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• The Other Side of XBRL

  - by john.orourke(at)oracle.com

  With the United States SEC's mandate for XBRL filings entering its third year, and impacting over 7000 additional companies in 2011, there's a lot of buzz in the industry about how companies should address the new reporting requirements.  Should they outsource the XBRL tagging process to a third party publisher, handle the process in-house with a bolt-on XBRL tool, or should they integrate XBRL tagging with the financial close and reporting process?  Oracle is recommending the latter approach, in fact  here's a link to a recent webcast that I did with CFO.com on this topic: http://www.cfo.com/webcasts/index.cfm/l_eventarchive/14548560 But production of XBRL-based filings is only half of the story. The other half is consumption of XBRL by regulators, academics, financial analysts and investors.  As I mentioned in my December article on the XBRL US conference, the feedback from these groups is that they are not really leveraging XBRL for analysis of companies due to a lack of tools and historic XBRL-based data on public companies.   The good news here is that the historic data problem is getting better as large, accelerated filers enter their third year of XBRL filings.  And the situation is getting better on the reporting and analysis tools side of the equation as well - and Oracle is leading the way. In early January, Oracle released the Oracle XBRL Extension for Oracle Database 11g.  This is a "no cost option" on top of the latest Oracle Database 11.2.0.2.0 release. With this added functionality organizations will have the ability to create one or more back-end XBRL repositories based on Oracle Database, which provide XBRL storage and query-ability with a set of XBRL-specific services.  The XBRL Extension to Oracle XML DB integrates easily with Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) for analytics and with interactive development environments (IDEs) and design tools for creating and editing XBRL taxonomies. The Oracle XBRL Extension to Oracle Database 11g should be attractive to regulators, stock exchanges, universities and other organizations that need to collect, analyze and disseminate XBRL-based filings.  It should also be attractive to organizations that produce XBRL filings, and need a way to store and compare their own XBRL-based financial filings to those of their peers and competitors. If you would like more information, here's a link to a web page on the Oracle Technology Network with the details about Oracle XBRL Extension for Oracle Database 11g, including data sheet, white paper, presentation, demos and other information: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/features/xmldb/index-087631.html

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• 3 Reasons You Need To Know Something About Every Technology

  - by Tim Murphy

  I make my living as a consultant and a general technologist.  I credit my success to the fact that I have never been afraid to pick up any product, language or platform needed to get the job done.  While Microsoft technologies I my mainstay, I have done work on mainframe and UNIX platforms and have worked with a wide variety of database engines.  Each one has it’s use and most times it is less expensive to find a way to communicate with an existing system than to replace it. So what are the main benefits of expending the effort to learn a new technology? New ways to solve problems Accelerate development Advise clients and get new business opportunities By new technology I mean ones that you haven’t had experience with before.  They don’t have to be the the one that just came out yesterday.  As they say, those who do not learn from history are bound to repeat it.  If you can learn something from an older technology it can be just as valuable as the shiny new one.  Either way, when you add another tool to your kit you get a new view on each problem you face.  This makes it easier to create a sound solution. The next thing you can learn from working with different products and techniques is how to more efficiently develop solve problems.  Many times if you are working with a new language you will find that there are specific design patterns that are used with it in normal use.  These can usually be applied with most languages.  You just needed to be exposed to them. The last point is about helping your clients and helping yourself.  If you can get in on technologies early you will have advantage over your competition in the market.  You will also be able to honestly advise you client on why they should or should not go with a new product.  Being able to compare products and their features is always an ability that stake holders appreciate. You don’t need to learn every detail of a product.  Learn enough to function and get an idea of how to use the technology.  Keep eating those technology Wheaties and you will be ready to go the distance in any project. del.icio.us Tags: Technology,technologists,technology generalist,Software Architecture

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• Wesquare (NL) helps major CG customer integrating Oracle Service Cloud (RightNow) with JDEdwards

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE When this well known, Italy based, CG player claimed that they needed a new CRM tool, Oracle partner WeSquare had a precise idea of what would be required, knowing that the customer was using JDEdwards as an ERP: they immediately thoughts about a solution that would help synchronizing the customer’s back-end system with the new CRM interface. The customer asked for presentations from three companies, including Oracle, and eventually selected Oracle Service Cloud (RightNow) with Alfa Sistemi (Oracle Platinum Partner) as a System Integrator supported by Wesquare (Oracle Gold partner specialized in RightNow). Synchronizing an On Premises ERP with a new SaaS based CRM platform could be seen as an uphill task, but WeSquare was determined, during the presales cycle, to prove that they had the skills and the attitude to make the difference. So, they rolled up their sleeves and got to it: five days of relentless work, missed lunches, and hours of brainstorming showed its result in the form of a new interface that works fabulously well with the JDEdwards ERP back-end and was successfully pitched by Oracle to the end-customer to win the deal! WeSquare took the occasion to learn that they can integrate Oracle Service Cloud (RightNow) with practically every other solution that a customer may run. As part of the project, WeSquare was also involved in different add-on’s development with the aim of enriching Oracle Service Cloud’s functionality. WeSquare is based in The Netherlands with an in-shore practice supported by off-shore teams in India. WeSquare can integrate and synchronize any application with RightNow. For more information, visit www.wesquare.nl or contact Wiebe Blankenberg (Managing Director) at +31 (0) 6 3632 1104 /* 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-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;}

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• Advice for how to handle company pride

  - by user17971

  We have this "amazing" little product using the latest development methodologies, components with all the bells and whistles. I took over this product maybe 6 months ago and struggled with it from day one. Even though it is supposedly is state of the art because of all its amazing structure, using dependency injections, inversion of control from the unity framework, hibernation and is domain driven in a .net mvvm xaml application to make it streamlined and modular. I knew from the moment I saw the monolith that it was going to be an uphill struggle for me. A lot of little code-bits scattered all around in neatly organized paradigms. Debugging is difficult, tracing the code is difficult, making new code is difficult, although some modifications is surprisinly easy but it doesn't out weight the problems I have with the code by a long shot. When I took over the project I was told that the new management console was ready for delivery and all I had to do was compile it and drop it. This was the beginning of a uphill struggle, our customer didn't agree at all that this was the functionality they had asked for so I had to do modifications to the program to their specifications. Since the project pretty much has been overdue since I took over it it has always been important that we didn't add or change much to the original system. I could modify the existing bits. fast forward until today where I finally completed all their comments and issues with the program but now I think that the users has opened their eyes (even though they saw this program many times) that they will be going backwards with this new system, that it will be much worse than the tool they got today (for a long time due to the fact that I'm the only resource on the project, project manager, tester, developer, integration specialist etc) My problem is that I lost faith in this system quite early due to the nature of the program. Although I made many changes and improvements to the system I wholeheartedly sympathize with the poor users who are going to start using this system. Its not nearly doing all the things it should do. I had this conversation internally with my boss where I told him what I thought about it, that if I were the customer I wouldn't have spent money developing it. So what do I do now? The system in ready, on a staging system and nobody likes it, its too slow and boring and does maybe do 50% of what they need it to do. Despite how much energy and working around the clock I've done to this project: I won't mind scrapping the system but we've spent much money (well my salaries) developing it and my company wants us to be proud of everything we do and advocate it. How will I tackle the contractor when he asks for advice? Surely I can tell him, this is what we agreed upon based on your use case scenarios, and be done with it? How will I inform my boss about this progress? He knows what I feel about it but I always get the feeling he let my criticism pass him by as just hot air, gone tomorrow,.

