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• Many Different Things Rolled into a Ball

  - by MOSSLover

  Yeah I know I don’t blog much anymore, because life has taken me places that don’t involve the interwebs unfortunately.  I am in the midst of planning two events, starting a non for profit, creating more sessions for various conferences, submitting to various conferences, working a 40 hour a week job, attempting to hang out with boyfriend/friends/family.  So you can see that list does not include this blog sadly that’s how it goes sometimes.  The bottom piece very important over any of the top pieces.  I haven’t seen St. Louis in a while and I get to go back.  I was gone from home for MVP Summit and Best Practices Conference, so the boyfriend and cat didn’t get to see me either for a bit.  Then you have to add in the whole toilet being broken fiasco this week.  Maintenance really thought it would be cool to turn off the ability to flush.  I mean who does that?  Then when we call the owner he comes by turns it on and we figure it was an accident, because well the next day no one came by to tell us there was a leak.  It was all kinds of strangeness and involved me running to other people’s toilets.  As Dan Usher would say, I was a sad panda for a few days.  So I guess I wanted to post a few thoughts here just because I can.  I do not like multiple content editor webparts embedded with html files in numerous pages doing the same thing.  I will tell you why I don’t like these particular webparts and the way they are being used.  First off if you have a bunch of pages with script includes it’s about time you should just dump them into the masterpage.  Why bother finding all 20 pages and changing those pages when you can just use a single masterpage that already exists? The other thing that is bothering me days is screen scraping.  Just don’t do it, because in 2010 you will find the UI is substantially slower.  I understand you are new and you have no idea what to do.  You are also using 2007 am I right?  So then you need to go to codeplex.com and type in a search for SPServices.  Download it, use it, love it and then have it’s babies (well maybe don’t go so far this is not the GRID in Tron). If you have a ton of constants in your code why did you not go in and create a webpart with a bunch of properties and/or link to a configuration list hidden in the browser?  This type of property and list could help you out in the long run.  The power users and administrators can now change the control without you having to compile it over and over again.  It’s good stuff.  Also, you can change the control without compiling it, especially in 2007 where you have to do a farm solution.  In 2010 you can do a sandbox solution I guess, but shouldn’t you make it as easy and supportable as possible for other users? In conclusion I’m an angry person when it comes to viewing something repeatedly and analyzing it in a system.  Now we will move on to the next topic…MVP Summit…So yeah I can’t really talk about particulars, but I can talk about my experience as a person.  Don’t build something up to be cooler than it is only to be dropped from your 10,000 foot perch.  My experience was great, but the content overall was something to be desired.  It’s ok I got to meet a lot of people I would not have met if I had not gone.  Some of it was surreal, such as product group members showing up and talking to us.  It was pretty neat.  Plus I never had the chance to get to that mythical MS Office in Redmond.  Prior to Summit it was like Rainbow Brites unicorn trying taunting me on television when I was a kid.  So I guess with all that said I give it a B.  It was awesome in some way, but lacking in other ways.  The cool part is that I got to go.  Would I have lived without going? Yes, but it was still cool. I could prattle on about other things and make this post massive, but I’m going to pass and give myself a piece of Sunday to play Rockband and do 800 other things.  I hope the two of you who read this blog are well.  I’ll catch you all at another juncture.  Have a good weekend and varying holidays in between. Technorati Tags: SharePoint,MVP Summit,JQuery,Javascript

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• JavaOne Latin America Opening Keynotes

  - by Tori Wieldt

  Originally published on blogs.oracle.com/javaone It was a great first day at JavaOne Brazil, which included the Java Strategy and Java Technical keynotes. Henrik Stahl, Senior Director, Product Management for Java opened the keynotes by saying that this is the third year for JavaOne Latin America. He explained, "You know what they say, the first time doesn't count, the second time is a habit and the third time it's a tradition!" He mentioned that he was thrilled that this is largest JavaOne in Brazil to date, and he wants next year to be larger. He said that Oracle knows Latin America is an important hub for development.  "We continually come back to Latin America because of the dedication the community has with driving the continued innovation for Java," he said. Stahl explained that Oracle and the Java community must continue to innovate and Make the Future Java together. The success of Java depends on three important factors: technological innovation, Oracle as a strong steward of Java, and community participation. "The Latin American Java Community (especially in Brazil) is a shining example of how to be positive contributor to Java," Stahl said. Next, George Saab, VP software dev, Java Platform Group at Oracle, discussed some of the recent and upcoming changes to Java. "In addition to the incremental improvements to Java 7, we have also increased the set of platforms supported by Oracle from Linux, Windows, and Solaris to now also include Mac OS X and Linux/ARM for ARM-based PCs such as the Raspberry Pi and emerging ARM based microservers."  Saab announced that EA builds for Linux ARM Hard Float ABI will be available by the end of the year.  Staffan Friberg, Product Manager, Java Platform Group, provided an overview of some of the language coming in Java 8, including Lambda, remove of PermGen, improved data and time APIs and improved security, Java 8 development is moving along. He reminded the audience that they can go to OpenJDK to see this development being done in real-time, and that there are weekly early access builds of OracleJDK 8 that developers can download and try today. Judson Althoff, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Alliances and Channels and Embedded Sales, was invited to the stage, and the audience was told that "even though he is wearing a suit, he is still pretty technical." Althoff started off with a bang: "The Internet of Things is on a collision course with big data and this is a huge opportunity for developers."  For example, Althoff said, today cars are more a data device than a mechanical device. A car embedded with sensors for fuel efficiency, temperature, tire pressure, etc. can generate a petabyte of data A DAY. There are similar examples in healthcare (patient monitoring and privacy requirements creates a complex data problem) and transportation management (sending a package around the world with sensors for humidity, temperature and light). Althoff then brought on stage representatives from three companies that are successful with Java today, first Axel Hansmann, VP Strategy & Marketing Communications, Cinterion. Mr. Hansmann explained that Cinterion, a market leader in Latin America, enables M2M services with Java. At JavaOne San Francisco, Cinterion launched the EHS5, the smallest 3g solderable module, with Java installed on it. This provides Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) with a cost effective, flexible platform for bringing advanced M2M technology to market.Next, Steve Nelson, Director of Marketing for the Americas, at Freescale explained that Freescale is #1 in Embedded Processors in Wired and Wireless Communications, and #1 in Automotive Semiconductors in the Americas. He said that Java provides a mature, proven platform that is uniquely suited to meet the requirements of almost any type of embedded device. He encouraged University students to get involved in the Freescale Cup, a global competition where student teams build, program, and race a model car around a track for speed.Roberto Franco, SBTVD Forum President, SBTVD, talked about Ginga, a Java-based standard for television in Brazil. He said there are 4 million Ginga TV sets in Brazil, and they expect over 20 million TV sets to be sold by the end of 2014. Ginga is also being adopted in other 11 countries in Latin America. Ginga brings interactive services not only at TV set, but also on other devices such as tablets,  PCs or smartphones, as the main or second screen. "Interactive services is already a reality," he said, ' but in a near future, we foresee interactivity enhanced TV content, convergence with OTT services and a big participation from the audience,  all integrated on TV, tablets, smartphones and second screen devices."Before he left the stage, Nandini Ramani thanked Judson for being part of the Java community and invited him to the next Geek Bike Ride in Brazil. She presented him an official geek bike ride jersey.For the Technical Keynote, a "blue screen of death" appeared. With mock concern, Stephin Chin asked the rest of the presenters if they could go on without slides. What followed was a interesting collection of demos, including JavaFX on a tablet, a look at Project Easel in NetBeans, and even Simon Ritter controlling legos with his brainwaves! Stay tuned for more dispatches.

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• JavaOne Latin America Opening Keynotes

  - by Tori Wieldt

  It was a great first day at JavaOne Brazil, which included the Java Strategy and Java Technical keynotes. Henrik Stahl, Senior Director, Product Management for Java opened the keynotes by saying that this is the third year for JavaOne Latin America. He explained, "You know what they say, the first time doesn't count, the second time is a habit and the third time it's a tradition!" He mentioned that he was thrilled that this is largest JavaOne in Brazil to date, and he wants next year to be larger. He said that Oracle knows Latin America is an important hub for development.  "We continually come back to Latin America because of the dedication the community has with driving the continued innovation for Java," he said. Stahl explained that Oracle and the Java community must continue to innovate and Make the Future Java together. The success of Java depends on three important factors: technological innovation, Oracle as a strong steward of Java, and community participation. "The Latin American Java Community (especially in Brazil) is a shining example of how to be positive contributor to Java," Stahl said. Next, George Saab, VP software dev, Java Platform Group at Oracle, discussed some of the recent and upcoming changes to Java. "In addition to the incremental improvements to Java 7, we have also increased the set of platforms supported by Oracle from Linux, Windows, and Solaris to now also include Mac OS X and Linux/ARM for ARM-based PCs such as the Raspberry Pi and emerging ARM based microservers."  Saab announced that EA builds for Linux ARM Hard Float ABI will be available by the end of the year.  Staffan Friberg, Product Manager, Java Platform Group, provided an overview of some of the language coming in Java 8, including Lambda, remove of PermGen, improved data and time APIs and improved security, Java 8 development is moving along. He reminded the audience that they can go to OpenJDK to see this development being done in real-time, and that there are weekly early access builds of OracleJDK 8 that developers can download and try today. Judson Althoff, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Alliances and Channels and Embedded Sales, was invited to the stage, and the audience was told that "even though he is wearing a suit, he is still pretty technical." Althoff started off with a bang: "The Internet of Things is on a collision course with big data and this is a huge opportunity for developers."  For example, Althoff said, today cars are more a data device than a mechanical device. A car embedded with sensors for fuel efficiency, temperature, tire pressure, etc. can generate a petabyte of data A DAY. There are similar examples in healthcare (patient monitoring and privacy requirements creates a complex data problem) and transportation management (sending a package around the world with sensors for humidity, temperature and light). Althoff then brought on stage representatives from three companies that are successful with Java today, first Axel Hansmann, VP Strategy & Marketing Communications, Cinterion. Mr. Hansmann explained that Cinterion, a market leader in Latin America, enables M2M services with Java. At JavaOne San Francisco, Cinterion launched the EHS5, the smallest 3g solderable module, with Java installed on it. This provides Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) with a cost effective, flexible platform for bringing advanced M2M technology to market.Next, Steve Nelson, Director of Marketing for the Americas, at Freescale explained that Freescale is #1 in Embedded Processors in Wired and Wireless Communications, and #1 in Automotive Semiconductors in the Americas. He said that Java provides a mature, proven platform that is uniquely suited to meet the requirements of almost any type of embedded device. He encouraged University students to get involved in the Freescale Cup, a global competition where student teams build, program, and race a model car around a track for speed.Roberto Franco, SBTVD Forum President, SBTVD, talked about Ginga, a Java-based standard for television in Brazil. He said there are 4 million Ginga TV sets in Brazil, and they expect over 20 million TV sets to be sold by the end of 2014. Ginga is also being adopted in other 11 countries in Latin America. Ginga brings interactive services not only at TV set, but also on other devices such as tablets,  PCs or smartphones, as the main or second screen. "Interactive services is already a reality," he said, ' but in a near future, we foresee interactivity enhanced TV content, convergence with OTT services and a big participation from the audience,  all integrated on TV, tablets, smartphones and second screen devices."Before he left the stage, Nandini Ramani thanked Judson for being part of the Java community and invited him to the next Geek Bike Ride in Brazil. She presented him an official geek bike ride jersey.For the Technical Keynote, a "blue screen of death" appeared. With mock concern, Stephin Chin asked the rest of the presenters if they could go on without slides. What followed was a interesting collection of demos, including JavaFX on a tablet, a look at Project Easel in NetBeans, and even Simon Ritter controlling legos with his brainwaves! Stay tuned for more dispatches.

