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• Split Internet Explorer into Dual-Panes

  - by Asian Angel

  If you have a wide screen monitor then you may want to make better use of Internet Explorer’s browser window area. Now you can split the browser window into dual-panes as needed with the IE Split browser plugin. Note: Requires .NET Framework 2.0 or higher (link provided below). IE Split in Action If you are using an older version of this software here is something to keep in mind before upgrading to the 2.0 release. Once you have installed IE Split you will notice a new toolbar added to your browser. As seen here, you can condense it down tightly and access it using the drop-down bar. A closer look at the drop-down bar. Notice the address bar…this will be for the left pane when you split the browser window. Here is our browser split into dual-panes. There are two address bars and two tab/title bars each corresponding to their appropriate pane. It may look slightly backwards at first but is not hard to get used to. A better view of the left pane with the IE Split navigation & title bars showing. Note: The title bar can be hidden if desired. And the right pane. You can also have multiple “split” tabs open if needed. There is nothing quite like getting double the value for the same amount of space. When you no longer need dual-panes open just click on the “x” to close IE Split down. All back to normal again. Conclusion While might not be for everyone this can still be useful for those who need side-by-side access to websites without using multiple separate windows. Links Download IE-Split Download the Microsoft .NET Framework 4 (Standalone Installer) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Set Up Multi-Pane Viewing in FirefoxWhy Can’t I Turn the Details/Preview Panes On or Off in Windows Vista Explorer?Split a text file in half (or any percentage) on Ubuntu LinuxMysticgeek Blog: A Look at Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 on Windows XPMake Ctrl+Tab in Internet Explorer 7 Use Most Recent Order TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 Filevo is a Cool File Hosting & Sharing Site Get a free copy of WinUtilities Pro 2010 World Cup Schedule Boot Snooze – Reboot and then Standby or Hibernate Customize Everything Related to Dates, Times, Currency and Measurement in Windows 7 Google Earth replacement Icon (Icons we like)

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• Missing Indexes DMV Report, 3 billion Impact!

  - by Tara Kizer

  We’ve been having some major performance issues with one of the applications that I support.  The database is on SQL Server 2005 and is about 150GB in size.  We’ve identified a couple of issues already on the database side.  The first issue is that some query (or maybe several queries) is getting a bad execution plan at some point in time during the day.  When it occurs, database performance comes to a grinding halt.  We know it’s a bad execution plan as running DBCC FREEPROCCACHE immediately resolves the problem system-wide.  As we have not yet identified the problematic query, we’ve put a temporary solution in place that frees the procedure cache on an hourly basis via a SQL Agent job.  This is not ideal, but it is getting us through the day without a major problem.  We are actively working on identifying the problematic query and hope to disable the SQL Agent job soon. Earlier this week, we had a major slowdown for one of the processes of this application.  I was unable to find any database performance issues, but I continued to investigate it.  One of things that I typically do when investigating database performance issues is run the “Missing Indexes DMV Report” (that’s what I call it at least).  When analyzing the output of that report, I immediately dismiss anything under 1 million “Impact” as I want to target the “low-hanging fruit” initially.  When I ran the report earlier this week, I was shocked to find a suggested index with an impact of over 3 billion! Do I win a prize for the highest impact?  Has anyone seen a value higher than mine?  My exact value was 3154284120.67765. The performance issue from earlier this week ended up being an application problem, but it also brought to light a much needed index.  I had previously seen this index come up in that report but always with a much lower impact.  I had never considered it as the index’s selectivity is very low.  It’s a composite index with three columns.  The first column is not selective, the first two columns are not selective, and the three columns together are not selective.  In fact, no matter how I order it, the index will not be selective at all.  I briefly discussed this with Kimberly Tripp, and she said that this was okay for covering indexes.  Selectivity is irrelevant for a covering index.  She indicated that she’s even created indexes with gender as the first column in the index.  I’ve got lots to learn still!

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• Is there a better term than "smoothness" or "granularity" to describe this language feature?

  - by Chris

  One of the best things about programming is the abundance of different languages. There are general purpose languages like C++ and Java, as well as little languages like XSLT and AWK. When comparing languages, people often use things like speed, power, expressiveness, and portability as the important distinguishing features. There is one characteristic of languages I consider to be important that, so far, I haven't heard [or been able to come up with] a good term for: how well a language scales from writing tiny programs to writing huge programs. Some languages make it easy and painless to write programs that only require a few lines of code, e.g. task automation. But those languages often don't have enough power to solve large problems, e.g. GUI programming. Conversely, languages that are powerful enough for big problems often require far too much overhead for small problems. This characteristic is important because problems that look small at first frequently grow in scope in unexpected ways. If a programmer chooses a language appropriate only for small tasks, scope changes can require rewriting code from scratch in a new language. And if the programmer chooses a language with lots of overhead and friction to solve a problem that stays small, it will be harder for other people to use and understand than necessary. Rewriting code that works fine is the single most wasteful thing a programmer can do with their time, but using a bazooka to kill a mosquito instead of a flyswatter isn't good either. Here are some of the ways this characteristic presents itself. Can be used interactively - there is some environment where programmers can enter commands one by one Requires no more than one file - neither project files nor makefiles are required for running in batch mode Can easily split code across multiple files - files can refeence each other, or there is some support for modules Has good support for data structures - supports structures like arrays, lists, and especially classes Supports a wide variety of features - features like networking, serialization, XML, and database connectivity are supported by standard libraries Here's my take on how C#, Python, and shell scripting measure up. Python scores highest. Feature C# Python shell scripting --------------- --------- --------- --------------- Interactive poor strong strong One file poor strong strong Multiple files strong strong moderate Data structures strong strong poor Features strong strong strong Is there a term that captures this idea? If not, what term should I use? Here are some candidates. Scalability - already used to decribe language performance, so it's not a good idea to overload it in the context of language syntax Granularity - expresses the idea of being good just for big tasks versus being good for big and small tasks, but doesn't express anything about data structures Smoothness - expresses the idea of low friction, but doesn't express anything about strength of data structures or features Note: Some of these properties are more correctly described as belonging to a compiler or IDE than the language itself. Please consider these tools collectively as the language environment. My question is about how easy or difficult languages are to use, which depends on the environment as well as the language.

