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• git branch naming best practices

  - by skiphoppy

  I've been using a local git repository interacting with my group's CVS repository for several months, now. I've made an almost neurotic number of branches, most of which have thankfully merged back into my trunk. But naming is starting to become an issue. If I have a task easily named with a simple label, but I accomplish it in three stages which each include their own branch and merge situation, then I can repeat the branch name each time, but that makes the history a little confusing. If I get more specific in the names, with a separate description for each stage, then the branch names start to get long and unwieldy. I did learn looking through old threads here that I could start naming branches with a / in the name, i.e., topic/task, or something like that. I may start doing that and seeing if it helps keep things better organized. What are some best practices for naming git branches? Edit: Nobody has actually suggested any naming conventions. I do delete branches when I'm done with them. I just happen to have several around due to management constantly adjusting my priorities. :) As an example of why I might need more than one branch on a task, suppose I need to commit the first discrete milestone in the task to the group's CVS repository. At that point, due to my imperfect interaction with CVS, I would perform that commit and then kill that branch. (I've seen too much weirdness interacting with CVS if I try to continue to use the same branch at that point.)

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• Suggest joomla html editor extension/software

  - by DMin

  I've started using Joomla 1.5 recently and am using the TinyMCE online WYSIWYG editor that comes with the package to edit articles. I tend to write direct html and javascript rather than use the WYSIWYG functions, I find that after the first time the changes are applied(page updated) most of your html becomes 4-5 separate big paragraphs. Its very hard to find stuff in there cause the content has no formatting -- eg: <p><span id="psy_ass_span" class="pink_heading">Psychometric Assessment</span></p> <div id="psy_ass_div" class="pink_box"><img class="img_right" src="templates/teamwork.jpg" border="0" /> <p><strong>Emporkommen</strong> uses <strong>Psychometric assessment</strong> as a tool in order to gain insight into a person’s personality and psychological thinking. It can help develop team spirit in t <script src="plugins/editors/tinymce/jscripts/tiny_mce/themes/advanced/langs/en.js" type="text/javascript"></script> he workplace and assess an individual’s priorities.</p> Plus obviously there is no code highlighting in the editor so you can't figure out what is what. My question is, do you guys know of good(preferably non-commercial) extensions or other softwares or techniques that can make editing html code in Joomla 1.5 articles easier even after applying changes several times.

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• SQL with Regular Expressions vs Indexes with Logical Merging Functions

  - by geeko

  Hello Lads, I am trying to develop a complex textual search engine. I have thousands of textual pages from many books. I need to search pages that contain specified complex logical criterias. These criterias can contain virtually any compination of the following: A: Full words. B: Word roots (semilar to stems; i.e. all words with certain key letters). C: Word templates (in some languages are filled in certain templates to form various part of speech such as adjactives, past/present verbs...). D: Logical connectives: AND/OR/XOR/NOT/IF/IFF and parentheses to state priorities. Now, would it be faster to have the pages' full text in database (not indexed) and search though them all using SQL and Regular Expressions ? Or would it be better to construct indexes of word/root/template-page-location tuples. Hence, we can boost searching for individual words/roots/templates. However, it gets tricky as we interdouce logical connectives into our query. I thought of doing the following steps in such cases: 1: Seperately search for each individual words/roots/templates in the specified query. 2: On priority bases, we merge two result lists (from step 1) at a time depedning on the logical connective For example, if we are searching for "he AND (is OR was)": 1: We shall search for "he", "is" and "was" seperately and get result lists for each word. 2: Merge the result lists of "is" and "was" using the merging function OR-MERGE 3: Merge the merged result list from the OR-MERGE function with the one of "he" using the merging function AND-MERGE The result of step 3 is then returned as the result of the specified query. What do you think gurues ? Which is faster ? Any better ideas ? Thank you all in advance.

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• xstream and ibm j9 sdk incompatibilities on linux

  - by Yoni

  I encountered an incompatibility with xstream and IBM J9 jdk (the 32bits version). Everything worked fine when I used sun jdk but fails on IBM jdk (on linux only. on windows it's ok with both jdks). When debugging, the error appears to be that xstream uses a java.util.TreeSet internally but the set's iterator returns elements in the wrong order (I know this sounds very strange, but this is the behavior that I saw). Googling for related bugs didn't give any meaningful results I tried upgrading pretty much any component possible but no luck. I tried the following configurations: ibm jdk 1.6 SR 7 (bundled with WebSphere 7.0.0.9), xstream 1.2.2 ibm jdk 1.6 SR 8, xstream 1.2.2 ibm jdk 1.6 SR 8, xstream 1.3.1 (I tried those both with tomcat and with WebSphere server, so actually there are 6 configurations using IBM jdk). The code in question is in class com.thoughtworks.xstream.core.DefaultConverterLookup, around line 44. It uses an iterator from class com.thoughtworks.xstream.core.util.PrioritizedList, which uses a custom comparator, but all the comparator does is compare integers (the priorities). Has anyone seen this before? Any idea what can I do or change?

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• Does SetFileBandwidthReservation affect memory-mapped file performance?

  - by Ghostrider

  Does this function affect Memory-mapped file performance? Here's the problem I need to solve: I have two applications competing for disk access: "reader" and "updater". Whole system runs on Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 "Updater" constantly accesses disk in a linear manner, updating data. They system is set up in such a way that updater always has infinite data to update. Consider that it is constantly approximating a solution of a huge set of equations that takes up entire 2TB disk drive. Updater uses ReadFile and WriteFile to process data in a linear fashion. "Reader" is occasionally invoked by user to get some pieces of data. Usually user would read several 4kb blocks from the drive and stop. Occasionally user needs to read up to 100mb sequentially. In exceptional cases up to several gigabytes. Reader maps files to memory to get data it needs. What I would like to achieve is for "reader" to have absolute priority so that "updater" would completely stop if needed so that "reader" could get the data user needs ASAP. Is this problem solvable by using SetPriorityClass and SetFileBandwidthReservation calls? I would really hate to put synchronization login in "reader" and "updater" and rather have the OS take care of priorities.

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• How to control the order of module initialization in Prism

  - by Robert Taylor

  I'm using Prism V2 with a DirectoryModuleCatalog and I need the modules to be initialized in a certain order. The desired order is specified with an attribute on each IModule implementation. This is so that as each module is initialized, they add their View into a TabControl region and the order of the tabs needs to be deterministic and controlled by the module author. The order does not imply a dependency, but rather just an order that they should be initialized in. In other words: modules A, B, and C may have priorities of 1, 2, and 3 respectively. B does not have a dependency on A - it just needs to get loaded into the TabControl region after A. So that we have a deterministic and controllable order of the tabs. Also, B might not exist at runtime; so they would load as A, C because the priority should determine the order (1, 3). If i used the ModuleDependency, then module "C" will not be able to load w/o all of it's dependencies. I can manage the logic of how to sort the modules, but i can't figure out where to put said logic.

