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• Most Innovative IDM Projects: Awards at OpenWorld

  - by Tanu Sood

  On Tuesday at Oracle OpenWorld 2012, Oracle recognized the winners of Innovation Awards 2012 at a ceremony presided over by Hasan Rizvi, Executive Vice President at Oracle. Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation Awards recognize customers for achieving significant business value through innovative uses of Oracle Fusion Middleware offerings. Winners are selected based on the uniqueness of their business case, business benefits, level of impact relative to the size of the organization, complexity and magnitude of implementation, and the originality of architecture. This year’s Award honors customers for their cutting-edge solutions driving business innovation and IT modernization using Oracle Fusion Middleware. The program has grown over the past 6 years, receiving a record number of nominations from customers around the globe. The winners were selected by a panel of judges that ranked each nomination across multiple different scoring categories. Congratulations to both Avea and ETS for winning this year’s Innovation Award for Identity Management. Identity Management Innovation Award 2012 Winner – Avea Company: Founded in 2004, AveA is the sole GSM 1800 mobile operator of Turkey and has reached a nationwide customer base of 12.8 million as of the end of 2011 Region: Turkey (EMEA) Products: Oracle Identity Manager, Oracle Identity Analytics, Oracle Access Management Suite Business Drivers: ·         To manage the agility and scale required for GSM Operations and enable call center efficiency by enabling agents to change their identity profiles (accounts and entitlements) rapidly based on call load. ·         Enhance user productivity and call center efficiency with self service password resets ·         Enforce compliance and audit reporting ·         Seamless identity management between AveA and parent company Turk Telecom Innovation and Results: ·         One of the first Sun2Oracle identity management migrations designed for high performance provisioning and trusted reconciliation built with connectors developed on the ICF architecture that provides custom user interfaces for  dynamic and rapid management of roles and entitlements along with entitlement level attestation using closed loop remediation between Oracle Identity Manager and Oracle Identity Analytics. ·         Dramatic reduction in identity administration and call center password reset tasks leading to 20% reduction in administration costs and 95% reduction in password related calls. ·         Enhanced user productivity by up to 25% to date ·         Enforced enterprise security and reduced risk ·         Cost-effective compliance management ·         Looking to seamlessly integrate with parent and sister companies’ infrastructure securely. Identity Management Innovation Award 2012 Winner – Education Testing Service (ETS)       See last year's winners here --Company: ETS is a private nonprofit organization devoted to educational measurement and research, primarily through testing. Region: U.S.A (North America) Products: Oracle Access Manager, Oracle Identity Federation, Oracle Identity Manager Business Drivers: ETS develops and administers more than 50 million achievement and admissions tests each year in more than 180 countries, at more than 9,000 locations worldwide.  As the business becomes more globally based, having a robust solution to security and user management issues becomes paramount. The organizations was looking for: ·         Simplified user experience for over 3000 company users and more than 6 million dynamic student and staff population ·         Infrastructure and administration cost reduction ·         Managing security risk by controlling 3rd party access to ETS systems ·         Enforce compliance and manage audit reporting ·         Automate on-boarding and decommissioning of user account to improve security, reduce administration costs and enhance user productivity ·         Improve user experience with simplified sign-on and user self service Innovation and Results: 1.    Manage Risk ·         Centralized system to control user access ·         Provided secure way of accessing service providers' application using federated SSO. ·         Provides reporting capability for auditing, governance and compliance. 2.    Improve efficiency ·         Real-Time provisioning to target systems ·         Centralized provisioning system for user management and access controls. ·         Enabling user self services. 3.    Reduce cost ·         Re-using common shared services for provisioning, SSO, Access by application reducing development cost and time. ·         Reducing infrastructure and maintenance cost by decommissioning legacy/redundant IDM services. ·         Reducing time and effort to implement security functionality in business applications (“onboard” instead of new development). ETS was able to fold in new and evolving requirement in addition to the initial stated goals realizing quick ROI and successfully meeting business objectives. Congratulations to the winners once again. We will be sure to bring you more from these Innovation Award winners over the next few months.

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• 7 Steps To Cut Recruiting Costs & Drive Exceptional Business Results

  - by Oracle Accelerate for Midsize Companies

  By Steve Viarengo, Vice President Product Management, Oracle Taleo Cloud Services  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 In good times, trimming operational costs is an ongoing goal. In tough times, it’s a necessity. In both good times and bad, however, recruiting occurs. Growth increases headcount in good times, and opportunistic or replacement hiring occurs in slow business cycles. By employing creative recruiting strategies in tandem with the latest technology developments, you can reduce recruiting costs while driving exceptional business results. Here are some critical areas to focus on. 1.  Target Direct Cost Savings Total recruiting process expenses are the sum of external costs plus internal labor costs. Most organizations can reduce recruiting expenses with direct cost savings. While additional savings on indirect costs can be realized from process improvement and efficiency gains, there are direct cost savings and benefits readily available in three broad areas: sourcing, assessments, and green recruiting. 2. Sourcing: Reduce Agency Costs Agency search firm fees can amount to 35 percent of a new employee’s annual base salary. Typically taken from the hiring department budget, these fees may not be visible to HR. By relying on internal mobility programs, referrals, candidate pipelines, and corporate career Websites, organizations can reduce or eliminate this agency spend. And when you do have to pay third-party agency fees, you can optimize the value you receive by collaborating with agencies to identify referred candidates, ensure access to candidate data and history, and receive automatic notifications and correspondence. 3. Sourcing: Reduce Advertising Costs You can realize significant cost reductions by placing all job positions on your corporate career Website. This will allow you to reap a substantial number of candidates at minimal cost compared to job boards and other sourcing options. 4.  Sourcing: Internal Talent Pool Internal talent pools provide a way to reduce sourcing and advertising costs while delivering improved productivity and retention. Internal redeployment reduces costs and ramp-up time while increasing retention and employee satisfaction. 5.  Sourcing: External Talent Pool Strategic recruiting requires identifying and matching people with a given set of skills to a particular job while efficiently allocating sourcing expenditures. By using an e-recruiting system (which drives external talent pool management) with a candidate relationship database, you can automate prescreening and candidate matching while communicating with targeted candidates. Candidate relationship management can lower sourcing costs by marketing new job opportunities to candidates sourced in the past. By mining the talent pool in this fashion, you eliminate the need to source a new pool of candidates for each new requisition. Managing and mining the corporate candidate database can reduce the sourcing cost per candidate by as much as 50 percent. 6.  Assessments: Reduce Turnover Costs By taking advantage of assessments during the recruitment process, you can achieve a range of benefits, including better productivity, superior candidate performance, and lower turnover (providing considerable savings). Assessments also save recruiter and hiring manager time by focusing on a short list of qualified candidates. Hired for fit, such candidates tend to stay with the organization and produce quality work—ultimately driving revenue.  7. Green Recruiting: Reduce Paper and Processing Costs You can reduce recruiting costs by automating the process—and making it green. A paperless process informs candidates that you’re dedicated to green recruiting. It also leads to direct cost savings. E-recruiting reduces energy use and pollution associated with manufacturing, transporting, and recycling paper products. And process automation saves energy in mailing, storage, handling, filing, and reporting tasks. Direct cost savings come from reduced paperwork related to résumés, advertising, and onboarding. Improving the recruiting process through sourcing, assessments, and green recruiting not only saves costs. It also positions the company to improve the talent base during the recession while retaining the ability to grow appropriately in recovery. /* 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:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} 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:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";}

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• Where would a spam bot be located?

  - by Tim

  I have a hosted website using a free hosting service, I received an email this afternoon saying that I have been suspended because my account has been compromised. Basically, someone is using my email account to mass send spam. I've changed all the passwords and everything but when my Gmail pulls the emails from the host it's still downloading loads of spam messages that show like this: This message was created automatically by mail delivery software. A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed: [email protected] SMTP error from remote mail server after end of data: host 198.91.80.251 [198.91.80.251]: 554 5.6.0 id=23634-03 - Rejected by MTA on relaying, from MTA([127.0.0.1]:10030): 554 Error: This email address has lost rights to send email from the system ------ This is a copy of the message, including all the headers. ------ Return-path: <[email protected]> Received: from keenesystems.com ([66.135.33.211]:2370 helo=server211) by absolut.x10hosting.com with esmtpsa (TLSv1:RC4-MD5:128) (Exim 4.77) (envelope-from <[email protected]>) id 1TGwSW-002hHe-Lc for [email protected]; Wed, 26 Sep 2012 13:35:44 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2012 13:35:43 -0500 X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-Mailer: Ximian Evolution 3.9.9 (8.5.3-6) Subject: New staff members wanted at Auction It Online From: [email protected] Reply-To: [email protected] To: "Nadia Monti" <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Message-ID: <OUTLOOK-IDM-9aed7054-6a3e-e1a4-1d5c-3e73377652a6@server211> Date : 26 September 2012=0ATime : 13:35=0ASender : Dennise Halcomb Head = Office Manager of RJ Auction Drop-Off Int.=0A=0ANice to meet you Nadia M= onti=0A=0ARJ ADO Ltd., a USA based company, offers a significant amount = of goods worldwide for our customers on eBay and other auction venues. = Our company's main target is to provide a suitable and cost-effective se= rvice for any person, company or fundraising company. The main purpose o= f the administrative assistant / sales support representative is to cont= ribute to the sales force and add convenience to our cost-effective serv= ice dedicated to individuals, businesses, and organizations worldwide. O= ur HR department obtained your resume from one of the various job-orient= ed websites just to offer you this post.=0A=0AWorking Schedule: This is = a part time and home-based offer. You won't need to spend more than 3 ho= urs each day. Your =0Aschedule will be flexible.=0A=0ASalary: At the end= of the trial period (it lasts for 1 month) you will be paid 1,800 EUR. = With the average volume of clients your overall income will raise up to = 3,000 EUR per month. After the trial period is over your base salary wil= l grow up to 2,500 EUR per month, so you will earn 5% commission from th= e transactions completed.=0A=0AWhere?: Italy Wide. As it is a stay at ho= me position all the communication will be carried out via email and via = phone.=0A=0ARequirements: Access to the internet during the workday and = basic microsoft office skills are needed. Basic knowledge of English is = required (most of the contacts will be in English).=0A=0ACosts and Fees:= There are NO costs at any time for our employees. All fees related to t= his position are covered by the RJ ADO Co. Ltd..=0A=0AFurther Hiring Pro= cess: If you are interested in position we offer, please reply to this e= mail and send us the copy of your resume for verification.=0A=0AAfter re= viewing all of the received applications we will reply to successful app= licants only. Then we'll offer to these successful applicants a position= within our firm on a trial period basis for one month beginning from th= e date you sign a trial agreement. During this trial period you will rec= eive full guidance and support. Employees on a one monthly trial period = are evaluated at least one week prior to the end of their trial. During = the trial, your supervisor can recommend termination. At the end of the = trial period, the supervisor can offer continued employment, extension o= f trial period, or termination. After the trial period you may ask for m= ore hours or continue full-time.=0A=0AIf you are interested in this posi= tion, just reply to this email and send any questions you have and the c= opy of your resume for verification.=0A=0AThank You,=0AHR-Manager of RJ = ADO Co. Ltd.=0A=0APermission Settings=0AYou have been referred to RJ Auc= tion Drop-Off If you feel you received this email in error or do not wis= h to receive future messages, please reply to this message with "remove"= in the subject field. We will immediately update our database according= ly. =0AWe apologize for any inconvenience caused.=0A=0ARJ Auction Drop-O= ff Co. Ltd. I'm not aware of how this has happened. I'm not sure how anyone could have got hold of my password. It's a simple wordpress install, at some point recently my host went down and there was a fresh install of wordpress with default admin accounts, I have a feeling it could be something to do with this. My question is, even though I've changed all my passwords it's all still happening, is there annywhere in paticular this script would be stored on my host. I really can't deal with having my hosting account suspended and my email account sending all this spam.

