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  • Rails Browser Detection Methods

    - by alvincrespo
    Hey Everyone, I was wondering what methods are standard within the industry to do browser detection in Rails? Is there a gem, library or sample code somewhere that can help determine the browser and apply a class or id to the body element of the (X)HTML? Thanks, I'm just wondering what everyone uses and whether there is accepted method of doing this? I know that we can get the user.agent and parse that string, but I'm not sure if that is that is an acceptable way to do browser detection. Also, I'm not trying to debate feature detection here, I've read multiple answers for that on StackOverflow, all I'm asking for is what you guys have done. [UPDATE] So thanks to faunzy on GitHub, I've sort of understand a bit about checking the user agent in Rails, but still not sure if this is the best way to go about it in Rails 3. But here is what I've gotten so far: def users_browser user_agent = request.env['HTTP_USER_AGENT'].downcase @users_browser ||= begin if user_agent.index('msie') && !user_agent.index('opera') && !user_agent.index('webtv') 'ie'+user_agent[user_agent.index('msie')+5].chr elsif user_agent.index('gecko/') 'gecko' elsif user_agent.index('opera') 'opera' elsif user_agent.index('konqueror') 'konqueror' elsif user_agent.index('ipod') 'ipod' elsif user_agent.index('ipad') 'ipad' elsif user_agent.index('iphone') 'iphone' elsif user_agent.index('chrome/') 'chrome' elsif user_agent.index('applewebkit/') 'safari' elsif user_agent.index('googlebot/') 'googlebot' elsif user_agent.index('msnbot') 'msnbot' elsif user_agent.index('yahoo! slurp') 'yahoobot' #Everything thinks it's mozilla, so this goes last elsif user_agent.index('mozilla/') 'gecko' else 'unknown' end end return @users_browser end

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  • Is going for a BCS the right move for me?

    - by Michel Carroll
    I'm at a fork in the road. I need somebody to give me some advice from their personal journey in IT. At the moment, I have a college diploma (2 years) in Computer Programmer, and about 2 years of professional experience in the field of software. I'm currently freelancing my programming skills to the public, and am enjoying a nice income, and the rewards of flexibly working on a variety of projects with different cool people. I'm young (21 years old), passionate about software, technology, the internet, and also business. I know if I ever want to dwell deeper into the software industry, I might have a hard time doing so without a Bachelors in Computer Science. On one side, I think I'm better off getting my BCS while I'm still young and malleable. Also, the thought of learning even more stuff in my field is really exciting to me. On the flip side, it means another 3-4 years of studying, and jeopardizing my chances of going on vacation and accumulating wealth for a long time. Considering that I'm already pretty successful with my college diploma, do you think it's a good idea for me to go get my BCS? Will it open up many more doors in the future?

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  • Is there a search engine that indexes source code of a web-page?

    - by Dexter
    I need to search the web for sites that are in our industry that use the same Adwords management company, to ensure that the said company is not violating our contract, as they have been accused of doing. They use a tracking code in the template of every page which has a certain domain in the URL, and I'm wondering if it's possible "Google" the source code using some bot that crawls the code rather than the content? For example, I bought an unlimited license for an image gallery, and I was asked to type the license number in a comment just before the script. I thought it was just so a human could look at the source and find out if someone paid, but it turned out that it was actually that they had a crawler looking for their source code and that comment. If it ran across the code on your site, it would look for the comment, and if it found one, it would check to see if it was an existing one. If not, it would first notify you of your noncompliance, and then notify the owner of the script. Edit: I'm looking to index HTML and JavaScript only, not the server-side languages or Java.

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  • how to design and produce enterprise software in Java Technology EE ? more importantly does it have

    - by fwfwfw
    I want to be able to design and produce enterprise software/applications. Java EE comes to mind. but are there alternatives ? Does it have to be J2EE, to make enterprisey software ? More importantly, how common is it for developers to use Java Technology in order to build enterprise software ? I mean how much "meat" do you need to pack before you can charge a $100,000 sticker price ? is bloatware common in this industry ? what is the best way I can learn the entire Java Enterprise and be able to design and produce enterprise software ? Or perhaps an alternative to Java ? I am starting software engineering in University, but I have personal coding experience....i just would love to be able to design enterprise software using Java Technology....i can pick up books and start practicing.....i just dont know where to begin or what to expect. My goal is to get as much experience in enterprise software field, and specialize into niches start my own company. so far i know enterprise software sale process usually take at least a couple of months but for a good reason..

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  • World Economic Crisis. IT prospects

    - by Andrew Florko
    There was alike question in 2008, 2 years passed. Please, share your expectations about IT market and employment in the next year or two (or so far you can predict). IMHO Russia (my native country) fully met Crisis in spring, 2008. Stock markets shrank 3(!) times during half a year. Many developers were fired those days but I suppose just because business was shocked and freezed some projects. Developers expected +20% salary growth per year in 2004-2007 (Developer salary in Moscow was about 2-3K$ in early 2008). Then there was 30% (very subjective) salary cut-off in 2008 and salaries were frozen till 2009. Now things are slowly coming back to 2008. Looking in the future I expect pessimistic scenario and another crash. Our economic depends more and more on oil & gas every year. IT that serves industry will be shrinked because we can't compete to China in real production. Due to high currency board (rubble is strong compared to dollar) we can't rely on offshore programming. Our officials are concerned on innovative economic breakthrough but it's an ordinary budget money assignemtn in practice. I don't believe in innovations either because who require innovations if you have debts and tomorrow is vapor?

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  • Error handling approach on PHP

    - by Industrial
    Hi everybody, We have a web server that we're about to launch a number of applications onto. They will all share database and memcached servers, but each application has it's own mySQL database and all memcached keys per application, is prefixed. Possible scenario: If a memcached server in our cluster goes boom, we want someone (operative system admin) to be automatically contacted by email/iphone push notification or in any other appropriate way. If we we're about to install 150 identical applications for our customers on our servers, and a memcached server dies - all 150 applications will individually find this out and contact our system admin, which most certainly is going to think about getting a new job where he or she isn't about to be woken up by getting 150 messages sent 4:15 in the morning. Possible solution: One idea is to set up an external server for error handling that gets a $_POST or cURL request sent, and handles storage of the error message depending on the seriousness of the actual error message. It would of course check upon receiving the error call, that if the same memcached server have already been reported as offline, there would be no need to spam the system admin with additional reminders... The questions: What's a good approach on how to handle errors? How does the big guys in the industry handle this? Thanks!

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  • Agile methodologies. Is it a by-product of mind control techniques as NLP / Scientology?