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• How do I improve this design for dealing with intersecting date ranges and resolving date range conf

  - by derdo

  I am working on some code that deals with date ranges. I have pricing activities that have a starting-date and an end-date to set a certain price for that range. There are multiple pricing activities with intersecting date ranges. What I ultimately need is the ability to query valid prices for a date range. I pass in (jan1,jan31) and I get back a list that says jan1--jan10 $4 , jan11--jan19 $3 jan20--jan31 $4. There are priorities between pricing activities. Some type of pricing activities have high priority, so they override other pricing activities and for certain type of pricing activities lowest price wins etc. I currently have a class that holds these pricing activities and keeps a resolved pricing calendar. As I add new pricing activities I update the resolved calendar. As I write more tests/code, it started to get very complicated with all the different cases (pricing activities intersecting in different ways). I am ending up with very complicated code where I am resolving a newly added pricing activity. See AddPricingActivity() method below. Can anybody think of a simpler way to deal with this? Could there be similar code somewhere out there? Public class PricingActivity() { DateTime startDate; DateTime endDate; Double price; Public bool StartsBeforeEndsAfter (PricingActivity pAct) { // pAct covers this pricing activity } Public bool StartsMiddleEndsAfter (PricingActivity pAct){ // early part of pAct Itersects with later part of this pricing activity } //more similar methods to cover all the combinations of intersecting } Public Class PricingActivityList() { List<PricingActivity> activities; SortedDictionary<Date, PricingActivity> resolvedPricingCalendar; Public void AddPricingActivity(PricingActivity pAct) { //update the resolvedCalendar //go over each activity and find intersecting ones //update the resolved calendar correctly //depending on the type of the intersection //this part is getting out of hand….. } }

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• HMAC URLs instead of login?

  - by Tres

  In implementing my site (a Rails site if it makes any difference), one of my design priorities is to relieve the user of the need to create yet another username and password while still providing useful per-user functionality. The way I am planning to do this is: User enters information on the site. Information is associated with the user via server-side session. User completes entering information, server sends an access URL via e-mail to the user roughly in the form of: http://siteurl/<user identifier>/<signature: HMAC(secret + salt + user identifier)> User clicks URL, site looks up user ID and salt and computes the HMAC with the server-stored secret and authenticates if the computed HMAC and signature match. My question is: is this a reasonably secure way to accomplish what I'm looking to do? Are there common attacks that would render it useless? Is there a compelling reason to abandon my desire to avoid a username/password? Is there a must-read book or article on the subject? Note that I'm not dealing with credit card numbers or anything exceedingly private, but I would still like to keep the information reasonably secure.

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• Multi-user job/task tracking/queue software

  - by Bmsgaffer86

  Background: I test and repair electronic products with a team. There are many 'jobs' going through my lab at any point in time. It is getting difficult to track whats coming in and going out because I don't do every test or repair myself. Target: User can enter a job when they drop it off in my lab, and it will appear on the master list or queue. Needs to have priorities and due dates that can be adjusted by users. Ideally this would be web based and open-source, but I am flexible. Dream: A large monitor displaying a list of jobs in the master queue with details. This is very optional though, and would be in the best case scenario. I have done MANY hours of Google-ing and I am not sure if I have been using the right terminology, but I have not found anything that is simple enough to stand alone yet complex enough to be multi-user based. I am mildly proficient in VB, and have the drive to piece anything together that I have to. I am open to ANY help or suggestions.

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• How to start networking on a wired interface before logon in Ubuntu Desktop Edition

  - by Burly

  Problem Ubuntu 9.10 Desktop Edition (and possibly previous versions as well, I haven't tested them) has no network connections after boot until at least 1 user logs in. This means any services that require networking (e.g. openssh-server) are not available until someone logs in locally either via gdm, kdm, or a TTY. Background Ubuntu 9.10 Desktop Edition uses the NetworkManager service to take commands from the nm-applet in Gnome (or it's equivalent in KDE). As I understand it, while NetworkManager is running at boot, it is not issued any commands to connect until you login for the first time because nm-applet isn't running until you login and your Gnome session starts (or similar for KDE). I'm not sure what prompts NetworkManager to connect to the network when you login via a TTY. There are several relevant variables involved in starting up the network connections including: Wired vs Wireless (and the resulting drivers, SSID, passwords, and priorities) Static vs DHCP Multiple interfaces Constraints Support Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala (bonus points for additional supported versions) Support wired eth0 interface Receive an IP address via DHCP Receive DNS information via DHCP (obviously the DHCP server must provide this information) Enable networking at the proper time (e.g. some time after file systems are loaded but before network services like ssh start) Switching distros or versions (e.g. to Server Edition) is not an acceptable solution Switching to a Static IP configuration is not an acceptable solution Question How to start networking on a wired interface before logon in Ubuntu Desktop Edition? What I have tried Per this guide, adding the following entry into /etc/network/interfaces so that NetworkManager won't manage the eth0 interface: auth eth0 iface inet dhcp After reboot eth0 is down. Issuing ifconfig eth0 up brings the interface up but it receives no IP address. Issuing dhclient eth0 instead Does bring up the interface and it Does receive an IP address. Completely removing the NetworkManager package in addition to the settings above. I'm a bit confused with the whole UpStart/SysVinit mangling that's going in Ubuntu currently (I'm more familiar with the CentOS world). However, directly issuing sudo /etc/init.d/networking start Or sudo start networking does not bring up the eth0 interface at all, much less get an IP address. See-Also How to force NetworkManager to make a connection before login? References Ubuntu Desktop Edition Ubuntu Networking Configuration Using Command Line Automatic Network Configuration Via Command-Line Start network connection before login

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• An alternative to Google Talk, AIM, MSN, et al [closed]

  - by mkaito

  I'm not entirely sure whether this part of stack exchange is the most adequate for my question, but it would seem to me that people sharing this kind of concern would converge either here, or possibly on a more unix-specific sub site. Either way, here goes. Background Feel free to skip to The Question, below. This should, however, help those interested understand where I'm coming from, and where I expect to get, messaging-wise. My online talking place-to-go has been IRC for the last fifteen years. I think it's a great protocol, and clients out there are very good. I still use, and will always continue to use IRC for most of my chat needs. But then, there is private instant messaging. While IRC can solve this with queries and DCC chats, the protocol just isn't meant to work too well on intermittent connections, such as a mobile device, where you can often walk around places with low signal. I used MSN for a while, but didn't like it. The concept was awesome, but I think Microsoft didn't get the implementation quite right. When they started adding all that eye candy, and my buddies started flooding me with custom icons and buzzing my screen to it's knees, I shut my account and told folks that missed me to just email or call me. Much whining happened, I got called many weird things for not using MSN, but folks eventually got over it. Next, Google Talk came along, and seemed to be a lot better than MSN ever was. The protocol was open, so I could use whatever client I felt a fancy for. With the advent of smart phones, I just got myself a gtalk client on the phone, and have had a really decent integrated mostly-universal IM solution. Over the last few months, all Google services have been feeling flaky. IMs will often arrive anywhere between twenty minutes and one hour after being sent, clients will randomly disconnect, client priorities seem to work sometimes, and sometimes just a random device of those connected will get an IM. I think the time has come to look for greener grass. The Question It's rather hard to put what I'm looking for into precise words. I guess I just want something that is kind of like MSN/Gtalk, but that doesn't let me down when I need it. IRC is pretty much perfect, but the protocol just isn't designed to work well on mobile devices. Really, at this point I'm considering sticking to IRC for desktop messaging, and SMS/email on the phone, but I hope that in this day and age there is something better out there.

