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• JMaghreb 2012 Trip Report

  - by arungupta

  JMaghreb is the inaugural Java conference organized by Morocco JUG. It is the biggest Java conference in Maghreb (5 countries in North West Africa). Oracle was the exclusive platinum sponsor with several others. The registrations had to be closed at 1412 for the free conference and several folks were already on the waiting list. Rabat with 531 registrations and Casablanca with 426 were the top cities. Some statistics ... 850+ attendees over 2 days, 500+ every day 30 sessions were delivered by 18 speakers from 10 different countries 10 sessions in French and 20 in English 6 of the speakers spoke at JavaOne 2012 8 will be at Devoxx Attendees from 5 different countries and 57 cities in Morocco 40.9% qualified them as professional and rest as students Topics ranged from HTML5, Java EE 7, ADF, JavaFX, MySQL, JCP, Vaadin, Android, Community, JCP Java EE 6 hands-on lab was sold out within 7 minutes and JavaFX in 12 minutes I gave the keynote along with Simon Ritter which was basically a recap of the Strategy and Technical keynotes presented at JavaOne 2012. An informal survey during the keynote showed the following numbers: 25% using NetBeans, 90% on Eclipse, 3 on JDeveloper, 1 on IntelliJ About 10 subscribers to free online Java magazine. This digital magazine is a comprehensive source of information for everything Java - subscribe for free!! About 10-15% using Java SE 7. Download JDK 7 and get started today! Even JDK 8 builds have been available for a while now. My second talk explained the core concepts of WebSocket and how JSR 356 is providing a standard API to build WebSocket-driven applications in Java EE 7. TOTD #183 explains how you can easily get started with WebSocket in GlassFish 4. The complete slide deck is available: Next day started with a community keynote by Sonya Barry. Some of us live the life of JCP, JSR, EG, EC, RI, etc every day, but not every body is. To address that, Sonya prepared an excellent introductory presentation providing an explanation of these terms and how java.net infrastructure supports Java development. The registration for the lab showed there is a definite demand for these technologies in this part of the world. I delivered the Java EE 6 hands-on lab to a packed room of about 120 attendees. Most of the attendees were able to progress and follow the lab instructions. Some of the attendees did not have a laptop but were taking extensive notes on paper notepads. Several attendees were already using Java EE 6 in their projects and typically they are the ones asking deep dive questions. Also gave out three copies of my recently released Java EE 6 Pocket Guide and new GlassFish t-shirts. Definitely feels happy to coach ~120 more Java developers learn standards-based enterprise Java programming. I also participated in a JCP BoF along with Werner, Sonya, and Badr. Adotp-a-JSR, java.net infrastructure, how to file a JSR, what is an RI, and other similar topics were discussed in a candid manner. You can follow @JMaghrebConf or check out their facebook page. java.net published a timely conversation with Badr El Houari - the fearless leader of the Morocco JUG team. Did you know that Morocco JUG stood for JCP EC elections (ADD LINK) ? Even though they did not get elected but did fairly well. Now some sample tweets from #JMaghreb ... #JMaghreb is over. Impressive for a first edition! Thanks @badrelhouari and all the @MoroccoJUG team ! Since you @speakjava : System.out.println("Thank you so much dear Tech Evangelist ! The JavaFX was pretty amazing !!! "); #JMaghreb @YounesVendetta @arungupta @JMaghrebConf Right ! hope he will be back to morocco again and again .. :) @Alji_ @arungupta @JMaghrebConf That dude is a genius ;) Put it on your wall :p @arungupta rocking Java EE 6 at @JMaghrebConf #Java #JavaEE #JMaghreb http://t.co/isl0Iq5p @sonyabarry you are an awesome speaker ;-) #JMaghreb rich more than 550 attendees in day one. Expecting more tomorrow! ongratulations @badrelhouari the organisation was great! The talks were pretty interesting, and the turnout was surprising at #JMaghreb! #JMaghreb is truly awesome... The speakers are unbelievable ! #JavaFX... Just amazing #JMaghreb Charmed by the talk about #javaFX ( nodes architecture, MVC, Lazy loading, binding... ) gotta start using it intead of SWT. #JMaghreb JavaFX is killing JFreeChart. It supports Charts a lot of kind of them ... #JMaghreb The british man is back #JMaghreb I do like him!! #JMaghreb @arungupta rocking @JMaghrebConf. pic.twitter.com/CNohA3PE @arungupta Great talk about the future of Java EE (JEE 7 & JEE 8) Thank you. #JMaghreb JEE7 more mooore power , leeess less code !! #JMaghreb They are simplifying the existing API for Java Message Service 2.0 #JMaghreb good to know , the more the code is simplified the better ! The Glassdoor guy #arungupta is doing it RIGHT ! #JMaghreb Great presentation of The Future of the Java Platform: Java EE 7, Java SE 8 & Beyond #jMaghreb @arungupta is a great Guy apparently #JMaghreb On a personal front, the hotel (Soiftel Jardin des Roses) was pretty nice and the location was perfect. There was a 1.8 mile loop dirt trail right next to it so I managed to squeeze some runs before my upcoming marathon. Also enjoyed some great Moroccan cuisine - Couscous, Tajine, mint tea, and moroccan salad. Visit to Kasbah of the Udayas, Hassan II (one of the tallest mosque in the world), and eating in a restaurant in a kasbah are some of the exciting local experiences. Now some pictures from the event (and around the city) ... And the complete album: Many thanks to Badr, Faisal, and rest of the team for organizing a great conference. They are already thinking about how to improve the content, logisitics, and flow for the next year. I'm certainly looking forward to JMaghreb 2.0 :-)

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• Silverlight for Windows Embedded Tutorial (step 5 and a bit of Windows Phone 7)

  - by Valter Minute

  If you haven’t spent the last week in the middle of the Sahara desert or traveling on a sled in the north pole area you should have heard something about the launch of Windows Phone 7 Series (or Windows Phone Series 7, or Windows Series Phone 7 or something like that). Even if you are in the middle of the desert or somewhere around the north pole you may have been reached by the news, since it seems that WP7S (using the full name will kill my available bandwidth!) is generating a lot of buzz in the development and IT communities. One of the most important aspects of this new platform is that it will be programmed using a new set of tools and frameworks, completely different from the ones used on older releases of Windows Mobile (or SmartPhone, or PocketPC or whatever…). WP7S applications can be developed using Silverlight or XNA. If you want to learn something more about WP7S development you can download the preview of Charles Petzold’s book about it: http://www.charlespetzold.com/phone/index.html Charles Petzold is also the author of “Programming Windows”, the first book I ever read about programming on Windows (it was Windows 3.0 at that time!). The fact that even I was able to learn how to develop Windows application is a proof of the quality of Petzold’s work. This book is up to his standards and the 150pages preview is already rich in technical contents without being boring or complicated to understand. I may be able to become a Windows Phone developer thanks to mr. Petzold. Mr. Petzold uses some nice samples to introduce the basic concepts of Silverlight development on WP7S. On this new platform you’ll use managed code to develop your application, so those samples can’t be ported on Windows CE R3 as they are, but I would like to take one of the first samples (called “SilverlightTapHello1”) and adapt it to Silverlight for Windows Embedded to show that even plain old native code can be used to develop “cool” user interfaces! The sample shows the standard WP7S title header and a textbox with an hello world message inside it. When the user touches the textbox, it will change its color. When the user touches the background (Grid) behind it, its default color (plain old White) will be restored. Let’s see how we can implement the same features on our embedded device! I took the XAML code of the sample (you can download the book samples here: http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/D/B/1DB49641-3956-41F1-BAFA-A021673C709E/CodeSamples_DRAFTPreview_ProgrammingWindowsPhone7Series.zip) and changed it a little bit to remove references to WP7S or managed runtime. If you compare the resulting files you will see that I was able to keep all the resources inside the App.xaml files and the structure of  MainPage.XAML almost intact. This is the Silverlight for Windows Embedded version of MainPage.XAML: <UserControl x:Class="SilverlightTapHello1.MainPage" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:phoneNavigation="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Phone.Controls;assembly=Microsoft.Phone.Controls.Navigation" xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008" xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006" mc:Ignorable="d" d:DesignWidth="480" d:DesignHeight="800" FontFamily="{StaticResource PhoneFontFamilyNormal}" FontSize="{StaticResource PhoneFontSizeNormal}" Foreground="{StaticResource PhoneForegroundBrush}" Width="640" Height="480">   <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="{StaticResource PhoneBackgroundBrush}"> <Grid.RowDefinitions> <RowDefinition Height="Auto"/> <RowDefinition Height="*"/> </Grid.RowDefinitions>   <!--TitleGrid is the name of the application and page title--> <Grid x:Name="TitleGrid" Grid.Row="0"> <TextBlock Text="SILVERLIGHT TAP HELLO #1" x:Name="textBlockPageTitle" Style="{StaticResource PhoneTextPageTitle1Style}"/> <TextBlock Text="main page" x:Name="textBlockListTitle" Style="{StaticResource PhoneTextPageTitle2Style}"/> </Grid>   <!--ContentGrid is empty. Place new content here--> <Grid x:Name="ContentGrid" Grid.Row="1" MouseLeftButtonDown="ContentGrid_MouseButtonDown" Background="{StaticResource PhoneBackgroundBrush}"> <TextBlock x:Name="TextBlock" Text="Hello, Silverlight for Windows Embedded!" HorizontalAlignment="Center" VerticalAlignment="Center" /> </Grid> </Grid> </UserControl> If you compare it to the WP7S sample (not reported here to avoid any copyright issue) you’ll notice that I had to replace the original phoneNavigation:PhoneApplicationPage with UserControl as the root node. This make sense because there is not support for phone applications on CE 6. I also had to specify width and height of my main page (on the WP7S device this will be adjusted by the OS) and I had to replace the multi-touch event handler with the MouseLeftButtonDown event (no multitouch support for Windows CE R3, still). I also changed the hello message, of course. I used XAML2CPP to generate the boring part of our application and then added the initialization code to WinMain: int WINAPI WinMain(HINSTANCE hInstance, HINSTANCE hPrevInstance, LPTSTR lpCmdLine, int nCmdShow) { if (!XamlRuntimeInitialize()) return -1;   HRESULT retcode;   IXRApplicationPtr app; if (FAILED(retcode=GetXRApplicationInstance(&app))) return -1; XRXamlSource dictsrc;   dictsrc.SetResource(hInstance,TEXT("XAML"),IDR_XAML_App);   if (FAILED(retcode=app->LoadResourceDictionary(&dictsrc,NULL))) return -1;   MainPage page;   if (FAILED(page.Init(hInstance,app))) return -1;   UINT exitcode;   if (FAILED(page.GetVisualHost()->StartDialog(&exitcode))) return -1;   return exitcode; }   You may have noticed that there is something different from the previous samples. I added the code to load a resource dictionary. Resources are an important feature of XAML that allows you to define some values that could be replaced inside any XAML file loaded by the runtime. You can use resources to define custom styles for your fonts, backgrounds, controls etc. and to support internationalization, by providing different strings for different languages. The rest of our WinMain isn’t that different. It creates an instances of our MainPage object and displays it. The MainPage class implements an event handler for the MouseLeftButtonDown event of the ContentGrid: class MainPage : public TMainPage<MainPage> { public:   HRESULT ContentGrid_MouseButtonDown(IXRDependencyObject* source,XRMouseButtonEventArgs* args) { HRESULT retcode; IXRSolidColorBrushPtr brush; IXRApplicationPtr app;   if (FAILED(retcode=GetXRApplicationInstance(&app))) return retcode;   if (FAILED(retcode=app->CreateObject(IID_IXRSolidColorBrush,&brush))) return retcode;   COLORREF color=RGBA(0xff,0xff,0xff,0xff);   if (args->pOriginalSource==TextBlock) color=RGBA(rand()&0xFF,rand()&0xFF,rand()&0xFF,0xFF);   if (FAILED(retcode=brush->SetColor(color))) return retcode;   if (FAILED(retcode=TextBlock->SetForeground(brush))) return retcode; return S_OK; } }; As you can see this event is generated when a used clicks inside the grid or inside one of the objects it contains. Since our TextBlock is inside the grid, we don’t need to provide an event handler for its MouseLeftButtonDown event. We can just use the pOriginalSource member of the event arguments to check if the event was generated inside the textblock. If the event was generated inside the grid we create a white brush,if it’s inside the textblock we create some randomly colored brush. Notice that we need to use the RGBA macro to create colors, specifying also a transparency value for them. If we use the RGB macro the resulting color will have its Alpha channel set to zero and will be transparent. Using the SetForeground method we can change the color of our control. You can compare this to the managed code that you can find at page 40-41 of Petzold’s preview book and you’ll see that the native version isn’t much more complex than the managed one. As usual you can download the full code of the sample here: http://cid-9b7b0aefe3514dc5.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/.Public/SilverlightTapHello1.zip And remember to pre-order Charles Petzold’s “Programming Windows Phone 7 series”, I bet it will be a best-seller! Technorati Tags: Silverlight for Windows Embedded,Windows CE

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• PeopleSoft Upgrades, Fusion, & BI for Leading European PeopleSoft Applications Customers

  - by Mark Rosenberg

  With so many industry-leading services firms around the globe managing their businesses with PeopleSoft, it’s always an adventure setting up times and meetings for us to keep in touch with them, especially those outside of North America who often do not get to join us at Oracle OpenWorld. Fortunately, during the first two weeks of May, Nigel Woodland (Oracle’s Service Industries Director for the EMEA region) and I successfully blocked off our calendars to visit seven different customers spanning four countries in Western Europe. We met executives and leaders at four Staffing industry firms, two Professional Services firms that engage in consulting and auditing, and a Financial Services firm. As we shared the latest information regarding product capabilities and plans, we also gained valuable insight into the hot technology topics facing these businesses. What we heard was both informative and inspiring, and I suspect other Oracle PeopleSoft applications customers can benefit from one or more of the following observations from our trip. Great IT Plans Get Executed When You Respect the Users Each of our visits followed roughly the same pattern. After introductions, Nigel outlined Oracle’s product and technology strategy, including a discussion of how we at Oracle invest in each layer of the “technology stack” to provide customers with unprecedented business management capabilities and choice. Then, I provided the specifics of the PeopleSoft product line’s investment strategy, detailing the dramatic number of rich usability and functionality enhancements added to release 9.1 since its general availability in 2009 and the game-changing capabilities slated for 9.2. What was most exciting about each of these discussions was that shortly after my talking about what customers can do with release 9.1 right now to drive up user productivity and satisfaction, I saw the wheels turning in the minds of our audiences. Business analyst and end user-configurable tools and technologies, such as WorkCenters and the Related Action Framework, that provide the ability to tailor a “central command center” to the exact needs of each recruiter, biller, and every other role in the organization were exactly what each of our customers had been looking for. Every one of our audiences agreed that these tools which demonstrate a respect for the user would finally help IT pole vault over the wall of resistance that users had often raised in the past. With these new user-focused capabilities, IT is positioned to definitively partner with the business, instead of drag the business along, to unlock the value of their investment in PeopleSoft. This topic of respecting the user emerged during our very first visit, which was at Vital Services Group at their Head Office “The Mill” in Manchester, England. (If you are a student of architecture and are ever in Manchester, you should stop in to see this amazingly renovated old mill building.) I had just finished explaining our PeopleSoft 9.2 roadmap, and Mike Code, PeopleSoft Systems Manager for this innovative staffing company, said, “Mark, the new features you’ve shown us in 9.1/9.2 are very relevant to our business. As we forge ahead with the 9.1 upgrade, the ability to configure a targeted user interface with WorkCenters, Related Actions, Pivot Grids, and Alerts will enable us to satisfy the business that this upgrade is for them and will deliver tangible benefits. In fact, you’ve highlighted that we need to start talking to the business to keep up the momentum to start reviewing the 9.2 upgrade after we get to 9.1, because as much as 9.1 and PeopleTools 8.52 offers, what you’ve shown us for 9.2 is what we’ve envisioned was ultimately possible with our investment in PeopleSoft applications.” We also received valuable feedback about our investment for the Staffing industry when we visited with Hans Wanders, CIO of Randstad (the second largest Staffing company in the world) in the Netherlands. After our visit, Hans noted, “It was very interesting to see how the PeopleSoft applications have developed. I was truly impressed by many of the new developments.” Hans and Mike, sincere thanks for the validation that our team’s hard work and dedication to “respecting the users” is worth the effort! Co-existence of PeopleSoft and Fusion Applications Just Makes Sense As a “product person,” one of the most rewarding things about visiting customers is that they actually want to talk to me. Sometimes, they want to discuss a product area that we need to enhance; other times, they are interested in learning how to extract more value from their applications; and still others, they want to tell me how they are using the applications to drive real value for the business. During this trip, I was very pleased to hear that several of our customers not only thought the co-existence of Fusion applications alongside PeopleSoft applications made sense in theory, but also that they were aggressively looking at how to deploy one or more Fusion applications alongside their PeopleSoft HCM and FSCM applications. The most common deployment plan in the works by three of the organizations is to upgrade to PeopleSoft 9.1 or 9.2, and then adopt one of the new Fusion HCM applications, such as Fusion Performance Management or the full suite of  Fusion Talent Management. For example, during an applications upgrade planning discussion with the staffing company Hays plc., Mark Thomas, who is Hays’ UK IT Director, commented, “We are very excited about where we can go with the latest versions of the PeopleSoft applications in conjunction with Fusion Talent Management.” Needless to say, this news was very encouraging, because it reiterated that our applications investment strategy makes good business sense for our customers. Next Generation Business Intelligence Is the Key to the Future The third, and perhaps most exciting, lesson I learned during this journey is that our audiences already know that the latest generation of Business Intelligence technologies will be the “secret sauce” for organizations to transform business in radical ways. While a number of the organizations we visited on the trip have deployed or are deploying Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition and the associated analytics applications to provide dashboards of easy-to-understand, user-configurable metrics that help optimize business performance according to current operating procedures, what’s most exciting to them is being able to use Business Intelligence to change the way an organization does business, grows revenue, and makes a profit. In particular, several executives we met asked whether we can help them minimize the need to have perfectly structured data and at the same time generate analytics that improve order fulfillment decision-making. To them, the path to future growth lies in having the ability to analyze unstructured data rapidly and intuitively and leveraging technology’s ability to detect patterns that a human cannot reasonably be expected to see. For illustrative purposes, here is a good example of a business problem where analyzing a combination of structured and unstructured data can produce better results. If you have a resource manager trying to decide which person would be the best fit for an assignment in terms of ensuring (a) client satisfaction, (b) the individual’s satisfaction with the work, (c) least travel distance, and (d) highest margin, you traditionally compare resource qualifications to assignment needs, calculate margins on past work with the client, and measure distances. To perform these comparisons, you are likely to need the organization to have profiles setup, people ranked against profiles, margin targets setup, margins measured, distances setup, distances measured, and more. As you can imagine, this requires organizations to plan and implement data setup, capture, and quality management initiatives to ensure that dependable information is available to support resourcing analysis and decisions. In the fast-paced, tight-budget world in which most organizations operate today, the effort and discipline required to maintain high-quality, structured data like those described in the above example are certainly not desirable and in some cases are not feasible. You can imagine how intrigued our audiences were when I informed them that we are ready to help them analyze volumes of unstructured data, detect trends, and produce recommendations. Our discussions delved into examples of how the firms could leverage Oracle’s Secure Enterprise Search and Endeca technologies to keyword search against, compare, and learn from unstructured resource and assignment data. We also considered examples of how they could employ Oracle Real-Time Decisions to generate statistically significant recommendations based on similar resourcing scenarios that have produced the desired satisfaction and profit margin results. --- Although I had almost no time for sight-seeing during this trip to Europe, I have to say that it may have been one of the most energizing and engaging trips of my career. Showing these dedicated customers how they can give every user a uniquely tailored set of tools and address business problems in ways that have to date been impossible made the journey across the Atlantic more than worth it. If any of these three topics intrigue you, I’d recommend you contact your Oracle applications representative to arrange for more detailed discussions with the appropriate members of our organization.

