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• Experience the iPad UI On Your PC

  - by Matthew Guay

  Want to test drive iPad without heading over to an Apple store?  Here’s a way you can experience some of the iPad UI straight from your browser! The iPad is the latest gadget from Apple to wow the tech world, and people even waited in line all night to be one of the first to get their hands on one.  Thanks to a simple JavaScript trick, however, you can get a feel for some of its new features without leaving your computer.  This won’t let you try out everything on the iPad, but it will let you see how the new lists and pop-over menus work just like they do in the new apps. Test drive the iPad’s UI from your browser Normally, the Apple iPhone developer library online looks like a standard webpage. But, on the iPad, it looks and feels like a full-blown native iPad app.  With a nifty JavaScript trick from boredzo.org you can use this same interface on your PC.  Since the iPad uses the Safari browser, we ran this test in Safari for Windows.  If you don’t already have it installed, you can download it from Apple (link below) and setup as normal. Now, open Safari and browse to Apple’s developer page at: http://www.developer.apple.com   Now, enter the following in the address bar, and press Enter. javascript:localStorage.setItem('debugSawtooth', 'true')   Finally, click this link to go to the iPhone OS documentation. http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/iPad/ After a short delay, it should open in full iPad style! The left menu works just like the menus on the iPad, complete with transitions.  It feels entirely like a native application, instead of a webpage.  To scroll through text, click and pull up or down similar to the way you would use it on a touch screen. Some pages even include a pop-over menu like many of the new iPad apps use. Note that the page will be rendered for the size of your browser, and if you resize your window the page will not resize with it.  Simply press F5 to reload the page, and it will resize to fit the new window size.  If you resize your window to be tall and narrow, like the iPad in horizontal mode, the webpage will change and the left menu will disappear in lieu of a drop-down menu just like it would if you rotated the iPad. This works in Chrome as well, since it, like Safari, is based on Webkit.  However, it didn’t seem to work in our test on Firefox or other browsers. We’ve previously covered how you can experience some of the iPhone’s UI with the online iPhone user guide.  Check it out if you haven’t yet: View Mobile Websites in Windows with Safari 4 Developer Tools Conclusion Although this doesn’t let you really try out all of the iPad’s interface, it at least gives you a taste of how it works.  It’s exciting to see how much functionality can be packed into webapps today.  And don’t forget, How-to Geek is giving away an iPad to a random fan!  Head over to our Facebook page and fan How-to Geek if you haven’t already done so. Win an iPad on the How-To Geek Facebook Fan Page Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Want an iPad? How-To Geek is Giving One Away!Why Wait? Amazing New Add-on Turns Your iPhone into an iPad! [Comic]The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and TutorialsShare Your Windows Vista Experience Index ScoreAnother Blog You Should Subscribe To 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 DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Awesome Lyrics Finder for Winamp & Windows Media Player Download Videos from Hulu Pixels invade Manhattan Convert PDF files to ePub to read on your iPad Hide Your Confidential Files Inside Images Get Wildlife Photography Tips at BBC’s PhotoMasterClasses

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• Developing an Implementation Plan with Iterations by Russ Pitts

  - by user535886

  Developing an Implementation Plan with Iterations by Russ Pitts  Ok, so you have come to grips with understanding that applying the iterative concept, as defined by OUM is simply breaking up the project effort you have estimated for each phase into one or more six week calendar duration blocks of work. Idea being the business user(s) or key recipient(s) of work product(s) being developed never go longer than six weeks without having some sort of review or prototyping of the work results for an iteration…”think-a-little”, “do-a-little”, and “show-a-little” in a six week or less timeframe…ideally the business user(s) or key recipients(s) are involved throughout. You also understand the OUM concept that you only plan for that which you have knowledge of. The concept further defined, a project plan initially is developed at a high-level, and becomes more detailed as project knowledge grows. Agreeing to this concept means you also have to admit to the fallacy that one can plan with precision beyond six weeks into a project…Anything beyond six weeks is a best guess in most cases when dealing with software implementation projects. Project planning, as defined by OUM begins with the Implementation Plan view, which is a very high-level perspective of the effort estimated for each of the five OUM phases, as well as the number of iterations within each phase. You might wonder how can you predict the number of iterations for each phase at this early point in the project. Remember project planning is not an exact science, and initially is high-level and abstract in nature, and then becomes more detailed and precise as the project proceeds. So where do you start in defining iterations for each phase for a project? The following are three easy steps to initially define the number of iterations for each phase: Step 1 => Start with identifying the known factors… …Prior to starting a project you should know: · The agreed upon time-period for an iteration (e.g 6 weeks, or 4 weeks, or…) within a phase (recommend keeping iteration time-period consistent within a phase, if not for the entire project) · The number of resources available for the project · The number of total number of man-day (effort) you have estimated for each of the five OUM phases of the project · The number of work days for a week Step 2 => Calculate the man-days of effort required for an iteration within a phase… Lets assume for the sake of this example there are 10 project resources, and you have estimated 2,536 man-days of work effort which will need to occur for the elaboration phase of the project. Let’s also assume a week for this project is defined as 5 business days, and that each iteration in the elaboration phase will last a calendar duration of 6 weeks. A simple calculation is performed to calculate the daily burn rate for a single iteration, which produces a result of… ((Number of resources * days per week) * duration of iteration) = Number of days required per iteration ((10 resources * 5 days/week) * 6 weeks) = 300 man days of effort required per iteration Step 3 => Calculate the number of iterations that can occur within a phase Next calculate the number of iterations that can occur for the amount of man-days of effort estimated for the phase being considered… (number of man-days of effort estimated / number of man-days required per iteration) = # of iterations for phase (2,536 man-days of estimated effort for phase / 300 man days of effort required per iteration) = 8.45 iterations, which should be rounded to a whole number such as 9 iterations* *Note - It is important to note this is an approximate calculation, not an exact science. This particular example is a simple one, which assumes all resources are utilized throughout the phase, including tech resources, etc. (rounding down or up to a whole number based on project factor considerations). It is also best in many cases to round up to higher number, as this provides some calendar scheduling contingency.

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• How To Quickly Reboot Directly from Windows 7 to XP, Vista, or Ubuntu

  - by The Geek

  One of the biggest annoyances with a dual-boot system is having to wait for your PC to reboot to select the operating system you want to switch to, but there’s a simple piece of software that can make this process easier. This guest article was written by Ryan Dozier from the Doztech tech blog. With a small piece of software called iReboot we can skip the above step all together and instantly reboot into the operating system we want right from Windows. Their description says: “Instead of pressing restart, waiting for Windows to shut down, waiting for your BIOS to post, then selecting the operating system you want to boot into (within the bootloader time-limit!); you just select that entry from iReboot and let it do the rest!” Don’t worry about iReboot reconfiguring  your bootloader or any dual boot configuration you have. iReboot will only boot the selected operating system once and go back to your default settings. Using iReboot iReboot is quick and easy to install. Just download it, link below, run through the setup and select the default configuration. iReboot will automatically figure out what operating systems you have installed and appear in the taskbar. Go over to the taskbar and right click on the iReboot icon and select which operating system you want to reboot into. This method will add a check mark on the operating system you want to boot into. On your next reboot the system will automatically load your choice and skip the Windows Boot Manager. If you want to reboot automatically just select “Reboot on Selection” in the iReboot menu.   To be even more productive, you can install iReboot into each Windows operating system to quickly access the others with a few simple clicks.   iReboot does not work in Linux so you will have to reboot manually. Then wait for the Windows Boot Manager to load and select your operating system.   Conclusion iReboot works on  Windows XP, Windows Vista,  and Windows 7 as well as 64 bit versions of these operating systems. Unfortunately iReboot is only available for Windows but you can still use its functionality in Windows to quickly boot up your Linux machine. A simple reboot in Linux will take you back to Windows Boot Manager. Download iReboot from neosmart.net Editor’s note: We’ve not personally tested this software over at How-To Geek, but Neosmart, the author of the software, generally makes quality stuff. Still, you might want to test it out on a test machine first. If you’ve got any experience with this software, please be sure to let your fellow readers know in the comments. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Restart the Ubuntu Gnome User Interface QuicklyKeyboard Ninja: 21 Keyboard Shortcut ArticlesTest Your Computer’s Memory Using Windows Vista Memory Diagnostic ToolEnable or Disable UAC From the Windows 7 / Vista Command LineSet Windows as Default OS when Dual Booting Ubuntu 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 DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Home Networks – How do they look like & the problems they cause Check Your IMAP Mail Offline In Thunderbird Follow Finder Finds You Twitter Users To Follow Combine MP3 Files Easily QuicklyCode Provides Cheatsheets & Other Programming Stuff Download Free MP3s from Amazon

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• Edit the Windows Live Writer Custom Dictionary

