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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for October 14-20, 2012

  - by Bob Rhubart

  The Top 10 items shared on the OTN ArchBeat Facebook page for the week of October 14-21, 2012. Panel: On the Impact of Software | InfoQ Les Hatton (Oakwood Computing Associates), Clive King (Oracle), Paul Good (Shell), Mike Andrews (Microsoft) and Michiel van Genuchten (moderator) discuss the impact of software engineering on our lives in this panel discussion recorded at the Computer Society Software Experts Summit 2012. ResCare Solves Content Lifecycle Challenges with Oracle WebCenter Learn how ResCare solves content lifecycle challenges with Oracle WebCenter. Speakers: Joe Lichtefeld, VP of Application Services & PMO, ResCare Wayne Boerger, Product Manager, TEAM Informatics Doug Thompson, EVP Global Development, TEAM Informatics Date: Tuesday, October 30, 2012 Time: 10:00 a.m. PT / 1:00 p.m. ET WebLogic Server 11gR1 Interactive Quick Reference "The WebLogic Server 11gR1 Administration interactive quick reference," explains Juergen Kress, "is a multimedia tool for various terms and concepts used in WebLogic Server architecture. This tool is available for administrators for online or offline use. This is built as a multimedia web page which provides descriptions of WebLogic Server Architectural components, and references to relevant documentation. This tool offers valuable reference information for any complex concept or product in an intuitive and useful manner." Oracle ACE Directors Nordic Tour 2012 : Venues and BI Presentations | Mark Rittman Oracle ACE Director Mark Rittman shares information on the Oracle ACE Director Tour, as the community leaders make their way through the land of the midnight sun, with events in Copenhagen, Stockholm, Oslo and Helsinki. Mobile Apps for EBS | Capgemini Oracle Blog Capgemini solution architect Satish Iyer breifly describes how Oracle ADF and Oracle SOA Suite can be used to fill the gap in mobile applications for Oracle EBS. Introducing the New Face of Fusion Applications | Misha Vaughan Oracle ACE Directors Debra Lilly and Floyd Teter have already blogged about the the new face of Oracle Fusion Applications. Now Applications User Experience Architect Misha Vaughan shares a brief overview of how the Oracle Applications User Experience (UX) team developed the new look. BPM 11g - Dynamic Task Assignment with Multi-level Organization Units | Mark Foster "I've seen several requirements to have a more granular level of task assignment in BPM 11g based on some value in the data passed to the process," says Fusion Middleware A-Team architect Mark Foster. "Parametric Roles is normally the first port of call to try to satisfy this requirement, but in this blog we will show how a lot of use-cases can be satisfied by the easier to implement and flexible Organization Unit." OTN Architect Day Los Angeles - Oct 25 Oracle Technology Network Architect Day in Los Angeles happens in one week. Register now to make sure you don't miss out on a rich schedule of expert technical sessions and peer interaction covering the use of Oracle technologies in cloud computing, SOA, and more. Even better: it's all free. When: October 25, 2012, 8:30am - 5:00pm. Where: Sofitel Los Angeles, 8555 Beverly Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90048. Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.2.2 released | Oracle's Virtualization Blog The Fat Bloke weighs in with a short post with information on where you can find information and the download for the latest VirtualBox release. Advanced Oracle SOA Suite #OOW 2012 SOA Presentations The Oracle SOA Product Management team has compiled a complete list of all twelve of their Oracle SOA Suite presentations from Oracle OpenWorld 2012, with links to the slide decks. Thought for the Day "Software: do you write it like a book, grow it like a plant, accrete it like a pearl, or construct it like a building?" — Jeff Atwood Source: softwarequotes.com

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• Systems of Engagement

  - by Michael Snow

  12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}  Engagement Week 12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} This week we’ll be looking at the ever evolving topic of systems of engagement. This topic continues generating widespread discussion around how we connect with businesses, employers, governments, and extended social communities across multiple channels spanning web, mobile and human face to face contact. Earlier in our Social Business Thought Leader Webcast Series, we had AIIM President John Mancini presenting "Moving from Records to Engagement to Insight" discussing the factors that are driving organizations to think more strategically about the intersection of content management, social technologies, and business processes. John spoke about how Content Management and Enterprise IT are being changed by social technologies and how new technologies are being used to drive innovation and transform processes along and what the implications of this transformation are for information professionals. He used these two slides below to illustrate the evolution from Systems of Record to Systems of Engagement. The AIIM White Paper is available for download from the AIIM website. Later this week (09/20), we'll have another session in our Social Business Thought Leader Webcast Series featuring  R “Ray” Wang (@rwang0) Principal Analyst & CEO from Constellation Research presenting: "Engaging Customers in the Era of Overexposure"  More info to come tomorrow on the upcoming webcast this week. ~~~~~~ In the spirit of spreading good karma - one of the first things that came to mind as I was thinking about "Engagement" was the evolution of the Marriage Proposal.  Someone sent me a link to this link a couple of months ago and it raises the bar on all proposals. I hope you'll enjoy!

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• How do you report out user research results?

  - by user12277104

  A couple weeks ago, one of my mentees asked to meet, because she wanted my advice on how to report out user research results. She had just conducted her first usability test for her new employer, and was getting to the point where she wanted to put together some slides, but she didn't want them to be boring. She wanted to talk with me about what to present and how best to present results to stakeholders. While I couldn't meet for another week, thanks to slideshare, I could quickly point her in the direction that my in-person advice would have led her. First, I'd put together a panel for the February 2012 New Hampshire UPA monthly meeting that we then repeated for the 2012 Boston UPA annual conference. In this panel, I described my reporting techniques, as did six of my colleagues -- two of whom work for companies smaller than mine, and four of whom are independent consultants. Before taking questions, we each presented for 3 to 5 minutes on how we presented research results. The differences were really interesting. For example, when do you really NEED a long, written report (as opposed to an email, spreadsheet, or slide deck with callouts)? When you are reporting your test results to the FDA -- that makes sense. in this presentation, I describe two modes of reporting results that I use.  Second, I'd been a participant in the CUE-9 study. CUE stands for Comparative Usability Evaluation, and this was the 9th of these studies that Rolf Molich had designed. Originally, the studies were designed to show the variability in evaluation methods practitioners use to evaluate websites and applications. Of course, using methods and tasks of their own choosing, the results were wildly different. However, in this 9th study, the tasks were the same, the participants were the same, and the problem severity scale was the same, so how would the results of the 19 practitioners compare? Still wildly variable. But for the purposes of this discussion, it gave me a work product that was not proprietary to the company I work for -- a usability test report that I could share publicly. This was the way I'd been reporting results since 2005, and pretty much what I still do, when time allows.  That said, I have been continuing to evolve my methods and reporting techniques, and sometimes, there is no time to create that kind of report -- the team can't wait the days that it takes to take screen shots, go through my notes, refer back to recordings, and write it all up. So in those cases, I use bullet points in email, talk through the findings with stakeholders in a 1-hour meeting, and then post the take-aways on a wiki page. There are other requirements for that kind of reporting to work -- for example, the stakeholders need to attend each of the sessions, and the sessions can't take more than a day to complete, but you get the idea: there is no one "right" way to report out results. If the method of reporting you are using is giving your stakeholders the information they need, in a time frame in which it is useful, and in a format that meets their needs (FDA report or bullet points on a wiki), then that's the "right" way to report your results. 