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• User Experience Highlights in PeopleSoft and PeopleTools: Direct from Jeff Robbins

  - by mvaughan

  By Kathy Miedema, Oracle Applications User Experience  This is the fifth in a series of blog posts on the user experience (UX) highlights in various Oracle product families. The last posted interview was with Nadia Bendjedou, Senior Director, Product Strategy on upcoming Oracle E-Business Suite user experience highlights. You’ll see themes around productivity and efficiency, and get an early look at the latest mobile offerings coming through these product lines. Today’s post is on the user experience in PeopleSoft and PeopleTools. To learn more about what’s ahead, attend PeopleSoft or PeopleTools OpenWorld presentations.This interview is with Jeff Robbins, Senior Director, PeopleSoft Development. Jeff Robbins Q: How would you describe the vision you have for the user experience of PeopleSoft?A: Intuitive – Specifically, customers use PeopleSoft to help their employees do their day-to-day work, and the UI (user interface) has been helpful and assistive in that effort. If it’s not obvious what they need to do a task, then the UI isn’t working. So the application needs to make it simple for users to find information they need, complete a task, do all the things they are responsible for, and it really helps when the UI just makes sense. Productive – PeopleSoft is a tool used to support people to do their work, and a lot of users are measured by how much work they’re able to get done per hour, per day, etc. The UI needs to help them be as productive as possible, and can’t make them waste time or energy. The UI needs to reflect the type of work necessary for a task -- if it's data entry, the UI needs to assist the user to get information into the system. For analysts, the UI needs help users assess or analyze information in a particular way. Innovative – The concept of the UI being innovative is something we’ve been working on for years. It’s not just that we want to be seen as innovative, the fact is that companies are asking their employees to do more than they’ve ever asked before. More often companies want to roll out processes as employee or manager self-service, where an employee is responsible to review and maintain their own data. So we’ve had to reinvent, and ask,  “How can we modify the ways an employee interacts with our applications so that they can be more productive and efficient – even with tasks that are entirely unfamiliar?”  Our focus on innovation has forced us to design new ways for users to interact with the entire application.Q: How are the UX features you have delivered so far resonating with customers?  A: Resonating very well. We’re hearing tremendous responses from users, managers, decision-makers -- who are very happy with the improved user experience. Many of the individual features resonate well. Some have really hit home, others are better than they used to be but show us that there’s still room for improvement.A couple innovations really stand out; features that have a significant effect on how users interact with PeopleSoft.First, the deployment of PeopleSoft in a way that’s more like a consumer website with the PeopleSoft Home page and Dashboards.  This new approach is very web-centric, where users feel they’re coming to a website rather than logging into an enterprise application.  There’s lots of information from all around the organization collected in a way that feels very familiar to users. In order to do your job, you can come to this web site rather than having to learn how to log into an application and figure out a complicated menu. Companies can host these really rich web sites for employees that are home pages for accessing critical tasks and information. The UI elements of incorporating search into the whole navigation process is another hit. Rather than having to log in and choose a task from a menu, users come to the web site and begin a task by simply searching for data: themselves, another employee, a customer record, whatever.  The search results include the data along with a set of actions the user might take, completely eliminating the need to hunt through a complicated system menu. Search-centric navigation is really sitting well with customers who are trying to deploy an intuitive set of systems. Q: Are any UX highlights more popular than you expected them to be?  A: We introduced a feature called Pivot Grid in the last release, which is a combination of an interactive grid, like an Excel Pivot Table, along with a dynamic visual chart that automatically graphs the data. I wasn’t certain at first how extensively this would be used. It looked like an innovative tool, but it wasn’t clear how it would be incorporated in business process applications. The fact is that everyone who sees Pivot Grids is thrilled with that kind of interactivity.  It reflects the amount of analytical thinking customers are asking employees to do. Employees can’t just enter data any more. They must interact with it, analyze it, and make decisions. Pivot Grids fit into this way of working. Q: What can you tell us about PeopleSoft’s mobile offerings?A: A lot of customers are finding that mobile is the chief priority in their organization.  They tell us they want their employees to be able to access company information from their mobile devices.  Of course, not everyone has the same requirements, so we’re working to make sure we can help our customers accomplish what they’re trying to do.  We’ve already delivered a number of mobile features.  For instance, PeopleSoft home pages, dashboards and workcenters all work well on an iPad, straight out of the box.  We’ve delivered a number of key functions and tasks for mobile workers – those who are responsible for using a mobile device to manage inventory, for example.  Customers tell us they also need a holistic strategy, one that allows their employees to access nearly every task from a mobile device.  While we don’t expect users to do extensive data entry from their smartphone, it makes sense that they have access to company information and systems while away from their desk.  That’s where our strategy is going now.  We plan to unveil a number of new mobile offerings at OpenWorld.  Some will be available then, some shortly after. Q: What else are you working on now that you think is going to be exciting to customers at Oracle OpenWorld?A: Our next release -- the big thing is PeopleSoft 9.2, and we’ll be talking about the huge amount of work that’s gone into the next versions. A new toolset, 8.53, will be coming, and there’s a lot to talk about there, and the next generation of PeopleSoft 9.2.  We have a ton of new stuff coming.Q: What do you want PeopleSoft customers to know? A: We have been focusing on the user experience in PeopleSoft as a very high priority for the last 4 years, and it’s had interesting effects. One thing is that the application is better, more usable.  We’ve made visible improvements. Another aspect is that in customers’ minds, the PeopleSoft brand is being reinvigorated. Customers invested in PeopleSoft years ago, and then they weren’t sure where PeopleSoft was going.  This investment in the UI and overall user experience keeps PeopleSoft current, innovative and fresh.  Customers  are able to take advantage of a lot of new features, even on the older applications, simply by upgrading their PeopleTools. The interest in that ability has been tremendous. Knowing they have a lot of these features available -- right now, that’s pretty huge. There’s been a tremendous amount of positive response, just on the fact that we’re focusing on the user experience. Editor’s note: For more on PeopleSoft and PeopleTools user experience highlights, visit the Usable Apps web site.To find out more about these enhancements at Openworld, be sure to check out these sessions: GEN8928     General Session: PeopleSoft Update and Product RoadmapCON9183     PeopleSoft PeopleTools Technology Roadmap CON8932     New Functional PeopleSoft PeopleTools Capabilities for the Line-of-Business UserCON9196     PeopleSoft PeopleTools Roadmap: Mobile ApplicationsCON9186     Case Study: Delivering a Groundbreaking User Interface with PeopleSoft PeopleTools

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• Observations in Migrating from JavaFX Script to JavaFX 2.0

  - by user12608080

  Observations in Migrating from JavaFX Script to JavaFX 2.0 Introduction Having been available for a few years now, there is a decent body of work written for JavaFX using the JavaFX Script language. With the general availability announcement of JavaFX 2.0 Beta, the natural question arises about converting the legacy code over to the new JavaFX 2.0 platform. This article reflects on some of the observations encountered while porting source code over from JavaFX Script to the new JavaFX API paradigm. The Application The program chosen for migration is an implementation of the Sudoku game and serves as a reference application for the book JavaFX – Developing Rich Internet Applications. The design of the program can be divided into two major components: (1) A user interface (ideally suited for JavaFX design) and (2) the puzzle generator. For the context of this article, our primary interest lies in the user interface. The puzzle generator code was lifted from a sourceforge.net project and is written entirely in Java. Regardless which version of the UI we choose (JavaFX Script vs. JavaFX 2.0), no code changes were required for the puzzle generator code. The original user interface for the JavaFX Sudoku application was written exclusively in JavaFX Script, and as such is a suitable candidate to convert over to the new JavaFX 2.0 model. However, a few notable points are worth mentioning about this program. First off, it was written in the JavaFX 1.1 timeframe, where certain capabilities of the JavaFX framework were as of yet unavailable. Citing two examples, this program creates many of its own UI controls from scratch because the built-in controls were yet to be introduced. In addition, layout of graphical nodes is done in a very manual manner, again because much of the automatic layout capabilities were in flux at the time. It is worth considering that this program was written at a time when most of us were just coming up to speed on this technology. One would think that having the opportunity to recreate this application anew, it would look a lot different from the current version. Comparing the Size of the Source Code An attempt was made to convert each of the original UI JavaFX Script source files (suffixed with .fx) over to a Java counterpart. Due to language feature differences, there are a small number of source files which only exist in one version or the other. The table below summarizes the size of each of the source files. JavaFX Script source file Number of Lines Number of Character JavaFX 2.0 Java source file Number of Lines Number of Characters ArrowKey.java 6 72 Board.fx 221 6831 Board.java 205 6508 BoardNode.fx 446 16054 BoardNode.java 723 29356 ChooseNumberNode.fx 168 5267 ChooseNumberNode.java 302 10235 CloseButtonNode.fx 115 3408 CloseButton.java 99 2883 ParentWithKeyTraversal.java 111 3276 FunctionPtr.java 6 80 Globals.java 20 554 Grouping.fx 8 140 HowToPlayNode.fx 121 3632 HowToPlayNode.java 136 4849 IconButtonNode.fx 196 5748 IconButtonNode.java 183 5865 Main.fx 98 3466 Main.java 64 2118 SliderNode.fx 288 10349 SliderNode.java 350 13048 Space.fx 78 1696 Space.java 106 2095 SpaceNode.fx 227 6703 SpaceNode.java 220 6861 TraversalHelper.fx 111 3095 Total 2,077 79,127 2531 87,800 A few notes about this table are in order: The number of lines in each file was determined by running the Unix ‘wc –l’ command over each file. The number of characters in each file was determined by running the Unix ‘ls –l’ command over each file. The examination of the code could certainly be much more rigorous. No standard formatting was performed on these files.  All comments however were deleted. There was a certain expectation that the new Java version would require more lines of code than the original JavaFX script version. As evidenced by a count of the total number of lines, the Java version has about 22% more lines than its FX Script counterpart. Furthermore, there was an additional expectation that the Java version would be more verbose in terms of the total number of characters.  In fact the preceding data shows that on average the Java source files contain fewer characters per line than the FX files.  But that's not the whole story.  Upon further examination, the FX Script source files had a disproportionate number of blank characters.  Why?  Because of the nature of how one develops JavaFX Script code.  The object literal dominates FX Script code.  Its not uncommon to see object literals indented halfway across the page, consuming lots of meaningless space characters. RAM consumption Not the most scientific analysis, memory usage for the application was examined on a Windows Vista system by running the Windows Task Manager and viewing how much memory was being consumed by the Sudoku version in question. Roughly speaking, the FX script version, after startup, had a RAM footprint of about 90MB and remained pretty much the same size. The Java version started out at about 55MB and maintained that size throughout its execution. What About Binding? Arguably, the most striking observation about the conversion from JavaFX Script to JavaFX 2.0 concerned the need for data synchronization, or lack thereof. In JavaFX Script, the primary means to synchronize data is via the bind expression (using the “bind” keyword), and perhaps to a lesser extent it’s “on replace” cousin. The bind keyword does not exist in Java, so for JavaFX 2.0 a Data Binding API has been introduced as a replacement. To give a feel for the difference between the two versions of the Sudoku program, the table that follows indicates how many binds were required for each source file. For JavaFX Script files, this was ascertained by simply counting the number of occurrences of the bind keyword. As can be seen, binding had been used frequently in the JavaFX Script version (and does not take into consideration an additional half dozen or so “on replace” triggers). The JavaFX 2.0 program achieves the same functionality as the original JavaFX Script version, yet the equivalent of binding was only needed twice throughout the Java version of the source code. JavaFX Script source file Number of Binds JavaFX Next Java source file Number of “Binds” ArrowKey.java 0 Board.fx 1 Board.java 0 BoardNode.fx 7 BoardNode.java 0 ChooseNumberNode.fx 11 ChooseNumberNode.java 0 CloseButtonNode.fx 6 CloseButton.java 0 CustomNodeWithKeyTraversal.java 0 FunctionPtr.java 0 Globals.java 0 Grouping.fx 0 HowToPlayNode.fx 7 HowToPlayNode.java 0 IconButtonNode.fx 9 IconButtonNode.java 0 Main.fx 1 Main.java 0 Main_Mobile.fx 1 SliderNode.fx 6 SliderNode.java 1 Space.fx 0 Space.java 0 SpaceNode.fx 9 SpaceNode.java 1 TraversalHelper.fx 0 Total 58 2 Conclusions As the JavaFX 2.0 technology is so new, and experience with the platform is the same, it is possible and indeed probable that some of the observations noted in the preceding article may not apply across other attempts at migrating applications. That being said, this first experience indicates that the migrated Java code will likely be larger, though not extensively so, than the original Java FX Script source. Furthermore, although very important, it appears that the requirements for data synchronization via binding, may be significantly less with the new platform.

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• How to launch LOV and Date dialogs using the keyboard

  - by frank.nimphius

  v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Using the ADF Faces JavaScript API, developers can listen for user keyboard input in input components to filter or respond to specific characters or key combination. The JavaScript shown below can be used with an af:clientListener tag on af:inputListOfValues or af:inputDate. At runtime, the JavaScript code determines the component type it is executed on and either opens the LOV dialog or the input Date popup.   <af:resource type="javascript">     /**     * function to launch dialog if cursor is in LOV or     * input date field     * @param evt argument to capture the AdfUIInputEvent object     */   function launchPopUpUsingF8(evt) {      var component = evt.getSource();      if (evt.getKeyCode() == AdfKeyStroke.F8_KEY) {      //check for input LOV component        if (component.getTypeName() == 'AdfRichInputListOfValues') {            AdfLaunchPopupEvent.queue(component, true);            //event is handled on the client. Server does not need            //to be notified            evt.cancel();          }         //check for input Date component               else if (component.getTypeName() == 'AdfRichInputDate') {           //the inputDate af:popup component ID always is ::pop           var popupClientId = component.getAbsoluteLocator() + '::pop';           var popup = component.findComponent(popupClientId);           var hints = {align : AdfRichPopup.ALIGN_END_AFTER,                        alignId : component.getAbsoluteLocator()};           popup.show(hints);           //event is handled on the client. Server does not need           //to be notified           evt.cancel();        }              } } </af:resource> The af:clientListener that calls the JavaScript is added as shown below. <af:inputDate label="Label 1" id="id1">    <af:clientListener method="launchPopUpUsingF8" type="keyDown"/> </af:inputDate> As you may have noticed, the call to open the popup is different for the af:inputListOfValues and the af:inputDate. For the list of values component, an ADF Faces AdfLaunchPopupEvent is queued with the LOV component passed s an argument. Launching the input date popup is a bit more complicate and requires you to lookup the implicit popup dialog and to open it manually. Because the popup is opened manually using the show() method on the af:popup component, the alignment of the dialog also needs to be handled manually. For this, the popup component specifies alignment hints, that for the ALIGN_END_AFTER hint aligns the dialog at the end and below the date component. The align Id hint specifies the component the dialog is relatively positioned to, which of course should be the input date field. The ADF Faces JavaScript API and how to use it is further explained in the Using JavaScript in ADF Faces Rich Client Applications whitepaper available from the Oracle Technology Network (OTN) http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/developer-tools/jdev/1-2011-javascript-302460.pdf An ADF Insider recording about JavaScript in ADF Faces can be watched from here http://download.oracle.com/otn_hosted_doc/jdeveloper/11gdemos/adf-insider-javascript/adf-insider-javascript.html

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• Why Fusion Middleware matters to Oracle Applications and Fusion Applications customers?

