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• SOA Community Newsletter June 2012

  - by JuergenKress

  Dear SOA partner community member Happy New fiscal Year FY13 - thanks for the FY12 middleware business! Our SOA & BPM Partner Community continued to grow to almost 4000 members. Additional we launched the WebLogic Partner Community which grew very fast to 800+ members! To continue our joint successful business in the new fiscal year our Top priorities FY13 are: Become trained:the next opportunity are the summer camps in Lisbon & Munich or our on-demand training SOA & BPM and see our detailed training calendar below. Run your marketing & sales campaign: sales kits, marketing kits, solution catalog add your services to oracle.com, add your events to oracle.com and advertisement Get recognized: OFM awards, partner excellence awards & references & plaques Become Specialized: All of the above makes the Oracle Specialization! Make sure you get your Specialization benefits! Topics: Key product focus areas will be: SOA as the foundation for clouds, integration platform 2.0 for industrial SOA including BAM & CEP, BPM & adaptive case management & migrate legacy solutions to the strategic offerings. The new Oracle VM VirtualBox image is available to test SOA Suite and BPM Suite. To start your BPM 11g project a new BPM Standard Edition a license entry version is available. EAIESB published a post with all BPMN2.0 notations. If you want to learn more please visit the Oracle Learning Library. We want to promote your SOA 11g & BPM 11g success let us know where you are in production! And nominate this success for our Middleware Oracle Excellence Awards 2012. Douwe P. van den Bos published at his blog a SOA governance series: Principles of Service-Oriented Architecture & The Maturity of a Service-Oriented Architecture & SOA Maturity Models. Please let us know if you published interesting papers! Would be great to see you at the SOA, Cloud + Service Technology Symposium by Thomas Erl. Please feel free to get your conference pass with the oracle discount code “DJMXZ370”. See you in Lisbon & London at our summer camps! Jürgen Kress Oracle SOA & BPM Partner Adoption EMEA To read the newsletter please visit http://tinyurl.com/soanewsJune2012 (OPN Account required) To become a member of the SOA Partner Community please register at http://www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Technorati Tags: SOA Community newsletter,SOA Community,Oracle,OPN,Jürgen Kress,SOA Demo System,BPM

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• ANTS Memory Profiler 7.0

  - by Sam Abraham

  In the next few lines, I would like to briefly review ANTS Memory Profiler 7.0.  I was honored to be extended the opportunity to review this valuable tool as part of the GeeksWithBlogs influencers Program, a quarterly award providing its recipients access to valuable tools and enabling them with an opportunity to provide a brief write-up reviewing the complimentary tools they receive.   Typical Usage   ANTS Memory Profiler 7.0 is very intuitive and easy to use for any user be it novice or expert. A simple yet comprehensive menu screen enables the selection of the appropriate program type to profile as well as the executable or site for this program.   A typical use case starts with establishing a baseline memory snapshot, which tells us the initial memory cost used by the program under normal or low activity conditions. We would then take a second snapshot after the program has performed an activity which we want to investigate for memory leaks. We can then compare the initial baseline snapshot against the snapshot when the program has completed processing the activity in question to study anomalies in memory that did not get freed-up after the program has completed its performed function. The following are some screenshots outlining the selection of the program to profile (an executable for this demonstration’s purposes).   Figure 1 - Getting Started   Figure 2 - Selecting an Application to Profile     Features and Options   Right after the second snapshot is generated, Memory Profiler gives us immediate access to information on memory fragmentation, size differences between snapshots, unmanaged memory allocation and statistics on the largest classes taking up un-freed memory space.   We would also have the option to itemize objects held in memory grouped by object types within which we can study the instances allocated of each type. Filtering options enable us to quickly narrow object instances we are interested in.   Figure 3 - Easily accessible Execution Memory Information   Figure 4 - Class List   Figure 5 - Instance List   Figure 6-  Retention Graph for a Particular Instance   Conclusion I greatly enjoyed the opportunity to evaluate ANTS Memory Profiler 7.0. The tool's intuitive User Interface design and easily accessible menu options enabled me to quickly identify problem areas where memory was left unfreed in my code.     Tutorials and References  FInd out more About ANTS Memory Profiler 7.0 http://www.red-gate.com/supportcenter/Product?p=ANTS Memory Profiler   Checkout what other reviewers of this valuable tool have already shared: http://geekswithblogs.net/BlackRabbitCoder/archive/2011/03/10/ants-memory-profiler-7.0.aspx http://geekswithblogs.net/mikebmcl/archive/2011/02/28/ants-memory-profiler-7.0-review.aspx

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• Parallel MSBuild FTW - Build faster in parallel

  - by deadlydog

  Hey everyone, I just discovered this great post yesterday that shows how to have msbuild build projects in parallel Basically all you need to do is pass the switches “/m:[NumOfCPUsToUse] /p:BuildInParallel=true” into MSBuild. Example to use 4 cores/processes (If you just pass in “/m” it will use all CPU cores): MSBuild /m:4 /p:BuildInParallel=true "C:\dev\Client.sln" Obviously this trick will only be useful on PCs with multi-core CPUs (which we should all have by now) and solutions with multiple projects; So there’s no point using it for solutions that only contain one project.  Also, testing shows that using multiple processes does not speed up Team Foundation Database deployments either in case you’re curious Also, I found that if I didn’t explicitly use “/p:BuildInParallel=true” I would get many build errors (even though the MSDN documentation says that it is true by default). The poster boasts compile time improvements up to 59%, but the performance boost you see will vary depending on the solution and its project dependencies.  I tested with building a solution at my office, and here are my results (runs are in seconds): # of Processes 1st Run 2nd Run 3rd Run Avg Performance 1 192 195 200 195.67 100% 2 155 156 156 155.67 79.56% 4 146 149 146 147.00 75.13% 8 136 136 138 136.67 69.85%   So I updated all of our build scripts to build using 2 cores (~20% speed boost), since that gives us the biggest bang for our buck on our solution without bogging down a machine, and developers may sometimes compile more than 1 solution at a time.  I’ve put the any-PC-safe batch script code at the bottom of this post. The poster also has a follow-up post showing how to add a button and keyboard shortcut to the Visual Studio IDE to have VS build in parallel as well (so you don’t have to use a build script); if you do this make sure you use the .Net 4.0 MSBuild, not the 3.5 one that he shows in the screenshot.  While this did work for me, I found it left an MSBuild.exe process always hanging around afterwards for some reason, so watch out (batch file doesn’t have this problem though).  Also, you do get build output, but it may not be the same that you’re used to, and it doesn’t say “Build succeeded” in the status bar when completed, so I chose to not make this my default Visual Studio build option, but you may still want to. Happy building! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- :: Calculate how many Processes to use to do the build. SET NumberOfProcessesToUseForBuild=1  SET BuildInParallel=false if %NUMBER_OF_PROCESSORS% GTR 2 (                 SET NumberOfProcessesToUseForBuild=2                 SET BuildInParallel=true ) MSBuild /maxcpucount:%NumberOfProcessesToUseForBuild% /p:BuildInParallel=%BuildInParallel% "C:\dev\Client.sln"

