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Perm SSIS Developer Urgently Required

- by blakmk

Job Role To provide dedicated data services support to the company, by designing, creating, maintaining and enhancing database objects, ensuring data quality, consistency and integrity. Migrating data from various sources to central SQL 2008 data warehouse will be the primary function. Migration of data from bespoke legacy database’s to SQL 2008 data warehouse. Understand key business requirements, Liaising with various aspects of the company. Create advanced transformations of data, with focus on data cleansing, redundant data and duplication. Creating complex business rules regarding data services, migration, Integrity and support (Best Practices). Experience · Minimum 3 year SSIS experience, in a project or BI Development role and involvement in at least 3 full ETL project life cycles, using the following methodologies and tools o Excellent knowledge of ETL concepts including data migration & integrity, focusing on SSIS. o Extensive experience with SQL 2005 products, SQL 2008 desirable. o Working knowledge of SSRS and its integration with other BI products. o Extensive knowledge of T-SQL, stored procedures, triggers (Table/Database), views, functions in particular coding and querying. o Data cleansing and harmonisation. o Understanding and knowledge of indexes, statistics and table structure. o SQL Agent – Scheduling jobs, optimisation, multiple jobs, DTS. o Troubleshoot, diagnose and tune database and physical server performance. o Knowledge and understanding of locking, blocks, table and index design and SQL configuration. · Demonstrable ability to understand and analyse business processes. · Experience in creating business rules on best practices for data services. · Experience in working with, supporting and troubleshooting MS SQL servers running enterprise applications · Proven ability to work well within a team and liaise with other technical support staff such as networking administrators, system administrators and support engineers. · Ability to create formal documentation, work procedures, and service level agreements. · Ability to communicate technical issues at all levels including to a non technical audience. · Good working knowledge of MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio and Project. Location Based in Crawley with possibility of some remote working Contact me for more info: http://sqlblogcasts.com/blogs/blakmk/contact.aspx

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Where Twitter Stands Heading Into 2013

- by Mike Stiles

As Twitter continued throughout 2012 to be a stage on which global politics and culture played itself out, the company itself underwent some adjustments that give us a good indication of what users and brands can expect from the platform in 2013. The power of the network did anything but fade. Celebrities continued to use it to connect one-on-one. Even the Pope signed on this year. It continued to fuel revolutions. It played an exponentially large factor in this US Presidential election. And around the world, the freedom to speak was challenged as users were fired, sued, sometimes even jailed for their tweets. Expect more of the same in 2013, as Twitter has entrenched itself, for individuals, causes and brands, as the fastest, easiest, most efficient way to message the masses so some measure of impact can come from it. It’s changed everything, and it’s not finished. These fun facts reveal the position of strength with which Twitter enters 2013: It now generates a billion tweets every 2.5 days It has 500 million+ users The average Twitter user has tweeted 307 times 32% of everyone using the Internet uses Twitter It’s expected to bring in $540 million in ad revenue by 2014 11 new accounts are created every second High-level Executive Summary: people love it, people use it, and they’re going to keep loving and using it. Whether or not outside developers love it is a different matter. 2012 marked a shift from welcoming the third party support that played at least some role in Twitter being so warmly embraced, to discouraging anything that replicates what Twitter can do itself…or plans to do itself. It’s not the open playground it once was. Now Twitter must spend 2013 proving it can innovate in-house and keep us just as entranced. Likewise, Twitter is distancing itself from Facebook. Images from the #1 platform’s Instagram don’t work on Twitter anymore, and Twitter’s rolling out their own photo filter product. Where the two have lived in a “plenty of room for everybody” symbiosis up to now, 2013 could see the giants ramping up a full-on rivalry. Twitter is exhibiting a deliberate strategy. Updates have centered on more visually appealing search results, and making finding and sharing content easier. Deals have been cut with some media entities so their content stands out. CEO Dick Costolo has said tweets aren’t the attraction, they’re what leads you to content. Twitter aims to be a key distributor of media and info. Add the addition of former News Corp. President Peter Chernin to the board, and their hashtag landing page experience for events, and their media behemoth ambitions get pretty clear. There are challenges ahead and Costolo has also laid those out; entry into China, figuring out how to have Twitter deliver both comprehensive and relevant, targeted experiences, and the visualization of big data. What does this mean for corporations? They can expect a more media-rich evolution and growing emphases on imagery. They can expect more opportunities to create great media content and leverage Twitter for its distribution. And they can expect new ways to surface in searches. Are brands diving in? 56% of customer tweets to companies get completely and totally ignored. Ugh. A study Twitter recently conducted with Compete shows people who see tweets from retailers are more likely to buy a product. And, the more retailer tweets they see, the more likely they are to purchase on the retail site. As more of those tweets point to engaging media content from the brand, the results should get even better. Twitter appears ready for 2013. Enterprise brands have some work to do. @mikestilesPhoto Stuart Miles, freedigitalphotos.net

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Let Me Show You Something: Instagram, Vine and Snapchat for Brands

- by Mike Stiles

While brands are well aware of how much more impactful images are than text-only posts on social channels, today you’re additionally being presented with platform after additional platform for hosting, doctoring and sharing photos and videos. Can you play in every sandbox? And if you do, can you be brilliant on all of them? As has usually been the case, so far brands are sticking their toes into new platforms while not actually committing to them, or strategizing for them, or resourcing them. TrackMaven found of the 123 F500 companies using Instagram, only 22% of them are active on it. Likewise, research from Simply Measured found brands are indeed jumping in, with the number establishing a presence on Instagram up 55% over the past year. Users want them there…brand engagement has exploded 350%, and over 1/3 of the top brands have at least 10,000 followers. BUT…the top 10 brands are generating 33% of all posts, reaping 83% of all engagement. Things are also growing on Twitter’s Vine, the 6-second looping video app that hit 40 million users in August. The 7th Chamber says 5 tweets a second contain a Vine link. Other studies say branded Vines are 4 times more likely to be shared and seen than rank-and-file branded videos. Why? Users know that even if a video is pure junk, they won’t get robbed of too much of their valuable time. Vine is always upgrading so you can make sure your videos are worth viewers’ time. You can now edit videos, and save & work on several projects concurrently. What you can’t do is upload a finely crafted video into Vine, but you can do that with Instagram. The key to success? Same as with all other content; make it of value. Deliver a laugh or a lesson or both. How-to, behind the scenes peeks, contests, demos, all make sense in the short video format. Or follow Nash Grier’s example, which is to just have fun with and connect to your viewers, earning their trust that your next Vine will be as good as the last. Nash is only 15, has over 1.4 million followers, and adds about 100,000 a week. He broke out when one of his videos was re-Vined by some other kid with 300,000 followers. Make good stuff, get it in front of influencers, and your brand Vines could break out as well. Then there’s Snapchat, the “this photo will self destruct” platform. How can that be of use to brands besides offering coupons that really expire? The jury is out. But with an audience of over 100 million and a valuation of $800 million, media-with-a-time-limit is compelling. Now there’s “Snapchat Stories” that can last 24 hours and be shared to the public at large. You might be able to capitalize on how much more focus gets put on content when there’s a time limit on its availability. The underlying truth to all of this is, these are all tools. Very cool, feature rich tools, but tools. You can give the exact same art kit to 5 different people and you’d get back 5 very different works, ranging from worthless garbage to masterpiece. Brands are being called upon to be still and moving image artists. That’s what your customers are used to seeing, from a variety of sources. Commit to communicating with them accordingly. @mikestiles Photo: stock.xchng

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Utility to Script SQL Server Configuration

