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  • How to detect and configure an output with xrandr?

    - by ysap
    I have a DELL U2410 monitor connected to a Compaq 100B desktop equipped with an integrated AMD/ATI graphics card (AMD E-350). The installed O/S is Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. The computer is connected to the monitor via the DVI connection. The problem is that I cannot set the desktop resolution to the native 1920x1200. The maximum allowed resolution is 1600x1200. Doing some research I found about the xrandr utility. Unfortunately, when trying to use it I cannot configure it to the required resolution. First, it does not report the output name (which supposed to be DVI-0), saying default instead. Without it I cannot use the --fb option. The EDID utility seems to identify the monitor well. Here's the output from get-edid: # EDID version 1 revision 3 Section "Monitor" # Block type: 2:0 3:ff # Block type: 2:0 3:fc Identifier "DELL U2410" VendorName "DEL" ModelName "DELL U2410" # Block type: 2:0 3:ff # Block type: 2:0 3:fc # Block type: 2:0 3:fd HorizSync 30-81 VertRefresh 56-76 # Max dot clock (video bandwidth) 170 MHz # DPMS capabilities: Active off:yes Suspend:yes Standby:yes Mode "1920x1200" # vfreq 59.950Hz, hfreq 74.038kHz DotClock 154.000000 HTimings 1920 1968 2000 2080 VTimings 1200 1203 1209 1235 Flags "-HSync" "+VSync" EndMode # Block type: 2:0 3:ff # Block type: 2:0 3:fc # Block type: 2:0 3:fd EndSection but the xrandr -q command returns: Screen 0: minimum 640 x 400, current 1600 x 1200, maximum 1600 x 1200 default connected 1600x1200+0+0 0mm x 0mm 1600x1200 0.0* 1280x1024 0.0 1152x864 0.0 1024x768 0.0 800x600 0.0 640x480 0.0 720x400 0.0 When I try to set the resolution, I get: $ xrandr --fb 1920x1200 xrandr: screen cannot be larger than 1600x1200 (desired size 1920x1200) $ xrandr --output DVI-0 --auto warning: output DVI-0 not found; ignoring How can I set the screen resolution to 1920x1200? Why doesn't xrandr identify the DVI-0 output? Note that the same computer running Ubuntu version higher than 10.04 detects the correct resolution with no problems. On this machine I cannot upgrade due to some legacy hardware compatibility problems. Also, I don't see any optional screen drivers available in the Hardware Drivers dialog. ---- UPDATE: following the answer to this question, I got some advance. Now the required mode is listed in the xrandr -q list, but I can't switch to that mode. Using the Monitors applet (which now shows the new mode), I get the response that: The selected configuration for displays could not be applied. Could not set the configuration to CRTC 262. From the command line it looks like this: $ cvt 1920 1200 60 # 1920x1200 59.88 Hz (CVT 2.30MA) hsync: 74.56 kHz; pclk: 193.25 MHz Modeline "1920x1200_60.00" 193.25 1920 2056 2256 2592 1200 1203 1209 1245 -hsync +vsync $ xrandr --newmode "1920x1200_60.00" 193.25 1920 2056 2256 2592 1200 1203 1209 1245 -hsync +vsync $ xrandr -q Screen 0: minimum 640 x 400, current 1600 x 1200, maximum 1600 x 1200 default connected 1600x1200+0+0 0mm x 0mm 1600x1200 0.0* 1280x1024 0.0 1152x864 0.0 1024x768 0.0 800x600 0.0 640x480 0.0 720x400 0.0 1920x1200_60.00 (0x120) 193.0MHz h: width 1920 start 2056 end 2256 total 2592 skew 0 clock 74.5KHz v: height 1200 start 1203 end 1209 total 1245 clock 59.8Hz $ xrandr --addmode default 1920x1200_60.00 $ xrandr -q Screen 0: minimum 640 x 400, current 1600 x 1200, maximum 1600 x 1200 default connected 1600x1200+0+0 0mm x 0mm 1600x1200 0.0* 1280x1024 0.0 1152x864 0.0 1024x768 0.0 800x600 0.0 640x480 0.0 720x400 0.0 1920x1200_60.00 59.8 $ xrandr --output default --mode 1920x1200_60.00 xrandr: Configure crtc 0 failed Another piece of info (if it helps anyone): $ sudo lshw -c video *-display UNCLAIMED description: VGA compatible controller product: ATI Technologies Inc vendor: ATI Technologies Inc physical id: 1 bus info: pci@0000:00:01.0 version: 00 width: 32 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm pciexpress msi bus_master cap_list configuration: latency=0 resources: memory:c0000000-cfffffff(prefetchable) ioport:f000(size=256) memory:feb00000-feb3ffff

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  • Big Data – Beginning Big Data – Day 1 of 21

    - by Pinal Dave
    What is Big Data? I want to learn Big Data. I have no clue where and how to start learning about it. Does Big Data really means data is big? What are the tools and software I need to know to learn Big Data? I often receive questions which I mentioned above. They are good questions and honestly when we search online, it is hard to find authoritative and authentic answers. I have been working with Big Data and NoSQL for a while and I have decided that I will attempt to discuss this subject over here in the blog. In the next 21 days we will understand what is so big about Big Data. Big Data – Big Thing! Big Data is becoming one of the most talked about technology trends nowadays. The real challenge with the big organization is to get maximum out of the data already available and predict what kind of data to collect in the future. How to take the existing data and make it meaningful that it provides us accurate insight in the past data is one of the key discussion points in many of the executive meetings in organizations. With the explosion of the data the challenge has gone to the next level and now a Big Data is becoming the reality in many organizations. Big Data – A Rubik’s Cube I like to compare big data with the Rubik’s cube. I believe they have many similarities. Just like a Rubik’s cube it has many different solutions. Let us visualize a Rubik’s cube solving challenge where there are many experts participating. If you take five Rubik’s cube and mix up the same way and give it to five different expert to solve it. It is quite possible that all the five people will solve the Rubik’s cube in fractions of the seconds but if you pay attention to the same closely, you will notice that even though the final outcome is the same, the route taken to solve the Rubik’s cube is not the same. Every expert will start at a different place and will try to resolve it with different methods. Some will solve one color first and others will solve another color first. Even though they follow the same kind of algorithm to solve the puzzle they will start and end at a different place and their moves will be different at many occasions. It is  nearly impossible to have a exact same route taken by two experts. Big Market and Multiple Solutions Big Data is exactly like a Rubik’s cube – even though the goal of every organization and expert is same to get maximum out of the data, the route and the starting point are different for each organization and expert. As organizations are evaluating and architecting big data solutions they are also learning the ways and opportunities which are related to Big Data. There is not a single solution to big data as well there is not a single vendor which can claim to know all about Big Data. Honestly, Big Data is too big a concept and there are many players – different architectures, different vendors and different technology. What is Next? In this 31 days series we will be exploring many essential topics related to big data. I do not claim that you will be master of the subject after 31 days but I claim that I will be covering following topics in easy to understand language. Architecture of Big Data Big Data a Management and Implementation Different Technologies – Hadoop, Mapreduce Real World Conversations Best Practices Tomorrow In tomorrow’s blog post we will try to answer one of the very essential questions – What is Big Data? Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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  • New Release of Oracle EPM (Enterprise Performance Management)

    - by Theresa Hickman
    I'm a huge fan of Hyperion products and consider Hyperion to be one of the best acquisitions Oracle has made in terms of applications. So I am really excited to talk about their latest release, Release 11.1.2 of the Oracle EPM System. This is EPM's largest release in 2 years, and it's jam-packed with new modules and features. In terms of brand new products, there are three: 1. Public Sector Planning and Budgeting meets the needs of public sector agencies, higher education, governments, etc. that have complex budget requirements. It supports position or employee-based budgeting and integrates with MS Office and your ERP ledgers to perform commitment control. 2. Hyperion Financial Close Management is a complete financial close solution that orchestrates the entire close process from subledgers and general ledger to financial reporting and disclosure submissions. And of course, it is integrated with GL systems and consolidation systems. I saw a demo of this and it looked pretty slick. They have this unified close calendar that looks like a regular calendar that gives each person participating in the close process a task list. It comes with a Gantt chart that shows the relationships and dependencies among closing tasks. There are dashboards to allow you to track the close progress and completion of tasks as well as perform trend analysis and see how much time is being spent on different activities in the close process. This gives you visibility that you never had before to understand where the bottlenecks are and where improvements could be made. I think what I liked best about this product was that it provides a central place for all participants to communicate their progress. When I worked as an Accountant, we used ad hoc tools, such as spreadsheets, Word documents, emails, and phone calls during the close process. I like the idea of having a central system to track the overall progress as well as automate the entire financial close process. Who knows, maybe Accountants won't have to revolve their lives around the month end close anymore with a tool like this. Those periodic fire drills can become predictable, well managed processes. 3. Disclosure Management is an out-of-the-box, pre-packaged XBRL solution to meet statutory reporting requirements. This product is really going to help companies improve the timeliness of producing financial reports. Reports can be authored using MS Word and Excel and then XBRL instance documents can be produced with its embedded XBRL tags. It even supports footnotes and disclosures of non-financial information. With a product like this, companies no longer have to outsource their XBRL filing; they can bring it back in house to save costs and time. In terms of other enhancements, they have ERP Integrator that provides integration and drill downs from Hyperion products to source systems, such as Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, and SAP. No other vendor offers this level of integration. There's also a new product that links Oracle Essbase directly to Hyperion Financial Management for internal financial reporting, and new integrations between Hyperion Financial Management and Oracle's GRC products. They also improved the usability of Oracle Hyperion Planning. They made it much easier for end users to use the system via the web or via MS Excel when submitting plans and budgets. It is also integrated with intelligent approval workflows that are data-driven, user-configurable, and scenario-specific to efficiently streamline the budgeting process. Here's the press release from April 7, 2010. Here's the pre-recorded web cast where you can see the demos. Just register and watch the hour long presentation. And finally, here's the newsletter

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  • How John Got 15x Improvement Without Really Trying