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• Smarter Ways to Unlock Your Unused Contingency Budgets

  - by Melissa Centurio Lopes

  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-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Cash flow is becoming increasingly important in the current economy; senior executives are looking for smarter ways of unlocking unused funds for new or ongoing capital expenditure projects. With project contingency budgets on average equaling 10 percent of overall costs, are you confident that you can release this cash without risking existing investments or the health of your overall project portfolio? This is the central question posed in a new report from the EPPM board, Hedging Your Bets? Optimizing Investment Opportunities for Great Cash Flow. The board is Oracle’s international steering committee, which brings together senior figures from leading organizations to discuss the critical role of enterprise project portfolio management (EPPM). C-Level Visibility Will Unlock Funds In addition to exploring how unlocking your contingency funds enables you to augment your cash flow (without resorting to expensive borrowing), the report offers a number of suggestions on how this can be done in a risk-free way, including Building an effective governance framework that shows the demonstrable value of every project within the portfolio Undertaking contingency planning risk assessments that give you complete portfolio wide visibility into all risk factors Establishing executive ownership of the portfolio to promote a more realistic appreciation of the risk levels inherent in the portfolio Creating a chief risk officer role that can review consolidated contingencies and risks so they are not considered in isolation The overriding message behind the report—and the work carried out by the EPPM board—is the need for increased C-level visibility across the entire enterprise project portfolio to enable better business decisions. Read the complete report in English, Chinese, German, or French. Read more in the October Edition of the quarterly Information InDepth EPPM Newsletter

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• PCF shadow shader math causing artifacts

  - by user2971069

  For a while now I used PCSS for my shadow technique of choice until I discovered a type of percentage closer filtering. This method creates really smooth shadows and with hopes of improving performance, with only a fraction of texture samples, I tried to implement PCF into my shader. This is the relevant code: float c0, c1, c2, c3; float f = blurFactor; float2 coord = ProjectedTexCoords; if (receiverDistance - tex2D(lightSampler, coord + float2(0, 0)).x > 0.0007) c0 = 1; if (receiverDistance - tex2D(lightSampler, coord + float2(f, 0)).x > 0.0007) c1 = 1; if (receiverDistance - tex2D(lightSampler, coord + float2(0, f)).x > 0.0007) c2 = 1; if (receiverDistance - tex2D(lightSampler, coord + float2(f, f)).x > 0.0007) c3 = 1; coord = (coord % f) / f; return 1 - (c0 * (1 - coord.x) * (1 - coord.y) + c1 * coord.x * (1 - coord.y) + c2 * (1 - coord.x) * coord.y + c3 * coord.x * coord.y); This is a very basic implementation. blurFactor is initialized with 1 / LightTextureSize. So the if statements fetch the occlusion values for the four adjacent texels. I now want to weight each value based on the actual position of the texture coordinate. If it's near the bottom-right pixel, that occlusion value should be preferred. The weighting itself is done with a simple bilinear interpolation function, however this function takes a 2d vector in the range [0..1] so I have to convert my texture coordinate to get the distance from my first pixel to the second one in range [0..1]. For that I used the mod operator to get it into [0..f] range and then divided by f. This code makes sense to me, and for specific blurFactors it works, producing really smooth one pixel wide shadows, but not for all blurFactors. Initially blurFactor is (1 / LightTextureSize) to sample the 4 adjacent texels. I now want to increase the blurFactor by factor x to get a smooth interpolation across maybe 4 or so pixels. But that is when weird artifacts show up. Here is an image: Using a 1x on blurFactor produces a good result, 0.5 is as expected not so smooth. 2x however doesn't work at all. I found that only a factor of 1/2^n produces an good result, every other factor produces artifacts. I'm pretty sure the error lies here: coord = (coord % f) / f; Maybe the modulo is not calculated correctly? I have no idea how to fix that. Is it even possible for pixel that are further than 1 pixel away?

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• Introducing Oracle Retail Mobile Point-of-Service

  - by user801960

  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:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Oracle recently announced the introduction of Oracle Retail Mobile Point-of-Service, a mobile extension to the Oracle Retail Point-of-Service (POS) used by many retailers internationally. Oracle Retail Mobile POS offers wide ranging cost and efficiency benefits by allowing staff resource to be used more effectively whilst also reducing spend associated with fixed POS solutions. For retailers utilising Oracle Retail Stores Solutions, additional benefits can be realised. Oracle Retail Mobile POS works with these solutions to allow store personnel to check in-store inventory, access product information and specifications, and perform tasks such as the printing or emailing of receipts and the activation of gift cards.  As Oracle Retail Mobile POS is an extension of Oracle Retail Point-of-Service, retailers can benefit from seamless integration with existing systems, simple upgrade procedures and seamless delivery across the business. However, the solution’s scalable and flexible architecture also supports multiple mobile operators and systems, so retailers are not locked into particular vendors. As well as being popular with retailers, Mobile POS has also proved to be well liked by consumers as it facilitates improved customer service levels. Retail staff are able to spend more time with consumers on the shop floor, access requested inventory information, and perform tasks that would traditionally have needed to be completed at a fixed cash register. Additional information can be accessed on Oracle Retail Point-of-Service or read the press announcement Oracle Introduces Mobile Point-of-Service for Retailers. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE

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• Oracle WebCenter: Composite Applications & Mash-Ups

  - by kellsey.ruppel(at)oracle.com

  We’ve talked in previous weeks about the key goals of the new release of WebCenter are providing a Modern User Experience, unparalleled Application Integration, converging all the best of the existing portal platforms into WebCenter and delivering a Common User Experience Architecture.  We’ve provided an overview of Oracle WebCenter and discussed some of the other key goals in previous weeks, and this week, we’ll focus on how with the new release of Oracle WebCenter you can create composite applications and mashups.We recently talked with Sachin Agarwal, Director of Product Management of Enterprise 2.0 at Oracle around the topic of Composite Applications and Mashups. Oracle WebCenter provides a rich set of tools and capabilities for pulling in content, applications and collaboration functionality from various different sources and weaving them together into what we call Mashups. Mashups that also consists of transactional applications from multiple sources are specifically called Composite Applications. With the latest release of Oracle WebCenter one can develop highly productive tasked based interfaces that aggregate a related set of applications that are part of a business process and provide in context collaboration tools so that users don’t have to navigate away to different tabs to achieve these tasks. For instance, a call center representative (CSR), not only needs to be able to pull customer information from a CRM application like Siebel, but also related information from Oracle E-Business Suite about whether a specific order has shipped. The CSR will be far more efficient if he or she does not have to open different tabs to login into multiple applications while the customer is waiting, but can access all this information in one mashup.Oracle WebCenter Suite provides a comprehensive set of tooling that enables a business user to quickly aggregate together a mashup and wire-in different backend applications to create a custom dashboard. Not only does Oracle WebCenter supports a wide set of standards (WSRP 1.0, 2.0, JSR 168, JSR 286) that allow portlets  from other applications to be surfaced within WebCenter, but it also provides tools to bring in other web applications such as .Net Applications  as well as SharePoint webparts. The new Business Mash-up editor allows business users to take any Oracle Application or 3rd party application and wire the backend data sources or APIs to a rich set of visualizations and reuse them in mashups.  Moreover, Business users can customize or personalize any page using Oracle WebCenter Composer’s on-the-fly visual page editing features. Users access and select different resource components available in Oracle WebCenter’s Business Dictionary in order to add new content to the page. The Business Dictionary provides a role-based view of available components or resources, and these components can include information from a variety of enterprise resources such as enterprise applications, managed content, rich media, business processes, or business intelligence systems. Together, Oracle WebCenter’s Composer and Business Dictionary give users access to a powerful, yet easy to use, set of tools to personalize and extend their Oracle WebCenter portals and applications without involving IT.Keep checking back this week as we share more information on how you can easily create Commposite Applications and Mashups with Oracle WebCenter .Technorati Tags: UXP, collaboration, enterprise 2.0, modern user experience, oracle, portals, webcenter, applications, mashups, composite applications

