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• How come verification does not include actual testing?

  - by user970696

  Having read a lot about this topic, I still did not get it. Verification should prove that you are building the product right, while validation you build the right product. But only static techniques are mentioned as being verification methods (code reviews, requirements checks...). But how can you say if its implemented correctly if you do not test it? It is said that verification checks e.g. code for its correctnes. Verification - ensure that the product meet specified requirements. Again, if the function is specified to work somehow, only by testing I can say that it does. Could anyone explain this to me please? EDIT: As Wiki says: Verification:Preparing of the test cases (based on the analysis of the requireemnts) Validation: Running of the test cases

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• Does using structure data semantic LocalBusiness schema markup work for local EMD URL's?

  - by ElHaix

  Based on what I have read about Google's recent Panda and Penguin updates, I'm getting the impression that using semantic markup may help improve SEO results. On a EMD (exact match domain) site, that may have been hit, we list location-based products. We are now going to be adding a itemtype="http://schema.org/Product" to each product, with relevant details. However, that product may be available in Los Angeles and also in appear in a Seattle results page. We could add a LocalBusiness item type on each geo page to define the geo location for that page. While the definition states: A particular physical business or branch of an organization. Examples of LocalBusiness include a restaurant, a particular branch of a restaurant chain, a branch of a bank, a medical practice, a club, a bowling alley, etc. We could add use the location property which would simply include the city/state details. I realize that this looks like it is meant for a physical location, however could this be done without seeming black-hat?

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• General Session: Building and Managing a Private Oracle Java and Middleware Cloud

  - by Ruma Sanyal

  If you are developing, managing, or planning enterprise Java and business application deployments on Oracle WebLogic Server with Oracle Coherence or Oracle GlassFish Server applications or continue to have deployments of Oracle Application Server, this session will give you the roadmap of how Oracle is evolving this infrastructure to be the next-generation application foundation for its customers to build on in a private cloud setting. In the session, Ajay Patel, VP of Product Management, and the product management team shares Oracle's vision, product plans, and roadmap for this server infrastructure and how it will be used in the rapidly maturing cloud infrastructure space. The presentation will help you make key decisions about running your enterprise applications on Oracle's enterprise Java server foundation. For more information about this and other Cloud Application Foundation sessions, review the Cloud Application Foundation Focus On document. Details: Monday, 10/1; 4.45-5.45pm; Moscone West Room 3014

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• Oracle BI Publisher integration Guidelines published

  - by Anthony Shorten

  The Oracle Utilities Application Framework integrates with Oracle BI Publisher 10g/11g to allow reports to be submitted and viewed within the Oracle Utilities Application Framework based product. The integration is achieved using base provided algorithms that perform the integration from within the Oracle Utilities Application Framework based product. A new whitepaper has been released that outlines how to configure the algorithm for integration and also some guidelines on how to define a new report to the product for submission and viewing. The whitepaper is available from My Oracle Support at KB Id 1299732.1 titled “BI Publisher Guidelines for Oracle Utilities Application Framework”.

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• SQL Editor for Database Developers

  SQL editor with syntax parser, direct editing, code execution, database backup, table comparison, script generation, time measurement

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• New MOS Community: Oracle Endeca Information Discovery

  - by inowodwo

  Effective November 22, the Oracle Endeca Community has been split into separate communities representing individual Oracle Endeca products. The Oracle Endeca Information Discovery Community will fall under the Business Intelligence (BI) category, and can be found here: https://communities.oracle.com/portal/server.pt/community/oracle_endeca_information_discovery/551. This community will focus on the Oracle Endeca Information Discovery (OEID) product, formerly known as Endeca Latitude and Endeca Discovery Framework. The previous Oracle Endeca Community has been renamed to Oracle Endeca Guided Search Community and will focus on discussions around the Oracle Endeca Guided Search product, formerly known as Endeca Infront and Endeca IAP. The Guided Search Community will continue to be located under the Oracle Commerce Category. Forum threads in the previous Oracle Endeca Community related to Oracle Endeca Information Discovery product have been moved to the new Oracle Endeca Information Discovery Community. We look forward to your continued involvement.