    - by Bobb
    The more I read about contemporary methods combinging scrum, tdd and xp, the more I feel like I already seen the methods. I am not arguing that agile approach is much more progressive than older rigid structures like waterfall, what I am saying is that it seems to me that agile methodologies are ideal to be used as a nest for a brainwashing business. I read few articles which kept referring to authors which I checked afterwards and they call themselves - coaches, trainers (usual thing when NLP specialists are involved) with no apparent software development history. Also I met a guy who is a scrum faciltator (term widly used in relation to scientology) in a high profile company. I talked to him less than 5 min but I got complete feeling that he is either on drugs or he has been programmed by a powerful NLP specialist. The way to talk and his body movements witnessed he is not an average normal person (in terms of normal distribution :))... Please dont get me wrong. I am not a fun of conspiracy theories. But I had an experience with a member of church of scientology tried to invade a commercial firm and actually went half way through to very top in just 3 weeks. I saw his work. For now I have complete impression is that psycho manipulators are now invading IT industry through the convenient door of agile techniques. Anyone has the same feeling/thoughts?

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  • Please recommend the one SQL book for a developer without a lot of SQL experience.

    - by Hamish Grubijan
    I have too many hobbies outside of my profession, so I am hoping to read just one good book, and get a tad better at SQL. My background: took one boring, theoretical class in databases, was exposed to SQL professionally (in addition to several other languages and technologies) for a year and a half. I've done about 5 years of C#/Java stuff professionally. By "professionally" I mean doing it full-time while someone paid me more than $25/hr for it - not necessarily that I created masterpieces along the way :) I want to become better at SQL (coding aspect; DBA is not of particular importance to me right now). I am looking for one book to give me a solid foundation in it. When I needed to learn some C from almost a scratch, I used (and loved) this book: http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Language-2nd-Brian-Kernighan/dp/0131103628 I am hoping to find one just like this for SQL. I am not doing web development now or in a near future, and I am looking for something that is hopefully not specific to any one sub-industry. Thanks in advance.

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  • best web database solution for scala for a high traffic site?

    - by egervari
    I am in charge of a rebuilding a website that gets about 250,000 visitors a day. We'd like to use Scala, but it does not work very well with Spring (in some minor cases) and Hibernate (there is a major and very annoying mismatch here if you want to use scala collections, which we do). The application itself is going to have about 40-50 tables. Other than Hibernate, is there an ORM that works awesome with Scala and is as performant and reliable as Hibernate? Does it also have the same capabilities, or are we going to run into leaky-abstractions if we don't use Hibernate? It would be a big risk for us to go with a framework that is newer and doesn't seem to have a lot of industry backing... and at the same time, Hibernate is a real pain to program against when using Scala. 1) The Java Collection <- Scala Collection is absolutely painful. There is a lot more boilerplate and crap to write. 2) The IDE doesn't import JavaConversions and java interfaces automatically... so we this needs to be done manually. Optimizing Imports in IDEA is going to destroy all the manual work. 3) There is also a performance cost to converting back and forth all the time in your domain objects and your dao classes. 4) Not to mention there needs to be a lot of casting, which produces code ugly as sin. I actually would love to write my own orm that is 100% tailored to scala, but obviously this is really outside of the scope of our project for now. So what is the best approach?

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  • Error monitoring/handling on webservers

    - by Industrial
    Hi everybody, We have a web server that we're about to launch a number of applications onto. They will all share database and memcached servers, but each application has it's own mySQL database and all memcached keys per application, is prefixed. Possible scenario: If a memcached server in our cluster goes boom, we want someone (operative system admin) to be automatically contacted by email/iphone push notification or in any other appropriate way. If we we're about to install 150 identical applications for our customers on our servers, and a memcached server dies - all 150 applications will individually find this out and contact our system admin, which most certainly is going to think about getting a new job where he or she isn't about to be woken up by getting 150 messages sent 4:15 in the morning. Possible solution: One idea is to set up an external server for error handling that gets a $_POST or cURL request sent, and handles storage of the error message depending on the seriousness of the actual error message. It would of course check upon receiving the error call, that if the same memcached server have already been reported as offline, there would be no need to spam the system admin with additional reminders... The questions: What's a good approach on how to handle errors? How does the big guys in the industry handle this? Thanks!

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  • Organizing development teams

    - by Patrick
    A long time ago, when my company was much smaller, dividing the development work over teams was quite easy: the 'application' team developed the applications-specific logic, often requiring a deep insight of specific industry problems) the 'generic' team developed the parts that were common/generic for all applications (user interface related stuff, database access, low-level Windows stuff, ...) Over the years the boundaries between the teams have become fuzzy: the 'application' teams often write application-specific functionality with a 'generic' part, so instead of asking the 'generic' team to write that part for them, they write it themselves to speed up the developments; then donate it to the 'generic' team the 'generic' team's focus seems to be more 'maintenance oriented'. All of the 'very generic' code has already been written, so no new developments are needed in it, but instead they continuously have to support all the functionality donated by the application teams. All this seems to indicate that it's not a good idea anymore to have this split in teams. Maybe the 'generic' team should evolve into a 'software quality' team (defining and guarding the rules for writing good quality software), or into a 'software deployment' team (defining how software should be deployed, installed, ...). How do you split up the work in different teams if you have different applications? everybody can write generic code and donates it to a central 'generic' team? everybody can write generic code, but nobody 'manages' this generic code (everybody is the owner) generic code is written by a 'generic' team only and the applications have to wait until the 'generic' team delivers the generic part (via a library, via a DLL) there is no overlap in code between the different applications some other way? Notice that thee advantage of having the mix (allowing everybody to write everywhere in the code) is that: code is written in a more flexible way it's easier to debug the code since you can easily step into the 'generic' code in the debugger But the big (and maybe only) disadvantage is that this generic code may become nobody's responsibility if there is no clear team that manages it anymore. What is your vision?

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  • JMS message. Model to include data or pointers to data?

    - by John
    I am trying to resolve a design difference of opinion where neither of us has experience with JMS. We want to use JMS to communicate between a j2ee application and the stand-alone application when a new event occurs. We would be using a single point-to-point queue. Both sides are Java-based. The question is whether to send the event data itself in the JMS message body or to send a pointer to the data so that the stand-alone program can retrieve it. Details below. I have a j2ee application that supports data entry of new and updated persons and related events. The person records and associated events are written to an Oracle database. There are also stand-alone, separate programs that contribute new person and event records to the database. When a new event occurs through any of 5-10 different application functions, I need to notify remote systems through an outbound interface using an industry-specific standard messaging protocol. The outbound interface has been designed as a stand-alone application to support scalability through asynchronous operation and by moving it to a separate server. The j2ee application currently has most of the data in memory at the time the event is entered. The data would consist of approximately 6 different objects; a person object and some with multiple instances for an average size in the range of 3000 to 20,000 bytes. Some special cases could be many times this amount. From a performance and reliability perspective, should I model the JMS message to pass all the data needed to create the interface message, or model the JMS message to contain record keys for the data and have the stand-alone Java application retrieve the data to create the interface message?

