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  • Inserting and Deleting Sub Rows in GridView

    - by Vincent Maverick Durano
    A user in the forums (http://forums.asp.net) is asking how to insert  sub rows in GridView and also add delete functionality for the inserted sub rows. In this post I'm going to demonstrate how to this in ASP.NET WebForms.  The basic idea to achieve this is we just need to insert row data in the DataSource that is being used in GridView since the GridView rows will be generated based on the DataSource data. To make it more clear then let's build up a sample application. To start fire up Visual Studio and create a WebSite or Web Application project and then add a new WebForm. In the WebForm ASPX page add this GridView markup below:   1: <asp:gridview ID="GridView1" runat="server" AutoGenerateColumns="false" onrowdatabound="GridView1_RowDataBound"> 2: <Columns> 3: <asp:BoundField DataField="RowNumber" HeaderText="Row Number" /> 4: <asp:TemplateField HeaderText="Header 1"> 5: <ItemTemplate> 6: <asp:TextBox ID="TextBox1" runat="server"></asp:TextBox> 7: </ItemTemplate> 8: </asp:TemplateField> 9: <asp:TemplateField HeaderText="Header 2"> 10: <ItemTemplate> 11: <asp:TextBox ID="TextBox2" runat="server"></asp:TextBox> 12: </ItemTemplate> 13: </asp:TemplateField> 14: <asp:TemplateField HeaderText="Header 3"> 15: <ItemTemplate> 16: <asp:TextBox ID="TextBox3" runat="server"></asp:TextBox> 17: </ItemTemplate> 18: </asp:TemplateField> 19: <asp:TemplateField HeaderText="Action"> 20: <ItemTemplate> 21: <asp:LinkButton ID="LinkButton1" runat="server" onclick="LinkButton1_Click" Text="Insert"></asp:LinkButton> 22: </ItemTemplate> 23: </asp:TemplateField> 24: </Columns> 25: </asp:gridview>   Then at the code behind source of ASPX page you can add this codes below:   1: private DataTable FillData() { 2:   3: DataTable dt = new DataTable(); 4: DataRow dr = null; 5:   6: //Create DataTable columns 7: dt.Columns.Add(new DataColumn("RowNumber", typeof(string))); 8:   9: //Create Row for each columns 10: dr = dt.NewRow(); 11: dr["RowNumber"] = 1; 12: dt.Rows.Add(dr); 13:   14: dr = dt.NewRow(); 15: dr["RowNumber"] = 2; 16: dt.Rows.Add(dr); 17:   18: dr = dt.NewRow(); 19: dr["RowNumber"] = 3; 20: dt.Rows.Add(dr); 21:   22: dr = dt.NewRow(); 23: dr["RowNumber"] = 4; 24: dt.Rows.Add(dr); 25:   26: dr = dt.NewRow(); 27: dr["RowNumber"] = 5; 28: dt.Rows.Add(dr); 29:   30: //Store the DataTable in ViewState for future reference 31: ViewState["CurrentTable"] = dt; 32:   33: return dt; 34:   35: } 36:   37: private void BindGridView(DataTable dtSource) { 38: GridView1.DataSource = dtSource; 39: GridView1.DataBind(); 40: } 41:   42: private DataRow InsertRow(DataTable dtSource, string value) { 43: DataRow dr = dtSource.NewRow(); 44: dr["RowNumber"] = value; 45: return dr; 46: } 47: //private DataRow DeleteRow(DataTable dtSource, 48:   49: protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { 50: if (!IsPostBack) { 51: BindGridView(FillData()); 52: } 53: } 54:   55: protected void LinkButton1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { 56: LinkButton lb = (LinkButton)sender; 57: GridViewRow row = (GridViewRow)lb.NamingContainer; 58: DataTable dtCurrentData = (DataTable)ViewState["CurrentTable"]; 59: if (lb.Text == "Insert") { 60: //Insert new row below the selected row 61: dtCurrentData.Rows.InsertAt(InsertRow(dtCurrentData, row.Cells[0].Text + "-sub"), row.RowIndex + 1); 62:   63: } 64: else { 65: //Delete selected sub row 66: dtCurrentData.Rows.RemoveAt(row.RowIndex); 67: } 68:   69: BindGridView(dtCurrentData); 70: ViewState["CurrentTable"] = dtCurrentData; 71: } 72:   73: protected void GridView1_RowDataBound(object sender, GridViewRowEventArgs e) { 74: if (e.Row.RowType == DataControlRowType.DataRow) { 75: if (e.Row.Cells[0].Text.Contains("-sub")) { 76: ((LinkButton)e.Row.FindControl("LinkButton1")).Text = "Delete"; 77: } 78: } 79: }   As you can see the code above is pretty straight forward and self explainatory but just to give you a short explaination the code above is composed of three (3) private methods which are the FillData(), BindGridView and InsertRow(). The FillData() method is a method that returns a DataTable and basically creates a dummy data in the DataTable to be used as the GridView DataSource. You can replace the code in that method if you want to use actual data from database but for the purpose of this example I just fill the DataTable with a dummy data on it. The BindGridVew is a method that handles the actual binding of GridVew. The InsertRow() is a method that returns a DataRow. This method handles the insertion of the sub row. Now in the LinkButton OnClick event, we casted the sender to a LinkButton to determine the specific object that fires up the event and get the row values. We then reference the Data from ViewState to get the current data that is being used in the GridView. If the LinkButton text is "Insert" then we will insert new row to the DataSource ( in this case the DataTable) based on the rowIndex if not then Delete the sub row that was added. Here are some screen shots of the output below: On initial load:   After inserting a sub row:   That's it! I hope someone find this post useful!   Technorati Tags: ASP.NET,C#,GridView

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  • Upgrading VSIX extensions from VS2012 to VS2013

    - by Tarun Arora [Microsoft MVP]
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/TarunArora/archive/2013/06/27/upgrading-vsix-extensions-from-vs2012-to-vs2013.aspx  As consumers of your Visual Studio extensions start to move over to VS 2013, you will have to upgrade the Visual Studio extensions you build for Visual Studio 2012 to Visual Studio 2013 and republish to the Visual Studio extension gallery. Failing which, it will not be possible for your consumers to install and use your extensions on Visual Studio 2013.   Objective In this blog post, I’ll show you how simple it is to upgrade your Visual Studio 2012 extension to Visual Studio 2013. There aren’t any reported breaking changes between VS 2012 SDK and VS 2013 SDK, the upgrade usually involves, rebuilding the extension against VS 2013 SDK and updating the vsix manifest file.              Walkthrough Download the Visual Studio 2013 SDK - You will need to download the Visual Studio 2013 SDK in order to open up the Visual Studio extension project in Visual Studio 2013. The SDK can be downloaded from here. Install the SDK before you proceed.                2. Once the VS 2013 SDK has been installed, open up your package project. For the purposes of this blog post, I’ll open up the Avanade Extension – Software Inventory in Visual Studio 2013. You will notice that Visual Studio doesn’t load the project but let’s you know that the project needs to be Migrated.                  3. Right click the project and choose the option ‘Reload Project’ from the Context Menu.                  4. Choosing the Reload Project option brings up an upgrade window, telling you that the upgrade is a one way only upgrade i.e. the project will be changed to work with Visual Studio 2013 and you will not be able to open the project up in Visual Studio 2012. My recommendation would be to create a Visual Studio 2013 branch and upgrading the project in that branch only, so if you need to go back to Visual Studio 2012 project at some point, you have a handy reference in a separate branch.             5. Upon clicking Ok, the project is updated. See below, the following changes are made at the time of upgrade,           - The runtime version is updated in the Resources.Designer.cs file                      - The Minimum version of Visual Studio in the package project file is changed from 11.0 to 12.0                    6. Reference VS 2013 dll’s rather than VS 2012 dll’s. So reference Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client.dll and Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Controls.dll from C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\IDE\ReferenceAssemblies\v2.0 and C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\IDE\ReferenceAssemblies\v4.5. If you have any other API references, then change the references to point to VS 2013 instead of VS 2012.                          7. Rebuild your solution to ensure there are no breaking changes. Success!                8. Update VSIX Manifest file (the file source.extnsion.vsixmanifest contains the meta data for your VSIX).          - Update the Install Targets from 11.0 to 12.0. This basically enforces that the extension can be installed on Visual Studio 2013 version of Visual Studio.                         - Update the Dependencies from Visual Studio MPF 11.0 to Visual Studio MPF 12.0              9. Rebuild the solution and open up the bin folder for the Package project and look for the file *.vsix file [Microsoft Visual Studio Extension].         - This is basically the installer for your extension.                 - Double click the installer to launch the installer wizard. Viola! You can see the package installation wizard opens up and gives you the option to install the extension for Visual Studio 2013.                    - Click Install to Continue                    - Note – If you run into the exception “23/06/2013 10:42:18 - Install Error : Microsoft.VisualStudio.ExtensionManager.InstallByMsiException: The InstalledByMSI element in extension Avanade Extensions cannot be 'true' when installing an extension through the Extensions and Updates Installer.  The element can only be 'true' when an MSI lays down the extension manifest file.” Ensure you have the option “This VSIX is installed by Windows Installer” unchecked in the Install Targets tab.        10. Verifying that the extension has installed correctly.           - Open Extension Manager and verify that the installed extension shows up in the extension manager “list of installed VSIX”.                      11. First Look at the updated Extension                         - The links have now been moved to the context menu, so to see the navigation links, you’ll have to right click on the icon and select the option from the context menu.                                        Note – The Avanade Extension being used in the demo has been developed by Utkarsh and Tarun. The Software Inventory Extension for Visual Studio 2012…  allows you to see the list of Software installed on the hosted build server right from with in Visual Studio,  the extension also allows you to export this list to excel. More details on how this has been implemented can be found here.   I hope you found this useful. In case you have any questions or feedback, feel free to reach out on Visual Studio extensibility MSDN forums or via Microsoft Visual Studio feedback forum. Thank you for taking the time out and reading this blog post. If you enjoyed the post, remember to subscribe to http://feeds.feedburner.com/TarunArora. Stay tuned!

