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• Google OAuthGetRequestToken returns "signature_invalid"

  - by M Schenkel

  Trying for hours to get a request token using Google OAuthGetRequestToken but it always returns "signature_invalid". For a test I use the oAuth Playground to successfully request the token. Here are the results: Signature base string GET&https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Faccounts%2FOAuthGetRequestToken&oauth_callback%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fgooglecodesamples.com%252Foauth_playground%252Findex.php%26oauth_consumer_key%3Dwww.embeddedanalytics.com%26oauth_nonce%3D56aa884162ed21815a0406725c79cf79%26oauth_signature_method%3DRSA-SHA1%26oauth_timestamp%3D1321417095%26oauth_version%3D1.0%26scope%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.google.com%252Fanalytics%252Ffeeds%252F Request/Response GET /accounts/OAuthGetRequestToken?scope=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fanalytics%2Ffeeds%2F HTTP/1.1 Host: www.google.com Accept: */* Authorization: OAuth oauth_version="1.0", oauth_nonce="56aa884162ed21815a0406725c79cf79", oauth_timestamp="1321417095", oauth_consumer_key="www.embeddedanalytics.com", oauth_callback="http%3A%2F%2Fgooglecodesamples.com%2Foauth_playground%2Findex.php", oauth_signature_method="RSA-SHA1", oauth_signature="qRtorIaSFaQdOXW1u6eMQlY9LT2j7ThG5kgkcD6rDcW4MIvzluslFgYRNTuRvnaruraNpItjojtgsrK9deYRKoHBGOlU27SsWy6jECxKczcSECl3cVAcjk7dvbywFMDkgi1ZhTZ5Q%2BFoD60HoVQUYnGUbOO0jPXI48LfkiA5ZN4%3D" HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2011 04:18:15 GMT Expires: Wed, 16 Nov 2011 04:18:15 GMT Cache-Control: private, max-age=0 X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode=block Content-Length: 118 Server: GSE oauth_token=4%2FmO86qZzixayI2NoUc-hewC--D53R&oauth_token_secret=r0PReF9D83w1d6uP0nyQQm9c&oauth_callback_confirmed=true I am using Fiddler to trace my calls. It returns the Signature base string: GET&https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Faccounts%2FOAuthGetRequestToken&oauth_callback%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fgooglecodesamples.com%252Foauth_playground%252Findex.php%26oauth_consumer_key%3Dwww.embeddedanalytics.com%26oauth_nonce%3Dl9Jydzjyzt2fJfM3ltY5yrxxYy2uh1U7%26oauth_signature_method%3DRSA-SHA1%26oauth_timestamp%3D1321417107%26oauth_version%3D1.0%26scope%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.google.com%252Fanalytics%252Ffeeds%252F Aside from the oauth_timestamp and oauth_nonce (which should be different), the base string are pretty much identical. Anyone know what I am doing wrong? Update 11/20/2011 Thinking it might be something wrong with my RSA-SHA signing, I have since tried HMAC-SHA. It gives the same results. I thought it might be beneficial to include the Fiddler results (I added carriage returns to have it format better). GET https://www.google.com/accounts/OAuthGetRequestToken? scope=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fanalytics%2Ffeeds%2F HTTP/1.1 Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded Authorization: OAuth oauth_version="1.0", oauth_nonce="7C4C900EAACC9C7B62E399A91B81D8DC", oauth_timestamp="1321845418", oauth_consumer_key="www.embeddedanalytics.com", oauth_signature_method="HMAC-SHA1", oauth_signature="ows%2BbFTNSR8jVZo53rGBB8%2BfwFM%3D" Host: www.google.com Accept: */* Accept-Encoding: identity Response HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2011 03:16:57 GMT Expires: Mon, 21 Nov 2011 03:16:57 GMT Cache-Control: private, max-age=0 X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode=block Content-Length: 358 Server: GSE signature_invalid base_string:GET&https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Faccounts%2FOAuthGetRequestToken &oauth_consumer_key%3Dwww.embeddedanalytics.com %26oauth_nonce%3D7C4C900EAACC9C7B62E399A91B81D8DC %26oauth_signature_method%3DHMAC-SHA1 %26oauth_timestamp%3D1321845418 %26oauth_version%3D1.0 %26scope%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.google.com%252Fanalytics%252Ffeeds%252F

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• My mental block - struggling to learn Objective C

  - by iqessar

  Hello people, this would be my first question after signing up! Anyway heres my question, I did Java at university and I was always told I am a good programmer. However I never pursued it as a career - I went into support and management instead. Im pretty much bored with my job, I have therefore started to learn Objective C so that I can develop apps for the iphone. I am currently watching several different Videos / Books. My problem is that when I go through the Apple documentation, although I understand most of it, sometimes I stumble. I believe that because you/we have the Apple documentation (i.e. Framework references) , everything should be clear, and therefore you should have no need to refer to a book or video (in order to learn how to use a particular class). But I alway do refer to a book and video and subsequently feel guilty as I believe the framework reference should be enough. (I therefore feel I am not up to being a programmer) I also believe that you shouldn't need example code in order to learn how to use a particular class because Apple provides documentation for each class, but AGAIN I find my self googling example code and I find my answer like that - again I feel guilty for doing this. Am I right in saying that Apple documentation is simply not clear? and that its ok to refer to a video/book or google? or forums for that matter? I have proffesional programmers who tell me that I am worrying too much and that I should get on with it and use all the resources that I have. I just cant seem to get round this mental block that I have in my head. When I start a programming project I am able to use the excellent search skills that I have to find the code I need, copy and paste it (yes I do understand it) BUT then I feel guilty telling myself that why didn't you think up the code yourself???? Therefore your not a real programmer, your just good at googling. Currently I am going through 20+ books so that I can learn most of the frameworks, syntax etc to develop iphone apps. I believe if I do this, then when I think of a project I can make it quickly. Should I read a few books, like 2-3 and then just start a project /app , and if I get stuck just google it and get the code I need? Can anybody please answer my questions?

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• IPHONE DEVELOPMENT PROFILE EXPIRED - I TRIED EVERYTHING AND YES, I READ THE DOCS

  - by theiphoneguy

  I really combed this site and others. I read and re-read the related links here and the Apple docs. I'm sorry, but either I am obviously missing something right under my nose, or this Apple profile/certificate stuff is a bit convoluted. Here it is: I have a product in the App Store. I have updated it several times and users like it. My development profile recently expired just when I was improving the app for its next release. I can run the app in the simulator. I can compile and put the distribution build on my iPhone just fine. I went to the Apple portal and renewed the development profile. I downloaded it and installed it in Xcode. I see it in the Organize window. I see it on my iPhone. I CANNOT put the debug build on my iPhone to debug or run with Instruments. The message is that either there is not a valid signed profile or it is untrusted. I subsequently tried to download and install the certificate to my Mac's keychain. Still no success. I checked the code signing section of Project settings and also for the target and the root. All appears to indicate that it is using the expected development profile for debug. Yes, I had deleted the old profile from my iPhone, from the Organizer. I cleaned the Xcode cache and all targets. I have done all of this several times and in varying sequences to try to cover every possibility. I am ready to do anything to be able to debug with Instruments in order to check for leaks or high memory usage. Even though the distribution compile runs fine on my iPhone and plays well with other running processes, I will not release anything without a leaks/memory test. Any ideas will be appreciated. If I missed something obvious, please forgive me - it was not due to just posting a question without searching for similar postings. Thanks!

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• Self updating app, wont overwrite existing app, using Android packagemanager?

  - by LokiSinclair

  I know there are plenty of questions about this on here, but I've tried everything (but the correct 'thing', obviously!) and nothing seems to shine any light on the problem I'm having. I've written an app (for a customer), which is designed to be hosted on their own server. The app references a simple text file with the latest version code in it and checks it against it's own version. If it's out of date it goes off and downloads the update. Everything is working as intended up to this point. I use the: Intent i = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW); i.setDataAndType(Uri.fromFile(outputFile), "application/vnd.android.package-archive"); i.setFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK); startActivity(i); ...code to start the install process of the newly downloaded .apk file. And that all starts as I would expect. I click on "Install" - when I'm prompted to confirm the overwriting of the current app, with the new. It starts, and then displays: App not installed. And existing package by the same name with a conflicting signature is already installed. Now I'm aware that Android can't have multiple applications sharing the same package name, which is fine, but nothing comes up in LogCat and I can only assume that the OS is annoyed at me attempting to 'update' my app, even though I'm going through all the correct channels and using the inbuilt package manager to do it for me! Can anyone tell me what the OS is moaning about? I'm not attempting to install two apps side by side, I want it to update it, which it starts to do, and then gets really confused. Is it something to do with me using the same keystore for signing the packages? I highly doubt it as I've used the same keystores previously to handle updates to games and the like, but I just can't figure out what it's complaining about. Hopefully someone out there has had this issue and solved it, and can point me in the right direction. I'm flying a bit blind with the limited information it's giving me :( Cheers.