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• Restoring MSDB

  - by David-Betteridge

  We recently performed a disaster recovery exercise which included the restoration of the MSDB database onto our DR server.  I did a quick google to see if there were any special considerations and found the following MS article.  Considerations for Restoring the model and msdb Databases (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms190749(v=sql.105).aspx).   It said both the original and replacement servers must be on the same version,  I double-checked and in my case they are both SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1 (10.50.2500).. So I went ahead and stopped SQL Server agent, restored the database and restarted the agent.  Checked the jobs and they were all there, everything looked great, and was until the server was rebooted a few days later.Then the syspolicy_purge_history job started failing on the 3rd step with the error message “Unable to start execution of step 3 (reason: The PowerShell subsystem failed to load [see the SQLAGENT.OUT file for details]; The job has been suspended). The step failed.”   A bit more googling pointed me to the msdb.dbo.syssubsystems table SELECT * FROM msdb.dbo.syssubsystems WHERE start_entry_point ='PowerShellStart'   And in particular the value for the subsystem_dll. It still had the path to the SQLPOWERSHELLSS.DLL but on the old server. The DR instance has a different name to the live instance and so the paths are different.   This was quickly fixed with the following SQL Use msdb; GO sp_configure 'allow updates', 1 ; RECONFIGURE WITH OVERRIDE ; GO UPDATE msdb.dbo.syssubsystems SET subsystem_dll='C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10_50.DR\MSSQL\binn\SQLPOWERSHELLSS.DLL' WHERE start_entry_point ='PowerShellStart'; GO sp_configure 'allow updates', 0; RECONFIGURE WITH OVERRIDE ; GO Stopped and started SQL Server agent and now the job completes.   I then wondered if anything else might be broken, SELECT subsystem_dll FROM msdb.dbo.syssubsystems Shows a further 10 wrong paths – fortunately for parts of SQL (replication, SSIS etc) we aren’t using! Lessons Learnt 1.       DR exercises are a good thing! 2.       Keep the Live and DR environments as similar as possible.    

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• Quick run through of the WP7 Developer Tools January 2011

  - by mbcrump

  In case you haven’t heard the latest WP7 Developers Tool update was released yesterday and contains a few goodies. First you need to go and grab the bits here. You can install them in any order, but I installed the WindowsPhoneDeveloperResources_en-US_Patch1.msp first. Then the VS10-KB2486994-x86.exe. They install silently. In other words, you would need to check Programs and Features and look in Installed Updates to see if they installed successfully. Like the screenshot below: Once you get them installed you can try out a few new features. Like Copy and Paste. Just fire up your application and put a TextBox on it and Select the Text and you will have the option highlighted in red above the text. Once you select it you will have the option to paste it. (see red rectangle below). Another feature is the Windows Phone Capability Detection Tool – This tool detects the phone capabilities used by your application. This will prevent you from submitting an app to the marketplace that says it uses x feature but really does not. How do you use it? Well navigate out to either directory: %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Phone\v7.0\Tools\CapDetect %ProgramFiles (x86)%\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Phone\v7.0\Tools\CapDetect and run the following command: CapabilityDetection.exe Rules.xml YOURWP7XAPFILEOUTPUTDIRECTORY So, in my example you will see my app only requires the ID_CAP_MICROPHONE. Let’s see what the WmAppManifest.xml says in our WP7 Project: Whoa! That’s a lot of extra stuff we don’t need. We can delete unused capabilities safely now. Some of the other fixes are: (Copied straight from Microsoft) Fixes a text selection bug in pivot and panorama controls. In applications that have pivot or panorama controls that contain text boxes, users can unintentionally change panes when trying to copy text. To prevent this problem, open your application, recompile it, and then resubmit it to the Windows Phone Marketplace. Windows Phone Connect Tool – Allows you to connect your phone to a PC when Zune® software is not running and debug applications that use media APIs. For more information, see How to: Use the Connect Tool. Updated Bing Maps Silverlight Control – Includes improvements to gesture performance when using Bing™ Maps Silverlight® Control. Windows Phone Developer Tools Fix allowing deployment of XAP files over 64 MB in size to physical phone devices for testing and debugging. That’s pretty much it. Thanks again for reading my blog!  Subscribe to my feed CodeProject

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• Customer Experience and BPM – From Efficiency to Engagement

  - by Ajay Khanna

  Over the last few years, focus of BPM has been mainly to improve the businesses efficiency. To create more efficient processes, to remove bottlenecks, to automate processes. That still holds true and why not? Isn’t BPM all about continuous improvement? BPM facilitates and requires business and IT collaboration. But business also requires working with customer. Do we not want to get close to and collaborate with our customers? This is where Social BPM takes BPM a step further. It not only allows people within an organization to collaborate to design exceptional processes, not only lets them collaborate on resolving a case but also let them engage with the customers. Engaging with customer means, first of all, connecting with them on their terms and turf. Take a new account opening process. Can a customer call you and initiate the process? Can a customer email you, or go to the website and initiate the process? Can they tweet you and initiate the process? Can they check the status of process via any channel they like? Can they take a picture of damaged package delivery and kick-off a returns process from their mobile device, with GIS data? Yes, these are various aspects to consider during process design if the goal is better customer experience and engagement. Of course, we want to be efficient and agile, but the focus here needs to be the customer. Now when the customer is tweeting about your products, posting on Facebook and Yelp about their experience with your company (and your process), you need to seek out that information. You need to gather and analyze the customer’s feedback on the social media and use that information to improve the processes and products. This is an excellent source of product and process ideation. So BPM is no longer only about improving back-office process efficiency, it is moving into a new and exciting phase of improving frontline customer facing processes, customer experience and engagement. Let me know how you think BPM can enhance customer experience.

