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• Stand-Up Desk 2012 Update

  - by BuckWoody

  One of the more popular topics here on my technical blog doesn't have to do with technology, per-se - it's about the choice I made to go to a stand-up desk work environment. If you're interested in the history of those, check here: Stand-Up Desk Part One Stand-Up Desk Part Two I have made some changes and I was asked to post those here.Yes, I'm still standing - I think the experiment has worked well, so I'm continuing to work this way. I've become so used to it that I notice when I sit for a long time. If I'm flying, or driving a long way, or have long meetings, I take breaks to stand up and move around. That being said, I don't stand as much as I did. I started out by standing the entire day - which did not end well. As you can read in my second post, I found that sitting down for a few minutes each hour worked out much better. And over time I would say that I now stand about 70-80% of the day, depending on the day. Some days I don't even notice I'm standing, so I don't sit as often. Other days I find that I really tire quickly - so I sit more often. But in both cases, I stand more than I sit. In the first post you can read about how I used a simple coffee-table from Ikea to elevate my desktop to the right height. I then adjusted the height where I stand by using a small plastic square and some carpet. Over time I found this did not work as well as I'd like. The primary reason is that the front of these are at the same depth - so my knees would hit the desk or table when I sat down. Also, the desk was at a certain height, and I had to adjust, rather than the other way around.  Also, I like a lot of surface area on top of a desk - almost more of a table. Routing cables and wiring was a pain, and of course moving it was out of the question.   So I've changed what I use. I found a perfect solution for what I was looking for - industrial wire shelving: I bought one, built only half of it (for the right height I wanted) and arranged the shelves the way I wanted. I then got a 5'x4' piece of wood from Lowes, and mounted it to where the top was balanced, but had an over-hang  I could get my knees under easily.My wife sewed a piece of fake-leather for the top. This arrangement provides the following benefits: Very strong Rolls easily, wheels can lock to prevent rolling Long, wide shelves Wire-frame allows me to route any kind of wiring and other things all over the desk I plugged in my UPS and ran it's longer power-cable to the wall outlet. I then ran the router's LAN connection along that wire, and covered both with a large insulation sleeve. I then plugged in everything to the UPS, and routed all the wiring. I can now roll the desk almost anywhere in the room so that I can record, look out the window, get closer to or farther away from the door and more. I put a few boxes on the shelves as "drawers" and tidied that part up. Even my printer fits on a shelf. Laser-dog not included - some assembly required In the second post you can read about the bar-stool I purchased from Target for the desk. I cheaped-out on this one, and it proved to be a bad choice. Because I had to raise it so high, and was constantly sitting on it and then standing up, the gas-cylinder in it just gave out. So it became a very short stool that I ended up getting rid of. In the end, this one from Ikea proved to be a better choice: And so this arrangement is working out perfectly. I'm finding myself VERY productive this way. I hope these posts help you if you decide to try working at a stand-up desk. Although I was skeptical at first, I've found it to be a very healthy, easy way to code, design and especially present over a web-cam. It's natural to stand to speak when you're presenting, and it feels more energetic than sitting down to talk to others.

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• 7 Reasons for Abandonment in eCommerce and the need for Contextual Support by JP Saunders

  - by Tuula Fai

  Shopper confidence, or more accurately the lack thereof, is the bane of the online retailer. There are a number of questions that influence whether a shopper completes a transaction, and all of those attributes revolve around knowledge. What products are available? What products are on offer? What would be the cost of the transaction? What are my options for delivery? In general, most online businesses do a good job of answering basic questions around the products as the shopper engages in the online journey, navigating the product catalog and working through the checkout process. The needs that are harder to address for the shopper are those that are less concerned with product specifics and more concerned with deciding whether the transaction met their needs and delivered value. A recent study by the Baymard Institute [1] finds that more than 60% of ecommerce site visitors will abandon their shopping cart. The study also identifies seven reasons for abandonment out of the commerce process [2]. Most of those reasons come down to poor usability within the commerce experience. Distractions. External distractions within the shopper’s external environment (TV, Children, Pets, etc.) or distractions on the eCommerce page can drive shopper abandonment. Ideally, the selection and check-out process should be straightforward. One common distraction is to drive the shopper away from the task at hand through pop-ups or re-directs. The shopper engaging with support information in the checkout process should not be directed away from the page to consume support. Though confidence may improve, the distraction also means abandonment may increase. Poor Usability. When the experience gets more complicated, buyer’s remorse can set in. While knowledge drives confidence, a lack of understanding erodes it. Therefore it is important that the commerce process is streamlined. In some cases, the number of clicks to complete a purchase is lengthy and unavoidable. In these situations, it is vital to ensure that the complexity of your experience can be explained with contextual support to avoid abandonment. If you can illustrate the solution to a complex action while the user is engaged in that action and address customer frustrations with your checkout process before they arise, you can decrease abandonment. Fraud. The perception of potential fraud can be enough to deter a buyer. Does your site look credible? Can shoppers trust your brand? Providing answers on the security of your experience and the levels of protection applied to profile information may play as big a role in ensuring the sale, as does the support you provide on the product offerings and purchasing process. Does it fit? If it is a clothing item or oversized furniture item, another common form of abandonment is for the shopper to question whether the item can be worn by the intended user. Providing information on the sizing applied to clothing, physical dimensions, and limitations on delivery/returns of oversized items will also assist the sale. A photo alone of the item will help, as it answers some of those questions, but won’t assuage all customer concerns about sizing and fit. Sometimes the customer doesn’t want to buy. Prospective buyers might be browsing through your catalog to kill time, or just might not have the money to purchase the item! You are unlikely to provide any information in contextual support to increase the likelihood to buy if the shopper already has no intentions of doing so. The customer will still likely abandon. Ensuring that any questions are proactively answered as they browse through your site can only increase their likelihood to return and buy at a future date. Can’t Buy. Errors or complexity at checkout can be another major cause of abandonment. Good contextual support is unlikely to help with severe errors caused by technical issues on your site, but it will have a big impact on customers struggling with complexity in the checkout process and needing a question answered prior to completing the sale. Embedded support within the checkout process to patiently explain how to complete a task will help increase conversion rates. Additional Costs. Tax, shipping and other costs or duties can dramatically increase the cost of the purchase and when unexpected, can increase abandonment, particularly if they can’t be adequately explained. Again, a lack of knowledge erodes confidence in the purchase, and cost concerns in particular, erode the perception of your brand’s trustworthiness. Again, providing information on what costs are additive and why they are being levied can decrease the likelihood that the customer will abandon out of the experience. Knowledge drives confidence and confidence drives conversion. If you’d like to understand best practices in providing contextual customer support in eCommerce to provide your shoppers with confidence, download the Oracle Cloud Service and Oracle Commerce - Contextual Support in Commerce White Paper. This white paper discusses the process of adding customer support, including a suggested process for finding where knowledge has the most influence on your shoppers and practical step-by-step illustrations on how contextual self-service can be added to your online commerce experience. Resources: [1] http://baymard.com/checkout-usability [2] http://baymard.com/blog/cart-abandonment

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• How to Tell a Hardware Problem From a Software Problem

  - by Chris Hoffman

  Your computer seems to be malfunctioning — it’s slow, programs are crashing or Windows may be blue-screening. Is your computer’s hardware failing, or does it have a software problem that you can fix on your own? This can actually be a bit tricky to figure out. Hardware problems and software problems can lead to the same symptoms — for example, frequent blue screens of death may be caused by either software or hardware problems. Computer is Slow We’ve all heard the stories — someone’s computer slows down over time because they install too much software that runs at startup or it becomes infected with malware. The person concludes that their computer is slowing down because it’s old, so they replace it. But they’re wrong. If a computer is slowing down, it has a software problem that can be fixed. Hardware problems shouldn’t cause your computer to slow down. There are some rare exceptions to this — perhaps your CPU is overheating and it’s downclocking itself, running slower to stay cooler — but most slowness is caused by software issues. Blue Screens Modern versions of Windows are much more stable than older versions of Windows. When used with reliable hardware with well-programmed drivers, a typical Windows computer shouldn’t blue-screen at all. If you are encountering frequent blue screens of death, there’s a good chance your computer’s hardware is failing. Blue screens could also be caused by badly programmed hardware drivers, however. If you just installed or upgraded hardware drivers and blue screens start, try uninstalling the drivers or using system restore — there may be something wrong with the drivers. If you haven’t done anything with your drivers recently and blue screens start, there’s a very good chance you have a hardware problem. Computer Won’t Boot If your computer won’t boot, you could have either a software problem or a hardware problem. Is Windows attempting to boot and failing part-way through the boot process, or does the computer no longer recognize its hard drive or not power on at all? Consult our guide to troubleshooting boot problems for more information. When Hardware Starts to Fail… Here are some common components that can fail and the problems their failures may cause: Hard Drive: If your hard drive starts failing, files on your hard drive may become corrupted. You may see long delays when you attempt to access files or save to the hard drive. Windows may stop booting entirely. CPU: A failing CPU may result in your computer not booting at all. If the CPU is overheating, your computer may blue-screen when it’s under load — for example, when you’re playing a demanding game or encoding video. RAM: Applications write data to your RAM and use it for short-term storage. If your RAM starts failing, an application may write data to part of the RAM, then later read it back and get an incorrect value. This can result in application crashes, blue screens, and file corruption. Graphics Card: Graphics card problems may result in graphical errors while rendering 3D content or even just while displaying your desktop. If the graphics card is overheating, it may crash your graphics driver or cause your computer to freeze while under load — for example, when playing demanding 3D games. Fans: If any of the fans fail in your computer, components may overheat and you may see the above CPU or graphics card problems. Your computer may also shut itself down abruptly so it doesn’t overheat any further and damage itself. Motherboard: Motherboard problems can be extremely tough to diagnose. You may see occasional blue screens or similar problems. Power Supply: A malfunctioning power supply is also tough to diagnose — it may deliver too much power to a component, damaging it and causing it to malfunction. If the power supply dies completely, your computer won’t power on and nothing will happen when you press the power button. Other common problems — for example, a computer slowing down — are likely to be software problems. It’s also possible that software problems can cause many of the above symptoms — malware that hooks deep into the Windows kernel can cause your computer to blue-screen, for example. The Only Way to Know For Sure We’ve tried to give you some idea of the difference between common software problems and hardware problems with the above examples. But it’s often tough to know for sure, and troubleshooting is usually a trial-and-error process. This is especially true if you have an intermittent problem, such as your computer blue-screening a few times a week. You can try scanning your computer for malware and running System Restore to restore your computer’s system software back to its previous working state, but these aren’t  guaranteed ways to fix software problems. The best way to determine whether the problem you have is a software or hardware one is to bite the bullet and restore your computer’s software back to its default state. That means reinstalling Windows or using the Refresh or reset feature on Windows 8. See whether the problem still persists after you restore its operating system to its default state. If you still see the same problem – for example, if your computer is blue-screening and continues to blue-screen after reinstalling Windows — you know you have a hardware problem and need to have your computer fixed or replaced. If the computer crashes or freezes while reinstalling Windows, you definitely have a hardware problem. Even this isn’t a completely perfect method — for example, you may reinstall Windows and install the same hardware drivers afterwards. If the hardware drivers are badly programmed, the blue-screens may continue. Blue screens of death aren’t as common on Windows these days — if you’re encountering them frequently, you likely have a hardware problem. Most blue screens you encounter will likely be caused by hardware issues. On the other hand, other common complaints like “my computer has slowed down” are easily fixable software problems. When in doubt, back up your files and reinstall Windows. Image Credit: Anders Sandberg on Flickr, comedy_nose on Flickr     

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• Getting a handle on mobile data

  - by Eric Jensen

  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;} written by Ashok Joshi The proliferation of mobile devices in the corporate world is both a blessing as well as a challenge.  Mobile devices improve productivity and the velocity of business for the end users; on the other hand, IT departments need to manage the corporate data and applications that run on these devices. Oracle Database Mobile Server (DMS for short) provides a simple and effective way to deal with the management challenge.  DMS supports data synchronization between a central Oracle database server and data on mobile devices.  It also provides authentication, encryption and application and device management.  Finally, DMS is a highly scalable solution that can be used to manage hundreds of thousands of devices.   Here’s a simplified outline of how such a solution might work. Each device runs local sync and mgmt agents that handle bidirectional data flow with an Oracle enterprise backend, run remote commands, and provide status to the management console. For example, mobile admins could monitor multiple networks of mobile devices, upgrade their software remotely, and even destroy the local database on a compromised device. DMS supports either Oracle Berkeley DB or SQLite for device-local storage, and runs on a wide variety of mobile platforms. The schema for the device-local database is pretty simple – it contains the name of the application that’s installed on the device as well as details such as product name, version number, time of last access etc. Each mobile user has an account on the monitoring system.  DMS supports authentication via the Oracle database authentication mechanisms or alternately, via an external authentication server such as Oracle Identity Management. DMS also provides the option of encrypting the data on disk as well as while it is being synchronized. Whenever a device connects with DMS, it sends the list of all local application changes to the server; the server updates the central repository with this information.  Synchronization can be triggered on-demand, whenever there’s a change on the device (e.g. new application installed or an existing application removed) or via a rule-based schedule (e.g. every Saturday). Synchronization is very fast and efficient, since only the changes are propagated.  This includes resume capability; should synchronization be interrupted for any reason, the next synchronization will resume where the previous synchronization was interrupted. If the device should be lost or stolen, DMS has the capability to remove the applications and/or data from the device. This ability to control access to sensitive data and applications is critical in the corporate environment. The central repository also allows the IT manager to track the kinds of applications that mobile users use and recommend patches and upgrades, while still allowing the mobile user full control over what applications s/he downloads and uses on the device.  This is useful since most devices are used for corporate as well as personal information. In certain restricted use scenarios, the IT manager can also control whether a certain application can be installed on a mobile device.  Should an unapproved application be installed, it can easily be removed the next time the device connects with the central server. Oracle Database mobile server provides a simple, effective and highly secure and scalable solution for managing the data and applications for the mobile workforce.

