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  • Java EE 8 update

    - by delabassee
    Planning for Java EE 8 is now well underway. As you know, a few weeks ago, we conducted a three part Java EE 8 Community Survey (you can find the final summary here). The data gathered have been very influential for the next steps. You can now expect over the coming weeks and months to see updates on the various specifications that compose the Java EE platform. Some Specification Leads are busy gathering additional feedback regarding what they should focus their efforts on (e.g. CDI 2 survey). Other Specification Leads have already publicly exposed what they think should be one of the focus for the evolution of the specification they lead.  For example, adding Server-Senet Events (SSE) support in JAX-RS is being discussed here and adding MVC support is being discussed here. Please remember that the fact we are now discussing any feature does not insure that it will be included in the proposal, nor in any particular update to Java EE. We can expect additional enhancements, changes and evolutions as we get closer to the finalisation of the different specifications... and there is still a long way to go with these specification proposals! Linda DeMichiel, Java EE Co-Specification Lead, has recently posted a draft proposal for the Java EE 8 Platform specification. Linda's goal is to recruit people and companies supporting this proposal before submitting it to the JCP.  This draft proposal is very interesting reading as it contains relevant information on the plans for Java EE 8 such as : The themes: Support for the latest web standards (eg. HTTP 2.0)  Continue to work on ease of development Improve the infrastructure for cloud support Alignment with Java SE 8 New JSRs to be added to the platform: J-Cache Java API for JSON Binding Java Configuration Plans for the Web Profile Plans on technologies to prune in Java EE 8, ... So if you haven't done it yet, I really encourage you to read the Java EE 8 draft proposal! Our goal for the Java EE 8 specification is for it to be finalized in the second half of 2016. It is important to note that we are in the early days of Java EE 8 and at this stage everything (themes, content, timing, etc.) is preliminary. Everything still needs to be discussed, challenged and agreed within the different Java Community Process (JCP) Experts Groups (EGs). Some EGs that still need to be formed! It could also means that the roadmap will have to be adjusted to follow the progress being made in the different EGs. This is also a good occasion to remind you that participation within those upcoming JCP Experts Groups is encouraged. Contributing in an EG is an effective lever to influence what Java EE 8 will become! Finally, as things get more concrete, we will share details on how to engage in the different Java EE 8 related Adopt-a-JSR initiatives, another way to contribute. You can also read other posts related to Java EE 8, here at The Aquarium blog. Just look for articles with the 'javaee8' tag.

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  • Circle-Rectangle collision in a tile map game

    - by furiousd
    I am making a 2D tile map based putt-putt game. I have collision detection working between the ball and the walls of the map, although when the ball collides at the meeting point between 2 tiles I offset it by 0.5 so that it doesn't get stuck in the wall. This aint a huge issue though. if(y % 20 == 0) { y+=0.5; } if(x % 20 == 0) { x+=0.5; } Collisions work as follows Find the closest point between each tile and the center of the ball If distance(ball_x, ball_y, close_x, close_y) <= ball_radius and the closest point belongs to a solid object, collision has occured Invert X/Y speed according to side of object collided with The next thing I tried to do was implement floating blocks in the middle of the map for the ball to bounce off of. When a ball collides with a corner of the block, it gets stuck in it. So I changed my determineRebound() function to treat corners as if they were circles. Here's that functon: `i and j are indexes of the solid object in the 2d map array. x & y are centre point of ball.` void determineRebound(int _i, int _j) { if(y > _i*tile_w && y < _i*tile_w + tile_w) { //Not a corner xs*=-1; } else if(x > _j*tile_w && x < _j*tile_w + tile_w) { //Not a corner ys*=-1; } else { //Corner float nx = x - close_x; float ny = y - close_y; float len = sqrt(nx * nx + ny * ny); nx /= len; ny /= len; float projection = xs * nx + ys * ny; xs -= 2 * projection * nx; ys -= 2 * projection * ny; } } This is where things have gotten messy. Collisions with 'floating' corners work fine, but now when the ball collides near the meeting point of 2 tiles, it detects a corner collision and does not rebound as expected. I'm a bit in over my head at this point. I guess I'm wondering if I'm going about making this sort of game in the right way. Is a 2d tile map the way to go? If so, is there a problem with my collision logic and where am I going wrong? Any advice/feedback would be great.

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

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

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  • The Birth of SSAS Compare

    - by Red Gate Software BI Tools Team
    Noemi Moreno, Red Gate Business Intelligence Specialist Software vendors – even Microsoft – tend to forget about the needs of business intelligence developers. We are a rare and rather invisible species. For example, BIDS remained in VS 2008 until SQL Server 2012. It took until this release before we got something as simple as an “undo” function. Before I joined Red Gate as a BI specialist, I worked on SQL Development. I’ll never forget the time I discovered Red Gate’s SQL Compare tool and how it reduced the task of preparing a database release from a couple of days to ten minutes. When I moved to SSAS, MDX and cubes, I became frustrated with the deployment process because I couldn’t find a tool that made Cube releases as easy as they are with SQL Compare. This became my quest. I pitched the idea to a few people in Red Gate’s regular Down Tools Week, when everyone puts down their day-to-day tasks and works on their own projects. My task was to reason with a roomful of cynical developers, hardened to the blandishments of project managers, for help to develop a tool that would compare two different SSAS databases and create the script to process only the objects that needed processing, thereby reducing release time to only a few minutes. I walked to the podium and gave them the full story of the distressed BI specialists, doomed to spend tedious hours preparing deployment scripts. A few developers recovered from their torpor to cast a languid eye at my presentation. It wasn’t enough. In a sudden impulse, I blurted out a promise to perform a flamenco dance for just the team if the tool was able to successfully compare two SSAS databases and generate a script by the end of the week. I was lucky enough that some of them believed me and jumped in: David Pond (Dev), Matt Burton (Dev), Tilman Bregler (Dev), Shobana Sekar (Test), Ruchija Raj (Test), Nick Sutherland (Product Manager) and Irma Tanovic (BI). They didn’t know that Irma and I would be away on a conference in Amsterdam and would leave them without our support. But to my surprise, they had a working tool by the time we came back – basic, and with a few bugs, but a working tool nonetheless! Seeing it compare a very basic SSAS database, detect the changes and generate the scripts was amazing! Something that normally takes half a day was done in under a minute. Since then, a few months have passed and a BI Tools team has been created at Red Gate to work full time on BI tools for BI developers, starting with SSAS Compare. How cool is that? So download the free beta and give us your feedback. And the flamenco? I still need to deliver that. Tilman reminds me every day! I need to get the full flamenco costume.