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• Ubuntu 12.04.3 Graphics Issues: Broken Pipes, Reinstalled Xorg and Bumblebee

  - by user190488

  It seems I have a problem, and am only making it worse by following what I find online. I have a new Asus N550JV-D71 (not sure about the part after the dash, though I definitely know it includes 71). I decided to downgrade Windows 8 to 7, then dual boot Ubuntu 12.04 with it (there were issues with Windows 8, and I had a Windows 7 disk handy). It did work and, after installing Bumblebee in tty (because it wouldn't boot when it was first installed), it worked marvelously for a little less than a week. However, I restarted it last night and got the Could not write bytes: Broken pipes error. (I see it's a very common error, but I've looked at the majority of the suggested Similar Questions already.) I followed what I could find online, followed those instructions (making sure to not install any sort of graphics drivers other than what Bumblebee provides), and it just seems to go further and further downhill. I'm afraid I didn't write the exact steps to get to this point (it was late by the time I gave up the night before), but it involved reinstalling lightdm, xorg (and xserver?), and Bumblebee. I then changed the Bumblebee.conf file so that Device=nvidia. I'm pretty new to Linux in general (I've used it since 10.04, but I hadn't had issues up until this computer, so it let me stay a newbie), so I'm not exactly sure what log files to look at to find the errors to look up. However, I did look at lshw and noticed that displays was marked as unassigned. Also, if I try to start lightdm using the command line, it always stops at Stopping Mount network filesystems. I should note that there isn't an xorg.conf file, and no .Xauthority. I would really, really prefer not to reinstall 12.04 if possible. I managed to get grub to display only a short time ago, and I can't boot to the dvd drive unless I go into the BIOS settings and manually change the boot order (that was an issue from the beginning, before the Ubuntu install), and getting into those settings often means rebooting several times due to the fact that the window to get to it is extremely small. I have most of what I need backed up, however, in case it does get to that point. If I really have to, I can just use the latest Ubuntu version instead of the LTS, but the reason I chose 12.04 in the first place is because I need something stable-ish, and Windows isn't suitable to what I need to do. I should note that the reason I restarted last night in the first place was that it wasn't charging the battery, and the wifi kept on going out. Hardware: Nvidia GeForce GT 750M Intel HD graphics 4600

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• Set iPhone Style Location Based Alerts On Your Android Device With Google Now

  - by Gopinath

  Location based alerts of iPhone are very useful. You can set an alert to popup as soon as you reach a specific location like “Pickup milk and eggs” when I’m near a grocery store. This feature was missing in Android for a long time, but last week at Google I/O conference Google released an update to Google Now which supports location based alerts. To setup a location based alert 1. Launch Google Now 2. Type or say add reminder 3. By default it shows time based alert interface, switch it location based by touching Location icon 4. Set reminder text, choose a location and touch Set reminder 5. Your alert is set now and as soon as you are close by the specified location, you’ll see an alert on your device. This is a nice feature and I’m using it quite often for the past couple of days.  There are couple of things missing from the current version of Google Now location based alerts– recurring alerts and ability to set alerts on leaving a specific location. It is not possible to recur location based alerts. You will be alerted only once as soon as you reach the location and it is not possible to repeat the alert next time you visit the location. Lets say you want to be reminded to say hi to friend’s parents whenever you are travelling close by their home. It does not work. The second missing feature is something basic and some how Google did not incorporate in their first iteration. Lets say you are at office now and you want to set up alert to pickup flowers when you leave office. Sounds like a simple use case for location based alerts right? But there is no way to set this type of alerts. Google Now alerts you as soon as you reach a location, but not when you leave a location. Do you have an Android that supports Google Now? If so what are your thoughts on location based alerts?

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• Unable to boot ubuntu 11.10 from external usb drive

  - by user45006

  I'm new to Ubuntu (and actually all things Linux) as of this morning, so please excuse any stupid mistakes I may be making. I recently bought an external hard drive for my newly built PC (that is running windows 7 if it matters). I would like to install Ubuntu onto the external drive and boot from there. I downloaded Ubuntu 11.10 and made a bootable cd, unplugged my internal HDDs, plugged in the external drive, installed Ubuntu 11.10 on the external drive via the installer, and replugged in my internal HDDs. Then I set my bios boot order to: Boot from USB-HDD - Boot from Hard Disk - Boot from CD/DVD. Now when I restart I get the message "Starting Operating System..." (or something like that, I forget exactly what it says) that lingers on the screen for a moment and then windows starts. Any idea what the problem may be? ~Relevant info~ BIOS version: Award Software International, Inc. F2, 2/22/2011 Ubuntu Version: 11.10 External Hard Drive: Western Digital My Passport Essential 500GB Portable Hard Drive (Black) ~Things I've already tried~ 1) Unplug internal HDDs so that only external drive was plugged in via usb. Same thing happened only obviously my BIOS could not detect any hard drives besides the external one. When booting received error "Could not detect operating system" 2) Formatted external hard drive and re installed. It didn't make a difference, however interestingly when I booted from cd the ubuntu installer said it detected ubuntu 11.10 on the external hard drive. 3) Within BIOS I've messed around with every boot order combo I could think of both in the "Hard Disk boot order" screen and the "Boot order" screen. I'm a little confused of why there are two screens for this. 4) Held F12 during startup which opens (what I think is) the one time boot screen and it gave me the options "Hard Drive", "cd/dvd", "USB-FDD", "USB-cdrom", "USB-HDD", and "USB-something else I can't remember what it was". I tried all of them, but the same thing as before happened each time. ~References~ I noticed several people on askubuntu have tried to do something similar if not the exact same. In fact, I even found a post that pretty much outlines step by step exactly what I did... only their's worked. /jealous. Linky: Install Ubuntu or Kubuntu on a External USB Drive I'm willing to try a different version of ubuntu - it's not like my heart is set on 11.10, but it's a pain to open my case and unplug my internal hard drives so I'd prefer not to do this unless someone is reasonably confident it'll work. Thank you for all of your help in advance! I'm really looking forward to exploring Ubuntu!

