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• Power Your Cloud with Oracle Fusion Middleware

  - by user753488

  Introducing the biggest and most strategic event for Fusion Middleware this year: Power your Cloud with Oracle Fusion Middleware. Running in over 50 cities across the globe, this event is aimed at Architects, IT Managers, and technical leaders like you who are using Fusion Middleware or trying to learn more about middleware in the context of Cloud computing. Join us for a special kickoff on Wednesday, June 29th in Chicago for the first event in North America. This event features an exclusive keynote from Rick Schultz, VP of Technology Product Marketing. Cloud is certainly all the rage. But what can we make of it? According to Alex Andrianopoulos, Vice President Product Marketing for Fusion Middleware states, “Not since Java was unveiled have we seen something so transformative hit the industry. The promised benefits of Cloud are many, significant, and deliver value to both IT organizations as well as the Line of Business. The benefits range from lower data center costs, to significantly reduced environmental impact, to the ability to capture more of the opportunities that market present through increased agility in resource deployment and dramatically reduced time to market.” With an ROI so promising, why isn’t everyone on Cloud already? It’s a question a lot of IT managers are struggling with. While the promised benefits of Cloud computing can be immense, achieving them requires much more than the adoption of a new architecture, or the virtualization of servers, or the outsourcing of some or all of the IT resources. These may be useful steps towards moving to a Cloud computing blueprint, but on their own do not deliver Cloud computing and its associated benefits to the enterprise. This is exactly what we’ll be addressing in the event series, ways you can leverage Complete, Open and Integrated capabilities of Oracle Fusion Middleware today to get one step closer to Cloud. Whether you’re: Leveraging Exalogic Elastic Cloud to consolidate your applications Improving agility with Oracle SOA to generate a foundation for shared data services Securing and managing your Cloud using Oracle Identity Management and Oracle Enterprise Manager Migrating from mainframe to Cloud using Oracle Tuxedo, Coherence and GoldenGate Building applications in the Cloud swiftly and easier with Oracle’s WebCenter Suite Join us for the first of its kind event in Chicago this week by registering now, or find an event near you. Learn more about Oracle Fusion Middleware and Cloud computing today on the Oracle.com website by going to http://www.Oracle.com/goto/Middleware4Cloud

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• Business Insight, IT Execution: 9 Project Management Tips

  - by Sylvie MacKenzie, PMP

  Excerpt from Profit Magazine - by David Rosenbaum When Marcos Baccetto was first asked to be the business-side project lead on Eaton Corporation’s Vehicle Group South America (VGSA) Oracle project, the operations services manager responsible for running manufacturing was, he confesses, “a little afraid” because of his lack of IT experience. Today, Baccetto calls the project “a fantastic experience,” and he is a true believer in the benefits of a close relationship between IT implementers and their line-of-business peers. Through his partnership with Jesiele Lima, then VGSA IT manager, Baccetto and Eaton’s South American operations team came to understand several important principles of business and IT. Here he shares nine tips managers should consider when working on an enterprise technology project. 1. Make it a business project, not an IT project. All levels of functional management must have ownership, responsibility, and accountability for the success of the implementation. 2. Share responsibility. Business owners should sign off on tests and data conversion. 3. Clean your data. Dedicating a team to improve core data quality prior to project launch can be a significant time-saver. 4. Select resources properly. Have functional people who can translate business needs to IT and can influence organizational change. 5. Manage scope. Follow project management methodologies and disciplines. 6. Adopt common processes, global solutions. Avoid customized, local solutions. The big-picture business goals can get lost in the details. 7. Implement processes prior to the go-live date. Change management can be key. Keep the workforce informed and train users in advance. 8. Define metrics milestones. Assume there will be a crisis during deployment. Having baseline metrics to compare against will help implementers keep their cool—and the project moving forward. 9. The sponsor’s commitment is critical. It is needed to support the truly difficult decisions.

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• Oracle went back to school !....

  - by Cristina Ciocoiu

  I am Georgiana, Contracts Manager for Oracle University and Advanced Customer Services in Romania. I started working for Oracle for 4 years ago as a Contracts Specialist. Two years ago I became a manager of a team of 9 Contracts Specialists. On a sunny day in March some members of my team visited the students of the Academy of Economic Studies, accompanied by Recruitment colleagues. This was part of a new initiative to raise awareness on career opportunities at Oracle. We spent approximately 2 hours illustrating and explaining different aspects of the day-to-day activities of an Oracle Contracts Specialist to the future graduates of the Academy. Role Play Since a role play is worth 1000 job descriptions, the audience witnessed an entertaining performance on the contracting process from the phase of the negotiation with the customer to actual signing of the contract. The main focus was on the role of Contracts Specialist liaising with all the groups involved and ensuring that the contract is compliant with Oracle policies while generating the expected revenue. However, the team took other roles as well i.e. Sales Representative, Customer, Business Approver and Lawyer to demonstrate their role in the process. As each of these roles only have a small slice of the big pie, it is vital to understand what happens before and after you come on stage as a Contract Specialist. Contracts Specialist Being a Contracts Specialist goes beyond simply knowing what policies apply, it means understanding Oracle’s core business model, understanding customers’ requests and addressing them in the most effective way. The job also involves connecting smaller teams that are often geographically dispersed across multiple regions so that they become a bigger, stronger and successful team. You are the expert in this key position that can facilitate the closing of a deal or stop it from happening if the risk is too high. The role play provided insights on both. Why I love this job Events of this kind are sometimes just as useful for the “recruiters” as for the “recruits”. For me, as a presenter, it was an excellent opportunity to think about the many reasons why I love what I do in the Contracts department every day and to share this with the students. I wanted to explain to the audience, who are still considering education and career possibilities, that what we do in Contracts DOES make a difference. You have the power to achieve targets that you did not think reachable before. Working in the dynamic Oracle environment shapes you as a person and there is a lot to take away from this experience. Looking back to my years in the Academy (I graduated from the Academy myself), I wish I could have listened to more people talking about their great jobs and about how I could get there. If those were Oracle people I might have been writing this article sooner. J If you are interested to join the Contracts team please click here for more information or contact lavinia.protopopescu-AT-oracle-DOT-com. You can find all openings in Romania via http://campus.oracle.com

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• The most dangerous SQL Script in the world!