  - by Matthew Guay

  Windows Live Writer is a great tool for writing and publishing posts to your blog, but its spell check unfortunately doesn’t include many common tech words.  Here’s how you can easily edit your custom dictionary and add your favorite words. Customize Live Writer’s Dictionary Adding an individual word to the Windows Live Writer dictionary works as you would expect.  Right-click on a word and select Add to dictionary. And changing the default spell check settings is easy too.  In the menu, click Tools, then Options, and select the Spelling tab in this dialog.  Here you can choose your dictionary language and turn on/off real-time spell checking and other settings. But there’s no obvious way to edit your custom dictionary.  Editing the custom dictionary directly is nice if you accidently add a misspelled word to your dictionary and want to remove it, or if you want to add a lot of words to the dictionary at once. Live Writer actually stores your custom dictionary entries in a plain text file located in your appdata folder.  It is saved as User.dic in the C:\Users\user_name\AppData\Roaming\Windows Live Writer\Dictionaries folder.  The easiest way to open the custom dictionary is to enter the following in the Run box or the address bar of an Explorer window: %appdata%\Windows Live Writer\Dictionaries\User.dic   This will open the User.dic file in your default text editor.  Add any new words to the custom dictionary on separate lines, and delete any misspelled words you accidently added to the dictionary.   Microsoft Office Word also stores its custom dictionary in a plain text file.  If you already have lots of custom words in it and want to import them into Live Writer, enter the following in the Run command or Explorer’s address bar to open Word’s custom dictionary.  Then copy the words, and past them into your Live Writer custom dictionary file. %AppData%\Microsoft\UProof\Custom.dic Don’t forget to save the changes when you’re done.  Note that the changes to the dictionary may not show up in Live Writer’s spell check until you restart the program.  If it’s currently running, save any posts you’re working on, exit, and then reopen, and all of your new words should be in the dictionary. Conclusion Whether you use Live Writer daily in your job or occasionally post an update to a personal blog, adding your own custom words to the dictionary can save you a lot of time and frustration in editing.  Plus, if you’ve accidently added a misspelled word to the dictionary, this is a great way to undo your mistake and make sure your spelling is up to par! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Backup Your Windows Live Writer SettingsTransfer or Move Your Microsoft Office Custom DictionaryFuture Date a Post in Windows Live WriterTools to Help Post Content On Your WordPress BlogInstall Windows Live Essentials In Windows 7 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 Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows Video Toolbox is a Superb Online Video Editor Fun with 47 charts and graphs Tomorrow is Mother’s Day Check the Average Speed of YouTube Videos You’ve Watched OutlookStatView Scans and Displays General Usage Statistics How to Add Exceptions to the Windows Firewall

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• Danke für die gute Zusammenarbeit im FY12

  - by A&C Redaktion

  Liebe Oracle Partner, und schon wieder ist ein Geschäftsjahr zu Ende gegangen. Als erstes möchte ich Ihnen, unseren Partnern, sagen: Sie leisten seit Jahren einen fundamentalen Beitrag zum Erfolg von Oracle – auch im Fiskaljahr 2012. Herzlichen Dank dafür! Wenn wir auf das letzte Jahr zurückblicken, gab es unter dem Motto „Oracle on Oracle“ herausragende Produktvorstellungen, Events und Partner Programme. Zu den wichtigsten technischen Innovationen gehörte sicherlich die Oracle Database Appliance speziell für kleinere Unternehmen. Auch die Daten-Explosion, zu der wir jeden Tag beitragen, stellt für alle Unternehmen eine Herausforderung dar. Um diese „Big Data“ effizient zu verwalten, haben wir die Exa-Familie erweitert. So stehen neben der Exadata Database Machine nun auch Exalogic und Exalytics – mit zuverlässiger Hardware, ausgereifter Software und Support aus einer Hand – je nach Bedarf zur Verfügung. Da ist für jeden Kunden was dabei. Die Oracle Optimized Solutions unserer VADs waren ein weiteres wichtiges Thema, speziell für den Mittelstand, über das wir auch hier im Blog berichtet haben. Für ISVs wurden die Exastack Ready und Exastack Optimized Programme entwickelt. Speziell für Partner wurden Partner Sales Books zu den Fokus-Themen, wie beispielsweise Cloud Computing, erstellt. Im OPN stehen Ihnen mehr als 30 deutschsprachige Marketing-Kits zur Verfügung, um Sie bei der täglichen Vertriebsarbeit zu unterstützen. Und mit dem überarbeiteten und erweiterten Solutions Catalog im OPN können Sie von Endkunden ganz einfach nach Ihrem Lösungsangebot gefunden werden. Dies sind nur einige Beispiele, wie wir versuchen, Sie bei Ihrem Geschäft zu unterstützen. Ich hoffe, wir schaffen das auch weiterhin so gut wie bisher. Was das neue Fiskaljahr bringt, erfahren Sie beim EMEA Partner Kickoff am 29. Juni Normal 0 21 false false false DE 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:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; 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;} und demnächst hier im Blog. Aber soviel sei schon verraten: Meine Glückszahl ist die 13 – und Ihre? Herzlichst, Ihre Silvia Kaske Senior Direktor Alliances & Channel Tech Europe North Oracle Deutschland B.V. & Co. KG

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• Danke für die gute Zusammenarbeit im FY12

  - by A&C Redaktion

  Liebe Oracle Partner, und schon wieder ist ein Geschäftsjahr zu Ende gegangen. Als erstes möchte ich Ihnen, unseren Partnern, sagen: Sie leisten seit Jahren einen fundamentalen Beitrag zum Erfolg von Oracle – auch im Fiskaljahr 2012. Herzlichen Dank dafür! Wenn wir auf das letzte Jahr zurückblicken, gab es unter dem Motto „Oracle on Oracle“ herausragende Produktvorstellungen, Events und Partner Programme. Zu den wichtigsten technischen Innovationen gehörte sicherlich die Oracle Database Appliance speziell für kleinere Unternehmen. Auch die Daten-Explosion, zu der wir jeden Tag beitragen, stellt für alle Unternehmen eine Herausforderung dar. Um diese „Big Data“ effizient zu verwalten, haben wir die Exa-Familie erweitert. So stehen neben der Exadata Database Machine nun auch Exalogic und Exalytics – mit zuverlässiger Hardware, ausgereifter Software und Support aus einer Hand – je nach Bedarf zur Verfügung. Da ist für jeden Kunden was dabei. Die Oracle Optimized Solutions unserer VADs waren ein weiteres wichtiges Thema, speziell für den Mittelstand, über das wir auch hier im Blog berichtet haben. Für ISVs wurden die Exastack Ready und Exastack Optimized Programme entwickelt. Speziell für Partner wurden Partner Sales Books zu den Fokus-Themen, wie beispielsweise Cloud Computing, erstellt. Im OPN stehen Ihnen mehr als 30 deutschsprachige Marketing-Kits zur Verfügung, um Sie bei der täglichen Vertriebsarbeit zu unterstützen. Und mit dem überarbeiteten und erweiterten Solutions Catalog im OPN können Sie von Endkunden ganz einfach nach Ihrem Lösungsangebot gefunden werden. Dies sind nur einige Beispiele, wie wir versuchen, Sie bei Ihrem Geschäft zu unterstützen. Ich hoffe, wir schaffen das auch weiterhin so gut wie bisher. Was das neue Fiskaljahr bringt, erfahren Sie beim EMEA Partner Kickoff am 29. Juni Normal 0 21 false false false DE 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:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; 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;} und demnächst hier im Blog. Aber soviel sei schon verraten: Meine Glückszahl ist die 13 – und Ihre? Herzlichst, Ihre Silvia Kaske Senior Direktor Alliances & Channel Tech Europe North Oracle Deutschland B.V. & Co. KG

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• December 3 is Stephanie Choyer Day

  - by rickramsey

  I don't answer Stephanie Choyer's email just so I can enjoy her French accent when she calls. "Reek! Reek! Why do joo not answer my eemails?" Without the French, life on Earth would be so much poorer. No, they don't bring to the party any motorcycles that grow chest on your hair, and the Citroen is such a frightening study in Automobile design that I don't dare climb inside one. But they have French architecture. French sidewalks. French villages. The French Alps. Grenoble. French cheese. French wine. And that glorious French accent. If I were French, I'd spend all my time enjoying being French. Which makes the work that Stephanie does day in and day with our hard-edged technologies and stubborn technologists so admirable. Oracle Solaris 11 Resources for Sysadmins and Developers The page in the link above represents the work of many people, but it was Steph who rounded them up. And it wasn't easy. I know, because I ran and hid from her on many, many occasions. But she was tireless. "Reek. Reek. Why have you not published Glynn's article? Pleeeease, you must!" Remember when tech companies gave you a simple choice? You could either read the 27,000 pages of documentation or a double-sided data sheet. Which will it be, pal? Then they started writing white papers. 74 pages of excellent prose did a beautiful job of explaining why the technology was fantastic, but never told you how to use it. Well, have you taken a look at these? How-To Technical Articles for System Admins and Developers Now you can get wicked excited about a cool technique described in a 74-page white paper, and find a technical article that shows you exactly how to use it. The wicked smart marketing folks on the Oracle Solaris team wrote them, but it was Steph who bribed them with a Cabernet or beat them over the head with a baguette until all that work was finished and posted on OTN. There are songs about French wine, but not about French vintners. There are songs about French cities, but not about French bricklayers. About French sidewalks, but not about the French policemen who keep them safe. As far as I know, there are no songs about OTN, but if there were, they would probably neglect to mention Steph. Which is why today, Dec 3rd, we celebrate Stephanie Choyer Day. We dedicate this day to our relentless, hardworking, tireless, patient and friendly French colleague with the delightful accent. If I knew how to speak French, I'd say "Thanks for all you do" in French. But I don't speak French. And I don't trust online translations. I'd probably wind up saying "My left foot yearns for curdled milk." So here it is in plain old English: Thank you, Stephanie. psssst! about that documentation and those white papers ... In case you haven't noticed, the Oracle Solaris doc team has done some pretty cool things with the Solaris docs. And those white papers are interesting reading, well worth setting aside some time. Because with Solaris, as you know, it's not just about getting by with a rudimentary grasp of the basics. It's about the amazing stuff savvy sysadmins and developers can do when they really understand it. Find them here: White Papers Documentation And don't forget training! - Rick Website Newsletter Facebook Twitter