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• Self-signed certificates for a known community

  - by costlow

  Recently announced changes scheduled for Java 7 update 51 (January 2014) have established that the default security slider will require code signatures and the Permissions Manifest attribute. Code signatures are a common practice recommended in the industry because they help determine that the code your computer will run is the same code that the publisher created. This post is written to help users that need to use self-signed certificates without involving a public Certificate Authority. The role of self-signed certificates within a known community You may still use self-signed certificates within a known community. The difference between self-signed and purchased-from-CA is that your users must import your self-signed certificate to indicate that it is valid, whereas Certificate Authorities are already trusted by default. This works for known communities where people will trust that my certificate is mine, but does not scale widely where I cannot actually contact or know the systems that will need to trust my certificate. Public Certificate Authorities are widely trusted already because they abide by many different requirements and frequent checks. An example would be students in a university class sharing their public certificates on a mailing list or web page, employees publishing on the intranet, or a system administrator rolling certificates out to end-users. Managed machines help this because you can automate the rollout, but they are not required -- the major point simply that people will trust and import your certificate. How to distribute self-signed certificates for a known community There are several steps required to distribute a self-signed certificate to users so that they will properly trust it. These steps are: Creating a public/private key pair for signing. Exporting your public certificate for others Importing your certificate onto machines that should trust you Verify work on a different machine Creating a public/private key pair for signing Having a public/private key pair will give you the ability both to sign items yourself and issue a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) to a certificate authority. Create your public/private key pair by following the instructions for creating key pairs.Every Certificate Authority that I looked at provided similar instructions, but for the sake of cohesiveness I will include the commands that I used here: Generate the key pair.keytool -genkeypair -alias erikcostlow -keyalg EC -keysize 571 -validity 730 -keystore javakeystore_keepsecret.jks Provide a good password for this file. The alias "erikcostlow" is my name and therefore easy to remember. Substitute your name of something like "mykey." The sigalg of EC (Elliptical Curve) and keysize of 571 will give your key a good strong lifetime. All keys are set to expire. Two years or 730 days is a reasonable compromise between not-long-enough and too-long. Most public Certificate Authorities will sign something for one to five years. You will be placing your keys in javakeystore_keepsecret.jks -- this file will contain private keys and therefore should not be shared. If someone else gets these private keys, they can impersonate your signature. Please be cautious about automated cloud backup systems and private key stores. Answer all the questions. It is important to provide good answers because you will stick with them for the "-validity" days that you specified above.What is your first and last name?  [Unknown]:  First LastWhat is the name of your organizational unit?  [Unknown]:  Line of BusinessWhat is the name of your organization?  [Unknown]:  MyCompanyWhat is the name of your City or Locality?  [Unknown]:  City NameWhat is the name of your State or Province?  [Unknown]:  CAWhat is the two-letter country code for this unit?  [Unknown]:  USIs CN=First Last, OU=Line of Business, O=MyCompany, L=City, ST=CA, C=US correct?  [no]:  yesEnter key password for <erikcostlow>        (RETURN if same as keystore password): Verify your work:keytool -list -keystore javakeystore_keepsecret.jksYou should see your new key pair. Exporting your public certificate for others Public Key Infrastructure relies on two simple concepts: the public key may be made public and the private key must be private. By exporting your public certificate, you are able to share it with others who can then import the certificate to trust you. keytool -exportcert -keystore javakeystore_keepsecret.jks -alias erikcostlow -file erikcostlow.cer To verify this, you can open the .cer file by double-clicking it on most operating systems. It should show the information that you entered during the creation prompts. This is the file that you will share with others. They will use this certificate to prove that artifacts signed by this certificate came from you. If you do not manage machines directly, place the certificate file on an area that people within the known community should trust, such as an intranet page. Import the certificate onto machines that should trust you In order to trust the certificate, people within your known network must import your certificate into their keystores. The first step is to verify that the certificate is actually yours, which can be done through any band: email, phone, in-person, etc. Known networks can usually do this Determine the right keystore: For an individual user looking to trust another, the correct file is within that user’s directory.e.g. USER_HOME\AppData\LocalLow\Sun\Java\Deployment\security\trusted.certs For system-wide installations, Java’s Certificate Authorities are in JAVA_HOMEe.g. C:\Program Files\Java\jre8\lib\security\cacerts File paths for Mac and Linux are included in the link above. Follow the instructions to import the certificate into the keystore. keytool -importcert -keystore THEKEYSTOREFROMABOVE -alias erikcostlow -file erikcostlow.cer In this case, I am still using my name for the alias because it’s easy for me to remember. You may also use an alias of your company name. Scaling distribution of the import The easiest way to apply your certificate across many machines is to just push the .certs or cacerts file onto them. When doing this, watch out for any changes that people would have made to this file on their machines. Trusted.certs: When publishing into user directories, your file will overwrite any keys that the user has added since last update. CACerts: It is best to re-run the import command with each installation rather than just overwriting the file. If you just keep the same cacerts file between upgrades, you will overwrite any CAs that have been added or removed. By re-importing, you stay up to date with changes. Verify work on a different machine Verification is a way of checking on the client machine to ensure that it properly trusts signed artifacts after you have added your signing certificate. Many people have started using deployment rule sets. You can validate the deployment rule set by: Create and sign the deployment rule set on the computer that holds the private key. Copy the deployment rule set on to the different machine where you have imported the signing certificate. Verify that the Java Control Panel’s security tab shows your deployment rule set. Verifying an individual JAR file or multiple JAR files You can test a certificate chain by using the jarsigner command. jarsigner -verify filename.jar If the output does not say "jar verified" then run the following command to see why: jarsigner -verify -verbose -certs filename.jar Check the output for the term “CertPath not validated.”

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• SQL SERVER – Recover the Accidentally Renamed Table

  - by pinaldave

  I have no answer to following question. I saw a desperate email marked as urgent delivered in my mailbox. “I accidentally renamed table in my SSMS. I was scrolling very fast and I made mistakes. It was either because I double clicked or clicked on F2 (shortcut key for renaming). However, I have made the mistake and now I have no idea how to fix this. I am in big trouble. Help me get my original tablename.” I have seen many similar scenarios in my life and they give me a very good opportunity to preach wisdom but when the house is burning, we cannot talk about how we should have conserved the water earlier. The goal at that point is to put off the fire as fast as we can. I decided to answer this email with my best knowledge. If you have renamed the table, I think you pretty much is out of luck. Here are few things which you can do which can give you idea about what your tablename can be if you are lucky. Method 1: (Not Recommended but try your luck) Check your naming convention of your system. I have often seen that many organizations name their index as IX_TableName_Colms or name their keys as FK_TableName1_TableName2_Cols. If your organization is following the same you can get the name from your table, you may refer your keys. Again, note that this is quite possible that your tablename was already renamed and your keys were not updated. This can easily lead you to select incorrect name. I think follow this if you are confident or move to the next method. Method 2: (Not Recommended but try your luck) This method is also based on your orgs naming convention. If you use the name of the table in any columnname (some organizations use tablename in their incremental identity column name), you can get that name from there. Method 3: (Not Recommended but try your luck) If you know where your table was used in your stored procedures, you can script your stored procedure and find the name of the table back. Method 4: (Try your luck) All the best organizations first create a data model of the schema and there is good chance that this table is used there, you should take your chances and refer original document. If your organization is good at managing docs or source code, you will get the name of the table back for sure. Method 5: (It WORKS but try on a development server) There is no sure way to get you the name of the table which you accidentally renamed however, there is one way which will work for sure. You need to take your latest full backup and restore it on your development server (remember not on production or where you have renamed this column). Now restore latest differential file of the full backup. Now restore all the log files one by one making sure that you are restoring before the point of time of you renamed the tablename. Now go to explore and this will give you the name of the table which you have renamed. If you are confident that the same table existed with the same name when the last full backup was made, you do not have to go to all the steps. You can just get the name of the table directly from last backup’s restore. Read the article about Backup Timeline. Wisdom: How can I miss to preach wisdom when I get the opportunity to do so? Here are a few points to remember. Use a different account to explore production environment. Do not use the same account which have all the rights and permissions all the time. Use the account which has read only permissions if there are no modification required. Use policy based management to prevent changes which are accidental. If there was policy of valid names, the accidental change of the table was not possible unless it was intentional delibarate changes. Have a proper auditing of the system in place. You can use DDL triggers but be careful with its usage (get it reviewed properly first). (Add your suggestion here) I guess Method 5 will work all the time (using point in time restore). Everything else is chance of luck and if you are lucky are bad – you will get further incorrect name. Now go back and read the first line of this blog. Out of five method four methods are just lucky guesses. The method 5 will work but again it is a lengthy process if the size of the database is huge or if you do not have full backup. Did I miss anything obvious? Please leave a comment and I will publish your answer with due credit. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Puzzle, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Limiting Audit Exposure and Managing Risk – Q&A and Follow-Up Conversation