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• IPhone Development Profile Expired

  - by theiphoneguy

  I really combed this site and others. I read and re-read the related links here and the Apple docs. I'm sorry, but either I am obviously missing something right under my nose, or this Apple profile/certificate stuff is a bit convoluted. Here it is: I have a product in the App Store. I have updated it several times and users like it. My development profile recently expired just when I was improving the app for its next release. I can run the app in the simulator. I can compile and put the distribution build on my iPhone just fine. I went to the Apple portal and renewed the development profile. I downloaded it and installed it in Xcode. I see it in the Organize window. I see it on my iPhone. I CANNOT put the debug build on my iPhone to debug or run with Instruments. The message is that either there is not a valid signed profile or it is untrusted. I subsequently tried to download and install the certificate to my Mac's keychain. Still no success. I checked the code signing section of Project settings and also for the target and the root. All appears to indicate that it is using the expected development profile for debug. Yes, I had deleted the old profile from my iPhone, from the Organizer. I cleaned the Xcode cache and all targets. I have done all of this several times and in varying sequences to try to cover every possibility. I am ready to do anything to be able to debug with Instruments in order to check for leaks or high memory usage. Even though the distribution compile runs fine on my iPhone and plays well with other running processes, I will not release anything without a leaks/memory test. Any ideas will be appreciated. If I missed something obvious, please forgive me - it was not due to just posting a question without searching for similar postings. Thanks!

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• DESIGNING FOR WIN PHONE 7

  Designing applications for the Win Phone 7 is very similar to designing for print. In my opinion, it feels like a cross between a tri-fold brochure and a poster. I based my prototype designs on Microsofts Metro style guide, with typography as the main focus and stunning imagery for support. Its nice to have fixed factors regulating the design, making it a fun and fresh design experience. Microsoft provides a UI Design Guidelines document that outlines layout sizes, background image size, recommended typefaces and spacing. You know what you are designing for and you know how it will look and act on the win phone 7 platform. Although applications are not required to strictly adhere to the Metro style guide I feel it makes the best use of the panorama view  and navigation. With strong examples of this UI concept in place like their Zune-like music + videos hub, I found it fairly easy to put together a few quick app mockups (see below). In addition to design guidelines, using a ready built design templates, or a win phone 7 specific panorama control like the one by Clarity Consulting will make the process of bringing your designs to life much more efficient. Likes, Dislikes, and Challenges I think the idea of the hub is completely intuitive. This concept clearly breaks down info into more manageable pieces, and greatly helps with organization when designing for the phone. I like the chromeless appearance, allowing the core functionality of the application to take precedence over gradients, textures, bevels, drop shadows, and the complicated animations you see on the web. Although I understand the Win Phone 7 guidelines are a work in progress, I found a few contradictions. I also noticed that certain design specifications did not translate well to the phone emulator . If you use their guidelines as suggested best practices and not as fixed definitions you will have more success. Multi-directional vs Linear The main challenge I had was stepping away from familiar navigational examples seen in other mobile phones. I had to keep reminding myself that the content to the right and to the left of what I was working on didnt necessarily have to have a direct link to one another. I started thinking multi-directional as opposed to linear. Win phone 7 vs IPhone The Metro styling of the Win Phone 7 is similar to the Zune HD and the Windows Media Center UI and offers a different interface paradigm than the IPhone. When navigating an application it feels like you are panning a long seamless page of information in contrast to the multiple panels of an IPhone. I think there is less of an opportunity to overdesign your application, which happens often with IPhone applications. While both interfaces are simple and sleek, win phone 7 really gets down to the basics. IPhone sets a high standard for designing for touch, designing for win phone 7 could improve on that user experience with a consistent and strategic use of white space and staying away from a menu and icon heavy UI. Design Examples for Win Phone 7 Applications Here are some concepts for both generic and brand specific applications for Win Phone 7: View Full Album Resources to get you going with your own Win Phone 7 design: Helpful design templates for Win Phone 7  http://www.shazaml.com/archives/windows-phone-7-ui-templates Here is the interaction design guide for Win Phone 7 http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9713252 Windows has a project template for Blend 4 and Visual Studio 2010 RC1 http://developer.windowsphone.com/ Clarity Consulting developed a panorama control for Win Phone 7 http://blogs.claritycon.com/blogs/design/archive/2010/03/30/building-the-elusive-windows-phone-panorama-control.aspxDid you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• DESIGNING FOR WIN PHONE 7

  Designing applications for the Win Phone 7 is very similar to designing for print. In my opinion, it feels like a cross between a tri-fold brochure and a poster. I based my prototype designs on Microsofts Metro style guide, with typography as the main focus and stunning imagery for support. Its nice to have fixed factors regulating the design, making it a fun and fresh design experience. Microsoft provides a UI Design Guidelines document that outlines layout sizes, background image size, recommended typefaces and spacing. You know what you are designing for and you know how it will look and act on the win phone 7 platform. Although applications are not required to strictly adhere to the Metro style guide I feel it makes the best use of the panorama view  and navigation. With strong examples of this UI concept in place like their Zune-like music + videos hub, I found it fairly easy to put together a few quick app mockups (see below). In addition to design guidelines, using a ready built design templates, or a win phone 7 specific panorama control like the one by Clarity Consulting will make the process of bringing your designs to life much more efficient. Likes, Dislikes, and Challenges I think the idea of the hub is completely intuitive. This concept clearly breaks down info into more manageable pieces, and greatly helps with organization when designing for the phone. I like the chromeless appearance, allowing the core functionality of the application to take precedence over gradients, textures, bevels, drop shadows, and the complicated animations you see on the web. Although I understand the Win Phone 7 guidelines are a work in progress, I found a few contradictions. I also noticed that certain design specifications did not translate well to the phone emulator . If you use their guidelines as suggested best practices and not as fixed definitions you will have more success. Multi-directional vs Linear The main challenge I had was stepping away from familiar navigational examples seen in other mobile phones. I had to keep reminding myself that the content to the right and to the left of what I was working on didnt necessarily have to have a direct link to one another. I started thinking multi-directional as opposed to linear. Win phone 7 vs IPhone The Metro styling of the Win Phone 7 is similar to the Zune HD and the Windows Media Center UI and offers a different interface paradigm than the IPhone. When navigating an application it feels like you are panning a long seamless page of information in contrast to the multiple panels of an IPhone. I think there is less of an opportunity to overdesign your application, which happens often with IPhone applications. While both interfaces are simple and sleek, win phone 7 really gets down to the basics. IPhone sets a high standard for designing for touch, designing for win phone 7 could improve on that user experience with a consistent and strategic use of white space and staying away from a menu and icon heavy UI. Design Examples for Win Phone 7 Applications Here are some concepts for both generic and brand specific applications for Win Phone 7: View Full Album Resources to get you going with your own Win Phone 7 design: Helpful design templates for Win Phone 7  http://www.shazaml.com/archives/windows-phone-7-ui-templates Here is the interaction design guide for Win Phone 7 http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9713252 Windows has a project template for Blend 4 and Visual Studio 2010 RC1 http://developer.windowsphone.com/ Clarity Consulting developed a panorama control for Win Phone 7 http://blogs.claritycon.com/blogs/design/archive/2010/03/30/building-the-elusive-windows-phone-panorama-control.aspxDid you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Required Skill Sets Of A Software Architect

