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• BYOD (accessing files) on a domain without joining?

  - by Philip White

  I run a Samba 4 instance at a small private school. This makes a regular Linux server appear as a directory controller. There are two relevant benefits to this: I have a Samba share for people's documents, and I use the Redirected Folders feature to allow any employee to sit down at any PC, log in with their domain credentials, and their My Documents points to network storage. Everyone has a mapped drive (using Group Policy Preferences) to a share specific to their account type. Students can access one share (one share for all students), teachers have another, and office staff have another. However, I would like to allow BYOD (Bring Your Own Device). Some employees are already asking for it with their personal laptops, and I know eventually most everyone will want to. Is there any way to replicate the two features above without having to join PCs to the domain? Joining personal PCs is impractical if only because only professional editions of Windows support this. Ideally, any operating system (including mobile) could access the relevant shares, but of course Windows is key. Offline caching is optional. (I could set up OpenVPN for teachers who want to access their files from home.) The problem with simply giving SSH access to the relevant shares is primarily that Samba 4 relies on ext4 ACLs and ext4 extended attributes to maintain NTFS permissions. Writing files directly to the Linux server would bypass this and would (probably) not be interoperable with Samba4. Right now I am completely flexible. I am even fine with scrapping the whole domain and using some other software for the two features above. How can I allow school employees and students freedom to securely share files without requiring everyone to have specific editions of Windows?

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• What’s New from the Oracle Marketing Cloud at Oracle OpenWorld 2014?

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Marketing—CX Central is your hub for all things Marketing related at OpenWorld in San Francisco, September 28-October 2, 2014. Learn how to personalize the modern marketing journey to improve customer loyalty. We’re hosting more than 60 breakout sessions, half of which will highlight customer success stories from marquee brands including Bizo, Comcast, Dell, Epson, John Deere, Lane Bryant, ReadyTalk and Shutterfly. Moscone West, Levels 2 and 3 To learn more about how modern marketing works, visit Moscone West, levels 2 and 3, for exciting demos of each of the Oracle Marketing Cloud solutions (BlueKai, Compendium, Eloqua, Push I/O, and Responsys). You also can check out our stations for Vertical Marketing Best Practices, the Markie Awards, and more! CX Spotlight Sessions “Accelerating Big Profits in Big Data,” Jeff Tanner, Baylor University “Using Content Marketing to Impact Every Stage of the Buyer’s Journey,” Jennifer Agustin, Bizo “Expanding Your Marketing with Proven Testing and Optimization,” Brian Border, Shutterfly and Matthew Balthazor, Epson “Modern Marketing: The New Digital Dialogue,” Cory Treffiletti, Oracle A Special Marquee Session Dell’s Hayden Mugford will speak on “The Digital Ecosystem: Driving Experience Through Contact Engagement.” She will highlight how the organization built a digital ecosystem that supports a behaviorally driven, multivehicle nurturing campaign. The Dell 1:1 Global Marketing team worked with multiple partners to innovate integrations with Oracle Eloqua, Oracle Real-Time Decisions for real-time decision logic, and a content management system (CMS) that enables 100 percent customized e-mails. The program doubled average order values for nurtured contacts versus non-nurtured and tripled open and click-through rates versus push e-mail. Other Oracle Marketing Cloud Session Highlights Thought leadership by role Exploring the benefits of moving to the Cloud Product line roadmaps and innovations in Marketing Technical deep dives for product lines within Marketing Best practices and impactful business measurements Solutions that are Integrated across CX Target Audience Session content is geared toward professionals in Marketing, Marketing Operations, Marketing Demand Generation, Social: Chief Marketing Officers, Vice Presidents, Directors and Managers. Outcomes Customers attending Marketing—CX Central @ OpenWorld will be able to: Gain insight into delivering consistent cross-channel marketing Discover how to provide the right information to the right customer at the right time and with the right channel Get answers to burning questions and advice on business challenges Hear from other Oracle customers about recommended best practices to help their organization move forward Network and share ideas to help create a strategy for connecting with customers in better ways It Wouldn’t Be an Oracle Marketing Cloud Event Without a Party! We’re hosting CX Central Fest:  a unique customer experience specifically designed for attendees of CX Central. It will include a chance to rock out at a private concert featuring Los Angeles indie electronic pop group, Capital Cities! Join us Tuesday, September 30 from 7-9 p.m. OpenWorld is a fabulous way for your customers to see all that Oracle Marketing Cloud has to offer. Pass on an invitation today. By Laura Vogel (Oracle) /* 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;}

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• Listen to Over 100,000 Radio Stations in Windows Media Center

  - by Mysticgeek

  A cool feature in Windows 7 Media Center is the ability to listen to local FM radio. But what if you don’t have a tuner card that supports a connected radio antenna? The RadioTime plugin solves the problem by allowing access to thousands of online radio stations. With the RadioTime plugin for Windows Media Center, you’ll have access to over 100,000 online radio stations from around the world. Their guide is broken down into different categories such as Talk Radio, Music Radio, Sports Radio and more. It’s completely free, but does require registration to save preset stations. RadioTime It works with Media Center in XP, Vista, and Windows 7 (which we’re demonstrating here). When installing it for Windows 7, make sure to click the Installer link below the “Get It Now – Free” button as the installer works best for the new OS. Installation is extremely quick and easy… Now when you open Windows 7 Media Center you’ll find it located in the Extras category from the main menu. After you launch it, you’re presented with the RadioTime guide where you can browse through the different categories of stations. Your shown various station suggestions each time you start it up. The main categories are broken down further so you can find the right genre of the music your looking for.   World Radio offers you stations from all over the world categorized into different regions. RadioTime does support local stations via an FM tuner, but if you don’t have one, you can still access local stations provided they broadcast online. One thing about listening to your local stations online is the audio quality may not be as good as if you had a tuner connected. It provides information on most of the online stations. For example here we look at Minnesota Public Radio info and you get a schedule of when certain programs are on. Then get even more information about the topics on the shows. To use the Presets option you’ll need to log into your RadioTime account, or if you don’t have one just click on the link to create a free one.   Creating a free account is simple and basic on their site. You aren’t required to have an account to use the RadioTime plugin, it’s only if you want the additional benefits. Conclusion For this article we only tried it with Windows 7 Media Center, and sometimes the interface felt clunky when moving quickly through menus. Also, there isn’t a search feature from within Media Center, however, you can search stations from their site and add them to your presets. Despite a few shortcomings, this is a very cool way to get access to thousands of online radio stations through Windows Media Center. If you’re looking for a way to access thousands of radio stations through WMC, you might want to give RadioTime a try. Download RadioTime for Windows Media Center Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Listen To XM Radio with Windows Media Center in Windows 7Listen and Record Over 12,000 Online Radio Stations with RadioSureUsing Netflix Watchnow in Windows Vista Media Center (Gmedia)Learning Windows 7: Manage Your Music with Windows Media PlayerSchedule Updates for Windows Media Center TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Windows Media Player 12: Tweak Video & Sound with Playback Enhancements Own a cell phone, or does a cell phone own you? Make your Joomla & Drupal Sites Mobile with OSMOBI Integrate Twitter and Delicious and Make Life Easier Design Your Web Pages Using the Golden Ratio Worldwide Growth of the Internet

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• What is the Oracle Utilities Application Framework?

  - by Anthony Shorten

  The Oracle Utilities Application Framework is a reusable, scalable and flexible java based framework which allows other products to be built, configured and implemented in a standard way. Note: Even though the Framework is built in java it can be integrated with COBOL based extensions for backward compatibility. When Oracle Utilities Customer Care & Billing was migrated from V1 to V2, it was decided that the technical aspects of that product be separated to allow for reuse and independence from technical issues. The idea was that all the technical aspects would be concentrated in this separate product (i.e. a framework) and allow all products using the framework to concentrate on delivering superior functionality. The product was named the Oracle Utilities Application Framework (oufw is the product code). The technical components are contained in the Oracle Utilities Application Framework which can be summarized as follows: Metadata - The Oracle Utilities Application Framework is responsible for defining and using the metadata to define the runtime behavior of the product. All the metadata definition and management is contained within the Oracle Utilities Application Framework. UI Management - The Oracle Utilities Application Framework is responsible for defining and rendering the pages and responsible for ensuring the pages are in the appropriate format for the locale. Integration - The Oracle Utilities Application Framework is responsible for providing the integration points to the architecture. Refer to the Oracle Utilities Application Framework Integration Overview for more details Tools - The Oracle Utilities Application Framework provides a common set of facilities and tools that can be used across all products. Technology - The Oracle Utilities Application Framework is responsible for all technology standards compliance, platform support and integration. There are a number of products from the Tax and Utilities Global Business Unit as well as from the Financial Services Global Business Unit that are built upon the Oracle Utilities Application Framework. These products require the Oracle Utilities Application Framework to be installed first and then the product itself installed onto the framework to complete the installation process. There are a number of key benefits that the Oracle Utilities Application Framework provides to these products: Common facilities - The Oracle Utilities Application Framework provides a standard set of technical facilities that mean that products can concentrate in the unique aspects of their markets rather than making technical decisions. Common methods of configuration - The Oracle Utilities Application Framework standardizes the technical configuration process for a product. Customers can effectively reuse the configuration process across products. Multi-lingual and Multi-platform - The Oracle Utilities Application Framework allows the products to be offered in more markets and across multiple platforms for maximized flexibility. Common methods of implementation - The Oracle Utilities Application Framework standardizes the technical aspects of a product implementation. Customers can effectively reuse the technical implementation process across products. Quicker adoption of new technologies - As new technologies and standards are identified as being important for the product line, they can be integrated centrally benefiting multiple products. Cross product reuse - As enhancements to the Oracle Utilities Application Framework are identified by a particular product, all products can potentially benefit from the enhancement. Note: Use of the Oracle Utilities Application Framework does not preclude the introduction of product specific technologies or facilities to satisfy market needs. The framework minimizes the need and assists in the quick integration of a new product specific piece of technology (if necessary). The Framework is not available as a product itself and is bundled with Tax and Utilities Global Business Unit prodicts. At the present time the following products are on the Framework: Oracle Utilities Customer Care And Billing (V2 and above) Oracle Enterprise Taxation Management (V2 and above) Oracle Utilities Business Intelligence (V2 and above) Oracle Utilities Mobile Workforice Management (V2 and above)