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• ASP.NET Multi-Select Radio Buttons

  - by Ajarn Mark Caldwell

  “HERESY!” you say, “Radio buttons are for single-select items!  If you want multi-select, use checkboxes!”  Well, I would agree, and that is why I consider this a significant bug that ASP.NET developers need to be aware of.  Here’s the situation. If you use ASP:RadioButton controls on your WebForm, then you know that in order to get them to behave properly, that is, to define a group in which only one of them can be selected by the user, you use the Group attribute and set the same value on each one.  For example: 1: <asp:RadioButton runat="server" ID="rdo1" Group="GroupName" checked="true" /> 2: <asp:RadioButton runat="server" ID="rdo2" Group="GroupName" /> With this configuration, the controls will render to the browser as HTML Input / Type=radio tags and when the user selects one, the browser will automatically deselect the other one so that only one can be selected (checked) at any time. BUT, if you user server-side code to manipulate the Checked attribute of these controls, it is possible to set them both to believe that they are checked. 1: rdo2.Checked = true; // Does NOT change the Checked attribute of rdo1 to be false. As long as you remain in server-side code, the system will believe that both radio buttons are checked (you can verify this in the debugger).  Therefore, if you later have code that looks like this 1: if (rdo1.Checked) 2: { 3: DoSomething1(); 4: } 5: else 6: { 7: DoSomethingElse(); 8: } then it will always evaluate the condition to be true and take the first action.  The good news is that if you return to the client with multiple radio buttons checked, the browser tries to clean that up for you and make only one of them really checked.  It turns out that the last one on the screen wins, so in this case, you will in fact end up with rdo2 as checked, and if you then make a trip to the server to run the code above, it will appear to be working properly.  However, if your page initializes with rdo2 checked and in code you set rdo1 to checked also, then when you go back to the client, rdo2 will remain checked, again because it is the last one and the last one checked “wins”. And this gets even uglier if you ever set these radio buttons to be disabled.  In that case, although the client browser renders the radio buttons as though only one of them is checked the system actually retains the value of both of them as checked, and your next trip to the server will really frustrate you because the browser showed rdo2 as checked, but your DoSomething1() routine keeps getting executed. The following is sample code you can put into any WebForm to test this yourself. 1: <body> 2: <form id="form1" runat="server"> 3: <h1>Radio Button Test</h1> 4: <hr /> 5: <asp:Button runat="server" ID="cmdBlankPostback" Text="Blank Postback" /> 6: &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 7: <asp:Button runat="server" ID="cmdEnable" Text="Enable All" OnClick="cmdEnable_Click" /> 8: &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 9: <asp:Button runat="server" ID="cmdDisable" Text="Disable All" OnClick="cmdDisable_Click" /> 10: &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 11: <asp:Button runat="server" ID="cmdTest" Text="Test" OnClick="cmdTest_Click" /> 12: <br /><br /><br /> 13: <asp:RadioButton ID="rdoG1R1" GroupName="Group1" runat="server" Text="Group 1 Radio 1" Checked="true" /><br /> 14: <asp:RadioButton ID="rdoG1R2" GroupName="Group1" runat="server" Text="Group 1 Radio 2" /><br /> 15: <asp:RadioButton ID="rdoG1R3" GroupName="Group1" runat="server" Text="Group 1 Radio 3" /><br /> 16: <hr /> 17: <asp:RadioButton ID="rdoG2R1" GroupName="Group2" runat="server" Text="Group 2 Radio 1" /><br /> 18: <asp:RadioButton ID="rdoG2R2" GroupName="Group2" runat="server" Text="Group 2 Radio 2" Checked="true" /><br /> 19:  20: </form> 21: </body> 1: protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) 2: { 3:  4: } 5:  6: protected void cmdEnable_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) 7: { 8: rdoG1R1.Enabled = true; 9: rdoG1R2.Enabled = true; 10: rdoG1R3.Enabled = true; 11: rdoG2R1.Enabled = true; 12: rdoG2R2.Enabled = true; 13: } 14:  15: protected void cmdDisable_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) 16: { 17: rdoG1R1.Enabled = false; 18: rdoG1R2.Enabled = false; 19: rdoG1R3.Enabled = false; 20: rdoG2R1.Enabled = false; 21: rdoG2R2.Enabled = false; 22: } 23:  24: protected void cmdTest_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) 25: { 26: rdoG1R2.Checked = true; 27: rdoG2R1.Checked = true; 28: } 29: 30: protected void Page_PreRender(object sender, EventArgs e) 31: { 32:  33: } After you copy the markup and page-behind code into the appropriate files.  I recommend you set a breakpoint on Page_Load as well as cmdTest_Click, and add each of the radio button controls to the Watch list so that you can walk through the code and see exactly what is happening.  Use the Blank Postback button to cause a postback to the server so you can inspect things without making any changes. The moral of the story is: if you do server-side manipulation of the Checked status of RadioButton controls, then you need to set ALL of the controls in a group whenever you want to change one.

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• Top Questions and Answers for Pluging into Oracle Database as a Service

  - by David Swanger

  Yesterday we hosted a comprehensive online forum that shared a comprehensive path to help your organization design, deploy, and deliver a Database as a Service cloud. If you missed the online forum, you can watch it on demand by registering here. We received numerous questions.  Below are highlights of the most informative: DBaaS requires a lengthy and careful design efforts. What is the minimum requirements of setting up a scaled-down environment and test it out? You should have an OEM 12c environment for DBaaS administration and then a target database deployment platform that has the key characteristics of what your production environment will look like. This could be a single server or it could be a small pool of hosts if your production DBaaS will be larger and you want to test a more robust / real world configuration with Zones and Pools or DR capabilities for example. How does this benefit companies having their own data center? This allows companies to transform their internal IT to a service delivery model for the database. The benefits to the company are significant cost savings, improved business agility and reduced risk. The benefits to the consumers (internal) of services if much fast provisioning, and response to change in business requirements. From a deployment perspective, is DBaaS's job solely DBA's job? The best deployment model enables the DBA (or end-user) to control the entire process. All resources required to deploy the service are pre-provisioned, and there are no external dependencies (on network, storage, sysadmins teams). The service is created either via a self-service portal or by the DBA. The purpose of self service seems to be that the end user does not rely on the DBA. I just need to give him a template. He decides how much AMM he needs. Why shall I set it one by one. That doesn't seem to be the purpose of self service. Most customers we have worked with define a standardized service catalog, with a few (2 to 5) different classes of service. For each of these classes, there is a pre-defined deployment template, and the user has the ability to select from some pre-defined service sizes. The administrator only has to create this catalog once. Each user then simply selects from the options offered in the catalog.  Looking at DBaaS service definition, it seems to be no different from a service definition provided by a well defined DBA team. Why do you attribute it to DBaaS? There are a couple of perspectives. First, some organizations might already be operating with a high level of standardization and a higher level of maturity from an ITIL or Service Management perspective. Their journey to DBaaS could be shorter and their Service Definition will evolve less but they still might need to add capabilities such as Self Service and Metering/Chargeback. Other organizations are still operating in highly siloed environments with little automation and their formal Service Definition (if they have one) will be a lot less mature today. Therefore their future state DBaaS will look a lot different from their current state, as will their Service Definition. How database as a service impact or help with "Click to Compute" or deploying "Database in cloud infrastructure" DBaaS enables Click to Compute. Oracle DBaaS can be implemented using three architecture models: Oracle Multitenant 12c, native consolidation using Oracle Database and consolidation using virtualization in infrastructure cloud. As Deploy session showed, you get higher consolidating density and efficiency using Multitenant and higher isolation using infrastructure cloud. Depending upon your business needs, DBaaS can be implemented using any of these models. How exactly is the DBaaS different from the traditional db? Storage/OS/DB all together to 'transparently' provide service to applications? Will there be across-databases access by application/user. Some key differences are: 1) The services run on a shared platform. 2) The services can be rapidly provisioned (< 15 minutes). 3) The services are dynamic and can be relocated, grown, shrunk as needed to meet business needs without disruption and rapidly. 4) The user is able to provision the services directly from a standardized service catalog.. With 24x7x365 databases its difficult to find off peak hrs to do basic admin tasks such as gathering stats, running backups, batch jobs. How does pluggable database handle this and different needs/patching downtime of apps databases might be serving? You can gather stats in Oracle Multitenant the same way you had been in regular databases. Regarding patching/upgrading, Oracle Multitenant makes patch/upgrade very efficient in that you can pre-provision a new version/patched multitenant db in a different ORACLE_HOME and then unplug a PDB from its CDB and plug it into the newer/patched CDB in seconds.  Thanks for all the great questions!  If you'd like to learn more and missed the online forum, you can watch it on demand here.

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• 7-Eleven Improves the Digital Guest Experience With 10-Minute Application Provisioning

  - by MichaelM-Oracle

  By Vishal Mehra - Director, Cloud Computing, Oracle Consulting Making the Cloud Journey Matter There’s much more to cloud computing than cutting costs and closing data centers. In fact, cloud computing is fast becoming the engine for innovation and productivity in the digital age. Oracle Consulting Services contributes to our customers’ cloud journey by accelerating application provisioning and rapidly deploying enterprise solutions. By blending flexibility with standardization, our Middleware as a Service (MWaaS) offering is ensuring the success of many cloud initiatives. 10-Minute Application Provisioning Times at 7-Eleven As a case in point, 7-Eleven recently highlighted the scope, scale, and results of a cloud-powered environment. The world’s largest convenience store chain is rolling out a Digital Guest Experience (DGE) program across 8,500 stores in the U.S. and Canada. Everyday, 7-Eleven connects with tens of millions of customers through point-of-sale terminals, web sites, and mobile apps. Promoting customer loyalty, targeting promotions, downloading digital coupons, and accepting digital payments are all part of the roadmap for a comprehensive and rewarding customer experience. And what about the time required for deploying successive versions of this mission-critical solution? Ron Clanton, 7-Eleven's DGE Program Manager, Information Technology reported at Oracle Open World, " We are now able to provision new environments in less than 10 minutes. This includes the complete SOA Suite on Exalogic, and Enterprise Manager managing both the SOA Suite, Exalogic, and our Exadata databases ." OCS understands the complex nature of innovative solutions and has processes and expertise to help clients like 7-Eleven rapidly develop technology that enhances the customer experience with little more than the click of a button. OCS understood that the 7-Eleven roadmap required careful planning, agile development, and a cloud-capable environment to move fast and perform at enterprise scale. Business Agility Today’s business-savvy technology leaders face competing priorities as they confront the digital disruptions of the mobile revolution and next-generation enterprise applications. To support an innovation agenda, IT is required to balance competing priorities between development and operations groups. Standardization and consolidation of computing resources are the keys to success. With our operational and technical expertise promoting business agility, Oracle Consulting's deep Middleware as a Service experience can make a significant difference to our clients by empowering enterprise IT organizations with the computing environment they seek to keep up with the pace of change that digitally driven business units expect. Depending on the needs of the organization, this environment runs within a private, public, or hybrid cloud infrastructure. Through on-demand access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources, IT delivers the standard tools and methods for developing, integrating, deploying, and scaling next-generation applications. Gold profiles of predefined configurations eliminate the version mismatches among databases, application servers, and SOA suite components, delivered both by Oracle and other enterprise ISVs. These computing resources are well defined in business terms, enabling users to select what they need from a service catalog. Striking the Balance between Development and Operations As a result, development groups have the flexibility to choose among a menu of available services with descriptions of standard business functions, service level guarantees, and costs. Faced with the consumerization of enterprise IT, they can deliver the innovative customer experiences that seamlessly integrate with underlying enterprise applications and services. This cloud-powered development and testing environment accelerates release cycles to ensure agile development and rapid deployments. At the same time, the operations group is relying on certified stacks and frameworks, tuned to predefined environments and patterns. Operators can maintain a high level of security, and continue best practices for applications/systems monitoring and management. Moreover, faced with the challenges of delivering on service level agreements (SLAs) with the business units, operators can ensure performance, scalability, and reliability of the infrastructure. The elasticity of a cloud-computing environment – the ability to rapidly add virtual machines and storage in response to computing demands -- makes a difference for hardware utilization and efficiency. Contending with Continuous Change What does it take to succeed on the promise of the cloud? As the engine for innovation and productivity in the digital age, IT must face not only the technical transformations but also the organizational challenges of the cloud. Standardizing key technologies, resources, and services through cloud computing is only one part of the cloud journey. Managing relationships among multiple department and projects over time – developing the management, governance, and monitoring capabilities within IT – is an often unmentioned but all too important second part. In fact, IT must have the organizational agility to contend with continuous change. This is where a skilled consulting services partner can play a pivotal role as a trusted advisor in the successful adoption of cloud solutions. With a lifecycle services approach to delivering innovative business solutions, Oracle Consulting Services has expertise and a portfolio of services to help enterprise customers succeed on their cloud journeys as well as other converging mega trends .