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  • FAT Volume and CE

    - by Kate Moss' Open Space
    Whenever we format a disk volume, it is a good idea to name the label so it will be easier to categorize. To label a volume, we can use LABEL command or UI depends on your preference. Windows CE does provide FAT driver and support various format (FAT12, FAT16,FAT32, ExFAT and TFAT - transaction-safe FAT) and many feature to let you scan and even defrag the volume but not labeling. At any time you format a volume in CE and then mount it on PC, the label is always empty! Of course, you can always label the volume on PC, even it is formatted in CE. So looks like CE does not care about the volume label at all, neither report the label to OS nor changing the label on FAT.So how can we set the volume label in CE? To Answer this question, we need to know how does FAT stores the volume label. Here are some on-line resources are handy for parsing FAT. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table http://www.pjrc.com/tech/8051/ide/fat32.html http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/firmware/fatgen.mspx You can refer to PUBLIC\COMMON\OAK\DRIVERS\FSD\FATUTIL\MAIN\bootsec.h and dosbpb.h or the above links for the fields we discuss here. The first sector of a FAT Volume (it is not necessary to be the first sector of a disk.) is a FAT boot sector and BPB (BIOS Parameter Block). And at offset 43, bgbsVolumeLabel (or bsVolumeLabel on FAT16) is for storing the volume lable, but note in the spec also indicates "FAT file system drivers should make sure that they update this field when the volume label file in the root directory has its name changed or created.". So we can't just simply update the bgbsVolumeLabel but also need to create a volume lable file in root directory. The volume lable file is not a real file but just a file entry in root directory with zero file lenth and a very special file attribute, ATTR_VOLUME_ID. (defined in public\common\oak\drivers\fsd\fatutil\MAIN\fatutilp.h) Locating and accessing bootsector is quite straight forward, as long as we know the starting sector of a FAT volume, that's it. But where is the root directory? The layout of a typical FAT is like this Boot sector (Volume ID in the figure) followed by Reserved Sectors (1 on FAT12/16 and 32 on FAT32), then FAT chain table(s) (can be 1 or 2), after that is the root directory (FAT12/16 and not shows in the figure) then begining of the File and Directories. In FAT12/16, the root directory is placed right after FAT so it is not hard to caculate the offset in the volume. But in FAT32, this rule is no longer true: the first cluster of the root directory is determined by BGBPB_RootDirStrtClus (or offset 44 in boot sector). Although this field is usually 0x00000002 (it is how CE initial the root directory after formating a volume. Note we should never assume it is always true) which means the first cluster contains data but not like the root directory is contiguous in FAT12/16, it is just like a regular file can be fragmented. So we need to access the root directory (of FAT32) hopping one cluster to another by traversing FAT table. Let's trace the code now. Although the source of FAT driver is not available in CE Shared Source program, but the formatter, Fatutil.dll, is available in public\common\oak\drivers\fsd\fatutil\MAIN\formatdisk.cpp. Be aware the public code only provides formatter for FAT12/16/32 for ExFAT it is still not available. FormatVolumeInternal is the main worker function. With the knowledge here, you should be able the trace the code easily. But I would like to discuss the following code pieces     dwReservedSectors = (fo.dwFatVersion == 32) ? 32 : 1;     dwRootEntries = (fo.dwFatVersion == 32) ? 0 : fo.dwRootEntries; Note the dwReservedSectors is 32 in FAT32 and 1 in FAT12/16. Root Entries is another different mentioned in previous paragraph, 0 for FAT32 (dynamic allocated) and fixed size (usually 512, defined in DEFAULT_ROOT_ENTRIES in public\common\sdk\inc\fatutil.h) And then here   memset(pBootSec->bsVolumeLabel, 0x20, sizeof(pBootSec->bsVolumeLabel)); It sets the Volume Label as empty string. Now let's carry on to the next section - write the root directory.     if (fo.dwFatVersion == 32) {         if (!(fo.dwFlags & FATUTIL_FORMAT_TFAT)) {             dwRootSectors = dwSectorsPerCluster;         }         else {             DIRENTRY    dirEntry;             DWORD       offset;             int               iVolumeNo;             memset(pbBlock, 0, pdi->di_bytes_per_sect);             memset(&dirEntry, 0, sizeof(DIRENTRY));                         dirEntry.de_attr = ATTR_VOLUME_ID;             // the first one is volume label             memcpy(dirEntry.de_name, "TFAT       ", sizeof (dirEntry.de_name));             memcpy(pbBlock, &dirEntry, sizeof(dirEntry));              ...             // Skip the next step of zeroing out clusters             dwCurrentSec += dwSectorsPerCluster;             dwRootSectors = 0;         }     }     // Each new root directory sector needs to be zeroed.     memset(pbBlock, 0, cbSizeBlk);     iRootSec=0;     while ( iRootSec < dwRootSectors) { Basically, the code zero out the each entry in root directory depends on dwRootSectors. In FAT12/16, the dwRootSectors is calculated as the sectors we need for the root entries (512 for most of the case) and in FAT32 it just zero out the one cluster. Please note that, if it is a TFAT volume, it initialize the root directory with special volume label entries for some special purpose. Despite to its unusual initialization process for TFAT, it does provide a example for how to create a volume entry. With some minor modification, we can assign the volume label in FAT formatter and also remember to sync the volume label with bsVolumeLabel or bgbsVolumeLabel in boot sector.

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  • Make a Drive Image Using an Ubuntu Live CD

    - by Trevor Bekolay
    Cloning a hard drive is useful, but what if you have to make several copies, or you just want to make a complete backup of a hard drive? Drive images let you put everything, and we mean everything, from your hard drive in one big file. With an Ubuntu Live CD, this is a simple process – the versatile tool dd can do this for us right out of the box. We’ve used dd to clone a hard drive before. Making a drive image is very similar, except instead of copying data from one hard drive to another, we copy from a hard drive to a file. Drive images are more flexible, as you can do what you please with the data once you’ve pulled it off the source drive. Your drive image is going to be a big file, depending on the size of your source drive – dd will copy every bit of it, even if there’s only one tiny file stored on the whole hard drive. So, to start, make sure you have a device connected to your computer that will be large enough to hold the drive image. Some ideas for places to store the drive image, and how to connect to them in an Ubuntu Live CD, can be found at this previous Live CD article. In this article, we’re going to make an image of a 1GB drive, and store it on another hard drive in the same PC. Note: always be cautious when using dd, as it’s very easy to completely wipe out a drive, as we will show later in this article. Creating a Drive Image Boot up into the Ubuntu Live CD environment. Since we’re going to store the drive image on a local hard drive, we first have to mount it. Click on Places and then the location that you want to store the image on – in our case, a 136GB internal drive. Open a terminal window (Applications > Accessories > Terminal) and navigate to the newly mounted drive. All mounted drives should be in /media, so we’ll use the command cd /media and then type the first few letters of our difficult-to-type drive, press tab to auto-complete the name, and switch to that directory. If you wish to place the drive image in a specific folder, then navigate to it now. We’ll just place our drive image in the root of our mounted drive. The next step is to determine the identifier for the drive you want to make an image of. In the terminal window, type in the command sudo fdisk -l Our 1GB drive is /dev/sda, so we make a note of that. Now we’ll use dd to make the image. The invocation is sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=./OldHD.img This means that we want to copy from the input file (“if”) /dev/sda (our source drive) to the output file (“of”) OldHD.img, which is located in the current working directory (that’s the “.” portion of the “of” string). It takes some time, but our image has been created…Let’s test to make sure it works. Drive Image Testing: Wiping the Drive Another interesting thing that dd can do is totally wipe out the data on a drive (a process we’ve covered before). The command for that is sudo dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda This takes some random data as input, and outputs it to our drive, /dev/sda. If we examine the drive now using sudo fdisk –l, we can see that the drive is, indeed, wiped. Drive Image Testing: Restoring the Drive Image We can restore our drive image with a call to dd that’s very similar to how we created the image. The only difference is that the image is going to be out input file, and the drive now our output file. The exact invocation is sudo dd if=./OldHD.img of=/dev/sda It takes a while, but when it’s finished, we can confirm with sudo fdisk –l that our drive is back to the way it used to be! Conclusion There are a lots of reasons to create a drive image, with backup being the most obvious. Fortunately, with dd creating a drive image only takes one line in a terminal window – if you’ve got an Ubuntu Live CD handy! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Reset Your Ubuntu Password Easily from the Live CDCreate a Bootable Ubuntu USB Flash Drive the Easy WayHow to Browse Without a Trace with an Ubuntu Live CDWipe, Delete, and Securely Destroy Your Hard Drive’s Data the Easy WayClone a Hard Drive Using an Ubuntu Live CD TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips HippoRemote Pro 2.2 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Microsoft Office Web Apps Guide Know if Someone Accessed Your Facebook Account Shop for Music with Windows Media Player 12 Access Free Documentaries at BBC Documentaries Rent Cameras In Bulk At CameraRenter Download Songs From MySpace

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  • Running a Silverlight application in the Google App Engine platform

    - by rajbk
    This post shows you how to host a Silverlight application in the Google App Engine (GAE) platform. You deploy and host your Silverlight application on Google’s infrastructure by creating a configuration file and uploading it along with your application files. I tested this by uploading an old demo of mine - the four stroke engine silverlight demo. It is currently being served by the GAE over here: http://fourstrokeengine.appspot.com/ The steps to run your Silverlight application in GAE are as follows: Account Creation Create an account at http://appengine.google.com/. You are allocated a free quota at signup. Select “Create an Application”   Verify your account by SMS   Create your application by clicking on “Create an Application”   Pick an application identifier on the next screen. The identifier has to be unique. You will use this identifier when uploading your application. The application you create will by default be accessible at [applicationidentifier].appspot.com. You can also use custom domains if needed (refer to the docs).   Save your application. Download SDK  We will use the  Windows Launcher for Google App Engine tool to upload our apps (it is possible to do the same through command line). This is a GUI for creating, running and deploying applications. The launcher lets you test the app locally before deploying it to the GAE. This tool is available in the Google App Engine SDK. The GUI is written in Python and therefore needs an installation of Python to run. Download and install the Python Binaries from here: http://www.python.org/download/ Download and install the Google App Engine SDK from here: http://code.google.com/appengine/downloads.html Run the GAE Launcher. Select Create New Application.   On the next dialog, give your application a name (this must match the identifier we created earlier) For Parent Directory, point to the directory containing your Silverlight files. Change the port if you want to. The port is used by the GAE local web server. The server is started if you choose to run the application locally for testing purposes. Hit Save. Configure, Test and Upload As shown below, the files I am interested in uploading for my Silverlight demo app are The html page used to host the Silverlight control The xap file containing the compiled Silverlight application A favicon.ico file.   We now create a configuration file for our application called app.yaml. The app.yaml file specifies how URL paths correspond to request handlers and static files.  We edit the file by selecting our app in the GUI and clicking “Edit” The contents of file after editing is shown below (note that the contents of the file should be in plain text): application: fourstrokeengine version: 1 runtime: python api_version: 1 handlers: - url: /   static_files: Default.html   upload: Default.html - url: /favicon.ico   static_files: favicon.ico   upload: favicon.ico - url: /FourStrokeEngine.xap   static_files: FourStrokeEngine.xap   upload: FourStrokeEngine.xap   mime_type: application/x-silverlight-app - url: /.*   static_files: Default.html   upload: Default.html We have listed URL patterns for our files, specified them as static files and specified a mime type for our xap file. The wild card URL at the end will match all URLs that are not found to our default page (you would normally include a html file that displays a 404 message).  To understand more about app.yaml, refer to this page. Save the file. Run the application locally by selecting “Browse” in the GUI. A web server listening on the port you specified is started (8080 in my case). The app is loaded in your default web browser pointing to http://localhost:8080/. Make sure the application works as expected. We are now ready to deploy. Click the “Deploy” icon. You will be prompted for your username and password. Hit OK. The files will get uploaded and you should get a dialog telling you to “close the window”. We are done uploading our Silverlight application. Go to http://appengine.google.com/ and launch the application by clicking on the link in the “Current Version” column.   You should be taken to a URL which points to your application running in Google’s infrastructure : http://fourstrokeengine.appspot.com/. We are done deploying our application! Clicking on the link in the Application column will take you to the Admin console where you can see stats related to system usage.  To learn more about the Google Application Engine, go here: http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/whatisgoogleappengine.html

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  • Parallelism in .NET – Part 17, Think Continuations, not Callbacks