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• Oracle Virtualization at Oracle OpenWorld 2012

  - by Chris Kawalek

  Mini-Series Entry 1 of 3: Hands-On Virtualization This is the first entry of a 3 part mini-series aimed at highlighting server and desktop virtualization at this year’s Oracle OpenWorld.  Oracle OpenWorld 2012 is fast approaching! If you are as excited as we are about the fascinating new Oracle virtualization content featured at Oracle OpenWorld 2012, you won’t want to miss this blog mini-series. We will be highlighting sessions that cover advances and innovations in our products, our product strategy and roadmap, and hands on labs for step-by-step instructions from our field and product experts. In the blog mini-series you will learn about: The Oracle Virtualization general keynote session Hands-on labs  Key Oracle server and desktop virtualization sessions In this entry, we will cover the Oracle Virtualization keynote session and the hands-on labs you won't want to miss. General Session: Oracle Virtualization Strategy and Roadmap Session ID: GEN8725 Oracle offers the industry’s most complete and integrated virtualization portfolio enabling organizations to realize benefits beyond simple consolidation as they transform their data centers into flexible cloud-based infrastructures. Join Oracle executives and experts to learn about Oracle’s desktop-to-data-center virtualization solutions, such as the OS, with built-in management integration at all layers that can help you virtualize and manage the complete computing environment, from physical servers to virtual servers and applications. This “don’t-miss” session offers details of the latest product updates and strategy; product roadmaps; integration with enterprise applications; and real-world examples of how Oracle server, desktop, and storage virtualization is benefiting customers. Here are our top picks for Hands-On Labs for Oracle OpenWorld 2012: Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Performance and Tablet Mobility Session ID: HOL9907 This hands-on lab demonstrates the performance (using an industry-standard load tester) and roaming capabilities of Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure with Oracle’s Sun Ray Clients, Apple iPad and other clients. Deploying an IaaS Environment with Oracle VM: Hands-On Lab  Session ID: HOL9558 This hands-on lab takes you through the planning and deployment of an infrastructure as a service (IaaS) environment with Oracle VM as the foundation. It covers a range of topics, from planning storage capacity, LUN creation, network bandwidth planning, and best practices to designing and streamlining the environment for ease of management. Learn from deeply experienced field engineers and product experts. Virtualize and Deploy Oracle Applications in Minutes with Oracle VM: Hands-On Lab Session ID: HOL9559 This hands-on lab is for application architects or system administrators who will need to deploy and manage Oracle Applications. You’ll learn how Oracle VM Templates can turn you into a power user who can virtualize and deploy complex Oracle Applications in minutes. Longtime field-experienced engineers and product experts will show you, step by step, how to download and import templates and deploy the applications. x86 Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure with Oracle VM 3.x and Sun ZFS Storage Appliance Session ID: HOL9870 The purpose of this hands-on lab is to demonstrate the functionality and usage of Oracle’s enterprise cloud infrastructure for x86 with Oracle VM 3.x. It covers:  Creation of VMs Migration of VMs  Quick and easy deployment of Oracle applications with Oracle VM Templates  Usage of the Storage Connect plug-in for the Sun ZFS Storage Appliance You can find these and other great sessions on the Oracle OpenWorld 2012 Content Catalogue. Start checking now to better plan and organize your week at the conference. Then you’ll be ready to sign up for all of your sessions in mid-July when the scheduling tool goes live. While the hands-on labs allow you to directly interact with Oracle virtualization products, the conference sessions allow you to hear from a wide variety of industry experts on how they're using they technology in real world deployments, solving specific challenges, and more. In tomorrow's entry, we'll start talking about the many conference sessions related to Oracle server and desktop virtualization you can attend during the show. See you then! - The Oracle Virtualization marketing team

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• Developer Training – Importance and Significance – Part 1

  - by pinaldave

  Developer Training - Importance and Significance - Part 1 Developer Training – Employee Morals and Ethics – Part 2 Developer Training – Difficult Questions and Alternative Perspective - Part 3 Developer Training – Various Options for Developer Training – Part 4 Developer Training – A Conclusive Summary- Part 5 Can anyone remember their final day of schooling?  This is probably a silly question because – of course you can!  Many people mark this as the most exciting, happiest day of their life.  It marks the end of testing, the end of following rules set by teachers, and the beginning of finally being able to earn money and work in your chosen field. Beginning in Real World However, many former-students will be disappointed to find out that once they become employees, learning is not over.  Many companies are discovering the importance and benefits to training their employees.  You can breathe a sigh of relief, though, because much for this kind of training there are not usually tests! We often think that we go to school for our younger years so that we do all our learning all at once, and then for the rest of our lives we use that knowledge.  But in so many cases, but especially for developers, the opposite is true.  It takes many years of schools to learn the basics of a field, and then our careers are spent learning to become experts. For this, and so many other reasons, training is very important.  Example one: developer training leads to better employees.  A company is only as good as the people it employs, and one way to ensure that you have employed the right candidate is through training.  Training can take a regular “stone” and polish it into a “diamond.”  Employees who have been well-trained will be better at their jobs and produce a better product. Most Expensive Resource Did you know that one of the most expensive operating costs for any company is not buying goods, or advertising, but its employees – especially having to hire new employees.  Bringing in new people, getting them up to speed, and providing them with perks to attract them to a company is a huge cost for companies.  So employee retention – keep the employees you already have, and keeping them happy – is incredibly important from a business aspect.  And research shows that a well-trained employee is a happy employee.  They feel more confident in their job, happier with their position, and more cared-about – and therefore less likely to leave in search of a better job.  Employee training leads to better retention. Good Moral On the subject of keeping employees happy in order to keep them at a company, the complement to that research shows that happier employees are more efficient and overall better at their jobs.  You don’t have to be a scientist to figure out why this is true.  An employee who feel that his company cares about him and his educational future will work harder for the company.  He or she will put in that extra hour during the busy season that makes all the difference in the end.  Good morale is good for the company. If good morale is better for the company, you know that it goes hand-in-hand with something even better – better efficiency.  An employee who is well trained obviously knows more about their job and all the technical aspects.  That means when a problem crops up – and they inevitably do – this employee will be well-equipped to deal with that problem with fewer problems, and no need to go searching for help from higher up.  When employees are well trained, companies run more smoothly. A Better Product Of course, all of these “pros” for employee training are leading up to the one thing that companies truly care about – a better product.  We have shown that employees who have been trained to be competitive in the market are happier at the company, they are more efficient, and their morale is better.  The overall result is that the company’s product – whether it is a database, piece of equipment, or even a physical good – is better.  And a better product will always be more competitive on the market. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Developer Training, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• SQL SERVER – Reducing CXPACKET Wait Stats for High Transactional Database

  - by pinaldave

  While engaging in a performance tuning consultation for a client, a situation occurred where they were facing a lot of CXPACKET Waits Stats. The client asked me if I could help them reduce this huge number of wait stats. I usually receive this kind of request from other client as well, but the important thing to understand is whether this question has any merits or benefits, or not. Before we continue the resolution, let us understand what CXPACKET Wait Stats are. The official definition suggests that CXPACKET Wait Stats occurs when trying to synchronize the query processor exchange iterator. You may consider lowering the degree of parallelism if a conflict concerning this wait type develops into a problem. (from BOL) In simpler words, when a parallel operation is created for SQL Query, there are multiple threads for a single query. Each query deals with a different set of the data (or rows). Due to some reasons, one or more of the threads lag behind, creating the CXPACKET Wait Stat. Threads which came first have to wait for the slower thread to finish. The Wait by a specific completed thread is called CXPACKET Wait Stat. Note that CXPACKET Wait is done by completed thread and not the one which are unfinished. “Note that not all the CXPACKET wait types are bad. You might experience a case when it totally makes sense. There might also be cases when this is also unavoidable. If you remove this particular wait type for any query, then that query may run slower because the parallel operations are disabled for the query.” Now let us see what the best practices to reduce the CXPACKET Wait Stats are. The suggestions, with which you will find that if you search online through the browser, would play a major role as and might be asked about their jobs In addition, might tell you that you should set ‘maximum degree of parallelism’ to 1. I do agree with these suggestions, too; however, I think this is not the final resolutions. As soon as you set your entire query to run on single CPU, you will get a very bad performance from the queries which are actually performing okay when using parallelism. The best suggestion to this is that you set ‘the maximum degree of parallelism’ to a lower number or 1 (be very careful with this – it can create more problems) but tune the queries which can be benefited from multiple CPU’s. You can use query hint OPTION (MAXDOP 0) to run the server to use parallelism. Here is the two-quick script which helps to resolve these issues: Change MAXDOP at Server Level EXEC sys.sp_configure N'max degree of parallelism', N'1' GO RECONFIGURE WITH OVERRIDE GO Run Query with all the CPU (using parallelism) USE AdventureWorks GO SELECT * FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail ORDER BY ProductID OPTION (MAXDOP 0) GO Below is the blog post which will help you to find all the parallel query in your server. SQL SERVER – Find Queries using Parallelism from Cached Plan Please note running Queries in single CPU may worsen your performance and it is not recommended at all. Infect this can be very bad advise. I strongly suggest that you identify the queries which are offending and tune them instead of following any other suggestions. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Optimization, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL White Papers, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

