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• Oracle Partner Architects Training

  - by mseika

  Dear Oracle Partner, There is a lot more to Oracle technology than meets the eye. Sure, you already belong to a small circle of our most experienced and committed partners. But are you making the best use possible of our technology solutions? Put it to the test.  Join the “Oracle Partner Architects Training”. It is aimed at providing your experts, architects and consultants with in-depth architectural knowledge about Oracle technology. Here is your chance to learn from the best. Seasoned speakers, exclusive content and no product marketing. Oracle technology beyond the obvious. Choose from any of the 40 recorded training sessions. Topics include:  • Security• Service integration • Database and options• Data integration • BI and applications• Applications and infrastructure• Hardware and software combinations The market and Oracle value specialized partners More information about specialization can be found on opn.oracle.com. Click through to OPN Program/Specialize “What’s in it for us?” Quite simply: the opportunity to gain the differentiation and competitive edge you need to stand out in the marketplace. • Differentiate your company through expertise in leading Oracle IT solutions;• Get your experts, architects and consultants up to speed on specialized services and solutions;• Make our customers’ shortlists. They are looking for value-added solutions for their business.   Recordings All sessions are recorded. After registering for a session in oraevents, you will receive the info to access the webex recording. Your timing, your tempo.  Registration and more information Visit architects.oraevents.eu to sign up for the recorded sessions. NOTE: Looking to get your consultants Oracle certified? One more reason to join the Oracle Partner Architects Training. It is the fast track to getting their expertise validated with an Oracle certificate. Training schedule  Choose from any of the 40 recorded training sessions: SECURITY THE PRACTICAL APPROACH •  Identity governance• Access management• Data privacy and protection• End-to-end security, layers of exposures•  Identity & access management, why and where to start?• Data security, how? SERVICE INTEGRATION A NEW ROADTO ENTERPRISE-WIDE SERVICE INTEGRATION • Oracle RUEI: maximize business value by insight into real end-user experiences•  Governance challenges in the services landscape•  Creating an agile enterprise (by Jeff Davies)• Oracle’s approach to SOA (by Jeff Davies) - guiding and accelerating SOA success• Technical case study – the SOA challenge• Oracle’s unified business process management suite 11g (incl. demo) DATABASE DATABASE AND OPTIONS, GOINGWIDE •  Understanding service level agreements for databases• Database lifecycle management• Data centric information lifecycle management DATA INTEGRATION  DIS FOR ARCHITECTS • Data integration solutions: an overview• ODI and goldengate• Data quality

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• Motivating yourself to actually write the code after you've designed something

  - by dpb

  Does it happen only to me or is this familiar to you too? It's like this: You have to create something; a module, a feature, an entire application... whatever. It is something interesting that you have never done before, it is challenging. So you start to think how you are going to do it. You draw some sketches. You write some prototypes to test your ideas. You are putting different pieces together to get the complete view. You finally end up with a design that you like, something that is simple, clear to everybody, easy maintainable... you name it. You covered every base, you thought of everything. You know that you are going to have this class and that file and that database schema. Configure this here, adapt this other thingy there etc. But now, after everything is settled, you have to sit down and actually write the code for it. And is not challenging anymore.... Been there, done that! Writing the code now is just "formalities" and makes it look like re-iterating what you've just finished. At my previous job I sometimes got away with it because someone else did the coding based on my specifications, but at my new gig I'm in charge of the entire process so I have to do this too ('cause I get payed to do it). But I have a pet project I'm working on at home, after work and there is just me and no one is paying me to do it. I do the creative work and then when time comes to write it down I just don't feel like it (lets browse the web a little, see what's new on P.SE, on SO etc). I just want to move to the next challenging thing, and then to the next, and the next... Does this happen to you too? How do you deal with it? How do you convince yourself to go in and write the freaking code? I'll take any answer.

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• Windows 8 and the future of Silverlight

  - by Laila

  After Steve Ballmer's indiscrete 'MisSpeak' about Windows 8, there has been a lot of speculation about the new operating system. We've now had a few glimpses, such as the demonstration of 'Mosh' at the D9 2011 conference, and the Youtube video, which showed a touch-centric new interface for apps built using HTML5 and JavaScript. This has caused acute anxiety to the programmers who have followed the recommended route of WPF, Silverlight and .NET, but it need not have caused quite so much panic since it was, in fact, just a thin layer to make Windows into an apparently mobile-friendly OS. More worryingly, the press-release from Microsoft was at pains to say that 'Windows 8 apps use the power of HTML5, tapping into the native capabilities of Windows using standard JavaScript and HTML', as if all thought of Silverlight, dominant in WP7, had been jettisoned. Ironically, this brave new 'happening' platform can all be done now in Windows 7 and an iPad, using Adobe Air, so it is hardly cutting-edge; in fact the tile interface had a sort of Retro-Zune Metro UI feel first seen in Media Centre, followed by Windows Phone 7, with any originality leached out of it by the corporate decision-making process. It was kinda weird seeing old Excel running alongside stodgily away amongst all the extreme paragliding videos. The ability to snap and resize concurrent apps might be a novelty on a tablet, but it is hardly so on a PC. It was at that moment that it struck me that here was a spreadsheet application that hadn't even made the leap to the .NET platform. Windows was once again trying to be all things to all men, whereas Apple had carefully separated Mac OS X development from iOS. The acrobatic feat of straddling all mobile and desktop devices with one OS is looking increasingly implausible. There is a world of difference between an operating system that facilitates business procedures and a one that drives a device for playing pop videos and your holiday photos. So where does this leave Silverlight? Pretty much where it was. Windows 8 will support it, and it will continue to be developed, but if these press-releases reflect the thinking within Microsoft, it is no longer seen as the strategic direction. However, Silverlight is still there and there will be a whole new set of developer APIs for building touch-centric apps. Jupiter, for example, is rumoured to involve an App store that provides new, Silverlight based "immersive" applications that are deployed as AppX packages. When the smoke clears, one suspects that the Javascript/HTML5 is merely an alternative development environment for Windows 8 to attract the legions of independent developers outside the .NET culture who are unlikely to ever take a shine to a more serious development environment such as WPF or Silverlight. Cheers, Laila

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• cloud programming for OpenStack in C / C++