    - by Reed
    In traditional asynchronous programming, we’d often use a callback to handle notification of a background task’s completion.  The Task class in the Task Parallel Library introduces a cleaner alternative to the traditional callback: continuation tasks. Asynchronous programming methods typically required callback functions.  For example, MSDN’s Asynchronous Delegates Programming Sample shows a class that factorizes a number.  The original method in the example has the following signature: public static bool Factorize(int number, ref int primefactor1, ref int primefactor2) { //... .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } However, calling this is quite “tricky”, even if we modernize the sample to use lambda expressions via C# 3.0.  Normally, we could call this method like so: int primeFactor1 = 0; int primeFactor2 = 0; bool answer = Factorize(10298312, ref primeFactor1, ref primeFactor2); Console.WriteLine("{0}/{1} [Succeeded {2}]", primeFactor1, primeFactor2, answer); If we want to make this operation run in the background, and report to the console via a callback, things get tricker.  First, we need a delegate definition: public delegate bool AsyncFactorCaller( int number, ref int primefactor1, ref int primefactor2); Then we need to use BeginInvoke to run this method asynchronously: int primeFactor1 = 0; int primeFactor2 = 0; AsyncFactorCaller caller = new AsyncFactorCaller(Factorize); caller.BeginInvoke(10298312, ref primeFactor1, ref primeFactor2, result => { int factor1 = 0; int factor2 = 0; bool answer = caller.EndInvoke(ref factor1, ref factor2, result); Console.WriteLine("{0}/{1} [Succeeded {2}]", factor1, factor2, answer); }, null); This works, but is quite difficult to understand from a conceptual standpoint.  To combat this, the framework added the Event-based Asynchronous Pattern, but it isn’t much easier to understand or author. Using .NET 4’s new Task<T> class and a continuation, we can dramatically simplify the implementation of the above code, as well as make it much more understandable.  We do this via the Task.ContinueWith method.  This method will schedule a new Task upon completion of the original task, and provide the original Task (including its Result if it’s a Task<T>) as an argument.  Using Task, we can eliminate the delegate, and rewrite this code like so: var background = Task.Factory.StartNew( () => { int primeFactor1 = 0; int primeFactor2 = 0; bool result = Factorize(10298312, ref primeFactor1, ref primeFactor2); return new { Result = result, Factor1 = primeFactor1, Factor2 = primeFactor2 }; }); background.ContinueWith(task => Console.WriteLine("{0}/{1} [Succeeded {2}]", task.Result.Factor1, task.Result.Factor2, task.Result.Result)); This is much simpler to understand, in my opinion.  Here, we’re explicitly asking to start a new task, then continue the task with a resulting task.  In our case, our method used ref parameters (this was from the MSDN Sample), so there is a little bit of extra boiler plate involved, but the code is at least easy to understand. That being said, this isn’t dramatically shorter when compared with our C# 3 port of the MSDN code above.  However, if we were to extend our requirements a bit, we can start to see more advantages to the Task based approach.  For example, supposed we need to report the results in a user interface control instead of reporting it to the Console.  This would be a common operation, but now, we have to think about marshaling our calls back to the user interface.  This is probably going to require calling Control.Invoke or Dispatcher.Invoke within our callback, forcing us to specify a delegate within the delegate.  The maintainability and ease of understanding drops.  However, just as a standard Task can be created with a TaskScheduler that uses the UI synchronization context, so too can we continue a task with a specific context.  There are Task.ContinueWith method overloads which allow you to provide a TaskScheduler.  This means you can schedule the continuation to run on the UI thread, by simply doing: Task.Factory.StartNew( () => { int primeFactor1 = 0; int primeFactor2 = 0; bool result = Factorize(10298312, ref primeFactor1, ref primeFactor2); return new { Result = result, Factor1 = primeFactor1, Factor2 = primeFactor2 }; }).ContinueWith(task => textBox1.Text = string.Format("{0}/{1} [Succeeded {2}]", task.Result.Factor1, task.Result.Factor2, task.Result.Result), TaskScheduler.FromCurrentSynchronizationContext()); This is far more understandable than the alternative.  By using Task.ContinueWith in conjunction with TaskScheduler.FromCurrentSynchronizationContext(), we get a simple way to push any work onto a background thread, and update the user interface on the proper UI thread.  This technique works with Windows Presentation Foundation as well as Windows Forms, with no change in methodology.

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  • Record and Play your WebLogic Console Tasks Like a DVR

    - by james.bayer
    Automation using WebLogic Scripting Tool Today on the Oracle internal mailing list for WebLogic Server questions someone asked how to automate the configuration of the thread model for WebLogic Server and they were having trouble with the jython scripting syntax.  I’ve previously written about this feature called Work Managers and the associated constraints.  However, I did not show how to automate the process of configuring this without the console using WebLogic Scripting Tool – the jython scripting automation environment abbreviated as WLST.  I’ve written some very basic introductions to WLST before and there is also an Oracle By Example on the subject, but this is a bit more advanced.  Fear not because there is a really easy-to-use feature of the WLS console that lets you “Record” user actions just like a DVR.  Using these recordings of the web-based console, you can easily create a script even if you are unfamiliar with the WLST syntax and API.  I’m a big fan of both DVR’s and automation as can be evidenced with this old Halloween picture taken during simpler times.  Obviously the Cast Away and The Big Labowski references show some age.  I was a big Tivo fan-boy back in the day and I still think it’s the best DVR. I strongly believe that WebLogic Scripting Tool (WLST) is an absolutely essential tool for automating administration tasks in anything beyond a development environment.  Even in development environments you can make a case that it makes sense to start the automation for environments downstream.  I promise you that once you start using it for any tasks that you do even semi-regularly, you won’t go back to clicking through the console.  It’s simply so much more efficient and less error-prone to run a script. Let’s say you need to create a Work Manager and MaxThreadsConstraint – the easy way to do it is configure it in the WLS console first while capturing the commands with a recording.  See the images for the simple steps – click to enlarge. Record Console Configurations to a File Review the Recordings and Make Slight Modifications In order to make the recorded .py file directly callable as a stand-alone script I added calls to the connect() and edit() functions at the beginning and calls to disconnect() and exit() at the end – otherwise the main section of the script was provided by the console recording.  Below is the resulting file I saved as d:/temp/wm.py connect('weblogic','welcome1', 't3://localhost:7001') edit() startEdit()   cd('/SelfTuning/wl_server') cmo.createMaxThreadsConstraint('MaxThreadsConstraint-0')   cd('/SelfTuning/wl_server/MaxThreadsConstraints/MaxThreadsConstraint-0') set('Targets',jarray.array([ObjectName('com.bea:Name=examplesServer,Type=Server')], ObjectName)) cmo.setCount(5) cmo.unSet('ConnectionPoolName')   cd('/SelfTuning/wl_server') cmo.createWorkManager('WorkManager-0') cd('/SelfTuning/wl_server/WorkManagers/WorkManager-0') set('Targets',jarray.array([ObjectName('com.bea:Name=examplesServer,Type=Server')], ObjectName))   cmo.setMaxThreadsConstraint(getMBean('/SelfTuning/wl_server/MaxThreadsConstraints/MaxThreadsConstraint-0')) cmo.setIgnoreStuckThreads(false)   activate() disconnect() exit() Run the Script If you want to test it be sure to delete the Work Manager and MaxThreadConstraint that you had previously created in the console.  Do something like the following - set up the environment and tell WLST to execute the script which happens in the first 2 lines, the rest doesn’t require any user input: D:\Oracle\wls11g\wlserver_10.3\samples\domains\wl_server\bin>setDomainEnv.cmd D:\Oracle\wls11g\wlserver_10.3\samples\domains\wl_server>java weblogic.WLST d:\temp\wm.py   Initializing WebLogic Scripting Tool (WLST) ...   Welcome to WebLogic Server Administration Scripting Shell   Type help() for help on available commands   Connecting to t3://localhost:7001 with userid weblogic ... Successfully connected to Admin Server 'examplesServer' that belongs to domain 'wl_server'.   Warning: An insecure protocol was used to connect to the server. To ensure on-the-wire security, the SSL port or Admin port should be used instead.   Location changed to edit tree. This is a writable tree with DomainMBean as the root. To make changes you will need to start an edit session via startEdit().   For more help, use help(edit)   Starting an edit session ... Started edit session, please be sure to save and activate your changes once you are done. Activating all your changes, this may take a while ... The edit lock associated with this edit session is released once the activation is completed. Activation completed Disconnected from weblogic server: examplesServer     Exiting WebLogic Scripting Tool.   Now if you go back and look in the console the changes have been made and we now have a compete script.  Of course there is a full MBean reference and you can learn the nuances of jython and WLST, but why not the WLS console do most of the work for you!  Happy scripting.

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  • RIDC Accelerator for Portal

    - by Stefan Krantz
    What is RIDC?Remote IntraDoc Client is a Java enabled API that leverages simple transportation protocols like Socket, HTTP and JAX/WS to execute content service operations in WebCenter Content Server. Each operation by design in the Content Server will execute stateless and return a complete result of the request. Each request object simply specifies the in a Map format (key and value pairs) what service to call and what parameters settings to apply. The result responded with will be built on the same Map format (key and value pairs). The possibilities with RIDC is endless since you can consume any available service (even custom made ones), RIDC can be executed from any Java SE application that has any WebCenter Content Services needs. WebCenter Portal and the example Accelerator RIDC adapter frameworkWebCenter Portal currently integrates and leverages WebCenter Content Services to enable available use cases in the portal today, like Content Presenter and Doc Lib. However the current use cases only covers few of the scenarios that the Content Server has to offer, in addition to the existing use cases it is not rare that the customer requirements requires additional steps and functionality that is provided by WebCenter Content but not part of the use cases from the WebCenter Portal.The good news to this is RIDC, the second good news is that WebCenter Portal already leverages the RIDC and has a connection management framework in place. The million dollar question here is how can I leverage this infrastructure for my custom use cases. Oracle A-Team has during its interactions produced a accelerator adapter framework that will reuse and leverage the existing connections provisioned in the webcenter portal application (works for WebCenter Spaces as well), as well as a very comprehensive design patter to minimize the work involved when exposing functionality. Let me introduce the RIDCCommon framework for accelerating WebCenter Content consumption from WebCenter Portal including Spaces. How do I get started?Through a few easy steps you will be on your way, Extract the zip file RIDCCommon.zip to the WebCenter Portal Application file structure (PortalApp) Open you Portal Application in JDeveloper (PS4/PS5) select to open the project in your application - this will add the project as a member of the application Update the Portal project dependencies to include the new RIDCCommon project Make sure that you WebCenter Content Server connection is marked as primary (a checkbox at the top of the connection properties form) You should by this stage have a similar structure in your JDeveloper Application Project Portal Project PortalWebAssets Project RIDCCommon Since the API is coming with some example operations that has already been exposed as DataControl actions, if you open Data Controls accordion you should see following: How do I implement my own operation? Create a new Java Class in for example com.oracle.ateam.portal.ridc.operation call it (GetDocInfoOperation) Extend the abstract class com.oracle.ateam.portal.ridc.operation.RIDCAbstractOperation and implement the interface com.oracle.ateam.portal.ridc.operation.IRIDCOperation The only method you actually are required to implement is execute(RIDCManager, IdcClient, IdcContext) The best practice to set object references for the operation is through the Constructor, example below public GetDocInfoOperation(String dDocName)By leveraging the constructor you can easily force the implementing class to pass right information, you can also overload the Constructor with more or less parameters as required Implement the execute method, the work you supposed to execute here is creating a new request binder and retrieve a response binder with the information in the request binder.In this case the dDocName for which we want the DocInfo Secondly you have to process the response binder by extracting the information you need from the request and restore this information in a simple POJO Java BeanIn the example below we do this in private void processResult(DataBinder responseData) - the new SearchDataObject is a Member of the GetDocInfoOperation so we can return this from a access method. Since the RIDCCommon API leverage template pattern for the operations you are now required to add a method that will enable access to the result after the execution of the operationIn the example below we added the method public SearchDataObject getDataObject() - this method returns the pre processed SearchDataObject from the execute method  This is it, as you can see on the code below you do not need more than 32 lines of very simple code 1: public class GetDocInfoOperation extends RIDCAbstractOperation implements IRIDCOperation { 2: private static final String DOC_INFO_BY_NAME = "DOC_INFO_BY_NAME"; 3: private String dDocName = null; 4: private SearchDataObject sdo = null; 5: 6: public GetDocInfoOperation(String dDocName) { 7: super(); 8: this.dDocName = dDocName; 9: } 10:   11: public boolean execute(RIDCManager manager, IdcClient client, 12: IdcContext userContext) throws Exception { 13: DataBinder dataBinder = createNewRequestBinder(DOC_INFO_BY_NAME); 14: dataBinder.putLocal(DocumentAttributeDef.NAME.getName(), dDocName); 15: 16: DataBinder responseData = getResponseBinder(dataBinder); 17: processResult(responseData); 18: return true; 19: } 20: 21: private void processResult(DataBinder responseData) { 22: DataResultSet rs = responseData.getResultSet("DOC_INFO"); 23: for(DataObject dobj : rs.getRows()) { 24: this.sdo = new SearchDataObject(dobj); 25: } 26: super.setMessage(responseData.getLocal(ATTR_MESSAGE)); 27: } 28: 29: public SearchDataObject getDataObject() { 30: return this.sdo; 31: } 32: } How do I execute my operation? In the previous section we described how to create a operation, so by now you should be ready to execute the operation Step one either add a method to the class  com.oracle.ateam.portal.datacontrol.ContentServicesDC or a class of your own choiceRemember the RIDCManager is a very light object and can be created where needed Create a method signature look like this public SearchDataObject getDocInfo(String dDocName) throws Exception In the method body - create a new instance of GetDocInfoOperation and meet the constructor requirements by passing the dDocNameGetDocInfoOperation docInfo = new GetDocInfoOperation(dDocName) Execute the operation via the RIDCManager instance rMgr.executeOperation(docInfo) Return the result by accessing it from the executed operationreturn docInfo.getDataObject() 1: private RIDCManager rMgr = null; 2: private String lastOperationMessage = null; 3:   4: public ContentServicesDC() { 5: super(); 6: this.rMgr = new RIDCManager(); 7: } 8: .... 9: public SearchDataObject getDocInfo(String dDocName) throws Exception { 10: GetDocInfoOperation docInfo = new GetDocInfoOperation(dDocName); 11: boolean boolVal = rMgr.executeOperation(docInfo); 12: lastOperationMessage = docInfo.getMessage(); 13: return docInfo.getDataObject(); 14: }   Get the binaries! The enclosed code in a example that can be used as a reference on how to consume and leverage similar use cases, user has to guarantee appropriate quality and support.  Download link: https://blogs.oracle.com/ATEAM_WEBCENTER/resource/stefan.krantz/RIDCCommon.zip RIDC API Referencehttp://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23943_01/apirefs.1111/e17274/toc.htm