- by Bill Graziano

I wrote a small utility to script some key SQL Server configuration information. I had two goals for this utility: Assist with disaster recovery preparation Identify configuration changes I’ve released the application as open source through CodePlex. You can download it from CodePlex at the Script SQL Server Configuration project page. The application is a .NET 2.0 console application that uses SMO. It writes its output to a directory that you specify. Disaster Planning ScriptSqlConfig generates scripts for logins, jobs and linked servers. It writes the properties and configuration from the instance to text files. The scripts are designed so they can be run against a DR server in the case of a disaster. The properties and configuration will need to be manually compared. Each job is scripted to its own file. Each linked server is scripted to its own file. The linked servers don’t include the password if you use a SQL Server account to connect to the linked server. You’ll need to store those somewhere secure. All the logins are scripted to a single file. This file includes windows logins, SQL Server logins and any server role membership. The SQL Server logins are scripted with the correct SID and hashed passwords. This means that when you create the login it will automatically match up to the users in the database and have the correct password. This is the only script that I programmatically generate rather than using SMO. The SQL Server configuration and properties are scripted to text files. These will need to be manually reviewed in the event of a disaster. Or you could DIFF them with the configuration on the new server. Configuration Changes These scripts and files are all designed to be checked into a version control system. The scripts themselves don’t include any date specific information. In my environments I run this every night and check in the changes. I call the application once for each server and script each server to its own directory. The process will delete any existing files before writing new ones. This solved the problem I had where the scripts for deleted jobs and linked servers would continue to show up. To see any changes I just need to query the version control system to show many any changes to the files. Database Scripting Utilities that script database objects are plentiful. CodePlex has at least a dozen of them including one I wrote years ago. The code is so easy to write it’s hard not to include that functionality. This functionality wasn’t high on my list because it’s included in a database backup. Unless you specify the /nodb option, the utility will script out many user database objects. It will script one object per file. It will script tables, stored procedures, user-defined data types, views, triggers, table types and user-defined functions. I know there are more I need to add but haven’t gotten around it yet. If there’s something you need, please log an issue and get it added. Since it scripts one object per file these really aren’t appropriate to recreate an empty database. They are really good for checking into source control every night and then seeing what changed. I know everyone tells me all their database objects are in source control but a little extra insurance never hurts. Conclusion I hope this utility will help a few of you out there. My goal is to have it script all server objects that aren’t contained in user databases. This should help with configuration changes and especially disaster recovery.

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Something about Property Management or … the understanding of SharePoint Admins/roles ?!?

- by Enrique Lima

When I talk about SharePoint, for some reason it comes to my mind as if it were property management and all the tasks associated with it. So, imagine you have a lot ( a piece of land of sorts), you then decide there is something you want to do with it. So, you make the choice of having a building built. Now, in order to go forward with your plan, you need to check what the rules/regulations are. Has is it been zoned residential, commercial, industrial … you get the idea. This to me sounds like Governance. The what am I to do given a defined set of rules. We keep on moving forward based on those rules. And with this we start the process of building, the building process takes us to survey the land, identify what our boundaries are. And as we go along we start getting the idea in our head as to what we will do as far as the building goes. We identify the essentials of the building, basic services and such. All in all, we plan. And as with many things we do, we like solid foundations. What a solid foundation looks like will depend on where and what we build. The way buildings are built depends in many ways in being able to foresee the potential for natural disasters or to try to leverage the lay of the land. Sound familiar? We have done our Requirements Gathering. We have the building in place, we have followed the zoning rules, we have implemented services. But we need someone to manage the building, now we move on to the human side of the story. We want to establish a means to normalcy in the building, someone that can be the monitoring agent as to the “what’s going on?” of it. This person will be tasked with making sure all basic services are functional, that measures are taken if there is an issue and so on. Enter the Farm Administrator. In a way, we establish an extension of the rules to make sure the building and the apartments/offices build follow a standard set of rules too. Now, in turn you will have people leasing or buying the apartments/offices, they will be the keepers of that space. So, now we are building sites, we have moved from having the building (farm) ready, to leasing/selling offices/apartments (site collections). There will be someone assuming responsibility for those offices, that person will authorize or be informed about activities and also who not only gets a code into the building, but perhaps a key to the office. Enter Site Collection Administrator. And then perhaps we move on to the person that would be responsible for specifics within the office, for example a Human Resources Manager or Coordinator. They will have specific control and knowledge about people. A facilities coordinator, and so on. I would translate that into Site Administrators. With that said then, we identify the following: Role Name Responsibility (but not limited to) Farm Administrator Infrastructure Site Collection Admin Policies for Content, Hierarchy, Recycle Bin, Security and Access Site Owner (Site Admin) Security and Access, Training, Guidance, Manage Templates All in all there are different levels of responsibility to be handled, but it is very important to understand what they are and what they mean. Here is a link to very well laid out explanation on this … http://www.endusersharepoint.com/2009/08/11/site-managers-and-end-user-expectations-roles-and-responsibilities/

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My 2D collision code does not work as expected. How do I fix it?

- by farmdve

I have a simple 2D game with a tile-based map. I am new to game development, I followed the LazyFoo tutorials on SDL. The tiles are in a bmp file, but each tile inside it corresponds to an internal number of the type of tile(color, or wall). The game is simple, but the code is a lot so I can only post snippets. // Player moved out of the map if((player.box.x < 0)) player.box.x += GetVelocity(player, 0); if((player.box.y < 0)) player.box.y += GetVelocity(player, 1); if((player.box.x > (LEVEL_WIDTH - DOT_WIDTH))) player.box.x -= GetVelocity(player, 0); if((player.box.y > (LEVEL_HEIGHT - DOT_HEIGHT))) player.box.y -= GetVelocity(player, 1); // Now that we are here, we check for collisions if(touches_wall(player.box)) { if(player.box.x < player.prev_x) { player.box.x += GetVelocity(player, 0); } if(player.box.x > player.prev_x) { player.box.x -= GetVelocity(player, 0); } if(player.box.y < player.prev_y) { player.box.y += GetVelocity(player, 1); } if(player.box.y > player.prev_y) { player.box.y -= GetVelocity(player, 1); } } player.prev_x = player.box.x; player.prev_y = player.box.y; Let me explain, player is a structure with the following contents typedef struct { Rectangle box; //Player position on a map(tile or whatever). int prev_x, prev_y; // Previous positions int key_press[3]; // Stores which key was pressed/released. Limited to three keys. E.g Left,right and perhaps jump if possible in 2D int velX, velY; // Velocity for X and Y coordinate. //Health int health; bool main_character; uint32_t jump_ticks; } Player; And Rectangle is just a typedef of SDL_Rect. GetVelocity is a function that according to the second argument, returns the velocity for the X or Y axis. This code I have basically works, however inside the if(touches_wall(player.box)) if statement, I have 4 more. These 4 if statements are responsible for detecting collision on all 4 sides(up,down,left,right). However, they also act as a block for any other movement. Example: I move down the object and collide with the wall, as I continue to move down and still collide with the wall, I wish to move left or right, which is indeed possible(not to mention in 3D games), but remember the 4 if statements? They are preventing me from moving anywhere. The original code on the LazyFoo Productions website has no problems, but it was written in C++, so I had to rewrite most of it to work, which is probably where the problem comes from. I also use a different method of moving, than the one in the examples. Of course, that was just an example. I wish to be able to move no matter at which wall I collide. Before this bit of code, I had another one that had more logic in there, but it was flawed.