  The question has been asked as to what is the required skill sets of a software architect. The answer to this is that it truly depends. When I state that it depend, it depends on the organization, industry, and skill sets available on the open market and internally within a company. With open ended skill sets even Napoleon Dynamite could be an architect. Napoleon Dynamite’s Skills Pedro: Have you asked anybody yet? Napoleon Dynamite: No, but who would? I don't even have any good skills. Pedro: What do you mean? Napoleon Dynamite: You know, like nunchuck skills, bow hunting skills, computer hacking skills... Girls only want boyfriends who have great skills. Pedro: Aren't you pretty good at drawing, like animals and warriors and stuff? This example might be a little off base but it does illustrate a point. What are the real required skills of a software architect? In my opinion, an architect needs to demonstrate the knowledge of the following three main skill set categories so that they are successful. General Skill Sets of an Architect Basic Engineering Skills Organizational  Skills Interpersonal Skills Basic Engineering Skills are a very large part of what a software architect deal with on a daily bases when designing or updating systems. Think about it, how good would a lead mechanic be if they did not know how to fix or repair cars? They would not be, and that is my point that architects need to have at least some basic skills regarding engineering. The skills listed below are generic in nature because they change from job to job, so in this discussion I am trying to focus more on generalities so that anyone can apply this information to their individual situation. Common Basic Engineering Skills Data Modeling Code Creation Configuration Testing Deployment/Publishing System and Environment Knowledge Organizational Skills If an Architect works for or with an origination then they will need strong organization skills to survive. An architect is no use to a project if the project is missed managed. Additionally, budgets and timelines can really affect a company and their products when established deadlines are repeated not meet. By not meeting these timelines a company is forced to cancel the project and waste all the money and time spent or spend more money until it is completed, if it is ever completed. Common Organizational Skills Project Management Estimation (Cost and Time) Creation and Maintenance of Accepted Standards Interpersonal Skills For me personally Interpersonal skill ranks above the other types of skill sets because an architect can quickly pick up the other two skill sets by communicating with other team/project members so that they are quickly up to speed on a project. Additionally, in order for an architect to manage a project or even derive rough estimates they will more than likely have to consult with others actually working on the code (Programmers/Software Engineers) to get there estimates since they will be the ones actually working on the changes to be implemented. Common Interpersonal Skills Good Communicator Focus on projects success over personal Honors roles within a team Reference: Taylor, R. N., Medvidovic, N., & Dashofy, E. M. (2009). Software architecture: Foundations, theory, and practice Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons

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• Travelling MVP #1: Visit to SharePoint User Group Finland

  - by DigiMortal

  My first self organized trip this autumn was visit to SharePoint User Group Finland community evening. As active community leaders who make things like these possible they are worth mentioning and on spug.fi side there was Jussi Roine the one who invited me. Here is my short review about my trip to Helsinki. User group meeting As Helsinki is near Tallinn I went there using ship. It was easy to get from sea port to venue and I had also some minutes of time to visit academic book store. Community evening was held on the ground floor of one city center hotel and room was conveniently located near hotel bar and restaurant. Here is the meeting schedule: Welcome (Jussi Roine) OpenText application archiving and governance for SharePoint (Bernd Hennicke, OpenText) Using advanced C# features in SharePoint development (Alexey Sadomov, NED Consulting) Optimizing public-facing internet sites for SharePoint (Gunnar Peipman) After meeting, of course, local dudes doesn’t walk away but continue with some beers and discussion. Sessions After welcome words by Jussi there was session by Bernd Hennicke who spoke about OpenText. His session covered OpenText history and current moment. After this introduction he spoke about OpenText products for SharePoint and gave the audience good overview about where their SharePoint extensions fit in big picture. I usually don’t like those vendors sessions but this one was good. I mean vendor dudes were not aggressively selling something. They were way different – kind people who introduced their stuff and later answered questions. They acted like good guests. Second speaker was Alexey Sadomov who is working on SharePoint development projects. He introduced some ways how to get over some limitations of SharePoint. I don’t go here deeply with his session but it’s worth to mention that this session was strong one. It is not rear case when developers have to make nasty hacks to SharePoint. I mean really nasty hacks. Often these hacks are long blocks of code that uses terrible techniques to achieve the result. Alexey introduced some very much civilized ways about how to apply hacks. Alex Sadomov, SharePoint MVP, speaking about SharePoint coding tips and tricks on C# I spoke about how I optimized caching of Estonian Microsoft community portal that runs on SharePoint Server and that uses publishing infrastructure. I made no actual demos on SharePoint because I wanted to focus on optimizing process and share some experiences about how to get caches optimized and how to measure caches. Networking After official part there was time to talk and discuss with people. Finns are cool – they have beers and they are glad. It was not big community event but people were like one good family. Developers there work often for big companies and it was very interesting to me to hear about their experiences with SharePoint. One thing was a little bit surprising for me – SharePoint guys in Finland are talking actively also about Office 365 and online SharePoint. It doesn’t happen often here in Estonia. I had to leave a little bit 21:00 to get to my ship back to Tallinn. I am sure spug.fi dudes continued nice evening and they had at least same good time as I did. Do I want to go back to Finland and meet these guys again? Yes, sure, let’s do it again! :)

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• SQL SERVER – What is a Technology Evangelist?

  - by pinaldave

  When you hear that someone is an “evangelist” the first thing that might pop into your mind is the Christian church.  In fact, the term did come from Christianity, and basically means someone who spreads the news about their faith.  In the technology world, the same definition is true. Technology evangelists are individuals who, professionally or in their spare time, spread the news about the latest new products.  Sounds like a salesperson, right?  No they are absolutely different. Salespeople also keep up to date with a large number of people, and like to convince others to buy their product – and some will go to any lengths to sell!  An evangelist, on the other hand, is brutally honest about the product, even if sometimes it means not making a sale.  An evangelist is out there to tell the TRUTH.  A salesperson needs to make sales. An Evangelist offers a Solution independent of Technology used – a Salesperson offers Particular Technology. With this definition in mind, you can probably think of a few technology evangelists you already know.  Maybe it’s a relative or a neighbor, someone who loves keeping up with the latest trends and is always willing to tell you about them if you ask even the simplest question.  And, in fact, they probably are evangelists and don’t even know it.  For a long time, the work of technology evangelism was in the hands of community and community technology leaders. Luckily now various organizations have understood the importance of the community and helping community to reach their goals. This has lead them to create role of “Technology Evangelists”. Let me talk about one of the most famous Evangelist of the SQL Server technology. Technology Evangelist only belongs to technology and above any country, race, location or any other thing. They are dedicated to the technology. Vinod Kumar is such a man, who have given a lot to community. For years he was a Technology Evangelist for Microsoft, and maintained a blog that was dedicated to spreading his enthusiasm for his favorite products.  He is one of the most respected Evangelists in the field, and has done a lot of work to define the job for other professionals. Vinod’s career has since progressed to the Microsoft Technology Center (read his post), but he is continuing to be a strong presence in the evangelism community.  I have a lot of respect for Vinod.  He has done a lot for the community and technology evangelism.  Everybody has dream to serve community the way he does, and he is a great role model for evangelists everywhere. On his blog, Vinod created one of the best descriptions of a Technology Evangelist.  It defined the position and also made the distinction between evangelist and salesperson extremely clear.  I will include the highlights of that list here, because no one can say it better than Vinod: Bundle of energy – Passion is their middle name Wonderful Story tellers Empathy, Trust, Loyalty, Openness, Accessibility and Warmth Technology Enthusiast – Doers Love people, people and more people – Community oriented Unique Style and Leadership qualities !!! Self-Confident, Self-Motivated but a student (To read the full list, see: Evangelism Beyond Borders with Evangelists) His blog is a must-read for anyone interested in technology evangelism as a career or simply a hobby.  His advice about how to gain an audience and become a trusted advisor is the best in the business. I think there is an evangelist in everyone. I, too, consider myself a technology evangelist.  Regular readers of this blog will recognize that I am dedicated to bringing information to the masses, and that I pride myself on being both brutally and honest and giving every product fair consideration. I think there is no better way of saying following subject. “Once an Evangelist – Always an Evangelist!” Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com)     Filed under: About Me, Database, MVP, Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Evangelist

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• Software development stack 2012

