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  • 101 Ways to Participate...and make the future Java

    - by heathervc
     In case you missed it earlier today, and as promised in BOF6283, here are the 101 Ways to Improve (and Make the Future) Java...thanks to Bruno Souza of SouJava and Martijn Verburg of the London Java Community for their contributions! Join or create a JUG Come to the meetings Help promoting your JUG: twitter, facebook, etc Find someone that can give a talk Get your company to sponsor (a meeting, an event) Organize an activity (meetings, hackathons, dojos, etc) Answer questions on a mailing list (or simply join!) Volunteer for a small, one time tasks (creating a web page, helping with an activity) Come early to an event, and help to carry the piano Moderate a list or add things to the wiki Participate in the organization meetings or mailing lists Take pictures of an event or meeting and publish them online Write a blog about an event or meeting, to help promote the group Help record and post a session online Present your JavaOne experience when you get back Repeat the best talk you saw at JavaOne at a JUG meeting Send this list of ideas to other Java developers in your area so they can help out too! Present a step-by-step tutorial Present GreenFoot and Alice to school students Present BlueJ and Alice to university students Teach those tools to teachers and professors Write a step-by-step tutorial on your blog or to a magazine Create a page that lists resources Give a talk about your favorite Java feature or technology Learn a new Java API and present to your co-workers Then, present in a JUG meeting, and then, present it in an event in your area, and submit it to JavaOne! Create a study group to get certified or to learn some new Java technology Teach a non-Java developer how to download the basic tools and where to find more information Download and use an open source project Improve the documentation Write an article or a blog post about the project Write an FAQ Join and participate on the mailing list Describe a bug in detail and submit a bug report Fix a bug and submit it to the project Give a talk about it at a JUG meeting Teach your co-workers how to use the project Sign up to Adopt a JSR Test regular builds of the Reference Implementation (RI) Report bugs in the RI Submit Feature Requests to the spec Triage issues on the issue tracker Run a hack day to discuss the API Moderate mailing lists and forums Create an FAQ or Wiki Evangelize a specification on Twitter, G+, Hacker News, etc Give a lightning talk Help build the RI Help build the Technical Compatibility Kit (TCK) Create a Podcast Learn Latin - e.g. legal language, translate to English Sign up to Adopt OpenJDK Run a Bugathon Fix javac compiler warnings Build virtual images Add tests to Java Submit Javadoc patches Give a webbing Teach someone to build OpenJDK Hold a brown bag session at work Fix the oldest known bug Overhaul Javadoc to use HTML Load the OpenJDK into different IDEs Run a build farm node Test your code on a nightly build Learn how to read Java byte code Visit JCP.org Follow jcp_org on Twitter Friend JCP on Facebook Read JCP Blog Register for JCP.org site Create a JSR Watch List Review JSRs in progress Comment on JSRs in progress, write and track bug reports, use cases, etc Review JSRs in Maintenance Comment on JSRs in Maintenance Implement Final JSRs Review the Transparency of JSRs in progress and provide feedback to the PMO and Spec Lead/community Become a JCP Member or associate with a current JCP member Nominate to serve on an Expert Group (EG) Serve on an EG Submit a JSR proposal and become Spec Lead Take a Spec Lead role in an Inactive or Dormant JSR Nominate for an Executive Committee (EC) seat Vote in the EC elections Vote in EC Special Elections Review EC Meeting Summaries Attend Spec Lead calls Write blogs, articles on your experiences Join the EC project on java.net Join JCP.Next on java.net/JSR 358 Participate on the JCP forums and join JSR projects on java.net Suggest agenda items for open EC meetings Attend public EC teleconference (2x per year) Attend open EC meetings at JavaOne Nominate for JCP Annual Awards Attend annual JavaOne and JCP Annual Awards Ceremony Attend JCP related BOF sessions and give your feedback to Program Office Invite JCP program office members to your JUG  or meetup Invite JSR Spec Leads to your JUG or meetup And always - hold a party!

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  • Get Fanatical About Your Followers

    - by Mike Stiles
    In the fourth of our series of discussions with Aberdeen’s Trip Kucera, we touch on what fans of your brand have come to expect in exchange for their fandom. Spotlight: Around the Oracle Social office, we live for football. So when we think of a true “fan” of a brand, something on the level of a football fan is what comes to mind. But are brands trying to invest fans on that same level? Trip: Yeah, if you’re a football fan, this is definitely your time of year. And if you’ve been to any NFL games recently, especially if you hadn’t been for a few years previously, you may have noticed that from the cup holders to in-stadium Wi-Fi, there’s an increasing emphasis being placed on “fan-focused” accommodations. That’s what they’re known as in the stadium business. Spotlight: How are brands doing in that fan-focused arena? Trip: Remember fan is short for “fanatical.” Brands can definitely learn from the way teams have become fanatical about their fans, or in the social media world, their followers. Many companies consider a segment of their addressable social audience as true fans; I’ve even heard the term “super-fans” used. So just as fans know and can tell you nearly everything about their favorite team, our research shows that there’s a lot value from getting to know your social audience—your followers—at a deeper level. Spotlight: So did your research show there’s a lot to be gained by making fandom a two-way street? Trip: Aberdeen’s new social relationship management research suggests that companies should develop capabilities to better analyze their social audience at a more granular level. Countless “ripped from the headlines” examples, from “United Breaks Guitars” to the most recent British Airways social fiasco we talked about a few weeks ago show how social can magnify the impact of a single customer voice. Spotlight: So how do the companies who are executing social most successfully do that? Trip: Leaders, which are the top-performing companies in Aberdeen’s study, are showing the value of identifying and categorizing your social audience. You should certainly treat every customer as if they have 10,000 followers, because they just might, but you can also proactively engage with high-value customer and high-value influencers. Getting back to the football analogy, it’s like how teams strive to give every guest a great experience, but they really roll out the red carpet for those season ticket and luxury box holders. Spotlight: I’m not allowed in luxury boxes, so you’ll have to tell me what that’s like. But what is the brand equivalent of rolling out the red carpet? Trip: Leaders are nearly three times more likely than Followers to have a process in place that identifies key social influencers for engagement, and more than twice as likely to identify customer advocates for social outreach. This is the kind of knowledge that gives companies the ability to better target social messaging and promotions like we talked about in our last discussion, as well as a basis for understanding how to measure the impact of their social media programs. I’ll give you an example. I hosted an event at one of my favorite restaurants recently. I had mentioned them in a Tweet several weeks before the event, and on the day of the event, they Tweeted out that they were looking forward to seeing me that evening for the event. It’s a small thing, but it had a big impact and I’d certainly go back as a result. Spotlight: So what specifically can brands use and look at to determine where their potential super-fans are? Trip: Social graph analysis, which looks at both the demographic/psychographic trends as well as the behavioral connections, can surface important brand value. Aberdeen’s PR and Brand Management research indicated that top-performing companies are more than three times more likely than Followers to both determine demographic trends through social listening (44% vs. 13%), and to identify meaningful customer segments through social (44% vs. 12%). This kind of brand-level insight can complement and enrich traditional market research. But perhaps even more importantly, it can serve as an early warning system for customer experience failures. @mikestilesPhoto: freedigitalphotos.net

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  • Free Advanced ADF eCourse, part II