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  • Getting WCF Bindings and Behaviors from any config source

    - by cibrax
    The need of loading WCF bindings or behaviors from different sources such as files in a disk or databases is a common requirement when dealing with configuration either on the client side or the service side. The traditional way to accomplish this in WCF is loading everything from the standard configuration section (serviceModel section) or creating all the bindings and behaviors by hand in code. However, there is a solution in the middle that becomes handy when more flexibility is needed. This solution involves getting the configuration from any place, and use that configuration to automatically configure any existing binding or behavior instance created with code.  In order to configure a binding instance (System.ServiceModel.Channels.Binding) that you later inject in any endpoint on the client channel or the service host, you first need to get a binding configuration section from any configuration file (you can generate a temp file on the fly if you are using any other source for storing the configuration).  private BindingsSection GetBindingsSection(string path) { System.Configuration.Configuration config = System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.OpenMappedExeConfiguration( new System.Configuration.ExeConfigurationFileMap() { ExeConfigFilename = path }, System.Configuration.ConfigurationUserLevel.None); var serviceModel = ServiceModelSectionGroup.GetSectionGroup(config); return serviceModel.Bindings; }   The BindingsSection contains a list of all the configured bindings in the serviceModel configuration section, so you can iterate through all the configured binding that get the one you need (You don’t need to have a complete serviceModel section, a section with the bindings only works).  public Binding ResolveBinding(string name) { BindingsSection section = GetBindingsSection(path); foreach (var bindingCollection in section.BindingCollections) { if (bindingCollection.ConfiguredBindings.Count > 0 && bindingCollection.ConfiguredBindings[0].Name == name) { var bindingElement = bindingCollection.ConfiguredBindings[0]; var binding = (Binding)Activator.CreateInstance(bindingCollection.BindingType); binding.Name = bindingElement.Name; bindingElement.ApplyConfiguration(binding); return binding; } } return null; }   The code above does just that, and also instantiates and configures the Binding object (System.ServiceModel.Channels.Binding) you are looking for. As you can see, the binding configuration element contains a method “ApplyConfiguration” that receives the binding instance that needs to be configured. A similar thing can be done for instance with the “Endpoint” behaviors. You first get the BehaviorsSection, and then, the behavior you want to use.  private BehaviorsSection GetBehaviorsSection(string path) { System.Configuration.Configuration config = System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.OpenMappedExeConfiguration( new System.Configuration.ExeConfigurationFileMap() { ExeConfigFilename = path }, System.Configuration.ConfigurationUserLevel.None); var serviceModel = ServiceModelSectionGroup.GetSectionGroup(config); return serviceModel.Behaviors; }public List<IEndpointBehavior> ResolveEndpointBehavior(string name) { BehaviorsSection section = GetBehaviorsSection(path); List<IEndpointBehavior> endpointBehaviors = new List<IEndpointBehavior>(); if (section.EndpointBehaviors.Count > 0 && section.EndpointBehaviors[0].Name == name) { var behaviorCollectionElement = section.EndpointBehaviors[0]; foreach (BehaviorExtensionElement behaviorExtension in behaviorCollectionElement) { object extension = behaviorExtension.GetType().InvokeMember("CreateBehavior", BindingFlags.InvokeMethod | BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Instance, null, behaviorExtension, null); endpointBehaviors.Add((IEndpointBehavior)extension); } return endpointBehaviors; } return null; }   In this case, the code for creating the behavior instance is more tricky. First of all, a behavior in the configuration section actually represents a set of “IEndpoint” behaviors, and the behavior element you get from the configuration does not have any public method to configure an existing behavior instance. This last one only contains a protected method “CreateBehavior” that you can use for that purpose. Once you get this code implemented, a client channel can be easily configured as follows  var binding = resolver.ResolveBinding("MyBinding"); var behaviors = resolver.ResolveEndpointBehavior("MyBehavior"); SampleServiceClient client = new SampleServiceClient(binding, new EndpointAddress(new Uri("http://localhost:13749/SampleService.svc"), new DnsEndpointIdentity("localhost"))); foreach (var behavior in behaviors) { if(client.Endpoint.Behaviors.Contains(behavior.GetType())) { client.Endpoint.Behaviors.Remove(behavior.GetType()); } client.Endpoint.Behaviors.Add(behavior); }   The code above assumes that a configuration file (in any place) with a binding “MyBinding” and a behavior “MyBehavior” exists. That file can look like this,  <system.serviceModel> <bindings> <basicHttpBinding> <binding name="MyBinding"> <security mode="Transport"></security> </binding> </basicHttpBinding> </bindings> <behaviors> <endpointBehaviors> <behavior name="MyBehavior"> <clientCredentials> <windows/> </clientCredentials> </behavior> </endpointBehaviors> </behaviors> </system.serviceModel>   The same thing can be done of course in the service host if you want to manually configure the bindings and behaviors.  

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  • A Rose by Any Other Name..

    - by Geoff N. Hiten
    It is always a good start when you can steal a title line from one of the best writers in the English language.  Let’s hope I can make the rest of this post live up to the opening.  One recurring problem with SQL server is moving databases to new servers.  Client applications use a variety of ways to resolve SQL Server names, some of which are not changed easily <cough SharePoint /cough>.  If you happen to be using default instances on both the source and target SQL Server, then the solution is pretty simple.  You create (or bug the network admin until she creates) two DNS “A” records. One points the old name to the new IP address.  The other creates a new alias for the old server, since the original system name is now redirected.  Note this will redirect ALL traffic from the old server to the new server, including RDP and file share connection attempts.    Figure 1 – Microsoft DNS MMC Snap-In   Figure 2 – DNS New Host Dialog Box Both records are necessary so you can still access the old server via an alternate name. Server Role IP Address Name Alias Source 10.97.230.60 SQL01 SQL01_Old Target 10.97.230.80 SQL02 SQL01 Table 1 – Alias List If you or somebody set up connections via IP address, you deserve to have to go to each app and fix it by hand.  That is the only way to fix that particular foul-up. If have to deal with Named Instances either as a source or a target, then it gets more complicated.  The standard fix is to use the SQL Server Configuration Manager (or one of its earlier incarnations) to create a SQL client alias to redirect the connection.  This can be a pain installing and configuring the app on multiple client servers.  The good news is that SQL Server Configuration Manager AND all of its earlier versions simply write a few registry keys.  Extracting the keys into a .reg file makes centralized automated deployment a snap. If the client is a 32-bit system, you have to extract the native key.  If it is a 64-bit, you have to extract the native key and the WoW (32 bit on 64 bit host) key. First, pick a development system to create the actual registry key.  If you do this repeatedly, you can simply edit an existing registry file.  Create the entry using the SQL Configuration Manager.  You must use a 64-bit system to create the WoW key.  The following example redirects from a named instance “SQL01\SQLUtiluty” to a default instance on “SQL02”.   Figure 3 – SQL Server Configuration Manager - Native Figure 3 shows the native key listing. Figure 4 – SQL Server Configuration Manager – WoW If you think you don’t need the WoW key because your app is 64 it, think again.  SQL Server Management Server is a 32-bit app, as are most SQL test utilities.  Always create both keys for 64-bit target systems. Now that the keys exist, we can extract them into a .reg file. Fire up REGEDIT and browse to the following location:  HKLM\Software\Microsoft\MSSQLServer\Client\ConnectTo.  You can also search the registry for the string value of one of the server names (old or new). Right click on the “ConnectTo” label and choose “Export”.  Save with an appropriate name and location.  The resulting file should look something like this: Figure 5 – SQL01_Alias.reg Repeat the process with the location: HKLM\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\MSSQLServer\Client\ConnectTo Note that if you have multiple alias entries, ALL of the entries will be exported.  In that case, you can edit the file and remove the extra aliases. You can edit the files together into a single file.  Just leave a blank line between new keys like this: Figure 6 – SQL01_Alias_All.reg Of course if you have an automatic way to deploy, it makes sense to have an automatic way to Un-deploy.  To delete a registry key, simply edit the .reg file and replace the target with a “-“ sign like so. Figure 7 – SQL01_Alias_UNDO.reg Now we have the ability to move any database to any server without having to install or change any applications on any client server.  The whole process should be transparent to the applications, which makes planning and coordinating database moves a far simpler task.