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• mobile broadband recommendations for Lenovo T500

  - by Justin Grant

  I use a Lenovo T500 primarily in and around San Francisco, although I do some travel in the US on business and occasionally to Europe/Asia. I'm looking for a good mobile broadband option for my T500. I am admittedly baffled by the various mobile-broadband choices (3G vs. 4G, WiMax vs. LTE vs. MIMO vs. ..., etc.). My priorities are (in this order): Compatible with Lenovo T500 and Windows 7. I realize only the AT&T accessory card is listed on Lenovo's site, but I've also heard that other cards will work in my T500 too, like the WiMax/Wifi combo card-- so I'm interested in what actually works, not necessarily only what Lenovo is promoting. Reliable coverage in US large cities, especially the SF Bay Area. my IPhone has lousy coverage in many spots, so I'd be nervous about an AT&T 3G option unless the problem is with the IPhone and not AT&T's network. I'm OK with non-great coverage outside major US cities, since I don't do much travel in those areas. Speed. faster is better. Internal card. I'd slightly prefer something I could install inside my T500 instead of a dongle on the side that might break off, although this is my lowest priority so it's not a big deal. Price. I don't want to pay over $100/month. I've tried lots of Googling and haven't come up with clear answers. I've seen lots of general overviews without recommendations, and lots of passionate opinions which don't feel objective (and don't help me understand compatibility with my hardware & geography). Can you recommend a good, objective guide online, ideally for Lenovo although general guide is OK too, which can help me figure out which option is the best one for me? I'd also be interested in your own personal experiences of using mobile broadband using a Lenovo T500. I'll accept the answer which gets me closest to making a decision.

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• “Being Agile” Means No Documentation, Right?

  - by jesschadwick

  Ask most software professionals what Agile is and they’ll probably start talking about flexibility and delivering what the customer wants.  Some may even mention the word “iterations”.  But inevitably, they’ll say at some point that it means less or even no documentation.  After all, doesn’t creating, updating, and circulating painstakingly comprehensive documentation that everyone and their mother have officially signed off on go against the very core of Agile?  Of course it does!  But really, they’re missing the point! Read The Agile Manifesto. (No, seriously - read it now. It’s short. I’ll wait.)  It’s essentially a list of values.  More specifically, it’s a right-side/left-side weighted list of values:  “Value this over that”. Many people seem to get the impression that this is really a “good vs. bad” list and that those values on the right side are evil and should essentially be tossed on the floor.  This leads to the conclusion that in order to be Agile we must throw away our fancy expensive tools, document as little as possible, and scoff at the idea of a project plan.  This conclusion is quite convenient because it essentially means “less work, more productivity!” (particularly in regards to the documentation and project planning).  I couldn’t disagree with this conclusion more. My interpretation of the Manifesto targets “over” as the operative word.  It’s not just a list of right vs. wrong or good vs. bad.  It’s a list of priorities.  In other words, none of the concepts on the list should be removed from your development lifecycle – they are all important… just not equally important.  This is not a unique interpretation, in fact it says so right at the end of the manifesto! So, the next time your team sits down to tackle that big new project, don’t make the first order of business to outlaw all meetings, documentation, and project plans.  Instead, collaborate with both your team and the business members involved (you do have business members sitting in the room, directly involved in the project planning, right?) and determine the bare minimum that will allow all of you to work and communicate in the best way possible.  This often means that you can pick and choose which parts of the Agile methodologies and process work for your particular project and end up with an amalgamation of Waterfall, Agile, XP, SCRUM and whatever other methodologies the members of your team have been exposed to (my favorite is “SCRUMerfall”). The biggest implication of this is that there is no one way to implement Agile.  There is no checklist with which you can tick off boxes and confidently conclude that, “Yep, we’re Agile™!”  In fact, depending on your business and the members of your team, moving to Agile full-bore may actually be ill-advised.  Such a drastic change just ends up taking everyone out of their comfort zone which they inevitably fall back into by the end of the project.  This often results in frustration to the point that Agile is abandoned altogether because “we just need to ship something!”  Needless to say, this is far more devastating to a project. Instead, I offer this approach: keep it simple and take it slow.  If your business members or customers are only involved at the beginning phases and nowhere to be seen until the project is delivered, invite them to your daily meetings; encourage them to keep up to speed on what’s going on on a daily basis and provide feedback.  If your current process is heavy on the documentation, try to reduce it as opposed to eliminating it outright.  If you need a “TPS Change Request” signed in triplicate with a 5-day “cooling off period” before a change is implemented, try a simple bug tracking system!  Tighten the feedback loop! Finally, at the end of every “iteration” (whatever that means to you, as long as it’s relatively frequent), take as much time as you can spare (even if it’s an hour or so) and perform some kind of retrospective.  Learn from your mistakes.  Figure out what’s working for you and what’s not, then fix it.  Before you know it you’ve got a handful of iterations and/or projects under your belt and you sit down with your team to realize that, “Hey, this is working - we’re pretty Agile!”  After all, Agile is a Zen journey.  It’s a destination that you aim for, not force, and even if you never reach true “enlightenment” that doesn’t mean your team can’t be exponentially better off from merely taking the journey.

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• Building the Elusive Windows Phone Panorama Control

  When the Windows Phone 7 Developer SDK was released a couple of weeks ago at MIX10 many people noticed the SDK doesnt include a template for a Panorama control.   Here at Clarity we decided to build our own Panorama control for use in some of our prototypes and I figured I would share what we came up with. There have been a couple of implementations of the Panorama control making their way through the interwebs, but I didnt think any of them really nailed the experience that is shown in the simulation videos.   One of the key design principals in the UX Guide for Windows Phone 7 is the use of motion.  The WP7 OS is fairly stripped of extraneous design elements and makes heavy use of typography and motion to give users the necessary visual cues.  Subtle animations and wide layouts help give the user a sense of fluidity and consistency across the phone experience.  When building the panorama control I was fairly meticulous in recreating the motion as shown in the videos.  The effect that is shown in the application hubs of the phone is known as a Parallax Scrolling effect.  This this pseudo-3D technique has been around in the computer graphics world for quite some time. In essence, the background images move slower than foreground images, creating an illusion of depth in 2D.  Here is an example of the traditional use: http://www.mauriciostudio.com/.  One of the animation gems I've learned while building interactive software is the follow animation.  The premise is straightforward: instead of translating content 1:1 with the interaction point, let the content catch up to the mouse or finger.  The difference is subtle, but the impact on the smoothness of the interaction is huge.  That said, it became the foundation of how I achieved the effect shown below.   Source Code Available HERE Before I briefly describe the approach I took in creating this control..and Ill add some **asterisks ** to the code below as my coding skills arent up to snuff with the rest of my colleagues.  This code is meant to be an interpretation of the WP7 panorama control and is not intended to be used in a production application.  1.  Layout the XAML The UI consists of three main components :  The background image, the Title, and the Content.  You can imagine each  these UI Elements existing on their own plane with a corresponding Translate Transform to create the Parallax effect.  2.  Storyboards + Procedural Animations = Sexy As I mentioned above, creating a fluid experience was at the top of my priorities while building this control.  To recreate the smooth scroll effect shown in the video we need to add some place holder storyboards that we can manipulate in code to simulate the inertia and snapping.  Using the easing functions built into Silverlight helps create a very pleasant interaction.    3.  Handle the Manipulation Events With Silverlight 3 we have some new touch event handlers.  The new Manipulation events makes handling the interactivity pretty straight forward.  There are two event handlers that need to be hooked up to enable the dragging and motion effects: the ManipulationDelta event :  (the most relevant code is highlighted in pink) Here we are doing some simple math with the Manipulation Deltas and setting the TO values of the animations appropriately. Modifying the storyboards dynamically in code helps to create a natural feel.something that cant easily be done with storyboards alone.   And secondly, the ManipulationCompleted event:  Here we take the Final Velocities from the Manipulation Completed Event and apply them to the Storyboards to create the snapping and scrolling effects.  Most of this code is determining what the next position of the viewport will be.  The interesting part (shown in pink) is determining the duration of the animation based on the calculated velocity of the flick gesture.  By using velocity as a variable in determining the duration of the animation we can produce a slow animation for a soft flick and a fast animation for a strong flick. Challenges to the Reader There are a couple of things I didnt have time to implement into this control.  And I would love to see other WPF/Silverlight approaches.  1.  A good mechanism for deciphering when the user is manipulating the content within the panorama control and the panorama itself.   In other words, being able to accurately determine what is a flick and what is click. 2.  Dynamically Sizing the panorama control based on the width of its content.  Right now each control panel is 400px, ideally the Panel items would be measured and then panorama control would update its size accordingly.  3.  Background and content wrapping.  The WP7 UX guidelines specify that the content and background should wrap at the end of the list.  In my code I restrict the drag at the ends of the list (like the iPhone).  It would be interesting to see how this would effect the scroll experience.     Well, Its been fun building this control and if you use it Id love to know what you think.  You can download the Source HERE or from the Expression Gallery  Erik Klimczak  | [email protected] | twitter.com/eklimczDid 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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• Building the Elusive Windows Phone Panorama Control

