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• How do I get the Virtual Machines folder on Win7?

  - by xpmore

  I'm writing a tool called XP-More, which should help manage Windows 7 Virtual Machines. The first thing the tool has to do when launched is find the VM folder. However, turns out that folder is not listed as a Windows Special Folder. I use a workaround, but it's unreliable. Ideally, Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.VMFolder) or so would have done the job, but VMFolder is a fiction of my imagination. Is there any real way to get that folder?

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• Maven, Java, and custom files for deployment

  - by Marco

  Hi, i've a Java project managed by Maven2. The scenario i'm trying to solve is the following: in development mode i need to use some configuration files (for example, a hibernate.cfg.xml configured for the dev environment), while in production i need to exclude all the development specific files and configurations, and get instead some other ones for my production environment. How can i handle this situation? Thanks

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• Rails-like console for PHP?

  - by Chad Johnson

  Every so often, things work in my local PHP development environment, while in my test environment on my server, things do not. It's a nightmare to debug this. If I had a console like Rails provides, debugging would be much much simpler. Is there anything like the Rails console but for PHP? I should mention that I am using a home-brewn PHP application.

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• How do I debug production push notifications using Xcode?

  - by richcollins

  I would like to be able to debug handling of push notifications that originate from the production environment using Xcode. However, it appears that only distribution provisioning profiles can be used with an aps-environment entitlement value of "production". Is there a way to debug production messages on the device using Xcode?

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• Remote tomcat deployment

  - by Hrushi

  I could set up the environment in my local host, But I have no choice like deploying my war file as its shared server, my admin ask me to extract the war file and upload through FTP. Now the problem is I am new to remote server. Please guide me with the remote environment file system and complete directory structure in remote tomcat. And how to use FTP for deployment ?

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• Does anyone use config files for javascript?

  - by Ek0nomik

  We have javascript files that are environment specific, and so I was thinking of going down the path of creating a generic way to read in an XML (config) file to store different environment specific settings. I was curious to know if anybody else on here does that (or if not, is there a reason why you don't)?

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• What is the most robust way of determining the current codepage from a shell script?

  - by rewbs

  Hi all, I'd like to determine the environment's current codepage at runtime from a Unix shell script. What's the most reliable way of doing this? I'm looking into parsing environment variable $LC_ALL, but it isn't always set to a useful value, and its format seems to vary (can be <locale, or <locale.<code page, or <locale.<code page@<modifier etc...). Is there a better way? I'm essentially after a shell equivalent of what I'd get if I called nl_langinfo(CODESET) from C.

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• Difference in Java versions

  - by Polppan

  Are there any differences between these two java versions. If there are any differences how can I have the version java version "1.4.2" because that is what I have in server. 1) java version "1.4.2_06" Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.4.2_06-b03) Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.4.2_06-b03, mixed mode) 2) java version "1.4.2" Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.4.2) Classic VM (build 1.4.2, J2RE 1.4.2 IBM AIX build ca142-20090307

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• access parametrically values of variables inside environments

  - by Apostolos

  Let's say we have one or more environments and variables in them. My question is how we access the values of these variables, parametrically. rm(list = ls()) env1 <- new.env() env1$var1 <- "value1" env2 <- new.env() env2$var2 <- "value2" env <- ls.str(mode="environment") # We get the environments var <- ls.str(eval(parse(text = env[1])))# We get the variables of an environment eval(var[1]) # We fail to get the value of a variable Thank you all, in advance

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• Windows 7 Boot to VHD using a VHD clone of the system drive

  - by daveh551

  This seems like a not too difficult problem, and, after several hurdles, I'm maddeningly close. But I can't quite get there. I'm running Windows 7 in development shop. I want to start using VS2010 to work on some stuff that won't be released for awhile. My boss said no beta code on the production machine, but I could run VS2010 for this project IF I could do it in an isolated environment, like a virtual PC. Well, I've used the beta and RC of Win7 on VPC's before, and it was painfully slow because of the VPC environment. But everyone has been singing the praises of Windows 7's boot-to-VHD capability, where only the disk is virtualized, and you're actually running on the hardware. Supposed to be little slower, but nowhere near the speed penalty of VPC. I've spent a fair amount of time getting everything installed the way I want it. So I figured, I'll just clone my system drive using Disk2VHD, and boot off of that, and then install VS2010 onto that. (I keep most of my user data, including all my projects, in a separate partition, so that wouldn't have to be duplicated and would still be available.) Well, I had some difficulties with that, owing mainly to the fact that I was using an old version of Disk2VHD - (get the latest if you're going to try it.) But I did finally get it to boot. (Scott Hanselman has a good blog post on boot to VHD). But it wasn't exactly what I was expecting or hoping for. What I expected was that the VHD would become the C: drive, and the original (physical) C: drive would be either hidden or mounted under a different letter, and thus isolated and protected from any changes. What you actually get is that the VHD becomes the D: drive AND you boot from the D: drive, BUT your original C: drive is still there. Which is sort of okay EXCEPT that the Registry on the VHD is a clone of the Registry on C: drive, and includes many hard-coded references to C:. So the result is that some things come from (and modify) D: (the VHD), but some things come from (and modify) C:. (If you open a cmd prompt and do a SET to look at your environment variables, you will see a mixture of D:\ and C:\ paths.) So I don't really have an isolated environment. Most importantly, %ProgramFiles% is still set to C:\Program Files. What I really need is a tool that can access the registry files on the mounted VHD AS FILES, not as registry entries, and do a global search and replace on all the C:\ in strings to D:. I haven't found such a program. (I've tried to do it with a program called Registry Replace, but, even when running as Administrator, there are certain entries that the Registry won't let you change.) Does anyone know of one? Or any other solution to my problem (other than starting from scratch with a clean VHD and installing Win7 and all my programs on it.)?

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• Performance issues when using SSD for a developer notebook (WAMP/LAMP stack)?

  - by András Szepesházi

  I'm a web application developer using my notebook as a standalone development environment (WAMP stack). I just switched from a Core2-duo Vista 32 bit notebook with 2Gb RAM and SATA HDD, to an i5-2520M Win7 64 bit with 4Gb RAM and 128 GB SDD (Corsair P3 128). My initial experience was what I expected, fast boot, quick load of all the applications (Eclipse takes now 5 seconds as opposed to 30s on my old notebook), overall great experience. Then I started to build up my development stack, both as LAMP (using VirtualBox with a debian guest) and WAMP (windows native apache + mysql + php). I wanted to compare those two. This still all worked great out, then I started to pull in my projects to these stacks. And here came the nasty surprise, one of those projects produced a lot worse response times than on my old notebook (that was true for both the VirtualBox and WAMP stack). Apache, php and mysql configurations were practically identical in all environments. I started to do a lot of benchmarking and profiling, and here is what I've found: All general benchmarks (Performance Test 7.0, HDTune Pro, wPrime2 and some more) gave a big advantage to the new notebook. Nothing surprising here. Disc specific tests showed that read/write operations peaked around 380M/160M for the SSD, and all the different sized block operations also performed very well. Started apache performance benchmarking with Apache Benchmark for a small static html file (10 concurrent threads, 500 iterations). Old notebook: min 47ms, median 111ms, max 156ms New WAMP stack: min 71ms, median 135ms, max 296ms New LAMP stack (in VirtualBox): min 6ms, median 46ms, max 175ms Right here I don't get why the native WAMP stack performed so bad, but at least the LAMP environment brought the expected speed. Apache performance measurement for non-cached php content. The php runs a loop of 1000 and generates sha1(uniqid()) inisde. Again, 10 concurrent threads, 500 iterations were used for the benchmark. Old notebook: min 0ms, median 39ms, max 218ms New WAMP stack: min 20ms, median 61ms, max 186ms New LAMP stack (in VirtualBox): min 124ms, median 704ms, max 2463ms What the hell? The new LAMP performed miserably, and even the new native WAMP was outperformed by the old notebook. php + mysql test. The test consists of connecting to a database and reading a single record form a table using INNER JOIN on 3 more (indexed) tables, repeated 100 times within a loop. Databases were identical. 10 concurrent threads, 100 iterations were used for the benchmark. Old notebook: min 1201ms, median 1734ms, max 3728ms New WAMP stack: min 367ms, median 675ms, max 1893ms New LAMP stack (in VirtualBox): min 1410ms, median 3659ms, max 5045ms And the same test with concurrency set to 1 (instead of 10): Old notebook: min 1201ms, median 1261ms, max 1357ms New WAMP stack: min 399ms, median 483ms, max 539ms New LAMP stack (in VirtualBox): min 285ms, median 348ms, max 444ms Strictly for my purposes, as I'm using a self contained development environment (= low concurrency) I could be satisfied with the second test's result. Though I have no idea why the VirtualBox environment performed so bad with higher concurrency. Finally I performed a test of including many php files. The application that I mentioned at the beginning, the one that was performing so bad, has a heavy bootstrap, loads hundreds of small library and configuration files while initializing. So this test does nothing else just includes about 100 files. Concurrency set to 1, 100 iterations: Old notebook: min 140ms, median 168ms, max 406ms New WAMP stack: min 434ms, median 488ms, max 604ms New LAMP stack (in VirtualBox): min 413ms, median 1040ms, max 1921ms Even if I consider that VirtualBox reached those files via shared folders, and that slows things down a bit, I still don't see how could the old notebook outperform so heavily both new configurations. And I think this is the real root of the slow performance, as the application uses even more includes, and the whole bootstrap will occur several times within a page request (for each ajax call, for example). To sum it up, here I am with a brand new high-performance notebook that loads the same page in 20 seconds, that my old notebook can do in 5-7 seconds. Needless to say, I'm not a very happy person right now. Why do you think I experience these poor performance values? What are my options to remedy this situation?

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• Quick guide to Oracle IRM 11g: Configuring SSL