  A couple of months ago, I posted on Google+ about my evaluation period for a new software development stack in general. "Analysing existing 'jungle' of multiple applications and tools in various languages for clarification and future design decisions. Great fun and lots of headaches... #DevelopersLife" Surprisingly, there was response... ;-) - And this series of articles is initiated by this post. Thanks Olaf. The past few years... Well, after all my first choice of software development in the past was Microsoft Visual FoxPro 6.0 - 9.0 in combination with Microsoft SQL Server 2000 - 2008 and Crystal Reports 9.x - XI. Honestly, it is my main working environment due to exisiting maintenance and support plans with my customers, but also for new project requests. And... hands on, it is still my first choice for data manipulation and migration options. But the earth is spinning, and as a software craftsman one has to be flexible with the choice of tools. In parallel to my knowledge and expertise in the above mentioned tools, I already started very early to get my hands dirty with the Microsoft .NET Framework. If I remember correctly, I started back in 2002/2003 with the first version ever. But this was more out of curiousity. During the years this kind of development got more serious and demanding, and I focused myself on interop and integrational libraries and applications. Mainly, to expose exisitng features of the .NET Framework to Visual FoxPro - I even had a session about that at the German Developer's Conference in Frankfurt. Observation of recent developments With the recent hype on Javascript and HTML5, especially for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 development, I had several 'Deja vu' events... Back in early 2006 (roughly) I had a conversation on the future of Web and Desktop development with my former colleagues Golo Roden and Thomas Wilting about the underestimation of Javascript and its root as a prototype-based, dynamic, full-featured programming language. During this talk with them I took the Mozilla applications, namely Firefox and Thunderbird, as a reference which are mainly based on XML, CSS, Javascript and images - besides the core rendering engine. And that it is very simple to write your own extensions for the Gecko rendering engine. Looking at the Windows Vista Sidebar widgets, just underlines this kind of usage. So, yes the 'Modern UI' of Windows 8 based on HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript didn't come as any surprise to me. Just allow me to ask why did it take so long for Microsoft to come up with this step? A new set of tools Ok, coming from web development in HTML 4, CSS and Javascript prior to Visual FoxPro, I am partly going back to that combination of technologies. What is the other part of the software development stack here at IOS Indian Ocean Software Ltd? Frankly, it is easy and straight forward to describe: Microsoft Visual FoxPro 9.0 SP 2 - still going strong! Visual Studio 2012 (C# on latest .NET Framework) MonoDevelop Telerik DevCraft Suite WPF ASP.NET MVC Windows 8 Kendo UI OpenAccess ORM Reporting JustCode CODE Framework by EPS Software MonoTouch and Mono for Android Subversion and additional tools for the daily routine: Notepad++, JustCode, SQL Compare, DiffMerge, VMware, etc. Following the principles of Clean Code Developer and the Agile Manifesto Actually, nothing special about this combination but rather a solid fundament to work with and create line of business applications for customers.Honestly, I am really interested in your choice of 'weapons' for software development, and hopefully there might be some nice conversations in the comment section. Over the next coming days/weeks I'm going to describe a little bit more in detail about the reasons for my decision. Articles will be added bit by bit here as reference, too. Please bear with me... Regards, JoKi

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• Java Script – Content delivery networks (CDN) can bit you in the butt.

  - by Ryan Ternier

  As much as I love the new CDN’s that Google, Microsoft and a few others have publically released, there are some strong gotchas that could come up and bite you in the ass if you’re not careful. But before we jump into that, for those that are not 100% sure what a CDN is (besides Canadian).   Content Delivery Network. A way of distributing your static content across various servers in different physical locations.  Because this static content is stored on many servers around the world, whenever a user needs to access this content, they are given the closest server to their location for this data. Already you can probably see the immediate bonuses to a system like this: Lower bandwidth Even small script files downloaded thousands of times will start to take a noticeable hit on your bandwidth meter. Less connections/hits to your web server which gives better latency If you manage many servers, you don’t need to manually update each server with scripts. A user will download a script for each website they visit. If a user is redirected to many domains/sub-domains within your web site, they might download many copies of the same file. When a system sees multiple requests from the same  domain, they will ignore the download   Those are just a handful of the many bonuses a CDN will give you. And for the average website, a CDN is great choice. Check out the following CDN links for their solutions: Google AJAX Library: http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxlibs/ Microsoft Ajax library: http://www.asp.net/ajaxlibrary/cdn.ashx The Gotcha There is always a catch. Here are some issues I found with using CDN’s that hopefully can help you make your decision. HTTP / HTTPS If you are running a website behind SSL, make sure that when you reference your CDN data that you use https:// vs. http://. If you forget this users will get a very nice message telling them that their secure connection is trying to access unsecure data. For a developer this is fairly simple, but general users will get a bit anxious when seeing this. Trusted Sites Internet Explorer has this really nifty feature that allows users to specify what sites they trust, and by some defaults IE7 only allows trusted sites to be viewed.  No problem, they set your website as trusted. But what about your CDN? If a user sets your websites to trusted, but not the CDN, they will not download those static files. This has the potential to totally break your web site. Pedantic Network Admins This alone is sometimes the killer of projects. However, always be careful when you are going to use a CDN for a professional project. If a network / security admin sees that you’re referencing an outside source, or that a call from a website might hit an outside domain.. panties will be bunched, emails will be spewed out and well, no one wants that.

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• Do We Indeed Have a Future? George Takei on Star Wars.

  - by Bil Simser

  George Takei (rhymes with Okay), probably best known for playing Hikaru Sulu on the original Star Trek, has always had deep concerns for the present and the future. Whether on Earth or among the stars, he has the welfare of humanity very much at heart. I was digging through my old copies of Famous Monsters of Filmland, a great publication on monster and films that I grew up with, and came across this. This was his reaction to STAR WARS from issue 139 of Famous Monsters of Filmland and was written June 6, 1977. It is reprinted here without permission but I hope since the message is still valid to this day and has never been reprinted anywhere, nobody will mind me sharing it. STAR WARS is the most pre-posterously diverting galactic escape and at the same time the most hideously credible portent of the future yet.While I thrilled to the exploits that reminded me of the heroics of Errol Flynn as Robin Hood, Burt Lancaster as the Crimson Pirate and Buster Crabbe as Flash Gordon, I was at the same time aghast at the phantasmagoric violence technology can place at our disposal. STAR WARS raised in my mind the question - do we indeed have a future?It seems to me what George Lucas has done is to masterfully guide us on a journey through space and time and bring us back face to face with today's reality. STAR WARS is more than science fiction, I think it is science fictitious reality.Just yesterday, June 7, 1977, I read that the United States will embark on the production of a neutron bomb - a bomb that will kill people on a gigantic scale but will not destroy buildings. A few days before that, I read that the Pentagon is fearful that the Soviets may have developed a warhead that could neutralize ours that have a capacity for that irrational concept overkill to the nth power. Already, it seems we have the technology to realize the awesome special effects simulations that we saw in the film.The political scene of STAR WARS is that of government by force and power, of revolutions based on some unfathomable grievance, survival through a combination of cunning and luck and success by the harnessing of technology -  a picture not very much at variance from the political headlines that we read today.And most of all, look at the people; both the heroes in the film and the reaction of the audience. First, the heroes; Luke Skywalker is a pretty but easily led youth. Without any real philosophy to guide him, he easily falls under the influence of a mystical old man believed previously to be an eccentric hermit. Recognize a 1960's hippie or a 1970's moonie? Han Solo has a philosophy coupled with courage and skill. His philosophy is money. His proficiency comes for a price - the highest. Solo is a thoroughly avaricious mercenary. And the Princess, a decisive, strong, self-confident and chilly woman. The audience cheered when she wielded a gun. In all three, I missed qualities that could be called humane - love, kindness, yes, I missed sensuality. I also missed a sense of ideals and faith. In this regard the machines seemed more human. They demonstrated real affection for each other and an occasional poutiness. They exhibited a sense of fidelity and constancy. The machines were humanized and the humans conversely seemed mechanical.As a member of the audience, I was swept up by the sheer romantic escapsim of it all. The deering-dos, the rope swing escape across the pit, the ray gun battles and especially the swash buckle with the ray swords. Great fun!But I just hope that we weren't too intoxicated by the escapism to be able to focus on the recognizable. I hope the beauty of the effects didn't narcotize our sensitivity to violence. I hope the people see through the fantastically well done futuristic mirrors to the disquieting reflection of our own society. I hope they enjoy STAR WARS without being "purely entertained".

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• Major Analyst Report Chooses Oracle As An ECM Leader