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  • Help Needed Finding a Programmer

    - by ssean
    Good Morning, I am trying to find a programmer to code a piece of custom software for my business. I plan on using this software to manage my business, and possibly sell it to other companies (in the same industry) at a later date. I've never hired a programmer before, so I'm not sure what to expect or where to begin. I know exactly what features I need, and how I want it laid out, I just need someone who can take my ideas and make it happen. This software will be used to manage customer information, and keep track of orders. What I think I need: * SQL Server or similar database that will be located at our office. * Desktop Application, that connects via LAN to the database server (cannot be browser based) * Multiple User Support (Simultaneous users accesing the system) * Needs to be scalable (currently we have 5 employees, but who knows what the future will bring) * Multi-Platform Support (Windows, Linux) I posted a job offer through elance, which seems to raise more questions than answers. How do I decide what language(s) will work best for my situation? (I have received offers for C#, Eclipse, .NET, Powerbuilder, etc. - I want to make sure that I choose the best one now, so I don't run into problems later) Does the programmer hold any rights to the software? (I plan to offer the software for sale at a later date) Any help or insight would be appreciated, and I'd be happy to clarify anything if it helps. Thanks in advance!

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  • Why do you program? Why do you do what you do? [closed]

    - by Pirate for Profit
    To me, writing a new program is like a puzzle. Before you write any code for a large system, you have to carefully craft each piece in your mind and imagine how all the pieces will fit together. If you don't, your solution may end up being undefined. What I mean is, I often don't know what I'm doing so I'll come to this site and beg for a code snippet, and then somehow try to hack it into my projects. I started writing GW-Basic when I was around 8 years old. Then it progressed from there, went to california university and did some Python and C++, but really didn't learn anything(college = highsk00l++). I've mostly been self-taught, took awhile to break bad habits and I'd say only in recent years would I consider myself understanding of design patterns and all that stuff (no but honestly procedural dudes, I would not want to design and maintain a large system procedurally, yous crazy). And despite my username, money has NOT been a big motivator. I've gone from job to job, I can usually get the work done perfect very quickly, any delays on my part are understandable (well about as understandable as it gets in the industry). But I ain't gonna work for peanuts because I got mouths to feed. Why do you program? Why do you do what you do?

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  • Which one gives you more advantages: Microsoft or SUN/Oracle certification?

    - by edwin.nathaniel
    Which one gives you more advantages: Microsoft or SUN/Oracle certification? If you don't mind, please relate your answer to your career (dev, sys-admin, dba), industry (finance, general consulting, business apps, software house), and location (where you live, does it influence your decision?) as well. One reason I asked this because I heard that having MCP (in C#, MCSAD or whatever the cert is called these days) could give you extra point from the employer perspective if they're a Microsoft Partner. I don't quite understand why and am also wondering if SUN/Oracle certificate holder have similar edge/benefit. I'm also interested to know if Certification plays role where you live. For example: certification could be a big negative sign in Silicon Valley, but might be helpful if you're in other US/Canada cities or outside USA/Canada. If you are an independent software consultant, do these certification helps you win bids? I totally understand that this question might be subjective and could be "closed". But it doesn't hurt to ask I suppose. I also understand that there are people who dislike/disagree (or have negative perspective on technology certification). While there are people who have the opinion that "these are not the kind of employers you would want to work with", I respect you guys, but sometime a pure software product company might not exist in certain cities in the world. And if certification can help one's career somewhere else, I guess that means more opportunities right? I've had experienced in both platforms: (short) .NET and (not too long) Java (minus Oracle DB stuff), but I think it's about time I have to pick one of them and be good at. Where I live right now might also dictates my career albeit insignificant. Anyhow, this last paragraph is just tiny blurb. Thanks!

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  • License key pattern detection?

    - by Ricket
    This is not a real situation; please ignore legal issues that you might think apply, because they don't. Let's say I have a set of 200 known valid license keys for a hypothetical piece of software's licensing algorithm, and a license key consists of 5 sets of 5 alphanumeric case-insensitive (all uppercase) characters. Example: HXDY6-R3DD7-Y8FRT-UNPVT-JSKON Is it possible (or likely) to extrapolate other possible keys for the system? What if the set was known to be consecutive; how do the methods change for this situation, and what kind of advantage does this give? I have heard of "keygens" before, but I believe they are probably made by decompiling the licensing software rather than examining known valid keys. In this case, I am only given the set of keys and I must determine the algorithm. I'm also told it is an industry standard algorithm, so it's probably not something basic, though the chance is always there I suppose. If you think this doesn't belong in Stack Overflow, please at least suggest an alternate place for me to look or ask the question. I honestly don't know where to begin with a problem like this. I don't even know the terminology for this kind of problem.

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  • Amazon Elastic Terms and Conditions

    - by PP
    WARNING: Have you really read Amazon's Terms and Conditions? Would anybody seriously agree to this term on Amazon's Elastic services sign up page? 6.2. Restrictions with Respect to Use of Marks. Your use of any trademarks, service marks, service or trade names, logos, and other designations of AWS and its affiliates or licensors, hereinafter "Marks", shall strictly comply with the following provisions. You may use the Marks in conjunction with the display of the AWS Content and for the purpose of indicating that your Application was created using the Services. You may use the Marks only in the form in which we make them available to you and not in any manner that disparages Amazon, its affiliates or its licensors, or that otherwise dilutes any Mark. Other than your limited right to use the Marks as provided in this Agreement, we and our licensors retain all right, title, and interest in and to the Marks. You will not at any time now or in the future challenge or assist others to challenge the validity of the Marks, or attempt to register confusingly similar trademarks, trade names, service marks or logos. You agree to follow our the Trademark Use Guidelines posted on the Amazon Web Services™ Trademark Guidelines page (the "Trademark Guidelines") as those guidelines may change from time to time. The Trademark Guidelines are incorporated herein by reference. You must immediately discontinue use of any Mark as specified by us at any time in writing. We may modify any Marks provided to you at any time, and upon notice, you will use only the modified Marks and not the old Marks. Other than as specified in this Agreement, you may not use any trademark, service mark, trade name or other business identifier of Amazon or its affiliates unless you obtain Amazon's or its affiliates' prior written consent. The foregoing prohibition includes the use of "amazon," any other trademark of AWS, Amazon or its affiliates, or variations or misspellings of any of them, in the name of an Application or in a URL to the left of the top-level domain name (e.g., ".com", ".net", "co.uk", etc.)-for example, a URL such as "amazon.mydomain.com", "amaozn.com" or "amazonauctions.net" are expressly prohibited. Any use you make of the Marks shall inure to our benefit and you hereby irrevocably assign to us all right, title and interest in the same. In addition, you agree not to misrepresent or embellish the relationship between us and you, for example by implying that we support, sponsor, endorse, or contribute money to you or your business endeavors. If you are a large company and you want to use Amazon's services you must agree that: you may not use the word "amazon" in any domain name you control (even if you are a forestry company) you may not use any word Amazon choose to trademark in any domain you control (regardless of whether the name has a different meaning/purpose in your industry) from now until forever you will never dispute any claim Amazon makes on any word you or anybody else uses Seriously, who would sign such a thing?