  - by Tanu Sood

  Thanks to all who attended the live ISACA webcast on Limiting Audit Exposure and Managing Risk with Metrics-Driven Identity Analytics. We were really fortunate to have Don Sparks from ISACA moderate the webcast featuring Stuart Lincoln, Vice President, IT P&L Client Services, BNP Paribas, North America and Neil Gandhi, Principal Product Manager, Oracle Identity Analytics. Stuart’s insights given the team’s role in providing IT for P&L Client Services and his tremendous experience in identity management and establishing sustainable compliance programs were true value-add at yesterday’s webcast. And if you are a healthcare organization looking to solve your compliance and security challenges, we recommend you join us for a live webcast on Tuesday, November 29 at 10 am PT. The webcast will feature experts from Kaiser Permanente, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Oracle and the focus of the discussion will be around the compliance challenges a healthcare organization faces and best practices for tackling those. Here are the details: Healthcare IT News Webcast: Managing Risk and Enforcing Compliance in Healthcare with Identity Analytics Tuesday, November 29, 201110:00 a.m. PT / 1:00 p.m. ET Register Today The ISACA webcast replay is now available on-demand and the slides are also available for download. Since we didn’t have time to address all the questions we received during the live Q&A portion of the webcast, we have captured responses to the remaining questions here. Please continue to provide us your feedback and insights from your experience in deploying identity compliance solutions. Q. Can you please clarify the mechanism utilized to populate the Identity Warehouse from each individual application's access management function / files? A. Oracle Identity Analytics (OIA) supports direct imports from applications. Data collection is based on Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) that eliminates the need to write connectors to different applications. Oracle Identity Analytics’ import engine supports complex entitlement feeds saved as either text files or XML. The imports can be scheduled on a periodic basis or triggered as needed. If the applications are synchronized with a user provisioning solution like Oracle Identity Manager, Oracle Identity Analytics has a seamless integration to pull in data from Oracle Identity Manager. Q.  Can you provide a short summary of the new features in your latest release of Oracle Identity Analytics? A. Oracle recently announced availability of enhanced Oracle Identity Analytics. This release focused on easing the certification process by offering risk analytics driven certification, advanced certification screens, business centric views and significant improvement in performance including 3X faster data imports, 3X faster certification campaign generation and advanced auto-certification features, that  will allow organizations to improve user productivity by up to 80%. Closed-loop risk feedback and IT policy monitoring with Oracle Identity Manager, a leading user provisioning solution, allows for more accurate certification reviews. And, OIA's improved performance enables customers to scale compliance initiatives supporting millions of user entitlements across thousands of applications, whether on premise or in the cloud, without compromising speed or integrity. Q. Will ISACA grant a CPE credit for attending this ISACA-sponsored webinar today? A. From ISACA: Hello and thank you for your interest in the 2011 ISACA Webinar Program!  Unfortunately, there are no CPEs offered for this program, archived or live.  We will be looking into the feasibility of offering them in the future.  Q. Would you be able to use this to help manage licenses for software? That is to say - could it track software that is not used by a user, thus eliminating the software license? A. OIA’s integration with Oracle Identity Manager, a leading user provisioning solution, allows organizations to detect ghost accounts or unused accounts via account reconciliation. Based on company’s policies, this could trigger an automated workflow for account deletion or asking for further investigation. Closed-loop feedback between the two solutions would then allow visibility into the complete audit trail of when the account was detected, the action taken, by whom, when and the current status. Q. We have quarterly attestations and .xls mechanisms are not working. Once the identity data is correlated in Identity Analytics, do you then automate access certification? A. OIA’s identity warehouse analyzes and correlates identity data across various resources that allows OIA to determine a user’s risk profile, who the access review request should go to, along with all the relevant access details of the user. The access certification manager gets notification on what to review, when and the relevant data is presented in a business friendly screen. Based on the result of the access certification process, actions are triggered and results recorded and archived. Access review managers have visual risk indicators that also allow them to prioritize access certification tasks and efforts. Q. How does Oracle Identity Analytics work with Cloud Security? A. For enterprises looking to build their own cloud(s), Oracle offers a set of security services that cloud developers can leverage including Oracle Identity Analytics.  For enterprises looking to manage their compliance requirements but without hosting those in-house and instead having a hosting provider offer managed Identity Management services to the organizations, Oracle Identity Analytics can be leveraged much the same way as you’d in an on-premise (within the enterprise) environment. In fact, organizations today are leveraging Oracle Identity Analytics to manage identity compliance in both these ways. Q. Would you recommend this as a cost effective solution for a smaller organization with @ 2,500 users? A. The key return-on-investment (ROI) on Oracle Identity Analytics is derived from automating compliance processes thereby eliminating administrative overhead, minimizing errors, maintaining cost- and time-effective sustainable compliance processes and minimizing audit exposures and penalties.  Of course, there are other tangible benefits that are derived from an Oracle Identity Analytics implementation as outlined in the webcast. For a quantitative analysis of your requirements and potential ROI calculation, we recommend you refer to the Forrester Study on Total Economic Impact of Oracle Identity Analytics. For an in-person discussion, please email Richard Caldwell.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, July 02, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, July 02, 2013Popular ReleasesMastersign.Expressions: Mastersign.Expressions v0.4.2: added support for if(<cond>, <true-part>, <false-part>) fixed multithreading issue with rand() improved demo applicationNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog Module: NB_Store v2.3.6 Rel0: v2.3.6 Is now DNN6 and DNN7 compatible Important : During update this install with overwrite the menu.xml setting, if you have changed this then make a backup before you upgrade and reapply your changes after the upgrade. Please view the following documentation if you are installing and configuring this module for the first time System Requirements Skill requirements Downloads and documents Step by step guide to a working store Please ask all questions in the Discussions tab. Document.Editor: 2013.26: What's new for Document.Editor 2013.26: New Insert Chart Improved User Interface Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsWsus Package Publisher: Release V1.2.1307.01: Fix an issue in the UI, approvals are not shown correctly in the 'Report' tabDirectX Tool Kit: July 2013: July 1, 2013 VS 2013 Preview projects added and updates for DirectXMath 3.05 vectorcall Added use of sRGB WIC metadata for JPEG, PNG, and TIFF SaveToWIC functions updated with new optional setCustomProps parameter and error check with optional targetFormatCore Server 2012 Powershell Script Hyper-v Manager: new_root.zip: Verison 1.0JSON Toolkit: JSON Toolkit 4.1.736: Improved strinfigy performance New serializing feature New anonymous type support in constructorsDotNetNuke® IFrame: IFrame 04.05.00: New DNN6/7 Manifest file and Azure Compatibility.VidCoder: 1.5.2 Beta: Fixed crash on presets with an invalid bitrate.Gardens Point LEX: Gardens Point LEX version 1.2.1: The main distribution is a zip file. This contains the binary executable, documentation, source code and the examples. ChangesVersion 1.2.1 has new facilities for defining and manipulating character classes. These changes make the construction of large Unicode character classes more convenient. The runtime code for performing automaton backup has been re-implemented, and is now faster for scanners that need backup. Source CodeThe distribution contains a complete VS2010 project for the appli...ZXMAK2: Version 2.7.5.7: - fix TZX emulation (Bruce Lee, Zynaps) - fix ATM 16 colors for border - add memory module PROFI 512K; add PROFI V03 rom image; fix PROFI 3.XX configTwitter image Downloader: Twitter Image Downloader 2 with Installer: Application file with Install shield and Dot Net 4.0 redistributableUltimate Music Tagger: Ultimate Music Tagger 1.0.0.0: First release of Ultimate Music TaggerBlackJumboDog: Ver5.9.2: 2013.06.28 Ver5.9.2 (1) ??????????(????SMTP?????)?????????? (2) HTTPS???????????Outlook 2013 Add-In: Configuration Form: This new version includes the following changes: - Refactored code a bit. - Removing configuration from main form to gain more space to display items. - Moved configuration to separate form. You can click the little "gear" icon to access the configuration form (still very simple). - Added option to show past day appointments from the selected day (previous in time, that is). - Added some tooltips. You will have to uninstall the previous version (add/remove programs) if you had installed it ...Terminals: Version 3.0 - Release: Changes since version 2.0:Choose 100% portable or installed version Removed connection warning when running RDP 8 (Windows 8) client Fixed Active directory search Extended Active directory search by LDAP filters Fixed single instance mode when running on Windows Terminal server Merged usage of Tags and Groups Added columns sorting option in tables No UAC prompts on Windows 7 Completely new file persistence data layer New MS SQL persistence layer (Store data in SQL database)...NuGet: NuGet 2.6: Released June 26, 2013. Release notes: http://docs.nuget.org/docs/release-notes/nuget-2.6Python Tools for Visual Studio: 2.0 Beta: We’re pleased to announce the release of Python Tools for Visual Studio 2.0 Beta. Python Tools for Visual Studio (PTVS) is an open-source plug-in for Visual Studio which supports programming with the Python language. PTVS supports a broad range of features including CPython/IronPython, Edit/Intellisense/Debug/Profile, Cloud, HPC, IPython, and cross platform debugging support. For a quick overview of the general IDE experience, please watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuewiStN...Player Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows 8 and WP8 (v1.3 beta): Preview: New MPEG DASH adaptive streaming plugin for Windows Azure Media Services Preview: New Ultraviolet CFF plugin. Preview: New WP7 version with WP8 compatibility. (source code only) Source code is now available via CodePlex Git Misc bug fixes and improvements: WP8 only: Added optional fullscreen and mute buttons to default xaml JS only: protecting currentTime from returning infinity. Some videos would cause currentTime to be infinity which could cause errors in plugins expectin...AssaultCube Reloaded: 2.5.8: SERVER OWNERS: note that the default maprot has changed once again. Linux has Ubuntu 11.10 32-bit precompiled binaries and Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit precompiled binaries, but you can compile your own as it also contains the source. If you are using Mac or other operating systems, please wait while we continue to try to package for those OSes. Or better yet, try to compile it. If it fails, download a virtual machine. The server pack is ready for both Windows and Linux, but you might need to compi...New ProjectsALM Rangers DevOps Tooling and Guidance: Practical tooling and guidance that will enable teams to realize a faster deployment based on continuous feedback.Core Server 2012 Powershell Script Hyper-v Manager: Free core Server 2012 powershell scripts and batch files that replace the non-existent hyper-v manager, vmconnect and mstsc.Enhanced Deployment Service (EDS): EDS is a web service based utility designed to extend the deployment capabilities of administrators with the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit.ExtendedDialogBox: Libreria DialogBoxJazdy: This project is here only because we wanted to take advantage of a public git server.Mon Examen: This web interface is meant to make examinationsneet: summaryOrchard Multi-Choice Voting: A multiple choice voting Orchard module.Particle Swarm Optimization Solving Quadratic Assignment Problem: This project is submitted for the solving of QAP using PSO algorithms with addition of some modification Porjects: 23123123PPL Power Pack: PPL Power PackProperty Builder: Visual Studio tool for speeding up process of coding class properties getters and setters.RedRuler for Redline: I tried some on-screen rulers, none of them help me measure the UI element quickly based on the Redline. So I decided to created this handy RedRuler tool. Royale Living: Mahindra Royale Community PortalSearch and booking Hotel or Tours: Ð? án nghiên c?u c?a sinh viên tdt theo mô hình mvc 4SystemBuilder.Show: This tool is a helper after you create your project in visual studio to create the respective objects and interface. TalentDesk: new ptojectTcmplex: The Training Center teaches many different kind of course such as English, French, Computer hardware and computer softwareTFS Reporting Guide: Provides guidance and samples to enable TFS users to generate reports based on WIT data.Umbraco AdaptiveImages: Adaptive Images Package for UmbracoVirtualNet - A ILcode interpreter/emulator written in C++/Assembly: VirtualNet is a interpreter/emulator for running .net code in native without having to install the .Net FrameWorkVisual Blocks: Visual Blocks ????IDE ????? ??????? ????? ????/?? Visual Studio and Cloud Based Mobile Device Testing: Practical guidance enabling field to remove blockers to adoption and to use and extend the Perfecto Mobile Cloud Device testing within the context of VS.Windows 8 Time Picker for Windows Phone: A Windows Phone implementation of the Time Picker control found in the Windows 8.1 Alarms app.???? - SmallBasic?: ?????????

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• Introducing sp_ssiscatalog (v1.0.0.0)

  - by jamiet

  Regular readers of my blog may know that over the last year I have made available a suite of SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) reports that provide visualisations of the data in the SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) 2012 Catalog. Those reports are available at http://ssisreportingpack.codeplex.com. As I have built these reports and used them myself on a real life project a couple of things have dawned on me: As soon as your SSIS Catalog gets a significant amount of data in it the performance of the reports degrades rapidly. This is hampered by the fact that there are limitations as to the SQL statements that I can embed within a SSRS report. SSIS professionals are data guys at heart and those types of people feel more comfortable in a query environment rather than having to go through the rigmarole of standing up a reporting server (well, I know I do anyway) Hence I have decided to take a different tack with the reporting pack. Taking my lead from Adam Machanic’s sp_whoisactive and Brent Ozar’s sp_blitz I have produced sp_ssiscatalog, a stored procedure that makes it easy to get at the crucial data in the SSIS Catalog. I will spend the rest of this blog explaining exactly what sp_ssiscatalog does and how to use it but if you would rather just download the bits yourself and start to play you can download v1.0.0.0 from DB v1.0.0.0. Usage Scenarios Most Recent Execution I find that the most frequent information that one needs to get from the SSIS Catalog is information pertaining to the most recent execution. Hence if you execute sp_ssiscatalog with no parameters, that is exactly what you will get. EXEC [dbo].[sp_ssiscatalog] This will return up to 5 resultsets: EXECUTION - Summary information about the execution including status, start time & end time EVENTS - All events that occurred during the execution OnError,OnTaskFailed - All events where event_name is either OnError or OnTaskFailed OnWarning - All events where event_name is OnWarning EXECUTABLE_STATS - Duration and execution result of every executable in the execution All 5 resultsets will be displayed if there is any data satisfying that resultset. In other words, if there are no (for example) OnWarning events then the OnWarning resultset will not be displayed. The display of these 5 resultsets can be toggled respectively by these 5 optional parameters (all of which are of type BIT): @exec_execution @exec_events @exec_errors @exec_warnings @exec_executable_stats Any Execution As just explained the default behaviour is to supply data for the most recent execution. If you wish to specify which execution the data should return data for simply supply the execution_id as a parameter: EXEC [dbo].[sp_ssiscatalog] 6 All Executions sp_ssiscatalog can also return information about all executions: EXEC [dbo].[sp_ssiscatalog] @operation_type='execs' The most recent execution will appear at the top. sp_ssiscatalog provides a number of parameters that enable you to filter the resultset: @execs_folder_name @execs_project_name @execs_package_name @execs_executed_as_name @execs_status_desc Some typical usages might be: //Return all failed executions EXEC [dbo].[sp_ssiscatalog] @operation_type='execs',@execs_status_desc='failed' //Return all executions for a specified folder EXEC [dbo].[sp_ssiscatalog] @operation_type='execs',@execs_folder_name='My folder' //Return all executions of a specified package in a specified project EXEC [dbo].[sp_ssiscatalog] @operation_type='execs',@execs_project_name='My project', @execs_package_name='Pkg.dtsx' Installing sp_ssicatalog Under the covers sp_ssiscatalog actually calls many other stored procedures and functions hence creating it on your server is not simply a case of running a CREATE PROCEDURE script. I maintain the code in an SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) database project which means that you have two ways of obtaining it. Download the source code You can download the latest (at the time of writing) source code from http://ssisreportingpack.codeplex.com/SourceControl/changeset/view/70192. Hit the download button to download all the source code in a zip file. The contents of that zip file will include an SSDT database project which you can open up in SSDT and publish just like any other SSDT database project. You can publish to a new database or any existing database, even [SSISDB] if you prefer. Download a dacpac Maintaining the code in an SSDT database project means that it can all get packaged up into a dacpac that you can then publish to your SQL Server. That dacpac is available from DB v1.0.0.0: Ordinarily a dacpac can be deployed to a SQL Server from SSMS using the Deploy Dacpac wizard however in this case there is a limitation. Due to sp_ssiscatalog referring to objects in the SSIS Catalog (which it has to do of course) the dacpac contains a SqlCmd variable to store the name of the database that underpins the SSIS Catalog; unfortunately the Deploy Dacpac wizard in SSMS has a rather gaping limitation in that it cannot deploy dacpacs containing SqlCmd variables. Hence, we can use the command-line tool, sqlpackage.exe, instead. Don’t worry if reverting to the command-line sounds a little daunting, I assure you it is not. Simply open a Visual Studio command-prompt and cd to the folder containing the downloaded dacpac: Type: "%PROGRAMFILES(x86)%\Microsoft SQL Server\110\DAC\bin\sqlpackage.exe" /action:Publish /TargetDatabaseName:SsisReportingPack /SourceFile:SSISReportingPack.dacpac /Variables:SSISDB=SSISDB /TargetServerName:(local) or the shortened form: "%PROGRAMFILES(x86)%\Microsoft SQL Server\110\DAC\bin\sqlpackage.exe" /a:Publish /tdn:SsisReportingPack /sf:SSISReportingPack.dacpac /v:SSISDB=SSISDB /tsn:(local) remembering to set your server name appropriately (here mine is set to “(local)” ). If everything works successfully you will see this: And you’re done! You’ll have a new database called [SsisReportingPack] which contains sp_ssiscatalog:   Good luck with sp_ssiscatalog. I have been using it extensively on my own projects recently and it has proved to be very useful indeed. Rest-assured however, I will be adding many new capabilities in the future. Feedback is welcome. @Jamiet

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• Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g next launch phase - what a week of product releases! Feedback from our

  - by Jürgen Kress

    Product releases: SOA Suite 11gR1 Patch Set 2 (PS2) BPM Suite 11gR1 Released Oracle JDeveloper 11g (11.1.1.3.0) (Build 5660) Oracle WebLogic Server 11gR1 (10.3.3) Oracle JRockit (4.0) Oracle Tuxedo 11gR1 (11.1.1.1.0) Enterprise Manager 11g Grid Control Release 1 (11.1.0.1.0) for Linux x86/x86-64 All Oracle Fusion Middleware 11gR1 Software Download   BPM Suite 11gR1 Released by Manoj Das Oracle BPM Suite 11gR1 became available for download from OTN and eDelivery. If you have been following our plans in this area, you know that this is the release unifying BEA ALBPM product, which became Oracle BPM10gR3, with the Oracle stack. Some of the highlights of this release are: BPMN 2.0 modeling and simulation Web based Process Composer for BPMN and Rules authoring Zero-code environment with full access to Oracle SOA Suite’s rich set of application and other adapters Process Spaces – Out-of-box integration with Web Center Suite Process Analytics – Native process cubes as well as integration with Oracle BAM You can learn more about this release from the documentation. Notes about downloading and installing Please note that Oracle BPM Suite 11gR1 is delivered and installed as part of SOA 11.1.1.3.0, which is a sparse release (only incremental patch). To install: Download and install SOA 11.1.1.2.0, which is a full release (you can find the bits at the above location) Download and install SOA 11.1.1.3.0 During configure step (using the Fusion Middleware configuration wizard), use the Oracle Business Process Management template supplied with the SOA Suite11g (11.1.1.3.0) If you plan to use Process Spaces, also install Web Center 11.1.1.3.0, which also is delivered as a sparse release and needs to be installed on top of Web Center 11.1.1.2.0   SOA Suite 11gR1 Patch Set 2 (PS2) released by Demed L'Her We just released SOA Suite 11gR1 Patch Set 2 (PS2)! You can download it as usual from: OTN (main platforms only) eDelivery (all platforms) 11gR1 PS2 is delivered as a sparse installer, that is to say that it is meant to be applied on the latest full install (11gR1 PS1). That’s great for existing PS1 users who simply need to apply the patch and run the patch assistant – but an extra step for new users who will first need to download SOA Suite 11gR1 PS1 (in addition to the PS2 patch). What’s in that release? Bug fixes of course but also several significant new features. Here is a short selection of the most significant ones: Spring component (for native Java extensibility and integration) SOA Partitions (to organize and manage your composites) Direct Binding (for transactional invocations to and from Oracle Service Bus) HTTP binding (for those of you trying to do away with SOAP and looking for simple GET and POST) Resequencer (for ordering out-of-order messages) WS Atomic Transactions (WS-AT) support (for propagation of transactions across heterogeneous environments) Check out the complete list of new features in PS2 for more (including links to the documentation for the above)! But maybe even more importantly we are also releasing Oracle Service Bus 11gR1 and BPM Suite 11gR1 at the same time – all on the same base platform (WebLogic Server 10.3.3)! (NB: it might take a while for all pages and caches to be updated with the new content so if you don’t find what you need today, try again soon!)   Are you Systems Integrations and Independent Software Vendors ready to adopt and to deliver? Make sure that you become trained: Local training calendars Register for the SOA Partner Community & Webcast www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa What is your feedback?  Who installed the software? please feel free to share your experience at http://twitter.com/soacommunity #soacommunity Technorati Tags: SOA partner community ACE Directoris SOA Suite PS2 BPM11g First feedback from our ACE Directors and key Partners:   Now, these are great times to start the journey into BPM! Hajo Normann Reuse of components across the Oracle 11G Fusion Middleware stack, BPM just is one of the components plugging into the stack and reuses all other components. Mr. Leon Smiers With BPM11g, Oracle offers a very competitive product which will have a big effect on the IT market. Guido Schmutz We have real BPMN 2.0, which get's executed. No more transformation from business models to executable models - just press the run button... Torsten Winterberg Oracle BPM Suite 11g brings Out-of-box integration with WebCenter Suite and Oracle ADF development framework. Andrejus Baranovskis With the release of BPM Suite 11g, Oracle has defined new standards for Business Process platforms. Geoffroy de Lamalle With User Messaging Service you can let Soa Suite 11g do all your Messaging Edwin Biemond