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• Wrong statistics in AUX_STATS$ might puzzle the optimizer

  - by Mike Dietrich

  We do recommend the creation of System Statistics for quite a long time. Since Oracle 9i the optimizer works with a CPU and IO cost based model. And in order to give the optimizer some knowledge about the IO subsystem's performance and throughput - once System Statistics are collected - they'll get stored in AUX_STATS$. For this purpose in the old Oracle 9i days some default values had been defined - and you'll still find those defaults in Oracle Database 11g Release 2 in AUX_STATS$. But these old values don't reflect the performance of modern IO systems. So it might be a good best practice post upgrade to create fresh System Statistics if you haven't done this before.  You can collect System Statistics with: exec DBMS_STATS.GATHER_SYSTEM_STATS('start'); and end it later by executing: exec DBMS_STATS.GATHER_SYSTEM_STATS('stop'); You could also run DBMS_STATS.GATHER_SYSTEM_STATS('interval', interval=>N) instead where N is the number of minutes when statistics gathering is stopped automatically. Please make sure you'll do this on a real workload period. It won't make sense to gather these values while the database is in an idle state. You should do this ideally for several hours. It doesn't affect performance in a negative way as the values are anyway collected in V$SYSSTAT and V$SESSTAT. And in case you'd like to delete the stats and revert to the old default values you'd simply execute:exec DBMS_STATS.DELETE_SYSTEM_STATS; The tricky thing in Oracle Database 11.2 - and that's why I'm actually writing this blog post today - is bug9842771. This leads to wrong values in AUX_STATS$ for SREADTIM and MREADTIM by factor 1000 guiding the optimizer sometimes into the totally wrong directon. The workaround is to overwrite these values manually and divide them by 1000. Use the DBMS_STATS.SET_SYSTEM_STATS procedure. See this MOS Note:9842771.8 for the above bug for some further information. This issue is fixed in Oracle Database 11.2.0.3 and above. To get some background information about the statistics collected in please read this section in the Oracle Database 11.2 Performance Tuning Guide. And gathering System Statistics might have some implication if you have mixed workloads - and interacts with DB_FILE_MULTIBLOCK_READ_COUNT. For more information please read section 13.4.1.2.

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• Registering domain during christmas holydays

  - by arkascha

  One of the domain names I tried to register previously has been blocked by a domain grabber two days prior to my own attempt. That was about 1 year ago. The attempt to buy the domain from that person failed due to a totally exaggerated price. So I dropped the issue and watched the domain (offered at sedo.com). As expected there were no more offers, the domain was not sold. Now I learn from the whois database that the registration of that domain name ends on 25.12.2012 (christmas holyday). This raises two questions for me, I fail to find reliable answers on the internet. So maybe someone experienced here can drop a statement or a hint: is it reasonable that the domain name in question really will be free again when that date mentioned in the whois database up to when the domain is registered has passed? I certainly know that the registration can be prolonged, that is not what I mean. I expect (hope) that that domain grabber does not extend the registration, since it costs money and effort and he failed to sell the domain. Provided this is the case and the domain registration is not prolonged, is that date mentioned reliable? Or might it just be some 'default' date? I would like to try to register that domain name as soon as it is unregistered. Since that domain grabber registered that domain only two days before my own registration attempt I would like to prevent such annoying interference next time. So I ask myself: is it possible to register a domain name on a holyday? I mean not to send an email to my provider to do so on that day or before, but to actually have to process taking place as not to wait for 1-2 days after the unregistration? My own provider which I am very happy with does not offer such service on a holyday (which is perfectly understandable). They are 'still checking' if they can offer something automatic. I researched and did not find an answer to the question if that is possible at all. Is an autoomatic registration attempt on a holyday possible? Where can I do that? Is that reliable? Thanks for any reply!

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• WebLogic Server 11gR1 Interactive Quick Reference

  - by JuergenKress

  The WebLogic Server 11gR1 Administration interactive quick reference is a multimedia tool for various terms and concepts used in WebLogic Server architecture. This tool is available for administrators for online or offline use. This is built as a multimedia web page which provides descriptions of WebLogic Server Architectural components, and references to relevant documentation. This tool offers valuable reference information for any complex concept or product in an intuitive and useful manner. Each interactive type presents data that may be available in the documentation (in the case of Oracle products), but presents it in a way that is more intuitive and useful to a user of Oracle products because it displays data the way it is used in a real world, best practice scenario. For example, the architectural diagram interactive type provides an image of an architectural diagram that is typically larger than a single slide or paper. The image is scrollable and provides zoom capabilities to easily and clearly view any part of the image. The image itself contains a hotspot map that you can click to get more information about a feature, including reference links to the documentation in question. Linking the visual image of the component and where it fits in the overall architecture of the product, or technology in use, to the technical explanation and how-to materials related to that component is something not offered by the documentation. In a future release, the poster will also enable you to drill down even further into the individual subsystems in nested diagrams to look at the details of that subsystem. In short, the interactive posters are good at showing you the big picture, then quickly and easily getting you to the detailed information you need. In an instant, you can see where a technical component fits into an overall architecture, and zero in on the nitty-gritty details that show you how to do it yourself. Note: This is a first initial release with more features in development. Currently known information: Only Firefox 8.0 and higher is known to work with this product. This product may work with Chrome and Safari browsers, but is known to have issues in Internet Explorer at this time. Smartphones, such as iPads and iPhones, are partially supported WebLogic Partner Community For regular information become a member in the WebLogic Partner Community please visit: http://www.oracle.com/partners/goto/wls-emea ( OPN account required). If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. BlogTwitterLinkedInMixForumWiki Technorati Tags: WebLogic server quick reference,weblogic overview,weblogic 12c,WebLogic Community,Oracle,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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• Games at Work Part 1: Introduction to Gamification and Applications

