last, but certainly not least, was Kimberly’s session.  Kimberly is my favorite speaker.  I attended her two-day pre-conference seminar at PASS Summit 2005 as well as a SQL Immersion Event last December.  Did I mention she’s my favorite speaker?  Okay, enough of that. Kimberly’s session was packed with demos.  I had seen some of it in the SQL Immersion Event, but it was very nice to get a refresher on these, especially since I’ve got a VLDB with some growing pains.  One key takeaway from her session is the idea to use a log shipping solution with a load delay, such as 6, 8, or 24 hours behind the primary.  In the case of say an accidentally dropped table in a VLDB, we could retrieve it from the secondary database rather than waiting an eternity for a restore to complete.  Kimberly let us know that in SQL Server 2012 (it finally has a name!), online rebuilds are supported even if there are LOB columns in your table.  This will simplify custom code that intelligently figures out if an online rebuild is possible. There was actually one last time slot for sessions that day, but I had an airplane to catch and my kids to see!

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• Silverlight Cream for March 08, 2011 -- #1056

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Joost van Schaik, Manas Patnaik, Kevin Hoffman, Jesse Liberty, Deborah Kurata, Dhananjay Kumar, Dennis Delimarsky, Samuel Jack, Peter Kuhn, WindowsPhoneGeek, and Jfo. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "How I let the trees grow" Peter Kuhn WP7: "Simple Windows Phone 7 / Silverlight drag/flick behavior" Joost van Schaik Shoutouts: SilverlightShow has their top 5 from last week posted, plus the ECOContest is ready to be voted on: SilverlightShow for Feb 28 - March 06, 2011 Drew DeVault is a young man involved with the Microsoft Student Insiders. He gave a WP7 presentation at RMTT and has posted his material: Post-Session: Windows Phone 7 @ RMTT Rui Marinho has an app in the ECO Contest called Forest Findr. is based on the BIng Map Control for silverlight and Sql Spatial data, and helps you find Forests and get geolocated pictures and wikipedia information, and has a post up with a bunch of info on it here: Forest Findr. my entry on the SilverlightShow EcoContest From SilverlightCream.com: Simple Windows Phone 7 / Silverlight drag/flick behavior Joost van Schaik has a behavior that makes *anything* draggable and 'flickable' in WP7 ... read the intro, scroll to the bottom to watch the demo, and then grab up the code... cool stuff, Joost! Data Aggregation Using Presentation Model in RIA and Silverlight 4 Manas Patnaik sent me a link to his blog, and it appears he's got lots of Silverlight goodness out there so you'll be hearing more about him. This first post is on the Presentation Model in RIA and Silverlight 4... good discussion, diagrams and code... good job, Manas! WP7 for iPhone and Android Developers - Advanced UI Kevin Hoffman has part 3 of an ambitious 12-part tutorial series up on WP7 development ... this go-around is concentrating on Advanced UI - Panorama/Pivot controls, DataBinding, ObservableCollections, and Converters... whew! Sterling DB on top of Isolated Storage – 2 Jesse Liberty has part 2 of his Sterling series up... this time setting up the database in App.xaml so it can be used for dealing with tombstoning. Silverlight Charting: Formatting the Tick Marks Deborah Kurata's next chart tutorial is all about showing you how to continue to dress up your charts.. this time by formatting the tick marks... if you don't know what that is... check out the first image in the post. Stored Procedure in WCF Data Service Dhananjay Kumar has a very nice tutorial up on using a stored proc with WCF Data Services... I happen to know someone working on just that at this time. If you have this in mind, here's a step-by-step guide to getting it done. Windows Phone 7 – Episode 5 – Pages Dennis Delimarsky has part 5 of his WP7 tutorial series up and is discussing Pages in this 17 minute video. Unpacking Simon Squared: My mini framework-independent animation library Samuel Jack has not only Open-Sourced the WP7 game he built and blogged about, but he's now explaining some of the structure of the game in posts such as this one about the animation library he wrote that his game is built on. How I let the trees grow Peter Kuhn shares with us the code he used for the tree animation in his ECO Contest entry. There's a lot to learn in this post about performance ... the fully-animated tree has about 20K elements... 5K branches and 20K leaves... check it out. WP7 ToastPrompt in depth WindowsPhoneGeek takes a deep dive into the ToastPrompt control in the Coding4fun Toolkit... everything you need to completely use the control including sample code. Beware the loaded event Jfo talks about another frustration point she had with WP7 development, and that is around the use of the loaded event... read these tips from someone that's been there. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• The Value of SOA Specialization - Fujitsu