  - by Simon Thorpe

  Quick guide to Oracle IRM 11g index So far in this guide we have an IRM Server up and running, however I skipped over SSL configuration in the previous article because I wanted to focus in more detail now. You can, if you wish, not bother with setting up SSL, but considering this is a security technology it is worthwhile doing. Contents Setting up a one way, self signed SSL certificate in WebLogic Setting up an official SSL certificate in Apache 2.x Configuring Apache to proxy traffic to the IRM server There are two common scenarios in which an Oracle IRM server is configured. For a development or evaluation system, people usually communicate directly to the WebLogic Server running the IRM service. However in a production environment and for some proof of concept evaluations that require a setup reflecting a production system, the traffic to the IRM server travels via a web server proxy, commonly Apache. In this guide we are building an Oracle Enterprise Linux based IRM service and this article will go over the configuration of SSL in WebLogic and also in Apache. Like in the past articles, we are going to use two host names in the configuration below,irm.company.com will refer to the public Apache server irm.company.internal will refer to the internal WebLogic IRM server Setting up a one way, self signed SSL certificate in WebLogic First lets look at creating just a simple self signed SSL certificate to be used in WebLogic. This is a quick and easy way to get SSL working in your environment, however the downside is that no browsers are going to trust this certificate you create and you'll need to manually install the certificate onto any machine's communicating with the server. This is fine for development or when you have only a few users evaluating the system, but for any significant use it's usually better to have a fully trusted certificate in use and I explain that in the next section. But for now lets go through creating, installing and testing a self signed certificate. We use a library in Java to create the certificates, open a console and running the following commands. Note you should choose your own secure passwords whenever you see password below. [oracle@irm /] source /oracle/middleware/wlserver_10.3/server/bin/setWLSEnv.sh [oracle@irm /] cd /oracle/middleware/user_projects/domains/irm_domain/config/fmwconfig/ [oracle@irm /] java utils.CertGen -selfsigned -certfile MyOwnSelfCA.cer -keyfile MyOwnSelfKey.key -keyfilepass password -cn "irm.oracle.demo" [oracle@irm /] java utils.ImportPrivateKey -keystore MyOwnIdentityStore.jks -storepass password -keypass password -alias trustself -certfile MyOwnSelfCA.cer.pem -keyfile MyOwnSelfKey.key.pem -keyfilepass password [oracle@irm /] keytool -import -trustcacerts -alias trustself -keystore TrustMyOwnSelf.jks -file MyOwnSelfCA.cer.der -keyalg RSA We now have two Java Key Stores, MyOwnIdentityStore.jks and TrustMyOwnSelf.jks. These contain keys and certificates which we will use in WebLogic Server. Now we need to tell the IRM server to use these stores when setting up SSL connections for incoming requests. Make sure the Admin server is running and login into the WebLogic Console at http://irm.company.intranet:7001/console and do the following; In the menu on the left, select the + next to Environment to expose the submenu, then click on Servers. You will see two servers in the list, AdminServer(admin) and IRM_server1. If the IRM server is running, shut it down either by hitting CONTROL + C in the console window it was started from, or you can switch to the CONTROL tab, select IRM_server1 and then select the Shutdown menu and then Force Shutdown Now. In the Configuration tab select IRM_server1 and switch to the Keystores tab. By default WebLogic Server uses it's own demo identity and trust. We are now going to switch to the self signed one's we've just created. So select the Change button and switch to Custom Identity and Custom Trust and hit save. Now we have to complete the resulting fields, the setting's i've used in my evaluation server are below. IdentityCustom Identity Keystore: /oracle/middleware/user_projects/domains/irm_domain/config/fmwconfig/MyOwnIdentityStore.jks Custom Identity Keystore Type: JKS Custom Identity Keystore Passphrase: password Confirm Custom Identity Keystore Passphrase: password TrustCustom Trust Keystore: /oracle/middleware/user_projects/domains/irm_domain/config/fmwconfig/TrustMyOwnSelf.jks Custom Trust Keystore Type: JKS Custom Trust Keystore Passphrase: password Confirm Custom Trust Keystore Passphrase: password Now click on the SSL tab for the IRM_server1 and enter in the alias and passphrase, in my demo here the details are; IdentityPrivate Key Alias: trustself Private Key Passphrase: password Confirm Private Key Passphrase: password And hit save. Now lets test a connection to the IRM server over HTTPS using SSL. Go back to a console window and start the IRM server, a quick reminder on how to do this is... [oracle@irm /] cd /oracle/middleware/user_projects/domains/irm_domain/bin [oracle@irm /] ./startManagedWeblogic IRM_server1 Once running, open a browser and head to the SSL port of the server. By default the IRM server will be listening on the URL https://irm.company.intranet:16101/irm_rights. Note in the example image on the right the port is 7002 because it's a system that has the IRM services installed on the Admin server, this isn't typical (or advisable). Your system is going to have a separate managed server which will be listening on port 16101. Once you open this address you will notice that your browser is going to complain that the server certificate is untrusted. The images on the right show how Firefox displays this error. You are going to be prompted every time you create a new SSL session with the server, both from the browser and more annoyingly from the IRM Desktop. If you plan on always using a self signed certificate, it is worth adding it to the Windows certificate store so that when you are accessing sealed content you do not keep being informed this certificate is not trusted. Follow these instructions (which are for Internet Explorer 8, they may vary for your version of IE.) Start Internet Explorer and open the URL to your IRM server over SSL, e.g. https://irm.company.intranet:16101/irm_rights. IE will complain that about the certificate, click on Continue to this website (not recommended). From the IE Tools menu select Internet Options and from the resulting dialog select Security and then click on Trusted Sites and then the Sites button. Add to the list of trusted sites a URL which mates the server you are accessing, e.g. https://irm.company.intranet/ and select OK. Now refresh the page you were accessing and next to the URL you should see a red cross and the words Certificate Error. Click on this button and select View Certificates. You will now see a dialog with the details of the self signed certificate and the Install Certificate... button should be enabled. Click on this to start the wizard. Click next and you'll be asked where you should install the certificate. Change the option to Place all certificates in the following store. Select browse and choose the Trusted Root Certification Authorities location and hit OK. You'll then be prompted to install the certificate and answer yes. You also need to import the root signed certificate into the same location, so once again select the red Certificate Error option and this time when viewing the certificate, switch to the Certification Path tab and you should see a CertGenCAB certificate. Select this and then click on View Certificate and go through the same process as above to import the certificate into the store. Finally close all instances of the IE browser and re-access the IRM server URL again, this time you should not receive any errors. Setting up an official SSL certificate in Apache 2.x At this point we now have an IRM server that you can communicate with over SSL. However this certificate isn't trusted by any browser because it's path of trust doesn't end in a recognized certificate authority (CA). Also you are communicating directly to the WebLogic Server over a non standard SSL port, 16101. In a production environment it is common to have another device handle the initial public internet traffic and then proxy this to the WebLogic server. The diagram below shows a very simplified view of this type of deployment. What i'm going to walk through next is configuring Apache to proxy traffic to a WebLogic server and also to use a real SSL certificate from an official CA. First step is to configure Apache to handle incoming requests over SSL. In this guide I am configuring the IRM service in Oracle Enterprise Linux 5 update 3 and Apache 2.2.3 which came with OpenSSL and mod_ssl components. Before I purchase an SSL certificate, I need to generate a certificate request from the server. Oracle.com uses Verisign and for my own personal needs I use cheaper certificates from GoDaddy. The following instructions are specific to Apache, but there are many references out there for other web servers. For Apache I have OpenSSL and the commands are; [oracle@irm /] cd /usr/bin [oracle@irm bin] openssl genrsa -des3 -out irm-apache-server.key 2048 Generating RSA private key, 2048 bit long modulus ............................+++ .........+++ e is 65537 (0x10001) Enter pass phrase for irm-apache-server.key: Verifying - Enter pass phrase for irm-apache-server.key: [oracle@irm bin] openssl req -new -key irm-apache-server.key -out irm-apache-server.csr Enter pass phrase for irm-apache-server.key: You are about to be asked to enter information that will be incorporated into your certificate request. What you are about to enter is what is called a Distinguished Name or a DN. There are quite a few fields but you can leave some blank For some fields there will be a default value, If you enter '.', the field will be left blank. ----- Country Name (2 letter code) [GB]:US State or Province Name (full name) [Berkshire]:CA Locality Name (eg, city) [Newbury]:San Francisco Organization Name (eg, company) [My Company Ltd]:Oracle Organizational Unit Name (eg, section) []:Security Common Name (eg, your name or your server's hostname) []:irm.company.com Email Address []:[email protected] Please enter the following 'extra' attributes to be sent with your certificate request A challenge password []:testing An optional company name []: You must make sure to remember the pass phrase you used in the initial key generation, you will need this when later configuring Apache. In the /usr/bin directory there are now two new files. The irm-apache-server.csr contains our certificate request and is what you cut and paste, or upload, to your certificate authority when you purchase and validate your SSL certificate. In response you will typically get two files. Your server certificate and another certificate file that will likely contain a set of certificates from your CA which validate your certificate's trust. Next we need to configure Apache to use these files. Typically there is an ssl.conf file which is where all the SSL configuration is done. On my Oracle Enterprise Linux server this file is located in /etc/httpd/conf.d/ssl.conf and i've added the following lines. <VirtualHost irm.company.com> # Setup SSL for irm.company.com ServerName irm.company.com SSLEngine On SSLCertificateFile /oracle/secure/irm.company.com.crt SSLCertificateKeyFile /oracle/secure/irm.company.com.key SSLCertificateChainFile /oracle/secure/gd_bundle.crt </VirtualHost> Restarting Apache (apachectl restart) and I can now attempt to connect to the Apache server in a web browser, https://irm.company.com/. If all is configured correctly I should now see an Apache test page delivered to me over HTTPS. Configuring Apache to proxy traffic to the IRM server Final piece in setting up SSL is to have Apache proxy requests for the IRM server but do so securely. So the requests to Apache will be over HTTPS using a legitimate certificate, but we can also configure Apache to proxy these requests internally across to the IRM server using SSL with the self signed certificate we generated at the start of this article. To do this proxying we use the WebLogic Web Server plugin for Apache which you can download here from Oracle. Download the zip file and extract onto the server. The file extraction reveals a set of zip files, each one specific to a supported web server. In my instance I am using Apache 2.2 32bit on an Oracle Enterprise Linux, 64 bit server. If you are not sure what version your Apache server is, run the command /usr/sbin/httpd -V and you'll see version and it its 32 or 64 bit. Mine is a 32bit server so I need to extract the file WLSPlugin1.1-Apache2.2-linux32-x86.zip. The from the resulting lib folder copy the file mod_wl.so into /usr/lib/httpd/modules/. First we want to test that the plug in will work for regular HTTP traffic. Edit the httpd.conf for Apache and add the following section at the bottom. LoadModule weblogic_module modules/mod_wl.so <IfModule mod_weblogic.c>    WebLogicHost irm.company.internal    WebLogicPort 16100    WLLogFile /tmp/wl-proxy.log </IfModule> <Location /irm_rights>    SetHandler weblogic-handler </Location> <Location /irm_desktop>    SetHandler weblogic-handler </Location> <Location /irm_sealing>    SetHandler weblogic-handler </Location> <Location /irm_services>    SetHandler weblogic-handler </Location> Now restart Apache again (apachectl restart) and now open a browser to http://irm.company.com/irm_rights. Apache will proxy the HTTP traffic from the port 80 of your Apache server to the IRM service listening on port 16100 of the WebLogic Managed server. Note above I have included all four of the Locations you might wish to proxy. http://irm.company.internalirm_rights is the URL to the management website, /irm_desktop is the URL used for the IRM Desktop to communicate. irm_sealing is for web services based document sealing and irm_services is for IRM server web services. The last two are typically only used when you have the IRM server integrated with another application and it is unlikely you'd be accessing these resources from the public facing Apache server. However, just in case, i've mentioned them above. Now let's enable SSL communication from Apache to WebLogic. In the ZIP file we extracted were some more modules we need to copy into the Apache folder. Looking back in the lib that we extracted, there are some more files. Copy the following into the /usr/lib/httpd/modules/ folder. libwlssl.so libnnz11.so libclntsh.so.11.1 Now the documentation states that should only need to do this, but I found that I also needed to create an environment variable called LD_LIBRARY_PATH and point this to the folder /usr/lib/httpd/modules/. If I didn't do this, starting Apache with the WebLogic module configured to SSL would throw the error. [crit] (20014)Internal error: WL SSL Init failed for server: (null) on 0 So I had to edit the file /etc/profile and add the following lines at the bottom. You may already have the LD_LIBRARY_PATH variable defined, therefore simply add this path to it. LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib/httpd/modules/ export LD_LIBRARY_PATH Now the WebLogic plug in uses an Oracle Wallet to store the required certificates.You'll need to copy the self signed certificate from the IRM server over to the Apache server. Copy over the MyOwnSelfCA.cer.der into the same folder where you are storing your public certificates, in my example this is /oracle/secure. It's worth mentioning these files should ONLY be readable by root (the user Apache runs as). Now lets create an Oracle Wallet and import the self signed certificate from the IRM server. The file orapki was included in the bin folder of the Apache 1.1 plugin zip you extracted. orapki wallet create -wallet /oracle/secure/my-wallet -auto_login_only orapki wallet add -wallet /oracle/secure/my-wallet -trusted_cert -cert MyOwnSelfCA.cer.der -auto_login_only Finally change the httpd.conf to reflect that we want the WebLogic Apache plug-in to use HTTPS/SSL and not just plain HTTP. <IfModule mod_weblogic.c>    WebLogicHost irm.company.internal    WebLogicPort 16101    SecureProxy ON    WLSSLWallet /oracle/secure/my-wallet    WLLogFile /tmp/wl-proxy.log </IfModule> Then restart Apache once more and you can go back to the browser to test the communication. Opening the URL https://irm.company.com/irm_rights will proxy your request to the WebLogic server at https://irm.company.internal:16101/irm_rights. At this point you have a fully functional Oracle IRM service, the next step is to create a sealed document and test the entire system.

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• Transformation of Product Management in Telecommunications for Rapid Launch of Next Generation Products

  - by raul.goycoolea

  @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }a:link, span.MsoHyperlink { color: blue; text-decoration: underline; }a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed { color: purple; text-decoration: underline; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } The Telecom industry continues to evolve through disruptive products, uncertain markets, shorter product lifecycles and convergence of technologies. Today’s market has moved from network centric to consumer centric and focuses primarily on the customer experience. It has resulted in several product management challenges such as an increased complexity and volume of offerings, creating product variants, accelerating time-to-market, ability to provide multiple product views for varied stakeholders, leveraging OSS intelligence to BSS layer, product co-creation and increasing audit and security concerns for service providers. The document discusses how enterprise product management enabled by PLM-based product catalogue solutions helps to launch next generation products rapidly in the context of the Telecommunication Industry.   1.0.       Introduction   Figure 1: Business Scenario   Modern business demands the launch of complex products in a very short timeframe and effecting changes in the price plan faster without IT intervention. One of the key transformation initiatives companies are focusing on is in the area of product management transformation and operational efficiency improvement. As part of these initiatives, companies are investing in best- in-class COTs-based Product Management solutions developed on industry-wide standards.   The new COTs packages are planned to integrate with existing or new B/OSS systems to provide a strategic end-to-end agile solution for reduced time-to-market and order journey time. In addition, system rationalization is being undertaken to phase out legacy systems and migrate to strategic systems.   2.0.       An Overview of Product Management in Telecom   Product data in telecom is multi- dimensional and difficult to manage. It increased significantly due to the complexity of the product, product offerings on the converged network, increased volume of offerings, bundled offering structures and ever increasing regulatory requirements.   In addition, the shrinking product lifecycle in telecom makes it difficult to manage the dynamic product data. Mergers and acquisitions coupled with organic growth pose major challenges in product portfolio management. It is a roadblock in the journey towards becoming an agile organization.       Figure 2: Complexity in Product Management   Network Technology’ is the new dimension in telecom product management where the same products are realized through different networks i.e., Soiled network to Converged network. Consequently, the product solution is different.     Figure 3: Current Scenario - Pain Points in Product Management   The major business implications arising out of the current scenario are slow time-to-market and an inefficient process that affects innovation.   3.0. Transformation of Next Generation Product Management   Companies must focus on their Product Management Transformation Journey in the areas of:   ·       Management of single truth of product information across the organization/geographies which is currently managed in heterogeneous systems   ·       Management of the Intellectual Property (IP) on the product concept and partnership in the design of discrete components to integrate into the system   ·       Leveraging structured and unstructured product data within the extended enterprise to extract consumer insights and drive innovation   ·       Management of effective operational separation to comply with regulatory bodies   ·       Reuse of existing designs and add relevant features such as value-added services to enable effective product bundling     Figure 4: Next generation needs   PLM-based Enterprise Product Catalogue solutions efficiently address the above requirements and act as an enabler towards product management transformation and rapid product launch.   4.0. PLM-based Enterprise Product Management     Figure 5: PLM-based Enterprise Product Mastering   Enterprise Product Management (EPM) enables the business to manage complex product attributes of data in complex environments. Product Mastering helps create a 'single view' of the product by creating a business-driven, IT-supported environment where a global 'single truth record' is created, managed and reused.   4.1 The Business Case for Telco PLM-based solutions for Enterprise Product Management   ·       Telco PLM-based Product Mastering solutions provide a centralized authoring environment for product definition and control of all product data and rules   ·       PLM packages are designed to support multiple perspectives of product data (ordering perspective, billing perspective, provisioning perspective)   ·       Maintains relationships/links between different elements of the entire product definition   ·       Telco PLM packages are specialized in next generation lifecycle management requirements of products such as revision and state management, test and release management, role management and impact analysis)   ·       Takes into consideration all aspects of OSS product requirements compared to CRM product catalogue solutions where the product data managed is mostly order oriented and transactional     ·       New breed of Telco PLM packages are designed with 'open' standards such as SID and eTOM. They are interoperable, support integration frameworks such as subscription and notification.   ·       Telco PLM packages have developed good collaboration frameworks to integrate suppliers and partners into the product development value chain   4.2 Various Architectures/Approaches for Product Mastering using Telco PLM systems   4. 2.a Single Central Product Management (Mastering) Approach   Figure 6: Single Central Product Management (Master) Approach       This approach is implemented across verticals such as aerospace and automotive. It focuses on a physically centralized product master to which other sources are dependent on. The product definition data (Product bundles, service bundles, price plans, offers and discounts, product configuration rules and market campaigns) is created and maintained physically in a centralized environment. In addition, the product definition/authoring environment is centralized. The existing legacy product definition data available in CRM product catalogue, billing catalogue and the legacy product catalogue is migrated to the centralized PLM-based Enterprise Product Management solution.   Architectural changes must be made in the existing business landscape of applications to create and revise data because the applications have to refer to the central repository for approvals and validation of product configurations. It is achieved by modifying how the applications write data or how the applications can be adapted to use the rules to be managed and published.   Complete product configuration validation will be done in enterprise / central product catalogue and final configuration will be sent to the B/OSS system through the SOA compliant product distribution architecture. The approach/architecture enables greater control in terms of product data management and product data governance.   4.2.b Federated Product Management (Mastering) Architecture     Figure 7: Federated Product Management (Mastering) Architecture   In the federated product mastering approach, the basic unique product definition data (product id, description product hierarchy, basic price plans and simple product design rules) will be centrally created and will be maintained. And, the advanced product definition (Product bundling, promotions, offers & discount plans) will be created in respective down stream OSS systems. The advanced product definition (Product bundling, promotions, offers and discount plans) will be created in respective downstream OSS systems.   For example, basic product definitions such as attributes, product hierarchy and basic price plans will be created and maintained in Enterprise/Central product reference catalogue and distributed to downstream OSS systems. Respective downstream OSS systems build product bundles, promotions, advanced price plans over the basic product definition and master the advanced product definition. Central reference database accesses the respective other source product master data and assembles a point-in-time consolidated view of the product. The approach is typically adapted in some merger and acquisition scenarios where there is a low probability of a central physical authority managing the data. In addition, the migration effort in this case is minimal and there are no big architectural changes to the organization application landscape. However, this approach will not result in better product data management and data governance.   5.0 Customer Scenario – Before EPC deployment   A leading global telecommunications service provider wanted to launch a quad play and triple play service offering in the shortest possible lead time. The service provider was offering Broadband and VoIP services to customers. The company wanted to reuse a majority of the Broadband services and price plans and bundle them with new wireless and IPTV services for quad play and triple play. The challenges in launching the new service offerings were:       Figure 8: Triple Play Plan   ·       Broadband product data was stored in multiple product catalogues (CRM catalogue, Billing catalogue, spread sheets)   ·       Product managers spent a lot of time performing tasks involving duplication or re-keying of data. Manual effort caused errors, cost and time over-runs.   ·       No effective product and price data governance mechanism. Price change issues arising from the lack of data consistency across systems resulted in leakage of customer value and revenue.   ·       Product data had re-usability issues and was not in a structured format. It resulted in uncontrolled product portfolio creation and product management issues.   ·       Lack of enterprise product model resulted into product distribution challenges and thus delays in product launch.   ·       Designers are constrained by existing legacy product management solutions to model product/service requirements and product configuration rules such as upgrading, downgrading and cross selling.    5.1 Customer Scenario - After EPC deployment     Figure 9: SOA-based end-to-end EPC Solution   The company deployed PLM-based Enterprise Product Catalogue solutions to launch quad play service after evaluating various product catalogues. The broadband product offering, service and price data were migrated to the new system, and the product and price plan hierarchy for new offerings were created using the entities defined in the Enterprise Product Model. Supplier product catalogue data such as routers and set up boxes were loaded onto the new solution through SOA-based web service. Price plans and configuration rules were built in the new system. The validated final product configurations were extracted from the product catalogue in a SID format and were distributed to the downstream B/OSS systems through exposed SOA-based web services. The transformations required for the B/OSS system were handled using the transformation layer as part of the solution.   6.0 How PLM enabled Product Management Transformation         Figure 10: Product Management Transformation     PLM-based Product Catalogue Solution helped the customer reduce the product launch cycle time by 30% and enable transformation of Product Management for next generation services.   7.0 Conclusion   On the one hand, the telecom industry is undergoing changes due to disruptions, uncertain product markets and increased complexity of products. On the other hand, the ARPU is decreasing year-on-year. Communications Service Providers are embarking on convergence, bundled service offerings, flexibility to cross-sell and up-sell, introduce new value-added services, leverage Web 2.0 concepts and network capabilities. Consequently, large scale IT transformation initiatives to improve their ARPU supporting network and business transformations are a business imperative. Product Management has become a focus area. Companies are investing in best-in- class COTS solutions to reduce time-to-market, ensure rapid service delivery and improve operational efficiency. An efficient PLM-based enterprise product mastering solution plays a key role in achieving zero touch automation and rapid product launch.   References:   1.     Preston G.Smith, Donald G.Reineristsem, Van Nostrand Reinhold “Developing Products in Half the time”.   2.     John G. Innes, "Achieving Successful Product Change", Pitman Publishing.   3.     D T Pham and R M Setchi (16th Jan, 2001) "Authoring environment for documentation development" University of Wales Cardiff, U.K., Proceedings on Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Vol. 215, Part B.   4.     Oracle Product Hub for Communications:   http://www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/master-data-management/product-hub-082059.html  