  When the Windows Phone 7 Developer SDK was released a couple of weeks ago at MIX10 many people noticed the SDK doesnt include a template for a Panorama control.   Here at Clarity we decided to build our own Panorama control for use in some of our prototypes and I figured I would share what we came up with. There have been a couple of implementations of the Panorama control making their way through the interwebs, but I didnt think any of them really nailed the experience that is shown in the simulation videos.   One of the key design principals in the UX Guide for Windows Phone 7 is the use of motion.  The WP7 OS is fairly stripped of extraneous design elements and makes heavy use of typography and motion to give users the necessary visual cues.  Subtle animations and wide layouts help give the user a sense of fluidity and consistency across the phone experience.  When building the panorama control I was fairly meticulous in recreating the motion as shown in the videos.  The effect that is shown in the application hubs of the phone is known as a Parallax Scrolling effect.  This this pseudo-3D technique has been around in the computer graphics world for quite some time. In essence, the background images move slower than foreground images, creating an illusion of depth in 2D.  Here is an example of the traditional use: http://www.mauriciostudio.com/.  One of the animation gems I've learned while building interactive software is the follow animation.  The premise is straightforward: instead of translating content 1:1 with the interaction point, let the content catch up to the mouse or finger.  The difference is subtle, but the impact on the smoothness of the interaction is huge.  That said, it became the foundation of how I achieved the effect shown below.   Source Code Available HERE Before I briefly describe the approach I took in creating this control..and Ill add some **asterisks ** to the code below as my coding skills arent up to snuff with the rest of my colleagues.  This code is meant to be an interpretation of the WP7 panorama control and is not intended to be used in a production application.  1.  Layout the XAML The UI consists of three main components :  The background image, the Title, and the Content.  You can imagine each  these UI Elements existing on their own plane with a corresponding Translate Transform to create the Parallax effect.  2.  Storyboards + Procedural Animations = Sexy As I mentioned above, creating a fluid experience was at the top of my priorities while building this control.  To recreate the smooth scroll effect shown in the video we need to add some place holder storyboards that we can manipulate in code to simulate the inertia and snapping.  Using the easing functions built into Silverlight helps create a very pleasant interaction.    3.  Handle the Manipulation Events With Silverlight 3 we have some new touch event handlers.  The new Manipulation events makes handling the interactivity pretty straight forward.  There are two event handlers that need to be hooked up to enable the dragging and motion effects: the ManipulationDelta event :  (the most relevant code is highlighted in pink) Here we are doing some simple math with the Manipulation Deltas and setting the TO values of the animations appropriately. Modifying the storyboards dynamically in code helps to create a natural feel.something that cant easily be done with storyboards alone.   And secondly, the ManipulationCompleted event:  Here we take the Final Velocities from the Manipulation Completed Event and apply them to the Storyboards to create the snapping and scrolling effects.  Most of this code is determining what the next position of the viewport will be.  The interesting part (shown in pink) is determining the duration of the animation based on the calculated velocity of the flick gesture.  By using velocity as a variable in determining the duration of the animation we can produce a slow animation for a soft flick and a fast animation for a strong flick. Challenges to the Reader There are a couple of things I didnt have time to implement into this control.  And I would love to see other WPF/Silverlight approaches.  1.  A good mechanism for deciphering when the user is manipulating the content within the panorama control and the panorama itself.   In other words, being able to accurately determine what is a flick and what is click. 2.  Dynamically Sizing the panorama control based on the width of its content.  Right now each control panel is 400px, ideally the Panel items would be measured and then panorama control would update its size accordingly.  3.  Background and content wrapping.  The WP7 UX guidelines specify that the content and background should wrap at the end of the list.  In my code I restrict the drag at the ends of the list (like the iPhone).  It would be interesting to see how this would effect the scroll experience.     Well, Its been fun building this control and if you use it Id love to know what you think.  You can download the Source HERE or from the Expression Gallery  Erik Klimczak  | [email protected] | twitter.com/eklimczDid 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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• A Graduate&rsquo;s Journey at Oracle &ndash; Bhaskar Ghosh From Oracle India