    - by Frank Nimphius
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} A second part of the advanced Oracle ADF online training is available for free. Lynn Munsinger and her team worked hard to deliver this second part of the training as close to the release of the first installment as possible. This two part advanced ADF training provides you with a wealth of advanced ADF know-how and insight for you to adopt in a self-paced manner. Part 1 (though I am sure you have this bookmarked): http://tinyurl.com/advadf-part1 Part 2 (the new material): http://tinyurl.com/advadf-part2 Quoting Lynn: "This second installment provides you with all you need to know about regions, including best practices for implementing contextual events and other region communication patterns. It also covers the nitty-gritty details of building great looking user interfaces, such as how to work with (not against!) the ADF Faces layout components, how to build page templates and declarative components, and how to skin the application to your organization’s needs. It wraps up with an in-depth look at layout components, and a second helping of additional region considerations if you just can’t get enough. Like the first installment, the content for this course comes from Product Management. This 2nd eCourse compilation is a bit of a “Swan Song” for Patrice Daux, a long-time JDeveloper and ADF curriculum developer, who is retiring the end of this month. Thanks for your efforts, Patrice, and bon voyage!" Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Indeed: Great job Patrice! (and all others involved)

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  • Brazil is Hot for Social Media

    - by Mike Stiles
    Today’s guest blog is from Oracle SVP Product Development Reggie Bradford, fresh off a visit to Sao Paulo, Brazil where he spoke at the Dachis Social Business Summit and spent some time getting a personal taste for the astonishing growth of social in Brazil, both in terms of usage and engagement. I knew it was big, but I now have an all-new appreciation for why the Wall Street Journal branded Brazil the “social media capital of the universe.” Brazil has the world’s 5th largest economy, an expanding middle class, an active younger demo market, a connected & outgoing culture, and an ongoing embrace of the social media platforms. According to comScore's 2012 Brazil Digital Future in Focus report, 97% are using social media, and that’s not even taking mobile-only users into account. There were 65 million Facebook users in 2012, spending an average 535 minutes there, up 208%. It’s one of Twitter’s fastest growing markets and the 2nd biggest market for YouTube. Instagram usage has grown over 300% since last year. That by itself is exciting, but look at the opportunity for social marketing brands. 74% of Brazilian social users follow brands on Facebook, and 59% have praised a company on either Twitter or Facebook. A 2011 Oh! Panel study found 81% of social networkers there used social to research new products and 75% went there looking for discounts. B2C eCommerce sales in Brazil is projected to hit $26.9 billion by 2015. I bet I’m not the only one who sees great things ahead, and I was fortunate enough give a keynote ABRADI, an association of leading digital agencies in Brazil with 53 execs from 35 agencies attending. I was also afforded the opportunity to give my impressions of what’s going on in Brazil to Jornal Propoganda & Marketing, one of the most popular publications in Latin America for marketers. I conveyed that especially in an environment like Brazil, where social users are so willing to connect and engage brands, marketers need to back away from the heavy-handed, one-way messaging of old school advertising and move toward genuine relationships and trust-building. To aide in this, organizational and operation changes must be embraced inside the enterprise. We've talked often about the new, tighter partnership forming between the CIO and CMO. If this partnership is not encouraged, fostered and resourced, the increasing amount of time consumers spend on mobile and digital, and the efficiencies and integrations offered by cloud-based software cannot be exploited. These are the kinds of changes that can yield social data that, when combined with enterprise data, helps you come to know your social audiences intimately and predict their needs. Consumers are always connected and need your brand to be accessible at any time, be it for information or customer service. And, of course, all of this is happening quite publicly. The holistic, socially-enable enterprise connects social to customer service systems and all other customer touch points, facilitating the kind of immediate, real-time, gratifying response customers are coming to expect. Social users in Brazil are highly active and clearly willing to meet us as brands more than halfway. Empowering yourself with a social management technology platform will have you set up to maximize this booming social market…from listening & monitoring to engagement to analytics to workflow & automation to globalization & language support. Brands, it’s time to be as social as the great people of Brazil are. Obrigado! @reggiebradfordPhoto: Gualberto107, freedigitalphotos.net

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  • JavaOne 2012: Nashorn Edition

    - by $utils.escapeXML($entry.author)
    As with my JavaOne 2012: OpenJDK Edition post a while back (now updated to reflect the schedule of the talks), I find it convenient to have my JavaOne schedule ordered by subjects of interest. Beside OpenJDK in all its flavors, another subject I find very exciting is Nashorn. I blogged about the various material on Nashorn in the past, and we interviewed Jim Laskey, the Project Lead on Project Nashorn in the Java Spotlight podcast. So without further ado, here are the JavaOne 2012 talks and BOFs with Nashorn in their title, or abstract:CON5390 - Nashorn: Optimizing JavaScript and Dynamic Language Execution on the JVM - Monday, Oct 1, 8:30 AM - 9:30 AMThere are many implementations of JavaScript, meant to run either on the JVM or standalone as native code. Both approaches have their respective pros and cons. The Oracle Nashorn JavaScript project is based on the former approach. This presentation goes through the performance work that has gone on in Oracle’s Nashorn JavaScript project to date in order to make JavaScript-to-bytecode generation for execution on the JVM feasible. It shows that the new invoke dynamic bytecode gets us part of the way there but may not quite be enough. What other tricks did the Nashorn project use? The presentation also discusses future directions for increased performance for dynamic languages on the JVM, covering proposed enhancements to both the JVM itself and to the bytecode compiler.CON4082 - Nashorn: JavaScript on the JVM - Monday, Oct 1, 3:00 PM - 4:00 PMThe JavaScript programming language has been experiencing a renaissance of late, driven by the interest in HTML5. Nashorn is a JavaScript engine implemented fully in Java on the JVM. It is based on the Da Vinci Machine (JSR 292) and will be available with JDK 8. This session describes the goals of Project Nashorn, gives a top-level view of how it all works, provides the current status, and demonstrates examples of JavaScript and Java working together.BOF4763 - Meet the Nashorn JavaScript Team - Tuesday, Oct 2, 4:30 PM - 5:15 PMCome to this session to meet the Oracle JavaScript (Project Nashorn) language teamBOF6661 - Nashorn, Node, and Java Persistence - Tuesday, Oct 2, 5:30 PM - 6:15 PMWith Project Nashorn, developers will have a full and modern JavaScript engine available on the JVM. In addition, they will have support for running Node applications with Node.jar. This unique combination of capabilities opens the door for best-of-breed applications combining Node with Java SE and Java EE. In this session, you’ll learn about Node.jar and how it can be combined with Java EE components such as EclipseLink JPA for rich Java persistence. You’ll also hear about all of Node.jar’s mapping, caching, querying, performance, and scaling features.CON10657 - The Polyglot Java VM and Java Middleware - Thursday, Oct 4, 12:30 PM - 1:30 PMIn this session, Red Hat and Oracle discuss the impact of polyglot programming from their own unique perspectives, examining non-Java languages that utilize Oracle’s Java HotSpot VM. You’ll hear a discussion of topics relating to Ruby, Lisp, and Clojure and the intersection of other languages where they may touch upon individual frameworks and projects, and you’ll get perspectives on JavaScript via the Nashorn Project, an upcoming JavaScript engine, developed fully in Java.CON5251 - Putting the Metaobject Protocol to Work: Nashorn’s Java Bindings - Thursday, Oct 4, 2:00 PM - 3:00 PMProject Nashorn is Oracle’s new JavaScript runtime in Java 8. Being a JavaScript runtime running on the JVM, it provides integration with the underlying runtime by enabling JavaScript objects to manipulate Java objects, implement Java interfaces, and extend Java classes. Nashorn is invokedynamic-based, and for its Java integration, it does away with the concept of wrapper objects in favor of direct virtual machine linking to Java objects’ methods provided by a metaobject protocol, providing much higher performance than what could be expected from a scripting runtime. This session looks at the details of the integration, a topic of interest to other language implementers on the JVM and a wider audience of developers who want to understand how Nashorn works.That's 6 sessions tooting the Nashorn this year at JavaOne, up from 2 last year.