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• Impressions and Reactions from Alliance 2012

  - by user739873

  Alliance 2012 has come to a conclusion.  What strikes me about every Alliance conference is the amazing amount of collaboration and cooperation I see across higher education in the sharing of best practices around the entire Oracle PeopleSoft software suite, not just the student information system (Oracle’s PeopleSoft Campus Solutions).  In addition to the vibrant U.S. organization, it's gratifying to see the growth in the international attendance again this year, with an EMEA HEUG organizing to complement the existing groups in the Netherlands, South Africa, and the U.K.  Their first meeting is planned for London in October, and I suspect they'll be surprised at the amount of interest and attendance. In my discussions with higher education IT and functional leadership at Alliance there were a number of instances where concern was expressed about Oracle's commitment to higher education as an industry, primarily because of a lack of perceived innovation in the applications that Oracle develops for this market. Here I think perception and reality are far apart, and I'd like to explain why I believe this to be true. First let me start with what I think drives this perception. Predominately it's in two areas. The first area is the user interface, both for students and faculty that interact with the system as "customers", and for those employees of the institution (faculty, staff, and sometimes students as well) that use the system in some kind of administrative role. Because the UI hasn't changed all that much from the PeopleSoft days, individuals perceive this as a dead product with little innovation and therefore Oracle isn't investing. The second area is around the integration of the higher education suite of applications (PeopleSoft Campus Solutions) and the rest of the Oracle software assets. Whether grown organically or acquired, there is an impressive array of middleware and other software products that could be leveraged much more significantly by the higher education applications than is currently the case today. This is also perceived as lack of investment. Let me address these two points.  First the UI.  More is being done here than ever before, and the PAG and other groups where this was discussed at Alliance 2012 were more numerous than I've seen in any past meeting. Whether it's Oracle development leveraging web services or some extremely early but very promising work leveraging the recent Endeca acquisition (see some cool examples here) there are a lot of resources aimed at this issue.  There are also some amazing prototypes being developed by our UX (user experience team) that will eventually make their way into the higher education applications realm - they had an impressive setup at Alliance.  Hopefully many of you that attended found this group. If not, the senior leader for that team Jeremy Ashley will be a significant contributor of content to our summer Industry Strategy Council meeting in Washington in June. In the area of integration with other elements of the Oracle stack, this is also an area of focus for the company and my team.  We're making this a priority especially in the areas of identity management and security, leveraging WebCenter more effectively for content, imaging, and mobility, and driving towards the ultimate objective of WebLogic Suite as our platform for SOA, links to learning management systems (SAIP), and content. There is also much work around business intelligence centering on OBI applications. But at the end of the day we get enormous value from the HEUG (higher education user group) and the various subgroups formed as a part of this community that help us align and prioritize our investments, whether it's around better integration with other Oracle products or integration with partner offerings.  It's one of the healthiest, mutually beneficial relationships between customers and an Education IT concern that exists on the globe. And I can't avoid mentioning that this kind of relationship between higher education and the corporate IT community that can truly address the problems of efficiency and effectiveness, institutional excellence (which starts with IT) and student success.  It's not (in my opinion) going to be solved through community source - cost and complexity only increase in that model and in the end higher education doesn't ultimately focus on core competencies: educating, developing, and researching.  While I agree with some of what Michael A. McRobbie wrote in his EDUCAUSE Review article (Information Technology: A View from Both Sides of the President’s Desk), I take strong issue with his assertion that the "the IT marketplace is just the opposite of long-term stability...."  Sure there has been healthy, creative destruction in the past 2-3 decades, but this has had the effect of, in the aggregate, benefiting education with greater efficiency, more innovation and increased stability as larger, more financially secure firms acquire and develop integrated solutions. Cole

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• Oracle NoSQL Database Exceeds 1 Million Mixed YCSB Ops/Sec

  - by Charles Lamb

  We ran a set of YCSB performance tests on Oracle NoSQL Database using SSD cards and Intel Xeon E5-2690 CPUs with the goal of achieving 1M mixed ops/sec on a 95% read / 5% update workload. We used the standard YCSB parameters: 13 byte keys and 1KB data size (1,102 bytes after serialization). The maximum database size was 2 billion records, or approximately 2 TB of data. We sized the shards to ensure that this was not an "in-memory" test (i.e. the data portion of the B-Trees did not fit into memory). All updates were durable and used the "simple majority" replica ack policy, effectively 'committing to the network'. All read operations used the Consistency.NONE_REQUIRED parameter allowing reads to be performed on any replica. In the past we have achieved 100K ops/sec using SSD cards on a single shard cluster (replication factor 3) so for this test we used 10 shards on 15 Storage Nodes with each SN carrying 2 Rep Nodes and each RN assigned to its own SSD card. After correcting a scaling problem in YCSB, we blew past the 1M ops/sec mark with 8 shards and proceeded to hit 1.2M ops/sec with 10 shards.  Hardware Configuration We used 15 servers, each configured with two 335 GB SSD cards. We did not have homogeneous CPUs across all 15 servers available to us so 12 of the 15 were Xeon E5-2690, 2.9 GHz, 2 sockets, 32 threads, 193 GB RAM, and the other 3 were Xeon E5-2680, 2.7 GHz, 2 sockets, 32 threads, 193 GB RAM.  There might have been some upside in having all 15 machines configured with the faster CPU, but since CPU was not the limiting factor we don't believe the improvement would be significant. The client machines were Xeon X5670, 2.93 GHz, 2 sockets, 24 threads, 96 GB RAM. Although the clients had 96 GB of RAM, neither the NoSQL Database or YCSB clients require anywhere near that amount of memory and the test could have just easily been run with much less. Networking was all 10GigE. YCSB Scaling Problem We made three modifications to the YCSB benchmark. The first was to allow the test to accommodate more than 2 billion records (effectively int's vs long's). To keep the key size constant, we changed the code to use base 32 for the user ids. The second change involved to the way we run the YCSB client in order to make the test itself horizontally scalable.The basic problem has to do with the way the YCSB test creates its Zipfian distribution of keys which is intended to model "real" loads by generating clusters of key collisions. Unfortunately, the percentage of collisions on the most contentious keys remains the same even as the number of keys in the database increases. As we scale up the load, the number of collisions on those keys increases as well, eventually exceeding the capacity of the single server used for a given key.This is not a workload that is realistic or amenable to horizontal scaling. YCSB does provide alternate key distribution algorithms so this is not a shortcoming of YCSB in general. We decided that a better model would be for the key collisions to be limited to a given YCSB client process. That way, as additional YCSB client processes (i.e. additional load) are added, they each maintain the same number of collisions they encounter themselves, but do not increase the number of collisions on a single key in the entire store. We added client processes proportionally to the number of records in the database (and therefore the number of shards). This change to the use of YCSB better models a use case where new groups of users are likely to access either just their own entries, or entries within their own subgroups, rather than all users showing the same interest in a single global collection of keys. If an application finds every user having the same likelihood of wanting to modify a single global key, that application has no real hope of getting horizontal scaling. Finally, we used read/modify/write (also known as "Compare And Set") style updates during the mixed phase. This uses versioned operations to make sure that no updates are lost. This mode of operation provides better application behavior than the way we have typically run YCSB in the past, and is only practical at scale because we eliminated the shared key collision hotspots.It is also a more realistic testing scenario. To reiterate, all updates used a simple majority replica ack policy making them durable. Scalability Results In the table below, the "KVS Size" column is the number of records with the number of shards and the replication factor. Hence, the first row indicates 400m total records in the NoSQL Database (KV Store), 2 shards, and a replication factor of 3. The "Clients" column indicates the number of YCSB client processes. "Threads" is the number of threads per process with the total number of threads. Hence, 90 threads per YCSB process for a total of 360 threads. The client processes were distributed across 10 client machines. Shards KVS Size Clients Mixed (records) Threads OverallThroughput(ops/sec) Read Latencyav/95%/99%(ms) Write Latencyav/95%/99%(ms) 2 400m(2x3) 4 90(360) 302,152 0.76/1/3 3.08/8/35 4 800m(4x3) 8 90(720) 558,569 0.79/1/4 3.82/16/45 8 1600m(8x3) 16 90(1440) 1,028,868 0.85/2/5 4.29/21/51 10 2000m(10x3) 20 90(1800) 1,244,550 0.88/2/6 4.47/23/53

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• Speakers, Please Check Your Time