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• OBIEE 11.1.1 - Introduction to OBIEE 11g Full Sample App

  - by user809526

  Isn't it nice to discover OBIEE 11g around a nice "How To" catalog of features? to observe OBI and Essbase relationships at work? to discover TimesTen? The OBIEE 11g Full Sample App (FSA) is a comprehensive collection of examples designed to demonstrate the latest Oracle BIEE 11g capabilities and design best practices: Enhanced visualizations as Geo-spacial maps and interactive dashboards, Action Framework,  BI Publisher, Scorecard and Strategy Management, Mobile style sheets, Semantic layer modeling, Multi-source federation, Integration with products such as Essbase, Oracle OLAP, ODM, TimesTen, ODI and more The FSA is intended to be comprehensive, it is big (see CAVEAT below). The FSA is not an Oracle product, it is a good will free deployment of OBIEE/Essbase designed to exemplify OBIEE features, infrastructure and security around the Fusion Middleware components. Its contents and code are distributed free for demonstrative purposes only. It is neither maintained nor supported by Oracle as a licensed product. The OBIEE Full Sample App is independent of the default Sample App that comes with the OBIEE product. BENEFITS The FSA helps as a demonstrator of OBIEE 11g best practices, a tutorial, an environment "Test & Scrap", a SR bench (regression, conflicts), a tuning bench, a quick ready made POC seed for projects, a security options environment, ... The FSA - Is organized around a catalog of functional features - Has been deployed over 1000 times, it should be stable RELEASE The Full Sample App (V107) is bound to OBIEE 11.1.1.5 and Essbase 11.1.2.1 (November 2011). The FSA release dates are independent of the Product GA date (OBIEE). In early December 2011, a new functional Patch (V110) is released. It is easily applied (in less than 15 mins) on top of OBIEE SampleApp 11.1.1.5 (V107). The patch (V110) includes additional functional examples:        1. Web Catalog Statistics Application: Provides detailed insight into your web catalog content, dormant catalog objects, webcat impact analysis for metadata changes and more        2. Data inflation Scripts: A set of simple SQL procedures to quickly inflate SampleApp Fact and Dimension data to millions of records in a few minutes        3. Public Content Extensions Framework: A patching framework for public examples and contributions leveraging SampleApp        4. Additional report examples (including bridge report, external chart integrations) and bug fixes DISTRIBUTION as VBox image (November 2011) The ready made VBox image is designed to run on Virtual Box. It can be converted to VMware (see another BLOG). 1/ http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/bi-foundation/obiee-samples-167534.html VBox Image Deployment Guide Sampleapp_v107_GA.ovf - VBox image key file The above http URL provides the user:password for the ftp URLs below. 2/ ftp://user:[email protected]/static/SampleAppV107/ 12 "7-zip" files Sampleapp_v107_GA_7_20.7z.001 -> .012 We recommend 7-zip file manager for unzipping (http://www.7-zip.org/). Select Unzip here option, it will create the contents under a directory named "SampleApp_10722". On Windows, it is important to download and save zip file under the root directory (e.g. C:\ or D:\) because of possible long pathnames. 3/ ftp://user:[email protected]/static/SampleAppV107/Unzipped_Version/ 4 files Sampleapp_v107_GA-disk[1234].vmdk Important note: Check the provided checksums (md5sum). Please do it! DISTRIBUTION as Installation files for existing OBI 11.1.1.5 (November 2011) http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/bi-foundation/obiee-samples-167534.html Install files Deployment Guide SampleApp_10722_1.zip - 198 MB CAVEAT Many computers have RAM chips problems that keep often silent ... until you manipulate big files. It is strongly advised you run some memory check program eg MEMTEST in GRUB boot manager. Running md5sum repeatedly onto the very same big file must be consistent [same result], else a hardware memory problem is suspected. For Virtual Box, you should most likely enable VT-X (Vanderpool) hardware virtualization in BIOS. A free disk space of 80 GB is required to perform safely the VBox image installation. A Virtual Machine of minimum 6 to 7 GB memory fits the needs of combining OBIEE and Essbase execution.

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• Principles of Big Data By Jules J Berman, O&rsquo;Reilly Media Book Review

  - by Compudicted

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/Compudicted/archive/2013/11/04/principles-of-big-data-by-jules-j-berman-orsquoreilly-media.aspx A fantastic book! Must be part, if not yet, of the fundamentals of the Big Data as a field of science. Highly recommend to those who are into the Big Data practice. Yet, I confess this book is one of my best reads this year and for a number of reasons: The book is full of wisdom, intimate insight, historical facts and real life examples to how Big Data projects get conceived, operate and sadly, yes, sometimes die. But not only that, the book is most importantly is filled with valuable advice, accurate and even overwhelming amount of reference (from the positive side), and the author does not event stop there: there are numerous technical excerpts, links and examples allowing to quickly accomplish many daunting tasks or make you aware of what one needs to perform as a data practitioner (excuse my use of the word practitioner, I just did not find a better substitute to it to trying to reference all who face Big Data). Be aware that Jules Berman’s background is in medicine, naturally, this book discusses this subject a lot as it is very dear to the author’s heart I believe, this does not make this book any less significant however, quite the opposite, I trust if there is an area in science or practice where the biggest benefits can be ripped from Big Data projects it is indeed the medical science, let’s make Cancer history! On a personal note, for me as a database, BI professional it has helped to understand better the motives behind Big Data initiatives, their underwater rivers and high altitude winds that divert or propel them forward. Additionally, I was impressed by the depth and number of mining algorithms covered in it. I must tell this made me very curious and tempting to find out more about these indispensable attributes of Big Data so sure I will be trying stretching my wallet to acquire several books that go more in depth on several most popular of them. My favorite parts of the book, well, all of them actually, but especially chapter 9: Analysis, it is just very close to my heart. But the real reason is it let me see what I do with data from a different angle. And then the next - “Special Considerations”, they are just two logical parts. The writing language is of this book is very acceptable for all levels, I had no technical problem reading it in ebook format on my 8” tablet or a large screen monitor. If I would be asked to say at least something negative I have to state I had a feeling initially that the book’s first part reads like an academic material relaxing the reader as the book progresses forward. I admit I am impressed with Jules’ abilities to use several programming languages and OSS tools, bravo! And I agree, it is not too, too hard to grasp at least the principals of a modern programming language, which seems becomes a defacto knowledge standard item for any modern human being. So grab a copy of this book, read it end to end and make yourself shielded from making mistakes at any stage of your Big Data initiative, by the way this book also helps build better future Big Data projects. Disclaimer: I received a free electronic copy of this book as part of the O'Reilly Blogger Program.

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• SQL SERVER – Guest Post – Jacob Sebastian – Filestream – Wait Types – Wait Queues – Day 22 of 28

  - by pinaldave

  Jacob Sebastian is a SQL Server MVP, Author, Speaker and Trainer. Jacob is one of the top rated expert community. Jacob wrote the book The Art of XSD – SQL Server XML Schema Collections and wrote the XML Chapter in SQL Server 2008 Bible. See his Blog | Profile. He is currently researching on the subject of Filestream and have submitted this interesting article on the very subject. What is FILESTREAM? FILESTREAM is a new feature introduced in SQL Server 2008 which provides an efficient storage and management option for BLOB data. Many applications that deal with BLOB data today stores them in the file system and stores the path to the file in the relational tables. Storing BLOB data in the file system is more efficient that storing them in the database. However, this brings up a few disadvantages as well. When the BLOB data is stored in the file system, it is hard to ensure transactional consistency between the file system data and relational data. Some applications store the BLOB data within the database to overcome the limitations mentioned earlier. This approach ensures transactional consistency between the relational data and BLOB data, but is very bad in terms of performance. FILESTREAM combines the benefits of both approaches mentioned above without the disadvantages we examined. FILESTREAM stores the BLOB data in the file system (thus takes advantage of the IO Streaming capabilities of NTFS) and ensures transactional consistency between the BLOB data in the file system and the relational data in the database. For more information on the FILESTREAM feature, visit: http://beyondrelational.com/filestream/default.aspx FILESTREAM Wait Types Since this series is on the different SQL Server wait types, let us take a look at the various wait types that are related to the FILESTREAM feature. FS_FC_RWLOCK This wait type is generated by FILESTREAM Garbage Collector. This occurs when Garbage collection is disabled prior to a backup/restore operation or when a garbage collection cycle is being executed. FS_GARBAGE_COLLECTOR_SHUTDOWN This wait type occurs when during the cleanup process of a garbage collection cycle. It indicates that that garbage collector is waiting for the cleanup tasks to be completed. FS_HEADER_RWLOCK This wait type indicates that the process is waiting for obtaining access to the FILESTREAM header file for read or write operation. The FILESTREAM header is a disk file located in the FILESTREAM data container and is named “filestream.hdr”. FS_LOGTRUNC_RWLOCK This wait type indicates that the process is trying to perform a FILESTREAM log truncation related operation. It can be either a log truncate operation or to disable log truncation prior to a backup or restore operation. FSA_FORCE_OWN_XACT This wait type occurs when a FILESTREAM file I/O operation needs to bind to the associated transaction, but the transaction is currently owned by another session. FSAGENT This wait type occurs when a FILESTREAM file I/O operation is waiting for a FILESTREAM agent resource that is being used by another file I/O operation. FSTR_CONFIG_MUTEX This wait type occurs when there is a wait for another FILESTREAM feature reconfiguration to be completed. FSTR_CONFIG_RWLOCK This wait type occurs when there is a wait to serialize access to the FILESTREAM configuration parameters. Waits and Performance System waits has got a direct relationship with the overall performance. In most cases, when waits increase the performance degrades. SQL Server documentation does not say much about how we can reduce these waits. However, following the FILESTREAM best practices will help you to improve the overall performance and reduce the wait types to a good extend. Read all the post in the Wait Types and Queue series. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, Readers Contribution, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Wait Stats, SQL Wait Types, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Filestream