    - by rchrd
    The following article was published on a Sun Microsystems website a number of years ago by John Feo. It is still useful and worth preserving. So I'm republishing it here.  How I Got 15x Improvement Without Really Trying John Feo, Sun Microsystems Taking ten "personal" program codes used in scientific and engineering research, the author was able to get from 2 to 15 times performance improvement easily by applying some simple general optimization techniques. Introduction Scientific research based on computer simulation depends on the simulation for advancement. The research can advance only as fast as the computational codes can execute. The codes' efficiency determines both the rate and quality of results. In the same amount of time, a faster program can generate more results and can carry out a more detailed simulation of physical phenomena than a slower program. Highly optimized programs help science advance quickly and insure that monies supporting scientific research are used as effectively as possible. Scientific computer codes divide into three broad categories: ISV, community, and personal. ISV codes are large, mature production codes developed and sold commercially. The codes improve slowly over time both in methods and capabilities, and they are well tuned for most vendor platforms. Since the codes are mature and complex, there are few opportunities to improve their performance solely through code optimization. Improvements of 10% to 15% are typical. Examples of ISV codes are DYNA3D, Gaussian, and Nastran. Community codes are non-commercial production codes used by a particular research field. Generally, they are developed and distributed by a single academic or research institution with assistance from the community. Most users just run the codes, but some develop new methods and extensions that feed back into the general release. The codes are available on most vendor platforms. Since these codes are younger than ISV codes, there are more opportunities to optimize the source code. Improvements of 50% are not unusual. Examples of community codes are AMBER, CHARM, BLAST, and FASTA. Personal codes are those written by single users or small research groups for their own use. These codes are not distributed, but may be passed from professor-to-student or student-to-student over several years. They form the primordial ocean of applications from which community and ISV codes emerge. Government research grants pay for the development of most personal codes. This paper reports on the nature and performance of this class of codes. Over the last year, I have looked at over two dozen personal codes from more than a dozen research institutions. The codes cover a variety of scientific fields, including astronomy, atmospheric sciences, bioinformatics, biology, chemistry, geology, and physics. The sources range from a few hundred lines to more than ten thousand lines, and are written in Fortran, Fortran 90, C, and C++. For the most part, the codes are modular, documented, and written in a clear, straightforward manner. They do not use complex language features, advanced data structures, programming tricks, or libraries. I had little trouble understanding what the codes did or how data structures were used. Most came with a makefile. Surprisingly, only one of the applications is parallel. All developers have access to parallel machines, so availability is not an issue. Several tried to parallelize their applications, but stopped after encountering difficulties. Lack of education and a perception that parallelism is difficult prevented most from trying. I parallelized several of the codes using OpenMP, and did not judge any of the codes as difficult to parallelize. Even more surprising than the lack of parallelism is the inefficiency of the codes. I was able to get large improvements in performance in a matter of a few days applying simple optimization techniques. Table 1 lists ten representative codes [names and affiliation are omitted to preserve anonymity]. Improvements on one processor range from 2x to 15.5x with a simple average of 4.75x. I did not use sophisticated performance tools or drill deep into the program's execution character as one would do when tuning ISV or community codes. Using only a profiler and source line timers, I identified inefficient sections of code and improved their performance by inspection. The changes were at a high level. I am sure there is another factor of 2 or 3 in each code, and more if the codes are parallelized. The study’s results show that personal scientific codes are running many times slower than they should and that the problem is pervasive. Computational scientists are not sloppy programmers; however, few are trained in the art of computer programming or code optimization. I found that most have a working knowledge of some programming language and standard software engineering practices; but they do not know, or think about, how to make their programs run faster. They simply do not know the standard techniques used to make codes run faster. In fact, they do not even perceive that such techniques exist. The case studies described in this paper show that applying simple, well known techniques can significantly increase the performance of personal codes. It is important that the scientific community and the Government agencies that support scientific research find ways to better educate academic scientific programmers. The inefficiency of their codes is so bad that it is retarding both the quality and progress of scientific research. # cacheperformance redundantoperations loopstructures performanceimprovement 1 x x 15.5 2 x 2.8 3 x x 2.5 4 x 2.1 5 x x 2.0 6 x 5.0 7 x 5.8 8 x 6.3 9 2.2 10 x x 3.3 Table 1 — Area of improvement and performance gains of 10 codes The remainder of the paper is organized as follows: sections 2, 3, and 4 discuss the three most common sources of inefficiencies in the codes studied. These are cache performance, redundant operations, and loop structures. Each section includes several examples. The last section summaries the work and suggests a possible solution to the issues raised. Optimizing cache performance Commodity microprocessor systems use caches to increase memory bandwidth and reduce memory latencies. Typical latencies from processor to L1, L2, local, and remote memory are 3, 10, 50, and 200 cycles, respectively. Moreover, bandwidth falls off dramatically as memory distances increase. Programs that do not use cache effectively run many times slower than programs that do. When optimizing for cache, the biggest performance gains are achieved by accessing data in cache order and reusing data to amortize the overhead of cache misses. Secondary considerations are prefetching, associativity, and replacement; however, the understanding and analysis required to optimize for the latter are probably beyond the capabilities of the non-expert. Much can be gained simply by accessing data in the correct order and maximizing data reuse. 6 out of the 10 codes studied here benefited from such high level optimizations. Array Accesses The most important cache optimization is the most basic: accessing Fortran array elements in column order and C array elements in row order. Four of the ten codes—1, 2, 4, and 10—got it wrong. Compilers will restructure nested loops to optimize cache performance, but may not do so if the loop structure is too complex, or the loop body includes conditionals, complex addressing, or function calls. In code 1, the compiler failed to invert a key loop because of complex addressing do I = 0, 1010, delta_x IM = I - delta_x IP = I + delta_x do J = 5, 995, delta_x JM = J - delta_x JP = J + delta_x T1 = CA1(IP, J) + CA1(I, JP) T2 = CA1(IM, J) + CA1(I, JM) S1 = T1 + T2 - 4 * CA1(I, J) CA(I, J) = CA1(I, J) + D * S1 end do end do In code 2, the culprit is conditionals do I = 1, N do J = 1, N If (IFLAG(I,J) .EQ. 0) then T1 = Value(I, J-1) T2 = Value(I-1, J) T3 = Value(I, J) T4 = Value(I+1, J) T5 = Value(I, J+1) Value(I,J) = 0.25 * (T1 + T2 + T5 + T4) Delta = ABS(T3 - Value(I,J)) If (Delta .GT. MaxDelta) MaxDelta = Delta endif enddo enddo I fixed both programs by inverting the loops by hand. Code 10 has three-dimensional arrays and triply nested loops. The structure of the most computationally intensive loops is too complex to invert automatically or by hand. The only practical solution is to transpose the arrays so that the dimension accessed by the innermost loop is in cache order. The arrays can be transposed at construction or prior to entering a computationally intensive section of code. The former requires all array references to be modified, while the latter is cost effective only if the cost of the transpose is amortized over many accesses. I used the second approach to optimize code 10. Code 5 has four-dimensional arrays and loops are nested four deep. For all of the reasons cited above the compiler is not able to restructure three key loops. Assume C arrays and let the four dimensions of the arrays be i, j, k, and l. In the original code, the index structure of the three loops is L1: for i L2: for i L3: for i for l for l for j for k for j for k for j for k for l So only L3 accesses array elements in cache order. L1 is a very complex loop—much too complex to invert. I brought the loop into cache alignment by transposing the second and fourth dimensions of the arrays. Since the code uses a macro to compute all array indexes, I effected the transpose at construction and changed the macro appropriately. The dimensions of the new arrays are now: i, l, k, and j. L3 is a simple loop and easily inverted. L2 has a loop-carried scalar dependence in k. By promoting the scalar name that carries the dependence to an array, I was able to invert the third and fourth subloops aligning the loop with cache. Code 5 is by far the most difficult of the four codes to optimize for array accesses; but the knowledge required to fix the problems is no more than that required for the other codes. I would judge this code at the limits of, but not beyond, the capabilities of appropriately trained computational scientists. Array Strides When a cache miss occurs, a line (64 bytes) rather than just one word is loaded into the cache. If data is accessed stride 1, than the cost of the miss is amortized over 8 words. Any stride other than one reduces the cost savings. Two of the ten codes studied suffered from non-unit strides. The codes represent two important classes of "strided" codes. Code 1 employs a multi-grid algorithm to reduce time to convergence. The grids are every tenth, fifth, second, and unit element. Since time to convergence is inversely proportional to the distance between elements, coarse grids converge quickly providing good starting values for finer grids. The better starting values further reduce the time to convergence. The downside is that grids of every nth element, n > 1, introduce non-unit strides into the computation. In the original code, much of the savings of the multi-grid algorithm were lost due to this problem. I eliminated the problem by compressing (copying) coarse grids into continuous memory, and rewriting the computation as a function of the compressed grid. On convergence, I copied the final values of the compressed grid back to the original grid. The savings gained from unit stride access of the compressed grid more than paid for the cost of copying. Using compressed grids, the loop from code 1 included in the previous section becomes do j = 1, GZ do i = 1, GZ T1 = CA(i+0, j-1) + CA(i-1, j+0) T4 = CA1(i+1, j+0) + CA1(i+0, j+1) S1 = T1 + T4 - 4 * CA1(i+0, j+0) CA(i+0, j+0) = CA1(i+0, j+0) + DD * S1 enddo enddo where CA and CA1 are compressed arrays of size GZ. Code 7 traverses a list of objects selecting objects for later processing. The labels of the selected objects are stored in an array. The selection step has unit stride, but the processing steps have irregular stride. A fix is to save the parameters of the selected objects in temporary arrays as they are selected, and pass the temporary arrays to the processing functions. The fix is practical if the same parameters are used in selection as in processing, or if processing comprises a series of distinct steps which use overlapping subsets of the parameters. Both conditions are true for code 7, so I achieved significant improvement by copying parameters to temporary arrays during selection. Data reuse In the previous sections, we optimized for spatial locality. It is also important to optimize for temporal locality. Once read, a datum should be used as much as possible before it is forced from cache. Loop fusion and loop unrolling are two techniques that increase temporal locality. Unfortunately, both techniques increase register pressure—as loop bodies become larger, the number of registers required to hold temporary values grows. Once register spilling occurs, any gains evaporate quickly. For multiprocessors with small register sets or small caches, the sweet spot can be very small. In the ten codes presented here, I found no opportunities for loop fusion and only two opportunities for loop unrolling (codes 1 and 3). In code 1, unrolling the outer and inner loop one iteration increases the number of result values computed by the loop body from 1 to 4, do J = 1, GZ-2, 2 do I = 1, GZ-2, 2 T1 = CA1(i+0, j-1) + CA1(i-1, j+0) T2 = CA1(i+1, j-1) + CA1(i+0, j+0) T3 = CA1(i+0, j+0) + CA1(i-1, j+1) T4 = CA1(i+1, j+0) + CA1(i+0, j+1) T5 = CA1(i+2, j+0) + CA1(i+1, j+1) T6 = CA1(i+1, j+1) + CA1(i+0, j+2) T7 = CA1(i+2, j+1) + CA1(i+1, j+2) S1 = T1 + T4 - 4 * CA1(i+0, j+0) S2 = T2 + T5 - 4 * CA1(i+1, j+0) S3 = T3 + T6 - 4 * CA1(i+0, j+1) S4 = T4 + T7 - 4 * CA1(i+1, j+1) CA(i+0, j+0) = CA1(i+0, j+0) + DD * S1 CA(i+1, j+0) = CA1(i+1, j+0) + DD * S2 CA(i+0, j+1) = CA1(i+0, j+1) + DD * S3 CA(i+1, j+1) = CA1(i+1, j+1) + DD * S4 enddo enddo The loop body executes 12 reads, whereas as the rolled loop shown in the previous section executes 20 reads to compute the same four values. In code 3, two loops are unrolled 8 times and one loop is unrolled 4 times. Here is the before for (k = 0; k < NK[u]; k++) { sum = 0.0; for (y = 0; y < NY; y++) { sum += W[y][u][k] * delta[y]; } backprop[i++]=sum; } and after code for (k = 0; k < KK - 8; k+=8) { sum0 = 0.0; sum1 = 0.0; sum2 = 0.0; sum3 = 0.0; sum4 = 0.0; sum5 = 0.0; sum6 = 0.0; sum7 = 0.0; for (y = 0; y < NY; y++) { sum0 += W[y][0][k+0] * delta[y]; sum1 += W[y][0][k+1] * delta[y]; sum2 += W[y][0][k+2] * delta[y]; sum3 += W[y][0][k+3] * delta[y]; sum4 += W[y][0][k+4] * delta[y]; sum5 += W[y][0][k+5] * delta[y]; sum6 += W[y][0][k+6] * delta[y]; sum7 += W[y][0][k+7] * delta[y]; } backprop[k+0] = sum0; backprop[k+1] = sum1; backprop[k+2] = sum2; backprop[k+3] = sum3; backprop[k+4] = sum4; backprop[k+5] = sum5; backprop[k+6] = sum6; backprop[k+7] = sum7; } for one of the loops unrolled 8 times. Optimizing for temporal locality is the most difficult optimization considered in this paper. The concepts are not difficult, but the sweet spot is small. Identifying where the program can benefit from loop unrolling or loop fusion is not trivial. Moreover, it takes some effort to get it right. Still, educating scientific programmers about temporal locality and teaching them how to optimize for it will pay dividends. Reducing instruction count Execution time is a function of instruction count. Reduce the count and you usually reduce the time. The best solution is to use a more efficient algorithm; that is, an algorithm whose order of complexity is smaller, that converges quicker, or is more accurate. Optimizing source code without changing the algorithm yields smaller, but still significant, gains. This paper considers only the latter because the intent is to study how much better codes can run if written by programmers schooled in basic code optimization techniques. The ten codes studied benefited from three types of "instruction reducing" optimizations. The