  - by DrJohn

  In my last blog entry, I outlined how to automate SQL Server database builds from concatenated SQL Scripts. However, I did not mention how I ensure the database is clean before I rebuild it. Clearly a simple DROP/CREATE DATABASE command would suffice; but you may not have permission to execute such commands, especially in a corporate environment controlled by a centralised DBA team. However, you should at least have database owner permissions on the development database so you can actually do your job! Then you can employ my universal "drop all" script which will clear down your database before you run your SQL Scripts to rebuild all the database objects. Why start with a clean database? During the development process, it is all too easy to leave old objects hanging around in the database which can have unforeseen consequences. For example, when you rename a table you may forget to delete the old table and change all the related views to use the new table. Clearly this will mean an end-user querying the views will get the wrong data and your reputation will take a nose dive as a result! Starting with a clean, empty database and then building all your database objects using SQL Scripts using the technique outlined in my previous blog means you know exactly what you have in your database. The database can then be repopulated using SSIS and bingo; you have a data mart "to go". My universal "drop all" SQL Script To ensure you start with a clean database run my universal "drop all" script which you can download from here: 100_drop_all.zip By using the database catalog views, the script finds and drops all of the following database objects: Foreign key relationships Stored procedures Triggers Database triggers Views Tables Functions Partition schemes Partition functions XML Schema Collections Schemas Types Service broker services Service broker queues Service broker contracts Service broker message types SQLCLR assemblies There are two optional sections to the script: drop users and drop roles. You may use these at your peril, particularly as you may well remove your own permissions! Note that the script has a verbose mode which displays the SQL commands it is executing. This can be switched on by setting @debug=1. Running this script against one of the system databases is certainly not recommended! So I advise you to keep a USE database statement at the top of the file. Good luck and be careful!!

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• What if you could work on anything you wanted?

  - by Nick Harrison

  What if you could work on anything you wanted? Redgate is doing an experiment of sorts this week.  Called Down Tools Week.    The idea is that they stopped working on their regular projects for a week and strike out on something that catches their attention and drives their passion. Evidently in many cases, these projects have turned out to be new features in their existing products that individual were interested in, some were internal iniatives and some where evidently off the wall new ideas.   Today is show and tell where they will share with each other what they have been working on. There may well be some interesting announcements coming out of this.    The prospects are exciting. I understand that Google does something similar allowing their employees a specified amount of time to work on projects of their own choosing.    This has been the breeding ground for some of my favorite services. It is a shame that more companies do not follow such practices.   Now I know that most companies cannot afford to shut down everything for a week and sometimes you can't really explore an interesting idea in 8 hours a week or however much time Google allocates, but still it may be worth while. What would happen if your company gave you as an individual 1 week each quarter to work on a project of your own design and see what happens?   I would be happen if you still had to get approval for before your week long adventure. Personally, I think that this could be a very effective use of training budgets.   Give me a week to research something on my own and you would be amazed at what I can find out.    Maybe this should be the prerequisite before starting a new project.   Stagger the team onboarding but have everyone spend a week long sabbatical studying BizTalk before starting a project that will hinge on BizTalk. The show and tell afterwards is a great way to keep everyone honest or at least reassure management that everyone is honest.    If your goal was to spend a week researching and exploring a new technology and you had to do a show and tell afterwards to show off what you had learned, then everyone can learn a bit of what you just learned.     Sounds like a promising win win for me. Maybe it is a pipe dream, but what if .... What would you work on if given the opportunity to work on anything you wanted?

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• 10 Tips for Partners - Oracle PartnerNetwork Exchange Planning

  - by Get_Specialized!

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; 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;} With the Oracle PartnerNetwork Exchange @ Oracle OpenWorld 2012 just around the corner, here are 10 tips to aid partners in planning and preparation. Before you arrive, select the Oracle PartnerNetwork Exchange Sessions you and your team will attend Signup for the Test Fest and the exams you and your team can take while attending Review the Subject Area Focus on Documents to help you zero in on the Oracle OpenWorld sessions to attend Use the handy floor plans to get familiar with what is where in the exposition hall this year before you arrive Sunday just after lunch at 1pm, attend the PartnerNetwork Exchange keynote , Moscone North, Hall D, followed by the session track kickoffs Sunday night , 7:30pm – 10:30 pm , checkout the OPN AfterDark Reception where you can meet and network with contacts from around the world On Sunday and Monday, be sure check in with the Social Media Rally Coordinator for maximum social media expertise and exposure On Monday through Wednesday, meet with Oracle Partner representatives at the Oracle PartnerNetwork Lounge Moscone South, Exhibit Hall, Room 100 Take and share your PartnerNetwork pictures during the week with OPN on Instagram Be prepared to share with roving OPN team member reporters, how you are leveraging your OPN Specializations to provide innovative solutions and services for the Cloud. You never know – it could aid in getting you exposure as a possible speaker for next year’s event.

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• Social Search: Looking for Love

  - by Mike Stiles

  For marketers and enterprise executives who have placed a higher priority on and allocated bigger budgets to search over social, it might be time to notice yet another shift that’s well underway. Social is search. Search marketing was always more of an internal slam-dunk than other digital initiatives. Even a C-suite that understood little about the new technology world knew it’s a good thing when people are able to find you. Google was the new Yellow Pages. Only with Google, you could get your listing first without naming yourself “AAAA Plumbing.” There were wizards out there who could give your business prominence in front of people who were specifically looking for what you offered. Other search giants like Bing also came along to offer such ideal matchmaking possibilities. But what if the consumer isn’t using a search engine to find what they’re looking for? And what if the search engines started altering their algorithms so that search placement manipulation was more difficult? Both of those things have started to happen. Experian Hitwise’s numbers show that visits to the major search engines in the UK dropped 100 million through August. Search engines are far from dead, or even challenged. But more and more, the public is discovering the sites and brands they need through advice they get via social, not search. You’ll find the worlds of social and search increasingly co-mingling as well. Search behemoths Google and Bing are including Facebook and Google+ into their engines. Meanwhile, Facebook and Twitter have done some integration of global web search into their platforms. So what makes social such a worthwhile search entity for brands? First and foremost, the consumer has demonstrated a behavior of acting on recommendations from social connections. A cry in the wilderness like, “Anybody know any good catering companies?” will usually yield a link (and an endorsement) from a friend such as “Yeah, check out Just-Cheese-Balls Catering.” There’s no such human-driven force/influence behind the big search engines. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and others call it “Friend Mining.” It is, in essence, searching for answers from friends’ experiences as opposed to faceless code. And Facebook has all of those friends’ experiences already stored as data. eMarketer says search in an $18 billion business, and investors are really into it. So no shock Facebook’s ready to leverage their social graph into relevant search. What do you do about all this as a brand? For one thing, it’s going to lead to some interesting paid marketing opportunities around the corner, including Sponsored Stories bought against certain queries, inserting deals into search results, capitalizing on social search results on mobile, etc. Apart from that, it might be time to stop mentally separating social and search in your strategic planning and budgeting. Courting your fans on social will cumulatively add up to more valuable, personally endorsed recommendations for your company when a consumer conducts a search on social. Fail to foster those relationships, fail to engage, fail to provide knock-em-dead customer service, fail to wow them with your actual products and services…and you’ll wind up with the visibility you deserve in social search results.