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  • eSTEP Newsletter for October 2013 now available

    - by uwes
    Dear Partners,We would like to let you know that the October'13 issue of our Newsletter is now available.The issue contains information on the following topics: Oracle Open World Summary Oracle Cloud: Oracle Engineered Systems Oracle Database and Middleware Oracle Applications and Software as a Service Oracle Industries Oracle Partners and the "Internet of Things" JavaOne News MySQL News Corporate News Create Your HR Strategic Vision at Oracle HCM World Oracle Database Protection Redefined A Preview: Oracle Database Backup Logging Recovery Appliance Oracle closed Tekelec acquisition Congratulations to ORACLE TEAM USA! Tech sectionARC M6 Oracle's SPARC M6 Oracle SuperCluster M6-32 - Oracle’s Most Scalable Engineered System Oracle Multitenant on SPARC Servers and Oracle Solaris Oracle Database 12c Enterprise Edition: Plug into the Cloud Oracle In-Memory Database Cache Oracle Virtual Compute Appliance New Benchmark-Results published (Sept. 2013) Video Interview: Elasticity, the Biggest Challenge Facing Data Centers Today Tech blog Announcing New Sun Storage 2500-M2 Drives SPARC Product Line Update ZFS RAID Calculator v6 What ships with ODA X3-2? Tech Article: Oracle Multitenant on SPARC Servers and Oracle Solaris New release of Sun Rack II capacity calculator available Announcing: Oracle Solaris Cluster Product Bulletin, September 2013 Learning & events Planned TechCasts Quarterly Partner Update Live Webcast: Simplify and Accelerate Oracle Database deployment with Oracle VM Templates Join us for OTN's Virtual Developer Day - Harnessing the Power of Oracle WebLogic and Oracle Coherence.Learn from OOW 2013 what is going on in Virtualization How to Implementing Early Arriving Facts in ODI, Part I and Part II: Proof of Concept Overview Multi-Factor Authentication in Oracle WebLogic Using multi-factor authentication to protect web applications deployed on Oracle WebLogic. If Virtualization Is Free, It Can't Be Any Good—Right? Looking beyond System/HW SOA and User Interfaces Overcoming the challenges to developing user interfaces in a service oriented References Vodafone Romania Improves Business Agility and Customer Satisfaction, with 10x Faster Business Intelligence Delivery and 12x Faster Processing Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Captures 47% Market Share in a Competitive Market, Thanks to 24/7 Availability Home Credit and Finance Bank Accelerates Getting New Banking Products to Market Extra A Conversation with Java Champion Johan VosYou can find the Newsletter on our portal under eSTEP News ---> Latest Newsletter. You will need to provide your email address and the pin below to get access. Link to the portal is shown below.URL: http://launch.oracle.com/PIN: eSTEP_2011Previous published Newsletters can be found under the Archived Newsletters section and more useful information under the Events, Download and Links tab. Feel free to explore and any feedback is appreciated to help us improve the service and information we deliver.Thanks and best regards,Partner HW Enablement EMEA

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  • Data Transformation Pipeline

    - by davenewza
    I have create some kind of data pipeline to transform coordinate data into more useful information. Here is the shell of pipeline: public class PositionPipeline { protected List<IPipelineComponent> components; public PositionPipeline() { components = new List<IPipelineComponent>(); } public PositionPipelineEntity Process(Position position) { foreach (var component in components) { position = component.Execute(position); } return position; } public PositionPipeline RegisterComponent(IPipelineComponent component) { components.Add(component); return this; } } Every IPipelineComponent accepts and returns the same type - a PositionPipelineEntity. Code: public interface IPipelineComponent { PositionPipelineEntity Execute(PositionPipelineEntity position); } The PositionPipelineEntity needs to have many properties, many which are unused in certain components and required in others. Some properties will also have become redundant at the end of the pipeline. For example, these components could be executed: TransformCoordinatesComponent: Parse the raw coordinate data into a Coordinate type. DetermineCountryComponent: Determine and stores country code. DetermineOnRoadComponent: Determine and store whether coordinate is on a road. Code: pipeline .RegisterComponent(new TransformCoordinatesComponent()) .RegisterComponent(new DetermineCountryComponent()) .RegisterComponent(new DetermineOnRoadComponent()); pipeline.Process(positionPipelineEntity); The PositionPipelineEntity type: public class PositionPipelineEntity { // Only relevant to the TransformCoordinatesComponent public decimal RawCoordinateLatitude { get; set; } // Only relevant to the TransformCoordinatesComponent public decimal RawCoordinateLongitude { get; set; } // Required by all components after TransformCoordinatesComponent public Coordinate CoordinateLatitude { get; set; } // Required by all components after TransformCoordinatesComponent public Coordinate CoordinateLongitude { get; set; } // Set in DetermineCountryComponent, not required anywhere. // Requires CoordinateLatitude and CoordinateLongitude (TransformCoordinatesComponent) public string CountryCode { get; set; } // Set in DetermineOnRoadComponent, not required anywhere. // Requires CoordinateLatitude and CoordinateLongitude (TransformCoordinatesComponent) public bool OnRoad { get; set; } } Problems: I'm very concerned about the dependency that a component has on properties. The way to solve this would be to create specific types for each component. The problem then is that I cannot chain them together like this. The other problem is the order of components in the pipeline matters. There is some dependency. The current structure does not provide any static or runtime checking for such a thing. Any feedback would be appreciated.

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  • eSTEP Newsletter December 2012

    - by uwes
    Dear Partners,We would like to inform you that the December issue of our Newsletter is now available.The issue contains informations to the following topics: Notes from Corporate: It's Earth day - Every Day, Oracle SPARC Newsletter, Pre-Built Developer VMs (for Oracle VM VirtualBox), Oracle Database Appliance Now Certified by SAP, Database High Availability, Cultivating Business-Led Innovation Technical Corner: Geek Fest! Talking About the Design of the T4 and T5 SPARC Chips, Blog: Is This Your Idea of Disaster Recovery?; Oracle® Practitioner Guide - A Pragmatic Approach to Cloud Adoption; Oracle Practitioner Guide: A pragmatic Approach to Cloud Adoption; Darren Moffat Explains the new ZFS Encryption Features in Solaris 11.1; Command Summary: Basic Operations with the Image Packaging System; SPARC T4 Server Delivers Outstanding Performance on Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g; SPARC T4-4 Servers Set First World Record on PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 Benchmark; Sun ZFS Appliance Monitor Refresh: Core Factor Table; Remanufactured Systems Program for Sun Systems from Oracle; Reminder: Oracle Premier Support for Systems; Reminder: Oracle Platinum Services Learning & Events: eSTEP Events Schedule; Recently Delivered Techcasts; Webinar: Maximum Availibility with Oracle GoldenGate References: LUKOIL Overseas Holding Optimizes Oil Field Development Projects with Integrated Project Management; United Networks Increases Accounting Flexibility and Boosts System Performance with ERP Applications Upgrade; Ziggo Rapidly Creates Applications That Accelerate Communications-Service Orders l How to ...: The Role of Oracle Solaris Zones and Oracle Linux Containers in a Virtualization Strategy; How to Update to Oracle Solaris 11.1; Using svcbundle to Create Manifests and Profiles in Oracle Solaris 11.1; How to Migrate Your Data to Oracle Solaris 11 Using Shadow Migration; How to Script Oracle Solaris 11.1 Zones for Easy Cloning; How to Script Oracle Solaris 11 Zones Creation for a Network-in-a-Box Configuration; How to Know Whether T4 Crypto Accelerators Are in Use; Fault Handling and Prevention – Part 1; Transforming and Consolidating Web Data with Oracle Database; Looking Under the Hood at Networking in Oracle VM Server for x86; Best Way to Migrate Data from Legacy File System to ZFS in Oracle Solaris 11; Special Year End Article: The Top 10 Strategic CIO Issues For 2013 You find the Newsletter on our portal under eSTEP News ---> Latest Newsletter. You will need to provide your email address and the pin below to get access. Link to the portal is shown below.URL: http://launch.oracle.com/PIN: eSTEP_2011Previous published Newsletters can be found under the Archived Newsletters section and more useful information under the Events, Download and Links tab. Feel free to explore and any feedback is appreciated to help us improve the service and information we deliver.Thanks and best regards,Partner HW Enablement EMEA