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• Using rel=next and rel=prev with multiple sets of paginated content on the same page

  - by jakejgordon

  We are running into issues with trying to figure out how to implement rel="next" and rel="prev" -- coupled with rel="canonical" -- with multiple sets of paginated content on the same page, with pages in multiple cultures. In other words, how do we implement these when we have a pager for both Product Reviews and Questions and Answers (aka "Q&A") on the same page, with duplicate content across culture-specific URLs (e.g. /us/en/my-product vs. /ca/en/my-product)? Our current implementation will actually do a full postback when you click Page 2, and will add something to the query string (e.g. website.com/ca/en/my-product?previewpage=2 or website.com/ca/en/my-product?questionpage=2). If we only had one set of paginated content then the implementation would certainly be more straightforward. Adding a second set of paginated content (i.e. Q&A) complicates things. Let's assume that we want the United States English page to be the canonical target (i.e. /us/en/my-product) based on culture. If you go to the /ca/en/my-product page you'll have a rel="canonical" href="/us/en/my-product". So far so good. Let's also assume that we are not implementing a page that lists ALL Product Reviews and Q&A. This would likely solve a number of our problems by using rel="canonical" to this page, but is not an option for reasons that are out of scope for this discussion. Now if you click on page 2 of Product Reviews, it will reload the page with /ca/en/my-product?reviewpage=2 as the URL. Given this scenario, here are my questions: On page 2 of the my-product page on the Canadian site, should there be a rel="canonical" to /us/en/my-product?reviewpage=2 (assuming the content is identical in the United States and Canada)? Should the rel="prev" go to /ca/en/my-product?reviewpage=1 or should it go to /ca/en/my-product ? The query-string version would really only be accessible if using the pager and shows the exact same content as the base page. The following two questions are closely related to this one. Should the /ca/en/my-product?reviewpage=1 have a rel canonical directly to /us/en/my-product (United States page with nothing in query string) since the content is identical)? Given that Q&A content is also paginated, should there be a rel="next" on the base page without query string? In other words, should the /ca/en/my-product page have a rel="next" to /ca/en/my-product?reviewpage=2 AND rel="next" to /ca/en/my-product?questionpage=2 . So far as I can tell it doesn't make sense to have multiple rel="next" implementations on the same page. I suspect that the pages with query string values should have rel="next" and rel="prev" that only point to other pages with query strings and not to the base page. The ?reviewpage=1 and ?questionpage=1 pages would then just have a rel="canonical" to /us/en/my-product . Thoughts? I know this is a tough one -- that's why I brought it to this community. Thanks so much for your help in advance!

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• Ask the Readers: Would You Be Willing to Give Windows Up and Use a Different O.S.?

  - by Asian Angel

  When it comes to computers, Windows definitely rules the desktop in comparison to other operating systems. What we would like to know this week is if you would actually be willing to give up using Windows altogether and move to a different operating system on your computers. Note: This week’s Ask the Readers post is posing a hypothetical situation, so please refrain from starting arguments or a flame war in the comments. Good reasoned discussion is always welcome. There is no doubt that Windows is the dominant operating system in use today. Everywhere you go or look it is easy to find computers with Windows installed such as at work, home, the library, government offices, and more. For many people it is the operating system that they know and are comfortable with, which makes changing to a different operating system less appealing. Adding to the preference for Windows (or dependency based on your view) is the custom software that many businesses use on a daily basis. Throw in the high volume of people who depend on and use Microsoft Office as a standard for their business documents and it is little wonder that Windows is so dominant. So what would you use if you did decide to take a break from or permanently move away from Windows? If your choice is Linux then you have a large and wonderful variety of distributions to choose from based on what you want out of your system. Want a distribution that is easy to work with? You could choose Ubuntu, Linux Mint, or others that are engineered to be ready to go “out of the box”. Like a challenge? Perhaps Arch Linux is more your style. One of the most attractive features of all about Linux is the price…it is very hard to beat free! Maybe Mac OS X sounds like the perfect choice. It has a certain mystique and elegance associated with it and many OS X fans refuse to use anything else if given a choice. Then there is the soon to be released Chrome OS with its’ emphasis on cloud computing. This is a system that is definitely focused on being as low-maintenance and hassle-free as possible. Quick on, quick off, minimalist, and made to be portable. All of the system’s updates will occur automatically leaving you free to work and play in the cloud. But it does have its’ limitations…no installing all of those custom apps that you love using on Windows or other systems…it is literally all about the browsing window and web apps. So there you have it. If the opportunity presented itself would you, could you give Windows up and use a different operating system? Would it be easy or hard for you to do? Perhaps it would not really matter so long as you could do what you needed or wanted to do on a computer. And maybe this is the perfect time to try something new and find out…that new favorite operating system could be just an install disc away. Let us know your thoughts in the comments! How-To Geek Polls require Javascript. Please Click Here to View the Poll. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials The 50 Best Registry Hacks that Make Windows Better The How-To Geek Holiday Gift Guide (Geeky Stuff We Like) LCD? LED? Plasma? The How-To Geek Guide to HDTV Technology The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 8: Filters Improve Digital Photography by Calibrating Your Monitor The Brothers Mario – Epic Gangland Style Mario Brothers Movie Trailer [Video] Score Awesome Games on the Cheap with the Humble Indie Bundle Add a Colorful Christmas Theme to Your Windows 7 Desktop This Windows Hack Changes the Blue Screen of Death to Red Edit Images Quickly in Firefox with Pixlr Grabber Zoho Writer, Sheet, and Show Now Available in Chrome Web Store

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• To SYNC or not to SYNC – Part 4

  - by AshishRay

  This is Part 4 of a multi-part blog article where we are discussing various aspects of setting up Data Guard synchronous redo transport (SYNC). In Part 1 of this article, I debunked the myth that Data Guard SYNC is similar to a two-phase commit operation. In Part 2, I discussed the various ways that network latency may or may not impact a Data Guard SYNC configuration. In Part 3, I talked in details regarding why Data Guard SYNC is a good thing, and the distance implications you have to keep in mind. In this final article of the series, I will talk about how you can nicely complement Data Guard SYNC with the ability to failover in seconds. Wait - Did I Say “Seconds”? Did I just say that some customers do Data Guard failover in seconds? Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. Data Guard has an automatic failover capability, aptly called Fast-Start Failover. Initially available with Oracle Database 10g Release 2 for Data Guard SYNC transport mode (and enhanced in Oracle Database 11g to support Data Guard ASYNC transport mode), this capability, managed by Data Guard Broker, lets your Data Guard configuration automatically failover to a designated standby database. Yes, this means no human intervention is required to do the failover. This process is controlled by a low footprint Data Guard Broker client called Observer, which makes sure that the primary database and the designated standby database are behaving like good kids. If something bad were to happen to the primary database, the Observer, after a configurable threshold period, tells that standby, “Your time has come, you are the chosen one!” The standby dutifully follows the Observer directives by assuming the role of the new primary database. The DBA or the Sys Admin doesn’t need to be involved. And - in case you are following this discussion very closely, and are wondering … “Hmmm … what if the old primary is not really dead, but just network isolated from the Observer or the standby - won’t this lead to a split-brain situation?” The answer is No - It Doesn’t. With respect to why-it-doesn’t, I am sure there are some smart DBAs in the audience who can explain the technical reasons. Otherwise - that will be the material for a future blog post. So - this combination of SYNC and Fast-Start Failover is the nirvana of lights-out, integrated HA and DR, as practiced by some of our advanced customers. They have observed failover times (with no data loss) ranging from single-digit seconds to tens of seconds. With this, they support operations in industry verticals such as manufacturing, retail, telecom, Internet, etc. that have the most demanding availability requirements. One of our leading customers with massive cloud deployment initiatives tells us that they know about server failures only after Data Guard has automatically completed the failover process and the app is back up and running! Needless to mention, Data Guard Broker has the integration hooks for interfaces such as JDBC and OCI, or even for custom apps, to ensure the application gets automatically rerouted to the new primary database after the database level failover completes. Net Net? To sum up this multi-part blog article, Data Guard with SYNC redo transport mode, plus Fast-Start Failover, gives you the ideal triple-combo - that is, it gives you the assurance that for critical outages, you can failover your Oracle databases: very fast without human intervention, and without losing any data. In short, it takes the element of risk out of critical IT operations. It does require you to be more careful with your network and systems planning, but as far as HA is concerned, the benefits outweigh the investment costs. So, this is what we in the MAA Development Team believe in. What do you think? How has your deployment experience been? We look forward to hearing from you!