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• Ask the Readers: Backing Your Files Up – Local Storage versus the Cloud

  - by Asian Angel

  Backing up important files is something that all of us should do on a regular basis, but may not have given as much thought to as we should. This week we would like to know if you use local storage, cloud storage, or a combination of both to back your files up. Photo by camknows. For some people local storage media may be the most convenient and/or affordable way to back up their files. Having those files stored on media under your control can also provide a sense of security and peace of mind. But storing your files locally may also have drawbacks if something happens to your storage media. So how do you know whether the benefits outweigh the disadvantages or not? Here are some possible pros and cons that may affect your decision to use local storage to back up your files: Local Storage Pros You are in control of your data Your files are portable and can go with you when needed if using external or flash drives Files are accessible without an internet connection You can easily add more storage capacity as needed (additional drives, etc.) Cons You need to arrange room for your storage media (if you have multiple externals drives, etc.) Possible hardware failure No access to your files if you forget to bring your storage media with you or it is too bulky to bring along Theft and/or loss of home with all contents due to circumstances like fire If you are someone who is always on the go and needs to travel as lightly as possible, cloud storage may be the perfect way for you to back up and access your files. Perhaps your laptop has a hard-drive failure or gets stolen…unhappy events to be sure, but you will still have a copy of your files available. Perhaps a company wants to make sure their records, files, and other information are backed up off site in case of a major hardware or system failure…expensive and/or frustrating to fix if it happens, but once again there is a nice backup ready to go once things are fixed. As with local storage, here are some possible pros and cons that may influence your choice of cloud storage to back up your files: Cloud Storage Pros No need to carry around flash or bulky external drives All of your files are accessible wherever there is an internet connection No need to deal with local storage media (or its’ upkeep) Your files are still safe if your home is broken into or other unfortunate circumstances occur Cons Your files and data are not 100% under your control Possible hardware failure or loss of files on the part of your cloud storage provider (this could include a disgruntled employee wreaking havoc) No access to your files if you do not have an internet connection The cloud storage provider may eventually shutdown due to financial hardship or other unforeseen circumstances The possibility of your files and data being stolen by hackers due to a security breach on the part of your cloud storage provider You may also prefer to try and cover all of the possibilities by using both local and cloud storage to back up your files. If something happens to one, you always have the other to fall back on. Need access to those files at or away from home? As long as you have access to either your storage media or an internet connection, you are good to go. Maybe you are getting ready to choose a backup solution but are not sure which one would work better for you. Here is your chance to ask your fellow HTG readers which one they would recommend. Got a great backup solution already in place? Then be sure to share it with your fellow readers! How-To Geek Polls require Javascript. Please Click Here to View the Poll. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The 20 Best How-To Geek Explainer Topics for 2010 How to Disable Caps Lock Key in Windows 7 or Vista How to Use the Avira Rescue CD to Clean Your Infected PC The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials Is Your Desktop Printer More Expensive Than Printing Services? 20 OS X Keyboard Shortcuts You Might Not Know Winter Sunset by a Mountain Stream Wallpaper Add Sleek Style to Your Desktop with the Aston Martin Theme for Windows 7 Awesome WebGL Demo – Flight of the Navigator from Mozilla Sunrise on the Alien Desert Planet Wallpaper Add Falling Snow to Webpages with the Snowfall Extension for Opera [Browser Fun] Automatically Keep Up With the Latest Releases from Mozilla Labs in Firefox 4.0

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• Innovative SPARC: Lighting a Fire Under Oracle's New Hardware Business

  - by Paulo Folgado

  "There's a certain level of things you can do with commercially available parts," says Oracle Executive Vice President Mike Splain. But, he notes, you can do so much more if you design the parts yourself. Mike Splain,EVP, OracleYou can, for example, design cryptographic accelerators into your microprocessors so customers can run their networks fully encrypted if they choose.Of course, it helps if you've already built multiple processing "cores" into those chips so they can handle all that encrypting and decrypting while still getting their other work done.System on a ChipAs the leader of Oracle Microelectronics, Mike knows how implementing clever innovations in silicon can give systems a real competitive advantage.The SPARC microprocessors that his team designed at Sun pioneered the concept of multiple cores several years ago, and the UltraSPARC T2 processor--the industry's first "system on a chip"--packs up to eight cores per chip, each running as many as eight threads at once. That's the most cores and threads of any general-purpose processor. Looking back, Mike points out that the real value of large enterprise-class servers was their ability to run a lot of very large applications in parallel."The beauty of our CMT [chip multi-threading] machines is you can get that same kind of parallel-processing capability at a much lower cost and in a much smaller footprint," he says.The Whole StackWhat has Mike excited these days is that suddenly the opportunity to innovate is much bigger as part of Oracle."In my group, we used to look up the software stack and say, 'We can do any innovation we want, provided the only thing we have to change is what's in the Solaris operating system'--or maybe Java," he says. "If we wanted to change things beyond that, we'd have to go outside the walls of Sun and we'd have to convince the vendors: 'You have to align with us, you have to test with us, you have to build for us, and then you'll reap the benefits.' Now we get access to the entire stack. We can look all the way through the stack and say, 'Okay, what would make the database go faster? What would make the middleware go faster?'"Changing the WorldMike and his microelectronics team also like the fact that Oracle is not just any software company. We're #1 in database, middleware, business intelligence, and more."We're like all the other engineers from Sun; we believe we can change the world, if we can just figure out how to get people to pay attention to us," he says. "Now there's a mechanism at Oracle--much more so than we ever had at Sun."He notes, too, that every innovation in SPARC has involved some combination of hardware and softwareoptimization."Take our cryptography framework, for example. Sure, we can accelerate rapidly, but the Solaris OS has to provide the right set of interfaces that applications can tap into," Mike says. "Same thing with our multicore architecture. We have to have software that can utilize all those threads and run in parallel." His engineers, he points out, have never been interested in producing chips that sell as mere components."Our chips are always designed to go into systems and be combined with various pieces of software," he says. "Our job is to enable the creation of systems."

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• The dislikes of TDD

  - by andrewstopford

  I enjoy debates about TDD and Brian Harrys blog post is no exception. Brian sounds out what he likes and dislikes about TDD and it's the dislikes I'll focus on. The idea of having unit tests that cover virtually every line of code that I’ve written that I have to refactor every time I refactor my code makes me shudder.  Doing this way makes me take nearly twice as long as it would otherwise take and I don’t feel like I get sufficient benefits from it. Refactoring your tests to match your refactored code sounds like the tests are suffering. Too many hard dependencies with no SOLID concerns are a sure fire reason you would do this. Maybe at the start of a TDD cycle you would need to do this as your design evolves and you remove these dependencies but this should quickly be resolved as you refactor. If you find your self still doing it then stop and look back at your design. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of unit tests.  I just prefer to write them after the code has stopped shaking a bit.  In fact most of my early testing is “manual”.  Either I write a small UI on top of my service that allows me to plug in values and try it or write some quick API tests that I throw away as soon as I have validated them. The problem with this is that a UI can make assumptions on your code that then just unit test around and very quickly the design becomes bad and you technical debt sweeps in. If you want to blackbox test your code with a UI then do so after your TDD cycles not before. This is probably by biggest issue with a literal TDD interpretation.  TDD says you never write a line of code without a failing test to show you need it.  I find it leads developers down a dangerous path.  Without any help from a methodology, I have met way too many developers in my life that “back into a solution”.  By this, I mean they write something, it mostly works and they discover a new requirement so they tack it on, and another and another and when they are done, they’ve got a monstrosity of special cases each designed to handle one specific scenario.  There’s way more code than there should be and it’s way too complicated to understand. I believe in finding general solutions to problems from which all the special cases naturally derive rather than building a solution of special cases.  In my mind, to do this, you have to start by conceptualizing and coding the framework of the general algorithm.  For me, that’s a relatively monolithic exercise. TDD is an development pratice not a methodology, the danger is that the solution becomes a mass of different things that violate DRY. TDD won't solve these problems, only good communication and practices like pairing will help. Above all else an assumption that TDD replaces a methodology is a mistake, combine it with what ever works for your team\business but only good communication will help. A good naming scheme\structure for folders, files and tests can help you and your team isolate what tests are for what.