  - by ultan o'broin

  Games Are Everywhere How many of you (will admit to) remember playing Pong? OK then, do you play Angry Birds on your phone during work hours? Thought about why we keep playing online, video, and mobile games and what this "gamification" business we're hearing about means for the enterprise applications user experience? In Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World, Jane McGonigal says that playing computer and online games now provides more rewards for people than their real lives do. Games offer intrinsic rewards and happiness to the players as they pursue more satisfying work and the success, social connection, and meaning that goes with it. Yep, Gran Turismo, Dungeons & Dragons, Guitar Hero, Mario Kart, Wii Boxing, and the rest are all forms of work it seems. Games are, in fact, work taken so seriously that governments now move to limit the impact of virtual gaming currencies on the real financial system. Anyone who spends hours harvesting crops on FarmVille realizes it’s hard work too. Yet games evoke a positive emotion in players who voluntarily stay engaged with games for hours, day after day. Some 183 million active gamers in the United States play on average 13 hours per week. Weekly, 5 million of those gamers play for longer than a working week (45 hours). So why not harness the work put into games to solve real-world problems? Or, in the case of our applications users, real-world work problems? What’s a Game? Jane explains that all games have four defining traits: a goal, rules, a feedback system, and voluntary participation. We need to look at what motivational ideas behind the dynamics of the game—what we call gamification—are appropriate for our users. Typically, these motivators are achievement, altruism, competition, reward, self-expression, and status). Common game techniques for leveraging these motivations include: Badging and avatars Points and awards Leader boards Progress charts Virtual currencies or goods Gifting and giving Challenges and quests Some technology commentators argue for a game layer on top of everything, but this layer is already part of our daily lives in many instances. We see gamification working around us already: the badging and kudos offered on My Oracle Support or other Oracle community forums, becoming a Dragon Slayer implementor of Atlassian applications, being made duke of your favorite coffee shop on Yelp, sharing your workout details with Nike+, or donating to Japanese earthquake relief through FarmVille, for example. And what does all this mean for the applications that you use in your work? Read on in part two...

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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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• TouchDevelop: The Fast Path to Windows 8 and Phone Apps

  - by Clint Edmonson

  Are you looking for a little extra cash for the upcoming holidays? Then you might be interested in creating some cool apps to sell in the Windows Store. Or maybe you’re simply curious and want to try your hand at developing for Windows 8 and Windows Phone. In either case, the newly released TouchDevelop Web App is for you. TouchDevelop Web App is a development environment to create apps on your tablet or smartphone, without requiring a separate PC. Scripts written by using TouchDevelop can access data, media, and sensors on the phone, tablet, and PC. The script can interact with cloud services, including storage, computing, and social networks. TouchDevelop lets you quickly create fun games and useful tools, turning your scripts into true Windows Phone and Windows 8 apps. A year ago, Microsoft Research released TouchDevelop for Windows Phone, which is being used by enthusiasts, students, and researchers to program their phones in fun, inventive, and interesting ways. These scripts are available at TouchDevelop for anyone to download and use. Ever since we released TouchDevelop, we’ve been eyeing the tablet form factor and working on a version for the browser. Now, with the release of TouchDevelop Web App, the wait is over: the tablet version is ready, so go play around with it. All TouchDevelop scripts that are developed on the smartphone can be downloaded to the tablet and run (if hardware allows). Any script that is developed on the tablet can also be accessed on the phone. And scripts can be converted to Windows Phone or Windows 8 apps and submitted to the Windows Phone Store or Windows Store, respectively. TouchDevelop Web App’s editor and programming language have been designed for tablet devices with touchscreens, but you can also use a keyboard and a mouse. So grab your web-enabled device and give the TouchDevelop Web App a try. It’s fun and easy, and could even put a little cash in your holiday-depleted wallet. Or at least give you bragging rights at family get-togethers. Are you interested in further tips on Windows 8 development?  Sign up for the 30 to launch program which will help you build a Windows Store application in 30 days.  You will receive a tip per day for 30 days, along with potential free design consultations and technical support from a Windows 8 expert. As always, stay tuned to my twitter feed for Windows 8, Windows Azure and other Microsoft announcements, updates, and links: @clinted

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• ASP.NET Web Forms is bad, or what am I missing?

  - by iveqy

  Being a PHP guy myself I recently had to write a spider to an asp.net site. I was really surprised by the different approach to ajax and form-handling. For example, in the PHP sites I've worked with, a deletion of a database entry would be something like: GET delete.php?id=&confirm=yes and get a "success" back in some form (in the ajax case, probably a json reply). In this asp.net application you would instead post a form, including all inputs on the page, with a huge __VIEWSTATE and __EVENTVALIDATION. This would be more than 10 times as big as above. The reply would be the complete side again, with a footer containing some structured data for javascript to parse and display the result. Again, the whole page is sent, and then throwed away(?) since it's already displayed. Why not just send the footer with the data to parse (it's not json nor xml but a | separated list). I really can't see why you would design a system that way. Usually you've a fast client, and a somewhat fast server but a really slow connection. Why not keep the datatransfer to a minimum? Why those huge __VIEWSTATE and __EVENTVALIDATION? It seems that everything is done way to chatty and way to complicated. I really can't see the point and that usually means that I'm missing something. So please tell me, what are the reasons for this design and what benefits (and weaknesses) does it have? (Yes I know that __VIEWSTATE is used to tell what type of form-konfiguration should be sent back to the server. But WHY is this needed?) Please keep this discussion strictly technical and avoid flamewars. Update: Please excuse the somewhat rantish question. I tried to explain my view to be able to get a better answer. I am not saying that asp.net is bad, I am saying that I don't understand the meaning of those concepts. Usually that means that I've things to learn instead of the concepts beeing wrong. I appreciate the explanations about that "you don't have to do this way in asp.net", I'll read up on MVC and other .net technologies. However, there most be a reason for this site (the one I referred to) to be written the way it is. It's written by professionals for a big organisation with far more experience than what I've. Any explanation about their (possible) design choice would be welcome.

