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• Using different SSDs types (not only SATA based) as system drive

  - by Hubert Kario

  Currently I have a Thinkpad X61s and want to make it both a bit faster and a bit more power efficient. For that reason I thought that adding SSD drive would make most sense. Unfortunately, because of financial reasons, buying SSD of over 200GB capacity is out of reach for me (not only it would be worth more than the rest of the laptop, but also I currently have a 500GB drive in it, so even such a drive would be kind of a downgrade for me). During preliminary testing with a cheap Transcend 4GB Class 6 (14MiB/s streaming, 9MiB/s random read) card I experienced boot times to be reduced by half so putting the OS only on it would already would be an improvement. Unfortunately, my system now is about 11GiB in size so anything less than 16GB would be constraining. In this laptop I can connect additional drives on at least 5 different ways: using SATA-ATA converter caddy in the X6 Ultrabase using internal mini PCIe slot using integrated SDHC slot using CardBus (a.k.a PCMCIA or PC Card) slot using USB Thankfully, because I use only Linux on this PC the bootability of them is irrelevant as I can put the /boot partition on internal HDD and / on any of the above mentioned Flash memories (as I already did for the SDHC test). From what I was able to research and from my own experience those options come with rather big downsides or other problems: SATA-ATA caddy It has three downsides: I have to carry the Ultrabse with me at all times (it's not really inconvenient, but those grams do add) and couldn't disconnect it when I want to disconnect the battery It makes the bay unusable for the optical drive and occasional quick access to other hard drives the only caddies I could buy have rather flaky controllers in them so putting my OS on it would hamper its stability Internal mini PCIe slot This would be an ideal solution, if only I could find real PCIe SSDs, not only devices that could talk only SATA or ATA over PCIe mechanical connection (the ones used in Dell Mini or Asus EEE). Theoretically Samsung did release such devices but I couldn't find them in retail anywhere. Integrated SDHC slot It's a nice solution with a single drawback: the fastest 16GB SDHC card on the market can only do around 35MiB/s read and 15MiB/s write while still costing like a normal 40GB SATA SSD that's 10 times faster. Not really cost-effective. CardBus (a.k.a PCMCIA or PC Card) slot Those cards are much faster than the SDHC option (there are ones that can do well over 50MiB/s read in benchmarks) and from what I could find the PCMCIA controller in my laptop does support UDMA so it should be able to deliver comparable speeds. They still cost similarly to SD cards but at least they provide streaming performance comparable to my current HDD. USB That's the worst option. Not only is it limited to 20-30MiB/s by the interface itself the drive would stick out of the laptop so it's a big no no. The question As such I think that going the "CF in a CardBus adapter" route will be the best option. My question is: did anyone try using CF cards in CardBus adapters as system drives with Linux on Thinkpad laptops? Laptops in general? What was the real-world performance? I don't have any CF cards so I can't check how well does it work with suspend/resume, or whatever it's easy to make it work in initramfs (I'm using ArchLinux and SD card was trivial — add 3 modules in single config line and rebuilding initramfs) so any tips/gotchas on this are welcome as well.

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• Understanding the 'High Performance' meaning in Extreme Transaction Processing

  - by kyap

  Despite my previous blogs entries on SOA/BPM and Identity Management, the domain where I'm the most passionated is definitely the Extreme Transaction Processing, commonly called XTP.I came across XTP back to 2007 while I was still FMW Product Manager in EMEA. At that time Oracle acquired a company called Tangosol, which owned an unique product called Coherence that we renamed to Oracle Coherence. Beside this innovative renaming of the product, to be honest, I didn't know much about it, except being a "distributed in-memory cache for Extreme Transaction Processing"... not very helpful still.In general when people doesn't fully understand a technology or a concept, they tend to find some shortcuts, either correct or not, to justify their lack-of understanding... and of course I was part of this category of individuals. And the shortcut was "Oracle Coherence Cache helps to improve Performance". Excellent marketing slogan... but not very meaningful still. By chance I was able to get away quickly from that group in July 2007* at Thames Valley Park (UK), after I attended one of the most interesting workshops, in my 10 years career in Oracle, delivered by Brian Oliver. The biggest mistake I made was to assume that performance improvement with Coherence was related to the response time. Which can be considered as legitimus at that time, because after-all caches help to reduce latency on cached data access, hence reduce the response-time. But like all caches, you need to define caching and expiration policies, thinking about the cache-missed strategy, and most of the time you have to re-write partially your application in order to work with the cache. At a result, the expected benefit vanishes... so, not very useful then?The key mistake I made was my perception or obsession on how performance improvement should be driven, but I strongly believe this is still a common problem to most of the developers. In fact we all know the that the performance of a system is generally presented by the Capacity (or Throughput), with the 2 important dimensions Speed (response-time) and Volume (load) :Capacity (TPS) = Volume (T) / Speed (S)To increase the Capacity, we can either reduce the Speed(in terms of response-time), or to increase the Volume. However we tend to only focus on reducing the Speed dimension, perhaps it is more concrete and tangible to measure, and nicer to present to our management because there's a direct impact onto the end-users experience. On the other hand, we assume the Volume can be addressed by the underlying hardware or software stack, so if we need more capacity (scale out), we just add more hardware or software. Unfortunately, the reality proves that IT is never as ideal as we assume...The challenge with Speed improvement approach is that it is generally difficult and costly to make things already fast... faster. And by adding Coherence will not necessarily help either. Even though we manage to do so, the Capacity can not increase forever because... the Speed can be influenced by the Volume. For all system, we always have a performance illustration as follow: In all traditional system, the increase of Volume (Transaction) will also increase the Speed (Response-Time) as some point. The reason is simple: most of the time the Application logics were not designed to scale. As an example, if you have a while-loop in your application, it is natural to conceive that parsing 200 entries will require double execution-time compared to 100 entries. If you need to "Speed-up" the execution, you can only upgrade your hardware (scale-up) with faster CPU and/or network to reduce network latency. It is technically limited and economically inefficient. And this is exactly where XTP and Coherence kick in. The primary objective of XTP is about designing applications which can scale-out for increasing the Volume, by applying coding techniques to keep the execution-time as constant as possible, independently of the number of runtime data being manipulated. It is actually not just about having an application running as fast as possible, but about having a much more predictable system, with constant response-time and linearly scale, so we can easily increase throughput by adding more hardwares in parallel. It is in general combined with the Low Latency Programming model, where we tried to optimize the network usage as much as possible, either from the programmatic angle (less network-hoops to complete a task), and/or from a hardware angle (faster network equipments). In this picture, Oracle Coherence can be considered as software-level XTP enabler, via the Distributed-Cache because it can guarantee: - Constant Data Objects access time, independently from the number of Objects and the Coherence Cluster size - Data Objects Distribution by Affinity for in-memory data grouping - In-place Data Processing for parallel executionTo summarize, Oracle Coherence is indeed useful to improve your application performance, just not in the way we commonly think. It's not about the Speed itself, but about the overall Capacity with Extreme Load while keeping consistant Speed. In the future I will keep adding new blog entries around this topic, with some sample codes experiences sharing that I capture in the last few years. In the meanwhile if you want to know more how Oracle Coherence, I strongly suggest you to start with checking how our worldwide customers are using Oracle Coherence first, then you can start playing with the product through our tutorial.Have Fun !

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• UIView with IrrlichtScene - iOS

  - by user1459024

  i have a UIViewController in a Storyboard and want to draw a IrrlichtScene in this View Controller. My Code: WWSViewController.h #import <UIKit/UIKit.h> @interface WWSViewController : UIViewController { IBOutlet UILabel *errorLabel; } @end WWSViewController.mm #import "WWSViewController.h" #include "../../ressources/irrlicht/include/irrlicht.h" using namespace irr; using namespace core; using namespace scene; using namespace video; using namespace io; using namespace gui; @interface WWSViewController () @end @implementation WWSViewController -(void)awakeFromNib { errorLabel = [[UILabel alloc] init]; errorLabel.text = @""; IrrlichtDevice *device = createDevice( video::EDT_OGLES1, dimension2d<u32>(640, 480), 16, false, false, false, 0); /* Set the caption of the window to some nice text. Note that there is an 'L' in front of the string. The Irrlicht Engine uses wide character strings when displaying text. */ device->setWindowCaption(L"Hello World! - Irrlicht Engine Demo"); /* Get a pointer to the VideoDriver, the SceneManager and the graphical user interface environment, so that we do not always have to write device->getVideoDriver(), device->getSceneManager(), or device->getGUIEnvironment(). */ IVideoDriver* driver = device->getVideoDriver(); ISceneManager* smgr = device->getSceneManager(); IGUIEnvironment* guienv = device->getGUIEnvironment(); /* We add a hello world label to the window, using the GUI environment. The text is placed at the position (10,10) as top left corner and (260,22) as lower right corner. */ guienv->addStaticText(L"Hello World! This is the Irrlicht Software renderer!", rect<s32>(10,10,260,22), true); /* To show something interesting, we load a Quake 2 model and display it. We only have to get the Mesh from the Scene Manager with getMesh() and add a SceneNode to display the mesh with addAnimatedMeshSceneNode(). We check the return value of getMesh() to become aware of loading problems and other errors. Instead of writing the filename sydney.md2, it would also be possible to load a Maya object file (.obj), a complete Quake3 map (.bsp) or any other supported file format. By the way, that cool Quake 2 model called sydney was modelled by Brian Collins. */ IAnimatedMesh* mesh = smgr->getMesh("/Users/dbocksteger/Desktop/test/media/sydney.md2"); if (!mesh) { device->drop(); if (!errorLabel) { errorLabel = [[UILabel alloc] init]; } errorLabel.text = @"Konnte Mesh nicht laden."; return; } IAnimatedMeshSceneNode* node = smgr->addAnimatedMeshSceneNode( mesh ); /* To let the mesh look a little bit nicer, we change its material. We disable lighting because we do not have a dynamic light in here, and the mesh would be totally black otherwise. Then we set the frame loop, such that the predefined STAND animation is used. And last, we apply a texture to the mesh. Without it the mesh would be drawn using only a color. */ if (node) { node->setMaterialFlag(EMF_LIGHTING, false); node->setMD2Animation(scene::EMAT_STAND); node->setMaterialTexture( 0, driver->getTexture("/Users/dbocksteger/Desktop/test/media/sydney.bmp") ); } /* To look at the mesh, we place a camera into 3d space at the position (0, 30, -40). The camera looks from there to (0,5,0), which is approximately the place where our md2 model is. */ smgr->addCameraSceneNode(0, vector3df(0,30,-40), vector3df(0,5,0)); /* Ok, now we have set up the scene, lets draw everything: We run the device in a while() loop, until the device does not want to run any more. This would be when the user closes the window or presses ALT+F4 (or whatever keycode closes a window). */ while(device->run()) { /* Anything can be drawn between a beginScene() and an endScene() call. The beginScene() call clears the screen with a color and the depth buffer, if desired. Then we let the Scene Manager and the GUI Environment draw their content. With the endScene() call everything is presented on the screen. */ driver->beginScene(true, true, SColor(255,100,101,140)); smgr->drawAll(); guienv->drawAll(); driver->endScene(); } /* After we are done with the render loop, we have to delete the Irrlicht Device created before with createDevice(). In the Irrlicht Engine, you have to delete all objects you created with a method or function which starts with 'create'. The object is simply deleted by calling ->drop(). See the documentation at irr::IReferenceCounted::drop() for more information. */ device->drop(); } - (void)viewDidLoad { [super viewDidLoad]; // Do any additional setup after loading the view, typically from a nib. } - (void)viewDidUnload { [super viewDidUnload]; // Release any retained subviews of the main view. } - (BOOL)shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation:(UIInterfaceOrientation)interfaceOrientation { return (interfaceOrientation != UIInterfaceOrientationPortraitUpsideDown); } @end Sadly the result is just a black View in the Simulator. :( Hope here is anyone who can explain me how i draw the scene in a UIView. Furthermore I'm getting this Error: Could not load sprite bank because the file does not exist: #DefaultFont How can i fix it ?

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• World Backup Day

  - by red(at)work

  Here at Red Gate Towers, the SQL Backup development team have been hunkered down in their shed for the last few months, with the toolbox, blowtorch and chamois leather out, upgrading SQL Backup. When we started, autumn leaves were falling. Now we're about to finish, spring flowers are budding. If not quite a gleaming new machine, at the very least a familiar, reliable engine with some shiny new bits on it will trundle magnificently out of the workshop. One of the interesting things I've noticed about working on software development teams is that the team is together for so long 'implementing' stuff - designing, coding, testing, fixing bugs and so on - that you occasionally forget why you're doing what you're doing. Doubt creeps in. It feels like a long time since we launched this project in a fanfare of optimism and enthusiasm, and all that clarity of purpose and mission "yee-haw" has dissipated with the daily pressures of development. Every now and again, we look up from our bunker and notice all those thousands of users out there, with their different configurations and working practices and each with their own set of problems and requirements, and we ask ourselves "does anyone care about what we're doing?" Has the world moved on while we've been busy? Could we have been doing something more useful with the time and talent of all these excellent people we've assembled? In truth, you can research and test and validate all you like, but you never really know if you've done the right thing (or at least, something valuable for some users) until you release. All projects suffer this insecurity. If they don't, maybe you're not worrying enough about what you're building. The two enemies of software development are certainty and complacency. Oh, and of course, rival teams with Nerf guns. The goal of SQL Backup 7 is to make it so easy to schedule regular restores of your backups that you have no excuse not to. Why schedule a restore? Because your data is not as good as your last backup. It's only as good as your last successful restore. If you're not checking your backups by restoring them and running an integrity check on the database, you're only doing half the job. It seems that most DBAs know that this is best practice, but it can be tricky and time-consuming to set up, so it's one of those tasks that can get forgotten in the midst all the other demands on their time. Sometimes, they're just too busy firefighting. But if it was simple to do? That was our inspiration for SQL Backup 7. So it was heartening to read Brent Ozar's blog post the other day about World Backup Day. To be honest, I'd never heard of World Backup Day (Talk Like a Pirate Day, yes, but not this one); however, its emphasis on not just backing up your data but checking the validity of those backups was exactly the same message we had in mind when building SQL Backup 7. It's printed on a piece of A3 above our planning board - "Make backup verification so easy to do that no DBA has an excuse for not doing it" It's the missing piece that completes the puzzle. Simple idea, great concept, useful feature, but, as it turned out, far from straightforward to implement. The problem is the future. As Marty McFly discovered over the course of three movies, the future is uncertain and hard to predict - so when you are scheduling a restore to take place an hour, day, week or month after the backup, there are all kinds of questions that you wouldn't normally have to consider. Where will this backup live? Will it even exist at the time? Will it be split into multiple files? What will the file names be? Will it be encrypted? What files should it be restored to? SQL Backup needs to know what to expect at the time the restore job is actually run. Of course, a DBA will know the answer to all these questions, but to deliver the whole point of version 7, we wanted to make it easy for them to input that information into SQL Backup. We think we've done that. When you create your scheduled backup job, there is now an option to create a "reminder" to follow it up with a scheduled restore to verify the resulting backups. Actually, it's much more than a reminder, as it stores all the relevant data so you can click it and pre-populate the wizard with all the right settings to set up your verification restores. Simple. But, what do you think? We'd love you to try it. Post by Brian Harris

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• MIX 2010 Covert Operations Day 2 Silverlight + Windows 7 Phone