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• Agile Manifesto, Revisited

  - by GeekAgilistMercenary

  Again, conversations give me a zillion things to write about.  The recent conversation that has cropped up again is my various viewpoints of the Agile Manifesto.  Not all the processes that came after the manifesto was written, but just the core manifesto itself.  Just for context, here is the manifesto in all the glory. We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value: Individuals and interactions over processes and tools Working software over comprehensive documentation Customer collaboration over contract negotiation Responding to change over following a plan That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more. Several of the key signatories at the time went on to write some of the core books that really gave Agile Software Development traction.  If you check out the Agile Manifesto Site and do a search for any of those people, you will find a treasure trove of software development information. My 2 Cents First off, I agree with a few people out there.  Agile is not Scrum for instance.  Do NOT get these things confused when checking out Agile, or pushing forward with Scrum.  As David Starr points out in his blog entry, "About 35 minutes into this discussion, I realized I hadn?t heard a question or comment that wasn?t related to Scrum. I asked the room, ?How many people are on an agile team that is NOT using Scrum?? 5 hands. Seriously, out of about 150 people of so. 5 hands." So know, as this is one of my biggest pet peves these days, that Scrum is not Agile.  Another quote David writes, "I assure you, dear reader, 2 week time boxes does not an agile team make." This is the exact problem.  Take a look at the actual manifesto above.  First ideal, "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools".  There are a couple of meanings in this ideal, just as there are in the other written ideals.  But this one has a lot of contention with a set practice such as Scrum.  There are other formulas, namely XP (eXtreme) and Kanban are two that come to mind often.  But none of these are Agile, but instead a process based on the ideals of Agile. Some of you may be thinking, "that?s the same thing".  Well, no, it is not.  This type of differentiation is vitally important.  Agile is a set of ideals.  Processes are nice, but they can change, they may work for some and not others.  The Agile Manifesto covers the ideals behind what is intended, that intention being to learn and find new ways to build better software. Ideals, not processes.  Definition versus implementation.  Class versus object.  The ideals are of utmost importance, the processes are secondary, the first ideal is what really lays this out for me "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools".  Yes, we need tools but we need the individuals and their interactions more. For those coming into a development team, I hope you take this to mind.  It is of utmost importance that this differentiation is known and fought for.  The second the process becomes more important than the individuals and interactions, the team will effectively lose the advantages of Agile Ideals. This is just one of my first thoughts on the topic of Agile.  I will be writing more in the near future about each of the ideals.  I will make a point to outline more of my thoughts, my opinions, and experience with the ideals of Agile and the various processes that are out there.  Maybe, I may stumble upon something new with the help of my readers?  It would be a grand overture to the ideals I hold. For the original entry, check out my personal blog with other juicy tech tidbits, rants, raves, and the like. Agilist Mercenary

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• ArchBeat Top 10 for December 2-8, 2012

  - by Bob Rhubart

  The Top 10 most-clicked items shared on the OTN ArchBeat Facebook page for the week of December 2-8, 2012 Configure Oracle SOA JMSAdatper to Work with WLS JMS Topics Another of the four posts published on Dec 4 by the Fusion Middleware A-Team blogger identified as "fip" illlustrates "how to configure the JMS Topic, the JmsAdapter connection factory, as well as the composite so that the JMS Topic messages will be evenly distributed to same composite running off different SOA cluster nodes without causing duplication." Web Service Example - Part 3: Asynchronous Part 3 in this series from the Oracle ADF Mobile blog looks at "firing the web service asynchronously and then filling in the UI when it completes." Denis says, "This can be useful when you have data on the device in a local store and want to show that to the user while the application uses lazy loading from a web service to load more data." Advanced Oracle SOA Suite Oracle Open World 2012 SOA Presentations Oracle SOA & BPM Partner Community blogger Juergen Kress shares a list of 13 SOA presentations delivered or moderated by Oracle SOA Product Management at OOW12 in San Francisco. Oracle WebLogic Server WLS Domain Browser My colleague Jeff Davies, a frequent speaker at OTN Architect Day events and a genuinely nice guy, emailed me last night with this message: "I just came across this app on Google Play. It allows WebLogic administrators to browse WLS 12c domain information. I installed it on my phone and tried it out. Works very fast." I'm an iPhone guy, but I'm perfectly comfortable taking Jeff at his word. The app is called WLS Domain Browser. Follow the link for more info from the Google Play site. Retrieve Performance Data from SOA Infrastructure Database Another of the four blog posts published on Dec 4 by very busy Oracle Fusion Middleware A-Team member "fip," this one offers "examples of some basic SQL queries you can run against the infrastructure database of Oracle SOA Suite 11G to acquire the performance statistics for a given period of time." How to Achieve OC4J RMI Load Balancing "Having returned from a customer who faced challenges with OC4J RMI load balancing, I felt there is still some confusion in the field [about] how OC4J RMI load balancing works," says the Oracle Fusion Middleware A-Team member known only as "fip." "Hence I decide to dust off an old tech note that I wrote a few years back and share it with the general public." From XaaS to Java EE – Which damn cloud is right for me in 2012? Oracle ACE Director Markus Eisele wrestles with a timely technical issue and shares his observations on several of the alternatives. Exalogic 2.0.1 Tea Break Snippets - Creating a ModifyJeOS VirtualBox "One of the main advantages of this is that Templates can be created away from the Exalogic Environment," explains The Old Toxophilist. (BTW: I had to look it up: a toxophilist is one who collects bows and arrows.) ADF Mobile - Implementing Reusable Mobile Architecture "Reusability was always a strong part of ADF," says Oracle ACE Director Andrejus Baranovskis. "The same high reusability level is supported now in ADF Mobile." The objective of this post is "to prove technically that [the] reusable architecture concept works for ADF Mobile." Using BPEL Performance Statistics to Diagnose Performance Bottlenecks Someone had a busy day… This post, one of four published on DeC 4 by a member of the Oracle Fusion Middleware A-Team identified only as "fip," offers details on how to "enable, retrieve and interpret the performance statistics, before the future versions provides a more pleasant user experience." Thought for the Day "If you're afraid to change something it is clearly poorly designed." — Martin Fowler Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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• Speeding up procedural texture generation

  - by FalconNL

  Recently I've begun working on a game that takes place in a procedurally generated solar system. After a bit of a learning curve (having neither worked with Scala, OpenGL 2 ES or Libgdx before), I have a basic tech demo going where you spin around a single procedurally textured planet: The problem I'm running into is the performance of the texture generation. A quick overview of what I'm doing: a planet is a cube that has been deformed to a sphere. To each side, a n x n (e.g. 256 x 256) texture is applied, which are bundled in one 8n x n texture that is sent to the fragment shader. The last two spaces are not used, they're only there to make sure the width is a power of 2. The texture is currently generated on the CPU, using the updated 2012 version of the simplex noise algorithm linked to in the paper 'Simplex noise demystified'. The scene I'm using to test the algorithm contains two spheres: the planet and the background. Both use a greyscale texture consisting of six octaves of 3D simplex noise, so for example if we choose 128x128 as the texture size there are 128 x 128 x 6 x 2 x 6 = about 1.2 million calls to the noise function. The closest you will get to the planet is about what's shown in the screenshot and since the game's target resolution is 1280x720 that means I'd prefer to use 512x512 textures. Combine that with the fact the actual textures will of course be more complicated than basic noise (There will be a day and night texture, blended in the fragment shader based on sunlight, and a specular mask. I need noise for continents, terrain color variation, clouds, city lights, etc.) and we're looking at something like 512 x 512 x 6 x 3 x 15 = 70 million noise calls for the planet alone. In the final game, there will be activities when traveling between planets, so a wait of 5 or 10 seconds, possibly 20, would be acceptable since I can calculate the texture in the background while traveling, though obviously the faster the better. Getting back to our test scene, performance on my PC isn't too terrible, though still too slow considering the final result is going to be about 60 times worse: 128x128 : 0.1s 256x256 : 0.4s 512x512 : 1.7s This is after I moved all performance-critical code to Java, since trying to do so in Scala was a lot worse. Running this on my phone (a Samsung Galaxy S3), however, produces a more problematic result: 128x128 : 2s 256x256 : 7s 512x512 : 29s Already far too long, and that's not even factoring in the fact that it'll be minutes instead of seconds in the final version. Clearly something needs to be done. Personally, I see a few potential avenues, though I'm not particularly keen on any of them yet: Don't precalculate the textures, but let the fragment shader calculate everything. Probably not feasible, because at one point I had the background as a fullscreen quad with a pixel shader and I got about 1 fps on my phone. Use the GPU to render the texture once, store it and use the stored texture from then on. Upside: might be faster than doing it on the CPU since the GPU is supposed to be faster at floating point calculations. Downside: effects that cannot (easily) be expressed as functions of simplex noise (e.g. gas planet vortices, moon craters, etc.) are a lot more difficult to code in GLSL than in Scala/Java. Calculate a large amount of noise textures and ship them with the application. I'd like to avoid this if at all possible. Lower the resolution. Buys me a 4x performance gain, which isn't really enough plus I lose a lot of quality. Find a faster noise algorithm. If anyone has one I'm all ears, but simplex is already supposed to be faster than perlin. Adopt a pixel art style, allowing for lower resolution textures and fewer noise octaves. While I originally envisioned the game in this style, I've come to prefer the realistic approach. I'm doing something wrong and the performance should already be one or two orders of magnitude better. If this is the case, please let me know. If anyone has any suggestions, tips, workarounds, or other comments regarding this problem I'd love to hear them.

