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Silverlight Cream for December 12, 2010 - 2 -- #1009

- by Dave Campbell

In this Issue: Michael Crump, Jesse Liberty, Shawn Wildermuth, Domagoj Pavlešic, Peter Kuhn, James Ashley, Sara Summers, Morten Nielsen, Peter Torr, and Tau Sick. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Silverlight 4 – Coded UI Framework Video Tutorial" Michael Crump WP7: "Windows Phone From Scratch #12–Custom Behaviors (Part I)" Jesse Liberty From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight 4 – Coded UI Framework Video Tutorial Michael Crump posted a video tutorial today on the Coded UI Test Framework that we got with the VS2010 Feature Pack 2. Wanna create automated tests? ... check out Michael's video and save yourself some time. Windows Phone From Scratch #12–Custom Behaviors (Part I) Jesse Liberty posted his Windows Phone from Scratch number 12 today... and it's on Custom Behaviors... cool stuff... need to read this and get your head around it... this is part 1, jump on it before he drops part 2 on us! The Next Application Platform? All of them... Shawn Wildermuth has a thought-provoking post up ... check it out and see if you're ready to join him on the adventure of building for all the platforms... Windows Phone 7 Accelerometer Test App Domagoj Pavlešic has a test app up for the accelerometer on the WP7 ... if you need to use it, and are having problems, a good example always helps me. Protocol of developing an animation texture tool Peter Kuhn found a need for a tool to creat some animations for an WP7 XNA game... so he challenged himself to write it, and detailed out all his steps as he went. Re-examining WP7 Launchers and Choosers James Ashley's most recent post is on the Pivot Control ... check this out... add a working Horizontally oriented slider to a pivot... plus some external links to help out New Prototyping Sketch Sheets for WP7 This is one of those posts that I had to go to SilverlightCream and make sure I hadn't hit it yet... pretty cool prototype sheets for WP7 by Sara Summers ... we've seen others, they're all good. Simulating GPS on Windows Phone 7 Morten Nielsen helps you get around the fact that you're not going to be able to use the emulator for testing your GPS app ... at least not without some assistance... and that doesn't mean hauling your dev system around your neighborhood, either. How to correctly handle application deactivation and reactivation We've seen posts on Tombstoning, but probably not from Silverlight team members... check this one out from Peter Torr ... great even sequence information and all the info on how to correctly handle it, plus external links to the documentation... you knew there was documentation, right? :) Localizing a Windows Phone 7 Application Tau Sick has a post up discussing Localization and your WP7 apps... coming from soneone with an app in the marketplace in 3 languages, it's a pretty good bet he's got it figured out! 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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Part 9: EBS Customizations, how to track

- by volker.eckardt(at)oracle.com

In the previous blogs we were concentrating on the preparation tasks. We have defined standards, we know about the tools and techniques we will start with. Additionally, we have defined the modification strategy, and how to handle such topics best. Now we are ready to take the requirements! Such requirements coming over in spreadsheets, word files (like GAP documents), or in any other format. As we have to assign some attributes, we start numbering all that and assign a short name to each of these requirements (=CEMLI reference). We may also have already a Functional person assigned, and we might involve someone from the tech team to estimate, and we like to assign a status such as 'planned', 'estimated' etc. All these data are usually kept in spreadsheets, but I would put them into a database (yes, I am from Oracle :). If you don't have any good looking and centralized application already, please give a try with Oracle APEX. It should be up and running in a day and the imported sheets are than manageable concurrently! For one of my clients I have created this CEMLI-DB; in between enriched with a lot of additional functionality, but initially it was just a simple centralized CEMLI tracking application. Why I am pointing out again the centralized method to manage such data? Well, your data quality will dramatically increase, if you let your project members see (also review and update) "your" data. APEX allows you to filter, sort, print, and also export. And if you can spend some time to define proper value lists, everyone will gain from. APEX allows you to work in 'agile' mode, means you can improve your application step by step. Let's say you like to reference a document, or even upload the same, you can do that. Or, you need to classify the CEMLIs by release, just add this release field, same for business area or CEMLI type. One CEMLI record may then look like this: Prepare one or two (online) reports, to be ready to present your "workload" to the project management. Use such extracts also when you work offline (to prioritize etc.). But as soon as you are again connected, feed the data back into the central application. Note: I have combined this application with an additional issue tracker. Here the most important element is the CEMLI reference, which acts as link to any other application (if you are not using APEX also as issue tracker :). Please spend a minute to define such a reference (see blog Part 8: How to name Customizations). Summary: Building the bridge from Gap analyse to the development has to be done in a controlled way. Usually the information is provided differently, but it is suggested to collect all requirements centrally. Oracle APEX is a great solution to enter and maintain such information in a structured, but flexible way. APEX helped me a lot to work with distributed development teams during the complete development cycle.

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Pondering New Technology

- by MOSSLover

So I have been standing at the end of a fork for a year peering down a corner looking at this way and that way trying to figure out where I fit in. I was so enthusiastic and excited about Silverlight when it came out. It was this amazing awesome technology that had this really cool animation and webcam/multimedia piece. I thought if I put my money on Silverlight it’s going somewhere, then HTML 5 came out and the wind shifted. I realized times were changing. I have been working with web technologies since I was 15 years old. Playing with html and javascript and even css back when it first came out. In tech years 15 years is forever. Things change so quickly and so often. So I guess the question is where am I heading? The answer is mobile technology. For some reason I was resisting change and I have no idea why. I guess I really wanted to see more than one player. I didn’t quite feel that Microsoft was ready with Windows Phone 7. It was a great start, but it just didn’t feel like they went all the way. Now with Windows 8 it feels like they are at version 2.0. It’s like hitting Silverlight 2.0 where they finally added the .Net bits. The path is paved, but we don’t know where it’s leading. Then we had 3.0, 4.0, and 5.0 to mature the technology into what it is today (man I’m hoping they are going to roll some of the cool bits into other tech if they don’t exist). Anyway, I’m on board, but I’m not buying a Windows Tablet just yet. I was hoping for a 7 inch screen from Apple around $300 or just above and a 7 inch screen from the MS side around the same price. What I got was the Apple side, but nothing from Microsoft. I was pretty disappointed with the $500 market price on the RT version. I realized Microsoft is close, but not quite where Apple is today. Yes the devices have Office that they are offering, but the sticker is just too much for a first generation device. If you guys remember correctly the first generation iPad was quite expensive. I guess for a 1st generation device $500 is pretty good. So I guess what I’m trying to say is that I am shifting my focus entirely away from Silverlight and more towards mobile. I will be doing a lot of postings on iOS, Windows 8, and Windows Phone 8 with SharePoint 2013. Since I don’t have a tablet and don’t foresee myself buying one just yet it might be mostly on the phones for right now. I want to do a bunch of testing on various devices on what needs to be done in apps on each device. I might add a bit on porting code from one to the other. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun and make things flow a little better for me. In a way it’s kind of like Star Trek 6 where they talk about the Undiscovered Country. I’m going to jump forward completely and see where I land. Technorati Tags: SharePoint 2013,Mobile,Windows 8,iOS

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SQL SERVER – Learn SQL Server 2014 Online in a Day – My Latest Pluralsight Course

- by Pinal Dave

Click here watch SQL Server 2014 Administration New Features. SQL Server 2014 was released earlier this year and it has been extremely popular in Microsoft world. Here is the announcement for everyone, who have been asking me to build a tutorial around SQL Server 2014. I have authored latest Pluralsight courses on the subject of SQL Server 2014. This course is 4 hours and 17 minutes long, but the best part is that this course contains all the latest features of SQL Server 2014. I have build this course with the assumption that DBA is familiar with earlier versions of SQL Server and wants to explore and learn new features of SQL Server 2014. The Challenge I Faced The biggest challenge I faced was how to come up with the outline for the course. The reason is that there are so many different features introduced in SQL Server 2014 that is will be difficult to cover each of the features in a single course. I wanted to cover the topics which are the most relevant and useful to developers, but in addition I also wanted to cover the topics which may be useful to develop if they know that they exists in the product. I finally decided to depend on blog readers and few of the SQL Experts. I reached out to selected 20 people via email and gave them a list of the topics which I should be covering in this course. They all work in different organizations and have a good understanding about the need of the DBA and Developers. Based on their feedback, I was able to come up with a very good outline which is currently very popular with Pluralsight library. Lots of people have asked me how was I able to come up with a course content outline so accurately. The credit for the same goes to the developers and DBA, who have voted in the topics and have helped me to build a very solid outline for the course. Outline of the Course Here is a quick outline for the course: Introduction Backup Enhancements Security Enhancements Columnstore Enhancements Online Data Operations Enhancements Enhancements with Microsoft Azure SSD Buffer Pool Extensions Resource Governor IO Miscellaneous Features Online Index Rebuilding Live Plans for Long Running Queries Transaction Durability Cardinality Estimation In Memory OLTP Optimization Well, I had a great fun working on the topics which I have mentioned in the outline. I am very confident that once you start with the course, you will indeed understand how each of the topics builds and presented. I have made sure that each of the topic has a vivid and clear story to begin with. I first explain the story and right after that I explain the concept. Who Should Attend This Course Everyone who has basic knowledge of SQL Server and wants to update themselves with SQL Server 2014. They should attend this course. One thing I have made sure that this course is easy to understand and I have decided complex subject into multiple parts. This way the learning is progressive and anyone with a poor knowledge of the subject can have enough time to understand the presented concept. Screenshot of the Course Here are few of the screenshot of the courses. How to Watch Video Course This course is available at Pluralsight, and you will need a valid login to Pluralsight. If you do not have Pluralsight login, you can quickly sign up for the FREE Trial. Click here watch SQL Server 2014 Administration New Features. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com)Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Training, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Video