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• Latency Matters

  - by Frederic P

  A lot of interest in low latencies has been expressed within the financial services segment, most especially in the stock trading applications where every millisecond directly influences the profitability of the trader. These days, much of the trading is executed by software applications which are trained to respond to each other almost instantaneously. In fact, you could say that we are in an arms race where traders are using any and all options to cut down on the delay in executing transactions, even by moving physically closer to the trading venue. The Solaris OS network stack has traditionally been engineered for high throughput, at the expense of higher latencies. Knowledge of tuning parameters to redress the imbalance is critical for applications that are latency sensitive. We are presenting in this blog how to configure further a default Oracle Solaris 10 installation to reduce network latency. There are many parameters in fact that can be altered, but the most effective ones are intr_blank_time and intr_blank_packets. These parameters affect on-board network throughput and latency on Solaris systems. If interrupt blanking is disabled, packets are processed by the driver as soon as they arrive, resulting in higher network throughput and lower latency, but with higher CPU utilization. With interrupt blanking disabled, processor utilization can be as high as 80–90% in some high-load web server environments. If interrupt blanking is enabled, packets are processed when the interrupt is issued. Enabling interrupt blanking can result in reduced processor utilization and network throughput, but higher network latency. Both parameters should be set at the same time. You can set these parameters by using the ndd command as follows: # ndd -set /dev/eri intr_blank_time 0 # ndd -set /dev/eri intr_blank_packets 0 You can add them to the /etc/system file as follows: set eri:intr_blank_time 0 set eri:intr_blank_packets 0 The value of the interrupt blanking parameter is a trade-off between network throughput and processor utilization. If higher processor utilization is acceptable for achieving higher network throughput, then disable interrupt blanking. If lower processor utilization is preferred and higher network latency is the penalty, then enable interrupt blanking. Our experience at ISV Engineering is that under controlled experiments the above settings result in reduction of network latency by at least 50%; on a two-socket 3GHz Sun Fire X4170 M2 running Solaris 10 Update 9, the above settings improved ping-pong latency from 60µs to 25-30µs with the on-board NIC.

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• SOA Community Newsletter June 2012

  - by JuergenKress

  Dear SOA partner community member Happy New fiscal Year FY13 - thanks for the FY12 middleware business! Our SOA & BPM Partner Community continued to grow to almost 4000 members. Additional we launched the WebLogic Partner Community which grew very fast to 800+ members! To continue our joint successful business in the new fiscal year our Top priorities FY13 are: Become trained:the next opportunity are the summer camps in Lisbon & Munich or our on-demand training SOA & BPM and see our detailed training calendar below. Run your marketing & sales campaign: sales kits, marketing kits, solution catalog add your services to oracle.com, add your events to oracle.com and advertisement Get recognized: OFM awards, partner excellence awards & references & plaques Become Specialized: All of the above makes the Oracle Specialization! Make sure you get your Specialization benefits! Topics: Key product focus areas will be: SOA as the foundation for clouds, integration platform 2.0 for industrial SOA including BAM & CEP, BPM & adaptive case management & migrate legacy solutions to the strategic offerings. The new Oracle VM VirtualBox image is available to test SOA Suite and BPM Suite. To start your BPM 11g project a new BPM Standard Edition a license entry version is available. EAIESB published a post with all BPMN2.0 notations. If you want to learn more please visit the Oracle Learning Library. We want to promote your SOA 11g & BPM 11g success let us know where you are in production! And nominate this success for our Middleware Oracle Excellence Awards 2012. Douwe P. van den Bos published at his blog a SOA governance series: Principles of Service-Oriented Architecture & The Maturity of a Service-Oriented Architecture & SOA Maturity Models. Please let us know if you published interesting papers! Would be great to see you at the SOA, Cloud + Service Technology Symposium by Thomas Erl. Please feel free to get your conference pass with the oracle discount code “DJMXZ370”. See you in Lisbon & London at our summer camps! Jürgen Kress Oracle SOA & BPM Partner Adoption EMEA To read the newsletter please visit http://tinyurl.com/soanewsJune2012 (OPN Account required) To become a member of the SOA Partner Community please register at http://www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Technorati Tags: SOA Community newsletter,SOA Community,Oracle,OPN,Jürgen Kress,SOA Demo System,BPM

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• Oracle OpenWorld Call for MDM Papers

  - by david.butler(at)oracle.com

  As the MDM Track owner, I would like to invite everyone to respond to the Oracle OpenWorld (October 2-6, Moscone Center, San Francisco) Call for Papers (https://oracleus.wingateweb.com/portal/cfp/ ). The Call for Papers is open now through Sunday, March 27. This is an outstanding opportunity for organizations familiar with MDM to tell their story to a very large, knowledgeable and intensely interested community. Opportunities for feedback and networking abound.  I would love to see MDM papers on: business drivers; business benefits; quantified ROI stories; business process optimization; implementation styles; implementation lessons learned; using master data as a service; data governance best practices; end-to-end data quality experiences; support for SOA; Chart of Accounts issues fixed; how to leverage reference data; improving EPM and/or BI across the board; operationalizing a data warehouse; support for cloud computing; compliance success stories; architecture, scalability, and mixed workload RAC platform performance examples; industry specific value propositions (Financial Services; Retail, Telecom; Manufacturing, High Tech Manufacturing, Public Sector, Health Care, …); and line of business specific value propositions (CRM, ERP, PLM, SCM, …); etc. In fact, given that MDM positively impacts all areas of operations and analytics, there are no limits to the ideas you may have for an OpenWorld presentation. When you follow the submission process, be sure to use “Master Data Management” for either the Primary or Optional track. Add “Master Data Management” as an Optional track if you are adding MDM content to a presentation on one of the following tracks: Agile; Customer Relationship Management, Oracle E-Business Suite, Product Lifecycle Management, Siebel, Sourcing and Procurement, Supply Chain Management, or one of the 18 available industry tracks. If Cloud Computing is included, please add “Cloud Computing” as a Cross-Stream Track. And don’t forget to make “MDM” a Tag, along with Business Intelligence, Cloud, CRM, Data Integration, Data Migration, Data Warehousing, EPM, or Service-Oriented Architecture whenever your content includes these items. I will personally review each submission. I hope you all keep me very busy over the next few weeks.