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• The Use-Case Driven Approach to Change Management

  - by Lauren Clark

  In the third entry of the series on OUM and PMI’s Pulse of the Profession, we took a look at the continued importance of change management and risk management. The topic of change management and OUM’s use-case driven approach has come up in few recent conversations. So I thought I would jot down a few thoughts on how the use-case driven approach aids a project team in managing the project’s scope. The use-case model is one of several tools in OUM that is used to establish and manage the project's scope.  Because a use-case model can be understood by both business and IT project team members, it can serve as a bridge for ongoing collaboration as well as a visual diagram that encapsulates all agreed-upon functionality. This makes it a vital artifact in identifying changes to the project’s scope. Here are some of the primary benefits of using the use-case model as part of the effort for establishing and managing project scope: The use-case model quickly communicates scope in a straightforward manner. All project stakeholders can have a common foundation for the decisions regarding architecture and design and how they relate to the project's objectives. Once agreed upon, the model can be put under change control and any updates to the model can then be quickly identified as potentially affecting the project’s scope.  Changes requested or discovered later in the project can be analyzed objectively for their impact on project's budget, resources and schedule. A modular foundation for the design of the software solution can be established in Elaboration.  This permits work to be divided up effectively and executed in so that the most important and riskiest use-cases can be tackled early in the project. The use-case model helps the team make informed decisions about implementation priorities, which allows effective allocation of limited project resources.  This is very helpful in not only managing scope, but in doing iterative and incremental planning which relies heavily on the ability to identify project priorities. Bottom line is that the use-case model gives the project team solid understanding of scope early in the project.  Combine this understanding with effective project management and communication and you have an effective tool for reducing the risk of overruns in budget and/or time due to out of control scope changes. Now that you’ve had a chance to read these thoughts on the use-case model and project scope, please let me know your feedback based on your experience.

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• Wireframing: A Day In the Life of UX Workshop at Oracle

  - by ultan o'broin

  The Oracle Applications User Experience team's Day in the Life (DITL) of User Experience (UX) event was run in Oracle's Redwood Shores HQ for Oracle Usability Advisory Board (OUAB) members. I was charged with putting together a wireframing session, together with Director of Financial Applications User Experience, Scott Robinson (@scottrobinson). Example of stunning new wireframing visuals we used on the DITL events. We put on a lively show, explaining the basics of wireframing, the concepts, what it is and isn't, considerations on wireframing tool choice, and then imparting some tips and best practices. But the real energy came when the OUAB customers and partners in the room were challenge to do some wireframing of their own. Wireframing is about bringing your business and product use cases to life in real UX visual terms, by creating a low-fidelity drawing to iterate and agree on in advance of prototyping and coding what is to be finally built and rolled out for users. All the best people wireframe. Leonardo da Vinci used "cartoons" on some great works, tracing outlines first and using red ochre or charcoal dropped through holes in the tracing parchment onto the canvas to outline the subject. (Image distributed under Wikimedia commons license) Wireframing an application's user experience design enables you to: Obtain stakeholder buy-in. Enable faster iteration of different designs. Determine the task flow navigation paths (in Oracle Fusion Applications navigation is linked with user roles). Develop a content strategy (readability, search engine optimization (SEO) of content, and so on) Lay out the pages, widgets, groups of features, and so on. Apply usability heuristics early (no replacement for usability testing, but a great way to do some heavy-lifting up front). Decide upstream which functional user experience design patterns to apply (out of the box solutions that expedite productivity). Assess which Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF) or equivalent technology components can be used (again, developer productivity is enhanced downstream). We ran a lively hands-on exercise where teams wireframed a choice of application scenarios using the time-honored tools of pen and paper. Scott worked the floor like a pro, pointing out great use of features, best practices, innovations, and making sure that the whole concept of wireframing, the gestalt, transferred. "We need more buttons!" The cry of the energized. Not quite. The winning wireframe session (online shopping scenario) from the Applications UX DITL event shown. Great fun, great energy, and great teamwork were evident in the room. Naturally, there were prizes for the best wireframe. Well, actually, prizes were handed out to the other attendees too! An exciting, slightly different aspect to delivery of this session made the wireframing event one of the highlights of the day. And definitely, something we will repeat again when we get the chance. Thanks to everyone who attended, contributed, and helped organize.

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• Workflow 4.5 is Awesome, cant wait for 5.0!

  - by JoshReuben

  About 2 years ago I wrote a blog post describing what I would like to see in Workflow vnext: http://geekswithblogs.net/JoshReuben/archive/2010/08/25/workflow-4.0---not-there-yet.aspx At the time WF 4.0 was a little rough around the edges – the State Machine was on codeplex and people were simulating state machines with Flowcharts. Last year I built a near- realtime machine management system using WF 4.0.1 – its managing the internal operations of this device: http://landanano.com/products/commercial   Well WF 4.5 has come a long way – many of my gripes have been addressed: C# expressions - no more VB 'AndAlso' clauses state machine awesomeness - can query current state many designer improvements - Document Outline is so much more succinct than Designer! Separate WCF Service Contract interfaces and ability to generate activities from contract operations ability to rehydrate to updated flow definitions via DynamicUpdateMap and WorkflowIdentity you can read about the new features here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh305677(VS.110).aspx   2013 could be the year of Workflow evangelism for .NET, as it comes together as the DSL language. Eg on Azure it could be used to graphically orchestrate between WebRoles, WorkerRoles and AppFabric Queues and the ServiceBus – that would be grand.   Here’s a list of things I’d like to see in Workflow 5.0: Stronger Parallelism support for true multithreaded workflows . A Workflow executes on a single thread – wouldn’t it be great if we had the ability to model TPL DataFlow? Parallel is not really parallel, just allows AsyncCodeActivity.     support for recursion an ExpressionTree activity with an editor design surface a math activity pack return of application level protocol (3.51 WF services) – automatically expose a state machine as a WCF service with bookmark Receive activities generated from OperationContract automatically placed in state transition triggers. A new HTML5 ActivityDesigner control – support with different CSS3  skinnable hooks,  remote connectivity (had to roll my own) A data flow view – crucial to understanding the big picture Ability to refactor a Sequence to custom activity in a separate .xaml file – like Expression Blend does for UserControl state machine global error handling - if all states goto an error state, you quickly get visual spagetti. Now you could nest a state machine, but what if you want an application level protocol whereby each state exposes certain WCF ops. DSL RAD editing - Make the Document Outline into a DSL editor for adding activities  – For WF to really succeed as a higher level of abstraction, It needs to be more productive than raw coding - drag & drop on the designer is currently too slow compared to just typing code. Extensible Wizard API - for pluggable WF editor experience other execution models beyond Sequence, Flowchart & StateMachine: SSIS, Behavior Trees,  Wolfram Model tool – surprise us! improvements to Designer debugging API - SourceLocation is tied to XAML file line number and char position, and ModelService access seems convoluted - why not leverage WPF LogicalTreeHelper / VisualTreeHelper ? Workflow Team , keep on rocking!

