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• 101 Ways to Participate...and make the future Java

  - by heathervc

   In case you missed it earlier today, and as promised in BOF6283, here are the 101 Ways to Improve (and Make the Future) Java...thanks to Bruno Souza of SouJava and Martijn Verburg of the London Java Community for their contributions! Join or create a JUG Come to the meetings Help promoting your JUG: twitter, facebook, etc Find someone that can give a talk Get your company to sponsor (a meeting, an event) Organize an activity (meetings, hackathons, dojos, etc) Answer questions on a mailing list (or simply join!) Volunteer for a small, one time tasks (creating a web page, helping with an activity) Come early to an event, and help to carry the piano Moderate a list or add things to the wiki Participate in the organization meetings or mailing lists Take pictures of an event or meeting and publish them online Write a blog about an event or meeting, to help promote the group Help record and post a session online Present your JavaOne experience when you get back Repeat the best talk you saw at JavaOne at a JUG meeting Send this list of ideas to other Java developers in your area so they can help out too! Present a step-by-step tutorial Present GreenFoot and Alice to school students Present BlueJ and Alice to university students Teach those tools to teachers and professors Write a step-by-step tutorial on your blog or to a magazine Create a page that lists resources Give a talk about your favorite Java feature or technology Learn a new Java API and present to your co-workers Then, present in a JUG meeting, and then, present it in an event in your area, and submit it to JavaOne! Create a study group to get certified or to learn some new Java technology Teach a non-Java developer how to download the basic tools and where to find more information Download and use an open source project Improve the documentation Write an article or a blog post about the project Write an FAQ Join and participate on the mailing list Describe a bug in detail and submit a bug report Fix a bug and submit it to the project Give a talk about it at a JUG meeting Teach your co-workers how to use the project Sign up to Adopt a JSR Test regular builds of the Reference Implementation (RI) Report bugs in the RI Submit Feature Requests to the spec Triage issues on the issue tracker Run a hack day to discuss the API Moderate mailing lists and forums Create an FAQ or Wiki Evangelize a specification on Twitter, G+, Hacker News, etc Give a lightning talk Help build the RI Help build the Technical Compatibility Kit (TCK) Create a Podcast Learn Latin - e.g. legal language, translate to English Sign up to Adopt OpenJDK Run a Bugathon Fix javac compiler warnings Build virtual images Add tests to Java Submit Javadoc patches Give a webbing Teach someone to build OpenJDK Hold a brown bag session at work Fix the oldest known bug Overhaul Javadoc to use HTML Load the OpenJDK into different IDEs Run a build farm node Test your code on a nightly build Learn how to read Java byte code Visit JCP.org Follow jcp_org on Twitter Friend JCP on Facebook Read JCP Blog Register for JCP.org site Create a JSR Watch List Review JSRs in progress Comment on JSRs in progress, write and track bug reports, use cases, etc Review JSRs in Maintenance Comment on JSRs in Maintenance Implement Final JSRs Review the Transparency of JSRs in progress and provide feedback to the PMO and Spec Lead/community Become a JCP Member or associate with a current JCP member Nominate to serve on an Expert Group (EG) Serve on an EG Submit a JSR proposal and become Spec Lead Take a Spec Lead role in an Inactive or Dormant JSR Nominate for an Executive Committee (EC) seat Vote in the EC elections Vote in EC Special Elections Review EC Meeting Summaries Attend Spec Lead calls Write blogs, articles on your experiences Join the EC project on java.net Join JCP.Next on java.net/JSR 358 Participate on the JCP forums and join JSR projects on java.net Suggest agenda items for open EC meetings Attend public EC teleconference (2x per year) Attend open EC meetings at JavaOne Nominate for JCP Annual Awards Attend annual JavaOne and JCP Annual Awards Ceremony Attend JCP related BOF sessions and give your feedback to Program Office Invite JCP program office members to your JUG  or meetup Invite JSR Spec Leads to your JUG or meetup And always - hold a party!

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• The Future of Air Travel: Intelligence and Automation

  - by BobEvans

  Remember those white-knuckle flights through stormy weather where unexpected plunges in altitude result in near-permanent relocations of major internal organs? Perhaps there’s a better way, according to a recent Wall Street Journal article: “Pilots of a Honeywell International Inc. test plane stayed on their initial flight path, relying on the company's latest onboard radar technology to steer through the worst of the weather. The specially outfitted Boeing 757 barely shuddered as it gingerly skirted some of the most ferocious storm cells over Fort Walton Beach and then climbed above the rest in zero visibility.” Or how about the multifaceted check-in process, which might not wreak havoc on liver location but nevertheless makes you wonder if you’ve been trapped in some sort of covert psychological-stress test? Another WSJ article, called “The Self-Service Airport,” says there’s reason for hope there as well: “Airlines are laying the groundwork for the next big step in the airport experience: a trip from the curb to the plane without interacting with a single airline employee. At the airport of the near future, ‘your first interaction could be with a flight attendant,’ said Ben Minicucci, chief operating officer of Alaska Airlines, a unit of Alaska Air Group Inc.” And in the topsy-turvy world of air travel, it’s not just the passengers who’ve been experiencing bumpy rides: the airlines themselves are grappling with a range of challenges—some beyond their control, some not—that make profitability increasingly elusive in spite of heavy demand for their services. A recent piece in The Economist illustrates one of the mega-challenges confronting the airline industry via a striking set of contrasting and very large numbers: while the airlines pay $7 billion per year to third-party computerized reservation services, the airlines themselves earn a collective profit of only $3 billion per year. In that context, the anecdotes above point unmistakably to the future that airlines must pursue if they hope to be able to manage some of the factors outside of their control (e.g., weather) as well as all of those within their control (operating expenses, end-to-end visibility, safety, load optimization, etc.): more intelligence, more automation, more interconnectedness, and more real-time awareness of every facet of their operations. Those moves will benefit both passengers and the air carriers, says the WSJ piece on The Self-Service Airport: “Airlines say the advanced technology will quicken the airport experience for seasoned travelers—shaving a minute or two from the checked-baggage process alone—while freeing airline employees to focus on fliers with questions. ‘It's more about throughput with the resources you have than getting rid of humans,’ said Andrew O'Connor, director of airport solutions at Geneva-based airline IT provider SITA.” Oracle’s attempting to help airlines gain control over these challenges by blending together a range of its technologies into a solution called the Oracle Airline Data Model, which suggests the following steps: • To retain and grow their customer base, airlines need to focus on the customer experience. • To personalize and differentiate the customer experience, airlines need to effectively manage their passenger data. • The Oracle Airline Data Model can help airlines jump-start their customer-experience initiatives by consolidating passenger data into a customer data hub that drives realtime business intelligence and strategic customer insight. • Oracle’s Airline Data Model brings together multiple types of data that can jumpstart your data-warehousing project with rich out-of-the-box functionality. • Oracle’s Intelligent Warehouse for Airlines brings together the powerful capabilities of Oracle Exadata and the Oracle Airline Data Model to give you real-time strategic insights into passenger demand, revenues, sales channels and your flight network. The airline industry aside, the bullet points above offer a broad strategic outline for just about any industry because the customer experience is becoming pre-eminent in each and there is simply no way to deliver world-class customer experiences unless a company can capture, manage, and analyze all of the relevant data in real-time. I’ll leave you with two thoughts from the WSJ article about the new in-flight radar system from Honeywell: first, studies show that a single episode of serious turbulence can wrack up $150,000 in additional costs for an airline—so, it certainly behooves the carriers to gain the intelligence to avoid turbulence as much as possible. And second, it’s back to that top-priority customer-experience thing and the value that ever-increasing levels of intelligence can deliver. As the article says: “In the cabin, reporters watched screens showing the most intense parts of the nearly 10-mile wide storm, which churned some 7,000 feet below, in vibrant red and other colors. The screens also were filled with tiny symbols depicting likely locations of lightning and hail, which can damage planes and wreak havoc on the nerves of white-knuckle flyers.”  (Bob Evans is senior vice-president, communications, for Oracle.)  