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• Announcing Solaris Technical Track at NLUUG Spring Conference on Operating Systems

  - by user9135656

  The Netherlands Unix Users Group (NLUUG) is hosting a full-day technical Solaris track during its spring 2012 conference. The official announcement page, including registration information can be found at the conference page.This year, the NLUUG spring conference focuses on the base of every computing platform; the Operating System. Hot topics like Cloud Computing and Virtualization; the massive adoption of mobile devices that have their special needs in the OS they run but that at the same time put the challenge of massive scalability onto the internet; the upspring of multi-core and multi-threaded chips..., all these developments cause the Operating System to still be a very interesting area where all kinds of innovations have taken and are taking place.The conference will focus specifically on: Linux, BSD Unix, AIX, Windows and Solaris. The keynote speech will be delivered by John 'maddog' Hall, infamous promotor and supporter of UNIX-based Operating Systems. He will talk the audience through several decades of Operating Systems developments, and share many stories untold so far. To make the conference even more interesting, a variety of talks is offered in 5 parallel tracks, covering new developments in and  also collaboration  between Linux, the BSD's, AIX, Solaris and Windows. The full-day Solaris technical track covers all innovations that have been delivered in Oracle Solaris 11. Deeply technically-skilled presenters will talk on a variety of topics. Each topic will first be introduced at a basic level, enabling visitors to attend to the presentations individually. Attending to the full day will give the audience a comprehensive overview as well as more in-depth understanding of the most important new features in Solaris 11.NLUUG Spring Conference details:* Date and time:        When : April 11 2012        Start: 09:15 (doors open: 8:30)        End  : 17:00, (drinks and snacks served afterwards)* Venue:        Nieuwegein Business Center        Blokhoeve 1             3438 LC Nieuwegein              The Nederlands          Tel     : +31 (0)30 - 602 69 00        Fax     : +31 (0)30 - 602 69 01        Email   : [email protected]        Route   : description - (PDF, Dutch only)* Conference abstracts and speaker info can be found here.* Agenda for the Solaris track: Note: talks will be in English unless marked with 'NL'.1.      Insights to Solaris 11         Joerg Moellenkamp - Solaris Technical Specialist         Oracle Germany2.      Lifecycle management with Oracle Solaris 11         Detlef Drewanz - Solaris Technical Specialist         Oracle Germany3.      Solaris 11 Networking - Crossbow Project        Andrew Gabriel - Solaris Technical Specialist        Oracle UK4.      ZFS: Data Integrity and Security         Darren Moffat - Senior Principal Engineer, Solaris Engineering         Oracle UK5.      Solaris 11 Zones and Immutable Zones (NL)         Casper Dik - Senior Staff Engineer, Software Platforms         Oracle NL6.      Experiencing Solaris 11 (NL)         Patrick Ale - UNIX Technical Specialist         UPC Broadband, NLTalks are 45 minutes each.There will be a "Solaris Meeting point" during the conference where people can meet-up, chat with the speakers and with fellow Solaris enthousiasts, and where live demos or other hands-on experiences can be shared.The official announcement page, including registration information can be found at the conference page on the NLUUG website. This site also has a complete list of all abstracts for all talks.Please register on the NLUUG website.

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• Oracle OpenWorld Preview: Let's Get Social and Interactive

  - by Christie Flanagan

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} On this blog, we often write about getting social and interactive.  Usually, we’re talking about how to create a social business or how to make the customer experience more social and interactive.  Today’s topic is about getting social and interactive as well. But this time we’re talking about getting social and interactive the old fashioned way, face-to-face at Oracle OpenWorld with fellow Oracle WebCenter customers, partners and experts and the broader Oracle community.  Here are some great ways to get social at OpenWorld outside of the exhibition halls and meeting rooms: Oracle OpenWorld Welcome Reception - Sponsored by FujitsuSunday, September 30, 7:00 p.m.–8:30 p.m.Yerba Buena Gardens & Howard Street Tent You’ll definitely want to attend the Opening Ceremonies for Oracle OpenWorld 2012 on Sunday, September 30. Centered in Yerba Buena Gardens (YBG) and shimmying out to other venues, the Opening Ceremonies are not to be missed. Join other attendees for great food and drink, energizing music, networking opportunities, and more. While you’re at YBG (home of ORACLE TEAM USA’s America’s Cup Pavilion), be sure to meet the sailors who will be defending the 34th America’s Cup in 2013. Get a good look at the 161-year old Trophy itself—the oldest trophy still being contested in international sport. And at the AC72 boat display, view a model of the largest wingsail ever built. Oracle WebCenter Customer Appreciation ReceptionTuesday, October 2, 6:30 p.m.—9:30 p.m.The Palace Hotel, Rallston BallroomThose Oracle WebCenter customers who’ve RSVP’d to attend the Oracle WebCenter Customer Appreciation Reception shouldn’t miss this private cocktail reception at one of San Francisco’s finest hotels. Sponsored by Oracle WebCenter partners Fishbowl Solutions, Fujitsu, Keste, Mythics, Redstone Content Solutions, TEAM Informatics, and TekStream, this evening will provide plenty of time to interact with other WebCenter customers, partners and employees over hors d'oeuvres and cocktails. Oracle Appreciation Event – Sponsored by CSC, Fujitsu and IntelWednesday, October 3, 7:30 p.m.—1:00 a.m.Treasure Island, San Francisco On Wednesday night October 3, Treasure Island will be engineered to rock as the Oracle Appreciation Event gets revved up and attendees get rolling. As always at the Oracle Appreciation Event, there will be unlimited refreshments, fun and games, the most awesome views of San Francisco from just about anywhere, and top notch entertainment.  Past performers read like a veritable who’s who of the rock and roll elite. Join us—it's our way of saying thanks to you for supporting Oracle and our flagship conference. Complimentary shuttle service to and from Treasure Island will be provided, so all you have to worry about is having a rocking night of your own. Oracle OpenWorld Music FestivalSeptember 30-October 4, Check schedule for venues and times.Oracle presents the first annual Oracle OpenWorld Musical Festival, featuring some of today’s breakthrough musicians from around the country and the world including Macy Gray, Joss Stone, Jimmy Cliff and The Hives. It’s five nights of back-to-back performances in the heart of San Francisco. Registered Oracle conference attendees get free admission, so remember your badge when you head to a show. With limited space at some venues, these concerts are first-come, first-served. So mark your calendars and get ready for the music to begin. See you there!I hope this give you an idea of the many opportunities to socialize and interact with the Oracle community at OpenWorld, and if you’re a music lover like me, you’re in for a special treat as we debut our first annual Oracle OpenWorld Music Festival.  Check out the links below for more information on these events and the many featured performers: Reflections from the Young Prisms A Brief Soul Session with Joss Stone Mixing It Up with Blues Mix Red Meat’s Music is Rare and Well Done The English Beat’s Dave Wakeling Gets Philosophical Top Ten Reasons to Attend the Oracle Appreciation Event There’s Magic in the Air, There’ll Be Music Everywhere Looking forward to seeing you at OpenWorld!

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• Scripting custom drawing in Delphi application with IF/THEN/ELSE statements?

  - by Jerry Dodge

  I'm building a Delphi application which displays a blueprint of a building, including doors, windows, wiring, lighting, outlets, switches, etc. I have implemented a very lightweight script of my own to call drawing commands to the canvas, which is loaded from a database. For example, one command is ELP 1110,1110,1290,1290,3,8388608 which draws an ellipse, parameters are 1110x1110 to 1290x1290 with pen width of 3 and the color 8388608 converted from an integer to a TColor. What I'm now doing is implementing objects with common drawing routines, and I'd like to use my scripting engine, but this calls for IF/THEN/ELSE statements and such. For example, when I'm drawing a light, if the light is turned on, I'd like to draw it yellow, but if it's off, I'd like to draw it gray. My current scripting engine has no recognition of such statements. It just accepts simple drawing commands which correspond with TCanvas methods. Here's the procedure I've developed (incomplete) for executing a drawing command on a canvas: function DrawCommand(const Cmd: String; var Canvas: TCanvas): Boolean; type TSingleArray = array of Single; var Br: TBrush; Pn: TPen; X: Integer; P: Integer; L: String; Inst: String; T: String; Nums: TSingleArray; begin Result:= False; Br:= Canvas.Brush; Pn:= Canvas.Pen; if Assigned(Canvas) then begin if Length(Cmd) > 5 then begin L:= UpperCase(Cmd); if Pos(' ', L)> 0 then begin Inst:= Copy(L, 1, Pos(' ', L) - 1); Delete(L, 1, Pos(' ', L)); L:= L + ','; SetLength(Nums, 0); X:= 0; while Pos(',', L) > 0 do begin P:= Pos(',', L); T:= Copy(L, 1, P - 1); Delete(L, 1, P); SetLength(Nums, X + 1); Nums[X]:= StrToFloatDef(T, 0); Inc(X); end; Br.Style:= bsClear; Pn.Style:= psSolid; Pn.Color:= clBlack; if Inst = 'LIN' then begin Pn.Width:= Trunc(Nums[4]); if Length(Nums) > 5 then begin Br.Style:= bsSolid; Br.Color:= Trunc(Nums[5]); end; Canvas.MoveTo(Trunc(Nums[0]), Trunc(Nums[1])); Canvas.LineTo(Trunc(Nums[2]), Trunc(Nums[3])); Result:= True; end else if Inst = 'ELP' then begin Pn.Width:= Trunc(Nums[4]); if Length(Nums) > 5 then begin Br.Style:= bsSolid; Br.Color:= Trunc(Nums[5]); end; Canvas.Ellipse(Trunc(Nums[0]),Trunc(Nums[1]),Trunc(Nums[2]),Trunc(Nums[3])); Result:= True; end else if Inst = 'ARC' then begin Pn.Width:= Trunc(Nums[8]); Canvas.Arc(Trunc(Nums[0]),Trunc(Nums[1]),Trunc(Nums[2]),Trunc(Nums[3]), Trunc(Nums[4]),Trunc(Nums[5]),Trunc(Nums[6]),Trunc(Nums[7])); Result:= True; end else if Inst = 'TXT' then begin Canvas.Font.Size:= Trunc(Nums[2]); Br.Style:= bsClear; Pn.Style:= psSolid; T:= Cmd; Delete(T, 1, Pos(' ', T)); Delete(T, 1, Pos(',', T)); Delete(T, 1, Pos(',', T)); Delete(T, 1, Pos(',', T)); Canvas.TextOut(Trunc(Nums[0]), Trunc(Nums[1]), T); Result:= True; end; end else begin //No space found, not a valid command end; end; end; end; What I'd like to know is what's a good lightweight third-party scripting engine I could use to accomplish this? I would hate to implement parsing of IF, THEN, ELSE, END, IFELSE, IFEND, and all those necessary commands. I need simply the ability to tell the scripting engine if certain properties meet certain conditions, it needs to draw the object a certain way. The light example above is only one scenario, but the same solution needs to also be applicable to other scenarios, such as a door being open or closed, locked or unlocked, and draw it a different way accordingly. This needs to be implemented in the object script drawing level. I can't hard-code any of these scripting/drawing rules, the drawing needs to be controlled based on the current state of the object, and I may also wish to draw a light a certain shade or darkness depending on how dimmed the light is.