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• Handy Generic JQuery Functions

  - by Steve Wilkes

  I was a bit of a late-comer to the JQuery party, but now I've been using it for a while it's given me a host of options for adding extra flair to the client side of my applications. Here's a few generic JQuery functions I've written which can be used to add some neat little features to a page. Just call any of them from a document ready function. Apply JQuery Themeroller Styles to all Page Buttons   The JQuery Themeroller is a great tool for creating a theme for a site based on colours and styles for particular page elements. The JQuery.UI library then provides a set of functions which allow you to apply styles to page elements. This function applies a JQuery Themeroller style to all the buttons on a page - as well as any elements which have a button class applied to them - and then makes the mouse pointer turn into a cursor when you mouse over them: function addCursorPointerToButtons() {     $("button, input[type='submit'], input[type='button'], .button") .button().css("cursor", "pointer"); } Automatically Remove the Default Value from a Select Box   Required drop-down select boxes often have a default option which reads 'Please select...' (or something like that), but once someone has selected a value, there's no need to retain that. This function removes the default option from any select boxes on the page which have a data-val-remove-default attribute once one of the non-default options has been chosen: function removeDefaultSelectOptionOnSelect() {     $("select[data-val-remove-default='']").change(function () {         var sel = $(this);         if (sel.val() != "") { sel.children("option[value='']:first").remove(); }     }); } Automatically add a Required Label and Stars to a Form   It's pretty standard to have a little * next to required form field elements. This function adds the text * Required to the top of the first form on the page, and adds *s to any element within the form with the class editor-label and a data-val-required attribute: function addRequiredFieldLabels() {     var elements = $(".editor-label[data-val-required='']");     if (!elements.length) { return; }     var requiredString = "<div class='editor-required-key'>* Required</div>";     var prependString = "<span class='editor-required-label'> * </span>"; var firstFormOnThePage = $("form:first");     if (!firstFormOnThePage.children('div.editor-required-key').length) {         firstFormOnThePage.prepend(requiredString);     }     elements.each(function (index, value) { var formElement = $(this);         if (!formElement.children('span.editor-required-label').length) {             formElement.prepend(prependString);         }     }); } I hope those come in handy :)

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• Getting FEATURE_LEVEL_9_3 to work in DX11

  - by Dominic

  Currently I'm going through some tutorials and learning DX11 on a DX10 machine (though I just ordered a new DX11 compatible computer) by means of setting the D3D_FEATURE_LEVEL_ setting to 10_0 and switching the vertex and pixel shader versions in D3DX11CompileFromFile to "vs_4_0" and "ps_4_0" respectively. This works fine as I'm not using any DX11-only features yet. I'd like to make it compatible with DX9.0c, which naively I thought I could do by changing the feature level setting to 9_3 or something and taking the vertex/pixel shader versions down to 3 or 2. However, no matter what I change the vertex/pixel shader versions to, it always fails when I try to call D3DX11CompileFromFile to compile the vertex/pixel shader files when I have D3D_FEATURE_LEVEL_9_3 enabled. Maybe this is due to the the vertex/pixel shader files themselves being incompatible for the lower vertex/pixel shader versions, but I'm not expert enough to say. My shader files are listed below: Vertex shader: cbuffer MatrixBuffer { matrix worldMatrix; matrix viewMatrix; matrix projectionMatrix; }; struct VertexInputType { float4 position : POSITION; float2 tex : TEXCOORD0; float3 normal : NORMAL; }; struct PixelInputType { float4 position : SV_POSITION; float2 tex : TEXCOORD0; float3 normal : NORMAL; }; PixelInputType LightVertexShader(VertexInputType input) { PixelInputType output; // Change the position vector to be 4 units for proper matrix calculations. input.position.w = 1.0f; // Calculate the position of the vertex against the world, view, and projection matrices. output.position = mul(input.position, worldMatrix); output.position = mul(output.position, viewMatrix); output.position = mul(output.position, projectionMatrix); // Store the texture coordinates for the pixel shader. output.tex = input.tex; // Calculate the normal vector against the world matrix only. output.normal = mul(input.normal, (float3x3)worldMatrix); // Normalize the normal vector. output.normal = normalize(output.normal); return output; } Pixel Shader: Texture2D shaderTexture; SamplerState SampleType; cbuffer LightBuffer { float4 ambientColor; float4 diffuseColor; float3 lightDirection; float padding; }; struct PixelInputType { float4 position : SV_POSITION; float2 tex : TEXCOORD0; float3 normal : NORMAL; }; float4 LightPixelShader(PixelInputType input) : SV_TARGET { float4 textureColor; float3 lightDir; float lightIntensity; float4 color; // Sample the pixel color from the texture using the sampler at this texture coordinate location. textureColor = shaderTexture.Sample(SampleType, input.tex); // Set the default output color to the ambient light value for all pixels. color = ambientColor; // Invert the light direction for calculations. lightDir = -lightDirection; // Calculate the amount of light on this pixel. lightIntensity = saturate(dot(input.normal, lightDir)); if(lightIntensity > 0.0f) { // Determine the final diffuse color based on the diffuse color and the amount of light intensity. color += (diffuseColor * lightIntensity); } // Saturate the final light color. color = saturate(color); // Multiply the texture pixel and the final diffuse color to get the final pixel color result. color = color * textureColor; return color; }

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• Using HBase or Cassandra for a token server

  - by crippy

  I've been trying to figure out how to use HBase/Cassandra for a token system we're re-implementing. I can probably squeeze quite a lot more from MySQL, but it just seems it has come to clinging on to the wrong tool for the task just because we know it well. Eventually will hit a wall (like happened to us in other areas). Naturally I started looking into possible NoSQL solutions. The prominent ones (at least in terms of buzz) are HBase and Cassandra. The story is more or less like this: A user can send a gift other users. Each gift has a list of recipients or is public in which case limited by number or expiration date For each gift sent we generate some token that uniquely identifies that gift. For each gift we track the list of potential recipients and their current status relating to that gift (accepted, declinded etc). A user can request to see all his currently pending gifts A can request a list of users he has sent a gift to today (used to limit number of gifts sent) Required the ability to "dump" or "ignore" expired gifts (x day old gifts are considered expired) There are some other requirements but I believe the above covers the essentials. How would I go and model that using HBase or Cassandra? Well, the wall was performance. A few 10s of millions of records per day over 2 tables kept for 2 weeks (wish I could have kept it for more but there was no way). The response times kept getting slower and slower until eventually we had to start cutting down number of days we kept data. Caching helps here but it's not an ideal solution since a big part of the ops are updates. Also, as I hinted in my original post. We use MySQL extensively. We know exactly what it can and can't do both in naive implementations followed by native partitioning and finally by horizontally sharding our dataset on the application level to reside on multiple DB nodes. It can be done, but that's not really what I'm trying to get from this. I asked a very specific question about designing a solution using a NoSQL solution since it's very hard to find examples for designs out there. Brainlag, not trying to come off as rude. I actually appreciate it a lot that you are the only one who even bothered to respond. but I see it over and over again. People ask questions and others assume they have no idea what they're talking about and give an irrelevant answer. Ignore RDBMS please. The question is about nosql.