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• Interview with Geoff Bones, developer on SQL Storage Compress

  - by red(at)work

  How did you come to be working at Red Gate? I've been working at Red Gate for nine months; before that I had been at a multinational engineering company. A number of my colleagues had left to work at Red Gate and spoke very highly of it, but I was happy in my role and thought, 'It can't be that great there, surely? They'll be back!' Then one day I visited to catch up them over lunch in the Red Gate canteen. I was so impressed with what I found there, that, three days later, I'd applied for a role as a developer. And how did you get into software development? My first job out of university was working as a systems programmer on IBM mainframes. This was quite a while ago: there was a lot of assembler and loading programs from tape drives and that kind of stuff. I learned a lot about how computers work, and this stood me in good stead when I moved over the development in the 90s. What's the best thing about working as a developer at Red Gate? Where should I start? One of the great things as a developer at Red Gate is the useful feedback and close contact we have with the people who use our products, either directly at trade shows and other events or through information coming through the product managers. The company's whole ethos is built around assisting the user, and this is in big contrast to my previous development roles. We aim to produce tools that people really want to use, that they enjoy using, and, as a developer, this is a great thing to aim for and a great feeling when we get it right. At Red Gate we also try to cut out the things that distract and stop us doing our jobs. As a developer, this means that I can focus on the code and the product I'm working on, knowing that others are doing a first-class job of making sure that the builds are running smoothly and that I'm getting great feedback from the testers. We keep our process light and effective, as we want to produce great software more than we want to produce great audit trails. Tell us a bit about the products you are currently working on. You mean HyperBac? First let me explain a bit about what HyperBac is. At heart it's a compression and encryption technology, but with a few added features that open up a wealth of really exciting possibilities. Right now we have the HyperBac technology in just three products: SQL HyperBac, SQL Virtual Restore and SQL Storage Compress, but we're only starting to develop what it can do. My personal favourite is SQL Virtual Restore; for example, I love the way you can use it to run independent test databases that are all backed by a single compressed backup. I don't think the market yet realises the kind of things you do once you are using these products. On the other hand, the benefits of SQL Storage Compress are straightforward: run your databases but use only 20% of the disk space. Databases are getting larger and larger, and, as they do, so does your ROI. What's a typical day for you? My days are pretty varied. We have our daily team stand-up meeting and then sometimes I will work alone on a current issue, or I'll be pair programming with one of my colleagues. From time to time we give half a day up to future planning with the team, when we look at the long and short term aims for the product and working out the development priorities. I also get to go to conferences and events, which is unusual for a development role and gives me the chance to meet and talk to our customers directly. Have you noticed anything different about developing tools for DBAs rather than other IT kinds of user? It seems to me that DBAs are quite independent minded; they know exactly what the problem they are facing is, and often have a solution in mind before they begin to look for what's on the market. This means that they're likely to cherry-pick tools from a range of vendors, picking the ones that are the best fit for them and that disrupt their environments the least. When I've met with DBAs, I've often been very impressed at their ability to summarise their set up, the issues, the obstacles they face when implementing a tool and their plans for their environment. It's easier to develop products for this audience as they give such a detailed overview of their needs, and I feel I understand their problems.

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• Network communications mechanisms for SQL Server

  - by Akshay Deep Lamba

  Problem I am trying to understand how SQL Server communicates on the network, because I'm having to tell my networking team what ports to open up on the firewall for an edge web server to communicate back to the SQL Server on the inside. What do I need to know? Solution In order to understand what needs to be opened where, let's first talk briefly about the two main protocols that are in common use today: TCP - Transmission Control Protocol UDP - User Datagram Protocol Both are part of the TCP/IP suite of protocols. We'll start with TCP. TCP TCP is the main protocol by which clients communicate with SQL Server. Actually, it is more correct to say that clients and SQL Server use Tabular Data Stream (TDS), but TDS actually sits on top of TCP and when we're talking about Windows and firewalls and other networking devices, that's the protocol that rules and controls are built around. So we'll just speak in terms of TCP. TCP is a connection-oriented protocol. What that means is that the two systems negotiate the connection and both agree to it. Think of it like a phone call. While one person initiates the phone call, the other person has to agree to take it and both people can end the phone call at any time. TCP is the same way. Both systems have to agree to the communications, but either side can end it at any time. In addition, there is functionality built into TCP to ensure that all communications can be disassembled and reassembled as necessary so it can pass over various network devices and be put together again properly in the right order. It also has mechanisms to handle and retransmit lost communications. Because of this functionality, TCP is the protocol used by many different network applications. The way the applications all can share is through the use of ports. When a service, like SQL Server, comes up on a system, it must listen on a port. For a default SQL Server instance, the default port is 1433. Clients connect to the port via the TCP protocol, the connection is negotiated and agreed to, and then the two sides can transfer information as needed until either side decides to end the communication. In actuality, both sides will have a port to use for the communications, but since the client's port is typically determined semi-randomly, when we're talking about firewalls and the like, typically we're interested in the port the server or service is using. UDP UDP, unlike TCP, is not connection oriented. A "client" can send a UDP communications to anyone it wants. There's nothing in place to negotiate a communications connection, there's nothing in the protocol itself to coordinate order of communications or anything like that. If that's needed, it's got to be handled by the application or by a protocol built on top of UDP being used by the application. If you think of TCP as a phone call, think of UDP as a postcard. I can put a postcard in the mail to anyone I want, and so long as it is addressed properly and has a stamp on it, the postal service will pick it up. Now, what happens it afterwards is not guaranteed. There's no mechanism for retransmission of lost communications. It's great for short communications that doesn't necessarily need an acknowledgement. Because multiple network applications could be communicating via UDP, it uses ports, just like TCP. The SQL Browser or the SQL Server Listener Service uses UDP. Network Communications - Talking to SQL Server When an instance of SQL Server is set up, what TCP port it listens on depends. A default instance will be set up to listen on port 1433. A named instance will be set to a random port chosen during installation. In addition, a named instance will be configured to allow it to change that port dynamically. What this means is that when a named instance starts up, if it finds something already using the port it normally uses, it'll pick a new port. If you have a named instance, and you have connections coming across a firewall, you're going to want to use SQL Server Configuration Manager to set a static port. This will allow the networking and security folks to configure their devices for maximum protection. While you can change the network port for a default instance of SQL Server, most people don't. Network Communications - Finding a SQL Server When just the name is specified for a client to connect to SQL Server, for instance, MySQLServer, this is an attempt to connect to the default instance. In this case the client will automatically attempt to communicate to port 1433 on MySQLServer. If you've switched the port for the default instance, you'll need to tell the client the proper port, usually by specifying the following syntax in the connection string: <server>,<port>. For instance, if you moved SQL Server to listen on 14330, you'd use MySQLServer,14330 instead of just MySQLServer. However, because a named instance sets up its port dynamically by default, the client never knows at the outset what the port is it should talk to. That's what the SQL Browser or the SQL Server Listener Service (SQL Server 2000) is for. In this case, the client sends a communication via the UDP protocol to port 1434. It asks, "Where is the named instance?" So if I was running a named instance called SQL2008R2, it would be asking the SQL Browser, "Hey, how do I talk to MySQLServer\SQL2008R2?" The SQL Browser would then send back a communications from UDP port 1434 back to the client telling the client how to talk to the named instance. Of course, you can skip all of this of you set that named instance's port statically. Then you can use the <server>,<port> mechanism to connect and the client won't try to talk to the SQL Browser service. It'll simply try to make the connection. So, for instance, is the SQL2008R2 instance was listening on port 20080, specifying MySQLServer,20080 would attempt a connection to the named instance. Network Communications - Named Pipes Named pipes is an older network library communications mechanism and it's generally not used any longer. It shouldn't be used across a firewall. However, if for some reason you need to connect to SQL Server with it, this protocol also sits on top of TCP. Named Pipes is actually used by the operating system and it has its own mechanism within the protocol to determine where to route communications. As far as network communications is concerned, it listens on TCP port 445. This is true whether we're talking about a default or named instance of SQL Server. The Summary Table To put all this together, here is what you need to know: Type of Communication Protocol Used Default Port Finding a SQL Server or SQL Server Named Instance UDP 1434 Communicating with a default instance of SQL Server TCP 1433 Communicating with a named instance of SQL Server TCP * Determined dynamically at start up Communicating with SQL Server via Named Pipes TCP 445

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• The Great Divorce

  - by BlackRabbitCoder

  I have a confession to make: I've been in an abusive relationship for more than 17 years now.  Yes, I am not ashamed to admit it, but I'm finally doing something about it. I met her in college, she was new and sexy and amazingly fast -- and I'd never met anything like her before.  Her style and her power captivated me and I couldn't wait to learn more about her.  I took a chance on her, and though I learned a lot from her -- and will always be grateful for my time with her -- I think it's time to move on. Her name was C++, and she so outshone my previous love, C, that any thoughts of going back evaporated in the heat of this new romance.  She promised me she'd be gentle and not hurt me the way C did.  She promised me she'd clean-up after herself better than C did.  She promised me she'd be less enigmatic and easier to keep happy than C was.  But I was deceived.  Oh sure, as far as truth goes, it wasn't a complete lie.  To some extent she was more fun, more powerful, safer, and easier to maintain.  But it just wasn't good enough -- or at least it's not good enough now. I loved C++, some part of me still does, it's my first-love of programming languages and I recognize its raw power, its blazing speed, and its improvements over its predecessor.  But with today's hardware, at speeds we could only dream to conceive of twenty years ago, that need for speed -- at the cost of all else -- has died, and that has left my feelings for C++ moribund. If I ever need to write an operating system or a device driver, then I might need that speed.  But 99% of the time I don't.  I'm a business-type programmer and chances are 90% of you are too, and even the ones who need speed at all costs may be surprised by how much you sacrifice for that.   That's not to say that I don't want my software to perform, and it's not to say that in the business world we don't care about speed or that our job is somehow less difficult or technical.  There's many times we write programs to handle millions of real-time updates or handle thousands of financial transactions or tracking trading algorithms where every second counts.  But if I choose to write my code in C++ purely for speed chances are I'll never notice the speed increase -- and equally true chances are it will be far more prone to crash and far less easy to maintain.  Nearly without fail, it's the macro-optimizations you need, not the micro-optimizations.  If I choose to write a O(n2) algorithm when I could have used a O(n) algorithm -- that can kill me.  If I choose to go to the database to load a piece of unchanging data every time instead of caching it on first load -- that too can kill me.  And if I cross the network multiple times for pieces of data instead of getting it all at once -- yes that can also kill me.  But choosing an overly powerful and dangerous mid-level language to squeeze out every last drop of performance will realistically not make stock orders process any faster, and more likely than not open up the system to more risk of crashes and resource leaks. And that's when my love for C++ began to die.  When I noticed that I didn't need that speed anymore.  That that speed was really kind of a lie.  Sure, I can be super efficient and pack bits in a byte instead of using separate boolean values.  Sure, I can use an unsigned char instead of an int.  But in the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter as much as you think it does.  The key is maintainability, and that's where C++ failed me.  I like to tell the other developers I work with that there's two levels of correctness in coding: Is it immediately correct? Will it stay correct? That is, you can hack together any piece of code and make it correct to satisfy a task at hand, but if a new developer can't come in tomorrow and make a fairly significant change to it without jeopardizing that correctness, it won't stay correct. Some people laugh at me when I say I now prefer maintainability over speed.  But that is exactly the point.  If you focus solely on speed you tend to produce code that is much harder to maintain over the long hall, and that's a load of technical debt most shops can't afford to carry and end up completely scrapping code before it's time.  When good code is written well for maintainability, though, it can be correct both now and in the future. And you know the best part is?  My new love is nearly as fast as C++, and in some cases even faster -- and better than that, I know C# will treat me right.  Her creators have poured hundreds of thousands of hours of time into making her the sexy beast she is today.  They made her easy to understand and not an enigmatic mess.  They made her consistent and not moody and amorphous.  And they made her perform as fast as I care to go by optimizing her both at compile time and a run-time. Her code is so elegant and easy on the eyes that I'm not worried where she will run to or what she'll pull behind my back.  She is powerful enough to handle all my tasks, fast enough to execute them with blazing speed, maintainable enough so that I can rely on even fairly new peers to modify my work, and rich enough to allow me to satisfy any need.  C# doesn't ask me to clean up her messes!  She cleans up after herself and she tries to make my life easier for me by taking on most of those optimization tasks C++ asked me to take upon myself.  Now, there are many of you who would say that I am the cause of my own grief, that it was my fault C++ didn't behave because I didn't pay enough attention to her.  That I alone caused the pain she inflicted on me.  And to some extent, you have a point.  But she was so high maintenance, requiring me to know every twist and turn of her vast and unrestrained power that any wrong term or bout of forgetfulness was met with painful reminders that she wasn't going to watch my back when I made a mistake.  But C#, she loves me when I'm good, and she loves me when I'm bad, and together we make beautiful code that is both fast and safe. So that's why I'm leaving C++ behind.  She says she's changing for me, but I have no interest in what C++0x may bring.  Oh, I'll still keep in touch, and maybe I'll see her now and again when she brings her problems to my door and asks for some attention -- for I always have a soft spot for her, you see.  But she's out of my house now.  I have three kids and a dog and a cat, and all require me to clean up after them, why should I have to clean up after my programming language as well?