  - by Harish Gaur

  Did you miss this general session on Monday morning presented by Amit Zavery, VP of Oracle Fusion Middleware Product Management? There will be a recording made available shortly and in the meanwhile, here is a recap. Amit presented 5 strategies customers can leverage today to extend their applications. Figure 1: 5 Oracle Fusion Middleware strategies to extend Oracle Applications & Oracle Fusion Apps 1. Engage Everyone – Provide intuitive and social experience for application users using Oracle WebCenter 2. Extend Enterprise – Extend Oracle Applications to mobile devices using Oracle ADF Mobile 3. Orchestrate Processes – Automate key organization processes across on-premise & cloud applications using Oracle BPM Suite & Oracle SOA Suite 4. Secure the core – Provide single sign-on and self-service provisioning across multiple apps using Oracle Identity Management 5. Optimize Performance – Leverage Exalogic stack to consolidate multiple instance and improve performance of Oracle Applications Session included 3 demonstrations to illustrate these strategies. 1. First demo highlighted significance of mobile applications for unlocking existing investment in Applications such as EBS. Using a native iPhone application interacting with e-Business Suite, demo showed how expense approval can be mobile enabled with enhanced visibility using BI dashboards. 2. Second demo showed how you can extend a banking process in Siebel and Oracle Policy Automation with Oracle BPM Suite.Process starts in Siebel with a customer requesting a loan, and then jumps to OPA for loan recommendations and decision making and loan processing with approvals in handled in BPM Suite. Once approvals are completed Siebel is updated to complete the process. 3. Final demo showcased FMW components inside Fusion Applications, specifically WebCenter. Boeing, Underwriter Laboratories and Electronic Arts joined this quest and discussed 3 different approaches of leveraging Fusion Middleware stack to maximize their investment in Oracle Applications and/or Fusion Applications technology. Let’s briefly review what these customers shared during the session: 1. Extend Fusion Applications We know that Oracle Fusion Middleware is the underlying technology infrastructure for Oracle Fusion Applications. Architecturally, Oracle Fusion Apps leverages several components of Oracle Fusion Middleware from Oracle WebCenter for rich collaborative interface, Oracle SOA Suite & Oracle BPM Suite for orchestrating key underlying processes to Oracle BIEE for dash boarding and analytics. Boeing talked about how they are using Oracle BPM Suite 11g, a key component of Oracle Fusion Middleware with Oracle Fusion Apps to transform their supply chain. Tim Murnin, Director of Supply Chain talked about Boeing’s 5 year supply chain transformation journey. Boeing’s Integrated and Information Management division began with automation of critical RFQ process using Oracle BPM Suite. This 1st phase resulted in 38% reduction in labor costs for RFP. As a next step in this effort, Boeing is now creating a platform to enable electronic Order Management. Fusion Apps are playing a significant role in this phase. Boeing has gone live with Oracle Fusion Product Hub and efforts are underway with Oracle Fusion Distributed Order Orchestration (DOO). So, where does Oracle BPM Suite 11g fit in this equation? Let me explain. Business processes within Fusion Apps are designed using 2 standards: Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) and Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN). These processes can be easily configured using declarative set of tools. Boeing leverages Oracle BPM Suite 11g (which supports BPMN 2.0) and Oracle SOA Suite (which supports BPEL) to “extend” these applications. Traditionally, customizations are done within an app using native technologies. But, instead of making process changes within Fusion Apps, Boeing has taken an approach of building “extensions” layer on top of the application. Fig 2: Boeing’s use of Oracle BPM Suite to orchestrate key supply chain processes across Fusion Apps 2. Maximize Oracle Applications investment Fusion Middleware appeals not only to Fusion Apps customers, but is also leveraged by Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, Siebel and JD Edwards customers significantly. Using Oracle BPM Suite and Oracle SOA Suite is the recommended extension strategy for Oracle Fusion Apps and Oracle Applications Unlimited customers. Electronic Arts, E-Business Suite customer, spoke about their strategy to transform their order-to-cash process using Oracle SOA Suite, Oracle Foundation Packs and Oracle BAM. Udesh Naicker, Sr Director of IT at Elecronic Arts (EA), discussed how growth of social and digital gaming had started to put tremendous pressure on EA’s existing IT infrastructure. He discussed the challenge with millions of micro-transactions coming from several sources – Microsoft Xbox, Paypal, several service providers. EA found Order-2-Cash processes stretched to their limits. They lacked visibility into these transactions across the entire value chain. EA began by consolidating their E-Business Suite R11 instances into single E-Business Suite R12. EA needed to cater to a variety of service requirements, connectivity methods, file formats, and information latency. Their integration strategy was tactical, i.e., using file uploads, TIBCO, SQL scripts. After consolidating E-Business suite, EA standardized their integration approach with Oracle SOA Suite and Oracle AIA Foundation Pack. Oracle SOA Suite is the platform used to extend E-Business Suite R12 and standardize 60+ interfaces across several heterogeneous systems including PeopleSoft, Demantra, SF.com, Workday, and Managed EDI services spanning on-premise, hosted and cloud applications. EA believes that Oracle SOA Suite 11g based extension strategy has helped significantly in the followings ways: - It helped them keep customizations out of E-Business Suite, thereby keeping EBS R12 vanilla and upgrade safe - Developers are now proficient in technology which is also leveraged by Fusion Apps. This has helped them prepare for adoption of Fusion Apps in the future Fig 3: Using Oracle SOA Suite & Oracle e-Business Suite, Electronic Arts built new platform for order processing 3. Consolidate apps and improve scalability Exalogic is an optimal platform for customers to consolidate their application deployments and enhance performance. Underwriter Laboratories talked about their strategy to run their mission critical applications including e-Business Suite on Exalogic. Christian Anschuetz, CIO of Underwriter Laboratories (UL) shared how UL is on a growth path - $1B to $2.5B in 5 years- and planning a significant business transformation from a not-for-profit to a for-profit business. To support this growth, UL is planning to simplify its IT environment and the deployment complexity associated with ERP applications and technology it runs on. Their current applications were deployed on variety of hardware platforms and lacked comprehensive disaster recovery architecture. UL embarked on a mission to deploy E-Business Suite on Exalogic. UL’s solution is unique because it is one of the first to deploy a large number of Oracle applications and related Fusion Middleware technologies (SOA, BI, Analytical Applications AIA Foundation Pack and AIA EBS to Siebel UCM prebuilt integration) on the combined Exalogic and Exadata environment. UL is planning to move to a virtualized architecture toward the end of 2012 to securely host external facing applications like iStore Fig 4: Underwrites Labs deployed e-Business Suite on Exalogic to achieve performance gains Key takeaways are: - Fusion Middleware platform is certified with major Oracle Applications Unlimited offerings. Fusion Middleware is the underlying technological infrastructure for Fusion Apps - Customers choose Oracle Fusion Middleware to extend their applications (Apps Unlimited or Fusion Apps) to keep applications upgrade safe and prepare for Fusion Apps - Exalogic is an optimum platform to consolidate applications deployments and enhance performance

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• Why Fusion Middleware matters to Oracle Applications and Fusion Applications customers?

  - by Harish Gaur

  Did you miss this general session on Monday morning presented by Amit Zavery, VP of Oracle Fusion Middleware Product Management? There will be a recording made available shortly and in the meanwhile, here is a recap. Amit presented 5 strategies customers can leverage today to extend their applications. Figure 1: 5 Oracle Fusion Middleware strategies to extend Oracle Applications & Oracle Fusion Apps 1. Engage Everyone – Provide intuitive and social experience for application users using Oracle WebCenter 2. Extend Enterprise – Extend Oracle Applications to mobile devices using Oracle ADF Mobile 3. Orchestrate Processes – Automate key organization processes across on-premise & cloud applications using Oracle BPM Suite & Oracle SOA Suite 4. Secure the core – Provide single sign-on and self-service provisioning across multiple apps using Oracle Identity Management 5. Optimize Performance – Leverage Exalogic stack to consolidate multiple instance and improve performance of Oracle Applications Session included 3 demonstrations to illustrate these strategies. 1. First demo highlighted significance of mobile applications for unlocking existing investment in Applications such as EBS. Using a native iPhone application interacting with e-Business Suite, demo showed how expense approval can be mobile enabled with enhanced visibility using BI dashboards. 2. Second demo showed how you can extend a banking process in Siebel and Oracle Policy Automation with Oracle BPM Suite.Process starts in Siebel with a customer requesting a loan, and then jumps to OPA for loan recommendations and decision making and loan processing with approvals in handled in BPM Suite. Once approvals are completed Siebel is updated to complete the process. 3. Final demo showcased FMW components inside Fusion Applications, specifically WebCenter. Boeing, Underwriter Laboratories and Electronic Arts joined this quest and discussed 3 different approaches of leveraging Fusion Middleware stack to maximize their investment in Oracle Applications and/or Fusion Applications technology. Let’s briefly review what these customers shared during the session: 1. Extend Fusion Applications We know that Oracle Fusion Middleware is the underlying technology infrastructure for Oracle Fusion Applications. Architecturally, Oracle Fusion Apps leverages several components of Oracle Fusion Middleware from Oracle WebCenter for rich collaborative interface, Oracle SOA Suite & Oracle BPM Suite for orchestrating key underlying processes to Oracle BIEE for dash boarding and analytics. Boeing talked about how they are using Oracle BPM Suite 11g, a key component of Oracle Fusion Middleware with Oracle Fusion Apps to transform their supply chain. Tim Murnin, Director of Supply Chain talked about Boeing’s 5 year supply chain transformation journey. Boeing’s Integrated and Information Management division began with automation of critical RFQ process using Oracle BPM Suite. This 1st phase resulted in 38% reduction in labor costs for RFP. As a next step in this effort, Boeing is now creating a platform to enable electronic Order Management. Fusion Apps are playing a significant role in this phase. Boeing has gone live with Oracle Fusion Product Hub and efforts are underway with Oracle Fusion Distributed Order Orchestration (DOO). So, where does Oracle BPM Suite 11g fit in this equation? Let me explain. Business processes within Fusion Apps are designed using 2 standards: Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) and Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN). These processes can be easily configured using declarative set of tools. Boeing leverages Oracle BPM Suite 11g (which supports BPMN 2.0) and Oracle SOA Suite (which supports BPEL) to “extend” these applications. Traditionally, customizations are done within an app using native technologies. But, instead of making process changes within Fusion Apps, Boeing has taken an approach of building “extensions” layer on top of the application. Fig 2: Boeing’s use of Oracle BPM Suite to orchestrate key supply chain processes across Fusion Apps 2. Maximize Oracle Applications investment Fusion Middleware appeals not only to Fusion Apps customers, but is also leveraged by Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, Siebel and JD Edwards customers significantly. Using Oracle BPM Suite and Oracle SOA Suite is the recommended extension strategy for Oracle Fusion Apps and Oracle Applications Unlimited customers. Electronic Arts, E-Business Suite customer, spoke about their strategy to transform their order-to-cash process using Oracle SOA Suite, Oracle Foundation Packs and Oracle BAM. Udesh Naicker, Sr Director of IT at Elecronic Arts (EA), discussed how growth of social and digital gaming had started to put tremendous pressure on EA’s existing IT infrastructure. He discussed the challenge with millions of micro-transactions coming from several sources – Microsoft Xbox, Paypal, several service providers. EA found Order-2-Cash processes stretched to their limits. They lacked visibility into these transactions across the entire value chain. EA began by consolidating their E-Business Suite R11 instances into single E-Business Suite R12. EA needed to cater to a variety of service requirements, connectivity methods, file formats, and information latency. Their integration strategy was tactical, i.e., using file uploads, TIBCO, SQL scripts. After consolidating E-Business suite, EA standardized their integration approach with Oracle SOA Suite and Oracle AIA Foundation Pack. Oracle SOA Suite is the platform used to extend E-Business Suite R12 and standardize 60+ interfaces across several heterogeneous systems including PeopleSoft, Demantra, SF.com, Workday, and Managed EDI services spanning on-premise, hosted and cloud applications. EA believes that Oracle SOA Suite 11g based extension strategy has helped significantly in the followings ways: - It helped them keep customizations out of E-Business Suite, thereby keeping EBS R12 vanilla and upgrade safe - Developers are now proficient in technology which is also leveraged by Fusion Apps. This has helped them prepare for adoption of Fusion Apps in the future Fig 3: Using Oracle SOA Suite & Oracle e-Business Suite, Electronic Arts built new platform for order processing 3. Consolidate apps and improve scalability Exalogic is an optimal platform for customers to consolidate their application deployments and enhance performance. Underwriter Laboratories talked about their strategy to run their mission critical applications including e-Business Suite on Exalogic. Christian Anschuetz, CIO of Underwriter Laboratories (UL) shared how UL is on a growth path - $1B to $2.5B in 5 years- and planning a significant business transformation from a not-for-profit to a for-profit business. To support this growth, UL is planning to simplify its IT environment and the deployment complexity associated with ERP applications and technology it runs on. Their current applications were deployed on variety of hardware platforms and lacked comprehensive disaster recovery architecture. UL embarked on a mission to deploy E-Business Suite on Exalogic. UL’s solution is unique because it is one of the first to deploy a large number of Oracle applications and related Fusion Middleware technologies (SOA, BI, Analytical Applications AIA Foundation Pack and AIA EBS to Siebel UCM prebuilt integration) on the combined Exalogic and Exadata environment. UL is planning to move to a virtualized architecture toward the end of 2012 to securely host external facing applications like iStore Fig 4: Underwrites Labs deployed e-Business Suite on Exalogic to achieve performance gains Key takeaways are: - Fusion Middleware platform is certified with major Oracle Applications Unlimited offerings. Fusion Middleware is the underlying technological infrastructure for Fusion Apps - Customers choose Oracle Fusion Middleware to extend their applications (Apps Unlimited or Fusion Apps) to keep applications upgrade safe and prepare for Fusion Apps - Exalogic is an optimum platform to consolidate applications deployments and enhance performance TAGS: Fusion Apps, Exalogic, BPM Suite, SOA Suite, e-Business Suite Integration

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• Portal And Content - Content Integration - Best Practices