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• Do you know about the Visual Studio 2010 Database Projects Guidance?

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  Early on in the Team System (now Visual Studio ALM) cycle a new product surfaced within Team System that was affectionately called “Data Dude”, but had the more formal name of “Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Database Professionals”. The purpose of this product was to try and make the database a “first class citizen” in the development world. Those that started using Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Database Professionals (Data Dude) loved it, but everyone else did not get it. The capabilities were a little patchy, but the one thing it did bring to the party was the ability to put your database schema under source control. This was revolutionary as previously your DBA sat as far away from the team as possible, and usually in a dark cupboard, now they could partake of all the goodness of Version Control, Work Item Tracking and automated builds. The problem was that the understanding required to manage these projects was very different to that needed previously. Then the Visual Studio ALM Rangers got a hold of it…and produced some of the best guidance available. Figure: Download the guidance from http://vsdatabaseguide.codeplex.com/ This guidance discusses scenarios and approaches of using the Database Projects in Visual Studio 2010 to help you use the tools more effectively and maximize their value to your organization This guidance is focused on these five areas: Solution and Project Management Source Code Control and Configuration Management Integrating External Changes with the Project System Build and Deployment Automation with Visual Studio Database Projects Database Testing and Deployment Verification Each of these areas has common guidance, usage scenarios, hands on labs, and lessons learned from real world engagements and the community discussions.   The guidance is broken down into three packages: Guidance documentation Hands-on-lab (HOL) documentation note: The documentation is available in XPS-only format packages or complete XPS,PDF,DOCX format packages HOL Package If you need assistance and no one else can help, then you may need to call the Visual Studio ALM Rangers. The Visual Studio ALM Rangers have the mission to provide out of band solutions for missing features or guidance. They are supported by Microsoft Product Group, Microsoft Consulting Services, Microsoft Most Valued Professionals (MVPs) and technical specialists from technology communities around the globe, giving you a real-world view from the field, where the technology has been tested and used. For more information on the Rangers please visit http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/ee358786.aspx and for more a list of other Rangers projects please see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/ee358787.aspx.

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• Synchronizing ODSEE and OUD

  - by Etienne Remillon

  When it comes to synchronizing between ODSEE and OUD, what should be the best options ? Couple  options are available - Use one of OUD internal capability called Replication Gateway - Use our synchronization tool called Directory Integration Platform part of Oracle Directory Services Plus - Manuel export and import Let's check pro and cons on each method. Replication Gateway is the natural, out of the box solution to perform the task. We created this as a feature of OUD because it works at our replication protocol level. The gateway perform the required adaptation between the ODSEE's replication protocol and OUD's one. The benefits of doing this is that it provide strong consistency between the to type of directories. This fully leverage conflict management implemented in the replication protocols to ensure that changes are applied in a coherent and ordered manner. It does not require specific modification on existing ODSEE production instances such as turning on "retro changelog". Changes are propagated at near speed of replication in both directions. Replication Gateway can also synchronize information that are stored internally in the directory server such as "xxxxx" account locking managed at ODSEE server level and not via the nsyyyy attribute. OUD replication gateway does no require any specific tools or installation specific procedure. It is manged like other OUD component with monitoring and configuration via the standard console. OUD Replication Gateway does not perform adaptation between ODSEE and OUD. Using Directory Integration Protocol as external component to OUD, brings flexibility in remapping and transformations between ODSEE and OUD. There is a price to pay in using DIP to perform the synchronization task. You will have to turn on the retro change log to get access to changes on the ODSEE side (this will impact disk and CPU usage and performances which could be a serious challenge for your existing ODSEE environment (if you have not provisioned additional hardware and instances). You will not benefits of conflict resolution management and this might have to be addressed at application level, which is not always possible to implement. Using export and import seams very simple, but this methodology cannot ensure an highly available deployment with up to date entries on booth sides. This solution can be used if full HA with up-to-date data is not needed (during synchronization time). It often used  if data-cleaning need to take place to avoid polluting a new environment with old un-necessary data.

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• Swiss Re increases data warehouse performance and deploys in record time

  - by KLaker

  Great information on yet another data warehouse deployment on Exadata. A little background on Swiss Re: In 2002, Swiss Re established a data warehouse for its client markets and products to gather reinsurance information across all organizational units into an integrated structure. The data warehouse provided the basis for reporting at the group level with drill-down capability to individual contracts, while facilitating application integration and data exchange by using common data standards. Initially focusing on property and casualty reinsurance information only, it now includes life and health reinsurance, insurance, and nonlife insurance information. Key highlights of the benefits that Swiss Re achieved by using Exadata: Reduced the time to feed the data warehouse and generate data marts by 58% Reduced average runtime by 24% for standard reports comfortably loading two data warehouse refreshes per day with incremental feeds Freed up technical experts by significantly minimizing time spent on tuning activities Most importantly this was one of the fastest project deployments in Swiss Re's history. They went from installation to production in just four months! What is truly surprising is the that it only took two weeks between power-on to testing the machine with full data volumes! Business teams at Swiss Re are now able to fully exploit up-to-date analytics across property, casualty, life, health insurance, and reinsurance lines to identify successful products. These points are highlighted in the following quotes from Dr. Stephan Gutzwiller, Head of Data Warehouse Services at Swiss Re:  "We were operating a complete Oracle stack, including servers, storage area network, operating systems, and databases that was well optimized and delivered very good performance over an extended period of time. When a hardware replacement was scheduled for 2012, Oracle Exadata was a natural choice—and the performance increase was impressive. It enabled us to deliver analytics to our internal customers faster, without hiring more IT staff" “The high quality data that is readily available with Oracle Exadata gives us the insight and agility we need to cater to client needs. We also can continue re-engineering to keep up with the increasing demand without having to grow the organization. This combination creates excellent business value.” Our full press release is available here: http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/customers/customersearch/swiss-re-1-exadata-ss-2050409.html. If you want more information about how Exadata can increase the performance of your data warehouse visit our home page: http://www.oracle.com/us/products/database/exadata-database-machine/overview/index.html

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• Thoughts on schemas and schema proliferation