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Windows Azure Recipe: Mobile Computing

- by Clint Edmonson

A while back, mashups were all the rage. The idea was to compose solutions that provided aggregation and integration across applications and services to make information more available, useful, and personal. Mashups ushered in the era of Web 2.0 in all it’s socially connected goodness. They taught us that to be successful, we needed to add web service APIs to our web applications. Web and client based mashups met with great success and have evolved even further with the introduction of the internet connected smartphone. Nothing is more available, useful, or personal than our smartphones. The current generation of cloud connected mobile computing mashups allow our mobilized workforces to receive, process, and react to information from disparate sources faster than ever before. Drivers Integration Reach Time to market Solution Here’s a sketch of a prototypical mobile computing solution using Windows Azure: Ingredients Web Role – with the phone running a dedicated client application, the web role is responsible for serving up backend web services that implement the solution’s core connected functionality. Database – used to store core operational and workflow data for the solution’s web services. Access Control – this service is used to authenticate and manage users identity, roles, and groups, possibly in conjunction with 3rd identity providers such as Windows LiveID, Google, Yahoo!, and Facebook. Worker Role – this role is used to handle the orchestration of long-running, complex, asynchronous operations. While much of the integration and interaction with other services can be handled directly by the mobile client application, it’s possible that the backend may need to integrate with 3rd party services as well. Offloading this work to a worker role better distributes computing resources and keeps the web roles focused on direct client interaction. Queues – these provide reliable, persistent messaging between applications and processes. They are an absolute necessity once asynchronous processing is involved. Queues facilitate the flow of distributed events and allow a solution to send push notifications back to mobile devices at appropriate times. Training & Resources These links point to online Windows Azure training labs and resources where you can learn more about the individual ingredients described above. (Note: The entire Windows Azure Training Kit can also be downloaded for offline use.) Windows Azure (16 labs) Windows Azure is an internet-scale cloud computing and services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers, which provides an operating system and a set of developer services which can be used individually or together. It gives developers the choice to build web applications; applications running on connected devices, PCs, or servers; or hybrid solutions offering the best of both worlds. New or enhanced applications can be built using existing skills with the Visual Studio development environment and the .NET Framework. With its standards-based and interoperable approach, the services platform supports multiple internet protocols, including HTTP, REST, SOAP, and plain XML SQL Azure (7 labs) Microsoft SQL Azure delivers on the Microsoft Data Platform vision of extending the SQL Server capabilities to the cloud as web-based services, enabling you to store structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data. Windows Azure Services (9 labs) As applications collaborate across organizational boundaries, ensuring secure transactions across disparate security domains is crucial but difficult to implement. Windows Azure Services provides hosted authentication and access control using powerful, secure, standards-based infrastructure. Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone The Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone is designed to make it easier for you to build mobile applications that leverage cloud services running in Windows Azure. The toolkit includes Visual Studio project templates for Windows Phone and Windows Azure, class libraries optimized for use on the phone, sample applications, and documentation Windows Azure Toolkit for iOS The Windows Azure Toolkit for iOS is a toolkit for developers to make it easy to access Windows Azure storage services from native iOS applications. The toolkit can be used for both iPhone and iPad applications, developed using Objective-C and XCode. Windows Azure Toolkit for Android The Windows Azure Toolkit for Android is a toolkit for developers to make it easy to work with Windows Azure from native Android applications. The toolkit can be used for native Android applications developed using Eclipse and the Android SDK. See my Windows Azure Resource Guide for more guidance on how to get started, including links web portals, training kits, samples, and blogs related to Windows Azure.

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Silverlight Cream for May 11, 2010 -- #859

- by Dave Campbell

In this All Submittal Issue: Colin Eberhardt, Ken Johnson, Alan Beasley, Pencho Popadiyn, Phil Middlemiss, Khawar(-2-), Levente Mihály, Alex van Beek, Bart Czernicki, Michael Washington, and Mark Monster. Shoutout: Not Silverlight necessarily, but definitely VS2010, read what Brett Balmer has to say In Defense of Portrait Mode From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight MultiBinding solution for Silverlight 4 Colin Eberhardt updated his Silverlight Multibinding solution to Silverlight 4. Great article with explanatory graphics, and links to the code... congrats on the use in the FaceBook Client too! Spirograph Shapes: WPF Bezier shapes from math formulae Wow... I haven't seen this much math since my Master's Thesis! ... Check out all the shapes Ken Johnson has built... don't let the math scare you... just use it :) Busy Dizzy Bee-sley Spirographic Animation in Expression Blend and Silverlight This is just fun... I saw Michael Washington playing with this yesterday at the Arizona Day of .NET but didn't have a chance to ask what it was.. Alan Beasley had a good time building this, and is sharing a very detailed tutorial with us. ModalDialogs, IEditableObject and MVVM in Silverlight 4 Pencho Popadiyn said the 'M' word over at SilverlightShow... actually the 'MVVM' word :) ... he's discussing Modal dialogs with no code in the View ... check out how he did it. A Chrome and Glass Theme - Part 6 Phil Middlemiss is up to episode 6 in his Theme-building tutorial... this time out, he's giving the TabControl and TabItem new clothes ... specifically discussing what to change and what to allow to inherit ... good stuff! Silverlight 4 Fonts gotcha Check out Khawar's ATM Machine demo -- there's a link on the page for this post... he had an issue with fonts, ratted it out, and explains it for all of us... thanks Khawar Demystifying Silverlight Obfuscation Khawar also has a good post up on Obfuscating your Silverlight... definitely showing that it's not all that difficult to do. geoGallery, a WinPhone7 sample OK this is interesting... using the geoLocation feature of WP7, Levente Mihály hits Google Picasa to find pictures... good write-up and all the code. Silverlight 4: Digitally signing a XAP with Visual Studio 2010 Alex van Beek has a nice tutorial on Signing your XAP file using Visual Studio 2010... of course you may want to visit Tim Heuer's blog (search at SC) to find the two good deals on certificates that are still in play. Creating Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in Expression Blend 4 for Business Intelligence applications In an interesting post, Bart Czernicki describes using the shape assets in Blend 4 to produce a KPI display in Silverlight or WPF. A discussion of the shape's evolution for KPI is included as well as some alternate shape uses. A DotNetNuke Silverlight 4 Drag and Drop File Manager Michael Washington has blogged about his Drag and Drop File Manager using the View Model Style pattern. This is covered in two CodeProject articles listed in the post. The design work was done by Alan Beasely and links to his work is there as well as covered in other SC posts. How to select a ListItem on Hover Mark Monster had a Use Case for Selecting a ListBox entry by hovering ... but he did it with a Behavior and for a ListBox and PathListBox and it works with DataBinding... 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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Give a session on C++ AMP – here is how