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• Do NOT Change "Copy Local” project references to false, unless understand subsequences.

  - by Michael Freidgeim

  To optimize performance of visual studio build I've found multiple recommendations to change CopyLocal property for dependent dlls to false,e.g. From http://stackoverflow.com/questions/690033/best-practices-for-large-solutions-in-visual-studio-2008 CopyLocal? For sure turn this offhttp://stackoverflow.com/questions/280751/what-is-the-best-practice-for-copy-local-and-with-project-referencesAlways set the Copy Local property to false and enforce this via a custom msbuild stephttp://codebetter.com/patricksmacchia/2007/06/20/benefit-from-the-c-and-vb-net-compilers-perf/BenefitBenefitMy advice is to always set ‘Copy Local’ to falseSome time ago we've tried to change the setting to false, and found that it causes problem for deployment of top-level projects.Recently I've followed the suggestion and changed the settings for middle-level projects. It didn't cause immediate issues, but I was warned by Readify Consultant Colin Savage about possible errors during deploymentsI haven't undone the changes immediately and we found a few issues during testing.There are many scenarios, when you need to have Copy Local’ left to True.The concerns are highlighted in some stack overflow answers, but they have small number of votes.Top-level projects:  set copy local = true.First of all, it doesn't work correctly for top-level projects, i.e. executables or web sites.As pointed in the answer http://stackoverflow.com/a/6529461/52277for all the references in the one at the top set copy local = true.Alternatively you have to change output directory as it's described in http://www.simple-talk.com/dotnet/.net-framework/partitioning-your-code-base-through-.net-assemblies-and-visual-studio-projects/If you set ‘ Copy Local = false’, VS will, unless you tell it otherwise, place each assembly alone in its own .\bin\Debugdirectory. Because of this, you will need to configure VS to place assemblies together in the same directory. To do so, for each VS project, go to VS > Project Properties > Build tab > Output path, and set the Ouput path to ..\bin\Debugfor debug configuration, and ..\bin\Release for release configuration.Second-level  dependencies:  set copy local = true.Another example when copylocal =false fails on run-time, is when top level assembly doesn't directly referenced one of indirect dependencies.E..g. Top-level assembly A has reference to assembly B with copylocal =true, but assembly B has reference to assembly C with copylocal =false. Most likely assembly C will be missing on runtime and will cause errors E.g. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/602765/when-should-copy-local-be-set-to-true-and-when-should-it-not?lq=1Copy local is important for deployment scenarios and tools. As a general rule you should use CopyLocal=True and http://stackoverflow.com/questions/602765/when-should-copy-local-be-set-to-true-and-when-should-it-not?lq=1 Unfortunately there are some quirks and CopyLocal won't necessary work as expected for assembly references in secondary assemblies structured as shown below.MainApp.exe MyLibrary.dll ThirdPartyLibrary.dll (if in the GAC CopyLocal won't copy to MainApp bin folder)This makes xcopy deployments difficult . .Reflection called DLLs  dependencies:  set copy local = true.E.g user can see error "ISystem.Reflection.ReflectionTypeLoadException: Unable to load one or more of the requested types. Retrieve the LoaderExceptions property for more information."The fix for the issue is recommended in http://stackoverflow.com/a/6200173/52277"I solved this issue by setting the Copy Local attribute of my project's references to true."In general, the problems with investigation of deployment issues may overweight the benefits of reduced build time. Setting the Copy Local to false without considering deployment issues is not a good idea.

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• Exceptional DBA 2011 Jeff Moden on why you should enter in 2012

  - by RedAndTheCommunity

  My "reign" as the Red Gate Exceptional DBA is almost over and I was asked to say a few words about this wonderful award. Having been one of those folks that shied away from entering the contest during the first 3 years of the award, I thought I'd spend the time encouraging DBAs of all types to enter. Winning this award has some obvious benefits. You win a trip to PASS including money towards your flight, paid hotel stay, and, of course, paid admission. You win a wonderful bundle of software from Red Gate to make your job as a DBA a whole lot easier. You also win some pretty incredible notoriety for your resume. After all, it's not everyone who wins a worldwide contest. To date, there are only 4 of us in the world who have won this award. You could be number 5! For me, all of that pales in comparison to what I found out during the entry process. I'm very confident in my skills, but I'm also humble. It was suggested to me that I enter the contest when it first started. I just couldn't bring myself to nominate myself. When the 2011 nomination period opened up, several people again suggested that I enter, so I swallowed hard and asked several co-workers to have a look at the online nomination form and, if they thought me worthy, to write a nomination for me. I won't bore you with the details, but what they wrote about me was one of the most incredible rewards that I could ever have hoped to receive. I had no idea of the impact that I'd made on my co-workers. Even if I hadn't made it to the top 5 for the award, I had already won something very near and dear that no one can ever top. "Even if I hadn't made it to the top 5 for the award, I had already won something very near and dear that no one can ever top." There's only one named winner and 4 "runners up" in this competition every year but don't let that discourage you. Enter this competition. Even if you work in the proverbial "Mom'n'Pop" shop, get your boss and the people you work with directly to nominate you. Even if you don't make it to the top 5, you might just find out that you're more of a winner than you think. If you're too proud to ask them, then take the time to nominate yourself instead of shying away like I did for the first 3 years. You work hard as a DBA and, as David Poole once said, if you're the first person that people ask for help rather than one of the last, then you're probably an Exceptional DBA. It's time to stand up and be counted! Win or lose, the entry process can be a huge reward in itself. It was for me. Thank you, Red Gate, for giving me such a wonderful opportunity. Thanks for listening folks and for all that you do as DBAs. As 'Red Green' says, "We're all in this together and I'm pullin' for ya". --Jeff Moden Red Gate Exceptional DBA 2011

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• Oracle Social Network Developer Challenge: TEAM Informatics

  - by Kellsey Ruppel

  Originally posted by Jake Kuramoto on The Apps Lab blog. Here comes another Oracle Social Network Developer Challenge entry, this one courtesy of TEAM Informatics (@teaminformatics). As their name suggests, their entry was a true team effort, featuring the work of Jon Chartrand, Deepthi Sanikommu, Dmitry Shtulman, Raghavendra Joshi, and Daniel Stitely with Wayne Boerger doing the presentation honors. Speaking of the presentation, Wayne’s laptop wouldn’t project onto the plasma we had in the OTN Lounge, but luckily, Noel (@noelportugal) had his iPad and VGA dongle in his backpack of goodies, so they were able to improvise by using the iPad camera to capture Wayne’s demo and project the video to the plasma. Code will find a way. Anyway, TEAM built Do Over, an integration with Atlassian’s JIRA, coincidentally something I’ve chatted with Rich (@rmanalan) about in the past. The basic idea is simple; integrate JIRA issues with Oracle Social Network to expand and centralize the conversation around issue resolution. In Dmitry’s words: We were able to put together a team on fairly short notice and, after batting a few ideas around, decided to pursue an integration with JIRA, an issue and project tracking tool used in-house at TEAM.  After getting to know WebCenter Social, we saw immediate benefits that a JIRA integration could bring, primarily due to the fact that JIRA only allows assignment of an issue to one person at a time.  Integrating Social would allow collaboration and issue resolution to happen right from the JIRA Issue interface. TEAM tackled a very common pain point among developers, i.e. including everyone who needs to be involved in issue resolution into a single thread. If you’ve ever fixed bugs or participated in that process, you’ll know that not everyone has access to the issue resolution system, which makes consolidating discussion time-consuming and fragmented. Why? Because we typically use email as the tool for collaboration. Oracle Social Network allows for all parties involved to work in a single, private and secure conversation, and through its RESTful Public API, information from external systems like JIRA can be brought in for context. TEAM only had time to address half the solution, but given more time, I’m sure they would have made the integration bidirectional, allowing for relevant commentary to be pushed back to JIRA, closing the loop. Here are some screenshot of their integration. #gallery-1 { margin: auto; } #gallery-1 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-1 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-1 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } When Oracle Social Network is released, TEAM will have something they use internally to work on issues, and maybe they’ll even productize their work and add it to the Atlassian Marketplace so that other JIRA users can benefit from the combination of Oracle Social Network and JIRA. Thanks to everyone at TEAM for participating in our challenge. We hope they had a good experience. Look for the details of the other entries this week. Be sure to check out a full recap from Dmitry over on the TEAM blog.