  - by GeekAgilistMercenary

  Left the Circus Circus and headed to the geek circus at Mandalay Bay.  Got in, got some breakfast, met a few more people and headed to the keynote. Upon arriving the crew I was hanging with at the event; Erik Mork, Beth Murray, and Brian Henderson and I were entertained with several other thousand geeks by the wicked yo-yoing. The first video demo of something was of Bing Maps and various aspects of Microsoft Research integrated together.  Namely the pictures, put in place, on real 3d element maps of various environments. Silverlight Scott Guthrie, as one would guess, kicked off the keynote.  His first point was that user experience has become a priority at Microsoft.  This can be seen by any observant soul with the release and push of Expression, Silverlight, and the other tools.  This is even more apparent when one takes note of Microsoft bringing in people that can actually do good design and putting them at the forefront. The next thing Scott brought up was a few key points about Silverlight.  Currently Silverlight is a little over 2 years old and has achieved a pretty solid 60% penetration.  Silverlight has all sorts of capabilities that have been developed and are now provided as open source including;  ad injection, smoothing, playback editing, and more.  Another thing he showed, which really struck me as awesome being in the analytics space, was the Olympics and a quick glimpse of the ad statistics, viewer experience, video playback performance, audience trends, and overall viewer participation.  All of it rendered in Silverlight in beautiful detail. The key piece of Scott's various points were all punctuated with the fact that all of this code is available as open source.  Not only is Microsoft really delving into this design element of things, they're getting involved in the right ways. One of the last points I'll bring up about Silverlight 4 is the ability to have HD video on a monitor, and an entirely different activity being done on the other monitor, effectively making Silverlight the only RIA framework that supports multi-monitor support.  Overall, Silverlight is continuing to impress – providing superior capabilities tit-for-tat with the competition. Windows 7 Phone The Windows 7 Phone has 3 primary buttons (yes, more than the iPhone, don't let your mind explode!!).  Start, Search, and Back control all of the needed functionality of the phone.  At the same time, of course, there is the multi-touch, touch, and other interactive abilities of the interface.  The intent, once start is pressed is to have all the information that a phone owner wants displayed immediately.  Avoiding the scrolling through pages of apps or rolling a ball to get through multitudes of other non-interactive phone interfaces.  The Windows 7 Phone simply has the data right in front of you, basically a phone dashboard.  From there it is easy to dive into the interactive areas of the phone. Each area of the interface of the phone is broken into hubs.  These hubs include applications, data, and other things based on a relative basis.  This basis being determined by the user.  These applications interact on many other levels, and form a kind of relationship between each other adding more and more meta-data to the phone user, their interactions between the applications, and of course the social element of their interactions on the phone.  This makes this phone a practical must have for a marketer involved in social media.  The level of wired together interaction is massive, and of course, if you've seen Office Outlook 2010 you know that the power that is pulled into the phone by being tied to Outlook is massive. Joe Belfiore also showed several UI & specifically UX elements of the phone interface that allows paging to be instinctual by simple clipped items, flipping page to page, and other excellent user experience advances for phone devices.  Belfiore's also showed how his people hub had a massive list of people, with pictures, all from various different social networks and other associated relations.  The rendering, speed, and viewing of these people's, their pictures, their social network information, and other characteristics was smooth and in some situations unbelievably rendered.  This demo showed some of the great power of the beta phone, which isn't even as powerful as the planned end device. Joe finished up by jumping into the music, videos, and other media with the Zune Component of the Windows 7 Mobile Phone.  This was all good stuff, but I'll get to what really sold me on the media element in a moment. When Joe was done, Scott Guthrie stepped back up to walk through building a Windows 7 Mobile Phone.  This is were I have to give serious props.  He built this application, in Visual Studio 2010, in front of 2000+ people.  That was cool, but what really was amazing that he build the application in about 2 minutes.  The IDE, side by side design that is standard in Visual Studio is light years ahead of x-Code or any of the iPhone IDEs.  The Windows 7 Mobile System, if it can get market penetration, poses a technologically superior development and phone platform over anything on the market right now.  The biggest problem with the phone, is it just isn't available yet.  I personally can't wait for a chance to build some apps for the new Windows Phone. Netflix, I May Start Up an Account Again! When I get my Windows 7 Phone device, I am absolutely getting a Netflix account again.  The Vertigo crew, as I wrote on Twitter "#MIX10 Props @seesharp on @netflix demo", displayed an application on the phone for Netflix that actually ran HD Video of Rescue Me (with Dennis Leary).  The video played back smooth as it would on a dedicated computer, I was instantly sold.  So this didn't actually sell me on the phone, because I'm already sold, but it did sell me whole heartedly on the media capabilities of the pending phone. Anyway, I try not to do this but I may double post today.  Lunch is over and I'm off to another session very near and dear to the heart of my occupation, Analytics Tracking.  Stay tuned and I should have that post up by the end of the day. Original Post – Check out my other blog for even more technical ramblings and reads.

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• Rockmelt, the technology adoption model, and Facebook's spare internet

  - by Roger Hart

  Regardless of how good it is, you'd have to have a heart of stone not to make snide remarks about Rockmelt. After all, on the surface it looks a lot like some people spent two years building a browser instead of just bashing out a Chrome extension over a wet weekend. It probably does some more stuff. I don't know for sure because artificial scarcity is cool, apparently, so the "invitation" is still in the post*. I may in fact never know for sure, because I'm not wild about Facebook sign-in as a prerequisite for anything. From the video, and some initial reviews, my early reaction was: I have a browser, I have a Twitter client; what on earth is this for? The answer, of course, is "not me". Rockmelt is, in a way, quite audacious. Oh, sure, on launch day it's Bay Area bar-chat for the kids with no lenses in their retro specs and trousers that give you deep-vein thrombosis, but it's not really about them. Likewise,  Facebook just launched Google Wave, or something. And all the tech snobbery and scorn packed into describing it that way is irrelevant next to what they're doing with their platform. Here's something I drew in MS Paint** because I don't want to get sued: (see: The technology adoption lifecycle) A while ago in the Guardian, John Lanchester dusted off the idiom that "technology is stuff that doesn't work yet". The rest of the article would be quite interesting if it wasn't largely about MySpace, and he's sort of got a point. If you bolt on the sentiment that risk-averse businessmen like things that work, you've got the essence of Crossing the Chasm. Products for the mainstream market don't look much like technology. Think for  a second about early (1980s ish) hi-fi systems, with all the knobs and fiddly bits, their ostentatious technophile aesthetic. Then consider their sleeker and less (or at least less conspicuously) functional successors in the 1990s. The theory goes that innovators and early adopters like technology, it's a hobby in itself. The rest of the humans seem to like magic boxes with very few buttons that make stuff happen and never trouble them about why. Personally, I consider Apple's maddening insistence that iTunes is an acceptable way to move files around to be more or less morally unacceptable. Most people couldn't care less. Hence Rockmelt, and hence Facebook's continued growth. Rockmelt looks pointless to me, because I aggregate my social gubbins with Digsby, or use TweetDeck. But my use case is different and so are my enthusiasms. If I want to share photos, I'll use Flickr - but Facebook has photo sharing. If I want a short broadcast message, I'll use Twitter - Facebook has status updates. If I want to sell something with relatively little hassle, there's eBay - or Facebook marketplace. YouTube - check, FB Video. Email - messaging. Calendaring apps, yeah there are loads, or FB Events. What if I want to host a simple web page? Sure, they've got pages. Also Notes for blogging, and more games than I can count. This stuff is right there, where millions and millions of users are already, and for what they need it just works. It's not about me, because I'm not in the big juicy area under the curve. It's what 1990s portal sites could never have dreamed of achieving. Facebook is AOL on speed, crack, and some designer drugs it had specially imported from the future. It's a n00b-friendly gateway to the internet that just happens to serve up all the things you want to do online, right where you are. Oh, and everybody else is there too. The price of having all this and the social graph too is that you have all of this, and the social graph too. But plenty of folks have more incisive things to say than me about the whole privacy shebang, and it's not really what I'm talking about. Facebook is maintaining a vast, and fairly fully-featured training-wheels internet. And it makes up a large proportion of the online experience for a lot of people***. It's the entire web (2.0?) experience for the early and late majority. And sure, no individual bit of it is quite as slick or as fully-realised as something like Flickr (which wows me a bit every time I use it. Those guys are good at the web), but it doesn't have to be. It has to be unobtrusively good enough for the regular humans. It has to not feel like technology. This is what Rockmelt sort of is. You're online, you want something nebulously social, and you don't want to faff about with, say, Twitter clients. Wow! There it is on a really distracting sidebar, right in your browser. No effort! Yeah - fish nor fowl, much? It might work, I guess. There may be a demographic who want their social web experience more simply than tech tinkering, and who aren't just getting it from Facebook (or, for that matter, mobile devices). But I'd be surprised. Rockmelt feels like an attempt to grab a slice of Facebook-style "Look! It's right here, where you already are!", but it's still asking the mature market to install a new browser. Presumably this is where that Facebook sign-in predicate comes in handy, though it'll take some potent awareness marketing to make it fly. Meanwhile, Facebook quietly has the entire rest of the internet as a product management resource, and can continue to give most of the people most of what they want. Something that has not gone un-noticed in its potential to look a little sinister. But heck, they might even make Google Wave popular.     *This was true last week when I drafted this post. I got an invite subsequently, hence the screenshot. **MS Paint is no fun any more. It's actually good in Windows 7. Farewell ironically-shonky diagrams. *** It's also behind a single sign-in, lending a veneer of confidence, and partially solving the problem of usernames being crummy unique identifiers. I'll be blogging about that at some point.

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• Workshops, online content show how Oracle infuses simplicity, mobility, extensibility into user experience

  - by mvaughan

  By Kathy Miedema & Misha Vaughan, Oracle Applications User Experience Oracle has made a huge investment into the user experience of its many different software product families, and recent releases showcase big changes and features that aim to promote end user engagement and efficiency by streamlining navigation and simplifying the user interface. But making Oracle’s enterprise software great-looking and usable doesn’t stop when Oracle products go out the door. The Applications User Experience (UX) team recognizes that our customers may need to customize software to fit their work processes. And that’s why we provide tools such as user experience design patterns to help you maintain the Oracle user experience as you tailor your application to fit your business needs. Often, however, customers may need some context around user experience. How has the Oracle user experience been designed and constructed? Why is a good user experience important for users? How does understanding what goes into the user experience benefit the people who purchase the software for users? There’s a short answer to these questions, and you can read about it on Usable Apps. But truly understanding Oracle’s investment and seeing how it applies across product families occasionally requires a deeper dive into the Oracle user experience, especially if you’re an influencer or decision-maker about Oracle products. To help frame these decisions, the Communications & Outreach team has developed several targeted workshops that explore what Oracle means when it talks about user experience, and provides a roadmap into where the Oracle user experience is going. These workshops require non-disclosure agreements, and have been delivered to Oracle sales folks, Oracle partners, Oracle ACE Directors and ACEs, and a few customers. Some of these audience members have been developers or have a technical background; just as many did not. Here’s a breakdown of the kind of training you can get around the Oracle user experience from the OAUX Communications & Outreach team.For Partners: George Papazzian, Principal, Naviscent with Joyce Ohgi, Oracle Oracle Fusion Applications HCM Pre-Sales Seminar:  In concert with Worldwide Alliances  and  Channels under Applications Partner Enablement Director Jonathan Vinoskey’s guidance, the Applications User Experience team delivers a two-day workshop.  Day one focuses on Oracle Fusion Applications HCM and pre-sales strategy, and Day two focuses on positioning and leveraging Oracle’s investment in the Oracle Fusion Applications user experience.  The next workshops will occur on the following dates: December 4-5, 2013 @ Manchester, UK January 29-30, 2014 @ Reston, Virginia February 2014 @ Guadalajara, Mexico (email: Shannon Whiteman) March 11-12, 2014 @ Dubai, United Arab Emirates April 1-2, 2014 @ Chicago, Illinois Partner Advisory Board: A two-day board meeting in the U.S. and U.K. to discuss four main user experience areas for Oracle Fusion Applications: simplicity, visualization & analytics, mobility, & futures. This event is limited to Oracle Diamond Partners, UX bloggers, and key UX influencers and requires legal documentation.  We will be talking about the Oracle applications UX strategy and roadmap. Partner Implementation Training on User Interface: How to Build Great-Looking, Usable Apps:  In this two-day, hands-on workshop built around Oracle’s Application Development Framework, learn how to build desktop and mobile user interfaces and mobile user interfaces based on Oracle’s experience with Fusion Applications. This workshop is for partners with a technology background who are looking for ways to tailor Fusion Applications using ADF, or have built their own custom solutions using ADF. It includes an introduction to UX design patterns and provides tools to build usability-tested UX designs. Nov 5-6, 2013 @ Redwood Shores, CA, USA January 28-29th, 2014 @ Reston, Virginia, USA February 25-26, 2014 @ Guadalajara, Mexico March 9-10, 2014 @ Dubai, United Arab Emirates To register, contact [email protected] Simplified UI Customization & Extensibility:  Pilot workshop:  We will be reviewing the proposed content for communicating the user experience tool kit available with the next release of Oracle Fusion Applications.  Our core focus will be on what toolkit components our system implementors and independent software vendors will need to respond to customer demand, whether they are extending Fusion Applications, or building custom applications, that will need to leverage the simplified UI. Dec 11th, 2013 @ Reading, UK For information: contact [email protected] Private lab tour and demos: Interested in seeing what’s going on in the Apps UX Labs?  If you are headed to the San Francisco Bay Area, let us know. We can arrange a spin through our usability labs at headquarters. OAUX Expo: This open-house forum gives partners a look at what the UX team is working on, and showcases the next-generation user experiences in a demo environment where attendees can see and touch the applications. UX Direct: Use the same methods that Oracle uses to develop its own user experiences. We help you define your users and their needs, and then provide direction on how to tailor the best user experience you can for them. For CustomersAngela Johnston, Gozel Aamoth, Teena Singh, and Yen Chan, Oracle Lab tours: See demos of soon-to-be-released products, and take a spin on usability research equipment such as our eye-tracker. Watch this video to get an idea of what you’ll see. Get our newsletter: Learn about newly released products and see where you can meet us at user group conferences. Participate in a feedback session: Join a focus group or customer feedback session to get an early look at user experience designs for the next generation of software, and provide your thoughts on how well it will work. Join the OUAB: The Oracle Usability Advisory Board meets several times a year to discuss trends in the workforce and provide direction on user experience designs. UX Direct: Use the same methods that Oracle uses to develop its own user experiences. We help you define your users and their needs, and then provide direction on how to tailor the best user experience you can for them. For Developers (customers, partners, and consultants): Plinio Arbizu, SP Solutions, Richard Bingham, Oracle, Balaji Kamepalli, EiSTechnoogies, Praveen Pillalamarri, EiSTechnologies How to Build Great-Looking, Usable Apps: This workshop is for attendees with a strong technology background who are looking for ways to tailor customer software using ADF. It includes an introduction to UX design patterns and provides tools to build usability-tested UX designs.  See above for dates and times. UX design patterns web site: Cut the length of your project down by months. Use these patterns to build out the task flow you need to develop for your users. The patterns have already been usability-tested and represent the best practices that the Oracle UX research team has found in its studies. UX Direct: Use the same methods that Oracle uses to develop its own user experiences. We help you define your users and their needs, and then provide direction on how to tailor the best user experience you can for them. For Oracle Sales Mike Klein, Jeremy Ashley, Brent White, Oracle Contact your local sales person for more information about the Oracle user experience and the training available from the Applications User Experience Communications & Outreach team. See customer-friendly user experience collateral ranging from the new simplified UI in Oracle Fusion Applications Release 7, to E-Business Suite user experience highlights, to Siebel, PeopleSoft, and JD Edwards user experience highlights.   Receive access to the same pre-sales and implementation training we provide to partners. For Oracle Sales only: Oracle-only training on the Oracle Fusion Applications UX Innovation Sales Kit.