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• Get Ready for Anytime, Anywhere Engagement

  - by Christie Flanagan

  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-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; 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;} Are you ready for 2015?  According to IDC, 2015 is the year when more users are projected to access the internet using mobile devices than with PC’s or other wired devices.  It’s no doubt that mobile devices are a critical means of communication today, and are on track to become increasingly more important in the coming years. However, device formats are so varied that delivering a mobile web experience that will engage site visitors and enhance your brand can be a daunting task. Solutions that empower organizations to easily extend their web presence to the mobile channel, while saving significant time and effort in managing mobile sites, are now essential in our ever connected mobile world. So what are some of the things organizations should look for in such a solution? Mobile device form factors, networks, protocols, and browsers vary widely, and reformatting web content for thousands of different device and software combinations is a prohibitive task. An effective mobile solution can make this process seamless by automatically formatting designated web content for mobile delivery.  By automatically detecting a site visitor’s device configuration, the selected web content can be sized and formatted for optimal display on that particular device. This can save tremendous time involved in building, formatting, and maintaining individual websites or mobile applications for different mobile devices. It’s not enough to simply support the thousands of different mobile device types that are out there. It’s also critical to make it easy for marketers and other business users to manage mobile sites and mobile content. Those responsible for maintaining an organization’s web and mobile experiences need the ability to edit content using rich text editor tools and then preview that content directly in the context of the mobile website and the traditional website, ideally from the same business user interface. Powerful capabilities such as these make managing the web experience for mobile devices easy, even with frequently changing content, across a multitude of different devices. This saves tremendous time involved in building, formatting, and maintaining individual websites or mobile applications for different mobile devices. When content or business needs change, the business user needs only to change site content once, and it is seamlessly deployed to the web and all mobile channels.Geo-location is another critical input to making the online experience engaging and relevant for web visitors who are increasingly mobile. A mobile solution should enable use of device GPS data to deliver location-based content and services to mobile website visitors. Organizations can provide mobile site visitors with location-sensitive search results, location-based offers and recommendations, integration of maps and directions into site content, and much more – all critical for meeting the needs of those on the go.To hear more about how mobile is changing the game, check out our recent webcast with Ted Schadler, Vice President, Principal Analyst, Forrester, where he discussed why mobile is the new face of engagement, or learn more about how to extend your web presence to the mobile channel with Oracle WebCenter Sites and Oracle WebCenter Sites Mobility Server.

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• Top 5 characteristics Recruiters are looking for

  - by Maria Sandu

  Of course many skills and characteristics recruiters are looking for are job specific. But whether you are a graduate fresh out of college or seasoned in the workplace, recruiters are also looking for generic skills and attitude to see whether you are a good fit to the company. So make sure you prepare and show through examples that you have these skills. 1. Drive/passion Liking the job you are applying for is paramount and something recruiters are always looking for. Show and prove your drive for the role and/or the field you are applying for. Always be prepared to pitch yourself, this shows your drive in the role you are applying for. 2. Communication skills People often make the mistake by thinking this skill is related to how good they are able to talk about their background and expertise. This is important, but as least as important is it that you listen well to questions that are asked. Make sure you answer to the point and ask questions if you want questions to be clarified. This shows your interest in the role and the ability to communicate clearly. This also helps you building trust with the recruiter every time you speak to him/her. 3. Confidence Recruiters are looking for the best candidate for the job. So if you don’t think you are the best candidate why should the recruiter? Show with confidence, without being arrogant (think about building trust), why you are the right person for the job. Confidence also shows in your answers to difficult questions. Be confident enough to explain why some experiences went wrong and how you learnt from them. If you don’t have a direct explanation on a question, it is better to ask for a second to think instead of a random answer. 4. Vision The main reason to hire graduates for many companies is that graduates are perceived to be flexible. The organisation will train and up skill you in the direction best suitable for the organisation. However the most intense learning path is realised when you also know where you want to go. Companies are often happy to accommodate you to support with training and development, but if you don’t have a clear vision on what you want to achieve for yourself and what value you bring to the company, recruiters can decide you are not the right candidate as they are afraid you aren’t going to stay in the company. 5. Business awareness For every job you apply you will get challenged on your knowledge and interest for the market and business they are in. All companies add value in different ways in their respective markets. So make sure you are aware of what a company is doing, what their goal is and why and how they exist and how you can add value for the company in the role you are applying for. /* 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:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; 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-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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• BI&EPM in Focus November 2012