  - by david.talamelli

  I am Bhaskar Ghosh, and I work as an Applications Engineer with Oracle. Well, it was three years ago when my journey with one of the largest software companies started. It was a fine day and a decisive moment, when I was placed in Oracle as a campus recruit from College of Engineering Guindy, Anna University, Chennai! I always thought of looking back, the time that helped me learn beyond my boundaries, think broader and ahead, and grow – technically, professionally and personally. Hmmn! Let me recall the eventful moments once again. My first day as an intern at Oracle started in late 2007. I met one of the Oracle Managers at the Oracle Campus in Hyderabad and on the same day I also met another Oracle employee who was to later to become my first manager. I was charged and thrilled with the environment and the wonderful people around me! I was joined by two other interns, who also had a Masters in Computer Applications. We formed a very friendly group with all the interns and the new hires, and shared our excitement and learning. Myself and one of the other Graduates started working on a very interesting project on Semantic technology. We finally had our names added as co-developers for this very project. This phase of five months was the time and we learnt tremendously and worked very hard, partly because we had to travel back and forth to our colleges to submit reports and present for the Masters in Computer Applications final year project reviews. After completing my MCA, I joined as a full-time employee in 2008. During the next year, we worked on interesting and bleeding edge technologies - OWL, RDF, SPARQL, Visualization, J2EE, Social Web features, Semantic Web technologies, Web Services and many more! We developed cool, rich internet and desktop applications. Little did I know at that time, that this learning would help me tremendously for my the next project in Oracle. The following year saw me being assigned a role in a different project that my other team members were working on for the last two years. It took me two months to understand and get into a flow with this new task. I was fortunate that this phase helped me enhance my inter-personal and communication skills, as much as it helped me grow professionally with better ability to tackle multiple priorities and switch between tasks based on the team’s requirements. I was made the POC for all communications with our team and other product teams. I personally feel that this time enhanced me tremendously in technologies like Oracle Forms, J2EE, and Java and Web Services. The last six months, saw myself becoming an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineer member, and continuing my higher education International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad. Oracle supports its employees becoming members of professional bodies, and higher studies are supported by management, I think it is tremendously helpful in the professional and technical growth of the employees. Last three months, I have been working on great and useful enhancements to our product. Ah beautiful! All these years, there have been other moments and events of fun that are too worth mentioning. Clubs and groups at Oracle such as Employee Club, Oracle Volunteers, Football Club, etc. have always kept on organizing numerous events and competitions, full of fun and entertainment. I really enjoyed participating, even if it was small, in the intra-Oracle football tourney, Oracle Volunteer Days, OraFora, OraOvations, and a few more. Those ‘Seasons of Sharing’, those ‘Blood Donation camps’, those ‘Diwali and Christmas gifts and events’, those ‘fun events at the annual function called OraOvations’, those ‘books and cycle stalls’, and those so many other things… It only fills my mind with pleasure. The last three years have been very eventful:they have been full of learning and growth, and under the very able and encouraging guidance of my manager. I have got the opportunity to know about and/or interact with many wonderful personalities, and learn from them, here at Oracle. The environment, the people, and the fellow developers have been so friendly, and always ever ready to help, when we were in doubt.. I really love the big office space, and the flexible timings, and the caring people around. I look forward to a beautiful, learning and motivating journey with Oracle.

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• PASS Summit 2010 Recap

  - by AjarnMark

  Last week I attended my eighth PASS Summit in nine years, and every year it is a fantastic event!  I was fortunate my first year to have a contact (Bill Graziano (blog | Twitter) from SQLTeam) that I was expecting to meet, and who got me started on a good track of making new contacts.  Each year I have made a few more, and renewed friendships from years past.  Many of the attendees agree that the pure networking opportunities are one of the best benefits of attending the Summit.  And there’s a lot of great technical stuff, too, some of the things that stick out for me this year include… Pre-Con Monday: PowerShell with Allen White (blog | Twitter).  This was the first time that I attended a pre-con.  For those not familiar with the concept, the regular sessions for the conference are 75-90 minutes long.  For an extra fee, you can attend a full-day session on a single topic during a pre- or post-conference training day.  I had been meaning for several months to dive in and learn PowerShell, but just never seemed to find (or make) the time for it, so when I saw this was one of the all-day sessions, and I was planning to be there on Monday anyway, I decided to go for it.  And it was well worth it!  I definitely came out of there with a good foundation to build my own PowerShell scripts, plus several sample scripts that he showed which already cover the first four or five things I was planning to do with PowerShell anyway.  This looks like the right tool for me to build an automated version of our software deployment process, which right now contains many repeated steps.  Thanks Allen! Service Broker with Denny Cherry (blog | Twitter).  I remembered reading Denny’s blog post on Using Service Broker instead of Replication, and ever since then I have been thinking about using this to populate a new reporting-focused Data Repository that we will be building in the near future.  When I saw he was doing this session, I thought it would be great to get more information and be able to ask the author questions.  When I brought this idea back to my boss, he really liked it, as we had previously been discussing doing nightly data loads, with an option to manually trigger a mid-day load if up-to-the-minute data was needed for something.  If we go the Service Broker route, we can keep the Repository current in near real-time.  Hooray! DBA Mythbusters with Paul Randal (blog | Twitter).  Even though I read every one of the posts in Paul’s blog series of the same name, I had to go see the legend in person.  It was great, and I still learned something new! How to Conduct Effective Meetings with Joe Webb (blog | Twitter).  I always like to sit in on a session that Joe does.  I met Joe several years ago when both he and Bill Graziano were on the PASS Board of Directors together, and we have kept in touch.  Joe is very well-spoken and has great experience with both SQL Server and business.  And we could certainly use some pointers at my work (probably yours, too) on making our meetings more effective and to run on-time.  Of course, now that I’m the Chapter Leader for the Professional Development virtual chapter, I also had to sit in on this ProfDev session and recruit Joe to do a presentation or two for the chapter next year. Query Optimization with David DeWitt.  Anyone who has seen Dr. David DeWitt present the 3rd keynote at a PASS Summit over the last three years knows what a great time it is to sit and listen to him make some really complicated and advanced topic easy to understand (although it still makes your head hurt).  It still amazes me that the simple two-table join query from pubs that he used in his example can possibly have 22 million possible physical query plans.  Ouch! Exhibit Hall:  This year I spent more serious time in the exhibit hall than any year past.  I have talked my boss into making a significant (for us) investment in monitoring tools next year, and this was a great opportunity to talk with all the big-hitters.  Readers of mine may recall that I fell in love with the SQL Sentry Power Suite several months ago and wrote a blog entry about it just from the trial version.  Well as things turned out, short-term budget priorities shifted, and we weren’t able to make the purchase then.  I have it in the budget for next year, but since I was going to the Summit, my boss wanted me to look at the other options to see if this was really the one that we wanted.  I spent a couple of hours talking with representatives from Red-Gate, Idera, Confio, and Quest about their offerings, and giving them each the same 3 scenarios that I wanted to be able to accomplish based on the questions and issues that arise in our company.  It was interesting to discover the different approaches or “world view” that each vendor takes to the subject of performance monitoring and troubleshooting.  I may write a separate article that goes into this in more depth, but the product that best aligned with our point of view, and met the current needs we have is still the SQL Sentry Power Suite.  I’m not saying that the others are bad or wrong or anything like that, just that the way they tackled the issue did not align as well with our particular needs as does SQL Sentry’s product.  And that was something I learned too, when you go shopping for these products, you really need to know what you want to get from them.  It’s best if you have a few example scenarios from work that you can use to test out how well each tool fits your particular needs. Overall, another GREAT event.  I can’t wait to get the DVDs so I can sit in on a bunch of other sessions that I couldn’t get to because I was in one of the ones above.  And I can hardly wait until next year!

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• FY12 Partner Kickoff – Are you Ready?