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• Oracle WebCenter: Composite Applications & Mash-Ups

  - by kellsey.ruppel(at)oracle.com

  We’ve talked in previous weeks about the key goals of the new release of WebCenter are providing a Modern User Experience, unparalleled Application Integration, converging all the best of the existing portal platforms into WebCenter and delivering a Common User Experience Architecture.  We’ve provided an overview of Oracle WebCenter and discussed some of the other key goals in previous weeks, and this week, we’ll focus on how with the new release of Oracle WebCenter you can create composite applications and mashups.We recently talked with Sachin Agarwal, Director of Product Management of Enterprise 2.0 at Oracle around the topic of Composite Applications and Mashups. Oracle WebCenter provides a rich set of tools and capabilities for pulling in content, applications and collaboration functionality from various different sources and weaving them together into what we call Mashups. Mashups that also consists of transactional applications from multiple sources are specifically called Composite Applications. With the latest release of Oracle WebCenter one can develop highly productive tasked based interfaces that aggregate a related set of applications that are part of a business process and provide in context collaboration tools so that users don’t have to navigate away to different tabs to achieve these tasks. For instance, a call center representative (CSR), not only needs to be able to pull customer information from a CRM application like Siebel, but also related information from Oracle E-Business Suite about whether a specific order has shipped. The CSR will be far more efficient if he or she does not have to open different tabs to login into multiple applications while the customer is waiting, but can access all this information in one mashup.Oracle WebCenter Suite provides a comprehensive set of tooling that enables a business user to quickly aggregate together a mashup and wire-in different backend applications to create a custom dashboard. Not only does Oracle WebCenter supports a wide set of standards (WSRP 1.0, 2.0, JSR 168, JSR 286) that allow portlets  from other applications to be surfaced within WebCenter, but it also provides tools to bring in other web applications such as .Net Applications  as well as SharePoint webparts. The new Business Mash-up editor allows business users to take any Oracle Application or 3rd party application and wire the backend data sources or APIs to a rich set of visualizations and reuse them in mashups.  Moreover, Business users can customize or personalize any page using Oracle WebCenter Composer’s on-the-fly visual page editing features. Users access and select different resource components available in Oracle WebCenter’s Business Dictionary in order to add new content to the page. The Business Dictionary provides a role-based view of available components or resources, and these components can include information from a variety of enterprise resources such as enterprise applications, managed content, rich media, business processes, or business intelligence systems. Together, Oracle WebCenter’s Composer and Business Dictionary give users access to a powerful, yet easy to use, set of tools to personalize and extend their Oracle WebCenter portals and applications without involving IT.Keep checking back this week as we share more information on how you can easily create Commposite Applications and Mashups with Oracle WebCenter .Technorati Tags: UXP, collaboration, enterprise 2.0, modern user experience, oracle, portals, webcenter, applications, mashups, composite applications

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• Oracle WebCenter: Composite Applications & Mash-Ups

  - by kellsey.ruppel(at)oracle.com

  We’ve talked in previous weeks about the key goals of the new release of WebCenter are providing a Modern User Experience, unparalleled Application Integration, converging all the best of the existing portal platforms into WebCenter and delivering a Common User Experience Architecture.  We’ve provided an overview of Oracle WebCenter and discussed some of the other key goals in previous weeks, and this week, we’ll focus on how with the new release of Oracle WebCenter you can create composite applications and mashups.We recently talked with Sachin Agarwal, Director of Product Management of Enterprise 2.0 at Oracle around the topic of Composite Applications and Mashups. Oracle WebCenter provides a rich set of tools and capabilities for pulling in content, applications and collaboration functionality from various different sources and weaving them together into what we call Mashups. Mashups that also consists of transactional applications from multiple sources are specifically called Composite Applications. With the latest release of Oracle WebCenter one can develop highly productive tasked based interfaces that aggregate a related set of applications that are part of a business process and provide in context collaboration tools so that users don’t have to navigate away to different tabs to achieve these tasks. For instance, a call center representative (CSR), not only needs to be able to pull customer information from a CRM application like Siebel, but also related information from Oracle E-Business Suite about whether a specific order has shipped. The CSR will be far more efficient if he or she does not have to open different tabs to login into multiple applications while the customer is waiting, but can access all this information in one mashup.Oracle WebCenter Suite provides a comprehensive set of tooling that enables a business user to quickly aggregate together a mashup and wire-in different backend applications to create a custom dashboard. Not only does Oracle WebCenter supports a wide set of standards (WSRP 1.0, 2.0, JSR 168, JSR 286) that allow portlets  from other applications to be surfaced within WebCenter, but it also provides tools to bring in other web applications such as .Net Applications  as well as SharePoint webparts. The new Business Mash-up editor allows business users to take any Oracle Application or 3rd party application and wire the backend data sources or APIs to a rich set of visualizations and reuse them in mashups.  Moreover, Business users can customize or personalize any page using Oracle WebCenter Composer’s on-the-fly visual page editing features. Users access and select different resource components available in Oracle WebCenter’s Business Dictionary in order to add new content to the page. The Business Dictionary provides a role-based view of available components or resources, and these components can include information from a variety of enterprise resources such as enterprise applications, managed content, rich media, business processes, or business intelligence systems. Together, Oracle WebCenter’s Composer and Business Dictionary give users access to a powerful, yet easy to use, set of tools to personalize and extend their Oracle WebCenter portals and applications without involving IT.Keep checking back this week as we share more information on how you can easily create Commposite Applications and Mashups with Oracle WebCenter .Technorati Tags: UXP, collaboration, enterprise 2.0, modern user experience, oracle, portals, webcenter, applications, mashups, composite applications

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• Three Master Data Management Deployment Tips