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• April Oracle Database Events

  - by Mandy Ho

  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";} April 17-18, 2012 – Moscow, Russia Oracle Develop Conference The Oracle database developer conference, Oracle Develop, will visit Moscow, Russia and Hyderabad, India this spring. Oracle Develop includes a database development track, which contains .NET sessions and hands-on lab led by an Oracle .NET product manager. Register today before the event fills up. http://www.oracle.com/javaone/ru-en/index.html 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";} April 24, 26 – San Diego, CA & San Jose, CA ISC2 Leadership Regional Event Series Oracle at (ISC)2 Security Leadership Series: Herding Clouds -- Managing Cloud Security Concerns and Expectations Join us for his interactive day-long session where industry leaders, including Oracle solution experts, will talk about how to: dispel the top Cloud security myths minimize "rogue Cloud" implementations identify potential compliance pitfalls and how to avoid them develop contract language for your cloud providers manage users across your fractured datacenter leverage existing technologies to protect data as it moves from the enterprise to the cloud http://www.oracle.com/webapps/events/ns/EventsDetail.jsp?p_eventId=146972&src=7239493&src=7239493&Act=228 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";} April 22-26, 2012 – Las Vegas, NV IOUG Collaborate 12 From April 22-26, 2012, Oracle takes Las Vegas. Thousands of Oracle professionals will descend upon the Mandalay Bay Convention Center for a weeks worth of education sessions, networking opportunities and more, at the only user-driven and user-run Oracle conference - COLLABORATE 12.  Your COLLABORATE 12 - IOUG Forum registration comes complete with a bonus- a full day Deep Dive education program on Sunday! Choose from numerous hot topics, including Real World Performance, High Availability and more, presented by legendary and seasoned Oracle pros, including Tom Kyte and Craig Shallahamer. http://www.oracle.com/webapps/events/ns/EventsDetail.jsp?p_eventId=143637&src=7360364&src=7360364&Act=5 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";} Independent Oracle User Group (IOUG) Regional Events: April 16, 2012 – Columbus, Ohio Ohio Oracle Users Group Higher Performance PL/PQL and Oracle Database 11g PL/SQL New Features – Featuring Steven Feuerstein http://www.ooug.org/ 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";} 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";} April 26, 2012- Irving, TX Dallas Oracle Users Group Oracle Database Forum: 5-7PM Oracle Corporation, 6031 Connection Drive Irving, TX http://memberservices.membee.com/538/irmevents.aspx?id=64 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";} Apr 30, 2012- Los Angeles, CA Real World Performance Tour A full day of real world database performance with: Tom Kyte, author of the ever popular AskTom Blog, Andrew Holdsworth, head of Oracle's Real World Performance Team, and Graham Wood, renowned Oracle Database performance architect. Through discussion, debate and demos, they’ll show you how to master performance engineering topics like: Best practices for designing hardware architectures and how to spot and fix bad design. How to develop applications that deliver the fastest possible performance without sacrificing accuracy.  New for 2012! Updates on Enterprise Manager, Exadata, and what these technologies mean to your current systems. http://www.ioug.org/Events/ADayofRealWorldPerformance/tabid/194/Default.aspx

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• Disaster, or Migration?

  - by Rob Farley

  This post is in two parts – technical and personal. And I should point out that it’s prompted in part by this month’s T-SQL Tuesday, hosted by Allen Kinsel. First, the technical: I’ve had a few conversations with people recently about migration – moving a SQL Server database from one box to another (sometimes, but not primarily, involving an upgrade). One question that tends to come up is that of downtime. Obviously there will be some period of time between the old server being available and the new one. The way that most people seem to think of migration is this: Build a new server. Stop people from using the old server. Take a backup of the old server Restore it on the new server. Reconfigure the client applications (or alternatively, configure the new server to use the same address as the old) Make the new server online. There are other things involved, such as testing, of course. But this is essentially the process that people tell me they’re planning to follow. The bit that I want to look at today (as you’ve probably guessed from my title) is the “backup and restore” section. If a SQL database is using the Simple Recovery Model, then the only restore option is the last database backup. This backup could be full or differential. The transaction log never gets backed up in the Simple Recovery Model. Instead, it truncates regularly to stay small. One that’s using the Full Recovery Model (or Bulk-Logged) won’t truncate its log – the log must be backed up regularly. This provides the benefit of having a lot more option available for restores. It’s a requirement for most systems of High Availability, because if you’re making sure that a spare box is up-and-running, ready to take over, then you have to be interested in the logs that are happening on the current box, rather than truncating them all the time. A High Availability system such as Mirroring, Replication or Log Shipping will initialise the spare machine by restoring a full database backup (and maybe a differential backup if available), and then any subsequent log backups. Once the secondary copy is close, transactions can be applied to keep the two in sync. The main aspect of any High Availability system is to have a redundant system that is ready to take over. So the similarity for migration should be obvious. If you need to move a database from one box to another, then introducing a High Availability mechanism can help. By turning on the Full Recovery Model and then taking a backup (so that the now-interesting logs have some context), logs start being kept, and are therefore available for getting the new box ready (even if it’s an upgraded version). When the migration is ready to occur, a failover can be done, letting the new server take over the responsibility of the old, just as if a disaster had happened. Except that this is a planned failover, not a disaster at all. There’s a fine line between a disaster and a migration. Failovers can be useful in patching, upgrading, maintenance, and more. Hopefully, even an unexpected disaster can be seen as just another failover, and there can be an opportunity there – perhaps to get some work done on the principal server to increase robustness. And if I’ve just set up a High Availability system for even the simplest of databases, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. :) So now the personal: It’s been an interesting time recently... June has been somewhat odd. A court case with which I was involved got resolved (through mediation). I can’t go into details, but my lawyers tell me that I’m allowed to say how I feel about it. The answer is ‘lousy’. I don’t regret pursuing it as long as I did – but in the end I had to make a decision regarding the commerciality of letting it continue, and I’m going to look forward to the days when the kind of money I spent on my lawyers is small change. Mind you, if I had a similar situation with an employer, I’d do the same again, but that doesn’t really stop me feeling frustrated about it. The following day I had to fly to country Victoria to see my grandmother, who wasn’t expected to last the weekend. She’s still around a week later as I write this, but her 92-year-old body has basically given up on her. She’s been a Christian all her life, and is looking forward to eternity. We’ll all miss her though, and it’s hard to see my family grieving. Then on Tuesday, I was driving back to the airport with my family to come home, when something really bizarre happened. We were travelling down the freeway, just pulled out to go past a truck (farm-truck sized, not a semi-trailer), when a car-sized mass of metal fell off it. It was something like an industrial air-conditioner, but from where I was sitting, it was just a mass of spinning metal, like something out of a movie (one friend described it as “holidays by Michael Bay”). Somehow, and I’m really don’t know how, the part of it nearest us bounced high enough to clear the car, and there wasn’t even a scratch. We pulled over the check, and I was just thanking God that we’d changed lanes when we had, and that we remained unharmed. I had all kinds of thoughts about what could’ve happened if we’d had something that size land on the windscreen... All this has drilled home that while I feel that I haven’t provided as well for the family as I could’ve done (like by pursuing an expensive legal case), I shouldn’t even consider that I have proper control over things. I get to live life, and make decisions based on what I feel is right at the time. But I’m not going to get everything right, and there will be things that feel like disasters, some which could’ve been in my control and some which are very much beyond my control. The case feels like something I could’ve pursued differently, a disaster that could’ve been avoided in some way. Gran dying is lousy of course. An accident on the freeway would have been awful. I need to recognise that the worst disasters are ones that I can’t affect, and that I need to look at things in context – perhaps seeing everything that happens as a migration instead. Life is never the same from one day to the next. Every event has a before and an after – sometimes it’s clearly positive, sometimes it’s not. I remember good events in my life (such as my wedding), and bad (such as the loss of my father when I was ten, or the back injury I had eight years ago). I’m not suggesting that I know how to view everything from the “God works all things for good” perspective, but I am trying to look at last week as a migration of sorts. Those things are behind me now, and the future is in God’s hands. Hopefully I’ve learned things, and will be able to live accordingly. I’ve come through this time now, and even though I’ll miss Gran, I’ll see her again one day, and the future is bright.

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• When should I use Perl's AUTOLOAD?

  - by Robert S. Barnes

  In "Perl Best Practices" the very first line in the section on AUTOLOAD is: Don't use AUTOLOAD However all the cases he describes are dealing with OO or Modules. I have a stand alone script in which some command line switches control which versions of particular functions get defined. Now I know I could just take the conditionals and the evals and stick them naked at the top of my file before everything else, but I find it convenient and cleaner to put them in AUTOLOAD at the end of the file. Is this bad practice / style? If you think so why, and is there a another way to do it? As per brian's request I'm basically using this to do conditional compilation based on command line switches. I don't mind some constructive criticism. sub AUTOLOAD { our $AUTOLOAD; (my $method = $AUTOLOAD) =~ s/.*:://s; # remove package name if ($method eq 'tcpdump' && $tcpdump) { eval q( sub tcpdump { my $msg = shift; warn gf_time()." Thread ".threads->tid().": $msg\n"; } ); } elsif ($method eq 'loginfo' && $debug) { eval q( sub loginfo { my $msg = shift; $msg =~ s/$CRLF/\n/g; print gf_time()." Thread ".threads->tid().": $msg\n"; } ); } elsif ($method eq 'build_get') { if ($pipelining) { eval q( sub build_get { my $url = shift; my $base = shift; $url = "http://".$url unless $url =~ /^http/; return "GET $url HTTP/1.1${CRLF}Host: $base$CRLF$CRLF"; } ); } else { eval q( sub build_get { my $url = shift; my $base = shift; $url = "http://".$url unless $url =~ /^http/; return "GET $url HTTP/1.1${CRLF}Host: $base${CRLF}Connection: close$CRLF$CRLF"; } ); } } elsif ($method eq 'grow') { eval q{ require Convert::Scalar qw(grow); }; if ($@) { eval q( sub grow {} ); } goto &$method; } else { eval "sub $method {}"; return; } die $@ if $@; goto &$method; }

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• How can a test script inform R CMD check that it should emit a custom message?

  - by mariotomo

  I'm writing a R package (delftfews) here at office. we are using svUnit for unit testing. our process for describing new functionality: we define new unit tests, initially marked as DEACTIVATED; one block of tests at a time we activate them and implement the function described by the tests. almost all the time we have a small amount of DEACTIVATED tests, relative to functions that might be dropped or will be implemented. my problem/question is: can I alter the doSvUnit.R so that R CMD check pkg emits a NOTE (i.e. a custom message "NOTE" instead of "OK") in case there are DEACTIVATED tests? as of now, we see only that the active tests don't give error: . . * checking for unstated dependencies in tests ... OK * checking tests ... Running ‘doSvUnit.R’ OK * checking PDF version of manual ... OK which is all right if all tests succeed, but less all right if there are skipped tests and definitely wrong if there are failing tests. In this case, I'd actually like to see a NOTE or a WARNING like the following: . . * checking for unstated dependencies in tests ... OK * checking tests ... Running ‘doSvUnit.R’ NOTE 6 test(s) were skipped. WARNING 1 test(s) are failing. * checking PDF version of manual ... OK As of now, we have to open the doSvUnit.Rout to check the real test results. I contacted two of the maintainers at r-forge and CRAN and they pointed me to the sources of R, in particular the testing.R script. if I understand it correctly, to answer this question we need patching the tools package: scripts in the tests directory are called using a system call, output (stdout and stderr) go to one single file, there are two possible outcomes: ok or not ok, so I opened a change request on R, proposing something like bit-coding the return status, bit-0 for ERROR (as it is now), bit-1 for WARNING, bit-2 for NOTE. with my modification, it would be easy producing this output: . . * checking for unstated dependencies in tests ... OK * checking tests ... Running ‘doSvUnit.R’ NOTE - please check doSvUnit.Rout. WARNING - please check doSvUnit.Rout. * checking PDF version of manual ... OK Brian Ripley replied "There are however several packages with properly written unit tests that do signal as required. Please do take this discussion elsewhere: R-bugs is not the place to ask questions." and closed the change request. anybody has hints?

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• jQuery nested sortables jumpy behaviour

  - by sebbie

  I want to allow user to drag and drop UI elements. I've 'container' and 'control', control may be in container, containers may include other containers (this is important requirement). I created simple prototype using jQuery. HTML: <div class="one"> <div class="control">Control 1</div> <div class="control">Control 2</div> <div class="control container"> Container drag area <div class="control">Subcontrol 1</div> <div class="control">Subcontrol 2</div> <div class="control">Subcontrol 3</div> <div class="control">Subcontrol 4</div> <div class="control">Subcontrol 5</div> <div class="control">Subcontrol 6</div> <div class="control">Subcontrol 7</div> <div class="control">Subcontrol 8</div> <div class="control">Subcontrol 9</div> </div> <div class="control">Control 3</div> Then I created sortables using jQueryUI: $('.one').sortable({ items: 'div.control', placeholder: 'placeholder', forcePlaceholderSize: true }); Now when I'm trying to drag "Subcontrol 8" and place it between "Subcontrol 2" and "Subcontrol 3" for example I'm getting jumpy effect, you can observe it here: http://jsbin.com/egipu4/2 Interesting thing is - when I remove ability to drag "container" then it becomes smooth and perfect (you can see this on jsbin example below "jumpy" example, you can't drag using "Container drag area" span). I tried different "nested" plugins and techniques, google'd for a long time and the only one that worked was on this page: (StackOverflow doesn't allow me to post more than one like, google for "Brian Swartzfager's Blog: Nested List Sort Demo" should be first, sorry!) But it does work great only in jQuery1.2 and very old jQueryUI. If I include latest jQuery (1.3/1.4) and UI (1.7/1.8) it gets jumpy as well. What am I doing wrong?

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• Code golf - hex to (raw) binary conversion

  - by Alnitak

  In response to this question asking about hex to (raw) binary conversion, a comment suggested that it could be solved in "5-10 lines of C, or any other language." I'm sure that for (some) scripting languages that could be achieved, and would like to see how. Can we prove that comment true, for C, too? NB: this doesn't mean hex to ASCII binary - specifically the output should be a raw octet stream corresponding to the input ASCII hex. Also, the input parser should skip/ignore white space. edit (by Brian Campbell) May I propose the following rules, for consistency? Feel free to edit or delete these if you don't think these are helpful, but I think that since there has been some discussion of how certain cases should work, some clarification would be helpful. The program must read from stdin and write to stdout (we could also allow reading from and writing to files passed in on the command line, but I can't imagine that would be shorter in any language than stdin and stdout) The program must use only packages included with your base, standard language distribution. In the case of C/C++, this means their respective standard libraries, and not POSIX. The program must compile or run without any special options passed to the compiler or interpreter (so, 'gcc myprog.c' or 'python myprog.py' or 'ruby myprog.rb' are OK, while 'ruby -rscanf myprog.rb' is not allowed; requiring/importing modules counts against your character count). The program should read integer bytes represented by pairs of adjacent hexadecimal digits (upper, lower, or mixed case), optionally separated by whitespace, and write the corresponding bytes to output. Each pair of hexadecimal digits is written with most significant nibble first. The behavior of the program on invalid input (characters besides [a-fA-F \t\r\n], spaces separating the two characters in an individual byte, an odd number of hex digits in the input) is undefined; any behavior (other than actively damaging the user's computer or something) on bad input is acceptable (throwing an error, stopping output, ignoring bad characters, treating a single character as the value of one byte, are all OK) The program may write no additional bytes to output. Code is scored by fewest total bytes in the source file. (Or, if we wanted to be more true to the original challenge, the score would be based on lowest number of lines of code; I would impose an 80 character limit per line in that case, since otherwise you'd get a bunch of ties for 1 line).