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  • Managing Joomla via Android

    Surprisingly, it was only today that I actually looked for possible solutions to write more content for my blog. Since quite some time I'm using my Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 for all kind of social media activities like Google+, FB, etc. but also for my casual mail during the evening hours. And yes, I feel a little bit guilty about missing the chance to use my tablet to write some content here... OK, only a little bit. ;-) These are not the droids you are looking for But those lazy times are over! While searching the Play Store with the expression 'joomla' I got three interesting hits: - Joomla Admin Mobile! - Joooid - Joomla! Security Checklist After reading the reviews I installed the two later apps. Joomla! Security Checklist The author clearly outlines here that the app is primarily for his personal purpose to have safety checklist at hand at anytime. I guess that any reader of this article has an Android based smartphone or tablet, so that simple app should be part of your toolbox when using Joomla! for your websites. Joooid plugin & app Although I was looking for an app that could work with the default XML RPC interface of Joomla I have to admit that this combination of an enhanced Web service suits me better, mainly due to performance reason. The official website has not only the downloads for Joomla versions 1.5 - 2.5 but also very good and easy to follow step-by-step instructions to prepare your server for the Android app. It will take you less than 5 minutes to get it up and running. For safety reasons, I recommend that you should configure your Web server to have an additional authentication layer on the plugins folder. The smartphone app has the ability to run against HTTP authentication. Personally, I like the look and feel of the app. It is a little bit different compared to the web UI but still easy to use. In fact, this article is the first one written in the Joooid app. At the moment, I only miss the ability to have list tags. Quick and easy Writing full-fledged articles with images, a couple of hyperlinks and some styling here and there should be left to the desktop. At least for the moment. Let's see whether I'm going to change my mind on this during the upcoming months... I'll give it a try, and hope to publish at least once per month to write some content using Joooid. Actually, it would be great to have some feedback about other Joomla! clients in the wild.

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  • A starting point for Use Cases and User Stories

    - by Mike Benkovich
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/benko/archive/2013/07/23/a-starting-point-for-use-cases-and-user-stories.aspxSoftware is a challenging business and is rife with opportunities to go wrong. Over the years a number of methodologies have evolved to help make sure that things go right. In an effort to contribute to this I’ve created a list of user stories that I think should be included and sometimes are just assumed. Note this is a work in progress, so I’m looking for your feedback. I’m curious what you would add or change in my list. · As a DBA I am working with a Normalized data model that reflects an agreed upon logical model for the system · As a DBA I am using consistent names for my fields which match the naming standards of my organization · As a DBA my model supports simple CRUD operations against all the entities · As an Application Architect the UI has been validated against the Business requirements and a complete set of user story’s have been created · As an Application Architect the database model has been validated against the UI · As an Application Architect we have a logical business model that describes all the known and/or expected usage of the system during the software’s expected lifecycle · As an Application Architect we have a Deployment diagram that describes how the application components will be deployed · As an Application Architect we have a navigation diagram that describes the typical application flow · As an Application Architect we have identified points of interaction which describes how the UI interacts with the services and the data storage · As an Application Architect we have identified external systems which may now or in the future use the data of this application and have adapted the logical model to include these interactions · As an Application Architect we have identified existing systems and tools that can be extended and/or reused to help this application achieve it’s business goals · As a Project Manager all team members understand the goals of each release and iteration as they are planned · As a Project Manager all team members understand their role and the roles of others · As a Project Manager we have support of the business to do the right thing even if it is not the expedient thing · As a Test/QA Analyst we have created a simulation environment for testing the system which does not use sensitive data and accurately reflects the scenarios of all the data that will be supported by the system · As a Test/QA Analyst we have identified the matrix of supported clients used to access the system including the likely browsers, mobile devices and other interfaces to work with the application · As a Test/QA Analyst we have created exit criteria for each user story that match the requirements of the business story that was used to create them · As a Test/QA Analyst we have access to a Test environment that is isolated from production and staging environments · As a Test/QA Analyst there we have a way to reset the environment so we can rerun tests when a new version of the software becomes available · As a Test/QA Analyst I am able to automate portions of the test process Thoughts? -mike

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  • Survey: Your Plans for Adopting New Firefox Releases?

    - by Steven Chan (Oracle Development)
    Mozilla is committing to releasing new Firefox versions every six weeks.  Mozilla released Firefox 5 this week.  With this release, Mozilla states that Firefox 4 is End-of-Life and will not receive any additional security updates.  In a comment thread posted on to a Mike Kaply's blog article discussing these new Firefox policies, Asa Dotzler from Mozilla stated: ... Enterprise has never been (and I’ll argue, shouldn’t be) a focus of ours. Until we run out of people who don’t have sysadmins and enterprise deployment teams looking out for them, I can’t imagine why we’d focus at all on the kinds of environments you care so much about.  In a later comment, he added: ... A minute spent making a corporate user happy can better be spent making many regular users happy. I’d much rather Mozilla spending its limited resources looking out for the billions of users that don’t have enterprise support systems already taking care of them. Asa then confirmed that every new Firefox release will put the previous one into End-of-Life: As for John’s concern, “By the time I validate Firefox 5, what guarantee would I have that Firefox 5 won’t go EOL when Firefox 6 is released?” He has the opposite of guarantees that won’t happen. He has my promise that it will happen. Firefox 6 will be the EOL of Firefox 5. And Firefox 7 will be the EOL for Firefox 6.  He added: “You’re basically saying you don’t care about corporations.” Yes, I’m basically saying that I don’t care about making Firefox enterprise friendly. Kev Needham, Channel Manager at Mozilla later stated to PC Mag: The Web and Web browsers continue to evolve rapidly. Mozilla's focus is on providing users with the best Web experience possible, and Firefox needs to evolve at the pace the Web's users and developers expect. By releasing small, focused updates more often, we are able to deliver improved security and stability even as we introduce new features, which is better for our users, and for the Web.We recognize that this shift may not be compatible with a large organization's IT Policy and understand that it is challenging to organizations that have effort-intensive certification polices. However, our development process is geared toward delivering products that support the Web as it is today, while innovating and building future Web capabilities. Tying Firefox product development to an organizational process we do not control would make it difficult for us to continue to innovate for our users and the betterment of the Web.  Your feedback needed for E-Business Suite certifications  Mozilla's new support policy has significant implications for enterprise users of Firefox with Oracle E-Business Suite.  We are reviewing the implications for our certification and support policies for Firefox now.  It would be very helpful if you could let me know about your organisation's plans for Firefox in light of this new information.  Please feel free to drop me a private email, or post a comment here if that's appropriate. 