  - by Basile Starynkevitch

  (Sorry for such a fuzzy question, I am very newbie to cloud programming) I am interested in designing (and developing) a (free software) program in C or C++ (probably, most of it being meta-programmed, i.e. part of the C code code being generated). I am still in the thinking / designing phase. And I might perhaps give up. For reference, I am the main architect and implementor of GCC MELT, a domain specific language to extend the GCC compiler (the MELT language is translated to C/C++ and is bootstrapped: the MELT to C/C++ translator being written in MELT). And I am dreaming of extending it with some cloud computing abilities. But I am a newbie in cloud computing. (I am only interested in free-software, GPLv3 friendly, based cloud computing, which probably means openstack). I believe that "compiling on the cloud with some enhanced GCC" could make sense (for super-optimizations or static analysis of e.g. an entire Linux distribution, or at least a massive GCC compiled free software like Qt, GCC itself, or the Linux kernel). I'm dreaming of a MELT specific monitoring program which would store, communicate, and and enhance GCC compilation (extended by MELT). So the picture would be that each GCC process (actually the cc1 or cc1plus started by the gcc driver, suitably extended by some MELT extension) would communicate with some monitor. That "monitoring/persisting" program would run "on the cloud" (and probably manage some information produced by GCC e.g. on NoSQL bases). So, how should some (yet to be written) C program (some Linux daemon) be designed to be cloud-friendly? So far, I understood that it should provide some Web service, probably thru a RESTful service, so should use an HTTP server library like onion. And that OpenStack is able to start (e.g. a dozen of) such services. But I don't have a clear picture of what OpenStack brings. So far, I noticed the ability to manage (and distribute) virtual machines (with some Python API). It is less clear how can it distribute some ELF executable, how can it start it, etc. Do you have any references or examples of C / C++ programming on the cloud? How should a "cloud-friendly" (actually, OpenStack friendly) C/C++ server application be designed?

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• Hadoop, NOSQL, and the Relational Model

  - by Phil Factor

  (Guest Editorial for the IT Pro/SysAdmin Newsletter)Whereas Relational Databases fit the world of commerce like a glove, it is useless to pretend that they are a perfect fit for all human endeavours. Although, with SQL Server, we’ve made great strides with indexing text, in processing spatial data and processing markup, there is still a problem in dealing efficiently with large volumes of ephemeral semi-structured data. Key-value stores such as Cassandra, Project Voldemort, and Riak are of great value for ephemeral data, and seem of equal value as a data-feed that provides aggregations to an RDBMS. However, the Document databases such as MongoDB and CouchDB are ideal for semi-structured data for which no fixed schema exists; analytics and logging are obvious examples. NoSQL products, such as MongoDB, tackle the semi-structured data problem with panache. MongoDB is designed with a simple document-oriented data model that scales horizontally across multiple servers. It doesn’t impose a schema, and relies on the application to enforce the data structure. This is another take on the old ‘EAV’ problem (where you don’t know in advance all the attributes of a particular entity) It uses a clever replica set design that allows automatic failover, and uses journaling for data durability. It allows indexing and ad-hoc querying. However, for SQL Server users, the obvious choice for handling semi-structured data is Apache Hadoop. There will soon be an ODBC Driver for Apache Hive .and an Add-in for Excel. Additionally, there are now two Hadoop-based connectors for SQL Server; the Apache Hadoop connector for SQL Server 2008 R2, and the SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse (PDW) connector. We can connect to Hadoop process the semi-structured data and then store it in SQL Server. For one steeped in the culture of Relational SQL Databases, I might be expected to throw up my hands in the air in a gesture of contempt for a technology that was, judging by the overblown journalism on the subject, about to make my own profession as archaic as the Saggar makers bottom knocker (a potter’s assistant who helped the saggar maker to make the bottom of the saggar by placing clay in a metal hoop and bashing it). However, on the contrary, I find that I'm delighted with the advances made by the NoSQL databases in the past few years. Having the flow of ideas from the NoSQL providers will knock any trace of complacency out of the providers of Relational Databases and inspire them into back-fitting some features, such as horizontal scaling, with sharding and automatic failover into SQL-based RDBMSs. It will do the breed a power of good to benefit from all this lateral thinking.

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• Writing or extending existing emacs packages: is it worth or should I move to Netbeans/Eclipse?

  - by Andrea

  I'm finishing my master degree course in CS and I've almost become addicted to Emacs. I've used it to write in C, Latex, Java, JSP,XML, CommonLisp, Ada and other languages no other editor supported, like AMPL. I'd like to improve the packages I've been using the most or create new ones, but, in practice, I find that the implementation of Emacs leaves a lot to be desired. There are a lot of poorly-featured/poorly-maintained packages with either overlapping functionalities or obscure incompatibilities, and Elisp just seems to foster the situation by lacking the common features modern lisps have. In contrast Eclipse and Netbeans are actively improved and it does seem they can be effective for non-mainstream languages. I tried Hibachi for Ada in Eclipse and it worked well, there's CUPS for Lisp in Eclipse and LambdaBeans built using NetBeans components. On the other hand those plugins seem to be less active than their Emacs' counterparts, for example Hibachi was archived last year. What's your opinion on this? Which editor should I write extension for? EDIT: To answer Larry Coleman (see comment below): I like Emacs as a user because it is efficient both for me and the computer I'm using. It's fast and the textual interface (i.e. minibuffer) allows for quick interaction. It's solid and packages are usually small and easy to manage. If I need to correct or remove something I usually just have to change a row in my .emacs or an elisp file, or delete a directory. Eclipse plugins rely on a more complicated process that screwed my Eclipse configuration a couple of times, forcing me to do a clean reinstall. Emacs works as long as I use the basic packages. If I need something more complicated the situation gets pretty hairy. As a "power user" I think that the best I can hope for is to write a severely crippled version of the extensions I'd actually like to have; in other words, that it's not worth the trouble. I'd like to write extensions for the things I'd like to have automated in Emacs, for example project support with automated tag-table update on file writing. There are a few projects on this that lack integration, documentation, extensibility and so forth. The best one is probably CEDET, for which I believe the Greenspun's 10th rule can be applied. EDIT: To comment Larry Coleman's answer I'm pretty sure I can pick elisp programming but the extensions I have in mind don't exist yet despite their relative simplicity and the effort more knowledgeable people poured into related projects.This makes me wonder whether it is so because of the way emacs is developed, i.e. people tend to write their own little extensions without coordination, or its implementation, its extension language not being able to keep up with the growing complexity.