  - by AjarnMark

  Woodrow Wilson was once asked how long it would take him to prepare for a 10 minute speech. He replied "Two weeks". He was then asked how long it would take for a 1 hour speech. "One week", he replied. 2 hour speech? "I'm ready right now," he replied.  Whether that is a true story or an urban legend, I don’t really know, but either way, it is a poignant reminder for all speakers, and particularly apropos this week leading up to the PASS Community Summit. (Cross-posted to the PASS Professional Development Virtual Chapter blog #PASSProfDev.) What’s the point of that story?  Simply this…if you have plenty of time to do your presentation, you don’t need to prepare much because it is easy to throw in more and more material to stretch out to your allotted time.  But if you are on a tight time constraint, then it will take significant preparation to distill your talk down to only the essential points. I have attended seven of the last eight North American Summit events, and every one of them has been fantastic.  The speakers are great, the material is timely and relevant, and the networking opportunities are awesome.  And every year, there is one little thing that just bugs me…speakers going over their allotted time.  Why does it bother me so?  Well, if you look at a typical schedule for a Summit, you’ll see that there are six or more sessions going on at the same time, and only 15 minutes to move from one to another.  If you’re trying to maximize your training dollar by attending something during every session time slot, and you don’t want to be the last guy trying to squeeze into the middle of the row, then those 15 minutes can be critical.  All the more so if you need to stop and use the bathroom or if you have to hike to the opposite end of the convention center.  It is really a bad position to find yourself having to choose between learning the last key points of Speaker A who is going over time, and getting over to Speaker B on time so you don’t miss her key opening remarks. And frankly, I think it is just rude.  Yes, the speakers are the function, after all they are bringing the content that the rest of us are paying to learn.  But it is also an honor to be given the opportunity to speak at a conference like this, and no one speaker is so important that the conference would be a disaster without him.  Speakers know when they submit their abstract, long before the conference, how much time they will have.  It has been the same pattern at the Summit for at least the last eight years.  Program Sessions are 75 minutes long.  Some speakers who have a good track record, and meet other qualifying criteria, are extended an invitation to present a Spotlight Session which is 90 minutes (a 20% increase).  So there really is no excuse.  It’s not like you were promised a 2-hour segment and then discovered when you got here that it was only 75 minutes.  In fact, it’s not like PASS advertised 90-minute sessions for everyone and then a select few were cut back to only 75.  As a speaker, you know well before you get here which type of session you are doing and how long it is, so as a professional, you should plan accordingly. Now you might think that this only happens to rookies, but I’ll tell you that some of the worst offenders are big-name veterans who draw huge attendance numbers for their sessions.  Some attendees blow this off as, “Hey, it’s so-and-so, and I’d stay here for hours and listen to him/her talk.”  To which I would reply, “Then they should have submitted for a pre- or post-conference day-long seminar instead, but don’t try to squeeze your day-long talk into a 90-minute session.”  Now I don’t really believe that these speakers are being malicious or just selfishly trying to extend their time in the spotlight.  I think that most of them are merely being undisciplined and did not trim their presentation sufficiently, or allowed themselves to get off-track (often in a generous attempt to help someone in the audience with a question or problem that really should have been noted for further discussion after the session). So here is my recommendation…my plea, even.  TRIM THE FAT!  Now.  Before it’s too late.  Before you even get on the airplane, take a long, hard look at your presentation and eliminate some of the points that you originally thought you had to make, but in reality are not truly crucial to your main topic.  Delete a few slides.  Test your demos and have them already scripted rather than typing them during your talk.  It is better to cut out too much and end up with plenty of time at the end for Questions & Answers.  And you can always keep some notes on the stuff that you cut out so that you could fill it back in at the end as bonus material if you really do end up with a whole bunch of time on your hands.  But I don’t think you will.  And if you do, that will look even better to the audience as it will look like you’re giving them something extra that not every audience gets.  And they will thank you for that.

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• To refund or not to refund this client?

  - by Mahalia Samuels

  I'd really appreciate your advice on an ongoing project. I presented my client with a proposal and design samples which he approved, and he paid in full instead of the 50% upfront deposit as I'd given him a generous discount. He was then slow in furnishing me with some of the content, but once we did, he expected the website to be finished immediately which was not possible. Because he needed it done urgently, we agreed to try to get it done about 10 working days after the content was provided, but the developer who was helping me let me down. The next week, I completed the website myself and uploaded it to the server on a Friday afternoon. He then calls and texts me on following Sunday while I'm at church to say it's not online (there was probably a problem with his browser). The next morning, I received an email from him demanding a full refund within two days because he couldn't see the website (even though it was live, and I tested it on multiple browsers, a different computer and my phone), and he called me shouting at me because he couldn't access it. Finally when he was able to access it, he was unhappy with a certain detail regarding the slideshow which I began fixing and which was done the next day. He then referred me to another website and said he wanted it to look similar but not identical to it in terms of the layout. He also now wanted to add more features which were not in the original design. I got a designer to work on a new design which I sent to him for review, which if approved would be completed by 15 October, and he approved it last Thursday. He then called me yesterday to say that he wanted to change the design - he only approved it out of impatience. He now wants the website to be more similar to the other website he referred me to and he wants it done before the 15th! Then, he says to me that other people have done websites for him in three days - website's he's complained to me about for lacking dimension because they were just premium themes, whereas we'd designed and coded from scratch. I'm thinking of finishing the website but refunding him in full (or at least the refundable 50%) less domain registration and other non-refundable amounts, just to avoid further escalation of this matter and having him call me next week and say he wants to change it again. These are the applicable terms and conditions as laid out in the agreement: Total amount due for this project is Amount A. Client shall pay Consultant a deposit of Amount B (50% of total amount due for project) in advance before any work commences on the Project. The balance is due within 7 working days of completion of project. Deposit is non-refundable. Should client opt to host elsewhere, applicable transferral fee of Amount C will apply. Estimated project completion time frame is 14 to 30 days from the date Client furnishes Consultant with Brief and all other required media and data, provided that Client has made payment to secure the project. Consultant will make every effort to meet agreed upon due dates. The Client should be aware that failure to submit required information or materials, or last minute changes and excessive changes may cause subsequent delays. Client delays could result in significant delays in delivery of finished work. Major changes in client input or direction or brief will be charged at normal rates. Any work the Client wishes Consultant to create, which is not specified in the attached Proposal will be considered an additional service. Client agrees to pay Consultant for any additional expenses or additional services not included in the attached quotation and proposal if requested by the Client. Web design credit in the name of the Consultant, and link to Consultant’s website shall be placed on the footer of the final Website. Either party may terminate this Agreement by giving 7 days written notice to the other of such termination. In the event that Work is postponed or terminated at the request of the Client, Consultant shall have the right to bill pro rata at full rates for work completed through the date of that request, while reserving all rights under this Agreement. If additional payment is due, this shall be payable within seven days of the Client's written notification to stop work. In the event of termination, the Client shall also pay any expenses incurred by Consultant and the Consultant shall own all rights to the Work. Advice please?

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• Right-Time Retail Part 2

  - by David Dorf

  This is part two of the three-part series. 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-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;} Right-Time Integration Of course these real-time enabling technologies are only as good as the systems that utilize them, and it only takes one bottleneck to slow everyone else down. What good is an immediate stock-out notification if the supply chain can’t react until tomorrow? Since being formed in 2006, Oracle Retail has been not only adding more integrations between systems, but also modernizing integrations for appropriate speed. Notice I tossed in the word “appropriate.” Not everything needs to be real-time – again, we’re talking about Right-Time Retail. The speed of data capture, analysis, and execution must be synchronized or you’re wasting effort. Unfortunately, there isn’t an enterprise-wide dial that you can crank-up for your estate. You’ll need to improve things piecemeal, with people and processes as limiting factors while choosing the appropriate types of integrations. There are three integration styles we see in the retail industry. First is batch. I know, the word “batch” just sounds slow, but this pattern is less about velocity and more about volume. When there are large amounts of data to be moved, you’ll want to use batch processes. Our technology of choice here is Oracle Data Integrator (ODI), which provides a fast version of Extract-Transform-Load (ETL). Instead of the three-step process, the load and transform steps are combined to save time. ODI is a key technology for moving data into Retail Analytics where we can apply science. Performing analytics on each sale as it occurs doesn’t make any sense, so we batch up a statistically significant amount and submit all at once. The second style is fire-and-forget. For some types of data, we want the data to arrive ASAP but immediacy is not necessary. Speed is less important than guaranteed delivery, so we use message-oriented middleware available in both Weblogic and the Oracle database. For example, Point-of-Service transactions are queued for delivery to Central Office at corporate. If the network is offline, those transactions remain in the queue and will be delivered when the network returns. Transactions cannot be lost and they must be delivered in order. (Ever tried processing a return before the sale?) To enhance the standard queues, we offer the Retail Integration Bus (RIB) to help the management and monitoring of fire-and-forget messaging in the enterprise. The third style is request-response and is most commonly implemented as Web services. This is a synchronous message where the sender waits for a response. In this situation, the volume of data is small, guaranteed delivery is not necessary, but speed is very important. Examples include the website checking inventory, a price lookup, or processing a credit card authorization. The Oracle Service Bus (OSB) typically handles the routing of such messages, and we’ve enhanced its abilities with the Retail Service Backbone (RSB). To better understand these integration patterns and where they apply within the retail enterprise, we’re providing the Retail Reference Library (RRL) at no charge to Oracle Retail customers. The library is composed of a large number of industry business processes, including those necessary to support Commerce Anywhere, as well as detailed architectural diagrams. These diagrams allow implementers to understand the systems involved in integrations and the specific data payloads. Furthermore, with our upcoming release we’ll be providing a new tool called the Retail Integration Console (RIC) that allows IT to monitor and manage integrations from a single point. Using RIC, retailers can quickly discern where integration activity is occurring, volume statistics, average response times, and errors. The dashboards provide the ability to dive down into the architecture documentation to gather information all the way down to the specific payload. Retailers that want real-time integrations will also need real-time monitoring of those integrations to ensure service-level agreements are maintained. Part 3 looks at marketing.

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• Developing Schema Compare for Oracle (Part 6): 9i Query Performance