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• Pretty URL in ADF Faces of JDeveloper 11.1.2.2

  - by Frank Nimphius

  Many features planned for Oracle JDeveloper 12c find their way into current releases of Oracle JDeveloper 11g R1 and JDeveloper 11g R2. One example of such a feature is "pretty URL" - or "clean URL" as the Oracle JDeveloper 11g R2 (11.1.2.2) documentation puts it. "A.2.3.24 Clean URLs Historically, ADF Faces has used URL parameters to hold information, such as window IDs and state. However, URL parameters can prevent search engines from recognizing when URLs are actually the same, and therefore interfere with analytics. URL parameters can also interfere with bookmarking. By default, ADF Faces removes URL parameters using the HTML5 History Management API. If that API is unavailable, then session cookies are used.You can also manually configure how URL parameters are removed using the context parameter oracle.adf.view.rich.prettyURL.OPTIONS. Set the parameter to off so that no parameters are removed. Set the parameter to useHistoryApi to only use the HTML5 History Management API. If a browser does not support this API, then no parameters will be removed. Set the parameter to useCookies to use session cookies to remove parameters. If the browser does not support cookies, then no parameters will be removed." See: http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E26098_01/web.1112/e16181/ap_config.htm#ADFUI12856 So basically, what this part in the documentation says is: In JDeveloper 11g R2 (11.1.2.2), Oracle ADF Faces automatically removes its internally used dynamic parameters from the URL You can influence the setting with the prettyURL.OPTIONS context option, which however is not recommended you to do because the default behavior is able to detect if the browser client supports HTML 5 History management or not. In the latter case it the uses a session cookie and if this doesn't work, falls back to the "old" URL parameter adding. The information that is not so explicit and clearly mentioned in the documentation is that this is only for ADF Faces parameters (such as _afrLoop, Adf-Window-Id, etc.), but not the ADF controller token (_adf.ctrl-state)! Removing the ADF controller token is an enhancement request that will be implemented in Oracle JDeveloper 12c

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• How to handle interruptions in developer work without losing concentration? [closed]

  - by tomaszs

  I work as a developer for some years now. Mainly the issue why it's antisocial work is because you need to spend much time programming. I've been always the kind of developer who likes to cut off from any sources of distraction and spend several hours on project because in this way i (as i hope) do it faster. There are also other kinds of developers, more social that can chat, read, watch movies while development and they are ok with this and don't hesitate to be interrupted in their work in any time and come back to the project without any problem. For me any distraction is source of frustration because i need to spend substantial time to load my mind with all info about the project and to concentrate back on the tasks. I always thought it's better to do this that way because project is completed faster. But it makes some things difficult: it's hard to chat with someone who needs to have some important info: because you are a bit frustrated when you know you loose your Zen. And sometimes its more important to chat with someone than to loose Zen. Well.. mostly in any other kind of work the ability to be "multitask" is very important. But as a developer and as a person it's also very important to stay social. And i see now that the problem of concentration makes it difficult to make the right chose: the cost of maintaining concentration is just sometimes so damn high! So is it only me that i have so little concentration skills so any interruption is for me a big deal? Maybe it's just i have so bad memory so that i dont remember all issues of a project so long? Or maybe i develop the project in a fashion that requires me to store so much info on my mind only to be able to start working with code? Or should i just accept that being more social will make me finish project slower and in the fashion that i personally consider non 100% productive? And it's just normal thing and i should just accept it and start to live like any other person who has many works and don't assume that programming is in any case other than any other work and i just do fuzz about the whole concentration thing? This is question for mid-pro developers. I think you was having the same dillema in your life. I would be glad if you could help me take the right road here because it's just driving me and i suppose people i work with crazy for years.

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• Running C++ AMP kernels on the CPU

  - by Daniel Moth

  One of the FAQs we receive is whether C++ AMP can be used to target the CPU. For targeting multi-core we have a technology we released with VS2010 called PPL, which has had enhancements for VS 11 – that is what you should be using! FYI, it also has a Linux implementation via Intel's TBB which conforms to the same interface. When you choose to use C++ AMP, you choose to take advantage of massively parallel hardware, through accelerators like the GPU. Having said that, you can always use the accelerator class to check if you are running on a system where the is no hardware with a DirectX 11 driver, and decide what alternative code path you wish to follow.  In fact, if you do nothing in code, if the runtime does not find DX11 hardware to run your code on, it will choose the WARP accelerator which will run your code on the CPU, taking advantage of multi-core and SSE2 (depending on the CPU capabilities WARP also uses SSE3 and SSE 4.1 – it does not currently use AVX and on such systems you hopefully have a DX 11 GPU anyway). A few things to know about WARP It is our fallback CPU solution, not intended as a primary target of C++ AMP. WARP stands for Windows Advanced Rasterization Platform and you can read old info on this MSDN page on WARP. What is new in Windows 8 Developer Preview is that WARP now supports DirectCompute, which is what C++ AMP builds on. It is not currently clear if we will have a CPU fallback solution for non-Windows 8 platforms when we ship. When you create a WARP accelerator, its is_emulated property returns true. WARP does not currently support double precision.   BTW, when we refer to WARP, we refer to this accelerator described above. If we use lower case "warp", that refers to a bunch of threads that run concurrently in lock step and share the same instruction. In the VS 11 Developer Preview, the size of warp in our Ref emulator is 4 – Ref is another emulator that runs on the CPU, but it is extremely slow not intended for production, just for debugging. Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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• Memory read/write access efficiency