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• Changes in Language Punctuation [closed]

  - by Wes Miller

  More social curiosity than actual programming question... (I got shot for posting this on Stack Overflow. They sent me here. At least i hope here is where they meant.) Based on the few responses I got before the content police ran me off Stack Overflow, I should note that I am legally blind and neatness and consistency in programming are my best friends. A thousand years ago when I took my first programming class (Fortran 66) and a mere 500 years ago when I tokk my first C and C++ classes, there were some pretty standard punctuation practices across languages. I saw them in Basic (shudder), PL/1, PL/AS, Rexx even Pascal. Ok, APL2 is not part of this discussion. Each language has its own peculiar punctuation. Pascal's periods, Fortran's comma separated do loops, almost everybody else's semicolons. As I learned it, each language also has KEYWORDS (if, for, do, while, until, etc.) which are set off by whitespace (or the left margin) if, etc. Each language has function, subroutines of whatever they're called. Some built-in some user coded. They were set off by function_name( parameters );. As in sqrt( x ) or rand( y ); Lately, there seems to be a new set of punctuation rules. Especially in c++ where initializers get glued onto the end of variable declarations int x(0); or auto_ptr p(new gizmo); This usually, briefly fools me into thinking someone is declaring a function prototype or using a function as a integer. Then "if" and 'for' seems to have grown parens; if(true) for(;;), etc. Since when did keywords become functions. I realize some people think they ARE functions with iterators as parameters. But if "for" is a function, where did the arg separating commas go? And finally, functions seem to have shed their parens; sqrt (2) select (...) I know, I koow, loosening whitespace rules is good. Keep reading. Question: when did the old ways disappear and this new way come into vogue? Does anyone besides me find it irritating to read and that the information that the placement of punctuation used to convey is gone? I know full well that K&R put the { at the end of the "if" or "for" to save a byte here and there. Can't use that excuse here. Space as an excuse for loss of readability died as HDD space soared past 100 MiB. Your thoughts are solicited. If there is a good reason to do this, I'll gladly learn it and maybe in another 50 years I'll get used to it. Of course it's good that compilers recognize these (IMHO) typos and keep right on going, but just because you CAN code it that way doesn't mean you HAVE to, right?

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama Top 10 for October 21-27, 2012

  - by Bob Rhubart

  The Top 10 most popular items shared on the OTN ArchBeat Facebook Page for the week of October 21-27, 2012. OTN Architect Day: Los Angeles This is your brain on IT architecture. Stuff your cranium with architecture by attending Oracle Technology Network Architect Day in Los Angeles, October 25, 2012, at the Sofitel Los Angeles, 8555 Beverly Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90048. Technical sessions, panel Q&A, and peer roundtables—plus a free lunch. [NOTE: The event was last week, of course. Big thanks to the session presenters and especially to those Angelinos who came out for the event.] WebLogic Server 11gR1 Interactive Quick Reference"The WebLogic Server 11gR1 Administration interactive quick reference," explains Juergen Kress, "is a multimedia tool for various terms and concepts used in WebLogic Server architecture. This tool is available for administrators for online or offline use. This is built as a multimedia web page which provides descriptions of WebLogic Server Architectural components, and references to relevant documentation. This tool offers valuable reference information for any complex concept or product in an intuitive and useful manner." Podcast: Are You Future Proof? The latest OTN ArchBeat Podcast series features Oracle ACE Directors Ron Batra, Basheer Khan, and Ronald van Luttikhuizen, three practicing architects in an open discussion about how changes in enterprise IT are raising the bar for success for software architects and developers. Play Oracle Vanquisher Here's a little respite from whatever it is you normally spend your time on. Oracle Vanquisher is an online diversion that makes a game of data center optimization. According to the description: "Armed with a cool Oracle vacuum pack suit and a strategic IT roadmap, you will thwart threats and optimize your data center to increase your company’s stock price and boost your company’s position." Mainly you avoid electric shock and killer birds. The current high score belongs to someone identified as 'TEN." My score? Never mind. Advanced Oracle SOA Suite OOW 2012 PresentationsThe Oracle SOA Product Management team has compiled a complete list of all twelve of their Oracle SOA Suite presentations from Oracle OpenWorld 2012, with links to the slide decks. OAM and OIM 11g Academies Looking for technical how-to content covering Oracle Access Manager and Oracle Identity Manager? The people behind the Oracle Middleware Security blog have indexed relevant blog posts into what they call "Academies." "These indexes contain the articles we’ve written that we believe provide long lasting guidance on OAM and OIM. Posts covered in these series include articles on key aspects of OAM and OIM 11g, best practice architectural guidance, integrations, and customizations." Oracle’s Analytics, Engineered Systems, and Big Data Strategy | Mark Rittman Part 1 of 3 in Oracle ACE Director Mark Rittman's series on Oracle Exalytics, Oracle R Enterprise and Endeca. Oracle ACE Directors Nordic Tour 2012 : Venues and BI Presentations | Mark RittmanOracle ACE Director Mark Rittman shares information on the Oracle ACE Director Tour, as the community leaders make their way through the land of the midnight sun, with events in Copenhagen, Stockholm, Oslo and Helsinki. Following the Thread in OSB | Antony Reynolds Antony Reynolds recently led an Oracle Service Bus POC in which his team needed to get high throughput from an OSB pipeline. "Imagine our surprise when, on stressing the system, we saw it lock up, with large numbers of blocked threads." He shares the details of the problem and the solution in this extensive technical post. OW12: Oracle Business Process Management/Oracle ADF Integration Best Practices | Andrejus Baranovskis The Oracle OpenWorld presentations keep coming! Oracle ACE Director Andrejus Baranovskis shares the slides from "Oracle Business Process Management/Oracle ADF Integration Best Practices," co-presented with Danilo Schmiedel from Opitz Consulting. Thought for the Day "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." — Albert Einstein (March 14, 1879 – April 18, 1955) Source: Quotes For Software Engineers

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• JavaOne User Group Sunday

  - by Tori Wieldt

  Before any "official" sessions of JavaOne 2012, the Java community was already sizzling. User Group Sunday was a great success, with several sessions offered by Java community members for anyone wanting to attend. Sessions were both about Java and best practices for running a JUG. Technical sessions included "Autoscaling Web Java Applications: Handle Peak Traffic with Zero Downtime and Minimized Cost,"  "Using Java with HTML5 and CSS3," and "Gooey and Sticky Bits: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Java." Several sessions were about how to start and run a JUG, like "Getting Speakers, Finding Sponsors, Planning Events: A Day in the Life of a JUG" and "JCP and OpenJDK: Using the JUGs’ “Adopt” Programs in Your Group." Badr ElHouari and Faiçal Boutaounte presented the session "Why Communities Are Important and How to Start One." They used the example of the Morocco JUG, which they started. Before the JUG, there was no "Java community," they explained. They shared their best practices, including: have fun, enjoy what you are doing get a free venue to have regular meetings, a University is a good choice run a conference, it gives you visibility and brings in new members students are a great way to grow a JUG Badr was proud to mention JMaghreb, a first-time conference that the Morocco JUG is hosting in November. They have secured sponsors and international speakers, and are able to offer a free conference for Java developers in North Africa. The session also included a free-flowing discussion about recruiters (OK to come to meetings, but not to dominate them), giving out email addresses (NEVER do without permission), no-show rates (50% for free events) and the importance of good content (good speakers really help!). Trisha Gee, member of the London Java Community (LJC) was one of the presenters for the session "Benefits of Open Source." She explained how open sourcing the LMAX Disruptor (a high performance inter-thread messaging library) gave her company LMAX several benefits, including more users, more really good quality new hires, and more access to 3rd party companies. Being open source raised the visibility of the company and the product, which was good in many ways. "We hired six really good coders in three months," Gee said. They also got community contributors for their code and more cred with technologists. "We had been unsuccessful at getting access to executives from other companies in the high-performance space. But once we were open source, the techies at the company had heard of us, knew our code was good, and that opened lots of doors for us." So, instead of "giving away the secret sauce," by going open source, LMAX gained many benefits. "It was a great day," said Bruno Souza, AKA The Brazilian Java Man, "the sessions were well attended and there was lots of good interaction." Sizzle and steak!

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• Why Is Hibernation Still Used?