  - by brian.dirking(at)oracle.com

  Oracle announced that Gartner, Inc. has named Oracle as a Leader in its latest "Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Content Management" in a press release issued this morning. Gartner's Magic Quadrant reports position vendors within a particular quadrant based on their completeness of vision and ability to execute. According to Gartner, "Leaders have the highest combined scores for Ability to Execute and Completeness of Vision. They are doing well and are prepared for the future with a clearly articulated vision. In the context of ECM, they have strong channel partners, presence in multiple regions, consistent financial performance, broad platform support and good customer support. In addition, they dominate in one or more technology or vertical market. Leaders deliver a suite that addresses market demand for direct delivery of the majority of core components, though these are not necessarily owned by them, tightly integrated, unique or best-of-breed in each area. We place more emphasis this year on demonstrated enterprise deployments; integration with other business applications and content repositories; incorporation of Web 2.0 and XML capabilities; and vertical-process and horizontal-solution focus. Leaders should drive market transformation." "To extend content governance and best practices across the enterprise, organizations need an enterprise content management solution that delivers a broad set of functionality and is tightly integrated with business processes," said Andy MacMillan, vice president, Product Management, Oracle. "We believe that Oracle's position as a Leader in this report is recognition of the industry-leading performance, integration and scalability delivered in Oracle Enterprise Content Management Suite 11g." With Oracle Enterprise Content Management Suite 11g, Oracle offers a comprehensive, integrated and high-performance content management solution that helps organizations increase efficiency, reduce costs and improve content security. In the report, Oracle is grouped among the top three vendors for execution, and is the furthest to the right, placing Oracle as the most visionary vendor. This vision stems from Oracle's integration of content management right into key business processes, delivering content in context as people need it. Using a PeopleSoft Accounts Payable user as an example, as an employee processes an invoice, Oracle ECM Suite brings that invoice up on the screen so the processor can verify the content right in the process, improving speed and accuracy. Oracle integrates content into business processes such as Human Resources, Travel and Expense, and others, in the major enterprise applications such as PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Siebel, and E-Business Suite. As part of Oracle's Enterprise Application Documents strategy, you can see an example of these integrations in this webinar: Managing Customer Documents and Marketing Assets in Siebel. You can also get a white paper of the ROI Embry Riddle achieved using Oracle Content Management integrated with enterprise applications. Embry Riddle moved from a point solution for content management on accounts payable to an infrastructure investment - they are now using Oracle Content Management for accounts payable with Oracle E-Business Suite, and for student on-boarding with PeopleSoft e-Campus. They continue to expand their use of Oracle Content Management to address further use cases from a core infrastructure. Oracle also shows its vision in the ability to deliver content optimized for online channels. Marketers can use Oracle ECM Suite to deliver digital assets and offers as part of an integrated campaign that understands website visitors and ensures that they are given the most pertinent information and offers. Oracle also provides full lifecycle management through its built-in records management. Companies are able to manage the lifecycle of content (both records and non-records) through built-in retention management. And with the integration of Oracle ECM Suite and Sun Storage Archive Manager, content can be routed to the appropriate storage media based upon content type, usage data or other business rules. This ensures that the most accessed content is instantly available, and archived content is stored on a more appropriate medium like tape. You can learn more in this webinar - Oracle Content Management and Sun Tiered Storage. If you are interested in reading more about why Oracle was chosen as a Leader, view the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Content Management.

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• Type Casting variables in PHP: Is there a practical example?

  - by Stephen

  PHP, as most of us know, has weak typing. For those who don't, PHP.net says: PHP does not require (or support) explicit type definition in variable declaration; a variable's type is determined by the context in which the variable is used. Love it or hate it, PHP re-casts variables on-the-fly. So, the following code is valid: $var = "10"; $value = 10 + $var; var_dump($value); // int(20) PHP also alows you to explicitly cast a variable, like so: $var = "10"; $value = 10 + $var; $value = (string)$value; var_dump($value); // string(2) "20" That's all cool... but, for the life of me, I cannot conceive of a practical reason for doing this. I don't have a problem with strong typing in languages that support it, like Java. That's fine, and I completely understand it. Also, I'm aware of—and fully understand the usefulness of—type hinting in function parameters. The problem I have with type casting is explained by the above quote. If PHP can swap types at-will, it can do so even after you force cast a type; and it can do so on-the-fly when you need a certain type in an operation. That makes the following valid: $var = "10"; $value = (int)$var; $value = $value . ' TaDa!'; var_dump($value); // string(8) "10 TaDa!" So what's the point? Can anyone show me a practical application or example of type casting—one that would fail if type casting were not involved? I ask this here instead of SO because I figure practicality is too subjective. Edit in response to Chris' comment Take this theoretical example of a world where user-defined type casting makes sense in PHP: You force cast variable $foo as int -- (int)$foo. You attempt to store a string value in the variable $foo. PHP throws an exception!! <--- That would make sense. Suddenly the reason for user defined type casting exists! The fact that PHP will switch things around as needed makes the point of user defined type casting vague. For example, the following two code samples are equivalent: // example 1 $foo = 0; $foo = (string)$foo; $foo = '# of Reasons for the programmer to type cast $foo as a string: ' . $foo; // example 2 $foo = 0; $foo = (int)$foo; $foo = '# of Reasons for the programmer to type cast $foo as a string: ' . $foo; UPDATE Guess who found himself using typecasting in a practical environment? Yours Truly. The requirement was to display money values on a website for a restaurant menu. The design of the site required that trailing zeros be trimmed, so that the display looked something like the following: Menu Item 1 .............. $ 4 Menu Item 2 .............. $ 7.5 Menu Item 3 .............. $ 3 The best way I found to do that wast to cast the variable as a float: $price = '7.50'; // a string from the database layer. echo 'Menu Item 2 .............. $ ' . (float)$price; PHP trims the float's trailing zeros, and then recasts the float as a string for concatenation.

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• Don&rsquo;t Kill the Password

  - by Anthony Trudeau

  A week ago Mr. Honan from Wired.com penned an article on security he titled “Kill the Password: Why a String of Characters Can’t Protect Us Anymore.” He asserts that the password is not effective and a new solution is needed. Unfortunately, Mr. Honan was a victim of hacking. As a result he has a victim’s vendetta. His conclusion is ill conceived even though there are smatterings of truth and good advice. The password is a security barrier much like a lock on your door. In of itself it’s not guaranteeing protection. You can have a good password akin to a steel reinforced door with the best lock money can buy, or you can have a poor password like “password” which is like a sliding lock like on a bathroom stall. But, just like in the real world a lock isn’t always enough. You can have a lock, security system, video cameras, guard dogs, and even armed security guards; but none of that guarantees your protection. Even top secret government agencies can be breached by someone who is just that good (as dramatized in movies like Mission Impossible). And that’s the crux of it. There are real hackers out there that are that good. Killer coding ninja monkeys do exist! We still have locks on our doors, because they still serve their role. Passwords are no different. Security doesn’t end with the password. Most people would agree that stuffing your mattress with your life savings isn’t a good idea even if you have the best locks and security system. Most people agree its safest to have the money in a bank. Essentially this is compartmentalization. Compartmentalization extends to the online world as well. You’re at risk if your online banking accounts are linked to the same account as your social networks. This is especially true if you’re lackadaisical about linking those social networks to outside sources including apps. The object here is to minimize the damage that can be done. An attacker should not be able to get into your bank account, because they breached your Twitter account. It’s time to prioritize once you’ve compartmentalized. This simply means deciding how much security you want for the different compartments which I’ll call security zones. Social networking applications like Facebook provide a lot of security features. However, security features are almost always a compromise with privacy and convenience. It’s similar to an engineering adage, but in this case it’s security, convenience, and privacy – pick two. For example, you might use a safe instead of bank to store your money, because the convenience of having your money closer or the privacy of not having the bank records is more important than the added security. The following are lists of security do’s and don’ts (these aren’t meant to be exhaustive and each could be an article in of themselves): Security Do’s: Use strong passwords based on a phrase Use encryption whenever you can (e.g. HTTPS in Facebook) Use a firewall (and learn to use it properly) Configure security on your router (including port blocking) Keep your operating system patched Make routine backups of important files Realize that if you’re not paying for it, you’re the product Security Don’ts Link accounts if at all possible Reuse passwords across your security zones Use real answers for security questions (e.g. mother’s maiden name) Trust anything you download Ignore message boxes shown by your system or browser Forget to test your backups Share your primary email indiscriminately Only you can decide your comfort level between convenience, privacy, and security. Attackers are going to find exploits in software. Software is complex and depends on other software. The exploits are the responsibility of the software company. But your security is always your responsibility. Complete security is an illusion. But, there is plenty you can do to minimize the risk online just like you do in the physical world. Be safe and enjoy what the Internet has to offer. I expect passwords to be necessary just as long as locks.

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• Why Haven’t NFC Payments Taken Off?