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• Who Are the BI Users in Your Neighborhood?

  - by [email protected]

  By Brian Dayton on March 19, 2010 10:52 PM Forrester's Boris Evelson recently wrote a blog titled "Who are the BI Personas?" that I enjoyed for a number of reasons. It's a quick read, easy to grasp and (refreshingly) focuses on the users of technology VS the technology. As Evelson admits, he meant to keep the reference chart at a high-level because there are too many different permutations and additional sub-categories to make such a chart useful. For me, I wouldn't head into the technical permutations but more the contextual use of BI and the issues that users experience. My thoughts brought up more questions than answers such as: Context: - HOW: With the exception of the "Power User" persona--likely some sort of business or operations analyst? - WHEN: Are they using the information to make real-time decisions on the front lines (a customer service manager or shipping/logistics VP) or are they using this information for cumulative analysis and business planning? Or both? - WHERE: What areas of the business are more or less likely to rely on BI across an organization? Human Resources, Operations, Facilities, Finance--- and why are some more prone to use data-driven analysis than others? Issues: - DELAYS & DRAG ON IT?: One of the persona characteristics Evelson calls out is a reliance on IT. Every persona except for the "Power User" has a heavy reliance on IT for support. What business issues or delays does that cause to users? What is the drag on IT resources who could potentially be creating instead of reporting? - HOW MANY CLICKS: If BI is being used within the context of a transaction (sales manager looking for upsell opportunities as an example) is that person getting the information within the context of that action or transaction? Or are they minimizing screens, logging into another application or reporting tool, running queries, etc.? Who are the BI Users in your neighborhood or line of business? Do Evelson's personas resonate--and do the tools that he calls out (he refers to it as "BI Style") resonate with what your personas have or need? Finally, I'm very interested if BI use is viewed as a bolt-on...or an integrated part of your daily enterprise processes?

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• Confusion about inheritance

  - by Samuel Adam

  I know I might get downvoted for this, but I'm really curious. I was taught that inheritance is a very powerful polymorphism tool, but I can't seem to use it well in real cases. So far, I can only use inheritance when the base class is an abstract class. Examples : If we're talking about Product and Inventory, I quickly assumed that a Product is an Inventory because a Product must be inventorized as well. But a problem occured when user wanted to sell their Inventory item. It just doesn't seem to be right to change an Inventory object to it's subtype (Product), it's almost like trying to convert a parent to it's child. Another case is Customer and Member. It is logical (at least for me) to think that a Member is a Customer with some more privileges. Same problem occurred when user wanted to upgrade an existing Customer to become a Member. A very trivial case is the Employee case. Where Manager, Clerk, etc can be derived from Employee. Still, the same upgrading issue. I tried to use composition instead for some cases, but I really wanted to know if I'm missing something for inheritance solution here. My composition solution for those cases : Create a reference of Inventory inside a Product. Here I'm making an assumption about that Product and Inventory is talking in a different context. While Product is in the context of sales (price, volume, discount, etc), Inventory is in the context of physical management (stock, movement, etc). Make a reference of Membership instead inside Customer class instead of previous inheritance solution. Therefor upgrading a Customer is only about instantiating the Customer's Membership property. This example is keep being taught in basic programming classes, but I think it's more proper to have those Manager, Clerk, etc derived from an abstract Role class and make it a property in Employee. I found it difficult to find an example of a concrete class deriving from another concrete class. Is there any inheritance solution in which I can solve those cases? Being new in this OOP thing, I really really need a guidance. Thanks!

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• The State of the Internet -- Retail Edition

  - by David Dorf

  Over at Business Insider, there's a great presentation on the State of the Internet done in the Mary Meeker style.  Its 138 slides so I took the liberty of condensing it down to the 15 slides that directly apply to the retail industry.  However, I strongly recommend looking at the entire deck when you have time.  And while you're at it, Business Insider just launched a retail portal that's dedicated to retail industry content.  Please check it out as well.  My take-aways are below after the slide show. &amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;span id=&amp;amp;amp;amp;quot;XinhaEditingPostion&amp;amp;amp;amp;quot;&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/span&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt; [Source: Business Insider] Here are a few things I took away from the statistics: Facebook and Twitter are in their infancy.  While all retailers should have social programs, search is still the driver and therefore should receive the lions share of investment.  Facebook referrals are up 92% year-over-year, but Google still does 80% of the referrals. E-commerce continues to grow at breakneck speed, but in-store commerce is still king. Stores are not showrooms yet.  And social commerce pure-plays like Gilt and Groupon are tiny but worthy of some attention. There are more smartphones than PCs on the internet, and the disparity will continue to grow. PC growth will be flat and Tablet use will continue to grow. Mobile accounts for 12% of all internet traffic. A quarter of smartphone sales come from China, so anyone with a presence there better have a strong mobile strategy. 38% of people have used their smartphone to make a purchase, and many use their smartphones inside stores.  Smartphones are a critical consumer tool for shopping. Mobile is starting to drive significant traffic to e-commerce sites, especially tablets.  Tablet strategies are crucial for retailers. Mobile payments from the likes of Paypal and Square are growing quickly.  It will be interesting to see how NFC plays in this area. Mobile operating systems are losing market share to iOS and Android.  I wonder in Microsoft can finally make a dent? The internet is being dominated by mobile devices, and retailers had better have a strong mobile strategy to meet consumer demand.

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• Any tips on getting hired as a software project manager straight out of college?