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  • Looking for a real-world example illustrating that composition can be superior to inheritance

    - by Job
    I watched a bunch of lectures on Clojure and functional programming by Rich Hickey as well as some of the SICP lectures, and I am sold on many concepts of functional programming. I incorporated some of them into my C# code at a previous job, and luckily it was easy to write C# code in a more functional style. At my new job we use Python and multiple inheritance is all the rage. My co-workers are very smart but they have to produce code fast given the nature of the company. I am learning both the tools and the codebase, but the architecture itself slows me down as well. I have not written the existing class hierarchy (neither would I be able to remember everything about it), and so, when I started adding a fairly small feature, I realized that I had to read a lot of code in the process. At the surface the code is neatly organized and split into small functions/methods and not copy-paste-repetitive, but the flip side of being not repetitive is that there is some magic functionality hidden somewhere in the hierarchy chain that magically glues things together and does work on my behalf, but it is very hard to find and follow. I had to fire up a profiler and run it through several examples and plot the execution graph as well as step through a debugger a few times, search the code for some substring and just read pages at the time. I am pretty sure that once I am done, my resulting code will be short and neatly organized, and yet not very readable. What I write feels declarative, as if I was writing an XML file that drives some other magic engine, except that there is no clear documentation on what the XML should look like and what the engine does except for the existing examples that I can read as well as the source code for the 'engine'. There has got to be a better way. IMO using composition over inheritance can help quite a bit. That way the computation will be linear rather than jumping all over the hierarchy tree. Whenever the functionality does not quite fit into an inheritance model, it will need to be mangled to fit in, or the entire inheritance hierarchy will need to be refactored/rebalanced, sort of like an unbalanced binary tree needs reshuffling from time to time in order to improve the average seek time. As I mentioned before, my co-workers are very smart; they just have been doing things a certain way and probably have an ability to hold a lot of unrelated crap in their head at once. I want to convince them to give composition and functional as opposed to OOP approach a try. To do that, I need to find some very good material. I do not think that a SCIP lecture or one by Rich Hickey will do - I am afraid it will be flagged down as too academic. Then, simple examples of Dog and Frog and AddressBook classes do not really connivence one way or the other - they show how inheritance can be converted to composition but not why it is truly and objectively better. What I am looking for is some real-world example of code that has been written with a lot of inheritance, then hit a wall and re-written in a different style that uses composition. Perhaps there is a blog or a chapter. I am looking for something that can summarize and illustrate the sort of pain that I am going through. I already have been throwing the phrase "composition over inheritance" around, but it was not received as enthusiastically as I had hoped. I do not want to be perceived as a new guy who likes to complain and bash existing code while looking for a perfect approach while not contributing fast enough. At the same time, my gut is convinced that inheritance is often the instrument of evil and I want to show a better way in a near future. Have you stumbled upon any great resources that can help me?

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  • Test Fest Pop Quiz!

    - by Kristin Rose
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Question: Where can partners go during OPN Exchange to take complementary certification testing, and upon completing it, receive the credentials of a Certified Specialist, while having it count towards their company’s Specialization and upgrade within the OPN program? Answer: A.) Test Fest B.) Test Fest C.) All of the Above You are right! Test Fest is back by popular demand, and has been included as one of the many partner benefits for attending OPN Exchange this year. Join us from October 1-4th in the Marriott Marquis, Juniper Room at Oracle OpenWorld and get recognized! For times and registration, visit the Oracle OpenWorld Test Fest page and be sure to “study up” by watching this short video on Test Fest at Oracle OpenWorld 2012 below! Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} With over 100 exam titles and four days of sessions, you’re sure to walk away with an A+! Best of Luck, The OPN Communications Team

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  • Make the Time

    - by WonderOfItAll
    Took the little one to the pool tonight for swim lessons. Okay, Okay. They're not really lessons so much as they are "Hey, here's a few bucks, let me rent out a small section of your pool to swim around with my little one" Saw a dad at the pool. Bluetooth on, iPad in hand, and two year old somewhere around there. Saw a mom at the pool. Arguing with her five year old to NOT take a shower after swimming. Bluetooth on, iPad in hand, work laptop open on stadium seats. Her reasoning for not wanting the child to shower "Look, I have to get this stuff to the office by 6:30, we don't have time for you to shower. Let's go" Wait, isn't the whole point of this little experience called Mommy and Me (or, as in my case, Daddy and Me). Wherein Mommy/Daddy is supposed to spend time with little one. Not with the Bluetooth. Not with the work laptop. Dad (yeah, the same dad from earlier), in the pool. Bluetooth off (it's not waterproof or I'm sure he would've had it on), two year old in hand and iPad somewhere put away. Getting frustrated with kid because he won't 'perform' on command. Here's a little exchange Kid: "I don't wanna get in the water" Dad: "Well, we're here for 30 minutes, get in the water" Kid: "No, don't wanna" Dad: "Fine, I'm getting in" and, true to his word, in he goes, off to swim. Kid: Crying Dad: "Well, c'mon" Kid: Walking to stands Dad: Ignoring kid Kid: At stands Dad: Out of pool, drying off. Frustrated. Grabs bag, grabs kid, leaves How sad. It really seems like I am living in a generation of parents who view their children as one big scheduled distraction to another. It's almost like the dad was saying "Look, little 2 year old boy, I have a busy scheduled. Right now my Outlook Calendar tells me that I have 30 mins to spend with you, so, let's go kid: PERFORM because I have the time" Really? Can someone please tell me when the hell this happened? When did spending time with your kid, spending time with your family, spending time with your spouse, etc... become a distraction? I've seen people at work all day Tweeting throughout the day, checked in with Four Square, IM up and running constantly so they can 'stay in touch' only to see these same folks come home and be irritated because their kids or their spouse wants to connect with the. I've seen these very same people leave the house, go to the corner bar/store/you-name-the-place to be 'alone' only to find them there, plugged in, tweeting away, etc, etc, etc I LOVE technology. I love working with technology. But I also know that I am a human being. A person who, by very definition, is a social being. I needed social interactions and contact--and, no, I'm not talking about the Social Graph kind of connections, I'm talking about those interactions which, *GASP* involve eye to eye contact and human contact. A recent study found that the number one complaint of kids is that they feel they have to compete with technology for their parents time and attention. The number one wish from high school kids? That there parents would turn off the computer/tv/cell phone at dinner. This, coming from high school kids. Shouldn't that tell you a whole helluva lot? So, do yourself a favor tomorrow. Plug into technology all day. Throw yourself into it. Be passionate about what you do. When you walk through the door to your family, turn it all off for 30 mins and be there with your loved ones. If you can manage to play Angry Birds, I'm sure you can handle being disconnected for 30 minutes. Make the time

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  • Proving What You are Worth