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• RDA Health Checks for SOA

  - by ShawnBailey

  What is a health check in RDA? A health check evaluates something in your environment to determine whether a change needs to be considered in order to avoid a problem or optimize fuctionality. Examples of what this 'something' might be are: Configuration Parameters JVM Options Runtime Statistics What have we done for SOA? In the latest release of RDA, 4.30, we have added a Rule Set for SOA called 'Oracle SOA 11g (11.1.1) Post Installation (Generic)'. This Rule Set contains 14 SOA related health checks. These checks were all derived from common issues / solutions we see in support of the SOA product. Many of the recommendations come from the product documentation while others are covered in the SOA Knowledge Base. Our goal is that you will be able to easily identify the areas of concern and understand the guidance available from the output of the Rule Set. Running the health checks for SOA The rules that the checks use are installed with RDA and bundled by product or functional area into what are called 'Rule Sets'. To view the available Rule Sets simply run the command from the RDA home location: rda.cmd (or .sh) -dT hcve This will bring up a list of the available HCVE (Health Check / Verification Engine) Rule Sets. Each Rule Set contains a group of related rules that are used for evalutation and display of results. A rule can be considered synonymous with a single health check and they are assigned an ID, Name and Description that can be seen when they are executed. The Rule Set for SOA is option number 11 and you just enter this selection at the prompt. The Rule Set will then execute to completion. After running an HCVE Rule Set the tool will write the output to the RDA_HOME/output folder. The simplest way to view the output is to drag the .htm file to a browser but of course it can also be uploaded to a Service Request for evaluation by Oracle Support. Many of the Rule Sets will prompt you for information before they can execute their rules but the SOA Rule Set will identify the SOA domains configured in your RDA setup.cfg file. This means that you don't need to answer all of the questions again about where stuff is but it also means that you must have configured RDA for SOA. To run the Rule Set: Download the latest version of RDA from MOS Doc ID 314422.1 Configure RDA for your SOA domains. Detailed steps can be found here In it's simplest form the command is 'rda.cmd (.sh) -S SOA' Go to the RDA home location and enter the command 'rda.cmd (or .sh) -dT hcve' Select option '11' It should be noted that this our first release of a SOA Rule Set so there will probably be some things we need to clean up or fix. None of these rules will actually modify anything on your system as they are read only and do the evaluations internally. Please let us know if you have any issues with the rules or ideas for new ones so we can make them as useful as possible. The Checks Here is a list of the SOA health checks by ID, Name and Description. ID Name Description A00100 SOA Domain Homes Lists the SOA domains that were indentified from the RDA setup.cfg file A00200 Coherence Protocol Conflict Checks to see if you have both Unicast and Multicast configured in the same domain. Checks both the setDomainEnv and config.xml entries (if it exists). We recommend Unicast with fully qualified host names or IP addresses. A00210 Coherence Fully Qualified Host Checks that the host names are fully qualified or that IP addresses are used. Will fail if unqualified host names are detected. A00220 Unicast Local Host Checks that the Coherence localhost is specified for use with Unicast A00300 JTA Timeout Checks that the JTA timeout is configured for the domain and lists the value. The bundled rule will only list the current values of the JTA timeout for each SOA Domain. In the future the rule with fail with a warning if the value is 300 seconds or lower. It is recommended that timeouts follow the pattern 'syncMaxWaitTime' < EJB Timeouts < JTA Timeout. The 300 second value is important because the EJB Timeouts default to 300 seconds. Additional information can be found in MOS Doc ID 880313.1. A00310 XA Max Time Checks that the JTA Maximum XA call time is set for the domain. Fails if it is not explicitly set or if the value is less than or equal to the default of 12000 ms. A00320 XA Timeout Checks that the XA timeout is enabled and that the value is '0' for the SOA Data Source (SOADataSource-jdbc.xml) A00330 JDBC Statement Timeout Checks that the Statement Timeout is set for all SOA Data Sources. Fails if the value is not set or if it is set to the default of -1. A00400 XA Driver Checks that the SOA Data Source is configured to use an XA driver. Fails if it is not. A00410 JDBC Capacity Settings Checks that the minimum and maximum capacity are equal for all SOA Data Sources. Fails if they are not and lists specifically which data sources failed. A00500 SOA Roles Checks that the default SOA roles 'SOAAdmin' and 'SOAOperator' are configured for the soa-infra application in the file sytem-jazn-data.xml. Fails if they are not. A00700 SOA-INFRA Deployment Checks that the soa-infra application is deployed to either a cluster, all members of a cluster or a stand alone server. A00710 SOA Deployments Checks that the SOA related applications are deployed to the same domain members as soa-infra. A00720 SOA Library Deployments Checks that the SOA related libraries are deployed to the same domain members as soa-infra. A00730 Data Source Deployments Checks that the SOA Data Sources are all targeted to the same domain members as soa-infra

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• The Oracle Graduate Experience...A Graduates Perspective by Angelie Tierney

  - by david.talamelli

  [Note: Angelie has just recently joined Oracle in Australia in our 2011 Graduate Program. Last week I shared my thoughts on our 2011 Graduate Program, this week Angelie took some time to share her thoughts of our Graduate Program. The notes below are Angelie's overview from her experience with us starting with our first contact last year - David Talamelli] How does the 1 year program work? It consists of 3 weeks of training, followed by 2 rotations in 2 different Lines of Business (LoB's). The first rotation goes for 4 months, while your 2nd rotation goes for 7, when you are placed into your final LoB for the program. The interview process: After sorting through the many advertised graduate jobs, submitting so many resumes and studying at the same time, it can all be pretty stressful. Then there is the interview process. David called me on a Sunday afternoon and I spoke to him for about 30 minutes in a mini sort of phone interview. I was worried that working at Oracle would require extensive technical experience, but David stressed that even the less technical, and more business-minded person could, and did, work at Oracle. I was then asked if I would like to attend a group interview in the next weeks, to which I said of course! The first interview was a day long, consisting of a brief introduction, a group interview where we worked on a business plan with a group of other potential graduates and were marked by 3 Oracle employees, on our ability to work together and presentation. After lunch, we then had a short individual interview each, and that was the end of the first round. I received a call a few weeks later, and was asked to come into a second interview, at which I also jumped at the opportunity. This was an interview based purely on your individual abilities and would help to determine which Line of Business you would go to, should you land a graduate position. So how did I cope throughout the interview stages? I believe the best tool to prepare for the interview, was to research Oracle and its culture and to see if I thought I could fit into that. I personally found out about Oracle, its partners as well as competitors and along the way, even found out about their part (or Larry Ellison's specifically) in the Iron Man 2 movie. Armed with some Oracle information and lots of enthusiasm, I approached the Oracle Graduate Interview process. Why did I apply for an Oracle graduate position? I studied a Bachelor of Business/Bachelor of Science in IT, and wanted to be able to use both my degrees, while have the ability to work internationally in the future. Coming straight from university, I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to do in terms of my career. With the program, you are rotated across various lines of business, to not only expose you to different parts of the business, but to also help you to figure out what you want to achieve out of your career. As a result, I thought Oracle was the perfect fit. So what can an Oracle ANZ Graduate expect? First things first, you can expect to line up for your visitor pass. Really. Next you enter a room full of unknown faces, graduates just like you, and then you realise you're in this with 18 other people, going through the same thing as you. 3 weeks later you leave with many memories, colleagues you can call your friends, and a video of your presentation. Vanessa, the Graduate Manager, will also take lots of photos and keep you (well) fed. Well that's not all you leave with, you are also equipped with a wealth of knowledge and contacts within Oracle, both that will help you throughout your career there. What training is involved? We started our Oracle experience with 3 weeks of training, consisting of employee orientation, extensive product training, presentations on the various lines of business (LoB's), followed by sales and presentation training. While there was potential for an information overload, maybe even death by Powerpoint, we were able to have access to the presentations for future reference, which was very helpful. This period also allowed us to start networking, not only with the graduates, but with the managers who presented to us, as well as through the monthly chinwag, HR celebrations and even with the sharing of tea facilities. We also had a team bonding day when we recorded a "commercial" within groups, and learned how to play an Irish drum. Overall, the training period helped us to learn about Oracle, as well as ourselves, and to prepare us for our transition into our rotations. Where to now? I'm now into my 2nd week of my first graduate rotation. It has been exciting to finally get out into the work environment and utilise that knowledge we gained from training. My manager has been a great mentor, extremely knowledgeable, and it has been good being able to participate in meetings, conference calls and make a contribution towards the business. And while we aren't necessarily working directly with the other graduates, they are still reachable via email, Pidgin and lunch and they are important as a resource and support, after all, they are going through a similar experience to you. While it is only the beginning, there is a lot more to learn and a lot more to experience along the way, especially because, as we learned during training, at Oracle, the only constant is change.

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• Tracing Silex from PHP to the OS with DTrace

  - by cj

  In this blog post I show the full stack tracing of Brendan Gregg's php_syscolors.d script in the DTrace Toolkit. The Toolkit contains a dozen very useful PHP DTrace scripts and many more scripts for other languages and the OS. For this example, I'll trace the PHP micro framework Silex, which was the topic of the second of two talks by Dustin Whittle at a recent SF PHP Meetup. His slides are at Silex: From Micro to Full Stack. Installing DTrace and PHP The php_syscolors.d script uses some static PHP probes and some kernel probes. For Oracle Linux I discussed installing DTrace and PHP in DTrace PHP Using Oracle Linux 'playground' Pre-Built Packages. On other platforms with DTrace support, follow your standard procedures to enable DTrace and load the correct providers. The sdt and systrace providers are required in addition to fasttrap. On Oracle Linux, I loaded the DTrace modules like: # modprobe fasttrap # modprobe sdt # modprobe systrace # chmod 666 /dev/dtrace/helper Installing the DTrace Toolkit I download DTraceToolkit-0.99.tar.gz and extracted it: $ tar -zxf DTraceToolkit-0.99.tar.gz The PHP scripts are in the Php directory and examples in the Examples directory. Installing Silex I downloaded the "fat" Silex .tgz file from the download page and extracted it: $ tar -zxf silex_fat.tgz I changed the demonstration silex/web/index.php so I could use the PHP development web server: <?php // web/index.php $filename = __DIR__.preg_replace('#(\?.*)$#', '', $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']); if (php_sapi_name() === 'cli-server' && is_file($filename)) { return false; } require_once __DIR__.'/../vendor/autoload.php'; $app = new Silex\Application(); //$app['debug'] = true; $app->get('/hello', function() { return 'Hello!'; }); $app->run(); ?> Running DTrace The php_syscolors.d script uses the -Z option to dtrace, so it can be started before PHP, i.e. when there are zero of the requested probes available to be traced. I ran DTrace like: # cd DTraceToolkit-0.99/Php # ./php_syscolors.d Next, I started the PHP developer web server in a second terminal: $ cd silex $ php -S localhost:8080 -t web web/index.php At this point, the web server is idle, waiting for requests. DTrace is idle, waiting for the probes in php_syscolors.d to be fired, at which time the action associated with each probe will run. I then loaded the demonstration page in a browser: http://localhost:8080/hello When the request was fulfilled and the simple output of "Hello" was displayed, I ^C'd php and dtrace in their terminals to stop them. DTrace output over a thousand lines long had been generated. Here is one snippet from when run() was invoked: C PID/TID DELTA(us) FILE:LINE TYPE -- NAME ... 1 4765/4765 21 Application.php:487 func -> run 1 4765/4765 29 ClassLoader.php:182 func -> loadClass 1 4765/4765 17 ClassLoader.php:198 func -> findFile 1 4765/4765 31 ":- syscall -> access 1 4765/4765 26 ":- syscall <- access 1 4765/4765 16 ClassLoader.php:198 func <- findFile 1 4765/4765 25 ":- syscall -> newlstat 1 4765/4765 15 ":- syscall <- newlstat 1 4765/4765 13 ":- syscall -> newlstat 1 4765/4765 13 ":- syscall <- newlstat 1 4765/4765 22 ":- syscall -> newlstat 1 4765/4765 14 ":- syscall <- newlstat 1 4765/4765 15 ":- syscall -> newlstat 1 4765/4765 60 ":- syscall <- newlstat 1 4765/4765 13 ":- syscall -> newlstat 1 4765/4765 13 ":- syscall <- newlstat 1 4765/4765 20 ":- syscall -> open 1 4765/4765 16 ":- syscall <- open 1 4765/4765 26 ":- syscall -> newfstat 1 4765/4765 12 ":- syscall <- newfstat 1 4765/4765 17 ":- syscall -> newfstat 1 4765/4765 12 ":- syscall <- newfstat 1 4765/4765 12 ":- syscall -> newfstat 1 4765/4765 12 ":- syscall <- newfstat 1 4765/4765 20 ":- syscall -> mmap 1 4765/4765 14 ":- syscall <- mmap 1 4765/4765 3201 ":- syscall -> mmap 1 4765/4765 27 ":- syscall <- mmap 1 4765/4765 1233 ":- syscall -> munmap 1 4765/4765 53 ":- syscall <- munmap 1 4765/4765 15 ":- syscall -> close 1 4765/4765 13 ":- syscall <- close 1 4765/4765 34 Request.php:32 func -> main 1 4765/4765 22 Request.php:32 func <- main 1 4765/4765 31 ClassLoader.php:182 func <- loadClass 1 4765/4765 33 Request.php:249 func -> createFromGlobals 1 4765/4765 29 Request.php:198 func -> __construct 1 4765/4765 24 Request.php:218 func -> initialize 1 4765/4765 26 ClassLoader.php:182 func -> loadClass 1 4765/4765 89 ClassLoader.php:198 func -> findFile 1 4765/4765 43 ":- syscall -> access ... The output shows PHP functions being called and returning (and where they are located) and which system calls the PHP functions in turn invoked. The time each line took from the previous one is displayed in the third column. The first column is the CPU number. In this example, the process was always on CPU 1 so the output is naturally ordered without requiring post-processing, or the D script requiring to be modified to display a time stamp. On a terminal, the output of php_syscolors.d is color-coded according to whether each function is a PHP or system one, hence the file name. Summary With one tool, I was able to trace the interaction of a user application with the operating system. I was able to do this to an application running "live" in a web context. The DTrace Toolkit provides a very handy repository of DTrace information. Even though the PHP scripts were created in the time frame of the original PHP DTrace PECL extension, which only had PHP function entry and return probes, the scripts provide core examples for custom investigation and resolution scripts. You can easily adapt the ideas and and create scripts using the other PHP static probes, which are listed in the PHP Manual. Because DTrace is "always on", you can take advantage of it to resolve development questions or fix production situations.