  - by MHarrison

  I graduated with a BS in compsci last September, and I've been trying (unsuccessfully) to find a job as a project manager ever since. I fell in love with software engineering (the formal practice behind it all, not just coding) in school, and I've dedicated the last 3-4 years of my life to learning everything I can about project management and gaining experience. I've managed several projects (with teams around 12 people) while in school, and I worked with my university's software engineering research lab. My résumé is also decent - I worked as a programmer before I went to school (I'm 27 now), and I did Google Summer of Code for 3 summers. I also have general "people management" experience via working as the photo editor for my university's newspaper for 2 years. My first problem with the job hunt is not getting enough interviews. I use careers.stackoverflow.com, which is awesome because I usually get contacted by non-HR people who know what they're talking about, but there's just not enough companies using it for me to get interviews on a regular basis. I've also tried sites like monster.com, and in a fit of desperation, I sent out no less than 60 applications to project management positions. I've gotten 3 automated rejection letters and that's it. At least careers.stackoverflow gets me a phone interview with 8/10 places I apply to. But the main (and extremely frustrating) problem is the matter of experience. I've successfully managed projects from start to finish (in my software engineering classes we had real customers come in with a real software need and we built it for them), but I've never had to deal with budgets and money (I know this is why HR people immediately turn me away). Most of these positions require 5+ years PM experience, and I've seen absurd things like 12+ years required. Interviews are also maddening. I've had so many places who absolutely loved me and I made it to the final round of interviews, and I left thinking things went extremely well and they'd consider me. However, when I check in with them a week later, they tell me "We really liked you and your qualifications are excellent, but we're hoping to find someone with more experience." The bad interviews I can understand - like the PM position that would have had me managing developers both locally and overseas - I had 3 interviews with them and the ENTIRE interview process was them asking me CS brainteasers and having me waste time on things like writing quicksort on paper or writing binary search trees. Even when I tried steering the discussion towards more relevant PM stuff, they gave me some vague generic replies and went back to the "We want to be Google/MS" crap. But when I have a GOOD interview, they say my "qualifications are excellent" but they want "more experience"...that makes me want to tear my hair out. What else can I DO? While I'm aiming for technically-involved PM positions (not just crunching budget numbers), I really don't want a straight development job because I like creating software from the very high-level vs. spending a lot of time debugging memory leaks. In fact, I can't even GET development positions that I'm qualified for because I make the mistake of telling them that my future career goals are as PM (which usually results in them saying something like "Well we already have PMs and this position isn't really set up to get you there." - which I take to mean "No, that's my job, stay away.") My apologies on the long rant, but I'm seriously hellbent on getting hired as a PM since it's both my career goal and the passion that keeps me awake at night. Any suggestions on what the heck else I can do? I'm currently writing a blog where I talk about my philosophies about software engineering, and I'm writing up specs for an iOS app which I will design, code, and show employers, but this takes an awful lot of time that I don't have.

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• How should I plan the inheritance structure for my game?

  - by Eric Thoma

  I am trying to write a platform shooter in C++ with a really good class structure for robustness. The game itself is secondary; it is the learning process of writing it that is primary. I am implementing an inheritance tree for all of the objects in my game, but I find myself unsure on some decisions. One specific issue that it bugging me is this: I have an Actor that is simply defined as anything in the game world. Under Actor is Character. Both of these classes are abstract. Under Character is the Philosopher, who is the main character that the user commands. Also under Character is NPC, which uses an AI module with stock routines for friendly, enemy and (maybe) neutral alignments. So under NPC I want to have three subclasses: FriendlyNPC, EnemyNPC and NeutralNPC. These classes are not abstract, and will often be subclassed in order to make different types of NPC's, like Engineer, Scientist and the most evil Programmer. Still, if I want to implement a generic NPC named Kevin, it would nice to be able to put him in without making a new class for him. I could just instantiate a FriendlyNPC and pass some values for the AI machine and for the dialogue; that would be ideal. But what if Kevin is the one benevolent Programmer in the whole world? Now we must make a class for him (but what should it be called?). Now we have a character that should inherit from Programmer (as Kevin has all the same abilities but just uses the friendly AI functions) but also should inherit from FriendlyNPC. Programmer and FriendlyNPC branched away from each other on the inheritance tree, so inheriting from both of them would have conflicts, because some of the same functions have been implemented in different ways on the two of them. 1) Is there a better way to order these classes to avoid these conflicts? Having three subclasses; Friendly, Enemy and Neutral; from each type of NPC; Engineer, Scientist, and Programmer; would amount to a huge number of classes. I would share specific implementation details, but I am writing the game slowly, piece by piece, and so I haven't implemented past Character yet. 2) Is there a place where I can learn these programming paradigms? I am already trying to take advantage of some good design patterns, like MVC architecture and Mediator objects. The whole point of this project is to write something in good style. It is difficult to tell what should become a subclass and what should become a state (i.e. Friendly boolean v. Friendly class). Having many states slows down code with if statements and makes classes long and unwieldy. On the other hand, having a class for everything isn't practical. 3) Are there good rules of thumb or resources to learn more about this? 4) Finally, where does templating come in to this? How should I coordinate templates into my class structure? I have never actually taken advantage of templating honestly, but I hear that it increases modularity, which means good code.

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• Seperation of project responsibilities in new project

  - by dreza

  We have very recently started a new project (MVC 3.0) and some of our early discussion has been around how the work and development will be split amongst the team members to ensure we get the least amount of overlap of work and so help make it a bit easier for each developer to get on and do their work. The project is expected to take about 6 months - 1 year (although not all developers are likely to be on and might filter off towards the end), Our team is going to be small so this will help out a bit I believe. The team will essentially consist of: 3 x developers (1 a slightly more experienced and will be the lead) 1 x project manager / product owner / tester An external company responsbile for doing our design work General project/development decisions so far have included: Develop in an Agile way using SCRUM techniques (We are still very much learning this approach as a company) Use MVVM archectecture Use Ninject and DI where possible Attempt to use as TDD as much as possible to drive development. Keep our controllers as skinny as possible Keep our views as simple as possible During our discussions two approaches have been broached as too how to seperate the workload given our objectives outlined above. OPTION 1: A framework seperation where each person is responsible for conceptual areas with overlap and discussion primarily in the integration areas. The integration areas would the responsibily of both developers as required. View prototypes (**Graphic designer**) | - Mockups | Views (Razor and view helpers etc) & Javascript (**Developer 1**) | - View models (Integration point) | Controllers and Application logic (**Developer 2**) | - Models (Integration point) | Domain model and persistence (**Developer 3**) PROS: Integration points are quite clear and so developers can work without dependencies on others fairly easily Code practices such as naming conventions and style is more easily managed in regards to consistancy as primarily only one developer will be handling an area CONS: Completion of an entire feature becomes a bit grey as no single person is responsible for an entire feature (story?) A person might not have a full appreciation for all areas of the project and so code overlap might be lacking if suddenly that person left. OPTION 2: A more task orientated approach where each person is responsible for the completion of the entire task from view - controller - model. PROS: A person is responsible for one entire feature so it's "complete" state can be clearly defined Code overlap into different areas will occur so each individual has good coverage over the entire application CONS: Overlap of development will occur in all the modules and developers can develop/extend without a true understanding of what the original code owner was intending. This could potentially lead more easily to code bloat? Following a convention might be harder as developers are adding to all areas of the project If a developer sets up a way of doing things would it be harder to enforce the other developers to follow that convention or even build on it (or even discuss it?). Dunno.. Bugs could more easily be introduced into areas not thought about by the developer It's easier to possibly to carry a team member in so far as one member just hacks code together to complete a task whilst another takes time to build a foundation that could be used by others and so help make future tasks easier i.e. starts building a framework? QUESTION: As it might appear I'm more in favor of option 1, however I'm interested to see how others might have approached this or what is the standard or best or preferred way of undertaking a project. Or indeed any different approach to handling this?