  - by Jürgen Kress

  Thanks for the nice ink The Value of Specialization In my last post  I talked about Fujitsu's achievement in obtaining SOA and other specializations, but I have heard murmurings from other partners about what just is the value? I think Oracle have to do more to advertise the benefits to customers, we need to see customers asking for specialization for it to really work, but Oracle have made great promises about only recommending those partners who are specialized. For us there was another benefit. Oracle was sponsoring the 3rd Annual SOA Symposium in Berlin and invited us as their first specialized partner to take part. There is a great blog about the symposium on the SOA community blog site. This is real commitment from Oracle and we have other marketing opportunities being worked on with Jürgen. This does generate leads so my message to other Oracle Partners is, you need to do this, it is worthwhile.   Fujitsu - First SOA Specialized Partner Globally Just before Oracle Open World I found out that Fujitsu had achieved the first SOA Specialization globally. I think most partners know what the requirements are for Specialization and that in itself is challenging but the bureaucracy around the actual submission is an exercise in tenacity. I won’t go into that now; I have had my dig at Oracle this month, but enough to say the process could be improved. As a platinum partner we needed 5 specializations and we decided to go for SOA first. The reasoning behind this is that our Oracle Practice is known for being applications centric. We have always had an excellent technical capability but no one ever talked about that, it was just part and parcel of an implementation. However today we have just as many bids that are technology lead as there is applications lead, so it seemed a good plan to work on the areas we were not known for. We appointed a capability lead to be responsible for putting the team through the training and testing and Rosemary (Kell) was excellent, she ensured that everyone was on track and that it wasn’t just getting put into the ‘to do list’. In Fujitsu everyone in the Oracle Practice has an objective to achieve the competency tests in their area, so achieving the 2 pre sales, 2 sales and 1 support was no problem at all. We actually had 22 with the support capability proficiency.  The implementation specialist exams are much harder, more like OCP in the database area. We had help from the Oracle SOA Community; Jürgen Kress who runs this in EMEA is really motivational. At the time we started SOA was a beta exam which means you do not get the results immediately but again we put forward more than we needed. Manjit Chopra, Sukhraj Sahota, Emely Patra, Ian Scorrer and Sunny Sidhu all took the exam and eventually got the results they wanted they had passed. Congratulations. Here is Jurgen expalining why specialization is important. After the tests came the submissions where you need to include deals and experience, this was my bit, and persuading Oracle we really deserved the specialization. Finally we got the news we had been awarded the specialization, and a few days later that we were first globally. I am very proud. However there is no rest for the wicked and we plodded on to make the 5 specializations needed for Platinum and now we are working on the new Diamond status and I think SOA will be one of our 5 ‘super specializations’. This is a global Fujitsu initiative and I work closely with my colleague in Germany Jessika Weiss. It was nice to be able to have a press release about this and a comment from Judson Althoff  head of Oracle Alliances. For more information on SOA Specialization and the SOA Partner Community please feel free to register at www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Wiki Website Technorati Tags: SOA,SOA Community,OPN,Oracle,Fujitsu,Debra Lilley,Jürgen Kress,Specialization,SOA Specialization

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• Smooth Sailing or Rough Waters: Navigating Policy Administration Modernization

  - by helen.pitts(at)oracle.com

  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;} Life insurance and annuity carriers continue to recognize the need to modernize their aging policy administration systems, but may be hesitant to move forward because of the inherent risk involved. To help carriers better prepare for what lies ahead LOMA's Resource Magazine asked Karen Furtado, partner of Strategy Meets Action, to help them chart a course in Navigating Policy Administration Selection, the cover story of this month’s issue. The industry analyst and research firm recently asked insurance carriers to name the business drivers for replacing legacy policy administration systems. The top five cited, according to Furtado, centered on: Supporting growth in current lines Improving competitive position Containing and reducing costs Supporting growth in new lines Supporting agent demands and interaction It’s no surprise that fueling growth, both now and in the future, continues to be a key driver for modernization. Why? Inflexible, hard-coded, legacy systems require customization by IT every time a change is required. This in turn impedes a carrier’s ability to be agile, constraining their ability to quickly adapt to changing regulatory requirements and evolving market demands. It also stymies their ability to quickly bring to market new products or rapidly configure changes to existing ones, and also can inhibit how carriers service customers and distribution channels. In the article, Furtado advised carriers to ensure that the policy administration system they are considering is current and modern, with an adaptable user interface and flexible service-oriented architecture. She said carriers to should ask themselves, “How much do you need flexibility and agility now and in the future? Does it support the business processes and rules that are needed for you to be able to create that adaptable environment?” Furtado went on to advise that carriers “Connect your strategy to your business and technical capabilities before you make investment choices…You want to enable your organization to transform for the future, not just automate the past.” Unlocking High Performance with Policy Administration Transformation also was the topic of a recent LOMA webcast moderated by Ron Clark, editor of LOMA's Resource Magazine. The web cast, which featured speakers from Oracle Insurance and Capgemini, focused on how insurers can competitively drive high performance by: Replacing a legacy policy administration system with a modern, flexible platform Optimizing IT and operations costs, creating consistent processes and eliminating resource redundancies Selecting the right partner with the best blend of technology, operational, and consulting capabilities to achieve market leadership Understanding the value of outsourcing closed block operations Learn more by clicking here to access this free, one-hour recorded webcast. Helen Pitts, is senior product marketing manager for Oracle Insurance's life and annuities solutions.