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  • Social Business Forum Milano: Day 2

    - by me
    @YourService. The business world has flipped and small business can capitalize  by Frank Eliason (twitter: @FrankEliason ) Technology and social media tools have made it easier than ever for companies to communicate with consumers. They can listen and join in on conversations, solve problems, get instant feedback about their products and services, and more. So why, then, are most companies not doing this? Instead, it seems as if customer service is at an all time low, and that the few companies who are choosing to focus on their customers are experiencing a great competitive advantage. At Your Service explains the importance of refocusing your business on your customers and your employees, and just how to do it. Explains how to create a culture of empowered employees who understand the value of a great customer experience Advises on the need to communicate that experience to their customers and potential customers Frank Eliason, recognized by BusinessWeek as the 'most famous customer service manager in the US, possibly in the world,' has built a reputation for helping large businesses improve the way they connect with customers and enhance their relationships Quotes from the Audience: Bertrand Duperrin ?@bduperrin social service is not about shutting up the loudest cutsomers ! #sbf12 @frankeliason Paolo Pelloni ?@paolopelloniGautam Ghosh ?@GautamGhosh RT @cecildijoux: #sbf12 @frankeliason you need to change things and fix the approach it's not about social media it's about driving change  Peter H. Reiser ?@peterreiser #sbf12 Company Experience = Product Experience + Customer Interactions + Employee Experience @yourservice Engage or lose! Socialize, mobilize, conversify: engage your employees to improve business performance Christian Finn (twitter: @cfinn) First Christian was presenting the flying monkey   Then he outlined the four principals to fix the Intranet: 1. Socalize the Intranet 2. Get Thee to a Single Repository 3. Mobilize the Intranet 4. Conversationalize Your Processes Quotes from the Audience: Oscar Berg ?@oscarberg Engaged employees think their work bring out the best of their ideas @cfinn #sbf12 http://pic.twitter.com/68eddp48 John Stepper ?@johnstepper I like @cfinn's "conversify your processes" A nice related concept to "narrating your work", part of working out loud. http://johnstepper.com/2012/05/26/working-out-loud-your-personal-content-strategy/ Oscar Berg ?@oscarberg Organizations are talent markets - socializing your intranet makes this market function better @cfinn #sbf12 For profit, productivity, and personal benefit: creating a collaborative culture at Deutsche Bank John Stepper (twitter:@johnstepper) Driving adoption of collaboration + social media platforms at Deutsche Bank. John shared some great best practices on how to deploy an enterprise wide  community model  in a large company. He started with the most important question What is the commercial value of adding social ? Then he talked about the success of Community of Practices deployment and outlined some key use cases including the relevant measures to proof the ROI of the investment. Examples:  Community of practice -> measure: systematic collection of value stories  Self-service website  -> measure: based on representative models Optimizing asset inventory - > measure: Actual counts  This use case was particular interesting.  It is a crowd sourced spending/saving of infrastructure model.  User can cancel IT services they don't need (as example Software xx).  5% of the saving goes to social responsibility projects. The John outlined some  best practices on how to address the WIIFM (What's In It For Me) question of the individual users:  - change from hierarchy to graph -  working out loud = observable work + narrating  your work  - add social skills to career objectives - example: building a purposeful social network course/training as part of the job development curriculum And last but not least John gave some important tips on how to get senior management buy-in by establishing management sponsored division level collaboration boards which defines clear uses cases and measures. This divisional use cases are then implemented using a common social platform.  Thanks John - I learned a lot from your presentation!   Quotes from the Audience: Ana Silva ?@AnaDataGirl #sbf12 what's in it for individuals at Deutsche Bank? Shapping their reputations in a big org says @johnstepper #e20Ana Silva ?@AnaDataGirl Any reason why not? MT @magatorlibero #sbf12 is Deutsche B. experience on applying social inside company applicable to Italian people? Oscar Berg ?@oscarberg Your career is not a ladder, it is a network that opens up opportunities - @johnstepper #sbf12 Oscar Berg ?@oscarberg @johnstepper: Institutionalizing collaboration is next - collaboration woven into the fabric of daily work #sbf12 Ana Silva ?@AnaDataGirl #sbf12 @johnstepper talking about how Deutsche Bank is using #socbiz to build purposeful CoP & save money

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  • Open Source but not Free Software (or vice versa)

    - by TRiG
    The definition of "Free Software" from the Free Software Foundation: “Free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer.” Free software is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it means that the program's users have the four essential freedoms: The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0). The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this. The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2). The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this. A program is free software if users have all of these freedoms. Thus, you should be free to redistribute copies, either with or without modifications, either gratis or charging a fee for distribution, to anyone anywhere. Being free to do these things means (among other things) that you do not have to ask or pay for permission to do so. The definition of "Open Source Software" from the Open Source Initiative: Open source doesn't just mean access to the source code. The distribution terms of open-source software must comply with the following criteria: Free Redistribution The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale. Source Code The program must include source code, and must allow distribution in source code as well as compiled form. Where some form of a product is not distributed with source code, there must be a well-publicized means of obtaining the source code for no more than a reasonable reproduction cost preferably, downloading via the Internet without charge. The source code must be the preferred form in which a programmer would modify the program. Deliberately obfuscated source code is not allowed. Intermediate forms such as the output of a preprocessor or translator are not allowed. Derived Works The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software. Integrity of The Author's Source Code The license may restrict source-code from being distributed in modified form only if the license allows the distribution of "patch files" with the source code for the purpose of modifying the program at build time. The license must explicitly permit distribution of software built from modified source code. The license may require derived works to carry a different name or version number from the original software. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research. Distribution of License The rights attached to the program must apply to all to whom the program is redistributed without the need for execution of an additional license by those parties. License Must Not Be Specific to a Product The rights attached to the program must not depend on the program's being part of a particular software distribution. If the program is extracted from that distribution and used or distributed within the terms of the program's license, all parties to whom the program is redistributed should have the same rights as those that are granted in conjunction with the original software distribution. License Must Not Restrict Other Software The license must not place restrictions on other software that is distributed along with the licensed software. For example, the license must not insist that all other programs distributed on the same medium must be open-source software. License Must Be Technology-Neutral No provision of the license may be predicated on any individual technology or style of interface. These definitions, although they derive from very different ideologies, are broadly compatible, and most Free Software is also Open Source Software and vice versa. I believe, however, that it is possible for this not to be the case: It is possible for software to be Open Source without being Free, or to be Free without being Open Source. Questions Is my belief correct? Is it possible for software to fall into one camp and not the other? Does any such software actually exist? Please give examples. Clarification I've already accepted an answer now, but I seem to have confused a lot of people, so perhaps a clarification is in order. I was not asking about the difference between copyleft (or "viral", though I don't like that term) and non-copyleft ("permissive") licenses. Nor was I asking about your personal idiosyncratic definitions of "Free" and "Open". I was asking about "Free Software as defined by the FSF" and "Open Source Software as defined by the OSI". Are the two always the same? Is it possible to be one without being the other? And the answer, it seems, is that it's impossible to be Free without being Open, but possible to be Open without being Free. Thank you everyone who actually answered the question.

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  • Identity Management Monday at Oracle OpenWorld

    - by Tanu Sood
    What a great start to Oracle OpenWorld! Did you catch Larry Ellison’s keynote last evening? As expected, it was a packed house and the keynote received a tremendous response both from the live audience as well as the online community as evidenced by the frequent spontaneous applause in house and the twitter buzz. Here’s but a sampling of some of the tweets that flowed in: @paulvallee: I freaking love that #oracle has been born again in it's interest in core tech #oow (so good for #pythian) @rwang0: MyPOV: #oracle just leapfrogged the competition on the tech front across the board. All they need is the content delivery network #oow12 @roh1: LJE more astute & engaging this year. Nice announcements this year with 12c the MTDB sounding real good. #oow12 @brooke: Cool to see @larryellison interrupted multiple times by applause from the audience. Great speaker. #OOW And there’s lot more to come this week. Identity Management sessions kick-off today. Here’s a quick preview of what’s in store for you today for Identity Management: CON9405: Trends in Identity Management 10:45 a.m. – 11:45 a.m., Moscone West 3003 Hear directly from subject matter experts from Kaiser Permanente and SuperValu who would share the stage with Amit Jasuja, Senior Vice President, Oracle Identity Management and Security, to discuss how the latest advances in Identity Management that made it in Oracle Identity Management 11g Release 2 are helping customers address emerging requirements for securely enabling cloud, social and mobile environments. CON9492: Simplifying your Identity Management Implementation 3:15 p.m. – 4:15 p.m., Moscone West 3008 Implementation experts from British Telecom, Kaiser Permanente and UPMC participate in a panel to discuss best practices, key strategies and lessons learned based on their own experiences. Attendees will hear first-hand what they can do to streamline and simplify their identity management implementation framework for a quick return-on-investment and maximum efficiency. This session will also explore the architectural simplifications of Oracle Identity Governance 11gR2, focusing on how these enhancements simply deployments. CON9444: Modernized and Complete Access Management 4:45 p.m. – 5:45 p.m., Moscone West 3008 We have come a long way from the days of web single sign-on addressing the core business requirements. Today, as technology and business evolves, organizations are seeking new capabilities like federation, token services, fine grained authorizations, web fraud prevention and strong authentication. This session will explore the emerging requirements for access management, what a complete solution is like, complemented with real-world customer case studies from ETS, Kaiser Permanente and TURKCELL and product demonstrations. HOL10478: Complete Access Management Monday, October 1, 1:45 p.m. – 2:45 p.m., Marriott Marquis - Salon 1/2 And, get your hands on technology today. Register and attend the Hands-On-Lab session that demonstrates Oracle’s complete and scalable access management solution, which includes single sign-on, authorization, federation, and integration with social identity providers. Further, the session shows how to securely extend identity services to mobile applications and devices—all while leveraging a common set of policies and a single instance. Product Demonstrations The latest technology in Identity Management is also being showcased in the Exhibition Hall so do find some time to visit our product demonstrations there. Experts will be at hand to answer any questions. DEMOS LOCATION EXHIBITION HALL HOURS Access Management: Complete and Scalable Access Management Moscone South, Right - S-218 Monday, October 1 9:30 a.m.–6:00 p.m. 9:30 a.m.–10:45 a.m. (Dedicated Hours) Tuesday, October 2 9:45 a.m.–6:00 p.m. 2:15 p.m.–2:45 p.m. (Dedicated Hours) Wednesday, October 3 9:45 a.m.–4:00 p.m. 2:15 p.m.–3:30 p.m. (Dedicated Hours) Access Management: Federating and Leveraging Social Identities Moscone South, Right - S-220 Access Management: Mobile Access Management Moscone South, Right - S-219 Access Management: Real-Time Authorizations Moscone South, Right - S-217 Access Management: Secure SOA and Web Services Security Moscone South, Right - S-223 Identity Governance: Modern Administration and Tooling Moscone South, Right - S-210 Identity Management Monitoring with Oracle Enterprise Manager Moscone South, Right - S-212 Oracle Directory Services Plus: Performant, Cloud-Ready Moscone South, Right - S-222 Oracle Identity Management: Closed-Loop Access Certification Moscone South, Right - S-221 We recommend you keep the Focus on Identity Management document handy. And don’t forget, if you are not on site, you can catch all the keynotes LIVE from the comfort of your desk on YouTube.com/Oracle. Keep the conversation going on @oracleidm. Use #OOW and #IDM and get engaged today. Photo Courtesy: @OracleOpenWorld

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  • Silverlight 5 &ndash; What&rsquo;s New? (Including Screenshots &amp; Code Snippets)