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• How does PHP5 fare with the earlier versions of the language

  - by Pankaj Upadhyay

  Many times, I like to learn PHP for web development but been drawn back due to comments like the following :- (Comments are just for reference and does not invite Flame-war) "PHP is good but generates spaghetti code" "PHP is nice but Python is marriage material" "PHP lags stuff that you get in other languages like C# or JAVA" But for PHP5 i have seen some promising comments. So, What my question is how does PHP5 fare with the earlier versions of the language and is it good enough now to learn for web development. NOTE:- No comparison of PHP with other languages is sorted here. Please comment just on PHP and it's comparison with itself

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• UPK Pre-Built Content Update

  - by Karen Rihs

  UPK pre-built content development efforts are always underway and growing. Over the last few months, the following new and upgraded modules became available:  NEW CONTENT RELEASES E-Business Suite 12.1 Field Service Manufacturing Operations Center Process Manufacturing:  System Administration Strategic Network Optimization U.S. Federal Financials Oracle Communications 11.1 Oracle Communications UPK for Pricing Design Center, Voice and Data Offerings Oracle Mobile Workforce 2.1.0 Administrative Setup User Tasks Primavera Primavera Portfolio Management 9.0 UPK CONTENT UPGRADES JDE E1 9.1 HCM Fundamentals for EnterpriseOne Manufacturing - Product Data Management Manufacturing Management Discrete Shop Floor Management Procurement and Subcontract Management JDE World A9.3 Accounts Payable Address Book  Common Foundation General Ledger For a list of modules currently available for each product line, visit the UPK Resource Library on Oracle.com. For more information on how your organization can take advantage of UPK pre-built content, see our previous blog,  The Value of UPK Pre-Built Content. - Karen Rihs, UPK Outbound Product Management

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• CW/CCW Rotation of a Vector

  - by user23132

  Considering that I have a vector A, and after an arbitrary rotation I get vector B. I want to use this rotation operation in others vectors as well, but I'm having problems in doing that. My idea do that is to calculate the perpendicular vector C of the plane AB (by calculating AxB). This vector C is the axis that I'll need to rotate. To discover the angle I used the dot product between A and B, the acos of the dot product will return the lowest angle between A and B, the angle ang. The rotation I need to do is then: -rotate *ang*º around the C axis. The problem is that I dont know if this rotation is a CW or CCW rotation, since the cos of the dot product does not give me information of the sign of the angle. There's a tip discover that in 2D ( A.x * B.y - A.y * B.x) that you can use to discover if the vector A is at left/right of vector B. But I dont know how to do this in 3D space. Can anyone help me?

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• need example sql transaction procedures for sales tracking or financial database [closed]

  - by fa1c0n3r

  hi, i am making a database for an accounting/sales type system similar to a car sales database and would like to make some transactions for the following real world actions salesman creates new product shipped onto floor (itempk, car make, year, price).   salesman changes price.   salesman creates sale entry for product sold (salespk, itemforeignkey, price sold, salesman).   salesman cancels item for removed product.   salesman cancels sale for cancelled sale    the examples i have found online are too generic...like this is a transaction... i would like something resembling what i am trying to do to understand it.  anybody have some good similar or related sql examples i can look at to design these? do people use transactions for sales databases?  or if you have done this kind of sql transaction before could you make an outline for how these could be made?  thanks  my thread so far on stack overflow... http://stackoverflow.com/q/4975484/613799

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• Possible automated Bing Ads fraud?

  - by Gary Joynes

  I run a website that generates life insurance leads. The site is very simple a) there is a form for capturing the user's details, life insurance requirements etc b) A quote comparison feature We drive traffic to our site using conventional Google Adwords and Bing Ads campaigns. Since the 6th January we have received 30-40 dodgy leads which have the following in common: All created between 2 and 8 AM Phone number always in the format "123 1234 1234' Name, Date Of Birth, Policy details, Address all seem valid and are unique across the leads Email addresses from "disposable" email accounts including dodgit.com, mailinator.com, trashymail.com, pookmail.com Some leads come from the customer form, some via the quote comparison feature All come from different IP addresses We get the keyword information passed through from the URLs All look to be coming from Bing Ads All come from Internet Explorer v7 and v8 The consistency of the data and the random IP addresses seem to suggest an automated approach but I'm not sure of the intent. We can handle identifying these leads within our database but is there anyway of stopping this at the Ad level i.e. before the click through.