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LUKOIL Overseas Holding Optimizes Oil Field Development Projects with Integrated Project Management

- by Melissa Centurio Lopes

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} LUKOIL Overseas Group is a growing oil and gas company that is an integral part of the vertically integrated oil company OAO LUKOIL. It is engaged in the exploration, acquisition, integration, and efficient development of oil and gas fields outside the Russian Federation to promote transforming LUKOIL into a transnational energy company. In 2010, the company signed a 20-year development project for the giant, West Qurna 2 oil field in Iraq. Executing 10,000 to 15,000 project activities simultaneously on 14 major construction and drilling projects in Iraq for the West Qurna-2 project meant the company needed a clear picture, in real time, of dependencies between its capital construction, geologic exploration and sinking projects—required for its building infrastructure oil field development projects in Iraq. LUKOIL Overseas Holding deployed Oracle’s Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management to generate structured project management information and optimize planning, monitoring, and analysis of all engineering and commercial activities—such as tenders, and bulk procurement of materials and equipment—related to oil field development projects. A word from LUKOIL Overseas Holding Ltd. “Previously, we created project schedules on desktop computers and uploaded them to the project server to be merged into one big file for each project participant to access. This was not scalable, as we’ve grown and now run up to 15,000 activities in numerous projects and subprojects at any time. With Oracle’s Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management, we can now work concurrently on projects with many team members, enjoy absolute security, and issue new baselines for all projects and project participants once a week, with ease.” – Sergey Kotov, Head of IT and the Communication Office, LUKOIL Mid-East Ltd. Oracle Primavera Solutions: · Facilitated managing dependencies between projects by enabling the general scheduler to reschedule all projects and subprojects once a week, realigning 10,000 to 15,000 project activities that the company runs at any time · Replaced Microsoft Project and a paper-based system with a complete solution that provides structured project data · Enhanced data security by establishing project management security policies that enable only authorized project members to edit their project tasks, while enabling each project participant to view all project data that are relevant to that individual’s task · Enabled the company to monitor project progress in comparison to the projected plan, based on physical project assets to determine if each project is on track to conclude within its time and budget limitations To view the full list of solutions view here. “Oracle Gold Partner Parma Telecom was key to our successful Primavera deployment, implementing the software’s basic functionalities, such as project content, timeframes management, and cost management, in addition to performing its integration with our enterprise resource planning system and intranet portal within ten months and in accordance with budgets,” said Rafik Baynazarov, head of the master planning and control office, LUKOIL Mid-East Ltd. “ To read the full version of the customer success story, please view here.

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User password rejected on login screen but accepted on text console login

- by MadsirR

I had to force shutdown my Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit, after which I restarted and tried to log in as a normal user, which was rejected several times. I then logged in as guest and tty to my regular account with use of my normal password, which succeeded. (So the password is still valid.) How can I gain access again via the normal login procedure (welcome screen)? Update: When I tried to log on with my new password, it again was denied. When I deliberately tried to log on with a faulty password, an error message came back, saying: Access denied - wrong password. I suppose, the first time the password was not rejected, but the procedure was aborted for some reason. Some additional info after trying to find a solution: I am conviced it is a Compiz-issue. Why? before this happened, all sessions came to a grinding halt, regardless of being logged on in a 2D or 3d environment. I found a link saying that I should remove Compiz and proceed in a 2D environment, which initiall worked without a glitch, until my system went into a state of total obivium. Only after that, the above mentioned troubles appeared. In the meantime I have happened to find a thread with reference 17381, describing exactly what I have experienced. For now, I will try to cure this situation (later this week) and revert with the results, hopefully to close this post. In the meantime I cordially thank you all, even if you didn't kill the problem; you gave me the inspiration to look further and find a possible cure. Update2: After 15 hrs of trial-and-error I callled it quits (When I decided to tackle this problem, I've given myself 12 hrs, to avoid massive loss of time.) I decided to re-install Precise, since the "point 1" version has become availabe. Log-in is back to normal, as is the graphic environment. Response to mouse input is stil appalling, especially when I have a series of screens open as "children"of a "parent" screen. It still completely locks up. I have installed Enlightenment, Gnome classic, Gnome 3, Cinnamon and they all behave in a similar fashion. FOR THOSE WHO NEED A WAY-OUT IN SITUATIONS OF THE LIKE: Open a terminal with [Ctrl+Alt+F2]. Type [sudo killall Firefox] (or whatever application you wish to terminate). Key in your password. Return to your graphical screen with [Ctrl+Alt+F7], and Bob's your uncle. Just re-open Firefox like nothing happened. Next time you are stuck: [Ctrl+Alt+F2], upward arrow till you meet the command of your desire, [Ctrl+Alt+F7], etcetera. Hope this is of help. My next move will be to upgrade the kernel to 3.4 from the repositories for 12.10. However, since this entails a totally new situation, I will start a new thread on this site to avoid topic pollution I will keep you posted. Still.

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Taking HRMS to the Cloud to Simplify Human Resources Management

- by HCM-Oracle

By Anke Mogannam With human capital management (HCM) a top-of-mind issue for executives in every industry, human resources (HR) organizations are poised to have their day in the sun—proving not just their administrative worth but their strategic value as well. To make good on that promise, however, HR must modernize. Indeed, if HR is to act as an agent of change—providing the swift reallocation of employees and the rapid absorption of employee data required for enterprises to shift course on a dime—it must first deal with the disruptive change at its own front door. And increasingly, that means choosing the right technology and human resources management system (HRMS) for managing the entire employee lifecycle. Unfortunately, for most organizations, this task has proved easier said than done. This is because while much has been written about advances in HRMS technology, until recently, most of those advances took the form of disparate on-premises solutions designed to serve very specific purposes. Although this may have resulted in key competencies in certain areas, it also meant that processes for core HR functions like payroll and benefits were being carried out in separate systems from those used for talent management, workforce optimization, training, and so on. With no integration—and no single system of record—processes were disconnected, ease of use was impeded, user experience was diminished, and vital data was left untapped. Today, however, that scenario has begun to change, and end-to-end cloud-based HCM solutions have moved from wished-for innovations to real-life solutions. Why, then, have HR organizations been so slow in adopting them? The answer—it would seem—is, “It’s complicated.” So complicated, in fact, that 45 percent of the respondents to PwC’s “Annual HR Technology Survey” (for 2013) reported having no formal HR software roadmap, and 40 percent stated that they “did not know” whether their organizations would be increasing their use of cloud or software as a service (SaaS) for HR. Clearly, HR organizations need help sorting through the morass of HR software options confronting them. But just as clearly, there’s an enormous opportunity awaiting those that do. The trick will come in charting a course that allows HR to leverage existing technology while investing in the cloud-based solutions that will deliver the end-to-end processes, easy-to-understand analytics, and superior adaptability required to simplify—and add value to—every aspect of employee management. The Opportunity therefore is to cut costs, drive Innovation, and increase engagement by moving to cloud-based HCM. Then you will benefit from one Interface, leverage many access points, and gain at-a-glance insight across your entire workforce. With many legacy on-premises HR systems not being efficient anymore and cloud-based, integrated systems that span the range of HR functions finally reaching maturity, the time is ripe for moving core HR to the cloud. Indeed, for the first time ever there are more HRMS replacement initiatives than HRMS upgrade initiatives under way, and the majority of them involve moving to the cloud per Cedar Crestone’s 2013-2014 HRMS survey. To learn how you can launch your own cloud HCM initiative and begin using HR to power the enterprise, visit Oracle HRMS in the Cloud and Oracle’s new customer 2 cloud program. Anke Mogannam brings more than 16 years of marketing and human capital management experience in the technology industries to her role at Oracle where she is part of the Human Capital Management applications marketing team. In that role, Anke drives content marketing, messaging, go-to-market activities, integrated marketing campaigns, and field enablement. Prior to joining Oracle, Anke held several roles in communications, marketing, HCM product strategy and product management at PeopleSoft, SAP, Workday and Saba. Follow her on Twitter @amogannam

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PaaS, DBaaS and the Oracle Database Cloud Service

- by yaldahhakim

v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} 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-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;} As with many widely hyped areas, there is much more variation within the broad spectrum of products referred to as “Cloud” that is immediately apparent. This variation is evident in one of the key misunderstandings about the Oracle Database Cloud Service. People could be forgiven for thinking that the Database Cloud Service was a Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS), but this is actually not true. The Database Cloud Service is a Platform-as-a-Service, which presents a different user and developer interface and has a different set of qualities. A good way to think about the difference between these two varieties of Cloud offerings is that you, the customer, have to deal with things at the level of the offering, but not for anything below it. In practice, this means that you do not have to deal with hardware or system software, including installation and maintenance, for DBaaS. You also do not have much control over configuration of these options. For PaaS, you don’t have to deal with hardware, system software, or database software – and also do not have control over these levels in the stack. So you cannot modify configuration parameters for the database with the Database Cloud Service – your interface is through SQL and PL/SQL, with Application Express, included in the Database Cloud Service, or through JDBC for Java apps running in the Java Cloud Service, or through RESTful Web Services. You will notice what is not mentioned there – SQL*Net. You cannot access your Oracle Database Cloud Service by changing an entry in the TNSNames file and using SQL*Net. So the effort involved in migrating an existing Oracle Database in your data center to the Database Cloud Service may be prohibitive. The good news is that Application Express and the RESTful Web Services wizard in the Database Cloud Service allow you to develop new applications very quickly, and, of course, the provisioning of the entire Database Cloud Service takes only minutes.