  - by Mike.Hallett(at)Oracle-BI&EPM

  Customers ·       San Diego Unified School District Harnesses Attendance, Procurement, and Operational Data with Oracle Exalytics, Generating $4.4 Million in Savings ·       NilsonGroup chooses Oracle Exalytics In-Memory Machine as their solution to access critical data to keep its stores competitive with real-time Mobile BI:  Video ·       Nykredit, in the Danish Financial Sector, describes their experiences from testing the Exalytics Business Intelligence Machine: Video  ·       Sodexo chose Oracle Exalytics as their business analytics platform:  Video ·       AstraZeneca (US, Canada, MedImmune) Improves Insight, Analytics, and Reporting, Enterprisewide with Unified Planning on a Single Platform ·       Experian Consolidates Reporting Systems for One, Global View of Financial Data and Improves Planning for Continued Growth ·       Munchkin Gives its Line of Children’s Products Plenty of Room to Grow in an Upgraded Enterprise Application Environment ·       Top 20 EPM Customer Snapshots, in One Handy Booklet (link) ·       Customer and Partner Successes: Link to Complete Archive Enterprise Performance Management ·       Nov 15: Is Hope and Email the Core of your Reconciliation Process? (link) ·       Replay: Integrated Business Planning, Featuring Leggett & Platt (link) ·       Whitepaper: The New Competitive Advantage - Strategic CIO's Embrace the Cloud (link) ·       Press: Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Driving Significant Improvements in Budget Management and Reporting for Public Sector Organizations (link) ·       Enterprise Performance Management Video Feature Overviews, Now Available on YouTube (link) ·       NEW Solution Brief - Oracle Hyperion Planning on the Oracle Exalytics In-Memory Machine (link) ·       For Insurance sector: Datasheet for new release V2.0 - Oracle Quantitative Management and Reporting for Solvency II (link) ·       Whitepaper FSN 2012: Managing Risk and Uncertainty, an Executive's Guide to Integrated Business Planning (link) ·       NEW Datasheet for Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service (link) ·       Blog: Planning in the Cloud - For Real Business Intelligence ·       Press: Latest Release of Oracle Exalytics In-Memory Machine Software Enables Customers to View and Analyze Data at the Speed of Business (link) ·       Press: New Release (11.1.1.6.2BP1) of Oracle Business Intelligence Enables Users to Quickly Access and Analyze Key Business Information, Anytime, Anywhere (link) ·       Mark Hurd Interviewed on USA Today about Big Data & Analytics (link) ·       Whitepaper: Mastering Big Data - CFO Strategies to Transform Insight into Opportunity (link) ·       Nov 15: Improve Asset Utilization. Achieve Greater Profitability: Oracle Enterprise Asset Management Analytics (link) ·       Replay: Oracle Enterprise Asset Mgmt Analytics and Oracle Manufacturing Analytics (link) ·       Overload to Impact: An Industry Scorecard on Big Data Business Challenges (link) ·       Webcast Replay: Overview of Oracle Endeca Informational Discovery (link) ·       OBIEE 11g: Required and Recommended Patches and Patch Sets (link)

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• Moving abroad - Relocation advice

  - by Tim Koekkoek

  Oracle offers graduates from different European countries the opportunity to start their career abroad. Some already have experience with living abroad as they have done an exchange semester or internship in another county, for others it is the first time they will move abroad. Rui started in October 2011 as a Business Development Consultant in Dublin and moved from Portugal to Dublin, Ireland to start his career. For those planning to leave their home country and who desire to work abroad, he will share some tips and tricks in this article. When you’re faced with an opportunity like this, there are lots of things that will come to your mind. Sometimes it can be either very exciting, or even stressful. 1. First of all, try to relax. If you are certain you are moving abroad, all you need to do is some research about the country where you’re going to live, get to know its culture (gastronomy, important dates and events, its economy and effective ways to keep you in touch with your family and friends – such as mobile companies and Internet services), and start to understand the best locations (with good access) you could/should live in are. Don’t forget that initially you can be limited by transport and therefore it is important to explore the ideal places for you. During this time, Oracle provides everything you’ll need (papers, documents, etc.) to cross borders. 2. When you arrive, you understand that you are in a new country, in a new place, where all things (or most) are unknown to you. Before you panic, try to see it as a new challenge where new opportunities will come. Sometimes, it’s not easy I know, but the very best a new place has to give to you, is the opportunity to understand a new culture, get to know other people, other ways of working, and grow both as a person and professionally. So, you have nothing to lose in this kind of experiment. 3. When you arrive at Oracle, there’s a fantastic team that will help you with settling in, HR, Payroll, Relocation, IT. In my case, Oracle helped me with the relocation, they supported me to arrange everything such as helping out with all the paperwork and finding a new apartment. As you can see they will do their best to help you to be successful! 4. Engage with your new co-workers. Going to a place where you don’t know anyone can be tough sometimes but see it as an opportunity to meet people from all over the world and share experiences. Embrace it. 5. Plan ahead, try to get the most information possible and use it. Oracle is a multinational enterprise that will allow you to get to know a new labour market and give you the flexibility you need to understand your view of employment and occupation, giving you the very best opportunities to join different teams and working areas, so that you can work where you fit best. Good luck! If you’re thinking about starting a career abroad, read the following article: http://www.overseasdigest.com/movingtips.htm it can be very useful to you. Interested in starting your career at Oracle like Rui has? Please have a look at https://campus.oracle.com for all of our latest vacancies.

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• The Minimalist Approach to Content Governance - Request Phase

  - by Kellsey Ruppel

  Originally posted by John Brunswick. For each project, regardless of size, it is critical to understand the required ownership, business purpose, prerequisite education / resources needed to execute and success criteria around it. Without doing this, there is no way to get a handle on the content life-cyle, resulting in a mass of orphaned material. This lowers the quality of end user experiences.     The good news is that by using a simple process in this request phase - we will not have to revisit this phase unless something drastic changes in the project. For each of the elements mentioned above in this stage, the why, how (technically focused) and impact are outlined with the intent of providing the most value to a small team. 1. Ownership Why - Without ownership information it will not be possible to track and manage any of the content and take advantage of many features of enterprise content management technology. To hedge against this, we need to ensure that both a individual and their group or department within the organization are associated with the content. How - Apply metadata that indicates the owner and department or group that has responsibility for the content. Impact - It is possible to keep the content system optimized by running native reports against the meta-data and acting on them based on what has been outlined for success criteria. This will maximize end user experience, as content will be faster to locate and more relevant to the user by virtue of working through a smaller collection. 2. Business Purpose Why - This simple step will weed out requests that have tepid justification, as users will most likely not spend the effort to request resources if they do not have a real need. How - Use a simple online form to collect and workflow the request to management native to the content system. Impact - Minimizes the amount user generated content that is of low value to the organization. 3. Prerequisite Education Resources Needed Why - If a project cannot be properly staffed the probability of its success is going to be low. By outlining the resources needed - in both skill set and duration - it will cause the requesting party to think critically about the commitment needed to complete their project and what gap must be closed with regard to education of those resources. How - In the simple request form outlined above, resources and a commitment to fulfilling any needed education should be included with a brief acceptance clause that outlines the requesting party's commitment. Impact - This stage acts as a formal commitment to ensuring that resources are able to execute on the vision for the project. 4. Success Criteria Why - Similar to the business purpose, this is a key element in helping to determine if the project and its respective content should continue to exist if it does not meet its intended goal. How - Set a review point for the project content that will check the progress against the originally outlined success criteria and then determine the fate of the content. This can even include logic that will tell the content system to remove items that have not been opened by any users in X amount of time. Impact - This ensures that projects and their contents do not live past their useful lifespans. Just as with orphaned content, non-relevant information will slow user's access to relevant materials for the jobs. Request Phase Summary With a simple form that outlines the ownership of a project and its content, business purpose, education and resources, along with success criteria, we can ensure that an enterprise content management system will stay clean and relevant to end users - allowing it to deliver the most value possible. The key here is to make it straightforward to make the request and let the content management technology manage as much as possible through metadata, retention policies and workflow. Doing these basic steps will allow project content to get off to a great start in the enterprise! Stay tuned for the next installment - the "Create Phase" - covering security access and workflow involved in content creation, enabling a practical layer of governance over our enterprise content repository.