  - by David Dorf

  With the EMV 2015 milestone approaching rapidly, there’s been renewed interest in smartcards, those credit cards with an embedded computer chip.  Back in 1996 I was working for a vendor helping Visa introduce a stored-value smartcard to the US.  Visa Cash was debuted at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, and I firmly believed it was the beginning of a cashless society.  (I later worked on MasterCard’s system called Mondex, from the UK, which debuted the following year in Manhattan). But since you don’t have a Visa Cash card in your wallet, it’s obvious the project never took off.  It was convenient for consumers, faster for merchants, and more cost-effective for banks, so why did it fail?  All emerging payment systems suffer from the chicken-and-egg dilemma.  Consumers won’t carry the cards if few merchants accept them, and merchants won’t install the terminals if few consumers have cards. Today’s emerging payment providers are in a similar pickle.  There has to be enough value for all three constituents – consumers, merchants, banks – to change the status quo.  And it’s not enough to exceed the value, it’s got to be a leap in value, because people generally resist change.  ATMs and transit cards are great examples of this, and airline kiosks and self-checkout systems are to a lesser extent. Although Google Wallet and ISIS, the two leading NFC payment platforms in the US, have shown strong commitment, there’s been very little traction.  Yes, I can load my credit card number into my phone then tap to pay, but what was the incremental value over swiping my old card?  For it to be a leap in value, it has to offer more than just payment, which I can do very easily today.  The other two ingredients are thought to be loyalty programs and digital coupons, but neither Google nor ISIS really did them well. Of course a large portion of the mobile phone market doesn’t even support NFC thanks to Apple, and since it’s not in their best interest that situation is unlikely to change.  Another issue is getting access to the “secure element,” the chip inside the phone where accounts numbers can be held securely.  Telco providers and handset manufacturers own that area, and they’re not willing to share with banks.  (Host Card Emulation, which has been endorsed by MasterCard and Visa, might be a solution.) Square recently gave up on its wallet, and MCX (the group of retailers trying to create a mobile payment platform) is very slow out of the gate.  That leaves PayPal and a slew of smaller companies trying to introduce easier ways to pay. But is it really so cumbersome to carry and swipe (soon to insert) a credit card?  Aren’t there more important problems to solve in the retail customer experience?  Maybe Apple will come up with some novel way to use iBeacons and fingerprint identification to make payments, but for now I think we need to focus on upgrading to Chip-and-PIN and tightening security.  In the meantime, NFC payments will continue to struggle.

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• SQLAuthority News – Top 5 Latest Microsoft Certifications of 2013 – Guest Post

  - by Pinal Dave

  With the IT job market getting more and more competent by the day, certifications are a must for anyone who wishes to get a strong foothold in the industry. Microsoft community comes up with regular updates and enhancements in its existing products to keep up with the rapidly evolving requirements of the ICT industry. We bring you a list of five latest Microsoft certifications that you must consider acquiring this year. MCSE: SharePoint Learn all about Windows Server 2012 and Microsoft SharePoint 2013, which brings an advanced set of features to the fore in this latest version. It introduces new capabilities for business intelligence, social media, branding, search, identity management, mobile device among other features. Enjoy a great user experience with sharing and collaboration in community forum, within a pixel-perfect SharePoint website. Data connectivity and business intelligence tools allow users to process and access data, analyze reports, share and collaborate with each other more conveniently. Microsoft Specialist: Microsoft Project 2013 The only project management system that works seamlessly with other applications and cloud solutions of Microsoft, MS Project 2013 offers more than what meets the eye.  It provides for easier management and monitoring of projects so that users can ensure timely delivery while improving the productivity significantly. So keep all your projects on track and collaborate with your team like never before with this enhanced release! This one’s a must for all project managers. MCSE Messaging Another one of Microsoft gems is its messaging environment which has also launched the latest release Microsoft Exchange Server 2013. Messaging administrators can take up this training and validate their expertise in Unified Messaging, Exchange Online, PowerShell and Virtualization strategies, through MCSE Messaging certification in Exchange Server. If you wish to enhance productivity and data security of your organization while being flexible and extremely efficient, this is the right certification for you. MCSE Communication An enterprise can function optimally on the strength of its information flow and communication systems. With Lync Server 2013, you can introduce a whole new world of unified communications which consists of audio/video conferencing, dial-in, Persistent Chat, instant chat, and EDGE services in your organization. Utilize IT to serve and support business objectives by mastering this UC technology with this latest MCSE Communication course on using Microsoft Lync Server 2013. MCSE: SQL Server 2012 BI Platform The decision making process is largely influenced by underlying enterprise information used by the management for business intelligence. Therefore, a robust business intelligence platform that anchors enterprise IT and transform it to operational efficiencies is the need of the hour. SQL Server 2012 BI Platform certification helps professionals implement, manage and maintain a BI database infrastructure effectively. IT professionals with BI skills are highly sought after these days. MCSD: Windows Store Apps A Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer certification in Windows Store Apps validates your potential in designing interactive apps. Learn The Essentials of Developing Windows Store Apps using HTML5 and JavaScript and establish yourself as an ace developer capable of creating fast and fluid Metro style apps for Windows 8 that are accessible on a variety of devices. You can also go ahead and Learn Essentials of Developing Windows Store Apps using C# mode if you’re already familiar and working with C# programming language. Hence the developers are free to choose their own favorite development stream which opens doors for them to get ready for the latest and exciting application development platform called Windows store apps. Software developers with these skills are in great demand in the industry today. In order to continue being competitive in your respective fields, it is imperative that IT personnel update their knowledge on a regular basis. Certifications are a means to achieve this goal. Not considered to be an optional pre-requisite anymore, major IT certifications such as these are now essential to stay afloat in a cut-throat industry where technologies change on a daily basis. This blog is written by Aruneet Anand of Koenig Solutions. Koenig Solutions does training for all of the above courses. For more information, visit the website. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Microsoft Certifications

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• Introducing functional programming constructs in non-functional programming languages

  - by Giorgio

  This question has been going through my mind quite a lot lately and since I haven't found a convincing answer to it I would like to know if other users of this site have thought about it as well. In the recent years, even though OOP is still the most popular programming paradigm, functional programming is getting a lot of attention. I have only used OOP languages for my work (C++ and Java) but I am trying to learn some FP in my free time because I find it very interesting. So, I started learning Haskell three years ago and Scala last summer. I plan to learn some SML and Caml as well, and to brush up my (little) knowledge of Scheme. Well, a lot of plans (too ambitious?) but I hope I will find the time to learn at least the basics of FP during the next few years. What is important for me is how functional programming works and how / whether I can use it for some real projects. I have already developed small tools in Haskell. In spite of my strong interest for FP, I find it difficult to understand why functional programming constructs are being added to languages like C#, Java, C++, and so on. As a developer interested in FP, I find it more natural to use, say, Scala or Haskell, instead of waiting for the next FP feature to be added to my favourite non-FP language. In other words, why would I want to have only some FP in my originally non-FP language instead of looking for a language that has a better support for FP? For example, why should I be interested to have lambdas in Java if I can switch to Scala where I have much more FP concepts and access all the Java libraries anyway? Similarly: why do some FP in C# instead of using F# (to my knowledge, C# and F# can work together)? Java was designed to be OO. Fine. I can do OOP in Java (and I would like to keep using Java in that way). Scala was designed to support OOP + FP. Fine: I can use a mix of OOP and FP in Scala. Haskell was designed for FP: I can do FP in Haskell. If I need to tune the performance of a particular module, I can interface Haskell with some external routines in C. But why would I want to do OOP with just some basic FP in Java? So, my main point is: why are non-functional programming languages being extended with some functional concept? Shouldn't it be more comfortable (interesting, exciting, productive) to program in a language that has been designed from the very beginning to be functional or multi-paradigm? Don't different programming paradigms integrate better in a language that was designed for it than in a language in which one paradigm was only added later? The first explanation I could think of is that, since FP is a new concept (it isn't new at all, but it is new for many developers), it needs to be introduced gradually. However, I remember my switch from imperative to OOP: when I started to program in C++ (coming from Pascal and C) I really had to rethink the way in which I was coding, and to do it pretty fast. It was not gradual. So, this does not seem to be a good explanation to me. Or can it be that many non-FP programmers are not really interested in understanding and using functional programming, but they find it practically convenient to adopt certain FP-idioms in their non-FP language? IMPORTANT NOTE Just in case (because I have seen several language wars on this site): I mentioned the languages I know better, this question is in no way meant to start comparisons between different programming languages to decide which is better / worse. Also, I am not interested in a comparison of OOP versus FP (pros and cons). The point I am interested in is to understand why FP is being introduced one bit at a time into existing languages that were not designed for it even though there exist languages that were / are specifically designed to support FP.