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  • Looking For iPhone 4S Alternatives? Here Are 3 Smartphones You Should Consider

    - by Gopinath
    If you going to buy iPhone 4S on a two year contract in USA, Europe or Australia you may not find it expensive. But if you are planning to buy it in any other parts of the world, you will definitely feel the heat of ridiculous iPhone 4S price. In India iPhone 4S costs approximately costs $1000 which is 30% more than the price tag of an unlocked iPhone sold in USA. Personally I love iPhones as there is no match for the user experience provided by Apple as well as the wide range of really meaning applications available for iPhone. But it breaks heart to spend $1000 for a phone and I’m forced to look at alternates available in the market. Here are the four iPhone 4S alternates available in almost all the countries where we can buy iPhone 4S Google Galaxy Nexus The Galaxy Nexus is Google’s own Android smartphone manufactured by Samsung and sold under the brand name of Google Nexus. Galaxy Nexus is the pure Android phone available in the market without any bloat software or custom user interfaces like other Androids available in the market. Galaxy Nexus is also the first Android phone to be shipped with the latest version of Android OS, Ice Cream Sandwich. This phone is the benchmark for the rest of Android phones that are going to enter the market soon. In the words of Google this smartphone is called as “Galaxy Nexus: Simple. Beautiful. Beyond Smart.”.  BGR review summarizes the phone as This is almost comical at this point, but the Samsung Galaxy Nexus is my favourite Android device in the world. Easily replacing the HTC Rezound, the Motorola DROID RAZR, and Samsung Galaxy S II, the Galaxy Nexus champions in a brand new version of Android that pushes itself further than almost any other mobile OS in the industry. Samsung Galaxy S II The one single company that is able to sell more smartphones than Apple is Samsung. Samsung recently displaced Apple from the top smartphone seller spot and occupied it with loads of pride. Samsung’s Galaxy S II fits as one the best alternatives to Apple’s iPhone 4S with it’s beautiful design and remarkable performance. Engadget summarizes Samsung Galaxy S2 review as It’s the best Android smartphone yet, but more importantly, it might well be the best smartphone, period. Of course, a 4.3-inch screen size won’t suit everyone, no matter how stupendously thin the device that carries it may be, and we also can’t say for sure that the Galaxy S II would justify a long-term iOS user foresaking his investment into one ecosystem and making the leap to another. Nonetheless, if you’re asking us what smartphone to buy today, unconstrained by such externalities, the Galaxy S II would be the clear choice. Sometimes it’s just as simple as that. Nokia Lumia 800 Here comes unexpected Windows Phone in to the boxing ring. May be they are not as great as Androids available in the market today, but they are picking up very quickly. Especially the Nokia Lumia 800 seems to be first ever Windows Phone 7 aimed at competing serious with Androids and iPhones available in the market. There are reports that Nokia Lumia 800 is outselling all Androids in UK and few high profile tech blogs are calling it as the king of Windows Phone. Considering this phone while evaluating the alternative of iPhone 4S will not disappoint you. We assure. Droid RAZR Remember the Motorola Driod that swept entire Android market share couple of years ago? The first two version of Motorola Droids were the best in the market and they out performed almost every other Android phone those days. The invasion of Samsung Androids, Motorola lost it charm. With the recent release of Droid RAZR, Motorola seems to be in the right direction to reclaiming the prestige. Droid RAZR is the thinnest smartphone available in the market and it’s beauty is not just skin deep. Here is a review of the phone from Engadget blog the RAZR’s beauty is not only skin deep. The LTE radio, 1.2GHz dual-core processor and 1GB of RAM make sure this sleek number is ready to run with the big boys. It kept pace with, and in some cases clearly outclassed its high-end competition. Despite its deficiencies in the display department and underwhelming battery life, the RAZR looks to be a perfectly viable alternative when considering the similarly-pricey Rezound and Galaxy Nexus Further Reading So we have seen the four alternates of iPhone 4S available in the market and I personally love to buy a Samsung smartphone if I’m don’t have money to afford an iPhone 4S. If you are interested in deep diving into the alternates, here few links that help you do more research Apple iPhone 4S vs. Samsung Galaxy Nexus vs. Motorola Droid RAZR: How Their Specs Compare by Huffington Post Nokia Lumia 800 vs. iPhone 4S vs. Nexus Galaxy: Spec Smackdown by PC World Browser Speed Test: Nokia Lumia 800 vs. iPhone 4S vs. Samsung Galaxy S II – by Gizmodo iPhone 4S vs Samsung Galaxy S II by pocket lint Apple iPhone 4S vs. Samsung Galaxy S II by techie buzz This article titled,Looking For iPhone 4S Alternatives? Here Are 3 Smartphones You Should Consider, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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  • SQLAuthority News – Meeting with Allen Bailochan Tuladhar – An Unlimited Experience