  - by jamiet

  In SQL Server 2005 Microsoft introduced user-schema separation and since then I have seen the use of schemas increase; whereas before I would typically see databases where all objects were in the [dbo] schema I now see databases that have multiple schemas, a database I saw recently had 31 (thirty one) of them. I can’t help but wonder whether this is a good thing or not – clearly 31 is an extreme case but I question whether multiple schemas create more problems than they solve? I have been involved in many discussions that go something like this: Developer #1> “I have a new function to add to the database and I’m not sure which schema to put it in” Developer #2> “What does it do?” Developer #1> “It provides data to a report in Reporting Services” Developer #2> “Ok, so put it in the [reports] schema” Developer #1> “Well I could, but the data will only be used by our Financial reporting folks so shouldn’t I put it in the [financial] schema?” Developer #2> “Maybe, yes” Developer #1> “Mind you, the data is supposed to be used for regulatory reporting to the FSA, should I put it in [regulatory]?” Developer #2> “Err….” You get the idea!!! The more schemas that exist in your database then the more chance that their supposed usages will overlap. I’m left wondering whether the use of schemas is actually necessary. I don’t view really see them as an aid to security because I generally believe that principles should be assigned permissions on objects as-needed on a case-by-case basis (and I have a stock SQL query that deciphers them all for me) so why bother using them at all? I can envisage a use where a database is used to house objects pertaining to many different business functions (which, in itself, is an ambiguous term) and in that circumstance perhaps a schema per business function would be appropriate; hence of late I have been loosely following this edict: If some objects in a database could be moved en masse to another database without the need to remove any foreign key constraints then those objects could legitimately exist in a dedicated schema. I am interested to know what other people’s thoughts are on this. If you would like to share then please do so in the comments. @Jamiet

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• WebAPI and MVC4 and OData

  - by Aligned

  I was looking closer into WebAPI, specificially how to use OData to avoid writing GetCustomerByCustomerId(int id) methods all over the place. I had problems just returning IQueryable<T> as some sites suggested in the WebpAPI (Assembly System.Web.Http.dll, v4.0.0.0).  I think things changed in the release version and the blog posts are still out of date. There is no [Queraable] as the answer to this question suggests. Once I get WebAPI.Odata Nuget package, and added the [Queryable] to the method http://localhost:57146/api/values/?$filter=Id%20eq%201 worked (don’t forget the ‘$’). Now the main question is whether I should do this and how to stop logged in users from sniffing the url and getting data for other users. I John V. Peterson has a post on securing WebAPI with headers and intercepting the call at that point. He had an update to use HttpMessageHandlers instead. I think I’ll use this to force the call to contain some kind of unique code for the user, but I’m still thinking about this. I will not expose this to the public, just to my calls with-in my Forms Authentication areas. Other links: http://robbincremers.me/2012/02/16/building-and-consuming-rest-services-with-asp-net-web-api-and-odata-support/ ~lots of good information John V Peterson example: https://github.com/johnvpetersen/ASPWebAPIExample ~ all data access goes through the WebApi and the web client doesn’t have a connection string ~ There is code library for calling the WebApi from MVC using the HttpClient. It’s a great starting point http://blogs.msdn.com/b/alexj/archive/2012/08/15/odata-support-in-asp-net-web-api.aspx ~ Beta (9/18/2012) Nuget package to help with what I want to do? ~ has a sample code project with examples http://blogs.msdn.com/b/alexj/archive/2012/08/15/odata-support-in-asp-net-web-api.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/alexj/archive/2012/08/21/web-api-queryable-current-support-and-tentative-roadmap.aspx http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10885868/asp-net-mvc4-rc-web-api-odata-filter-not-working-with-iqueryable JSON, pass the correct format in the header (Accept: application/json). $format=JSON doesn’t appear to be working. Async methods built into WebApi! Look for the GetAsync methods.

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• apt-get upgrade stuck at the same package (openjdk-6-jre-headless)

  - by decibyte

  I'm stuck, can't upgrade my system. Running sudo apt-get upgrade gives me the following: mmm@alalunga:~$ sudo apt-get upgrade Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following packages have been kept back: ginn libgrip0 linux-generic-pae linux-headers-generic-pae linux-image-generic-pae The following packages will be upgraded: apport apport-gtk bind9-host build-essential dhcp3-client dhcp3-common dnsutils eog evince evince-common firefox firefox-branding firefox-dbg firefox-globalmenu firefox-gnome-support firefox-locale-en gimp gimp-data gir1.2-totem-1.0 glib-networking glib-networking-common glib-networking-services gnupg gpgv icedtea-6-jre-cacao icedtea-6-jre-jamvm icedtea-6-plugin icedtea-netx icedtea-netx-common icedtea-plugin isc-dhcp-client isc-dhcp-common libapache2-mod-php5 libart-2.0-2 libbind9-80 libdns81 libevince3-3 libgimp2.0 libisc83 libisccc80 libisccfg82 liblwres80 libssl-dev libssl-doc libssl1.0.0 libtotem0 linux-firmware linux-libc-dev openjdk-6-jre openjdk-6-jre-headless openjdk-6-jre-lib openssl php-pear php5-cli php5-common php5-curl php5-dev php5-gd php5-mysql php5-xsl policykit-1-gnome python-apport python-django python-gst0.10 python-problem-report resolvconf thunderbird thunderbird-globalmenu thunderbird-gnome-support totem totem-common totem-mozilla totem-plugins xserver-xorg-input-synaptics 74 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 5 not upgraded. Need to get 317 MB/327 MB of archives. After this operation, 1.481 kB of additional disk space will be used. Do you want to continue [Y/n]? Get:1 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates/main openjdk-6-jre-headless i386 6b24-1.11.4-1ubuntu0.12.04.1 [27,3 MB] Get:2 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates/main openjdk-6-jre-headless i386 6b24-1.11.4-1ubuntu0.12.04.1 [27,3 MB] Get:3 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates/main openjdk-6-jre-headless i386 6b24-1.11.4-1ubuntu0.12.04.1 [27,3 MB] Get:4 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates/main openjdk-6-jre-headless i386 6b24-1.11.4-1ubuntu0.12.04.1 [27,3 MB] Get:5 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates/main openjdk-6-jre-headless i386 6b24-1.11.4-1ubuntu0.12.04.1 [27,3 MB] Get:6 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates/main openjdk-6-jre-headless i386 6b24-1.11.4-1ubuntu0.12.04.1 [27,3 MB] Get:7 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates/main openjdk-6-jre-headless i386 6b24-1.11.4-1ubuntu0.12.04.1 [27,3 MB] 9% [7 openjdk-6-jre-headless 27,3 MB/27,3 MB 100%] It keeps downloading the package openjdk-6-jre-headless, then does nothing for a while (hanging on what's the last line above), then download the package again. It's at its 13th download attempt at the moment of writing. The actual downloads seem to be done just fine, but whatever it does after downloading seems to be failing. I tried removing openjdk-6, but then it wanted to install openjdk-7 instead, with the same result, hanging at openjdk-7-jre-headless instead. I also tried changing servers from my local (Danish) to the main server. No luck. It's also keeping me from upgrading alle the other packages. What to do?