  - by Simon Cooper

  All throughout the EAP and beta versions of Schema Compare for Oracle, our main request was support for Oracle 9i. After releasing version 1.0 with support for 10g and 11g, our next step was then to get version 1.1 of SCfO out with support for 9i. However, there were some significant problems that we had to overcome first. This post will concentrate on query execution time. When we first tested SCfO on a 9i server, after accounting for various changes to the data dictionary, we found that database registration was taking a long time. And I mean a looooooong time. The same database that on 10g or 11g would take a couple of minutes to register would be taking upwards of 30 mins on 9i. Obviously, this is not ideal, so a poke around the query execution plans was required. As an example, let's take the table population query - the one that reads ALL_TABLES and joins it with a few other dictionary views to get us back our list of tables. On 10g, this query takes 5.6 seconds. On 9i, it takes 89.47 seconds. The difference in execution plan is even more dramatic - here's the (edited) execution plan on 10g: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------| Id | Operation | Name | Bytes | Cost |-------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 0 | SELECT STATEMENT | | 108K| 939 || 1 | SORT ORDER BY | | 108K| 939 || 2 | NESTED LOOPS OUTER | | 108K| 938 ||* 3 | HASH JOIN RIGHT OUTER | | 103K| 762 || 4 | VIEW | ALL_EXTERNAL_LOCATIONS | 2058 | 3 ||* 20 | HASH JOIN RIGHT OUTER | | 73472 | 759 || 21 | VIEW | ALL_EXTERNAL_TABLES | 2097 | 3 ||* 34 | HASH JOIN RIGHT OUTER | | 39920 | 755 || 35 | VIEW | ALL_MVIEWS | 51 | 7 || 58 | NESTED LOOPS OUTER | | 39104 | 748 || 59 | VIEW | ALL_TABLES | 6704 | 668 || 89 | VIEW PUSHED PREDICATE | ALL_TAB_COMMENTS | 2025 | 5 || 106 | VIEW | ALL_PART_TABLES | 277 | 11 |------------------------------------------------------------------------------- And the same query on 9i: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------| Id | Operation | Name | Bytes | Cost |-------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 0 | SELECT STATEMENT | | 16P| 55G|| 1 | SORT ORDER BY | | 16P| 55G|| 2 | NESTED LOOPS OUTER | | 16P| 862M|| 3 | NESTED LOOPS OUTER | | 5251G| 992K|| 4 | NESTED LOOPS OUTER | | 4243M| 2578 || 5 | NESTED LOOPS OUTER | | 2669K| 1440 ||* 6 | HASH JOIN OUTER | | 398K| 302 || 7 | VIEW | ALL_TABLES | 342K| 276 || 29 | VIEW | ALL_MVIEWS | 51 | 20 ||* 50 | VIEW PUSHED PREDICATE | ALL_TAB_COMMENTS | 2043 | ||* 66 | VIEW PUSHED PREDICATE | ALL_EXTERNAL_TABLES | 1777K| ||* 80 | VIEW PUSHED PREDICATE | ALL_EXTERNAL_LOCATIONS | 1744K| ||* 96 | VIEW | ALL_PART_TABLES | 852K| |------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Have a look at the cost column. 10g's overall query cost is 939, and 9i is 55,000,000,000 (or more precisely, 55,496,472,769). It's also having to process far more data. What on earth could be causing this huge difference in query cost? After trawling through the '10g New Features' documentation, we found item 1.9.2.21. Before 10g, Oracle advised that you do not collect statistics on data dictionary objects. From 10g, it advised that you do collect statistics on the data dictionary; for our queries, Oracle therefore knows what sort of data is in the dictionary tables, and so can generate an efficient execution plan. On 9i, no statistics are present on the system tables, so Oracle has to use the Rule Based Optimizer, which turns most LEFT JOINs into nested loops. If we force 9i to use hash joins, like 10g, we get a much better plan: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------| Id | Operation | Name | Bytes | Cost |-------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 0 | SELECT STATEMENT | | 7587K| 3704 || 1 | SORT ORDER BY | | 7587K| 3704 ||* 2 | HASH JOIN OUTER | | 7587K| 822 ||* 3 | HASH JOIN OUTER | | 5262K| 616 ||* 4 | HASH JOIN OUTER | | 2980K| 465 ||* 5 | HASH JOIN OUTER | | 710K| 432 ||* 6 | HASH JOIN OUTER | | 398K| 302 || 7 | VIEW | ALL_TABLES | 342K| 276 || 29 | VIEW | ALL_MVIEWS | 51 | 20 || 50 | VIEW | ALL_PART_TABLES | 852K| 104 || 78 | VIEW | ALL_TAB_COMMENTS | 2043 | 14 || 93 | VIEW | ALL_EXTERNAL_LOCATIONS | 1744K| 31 || 106 | VIEW | ALL_EXTERNAL_TABLES | 1777K| 28 |------------------------------------------------------------------------------- That's much more like it. This drops the execution time down to 24 seconds. Not as good as 10g, but still an improvement. There are still several problems with this, however. 10g introduced a new join method - a right outer hash join (used in the first execution plan). The 9i query optimizer doesn't have this option available, so forcing a hash join means it has to hash the ALL_TABLES table, and furthermore re-hash it for every hash join in the execution plan; this could be thousands and thousands of rows. And although forcing hash joins somewhat alleviates this problem on our test systems, there's no guarantee that this will improve the execution time on customers' systems; it may even increase the time it takes (say, if all their tables are partitioned, or they've got a lot of materialized views). Ideally, we would want a solution that provides a speedup whatever the input. To try and get some ideas, we asked some oracle performance specialists to see if they had any ideas or tips. Their recommendation was to add a hidden hook into the product that allowed users to specify their own query hints, or even rewrite the queries entirely. However, we would prefer not to take that approach; as well as a lot of new infrastructure & a rewrite of the population code, it would have meant that any users of 9i would have to spend some time optimizing it to get it working on their system before they could use the product. Another approach was needed. All our population queries have a very specific pattern - a base table provides most of the information we need (ALL_TABLES for tables, or ALL_TAB_COLS for columns) and we do a left join to extra subsidiary tables that fill in gaps (for instance, ALL_PART_TABLES for partition information). All the left joins use the same set of columns to join on (typically the object owner & name), so we could re-use the hash information for each join, rather than re-hashing the same columns for every join. To allow us to do this, along with various other performance improvements that could be done for the specific query pattern we were using, we read all the tables individually and do a hash join on the client. Fortunately, this 'pure' algorithmic problem is the kind that can be very well optimized for expected real-world situations; as well as storing row data we're not using in the hash key on disk, we use very specific memory-efficient data structures to store all the information we need. This allows us to achieve a database population time that is as fast as on 10g, and even (in some situations) slightly faster, and a memory overhead of roughly 150 bytes per row of data in the result set (for schemas with 10,000 tables in that means an extra 1.4MB memory being used during population). Next: fun with the 9i dictionary views.

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• How do I organize a GUI application for passing around events and for setting up reads from a shared resource

  - by Savanni D'Gerinel

  My tools involved here are GTK and Haskell. My questions are probably pretty trivial for anyone who has done significant GUI work, but I've been off in the equivalent of CGI applications for my whole career. I'm building an application that displays tabular data, displays the same data in a graph form, and has an edit field for both entering new data and for editing existing data. After asking about sharing resources, I decided that all of the data involved will be stored in an MVar so that every component can just read the current state from the MVar. All of that works, but now it is time for me to rearrange the application so that it can be interactive. With that in mind, I have three widgets: a TextView (for editing), a TreeView (for displaying the data), and a DrawingArea (for displaying the data as a graph). I THINK I need to do two things, and the core of my question is, are these the right things, or is there a better way. Thing the first: All event handlers, those functions that will be called any time a redisplay is needed, need to be written at a high level and then passed into the function that actually constructs the widget to begin with. For instance: drawStatData :: DrawingArea -> MVar Core.ST -> (Core.ST -> SetRepWorkout.WorkoutStore) -> IO () createStatView :: (DrawingArea -> IO ()) -> IO VBox createUI :: MVar Core.ST -> (Core.ST -> SetRepWorkout.WorkoutStore) -> IO HBox createUI storeMVar field = do graphs <- createStatView (\area -> drawStatData area storeMVar field) hbox <- hBoxNew False 10 boxPackStart hbox graphs PackNatural 0 return hbox In this case, createStatView builds up a VBox that contains a DrawingArea to graph the data and potentially other widgets. It attaches drawStatData to the realize and exposeEvent events for the DrawingArea. I would do something similar for the TreeView, but I am not completely sure what since I have not yet done it and what I am thinking of would involve replacing the TreeModel every time the TreeView needs to be updated. My alternative to the above would be... drawStatData :: DrawingArea -> MVar Core.ST -> (Core.ST -> SetRepWorkout.WorkoutStore) -> IO () createStatView :: IO (VBox, DrawingArea) ... but in this case, I would arrange createUI like so: createUI :: MVar Core.ST -> (Core.ST -> SetRepWorkout.WorkoutStore) -> IO HBox createUI storeMVar field = do (graphbox, graph) <- createStatView (\area -> drawStatData area storeMVar field) hbox <- hBoxNew False 10 boxPackStart hbox graphs PackNatural 0 on graph realize (drawStatData graph storeMVar field) on graph exposeEvent (do liftIO $ drawStatData graph storeMVar field return ()) return hbox I'm not sure which is better, but that does lead me to... Thing the second: it will be necessary for me to rig up an event system so that various events can send signals all the way to my widgets. I'm going to need a mediator of some kind to pass events around and to translate application-semantic events to the actual events that my widgets respond to. Is it better for me to pass my addressable widgets up the call stack to the level where the mediator lives, or to pass the mediator down the call stack and have the widgets register directly with it? So, in summary, my two questions: 1) pass widgets up the call stack to a global mediator, or pass the global mediator down and have the widgets register themselves to it? 2) pass my redraw functions to the builders and have the builders attach the redraw functions to the constructed widgets, or pass the constructed widgets back and have a higher level attach the redraw functions (and potentially link some widgets together)? Okay, and... 3) Books or wikis about GUI application architecture, preferably coherent architectures where people aren't arguing about minute details? The application in its current form (displays data but does not write data or allow for much interaction) is available at https://bitbucket.org/savannidgerinel/fitness . You can run the application by going to the root directory and typing runhaskell -isrc src/Main.hs data/ or... cabal build dist/build/fitness/fitness data/ You may need to install libraries, but cabal should tell you which ones.

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• Content in Context: The right medicine for your business applications

  - by Lance Shaw

  For many of you, your companies have already invested in a number of applications that are critical to the way your business is run. HR, Payroll, Legal, Accounts Payable, and while they might need an upgrade in some cases, they are all there and handling the lifeblood of your business. But are they really running as efficiently as they could be? For many companies, the answer is no. The problem has to do with the important information caught up within documents and paper. It’s everywhere except where it truly needs to be – readily available right within the context of the application itself. When the right information cannot be easily found, business processes suffer significantly. The importance of this recently struck me when I recently went to meet my new doctor and get a routine physical. Walking into the office lobby, I couldn't help but notice rows and rows of manila folders in racks from floor to ceiling, filled with documents and sensitive, personal information about various patients like myself.  As I looked at all that paper and all that history, two things immediately popped into my head.  “How do they find anything?” and then the even more alarming, “So much for information security!” It sure looked to me like all those documents could be accessed by anyone with a key to the building. Now the truth is that the offices of many general practitioners look like this all over the United States and the world.  But it had me thinking, is the same thing going on in just about any company around the world, involving a wide variety of important business processes? Probably so. Think about all the various processes going on in your company right now. Invoice payments are being processed through Accounts Payable, contracts are being reviewed by Procurement, and Human Resources is reviewing job candidate submissions and doing background checks. All of these processes and many more like them rely on access to forms and documents, whether they are paper or digital. Now consider that it is estimated that employee’s spend nearly 9 hours a week searching for information and not finding it. That is a lot of very well paid employees, spending more than one day per week not doing their regular job while they search for or re-create what already exists. Back in the doctor’s office, I saw this trend exemplified as well. First, I had to fill out a new patient form, even though my previous doctor had transferred my records over months previously. After filling out the form, I was later introduced to my new doctor who then interviewed me and asked me the exact same questions that I had answered on the form. I understand that there is value in the interview process and it was great to meet my new doctor, but this simple process could have been so much more efficient if the information already on file could have been brought directly together with the new patient information I had provided. Instead of having a highly paid medical professional re-enter the same information into the records database, the form I filled out could have been immediately scanned into the system, associated with my previous information, discrepancies identified, and the entire process streamlined significantly. We won’t solve the health records management issues that exist in the United States in this blog post, but this example illustrates how the automation of information capture and classification can eliminate a lot of repetitive and costly human entry and re-creation, even in a simple process like new patient on-boarding. In a similar fashion, by taking a fresh look at the various processes in place today in your organization, you can likely spot points along the way where automating the capture and access to the right information could be significantly improved. As you evaluate how content-process flows through your organization, take a look at how departments and regions share information between the applications they are using. Business applications are often implemented on an individual department basis to solve specific problems but a holistic approach to overall information management is not taken at the same time. The end result over the years is disparate applications with separate information repositories and in many cases these contain duplicate information, or worse, slightly different versions of the same information. This is where Oracle WebCenter Content comes into the story. More and more companies are realizing that they can significantly improve their existing application processes by automating the capture of paper, forms and other content. This makes the right information immediately accessible in the context of the business process and making the same information accessible across departmental systems which has helped many organizations realize significant cost savings. Here on the Oracle WebCenter team, one of our primary goals is to help customers find new ways to be more effective, more cost-efficient and manage information as effectively as possible. We have a series of three webcasts occurring over the next few weeks that are focused on the integration of enterprise content management within the context of business applications. We hope you will join us for one or all three and that you will find them informative. Click here to learn more about these sessions and to register for them. There are many aspects of information management to consider as you look at integrating content management within your business applications. We've barely scratched the surface here but look for upcoming blog posts where we will discuss more specifics on the value of delivering documents, forms and images directly within applications like Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft Enterprise, JD Edwards Enterprise One, Siebel CRM and many others. What do you think?  Are your important business processes as healthy as they can be?  Do you have any insights to share on the value of delivering content directly within critical business processes? Please post a comment and let us know the value you have realized, the lessons learned and what specific areas you are interested in.