  - by david.butler(at)oracle.com

  MDM is all about data quality and data governance. We now know that improved data quality raises all operational and analytical boats. But it's not just about deploying data quality tools. It's about deploying data quality tools within and across the IT landscape - from a thousand points of data entry to a single version of the truth. Here are three tips to deploying MDM across your applications and enterprise.   #1: Identify a tactical, high-value business problem where MDM can materially help. §  Support a customer acquisition and retention program with a 'customer' master data solution. §  Accelerate new products and services to market with a 'product' master data solution. §  Reduce supplier exceptions or support spend control initiatives with a 'supplier' master data solution. §  Support new store (branch, campus, restaurant, hospital, office, well head) location analysis with a 'site' master data solution. §  Fix long standing Chart of Accounts and Cost Center problems with a 'financial' master data solution. §  Support M&A activity, application upgrades, an SOA initiative, a cloud computing program, or a new business intelligence deployment by implementing a mix of master data solutions.   #2: Incrementally expand to a full information architecture. Quite often, the measurable return on interest from tactical MDM initiatives will fund future deployments. Over time, the MDM solution expands into its full architecture to cover the entire IT landscape. Operations and analytics are united, IT flexibility is restored, and sustainable competitive advantage is achieved.   #3: Bring business into every MDM deployment. To be successful, MDM must work hand in hand with data governance. In fact, Oracle MDM incorporates data governance tools for business users. IT can insure data quality, but only after the business side has defined what quality means. The business establishes the rules for governing the master data, and then IT enforces the rules via the MDM applications. Without this business/IT collaboration, MDM initiatives seldom achieve their full potential.   It is not very often that a technology comes along that can measurably assist organizations across a wide variety of top IT initiatives. Reducing costs, increasing flexibility, getting more out of existing assets, and aligning business and IT are not easy tasks for any CIO. But with MDM, success is achievable. IT can regain its place as a center for innovation.   For more information on this topic, take a look at my article Master Data Management Deployment Tips in the Opinion Section of Oracle's Profit Online magazine.

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• One Week To Go: OTN Architect Day: Cloud Computing

  - by Bob Rhubart

  One week remains until OTN Architect Day: Cloud Computing kicks of at the spectacular Oracle HQ campus in Redwood Shores, CA. The event is free, and there is still time to register. When: Tuesday July 9, 2013 8:30am - 12:30pm Where: Oracle Conference Center350 Oracle Pkwy Redwood City, CA 94065 Register now. It's free! Here's the latest update to the event agenda: 8:30am - 9:00am Registration and Continental Breakfast 9:00am - 9:45am Keynote 21st Century IT | Dr. James Baty VP, Global Enterprise Architecture Program, Oracle Imagine a time long, long ago. A time when servers were certified and dedicated to specific applications, when anything posted on an enterprise web site was from restricted, approved channels, and when we tried to limit the growth of 'dirty' data and storage. Today, applications are services running in the muti-tenant hybrid cloud. Companies beg their customers to tweet them, friend them, and publicly rate their products. And constantly analyzing a deluge of Internet, social and sensor data is the key to creating the next super-successful product, or capturing an evil terrorist. The old IT architecture was planned, dedicated, stable, controlled, with separate and well-defined roles. The new architecture is shared, dynamic, continuous, XaaS, DevOps. This keynote session describes the challenges and opportunities that the new business / IT paradigms present to the IT architecture and architects. 9:45am - 10:30am Technical Session Oracle Cloud: A Case Study in Building a Cloud | Anbu Krishnaswami Enterprise Architect, Oracle Building a Cloud can be challenging thanks to the complex requirements unique to Cloud computing and the massive scale typically associated with Cloud. Cloud providers can take an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) approach and build a cloud on virtualized commodity hardware, or they can take the Platform as a Service (PaaS) path, a service-oriented approach based on pre-configured, integrated, engineered systems. This presentation uses the Oracle Cloud itself as a case study in the use of engineered systems, demonstrating how the technical design of engineered systems is leveraged for building PaaS and SaaS Cloud services and a Cloud management infrastructure. The presentation will also explore the principles, patterns, best practices, and architecture views provided in Oracle's Cloud reference architecture. 10:30 am -10:45 am Break 10:45am-11:30am Technical Session Database as a Service | Markus Michalewicz Senior Principal Product Manager Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) New applications are now commonly built in a Cloud model, where the database is consumed as a service, and many established business processes are beginning to migrate to database as a service (DBaaS). This adoption of DBaaS is made possible by the availability of new capabilities in the database that enable resource pooling, dynamic resource management, model-based provisioning, metered use, and effective quality-of-service controls. This session will examine the catalog of database services at a large commercial bank to understand how these capabilities are enabling DBaaS for a wide range of needs within the enterprise. 11:30 am - 12:00 pm Panel Q&A Dr. James Baty, Anbu Krishnaswami, and Markus Michalewicz respond to audience questions. Registration is free, but seating is limited, so register now.

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• One Week To Go: OTN Architect Day: Cloud Computing

  - by Bob Rhubart

  One week remains until OTN Architect Day: Cloud Computing kicks of at the spectacular Oracle HQ campus in Redwood Shores, CA. The event is free, and there is still time to register. When: Tuesday July 9, 2013 8:30am - 12:30pm Where: Oracle Conference Center350 Oracle Pkwy Redwood City, CA 94065 Register now. It's free! Here's the latest update to the event agenda: 8:30am - 9:00am Registration and Continental Breakfast 9:00am - 9:45am Keynote 21st Century IT | Dr. James Baty VP, Global Enterprise Architecture Program, Oracle Imagine a time long, long ago. A time when servers were certified and dedicated to specific applications, when anything posted on an enterprise web site was from restricted, approved channels, and when we tried to limit the growth of 'dirty' data and storage. Today, applications are services running in the muti-tenant hybrid cloud. Companies beg their customers to tweet them, friend them, and publicly rate their products. And constantly analyzing a deluge of Internet, social and sensor data is the key to creating the next super-successful product, or capturing an evil terrorist. The old IT architecture was planned, dedicated, stable, controlled, with separate and well-defined roles. The new architecture is shared, dynamic, continuous, XaaS, DevOps. This keynote session describes the challenges and opportunities that the new business / IT paradigms present to the IT architecture and architects. 9:45am - 10:30am Technical Session Oracle Cloud: A Case Study in Building a Cloud | Anbu Krishnaswami Enterprise Architect, Oracle Building a Cloud can be challenging thanks to the complex requirements unique to Cloud computing and the massive scale typically associated with Cloud. Cloud providers can take an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) approach and build a cloud on virtualized commodity hardware, or they can take the Platform as a Service (PaaS) path, a service-oriented approach based on pre-configured, integrated, engineered systems. This presentation uses the Oracle Cloud itself as a case study in the use of engineered systems, demonstrating how the technical design of engineered systems is leveraged for building PaaS and SaaS Cloud services and a Cloud management infrastructure. The presentation will also explore the principles, patterns, best practices, and architecture views provided in Oracle's Cloud reference architecture. 10:30 am -10:45 am Break 10:45am-11:30am Technical Session Database as a Service | Markus Michalewicz Senior Principal Product Manager Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) New applications are now commonly built in a Cloud model, where the database is consumed as a service, and many established business processes are beginning to migrate to database as a service (DBaaS). This adoption of DBaaS is made possible by the availability of new capabilities in the database that enable resource pooling, dynamic resource management, model-based provisioning, metered use, and effective quality-of-service controls. This session will examine the catalog of database services at a large commercial bank to understand how these capabilities are enabling DBaaS for a wide range of needs within the enterprise. 11:30 am - 12:00 pm Panel Q&A Dr. James Baty, Anbu Krishnaswami, and Markus Michalewicz respond to audience questions. Registration is free, but seating is limited, so register now.