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  • Accessing SQL Server data from iOS apps

    - by RobertChipperfield
    Almost all mobile apps need access to external data to be valuable. With a huge amount of existing business data residing in Microsoft SQL Server databases, and an ever-increasing drive to make more and more available to mobile users, how do you marry the rather separate worlds of Microsoft's SQL Server and Apple's iOS devices? The classic answer: write a web service layer Look at any of the questions on this topic asked in Internet discussion forums, and you'll inevitably see the answer, "just write a web service and use that!". But what does this process gain? For a well-designed database with a solid security model, and business logic in the database, writing a custom web service on top of this just to access some of the data from a different platform seems inefficient and unnecessary. Desktop applications interact with the SQL Server directly - why should mobile apps be any different? The better answer: the iSql SDK Working along the lines of "if you do something more than once, make it shared," we set about coming up with a better solution for the general case. And so the iSql SDK was born: sitting between SQL Server and your iOS apps, it provides the simple API you're used to if you've been developing desktop apps using the Microsoft SQL Native Client. It turns out a web service remained a sensible idea: HTTP is much more suited to the Big Bad Internet than SQL Server's native TDS protocol, removing the need for complex configuration, firewall configuration, and the like. However, rather than writing a web service for every app that needs data access, we made the web service generic, serving only as a proxy between the SQL Server and a client library integrated into the iPhone or iPad app. This client library handles all the network communication, and provides a clean API. OSQL in 25 lines of code As an example of how to use the API, I put together a very simple app that allowed the user to enter one or more SQL statements, and displayed the results in a rather primitively formatted text field. The total amount of Objective-C code responsible for doing the work? About 25 lines. You can see this in action in the demo video. Beta out now - your chance to give us your suggestions! We've released the iSql SDK as a beta on the MobileFoo website: you're welcome to download a copy, have a play in your own apps, and let us know what we've missed using the Feedback button on the site. Software development should be fun and rewarding: no-one wants to spend their time writing boiler-plate code over and over again, so stop writing the same web service code, and start doing exciting things in the new world of mobile data!

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  • What shall I include in a 10 week web technologies course?

    - by Iain
    In September I will be teaching a university module on web technologies. This session will be available to 1st year (freshman) students who don't necessarily have any programming knowledge or know how the web works. In the 2nd semester I will be teaching Flash, which is my specialism, so I know exactly what I am going to teach, but in the 1st semester I will be teaching them web standards technologies - HTML, CSS, JS, jQuery, PHP and MySQL. Where I need advice is how to proportion the emphasis for each part, and which parts of each technology to cover. Another real issue I'm struggling with is how much of the bad old ways should I teach them? Do they need to know about bold as well as strong, etc. UPDATE: based, on your feedback I will only be teaching the latest version of everything - CSS3, HTML5 etc. I'm not sure exactly how long the semester will be but I'm guessing about 10-12 weeks. Each session is a 2 hour lab. Obviously there's only so much I can cover in that time and it will be up to the students to go a research this stuff properly on W3 schools etc. My ideas so far were: Lesson 0 - Course intro and overview of the current tech landscape. What is out there, what will we be learning, what won't we. What is a web server, URL etc. Looking at different example websites and discussing how they work. Lesson 1 - HTML basics (head, body, title, img, table, a, lists, h1, strong etc) Lesson 2 - CSS for styling and layout - fonts, webfonts, float etc Lesson 3 - Intro to programming JS (variables, loops, conditionals, functions) Lesson 4 - more JS programming fundamentals, DOM manipulation Lesson 5 - jQuery - making things fly about and look cool Lesson 6 - XML and Ajax Lesson 7 - PHP basics - syntax, server-side principles Lesson 8 - PHP and MySQL - forms, logins, saving user info Lesson 9 - don't know Lesson 10 - don't know Please let me know if you think this is the right order, what have I missed, how to use any spare sessions etc. Thanks :) UPDATE BASED ON RESPONSES: Thanks for all your responses - some great stuff. To be absolutely clear, this is not a computer science course, it is a practical module on a creative technology course. The emphasis definitely has to be on making cool things work rather than understanding how the backbone of the internet works. That can come later, if the students are interested. At the end of the module I would like the students to be able to produce a web page or pages that does something cool, using some or all of the technologies I cover. Many of these topics are of course far beyond the scope of a 2 hour session, however I do not have the option of reducing the syllabus, I will just have to explain what the technology does and encourage the student to research it in their own time.

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  • Business Intelligence goes Big Data

    - by Alliances & Channels Redaktion
    Big Data stellt die nächste große Herausforderung für die IT-Branche dar: Massen von Daten aus immer mehr Quellen – aus sozialen Netzwerken, Telekommunikations- und Weblogs, RFID-Lesern etc. – müssen logisch verknüpft, in Echtzeit integriert und verarbeitet werden. Doch wie sieht es mit der praktischen Umsetzung aus? Eine europaweite Studie von Steria Mummert Consulting zeigt: Lediglich 28 % der Unternehmen haben bereits heute eine übergreifende, abgestimmte Business-Intelligence-Strategie implementiert. Vorherrschend sind BI-Insellösungen, die schon jetzt an den Grenzen ihrer Kapazität arbeiten. Daten werden also bisher nur eingeschränkt als wertschöpfende Ressource genutzt! Das Ergebnis der Studie klingt erschreckend, doch Unternehmen können es zu Ihrem Vorteil nutzen: Wer jetzt das Thema Big Data anpackt, kann sich einen gewinnbringenden Vorsprung vor dem Wettbewerb sichern. Wie sieht die Analyse-Umgebung der Zukunft aus? Wie und wo kann Big Data für den Geschäftserfolg genutzt werden? Antworten darauf liefert die Kunden-Event Reihe von Oracle und dem Oracle Platinum Partner Steria Mummert Consulting: Hier werden Strategien entwickelt, wie Unternehmen mit Information Discovery ihr BI-Potenzial auf dem Weg zur Big Data Schritt für Schritt ausbauen können. Highlights aus München Durchweg positives Feedback haben wir aus München, der ersten Station der Eventreihe am 23.7., erhalten: Nicht nur die tolle Location, das "La Villa" im Bamberger Haus, überzeugte. Die 31 Teilnehmerinnen und Teilnehmer konnten auch inhaltlich eine Menge mitnehmen – unter anderem einen konkreten Vorschlag für ihre eigene Roadmap in Richtung Big Data. Die Ausgangsfrage des Tages lautete – einfach und umfassend zugleich: Wie können wir den Überblick in einer komplexen Welt behalten? Den Status quo in Europa für Business Intelligence präsentierte Steria Mummert Consulting entlang der Europäischen biMA®-Studie 2012/13. Anhand von Anwendungsbeispielen aus ihrer Praxis präsentierten die geladenen Experten von Oracle und Steria Mummert Consulting verschiedene Lösungsansätze. Eine sehr anschauliche Demo zu Endeca zeigte beispielsweise, wie einfach und flexibel ein Dashboard sein kann: Hier gibt es keine vordefinierten Reports, stattdessen können Entscheider die Filter einfach per Drag & Drop verändern und bekommen so einen individuell sturkturierten Überblick über ihre Daten. Einen Ausblick bot die Session zu Oracle Business Analytics für mobile Anwendungen und Real-Time Decisions. Fazit: eine gelungene Mischung aus Überblicks-Informationen und ganz konkreten Ideen für die spezifischen Anwendungsbereiche der Kunden. Die Eventreihe „BI goes Big Data“ macht im August in Hamburg und Frankfurt Station. Die kostenfreie Veranstaltung findet zusammen mit Steria Mummert Consulting statt und richtet sich an Endkunden. In Hamburg am 14.8.2013 – zur AnmeldungIn Frankfurt a.M. am 20.8.2013 – zur Anmeldung