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• What Counts For a DBA: Ego

  - by Louis Davidson

  Leaving aside, for a second, Freud’s psychoanalytical definitions, the term “ego” generally refers to a person’s sense of self, and their self-esteem. In casual usage, however, it usually appears in the adjectival form, “egotistical” (most often followed by “jerk”). You don’t need to be a jerk to be a DBA; humility is important. However, ego is important too. A good DBA needs a certain degree of self-esteem…a belief and pride in what he or she can do better than anyone else can. The ideal DBA needs to be humble enough to admit when they are wrong but egotistical enough to know when they are right, and to stand up for that knowledge and make their voice heard. In most organizations, the DBA team is seriously outnumbered by headstrong developers and clock driven managers, and “great” DBAs will often be outnumbered by…well…the not so great. In order to be heard in this environment, a DBA will not only need to be very skilled, but will also need a healthy dose of ego. As Freud might have put it, the unconscious desire of the DBA (the id) is for iron-fist control over their databases, and code that runs in them. However, the ego moderates this desire, seeking to “satisfy the id in realistic ways that, in the long term, bring benefit rather than grief“. In other words, the ego understands the need to exert a measure of control and self-belief, but also to tolerate and play nicely with developers and other DBAs. The trick, naturally, is learning how to be heard when it is important, but also to make everyone around you welcome that input, even when you have to be bold to make the “I know what I am talking about, and you…well…not so much” decisions. Consider a baseball team, bottom of the ninth inning of the championship game, man on first and down one run. Almost anyone on that team will have the ability to hit a home run, but only one or two will have the iron belief that they can pull it off in this critical, end-game situation. The player you need in this situation is the one who has passionately gone the extra mile preparing for just this moment, is bursting at the seams with self-confidence, and can look the coach in the eye and state, boldly, “Put me in, I am your best bet“. Likewise, on those occasions when high customer demand coincides with copious system errors, and panic is bubbling just beneath the surface, you don’t need the minimally qualified support person, armed with the “reboot and hope” technique (though that sometimes works!). You need the DBA who steps up and says, “Put me in” and has the skill and tenacity to back up those words and to fix the pinpoint and fix the problem, whatever it takes, while keeping customers and managers happy. Of course, the egotistical DBA will happily spend hours telling you how great they are at their job, and how brilliantly they put out a previous fire, and this is no guarantee that they can deliver. However, if an otherwise-humble DBA looks you in the eye and says, “I can do it”, then hear them out. Sometimes, this burst of ego will be exactly what’s required.

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• Multidimensional Thinking–24 Hours of Pass: Celebrating Women in Technology

  - by smisner

  It’s Day 1 of #24HOP and it’s been great to participate in this event with so many women from all over the world in one long training-fest. The SQL community has been abuzz on Twitter with running commentary which is fun to watch while listening to the current speaker. If you missed the fun today because you’re busy with all that work you’ve got to do – don’t despair. All sessions are recorded and will be available soon. Keep an eye on the 24 Hours of Pass page for details. And the fun’s not over today. Rather than run 24 hours consecutively, #24HOP is now broken down into 12-hours over two days, so check out the schedule to see if there’s a session that interests you and fits your schedule. I’m pleased to announce that my business colleague Erika Bakse ( Blog | Twitter) will be presenting on Day 2 – her debut presentation for a PASS event. (And I’m also pleased to say she’s my daughter!) Multidimensional Thinking: The Presentation My contribution to this lineup of terrific speakers was Multidimensional Thinking. Here’s the abstract: “Whether you’re developing Analysis Services cubes or creating PowerPivot workbooks, you need to get into a multidimensional frame of mind to produce a model that best enables users to answer their business questions on their own. Many database professionals struggle initially with multidimensional models because the data modeling process is much different than the one they use to produce traditional, third normal form databases. In this session, I’ll introduce you to the terminology of multidimensional modeling and step through the process of translating business requirements into a viable model.” If you watched the presentation and want a copy of the slides, you can download a copy here. And you’re welcome to download the slides even if you didn’t watch the presentation, but they’ll make more sense if you did! Kimball All the Way There’s only so much I can cover in the time allotted, but I hope that I succeeded in my attempt to build a foundation that prepares you for starting out in business intelligence. One of my favorite resources that will get into much more detail about all kinds of scenarios (well beyond the basics!) is The Data Warehouse Toolkit (Second Edition) by Ralph Kimball. Anything from Kimball or the Kimball Group is worth reading. Kimball material might take reading and re-reading a few times before it makes sense. From my own experience, I found that I actually had to just build my first data warehouse using dimensional modeling on faith that I was going the right direction because it just didn’t click with me initially. I’ve had years of practice since then and I can say it does get easier with practice. The most important thing, in my opinion, is that you simply must prototype a lot and solicit user feedback, because ultimately the model needs to make sense to them. They will definitely make sure you get it right! Schema Generation One question came up after the presentation about whether we use SQL Server Management Studio or Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) to build the tables for the dimensional model. My answer? It really doesn’t matter how you create the tables. Use whatever method that you’re comfortable with. But just so happens that it IS possible to set up your design in BIDS as part of an Analysis Services project and to have BIDS generate the relational schema for you. I did a Webcast last year called Building a Data Mart with Integration Services that demonstrated how to do this. Yes, the subject was Integration Services, but as part of that presentation, I showed how to leverage Analysis Services to build the tables, and then I showed how to use Integration Services to load those tables. I blogged about this presentation in September 2010 and included downloads of the project that I used. In the blog post, I explained that I missed a step in the demonstration. Oops. Just as an FYI, there were two more Webcasts to finish the story begun with the data – Accelerating Answers with Analysis Services and Delivering Information with Reporting Services. If you want to just cut to the chase and learn how to use Analysis Services to build the tables, you can see the Using the Schema Generation Wizard topic in Books Online.