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• Get to Know a Candidate (2 of 25): Merlin Miller&ndash;American Third Position Party

  - by Brian Lanham

  DISCLAIMER: This is not a post about “Romney” or “Obama”. This is not a post for whom I am voting. Information sourced for Wikipedia. Meet Merlin Miller of American Third Position Party In addition to being American Third Position Party nominee, Miller is an independent film maker.  He is a graduate of West Point and has commanded two units in the United States Army.  After military service he worked as an industrial engineering manager for Michelin Tire.  He learned about film making by earning an MFA from the University of Southern California. Mr. Miller is on the ballot in: CO, NJ, and TN. In the 2000’s, Miller began taking an increasingly paleoconservative political stance.  He claimed that Hollywood “ surreptitiously seeks to destroy our European-American heritage and our Christian-based traditional values, and replace them with values that debase these traditional values and elevate minorities as paragons of virtue and wisdom....Today’s motion pictures, in concert with other forms of mass media entertainment, are the greatest enemies to the well-being of our progeny and the future of our country.” Miller states that he "doesn't like" interracial marriage; however, he does not support outlawing interracial marriage, either.  Miller has denied being anti-Semitic, instead claiming that he merely opposes "favoritism" granted to Jews in the film industry.  He also opposes illegal immigration and what he refers to as "wide open borders" in the United States. The American Third Position Party (A3P) is a third positionist American political party which promotes white supremacy.  It was officially launched in January 2010 (although in November 2009 it filed papers to get on a ballot in California) partially to channel the right-wing populist resentment engendered by the financial crisis of 2007–2010 and the policies of the Obama administration and defines its principal mission as representing the political interests of white Americans. The party takes a strong stand against immigration and globalization, and strongly supports an anti-interventionist foreign policy. Although the party does not support labor unions, they do strongly support the labor rights of the American working class on a platform of placing American workers first over illegal immigrant workers and banning of overseas corporate relocation of American industry and technology Third Position or Third Alternative refers to a revolutionary nationalist political position that emphasizes its opposition to both communism and capitalism. Advocates of Third Position politics typically present themselves as "beyond left and right", instead claiming to syncretize radical ideas from both ends of the political spectrum Learn more about Merlin Miller and American Third Position Party on Wikipedia.

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• Need help with a complex 3d scene (using Ogre and bullet)

  - by Matthias

  In my setup there is a box with a hole on one side, and a freely movable "stick" (or bar, tube). This stick can be inserted/moved through the hole into the box. This hole is exactly as wide as the diameter of the stick. In reality, when you would now hold the end of the stick in your hand and move the hand left/right or up/down, the other end of the stick, which is inside the box, would move into the opposite direction of your hand movement (because the stick is affixed at the pivot point where it is entering the box through the hole). (I hope you understand what I mean so far.) Now I need to simulate such a setup in a 3d program. I have already successfully developed an Ogre3d framework for this application, including bullet. But what I don't know is how I can implement in my program what I have described above. This application must include two more features: The scene camera is attached to the end of the stick that is inserted into the box. So when the user would move the mouse (to control "his" end of the stick outside the box), then the camera attached to the stick would move in the opposite direction, as described above. The stick has some length, and the user can push it further into the box, or pull it closer to him again. That means of course that the max. radius on which the end of the stick inside the box can move depends on how far the stick is pushed into the box. Thus, the more the stick is pushed into the box, the larger the max. radius of this end of the stick with the camera will be. I understand this is maybe quite a complex thing, so I don't expect any real source code here. I already have the Ogre and bullet part as said up and running, as well as a camera attached to the stick. This works fine. What I don't know though is how I can simulate the setup described above. Especially the requirement that the stick is affixed at the position of the hole on the box, where it is inserted into the box. Any ideas how I could approach to implement the described setup?

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• Oracle JDeveloper 11gR2 Cookbook book review

  - by Chris Muir

  I recently received a free copy of Oracle JDeveloper 11gR2 Cookbook published by Packt Publishing for review. Readers of technical cookbooks would know this genre of text includes problems that developers will hit and the prescribed solutions, in this case for Oracle's Application Development Framework (ADF).  Books like this excel themselves on excellent coverage, a logical progress of solutions through out the book, and providing a readable narrative around the numerous steps and code. This book progresses well through ADF application assembly, ADF Business Components, the view layer, security, deployment and tuning.  Each recipe had a clear introduction and I especially enjoyed the "There's more" follow up sections for some recipes that leads the reader onto related ideas and issues the reader really needs to be aware of. Also worthy of comment having worked with ADF for over 5 years, there certainly was recipes and solutions I hadn't encountered before, this book gets bonus points for that. As a reviewer what negatives can I give this text? The book has cast it's net too wide by trying to cover "everything from design and construction, to deployment, testing, debugging and optimization."  ADF is such a large and sophistication technology, this book with 100 recipes barely scrapes the surface.  Don't expect all your ADF problems to be solved here. In turn there is inconsistency in the level of problems and solutions.  I felt at the beginning the book was pitching itself at advanced problems to solve (that's great for me), but then it introduces topics like building a static View Object or train.  These topics in my opinion are fairly simple and are covered by the Oracle documentation just as well, they shouldn't have been included here.  In conclusion, ADF beginners will find this book worthwhile as it will open your eyes to the wider problems and solutions required for ADF, and experts for just the fact they can point junior programmers at the book for certain problems and say "get on with it". Is there scope for more ADF tombs like this?  Yes!  I'd love to see a cookbook specializing on ADF Business Components (hint hint to budding authors).