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• AI to move custom-shaped spaceships (shape affecting movement behaviour)

  - by kaoD

  I'm designing a networked turn based 3D-6DOF space fleet combat strategy game which relies heavily on ship customization. Let me explain the game a bit, since you need to know a bit about it to set the question. What I aim for is the ability to create your own fleet of ships with custom shapes and attached modules (propellers, tractor beams...) which would give advantages and disadvantages to each ship, so you have lots of different fleet distributions. E.g., long ship with two propellers at the side would let the ship spin around that plane easily, bigger ships would move slowly unless you place lots of propellers at the back (therefore spending more "construction" points and energy when moving, and it will only move fast towards that direction.) I plan to balance all the game around this feature. The game would revolve around two phases: orders and combat phase. During the orders phase, you command the different ships. When all players finish the order phase, the combat phase begins and the ship orders get resolved in real-time for some time, then the action pauses and there's a new orders phase. The problem comes when I think about player input. To move a ship, you need to turn on or off different propellers if you want to steer, travel forward, brake, rotate in place... These propellers don't have to work at their whole power, so you can achieve more movement combinations with less propellers. I think this approach is a bit boring. The player doesn't want to fiddle with motors or anything, you just want to MOVE and KILL. The way I intend the player to give orders to these ships is by a destination and a rotation, and then the AI would calculate the correct propeller power to achive that movement and rotation. Propulsion doesn't have to be the same throught the entire turn calculation (after the orders have been given) so it would be cool if the ships reacted as they move, adjusting the power of the propellers for their needs dynamically, but it may be too hard to implement and it's not really needed for the game to work. In both cases, how would that AI decide which propellers to activate for the best (or at least not worst) trajectory to be achieved? I though about some approaches: Learning AI: The ship types would learn about their movement by trial and error, adjusting their behaviour with more uses, and finally becoming "smart". I don't want to get involved THAT far in AI coding, and I think it can be frustrating for the player (even if you can let it learn without playing.) Pre-calculated timestep movement: Upon ship creation, ALL possible movements are calculated for each propeller configuration and power for a given delta-time. Memory intensive, ugly, bad. Pre-calculated trajectories: The same as above but not for each delta-time but the whole trajectory, which would then be fitted as much as possible. Requires a fixed propeller configuration for the whole combat phase and is still memory intensive, ugly and bad. Continuous brute forcing: The AI continously checks ALL possible propeller configurations throughout the entire combat phase, precalculates a few time steps and decides which is the best one based on that. Con: what's good now might not be that good later, and it's too CPU intensive, ugly, and bad too. Single brute forcing: Same as above, but only brute forcing at the beginning of the simulation, so it needs constant propeller configuration throughout the entire combat phase. Coninuous angle check: This is not a full movement method, but maybe a way to discard "stupid" propeller configurations. Given the current propeller's normal vector and the final one, you can approximate the power needed for the propeller based on the angle. You must do this continuously throughout the whole combat phase. I figured this one out recently so I didn't put in too much thought. A priori, it has the "what's good now might not be that good later" drawback too, and it doesn't care about the other propellers which may act together to make a better propelling configuration. I'm really stuck here. Any ideas?

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• Lookup Viewer

  - by Geertjan

  The Maven integrated view that I showed yesterday I was able to create because I happened to know that an implementation of SubprojectProvider and LogicalViewProvider are in the Lookup of Maven projects. With that knowledge, I was able to use and even delegate to those implementations. But what if you don't know that those implementations are in the Lookup of the Project object? In the case of the Maven Project implementation, you could look in the source code of the Maven Project implementation, at the "getLookup" method. However, any other module could be putting its own objects into that Lookup, dynamically, i.e., at runtime. So there's no way of knowing what's in the Lookup of any Project object or any other object with a Lookup. But now imagine that you have a Lookup Viewer, as a tool during development, which you would exclude when distributing the application. Whenever new objects are found in the Lookup, the viewer displays them. You could install the Lookup Viewer into NetBeans IDE, or any other NetBeans Platform application, and then get a quick impression of what's actually in the Lookup when you select a different item in the application during development. Here it is (though I vaguely remember someone else writing something similar): Above, a Maven Project is selected. The Lookup Window shows that, among many other classes, an implementation of SubprojectProvider and LogicalViewProvider are found in the Lookup when the Maven Project is selected. If an item in the Lookup Window has its own Lookup, the content of that Lookup is displayed as child nodes of the Lookup, etc, i.e., you can explore all the way down the Lookup of each item found within objects found within the current selection. (What's especially fun is seeing the SaveCookieImpl being added and removed from the Lookup Window when you make/save a change in a document.) Another example is below, showing the Lookup Window installed in a custom application created during a course at MIT in Boston: A small trick I had to apply is that I always show the previous Lookup, since the current Lookup, when you select one of the Nodes in the Lookup Window, would be the Lookup of the Lookup Window itself! If anyone is interested in this, I can publish the NetBeans module providing the above window to the NetBeans update center. 

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• Deliberate Practice

  - by Jeff Foster

  It’s easy to assume, as software engineers, that there is little need to “practice” writing code. After all, we write code all day long! Just by writing a little each day, we’re constantly learning and getting better, right? Unfortunately, that’s just not true. Of course, developers do improve with experience. Each time we encounter a problem we’re more likely to avoid it next time. If we’re in a team that deploys software early and often, we hone and improve the deployment process each time we practice it. However, not all practice makes perfect. To develop true expertise requires a particular type of practice, deliberate practice, the only goal of which is to make us better programmers. Everyday software development has other constraints and goals, not least the pressure to deliver. We rarely get the chance in the course of a “sprint” to experiment with potential solutions that are outside our current comfort zone. However, if we believe that software is a craft then it’s our duty to strive continuously to raise the standard of software development. This requires specific and sustained efforts to get better at something we currently can’t do well (from Harvard Business Review July/August 2007). One interesting way to introduce deliberate practice, in a sustainable way, is the code kata. The term kata derives from martial arts and refers to a set of movements practiced either solo or in pairs. One of the better-known examples is the Bowling Game kata by Bob Martin, the goal of which is simply to write some code to do the scoring for 10-pin bowling. It sounds too easy, right? What could we possibly learn from such a simple example? Trust me, though, that it’s not as simple as five minutes of typing and a solution. Of course, we can reach a solution in a short time, but the important thing about code katas is that we explore each technique fully and in a controlled way. We tackle the same problem multiple times, using different techniques and making different decisions, understanding the ramifications of each one, and exploring edge cases. The short feedback loop optimizes opportunities to learn. Another good example is Conway’s Game of Life. It’s a simple problem to solve, but try solving it in a functional style. If you’re used to mutability, solving the problem without mutating state will push you outside of your comfort zone. Similarly, if you try to solve it with the focus of “tell-don’t-ask“, how will the responsibilities of each object change? As software engineers, we don’t get enough opportunities to explore new ideas. In the middle of a development cycle, we can’t suddenly start experimenting on the team’s code base. Code katas offer an opportunity to explore new techniques in a safe environment. If you’re still skeptical, my challenge to you is simply to try it out. Convince a willing colleague to pair with you and work through a kata or two. It only takes an hour and I’m willing to bet you learn a few new things each time. The next step is to make it a sustainable team practice. Start with an hour every Friday afternoon (after all who wants to commit code to production just before they leave for the weekend?) for month and see how that works out. Finally, consider signing up for the Global Day of Code Retreat. It’s like a daylong code kata, it’s on December 8th and there’s probably an event in your area!