  - by Stefan Krantz

  Lately we have seen an increase in projects that have failed to either get user friendly content integration or non satisfactory performance. Our intention is to mitigate any knowledge gap that our previous post might have left you with, therefore this post will repeat some recommendation or reference back to old useful post. Moreover this post will help you understand ground up how to design, architect and implement business enabled, responsive and performing portals with complex requirements on business centric information publishing. Design the Information Model The key to successful portal deployments is Information modeling, it's a key task to understand the use case you designing for, therefore I have designed a set of question you need to ask yourself or your customer: Question: Who will own the content, IT or Business? Answer: BusinessQuestion: Who will publish the content, IT or Business? Answer: BusinessQuestion: Will there be multiple publishers? Answer: YesQuestion: Are the publishers computer scientist?Answer: NoQuestion: How often do the information changes, daily, weekly, monthly?Answer: Daily, weekly If your answers to the questions matches at least 2, we strongly recommend you design your content with following principles: Divide your pages in to logical sections, where each section is marked with its purpose Assign capabilities to each section, does it contain text, images, formatting and/or is it static and is populated through other contextual information Select editor/design element type WYSIWYG - Rich Text Plain Text - non-format text Image - Image object Static List - static list of formatted informationDynamic Data List - assembled information from multiple data files through CMIS query The result of such design map could look like following below examples: Based on the outcome of the required elements in the design column 3 from the left you will now simply design a data model in WebCenter Content - Site Studio by creating a Region Definition structure matching your design requirements.For more information on how to create a Region definition see following post: Region Definition Post - note see instruction 7 for details. Each region definition can now be used to instantiate data files, a data file will hold the actual data for each element in the region definition. Another way you can see this is to compare the region definition as an extension to the metadata model in WebCenter Content for each data file item. Design content templates With a solid dependable information model we can now proceed to template creation and page design, in this phase focuses on how to place the content sections from the region definition on the page via a Content Presenter template. Remember by creating content presenter templates you will leverage the latest and most integrated technology WebCenter has to offer. This phase is much easier since the you already have the information model and design wire-frames to base the logic on, however there is still few considerations to pay attention to: Base the template on ADF and make only necessary exceptions to markup when required Leverage ADF design components for Tabs, Accordions and other similar components, this way the design in the content published areas will comply with other design areas based on custom ADF taskflows There is no performance impact when using meta data or region definition based data All data access regardless of type, metadata or xml data it can be accessed via the Content Presenter - Node. See below for applied examples on how to access data Access metadata property from Document - #{node.propertyMap['myProp'].value}myProp in this example can be for instance (dDocName, dDocTitle, xComments or any other available metadata) Access element data from data file xml - #{node.propertyMap['[Region Definition Name]:[Element name]'].asTextHtml}Region Definition Name is the expect region definition that the current data file is instantiatingElement name is the element value you like to grab from the data file I recommend you read following  useful post on content template topic:CMIS queries and template creation - note see instruction 9 for detailsStatic List template rendering For more information on templates:Single Item Content TemplateMulti Item Content TemplateExpression Language Internationalization Considerations When integrating content assets via content presenter you by now probably understand that the content item/data file is wired to the page, what is also pretty common at this stage is that the content item/data file only support one language since its not practical or business friendly to mix that into a complex structure. Therefore you will be left with a very common dilemma that you will have to either build a complete new portal for each locale, which is not an good option! However with little bit of information modeling and clear naming convention this can be addressed. Basically you can simply make sure that all content item/data file are named with a predictable naming convention like "Content1_EN" for the English rendition and "Content1_ES" for the Spanish rendition. This way through simple none complex customizations you will be able to dynamically switch the actual content item/data file just before rendering. By following proposed approach above you not only enable a simple mechanism for internationalized content you also preserve the functionality in the content presenter to support business accessible run-time publishing of information on existing and new pages. I recommend you read following useful post on Internationalization topics:Internationalize with Content Presenter Integrate with Review & Approval processes Today the Review and approval functionality and configuration is based out of WebCenter Content - Criteria Workflows. Criteria Workflows uses the metadata of the checked in document to evaluate if the document is under any review/approval process. So for instance if a Criteria Workflow is configured to force any documents with Version = "2" or "higher" and Content Type is "Instructions", any matching content item version on check in will now enter the workflow before getting released for general access. Few things to consider when configuring Criteria Workflows: Make sure to not trigger on version one for Content Items that are Data Files - if you trigger on version 1 you will not only approve an empty document you will also have a content presenter pointing to a none existing document - since the document will only be available after successful completion of the workflow Approval workflows sometimes requires more complex criteria, the recommendation if that is the case is that the meta data triggering such criteria is automatically populated, this can be achieved through many approaches including Content Profiles Criteria workflows are configured and managed in WebCenter Content Administration Applets where you can configure one or more workflows. When you configured Criteria workflows the Content Presenter will support the editors with the approval process directly inline in the "Contribution mode" of the portal. In addition to approve/reject and details of the task, the content presenter natively support the user to view the current and future version of the change he/she is approving. See below for example: Architectural recommendation To support review&approval processes - minimize the amount of data files per page Each CMIS query can consume significant time depending on the complexity of the query - minimize the amount of CMIS queries per page Use Content Presenter Templates based on ADF - this way you minimize the design considerations and optimize the usage of caching Implement the page in as few Data files as possible - simplifies publishing process, increases performance and simplifies release process Named data file (node) or list of named nodes when integrating to pages increases performance vs. querying for data Named data file (node) or list of named nodes when integrating to pages enables business centric page creation and publishing and reduces the need for IT department interaction Summary Just because one architectural decision solves a business problem it doesn't mean its the right one, when designing portals all architecture has to be in harmony and not impacting each other. For instance the most technical complex solution is not always the best since it will most likely defeat the business accessibility, performance or both, therefore the best approach is to first design for simplicity that even a non-technical user can operate, after that consider the performance impact and final look at the technology challenges these brings and workaround them first with out-of-the-box features, after that design and develop functions to complement the short comings.

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• Documenting C# Library using GhostDoc and SandCastle

  - by sreejukg

  Documentation is an essential part of any IT project, especially when you are creating reusable components that will be used by other developers (such as class libraries). Without documentation re-using a class library is almost impossible. Just think of coding .net applications without MSDN documentation (Ooops I can’t think of it). Normally developers, who know the bits and pieces of their classes, see this as a boring work to write details again to generate the documentation. Also the amount of work to make this and manage it changes made the process of manual creation of Documentation impossible or tedious. So what is the effective solution? Let me divide this into two steps 1. Generate comments for your code while you are writing the code. 2. Create documentation file using these comments. Now I am going to examine these processes. Step 1: Generate XML Comments automatically Most of the developers write comments for their code. The best thing is that the comments will be entered during the development process. Additionally comments give a good reference to the code, make your code more manageable/readable. Later these comments can be converted into documentation, along with your source code by identifying properties and methods I found an add-in for visual studio, GhostDoc that automatically generates XML documentation comments for C#. The add-in is available in Visual Studio Gallery at MSDN. You can download this from the url http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/46A20578-F0D5-4B1E-B55D-F001A6345748. I downloaded the free version from the above url. The free version suits my requirement. There is a professional version (you need to pay some $ for this) available that gives you some more features. I found the free version itself suits my requirements. The installation process is straight forward. A couple of clicks will do the work for you. The best thing with GhostDoc is that it supports multiple versions of visual studio such as 2005, 2008 and 2010. After Installing GhostDoc, when you start Visual studio, the GhostDoc configuration dialog will appear. The first screen asks you to assign a hot key, pressing this hotkey will enter the comment to your code file with the necessary structure required by GhostDoc. Click Assign to go to the next step where you configure the rules for generating the documentation from the code file. Click Create to start creating the rules. Click finish button to close this wizard. Now you performed the necessary configuration required by GhostDoc. Now In Visual Studio tools menu you can find the GhostDoc that gives you some options. Now let us examine how GhostDoc generate comments for a method. I have write the below code in my code behind file. public Char GetChar(string str, int pos) { return str[pos]; } Now I need to generate the comments for this function. Select the function and enter the hot key assigned during the configuration. GhostDoc will generate the comments as follows. /// <summary> /// Gets the char. /// </summary> /// <param name="str">The STR.</param> /// <param name="pos">The pos.</param> /// <returns></returns> public Char GetChar(string str, int pos) { return str[pos]; } So this is a very handy tool that helps developers writing comments easily. You can generate the xml documentation file separately while compiling the project. This will be done by the C# compiler. You can enable the xml documentation creation option (checkbox) under Project properties -> Build tab. Now when you compile, the xml file will created under the bin folder. Step 2: Generate the documentation from the XML file Now you have generated the xml file documentation. Sandcastle is the tool from Microsoft that generates MSDN style documentation from the compiler produced XML file. The project is available in codeplex http://sandcastle.codeplex.com/. Download and install Sandcastle to your computer. Sandcastle is a command line tool that doesn’t have a rich GUI. If you want to automate the documentation generation, definitely you will be using the command line tools. Since I want to generate the documentation from the xml file generated in the previous step, I was expecting a GUI where I can see the options. There is a GUI available for Sandcastle called Sandcastle Help File Builder. See the link to the project in codeplex. http://www.codeplex.com/wikipage?ProjectName=SHFB. You need to install Sandcastle and then the Sandcastle Help file builder. From here I assume that you have installed both sandcastle and Sandcastle help file builder successfully. Once you installed the help file builder, it will be available in your all programs list. Click on the Sandcastle Help File Builder GUI, will launch application. First you need to create a project. Click on File -> New project The New project dialog will appear. Choose a folder to store your project file and give a name for your documentation project. Click the save button. Now you will see your project properties. Now from the Project explorer, right click on the Documentation Sources, Click on the Add Documentation Source link. A documentation source is a file such as an assembly or a Visual Studio solution or project from which information will be extracted to produce API documentation. From the Add Documentation source dialog, I have selected the XML file generated by my project. Once you add the xml file to the project, you will see the dll file automatically added by the help file builder. Now click on the build button. Now the application will generate the help file. The Build window gives to the result of each steps. Once the process completed successfully, you will have the following output in the build window. Now navigate to your Help Project (I have selected the folder My Documents\Documentation), inside help folder, you can find the chm file. Open the chm file will give you MSDN like documentation. Documentation is an important part of development life cycle. Sandcastle with GhostDoc make this process easier so that developers can implement the documentation in the projects with simple to use steps.

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• Lessons from rewriting POP Forums for MVC, open source-like

  - by Jeff

  It has been a ton of work, interrupted over the last two years by unemployment, moving, a baby, failing to sell houses and other life events, but it's really exciting to see POP Forums v9 coming together. I'm not even sure when I decided to really commit to it as an open source project, but working on the same team as the CodePlex folks probably had something to do with it. Moving along the roadmap I set for myself, the app is now running on a quasi-production site... we launched MouseZoom last weekend. (That's a post-beta 1 build of the forum. There's also some nifty Silverlight DeepZoom goodness on that site.)I have to make a point to illustrate just how important starting over was for me. I started this forum thing for my sites in old ASP more than ten years ago. What a mess that stuff was, including SQL injection vulnerabilities and all kinds of crap. It went to ASP.NET in 2002, but even then, it felt a little too much like script. More than a year later, in 2003, I did an honest to goodness rewrite. If you've been in this business of writing code for any amount of time, you know how much you hate what you wrote a month ago, so just imagine that with seven years in between. The subsequent versions still carried a fair amount of crap, and that's why I had to start over, to make a clean break. Mind you, much of that crap is still running on some of my production sites in a stable manner, but it's a pain in the ass to maintain.So with that clean break, there is much that I have learned. These are a few of those lessons, in no particular order...Avoid shiny object syndromeOver the years, I've embraced new things without bothering to ask myself why. I remember spending the better part of a year trying to adapt this app to use the membership and profile API's in ASP.NET, just because they were there. They didn't solve any known problem. Early on in this version, I dabbled in exotic ORM's, even though I already had the fundamental SQL that I knew worked. I bloated up the client side code with all kinds of jQuery UI and plugins just because, and it got in the way. All the new shiny can be distracting, and I've come to realize that I've allowed it to be a distraction most of my professional life.Just query what you needI've spent a lot of time over-thinking how to query data. In the SQL world, this means exotic joins, special caches, the read-update-commit loop of ORM's, etc. There are times when you have to remind yourself that you aren't Facebook, you'll never be Facebook, and that databases are in fact intended to serve data. In a lot of projects, back in the day, I used to have these big, rich data objects and pass them all over the place, through various application tiers, when in reality, all I needed was some ID from the entity. I try to be mindful of how many queries hit the database on a given request, but I don't obsess over it. I just get what I need.Don't spend too much time worrying about your unit testsIf you've looked at any of the tests for POP Forums, you might offer an audible WTF. That's OK. There's a whole lot of mocking going on. In some cases, it points out where you're doing too much, and that's good for improving your design. In other cases it shows where your design sucks. But the biggest trap of unit testing is that you worry it should be prettier. That's a waste of time. When you write a test, in many cases before the production code, the important part is that you're testing the right thing. If you have to mock up a bunch of stuff to test the outcome, so be it, but it's not wasted time. You're still doing up the typical arrange-action-assert deal, and you'll be able to read that later if you need to.Get back to your HTTP rootsASP.NET Webforms did a reasonably decent job at abstracting us away from the stateless nature of the Web. A lot of people criticize it, but I think it all worked pretty well. These days, with MVC, jQuery, REST services, and what not, we've gone back to thinking about the wire. The nuts and bolts passing between our Web browser and server matters. This doesn't make things harder, in my opinion, it makes them easier. There is something incredibly freeing about how we approach development of Web apps now. HTTP is a really simple protocol, and the stuff we push through it, in particular HTML and JSON, are pretty simple too. The debugging points are really easy to trap and trace.Premature optimization is prematureI'll go back to the data thing for a moment. I've been known to look at a particular action or use case and stress about the number of calls that are made to the database. I'm not suggesting that it's a bad thing to keep these in mind, but if you worry about it outside of the context of the actual impact, you're wasting time. For example, I query the database for last read times in a forum separately of the user and the list of forums. The impact on performance barely exists. If I put it under load, exceeding the kind of load I expect, it still barely has an impact. Then consider it only counts for logged in users. The context of this "inefficient" action is that it doesn't matter. Did I mention I won't be Facebook?Solve your own problems firstThis is another trap I've fallen into. I've often thought about what other people might need for some feature or aspect of the app. In other words, I was willing to make design decisions based on non-existent data. How stupid is that? When I decided to truly open source this thing, building for myself first was a stated design goal. This app has to server the audiences of CoasterBuzz, MouseZoom and other sites first. In this development scenario, you don't have access to mountains of usability studies or user focus groups. You have to start with what you know.I'm sure there are other points I could make too. It has been a lot of fun to work on, and I look forward to evolving the UI as time goes on. That's where I hope to see more magic in the future.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, March 23, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, March 23, 2010New Projects.NET StarCraft II Replay Parser: A .NET 3.5 Library used to parse StarCraft II replays. Developed in C# 3.5.BackToBasics "B2B" Chat: With technology and software getting more and more complicated, why not get back to basics with BackToBasicsChat. B2B allows you to chat over a ser...Dark Neuron Game Engine: Dark Neuron allows you to easily create fun and interesting games with no need of developing basic game components. This engine is developed for C#...DeepZoom Pivot Constructor: Library to make building DeepZoom images and Pivot displays simpler.ePaper reader: The project is aimed at creating a tool which helps in reading electronic editions of news papers(pdf/flash)FSharpPageProvider for EPiServer CMS 6: This project starts as the port of EPiServer XmlPageProvider to F# programming language. Hammock for REST: Hammock is a REST library for .NET that greatly simplifies consuming and wrapping RESTful services.Kirill Osenkov: Various small projects, tools, utilities and samples by Kirill OsenkovliveDB: liveDB - web client for sql serverLucilla Framework: lucilla frameworkMVC Foolproof Validation: MVC Foolproof Validation aims to extend the Data Annotation validation provided in ASP.NET MVC. Initial efforts are focused on adding contingent va...MVC2Forums: MVC2Forums is simply a forum system based upon MVC2.Mvvm Foundation Silverlight: Mvvm Foundation Silverlight is a library of classes that are helpful when building Silverlight applications based in the MVVM pattern. This librar...MyPersonalWebsite: This is my personal web site developed using ASP.NET MVC 2Planner: Planner makes it easier for all peoples to plan your tasks. It's developed in Delphi.Prose: Prose is an playground for an experimental JavaScript like language compiler. Eventually it will implement 0-CFA, CFA2, and a Tracing JITQuestTracker: QuestTracker is a todo list presented in the format of a quest tracking list such as the one in World of Warcraft.SevenZipLib: SevenZipLib is a C# interface to the 7-zip library.SimpleGeo .Net: .Net Client library for the SimpleGeo.com serviceNew ReleasesAutenticar no OpenLDAP utilizando pGIna: DLL LDAPAuth Plus: New Group: No LoginBMap.NET: BMap.NET 2: This is the 2nd version of BMap.NET. It has included these tags: Bing Maps, and "About BMap.NET".Cronos: Version 2.04: This is primarily a bug-fix release. Several numerical issues have been resolved, and a resource leak (of MS Windows graphics objects) has been fi...EV Dashboard: v1.0: This release includes support for an App.config file and Auto Connect, which will connect to the specified BMS at startup. Note: You still have to ...GKO Libraries: GKO Libraries 0.1 Beta: 0.1 Beta Added More utilities and functions RefactoringsGLB Virtual Player Builder: 0.4.2 Beta: Beta build that includes a new player creator.HKGolden Express: HKGoldenExpress (Build 201003222215): New features: (None) Bug fix: Fixed bugs of unable to parse XML file stream returned from HKGolden API, as the encoding of XML file stream chang...jQuery Web Controls ASP.Net: jQueryWebControls 1.1.1.2: En esta versión se han corregido problemas existentes en la ejecución de los scripts de jquery cuando se utilizaban MasterPage y/o Ajax Control Too...LightKit: Version 0.2.2: Fixed: fixed bug when CollectionItemsEditor ditermines IsChanged property incorrectly fixed ObjectEditor`a thisstring propertyName method wrong l...LINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter Beta v2.0.8: New items added since v1.1 include: Support for OAuth (via DotNetOpenAuth), secure communication via https, VB language support, serialization of ...MapWindow6: MapWindow 6.0 msi (March 22): This version fixes the icons for the desktop installer and changes the install directory to Program Files\MapWindow instead of Program Files\ISU.Math.NET Numerics: 2010.3.22.1334 Build: Latest alpha buildMiniCalendar Web Part: MiniCalendar Web Part 1.8: A small web part to display links to events stored in a list (or document library) in a mini calendar (in month view mode). It shows tooltips for t...OCInject: Release Two: This release brings some missing features such as Singleton support, Func<T> factories and child containers. It, also, has an updated constructor ...Phalanger - The PHP Language Compiler for the .NET Framework: 2.0 (March 2010): Installer of the latest binaries of Phalanger 2.0 (March 2010) and its integration into Visual Studio 2008. Easy installer with automatic IIS int...Planner: Planner: firstQuestTracker: QuestTracker 0.1: This is the preliminary release of QuestTracker. There's not much documentation or many features yet, but it is functional. Any feedback would be a...QuestTracker: QuestTracker 0.1.1: Bugfix for QuestTracker 0.1QuestTracker: QuestTracker 0.1.2: Fixes an issue with saving the quest list.Rawr: Rawr 2.3.13: We're pleased to announce that, after long last, Rawr3 has entered public beta. You're still welcome to continue using Rawr2 (that's what you're re...Single Web Session: Alpha Model Plugin: !How to use Single Web Session add following line into your web config <httpModules> <add name="SingleSession" type="SingleWebSession.Model.W...SMIL - SharePoint Map Integration Layer: SMIL 1.0: Custom data field Extracts Lat/Lon from EXIF from images being uploaded. Map Web Part Filter with SharePoint views Filter by connecting to...sTASKedit: sTASKedit 42532 (Developer Alpha): This release is only to verify the currently decoded task structure... Supported files: tasks.data (v1.3.6 client)VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30322.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVisual Studio DSite: Advanced Notepad (Visual C++ 2008): An notepad written in c that can save in a rich text file format.Wallpaper Rotator: Wallpaper Rotator 0.5: Wallpaper Rotator 0.5 This version includes the following improvements: Saving the choice of "Random Order (Shuffle Mode)" Updating the configu...Most Popular ProjectsMetaSharpRawrWBFS ManagerSilverlight ToolkitASP.NET Ajax LibraryMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseAJAX Control ToolkitLiveUpload to FacebookWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETMost Active ProjectsRawrjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesBlogEngine.NETLINQ to TwitterPHPExcelFarseer Physics EngineFacebook Developer ToolkitNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog Modulepatterns & practices: Composite WPF and SilverlightN2 CMS