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• Visual Studio &amp; TFS 11 &ndash; List of extensions and upgrades

  - by terje

  This post is a list of the extensions I recommend for use with Visual Studio 11. It’s coming up all the time – what to install, where are the download sites, last version, etc etc, and thus I thought it better to post it here and keep it updated. The basics are Visual Studio 11 connected to a Team Foundation Server 11. Note that we now are at Beta time, and that also many live in a side-by-side environment with Visual Studio 2010.  The side-by-side is supported by VS 11. However, if you installed a component supporting VS11 before you installed VS11, then you need to reinstall it.  The VSIX installer will understand that it is to apply those only for VS11, and will not touch – nor remove – the same for VS2010. A good example here is the Power Commands. The list is more or less in priority order. The focus is to get a setup which can be used for a complete coding experience for the whole ALM process. The list of course reflects what I use for my work , so it is by no means complete, and for some of the tools there are equally useful alternatives. Many components have not yet arrived with VS11 support.  I will add them as they arrive.  The components directly associated with Visual Studio from Microsoft should be common, see the Microsoft column. If you still need the VS2010 extensions, here they are: The extensions for VS 2010.   Components ready for VS 11, both upgrades and new ones Product Notes Latest Version License Applicable to Microsoft TFS Power Tools Beta 111 Side-by-side with TFS 2010 should work, but remove the Shell Extension from the TFS 2010 power tool first. March 2012(11.0.50321.0) Free TFS integration Yes ReSharper EAP for Beta 11 (updates very often, nearly daily) 7.0.3.261 pr. 16/3/2012 Free as EAP, Licensed later Coding & Quality No Power Commands1 Just reinstall, even if you already have it for VS2010. The reinstall will then apply it to VS 11 1.0.2.3 Free Coding Yes Visualization and Modelling SDK for beta Info here and here. Another download site and info here. Also download from MSDN Subscription site. Requires VS 11 Beta SDK 11 Free now, otherwise Part of MSDN Subscription Modeling Yes Visual Studio 11 Beta SDK Published 16.2.2012     Yes Visual Studio 11 Feedback tool1 Use this to really ease the process of sending bugs back to Microsoft. 1.1 Free as prerelase Visual Studio Yes             #1 Get via Visual Studio’s Tools | Extension Manager (or The Code Gallery). (From Adam : All these are auto updated by the Extension Manager in Visual Studio) #2 Works with ultimate only Components we wait for, not yet in a VS 11 version Product Notes Latest Version License Applicable to Microsoft       Coding Yes Inmeta Build Explorer     Free TFS integration No Build Manager Community Build Manager. Info here from Jakob   Free TFS Integration No Code Contracts Coming real soon   Free Coding & Quality Yes Code Contracts Editor Extensions     Free Coding & Quality Yes Web Std Update     Free Coding (Web) Yes (MSFT) Web Essentials     Free Coding (Web) Yes (MSFT) DotPeek It says up to .Net 4.0, but some tests indicates it seems to be able to handle 4.5. 1.0.0.7999 Free Coding/Investigation No Just Decompile Also says up to .net 4.0   Free Coding/Investigation No dotTrace     Licensed Quality No NDepend   Licensed Quality No tangible T4 editor     Lite version Free (Good enough) Coding (T4 templates) No Pex Moles are now integrated and improved in VS 11 as a new library called Fakes.     Coding & Unit Testing Yes Components which are now integrated into VS 11 Product Notes Productivity Power Tools Features integrated into VS11, with a few exceptions, I don’t think you will miss those. Fakes  Was Moles in 2010. Fakes is improved and made into a product.  NuGet Manager Included in the install, but still an extension package. Info here. Product installation, upgrades and patches for VS/TFS 11   Product Notes Date Applicable to Visual Studio 11 & TFS 11 Beta This is the beta release, and you are free to download and try it out. March 2012 Visual Studio and TFS SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1 Cumulative Update 4 The TFS 11 requires the CU1 at least, but you should go up to at least CU4, since this update solves a ghost record problem that otherwise may cause your TFS database to not release records the way it should when you clean it up, see this post for more information on that issue.  Oct 2011 SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1

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• The first day of JavaOne is already over!

  - by delabassee

  In the past Sunday used to be a more relaxing day with ‘just’ some JavaOne activities going on. Sunday used to be a soft day to prepare yourself for an exhausting week. This is now over as JavaOne is expanding; Sunday is now an integral part of the conference. One of the side effect of this extra day is that some activities related to JavaOne and OpenWorld such as MySQL Connect are being push to start a day earlier on Saturday (can you spot the pattern here?). On the GlassFish front, Sunday was a very busy day! It started at the Moscone Center with the annual GlassFish Community Event where the Java EE 7 and GF 4 roadmaps were presented and discussed. During the event, different GlassFish users such as ZeroTurnaround (the JRebel guys), Grupo RBS and IDR Solutions shared their views on GF, why they like GF but also what could be improved. The event was also a forum for the GF community to exchange with some of the key Java EE / GlassFish Oracle Executives and the different GF team members. The Strategy keynote and the Technical keynote were held in the Masonic Auditorium later in the after-noon. Oracle executives have presented the plans for Java SE, Java FX and Java EE. As on-demand replays will be available soon, I will not summarize several hours of content but here are some personal takeaways from those keynotes. Modularity Modularity is a big deal. We know by now that Project Jigsaw will not be ready for Java SE 8 but in any case, it is already possible (and encouraged) to test Jigsaw today. In the future, Java EE plan to rely on the modularity features provided by Java SE, so Project Jigsaw is also relevant for Java EE developers. Shorter term, to cover some of the modular requirements, Java SE will adopt the approach that was used for Java EE 6 and the notion of Profiles. This approach does not define a module system per say; Profiles is a way to clearly define different subsets of Java SE to fulfill different needs (e.g. the full JRE is not required for a headless application). The introduction of different Profiles, from the Base profile (10mb) to the Full Profile (+50mb), has been proposed for Java SE 8. Embedded Embedded is a strong theme going forward for the Java Plaform. There is now a dedicated program : Java Embedded @ JavaOne Java by nature (e.g. platform independence, built-in security, ability easily talks to any back-end systems, large set of skills available on the market, etc.) is probably the most suited platform for the Internet of Things. You can quickly be up-to-speed and develop services and applications for that space just by using your current Java skills. All you need to start developing on ARM is a 35$ Raspberry Pi ARM board (25$ if you are cheap and can live without an ethernet connection) and the recently released JDK for Linux/ARM. Obviously, GlassFish runs on Raspberry Pi. If you wan to go further in the embedded space, you should take a look Java SE Embedded, an optimized, low footprint, Java environment that support the major embedded architectures (ARM, PPC and x86). Finally, Oracle has recently introduced Java Embedded Suite, a new solution that brings modern middleware capabilities to the embedded space. Java Embedded Suite is an optimized solution that leverage Java SE Embedded but also GlassFish, Jersey and JavaDB to deploy advanced value added capabilities (eg. sensor data filtering and) deeper in the network, closer to the devices. JavaFX JavaFX is going strong! Starting from Java SE 7u6, JavaFX is bundled with the JDK. JavaFX is now available for all the major desktop platforms (Windows, Linux and Mac OS X). JavaFX is now also available, in developer preview, for low end device running Linux/ARM. During the keynote, JavaFX was shown running on a Raspberry Pi! And as announced during the keynote, JavaFX should be fully open-sourced by the end of the year; contributions are welcome!. There is a strong momentum around JavaFX, it’s the ideal client solution for the Java platform. A client layer that works perfectly with GlassFish on the back-end. If you were not convince by JavaFX, it’s time to reconsider it! As an old Chinese proverb say “One tweet is worth a thousand words!” HTML5, Project Avatar and Java EE 7 HTML5 got a lot of airtime too, it was covered during the Java EE 7 section of the keynote. Some details about Project Avatar, Oracle’s incubator project for a TSA (Thin Server Architecture) solution, were diluted and shown during the keynote. On the tooling side, Project Easel running on NetBeans 7.3 beta was demo’ed, including a cool NetBeans debugging session running in Chrome! HTML 5, Project Avatar and Java EE 7 deserve separate posts... Feedback We need your feedback! There are many projects, JSRs and products cooking : GlassFish 4, Project Jigsaw, Concurrency Utilities for Java EE (JSR 236), OpenJFX, OpenJDK to name just a few. Those projects, those specifications will have a profound impact on the Java platform for the years to come! So if you have the opportunity, download, install, learn, tests them and give feedback! Remember, you can "Make the Future Java!" Finally, the traditional GlassFish Party at the Thirsty Bear concluded the first JavaOne day. This party is another place where the community can freely exchange with the GlassFish team in a more relaxed, more friendly (but sometime more noisy) atmosphere. Arun has posted a set of pictures to reflect the atmosphere of the keynotes and the GlassFish party. You can find more details on the others Java EE and GlassFish activities here.

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• Clarity is important, both in question and in answer.

  - by gerrylowry

  clarity is important ... i'm often reminded of the Clouseau movie in which Peter Sellers as Chief Inspector Clouseau asks a hotel clerk "Does your dog bite?" ... the clerk answers "no" ... after Clouseau has been bitten by the dog, he looks at the hotel clerk who says "That's not my dog".  Clarity is important, both in question and in answer. i've been a member of forums.asp.net since 2008 ... like many of my peers at forums.asp.net, i've answered my fair share of questions. FWIW, the purpose of this, my first web log post to http://weblogs.asp.net/gerrylowry is to help new members ask better questions and in turn get better answers. TIMTOWTDI  =.  there is more than one way to do it imho, the best way to ask a question in any forum, or even person to person, is to first formulate your question and then ask yourself to answer your own question. Things to consider when asking (the more complete your question, the more likely you'll get the answer you require): -- have you searched Google and/or your favourite search engine(s) before posting your question to forums.asp.net; examples: site:msdn.microsoft.com entity framework 5.0 c#http://lmgtfy.com/?q=site%3Amsdn.microsoft.com+entity+framework+5.0+c%23 site:forums.asp.net MVC tutorial c#http://lmgtfy.com/?q=site%3Aforums.asp.net+MVC+tutorial+c%23 -- are you asking your question in the correct forum?  look at the forums' descriptions at http://forums.asp.net/; examples: Getting Started If you have a general ASP.NET question on a topic that's not covered by one of the other more specific forums - ask it here. MVC Discussions regarding ASP.NET Model-View-Controller (MVC) C# Questions about using C# for ASP.NET development Note:  if your question pertains more to c# than to MVC, choosing the C# forum is likely to be more appropriate. -- is your post subject clear and concise, yet not too vague? compare these three subjects (all three had something to do with GridView):     (1)    please help     (2)    gridview      (3)    How to show newline in GridView  -- have you clearly explained your scenario? compare:  my leg hurts   with   when i walk too much, my right knee hurts in the knee joint  compare:  my code does not work    with    when i enter a date as 2012-11-8, i get a FormatException -- have you checked your spelling, your grammar, and your English? for better or worse, English is the language of forums.asp.net ... many of the currently 170000++ forums.asp.net are not native speakers of English; that's okay ... however, there are times when choosing the more appropriate words will likely get one a better answer; fortunately, there are web tools to help you formulate your question, for example, http://translate.google.com/.  -- have you provided relevant information about your environment? here are a few examples ... feel free to include other items to your question ... rule of thumb:  if you think a given detail is relevant, it likely is -- what technology are you using?    ASP.NET MVC 4, ASP.NET MVC 3, WebForms, ...  -- what version of Visual Studio are you using?  vs2012 (ultimate, professional, express), vs2010, vs2008 ... -- are you hosting your own website?  are you using a shared hosting service? -- are you experience difficulties in just one browser? more than one browser? -- what browser version(s) are you using?   ie8? ie9? ... -- what is your operating system?     win8, win7, vista, XP, server 2008 R2 ... -- what is your database?   SQL Server 2008 R2, ss2005, MySQL, Oracle, ... -- what is your web server?  iis 7.5, iis 6, .... -- have you provided enough information for someone to be able to answer your question? Here's an actual example from an O.P. that i hope is self-explanatory: I'm trying to make a simple calculator when i write the code in windows application it worked when i tried it in web application it doesn't work and there are no errors what should i do ??!! -- have you included unnecessary information? more than once, i've seen the O.P. (original post, original poster) include many extra lines of code that were not relevant to the actual question; the more unnecessary code that you include, the less likely your volunteer peers will be motivated to donate their time to help you. -- have you asked the question that you want answered? "Does this dog bite?" -- are your expectations reasonable? -- generally, persons who are going to answer your questions are your peers ... they are unpaid volunteers ... -- are you looking for help with your homework, work assignment, or hobby? or, are you expecting someone else to do your work for you?  -- do you expect a complete solution or are you simply looking for guidance and direction? -- you are likely to get more help by first making a reasonable effort to help yourself first Clarity is important, both in question and in answer. if you are answering someone else's question, please remember that clear answers are just as important as clear questions; would you understand your own answer? Things to consider when answering: -- have you tested your code example?  if you have, say so; if you've not tested your code example, also say so -- imho, it's okay to guess as long as you clearly state that you're guessing ... sometimes a wrong guess can still help the O.P. find her/his way to the right answer -- meanness does not contribute to being helpful; sometimes one may become frustrated with the O.P. and/or others participating in a thread, if that happens to you, be kind regardless; speaking from my own experience, at least once i've allowed myself to be frustrated into writing something inappropriate that i've regretted later ... being a meany does not feel good ... being kind and helpful feels fantastic! Tip:  before asking your question, read more than a few existing questions and answers to get a sense of how your peers ask and answer questions. Gerry P.S.:  try to avoid necroposting and piggy backing. necroposting is adding to an old post, especially one that was resolved months ago. piggy backing is adding your own question to someone else's thread.