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• Becoming an Expert MySQL DBA Across Five Continents

  - by Antoinette O'Sullivan

  You can take Oracle's MySQL Database Administrator training on five contents. In this 5-day, live, instructor-led course, you learn to install and optimize the MySQL Server, set up replication and security, perform database backups and performance tuning, and protect MySQL databases. Below is a selection of the in-class events already on the schedule for the MySQL for Database Administrators course. AFRICA  Location  Date  Delivery Language  Nairobi, Kenya  22 July 2013  English  Johannesburg, South Africa  9 December 2013  English AMERICA  Location  Date  Delivery Language  Belmont, California, United States  22 July 2013  English ASIA  Location  Date  Delivery Language  Dehradun, India  11 July 2013  English  Grogol - Jakarta Barat, Indonesia  16 September 2013  English  Makati City, Philippines  5 August 2013  English  Pasig City, Philippines  12 August 2013  English  Istanbul, Turkey  12 August 2013  Turkish AUSTRALIA and OCEANIA  Location  Date  Delivery Language  Sydney, Australia  15 July 2013  English  Auckland, New Zealand  5 August 2013  English  Wellington, New Zealand  15 July 2013  English EUROPE  Location  Date  Delivery Language  London, England  9 September 2013  English  Aix-en-Provence, France  2 December 2013  French  Bordeaux Merignac, France  2 December 2013  French  Puteaux, France  16 September 2013  French  Dresden, Germany  26 August 2013  German  Hamburg, Germany  16 November 2013  German  Munich, Germany  19 August 2013  German  Munster, Germany  9 September 2013  German  Budapest, Hungary  4 November 2013  Hungarian  Belfast, Ireland  16 December 2013  English  Milan, Italy  7 October 2013  Italian  Rome, Italy  16 September 2013  Italian  Utrecht, Netherlands  16 September 2013  English  Warsaw, Poland 5 August 2013  Polish   Lisbon, Portugal  16 September 2013 European Portugese   Barcelona, Spain 30 October 2013  Spanish   Madrid, Spain 4 November 2013  Spanish   Bern, Switzerland  27 November 2013  German  Zurich, Switzerland  27 November 2013  German You can also take this course from your own desk as a live-virtual class, choosing from a wide selection of events already on the schedule suiting different timezones. To register for this course or to learn more about the authentic MySQL curriculum, go to http://oracle.com/education/mysql.

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• TechEd 2012: Recap

  - by Tim Murphy

  TechEd this week was a great experience and I wanted to wrap it up with a summary post. First let me say a thank you to John and Jeff from GWB for supplying power, connectivity and a place to work in between sessions.  The blogging hub was a great experience in itself.  Getting to talk with other bloggers and other conference goers turned into a series of interesting conversations.  And where else can you almost end up in the day 1 highlights video? The sessions at TechEd were a mixed bag of value.  The Keynotes rocked, both figuratively and literally and most of the sessions that I want to were a good experience and had gems of information to take away.  There were a few exceptions though.  A couple of the sessions turned out to be sales jobs.  Nothing turns me off more than that (there will be some really honest comments on those surveys). TechEd re-enforced for me that much of the value is not in the sessions, but in the networking opportunities. I got to talk with several Microsoft team members and MVPs as well as some of the vendor representative for companies like Inrule and ComponentOne. Also got to expand both my local and extended community with discussions at meal times and waiting for sessions to start. I think this is one of the benefits that a lot of people don’t take advantage of in these conferences that should be a bigger part of the advertising. Exposure to a wide variety of topics, many of which I had not been able to make time for up to this point was envigorating.  The list of topic includes: Office 365, Windows Server 2012, Windows 8, Metro, Azure.  I can’t wait to get back to work and dig into these subjects in more depth. The one complaint that I had and heard from other attendees was that there weren’t enough sessions that were actually about development.  I realize that TechEd started as an event for IT Pros, but there needs to be more value for the Devs.  It all went by too fast and it will take a couple more days to digest the material, but the batteries are and I’m ready to leverage what I’ve learned.  Hopefully we will do it again next year. del.icio.us Tags: TechEd,TechEd 2012

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• 3 Reasons You Need To Know Something About Every Technology

  - by Tim Murphy

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

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• Oracle Partner Architects Training

  - by mseika

  Dear Oracle Partner, There is a lot more to Oracle technology than meets the eye. Sure, you already belong to a small circle of our most experienced and committed partners. But are you making the best use possible of our technology solutions? Put it to the test.  Join the “Oracle Partner Architects Training”. It is aimed at providing your experts, architects and consultants with in-depth architectural knowledge about Oracle technology. Here is your chance to learn from the best. Seasoned speakers, exclusive content and no product marketing. Oracle technology beyond the obvious. Choose from any of the 40 recorded training sessions. Topics include:  • Security• Service integration • Database and options• Data integration • BI and applications• Applications and infrastructure• Hardware and software combinations The market and Oracle value specialized partners More information about specialization can be found on opn.oracle.com. Click through to OPN Program/Specialize “What’s in it for us?” Quite simply: the opportunity to gain the differentiation and competitive edge you need to stand out in the marketplace. • Differentiate your company through expertise in leading Oracle IT solutions;• Get your experts, architects and consultants up to speed on specialized services and solutions;• Make our customers’ shortlists. They are looking for value-added solutions for their business.   Recordings All sessions are recorded. After registering for a session in oraevents, you will receive the info to access the webex recording. Your timing, your tempo.  Registration and more information Visit architects.oraevents.eu to sign up for the recorded sessions. NOTE: Looking to get your consultants Oracle certified? One more reason to join the Oracle Partner Architects Training. It is the fast track to getting their expertise validated with an Oracle certificate. Training schedule  Choose from any of the 40 recorded training sessions: SECURITY THE PRACTICAL APPROACH •  Identity governance• Access management• Data privacy and protection• End-to-end security, layers of exposures•  Identity & access management, why and where to start?• Data security, how? SERVICE INTEGRATION A NEW ROADTO ENTERPRISE-WIDE SERVICE INTEGRATION • Oracle RUEI: maximize business value by insight into real end-user experiences•  Governance challenges in the services landscape•  Creating an agile enterprise (by Jeff Davies)• Oracle’s approach to SOA (by Jeff Davies) - guiding and accelerating SOA success• Technical case study – the SOA challenge• Oracle’s unified business process management suite 11g (incl. demo) DATABASE DATABASE AND OPTIONS, GOINGWIDE •  Understanding service level agreements for databases• Database lifecycle management• Data centric information lifecycle management DATA INTEGRATION  DIS FOR ARCHITECTS • Data integration solutions: an overview• ODI and goldengate• Data quality

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• OData &ndash; The easiest service I can create

  - by Jon Dalberg

  I wanted to create an OData service with the least amount of code so I fired up Visual Studio and got cracking. I decided to serve up a list of naughty words and make them read-only. Create a new web project. I created an empty MVC 2 application but MVC is not required for OData. Add a new WCF Data Service to the project. I named mine NastyWords.svc since I’m serving up a list of nasty words. Add a class to expose via the service: NastyWord 1: [DataServiceKey("Word")] 2: public class NastyWord 3: { 4: public string Word { get; set; } 5: }   I need to be able to uniquely identify instances of NastyWords for the DataService so I used the DataServiceKey attribute with the “Word” property as the key. I could have added an “ID” property which would have uniquely identified them and would then not need the “DataServiceKey” attribute because the DataService would apply some reflection and heuristics to guess at which property would be the unique identifier. However, the words themselves are unique so adding an “ID” property would be redundantly repetitive. Then I created a data source to expose my NastyWord objects to the service. This is just a simple class with IQueryable<T> properties exposing the entities for my service: 1: public class NastyWordsDataSource 2: { 3: private static IList<NastyWord> words = new List<NastyWord> 4: { 5: new NastyWord{ Word="crap"}, 6: new NastyWord{ Word="darn"}, 7: new NastyWord{ Word="hell"}, 8: new NastyWord{ Word="shucks"} 9: }; 10:   11: public NastyWordsDataSource() 12: { 13: NastyWords = words.AsQueryable(); 14: } 15:   16: public IQueryable<NastyWord> NastyWords { get; private set; } 17: }   Now I can go to the NastyWords.svc class and tell it which data source to use and which entities to expose: 1: public class NastyWords : DataService<NastyWordsDataSource> 2: { 3: // This method is called only once to initialize service-wide policies. 4: public static void InitializeService(DataServiceConfiguration config) 5: { 6: config.SetEntitySetAccessRule("*", EntitySetRights.AllRead); 7: config.DataServiceBehavior.MaxProtocolVersion = DataServiceProtocolVersion.V2; 8: } 9: }   Compile and browse to my NastWords.svc and weep with joy Now I can query my service just like any other OData service. Next time, I’ll modify this service to allow updates to sent so I can build up my list of nasty words. Enjoy!