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• Try a sample: Using the counter predicate for event sampling

  - by extended_events

  Extended Events offers a rich filtering mechanism, called predicates, that allows you to reduce the number of events you collect by specifying criteria that will be applied during event collection. (You can find more information about predicates in Using SQL Server 2008 Extended Events (by Jonathan Kehayias)) By evaluating predicates early in the event firing sequence we can reduce the performance impact of collecting events by stopping event collection when the criteria are not met. You can specify predicates on both event fields and on a special object called a predicate source. Predicate sources are similar to action in that they typically are related to some type of global information available from the server. You will find that many of the actions available in Extended Events have equivalent predicate sources, but actions and predicates sources are not the same thing. Applying predicates, whether on a field or predicate source, is very similar to what you are used to in T-SQL in terms of how they work; you pick some field/source and compare it to a value, for example, session_id = 52. There is one predicate source that merits special attention though, not just for its special use, but for how the order of predicate evaluation impacts the behavior you see. I’m referring to the counter predicate source. The counter predicate source gives you a way to sample a subset of events that otherwise meet the criteria of the predicate; for example you could collect every other event, or only every tenth event. Simple CountingThe counter predicate source works by creating an in memory counter that increments every time the predicate statement is evaluated. Here is a simple example with my favorite event, sql_statement_completed, that only collects the second statement that is run. (OK, that’s not much of a sample, but this is for demonstration purposes. Here is the session definition: CREATE EVENT SESSION counter_test ON SERVERADD EVENT sqlserver.sql_statement_completed    (ACTION (sqlserver.sql_text)    WHERE package0.counter = 2)ADD TARGET package0.ring_bufferWITH (MAX_DISPATCH_LATENCY = 1 SECONDS) You can find general information about the session DDL syntax in BOL and from Pedro’s post Introduction to Extended Events. The important part here is the WHERE statement that defines that I only what the event where package0.count = 2; in other words, only the second instance of the event. Notice that I need to provide the package name along with the predicate source. You don’t need to provide the package name if you’re using event fields, only for predicate sources. Let’s say I run the following test queries: -- Run three statements to test the sessionSELECT 'This is the first statement'GOSELECT 'This is the second statement'GOSELECT 'This is the third statement';GO Once you return the event data from the ring buffer and parse the XML (see my earlier post on reading event data) you should see something like this: event_name sql_text sql_statement_completed SELECT ‘This is the second statement’ You can see that only the second statement from the test was actually collected. (Feel free to try this yourself. Check out what happens if you remove the WHERE statement from your session. Go ahead, I’ll wait.) Percentage Sampling OK, so that wasn’t particularly interesting, but you can probably see that this could be interesting, for example, lets say I need a 25% sample of the statements executed on my server for some type of QA analysis, that might be more interesting than just the second statement. All comparisons of predicates are handled using an object called a predicate comparator; the simple comparisons such as equals, greater than, etc. are mapped to the common mathematical symbols you know and love (eg. = and >), but to do the less common comparisons you will need to use the predicate comparators directly. You would probably look to the MOD operation to do this type sampling; we would too, but we don’t call it MOD, we call it divides_by_uint64. This comparator evaluates whether one number is divisible by another with no remainder. The general syntax for using a predicate comparator is pred_comp(field, value), field is always first and value is always second. So lets take a look at how the session changes to answer our new question of 25% sampling: CREATE EVENT SESSION counter_test_25 ON SERVERADD EVENT sqlserver.sql_statement_completed    (ACTION (sqlserver.sql_text)    WHERE package0.divides_by_uint64(package0.counter,4))ADD TARGET package0.ring_bufferWITH (MAX_DISPATCH_LATENCY = 1 SECONDS)GO Here I’ve replaced the simple equivalency check with the divides_by_uint64 comparator to check if the counter is evenly divisible by 4, which gives us back every fourth record. I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to test this session. Why order matters I indicated at the start of this post that order matters when it comes to the counter predicate – it does. Like most other predicate systems, Extended Events evaluates the predicate statement from left to right; as soon as the predicate statement is proven false we abandon evaluation of the remainder of the statement. The counter predicate source is only incremented when it is evaluated so whether or not the counter is incremented will depend on where it is in the predicate statement and whether a previous criteria made the predicate false or not. Here is a generic example: Pred1: (WHERE statement_1 AND package0.counter = 2)Pred2: (WHERE package0.counter = 2 AND statement_1) Let’s say I cause a number of events as follows and examine what happens to the counter predicate source. Iteration Statement Pred1 Counter Pred2 Counter A Not statement_1 0 1 B statement_1 1 2 C Not statement_1 1 3 D statement_1 2 4 As you can see, in the case of Pred1, statement_1 is evaluated first, when it fails (A & C) predicate evaluation is stopped and the counter is not incremented. With Pred2 the counter is evaluated first, so it is incremented on every iteration of the event and the remaining parts of the predicate are then evaluated. In this example, Pred1 would return an event for D while Pred2 would return an event for B. But wait, there is an interesting side-effect here; consider Pred2 if I had run my statements in the following order: Not statement_1 Not statement_1 statement_1 statement_1 In this case I would never get an event back from the system because the point at which counter=2, the rest of the predicate evaluates as false so the event is not returned. If you’re using the counter target for sampling and you’re not getting the expected events, or any events, check the order of the predicate criteria. As a general rule I’d suggest that the counter criteria should be the last element of your predicate statement since that will assure that your sampling rate will apply to the set of event records defined by the rest of your predicate. Aside: I’m interested in hearing about uses for putting the counter predicate criteria earlier in the predicate statement. If you have one, post it in a comment to share with the class. - Mike Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Tailoring the Oracle Fusion Applications User Interface with Oracle Composer

  - by mvaughan

  By Killian Evers, Oracle Applications User Experience Changing the user interface (UI) is one of the most common modifications customers perform to Oracle Fusion Applications. Typically, customers add or remove a field based on their needs. Oracle makes the process of tailoring easier for customers, and reduces the burden for their IT staff, which you can read about on the Usable Apps website or in an earlier VoX post.This is the first in a series of posts that will talk about the tools that Oracle has provided for tailoring with its family of composers. These tools are designed for business systems analysts, and they allow employees other than IT staff to make changes in an upgrade-safe and patch-friendly manner. Let’s take a deep dive into one of these composers, the Oracle Composer. Oracle Composer allows business users to modify existing UIs after they have been deployed and are in use. It is an integral component of our SaaS offering. Using Oracle Composer, users can control:     •    Who sees the changes     •    When the changes are made     •    What changes are made Change for me, change for you, change for all of youOne of the most powerful aspects of Oracle Composer is its flexibility. Oracle uses Oracle Composer to make changes for a user or group of users – those who see the changes. A user of Oracle Fusion Applications can make changes to the user interface at runtime via Oracle Composer, and these changes will remain every time they log into the system. For example, they can rearrange certain objects on a page, add and remove designated content, and save queries.Business systems analysts can make changes to Oracle Fusion Application UIs for groups of users or all users. Oracle’s Fusion Middleware Metadata Services (MDS) stores these changes and retrieves them at runtime, merging customizations with the base metadata and revealing the final experience to the end user. A tailored application can have multiple customization layers, and some layers can be specific to certain Fusion Applications. Some examples of customization layers are: site, organization, country, or role. Customization layers are applied in a specific order of precedence on top of the base application metadata. This image illustrates how customization layers are applied.What time is it?Users make changes to UIs at design time, runtime, and design time at runtime. Design time changes are typically made by application developers using an integrated development environment, or IDE, such as Oracle JDeveloper. Once made, these changes are then deployed to managed servers by application administrators. Oracle Composer covers the other two areas: Runtime changes and design time at runtime changes. When we say users are making changes at runtime, we mean that the changes are made within the running application and take effect immediately in the running application. A prime example of this ability is users who make changes to their running application that only affect the UIs they see. What is new with Oracle Composer is the last area: Design time at runtime.  A business systems analyst can make changes to the UIs at runtime but does not have to make those changes immediately to the application. These changes are stored as metadata, separate from the base application definitions. Customizations made at runtime can be saved in a sandbox so that the changes can be isolated and validated before being published into an environment, without the need to redeploy the application. What can I do?Oracle Composer can be run in one of two modes. Depending on which mode is chosen, you may have different capabilities available for changing the UIs. The first mode is view mode, the most common default mode for most pages. This is the mode that is used for personalizations or user customizations. Users can access this mode via the Personalization link (see below) in the global region on Oracle Fusion Applications pages. In this mode, you can rearrange components on a page with drag-and-drop, collapse or expand components, add approved external content, and change the overall layout of a page. However, all of the changes made this way are exclusive to that particular user.The second mode, edit mode, is typically made available to select users with access privileges to edit page content. We call these folks business systems analysts. This mode is used to make UI changes for groups of users. Users with appropriate privileges can access the edit mode of Oracle Composer via the Administration menu (see below) in the global region on Oracle Fusion Applications pages. In edit mode, users can also add components, delete components, and edit component properties. While in edit mode in Oracle Composer, there are two views that assist the business systems analyst with making UI changes: Design View and Source View (see below). Design View, the default view, is a WYSIWYG rendering of the page and its content. The business systems analyst can perform these actions: Add content – including custom content like a portlet displaying news or stock quotes, or predefined content delivered from Oracle Fusion Applications (including ADF components and task flows) Rearrange content – performed via drag-and-drop on the page or by using the actions menu of a component or portlet to move content around Edit component properties and parameters – for specific components, control the visual properties such as text or display labels, or parameters such as RSS feeds Hide or show components – hidden components can be re-shown Delete components Change page layout – users can select from eight pre-defined layouts Edit page properties – create or edit a page’s parameters and display properties Reset page customizations – remove edits made to the page in the current layer and/or reset the page to a previous state. Detailed information on each of these capabilities and the additional actions not covered in the list above can be found in the Oracle® Fusion Middleware Developer's Guide for Oracle WebCenter.This image shows what the screen looks like in Design View.Source View, the second option in the edit mode of Oracle Composer, provides a WYSIWYG and a hierarchical rendering of page components in a component navigator. In Source View, users can access and modify properties of components that are not otherwise selectable in Design View. For example, many ADF Faces components can be edited only in Source View. Users can also edit components within a task flow. This image shows what the screen looks like in Source View.Detailed information on Source View can be found in the Oracle® Fusion Middleware Developer's Guide for Oracle WebCenter.Oracle Composer enables any application or portal to be customized or personalized after it has been deployed and is in use. It is designed to be extremely easy to use so that both business systems analysts and users can edit Oracle Fusion Applications pages with a few clicks of the mouse. Oracle Composer runs in all modern browsers and provides a rich, dynamic way to edit JSF application and portal pages.From the editor: The next post in this series about composers will be on Data Composer. You can also catch Killian speaking about extensibility at OpenWorld 2012 and in her Faces of Fusion video.

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• Personal Development : Time, Planning , Repairs & Maintenance

  - by Rajesh Pillai

  Personal Development : Time, Planning, Repairs & Maintenance These are just my thoughts, but some you may find something interesting in it. Please think over it. We may know many things, but still we always keeps procrastinating it. I have written this as I have heard many people coming back and saying they don’t have time to do things they like. These are my thoughts buy may be useful to someone else too. Certain things in life needs periodic repairs and maintenance. To cite some examples , your CAR, your HOUSE, your personal laptop/desktop, your health etc. Likewise there are certain other things in professional life that requires repair/ maintenance /or some kind of polishing, so that you always stay on top of it. But they are not always obvious. Some of them are - Improving your communication skills - Increasing your vocabulary - Upgrading your technical skills - Pursuing your hobby - Increasing your knowledge/awareness etc… etc… And then there are certain things that we are always short of…. one is TIME. We all know TIME is one of the most precious things in life and yet we all are very miserable at managing it. Remember you can only manage it and not control it. You can only control which you own or which you create. In theory time is infinite. So, there should be abundant of it. But remember one thing, you know this, it’s not reversible. Once it has elapsed you cannot live it again. Think over it. So, how do find that golden 25th hour every day. To find the 25th hour you need to reflect back on your current daily activities. Analyze them and see where you are spending most of your time and is it really important. Even the 8 hours that you spent in the office, is it spent fruitfully. At the end of the day is the 8 precious hour that you spent was worth it. Just reflect back on your activities. Did you learn something? If yes did you make a point to NOTE IT. If you didn’t NOTED it then was the time you spent really worth it. Just ponder over it. Some calculations of your daily activities where most of the time is spent. Let’s start (in no particular order though) - Sleep (6.5 hours) [Remember you only require 6 good hours of sleep every day]. Some may thing it is 8, but it’s a myth.   o To achive 6 hours of sleep and be in good health you can practice 15 minutes of daily meditation. So effectively you can    round it to 6.5 hours. - Morning chores(2 hours) : Some may need to prepare breakfast and all other things. - Office commuting (avg. to and fro 3 hours) - Office Work (avg 9.5 hours) Total Hours: 21 hours effective time which is spent irrespective of what you do. There may be some variations here and there. Still you have 3 hours EXTRA. Where do these 3 hours go? If you can find it, then you may get that golden 25th hour out of these 3 hours. Let’s discount 2 hours for contingencies, still you have 1 hour with you. If you can’t find it then you are living a direction less life. As you can see, the 25th Hour lies within the 24 hours of the day. It’s upto each one of us to find and make use of it. Now what can you do with that 25th hour i.e. 1 hour extra of your life. Imagine the possibility. Again some calculations 1 hour daily * 30 days = 30 hours every month 30 hours pm * 12 month = 360 hours every year. 360 hours every year seems very promising. Let’s add some contingencies, say, let’s be optimistic and say 50 % contingency. Still you have 180 hours every year. That leaves with 30 minutes every day of extra time. That’s hell a lot of time, if you could manage it. These may sound like a high talk [yes, it is, unless you apply these simple rules and rationalize your everyday living and stop procrastinating]. NOTE: I haven’t taken weekend, holidays and leaves into account. So, that leaves us with a lot of buffer time. You can meet family friends, relatives, other tasks, and yet have these 180 pure hours of joy every year. Do whatever you want to do with it. So, how important is this 180 hours per year to you? Just think over it. You may use it the way you like - 50 hours [pursue your hobby like drawing, crafting, learn dance, learn juggling, learn swimming, travelling hmm.. anything you like doing and you didn’t had time to do it.] - 30 hours you can learn a new programming language or technology (i.e. you can get comfortable with it) - 50 hours [improve existing skills] - 20 hours [improve you communication skill]. Do some light reading. - 30 hours [YOU DECIDE WHAT TO DO]? So, if you had done this for one year you would have learnt a new programming language, upgraded existing skills, improved you communication etc.. If you had done this for two years.. imagine the level of personal development or growth which you may have attained….. If you had done this for three years….. NOW I think I don’t need to mention this… So, you still have TIME, as they say TIME is infinite. So, make judicious use of this precious thing. And never ever comeback saying “I don’t have time”. So, if you are RICH in TIME, everything else will be automatically taken care of, as those things may just be a byproduct of how you spend your time… So, happy TIMING your TIME everyday.