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• The Social Content Conundrum

  - by Mike Stiles

  Here’s the social content conundrum: people who are not entertainers are being asked to entertain. Despite a world of skilled MBAs, marketing savants, technological innovators, analysts, social strategists and consultants, every development in social for brands keeps boomeranging right back to the same unavoidable truth. Success hinges on having content creators who know how to entertain the target audience. You can’t make this all about business-processes. You can’t make this all about technology, though data is critical and helps inform content. This is about having human beings who know the audience, know what they’d love to see, and can create the magic that will draw and hold them. Since showing up in the News Feed is critical for exposition and engagement, and since social ads primarily serve to amplify content that’s performing well, I’m comfortable saying content creators are becoming exponentially recruited and valued. They will no longer be commodities. They’ll be your stars. Social has fundamentally changed the relationship between brand and consumer. No longer can the customer be told to sit down, shut up, and listen to our ads. It’s now all about what consumers are willing to watch or read. Their patience for subjecting themselves to material they aren’t interested in is waning. Therefore, brands must now be producers of entertainment and information content, not merely placers of ads within someone else’s content. Social has given you a huge stage, with an audience sitting out there waiting to see what you’re going to do. What are you putting on that stage? For most corporate environments, entertaining is alien. It’s risky and subjective. Most operate around two foundational principles: control and fear. To entertain and inform with branded content, some control has to go. You control the product. Past that, control is being transferred into the hands of the consumer. The “fear first” culture also has to yield. If you strive to never make waves, you will move absolutely nothing. Because most corporations don’t house entertainers, they must be found then trusted. They’re usually a little weird. The ideas they’ll bring may seem “out there.” But like any business professional, they’ve gone through the training and experiences that make them uniquely good at what they do, even if you don’t quite understand them. It’s okay. It’s what the audience thinks that matters. Get it right, and you’ll be generating one ambassador after another who’s proud to be identified with the brand and will regularly consume and share your content. Entertainment entities are able to shape our culture and succeed beyond their wildest dreams by being beholden to one thing…what the public likes and wants. When brands put the same emphasis on crowd-pleasing content, they too will enjoy brand fame the likes of which they’ve never seen. The stage is yours. Now get out there and go for that applause.

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• JTF Tranlsation Festival 2011

  - by user13133135

  ?????????????????????? (MT) ??????????????????????? JTF ????????????????????????????????????????????????? ???5??!???21?JTF???????? ? ??:2011?11?29?(?)9:30~20:30(??9:00) ? ??:??????????(????)?(??) ? ??:(?)?????? ??:JTF?????????? ? http://www.jtf.jp/jp/festival/festival_top.html ????????????????????????????????MT ????????????????????????????????????????????????? 90 ???!??(!?)?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ????????????????? http://www.jtf.jp/jp/festival/festival_program.html#koen_04 ?????????????????????????????? English:  It's been a while since the last post... I have been working on machine translation (MT) and post editing (PE) for Japanese.  Last year was my first step in MT+PE area, and I would take this year as an advanced step.  I plan to talk over Post editing 2011 (Advanced Step) on November 27 at JTF Translation Festival.  ?5 days before application due? 21st JTF Translation Festival ? Date:Nov 29, 2011 Tuesday 9:30~20:30(Gate open: 9:00) ? Place:Arcadia Ichigaya Tokyo ? http://www.jtf.jp/jp/festival/festival_top.html In this session, I would like to expand the thought on "how to best utilize MT and PE" either from the view of Client and Translator.  I will show some examples of post editing as a guideline to know what is the best way and most effective way to do post-edit for Japanese.  Also, I will discuss what is the best practice for MT users (Client). The session lasts 90 minutes... sound a little long for me, but I want to spend more time for discussion than last year.  It would be great to exchange thought or experiences about MT and PE.  What is your concerns or problems in the daily work with MT ?  If you have some, please bring them to my session at JTF Translation Festival.  Here is my session details (Japanese): http://www.jtf.jp/jp/festival/festival_program.html#koen_04 Here is the outline of my session: What is the advantage of MT ? Does it solve all the problems about cost, resource, and quality ?  Well, it is not a magic.  So, you cannot expect all at once.  When you have a problem, there are 3 options... 1. Be patient and wait until everything is ready, 2. Run a workaround using anything available now, 3. Find out something completely new and spend time and money. This time, I will focus Option 2 - do something with what we already have.  That is, I will discuss how we can best utilize MT in our daily business.  My view is two ways: From Client point of view, and From Translator point of view Looking forward to meeting many people and exchanging thoughts and information!