- by Daniel Moth

Ever since presenting on C++ AMP at the AMD Fusion conference in June, then the Gamefest conference in August, and the BUILD conference in September, I've had numerous requests about my material from folks that want to re-deliver the same session. The C++ AMP session I put together has evolved over the 3 presentations to its final form that I used at BUILD, so that is the one I recommend you base yours on. Please get the slides and the recording from channel9 (I'll refer to slide numbers below). This is how I've been presenting the C++ AMP session: Context (slide 3, 04:18-08:18) Start with a demo, on my dual-GPU machine. I've been using the N-Body sample (for VS 11 Developer Preview). (slide 4) Use an nvidia slide that has additional examples of performance improvements that customers enjoy with heterogeneous computing. (slide 5) Talk a bit about the differences today between CPU and GPU hardware, leading to the fact that these will continue to co-exist and that GPUs are great for data parallel algorithms, but not much else today. One is a jack of all trades and the other is a number cruncher. (slide 6) Use the APU example from amd, as one indication that the hardware space is still in motion, emphasizing that the C++ AMP solution is a data parallel API, not a GPU API. It has a future proof design for hardware we have yet to see. (slide 7) Provide more meta-data, as blogged about when I first introduced C++ AMP. Code (slide 9-11) Introduce C++ AMP coding with a simplistic array-addition algorithm – the slides speak for themselves. (slide 12-13) index<N>, extent<N>, and grid<N>. (Slide 14-16) array<T,N>, array_view<T,N> and comparison between them. (Slide 17) parallel_for_each. (slide 18, 21) restrict. (slide 19-20) actual restrictions of restrict(direct3d) – the slides speak for themselves. (slide 22) bring it altogether with a matrix multiplication example. (slide 23-24) accelerator, and accelerator_view. (slide 26-29) Introduce tiling incl. tiled matrix multiplication [tiling probably deserves a whole session instead of 6 minutes!]. IDE (slide 34,37) Briefly touch on the concurrency visualizer. It supports GPU profiling, but enhancements specific to C++ AMP we hope will come at the Beta timeframe, which is when I'll be spending more time talking about it. (slide 35-36, 51:54-59:16) Demonstrate the GPU debugging experience in VS 11. Summary (slide 39) Re-iterate some of the points of slide 7, and add the point that the C++ AMP spec will be open for other compiler vendors to implement, even on other platforms (in fact, Microsoft is actively working on that). (slide 40) Links to content – see slide – including where all your questions should go: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/parallelcppnative/threads. "But I don't have time for a full blown session, I only need 2 (or just 1, or 3) C++ AMP slides to use in my session on related topic X" If all you want is a small number of slides, you can take some from the session above and customize them. But because I am so nice, I have created some slides for you, including talking points in the notes section. Download them here. Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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Tech Ed/BI Conference 2010: A Recovering Industry in a Recovering City

- by andrewbrust

I tried writing a post for this blog last night, while at the this year’s Microsoft Tech Ed and Business Intelligence conferences, in New Orleans. But I literally fell asleep while writing it. That’s probably a sign that my readers might have done the same while reading it. Why the writer’s block? This was a very good show for me, but I think I was having trouble figuring out exactly why. Now that I’m on the flight home, I’m starting to piece it together. One reason, for sure, was that I’ve spent years in both the developer and the BI worlds, and a show that combined the two was really enjoyable for me. Typically, the subject matter, the attendees, the Microsoft execs and managers, and even the social circles have been separate. This year’s Tech Ed facilitated a fusion of each of these previously segregated groups. That was good for me as a speaker; for example, I facilitated a Birds of a Feather session on PowerPivot (Microsoft’s new self-service BI offering) which was well-attended, and by a large number of non-BI pros. The fusion was good for me as an attendee too, as Microsoft BI, in the form of a new Pivot Viewer control, made it into the Day 1 keynote, demoed by Microsoft’s key BI champion, Amir Netz. And it was good for me socially, as I was able to meet with peers in both camps, and at one location. Speaking of meeting with industry colleagues, I did a lot of that at this show. Probably for the first time ever, I carefully scheduled and conducted a series of meetings with friends and business acquaintances in the developer tools, data visualization, utilities, publishing and training areas of the Microsoft ecosystem. Beside the time efficiencies in conducting so many meetings, I discovered another benefit. I got a real handle on the tech industry’s economic health. The news here is good. First of all, 2010 has been a great year for just about everyone I spoke to. The mood is positive, energy is high, and people are working really hard. This is, of course, refreshing to see, and it’s a huge relief. Add to that the fact that this year’s Tech Ed was about 2.5 times larger in headcount than last year’s (based on numbers from unofficial, but reliable, sources), and the economic prognosis seems excellent. But there’s more to it than that. Here’s the thing: everyone I talked to seems to be working, and succeeding, at changing their business models to adapt to changes in the industry. Whether it’s the Internet’s impact on publishing and training, the increased importance of the developer audience in South Asia, the shift of affordable developer and business talent to unfamiliar locales abroad, or even lapses in Microsoft’s performance in the market, partner companies aren’t just rolling with the punches; they’re welcoming the changes and working them to their advantage. No one seemed downtrodden, or even fatigued. Even for businesses who have seen core revenue streams become commoditized, everyone seems to be changing their market strategy and winning. Even Microsoft, of whom I have been critical recently, showed signs of successful hard work and playbook change, in the maturing of their cloud strategy, their commitment to it and their excitement around it. And the embedded, managed, self-service BI strategy that Microsoft has been touting looks like it’s already being embraced by customers, even though PowerPivot, and other new Microsoft BI products, were released only recently. The collective optimism I have witnessed, and that I have felt, tells me good things about this industry and the economy. The stock market had huge mood swings during my stay, and that may yet subdue the industry recovery I have seen this week. Nonetheless, I am convinced that a strong foundation of hard work, innovative thinking and, if I may, true renaissance is underlying this industry’s success. That kind of strength will generate a strong recovery, I am certain, whether now or once we’re past another round of choppy weather in the broader economy. The fundamentals are good.

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ORACLE is WEB 2.0

- by anca.rosu

You never know what to expect in life, where it can take you and what kind of fulfillment it can offer you. It’s just like an amazing lottery with millions of winning tickets. My name is Paula, I am an Online Marketing Specialist at Oracle University and this is my story. Having graduated from a technical profile college, it seemed almost normal to follow the same career path. But I said no. I wanted to try something else, so I took an Advertising Masters Program and I really became in love with this entire industry. Advertising and the new impact of the Internet through social networking is my current fascination. I knew I had to work to incorporate both my skills intro one dream job. I want to believe that I have come to work at Oracle as part of a great plan that life has for me. It’s not the most glamorous job in advertising or in the fashion industry, but it’s everything you need to start investing in your development and to build relationships. A normal day at work begins at 9.30 at our Oracle Office in Bucharest. After a short chit-chat, coffee and some conference calls, marketing gets to work! Some of the members of my team are working besides me but others are based all over Europe. This is extremely useful when coordinating the EMEA Marketing for Oracle University, because this way it’s easier to keep an eye on these various locations. Even though it’s a team play, you need to speak up and make your mark. I am the kind of person that never stands-by and waits to be given directions, I am curious and intuitive. This makes things easier. In Oracle you really need to find your own way and to discover how to organize your time and how to get involved with people. People to people, this is the focus. But everything is up to you and it strongly depends on the type of personality that you have. I try to get involved in various activities, participate in Oracle Days Events, interact and meet all kinds of people. For those who are newly graduates or interns, Oracle has lots of trainings and webcasts you can attend to help you develop your career shape and to understand better the way the business works. You can also be awarded for ideas and setting the trends so that makes it worth it. What I like most about my job is the fact that I can come with ideas and bring them to life. For example Oracle University has a special seminar program called “Celebrity Seminars” where top industry speakers teach 1-day or 2-day condensed seminars. We thought of creating something exclusive and a video was the best idea. So my colleague and I became reporters for a day and interviewed this well-known speaker regarding his seminar. I think this is a good way to market this business. Live footage is a very good marketing tool so we are planning to use the video to target our online audiences via Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. This can even go in the newsletters that marketing sends regarding the Celebrity Seminars. This is what I meant when I said Oracle is a free spirited organization and you can surely find your place here among us. The best way to describe my job is WEB 2.0. The modern online approach comes to life while we are trying to sell our business. We need to be out there and we are responsible of spreading the buzz regarding our training offerings and our official courseware materials. There are so many new ways to interact with the target audience nowadays and I am so eager to discover the best online techniques! If you have any questions related to this article feel free to contact [email protected]. You can find our job opportunities via http://campus.oracle.com Technorati Tags: WEB 2.0,Online Marketing,Oracle University,Bucharest,events,graduates,interns,training,webcast,seminar,newsletters,business,Facebook,Twitter,LinkedIn

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Microsoft Cloud Day - the ups and downs