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• An invitation to join a JDeveloper and ADF productivity clinic (and more!) at KScope

  - by Chris Muir

  Would you like a chance to influence Oracle's decisions on tool usability and productivity? If you're attending ODTUG's Kaleidoscope conference this year in San Antonio, Oracle would like to invite you to participate in our Usability Activity Research and separately our JDeveloper and ADF Productivity Clinics with our experienced user experience teams.  The teams are keen to hear what you have to say about your experiences with our tools in general and specifically JDeveloper and ADF.  The details of each event are described below. Invitation to Usability Activity - Sunday June 24th to Wednesday June 27th Oracle is constantly working on new tools and new features for developers, and invites YOU to become a key part of the process!  As a special addition to Kscope 12, Oracle will be conducting onsite usability research in the Alyssum room, from Sunday June 24 to Wednesday June 27. Usability activities are scheduled ahead of time for participants' convenience.  If you would like to take part, please fill out this form to let us know of the session(s) that you would like to attend and your development experience. You will be emailed with your scheduled session before the start of the conference. JDeveloper and ADF Productivity Clinic - Thursday June 28th Are you concerned that Java, Oracle ADF or JDeveloper is difficult? Is JDeveloper making you jump through hoops?  Do you hate a particular dialog or feature of JDeveloper? Well, come and get things off your chest! Oracle is hosting a product management and user experience clinic where we want to hear about your issues and concerns. What's difficult to use?  What doesn't work the way you want, and how would you want it to work?  What isn't behaving like your current favorite tool?  If we can't help on you the spot, we'll take your feedback and use it to improve the product experience.  A great opportunity to get answers, or get improvements. Drop by the Alyssum room, anytime from 8:30 to 10:30 on Thursday, June 28. We look forward to seeing you at KScope soon! 

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• We need you! Sign up now to give Oracle your feedback on future product design trends at OpenWorld 2012

  - by mvaughan

  By Kathy Miedema, Oracle Applications User Experience Get the most from your Oracle OpenWorld 2012 experience and participate in a usability feedback session, where your expertise will help Oracle develop unbeatable products and solutions. Sign up to attend a one-hour session during Oracle OpenWorld. You’ll learn about Oracle’s future design trends -- including mobile applications and social networking -- and how these trends will affect your users down the road. A street scene from Oracle OpenWorld 2011. Oracle’s usability experts will guide you through practical learning sessions on the user experience of various business applications, middleware, and more. All user feedback sessions will be conducted October 1–3 at the InterContinental San Francisco Hotel on Howard Street, just a few steps away from the Moscone Center. To best match you with a user feedback activity, we will ask you about your role at your company. Our user feedback opportunities include focus groups, surveys, and one-on-one sessions with usability engineers. What do you get out of it? Customer and partner participants in the past have been surprised to learn how tuned in Oracle is to work that their applications users do every day. Oracle’s User Experience team members are trained to listen carefully, ask specific questions, interpret your answers, and work with designers to create products and solutions that suit your needs. Our goal is to help make you and your users more productive and efficient. Learn about Oracle’s process, and take advantage of the chance to give your specific feedback to the designers who create the enterprise applications of your future. See for yourself how Oracle collects feedback and measures its designs for turning them into code. Seats are limited for Oracle’s user feedback sessions, so sign up now by sending an e-mail to [email protected] with the subject line: Sign Me Up for an Oracle OpenWorld 2012 UX Session. For more information about customer feedback sessions and what you can learn from them, please visit the Usable Apps website. When: Monday-Wednesday during OpenWorld 2012, Oct. 1-3 Where: The InterContinental San Francisco Hotel How to sign up: RSVP now by sending an email to [email protected] with the subject line “Sign me up for an OOW 2012 UX Session.” Learn more: Visit the Usable Apps website at Get Involved.

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• Ubuntu is booting on acer e1-510 laptop, but screen displays nothing

  - by user287602

  Tried loading ubuntu 12.04 (32-bit as well 64 bit) through bootable usb , on a brand new 64-bit acer E1-510 laptop. It shows the 'Try ubuntu without installing screen' and I selected that option. But instead of showing ubuntu's logo(which implies it is loading). I get a blank screen. The screen is on, but it shows nothing. I tried the same on an old model laptop acer aspire 5738 and it worked like a charm. However, I realized that Ubuntu is actually booting on E1-510 and only the display is not working. How did I arrive at this conclusion? When I select on 'Try ubuntu without installing screen', after about 8-10 seconds I see that the WiFi indicator light on the laptop panel switches on(just like when we boot up a Windows OS or even Ubuntu ). I got an idea that the system booted Ubuntu. To confirm this, I tried to adjust volume using keyboard shortcuts. Voila, I can hear the sound of adjusting volume! That means it has already booted Ubuntu. I confirmed this with another step. I pressed the power button once and after two seconds I pressed ENTER. It began the process of switching off and within 5 seconds the laptop was powered off. You may ask, Why is this a confirmation that Ubuntu has booted? This is because in Ubuntu when you press on power button, a dialog box opens with shut down, restart, suspend option- and the shut down option is already selected by default; so all I have to do is press ENTER to shut down. This again proved that Ubuntu was indeed up and running. Unlike previous 'AskUbunutu' posts about Acer e1-510, I must mention that my laptop came WITH the Legacy BIOS mode, so its not really a problem to boot ubuntu from a bootable pendrive. Only the screen is not working. In case you need to know, I am running Windows 7-Ultimate 64 bit on acer e1-510.