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• Personal Financial Management – The need for resuscitation

  - by Salil Ravindran

  Until a year or so ago, PFM (Personal Financial Management) was the blue eyed boy of every channel banking head. In an age when bank account portability is still fiction, PFM was expected to incentivise customers to switch banks. It still is, in some emerging economies, but if the state of PFM in matured markets is anything to go by, it is in a state of coma and badly requires resuscitation. Studies conducted around the year show an alarming decline and stagnation in PFM usage in mature markets. A Sept 2012 report by Aite Group – Strategies for PFM Success shows that 72% of users hadn’t used PFM and worse, 58% of them were not kicked about using it. Of the rest who had used it, only half did on a bank site. While there are multiple reasons for this lack of adoption, some are glaringly obvious. While pretty graphs and pie charts are important to provide a visual representation of my income and expense, it is simply not enough to encourage me to return. Static representation of data without any insightful analysis does not help me. Budgeting and Cash Flow is important but when I have an operative account, a couple of savings accounts, a mortgage loan and a couple of credit cards help me with what my affordability is in specific contexts rather than telling me I just busted my budget. Help me with relative importance of each budget category so that I know it is fine to go over budget on books for my daughter as against going over budget on eating out. Budget over runs and spend analysis are post facto and I am informed of my sins only when I return to online banking. That too, only if I decide to come to the PFM area. Fundamentally, PFM should be a part of my banking engagement rather than an analysis tool. It should be contextual so that I can make insight based decisions. So what can be done to resuscitate PFM? Amalgamation with banking activities – In most cases, PFM tools are integrated into online banking pages and they are like chapter 37 of a long story. PFM needs to be a way of banking rather than a tool. Available balances should shift to Spendable Balances. Budget and goal related insights should be integrated with transaction sessions to drive pre-event financial decisions. Personal Financial Guidance - Banks need to think ground level and see if their PFM offering is really helping customers achieve self actualisation. Banks need to recognise that most customers out there are non-proficient about making the best value of their money. Customers return when they know that they are being guided rather than being just informed on their finance. Integrating contextual financial offers and financial planning into PFM is one way ahead. Yet another way is to help customers tag unwanted spending thereby encouraging sound savings habits. Mobile PFM – Most banks have left all those numbers on online banking. With access mostly having moved to devices and the success of apps, moving PFM on to devices will give it a much needed shot in the arm. This is not only about presenting the same wine in a new bottle but also about leveraging the power of the device in pushing real time notifications to make pre-purchase decisions. The pursuit should be to analyse spend, budgets and financial goals real time and push them pre-event on to the device. So next time, I should know that I have over run my eating out budget before walking into that burger joint and not after. Increase participation and collaboration – Peer group experiences and comments are valued above those offered by the bank. Integrating social media into PFM engagement will let customers share and solicit their financial management experiences with their peer group. Peer comparisons help benchmark one’s savings and spending habits with those of the peer group and increases stickiness. While mature markets have gone through this learning in some way over the last one year, banks in maturing digital banking economies increasingly seem to be falling into this trap. Best practices lie in profiling and segmenting customers, being where they are and contextually guiding them to identify and achieve their financial goals. Banks could look at the likes of Simple and Movenbank to draw inpiration from.

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• Particle System in XNA - cannot draw particle

  - by Dave Voyles

  I'm trying to implement a simple particle system in my XNA project. I'm going by RB Whitaker's tutorial, and it seems simple enough. I'm trying to draw particles within my menu screen. Below I've included the code which I think is applicable. I'm coming up with one error in my build, and it is stating that I need to create a new instance of the EmitterLocation from the particleEngine. When I hover over particleEngine.EmitterLocation = new Vector2(Mouse.GetState().X, Mouse.GetState().Y); it states that particleEngine is returning a null value. What could be causing this? /// <summary> /// Base class for screens that contain a menu of options. The user can /// move up and down to select an entry, or cancel to back out of the screen. /// </summary> abstract class MenuScreen : GameScreen ParticleEngine particleEngine; public void LoadContent(ContentManager content) { if (content == null) { content = new ContentManager(ScreenManager.Game.Services, "Content"); } base.LoadContent(); List<Texture2D> textures = new List<Texture2D>(); textures.Add(content.Load<Texture2D>(@"gfx/circle")); textures.Add(content.Load<Texture2D>(@"gfx/star")); textures.Add(content.Load<Texture2D>(@"gfx/diamond")); particleEngine = new ParticleEngine(textures, new Vector2(400, 240)); } public override void Update(GameTime gameTime, bool otherScreenHasFocus, bool coveredByOtherScreen) { base.Update(gameTime, otherScreenHasFocus, coveredByOtherScreen); // Update each nested MenuEntry object. for (int i = 0; i < menuEntries.Count; i++) { bool isSelected = IsActive && (i == selectedEntry); menuEntries[i].Update(this, isSelected, gameTime); } particleEngine.EmitterLocation = new Vector2(Mouse.GetState().X, Mouse.GetState().Y); particleEngine.Update(); } public override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { // make sure our entries are in the right place before we draw them UpdateMenuEntryLocations(); GraphicsDevice graphics = ScreenManager.GraphicsDevice; SpriteBatch spriteBatch = ScreenManager.SpriteBatch; SpriteFont font = ScreenManager.Font; spriteBatch.Begin(); // Draw stuff logic spriteBatch.End(); particleEngine.Draw(spriteBatch); }

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• The Nine Cs of Customer Engagement

  - by Michael Snow

  Avoid Social Media Fatigue - Learn the 9 C's of Customer Engagement inside the Click Here The order you must follow to make the colored link appear in browsers. If not the default window link will appear 1. Select the word you want to use for the link 2. Select the desired color, Red, Black, etc 3. Select bold if necessary ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Templates use two sizes of fonts and the sans-serif font tag for the email. All Fonts should be (Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif) tags Normal size reading body fonts should be set to the size of 2. Small font sizes should be set to 1 !!!!!!!DO NOT USE ANY OTHER SIZE FONT FOR THE EMAILS!!!!!!!! ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ -- Have We Hit a Social-Media Plateau? In recent years, social media has evolved from a cool but unproven medium to become the foundation of pragmatic social business and a driver of business value. Yet, time is running out for businesses to make the most out of this channel. This isn’t a warning. It’s a fact. Join leading industry analyst R “Ray” Wang as he explains how to apply the nine Cs of engagement to strengthen customer relationships. Learn: How to overcome social-media fatigue and make the most of the medium Why engagement is the most critical factor in the age of overexposure The nine pillars of successful customer engagement Register for the eighth Webcast in the Social Business Thought Leaders series today. Register Now Thurs., Sept. 20, 2012 10 a.m. PT / 1 p.m. ET Presented by: R “Ray” Wang Principal Analyst and CEO, Constellation Research Christian Finn Senior Director, Product Management Oracle Copyright © 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Contact Us | Legal Notices and Terms of Use | Privacy Statement SEV100103386 Oracle Corporation - Worldwide Headquarters, 500 Oracle Parkway, OPL - E-mail Services, Redwood Shores, CA 94065, United States Your privacy is important to us. You can login to your account to update your e-mail subscriptions or you can opt-out of all Oracle Marketing e-mails at any time.Please note that opting-out of Marketing communications does not affect your receipt of important business communications related to your current relationship with Oracle such as Security Updates, Event Registration notices, Account Management and Support/Service communications.