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  With the increased prevalence of fast solid-state hard drives, why do we still have system hibernation? Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. The Question SuperUser reader Moses wants to know why he should use hibernate on a desktop machine: I’ve never quite understood the original purpose of the Hibernation power state in Windows. I understand how it works, what processes take place, and what happens when you boot back up from Hibernate, but I’ve never truly understood why it’s used. With today’s technology, most notably with SSDs, RAM and CPUs becoming faster and faster, a cold boot on a clean/efficient Windows installation can be pretty fast (for some people, mere seconds from pushing the power button). Standby is even faster, sometimes instantaneous. Even SATA drives from 5-6 years ago can accomplish these fast boot times. Hibernation seems pointless to me [on desktop computers] when modern technology is considered, but perhaps there are applications that I’m not considering. What was the original purpose behind hibernation, and why do people still use it? Quite a few people use hibernate, so what is Moses missing in the big picture? The Answer SuperUser contributor Vignesh4304 writes: Normally hibernate mode saves your computer’s memory, this includes for example open documents and running applications, to your hard disk and shuts down the computer, it uses zero power. Once the computer is powered back on, it will resume everything where you left off. You can use this mode if you won’t be using the laptop/desktop for an extended period of time, and you don’t want to close your documents. Simple Usage And Purpose: Save electric power and resuming of documents. In simple terms this comment serves nice e.g (i.e. you will sleep but your memories are still present). Why it’s used: Let me describe one sample scenario. Imagine your battery is low on power in your laptop, and you are working on important projects on your machine. You can switch to hibernate mode – it will result your documents being saved, and when you power on, the actual state of application gets restored. Its main usage is like an emergency shutdown with an auto-resume of your documents. MagicAndre1981 highlights the reason we use hibernate everyday: Because it saves the status of all running programs. I leave all my programs open and can resume working the next day very easily. Doing a real boot would require to start all programs again, load all the same files into those programs, get to the same place that I was at before, and put all my windows in exactly the same place. Hibernating saves a lot of work pulling these things back up again. It’s not unusual to find computers around the office here that have been hibernated day in and day out for months without an actual full system shutdown and restart. It’s enormously convenient to freeze your work space at the exact moment you stopped working and to turn right around and resume there the next morning. Have something to add to the explanation? Sound off in the the comments. Want to read more answers from other tech-savvy Stack Exchange users? Check out the full discussion thread here.     

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• Lead, Follow, or Get out of the way

  - by Daniel Moth

  This is one of the sayings (attributed to Thomas Paine) that totally resonated with me from the first time I heard it, which was only 3 years ago during some training course at work: "Lead, Follow, or Get out of the way" You'll find many books with this title and you'll find it quoted by politicians and other leaders in various countries at various times... the quote is open to interpretation and works on many levels. To set the tone of what this means to me, I'll use a simple micro example: In any given conversation, you are either leading it or following it, at different times/snapshots of the conversation. If you are not willing or able to lead it, and you are not willing or able to follow it, then you should depart. The bad alternative which this guidance encourages you NOT to do is to stick around and obstruct progress by not following, not leading, and simply complaining or trying to derail the discussion in no particular direction. The same pattern applies at your position/role at work. Either follow your management/leadership team, or try to lead them to what you think is a better place, or change jobs. Don't stick around complaining about the direction things are going, while not actively trying to either change things or make peace with it. In the previous paragraph you can replace the word "your management" with "the people reporting to you" and the guidance still holds. Either lead your direct reports to where you think they should go, or follow their lead, or change jobs. Complaining about folks not taking direction while doing nothing is not a maintainable state. To me this quote is not about a permanent state, it is not about some people always leading and some always following: It is about a role/hat that anybody can play/wear at any given moment. One minute I am leading you, the next I am following you, and the next we are both following someone else and so on... When there is disagreement, debate the different directions for as long as it takes for you to be comfortable that you can either follow or lead. If you don't become comfortable with either of those, get out of the way. Something to remember is that it is impossible to learn how to lead well, without learning how to follow well (probably deserves its own blog entry)... Things go wrong when someone thinks that they must always be leading, or when everybody wants to follow and nobody steps up to lead... Things go wrong when more than one person wants to lead and they don't try to reach agreement on a shared direction, stubbornly sticking to their guns pulling the rest of the team in multiple directions... Things go wrong when more than one person wants to lead and after numerous and lengthy discussions, none of them decides to follow or get out of the way... Things go wrong when people don't want to lead, don't want to follow, and insist on sticking around... While there are a few ways things that can go wrong as enumerated in the previous paragraph, the most common one in my experience is the last one I mentioned. You'll recognize these folks as the ones that always complain about everything that is wrong with their company/product but do nothing about it. Every time you hear someone giving feedback on how something is wrong or suboptimal, ask them "So now that you identified the problem, what do you think the solution is and what are you doing to drive us to that solution?" The next time things start going wrong, step up and remind everyone: Lead, Follow, or Get out of the way. For more perspectives, and for input to help you form your own interpretation, search the web for this phrase to see in what contexts it is being used (bing, google). Finally, regardless of your political views, I hope you can appreciate if only as an example this perspective of someone leading by actually getting out of the way. Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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• My collection of favourite TFS utilities

  - by Aaron Kowall

  So, you’re in charge of your company or team’s Team Foundation Server.  Wish it was easier to manage, administer, extend?  Well, here are a few utilities that I highly recommend looking at. I’ve recently had need to rebuild my laptop and upgrade my local TFS environment to TFS 2012 Update 1.  This gave me cause to enumerate some of the utilities I like to have on hand. One of the reasons I love to use TFS on projects is that it’s basically a complete ALM toolkit.  Everything from Task Management, Version Control, Build Management, Test Management, Metrics and Reporting are all there ‘in the box’.  However, no matter how complete a product set it, there are always ways to make it better.  Here are a list of utilities and libraries that are pretty generally useful.  this is not intended to be an exhaustive list of TFS extensions but rather a set that I recommend you look at.  There are many more out there that may be applicable in one scenario or another.  This set of tools should work with TFS 2012 or 2010 if you grab the right version. Most of these tools (and more) are available from the Visual Studio Gallery or CodePlex. General TFS Power Tools – This is ‘the’ collection of utilities and extensions delivered by the Product Group.  Highly recommended from here are the Best Practice Analyzer for ensuring your TFS implementation is healthy and the Team Foundation Server Backups to ensure your TFS databases are backed up correctly. TFS Administrators Toolkit – helps make updates to work item types and reports across many team projects.  Also provides visibility of disk usage by finding large files in version control or test attachments to assist in managing storage utilization. Version Control Git-TF - a set of cross-platform, command line tools that facilitate sharing of changes between TFS and Git. These tools allow a developer to use a local Git repository, and configure it to share changes with a TFS server.  Great for all Git lovers who must integrate into a TFS repository. Testing TFS 2012 Tester Power Tool – A utility for bulk copying test cases which assists in an approach for managing test cases across multiple releases.  A little plug that this utility was written and maintained by Anna Russo of Imaginet where I also work. Test Scribe - A documentation power tool designed to construct documents directly from the TFS for test plan and test run artifacts for the purpose of discussion, reporting etc. Reporting Community TFS Report Extensions - a single repository of SQL Server Reporting Services report for Team Foundation 2010 (and above).  Check out the Test Plan Status report by Imaginet’s Steve St. Jean.  Very valuable for your test managers. Builds TFS Build Manager – A great utility if you are build manager over a complex build environment with many TFS build definitions. Community TFS Build Extensions – contains many custom build activities.  Current release binaries are for TFS 2010 but many of the activities can be recompiled for use with TFS 2012. While compiling this list, I was surprised by the number of TFS utilities and extensions I no longer use/need in TFS 2012 because of the great work by the TFS team addressing many gaps since the 2010 release. Are there any utilities you depend on that I’ve missed?  I’d love to hear about them in the comments!

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• Guaranteed Restore Points as Fallback Method

  - by Mike Dietrich

  Thanks to the great audience yesterday in the Upgrade & Migration Workshop in Utrecht. That was really fun and I was amazed by our new facilities (and the  "wellness" lights surrounding the plenum room's walls). And another reason why I like to do these workshops is that often I learn new things from you So credits here to Rick van  Ek who has highlighted the following topic to me. Yesterday (and in some previous workshops) I did mention during the discussion about Fallback Strategies that you'll have to switch on Flashback Database beforehand to create a guaranteed restore point in case you'll encounter an issue during the database upgrade. I knew that we've made it possible since Oracle Database 11.2 to switch Flashback Database on without taking the database into MOUNT status (you could switch it off anyway while the database is open before in all releases). But before Oracle Database 11.2 that did require MOUNT status. SQL> create restore point rp1 guarantee flashback database ; create restore point rp1 guarantee flashback database * ERROR at line 1: ORA-38784: Cannot create restore point 'RP1'. ORA-38787: Creating the first guaranteed restore point requires mount mode when flashback database is off. But Rick did mention that I won't need to switch Flashback Database On to create a guaranteed restore point. And he's right - in older releases I would have had to go into MOUNT state to define the restore point which meant to restart the database. But in 11.2 that's no necessary anymore. And the same will apply when you upgrade your pre-11.2 database (e.g. an Oracle Database 10.2.0.4) to Oracle Database 11.2. As soon as you start your "old" not-yet-upgraded database in your 11.2 environment with STARTUP UPGRADE you can define a guaranteed restore point. If you tail the alert.log you'll see that the database will start the RVWR (Recovery Writer) background process - you'll just have to make sure that you'd define the values for db_recovery_file_dest_size and db_recovery_file_dest. SQL> startup upgrade ORACLE instance started. Total System Global Area  417546240 bytes Fixed Size                  2228944 bytes Variable Size             134221104 bytes Database Buffers          272629760 bytes Redo Buffers                8466432 bytes Database mounted. Database opened. SQL> create restore point grpt guarantee flashback database; Restore point created.SQL> drop restore point grpt; And don't forget to drop that restore point the sooner or later as it is guaranteed - and will fill up your Fast Recovery Area pretty quickly Just on the side: in any case archivelog mode is required if you'd like to work with restore points. - Mike