    - by mbcrump
    Silverlight 5 is coming next year (2011) and this blog post will tell you what you need to know before the beta ships. First, let me address people saying that it is dead after PDC 2010. I believe that it’s best to see what the market is doing, not the vendor. Below is a list of companies that are developing Silverlight 4 applications shown during the Silverlight Firestarter. Some of the companies have shipped and some haven’t. It’s just great to see the actual company names that are working on Silverlight instead of “people are developing for Silverlight”. The next thing that I wanted to point out was that HTML5, WPF and Silverlight can co-exist. In case you missed Scott Gutherie’s keynote, they actually had a slide with all three stacked together. This shows Microsoft will be heavily investing in each technology.  Even I, a Silverlight developer, am reading Pro HTML5. Microsoft said that according to the Silverlight Feature Voting site, 21k votes were entered. Microsoft has implemented about 70% of these votes in Silverlight 5. That is an amazing number, and I am crossing my fingers that Microsoft bundles Silverlight with Windows 8. Let’s get started… what’s new in Silverlight 5? I am going to show you some great application and actual code shown during the Firestarter event. Media Hardware Video Decode – Instead of using CPU to decode, we will offload it to GPU. This will allow netbooks, etc to play videos. Trickplay – Variable Speed Playback – Pitch Correction (If you speed up someone talking they won’t sound like a chipmunk). Power Management – Less battery when playing video. Screensavers will no longer kick in if watching a video. If you pause a video then screensaver will kick in. Remote Control Support – This will allow users to control playback functions like Pause, Rewind and Fastforward. IIS Media Services 4 has shipped and now supports Azure. Data Binding Layout Transitions – Just with a few lines of XAML you can create a really rich experience that is not using Storyboards or animations. RelativeSource FindAncestor – Ancestor RelativeSource bindings make it much easier for a DataTemplate to bind to a property on a container control. Custom Markup Extensions – Markup extensions allow code to be run at XAML parse time for both properties and event handlers. This is great for MVVM support. Changing Styles during Runtime By Binding in Style Setters – Changing Styles at runtime used to be a real pain in Silverlight 4, now it’s much easier. Binding in style setters allows bindings to reference other properties. XAML Debugging – Below you can see that we set a breakpoint in XAML. This shows us exactly what is going on with our binding.  WCF & RIA Services WS-Trust Support – Taken from Wikipedia: WS-Trust is a WS-* specification and OASIS standard that provides extensions to WS-Security, specifically dealing with the issuing, renewing, and validating of security tokens, as well as with ways to establish, assess the presence of, and broker trust relationships between participants in a secure message exchange. You can reduce network latency by using a background thread for networking. Supports Azure now.  Text and Printing Improved text clarity that enables better text rendering. Multi-column text flow, Character tracking and leading support, and full OpenType font support.  Includes a new Postscript Vector Printing API that provides control over what you print . Pivot functionality baked into Silverlight 5 SDK. Graphics Immediate mode graphics support that will enable you to use the GPU and 3D graphics supports. Take a look at what was shown in the demos below. 1) 3D view of the Earth – not really a real-world application though. A doctor’s portal. This demo really stood out for me as it shows what we can do with the 3D / GPU support. Out of Browser OOB applications can now create and manage childwindows as shown in the screenshot below.  Trusted OOB applications can use P/Invoke to call Win32 APIs and unmanaged libraries.  Enterprise Group Policy Support allow enterprises to lock down or up the sandbox capabilities of Silverlight 5 applications. In this demo, he tore the “notes” off of the application and it appeared in a new window. See the black arrow below. In this demo, he connected a USB Device which fired off a local Win32 application that provided the data off the USB stick to Silverlight. Another demo of a Silverlight 5 application exporting data right into Excel running inside of browser. Testing They demoed Coded UI, which is available now in the Visual Studio Feature Pack 2. This will allow you to create automated testing without writing any code manually. Performance: Microsoft has worked to improve the Silverlight startup time. Silverlight 5 provides 64-bit browser support.  Silverlight 5 also provides IE9 Hardware acceleration.   I am looking forward to Silverlight 5 and I hope you are too. Thanks for reading and I hope you visit again soon.  Subscribe to my feed CodeProject

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  • Whitepaper list for the application framework

    - by Rick Finley
    We're reposting the list of technical whitepapers for the Oracle ETPM framework (called OUAF, Oracle Utilities Application Framework).  These are are available from My Oracle Support at the Doc Id's mentioned below. Some have been updated in the last few months to reflect new advice and new features.  This is reposted from the OUAF blog:  http://blogs.oracle.com/theshortenspot/entry/whitepaper_list_as_at_november Doc Id Document Title Contents 559880.1 ConfigLab Design Guidelines This whitepaper outlines how to design and implement a data management solution using the ConfigLab facility. This whitepaper currently only applies to the following products: Oracle Utilities Customer Care And Billing Oracle Enterprise Taxation Management Oracle Enterprise Taxation and Policy Management           560367.1 Technical Best Practices for Oracle Utilities Application Framework Based Products Whitepaper summarizing common technical best practices used by partners, implementation teams and customers. 560382.1 Performance Troubleshooting Guideline Series A set of whitepapers on tracking performance at each tier in the framework. The individual whitepapers are as follows: Concepts - General Concepts and Performance Troublehooting processes Client Troubleshooting - General troubleshooting of the browser client with common issues and resolutions. Network Troubleshooting - General troubleshooting of the network with common issues and resolutions. Web Application Server Troubleshooting - General troubleshooting of the Web Application Server with common issues and resolutions. Server Troubleshooting - General troubleshooting of the Operating system with common issues and resolutions. Database Troubleshooting - General troubleshooting of the database with common issues and resolutions. Batch Troubleshooting - General troubleshooting of the background processing component of the product with common issues and resolutions. 560401.1 Software Configuration Management Series  A set of whitepapers on how to manage customization (code and data) using the tools provided with the framework. The individual whitepapers are as follows: Concepts - General concepts and introduction. Environment Management - Principles and techniques for creating and managing environments. Version Management - Integration of Version control and version management of configuration items. Release Management - Packaging configuration items into a release. Distribution - Distribution and installation of releases across environments Change Management - Generic change management processes for product implementations. Status Accounting - Status reporting techniques using product facilities. Defect Management - Generic defect management processes for product implementations. Implementing Single Fixes - Discussion on the single fix architecture and how to use it in an implementation. Implementing Service Packs - Discussion on the service packs and how to use them in an implementation. Implementing Upgrades - Discussion on the the upgrade process and common techniques for minimizing the impact of upgrades. 773473.1 Oracle Utilities Application Framework Security Overview A whitepaper summarizing the security facilities in the framework. Now includes references to other Oracle security products supported. 774783.1 LDAP Integration for Oracle Utilities Application Framework based products Updated! A generic whitepaper summarizing how to integrate an external LDAP based security repository with the framework. 789060.1 Oracle Utilities Application Framework Integration Overview A whitepaper summarizing all the various common integration techniques used with the product (with case studies). 799912.1 Single Sign On Integration for Oracle Utilities Application Framework based products A whitepaper outlining a generic process for integrating an SSO product with the framework. 807068.1 Oracle Utilities Application Framework Architecture Guidelines This whitepaper outlines the different variations of architecture that can be considered. Each variation will include advice on configuration and other considerations. 836362.1 Batch Best Practices for Oracle Utilities Application Framework based products This whitepaper outlines the common and best practices implemented by sites all over the world. 856854.1 Technical Best Practices V1 Addendum Addendum to Technical Best Practices for Oracle Utilities Customer Care And Billing V1.x only. 942074.1 XAI Best Practices This whitepaper outlines the common integration tasks and best practices for the Web Services Integration provided by the Oracle Utilities Application Framework. 970785.1 Oracle Identity Manager Integration Overview This whitepaper outlines the principals of the prebuilt intergration between Oracle Utilities Application Framework Based Products and Oracle Identity Manager used to provision user and user group security information. For Fw4.x customers use whitepaper 1375600.1 instead. 1068958.1 Production Environment Configuration Guidelines A whitepaper outlining common production level settings for the products based upon benchmarks and customer feedback. 1177265.1 What's New In Oracle Utilities Application Framework V4? Whitepaper outlining the major changes to the framework since Oracle Utilities Application Framework V2.2. 1290700.1 Database Vault Integration Whitepaper outlining the Database Vault Integration solution provided with Oracle Utilities Application Framework V4.1.0 and above. 1299732.1 BI Publisher Guidelines for Oracle Utilities Application Framework Whitepaper outlining the interface between BI Publisher and the Oracle Utilities Application Framework 1308161.1 Oracle SOA Suite Integration with Oracle Utilities Application Framework based products This whitepaper outlines common design patterns and guidelines for using Oracle SOA Suite with Oracle Utilities Application Framework based products. 1308165.1 MPL Best Practices Oracle Utilities Application Framework This is a guidelines whitepaper for products shipping with the Multi-Purpose Listener. This whitepaper currently only applies to the following products: Oracle Utilities Customer Care And Billing Oracle Enterprise Taxation Management Oracle Enterprise Taxation and Policy Management 1308181.1 Oracle WebLogic JMS Integration with the Oracle Utilities Application Framework This whitepaper covers the native integration between Oracle WebLogic JMS with Oracle Utilities Application Framework using the new Message Driven Bean functionality and real time JMS adapters. 1334558.1 Oracle WebLogic Clustering for Oracle Utilities Application Framework New! This whitepaper covers process for implementing clustering using Oracle WebLogic for Oracle Utilities Application Framework based products. 1359369.1 IBM WebSphere Clustering for Oracle Utilities Application Framework New! This whitepaper covers process for implementing clustering using IBM WebSphere for Oracle Utilities Application Framework based products 1375600.1 Oracle Identity Management Suite Integration with the Oracle Utilities Application Framework New! This whitepaper covers the integration between Oracle Utilities Application Framework and Oracle Identity Management Suite components such as Oracle Identity Manager, Oracle Access Manager, Oracle Adaptive Access Manager, Oracle Internet Directory and Oracle Virtual Directory. 1375615.1 Advanced Security for the Oracle Utilities Application Framework New! This whitepaper covers common security requirements and how to meet those requirements using Oracle Utilities Application Framework native security facilities, security provided with the J2EE Web Application and/or facilities available in Oracle Identity Management Suite.

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  • Smarter, Faster, Cheaper: The Insurance Industry’s Dream

    - by Jenna Danko
    On June 3rd, I saw the Gaylord Resort Centre in Washington D.C. become the hub of C level executives and managers of insurance carriers for the IASA 2013 Conference.  Insurance Accounting/Regulation and Technology sessions took the focus, but there were plenty of tertiary sessions for career development, which complemented the overall strong networking side of the conference.  As an exhibitor, Oracle, along with several hundred other product providers, welcomed the opportunity to display and demonstrate our solutions and we were encouraged by hustle and bustle of the exhibition floor.  The IASA organizers had pre-arranged fast track tours whereby interested conference delegates could sign up for a series of like-themed presentations from Vendors, giving them a level of 'Speed Dating' introductions to possible solutions and services.  Oracle participated in a number of these, which were very well subscribed.  Clearly, the conference had a strong business focus; however, attendees saw technology as a key enabler to get their processes done smarter, faster and cheaper.  As we navigated through the exhibition, it became clear from the inquiries that came to us that insurance carriers are gravitating to a number of focus areas: Navigating the maze of upcoming regulatory reporting changes. For US carriers with European holdings, Solvency II carries a myriad of rules and reporting requirements. Alignment across the globe of the Own Risk and Solvency Assessment (ORSA) processes brings to the fore the National Insurance of Insurance commissioners' (NAIC) recent guidance manual publication. Doing more with less and to certainly expect more from technology for less dollars. The overall cost of IT, in particular hardware, has dropped in real terms (though the appetite for more has risen: more CPU, more RAM, more storage), but software has seen less change. Clearly, customers expect either to pay less or get a lot more from their software solutions for the same buck. Doing things smarter – A recognition that with the advance of technology to stand still no longer means you are technically going backwards. Technology and, in particular technology interactions with human business processes, has undergone incredible change over the past 5 years. Consumer usage (iPhones, etc.) has been at the forefront, but now at the Enterprise level ever more effective technology exploitation is beginning to take place. That data and, in particular gleaning knowledge from data, is refining and improving business processes.  Organizations are now consuming more data than ever before, and it is set to grow exponentially for some time to come.  Amassing large volumes of data is one thing, but effectively analyzing that data is another.  It is the results of such analysis that leads to improvements both in terms of insurance product offerings and the processes to support them. Regulatory Compliance, damned if you do and damned if you don’t! Clearly, around the globe at lot is changing from a regulatory perspective and it is evident that in terms of regulatory requirements, whilst there is a greater convergence across jurisdictions bringing uniformity, there is also a lot of work to be done in the next 5 years. Just like the big data, hidden behind effective regulatory compliance there often lies golden nuggets that can give competitive advantages. From Oracle's perspective, our Rating Engine, Billing, Document Management and Insurance Analytics solutions on display served to strike up good conversations and, as is always the case at conferences, it was a great opportunity to meet and speak with existing Oracle customers that we might not have otherwise caught up with for a while. Fortunately, I was able to catch up on a few sessions at the close of the Exhibition.  The speaker quality was high and the audience asked challenging, but pertinent, questions.  During Dr. Jackie Freiberg’s keynote “Bye Bye Business as Usual,” the author discussed 8 strategies to help leaders create a culture where teams consistently deliver innovative ideas by disrupting the status quo.  The very first strategy: Get wired for innovation.  Freiberg admitted that folks in the insurance and financial services industry understand and know innovation is important, but oftentimes they are slow adopters.  Today, technology and innovation go hand in hand. In speaking to delegates during and after the conference, a high degree of satisfaction could be measured from their positive comments of speaker sessions and the exhibitors. I suspect many will be back in 2014 with Indianapolis as the conference location. Did you attend the IASA Conference in Washington D.C.?  If so, I would love to hear your comments. Andrew Collins is the Director, Solvency II of Oracle Financial Services. He can be reached at andrew.collins AT oracle.com.