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• AVIO Academy - ADF w/Oracle BPM

  - by BPMWarrior

  Oracle Platinum Partner AVIO Consulting is excited to announce the launch of the industry’s first ADF with Oracle BPM developer training program.  This training program is for any prospects or customers that could benefit from a better understanding of Oracle ADF and Oracle BPM.    Visit the AVIO Academy website for an in-depth description of the new ADF with Oracle BPM Workshop .     What it is: ·         Industry’s first ADF with Oracle BPM training program ·         3-day workshop showcasing application development using ADF with Oracle BPM Suite   Training Purpose: Teaches developers how to use Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF) with the Oracle Business Process Management (BPM) Suite.  The workshop is the only one of its kind on the market today.  During the course, students gain a better understanding of Oracle ADF, and the nuances of making it work with Oracle BPM.   Course Overview This course in AVIO’s BPM series, consists of 11 hands-on lessons designed specifically for developers.   It provides a comprehensive overview of ADF and Oracle BPM concepts, and step-by-step easy to follow instructions for creating and integrating ADF user interfaces with Oracle BPM processes.  Students leave the workshop with the working versions of the projects they build for their future reference.  Rather than just frantically clicking through the lessons, concepts are thoroughly explained and demonstrated.  Students leave understanding the best practices AVIO established during years of developing ADF solutions for Oracle BPM and SOA.   AVIO Academy This new workshop is offered through AVIO Academy, the only program with curriculum specifically developed for the most recent version of the Oracle BPM Suite. The academy specializes in hands-on role based training that uses an organization’s own processes for a more practical learning experience.   Visit the AVIO Academy website for an in-depth description of the new ADF with Oracle BPM Workshop. If you have any questions please contact Brandon Dean at [email protected]

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• Paranoid management, contractor checking work [closed]

  - by user833345

  Just wanted to get some opinions and experiences on an issue I'm having at work. First, a little background. I've been working at a company for some time (past any probation periods) and rewriting a horrendous system. No tests, incomplete and broken functionality everywhere, enough copypasta to feed a small village, redundant code, more unused SQL tables than used ones and terrible performance. I've never seen such bad code, pretty much all of it is worthy of being posted on TheDailyWTF. The company has been operating for a number of years and have had a string of bad developers working on this system. I made a call on rewriting instead of refactoring since I judged it to be less work overall and decided that the result will address the requirements more appropriately, since the central requirement is to have a future-proof system for the next decade with plenty of room to scale up. Refactoring would have entailed untangling a huge ball of yarn and at the same time integrating it with a proper foundation or building a foundation from scratch. I've introduced the latest spiffy framework, unit & functional testing, CI, a bug tracker and agile workflow to the environment. I've fixed most of the performance issues of the old system (there were no indexes on any of the tables, for example). I've created an automated deployment process for the old system. The CTO has been maintaining the old system while I have been building the new one and he has been advising management that everything is being done as per best practices. However, management is hiring a contractor to come in and verify my work. In my experience, this is unprecedented. I can understand their reasoning to an extent, since they've had bad luck in the past, but can't help but feel somewhat offended at the fact that they distrust two senior developers who have been working with them for some time enough that a third party is being brought in. And it's not just me who is under watch - people's emails are constantly checked, someone had a remote desktop application installed on their computer of which I was asked to check the usage logs to try to determine if they were stealing sensitive data and there are CCTV cameras in one of the rooms. It's the first time I've decided to disable my Skype history at work. Am I right to feel indignant here? Has anyone else ever encountered such a situation? If so, how did it work out in the end? Was it worth sticking around? Should I just find another job?

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• What kind of position matches my skills, experience and interests? [closed]

  - by Ryan

  I work in a large firm and my current job covers a variety of different duties. Due to several factors I am seriously considering finding a new job (hours, pay-cut, limited career growth). I have worked for the company nearly 4 years and almost 2 years ago I transitioned into more of a business analyst role (previously I was working in a client facing role for our audit group). In this role I have overseen all aspects of the development of a large scale re-platforming of our firm's key tool in analyzing investment portfolios. I gathered requirements, wrote specs, designed the UI and functionality, worked closely with developers (onshore and offshore) to see to it the implementation was correct, managed schedules and was the lead tester. This is a large scale system used by thousands of people around the world. I've also written Excel macros, reports in SQL, given trainings, written technical manuals, interfaced with senior managers and partners, etc. I've been on a couple interviews sporadically, most of which were for positions aimed at higher management consulting type positions, dealing with strategy, overall process management, project management, etc. What really interests me is the technical stuff and overseeing a project from beginning to end (although I would rather not have to do so many of the tasks on my own). I genuinely like a lot of what I do, but the company culture and attitude towards overworking people combined with my recent pay-cut (my overtime was cut due to a promotion to a higher level) has lead me to want to seek work elsewhere. The problem is - what type of work could I realistically do? I feel like traditional business analysis is too much business and not enough tech stuff, and I've really taken a shine lately to beefing up my programming abilities and creating small programs to automate things around work. I also feel that because my actual years of experience as a business analyst (figure 1.5 years realistically) puts me at a junior level doing a lot of grunt requirements gathering, when the work that I have been doing with my current company is more in line with what a Program Manager does (depending on your definition I guess). So in reality, when I'm job hunting I get a bit perplexed because I feel like the traditional BA stuff wouldn't really suit me, and even if it did it's usually something along the lines of 5-10 years experience for the type of work that is similar to what I've done (and I've also found most BA jobs to be contract only which at the moment I'm not too keen on). Program Manager is something that interests me, but again I feel like the experience is lacking because that's a much more senior position. Am I in some kind of career no-man's land? Any idea what would best suit me given my experience and abilities, as well as my interests? I plan to keep learning programming on the side, but don't expect to get a job being a straight programmer given my relative inexperience with programming.

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• What economic books would you suggest for learning about economic valuation of goods and simulations thereof?

  - by Rushyo

  I'm looking to create an economic model for a game based on goods created procedurally. Every natural resource and produced good would be procedurally generated, with certain goods being assigned certain uses. Fakesium might be used for the production of Weapon A and produced from Fakesium factories which use Dilithium and Widgets as reagents, where Widgets are also the product of Foo and Bar The problem is not creating the resources and their various production utlities - but getting the game's AI empires and merchants to (Addendum: somewhat) correctly value the goods according to their scarcity, utility and production costs. I need to create a simulation of goods which allows the various game factions to assign a common value denominator (credits) to each resource, depending on how much its worth to that empire. I see the simulation being something like: "I have a high requirement for Weapon A. Since I don't have much of Fakesium, which is needed for Weapon A - I must have a high demand for Fakesium. If I can acquire Fakesium, devalue it. If not, increase its value - and also increase demand for Dilithium and Widgets too." This is very naive - because it may be much much cheaper for the empire to simply purchase Dilithium and Widgets directly rather than purchasing Fakesium, for example. Another example is two resources might allow the creation of Weapon A (Fakesium and Lieron), so we'd need to consider that. I've been scratching my head over the problem and it keeps growing. By the time the player joins the world, I'd expect enough iterations of this process to have occurred that prices would have largely normalised - and would then only trigger rarely to compensate for major changes (eg. if the player blows up the world's only Foo mine!) Could anyone suggest resources (books, largely) which outline this style of modelling, preferably in the context of simulations? Since this problem would never occur outside fantasy worlds, I figured this is probably the most likely place to find people who have encountered similar problems and I'm sure there's people who know of good places for Games Developers to start looking at less specific economic theory too. Additionally, does anyone know of any developers with blogs whose games or research applications perform similar modelling? EDIT: I think I should underline that I'm not looking for optimal solutions. I'm looking to make the actors impulsive - making rudimentary decisions based on fuzzy inputs about what they care about or don't. I'm aiming to understand the problem area better not derive answers. All the textbooks I've found seem to be about real-world economics or how to solve complex theoretical problems, neither of which are terribly relevant to the actor's decision making.