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• Waterfall Model (SDLC) vs. Prototyping Model

  The characters in the fable of the Tortoise and the Hare can easily be used to demonstrate the similarities and differences between the Waterfall and Prototyping software development models. This children fable is about a race between a consistently slow moving but steadfast turtle and an extremely fast but unreliable rabbit. After closely comparing each character’s attributes in correlation with both software development models, a trend seems to appear in that the Waterfall closely resembles the Tortoise in that Waterfall Model is typically a slow moving process that is broken up in to multiple sequential steps that must be executed in a standard linear pattern. The Tortoise can be quoted several times in the story saying “Slow and steady wins the race.” This is the perfect mantra for the Waterfall Model in that this model is seen as a cumbersome and slow moving. Waterfall Model Phases Requirement Analysis & Definition This phase focuses on defining requirements for a project that is to be developed and determining if the project is even feasible. Requirements are collected by analyzing existing systems and functionality in correlation with the needs of the business and the desires of the end users. The desired output for this phase is a list of specific requirements from the business that are to be designed and implemented in the subsequent steps. In addition this phase is used to determine if any value will be gained by completing the project. System Design This phase focuses primarily on the actual architectural design of a system, and how it will interact within itself and with other existing applications. Projects at this level should be viewed at a high level so that actual implementation details are decided in the implementation phase. However major environmental decision like hardware and platform decision are typically decided in this phase. Furthermore the basic goal of this phase is to design an application at the system level in those classes, interfaces, and interactions are defined. Additionally decisions about scalability, distribution and reliability should also be considered for all decisions. The desired output for this phase is a functional  design document that states all of the architectural decisions that have been made in regards to the project as well as a diagrams like a sequence and class diagrams. Software Design This phase focuses primarily on the refining of the decisions found in the functional design document. Classes and interfaces are further broken down in to logical modules based on the interfaces and interactions previously indicated. The output of this phase is a formal design document. Implementation / Coding This phase focuses primarily on implementing the previously defined modules in to units of code. These units are developed independently are intergraded as the system is put together as part of a whole system. Software Integration & Verification This phase primarily focuses on testing each of the units of code developed as well as testing the system as a whole. There are basic types of testing at this phase and they include: Unit Test and Integration Test. Unit Test are built to test the functionality of a code unit to ensure that it preforms its desired task. Integration testing test the system as a whole because it focuses on results of combining specific units of code and validating it against expected results. The output of this phase is a test plan that includes test with expected results and actual results. System Verification This phase primarily focuses on testing the system as a whole in regards to the list of project requirements and desired operating environment. Operation & Maintenance his phase primarily focuses on handing off the competed project over to the customer so that they can verify that all of their requirements have been met based on their original requirements. This phase will also validate the correctness of their requirements and if any changed need to be made. In addition, any problems not resolved in the previous phase will be handled in this section. The Waterfall Model’s linear and sequential methodology does offer a project certain advantages and disadvantages. Advantages of the Waterfall Model Simplistic to implement and execute for projects and/or company wide Limited demand on resources Large emphasis on documentation Disadvantages of the Waterfall Model Completed phases cannot be revisited regardless if issues arise within a project Accurate requirement are never gather prior to the completion of the requirement phase due to the lack of clarification in regards to client’s desires. Small changes or errors that arise in applications may cause additional problems The client cannot change any requirements once the requirements phase has been completed leaving them no options for changes as they see their requirements changes as the customers desires change. Excess documentation Phases are cumbersome and slow moving Learn more about the Major Process in the Sofware Development Life Cycle and Waterfall Model. Conversely, the Hare shares similar traits with the prototyping software development model in that ideas are rapidly converted to basic working examples and subsequent changes are made to quickly align the project with customers desires as they are formulated and as software strays from the customers vision. The basic concept of prototyping is to eliminate the use of well-defined project requirements. Projects are allowed to grow as the customer needs and request grow. Projects are initially designed according to basic requirements and are refined as requirement become more refined. This process allows customer to feel their way around the application to ensure that they are developing exactly what they want in the application This model also works well for determining the feasibility of certain approaches in regards to an application. Prototypes allow for quickly developing examples of implementing specific functionality based on certain techniques. Advantages of Prototyping Active participation from users and customers Allows customers to change their mind in specifying requirements Customers get a better understanding of the system as it is developed Earlier bug/error detection Promotes communication with customers Prototype could be used as final production Reduced time needed to develop applications compared to the Waterfall method Disadvantages of Prototyping Promotes constantly redefining project requirements that cause major system rewrites Potential for increased complexity of a system as scope of the system expands Customer could believe the prototype as the working version. Implementation compromises could increase the complexity when applying updates and or application fixes When companies trying to decide between the Waterfall model and Prototype model they need to evaluate the benefits and disadvantages for both models. Typically smaller companies or projects that have major time constraints typically head for more of a Prototype model approach because it can reduce the time needed to complete the project because there is more of a focus on building a project and less on defining requirements and scope prior to the start of a project. On the other hand, Companies with well-defined requirements and time allowed to generate proper documentation should steer towards more of a waterfall model because they are in a position to obtain clarified requirements and have to design and optimal solution prior to the start of coding on a project.

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• Source-control 'wet-work'?

  - by Phil Factor

  When a design or creative work is flawed beyond remedy, it is often best to destroy it and start again. The other day, I lost the code to a long and intricate SQL batch I was working on. I’d thought it was impossible, but it happened. With all the technology around that is designed to prevent this occurring, this sort of accident has become a rare event.  If it weren’t for a deranged laptop, and my distraction, the code wouldn’t have been lost this time.  As always, I sighed, had a soothing cup of tea, and typed it all in again.  The new code I hastily tapped in  was much better: I’d held in my head the essence of how the code should work rather than the details: I now knew for certain  the start point, the end, and how it should be achieved. Instantly the detritus of half-baked thoughts fell away and I was able to write logical code that performed better.  Because I could work so quickly, I was able to hold the details of all the columns and variables in my head, and the dynamics of the flow of data. It was, in fact, easier and quicker to start from scratch rather than tidy up and refactor the existing code with its inevitable fumbling and half-baked ideas. What a shame that technology is now so good that developers rarely experience the cleansing shock of losing one’s code and having to rewrite it from scratch.  If you’ve never accidentally lost  your code, then it is worth doing it deliberately once for the experience. Creative people have, until Technology mistakenly prevented it, torn up their drafts or sketches, threw them in the bin, and started again from scratch.  Leonardo’s obsessive reworking of the Mona Lisa was renowned because it was so unusual:  Most artists have been utterly ruthless in destroying work that didn’t quite make it. Authors are particularly keen on writing afresh, and the results are generally positive. Lawrence of Arabia actually lost the entire 250,000 word manuscript of ‘The Seven Pillars of Wisdom’ by accidentally leaving it on a train at Reading station, before rewriting a much better version.  Now, any writer or artist is seduced by technology into altering or refining their work rather than casting it dramatically in the bin or setting a light to it on a bonfire, and rewriting it from the blank page.  It is easy to pick away at a flawed work, but the real creative process is far more brutal. Once, many years ago whilst running a software house that supplied commercial software to local businesses, I’d been supervising an accounting system for a farming cooperative. No packaged system met their needs, and it was all hand-cut code.  For us, it represented a breakthrough as it was for a government organisation, and success would guarantee more contracts. As you’ve probably guessed, the code got mangled in a disk crash just a week before the deadline for delivery, and the many backups all proved to be entirely corrupted by a faulty tape drive.  There were some fragments left on individual machines, but they were all of different versions.  The developers were in despair.  Strangely, I managed to re-write the bulk of a three-month project in a manic and caffeine-soaked weekend.  Sure, that elegant universally-applicable input-form routine was‘nt quite so elegant, but it didn’t really need to be as we knew what forms it needed to support.  Yes, the code lacked architectural elegance and reusability. By dawn on Monday, the application passed its integration tests. The developers rose to the occasion after I’d collapsed, and tidied up what I’d done, though they were reproachful that some of the style and elegance had gone out of the application. By the delivery date, we were able to install it. It was a smaller, faster application than the beta they’d seen and the user-interface had a new, rather Spartan, appearance that we swore was done to conform to the latest in user-interface guidelines. (we switched to Helvetica font to look more ‘Bauhaus’ ). The client was so delighted that he forgave the new bugs that had crept in. I still have the disk that crashed, up in the attic. In IT, we have had mixed experiences from complete re-writes. Lotus 123 never really recovered from a complete rewrite from assembler into C, Borland made the mistake with Arago and Quattro Pro  and Netscape’s complete rewrite of their Navigator 4 browser was a white-knuckle ride. In all cases, the decision to rewrite was a result of extreme circumstances where no other course of action seemed possible.   The rewrite didn’t come out of the blue. I prefer to remember the rewrite of Minix by young Linus Torvalds, or the rewrite of Bitkeeper by a slightly older Linus.  The rewrite of CP/M didn’t do too badly either, did it? Come to think of it, the guy who decided to rewrite the windowing system of the Xerox Star never regretted the decision. I’ll agree that one should often resist calls for a rewrite. One of the worst habits of the more inexperienced programmer is to denigrate whatever code he or she inherits, and then call loudly for a complete rewrite. They are buoyed up by the mistaken belief that they can do better. This, however, is a different psychological phenomenon, more related to the idea of some motorcyclists that they are operating on infinite lives, or the occasional squaddies that if they charge the machine-guns determinedly enough all will be well. Grim experience brings out the humility in any experienced programmer.  I’m referring to quite different circumstances here. Where a team knows the requirements perfectly, are of one mind on methodology and coding standards, and they already have a solution, then what is wrong with considering  a complete rewrite? Rewrites are so painful in the early stages, until that point where one realises the payoff, that even I quail at the thought. One needs a natural disaster to push one over the edge. The trouble is that source-control systems, and disaster recovery systems, are just too good nowadays.   If I were to lose this draft of this very blog post, I know I’d rewrite it much better. However, if you read this, you’ll know I didn’t have the nerve to delete it and start again.  There was a time that one prayed that unreliable hardware would deliver you from an unmaintainable mess of a codebase, but now technology has made us almost entirely immune to such a merciful act of God. An old friend of mine with long experience in the software industry has long had the idea of the ‘source-control wet-work’,  where one hires a malicious hacker in some wild eastern country to hack into one’s own  source control system to destroy all trace of the source to an application. Alas, backup systems are just too good to make this any more than a pipedream. Somehow, it would be difficult to promote the idea. As an alternative, could one construct a source control system that, on doing all the code-quality metrics, would systematically destroy all trace of source code that failed the quality test? Alas, I can’t see many managers buying into the idea. In reading the full story of the near-loss of Toy Story 2, it set me thinking. It turned out that the lucky restoration of the code wasn’t the happy ending one first imagined it to be, because they eventually came to the conclusion that the plot was fundamentally flawed and it all had to be rewritten anyway.  Was this an early  case of the ‘source-control wet-job’?’ It is very hard nowadays to do a rapid U-turn in a development project because we are far too prone to cling to our existing source-code.

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• Goals for 2010 Retrospective

  - by Brian Jackett

  As we approach the end of 2010 I’d like to take a  few minutes to reflect back on this past year and revisit the goals that I set for myself at the beginning of the year (click here to see those goals).  I feel it is important to track your goals not only to see if you accomplished them but also to see what new directions in life you pursued.  Once we enter into 2011 I’ll follow up with a new post on goals for the new year. Professional Blog – This year I intended to write at least 2 posts a month.  Looking back I far surpassed that goal by writing 47 posts (this one being my 48th).  As with many things in life, quantity does not mean quality.  A good example is a number of my posts announcing upcoming speaking engagements and providing links to presentation slides and scripts.  That aside, I like to at least keep content relatively fresh on this blog  which I was able to accomplish.  At the same time I’ve gotten much more comfortable in my blogging style and it has become much easier to write. Speaking – I didn’t define a clear goal for speaking engagements, but had a rough idea of wanting to speak at 2-3 events.  Once again I far exceeded that number by speaking at 10 separate events and delivering 12+ presentations.  I’m very thankful for all of the opportunities that I was given and all of the wonderful people I have met as a result. Volunteering – This year I intended to help out with the COSPUG (now Buckeye SPUG) steering committee and Stir Trek conference.  I fulfilled both goals and as well as taking on lead organizer duties for the first ever SharePoint Saturday Columbus.  Each of these events and groups turned out to be successful and I was glad to be a part of them all.  I look forward to continuing to volunteer with each next year in some capacity. Android Development – My goal for getting into Android development was a late addition, but one I didn’t necessarily fulfill.  I spent a couple nights downloading the tools, configuring my environment, and going through some “simple” tutorials.  I say “simple” because in my opinion the tutorials were not laid out very well, took a long time to get running properly, and confused me more than helped.  After about a week I was frustrated with the process and didn’t think it was a good use of my time.  On a side note, I’ve dabbled in Windows Phone 7 development over the past few months and have been very excited by how easy and intuitive it was to get started and develop some proof of concepts. Personal Getting in Shape – I had intended to play on recreational sports leagues and work out on a semi-regular basis.  For the most part I fulfilled this goal by playing on various softball and volleyball leagues as well as using the gym.  At the same time I had some major setbacks.  In the spring I badly sprained my ankle and got hit in the knee with a softball which kept me inactive for almost 2 months.  More recently I broke my knuckle (click here to read about it) which I am still recovering from. Volunteering – On the volunteering front I kept my commitments at my parish’s high school youth group.  As for other volunteering opportunities I got involved with a great organization called Columbus Gives Back (website).  I’ve volunteered with them a few times and really enjoy their goal to provide opportunities to people with busy schedules.  They  offer a variety of events typically after work hours and spread out around Columbus with no set commitments on time you need to put in.  If you have the time or motivation I highly recommend them. House/Condo – I had been thinking of buying a house or condo this past summer, but decided to extend my apartment lease for another year instead.  I have begun the search for a place in the past few weeks and am excited begin the process of owning a home. Conclusion     This year I was able to set and achieve many of my goals.  For next year I’ll try to put more specific numbers to all of my goals.  If any of you readers set goals for 2011 feel free to send me a link as I’d love to see what you are aiming to accomplish.  Have a great end of 2010 and best wishes for the start of 2011!       -Frog Out

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• Developing Mobile Applications: Web, Native, or Hybrid?