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Universities 2030: Learning from the Past to Anticipate the Future

- by Mohit Phogat

What will the landscape of international higher education look like a generation from now? What challenges and opportunities lie ahead for universities, especially “global” research universities? And what can university leaders do to prepare for the major social, economic, and political changes—both foreseen and unforeseen—that may be on the horizon? The nine essays in this collection proceed on the premise that one way to envision “the global university” of the future is to explore how earlier generations of university leaders prepared for “global” change—or at least responded to change—in the past. As the essays in this collection attest, many of the patterns associated with contemporary “globalization” or “internationalization” are not new; similar processes have been underway for a long time (some would say for centuries).[1] A comparative-historical look at universities’ responses to global change can help today’s higher-education leaders prepare for the future. Written by leading historians of higher education from around the world, these nine essays identify “key moments” in the internationalization of higher education: moments when universities and university leaders responded to new historical circumstances by reorienting their relationship with the broader world. Covering more than a century of change—from the late nineteenth century to the early twenty-first—they explore different approaches to internationalization across Europe, Asia, Australia, North America, and South America. Notably, while the choice of historical eras was left entirely open, the essays converged around four periods: the 1880s and the international extension of the “modern research university” model; the 1930s and universities’ attempts to cope with international financial and political crises; the 1960s and universities’ role in an emerging postcolonial international development apparatus; and the 2000s and the rise of neoliberal efforts to reform universities in the name of international economic “competitiveness.” Each of these four periods saw universities adopt new approaches to internationalization in response to major historical-structural changes, and each has clear parallels to today. Among the most important historical-structural challenges that universities confronted were: (1) fluctuating enrollments and funding resources associated with global economic booms and busts; (2) new modes of transportation and communication that facilitated mobility (among students, scholars, and knowledge itself); (3) increasing demands for applied science, technical expertise, and commercial innovation; and (4) ideological reconfigurations accompanying regime changes (e.g., from one internal regime to another, from colonialism to postcolonialism, from the cold war to globalized capitalism, etc.). Like universities today, universities in the past responded to major historical-structural changes by internationalizing: by joining forces across space to meet new expectations and solve problems on an ever-widening scale. Approaches to internationalization have typically built on prior cultural or institutional ties. In general, only when the benefits of existing ties had been exhausted did universities reach out to foreign (or less familiar) partners. As one might expect, this process of “reaching out” has stretched universities’ traditional cultural, political, and/or intellectual bonds and has invariably presented challenges, particularly when national priorities have differed—for example, with respect to curricular programs, governance structures, norms of academic freedom, etc. Strategies of university internationalization that either ignore or downplay cultural, political, or intellectual differences often fail, especially when the pursuit of new international connections is perceived to weaken national ties. If the essays in this collection agree on anything, they agree that approaches to internationalization that seem to “de-nationalize” the university usually do not succeed (at least not for long). Please continue reading the other essays at http://globalhighered.wordpress.com/

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Construction Paper, Legos, and Architectural Modeling

I can remember as a kid playing with construction paper and Legos to explore my imagination. Through my exploration I was able to build airplanes, footballs, guns, and more, out of paper. Additionally I could create entire cities, robots, or anything else I could image out of Legos. These toys, I now realize were in fact tools that gave me an opportunity to explore my ideas in the physical world through the use of modeling. My imagination was allowed to run wild as I, unknowingly at the time, made design decisions that directly affected the models I was building from the raw materials. To prove my point further, I can remember building a paper airplane that seemed to go nowhere when I tried to throw it. So I decided to attach a paper clip to the plane before I decided to throw it the next time to test my concept that by adding more weight to the plane that it would fly better and for longer distances. The paper airplane allowed me to model my design decision through the use of creating an artifact in that I created a paper airplane that was carrying extra weight through the incorporation of the paper clip in to the design. Also, I remember using Legos to build all sorts of creations, and these creations became artifacts of my imagination. As I further and further defined my Lego creations through the process of playing I was able to create elaborate artifacts of my imagination. These artifacts represented design decision I had made in the evolution of my creation through my child like design process. In some form or fashion the artifacts I created as a kid are very similar to the artifacts that I create when I model a software architectural concept or a software design in that the process of making decisions is directly translated in to a tangible model in the form of an architectural model. Architectural models have been defined as artifacts that depict design decisions of a system’s architecture. The act of creating architectural models is the act of architectural modeling. Furthermore, architectural modeling is the process of creating a physical model based architectural concepts and documenting these design decisions. In the process of creating models, the standard notation used is Architectural modeling notation. This notation is the primary method of capturing the essence of design decisions regarding architecture. Modeling notations can vary based on the need and intent of a project; typically they range from natural language to a diagram based notation. Currently, Unified Markup Language (UML) is the industry standard in terms of architectural modeling notation because allows for architectures to be defined through a series of boxes, lines, arrows and other basic symbols that encapsulate design designs in to virtual components, connectors, configurations and interfaces. Furthermore UML allows for additional break down of models through the use of natural language as to explain each section of the model in plain English. One of the major factors in architectural modeling is to define what is to be modeled. As a basic rule of thumb, I tend to model architecture based on the complexity of systems or sub sub-systems of architecture. Another key factor is the level of detail that is actually needed for a model. For example if I am modeling a system for a CEO to view then the low level details will be omitted. In comparison, if I was modeling a system for another engineer to actually implement I would include as much detailed information as I could to help the engineer implement my design.

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Setup and configure a MVC4 project for Cloud Service(web role) and SQL Azure

- by MagnusKarlsson

I aim at keeping this blog post updated and add related posts to it. Since there are a lot of these out there I link to others that has done kind of the same before me, kind of a blog-DRY pattern that I'm aiming for. I also keep all mistakes and misconceptions for others to see. As an example; if I hit a stacktrace I will google it if I don't directly figure out the reason for it. I will then probably take the most plausible result and try it out. If it fails because I misinterpreted the error I will not delete it from the log but keep it for future reference and for others to see. That way people that finds this blog can see multiple solutions for indexed stacktraces and I can better remember how to do stuff. To avoid my errors I recommend you to read through it all before going from start to finish.The steps:Setup project in VS2012. (msdn blog)Setup Azure Services (half of mpspartners.com blog)Setup connections strings and configuration files (msdn blog + notes)Export certificates.Create Azure package from vs2012 and deploy to staging (same steps as for production).Connections string error Set up the visual studio project:http://blogs.msdn.com/b/avkashchauhan/archive/2011/11/08/developing-asp-net-mvc4-based-windows-azure-web-role.aspx Then login in to Azure to setup the services:Stop following this guide at the "publish website" part since we'll be uploading a package.http://www.mpspartners.com/2012/09/ConfiguringandDeployinganMVC4applicationasaCloudServicewithAzureSQLandStorage/ When set up (connection strings for debug and release and all), follow this guide to set up the configuration files:http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/hh369931.aspxTrying to package our application at this step will generate the following warning:3>MvcWebRole1(0,0): warning WAT170: The configuration setting 'Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Diagnostics.ConnectionString' is set up to use the local storage emulator for role 'MvcWebRole1' in configuration file 'ServiceConfiguration.Cloud.cscfg'. To access Windows Azure storage services, you must provide a valid Windows Azure storage connection string. Right click the web role under roles in solution manager and choose properties. Choose "Service configuration: Cloud". At "specify storage account credentials" we will copy/paste our account name and key from the Azure management platform.3.1 4. Right click Remote desktop Configuration and select certificate and export to file. We need to allow it in Portal manager.4.15 Now right click the cloud project and select package.5.1 Showing dialogue box. 5.2 Package success Now copy the path to the packaged file and go to management portal again. Click your web role and choose staging (or production). Upload. 5.3Tick the box about the single instance if that's what you want or you don't know what it means. Otherwise the following will happen (see image 4.6)5.4 Dialogue box When you have clicked the symbol for accept- button you will see the following screen with some green indicators down at the right corner. Click them if you want to see status.5.5 Information screen.5.6 "Failed to deploy application. The upload application has at least one role with only one instance. We recommend that you deploy at least two instances per role to ensure high availability in case one of the instances becomes unavailable. "To fix, go to step 5.4If you forgot to (or just didn't know you were supposed to) export your certificates. The following error will occur. Side note, the following thread suggests. To prevent: "Enable Remote Desktop for all roles" when right-clicking BIAB and choosing "Package". But in my case it was the not so present certificates. I fund the solution here.http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/dotnetstocktradersampleapplication/thread/0e94c2b5-463f-4209-86b9-fc257e0678cd5.75.8 Success! 5.9 Nice URL n' all. (More on that at another blog post).6. If you try to login and getWhen this error occurs many web sites suggest this is because you need:http://nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.AspNet.Providers.LocalDBOr : http://nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.AspNet.ProvidersBut it can also be that you don't have the correct setup for converting connectionstrings between your web.config to your debug.web.config(or release.web.config, whichever your using).Run as suggested in the "ordinary project in your solution. Go to the management portal and click update.