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• What’s New from the Oracle Marketing Cloud at Oracle OpenWorld 2014

  - by Kathryn Perry

  A Guest Post by Laura Vogel, Director, Oracle Marketing Cloud Events (pictured left) Marketing—CX Central is your hub for all things Marketing related at OpenWorld in San Francisco, September 28-October 2, 2014. Learn how to personalize the modern marketing journey to improve customer loyalty. We’re hosting more than 60 breakout sessions, half of which will highlight customer success stories from marquee brands including Bizo, Comcast, Dell, Epson, John Deere, Lane Bryant, ReadyTalk and Shutterfly. Moscone West, Levels 2 and 3To learn more about how modern marketing works, visit Moscone West, levels 2 and 3, for exciting demos of each of the Oracle Marketing Cloud solutions (BlueKai, Compendium, Eloqua, Push I/O, and Responsys). You also can check out our stations for Vertical Marketing Best Practices, the Markie Awards, and more! CX Spotlight Sessions “Accelerating Big Profits in Big Data,” Jeff Tanner, Baylor University “Using Content Marketing to Impact Every Stage of the Buyer’s Journey,” Jennifer Agustin, Bizo “Expanding Your Marketing with Proven Testing and Optimization,” Brian Border, Shutterfly and Matthew Balthazor, Epson “Modern Marketing: The New Digital Dialogue,” Cory Treffiletti, Oracle A Special Marquee SessionDell’s Hayden Mugford will speak on "The Digital Ecosystem: Driving Experience Through Contact Engagement.” She will highlight how the organization built a digital ecosystem that supports a behaviorally driven, multivehicle nurturing campaign. The Dell 1:1 Global Marketing team worked with multiple partners to innovate integrations with Oracle Eloqua, Oracle Real-Time Decisions for real-time decision logic, and a content management system (CMS) that enables 100 percent customized e-mails. The program doubled average order values for nurtured contacts versus non-nurtured and tripled open and click-through rates versus push e-mail. It Wouldn’t Be an Oracle Marketing Cloud Event Without a Party!We’re hosting CX Central Fest: a unique customer experience specifically designed for attendees of CX Central. It will include a chance to rock out at a private concert featuring Los Angeles indie electronic pop group, Capital Cities! Join us Tuesday, September 30 from 7-9 p.m. Other Oracle Marketing Cloud Session Highlights Thought leadership by role Exploring the benefits of moving to the Cloud Product line roadmaps and innovations in Marketing Technical deep dives for product lines within Marketing Best practices and impactful business measurements Solutions that are integrated across CX Target AudienceSession content is geared toward professionals in Marketing, Marketing Operations, Marketing Demand Generation, Social: Chief Marketing Officers, Vice Presidents, Directors and Managers. OutcomesCustomers attending Marketing—CX Central @ OpenWorld will be able to: Gain insight into delivering consistent cross-channel marketing Discover how to provide the right information to the right customer at the right time and with the right channel Get answers to burning questions and advice on business challenges Hear from other Oracle customers about recommended best practices to help their organization move forward Network and share ideas to help create a strategy for connecting with customers in better ways Resources At a Glance Register Now Track Site—View Marketing Sessions 72 1024x768 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Focus on Session Doc Downloadable Justification Email OpenWorld is a fabulous way for you to see all that Oracle Marketing Cloud has to offer. Register today.

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• Building a Mafia&hellip;TechFest Style

  - by David Hoerster

  It’s been a few months since I last blogged (not that I blog much to begin with), but things have been busy.  We all have a lot going on in our lives, but I’ve had one item that has taken up a surprising amount of time – Pittsburgh TechFest 2012.  After the event, I went through some minutes of the first meetings for TechFest, and I started to think about how it all came together.  I think what inspired me the most about TechFest was how people from various technical communities were able to come together and build and promote a common event.  As a result, I wanted to blog about this to show that people from different communities can work together to build something that benefits all communities.  (Hopefully I've got all my facts straight.)  TechFest started as an idea Eric Kepes and myself had when we were planning our next Pittsburgh Code Camp, probably in the summer of 2011.  Our Spring 2011 Code Camp was a little different because we had a great infusion of some folks from the Pittsburgh Agile group (especially with a few speakers from LeanDog).  The line-up was great, but we felt our audience wasn’t as broad as it should have been.  We thought it would be great to somehow attract other user groups around town and have a big, polyglot conference. We started contacting leaders from Pittsburgh’s various user groups.  Eric and I split up the ones that we knew about, and we just started making contacts.  Most of the people we started contacting never heard of us, nor we them.  But we all had one thing in common – we ran user groups who’s primary goal is educating our members to make them better at what they do. Amazingly, and I say this because I wasn’t sure what to expect, we started getting some interest from the various leaders.  One leader, Greg Akins, is, in my opinion, Pittsburgh’s poster boy for the polyglot programmer.  He’s helped us in the past with .NET Code Camps, is a Java developer (and leader in Pittsburgh’s Java User Group), works with Ruby and I’m sure a handful of other languages.  He helped make some e-introductions to other user group leaders, and the whole thing just started to snowball. Once we realized we had enough interest with the user group leaders, we decided to not have a Fall Code Camp and instead focus on this new entity. Flash-forward to October of 2011.  I set up a meeting, with the help of Jeremy Jarrell (Pittsburgh Agile leader) to hold a meeting with the leaders of many of Pittsburgh technical user groups.  We had representatives from 12 technical user groups (Python, JavaScript, Clojure, Ruby, PittAgile, jQuery, PHP, Perl, SQL, .NET, Java and PowerShell) – 14 people.  We likened it to a scene from a Godfather movie where the heads of all the families come together to make some deal.  As a result, the name “TechFest Mafia” was born and kind of stuck. Over the next 7 months or so, we had our starts and stops.  There were moments where I thought this event would not happen either because we wouldn’t have the right mix of topics (was I off there!), or enough people register (OK, I was wrong there, too!) or find an appropriate venue (hmm…wrong there, too) or find enough sponsors to help support the event (wow…not doing so well).  Overall, everything fell into place with a lot of hard work from Eric, Jen, Greg, Jeremy, Sean, Nicholas, Gina and probably a few others that I’m forgetting.  We also had a bit of luck, too.  But in the end, the passion that we had to put together an event that was really about making ourselves better at what we do really paid off. I’ve never been more excited about a project coming together than I have been with Pittsburgh TechFest 2012.  From the moment the first person arrived at the event to the final minutes of my closing remarks (where I almost lost my voice – I ended up being diagnosed with bronchitis the next day!), it was an awesome event.  I’m glad to have been part of bringing something like this to Pittsburgh…and I’m looking forward to Pittsburgh TechFest 2013.  See you there!

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• Launch Webcast Q&A: Oracle WebCenter Suite 11g - The Platform for the Modern User Experience

  - by howard.beader(at)oracle.com

  Did you have a chance to watch the Oracle WebCenter Suite 11g Launch Webcast yet? Andy MacMillan presented some great information on the webcast and answered quite a few of your questions in the Q&A session as well. For your reading pleasure we have captured a number of the questions and answers and they are summarized below: Question: Can you tell me what should our Portal strategy be for integrating and extending our Oracle enterprise applications? Answer: We recommend that you look at this in two steps, the first would be to ensure that you have a good understanding of our common user experience architecture. Internally our product teams at Oracle are already investing in this quite heavily today for Fusion Applications and this is driving natural convergence from a UX strategy standpoint. The second step would be to look at how best to componentize the back office applications so that the business users across your organization can take advantage of these -- don't make it just about putting a new skin on top of what you already have from an application standpoint, instead look at how best to embed the social computing capabilities as part of the solution for your business users. Question: We are currently using the BEA WebLogic Portal now, should we stay on WLP or should we be looking at moving to WebCenter or when should we move to WebCenter? Answer: Our strategy has been called "Continue & Converge", this theme means that you can continue to use WebLogic or Plumtree portals until your organization is ready to move to WebCenter and in the mean time you can continue to deploy what you need to in your organization of WLP or WCI Portals with the full support of Oracle. In addition WebCenter Services can be leveraged for social computing to complement what you are already doing today and enable your organization to take advantage of some of the latest and greatest social computing capabilities. We have migration scripts and conversion capabilities available as well as programs where Oracle can help you evaluate your options to decide how best to move forward. WebCenter provides the best of the best capabilities and will enable you to take advantage of new capabilities that may not exist in your current portal today. In the end though it's up to you as a customer as to when you want to make the transition to Oracle WebCenter Suite. Question: Can you tell me how is Oracle leveraging WebCenter internally and for its Application and Middleware product UX strategies? Answer: Internally, Oracle is leveraging WebCenter for our employees and thus far we are seeing significant updates with our users taking advantage of the business activity streams, team spaces and collaboration capabilities. From a product strategy standpoint, our product teams are taking advantage of the common user experience architecture and leveraging WebCenter to provide social and collaborative capabilities to the Oracle Applications and providing new types of composite applications with what is coming with Fusion Applications. WebCenter also provides a common user experience across all the products in the Oracle Fusion Middleware family as well. Question: Our organization is currently using SharePoint, but we are also an Oracle Applications customer, how should we be thinking about WebCenter as we move forward? Answer: Great question. Typically, we are seeing organizations using SharePoint for its core use cases of small team collaboration and file server replacement. WebCenter can connect to SharePoint as a content source to feed into WebCenter quite easily and it leverages the robust Oracle ECM product under WebCenter as well. In addition, SharePoint team sites can be connected to WebCenter utilizing our SharePoint connector. With Oracle WebCenter though, we are really targeting business users and enterprise applications, thus affecting positive change on the processes that drive the business to improve productivity across your organization. Question: Are organizations today using WebCenter as a Web platform for externally facing public websites? Answer: Yes, we are seeing a convergence around web content management and portal types of websites with customers converting them from just broadcasting content to making it a much richer personalized experience and also exposing back-office applications as well. Web Content Management capabilities are already embedded in WebCenter so that organizations can take advantage now of the benefits a personalized web experience provides for your customers. This is simply a short summary of a few of the questions addressed on the webcast, please tune in now to learn more about Oracle WebCenter, the user experience platform for the enterprise and the web! The Oracle WebCenter Suite 11g Launch Webcast can be found here

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• SQL SERVER – Weekend Project – Experimenting with ACID Transactions, SQL Compliant, Elastically Scalable Database