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• Content Challenge: You Can Only Get it Here

  - by Mike Stiles

  Part of the content conundrum for brands is figuring out what kind of content customers would find cool, desirable, and relevant. The mere fact many brands have no idea what this content might be is, in itself, pretty alarming. You’d have to have a pretty thorough lack of involvement with and understanding of your customers to not know what they might like. But despite what should be a great awakening in which consumers are using every technology and trick in the book to shield themselves from ads and commercials, brand self-obsession continues as marketers concentrate on their message, their campaign, what they want to say, and what they want social users to do. When individuals conduct themselves in that same fashion on Facebook and Twitter, it gets tiresome and starts losing value pretty quickly. Their posts eventually get hidden. Conversely, friends who post things that consistently entertain or inform, with little self-marketing desperation involved, win the coveted “show all updates” setting. Of course brands are going to use social to market. It’s pretty much the point of having social in the marketing mix. And yes, people who follow a brand’s Twitter account or “Like” a brand’s Facebook Page implicitly state they want to know what’s going on with that brand’s products and services. But if you have a Facebook friend that assumes you want every one of her posts to be about what wine she likes (Mitsubishi’s current campaign is even based around weeding out pretentious Facebook friends, then running them over), then you know how it must feel for your fans and followers to get a sales pitch for your crackers or whatever you’re selling every single time. Is there such a thing as content that doesn’t sell but that still advances the brand and makes the consumer more involved and valuable? Of course. And perhaps there are no better companies than enterprise brands to do it. Enterprise organizations are large enough to go beyond a product and engage readers/viewers at higher, broader levels…communicating expertise across entire sectors, subjects and industries. You’re going from pitchman to news source, and getting full credit for it as the presenter. A recent GigaOM article pointed out the success a San Francisco-based startup called Crunchyroll is having. Their niche (and they proudly admit it’s a niche) is providing Japanese anime, Korean drama and Asian live action content to countries that can’t get it any other way via licensing deals. Shows are available in HD and on the same day they air in the host country. Crunchyroll not only gets 8 million viewers a month, they have 100,000 paying subscribers at $7-12/month. Got a point, Mike? I do happen to have one. Crunchyroll illustrates the content opportunity enterprise companies have…which is to determine your “area,” the interest graph of your customers, then provide content that speaks to and satisfies those interests that can’t be found anywhere else. At least not in the same style, or of the same quality, or with the same authority. Do what no one else is doing. Provide what no one else is providing in your sector. If underserved users are willing to pay monthly for access to awkwardly moving cartoon dragons, imagine the audience you could attract with free, useful, non-sales content in your customers’ area of interest. It’s an audience you’ll want in place when the time does come to put out that marketing message. A content challenge is better than a content conundrum any day.

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• What Counts For a DBA: Imagination