- by Charles Young

The term ‘cloud’ can sometimes obscure the obvious. Today’s Microsoft Cloud Day conference in London provided a good example. Scott Guthrie was halfway through what was an excellent keynote when he lost network connectivity. This proved very disruptive to his presentation which centred on a series of demonstrations of the Azure platform in action. Great efforts were made to find a solution, but no quick fix presented itself. The venue’s IT facilities were dreadful – no WiFi, poor 3G reception (forget 4G…this is the UK) and, unbelievably, no-one on hand from the venue staff to help with infrastructure issues. Eventually, after an unscheduled break, a solution was found and Scott managed to complete his demonstrations. Further connectivity issues occurred during the day. I can say that the cause was prosaic. A member of the venue staff had interfered with a patch board and inadvertently disconnected Scott Guthrie’s machine from the network by pulling out a cable. I need to state the obvious here. If your PC is disconnected from the network it can’t communicate with other systems. This could include a machine under someone’s desk, a mail server located down the hall, a server in the local data centre, an Internet search engine or even, heaven forbid, a role running on Azure. Inadvertently disconnecting a PC from the network does not imply a fundamental problem with the cloud or any specific cloud platform. Some of the tweeted comments I’ve seen today are analogous to suggesting that, if you accidently unplug your microwave from the mains, this suggests some fundamental flaw with the electricity supply to your house. This is poor reasoning, to say the least. As far as the conference was concerned, the connectivity issue in the keynote, coupled with some later problems in a couple of presentations, served to exaggerate the perception of poor organisation. Software problems encountered before the conference prevented the correct set-up of a smartphone app intended to convey agenda information to attendees. Although some information was available via this app, the organisers decided to print out an agenda at the last moment. Unfortunately, the agenda sheet did not convey enough information, and attendees were forced to approach conference staff through the day to clarify locations of the various presentations. Despite these problems, the overwhelming feedback from conference attendees was very positive. There was a real sense of excitement in the morning keynote. For many, this was their first sight of new Azure features delivered in the ‘spring’ release. The most common reaction I heard was amazement and appreciation that Azure’s new IaaS features deliver built-in template support for several flavours of Linux from day one. This coupled with open source SDKs and several presentations on Azure’s support for Java, node.js, PHP, MongoDB and Hadoop served to communicate that the Azure platform is maturing quickly. The new virtual network capabilities also surprised many attendees, and the much improved portal experience went down very well. So, despite some very irritating and disruptive problems, the event served its purpose well, communicating the breadth and depth of the newly upgraded Azure platform. I enjoyed the day very much.

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Customizing UPK outputs (Part 1)

- by [email protected]

If you are familiar with Oracle's User Productivity Kit, you are aware that UPK is a great product for rapidly developing application training. Did you know that you can also customize the UPK outputs to incorporate your company's logo, colors, and preferred styles? There are several areas that support customization: Logo - Within the developer, you can change the logo for all outputs at one time. Player - The player output uses a style sheet that can be updated to change colors, graphics and other visual branding. Documentation - The print documentation uses a Word-based template that can be modified to match your corporate standards. I'll discuss the first one today, and we'll cover the others in subsequent blogs. Before you begin: If you are working in a multi-user environment, ensure that you have "Modify" permissions for the Styles directory under the Publishing folder. Make a copy of the current styles. This recommendation is for backup purposes. If something goes wrong, you will have a way to recover. Consider creating your own category by creating a new folder under the Styles directory, and then copying the styles into your new folder. When you upgrade to future versions, the system will overwrite the standard styles with any new feature additions and updates that have been made. With your own category, all of your customizations will remain intact. To update the logos in all outputs: From the Tools Menu, choose Customize Logo. Select the category if necessary. Browse to select your logo. You can use any size logo, in any graphic format (*.bmp, *.gif, *.jpeg, *.jpg, *.png, or *.tif). The system will make a copy of your logo and add it to each of the publishing styles. Choose OK, and the update process begins. It may take a few minutes. Helpful hints: The logo you select is used "as is" - no resizing or cropping occurs during this process. The Customize Logo process automates replacing all the logo graphics for online deployment (small_logo.gif and large_logo.gif) and the headers in the documentation outputs. You can manually replace these graphics on an individual style basis if you prefer. The recommended logo size is 230 pixels wide x 44 pixels high. Prior to updating the logos, the system will display the size of the selected logo. If you use a logo that is much larger than the recommended size, the heading area will resize to fit the new logo, but that will impact the space available for your training material. If you are using a multi-user environment, the system will check out the publishing styles to you for the logo updates. After you review the styles, remember to check them in so the rest of your team can access the new changes. I'd be interested in hearing (or seeing) how you brand your UPK. Feel free to share in the comments! --Maria Cozzolino, Manager of Requirements & UI for UPK Product Development PS. For those of you who want to customize the player and documentation NOW, check out the detailed instructions in the Publishing Content chapter of the Content Development Guide.

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Red Gate's on the road in 2012 - Will you catch us?

- by RedAndTheCommunity

Annabel Bradford, our Communities and Events Manager, tells all about her experience of our 1st SQL Saturday of the year. The first stop this year was SQL Saturday #104 Colorado Springs, back in early January. I made the trip across from the UK just for this SQL Saturday event, and I'm so glad I did. I picked up Max from Red Gate's Pasadena office and we flew into Colorado Springs airport late on Friday evening to be greeted by freezing temperatures, which was quite a shock after the California sunshine. Rising before the sun, we arrived at Mr Biggs, the venue for the event, in the darkness. It was great to see so many smiling attendees so bright and early on a Saturday morning. Everyone was eager to learn more about SQL Server, and hundreds of people came and chatted with us at the table, saw demos and learnt more about Red Gate tools. The event highlights for the attendees were definitely the unlimited lazer quest, bowling and pool available during the break times. For Max, Grant Fritchey and I on the Red Gate table, the highlights have to be meeting customers and getting the opportunity to meet attendees who'd heard of, but wanted to know more about, Red Gate. We were delighted to hear lots of valuable feedback that we took back to share with the team. As a thank you for sharing insights about their work lives and how they use SQL Server and Red Gate tools, attendees are able to take away Red Gate SQL Server books. We aim to have a range of titles available when we exhibit, so that attendees can choose a book that's going to be most interesting to them, and that they can use as a reference back at the office. Every time I meet a Red Gate user or a member of the SQL community, I'm always overwhelmed by the enthusiasm they have for their industry. Everyone who gives up their time to learn more about their job should be rewarded, and at Red Gate we like to do just that. Red Gate has long supported the SQL community through sponsorship to facilitate user group meetings and community events, but it's only though face-to-face contact that we really get a chance to see the impact of our support. I hope we'll have the chance to see you on the road at some point this year. We'll be at a range of events, including free SQL Saturdays, one day free events 'the Red Gate way', two-day Rallys, and full-week conferences. Next stop is SQL Saturday #109 Silicon Valley on March 3rd where you'll meet Jeff and Arneh, two of our US-based SQL team members. Be sure to ask them any questions you've got about the Red Gate tools, as these guys will be delighted to hear your questions, show you the options, and will make a note of your feedback to send through to the development team. Until the next time. Happy learning! Annabel Grant, Max and Annabel at SQL Saturday #104 Colorado Springs

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links for 2010-12-08

- by Bob Rhubart

What's a data architect? A comic dialog by one who knows: Oracle ACE Director Lewis Cunningham. Webcast: Oracle Business Intelligence Forum - December 15, 2010 at 9:00 am PT "The Oracle Business Intelligence Online Forum is a half-day virtual event that offers you a unique opportunity to see, in one place, the full portfolio of Oracle’s Business Intelligence (BI) offerings, and to learn what sets Oracle apart from the rest. Hear Oracle executives and industry analyst, Howard Dresner, present the current state of Business Intelligence, along with a series of customers who will share their case studies of putting analytics in action." Oracle Rolls Out Private Cloud Architecture And World-Record Transaction Performance | Forrester Blogs "Exadata has been dealt with extensively in other venues, both inside Forrester and externally, and appears to deliver the goods for I&O groups who require efficient consolidation and maximum performance from an Oracle database environment." -- Richard Fichera, Forrester Seven ways to get things started: Java EE Startup Classes with GlassFish and WebLogic "This is a blog about a topic that I realy don't like. But it comes across my ways over and over again and it's no doubt that you need it from time to time. Enough reasons for me to collect some information about it and publish it for your reference. I am talking about Startup-/Shutdown classes with Java EE applications or servers." -- Oracle ACE Director Markus "@myfear" Eisele." Monitoring Undelivered Messages in BPEL in SOA 10g (Antony Reynolds' Blog) "I am currently working with a client that wants to know how many undelivered messages they have, and if it reaches a certain threshold then they wants to alert the operator. To do this they plan on using the Enterprise Manager alert functions, but first they needs to know how many undelivered instances are out there." SOA author Antony Reynolds VirtualBox Appliances for Developers "Developers can simply download a few files, assemble them with a script , and then import and run the resulting pre-built VM in VirtualBox. This makes starting with these technologies even easier. Each appliance contains some Hands-On-Labs to start learning." -- Peter Paul van de Beek Oracle UCM 11g Remote Intradoc Client (RIDC) Integration with Oracle ADF 11g "It's great we have out of the box WebCenter ADF task flows for document management in UCM. However, for complete business scenario implementations, usually it's not enough and we need to manage Content Repository programmatically. This can be achieved through Remote Intradoc Client (RIDC) API. It's quite hard to find any practical information about this API, but I managed to get code for UCM folder creation/removal and folder information." -- Oracle ACE Director Andrejus Baranovskis Interview with Java Champion Matjaz B. Juric on Cloud Computing, SOA, and Java EE 6 "Matjaz Juric of Slovenia, head of the Cloud Computing and SOA Competence Centre at the University of Maribor, and professor at the University of Ljubljana, shares insights about cloud computing, SOA and Java EE 6." White Paper: Oracle Complex Event Processing High Availability "This whitepaper describes the high availability (HA) solutions available in Oracle CEP 11g Release 1 Patch Set 2 and presents the results of a benchmark study demonstrating the performance of the Oracle CEP HA solutions."