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• Architecture for a template-building, WYSIWIG application

  - by Sam Selikoff

  I'm building a WYSIWYG designer in Ember.js. The designer will allow users to create campaigns - think MailChimp. To build a campaign, users will choose an existing template. The template will have a defined layout. The user will then be taken to the designer, where he will be able to edit the text and style, and additionally change some layout options. I've been thinking about how best to go about structuring this app, and there are a few hurdles. Specifically, the output of the campaign will be dynamic: eventually, it will be published somewhere, and when the consumers (not my users, but the people clicking on the campaign that my user created) visit the campaign, certain pieces of data will change, depending on the type of consumer viewing the campaign. That means the ultimate output of the designer will be a dynamic site. The data that is dynamic for this site - the end product - will not be manipulated by the user in the designer. However, the data that will be manipulated by the user in the designer are things like copy, styles, layout options, etc. I'll call the first set of variables server-side data, and the second client-side data. It seems, then, that the process will go something like this: I'll need to create templates for this designer that have two dynamic segments. For instance, the server-side data could be Liquid expressions, and the client-side data Handlebars expressions. When the user creates a campaign, I would compile the template on the back end using some dummy data for the server-side variables, and serve up a handlebars template to the Ember app. The user would then edit the template, and the Ember app would save all his edits to the JS variables that were powering the template. This way he'd be able to preview the template. When he saves, he'll send back the selected template, along with all the data and options he's made. When it comes time to publish, the back-end system will have to do two things: compile the template with Handlebars using the campaign data, and then compile the template with Liquid using the server-side data Is my thinking roughly accurate about this, or is there a simpler way?

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• Can't install alternate CD from USB?

  - by mattias

  Hi im trying to install ubuntu 12.04 with full hard disk encryption. After downloading and installing the Ubuntu live CD, I learned that truecrypt doesnt support full disk encryption on linux. I also learned that the best way to get "nearly full disk encryption" on ubuntu is by installing it from the alternate install CD. I tried that, but something is wrong with my CD reader/burner so it doesnt boot up when i insert the cd. My thought here was to take the .iso that I downloaded on my unencrypted Ubuntu system, use Unetbootin to make the usb drive. The usb drive used for this is exactly the same brand as one that I know has worked with a previous ubuntu live system on the same computer. I also used unetbootin for that usb, but I created it from windows that time. The usb stick boots up fine and i get through the first couple of steps in the installation process. However, After a while I get a "box" with the following error message "Load Installer components from CD" There was a problem reading data from the CD-ROM. Please make sure it is in the drive. If retrying does not work, you should check the integrity of your CD-ROM. "Failed to copy file from CD-ROM. Retry? " Then I cant get any further. I googled a lot and found this page which seems to tackle this very problem: http://www.dotkam.com/2010/11/29/ins...mage-from-usb/ I tried to do what it said. After pressing TAB, I wrote : cdrom-detect/try-usb=true without quotes because that's what i think is right. When I press TAB, there already is a text saying : /ubnkern initrd=/ubninit vga=788 -- quiet which can be removed. I have tried to both delete the text before the "--" and just inserting cdrom-detect/try-usb=true before it. Any idea of what can be wrong? I would like to do a full system encryption, or as full as it is possible. I dont want to just encrypt my /home folder. Maybe this isn't the easiest way. I use SanDisk usb sticks. I know there is a problem with U3 launcher on some SanDisks, but I never had to remove U3 before from similar disks, and the alternate install does boot up, so I dont think using U3 removal would help me. Any help or indication to an easier way to do this would be appreciated

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• Java JRE 1.6.0_37 Certified with Oracle E-Business Suite

  - by Steven Chan (Oracle Development)

  My apologies: this certification announcement got lost in the OpenWorld maelstorm.  Better late than never. The section below entitled, "All JRE 1.6 releases are certified with EBS upon release" should obviate the need for these announcements, but I know that people have gotten used to seeing these certifications referenced explicitly.  The latest Java Runtime Environment 1.6.0_37 (a.k.a. JRE 6u37-b06) is now certified with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i and 12 desktop clients.   What's new in Java 1.6.0_37?See the 1.6.0_37 Update Release Notes for details about what has changed in this release.  This release is available for download from the usual Sun channels and through the 'Java Automatic Update' mechanism. 32-bit and 64-bit versions certified This certification includes both the 32-bit and 64-bit JRE versions. 32-bit JREs are certified on: Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) and Service Pack 2 (SP2) Windows 7 and Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1) 64-bit JREs are certified only on 64-bit versions of Windows 7 and Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1). Worried about the 'mismanaged session cookie' issue? No need to worry -- it's fixed.  To recap: JRE releases 1.6.0_18 through 1.6.0_22 had issues with mismanaging session cookies that affected some users in some circumstances. The fix for those issues was first included in JRE 1.6.0_23. These fixes will carry forward and continue to be fixed in all future JRE releases.  In other words, if you wish to avoid the mismanaged session cookie issue, you should apply any release after JRE 1.6.0_22.All JRE 1.6 releases are certified with EBS upon release Our standard policy is that all E-Business Suite customers can apply all JRE updates to end-user desktops from JRE 1.6.0_03 and later updates on the 1.6 codeline.  We test all new JRE 1.6 releases in parallel with the JRE development process, so all new JRE 1.6 releases are considered certified with the E-Business Suite on the same day that they're released by our Java team.  You do not need to wait for a certification announcement before applying new JRE 1.6 releases to your EBS users' desktops. Important For important guidance about the impact of the JRE Auto Update feature on JRE 1.6 desktops, see: Planning Bulletin for JRE 7: What EBS Customers Can Do Today References Recommended Browsers for Oracle Applications 11i (Metalink Note 285218.1) Upgrading Sun JRE (Native Plug-in) with Oracle Applications 11i for Windows Clients (Metalink Note 290807.1) Recommended Browsers for Oracle Applications 12 (MetaLink Note 389422.1) Upgrading JRE Plugin with Oracle Applications R12 (MetaLink Note 393931.1) Related Articles Mismanaged Session Cookie Issue Fixed for EBS in JRE 1.6.0_23 Roundup: Oracle JInitiator 1.3 Desupported for EBS Customers in July 2009