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• Merging Social Accounts: What We Learned This Weekend

  - by Mike Stiles

  Guest Post by Erika BrookesWe learned that it’s not always as easy as you think it’s going to be. While it’s widely accepted that merging multiple owned Facebook Pages that are duplicating communities and putting out the same type of content is a best practice, actually pulling it off without rattling fans is a trickier proposition. Facebook is nice and clear about how to merge Facebook Pages. Although content is not carried over, Likes from the pages you’re merging are. So you can imagine the surprise when such fans start seeing posts in their News Feed from a page they don’t believe they ever Liked. One community member accurately likened it to having your bank come under another bank’s brand name. The Facebook Page changes to the new brand, just like your debit card, emails, signs and other communication. This weekend we did our merge. The Facebook communities of Vitrue, Involver and Collective Intellect were pulled into one community, Oracle Social. Could we have handled it better? Oh yeah. Our intent was to make sure, to the fullest extent possible, that the fans of the Vitrue, Involver, and Collective Intellect brand pages were well-informed about the pending page merges in ADVANCE of the merge. While many were aware that Oracle acquired the three companies, many were not. We learned from fan feedback that we should have sent notifications MUCH earlier to make the brand Page merge crystal clear and to answer any questions. That was our bad, our responsibility and we apologize for Oracle Social showing up in your News Feed if you were not aware that it was a result of your fandom of Vitrue, Involver or Collective Intellect. It was our job to make you aware well in advance. Some felt they had never Liked the fan Pages of Vitrue, Involver or Collective Intellect, so they were understandably upset (some cultures may call it “fit to be tied”) when they found themselves fans of Oracle Social. One thing to consider is that since 2009, brands and developers have used and enjoyed free Involver tab apps like Twitter, RSS and YouTube (1.2 million of which are currently active), which included an opt-in Liking the Involver Page. Often, when Liking happens in a manner outside of the traditional clicking of a Like button on a brand Page, it’s easy to forget a Page was indeed Liked. Lastly, a few felt that their Like of the Page had been “bought.” It was not. No fans or Likes were separately purchased. Yes, the companies and the social properties of Vitrue, Involver and Collective Intellect were acquired by Oracle. Those brands are now being coordinated into the larger Oracle brand. In social media, that means those brands are being integrated into the Oracle Social community. So what now? We apologize and apply lessons learned. We learned that you not only have to communicate thoroughly and clearly, but you have to communicate well in advance of any actionable items that will affect fans. We’re more than willing to walk straight to the woodshed when we deserve it. Going forward, the social team here is dedicated to facilitating content, discussion and sharing around social for marketers, agencies, IT stakeholders and social staffs, including community managers. We anticipate Oracle Social being the premier gathering place for true social innovators as we move into social’s exciting next phase of development. Inevitably, some will still feel they are fans of the Page in error. While we hate to see you go, you may unlike the Page if it’s not relevant or useful to you. Let’s continue to contribute, participate, foster our desire to learn, and move forward together positively and constructively - both for current fans of the community and the many fans to come.

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• What 5 things should SQL Server get rid of?

  - by BuckWoody

  I’ve been “tagged” by my friend Paul Randal. It’s a high-tech way of making someone else do what you want, but since it’s Paul, well, I guess I’m OK with that. He’s asked in his recent blog entry “What five things would you get rid of in SQL Server if you were in charge?” This is, of course, a delicate issue. After all, I work at Microsoft, so anything I say here might be taken as a criticism that would require action – but of course it really doesn’t. Interestingly, you may have more to do with what goes in to SQL Server than I did even as a Program Manager where I “owned” a feature. Unlike many places I’ve worked, Microsoft really does drive its products by what its users want – not every time, and not every user request, mind you, but overall I think we hit the mark pretty well. So, with all of that said, and of course the obligatory statement of “these are my own opinions, and have nothing to do with any official Microsoft position in any way, and do not reflect the opinions of other Microsoft employees or management”, here goes. 1. Get rid of SQL Server Management Studio Does that surprise you? After all, when I was a Program Manager, I actually owned the general architecture for SSMS. But those on my team probably would have been able to guess this one for you. I think that SSMS is a fine development tool. But I think that it does less of a good job for managing a system. It’s based on Visual Studio, probably one of the best development IDE’s around. And when I develop code, I really like it. But for a monitoring/management tool, I prefer a snap-in to the Microsoft Management Console (MMC). I know, the old one (prior to 3.0) was kludgy, difficult to use and program in. But that’s changed. Of course, when I bring this up, you’ll probably immediately say “But I don’t have that in XP.” And that’s one of the reasons we didn’t go there. (But I still don’t like SSMS for management.) 2. ShrinkDB I think this discussion has been done to death, so I’ll leave it at that. 3. SQL Server Agent Does that one surprise you as well? In my mind, since we ALWAYS ride on Windows, just use the task scheduler there, along with PowerShell. You could log the results in Windows logs, files, back into SQL Server, whatever. It’s just a complexity we don’t need in SQL Server. 4. SQL Server Error Logs We have a full logging setup in Windows. They’re well done, easy to understand and ubiquitous. We should just use that. 5. Several SKU’s I won’t say which, but we have a few SKU’s of SQL Server that need to go. And we need to figure out how to help you understand clearly where you need to go to Enterprise or Data Center.  Most folks are trying to push Standard edition to do things it isn’t designed to do, and then they think SQL Server won’t scale. I think we can do a better job of showing you where Standard Edition will hit the wall, and I think with fewer choices it would be pretty simple for you to pick the right one. Well, once again I’ve probably puzzled some folks and angered others. I think my work here is done. :) Back to you, Paul. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Help Me Help You Fix That

  - by BuckWoody

  If you've been redirected here because you posted on a forum, or asked a question in an e-mail, the person wanted you to know how to get help quickly from a group of folks who are willing to do so - but whose time is valuable. You need to put a little effort into the question first to get others to assist. This is how to do that. It will only take you a moment to read... 1. State the problem succinctly in the title When an e-mail thread starts, or a forum post is the "head" of the conversation, you'll attract more helpers by using a descriptive headline than a vague one. This: "Driver for Epson Line Printer Not Installing on Operating System XYZ" Not this: "Can't print - PLEASE HELP" 2. Explain the Error Completely Make sure you include all pertinent information in the request. More information is better, there's almost no way to add too much data to the discussion. What you were doing, what happened, what you saw, the error message, visuals, screen shots, whatever you can include. This: "I'm getting error '5203 - Driver not compatible with Operating System since about 25 years ago' in a message box on the screen when I tried to run the SETUP.COM file from my older computer. It was a 1995 Compaq Proliant and worked correctly there.." Not this: "I get an error message in a box. It won't install." 3. Explain what you have done to research the problem If the first thing you do is ask a question without doing any research, you're lazy, and no one wants to help you. Using one of the many fine search engines you can most always find the answer to your problem. Sometimes you can't. Do yourself a favor - open a notepad app, and paste the URL's as you look them up. If you get your answer, don't save the note. If you don't get an answer, send the list along with the problem. It will show that you've tried, and also keep people from sending you links that you've already checked. This: "I read the fine manual, and it doesn't mention Operating System XYZ for some reason. Also, I checked the following links, but the instructions there didn't fix the problem: " Not this: <NULL> 4. Say "Please" and "Thank You" Remember, you're asking for help. No one owes you their valuable time. Ask politely, don't pester, endure the people who are rude to you, and when your question is answered, respond back to the thread or e-mail with a thank you to close it out. It helps others that have your same problem know that this is the correct answer. This: "I could really use some help here - if you have any pointers or things to try, I'd appreciate it." Not this: "I really need this done right now - why are there no responses?" This: "Thanks for those responses - that last one did the trick. Turns out I needed a new printer anyway, didn't realize they were so inexpensive now." Not this: <NULL> There are a lot of motivated people that will help you. Help them do that.