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Issues printing through ssh tunnel and port forwarding

- by simogasp

I'm having some problems trying to print through a ssh tunnel. I'd like to print from my laptop to a network printer (Toshiba es453, for what matters) which is in a local network. I can reach the local network using a gateway. So far I did the following: ssh -N -L19100:<Printer_IP>:9100 <username>@<ssh_gateway> Basically i just mapped the port 19100 of my laptop directly to the input port of the printer, passing through the gateway. So far, so good. Then, i tried to install on my laptop a new printer with the GUI config tool of ubuntu, so that the new printer is on localhost at port 19100 (as APP Socket/HP Jet Direct) , then I provided the proper driver of the printer. In theory, once the tunnel is open I should be able to print from any program just selecting this printer. Of course, it does not work. :-) The document hangs in the queue with status Processing while in the shell where I set up the tunnel I get these errors on failing opening channels debug1: Local forwarding listening on ::1 port 19100. debug1: channel 0: new [port listener] debug1: Local forwarding listening on 127.0.0.1 port 19100. debug1: channel 1: new [port listener] debug1: Requesting [email protected] debug1: Entering interactive session. debug1: Connection to port 19100 forwarding to 195.220.21.227 port 9100 requested. debug1: channel 2: new [direct-tcpip] debug1: Connection to port 19100 forwarding to 195.220.21.227 port 9100 requested. debug1: channel 3: new [direct-tcpip] channel 2: open failed: connect failed: Connection timed out debug1: channel 2: free: direct-tcpip: listening port 19100 for 195.220.21.227 port 9100, connect from ::1 port 44434, nchannels 4 debug1: Connection to port 19100 forwarding to 195.220.21.227 port 9100 requested. debug1: channel 2: new [direct-tcpip] channel 3: open failed: connect failed: Connection timed out debug1: channel 3: free: direct-tcpip: listening port 19100 for 195.220.21.227 port 9100, connect from ::1 port 44443, nchannels 4 channel 2: open failed: connect failed: Connection timed out debug1: channel 2: free: direct-tcpip: listening port 19100 for 195.220.21.227 port 9100, connect from ::1 port 44493, nchannels 3 debug1: Connection to port 19100 forwarding to 195.220.21.227 port 9100 requested. debug1: channel 2: new [direct-tcpip] As a further debugging test I tried the following. From a machine inside the local network I did a telnet <IP_printer> 9100, got access, wrote some random thing, closed the connection and correctly I got a print of what I had written. So the port and the ip of the printer should be correct. I tried the same from my laptop with the tunnel opened, the telnet succeeded but, again, the printer didn't print anything, getting the usual channel x: open failed: errors. I'm not a great expert on the matter, I just thought that in theory it was possible to do something like that, but maybe there is something that I didn't consider or I did wrong. Any clue? Thanks! Simone [update] As further debugging test, I tried to replicate the procedure from a machine in the local network. From that machine, I did ssh -N -L19100:<IP_printer>:9100 <username>@<ssh_gateway> (note that now the machine, the gateway and the printer are in the same local network) then I tried again the telnet test with telnet localhost 19100, I got access and everything, but I didn't get the print but the usual error channel 2: open failed: connect failed: Connection timed out Maybe I am missing some other connection to be forwarded or maybe this is not allowed by the administrators. Of course, if I connect via ssh tunneling to the local machine from my laptop through the gateway, I can successfully print using the lpr command (from the local machine). But this is what I would like to avoid (yes, I'm lazy...:-), I would like to have a more 'elegant' and transparent way to do that.

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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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Silverlight Cream for December 07, 2010 -- #1004

- by Dave Campbell

In this Issue: András Velvárt, Kunal Chowdhury(-2-), AvraShow, Gill Cleeren, Ian T. Lackey, Richard Waddell, Joe McBride, Michael Crump, Xpert360, keyboardP, and Pete Vickers(-2-). Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Grouping Records in Silverlight DataGrid using PagedCollectionView" Kunal Chowdhury WP7: "Phone 7 Back Button and the ListPicker control" Ian T. Lackey Shoutouts: Colin Eberhardt has some Silverlight 5 Adoption Predictions you may want to check out. Michael Crump has a post up showing lots of the goodness of Silverlight 5 from the Firestarter... screenshots, code snippets, etc: Silverlight 5 – What’s New? (Including Screenshots & Code Snippets) Kunal Chowdhury has a pretty complete Silverlight 5 feature set from the Firestarter and an embedded copy of Scott Guthrie's kenote running on the page: New Features Announced for Silverlight 5 Beta From SilverlightCream.com: Just how productive is WP7 development compared to iOS, Android and mobile Web? András Velvárt blogged about a contest he took part in to build a WP7 app in 1-1/2 hours without any prior knowledge of it's funtion. He and his team-mate were pitted against other teams on Android, IOS, and mobile Web... guess who got (almost) their entire app running? ... just too cool Andras! ... Grouping Records in Silverlight DataGrid using PagedCollectionView Kunal Chowdhury has a couple good posts up, this first one is on using the PagedCollectionView to group the records in a DataGrid... code included. Filtering Records in Silverlight DataGrid using PagedCollectionView Kunal Chowdhury then continues with another post on the PagedCollectionView only this time is showing how to do some filtering. DeepZoom Tips and Techniques AvraShow has a post up discussing using DeepZoom to explore, in his case, a Printed Circuit Board, with information about how he proceeded in doing that, and some tips and techniques along the way. The validation story in Silverlight (Part 2) Gill Cleeren has Part 2 of his Silverlight Validation series up at SilverlightShow. This post gets into IDataErrorInfo and INotifyDataErrorInfo. Lots of code and the example is available for download. Phone 7 Back Button and the ListPicker control Ian T. Lackey has a post up about the WP7 backbutton and what can get a failure from the Marketplace in that area, and how that applies to the ListPicker as well. Very Simple Example of ICommand CanExecute Method and CanExecuteChanged Event Richard Waddell has a nice detailed tutorial on ICommand and dealing with CanExecute... lots of Blend love in this post. Providing an Alternating Background Color for an ItemsControl Joe McBride has a post up discussing putting an alternating background color on an ItemsControl... you know, how you do on a grid... interesting idea, and all the code... Pimp my Silverlight Firestarter Michael Crump has a great Firestarter post up ... where and how to get the videos, the labs... a good Firestarter resource for sure. Adventures with PivotViewer Part 7: Slider control Xpert360 has part 7 of the PivotViewer series they're doing up. This time they're demonstrating taking programmatic control of the Zoom slider. Creating Transparent Lockscreen Wallpapers for WP7 I don't know keyboardP's name, but he's got a cool post up about getting an image up for the WP7 lock screen that has transparent regions on it... pretty cool actually. Windows Phone 7 Linq to XML 'strangeness' Pete Vickers has a post up describing a problem he found with Linq to XML on WP7. He even has a demo app that has the problem, and the fix... and it's all downloadable. Windows Phone 7 multi-line radio buttons Pete Vickers has another quick post up on radio buttons with so much text that it needs wrapping ... this is for WP7, but applies to Silverlight in general. 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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Thoughts on Thoughts on TDD