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• Oracle Solaris: Zones on Shared Storage

  - by Jeff Victor

  Oracle Solaris 11.1 has several new features. At oracle.com you can find a detailed list. One of the significant new features, and the most significant new feature releated to Oracle Solaris Zones, is casually called "Zones on Shared Storage" or simply ZOSS (rhymes with "moss"). ZOSS offers much more flexibility because you can store Solaris Zones on shared storage (surprise!) so that you can perform quick and easy migration of a zone from one system to another. This blog entry describes and demonstrates the use of ZOSS. ZOSS provides complete support for a Solaris Zone that is stored on "shared storage." In this case, "shared storage" refers to fiber channel (FC) or iSCSI devices, although there is one lone exception that I will demonstrate soon. The primary intent is to enable you to store a zone on FC or iSCSI storage so that it can be migrated from one host computer to another much more easily and safely than in the past. With this blog entry, I wanted to make it easy for you to try this yourself. I couldn't assume that you have a SAN available - which is a good thing, because neither do I! What could I use, instead? [There he goes, foreshadowing again... -Ed.] Developing this entry reinforced the lesson that the solution to every lab problem is VirtualBox. Oracle VM VirtualBox (its formal name) helps here in a couple of important ways. It offers the ability to easily install multiple copies of Solaris as guests on top of any popular system (Microsoft Windows, MacOS, Solaris, Oracle Linux (and other Linuxes) etc.). It also offers the ability to create a separate virtual disk drive (VDI) that appears as a local hard disk to a guest. This virtual disk can be moved very easily from one guest to another. In other words, you can follow the steps below on a laptop or larger x86 system. Please note that the ability to use ZOSS to store a zone on a local disk is very useful for a lab environment, but not so useful for production. I do not suggest regularly moving disk drives among computers. In the method I describe below, that virtual hard disk will contain the zone that will be migrated among the (virtual) hosts. In production, you would use FC or iSCSI LUNs instead. The zonecfg(1M) man page details the syntax for each of the three types of devices. Why Migrate? Why is the migration of virtual servers important? Some of the most common reasons are: Moving a workload to a different computer so that the original computer can be turned off for extensive maintenance. Moving a workload to a larger system because the workload has outgrown its original system. If the workload runs in an environment (such as a Solaris Zone) that is stored on shared storage, you can restore the service of the workload on an alternate computer if the original computer has failed and will not reboot. You can simplify lifecycle management of a workload by developing it on a laptop, migrating it to a test platform when it's ready, and finally moving it to a production system. Concepts For ZOSS, the important new concept is named "rootzpool". You can read about it in the zonecfg(1M) man page, but here's the short version: it's the backing store (hard disk(s), or LUN(s)) that will be used to make a ZFS zpool - the zpool that will hold the zone. This zpool: contains the zone's Solaris content, i.e. the root file system does not contain any content not related to the zone can only be mounted by one Solaris instance at a time Method Overview Here is a brief list of the steps to create a zone on shared storage and migrate it. The next section shows the commands and output. You will need a host system with an x86 CPU (hopefully at least a couple of CPU cores), at least 2GB of RAM, and at least 25GB of free disk space. (The steps below will not actually use 25GB of disk space, but I don't want to lead you down a path that ends in a big sign that says "Your HDD is full. Good luck!") Configure the zone on both systems, specifying the rootzpool that both will use. The best way is to configure it on one system and then copy the output of "zonecfg export" to the other system to be used as input to zonecfg. This method reduces the chances of pilot error. (It is not necessary to configure the zone on both systems before creating it. You can configure this zone in multiple places, whenever you want, and migrate it to one of those places at any time - as long as those systems all have access to the shared storage.) Install the zone on one system, onto shared storage. Boot the zone. Provide system configuration information to the zone. (In the Real World(tm) you will usually automate this step.) Shutdown the zone. Detach the zone from the original system. Attach the zone to its new "home" system. Boot the zone. The zone can be used normally, and even migrated back, or to a different system. Details The rest of this shows the commands and output. The two hostnames are "sysA" and "sysB". Note that each Solaris guest might use a different device name for the VDI that they share. I used the device names shown below, but you must discover the device name(s) after booting each guest. In a production environment you would also discover the device name first and then configure the zone with that name. Fortunately, you can use the command "zpool import" or "format" to discover the device on the "new" host for the zone. The first steps create the VirtualBox guests and the shared disk drive. I describe the steps here without demonstrating them. Download VirtualBox and install it using a method normal for your host OS. You can read the complete instructions. Create two VirtualBox guests, each to run Solaris 11.1. Each will use its own VDI as its root disk. Install Solaris 11.1 in each guest.Install Solaris 11.1 in each guest. To install a Solaris 11.1 guest, you can either download a pre-built VirtualBox guest, and import it, or install Solaris 11.1 from the "text install" media. If you use the latter method, after booting you will not see a windowing system. To install the GUI and other important things, login and run "pkg install solaris-desktop" and take a break while it installs those important things. Life is usually easier if you install the VirtualBox Guest Additions because then you can copy and paste between the host and guests, etc. You can find the guest additions in the folder matching the version of VirtualBox you are using. You can also read the instructions for installing the guest additions. To create the zone's shared VDI in VirtualBox, you can open the storage configuration for one of the two guests, select the SATA controller, and click on the "Add Hard Disk" icon nearby. Choose "Create New Disk" and specify an appropriate path name for the file that will contain the VDI. The shared VDI must be at least 1.5 GB. Note that the guest must be stopped to do this. Add that VDI to the other guest - using its Storage configuration - so that each can access it while running. The steps start out the same, except that you choose "Choose Existing Disk" instead of "Create New Disk." Because the disk is configured on both of them, VirtualBox prevents you from running both guests at the same time. Identify device names of that VDI, in each of the guests. Solaris chooses the name based on existing devices. The names may be the same, or may be different from each other. This step is shown below as "Step 1." Assumptions In the example shown below, I make these assumptions. The guest that will own the zone at the beginning is named sysA. The guest that will own the zone after the first migration is named sysB. On sysA, the shared disk is named /dev/dsk/c7t2d0 On sysB, the shared disk is named /dev/dsk/c7t3d0 (Finally!) The Steps Step 1) Determine the name of the disk that will move back and forth between the systems. root@sysA:~# format Searching for disks...done AVAILABLE DISK SELECTIONS: 0. c7t0d0 /pci@0,0/pci8086,2829@d/disk@0,0 1. c7t2d0 /pci@0,0/pci8086,2829@d/disk@2,0 Specify disk (enter its number): ^D Step 2) The first thing to do is partition and label the disk. The magic needed to write an EFI label is not overly complicated. root@sysA:~# format -e c7t2d0 selecting c7t2d0 [disk formatted] FORMAT MENU: ... format fdisk No fdisk table exists. The default partition for the disk is: a 100% "SOLARIS System" partition Type "y" to accept the default partition, otherwise type "n" to edit the partition table. n SELECT ONE OF THE FOLLOWING: ... Enter Selection: 1 ... G=EFI_SYS 0=Exit? f SELECT ONE... ... 6 format label ... Specify Label type[1]: 1 Ready to label disk, continue? y format quit root@sysA:~# ls /dev/dsk/c7t2d0 /dev/dsk/c7t2d0 Step 3) Configure zone1 on sysA. root@sysA:~# zonecfg -z zone1 Use 'create' to begin configuring a new zone. zonecfg:zone1 create create: Using system default template 'SYSdefault' zonecfg:zone1 set zonename=zone1 zonecfg:zone1 set zonepath=/zones/zone1 zonecfg:zone1 add rootzpool zonecfg:zone1:rootzpool add storage dev:dsk/c7t2d0 zonecfg:zone1:rootzpool end zonecfg:zone1 exit root@sysA:~# oot@sysA:~# zonecfg -z zone1 info zonename: zone1 zonepath: /zones/zone1 brand: solaris autoboot: false bootargs: file-mac-profile: pool: limitpriv: scheduling-class: ip-type: exclusive hostid: fs-allowed: anet: ... rootzpool: storage: dev:dsk/c7t2d0 Step 4) Install the zone. This step takes the most time, but you can wander off for a snack or a few laps around the gym - or both! (Just not at the same time...) root@sysA:~# zoneadm -z zone1 install Created zone zpool: zone1_rpool Progress being logged to /var/log/zones/zoneadm.20121022T163634Z.zone1.install Image: Preparing at /zones/zone1/root. AI Manifest: /tmp/manifest.xml.RXaycg SC Profile: /usr/share/auto_install/sc_profiles/enable_sci.xml Zonename: zone1 Installation: Starting ... Creating IPS image Startup linked: 1/1 done Installing packages from: solaris origin: http://pkg.us.oracle.com/support/ DOWNLOAD PKGS FILES XFER (MB) SPEED Completed 183/183 33556/33556 222.2/222.2 2.8M/s PHASE ITEMS Installing new actions 46825/46825 Updating package state database Done Updating image state Done Creating fast lookup database Done Installation: Succeeded Note: Man pages can be obtained by installing pkg:/system/manual done. Done: Installation completed in 1696.847 seconds. Next Steps: Boot the zone, then log into the zone console (zlogin -C) to complete the configuration process. Log saved in non-global zone as /zones/zone1/root/var/log/zones/zoneadm.20121022T163634Z.zone1.install Step 5) Boot the Zone. root@sysA:~# zoneadm -z zone1 boot Step 6) Login to zone's console to complete the specification of system information. root@sysA:~# zlogin -C zone1 Answer the usual questions and wait for a login prompt. Then you can end the console session with the usual "~." incantation. Step 7) Shutdown the zone so it can be "moved." root@sysA:~# zoneadm -z zone1 shutdown Step 8) Detach the zone so that the original global zone can't use it. root@sysA:~# zoneadm list -cv ID NAME STATUS PATH BRAND IP 0 global running / solaris shared - zone1 installed /zones/zone1 solaris excl root@sysA:~# zpool list NAME SIZE ALLOC FREE CAP DEDUP HEALTH ALTROOT rpool 17.6G 11.2G 6.47G 63% 1.00x ONLINE - zone1_rpool 1.98G 484M 1.51G 23% 1.00x ONLINE - root@sysA:~# zoneadm -z zone1 detach Exported zone zpool: zone1_rpool Step 9) Review the result and shutdown sysA so that sysB can use the shared disk. root@sysA:~# zpool list NAME SIZE ALLOC FREE CAP DEDUP HEALTH ALTROOT rpool 17.6G 11.2G 6.47G 63% 1.00x ONLINE - root@sysA:~# zoneadm list -cv ID NAME STATUS PATH BRAND IP 0 global running / solaris shared - zone1 configured /zones/zone1 solaris excl root@sysA:~# init 0 Step 10) Now boot sysB and configure a zone with the parameters shown above in Step 1. (Again, the safest method is to use "zonecfg ... export" on sysA as described in section "Method Overview" above.) The one difference is the name of the rootzpool storage device, which was shown in the list of assumptions, and which you must determine by booting sysB and using the "format" or "zpool import" command. When that is done, you should see the output shown next. (I used the same zonename - "zone1" - in this example, but you can choose any valid zonename you want.) root@sysB:~# zoneadm list -cv ID NAME STATUS PATH BRAND IP 0 global running / solaris shared - zone1 configured /zones/zone1 solaris excl root@sysB:~# zonecfg -z zone1 info zonename: zone1 zonepath: /zones/zone1 brand: solaris autoboot: false bootargs: file-mac-profile: pool: limitpriv: scheduling-class: ip-type: exclusive hostid: fs-allowed: anet: linkname: net0 ... rootzpool: storage: dev:dsk/c7t3d0 Step 11) Attaching the zone automatically imports the zpool. root@sysB:~# zoneadm -z zone1 attach Imported zone zpool: zone1_rpool Progress being logged to /var/log/zones/zoneadm.20121022T184034Z.zone1.attach Installing: Using existing zone boot environment Zone BE root dataset: zone1_rpool/rpool/ROOT/solaris Cache: Using /var/pkg/publisher. Updating non-global zone: Linking to image /. Processing linked: 1/1 done Updating non-global zone: Auditing packages. No updates necessary for this image. Updating non-global zone: Zone updated. Result: Attach Succeeded. Log saved in non-global zone as /zones/zone1/root/var/log/zones/zoneadm.20121022T184034Z.zone1.attach root@sysB:~# zoneadm -z zone1 boot root@sysB:~# zlogin zone1 [Connected to zone 'zone1' pts/2] Oracle Corporation SunOS 5.11 11.1 September 2012 Step 12) Now let's migrate the zone back to sysA. Create a file in zone1 so we can verify it exists after we migrate the zone back, then begin migrating it back. root@zone1:~# ls /opt root@zone1:~# touch /opt/fileA root@zone1:~# ls -l /opt/fileA -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Oct 22 14:47 /opt/fileA root@zone1:~# exit logout [Connection to zone 'zone1' pts/2 closed] root@sysB:~# zoneadm -z zone1 shutdown root@sysB:~# zoneadm -z zone1 detach Exported zone zpool: zone1_rpool root@sysB:~# init 0 Step 13) Back on sysA, check the status. Oracle Corporation SunOS 5.11 11.1 September 2012 root@sysA:~# zoneadm list -cv ID NAME STATUS PATH BRAND IP 0 global running / solaris shared - zone1 configured /zones/zone1 solaris excl root@sysA:~# zpool list NAME SIZE ALLOC FREE CAP DEDUP HEALTH ALTROOT rpool 17.6G 11.2G 6.47G 63% 1.00x ONLINE - Step 14) Re-attach the zone back to sysA. root@sysA:~# zoneadm -z zone1 attach Imported zone zpool: zone1_rpool Progress being logged to /var/log/zones/zoneadm.20121022T190441Z.zone1.attach Installing: Using existing zone boot environment Zone BE root dataset: zone1_rpool/rpool/ROOT/solaris Cache: Using /var/pkg/publisher. Updating non-global zone: Linking to image /. Processing linked: 1/1 done Updating non-global zone: Auditing packages. No updates necessary for this image. Updating non-global zone: Zone updated. Result: Attach Succeeded. Log saved in non-global zone as /zones/zone1/root/var/log/zones/zoneadm.20121022T190441Z.zone1.attach root@sysA:~# zpool list NAME SIZE ALLOC FREE CAP DEDUP HEALTH ALTROOT rpool 17.6G 11.2G 6.47G 63% 1.00x ONLINE - zone1_rpool 1.98G 491M 1.51G 24% 1.00x ONLINE - root@sysA:~# zoneadm -z zone1 boot root@sysA:~# zlogin zone1 [Connected to zone 'zone1' pts/2] Oracle Corporation SunOS 5.11 11.1 September 2012 root@zone1:~# zpool list NAME SIZE ALLOC FREE CAP DEDUP HEALTH ALTROOT rpool 1.98G 538M 1.46G 26% 1.00x ONLINE - Step 15) Check for the file created on sysB, earlier. root@zone1:~# ls -l /opt total 1 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Oct 22 14:47 fileA Next Steps Here is a brief list of some of the fun things you can try next. Add space to the zone by adding a second storage device to the rootzpool. Make sure that you add it to the configurations of both zones! Create a new zone, specifying two disks in the rootzpool when you first configure the zone. When you install that zone, or clone it from another zone, zoneadm uses those two disks to create a mirrored pool. (Three disks will result in a three-way mirror, etc.) Conclusion Hopefully you have seen the ease with which you can now move Solaris Zones from one system to another.