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• Packaging Swing apps with integrated JavaFX content

  - by igor

  JavaFX provides a lot of interesting capabilities for developing rich client applications in Java, but what if you are working on an existing Swing application and you want to take advantage of these new features?  Maybe you want to use one or two controls like the LineChart or a MediaView.  Maybe you want to embed a large Scene Graph as an initial step in porting your application to FX.  A hybrid Swing/FX application might just be the answer. Developing a hybrid Swing + JavaFX application is not terribly difficult, but until recently the deployment of hybrid applications has not simple as a "pure" JavaFX application.  The existing tools focused on packaging FX Applications, or Swing applications - they did not account for hybrid applications. But with JavaFX 2.2 the tools include support for this hybrid application use case.  Solution  In JavaFX 2.2 we extended the packaging ant tasks to greatly simplify deploying hybrid applications.  You now use the same deployment approach as you would for pure JavaFX applications.  Just bundle your main application jar with the fx:jar ant task and then generate html/jnlp files using fx:deploy.  The only difference is setting toolkit attribute for the fx:application tag as shown below: <fx:application id="swingFXApp" mainClass="${main.class}" toolkit="swing"/>  The value of ${main.class} in the example above is your application class which has a main method.  It does not need to extend JavaFX Application class. The resulting package provides support for the same set of execution modes as a package for a JavaFX application, although the packages which are created are not identical to the packages created for a pure FX application.  You will see two JNLP files generated in the case of a hybrid application - one for use from Swing applet and another for the webstart launch.  Note that these improvements do not alter the set of features available to Swing applications. The packaging tools just make it easier to use the advanced features of JavaFX in your Swing application. The same limits still apply, for example a Swing application can not use JavaFX Preloaders and code changes are necessary to support HTML splash screens. Why should I use the JavaFX ant tasks for packaging my Swing application?  While using FX packaging tool for a Swing application may seem like a mismatch at face value, there are some really good reasons to use this approach.  The primary justification for our packaging tools is to simplify the creation of your application artifacts, and to reduce manual errors.  Plus, no one should have to write JNLP by hand. Some specific benefits include: Your application jar will include a launcher program.  This improves your standalone launch by: checking for the JavaFX runtime guiding the user through any necessary installations setting the system proxy for Java The ant tasks will generate JNLP and HTML files for your swing app: avoids learning unnecessary details about JNLP, and eliminates the error-prone hand editing of JNLP files simplifies using advanced features like embedding JNLP and signing jars as BLOBs to improve launch performance.you can also embed the signing certificate details to improve the user's experience  allows the use of web page templates to inject the generated code directly into your actual web page instead of being forced to copy/paste the generated code snippets. What about native packing? Absolutely!  The very same ant task can generate a native bundle for a Swing application with JavaFX content.  Try running one of these sample native bundles for the "SwingInterop" FX example: exe and dmg.   I also used another feature on these examples: a click-through license agreement for .exe installers and OS X DMG drag installers. Small Caveat This packaging procedure is optimized around using the JavaFX packaging tools for your entire Swing application.  If you are trying to embed JavaFX content into existing project (with an existing build/packing process) then you may need to experiment in order to find the best way to integrate the JavaFX packaging steps into your existing build procedure. As long as you can use ant in your build process this should be a workable approach. It some cases solution could be less than ideal. For example, you need to use fx:jar to package your main jar file in order to produce a double-clickable jar or a native bundle.  The jar will be created from scratch, but you may already be creating the main jar file with a custom manifest.  This may lead to some redundant steps in your build process.  Hopefully the benefits will outweigh the problems. This is an area of ongoing development for the team, and we will continue to refine and improve both the tools and the process. Please share your experiences and suggestions with us.  You can comment here on the blog or file issues to JIRA. Sample code Here is the full ant code used to package SwingInterop.  You can grab latest JavaFX samples and try it yourself:  <target name="-post-jar"> <taskdef resource="com/sun/javafx/tools/ant/antlib.xml" uri="javafx:com.sun.javafx.tools.ant" classpath="${javafx.tools.ant.jar}"/> <!-- Mark application as Swing-based --> <fx:application id="swingFXApp" mainClass="${main.class}" toolkit="swing"/> <!-- Create doubleclickable jar file with embedded launcher --> <fx:jar destfile="${dist.jar}"> <fileset dir="${build.classes.dir}"/> <fx:application refid="swingFXApp" name="SwingInterop"/> <manifest> <attribute name="Implementation-Vendor" value="${application.vendor}"/> <attribute name="Implementation-Title" value="${application.title}"/> <attribute name="Implementation-Version" value="1.0"/> </manifest> </fx:jar> <!-- sign application jar. Use new self signed certificate --> <delete file="${build.dir}/test.keystore"/> <genkey alias="TestAlias" storepass="xyz123" keystore="${build.dir}/test.keystore" dname="CN=Samples, OU=JavaFX Dev, O=Oracle, C=US"/> <fx:signjar keystore="${build.dir}/test.keystore" alias="TestAlias" storepass="xyz123"> <fileset file="${dist.jar}"/> </fx:signjar> <!-- generate JNLPs, HTML and native bundles --> <fx:deploy width="960" height="720" includeDT="true" nativeBundles="all" outdir="${basedir}/${dist.dir}" embedJNLP="true" outfile="${application.title}"> <fx:application refId="swingFXApp"/> <fx:resources> <fx:fileset dir="${basedir}/${dist.dir}" includes="SwingInterop.jar"/> </fx:resources> <fx:permissions/> <info title="Sample app: ${application.title}" vendor="${application.vendor}"/> </fx:deploy> </target>

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• Recap: Oracle Fusion Middleware Strategies Driving Business Innovation

  - by Harish Gaur

  Hasan Rizvi, Executive Vice President of Oracle Fusion Middleware & Java took the stage on Tuesday to discuss how Oracle Fusion Middleware helps enable business innovation. Through a series of product demos and customer showcases, Hassan demonstrated how Oracle Fusion Middleware is a complete platform to harness the latest technological innovations (cloud, mobile, social and Fast Data) throughout the application lifecycle. Fig 1: Oracle Fusion Middleware is the foundation of business innovation This Session included 4 demonstrations to illustrate these strategies: 1. Build and deploy native mobile applications using Oracle ADF Mobile 2. Empower business user to model processes, design user interface and have rich mobile experience for process interaction using Oracle BPM Suite PS6. 3. Create collaborative user experience and integrate social sign-on using Oracle WebCenter Portal, Oracle WebCenter Content, Oracle Social Network & Oracle Identity Management 11g R2 4. Deploy and manage business applications on Oracle Exalogic Nike, LA Department of Water & Power and Nintendo joined Hasan on stage to share how their organizations are leveraging Oracle Fusion Middleware to enable business innovation. Managing Performance in the Wrld of Social and Mobile How do you provide predictable scalability and performance for an application that monitors active lifestyle of 8 million users on a daily basis? Nike’s answer is Oracle Coherence, a component of Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle Exadata. Fig 2: Oracle Coherence enabled data grid improves performance of Nike+ Digital Sports Platform Nicole Otto, Sr. Director of Consumer Digital Technology discussed the vision of the Nike+ platform, a platform which represents a shift for NIKE from a  "product"  to  a "product +" experience.  There are currently nearly 8 million users in the Nike+ system who are using digitally-enabled Nike+ devices.  Once data from the Nike+ device is transmitted to Nike+ application, users access the Nike+ website or via the Nike mobile applicatoin, seeing metrics around their daily active lifestyle and even engage in socially compelling experiences to compare, compete or collaborate their data with their friends. Nike expects the number of users to grow significantly this year which will drive an explosion of data and potential new experiences. To deal with this challenge, Nike envisioned building a shared platform that would drive a consumer-centric model for the company. Nike built this new platform using Oracle Coherence and Oracle Exadata. Using Coherence, Nike built a data grid tier as a distributed cache, thereby provide low-latency access to most recent and relevant data to consumers. Nicole discussed how Nike+ Digital Sports Platform is unique in the way that it utilizes the Coherence Grid.  Nike takes advantage of Coherence as a traditional cache using both cache-aside and cache-through patterns.  This new tier has enabled Nike to create a horizontally scalable distributed event-driven processing architecture. Current data grid volume is approximately 150,000 request per minute with about 40 million objects at any given time on the grid. Improving Customer Experience Across Multiple Channels Customer experience is on top of every CIO's mind. Customer Experience needs to be consistent and secure across multiple devices consumers may use.  This is the challenge Matt Lampe, CIO of Los Angeles Department of Water & Power (LADWP) was faced with. Despite being the largest utilities company in the country, LADWP had been relying on a 38 year old customer information system for serving its customers. Their prior system  had been unable to keep up with growing customer demands. Last year, LADWP embarked on a journey to improve customer experience for 1.6million LA DWP customers using Oracle WebCenter platform. Figure 3: Multi channel & Multi lingual LADWP.com built using Oracle WebCenter & Oracle Identity Management platform Matt shed light on his efforts to drive customer self-service across 3 dimensions – new website, new IVR platform and new bill payment service. LADWP has built a new portal to increase customer self-service while reducing the transactions via IVR. LADWP's website is powered Oracle WebCenter Portal and is accessible by desktop and mobile devices. By leveraging Oracle WebCenter, LADWP eliminated the need to build, format, and maintain individual mobile applications or websites for different devices. Their entire content is managed using Oracle WebCenter Content and secured using Oracle Identity Management. This new portal automated their paper based processes to web based workflows for customers. This includes automation of Self Service implemented through My Account -  like Bill Pay, Payment History, Bill History and Usage Analysis. LADWP's solution went live in April 2012. Matt indicated that LADWP's Self-Service Portal has greatly improved customer satisfaction.  In a JD Power Associates website satisfaction survey, results indicate rankings have climbed by 25+ points, marking a remarkable increase in user experience. Bolstering Performance and Simplifying Manageability of Business Applications Ingvar Petursson, Senior Vice Preisdent of IT at Nintendo America joined Hasan on-stage to discuss their choice of Exalogic. Nintendo had significant new requirements coming their way for business systems, both internal and external, in the years to come, especially with new products like the WiiU on the horizon this holiday season. Nintendo needed a platform that could give them performance, availability and ease of management as they deploy business systems. Ingvar selected Engineered Systems for two reasons: 1. High performance  2. Ease of management Figure 4: Nintendo relies on Oracle Exalogic to run ATG eCommerce, Oracle e-Business Suite and several business applications Nintendo made a decision to run their business applications (ATG eCommerce, E-Business Suite) and several Fusion Middleware components on the Exalogic platform. What impressed Ingvar was the "stress” testing results during evaluation. Oracle Exalogic could handle their 3-year load estimates for many functions, which was better than Nintendo expected without any hardware expansion. Faster Processing of Big Data Middleware plays an increasingly important role in Big Data. Last year, we announced at OpenWorld the introduction of Oracle Data Integrator for Hadoop and Oracle Loader for Hadoop which helps in the ability to move, transform, load data to and from Big Data Appliance to Exadata.  This year, we’ve added new capabilities to find, filter, and focus data using Oracle Event Processing. This product can natively integrate with Big Data Appliance or runs standalone. Hasan briefly discussed how NTT Docomo, largest mobile operator in Japan, leverages Oracle Event Processing & Oracle Coherence to process mobile data (from 13 million smartphone users) at a speed of 700K events per second before feeding it Hadoop for distributed processing of big data. Figure 5: Mobile traffic data processing at NTT Docomo with Oracle Event Processing & Oracle Coherence    

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• Massive Silverlight Giveaway! DevExpress , Syncfusion, Crypto Obfuscator and SL Spy!

  - by mbcrump

  Oh my, have we grown! Maybe I should change the name to Multiple Silverlight Giveaways. So far, my Silverlight giveaways have been such a success that I’m going to be able to give away more than one Silverlight product every month. Last month, we gave away 3 great products. 1) ComponentOne Silverlight Controls 2)  ComponentOne XAP Optimizer (with obfuscation) and 3) Silverlight Spy. This month, we will give away 4 great Silverlight products and have 4 different winners. This way the Silverlight community can grow with more than just one person winning all the prizes. This month we will be giving away: DevExpress Silverlight Controls – Over 50+ Silverlight Controls Syncfusion User Interface Edition - Create stunning line of business silverlight applications with a wide range of components including a high performance grid, docking manager, chart, gauge, scheduler and much more. Crypto Obfuscator – Works for all .NET including Silverlight/Windows Phone 7. Silverlight Spy – provides a license EVERY month for this giveaway. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Win a FREE developer’s license of one of the products listed above! 4 winners will be announced on April 1st, 2011! To be entered into the contest do the following things: Subscribe to my feed. – Use Google Reader, email or whatever is best for you.  Leave a comment below with a valid email account (I WILL NOT share this info with anyone.) Retweet the following : I just entered to win free #Silverlight controls from @mbcrump . Register here: http://mcrump.me/fTSmB8 ! Don’t change the URL because this will allow me to track the users that Tweet this page. Don’t forget to visit each of the vendors sites because they made this possible. MichaelCrump.Net provides Silverlight Giveaways every month. You can also see the latest giveaway by bookmarking http://giveaways.michaelcrump.net . ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DevExpress Silverlight Controls Let’s take a quick look at some of the software that is provided in this giveaway. Before we get started with the Silverlight Controls, here is a couple of links to bookmark for the DevExpress Silverlight Controls: The Live Demos of the Silverlight Controls is located here. Great Video Tutorials of the Silverlight Controls are here. One thing that I liked about the DevExpress is how easy it was to find demos of each control. After you install the controls the following Program Group appears complete with “demos” that include full-source.   So, the first question that you may ask is, “What is included?” Here is the official list below. I wanted to show several of the controls that I think developers will use the most. The Book – Very rich animation between switching pages. Very easy to add your own images and custom text. The Menu – This is another control that just looked great. You can easily add images to the menu items with a few lines of XAML. The Window / Dialog Box – You can use this control to make a very beautiful “Wizard” to help your users navigate between pages. This is useful in setup or installation. Calculator – This would be useful for any type of Banking app. Also a first that I’ve seen from a 3rd party Control company. DatePicker – This controls feels a lot smoother than the one provided by Microsoft. It also provides the ability to “Clear” the selection. Overall the DevExpress Silverlight Controls feature a lot of quality controls that you should check out. You can go ahead and download a trial version of it right now by clicking here. If you win the contest you can simply enter your registration key and continue using the product without reinstalling. Syncfusion User Interface Edition Before we get started with the Syncfusion User Interface Edition, here is a couple of links to bookmark. The Live Demos can be found here. You can download a demo of it now at http://www.syncfusion.com/downloads/evalstart. After you install the Syncfusion, you can view the dashboard to run locally installed samples. You may also download the documentation to your local machine if needed. Since the name of the package is “User Interface Edition”, I decided to share several samples that struck me as “awesome”. Dashboard Gauges – I was very impressed with the various gauges they have included. The digital clock also looks very impressive. Diagram – The diagrams are also very easy to build. In the sample project below you can drag/drop the shapes onto the content pane. More complex lines like the Bezier lines are also easy to create using Syncfusion. Scheduling – Another strong component was the Scheduling with built-in support for Themes. Tools – If all of that wasn’t enough, it also comes with a nice pack of essential tools. Syncfusion has a nice variety of Silverlight Controls that you should check out. You can go ahead and download a trial version of it right now by clicking here. Crypto Obfuscator The following feature set is what is important to me in an Obfuscator since I am a Silverlight/WP7 Developer: And thankfully this is what you get in Crypto Obfuscator. You can download a trial version right now if you want to go ahead and play with it. Let’s spend a few moments taking a look at the application. After you have installed Crypto Obfuscator you will see the following screen: After you click on Assemblies you have the option to add your .XAP file in: I went ahead and loaded my .xap file from a Silverlight Application. At this point, you can simply save your project and hit “Obfuscate” and your done. You don’t have to mess with any of the other settings if you don’t want too. Of course, you can change the settings and add obfuscation rules, watermarks and signing if you wish.  After Obfuscation, it looks like this in .NET Reflector: I was trying to browse through methods and it actually crashed Reflector. This confirms the level of protection the obfuscator is providing. If this were a commercial application that my team built, I would have a huge smile on my face right now. Crypto Obfuscator is a great product and I hope you will spend the time learning more about it. Silverlight Spy Silverlight Spy is a runtime inspector tool that will tell you pretty much everything that is going on with the application. Basically, you give it a URL that contains a Silverlight application and you can explore the element tree, events, xaml and so much more. This has already been reviewed on MichaelCrump.net. _________________________________________________________________________________________ Thanks for reading and don’t forget to leave a comment below in order to win one of the four prizes available! Subscribe to my feed

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• 14+ WordPress Portfolio Themes