two most prevalent were hoisting invariant memory and data operations out of inner loops. The third was eliminating unnecessary data copying. The nature of these inefficiencies is language dependent. Memory operations The semantics of C make it difficult for the compiler to determine all the invariant memory operations in a loop. The problem is particularly acute for loops in functions since the compiler may not know the values of the function's parameters at every call site when compiling the function. Most compilers support pragmas to help resolve ambiguities; however, these pragmas are not comprehensive and there is no standard syntax. To guarantee that invariant memory operations are not executed repetitively, the user has little choice but to hoist the operations by hand. The problem is not as severe in Fortran programs because in the absence of equivalence statements, it is a violation of the language's semantics for two names to share memory. Codes 3 and 5 are C programs. In both cases, the compiler did not hoist all invariant memory operations from inner loops. Consider the following loop from code 3 for (y = 0; y < NY; y++) { i = 0; for (u = 0; u < NU; u++) { for (k = 0; k < NK[u]; k++) { dW[y][u][k] += delta[y] * I1[i++]; } } } Since dW[y][u] can point to the same memory space as delta for one or more values of y and u, assignment to dW[y][u][k] may change the value of delta[y]. In reality, dW and delta do not overlap in memory, so I rewrote the loop as for (y = 0; y < NY; y++) { i = 0; Dy = delta[y]; for (u = 0; u < NU; u++) { for (k = 0; k < NK[u]; k++) { dW[y][u][k] += Dy * I1[i++]; } } } Failure to hoist invariant memory operations may be due to complex address calculations. If the compiler can not determine that the address calculation is invariant, then it can hoist neither the calculation nor the associated memory operations. As noted above, code 5 uses a macro to address four-dimensional arrays #define MAT4D(a,q,i,j,k) (double *)((a)->data + (q)*(a)->strides[0] + (i)*(a)->strides[3] + (j)*(a)->strides[2] + (k)*(a)->strides[1]) The macro is too complex for the compiler to understand and so, it does not identify any subexpressions as loop invariant. The simplest way to eliminate the address calculation from the innermost loop (over i) is to define a0 = MAT4D(a,q,0,j,k) before the loop and then replace all instances of *MAT4D(a,q,i,j,k) in the loop with a0[i] A similar problem appears in code 6, a Fortran program. The key loop in this program is do n1 = 1, nh nx1 = (n1 - 1) / nz + 1 nz1 = n1 - nz * (nx1 - 1) do n2 = 1, nh nx2 = (n2 - 1) / nz + 1 nz2 = n2 - nz * (nx2 - 1) ndx = nx2 - nx1 ndy = nz2 - nz1 gxx = grn(1,ndx,ndy) gyy = grn(2,ndx,ndy) gxy = grn(3,ndx,ndy) balance(n1,1) = balance(n1,1) + (force(n2,1) * gxx + force(n2,2) * gxy) * h1 balance(n1,2) = balance(n1,2) + (force(n2,1) * gxy + force(n2,2) * gyy)*h1 end do end do The programmer has written this loop well—there are no loop invariant operations with respect to n1 and n2. However, the loop resides within an iterative loop over time and the index calculations are independent with respect to time. Trading space for time, I precomputed the index values prior to the entering the time loop and stored the values in two arrays. I then replaced the index calculations with reads of the arrays. Data operations Ways to reduce data operations can appear in many forms. Implementing a more efficient algorithm produces the biggest gains. The closest I came to an algorithm change was in code 4. This code computes the inner product of K-vectors A(i) and B(j), 0 = i < N, 0 = j < M, for most values of i and j. Since the program computes most of the NM possible inner products, it is more efficient to compute all the inner products in one triply-nested loop rather than one at a time when needed. The savings accrue from reading A(i) once for all B(j) vectors and from loop unrolling. for (i = 0; i < N; i+=8) { for (j = 0; j < M; j++) { sum0 = 0.0; sum1 = 0.0; sum2 = 0.0; sum3 = 0.0; sum4 = 0.0; sum5 = 0.0; sum6 = 0.0; sum7 = 0.0; for (k = 0; k < K; k++) { sum0 += A[i+0][k] * B[j][k]; sum1 += A[i+1][k] * B[j][k]; sum2 += A[i+2][k] * B[j][k]; sum3 += A[i+3][k] * B[j][k]; sum4 += A[i+4][k] * B[j][k]; sum5 += A[i+5][k] * B[j][k]; sum6 += A[i+6][k] * B[j][k]; sum7 += A[i+7][k] * B[j][k]; } C[i+0][j] = sum0; C[i+1][j] = sum1; C[i+2][j] = sum2; C[i+3][j] = sum3; C[i+4][j] = sum4; C[i+5][j] = sum5; C[i+6][j] = sum6; C[i+7][j] = sum7; }} This change requires knowledge of a typical run; i.e., that most inner products are computed. The reasons for the change, however, derive from basic optimization concepts. It is the type of change easily made at development time by a knowledgeable programmer. In code 5, we have the data version of the index optimization in code 6. Here a very expensive computation is a function of the loop indices and so cannot be hoisted out of the loop; however, the computation is invariant with respect to an outer iterative loop over time. We can compute its value for each iteration of the computation loop prior to entering the time loop and save the values in an array. The increase in memory required to store the values is small in comparison to the large savings in time. The main loop in Code 8 is doubly nested. The inner loop includes a series of guarded computations; some are a function of the inner loop index but not the outer loop index while others are a function of the outer loop index but not the inner loop index for (j = 0; j < N; j++) { for (i = 0; i < M; i++) { r = i * hrmax; R = A[j]; temp = (PRM[3] == 0.0) ? 1.0 : pow(r, PRM[3]); high = temp * kcoeff * B[j] * PRM[2] * PRM[4]; low = high * PRM[6] * PRM[6] / (1.0 + pow(PRM[4] * PRM[6], 2.0)); kap = (R > PRM[6]) ? high * R * R / (1.0 + pow(PRM[4]*r, 2.0) : low * pow(R/PRM[6], PRM[5]); < rest of loop omitted > }} Note that the value of temp is invariant to j. Thus, we can hoist the computation for temp out of the loop and save its values in an array. for (i = 0; i < M; i++) { r = i * hrmax; TEMP[i] = pow(r, PRM[3]); } [N.B. – the case for PRM[3] = 0 is omitted and will be reintroduced later.] We now hoist out of the inner loop the computations invariant to i. Since the conditional guarding the value of kap is invariant to i, it behooves us to hoist the computation out of the inner loop, thereby executing the guard once rather than M times. The final version of the code is for (j = 0; j < N; j++) { R = rig[j] / 1000.; tmp1 = kcoeff * par[2] * beta[j] * par[4]; tmp2 = 1.0 + (par[4] * par[4] * par[6] * par[6]); tmp3 = 1.0 + (par[4] * par[4] * R * R); tmp4 = par[6] * par[6] / tmp2; tmp5 = R * R / tmp3; tmp6 = pow(R / par[6], par[5]); if ((par[3] == 0.0) && (R > par[6])) { for (i = 1; i <= imax1; i++) KAP[i] = tmp1 * tmp5; } else if ((par[3] == 0.0) && (R <= par[6])) { for (i = 1; i <= imax1; i++) KAP[i] = tmp1 * tmp4 * tmp6; } else if ((par[3] != 0.0) && (R > par[6])) { for (i = 1; i <= imax1; i++) KAP[i] = tmp1 * TEMP[i] * tmp5; } else if ((par[3] != 0.0) && (R <= par[6])) { for (i = 1; i <= imax1; i++) KAP[i] = tmp1 * TEMP[i] * tmp4 * tmp6; } for (i = 0; i < M; i++) { kap = KAP[i]; r = i * hrmax; < rest of loop omitted > } } Maybe not the prettiest piece of code, but certainly much more efficient than the original loop, Copy operations Several programs unnecessarily copy data from one data structure to another. This problem occurs in both Fortran and C programs, although it manifests itself differently in the two languages. Code 1 declares two arrays—one for old values and one for new values. At the end of each iteration, the array of new values is copied to the array of old values to reset the data structures for the next iteration. This problem occurs in Fortran programs not included in this study and in both Fortran 77 and Fortran 90 code. Introducing pointers to the arrays and swapping pointer values is an obvious way to eliminate the copying; but pointers is not a feature that many Fortran programmers know well or are comfortable using. An easy solution not involving pointers is to extend the dimension of the value array by 1 and use the last dimension to differentiate between arrays at different times. For example, if the data space is N x N, declare the array (N, N, 2). Then store the problem’s initial values in (_, _, 2) and define the scalar names new = 2 and old = 1. At the start of each iteration, swap old and new to reset the arrays. The old–new copy problem did not appear in any C program. In programs that had new and old values, the code swapped pointers to reset data structures. Where unnecessary coping did occur is in structure assignment and parameter passing. Structures in C are handled much like scalars. Assignment causes the data space of the right-hand name to be copied to the data space of the left-hand name. Similarly, when a structure is passed to a function, the data space of the actual parameter is copied to the data space of the formal parameter. If the structure is large and the assignment or function call is in an inner loop, then copying costs can grow quite large. While none of the ten programs considered here manifested this problem, it did occur in programs not included in the study. A simple fix is always to refer to structures via pointers. Optimizing loop structures Since scientific programs spend almost all their time in loops, efficient loops are the key to good performance. Conditionals, function calls, little instruction level parallelism, and large numbers of temporary values make it difficult for the compiler to generate tightly packed, highly efficient code. Conditionals and function calls introduce jumps that disrupt code flow. Users should eliminate or isolate conditionls to their own loops as much as possible. Often logical expressions can be substituted for if-then-else statements. For example, code 2 includes the following snippet MaxDelta = 0.0 do J = 1, N do I = 1, M < code omitted > Delta = abs(OldValue ? NewValue) if (Delta > MaxDelta) MaxDelta = Delta enddo enddo if (MaxDelta .gt. 0.001) goto 200 Since the only use of MaxDelta is to control the jump to 200 and all that matters is whether or not it is greater than 0.001, I made MaxDelta a boolean and rewrote the snippet as MaxDelta = .false. do J = 1, N do I = 1, M < code omitted > Delta = abs(OldValue ? NewValue) MaxDelta = MaxDelta .or. (Delta .gt. 0.001) enddo enddo if (MaxDelta) goto 200 thereby, eliminating the conditional expression from the inner loop. A microprocessor can execute many instructions per instruction cycle. Typically, it can execute one or more memory, floating point, integer, and jump operations. To be executed simultaneously, the operations must be independent. Thick loops tend to have more instruction level parallelism than thin loops. Moreover, they reduce memory traffice by maximizing data reuse. Loop unrolling and loop fusion are two techniques to increase the size of loop bodies. Several of the codes studied benefitted from loop unrolling, but none benefitted from loop fusion. This observation is not too surpising since it is the general tendency of programmers to write thick loops. As loops become thicker, the number of temporary values grows, increasing register pressure. If registers spill, then memory traffic increases and code flow is disrupted. A thick loop with many temporary values may execute slower than an equivalent series of thin loops. The biggest gain will be achieved if the thick loop can be split into a series of independent loops eliminating the need to write and read temporary arrays. I found such an occasion in code 10 where I split the loop do i = 1, n do j = 1, m A24(j,i)= S24(j,i) * T24(j,i) + S25(j,i) * U25(j,i) B24(j,i)= S24(j,i) * T25(j,i) + S25(j,i) * U24(j,i) A25(j,i)= S24(j,i) * C24(j,i) + S25(j,i) * V24(j,i) B25(j,i)= S24(j,i) * U25(j,i) + S25(j,i) * V25(j,i) C24(j,i)= S26(j,i) * T26(j,i) + S27(j,i) * U26(j,i) D24(j,i)= S26(j,i) * T27(j,i) + S27(j,i) * V26(j,i) C25(j,i)= S27(j,i) * S28(j,i) + S26(j,i) * U28(j,i) D25(j,i)= S27(j,i) * T28(j,i) + S26(j,i) * V28(j,i) end do end do into two disjoint loops do i = 1, n do j = 1, m A24(j,i)= S24(j,i) * T24(j,i) + S25(j,i) * U25(j,i) B24(j,i)= S24(j,i) * T25(j,i) + S25(j,i) * U24(j,i) A25(j,i)= S24(j,i) * C24(j,i) + S25(j,i) * V24(j,i) B25(j,i)= S24(j,i) * U25(j,i) + S25(j,i) * V25(j,i) end do end do do i = 1, n do j = 1, m C24(j,i)= S26(j,i) * T26(j,i) + S27(j,i) * U26(j,i) D24(j,i)= S26(j,i) * T27(j,i) + S27(j,i) * V26(j,i) C25(j,i)= S27(j,i) * S28(j,i) + S26(j,i) * U28(j,i) D25(j,i)= S27(j,i) * T28(j,i) + S26(j,i) * V28(j,i) end do end do Conclusions Over the course of the last year, I have had the opportunity to work with over two dozen academic scientific programmers at leading research universities. Their research interests span a broad range of scientific fields. Except for two programs that relied almost exclusively on library routines (matrix multiply and fast Fourier transform), I was able to improve significantly the single processor performance of all codes. Improvements range from 2x to 15.5x with a simple average of 4.75x. Changes to the source code were at a very high level. I did not use sophisticated techniques or programming tools to discover inefficiencies or effect the changes. Only one code was parallel despite the availability of parallel systems to all developers. Clearly, we have a problem—personal scientific research codes are highly inefficient and not running parallel. The developers are unaware of simple optimization techniques to make programs run faster. They lack education in the art of code optimization and parallel programming. I do not believe we can fix the problem by publishing additional books or training manuals. To date, the developers in questions have not studied the books or manual available, and are unlikely to do so in the future. Short courses are a possible solution, but I believe they are too concentrated to be much use. The general concepts can be taught in a three or four day course, but that is not enough time for students to practice what they learn and acquire the experience to apply and extend the concepts to their codes. Practice is the key to becoming proficient at optimization. I recommend that graduate students be required to take a semester length course in optimization and parallel programming. We would never give someone access to state-of-the-art scientific equipment costing hundreds of thousands of dollars without first requiring them to demonstrate that they know how to use the equipment. Yet the criterion for time on state-of-the-art supercomputers is at most an interesting project. Requestors are never asked to demonstrate that they know how to use the system, or can use the system effectively. A semester course would teach them the required skills. Government agencies that fund academic scientific research pay for most of the computer systems supporting scientific research as well as the development of most personal scientific codes. These agencies should require graduate schools to offer a course in optimization and parallel programming as a requirement for funding. About the Author John Feo received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from The University of Texas at Austin in 1986. After graduate school, Dr. Feo worked at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory where he was the Group Leader of the Computer Research Group and principal investigator of the Sisal Language Project. In 1997, Dr. Feo joined Tera Computer Company where he was project manager for the MTA, and oversaw the programming and evaluation of the MTA at the San Diego Supercomputer Center. In 2000, Dr. Feo joined Sun Microsystems as an HPC application specialist. He works with university research groups to optimize and parallelize scientific codes. Dr. Feo has published over two dozen research articles in the areas of parallel parallel programming, parallel programming languages, and application performance.