  - by Michelle Kimihira

  Authors: Joe Huang, Senior Principal Product Manager, Oracle Mobile Application Development Framework  and Carlos Chang, Senior Principal Product Director The proliferation of mobile devices and platforms represents a game-changing technology shift on a number of levels. Companies must decide not only the best strategic use of mobile platforms, but also how to most efficiently implement them. Inevitably, this conversation devolves to the developers, who face the task of developing and supporting mobile applications—not a simple task in light of the number of devices and platforms. Essentially, developers can choose from the following three different application approaches, each with its own set of pros and cons. Native Applications: This refers to apps built for and installed on a specific platform, such as iOS or Android, using a platform-specific software development kit (SDK).  For example, apps for Apple’s iPhone and iPad are designed to run specifically on iOS and are written in Xcode/Objective-C. Android has its own variation of Java, Windows uses C#, and so on.  Native apps written for one platform cannot be deployed on another. Native apps offer fast performance and access to native-device services but require additional resources to develop and maintain each platform, which can be expensive and time consuming. Mobile Web Applications: Unlike native apps, mobile web apps are not installed on the device; rather, they are accessed via a Web browser.  These are server-side applications that render HTML, typically adjusting the design depending on the type of device making the request.  There are no program coding constraints for writing server-side apps—they can be written in Java, C, PHP, etc., it doesn’t matter.  Instead, the server detects what type of mobile browser is pinging the server and adjusts accordingly. For example, it can deliver fully JavaScript and CSS-enabled content to smartphone browsers, while downgrading gracefully to basic HTML for feature phone browsers. Mobile apps work across platforms, but are limited to what you can do through a browser and require Internet connectivity. For certain types of applications, these constraints may not be an issue. Oracle supports mobile web applications via ADF Faces (for tablets) and ADF Mobile browser (Trinidad) for smartphone and feature phones. Hybrid Applications: As the name implies, hybrid apps combine technologies from native and mobile Web apps to gain the benefits each. For example, these apps are installed on a device, like their pure native app counterparts, while the user interface (UI) is based on HTML5.  This UI runs locally within the native container, which usually leverages the device’s browser engine.  The advantage of using HTML5 is a consistent, cross-platform UI that works well on most devices.  Combining this with the native container, which is installed on-device, provides mobile users with access to local device services, such as camera, GPS, and local device storage.  Native apps may offer greater flexibility in integrating with device native services.  However, since hybrid applications already provide device integrations that typical enterprise applications need, this is typically less of an issue.  The new Oracle ADF Mobile release is an HTML5 and Java hybrid framework that targets mobile app development to iOS and Android from one code base. So, Which is the Best Approach? The short answer is – the best choice depends on the type of application you are developing.  For instance, animation-intensive apps such as games would favor native apps, while hybrid applications may be better suited for enterprise mobile apps because they provide multi-platform support. Just for starters, the following issues must be considered when choosing a development path. Application Complexity: How complex is the application? A quick app that accesses a database or Web service for some data to display?  You can keep it simple, and a mobile Web app may suffice. However, for a mobile/field worker type of applications that supports mission critical functionality, hybrid or native applications are typically needed. Richness of User Interactivity: What type of user experience is required for the application?  Mobile browser-based app that’s optimized for mobile UI may suffice for quick lookup or productivity type of applications.  However, hybrid/native application would typically be required to deliver highly interactive user experiences needed for field-worker type of applications.  For example, interactive BI charts/graphs, maps, voice/email integration, etc.  In the most extreme case like gaming applications, native applications may be necessary to deliver the highly animated and graphically intensive user experience. Performance: What type of performance is required by the application functionality?  For instance, for real-time look up of data over the network, mobile app performance depends on network latency and server infrastructure capabilities.  If consistent performance is required, data would typically need to be cached, which is supported on hybrid or native applications only. Connectivity and Availability: What sort of connectivity will your application require? Does the app require Web access all the time in order to always retrieve the latest data from the server? Or do the requirements dictate offline support? While native and hybrid apps can be built to operate offline, Web mobile apps require Web connectivity. Multi-platform Requirements: The terms “consumerization of IT” and BYOD (bring your own device) effectively mean that the line between the consumer and the enterprise devices have become blurred. Employees are bringing their personal mobile devices to work and are often expecting that they work in the corporate network and access back-office applications.  Even if companies restrict access to the big dogs: (iPad, iPhone, Android phones and tablets, possibly Windows Phone and tablets), trying to support each platform natively will require increasing resources and domain expertise with each new language/platform. And let’s not forget the maintenance costs, involved in upgrading new versions of each platform.   Where multi-platform support is needed, Web mobile or hybrid apps probably have the advantage. Going native, and trying to support multiple operating systems may be cost prohibitive with existing resources and developer skills. Device-Services Access:  If your app needs to access local device services, such as the camera, contacts app, accelerometer, etc., then your choices are limited to native or hybrid applications.   Fragmentation: Apple controls Apple iOS and the only concern is what version iOS is running on any given device.   Not so Android, which is open source. There are many, many versions and variants of Android running on different devices, which can be a nightmare for app developers trying to support different devices running different flavors of Android.  (Is it an Amazon Kindle Fire? a Samsung Galaxy?  A Barnes & Noble Nook?) This is a nightmare scenario for native apps—on the other hand, a mobile Web or hybrid app, when properly designed, can shield you from these complexities because they are based on common frameworks.  Resources: How many developers can you dedicate to building and supporting mobile application development?  What are their existing skills sets?  If you’re considering native application development due to the complexity of the application under development, factor the costs of becoming proficient on a each platform’s OS and programming language. Add another platform, and that’s another language, another SDK. On the other side of the equation, Web mobile or hybrid applications are simpler to make, and readily support more platforms, but there may be performance trade-offs. Conclusion This only scratches the surface. However, I hope to have suggested some food for thought in choosing your mobile development strategy.  Do your due diligence, search the Web, read up on mobile, talk to peers, attend events. The development team at Oracle is working hard on mobile technologies to help customers extend enterprise applications to mobile faster and effectively.  To learn more on what Oracle has to offer, check out the Oracle ADF Mobile (hybrid) and ADF Faces/ADF Mobile browser (Web Mobile) solutions from Oracle.   Additional Information Blog: ADF Blog Product Information on OTN: ADF Mobile Product Information on Oracle.com: Oracle Fusion Middleware Follow us on Twitter and Facebook Subscribe to our regular Fusion Middleware Newsletter

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• Mobile BI Comes of Age

  - by rich.clayton(at)oracle.com

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-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;} 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;} 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: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;} One of the hot topics in the Business Intelligence industry is mobility.  More specifically the question is how business can be transformed by the iPhone and the iPad.  In June 2003, Gartner predicted that Mobile BI would be obsolete and that the technology was headed for the 'trough of disillusionment'.  I agreed with them at that time.  Many vendors like MicroStrategy and Business Objects jumped into the fray attempting to show how PDA's like Palm Pilots could be integrated with BI.  Their investments resulted in interesting demos with no commercial traction.  Why, because wireless networks and mobile operating systems were primitive, immature and slow. In my opinion, Apple's iOS has changed everything in Mobile BI.  Yes Blackberry, Android and Symbian and all the rest have their place in the market but I believe that increasingly consumers (not IT departments) influence BI decision making processes.  Consumers are choosing the iPhone and the iPad. The number of iPads I see in business meetings now is staggering.  Some use it for email and note taking and others are starting to use corporate applications.  The possibilities for Mobile BI are countless and I would expect to see iPads enterprise-wide over the next few years.   These new devices will provide just-in-time access to critical business information.  Front-line managers interacting with customers, suppliers, patients or citizens will have information literally at their fingertips. I've experimented with several mobile BI tools.  They look cool but like their Executive Information System (EIS) predecessors of the 1990's these tools lack a backbone and a plausible integration strategy.  EIS was a viral technology in the early 1990's.  Executives from every industry and job function were showcasing their dashboards to fellow co-workers and colleagues at the country club.  Just like the iPad, every senior manager wanted one.  EIS wasn't a device however, it was a software application.   EIS quickly faded into the software sunset as it lacked integration with corporate information systems.  BI servers  replaced EIS because the technology focused on the heavy data lifting of integrating, normalizing, aggregating and managing large, complex data volumes.  The devices are here to stay. The cute stand-alone mobile BI tools, not so much. If all you're looking to do is put Excel files on your iPad, there are plenty of free tools on the market.  You'll look cool at your next management meeting but after a few weeks, the cool factor will fade away and you'll be wondering how you will ever maintain it.  If however you want secure, consistent, reliable information on your iPad, you need an integration strategy and a way to model the data.  BI Server technologies like the Oracle BI Foundation is a market leading approach to tackle that issue. I liken the BI mobility frenzy to buying classic cars.  Classic Cars have two buying groups - teenagers and middle-age folks looking to tinker.  Teenagers look at the pin-stripes and the paint job while middle-agers (like me)  kick the tires a bit and look under the hood to check out the quality and reliability of the engine.  Mobile BI tools sure look sexy but don't go very far without an engine and a transmission or an integration strategy. The strategic question in Mobile BI is can these startups build a motor and transmission faster than Oracle can re-paint the car?  Oracle has a great engine and a transmission that connects to all enterprise information assets.  We're working on the new paint job and are excited about the possibilities.  Just as vertical integration worked in the automotive business, it too works in the technology industry.

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• Where Facebook Stands Heading Into 2013

  - by Mike Stiles

  In our last blog, we looked at how Twitter is positioned heading into 2013. Now it’s time to take a similar look at Facebook. 2012, for a time at least, seemed to be the era of Facebook-bashing. Between a far-from-smooth IPO, subsequent stock price declines, and anxiety over privacy, the top social network became a target for comedians, politicians, business journalists, and of course those who were prone to Facebook-bash even in the best of times. But amidst the “this is the end of Facebook” headlines, the company kept experimenting, kept testing, kept innovating, and pressing forward, committed as always to the user experience, while concurrently addressing monetization with greater urgency. Facebook enters 2013 with over 1 billion users around the world. Usage grew 41% in Brazil, Russia, Japan, South Korea and India in 2012. In the Middle East and North Africa, an average 21 new signups happen per minute. Engagement and time spent on the site would impress the harshest of critics. Facebook, while not bulletproof, has become such an integrated daily force in users’ lives, it’s getting hard to imagine any future mass rejection. You want to see a company recognizing weaknesses and shoring them up. Mobile was a weakness in 2012 as Facebook was one of many caught by surprise at the speed of user migration to mobile. But new mobile interfaces, better mobile ads, speed upgrades, standalone Messenger and Pages mobile apps, and the big dollar acquisition of Instagram, were a few indicators Facebook won’t play catch-up any more than it has to. As a user, the cool thing about Facebook is, it knows you. The uncool thing about Facebook is, it knows you. The company’s walking a delicate line between the public’s competing desires for customized experiences and privacy. While the company’s working to make privacy options clearer and easier, Facebook’s Paul Adams says data aggregation can move from acting on what a user is engaging with at the moment to a more holistic view of what they’re likely to want at any given time. To help learn about you, there’s Open Graph. Embedded through diverse partnerships, the idea is to surface what you’re doing and what you care about, and help you discover things via your friends’ activities. Facebook’s Director of Engineering, Mike Vernal, says building mobile social apps connected to Facebook in such ways is the next wave of big innovation. Expect to see that fostered in 2013. The Facebook site experience is always evolving. Some users like that about Facebook, others can’t wait to complain about it…on Facebook. The Facebook focal point, the News Feed, is not sacred and is seeing plenty of experimentation with the insertion of modules. From upcoming concerts, events, suggested Pages you might like, to aggregated “most shared” content from social reader apps, plenty could start popping up between those pictures of what your friends had for lunch.  As for which friends’ lunches you see, that’s a function of the mythic EdgeRank…which is also tinkered with. When Facebook changed it in September, Page admins saw reach go down and the high anxiety set in quickly. Engagement, however, held steady. The adjustment was about relevancy over reach. (And oh yeah, reach was something that could be charged for). Facebook wants users to see what they’re most likely to like, based on past usage and interactions. Adding to the “cream must rise to the top” philosophy, they’re now even trying out ordering post comments based on the engagement the comments get. Boy, it’s getting competitive out there for a social engager. Facebook has to make $$$. To do that, they must offer attractive vehicles to marketers. There are a myriad of ad units. But a key Facebook marketing concept is the Sponsored Story. It’s key because it encourages content that’s good, relevant, and performs well organically. If it is, marketing dollars can amplify it and extend its reach. Brands can expect the rollout of a search product and an ad network. That’s a big deal. It takes, as Open Graph does, the power of Facebook’s user data and carries it beyond the Facebook environment into the digital world at large. No one could target like Facebook can, and some analysts think it could double their roughly $5 billion revenue stream. As every potential revenue nook and cranny is explored, there are the users themselves. In addition to Gifts, Facebook thinks users might pay a few bucks to promote their own posts so more of their friends will see them. There’s also word classifieds could be purchased in News Feeds, though they won’t be called classifieds. And that’s where Facebook stands; a wildly popular destination, a part of our culture, with ever increasing functionalities, the biggest of big data, revenue strategies that appeal to marketers without souring the user experience, new challenges as a now public company, ongoing privacy concerns, and innovations that carry Facebook far beyond its own borders. Anyone care to write a “this is the end of Facebook” headline? @mikestilesPhoto via stock.schng

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