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• The Other Side of XBRL

  - by john.orourke(at)oracle.com

  With the United States SEC's mandate for XBRL filings entering its third year, and impacting over 7000 additional companies in 2011, there's a lot of buzz in the industry about how companies should address the new reporting requirements.  Should they outsource the XBRL tagging process to a third party publisher, handle the process in-house with a bolt-on XBRL tool, or should they integrate XBRL tagging with the financial close and reporting process?  Oracle is recommending the latter approach, in fact  here's a link to a recent webcast that I did with CFO.com on this topic: http://www.cfo.com/webcasts/index.cfm/l_eventarchive/14548560 But production of XBRL-based filings is only half of the story. The other half is consumption of XBRL by regulators, academics, financial analysts and investors.  As I mentioned in my December article on the XBRL US conference, the feedback from these groups is that they are not really leveraging XBRL for analysis of companies due to a lack of tools and historic XBRL-based data on public companies.   The good news here is that the historic data problem is getting better as large, accelerated filers enter their third year of XBRL filings.  And the situation is getting better on the reporting and analysis tools side of the equation as well - and Oracle is leading the way. In early January, Oracle released the Oracle XBRL Extension for Oracle Database 11g.  This is a "no cost option" on top of the latest Oracle Database 11.2.0.2.0 release. With this added functionality organizations will have the ability to create one or more back-end XBRL repositories based on Oracle Database, which provide XBRL storage and query-ability with a set of XBRL-specific services.  The XBRL Extension to Oracle XML DB integrates easily with Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) for analytics and with interactive development environments (IDEs) and design tools for creating and editing XBRL taxonomies. The Oracle XBRL Extension to Oracle Database 11g should be attractive to regulators, stock exchanges, universities and other organizations that need to collect, analyze and disseminate XBRL-based filings.  It should also be attractive to organizations that produce XBRL filings, and need a way to store and compare their own XBRL-based financial filings to those of their peers and competitors. If you would like more information, here's a link to a web page on the Oracle Technology Network with the details about Oracle XBRL Extension for Oracle Database 11g, including data sheet, white paper, presentation, demos and other information: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/features/xmldb/index-087631.html

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• Managing accounts on a private website for a real-life community

  - by Smudge

  Hey Pro Webmasters, I'm looking at setting-up a walled-in website for a real-life community of people, and I was wondering if anyone has any experience with managing member accounts for this kind of thing. Some conditions that must be met: This community has a set list of real-life members, each of whom would be eligible for one account on the website. We don't expect or require that they all sign-up. It is purely opt-in, but we anticipate that many of them would be interested in the services we are setting up. Some of the community members emails are known, but some of them have fallen off the grid over the years, so ideally there would be a way for them to get back in touch with us through the public-facing side of the site. (And we'd want to manually verify the identity of anyone who does so). Their names are known, and for similar projects in the past we have assigned usernames derived from their real-life names. This time, however, we are open to other approaches, such as letting them specify their own username or getting rid of usernames entirely. The specific web technology we will use (e.g. Drupal, Joomla, etc) is not really our concern right now -- I am more interested in how this can be approached in the abstract. Our database already includes the full member roster, so we can email many of them generated links to a page where they can create an account. (And internally we can require that these accounts be paired with a known member). Should we have them specify their own usernames, or are we fine letting them use their registered email address to log-in? Are there any paradigms for walled-in community portals that help address security issues if, for example, one of their email accounts is compromised? We don't anticipate attempted break-ins being much of a threat, because nothing about this community is high-profile, but we do want to address security concerns. In addition, we want to make the sign-up process as painless for the members as possible, especially given the fact that we can't just make sign-ups open to anyone. I'm interested to hear your thoughts and suggestions! Thanks!

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 2012-06-05

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Why is enterprise software often so complicated? | Rajesh Raheja rraheja.wordpress.com Rajesh Raheja shares "a few examples of requirements that lead to creation of complex platform infrastructures that up the complex enterprise software." Educause Top-Ten IT Issues - the most change in a decade or more | Cole Clark blogs.oracle.com Cole Clark discusses why "higher education IT must change in order to fully realize the potential for transforming the institution, and therefore it's people must learn new skills, understand and accept new ways of solving problems, and not be tied down by past practices or institutional inertia." Oracle VM RAC template - what it took | Wim Coekaerts blogs.oracle.com Wim Coekaerts shares an example that shows how easy it is to deploy a complete Oracle RAC cluster with Oracle VM. Oracle Cloud and Oracle Platinum Services Announcements oracle.com Featuring Larry Ellison and Mark Hurd. Wednesday, June 06, 2012. 1:00 p.m. PT – 2:30 p.m. PT Creating an Oracle Endeca Information Discovery 2.3 Application Part 1 : Scoping and Design | Mark Rittman www.rittmanmead.com Oracle ACE Director Mark Rittman launches a new series that dives into "the various stages in building a simple Oracle Endeca Information Discovery application, using the recent Endeca Information Discovery 2.3 release." Introducing Decision Tables in the SOA Suite 11g | Lucas Jellama technology.amis.nl Oracle ACE Director Lucas Jellema demonstrates how "the decision table can be put to good use to implement the business logic behind the classical game of Rock, Paper and Scissors." Application integration: reorganise, recycle, repurpose | Andrew Clarke radiofreetooting.blogspot.com "Integration is a topic which is in everybody's baliwick," says Oracle ACE Andrew Clarke. "The business people want to get the best value from their existing IT investments. The architects need to understand the interfaces between the silos and across the layers. The developers have to implement it." Using XA Transactions in Coherence-based Applications | Jonathan Purdy blogs.oracle.com Purdy shares "a few common approaches when integrating Coherence into applications via the use of an application server's transaction manager." Thought for the Day "The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones..." — John Maynard Keynes (June 5, 1883 - April 4, 1946) Source: Quotations Page