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• Part 9: EBS Customizations, how to track

  - by volker.eckardt(at)oracle.com

  In the previous blogs we were concentrating on the preparation tasks. We have defined standards, we know about the tools and techniques we will start with. Additionally, we have defined the modification strategy, and how to handle such topics best. Now we are ready to take the requirements! Such requirements coming over in spreadsheets, word files (like GAP documents), or in any other format. As we have to assign some attributes, we start numbering all that and assign a short name to each of these requirements (=CEMLI reference). We may also have already a Functional person assigned, and we might involve someone from the tech team to estimate, and we like to assign a status such as 'planned', 'estimated' etc. All these data are usually kept in spreadsheets, but I would put them into a database (yes, I am from Oracle :). If you don't have any good looking and centralized application already, please give a try with Oracle APEX. It should be up and running in a day and the imported sheets are than manageable concurrently!  For one of my clients I have created this CEMLI-DB; in between enriched with a lot of additional functionality, but initially it was just a simple centralized CEMLI tracking application. Why I am pointing out again the centralized method to manage such data? Well, your data quality will dramatically increase, if you let your project members see (also review and update) "your" data.  APEX allows you to filter, sort, print, and also export. And if you can spend some time to define proper value lists, everyone will gain from. APEX allows you to work in 'agile' mode, means you can improve your application step by step. Let's say you like to reference a document, or even upload the same, you can do that. Or, you need to classify the CEMLIs by release, just add this release field, same for business area or CEMLI type. One CEMLI record may then look like this: Prepare one or two (online) reports, to be ready to present your "workload" to the project management. Use such extracts also when you work offline (to prioritize etc.). But as soon as you are again connected, feed the data back into the central application. Note: I have combined this application with an additional issue tracker.  Here the most important element is the CEMLI reference, which acts as link to any other application (if you are not using APEX also as issue tracker :).  Please spend a minute to define such a reference (see blog Part 8: How to name Customizations).   Summary: Building the bridge from Gap analyse to the development has to be done in a controlled way. Usually the information is provided differently, but it is suggested to collect all requirements centrally. Oracle APEX is a great solution to enter and maintain such information in a structured, but flexible way. APEX helped me a lot to work with distributed development teams during the complete development cycle.

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• Are there too many qualified software development engineers chasing too few jobs?

  - by T Gregory

  I am trying to write this question in a non-argumentative way, but it is quite emotionally charged for some, so please bear with me. In the U.S., we hear constantly from CEOs that they cannot find enough qualified software engineers. In fact, it is the position of the U.S. government that demand for software engineering talent outpaces supply. This position can be clearly seen in the granting of tens of thousands of H1B visas, but also in the following excerpt from the official 2010-11 Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook: Employment of computer software engineers is expected to increase by 32 percent from 2008-2018, which is much faster than the average for all occupations. In addition, this occupation will see a large number of new jobs, with more than 295,000 created between 2008 and 2018. Demand for computer software engineers will increase as computer networking continues to grow. For example, expanding Internet technologies have spurred demand for computer software engineers who can develop Internet, intranet, and World Wide Web applications. Likewise, electronic data-processing systems in business, telecommunications, healthcare, government, and other settings continue to become more sophisticated and complex. Implementing, safeguarding, and updating computer systems and resolving problems will fuel the demand for growing numbers of systems software engineers. New growth areas will also continue to arise from rapidly evolving technologies. The increasing uses of the Internet, the proliferation of Web sites, and mobile technology such as the wireless Internet have created a demand for a wide variety of new products. As more software is offered over the Internet, and as businesses demand customized software to meet their specific needs, applications and systems software engineers will be needed in greater numbers. In addition, the growing use of handheld computers will create demand for new mobile applications and software systems. As these devices become a larger part of the business environment, it will be necessary to integrate current computer systems with this new, more mobile technology. However, from the the employee side of the equation, we often hear the opposite. Many of the stories of SDEs with graduate degrees and decades of experience on the unemployment line, or the big tech interview war stories, are anecdotal, for sure. But, there is one piece of data that is neither anecdotal nor transitory, and that is the aggregate decisions of millions of undergraduates of what degree to pursue. Here, a different picture emerges from the data, and that picture is not good for the software profession. According the most recent Taulbee Survey from Computer Research Association, undergrad degree production in CS and CE has fallen nearly 60% since 2004. (Undergrad enrollments have ticked up in the past two years, but only modestly). Here we see that a basic disconnect between what corporate CEOs and the US government are saying and what potential employees really think about job prospects in software engineering. So my questions are these. Who are we to believe? Is there an acute talent shortage, or is there a long-term structural oversupply in the SDE labor market? Can anyone provide reliable data on long-term unemployment among SDEs? How many are leaving the profession due to lack of work? Real data is most helpful. Thanks.

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• Java Spotlight Episode 76: Pro Java FX2 - A Definative Guide to Rich Clients with Java Technology

  - by Roger Brinkley

  Tweet An interview with the authors of Pro Java FX2: A Definative Guide to Rich Clients with Java Technology. Right-click or Control-click to download this MP3 file. You can also subscribe to the Java Spotlight Podcast Feed to get the latest podcast automatically. If you use iTunes you can open iTunes and subscribe with this link:  Java Spotlight Podcast in iTunes. Show Notes News Angela Caicedo has created 3 new Java FX screen cast videos on java UTube channel: Part 1: Building your First Java FX Application with Netbeans 7.1, Part 2: Building your First Java FX Application with Netbeans 7.1, and Getting Started with Scene Builder.  Events March 26-29, EclipseCon, Reston, USA March 27, Virtual Developer Days - Java (Asia Pacific (English)),9:30 am to 2:00pm IST / 12:00pm to 4.30pm SGT  / 3.00pm - 7.30pm AEDT April 4-5, JavaOne Japan, Tokyo, Japan April 12, GreenJUG, Greenville, SC April 17-18, JavaOne Russia, Moscow Russia April 18–20, Devoxx France, Paris, France April 26, Mix-IT, Lyon, France, May 3-4, JavaOne India, Hyderabad, India Feature InterviewPro JavaFX 2: A Definitive Guide to Rich Clients with Java Technology is available from Amazon.com in either paperback or on the Kindle.James L. (Jim) Weaver is a Java and JavaFX developer, author, and speaker with a passion for helping rich-client Java and JavaFX become preferred technologies for new application development. Books that Jim has authored include Inside Java, Beginning J2EE, and Pro JavaFX Platform, with the latter being updated to cover JavaFX 2.0. His professional background includes 15 years as a systems architect at EDS, and the same number of years as an independent developer. Jim is an international speaker at software technology conferences, including the JavaOne conferences in San Francisco and São Paulo. Jim blogs at http://javafxpert.com, tweets @javafxpert. Weiqi Gao is a principal software engineer with Object Computing, Inc., in St. Louis, MO. He has more than 18 years of software development experience and has been using Java technology since 1998. He is interested in programming languages, object-oriented systems, distributed computing, and graphical user interfaces. He is a presenter and a member of the steering committee of the St. Louis Java Users Group. Weiqi holds a PhD in mathematics. Stephen Chin is chief agile methodologist at GXS and a technical expert in client UI technologies. He is lead author on the Pro Android Flash title and coauthored the Pro JavaFX Platform title, which is the leading technical reference for JavaFX. In addition, Stephen runs the very successful Silicon Valley JavaFX User Group, which has hundreds of members and tens of thousands of online viewers. Finally, he is a Java Champion, chair of the OSCON Java conference, and an internationally recognized speaker featured at Devoxx, Codemash, AnDevCon, Jazoon, and JavaOne, where he received a Rock Star Award. Stephen can be followed on twitter @steveonjava and reached via his blog: http://steveonjava.com.Dean Iverson has been writing software professionally for more than 15 years. He is employed by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, where he is a rich client application developer. He also has a small software consultancy called Pleasing Software Solutions, which he cofounded with his wife. Johan Vos started to work with Java in 1995. As part of the Blackdown team, he helped port Java to Linux. With LodgON, the company he cofounded, he has been mainly working on Java-based solutions for social networking software. Because he can't make a choice between embedded development and enterprise development, his main focus is on end-to-end Java, combining the strengths of backend systems and embedded devices. His favorite technologies are currently Java EE/Glassfish at the backend and JavaFX at the frontend. Johan's blog can be followed at http://blogs.lodgon.com/johan, he tweets at http://twitter.com/johanvos. Mail Bag What’s Cool Gerrit Grunwald's SteelSeries FX Experience Tools Canned Animations ComboBox