    - by pinaldave
    Allen  Tuladhar I recently came back from my 9-day trip in Nepal and I must say that this is one of the best trips I had in my lifetime. Allen Bailochan Tuladhar is a wonderful person and an extreme enthusiast for Microsoft Technology. Allen is the Chief Executive Officer of Unlimited Technologies Pvt Ltd., Country Manager of Microsoft MDP Nepal, the Member Secretary of Nepali Language in Information Technology, and member of the Steering Committee of the Government of Nepal. He is the person who keeps the Nepal’s Tech Community constantly motivating and taking it to the next level. I have met Allen for many times before, but this was the first time I was with him in Kathmandu, Nepal. I was very impressed with the amount of the work he does in the community. During my 9 days of stay, every single day was a new lesson for me. I was amazed and overwhelmed with the many things he does every single day. Not only he does he work closely with Government of Nepal ministry, but he is also the most known person in the Student Community. His expertise in the technical subject matter is not limited to one technology; rather, I have seen him actively engaging himself in  discussions of various tech topics. Allen presending at TechMela Kathmandu, Nepal Allen is currently active in working out to localize Windows and Office and incorporate it using the Nepali language. I was able to witness and experience how the localization works, as well as the procedure on how to do such. If you know the whole localization process, you must have realized how big and daunting of a process it is. I was glad that I became a part of it. Prominent Personality of Nepal on Panel Discussion Another great opportunity I had when I was at Allen’s office is that I have learned how the radio technology talk show works. Nepali Radio station has the weekly program in their local language, in which MS technology is discussed and industry leaders are invited to talk about their experience with the technology. I found the program so interesting because it has so much variety in terms of technology subjects. Well, my understanding of Nepali language is limited but I did understand quite a bit. Ravi, Nutan, Pinal, Gandip I got the chance to meet lots of Database Professionals as well. People in Nepal are very polite even though they are very strong in their technology fundamentals. I had in-depth discussion regarding High Availability scenarios, as well Query Tuning. Database professionals from the leading financial sectors of Nepal wanted me to visit their Data Center and help them out with a few advances. In no time, Allen organized a visit for me. He sent me a Nepali-speaking expert from his own organization to accompany me in overcoming any difficulties while I was on my way helping this financial district. Pinal (SQLAuthority) and Deependra (Unlimited) When I was going to Nepal, I was really not sure if I would be able to stay busy for 9 days straight in Community-related activity. However, on the 9th day I realize that I can still stay here for more than 9 days because in every single day, I feel enthusiastic enough to do something new. Allen Bailochan Tuladhar Even though I was working  very hard every day, I hardly had the chance to work with and talk to him one-on-one for the first few days. One of the evenings, Allen invited me to his home and we discussed about his future ideas. I was really surprised to see how much a man can do for his technical community and for his country. When I asked Allen’s wife and daughter if they ever think it’s getting too much with regards to Allen putting tough efforts to the community, their answer was something I did not expect. I found out that Allen’s wife manages all the back office and logistics of the community events and his daughter manages the websites. I felt that they do not have any complain,  and instead, their whole family is in this activity as deeply as it can get, which I thought is a very good thing. Pinal and Allen I want to end this post with an interesting story that happened during our lunch hour at one of the Nepali restaurants. While we were having our lunch and having some chitchat, Allen suddenly stood up and called several people walking along the pavement. He introduced them all to me as Microsoft Student Partners. He asked all of them to order their favorite dish and called the waiter to inform that he will pick up their tab. Figuring out the question written on my face, he just said one sentence: “They are all future technology professionals who are going to make all of us proud.” I guess I have a lot of things to learn. Hats off to Allen! Pinal and Allen at Microsoft MDP Unlimited Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: MVP, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Author Visit, T SQL, Technology

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  • Oracle OpenWorld Preview: Real World Perspectives from Oracle WebCenter Customers

    - by Christie Flanagan
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With this spirit in mind, this polished marketer personally invites you to hear directly from Oracle WebCenter customers about their real-life experiences during our customer panel sessions at Oracle OpenWorld next week.  If you’re currently using WebCenter, thinking about it, or just want to find out more about best practices in social business, next-generation portals, enterprise content management or web experience management, be sure to attend these sessions: CON8899 - Becoming a Social Business: Stories from the Front Lines of Change Wednesday, Oct 3, 11:45 AM - 12:45 PM - Moscone West - 3000Priscilla Hancock - Vice President/CIO, University of Louisville Kellie Christensen - Director of Information Technology, Banner EngineeringWhat does it really mean to be a social business? How can you change your organization to embrace social approaches? What pitfalls do you need to avoid? In this lively panel discussion, customer and industry thought leaders in social business explore these topics and more as they share their stories of the good, the bad, and the ugly that can happen when embracing social methods and technologies to improve business success. Using moderated questions and open Q&A from the audience, the panel discusses vital topics such as the critical factors for success, the major issues to avoid, how to gain senior executive support for social efforts, how to handle undesired behavior, and how to measure business impact. This session will take a thought-provoking look at becoming a social business from the inside. CON8900 - Building Next-Generation Portals: An Interactive Customer Panel DiscussionWednesday, Oct 3, 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM - Moscone West - 3000Roberts Wayne - Director, IT, Canadian Partnership Against CancerMike Beattie - VP Application Development, Aramark Uniform ServicesJohn Chen - Utilities Services Manager 6, Los Angeles Department of Water & PowerJörg Modlmayr - Head of Product Managment, Siemens AGSocial and collaborative technologies have changed how people interact, learn, and collaborate, and providing a modern, social Web presence is imperative to remain competitive in today’s market. Can your business benefit from a more collaborative and interactive portal environment for employees, customers, and partners? Attend this session to hear from Oracle WebCenter Portal customers as they share their strategies and best practices for providing users with a modern experience that adapts to their needs and includes personalized access to content in context. The panel also addresses how customers have benefited from creating next-generation portals by migrating from older portal technologies to Oracle WebCenter Portal. CON8898 - Land Mines, Potholes, and Dirt Roads: Navigating the Way to ECM NirvanaThursday, Oct 4, 12:45 PM - 1:45 PM - Moscone West - 3001Stephen Madsen - Senior Management Consultant, Alberta Agriculture and Rural DevelopmentHimanshu Parikh - Sr. Director, Enterprise Architecture & Middleware, Ross Stores, Inc.Ten years ago, people were predicting that by this time in history, we’d be some kind of utopian paperless society. As we all know, we're not there yet, but are we getting closer? What is keeping companies from driving down the road to enterprise content management bliss? Most people understand that using ECM as a central platform enables organizations to expedite document-centric processes, but most business processes in organizations are still heavily paper-based. Many of these processes could be automated and improved with an ECM platform infrastructure. In this panel discussion, you’ll hear from Oracle WebCenter customers that have already solved some of these challenges as they share their strategies for success and roads to avoid along your journey. CON8897 - Using Web Experience Management to Drive Online Marketing SuccessThursday, Oct 4, 2:15 PM - 3:15 PM - Moscone West - 3001Blane Nelson - Chief Architect, Ancestry.comMike Remedios - CIO, ArbonneCaitlin Scanlon - Product Manager, Monster WorldwideEvery year, the online channel becomes more imperative for driving organizational top-line revenue, but for many companies, mastering how to best market their products and services in a fast-evolving online world with high customer expectations for personalized experiences can be a complex proposition. Come to this panel discussion, and hear directly from customers on how they are succeeding today by using Web experience management to drive marketing success, using capabilities such as targeting and optimization, user-generated content, mobile site publishing, and site visitor personalization to deliver engaging online experiences. Your Handy Guide to WebCenter at Oracle OpenWorld Want a quick and easy guide to all the keynotes, demos, hands-on labs and WebCenter sessions you definitely don't want to miss at Oracle OpenWorld? Download this handy guide, Focus on WebCenter. More helpful links: * Oracle OpenWorld* Oracle Customer Experience Summit @ OpenWorld* Oracle OpenWorld on Facebook * Oracle OpenWorld on Twitter* Oracle OpenWorld on LinkedIn* Oracle OpenWorld Blog