Brian Harry wrote a post entitled Thoughts on TDD that I thought I was going to let lie, but I find that I need to write a response. I find myself in agreement with Brian on many points in the post, but I disagree with his conclusion. Not surprisingly, I agree with the things that he likes about TDD. Focusing on the usage rather than the implementation is really important, and this is important whether you use TDD or not. And YAGNI was a big theme in my Seven Deadly Sins of Programming series. Now, on to what he doesnt like. He says that he finds it inefficient to have tests that he has to change every time he refactors. Here is where we part company. If you are having to do a lot of test rewriting (say, more than a couple of minutes work to get back to green) *often* when you are refactoring your code, I submit that either you are testing things that you dont need to test (internal details rather than external implementation), your code perhaps isnt as decoupled as it could be, or maybe you need a visit to refactorers anonymous. I also like to refactor like crazy, but as we all know, the huge downside of refactoring is that we often break things. Important things. Subtle things. Which makes refactoring risky. *Unless* we have a set of tests that have great coverage. And TDD (or Example-based Design, which I prefer as a term) gives those to us. Now, I dont know what sort of coverage Brian gets with the unit tests that he writes, but I do know that for the majority of the developers Ive worked with and I count myself in that bucket the coverage of unit tests written afterwards is considerably inferior to the coverage of unit tests that come from TDD. For me, it all comes down to the answer to the following question: How do you ensure that your code works now and will continue to work in the future? Im willing to put up with a little efficiency on the front side to get that benefit later. Its not the writing of the code thats the expensive part, its everything else that comes after. I dont think that stepping through test cases in the debugger gets you what you want. You can verify what the current behavior is, sure, and do it fairly cheaply, but you dont help the guy in the future who doesnt know what conditions were important if he has to change your code. His second part that he doesnt like backing into an architecture (go read to see what he means). Ive certainly had to work with code that was like this before, and its a nightmare the code that nobody wants to touch. But thats not at all the kind of code that you get with TDD, because if youre doing it right youre doing the write a failing tests, make it pass, refactor approach. Now, you may miss some useful refactorings and generalizations for this, but if you do, you can refactor later because you have the tests that make it safe to do so, and your code tends to be easy to refactor because the same things that make code easy to write unit tests for make it easy to refactor. I also think Brian is missing an important point. We arent all as smart as he is. Im reminded a bit of the lesson of Intentional Programming, Charles Simonyis paradigm for making programming easier. I played around with Intentional Programming when it was young, and came to the conclusion that it was a pretty good thing if you were as smart as Simonyi is, but it was pretty much a disaster if you were an average developer. In this case, TDD gives you a way to work your way into a good, flexible, and functional architecture when you dont have somebody of Brians talents to help you out. And thats a good thing.Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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TechEd Israel 2010 may only accept speakers from sponsors

- by RoyOsherove

A month or so ago, Microsoft Israel started sending out emails to its partners and registered event users to “Save the date!” – Micraoft Teched Israel is coming, and it’s going to be this november! “Great news” I thought to myself. I’d been to a couple of the MS teched events, as a speaker and as an attendee, and it was lovely and professionally done. Israel is an amazing place for technology and development and TechEd hosted some big names in the world of MS software. A couple of weeks ago, I was shocked to hear from a couple of people that Microsoft Israel plans to only accept non-MS teched speakers, only from sponsors of the event. That means that according to the amount that you have paid, you get to insert one or more of your own selected speakers as part of teched. I’ve spent the past couple of weeks trying to gather more evidence of this, and have gotten some input from within MS about this information. It looks like that is indeed the case, though no MS rep. was prepared to answer any email I had publicly. If they approach me now I’d be happy to print their response. What does this mean? If this is true, it means that Microsoft Israel is making a grave mistake – They are diluting the quality of the speakers for pure money factors. That means, that as a teched attendee, who paid good money, you might be sitting down to watch nothing more that a bunch of infomercials, or sub-standard speakers – since speakers are no longer selected on quality or interest in their topic. They are turning the conference from a learning event to a commercial driven event They are closing off the stage to the community of speakers who may not be associated with any organization willing to be a sponsor They are losing speakers (such as myself) who will not want to be part of such an event. (yes – even if my company ends up sponsoring the event, I will not take part in it, Sorry Eli!) They are saying “F&$K you” to the community of MVPs who should be the people to be approached first about technical talks (my guess is many MVPs wouldn’t want to talk at an event driven that way anyway ) I do hope this ends up not being true, but it looks like it is. MS Israel had already done such a thing with the Developer Days event previouly held in Israel – only sponsors were allowed to insert speakers into the event. If this turns out to be true I would urge the MS community in Israel to NOT TAKE PART AT THIS EVENT in any form (attendee, speaker, sponsor or otherwise). by taking part, you will be telling MS Israel it’s OK to piss all over the community that they are quietly suffocating anyway. The MVP case MS Israel has managed to screw the MVP program as well. MS MVPs (I’m one) have had a tough time here in Israel the past couple of years. ever since yosi taguri left the blue badge ranks, there was not real community leader left. Whoever runs things right now has their eyes and minds set elsewhere, with the software MVP community far from mind and heart. No special MVP events (except a couple of small ones this year). No real MVP leadership happens here, with the MVP MEA lead (Ruari) being on a remote line, is not really what’s needed. “MVP? What’s that?” I’m sure many MS Israel employees would say. Exactly my point. Last word I’ve been disappointed by the MS machine for a while now, but their slowness to realize what real community means in the past couple of years really turns me off. Maybe it’s time to move on. Maybe I shouldn’t be chasing people at MS Israel begging for a room to host the Agile Israel user group. Maybe it’s time to say a big bye bye and start looking at a life a bit more disconnected.

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24 Hours of PASS: Whine, Whine, Whine

- by Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)

24 Hours of Pass (or 24HOP) is a great program offered by PASS to provide free, online training for anyone who wants to learn more about SQL Server. They routinely have the best SQL Server presenters available for these sessions, and attract hundreds, perhaps even a thousand attendees from around the world. This is definitely one of the best things they've started doing in the past few years, and every session I've attended has been excellent. So why am I so grumpy about it? I'm not really, pretty much everything here is a minor annoyance that I can deal with. However since they're so minor they seem to be things that can be easily corrected and would make the process much better. First off, this is my biggest gripe, the registration page: https://www323.livemeeting.com/lrs/8000181573/Registration.aspx?pageName=lj6378f4fhf5hpdm What grinds my gears about this? I have to scroll alllllllllllllllllllllllllllll the way to bottom to actually register for the sessions. This wouldn't be so bad except all the details of the session, including the presenter, is in a separate list at the top. Both lists contain info the other does not, and scrolling between them to determine "Should I make time to listen to this? Who is speaking at this time anyway?" is really unnecessary. My preference would be to keep the top list and add the checkboxes and schedule info in separate columns. This is a full-width design, so there's plenty of space for this data, which is pretty small anyway. The other huge benefit is halving the size of the page, which improves performance and lowers bandwidth usage considerably. And if you know HTML/ASP.Net, and you view the page source, you can find PLENTY of other things that can be reduced even further. (not just viewstate) One nice thing that PASS does is send iCal reminders to your email address so you can accept them to your calendar. Again, they leave off the presenter in the appointment details, while still duplicating the meeting title in the body. Sometimes I make decisions based on speaker rather than content (Natalie Portman is reading the Yellow Pages??? I'M THERE!) and having the speaker in the iCal is helpful. Next minor annoyances are the necessity for providing a company name, and the survey questions. I know PASS needs to market themselves effectively, and they need information to do that, and since this is a free event it's really not worth complaining about, but why ask the survey question twice? (once at registration, once again when joining the LiveMeeting) Same thing for the company name. All of this should be tied to email address, so that's all I should need to enter when joining the LiveMeeting. The last one is also minor, but it irks me in this day and age of multiple browsers and the decline of Internet Explorer as a dominant platform. The registration page was originally created in Visual Studio 2003, and has a lot of IE-specific crud representative of the browser situation of 2003. (IE5 references? really? and is the aforementioned viewstate big enough?) This causes some grief with other browsers like Firefox, Chrome, and sometimes IE8 or 9. And don't get me started on using the page on a Mac or in Safari. My main point is that PASS is an international organization, welcoming everyone from all levels of SQL Server proficiency, and in that spirit I think it would help to accommodate a wider range of browser software, especially since the registration page is extremely simple. I recognize that this page is not hosted on the PASS website and may be maintained by some division of Microsoft, but to me that's even worse if MS can't update their own pages. They've deprecated IE6, so they don't need to maintain support on their own websites anymore. OK, I'll shut up now. #sqlpass #24HOP

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regarding the Windows Phone 7 series, XNA and Visual Basic