  - by pinaldave

  Database technology is huge and big world. I like to explore always beyond what I know and share the learning. Weekend is the best time when I sit around download random software on my machine which I like to call as a lab machine (it is a pretty old laptop, hardly a quality as lab machine) and experiment it. There are so many free betas available for download that it’s hard to keep track and even harder to find the time to play with very many of them.  This blog is about one you shouldn’t miss if you are interested in the learning various relational databases. NuoDB just released their Beta 7.  I had already downloaded their Beta 6 and yesterday did the same for 7.   My impression is that they are onto something very very interesting.  In fact, it might be something really promising in terms of database elasticity, scale and operational cost reduction. The folks at NuoDB say they are working on the world’s first “emergent” database which they tout as a brand new transitional database that is intended to dramatically change what’s possible with OLTP.  It is SQL compliant, guarantees ACID transactions, yet scales elastically on heterogeneous and decentralized cloud-based resources. Interesting note for sure, making me explore more. Based on what I’ve seen so far, they are solving the architectural challenge that exists between elastic, cloud-based compute infrastructures designed to scale out in response to workload requirements versus the traditional relational database management system’s architecture of central control. Here’s my experience with the NuoDB Beta 6 so far: First they pretty much threw away all the features you’d associate with existing RDBMS architectures except the SQL and ACID transactions which they were smart to keep.  It looks like they have incorporated a number of the big ideas from various algorithms, systems and techniques to achieve maximum DB scalability. From a user’s perspective, the NuoDB Beta software behaves like any other traditional SQL database and seems to offer all the benefits users have come to expect from standards-based SQL solutions. One of the interesting feature is that one can run a transactional node and a storage node on my Windows laptop as well on other platforms – indeed interesting for sure. It’s quite amazing to see a database elastically scale across machine boundaries. So, one of the basic NuoDB concepts is that as you need to scale out, you can easily use more inexpensive hardware when/where you need it.  This is unlike what we have traditionally done to scale a database for an application – we replace the hardware with something more powerful (faster CPU and Disks). This is where I started to feel like NuoDB is on to something that has the potential to elastically scale on commodity hardware while reducing operational expense for a big OLTP database to a degree we’ve never seen before. NuoDB is able to fully leverage the cloud in an asynchronous and highly decentralized manner – while providing both SQL compliance and ACID transactions. Basically what NuoDB is doing is so new that it is all hard to believe until you’ve experienced it in action.  I will keep you up to date as I test the NuoDB Beta 7 but if you are developing a web-scale application or have an on-premise app you are thinking of moving to the cloud, testing this beta is worth your time. If you do try it, let me know what you think.  Before I say anything more, I am going to do more experiments and more test on this product and compare it with other existing similar products. For me it was a weekend worth spent on learning something new. I encourage you to download Beta 7 version and share your opinions here. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Documentation, SQL Download, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Three Easy Ways of Providing Feedback to the Oracle AutoVue Team

  - by Celine Beck

  Customer feedback is essential in helping us deliver best-in-class Enterprise Visualization solutions which are centered around real-world usage. As the Oracle AutoVue Product Management team is busy prioritizing the next round of improvements, enhancements and new innovation to the AutoVue platform, I thought it would be a good idea to provide our blog-readers with a recap of how best to provide product feedback to the AutoVue Product Management team. This gives you the opportunity to help shape our future agenda and make our solutions better for you. Enterprise Visualization Special Interest Group (EV SIG): the AutoVue EV SIG is a customer-driven initiative that has recently been created to share knowledge and information between members and discuss common and best practices around Enterprise Visualization. The EV SIG also serves as a mechanism for establishing and communicating to AutoVue Product Management users’ collective priorities for the future development, direction and enhancement of the AutoVue product family with the objective of ensuring their continuous improvement. Essentially, EV SIG members meet in order to share and prioritize feedback and use this input to begin dialog with the AutoVue Product Management team on what they deem to be the most important improvements to Enterprise Visualization solutions. The AutoVue EV SIG is by far the best platform for sharing and relaying feedback to our Product Strategy / Management team regarding general product enhancements, industry-specific scenarios, new use cases, usability, support, deployability, etc, and helping us shape the future direction of Enterprise Visualization solutions. We strongly encourage ALL our customers to sign up for the SIG;  here is how you can do so: Sign up for the EVSIG mailing list b.    Visit the group’s website c.    Contact Dennis Walker at Harris Corporation directly should you have any questions: dwalke22-AT-harris-DOT-com Customer / Partner Advisory Boards: The AutoVue Product Strategy / Management team also periodically runs Customer and Partner Advisory Boards. These invitation-only events bring together individuals chosen from Oracle AutoVue’s top customers that are using AutoVue at the enterprise level, as well as strategic partners.  The idea here is to establish open lines of communication between top customers and partners and the Oracle AutoVue Product Strategy team, help us communicate AutoVue’s product direction, share perspectives on today and tomorrow’s challenges and needs for Enterprise Visualization, and validate that proposed additions to the product are valid industry solutions. Our next Customer / Partner Advisory Board will be held in San Francisco during Oracle Open World, please contact your account manager to find out more about the CAB Members’ nomination process. Enhancement Requests:  Enhancement requests are request logged by customers or partners with Product Development for a feature that is not currently available in Oracle AutoVue. Enhancement requests (ER) can be logged easily via the My Oracle Support portal. This is the best way to share feedback with us at the functionality level; for instance if you would like to see a new format supported in AutoVue or make suggestions as per how certain functionality can be improved or should behave. Once the ER is logged, it is then evaluated by Product Management based on feasibility, product adequation and business justification. Product Management then decides whether to consider this ER for future release or not. What helps accelerate the process is hearing from a large number of customers who urgently need a particular feature or configuration. Hence the importance of logging Metalink Service Requests, and describing in details your business expectations. You can include key milestones dates and justifications as to why this request is important and the benefits your organization stands to gain should this request be accepted. Again, feedback from customers and partners is critical to ensure we offer solutions that have the biggest impact on customers’ business processes and day-to-day operations. All feedback is welcome,. So please don’t be shy! 

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• Why Cornell University Chose Oracle Data Masking

  - by Troy Kitch

  One of the eight Ivy League schools, Cornell University found itself in the unfortunate position of having to inform over 45,000 University community members that their personal information had been breached when a laptop was stolen. To ensure this wouldn’t happen again, Cornell took steps to ensure that data used for non-production purposes is de-identified with Oracle Data Masking. A recent podcast highlights why organizations like Cornell are choosing Oracle Data Masking to irreversibly de-identify production data for use in non-production environments. Organizations often copy production data, that contains sensitive information, into non-production environments so they can test applications and systems using “real world” information. Data in non-production has increasingly become a target of cyber criminals and can be lost or stolen due to weak security controls and unmonitored access. Similar to production environments, data breaches in non-production environments can cost millions of dollars to remediate and cause irreparable harm to reputation and brand. Cornell’s applications and databases help carry out the administrative and academic mission of the university. They are running Oracle PeopleSoft Campus Solutions that include highly sensitive faculty, student, alumni, and prospective student data. This data is supported and accessed by a diverse set of developers and functional staff distributed across the university. Several years ago, Cornell experienced a data breach when an employee’s laptop was stolen.  Centrally stored backup information indicated there was sensitive data on the laptop. With no way of knowing what the criminal intended, the university had to spend significant resources reviewing data, setting up service centers to handle constituent concerns, and provide free credit checks and identity theft protection services—all of which cost money and took time away from other projects. To avoid this issue in the future Cornell came up with several options; one of which was to sanitize the testing and training environments. “The project management team was brought in and they developed a project plan and implementation schedule; part of which was to evaluate competing products in the market-space and figure out which one would work best for us.  In the end we chose Oracle’s solution based on its architecture and its functionality.” – Tony Damiani, Database Administration and Business Intelligence, Cornell University The key goals of the project were to mask the elements that were identifiable as sensitive in a consistent and efficient manner, but still support all the previous activities in the non-production environments. Tony concludes,  “What we saw was a very minimal impact on performance. The masking process added an additional three hours to our refresh window, but it was well worth that time to secure the environment and remove the sensitive data. I think some other key points you can keep in mind here is that there was zero impact on the production environment. Oracle Data Masking works in non-production environments only. Additionally, the risk of exposure has been significantly reduced and the impact to business was minimal.” With Oracle Data Masking organizations like Cornell can: Make application data securely available in non-production environments Prevent application developers and testers from seeing production data Use an extensible template library and policies for data masking automation Gain the benefits of referential integrity so that applications continue to work Listen to the podcast to hear the complete interview.  Learn more about Oracle Data Masking by registering to watch this SANS Institute Webcast and view this short demo.