  - by user715249

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Want to know what Oracle has up its sleeve for FY12? Join us on June 28th (or 29th depending on your region) as we kick off the new year and fill you in on our latest plans. This live, interactive session will be hosted by Judson Althoff and he’s bringing some top Oracle executives into the studio with him. Take a peek below as Lydia Smyers, Oracle WW A&C vice president, talks about this upcoming event. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} As if that weren’t enough, Oracle President Mark Hurd will update you on his focus for partners in FY12 and OPN will be making a special announcement for our ISV partners highlighting some exciting new offerings on how we will go to market together.  But wait, there’s more – you’ll also hear from Oracle product executives and regional sales leaders outlining their priorities for the upcoming year.  Phew – We’re tired just thinking about all of the great content that will be shared on June 28th/29th.  There are a lot of exciting announcements in store for you later this month so tune in for the latest updates! Register now to get your name on ‘the list’, The OPN Communications Team

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• The Oracle Retail Week Awards - in review

  - by user801960

  The Oracle Retail Week Awards 2012 were another great success, building on the legacy of previous award ceremonies. Over 1,600 of the UK's top retailers gathered at the Grosvenor House Hotel and many of Europe's top retail leaders attended the prestigious Oracle Retail VIP Reception in the Grosvenor House Hotel's Red Bar. Over the years the Oracle Retail Week Awards have become a rallying point for the morale of the retail industry, and each nominated retailer served as a demonstration that the industry is fighting fit. It was an honour to speak to so many figureheads of UK - and global - retail. All of us at Oracle Retail would like to congratulate both the winners and the nominees for the awards. Retail is a cornerstone of the economy and it was inspiring to see so many outstanding demonstrations of innovation and dedication in the entries. Winners 2012   The Market Force Customer Service Initiative of the Year Winner: Dixons Retail: Knowhow Highly Commended: Hughes Electrical: Digital Switchover     The Deloitte Employer of the Year Winner: Morrisons     Growing Retailer of the Year Winner: Hallett Retail - The Concessions People Highly Commended: Blue Inc     The TCC Marketing/Advertising Campaign of the Year Winner: Sainsbury's: Feed your Family for £50     The Brandbank Multichannel Retailer of the Year Winner: Debenhams Highly Commended: Halfords     The Ashton Partnership Product Innovation of the Year Winner: Argos: Chad Valley Highly Commended: Halfords: Private label bikes     The RR Donnelley Pure-play Online Retailer of the Year Winner: Wiggle     The Hitachi Consulting Responsible Retailer of the Year Winner: B&Q: One Planet Home     The CA Technologies Retail Technology Initiative of the Year Winner: Oasis: Argyll Street flagship launch with iPad PoS     The Premier Tax Free Speciality Retailer of the Year Winner: Holland & Barrett     Store Design of the Year Winner: Next Home and Garden, Shoreham, Sussex Highly Commended: Dixons Retail, Black concept store, Birmingham Bullring     Store Manager of the Year Winner: Ian Allcock, Homebase, Aylesford Highly Commended: Darren Parfitt, Boots UK, Melton Mowbray Health Centre     The Wates Retail Destination of the Year Winner: Westfield, Stratford     The AlixPartners Emerging Retail Leader of the Year Winner: Catriona Marshall, HobbyCraft, Chief Executive     The Wipro Retail International Retailer of the Year Winner: Apple     The Clarity Search Retail Leader of the Year Winner: Ian Cheshire, Chief Executive, Kingfisher     The Oracle Retailer of the Year Winner: Burberry     Outstanding Contribution to Retail Winner: Lord Harris of Peckham     Oracle Retail and "Your Experience Platform" Technology is the key to providing that differentiated retail experience. More specifically, it is what we at Oracle call ‘the experience platform’ - a set of integrated, cross-channel business technology solutions, selected and operated by a retail business and IT team, and deployed in accordance with that organisation’s individual strategy and processes. This business systems architecture simultaneously: Connects customer interactions across all channels and touchpoints, and every customer lifecycle phase to provide a differentiated customer experience that meets consumers’ needs and expectations. Delivers actionable insight that enables smarter decisions in planning, forecasting, merchandising, supply chain management, marketing, etc; Optimises operations to align every aspect of the retail business to gain efficiencies and economies, to align KPIs to eliminate strategic conflicts, and at the same time be working in support of customer priorities.   Working in unison, these three goals not only help retailers to successfully navigate the challenges of today but also to focus on delivering that personalised customer experience based on differentiated products, pricing, services and interactions that will help you to gain market share and grow sales.  

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• Interview with Geoff Bones, developer on SQL Storage Compress

  - by red(at)work

  How did you come to be working at Red Gate? I've been working at Red Gate for nine months; before that I had been at a multinational engineering company. A number of my colleagues had left to work at Red Gate and spoke very highly of it, but I was happy in my role and thought, 'It can't be that great there, surely? They'll be back!' Then one day I visited to catch up them over lunch in the Red Gate canteen. I was so impressed with what I found there, that, three days later, I'd applied for a role as a developer. And how did you get into software development? My first job out of university was working as a systems programmer on IBM mainframes. This was quite a while ago: there was a lot of assembler and loading programs from tape drives and that kind of stuff. I learned a lot about how computers work, and this stood me in good stead when I moved over the development in the 90s. What's the best thing about working as a developer at Red Gate? Where should I start? One of the great things as a developer at Red Gate is the useful feedback and close contact we have with the people who use our products, either directly at trade shows and other events or through information coming through the product managers. The company's whole ethos is built around assisting the user, and this is in big contrast to my previous development roles. We aim to produce tools that people really want to use, that they enjoy using, and, as a developer, this is a great thing to aim for and a great feeling when we get it right. At Red Gate we also try to cut out the things that distract and stop us doing our jobs. As a developer, this means that I can focus on the code and the product I'm working on, knowing that others are doing a first-class job of making sure that the builds are running smoothly and that I'm getting great feedback from the testers. We keep our process light and effective, as we want to produce great software more than we want to produce great audit trails. Tell us a bit about the products you are currently working on. You mean HyperBac? First let me explain a bit about what HyperBac is. At heart it's a compression and encryption technology, but with a few added features that open up a wealth of really exciting possibilities. Right now we have the HyperBac technology in just three products: SQL HyperBac, SQL Virtual Restore and SQL Storage Compress, but we're only starting to develop what it can do. My personal favourite is SQL Virtual Restore; for example, I love the way you can use it to run independent test databases that are all backed by a single compressed backup. I don't think the market yet realises the kind of things you do once you are using these products. On the other hand, the benefits of SQL Storage Compress are straightforward: run your databases but use only 20% of the disk space. Databases are getting larger and larger, and, as they do, so does your ROI. What's a typical day for you? My days are pretty varied. We have our daily team stand-up meeting and then sometimes I will work alone on a current issue, or I'll be pair programming with one of my colleagues. From time to time we give half a day up to future planning with the team, when we look at the long and short term aims for the product and working out the development priorities. I also get to go to conferences and events, which is unusual for a development role and gives me the chance to meet and talk to our customers directly. Have you noticed anything different about developing tools for DBAs rather than other IT kinds of user? It seems to me that DBAs are quite independent minded; they know exactly what the problem they are facing is, and often have a solution in mind before they begin to look for what's on the market. This means that they're likely to cherry-pick tools from a range of vendors, picking the ones that are the best fit for them and that disrupt their environments the least. When I've met with DBAs, I've often been very impressed at their ability to summarise their set up, the issues, the obstacles they face when implementing a tool and their plans for their environment. It's easier to develop products for this audience as they give such a detailed overview of their needs, and I feel I understand their problems.