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• AppHarbor - Azure Done Right AKA Heroku for .NET

  - by Robz / Fervent Coder

  Easy and Instant deployments and instant scale for .NET? Awhile back a few of us were looking at Ruby Gems as the answer to package management for .NET. The gems platform supported the concept of DLLs as packages although some changes would have needed to happen to have long term use for the entire community. From that we formed a partnership with some folks at Microsoft to make v2 into something that would meet wider adoption across the community, which people now call NuGet. So now we have the concept of package management. What comes next? Heroku Instant deployments and instant scaling. Stupid simple API. This is Heroku. It doesn’t sound like much, but when you think of how fast you can go from an idea to having someone else tinker with it, you can start to see its power. In literally seconds you can be looking at your rails application deployed and online. Then when you are ready to scale, you can do that. This is power. Some may call this “cloud-computing” or PaaS (Platform as a Service). I first ran into Heroku back in July when I met Nick of RubyGems.org. At the time there was no alternative in the .NET-o-sphere. I don’t count Windows Azure, mostly because it is not simple and I don’t believe there is a free version. Heroku itself would not lend itself well to .NET due to the nature of platforms and each language’s specific needs (solution stack).  So I tucked the idea in the back of my head and moved on. AppHarbor Enters The Scene I’m not sure when I first heard about AppHarbor as a possible .NET version of Heroku. It may have been in November, but I didn’t actually try it until January. I was instantly hooked. AppHarbor is awesome! It still has a ways to go to be considered Heroku for .NET, but it already has a growing community. I created a video series (at the bottom of this post) that really highlights how fast you can get a product onto the web and really shows the power and simplicity of AppHarbor. Deploying is as simple as a git/hg push to appharbor. From there they build your code, run any unit tests you have and deploy it if everything succeeds. The screen on the right shows a simple and elegant UI to getting things done. The folks at AppHarbor graciously gave me a limited number of invites to hand out. If you are itching to try AppHarbor then navigate to: https://appharbor.com/account/new?inviteCode=ferventcoder  After playing with it, send feedback if you want more features. Go vote up two features I want that will make it more like Heroku. Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with AppHarbor and have not received any funds or favors from anyone at AppHarbor. I just think it is awesome and I want others to know about it. From Zero To Deployed in 15 Minutes (Or Less) Now I have a challenge for you. I created a video series showing how fast I could go from nothing to a deployed application. It could have been from Zero to Deployed in Less than 5 minutes, but I wanted to show you the tools a little more and give you an opportunity to beat my time. And that’s the challenge. Beat my time and show it in a video response. The video series is below (at least one of the videos has to be watched on YouTube). The person with the best time by March 15th @ 11:59PM CST will receive a prize. Ground rules: .NET Application with a valid database connection Start from Zero Deployed with AppHarbor or an alternative A timer displayed in the video that runs during the entire process Video response published on YouTube or acceptable alternative Video(s) must be published by March 15th at 11:59PM CST. Either post the link here as a comment or on YouTube as a response (also by 11:59PM CST March 15th) From Zero To Deployed In 15 Minutes (Or Less) Part 1 From Zero To Deployed In 15 Minutes (Or Less) Part 2 From Zero To Deployed In 15 Minutes (Or Less) Part 3

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• Educause Top-Ten IT Issues - the most change in a decade or more

  - by user739873

  The Education IT Issue Panel has released the 2012 top-ten issues facing higher education IT leadership, and instead of the customary reshuffling of the same deck, the issues reflect much of the tumult and dynamism facing higher education generally.  I find it interesting (and encouraging) that at the top of this year's list is "Updating IT Professionals' Skills and Roles to Accommodate Emerging Technologies and Changing IT Management and Service Delivery Models."  This reflects, in my view, the realization that higher education IT must change in order to fully realize the potential for transforming the institution, and therefore it's people must learn new skills, understand and accept new ways of solving problems, and not be tied down by past practices or institutional inertia. What follows in the remaining 9 top issues all speak, in some form or fashion, to the need for dramatic change, but not just in the areas of "funding IT" (code for cost containment or reduction), but rather the need to increase effectiveness and efficiency of the institution through the use of technology—leveraging the wave of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) to the institution's advantage, rather than viewing it as a threat and a problem to be contained. Although it's #10 of 10, IT Governance (and establishment and implementation of the governance model throughout the institution) is key to effectively acting upon many of the preceding issues in this year's list.  In the majority of cases, technology exists to meet the needs and requirements to effectively address many of the challenges outlined in top-ten issues list. Which brings me to my next point. Although I try not to sound too much like an Oracle commercial in these (all too infrequent) blog posts, I can't help but point out how much confluence there is between several of the top issues this year and what my colleagues and I have been evangelizing for some time. Starting from the bottom of the list up: 1) I'm gratified that research and the IT challenges it presents has made the cut.  Big Data (or Large Data as it's phased in the report) is rapidly going to overwhelm much of what exists today even at our most prepared and well-equipped research universities.  Combine large data with the significantly more stringent requirements around data preservation, archiving, sharing, curation, etc. coming from granting agencies like NSF, and you have the brewing storm that could result in a lot of "one-off" solutions to a problem that could very well be addressed collectively and "at scale."   2) Transformative effects of IT – while I see more and more examples of this, there is still much more that can be achieved. My experience tells me that culture (as the report indicates or at least poses the question) gets in the way more than technology not being up to task.  We spend too much time on "context" and not "core," and get lost in the weeds on the journey to truly transforming the institution with technology. 3) Analytics as a key element in improving various institutional outcomes.  In our work around Student Success, we see predictive "academic" analytics as essential to getting in front of the Student Success issue, regardless of how an institution or collections of institutions defines success.  Analytics must be part of the fabric of the key academic enterprise applications, not a bolt-on.  We will spend a significant amount of time on this topic during our semi-annual Education Industry Strategy Council meeting in Washington, D.C. later this month. 4) Cloud strategy for the broad range of applications in the academic enterprise.  Some of the recent work by Casey Green at the Campus Computing Survey would seem to indicate that there is movement in this area but mostly in what has been termed "below the campus" application areas such as collaboration tools, recruiting, and alumni relations.  It's time to get serious about sourcing elements of mature applications like student information systems, HR, Finance, etc. leveraging a model other than traditional on-campus custom. I've only selected a few areas of the list to highlight, but the unifying theme here (and this is where I run the risk of sounding like an Oracle commercial) is that these lofty goals cry out for partners that can bring economies of scale to bear on the problems married with a deep understanding of the nuances unique to higher education.  In a recent piece in Educause Review on Student Information Systems, the author points out that "best of breed is back". Unfortunately I am compelled to point out that best of breed is a large part of the reason we have made as little progress as we have as an industry in advancing some of the causes outlined above.  Don't confuse "integrated" and "full stack" for vendor lock-in.  The best-of-breed market forces that Ron points to ensure that solutions have to be "integratable" or they don't survive in the marketplace. However, by leveraging the efficiencies afforded by adopting solutions that are pre-integrated (and possibly metered out as a service) allows us to shed unnecessary costs – as difficult as these decisions are to make and to drive throughout the organization. Cole

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• Microsoft Forcing Dev/Partners Hands on Win 8 Through Certification

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  I remember 2.5 years ago when Microsoft dropped a bomb on the Microsoft Partner community: all Gold competencies would require .NET 4 based premiere certifications (MCPD). Problem was, this gave a window of about 6 months for partners to update their employees’ certifications. At the place I was working, I put together an aggressive plan and we were able to attain the certs needed. Microsoft is always open that the certification requirements will change as the industry changes. .NET 1.0 certifications are useless here in 2012, and rightfully so they’ve been retired for a long time now. But now we’re seeing a new tactic by Microsoft – shifting gears away from certifications that speak to what industry needs and more to the Windows 8 agenda. Consider that currently the premiere development certification is the Microsoft Certified Professional Developer, which comes in three flavours – Web, Windows, and Azure. All require WCF and Data Access exams, as well as one that deals with the associated base technologies (ASP.NET, WinForms/WPF, Azure), and one that ties all three together in a solution-based exam. For Microsoft-based organizations, these skills aren’t just valid but necessary in building Microsoft applications. But the MCPD is being replaced with our old friend Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer (MCSD). So far, Microsoft has only released two types of MCSD – Web and Windows Store Apps. Windows Store Apps?! In a push to move developers to create WinRT-based applications, desktop development is now considered a second-class citizen in the eyes of Redmond. Also interesting are the language options for the exams: HTML5 and C#. Sorry VB folks, its time to embrace curly braces whether they be JavaScript or C#. Consider too the skills being assessed for the Windows Store Apps: Get your MCSD: Windows Store Apps Using HTML5 Get your MCSD: Windows Store Apps Using C# *Image Source: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/certification/mcsd-windows-store-apps.aspx Nov 21/2012 If you look at the skills being tested in each exam, you’ll find that skills like WCF and Data Access are downplayed compared to things like integrating Charms, facilitating Search, programming for the microphone and camera – all very Windows 8 focussed items. Where this becomes maddening is that Microsoft is still pushing Windows 7 with enterprise clients. According to a ZDNet article, Microsoft wants to see Windows 7 on 70% of enterprise desktops by mid 2013. Assuming they somehow meet that (its a pretty lofty goal), there’s years of traditional desktop-based development that will still be required at some level. For those thinking they’ll just write and stick with the MCPD certification, note that most exams that go towards that certification will be retired at the end of July 2013! (Read the small print). And while details haven’t been finalized, its a safe bet that MCPD certifications eventually won’t count towards Gold-level competencies in the Microsoft Partner program. What this means for Microsoft Partners and Developers is that certification for desktop development is going to be limited to Windows Store Apps unless Microsoft re-introduces a traditional desktop (WPF) based MCSD cert. Web Application Development – It’s Not All Bad There’s big changes on the web side of certification, but I actually see these changes as being for the good! Check out the new exam requirements for MCSD – Web Applications: Get your MCSD: Web Applications certification *Image Source: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/certification/cert-mcsd-web-applications.aspx Nov 21, 2012 We now *start* with HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS3! Now I’m sure that these will be slanted towards web development in IE, and I can hear designers everywhere bemoaning the CSS/IE combination. Still, I applaud Microsoft for adopting HTML5 as the go-to web technology and requiring certified developers to prove they have skills in the basics of web dev. The fact that the second exam clearly states “MVC Web Applications” shows that Web Forms is truly legacy and deprecated. That’s not to say there aren’t those out there that are still supporting or (for whatever reason) doing new dev with Web Forms, but this move by Microsoft is telling the community they better get on the MVC bandwagon if they want to stay current. Fantastic! And of course Azure needs to be here as well, and this is where the Microsoft agenda fits in. It’s no secret that there’s been a huge push in getting developers on to Azure. I don’t see this as being a bad thing either, as cloud computing (whether Azure, private, or 3rd party) is a necessary skill for developers to have here in 2012. The cynic in me realizes that the HTML5/JavaScript/CSS push wouldn’t be as prominent though if not for the Windows 8 Store App play, where HTML5 is a first class citizen (and an available language for the MCSD Windows Store App cert). In this case, the desktop developers loss is the web developers gain. Get Ready for Changes In addition to the changes in certifications, the Microsoft Partner competencies are going through changes as well. Web and Software Development are being merged into a single competency, meaning that licenses you would have received from having both as Gold are reduced. Other competencies are either being removed or changed, as are the exam requirements. In the same way that we’re seeing faster release cycles from Microsoft, so too will we see the Microsoft Partner Program and MS Certifications evolve faster than ever before. Many of us got caught in the last wave of changes, but this time we can see the wave coming – and it looks pretty big!