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  • Change Comes from Within

    - by John K. Hines
    I am in the midst of witnessing a variety of teams moving away from Scrum. Some of them are doing things like replacing Scrum terms with more commonly understood terminology. Mainly they have gone back to using industry standard terms and more traditional processes like the RAPID decision making process. For example: Scrum Master becomes Project Lead. Scrum Team becomes Project Team. Product Owner becomes Stakeholders. I'm actually quite sad to see this happening, but I understand that Scrum is a radical change for most organizations. Teams are slowly but surely moving away from Scrum to a process that non-software engineers can understand and follow. Some could never secure the education or personnel (like a Product Owner) to get the whole team engaged. And many people with decision-making authority do not see the value in Scrum besides task planning and tracking. You see, Scrum cannot be mandated. No one can force a team to be Agile, collaborate, continuously improve, and self-reflect. Agile adoptions must start from a position of mutual trust and willingness to change. And most software teams aren't like that. Here is my personal epiphany from over a year of attempting to promote Agile on a small development team: The desire to embrace Agile methodologies must come from each and every member of the team. If this desire does not exist - if the team is satisfied with its current process, if the team is not motivated to improve, or if the team is afraid of change - the actual demonstration of all the benefits prescribed by Agile and Scrum will take years. I've read some blog posts lately that criticise Scrum for demanding "Big Change Up Front." One's opinion of software methodologies boils down to one's perspective. If you see modern software development as successful, you will advocate for small, incremental changes to how it is done. If you see it as broken, you'll be much more motivated to take risks and try something different. So my question to you is this - is modern software development healthy or in need of dramatic improvement? I can tell you from personal experience that any project that requires exploration, planning, development, stabilisation, and deployment is hard. Trying to make that process better with only a slightly modified approach is a mistake. You will become completely dependent upon the skillset of your team (the only variable you can change). But the difficulty of planned work isn't one of skill. It isn't until you solve the fundamental challenges of communication, collaboration, quality, and efficiency that skill even comes into play. So I advocate for Big Change Up Front. And I advocate for it to happen often until those involved can say, from experience, that it is no longer needed. I hope every engineer has the opportunity to see the benefits of Agile and Scrum on a highly functional team. I'll close with more key learnings that can help with a Scrum adoption: Your leaders must understand Scrum. They must understand software development, its inherent difficulties, and how Scrum helps. If you attempt to adopt Scrum before the understanding is there, your leaders will apply traditional solutions to your problems - often creating more problems. Success should be measured by quality, not revenue. Namely, the value of software to an organization is the revenue it generates minus ongoing support costs. You should identify quality-based metrics that show the effect Agile techniques have on your software. Motivation is everything. I finally understand why so many Agile advocates say you that if you are not on a team using Agile, you should leave and find one. Scrum and especially Agile encompass many elegant solutions to a wide variety of problems. If you are working on a team that has not encountered these problems the the team may never see the value in the solutions.   Having said all that, I'm not giving up on Agile or Scrum. I am convinced it is a better approach for software development. But reality is saying that its adoption is not straightforward and highly subject to disruption. Unless, that is, everyone really, really wants it.

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  • Big Data – Buzz Words: Importance of Relational Database in Big Data World – Day 9 of 21

    - by Pinal Dave
    In yesterday’s blog post we learned what is HDFS. In this article we will take a quick look at the importance of the Relational Database in Big Data world. A Big Question? Here are a few questions I often received since the beginning of the Big Data Series - Does the relational database have no space in the story of the Big Data? Does relational database is no longer relevant as Big Data is evolving? Is relational database not capable to handle Big Data? Is it true that one no longer has to learn about relational data if Big Data is the final destination? Well, every single time when I hear that one person wants to learn about Big Data and is no longer interested in learning about relational database, I find it as a bit far stretched. I am not here to give ambiguous answers of It Depends. I am personally very clear that one who is aspiring to become Big Data Scientist or Big Data Expert they should learn about relational database. NoSQL Movement The reason for the NoSQL Movement in recent time was because of the two important advantages of the NoSQL databases. Performance Flexible Schema In personal experience I have found that when I use NoSQL I have found both of the above listed advantages when I use NoSQL database. There are instances when I found relational database too much restrictive when my data is unstructured as well as they have in the datatype which my Relational Database does not support. It is the same case when I have found that NoSQL solution performing much better than relational databases. I must say that I am a big fan of NoSQL solutions in the recent times but I have also seen occasions and situations where relational database is still perfect fit even though the database is growing increasingly as well have all the symptoms of the big data. Situations in Relational Database Outperforms Adhoc reporting is the one of the most common scenarios where NoSQL is does not have optimal solution. For example reporting queries often needs to aggregate based on the columns which are not indexed as well are built while the report is running, in this kind of scenario NoSQL databases (document database stores, distributed key value stores) database often does not perform well. In the case of the ad-hoc reporting I have often found it is much easier to work with relational databases. SQL is the most popular computer language of all the time. I have been using it for almost over 10 years and I feel that I will be using it for a long time in future. There are plenty of the tools, connectors and awareness of the SQL language in the industry. Pretty much every programming language has a written drivers for the SQL language and most of the developers have learned this language during their school/college time. In many cases, writing query based on SQL is much easier than writing queries in NoSQL supported languages. I believe this is the current situation but in the future this situation can reverse when No SQL query languages are equally popular. ACID (Atomicity Consistency Isolation Durability) – Not all the NoSQL solutions offers ACID compliant language. There are always situations (for example banking transactions, eCommerce shopping carts etc.) where if there is no ACID the operations can be invalid as well database integrity can be at risk. Even though the data volume indeed qualify as a Big Data there are always operations in the application which absolutely needs ACID compliance matured language. The Mixed Bag I have often heard argument that all the big social media sites now a days have moved away from Relational Database. Actually this is not entirely true. While researching about Big Data and Relational Database, I have found that many of the popular social media sites uses Big Data solutions along with Relational Database. Many are using relational databases to deliver the results to end user on the run time and many still uses a relational database as their major backbone. Here are a few examples: Facebook uses MySQL to display the timeline. (Reference Link) Twitter uses MySQL. (Reference Link) Tumblr uses Sharded MySQL (Reference Link) Wikipedia uses MySQL for data storage. (Reference Link) There are many for prominent organizations which are running large scale applications uses relational database along with various Big Data frameworks to satisfy their various business needs. Summary I believe that RDBMS is like a vanilla ice cream. Everybody loves it and everybody has it. NoSQL and other solutions are like chocolate ice cream or custom ice cream – there is a huge base which loves them and wants them but not every ice cream maker can make it just right  for everyone’s taste. No matter how fancy an ice cream store is there is always plain vanilla ice cream available there. Just like the same, there are always cases and situations in the Big Data’s story where traditional relational database is the part of the whole story. In the real world scenarios there will be always the case when there will be need of the relational database concepts and its ideology. It is extremely important to accept relational database as one of the key components of the Big Data instead of treating it as a substandard technology. Ray of Hope – NewSQL In this module we discussed that there are places where we need ACID compliance from our Big Data application and NoSQL will not support that out of box. There is a new termed coined for the application/tool which supports most of the properties of the traditional RDBMS and supports Big Data infrastructure – NewSQL. Tomorrow In tomorrow’s blog post we will discuss about NewSQL. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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  • Training on Demand Certification Packages for DBAs