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  • Business Intelligence goes Big Data

    - by Alliances & Channels Redaktion
    Big Data stellt die nächste große Herausforderung für die IT-Branche dar: Massen von Daten aus immer mehr Quellen – aus sozialen Netzwerken, Telekommunikations- und Weblogs, RFID-Lesern etc. – müssen logisch verknüpft, in Echtzeit integriert und verarbeitet werden. Doch wie sieht es mit der praktischen Umsetzung aus? Eine europaweite Studie von Steria Mummert Consulting zeigt: Lediglich 28 % der Unternehmen haben bereits heute eine übergreifende, abgestimmte Business-Intelligence-Strategie implementiert. Vorherrschend sind BI-Insellösungen, die schon jetzt an den Grenzen ihrer Kapazität arbeiten. Daten werden also bisher nur eingeschränkt als wertschöpfende Ressource genutzt! Das Ergebnis der Studie klingt erschreckend, doch Unternehmen können es zu Ihrem Vorteil nutzen: Wer jetzt das Thema Big Data anpackt, kann sich einen gewinnbringenden Vorsprung vor dem Wettbewerb sichern. Wie sieht die Analyse-Umgebung der Zukunft aus? Wie und wo kann Big Data für den Geschäftserfolg genutzt werden? Antworten darauf liefert die Kunden-Event Reihe von Oracle und dem Oracle Platinum Partner Steria Mummert Consulting: Hier werden Strategien entwickelt, wie Unternehmen mit Information Discovery ihr BI-Potenzial auf dem Weg zur Big Data Schritt für Schritt ausbauen können. Highlights aus München Durchweg positives Feedback haben wir aus München, der ersten Station der Eventreihe am 23.7., erhalten: Nicht nur die tolle Location, das "La Villa" im Bamberger Haus, überzeugte. Die 31 Teilnehmerinnen und Teilnehmer konnten auch inhaltlich eine Menge mitnehmen – unter anderem einen konkreten Vorschlag für ihre eigene Roadmap in Richtung Big Data. Die Ausgangsfrage des Tages lautete – einfach und umfassend zugleich: Wie können wir den Überblick in einer komplexen Welt behalten? Den Status quo in Europa für Business Intelligence präsentierte Steria Mummert Consulting entlang der Europäischen biMA®-Studie 2012/13. Anhand von Anwendungsbeispielen aus ihrer Praxis präsentierten die geladenen Experten von Oracle und Steria Mummert Consulting verschiedene Lösungsansätze. Eine sehr anschauliche Demo zu Endeca zeigte beispielsweise, wie einfach und flexibel ein Dashboard sein kann: Hier gibt es keine vordefinierten Reports, stattdessen können Entscheider die Filter einfach per Drag & Drop verändern und bekommen so einen individuell sturkturierten Überblick über ihre Daten. Einen Ausblick bot die Session zu Oracle Business Analytics für mobile Anwendungen und Real-Time Decisions. Fazit: eine gelungene Mischung aus Überblicks-Informationen und ganz konkreten Ideen für die spezifischen Anwendungsbereiche der Kunden. Die Eventreihe „BI goes Big Data“ macht im August in Hamburg und Frankfurt Station. Die kostenfreie Veranstaltung findet zusammen mit Steria Mummert Consulting statt und richtet sich an Endkunden. In Hamburg am 14.8.2013 – zur AnmeldungIn Frankfurt a.M. am 20.8.2013 – zur Anmeldung

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  • Business Analytics Oracle Partner Advisory Council 2013

    - by Mike.Hallett(at)Oracle-BI&EPM
    72 544x376 WHEN: Friday the 20th of September 2013 (just before OpenWorld) Register by: 1st of August 2013 WHERE: Sofitel San Francisco Bay 223 Twin Dolphin Drive, 94065 REDWOOD CITY, CA, USA Don’t miss this once a year opportunity to meet and drive a closer engagement with Oracle’s global Product Management Team: Oracle global Product Management will host this workshop. Target group: ACE Directors, Lead Consultants and key architects from our partners Topics: Product Development Roadmap, Partner project experience, your feedback, Q&A session For any inquiries please contact [email protected] As part of registering for the event, please note that you will need to complete the BI / EPM PAC-survey. Thank you for taking the time to provide this, your valuable input. The PAC (one for BI, and a separate track for Hyperion) is free of charge, but is only for OPN Specialised member partners, and is subject to availability. (Please do not attend unless you have received a confirmation from Oracle to do so.) Registration Link Coming Soon We do hope you will be able to join us - and I look forward to welcoming you in San Francisco. Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt: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;}

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  • BIDS Helper 1.6 Beta Release (now with SQL 2012 support!)

    - by Darren Gosbell
    The beta for BIDS Helper 1.6 was just released. We have not updated the version notification just yet as we would like to get some feedback on people's experiences with the SQL 2012 version. So if you are using SQL 2012, go grab it and let us know how you go (you can post a comment on this blog post or on the BIDS Helper site itself). This is the first release that supports SQL 2012 and consequently also the first release that runs in Visual Studio 2010. A big thanks to Greg Galloway for doing the bulk of the work on this release. Please note that if you are doing an xcopy deploy that you will need to unblock the files you download or you will get a cryptic error message. This appears to be caused by a security update to either Visual Studio or the .Net framework – the xcopy deploy instructions have been updated to show you how to do this. Below are the notes from the release page. ====== This beta release is the first to support SQL Server 2012 (in addition to SQL Server 2005, 2008, and 2008 R2). Since it is marked as a beta release, we are looking for bug reports in the next few months as you use BIDS Helper on real projects. In addition to getting all existing BIDS Helper functionality working appropriately in SQL Server 2012 (SSDT), the following features are new... Analysis Services Tabular Smart Diff Tabular Actions Editor Tabular HideMemberIf Tabular Pre-Build Fixes and Updates The Unused Datasets feature for Reporting Services now accounts for new features in Reporting Services 2008 R2 like Lookups and new features in Reporting Services 2012. SSIS: emit an informational message when a variable has an expression defined and EvaluateAsExpression = False SSAS: roles reports points to wrong server SSIS - Variable Copy / Move broken in v1.5 "Unused DataSets Report" not showing up in Context menu on VS2005 if Solution Folders used SSAS Tabular: Create a UI for managing actions SSAS Tabular: Smart Diff improvements for new schema and Tabular models SSIS: Copy/Move Variable Erroring due to custom Control Flow item Icon SSIS Performance Visualization Index out of range fixing bugs in AggManager when aggregation design IDs don't match names The exe downloads are a self extracting installer, the zip downloads allow for an xcopy deploy. Make sure to note the updated xcopy deploy instructions for SQL Server 2012.