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• Lessons learnt in implementing Scrum in a Large Organization that has traditional values

  - by MarkPearl

  I recently had the experience of being involved in a “test” scrum implementation in a large organization that was used to a traditional project management approach. Here are some lessons that I learnt from it. Don’t let the Project Manager be the Product Owner First lesson learnt is to identify the correct product owner – in this instance the product manager assumed the role of the product owner which was a mistake. The product owner is the one who has the most to loose if the project fails. With a methodology that advocates removing the role of the project manager from the process then it is not in the interests of the person who is employed as a project manager to be the product owner – in fact they have the most to gain should the project fail. Know the time commitments of team members to the Project Second lesson learnt is to get a firm time commitment of the members on a team for the sprint and to hold them to it. In this project instance many of the issues we faced were with team members having to double up on supporting existing projects/systems and the scrum project. In many situations they just didn’t get round to doing any work on the scrum project for several days while they tried to meet other commitments. Initially this was not made transparent to the team – in stand up team members would say that had done some work but would be very vague on how much time they had actually spent using the blackhole of their other legacy projects as an excuse – putting up a time burn down chart made time allocations transparent and easy to hold the team to. In addition, how can you plan for a sprint without knowing the actual time available of the members – when I mean actual time, the exercise of getting them to go through all their appointments and lunch times and breaks and removing them from their time commitment helps get you to a realistic time that they can dedicate. Make sure you meet your minimum team sizes In a recent post I wrote about the difference between a partnership and a team. If you are going to do scrum in a large organization make sure you have a minimum team size of at least 3 developers. My experience with larger organizations is that people have a tendency to be sick more, take more leave and generally not be around – if you have a team size of two it is so easy to loose momentum on the project – the more people you have in the team (up to about 9) the more the momentum the project will have when people are not around. Swapping from one methodology to another can seem as waste to the customer It sounds bad, but most customers don’t care what methodology you use. Often they have bought into the “big plan upfront”. If you can, avoid taking a project on midstream from a traditional approach unless the customer has not bought into the process – with this particular project they had a detailed upfront planning breakaway with the customer using the traditional approach and then before the project started we moved onto a scrum implementation – this seemed as waste to the customer. We should have managed the customers expectation properly. Don’t play the role of the scrum master if you can’t be the scrum master With this particular implementation I was the “scrum master”. But all I did was go through the process of the formal meetings of scrum – I attended stand up, retrospectives and planning – but I was not hands on the ground. I was not performing the most important role of removing blockages – and by the end of the project there were a number of blockages “cropping up”. What could have been a better approach was to take someone on the team and train them to be the scrum master and be present to coach them. Alternatively actually be on the team on a fulltime basis and be the scrum master. By just going through the meetings of scrum didn’t mean we were doing scrum. So we failed with this one, if you fail look at it from an agile perspective As this particular project drew to a close and it became more and more apparent that it was not going to succeed the failure of it became depressing. Emotions were expressed by various people on the team that we not encouraging and enforced the failure. Embracing the failure and looking at it for what it is instead of taking it as the end of the world can change how you grow from the experience. Acknowledging that it failed and then focussing on learning from why and how to avoid the failure in the future can change how you feel emotionally about the team, the project and the organization.

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• One to many problem with implementing 301 redirect after changed urls

  - by user16136

  I have a problem. I had an old dynamic url which I have now split into multiple static urls. e.g. www.mydomain.com/product.php?type=1&id=2 www.mydomain.com/product.php?type=2&id=3 www.mydomain.com/product.php?type=2&id=4, etc which I have changed to something like www.mydomain.com/electronics/radio www.mydomain.com/electronics/television www.mydomain.com/mobile/smartphone, etc. Google has previously indexed the dynamic urls and search results show the old urls. I want search to point to the new urls. I have kept the old url active, so both urls work. How can I set up a 301 redirect in this case? I run IIS and it only allows a page to be redirected to 1 url. Should I deactivate the old dynamic url? In that case I lose all the previous seo rankings..