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• The Virtues and Challenges of Implementing Basel III: What Every CFO and CRO Needs To Know

  - by Jenna Danko

  The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) is a group tasked with providing thought-leadership to the global banking industry.  Over the years, the BCBS has released volumes of guidance in an effort to promote stability within the financial sector.  By effectively communicating best-practices, the Basel Committee has influenced financial regulations worldwide.  Basel regulations are intended to help banks: More easily absorb shocks due to various forms of financial-economic stress Improve risk management and governance Enhance regulatory reporting and transparency In June 2011, the BCBS released Basel III: A global regulatory framework for more resilient banks and banking systems.  This new set of regulations included many enhancements to previous rules and will have both short and long term impacts on the banking industry.  Some of the key features of Basel III include: A stronger capital base More stringent capital standards and higher capital requirements Introduction of capital buffers  Additional risk coverage Enhanced quantification of counterparty credit risk Credit valuation adjustments  Wrong  way risk  Asset Value Correlation Multiplier for large financial institutions Liquidity management and monitoring Introduction of leverage ratio Even more rigorous data requirements To implement these features banks need to embark on a journey replete with challenges. These can be categorized into three key areas: Data, Models and Compliance. Data Challenges Data quality - All standard dimensions of Data Quality (DQ) have to be demonstrated.  Manual approaches are now considered too cumbersome and automation has become the norm. Data lineage - Data lineage has to be documented and demonstrated.  The PPT / Excel approach to documentation is being replaced by metadata tools.  Data lineage has become dynamic due to a variety of factors, making static documentation out-dated quickly.  Data dictionaries - A strong and clean business glossary is needed with proper identification of business owners for the data.  Data integrity - A strong, scalable architecture with work flow tools helps demonstrate data integrity.  Manual touch points have to be minimized.   Data relevance/coverage - Data must be relevant to all portfolios and storage devices must allow for sufficient data retention.  Coverage of both on and off balance sheet exposures is critical.   Model Challenges Model development - Requires highly trained resources with both quantitative and subject matter expertise. Model validation - All Basel models need to be validated. This requires additional resources with skills that may not be readily available in the marketplace.  Model documentation - All models need to be adequately documented.  Creation of document templates and model development processes/procedures is key. Risk and finance integration - This integration is necessary for Basel as the Allowance for Loan and Lease Losses (ALLL) is calculated by Finance, yet Expected Loss (EL) is calculated by Risk Management – and they need to somehow be equal.  This is tricky at best from an implementation perspective.  Compliance Challenges Rules interpretation - Some Basel III requirements leave room for interpretation.  A misinterpretation of regulations can lead to delays in Basel compliance and undesired reprimands from supervisory authorities. Gap identification and remediation - Internal identification and remediation of gaps ensures smoother Basel compliance and audit processes.  However business lines are challenged by the competing priorities which arise from regulatory compliance and business as usual work.  Qualification readiness - Providing internal and external auditors with robust evidence of a thorough examination of the readiness to proceed to parallel run and Basel qualification  In light of new regulations like Basel III and local variations such as the Dodd Frank Act (DFA) and Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review (CCAR) in the US, banks are now forced to ask themselves many difficult questions.  For example, executives must consider: How will Basel III play into their Risk Appetite? How will they create project plans for Basel III when they haven’t yet finished implementing Basel II? How will new regulations impact capital structure including profitability and capital distributions to shareholders? After all, new regulations often lead to diminished profitability as well as an assortment of implementation problems as we discussed earlier in this note.  However, by requiring banks to focus on premium growth, regulators increase the potential for long-term profitability and sustainability.  And a more stable banking system: Increases consumer confidence which in turn supports banking activity  Ensures that adequate funding is available for individuals and companies Puts regulators at ease, allowing bankers to focus on banking Stability is intended to bring long-term profitability to banks.  Therefore, it is important that every banking institution takes the steps necessary to properly manage, monitor and disclose its risks.  This can be done with the assistance and oversight of an independent regulatory authority.  A spectrum of banks exist today wherein some continue to debate and negotiate with regulators over the implementation of new requirements, while others are simply choosing to embrace them for the benefits I highlighted above. Do share with me how your institution is coping with and embracing these new regulations within your bank. Dr. Varun Agarwal is a Principal in the Banking Practice for Capgemini Financial Services.  He has over 19 years experience in areas that span from enterprise risk management, credit, market, and to country risk management; financial modeling and valuation; and international financial markets research and analyses.

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• Agile Executives

  - by Robert May

  Over the years, I have experienced many different styles of software development. In the early days, most of the development was Waterfall development. In the last few years, I’ve become an advocate of Scrum. As I talked about last month, many people have misconceptions about what Scrum really is. The reason why we do Scrum at Veracity is because of the difference it makes in the life of the team doing Scrum. Software is for people, and happy motivated people will build better software. However, not all executives understand Scrum and how to get the information from development teams that use Scrum. I think that these executives need a support system for managing Agile teams. Historical Software Management When Henry Ford pioneered the assembly line, I doubt he realized the impact he’d have on Management through the ages. Historically, management was about managing the process of building things. The people were just cogs in that process. Like all cogs, they were replaceable. Unfortunately, most of the software industry followed this same style of management. Many of today’s senior managers learned how to manage companies before software was a significant influence on how the company did business. Software development is a very creative process, but too many managers have treated it like an assembly line. Idea’s go in, working software comes out, and we just have to figure out how to make sure that the ideas going in are perfect, then the software will be perfect. Lean Manufacturing In the manufacturing industry, Lean manufacturing has revolutionized Henry Ford’s assembly line. Derived from the Toyota process, Lean places emphasis on always providing value for the customer. Anything the customer wouldn’t be willing to pay for is wasteful. Agile is based on similar principles. We’re building software for people, and anything that isn’t useful to them doesn’t add value. Waterfall development would have teams build reams and reams of documentation about how the software should work. Agile development dispenses with this work because excessive documentation doesn’t add value. Instead, teams focus on building documentation only when it truly adds value to the customer. Many other Agile principals are similar. Playing Catch-up Just like in the manufacturing industry, many managers in the software industry have yet to understand the value of the principles of Lean and Agile. They think they can wrap the uncertainties of software development up in a nice little package and then just execute, usually followed by failure. They spend a great deal of time and money trying to exactly predict the future. That expenditure of time and money doesn’t add value to the customer. Managers that understand that Agile know that there is a better way. They will instead focus on the priorities of the near term in detail, and leave the future to take care of itself. They have very detailed two week plans with less detailed quarterly plans. These plans are guided by a general corporate strategy that doesn’t focus on the exact implementation details. These managers also think in smaller features rather than large functionality. This adds a great deal of value to customers, since the features that matter most are the ones that the team focuses on in the near term and then are able to deliver to the customers that are paying for them. Agile managers also realize that stale software is very costly. They know that keeping the technology in their software current is much less expensive and risky than large rewrites that occur infrequently and schedule time in each release for refactoring of the existing software. Agile Executives Even though Agile is a better way, I’ve still seen failures using the Agile process. While some of these failures can be attributed to the team, most of them are caused by managers, not the team. Managers fail to understand what Agile is, how it works, and how to get the information that they need to make good business decisions. I think this is a shame. I’m very pleased that Veracity understands this problem and is trying to do something about it. Veracity is a key sponsor of Agile Executives. In fact, Galen is this year’s acting president for Agile Executives. The purpose of Agile Executives is to help managers better manage Agile teams and see better success. Agile Executives is trying to build a community of executives that range from managers interested in Agile to managers that have successfully adopted Agile. Together, these managers can form a community of support and ideas that will help make Agile teams more successful. Helping Your Team You can help too! Talk with your manager and get them involved in Agile Executives. Help Veracity build the community. If your manager understands Agile better, he’ll understand how to help his teams, which will result in software that adds more value for customers. If you have any questions about how you can be involved, please let me know. Technorati Tags: Agile,Agile Executives