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  • Speaker Notes...

    - by wulfers
    At a .Net User Group meeting this week, I experienced two poorly prepared speakers floundering through presentations….  As a Lead Technologist at the company I work for, I have experience training technical staff and also giving presentations at code camps.  Here are a few guidelines for aspiring speakers you might find helpful…   1.       Do not stand in front of your audience and read your slides.  This is  offensive to your audience and not what they came for...  Your slides are there to reinforce the information you are presenting and to give the audience a little clarification on some terms you may use and as a visual aid for some complicated issues. 2.       Have someone review your presentation (slides, notes, …) who speaks the language you will be presenting in fluently.  Also record at least ten minutes of your presentation and have that same person review that.  One of the speakers this week used the word “Basically” fifty times in less than thirty minutes…  I started to flinch every time he used the term. 3.       Be Prepared  -  before the presentation begins.  Don’t make any last minute changes to your presentation or demo code the night before.  Don’t patch your laptop or demo servers the night before.  If possible create a virtual image that you only use for presentations and use that (refreshed before every presentation). 4.       Know the level of expertise of your audience.  Speaking above or below their abilities will make or break your presentation. 5.       Deliver what you promise. The presentation this week was supposed to be on BDD (Behavior Driven Develpment).  The presenter completely ran off track and 90% of the discussion was how his team mistakenly used TDD (Test Driven Development), and was unhappy with the results.  Based on his loss of focus we only heard a rushed 10 minute presentation on DBB which was a disservice to the audience. 6.       Practice your presentation with your own small team before you try this on a room full of people you don’t know.  A side benefit of doing this with your own team is that you can get candid feedback from your team and also get kudos for training your own team.  I find I can also turn my presentations into technical white papers and get a third benefit from the work I’ve put into a presentation. 7.       Sharpen your own saw.  Pick a topic that is fairly current.  Something you would like to learn about and would benefit your current career path. 8.       Have fun doing it.

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  • PASS Summit for SQL Starters

    - by Davide Mauri
    I’ve received a buch of emails from PASS Summit “First Timers” that are also somehow new to SQL Server (for “somehow” I mean people with less than 6 month experience but with some basic knowledge of SQL Server engine) or are catching up from SQL Server 2000. The common question regards the session one should not miss to have a broad view of the entire SQL Server platform have some insight into some specific areas of SQL Server Given that I’m on (semi-)vacantion and that I have more free time (not true, I have to prepare slides & demos for several conferences, PASS Summit  - Building the Agile Data Warehouse with SQL Server 2012 - and PASS 24H - Agile Data Warehousing with SQL Server 2012 - among them…but let’s pretend it to be true), I’ve decided to make a post to answer to this common questions. Of course this is my personal point of view and given the fact that the number and quality of session that will be delivered at PASS Summit is so high that is very difficoult to make a choice, fell free to jump into the discussion and leave your feedback or – even better – answer with another post. I’m sure it will be very helpful to all the SQL Server beginners out there. I’ve imposed to myself to choose 6 session at maximum for each Track. Why 6? Because it’s the maximum number of session you can follow in one day, and given that all the session will be on the Summit DVD, they are the answer to the following question: “If I have one day to spend in training, which session I should watch?”. Of course a Summit is not like a Course so a lot of very basics concept of well-established technologies won’t be found here. Analysis Services, Integration Services, MDX are not part of the Summit this time (at least for the basic part of them). Enough with that, let’s start with the session list ideal to have a good Overview of all the SQL Server Platform: Geospatial Data Types in SQL Server 2012 Inside Unstructured Data: SQL Server 2012 FileTable and Semantic Search XQuery and XML in SQL Server: Common Problems and Best Practice Solutions Microsoft's Big Play for Big Data Dashboards: When to Choose Which MSBI Tool Microsoft BI End-User Tools 360° for what concern Database Development, I recommend the following sessions Understanding Transaction Isolation Levels What to Look for in Execution Plans Improve Query Performance by Fixing Bad Parameter Sniffing A Window into Your Data: Using SQL Window Functions Practical Uses and Optimization of New T-SQL Features in SQL Server 2012 Taking MERGE Beyond the Basics For Business Intelligence Information Delivery Analyzing SSAS Data with Excel Building Compelling Power View Reports Managed Self-Service BI PowerPivot 101  SharePoint for Business Intelligence The Best Microsoft BI Tools You've Never Heard Of and for Business Intelligence Architecture & Development BI Power Hour Building a Tabular Model Database Enterprise Information Management: Bringing Together SSIS, DQS, and MDS SSIS Design Patterns Storing Columnstore Indexes Hadoop and Its Ecosystem Components in Action Beside the listed sessions, First Timers should also take a look the the page PASS set up for them: http://www.sqlpass.org/summit/2012/Connect/FirstTimers.aspx See you at PASS Summit!

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  • LINQ to Twitter v2.1.09 Released

    - by Joe Mayo
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/WinAZ/archive/2013/10/15/linq-to-twitter-v2.1.09-released.aspxToday, I released LINQ to Twitter v2.1.09. Here are important new changes. Bug Fixes This is primarily a bug fix release. Most notably, there were authentication problems in WinRT apps. This is now fixed. New Features One new feature is the addition of ApplicationOnlyAuthentication for WinRT. It is fully async.  Here’s how it works: var auth = new WinRtApplicationOnlyAuthorizer { Credentials = new InMemoryCredentials { ConsumerKey = "", ConsumerSecret = "" } }; if (auth == null || !auth.IsAuthorized) { await auth.AuthorizeAsync(); } var twitterCtx = new TwitterContext(auth); (from search in twitterCtx.Search where search.Type == SearchType.Search && search.Query == SearchTextBox.Text select search) .MaterializedAsyncCallback( async response => await Dispatcher.RunAsync( CoreDispatcherPriority.Normal, async () => { Search searchResponse = response.State.Single(); string message = string.Format( "Search returned {0} statuses", searchResponse.Statuses.Count); await new MessageDialog(message, "Search Complete").ShowAsync(); })); It’s called the WinRtApplicationOnlyAuthorizer. You only need two tokens, ConsumerKey and ConsumerSecret, which come from your Twitter API application settings page. Note: You need a Twitter Application, which you can create at https://dev.twitter.com/. The MaterializedAsyncCallback materializes your query and handles the response. I put everything together in a lambda for demonstration purposes, but you can always replace the callback with a handler of type Action<TwitterAsyncResponse<IEnumerable<T>>>, where T is Search for this example. On the Horizon The next version of LINQ to Twitter is in development. I discussed it at LINQ to Twitter Async. This isn’t complete, but you can download the source code at the LINQ to Twitter site on CodePlex. I’ve competed all the spikes for what I thought would be the hard parts and now have prototypes of queries and commands working. This would be a good time to provide feedback if there are features in the current version that you think could be improved. The current driving forces for the next version will be async and PCL.   @JoeMayo