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• Cron job running successfully suddenly reports script is not found

  - by Ted B

  What might cause cron to suddenly report a file it is supposed to run is "not found," when the file hasn't been touched, and in fact, the entire system hasn't been touched since it last ran successfully? I have a cronjob schedule I define by doing sudo crontab -e In it, I have dozens of cron jobs that run successfully.. I do not have a PATH specified, and I use absolute paths to call all my scheduled scripts, setting the PATH in them as needed. I do not specify a SHELL in the crontab. All scripts identify the shell as their first line. Without me touching the system, a particular job defined in the middle of other jobs will suddenly stop running. To debug this, I added an output redirection to a log file. In that, the output clearly shows the output of the script successfully running time after time for weeks, and then suddenly the following appears: /bin/sh: /home/iupress/bin/sync-email_images: not found /bin/sh: /home/iupress/bin/sync-email_images: not found /bin/sh: /home/iupress/bin/sync-email_images: not found /bin/sh: /home/iupress/bin/sync-email_images: not found /bin/sh: /home/iupress/bin/sync-email_images: not found /bin/sh: /home/iupress/bin/sync-email_images: not found /bin/sh: /home/iupress/bin/sync-email_images: not found /bin/sh: /home/iupress/bin/sync-email_images: not found /bin/sh: /home/iupress/bin/sync-email_images: not found If I do the ls command, copying and pasting that exact path from the error message, it clearly reports the file is still there (no surprise). Yet the log continues to report that file is "not found" until I take action. I can run the script manually and it runs just fine. If I do sudo crontab -e and save the file, the job runs on the next scheduled time, putting its output in the log, no longer reporting the script is "not found". It seems to me the contents of the script trying to be run are irrelevant since cron doesn't even process the file because it is "not found". I have a job scheduled below the one that is encountering this problem that I know is continuing to run, because I have its output mailed to me. So I know cron is running and continues to run at least one other job, even after it suddenly reports this job's script is "not found". All my lines end with a newline. I had no periods in the crontab until I added the redirection to a log file. I have now added a PATH specification, but left the absolute paths in the jobs. Unfortunately, I have no idea if and when this problem will occur. It will likely be weeks from now. By the way, I am running a script to syncronize the clock, and I see the time is exactly what it should be.

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• How do you automate a SharePoint 2010 deployment?

  - by Enrique Lima

  In the last couple of months SharePoint traffic (consulting, training and speaking) has picked up.  And with that also the requests for deployments.  There are good, great, bad and really bad things around this. But that is for another topic.  However part of the good and great has been the fact of organizations wanting to do a proof of concept deployment (even when WSS or MOSS has been deployed). We can go through a session (Microsoft has the SDPS concept, SharePoint Deployment Planning Services) of discovering what the customer wants to achieve from their investment in the platform and then also proceed to model the solution that would fit their needs.  But it should not stop there.  The next step should be a POC (as many have requested) to test out. Now, on to the meat of this post.  How do I deploy?  While it is a good process to watch and see all of it take place, not many have the time to sit through that.  Even more so, when that has been part of the description of deploying the platform in the sessions mentioned above. I will, though, break it into a deployment for development purposes and a deployment of a farm. Two tools (or scripts) for those two different types of deployment. First, let me address the development environment.  Around the last week in October, Chris Johnson (SharePoint Product Team) announced a SharePoint Easy Setup for Developers.  The kit itself will assist you in installing SharePoint Server (in standalone mode), the tools that go around Visual Studio, Expression Studio and the Office 2010 tools. Here is the link to Chris’ post: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/cjohnson/archive/2010/10/28/announcing-sharepoint-easy-setup-for-developers.aspx The other scenario is the use of a script in assisting you through the deployment of a farm. Now, this is not to override planning.  It should highlight the need for planning even more.  How?  Having your service accounts planned, the structure of the sites and the scale of your deployment.  Enter AutoSPInstaller.  This is a CodePlex project, and the intent behind this is not only to automate the installation but to give some meaning and get some sense out of what goes on during a SharePoint deployment. How?  Take for example the creation of the databases, when we do the initial OOB deployment by using the wizard, more times than not, we leave the names as they are.  How is that a “bad thing”?  Let’s make it a better practice to rename those Databases, and have them take on a name that is not “GUID-ized”. Having a better naming convention will not hurt, on the other hand will allow for consistency. Here is the link to AutoSPInstaller’s site on CodePlex: http://autospinstaller.codeplex.com/

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• Sync Google Calendar with SharePoint Calendar

  - by dataintegration

  The ADO.NET Providers for Google and SharePoint make it easy to retrieve and update data in both Google's web services and SharePoint. This article shows how the SQL interface to data makes it easy to build applications that need to move data from one source to another. The application described here is a demo Windows application that synchronizes calendar events between Google and SharePoint, but the RSSBus Providers can be used to achieve integrations on both the .NET and the Java platforms, including more sophisticated features like full automation. Getting the Events Step 1: Google accounts can have several calendars. Obtain a list of a user's Google Calendars by issuing a query to the Calendars table. For example: SELECT * FROM Calendars. Step 2: In order to get a list of the events from a given Google Calendar, issue a query to the CalendarEvents table while specifying the CalendarId from the Calendars table. The resulting events can be further filtered by using the StartDateTime or EndDateTime columns. For example: SELECT * FROM CalendarEvents WHERE (CalendarId = '[email protected]') AND (StartDateTime >= '1/1/2012') AND (StartDateTime <= '2/1/2012') Step 3: SharePoint stores data in Lists. There are various types of lists, e.g., document lists and calendar lists. A SharePoint account can have several lists of the same type. To find all the calendar lists in SharePoint, use the ListLists stored procedure and inspect the BaseTemplate column. Step 4: The SharePoint data provider models each SharPoint list as a table. Get the events in a particular calendar by querying the table with the same name as the list. The events may be filtered further by specifying the EventDate or EndDate columns. For example: SELECT * FROM Calendar WHERE (EventDate >= '1/1/2012') AND (EventDate <= '2/1/2012') Synchronizing the Events Synchronizing the events is a simple process. Once the events from Google and SharePoint are available they can be compared and synchronized based on user preference. The sample application does this based on user input, but it is easy to create one that does the synchronization automatically. The INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE statements available in both data providers makes it easy to create, update, or delete events as needed. Pre-Built Demo Application The executable for the demo application can be downloaded here. Note that this demo is built using BETA builds of the ADO.NET Provider for Google V2 and ADO.NET Provider for SharePoint V2, and will expire in 2013. Source Code You can download the full source of the demo application here. You will need the Google ADO.NET Data Provider V2 and the SharePoint ADO.NET Data Provider V2, which can be obtained here.