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• To My 24 Year Old Self, Wherever You Are&hellip;

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  A decade is a milestone in one’s life, regardless of when it occurs. 2011 might seem like a weird year to mark a decade, but 2001 was a defining year for me. It marked my emergence into the technology industry, an unexpected loss of innocence, and triggered an ongoing struggle with faith and belief. Once you go through a valley, climbing the mountain and looking back over where you travelled, you can take in the entirety of the journey. Over the last 10 years I kept journals, and in this new year I took some time to review them. For those today that are me a decade ago, I share with you what I’ve gleamed from my experiences. Take it for what it’s worth, and safe travels on your own journeys through life. Life is a Performance-Based Sport Have confidence, believe you’re capable, but realize that life is a performance-based sport. Everything you get in life is based on whether you can show that you deserve it. Performance is also your best defense against personal attacks. Just make sure you know what standards you’re expected to hit and if people want to poke holes at you let them do the work of trying to find them. Sometimes performance won’t matter though. Good things will happen to bad people, and bad things to good people. What’s important is that you do the right things and ensure the good and bad even out in your own life. How you finish is just as important as how you start. Start strong, end strong. Respect is Your Most Prized Reward Respect is more important than status or ego. The formula is simple: Performing Well + Building Trust + Showing Dedication = Respect Focus on perfecting your craft and helping your team and respect will come. Life is a Team Sport Whatever aspect of your life, you can’t do it alone. You need to rely on the people around you and ensure you’re a positive aspect of their lives; even those that may be difficult or unpleasant. Avoid criticism and instead find ways to help colleagues and superiors better whatever environment you’re in (work, home, etc.). Don’t just highlight gaps and issues, but also come to the table with solutions. At the same time though, stand up for yourself and hold others accountable for the commitments they make to the team. A healthy team needs accountability. Give feedback early and often, and make it verbal. Issues should be dealt with immediately, and positives should be celebrated as they happen. Life is a Contact Sport Difficult moments will happen. Don’t run from them or shield yourself from experiencing them. Embrace them. They will further mold you and reveal who you will become. Find Your Tribe and Embrace Your Community We all need a tribe: a group of people that we gravitate to for support, guidance, wisdom, and friendship. Discover your tribe and immerse yourself in them. Don’t look for a non-existent tribe just to fill the need of belonging though that will leave you empty and bitter when they don’t meet your unrealistic expectations. Try to associate with people more experienced and more knowledgeable than you. You’ll always learn, and you’ll always remember you have much to learn. Put yourself out there, get involved with the community. Opportunities will present themselves. When we open ourselves up to be vulnerable, we also give others the chance to do the same. This helps us all to grow and help each other, it’s very important. And listen to your wife. (Easter *is* a romantic holiday btw, regardless of what you may think.) Don’t Believe Your Own Press Clippings (and by that I mean the ones you write) Until you have a track record of performance to refer to, any notions of grandeur are just that: notions. You lose your rookie status through trials and tribulations, not by the number of stamps in your passport. Be realistic about your own “experience and leadership” and be honest when you aren’t ready for something. And always remember: nobody really cares about you as much as you think they do. Don’t Let Assholes Get You Down The world isn’t evil, but there is evil in the world. Know the difference and don’t paint all people with the same brush. Do be wary of those that use personal beliefs to describe their business (i.e. “We’re a [religion] company”). What matters is the culture of the organization, and that will tell you the moral compass and what is truly valued. Don’t make someone or something a priority that only makes you an option. Life is unfair and enemies/opponents will succeed when you fail. Don’t waste your energy getting upset at this; the only one that will lose out is you. As mentioned earlier, nobody really cares about you as much as you think they do. Misc Ecclesiastes is bullshit. Everything is certainly *not* meaningless. Software development is about delivery, not the process. Having a great process means nothing if you don’t produce anything. Watch “The Weatherman” (“It’s not easy, but easy doesn’t enter into grownup life.”). Read Tony Dungee’s autobiography, even if you don’t like football, and even if you aren’t a Christian. Say no, don’t feel like you have to commit right away when someone asks you to.

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• UppercuT v1.0 and 1.1&ndash;Linux (Mono), Multi-targeting, SemVer, Nitriq and Obfuscation, oh my!

  - by Robz / Fervent Coder

  Recently UppercuT (UC) quietly released version 1 (in August). I’m pretty happy with where we are, although I think it’s a few months later than I originally planned. I’m glad I held it back, it gave me some more time to think about some things a little more and also the opportunity to receive a patch for running builds with UC on Linux. We also released v1.1 very recently (December). UppercuT v1 Builds On Linux Perhaps the most significant changes to UC going v1 is that it now supports builds on Linux using Mono! This is thanks mostly to Svein Ackenhausen for the patches and working with me on getting it all working while not breaking the windows builds!  This means you can use mono on Windows or Linux. Notice the shell files to execute with Linux that come as part of UC now. Multi-Targeting Perhaps one of the hardest things to do that requires an automated build is multi-targeting. At v1 this is early, and possibly prone to some issues, but available.  We believe in making everything stupid simple, so it’s as simple as adding a comma to the microsoft.framework property. i.e. “net-3.5, net-4.0” to suddenly produce both framework builds. When you build, this is what you get (if you meet each framework’s requirements): At this time you have to let UC override the build location (as it does by default) or this will not work.  Semantic Versioning By now many of you have been using UppercuT for awhile and have watched how we have done versioning. Many of you who use git already know we put the revision hash in the informational/product version as the last octet. At v1, UppercuT has adopted the semantic versioning scheme. What does that mean? This is a short read, but a good one: http://SemVer.org SemVer (Semantic Versioning) is really using versioning what it was meant for. You have three octets. Major.Minor.Patch as in 1.1.0.  UC will use three different versioning concepts, one for the assembly version, one for the file version, and one for the product version. All versions - The first three octects of the version are owned by SemVer. Major.Minor.Patch i.e.: 1.1.0 Assembly Version - The assembly version would much closer follow SemVer. Last digit is always 0. Major.Minor.Patch.0 i.e: 1.1.0.0 File Version - The file version occupies the build number as the last digit. Major.Minor.Patch.Build i.e.: 1.1.0.2650 Product/Informational Version - The last octect of your product/informational version is the source control revision/hash. Major.Minor.Patch.RevisionOrHash i.e. (TFS/SVN): 1.1.0.235 i.e. (Git/HG): 1.1.0.a45ace4346adef0 SemVer is not on by default, the passive versioning scheme is still in effect. Notice that version.use_semanticversioning has been added to the UppercuT.config file (and version.patch in support of the third octet): Gems Support Gems support was added at v1. This will probably be deprecated as some point once there is an announced sunset for Nu v1. Application gems may keep it around since there is no alternative for that yet though (CoApp would be a possible replacement). Nitriq Support Nitriq is a code analysis tool like NDepend. It’s built by Mr. Jon von Gillern. It uses LINQ query language, so you can use a familiar idiom when analyzing your code base. It’s a pretty awesome tool that has a free version for those looking to do code analysis! To use Nitriq with UC, you are going to need the console edition.  To take advantage of Nitriq, you just need to update the location of Nitriq in the config: Then add the nitriq project files at the root of your source. Please refer to the Nitriq documentation on how these are created. UppercuT v1.1 Obfuscation One thing I started looking into was an easy way to obfuscate my code. I came across EazFuscator, which is both free and awesome. Plus the GUI for it is super simple to use. How do you make obfuscation even easier? Make it a convention and a configurable property in the UC config file! And the code gets obfuscated! Closing Definitely get out and look at the new release. It contains lots of chocolaty (sp?) goodness. And remember, the upgrade path is almost as simple as drag and drop!

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• The Unintended Consequences of Sound Security Policy

  - by Tanu Sood

  v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} 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:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Author: Kevin Moulton, CISSP, CISM Meet the Author: Kevin Moulton, Senior Sales Consulting Manager, Oracle Kevin Moulton, CISSP, CISM, has been in the security space for more than 25 years, and with Oracle for 7 years. He manages the East Enterprise Security Sales Consulting Team. He is also a Distinguished Toastmaster. Follow Kevin on Twitter at twitter.com/kevin_moulton, where he sometimes tweets about security, but might also tweet about running, beer, food, baseball, football, good books, or whatever else grabs his attention. Kevin will be a regular contributor to this blog so stay tuned for more posts from him. When I speak to a room of IT administrators, I like to begin by asking them if they have implemented a complex password policy. Generally, they all nod their heads enthusiastically. I ask them if that password policy requires long passwords. More nodding. I ask if that policy requires upper and lower case letters – faster nodding – numbers – even faster – special characters – enthusiastic nodding all around! I then ask them if their policy also includes a requirement for users to regularly change their passwords. Now we have smiles with the nodding! I ask them if the users have different IDs and passwords on the many systems that they have access to. Of course! I then ask them if, when they walk around the building, they see something like this: Thanks to Jake Ludington for the nice example. Can these administrators be faulted for their policies? Probably not but, in the end, end-users will find a way to get their job done efficiently. Post-It Notes to the rescue! I was visiting a business in New York City one day which was a perfect example of this problem. First I walked up to the security desk and told them where I was headed. They asked me if they should call upstairs to have someone escort me. Is that my call? Is that policy? I said that I knew where I was going, so they let me go. Having the conference room number handy, I wandered around the place in a search of my destination. As I walked around, unescorted, I noticed the post-it note problem in abundance. Had I been so inclined, I could have logged in on almost any machine and into any number of systems. When I reached my intended conference room, I mentioned my post-it note observation to the two gentlemen with whom I was meeting. One of them said, “You mean like this,” and he produced a post it note full of login IDs and passwords from his breast pocket! I gave him kudos for not hanging the list on his monitor. We then talked for the rest of the meeting about the difficulties faced by the employees due to the security policies. These policies, although well-intended, made life very difficult for the end-users. Most users had access to 8 to 12 systems, and the passwords for each expired at a different times. The post-it note solution was understandable. Who could remember even half of them? What could this customer have done differently? I am a fan of using a provisioning system, such as Oracle Identity Manager, to manage all of the target systems. With OIM, and email could be automatically sent to all users when it was time to change their password. The end-users would follow a link to change their password on a web page, and then OIM would propagate that password out to all of the systems that the user had access to, even if the login IDs were different. Another option would be an Enterprise Single-Sign On Solution. With Oracle eSSO, all of a user’s credentials would be stored in a central, encrypted credential store. The end-user would only have to login to their machine each morning and then, as they moved to each new system, Oracle eSSO would supply the credentials. Good-bye post-it notes! 3M may be disappointed, but your end users will thank you. I hear people say that this post-it note problem is not a big deal, because the only people who would see the passwords are fellow employees. Do you really know who is walking around your building? What are the password policies in your business? How do the end-users respond?