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Apps UX Launches Blueprints for Mobile User Experiences

- by mvaughan

By Misha Vaughan, Oracle Applications User ExperienceAt Oracle OpenWorld 2012 this year, the Oracle Applications User Experience (Apps UX) team announced the release of Mobile User Experience Functional Design Patterns. These patterns are designed to work directly with Oracle’s Fusion Middleware, specifically, ADF Mobile. The Oracle Application Development Framework for mobile users enables developers to build one application that can be deployed to multiple mobile device platforms. These same mobile design patterns provide the guidance for Oracle teams to develop Fusion Mobile expenses. Application developers can use Oracle’s mobile design patterns to design iPhone, Android, or browser-based smartphone applications. We are sharing our mobile design patterns and their baked-in, scientifically proven usability to enable Oracle customers and partners to build mobile applications quickly.A different way of thinking and designing. Lynn Rampoldi-Hnilo, Senior Manager of Mobile User Experiences for Apps UX, says mobile design has to be compelling. “It needs to be optimized for the device, and be visually rich and simple,” she said. “What is really key is that you are designing for a user’s most personal device, the device that they will have with them at all times of the day.”Katy Massucco, director of the overall design patterns site, said: “You need to start with a simplified task flow. Everything should be a natural interaction. The action should be relevant and leveraging the device. It should be seamless.”She suggests that developers identify the essential tasks that a user would want to do while mobile. “They need to understand the user and the context,” she added. ?A sample inline action design patternWhat people are sayingReactions to the release of the design patterns have been positive. Debra Lilley, Oracle ACE Director and Fusion User Experience Advocate (FXA), has already demo’ed Fusion Mobile Expenses widely. Fellow Oracle Ace Director Ronald van Luttikhuizen, called it a “cool demo by @debralilley of the new mobile expenses app.” FXA member Floyd Teter says he is already cooking up some plans for using mobile design patterns. We hope to see those ideas at Collaborate or ODTUG in 2013. For another perspective on why user experience is such an important focus for mobile applications, check out this video by John King, Director, and Monty Latiolais, President, both from ODTUG, or the Oracle Development Tools User Group.In a separate interview by e-mail, Latiolais wrote: “I enjoy the fact we can take something that, in the past, has been largely subjective, and now apply to it a scientifically proven look and feel. Trusting Oracle’s UX Design Patterns, the presentation really can become one less thing to worry about. As someone with limited ADF experience, that is extremely beneficial.”?King, who was also interviewed by e-mail, wrote: “User Experience is about making the task at hand as easy and error-free as possible. Oracle's UX labs worked hard to make the User Experience in the new Fusion Applications as good as possible; ADF makes adding tested, consistent, user experiences a declarative exercise by leveraging that work. As we move applications onto mobile platforms, user experience is the driving factor. Customers are "spoiled" by a bevy of fantastic applications, and ours cannot disappoint them. Creating applications that enable users to quickly and effectively accomplish whatever task is at hand takes thought and practice. Developers must become ’power users’ and then create applications that they and their users will love.”

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OPN Exchange General Sessions –Fowler, Kurian & More!

- by Kristin Rose

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} With so much excitement about to take place at OPN Exchange @ OpenWorld, it’s hard to decide what to attend, where to go, who to meet and what to eat! Let us help you decide by first asking a question… How often do you get to choose between seven key Oracle Executives as they address the five biggest topics facing the industry today? After the Partner Keynote with Judson Althoff, join us for the OPN Exchange General Sessions: DATE: Sunday September 30th TIME: 3:30-4:30 pm LOCATION: Moscone South, Esplanade Level John Fowler & Tom LaRocca (Technology for Partners: Room 306): Learn how to grow your top and bottom line by selling Oracle on Oracle. Chris Leone (Applications for Partners: Room 303): Catch the partner-only value prop, selling secrets and competitive compares to win with the Fusions Applications product family. Angelo Pruscino & Sohan DeMel (Engineered Systems for Partners: Room 301): Get the secrets to selling and implementing Oracle’s transformational Engineered Systems products. You won’t want to miss the Oracle Database Appliance Unplugged demonstration! Sonny Singh (Industry Solutions: Room 302): Develop profitable practices answering the challenges faced by companies operating in discrete industries and the opportunity represented by Machine2Machine Java. Thomas Kurian (Cloud for Partnesr: Room 304): Today it is all about the Cloud. Oracle offers both traditional cloud infrastructure solutions, as well cloud platform and software services. Attend this session to learn more about Oracle’s Platform, Application, and Social cloud services. Put on your thinking caps because these speakers are ready to blow your mind with five tracks of exclusive content catered to you, our partners. Boom! The OPN Communication Team 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-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";}

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When row estimation goes wrong

- by Dave Ballantyne

Whilst working at a client site, I hit upon one of those issues that you are not sure if that this is something entirely new or a bug or a gap in your knowledge. The client had a large query that needed optimizing. The query itself looked pretty good, no udfs, UNION ALL were used rather than UNION, most of the predicates were sargable other than one or two minor ones. There were a few extra joins that could be eradicated and having fixed up the query I then started to dive into the plan. I could see all manor of spills in the hash joins and the sort operations, these are caused when SQL Server has not reserved enough memory and has to write to tempdb. A VERY expensive operation that is generally avoidable. These, however, are a symptom of a bad row estimation somewhere else, and when that bad estimation is combined with other estimation errors, chaos can ensue. Working my way back down the plan, I found the cause, and the more I thought about it the more i came convinced that the optimizer could be making a much more intelligent choice. First step is to reproduce and I was able to simplify the query down a single join between two tables, Product and ProductStatus, from a business point of view, quite fundamental, find the status of particular products to show if ‘active’ ,’inactive’ or whatever. The query itself couldn’t be any simpler The estimated plan looked like this: Ignore the “!” warning which is a missing index, but notice that Products has 27,984 rows and the join outputs 14,000. The actual plan shows how bad that estimation of 14,000 is : So every row in Products has a corresponding row in ProductStatus. This is unsurprising, in fact it is guaranteed, there is a trusted FK relationship between the two columns. There is no way that the actual output of the join can be different from the input. The optimizer is already partly aware of the foreign key meta data, and that can be seen in the simplifiction stage. If we drop the Description column from the query: the join to ProductStatus is optimized out. It serves no purpose to the query, there is no data required from the table and the optimizer knows that the FK will guarantee that a matching row will exist so it has been removed. Surely the same should be applied to the row estimations in the initial example, right ? If you think so, please upvote this connect item. So what are our options in fixing this error ? Simply changing the join to a left join will cause the optimizer to think that we could allow the rows not to exist. or a subselect would also work However, this is a client site, Im not able to change each and every query where this join takes place but there is a more global switch that will fix this error, TraceFlag 2301. This is described as, perhaps loosely, “Enable advanced decision support optimizations”. We can test this on the original query in isolation by using the “QueryTraceOn” option and lo and behold our estimated plan now has the ‘correct’ estimation. Many thanks goes to Paul White (b|t) for his help and keeping me sane through this

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It happens only at Devoxx ...