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  • Partition Wise Joins

    - by jean-pierre.dijcks
    Some say they are the holy grail of parallel computing and PWJ is the basis for a shared nothing system and the only join method that is available on a shared nothing system (yes this is oversimplified!). The magic in Oracle is of course that is one of many ways to join data. And yes, this is the old flexibility vs. simplicity discussion all over, so I won't go there... the point is that what you must do in a shared nothing system, you can do in Oracle with the same speed and methods. The Theory A partition wise join is a join between (for simplicity) two tables that are partitioned on the same column with the same partitioning scheme. In shared nothing this is effectively hard partitioning locating data on a specific node / storage combo. In Oracle is is logical partitioning. If you now join the two tables on that partitioned column you can break up the join in smaller joins exactly along the partitions in the data. Since they are partitioned (grouped) into the same buckets, all values required to do the join live in the equivalent bucket on either sides. No need to talk to anyone else, no need to redistribute data to anyone else... in short, the optimal join method for parallel processing of two large data sets. PWJ's in Oracle Since we do not hard partition the data across nodes in Oracle we use the Partitioning option to the database to create the buckets, then set the Degree of Parallelism (or run Auto DOP - see here) and get our PWJs. The main questions always asked are: How many partitions should I create? What should my DOP be? In a shared nothing system the answer is of course, as many partitions as there are nodes which will be your DOP. In Oracle we do want you to look at the workload and concurrency, and once you know that to understand the following rules of thumb. Within Oracle we have more ways of joining of data, so it is important to understand some of the PWJ ideas and what it means if you have an uneven distribution across processes. Assume we have a simple scenario where we partition the data on a hash key resulting in 4 hash partitions (H1 -H4). We have 2 parallel processes that have been tasked with reading these partitions (P1 - P2). The work is evenly divided assuming the partitions are the same size and we can scan this in time t1 as shown below. Now assume that we have changed the system and have a 5th partition but still have our 2 workers P1 and P2. The time it takes is actually 50% more assuming the 5th partition has the same size as the original H1 - H4 partitions. In other words to scan these 5 partitions, the time t2 it takes is not 1/5th more expensive, it is a lot more expensive and some other join plans may now start to look exciting to the optimizer. Just to post the disclaimer, it is not as simple as I state it here, but you get the idea on how much more expensive this plan may now look... Based on this little example there are a few rules of thumb to follow to get the partition wise joins. First, choose a DOP that is a factor of two (2). So always choose something like 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 and so on... Second, choose a number of partitions that is larger or equal to 2* DOP. Third, make sure the number of partitions is divisible through 2 without orphans. This is also known as an even number... Fourth, choose a stable partition count strategy, which is typically hash, which can be a sub partitioning strategy rather than the main strategy (range - hash is a popular one). Fifth, make sure you do this on the join key between the two large tables you want to join (and this should be the obvious one...). Translating this into an example: DOP = 8 (determined based on concurrency or by using Auto DOP with a cap due to concurrency) says that the number of partitions >= 16. Number of hash (sub) partitions = 32, which gives each process four partitions to work on. This number is somewhat arbitrary and depends on your data and system. In this case my main reasoning is that if you get more room on the box you can easily move the DOP for the query to 16 without repartitioning... and of course it makes for no leftovers on the table... And yes, we recommend up-to-date statistics. And before you start complaining, do read this post on a cool way to do stats in 11.

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  • Connection Pooling is Busted

    - by MightyZot
    A few weeks ago we started getting complaints about performance in an application that has performed very well for many years.  The application is a n-tier application that uses ADODB with the SQLOLEDB provider to talk to a SQL Server database.  Our object model is written in such a way that each public method validates security before performing requested actions, so there is a significant number of queries executed to get information about file cabinets, retrieve images, create workflows, etc.  (PaperWise is a document management and workflow system.)  A common factor for these customers is that they have remote offices connected via MPLS networks. Naturally, the first thing we looked at was the query performance in SQL Profiler.  All of the queries were executing within expected timeframes, most of them were so fast that the duration in SQL Profiler was zero.  After getting nowhere with SQL Profiler, the situation was escalated to me.  I decided to take a peek with Process Monitor.  Procmon revealed some “gaps” in the TCP/IP traffic.  There were notable delays between send and receive pairs.  The send and receive pairs themselves were quite snappy, but quite often there was a notable delay between a receive and the next send.  You might expect some delay because, presumably, the application is doing some thinking in-between the pairs.  But, comparing the procmon data at the remote locations with the procmon data for workstations on the local network showed that the remote workstations were significantly delayed.  Procmon also showed a high number of disconnects. Wireshark traces showed that connections to the database were taking between 75ms and 150ms.  Not only that, but connections to a file share containing images were taking 2 seconds!  So, I asked about a trust.  Sure enough there was a trust between two domains and the file share was on the second domain.  Joining a remote workstation to the domain hosting the share containing images alleviated the time delay in accessing the file share.  Removing the trust had no affect on the connections to the database. Microsoft Network Monitor includes filters that parse TDS packets.  TDS is the protocol that SQL Server uses to communicate.  There is a certificate exchange and some SSL that occurs during authentication.  All of this was evident in the network traffic.  After staring at the network traffic for a while, and examining packets, I decided to call it a night.  On the way home that night, something about the traffic kept nagging at me.  Then it dawned on me…at the beginning of the dance of packets between the client and the server all was well.  Connection pooling was working and I could see multiple queries getting executed on the same connection and ethereal port.  After a particular query, connecting to two different servers, I noticed that ADODB and SQLOLEDB started making repeated connections to the database on different ethereal ports.  SQL Server would execute a single query and respond on a port, then open a new port and execute the next query.  Connection pooling appeared to be broken. The next morning I wrote a test to confirm my hypothesis.  Turns out that the sequence causing the connection nastiness goes something like this: Make a connection to the database. Open a result set that returns enough records to require multiple roundtrips to the server. For each result, query for some other data in the database (this will open a new implicit connection.) Close the inner result set and repeat for every item in the original result set. Close the original connection. Provided that the first result set returns enough data to require multiple roundtrips to the server, ADODB and SQLOLEDB will start making new connections to the database for each query executed in the loop.  Originally, I thought this might be due to Microsoft’s denial of service (ddos) attack protection.  After turning those features off to no avail, I eventually thought to switch my queries to client-side cursors instead of server-side cursors.  Server-side cursors are the default, by the way.  Voila!  After switching to client-side cursors, the disconnects were gone and the above sequence yielded two connections as expected. While the real problem is the amount of time it takes to make connections over these MPLS networks (100ms on average), switching to client-side cursors made the problem go away.  Believe it or not, this is actually documented by Microsoft, and rather difficult to find.  (At least it was while we were trying to troubleshoot the problem!)  So, if you’re noticing performance issues on slower networks, or networks with slower switching, take a look at the traffic in a tool like Microsoft Network Monitor.  If you notice a high number of disconnects, and you’re using fire-hose or server-side cursors, then try switching to client-side cursors and you may see the problem go away. Most likely, Microsoft believes this to be appropriate behavior, because ADODB can’t guarantee that all of the data has been retrieved when you execute the inner queries.  I’m not convinced, though, because the problem remains even after replacing all of the implicit connections with explicit connections and closing those connections in-between each of the inner queries.  In that case, there doesn’t seem to be a reason why ADODB can’t use a single connection from the connection pool to make the additional queries, bringing the total number of connections to two.  Instead ADO appears to make an assumption about the state of the connection. I’ve reported the behavior to Microsoft and am awaiting to hear from the appropriate team, so that I can demonstrate the problem.  Maybe they can explain to us why this is appropriate behavior.  :)

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  • BI&EPM in Focus June 2014

    - by Mike.Hallett(at)Oracle-BI&EPM
    Applications Webcast Centre – A Library of Discussion and Research for Best Practice: Achieving Reliable Planning, Budgeting and Forecasting Talent Analytics and Big Data – Is HR ready for the challenge Enterprise Data – The cost of non-quality Customers Josephine Niemiec from ADP talks about Oracle Hyperion Workforce Planning at Collaborate 2014 (link) Video Chris Nelms from Ameren talks about Oracle BI Spend and Procurement Analytics at Collaborate 2014 (link) Video Leggett & Platt Leverages Oracle Hyperion EPM and Demantra (link) Video Pella Corporation Accelerates Close Cycle by Cutting Time for Financial Consolidation from Three Days to Less Than One Day (link) Secretaría General de Administración de Justicia en España Enhances Citizen Services with Near-Real-Time Business Intelligence Gleaned from 500 Databases  (link) Bellco Credit Union Speeds Budget Development by 30%—Gains Insight into Specific Branch and Financial Product Profitability  (link)  Video QDQ media Speeds up Financial Reporting by 24x, Gains Business Agility, and Integrates Seamlessly into Corporate Accounting System  (link) Westfield Group Maximizes Shopping Mall Revenue, Shortens Year-End Financial Consolidation by 75%  (link)  IL&FS Transportation Networks Shortens Financial Consolidation and Reporting Cycle by Eight Days, Gains In-Depth Insight into Business Performance   (link) Angel Trains Optimizes Rail Operations for Purchasing, Sourcing, and Project Management to Meet Challenges of Evolving Rail Industry  (link) Enterprise Performance Management June 11, at Oracle Utrecht, NL: Morning session: Explore Planning and Budgeting in the Cloud (link) June 12, London: PureApps Presents: Best Practice Financial Consolidation and Reporting Workshop (link) July 3, Koln: Oracle Hyperion Business Analytics Roundtable (link) Blog: What's Your Tax Strategy? Automate the Operational Transfer Pricing Process (link) YouTube Video: Automate Tax Reporting with Oracle Hyperion Tax Provision (link) YouTube Video: Introducing Oracle Hyperion Planning’s Tablet Optimized Interface (link) OracleEPMWebcasts @ YouTube (link) Partner webcasts: Wednesday, 4 June, 5.00 GMT - Case Study:  Lessons Learned from Edgewater Ranzal's Internal Implementation of Oracle Planning & Budgeting Cloud Service (PBCS) - Learn more and register here! Thursday, 5 June, 4.00 GMT - Achieving Accountable Care Using Oracle Technology - Learn more and register here! Tuesday, 17 June, 4.00 GMT - Optimizing Performance for Oracle EPM Systems - Learn more and register here! Oracle University Blog: The Coolest Features Available with Oracle Hyperion 11.1.2.3 – Training from OU to help you to best use them (link) Support: Proactive Support: EPM Hyperion Planning 11.1.2.3.500 Using RMI Service [Blog] Proactive Support: Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service Videos (link) Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service (PBCS) 11.1.2.3.410 Patch Bundle [Doc ID 1670981.1] Hyperion Analytic Provider Services 11.1.2.2.106 Patch Set Update [Doc ID 1667350.1] Hyperion Essbase 11.1.2.2.106 Patch Set Update [Doc ID 1667346.1] Hyperion Essbase Administration Services 11.1.2.2.106 Patch Set Update [Doc ID 1667348.1] Hyperion Essbase Studio 11.1.2.2.106 Patch Set Update [Doc ID 1667329.1] Hyperion Smart View 11.1.2.5.210 Patch Set Update [Doc ID 1669427.1] Using HPCM, HSF or DRM Communities (link) Business Intelligence June 12, Birmingham, UK: Oracle Big Data at Work - Use Cases and Architecture (link) June 17, London: Oracle at Cloud & Big Data World Forums (link) June 17, Partner Webcast: Transform your Planning Capabilities with Peloton's CloudAccelerator for Oracle PBCS (link) June 19, London: Oracle at the Whitehall Media Big Data Analytics Conference and Exhibition (link) June 19, London: Partner Event - Agile BI Conference by Peak Indicators [link] June 25, Munich: Oracle Special Day auf der TDWI 2014 Konferenz (link) July 15, London: Oracle Endeca Information Discovery Workshop (link) July 16, London: BI Applications Workshop – Financial Analytics & Procurement Analytics (link) July 17, London: BI Applications Workshop – HR Analytics (link) Milan, Italy: L’Osservatorio Big Data Analytics & Business Intelligence with Politecnico di Milano (link) OBIA 11.1.1.8.1 - Now Available [Blog] What’s New in OBIA 11.1.1.8.1 [Blog] BI Blog: A closer look at Oracle BI Applications 11.1.1.8.1 release (link) Press Release: BI Applications Deliver Greater Insight into Talent and Procurement (link) Support Blog: OBIA 11.1.1.8.1 Upgrade Guide & Documentation (link) YouTube Video: Glenn Hoormann of Ludus talks to us about Oracle Business Intelligence and ERP at Collaborate 2014 (Link) YouTube Video: Performance Architects talks about key BI and Mobile trends, including Endeca at Collaborate 2014 (link) Big Data Blog: 3 Keys for Using Big Data Effectively for Enhanced Customer Experience (link) Big Data Lite Demo VM 3.0 Now Available on OTN BI Blog: Data Relationship Governance - Workflow in a Bottle (link) MDM Blog: Register for Product Data Management Weekly Cloudcasts (link) MDM Blog: Improve your Customer Experience with High Quality Information (link) MDM Blog: Big Data Challenges & Considerations (link) Oracle University: Oracle BI Applications 11g: Implementation using ODI (link) Proactive Support: Monthly Index [Blog] My Oracle Support: Partner Accreditation for Business Analytics Support [Blog] OBIEE 11g Test-to-Production (T2P) / Clone Procedures Guide [Blog] Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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  • Goodby jQuery Templates, Hello JsRender