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• What to "CRM" in San Francisco? CRM Highlights for OpenWorld '12

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  There is plenty to SEE for CRM during OpenWorld in San Francisco, September 30 - October 4! Here are some of the sessions in the CRM Track that you might want to consider attending for products you currently own or might consider for the future. I think you'll agree, there is quite a bit of investment going on across Oracle CRM. Please use OpenWorld Schedule Builder or check the OpenWorld Content Catalog for all of the session details and any time or location changes. Tip: Pre-enrolled session registrants via Schedule Builder are allowed into the session rooms before anyone else, so Schedule Builder will guarantee you a seat. Many of the sessions below will likely be at capacity. General Session: Oracle Fusion CRM—Improving Sales Effectiveness, Efficiency, and Ease of Use (Session ID: GEN9674) - Oct 2, 11:45 AM - 12:45 PM. Anthony Lye, Senior VP, Oracle leads this general session focused on Oracle Fusion CRM. Oracle Fusion CRM optimizes territories, combines quota management and incentive compensation, integrates sales and marketing, and cleanses and enriches data—all within a single application platform. Oracle Fusion can be configured, changed, and extended at runtime by end users, business managers, IT, and developers. Oracle Fusion CRM can be used from the Web, from a smartphone, from Microsoft Outlook, or from an iPad. Deloitte, sponsor of the CRM Track, will also present key concepts on CRM implementations. Oracle Fusion Customer Relationship Management: Overview/Strategy/Customer Experiences/Roadmap (CON9407) - Oct 1, 3:15PM - 4:15PM. In this session, learn how Oracle Fusion CRM enables companies to create better sales plans, generate more quality leads, and achieve higher win rates and find out why customers are adopting Oracle Fusion CRM. Gain a deeper understanding of the unique capabilities only Oracle Fusion CRM provides, and learn how Oracle’s commitment to CRM innovation is driving a wide range of future enhancements. Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service Vision and Roadmap (CON9764) - Oct 1, 10:45 AM - 11:45 AM. Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service combines Web, social, and contact center experiences for a unified, cross-channel service solution in the cloud, enabling organizations to increase sales and adoption, build trust, strengthen relationships, and reduce costs and effort. Come to this session to hear from Oracle experts about where the product is going and how Oracle is committed to accelerating the pace of innovation and value to its customers. Siebel CRM Overview, Strategy, and Roadmap (CON9700) - Oct 1, 12:15PM - 1:15PM. The world’s most complete CRM solution, Oracle’s Siebel CRM helps organizations differentiate their businesses. Come to this session to learn about the Siebel product roadmap and how Oracle is committed to accelerating the pace of innovation and value for its customers on this platform. Additionally, the session covers how Siebel customers can leverage many Oracle assets such as Oracle WebCenter Sites; InQuira, RightNow, and ATG/Endeca applications, and Oracle Policy Automation in conjunction with their current Siebel investments. Oracle Fusion Social CRM Strategy and Roadmap: Future of Collaboration and Social Engagement (CON9750) - Oct 4, 11:15 AM - 12:15 PM. Social is changing the customer experience! Come find out how Oracle can help you know your customers better, encourage brand affinity, and improve collaboration within your ecosystem. This session reviews Oracle’s social media solution and shows how you can discover hidden insights buried in your enterprise and social data. Also learn how Oracle Social Network revolutionizes how enterprise users work, collaborate, and share to achieve successful outcomes. Oracle CRM On Demand Strategy and Roadmap (CON9727) - Oct 1, 10:45AM - 11:45AM. Oracle CRM On Demand is a powerful cloud-based customer relationship management solution. Come to this session to learn directly from Oracle experts about future product plans and hear how Oracle is committed to accelerating the pace of innovation and value to its customers. Knowledge Management Roadmap and Strategy (CON9776) - Oct 1, 12:15PM - 1:15PM. Learn how to harness the knowledge created as a natural byproduct of day-to-day interactions to lower costs and improve customer experience by delivering the right answer at the right time across channels. This session includes an overview of Oracle’s product roadmap and vision for knowledge management for both the Oracle RightNow and Oracle Knowledge (formerly InQuira) product families. Oracle Policy Automation Roadmap: Supercharging the Customer Experience (CON9655) - Oct 1, 12:15PM - 1:15PM. Oracle Policy Automation delivers rapid customer value by streamlining the capture, analysis, and deployment of policies across every facet of the customer experience. This session discusses recent Oracle Policy Automation enhancements for policy analytics; the latest Oracle Policy Automation Connector for Siebel; and planned new capabilities, including availability with the Oracle RightNow product line. There is much more, so stay tuned for more highlights or check out the Content Catalog and search for your areas of interest. 