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• UK OUG Conference Highlights and Insights

  - by Richard Bingham

  As per my preemptive post, this was the first time the annual conference organized by the UK Oracle User Group (UKOUG) was split into two events, one for Oracle Applications and another in December for Oracle Technology. Apps13, as it was branded, was hailed as a success, with over 1000 registered attendees and three days of sessions, exhibition, round-tables and many other types of content. As this poster on their stand illustrates, the UKOUG is a strong community with popular participants from both big and small Oracle partners and customers. The venue was a more intimate setting than previous years also, allowing everyone to casually bump into those they hoped to. It gave a real feeling of an Apps Community. The main themes over the days where CRM and Customer Experience, HCM, and FIN/SCM. This allowed people to attend just one focused day if they wanted. In addition the Apps Transformation stream ran across all three days, offering insights, advice, and details on the newer product solutions like Fusion Applications.  Here are some of the key take-aways I got from the conference, specific to my role in Fusion Applications Developer Relations: User Experience continues to be a significant reason for adopting some of the newer application products available, with immediately obvious gains in user productivity and satisfaction reported by customers. Also this doesn't stop with the baked-in UX either, with their Design Patterns proving popular and indeed currently being extended to including things like extending on ADF mobile and customizing the Simplified UI. More on this to come from us soon. The executive sessions emphasized the "it's a journey" phrase, illustrating that modern business applications are powered by technologies such as Cloud, Mobile, Social and Big Data and these can be harnessed to help propel your organization forward. Indeed the emphasis is away from the traditional vendor prescribed linear applications road map, and towards plotting a course based on business priorities supported by a broad range of integrated solutions. To help with this several conference sessions demoed the new "Applications Navigator" tool, developed in partnership with OUG members, which offers a visual framework to help organizations plan their Oracle Applications investments around business and technology imperatives. Initial reaction was positive, especially as customers do not need to decipher Oracle's huge product catalog and embeds the best blend of proven and integrated applications solutions. We'll share more on this when it is generally available. Several sessions focused around explanations and interpretation of Oracle OpenWorld 2013, helping highlight the key Oracle Applications messages and directions. With a relative small percentage of conference attendees also at OpenWorld (from a show of hands) this was a popular way to distill the information available down into specific items of interest for the community. Please note the original OpenWorld 2013 content is still available for download but will not remain available forever (via the Oracle website OpenWorld Content Catalog > pick a session > see the PDF download). With the release of E-Business Suite 12.2 the move to develop and deploy on the Fusion Middleware stack becomes a reality for many Oracle Applications customers. This coupled with recent E-Business Suite features such as the Integrated SOA Gateway and the E-Business Suite SDK for Java, illustrates how the gap between the technologies and techniques involved in extending E-Business Suite and Fusion Applications is quickly narrowing. We'll see this merging continue to evolve going forwards. Getting started with Oracle Cloud Applications is actually easier than many customers expected, with a broad selection of both large and medium sized organizations explaining how they added new features to their existing Oracle Applications portfolios. New functionality available from Fusion HCM and CX are popular extensions that do not have to disrupt those core business services. Coexistence is the buzzword here, and the available integration is also simpler than many expected, commonly involving an initial setup data load, then regularly incremental synchronizations, often without a need for real-time constant communication between systems. With much of this pre-built already the implementation process is also quite rapid. With most people dressed in suits, we wanted to get the conversations going without the traditional english reserve, so we decided to make ourselves a bit more obvious, as the photo below shows. This seemed to be quite successful and helped those interested identify and approach us. Keep a look out for similar again. In fact if you're in the UK there is an "Apps Transformation Day" planned by the UKOUG for the 19th March 2014, with more details to follow. Again something we'll be sure to participate in. I am hoping to attend the next half of the UKOUG annual conference, Tech13, that focuses more on Oracle technology and where there is more likely to be larger attendance of those interested in the lower-level aspects of applications customization and development. If you're going, let me know and maybe we can meet up.

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• Coherence Data Guarantees for Data Reads - Basic Terminology

  - by jpurdy

  When integrating Coherence into applications, each application has its own set of requirements with respect to data integrity guarantees. Developers often describe these requirements using expressions like "avoiding dirty reads" or "making sure that updates are transactional", but we often find that even in a small group of people, there may be a wide range of opinions as to what these terms mean. This may simply be due to a lack of familiarity, but given that Coherence sits at an intersection of several (mostly) unrelated fields, it may be a matter of conflicting vocabularies (e.g. "consistency" is similar but different in transaction processing versus multi-threaded programming). Since almost all data read consistency issues are related to the concept of concurrency, it is helpful to start with a definition of that, or rather what it means for two operations to be concurrent. Rather than implying that they occur "at the same time", concurrency is a slightly weaker statement -- it simply means that it can't be proven that one event precedes (or follows) the other. As an example, in a Coherence application, if two client members mutate two different cache entries sitting on two different cache servers at roughly the same time, it is likely that one update will precede the other by a significant amount of time (say 0.1ms). However, since there is no guarantee that all four members have their clocks perfectly synchronized, and there is no way to precisely measure the time it takes to send a given message between any two members (that have differing clocks), we consider these to be concurrent operations since we can not (easily) prove otherwise. So this leads to a question that we hear quite frequently: "Are the contents of the near cache always synchronized with the underlying distributed cache?". It's easy to see that if an update on a cache server results in a message being sent to each near cache, and then that near cache being updated that there is a window where the contents are different. However, this is irrelevant, since even if the application reads directly from the distributed cache, another thread update the cache before the read is returned to the application. Even if no other member modifies a cache entry prior to the local near cache entry being updated (and subsequently read), the purpose of reading a cache entry is to do something with the result, usually either displaying for consumption by a human, or by updating the entry based on the current state of the entry. In the former case, it's clear that if the data is updated faster than a human can perceive, then there is no problem (and in many cases this can be relaxed even further). For the latter case, the application must assume that the value might potentially be updated before it has a chance to update it. This almost aways the case with read-only caches, and the solution is the traditional optimistic transaction pattern, which requires the application to explicitly state what assumptions it made about the old value of the cache entry. If the application doesn't want to bother stating those assumptions, it is free to lock the cache entry prior to reading it, ensuring that no other threads will mutate the entry, a pessimistic approach. The optimistic approach relies on what is sometimes called a "fuzzy read". In other words, the application assumes that the read should be correct, but it also acknowledges that it might not be. (I use the qualifier "sometimes" because in some writings, "fuzzy read" indicates the situation where the application actually sees an original value and then later sees an updated value within the same transaction -- however, both definitions are roughly equivalent from an application design perspective). If the read is not correct it is called a "stale read". Going back to the definition of concurrency, it may seem difficult to precisely define a stale read, but the practical way of detecting a stale read is that is will cause the encompassing transaction to roll back if it tries to update that value. The pessimistic approach relies on a "coherent read", a guarantee that the value returned is not only the same as the primary copy of that value, but also that it will remain that way. In most cases this can be used interchangeably with "repeatable read" (though that term has additional implications when used in the context of a database system). In none of cases above is it possible for the application to perform a "dirty read". A dirty read occurs when the application reads a piece of data that was never committed. In practice the only way this can occur is with multi-phase updates such as transactions, where a value may be temporarily update but then withdrawn when a transaction is rolled back. If another thread sees that value prior to the rollback, it is a dirty read. If an application uses optimistic transactions, dirty reads will merely result in a lack of forward progress (this is actually one of the main risks of dirty reads -- they can be chained and potentially cause cascading rollbacks). The concepts of dirty reads, fuzzy reads, stale reads and coherent reads are able to describe the vast majority of requirements that we see in the field. However, the important thing is to define the terms used to define requirements. A quick web search for each of the terms in this article will show multiple meanings, so I've selected what are generally the most common variations, but it never hurts to state each definition explicitly if they are critical to the success of a project (many applications have sufficiently loose requirements that precise terminology can be avoided).

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• Key Windows Phone Development Concepts

  - by Tim Murphy

  As I am doing more development in and out of the enterprise arena for Windows Phone I decide I would study for the 70-599 test.  I generally take certification tests as a way to force me to dig deeper into a technology.  Between the development and studying I decided it would be good to put a post together of key development features in Windows Phone 7 environment.  Contrary to popular belief the launch of Windows Phone 8 will not obsolete Windows Phone 7 development.  With the launch of 7.8 coming shortly and people who will remain on 7.X for the foreseeable future there are still consumers needing these apps so don’t throw out the baby with the bath water. PhoneApplicationService This is a class that every Windows Phone developer needs to become familiar with.  When it comes to application state this is your go to repository.  It also contains events that help with management of your application’s lifecycle.  You can access it like the following code sample. 1: PhoneApplicationService.Current.State["ValidUser"] = userResult; DeviceNetworkInformation This class allows you to determine the connectivity of the device and be notified when something changes with that connectivity.  If you are making web service calls you will want to check here before firing off. I have found that this class doesn’t actually work very well for determining if you have internet access.  You are better of using the following code where IsConnectedToInternet is an App level property. private void Application_Launching(object sender, LaunchingEventArgs e){ // Validate user access if (Microsoft.Phone.Net.NetworkInformation.NetworkInterface.NetworkInterfaceType != Microsoft.Phone.Net.NetworkInformation.NetworkInterfaceType.None) { IsConnectedToInternet = true; } else { IsConnectedToInternet = false; } NetworkChange.NetworkAddressChanged += new NetworkAddressChangedEventHandler(NetworkChange_NetworkAddressChanged);}void NetworkChange_NetworkAddressChanged(object sender, EventArgs e){ IsConnectedToInternet = (Microsoft.Phone.Net.NetworkInformation.NetworkInterface.NetworkInterfaceType != Microsoft.Phone.Net.NetworkInformation.NetworkInterfaceType.None);} Push Notification Push notification allows your application to receive notifications in a way that reduces the application’s power needs. This MSDN article is a good place to get the basics of push notification, but you can see the essential concept in the diagram below.  There are three types of push notification: toast, Tile and raw.  The first two work regardless of the state of the application where as raw messages are discarded if your application is not running.   Live Tiles Live tiles are one of the main differentiators of the Windows Phone platform.  They allow users to find information at a glance from their start screen without navigating into individual apps.  Knowing how to implement them can be a great boost to the attractiveness of your application. The simplest step-by-step explanation for creating live tiles is here. Local Database While your application really only has Isolated Storage as a data store there are some ways of giving you database functionality to develop against.  There are a number of open source ORM style solutions.  Probably the best and most native way I have found is to use LINQ to SQL.  It does take a significant amount of setup, but the ease of use once it is configured is worth the cost.  Rather than repeat the full concepts here I will point you to a post that I wrote previously. Tasks (Bing, Email) Leveraging built in features of the Windows Phone platform is an easy way to add functionality that would be expensive to develop on your own.  The classes that you need to make yourself familiar with are BingMapsDirectionsTask and EmailComposeTask.  This will allow your application to supply directions and give the user an email path to relay information to friends and associates. Event model Because of the ability for users to switch quickly to switch to other apps or the home screen is just one reason why knowing the Windows Phone event model is important.  You need to be able to save data so that if a user gets a phone call they can come back to exactly where they were in your application.  This means that you will need to handle such events as Launching, Activated, Deactivated and Closing at an application level.  You will probably also want to get familiar with the OnNavigatedTo and OnNavigatedFrom events at the page level.  These will give you an opportunity to save data as a user navigates through your app. Summary This is just a small portion of the concepts that you will use while building Windows Phone apps, but these are some of the most critical.  With the launch of Windows Phone 8 this list will probably expand.  Take the time to investigate these topics further and try them out in your apps. del.icio.us Tags: Windows Phone 7,Windows Phone,WP7,Software Development,70-599

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• 2012&ndash;The End Of The World Review