  - by Edward

  There are various portfolio themes for WordPress out there, with this collection we are trying to help you choose the best one. These themes can be used to create any type of personal, photography, art or corporate portfolio. Display 3 in 1 Display 3 in 1 – Business & Portfolio WordPress Theme. Features a fantastic 3D Image slideshow that can be controlled from your backend with a custom tool. The Theme has a huge wordpress custom backend (8 additional Admin Pages) that make customization of the Theme easy for those who dont know much about coding or wordpress. Price: $40 View Demo Download DeepFocus Tempting features such as automatic separation of blog and portfolio content by template, publishing of most important information on homepage, styles to choose from and many more such features. It also provides for page templates for blog, portfolio, blog archive, tags etc. It has the best feature that helps you to manage everything from one place. Price: $39 (Package includes more than 55 themes) View Demo Download SimplePress Simple, yet awesome. One of the best portfolio theme. Price: $39 (Package includes more than 55 themes) View Demo Download Graphix Graphix is one of best word press portfolio themes. It is most suited to aspiring designers, developers, artists and photographers who’d like a framework theme, which has a great-looking portfolio with a feature-rich blog. It has theme option page, 5-color style, SEO option, featured content blocks, drop down multi-level menu, social profile link custom widgets, custom post, custom page template etc. Price: $69 Single & $149 Developer Package View Demo Download Bizznizz It boasts of many features such as custom homepage, custom post types, custom widgets, portfolio templates, alternative styles and many more. View Demo Download Showtime Ultimate WordPress Theme for you to create your web portfolio, It has 3 different styles for you to choose from. Price: $40 View Demo Download Montana WP Horizontal Portfolio Theme Montana Theme – WP Horizontal Portfolio Theme, best suited for creative studios to showcase design, photography, illustration, paintings and art. Price: $30 View Demo Download OverALL OverALL Premium WordPress Blog & Portfolio Theme, is low priced & has amazing tons of features. Price: $17 View Demo Download Habitat Habitat – Blog and Portfolio Theme. Unique Portfolio Sorting/Filtering with a custom jQuery script (each entry supports multiple images or a video) Multiple Featured Images for each post to generate individual Slideshows per Post, or the option to directly embed video content from youtube, vimeo, hulu etc. Price: $35 View Demo Download Fresh Folio Fresh Folio from WooThemes, can be used as both portfolio and a premium WordPress theme. The theme is a remix of the Fresh News Theme and Proud Folio Theme which combines all the best elements of the respective blog and portfolio style themes. View Demo Download Fresh Folio Features: Can be used to create an impressive portfolio. 7 diverse theme styles to choose from (default, blue, red, grunge light, grunge floral, antique, blue creamer, nightlife) The template will automatically (visually) separate your blog & portfolio content, making this an amazing theme for aspiring designers, developers, artists, photographers etc. Unique page templates types for the portfolio, blog, blog archives, tags & search results. Integrated Theme Options (for WordPress) to tweak the layout, colour scheme etc. for the theme Optional Automatic Image Resize, which is used to dynamically create the thumbnails and featured images Includes Widget enabled Sidebars. eGallery eGallery is a theme made to transform your wordpress blog into a fully functional online portfolio. Theme is perfectly designed to emphasize the artwork you choose to showcase. The design has been greatly enhanced using javascript, and is easy to implement. Price: $39 (Package includes more than 55 themes) View Demo Download ProudFolio ProudFolio is a portfolio premium WordPress theme from Woo Themes. The theme is for designers, developers, artists and photographers who would like a showcase theme which would depict as a portfolio and also serves a purpose of blog. ProudFolio puts a strong emphasis on the portfolio pieces, allowing for decent-sized thumbnails, huge fullscreen views via Lightbox, and full details on the single page. The theme file also contains a choice of three different background images and color schemes. Price: $70 Single $150 Developer License View Demo Download Features: The template will automatically (visually) separate your blog & portfolio content. An unique homepage layout, which publishes only the most important information; Unique page templates for the portfolio, blog, blog archives, tags & search results. Integrated Theme Options (for WordPress) to tweak the layout, colour scheme etc. for the theme; Built-in video panel, which you can use to publish any web-based Flash videos; Automatic Image Resize, which is used to dynamically create the thumbnails and featured images; Custom Page Templates for Archives, Sitemap & Image Gallery; Built-in Gravatar Support for Authors & Comments; Integrated Banner Management script to display randomized banner ads of your choice site-wide; Pretty drop down navigation everywhere; and Widget Enabled Sidebars. Porftolio WordPress Theme A FREE wordpress theme designed for web portfolios and (for now) just for web portfolios. It is coming with an Administrative Panel from where you can edit the head quote text, you can edit all theme colors, font families, font sizes and you can fill a curriculum vitae and display it into a special page. Theme demo and download can be found here Viz | Biz Viz | Biz is a premium WordPress photo gallery and portfolio theme designed specifically for photographers, graphic designers and web designers who want to display their creative work online, market their services, as well as have a typical text blog, using the power and flexibility of WordPress. It is priced for $79.95. Theme Features: Premium quality portfolio template Custom logo uploader to replace the standard graphic with your own unique look from the WP Dashboard Integrated blog component (front images are custom fields and thumbnails, but you can also have a typical blog) Four tabbed feature areas (About Me, Services, Recent Posts, and Tags) Two home page feature photos (You choose which photos to feature using a WP category) Manage your online portfolio through the WordPress CMS Crop two sizes of your work: One for the front page thumbnails and another full size version and upload to WP Search engine optimized. Related posts:14 WordPress Photo Blog & Portfolio Themes 6 PhotoBlog Portfolio WordPress Themes Professional WordPress Business Themes

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• Big Data Matters with ODI12c

  - by Madhu Nair

  contributed by Mike Eisterer On October 17th, 2013, Oracle announced the release of Oracle Data Integrator 12c (ODI12c).  This release signifies improvements to Oracle’s Data Integration portfolio of solutions, particularly Big Data integration. Why Big Data = Big Business Organizations are gaining greater insights and actionability through increased storage, processing and analytical benefits offered by Big Data solutions.  New technologies and frameworks like HDFS, NoSQL, Hive and MapReduce support these benefits now. As further data is collected, analytical requirements increase and the complexity of managing transformations and aggregations of data compounds and organizations are in need for scalable Data Integration solutions. ODI12c provides enterprise solutions for the movement, translation and transformation of information and data heterogeneously and in Big Data Environments through: The ability for existing ODI and SQL developers to leverage new Big Data technologies. A metadata focused approach for cataloging, defining and reusing Big Data technologies, mappings and process executions. Integration between many heterogeneous environments and technologies such as HDFS and Hive. Generation of Hive Query Language. Working with Big Data using Knowledge Modules  ODI12c provides developers with the ability to define sources and targets and visually develop mappings to effect the movement and transformation of data.  As the mappings are created, ODI12c leverages a rich library of prebuilt integrations, known as Knowledge Modules (KMs).  These KMs are contextual to the technologies and platforms to be integrated.  Steps and actions needed to manage the data integration are pre-built and configured within the KMs.  The Oracle Data Integrator Application Adapter for Hadoop provides a series of KMs, specifically designed to integrate with Big Data Technologies.  The Big Data KMs include: Check Knowledge Module Reverse Engineer Knowledge Module Hive Transform Knowledge Module Hive Control Append Knowledge Module File to Hive (LOAD DATA) Knowledge Module File-Hive to Oracle (OLH-OSCH) Knowledge Module  Nothing to beat an Example: To demonstrate the use of the KMs which are part of the ODI Application Adapter for Hadoop, a mapping may be defined to move data between files and Hive targets.  The mapping is defined by dragging the source and target into the mapping, performing the attribute (column) mapping (see Figure 1) and then selecting the KM which will govern the process.  In this mapping example, movie data is being moved from an HDFS source into a Hive table.  Some of the attributes, such as “CUSTID to custid”, have been mapped over. Figure 1  Defining the Mapping Before the proper KM can be assigned to define the technology for the mapping, it needs to be added to the ODI project.  The Big Data KMs have been made available to the project through the KM import process.   Generally, this is done prior to defining the mapping. Figure 2  Importing the Big Data Knowledge Modules Following the import, the KMs are available in the Designer Navigator. v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false EN-US ZH-TW X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Figure 3  The Project View in Designer, Showing Installed IKMs Once the KM is imported, it may be assigned to the mapping target.  This is done by selecting the Physical View of the mapping and examining the Properties of the Target.  In this case MOVIAPP_LOG_STAGE is the target of our mapping. Figure 4  Physical View of the Mapping and Assigning the Big Data Knowledge Module to the Target Alternative KMs may have been selected as well, providing flexibility and abstracting the logical mapping from the physical implementation.  Our mapping may be applied to other technologies as well. The mapping is now complete and is ready to run.  We will see more in a future blog about running a mapping to load Hive. To complete the quick ODI for Big Data Overview, let us take a closer look at what the IKM File to Hive is doing for us.  ODI provides differentiated capabilities by defining the process and steps which normally would have to be manually developed, tested and implemented into the KM.  As shown in figure 5, the KM is preparing the Hive session, managing the Hive tables, performing the initial load from HDFS and then performing the insert into Hive.  HDFS and Hive options are selected graphically, as shown in the properties in Figure 4. Figure 5  Process and Steps Managed by the KM What’s Next Big Data being the shape shifting business challenge it is is fast evolving into the deciding factor between market leaders and others. Now that an introduction to ODI and Big Data has been provided, look for additional blogs coming soon using the Knowledge Modules which make up the Oracle Data Integrator Application Adapter for Hadoop: Importing Big Data Metadata into ODI, Testing Data Stores and Loading Hive Targets Generating Transformations using Hive Query language Loading Oracle from Hadoop Sources For more information now, please visit the Oracle Data Integrator Application Adapter for Hadoop web site, http://www.oracle.com/us/products/middleware/data-integration/hadoop/overview/index.html Do not forget to tune in to the ODI12c Executive Launch webcast on the 12th to hear more about ODI12c and GG12c. Normal 0 false false false EN-US ZH-TW X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";}

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• The Birth of a Method - Where did OUM come from?

  - by user702549

  It seemed fitting to start this blog entry with the OUM vision statement. The vision for the Oracle® Unified Method (OUM) is to support the entire Enterprise IT lifecycle, including support for the successful implementation of every Oracle product.  Well, it’s that time of year again; we just finished testing and packaging OUM 5.6.  It will be released for general availability to qualifying customers and partners this month.  Because of this, I’ve been reflecting back on how the birth of Oracle’s Unified method - OUM came about. As the Release Director of OUM, I’ve been honored to package every method release.  No, maybe you’d say it’s not so special.  Of course, anyone can use packaging software to create an .exe file.  But to me, it is pretty special, because so many people work together to make each release come about.  The rich content that results is what makes OUM’s history worth talking about.   To me, professionally speaking, working on OUM, well it’s been “a labor of love”.  My youngest child was just 8 years old when OUM was born, and she’s now in High School!  Watching her grow and change has been fascinating, if you ask her, she’s grown up hearing about OUM.  My son would often walk into my home office and ask “How is OUM today, Mom?”  I am one of many people that take care of OUM, and have watched the method “mature” over these last 6 years.  Maybe that makes me a "Method Mom" (someone in one of my classes last year actually said this outloud) but there are so many others who collaborate and care about OUM Development. I’ve thought about writing this blog entry for a long time just to reflect on how far the Method has come. Each release, as I prepare the OUM Contributors list, I see how many people’s experience and ideas it has taken to create this wealth of knowledge, process and task guidance as well as templates and examples.  If you’re wondering how many people, just go into OUM select the resources button on the top of most pages of the method, and on that resources page click the ABOUT link. So now back to my nostalgic moment as I finished release 5.6 packaging.  I reflected back, on all the things that happened that cause OUM to become not just a dream but to actually come to fruition.  Here are some key conditions that make it possible for each release of the method: A vision to have one method instead of many methods, thereby focusing on deeper, richer content People within Oracle’s consulting Organization  willing to contribute to OUM providing Subject Matter Experts who are willing to write down and share what they know. Oracle’s continued acquisition of software companies, the need to assimilate high quality existing materials from these companies The need to bring together people from very different backgrounds and provide a common language to support Oracle Product implementations that often involve multiple product families What came first, and then what was the strategy? Initially OUM 4.0 was based on Oracle’s J2EE Custom Development Method (JCDM), it was a good “backbone”  (work breakdown structure) it was Unified Process based, and had good content around UML as well as custom software development.  But it needed to be extended in order to achieve the OUM Vision. What happened after that was to take in the “best of the best”, the legacy and acquired methods were scheduled for assimilation into OUM, one release after another.  We incrementally built OUM.  We didn’t want to lose any of the expertise that was reflected in AIM (Oracle’s legacy Application Implementation Method), Compass (People Soft’s Application implementation method) and so many more. When was OUM born? OUM 4.1 published April 30, 2006.  This release allowed Oracles Advanced Technology groups to begin the very first implementations of Fusion Middleware.  In the early days of the Method we would prepare several releases a year.  Our iterative release development cycle began and continues to be refined with each Method release.  Now we typically see one major release each year. The OUM release development cycle is not unlike many Oracle Implementation projects in that we need to gather requirements, prioritize, prepare the content, test package and then go production.  Typically we develop an OUM release MoSCoW (must have, should have, could have, and won’t have) right after the prior release goes out.   These are the high level requirements.  We break the timeframe into increments, frequent checkpoints that help us assess the content and progress is measured through frequent checkpoints.  We work as a team to prioritize what should be done in each increment. Yes, the team provides the estimates for what can be done within a particular increment.  We sometimes have Method Development workshops (physically or virtually) to accelerate content development on a particular subject area, that is where the best content results. As the written content nears the final stages, it goes through edit and evaluation through peer reviews, and then moves into the release staging environment.  Then content freeze and testing of the method pack take place.  This iterative cycle is run using the OUM artifacts that make sense “fit for purpose”, project plans, MoSCoW lists, Test plans are just a few of the OUM work products we use on a Method Release project. In 2007 OUM 4.3, 4.4 and 4.5 were published.  With the release of 4.5 our Custom BI Method (Data Warehouse Method FastTrack) was assimilated into OUM.  These early releases helped us align Oracle’s Unified method with other industry standards Then in 2008 we made significant changes to the OUM “Backbone” to support Applications Implementation projects with that went to the OUM 5.0 release.  Now things started to get really interesting.  Next we had some major developments in the Envision focus area in the area of Enterprise Architecture.  We acquired some really great content from the former BEA, Liquid Enterprise Method (LEM) along with some SMEs who were willing to work at bringing this content into OUM.  The Service Oriented Architecture content in OUM is extensive and can help support the successful implementation of Fusion Middleware, as well as Fusion Applications. Of course we’ve developed a wealth of OUM training materials that work also helps to improve the method content.  It is one thing to write “how to”, and quite another to be able to teach people how to use the materials to improve the success of their projects.  I’ve learned so much by teaching people how to use OUM. What's next? So here toward the end of 2012, what’s in store in OUM 5.6, well, I’m sure you won’t be surprised the answer is Cloud Computing.   More details to come in the next couple of weeks!  The best part of being involved in the development of OUM is to see how many people have “adopted” OUM over these six years, Clients, Partners, and Oracle Consultants.  The content just gets better with each release.   I’d love to hear your comments on how OUM has evolved, and ideas for new content you’d like to see in the upcoming releases.

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• How accurate is "Business logic should be in a service, not in a model"?

  - by Jeroen Vannevel

  Situation Earlier this evening I gave an answer to a question on StackOverflow. The question: Editing of an existing object should be done in repository layer or in service? For example if I have a User that has debt. I want to change his debt. Should I do it in UserRepository or in service for example BuyingService by getting an object, editing it and saving it ? My answer: You should leave the responsibility of mutating an object to that same object and use the repository to retrieve this object. Example situation: class User { private int debt; // debt in cents private string name; // getters public void makePayment(int cents){ debt -= cents; } } class UserRepository { public User GetUserByName(string name){ // Get appropriate user from database } } A comment I received: Business logic should really be in a service. Not in a model. What does the internet say? So, this got me searching since I've never really (consciously) used a service layer. I started reading up on the Service Layer pattern and the Unit Of Work pattern but so far I can't say I'm convinced a service layer has to be used. Take for example this article by Martin Fowler on the anti-pattern of an Anemic Domain Model: There are objects, many named after the nouns in the domain space, and these objects are connected with the rich relationships and structure that true domain models have. The catch comes when you look at the behavior, and you realize that there is hardly any behavior on these objects, making them little more than bags of getters and setters. Indeed often these models come with design rules that say that you are not to put any domain logic in the the domain objects. Instead there are a set of service objects which capture all the domain logic. These services live on top of the domain model and use the domain model for data. (...) The logic that should be in a domain object is domain logic - validations, calculations, business rules - whatever you like to call it. To me, this seemed exactly what the situation was about: I advocated the manipulation of an object's data by introducing methods inside that class that do just that. However I realize that this should be a given either way, and it probably has more to do with how these methods are invoked (using a repository). I also had the feeling that in that article (see below), a Service Layer is more considered as a façade that delegates work to the underlying model, than an actual work-intensive layer. Application Layer [his name for Service Layer]: Defines the jobs the software is supposed to do and directs the expressive domain objects to work out problems. The tasks this layer is responsible for are meaningful to the business or necessary for interaction with the application layers of other systems. This layer is kept thin. It does not contain business rules or knowledge, but only coordinates tasks and delegates work to collaborations of domain objects in the next layer down. It does not have state reflecting the business situation, but it can have state that reflects the progress of a task for the user or the program. Which is reinforced here: Service interfaces. Services expose a service interface to which all inbound messages are sent. You can think of a service interface as a façade that exposes the business logic implemented in the application (typically, logic in the business layer) to potential consumers. And here: The service layer should be devoid of any application or business logic and should focus primarily on a few concerns. It should wrap Business Layer calls, translate your Domain in a common language that your clients can understand, and handle the communication medium between server and requesting client. This is a serious contrast to other resources that talk about the Service Layer: The service layer should consist of classes with methods that are units of work with actions that belong in the same transaction. Or the second answer to a question I've already linked: At some point, your application will want some business logic. Also, you might want to validate the input to make sure that there isn't something evil or nonperforming being requested. This logic belongs in your service layer. "Solution"? Following the guidelines in this answer, I came up with the following approach that uses a Service Layer: class UserController : Controller { private UserService _userService; public UserController(UserService userService){ _userService = userService; } public ActionResult MakeHimPay(string username, int amount) { _userService.MakeHimPay(username, amount); return RedirectToAction("ShowUserOverview"); } public ActionResult ShowUserOverview() { return View(); } } class UserService { private IUserRepository _userRepository; public UserService(IUserRepository userRepository) { _userRepository = userRepository; } public void MakeHimPay(username, amount) { _userRepository.GetUserByName(username).makePayment(amount); } } class UserRepository { public User GetUserByName(string name){ // Get appropriate user from database } } class User { private int debt; // debt in cents private string name; // getters public void makePayment(int cents){ debt -= cents; } } Conclusion All together not much has changed here: code from the controller has moved to the service layer (which is a good thing, so there is an upside to this approach). However this doesn't look like it had anything to do with my original answer. I realize design patterns are guidelines, not rules set in stone to be implemented whenever possible. Yet I have not found a definitive explanation of the service layer and how it should be regarded. Is it a means to simply extract logic from the controller and put it inside a service instead? Is it supposed to form a contract between the controller and the domain? Should there be a layer between the domain and the service layer? And, last but not least: following the original comment Business logic should really be in a service. Not in a model. Is this correct? How would I introduce my business logic in a service instead of the model?