    - by Antoinette O'Sullivan
    The demand for Database Administrators continues to grow.*Almost two-thirds of IT hiring managers indicate that they highly value certifications in validatingIT skills and expertise.** * Job satisfaction and DBA work growth rate: CNN Money's 2011 Best Jobs in America survey.** Survey among nearly 1,700 respondents by CompTIA, the nonprofit trade association for the IT industry, cited in Certification Magazine, Feb. 14 th., 2012. Get Certified with Training on DemandAre you an experienced Database professional eager to achieve certification?Is time your most precious resource?Then try our new Training On Demand Certification Value Package with 20% discount. These all-in-one packages give you everything you need to get certified with success: Why Training On Demand:  Expert training from Oracle’s top instructors Sophisticated streaming video recording Available for 90 days, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week White boarding and training labs for hands-on experience Start, stop, pause, jump or rewind sections of the course as needed  Oracle University instructor Q&A  A full-text search leads to the right video fragment in a matter of seconds. Watch this demo to see how it works. Additional Certification resources: Benefits of Oracle Certification Database Certification Paths Available Database Certification Exams Getting certified has never been easier!For assistance contact your local Oracle University Service Desk. Many organizations deploy both Oracle Database and MySQL side by side to serve different needs, and as a database professional you can find training courses on both topics at Oracle University! Check out the upcoming Oracle Database 11g training courses and MySQL training courses. Even if you're only managing Oracle Databases at this point of time, getting familiar with MySQL Database will broaden your career path with growing job demand. These Value Packages are also available with the following training formats: In-Class, Live Virtual Class and Self Study: MySQL Database Administration Value Packages Your Savings plus get a FREE Retake  save 5% save 20% save 20% save 20%   In Class Edition Live Virtual Class Edition Self-Study Edition Training On Demand MySQL Database Administrator Certification Value Package View Package View Package View Package View Package MySQL Developer Value Packages Your Savings plus get a FREE Retake  save 5% save 20% save 20% save 20%   In Class Edition Live Virtual Class Edition Self-Study Edition Training On Demand       MySQL Developer Certification Value Package View Package View Package     Oracle Database 10g Value Packages Your Savings plus get a FREE Retake  save 5% save 20% save 20% save 20%   In Class Edition Live Virtual Class Edition Self-Study Edition Training On Demand Oracle Database 10g Administrator Certified Associate Certification Value Package View Package View Package View Package   Oracle Database 10g Administrator Certified Professional Certification Value Package View Package View Package View Package   Oracle Database 11g Value Packages Your Savings plus get a FREE Retake  save 5% save 20% save 20% save 20%   In Class Edition Live Virtual Class Edition Self-Study Edition Training On Demand Oracle Database 11g Administrator Certified Associate Certification Value Package View Package View Package View Package View Package Oracle Database 11g Administrator Certified Professional Certification Value Package View Package View Package View Package View Package Exam Prep Seminar Value Package: Oracle Database Admin 1       View Package Oracle Database 11g Administrator Certified Professional UPGRADE Certification Value Package       View Package Oracle Real Application Clusters 11g and Grid Infrastructure Administraton Certified Expert Certification Value Package       View Package Exam Prep Seminar Value Package: Oracle Database Admin 2        View Package Exam Prep Seminar Value Package: Oracle RAC 11g and Grid Infrastructure Administration       View Package Exam Prep Seminar Value Package: Upgrade Oracle Certified Professional (OCP) to Oracle Database 11g       View Package SQL and PL/SQL Value Packages Your Savings plus get a FREE Retake  save 5% save 20% save 20% save 20%   In Class Edition Live Virtual Class Edition Self-Study Edition Training On Demand Oracle Database Sql Expert Certification Value Package View Package View Package View Package View Package Exam Prep Seminar Value Package: Oracle Database SQL       View Package View our Certification Value Packages Mention this code at the time of booking: E1245 Connect For a full list of MySQL Training courses and events, go to http://oracle.com/education/mysql.

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  • Off The Beaten Path—Three Things Growing Midsize Companies are Thankful For