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• BeautyBay.com Boosts its Web business with Endeca!

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  BeautyBay.com Boosts Webpage Views by 70%, Increases Items Placed in Shopping Baskets, and Runs 160 Concurrent Brand and Product Promotion. BeautyBay.com Ltd is the United Kingdom’s largest independent online luxury beauty-product retailer. The company sells more than 10,000 products from leading brands like Urban Decay, Paul & Joe, Mario Badescu, bareMinerals, and Dr Sebagh. It strives to stock consumers’ favorite brands and serve as a leading source of beauty information and product reviews. The company won an Online Retail Award in 2013 in the Beauty, Perfume & Cosmetics category. Read the success story, featuring the role of Oracle Endeca here

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• Best Resources for learning SQL? [closed]

  - by Simon

  Possible Duplicate: Good Books and videos for absolute beginner to SQL I have landed a role as a product engineer for a web based product. A big part of the product is allowing its users the ability to create queries with SQL to pull in business information from their back end databases. I know the very basics of SQL and need to spend some time getting a better grasp on SQL. I have the tutorial from w3schools on my ToDo list, but was hoping to get some answers that point me to good resources for learning SQL. I have no preference - I can buy a book (SQL For Dummies?), or online resources, online videos, audio, etc.

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• Options for Application Registry

  - by Matt Felzani

  I work for a small software company (about 200 people building 8-10 applications) and I was hoping to get some advice on products that might be out there to manage the information of which clients are using which versions of our products? The most fundamental relationship would be that a "product" has "versions" and a given "version" is used by a "client." Uses would be: Determine which clients use which products Determine which clients are on which versions of a product Determine which clients are exposed to which vulnerabilities because of the version they use Determine which clients cannot move to a new version because of a vulnerability in the new version that they may hit Determine which clients should be approached for an upgrade Any thoughts or product reviews would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance.

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• Sensor based vs. AABB based collision

  - by Hillel

  I'm trying to write a simple collision system, which will probably be primarily used for 2D platformers, and I've been planning out an AABB system for a few weeks now, which will work seamlessly with my grid data structure optimization. I picked AABB because I want a simple system, but I also want it to be perfect. Now, I've been hearing a lot lately about a different method to handle collision, using sensors, which are placed in the important parts of the entity. I understand it's a good way to handle slopes, better than AABB collision. The thing is, I can't find a basic explanation of how it works, let alone a comparison of it and the AABB method. If someone could explain it to me, or point me to a good tutorial, I'd very much appreciate it, and also a comparison of the advantages and disadvantages of the two techniques would be nice.

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• Tuesday at Oracle OpenWorld 2012 - Must See Session: “Jump-starting Integration Projects with Oracle AIA Foundation Pack”

  - by Lionel Dubreuil

  Don’t miss this “CON8769 - Jump-starting Integration Projects with Oracle AIA Foundation Pack“session: Date: Tuesday, Oct 2 Time: 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM Location: Marriott Marquis - Salon 7 Speakers: Robert Wunderlich - Principal Product Manager, Oracle Munazza Bukhari - Group Manager, AIA FP Product Management, Oracle The Oracle Application Integration Architecture Foundation Pack development lifecycle prescribes the best practice methodology for developing integrations between applications. The lifecycle is supported by a toolset that focuses on the architects and developers. Attend this session to understand how Oracle AIA Foundation Pack can jump-start integration project development and boost developer productivity. It demonstrates what the product does today and showcases new features such as support for building direct integrations. Objectives for this session are to: Understand how to boost developer productivity Hear about support for direct integrations Learn what’s new in Oracle AIA Foundation Pack

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• Tuesday at Oracle OpenWorld 2012 - Must See Session: “Jump-starting Integration Projects with Oracle AIA Foundation Pack”