    - by Ted Henson
    Here is a challenge for everyone. Just about everyone has been asked to provide or calculate the Return on Investment (ROI), so I will assume everyone has a method they use. The problem with stopping once you have an ROI is that those in the C-Suite probably do not care about the ROI as much as Return on Equity (ROE). Shareholders are mostly concerned with their return on the money the invested. Warren Buffett looks at ROE when deciding whether to make a deal or not. This article will outline how you can add more meaning to your ROI and show how you can potentially enhance the ROE of the company.   First I want to start with a base definition I am using for ROI and ROE. Return on investment (ROI) and return on equity (ROE) are ways to measure management effectiveness, parts of a system of measures that also includes profit margins for profitability, price-to-earnings ratio for valuation, and various debt-to-equity ratios for financial strength. Without a set of evaluation metrics, a company's financial performance cannot be fully examined by investors. ROI and ROE calculate the rate of return on a specific investment and the equity capital respectively, assessing how efficient financial resources have been used. Typically, the best way to improve financial efficiency is to reduce production cost, so that will be the focus. Now that the challenge has been made and items have been defined, let’s go deeper. Most research about implementation stops short at system start-up and seldom addresses post-implementation issues. However, we know implementation is a continuous improvement effort, and continued efforts after system start-up will influence the ultimate success of a system.   Most UPK ROI’s I have seen only include the cost savings in developing the training material. Some will also include savings based on reduced Help Desk calls. Using just those values you get a good ROI. To get an ROE you need to go a little deeper. Typically, the best way to improve financial efficiency is to reduce production cost, which is the purpose of implementing/upgrading an enterprise application. Let’s assume the new system is up and running and all users have been properly trained and are comfortable using the system. You provide senior management with your ROI that justifies the original cost. What you want to do now is develop a good base value to a measure the current efficiency. Using usage tracking you can look for various patterns. For example, you may find that users that are accessing UPK assistance are processing a procedure, such as entering an order, 5 minutes faster than those that don’t.  You do some research and discover each minute saved in processing a claim saves the company one dollar. That translates to the company saving five dollars on every transaction. Assuming 100,000 transactions are performed a year, and all users improve their performance, the company will be saving $500,000 a year. That $500,000 can be re-invested, used to reduce debt or paid to the shareholders.   With continued refinement during the life cycle, you should be able to find ways to reduce cost. These are the type of numbers and productivity gains that senior management and shareholders want to see. Being able to quantify savings and increase productivity may also help when seeking a raise or promotion.

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  • Security Access Control With Solaris Virtualization

    - by Thierry Manfe-Oracle
    Numerous Solaris customers consolidate multiple applications or servers on a single platform. The resulting configuration consists of many environments hosted on a single infrastructure and security constraints sometimes exist between these environments. Recently, a customer consolidated many virtual machines belonging to both their Intranet and Extranet on a pair of SPARC Solaris servers interconnected through Infiniband. Virtual Machines were mapped to Solaris Zones and one security constraint was to prevent SSH connections between the Intranet and the Extranet. This case study gives us the opportunity to understand how the Oracle Solaris Network Virtualization Technology —a.k.a. Project Crossbow— can be used to control outbound traffic from Solaris Zones. Solaris Zones from both the Intranet and Extranet use an Infiniband network to access a ZFS Storage Appliance that exports NFS shares. Solaris global zones on both SPARC servers mount iSCSI LU exported by the Storage Appliance.  Non-global zones are installed on these iSCSI LU. With no security hardening, if an Extranet zone gets compromised, the attacker could try to use the Storage Appliance as a gateway to the Intranet zones, or even worse, to the global zones as all the zones are reachable from this node. One solution consists in using Solaris Network Virtualization Technology to stop outbound SSH traffic from the Solaris Zones. The virtualized network stack provides per-network link flows. A flow classifies network traffic on a specific link. As an example, on the network link used by a Solaris Zone to connect to the Infiniband, a flow can be created for TCP traffic on port 22, thereby a flow for the ssh traffic. A bandwidth can be specified for that flow and, if set to zero, the traffic is blocked. Last but not least, flows are created from the global zone, which means that even with root privileges in a Solaris zone an attacker cannot disable or delete a flow. With the flow approach, the outbound traffic of a Solaris zone is controlled from outside the zone. Schema 1 describes the new network setting once the security has been put in place. Here are the instructions to create a Crossbow flow as used in Schema 1 : (GZ)# zoneadm -z zonename halt ...halts the Solaris Zone. (GZ)# flowadm add-flow -l iblink -a transport=TCP,remote_port=22 -p maxbw=0 sshFilter  ...creates a flow on the IB partition "iblink" used by the zone to connect to the Infiniband.  This IB partition can be identified by intersecting the output of the commands 'zonecfg -z zonename info net' and 'dladm show-part'.  The flow is created on port 22, for the TCP traffic with a zero maximum bandwidth.  The name given to the flow is "sshFilter". (GZ)# zoneadm -z zonename boot  ...restarts the Solaris zone now that the flow is in place.Solaris Zones and Solaris Network Virtualization enable SSH access control on Infiniband (and on Ethernet) without the extra cost of a firewall. With this approach, no change is required on the Infiniband switch. All the security enforcements are put in place at the Solaris level, minimizing the impact on the overall infrastructure. The Crossbow flows come in addition to many other security controls available with Oracle Solaris such as IPFilter and Role Based Access Control, and that can be used to tackle security challenges.

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  • The Social Content Conundrum

    - by Mike Stiles
    Here’s the social content conundrum: people who are not entertainers are being asked to entertain. Despite a world of skilled MBAs, marketing savants, technological innovators, analysts, social strategists and consultants, every development in social for brands keeps boomeranging right back to the same unavoidable truth. Success hinges on having content creators who know how to entertain the target audience. You can’t make this all about business-processes. You can’t make this all about technology, though data is critical and helps inform content. This is about having human beings who know the audience, know what they’d love to see, and can create the magic that will draw and hold them. Since showing up in the News Feed is critical for exposition and engagement, and since social ads primarily serve to amplify content that’s performing well, I’m comfortable saying content creators are becoming exponentially recruited and valued. They will no longer be commodities. They’ll be your stars. Social has fundamentally changed the relationship between brand and consumer. No longer can the customer be told to sit down, shut up, and listen to our ads. It’s now all about what consumers are willing to watch or read. Their patience for subjecting themselves to material they aren’t interested in is waning. Therefore, brands must now be producers of entertainment and information content, not merely placers of ads within someone else’s content. Social has given you a huge stage, with an audience sitting out there waiting to see what you’re going to do. What are you putting on that stage? For most corporate environments, entertaining is alien. It’s risky and subjective. Most operate around two foundational principles: control and fear. To entertain and inform with branded content, some control has to go. You control the product. Past that, control is being transferred into the hands of the consumer. The “fear first” culture also has to yield. If you strive to never make waves, you will move absolutely nothing. Because most corporations don’t house entertainers, they must be found then trusted. They’re usually a little weird. The ideas they’ll bring may seem “out there.” But like any business professional, they’ve gone through the training and experiences that make them uniquely good at what they do, even if you don’t quite understand them. It’s okay. It’s what the audience thinks that matters. Get it right, and you’ll be generating one ambassador after another who’s proud to be identified with the brand and will regularly consume and share your content. Entertainment entities are able to shape our culture and succeed beyond their wildest dreams by being beholden to one thing…what the public likes and wants. When brands put the same emphasis on crowd-pleasing content, they too will enjoy brand fame the likes of which they’ve never seen. The stage is yours. Now get out there and go for that applause.