  - by drsql

  "Imagination…One little spark, of inspiration… is at the heart, of all creation." – From the song "One Little Spark", by the Sherman Brothers I have a confession to make. Despite my great enthusiasm for databases and programming, it occurs to me that every database system I've ever worked on has been, in terms of its inputs and outputs, downright dull. Most have been glorified e-spreadsheets, many replacing manual systems built on actual spreadsheets. I've created a lot of database-driven software whose main job was to "count stuff"; phone calls, web visitors, payments, donations, pieces of equipment and so on. Sometimes, instead of counting stuff, the database recorded values from other stuff, such as data from sensors or networking devices. Yee hah! So how do we, as DBAs, maintain high standards and high spirits when we realize that so much of our work would fail to raise the pulse of even the most easily excitable soul? The answer lies in our imagination. To understand what I mean by this, consider a role that, in terms of its output, offers an extreme counterpoint to that of the DBA: the Disney Imagineer. Their job is to design Disney's Theme Parks, of which I'm a huge fan. To me this has always seemed like a fascinating and exciting job. What must an Imagineer do, every day, to inspire the feats of creativity that are so clearly evident in those spectacular rides and shows? Here, if ever there was one, is a role where "dull moments" must be rare indeed, surely? I wanted to find out, and so parted with a considerable sum of money for my wife and I to have lunch with one; I reasoned that if I found one small way to apply their secrets to my own career, it would be money well spent. Early in the conversation with our Imagineer (Cindy Cote), the job did indeed sound magical. However, as talk turned to management meetings, budget-wrangling and insane deadlines, I came to the strange realization that, in fact, her job was a lot more like mine than I would ever have guessed. Much like databases, all those spectacular Disney rides bring with them a vast array of complex plumbing, lighting, safety features, and all manner of other "boring bits", kept well out of sight of the end user, but vital for creating the desired experience; and, of course, it is these "boring bits" that take up much of the Imagineer's time. Naturally, there is still a vital part of their job that is spent testing out new ideas, putting themselves in the place of a park visitor, from a 9-year-old boy to a 90-year-old grandmother, and trying to imagine what experiences they'd like to have. It is these small, but vital, sparks of imagination and creativity that have the biggest impact. The real feat of a successful Imagineer is clearly to never to lose sight of this fact, in among all the rote tasks. It is the same for a DBA. Not matter how seemingly dull is the task at hand, try to put yourself in the shoes of the end user, and imagine how your input will affect the experience he or she will have with the database you're building, and how that may affect the world beyond the bits stored in your database. Then, despite the inevitable rush to be "done", find time to go the extra mile and hone the design so that it delivers something as close to that imagined experience as you can get. OK, our output still can't and won't reach the same spectacular heights as the "Journey into The Imagination" ride at EPCOT Theme Park in Orlando, where I first heard "One Little Spark". However, our imaginative sparks and efforts can, and will, make a difference to the user who now feels slightly more at home with a database application, or to the manager holding a report presented with enough clarity to drive an interesting decision or two. They are small victories, but worth having, and appreciated, or at least that's how I imagine it.

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• Upgrades in 5 Easy Pieces

  - by Anne R.

  Even though there are a few select tasks that I have to do once or twice a year, I can’t remember how to do them! Or where to find the bits and pieces to complete the task. So I love it when someone consolidates everything under one spot. That’s what the CRM On Demand team has done with the upgrade information. Specifically, they have: Provided a “one-stop” area for managing upgrades at your company. Broken down the upgrade process into 5 (yes, 5) steps. Explained when and how to perform each step with dates specific to your pod. Included details about each step, visible by expanding the step. Translated the steps into 11 languages. Added a list of release-specific resources with links from the page. Now, just head for the Training and Support portal, click the Release Info tab, and walk through the “5 Essential Steps to a Successful Upgrade.” Before you continue, though, select your language from the drop-down list on the Release Info page. CRM On Demand now has the upgrade steps translated into 11 languages. On the Step page, you can expand each section in sequence and follow the more detailed instructions that appear. This will ensure that you’ve covered all your bases for each upgrade. Here’s a shortened version of the information that you’ll find: 1. Verify your Primary Contact Information. Have you checked your primary contact information to make sure you’re being notified of all upgrade information? Or do you want more users to receive upgrade announcements? This section provides you with the navigation path to do that in CRM On Demand. 2. Review your Key Upgrade Dates. If you expand this step, a nice table appears with your critical dates for the various milestones. IMPORTANT: When your CRM On Demand pod has been officially added to the upgrade schedule, closer to the release date itself, this table will display your specific timetable. 3. Migrate your Customizations from the Staging Environment before the Snapshot Date. Oracle refreshes the Staging data with a copy of your Production data made on the Production Snapshot Date. So this section lists considerations relevant to this step. It also reminds you of the 2-week period when you should not be making any changes in your Staging environment.   4. Conduct your Upgrade Validation on the Staging Environment. When the Customer Validation Testing period begins, you need to log in to your Staging Environment to validate that your key business processes and customizations continue to behave as expected. If your company utilizes Web Services, Web Links, Web Applets or Workflow, focus on testing these first. You generally have about two weeks for testing. If you run into problems during this time, follow the instructions shown in this section for logging a service request. It describes exactly how to fill out the fields in the SR for the fastest resolution. 5. Conduct "White Glove" Testing in your Upgraded Production Environment. Before users start using the upgrade, you should access a few tabs and reports. Doing this actually warms up the cache so that frequently used pages and reports will come up at normal speed on Monday morning, when users log in to the upgraded system. Resources listed under this step help you in further preparing for the upgrade. Now there’s also a new Documentation section on the right with links to these release-specific resources.   Very nice, I commented, when discussing these improvements with the “responsible party.” She confirmed that, yes, they tried to consolidate the upgrade information, translate it for better communication, simplify it into 5 easy pieces, and drive admins responsible for handling upgrades to this one site instead of sending out elaborate emails. Yes, I just love it when someone practically reaches out and holds my hand through a process. Next best thing to a wizard!