  - by wolfPack88

  I've heard conflicting information from different sources, and I'm not really sure which one to believe. As such, I'll post what I understand and ask for corrections. Let's say I want to use a 2D matrix. There are three ways that I can do this (at least that I know of). 1: int i; char **matrix; matrix = malloc(50 * sizeof(char *)); for(i = 0; i < 50; i++) matrix[i] = malloc(50); 2: int i; int rowSize = 50; int pointerSize = 50 * sizeof(char *); int dataSize = 50 * 50; char **matrix; matrix = malloc(dataSize + pointerSize); char *pData = matrix + pointerSize - rowSize; for(i = 0; i < 50; i++) { pData += rowSize; matrix[i] = pData; } 3: //instead of accessing matrix[i][j] here, we would access matrix[i * 50 + j] char *matrix = malloc(50 * 50); In terms of memory usage, my understanding is that 3 is the most efficient, 2 is next, and 1 is least efficient, for the reasons below: 3: There is only one pointer and one allocation, and therefore, minimal overhead. 2: Once again, there is only one allocation, but there are now 51 pointers. This means there is 50 * sizeof(char *) more overhead. 1: There are 51 allocations and 51 pointers, causing the most overhead of all options. In terms of performance, once again my understanding is that 3 is the most efficient, 2 is next, and 1 is least efficient. Reasons being: 3: Only one memory access is needed. We will have to do a multiplication and an addition as opposed to two additions (as in the case of a pointer to a pointer), but memory access is slow enough that this doesn't matter. 2: We need two memory accesses; once to get a char *, and then to the appropriate char. Only two additions are performed here (once to get to the correct char * pointer from the original memory location, and once to get to the correct char variable from wherever the char * points to), so multiplication (which is slower than addition) is not required. However, on modern CPUs, multiplication is faster than memory access, so this point is moot. 1: Same issues as 2, but now the memory isn't contiguous. This causes cache misses and extra page table lookups, making it the least efficient of the lot. First and foremost: Is this correct? Second: Is there an option 4 that I am missing that would be even more efficient?

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• Questions about identifying the components in MVC

  - by luiscubal

  I'm currently developing an client-server application in node.js, Express, mustache and MySQL. However, I believe this question should be mostly language and framework agnostic. This is the first time I'm doing a real MVC application and I'm having trouble deciding exactly what means each component. (I've done web applications that could perhaps be called MVC before, but I wouldn't confidently refer to them as such) I have a server.js that ties the whole application together. It does initialization of all other components (including the database connection, and what I think are the "models" and the "views"), receiving HTTP requests and deciding which "views" to use. Does this mean that my server.js file is the controller? Or am I mixing code that doesn't belong there? What components should I break the server.js file into? Some examples of code that's in the server.js file: var connection = mysql.createConnection({ host : 'localhost', user : 'root', password : 'sqlrevenge', database : 'blog' }); //... app.get("/login", function (req, res) { //Function handles a GET request for login forms if (process.env.NODE_ENV == 'DEVELOPMENT') { mu.clearCache(); } session.session_from_request(connection, req, function (err, session) { if (err) { console.log('index.js session error', err); session = null; } login_view.html(res, user_model, post_model, session, mu); //I named my view functions "html" for the case I might want to add other output types (such as a JSON API), or should I opt for completely separate views then? }); }); I have another file that belongs named session.js. It receives a cookies object, reads the stored data to decide if it's a valid user session or not. It also includes a function named login that does change the value of cookies. First, I thought it would be part of the controller, since it kind of dealt with user input and supplied data to the models. Then, I thought that maybe it was a model since it dealt with the application data/database and the data it supplies is used by views. Now, I'm even wondering if it could be considered a View, since it outputs data (cookies are part of HTTP headers, which are output)

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• Dealing with coworkers when developing, need advice [closed]

  - by Yippie-Kai-Yay

  I developed our current project architecture and started developing it on my own (reaching something like, revision 40). We're developing a simple subway routing framework and my design seemed to be done extremely well - several main models, corresponding views, main logic and data structures were modeled "as they should be" and fully separated from rendering, algorithmic part was also implemented apart from the main models and had a minor number of intersection points. I would call that design scalable, customizable, easy-to-implement, interacting mostly based on the "black box interaction" and, well, very nice. Now, what was done: I started some implementations of the corresponding interfaces, ported some convenient libraries and wrote implementation stubs for some application parts. I had the document describing coding style and examples of that coding style usage (my own written code). I forced the usage of more or less modern C++ development techniques, including no-delete code (wrapped via smart pointers) and etc. I documented the purpose of concrete interface implementations and how they should be used. Unit tests (mostly, integration tests, because there wasn't a lot of "actual" code) and a set of mocks for all the core abstractions. I was absent for 12 days. What do we have now (the project was developed by 4 other members of the team): 3 different coding styles all over the project (I guess, two of them agreed to use the same style :), same applies to the naming of our abstractions (e.g CommonPathData.h, SubwaySchemeStructures.h), which are basically headers declaring some data structures. Absolute lack of documentation for the recently implemented parts. What I could recently call a single-purpose-abstraction now handles at least 2 different types of events, has tight coupling with other parts and so on. Half of the used interfaces now contain member variables (sic!). Raw pointer usage almost everywhere. Unit tests disabled, because "(Rev.57) They are unnecessary for this project". ... (that's probably not everything). Commit history shows that my design was interpreted as an overkill and people started combining it with personal bicycles and reimplemented wheels and then had problems integrating code chunks. Now - the project still does only a small amount of what it has to do, we have severe integration problems, I assume some memory leaks. Is there anything possible to do in this case? I do realize that all my efforts didn't have any benefit, but the deadline is pretty soon and we have to do something. Did someone have a similar situation? Basically I thought that a good (well, I did everything that I could) start for the project would probably lead to something nice, however, I understand that I'm wrong. Any advice would be appreciated, sorry for my bad english.