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• The Great Divorce

  - by BlackRabbitCoder

  I have a confession to make: I've been in an abusive relationship for more than 17 years now.  Yes, I am not ashamed to admit it, but I'm finally doing something about it. I met her in college, she was new and sexy and amazingly fast -- and I'd never met anything like her before.  Her style and her power captivated me and I couldn't wait to learn more about her.  I took a chance on her, and though I learned a lot from her -- and will always be grateful for my time with her -- I think it's time to move on. Her name was C++, and she so outshone my previous love, C, that any thoughts of going back evaporated in the heat of this new romance.  She promised me she'd be gentle and not hurt me the way C did.  She promised me she'd clean-up after herself better than C did.  She promised me she'd be less enigmatic and easier to keep happy than C was.  But I was deceived.  Oh sure, as far as truth goes, it wasn't a complete lie.  To some extent she was more fun, more powerful, safer, and easier to maintain.  But it just wasn't good enough -- or at least it's not good enough now. I loved C++, some part of me still does, it's my first-love of programming languages and I recognize its raw power, its blazing speed, and its improvements over its predecessor.  But with today's hardware, at speeds we could only dream to conceive of twenty years ago, that need for speed -- at the cost of all else -- has died, and that has left my feelings for C++ moribund. If I ever need to write an operating system or a device driver, then I might need that speed.  But 99% of the time I don't.  I'm a business-type programmer and chances are 90% of you are too, and even the ones who need speed at all costs may be surprised by how much you sacrifice for that.   That's not to say that I don't want my software to perform, and it's not to say that in the business world we don't care about speed or that our job is somehow less difficult or technical.  There's many times we write programs to handle millions of real-time updates or handle thousands of financial transactions or tracking trading algorithms where every second counts.  But if I choose to write my code in C++ purely for speed chances are I'll never notice the speed increase -- and equally true chances are it will be far more prone to crash and far less easy to maintain.  Nearly without fail, it's the macro-optimizations you need, not the micro-optimizations.  If I choose to write a O(n2) algorithm when I could have used a O(n) algorithm -- that can kill me.  If I choose to go to the database to load a piece of unchanging data every time instead of caching it on first load -- that too can kill me.  And if I cross the network multiple times for pieces of data instead of getting it all at once -- yes that can also kill me.  But choosing an overly powerful and dangerous mid-level language to squeeze out every last drop of performance will realistically not make stock orders process any faster, and more likely than not open up the system to more risk of crashes and resource leaks. And that's when my love for C++ began to die.  When I noticed that I didn't need that speed anymore.  That that speed was really kind of a lie.  Sure, I can be super efficient and pack bits in a byte instead of using separate boolean values.  Sure, I can use an unsigned char instead of an int.  But in the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter as much as you think it does.  The key is maintainability, and that's where C++ failed me.  I like to tell the other developers I work with that there's two levels of correctness in coding: Is it immediately correct? Will it stay correct? That is, you can hack together any piece of code and make it correct to satisfy a task at hand, but if a new developer can't come in tomorrow and make a fairly significant change to it without jeopardizing that correctness, it won't stay correct. Some people laugh at me when I say I now prefer maintainability over speed.  But that is exactly the point.  If you focus solely on speed you tend to produce code that is much harder to maintain over the long hall, and that's a load of technical debt most shops can't afford to carry and end up completely scrapping code before it's time.  When good code is written well for maintainability, though, it can be correct both now and in the future. And you know the best part is?  My new love is nearly as fast as C++, and in some cases even faster -- and better than that, I know C# will treat me right.  Her creators have poured hundreds of thousands of hours of time into making her the sexy beast she is today.  They made her easy to understand and not an enigmatic mess.  They made her consistent and not moody and amorphous.  And they made her perform as fast as I care to go by optimizing her both at compile time and a run-time. Her code is so elegant and easy on the eyes that I'm not worried where she will run to or what she'll pull behind my back.  She is powerful enough to handle all my tasks, fast enough to execute them with blazing speed, maintainable enough so that I can rely on even fairly new peers to modify my work, and rich enough to allow me to satisfy any need.  C# doesn't ask me to clean up her messes!  She cleans up after herself and she tries to make my life easier for me by taking on most of those optimization tasks C++ asked me to take upon myself.  Now, there are many of you who would say that I am the cause of my own grief, that it was my fault C++ didn't behave because I didn't pay enough attention to her.  That I alone caused the pain she inflicted on me.  And to some extent, you have a point.  But she was so high maintenance, requiring me to know every twist and turn of her vast and unrestrained power that any wrong term or bout of forgetfulness was met with painful reminders that she wasn't going to watch my back when I made a mistake.  But C#, she loves me when I'm good, and she loves me when I'm bad, and together we make beautiful code that is both fast and safe. So that's why I'm leaving C++ behind.  She says she's changing for me, but I have no interest in what C++0x may bring.  Oh, I'll still keep in touch, and maybe I'll see her now and again when she brings her problems to my door and asks for some attention -- for I always have a soft spot for her, you see.  But she's out of my house now.  I have three kids and a dog and a cat, and all require me to clean up after them, why should I have to clean up after my programming language as well?

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• The challenge of communicating externally with IRM secured content

  - by Simon Thorpe

  I am often asked by customers about how they handle sending IRM secured documents to external parties. Their concern is that using IRM to secure sensitive information they need to share outside their business, is troubled with the inability for third parties to install the software which enables them to gain access to the information. It is a very legitimate question and one i've had to answer many times in the past 10 years whilst helping customers plan successful IRM deployments. The operating system does not provide the required level of content security The problem arises from what IRM delivers, persistent security to your sensitive information where ever it resides and whenever it is in use. Oracle IRM gives customers an array of features that help ensure sensitive information in an IRM document or email is always protected and only accessed by authorized users using legitimate applications. Examples of such functionality are; Control of the clipboard, either by disabling completely in the opened document or by allowing the cut and pasting of information between secured IRM documents but not into insecure applications. Protection against programmatic access to the document. Office documents and PDF documents have the ability to be accessed by other applications and scripts. With Oracle IRM we have to protect against this to ensure content cannot be leaked by someone writing a simple program. Securing of decrypted content in memory. At some point during the process of opening and presenting a sealed document to an end user, we must decrypt it and give it to the application (Adobe Reader, Microsoft Word, Excel etc). This process must be secure so that someone cannot simply get access to the decrypted information. The operating system alone just doesn't have the functionality to deliver these types of features. This is why for every IRM technology there must be some extra software installed and typically this software requires administrative rights to do so. The fact is that if you want to have very strong security and access control over a document you are going to send to someone who is beyond your network infrastructure, there must be some software to provide that functionality. Simple installation with Oracle IRM The software used to control access to Oracle IRM sealed content is called the Oracle IRM Desktop. It is a small, free piece of software roughly about 12mb in size. This software delivers functionality for everything a user needs to work with an Oracle IRM solution. It provides the functionality for all formats we support, the storage and transparent synchronization of user rights and unique to Oracle, the ability to search inside sealed files stored on the local computer. In Oracle we've made every technical effort to ensure that installing this software is a simple as possible. In situations where the user's computer is part of the enterprise, this software is typically deployed using existing technologies such as Systems Management Server from Microsoft or by using Active Directory Group Policies. However when sending sealed content externally, you cannot automatically install software on the end users machine. You need to rely on them to download and install themselves. Again we've made every effort for this manual install process to be as simple as we can. Starting with the small download size of the software itself to the simple installation process, most end users are able to install and access sealed content very quickly. You can see for yourself how easily this is done by walking through our free and easy self service demonstration of using sealed content. How to handle objections and ensure there is value However the fact still remains that end users may object to installing, or may simply be unable to install the software themselves due to lack of permissions. This is often a problem with any technology that requires specialized software to access a new type of document. In Oracle, over the past 10 years, we've learned many ways to get over this barrier of getting software deployed by external users. First and I would say of most importance, is the content MUST have some value to the person you are asking to install software. Without some type of value proposition you are going to find it very difficult to get past objections to installing the IRM Desktop. Imagine if you were going to secure the weekly campus restaurant menu and send this to contractors. Their initial response will be, "why on earth are you asking me to download some software just to access your menu!?". A valid objection... there is no value to the user in doing this. Now consider the scenario where you are sending one of your contractors their employment contract which contains their address, social security number and bank account details. Are they likely to take 5 minutes to install the IRM Desktop? You bet they are, because there is real value in doing so and they understand why you are doing it. They want their personal information to be securely handled and a quick download and install of some software is a small task in comparison to dealing with the loss of this information. Be clear in communicating this value So when sending sealed content to people externally, you must be clear in communicating why you are using an IRM technology and why they need to install some software to access the content. Do not try and avoid the issue, you must be clear and upfront about it. In doing so you will significantly reduce the "I didn't know I needed to do this..." responses and also gain respect for being straight forward. One customer I worked with, 6 months after the initial deployment of Oracle IRM, called me panicking that the partner they had started to share their engineering documents with refused to install any software to access this highly confidential intellectual property. I explained they had to communicate to the partner why they were doing this. I told them to go back with the statement that "the company takes protecting its intellectual property seriously and had decided to use IRM to control access to engineering documents." and if the partner didn't respect this decision, they would find another company that would. The result? A few days later the partner had made the Oracle IRM Desktop part of their approved list of software in the company. Companies are successful when sending sealed content to third parties We have many, many customers who send sensitive content to third parties. Some customers actually sell access to Oracle IRM protected content and therefore 99% of their users are external to their business, one in particular has sold content to hundreds of thousands of external users. Oracle themselves use the technology to secure M&A documents, payroll data and security assessments which go beyond the traditional enterprise security perimeter. Pretty much every company who deploys Oracle IRM will at some point be sending those documents to people outside of the company, these customers must be successful otherwise Oracle IRM wouldn't be successful. Because our software is used by a wide variety of companies, some who use it to sell content, i've often run into people i'm sharing a sealed document with and they already have the IRM Desktop installed due to accessing content from another company. The future In summary I would say that yes, this is a hurdle that many customers are concerned about but we see much evidence that in practice, people leap that hurdle with relative ease as long as they are good at communicating the value of using IRM and also take measures to ensure end users can easily go through the process of installation. We are constantly developing new ideas to reducing this hurdle and maybe one day the operating systems will give us enough rich security functionality to have no software installation. Until then, Oracle IRM is by far the easiest solution to balance security and usability for your business. If you would like to evaluate it for yourselves, please contact us.

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• Consuming the Amazon S3 service from a Win8 Metro Application

  - by cibrax

  As many of the existing Http APIs for Cloud Services, AWS also provides a set of different platform SDKs for hiding many of complexities present in the APIs. While there is a platform SDK for .NET, which is open source and available in C#, that SDK does not work in Win8 Metro Applications for the changes introduced in WinRT. WinRT offers a complete different set of APIs for doing I/O operations such as doing http calls or using cryptography for signing or encrypting data, two aspects that are absolutely necessary for consuming AWS. All the I/O APIs available as part of WinRT are asynchronous, and uses the TPL model for .NET applications (HTML and JavaScript Metro applications use a model based in promises, which is similar concept).  In the case of S3, the http Authorization header is used for two purposes, authenticating clients and make sure the messages were not altered while they were in transit. For doing that, it uses a signature or hash of the message content and some of the headers using a symmetric key (That's just one of the available mechanisms). Windows Azure for example also uses the same mechanism in many of its APIs. There are three challenges that any developer working for first time in Metro will have to face to consume S3, the new WinRT APIs, the asynchronous nature of them and the complexity introduced for generating the Authorization header. Having said that, I decided to write this post with some of the gotchas I found myself trying to consume this Amazon service. 1. Generating the signature for the Authorization header All the cryptography APIs in WinRT are available under Windows.Security.Cryptography namespace. Many of operations available in these APIs uses the concept of buffers (IBuffer) for representing a chunk of binary data. As you will see in the example below, these buffers are mainly generated with the use of static methods in a WinRT class CryptographicBuffer available as part of the namespace previously mentioned. private string DeriveAuthToken(string resource, string httpMethod, string timestamp) { var stringToSign = string.Format("{0}\n" + "\n" + "\n" + "\n" + "x-amz-date:{1}\n" + "/{2}/", httpMethod, timestamp, resource); var algorithm = MacAlgorithmProvider.OpenAlgorithm("HMAC_SHA1"); var keyMaterial = CryptographicBuffer.CreateFromByteArray(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(this.secret)); var hmacKey = algorithm.CreateKey(keyMaterial); var signature = CryptographicEngine.Sign( hmacKey, CryptographicBuffer.CreateFromByteArray(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(stringToSign)) ); return CryptographicBuffer.EncodeToBase64String(signature); } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } The algorithm that determines the information or content you need to use for generating the signature is very well described as part of the AWS documentation. In this case, this method is generating a signature required for creating a new bucket. A HmacSha1 hash is computed using a secret or symetric key provided by AWS in the management console. 2. Sending an Http Request to the S3 service WinRT also ships with the System.Net.Http.HttpClient that was first introduced some months ago with ASP.NET Web API. This client provides a rich interface on top the traditional WebHttpRequest class, and also solves some of limitations found in this last one. There are a few things that don't work with a raw WebHttpRequest such as setting the Host header, which is something absolutely required for consuming S3. Also, HttpClient is more friendly for doing unit tests, as it receives a HttpMessageHandler as part of the constructor that can fake to emulate a real http call. This is how the code for consuming the service with HttpClient looks like, public async Task<S3Response> CreateBucket(string name, string region = null, params string[] acl) { var timestamp = string.Format("{0:r}", DateTime.UtcNow); var auth = DeriveAuthToken(name, "PUT", timestamp); var request = new HttpRequestMessage(HttpMethod.Put, "http://s3.amazonaws.com/"); request.Headers.Host = string.Format("{0}.s3.amazonaws.com", name); request.Headers.TryAddWithoutValidation("Authorization", "AWS " + this.key + ":" + auth); request.Headers.Add("x-amz-date", timestamp); var client = new HttpClient(); var response = await client.SendAsync(request); return new S3Response { Succeed = response.StatusCode == HttpStatusCode.OK, Message = (response.Content != null) ? await response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync() : null }; } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } You will notice a few additional things in this code. By default, HttpClient validates the values for some well-know headers, and Authorization is one of them. It won't allow you to set a value with ":" on it, which is something that S3 expects. However, that's not a problem at all, as you can skip the validation by using the TryAddWithoutValidation method. Also, the code is heavily relying on the new async and await keywords to transform all the asynchronous calls into synchronous ones. In case you would want to unit test this code and faking the call to the real S3 service, you should have to modify it to inject a custom HttpMessageHandler into the HttpClient. The following implementation illustrates this concept, In case you would want to unit test this code and faking the call to the real S3 service, you should have to modify it to inject a custom HttpMessageHandler into the HttpClient. The following implementation illustrates this concept, public class FakeHttpMessageHandler : HttpMessageHandler { HttpResponseMessage response; public FakeHttpMessageHandler(HttpResponseMessage response) { this.response = response; } protected override Task<HttpResponseMessage> SendAsync(HttpRequestMessage request, System.Threading.CancellationToken cancellationToken) { var tcs = new TaskCompletionSource<HttpResponseMessage>(); tcs.SetResult(response); return tcs.Task; } } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } You can use this handler for injecting any response while you are unit testing the code.

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