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• R Package Installation with Oracle R Enterprise

  - by Sherry LaMonica-Oracle

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE Programming languages give developers the opportunity to write reusable functions and to bundle those functions into logical deployable entities. In R, these are called packages. R has thousands of such packages provided by an almost equally large group of third-party contributors. To allow others to benefit from these packages, users can share packages on the CRAN system for use by the vast R development community worldwide. R's package system along with the CRAN framework provides a process for authoring, documenting and distributing packages to millions of users. In this post, we'll illustrate the various ways in which such R packages can be installed for use with R and together with Oracle R Enterprise. In the following, the same instructions apply when using either open source R or Oracle R Distribution. In this post, we cover the following package installation scenarios for: R command line Linux shell command line Use with Oracle R Enterprise Installation on Exadata or RAC Installing all packages in a CRAN Task View Troubleshooting common errors 1. R Package Installation BasicsR package installation basics are outlined in Chapter 6 of the R Installation and Administration Guide. There are two ways to install packages from the command line: from the R command line and from the shell command line. For this first example on Oracle Linux using Oracle R Distribution, we’ll install the arules package as root so that packages will be installed in the default R system-wide location where all users can access it, /usr/lib64/R/library.Within R, using the install.packages function always attempts to install the latest version of the requested package available on CRAN:R> install.packages("arules")If the arules package depends upon other packages that are not already installed locally, the R installer automatically downloads and installs those required packages. This is a huge benefit that frees users from the task of identifying and resolving those dependencies.You can also install R from the shell command line. This is useful for some packages when an internet connection is not available or for installing packages not uploaded to CRAN. To install packages this way, first locate the package on CRAN and then download the package source to your local machine. For example:$ wget http://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/arules_1.1-2.tar.gz Then, install the package using the command R CMD INSTALL:$ R CMD INSTALL arules_1.1-2.tar.gzA major difference between installing R packages using the R package installer at the R command line and shell command line is that package dependencies must be resolved manually at the shell command line. Package dependencies are listed in the Depends section of the package’s CRAN site. If dependencies are not identified and installed prior to the package’s installation, you will see an error similar to:ERROR: dependency ‘xxx’ is not available for package ‘yyy’As a best practice and to save time, always refer to the package’s CRAN site to understand the package dependencies prior to attempting an installation. If you don’t run R as root, you won’t have permission to write packages into the default system-wide location and you will be prompted to create a personal library accessible by your userid. You can accept the personal library path chosen by R, or specify the library location by passing parameters to the install.packages function. For example, to create an R package repository in your home directory: R> install.packages("arules", lib="/home/username/Rpackages")or$ R CMD INSTALL arules_1.1-2.tar.gz --library=/home/username/RpackagesRefer to the install.packages help file in R or execute R CMD INSTALL --help at the shell command line for a full list of command line options.To set the library location and avoid having to specify this at every package install, simply create the R startup environment file .Renviron in your home area if it does not already exist, and add the following piece of code to it:R_LIBS_USER = "/home/username/Rpackages" 2. Setting the RepositoryEach time you install an R package from the R command line, you are asked which CRAN mirror, or server, R should use. To set the repository and avoid having to specify this during every package installation, create the R startup command file .Rprofile in your home directory and add the following R code to it:cat("Setting Seattle repository")r = getOption("repos") r["CRAN"] = "http://cran.fhcrc.org/"options(repos = r)rm(r) This code snippet sets the R package repository to the Seattle CRAN mirror at the start of each R session. 3. Installing R Packages for use with Oracle R EnterpriseEmbedded R execution with Oracle R Enterprise allows the use of CRAN or other third-party R packages in user-defined R functions executed on the Oracle Database server. The steps for installing and configuring packages for use with Oracle R Enterprise are the same as for open source R. The database-side R engine just needs to know where to find the R packages.The Oracle R Enterprise installation is performed by user oracle, which typically does not have write permission to the default site-wide library, /usr/lib64/R/library. On Linux and UNIX platforms, the Oracle R Enterprise Server installation provides the ORE script, which is executed from the operating system shell to install R packages and to start R. The ORE script is a wrapper for the default R script, a shell wrapper for the R executable. It can be used to start R, run batch scripts, and build or install R packages. Unlike the default R script, the ORE script installs packages to a location writable by user oracle and accessible by all ORE users - $ORACLE_HOME/R/library.To install a package on the database server so that it can be used by any R user and for use in embedded R execution, an Oracle DBA would typically download the package source from CRAN using wget. If the package depends on any packages that are not in the R distribution in use, download the sources for those packages, also.  For a single Oracle Database instance, replace the R script with ORE to install the packages in the same location as the Oracle R Enterprise packages. $ wget http://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/arules_1.1-2.tar.gz$ ORE CMD INSTALL arules_1.1-2.tar.gzBehind the scenes, the ORE script performs the equivalent of setting R_LIBS_USER to the value of $ORACLE_HOME/R/library, and all R packages installed with the ORE script are installed to this location. For installing a package on multiple database servers, such as those in an Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC) or a multinode Oracle Exadata Database Machine environment, use the ORE script in conjunction with the Exadata Distributed Command Line Interface (DCLI) utility.$ dcli -g nodes -l oracle ORE CMD INSTALL arules_1.1-1.tar.gz The DCLI -g flag designates a file containing a list of nodes to install on, and the -l flag specifies the user id to use when executing the commands. For more information on using DCLI with Oracle R Enterprise, see Chapter 5 in the Oracle R Enterprise Installation Guide.If you are using an Oracle R Enterprise client, install the package the same as any R package, bearing in mind that you must install the same version of the package on both the client and server machines to avoid incompatibilities. 4. CRAN Task ViewsCRAN also maintains a set of Task Views that identify packages associated with a particular task or methodology. Task Views are helpful in guiding users through the huge set of available R packages. They are actively maintained by volunteers who include detailed annotations for routines and packages. If you find one of the task views is a perfect match, you can install every package in that view using the ctv package - an R package for automating package installation. To use the ctv package to install a task view, first, install and load the ctv package.R> install.packages("ctv")R> library(ctv)Then query the names of the available task views and install the view you choose.R> available.views() R> install.views("TimeSeries") 5. Using and Managing R packages To use a package, start up R and load packages one at a time with the library command.Load the arules package in your R session. R> library(arules)Verify the version of arules installed.R> packageVersion("arules")[1] '1.1.2'Verify the version of arules installed on the database server using embedded R execution.R> ore.doEval(function() packageVersion("arules"))View the help file for the apropos function in the arules packageR> ?aproposOver time, your package repository will contain more and more packages, especially if you are using the system-wide repository where others are adding additional packages. It’s good to know the entire set of R packages accessible in your environment. To list all available packages in your local R session, use the installed.packages command:R> myLocalPackages <- row.names(installed.packages())R> myLocalPackagesTo access the list of available packages on the ORE database server from the ORE client, use the following embedded R syntax: R> myServerPackages <- ore.doEval(function() row.names(installed.packages()) R> myServerPackages 6. Troubleshooting Common ProblemsInstalling Older Versions of R packagesIf you immediately upgrade to the latest version of R, you will have no problem installing the most recent versions of R packages. However, if your version of R is older, some of the more recent package releases will not work and install.packages will generate a message such as: Warning message: In install.packages("arules") : package ‘arules’ is not availableThis is when you have to go to the Old sources link on the CRAN page for the arules package and determine which version is compatible with your version of R.Begin by determining what version of R you are using:$ R --versionOracle Distribution of R version 3.0.1 (--) -- "Good Sport" Copyright (C) The R Foundation for Statistical Computing Platform: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu (64-bit)Given that R-3.0.1 was released May 16, 2013, any version of the arules package released after this date may work. Scanning the arules archive, we might try installing version 0.1.1-1, released in January of 2014:$ wget http://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/Archive/arules/arules_1.1-1.tar.gz$ R CMD INSTALL arules_1.1-1.tar.gzFor use with ORE:$ ORE CMD INSTALL arules_1.1-1.tar.gzThe "package not available" error can also be thrown if the package you’re trying to install lives elsewhere, either another R package site, or it’s been removed from CRAN. A quick Google search usually leads to more information on the package’s location and status.Oracle R Enterprise is not in the R library pathOn Linux hosts, after installing the ORE server components, starting R, and attempting to load the ORE packages, you may receive the error:R> library(ORE)Error in library(ORE) : there is no package called ‘ORE’If you know the ORE packages have been installed and you receive this error, this is the result of not starting R with the ORE script. To resolve this problem, exit R and restart using the ORE script. After restarting R and ">running the command to load the ORE packages, you should not receive any errors.$ ORER> library(ORE)On Windows servers, the solution is to make the location of the ORE packages visible to R by adding them to the R library paths. To accomplish this, exit R, then add the following lines to the .Rprofile file. On Windows, the .Rprofile file is located in R\etc directory C:\Program Files\R\R-<version>\etc. Add the following lines:.libPaths("<path to $ORACLE_HOME>/R/library")The above line will tell R to include the R directory in the Oracle home as part of its search path. When you start R, the path above will be included, and future R package installations will also be saved to $ORACLE_HOME/R/library. This path should be writable by the user oracle, or the userid for the DBA tasked with installing R packages.Binary package compiled with different version of RBy default, R will install pre-compiled versions of packages if they are found. If the version of R under which the package was compiled does not match your installed version of R you will get an error message:Warning message: package ‘xxx’ was built under R version 3.0.0The solution is to download the package source and build it for your version of R.$ wget http://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/Archive/arules/arules_1.1-1.tar.gz$ R CMD INSTALL arules_1.1-1.tar.gzFor use with ORE:$ ORE CMD INSTALL arules_1.1-1.tar.gzUnable to execute files in /tmp directoryBy default, R uses the /tmp directory to install packages. On security conscious machines, the /tmp directory is often marked as "noexec" in the /etc/fstab file. This means that no file under /tmp can ever be executed, and users who attempt to install R package will receive an error:ERROR: 'configure' exists but is not executable -- see the 'R Installation and Administration Manual’The solution is to set the TMP and TMPDIR environment variables to a location which R will use as the compilation directory. For example:$ mkdir <some path>/tmp$ export TMPDIR= <some path>/tmp$ export TMP= <some path>/tmpThis error typically appears on Linux client machines and not database servers, as Oracle Database writes to the value of the TMP environment variable for several tasks, including holding temporary files during database installation. 7. Creating your own R packageCreating your own package and submitting to CRAN is for advanced users, but it is not difficult. The procedure to follow, along with details of R's package system, is detailed in the Writing R Extensions manual.