- by Chris Williams

as long as we're talking about VB... I figured I would share this as well. Hi everyone, I'm about to express a sentiment that might ruffle a few feathers, but I think most of you know me well enough to know I love like accept VB for what it is and that what I'm about to say is with good intentions. (The rest of you, who don't know me, please take my word for it.) The world is full of VB developers, I was one of them for a long time. I think it's safe to assume that none of us are ignorant people who require handholding. We're working professionals, making a living by using our skills as developers. I'm also willing to bet that quite a few of us are fluent in C# as well as VB. It may not be your preferred language, but many of you can do it and you prove that nearly every day. Honestly, I don't know ANY developers or consultants that have only known ONE language ever. So it pains me greatly when I see the word "CAN'T" being tossed around like a crutch... as in "we CAN'T develop for the windows phone or we CAN'T develop XNA games." At MIX, Microsoft hath decreed that C# is the language of choice for developing for the Windows Phone 7. I think it's a safe bet that you won't see VB support if it isn't there already. (Just like XNA... which is up to version 4.0 by now.) So what? (Yeah... I said it.) I think everyone here can agree that actual coding is only one part of software design and development. There is nothing stopping ANY of you from beginning the process of designing your killer phone app, writing up specs, requirements, doing UI design, workflow, mockups, storyboards, art, etc.... None of these things are language dependent. IF by the time you've got that stuff out of the way, and there's still no VB support, then start doing some rapid prototyping of your app in C# (I know, I know... heresy!) You still have to spend time learning how the phone does things, what UI tricks do what, what paradigms make sense, how to use to accelerometer and the tilt and the multitouch functionality. I can guarantee you that time spent doing this is a great investment, no matter WHAT extension your code files have. Eventually, you may have a working prototype. IF by this time, there's STILL no VB support... fret not, you've made significant progress on your app. You've designed it, prototyped it, figured out how to use the phone specific features... so you might as well finish it and pat yourself on the back for learning something new... and possibly being first to market with your new app. I'll be happy to argue any and all of these points online or off with anyone who cares to do so, but there is one undeniable point that you simply can't argue: Your potential customers do not care AT ALL what programming language you used to write the app they are about to purchase. They care that it works. If your biggest concern is being first to market, than stop complaining and get busy because you're running out of time and the 3000+ people who were at MIX certainly aren't waiting for you. They've already started working on their apps.

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ArchBeat Link-o-Rama Top 10 for August 2012

- by Bob Rhubart

The Top 10 most popular items shared via the OTN ArchBeat Facebook page for the month of August 2012. Now Available: Oracle SQL Developer 3.2 (3.2.09.23) New features include APEX listener, UI enhancements, and 12c database support. The Role of Oracle VM Server for SPARC in a Virtualization Strategy In this article, Matthias Pfutzner discusses hardware, desktop, and operating system virtualization, along with various Oracle virtualization technologies, including Oracle VM Server for SPARC. How to Manually Install Flash Player Plugin to see the Oracle Enterprise Manager Performance Page | Kai Yu So, you're a DBA and you want to check the Performance page in Oracle Enterprise Manager (11g or 12c). So you click the Performance tab and… nothing. Zip. Nada. The Flash plugin is a no-show. Relax! Oracle ACE Director Kai Yu shows you what you need to do to see all the pretty colors instead of that dull grey screen. Relationally Challenged (CX - CRM - EQ/RQ/CRQ) | Chris Warticki Self-proclaimed Oracle Support "spokesmodel" Chris Chris Warticki has some advice for those interested in Customer Relationship Management: "How about we just dumb it down, strip it to the core, keep it simple and LISTEN?! No more focus groups, no more surveys, and no need to gather more data. We have plenty of that. Why not just provide the customer what they are asking for?" Free WebLogic Server Course | Middleware Magic So you want to sharpen your Oracle WebLogic Server skills, but you prefer to skip the whole classroom bit and don't want to be bothered with dealing with an instructor? No problem! Oracle ACE Rene van Wijk, a prolific Middleware Magic blogger, has information on an Oracle WebLogic course you can take on your own time, at your own pace. Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.1.20 released Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.1.20 was just released at the community and Oracle download sites, reports the Fat Bloke. This is a maintenance release containing bug fixes and stability improvements. Optimizing OLTP Oracle Database Performance using Dell Express Flash PCIe SSDs | Kai Yu Oracle ACE Director Kai Yu shares resources based on "several extensive performance studies on a single node Oracle 11g R2 database as well as a two node 11gR2 Oracle Real Application clusters (RAC) database running on Dell PowerEdge R720 servers with Dell Express Flash PCIe SSDs on Oracle Enterprise Linux 6.2 platform." Oracle ACE sessions at Oracle OpenWorld With so many great sessions at this year's event, building your Oracle OpenWorld schedule can involve making a lot of tough choices. But you'll find that the sessions led by Oracle ACEs just might be the icing on the cake for your OpenWorld experience. MySQL Update: The Cleveland MySQL Meetup (Independence, OH) Oracle MySQL team member Benjamin Wood, a MySQL engineer and five year veteran of the MySQL organization, will speak at the Cleveland MySQL Meetup event on September 12. The presentation will include a MySQL 5.5 Overview, Oracle's Roadmap for MySQL, including specifics on MySQL 5.6, best practices and how to overcome development and operational MySQL challenges, and the new MySQL commercial extensions. Click the link for time and location information. Parsing XML in Oracle Database | Martijn van der Kamp Martijn van der Kamp's post deals with processing XML in PL/SQL code and processing the data into the database. Thought for the Day "Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen." — Edward V. Berard Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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T-SQL Tuesday - the swag

- by Rob Farley

This month’s T-SQL Tuesday is hosted by Kendal van Dyke (@SQLDBA), and is on the topic of swag. He asks about the best SQL Server swag that we’ve ever received from a conference. I can’t say I ever focus on getting the swag at conferences, as I see some people doing. I know there are plenty of people that get around all the sponsors as soon as they’ve arrived, collecting whatever goodies they can, sometimes as token gifts for those at home, sometimes as giveaways for the user groups they attend. I remember a few years ago at my first PASS Summit, the SQLCAT team gave me a large pile of leftover SQL Server swag to give away to my user group – piles of branded things to stop your phone sliding off your car dashboard, and other things. The user group members thought it was great, and over the course of a few months, happily cleared me out of it all. I tend to consider swag to be something that you haven’t earned except by being at a conference, and there was no winning associated with it, it was simply a giveaway item at a sponsor booth. That means I don’t include the HP Mini laptop that was given away at TechEd Australia a few years ago to every attendee, or the SQL Server bag and Camelbak bottle that I was given as a thank-you for writing a guest blog post (which I use as my regular laptop bag and water bottle for work). I don’t even include the copy of Midtown Madness that I got as a door prize at my vey first TechEd event in 1999 (that was a really good game, and even meant that when I went to Chicago last year, I felt a strange familiarity about the place). I don’t want to include shirts in the mix either. I was given a nice SQL Server shirt about five years ago TechEd Australia. It’s a business shirt (buttons, cuffs, pocket on the chest), black with the SQL Server logo on it. It was such a nice shirt that I commented about it to the Product Marketing Manager for Australia (Christine, at the time), who unexpectedly arranged for me to get another one. That was certainly an improvement on the tent I was given at one of the MVP conference I attended. So when I consider these ‘rules’, two pieces of swag come to mind, and I think both were at PASS Summits (although I can’t be sure). One was a hand-warmer from HP, one of the “crystallisation-type” ones, which proved extremely popular when I got home, until one day when it didn’t survive being recharged – not overly SQL related, but still it was good swag. The other was an umbrella, from expressor, which was from the PASS Summit in 2010, my first PASS Summit. I remember it well – Blythe Morrow (now Gietz) (@blythemorrow) was working the booth, having stopped working for PASS some time before, but she’d been on my list of people to meet, as I’d had plenty of contact with her while she’d worked at PASS, my being a chapter leader and general volunteer. There had been an expressor dinner on one of the first evenings, which I’d been asked to be at, which is when I’d met lots of SQL people in person for the first time, including Ted Krueger (@onpnt), Jessica Moss (@jessicamoss) and Blythe. Anyway, at some point the next day I swung by their booth to say hello and thank them for the dinner, and Blythe says “Oh, we have the best swag – here!” and handed me an umbrella. And she was right. It’s excellent. @rob_farley

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ADF Enterprise Application Development - Made Simple (Book Review)