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• BI&EPM in Focus November 2013

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

  Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE IBM is Embracing Oracle Exalytics: The Velocity of Thought and Action (link) Customers Ambulance Victoria, Australia, uses analytics and modelling to serve the expanding needs of a growing population (link) Cablemás Selects Oracle to Speed Customer Data Insights (link) National Instruments Introduces New Business Intelligence Solutions—Runs Reports up to 30x Faster, and Expands Customer Insight (link) FLSmidth Ensures Precise, Transparent Financial Reporting at All Business Levels, Reduces Financial Consolidation Time by up to 40% (link) Enterprise Performance Management Partner Edgewater Ranzal Webinar Series Mitigate Your Biggest EPM Project Risk - Thursday, 21st November - Register here:  4.00 GMT Capital Planning in the Energy Industry - Tuesday, 26th November - Register here:  4.00 GMT Driving Value in the Retail Industry Using Hyperion Strategic Finance (HSF)  - Tuesday, 10th December - Register here:  7.00 GMT Dec 11, Look Smarter Selling Hyperion Profitability & Cost Management (HPCM) Webcast (link) EPM System Infrastructure Tips & Tricks Support: November EPM Patch Set Updates released Business Analytics Monthly Index - October 2013 Hyperion Smart View Assistance with OBIEE 11.1.1.7 Hyperion Disclosure Management 11.1.2.3.330 PSU 17444967 [Doc ID 1592645.1] Hyperion Financial Close Management (FCM) 11.1.2.3.100 PSU 16989110 [Doc ID 1592644.1] Business  Intelligence BI-Apps Whitepaper: Packaged Analytic Applications: Accelerating Time and Value By Wayne Eckerson (link) BI Apps Blog: A Closer Look at Oracle Price Analytics (link) Blog: Taking Your Business Scorecard Golfing (link) Blog: Practical Uses of Business Scorecards, from Company-Wide to Process Specific (link) Nov 19, Big Data at Work Series: How Delphi Harnesses Big Data to Improve Warranty Response & Customer Satisfaction (link) Rittman Mead Blog: Oracle BI Apps 11.1.1.7.1 – GoldenGate Integration Support: OBIEE Suite Bundle Patches (understand OBIEE naming convention) [Doc ID 1591422.1] Support Blog: Java update alert: Essbase Administration Services (EAS) 11.1.2.3 (link) Support Blog: OBIEE 11.1.1.7.131017 now available (link) /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;}

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• Help with Strategy-game AI

  - by f20k

  Hi, I am developing a strategy-game AI (think: Final Fantasy Tactics), and I am having trouble coming up for the design of the AI. My main problem is determining which is the optimal thing for it to do. First let me describe the priority of what action I would like the AI to take: Kill nearest player unit Fulfill primary directive (kill all player units, kill target unit, survive for x turns) Heal ally unit / cast buffer Now the AI can do the following in its turn: Move - {Attack / Ability / Item} (either attack or ability or item) {Attack / Ability / Item} - Move Move closer (if targets not in range) {Attack / Ability / Item} (if move not available) Notes Abilities have various ranges / effects / costs / effects. Each ai unit has maybe 5-10 abilities to choose from. The AI will prioritize killing over safety unless its directive is to survive for x turns. It also doesn't care about ability cost much. While a player may want to save a big spell for later, the AI will most likely use it asap. Movement is on a (hex) grid num of player units: 3-6 num of ai units: 3-7 or more. Probably max 10. AI and player take turns controlling ONE unit, instead of all at the same time. Platform is Android (if program doesnt respond after some time, there will be a popup saying to Force Quit or Wait - which looks really bad!). Now comes the questions: The best ability to use would obviously be the one that hits the most targets for the most damage. But since each ability has different ranges, I won't know if they are in range without exploring each possible place I can move to. One solution would be to go through each possible places to move to, determine the optimal attack at that location - which gives me a list of optimal moves for each location. Then choose the optimal out of the list and execute it. But this will take a lot of CPU time. Is there a better solution? My current idea is to move as close as possible towards the closest, largest group of people, and determine the optimal attack/ability from there. I think this would be a lot less work for the CPU and still allow for wide-range attacks. Its sub-optimal but the AI will still seem 'smart'. Other notes/questions: Am I over-thinking/over-complicating it? Better solution? I am open to all sorts of suggestions I have taken a look at the spell-casting question, but it doesn't take into account the movement - so perhaps use that algo for each possible move location? The top answer mentioned it wasn't great for area-of-effect and group fights - so maybe requires more tweaking? Please, if you mention a graph/tree, let me know basically how to use it. E.g. Node means ability, level corresponds to damage, then search for the deepest node.

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• Focusing on Mobile @ Oracle OpenWorld

  - by Carlos Chang

  Plenty of exciting trends in the industry today: Cloud, Big Data, Mobile, etc. The first two are amazing of course, but for me, it's mobile, mobile and... MOBILE.   Why? Think back to the mozilla browser (Marc Andreessen's mozilla, not today's mozilla.org), Netscape and the nascent beginnings of the World Wide Web. Amazing times. Companies were just starting to set up their home pages, basic HTML, hyperlinks, images, ooooh, aaaah.  Yahoo! was *the* search engine back then. :-\   Anywhoo, I would pose that mobile today, we are in a similar junction. Sure, there's millions of apps on Apple's App Store and Google Play, but within the enterprise, it's just getting started. I'm talking about going beyond the simple, tactical apps such as calendaring, contacts or directory service lookup. And while mobile first a common mantra, I'm referring to mobile plus which includes and looks upon the whole enterprise holistically and adds new parameters, such as your GPS location, perhaps even your vital signs. (Apple's health kit?)  Everything is going mobile. Everything connected. But with the enterprise - scalability, security, integration, app management, user management, etc. Amazing times ahead. Ok, got that off my mind. Oracle OpenWorld 2014 - Going Mobile!  If you're coming to the big dance, I've highlighted some key mobile sessions below. And if you see me around, and there's a bar within reach, high five me for a beer. I mean, if you read this far, and didn't already jump to the list below, I think you deserve one.   Cheers!  Monday, 9/29/14 at 10:15 AM - General Session: Time for You to Rethink Mobile? Oracle Mobile Strategy and Roadmap Tuesday, 9/30/14 @ 12:00 PM; MW3020 - Develop and Deploy Mobile Applications with Oracle’s Mobile Wednesday, 10/1/2014 @10:15 AM; MW 3022 Introduction to Oracle Mobile Application Framework Wednesday, 10/1/2014 @11:30 AM Accelerate Enterprise Mobility with Oracle Mobile Cloud Service Click here to view the complete Focus on Mobile sessions at this years Oracle OpenWorld 2014, and don't forget to follow @OracleMobile on Twitter. 