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  • HERMES Medical Solutions Helps Save Lives with MySQL

    - by Bertrand Matthelié
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} HERMES Medical Solutions was established in 1976 in Stockholm, Sweden, and is a leading innovator in medical imaging hardware/software products for health care facilities worldwide. HERMES delivers a plethora of different medical imaging solutions to optimize hospital workflow. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} HERMES advanced algorithms make it possible to detect the smallest changes under therapies important and necessary to optimize different therapeutic methods and doses. Challenges Fighting illness & disease requires state-of-the-art imaging modalities and software in order to diagnose accurately, stage disease appropriately and select the best treatment available. Selecting and implementing a new database platform that would deliver the needed performance, reliability, security and flexibility required by the high-end medical solutions offered by HERMES. Solution Decision to migrate from in-house database to an embedded SQL database powering the HERMES products, delivered either as software, integrated hardware and software solutions, or via the cloud in a software-as-a-service configuration. Evaluation of several databases and selection of MySQL based on its high performance, ease of use and integration, and low Total Cost of Ownership. On average, between 4 and 12 Terabytes of data are stored in MySQL databases underpinning the HERMES solutions. The data generated by each medical study is indeed stored during 10 years or more after the treatment was performed. MySQL-based HERMES systems also allow doctors worldwide to conduct new drug research projects leveraging the large amount of medical data collected. Hospitals and other HERMES customers worldwide highly value the “zero administration” capabilities and reliability of MySQL, enabling them to perform medical analysis without any downtime. Relying on MySQL as their embedded database, the HERMES team has been able to increase their focus on further developing their clinical applications. HERMES Medical Solutions could leverage the Oracle Financing payment plan to spread its investment over time and make the MySQL choice even more valuable. “MySQL has proven to be an excellent database choice for us. We offer high-end medical solutions, and MySQL delivers the reliability, security and performance such solutions require.” Jan Bertling, CEO.

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  • The Minimalist Approach to Content Governance - Request Phase

    - by Kellsey Ruppel
    Originally posted by John Brunswick. For each project, regardless of size, it is critical to understand the required ownership, business purpose, prerequisite education / resources needed to execute and success criteria around it. Without doing this, there is no way to get a handle on the content life-cyle, resulting in a mass of orphaned material. This lowers the quality of end user experiences.     The good news is that by using a simple process in this request phase - we will not have to revisit this phase unless something drastic changes in the project. For each of the elements mentioned above in this stage, the why, how (technically focused) and impact are outlined with the intent of providing the most value to a small team. 1. Ownership Why - Without ownership information it will not be possible to track and manage any of the content and take advantage of many features of enterprise content management technology. To hedge against this, we need to ensure that both a individual and their group or department within the organization are associated with the content. How - Apply metadata that indicates the owner and department or group that has responsibility for the content. Impact - It is possible to keep the content system optimized by running native reports against the meta-data and acting on them based on what has been outlined for success criteria. This will maximize end user experience, as content will be faster to locate and more relevant to the user by virtue of working through a smaller collection. 2. Business Purpose Why - This simple step will weed out requests that have tepid justification, as users will most likely not spend the effort to request resources if they do not have a real need. How - Use a simple online form to collect and workflow the request to management native to the content system. Impact - Minimizes the amount user generated content that is of low value to the organization. 3. Prerequisite Education Resources Needed Why - If a project cannot be properly staffed the probability of its success is going to be low. By outlining the resources needed - in both skill set and duration - it will cause the requesting party to think critically about the commitment needed to complete their project and what gap must be closed with regard to education of those resources. How - In the simple request form outlined above, resources and a commitment to fulfilling any needed education should be included with a brief acceptance clause that outlines the requesting party's commitment. Impact - This stage acts as a formal commitment to ensuring that resources are able to execute on the vision for the project. 4. Success Criteria Why - Similar to the business purpose, this is a key element in helping to determine if the project and its respective content should continue to exist if it does not meet its intended goal. How - Set a review point for the project content that will check the progress against the originally outlined success criteria and then determine the fate of the content. This can even include logic that will tell the content system to remove items that have not been opened by any users in X amount of time. Impact - This ensures that projects and their contents do not live past their useful lifespans. Just as with orphaned content, non-relevant information will slow user's access to relevant materials for the jobs. Request Phase Summary With a simple form that outlines the ownership of a project and its content, business purpose, education and resources, along with success criteria, we can ensure that an enterprise content management system will stay clean and relevant to end users - allowing it to deliver the most value possible. The key here is to make it straightforward to make the request and let the content management technology manage as much as possible through metadata, retention policies and workflow. Doing these basic steps will allow project content to get off to a great start in the enterprise! Stay tuned for the next installment - the "Create Phase" - covering security access and workflow involved in content creation, enabling a practical layer of governance over our enterprise content repository.

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  • Red Meat's Music is Rare - and Well Done

    - by Oracle OpenWorld Blog Team
    By Karen Shamban The blogger has questions; San Francisco-based country band Red Meat has answers. Although we forgot to ask how they got their band name, dang it. Read on and enjoy the honesty and insight. Q. What do you like best about performing in front of a live audience?A. Probably just having fun and entertaining the audience. We've been together for almost two decades, and in that time we've played for crowds of five people, and for crowds of more than 15,000. Both are equally important to us, and just as fun. We turn Jill and Smelley loose on the between-songs repartee, and let the songs shine through. On the best night, we feed on the audience's love and vice-versa. It's emotional vampirism of the best sort. [Blogger's note: now that whole "red meat" thing is starting to make sense ...] Q. Do you prefer smaller, intimate venues or larger, louder ones? Why?A. We love both. Whether it's a chance to connect with a small room or huge audience, we always try to hit 'em between the eyes! Q. What about your fans surprises you?A. Since we've been together for so long, we're pretty much on our third generation of fans now. We're excited that the Bakersfield sound has that same effect on the new, younger fans as it did on the punk rockers that we played to 20 years ago. And we still see them at our shows too! Q. What about your live act surprises your fans?A. For people who haven't seen Red Meat before, they may be dragged to a show thinking they don't like country music. But they're surprised to hear it done in a way that excites them so much. We get a lot of first-timers coming up to us after a performance and asking, "Wait, THAT'S what country music can sound like?" Q. There are going to be a lot of technical people (you could call them geeks) in the Oracle crowd - what are they going to love about your performance?A. Just what everyone loves about a Red Meat show - the chance to drink beer, dance, get rowdy, and have a great time. Q. Have you been on tour recently? If so, what do you like about touring, and what do you dislike?A. Actually, we're going to be coming off the road immediately into the Oracle OpenWorld Music Festival, having just played some Texas dates. On tour, we love playing for fans who don't get to see us as often as our California fans do. And food. Most of our conversations in the van center around food. Q. Ever think about playing another kind of music? If so, what, and why?A. Our tastes and influences in the band run all over the place. Obviously we love the Bakersfield artists - Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, Dwight Yoakam - but we love other types of roots music as well, along with the Beatles, NRBQ, MC5, punk/new wave, and countless bar bands that we've had the privilege of playing with through the years. But as far as playing a different kind of music as Red Meat? Nah. We love what we're doing. Q. What are the top three things people should know about your music?A1. Country music, done right, has unlimited soul.A2. Red Meat is a modern band, playing original material, with a great debt to the Bakersfield sound of Buck Owens and Merle Haggard.A3. It's FUN. More details on the Festival and the band: Oracle OpenWorld Music Festival Red Meat

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  • Getting Started with Cloud Computing