    - by Christine Randle
    By: Jim Lein, Senior Director, Oracle Accelerate Last Sunday I went on a walkabout.  That’s when I just step out the door of my Colorado home and hike through the mountains for hours with no predetermined destination. I favor “social trails”, the unmapped routes pioneered by both animal and human explorers.  These tracks  are usually more challenging than established, marked routes and you can’t be 100% sure of where you’re going to end up. But I’ve found the rewards to be much greater. For awhile, I pondered on how—depending upon your perspective—the current economic situation worldwide could be viewed as either a classic “the glass is half empty” or a “the glass is half full” scenario. Midsize companies buy Oracle to grow and so I’m continually amazed and fascinated by the success stories our customers relate to me.  Oracle’s successful midsize companies are growing via innovation, agility, and opportunity. For them, the glass isn’t half full—it’s overflowing. Growing Midsize Companies are Thankful for: Innovation The sun angling through the pine trees reminded me of a conversation with a European customer a year ago May.  You might not recognize the name but, chances are, your local evening weather report relies on this company’s weather observation, monitoring and measurement products.  For decades, the company was recognized in its industry for product innovation, but its recent rapid growth comes from tailoring end to end product and service solutions based on the needs of distinctly different customer groups across industrial, public sector, and defense sectors.  Hours after that phone call I was walking my dog in a local park and came upon a small white plastic box sprouting short antennas and dangling by a nylon cord from a tree branch.  I cut it down. The name of that customer’s company was stamped on the housing. “It’s a radiosonde from a high altitude weather balloon,” he told me the next day. “Keep it as a souvenir.”  It sits on my fireplace mantle and elicits many questions from guests. Growing Midsize Companies are Thankful for: Agility In July, I had another interesting discussion with the CFO of an Asia-Pacific company which owns and operates a large portfolio of leisure assets. They are best known for their epic outdoor theme parks. However, their primary growth today is coming from a chain of indoor amusement centers in the USA where billiards, bowling, and laser tag take the place of roller coasters, kiddy rides, and wave pools. With mountains and rivers right out my front door, I’m not much for theme parks, but I’ll take a spirited game of laser tag any day.  This company has grown dramatically since first implementing Oracle ERP more than a decade ago. Their profitable expansion into a completely foreign market is derived from the ability to replicate proven and efficient best business practices across diverse operating environments.  They recently went live on Oracle’s Fusion HCM and Taleo. Their CFO explained to me how, with thousands of employees in three countries, Fusion HCM and Taleo would enable them to remain incredibly agile by acting on trends linking individual employee performance to their management, establishing and maintaining those best practices. Growing Midsize Companies are Thankful for: Opportunity I have three GPS apps on my iPhone. I use them mainly to keep track of my stats—distance, time, and vertical gain. However, every once in awhile I need to find the most efficient route back home before dark from my current location (notice I didn’t use the word “lost”). In August I listened in on an interview with the CFO of another European company that designs and delivers telematics solutions—the integrated use of telecommunications and informatics—for managing the mobile workforce. These solutions enable customers to achieve evolutionary step-changes in their performance and service delivery. Forgive the overused metaphor, but this is route optimization on steroids.  The company’s executive team saw an opportunity in this emerging market and went “all in”. Consequently, they are being rewarded with tremendous growth results and market domination by providing the ability for their clients to collect and analyze performance information related to fuel consumption, service workforce safety, and asset productivity. This Thanksgiving, I’m thankful for health, family, friends, and a career with an innovative company that helps companies leverage top tier software to drive and manage growth. And I’m thankful to have learned the lesson that good things happen when you get off the beaten path—both when hiking and when forging new routes through a complex world economy. Halfway through my walkabout on Sunday, after scrambling up a long stretch of scree-covered hill, I crested a ridge with an obstructed view of 14,265 ft Mt Evans just a few miles to the west.  There, nowhere near a house or a trail, someone had placed a wooden lounge chair. Its wood was worn and faded but it was sturdy. I had lunch and a cold drink in my pack. Opportunity knocked and I seized it. Happy Thanksgiving.  

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  • The Complementary Roles of PLM and PIM

    - by Ulf Köster
    Oracle Product Value Chain Solutions (aka Enterprise PLM Solutions) are a comprehensive set of product management solutions that work together to provide Oracle customers with a broad array of capabilities to manage all aspects of product life: innovation, design, launch, and supply chain / commercialization processes beyond the capabilities and boundaries of traditional engineering-focused Product Lifecycle Management applications. They support companies with an integrated managed view across the product value chain: From Lab to Launch, From Farm to Fork, From Concept to Product to Customer, From Product Innovation to Product Design and Product Commercialization. Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) represents a broad suite of software solutions to improve product-oriented business processes and data. PLM success stories prove that PLM helps companies improve time to market, increase product-related revenue, reduce product costs, reduce internal costs and improve product quality. As a maturing suite of enterprise solutions, PLM is still evolving to realize the promise it can provide across all facets of a business and all phases of the product lifecycle. The vision for PLM includes everything from gathering early requirements for a product through multiple stages of the product lifecycle from product design, through commercialization and eventual product retirement or replacement. In discrete or process industries, PLM is typically more focused on Product Definition as items with respect to the technical view of a material or part, including specifications, bills of material and manufacturing data. With Agile PLM, this is specifically related to capabilities addressing Product Collaboration, Governance and Compliance, Product Quality Management, Product Cost Management and Engineering Collaboration. PLM today is mainly addressing key requirements in the early product lifecycle, in engineering changes or in the “innovation cycle”, and primarily adds value related to product design, development, launch and engineering change process. In short, PLM is the master for Product Definition, wherever manufacturing takes place. Product Information Management (PIM) is a product suite that has evolved in parallel to PLM. Product Information Management (PIM) can extend the value of PLM implementations by providing complementary tools and capabilities. More relevant in the area of Product Commercialization, the vision for PIM is to manage product information throughout an enterprise and supply chain to improve product-related knowledge management, information sharing and synchronization from multiple data sources. PIM success stories have shown the ability to provide multiple benefits, with particular emphasis on reducing information complexity and information management costs. Product Information in PIM is typically treated as the commercial view of a material or part, including sales and marketing information and categorization. PIM collects information from multiple manufacturing sites and multiple suppliers into its repository, but also provides integration tools to push the information back out to the other systems, serving as an active central repository with the aim to provide a holistic view on any product sold by a company (hence the name “Product Hub”). In short, PIM is the master of commercial Product Information. So PIM is quickly becoming mandatory because of its value in optimizing multichannel selling processes and relationships with customers, as you can see from the following table: Viewpoint PLM Current State PIM Key Benefits PIM adds to PLM Product Lifecycle Primarily R&D Front end Innovation Cycle Change process Primarily commercial / transactional state of lifecycle Provides a seamless information flow from design and manufacturing through the ultimate selling and servicing of products Data Primarily focused on “item” vs. “product” data Product structures Specifications Technical information Repository for all product information. Reaches out to entire enterprise and its various silos of product information and descriptions Provides a “trusted source” of accurate product information to the internal organization and trading partners Data Lifecycle Repository for all design iterations Historical information Released, current information, with version management and time stamping Provides a single location to track and audit historical product information Communication PLM release finished product to ERP PLM is the master for Product Definition Captures information from disparate sources, including in-house data stores Recognizes the reality of today’s data “mess” across information silos Provides the ability to package product information to its audience in the desired, relevant format to meet their exacting business requirements Departmental R&D Manufacturing Quality Compliance Procurement Strategic Marketing Focus on Marketing and Sales Gathering information from other Departments, multiple sites, multiple suppliers A singular enterprise solution that leverages existing information silos and data stores Supply Chain Multi-site internal collaboration Supplier collaboration Customer collaboration Works with customers, exchanges / data pools, and trading partners to provide relevant product information packaged the way the customer desires Provides ability to provide trading partners and internal customers with information in a manner they desire, continuously Tools Data Management Collaboration Innovation Management Cleansing Synchronization Hub functions Consistent, clean and complete commercial product information The goals of both PLM and PIM, put simply, are to help companies make more profit from their products. PLM and PIM solutions can be easily added as they share some of the same goals, while coming from two different perspectives: the definition of the product and the commercialization of the product. Both can serve as a form of product “system of record”, but take different approaches to delivering value. Oracle Product Value Chain solutions offer rich new strategies for executives to collectively leverage Agile PLM, Product Data Hub, together with Enterprise Data Quality for Products, and other industry leading Oracle applications to achieve further incremental value, like Oracle Innovation Management. This is unique on the market today.

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