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• Android , Read in binary data and write it to file

  - by Shpongle

  Hi all , Im trying to read in image file from a server , with the code below . It keeps going into the exception. I know the correct number of bytes are being sent as I print them out when received. Im sending the image file from python like so #open the image file and read it into an object imgfile = open (marked_image, 'rb') obj = imgfile.read() #get the no of bytes in the image and convert it to a string bytes = str(len(obj)) #send the number of bytes self.conn.send( bytes + '\n') if self.conn.sendall(obj) == None: imgfile.flush() imgfile.close() print 'Image Sent' else: print 'Error' Here is the android part , this is where I'm having the problem. Any suggestions on the best way to go about receiving the image and writing it to a file ? //read the number of bytes in the image String noOfBytes = in.readLine(); Toast.makeText(this, noOfBytes, 5).show(); byte bytes [] = new byte [Integer.parseInt(noOfBytes)]; //create a file to store the retrieved image File photo = new File(Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory(), "PostKey.jpg"); DataInputStream dis = new DataInputStream(link.getInputStream()); try{ os =new FileOutputStream(photo); byte buf[]=new byte[1024]; int len; while((len=dis.read(buf))>0) os.write(buf,0,len); Toast.makeText(this, "File recieved", 5).show(); os.close(); dis.close(); }catch(IOException e){ Toast.makeText(this, "An IO Error Occured", 5).show(); } EDIT: I still cant seem to get it working. I have been at it since and the result of all my efforts have either resulted in a file that is not the full size or else the app crashing. I know the file is not corrupt before sending server side. As far as I can tell its definitely sending too as the send all method in python sends all or throws an exception in the event of an error and so far it has never thrown an exception. So the client side is messed up . I have to send the file from the server so I cant use the suggestion suggested by Brian .

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• /usr/local/share/snmp/snmpd.conf: line 5: Error: unknown payload OID

  - by user1495181

  using ubuntu with net-snmp snmp work but in sys.log i see a lot of errors about snmpd.conf snmpd.conf: rwcommunity community 10.0.0.1 rwcommunity community 10.0.0.2 agentAddress udp:10.0.0.1:161 view systemonly included .1.3.6.1.2.1.1 view systemonly included .1.3.6.1.2.1.25.1 # Default access to basic system info rocommunity public default -V systemonly rouser authOnlyUser sysLocation Sitting on the Dock of the Bay sysContact Me <[email protected]> sysServices 72 proc mountd proc ntalkd 4 proc sendmail 10 1 disk / 10000 disk /var 5% includeAllDisks 10% load 12 10 5 trapsink localhost public iquerySecName internalUser rouser internalUser defaultMonitors yes linkUpDownNotifications yes master agentx errors: Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: payload OID: prNames Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: /usr/local/share/snmp/snmpd.conf: line 5: Error: unknown payload OID Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: Unknown payload OID: prNames Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: /usr/local/share/snmp/snmpd.conf: line 5: Error: Unknown payload OID Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: payload OID: prErrMessage Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: /usr/local/share/snmp/snmpd.conf: line 5: Error: unknown payload OID Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: Unknown payload OID: prErrMessage Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: /usr/local/share/snmp/snmpd.conf: line 5: Error: Unknown payload OID Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: trigger OID: prErrorFlag Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: /usr/local/share/snmp/snmpd.conf: line 5: Error: unknown monitor OID Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: payload OID: memErrorName Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: /usr/local/share/snmp/snmpd.conf: line 5: Error: unknown payload OID Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: Unknown payload OID: memErrorName Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: /usr/local/share/snmp/snmpd.conf: line 5: Error: Unknown payload OID Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: payload OID: memSwapErrorMsg Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: /usr/local/share/snmp/snmpd.conf: line 5: Error: unknown payload OID Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: Unknown payload OID: memSwapErrorMsg Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: /usr/local/share/snmp/snmpd.conf: line 5: Error: Unknown payload OID Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: trigger OID: memSwapError Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: /usr/local/share/snmp/snmpd.conf: line 5: Error: unknown monitor OID Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: payload OID: extNames Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: /usr/local/share/snmp/snmpd.conf: line 5: Error: unknown payload OID Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: Unknown payload OID: extNames Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: /usr/local/share/snmp/snmpd.conf: line 5: Error: Unknown payload OID Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: payload OID: extOutput Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: /usr/local/share/snmp/snmpd.conf: line 5: Error: unknown payload OID Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: Unknown payload OID: extOutput Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: /usr/local/share/snmp/snmpd.conf: line 5: Error: Unknown payload OID Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: trigger OID: extResult Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: /usr/local/share/snmp/snmpd.conf: line 5: Error: unknown monitor OID Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: payload OID: dskPath Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: /usr/local/share/snmp/snmpd.conf: line 5: Error: unknown payload OID Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: Unknown payload OID: dskPath Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: /usr/local/share/snmp/snmpd.conf: line 5: Error: Unknown payload OID Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: payload OID: dskErrorMsg Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: /usr/local/share/snmp/snmpd.conf: line 5: Error: unknown payload OID Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: Unknown payload OID: dskErrorMsg Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: /usr/local/share/snmp/snmpd.conf: line 5: Error: Unknown payload OID Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: trigger OID: dskErrorFlag Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: /usr/local/share/snmp/snmpd.conf: line 5: Error: unknown monitor OID Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: payload OID: laNames Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: /usr/local/share/snmp/snmpd.conf: line 5: Error: unknown payload OID Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: Unknown payload OID: laNames Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: /usr/local/share/snmp/snmpd.conf: line 5: Error: Unknown payload OID Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: payload OID: laErrMessage Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: /usr/local/share/snmp/snmpd.conf: line 5: Error: unknown payload OID Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: Unknown payload OID: laErrMessage Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: /usr/local/share/snmp/snmpd.conf: line 5: Error: Unknown payload OID Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: trigger OID: laErrorFlag Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: /usr/local/share/snmp/snmpd.conf: line 5: Error: unknown monitor OID Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: payload OID: fileName Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: /usr/local/share/snmp/snmpd.conf: line 5: Error: unknown payload OID Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: Unknown payload OID: fileName Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: /usr/local/share/snmp/snmpd.conf: line 5: Error: Unknown payload OID Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: payload OID: fileErrorMsg Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: /usr/local/share/snmp/snmpd.conf: line 5: Error: unknown payload OID Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: Unknown payload OID: fileErrorMsg Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: /usr/local/share/snmp/snmpd.conf: line 5: Error: Unknown payload OID Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: trigger OID: fileErrorFlag Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: /usr/local/share/snmp/snmpd.conf: line 5: Error: unknown monitor OID Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: payload OID: snmperrErrMessage Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: /usr/local/share/snmp/snmpd.conf: line 5: Error: unknown payload OID Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: Unknown payload OID: snmperrErrMessage Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: /usr/local/share/snmp/snmpd.conf: line 5: Error: Unknown payload OID Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: trigger OID: snmperrErrorFlag Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: /usr/local/share/snmp/snmpd.conf: line 5: Error: unknown monitor OID Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: Turning on AgentX master support. Sep 12 16:35:00 test snmpd[5485]: net-snmp: 33 error(s) in config file(s)

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• Solaris 11 Launch Blog Carnival Roundup

  - by constant

  Solaris 11 is here! And together with the official launch activities, a lot of Oracle and non-Oracle bloggers contributed helpful and informative blog articles to help your datacenter go to eleven. Here are some notable blog postings, sorted by category for your Solaris 11 blog-reading pleasure: Getting Started/Overview A lot of people speculated that the official launch of Solaris 11 would be on 11/11 (whatever way you want to turn it), but it actually happened two days earlier. Larry Wake himself offers 11 Reasons Why Oracle Solaris 11 11/11 Isn't Being Released on 11/11/11. Then, Larry goes on with a summary: Oracle Solaris 11: The First Cloud OS gives you a short and sweet rundown of what the major new features of Solaris 11 are. Jeff Victor has his own list of What's New in Oracle Solaris 11. A popular Solaris 11 meme is to write a blog post about 11 favourite features: Jim Laurent's 11 Reasons to Love Solaris 11, Darren Moffat's 11 Favourite Solaris 11 Features, Mike Gerdt's 11 of My Favourite Things! are just three examples of "11 Favourite Things..." type blog posts, I'm sure many more will follow... More official overview content for Solaris 11 is available from the Oracle Tech Network Solaris 11 Portal. Also, check out Rick Ramsey's blog post Solaris 11 Resources for System Administrators on the OTN Blog and his secret 5 Commands That Make Solaris Administration Easier post from the OTN Garage. (Automatic) Installation and the Image Packaging System (IPS) The brand new Image Packaging System (IPS) and the Automatic Installer (IPS), together with numerous other install/packaging/boot/patching features are among the most significant improvements in Solaris 11. But before installing, you may wonder whether Solaris 11 will support your particular set of hardware devices. Again, the OTN Garage comes to the rescue with Rick Ramsey's post How to Find Out Which Devices Are Supported By Solaris 11. Included is a useful guide to all the first steps to get your Solaris 11 system up and running. Tim Foster had a whole handful of blog posts lined up for the launch, teaching you everything you need to know about IPS but didn't dare to ask: The IPS System Repository, IPS Self-assembly - Part 1: Overlays and Part 2: Multiple Packages Delivering Configuration. Watch out for more IPS posts from Tim! If installing packages or upgrading your system from the net makes you uneasy, then you're not alone: Jim Laurent will tech you how Building a Solaris 11 Repository Without Network Connection will make your life easier. Many of you have already peeked into the future by installing Solaris 11 Express. If you're now wondering whether you can upgrade or whether a fresh install is necessary, then check out Alan Hargreaves's post Upgrading Solaris 11 Express b151a with support to Solaris 11. The trick is in upgrading your pkg(1M) first. Networking One of the first things to do after installing Solaris 11 (or any operating system for that matter), is to set it up for networking. Solaris 11 comes with the brand new "Network Auto-Magic" feature which can figure out everything by itself. For those cases where you want to exercise a little more control, Solaris 11 left a few people scratching their heads. Fortunately, Tschokko wrote up this cool blog post: Solaris 11 manual IPv4 & IPv6 configuration right after the launch ceremony. Thanks, Tschokko! And Milek points out a long awaited networking feature in Solaris 11 called Solaris 11 - hostmodel, which I know for a fact that many customers have looked forward to: How to "bind" a Solaris 11 system to a specific gateway for specific IP address it is using. Steffen Weiberle teaches us how to tune the Solaris 11 networking stack the proper way: ipadm(1M). No more fiddling with ndd(1M)! Check out his tutorial on Solaris 11 Network Tunables. And if you want to get even deeper into the networking stack, there's nothing better than DTrace. Alan Maguire teaches you in: DTracing TCP Congestion Control how to probe deeply into the Solaris 11 TCP/IP stack, the TCP congestion control part in particular. Don't miss his other DTrace and TCP related blog posts! DTrace And there we are: DTrace, the king of all observability tools. Long time DTrace veteran and co-author of The DTrace book*, Brendan Gregg blogged about Solaris 11 DTrace syscall provider changes. BTW, after you install Solaris 11, check out the DTrace toolkit which is installed by default in /usr/dtrace/DTT. It is chock full of handy DTrace scripts, many of which contributed by Brendan himself! Security Another big theme in Solaris 11, and one that is crucial for the success of any operating system in the Cloud is Security. Here are some notable posts in this category: Darren Moffat starts by showing us how to completely get rid of root: Completely Disabling Root Logins on Solaris 11. With no root user, there's one major entry point less to worry about. But that's only the start. In Immutable Zones on Encrypted ZFS, Darren shows us how to double the security of your services: First by locking them into the new Immutable Zones feature, then by encrypting their data using the new ZFS encryption feature. And if you're still missing sudo from your Linux days, Darren again has a solution: Password (PAM) caching for Solaris su - "a la sudo". If you're wondering how much compute power all this encryption will cost you, you're in luck: The Solaris X86 AESNI OpenSSL Engine will make sure you'll use your Intel's embedded crypto support to its fullest. And if you own a brand new SPARC T4 machine you're even luckier: It comes with its own SPARC T4 OpenSSL Engine. Dan Anderson's posts show how there really is now excuse not to encrypt any more... Developers Solaris 11 has a lot to offer to developers as well. Ali Bahrami has a series of blog posts that cover diverse developer topics: elffile: ELF Specific File Identification Utility, Using Stub Objects and The Stub Proto: Not Just For Stub Objects Anymore to name a few. BTW, if you're a developer and want to shape the future of Solaris 11, then Vijay Tatkar has a hint for you: Oracle (Sun Systems Group) is hiring! Desktop and Graphics Yes, Solaris 11 is a 100% server OS, but it can also offer a decent desktop environment, especially if you are a developer. Alan Coopersmith starts by discussing S11 X11: ye olde window system in today's new operating system, then Calum Benson shows us around What's new on the Solaris 11 Desktop. Even accessibility is a first-class citizen in the Solaris 11 user interface. Peter Korn celebrates: Accessible Oracle Solaris 11 - released! Performance Gone are the days of "Slowaris", when Solaris was among the few OSes that "did the right thing" while others cut corners just to win benchmarks. Today, Solaris continues doing the right thing, and it delivers the right performance at the same time. Need proof? Check out Brian's BestPerf blog with continuous updates from the benchmarking lab, including Recent Benchmarks Using Oracle Solaris 11! Send Me More Solaris 11 Launch Articles! These are just a few of the more interesting blog articles that came out around the Solaris 11 launch, I'm sure there are many more! Feel free to post a comment below if you find a particularly interesting blog post that hasn't been listed so far and share your enthusiasm for Solaris 11! *Affiliate link: Buy cool stuff and support this blog at no extra cost. We both win! var flattr_uid = '26528'; var flattr_tle = 'Solaris 11 Launch Blog Carnival Roundup'; var flattr_dsc = '<strong>Solaris 11 is here!</strong>And together with the official launch activities, a lot of Oracle and non-Oracle bloggers contributed helpful and informative blog articles to help your datacenter <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_to_eleven">go to eleven</a>.Here are some notable blog postings, sorted by category for your Solaris 11 blog-reading pleasure:'; var flattr_tag = 'blogging,digest,Oracle,Solaris,solaris,solaris 11'; var flattr_cat = 'text'; var flattr_url = 'http://constantin.glez.de/blog/2011/11/solaris-11-launch-blog-carnival-roundup'; var flattr_lng = 'en_GB'

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• Why It Is So Important to Know Your Customer

  - by Christie Flanagan

  Over the years, I endured enough delayed flights, air turbulence and misadventures in airport security clearance to watch my expectations for the air travel experience fall to abysmally low levels. The extent of my loyalty to any one carrier had more to do with the proximity of the airport parking garage to their particular gate than to any effort on the airline’s part to actually earn and retain my business. That all changed one day when I found myself at the airport hoping to catch a return flight home a few hours earlier than expected, using an airline I had flown with for the first time just that week.  When you travel regularly for business, being able to catch a return flight home that’s even an hour or two earlier than originally scheduled is a big deal. It can mean the difference between having a normal evening with your family and having to sneak in like a cat burglar after everyone is fast asleep. And so I found myself on this particular day hoping to catch an earlier flight home. I approached the gate agent and was told that I could go on standby for their next flight out. Then I asked how much it was going to cost to change the flight, knowing full well that I wouldn’t get reimbursed by my company for any change fees. “Oh, there’s no charge to fly on standby,” the gate agent told me. I made a funny look. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. This airline was going to let my fly on standby, at no additional charge, even though I was a new customer with no status or points. It had been years since I’d seen an airline pass up a short term revenue generating opportunity in favor of a long term loyalty generating one.  At that moment, this particular airline gained my loyal business. Since then, this airline has had the opportunity to learn a lot about me. They know where I live, where I fly from, where I usually fly to, and where I like to sit on the plane. In general, I’ve found their customer service to be quite good whether at the airport, via call center and even through social channels. They email me occasionally, and when they do, they demonstrate that they know me by promoting deals for flights from where I live to places that I’d be interested in visiting. And that’s part of why I’m always so puzzled when I visit their website.Does this company with the great service, customer friendly policies, and clean planes demonstrate that they know me at all when I visit their website? The answer is no. Even when I log in using my loyalty program credentials, it’s pretty obvious that they’re presenting the same old home page and same old offers to every single one of their site visitors. I mean, those promotional offers that they’re featuring so prominently  -- they’re for flights that originate thousands of miles from where I live! There’s no way I’d ever book one of those flights and I’m sure I’m not the only one of their customers to feel that way.My reason for recounting this story is not to pick on the one customer experience flaw I've noticed with this particular airline, in fact, they do so many things right that I’ll continue to fly with them. But I did want to illustrate just how glaringly obvious it is to customers today when a touch point they have with a brand is impersonal, unconnected and out of sync. As someone who’s spent a number of years in the web experience management and online marketing space, it particularly peeves me when that out of sync touch point is a brand’s website, perhaps because I know how important it is to make a customer’s online experience relevant and how many powerful tools are available for making a relevant experience a reality. The fact is, delivering a one-size-fits-all online customer experience is no longer acceptable or particularly effective in today’s world. Today’s savvy customers expect you to know who they are and to understand their preferences, behavior and relationship with your brand. Not only do they expect you to know about them, but they also expect you to demonstrate this knowledge across all of their touch points with your brand in a consistent and compelling fashion, whether it be on your traditional website, your mobile web presence or through various social channels.Delivering the kind of personalized online experiences that customers want can have tremendous business benefits. This is not just about generating feelings of goodwill and higher customer satisfaction ratings either. More relevant and personalized online experiences boost the effectiveness of online marketing initiatives and the statistics prove this out. Personalized web experiences can help increase online conversion rates by 70% -- that’s a huge number.1  And more than three quarters of consumers indicate that they’ve made additional online purchases based on personalized product recommendations.2Now if only this airline would get on board with delivering a more personalized online customer experience. I’d certainly be happier and more likely to spring for one of their promotional offers. And by targeting relevant offers on their home page to appropriate segments of their site visitors, I bet they’d be happier and generating additional revenue too. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}  ***** If you're interested in hearing more perspectives on the benefits of demonstrating that you know your customers by delivering a more personalized experience, check out this white paper on creating a successful and meaningful customer experience on the web.  Also catch the video below on the business value of CX in attracting new customers featuring Oracle's VP of Customer Experience Strategy, Brian Curran. 1 Search Engine Watch 2 Marketing Charts