- by arungupta

After attending several Java conferences world wide, this was my very first time at Devoxx. Here are some items I found that happens only at Devoxx ... Pioneers of theater-style seating - This not only provides comfortable seating for each attendee but the screens are very clearly visible to everybody in the room. Intellectual level of attendees is very high - Read more explanation on the Java EE 6 lab blog. In short, a lab, 1/3 of the content delivered at Devoxx 2011, could not be completed at other developer days in more than 1/3 the time. Snack box for lunches - Even though this suits well to the healthy lifestyle of multiple-snacks-during-a-day style but leaves attendees hungry sooner in the day. The longer breaks before the next snack in the evening does not help at all. Fortunately, Azure cupcakes and Android ice creams turned out to be handy. I finally carried my own apple :-) Wrist band instead of lanyard - The good part about this is that once tied to your hand then you are less likely to forget in your room. But OTOH you are a pretty much a branded conference attendee all through out the city. It was cost effective as it costed 20c as opposed to 1 euro for the lanyard. Live streaming from theater #8 (the biggest room) on parleys.com All talks recorded and released on parleys.com over next year. This allows attendees to not to miss any session and watch replay at their own leisure. Stephan promised to start sharing the sessions by mid December this year. No need to pre-register for a session - This is true for most of the conferences but bigger rooms (+ overflow room for key sessions) provide sufficient space for all those who want to attend the session. And of course all sessions are available on parleys.com anyway! Community votes on whiteboard - Devoxx attendees gets a chance to vote on topics ranging from their favorite non-Java language, operating system, or love from Oracle. Captured pictures at the end of Day 2 are shown below. Movie on the last but one night - This year it was The Adventures of Tintin and was lots of fun. Fries with mayo - This is a typical Belgian thing. Guys going in ladies room to avoid the long queues ... wow! Tweet wall everywhere and I mean literally everywhere, in rooms, hallways, front desk, and other places. The tweet picking algorithm was not very clear as I never saw my tweet appear on the wall ;-) You can also watch it at wall.devoxx.com. Cozy speaker dinner with great food and wine List of parallel and upcoming sessions displayed on the screen - This makes the information more explicit with the attendees. REST API with multiple mobile clients - This API is also used by some other conferences as well. And there always is iphone.devoxx.com. Steering committee members were recognized multiple times. The committee members were clearly identifiable wearing red hoodies. The wireless SSID was intuitive "Devoxx" but hidden to avoid some crap from Microsoft Windows. All of 9000 addresses were used up most of the times with each attendee having multiple devices. A 1 GB fibre optic cable was stretched to Metropolis to support the required network bandwidth. Stephan is already planning to upgrade the equipment and have a better infrastructure next year. Free water, soda, juice in a cooler Kinect connected to TV screens so that attendees can use their hands to browse through the list of sesssions. #devoxxblog, #devoxxwomen, #devoxxfrance, #devoxxgreat, #devoxxsuggestions And Devoxx attendees are called Devoxxians ... how cool is that ? :-) What other things do you think happen only at Devoxx ? And now the pictures from the community whiteboard: And a more complete album (including bigger pics of community votes) is available below:

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Mastering snow and Java development at jDays in Gothenburg

- by JavaCecilia

Last weekend, I took the train from Stockholm to Gothenburg to attend and present at the new Java developer conference jDays. It was professionally arranged in the Swedish exhibition hall close to the amusement park Liseberg and we got a great deal out of the top-level presenters and hallway discussions. Understanding and Improving Your Java Process Our main purpose was to spread information on JVM and our monitoring tools for Java processes, so I held a crash course in the most important terms and concepts if you want to affect the performance of your Java process. From the beginning - the JVM specification to interpretation of heap usage graphs. For correct analysis, you also need to understand something about process memory - you need space for the Java heap (-Xms for initial size and -Xmx for max heap size), but the process memory also contain the thread stacks (to a size of -Xss), JVM internal data structures used for keeping track of Java objects on the heap, method compilation/optimization, native libraries, etc. If you get long pause times, make sure to monitor your application, see the allocation rate and frequency of pause times.My colleague Klara Ward then held a presentation on the Java Mission Control product, the profiling and diagnostics tools suite for HotSpot, coming soon. The room was packed and very appreciated, Klara demonstrated four different scenarios, e.g. how to diagnose and fix latencies due to lock contention for logging.My German colleague, OpenJDK ambassador Dalibor Topic travelled to Sweden to do the second keynote on "Make the Future Java". He let us in on the coming features and roadmaps of Java, now delivering major versions on a two-year schedule (Java 7 2011, Java 8 2013, etc). Also letting us in on where to download early versions of 8, to report problems early on. Software Development in teams Being a scout leader, I'm drilled in different team building and workshop techniques, creating strong groups - of course, I had to attend Henrik Berglund's session on building successful teams. He spoke about the importance of clear goals, autonomy and agreed processes. Thomas Sundberg ended the conference by doing live remote pair programming with Alex in Rumania and a concrete tips for people wanting to try it out (for local collaboration, remember to wash and change clothes). Memory Master Keynote The conference keynote was delivered by the Swedish memory master Mattias Ribbing, showing off by remembering the order of a deck of cards he'd seen once. He made it interactive by forcing the audience to learn a memory mastering technique of remembering ten ordered things by heart, asking us to shout out the order backwards and we made it! I desperately need this - bought the book, will get back on the subject. Continuous Delivery The most impressive presenter was Axel Fontaine on Continuous Delivery. Very well prepared slides with key images of his message and moved about the stage like a rock star. The topic is of course highly interesting, how to create an infrastructure enabling immediate feedback to developers and ability to release your product several times per day. Tomek Kaczanowski delivered a funny and useful presentation on good and bad tests, providing comic relief with poorly written tests and the useful rules of thumb how to rewrite them. To conclude, we had a great time and hope to see you at jDays next year :)

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Simple Merging Of PDF Documents with iTextSharp 5.4.5.0

- by Mladen Prajdic

As we were working on our first SQL Saturday in Slovenia, we came to a point when we had to print out the so-called SpeedPASS's for attendees. This SpeedPASS file is a PDF and contains thier raffle, lunch and admission tickets. The problem is we have to download one PDF per attendee and print that out. And printing more than 10 docs at once is a pain. So I decided to make a little console app that would merge multiple PDF files into a single file that would be much easier to print. I used an open source PDF manipulation library called iTextSharp version 5.4.5.0 This is a console program I used. It’s brilliantly named MergeSpeedPASS. It only has two methods and is really short. Don't let the name fool you It can be used to merge any PDF files. The first parameter is the name of the target PDF file that will be created. The second parameter is the directory containing PDF files to be merged into a single file. using iTextSharp.text; using iTextSharp.text.pdf; using System; using System.IO; namespace MergeSpeedPASS { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { if (args.Length == 0 || args[0] == "-h" || args[0] == "/h") { Console.WriteLine("Welcome to MergeSpeedPASS. Created by Mladen Prajdic. Uses iTextSharp 5.4.5.0."); Console.WriteLine("Tool to create a single SpeedPASS PDF from all downloaded generated PDFs."); Console.WriteLine(""); Console.WriteLine("Example: MergeSpeedPASS.exe targetFileName sourceDir"); Console.WriteLine(" targetFileName = name of the new merged PDF file. Must include .pdf extension."); Console.WriteLine(" sourceDir = path to the dir containing downloaded attendee SpeedPASS PDFs"); Console.WriteLine(""); Console.WriteLine(@"Example: MergeSpeedPASS.exe MergedSpeedPASS.pdf d:\Downloads\SQLSaturdaySpeedPASSFiles"); } else if (args.Length == 2) CreateMergedPDF(args[0], args[1]); Console.WriteLine(""); Console.WriteLine("Press any key to exit..."); Console.Read(); } static void CreateMergedPDF(string targetPDF, string sourceDir) { using (FileStream stream = new FileStream(targetPDF, FileMode.Create)) { Document pdfDoc = new Document(PageSize.A4); PdfCopy pdf = new PdfCopy(pdfDoc, stream); pdfDoc.Open(); var files = Directory.GetFiles(sourceDir); Console.WriteLine("Merging files count: " + files.Length); int i = 1; foreach (string file in files) { Console.WriteLine(i + ". Adding: " + file); pdf.AddDocument(new PdfReader(file)); i++; } if (pdfDoc != null) pdfDoc.Close(); Console.WriteLine("SpeedPASS PDF merge complete."); } } } } Hope it helps you and have fun.