  - by Lionel Dubreuil

  Don’t miss this “CON8769 - Jump-starting Integration Projects with Oracle AIA Foundation Pack“session: Date: Tuesday, Oct 2 Time: 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM Location: Marriott Marquis - Salon 7 Speakers: Robert Wunderlich - Principal Product Manager, Oracle Munazza Bukhari - Group Manager, AIA FP Product Management, Oracle The Oracle Application Integration Architecture Foundation Pack development lifecycle prescribes the best practice methodology for developing integrations between applications. The lifecycle is supported by a toolset that focuses on the architects and developers. Attend this session to understand how Oracle AIA Foundation Pack can jump-start integration project development and boost developer productivity. It demonstrates what the product does today and showcases new features such as support for building direct integrations. Objectives for this session are to: Understand how to boost developer productivity Hear about support for direct integrations Learn what’s new in Oracle AIA Foundation Pack

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• Qualifying 'happiness' in software development?

  - by mummey

  It occurred to me today that often the real goal of questions asked on sites such as this one (where the questions tend to be more open-ended than say, SO) is for the OP to become happier upon achieving the result. We often excuse this by saying our desire is to be more productive or release a better product, but if you continue to look down this path you can determine that the OP seeks greater productivity or product-quality because those are important to his/her 'happiness'. With that in-mind I ask this: Have their been efforts to study software development from this perspective? In other words, what practises increase happiness in those who develop software as a career, and who, if anyone, has researched this specifically? As I mentioned above, they may include strategies that increase productivity or improve product quality, but by no means should they be limited to just those.

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• SPARC T5-4 Engineering Simulation Solution

  - by Mike Mulkey-Oracle

  A recent Oracle internal performance evaluation for computer-based product design demonstrated that Oracle's SPARC T5-4 server running MSC's SimManager simulation software with Oracle Database 12c consolidates the work of multiple x86 servers while delivering better overall performance.   Engineering simulation solutions have taken the center stage in helping companies design and develop innovative products while reducing physical prototyping costs, and exploring a larger design space, resulting in more design possibilities. For this solution, a single SPARC T5-4 server running Oracle Solaris 11 was deployed to consolidate the MSC SimManager server, the Oracle Database 12c server, and the web application server onto a single platform. An automotive design workload was deployed to demonstrate how the SPARC T5-4 server can be used to consolidate the work of multiple x86 servers and deliver better overall performance while reducing complexity and achieving optimal product designs.  A joint Oracle/MSC Software solution brief describes this in more detail:  A Simplified Solution for Product Lifecycle Management —MSC SimManager on a SPARC T5-4 Server

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• Developer Deep Dive into Oracle WebLogic Server 12c (Dec. 1)

  - by oracletechnet

  It is not often that we are compelled to direct you toward a product launch event. But this one is special. On Dec. 1, Oracle will launch (via live Webcast) Oracle WebLogic Server 12c, a major update to that product. And this release, which includes Java EE 6 support, Active GridLink for Oracle RAC, and Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder, among other things, is specifically designed to improve the process of deploying apps to the cloud. Even better: the Dec. 1 Webcast includes an hour-long, developer-focused deep-dive session in which product experts will answer your questions via live chat. (Register for this session separately.) You don't want to miss this one, folks! 

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• How do I optimize SEO in a multiblog WordPress install?

  - by user35585

  We are about to launch two product pages plus a corporate website. The goal is to keep a blog in all of the sites, but here it comes the question about how to do it in a way we get everything unified but do not mess with Google's web crawlers. We considered the following options: Putting a blog from which we retrieve two categories with custom CSS, so we have a blog that sub splits two category-dependent blogs; this way we can get the feeds and will point to it Putting two product blogs of which we retrieve their posts into a bigger, corporate blog Putting three independent blogs Despite I was for the first option, so we only have to address our content from the product pages, I would sincerely like to hear your opinion. We are afraid duplicate content or strange link games may make us lose PageRank. How would you do it?

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• IE9, LightSwitch Beta 2 and Zune HD: A Study in Risk Management?