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• The Enterprise is a Curmudgeon

  - by John K. Hines

  Working in an enterprise environment is a unique challenge.  There's a lot more to software development than developing software.  A project lead or Scrum Master has to manage personalities and intra-team politics, has to manage accomplishing the task at hand while creating the opportunities and a reputation for handling desirable future work, has to create a competent, happy team that actually delivers while being careful not to burn bridges or hurt feelings outside the team.  Which makes me feel surprised to read advice like: " The enterprise should figure out what is likely to work best for itself and try to use it." - Ken Schwaber, The Enterprise and Scrum. The enterprises I have experience with are fundamentally unable to be self-reflective.  It's like asking a Roman gladiator if he'd like to carve out a little space in the arena for some silent meditation.  I'm currently wondering how compatible Scrum is with the top-down hierarchy of life in a large organization.  Specifically, manufacturing-mindset, fixed-release, harmony-valuing large organizations.  Now I understand why Agile can be a better fit for companies without much organizational inertia. Recently I've talked with nearly two dozen software professionals and their managers about Scrum and Agile.  I've become convinced that a developer, team, organization, or enterprise can be Agile without using Scrum.  But I'm not sure about what process would be the best fit, in general, for an enterprise that wants to become Agile.  It's possible I should read more than just the introduction to Ken's book. I do feel prepared to answer some of the questions I had asked in a previous post: How can Agile practices (including but not limited to Scrum) be adopted in situations where the highest-placed managers in a company demand software within extremely aggressive deadlines? Answer: In a very limited capacity at the individual level.  The situation here is that the senior management of this company values any software release more than it values developer well-being, end-user experience, or software quality.  Only if the developing organization is given an immediate refactoring opportunity does this sort of development make sense to a person who values sustainable software.   How can Agile practices be adopted by teams that do not perform a continuous cycle of new development, such as those whose sole purpose is to reproduce and debug customer issues? Answer: It depends.  For Scrum in particular, I don't believe Scrum is meant to manage unpredictable work.  While you can easily adopt XP practices for bug fixing, the project-management aspects of Scrum require some predictability.  My question here was meant toward those who want to apply Scrum to non-development teams.  In some cases it works, in others it does not. How can a team measure if its development efforts are both Agile and employ sound engineering practices? Answer: I'm currently leaning toward measuring these independently.  The Agile Principles are a terrific way to measure if a software team is agile.  Sound engineering practices are those practices which help developers meet the principles.  I think Scrum is being mistakenly applied as an engineering practice when it is essentially a project management practice.  In my opinion, XP and Lean are examples of good engineering practices. How can Agile be explained in an accurate way that describes its benefits to sceptical developers and/or revenue-focused non-developers? Answer: Agile techniques will result in higher-quality, lower-cost software development.  This comes primarily from finding defects earlier in the development cycle.  If there are individual developers who do not want to collaborate, write unit tests, or refactor, then these are simply developers who are either working in an area where adding these techniques will not add value (i.e. they are an expert) or they are a developer who is satisfied with the status quo.  In the first case they should be left alone.  In the second case, the results of Agile should be demonstrated by other developers who are willing to receive recognition for their efforts.  It all comes down to individuals, doesn't it?  If you're working in an organization whose Agile adoption consists exclusively of Scrum, consider ways to form individual Agile teams to demonstrate its benefits.  These can even be virtual teams that span people across org-chart boundaries.  Once you can measure real value, whether it's Scrum, Lean, or something else, people will follow.  Even the curmudgeons.

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• Finding it Hard to Deliver Right Customer Experience: Think BPM!

  - by Ajay Khanna

  Our relationship with our customers is not a just a single interaction and we should not treat it like one. A customer’s relationship with a vendor is like a journey which starts way before customer makes a purchase and lasts long after that. The journey may start with customer researching a product that may lead to the eventual purchase and may continue with support or service needs for the product. A typical customer journey can be represented as shown below: As you may notice, customers tend to use multiple channels to interact with a company throughout their journey.  They also expect that they should get consistent experience, no matter what interaction channel they may choose. Customers do not like to repeat the information they have already provided and expect companies to remember their preferences, and offer them relevant products and services. If the company fails to meet this expectation, customers not only will abandon the purchase and go to the competitor but may also influence others’ purchase decision. Gone are the days when word of mouth was the only medium, and the customer could influence “Six” others. This is the age of social media and customer’s good or bad experience, especially bad get highly amplified and may influence hundreds of others. Challenges that face B2C companies today include: Delivering consistent experience: The reason that delivering consistent experience is challenging is due to fragmented data, disjointed systems and siloed multichannel interactions. Customers tend to get different service quality if they use web vs. phone vs. store. They get different responses from different service agents or get inconsistent answers if they call sales vs. service group in the company. Such inconsistent experiences result in lower customer satisfaction or NPS (net promoter score) numbers. Increasing Revenue: To stay competitive companies frequently introduce new products and services. Delay in launching such offerings has a significant impact on revenue realization. In addition to new product revenue, there are multiple opportunities to up-sell and cross-sell that impact bottom line. If companies are not able to identify such opportunities, bring a product to market quickly, or not offer the right product to the right customer at the right time, significant loss of revenue may occur. Ensuring Compliance: Companies must be compliant to ever changing regulations, these could be about Know Your Customer (KYC), Export/Import regulations, or taxation policies. In addition to government agencies, companies also need to comply with the SLA that they have committed to their customers. Lapse in meeting any of these requirements may lead to serious fines, penalties and loss in business. Companies have to make sure that they are in compliance will all such regulations and SLA commitments, at any given time. With the advent of social networks and mobile technology, companies not only need to focus on process efficiency but also on customer engagement. Improving engagement means delivering the customer experience as the customer is expecting and interacting with the customer at right time using right channel. Customers expect to be able to contact you via any channel of their choice (web, email, chat, mobile, social media), purchase via any viable channel (web, phone, store, mobile). Customers expect companies to understand their particular needs and remember their preferences on repeated visits. To deliver such an integrated, consistent, and contextual experience, power of BPM in must. Your company may be organized in departments like Marketing, Sales, Service. You may hold prospect data in SFA, order information in ERP, customer issues in CRM. However, the experience delivered to the customer must not be constrained by your system legacy. BPM helps in designing the right experience for the right customer and integrates all the underlining channels, systems, applications to make sure right information will be delivered to the right knowledge worker or to the customer every single time.     Orchestrating information across all systems (MDM, CRM, ERP), departments (commerce, merchandising, marketing service) and channels (Email, phone, web, social)  is the key, and that’s what BPM delivers. In addition to orchestrating systems and channels for consistency, BPM also provides an ability for analysis and decision management. By using data from historical transactions, social media and from other systems, users can determine the customer preferences, customer value, and churn propensity. This information, in the context, is then used while making a decision at a process step. Working with real-time decision management system can also suggest right up-sell or cross-sell offers, discounts or next-best-action steps for a particular customer. Timely action on customer issues or request is also a key tenet of a good customer experience. BPM’s complex event processing capabilities help companies to take proactive actions before issues get escalated. BPM system can be designed to listen to a certain event patters then deduce from those customer situations (credit card stolen, baggage lost, change of address) and do a triage before situation goes out of control. If such a situation arises you can send alerts to right people or immediately invoke corrective actions. Last but not least one of BPM’s key values is to drive continuous improvement. Learning about customers past experiences, interactions and social conversations, provide valuable insight. Such insight can be used to improve products, customer facing processes, and customer experience. You may take these insights as an input to design better more efficient and customer friendly sales, contact center or self-service processes. If customer experience is important for your business, make sure you have incorporated BPM as a part of your strategy to design, orchestrate and improve your customer facing processes.

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• Top Questions and Answers for Pluging into Oracle Database as a Service

  - by David Swanger

  Yesterday we hosted a comprehensive online forum that shared a comprehensive path to help your organization design, deploy, and deliver a Database as a Service cloud. If you missed the online forum, you can watch it on demand by registering here. We received numerous questions.  Below are highlights of the most informative: DBaaS requires a lengthy and careful design efforts. What is the minimum requirements of setting up a scaled-down environment and test it out? You should have an OEM 12c environment for DBaaS administration and then a target database deployment platform that has the key characteristics of what your production environment will look like. This could be a single server or it could be a small pool of hosts if your production DBaaS will be larger and you want to test a more robust / real world configuration with Zones and Pools or DR capabilities for example. How does this benefit companies having their own data center? This allows companies to transform their internal IT to a service delivery model for the database. The benefits to the company are significant cost savings, improved business agility and reduced risk. The benefits to the consumers (internal) of services if much fast provisioning, and response to change in business requirements. From a deployment perspective, is DBaaS's job solely DBA's job? The best deployment model enables the DBA (or end-user) to control the entire process. All resources required to deploy the service are pre-provisioned, and there are no external dependencies (on network, storage, sysadmins teams). The service is created either via a self-service portal or by the DBA. The purpose of self service seems to be that the end user does not rely on the DBA. I just need to give him a template. He decides how much AMM he needs. Why shall I set it one by one. That doesn't seem to be the purpose of self service. Most customers we have worked with define a standardized service catalog, with a few (2 to 5) different classes of service. For each of these classes, there is a pre-defined deployment template, and the user has the ability to select from some pre-defined service sizes. The administrator only has to create this catalog once. Each user then simply selects from the options offered in the catalog.  Looking at DBaaS service definition, it seems to be no different from a service definition provided by a well defined DBA team. Why do you attribute it to DBaaS? There are a couple of perspectives. First, some organizations might already be operating with a high level of standardization and a higher level of maturity from an ITIL or Service Management perspective. Their journey to DBaaS could be shorter and their Service Definition will evolve less but they still might need to add capabilities such as Self Service and Metering/Chargeback. Other organizations are still operating in highly siloed environments with little automation and their formal Service Definition (if they have one) will be a lot less mature today. Therefore their future state DBaaS will look a lot different from their current state, as will their Service Definition. How database as a service impact or help with "Click to Compute" or deploying "Database in cloud infrastructure" DBaaS enables Click to Compute. Oracle DBaaS can be implemented using three architecture models: Oracle Multitenant 12c, native consolidation using Oracle Database and consolidation using virtualization in infrastructure cloud. As Deploy session showed, you get higher consolidating density and efficiency using Multitenant and higher isolation using infrastructure cloud. Depending upon your business needs, DBaaS can be implemented using any of these models. How exactly is the DBaaS different from the traditional db? Storage/OS/DB all together to 'transparently' provide service to applications? Will there be across-databases access by application/user. Some key differences are: 1) The services run on a shared platform. 2) The services can be rapidly provisioned (< 15 minutes). 3) The services are dynamic and can be relocated, grown, shrunk as needed to meet business needs without disruption and rapidly. 4) The user is able to provision the services directly from a standardized service catalog.. With 24x7x365 databases its difficult to find off peak hrs to do basic admin tasks such as gathering stats, running backups, batch jobs. How does pluggable database handle this and different needs/patching downtime of apps databases might be serving? You can gather stats in Oracle Multitenant the same way you had been in regular databases. Regarding patching/upgrading, Oracle Multitenant makes patch/upgrade very efficient in that you can pre-provision a new version/patched multitenant db in a different ORACLE_HOME and then unplug a PDB from its CDB and plug it into the newer/patched CDB in seconds.  Thanks for all the great questions!  If you'd like to learn more and missed the online forum, you can watch it on demand here.