  - by Tim Murphy

  The end of the world must be coming.  Not because the Mayan calendar says so, but because Microsoft is innovating more than Apple.  It has been a crazy year, with pundits declaring not that the end of the world is coming, but that the end of Microsoft is coming.  Let’s take a look at what 2012 has brought us. The beginning of year is a blur.  I managed to get to TechEd in June which was the first time that I got to take a deep dive into Windows 8 and many other things that had been announced in 2011.  The promise I saw in these products was really encouraging.  The thought of being able to run Windows 8 from a thumb drive or have Hyper-V native to the OS told me that at least for developers good things were coming. I finally got my feet wet with Windows 8 with the developer preview just prior to the RTM.  While the initial experience was a bit of a culture shock I quickly grew to love it.  The media still seems to hold little love for the “reimagined” platform, but I think that once people spend some time with it they will enjoy the experience and what the FUD mongers say will fade into the background.  With the launch of the OS we finally got a look at the Surface.  I think this is a bold entry into the tablet market.  While I wish it was a little more affordable I am already starting to see them in the wild being used by non-techies. I was waiting for Windows Phone 8 at least as much as Windows 8, probably more.  The new hardware, better marketing and new OS features I think are going to finally push us to the point of having a real presence in the smartphone market.  I am seeing a number of iPhone users picking up a Nokia Lumia 920 and getting rid of their brand new iPhone 5.  The only real debacle that I saw around the launch was when they held back the SDK from general developers. Shortly after the launch events came Build 2012.  I was extremely disappointed that I didn’t make it to this year’s Build.  Even if they weren’t handing out Surface and Lumia devices I think the atmosphere and content were something that really needed to be experience in person.  Hopefully there will be a Build next year and it’s schedule will be announced soon.  As you would expect Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 development were the mainstay of the conference, but improvements in Azure also played a key role.  This movement of services to the cloud will continue and we need to understand where it best fits into the solutions we build. Lower on the radar this year were Office 2013, SQL Server 2012, and Windows Server 2012.  Their glory stolen by the consumer OS and hardware announcements, these new releases are no less important.  Companies will see significant improvements in performance and capabilities if they upgrade.  At TechEd they had shown some of the new features of Windows Server 2012 around hardware integration and Hyper-V performance which absolutely blew me away.  It is our job to bring these important improvements to our company’s attention so that they can be leveraged. Personally, the consulting business in 2012 was the busiest it has been in a long time.  More companies were ready to attack new projects after several years of putting them on the back burner.  I also worked to bring back momentum to the Chicago Information Technology Architects Group.  Both the community and clients are excited about the new technologies that have come out in 2012 and now it is time to deliver. What does 2013 have in store.  I don’t see it be quite as exciting as 2012.  Microsoft will be releasing the Surface Pro in January and it seems that we will see more frequent OS update for Windows.  There are rumors that we may see a Surface phone in 2013.  It has also been announced that there will finally be a rework of the XBox next fall.  The new year will also be a time for us in the development community to take advantage of these new tools and devices.  After all, it is what we build on top of these platforms that will attract more consumers and corporations to using them. Just as I am 99.999% sure that the world is not going to end this year, I am also sure that Microsoft will move on and that most of this negative backlash from the media is actually fear and jealousy.  In the end I think we have a promising year ahead of us. del.icio.us Tags: Microsoft,Pundits,Mayans,Windows 8,Windows Phone 8,Surface

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• Plagued by multithreaded bugs

  - by koncurrency

  On my new team that I manage, the majority of our code is platform, TCP socket, and http networking code. All C++. Most of it originated from other developers that have left the team. The current developers on the team are very smart, but mostly junior in terms of experience. Our biggest problem: multi-threaded concurrency bugs. Most of our class libraries are written to be asynchronous by use of some thread pool classes. Methods on the class libraries often enqueue long running taks onto the thread pool from one thread and then the callback methods of that class get invoked on a different thread. As a result, we have a lot of edge case bugs involving incorrect threading assumptions. This results in subtle bugs that go beyond just having critical sections and locks to guard against concurrency issues. What makes these problems even harder is that the attempts to fix are often incorrect. Some mistakes I've observed the team attempting (or within the legacy code itself) includes something like the following: Common mistake #1 - Fixing concurrency issue by just put a lock around the shared data, but forgetting about what happens when methods don't get called in an expected order. Here's a very simple example: void Foo::OnHttpRequestComplete(statuscode status) { m_pBar->DoSomethingImportant(status); } void Foo::Shutdown() { m_pBar->Cleanup(); delete m_pBar; m_pBar=nullptr; } So now we have a bug in which Shutdown could get called while OnHttpNetworkRequestComplete is occuring on. A tester finds the bug, captures the crash dump, and assigns the bug to a developer. He in turn fixes the bug like this. void Foo::OnHttpRequestComplete(statuscode status) { AutoLock lock(m_cs); m_pBar->DoSomethingImportant(status); } void Foo::Shutdown() { AutoLock lock(m_cs); m_pBar->Cleanup(); delete m_pBar; m_pBar=nullptr; } The above fix looks good until you realize there's an even more subtle edge case. What happens if Shutdown gets called before OnHttpRequestComplete gets called back? The real world examples my team has are even more complex, and the edge cases are even harder to spot during the code review process. Common Mistake #2 - fixing deadlock issues by blindly exiting the lock, wait for the other thread to finish, then re-enter the lock - but without handling the case that the object just got updated by the other thread! Common Mistake #3 - Even though the objects are reference counted, the shutdown sequence "releases" it's pointer. But forgets to wait for the thread that is still running to release it's instance. As such, components are shutdown cleanly, then spurious or late callbacks are invoked on an object in an state not expecting any more calls. There are other edge cases, but the bottom line is this: Multithreaded programming is just plain hard, even for smart people. As I catch these mistakes, I spend time discussing the errors with each developer on developing a more appropriate fix. But I suspect they are often confused on how to solve each issue because of the enormous amount of legacy code that the "right" fix will involve touching. We're going to be shipping soon, and I'm sure the patches we're applying will hold for the upcoming release. Afterwards, we're going to have some time to improve the code base and refactor where needed. We won't have time to just re-write everything. And the majority of the code isn't all that bad. But I'm looking to refactor code such that threading issues can be avoided altogether. One approach I am considering is this. For each significant platform feature, have a dedicated single thread where all events and network callbacks get marshalled onto. Similar to COM apartment threading in Windows with use of a message loop. Long blocking operations could still get dispatched to a work pool thread, but the completion callback is invoked on on the component's thread. Components could possibly even share the same thread. Then all the class libraries running inside the thread can be written under the assumption of a single threaded world. Before I go down that path, I am also very interested if there are other standard techniques or design patterns for dealing with multithreaded issues. And I have to emphasize - something beyond a book that describes the basics of mutexes and semaphores. What do you think? I am also interested in any other approaches to take towards a refactoring process. Including any of the following: Literature or papers on design patterns around threads. Something beyond an introduction to mutexes and semaphores. We don't need massive parallelism either, just ways to design an object model so as to handle asynchronous events from other threads correctly. Ways to diagram the threading of various components, so that it will be easy to study and evolve solutions for. (That is, a UML equivalent for discussing threads across objects and classes) Educating your development team on the issues with multithreaded code. What would you do?

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• iPhone - UIImage Leak, CGBitmapContextCreateImage Leak

  - by bbullis21

  Alright I am having a world of difficulty tracking down this memory leak. When running this script I do not see any memory leaking, but my objectalloc is climbing. Instruments points to CGBitmapContextCreateImage create_bitmap_data_provider malloc, this takes up 60% of my objectalloc. This code is called several times with a NSTimer. //GET IMAGE FROM RESOURCE DIR NSString * fileLocation = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:imgMain ofType:@"jpg"]; NSData * imageData = [NSData dataWithContentsOfFile:fileLocation]; UIImage * blurMe = [UIImage imageWithData:imageData]; NSAutoreleasePool * pool = [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc] init]; UIImage * scaledImage = [blurMe _imageScaledToSize:CGSizeMake(blurMe.size.width / dblBlurLevel, blurMe.size.width / dblBlurLevel) interpolationQuality:3.0]; UIImage * labelImage = [scaledImage _imageScaledToSize:blurMe.size interpolationQuality:3.0]; UIImage * imageCopy = [[UIImage alloc] initWithCGImage:labelImage.CGImage]; [pool drain]; // deallocates scaledImage and labelImage imgView.image = imageCopy; [imageCopy release]; Below is the blur function. I believe the objectalloc issue is located in here. Maybe I just need a pair of fresh eyes. Would be great if someone could figure this out. Sorry it is kind of long... I'll try and shorten it. @implementation UIImage(Blur) - (UIImage *)blurredCopy:(int)pixelRadius { //VARS unsigned char *srcData, *destData, *finalData; CGContextRef context = NULL; CGColorSpaceRef colorSpace; void * bitmapData; int bitmapByteCount; int bitmapBytesPerRow; //IMAGE SIZE size_t pixelsWide = CGImageGetWidth(self.CGImage); size_t pixelsHigh = CGImageGetHeight(self.CGImage); bitmapBytesPerRow = (pixelsWide * 4); bitmapByteCount = (bitmapBytesPerRow * pixelsHigh); colorSpace = CGColorSpaceCreateDeviceRGB(); if (colorSpace == NULL) { return NULL; } bitmapData = malloc( bitmapByteCount ); if (bitmapData == NULL) { CGColorSpaceRelease( colorSpace ); } context = CGBitmapContextCreate (bitmapData, pixelsWide, pixelsHigh, 8, bitmapBytesPerRow, colorSpace, kCGImageAlphaPremultipliedFirst ); if (context == NULL) { free (bitmapData); } CGColorSpaceRelease( colorSpace ); free (bitmapData); if (context == NULL) { return NULL; } //PREPARE BLUR size_t width = CGBitmapContextGetWidth(context); size_t height = CGBitmapContextGetHeight(context); size_t bpr = CGBitmapContextGetBytesPerRow(context); size_t bpp = (CGBitmapContextGetBitsPerPixel(context) / 8); CGRect rect = {{0,0},{width,height}}; CGContextDrawImage(context, rect, self.CGImage); // Now we can get a pointer to the image data associated with the bitmap // context. srcData = (unsigned char *)CGBitmapContextGetData (context); if (srcData != NULL) { size_t dataSize = bpr * height; finalData = malloc(dataSize); destData = malloc(dataSize); memcpy(finalData, srcData, dataSize); memcpy(destData, srcData, dataSize); int sums[5]; int i, x, y, k; int gauss_sum=0; int radius = pixelRadius * 2 + 1; int *gauss_fact = malloc(radius * sizeof(int)); for (i = 0; i < pixelRadius; i++) { .....blah blah blah... THIS IS JUST LONG CODE THE CREATES INT FIGURES ........blah blah blah...... } if (gauss_fact) { free(gauss_fact); } } size_t bitmapByteCount2 = bpr * height; //CREATE DATA PROVIDER CGDataProviderRef dataProvider = CGDataProviderCreateWithData(NULL, srcData, bitmapByteCount2, NULL); //CREATE IMAGE CGImageRef cgImage = CGImageCreate( width, height, CGBitmapContextGetBitsPerComponent(context), CGBitmapContextGetBitsPerPixel(context), CGBitmapContextGetBytesPerRow(context), CGBitmapContextGetColorSpace(context), CGBitmapContextGetBitmapInfo(context), dataProvider, NULL, true, kCGRenderingIntentDefault ); //RELEASE INFORMATION CGDataProviderRelease(dataProvider); CGContextRelease(context); if (destData) { free(destData); } if (finalData) { free(finalData); } if (srcData) { free(srcData); } UIImage *retUIImage = [UIImage imageWithCGImage:cgImage]; CGImageRelease(cgImage); return retUIImage; } The only thing I can think of that is holding up the objectalloc is this UIImage *retUIImage = [UIImage imageWithCGImage:cgImage];...but how to do I release that after it has been returned? Hopefully someone can help please.