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• Cloud Adoption Challenges

  - by Herve Roggero

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/hroggero/archive/2013/11/07/cloud-adoption-challenges.aspxWhile cloud computing makes sense for most organizations and countless projects, I have seen customers significantly struggle with cloud adoption challenges. This blog post is not an attempt to provide a generic assessment of cloud adoption; rather it is an account of personal experiences in the field, some of which may or may not apply to your organization. Cloud First, Burst? In the rush to cloud adoption some companies have made the decision to redesign their core system with a cloud first approach. However a cloud first approach means that the system may not work anymore on-premises after it has been redesigned, specifically if the system depends on Platform as a Service (PaaS) components (such as Azure Tables). While PaaS makes sense when your company is in a position to adopt the cloud exclusively, it can be difficult to leverage with systems that need to work in different clouds or on-premises. As a result, some companies are starting to rethink their cloud strategy by designing for on-premises first, and modify only the necessary components to burst when needed in the cloud. This generally means that the components need to work equally well in any environment, which requires leveraging Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) or additional investments for PaaS applications, or both.  What’s the Problem? Although most companies can benefit from cloud computing, not all of them can clearly identify a business reason for doing so other than in very generic terms. I heard many companies claim “it’s cheaper”, or “it allows us to scale”, without any specific metric or clear strategy behind the adoption decision. Other companies have a very clear strategy behind cloud adoption and can precisely articulate business benefits, such as “we have a 500% increase in traffic twice a year, so we need to burst in the cloud to avoid doubling our network and server capacity”. Understanding the problem being solved through by adopting cloud computing can significantly help organizations determine the optimum path and timeline to adoption. Performance or Scalability? I stopped counting the number of times I heard “the cloud doesn’t scale; our database runs faster on a laptop”.  While performance and scalability are related concepts, they are nonetheless different in nature. Performance is a measure of response time under a given load (meaning with a specific number of users), while scalability is the performance curve over various loads. For example one system could see great performance with 100 users, but timeout with 1,000 users, in which case the system wouldn’t scale. However another system could have average performance with 100 users, but display the exact same performance with 1,000,000 users, in which case the system would scale. Understanding that cloud computing does not usually provide high performance, but instead provides the tools necessary to build a scalable system (usually using PaaS services such as queuing and data federation), is fundamental to proper cloud adoption. Uptime? Last but not least, you may want to read the Service Level Agreement of your cloud provider in detail if you haven’t done so. If you are expecting 99.99% uptime annually you may be in for a surprise. Depending on the component being used, there may be no associated SLA at all! Other components may be restarted at any time, or services may experience failover conditions weekly ( or more) based on current overall conditions of the cloud service provider, most of which are outside of your control. As a result, for PaaS cloud environments (and to a certain extent some IaaS systems), applications need to assume failure and gracefully retry to be successful in the cloud in order to provide service continuity to end users. About Herve Roggero Herve Roggero, Windows Azure MVP, is the founder of Blue Syntax Consulting (http://www.bluesyntax.net). Herve's experience includes software development, architecture, database administration and senior management with both global corporations and startup companies. Herve holds multiple certifications, including an MCDBA, MCSE, MCSD. He also holds a Master's degree in Business Administration from Indiana University. Herve is the co-author of "PRO SQL Azure" and “PRO SQL Server 2012 Practices” from Apress, a PluralSight author, and runs the Azure Florida Association.

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• Is Visual Source Safe (The latest Version) really that bad? Why? What's the Best Alternative? Why? [closed]

  - by hanzolo

  Over the years I've constantly heard horror stories, had people say "Real Programmers Dont Use VSS", and so on. BUT, then in the workplace I've worked at two companies, one, a very well known public facing high traffic website, and another high end Financial Services "Web-Based" hosted solution catering to some very large, very well known companies, which is where I currently Reside and everything's working just fine (KNOCK KNOCK!!). I'm constantly interfacing with EXTREMELY Old technology with some of these financial institutions.. OLD LIKE YOU WOULDN'T BELIEVE.. which leads me to the conclusion that if it works "LEAVE IT", and that maybe there's some value in old technology? at least enough value to overrule a rewrite!? right?? Is there something fundamentally flawed with the underlying technology that VSS uses? I have a feeling that if i said "someone said VSS Sucks" they would beg to differ, most likely give me this look like i dont know -ish, and I'd never gain back their respect and my credibility (well, that'll be hard to blow.. lol), BUT, give me an argument that I can take to someone whose been coding for 30 years, that builds Platforms that leverage current technology (.NET 3.5 / SQL 2008 R2 ), write's their own ORM with scaffolding and is able to provide a quality platform that supports thousands of concurrent users on a multi-tenant hosted solution, and does not agree with any benefits from having Source Control Integrated, and yet uses the Infamous Visual Source Safe. I have extensive experience with TFS up to 2010, and honestly I think it's great when a team (beyond developers) can embrace it. I've worked side by side with someone whose a die hard SVN'r and from a purist standpoint, I see the beauty in it (I need a bit more, out of my SS, but it surely suffices). So, why are such smarties not running away from Visual Source Safe? surely if it was so bad, it would've have been realized by now, and I would not be sitting here with this simple old, Check In, Check Out, Version Resistant, Label Intensive system. But here I am... I would love to drop an argument that would be the end all argument, but if it's a matter of opinion and personal experience, there seems to be too much leeway for keeping VSS. UPDATE: I guess the best case is to have the VSS supporters check other people's experiences and draw from that until we (please no) experience the breaking factor ourselves. Until then, i wont be engaging in a discussion to migrate off of VSS.. UPDATE 11-2012: So i was able to convince everyone at my work place that since MS is sun downing Visual Source Safe it might be time to migrate over to TFS. I was able to convince them and have recently upgraded our team to Visual Studio 2012 and TFS 2012. The migration was fairly painless, had to run analyze.exe which found a bunch of errors (not sure they'll ever affect the project) and then manually run the VSSConverter.exe. Again, painless, except it took 16 hours to migrate 5 years worth of everything.. and now we're on TFS.. much more integrated.. much more cooler.. so all in all, VSS served it's purpose for years without hick-up. There were no horror stories and Visual Source Save as source control worked just fine. so to all the nay sayers (me included). there's nothing wrong with using VSS. i wouldnt start a new project with it, and i would definitely consider migrating to TFS. (it's really not super difficult and a new "wizard" type converter is due out any day now so migrating should be painless). But from my experience, it worked just fine and got the job done.

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• What do you need to know to be a world-class master software developer? [closed]