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• WiX 3 Tutorial: Generating file/directory fragments with Heat.exe

  - by Mladen Prajdic

  In previous posts I’ve shown you our SuperForm test application solution structure and how the main wxs and wxi include file look like. In this post I’ll show you how to automate inclusion of files to install into your build process. For our SuperForm application we have a single exe to install. But in the real world we have 10s or 100s of different files from dll’s to resource files like pictures. It all depends on what kind of application you’re building. Writing a directory structure for so many files by hand is out of the question. What we need is an automated way to create this structure. Enter Heat.exe. Heat is a command line utility to harvest a file, directory, Visual Studio project, IIS website or performance counters. You might ask what harvesting means? Harvesting is converting a source (file, directory, …) into a component structure saved in a WiX fragment (a wxs) file. There are 2 options you can use: Create a static wxs fragment with Heat and include it in your project. The pro of this is that you can add or remove components by hand. The con is that you have to do the pro part by hand. Automation always beats manual labor. Run heat command line utility in a pre-build event of your WiX project. I prefer this way. By always recreating the whole fragment you don’t have to worry about missing any new files you add. The con of this is that you’ll include files that you otherwise might not want to. There is no perfect solution so pick one and deal with it. I prefer using the second way. A neat way of overcoming the con of the second option is to have a post-build event on your main application project (SuperForm.MainApp in our case) to copy the files needed to be installed in a special location and have the Heat.exe read them from there. I haven’t set this up for this tutorial and I’m simply including all files from the default SuperForm.MainApp \bin directory. Remember how we created a System Environment variable called SuperFormFilesDir? This is where we’ll use it for the first time. The command line text that you have to put into the pre-build event of your WiX project looks like this: "$(WIX)bin\heat.exe" dir "$(SuperFormFilesDir)" -cg SuperFormFiles -gg -scom -sreg -sfrag -srd -dr INSTALLLOCATION -var env.SuperFormFilesDir -out "$(ProjectDir)Fragments\FilesFragment.wxs" After you install WiX you’ll get the WIX environment variable. In the pre/post-build events environment variables are referenced like this: $(WIX). By using this you don’t have to think about the installation path of the WiX. Remember: for 32 bit applications Program files folder is named differently between 32 and 64 bit systems. $(ProjectDir) is obviously the path to your project and is a Visual Studio built in variable. You can view all Heat.exe options by running it without parameters but I’ll explain some that stick out the most. dir "$(SuperFormFilesDir)": tell Heat to harvest the whole directory at the set location. That is the location we’ve set in our System Environment variable. –cg SuperFormFiles: the name of the Component group that will be created. This name is included in out Feature tag as is seen in the previous post. -dr INSTALLLOCATION: the directory reference this fragment will fall under. You can see the top level directory structure in the previous post. -var env.SuperFormFilesDir: the name of the variable that will replace the SourceDir text that would otherwise appear in the fragment file. -out "$(ProjectDir)Fragments\FilesFragment.wxs": the full path and name under which the fragment file will be saved. If you have source control you have to include the FilesFragment.wxs into your project but remove its source control binding. The auto generated FilesFragment.wxs for our test app looks like this: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><Wix xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/wix/2006/wi"> <Fragment> <ComponentGroup Id="SuperFormFiles"> <ComponentRef Id="cmp5BB40DB822CAA7C5295227894A07502E" /> <ComponentRef Id="cmpCFD331F5E0E471FC42A1334A1098E144" /> <ComponentRef Id="cmp4614DD03D8974B7C1FC39E7B82F19574" /> <ComponentRef Id="cmpDF166522884E2454382277128BD866EC" /> </ComponentGroup> </Fragment> <Fragment> <DirectoryRef Id="INSTALLLOCATION"> <Component Id="cmp5BB40DB822CAA7C5295227894A07502E" Guid="{117E3352-2F0C-4E19-AD96-03D354751B8D}"> <File Id="filDCA561ABF8964292B6BC0D0726E8EFAD" KeyPath="yes" Source="$(env.SuperFormFilesDir)\SuperForm.MainApp.exe" /> </Component> <Component Id="cmpCFD331F5E0E471FC42A1334A1098E144" Guid="{369A2347-97DD-45CA-A4D1-62BB706EA329}"> <File Id="filA9BE65B2AB60F3CE41105364EDE33D27" KeyPath="yes" Source="$(env.SuperFormFilesDir)\SuperForm.MainApp.pdb" /> </Component> <Component Id="cmp4614DD03D8974B7C1FC39E7B82F19574" Guid="{3443EBE2-168F-4380-BC41-26D71A0DB1C7}"> <File Id="fil5102E75B91F3DAFA6F70DA57F4C126ED" KeyPath="yes" Source="$(env.SuperFormFilesDir)\SuperForm.MainApp.vshost.exe" /> </Component> <Component Id="cmpDF166522884E2454382277128BD866EC" Guid="{0C0F3D18-56EB-41FE-B0BD-FD2C131572DB}"> <File Id="filF7CA5083B4997E1DEC435554423E675C" KeyPath="yes" Source="$(env.SuperFormFilesDir)\SuperForm.MainApp.vshost.exe.manifest" /> </Component> </DirectoryRef> </Fragment></Wix> The $(env.SuperFormFilesDir) will be replaced at build time with the directory where the files to be installed are located. There is nothing too complicated about this. In the end it turns out that this sort of automation is great! There are a few other ways that Heat.exe can compose the wxs file but this is the one I prefer. It just seems the clearest. Play with its options to see what can it do. It’s one awesome little tool.   WiX 3 tutorial by Mladen Prajdic navigation WiX 3 Tutorial: Solution/Project structure and Dev resources WiX 3 Tutorial: Understanding main wxs and wxi file WiX 3 Tutorial: Generating file/directory fragments with Heat.exe

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• Embedding ADF UI Components into OAF regions

  - by Juan Camilo Ruiz

  Having finished the 2 Webcast on ADF integration with Oracle E-Business Suite, Sara Woodhull, Principal Product Manager on the Oracle E-Business Suite Applications Technology team and I are going to continue adding entries to the series on this topic, trying to cover as many use cases as possible. In this entry, Sara created an overview on how Oracle ADF pages can be embedded into an Oracle Application Framework region. This is a very interesting approach that will enable those of you who are exploring ADF as a technology stack to enhanced some of the Oracle E-Business Suite flows and leverage your skill on Oracle Applications Framework (OAF). In upcoming entries we will start unveiling the internals needed to achieve session sharing between the regions. Stay tuned for more entries and enjoy this new post.   Document Scope This document only covers information that is specific to embedding an Oracle ADF page in an Oracle Application Framework–based page. It assumes knowledge of Oracle ADF and Oracle Application Framework development. It also assumes knowledge of the material in My Oracle Support Note 974949.1, “Oracle E-Business Suite SDK for Java” and My Oracle Support Note 1296491.1, "FAQ for Integration of Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF) Applications". Prerequisite Patch Download Patch 12726556:R12.FND.B from My Oracle Support and install it. The implementation described below requires Patch 12726556:R12.FND.B to provide the accessors for the ADF page. This patch is required in addition to the Oracle E-Business Suite SDK for Java patch described in My Oracle Support Note 974949.1. Development Environments You need two different JDeveloper environments: Oracle ADF and OA Framework. Oracle ADF Development Environment You build your Oracle ADF page using JDeveloper 11g. You should use JDeveloper 11g R1 (the latest is 11.1.1.6.0) if you need to use other products in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Stack, such as Oracle WebCenter, Oracle SOA Suite, or BI. You should use JDeveloper 11g R2 (the latest is 11.1.2.3.0) if you do not need other Oracle Fusion Middleware products. JDeveloper 11g R2 is an Oracle ADF-specific release that supports the latest Java EE standards and has various core improvements. Oracle Application Framework Development Environment Build your OA Framework page using a development environment corresponding to your Oracle E-Business Suite version. You must use Release 12.1.2 or later because the rich content container was introduced in Release 12.1.2. See “OA Framework - How to find the correct version of JDeveloper to use with eBusiness Suite 11i or Release 12.x” (My Oracle Support Doc ID 416708.1). Building your Oracle ADF Page Typically you build your ADF page using the session management feature of the Oracle E-Business Suite SDK for Java as described in My Oracle Support Note 974949.1. Also see My Oracle Support Note 1296491.1, "FAQ for Integration of Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF) Applications". Building an ADF Page with the Hierarchy Viewer If you are using the ADF hierarchy viewer, you should set up the structure and settings of the ADF page as follows or the hierarchy viewer may not fill the entire area it is supposed to fill (especially a problem in Firefox). Create a stretchable component as the parent component for the hierarchy viewer, such as af:panelStretchLayout (underneath the af:form component in the structure). Use af:panelStretchLayout for Oracle ADF 11.1.1.6 and earlier. For later versions of Oracle ADF, use af:panelGridLayout. Create your hierarchy viewer component inside the stretchable component. Create Function in Oracle E-Business Suite Instance In your Oracle E-Business Suite instance, create a function for your ADF page with the following parameters. You can use either the Functions window in the System Administrator responsibility or the Functions page in the Functional Administrator responsibility. Function Function Name Type=External ADF Function (ADFX) HTML Call=GWY.jsp?targetPage=faces/<your ADF page> ">You must also add your function to an Oracle E-Business Suite menu or permission set and set up function security or role-based access control (RBAC) so that the user has authorization to access the function. If you do not want the function to appear on the navigation menu, add the function without a menu prompt. See the Oracle E-Business Suite System Administrator's Guide Documentation Set for more information. Testing the Function from the Oracle E-Business Suite Home Page It’s a good idea to test launching your ADF page from the Oracle E-Business Suite Home Page. Add your function to the navigation menu for your responsibility with a prompt and try launching it. If your ADF page expects parameters from the surrounding page, those might not be available, however. Setting up the Oracle Application Framework Rich Container Once you have built your Oracle ADF 11g page, you need to embed it in your Oracle Application Framework page. Create Rich Content Container in your OA Framework JDeveloper environment In the OA Extension Structure pane for your OAF page, select the region where you want to add the rich content, and add a richContainer item to the region. Set the following properties on the richContainer item: id Content Type=Others (for Release 12.1.3. This property value may change in a future release.) Destination Function=[function code] Width (in pixels or percent, such as 100%) Height (in pixels) Parameters=[any parameters your Oracle ADF page is expecting to receive from the Oracle Application Framework page] Parameters In the Parameters property, specify parameters that will be passed to the embedded content as a list of comma-separated, name-value pairs. Dynamic parameters may be specified as paramName={@viewAttr}. Dynamic Rich Content Container Properties If you want your rich content container to display a different Oracle ADF page depending on other information, you would set up a different function for each different Oracle ADF page. You would then set the Destination Function and Parameters properties programmatically, instead of setting them in the Property Inspector. In the processRequest() method of your Oracle Application Framework page controller, where OAFRichContentPage is the ID of your richContainer item and the parameters are whatever parameters your ADF page expects, your code might look similar to this code fragment: OARichContainerBean richBean = (OARichContainerBean) webBean.findChildRecursive("OAFRichContentPage"); if(richBean != null){ if(isFirstCondition){ richBean.setFunctionName("ADF_EXAMPLE_EMBEDDED"); richBean.setParameters("ParamLoginPersonId="+loginPersonId +"&ParamPersonId="+personId+"&ParamUserId="+userId +"&ParamRespId="+respId+"&ParamRespApplId="+respApplId +"&ParamFromOA=Y"+"&ParamSecurityGroupId="+securityGroupId); } else if(isSecondCondition){ richBean.setFunctionName("ADF_EXAMPLE_OTHER_FUNCTION"); richBean.setParameters("ParamLoginPersonId=" +loginPersonId+"&ParamPersonId="+personId +"&ParamUserId="+userId+"&ParamRespId="+respId +"&ParamRespApplId="+respApplId +"&ParamFromOA=Y" +"&ParamSecurityGroupId="+securityGroupId); } }

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• Introducing Oracle VM Server for SPARC