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• Exceptional DBA 2011 Jeff Moden on why you should enter in 2012

  - by Red and the Community

  My "reign" as the Red Gate Exceptional DBA is almost over and I was asked to say a few words about this wonderful award. Having been one of those folks that shied away from entering the contest during the first 3 years of the award, I thought I’d spend the time encouraging DBAs of all types to enter. Winning this award has some obvious benefits. You win a trip to PASS including money towards your flight, paid hotel stay, and, of course, paid admission. You win a wonderful bundle of software from Red Gate to make your job as a DBA a whole lot easier. You also win some pretty incredible notoriety for your resume. After all, it’s not everyone who wins a worldwide contest. To date, there are only 4 of us in the world who have won this award. You could be number 5! For me, all of that pales in comparison to what I found out during the entry process. I’m very confident in my skills, but I’m also humble. It was suggested to me that I enter the contest when it first started. I just couldn’t bring myself to nominate myself. When the 2011 nomination period opened up, several people again suggested that I enter, so I swallowed hard and asked several co-workers to have a look at the online nomination form and, if they thought me worthy, to write a nomination for me. I won’t bore you with the details, but what they wrote about me was one of the most incredible rewards that I could ever have hoped to receive. I had no idea of the impact that I’d made on my co-workers. Even if I hadn’t made it to the top 5 for the award, I had already won something very near and dear that no one can ever top. “Even if I hadn’t made it to the top 5 for the award, I had already won something very near and dear that no one can ever top.” There’s only one named winner and 4 "runners up" in this competition every year but don’t let that discourage you. Enter this competition. Even if you work in the proverbial "Mom’n'Pop" shop, get your boss and the people you work with directly to nominate you. Even if you don’t make it to the top 5, you might just find out that you’re more of a winner than you think. If you’re too proud to ask them, then take the time to nominate yourself instead of shying away like I did for the first 3 years. You work hard as a DBA and, as David Poole once said, if you’re the first person that people ask for help rather than one of the last, then you’re probably an Exceptional DBA. It’s time to stand up and be counted! Win or lose, the entry process can be a huge reward in itself. It was for me. Thank you, Red Gate, for giving me such a wonderful opportunity. Thanks for listening folks and for all that you do as DBAs. As ‘Red Green’ says, "We’re all in this together and I’m pullin’ for ya". –Jeff Moden Red Gate Exceptional DBA 2011

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• Oracle Data Integration 12c: Simplified, Future-Ready, High-Performance Solutions

  - by Thanos Terentes Printzios

  In today’s data-driven business environment, organizations need to cost-effectively manage the ever-growing streams of information originating both inside and outside the firewall and address emerging deployment styles like cloud, big data analytics, and real-time replication. Oracle Data Integration delivers pervasive and continuous access to timely and trusted data across heterogeneous systems. Oracle is enhancing its data integration offering announcing the general availability of 12c release for the key data integration products: Oracle Data Integrator 12c and Oracle GoldenGate 12c, delivering Simplified and High-Performance Solutions for Cloud, Big Data Analytics, and Real-Time Replication. The new release delivers extreme performance, increase IT productivity, and simplify deployment, while helping IT organizations to keep pace with new data-oriented technology trends including cloud computing, big data analytics, real-time business intelligence. With the 12c release Oracle becomes the new leader in the data integration and replication technologies as no other vendor offers such a complete set of data integration capabilities for pervasive, continuous access to trusted data across Oracle platforms as well as third-party systems and applications. Oracle Data Integration 12c release addresses data-driven organizations’ critical and evolving data integration requirements under 3 key themes: Future-Ready Solutions : Supporting Current and Emerging Initiatives Extreme Performance : Even higher performance than ever before Fast Time-to-Value : Higher IT Productivity and Simplified Solutions  With the new capabilities in Oracle Data Integrator 12c, customers can benefit from: Superior developer productivity, ease of use, and rapid time-to-market with the new flow-based mapping model, reusable mappings, and step-by-step debugger. Increased performance when executing data integration processes due to improved parallelism. Improved productivity and monitoring via tighter integration with Oracle GoldenGate 12c and Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c. Improved interoperability with Oracle Warehouse Builder which enables faster and easier migration to Oracle Data Integrator’s strategic data integration offering. Faster implementation of business analytics through Oracle Data Integrator pre-integrated with Oracle BI Applications’ latest release. Oracle Data Integrator also integrates simply and easily with Oracle Business Analytics tools, including OBI-EE and Oracle Hyperion. Support for loading and transforming big and fast data, enabled by integration with big data technologies: Hadoop, Hive, HDFS, and Oracle Big Data Appliance. Only Oracle GoldenGate provides the best-of-breed real-time replication of data in heterogeneous data environments. With the new capabilities in Oracle GoldenGate 12c, customers can benefit from: Simplified setup and management of Oracle GoldenGate 12c when using multiple database delivery processes via a new Coordinated Delivery feature for non-Oracle databases. Expanded heterogeneity through added support for the latest versions of major databases such as Sybase ASE v 15.7, MySQL NDB Clusters 7.2, and MySQL 5.6., as well as integration with Oracle Coherence. Enhanced high availability and data protection via integration with Oracle Data Guard and Fast-Start Failover integration. Enhanced security for credentials and encryption keys using Oracle Wallet. Real-time replication for databases hosted on public cloud environments supported by third-party clouds. Tight integration between Oracle Data Integrator 12c and Oracle GoldenGate 12c and other Oracle technologies, such as Oracle Database 12c and Oracle Applications, provides a number of benefits for organizations: Tight integration between Oracle Data Integrator 12c and Oracle GoldenGate 12c enables developers to leverage Oracle GoldenGate’s low overhead, real-time change data capture completely within the Oracle Data Integrator Studio without additional training. Integration with Oracle Database 12c provides a strong foundation for seamless private cloud deployments. Delivers real-time data for reporting, zero downtime migration, and improved performance and availability for Oracle Applications, such as Oracle E-Business Suite and ATG Web Commerce . Oracle’s data integration offering is optimized for Oracle Engineered Systems and is an integral part of Oracle’s fast data, real-time analytics strategy on Oracle Exadata Database Machine and Oracle Exalytics In-Memory Machine. Oracle Data Integrator 12c and Oracle GoldenGate 12c differentiate the new offering on data integration with these many new features. This is just a quick glimpse into Oracle Data Integrator 12c and Oracle GoldenGate 12c. Find out much more about the new release in the video webcast "Introducing 12c for Oracle Data Integration", where customer and partner speakers, including SolarWorld, BT, Rittman Mead will join us in launching the new release. Resource Kits Meet Oracle Data Integration 12c  Discover what's new with Oracle Goldengate 12c  Oracle EMEA DIS (Data Integration Solutions) Partner Community is available for all your questions, while additional partner focused webcasts will be made available through our blog here, so stay connected. For any questions please contact us at partner.imc-AT-beehiveonline.oracle-DOT-com Stay Connected Oracle Newsletters

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• Reconciling the Boy Scout Rule and Opportunistic Refactoring with code reviews

  - by t0x1n

  I am a great believer in the Boy Scout Rule: Always check a module in cleaner than when you checked it out." No matter who the original author was, what if we always made some effort, no matter how small, to improve the module. What would be the result? I think if we all followed that simple rule, we'd see the end of the relentless deterioration of our software systems. Instead, our systems would gradually get better and better as they evolved. We'd also see teams caring for the system as a whole, rather than just individuals caring for their own small little part. I am also a great believer in the related idea of Opportunistic Refactoring: Although there are places for some scheduled refactoring efforts, I prefer to encourage refactoring as an opportunistic activity, done whenever and wherever code needs to cleaned up - by whoever. What this means is that at any time someone sees some code that isn't as clear as it should be, they should take the opportunity to fix it right there and then - or at least within a few minutes Particularly note the following excerpt from the refactoring article: I'm wary of any development practices that cause friction for opportunistic refactoring ... My sense is that most teams don't do enough refactoring, so it's important to pay attention to anything that is discouraging people from doing it. To help flush this out be aware of any time you feel discouraged from doing a small refactoring, one that you're sure will only take a minute or two. Any such barrier is a smell that should prompt a conversation. So make a note of the discouragement and bring it up with the team. At the very least it should be discussed during your next retrospective. Where I work, there is one development practice that causes heavy friction - Code Review (CR). Whenever I change anything that's not in the scope of my "assignment" I'm being rebuked by my reviewers that I'm making the change harder to review. This is especially true when refactoring is involved, since it makes "line by line" diff comparison difficult. This approach is the standard here, which means opportunistic refactoring is seldom done, and only "planned" refactoring (which is usually too little, too late) takes place, if at all. I claim that the benefits are worth it, and that 3 reviewers will work a little harder (to actually understand the code before and after, rather than look at the narrow scope of which lines changed - the review itself would be better due to that alone) so that the next 100 developers reading and maintaining the code will benefit. When I present this argument my reviewers, they say they have no problem with my refactoring, as long as it's not in the same CR. However I claim this is a myth: (1) Most of the times you only realize what and how you want to refactor when you're in the midst of your assignment. As Martin Fowler puts it: As you add the functionality, you realize that some code you're adding contains some duplication with some existing code, so you need to refactor the existing code to clean things up... You may get something working, but realize that it would be better if the interaction with existing classes was changed. Take that opportunity to do that before you consider yourself done. (2) Nobody is going to look favorably at you releasing "refactoring" CRs you were not supposed to do. A CR has a certain overhead and your manager doesn't want you to "waste your time" on refactoring. When it's bundled with the change you're supposed to do, this issue is minimized. The issue is exacerbated by Resharper, as each new file I add to the change (and I can't know in advance exactly which files would end up changed) is usually littered with errors and suggestions - most of which are spot on and totally deserve fixing. The end result is that I see horrible code, and I just leave it there. Ironically, I feel that fixing such code not only will not improve my standings, but actually lower them and paint me as the "unfocused" guy who wastes time fixing things nobody cares about instead of doing his job. I feel bad about it because I truly despise bad code and can't stand watching it, let alone call it from my methods! Any thoughts on how I can remedy this situation ?

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