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• Archbeat Link-O-Rama Top 10 Facebook Faves for October 20-26, 2013

  - by OTN ArchBeat

  Here's this week's list of the Top 10 items shared on the OTN ArchBeat Facebook Page from October 27 - November 2, 2013. Visualizing and Process (Twitter) Events in Real Time with Oracle Coherence | Noah Arliss This OTN Virtual Developer Day session explores in detail how to create a dynamic HTML5 Web application that interacts with Oracle Coherence as it’s processing events in real time, using the Avatar project and Oracle Coherence’s Live Events feature. Part of OTN Virtual Developer Day: Harnessing the Power of Oracle WebLogic and Oracle Coherence, November 5, 2013. 9am to 1pm PT / 12pm to 4pm ET / 1pm to 5pm BRT. Register now! HTML5 Application Development with Oracle WebLogic Server | Doug Clarke This free OTN Virtual Developer Day session covers the support for WebSockets, RESTful data services, and JSON infrastructure available in Oracle WebLogic Server. Part of OTN Virtual Developer Day: Harnessing the Power of Oracle WebLogic and Oracle Coherence, November 5, 2013. 9am to 1pm PT / 12pm to 4pm ET / 1pm to 5pm BRT. Register now! Video: ADF BC and REST services | Frederic Desbiens Spend a few minutes with Oracle ADF principal product manager Frederic Desbiens and learn how to publish ADF Business Components as RESTful web services. One Client Two Clusters | David Felcey "Sometimes its desirable to have a client connect to multiple clusters, either because the data is dispersed or for instance the clusters are in different locations for high availability," says David Felcey. David shows you how in this post, which includes a simple example. Exceptions Handling and Notifications in ODI | Christophe Dupupet Oracle Fusion Middleware A-Team director Christophe Dupupet reviews the techniques that are available in Oracle Data Integrator to guarantee that the appropriate individuals are notified in the event that ODI processes are impacted by network outages or other mishaps. Securing WebSocket applications on Glassfish | Pavel Bucek WebSocket is a key capability standardized into Java EE 7. Many developers wonder how WebSockets can be secured. One very nice characteristic for WebSocket is that it in fact completely piggybacks on HTTP. In this post Pavel Bucek demonstrates how to secure WebSocket endpoints in GlassFish using TLS/SSL. Oracle Coherence, Split-Brain and Recovery Protocols In Detail | Ricardo Ferreira Ricardo Ferreira's article "provides a high level conceptual overview of Split-Brain scenarios in distributed systems," focusing on a "specific example of cluster communication failure and recovery in Oracle Coherence." Non-programmatic Authentication Using Login Form in JSF (For WebCenter & ADF) | JayJay Zheng Oracle ACE JayJay Zheng shares an approach that "avoids the programmatic authentication and works great for having a custom login page developed in WebCenter Portal integrated with OAM authentication." The latest article in the Industrial SOA series looks at mobile computing and how companies are developing SOA to go. http://pub.vitrue.com/PUxT Tech Article: SOA in Real Life: Mobile Solutions The ACE Director Thing | Dr. Frank Munz Frank Munz finally gets around to blogging about achieving Oracle ACE Director status and shares some interesting insight into what will change—and what won't—thanks to that new status. A good, short read for those interested in learning more about the Oracle ACE program. Thought for the Day "Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there." — Will Rogers, American humorist (November 4, 1879 – August 15, 1935) Source: brainyquote.com

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• UPK Hands-on Labs at OHUG

  - by Karen Rihs

  Going to OHUG, June 18-22? Be sure to attend one or more UPK hands-on labs! Choose from Basic, Advanced, What's New, and Prebuilt Content!   Oracle User Productivity Kit 11.1 Workshop – Basic Stephen Armbruster, Oracle Corporation June 19, 2012, 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. June 20, 2012, 4:30 – 5:30 p.m. The User Productivity Kit (UPK) is a comprehensive, cost-effective, customizable solution that helps your organization quickly create the critical documentation, training, and support materials needed to drive project team and user productivity throughout the lifecycle of your software. The User Productivity Kit provides system process documentation, user acceptance test scripts, comprehensive instructor-led training materials, web-based training materials, role-based performance support, and complete documentation. Also provided is the UPK Developer, which serves as a single-source development and customization tool to enable rapid content creation and customization. The User Productivity Kit delivers: Business process documentation for fit-gap analysis - providing time and cost savings that jump-start your implementation or upgrade User Acceptance test scripts to help test applications prior to go-live State-of-the-art instructional design tools to rapidly build and tailor documentation, instructor-led training materials, and web-based training to fit organizational needs Live-application performance support with transactional and procedural information to maximize user efficiency. By registering for this hands-on UPK workshop, participants will use UPK to build an application job aid and simulation that can be used as performance support for the application. But hurry, space is limited! Oracle User Productivity Kit 11.1 Workshop – Advanced Stephen Armbruster, Oracle Corporation June 20, 2012, 1:30 – 2:30 p.m. This special workshop is for those already familiar with UPK and will cover advanced concepts. In this workshop, you will gain an in-depth knowledge of working with the UPK Developer. Following this workshop, you will be able to: Create publishing categories Add a logo to a publishing project Publish using the newly created category Configure your own library view Manage topic history in a multi-user environment Oracle User Productivity Kit 11.1 Workshop – What’s NEW! Stephen Armbruster, Oracle Corporation June 19, 2012, 1:30 – 2:30 p.m. June 21, 2012, 1:00 – 2:00 p.m. This special workshop is for those already familiar with UPK and will focus on the new features included in the latest version 11.1. In this workshop, you will review most of the new features included in the UPK Developer. Oracle User Productivity Kit 11.1 Workshop – Prebuilt Content Stephen Armbruster, Oracle Corporation June 19, 2012, 4:30 – 5:30 p.m. June 21, 2012, 2:15 – 3:15 p.m. This special workshop is for those already familiar with UPK and will focus on the latest version 11.1. At the end of this workshop, you will be able to demonstrate how to: Import prebuilt content Modify content frames Add a decision frame Translate a topic into Spanish Stephen Armbruster is a principal sales consultant, specializing in HCM and UPK applications for Oracle over the past twelve years. In addition to his current role, he serves as an ambassador for the Fusion User Experience (UX) team and is tasked with evangelizing the UX for end users across all Oracle brands (Fusion, PSFT, JDE, and EBS).  He is also a trusted advisor to Oracle’s Product Management teams related to Learning Management Systems (LMS). Prior to joining Oracle, he was an instructor as well as an instructional technologist working in the medical diagnostics, high tech, and information management industries. As an expert in both LMS and UPK, he regularly speaks at Oracle conferences including Oracle OpenWorld and OHUG on topics that span using Oracle solutions to accomplish employee training, certification, and user adoption. His presentations are both entertaining and engaging.

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• A tiny Utility to recycle an IIS Application Pool

  - by Rick Strahl

  In the last few weeks I've annoyingly been having problems with an area on my Web site. It's basically ancient articles that are using ASP classic pages and for reasons unknown ASP classic locks up on these pages frequently. It's not an individual page, but ALL ASP classic pages lock up. Ah yes, gotta old tech gone bad. It's not super critical since the content is really old, but still a hassle since it's linked content that still gets quite a bit of traffic. When it happens all ASP classic in that AppPool dies. I've been having a hard time tracking this one down - I suspect an errant COM object I have a Web Monitor running on the server that's checking for failures and while the monitor can detect the failures when the timeouts occur, I didn't have a good way to just restart that particular application pool. I started putzing around with PowerShell, but - as so often seems the case - I can never get the PowerShell syntax right - I just don't use it enough and have to dig out cheat sheets etc. In any case, after about 20 minutes of that I decided to just create a small .NET Console Application that does the trick instead, and in a few minutes I had this:using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Text; using System.DirectoryServices; namespace RecycleApplicationPool { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { string appPoolName = "DefaultAppPool"; string machineName = "LOCALHOST"; if (args.Length > 0) appPoolName = args[0]; if (args.Length > 1) machineName = args[1]; string error = null; DirectoryEntry root = null; try { Console.WriteLine("Restarting Application Pool " + appPoolName + " on " + machineName + "..."); root = new DirectoryEntry("IIS://" + machineName + "/W3SVC/AppPools/" +appPoolName); Console.WriteLine(root.InvokeGet("Name")); root.Invoke("Recycle"); Console.WriteLine("Application Pool recycling complete..."); } catch(Exception ex) { error = "Error: Unable to access AppPool: " + ex.Message; } if ( !string.IsNullOrEmpty(error) ) { Console.WriteLine(error); return; } } } } To run in you basically provide the name of the ApplicationPool and optionally a machine name if it's not on the local box. RecyleApplicationPool.exe "WestWindArticles" And off it goes. What's nice about AppPool recycling versus doing a full IISRESET is that it only affects the AppPool, and more importantly AppPool recycles happen in a staggered fashion - the existing instance isn't shut down immediately until requests finish while a new instance is fired up to handle new requests. So, now I can easily plug this Executable into my West Wind Web Monitor as an action to take when the site is not responding or timing out which is a big improvement than hanging for an unspecified amount of time. I'm posting this fairly trivial bit of code just in case somebody (maybe myself a few months down the road) is searching for ApplicationPool recyling code. It's clearly trivial, but I've written batch files for this a bunch of times before and actually having a small utility around without having to worry whether Powershell is installed and configured right is actually an improvement. Next time I think about using PowerShell remind me that it's just easier to just build a small .NET Console app, 'k? :-) Resources Download Executable and VS Project© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in IIS7  .NET  Windows   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• Announcing Oracle Knowledge 8.5: Even Superheroes Need Upgrades