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• BI&EPM in Focus November 2013

  - by Mike.Hallett(at)Oracle-BI&EPM

  Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE IBM is Embracing Oracle Exalytics: The Velocity of Thought and Action (link) Customers Ambulance Victoria, Australia, uses analytics and modelling to serve the expanding needs of a growing population (link) Cablemás Selects Oracle to Speed Customer Data Insights (link) National Instruments Introduces New Business Intelligence Solutions—Runs Reports up to 30x Faster, and Expands Customer Insight (link) FLSmidth Ensures Precise, Transparent Financial Reporting at All Business Levels, Reduces Financial Consolidation Time by up to 40% (link) Enterprise Performance Management Partner Edgewater Ranzal Webinar Series Mitigate Your Biggest EPM Project Risk - Thursday, 21st November - Register here:  4.00 GMT Capital Planning in the Energy Industry - Tuesday, 26th November - Register here:  4.00 GMT Driving Value in the Retail Industry Using Hyperion Strategic Finance (HSF)  - Tuesday, 10th December - Register here:  7.00 GMT Dec 11, Look Smarter Selling Hyperion Profitability & Cost Management (HPCM) Webcast (link) EPM System Infrastructure Tips & Tricks Support: November EPM Patch Set Updates released Business Analytics Monthly Index - October 2013 Hyperion Smart View Assistance with OBIEE 11.1.1.7 Hyperion Disclosure Management 11.1.2.3.330 PSU 17444967 [Doc ID 1592645.1] Hyperion Financial Close Management (FCM) 11.1.2.3.100 PSU 16989110 [Doc ID 1592644.1] Business  Intelligence BI-Apps Whitepaper: Packaged Analytic Applications: Accelerating Time and Value By Wayne Eckerson (link) BI Apps Blog: A Closer Look at Oracle Price Analytics (link) Blog: Taking Your Business Scorecard Golfing (link) Blog: Practical Uses of Business Scorecards, from Company-Wide to Process Specific (link) Nov 19, Big Data at Work Series: How Delphi Harnesses Big Data to Improve Warranty Response & Customer Satisfaction (link) Rittman Mead Blog: Oracle BI Apps 11.1.1.7.1 – GoldenGate Integration Support: OBIEE Suite Bundle Patches (understand OBIEE naming convention) [Doc ID 1591422.1] Support Blog: Java update alert: Essbase Administration Services (EAS) 11.1.2.3 (link) Support Blog: OBIEE 11.1.1.7.131017 now available (link) /* 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:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;}

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• Suggestions for Summer Intern Application Assignments

  - by orangepips

  As part of our application process we want prospective college interns to complete an assignment on their own - either programming or analytical - to give us something tangible to evaluate such as code or a flowchart. I have two ideas for these assignments, one programming and one analytical, I am interested in gathering feedback about these. Programming Assignment Generate an a month's calendar for a given date. The first row should indicate the days of the week (e.g. Sunday - Saturday). Each subsequent row should contain a week's days. The date supplied should be highlighted (e.g. bolded). I am thinking we'll probably proscribe the output format even more strictly - probably down to what the HTML source should look like including CSS classes. Thinking is this forces answerers to actually do some work if they merely copy a solution from the internet. Analytical Assignment Diagram or describe in prose a system for managing a set of traffic lights for traffic at a four way intersection. Each direction (i.e. North, South, East and West) has two lanes (i.e. right and left). The left lane is turn only and has green arrow light to indicate right of way. The system is able to detect if lanes have cars in them and change the lights accordingly. I would expect a flow chart or some prose describing a finite state machine that deals with each contingency. This would hopefully provide some indication of the applicant's ability to reason through a logic problem of sorts and articulate an approach for solving. Areas Seeking Feedback Is it unreasonable to ask this of applicants? If not, is it better to request before or after a phone screen? Are these questions too hard or easy for a collegiate audience? Any suggestions for alternate questions? Do these seem like good tools for analyzing people who would part of a software development life cycle? Programming language suggestions - I'm thinking Java, Python and/or C# (we're actually a ColdFusion shop).

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• How do I take responsibility for my code when colleague makes unnecessary improvements without notice?

  - by Jesslyn

  One of my teammates is a jack of all trades in our IT shop and I respect his insight. However, sometimes he reviews my code (he's second in command to our team leader, so that's expected) without a heads up. So sometimes he reviews my changes before they complete the end goal and makes changes right away... and has even broken my work once. Other times, he has made unnecessary improvements to some of my code that is 3+ months old. This annoys me for a few reasons: I am not always given a chance to fix my mistakes He has not taken the time to ask me what I was trying to accomplish when he is confused, which could affect his testing or changes I don't always think his code is readable Deadlines are not an issue and his current workload doesn't require any work in my projects other than reviewing my code changes. Anyways, I have told him in the past to please keep me posted if he sees something in my work that he wants to change so that I could take ownership of my code (maybe I should have said "shortcomings") and he's not been responsive. I fear that I may come off as aggressive when I ask him to explain his changes to me. He's just a quiet person who keeps to himself, but his actions continue. I don't want to banish him from making code changes (not like I could), because we are a team--but I want to do my part to help our team. Added clarifications: We share 1 development branch. I do not wait until all my changes complete a single task because I risk losing some significant work--so I make sure my changes build and do not break anything. My concern is that my teammate doesn't explain the reason or purpose behind his changes. I don't think he should need my blessing, but if we disagree on an approach I thought it would be best to discuss the pros and cons and make a decision once we both understand what is going on. I have not discussed this with our team lead yet as I would prefer to resolve personal disagreements without getting management involved unless it is necessary. Since my concern seemed more of personal issue than a threat to our work, I chose to not bother the team lead. I am working on code review process ideas--to help promote the benefits of more organized code reviews without making it all about my pet peeves.