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• Exchange 2010, Exchange 2003 Mail Flow issue

  - by Ryan Roussel

  While performing the initial Exchange 2010 deployment for a customer migrating from Exchange 2003, I ran into an issue with mail flow between the two environments.  The Exchange 2003 mailboxes could send to Exchange 2010, as well as to and from the internet.  Exchange 2010 mailboxes could send and receive to the internet, however they could not send to Exchange 2003 mailboxes.   After scouring the internet for a solution, it seemed quite a few people were experiencing this issue with no resolution to be found, or at least not easily.  After many attempts of manually deleting and recreating the routing group connectors,  I finally lucked onto the answer in an obscure comment left to another blogger.   If inheritable permissions are not allowed on the Exchange 2003 object in the Active Directory schema, exchange server authentication cannot be achieved between the servers.   It seems when Blackberry Enterprise Server gets added to 2003 environments, a lot of Admins get tricky and add the BES Admin user explicitly to the server object  to allow  inheritance down from there to all mailboxes.  The problem is they also coincidently turn off inheritance to the server object itself from its parent containers.  You can re-establish inheritance without overwriting the existing ACL however so that the BES Admin can remain in the server object ACL.   By re-establishing inheritance to the 2003 server object, mail flow was instantly restored between the servers.    To re-establish inheritance: 1. Open ASDIedit by adding the snap-in to a MMC (should be included on your 2008 server where Exchange 2010 is installed) 2. Navigate to Configuration > Services > Microsoft Exchange > Exchange Organization > Administrative Groups > First Administrative Group > Servers 3. In the right pane, right click on the CN=Server Name of your Exchange 2003 Server, select properties 4. Navigate to the Security tab, hit advanced toward the bottom. 5. Check the checkbox that reads “include inheritable permissions” toward the bottom of the dialogue box.

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• Musings on the launch of SQL Monitor

  - by Phil Factor

  For several years, I was responsible for the smooth running of a large number of enterprise database servers. We ran a network monitoring tool that was primitive by today’s standards but which performed the useful function of polling every system, including all the Servers in my charge. It ran a configurable script for each service that you needed to monitor that was merely required to return one of a number of integer values. These integer values represented the pain level of the service, from 10 (“hurtin’ real bad”) to 1 (“Things is great”). Not only could you program the visual appearance of each server on the network diagram according to the value of the integer, but you could even opt to run a sound file. Very soon, we had a large TFT Screen, high on the wall of the server room, with every server represented by an icon, and a speaker next to it that would give out a series of grunts, groans, snores, shrieks and funeral marches, depending on the problem. One glance at the display, and you could dive in with iSQL/QA/SSMS and check what was going on with your favourite diagnostic tools. If you saw a server icon burst into flames on the screen or droop like a jelly, you dropped your mug of coffee to do it.  It was real fun, but I remember it more for the huge difference it made to have that real-time visibility into how your servers are performing. The management soon stopped making jokes about the real reason we wanted the TFT screen. (It rendered DVDs beautifully they said; particularly flesh-tints). If you are instantly alerted when things start to go wrong, then there was a good chance you could fix it before being alerted to the problem by the users of the system.  There is a world of difference between this sort of tool, one that gives whoever is ‘on watch’ in the server room the first warning of a potential problem on one of any number of servers, and the breed of tool that attempts to provide some sort of prosthetic DBA Brain. I like to get the early warning, to get the right information to help to diagnose a problem: No auto-fix, but just the information. I prefer to leave the task of ascertaining the exact cause of a problem to my own routines, custom code, intuition and forensic instincts. A simulated aircraft cockpit doesn’t do anything for me, especially before I know where I should be flying.  Time has moved on, and that TFT screen is now, with SQL Monitor, an iPad or any other mobile or static device that can support a browser. Rather than trying to reproduce the conceptual topology of the servers, it lists them in their groups so as to give a display that scales with the increasing number of databases you monitor.  It gives the history of the major events and trends for the servers. It gives the icons and colours that you can spot out of the corner of your eye, but goes on to give you just enough information in drill-down to give you a much clearer idea of where to look with your DBA tools and routines. It doesn't swamp you with information.  Whereas a few server and database-level problems are pretty easily fixed, others depend on judgement and experience to sort out.  Although the idea of an application that automates the bulk of a DBA’s skills is attractive to many, I can’t see it happening soon. SQL Server’s complexity increases faster than the panaceas can be created. In the meantime, I believe that the best way of helping  DBAs  is to make the monitoring process as simple and effective as possible,  and provide the right sort of detail and ‘evidence’ to allow them to decide on the fix. In the end, it is still down to the skill of the DBA.

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• WIF, ADFS 2 and WCF&ndash;Part 1: Overview

  - by Your DisplayName here!

  A lot has been written already about passive federation and integration of WIF and ADFS 2 into web apps. The whole active/WS-Trust feature area is much less documented or covered in articles and blogs. Over the next few posts I will try to compile all relevant information about the above topics – but let’s start with an overview. ADFS 2 has a number of endpoints under the /services/trust base address that implement the WS-Trust protocol. They are grouped by the WS-Trust version they support (/13 and /2005), the client credential type (/windows*, /username*, /certificate*) and the security mode (*transport, *mixed and message). You can see the endpoints in the MMC console under the Service/Endpoints page. So in other words, you use one of these endpoints (which exactly depends on your configuration / system setup) to request tokens from ADFS 2. The bindings behind the endpoints are more or less standard WCF bindings, but with SecureConversation (establishSecurityContext) disabled. That means that whenever you need to programmatically talk to these endpoints – you can (easily) create client bindings that are compatible. Another option is to use the special bindings that come with WIF (in the Microsoft.IdentityModel.Protocols.WSTrust.Bindings namespace). They are already pre-configured to be compatible with the ADFS endpoints. The downside of these bindings is, that you can’t use them in configuration. That’s definitely a feature request of mine for the next version of WIF. The next important piece of information is the so called Federation Service Identifier. This is the value that you (at least by default) have to use as a realm/appliesTo whenever you are requesting a token for ADFS (e.g. in  IdP –> RSTS scenario). Or (even more) technically speaking, ADFS 2 checks for this value in the audience URI restriction in SAML tokens. You can get to this value by clicking the “Edit Federation Service Properties” in the MMC when the Service tree-node is selected. OK – I will come back to this basic information in the following posts. Basically I want to go through the following scenarios: ADFS in the IdP role ADFS in the R-STS role (with a chained claims provider) Using the WCF bindings for automatic token issuance Using WSTrustChannelFactory for manual token handling Stay tuned…

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