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  It’s no secret that we like Iron Man here at Oracle. We've certainly got stuff in common: one of the world’s largest technology companies and one of the world’s strongest technology-driven superheroes. If you've seen the recent Iron Man movies, you might have even noticed some of our servers sitting in Tony Stark’s lab. Heck, our CEO made a cameo appearance in one of the movies. Yeah, we’re fans. Especially as Iron Man is a regular guy with some amazing technology – like us. But Like all great things even Superheroes need upgrades, whether it’s their suit, their car or their spacestation. Oracle certainly has its share of advanced technology.  For example, Oracle acquired InQuira in 2011 after years of watching the company advance the science of Knowledge Management.  And it was some extremely super technology.  At that time, Forrester’s Kate Leggett wrote about it in ‘Standalone Knowledge Management Is Dead With Oracle's Announcement To Acquire InQuira’ saying ‘Knowledge, accessible via web self-service or agent UIs, is a critical customer service component for industries fielding repetitive questions about policies, procedures, products, and solutions.’  One short sentence that amounts to a very tall order.  Since the acquisition our KM scientists have been hard at work in their labs. Today Oracle announced its first major knowledge management release since its acquisition of InQuira: Oracle Knowledge 8.5. We’ve put a massively-upgraded supersuit on our KM solution because we still have bad guys to fight. And we are very proud to say that we went way beyond our original plans. So what, exactly, did we do in Oracle Knowledge 8.5? We did what any high-tech super-scientist would do. We made Oracle Knowledge smarter, stronger and faster. First, we gave Oracle Knowledge a stronger heart: Certified on Oracle technologies, including Oracle WebLogic Server, Oracle Business Intelligence, Oracle Exadata Database Machine and Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud. Huge scaling and performance improvements. Then we gave it a better reach: Improved iConnect functionality that delivers contextualized knowledge directly into CRM applications. Better content acquisition support across disparate sources. Enhanced Language Support including Natural Language search support for 16 Languages. Enhanced Keyword Search for 23 authoring languages, as well as enhanced out-of-the-box industry ontologies covering 14 languages. And finally we made Oracle Knowledge ridiculously smarter: Improved Natural Language Search and a new Contextual Answer Delivery that understands the true intent of each inquiry to deliver the best possible answers. AnswerFlow for Guided Navigation & Answer Delivery, a new application for guided troubleshooting and answer delivery. Knowledge Analytics standardized on Oracle’s Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition. Knowledge Analytics Dashboards optimized search and content creation through targeted, actionable insights. A new three-level language model "Global - Language - Locale" that provides an improved search experience for organizations with a global footprint. We believe that Oracle Knowledge 8.5 is the most sophisticated KM solution in existence today and we’ve worked very hard to help it fulfill the promise of KM: empowering customers and employees with deep insights wherever they need them. We hope you agree it’s a suit worth wearing. We are continuing to invest in Knowledge Management as it continues to be especially relevant today with the enterprise push for peer collaboration, crowd-sourced wisdom, agile innovation, social interaction channels, applied real-time analytics, and personalization. In fact, we believe that Knowledge Management is a critical part of the Customer Experience portfolio for success. From empowering employee’s, to empowering customers, to gaining the insights from interactions across all channels, businesses today cannot efficiently scale their efforts, strengthen their customer relationships or achieve their growth goals without a solid Knowledge Management foundation to build from. And like every good superhero saga, we’re not even close to being finished. Next we are taking Oracle Knowledge into the Cloud. Yes, we’re thinking what you’re thinking: ROCKET BOOTS! Stay tuned for the next adventure… By Nav Chakravarti, Vice-President, Product Management, CRM Knowledge and previously the CTO of InQuira, a knowledge management company acquired by Oracle in 2011

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• LexisNexis and Oracle Join Forces to Prevent Fraud and Identity Abuse

  - by Tanu Sood

  Author: Mark Karlstrand About the Writer:Mark Karlstrand is a Senior Product Manager at Oracle focused on innovative security for enterprise web and mobile applications. Over the last sixteen years Mark has served as director in a number of tech startups before joining Oracle in 2007. Working with a team of talented architects and engineers Mark developed Oracle Adaptive Access Manager, a best of breed access security solution.The world’s top enterprise software company and the world leader in data driven solutions have teamed up to provide a new integrated security solution to prevent fraud and misuse of identities. LexisNexis Risk Solutions, a Gold level member of Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN), today announced it has achieved Oracle Validated Integration of its Instant Authenticate product with Oracle Identity Management.Oracle provides the most complete Identity and Access Management platform. The only identity management provider to offer advanced capabilities including device fingerprinting, location intelligence, real-time risk analysis, context-aware authentication and authorization makes the Oracle offering unique in the industry. LexisNexis Risk Solutions provides the industry leading Instant Authenticate dynamic knowledge based authentication (KBA) service which offers customers a secure and cost effective means to authenticate new user or prove authentication for password resets, lockouts and such scenarios. Oracle and LexisNexis now offer an integrated solution that combines the power of the most advanced identity management platform and superior data driven user authentication to stop identity fraud in its tracks and, in turn, offer significant operational cost savings. The solution offers the ability to challenge users with dynamic knowledge based authentication based on the risk of an access request or transaction thereby offering an additional level to other authentication methods such as static challenge questions or one-time password when needed. For example, with Oracle Identity Management self-service, the forgotten password reset workflow utilizes advanced capabilities including device fingerprinting, location intelligence, risk analysis and one-time password (OTP) via short message service (SMS) to secure this sensitive flow. Even when a user has lost or misplaced his/her mobile phone and, therefore, cannot receive the SMS, the new integrated solution eliminates the need to contact the help desk. The Oracle Identity Management platform dynamically switches to use the LexisNexis Instant Authenticate service for authentication if the user is not able to authenticate via OTP. The advanced Oracle and LexisNexis integrated solution, thus, both improves user experience and saves money by avoiding unnecessary help desk calls. Oracle Identity and Access Management secures applications, Juniper SSL VPN and other web resources with a thoroughly modern layered and context-aware platform. Users don't gain access just because they happen to have a valid username and password. An enterprise utilizing the Oracle solution has the ability to predicate access based on the specific context of the current situation. The device, location, temporal data, and any number of other attributes are evaluated in real-time to determine the specific risk at that moment. If the risk is elevated a user can be challenged for additional authentication, refused access or allowed access with limited privileges. The LexisNexis Instant Authenticate dynamic KBA service plugs into the Oracle platform to provide an additional layer of security by validating a user's identity in high risk access or transactions. The large and varied pool of data the LexisNexis solution utilizes to quiz a user makes this challenge mechanism even more robust. This strong combination of Oracle and LexisNexis user authentication capabilities greatly mitigates the risk of exposing sensitive applications and services on the Internet which helps an enterprise grow their business with confidence.Resources:Press release: LexisNexis® Achieves Oracle Validated Integration with Oracle Identity Management Oracle Access Management (HTML)Oracle Adaptive Access Manager (pdf)

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama Top 10 for October 28 - November 3, 2012

  - by Bob Rhubart

  The Top 10 most popular items shared on the OTN ArchBeat Facebook Page for the week of Oct 28 - Nov 3, 2012. Eventually, 90% of tech budgets will be outside IT departments | ZDNet Another interesting post from ZDNet blogger Joe McKendrick about changing roles in IT. ADF Mobile - Login Functionality | Andrejus Baranovskis "The new ADF Mobile approach with native deployment is cool when you want to access phone functionality (camera, email, sms and etc.), also when you want to build mobile applications with advanced UI," reports Oracle ACE Director Andrejus Baranovskis. Mobile Development Platform Strategy Chart: ADF Mobile, WebCenter Sites, Portal, Content and Social "Unlike desktop web focused efforts, the world of mobile has undergone change at a feverish pace," says social enterprise expert John Brunswick. His extensive post charts various resources that will help you keep up. ADF Essentials - The Bare Necessities | Floyd Teter The experiment is over… And now Oracle ACE Director Floyd Teter shares his impressions after spending some time with Oracle ADF Essentials, the free version of Oracle ADF. A review of Oracle SOA Suite 11g Administrator’s Handbook | RedStack "More so than any other single piece of content that I have seen on the topic, it provides the information that a SOA administrator needs to know in order to successfully configure, manage, monitor, troubleshoot and backup an Oracle SOA environment." So says Oracle Fusion Middleware A-Team solution architect Mark Nelson of Oracle SOA Suite 11g Administrator’s Handbook, by Ahmed Aboulnaga and Arun Pareek. Expanding the Oracle Enterprise Repository with functional documentation Capgemini middleware specialist Marc Kuijpers shares information on how Oracle Enterprise Repository can be configured "to contain functional assets, i.e. functional designs, use cases and a logical data model" to aid in SOA governance efforts. Podcast: Are You Future Proof? - Part 2 In Part 2, practicing architects and Oracle ACE Directors Ron Batra (AT&T), Basheer Khan (Innowave Technology), and Ronald van Luttikhuizen discuss re-tooling one’s skill set to reflect changes in enterprise IT, including the knowledge to steer stakeholders around the hype to what’s truly valuable. Easy way to access JPA with REST (JSON / XML) | Edwin Biemond Oracle ACE Edwin Biemond shows you "what is possible with JPA-RS, how easy it is and howto setup your own EclipseLink REST service." Clustering ODI11g for High-Availability Part 1: Introduction and Architecture | Richard Yeardley "JEE agents can be deployed alongside, or instead of, standalone agents," says Rittman Meade's Richard Yeardley. "But there is one key advantage in using JEE agents and WebLogic: when you deploy JEE agents as part of a WebLogic cluster they can be configured together to form a high availability cluster." Learn more in Yeardley's extensive post. 2012 IOUG Virtualization SIG – Online Symposium on Nov 7 and Nov 8 | Kai Yu Oracle ACE Director Kai Yu shares information on this week's IOUG Virtualization SIG online event. Does that make it a virtual virtualization event? Thought for the Day "If McDonalds were run like a software company, one out of every hundred Big Macs would give you food poisoning — and the response would be, 'We’re sorry, here’s a coupon for two more.'" — Mark Minasi Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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• Announcing Oracle Knowledge 8.5: Even Superheroes Need Upgrades