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SQL Saturday 27 (Portland, Oregon)

- by BuckWoody

I’m sitting in the Seattle airport, waiting for my flight to Silicon Valley California for the SQL Server 2008 R2 Launch Event. By some quirk of nature, they are asking me to Emcee the event – but that’s another post entirely. I’m reflecting on the SQL Saturday 27 event that was just held in Portland, Oregon this last Saturday. These are not Microsoft-sponsored events – it’s truly the community at work. Think of a big user-group meeting – I mean REALLY big – held in a central location, like at a college (as ours was) or some larger, inexpensive venue like that. Everyone there is volunteering – it’s my own money and time to drive several hours to a hotel for the night, feed myself and present. It’s their own time and money for the folks that organize the event – unless a vendor or two steps in to help. It’s their own time and money for the attendees to drive a long way, spend the night and their Saturday to listen to the speakers. Why do all this? Because everybody benefits. Every speaker learns something new, meets new people, and reaches a new audience. Every volunteer does the same. And the attendees? Well, it’s pretty obvious what they get. A 7Am to 10PM extravaganza of knowledge from every corner of the product. In fact, this year the Portland group hooked up with the CodeCamp folks and held a combined event. We had over 850 people, and I had everyone from data professionals to developers in my sessions. So I’ll take this opportunity to do two things: to say “thank you” to all of the folks who attended, from those who spoke to those who worked and those who came to listen, and to challenge you to attend the next SQL Saturday anywhere near you. You can find the list here: http://www.sqlsaturday.com/. Don’t see anything in your area? Start one! The PASS folks have a package that will show you how. Sure, it’s a big job, but the key is to get as many people helping you as possible. Even if you have only a few dozen folks show up the first time, no worries. The first events I presented at had about 20 in the room. But not this week. See you at the Launch Event if you’re near the San Francisco area tomorrow, and see you at the Redmond SQL Saturday and TechEd if not. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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Library order is important

- by Darryl Gove

I've written quite extensively about link ordering issues, but I've not discussed the interaction between archive libraries and shared libraries. So let's take a simple program that calls a maths library function: #include <math.h int main() { for (int i=0; i<10000000; i++) { sin(i); } } We compile and run it to get the following performance: bash-3.2$ cc -g -O fp.c -lm bash-3.2$ timex ./a.out real 6.06 user 6.04 sys 0.01 Now most people will have heard of the optimised maths library which is added by the flag -xlibmopt. This contains optimised versions of key mathematical functions, in this instance, using the library doubles performance: bash-3.2$ cc -g -O -xlibmopt fp.c -lm bash-3.2$ timex ./a.out real 2.70 user 2.69 sys 0.00 The optimised maths library is provided as an archive library (libmopt.a), and the driver adds it to the link line just before the maths library - this causes the linker to pick the definitions provided by the static library in preference to those provided by libm. We can see the processing by asking the compiler to print out the link line: bash-3.2$ cc -### -g -O -xlibmopt fp.c -lm /usr/ccs/bin/ld ... fp.o -lmopt -lm -o a.out... The flag to the linker is -lmopt, and this is placed before the -lm flag. So what happens when the -lm flag is in the wrong place on the command line: bash-3.2$ cc -g -O -xlibmopt -lm fp.c bash-3.2$ timex ./a.out real 6.02 user 6.01 sys 0.01 If the -lm flag is before the source file (or object file for that matter), we get the slower performance from the system maths library. Why's that? If we look at the link line we can see the following ordering: /usr/ccs/bin/ld ... -lmopt -lm fp.o -o a.out So the optimised maths library is still placed before the system maths library, but the object file is placed afterwards. This would be ok if the optimised maths library were a shared library, but it is not - instead it's an archive library, and archive library processing is different - as described in the linker and library guide: "The link-editor searches an archive only to resolve undefined or tentative external references that have previously been encountered." An archive library can only be used resolve symbols that are outstanding at that point in the link processing. When fp.o is placed before the libmopt.a archive library, then the linker has an unresolved symbol defined in fp.o, and it will search the archive library to resolve that symbol. If the archive library is placed before fp.o then there are no unresolved symbols at that point, and so the linker doesn't need to use the archive library. This is why libmopt needs to be placed after the object files on the link line. On the other hand if the linker has observed any shared libraries, then at any point these are checked for any unresolved symbols. The consequence of this is that once the linker "sees" libm it will resolve any symbols it can to that library, and it will not check the archive library to resolve them. This is why libmopt needs to be placed before libm on the link line. This leads to the following order for placing files on the link line: Object files Archive libraries Shared libraries If you use this order, then things will consistently get resolved to the archive libraries rather than to the shared libaries.

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Need help partitioning when reinstalling Ubuntu 14.04

- by Chris M.

I upgraded to 14.04 about a month ago on my HP Mini netbook (about 16 GB hard disk). A few days ago the system crashed (I don't know why but I was using internet at the time). When I restarted the computer, Ubuntu would not load. Instead, I got a message from the BIOS saying Reboot and Select proper Boot device or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press a key I took this to mean that I needed to reinstall 14.04. When I try to reinstall Ubuntu from the USB stick, I choose "Erase disk and install Ubuntu" but then I get a message: Some of the partitions you created are too small. Please make the following partitions at least this large: / 3.3 GB If you do not go back to the partitioner and increase the size of these partitions, the installation may fail. At first I hit Continue to see if it would install anyway, and it gave the message: The attempt to mount a file system with type ext4 in SCSI1 (0,0,0), partition # 1 (sda) at / failed. You may resume partitioning from the partitioning menu. The second time I hit Go Back, and it took me to the following partitioning table: Device Type Mount Point Format Size Used System /dev/sda /dev/sda1 ext4 (checked) 3228 MB Unknown /dev/sda5 swap (not checked) 1063 MB Unknown + - Change New Partition Table... Revert Device for boot loader installation: /dev/sda ATA JM Loader 001 (4.3 GB) At this point I'm not sure what to do. I've never partitioned my hard drive before and I don't want to screw things up. (I'm not particularly tech savvy.) Can you instruct me what I should do. (P.S. I'm afraid the table might not appear as I typed it in.) Results from fdisk: ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l Disk /dev/sda: 4294 MB, 4294967296 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 522 cylinders, total 8388608 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00000000 Disk /dev/sda doesn't contain a valid partition table Disk /dev/sdb: 7860 MB, 7860125696 bytes 155 heads, 31 sectors/track, 3194 cylinders, total 15351808 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x0009a565 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdb1 * 2768 15351807 7674520 b W95 FAT32 ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ Here is what it displays when I open the Disks utility (I tried the screenshot terminal command you suggested but it didn't seem to do anything): 4.3 GB Hard Disk /dev/sda Model: JM Loader 001 (01000001) Size: 4.3 GB (4,294,967,296 bytes) Serial Number: 01234123412341234 Assessment: SMART is not supported Volumes Size: 4.3 GB (4,294,967,296 bytes) Device: /dev/sda Contents: Unknown (There is a button in the utility that when you click it gives the following options: Format... Create Disk Image... Restore Disk Image... Benchmark but SMART Data & Self-Tests... is dimmed out) When I hit F9 Change Boot Device Order, it shows the hard drive as: SATA:PM-JM Loader 001 When I hit F10 to get me into the BIOS Setup Utility, under Diagnostic it shows: Primary Hard Disk Self Test Not Support NetworkManager Tool State: disconnected Device: eth0 Type: Wired Driver: atl1c State: unavailable Default: no HW Address: 00:26:55:B0:7F:0C Capabilities: Carrier Detect: yes Wired Properties Carrier: off When I run command lshw -C network, I get: WARNING: you should run this program as super-user. *-network description: Network controller product: BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY vendor: Broadcom Corporation physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0 version: 01 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: bus_master cap_list configuration: driver=b43-pci-bridge latency=0 resources: irq:16 memory:feafc000-feafffff *-network description: Ethernet interface product: AR8132 Fast Ethernet vendor: Qualcomm Atheros physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:02:00.0 logical name: eth0 version: c0 serial: 00:26:55:b0:7f:0c capacity: 100Mbit/s width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd autonegotiation configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=atl1c driverversion=1.0.1.1-NAPI latency=0 link=no multicast=yes port=twisted pair resources: irq:43 memory:febc0000-febfffff ioport:ec80(size=128) WARNING: output may be incomplete or inaccurate, you should run this program as super-user.