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  • How to Set Up Your Enterprise Social Organization

    - by Mike Stiles
    The rush for business organizations to establish, grow, and adopt social was driven out of necessity and inevitability. The result, however, was a sudden, booming social presence creating touch points with customers, partners and influencers, but without any corporate social organization or structure in place to effectively manage it. Even today, many business leaders remain uncertain as to how to corral this social media thing so that it makes sense for their enterprise. Imagine their panic when they hear one of the most beneficial approaches to corporate use of social involves giving up at least some hierarchical control and empowering employees to publicly engage customers. And beyond that, they should also be empowered, regardless of their corporate status, to engage and collaborate internally, spurring “off the grid” innovation. An HBR blog points out that traditionally, enterprise organizations function from the top down, and employees work end-to-end, structured around business processes. But the social enterprise opens up structures that up to now have not exactly been embraced by turf-protecting executives and managers. The blog asks, “What if leaders could create a future where customers, associates and suppliers are no longer seen as objects in the system but as valued sources of innovation, ideas and energy?” What if indeed? The social enterprise activates internal resources without the usual obsession with position. It is the dawn of mass collaboration. That does not, however, mean this mass collaboration has to lead to uncontrolled chaos. In an extended interview with Oracle, Altimeter Group analyst Jeremiah Owyang and Oracle SVP Reggie Bradford paint a complete picture of today’s social enterprise, including internal organizational structures Altimeter Group has seen emerge. One sign of a mature social enterprise is the establishing of a social Center of Excellence (CoE), which serves as a hub for high-level social strategy, training and education, research, measurement and accountability, and vendor selection. This CoE is led by a corporate Social Strategist, most likely from a Marketing or Corporate Communications background. Reporting to them are the Community Managers, the front lines of customer interaction and engagement; business unit liaisons that coordinate the enterprise; and social media campaign/product managers, social analysts, and developers. With content rising as the defining factor for social success, Altimeter also sees a Content Strategist position emerging. Across the enterprise, Altimeter has seen 5 organizational patterns. Watching the video will give you the pros and cons of each. Decentralized - Anyone can do anything at any time on any social channel. Centralized – One central groups controls all social communication for the company. Hub and Spoke – A centralized group, but business units can operate their own social under the hub’s guidance and execution. Most enterprises are using this model. Dandelion – Each business unit develops their own social strategy & staff, has its own ability to deploy, and its own ability to engage under the central policies of the CoE. Honeycomb – Every employee can do social, but as opposed to the decentralized model, it’s coordinated and monitored on one platform. The average enterprise has a whopping 178 social accounts, nearly ¼ of which are usually semi-idle and need to be scrapped. The last thing any C-suite needs is to cope with fragmented technologies, solutions and platforms. It’s neither scalable nor strategic. The prepared, effective social enterprise has a technology partner that can quickly and holistically integrate emerging platforms and technologies, such that whatever internal social command structure you’ve set up can continue efficiently executing strategy without skipping a beat. @mikestiles

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  • Failure Sucks, But Does It Have To?

    - by steve.diamond
    Hey Folks--It's "elephant in the room" time. Imagine a representative from a CRM VENDOR discussing CRM FAILURES. Well. I recently saw this blog post from Michael Krigsman on "six ways CRM projects go wrong." Now, I know this may come off defensive, but my comments apply to ALL CRM vendors, not just Oracle. As I perused the list, I couldn't find any failures related to technology. They all seemed related to people or process. Now, this isn't about finger pointing, or impugning customers. I love customers! And when they fail, WE fail. Although I sit in the cheap seats, i.e., I haven't funded any multi-million dollar CRM initiatives lately, I kept wondering how to convert the perception of failure as something that ends and is never to be mentioned again (see Michael's reason #4), to something that one learns from and builds upon. So to continue my tradition of speaking in platitudes, let me propose the following three tenets: 1) Try and get ahead of your failures while they're very very small. 2) Immediately assess what you can learn from those failures. 3) With more than 15 years of CRM deployments, seek out those vendors that have a track record both in learning from "misses" and in supporting MANY THOUSANDS of CRM successes at companies of all types and sizes. Now let me digress briefly with an unpleasant (for me, anyway) analogy. I really don't like flying. Call it 'fear of dying' or 'fear of no control.' Whatever! I've spoken with quite a few commercial pilots over the years, and they reassure me that there are multiple failures on most every flight. We as passengers just don't know about them. Most of them are too miniscule to make a difference, and most of them are "caught" before they become LARGER failures. It's typically the mid-sized to colossal failures we hear about, and a significant percentage of those are due to human error. What's the point? I'd propose that organizations consider the topic of FAILURE in five grades. On one end, FAILURE Grade 1 is a minor/miniscule failure. On the other end, FAILURE Grade 5 is a colossal failure A Grade 1 CRM FAILURE could be that a particular interim milestone was missed. Why? What can we learn from that? How can we prevent that from happening as we proceed through the project? Individual organizations will need to define their own Grade 2 and Grade 3 failures. The opportunity is to keep those Grade 3 failures from escalating any further. Because honestly, a GRADE 5 failure may not be recoverable. It could result in a project being pulled, countless amounts of hours and dollars lost, and jobs lost. We don't want to go there. In closing, I want to thank Michael for opening my eyes up to the world of "color," versus thinking of failure as both "black and white" and a dead end road that organizations can't learn from and avoid discussing like the plague.

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  • All for one and one for all…the power of partnership in higher education

    - by Student Solutions Team-Oracle
    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:0in; 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;} Recently, several of our Oracle student solutions team members were in Latin America at a user group conference. Not an Oracle user group—although the conference was about and for higher education customers using Oracle software—but a Higher Education User Group (HEUG) conference. So what’s the difference? First of all, the HEUG is an entirely independent organization from Oracle, incorporated as a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation governed by a Board of Directors. As a self-governing organization, the more than 23,000 higher education members (and growing!) actively participate in a multitude of initiatives, communications and shared-learning opportunities that benefit each of them and their institutions. For example, one of these programs includes 16 active and effective Product Advisor Groups (PAGs) that interact directly with Oracle management, developers and business partners to provide input into product strategies and improvements. The HEUG also provides a variety of online tools to help its members navigate the world of Oracle applications software. There’s a lot more that this organization does, but you can go to www.heug.org yourself to learn more. We want to get back to our story! Anyway, as we were leaving the HEUG conference in Latin America, one of the guests invited to attend commented: “Do these users realize and appreciate how many people from Oracle come to support them? You have a much larger representation at these types of conferences than any other vendor. It shows the tremendous support you have for your higher education customers.” So that’s it! This is why the partnership between the HEUG and Oracle is so powerful and unique in the software industry. Two distinct, independent organizations come together focused entirely on providing the highest value and mutual benefit to each member, each organization and the larger higher education community. Through open communications and active engagement since the HEUG was formed in 1998, our partnership today is stronger than it has ever been and membership growing globally. Result? Everyone benefits. All for one and one for all—we are in this together. We’ve got a lot going on in the student solutions team and are working closely with customers and the HEUG to move ahead on continued development for PeopleSoft Campus Solutions 9.2 and a new Oracle Student Cloud. Come back here for more stories, news and information! --Oracle Student Solutions Team  

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  • Patching and PCI Compliance

    - by Joel Weise
    One of my friends and master of the security universe, Darren Moffat, pointed me to Dan Anderson's blog the other day.  Dan went to Toorcon which is a security conference where he went to a talk on security patching titled, "Stop Patching, for Stronger PCI Compliance".  I realize that often times speakers will use a headline grabbing title to create interest in their talk and this one certainly got my attention.  I did not go to the conference and did not see the presentation, so I can only go by what is in the Toorcon agenda summary and on Dan's blog, but the general statement to stop patching for stronger PCI compliance seems a bit misleading to me.  Clearly patching is important to all systems management and should be a part of any organization's security hygiene.  Further, PCI does require the patching of systems to maintain compliance.  So it's important to mention that organizations should not simply stop patching their systems; and I want to believe that was not the speakers intent. So let's look at PCI requirement 6: "Unscrupulous individuals use security vulnerabilities to gain privileged access to systems. Many of these vulnerabilities are fixed by vendor- provided security patches, which must be installed by the entities that manage the systems. All critical systems must have the most recently released, appropriate software patches to protect against exploitation and compromise of cardholder data by malicious individuals and malicious software." Notice the word "appropriate" in the requirement.  This is stated to give organizations some latitude and apply patches that make sense in their environment and that target the vulnerabilities in question.  Haven't we all seen a vulnerability scanner throw a false positive and flag some module and point to a recommended patch, only to realize that the module doesn't exist on our system?  Applying such a patch would obviously not be appropriate.  This does not mean an organization can ignore the fact they need to apply security patches.  It's pretty clear they must.  Of course, organizations have other options in terms of compliance when it comes to patching.  For example, they could remove a system from scope and make sure that system does not process or contain cardholder data.  [This may or may not be a significant undertaking.  I just wanted to point out that there are always options available.] PCI DSS requirement 6.1 also includes the following note: "Note: An organization may consider applying a risk-based approach to prioritize their patch installations. For example, by prioritizing critical infrastructure (for example, public-facing devices and systems, databases) higher than less-critical internal devices, to ensure high-priority systems and devices are addressed within one month, and addressing less critical devices and systems within three months." Notice there is no mention to stop patching one's systems.  And the note also states organization may apply a risk based approach. [A smart approach but also not mandated].  Such a risk based approach is not intended to remove the requirement to patch one's systems.  It is meant, as stated, to allow one to prioritize their patch installations.   So what does this mean to an organization that must comply with PCI DSS and maintain some sanity around their patch management and overall operational readiness?  I for one like to think that most organizations take a common sense and balanced approach to their business and security posture.  If patching is becoming an unbearable task, review why that is the case and possibly look for means to improve operational efficiencies; but also recognize that security is important to maintaining the availability and integrity of one's systems.  Likewise, whether we like it or not, the cyber-world we live in is getting more complex and threatening - and I dont think it's going to get better any time soon.

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  • How to Set Up Your Enterprise Social Organization?

    - by Richard Lefebvre
    By Mike Stiles on Dec 04, 2012 The rush for business organizations to establish, grow, and adopt social was driven out of necessity and inevitability. The result, however, was a sudden, booming social presence creating touch points with customers, partners and influencers, but without any corporate social organization or structure in place to effectively manage it. Even today, many business leaders remain uncertain as to how to corral this social media thing so that it makes sense for their enterprise. Imagine their panic when they hear one of the most beneficial approaches to corporate use of social involves giving up at least some hierarchical control and empowering employees to publicly engage customers. And beyond that, they should also be empowered, regardless of their corporate status, to engage and collaborate internally, spurring “off the grid” innovation. An HBR blog points out that traditionally, enterprise organizations function from the top down, and employees work end-to-end, structured around business processes. But the social enterprise opens up structures that up to now have not exactly been embraced by turf-protecting executives and managers. The blog asks, “What if leaders could create a future where customers, associates and suppliers are no longer seen as objects in the system but as valued sources of innovation, ideas and energy?” What if indeed? The social enterprise activates internal resources without the usual obsession with position. It is the dawn of mass collaboration. That does not, however, mean this mass collaboration has to lead to uncontrolled chaos. In an extended interview with Oracle, Altimeter Group analyst Jeremiah Owyang and Oracle SVP Reggie Bradford paint a complete picture of today’s social enterprise, including internal organizational structures Altimeter Group has seen emerge. One sign of a mature social enterprise is the establishing of a social Center of Excellence (CoE), which serves as a hub for high-level social strategy, training and education, research, measurement and accountability, and vendor selection. This CoE is led by a corporate Social Strategist, most likely from a Marketing or Corporate Communications background. Reporting to them are the Community Managers, the front lines of customer interaction and engagement; business unit liaisons that coordinate the enterprise; and social media campaign/product managers, social analysts, and developers. With content rising as the defining factor for social success, Altimeter also sees a Content Strategist position emerging. Across the enterprise, Altimeter has seen 5 organizational patterns. Watching the video will give you the pros and cons of each. Decentralized - Anyone can do anything at any time on any social channel. Centralized – One central groups controls all social communication for the company. Hub and Spoke – A centralized group, but business units can operate their own social under the hub’s guidance and execution. Most enterprises are using this model. Dandelion – Each business unit develops their own social strategy & staff, has its own ability to deploy, and its own ability to engage under the central policies of the CoE. Honeycomb – Every employee can do social, but as opposed to the decentralized model, it’s coordinated and monitored on one platform. The average enterprise has a whopping 178 social accounts, nearly ¼ of which are usually semi-idle and need to be scrapped. The last thing any C-suite needs is to cope with fragmented technologies, solutions and platforms. It’s neither scalable nor strategic. The prepared, effective social enterprise has a technology partner that can quickly and holistically integrate emerging platforms and technologies, such that whatever internal social command structure you’ve set up can continue efficiently executing strategy without skipping a beat. @mikestiles

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  • bluez 5.19 PS4 controller