  - by Honglin Su

  As you are watching Oracle's Virtualization Strategy Webcast and exploring the great virtualization offerings of Oracle VM product line, I'd like to introduce Oracle VM Server for SPARC --  highly efficient, enterprise-class virtualization solution for Sun SPARC Enterprise Systems with Chip Multithreading (CMT) technology. Oracle VM Server for SPARC, previously called Sun Logical Domains, leverages the built-in SPARC hypervisor to subdivide supported platforms' resources (CPUs, memory, network, and storage) by creating partitions called logical (or virtual) domains. Each logical domain can run an independent operating system. Oracle VM Server for SPARC provides the flexibility to deploy multiple Oracle Solaris operating systems simultaneously on a single platform. Oracle VM Server also allows you to create up to 128 virtual servers on one system to take advantage of the massive thread scale offered by the CMT architecture. Oracle VM Server for SPARC integrates both the industry-leading CMT capability of the UltraSPARC T1, T2 and T2 Plus processors and the Oracle Solaris operating system. This combination helps to increase flexibility, isolate workload processing, and improve the potential for maximum server utilization. Oracle VM Server for SPARC delivers the following: Leading Price/Performance - The low-overhead architecture provides scalable performance under increasing workloads without additional license cost. This enables you to meet the most aggressive price/performance requirement Advanced RAS - Each logical domain is an entirely independent virtual machine with its own OS. It supports virtual disk mutipathing and failover as well as faster network failover with link-based IP multipathing (IPMP) support. Moreover, it's fully integrated with Solaris FMA (Fault Management Architecture), which enables predictive self healing. CPU Dynamic Resource Management (DRM) - Enable your resource management policy and domain workload to trigger the automatic addition and removal of CPUs. This ability helps you to better align with your IT and business priorities. Enhanced Domain Migrations - Perform domain migrations interactively and non-interactively to bring more flexibility to the management of your virtualized environment. Improve active domain migration performance by compressing memory transfers and taking advantage of cryptographic acceleration hardware. These methods provide faster migration for load balancing, power saving, and planned maintenance. Dynamic Crypto Control - Dynamically add and remove cryptographic units (aka MAU) to and from active domains. Also, migrate active domains that have cryptographic units. Physical-to-virtual (P2V) Conversion - Quickly convert an existing SPARC server running the Oracle Solaris 8, 9 or 10 OS into a virtualized Oracle Solaris 10 image. Use this image to facilitate OS migration into the virtualized environment. Virtual I/O Dynamic Reconfiguration (DR) - Add and remove virtual I/O services and devices without needing to reboot the system. CPU Power Management - Implement power saving by disabling each core on a Sun UltraSPARC T2 or T2 Plus processor that has all of its CPU threads idle. Advanced Network Configuration - Configure the following network features to obtain more flexible network configurations, higher performance, and scalability: Jumbo frames, VLANs, virtual switches for link aggregations, and network interface unit (NIU) hybrid I/O. Official Certification Based On Real-World Testing - Use Oracle VM Server for SPARC with the most sophisticated enterprise workloads under real-world conditions, including Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC). Affordable, Full-Stack Enterprise Class Support - Obtain worldwide support from Oracle for the entire virtualization environment and workloads together. The support covers hardware, firmware, OS, virtualization, and the software stack. SPARC Server Virtualization Oracle offers a full portfolio of virtualization solutions to address your needs. SPARC is the leading platform to have the hard partitioning capability that provides the physical isolation needed to run independent operating systems. Many customers have already used Oracle Solaris Containers for application isolation. Oracle VM Server for SPARC provides another important feature with OS isolation. This gives you the flexibility to deploy multiple operating systems simultaneously on a single Sun SPARC T-Series server with finer granularity for computing resources.  For SPARC CMT processors, the natural level of granularity is an execution thread, not a time-sliced microsecond of execution resources. Each CPU thread can be treated as an independent virtual processor. The scheduler is naturally built into the CPU for lower overhead and higher performance. Your organizations can couple Oracle Solaris Containers and Oracle VM Server for SPARC with the breakthrough space and energy savings afforded by Sun SPARC Enterprise systems with CMT technology to deliver a more agile, responsive, and low-cost environment. Management with Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center The Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center Virtualization Management Pack provides full lifecycle management of virtual guests, including Oracle VM Server for SPARC and Oracle Solaris Containers. It helps you streamline operations and reduce downtime. Together, the Virtualization Management Pack and the Ops Center Provisioning and Patch Automation Pack provide an end-to-end management solution for physical and virtual systems through a single web-based console. This solution automates the lifecycle management of physical and virtual systems and is the most effective systems management solution for Oracle's Sun infrastructure. Ease of Deployment with Configuration Assistant The Oracle VM Server for SPARC Configuration Assistant can help you easily create logical domains. After gathering the configuration data, the Configuration Assistant determines the best way to create a deployment to suit your requirements. The Configuration Assistant is available as both a graphical user interface (GUI) and terminal-based tool. Oracle Solaris Cluster HA Support The Oracle Solaris Cluster HA for Oracle VM Server for SPARC data service provides a mechanism for orderly startup and shutdown, fault monitoring and automatic failover of the Oracle VM Server guest domain service. In addition, applications that run on a logical domain, as well as its resources and dependencies can be controlled and managed independently. These are managed as if they were running in a classical Solaris Cluster hardware node. Supported Systems Oracle VM Server for SPARC is supported on all Sun SPARC Enterprise Systems with CMT technology. UltraSPARC T2 Plus Systems ·   Sun SPARC Enterprise T5140 Server ·   Sun SPARC Enterprise T5240 Server ·   Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 Server ·   Sun Netra T5440 Server ·   Sun Blade T6340 Server Module ·   Sun Netra T6340 Server Module UltraSPARC T2 Systems ·   Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 Server ·   Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 Server ·   Sun Netra T5220 Server ·   Sun Blade T6320 Server Module ·   Sun Netra CP3260 ATCA Blade Server Note that UltraSPARC T1 systems are supported on earlier versions of the software.Sun SPARC Enterprise Systems with CMT technology come with the right to use (RTU) of Oracle VM Server, and the software is pre-installed. If you have the systems under warranty or with support, you can download the software and system firmware as well as their updates. Oracle Premier Support for Systems provides fully-integrated support for your server hardware, firmware, OS, and virtualization software. Visit oracle.com/support for information about Oracle's support offerings for Sun systems. For more information about Oracle's virtualization offerings, visit oracle.com/virtualization.

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• Failed to launch simulated application: iPhone Simulator failed to find the process ID of com.iAndAp

  - by Nicsoft

  Hello, I'm having this annoyning problem giving this message in the console: Failed to launch simulated application: iPhone Simulator failed to find the process ID of com.iAndApp.BlockPop. When trying to Build and Run, the application builds fine. The simulator starts but doesn't start the application. However, it manages to do something since the icon for the app is installed in the simulator. I have been searching to find the answer and tried a couple of things, none that worked. This happens for both new and old projects. I.e. when I create a new project I will receive the same error message. I've tried several projects of which all get the same error, so it's not related to the code (and successful builds proves it). Among other things I have updated to xCode 3.2.2. in order to try to solve the problem. Using Mac OSX 10.6.3. Here are the logs: 1. 2010-05-30 17.20.39 SpringBoard[15713] Unable to create CFServerConnection. Telephony state may be incorrect. 2010-05-30 17.20.40 SpringBoard[15713] Unable to create CFServerConnection. Telephony state may be incorrect. 2010-05-30 17.20.40 SpringBoard[15713] Unable to create CFServerConnection. Telephony state may be incorrect. 2010-05-30 17.20.40 SpringBoard[15713] Unable to create CFServerConnection. Telephony state may be incorrect. 2010-05-30 17.20.40 SpringBoard[15713] Can't find the translation dictionary, loadTranslationDictionaries 2010-05-30 17.20.40 SpringBoard[15713] Unable to create CFServerConnection. Telephony state may be incorrect. 2010-05-30 17.20.40 SpringBoard[15713] Unable to create CFServerConnection. Telephony state may be incorrect. 2010-05-30 17.20.41 SpringBoard[15713] Launchd returned an unexpected type or didn't return a value for job label UIKitApplication:com.iAndApp.BlockPop[0x8abd] with job key PID 2010-05-30 17.20.41 SpringBoard[15713] Unable to create CFServerConnection. Telephony state may be incorrect. 2010-05-30 17.21.10 Xcode[15496] Error launching simulated application: Error Domain=DTiPhoneSimulatorErrorDomain Code=1 UserInfo=0x200edcc00 "iPhone Simulator failed to find the process ID of com.iAndApp.BlockPop." 2. Form system.log May 30 17:20:39 Niklas-Johanssons-Mac-mini mobile_installationd[15712]: a0bc84e0 init_simulator_paths: No simulator root specified. Falling back to environment variable. May 30 17:20:39: --- last message repeated 5 times --- May 30 17:20:39 Niklas-Johanssons-Mac-mini mobile_installationd[15712]: b0081000 init_simulator_paths: No simulator root specified. Falling back to environment variable. May 30 17:20:39: --- last message repeated 1 time --- May 30 17:20:39 Niklas-Johanssons-Mac-mini mobile_installationd[15712]: b0081000 load_application_info: Could not load signer identity from /Users/Niklas/Library/Application Support/iPhone Simulator/3.0/Applications/1CD7E4BA-14D3-45A5-A05E-E552C04BCD4D/BlockPopLite.app/BlockPopLite May 30 17:20:39 Niklas-Johanssons-Mac-mini mobile_installationd[15712]: b0081000 load_application_info: Could not load signer identity from /Users/Niklas/Library/Application Support/iPhone Simulator/3.0/Applications/62585F19-5FAD-4548-89DF-C9AE621FCCD7/SysSound.app/SysSound May 30 17:20:39 Niklas-Johanssons-Mac-mini mobile_installationd[15712]: b0081000 load_application_info: Could not load signer identity from /Users/Niklas/Library/Application Support/iPhone Simulator/3.0/Applications/81AA51A5-7BFC-442F-BFF8-91E9C6EF13CD/BlockPop.app/BlockPop May 30 17:20:39 Niklas-Johanssons-Mac-mini mobile_installationd[15712]: b0103000 load_application_info: Could not load signer identity from /Users/Niklas/Library/Application Support/iPhone Simulator/3.0/Applications/A2DCBF96-8F15-4527-BDF1-BD90B34D401C/BlockPop.app/BlockPop May 30 17:20:39 Niklas-Johanssons-Mac-mini mobile_installationd[15712]: b0081000 init_simulator_paths: No simulator root specified. Falling back to environment variable. May 30 17:20:39: --- last message repeated 1 time --- May 30 17:20:39 Niklas-Johanssons-Mac-mini SpringBoard[15713]: Unable to create CFServerConnection. Telephony state may be incorrect. May 30 17:20:40 Niklas-Johanssons-Mac-mini mobile_installationd[15712]: b0081000 init_simulator_paths: No simulator root specified. Falling back to environment variable. May 30 17:20:40: --- last message repeated 1 time --- May 30 17:20:40 Niklas-Johanssons-Mac-mini SpringBoard[15713]: Unable to create CFServerConnection. Telephony state may be incorrect. May 30 17:20:40: --- last message repeated 2 times --- May 30 17:20:40 Niklas-Johanssons-Mac-mini SpringBoard[15713]: Can't find the translation dictionary, loadTranslationDictionaries May 30 17:20:40 Niklas-Johanssons-Mac-mini mobile_installationd[15712]: b0081000 init_simulator_paths: No simulator root specified. Falling back to environment variable. May 30 17:20:40: --- last message repeated 3 times --- May 30 17:20:40 Niklas-Johanssons-Mac-mini SpringBoard[15713]: Unable to create CFServerConnection. Telephony state may be incorrect. May 30 17:20:41: --- last message repeated 1 time --- May 30 17:20:41 Niklas-Johanssons-Mac-mini SpringBoard[15713]: Launchd returned an unexpected type or didn't return a value for job label UIKitApplication:com.iAndApp.BlockPop[0x8abd] with job key PID May 30 17:20:41 Niklas-Johanssons-Mac-mini SpringBoard[15713]: Unable to create CFServerConnection. Telephony state may be incorrect. May 30 17:21:10 Niklas-Johanssons-Mac-mini Xcode[15496]: Error launching simulated application: Error Domain=DTiPhoneSimulatorErrorDomain Code=1 UserInfo=0x200edcc00 "iPhone Simulator failed to find the process ID of com.iAndApp.BlockPop." Where do I start? I am really stuck and would be most greatful for any help!

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• Hibernate : load and

  - by Albert Kam

  According to the tutorial : http://jpa.ezhibernate.com/Javacode/learn.jsp?tutorial=27hibernateloadvshibernateget, If you initialize a JavaBean instance with a load method call, you can only access the properties of that JavaBean, for the first time, within the transactional context in which it was initialized. If you try to access the various properties of the JavaBean after the transaction that loaded it has been committed, you'll get an exception, a LazyInitializationException, as Hibernate no longer has a valid transactional context to use to hit the database. But with my experiment, using hibernate 3.6, and postgres 9, it doesnt throw any exception at all. Am i missing something ? Here's my code : import org.hibernate.Session; public class AppLoadingEntities { /** * @param args */ public static void main(String[] args) { HibernateUtil.beginTransaction(); Session session = HibernateUtil.getSession(); EntityUser userFromGet = get(session); EntityUser userFromLoad = load(session); // finish the transaction session.getTransaction().commit(); // try fetching field value from entity bean that is fetched via get outside transaction, and it'll be okay System.out.println("userFromGet.getId() : " + userFromGet.getId()); System.out.println("userFromGet.getName() : " + userFromGet.getName()); // fetching field from entity bean that is fetched via load outside transaction, and it'll be errornous // NOTE : but after testing, load seems to be okay, what gives ? ask forums try { System.out.println("userFromLoad.getId() : " + userFromLoad.getId()); System.out.println("userFromLoad.getName() : " + userFromLoad.getName()); } catch(Exception e) { System.out.println("error while fetching entity that is fetched from load : " + e.getMessage()); } } private static EntityUser load(Session session) { EntityUser user = (EntityUser) session.load(EntityUser.class, 1l); System.out.println("user fetched with 'load' inside transaction : " + user); return user; } private static EntityUser get(Session session) { // safe to set it to 1, coz the table got recreated at every run of this app EntityUser user = (EntityUser) session.get(EntityUser.class, 1l); System.out.println("user fetched with 'get' : " + user); return user; } } And here's the output : 88 [main] INFO org.hibernate.annotations.common.Version - Hibernate Commons Annotations 3.2.0.Final 93 [main] INFO org.hibernate.cfg.Environment - Hibernate 3.6.0.Final 94 [main] INFO org.hibernate.cfg.Environment - hibernate.properties not found 96 [main] INFO org.hibernate.cfg.Environment - Bytecode provider name : javassist 98 [main] INFO org.hibernate.cfg.Environment - using JDK 1.4 java.sql.Timestamp handling 139 [main] INFO org.hibernate.cfg.Configuration - configuring from resource: /hibernate.cfg.xml 139 [main] INFO org.hibernate.cfg.Configuration - Configuration resource: /hibernate.cfg.xml 172 [main] WARN org.hibernate.util.DTDEntityResolver - recognized obsolete hibernate namespace http://hibernate.sourceforge.net/. Use namespace http://www.hibernate.org/dtd/ instead. Refer to Hibernate 3.6 Migration Guide! 191 [main] INFO org.hibernate.cfg.Configuration - Configured SessionFactory: null 237 [main] INFO org.hibernate.cfg.AnnotationBinder - Binding entity from annotated class: EntityUser 263 [main] INFO org.hibernate.cfg.annotations.EntityBinder - Bind entity EntityUser on table MstUser 293 [main] INFO org.hibernate.cfg.Configuration - Hibernate Validator not found: ignoring 296 [main] INFO org.hibernate.cfg.search.HibernateSearchEventListenerRegister - Unable to find org.hibernate.search.event.FullTextIndexEventListener on the classpath. Hibernate Search is not enabled. 300 [main] INFO org.hibernate.connection.DriverManagerConnectionProvider - Using Hibernate built-in connection pool (not for production use!) 300 [main] INFO org.hibernate.connection.DriverManagerConnectionProvider - Hibernate connection pool size: 20 300 [main] INFO org.hibernate.connection.DriverManagerConnectionProvider - autocommit mode: false 309 [main] INFO org.hibernate.connection.DriverManagerConnectionProvider - using driver: org.postgresql.Driver at URL: jdbc:postgresql://localhost:5432/hibernate 309 [main] INFO org.hibernate.connection.DriverManagerConnectionProvider - connection properties: {user=sofco, password=****} 354 [main] INFO org.hibernate.cfg.SettingsFactory - Database -> name : PostgreSQL version : 9.0.1 major : 9 minor : 0 354 [main] INFO org.hibernate.cfg.SettingsFactory - Driver -> name : PostgreSQL Native Driver version : PostgreSQL 9.0 JDBC4 (build 801) major : 9 minor : 0 372 [main] INFO org.hibernate.dialect.Dialect - Using dialect: org.hibernate.dialect.PostgreSQLDialect 382 [main] INFO org.hibernate.engine.jdbc.JdbcSupportLoader - Disabling contextual LOB creation as createClob() method threw error : java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException 383 [main] INFO org.hibernate.transaction.TransactionFactoryFactory - Transaction strategy: org.hibernate.transaction.JDBCTransactionFactory 384 [main] INFO org.hibernate.transaction.TransactionManagerLookupFactory - No TransactionManagerLookup configured (in JTA environment, use of read-write or transactional second-level cache is not recommended) 384 [main] INFO org.hibernate.cfg.SettingsFactory - Automatic flush during beforeCompletion(): disabled 384 [main] INFO org.hibernate.cfg.SettingsFactory - Automatic session close at end of transaction: disabled 384 [main] INFO org.hibernate.cfg.SettingsFactory - JDBC batch size: 15 384 [main] INFO org.hibernate.cfg.SettingsFactory - JDBC batch updates for versioned data: disabled 384 [main] INFO org.hibernate.cfg.SettingsFactory - Scrollable result sets: enabled 384 [main] INFO org.hibernate.cfg.SettingsFactory - JDBC3 getGeneratedKeys(): enabled 384 [main] INFO org.hibernate.cfg.SettingsFactory - Connection release mode: auto 385 [main] INFO org.hibernate.cfg.SettingsFactory - Default batch fetch size: 1 385 [main] INFO org.hibernate.cfg.SettingsFactory - Generate SQL with comments: disabled 385 [main] INFO org.hibernate.cfg.SettingsFactory - Order SQL updates by primary key: disabled 385 [main] INFO org.hibernate.cfg.SettingsFactory - Order SQL inserts for batching: disabled 385 [main] INFO org.hibernate.cfg.SettingsFactory - Query translator: org.hibernate.hql.ast.ASTQueryTranslatorFactory 385 [main] INFO org.hibernate.hql.ast.ASTQueryTranslatorFactory - Using ASTQueryTranslatorFactory 385 [main] INFO org.hibernate.cfg.SettingsFactory - Query language substitutions: {} 385 [main] INFO org.hibernate.cfg.SettingsFactory - JPA-QL strict compliance: disabled 385 [main] INFO org.hibernate.cfg.SettingsFactory - Second-level cache: enabled 385 [main] INFO org.hibernate.cfg.SettingsFactory - Query cache: disabled 385 [main] INFO org.hibernate.cfg.SettingsFactory - Cache region factory : org.hibernate.cache.impl.NoCachingRegionFactory 386 [main] INFO org.hibernate.cfg.SettingsFactory - Optimize cache for minimal puts: disabled 386 [main] INFO org.hibernate.cfg.SettingsFactory - Structured second-level cache entries: disabled 388 [main] INFO org.hibernate.cfg.SettingsFactory - Echoing all SQL to stdout 389 [main] INFO org.hibernate.cfg.SettingsFactory - Statistics: disabled 389 [main] INFO org.hibernate.cfg.SettingsFactory - Deleted entity synthetic identifier rollback: disabled 389 [main] INFO org.hibernate.cfg.SettingsFactory - Default entity-mode: pojo 389 [main] INFO org.hibernate.cfg.SettingsFactory - Named query checking : enabled 389 [main] INFO org.hibernate.cfg.SettingsFactory - Check Nullability in Core (should be disabled when Bean Validation is on): enabled 402 [main] INFO org.hibernate.impl.SessionFactoryImpl - building session factory 549 [main] INFO org.hibernate.impl.SessionFactoryObjectFactory - Not binding factory to JNDI, no JNDI name configured Hibernate: select entityuser0_.id as id0_0_, entityuser0_.name as name0_0_, entityuser0_.password as password0_0_ from MstUser entityuser0_ where entityuser0_.id=? user fetched with 'get' : 1:Albert Kam xzy:abc user fetched with 'load' inside transaction : 1:Albert Kam xzy:abc userFromGet.getId() : 1 userFromGet.getName() : Albert Kam xzy userFromLoad.getId() : 1 userFromLoad.getName() : Albert Kam xzy