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Paper-free Customer Engagement

- by Michael Snow

v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} 12.00 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;} Appropriate repost from our friends at the AIIM blog: Digital Landfill -- John Mancini, supporting our mission of enabling customer engagement through better technology choices. ---------- My wife didn't even give me a card for #wpfd - and they say husbands are bad at remembering anniversaries Well, today is the third World Paper Free Day. I just got off the Tweet Jam, and there was a host of ideas for getting rid of -- or at least reducing -- paper. When we first started talking about "paper-free" most of the reasons raised to pursue this direction were "green" reasons. I'm glad to see that the thinking has moved on to questions about how getting rid of paper and digitizing processes helps improve customer engagement. And the bottom line. And process responsiveness. Not that the "green" reasons have gone away, but it's nice to see a maturation in the BUSINESS reasons to get rid of paper. Our World Paper Free Handbook (do not, do not, do not print it!) looks at how less paper in the workplace delivers significant benefits. Key findings show eliminating paper from processes can improve the responsiveness of customer service by 300 percent. Removing paper from business processes and moving content to PCs and tablets has the added advantage of helping companies adopt mobile-enable processes and eliminate elapsed time, lost forms, poor data and re-keying. To effectively mobile-enable processes and reduce reliance on paper, data should be captured as close to the point of origination as possible, which makes information easily available to whomever needs it, wherever they are, in the shortest time possible. This handbook summarizes the value of automating manual, paper-based processes. It then goes a step beyond to provide actionable steps that will set you on the path to productivity, profitability, and, yes, less paper. Get your copy today and send the link around to your peers and colleagues. Here's the link; please share it! http://www.aiim.org/Research-and-Publications/Research/AIIM-White-Papers/WPFD-Revolution-Handbook And don't miss out on the real world discussions about increasing engagement with WebCenter in new webinars being offered over the next couple of weeks: October 30, 2012: ResCare Solves Content Lifecycle Challenges with Oracle WebCenter November 1, 2012: WebCenter Content for Applications: Streamline Processes with Oracle WebCenter Content Management for Human Resources Applications Available On-Demand: Using Oracle WebCenter to Content-Enable Your Business Applications

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Upcoming Carbon Tax in South Africa

- by Evelyn Neumayr

By Elena Avesani, Principal Product Strategy Manager, Oracle In 2012, the South Africa National Treasury announced the plan to impose a carbon tax to cut carbon emissions that are blamed for climate change. South Africa is ranked among the top 20 countries measured by absolute carbon dioxide emissions, with emissions per capita in the region of 10 metric tons per annum and over 90% of South Africa's energy produced by burning fossil fuels. The top 40 largest companies in the country are responsible for 207 million tons of carbon dioxide, directly emitting 20 percent of South Africa’s carbon output. The legislation, originally scheduled to be implemented from January 2015 to 31 December 2019, is now delayed to January 2016. It will levy a carbon tax of R120 (US$11) per ton of CO2, rising then by 10 percent a year until 2020, while all sectors bar electricity will be able to claim additional relief of at least 10 percent. The South African treasury proposed a 60 percent tax-free threshold on emissions for all sectors, including electricity, petroleum, iron, steel and aluminum. Oracle Environmental Accounting and Reporting (EA&R) supports these needs and guarantees consistency across organizations in how data is collected, retained, controlled, consolidated and used in calculating and reporting emissions inventory. EA&R also enables companies to develop an enterprise-wide data view that includes all 5 of the key sustainability categories: carbon emissions, energy, water, materials and waste. Thanks to its native integration with Oracle E-Business Suite and JD Edwards EnterpriseOne ERP Financials and Inventory Systems and the capability of capturing environmental data across business silos, Oracle Environmental Accounting and Reporting is uniquely positioned to support a strategic approach to carbon management that drives business value. Sources: Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} African Utility Week BDlive Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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Introducing the Oracle Linux Playground yum repo

- by wcoekaer

We just introduced a new yum repository/channel on http://public-yum.oracle.com called the playground channel. What we started doing is the following: When a new stable mainline kernel is released by Linus or GregKH, we internally build RPMs to test it and do some QA work around it to keep track of what's going on with the latest development kernels. It helps us understand how performance moves up or down and if there are issues, we try to help look into them and of course send that stuff back upstream. Many Linux users out there are interested in trying out the latest features but there are some potential barriers to do this. (1) in general, you are looking at an upstream development distribution, which means that everything changes both in userspace(random applications) and kernel. Projects like Fedora are very useful and someone that wants to just see how the entire distribution evolves with all the changes, this is a great way to be current. A drawback here, though, is that if you have applications that are not part of the distribution, there's a lot of manual work involved or they might just not work because the changes are too drastic. The introduction of systemd is a good example. (2) when you look at many of our customers, that are interested in our database products or applications, the starting point of having a supported/certified userspace/distribution, like Oracle Linux, is a much easier way to get your feet wet in seeing what new/future Linux kernel enhancements could do. This is where the playground channel comes into play. When you install Oracle Linux 6 (which anyone can download and use from http://edelivery.oracle.com/linux), grab the latest public yum repository file http://public-yum.oracle.com/public-yum-ol6.repo, put it in /etc/yum.repos.d and enable the playground repo : [ol6_playground_latest] name=Latest mainline stable kernel for Oracle Linux 6 ($basearch) - Unsupported baseurl=http://public-yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleLinux/OL6/playground/latest/$basearch/ gpgkey=http://public-yum.oracle.com/RPM-GPG-KEY-oracle-ol6 gpgcheck=1 enabled=1 Now, all you need to do : type yum update and you will be downloading the latest stable kernel which will install cleanly on Oracle Linux 6. Thus you end up with a stable Linux distribution where you can install all your software, and then download the latest stable kernel (at time of writing this is 3.6.7) without having to recompile a kernel, without having to jump through hoops. There is of course a big, very important disclaimer this is NOT for PRODUCTION use. We want to try and help make it easy for people that are interested, from a user perspective, where the Linux kernel is going and make it easy to install and use it and play around with new features. Without having to learn how to compile a kernel and without necessarily having to install a complete new distribution with all the changes top to bottom. So we don't or won't introduce any new userspace changes, this project really is around making it easy to try out the latest upstream Linux kernels in a very easy way on an environment that's stable and you can keep current, since all the latest errata for Oracle Linux 6 are published on the public yum repo as well. So one repository location for all your current changes and the upstream kernels. We hope that this will get more users to try out the latest kernel and report their findings. We are always interested in understanding stability and performance characteristics. As new features are going into the mainline kernel, that could potentially be interesting or useful for various products, we will try to point them out on our blogs and give an example on how something can be used so you can try it out for yourselves. Anyway, I hope people will find this useful and that it will help increase interested in upstream development beyond reading lkml by some of the more non-kernel-developer types.

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