    - by Athanase
    I currently have a problem when pairing my computer with a PS4 remote. On my Ubuntu 14.04 I removed everything related with bluez and bluetooth, and I built and installed bluez 5.19. Here are some useful command outputs: jean@system ~ hcitool hcitool - HCI Tool ver 5.19 jean@system ~ hcitool dev Devices: hci0 00:15:83:4C:0C:BB jean@system ~ bluetoothctl [bluetooth]# version Version 5.19 jean@system ~ bluetoothctl [NEW] Controller 00:15:83:4C:0C:BB BlueZ [default] jean@system ~ lsusb Bus 003 Device 012: ID 0a12:0001 Cambridge Silicon Radio, Ltd Bluetooth Dongle (HCI mode) So here is what happens. When I try to hard pair the controller with the computer, by holding the share and ps button for a while, everything works as expected and the pairing is done properly. After a hard pairing if I try the pairing by pressing the ps button only, nothings happen. In order to go it, I first power up the bluetooth dongle: jean@system ~ sudo hciconfig hciX up and then I run the bluetooh deamon bluetoothd: jean@system /usr/libexec/bluetooth ~ ./bluetoothd -d -n bluetoothd[11270]: Bluetooth daemon 5.19 bluetoothd[11270]: src/main.c:parse_config() parsing main.conf bluetoothd[11270]: src/main.c:parse_config() discovto=0 bluetoothd[11270]: src/main.c:parse_config() pairto=0 bluetoothd[11270]: src/main.c:parse_config() auto_to=60 bluetoothd[11270]: src/main.c:parse_config() name=%h-%d bluetoothd[11270]: src/main.c:parse_config() class=0x000100 bluetoothd[11270]: src/main.c:parse_config() Key file does not have key 'DeviceID' bluetoothd[11270]: src/gatt.c:gatt_init() Starting GATT server bluetoothd[11270]: src/adapter.c:adapter_init() sending read version command bluetoothd[11270]: Starting SDP server bluetoothd[11270]: src/sdpd-service.c:register_device_id() Adding device id record for 0002:1d6b:0246:0513 ... bluetoothd[11270]: src/adapter.c:adapter_service_insert() /org/bluez/hci0 bluetoothd[11270]: src/adapter.c:add_uuid() sending add uuid command for index 0 bluetoothd[11270]: profiles/audio/a2dp.c:a2dp_sink_server_probe() path /org/bluez/hci0 bluetoothd[11270]: profiles/audio/a2dp.c:a2dp_source_server_probe() path /org/bluez/hci0 bluetoothd[11270]: src/adapter.c:btd_adapter_unblock_address() hci0 00:00:00:00:00:00 bluetoothd[11270]: src/adapter.c:get_ltk_info() A4:15:66:C1:0D:2A bluetoothd[11270]: src/device.c:device_create_from_storage() address A4:15:66:C1:0D:2A bluetoothd[11270]: src/device.c:device_new() address A4:15:66:C1:0D:2A bluetoothd[11270]: src/device.c:device_new() Creating device /org/bluez/hci0/dev_A4_15_66_C1_0D_2A bluetoothd[11270]: src/device.c:device_set_bonded() bluetoothd[11270]: src/adapter.c:get_ltk_info() A4:15:66:88:5E:9A bluetoothd[11270]: src/device.c:device_create_from_storage() address A4:15:66:88:5E:9A bluetoothd[11270]: src/device.c:device_new() address A4:15:66:88:5E:9A bluetoothd[11270]: src/device.c:device_new() Creating device /org/bluez/hci0/dev_A4_15_66_88_5E_9A bluetoothd[11270]: src/device.c:device_set_bonded() bluetoothd[11270]: src/adapter.c:load_link_keys() hci0 keys 2 debug_keys 0 bluetoothd[11270]: src/adapter.c:load_ltks() hci0 keys 0 bluetoothd[11270]: src/adapter.c:load_connections() sending get connections command for index 0 bluetoothd[11270]: src/adapter.c:adapter_service_insert() /org/bluez/hci0 bluetoothd[11270]: src/adapter.c:add_uuid() sending add uuid command for index 0 bluetoothd[11270]: src/adapter.c:set_did() hci0 source 2 vendor 1d6b product 246 version 513 bluetoothd[11270]: src/adapter.c:adapter_register() Adapter /org/bluez/hci0 registered bluetoothd[11270]: src/adapter.c:set_dev_class() sending set device class command for index 0 bluetoothd[11270]: src/adapter.c:set_name() sending set local name command for index 0 bluetoothd[11270]: src/adapter.c:set_mode() sending set mode command for index 0 bluetoothd[11270]: src/adapter.c:set_mode() sending set mode command for index 0 bluetoothd[11270]: src/adapter.c:adapter_start() adapter /org/bluez/hci0 has been enabled bluetoothd[11270]: src/adapter.c:trigger_passive_scanning() bluetoothd[11270]: plugins/hostname.c:property_changed() static hostname: system bluetoothd[11270]: plugins/hostname.c:property_changed() pretty hostname: bluetoothd[11270]: plugins/hostname.c:update_name() name: system bluetoothd[11270]: src/adapter.c:adapter_set_name() name: system bluetoothd[11270]: plugins/hostname.c:property_changed() chassis: desktop bluetoothd[11270]: plugins/hostname.c:update_class() major: 0x01 minor: 0x01 bluetoothd[11270]: src/adapter.c:load_link_keys_complete() link keys loaded for hci0 bluetoothd[11270]: src/adapter.c:load_ltks_complete() LTKs loaded for hci0 bluetoothd[11270]: src/adapter.c:get_connections_complete() Connection count: 0 And then I press the ps button of the PS4 controller bluetoothd[11270]: src/adapter.c:connected_callback() hci0 device A4:15:66:C1:0D:2A connected eir_len 5 bluetoothd[11270]: profiles/input/server.c:connect_event_cb() Incoming connection from A4:15:66:C1:0D:2A on PSM 17 bluetoothd[11270]: profiles/input/device.c:input_device_set_channel() idev (nil) psm 17 bluetoothd[11270]: Refusing input device connect: No such file or directory (2) bluetoothd[11270]: profiles/input/server.c:confirm_event_cb() bluetoothd[11270]: Refusing connection from A4:15:66:C1:0D:2A: unknown device bluetoothd[11270]: src/adapter.c:dev_disconnected() Device A4:15:66:C1:0D:2A disconnected, reason 3 bluetoothd[11270]: src/adapter.c:adapter_remove_connection() bluetoothd[11270]: plugins/policy.c:disconnect_cb() reason 3 bluetoothd[11270]: src/adapter.c:bonding_attempt_complete() hci0 bdaddr A4:15:66:C1:0D:2A type 0 status 0xe bluetoothd[11270]: src/device.c:device_bonding_complete() bonding (nil) status 0x0e bluetoothd[11270]: src/device.c:device_bonding_failed() status 14 bluetoothd[11270]: src/adapter.c:resume_discovery() So I don't know what is happening here and a bit of help would be appreciated.

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  • Bluetooth not found on BCM43228

    - by TK Kocheran
    I've got a Broadcom BCM43228 mPCIe card which came with my motherboard (ASUS ROG Maximus V Extreme, can't seem to find a link to what the card is) which is working great for WiFi right now, but I can't detect the Bluetooth hardware onboard. In Windows, I have full Bluetooth 4.0 support. $ lspci 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family DRAM Controller (rev 09) 00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200/2nd Generation Core Processor Family PCI Express Root Port (rev 09) 00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point USB xHCI Host Controller (rev 04) 00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point MEI Controller #1 (rev 04) 00:19.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82579V Gigabit Network Connection (rev 04) 00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point USB Enhanced Host Controller #2 (rev 04) 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Panther Point High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Panther Point PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev c4) 00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Panther Point PCI Express Root Port 5 (rev c4) 00:1c.6 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Panther Point PCI Express Root Port 7 (rev c4) 00:1c.7 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Panther Point PCI Express Root Port 8 (rev c4) 00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point USB Enhanced Host Controller #1 (rev 04) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Panther Point LPC Controller (rev 04) 00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point 6 port SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 04) 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation Panther Point SMBus Controller (rev 04) 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation Device 1189 (rev a1) 01:00.1 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation Device 0e0a (rev a1) 0d:00.0 USB controller: ASMedia Technology Inc. ASM1042 SuperSpeed USB Host Controller 0e:00.0 PCI bridge: PLX Technology, Inc. PEX 8608 8-lane, 8-Port PCI Express Gen 2 (5.0 GT/s) Switch (rev ba) 0f:01.0 PCI bridge: PLX Technology, Inc. PEX 8608 8-lane, 8-Port PCI Express Gen 2 (5.0 GT/s) Switch (rev ba) 0f:04.0 PCI bridge: PLX Technology, Inc. PEX 8608 8-lane, 8-Port PCI Express Gen 2 (5.0 GT/s) Switch (rev ba) 0f:05.0 PCI bridge: PLX Technology, Inc. PEX 8608 8-lane, 8-Port PCI Express Gen 2 (5.0 GT/s) Switch (rev ba) 0f:06.0 PCI bridge: PLX Technology, Inc. PEX 8608 8-lane, 8-Port PCI Express Gen 2 (5.0 GT/s) Switch (rev ba) 0f:07.0 PCI bridge: PLX Technology, Inc. PEX 8608 8-lane, 8-Port PCI Express Gen 2 (5.0 GT/s) Switch (rev ba) 0f:08.0 PCI bridge: PLX Technology, Inc. PEX 8608 8-lane, 8-Port PCI Express Gen 2 (5.0 GT/s) Switch (rev ba) 0f:09.0 PCI bridge: PLX Technology, Inc. PEX 8608 8-lane, 8-Port PCI Express Gen 2 (5.0 GT/s) Switch (rev ba) 10:00.0 USB controller: ASMedia Technology Inc. ASM1042 SuperSpeed USB Host Controller 12:00.0 SATA controller: ASMedia Technology Inc. ASM1062 Serial ATA Controller (rev 01) 15:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM43228 802.11a/b/g/n 17:00.0 SATA controller: ASMedia Technology Inc. ASM1062 Serial ATA Controller (rev 01) The key line seems to be: 15:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM43228 802.11a/b/g/n If I try to detect the Bluetooth card, I don't see anything: $ hcitool dev Devices: rfkill list all: Output lspci: Output lsusb: Output I finally found the card with usb-devices: T: Bus=01 Lev=02 Prnt=02 Port=00 Cnt=01 Dev#= 3 Spd=12 MxCh= 0 D: Ver= 2.00 Cls=ff(vend.) Sub=01 Prot=01 MxPS=64 #Cfgs= 1 P: Vendor=0b05 ProdID=17b5 Rev=01.12 S: Manufacturer=Broadcom Corp S: Product=BCM20702A0 S: SerialNumber=############ C: #Ifs= 4 Cfg#= 1 Atr=e0 MxPwr=0mA I: If#= 0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 3 Cls=ff(vend.) Sub=01 Prot=01 Driver=(none) I: If#= 1 Alt= 0 #EPs= 2 Cls=ff(vend.) Sub=01 Prot=01 Driver=(none) I: If#= 2 Alt= 0 #EPs= 2 Cls=ff(vend.) Sub=ff Prot=ff Driver=(none) I: If#= 3 Alt= 0 #EPs= 0 Cls=fe(app. ) Sub=01 Prot=01 Driver=(none) I've heard that this card needs to have firmware injected into it in order to function. If that's the case, how do I do it?

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  • My Doors - Why Standards Matter to Business

    - by Brian Dayton
    "Standards save money." "Standards accelerate projects." "Standards make better solutions."   What do these statements mean to you? You buy technology solutions like Oracle Applications but you're a business person--trying to close the quarter, get performance reviews processed, negotiate a new sourcing contract, etc.   When "standards" come up in presentations and discussions do you: -          Nod your head politely -          Tune out and check your smart phone -          Turn to your IT counterpart and say "Bob's all over this standards thing, right Bob?"   Here's why standards matter. My wife wants new external doors downstairs, ones that would get more light into the rooms. Am I OK with that? "Uhh, sure...it's a little dark in the kitchen."   -          24 hours ago - wife calls to tell me that she's going to the hardware store and may look at doors -          20 hours ago - wife pulls into driveway, informs me that two doors are in the back of her station wagon, ready for me to carry -          19 hours ago - I re-discovered the fact that it's not fun to carry a solid wood door by myself -          5 hours ago - Local handyman, who was at our house anyway, tells me that the doors we bought will likely cost 2-3x the material cost in installation time and labor...the doors are standard but our doorways aren't   We could have done more research. I could be more handy. Sure. But the fact is, my 1951 house wasn't built with me in mind. They built what worked and called it a day.   The same holds true with a lot of business applications. They were designed and architected for one-time use with one use-case in mind. Today's business climate is different. If you're going to use your processes and technology to differentiate your business you should have at least a working knowledge of: -          How standards can benefit your business -          Your IT organization's philosophy around standards -          Your vendor's track-record around standards...and watch for those who pay lip-service to standards but don't follow through   The rallying cry in most IT organizations today is "learn more about the business, drop the acronyms." I'm not advocating that you go out and learn how to code in Java. But I do believe it will help your business and your decision-making process if you meet IT ½...even ¼ of the way there.   Epilogue: The door project has been put on hold and yours truly has to return the doors to the hardware store tomorrow.