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• App Stores&ndash;In All Things, Its Quality Over Quantity

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  Everybody has an opinion about Windows 8. People love it, people hate it, people are meh about it, people are apparently buying it from Microsoft stores in NYC as if it was water before a natural disaster…if there’s one thing that Microsoft product launches do well, its the ability to bring out strong emotional responses. Over at eweek.com, Don Reisinger wrote about 5 good and bad things about Windows 8. Yes, another opinion piece on WIndows 8. I figured since this one had good and bad it might be worthwhile to read. I then came across #10 on his list, and figured “What the hell…might as well post a bit of a rant on Windows 8 myself!” Here’s #10: 10. Bad: Too few apps Unfortunately, Microsoft wasn’t able to get too many developers to start producing applications for its Windows 8 Store. Microsoft hasn’t yet released official numbers, but some have said that the marketplace has less than 8,000 programs. Considering Apple’s App Store has 100 times that, it’s about time Microsoft starts leaning on developers to get more programs into its store. Believe me, Microsoft *has* been leaning on developers to get apps into the store. I’ve been asked at least 5 or 6 times from 5 or 6 different friends at Microsoft about whether I was going to write a Windows 8 app. I think Microsoft felt they had to try and address the number of apps available in their marketplace, since some people (like Don) would draw comparisons to the number of apps in the Apple marketplace. I feel for Microsoft in this, since the number of apps in a marketplace are an empty stat. Quality of Quantity I have an iPad that my family (wife, 10yo daughter, 3yo daughter) use. We all have our own apps installed on it. In addition, my wife has an iPhone 4S that she also installs apps on. As someone who gets asked by his kids often whether they can buy/download an app, the vast majority of the vast catalogue of iOS marketplace apps are crap! Do you realize how many “free” games are out there, only to really be not-free because you have to purchase in-game content to make the game actually playable? And how about searching – with such a vast array of apps and such high numbers of craptastic ones, trying to find something is incredibly difficult and can be frustrating. I would rather see that Microsoft has 8000 high quality apps in their store at launch, instead of 800000 that were mostly junk. Too Few Apps?! And seriously, 8000 is not a small number. How many iOS apps have I actually bought between the iPad and iPhone? I’ll be generous and say 30…heck, let’s round it up to 40. It’s not like I have 10,000 apps installed on my iPad, nor will that ever happen! So if people have, at the *launch* of a new platform ecosystem, EIGHT THOUSAND apps to choose from, I don’t see that as a fail at all! It should be noted that most of the most common apps (Netflix, Skype, etc.) are available for Windows 8 at launch – I guess I’ll have to wait a few weeks for My Pony Ranch and all its clones to start showing up; pity. Let’s Check Back in a Year So look, let’s check back in a year’s time and see what the app store looks like. My hope is that Microsoft doesn’t continue to push quantity over quality. Even knowing the optics that # of apps in the store carries and the pressure to catch Apple and Android marketplaces, I hope Microsoft avoids the scenario where there’s a good percentage of apps in the Windows Store that are utter rubbish and finding the gems will be cumbersome. But if that happens, we can thank guys like Dan who raised the false issue of app count at the launch for it.

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• Silverlight Cream for February 06, 2011 -- #1042