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• WebCenter Customer Spotlight: Azul Brazilian Airlines

  - by me

  Author: Peter Reiser - Social Business Evangelist, Oracle WebCenter  Solution SummaryAzul Linhas Aéreas Brasileiras (Azul Brazilian Airlines) is the third-largest airline in Brazil serving  42 destinations with a fleet of 49 aircraft and employs 4,500 crew members. The company wanted to offer an innovative site with a simple purchasing process for customers to search for and buy tickets and for the company’s marketing team to more effectively conduct its campaigns. To this end, Azul implemented Oracle WebCenter Sites, succeeding in gathering all of the site’s key information onto a single platform. Azul can now complete the Web site content updating process—which used to take approximately 48 hours—in less than five minutes. Company OverviewAzul Linhas Aéreas Brasileiras (Azul Brazilian Airlines) has established itself as the third-largest airline in Brazil, based on a business model that combines low prices with a high level of service. Azul serves 42 destinations with a fleet of 49 aircraft. It operates 350 daily flights with a team of 4,500 crew members. Last year, the company transported 15 million passengers, achieving a 10% share of the Brazilian market, according to the Agência Nacional de Aviação Civil (ANAC, or the National Civil Aviation Agency). Business ChallengesThe company wanted to offer an innovative site with a simple purchasing process for customers to search for and buy tickets and for the company’s marketing team to more effectively conduct its campaigns. Provide customers with an  innovative Web site with a simple process for purchasing flight tickets Bring dynamism to the Web site’s content updating process to provide autonomy to the airline’s strategic departments, such as marketing and product development Facilitate integration among the site’s different application providers, such as ticket availability and payment process, on which ticket sales depend Solution DeployedAzul worked with the  Oracle partner TQI to implement Oracle WebCenter Sites, succeeding in gathering all of the site’s key information onto a single platform. Previously, at least three servers and corporate information environments had directed data to the portal. The single Oracle-based platform now facilitates site updates, which are daily and constant. Business Results Gained development freedom in all processes—from implementation to content editing Gathered all of the Web site’s key information onto a single platform, facilitating its daily and constant updating, whereas the information was previously spread among at least three IT environments and had to go through a complex process to be made available online to customers Reduced time needed to update banners and other Web site content from an average of 48 hours to less than five minutes Simplified the flight ticket sales process thanks to tool flexibility that enabled the company to improve Website usability “Oracle WebCenter Sites provides an easy-to-use platform that enables our marketing department to spend less time updating content and more time on innovative activities. Previously, it would take 48 hours to update content on our Web site; now it takes less than five minutes. We have shown the market that we are innovators, enabling customer convenience through an improved flight ticket purchase process.” Kleber Linhares, Information Technology and E-Commerce Director, Azul Linhas Aéreas Brasileiras Additional Information Azul Brazilian Airlines Case Study Oracle WebCenter Sites Oracle WebCenter Sites Satellite Server

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• Finding Leaders Breakfasts - Adelaide and Perth

  - by rdatson-Oracle

  HR Executives Breakfast Roundtables: Find the best leaders using science and social media! Perth, 22nd July & Adelaide, 24th July What is leadership in the 21st century? What does the latest research tell us about leadership? How do you recognise leadership qualities in individuals? How do you find individuals with these leadership qualities, hire and develop them? Join the Neuroleadership Institute, the Hay Group, and Oracle to hear: 1. the latest neuroscience research about human bias, and how it applies to finding and building better leaders; 2. the latest techniques to recognise leadership qualities in people; 3. and how you can harness your people and social media to find the best people for your company. Reflect on your hiring practices at this thought provoking breakfast, where you will be challenged to consider whether you are using best practices aimed at getting the right people into your company. Speakers Abigail Scott, Hay Group Abigail is a UK registered psychologist with 10 years international experience in the design and delivery of talent frameworks and assessments. She has delivered innovative assessment programmes across a range of organisations to identify and develop leaders. She is experienced in advising and supporting clients through new initiatives using evidence-based approach and has published a number of research papers on fairness and predictive validity in assessment. Karin Hawkins, NeuroLeadership Institute Karin is the Regional Director of NeuroLeadership Institute’s Asia-Pacific region. She brings over 20 years experience in the financial services sector delivering cultural and commercial results across a variety of organisations and functions. As a leadership risk specialist Karin understands the challenge of building deep bench strength in teams and she is able to bring evidence, insight, and experience to support executives in meeting today’s challenges. Robert Datson, Oracle Robert is a Human Capital Management specialist at Oracle, with several years as a practicing manager at IBM, learning and implementing latest management techniques for hiring, deploying and developing staff. At Oracle he works with clients to enable best practices for HR departments, and drawing the linkages between HR initiatives and bottom-line improvements. Agenda 07:30 a.m. Breakfast and Registrations 08:00 a.m. Welcome and Introductions 08:05 a.m. Breaking Bias in leadership decisions - Karin Hawkins 08:30 a.m. Identifying and developing leaders - Abigail Scott 08:55 a.m. Finding leaders, the social way - Robert Datson 09:20 a.m. Q&A and Closing Remarks 09:30 a.m. Event concludes If you are an employee or official of a government organisation, please click here for important ethics information regarding this event. To register for Perth, Tuesday 22nd July, please click HERE To register for Adelaide, Thursday 24th July, please click HERE 1024x768 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 -"/ /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Contact: To register or have questions on the event? Contact Aaron Tait on +61 2 9491 1404

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• Starting over and new to Ubuntu

  - by 2funnyyone

  We have been having repeated problems with our interent service and using windows xp & sp3 (users and premissions) I see no need for them. I started with computers long before windows. Every since sp 3 come out in 2009 I have had nothing but problems. I have lost so many computers to virius and trojans, we just stack them up. We are with Qwest/ Century link which is using advertising servers which I think is causing the problem. All the computers are networked together which is not how I set them up. I beleive Century link is networking them through assignment of a domain for our home. This causes all the computers to crash twice. This is getting expensive. We tried buying new harddrives but reinfect with hours of connecting to internet. I also beleive the modem, router and all computers are infected. I put combofix on this one and that is the only reason we are still online with this laptop. I am afraid to install new equipment because my partner and I are on SSDI and this cost a lot. I go to school at UOP and had to run off a flash and reboot this laptop to recovery every other day or so, this pass month. New plan is: We are getting ready to install new equipment but afraid to reinfect again. Need help to install new equipment. The plan is to use current internet services from Qwest/ now Century Link. The list of New equipment in order: Century link wireless modem is ZyXEL PK5000Z with 4 direct connect Ethernet ports Next Dell Optiplex 210L ( used auction purchase ) 2 gb ram 80 g hard drive Ubuntu 11.10 operating system Next Wireless D-Link router WBR-1310 with 4 direct connect Ethernet ports OK-------- Purchased Dell OEM disk for Repair or Reinstalling Windows XP Professional Operating system (2 roommates as well) All infected computers are Dell desktops or laptops with XP Pro Also purchasing Ubuntu 12.04 for 3 computers. We like the way it runs but still learning it. Questions 1] How do we fdisk the infected computers without infecting new system. We have Dos disks, but none have floppy dish drive. We do have a new floppy disk drive and usb adapter we purchased from Amazon. 2] We are thinking Avast internet security because of the boot scan. We want all software loaded before reconnecting. We can manually load our internet provider information. We purchased StopZilla $100 for 5 computers, but not sure that is what we need. But need how to setup ports security and services we will need. Really lost at this part. So we are safe when we go back on the internet. 3] Want to connect reloaded fdisk systems to router as public connection and no sharing. Do not want to network all computers. 4] Want parental/ ownership control from Ubuntu system for internet connection (Children and friends). Do we restrict at the modem and/ or router? Any help would be a blessing. I do not want to go alone on this anymore.