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  • Why Your ERP System Isn't Ready for the Next Evolution of the Enterprise

    - by ken.pulverman
      ERP has been the backbone of enterprise software.  The data held in your ERP system is core of most companies.  Efficiencies gained through the accounting and resource allocation through ERP software have literally saved companies trillions of dollars. Not only does everything seem to be fine with your ERP system, you haven't had to touch it in years.  Why aren't you ready for what comes next? Well judging by the growth rates in the space (Oracle posted only a 3% growth rate, while SAP showed a 12% decline) there hasn't been much modernization going on, just a little replacement activity. If you are like most companies, your ERP system is connected to a proprietary middleware solution that only effectively talks with a handful of other systems you might have acquired from the same vendor.   Connecting your legacy system through proprietary middleware is expensive and brittle and if you are like most companies, you were only willing to pay an SI so much before you said "enough."  So your ERP is working.  It's humming along.  You might not be able to get Order to Promise information when you take orders in your call center, but there are work arounds that work just fine. So what's the problem? The problem is that you built your business around your ERP core, and now there is such pressure to innovate your business processes to keep up that you need a whole new slew of modern apps and you need ERP data to be accessible from everywhere.   Every time you change a sales territory or a comp plan or change a benefits provider your ERP system, literally the economic brain of your business, needs to know what's going on.  And this giant need to access and provide information to your ERP is only growing. What makes matters even more challenging is that apps today come in every flavor under the Sun™.   SaaS, cloud, managed, hybrid, outsourced, composite....and they all have different integration protocols. The only easy way to get ahead of all this is to modernize the way you connect and run your applications.  Unlike the middleware solutions of yesteryear, modern middleware is effectively the operating system of the enterprise.  In the same way that you rely on Apple, Microsoft, and Google to find a video driver for your 23" monitor or to ensure the Word or Keynote runs, modern middleware takes care of intra-application connectivity and process execution.  It effectively allows you to take ERP out of the middle while ensuring connectivity to your vital data for anything you want to do.  The diagram below reflects that change.    In this model, the hegemony of ERP is over.  It too has to become a stealthy modern app to help you quickly adapt to business changes while managing vital information.  And through modern middleware it will connect to everything.  So yes ERP as we've know it is dead, but long live ERP as a connected application member of the modern enterprise. I want to Thank Andrew Zoldan, Group Vice President Oracle Manufacturing Industries Business Unit for introducing me to how some of his biggest customers have benefited by modernizing their applications infrastructure and making ERP a connected application. by John Burke, Group Vice President, Applications Business Unit

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  • Ubuntu 12.04 / 12.10 Randomly Freezing - nVidia?

    - by Alix Axel
    My Ubuntu install frequently freezes, sometimes showing a black screen (not very common anymore - in my latest installs), some other times the mouse and keyboard just fail to move and respond (not even Ctrl + Alt + F1 works) and some other times I'm able to move the mouse with a huge delay (2-5 seconds) but I'm not able to do/click anything. I have a pretty strong feeling that this problem is related to my graphic card drivers because: after hard reset, I usually get error reports about X.org / jockey it's common for artifacts to appear during loading / shutdown / whenever, for instance: pattern filled with £ during log off ugly-colored squared pattern during boot windows that are partially moved (i.e.: only the top half) Firefox renderings that leave the bottom ~30% of the page black These artifacts appear right before the system freezes. I've installed Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and after several failed attempts to get my dual monitor setup to work properly I tried installing the new 12.10 version, hoping that this new version would have this problem solved... Unfortunatly, that was not the case, so I reverted to Ubuntu 12.04. I've tried all the drivers in the Additional Drivers application (even the experimental ones), I've also tried the nvidia-current package from the PPA repository ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates as well as the nouveau OSS driver. Nothing (except no driver at all with a 640*480 resolution) at all seems stable. Here is the info of my graphic card: alix@alix-E500:~$ lspci | grep VGA 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation G86 [GeForce 8400M G] (rev a1) alix@alix-E500:~$ sudo lshw -C video [sudo] password for alix: *-display description: VGA compatible controller product: G86 [GeForce 8400M G] vendor: NVIDIA Corporation physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0 version: a1 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom configuration: driver=nouveau latency=0 resources: irq:16 memory:fd000000-fdffffff memory:d0000000-dfffffff memory:fa000000-fbffffff ioport:cc00(size=128) memory:fe0e0000-fe0fffff Right now, I don't even have my 22" monitor connected as I can't even get my laptop display to work properly and without freezes. I've searched, read and tried all that I could (over several fresh reinstalls) to fix the problem, but so far, no solution has proven definitive. I'm sorry I can't precise which symptom maps to each driver but I've been trying to solve this one on my own without logging what I'm doing, perhaps someone here will be able to point me to a certain-fix solution, if not I'll keep updating this question as I go along. Please let me know if any more info is needed to pinpoint the exact problem. Trying out NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver (version 173). The scrolling, minimizing / maximizing windows takes between 2 and 5 seconds to finalize. Context menus also pop up very slowly and the typing seems delayed by ~1 second. No critical issues so far. Firefox rendering of the Save Edits button is consistently messed up (random black lines in the top). Trying out NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver (version current) [Recommended]. All the delays mentioned above and the buggy rendering of the Save Edits button are gone, but I'm noticing that the whole screen flashes black for a couple of microseconds and while I was writing this test for the first time, the bottom 30% of the screen went black and I couldn't do anything (not even Ctrl + Alt + F1 would work). Had to force a hard reset. Also, the system hanged a little for a couple of seconds with the fade out of the "Restart" menu. Trying out NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver (*experimental*beta) (version experimental-304). Same symptoms as before, it crashed once while I was trying to install Chromium and again after a hard reset when I was trying to remove the driver. The bottom of the screen did not went black and I could move my mouse both times. Ctrl + Alt + F1 didn't work. The ugly-colored pattern also showed up during the second boot. Trying out NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver (*experimental*beta) (version experimental-307). The system crashed as soon as I clicked something. Had to do a fresh re-install. Trying out Nouveau: Accelerated Open Source driver for nVidia cards. Artifacts still show up during boot but other than that this one seems stable. As soon as I connected my second monitor, the responsiveness dropped a lot, animations and video are somewhat slow. I'm gonna try this solution http://askubuntu.com/a/98871/9018 later on.

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  • Why Your ERP System Isn't Ready for the Next Evolution of the Enterprise

    - by [email protected]
    By ken.pulverman on March 24, 2010 8:51 AM ERP has been the backbone of enterprise software. The data held in your ERP system is core of most companies. Efficiencies gained through the accounting and resource allocation through ERP software have literally saved companies trillions of dollars. Not only does everything seem to be fine with your ERP system, you haven't had to touch it in years. Why aren't you ready for what comes next? Well judging by the growth rates in the space (Oracle posted only a 3% growth rate, while SAP showed a 12% decline) there hasn't been much modernization going on, just a little replacement activity. If you are like most companies, your ERP system is connected to a proprietary middleware solution that only effectively talks with a handful of other systems you might have acquired from the same vendor. Connecting your legacy system through proprietary middleware is expensive and brittle and if you are like most companies, you were only willing to pay an SI so much before you said "enough." So your ERP is working. It's humming along. You might not be able to get Order to Promise information when you take orders in your call center, but there are work arounds that work just fine. So what's the problem? The problem is that you built your business around your ERP core, and now there is such pressure to innovate your business processes to keep up that you need a whole new slew of modern apps and you need ERP data to be accessible from everywhere. Every time you change a sales territory or a comp plan or change a benefits provider your ERP system, literally the economic brain of your business, needs to know what's going on. And this giant need to access and provide information to your ERP is only growing. What makes matters even more challenging is that apps today come in every flavor under the Sun™. SaaS, cloud, managed, hybrid, outsourced, composite....and they all have different integration protocols. The only easy way to get ahead of all this is to modernize the way you connect and run your applications. Unlike the middleware solutions of yesteryear, modern middleware is effectively the operating system of the enterprise. In the same way that you rely on Apple, Microsoft, and Google to find a video driver for your 23" monitor or to ensure that Word or Keynote runs, modern middleware takes care of intra-application connectivity and process execution. It effectively allows you to take ERP out of the middle while ensuring connectivity to your vital data for anything you want to do. The diagram below reflects that change. In this model, the hegemony of ERP is over. It too has to become a stealthy modern app to help you quickly adapt to business changes while managing vital information. And through modern middleware it will connect to everything. So yes ERP as we've know it is dead, but long live ERP as a connected application member of the modern enterprise. I want to Thank Andrew Zoldan, Group Vice President Oracle Manufacturing Industries Business Unit for introducing me to how some of his biggest customers have benefited by modernizing their applications infrastructure and making ERP a connected application. by John Burke, Group Vice President, Applications Business Unit

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  • Welcome Oracle Data Integration 12c: Simplified, Future-Ready Solutions with Extreme Performance

    - by Irem Radzik
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 The big day for the Oracle Data Integration team has finally arrived! It is my honor to introduce you to Oracle Data Integration 12c. Today we announced the general availability of 12c release for Oracle’s key data integration products: Oracle Data Integrator 12c and Oracle GoldenGate 12c. The new release delivers extreme performance, increase IT productivity, and simplify deployment, while helping IT organizations to keep pace with new data-oriented technology trends including cloud computing, big data analytics, real-time business intelligence. With the 12c release Oracle becomes the new leader in the data integration and replication technologies as no other vendor offers such a complete set of data integration capabilities for pervasive, continuous access to trusted data across Oracle platforms as well as third-party systems and applications. Oracle Data Integration 12c release addresses data-driven organizations’ critical and evolving data integration requirements under 3 key themes: Future-Ready Solutions Extreme Performance Fast Time-to-Value       There are many new features that support these key differentiators for Oracle Data Integrator 12c and for Oracle GoldenGate 12c. In this first 12c blog post, I will highlight only a few:·Future-Ready Solutions to Support Current and Emerging Initiatives: Oracle Data Integration offer robust and reliable solutions for key technology trends including cloud computing, big data analytics, real-time business intelligence and continuous data availability. Via the tight integration with Oracle’s database, middleware, and application offerings Oracle Data Integration will continue to support the new features and capabilities right away as these products evolve and provide advance features. E    Extreme Performance: Both GoldenGate and Data Integrator are known for their high performance. The new release widens the gap even further against competition. Oracle GoldenGate 12c’s Integrated Delivery feature enables higher throughput via a special application programming interface into Oracle Database. As mentioned in the press release, customers already report up to 5X higher performance compared to earlier versions of GoldenGate. Oracle Data Integrator 12c introduces parallelism that significantly increases its performance as well. Fast Time-to-Value via Higher IT Productivity and Simplified Solutions:  Oracle Data Integrator 12c’s new flow-based declarative UI brings superior developer productivity, ease of use, and ultimately fast time to market for end users.  It also gives the ability to seamlessly reuse mapping logic speeds development.Oracle GoldenGate 12c ‘s Integrated Delivery feature automatically optimally tunes the process, saving time while improving performance. This is just a quick glimpse into Oracle Data Integrator 12c and Oracle GoldenGate 12c. On November 12th we will reveal much more about the new release in our video webcast "Introducing 12c for Oracle Data Integration". Our customer and partner speakers, including SolarWorld, BT, Rittman Mead will join us in launching the new release. Please join us at this free event to learn more from our executives about the 12c release, hear our customers’ perspectives on the new features, and ask your questions to our experts in the live Q&A. Also, please continue to follow our blogs, tweets, and Facebook updates as we unveil more about the new features of the latest release. /* 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;}

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  • Java 6 Certified with Forms and Reports 10g for EBS 12

    - by John Abraham
    Java 6 is now certified with Oracle Application Server 10g Forms and Reports with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 (12.0.6, 12.1.1 and higher). What? Wasn't this already certified? No, but a little background might be useful in understanding why this is a new announcement. We previously certified the use of Java 6 with E-Business Suite Release 12 -- with the sole exception of Oracle Application Server 10g components in the E-Business Suite technology stack. Oracle Application Server 10g originally included Java 1.4.2 as part of its distribution.  E-Business Suite 12 uses, amongst other things, the Oracle Forms and Reports 10g components running on Java 1.4. Java 1.4 in the Oracle Application Server 10g ORACLE_HOME is used exclusively by AS 10g Forms and Reports' for Java functionality.  This version of Java is separate from the Java distribution used by other parts of EBS such as Oracle Containers for Java (OC4J). What's new about this certification? You can now upgrade the older Java 1.4 libraries used by Oracle Forms & Reports 10g to Java 6. This allows you to upgrade the Java releases within the Oracle Application Server 10g ORACLE_HOME to the the same level as the rest of your E-Business Suite technology stack components. Why upgrade? This becomes particularly important for customers as individual vendors' support lifecycle for Java 1.4 reaches End of Life: Oracle's Sun JDK Release 1.4.2's End of Extended Support: February 2013 (Sustaining Support indefinitely after) IBM SDK and JRE 1.4.2's End of Service: September 2013 HP-UX Java 1.4.2's End-of-Life : May 2012 Along with Oracle Forms, Java lies at the heart of the Oracle E-Business Suite.  Small improvements in Java can have significant effects on the performance and stability of the E-Business Suite.  As a notable side-benefit, later versions of Java have improved built-in and third-party tools for JVM performance monitoring and tuning.Our standing recommendation is that you always stay current with the latest available Java update provided by your operating system vendor.  Don't forget to upgrade Forms & Reports to 10.1.2.3 E-Business Suite 12 originally shipped with Oracle Application Server 10g Forms & Reports 10.1.2.0.2.  That version is no longer eligible for Error Correction Support. New Forms and Reports 10g patches are now being released with Forms and Reports 10.1.2.3 as the prerequisite. Forms and Reports 10.1.2.3 was certified for EBS 12 environments in November 2008. If you haven't upgraded your EBS 12 environment to Forms & Reports 10.1.2.3, this is a good opportunity to do so. References Using Latest Update of Java 6.0 with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 (My Oracle Support Document 455492.1) Overview of Using Java with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 (My Oracle Support Document 418664.1) Oracle Lifetime Support Policy (Oracle Fusion Middleware) IBM Developer Kit Lifecycle Dates HP-UX Java - End of Life Policy & Release Naming Terminology Related Articles OracleAS 10g Forms and Reports 10.1.2.3 Certified With EBS R12 Java 6 Certified with E-Business Suite Release 12