  - by Chris Warner

  It’s no secret that we like Iron Man here at Oracle. We've certainly got stuff in common: one of the world’s largest technology companies and one of the world’s strongest technology-driven superheroes. If you've seen the recent Iron Man movies, you might have even noticed some of our servers sitting in Tony Stark’s lab. Heck, our CEO made a cameo appearance in one of the movies. Yeah, we’re fans. Especially as Iron Man is a regular guy with some amazing technology – like us. But Like all great things even Superheroes need upgrades, whether it’s their suit, their car or their spacestation. Oracle certainly has its share of advanced technology.  For example, Oracle acquired InQuira in 2011 after years of watching the company advance the science of Knowledge Management.  And it was some extremely super technology.  At that time, Forrester’s Kate Leggett wrote about it in ‘Standalone Knowledge Management Is Dead With Oracle's Announcement To Acquire InQuira’ saying ‘Knowledge, accessible via web self-service or agent UIs, is a critical customer service component for industries fielding repetitive questions about policies, procedures, products, and solutions.’  One short sentence that amounts to a very tall order.  Since the acquisition our KM scientists have been hard at work in their labs. Today Oracle announced its first major knowledge management release since its acquisition of InQuira: Oracle Knowledge 8.5. We’ve put a massively-upgraded supersuit on our KM solution because we still have bad guys to fight. And we are very proud to say that we went way beyond our original plans. So what, exactly, did we do in Oracle Knowledge 8.5? We did what any high-tech super-scientist would do. We made Oracle Knowledge smarter, stronger and faster. First, we gave Oracle Knowledge a stronger heart: Certified on Oracle technologies, including Oracle WebLogic Server, Oracle Business Intelligence, Oracle Exadata Database Machine and Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud. Huge scaling and performance improvements. Then we gave it a better reach: Improved iConnect functionality that delivers contextualized knowledge directly into CRM applications. Better content acquisition support across disparate sources. Enhanced Language Support including Natural Language search support for 16 Languages. Enhanced Keyword Search for 23 authoring languages, as well as enhanced out-of-the-box industry ontologies covering 14 languages. And finally we made Oracle Knowledge ridiculously smarter: Improved Natural Language Search and a new Contextual Answer Delivery that understands the true intent of each inquiry to deliver the best possible answers. AnswerFlow for Guided Navigation & Answer Delivery, a new application for guided troubleshooting and answer delivery. Knowledge Analytics standardized on Oracle’s Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition. Knowledge Analytics Dashboards optimized search and content creation through targeted, actionable insights. A new three-level language model "Global - Language - Locale" that provides an improved search experience for organizations with a global footprint. We believe that Oracle Knowledge 8.5 is the most sophisticated KM solution in existence today and we’ve worked very hard to help it fulfill the promise of KM: empowering customers and employees with deep insights wherever they need them. We hope you agree it’s a suit worth wearing. We are continuing to invest in Knowledge Management as it continues to be especially relevant today with the enterprise push for peer collaboration, crowd-sourced wisdom, agile innovation, social interaction channels, applied real-time analytics, and personalization. In fact, we believe that Knowledge Management is a critical part of the Customer Experience portfolio for success. From empowering employee’s, to empowering customers, to gaining the insights from interactions across all channels, businesses today cannot efficiently scale their efforts, strengthen their customer relationships or achieve their growth goals without a solid Knowledge Management foundation to build from. And like every good superhero saga, we’re not even close to being finished. Next we are taking Oracle Knowledge into the Cloud. Yes, we’re thinking what you’re thinking: ROCKET BOOTS! Stay tuned for the next adventure… By Nav Chakravarti, Vice-President, Product Management, CRM Knowledge and previously the CTO of InQuira, a knowledge management company acquired by Oracle in 2011. 

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• How to Get Windows 7 Theme Wallpapers Without Installing Them

  - by Mysticgeek

  Are you using an older version of Windows but like the Windows 7 theme wallpapers? What if you have Windows 7 but you don’t want to install the themes just to get the wallpapers? Here is how to get them without having to install themes. This guest article was written by Ryan Dozier from the Doztech tech blog. Getting the Wallpaper on XP, Vista, or Windows 7 First download and install 7-zip on your machine (link below). After you’ve installed 7-zip, download a Windows 7 theme (link below) and right-click on the theme, select 7-Zip, and Extract to “Theme Name”… A new folder will appear with the theme name on it. When you open it, there will be a folder called DesktopBackground or something similar.   Open the folder to get the wallpapers to view the wallpapers for the theme. You can delete the extra files and just keep the wallpapers!   Getting the Wallpaper on Ubuntu Extracting the wallpaper on Ubuntu can be a little tricky. Just follow these steps and you will be able to do it. First go to the Ubuntu Software Center under the Applications menu. Search for 7zip and click on the arrow to go to the applications menu. Find the Install button and click it. It will take a couple of minutes for 7zip to install. After 7zip installs, close the Ubuntu Software Center and download a Windows 7 theme. Store it somewhere you can access it quickly. Right-click on the theme and select Rename and get rid of the themepack extension and replace it with zip. The file should be “Theme Name.zip” after you rename it. Right-click on the theme and click Extract Here. After  the extracting you will have a new folder with the theme name. Open it and go into the DesktopBackground folder to get the wallpapers. You can delete the extra files and just keep the wallpapers. If you want to get the new Windows 7 Themes Wallpapers, but don’t want to search and install them separately, this is a nice workaround. Links Get 7 zip for Windows  here Get Windows 7 Themes here Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Windows 7 Welcome Screen Taking Forever? Here’s the Fix (Maybe)Desktop Fun: Starship Theme WallpapersDesktop Fun: Underwater Theme WallpapersDesktop Fun: Forest Theme WallpapersDesktop Fun: Fantasy Theme Wallpapers 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 VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Cool Looking Skins for Windows Media Player 12 Move the Mouse Pointer With Your Face Movement Using eViacam Boot Windows Faster With Boot Performance Diagnostics Create Ringtones For Your Android Phone With RingDroid Enhance Your Laptop’s Battery Life With These Tips Easily Search Food Recipes With Recipe Chimp

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• NHibernate 3.0 and FluentNHibernate, how to get up and running&hellip;.

  - by DesigningCode

  First up. Its actually really easy. I’m not very religious about my DB tech, I don’t really care, I just want something that works.  So I’m happy to consider all options if they provide an advantage, and recently I was considering jumping from NHibernate to EF 4.0.  However before ditching NHibernate and jumping to EF 4.0 I thought I should try the head version of NHibernates trunk and the Head version of FluentNHibernate. I currently have a “Repository / Unit of Work” Framework built up around these two techs.  All up it makes my life pretty simple for dealing with databases.   The problem is the current release of NHibernate + the Linq provider wasn’t too hot for our purposes.  Especially trying to plug it into older VB.NET code.   The Linq provider spat the dummy with VB.NET lambdas.  Mainly because in C# Query().Where(l => l.Name.Contains("x") || l.Name.Contains("y")).ToList(); is not the same as the VB.NET Query().Where(Function(l) l.Name.Contains("x") Or l.Name.Contains("y")).ToList VB.NET seems to spit out … well…. something different :-) so anyways… Compiling your own version of NHibernate and FluentNHibernate.  It’s actually pretty easy! First you’ll need to install tortisesvn NAnt and Git if you don’t already have them.  NHibernate first step, get the subversion trunk https://nhibernate.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/nhibernate/trunk/ into a directory somewhere.  eg \thirdparty\nhibernate Then use NAnt to build it.   (if you open the .sln it will show errors in that  AssemblyInfo.cs doesn’t exist ) to build it, there is a .txt document with sample command line build instructions,  I simply used :- NAnt -D:project.config=release clean build >output-release-build.log *wait* *wait* *wait* and ta da, you will have a bin directory with all the release dlls. FluentNHibernate This was pretty simple. there’s instructions here :- http://wiki.fluentnhibernate.org/Getting_started#Installation basically, with git, create a directory, and you issue the command git clone git://github.com/jagregory/fluent-nhibernate.git and wait, and soon enough you have the source. Now, from the bin directory that NHibernate spit out, take everything and dump it into the subdirectory “fluent-nhibernate\tools\NHibernate” Now, to build, you can use rake….which a ruby build system, however you can also just open the solution and build.   Which is what I did.  I had a few problems with the references which I simply re-added using the new ones.  Once built, I just took all the NHibnerate dlls, and the fluent ones and replaced my existing NHibernate / Fluent and killed off the old linq project. All I had to change is the places that used  .Linq<T>  and replace them with .Query<T>  (which was easy as I had wrapped it already to isolate my code from such changes) and hey presto, everything worked.  Even the VB.NET linq calls. I need to do some more testing as I’ve only done basic smoke tests, but its all looking pretty good, so for now, I will stick to NHibernate!