  - by glitch

  I wanted to bring up this question to you folks and see what you think, hopefully advise me on the matter: let's say you had 30 years of learning and practicing software development in front of you, how would you dedicate your time so that you'd get the biggest bang for your buck. What would you both learn and work on to be a world-class software developer that would make a large impact on the industry and leave behind a legacy? I think that most great developers end up being both broad generalists and specialists in one-two areas of interest. I'm thinking Bill Joy, John Carmack, Linus Torvalds, K&R and so on. I'm thinking that perhaps one approach would be to break things down by categories and establish a base minimum of "software development" greatness. I'm thinking: Operating Systems: completely internalize the core concepts of OS, perhaps gain a lot of familiarity with an OSS one such as Linux. Anything from memory management to device drivers has to be complete second nature. Programming Languages: this is one of those topics that imho has to be fully grokked even if it might take many years. I don't think there's quite anything like going through the process of developing your own compiler, understanding language design trade-offs and so on. Programming Language Pragmatics is one of my favorite books actually, I think you want to have that internalized back to back, and that's just the start. You could go significantly deeper, but I think it's time well spent, because it's such a crucial building block. As a subset of that, you want to really understand the different programming paradigms out there. Imperative, declarative, logic, functional and so on. Anything from assembly to LISP should be at the very least comfortable to write in. Contexts: I believe one should have experience working in different contexts to truly be able to appreciate the trade-offs that are being made every day. Embedded, web development, mobile development, UX development, distributed, cloud computing and so on. Hardware: I'm somewhat conflicted about this one. I think you want some understanding of computer architecture at a low level, but I feel like the concepts that will truly matter will be slightly higher level, such as CPU caching / memory hierarchy, ILP, and so on. Networking: we live in a completely network-dependent era. Having a good understanding of the OSI model, knowing how the Web works, how HTTP works and so on is pretty much a pre-requisite these days. Distributed systems: once again, everything's distributed these days, it's getting progressively harder to ignore this reality. Slightly related, perhaps add solid understanding of how browsers work to that, since the world seems to be moving so much to interfacing with everything through a browser. Tools: Have a really broad toolset that you're familiar with, one that continuously expands throughout the years. Communication: I think being a great writer, effective communicator and a phenomenal team player is pretty much a prerequisite for a lot of a software developer's greatness. It can't be overstated. Software engineering: understanding the process of building software, team dynamics, the requirements of the business-side, all the pitfalls. You want to deeply understand where what you're writing fits from the market perspective. The better you understand all of this, the more of your work will actually see the daylight. This is really just a starting list, I'm confident that there's a ton of other material that you need to master. As I mentioned, you most likely end up specializing in a bunch of these areas as you go along, but I was trying to come up with a baseline. Any thoughts, suggestions and words of wisdom from the grizzled veterans out there who would like to share their thoughts and experiences with this? I'd really love to know what you think!

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• How to introduce a computer illiterate 50-year old to programming [closed]

  - by sunday

  The other day my dad asked me a question that I would have never expected from him. "How can I learn C++?" My dad is turning 56 this year and computers are a distant concept for him. He doesn't know how to use a phone very well besides calling numbers (no speed dial or contacts); though he has started to learn computers a little better - to the point that he knows how to open the internet (in Windows) and browse around (and has successfully completed several job applications entirely on his own online, of which he was offered positions too). But still, these are too narrow-windowed experiences to mean much, really. While he may not have the background, my dad knows how to read. And I mean reading as a skill, not just an ability. He has little to no college education (financial problems, family, etc.) and was fortunate enough to finish high school, but still taught himself to become a master electrician and has been one for almost 30 years now. He did the same with guitar, learning to play at a very professional level and has been praised for his skill. In high school, he picked up a weight lifting book - and was the only person in his high school at the time to qualify officially as an "athlete" by national standards. In all cases, he just needed something to read. Something to teach him. He absorbs information like a sponge. I have no doubt in my dad's motivation or capability of doing this, so my general goal is simply: Get my dad into the world of computers, and get him on the road to programming. I strongly believe that once I get him through the fundamentals, his drive and reading skill will keep him going on this own. So I'm asking you all: where should I start with all this? And what are the best resources out there? Should I get him to start Linux instead of Windows? Is C++ a bad idea? Remember, he needs to (IMO) learn computers first, and then get that first grasp (the "Hello world" experience) of programming. For money's sake and at top preference, I'd like free online resources that he can read, but by all means any good suggestions in print or paid-for-online are welcome (that I could possibly look into later to purchase). And also, I intend to start him off with C++ (no Python, Java, etc.), because I know it the best and will be able to help him along the way with code. (I have minimal knowledge right now in other languages). Edit: I'm getting a lot of persistent suggestions to use Python. The only reason I wanted to do C++ is that I KNOW it and can be THERE when my dad needs help. My VERY FIRST exposure to programming ever was Java. I learned Java, and I got good at it. I open to other suggestions, but please provide an effective application of your suggestions. EDIT #2: I understand my approach/thinking/knowledge could be lacking here. I'm a sophomore level undergraduate CS major. If you don't agree with anything in my post, tell me why - give me ideas, information - that's why I'm asking in the first place. To narrow down my general goal to specific reachable goals.

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• Azure - Unable To Get SQL Azure Invitation Code!

  - by Goober

  Scenario I'm trying to convert my Silverlight Business Application over to the cloud with the help of Azure. I have been following this link from Brad Abrams blog. Both the links to Windows Azure and SQL Azure crash out in Google Chrome, they work in Internet Explorer, but it's literally one of the worst user experiences I've ever had. The Problem I'm asked to sign in to Microsoft connect with my Live ID. I do so, I'm then asked to register!? - I do so. I'm then sent a verification email which I verify. I'm then signed out!?!?! When I sign back in, it repeats the process.... ANY IDEAS!??! Edit/Update: Finally managed to get signed up/in to connect. From here I was able to get hold of an invitation code to Windows Azure. Now I need an invitation code for SQL Azure. I cannot see ANYWHERE that advertises a way of getting this SQL Azure code, the only thing that I have seen is some text saying that there "may be a delay" in receiving codes due to volume of interest, which quite frankly I find hard to believe......... It's so far been 3 days now.This officially Sucks! If I have any more news I'll post back here.

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• Schliemann's method of programming language learning

  - by DVK

  Background: 19th-century German archeologist Heinrich Schliemann was of course famous for his successful quest to find and excavate the city of Troy (an actual archeological site for the Troy of Homer's Iliad). However, he is just as famous for being an astonishing learner of languages - within the space of two years, he taught himself fluent Dutch, English, French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, and later went on to learn seven more, including both modern and ancient Greek. One of the methods he famously used was comparison of a known text, e.g. take a book in a language one is fluent in, take a good translation of a book in a language you wish to learn, and go over them in parallel. (various sources cited the book used by Schliemann to be the Bible, or, as the link above states, a novel). Now, for the actual question. Has anyone used (or heard of) an equivalent of Schliemann's method for learning a new programming language? E.g. instead of basing the leaning on references and tutorials, take a somewhat comprehensive set of programs known to have high-quality code in both languages implementing similar/identical algorithms and learn by comparing them? I'm curious about either personal experiences of applying such an approach, or references to something published, or existance of codebases which could be used for such an approach? What got me thinking about the idea was Project Euler and some code snippets I saw on SO, in C++, Perl and Lisp.