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  • Oracle WebLogic Server and Oracle Database: A Robust Infrastructure for your Applications

    - by Ruma Sanyal
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 It has been said that a chain is as strong as its weakest link. Well, this is also true for your application infrastructure. Not only are the various components that constitute your infrastructure, like database and application server critical, the integration between these things [whether coming out of the box from your vendor or done in-house] is paramount. Imagine your database being down and your application server not knowing about it and as a result your application waiting indefinitely for a database response – not a great situation if high availability is critical to your application. Or one of your database nodes is very busy, but your application server doesn’t have the intelligence to decipher that – it keeps pinging the busy node when it can in fact get a response from another idle node much faster. This is what Oracle WebLogic and Database integration provides: Intelligent integration out of the box. Tight integration between Oracle WebLogic and Database makes your infrastructure robust enough that not only does each of your infrastructure component provide you with improved RASP [reliability availability, scalability, and performance] but these components work together to offer improved performance & availability, better resource sharing, inherent scalability, ease of configuration and automated management for your entire infrastructure. Oracle WebLogic Server is the only application server with this degree of integration to Oracle Database. With Oracle WebLogic Server 11g, we introduced Active GridLink for Real Application Clusters (RAC). In conjunction with Oracle Database, this powerful software technology simplifies management, increases availability, and ensures fast connection failover with runtime connection, load balancing and affinity capabilities. With the release of Oracle Database 12c this summer, even tighter integration between Oracle WebLogic Server 12c (12.1.2) and Oracle Database 12c has been achieved and this further optimizes the integration for a global cloud environment. Read about these capabilities in detail in the Oracle WebLogic-Database Integration Whitepaper. Get in depth ‘how-to’ details from this YouTube video on the topic from our resident expert, Monica Roccelli. /* 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:0in; 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;}

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  • Master Data Management for Location Data - Oracle Site Hub

    - by david.butler(at)oracle.com
    Most MDM discussions cover key domains such as customer, supplier, product, service, and reference data. It is usually understood that these domains have complex structures and hundreds if not thousands of attributes that need governing. Location, on the other hand, strikes most people as address data. How hard can that be? But for many industries, locations are complex, and site information is critical to efficient operations and relevant analytics. Retail stores and malls, bank branches, construction sites come to mind. But one of the best industries for illustrating the power of a site mastering application is Oil & Gas.   Oracle's Master Data Management solution for location data is the Oracle Site Hub. It is a location mastering solution that enables organizations to centralize site and location specific information from heterogeneous systems, creating a single view of site information that can be leveraged across all functional departments and analytical systems.   Let's take a look at the location entities the Oracle Site Hub can manage for the Oil & Gas industry: organizations, property, land, buildings, roads, oilfield, service center, inventory site, real estate, facilities, refineries, storage tanks, vendor locations, businesses, assets; project site, area, well, basin, pipelines, critical infrastructure, offshore platform, compressor station, gas station, etc. Any site can be classified into multiple hierarchies, like organizational hierarchy, operational hierarchy, geographic hierarchy, divisional hierarchies and so on. Any site can also be associated to multiple clusters, i.e. collections of sites, and these can be used as a foundation for driving reporting, analysis, organize daily work, etc. Hierarchies can also be used to model entities which are structured or non-structured collections of nodes, like for example routes, pipelines and more. The User Defined Attribute Framework provides the needed infrastructure to add single row attributes groups like well base attributes (well IDs, well type, well structure and key characterizing measures, and more) and well geometry, and multi row attribute groups like well applications, permits, production data, activities, operations, logs, treatments, tests, drills, treatments, and KPIs. Site Hub can also model areas, lands, fields, basins, pools, platforms, eco-zones, and stratigraphic layers as specific sites, tracking their base attributes, aliases, descriptions, subcomponents and more. Midstream entities (pipelines, logistic sites, pump stations) and downstream entities (cylinders, tanks, inventories, meters, partner's sites, routes, facilities, gas stations, and competitor sites) can also be easily modeled, together with their specific attributes and relationships. Site Hub can store any type of unstructured data associated to a site. This could be stored directly or on an external content management solution, like Oracle Universal Content Management. Considering a well, for example, Site Hub can store any relevant associated multimedia file such as: CAD drawings of the well profile, structure and/or parts, engineering documents, contracts, applications, permits, logs, pictures, photos, videos and more. For any site entity, Site Hub can associate all the related assets and equipments at the site, as well as all relationships between sites, between a site and multiple parties, and between a site and any purchasable or sellable item, over time. Items can be equipment, instruments, facilities, services, products, production entities, production facilities (pipelines, batteries, compressor stations, gas plants, meters, separators, etc.), support facilities (rigs, roads, transmission or radio towers, airstrips, etc.), supplier products and services, catalogs, and more. Items can just be associated to sites using standard Site Hub features, or they can be fully mastered by implementing Oracle Product Hub. Site locations (addresses or geographical coordinates) are also managed with out-of-the-box address geo-coding capabilities coupled with Google Maps integration to deliver powerful mapping capabilities and spatial data analysis. Locations can be shared between different sites. Centered on the site location, any site can also have associated areas. Site Hub can master any site location specific information, like for example cadastral, ownership, jurisdictional, geological, seismic and more, and any site-centric area specific information, like for example economical, political, risk, weather, logistic, traffic information and more. Now if anyone ever asks you why locations need MDM, think about how all these Oil & Gas entities and attributes would translate into your business locations. To learn more about Oracle's full MDM solution for the digital oil field, here is a link to Roberto Negro's outstanding whitepaper: Oracle Site Master Data Management for mastering wells and other PPDM entities in a digital oilfield context  

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  • T-SQL Tuesday #025 &ndash; CHECK Constraint Tricks

    - by Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)
    Allen White (blog | twitter), marathoner, SQL Server MVP and presenter, and all-around awesome author is hosting this month's T-SQL Tuesday on sharing SQL Server Tips and Tricks.  And for those of you who have attended my Revenge: The SQL presentation, you know that I have 1 or 2 of them.  You'll also know that I don't recommend using anything I talk about in a production system, and will continue that advice here…although you might be sorely tempted.  Suffice it to say I'm not using these examples myself, but I think they're worth sharing anyway. Some of you have seen or read about SQL Server constraints and have applied them to your table designs…unless you're a vendor ;)…and may even use CHECK constraints to limit numeric values, or length of strings, allowable characters and such.  CHECK constraints can, however, do more than that, and can even provide enhanced security and other restrictions. One tip or trick that I didn't cover very well in the presentation is using constraints to do unusual things; specifically, limiting or preventing inserts into tables.  The idea was to use a CHECK constraint in a way that didn't depend on the actual data: -- create a table that cannot accept data CREATE TABLE dbo.JustTryIt(a BIT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY, CONSTRAINT chk_no_insert CHECK (GETDATE()=GETDATE()+1)) INSERT dbo.JustTryIt VALUES(1)   I'll let you run that yourself, but I'm sure you'll see that this is a pretty stupid table to have, since the CHECK condition will always be false, and therefore will prevent any data from ever being inserted.  I can't remember why I used this example but it was for some vague and esoteric purpose that applies to about, maybe, zero people.  I come up with a lot of examples like that. However, if you realize that these CHECKs are not limited to column references, and if you explore the SQL Server function list, you could come up with a few that might be useful.  I'll let the names describe what they do instead of explaining them all: CREATE TABLE NoSA(a int not null, CONSTRAINT CHK_No_sa CHECK (SUSER_SNAME()<>'sa')) CREATE TABLE NoSysAdmin(a int not null, CONSTRAINT CHK_No_sysadmin CHECK (IS_SRVROLEMEMBER('sysadmin')=0)) CREATE TABLE NoAdHoc(a int not null, CONSTRAINT CHK_No_AdHoc CHECK (OBJECT_NAME(@@PROCID) IS NOT NULL)) CREATE TABLE NoAdHoc2(a int not null, CONSTRAINT CHK_No_AdHoc2 CHECK (@@NESTLEVEL>0)) CREATE TABLE NoCursors(a int not null, CONSTRAINT CHK_No_Cursors CHECK (@@CURSOR_ROWS=0)) CREATE TABLE ANSI_PADDING_ON(a int not null, CONSTRAINT CHK_ANSI_PADDING_ON CHECK (@@OPTIONS & 16=16)) CREATE TABLE TimeOfDay(a int not null, CONSTRAINT CHK_TimeOfDay CHECK (DATEPART(hour,GETDATE()) BETWEEN 0 AND 1)) GO -- log in as sa or a sysadmin server role member, and try this: INSERT NoSA VALUES(1) INSERT NoSysAdmin VALUES(1) -- note the difference when using sa vs. non-sa -- then try it again with a non-sysadmin login -- see if this works: INSERT NoAdHoc VALUES(1) INSERT NoAdHoc2 VALUES(1) GO -- then try this: CREATE PROCEDURE NotAdHoc @val1 int, @val2 int AS SET NOCOUNT ON; INSERT NoAdHoc VALUES(@val1) INSERT NoAdHoc2 VALUES(@val2) GO EXEC NotAdHoc 2,2 -- which values got inserted? SELECT * FROM NoAdHoc SELECT * FROM NoAdHoc2   -- and this one just makes me happy :) INSERT NoCursors VALUES(1) DECLARE curs CURSOR FOR SELECT 1 OPEN curs INSERT NoCursors VALUES(2) CLOSE curs DEALLOCATE curs INSERT NoCursors VALUES(3) SELECT * FROM NoCursors   I'll leave the ANSI_PADDING_ON and TimeOfDay tables for you to test on your own, I think you get the idea.  (Also take a look at the NoCursors example, notice anything interesting?)  The real eye-opener, for me anyway, is the ability to limit bad coding practices like cursors, ad-hoc SQL, and sa use/abuse by using declarative SQL objects.  I'm sure you can see how and why this would come up when discussing Revenge: The SQL.;) And the best part IMHO is that these work on pretty much any version of SQL Server, without needing Policy Based Management, DDL/login triggers, or similar tools to enforce best practices. All seriousness aside, I highly recommend that you spend some time letting your mind go wild with the possibilities and see how far you can take things.  There are no rules! (Hmmmm, what can I do with rules?) #TSQL2sDay

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  • Have Your Cake and Eat it Too: Industry Best Practices + Flexibility

    - by Oracle Accelerate for Midsize Companies
    By Richard Garraputa, VP of Sales & Marketing, brij Richard joined brij in 1996 after graduating from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro with degrees in Information Systems and Accounting. He directs brij’s overall strategies of both the business development and marketing departments. Companies looking for new ERP systems spend so much time comparing features and functions of software products but too often short change the value of their own processes.  Company managers I meet often claim that they are implementing a new ERP system so they can perform better and faster.  When asked how, the answer is often “by implementing best practices”.  But the term ‘best practices’ is frequently used to mean ‘doing things the way everyone else does them’ rather than a starting point or benchmark to build upon by adding your own value. Of course, implementing standardized processes across an enterprise is an important step in improving operational efficiencies.  But not all companies are alike.  Do you ever tell your customers “We are just like our competition and have no competitive differentiation”?  Probably not.  So why should the implementation of your business processes be just like your competitor’s?  Even within the same industry, companies differentiate themselves by leveraging their unique expertise and approach to business.  These unique aspects—the competitive differentiators that companies use to thrive in a crowded marketplace—can and should be supported by the implementation of business systems like ERP. Modern ERP systems like Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne have a broad and deep functional footprint designed to integrate a company’s core operations.  But how can a company take advantage of this footprint without blowing up their implementation budget?  Some ERP vendors claim to solve this challenge by stating that their systems come pre-configured with ‘best practices’.  Too often what they are really saying is that you will have to abandon your key operational differentiators to fit a vendor’s template for your business—or extend your implementation and postpone the realization of any benefits. Thankfully for midsize companies, there is an alternative to the undesirable options of extended implementation projects or abandoning their competitive differentiators.  Oracle Accelerate Solutions speed the time it takes to implement JD Edwards EnterpriseOne solution based on your unique business characteristics, getting your new ERP system up and running faster without forcing your business to fit a cookie-cutter solution. We’ve been a JD Edwards implementation partner since 1986 and we now leverage Oracle Business Accelerators—cloud based rapid implementation tools built and maintained by Oracle. Oracle Business Accelerators deliver the benefits of embedded industry best practices without forcing every customer in to one set of processes like many template or “clone and go” approaches do. You retain the ability to reconfigure your applications—without customization—as your business changes. Wielded by Oracle partners with industry-specific domain expertise, Oracle Accelerate Solution implementations powered by Oracle Business Accelerators help automate the application configuration to fit your business better, faster. For example, on a recent project at a manufacturing company, the project manager told me that Oracle Business Accelerators helped get them to Conference Room Pilot 20% faster than with a traditional approach. Time savings equal cost savings. And if ‘better and faster’ is your goal for your business performance, shouldn’t it be the goal for your ERP implementation as well? Established in 1986, brij has been dedicated solely to helping its customers implement Oracle’s JD Edwards solutions and to maximize the value of those customers’ IT investments. They are a Gold level member in Oracle PartnerNetwork and an Oracle Accelerate Solution provider.