    - by juanlarios
    You’ve likely heard about how Office 365 and Windows Intune are great applications to get you started with Cloud Computing. Many of you emailed me asking for more info on what Cloud Computing is, including the distinction between "Public Cloud" and "Private Cloud". I want to address these questions and help you get started. Let's begin with a brief set of definitions and some places to find more info; however, an excellent place where you can always learn more about Cloud Computing is the Microsoft Virtual Academy. Public Cloud computing means that the infrastructure to run and manage the applications users are taking advantage of is run by someone else and not you. In other words, you do not buy the hardware or software to run your email or other services being used in your organization – that is done by someone else. Users simply connect to these services from their computers and you pay a monthly subscription fee for each user that is taking advantage of the service. Examples of Public Cloud services include Office 365, Windows Intune, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, Hotmail, and others. Private Cloud computing generally means that the hardware and software to run services used by your organization is run on your premises, with the ability for business groups to self-provision the services they need based on rules established by the IT department. Generally, Private Cloud implementations today are found in larger organizations but they are also viable for small and medium-sized businesses since they generally allow an automation of services and reduction in IT workloads when properly implemented. Having the right management tools, like System Center 2012, to implement and operate Private Cloud is important in order to be successful. So – how do you get started? The first step is to determine what makes the most sense to your organization. The nice thing is that you do not need to pick Public or Private Cloud – you can use elements of both where it makes sense for your business – the choice is yours. When you are ready to try and purchase Public Cloud technologies, the Microsoft Volume Licensing web site is a good place to find links to each of the online services. In particular, if you are interested in a trial for each service, you can visit the following pages: Office 365, CRM Online, Windows Intune, and Windows Azure. For Private Cloud technologies, start with some of the courses on Microsoft Virtual Academy and then download and install the Microsoft Private Cloud technologies including Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V and System Center 2012 in your own environment and take it for a spin. Also, keep up to date with the Canadian IT Pro blog to learn about events Microsoft is delivering such as the IT Virtualization Boot Camps and more to get you started with these technologies hands on. Finally, I want to ask for your help to allow the team at Microsoft to continue to provide you what you need. Twice a year through something we call "The Global Relationship Study" – they reach out and contact you to see how they're doing and what Microsoft could do better. If you get an email from "Microsoft Feedback" with the subject line "Help Microsoft Focus on Customers and Partners" between March 5th and April 13th, please take a little time to tell them what you think. Cloud Computing Resources: Microsoft Server and Cloud Computing site – information on Microsoft's overall cloud strategy and products. Microsoft Virtual Academy – for free online training to help improve your IT skillset. Office 365 Trial/Info page – get more information or try it out for yourself. Office 365 Videos – see how businesses like yours have used Office 365 to transition to the cloud. Windows Intune Trial/Info – get more information or try it out for yourself. Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online page – information on trying and licensing Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. Additional Resources You May Find Useful: Springboard Series Your destination for technical resources, free tools and expert guidance to ease the deployment and management of your Windows-based client infrastructure. TechNet Evaluation Center Try some of our latest Microsoft products for free, Like System Center 2012 Pre-Release Products, and evaluate them before you buy. AlignIT Manager Tech Talk Series A monthly streamed video series with a range of topics for both infrastructure and development managers. Ask questions and participate real-time or watch the on-demand recording. Tech·Days Online Discover what's next in technology and innovation with Tech·Days session recordings, hands-on labs and Tech·Days TV.

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  • OBI10g will be Non-Qualifying for OPN Specialisation in September 2013

    - by Mike.Hallett(at)Oracle-BI&EPM
    aboteste 12.00 Just to alert you, that OPN Specialisation is software version-specific: so as we bring out new product versions, so the specialisation crtiteria and exam needs to keep updated to the new version. Specifically for our analytics partners, be aware that your “OBI10g Specialisation” credentials will be Non-Qualifying for OPN Specialisation in September 2013. Therefore to keep your profile up to date please start now to take the latest OBI11g exams and apply to OPN to upgrade to “OBI11g Specialisation”. Find out more about the new version OBI11g Exams to update your OPN Specialisation @ OPN Exam for OBI Suite 11g is Now LIVE, and more generally the Update on BI & EPM Specializations and Knowledge Zones. aboteste 12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-GB 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:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;} And to help you pass, see the Oracle Business Intelligence Foundation Suite 11 Essentials Exam Study Guide. Also check the documents on OPN for Frequently Asked Questions for Product Version Specialization and the latest Specializations Catalog. Normal 0 false false false EN-GB 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:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;}

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  • How Does a 724% Return on Your Salesforce Automation Investment Sound?

    - by Brian Dayton
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Oracle Sales Cloud and Marketing Cloud customer Apex IT gained just that, a 724% return on investment (ROI) when they implemented these Oracle Cloud solutions in their fast-moving, rapidly-growing business. 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";} Congratulations Apex IT! Apex IT was just announced as a winner of the Nucleus Research 11th annual Technology ROI Awards. The award, given by the analyst firm highlights organizations that have successfully leveraged IT deployments to maximize value per dollar spent. Fast Facts: Return on Investment - 724% Payback - 2 months Average annual benefit - $91,534 Cost: Benefit Ratio – 1:48 Business Benefits In addition to the ROI and cost metrics the award calls out improvements in Apex IT’s business operations—across both Sales and Marketing teams: Improved ability to identify new opportunities and focus sales resources on higher-probability deals Reduced administration and manual lead tracking—resulting in more time selling and a net new client increase of 46% Increased campaign productivity for both Marketing and Sales, including Oracle Marketing Cloud’s automation of campaign tracking and nurture programs Improved margins with more structured and disciplined sales processes—resulting in more effective deal negotiations Please join us in congratulating Apex IT on this award and their business achievements. Want More Details? Don’t take our word for it. Read the full Apex IT ROI Case Study and learn more about Apex IT’s business—including their work with Oracle Sales and Marketing Cloud on behalf of their clients in leading Sales organizations. Learn More About Oracle Sales Cloud www.oracle.com/salescloud www.facebook.com/oraclesalescloud www.youtube.com/oraclesalescloud Oracle Customer Experience and Complementary Sales Solutions Oracle Configure, Price and Quote (CPQ) Cloud Oracle Marketing Cloud Oracle Customer Experience /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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  • How can I work efficiently on a desktop sharing workflow?

    - by OSdave
    I am a freelance Magento developer, based in Spain. One of my clients is a Germany based web development company and they're asking me something I think it's impossible. OK, maybe not impossible but definitely not a preferred way of doing things. One of their clients has a Magento Entreprise installation, which is the paid (and I think proprietary) version of Magento. Their client has forbidden them to download the files from his server. My client is asking me now to study one particular module of the application in order to interact with it from a custom module I'll have to develop. As they have a read-only ssh access to their client's server, they came up with this solution: Set up a desktop/screen sharing session between one of their developer's station and mine, alongsides with a skype conversation. Their idea is that I'll say to the developer: show me file foo.php The developer will then open this foo.php file in his IDE. I'll have then to ask him to show me the bar method, the parent class, etc... Remember that it's a read-only session, so forget about putting a Zend_Debug::log() anywhere, and don't even think about a xDebug breakpoint (they don't use any kind of debugger, sic). Their client has also forbidden them to use any version control system... My first reaction when they explained to me this was (and I actually did say it outloud to them): Well, find another client. but they took it as a joke from me. I understand that in a business point of view rejecting a client is not a good practice, but I think that the condition of this assignment make it impossible to complete. At least according to my workflow. I mean, the way I work or learn a new framework/program is: download all files and copy of db on my pc create a git repository and a branch run the application locally use breakpoints use Zend_Debug::log() write the code and tests commit to git repo upload to (test/staging first if there is one, production if not) server I have agreed to try the desktop sharing session, although I think it will be a waste of time. On one hand I don't mind, they pay me for that time, but I know me and I don't like the sensation of loosing my time. On the other hand, I have other clients for whom I can work according to my workflow. I am about to say to them that I cannot (don't want to) do it. Well, I'll first try this desktop sharing session: maybe I'm wrong and it can actually work. But I like to consider myself as a professional, and I know that I don't know everything. So I try to keep an open mind and I am always willing to learn new stuff. So my questions are: Can this desktop-sharing workflow work? What should be done in order to take the most of it? Taking into account all the obstacles (geographic locations, no local, no git), is there another way for me to work on that project?