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• Where would a spam bot be located?

  - by Tim

  I have a hosted website using a free hosting service, I received an email this afternoon saying that I have been suspended because my account has been compromised. Basically, someone is using my email account to mass send spam. I've changed all the passwords and everything but when my Gmail pulls the emails from the host it's still downloading loads of spam messages that show like this: This message was created automatically by mail delivery software. A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed: [email protected] SMTP error from remote mail server after end of data: host 198.91.80.251 [198.91.80.251]: 554 5.6.0 id=23634-03 - Rejected by MTA on relaying, from MTA([127.0.0.1]:10030): 554 Error: This email address has lost rights to send email from the system ------ This is a copy of the message, including all the headers. ------ Return-path: <[email protected]> Received: from keenesystems.com ([66.135.33.211]:2370 helo=server211) by absolut.x10hosting.com with esmtpsa (TLSv1:RC4-MD5:128) (Exim 4.77) (envelope-from <[email protected]>) id 1TGwSW-002hHe-Lc for [email protected]; Wed, 26 Sep 2012 13:35:44 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2012 13:35:43 -0500 X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-Mailer: Ximian Evolution 3.9.9 (8.5.3-6) Subject: New staff members wanted at Auction It Online From: [email protected] Reply-To: [email protected] To: "Nadia Monti" <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Message-ID: <OUTLOOK-IDM-9aed7054-6a3e-e1a4-1d5c-3e73377652a6@server211> Date : 26 September 2012=0ATime : 13:35=0ASender : Dennise Halcomb Head = Office Manager of RJ Auction Drop-Off Int.=0A=0ANice to meet you Nadia M= onti=0A=0ARJ ADO Ltd., a USA based company, offers a significant amount = of goods worldwide for our customers on eBay and other auction venues. = Our company's main target is to provide a suitable and cost-effective se= rvice for any person, company or fundraising company. The main purpose o= f the administrative assistant / sales support representative is to cont= ribute to the sales force and add convenience to our cost-effective serv= ice dedicated to individuals, businesses, and organizations worldwide. O= ur HR department obtained your resume from one of the various job-orient= ed websites just to offer you this post.=0A=0AWorking Schedule: This is = a part time and home-based offer. You won't need to spend more than 3 ho= urs each day. Your =0Aschedule will be flexible.=0A=0ASalary: At the end= of the trial period (it lasts for 1 month) you will be paid 1,800 EUR. = With the average volume of clients your overall income will raise up to = 3,000 EUR per month. After the trial period is over your base salary wil= l grow up to 2,500 EUR per month, so you will earn 5% commission from th= e transactions completed.=0A=0AWhere?: Italy Wide. As it is a stay at ho= me position all the communication will be carried out via email and via = phone.=0A=0ARequirements: Access to the internet during the workday and = basic microsoft office skills are needed. Basic knowledge of English is = required (most of the contacts will be in English).=0A=0ACosts and Fees:= There are NO costs at any time for our employees. All fees related to t= his position are covered by the RJ ADO Co. Ltd..=0A=0AFurther Hiring Pro= cess: If you are interested in position we offer, please reply to this e= mail and send us the copy of your resume for verification.=0A=0AAfter re= viewing all of the received applications we will reply to successful app= licants only. Then we'll offer to these successful applicants a position= within our firm on a trial period basis for one month beginning from th= e date you sign a trial agreement. During this trial period you will rec= eive full guidance and support. Employees on a one monthly trial period = are evaluated at least one week prior to the end of their trial. During = the trial, your supervisor can recommend termination. At the end of the = trial period, the supervisor can offer continued employment, extension o= f trial period, or termination. After the trial period you may ask for m= ore hours or continue full-time.=0A=0AIf you are interested in this posi= tion, just reply to this email and send any questions you have and the c= opy of your resume for verification.=0A=0AThank You,=0AHR-Manager of RJ = ADO Co. Ltd.=0A=0APermission Settings=0AYou have been referred to RJ Auc= tion Drop-Off If you feel you received this email in error or do not wis= h to receive future messages, please reply to this message with "remove"= in the subject field. We will immediately update our database according= ly. =0AWe apologize for any inconvenience caused.=0A=0ARJ Auction Drop-O= ff Co. Ltd. I'm not aware of how this has happened. I'm not sure how anyone could have got hold of my password. It's a simple wordpress install, at some point recently my host went down and there was a fresh install of wordpress with default admin accounts, I have a feeling it could be something to do with this. My question is, even though I've changed all my passwords it's all still happening, is there annywhere in paticular this script would be stored on my host. I really can't deal with having my hosting account suspended and my email account sending all this spam.

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• To refund or not to refund this client?

  - by Mahalia Samuels

  I'd really appreciate your advice on an ongoing project. I presented my client with a proposal and design samples which he approved, and he paid in full instead of the 50% upfront deposit as I'd given him a generous discount. He was then slow in furnishing me with some of the content, but once we did, he expected the website to be finished immediately which was not possible. Because he needed it done urgently, we agreed to try to get it done about 10 working days after the content was provided, but the developer who was helping me let me down. The next week, I completed the website myself and uploaded it to the server on a Friday afternoon. He then calls and texts me on following Sunday while I'm at church to say it's not online (there was probably a problem with his browser). The next morning, I received an email from him demanding a full refund within two days because he couldn't see the website (even though it was live, and I tested it on multiple browsers, a different computer and my phone), and he called me shouting at me because he couldn't access it. Finally when he was able to access it, he was unhappy with a certain detail regarding the slideshow which I began fixing and which was done the next day. He then referred me to another website and said he wanted it to look similar but not identical to it in terms of the layout. He also now wanted to add more features which were not in the original design. I got a designer to work on a new design which I sent to him for review, which if approved would be completed by 15 October, and he approved it last Thursday. He then called me yesterday to say that he wanted to change the design - he only approved it out of impatience. He now wants the website to be more similar to the other website he referred me to and he wants it done before the 15th! Then, he says to me that other people have done websites for him in three days - website's he's complained to me about for lacking dimension because they were just premium themes, whereas we'd designed and coded from scratch. I'm thinking of finishing the website but refunding him in full (or at least the refundable 50%) less domain registration and other non-refundable amounts, just to avoid further escalation of this matter and having him call me next week and say he wants to change it again. These are the applicable terms and conditions as laid out in the agreement: Total amount due for this project is Amount A. Client shall pay Consultant a deposit of Amount B (50% of total amount due for project) in advance before any work commences on the Project. The balance is due within 7 working days of completion of project. Deposit is non-refundable. Should client opt to host elsewhere, applicable transferral fee of Amount C will apply. Estimated project completion time frame is 14 to 30 days from the date Client furnishes Consultant with Brief and all other required media and data, provided that Client has made payment to secure the project. Consultant will make every effort to meet agreed upon due dates. The Client should be aware that failure to submit required information or materials, or last minute changes and excessive changes may cause subsequent delays. Client delays could result in significant delays in delivery of finished work. Major changes in client input or direction or brief will be charged at normal rates. Any work the Client wishes Consultant to create, which is not specified in the attached Proposal will be considered an additional service. Client agrees to pay Consultant for any additional expenses or additional services not included in the attached quotation and proposal if requested by the Client. Web design credit in the name of the Consultant, and link to Consultant’s website shall be placed on the footer of the final Website. Either party may terminate this Agreement by giving 7 days written notice to the other of such termination. In the event that Work is postponed or terminated at the request of the Client, Consultant shall have the right to bill pro rata at full rates for work completed through the date of that request, while reserving all rights under this Agreement. If additional payment is due, this shall be payable within seven days of the Client's written notification to stop work. In the event of termination, the Client shall also pay any expenses incurred by Consultant and the Consultant shall own all rights to the Work. Advice please?

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• Business Case for investing time developing Stubs and BizUnit Tests

  - by charlie.mott

  I was recently in a position where I had to justify why effort should be spent developing Stubbed Integration Tests for BizTalk solutions. These tests are usually developed using the BizUnit framework. I assumed that most seasoned BizTalk developers would consider this best practice. Even though Microsoft suggest use of BizUnit on MSDN, I've not found a single site listing the justifications for investing time writing stubs and BizUnit tests. Stubs Stubs should be developed to isolate your development team from external dependencies. This is described by Michael Stephenson here. Failing to do this can result in the following problems: In contract-first scenarios, the external system interface will have been defined.  But the interface may not have been setup or even developed yet for the BizTalk developers to work with. By the time you open the target location to see the data BizTalk has sent, it may have been swept away. If you are relying on the UI of the target system to see the data BizTalk has sent, what do you do if it fails to arrive? It may take time for the data to be processed or it may be scheduled to be processed later. Learning how to use the source\target systems and investigations into where things go wrong in these systems will slow down the BizTalk development effort. By the time the data is visible in a UI it may have undergone further transformations. In larger development teams working together, do you all use the same source and target instances. How do you know which data was created by whose tests? How do you know which event log error message are whose?  Another developer may have “cleaned up” your data. It is harder to write BizUnit tests that clean up the data\logs after each test run. What if your B2B partners' source or target system cannot support the sort of testing you want to do. They may not even have a development or test instance that you can work with. Their single test instance may be used by the SIT\UAT teams. There may be licencing costs of setting up an instances of the external system. The stubs I like to use are generic stubs that can accept\return any message type.  Usually I need to create one per protocol. They should be driven by BizUnit steps to: validates the data received; and select a response messages (or error response). Once built, they can be re-used for many integration tests and from project to project. I’m not saying that developers should never test against a real instance.  Every so often, you still need to connect to real developer or test instances of the source and target endpoints\services. The interface developers may ask you to send them some data to see if everything still works.  Or you might want some messages sent to BizTalk to get confidence that everything still works beyond BizTalk. Tests Automated “Stubbed Integration Tests” are usually built using the BizUnit framework. These facilitate testing of the entire integration process from source stub to target stub. It will ensure that all of the BizTalk components are configured together correctly to meet all the requirements. More fine grained unit testing of individual BizTalk components is still encouraged.  But BizUnit provides much the easiest way to test some components types (e.g. Orchestrations). Using BizUnit with the Behaviour Driven Development approach described by Mike Stephenson delivers the following benefits: source: http://biztalkbddsample.codeplex.com – Video 1. Requirements can be easily defined using Given/When/Then Requirements are close to the code so easier to manage as features and scenarios Requirements are defined in domain language The feature files can be used as part of the documentation The documentation is accurate to the build of code and can be published with a release The scenarios are effective to document the scenarios and are not over excessive The scenarios are maintained with the code There’s an abstraction between the intention and implementation of tests making them easier to understand The requirements drive the testing These same tests can also be used to drive load testing as described here. If you don't do this ... If you don't follow the above “Stubbed Integration Tests” approach, the developer will need to manually trigger the tests. This has the following risks: Developers are unlikely to check all the scenarios each time and all the expected conditions each time. After the developer leaves, these manual test steps may be lost. What test scenarios are there?  What test messages did they use for each scenario? There is no mechanism to prove adequate test coverage. A test team may attempt to automate integration test scenarios in a test environment through the triggering of tests from a source system UI. If this is a replacement for BizUnit tests, then this carries the following risks: It moves the tests downstream, so problems will be found later in the process. Testers may not check all the expected conditions within the BizTalk infrastructure such as: event logs, suspended messages, etc. These automated tests may also get in the way of manual tests run on these environments.