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• T4 vs CodeDom vs Oslo

  - by Ryan Riley

  In an application scaffolding project on which I'm working, I'm trying to decide whether to use Oslo, T4 or CodeDom for generating code. Our goals are to keep dependencies to a minimum and drive code generation for a domain driven design from user stories. The first step will be to create the tests from the user stories, but we want the domain experts to be able to write their stories in a variety of different media (e.g. custom app, Word, etc.) and still generate the tests from the stories. What I know so far: CodeDom requires .NET but can only output .NET class files (e.g. .cs, .vb). Level of difficulty is fairly high. T4 requires CodeDom and VS Standard+. Level of difficulty is fairly reasonable, especially with the T4 Toolbox. Oslo is very new. I have no idea of the dependencies, but I imagine you must be on at least .NET 3.5. I'm also not certain as to the code generation abilities or the complexity for adding new grammars. However, domain experts could probably write user stories in Intellipad quite easily. Also not sure about ease of converting stories in Word to an MGrammar. What are your thoughts, experiences, etc. with any of the above tools. We want to stick with Microsoft or open source tools.

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• Any task-control algorithms programming practices?

  - by NumberFour

  Hi, I was just wondering if there's any field which concerns the task-control programming (or at least that's the way I call it). For a better explanation of task-control consider the following scenario: An application (master-thread) waits for a command - which might be a particular action or a set of actions the application should perform. When a command is received the master-thread creates a task (= spawns an independent thread which actually does the action) and adds a record in it's task-list - thus keeping track of the time of execution, thread handle, task priority...etc. The master-thread awaits for any other incoming commands while taking care of all the tasks - e.g: kills tasks running too long, prioritizes tasks with higher priorities, kills a task on a request of another task, limits the number of currently running tasks, allows task scheduling, cleans finished tasks (threads) and so on. The model is pretty similar to what we can see in OS dealing with running processes. Are there any good practices programming such task-models or is there some theoretical work done in this field? Maybe my question is too generalized, but at least I wanted to know whether there are any experiences working on such models or if there's a better approach. Thanks for any answers.

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• Interoperability between Weblogic 10.3.1 and Oracle BPM 10.3.1

  - by alfredozn

  Hi, Im migrating an ALBPM 6.5 running on a WLS 10.0 to an Oracle BPM 10.3.1 running on WLS 10.3.1 I got some problems with the Oracle driver because the old driver (weblogic.jdbcx.oracle.OracleDataSource) was definitely removed from the server and is not longer supported. Instead I used the thin driver (oracle.jdbc.xa.OracleXADataSource), the database migration was executed succesfully but after that, when I try to deploy the engine ear in WebLogic I got exceptions asociated to the driver: [ (cont) ] Main: Caused by: weblogic.application.ModuleException: [HTTP:101216]Servlet: "engineStartup" failed to preload on startup in Web application: "/albpmServices/albpm_engine". [ (cont) ] Main: fuego.directory.DirectoryRuntimeException: Exception [java.sql.SQLException: Invalid column type]. [ (cont) ] Main: at fuego.directory.DirectoryRuntimeException.wrapException(DirectoryRuntimeException.java:85) [ (cont) ] Main: at fuego.directory.provider.jdbc.oracle.OraclePersistenceManager.mapSQLException(OraclePersistenceManager.java:145) [ (cont) ] Main: at fuego.directory.provider.jdbc.datadirect.oracle.DataDirectOraclePersistenceManager.mapSQLException(DataDirectOraclePersistenceManager.java:51) [ (cont) ] Main: at fuego.directory.provider.jdbc.JDBCServiceAccessor.mapSQLException(JDBCServiceAccessor.java:78) [ (cont) ] Main: at fuego.directory.provider.jdbc.JDBCObjectPropertiesAccessor.fetchAllDirectoryProperties(JDBCObjectPropertiesAccessor.java:442) [ (cont) ] Main: at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method) I was looking around for a solution but all is pointing to use the old driver, I think isn't a good practice to force the server to use this driver after Oracle remove it completely. Any suggestions or similar experiences??

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• Migrating complex SVN branch hierarchy to Mercurial

  - by Christian Hang

  Our team has been using SVN for managing an application of decent size and over time a rather complex hierarchy of branches and tags has built up, which is following the basic standard layout for SVN repositories, but is more nested: |-trunk |-branches | |-releases | | |-releaseA | | `-releaseB | `-features | |-featureX | `-featureY |-tags |-releaseA | |-beta | `-RTP `-releaseB |-beta `-RTP (The feature branches are obviously temporary branches but we have to take them into consideration as it won't be feasible to close all of them at once in the near future) For several reasons but primarily because merges have been becoming an increasing pain, we are considering to switch to Mercurial. The main problem we are currently facing is migrating the existing code base without losing our history. I've tried several migration tools (e.g., yasvn2hg, hg convert and svn2hg) with yasvn2hg being the most promising, but none of them seem to be able to deal with nested hierarchies but they all assume that branches and tags are organized in one flat directory respectively. The choice between named branches or clones as the conversion target of old SVN branches is not a limiting factor in this case, as either solution would be appreciated. We are currently experimenting with both options and how they would fit into our current processes but haven't decided on one yet. I'd obviously be interested in recommendations or experiences with similar setups concerning that issue as well. So, what is the best way to convert a nested SVN branch hierarchy like this to Mercurial? Converting one branch at a time into a separate repository would be quite annoying and I am not sure if that would be the right approach in the first place, depending on how the tools handle historic merges and need to be aware of all other branches?

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• serializing type definitions?

  - by Dave

  I'm not positive I'm going about this the right way. I've got a suite of applications that have varying types of output (custom defined types). For example, I might have a type called Widget: Class Widget Public name as String End Class Throughout the course of operation, when a user experiences a certain condition, the application will take that output instance of widget that user received, serialize it, and log it to the database noting the name of the type. Now, I have other applications that do something similar, but instead of dealing with Widget, it could be some totally random other type with different attributes, but again I serialize the instance, log it to the db, and note the name of the type. I have maybe a half dozen different types and don't anticipate too many additional ones in the future. After all this is said and done, I have an admin interface that looks through these logs, and has the ability for the user to view the contents of this data thats been logged. The Admin app has a reference to all the types involved, and with some basic switch case logic hinged upon the name of the type, will cast it into their original types, and pass it on to some handlers that have basic display logic to spit the data back out in a readable format (one display handler for each type) NOW... all this is well and good... Until one day, my model changed. The Widget class now has deprecated the name attribute and added on a bunch of other attributes. I will of course get type mismatches in the admin side when I try to reconstitute this data. I was wondering if there was some way, at runtime, i could perhaps reflect through my code and get a snapshot of the type definition at that precise moment, serialize it, and store it along with the data so that I could somehow use this to reconstitute it in the future?