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• Know Your Audience, And/Or Your Customer

  - by steve.diamond

  Yesterday I gave an internal presentation to about 20 Oracle employees on "messaging," not messaging technology, but embarking on the process of building messages. One of the elements I covered was the importance of really knowing and understanding your audience. As a humorous reference I included two side-by-side photos of Oakland A's fans and Oakland Raiders fans. The Oakland A's fans looked like happy-go-lucky drunk types. The Oakland Raiders fans looked like angry extras from a low budget horror flick. I then asked my presentation attendees what these two groups had in common. Here's what I heard. --They're human (at least I THINK they're human). --They're from Oakland. --They're sports fans. After that, it was anyone's guess. A few days earlier we were putting the finishing touches on a sales presentation for one of our product lines. We had included an upfront "lead in" addressing how the economy is improving, yet that doesn't mean sales executives will have any more resources to add to their teams, invest in technology, etc. This "lead in" included miscellaneous news article headlines and statistics validating the slowly improving economy. When we subjected this presentation to internal review two days ago, this upfront section in particular was scrutinized. "Is the economy really getting better? I (exclamation point) don't think it's really getting better. Haven't you seen the headlines coming out of Greece and Europe?" Then the question TO ME became, "Who will actually be in the audience that sees and hears this presentation? Will s/he be someone like me? Or will s/he be someone like the critic who didn't like our lead-in?" We took the safe route and removed that lead in. After all, why start a "pitch" with a component that is arguably subjective? What if many of our audience members are individuals at organizations still facing a strong headwind? For reasons I won't go into here, it was the right decision to make. The moral of the story: Make sure you really know your audience. Harness the wisdom of the information your organization's CRM systems collect to get that fully informed "customer view." Conduct formal research. Conduct INFORMAL research. Ask lots of questions. Study industries and scenarios that have nothing to do with yours to see "how they do it." Stop strangers in coffee shops and on the street...seriously. Last week I caught up with an old friend from high school who recently retired from a 25 year career with the USMC. He said, "I can learn something from every single person I come into contact with." What a great way of approaching the world. Then, think about and write down what YOU like and dislike as a customer. But also remember that when it comes to your company's products, you are most likely NOT the customer, so don't go overboard in superimposing your own world view. Approaching the study of customers this way adds rhyme, reason and CONTEXT to lengthy blog posts like this one. Know your audience.

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• The Hunger Games for Aspiring IT Professionals

  - by Dain C. Hansen

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} It seems that no one can escape the buzz around Hunger Games. And who could? Stephen King said it best in his review when he referred to the Collins’ novel as “a violent, jarring speed-rap of a novel that generates nearly constant suspense and may also generate a fair amount of controversy”. So what’s the tie in for IT? Let’s leave the dystopia of District 12 and come back to today’s reality. This is the world of radical IT paradigm shifts that haven’t been seen since Java was introduced in 1995. Everything you learned in school is probably outdated as of Friday. And everything you learned on Friday will probably change when you get to work on Monday. Nevertheless, we’re eager, we’re aspiring, we’re hungry to learn. While the challenges upon us may not rival the venomous bees (or ‘tracker jackers’) seen in this blockbuster, there are certainly obstacles to be found. In preparation, I leave you two pieces of advice - aside from avoiding werewolves… Learn the Cloud If you had asked me what to learn in 1995, I would have said, “Go learn Java”. But now my advice is “Go learn Java and then learn Cloud”. Cloud computing and Java go hand in hand. This is especially true for Oracle’s own Public Cloud which uses Java (via WebLogic 12c) as well as Oracle Database at its core foundation. Understanding the connotations of elasticity, scale, virtualization, and multi-tenancy, (to name just a few) requires a strong foundation in computer science and especially Java to get it right. Without Java, the Cloud is nothing more than a brittle application meagerly deployed on the internet. Get Social and Actively Participate And at all levels. Socializing your ideas internally is dreadfully important. And this means socializing and communicating your good ideas to lines of business, to architects, business analysts, developers, DBAs and Operations. But don’t forget to go external. Stay current by being on the lookout for blogs, tweets, webcasts, papers, podcasts and videos for your technology area. Be not just a subscriber but a participant in these channels as well. Attend industry and vendor sponsored events to learn from the experts – and seek out opportunities to stay connected with those that are smarter than you. You’ll gain more understanding if you participate actively. At the same time you’ll make friends (and allies) and you’ll be glad you did. Tell help you get social and actively participate [while learning the Cloud] here are a couple of pointers for you: See our website on Cloud and Fusion Middleware Subscribe to our regular Fusion Middleware Newsletter Follow us on Twitter and Facebook Find us at one of our key events Meanwhile, happy IT hunger games!

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• Session Update from IASA 2010

  - by [email protected]

  Below: Tom Kristensen, senior vice president at Marsh US Consumer, and Roger Soppe, CLU, LUTCF, senior director of insurance strategy, Oracle Insurance. Tom and Roger participated in a panel discussion on policy administration systems this week at IASA 2010. This week was the 82nd Annual IASA Educational Conference & Business Show held in Grapevine, Texas. While attending the conference, I had the pleasure of serving as a panelist in one of many of the outstanding sessions conducted this year. The session - entitled "Achieving Business Agility and Promoting Growth with a Modern Policy Administration System" - included industry experts Steve Forte from OneShield, Mike Sciole of IFG Companies, and Tom Kristensen, senior vice president at Marsh US Consumer. The session was conducted as a panel discussion and focused on how insurers can leverage best practices to mitigate risk while enabling rapid product innovation through a modern policy administration system. The panelists offered insight into business and technical challenges for both Life & Annuity and Property & Casualty carriers. The session had three primary learning objectives: Identifying how replacing a legacy system with a more modern policy administration solution can deliver agility and growth Identifying how processes and system should be re-engineered or replaced in order to improve speed-to-market and product support Uncovering how to leverage best practices to mitigate risk during a migration to a new platform Tom Kristensen, who is an industry veteran with over 20 years of experience, was able was able to offer a unique perspective as a business process outsourcer (BPO). Marsh US Consumer is currently implementing both the Oracle Insurance Policy Administration solution and the Oracle Revenue Management and Billing platform while at the same time implementing a new BPO customer. Tom offered insight on the need to replace their aging systems and Marsh's ability to drive new products and processes with a modern solution. As a best practice, their current project has empowered their business users to play a major role in both the requirements gathering and configuration phases. Tom stated that working with a modern solution has also enabled his organization to use a more agile implementation methodology and get hands-on experience with the software earlier in the project. He also indicated that Marsh was encouraged by how quickly it will be able to implement new products, which is another major advantage of a modern rules-based system. One of the more interesting issues was raised by an audience member who asked, "With all the vendor solutions available in North American and across Europe, what is going to make some of them more successful than others and help ensure their long term success?" Panelist Mike Sciole, IFG Companies suggested that carriers do their due diligence and follow a structured evaluation process focusing on vendors who demonstrate they have the "cash to invest in long term R&D" and evaluate audited annual statements for verification. Other panelists suggested that the vendor space will continue to evolve and those with a strong strategy focused on the insurance industry and a solid roadmap will likely separate themselves from the rest. The session concluded with the panelists offering advice about not being afraid to evaluate new modern systems. While migrating to a new platform can be challenging and is typically only undertaken every 15+ years by carriers, the ability to rapidly deploy and manage new products, create consistent processes to better service customers, and the ability to manage their business more effectively, transparently and securely are well worth the effort. Roger A.Soppe, CLU, LUTCF, is the Senior Director of Insurance Strategy, Oracle Insurance.

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• Oracle Data Integration 12c: Simplified, Future-Ready, High-Performance Solutions