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• Traditional POS is Dead

  - by David Dorf

  Traditional POS is dead -- I've heard that one before. Here's an excerpt from Joe Skorupa's blog over at RIS where he relayed ten trends that were presented at NRF. 7. Mobile POS signals death of traditional POS. Shoppers don't love self-checkout, but they prefer it to long queues or dealing with associates. Fixed POS is expensive and bulky. Mobile POS frees floor space for other purposes and converts associates from being cashiers to being sales assistants that provide new levels of customer service and incremental basket sales. In addition to unplugging the POS, new alternatives are starting to take hold - thin client, POS as a service, and replacing POS software with e-commerce platforms. I'll grant that in some situations for some retailers there might be an opportunity to to ditch the traditional POS, but for the majority of retailers that's just not practical. Take it from a guy that had to wake up at 3am after every Thanksgiving to monitor POS systems across the US on Black Friday. If a retailer's website goes down on Black Friday, they will take a significant hit. If a retailer's chain-wide POS system goes down on Black Friday, that retailer will cease to exist. Mobile POS works great for Apple because the majority of purchases are one or two big-ticket items that don't involve cash. There's still a traditional POS in every store to fall back on (its just hidden). Try this at home: Choose your favorite e-commerce site and add an item to the cart while timing how long it takes. Now multiply that by 15 to represent the 15 items you might buy at store like Target. The user interface isn't optimized for bulk purchases, and that's how it should be. The webstore and POS are designed for different purposes. Self-checkout is a great addition to POS and so is mobile checkout. But they add capabilities to POS, not replace it. Centralized architectures, even those based in the cloud, are quite viable as long as there's resiliency in the registers. You cannot assume perfect access to the network, so a POS must always be able to sell regardless of connectivity. Clearly the different selling channels should be sharing common functionality. Things like calculating tax, accepting coupons, and processing electronic payments can be shared, usually through a service-oriented architecture. This lowers costs and providers greater consistency, both of which help retailers. On paper these technologies look really good and we should continue to push boundaries, but I'm not ready to call the patient dead just yet.

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• Why does my ID3DXSprite appear to be incorrectly scaled?

  - by Bjoern

  I am using D3D9 for rendering some simple things (a movie) as the backmost layer, then on top of that some text messages, and now wanted to add some buttons to that. Before adding the buttons everything seemed to have worked fine, and I was using a ID3DXSprite for the text as well (ID3DXFont), now I am loading some graphics for the buttons, but they seem to be scaled to something like 1.2 times their original size. In my test window I centered the graphic, but it being too big it just doesnt fit well, for example the client area is 640x360, the graphic is 440, so I expect 100 pixel on left and right, left side is fine [I took screenshot and "counted" the pixels in photoshop], but on the right there is only about 20 pixels) My rendering code is very simple (I am omitting error checks, et cetera, for brevity) // initially viewport was set to width/height of client area // clear device m_d3dDevice->Clear( 0, NULL, D3DCLEAR_TARGET|D3DCLEAR_STENCIL|D3DCLEAR_ZBUFFER, D3DCOLOR_ARGB(0,0,0,0), 1.0f, 0 ); // begin scene m_d3dDevice->BeginScene(); // render movie surface (just two triangles to which the movie is rendered) m_d3dDevice->SetRenderState(D3DRS_ALPHABLENDENABLE,false); m_d3dDevice->SetSamplerState( 0, D3DSAMP_MAGFILTER, D3DTEXF_LINEAR ); // bilinear filtering m_d3dDevice->SetSamplerState( 0, D3DSAMP_MINFILTER, D3DTEXF_LINEAR ); // bilinear filtering m_d3dDevice->SetTextureStageState( 0, D3DTSS_COLORARG1, D3DTA_TEXTURE ); m_d3dDevice->SetTextureStageState( 0, D3DTSS_COLORARG2, D3DTA_DIFFUSE ); //Ignored m_d3dDevice->SetTextureStageState( 0, D3DTSS_COLOROP, D3DTOP_SELECTARG1 ); m_d3dDevice->SetTexture( 0, m_movieTexture ); m_d3dDevice->SetStreamSource(0, m_displayPlaneVertexBuffer, 0, sizeof(Vertex)); m_d3dDevice->SetFVF(Vertex::FVF_Flags); m_d3dDevice->DrawPrimitive(D3DPT_TRIANGLELIST, 0, 2); // render sprites m_sprite->Begin(D3DXSPRITE_ALPHABLEND | D3DXSPRITE_SORT_TEXTURE | D3DXSPRITE_DO_NOT_ADDREF_TEXTURE); // text drop shadow m_font->DrawText( m_playerSprite, m_currentMessage.c_str(), m_currentMessage.size(), &m_playerFontRectDropShadow, DT_RIGHT|DT_TOP|DT_NOCLIP, m_playerFontColorDropShadow ); // text m_font->DrawText( m_playerSprite, m_currentMessage.c_str(), m_currentMessage.size(), &m_playerFontRect, DT_RIGHT|DT_TOP|DT_NOCLIP, m_playerFontColorMessage ) ); // control object m_sprite->Draw( m_texture, 0, 0, &m_vecPos, 0xFFFFFFFF ); // draws a few objects like this m_sprite->End() // end scene m_d3dDevice->EndScene(); What did I forget to do here? Except for the control objects (play button, pause button etc which are placed on a "panel" which is about 440 pixels wide) everything seems fine, the objects are positioned where I expect them, but just too big. By the way I loaded the images using D3DXCreateTextureFromFileEx (resizing wnidow, and reacting to lost device, etc, works fine too). For experimenting, I added some code to take an identity matrix and scale is down on the x/y axis to 0.75f, which then gave me the expected result for the controls (but also made the text smaller and out of position), but I don't know why I would need to scale anything. My rendering code is so simple, I just wanted to draw my 2D objects 1;1 the size they came from the file... I am really very inexperienced in D3D, so the answer might be very simple...

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