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• So You Want to Be a Social Media Director

  - by Mike Stiles

  Do you want to be a Social Media Director? Some say the title is already losing its relevance; that social should be a basic skill that is required and used no matter what your position is inside the enterprise. I suppose that’s visionary, and a fun thing for thought leaders to say. But in the vast majority of business organizations, we’re so far away from that reality that the thought of not having someone driving social’s implementation and guiding its proper usage conjures up images of anarchy. That said, social media has become so broad, so catch-all, and so extended across business functions, that today’s Social Media Director, depending on the size of their staff, must make jacks-of-all-trades look like one-trick-ponies. Just as the purview of the CMO has grown all-encompassing, the disciplines required of their heads of social are stacking up. Master of Content Every social pipeline you build must stay filled, with quantity and quality. Content takes time, and the job never stops. Never. And no, it’s not true that anybody can write. Master of Customer Experience You must have a passion for hearing from customers and making them really happy. Master of PR You must know how to communicate and leverage the trust you’ve built when crises strike. Couldn’t hurt to be a Master of Politics. Master of Social Technology So many social management tools on the market. You have to know what social tech ecosystem makes sense and avoid piecemeal point solutions. Master of Business Development Social for selling and prospecting is hot, and you have to know how to use social to do it. Master of Analytics Nothing else matters if you can’t prove social is helping the brand. That’s right, creative content guy has to also be a math and stats geek. Good luck with that. Master of Paid Media You’ve got to learn the language, learn the tactics, learn the vendors and learn how to measure results. Master of Education Guess who gets to teach everyone who has no clue how to use social for business. Master of Personal Likability You’ll be leading the voice, tone, image and personality of the brand. If you don’t instinctively know how to be liked by actual people, the brand will be starting from a deficit. How deep must you go in this parade of masteries? Again, that depends on your employer’s maturity level in social. Serious players recognize these as distinct disciplines requiring true experts for maximum effect. Less serious players will need you to execute personally in many of these areas. Do the best you can, and try to grow quickly at each. If you’re the sole person executing all social…well…you’re in the game of managing expectations and trying to socially educate your employer. The good news is, you should be making a certifiable killing. If you’re alone and your salary is modest, time to understand how many brands out there crave what you’ve mastered. Not to push back against thought leaders, but the need for brand social leadership has not gone away…not even a little bit. @mikestiles @oraclesocialPhoto: Stefan Wagner, freeimages.com

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• Using the latest (stable release) of Oracle Developer Tools for Visual Studio 11.1.0.7.20.

  - by mbcrump

  +  = Simple and safe Data connections.   This guide is for someone wanting to use the latest ODP.NET quickly without reading the official documentation. This guide will get you up and running in about 15 minutes. I have reviewed my referral link to my simple Setting up ODP.net with Win7 x64 and noticed most people were searching for one of the following terms: “how to use odp.net with vs” “setup connection odp.net” “query db using odp and vs” While my article provided links and a sample tnsnames.ora file, it really didn’t tell you how to use it. I’m hoping that this brief tutorial will help. So before we get started, you will need the following: Download the following: www.oracle.com/technology/software/tech/dotnet/utilsoft.html from oracle and install it. It is the first one on the page. Visual Studio 2008 or 2010. It should be noted that The System.Data.OracleClient namespace is the OLD .NET Framework Data Provider for Oracle. It should not be used anymore as it has been depreciated. The latest version which is what we are using is Oracle.DataAccess.Client. First things first, Add a reference to the Oracle.DataAccess.Client after you install ODP.NET   Copy and paste the following C# code into your project and replace the relevant info including the query string and you should be able to return data. I have commented several lines of code to assist in understanding what it is doing.   Lambda Expression. using System; using System.Data; using Oracle.DataAccess.Client;   namespace ConsoleApplication1 {     class Program     {         static void Main(string[] args)         {           try         {             //Setup DataSource             string oradb = "Data Source=(DESCRIPTION ="                                    + "(ADDRESS_LIST = (ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = hostname)(PORT = 1521)))"                                    + "(CONNECT_DATA = (SERVICE_NAME = SERVICENAME))) ;"                                    + "Persist Security Info=True;User ID=USER;Password=PASSWORD;";                        //Open Connection to Oracle - this could be moved outside the try.             OracleConnection conn = new OracleConnection(oradb);             conn.Open();               //Create cmd and use parameters to prevent SQL injection attacks.             OracleCommand cmd = new OracleCommand();             cmd.Connection = conn;               cmd.CommandText = "select username from table where username = :username";               OracleParameter p1 = new OracleParameter("username", OracleDbType.Varchar2);             p1.Value = username;             cmd.Parameters.Add(p1);               cmd.CommandType = CommandType.Text;               OracleDataReader dr = cmd.ExecuteReader();             dr.Read();               //Contains the value of the datarow             Console.WriteLine(dr["username"].ToString());               //Disposes of objects.             dr.Dispose();             cmd.Dispose();             conn.Dispose();         }           catch (OracleException ex) // Catches only Oracle errors         {             switch (ex.Number)             {                 case 1:                     Console.WriteLine("Error attempting to insert duplicate data.");                     break;                 case 12545:                     Console.WriteLine("The database is unavailable.");                     break;                 default:                     Console.WriteLine(ex.Message.ToString());                     break;             }         }           catch (Exception ex) // Catches any error not previously caught         {                   Console.WriteLine("Unidentified Error: " + ex.Message.ToString());              }         }       }           } At this point, you should have a working Program that returns data from an oracle database. If you are still having trouble then drop me a line and I will be happy to assist. As of this writing, oracle has announced the latest beta release of ODP.NET 11.2.0.1.1 Beta.  This release includes .NET Framework 4 and .NET Framework 4 Client Profile support. You may want to hold off on this version for a while as its BETA, and I wouldn’t want any production code using any BETA software.

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• Why would Copying a Large Image to the Clipboard Freeze a Computer?

  - by Akemi Iwaya

  Sometimes, something really odd happens when using our computers that makes no sense at all…such as copying a simple image to the clipboard and the computer freezing up because of it. An image is an image, right? Today’s SuperUser post has the answer to a puzzled reader’s dilemna. Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. Original image courtesy of Wikimedia. The Question SuperUser reader Joban Dhillon wants to know why copying an image to the clipboard on his computer freezes it up: I was messing around with some height map images and found this one: (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/Srtm_ramp2.world.21600×10800.jpg) The image is 21,600*10,800 pixels in size. When I right click and select “Copy Image” in my browser (I am using Google Chrome), it slows down my computer until it freezes. After that I must restart. I am curious about why this happens. I presume it is the size of the image, although it is only about 6 MB when saved to my computer. I am also using Windows 8.1 Why would a simple image freeze Joban’s computer up after copying it to the clipboard? The Answer SuperUser contributor Mokubai has the answer for us: “Copy Image” is copying the raw image data, rather than the image file itself, to your clipboard. The raw image data will be 21,600 x 10,800 x 3 (24 bit image) = 699,840,000 bytes of data. That is approximately 700 MB of data your browser is trying to copy to the clipboard. JPEG compresses the raw data using a lossy algorithm and can get pretty good compression. Hence the compressed file is only 6 MB. The reason it makes your computer slow is that it is probably filling your memory up with at least the 700 MB of image data that your browser is using to show you the image, another 700 MB (along with whatever overhead the clipboard incurs) to store it on the clipboard, and a not insignificant amount of processing power to convert the image into a format that can be stored on the clipboard. Chances are that if you have less than 4 GB of physical RAM, then those copies of the image data are forcing your computer to page memory out to the swap file in an attempt to fulfil both memory demands at the same time. This will cause programs and disk access to be sluggish as they use the disk and try to use the data that may have just been paged out. In short: Do not use the clipboard for huge images unless you have a lot of memory and a bit of time to spare. Like pretty graphs? This is what happens when I load that image in Google Chrome, then copy it to the clipboard on my machine with 12 GB of RAM: It starts off at the lower point using 2.8 GB of RAM, loading the image punches it up to 3.6 GB (approximately the 700 MB), then copying it to the clipboard spikes way up there at 6.3 GB of RAM before settling back down at the 4.5-ish you would expect to see for a program and two copies of a rather large image. That is a whopping 3.7 GB of image data being worked on at the peak, which is probably the initial image, a reserved quantity for the clipboard, and perhaps a couple of conversion buffers. That is enough to bring any machine with less than 8 GB of RAM to its knees. Strangely, doing the same thing in Firefox just copies the image file rather than the image data (without the scary memory surge). Have something to add to the explanation? Sound off in the comments. Want to read more answers from other tech-savvy Stack Exchange users? Check out the full discussion thread here.

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