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  • What do you need to know to be a world-class master software developer? [closed]

    - by glitch
    I wanted to bring up this question to you folks and see what you think, hopefully advise me on the matter: let's say you had 30 years of learning and practicing software development in front of you, how would you dedicate your time so that you'd get the biggest bang for your buck. What would you both learn and work on to be a world-class software developer that would make a large impact on the industry and leave behind a legacy? I think that most great developers end up being both broad generalists and specialists in one-two areas of interest. I'm thinking Bill Joy, John Carmack, Linus Torvalds, K&R and so on. I'm thinking that perhaps one approach would be to break things down by categories and establish a base minimum of "software development" greatness. I'm thinking: Operating Systems: completely internalize the core concepts of OS, perhaps gain a lot of familiarity with an OSS one such as Linux. Anything from memory management to device drivers has to be complete second nature. Programming Languages: this is one of those topics that imho has to be fully grokked even if it might take many years. I don't think there's quite anything like going through the process of developing your own compiler, understanding language design trade-offs and so on. Programming Language Pragmatics is one of my favorite books actually, I think you want to have that internalized back to back, and that's just the start. You could go significantly deeper, but I think it's time well spent, because it's such a crucial building block. As a subset of that, you want to really understand the different programming paradigms out there. Imperative, declarative, logic, functional and so on. Anything from assembly to LISP should be at the very least comfortable to write in. Contexts: I believe one should have experience working in different contexts to truly be able to appreciate the trade-offs that are being made every day. Embedded, web development, mobile development, UX development, distributed, cloud computing and so on. Hardware: I'm somewhat conflicted about this one. I think you want some understanding of computer architecture at a low level, but I feel like the concepts that will truly matter will be slightly higher level, such as CPU caching / memory hierarchy, ILP, and so on. Networking: we live in a completely network-dependent era. Having a good understanding of the OSI model, knowing how the Web works, how HTTP works and so on is pretty much a pre-requisite these days. Distributed systems: once again, everything's distributed these days, it's getting progressively harder to ignore this reality. Slightly related, perhaps add solid understanding of how browsers work to that, since the world seems to be moving so much to interfacing with everything through a browser. Tools: Have a really broad toolset that you're familiar with, one that continuously expands throughout the years. Communication: I think being a great writer, effective communicator and a phenomenal team player is pretty much a prerequisite for a lot of a software developer's greatness. It can't be overstated. Software engineering: understanding the process of building software, team dynamics, the requirements of the business-side, all the pitfalls. You want to deeply understand where what you're writing fits from the market perspective. The better you understand all of this, the more of your work will actually see the daylight. This is really just a starting list, I'm confident that there's a ton of other material that you need to master. As I mentioned, you most likely end up specializing in a bunch of these areas as you go along, but I was trying to come up with a baseline. Any thoughts, suggestions and words of wisdom from the grizzled veterans out there who would like to share their thoughts and experiences with this? I'd really love to know what you think!

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  • Challenges in Corporate Reporting - New Independent Research

    - by ndwyouell
    Earlier this year, Oracle and Accenture sponsored a global study on trends in financial close and reporting. We surveyed 1,123 finance professionals in large organizations in 12 countries around the world during February and March. Financial Consolidation and Reporting is the most mature aspect of Enterprise Performance Management with mainstream solutions having been around for over 30 years. But of course over this time there have been many changes and very significant increases in regulation. So just what is the current state is Financial Consolidation and Reporting in our major corporations across the world? We commissioned this independent research to find out. Highlights of the result are: •          Seeking change: Businesses recognize they need to invest in financial reporting to address the challenges they currently face. 47 percent of companies have made substantial investments over the last year to the financial close, filing, and reporting processes. •          Ineffective investments: Despite these investments, spreadsheets (72 percent) and e-mails (68 percent) are still being used daily to track and manage reporting, suggesting that new investments are falling short of expectations. •          Increased costs and uncertainty: The situation is so opaque that managers across the finance function are unable to fully understand the financial impact or cost implications of reporting, with 60 percent of respondents admitting they did not know the total cost of managing and publicizing their financial results. •          Persistent challenges: 68 percent of respondents admitted that they have inadequate visibility into reporting processes, while 84 percent of finance managers surveyed said they find it difficult to control the quality of financial data across the entire reporting process. •          Decreased effectiveness: 71 percent of finance managers feel their effectiveness is limited in some way by data-analysis–related issues, while 39 percent of C-level or VP-level respondents say their effectiveness is impaired by limited visibility. •          Missed deadlines: Due to late changes to the chart of accounts, 15 percent of global businesses have missed statutory filings, putting their companies at risk of financial penalties and potentially impacting share value. The report makes it clear that investments made to date by these large organizations around the world have been uneven across the close, reporting, and filing processes, which has led to the challenges these organizations currently face in the overall process. Regardless of whether companies are using a variety of solutions or a single solution, the report shows they continue to witness increased costs, ineffectual data management, and missed reporting, which—in extreme circumstances—can impact a company’s corporate image and share value. The good news is that businesses realize that these problems persist and 86 percent of companies are likely to make a significant investment during the next five years to address these issues. While they should invest, it is critical that they direct investments correctly to address the key issues this research identified: •          Improving data integrity •          Optimizing processes •          Integrating the extended financial close process By addressing these issues and with clear guidance on how to implement the correct business processes, infrastructure, and software solutions, finance teams will find that their reporting processes are much more effective, cost-efficient, and aligned with their performance expectations. To get a copy of the full report: http://www.oracle.com/webapps/dialogue/ns/dlgwelcome.jsp?p_ext=Y&p_dlg_id=11747758&src=7300117&Act=92 To replay a webcast discussing the findings: http://www.cfo.com/webcast.cfm?webcast=14639438&pcode=ORA061912_ORA

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  • Appropriate design / technologies to handle dynamic string formatting?

    - by Mark W
    recently I was tasked with implementing a way of adding support for versioning of hardware packet specifications to one of our libraries. First a bit of information about the project. We have a hardware library which has classes for each of the various commands we support sending to our hardware. These hardware modules are essentially just lights with a few buttons, and a 2 or 4 digit display. The packets typically follow the format {SOH}AADD{ETX}, where AA is our sentinel action code, and DD is the device ID. These packet specs are different from one command to the next obviously, and the different firmware versions we have support different specifications. For example, on version 1 an action code of 14 may have a spec of {SOH}AADDTEXT{ETX} which would be AA = 14 literal, DD = device ID, TEXT = literal text to display on the device. Then we come out with a revision with adds an extended byte(s) onto the end of the packet like this {SOH}AADDTEXTE{ETX}. Assume the TEXT field is fixed width for this example. We have now added a new field onto the end which could be used to say specify the color or flash rate of the text/buttons. Currently this java library only supports one version of the commands, the latest. In our hardware library we would have a class for this command, say a DisplayTextArgs.java. That class would have fields for the device ID, the text, and the extended byte. The command class would expose a method which generates the string ("{SOH}AADDTEXTE{ETX}") using the value from the class. In practice we would create the Args class as needed, populate the fields, call the method to get our packet string, then ship that down across the CAN. Some of our other commands specification can vary for the same command, on the same version, depending on some runtime state. For example, another command for version 1 may be {SOH}AA{ETX}, where this action code clears all of the modules behind a specific controller device of their text. We may overload this packet to have option fields with multiple meanings like {SOH}AAOC{ETX} where OC is literal text, which tells the controller to only clear text on a specific module type, and to leave the others alone, or the spec could also have an option format of {SOH}AADD{ETX} to clear the text off a a specific device. Currently, in the method which generates the packet string, we would evaluate fields on the args class to determine which spec we will be using when formatting the packet. For this example, it would be along the lines of: if m_DeviceID != null then use {SOH}AADD{ETX} else if m_ClearOCs == true then use {SOH}AAOC{EXT} else use {SOH}AA{ETX} I had considered using XML, or a database to store String.format format strings, which were linked to firmware version numbers in some table. We would load them up at startup, and pass in the version number of the hardwares firmware we are currently using (I can query the devices for their firmware version, but the version is not included in all packets as part of the spec). This breaks down pretty quickly because of the dynamic nature of how we select which version of the command to use. I then considered using a rule engine to possibly build out expressions which could be interpreted at runtume, to evaluate the args class's state, and from that select the appropriate format string to use, but my brief look at rule engines for java scared me away with its complexity. While it seems like it might be a viable solution, it seems overly complex. So this is why I am here. I wouldn't say design is my strongest skill, and im having trouble figuring out the best way to approach this problem. I probably wont be able to radically change the args classes, but if the trade off was good enough, I may be able to convince my boss that the change is appropriate. What I would like from the community is some feedback on some best practices / design methodologies / API or other resources which I could use to accomplish: Logic to determine which set of commands to use for a given firmware version Of those command, which version of each command to use (based on the args classes state) Keep the rules logic decoupled from the application so as to avoid needing releases for every firmware version Be simple enough so I don't need weeks of study and trial and error to implement effectively.