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• The Connected Company: WebCenter Portal - Feedback - Analytics and Polls

  - by Michael Snow

  Evernote Export body, td { }Guest Post by: Mitchell Palski, Staff Sales Consultant The importance of connecting peers has been widely recognized and socialized as a critical component of employee intranets. Organizations are striving to provide mediums for sharing knowledge and improving awareness across their enterprise. Indirectly, the socialization of your enterprise should lead to cost savings and improved product/service quality. However, many times the direct effects of connecting an organization’s leadership with its employees are overlooked. Oracle WebCenter Portal can help you bridge that gap by gathering implicit and explicit feedback. Implicit Feedback Through Usage Analytics Analytics allows administrators to track and analyze WebCenter Portal traffic and usage. Analytics provides the following basic functionality: Usage Tracking Metrics: Analytics collects and reports metrics of common WebCenter Portal functions, including community and portlet traffic. Behavior Tracking: Analytics can be used to analyze WebCenter Portal metrics to determine usage patterns, such as page visit duration and usage over time. User Profile Correlation: Analytics can be used to correlate metric information with user profile information. Usage tracking reports can be viewed and filtered by user profile data such as country, company or title. Usage analytics help measure how users interact with website content – allowing your IT staff and business analysts to make informed decisions when planning development for your next intranet enhancement. For example: If users are not accessing your Announcements page and missing critical information that they need to be aware of, you may elect to use graphical links on the home page to direct more users to that page. As a result, the number of employee help-requests to HR decreases. If users are not accessing your News page to read recent articles, you may elect to stop spending as much time updating the page with new stories and cut costs in your communications department. You notice that there is a high volume of users accessing the Employee Dashboard page so your organization decides to continue making personalization enhancements to the page and investing in the Portal tool that most users are accessing. Usage analytics aren’t necessarily a new concept in the IT industry. What sets WebCenter Portal Analytics apart is: Reports are tailored for WebCenter specific tools Report can be easily added to a page as simple as a drag-and-drop Explicit Feedback Through Polls WebCenter Portal users can create, edit, take, and analyze online polls. With polls, you can survey your audience (such as their opinions and their experience level), check whether they can recall important information, and gather feedback and metrics. How many times have you been involved in a requirements discussion and someone has asked a question similar to “Well how do you know that no one likes our home page?” and the response is “Everyone says they hate it! That’s all anyone complains about.” No one has any measurable, quantifiable metric to gauge user satisfaction. Analytics measure usage, but your organization also needs to measure the quality of your portal as defined by the actual people that use it. With that information, your leadership can make informed decisions that will not only match usage patterns but also relate to employees on a personal level. The end result is a connection between employees and leadership that gives everyone in the organization a sense of ownership of their Portal rather than the feeling of development decisions being segregated to leadership only. Polls can be created and edited through the Poll Manager: Polls and View Poll Results can easily be added to a page through drag-and-drop. What did we learn? Being a “connected” company doesn’t just mean helping employees connect with each other horizontally across your enterprise. It also means connecting those employees to the decisions that affect their everyday activities. Through WebCenter Portal Usage Analytics and Polls, any decision that is made to remove a Portal page, update a Portal page, or develop new Portal functionality, can be justified by quantifiable metrics. Instead of fielding complaints and hearing that your employees don’t have a voice, give those employees a voice and listen!

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• Investigating on xVelocity (VertiPaq) column size

  - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)

    In January I published an article about how to optimize high cardinality columns in VertiPaq. In the meantime, VertiPaq has been rebranded to xVelocity: the official name is now “xVelocity in-memory analytics engine (VertiPaq)” but using xVelocity and VertiPaq when we talk about Analysis Services has the same meaning. In this post I’ll show how to investigate on columns size of an existing Tabular database so that you can find the most important columns to be optimized. A first approach can be looking in the DataDir of Analysis Services and look for the folder containing the database. Then, look for the biggest files in all subfolders and you will find the name of a file that contains the name of the most expensive column. However, this heuristic process is not very optimized. A better approach is using a DMV that provides the exact information. For example, by using the following query (open SSMS, open an MDX query on the database you are interested to and execute it) you will see all database objects sorted by used size in a descending way. SELECT * FROM $SYSTEM.DISCOVER_STORAGE_TABLE_COLUMN_SEGMENTS ORDER BY used_size DESC You can look at the first rows in order to understand what are the most expensive columns in your tabular model. The interesting data provided are: TABLE_ID: it is the name of the object – it can be also a dictionary or an index COLUMN_ID: it is the column name the object belongs to – you can also see ID_TO_POS and POS_TO_ID in case they refer to internal indexes RECORDS_COUNT: it is the number of rows in the column USED_SIZE: it is the used memory for the object By looking at the ration between USED_SIZE and RECORDS_COUNT you can understand what you can do in order to optimize your tabular model. Your options are: Remove the column. Yes, if it contains data you will never use in a query, simply remove the column from the tabular model Change granularity. If you are tracking time and you included milliseconds but seconds would be enough, round the data source column to the nearest second. If you have a floating point number but two decimals are good enough (i.e. the temperature), round the number to the nearest decimal is relevant to you. Split the column. Create two or more columns that have to be combined together in order to produce the original value. This technique is described in VertiPaq optimization article. Sort the table by that column. When you read the data source, you might consider sorting data by this column, so that the compression will be more efficient. However, this technique works better on columns that don’t have too many distinct values and you will probably move the problem to another column. Sorting data starting from the lower density columns (those with a few number of distinct values) and going to higher density columns (those with high cardinality) is the technique that provides the best compression ratio. After the optimization you should be able to reduce the used size and improve the count/size ration you measured before. If you are interested in a longer discussion about internal storage in VertiPaq and you want understand why this approach can save you space (and time), you can attend my 24 Hours of PASS session “VertiPaq Under the Hood” on March 21 at 08:00 GMT.

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• Any tips on getting hired as a software project manager straight out of college?

  - by MHarrison

  I graduated with a BS in compsci last September, and I've been trying (unsuccessfully) to find a job as a project manager ever since. I fell in love with software engineering (the formal practice behind it all, not just coding) in school, and I've dedicated the last 3-4 years of my life to learning everything I can about project management and gaining experience. I've managed several projects (with teams around 12 people) while in school, and I worked with my university's software engineering research lab. My résumé is also decent - I worked as a programmer before I went to school (I'm 27 now), and I did Google Summer of Code for 3 summers. I also have general "people management" experience via working as the photo editor for my university's newspaper for 2 years. My first problem with the job hunt is not getting enough interviews. I use careers.stackoverflow.com, which is awesome because I usually get contacted by non-HR people who know what they're talking about, but there's just not enough companies using it for me to get interviews on a regular basis. I've also tried sites like monster.com, and in a fit of desperation, I sent out no less than 60 applications to project management positions. I've gotten 3 automated rejection letters and that's it. At least careers.stackoverflow gets me a phone interview with 8/10 places I apply to. But the main (and extremely frustrating) problem is the matter of experience. I've successfully managed projects from start to finish (in my software engineering classes we had real customers come in with a real software need and we built it for them), but I've never had to deal with budgets and money (I know this is why HR people immediately turn me away). Most of these positions require 5+ years PM experience, and I've seen absurd things like 12+ years required. Interviews are also maddening. I've had so many places who absolutely loved me and I made it to the final round of interviews, and I left thinking things went extremely well and they'd consider me. However, when I check in with them a week later, they tell me "We really liked you and your qualifications are excellent, but we're hoping to find someone with more experience." The bad interviews I can understand - like the PM position that would have had me managing developers both locally and overseas - I had 3 interviews with them and the ENTIRE interview process was them asking me CS brainteasers and having me waste time on things like writing quicksort on paper or writing binary search trees. Even when I tried steering the discussion towards more relevant PM stuff, they gave me some vague generic replies and went back to the "We want to be Google/MS" crap. But when I have a GOOD interview, they say my "qualifications are excellent" but they want "more experience"...that makes me want to tear my hair out. What else can I DO? While I'm aiming for technically-involved PM positions (not just crunching budget numbers), I really don't want a straight development job because I like creating software from the very high-level vs. spending a lot of time debugging memory leaks. In fact, I can't even GET development positions that I'm qualified for because I make the mistake of telling them that my future career goals are as PM (which usually results in them saying something like "Well we already have PMs and this position isn't really set up to get you there." - which I take to mean "No, that's my job, stay away.") My apologies on the long rant, but I'm seriously hellbent on getting hired as a PM since it's both my career goal and the passion that keeps me awake at night. Any suggestions on what the heck else I can do? I'm currently writing a blog where I talk about my philosophies about software engineering, and I'm writing up specs for an iOS app which I will design, code, and show employers, but this takes an awful lot of time that I don't have.