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• SQL Cruise Alaska 2011

  - by Grant Fritchey

  I had the extreme good fortune to get sent on the last SQL Cruise to Alaska. I love my job. In case you don't what this is, SQL Cruise is a trip on a cruise ship during which you get to attend classes while on the boat, learning all about SQL Server and related topics as well as network with the instructors and the other Cruisers. Frankly, it's amazing. Classes ran from Monday, 5/30, to Saturday, 6/4. The networking was constant, between classes, at night on cruise ship, out on excursions in Alaskan rainforests and while snorkeling in ocean waters. Here's a run down of the experience from my point of view. Because I couldn't travel out 2 days early, I missed the BBQ that occurred the day before the cruise when many of the Cruisers received their swag bags. Some of that swag came from Red Gate. I researched what was useful on a cruise like this and purchased small flashlights and binoculars for all the Cruisers. The flashlights were because, depending on your cabin, ships can be very dark. The binoculars were so that the cruisers could watch all the beautiful landscape as it flowed by. I would have liked to have been there when the bags were opened, but I heard from several people that they appreciated the gifts. Cruisers "In" the hot tub. Pictured: Marjory Woody, Michele Grondin, Kyle Brandt, Grant Fritchey, John Halunen Sunday I went to board the ship with my wife. We had a bit of an adventure because I messed up our documents. It all worked out and we got on board to meet up at the back of the boat at one of the outdoor bars with the other Cruisers, thanks to tweets letting everyone know where to go. That was the end of electronic coordination on the trip (connectivity in Alaska was horrible for everyone except AT&T). The Cruisers were a great bunch of people and it was a real honor to meet them and get to spend time with them. After everyone settled into their cabins, our very first activity was a contest, sponsored by Red Gate. The Cruisers, in an effort to get to know each other and the ship, were required to go all over taking various photographs, some of them hilarious. The winning team of three would all win prizes. Some of the significant others helped out and I tagged along with a team that tied for first but lost the coin toss. The winning team consisted of Christina Leo (blog|twitter), Ryan Malcom (twitter), Neil Hambly (blog|twitter). They then had to do math and identify the cabin with the lowest prime number, oh, and get a picture of it and be the first to get back up to the bar where we were waiting. Christina came in first and very happily carried home an Ipad2. Ryan won a 1TB portable hard drive and Neil won a wireless mouse (picture below, note my special SQL Server Central Friday Shirt. Thanks Steve (blog|twitter)). Winners: Christina Leo, Neil Hambly, Ryan Malcolm. Just Lucky: Grant Fritchey Monday morning classes started. Buck Woody (blog|twitter) was a special guest speaker on this cruise. His theme was "Three C's on the High Seas: Career, Communication and Cloud." The first session was all on Career. I'm not going to type out all my notes from the session, but let's just say, if you get the chance to hear Buck talk about how to manage your career, I suggest you attend. I have a ton of blog posts that I'll be putting together over the next several months (yes, months) both here and over on ScaryDBA. I also have a bunch of work I'm going to be doing to get my career performance bumped up a notch or two (and let's face it, that won't be easy). Later on Monday, Tim Ford (blog|twitter) did a session on DMOs. Specifically the session was on Tim's Period Table of DMOs that he has put together, and how to use some of the more interesting DMOs in your day to day job. It was a great session, packed with good information. Next, Brent Ozar (blog|twitter) did a session on how to monitor and guide SAN configuration for the DBA that doesn't have access to the SAN. That was some seriously useful information. Tuesday morning we only had a single class. Kendra Little (blog|twitter) taught us all about "No Lock for Yes Fun".  It was all about the different transaction isolation levels and how they work. There is so often confusion in this area and Kendra does a great job in clarifying the information. Also, she tosses in her excellent drawings to liven up the presentation. Then it was excursion time in Juneau. My wife and I, along with several other Cruisers, took a hike up around the Mendenhall Glacier. It was absolutely beautiful weather and walking through the Alaskan rain forest was a treat. Our guide, Jason, was a great guy and it was a good day of hiking. Wednesday was an all day excursion in Skagway. My wife and I took the "Ghost and Good Time Girls" walking tour that ended up at a bar that used to be a brothel, the Red Onion. It was a great history of the town. We went back out and hit a few museums and exhibits. We also hiked up the side of the mountain to see the Dewey Lake and some great views of the town. Finally we hiked out to the far side of town to see the Gold Rush cemetery. Hiking done we went back to the boat and had a quiet dinner on our own. Thursday we cruised through Glacier Bay and saw at least four different glaciers including sitting next to the Marjory Glacier for  about an hour. It was amazing. Then it got better. We went into class with Buck again, this time to talk about Communication. Again, I've got pages of notes that I'm going to be referring back to for some time to come. This was an excellent opportunity to learn. Snorkelers: Nicole Bertrand, Aaron Bertrand, Grant Fritchey, Neil Hambly, Christina Leo, John Robel, Yanni Robel, Tim Ford Friday we pulled into Ketchikan. A bunch of us went snorkeling. Yes, snorkeling. Yes, in Alaska. Yes, snorkeling in the ocean in Alaska. It was fantastic. They had us put on 7mm thick wet suits (an adventure all by itself) so it was basically warm the entire time we were in the water (except for the occasional squirt of cold water down my back). Before we got in the water a bald eagle flew up and landed about 15 feet in front of us, which was just an incredible event. Then our guide pointed out about 14 other eagles in the area, hanging out in the trees. Wow! The water was pretty clear and there was a ton of things to see. That was absolutely a blast. Back on the boat I presented a session called Execution Plans: The Deep Dive (note the nautical theme). It seemed to go over well and I had several good questions come out of the session that will lead to new blog posts. After I presented, it was Aaron Bertrand's (blog|twitter) turn. He did a session on "What's New in Denali" that provided a lot of great information. He was able to incorporate new things straight out of Tech-Ed, so this was expanded beyond his usual presentation. The man really knows what he's talking about and communicates it well. Saturday we were travelling so there was time for a bunch of classes. Jeremiah Peschka (blog|twitter) did a great overview of some of the NoSQL databases and what they should be used for. The session was called "The Database is Dead" but it was really about how there are specific uses for these databases that SQL Server doesn't fill, but also that these databases can't replace SQL Server in other areas. Again, good material. Brent Ozar presented again with a session on Defensive Indexing. It was an overview of how indexes work and a deep dive into how to apply them appropriately in your databases to better support access. A good session, as you would expect. Then we pulled into Victoria, BC, in Canada and had a nice dinner with several of the Cruisers, including Denny Cherry (blog|twitter). After that it was back to Seattle on Sunday. By the way, the Science Fiction Museum in Seattle isn't a Science Fiction Museum any more. I was very disappointed to discover this. Overall, it was a great experience. I'm extremely appreciative of Red Gate for sending me and for Tim, Brent, Kendra and Jeremiah for having me. The other Cruisers were all amazing people and it was an honor & privilege to meet them and spend time with them. While this was a seriously fun time, it was also a very serious training opportunity with solid information coming from seasoned industry pros.

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• Right-Time Retail Part 3

  - by David Dorf

  This is part three of the three-part series.  Read Part 1 and Part 2 first. 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;} Right-Time Marketing Real-time isn’t just about executing faster; it extends to interactions with customers as well. As an industry, we’ve spent many years analyzing all the data that’s been collected. Yes, that data has been invaluable in helping us make better decisions like where to open new stores, how to assort those stores, and how to price our products. But the recent advances in technology are now making it possible to analyze and deliver that data very quickly… fast enough to impact a potential sale in near real-time. Let me give you two examples. Salesmen in car dealerships get pretty good at sizing people up. When a potential customer walks in the door, it doesn’t take long for the salesman to figure out the revenue at stake. Is this person a real buyer, or just looking for a fun test drive? Will this person buy today or three months from now? Will this person opt for the expensive packages, or go bare bones? While the salesman certainly asks some leading questions, much of information is discerned through body language. But body language doesn’t translate very well over the web. Eloqua, which was acquired by Oracle earlier this year, reads internet body language. By tracking the behavior of the people visiting your web site, Eloqua categorizes visitors based on their propensity to buy. While Eloqua’s roots have been in B2B, we’ve been looking at leveraging the technology with ATG to target B2C. Knowing what sites were previously visited, how often the customer has been to your site recently, and how long they’ve spent searching can help understand where the customer is in their purchase journey. And knowing that bit of information may be enough to help close the deal with a real-time offer, follow-up email, or online customer service pop-up. This isn’t so different from the days gone by when the clerk behind the counter of the corner store noticed you were lingering in a particular aisle, so he walked over to help you compare two products and close the sale. You appreciated the personalized service, and he knew the value of the long-term relationship. Move that same concept into the digital world and you have Oracle’s CX Suite, a cloud-based offering of end-to-end customer experience tools, assembled primarily from acquisitions. Those tools are Oracle Marketing (Eloqua), Oracle Commerce (ATG, Endeca), Oracle Sales (Oracle CRM On Demand), Oracle Service (RightNow), Oracle Social (Collective Intellect, Vitrue, Involver), and Oracle Content (Fatwire). We are providing the glue that binds the CIO and CMO together to unleash synergies that drive the top-line higher, and by virtue of the cloud-approach, keep costs at bay. My second example of real-time marketing takes place in the store but leverages the concepts of Web marketing. In 1962 the decline of personalized service in retail began. Anyone know the significance of that year? That’s when Target, K-Mart, and Walmart each opened their first stores, and over the succeeding years the industry chose scale over personal service. No longer were you known as “Jane with the snotty kid so make sure we check her out fast,” but you suddenly became “time-starved female age 20-30 with kids.” I’m not saying that was a bad thing – it was the right thing for our industry at the time, and it enabled a huge amount of growth, cheaper prices, and more variety of products. But scale alone is no longer good enough. Today’s sophisticated consumer demands scale, experience, and personal attention. To some extent we’ve delivered that on websites via the magic of cookies, your willingness to log in, and sophisticated data analytics. What store manager wouldn’t love a report detailing all the visitors to his store, where they came from, and which products that examined? People trackers are getting more sophisticated, incorporating infrared, video analytics, and even face recognition. (Next time you walk in front on a mannequin, don’t be surprised if it’s looking back.) But the ultimate marketing conduit is the mobile phone. Since each mobile phone emits a unique number on WiFi networks, it becomes the cookie of the physical world. Assuming congress keeps privacy safeguards reasonable, we’ll have a win-win situation for both retailers and consumers. Retailers get to know more about the consumer’s purchase journey, and consumers get higher levels of service with the retailer. When I call my bank, a couple things happen before the call is connected. A reverse look-up on my phone number identifies me so my accounts can be retrieved from Siebel CRM. Then the system anticipates why I’m calling based on recent transactions. In this example, it sees that I was just charged a foreign currency fee, so it assumes that’s the reason I’m calling. It puts all the relevant information on the customer service rep’s screen as it connects the call. When I complain about the fee, the rep immediately sees I’m a great customer and I travel lots, so she suggests switching me to their traveler’s card that doesn’t have foreign transaction fees. That technology is powered by a product called Oracle Real-Time Decisions, a rules engine built to execute very quickly, basically in the time it takes the phone to ring once. So let’s combine the power of that product with our new-found mobile cookie and provide contextual customer interactions in real-time. Our first opportunity comes when a customer crosses a pre-defined geo-fence, typically a boundary around the store. Context is the key to our interaction: that’s the customer (known or anonymous), the time of day and day of week, and location. Thomas near the downtown store on a Wednesday at noon means he’s heading to lunch. If he were near the mall location on a Saturday morning, that’s a completely different context. But on his way to lunch, we’ll let Thomas know that we’ve got a new shipment of ASICS running shoes on display with a simple text message. We used the context to look-up Thomas’ past purchases and understood he was an avid runner. We used the fact that this was lunchtime to select the type of message, in this case an informational message instead of an offer. Thomas enters the store, phone in hand, and walks to the shoe department. He scans one of the new ASICS shoes using the convenient QR Codes we provided on the shelf-tags, but then he starts scanning low-end Nikes. Each scan is another opportunity to both learn from Thomas and potentially interact via another message. Since he historically buys low-end Nikes and keeps scanning them, he’s likely falling back into his old ways. Our marketing rules are currently set to move loyal customer to higher margin products. We could have set the dials to increase visit frequency, move overstocked items, increase basket size, or many other settings, but today we are trying to move Thomas to higher-margin products. We send Thomas another text message, this time it’s a personalized offer for 10% off ASICS good for 24 hours. Offering him a discount on Nikes would be throwing margin away since he buys those anyway. We are using our marketing dollars to change behavior that increases the long-term value of Thomas. He decides to buy the ASICS and scans the discount code on his phone at checkout. Checkout is yet another opportunity to interact with Thomas, so the transaction is sent back to Oracle RTD for evaluation. Since Thomas didn’t buy anything with the shoes, we’ll print a bounce-back coupon on the receipt offering 30% off ASICS socks if he returns within seven days. We have successfully started moving Thomas from low-margin to high-margin products. In both of these marketing scenarios, we are able to leverage data in near real-time to decide how best to interact with the customer and lead to an increase in the lifetime value of the customer. The key here is acting at the moment the customer shows interest using the context of the situation. We aren’t pushing random products at haphazard times. We are tailoring the marketing to be very specific to this customer, and it’s the technology that allows this to happen in near real-time. Conclusion As we enable more right-time integrations and interactions, retailers will begin to offer increased service to their customers. Localized and personalized service at scale will drive loyalty and lead to meaningful revenue growth for the retailers that execute well. Our industry needs to support Commerce Anywhere…and commerce anytime as well.