  - by Thanos Terentes Printzios

  In today’s data-driven business environment, organizations need to cost-effectively manage the ever-growing streams of information originating both inside and outside the firewall and address emerging deployment styles like cloud, big data analytics, and real-time replication. Oracle Data Integration delivers pervasive and continuous access to timely and trusted data across heterogeneous systems. Oracle is enhancing its data integration offering announcing the general availability of 12c release for the key data integration products: Oracle Data Integrator 12c and Oracle GoldenGate 12c, delivering Simplified and High-Performance Solutions for Cloud, Big Data Analytics, and Real-Time Replication. The new release delivers extreme performance, increase IT productivity, and simplify deployment, while helping IT organizations to keep pace with new data-oriented technology trends including cloud computing, big data analytics, real-time business intelligence. With the 12c release Oracle becomes the new leader in the data integration and replication technologies as no other vendor offers such a complete set of data integration capabilities for pervasive, continuous access to trusted data across Oracle platforms as well as third-party systems and applications. Oracle Data Integration 12c release addresses data-driven organizations’ critical and evolving data integration requirements under 3 key themes: Future-Ready Solutions : Supporting Current and Emerging Initiatives Extreme Performance : Even higher performance than ever before Fast Time-to-Value : Higher IT Productivity and Simplified Solutions  With the new capabilities in Oracle Data Integrator 12c, customers can benefit from: Superior developer productivity, ease of use, and rapid time-to-market with the new flow-based mapping model, reusable mappings, and step-by-step debugger. Increased performance when executing data integration processes due to improved parallelism. Improved productivity and monitoring via tighter integration with Oracle GoldenGate 12c and Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c. Improved interoperability with Oracle Warehouse Builder which enables faster and easier migration to Oracle Data Integrator’s strategic data integration offering. Faster implementation of business analytics through Oracle Data Integrator pre-integrated with Oracle BI Applications’ latest release. Oracle Data Integrator also integrates simply and easily with Oracle Business Analytics tools, including OBI-EE and Oracle Hyperion. Support for loading and transforming big and fast data, enabled by integration with big data technologies: Hadoop, Hive, HDFS, and Oracle Big Data Appliance. Only Oracle GoldenGate provides the best-of-breed real-time replication of data in heterogeneous data environments. With the new capabilities in Oracle GoldenGate 12c, customers can benefit from: Simplified setup and management of Oracle GoldenGate 12c when using multiple database delivery processes via a new Coordinated Delivery feature for non-Oracle databases. Expanded heterogeneity through added support for the latest versions of major databases such as Sybase ASE v 15.7, MySQL NDB Clusters 7.2, and MySQL 5.6., as well as integration with Oracle Coherence. Enhanced high availability and data protection via integration with Oracle Data Guard and Fast-Start Failover integration. Enhanced security for credentials and encryption keys using Oracle Wallet. Real-time replication for databases hosted on public cloud environments supported by third-party clouds. Tight integration between Oracle Data Integrator 12c and Oracle GoldenGate 12c and other Oracle technologies, such as Oracle Database 12c and Oracle Applications, provides a number of benefits for organizations: Tight integration between Oracle Data Integrator 12c and Oracle GoldenGate 12c enables developers to leverage Oracle GoldenGate’s low overhead, real-time change data capture completely within the Oracle Data Integrator Studio without additional training. Integration with Oracle Database 12c provides a strong foundation for seamless private cloud deployments. Delivers real-time data for reporting, zero downtime migration, and improved performance and availability for Oracle Applications, such as Oracle E-Business Suite and ATG Web Commerce . Oracle’s data integration offering is optimized for Oracle Engineered Systems and is an integral part of Oracle’s fast data, real-time analytics strategy on Oracle Exadata Database Machine and Oracle Exalytics In-Memory Machine. Oracle Data Integrator 12c and Oracle GoldenGate 12c differentiate the new offering on data integration with these many new features. This is just a quick glimpse into Oracle Data Integrator 12c and Oracle GoldenGate 12c. Find out much more about the new release in the video webcast "Introducing 12c for Oracle Data Integration", where customer and partner speakers, including SolarWorld, BT, Rittman Mead will join us in launching the new release. Resource Kits Meet Oracle Data Integration 12c  Discover what's new with Oracle Goldengate 12c  Oracle EMEA DIS (Data Integration Solutions) Partner Community is available for all your questions, while additional partner focused webcasts will be made available through our blog here, so stay connected. For any questions please contact us at partner.imc-AT-beehiveonline.oracle-DOT-com Stay Connected Oracle Newsletters

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• Functional programming constructs in non-functional programming languages

  - by Giorgio

  This question has been going through my mind quite a lot lately and since I haven't found a convincing answer to it I would like to know if other users of this site have thought about it as well. In the recent years, even though OOP is still the most popular programming paradigm, functional programming is getting a lot of attention. I have only used OOP languages for my work (C++ and Java) but I am trying to learn some FP in my free time because I find it very interesting. So, I started learning Haskell three years ago and Scala last summer. I plan to learn some SML and Caml as well, and to brush up my (little) knowledge of Scheme. Well, a lot of plans (too ambitious?) but I hope I will find the time to learn at least the basics of FP during the next few years. What is important for me is how functional programming works and how / whether I can use it for some real projects. I have already developed small tools in Haskell. In spite of my strong interest for FP, I find it difficult to understand why functional programming constructs are being added to languages like C#, Java, C++, and so on. As a developer interested in FP, I find it more natural to use, say, Scala or Haskell, instead of waiting for the next FP feature to be added to my favourite non-FP language. In other words, why would I want to have only some FP in my originally non-FP language instead of looking for a language that has a better support for FP? For example, why should I be interested to have lambdas in Java if I can switch to Scala where I have much more FP concepts and access all the Java libraries anyway? Similarly: why do some FP in C# instead of using F# (to my knowledge, C# and F# can work together)? Java was designed to be OO. Fine. I can do OOP in Java (and I would like to keep using Java in that way). Scala was designed to support OOP + FP. Fine: I can use a mix of OOP and FP in Scala. Haskell was designed for FP: I can do FP in Haskell. If I need to tune the performance of a particular module, I can interface Haskell with some external routines in C. But why would I want to do OOP with just some basic FP in Java? So, my main point is: why are non-functional programming languages being extended with some functional concept? Shouldn't it be more comfortable (interesting, exciting, productive) to program in a language that has been designed from the very beginning to be functional or multi-paradigm? Don't different programming paradigms integrate better in a language that was designed for it than in a language in which one paradigm was only added later? The first explanation I could think of is that, since FP is a new concept (it isn't new at all, but it is new for many developers), it needs to be introduced gradually. However, I remember my switch from imperative to OOP: when I started to program in C++ (coming from Pascal and C) I really had to rethink the way in which I was coding, and to do it pretty fast. It was not gradual. So, this does not seem to be a good explanation to me. Also, I asked myself if my impression is just plainly wrong due to lack of knowledge. E.g., do C# and C++11 support FP as extensively as, say, Scala or Caml do? In this case, my question would be simply non-existent. Or can it be that many non-FP programmers are not really interested in using functional programming, but they find it practically convenient to adopt certain FP-idioms in their non-FP language? IMPORTANT NOTE Just in case (because I have seen several language wars on this site): I mentioned the languages I know better, this question is in no way meant to start comparisons between different programming languages to decide which is better / worse. Also, I am not interested in a comparison of OOP versus FP (pros and cons). The point I am interested in is to understand why FP is being introduced one bit at a time into existing languages that were not designed for it even though there exist languages that were / are specifically designed to support FP.

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• Willy Rotstein on Supply Chain Planning

  - by sarah.taylor(at)oracle.com

  Each time a merchandiser, buyer or planner in Retail makes a business decision around assortment, inventory, pricing and promotions there is an opportunity to improve both Profitability and Customer Service. Improving decision making, however, has always been a tricky business for retailers.  I have worked in this space for more than 15 years. I began my career as an academic, at Imperial College London, and then broadened this interest with Retailers, aiming to optimize their merchandising and supply chain decisions. Planning the business and optimizing profit is a complex process. The complexity arises from the variety of people involved, the large number of decisions to take across all business processes, the uncertainty intrinsic to the retail environment as well as the volume of data available for analysis.  Things are not getting any easier either. The advent of multi-channel, social media and mobile is taking these complexities to a new level and presenting additional opportunities for those willing to exploit them. I guess it is due to the complexities of the decision making process that, over the last couple of years working with Oracle Retail, I have witnessed a clear trend around the deployment of planning systems. Retailers are aiming to simplify their decision making processes. They want to use one joined up planning platform across the business and enhance it with "actionable" data mining and optimization techniques. At Oracle Retail, we have a vibrant community of international retailers who regularly come together to discuss the big issues in retail planning. It is a combination of fashion, grocery and speciality retailers, all sharing their best practice vision for planning and optimizing merchandise decisions. As part of the Retail Exchange program, at the recent National Retail Federation event in New York, I jointly hosted a Planning dinner with Peter Fitzgerald from Google UK, Retail Division. Those retailers from our international planning community who were in New York for the annual NRF event were able to attend. The group comprised some of Europe's great International Retail brands.  All sectors were represented by organisations like Mango, LVMH, Ahold, Morrisons, Shop Direct and River Island. They confirmed the current importance of engaging with Planning and Optimization issues. In particular the impact of the internet was a key topic. We had a great debate about new retail initiatives.  Peter highlighted how mobility is changing retail - in particular with the new "local availability search" initiative. We also had an exciting discussion around the opportunities to improve merchandising using the new data that is becoming available from search, social media and ecommerce sites. It will be our focus to continue to help retailers translate this data into better results while keeping their business operations simple. New developments in "actionable" analytics and computing capacity make this a very exciting area today. Watch this space for my contributions on these topics which will be made available through this blog. Oracle Retail has a strong Planning community. if you are a category manager, a planner, a buyer, a merchandiser, a retail supplier or any retail executive with a keen interest in planning then you would be very welcome to join Oracle Retail's Planning Community. As part of our community you will be able to join our in-person and virtual events, download topical white papers and best practice information specifically tailored to your area of interest.  If anyone would like to register their interest in joining our community of retailers discussing planning then please contact me at [email protected]   Willy Rotstein, Oracle Retail

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