- by Frank Nimphius

Sten E. Vesterli wrote the "Oracle ADF Enterprise Application Development – Made Simple" book published by Packt Publishing in 2011 http://www.packtpub.com/oracle-adf-enterprise-application-development/book A common question on OTN, but also when talking to clients or customers is about where and how to start your ADF application development. Especially when the current programming background is not in Java, but 4 GL or PLSQL, developers often look for answers to the following questions: · How long does it take to learn Oracle ADF ? · How long does it take to replace a Forms application with ADF ? · How many developers do I need? · Do I need to know Java to use ADF and if yes, how good do I need to know this? · How do I structure my programming files, organizing them in JDeveloper work spaces, projects and libraries? · What is best practices for naming Java packages and how to void naming conflicts in ADF in general? · How many Application Modules do I need or should I create? · How to test applications? Sten Vesterli answers all of the above questions and more in his book http://www.packtpub.com/oracle-adf-enterprise-application-development/book , which makes it great value add to the 3 existing Oracle ADF books. In order of complexity (which also is the order in which reading the available Oracle ADF books makes sense), in my opinion, Sten's book should come second – though it also is useful to those that are already more advanced with Oracle ADF. So if you are absolutely new to Oracle ADF, then the order of books to read to get you up on an expert level should be: 1. Grant Ronald; "Quick Start Guide to Oracle Fusion Development: Oracle JDeveloper and Oracle ADF" (McGraw Hill 2010) 2. Sten Vesterli; "Oracle ADF Enterprise Application Development – Made Simple" (Packt Publishing 2011) 3. Duncan Mills, Peter Koletzke; " Oracle JDeveloper 11g Handbook: A Guide to Fusion Web Development" (McGraw Hill 2009) 4. Frank Nimphius, Lynn Munsinger; " Oracle Fusion Developer Guide: Building Rich Internet Applications with Oracle ADF Business Components and Oracle ADF Faces" (McGraw Hill 2010) If you are not new to Oracle ADF and Orace JDeveloper, then buy Sten Vesterli's book anyway. It is worth it and you want to have it on your book shelf. See below the table of content to get a better idea of what this book covers: · Chapter 1: The ADF Proof of Concept · Chapter 2: Estimating the Effort · Chapter 3: Getting Organized · Chapter 4: Productive Teamwork · Chapter 5: Prepare to Build · Chapter 6: Building the Enterprise Application · Chapter 7: Testing your Application · Chapter 8: Look and Feel · Chapter 9: Customizing the Functionality · Chapter 10: Securing your ADF Application · Chapter 11: Package and Deliver · Appendix: Internationalization The book is written with a lot of good humor, which makes the read very enjoyable (from a geek's perspective, of course). My favorite quote – just in case you are interested - is from page 97, when Sten talks about getting organized: " Stop sending e-mails to your team. Just stop it. E-mail is so last century.…" So true, so true! This quote's runner up is the "boss key" on page 128 where Sten talks about productivity and how Oracle Team Productivity Center (TPC) can help you with this. Quotes like these stick to your brains and make sure you never forget. Go for it!

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How to Use Sparklines in Excel 2010

- by DigitalGeekery

One of the cool features of Excel 2010 is the addition of Sparklines. A Sparkline is basically a little chart displayed in a cell representing your selected data set that allows you to quickly and easily spot trends at a glance. Inserting Sparklines on your Spreadsheet You will find the Sparklines group located on the Insert tab. Select the cell or cells where you wish to display your Sparklines. Select the type of Sparkline you’d like to add to your spreadsheet. You’ll notice there are three types of Sparklines, Line, Column, and Win/Loss. We’ll select Line for our example. A Create Sparklines pops up and will prompt you to enter a Data Range you are using to create the Sparklines. You’ll notice that the location range (the range where the Sparklines will appear) is already filled in. You can type in the data range manually, or click and drag with your mouse across to select the data range. This will auto-fill the data range for you. Click OK when you are finished. You will see your Sparklines appear in the desired cells. Customizing Sparklines Select the one of more of the Sparklines to reveal the Design tab. You can display certain value points like high and low points, negative points, and first and last points by selecting the corresponding options from the Show group. You can also mark all value points by selecting Markers. Select your desired Sparklines and click one of the included styles from the Style group on the Design tab. Click the down arrow on the lower right corner of the box to display additional pre-defined styles… or select Sparkline Color or Marker Color options to fully customize your Sparklines. The Axis options allow additional options such as Date Axis Type, Plotting Data Left to Right, and displaying an axis point to represent the zero line in your data with Show Axis. Column Sparklines Column Sparklines display your data in individual columns as opposed to the Line view we’ve been using for our examples. Win/Loss Sparklines Win/Loss shows a basic positive or negative representation of your data set. You can easily switch between different Sparkline types by simply selecting the current cells (individually or the entire group), and then clicking the desired type on the Design tab. For those that may be more visually oriented, Sparklines can be a wonderful addition to any spreadsheet. Are you just getting started with Office 2010? Check out some of our other great Excel posts such as how to copy worksheets, print only selected areas of a spreadsheet, and how to share data with Excel in Office 2010. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Convert a Row to a Column in Excel the Easy WayShare Access Data with Excel in Office 2010Make Excel 2007 Print Gridlines In Workbook FileMake Excel 2007 Always Save in Excel 2003 FormatConvert Older Excel Documents to Excel 2007 Format TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Office 2010 reviewed in depth by Ed Bott FoxClocks adds World Times in your Statusbar (Firefox) Have Fun Editing Photo Editing with Citrify Outlook Connector Upgrade Error Gadfly is a cool Twitter/Silverlight app Enable DreamScene in Windows 7

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Java in Flux: Utopia or Deuteranopia?

- by Tori Wieldt

What a difference a year makes, indeed. Steve Harris, Senior VP, App Server Dev, Oracle and Adam Messinger, VP, Fusion Middleware Group, Oracle presented an informative keynote at the TheServerSide Java Symposium today. With a title "Java in Flux: Utopia or Deuteranopia?" you know things are going to be interesting (see Aeon Flux if you don't get the title reference).What a YearThey started with a little background, explaining that the reactions to Oracle's acquisition of Sun (and therefore Java) one year ago varied greatly, from "Freak Out!" to "Don't Panic." From the Oracle perspective, being the steward of and key contributor to Java requires a lot of sausage making. They admitted to Oracle's fair share of Homer Simpson-esque "D'oh" moments in the past year, which was complicated by Oracle's communication style. "Oracle has a tradition has a saying a few things and sticking by then, in contrast to Sun who was much more open," Adam explained. "We laid out the Java roadmap and are executing on it, and we hope that speaks to our commitment."Java SEAdam talked about having a long term perspective on the Java language (20+ years), letting ideas mature in more experimental languages, then bringing them into Java. Current priorities include: JVM convergence (getting the best features of JRockit into Hotspot); support of parallel/multi-core programming, and of course, all the improvements in JDK7. The JDK7 Developer Preview is underway (please download now and report bugs!). The Oracle development team is also working on Lambda and modularity (Jigsaw) for SE 8. Less certain, but also under discussion are improvements for Java SE 9. Adam is thinking of it as a "back to basics" release. He mentioned reworking JNI, improving data integration and improved device support.Java EE To provide context about Java EE, Steve said Java EE was great at getting businesses on the internet. The success of Java EE resulted in an incredible expansion of the middleware marketplace for developers and vendors. But with success, came more. Java EE kept piling on capabilities, but that created excess baggage. Doing simple things was no longer so simple. That's where Java community is so valuable: "When Java EE was too complex and heavyweight, many people were happy to tell us what we were doing wrong and popularize solutions," Steve explained. Because of that feedback, the Java EE teams focused on making things simple again: POJOs and annotations, and leveraging changes in Java SE. Steve said that "innovation doesn't happen in expert groups, it happens on the ground where developers are solving problems," and platform stewards need to pay attention and take advantage of changes that are taking place.Enter the Cloud "Developers are restless, they want cloud functionality from their own IT dept" Steve explained. With the cloud, the scope of problem has expanded to include the data center itself, with multiple tenants. To move forward, existing APIs in Java EE need to be updated to be tenant-aware, service-enabled, and EE needs to support various styles of deployment. The goal is to get all that done in Java EE 8.Adam questioned Steve about timing and schedule. "Yes, the schedule is aggressive, but it'll work" Steve said. Then Adam asked about modularization. If Java SE 8 comes out at the end of 2012, when can Java EE deliver modularization? Steve suggested that key stakeholders can come with up some pre-SE 8 agreement on how to expose the metadata about modules. He then alluded to Mark Reinhold and John Duimovich's keynote at EclipseCON next week. Stay tuned.Evil Master PlanIn conclusion, Adam finally admitted to Oracle's Evil Master Plan: 1) Invest in and improve Java SE and EE 2) Collaborate with the community 3) Broaden the marketplace for Java development. Bwaaaaaaaaahahaha! <rubs hands together>Key LinksJDK7 Developer Preview http://jdk7.java.net/preview/Oracle Technology Network http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/index.htmlTheServerSide Java Symposium http://javasymposium.techtarget.com/"Utopia or Deuteranopia?" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeon_Flux

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