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• Advanced Continuous Delivery to Azure from TFS, Part 1: Good Enough Is Not Great

  - by jasont

  The folks over on the TFS / Visual Studio team have been working hard at releasing a steady stream of new features for their new hosted Team Foundation Service in the cloud. One of the most significant features released was simple continuous delivery of your solution into your Azure deployments. The original announcement from Brian Harry can be found here. Team Foundation Service is a great platform for .Net developers who are used to working with TFS on-premises. I’ve been using it since it became available at the //BUILD conference in 2011, and when I recently came to work at Stackify, it was one of the first changes I made. Managing work items is much easier than the tool we were using previously, although there are some limitations (more on that in another blog post). However, when continuous deployment was made available, it blew my mind. It was the killer feature I didn’t know I needed. Not to say that I wasn’t previously an advocate for continuous delivery; just that it was always a pain to set up and configure. Having it hosted - and a one-click setup – well, that’s just the best thing since sliced bread. It made perfect sense: my source code is in the cloud, and my deployment is in the cloud. Great! I can queue up a build from my iPad or phone and just let it go! I quickly tore through the quick setup and saw it all work… sort of. This will be the first in a three part series on how to take the building block of Team Foundation Service continuous delivery and build a CD model that will actually work for any team deploying something more advanced than a “Hello World” example. Part 1: Good Enough Is Not Great Part 2: A Model That Works: Branching and Multiple Deployment Environments Part 3: Other Considerations: SQL, Custom Tasks, Etc Good Enough Is Not Great There. I’ve said it. I certainly hope no one on the TFS team is offended, but it’s the truth. Let’s take a look under the hood and understand how it works, and then why it’s not enough to handle real world CD as-is. How it works. (note that I’ve skipped a couple of steps; I already have my accounts set up and something deployed to Azure) The first step is to establish some oAuth magic between your Azure management portal and your TFS Instance. You do this via the management portal. Once it’s done, you have a new build process template in your TFS instance. (Image lifted from the documentation) From here, you’ll get the usual prompts for security, allowing access, etc. But you’ll also get to pick which Solution in your source control to build. Here’s what the bulk of the build definition looks like. All I’ve had to do is add in the solution to build (notice that mine is from a specific branch – Release – more on that later) and I’ve changed the configuration. I trigger the build, and voila! I have an Azure deployment a few minutes later. The beauty of this is that it’s all in the cloud and I’m not waiting for my machine to compile and upload the package. (I also had to enable the build definition first – by default it is created in disabled state, probably a good thing since it will trigger on every.single.checkin by default.) I get to see a history of deployments from the Azure portal, and can link into TFS to see the associated changesets and work items. You’ll notice also that this build definition also automatically put my code in the Staging slot of my Azure deployment – more on this soon. For now, I can VIP swap and be in production. (P.S. I hate VIP swap and “production” and “staging” in Azure. More on that later too.) That’s it. That’s the default out-of-box experience. Easy, right? But it’s full of room for improvement, so let’s get into that….   The Problems Nothing is perfect (except my code – it’s always perfect), and neither is Continuous Deployment without a bit of work to help it fit your dev team’s process. So what are the issues? Issue 1: Staging vs QA vs Prod vs whatever other environments your team may have. This, for me, is the big hairy one. Remember how this automatically deployed to staging rather than prod for us? There are a couple of issues with this model: If I want to deliver to prod, it requires intervention on my part after deployment (via a VIP swap). If I truly want to promote between environments (i.e. Nightly Build –> Stable QA –> Production) I likely have configuration changes between each environment such as database connection strings and this process (and the VIP swap) doesn’t account for this. Yet. Issue 2: Branching and delivering on every check-in. As I mentioned above, I have set this up to target a specific branch – Release – of my code. For the purposes of this example, I have adopted the “basic” branching strategy as defined by the ALM Rangers. This basically establishes a “Main” trunk where you branch off Dev and Release branches. Granted, the Release branch is usually the only thing you will deploy to production, but you certainly don’t want to roll to production automatically when you merge to the Release branch and check-in (unless you like the thrill of it, and in that case, I like your style, cowboy….). Rather, you have nightly build and QA environments, or if you’ve adopted the feature-branch model you have environments for those. Those are the environments you want to continuously deploy to. But that takes us back to Issue 1: we currently have a 1:1 solution to Azure deployment target. Issue 3: SQL and other custom tasks. Let’s be honest and address the elephant in the room: I need to get some sleep because I see an elephant in the room. But seriously, I can’t think of an application I have touched in the last 10 years that doesn’t need to consider SQL changes when deploying code and upgrading an environment. Microsoft seems perfectly content to ignore this elephant for now: yes, they’ve added Data Tier Applications. But let’s be honest with ourselves again: no one really uses it, and it’s not suitable for anything more complex than a Hello World sample project database. Why? Because it doesn’t fit well into a great source control story. Developers make stored procedure and table changes all day long while coding complex applications, and if someone forgets to go update the DACPAC before the automated deployment, you have a broken build until it’s completed. Developers – not just DBAs – also like to work with SQL in SQL tools, not in Visual Studio. I’m really picking on SQL because that’s generally the biggest concern that I hear. But we need to account for any custom tasks as well in the build process.   The Solutions… ? We’ve taken a look at how this all works, and addressed the shortcomings. In my next post (which I promise will be very, very soon), I will detail how I’ve overcome these shortcomings and used this foundation to create a mature, flexible model for deploying my app – any version, any time, to any environment.

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• PASS: Election Changes for 2011

  - by Bill Graziano

  Last year after the election, the PASS Board created an Election Review Committee.  This group was charged with reviewing our election procedures and making suggestions to improve the process.  You can read about the formation of the group and review some of the intermediate work on the site – especially in the forums. I was one of the members of the group along with Joe Webb (Chair), Lori Edwards, Brian Kelley, Wendy Pastrick, Andy Warren and Allen White.  This group worked from October to April on our election process.  Along the way we: Interviewed interested parties including former NomCom members, Board candidates and anyone else that came forward. Held a session at the Summit to allow interested parties to discuss the issues Had numerous conference calls and worked through the various topics I can’t thank these people enough for the work they did.  They invested a tremendous number of hours thinking, talking and writing about our elections.  I’m proud to say I was a member of this group and thoroughly enjoyed working with everyone (even if I did finally get tired of all the calls.) The ERC delivered their recommendations to the PASS Board prior to our May Board meeting.  We reviewed those and made a few modifications.  I took their recommendations and rewrote them as procedures while incorporating those changes.  Their original recommendations as well as our final document are posted at the ERC documents page.  Please take a second and read them BEFORE we start the elections.  If you have any questions please post them in the forums on the ERC site. (My final document includes a change log at the end that I decided to leave in.  If you want to know which areas to pay special attention to that’s a good start.) Many of those recommendations were already posted in the forums or in the blogs of individual ERC members.  Hopefully nothing in the ERC document is too surprising. In this post I’m going to walk through some of the key changes and talk about what I remember from both ERC and Board discussions.  I’ll pay a little extra attention to things the Board changed from the ERC.  I’d also encourage any of the Board or ERC members to blog their thoughts on this. The Nominating Committee will continue to exist.  Personally, I was curious to see what the non-Board ERC members would think about the NomCom.  There was broad agreement that a group to vet candidates had value to the organization. The NomCom will be composed of five members.  Two will be Board members and three will be from the membership at large.  The only requirement for the three community members is that you’ve volunteered in some way (and volunteering is defined very broadly).  We expect potential at-large NomCom members to participate in a forum on the PASS site to answer questions from the other PASS members. We’re going to hold an election to determine the three community members.  It will be closer to voting for Summit sessions than voting for Board members.  That means there won’t be multiple dedicated emails.  If you’re at all paying attention it will be easy to participate.  Personally I wanted it easy for those that cared to participate but not overwhelm those that didn’t care.  I think this strikes a good balance. There’s also a clause that in order to be considered a winner in this NomCom election, you must receive 10 votes.  This is something I suggested.  I have no idea how popular the NomCom election is going to be.  I just wanted a fallback that if no one participated and some random person got in with one or two votes.  Any open slots will be filled by the NomCom chair (usually the PASS Immediate Past President).  My assumption is that they would probably take the next highest vote getters unless they were throwing flames in the forums or clearly unqualified.  As a final check, the Board still approves the final NomCom. The NomCom is going to rank candidates instead of rating them.  This has interesting implications.  This was championed by another ERC member and I’m hoping they write something about it.  This will really force the NomCom to make decisions between candidates.  You can’t just rate everyone a 3 and be done with it.  It may also make candidates appear further apart than they actually are.  I’m looking forward talking with the NomCom after this election and getting their feedback on this. The PASS Board added an option to remove a candidate with a unanimous vote of the NomCom.  This was primarily put in place to handle people that lied on their application or had a criminal background or some other unusual situation and we figured it out. We list an explicit goal of three candidate per open slot. We also wanted an easy way to find the NomCom candidate rankings from the ballot.  Hopefully this will satisfy those that want a broad candidate pool and those that want the NomCom to identify the most qualified candidates. The primary spokesperson for the NomCom is the committee chair.  After the issues around the election last year we didn’t have a good communication plan in place.  We should have and that was a failure on the part of the Board.  If there is criticism of the election this year I hope that falls squarely on the Board.  The community members of the NomCom shouldn’t be fielding complaints over the election process.  That said, the NomCom is ranking candidates and we are forcing them to rank some lower than others.  I’m sure you’ll each find someone that you think should have been ranked differently.  I also want to highlight one other change to the process that we started last year and isn’t included in these documents.  I think the candidate forums on the PASS site were tremendously helpful last year in helping people to find out more about candidates.  That gives our members a way to ask hard questions of the candidates and publicly see their answers. This year we have two important groups to fill.  The first is the NomCom.  We need three people from our membership to step up and fill this role.  It won’t be easy.  You will have to make subjective rankings of your fellow community members.  Your actions will be important in deciding who the future leaders of PASS will be.  There’s a 50/50 chance that one of the people you interview will be the President of PASS someday.  This is not a responsibility to be taken lightly. The second is the slate of candidates.  If you’ve ever thought about running for the Board this is the year.  We’ve never had nine candidates on the ballot before.  Your chance of making it through the NomCom are higher than in any previous year.  Unfortunately the more of you that run, the more of you that will lose in the election.  And hopefully that competition will mean more community involvement and better Board members for PASS. Is this the end of changes to the election process?  It isn’t.  Every year that I’ve been on the Board the election process has changed.  Some years there have been small changes and some years there have been large changes.  After this election we’ll look at how the process worked and decide what steps to take – just like we do every year.

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• Thou shalt not put code on a piedestal - Code is a tool, no more, no less

  - by Ralf Westphal

  “Write great code and everything else becomes easier” is what Paul Pagel believes in. That´s his version of an adage by Brian Marick he cites: “treat code as an end, not just a means.” And he concludes: “My post-Agile world is software craftsmanship.” I wonder, if that´s really the way to go. Will “simply” writing great code lead the software industry into the light? He´s alluding to the philosopher Kant who proposed, a human beings should never be treated as a means, but always as an end. But should we transfer this ethical statement into the world of software? I doubt it.   Reason #1: Human beings are categorially different from code. They are autonomous entities who need to find a way of living happily together. To Kant it seemed this goal could only be reached if nobody (ab)used a human being for his/her purposes. Because using a human being, i.e. treating it as a means, would contradict the fundamental autonomy and freedom of human beings. People should hold up a symmetric view of their relationships: Since nobody wants to be (ab)used, nobody should (ab)use anybody else. If you want to be treated decently, with respect, in accordance with your own free will - which means as an end - then do the same to other people. Code is dead, it´s a product, it´s a tool for people to reach their goals. No company spends any money on code other than to save money or earn money in the long run. Code is not a puppy. Enterprises do not commission software development to just feel good in its company. Code is not a buddy. Code is a slave, if you will. A mechanical slave, a non-tangible robot. Code is a tool, is a tool. And if we start to treat it differently, if we elevate its status unduely… I guess that will contort our relationship in a contraproductive way. Please get me right: Just because something is “just a tool”, “just a product” does not mean we should not be careful while designing, building, using it. Right to the contrary. We should be very careful when writing code – but not for the code´s sake! We should be careful because we respect our customers who are fellow human beings who should be treated as an end. If we are careless, neglectful, ignorant when producing code on their behalf, then we´re using them. Being sloppy means you´re caring more for yourself that for your customer. You´re then treating the customer as a means to fulfill some of your own needs. That´s plain unethical behavior.   Reason #2: The focus should always be on your purpose, not on any tool. But if code is treated as an end, then the focus is on the code. That might sound right, because where else should be your focus as a software developer? But, well, I´d say, your focus should be on delivering value to your customer. Because in the end your customer does not care if you write a single line of code. She just wants her problem to be solved. Solving problems is the purpose of any contractor. Code must be treated just as a means, a tool we know how to handle very well. But if we´re really trying to be craftsmen then we should be conscious about exactly that and act ethically. That means we must never be so focused on our tool as to be unable to suggest better solutions to the problems of our customers than code.   I´m all with Paul when he urges us to “Write great code”. Sure, if you need to write code, then by all means do so. Write the best code you can think of – and then try to improve it. Paul has all the best intentions when he signs Brians “treat code as an end” - but as we all know: “The road to hell is paved with best intentions” ;-) Yes, I can imagine a “hell of code focus”. In fact, I don´t need to imagine it, I´m seeing it quite often. Because code hell is whereever two developers stand together and are so immersed in talking about all sorts of coding tricks, design patterns, code smells, technologies, platforms, tools that they lose sight of the big picture. Talking about TDD or SOLID or refactoring is a sign of consciousness – relative to the “cowboy coders” view of the world. But from yet another point of view TDD, SOLID, and refactoring are just cures for ailments within a system. And I fear, if “Writing great code” is the only focus or the main focus of software development, then we as an industry lose the ability to see that. Focus draws a line around something, it defines a horizon for perceptions and thinking. So if we focus on code our horizon ends where “the land of code” ends. I don´t think that should be our professional attitude.   So what about Software Craftsmanship as the next big thing after Agility? I think Software Craftsmanship has an important message for all software developers and beyond. But to make it the successor of the Agility movement seems to miss a point. Agility never claimed to solve all software development problems, I´d say. So to blame it for having missed out on certain aspects of it is wrong. If I had to summarize Agility in one word I´d say “Value”. Agility put value for the customer back in software development. Focus on delivering value early and often – that´s Agility´s mantra. All else follows from that. And I ask you: Is that obsolete? Is delivering value not hip anymore? No, sure not. That´s our very purpose as software developers. So how can Agility become obsolete and need to be replaced? We need to do away with this “either/or”-thinking. It´s either Agility or Lean or Software Craftsmanship or whatnot. Instead we should start integrating concepts and movements. Think “both/and”. Think Agility plus Software Craftsmanship plus Lean plus whatnot. We don´t neet to tear down anything from a piedestal and replace it with a new idol. Instead we should do away with piedestals and arrange whatever is helpful is a circle. Then we can turn to concepts, movements for whatever they are best. After 10 years of Agility we should be able to identify what it was good at – and keep that. Keep Agility around and add whatever Agility was lacking or never concerned with. Add whatever is at the core of Software Craftsmanship. Add whatever is at the core of Lean etc. But don´t call out the age of Post-Agility. Because it better never will end. Because once we start to lose Agility´s core we´re losing focus of the customer.