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  • MySQL Enterprise Monitor 3.0.11 has been released

    - by Andy Bang
    We are pleased to announce that MySQL Enterprise Monitor 3.0.11 is now available for download on the My Oracle Support (MOS) web site. It will also be available via the Oracle Software Delivery Cloud in about 1 week. This is a maintenance release that includes a few new features and fixes a number of bugs. You can find more information on the contents of this release in the change log. You will find binaries for the new release on My Oracle Support. Choose the "Patches & Updates" tab, and then choose the "Product or Family (Advanced Search)" side tab in the "Patch Search" portlet. You will also find the binaries on the Oracle Software Delivery Cloud in approximately 1 week. Choose "MySQL Database" as the Product Pack and you will find the Enterprise Monitor along with other MySQL products. Based on feedback from our customers, MySQL Enterprise Monitor (MEM) 3.0 offers many significant improvements over previous releases. Highlights include: Policy-based automatic scheduling of rules and event handling (including email notifications) make administration of scale-out easier and automatic Enhancements such as automatic discovery of MySQL instances, centralized agent configuration and multi-instance monitoring further improve ease of configuration and management The new cloud and virtualization-friendly, "agent-less" design allows remote monitoring of MySQL databases without the need for any remote agents Trends, projections and forecasting - Graphs and Event handlers inform you in advance of impending file system capacity problems Zero Configuration Query Analyzer - Works "out of the box" with MySQL 5.6 Performance_Schema (supported by 5.6.14 or later) False positives from flapping or spikes are avoided using exponential moving averages and other statistical techniques Advisors can analyze data across an entire group; for example, the Replication Configuration Advisor can scan an entire topology to find common configuration errors like duplicate server UUIDs or a slave whose version is less than its master's More information on the contents of this release is available here: What's new in MySQL Enterprise Monitor 3.0? MySQL Enterprise Edition: Demos MySQL Enterprise Monitor Frequently Asked Questions MySQL Enterprise Monitor Change History More information on MySQL Enterprise and the Enterprise Monitor can be found here: http://www.mysql.com/products/enterprise/ http://www.mysql.com/products/enterprise/monitor.html http://www.mysql.com/products/enterprise/query.html http://forums.mysql.com/list.php?142 If you are not a MySQL Enterprise customer and want to try the Monitor and Query Analyzer using our 30-day free customer trial, go to http://www.mysql.com/trials, or contact Sales at http://www.mysql.com/about/contact. If you haven't looked at MEM recently, and especially MEM 3.0, please do so now and let us know what you think. Thanks and Happy Monitoring! - The MySQL Enterprise Tools Development Team

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  • Documenting sp_ssiscatalog

    - by jamiet
    What is the best way to document an API? Moreover, what is the best way to document a T-SQL API? Before I try to answer those questions I should explain what I mean by “a T-SQL API”. I think of an API as being a collection of well-defined, known, code modules that provide some notion of a service to whomever uses it; in T-SQL terms I tend to think of a collection of stored procedures and functions as a form of API. Its a loose definition, I admit, and in SQL Server circles we don’t tend to think of stored procedures collectively as an API but if you think about it that’s exactly what they are. The question of how to document a T-SQL API came to my mind as I worked on sp_ssiscatalog. How could I make it easy for people to learn about the capabilities of sp_ssiscatalog without forcing them to dig through the code and find out for themselves? My opening gambit was to write documentation pages on the wiki at http://ssisreportingpack.codeplex.com. That’s kinda useful but it does suffer the disadvantage that someone using sp_ssiscatalog needs to go visit a webpage to read it – I want the documentation to be available wherever the user is using sp_ssiscatalog. Moreover, maintaining the wiki is a real PITA. Intellisense works up to a point, I guess: but that only shows whatever SQL Server knows about the various parameters, which isn’t all that much! I wanted a better way for my API users to learn about its capabilities and so I hit upon the idea of simply using PRINT statements within the code itself to inform the user what options are available; hence I added such PRINT statements in the latest check-in. Now when you execute (for example): EXEC sp_ssiscatalog @operation_type='execs' you can hit F6 a few times to view the messages pane and you shall see something like this: Notice that I’m returning information about all the parameters that can be used to affect the results that just got returned. I really do think this will be very useful to anyone using sp_ssiscatalog; I myself am always forgetting what the parameters are and I wrote the damn thing so I can’t really expect anyone else to remember them. I have not yet made available a release that has these changes in it but when I do I’ll blog about it right here. At the time of writing the latest available release of sp_ssiscatalog is DB v1.0.1.0 but if you want to the latest and greatest simply download it straight from source. Feedback is welcome as always. @Jamiet

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  • How do you take into account usability and user requirements for your application?

    - by voroninp
    Our team supports BackOffice application: a mix of WinForm and WPF windows. (about 80 including dialogs). Really a kind of a Swiss Army Knife. It is used by developers, tech writers, security developers, testers. The requirements for new features come quite often and sometimes we play Wizard of Oz to decide which GUI our users like the most. And it usually happens (I admit it can be just my subjective interpretation of the reality) that one tiny detail giving the flavor of good usability to our app requires a lot of time. This time is being spent on 'fighting' with GUI framework making it act like we need. And it very difficult to make estimations for this type of tasks (at least for me and most members of our team). Scrum poker is not a help either. Management often considers this usability perfectionism to be a waste of time. On the other hand an accumulated affect of features where each has some little usability flaw frustrates users. But the same users want frequent releases and instant bug fixes. Hence, no way to get the positive feedback: there is always somebody who is snuffy. I constantly feel myself as competing with ourselves: more features - more bugs/tasks/architecture. We are trying to outrun the cart we are pushing. New technologies arrive and some of them can potentially help to improve the design or decrease task implementation time but these technologies require learning, prototyping and so on. Well, that was a story. And now is the question: How do you balance between time pressure, product quality, users and management satisfaction? When and how do you decide to leave the problem with not a perfect but to some extent acceptable solution, how often do you make these decisions? How do you do with your own satisfaction? What are your priorities? P.S. Please keep in mind, we are a BackOffice team, we have neither dedicated technical writer nor GUI designer. The tester have joined us recently. We've much work to do and much freedom concerning 'how'. I like it because it fosters creativity but I don't want to become too nerdy perfectionist.