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• Web-based clients vs thick/rich clients?

  - by rudolfv

  My company is a software solutions provider to a major telecommunications company. The environment is currently IBM WebSphere-based with front-end IBM Portal servers talking to a cluster of back-end WebSphere Application Servers providing EJB services. Some of the portlets use our own home-grown MVC-pattern and some are written in JSF. Recently we did a proof-of-concept rich/thick-client application that communicates directly with the EJB's on the back-end servers. It was written in NetBeans Platform and uses the WebSphere application client library to establish communication with the EJB's. The really painful bit was getting the client to use secure JAAS/SSL communications. But, after that was resolved, we've found that the rich client has a number of advantages over the web-based portal client applications we've become accustomed to: Enormous performance advantage (CORBA vs. HTTP, cut out the Portal Server middle man) Development is simplified and faster due to use of NetBeans' visual designer and Swing's generally robust architecture The debug cycle is shortened by not having to deploy your client application to a test server No mishmash of technologies as with web-based development (Struts, JSF, JQuery, HTML, JSTL etc., etc.) After enduring the pain of web-based development (even JSF) for a while now, I've come to the following conclusion: Rich clients aren't right for every situation, but when you're developing an in-house intranet-based solution, then you'd be crazy not to consider NetBeans Platform or Eclipse RCP. Any comments/experiences with rich clients vs. web clients?

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• WPF Control validation

  - by Jon

  Hi all, I'm developing a WPF GUI framework and have had bad experiences with two way binding and lots of un-needed events being fire(mainly in Flex) so I have gone down the route of having bindings (string that represent object paths) in my controls. When a view is requested to be displayed the controller loads the view, and gets the needed entities (using the bindings) from the DB and populates the controls with the correct values. This has a number of advantages i.e. lazy loading, default undo behaviour etc. When the data in the view needs to be saved the view is passed back to the controller again which basically does the reserve i.e. re-populates the entities from the view if values have changed. However, I have run into problems when I try and validate the components. Each entity has attributes on its properties that define validation rules which the controller can access easily and validate the data from the view against it. The actual validation of data is fine. The problem comes when I want the GUI control to display error validation information. It I try changing the style I get errors saying styles cannot be changed once in use. Is the a way in c# to fire off the normal WPF validation mechanism and just proved it with the validaiton errors the controller has found? Thanks in advance Jon

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• What do I do about recurring billing?

  - by phidah

  This might be a subjective question, but I'll give it a go. There are already a number of questions on SO that revolves around subscription billing management. I am currently working on a SaaS solution that will require a fully automated billing system. What I am not looking for when asking this question is not advice on implementing towards a specific payment gateway or stuff like that. Instead I'd like advice on what kind of approach to take. The functionality that I need is a system that can handle upgrades, downgrades, recurring billing, cancellations, etc. Initially for one product only, but it might over time be a requirement that the system can handle multiple products (by products I mean fundamentally different products, not different variations of the same product). As I see it there are a number of possible approaches when you need a solution like this: Code a billing server yourself that supports this and is decoupled from each product so that it can handle multiple independent products. Use a hosted solution like Recurly, Chargify, Spreedly or CheddarGetter. The advantage of using a hosted solution is obviously that you don't need PCI certification, the concern is outsourced and it is a lot faster to get up and running. These advantages come at a cost however: The most important support function for your product - i.e. the billing is not in your control. Additionally you have less control and flexibility. What would you do? If we look beyond the PCI requirements I would definately prefer to have a system coded in-house that could do this kind of job. On the other hand I've heard from numerous sources that coding a system like this is a pain. Any advice is highly appreciated. Also, if you advice to code it yourself, any experiences on how to do it or if there are any opensource projects (no matter the language, what I'm after is not the code but the structure) that I can benefit from would really mean alot. Thanks in advance for your inputs! :-)

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• Creating a Custom Design-Time Environment

  - by Charlie

  Hello all, My question is related to the design-time support of WPF. From MSDN I read, The WPF Designer provides a framework and a public API which you can use to implement custom adorners, tools, property editors, and designers. But the vast majority of the examples I have found are trivial, and do not illustrate much concerning the creation of a customized designer in an existing WPF application. We have migrated our application from Windows Forms to WPF over the past year, and the next step will be to take an existing WinForms Panel designer, and rewrite it in WPF. Suffice it to say that this will be a huge project. But I don't even know where to begin. I am wondering if any of you have had similar experiences writing a customized designer for a WPF application, and what it was like. Even better, if you could compare and contrast the functionality between the WinForms designer and the WPF designer, or explain the transition from the former to the latter, that would be helpful. If you know of any simple examples that demonstrate a customized design environment (with custom controls, etc.) that would be extremely beneficial. All in all, I am just wondering if many people have undertaken this yet, and what their results have been. EDIT: To clarify, yes, I am talking about hosting a WPF designer. It appears that this may not even be possible, which is a huge setback. Here is a screenshot of our current WinForms designer. As you can see, it is used to create customized user interfaces. You can drag custom controls onto it and design them, then put the panel into a "run mode" in which all of the controls become functional. Short of spending months writing our designer, would this be possible in WPF? What about .NET 4.0 and VS2010? Will those add any designer functionality?

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• Is MEF an all-or-nothing affair?

  - by Dave

  I've had a few questions about MEF recently, but here's the big one -- is it really all-or-nothing, as it appears to be? My basic application structure is simply an app, several shared libraries that are intended to be singletons, and several different plugins (which may implement different interfaces). The app loads the plugins, and both the app and all plugins need to access the shared libraries. My first go at MEF was fairly successful, although I made some stupid mistakes along the way because I was trying so many different things, I just got confused at times. But in the end, last night I got my smallish test app running with MEF, some shared libraries, and one plugin. Now I'm moving onto the target app, which I already described. And it's the multiple plugins part that has be a bit worried. My existing application already supports multiple plugins with different interfaces by using Reflection. I need to be able to uniquely identify each plugin so that the user can select one and get the expected behavior exposed by that plugin. The problem is that I don't know how to do this yet... but that's the topic of a different question. Ideally, I'd be able to take my existing plugin loader and use it as-is, while relying on MEF to do the shared library resolution. The problem is, I can't seem to get MEF to load them (i.e. I get a CompositionException when calling ComposeParts()) unless I also use MEF to load the plugin. And if I do this, well... then I need to know how to keep track of them as they get loaded so the user can select one from a list of plugins. What have your experiences been with trying to mix and match these approaches?

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