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  • MSBuild: building website using AspNetCompiler - adding references?

    - by Tom Morgan
    Hi, I'm attempting to build a ASP.NET website using MSBuild - specifically the AspNetCompiler tag. I know that, for my project, I need to add some references. Within Visual Studio I have several references, one is a project reference and the others are some DLLS (AjaxControlToolkit etc). I'm happy not referencing the project and referencing the DLL instead - however I just can't work out how to add a reference. I've looked up and down and this is what I've found so far: <Target Name = "PrecompileWeb"> <AspNetCompiler VirtualPath = "DeployTemp" PhysicalPath = "D:\AutoBuild\CruiseControl\Projects\Websites\MyCompany\2.0.0\WorkingDirectory\VSS" TargetPath = "D:\AutoBuild\CruiseControl\Projects\Websites\MyCompany\2.0.0\PreCompiled" Force = "true" Debug = "true" Updateable = "true"/> </Target> Also - I've picked up this bit of code from around the web somewhere, which I thought might help: <ItemGroup> <Reference Include="My.Web.DataEngine, Culture=neutral, processorArchitecture=MSIL"> <SpecificVersion>False</SpecificVersion> <HintPath>D:\AutoBuild\CruiseControl\Projects\Components\My.Web.DataEngine\bin\Debug\My.Web.DataEngine.dll</HintPath> </Reference> </ItemGroup> What I want to do is add a attribute to the AspNetCompiler tag, something like: References="@(Reference)" but MSBuild isn't very happy about this. I've been a bit stuck in not being able to find decent references on doing this anywhere: so I'd really apprechiate some pointers or reference material etc. (or just the answer!) Thanks for you help. -tom

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  • Autofac WCF integration + sessions

    - by Michael Sagalovich
    I am having an ASP.NET MVC 3 application that collaborates with a WCF service, which is hosted using Autofac host factory. Here are some code samples: .svc file: <%@ ServiceHost Language="C#" Debug="true" Service="MyNamespace.IMyContract, MyAssembly" Factory="Autofac.Integration.Wcf.AutofacServiceHostFactory, Autofac.Integration.Wcf" %> Global.asax of the WCF service project: protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e) { ContainerBuilder builder = new ContainerBuilder(); //Here I perform all registrations, including implementation of IMyContract AutofacServiceHostFactory.Container = builder.Build(); } Client proxy class constructor (MVC side): ContainerBuilder builder = new ContainerBuilder(); builder.Register(c => new ChannelFactory<IMyContract>( new BasicHttpBinding(), new EndpointAddress(Settings.Default.Url_MyService))) .SingleInstance(); builder.Register(c => c.Resolve<ChannelFactory<IMyContract>>().CreateChannel()) .UseWcfSafeRelease(); _container = builder.Build(); This works fine until I want WCF service to allow or require sessions ([ServiceContract(SessionMode = SessionMode.Allowed)], or [ServiceContract(SessionMode = SessionMode.Required)]) and to share one session with the MVC side. I changed the binding to WSHttpBinding on the MVC side, but I am having different exceptions depending on how I tune it. I also tried changing AutofacServiceHostFactory to AutofacWebServiceHostFactory, with no result. I am not using config file as I am mainly experimenting, not developing real-life application, but I need to study the case. But if you think I can achieve what I need only with config files, then OK, I'll use them. I will provide exception details for each combination of settings if required, I'm omitting them not to make the post too large. Any ideas on what I can do?

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  • A simple augmented reality application in C#

    - by Ian
    Hi All, I would like to start a personal project that will give me a lot of new concept to learn and understand. After some thought, I figured that an Augmented Reality related project will be the most beneficial for me because of the following reasons: I haven't tried interfacing a program with a live video/camera feed I haven't done any "image processing" project I haven't done any "graphics rendering" ever With that said, you can assume that I will totally suck at AR. So I'm here to ask for some advice regarding the best way to go through this. st milestone project that I am thinking of is to take a cheap webcam and read some Data Matrix using C#. nd milestone project will render some text-overlay on the feed when presented with a certain Data Matrix. rd milestone project will actually render some 3D shapes. I've searched all-around and found some nice yet advanced materials for AR: http://sites.google.com/site/augmentedrealitytestingsite/ http://soldeveloper.com/ http://www.mperfect.net/wpfAugReal/ So I came here to ask the following: Do you think my milestone is reasonable given my "deficiencies"? In order to start Milestone 1, can you give some materials that I can study? I prefer online materials. Thanks!

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  • Can aptitude for learning Programming paradigms be influenced by culture or native language's gramma

    - by DVK
    It is well known that different people have different aptitudes regarding various programming paradigms (e.g. some people have trouble learning non-procedural, especially functional languages. Some people have trouble understanding pointers - see Joel Spolsky's blog for musings on that. Some people have trouble grasping recursion). I was recently reading about a study that looked at how the grammar of someone's native language affected their speed of learning math. Can't find that article now but a quick googling found this reference. That led me to wondering whether someone's native culture or first language might affect their aptitude towards various programming paradigms. I'm more curious about positive influences - e.g. some trait that make it easier/faster for someone to learn a particular paradigm, for example native language grammar being very recursion-oriented. To be clear, I'm looking for how culture/language grammare may affect the difference between aptitude of the same person towards various paradigms as opposed to how it affects overall aptitude towards programming between different persons. Important: the only answers I'm interested in are either references to scientific studies, or personal observations from someone intimately familiar with a particular culture/language, including from their own experience. E.g. I'm not interested in your opinion of how Chinese being your first language affects anything unless you speak Chinese or worked with extremely large set of Chinese-native programmers extensively. I'm OK with your guesstimates not based on scientific studies, but please be sure to supply your reasoning about plausible causes of your observation. I'm not interested in culture-bashing (any such commends will be deleted or flagged for deletion). I'm also not particularly interested in culture-building - we all know Linus is from Finland and Tetris was written in Russia and Larry Wall is an American. Any culture/nation can produce a brilliant mind in any discipline. I'm interested in averages.

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