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• The Proper Use of the VM Role in Windows Azure

  - by BuckWoody

  At the Professional Developer’s Conference (PDC) in 2010 we announced an addition to the Computational Roles in Windows Azure, called the VM Role. This new feature allows a great deal of control over the applications you write, but some have confused it with our full infrastructure offering in Windows Hyper-V. There is a proper architecture pattern for both of them. Virtualization Virtualization is the process of taking all of the hardware of a physical computer and replicating it in software alone. This means that a single computer can “host” or run several “virtual” computers. These virtual computers can run anywhere - including at a vendor’s location. Some companies refer to this as Cloud Computing since the hardware is operated and maintained elsewhere. IaaS The more detailed definition of this type of computing is called Infrastructure as a Service (Iaas) since it removes the need for you to maintain hardware at your organization. The operating system, drivers, and all the other software required to run an application are still under your control and your responsibility to license, patch, and scale. Microsoft has an offering in this space called Hyper-V, that runs on the Windows operating system. Combined with a hardware hosting vendor and the System Center software to create and deploy Virtual Machines (a process referred to as provisioning), you can create a Cloud environment with full control over all aspects of the machine, including multiple operating systems if you like. Hosting machines and provisioning them at your own buildings is sometimes called a Private Cloud, and hosting them somewhere else is often called a Public Cloud. State-ful and Stateless Programming This paradigm does not create a new, scalable way of computing. It simply moves the hardware away. The reason is that when you limit the Cloud efforts to a Virtual Machine, you are in effect limiting the computing resources to what that single system can provide. This is because much of the software developed in this environment maintains “state” - and that requires a little explanation. “State-ful programming” means that all parts of the computing environment stay connected to each other throughout a compute cycle. The system expects the memory, CPU, storage and network to remain in the same state from the beginning of the process to the end. You can think of this as a telephone conversation - you expect that the other person picks up the phone, listens to you, and talks back all in a single unit of time. In “Stateless” computing the system is designed to allow the different parts of the code to run independently of each other. You can think of this like an e-mail exchange. You compose an e-mail from your system (it has the state when you’re doing that) and then you walk away for a bit to make some coffee. A few minutes later you click the “send” button (the network has the state) and you go to a meeting. The server receives the message and stores it on a mail program’s database (the mail server has the state now) and continues working on other mail. Finally, the other party logs on to their mail client and reads the mail (the other user has the state) and responds to it and so on. These events might be separated by milliseconds or even days, but the system continues to operate. The entire process doesn’t maintain the state, each component does. This is the exact concept behind coding for Windows Azure. The stateless programming model allows amazing rates of scale, since the message (think of the e-mail) can be broken apart by multiple programs and worked on in parallel (like when the e-mail goes to hundreds of users), and only the order of re-assembling the work is important to consider. For the exact same reason, if the system makes copies of those running programs as Windows Azure does, you have built-in redundancy and recovery. It’s just built into the design. The Difference Between Infrastructure Designs and Platform Designs When you simply take a physical server running software and virtualize it either privately or publicly, you haven’t done anything to allow the code to scale or have recovery. That all has to be handled by adding more code and more Virtual Machines that have a slight lag in maintaining the running state of the system. Add more machines and you get more lag, so the scale is limited. This is the primary limitation with IaaS. It’s also not as easy to deploy these VM’s, and more importantly, you’re often charged on a longer basis to remove them. your agility in IaaS is more limited. Windows Azure is a Platform - meaning that you get objects you can code against. The code you write runs on multiple nodes with multiple copies, and it all works because of the magic of Stateless programming. you don’t worry, or even care, about what is running underneath. It could be Windows (and it is in fact a type of Windows Server), Linux, or anything else - but that' isn’t what you want to manage, monitor, maintain or license. You don’t want to deploy an operating system - you want to deploy an application. You want your code to run, and you don’t care how it does that. Another benefit to PaaS is that you can ask for hundreds or thousands of new nodes of computing power - there’s no provisioning, it just happens. And you can stop using them quicker - and the base code for your application does not have to change to make this happen. Windows Azure Roles and Their Use If you need your code to have a user interface, in Visual Studio you add a Web Role to your project, and if the code needs to do work that doesn’t involve a user interface you can add a Worker Role. They are just containers that act a certain way. I’ll provide more detail on those later. Note: That’s a general description, so it’s not entirely accurate, but it’s accurate enough for this discussion. So now we’re back to that VM Role. Because of the name, some have mistakenly thought that you can take a Virtual Machine running, say Linux, and deploy it to Windows Azure using this Role. But you can’t. That’s not what it is designed for at all. If you do need that kind of deployment, you should look into Hyper-V and System Center to create the Private or Public Infrastructure as a Service. What the VM Role is actually designed to do is to allow you to have a great deal of control over the system where your code will run. Let’s take an example. You’ve heard about Windows Azure, and Platform programming. You’re convinced it’s the right way to code. But you have a lot of things you’ve written in another way at your company. Re-writing all of your code to take advantage of Windows Azure will take a long time. Or perhaps you have a certain version of Apache Web Server that you need for your code to work. In both cases, you think you can (or already have) code the the software to be “Stateless”, you just need more control over the place where the code runs. That’s the place where a VM Role makes sense. Recap Virtualizing servers alone has limitations of scale, availability and recovery. Microsoft’s offering in this area is Hyper-V and System Center, not the VM Role. The VM Role is still used for running Stateless code, just like the Web and Worker Roles, with the exception that it allows you more control over the environment of where that code runs.

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• The APEX of Business Value...or...the Business Value of APEX? Oracle Cloud Takes Oracle APEX to New Heights!

  - by Gene Eun

  The attraction of Oracle Application Express (APEX) has increased tremendously with the recent launch of the Oracle Cloud. APEX already supported departmental development and deployment of business applications with minimal involvement from the IT department. Positioned as the ideal replacement for MS Access, APEX probably has managed better to capture the eye of developers and was used for enterprise application development at least as much as for the kind of tactical applications that Oracle strategically positioned it for. With APEX as PaaS from the Oracle Cloud, a leap is made to a much higher level of business value. Now the IT department is not even needed to make infrastructure available with a database running  on it. All the business needs is a credit card. And the business application that is developed, managed and used from the cloud through a standard browser can now just as easily be accessed by users from around the world as by users from the business department itself. As a bonus – the development of the APEX application is also done in the cloud – with no special demands on the location or the enterprise access privileges of the developers. To sum it up: APEX from Oracle Cloud Database Service get the development environment up and running in minutes no involvement from the internal IT department required (not for infrastructure, platform, or development) superior availability and scalability is offered by Oracle users from anywhere in the world can be invited to access the application developers from anywhere in the world can participate in creating and maintaining the application In addition: because the Oracle Cloud platform is the same as the on-premise platform, you can still decide to move the APEX application between the cloud and the local environment – and back again. The REST-ful services that are available through APEX allow programmatic interaction with the database under the APEX application. That means that this database can be synchronized with on premise databases or data stores in (other) clouds. Through the Oracle Cloud Messaging Service, the APEX application can easily enter into asynchronous conversations with other APEX applications, Fusion Middleware applications (ADF, SOA, BPM) and any other type of REST-enabled application. In my opinion, now, for the first time perhaps, APEX offers the attraction to the business that has been suggested before: because of the cloud, all the business needs is  a credit card (a budget of $175 per month), an internet-connection and a browser. Not like before, with a PC hidden under a desk or a database running somewhere in the data center. No matter how unattended: equipment is needed, power is consumed, the database needs to be kept running and if Oracle Database XE does not suffice, software licenses are required as well. And this set up always has a security challenge associated with it. The cloud fee for the Oracle Cloud Database Service includes infrastructure, power, licenses, availability, platform upgrades, a collection of reusable application components and the development and runtime environments containing the APEX platform. Of course this not only means that business departments can move quickly without having to convince their IT colleagues to move along – it also means that small organizations that do not even have IT colleagues can do the same. Getting tailored applications or applications up and running to get in touch with users and customers all over the world is now within easy reach for small outfits – without any investment. My misunderstanding For a long time, I was under the impression that the essence of APEX was that the business could create applications themselves – meaning that business ‘people’ would actually go into APEX to create the application. To me APEX was too much of a developers’ tool to see that happen – apart from the odd business analyst who missed his or her calling as an IT developer. Having looked at various other cloud based development offerings – including Force.com, Mendix, WaveMaker, WorkXpress, OrangeScape, Caspio and Cordys- I have come to realize my mistake. All these platforms are positioned for 'the business' but require a fair amount of coding and technical expertise. However, they make the business happy nevertheless, because they allow the  business to completely circumvent the IT department. That is the essence. Not having to go through the red tape, not having to wait for IT staff who (justifiably) need weeks or months to provide an environment, not having to deal with administrators (again, justifiably) refusing to take on that 'strange environment'. Being able to think of an initiative and turn into action right away. The business does not have to build the application - it can easily hire some external developers or even that nerdy boy next door. They can get started, get an application up and running and invite users in – especially external users such as customers. They will worry later about upgrades and life cycle management and integration. To get applications up and running quickly and start turning ideas into action and results rightaway. That is the key selling point for all these cloud offerings, including APEX from the Cloud. And it is a compelling story. For APEX probably even more so than for the others. While I consider APEX a somewhat proprietary framework compared with ‘regular’ Java/JEE web development (or even .NET and PHP  development), it is still far more open than most cloud environments. APEX is SQL and PL/SQL based – nothing special about those languages – and can run just as easily on site as in the cloud. It has been around since 2004 (that is not including several predecessors that fed straight into APEX) so it can be considered pretty mature. Oracle as a company seems pretty stable – so investments in its technology are bound to last for some time to come. By the way: neither APEX nor the other Cloud DevaaS offerings are targeted at creating applications with enormous life times. They fit into a trend of agile development and rapid life cycle management, with fairly light weight user interfaces that quickly adapt to taste, technology trends and functional requirements and that are easily replaced. APEX and ADF – a match made in heaven?! (or at least in the sky) Note that using APEX only for cloud based database with REST-ful Services is also a perfectly viable scenario: any UI – mobile or browser based – capable of consuming REST-ful services can be created against such a business tier. Creating an ADF Mobile application for example that runs aginst REST-ful services is a best practice for mobile development. Such REST-ful services can be consumed from any service provider – including the Cloud based APEX powered REST-ful services running against the Oracle Cloud Database Service! The ADF Mobile architecture overview can easily be morphed to fit the APEX services in – allowing for a cloud based mobile app: Want to learn more about Oracle Database Cloud Service or Oracle Cloud, just visit cloud.oracle.com  or oracle.com/cloud. Repost of a blog entry by Rick Greenwald, Director of Product Management, Oracle Database Cloud Service.