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  • Expanding the Partner Ecosystem with Third-Party Plug-ins

    - by Joe Diemer
    Oracle Enterprise Manager’s extensibility capabilities are designed to allow customers and partners to adapt Enterprise Manager for management of heterogeneous environments with Plug-ins and Connectors.  Third-party developers continue to take advantage of Oracle Enterprise Manager’s Extensibility Development Kit (EDK) to build plug-ins to Enterprise Manager 12c, such as F5’s BIG IP Plug-in and Entuity’s Eye of the Storm Network Management Plug-In.  Partners can also validate their plug-ins through the Oracle Validated Integration (OVI) program, which assures customers that the plug-in has been tested and is functionally and technically sound, is designed in a reliable and standardized manner, and operates and performs as documented.   Two very recent examples of partners which have beta versions of their plug-ins are Blue Medora's VMware vSphere plug-in and the NetApp Storage plug-in.  VMware vSphere Plug-in by Blue Medora Blue Medora, an Oracle Partner Network (OPN) “Gold” member, which just announced that it is now signing up customers to try a beta version of their new VMware vSphere plug-in for Enterprise Manager 12c.  According to Blue Medora, the vSphere plug-in monitors critical VMware metrics (CPU, Memory, Disk, Network, etc) at the Host, VM, Cluster and Resource Pool levels.  It has minimal performance impact via an “agentless” approach that requires no installation directly on VMware servers.  It has discovery capabilities for VMware Datacenters, ESX Hosts, Clusters, Virtual Machines, and Datastores.  It offers integration of native VMware Events into Enterprise Manager, and it provides over 300 VMware-related health, availability, performance, and configuration metrics.  It comes with more than 30 out-of-the-box pre-defined thresholds and can manage VMware via a series of jobs split between cluster, host and VM target types.The company reports that the Enterprise Manager 12c plug-in supports vSphere versions 4.0, 4.5 and 5.0.  Platforms supported include Linux 64-bit, Windows, AIX and Solaris SPARC and x86.  Information about the plug-in, including how to sign up for the beta, is available at their web site at http://bluemedora.com after selecting the "Products" tab. NetApp Storage Plug-in NetApp believes the combination of storage system monitoring with comprehensive management of Oracle systems with Enterprise Manager will help customers reduce the cost and complexity of managing applications that rely on NetApp storage and Oracle technologies.  So, NetApp built a plug-in and reports that it has comprehensive availability and performance information for NetApp storage systems.  Using the plug-in, Oracle Enterprise Manager customers with NetApp storage solutions can track the association between databases and storage components and thereby respond to faults and IO performance bottlenecks quickly. With the latest configuration management capabilities, one can also perform drift analysis to make sure all storage systems are configured as per established gold standards. The company is also now signing up beta customers, which can be done at the NetApp Communities site at https://communities.netapp.com/groups/netapp-storage-system-plug-in-for-oem12c-beta. Learn More about Enterprise Manager Extensibility More plug-ins from other partners are soon to come, which I'll be reporting on them here.  To learn more about Enterprise Manager and how customers and partners can build plug-ins using the EDK to manage a multi-vendor data center, go to http://oracle.com/enterprisemanager in the Heterogeneous Management solution area.  The site also lists the plug-ins available with information on how to obtain them.  More info about the Oracle Validated Integration program can be found at the OPN Enterprise Manager Knowledge Zone in the "Develop" tab.

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  • ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 2012-08-30

    - by Bob Rhubart
    Next Generation Mobile Clients for Oracle Applications & the role of Oracle Fusion Middleware | Manish Palaparthy Manish Palaparthy examines some of Oracle's mobile applications, and takes a look at the underlying technology. Master Data Management: A Foundation for Big Data Analysis | Manouj Tahiliani "Businesses that have embraced MDM to get a single, enriched and unified view of Master data by resolving semantic discrepancies and augmenting the explicit master data information from within the enterprise with implicit data from outside the enterprise like social profiles will have a leg up in embracing Big Data solutions. This is especially true for large and medium-sized businesses in industries like Retail, Communications, Financial Services, etc that would find it very challenging to get comprehensive analytical coverage and derive long-term success without resolving the limitations of the heterogeneous topology that leads to disparate, fragmented and incomplete master data." — Manouj Tahiliani Architect Day: Boston - Agenda Update Here's the latest updated information on the session schedule and content for Oracle Technology Network Architect Day in Boston, MA on September 12, 2012. Registration is open, but seating is limited. OTN Architect Day: Boston is being held on Wednesday September 12, 2012, 8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m., at the Boston Marriott Burlington, One Burlington Mall Road, Burlington, MA 01803. Integrating Coherence & Java EE 6 Applications using ActiveCache | Ricardo Ferreira The seamless integration between Oracle Coherence and Oracle WebLogic Server "provides a comprehensive environment to develop applications without the complexity of extra Java code to manage cache as a dependency," explains Ricardo Ferreira, "since Oracle provides a DI (Dependency Injection) mechanism for Coherence, the same DI mechanism available in standard Java EE applications. This feature is called ActiveCache." Ricardo shows you how to configure ActiveCache in WebLogic and your Java EE application. Cloud Infrastructure has a new standard from the DMTF "Unlike a de facto standard where typically one vendor has change control over the interface, and everyone else has to reverse engineer the inner workings of it, [Cloud Infrastructure Management Interface (CIMI)] is a de jure standard that is under change control of a standards body. One reason the standard took two years to create is that we factored in use cases, requirements and contributed APIs from multiple vendors. These vendors have products shipping today and as a result CIMI has a strong foundation in real world experience." Oracle GoldenGate 11g Release Launch Webcast- September 12 The new release of Oracle GoldenGate 11g is now available for major databases and platforms. Register for this webcast and live Q&A with product experts to learn about the solution's new features. September 12, 2012. 8:00am AM and 10:00AM PT. Speakers: Doug Reid (Director, Product Management, Oracle GoldenGate), Irem Radzik (Director, Product Marketing, Oracle Data Integration Products) Thought for the Day "[When] asking skilled architects…what they do when confronted with highly complex problems… [they] would most likely answer, 'Just use Common Sense.' [A] better expression than 'common sense' is 'contextual sense'—a knowledge of what is reasonable within a given context. Practicing architects through eduction, experience and examples accumulate a considerable body of contextual sense by the time they're entrusted with solving a system-level problem…" — Eberhardt Rechtin (January 16, 1926 – April 14, 2006) Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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  • SOA Community Newsletter May 2014

    - by JuergenKress
    Registration for the Fusion Middleware Summer Camps 2014 is open – Register asap for one of our bootcamps August 4th – 8th 2014 in Lisbon. Please read details and pre-requisitions careful before you register. We expect that like in the past, the conference will be booked out soon! If you can’t make it to Lisbon attend our SOA Suite 11c free on-demand Bootcamp or  Managing the Complexity of IoT online trainings. With more than 5000 customers, SOA Suite Achieves Significant Customer Adoption and Industry Recognition.Thanks to all our SOA Specialized partners for making our joins SOA customers successful! As a summary of the Industrial SOA series we published the Podcast Show Notes: SOA and Cloud - Where's This Relationship Going? Make sure you use the Oracle Demo Systems for your customer presentations. The demo systems are hosted by Oracle and include complete scenarios based on the latest Middleware version like the new B2B SOA Suite Demo System! For local presentations without fast internet use the SOA/BPM 11.1.1.7.1 Virtual Machine and Case Management Sample. At our SOA Community Workspace (SOA Community membership required) you can get new IoT presentations for Location Based Offers for Banking & Whitepaper and online Webcast & Utility presentation. In this newsletter you will find many articles about OSB: OSB 11g – A Hands-on Tutorial & Using Split-Joins in OSB Services for parallel processing of messages & OSB, Service Callouts and OQL & Working with Oracle Security Token Service. Thanks for sharing all the additional SOA articles within the community: How to configure Oracle SOA/BPM task auto release & Controlling BPEL process flow at runtime & Upgrading to Oracle SOA Suite 11g PS6 (11.1.1.7)? Do this. & BPEL and BPM's performance monitoring using DMS & SOA 11g - Create RESTful Service In Oracle SOA & Wrong timezone causes TopLink warning in SOA suite. Highlight of the BPM and ACM section is the IDC BPM vendor report. The new bundle Patch including the ACM UI is now available. If you want to learn more about ACM, get the ACM training material at our SOA Community Workspace (SOA Community membership required). A great demo for your next BPM presentation is the BPM iPad app. It’s simpleMobile BPM is Not An Option. It’s a Necessity. Thanks for sharing all the additional BPM articles within the community: BPM update adds Case Management Web Interface and REST APIs & Implementing deadline functionality with Oracle Adaptive Case Management & BPM 11g Timeout Heuristics & Humantask Assignment: Names and Expressions Assignment via Rules. In our last section Architecture, it is all about design. Usability is a key factor for customer satisfaction, worth to spend some time and read the Simplified User Experience Design Patterns eBook. Great blueprint for your project! See you in Lisbon! To read the newsletter please visit www.tinyurl.com/soaNewsMay2014 (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 Facebook Wiki Mix Forum Technorati Tags: newsletter,SOA Community newsletter,SOA Community,Oracle,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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  • Deploying an SSL Application to Windows Azure &ndash; The Dark Secret

    - by ToStringTheory
    When working on an application that had been in production for some time, but was about to have a shopping cart added to it, the necessity for SSL certificates came up.  When ordering the certificates through the vendor, the certificate signing request (CSR) was generated through the providers (http://register.com) web interface, and within a day, we had our certificate. At first, I thought that the certification process would be the hard part…  Little did I know that my fun was just beginning… The Problem I’ll be honest, I had never really secured a site before with SSL.  This was a learning experience for me in the first place, but little did I know that I would be learning more than the simple procedure.  I understood a bit about SSL already, the mechanisms in how it works – the secure handshake, CA’s, chains, etc…  What I didn’t realize was the importance of the CSR in the whole process.  Apparently, when the CSR is created, a public key is created at the same time, as well as a private key that is stored locally on the PC that generated the request.  When the certificate comes back and you import it back into IIS (assuming you used IIS to generate the CSR), all of the information is combined together and the SSL certificate is added into your store. Since at the time the certificate had been ordered for our site, the selection to use the online interface to generate the CSR was chosen, the certificate came back to us in 5 separate files: A root certificate – (*.crt file) An intermediate certifcate – (*.crt file) Another intermediate certificate – (*.crt file) The SSL certificate for our site – (*.crt file) The private key for our certificate – (*.key file) Well, in case you don’t know much about Windows Azure and SSL certificates, the first thing you should learn is that certificates can only be uploaded to Azure if they are in a PFX package – securable by a password.  Also, in the case of our SSL certificate, you need to include the Private Key with the file.  As you can see, we didn’t have a PFX file to upload. If you don’t get the simple PFX from your hosting provider, but rather the multiple files, you will soon find out that the process has turned from something that should be simple – to one that borders on a circle of hell… Probably between the fifth and seventh somewhere… The Solution The solution is to take the files that make up the certificates chain and key, and combine them into a file that can be imported into your local computers store, as well as uploaded to Windows Azure.  I can not take the credit for this information, as I simply researched a while before finding out how to do this. Download the OpenSSL for Windows toolkit (Win32 OpenSSL v1.0.1c) Install the OpenSSL for Windows toolkit Download and move all of your certificate files to an easily accessible location (you'll be pointing to them in the command prompt, so I put them in a subdirectory of the OpenSSL installation) Open a command prompt Navigate to the folder where you installed OpenSSL Run the following command: openssl pkcs12 -export –out {outcert.pfx} –inkey {keyfile.key}      –in {sslcert.crt} –certfile {ca1.crt} –certfile (ca2.crt) From this command, you will get a file, outcert.pfx, with the sum total of your ssl certificate (sslcert.crt), private key {keyfile.key}, and as many CA/chain files as you need {ca1.crt, ca2.crt}. Taking this file, you can then import it into your own IIS in one operation, instead of importing each certificate individually.  You can also upload the PFX to Azure, and once you add the SSL certificate links to the cloud project in Visual Studio, your good to go! Conclusion When I first looked around for a solution to this problem, there were not many places online that had the information that I was looking for.  While what I ended up having to do may seem obvious, it isn’t for everyone, and I hope that this can at least help one developer out there solve the problem without hours of work!

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