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• Pay in the future should make you think in the present

  - by BuckWoody

  Distributed Computing - and more importantly “-as-a-Service” models of computing have a different cost model. This is something that sounds obvious on the surface but it’s often forgotten during the design and coding phase of a project. In on-premises computing, we’re used to purchasing a server and all of the hardware infrastructure and software licenses needed not only for one project, but several. This is an up-front or “sunk” cost that we consume by running code the organization needs to perform its function. Using a direct connection over wires you’ve already paid for, we don’t often have to think about bandwidth, hits on the data store or the amount of compute we use - we just know more is better. In a pay-as-you-go model, however, each of these architecture decisions has a potential cost impact. The amount of data you store, the number of times you access it, and the amount you send back all come with a charge. The offset is that you don’t buy anything at all up-front, so that sunk cost is freed up. And financial professionals know that money now is worth more than money later. Saving that up-front cost allows you to invest it in other things. It’s not just that you’re using things that now cost money - it’s that the design itself in distributed computing has a cost impact. That can be a really good thing, such as when you dynamically add capacity for paying customers. If you can tie back the cost of a series of clicks to what a user will pay to do so, you can set a profit margin that is easy to track. Here’s a case in point: Assume you are using a large instance in Windows Azure to compute some data that you retrieve from a SQL Azure database. If you don’t monitor the path of the application, you may not know what you are really using. Since you’re paying by the size of the instance, it’s best to maximize it all the time. Recently I evaluated just this situation, and found that downsizing the instance and adding another one where needed, adding a caching function to the application, moving part of the data into Windows Azure tables not only increased the speed of the application, but reduced the cost and more closely tied the cost to the profit. The key is this: from the very outset - the design - make sure you include metrics to measure for the cost/performance (sometimes these are the same) for your application. Windows Azure opens up awesome new ways of doing things, so make sure you study distributed systems architecture before you try and force in the application design you have on premises into your new application structure.

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• Is there a pedagogical game engine?

  - by K.G.

  I'm looking for a book, website, or other resource that gives modern 3D game engines the same treatment as Operating Systems: Design and Implementation gave operating systems. I have read Jason Gregory's Game Engine Architecture, which I enjoyed. However, by intent the author treated components of the architecture as atomic units, whereas what I'm interested in is the plumbing between those units that makes a coherent whole out of ideally loosely coupled parts. In books such as these, one usually reads that "that's academic," but that's the point! I have also read Julian Gold's Object-oriented Game Development, which likewise was good, but I feel is beginning to show its age. Since even mobile platforms these days are multicore and have fast video memory, those kinds of things (concurrency, display item buffering) would ideally be covered. There are other resources, such as the Doom 3 source code, which is highly instructive for its being a shipped product. The problem with those is as follows: float Q_rsqrt( float number ) { long i; float x2, y; const float threehalfs = 1.5F; x2 = number * 0.5F; y = number; i = * ( long * ) &y; // evil floating point bit level hacking i = 0x5f3759df - ( i >> 1 ); // what the f***? y = * ( float * ) &i; y = y * ( threehalfs - ( x2 * y * y ) ); // 1st iteration // y = y * ( threehalfs - ( x2 * y * y ) ); // 2nd iteration, this can be removed return y; } To wit, while brilliant, this kind of source requires more enlightenment than I can usually muster upon first read. In summary, here's my white whale: For an adult reader with experience in programming. I wish I could save all the trees killed by every. Single. Game Programming book ever devoting the first two chapters to "Now just what is a variable anyway?" In C or C++, very preferably C++. Languages that are more concise are fantastic for teaching, except for when what you want to learn is how to cope with a verbose language. There is also the benefit of the guardrails that C++ doesn't provide, such as garbage collection. Platform agnostic. I'm sincerely afraid that this book is out there and it's Visual C++/DirectX oriented. I'm a Linux guy, and I'd do what it takes, but I would very much like to be able to use OpenGL. Thanks for everything! Before anyone gets on my case about it, Fast inverse square root was from Quake III Arena, not Doom 3!

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• SEO to ensure visibility for a narrow, non-competitive, non-commercial site

  - by hen3ry

  I'm webmaster of a non-commercial site in English. A non-native-English speaker asked me why our site doesn't produce hits in Google searches she conducts for relevant keywords in her native language. I asked her for a list of keywords in her native language, and I naively tried inserting those into the META info in the page headers and waited a couple of weeks. No help. A little searching informed me that Google doesn't use the META info, and has not done so for a very long time. D'oh! To be entirely concrete, suppose the StackExchange folks want Russian speakers to find this site, Pro Webmasters. The direct translation in Russian of "webmaster" --thanks, Google Translator-- is: "?????????". (Not sure this will render properly, but that's not essential to my question.) Assuming Pro Webmasters has a common template for all pages it generates, inserting "?????????" into the Keywords META for that template won't help, it seems. What could StackExchange do to make this site visible to users searching with the Russian keyword "?????????" ? Pretty much all the advice I've seen boils down to this, if I understand correctly: use the desired search term often (but not too often) among site content, and the problem will be solved. That's great, but I don't think sprinkling "?????????" visibly all over Pro Webmasters is going to fly. Just for completeness, crawlers must be long immune to the invisible-to-visitors scheme, e.g, format "?????????" in a tiny text size in a color the same as an existing background, e.g. white-over-white. Or, put that text inside a div styled: ' style="visibility: hidden" '. Probably some other equivalents. I can only think of one slightly effective method, along these lines: place an unobtrusive link on the common template to a page titled "for international users" , and on that page list desired synonyms for "webmaster" in various languages on that page. A test case --admittedly, just one-- using my site implies that a Google search for "international users" ????????? will produce a hit for this page, and thus make the site minimally visible, despite the fact that the page will almost never be visited. At the moment, anyway. Note: All the SEO discussions I have found so far are about competitive and --almost certainly-- commercial sites. To repeat: my site is non-commercial, and it is about an obscure, narrow topic that is of interest to only a small number of people worldwide. This isn't about clawing our way to the top of competitive rankings, just making this content minimally visible to interested non-native-English speakers. Ideas? TIA

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