  - by andrewbrust

  Photo by parl, 'Risk.’ Under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License This has been a busy week for Microsoft, and for me as well.  On Monday, Microsoft launched Internet Explorer 9 at South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, TX.  That evening I flew from New York to Seattle.  On Tuesday morning, Microsoft launched Visual Studio LightSwitch, Beta 2 with a Go-Live license, in Redmond, and I had the privilege of speaking at the keynote presentation where the announcement was made.  Readers of this blog know I‘m a fan of LightSwitch, so I was happy to tell the app dev tools partners in the audience that I thought the LightSwitch extensions ecosystem represented a big opportunity – comparable to the opportunity when Visual Basic 1.0 was entering its final beta roughly 20 years ago.  On Tuesday evening, I flew back to New York (and wrote most of this post in-flight). Two busy, productive days.  But there was a caveat that impacts the accomplishments, because Monday was also the day reports surfaced from credible news agencies that Microsoft was discontinuing its dedicated Zune hardware efforts.  While the Zune brand, technology and service will continue to be a component of Windows Phone and a piece of the Xbox puzzle as well, speculation is that Microsoft will no longer be going toe-to-toe with iPod touch in the portable music player market. If we take all three of these developments together (even if one of them is based on speculation), two interesting conclusions can reasonably be drawn, one good and one less so. Microsoft is doubling down on technologies it finds strategic and de-emphasizing those that it does not.  HTML 5 and the Web are strategic, so here comes IE9, and it’s a very good browser.  Try it and see.  Silverlight is strategic too, as is SQL Server, Windows Azure and SQL Azure, so here comes Visual Studio LightSwitch Beta 2 and a license to deploy its apps to production.  Downloads of that product have exceeded Microsoft’s projections by more than 50%, and the company is even citing analyst firms’ figures covering the number of power-user developers that might use it. (I happen to think the product will be used by full-fledged developers as well, but that’s a separate discussion.) Windows Phone is strategic too…I wasn’t 100% positive of that before, but the Nokia agreement has made me confident.  Xbox as an entertainment appliance is also strategic.  Standalone music players are not strategic – and even if they were, selling them has been a losing battle for Microsoft.  So if Microsoft has consolidated the Zune content story and the ZunePass subscription into Xbox and Windows Phone, it would make sense, and would be a smart allocation of resources.  Essentially, it would be for the greater good. But it’s not all good.  In this scenario, Zune player customers would lose out.  Unless they wanted to switch to Windows Phone, and then use their phone’s battery for the portable media needs, they’re going to need a new platform.  They’re going to feel abandoned.  Even if Zune lives, there have been other such cul de sacs for customers.  Remember SPOT watches?  Live Spaces?  The original Live Mesh?  Microsoft discontinued each of these products.  The company is to be commended for cutting its losses, as admitting a loss isn’t easy.  But Redmond won’t be well-regarded by the victims of those decisions.  Instead, it gets black marks. What’s the answer?  I think it’s a bit like the 1980’s New York City “don’t block the box” gridlock rules: don’t enter an intersection unless you see a clear path through it.  If the light turns red and you’re blocking the perpendicular traffic, that’s your fault in judgment.  You get fined and get points on your license and you don’t get to shrug it off as beyond your control.  Accountability is key.  The same goes for Microsoft.  If it decides to enter a market, it should see a reasonable path through success in that market. Switching analogies, Microsoft shouldn’t make investments haphazardly, and it certainly shouldn’t ask investors to buy into a high-risk fund that is sold as safe and which offers only moderate returns.  People won’t continue to invest with a fund manager with a track record of over-zealous, imprudent, sub-prime investments.  The same is true on the product side for Microsoft, and not just with music players and geeky wrist watches.  It’s true of Web browsers, and line-of-business app dev tools, and smartphones, and cloud platforms and operating systems too.  When Microsoft is casual about its own risk, it raises risk for its customers, and weakens its reputation, market share and credibility.  That doesn’t mean all risk is bad, but it does mean no product team’s risk should be taken lightly. For mutual fund companies, it’s the CEO’s job to give his fund managers autonomy, but to make sure they’re conforming to a standard of rational risk management.  Because all those funds carry the same brand, and many of them serve the same investors. The same goes for Microsoft, its product portfolio, its executive ranks and its product managers.

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