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• Behaviour Trees with irregular updates

  - by Robominister

  I'm interested in behaviour trees that aren't iterated every game tick, but every so often. (Edit: the tree could specify how many frames within the main game loop to wait before running its tick function again). Every theoretical implementation I have seen of behaviour trees talks of the tree search being carried out every game update - which seems necessary, because a leaf node (eg a behaviour, like 'return to base') needs to be constantly checked to see if is still running, failed or completed. Can anyone suggest how I might start implementing a tree that isnt run every tick, or point me in the direction of good material specific to this case (I am struggling to find anything)? My thoughts so far: action leaf nodes (when they start) must only push some kind of action object onto a list for an entity, rather than directly calling any code that makes the entity do something. The list of actions for the entity would be run every frame (update any that need to run, pop any that have completed from the list). the return state from a given action must be fed back into the tree, so that when we run the tree iteration again (and reach the same action leaf node - so the tree has so far determined that we ought to still be trying this action) - that the action has completed, or is still running etc. If my actual action code is running from an action list on an entity, then I possibly need to cancel previously running actions in the list - i am thinking that I can just delete the entire stack of queued up actions. I've seen the idea of ActionLists which block lower priority actions when a higher priority one is added, but this seems like very close logic to behaviour trees, and I dont want to be duplicating behaviour. This leaves me with some questions 1) How would I feed the action return state back into the tree? Its obvious I need to store some information relating to 'currently executing actions' on the entity, and check that in the tree tick, but I can't imagine how. 2) Does having a seperate behaviour tree (for deciding behaviour) and action list (for carrying out actual queued up actions) sound like a reasonable approach? 3) Is the approach of updating a behaviour tree irregularly actually used by anyone? It seems like a nice idea for budgeting ai search time when you have a lot of ai entities to process. (Edit) - I am also thinking about storing a single instance of a given behaviour tree in memory, and providing it by reference to any entity that uses it. So any information about what action was last selected for execution on an entity must be stored in a data context relative to the entity (which the tree can check). (I am probably answering my own questions as i go!) I hope I have expressed my questions adequately! Thanks in advance for any help :)

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• Actor and Sprite, who should own these properties?

  - by Gerardo Marset

  I'm writing sort of a 2D game engine for making the process of creating games easier. It has two classes, Actor and Sprite. Actor is used for interactive elements (the player, enemies, bullets, a menu, an invisible instance that controls score, etc) and Sprite is used for animated (or not) images with transparency (or not). The actor may have an assigned sprite that represents it on the screen, which may change during the game. E.g. in a top-down action game you may have an actor with a sprite of a little guy that changes when attacking, walking, and facing different directions, etc. Currently the actor has x and y properties (its coordinates in the screen), while the sprite has an index property (the number of the frame currently being shown by the sprite). Since the sprite doesn't know which actor it belongs to (or if it belongs to an actor at all), the actor must pass its x and y coordinates when drawing the sprite. Also, since a actors may reset its sprite each frame (and usually do), the sprite's index property must be passed from the old to the new sprite like so (pseudocode): function change_sprite(new_sprite) old_index = my.sprite.index my.sprite = new_sprite() my.sprite.index = old_index % my.sprite.frames end I always thought this was kind of cumbersome, but it never was a big problem. Now I decided to add support for more properties. Namely a property to draw the sprite rotated, a property to draw it flipped, it a property draw it stretched, etc. These should probably belong to the sprite and not the actor, but if they do, the actor would have to pass them from the old to the new sprite each time it changes... On the other hand, if they belonged to the actor, the actor would have to pass each property to the sprite when drawing it (since the sprite doesn't know which actor it belongs to, and it shouldn't, since sprites aren't just meant to be used by actors, really). Another option I thought of would be having an extra class that owns all these properties (plus index, x and y) and links an actor with a sprite, but that doesn't come without drawbacks. So, what should I do with all these properties? Thanks!

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• Am I deluding myself? Business analyst transition to programmer

  - by Ryan

  Current job: Working as the lead business analyst for a Big 4 firm, leading a team of developers and testers working on a large scale re-platforming project (4 onshore dev, 4 offshore devs, several onshore/offshore testers). Also work in a similar capacity on other smaller scale projects. Extent of my role: Gathering/writing out requirements, creating functional specifications, designing the UI (basically mapping out all front-end aspects of the system), working closely with devs to communicate/clarify requirements and come up with solutions when we hit roadblocks, writing test cases (and doing much of the testing), working with senior management and key stakeholders, managing beta testers, creating user guides and leading training sessions, providing key technical support. I also write quite a few macros in Excel using VBA (several of my macros are now used across the entire firm, so there are maybe around 1000 people using them) and use SQL on a daily basis, both on the SQL compact files the program relies on, our SQL Server data and any Access databases I create. The developers feel that I am quite good in this role because I understand a lot about programming, inherent system limitations, structure of the databases, etc so it's easier for me to communicate ideas and come up with suggestions when we face problems. What really interests me is developing software. I do a fair amount of programming in VBA and have been wanting to learn C# for awhile (the dev team uses C# - I review code occasionally for my own sake but have not had any practical experience using it). I'm interested in not just the business process but also the technical side of things, so the traditional BA role doesn't really whet my appetite for the kind of stuff I want to do. Right now I have a few small projects that managers have given me and I'm finding new ways to do them (like building custom Access applications), so there's a bit here and there to keep me interested. My question is this: what I would like to do is create custom Excel or Access applications for small businesses as a freelance business (working as a one-man shop; maybe having an occasional contractor depending on a project's complexity). This would obviously start out as a part-time venture while I have a day job, but eventually become a full-time job. Am I deluding myself to thinking I can go from BA/part-time VBA programmer to making a full-time go of a freelance business (where I would be starting out just writing custom Excel/Access apps in VBA)? Or is this type of thing not usually attempted until someone gains years of full-time programming experience? And is there even a market for these types of applications amongst small businesses (and maybe medium-sized) businesses?

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