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• Speakers, Please Check Your Time

  - by AjarnMark

  Woodrow Wilson was once asked how long it would take him to prepare for a 10 minute speech. He replied "Two weeks". He was then asked how long it would take for a 1 hour speech. "One week", he replied. 2 hour speech? "I'm ready right now," he replied.  Whether that is a true story or an urban legend, I don’t really know, but either way, it is a poignant reminder for all speakers, and particularly apropos this week leading up to the PASS Community Summit. (Cross-posted to the PASS Professional Development Virtual Chapter blog #PASSProfDev.) What’s the point of that story?  Simply this…if you have plenty of time to do your presentation, you don’t need to prepare much because it is easy to throw in more and more material to stretch out to your allotted time.  But if you are on a tight time constraint, then it will take significant preparation to distill your talk down to only the essential points. I have attended seven of the last eight North American Summit events, and every one of them has been fantastic.  The speakers are great, the material is timely and relevant, and the networking opportunities are awesome.  And every year, there is one little thing that just bugs me…speakers going over their allotted time.  Why does it bother me so?  Well, if you look at a typical schedule for a Summit, you’ll see that there are six or more sessions going on at the same time, and only 15 minutes to move from one to another.  If you’re trying to maximize your training dollar by attending something during every session time slot, and you don’t want to be the last guy trying to squeeze into the middle of the row, then those 15 minutes can be critical.  All the more so if you need to stop and use the bathroom or if you have to hike to the opposite end of the convention center.  It is really a bad position to find yourself having to choose between learning the last key points of Speaker A who is going over time, and getting over to Speaker B on time so you don’t miss her key opening remarks. And frankly, I think it is just rude.  Yes, the speakers are the function, after all they are bringing the content that the rest of us are paying to learn.  But it is also an honor to be given the opportunity to speak at a conference like this, and no one speaker is so important that the conference would be a disaster without him.  Speakers know when they submit their abstract, long before the conference, how much time they will have.  It has been the same pattern at the Summit for at least the last eight years.  Program Sessions are 75 minutes long.  Some speakers who have a good track record, and meet other qualifying criteria, are extended an invitation to present a Spotlight Session which is 90 minutes (a 20% increase).  So there really is no excuse.  It’s not like you were promised a 2-hour segment and then discovered when you got here that it was only 75 minutes.  In fact, it’s not like PASS advertised 90-minute sessions for everyone and then a select few were cut back to only 75.  As a speaker, you know well before you get here which type of session you are doing and how long it is, so as a professional, you should plan accordingly. Now you might think that this only happens to rookies, but I’ll tell you that some of the worst offenders are big-name veterans who draw huge attendance numbers for their sessions.  Some attendees blow this off as, “Hey, it’s so-and-so, and I’d stay here for hours and listen to him/her talk.”  To which I would reply, “Then they should have submitted for a pre- or post-conference day-long seminar instead, but don’t try to squeeze your day-long talk into a 90-minute session.”  Now I don’t really believe that these speakers are being malicious or just selfishly trying to extend their time in the spotlight.  I think that most of them are merely being undisciplined and did not trim their presentation sufficiently, or allowed themselves to get off-track (often in a generous attempt to help someone in the audience with a question or problem that really should have been noted for further discussion after the session). So here is my recommendation…my plea, even.  TRIM THE FAT!  Now.  Before it’s too late.  Before you even get on the airplane, take a long, hard look at your presentation and eliminate some of the points that you originally thought you had to make, but in reality are not truly crucial to your main topic.  Delete a few slides.  Test your demos and have them already scripted rather than typing them during your talk.  It is better to cut out too much and end up with plenty of time at the end for Questions & Answers.  And you can always keep some notes on the stuff that you cut out so that you could fill it back in at the end as bonus material if you really do end up with a whole bunch of time on your hands.  But I don’t think you will.  And if you do, that will look even better to the audience as it will look like you’re giving them something extra that not every audience gets.  And they will thank you for that.

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• Documentation Changes in Solaris 11.1

  - by alanc

  One of the first places you can see Solaris 11.1 changes are in the docs, which have now been posted in the Solaris 11.1 Library on docs.oracle.com. I spent a good deal of time reviewing documentation for this release, and thought some would be interesting to blog about, but didn't review all the changes (not by a long shot), and am not going to cover all the changes here, so there's plenty left for you to discover on your own. Just comparing the Solaris 11.1 Library list of docs against the Solaris 11 list will show a lot of reorganization and refactoring of the doc set, especially in the system administration guides. Hopefully the new break down will make it easier to get straight to the sections you need when a task is at hand. Packaging System Unfortunately, the excellent in-depth guide for how to build packages for the new Image Packaging System (IPS) in Solaris 11 wasn't done in time to make the initial Solaris 11 doc set. An interim version was published shortly after release, in PDF form on the OTN IPS page. For Solaris 11.1 it was included in the doc set, as Packaging and Delivering Software With the Image Packaging System in Oracle Solaris 11.1, so should be easier to find, and easier to share links to specific pages the HTML version. Beyond just how to build a package, it includes details on how Solaris is packaged, and how package updates work, which may be useful to all system administrators who deal with Solaris 11 upgrades & installations. The Adding and Updating Oracle Solaris 11.1 Software Packages was also extended, including new sections on Relaxing Version Constraints Specified by Incorporations and Locking Packages to a Specified Version that may be of interest to those who want to keep the Solaris 11 versions of certain packages when they upgrade, such as the couple of packages that had functionality removed by an (unusual for an update release) End of Feature process in the 11.1 release. Also added in this release is a document containing the lists of all the packages in each of the major package groups in Solaris 11.1 (solaris-desktop, solaris-large-server, and solaris-small-server). While you can simply get the contents of those groups from the package repository, either via the web interface or the pkg command line, the documentation puts them in handy tables for easier side-by-side comparison, or viewing the lists before you've installed the system to pick which one you want to initially install. X Window System We've not had good X11 coverage in the online Solaris docs in a while, mostly relying on the man pages, and upstream X.Org docs. In this release, we've integrated some X coverage into the Solaris 11.1 Desktop Adminstrator's Guide, including sections on installing fonts for fontconfig or legacy X11 clients, X server configuration, and setting up remote access via X11 or VNC. Of course we continue to work on improving the docs, including a lot of contributions to the upstream docs all OS'es share (more about that another time). Security One of the things Oracle likes to do for its products is to publish security guides for administrators & developers to know how to build systems that meet their security needs. For Solaris, we started this with Solaris 11, providing a guide for sysadmins to find where the security relevant configuration options were documented. The Solaris 11.1 Security Guidelines extend this to cover new security features, such as Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) and Read-Only Zones, as well as adding additional guidelines for existing features, such as how to limit the size of tmpfs filesystems, to avoid users driving the system into swap thrashing situations. For developers, the corresponding document is the Developer's Guide to Oracle Solaris 11 Security, which has been the source for years for documentation of security-relevant Solaris API's such as PAM, GSS-API, and the Solaris Cryptographic Framework. For Solaris 11.1, a new appendix was added to start providing Secure Coding Guidelines for Developers, leveraging the CERT Secure Coding Standards and OWASP guidelines to provide the base recommendations for common programming languages and their standard API's. Solaris specific secure programming guidance was added via links to other documentation in the product doc set. In parallel, we updated the Solaris C Libary Functions security considerations list with details of Solaris 11 enhancements such as FD_CLOEXEC flags, additional *at() functions, and new stdio functions such as asprintf() and getline(). A number of code examples throughout the Solaris 11.1 doc set were updated to follow these recommendations, changing unbounded strcpy() calls to strlcpy(), sprintf() to snprintf(), etc. so that developers following our examples start out with safer code. The Writing Device Drivers guide even had the appendix updated to list which of these utility functions, like snprintf() and strlcpy(), are now available via the Kernel DDI. Little Things Of course all the big new features got documented, and some major efforts were put into refactoring and renovation, but there were also a lot of smaller things that got fixed as well in the nearly a year between the Solaris 11 and 11.1 doc releases - again too many to list here, but a random sampling of the ones I know about & found interesting or useful: The Privileges section of the DTrace Guide now gives users a pointer to find out how to set up DTrace privileges for non-global zones and what limitations are in place there. A new section on Recommended iSCSI Configuration Practices was added to the iSCSI configuration section when it moved into the SAN Configuration and Multipathing administration guide. The Managing System Power Services section contains an expanded explanation of the various tunables for power management in Solaris 11.1. The sample dcmd sources in /usr/demo/mdb were updated to include ::help output, so that developers like myself who follow the examples don't forget to include it (until a helpful code reviewer pointed it out while reviewing the mdb module changes for Xorg 1.12). The README file in that directory was updated to show the correct paths for installing both kernel & userspace modules, including the 64-bit variants.

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• Why Executives Need Enterprise Project Portfolio Management: 3 Key Considerations to Drive Value Across the Organization

  - by Melissa Centurio Lopes

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Cambria","serif";} By: Guy Barlow, Oracle Primavera Industry Strategy Director Over the last few years there has been a tremendous shift – some would say tectonic in nature – that has brought project management to the forefront of executive attention. Many factors have been driving this growing awareness, most notably, the global financial crisis, heightened regulatory environments and a need to more effectively operationalize corporate strategy. Executives in India are no exception. In fact, given the phenomenal rate of progress of the country, top of mind for all executives (whether in finance, operations, IT, etc.) is the need to build capacity, ramp-up production and ensure that the right resources are in place to capture growth opportunities. This applies across all industries from asset-intensive – like oil & gas, utilities and mining – to traditional manufacturing and the public sector, including services-based sectors such as the financial, telecom and life sciences segments are also part of the mix. However, compounding matters is a complex, interplay between projects – big and small, complex and simple – as companies expand and grow both domestically and internationally. So, having a standardized, enterprise wide solution for project portfolio management is natural. Failing to do so is akin to having two ERP systems, one to manage “large” invoices and one to manage “small” invoices. It makes no sense and provides no enterprise wide visibility. Therefore, it is imperative for executives to understand the full range of their business commitments, the benefit to the company, current performance and associated course corrections if needed. Irrespective of industry and regardless of the use case (e.g., building a power plant, launching a new financial service or developing a new automobile) company leaders need to approach the value of enterprise project portfolio management via 3 critical areas: Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Cambria","serif";} 1. Greater Financial Discipline – Improve financial rigor and results through better governance and control is an imperative given today’s financial uncertainty and greater investment scrutiny. For example, as India plans a US$1 trillion investment in the country’s infrastructure how do companies ensure costs are managed? How do you control cash flow? Can you easily report this to stakeholders? 2. Improved Operational Excellence – Increase efficiency and reduce costs through robust collaboration and integration. Upwards of 66% of cost variances are driven by poor supplier collaboration. As you execute initiatives do you have visibility into the performance of your supply base? How are they integrated into the broader program plan? 3. Enhanced Risk Mitigation – Manage and react to uncertainty through improved transparency and contingency planning. What happens if you’re faced with a skills shortage? How do you plan and account for geo-political or weather related events? In summary, projects are not just the delivery of a product or service to a customer inside a predetermined schedule; they often form a contractual and even moral obligation to shareholders and stakeholders alike. Hence the intimate connection between executives and projects, with the latter providing executives with the platform to demonstrate that their organization has the capabilities and competencies needed to meet and, whenever possible, exceed their customer commitments. Effectively developing and operationalizing corporate strategy is the hallmark of successful executives and enterprise project and portfolio management allows them to achieve this goal. Article was first published for Manage India, an e-newsletter, PMI India.