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• VB.Net Dynamically Load DLL

  - by hermiod

  I am trying to write some code that will allow me to dynamically load DLLs into my application, depending on an application setting. The idea is that the database to be accessed is set in the application settings and then this loads the appropriate DLL and assigns it to an instance of an interface for my application to access. This is my code at the moment: Dim SQLDataSource As ICRDataLayer Dim ass As Assembly = Assembly. _ LoadFrom("M:\MyProgs\WebService\DynamicAssemblyLoading\SQLServer\bin\Debug\SQLServer.dll") Dim obj As Object = ass.CreateInstance(GetType(ICRDataLayer).ToString, True) SQLDataSource = DirectCast(obj, ICRDataLayer) MsgBox(SQLDataSource.ModuleName & vbNewLine & SQLDataSource.ModuleDescription) I have my interface (ICRDataLayer) and the SQLServer.dll contains an implementation of this interface. I just want to load the assembly and assign it to the SQLDataSource object. The above code just doesn't work. There are no exceptions thrown, even the Msgbox doesn't appear. I would've expected at least the messagebox appearing with nothing in it, but even this doesn't happen! Is there a way to determine if the loaded assembly implements a specific interface. I tried the below but this also doesn't seem to do anything! For Each loadedType As Type In ass.GetTypes If GetType(ICRDataLayer).IsAssignableFrom(loadedType) Then Dim obj1 As Object = ass.CreateInstance(GetType(ICRDataLayer).ToString, True) SQLDataSource = DirectCast(obj1, ICRDataLayer) End If Next EDIT: New code from Vlad's examples: Module CRDataLayerFactory Sub New() End Sub ' class name is a contract, ' should be the same for all plugins Private Function Create() As ICRDataLayer Return New SQLServer() End Function End Module Above is Module in each DLL, converted from Vlad's C# example. Below is my code to bring in the DLL: Dim SQLDataSource As ICRDataLayer Dim ass As Assembly = Assembly. _ LoadFrom("M:\MyProgs\WebService\DynamicAssemblyLoading\SQLServer\bin\Debug\SQLServer.dll") Dim factory As Object = ass.CreateInstance("CRDataLayerFactory", True) Dim t As Type = factory.GetType Dim method As MethodInfo = t.GetMethod("Create") Dim obj As Object = method.Invoke(factory, Nothing) SQLDataSource = DirectCast(obj, ICRDataLayer) EDIT: Implementation based on Paul Kohler's code Dim file As String For Each file In Directory.GetFiles(baseDir, searchPattern, SearchOption.TopDirectoryOnly) Dim assemblyType As System.Type For Each assemblyType In Assembly.LoadFrom(file).GetTypes Dim s As System.Type() = assemblyType.GetInterfaces For Each ty As System.Type In s If ty.Name.Contains("ICRDataLayer") Then MsgBox(ty.Name) plugin = DirectCast(Activator.CreateInstance(assemblyType), ICRDataLayer) MessageBox.Show(plugin.ModuleName) End If Next I get the following error with this code: Unable to cast object of type 'SQLServer.CRDataSource.SQLServer' to type 'DynamicAssemblyLoading.ICRDataLayer'. The actual DLL is in a different project called SQLServer in the same solution as my implementation code. CRDataSource is a namespace and SQLServer is the actual class name of the DLL. The SQLServer class implements ICRDataLayer, so I don't understand why it wouldn't be able to cast it. Is the naming significant here, I wouldn't have thought it would be.

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• Best ASP.NET E-Commerce Framework (aspDotNetStoreFront, AbleCommerce, BVCommerce, MediaChase,...)

  - by EfficionDave

  I need a full-featured asp.net E-Commerce solution for a project. It needs to be easily extensible as I need to extend it to integrate with a custom Flash based personalization engine. It should also have a great administrative back-end that handles inventory tracking, report, labels, shipping, ... so that the client can really use it as the basis for their business. I've used quite a few different E-Commerce systems including OSCommerce, Zen Cart, Catalook, and eTailer. While I was impressed with Zen Cart and eTailer, this project is big enough that I want to try a more serious, commercial offering. I'm particularly interested in thoughts on aspdotnetstorefront, BVCommerce, AbleCommerce, and MediaChase. [UPDATE] I've done quite a bit of evaluation since I posted this question and will give some of my findings below: BVCommerce - The price point is nice, the product seems fairly well regarded, and I've heard good things about customizing/extending it, it just doesn't seem like it's going to meet my needs as an Top Tier ECommerce solution. After viewing the tutorial videos, the Admin interface just seems too basic and outdated. aspDotNetStorefront - The integration with DotNetNuke was it's biggest selling point for me but after reading peoples opinions, it's integration seems quite weak. It's sounds like there's a significant learning curve and the architecture just doesn't sound like it's as clean as it should be. AbleCommerce - After a rather thorough evaluation, I have selected AbleCommerce for at least my next project. The Admin interface is beautiful and has a nice list of features. The E-Commerce portion of the user side is very well done, highly skin-able (using Master Pages and a couple other techniques), and the checkout workflow has all the features I need while still being very clean. Source to the API can be bought for $500 but you generally won't need it. There are some 3rd party modules available but there's not currently a large market for these. The biggest glaring weakness of AbleCommerce I've found is their CMS capabilities are very limited and not at all well suited for a non-technical user to make most site content updates. But I have a good solution for that that I plan adapting into AbleCommerce. They will automatically generate a site for you to play with to your heart's content for 30 days. It is defniitely worth checking out.

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• Why is drawing to OnPaint graphics faster than image graphics?

  - by Tesserex

  I'm looking for a way to speed up the drawing of my game engine, which is currently the significant bottleneck, and is causing slowdowns. I'm on the verge of converting it over to XNA, but I just noticed something. Say I have a small image that I've loaded. Image img = Image.FromFile("mypict.png"); We have a picturebox on the screen we want to draw on. So we have a handler. pictureBox1.Paint += new PaintEventHandler(pictureBox1_Paint); I want our loaded image to be tiled on the picturebox (this is for a game, after all). Why on earth is this code: void pictureBox1_Paint(object sender, PaintEventArgs e) { for (int y = 0; y < 16; y++) for (int x = 0; x < 16; x++) e.Graphics.DrawImage(image, x * 16, y * 16, 16, 16); } over 25 TIMES FASTER than this code: Image buff = new Bitmap(256, 256, PixelFormat.Format32bppPArgb); // actually a form member void pictureBox1_Paint(object sender, PaintEventArgs e) { using (Graphics g = Graphics.FromImage(buff)) { for (int y = 0; y < 16; y++) for (int x = 0; x < 16; x++) g.DrawImage(image, x * 16, y * 16, 16, 16); } e.Graphics.DrawImage(buff, 0, 0, 256, 256); } To eliminate the obvious, I've tried commenting out the last e.Graphics.DrawImage (which means I don't see anything, but it gets rid a call that isn't in the first example). I've also left in the using block (needlessly) in the first example, but it's still just as blazingly fast. I've set properties of g to match e.Graphics - things like InterpolationMode, CompositingQuality, etc, but nothing I do bridges this incredible gap in performance. I can't find any difference between the two Graphics objects. What gives? My test with a System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch says that the first code snippet runs at about 7100 fps, while the second runs at a measly 280 fps. My reference image is VS2010ImageLibrary\Objects\png_format\WinVista\SecurityLock.png, which is 48x48 px, and which I modified to be 72 dpi instead of 96, but those made no difference either.

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• Automatically extracting inline XSD from WSDL into XSD file(s)

  - by Steven Geens

  I am using a third party Web Service whose definition and implementation are beyond my control. This web service will change in the future. The Web Service should be used to generate an XML file which contains some of the same data (represented by the same XSD types) as the Web Service plus some extra information generated by the program. My approach: create my own XSD referring to the XSD definitions of the WSDL of the called web service (This XSD also includes XSD types for the extra information obviously.) use a Java XML databinding framework (like ADB or JiXB) to generate the databinding classes from my own XSD file from step 1 use a Java SOAP framework (like Axis2 or CXF) with the same databinding framework to generate the databinding classes from the WSDL (This would enable me to use the objects retrieved by the web service directly in the generation of the XML.) The XSD types I am going to use in my own XSD file, but are defined in the WSDL, are subject to change. Whenever they change, I would like to automatically process the XSD and WSDL databinding again. (If the change is significant enough, this might trigger some development effort.(But usually not.)) My problem: In step 1 I need an XSD referring to the same types as used by the Web Service. The WSDL is referring to another WSDL, which is referring to another WSDL etc. Eventually there is an WSDL with the needed inline XSD types. As far as I know there is no way to directly reference the inline XSD types of a WSDL from an XSD. The approach I would think most viable, is to include an extra step in the automatic processing (before the databinding) that extracts the inline XSD from the WSDL into other XSD file(s). These other XSD file(s) can then be referred to by my own XSD file. Things I'd like to avoid: Manually copy pasting the inline XSD into an XSD file (I am looking for an automatic process.) Any manual steps.(Like the determining the WSDL that contains the inline types manually.(The location of that WSDL does change as well.)) Using xsd:any in my own XSD. I would like my own XSD file to be correct. Using a non-Java technology(like .NET) Huge amounts of implementation (but hints on how you would implement such an extraction are welcome anyway) PS: I found some similar questions, but they all had responses like: WTH would you want to do that? That is the reason for my rather large background story.

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• SQL 2008 R2 login/network issue

  - by martinjd

  I have a Windows Server 2008 R2 new clean install , not a VM, that I have added to a Windows Server 2003 based domain using my account which has domain admin rights. The domain functional level is 2003. I performed a clean install of SQL Server 2008 R2 using my account which has domain admin rights. The installation completed without any errors. I logged into SSMS locally and attempted to add another domain account by clicking Search, Advanced and finding the user in the domain. When I return to the "Dialog - New" window and click OK I receive the following error: Create failed for Login 'Domain\User'. (Microsoft.SqlServer.Smo) An exception occurred while executing a Transact-SQL statement or batch. (Microsoft.SqlServer.ConnectionInfo) Windows NT user or group 'Domain\User' not found. Check the name again. (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 15401) I have verified that the firewall is off, tried adding a different domain user, tried using SA to add a user, installed the hotfix for KB 976494 and verified that the Local Security Policy for Domain Member: Digitally encrypt or sign secure channel Domain Member: Digitally encrypt secure channel Domain Member: Digitally sign secure channel are disabled none of which have made a difference. I can RDP to a Server 2003 server running SQL 2008 and add the same domain user without issue. Also if I try to connect with SSMS to the sql server from another system on the domain using my account I get the following error: Login failed. The login is from an untrusted domain and cannot be used with Windows authentication. (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 18452) and on the database server I see the following in the security event log: An account failed to log on. Subject: Security ID: NULL SID Account Name: - Account Domain: - Logon ID: 0x0 Logon Type: 3 Account For Which Logon Failed: Security ID: NULL SID Account Name: myUserName Account Domain: MYDOMAIN Failure Information: Failure Reason: An Error occured during Logon. Status: 0xc000018d Sub Status: 0x0 Process Information: Caller Process ID: 0x0 Caller Process Name: - Network Information: Workstation Name: MYWKS Source Network Address: - Source Port: - Detailed Authentication Information: Logon Process: NtLmSsp Authentication Package: NTLM Transited Services: - Package Name (NTLM only): - Key Length: 0 I am sure that the "NULL SID" has some significant meaning but have no idea at this point what the issue could be.

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