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• Hiring New IT Employees versus Promoting Internally for IT Positions

  Recently I was asked my opinion regarding the hiring of IT professionals in regards to the option of hiring new IT employees versus promoting internally for IT positions. After thinking a little more about this question regarding staffing, specifically pertaining to promoting internally verses new employees; I think my answer to this question is that it truly depends on the situation. However, in most cases I would side with promoting internally. The key factors in this decision should be based on a company/department’s current values, culture, attitude, and existing priorities.  For example if a company values retaining all of its hard earned business knowledge then they would tend to promote existing employees internal over hiring a new employee. Moreover, the company will have to pay to train an existing employee to learn a new technology and the learning curve for some technologies can be very steep. Conversely, if a company values new technologies and technical proficiency over business knowledge then a company would tend to hire new employees because they may already have experience with a technology that the company is planning on using. In this scenario, the company would have to take on the additional overhead of allowing a new employee to learn how the business operates prior to them being fully effective. To illustrate my points above let us look at contractor that builds in ground pools for example.  He has the option to hire employees that are very strong but use small shovels to dig, or employees weak in physical strength but use large shovels to dig. Which employee should the contractor use to dig a hole for a new in ground pool? If we compare the possible candidates for this job we will find that they are very similar to hiring someone internally verses a new hire. The first example represents the existing workers that are very strong regarding the understanding how the business operates and the reasons why in a specific manner. However this employee could be potentially weaker than an outsider pertaining to specific technologies and would need some time to build their technical prowess for a new position much like the strong worker upgrading their shovels in order to remove more dirt at once when digging. The other employee is very similar to hiring a new person that may already have the large shovel but will need to increase their strength in order to use the shovel properly and efficiently so that they can move a maximum amount of dirt in a minimal amount of time. This can be compared to new employ learning how a business operates before they can be fully functional and integrated in the company/department. Another key factor in this dilemma pertains to existing employee and their passion for their work, their ability to accept new responsibility when given, and the willingness to take on responsibilities when they see a need in the business. As much as possible should be considered in this decision down to the mood of the team, the quality of existing staff, learning cure for both technology and business, and the potential side effects of the existing staff.  In addition, there are many more consideration based on the current team/department/companies culture and mood. There are several factors that need to be considered when promoting an individual or hiring new blood for a team. They both can provide great benefits as well as create controversy to a group. Personally, staffing especially in the IT world is like building a large scale system in that all of the components and modules must fit together and preform as one cohesive system in the same way a team must come together using their individually acquired skills so that they can work as one team.  If a module is out of place or is nonexistent then the rest of the team will suffer until the all of its issues are addressed and resolved. Benefits of Promoting Internally Internal promotions give employees a reason to constantly upgrade their technology, business, and communication skills if they want to further their career Employees can control their own destiny based on personal desires Employee already knows how the business operates Companies can save money by promoting internally because the initial overhead of allowing new hires to learn how a company operates is very expensive Newly promoted employees can assist in training their replacements while transitioning to their new role within a company. Existing employees already have a proven track record in regards fitting in with the business culture; this is always an unknown with all new hires Benefits of a New Hire New employees can energize and excite existing employees New employees can bring new ideas and advancements in technology New employees can offer a different perspective on existing issues based on their past experience. As you can see the decision to promote an existing employee from within a company verses hiring a new person should be based on several factors that should ultimately place the business in the best possible situation for the immediate and long term future. How would you handle this situation? Would you hire a new employee or promote from within?

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• What's My Problem? What's Your Problem?

  - by Jacek Ziabicki

  Software installers are not made for building demo environments. I can say this much after 12 years (on and off) of supporting my fellow sales consultants with environments for software demonstrations. When we release software, we include installation programs and procedures that are designed for use by our clients – to build a production environment and a limited number of testing, training and development environments. Different Objectives Your priorities when building an environment for client use vs. building a demo environment are very different. In a production environment, security, stability, and performance concerns are paramount. These environments are built on a specific server and rarely, if ever, moved to a different server or different network address. There is typically just one application running on a particular server (physical or virtual). Once built, the environment will be used for months or years at a time. Because of security considerations, the installation program wants to make these environments very specific to the organization using the software and the use case, encoding a fully qualified name of the server, or even the IP address on the network, in the configuration. So you either go through the installation procedure for each environment, or learn how to clone and reconfigure the software as a separate instance to build all your non-production environments. This may not matter much if the installation is as simple as clicking on the Setup program. But for enterprise applications, you have a number of configuration settings that you need to get just right – so whether you are installing from scratch or reconfiguring an existing installation, this requires both time and expertise in the particular piece of software. If you need a setup of several applications that are integrated to talk to one another, it is a whole new level of complexity. Now you need the expertise in all of the applications involved (plus the supporting technology products), and in addition to making each application work, you also have to configure the integration endpoints. Each application needs the URLs and credentials to call the integration layer, and the integration must be able to call each application. Then you have to make sure that each app has the right data so a business process initiated in one application can continue in the next. And, you will need to check that each application has the correct version and patch level for the integration to work. When building demo environments, your #1 concern is agility. If you can get away with a small number of long-running environments, you are lucky. More likely, you may get a request for a dedicated environment for a demonstration that is two weeks away: how quickly can you make this available so we still have the time to build the client-specific data? We are running a hands-on workshop next month, and we’ll need 15 instances of application X environment so each student can have a separate server for the exercises. We cannot connect to our data center from the client site, the client’s security policy won’t allow our VPN to go through – so we need a portable environment that we can bring with us. Our consultants need to be able to work at the hotel, airport, and the airplane, so we really want an environment that can run on a laptop. The client will need two playpen environments running in the cloud, accessible from their network, for a series of workshops that start two weeks from now. We have seen all of these scenarios and more. Here you would be much better served by a generic installation that would be easy to clone. Welcome to the Wonder Machine The reason I started this blog is to share a particular design of a demo environment, a special way to install software, that can address the above requirements, even for integrated setups. This design was created by a team at Oracle Utilities Global Business Unit, and we are using this setup for most of our demo environments. In a bout of modesty we called it the Wonder Machine. Over the next few posts – think of it as a novel in parts – I will tell you about the big idea, how it was implemented and what you can do with it. After we have laid down the groundwork, I would like to share some tips and tricks for users of our Wonder Machine implementation, as well as things I am learning about building portable, cloneable environments. The Wonder Machine is by no means a closed specification, it is under active development! I am hoping this blog will be of interest to two groups of readers – the users of the Wonder Machine we have built at Oracle Utilities, who want to get the most out of their demo environments and be able to reconfigure it to their needs – and to people who need to build environments for demonstration, testing, training, development and would like to make them cloneable and portable to maximize the reuse of their effort. Surely we are not the only ones facing this problem? If you can think of a better way to solve it, or if you can help us improve on our concept, I will appreciate your comments!

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• UK OUG Conference Highlights and Insights

  - by Richard Bingham

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

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