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Mike Taulty, Timmy Kokke, Laurent Bugnion, Arik Poznanski, Deyan Ginev, Deborah Kurata(-2-), Johnny Tordgeman, Roy Dallal, Jaime Rodriguez, Samuel Jack(-2-), James Ashley. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Customizing Silverlight properties for Visual Designers" Timmy Kokke WP7: "Back button press when using webbrowser control in WP7" Jaime Rodriguez Expression Blend: "Blend Bits 21–Importing from Photoshop & Illustrator…" Mike Taulty From SilverlightCream.com: Blend Bits 21–Importing from Photoshop & Illustrator… Mike Taulty is up to 21 episodes on his Blend Bits sequence now, and this one is about using Blend's import capability, such as a .psd file with all the layers intact. Customizing Silverlight properties for Visual Designers Timmy Kokke has part 1 of 2 parts on making your Silverlight control properties in design surfaces such as Visual Studio designer or Expression Blend. An error when installing MVVM Light templates for VS10 Express Laurent Bugnion has released a new version of MVVMLight that resolves a problem with VS2010 Express version of the templates... no problem with anything else. Reading RSS items on Windows Phone 7 Arik Poznanski has a post up about reading RSS on a WP7, but better yet, he also has code for a helper class that you can grab, plus explanation of wiring it up. Integrating your Windows Phone unit tests with MSBuild #4: The WP7 Unit Test Application Deyan Ginev has a post up about Telerik's WP7 test app that outputs test results in XML from the emulator so they can be integrated with the MSBuild log. Accessing Data in a Silverlight Application: EF I apprently missed this post by Deborah Kurata last week on bringing data into your Silverlight app via Entity Frameworks... good detailed tutorial in VB and C#. Updating Data in a Silverlight Application: EF In Deborah Kurata's latest post, she is continuing with Entity Frameworks by demonstrating updating to the database... full source code will be produced in a later post. Fun with Silverlight and SharePoint 2010 Ribbon Control - Part 2 - An In Depth Look At The Ribbon Control Johnny Tordgeman has Part 2 of his Silverlight and Sharepoint 2010 Ribbon up... taking a deep-dive into the ribbon... great explanation of the attributes, code included. Geographic Coordinates Systems Roy Dallal has some Geo code up that's not necessarily Silverlight, but very cool if you're doing any GIS programming... ya gotta know the coordinate systems! Back button press when using webbrowser control in WP7 Jaime Rodriguez has a post up discussing the much-lamented back-button action in the certification requirements and how to deal with that in a web browser app. Multiplayer-enabling my Windows Phone 7 game: Day 1 Samuel Jack challenged himself to build a WP7 game in 3 days... now he's challenging himself to make it multiplayer in 3 days... this first hour-to-hour post is research of networking and an azure server-side solution. Multiplayer-enabling my Windows Phone 7 game: Day 2–Building a UI with XPF Day 2 for Samuel Jack getting the multiplayer portion of his game working in 3 days.. this day involves getting up-to-speed with XPF. How to Hotwire your WP7 Phone Battery Did you realize if you run your WP7 battery completely down that you can't charge it? James Ashley reports that circumstance, and how he resolved it. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• Have you ever wondered...?

  - by diana.gray

  I've often wondered why folks do the same thing over and over. For some of us, it's because we "don't get it" and there's an abundance of TV talk shows that will help us analyze the why of it. Dr. Phil is all too eager to ask "...and how's that working for you?". But I'm not referring to being stuck in a destructive pattern or denial. I'm really talking about doing something over and over because you have found a joy, a comfort, a boost of energy from an activity or event. For example, how many times have I planted bulbs in November or December only to be amazed by their reach, colors, and fragrance in early spring? Or baked fresh cookies and allowed the aroma to fill the house? Or kissed a sleeping baby held gently in my arms and being reminded of how tiny and fragile we all are. I've often wondered why it is that I get so much out of something I've done so many times. I think it's because I've changed. The activity may be the same but in the preceding days, months and years I've had new experiences, challenges, joys and sorrows that have shaped me. I'm different. The same is true about attending the Professional Businesswomen of California (PBWC) conference. Although the conference is an annual event held at San Francisco's Moscone Center, I still enjoy being with 3,000 other women like me. Yes, we work at different companies and in different industries, have different lifestyles and are at different stages in our professional careers and personal lives; but we are all alike in that we bring the NEW me each year that we attend. This year I can cheer when Safra Catz, President of Oracle, encourages us to trust our intuition; that "if something doesn't make sense, it doesn't make sense". And I can warmly introduce myself to Lisa Askins, Cheryl Melching's business partner at Center Stage Group, when I would have been too intimated to do so last year. This year I can commit to new challenges such as "no whining, no excuses and no gossip" as suggested by Roxanne Emmerich, a goal that I would have wavered on last year. I can also embrace the suggestion given by Dr. Ian Smith to "spend one hour each day" on me - giving myself time to rejuvenate. A friend, when asked if she was attending PBWC this year, said "I've attended the conference several times and there's nothing new!" My perspective is that WE are what makes PBWC's annual conference new. We are far different in 2010 than we were in 2009. We are learning, growing, developing and shedding and that's what makes the conference fresh, vibrant, rewarding, and lasting. It is the diversity of women coming together that makes it new. By sharing our experiences, we discover. By meeting with one another professionally and personally, we connect. And by applying the wisdom learned, we shine. We are reNEW-ed. It shows in our fresh ideas, confident interactions, strategic decisions and successful businesses. This refreshed approach is what our companies want and need, our families depend on, our communities and nation look to for creative solutions to pressing concerns. Thanks Oracle for your continued support and thanks PBWC for providing an annual day to be reNEW-ed.

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• Join our Marketing Intelligence Team in Dublin!