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• Need to capture and store receiver's details via IPN by using Paypal Mass Pay API

  - by Devner

  Hi all, This is a question about Paypal Mass Pay IPN. My platform is PHP & mySQL. All over the Paypal support website, I have found IPN for only payments made. I need an IPN on similar lines for Mass Pay but could not find it. Also tried experimenting with already existing Mass Pay NVP code, but that did not work either. What I am trying to do is that for all the recipients to whom the payment has been successfully sent via Mass Pay, I want to record their email, amount and unique_id in my own database table. If possible, I want to capture the payment status as well, whether it has been a success of failure and based upon the same, I need to do some in house processing. The existing code Mass pay code is below: <?php $environment = 'sandbox'; // or 'beta-sandbox' or 'live' /** * Send HTTP POST Request * * @param string The API method name * @param string The POST Message fields in &name=value pair format * @return array Parsed HTTP Response body */ function PPHttpPost($methodName_, $nvpStr_) { global $environment; // Set up your API credentials, PayPal end point, and API version. $API_UserName = urlencode('my_api_username'); $API_Password = urlencode('my_api_password'); $API_Signature = urlencode('my_api_signature'); $API_Endpoint = "https://api-3t.paypal.com/nvp"; if("sandbox" === $environment || "beta-sandbox" === $environment) { $API_Endpoint = "https://api-3t.$environment.paypal.com/nvp"; } $version = urlencode('51.0'); // Set the curl parameters. $ch = curl_init(); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $API_Endpoint); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_VERBOSE, 1); // Turn off the server and peer verification (TrustManager Concept). curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, FALSE); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, FALSE); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1); // Set the API operation, version, and API signature in the request. $nvpreq = "METHOD=$methodName_&VERSION=$version&PWD=$API_Password&USER=$API_UserName&SIGNATURE=$API_Signature$nvpStr_"; // Set the request as a POST FIELD for curl. curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $nvpreq); // Get response from the server. $httpResponse = curl_exec($ch); if(!$httpResponse) { exit("$methodName_ failed: ".curl_error($ch).'('.curl_errno($ch).')'); } // Extract the response details. $httpResponseAr = explode("&", $httpResponse); $httpParsedResponseAr = array(); foreach ($httpResponseAr as $i => $value) { $tmpAr = explode("=", $value); if(sizeof($tmpAr) > 1) { $httpParsedResponseAr[$tmpAr[0]] = $tmpAr[1]; } } if((0 == sizeof($httpParsedResponseAr)) || !array_key_exists('ACK', $httpParsedResponseAr)) { exit("Invalid HTTP Response for POST request($nvpreq) to $API_Endpoint."); } return $httpParsedResponseAr; } // Set request-specific fields. $emailSubject =urlencode('example_email_subject'); $receiverType = urlencode('EmailAddress'); $currency = urlencode('USD'); // or other currency ('GBP', 'EUR', 'JPY', 'CAD', 'AUD') // Add request-specific fields to the request string. $nvpStr="&EMAILSUBJECT=$emailSubject&RECEIVERTYPE=$receiverType&CURRENCYCODE=$currency"; $receiversArray = array(); for($i = 0; $i < 3; $i++) { $receiverData = array( 'receiverEmail' => "[email protected]", 'amount' => "example_amount", 'uniqueID' => "example_unique_id", 'note' => "example_note"); $receiversArray[$i] = $receiverData; } foreach($receiversArray as $i => $receiverData) { $receiverEmail = urlencode($receiverData['receiverEmail']); $amount = urlencode($receiverData['amount']); $uniqueID = urlencode($receiverData['uniqueID']); $note = urlencode($receiverData['note']); $nvpStr .= "&L_EMAIL$i=$receiverEmail&L_Amt$i=$amount&L_UNIQUEID$i=$uniqueID&L_NOTE$i=$note"; } // Execute the API operation; see the PPHttpPost function above. $httpParsedResponseAr = PPHttpPost('MassPay', $nvpStr); if("SUCCESS" == strtoupper($httpParsedResponseAr["ACK"]) || "SUCCESSWITHWARNING" == strtoupper($httpParsedResponseAr["ACK"])) { exit('MassPay Completed Successfully: '.print_r($httpParsedResponseAr, true)); } else { exit('MassPay failed: ' . print_r($httpParsedResponseAr, true)); } ?> In the code above, how and where do I add code to capture the fields that I requested above? Any code indicating the solution is highly appreciated. Thank you very much.

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• Oracle Tutor: Top 10 to Implement Sustainable Policies and Procedures

  - by emily.chorba(at)oracle.com

  Overview Your organization (executives, managers, and employees) understands the value of having written business process documents (process maps, procedures, instructions, reference documents, and form abstracts). Policies and procedures should be documented because they help to reduce the range of individual decisions and encourage management by exception: the manager only needs to give special attention to unusual problems, not covered by a specific policy or procedure. As more and more procedures are written to cover recurring situations, managers will begin to make decisions which will be consistent from one functional area to the next.Companies should take a project management approach when implementing an environment for a sustainable documentation program and do the following:1. Identify an Executive Champion2. Put together a winning team3. Assign ownership4. Centralize publishing5. Establish the Document Maintenance Process Up Front6. Document critical activities only7. Document actual practice8. Minimize documentation9. Support continuous improvement10. Keep it simple 1. Identify an Executive ChampionAppoint a top down driver. Select one key individual to be a mentor for the procedure planning team. The individual should be a senior manager, such as your company president, CIO, CFO, the vice-president of quality, manufacturing, or engineering. Written policies and procedures can be important supportive aids when known to express the thinking for the chief executive officer and / or the president and to have his or her full support. 2. Put Together a Winning TeamChoose a strong Project Management Leader and staff the procedure planning team with management members from cross functional groups. Make sure team members have the responsibility - and the authority - to make things happen.The winning team should consist of the Documentation Project Manager, Document Owners (one for each functional area), a Document Controller, and Document Specialists (as needed). The Tutor Implementation Guide has complete job descriptions for these roles. 3. Assign Ownership It is virtually impossible to keep process documentation simple and meaningful if employees who are far removed from the activity itself create it. It is impossible to keep documentation up-to-date when responsibility for the document is not clearly understood.Key to the Tutor methodology, therefore, is the concept of ownership. Each document has a single owner, who is responsible for ensuring that the document is necessary and that it reflects actual practice. The owner must be a person who is knowledgeable about the activity and who has the authority to build consensus among the persons who participate in the activity as well as the authority to define or change the way an activity is performed. The owner must be an advocate of the performers and negotiate, not dictate practices.In the Tutor environment, a document's owner is the only person with the authority to approve an update to that document. 4. Centralize Publishing Although it is tempting (especially in a networked environment and with document management software solutions) to decentralize the control of all documents -- with each owner updating and distributing his own -- Tutor promotes centralized publishing by assigning the Document Administrator (gate keeper) to manage the updates and distribution of the procedures library. 5. Establish a Document Maintenance Process Up Front (and stick to it) Everyone in your organization should know they are invited to suggest changes to procedures and should understand exactly what steps to take to do so. Tutor provides a set of procedures to help your company set up a healthy document control system. There are many document management products available to automate some of the document change and maintenance steps. Depending on the size of your organization, a simple document management system can reduce the effort it takes to track and distribute document changes and updates. Whether your company decides to store the written policies and procedures on a file server or in a database, the essential tasks for maintaining documents are the same, though some tasks are automated. 6. Document Critical Activities Only The best way to keep your documentation simple is to reduce the number of process documents to a bare minimum and to include in those documents only as much detail as is absolutely necessary. The first step to reducing process documentation is to document only those activities that are deemed critical. Not all activities require documentation. In fact, some critical activities cannot and should not be standardized. Others may be sufficiently documented with an instruction or a checklist and may not require a procedure. A document should only be created when it enhances the performance of the employee performing the activity. If it does not help the employee, then there is no reason to maintain the document. Activities that represent little risk (such as project status), activities that cannot be defined in terms of specific tasks (such as product research), and activities that can be performed in a variety of ways (such as advertising) often do not require documentation. Sometimes, an activity will evolve to the point where documentation is necessary. For example, an activity performed by single employee may be straightforward and uncomplicated -- that is, until the activity is performed by multiple employees. Sometimes, it is the interaction between co-workers that necessitates documentation; sometimes, it is the complexity or the diversity of the activity.7. Document Actual Practices The only reason to maintain process documentation is to enhance the performance of the employee performing the activity. And documentation can only enhance performance if it reflects reality -- that is, current best practice. Documentation that reflects an unattainable ideal or outdated practices will end up on the shelf, unused and forgotten.Documenting actual practice means (1) auditing the activity to understand how the work is really performed, (2) identifying best practices with employees who are involved in the activity, (3) building consensus so that everyone agrees on a common method, and (4) recording that consensus.8. Minimize Documentation One way to keep it simple is to document at the highest level possible. That is, include in your documents only as much detail as is absolutely necessary.When writing a document, you should ask yourself, What is the purpose of this document? That is, what problem will it solve?By focusing on this question, you can target the critical information.• What questions are the end users likely to have?• What level of detail is required?• Is any of this information extraneous to the document's purpose? Short, concise documents are user friendly and they are easier to keep up to date. 9. Support Continuous Improvement Employees who perform an activity are often in the best position to identify improvements to the process. In other words, continuous improvement is a natural byproduct of the work itself -- but only if the improvements are communicated to all employees who are involved in the process, and only if there is consensus among those employees.Traditionally, process documentation has been used to dictate performance, to limit employees' actions. In the Tutor environment, process documents are used to communicate improvements identified by employees. How does this work? The Tutor methodology requires a process document to reflect actual practice, so the owner of a document must routinely audit its content -- does the document match what the employees are doing? If it doesn't, the owner has the responsibility to evaluate the process, to build consensus among the employees, to identify "best practices," and to communicate these improvements via a document update. Continuous improvement can also be an outgrowth of corrective action -- but only if the solutions to problems are communicated effectively. The goal should be to solve a problem once and only once, which means not only identifying the solution, but ensuring that the solution becomes part of the process. The Tutor system provides the method through which improvements and solutions are documented and communicated to all affected employees in a cost-effective, timely manner; it ensures that improvements are not lost or confined to a single employee. 10. Keep it Simple Process documents don't have to be complex and unfriendly. In fact, the simpler the format and organization, the more likely the documents will be used. And the simpler the method of maintenance, the more likely the documents will be kept up-to-date. Keep it simply by:• Minimizing skills and training required• Following the established Tutor document format and layout• Avoiding technology just for technology's sake No other rule has as major an impact on the success of your internal documentation as -- keep it simple. Learn More For more information about Tutor, visit Oracle.Com or the Tutor Blog. Post your questions at the Tutor Forum.   Emily Chorba Principle Product Manager Oracle Tutor & BPM 

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• Get your TFS 2012 task board demo ready in under 1 minute

  - by Tarun Arora

  Release Notes – http://tfsdemosetup.codeplex.com/  | Download | Source Code | Report a Bug | Ideas In this blog post, I’ll show you how to use the ‘TfsDemoSetup’ application to configure and setup the TFS 2012 task board for a demo in well less than 1 minute Step 1 – Note what you get with a newly created Team Project Create a new Team Project on TFS Preview         2. Click Create Project         3. The project creation has completed        4. Open the team web access and have a look at the home page Note – Since I created the project I am the only Team Member       A default Team by the name AdventureWorks Team has been created       A few sprints have been assigned to the default team but no dates for sprint start and end have been specified        A default Area Path for the team is missing       Step 2. Download the TFS Demo Setup Console application from Codeplex 1. Navigate to the TFS Demo Setup project on codeplex https://tfsdemosetup.codeplex.com/       2. Download Instructions and TFSDemo_<version>      3. Follow the steps in the Instructions.txt file      4. Unzip TFSDemo_<version> and open the target folder. Two important files in this folder, DemoDictionary.xml – This file contains the settings using which the demo environment will be setup SetupTfsDemo.exe – This will run the TFS demo environment setup application       Step 3 – Configure the setup (i.e. team name, members, sprint dates, etc) 1. Open up DemoDictionary.xml      2. Walkthrough DemoDictionary.xml             a. Basic Team Details         <Name> – Specify the name of the team         <Description> – Specify a description to go with the team         <SetAsDefaultTeam> – This accepts a value “true/false” when set to true, the newly created team will be set as the default team in the project         <BacklogIterationPath> – Specify a backlog iteration path for the team     b. Iterations – The iterations you specify here will be set as the Teams iterations        <Iterations> – Accepts multiple <Iteration> nodes.        <Iteration> – This is the most granular level of an Iteration        <Path> – The path to the sprint, sample values, Release 1\Sprint 1 or Release 2\Sprint 2        <StartDate> – The sprint start date, this accepts the format yyyy-MM-dd        <FinishDate> – The sprint finish date, this accepts the format yyyy-MM-dd     c. Team Members – Team Members that need to be added to the newly created team will be added under this section         <TeamMembers> – Accepts multiple <TeamMember> nodes.         <TeamMember> – This is the most granular level of a Team Member         <User> – This accepts the username, if you are running this against TFSPreview then the live id of the user will need to be passed. If you are running this against TFS Server then the user id i.e. Domain\UserName will need to be passed          <Team> – Specify the name of the team that you want the user to be assigned to.     d. WorkItems – This section will allow you to add work items (product backlog Items and linked tasks) to the current sprint of the team         <WorkItems> – Accepts multiple <WorkItem> nodes.         <WorkItem> – Accepts one <ProductBacklogItem> and multiple <Task> nodes         <ProductBacklogItem> – Used to create a Product Backlog Item type work item               <Title> – The title of the Product Backlog Item               <Description> – The description of the Product Backlog Type Work Item               <AssignedTo> – Used to assign the work item to a team member. The team member name or email address can be passed.               <Effort> – The total effort required to complete the Product Backlog Item         <Task> – Used to create a linked task to the Product Backlog type work item               <Title> – The title of the task type work item               <Description> – The description of the Task Type Work Item               <AssignedTo> – Used to assign the work item to a team member. The team member name or email address can be passed.               <RemainingWork> – The remaining effort to complete the task type work item Step 4 – Setup the demo environment against the newly created Team Project 1. Run SetupTfsDemo.exe    2. Enter Y or y on the prompt to continue setting up TFS Demo setup.     3. Select the newly created Team project, for this blogpost I had created the Team Project – AdventureWorks, so that is what I’ll select in the Connect to TFS Server pop up    3. Click Connect and follow the messages that are written to the console application       Step 5 – Validate that the Demo environment is set up as per the configuration 1. The team web access is all lit up You have a Sprint, a burn down chart, team members…    2. The team Demo has been added and has been set up as the default team    3. The Sprint Backlog Iteration path, Sprints and Sprint start and finish dates have been set    4. The default area path has been setup    5. Taskboard – Backlog items view    6. Taskboard – Team members view      Step 6 – Exception Handling! 1. This solution has been tested against TFS 2012 Service/Server for the Scrum 2.1 process template. 2. You are likely to run into an exception if you mess up the config file 3. If the team already exists and you run the console app to set up the team (with the same name) you will run into exceptions. Please remember this is just an alpha release, if you have any feedback please leave a comment! Didn’t I say that it would just take 1 minute, Enjoy!

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