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• Upgrading from TFS 2010 RC to TFS 2010 RTM done

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  Today is the big day, with the Launch of Visual Studio 2010 already done in Asia, and rolling around the world towards us, we are getting ready for the RTM (Released). We have had TFS 2010 in Production for nearly 6 months and have had only minimal problems. Update 12th April 2010  – Added Scott Hanselman’s tweet about the MSDN download release time. SSW was the first company in the world outside of Microsoft to deploy Visual Studio 2010 Team Foundation Server to production, not once, but twice. I am hoping to make it 3 in a row, but with all the hype around the new version, and with it being a production release and not just a go-live, I think there will be a lot of competition. Developers: MSDN will be updated with #vs2010 downloads and details at 10am PST *today*! @shanselman - Scott Hanselman Same as before, we need to Uninstall 2010 RC and install 2010 RTM. The installer will take care of all the complexity of actually upgrading any schema changes. If you are upgrading from TFS 2008 to TFS2010 you can follow our Rules To Better TFS 2010 Migration and read my post on our successes.   We run TFS 2010 in a Hyper-V virtual environment, so we have the advantage of running a snapshot as well as taking a DB backup. Done - Snapshot the hyper-v server Microsoft does not support taking a snapshot of a running server, for very good reason, and Brian Harry wrote a post after my last upgrade with the reason why you should never snapshot a running server. Done - Uninstall Visual Studio Team Explorer 2010 RC You will need to uninstall all of the Visual Studio 2010 RC client bits that you have on the server. Done - Uninstall TFS 2010 RC Done - Install TFS 2010 RTM Done - Configure TFS 2010 RTM Pick the Upgrade option and point it at your existing “tfs_Configuration” database to load all of the existing settings Done - Upgrade the SharePoint Extensions Upgrade Build Servers (Pending) Test the server The back out plan, and you should always have one, is to restore the snapshot. Upgrading to Team Foundation Server 2010 – Done The first thing you need to do is off the TFS server and then log into the Hyper-v server and create a snapshot. Figure: Make sure you turn the server off and delete all old snapshots before you take a new one I noticed that the snapshot that was taken before the Beta 2 to RC upgrade was still there. You should really delete old snapshots before you create a new one, but in this case the SysAdmin (who is currently tucked up in bed) asked me not to. I guess he is worried about a developer messing up his server Turn your server on and wait for it to boot in anticipation of all the nice shiny RTM’ness that is coming next. The upgrade procedure for TFS2010 is to uninstal the old version and install the new one. Figure: Remove Visual Studio 2010 Team Foundation Server RC from the system.   Figure: Most of the heavy lifting is done by the Uninstaller, but make sure you have removed any of the client bits first. Specifically Visual Studio 2010 or Team Explorer 2010.  Once the uninstall is complete, this took around 5 minutes for me, you can begin the install of the RTM. Running the 64 bit OS will allow the application to use more than 2GB RAM, which while not common may be of use in heavy load situations. Figure: It is always recommended to install the 64bit version of a server application where possible. I do not think it is likely, with SharePoint 2010 and Exchange 2010  and even Windows Server 2008 R2 being 64 bit only, I do not think there will be another release of a server app that is 32bit. You then need to choose what it is you want to install. This depends on how you are running TFS and on how many servers. In our case we run TFS and the Team Foundation Build Service (controller only) on out TFS server along with Analysis services and Reporting Services. But our SharePoint server lives elsewhere. Figure: This always confuses people, but in reality it makes sense. Don’t install what you do not need. Every extra you install has an impact of performance. If you are integrating with SharePoint you will need to run this install on every Front end server in your farm and don’t forget to upgrade your Build servers and proxy servers later. Figure: Selecting only Team Foundation Server (TFS) and Team Foundation Build Services (TFBS)   It is worth noting that if you have a lot of builds kicking off, and hence a lot of get operations against your TFS server, you can use a proxy server to cache the source control on another server in between your TFS server and your build servers. Figure: Installing Microsoft .NET Framework 4 takes the most time. Figure: Now run Windows Update, and SSW Diagnostic to make sure all your bits and bobs are up to date. Note: SSW Diagnostic will check your Power Tools, Add-on’s, Check in Policies and other bits as well. Configure Team Foundation Server 2010 – Done Now you can configure the server. If you have no key you will need to pick “Install a Trial Licence”, but it is only £500, or free with a MSDN subscription. Anyway, if you pick Trial you get 90 days to get your key. Figure: You can pick trial and add your key later using the TFS Server Admin. Here is where the real choices happen. We are doing an Upgrade from a previous version, so I will pick Upgrade the same as all you folks that are using the RC or TFS 2008. Figure: The upgrade wizard takes your existing 2010 or 2008 databases and upgraded them to the release.   Once you have entered your database server name you can click “List available databases” and it will show what it can upgrade. Figure: Select your database from the list and at this point, make sure you have a valid backup. At this point you have not made ANY changes to the databases. At this point the configuration wizard will load configuration from your existing database if you have one. If you are upgrading TFS 2008 refer to Rules To Better TFS 2010 Migration. Mostly during the wizard the default values will suffice, but depending on the configuration you want you can pick different options. Figure: Set the application tier account and Authentication method to use. We use NTLM to keep things simple as we host our TFS server externally for our remote developers.  Figure: Setting your TFS server URL’s to be the remote URL’s allows the reports to be accessed without using VPN. Very handy for those remote developers. Figure: Detected the existing Warehouse no problem. Figure: Again we love green ticks. It gives us a warm fuzzy feeling. Figure: The username for connecting to Reporting services should be a domain account (if you are on a domain that is). Figure: Setup the SharePoint integration to connect to your external SharePoint server. You can take the option to connect later.   You then need to run all of your readiness checks. These check can save your life! it will check all of the settings that you have entered as well as checking all the external services are configures and running properly. There are two reasons that TFS 2010 is so easy and painless to install where previous version were not. Microsoft changes the install to two steps, Install and configuration. The second reason is that they have pulled out all of the stops in making the install run all the checks necessary to make sure that once you start the install that it will complete. if you find any errors I recommend that you report them on http://connect.microsoft.com so everyone can benefit from your misery.   Figure: Now we have everything setup the configuration wizard can do its work.  Figure: Took a while on the “Web site” stage for some point, but zipped though after that.  Figure: last wee bit. TFS Needs to do a little tinkering with the data to complete the upgrade. Figure: All upgraded. I am not worried about the yellow triangle as SharePoint was being a little silly Exception Message: TF254021: The account name or password that you specified is not valid. (type TfsAdminException) Exception Stack Trace:    at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Management.Controls.WizardCommon.AccountSelectionControl.TestLogon(String connectionString)    at System.ComponentModel.BackgroundWorker.WorkerThreadStart(Object argument) [Info   @16:10:16.307] Benign exception caught as part of verify: Exception Message: TF255329: The following site could not be accessed: http://projects.ssw.com.au/. The server that you specified did not return the expected response. Either you have not installed the Team Foundation Server Extensions for SharePoint Products on this server, or a firewall is blocking access to the specified site or the SharePoint Central Administration site. For more information, see the Microsoft Web site (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=161206). (type TeamFoundationServerException) Exception Stack Trace:    at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client.SharePoint.WssUtilities.VerifyTeamFoundationSharePointExtensions(ICredentials credentials, Uri url)    at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Admin.VerifySharePointSitesUrl.Verify() Inner Exception Details: Exception Message: TF249064: The following Web service returned an response that is not valid: http://projects.ssw.com.au/_vti_bin/TeamFoundationIntegrationService.asmx. This Web service is used for the Team Foundation Server Extensions for SharePoint Products. Either the extensions are not installed, the request resulted in HTML being returned, or there is a problem with the URL. Verify that the following URL points to a valid SharePoint Web application and that the application is available: http://projects.ssw.com.au. If the URL is correct and the Web application is operating normally, verify that a firewall is not blocking access to the Web application. (type TeamFoundationServerInvalidResponseException) Exception Data Dictionary: ResponseStatusCode = InternalServerError I’ll look at SharePoint after, probably the SharePoint box just needs a restart or a kick If there is a problem with SharePoint it will come out in testing, But I will definatly be passing this on to Microsoft.   Upgrading the SharePoint connector to TFS 2010 You will need to upgrade the Extensions for SharePoint Products and Technologies on all of your SharePoint farm front end servers. To do this uninstall  the TFS 2010 RC from it in the same way as the server, and then install just the RTM Extensions. Figure: Only install the SharePoint Extensions on your SharePoint front end servers. TFS 2010 supports both SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint 2010.   Figure: When you configure SharePoint it uploads all of the solutions and templates. Figure: Everything is uploaded Successfully. Figure: TFS even remembered the settings from the previous installation, fantastic.   Upgrading the Team Foundation Build Servers to TFS 2010 Just like on the SharePoint servers you will need to upgrade the Build Server to the RTM. Just uninstall TFS 2010 RC and then install only the Team Foundation Build Services component. Unlike on the SharePoint server you will probably have some version of Visual Studio installed. You will need to remove this as well. (Coming Soon) Connecting Visual Studio 2010 / 2008 / 2005 and Eclipse to TFS2010 If you have developers still on Visual Studio 2005 or 2008 you will need do download the respective compatibility pack: Visual Studio Team System 2005 Service Pack 1 Forward Compatibility Update for Team Foundation Server 2010 Visual Studio Team System 2008 Service Pack 1 Forward Compatibility Update for Team Foundation Server 2010 If you are using Eclipse you can download the new Team Explorer Everywhere install for connecting to TFS. Get your developers to check that you have the latest version of your applications with SSW Diagnostic which will check for Service Packs and hot fixes to Visual Studio as well.   Technorati Tags: TFS,TFS2010,TFS 2010,Upgrade

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• When should I use Areas in TFS instead of Team Projects

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  Well, it depends…. If you are a small company that creates a finite number of internal projects then you will find it easier to create a single project for each of your products and have TFS do the heavy lifting with reporting, SharePoint sites and Version Control. But what if you are not… Update 9th March 2010 Michael Fourie gave me some feedback which I have integrated. Ed Blankenship via @edblankenship offered encouragement and a nice quote. Ewald Hofman gave me a couple of Cons, and maybe a few more soon. Ewald’s company, Avanade, currently uses Areas, but it looks like the manual management is getting too much and the project is getting cluttered. What if you are likely to have hundreds of projects, possibly with a multitude of internal and external projects? You might have 1 project for a customer or 10. This is the situation that most consultancies find themselves in and thus they need a more sustainable and maintainable option. What I am advocating is that we should have 1 “Team Project” per customer, and use areas to create “sub projects” within that single “Team Project”. "What you describe is what we generally do internally and what we recommend. We make very heavy use of area path to categorize the work within a larger project." - Brian Harry, Microsoft Technical Fellow & Product Unit Manager for Team Foundation Server   "We tend to use areas to segregate multiple projects in the same team project and it works well." - Tiago Pascoal, Visual Studio ALM MVP   "In general, I believe this approach provides consistency [to multi-product engagements] and lowers the administration and maintenance costs. All good." - Michael Fourie, Visual Studio ALM MVP   “@MrHinsh BTW, I'm very much a fan of very large, if not huge, team projects in TFS. Just FYI :) Use Areas & Iterations.” Ed Blankenship, Visual Studio ALM MVP   This would mean that SSW would have a single Team Project called “SSW” that contains all of our internal projects and consequently all of the Areas and Iteration move down one hierarchy to accommodate this. Where we would have had “\SSW\Sprint 1” we now have “\SSW\SqlDeploy\Sprint1” with “SqlDeploy” being our internal project. At the moment SSW has over 70 internal projects and more than 170 total projects in TFS. This method has long term benefits that help to simplify the support model for companies that often have limited internal support time and many projects. But, there are implications as TFS does not provide this model “out-of-the-box”. These implications stretch across Areas, Iterations, Queries, Project Portal and Version Control. Michael made a good comment, he said: I agree with your approach, assuming that in a multi-product engagement with a client, they are happy to adopt the same process template across all products. If they are not, then it’ll either be easy to convince them or there is a valid reason for having a different template - Michael Fourie, Visual Studio ALM MVP   At SSW we have a standard template that we use and this is applied across the board, to all of our projects. We even apply any changes to the core process template to all of our existing projects as well. If you have multiple projects for the same clients on multiple templates and you want to keep it that way, then this approach will not work for you. However, if you want to standardise as we have at SSW then this approach may benefit you as well. Implications around Areas Areas should be used for topological classification/isolation of work items. You can think of this as architecture areas, organisational areas or even the main features of your application. In our scenario there is an additional top level item that represents the Project / Product that we want to chop our Team Project into. Figure: Creating a sub area to represent a product/project is easy. <teamproject> <teamproject>\<Functional Area/module whatever> Becomes: <teamproject> <teamproject>\<ProjectName>\ <teamproject>\<ProjectName>\<Functional Area/module whatever> Implications around Iterations Iterations should be used for chronological classification/isolation of work items. This could include isolated time boxes, milestones or release timelines and really depends on the logical flow of your project or projects. Due to the new level in Area we need to add the same level to Iteration. This is primarily because it is unlikely that the sprints in each of your projects/products will start and end at the same time. This is just a reality of managing multiple projects. Figure: Adding the same Area value to Iteration as the top level item adds flexibility to Iteration. <teamproject>\Sprint 1 Or <teamproject>\Release 1\Sprint 1 Becomes: <teamproject>\<ProjectName>\Sprint 1 Or <teamproject>\<ProjectName>\Release 1\Sprint 1 Implications around Queries Queries are used to filter your work items based on a specified level of granularity. There are a number of queries that are built into a project created using the MSF Agile 5.0 template, but we now have multiple projects and it would be a pain to have to edit all of the work items every time we changed project, and that would only allow one team to work on one project at a time.   Figure: The Queries that are created in a normal MSF Agile 5.0 project do not quite suit our new needs. In order for project contributors to be able to query based on their project we need a couple of things. The first thing I did was to create an “_Area Template” folder that has a copy of the project layout with all the queries setup to filter based on the “_Area Template” Area and the “_Sprint template” you can see in the Area and Iteration views. Figure: The template is currently easily drag and drop, but you then need to edit the queries to point at the right Area and Iteration. This needs a tool. I then created an “Areas” folder to hold all of the area specific queries. So, when you go to create a new TFS Sub-Project you just drag “_Area Template” while holding “Ctrl” and drop it onto “Areas”. There is a little setup here. That said I managed it in around 10 minutes which is not so bad, and I can imagine it being quite easy to build a tool to create these queries Figure: These new queries can be configured in around 10 minutes, which includes setting up the Area and Iteration as well. Version Control What about your source code? Well, that is the easiest of the lot. Just create a sub folder for each of your projects/products.   Figure: Creating sub folders in source control is easy as “Right click | Create new folder”. <teamproject>\DEV\Main\ Becomes: <teamproject>\<ProjectName>\DEV\Main\ Conclusion I think it is up to each company to make a call on how you want to configure your Team Projects and it depends completely on how many projects/products you are going to have for each customer including yourself. If we decide to utilise this route it will require some configuration to get our 170+ projects into this format, and I will probably be writing some tools to help. Pros You only have one project to upgrade when a process template changes – After going through an upgrade of over 170 project prior to the changes in the RC I can tell you that that many projects is no fun. Standardises your Process Template – You will always have the same Process implementation across projects/products without exception You get tighter control over the permissions – Yes, you can do this on a standard Team Project, but it gets a lot easier with practice. You can “move” work items from one “product” to another – Have we not always wanted to do that. You can rename your projects – Wahoo: everyone wants to do this, now you can. One set of Reporting Services reports to manage – You set an area and iteration to run reports anyway, so you may as well set both. Simplified Check-In Policies– There is only one set of check-in policies per client. This simplifies administration of policies. Simplified Alerts – As alerts are applied across multiple projects this simplifies your alert rules as per client. Cons All of these cons could be mitigated by a custom tool that helps automate creation of “Sub-projects” within Team Projects. This custom tool could create areas, Iteration, permissions, SharePoint and queries. It just does not exist yet :) You need to configure the Areas and Iterations You need to configure the permissions You may need to configure sub sites for SharePoint (depends on your requirement) – If you have two projects/products in the same Team Project then you will not see the burn down for each one out-of-the-box, but rather a cumulative for the Team Project. This is not really that much of a problem as you would have to configure your burndown graphs for your current iteration anyway. note: When you create a sub site to a TFS linked portal it will inherit the settings of its parent site :) This is fantastic as it means that you can easily create sub sites and then set the Area and Iteration path in each of the reports to be the correct one. Every team wants their own customization (via Ewald Hofman) - small teams of 2 persons against teams of 30 – or even outsourcing – need their own process, you cannot allow that because everybody gets the same work item types. note: Luckily at SSW this is not a problem as our template is standardised across all projects and customers. Large list of builds (via Ewald Hofman) – As the build list in Team Explorer is just a flat list it can get very cluttered. note: I would mitigate this by removing any build that has not been run in over 30 days. The build template and workflow will still be available in version control, but it will clean the list. Feedback Now that I have explained this method, what do you think? What other pros and cons can you see? What do you think of this approach? Will you be using it? What tools would you like to support you?   Technorati Tags: Visual Studio ALM,TFS Administration,TFS,Team Foundation Server,Project Planning,TFS Customisation

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• top tweets WebLogic Partner Community – November 2011