  - by jessica.ebbelaar

  Do you want to work with the brightest minds in the industry? Want to be part of a global team that’s changing the way the world does business? Then Oracle is the place for YOU. Join now as a Marketing Intelligence Representative. You will have the opportunity to develop within the role through working alongside the Business Development, Sales and Marketing teams within Oracle. The Marketing Intelligence Group is viewed as a true talent pool for the Business Development and Sales Teams. Oracle offers a structured training programme for Marketing Intelligence Representatives and Business Development Consultants including our approved sales certified training methodology along with regular product training. Miriam started her career as a Marketing Intelligence Representative six years ago, and shares what she has learned and how her career is progressing. My Career Path at Oracle: June 2005 – October 2005: Profiler in the Marketing Intelligence Team November 2005 - October 2006: Team Leader for MIT November 2006 - February 2008: Business Development Consultant Iberia March 2008 - December 2010: Lead Management Specialist Currently: Sales Program Manager for Iberia & Benelux What did you learn from your role in the Market Intelligence Team Being a Profiler helped me to understand how an organisation works, from the beginning to the end. It is like being in University but being paid! The three key things I learnt in this role are: Knowledge of customers: You are on the phone with over 70 customers daily. Not only does this give you an overview of the IT infrastructure of the customers companies but also how to manage their questions and rejections. Essentially you are learning how to convert their pain and complaints into business opportunities. Knowledge of Oracle: As a Profiler you get an excellent overview of how Oracle works internally, from Marketing to Sales, without forgetting the Operations Team. Knowledge about yourself: As a Profiler I learnt how to work outside of my comfort zone, there is a new challenge almost every day but Oracle are there to support you every step of the way. Oracle really invests in developing the MIT Team and as a Profiler you can expect product and sales training on a monthly basis. How did you progress from MIT to Business Development Group (BDG)? I made sure that my manager knew from the very beginning that I was keen to progress at Oracle and I was set very clear objectives to help me reach my goal.  My manager was very supportive and ensured I received all the training I needed. After I became a Team Leader of Profiling, I moved to an Iberia BDG position. How you feel your experience in MI has helped you in your current role? I truly believe that the MI position gives you a great overview of Oracle and this has really helped me in my current position.  I am the Sales Program Manager for IBERIA & Benelux and in my campaigns I need to target the right companies and the right job specs.  My time in the Market Intelligence team really helped me to understand how to focus and target my campaigns so I know I don’t miss any business opportunities! How would you sum up your Oracle experience? Oracle is a big organisation with big opportunities. With the right skills and with the great training programs that Oracle offer, the only limit is you! If you have any questions related to this article feel free to contact [email protected] You can find all our job opportunities via http://campus.oracle.com. Tags van Technorati: Marketing Intelligence,Benelux,Iberia,Profiler,Business Development,Sales Representatives,BDG,Business Development Group,opportunities,Oracle

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• From DBA to Data Analyst

  - by Denise McInerney

  Cross posted from the PASS Blog There is a lot changing in the data professional’s world these days. More data is being produced and stored. More enterprises are trying to use that data to improve their products and services and understand their customers better. More data platforms and tools seem to be crowding the market. For a traditional DBA this can be a confusing and perhaps unsettling time. It’s also a time that offers great opportunity for career growth. I speak from personal experience. We sometimes refer to the “accidental DBA”, the person who finds herself suddenly responsible for managing the database because she has some other technical skills. While it was not accidental, six months ago I was unexpectedly offered a chance to transition out of my DBA role and become a data analyst. I have since come to view this offer as a gift, though at the time I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. Throughout my DBA career I’ve gotten support from my PASS friends and colleagues and they were the first ones I turned to for counsel about this new situation. Everyone was encouraging and I received two pieces of valuable advice: first, leverage what I already know about data and second, work to understand the business’ needs. Bringing the power of data to bear to solve business problems is really the heart of the job. The challenge is figuring out how to do that. PASS had been the source of much of my technical training as a DBA, so I naturally started there to begin my Business Intelligence education. Once again the Virtual Chapter webinars, local chapter meetings and SQL Saturdays have been invaluable. I work in a large company where we are fortunate to have some very talented data scientists and analysts. These colleagues have been generous with their time and advice. I also took a statistics class through Coursera where I got a refresher in statistics and an introduction to the R programming language. And that’s not the end of the free resources available to someone wanting to acquire new skills. There are many knowledgeable Business Intelligence and Analytics professionals who teach through their blogs. Every day I can learn something new from one of these experts. Sometimes we plan our next career move and sometimes it just happens. Either way a database professional who follows industry developments and acquires new skills will be better prepared when change comes. Take the opportunity to learn something about the changing data landscape and attend a Business Intelligence, Business Analytics or Big Data Virtual Chapter meeting. And if you are moving into this new world of data consider attending the PASS Business Analytics Conference in April where you can meet and learn from those who are already on that road. It’s been said that “the only thing constant is change.” That’s never been more true for the data professional than it is today. But if you are someone who loves data and grasps its potential you are in the right place at the right time.

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