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• SharePoint For Newbie Developers: Code Scope

  - by Mark Rackley

  So, I continue to try to come up with diagrams and information to help new SharePoint developers wrap their heads around this SharePoint beast, especially when those newer to development are on my team. To that end, I drew up the below diagram to help some of our junior devs understand where/when code is being executed in SharePoint at a high level. Note that I say “High Level”… This is a simplistic diagram that can get a LOT more complicated if you want to dive in deeper.  For the purposes of my lesson it served its purpose well. So, please no comments from you peanut gallery about information 3 levels down that’s missing unless it adds to the discussion.  Thanks So, the diagram below details where code is executed on a page load and gives the basic flow of the page load. There are actually many more steps, but again, we are staying high level here. I just know someone is still going to say something like “Well.. actually… the dlls are getting executed when…”  Anyway, here’s the diagram with some information I like to point out: Code Scope / Where it is executed So, looking at the diagram we see that dlls and XSL are executed on the server and that JavaScript/jQuery are executed on the client. This is the main thing I like to point out for the following reasons: XSL (for the most part) is faster than JavaScript I actually get this question a lot. Since XSL is executed on the server less data is getting passed over the wire and a beefier machine (hopefully) is doing the processing. The outcome of course is better performance. When You are using jQuery and making Web Service calls you are building XML strings and sending them to the server, then ALL the results come back and the client machine has to parse through the XML and use what it needs and ignore the rest (and there is a lot of garbage that comes back from SharePoint Web Service calls). XSL and JavaScript cannot work together in the same scope Let me clarify. JavaScript can send data back to SharePoint in postbacks that XSL can then use. XSL can output JavaScript and initiate JavaScript variables.  However, XSL cannot call a JavaScript method to get a value and JavaScript cannot directly interact with XSL and call its templates. They are executed in there scope only. No crossing of boundaries here. So, what does this all mean? Well, nothing too deep. This is just some basic fundamental information that all SharePoint devs need to understand. It will help you determine what is the best solution for your specific development situation and it will help the new guys understand why they get an error when trying to call a JavaScript Function from within XSL.  Let me know if you think quick little blogs like this are helpful or just add to the noise. I could probably put together several more that are similar.  As always, thanks for stopping by, hope you learned something new.

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• Get Fanatical About Your Followers

  - by Mike Stiles

  In the fourth of our series of discussions with Aberdeen’s Trip Kucera, we touch on what fans of your brand have come to expect in exchange for their fandom. Spotlight: Around the Oracle Social office, we live for football. So when we think of a true “fan” of a brand, something on the level of a football fan is what comes to mind. But are brands trying to invest fans on that same level? Trip: Yeah, if you’re a football fan, this is definitely your time of year. And if you’ve been to any NFL games recently, especially if you hadn’t been for a few years previously, you may have noticed that from the cup holders to in-stadium Wi-Fi, there’s an increasing emphasis being placed on “fan-focused” accommodations. That’s what they’re known as in the stadium business. Spotlight: How are brands doing in that fan-focused arena? Trip: Remember fan is short for “fanatical.” Brands can definitely learn from the way teams have become fanatical about their fans, or in the social media world, their followers. Many companies consider a segment of their addressable social audience as true fans; I’ve even heard the term “super-fans” used. So just as fans know and can tell you nearly everything about their favorite team, our research shows that there’s a lot value from getting to know your social audience—your followers—at a deeper level. Spotlight: So did your research show there’s a lot to be gained by making fandom a two-way street? Trip: Aberdeen’s new social relationship management research suggests that companies should develop capabilities to better analyze their social audience at a more granular level. Countless “ripped from the headlines” examples, from “United Breaks Guitars” to the most recent British Airways social fiasco we talked about a few weeks ago show how social can magnify the impact of a single customer voice. Spotlight: So how do the companies who are executing social most successfully do that? Trip: Leaders, which are the top-performing companies in Aberdeen’s study, are showing the value of identifying and categorizing your social audience. You should certainly treat every customer as if they have 10,000 followers, because they just might, but you can also proactively engage with high-value customer and high-value influencers. Getting back to the football analogy, it’s like how teams strive to give every guest a great experience, but they really roll out the red carpet for those season ticket and luxury box holders. Spotlight: I’m not allowed in luxury boxes, so you’ll have to tell me what that’s like. But what is the brand equivalent of rolling out the red carpet? Trip: Leaders are nearly three times more likely than Followers to have a process in place that identifies key social influencers for engagement, and more than twice as likely to identify customer advocates for social outreach. This is the kind of knowledge that gives companies the ability to better target social messaging and promotions like we talked about in our last discussion, as well as a basis for understanding how to measure the impact of their social media programs. I’ll give you an example. I hosted an event at one of my favorite restaurants recently. I had mentioned them in a Tweet several weeks before the event, and on the day of the event, they Tweeted out that they were looking forward to seeing me that evening for the event. It’s a small thing, but it had a big impact and I’d certainly go back as a result. Spotlight: So what specifically can brands use and look at to determine where their potential super-fans are? Trip: Social graph analysis, which looks at both the demographic/psychographic trends as well as the behavioral connections, can surface important brand value. Aberdeen’s PR and Brand Management research indicated that top-performing companies are more than three times more likely than Followers to both determine demographic trends through social listening (44% vs. 13%), and to identify meaningful customer segments through social (44% vs. 12%). This kind of brand-level insight can complement and enrich traditional market research. But perhaps even more importantly, it can serve as an early warning system for customer experience failures. @mikestilesPhoto: freedigitalphotos.net

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• JavaOne 2012: Nashorn Edition

  - by $utils.escapeXML($entry.author)

  As with my JavaOne 2012: OpenJDK Edition post a while back (now updated to reflect the schedule of the talks), I find it convenient to have my JavaOne schedule ordered by subjects of interest. Beside OpenJDK in all its flavors, another subject I find very exciting is Nashorn. I blogged about the various material on Nashorn in the past, and we interviewed Jim Laskey, the Project Lead on Project Nashorn in the Java Spotlight podcast. So without further ado, here are the JavaOne 2012 talks and BOFs with Nashorn in their title, or abstract:CON5390 - Nashorn: Optimizing JavaScript and Dynamic Language Execution on the JVM - Monday, Oct 1, 8:30 AM - 9:30 AMThere are many implementations of JavaScript, meant to run either on the JVM or standalone as native code. Both approaches have their respective pros and cons. The Oracle Nashorn JavaScript project is based on the former approach. This presentation goes through the performance work that has gone on in Oracle’s Nashorn JavaScript project to date in order to make JavaScript-to-bytecode generation for execution on the JVM feasible. It shows that the new invoke dynamic bytecode gets us part of the way there but may not quite be enough. What other tricks did the Nashorn project use? The presentation also discusses future directions for increased performance for dynamic languages on the JVM, covering proposed enhancements to both the JVM itself and to the bytecode compiler.CON4082 - Nashorn: JavaScript on the JVM - Monday, Oct 1, 3:00 PM - 4:00 PMThe JavaScript programming language has been experiencing a renaissance of late, driven by the interest in HTML5. Nashorn is a JavaScript engine implemented fully in Java on the JVM. It is based on the Da Vinci Machine (JSR 292) and will be available with JDK 8. This session describes the goals of Project Nashorn, gives a top-level view of how it all works, provides the current status, and demonstrates examples of JavaScript and Java working together.BOF4763 - Meet the Nashorn JavaScript Team - Tuesday, Oct 2, 4:30 PM - 5:15 PMCome to this session to meet the Oracle JavaScript (Project Nashorn) language teamBOF6661 - Nashorn, Node, and Java Persistence - Tuesday, Oct 2, 5:30 PM - 6:15 PMWith Project Nashorn, developers will have a full and modern JavaScript engine available on the JVM. In addition, they will have support for running Node applications with Node.jar. This unique combination of capabilities opens the door for best-of-breed applications combining Node with Java SE and Java EE. In this session, you’ll learn about Node.jar and how it can be combined with Java EE components such as EclipseLink JPA for rich Java persistence. You’ll also hear about all of Node.jar’s mapping, caching, querying, performance, and scaling features.CON10657 - The Polyglot Java VM and Java Middleware - Thursday, Oct 4, 12:30 PM - 1:30 PMIn this session, Red Hat and Oracle discuss the impact of polyglot programming from their own unique perspectives, examining non-Java languages that utilize Oracle’s Java HotSpot VM. You’ll hear a discussion of topics relating to Ruby, Lisp, and Clojure and the intersection of other languages where they may touch upon individual frameworks and projects, and you’ll get perspectives on JavaScript via the Nashorn Project, an upcoming JavaScript engine, developed fully in Java.CON5251 - Putting the Metaobject Protocol to Work: Nashorn’s Java Bindings - Thursday, Oct 4, 2:00 PM - 3:00 PMProject Nashorn is Oracle’s new JavaScript runtime in Java 8. Being a JavaScript runtime running on the JVM, it provides integration with the underlying runtime by enabling JavaScript objects to manipulate Java objects, implement Java interfaces, and extend Java classes. Nashorn is invokedynamic-based, and for its Java integration, it does away with the concept of wrapper objects in favor of direct virtual machine linking to Java objects’ methods provided by a metaobject protocol, providing much higher performance than what could be expected from a scripting runtime. This session looks at the details of the integration, a topic of interest to other language implementers on the JVM and a wider audience of developers who want to understand how Nashorn works.That's 6 sessions tooting the Nashorn this year at JavaOne, up from 2 last year.