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• DTLoggedExec 1.1.2008.4 Released!

  - by Davide Mauri

  Today I've relased the latest version of my DTExec replacement tool, DTLoggedExec. The main changes are the following: Used a new strategy for version numbers. Now it will follow the following pattern Major.Minor.TargetSQLServerVersion.Revision Added support for Auto Configurations Fixed a bug that reported incorrect number of errors and warnings to Log Providers Fixed a buf that prevented correct casting of values when using /Set and /Param options Errors and Warnings are now counted more precisely. Updated database and log import scripts to categorize logs by projects and sections. E.g.: Project: MyBIProject; Sections: Staging, Datawarehouse Removed unused report stored procedures from database Updated Samples: 12 samples are now available to show ALL DTLoggedExec features From this version only SSIS 2008 will be supported http://dtloggedexec.codeplex.com/releases/view/62218  It useful to say something more on a couple of specific points: From this version only SSIS 2008 will be supportedYes, Integration Services 2005 are not supported anymore. The latest version capable of running SSIS 2005 Packages is the 1.0.0.2. Updated database and log import scripts to categorize logs by projects and sectionsWhen you import a log file, you can now assign it to a Project and to a Section of that project. In this way it's easier to gather statistical information for an entire project or a subsection of it. This also allows to store logged data of package belonging to different projects in the same database. For example:  Updated SamplesA complete set of samples that shows how to use all DTLoggedExec features are now shipped with the product. Enjoy! Added support for Auto ConfigurationsThis point will have a post on its own, since it's quite important and is by far the biggest new feature introduced in this release. To explain it in a few words, I can just say that you don't need to waste time with complex DTS configuration files or options, since a package will configure itself automatically. You just need to write a single statement as a parameter for DTLoggedExec. This feature can simplify deployment *a lot* :)   I the next days I'll write the mentioned post on Auto-Configurations and i'll update the documentation available on theDTLoggedExec website:   http://dtloggedexec.davidemauri.it/MainPage.ashx

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• Cloud Computing Pricing - It's like a Hotel

  - by BuckWoody

  I normally don't go into the economics or pricing side of Distributed Computing, but I've had a few friends that have been surprised by a bill lately and I wanted to quickly address at least one aspect of it. Most folks are used to buying software and owning it outright - like buying a car. We pay a lot for the car, and then we use it whenever we want. We think of the "cloud" services as a taxi - we'll just pay for the ride we take an no more. But it's not quite like that. It's actually more like a hotel. When you subscribe to Azure using a free offering like the MSDN subscription, you don't have to pay anything for the service. But when you create an instance of a Web or Compute Role, Storage, that sort of thing, you can think of the idea of checking into a hotel room. You get the key, you pay for the room. For Azure, using bandwidth, CPU and so on is billed just like it states in the Azure Portal. so in effect there is a cost for the service and then a cost to use it, like water or power or any other utility. Where this bit some folks is that they created an instance, played around with it, and then left it running. No one was using it, no one was on - so they thought they wouldn't be charged. But they were. It wasn't much, but it was a surprise.They had the hotel room key, but they weren't in the room, so to speak. To add to their frustration, they had to talk to someone on the phone to cancel the account. I understand the frustration. Although we have all this spelled out in the sign up area, not everyone has the time to read through all that. I get that. So why not make this easier? As an explanation, we bill for that time because the instance is still running, and we have to tie up resources to be available the second you want them, and that costs money. As far as being able to cancel from the portal, that's also something that needs to be clearer. You may not be aware that you can spin up instances using code - and so cancelling from the Portal would allow you to do the same thing. Since a mistake in code could erase all of your instances and the account, we make you call to make sure you're you and you really want to take it down. Not a perfect system by any means, but we'll evolve this as time goes on. For now, I wanted to make sure you're aware of what you should do. By the way, you don't have to cancel your whole account not to be billed. Just delete the instance from the portal and you won't be charged. You don't have to call anyone for that. And just FYI - you can download the SDK for Azure and never even hit the online version at all for learning and playing around. No sign-up, no credit card, PO, nothing like that. In fact, that's how I demo Azure all the time. Everything runs right on your laptop in an emulated environment.  

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• How are you coping with Ubuntu's Unity app launcher? (It auto-hides, can't minimize apps)

  - by Bad Learner

  [Firstly, let me tell you that this cannot be subjective in anyway, as I think at least Ubuntu beginners will have these questions boggling in their mind; and yes, this is a question that has a definite answer - - so, I am completely within the rules.] Okay, coming to the point, I see that Ubuntu uses Unity since v10.xx (netbook edition?) and carried the same to v11.04 & v11.10. As someone who's stuck to Windows for all these years, it's somewhat difficult to cope with Ubuntu's Unity, for the following reasons: [1] The Unity app launcher (to the screen's left) auto-hides when a window is maximized. [2]- And once launched, apps cannot be minimized by clicking the app's icon in the launcher. I have to go to the top-left of the screen and click the "_" button. I do know I can fix these issues by installing some configuration tool. But the thing is, if that's how it's meant to work, Canonical/Ubuntu would have designed it that way. But they didn't. Why? w.r.t above points [1], [2]: [1] EDITED: So, does it mean, it's good to work without maximizing the windows? Because if I maximize the window, the app launcher hides. And I need to hover the mouse to the left of the screen, wait a bit (even if it's a sec or even less, I can still feel the lag), and then click on the next app icon in the launcher to switch to it. I do know, I can use Alt+TAB to switch, but I am not sure which window comes next. This, I feel, isn't productive. Also, this makes me feel, Ubuntu is designed for large screens (it's nice on my 1920x1080p screen), because I can have two windows side-by-side or something like that on a large screen. This is not possible on smaller screens. [2]- Being able to minimize an application's window by clicking on its icon in the launcher (just like it works on Windows & probably elsewhere) would have been great, rather than having to go to the top-left and clicking the _ (minimize) button which brings up the app launcher itself (from hiding) most of the time. It's too tiring to have these small issues in the UI. I really would like to know how you are coping with these issues the way they are?

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