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• Examine your readiness for managing Enterprise Private Cloud

  - by Anand Akela

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin: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;} Cloud computing promises to deliver greater agility to meet demanding  business needs, operational efficiencies, and lower cost. However these promises cannot be realized and enterprises may not be able to get the best value out of their enterprise private cloud computing infrastructure without a comprehensive cloud management solution . 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:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} Take this new self-assessment quiz that measures the readiness of your enterprise private cloud. It scores your readiness in the following areas and discover where and how you can improve to gain total cloud control over your enterprise private cloud. 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;} Complete Cloud Lifecycle Solution Check if you are ready to manage all phases of the building, managing, and consuming an enterprise cloud. You will learn how Oracle can help build and manage a rich catalog of cloud services – whether it is Infrastructure-as-a-Service, Database-as-a-Service, or Platform-as-a-Service, all from a single product. Integrated Cloud Stack Management Integrated management of the entire cloud stack – all the way from application to disk, is very important to eliminate the integration pains and costs that customers would have to otherwise incur by trying to create a cloud environment by integrating multiple point solutions. Business-Driven Clouds It is critical that an enterprise Cloud platform is not only able to run applications but also has deep business insight and visibility. Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c enables creation of application-aware and business-driven clouds that has deep insight into applications, business services and transactions. As the leading providers of business applications and the middleware, we are able to offer you a cloud solution that is optimized for business services. Proactive Management Integration of the enterprise cloud infrastructure with support can allow cloud administrators to benefit from Automatic Service Requests (ASR), proactive patch recommendations, health checks and end-of-life advisory for all of the technology deployed within cloud. Learn more about solution for Enterprise Cloud and Cloud management by attending various sessions , demos and hand-on labs at Oracle Open World 2012 . Stay Connected: Twitter |  Face book |  You Tube |  Linked in |  Newsletter

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• Customer Perspectives: Oracle Data Integrator

  - by Julien Testut

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE The Data Integration Product Management team will be hosting a customer panel session dedicated to Oracle Data Integrator at Oracle OpenWorld. I will have the pleasure to present this session with three of our customers: Paychex, Ross Stores and Turkcell. In this session, you will hear how Paychex, Ross Stores and Turkcell utilize Oracle Data Integrator to meet their IT and business needs. Our customers will be able to share with you how they use ODI in their environments, best practices, lessons learned and benefits of implementing Oracle Data Integrator. If you're interested in hearing more about how our customers use Oracle Data Integrator then I recommend attending this session: Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Customer Perspectives: Oracle Data Integrator Wednesday October, 3rd, 1:15PM - 2:15PM Marriott Marquis – Golden Gate C3 v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} The Data Integration track at OpenWorld covers variety of topics and speakers. In addition to product management of Oracle GoldenGate, Oracle Data Integrator, and Enteprise Data Quality presenting product updates and roadmap, we have several customer panels and stand-alone sessions featuring select customers such as St. Jude Medical, Raymond James, Aderas, Turkcell, Paychex, Comcast, Ticketmaster, Bank of America and more. You can see an overview of Data Integration sessions here.  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} If you are not able to attend OpenWorld, please check out our latest resources for Data Integration and Oracle GoldenGate. In the coming weeks you will see more blogs about our products’ new capabilities and what to expect at OpenWorld. We hope to see you at OpenWorld and stay in touch via our future blogs. v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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• SOA, Governance, and Drugs

  Why is IT governance important in service oriented architecture (SOA)? IT Governance provides a framework for making appropriate decisions based on company guidelines and accepted standards. This framework also outlines each stakeholder’s responsibilities and authority when making important architectural or design decisions. Furthermore, this framework of governance defines parameters and constraints that are used to give context and perspective when making decisions. The use of governance as it applies to SOA ensures that specific design principles and patterns are used when developing and maintaining services. When governance is consistently applied systems the following benefits are achieved according to Anne Thomas Manes in 2010. Governance makes sure that services conform to standard interface patterns, common data modeling practices, and promotes the incorporation of existing system functionality by building on top of other available services across a system. Governance defines development standards based on proven design principles and patterns that promote reuse and composition. Governance provides developers a set of proven design principles, standards and practices that promote the reduction in system based component dependencies.  By following these guidelines, individual components will be easier to maintain. For me personally, I am a fan of IT governance, and feel that it valuable part of any corporate IT department. However, depending on how it is implemented can really affect the value of using IT governance.  Companies need to find a way to ensure that governance does not become extreme in its policies and procedures. I know for me personally, I would really dislike working under a completely totalitarian or laissez-faire version of governance. Developers need to be able to be creative in their designs and too much governance can really impede the design process and prevent the most optimal design from being developed. On the other hand, with no governance enforced, no standards will be followed and accepted design patterns will be ignored. I have personally had to spend a lot of time working on this particular scenario and I have found that the concept of code reuse and composition is almost nonexistent.  Based on this, too much time and money is wasted on redeveloping existing aspects of an application that already exist within the system as a whole. I think moving forward we will see a staggered form of IT governance, regardless if it is for SOA or IT in general.  Depending on the size of a company and the size of its IT department,  I can see IT governance as a layered approach in that the top layer will be defined by enterprise architects that focus on abstract concepts pertaining to high level design, general  guidelines, acceptable best practices, and recommended design patterns.  The next layer will be defined by solution architects or department managers that further expand on abstracted guidelines defined by the enterprise architects. This layer will contain further definitions as to when various design patterns, coding standards, and best practices are to be applied based on the context of the solutions that are being developed by the department. The final layer will be defined by the system designer or a solutions architect assed to a project in that they will define what design patterns will be used in a solution, naming conventions, as well as outline how a system will function based on the best practices defined by the previous layers. This layered approach allows for IT departments to be flexible in that system designers have creative leeway in designing solutions to meet the needs of the business, but they must operate within the confines of the abstracted IT governance guidelines.  A real world example of this can be seen in the United States as it pertains to governance of the people in that the US government defines rules and regulations in the abstract and then the state governments take these guidelines and applies them based on the will of the people in each individual state. Furthermore, the county or city governments are the ones that actually enforce these rules based on how they are interpreted by local community.  To further define my example, the United States government defines that marijuana is illegal. Each individual state has the option to determine this regulation as it wishes in that the state of Florida determines that all uses of the drug are illegal, but the state of California legally allows the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes only. Based on these accepted practices each local government enforces these rules in that a police officer will arrest anyone in the state of Florida for having this drug on them if they walk down the street, but in California if a person has a medical prescription for the drug they will not get arrested.  REFERENCESThomas Manes, Anne. (2010). Understanding SOA Governance: http://www.soamag.com/I40/0610-2.php

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• UK OUG Conference Highlights and Insights

  - by Richard Bingham

  As per my preemptive post, this was the first time the annual conference organized by the UK Oracle User Group (UKOUG) was split into two events, one for Oracle Applications and another in December for Oracle Technology. Apps13, as it was branded, was hailed as a success, with over 1000 registered attendees and three days of sessions, exhibition, round-tables and many other types of content. As this poster on their stand illustrates, the UKOUG is a strong community with popular participants from both big and small Oracle partners and customers. The venue was a more intimate setting than previous years also, allowing everyone to casually bump into those they hoped to. It gave a real feeling of an Apps Community. The main themes over the days where CRM and Customer Experience, HCM, and FIN/SCM. This allowed people to attend just one focused day if they wanted. In addition the Apps Transformation stream ran across all three days, offering insights, advice, and details on the newer product solutions like Fusion Applications.  Here are some of the key take-aways I got from the conference, specific to my role in Fusion Applications Developer Relations: User Experience continues to be a significant reason for adopting some of the newer application products available, with immediately obvious gains in user productivity and satisfaction reported by customers. Also this doesn't stop with the baked-in UX either, with their Design Patterns proving popular and indeed currently being extended to including things like extending on ADF mobile and customizing the Simplified UI. More on this to come from us soon. The executive sessions emphasized the "it's a journey" phrase, illustrating that modern business applications are powered by technologies such as Cloud, Mobile, Social and Big Data and these can be harnessed to help propel your organization forward. Indeed the emphasis is away from the traditional vendor prescribed linear applications road map, and towards plotting a course based on business priorities supported by a broad range of integrated solutions. To help with this several conference sessions demoed the new "Applications Navigator" tool, developed in partnership with OUG members, which offers a visual framework to help organizations plan their Oracle Applications investments around business and technology imperatives. Initial reaction was positive, especially as customers do not need to decipher Oracle's huge product catalog and embeds the best blend of proven and integrated applications solutions. We'll share more on this when it is generally available. Several sessions focused around explanations and interpretation of Oracle OpenWorld 2013, helping highlight the key Oracle Applications messages and directions. With a relative small percentage of conference attendees also at OpenWorld (from a show of hands) this was a popular way to distill the information available down into specific items of interest for the community. Please note the original OpenWorld 2013 content is still available for download but will not remain available forever (via the Oracle website OpenWorld Content Catalog > pick a session > see the PDF download). With the release of E-Business Suite 12.2 the move to develop and deploy on the Fusion Middleware stack becomes a reality for many Oracle Applications customers. This coupled with recent E-Business Suite features such as the Integrated SOA Gateway and the E-Business Suite SDK for Java, illustrates how the gap between the technologies and techniques involved in extending E-Business Suite and Fusion Applications is quickly narrowing. We'll see this merging continue to evolve going forwards. Getting started with Oracle Cloud Applications is actually easier than many customers expected, with a broad selection of both large and medium sized organizations explaining how they added new features to their existing Oracle Applications portfolios. New functionality available from Fusion HCM and CX are popular extensions that do not have to disrupt those core business services. Coexistence is the buzzword here, and the available integration is also simpler than many expected, commonly involving an initial setup data load, then regularly incremental synchronizations, often without a need for real-time constant communication between systems. With much of this pre-built already the implementation process is also quite rapid. With most people dressed in suits, we wanted to get the conversations going without the traditional english reserve, so we decided to make ourselves a bit more obvious, as the photo below shows. This seemed to be quite successful and helped those interested identify and approach us. Keep a look out for similar again. In fact if you're in the UK there is an "Apps Transformation Day" planned by the UKOUG for the 19th March 2014, with more details to follow. Again something we'll be sure to participate in. I am hoping to attend the next half of the UKOUG annual conference, Tech13, that focuses more on Oracle technology and where there is more likely to be larger attendance of those interested in the lower-level aspects of applications customization and development. If you're going, let me know and maybe we can meet up.

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