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• Investigating on xVelocity (VertiPaq) column size

  - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)

    In January I published an article about how to optimize high cardinality columns in VertiPaq. In the meantime, VertiPaq has been rebranded to xVelocity: the official name is now “xVelocity in-memory analytics engine (VertiPaq)” but using xVelocity and VertiPaq when we talk about Analysis Services has the same meaning. In this post I’ll show how to investigate on columns size of an existing Tabular database so that you can find the most important columns to be optimized. A first approach can be looking in the DataDir of Analysis Services and look for the folder containing the database. Then, look for the biggest files in all subfolders and you will find the name of a file that contains the name of the most expensive column. However, this heuristic process is not very optimized. A better approach is using a DMV that provides the exact information. For example, by using the following query (open SSMS, open an MDX query on the database you are interested to and execute it) you will see all database objects sorted by used size in a descending way. SELECT * FROM $SYSTEM.DISCOVER_STORAGE_TABLE_COLUMN_SEGMENTS ORDER BY used_size DESC You can look at the first rows in order to understand what are the most expensive columns in your tabular model. The interesting data provided are: TABLE_ID: it is the name of the object – it can be also a dictionary or an index COLUMN_ID: it is the column name the object belongs to – you can also see ID_TO_POS and POS_TO_ID in case they refer to internal indexes RECORDS_COUNT: it is the number of rows in the column USED_SIZE: it is the used memory for the object By looking at the ration between USED_SIZE and RECORDS_COUNT you can understand what you can do in order to optimize your tabular model. Your options are: Remove the column. Yes, if it contains data you will never use in a query, simply remove the column from the tabular model Change granularity. If you are tracking time and you included milliseconds but seconds would be enough, round the data source column to the nearest second. If you have a floating point number but two decimals are good enough (i.e. the temperature), round the number to the nearest decimal is relevant to you. Split the column. Create two or more columns that have to be combined together in order to produce the original value. This technique is described in VertiPaq optimization article. Sort the table by that column. When you read the data source, you might consider sorting data by this column, so that the compression will be more efficient. However, this technique works better on columns that don’t have too many distinct values and you will probably move the problem to another column. Sorting data starting from the lower density columns (those with a few number of distinct values) and going to higher density columns (those with high cardinality) is the technique that provides the best compression ratio. After the optimization you should be able to reduce the used size and improve the count/size ration you measured before. If you are interested in a longer discussion about internal storage in VertiPaq and you want understand why this approach can save you space (and time), you can attend my 24 Hours of PASS session “VertiPaq Under the Hood” on March 21 at 08:00 GMT.

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• DBA Best Practices - A Blog Series: Episode 2 - Password Lists

  - by Argenis

    Digital World, Digital Locks One of the biggest digital assets that any company has is its secrets. These include passwords, key rings, certificates, and any other digital asset used to protect another asset from tampering or unauthorized access. As a DBA, you are very likely to manage some of these assets for your company - and your employer trusts you with keeping them safe. Probably one of the most important of these assets are passwords. As you well know, the can be used anywhere: for service accounts, credentials, proxies, linked servers, DTS/SSIS packages, symmetrical keys, private keys, etc., etc. Have you given some thought to what you're doing to keep these passwords safe? Are you backing them up somewhere? Who else besides you can access them? Good-Ol’ Post-It Notes Under Your Keyboard If you have a password-protected Excel sheet for your passwords, I have bad news for you: Excel's level of encryption is good for your grandma's budget spreadsheet, not for a list of enterprise passwords. I will try to summarize the main point of this best practice in one sentence: You should keep your passwords on an encrypted, access and version-controlled, backed-up, well-known shared location that every DBA on your team is aware of, and maintain copies of this password "database" on your DBA's workstations. Now I have to break down that statement to you: - Encrypted: what’s the point of saving your passwords on a file that any Windows admin with enough privileges can read? - Access controlled: This one is pretty much self-explanatory. - Version controlled: Passwords change (and I’m really hoping you do change them) and version control would allow you to track what a previous password was if the utility you’ve chosen doesn’t handle that for you. - Backed-up: You want a safe copy of the password list to be kept offline, preferably in long term storage, with relative ease of restoring. - Well-known shared location: This is critical for teams: what good is a password list if only one person in the team knows where it is? I have seen multiple examples of this that work well. They all start with an encrypted database. Certainly you could leverage SQL Server's native encryption solutions like cell encryption for this. I have found such implementations to be impractical, for the most part. Enter The World Of Utilities There are a myriad of open source/free software solutions to help you here. One of my favorites is KeePass, which creates encrypted files that can be saved to a network share, Sharepoint, etc. KeePass has UIs for most operating systems, including Windows, MacOS, iOS, Android and Windows Phone. Other solutions I've used before worth mentioning include PasswordSafe and 1Password, with the latter one being a paid solution – but wildly popular in mobile devices. There are, of course, even more "enterprise-level" solutions available from 3rd party vendors. The truth is that most of the customers that I work with don't need that level of protection of their digital assets, and something like a KeePass database on Sharepoint suits them very well. What are you doing to safeguard your passwords? Leave a comment below, and join the discussion! Cheers, -Argenis

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• Top Three Reasons to Move to the Cloud Before Your Next Upgrade

  - by yaldahhakim

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* 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";} 1) Reduced Cost - During major upgrades, most organizations typically need to replace or invest in extra hardware and other IT resources to support the upgrade. With the Cloud, this can become more of an Op-ex discussion. The flexibility and scalability of the cloud also allows for new business solution to be set up more quickly with the ability to scale IT resources to closely map to changing business requirements. . This enables more and faster innovation because you are spending money to focus on core business initiatives instead of setting up complex environments. 2) Reduced Risk- This is especially true when you are working with a cloud provider that possesses substantial in-house expertise. Oracle Managed Cloud Services has been hosting and managing customer’s business applications for over a decade and has help hundreds of customers upgrade and adopt new technologies faster and better. Customer have access to over 15,000 Oracle experts in operation centers around the world that can work around the clock and have direct access Oracle Development to optimize our customers’ upgrade experience. 3) Reduced Downtime - Whether a customer is looking to upgrade their E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, JD-Edwards, or Fusion applications, we’ve developed standardized best practices and tools across the technology stack to accelerate the upgrade and migration with substantially reduced timelines and risk. And because the process is repeatable, customer stay more current on the latest releases, continuously taking advantage of the newest innovations – without the headache.. By leveraging the economies and expertise of scale that belong to Oracle, you can sleep better at night knowing that your next major application upgrade is taken care of. Check out the video of this Managed Cloud Services customer to learn more about their experience.

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