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  • The Connected Company: WebCenter Portal Activity Streams

    - by Michael Snow
    Guest post by Mitchell Palski, Oracle Staff Sales Consultant Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Social media is sure to have made its way into your company or government organization. Whether its discussion threads, blog posts, Facebook-style profile-pages, or just a simple Instant Messenger application; in one way or another, your employees are connected. What are the objectives of leveraging social media in your organization? Facilitating knowledge transfer More effectively organizing team events Generating inter-community discussions to solve problems Improving resource management Increasing organizational awareness Creating an environment of accountability Do any of the business objectives above stand out to you as needs? If so, consider leveraging the WebCenter Portal Activity Stream as part of your solution. In WebCenter Portal, the Activity Stream feature provides a streaming view of the activities of your connections, actions taken in portals, and business activities that looks a lot like a combined Facebook and Twitter newsfeed. Activity Stream can note when a user: Posts feedback (comments) Uploads a document Creates a new blog, page, event, or announcement Starts a new discussion Streams messages and attachments entered through WebCenter Publisher (similar to Twitter) Through Activity Stream Preferences, you can select which of these activities to show or hide from your personal Activity Stream. Here’s what you get: Real-time stream of activities with in a Portal or sub-Portal increases awareness across your organization or within a working group Complete list of user actions reduces the time-to-find for users that need to interact with the latest activities in your portal Users can publish to their groups when tasks are finished for complete group traceability and accountability, as well as improved resource management. Project discussions and shared documents that require the expertise of someone outside of a working group now get increased visibility across your organization. There’s a reason that commercial Social Media tools like Facebook and Twitter have been so successful – they spread information in an aesthetically appealing and easy to read format.  Strategically placing an Activity Feed within your Portal is analogous to sending your employees a daily newsletter, events calendar, recent documents report, and list of announcements – BUT ALL IN ONE! 

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  • How can we unify business goals and technical goals?

    - by BAM
    Some background I work at a small startup: 4 devs, 1 designer, and 2 non-technical co-founders, one who provides funding, and the other who handles day-to-day management and sales. Our company produces mobile apps for target industries, and we've gotten a lot of lucky breaks lately. The outlook is good, and we're confident we can make this thing work. One reason is our product development team. Everyone on the team is passionate, driven, and has a great sense of what makes an awesome product. As a result, we've built some beautiful applications that we're all proud of. The other reason is the co-founders. Both have a brilliant business sense (one actually founded a multi-million dollar company already), and they have close ties in many of the industries we're trying to penetrate. Consequently, they've brought in some great business and continue to keep jobs in the pipeline. The problem The problem we can't seem to shake is how to bring these two awesome advantages together. On the business side, there is a huge pressure to deliver as fast as possible as much as possible, whereas on the development side there is pressure to take your time, come up with the right solution, and pay attention to all the details. Lately these two sides have been butting heads a lot. Developers are demanding quality while managers are demanding quantity. How can we handle this? Both sides are correct. We can't survive as a company if we build terrible applications, but we also can't survive if we don't sell enough. So how should we go about making compromises? Things we've done with little or no success: Work more (well, it did result in better quality and faster delivery, but the dev team has never been more stressed out before) Charge more (as a startup, we don't yet have the credibility to justify higher prices, so no one is willing to pay) Extend deadlines (if we charge the same, but take longer, we'll end up losing money) Things we've done with some success: Sacrifice pay to cut costs (everyone, from devs to management, is paid less than they could be making elsewhere. In return, however, we all have creative input and more flexibility and freedom, a typical startup trade off) Standardize project management (we recently started adhering to agile/scrum principles so we can base deadlines on actual velocity, not just arbitrary guesses) Hire more people (we used to have 2 developers and no designers, which really limited our bandwidth. However, as a startup we can only afford to hire a few extra people.) Is there anything we're missing or doing wrong? How is this handled at successful companies? Thanks in advance for any feedback :)

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  • Creating a Yes/No MessageBox in a NuGet install/uninstall script

    - by ParadigmShift
    Sometimes getting a little feedback during the install/uninstall process of a NuGet package could be really useful. Instead of accounting for all possible ways to install your NuGet package for every user, you can simplify the installation by clarifying with the user what they want. This example shows how to generate a windows yes/no message box to get input from the user in the PowerShell install or uninstall script. We’ll use the prompt on the uninstall to confirm if the user wants to delete a custom setting that the initial install placed in their configuration.  Obviously you could use the prompt in any way you want. The objects of the message box are generated similar to the controls in the code behind of a WinForm. At the beginning of your script enter this: param($installPath, $toolsPath, $package, $project)   # Set up path variables $solutionDir = Get-SolutionDir $projectName = (Get-Project).ProjectName $projectPath = Join-Path $solutionDir $projectName   ################################################################################################ # WinForm generation for prompt ################################################################################################ function Ask-Delete-Custom-Settings { [void][reflection.assembly]::loadwithpartialname("System.Windows.Forms") [Void][reflection.assembly]::loadwithpartialname("System.Drawing")   $title = "Package Uninstall" $message = "Delete the customized settings?" #Create form and controls $form1 = New-Object System.Windows.Forms.Form $label1 = New-Object System.Windows.Forms.Label $btnYes = New-Object System.Windows.Forms.Button $btnNo = New-Object System.Windows.Forms.Button   #Set properties of controls and form ############ # label1 # ############ $label1.Location = New-Object System.Drawing.Point(12,9) $label1.Name = "label1" $label1.Size = New-Object System.Drawing.Size(254,17) $label1.TabIndex = 0 $label1.Text = $message   ############# # btnYes # ############# $btnYes.Location = New-Object System.Drawing.Point(156,45) $btnYes.Name = "btnYes" $btnYes.Size = New-Object System.Drawing.Size(48,25) $btnYes.TabIndex = 1 $btnYes.Text = "Yes"   ########### # btnNo # ########### $btnNo.Location = New-Object System.Drawing.Point(210,45) $btnNo.Name = "btnNo" $btnNo.Size = New-Object System.Drawing.Size(48,25) $btnNo.TabIndex = 2 $btnNo.Text = "No"   ########### # form1 # ########### $form1.ClientSize = New-Object System.Drawing.Size(281,86) $form1.Controls.Add($label1) $form1.Controls.Add($btnYes) $form1.Controls.Add($btnNo) $form1.Name = "Form1" $form1.Text = $title #Event Handler $btnYes.add_Click({btnYes_Click}) $btnNo.add_Click({btnNo_Click}) return $form1.ShowDialog() } function btnYes_Click { #6 = Yes $form1.DialogResult = 6 } function btnNo_Click { #7 = No $form1.DialogResult = 7 } ################################################################################################ This has also wired up the click events to the form.  This is all it takes to create the message box. Now we have to actually use the message box and get the user’s response or this is all pointless.  We’ll then delete the section of the application/web configuration called <Custom.Settings> [xml] $configXmlContent = Get-Content $configFile   Write-Host "Please respond to the question in the Dialog Box." $dialogResult = Ask-Delete-Custom-Settings #6 = Yes #7 = No Write-Host "dialogResult = $dialogResult" if ($dialogResult.ToString() -eq "Yes") { Write-Host "Deleting customized settings" $customSettingsNode = $configXmlContent.configuration.Item("Custom.Settings") $configXmlContent.configuration.RemoveChild($customSettingsNode) $configXmlContent.Save($configFile) } if ($dialogResult.ToString() -eq "No") { Write-Host "Do not delete customized settings" } The part where I check if ($dialog.Result.ToString() –eq “Yes”) could just as easily check the value for either 6 or 7 (Yes or No).  I just personally decided I liked this way better.   Shahzad Qureshi is a Software Engineer and Consultant in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA His certifications include: Microsoft Certified System Engineer 3CX Certified Partner Global Information Assurance Certification – Secure Software Programmer – .NET He is the owner of Utah VoIP Store at http://www.utahvoipstore.com/ and SWS Development at http://www.swsdev.com/ and publishes windows apps under the name Blue Voice.

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