  - by JuergenKress

  Send us your tweets @wlscommunity #WebLogicCommunity and follow us on twitter http://twitter.com/wlscommunity glassfish GlassFish Marek’s JAX-RS 2.0 content from Devoxx 2011 – bit.ly/sp2NJO chriscmuir chriscmuir New blog post: ADF bug: missing af:column borders in af:table for IE7 – t.co/81np2jug chriscmuir chriscmuir Reading: Oracle’s ADF Rich Client User Interface (RCUI) Guidelines – oracle.com/webfolder/ux/m… netbeans NetBeans Team Bottlenecks be gone! #Java Performance Tuning workshop in Munich w Kirk Pepperdine, Nov 29-Dec 2: ow.ly/7Akh5 OracleBlogs OracleBlogs Creating ADF Faces Comamnd Button at Runtime ow.ly/1fM9dE alexismp Alexis MP blogged "GlassFish Back from Devoxx 2011, Mature Java EE 6 and EE 7 well on its way" – bit.ly/rP8LV0 JDeveloper JDeveloper & ADF Usage of jQuery in ADF dlvr.it/x3t84 20 hours ago Favorite Retweet Reply OTNArchBeat OTNArchBeat Webcast: Introducing Oracle WebLogic Server 12c: Developer Deep Dive – Dec 1 – 11am PT / 2pm ET bit.ly/t61W4G oraclepartners ORCL PartnerNetwork Brand new Oracle WebLogic 12c will launch on December 1, 10AM PT with a global Webcast highlighting salient… t.co/aflQQ3IX OracleBlogs OracleBlogs JDeveloper and ADF at UKOUG t.co/2CQTiB9n fnimphiu Frank Nimphius Attending UKOUG? All ADF sessions at a glance: t.co/TcMNTMXp 21 Nov Favorite Retweet Reply JDeveloper JDeveloper & ADF Free Webinar ‘ADF Task Flows for Beginners’, information and registration t.co/66jXnGgo via javafx4you javafx4you Java Developer Workshop #2 – Dec 1, 2011 @ Oracle Aoyama center in Tokyo t.co/8p9q3W2B AMIS_Services AMIS Services #vacature #Oracle #ADF ontwikkelaars. bit.ly/AMISADF Gun jezelf een nieuwe uitdaging? Meer op: dld.bz/azZ5N OracleBlogs OracleBlogs Launch Invitation: Introducing Oracle WebLogic Server 12c t.co/bRxCKwAk fnimphiu Frank Nimphius The brand new WebLogic 12c will be released on December 1st 2011 !!! Register for online launch event t.co/pPScg4Xh glassfish GlassFish Announcing Oracle WebLogic 12c – t.co/qh8TdFEl AdamBien Adam Bien Sun Coding Conventions–The Only Standard (Stop Inventing): Code written according to the Sun Coding Conventions… t.co/qaUWp5Mz wlscommunity WebLogic Community Launch Invitation: Introducing Oracle WebLogic Server 12c wp.me/p1LMIb-4y andrejusb Andrejus Baranovskis Andrejus Baranovskis’s Blog: Custom Exception Registration for ADF BC EO Attribute fb.me/1m6nXQD52 MNEMONIC01 Michel Schildmeijer Blog by Michel Schildmeijer: "Oracle WebLogic 12c has been announced" bit.ly/vk6WQL glassfish GlassFish Tab Sweep – Coherence, SBT for GlassFish, OSGi in question, Java EE plugins, … t.co/tVIL95lj OracleBlogs OracleBlogs JavaFX 2.0 at Devoxx 2011 ow.ly/1fJ5iT JDeveloper JDeveloper & ADF Experimenting with ADF BC Application Module Pool Tuning dlvr.it/wjLC1 OracleWebLogic Oracle WebLogic Brand New #WebLogic 12c Launch Event, Dec 1 10am PT. Hasan Rizvi, SVP Fusion Middleware. Developer session. bit.ly/weblogic12clau… JDeveloper JDeveloper & ADF PopUp and Esc/Cancel operations. ADF 11g dlvr.it/whrmC JDeveloper JDeveloper & ADF BPM Workspace: issue loading ADF task flows t.co/vk1gKPx5 OpenJDK OpenJDK Kelly O’Hair — OpenJDK B24 Available : t.co/1bFws6Nw JDeveloper JDeveloper & ADF Oracle ADF setting Task flow to use same page definition file of caller page t.co/9k6UIoYZ JDeveloper JDeveloper & ADF Master Detail Data presentation and CRUD Operations. Detail records in an Editable Popup. ADF 11g t.co/H8uudR0Y JDeveloper JDeveloper & ADF Entity Attribute Validation Rule (Business Rule) based on Master View Object Attribute Example ADF 11g t.co/1agxEQcZ oracletechnet Justin Kestelyn Webcast: Oracle WebLogic Server 12c Launch/Developer Deep-Dive (Dec. 1) t.co/OVBdGKzC JDeveloper JDeveloper & ADF How to render different node icons for different tree levels dlvr.it/wY2jL JDeveloper JDeveloper & ADF Query Component with ‘dynamic’ view criteria dlvr.it/wXlF1 JDeveloper JDeveloper & ADF How to play Flash .swf file in Oracle ADF application t.co/zaSONWAH Devoxx Devoxx Duke at the #Devoxx 2011 Noxx Party! pic.twitter.com/bVJWyu1Z brhubart Bob Rhubart Adam Leftik: JavaEE adoption continues to increase, reaching 40+ million downloads this year. #qconsf11 JDeveloper JDeveloper & ADF Free #ODTUG Seminar – #ADF Task Flows for Beginners – sign up today. www3.gotomeeting.com/register/13372… java Java New Project: OpenJFX j.mp/tI4k3s #javafx #openjdk #devoxx << JavaFX is open source! /via frankmunz Frank Munz WebLogic 12c launch event Dec 1st. t.co/jQKinBqN brhubart Bob Rhubart Spring to Java EE Migration | David Heffelfinger feedly.com/k/td8ccG odtug ODTUG Mark your calendars and register for our upcoming webinars: bit.ly/dWKG1C ADF Task Flows & Measuring Scalability & Performance w/TCP myfear Markus Eisele Anybody willing to take this question? Using #JavaMail with #Weblogic Server bit.ly/stJOET AMIS_Services AMIS Services 20-22 december #training #Oracle JHeadstart #11g, productief ontwikkelen met ADF. Schrijf je in op: amis.nl/trainingen/ora… AdamBien Adam Bien Stress Testing Java EE 6 Applications – Free Article In Free Java Magazine: In the November / December 2011 issu… bit.ly/vmzKkc java Java New Tech Article: Spring to #JavaEE Migration t.co/0EvdHNxb OracleBlogs OracleBlogs WebLogic Java record SPARC T4-4 Servers Set World Record on SPECjEnterprise2010 t.co/Eu1b6ZE0 OracleBlogs OracleBlogs What Is JavaFX? ow.ly/1frb6I OTNArchBeat OTNArchBeat The openJDK Windows Binary Download | Adam Bien ow.ly/7fRiG wlscommunity WebLogic Community WebLogic – Java record – SPARC T4-4 Servers Set World Record on SPECjEnterprise2010 glassfish GlassFish "youtube.com/java" blogs.oracle.com/theaquarium/en… OTNArchBeat OTNArchBeat Beta Testing Concludes: 1Z1-102 – "Oracle WebLogic Server 11g: System Administration I" (Oracle Certification) ow.ly/7fJCl wlscommunity WebLogic Community A deep dive in Oracle WebLogic! @ Contribute – November 29th, 2011 Kontich Belgium wp.me/p1LMIb-4u glassfish GlassFish Gartner’s Latest Enterprise Application Server Magic Quadrant – Oracle’s leadership t.co/aYDqipD8 OpenJDK OpenJDK Terrence Barr – Open sourcing of JavaFX: OpenJFX Project proposed – bit.ly/uKVnEl OpenJDK OpenJDK Maurizio Cimadamore – Testing overload resolution: bit.ly/vgXAbQ java Java Java User Groups Roundup, November 2011 : t.co/hea6vVnk /via @robilad << in German JavaSpotlight The Java Spotlight Java Spotlight Episode 54: Stuart Marks on the Coinification of JDK7 goo.gl/fb/3UXoM OTNArchBeat OTNArchBeat Article Series: Migrating Spring to Java EE 6 | Arun Gupta bit.ly/twUJtz glassfish GlassFish New Java EE 6 Hands-On lab, Devoxx-approved! bit.ly/vup5uE java Java Brian Goetz’s enthusiasm for Java is palpable! #devoxx interview adf_emg ADF EMG "ADF testing with a mock framework" – what is a mock framework? Visit the forum and see: groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/… java Java Taping a bunch of interviews today with Java experts at #devoxx. View on Parleys.com tomorrow. glassfish GlassFish New screencast to configure and run a cross-machine cluster using GlassFish 3.1.1 in < 7 mins faissalb.blogspot.com/2011/11/glassf… (via @bfaissal) glassfish GlassFish Oracle Contributor Agreements – New Home! bit.ly/tD2eLo OTNArchBeat OTNArchBeat Java Magazine – by and for the Java Community- inaugural issue bit.ly/tTv8UD OTNArchBeat OTNArchBeat The Heroes of Java: Michael Hüttermann | @MyFear bit.ly/rYYOFe javafx4you javafx4you Development with #JavaFX on #Linux j.mp/uOpe69 #not_for_the_faint_of_heart java Java Contribute Technical Questions for Java Experts at #devoxx bit.ly/up2cN0 netbeans NetBeans Team A simple REST service using #NetBeans 7, #Java Servlet, and #JAXB: t.co/pKkufsD8 AdamBien Adam Bien The most beautiful, and portable slide of the whole #jaxcon for "Die Hard Java EE 6"session checked-in: kenai.com/projects/javae… jaxlondon JAX London Mark Little’s (@nmcl) excellent keynote from #jaxlondon ‘Middleware Everywhere…’ is available in full – t.co/8vBmtDJ1 AdamBien Adam Bien Calculator sample from "Die Hard Java EE 6" #jaxcon session checked-in: t.co/0UqaULfg OTNArchBeat OTNArchBeat ADF Faces – a logic bomb in the order of bean instantiations | @ChrisCMuir bit.ly/vjqRaZ OracleBlogs OracleBlogs ODI 11g y JMS Queue de Weblogic ow.ly/1fzfQJ frankmunz Frank Munz Which WebLogic book do you recommend? 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New Service to Promote Your Events t.co/qTgyEpY4 wlscommunity WebLogic Community Oracle Weblogic Server 11gR1 PS2: Administration Essentials book and eBook andrejusb Andrejus Baranovskis Andrejus Baranovskis’s Blog: Stress Testing Oracle ADF BC Applications – Intern… andrejusb.blogspot.com/2011/11/stress… OracleBlogs OracleBlogs Frank Nimphius presenting a full day of Oracle ADF in Switzerland ow.ly/1fxU78 java Java #JavaEE and #GlassFish: #JavaOne11 Slides, Demos, Replays, Hands-on Labs t.co/tLM0ehrD OracleBlogs OracleBlogs weblogic.security.SecurityInitializationException: Authentication for user weblogic denied ow.ly/1fxmiu glassfish GlassFish The Last Migration – GlassFish Wiki : t.co/Dc5FT1SJ OTNArchBeat OTNArchBeat A Successful Year of @MiddlewareMagic t.co/amcGGTTk OracleWebLogic Oracle WebLogic Unbeatable Performance for your Cloud Applications with Exalogic, #OracleCoherence and #WebLogic. ow.ly/7lYKm OTNArchBeat OTNArchBeat Stress Testing Oracle ADF BC Applications – Passivation and Activation | @AndrejusB bit.ly/sASssL OTNArchBeat OTNArchBeat Review: "Oracle Weblogic Server 11gR1 PS2: Administration Essentials" by Michel Schildmeijer | @MyFear t.co/ll6ra0J9 OTNArchBeat OTNArchBeat GlassFish 3.1.2 themes and features | The Aquarium bit.ly/vVqr9r Andre_van_Dalen Andre van Dalen Masterclass: Advanced Oracle ADF 11g lnkd.in/M_45Pi AdamBien Adam Bien The "lunch" edition of RentACar is pushed into: kenai.com/projects/javae… #wjax AdamBien Adam Bien In munich, room munich at #wjax. Welcome to #javaee workshop. Gather your questions. 15 minutes to go lucasjellema Lucas Jellema Review by Markus of Michel’s book: t.co/41U9wvOb In short: valuable for novice WLS users, maybe not so much for die-hard WLS admin. biemond Edwin Biemond “@myfear: [blog] #Review: "#Weblogic Server 11gR1 PS2: Administration Essentials" t.co/LsODcb3e” got the same conclusion on amazon glassfish GlassFish Practical advice for deploying Lift apps to GlassFish: bit.ly/t3KUml glassfish GlassFish The unbearable lightness of GlassFish t.co/v9307SEJ javafx4you javafx4you Building Java EE applications in JavaFX: JavaFX 2.0, FXML and Spring j.mp/tiMDUh andrejusb Andrejus Baranovskis Andrejus Baranovskis’s Blog: Stress Testing Oracle ADF BC Applications – Passiv… andrejusb.blogspot.com/2011/11/stress… wlscommunity WebLogic Community “@AMIS_Services: Follow @amis_services To Win a copy of SOA Suite 11g Handbook by @lucasjellema dld.bz/axD22 pls RT” excellent book! glassfish GlassFish GlassFish 3.1.2 themes and features bit.ly/uEc6uZ biemond Edwin Biemond Weblogic pre-sales exam was hard, you really need to know the versions , upgrade path and have a score above 80% monkchips James Governor The Rise and Fall and Rise of Java. JAX 2011 london keynote. how big data and the web are floating the boat. slidesha.re/u3Kzlo glassfish GlassFish Tab Sweep – Jersey, Hudson, GlassFish Hosting, GC’s compared, Spring to JavaEE, Modularity, … bit.ly/u9Cc30 oracletechnet Justin Kestelyn Oracle Tuxedo: A renewed acquaintance t.co/gp0mmf20 OTNArchBeat OTNArchBeat Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse, OEPE 11.1.1.8 bit.ly/tC3eKp OracleBlogs OracleBlogs NetBeans HTML Editor and Groovy Editor in a Multiview Component (Part 2) ow.ly/1ftCeI myfear Markus Eisele [blog] #Oracle 2008 – 2011 in Gartners Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Application Servers t.co/2Bs1vgMZ myfear Markus Eisele [blog] #EclipseCon Europe – Java 7 in the Enterprise goo.gl/fb/r80df #ece2011 #java7 javafx4you javafx4you JavaFX 2.0 for Mac build b07 (developer preview) is available for download j.mp/vSwmBP Enjoy! #JavaFX #Mac OracleBlogs OracleBlogs A deep dive in Oracle WebLogic! @ Contribute November 29th, 2011 Kontich Belgium ow.ly/1fsEZs arungupta Arun Gupta #JavaEE7 slides from #jaxlondon and #jfall11 now available: slidesha.re/sh4iFq AdamBien Adam Bien Just checked-in the results of the #jaxlondon community night (somehow beer related): kenai.com/projects/javae… glassfish GlassFish GlassFish Podcast Episode #080 – User Stories, Part 3: Adam Bien and Sean Comerford (ESPN) blogs.oracle.com/glassfishpodca… glassfish GlassFish Story: t.co/jQPqihJb using GlassFish blogs.oracle.com/stories/entry/… "3000+ requests/sec" and more enterprisejava Java EE Mentions New blog post WebLogic deployment status checks for CI wp.me/pOOSs-F #weblogic #continuousintegration /vi… bit.ly/uZz0fk The become a member in the WebLogic Partner Community please first login at http://partner.oracle.com and then visit: http://www.oracle.com/partners/goto/wls-emea Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Wiki Technorati Tags: twitter,WebLogic,WebLogic Community,OPN,Oracle,Jürgen Kress

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