    - by SGWellens
    A funny thing happened on my way to the jQuery website, I blinked and a feature was dropped: jQuery Templates have been discontinued. The new pretender to the throne is JsRender. jQuery Templates looked pretty useful when they first came out. Several articles were written about them but I stayed away because being on the bleeding edge of technology is not a productive place to be. I wanted to wait until it stabilized…in retrospect, it was a serendipitous decision. This time however, I threw all caution to the wind and took a close look at JSRender. Why? Maybe I'm having a midlife crisis; I'll go motorcycle shopping tomorrow. Caveat, here is a message from the site: Warning: JsRender is not yet Beta, and there may be frequent changes to APIs and features in the coming period. Fair enough, we've been warned. The first thing we need is some data to render. Below is some JSON formatted data. Typically this will come from an asynchronous call to a web service. For simplicity, I hard coded a variable:     var Golfers = [         { ID: "1", "Name": "Bobby Jones", "Birthday": "1902-03-17" },         { ID: "2", "Name": "Sam Snead", "Birthday": "1912-05-27" },         { ID: "3", "Name": "Tiger Woods", "Birthday": "1975-12-30" }         ]; We also need some templates, I created two. Note: The script blocks have the id property set. They are needed so JsRender can locate them.     <script id="GolferTemplate1" type="text/html">         {{=ID}}: <b>{{=Name}}</b> <i>{{=Birthday}}</i> <br />     </script>       <script id="GolferTemplate2" type="text/html">         <tr>             <td>{{=ID}}</td>             <td><b>{{=Name}}</b></td>             <td><i>{{=Birthday}}</i> </td>         </tr>     </script> Including the correct JavaScript files is trivial:     <script src="Scripts/jquery-1.7.js" type="text/javascript"></script>     <script src="Scripts/jsrender.js" type="text/javascript"></script> Of course we need some place to render the output:     <div id="GolferDiv"></div><br />     <table id="GolferTable"></table> The code is also trivial:     function Test()     {         $("#GolferDiv").html($("#GolferTemplate1").render(Golfers));         $("#GolferTable").html($("#GolferTemplate2").render(Golfers));           // you can inspect the rendered html if there are poblems.         // var html = $("#GolferTemplate2").render(Golfers);     } And here's what it looks like with some random CSS formatting that I had laying around.    Not bad, I hope JsRender lasts longer than jQuery Templates. One final warning, a lot of jQuery code is ugly, butt-ugly. If you do look inside the jQuery files, you may want to cover your keyboard with some plastic in case you get vertigo and blow chunks. I hope someone finds this useful. Steve Wellens CodeProject

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  • TDD and WCF behavior

    - by Frederic Hautecoeur
    Some weeks ago I wanted to develop a WCF behavior using TDD. I have lost some time trying to use mocks. After a while i decided to just use a host and a client. I don’t like this approach but so far I haven’t found a good and fast solution to use Unit Test for testing a WCF behavior. To Implement my solution I had to : Create a Dummy Service Definition; Create the Dummy Service Implementation; Create a host; Create a client in my test; Create and Add the behavior; Dummy Service Definition This is just a simple service, composed of an Interface and a simple implementation. The structure is aimed to be easily customizable for my future needs.   Using Clauses : 1: using System.Runtime.Serialization; 2: using System.ServiceModel; 3: using System.ServiceModel.Channels; The DataContract: 1: [DataContract()] 2: public class MyMessage 3: { 4: [DataMember()] 5: public string MessageString; 6: } The request MessageContract: 1: [MessageContract()] 2: public class RequestMessage 3: { 4: [MessageHeader(Name = "MyHeader", Namespace = "http://dummyservice/header", Relay = true)] 5: public string myHeader; 6:  7: [MessageBodyMember()] 8: public MyMessage myRequest; 9: } The response MessageContract: 1: [MessageContract()] 2: public class ResponseMessage 3: { 4: [MessageHeader(Name = "MyHeader", Namespace = "http://dummyservice/header", Relay = true)] 5: public string myHeader; 6:  7: [MessageBodyMember()] 8: public MyMessage myResponse; 9: } The ServiceContract: 1: [ServiceContract(Name="DummyService", Namespace="http://dummyservice",SessionMode=SessionMode.Allowed )] 2: interface IDummyService 3: { 4: [OperationContract(Action="Perform", IsOneWay=false, ProtectionLevel=System.Net.Security.ProtectionLevel.None )] 5: ResponseMessage DoThis(RequestMessage request); 6: } Dummy Service Implementation 1: public class DummyService:IDummyService 2: { 3: #region IDummyService Members 4: public ResponseMessage DoThis(RequestMessage request) 5: { 6: ResponseMessage response = new ResponseMessage(); 7: response.myHeader = "Response"; 8: response.myResponse = new MyMessage(); 9: response.myResponse.MessageString = 10: string.Format("Header:<{0}> and Request was <{1}>", 11: request.myHeader, request.myRequest.MessageString); 12: return response; 13: } 14: #endregion 15: } Host Creation The most simple host implementation using a Named Pipe binding. The GetBinding method will create a binding for the host and can be used to create the same binding for the client. 1: public static class TestHost 2: { 3: 4: internal static string hostUri = "net.pipe://localhost/dummy"; 5:  6: // Create Host method. 7: internal static ServiceHost CreateHost() 8: { 9: ServiceHost host = new ServiceHost(typeof(DummyService)); 10:  11: // Creating Endpoint 12: Uri namedPipeAddress = new Uri(hostUri); 13: host.AddServiceEndpoint(typeof(IDummyService), GetBinding(), namedPipeAddress); 14:  15: return host; 16: } 17:  18: // Binding Creation method. 19: internal static Binding GetBinding() 20: { 21: NamedPipeTransportBindingElement namedPipeTransport = new NamedPipeTransportBindingElement(); 22: TextMessageEncodingBindingElement textEncoding = new TextMessageEncodingBindingElement(); 23:  24: return new CustomBinding(textEncoding, namedPipeTransport); 25: } 26:  27: // Close Method. 28: internal static void Close(ServiceHost host) 29: { 30: if (null != host) 31: { 32: host.Close(); 33: host = null; 34: } 35: } 36: } Checking the service A simple test tool check the plumbing. 1: [TestMethod] 2: public void TestService() 3: { 4: using (ServiceHost host = TestHost.CreateHost()) 5: { 6: host.Open(); 7:  8: using (ChannelFactory<IDummyService> channel = 9: new ChannelFactory<IDummyService>(TestHost.GetBinding() 10: , new EndpointAddress(TestHost.hostUri))) 11: { 12: IDummyService svc = channel.CreateChannel(); 13: try 14: { 15: RequestMessage request = new RequestMessage(); 16: request.myHeader = Guid.NewGuid().ToString(); 17: request.myRequest = new MyMessage(); 18: request.myRequest.MessageString = "I want some beer."; 19:  20: ResponseMessage response = svc.DoThis(request); 21: } 22: catch (Exception ex) 23: { 24: Assert.Fail(ex.Message); 25: } 26: } 27: host.Close(); 28: } 29: } Running the service should show that the client and the host are running fine. So far so good. Adding the Behavior Add a reference to the Behavior project and add the using entry in the test class. We just need to add the behavior to the service host : 1: [TestMethod] 2: public void TestService() 3: { 4: using (ServiceHost host = TestHost.CreateHost()) 5: { 6: host.Description.Behaviors.Add(new MyBehavior()); 7: host.Open();¨ 8: …  If you set a breakpoint in your behavior and run the test in debug mode, you will hit the breakpoint. In this case I used a ServiceBehavior. To add an Endpoint behavior you have to add it to the endpoints. 1: host.Description.Endpoints[0].Behaviors.Add(new MyEndpointBehavior()) To add a contract or an operation behavior a custom attribute should work on the service contract definition. I haven’t tried that yet.   All the code provided in this blog and in the following files are for sample use. Improvements I don’t like to instantiate a client and a service to test my behaviors. But so far I have' not found an easy way to do it. Today I am passing a type of endpoint to the host creator and it creates the right binding type. This allows me to easily switch between bindings at will. I have used the same approach to test Mex Endpoints, another post should come later for this. Enjoy !

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  • HTG Explains: Why is Printer Ink So Expensive?

    - by Chris Hoffman
    Printer ink is expensive, more expensive per drop than fine champagne or even human blood. If you haven’t gone paperless, you’ll notice that you’re paying a lot for new ink cartridges — more than seems reasonable. Purchasing the cheapest inkjet printer and buying official ink cartridge replacements is the most expensive thing you can do. There are ways to save money on ink if you must continue to print documents. Cheap Printers, Expensive Ink Ink jet printers are often very cheap. That’s because they’re sold at cost, or even at a loss — the manufacturer either makes no profit from the printer itself or loses money. The manufacturer will make most of its money from the printer cartridges you buy later. Even if the company does make a bit of money from each printer sold, it makes a much larger profit margin on ink. Rather than selling you a printer that may be rather expensive, they want to sell you a cheap printer and make money on an ongoing basis by providing expensive printer ink. It’s been compared to the razor model — sell a razor cheaply and mark up the razor blades. Rather than making a one-time profit on the razor, you’ll make continuing profit as the customer keeps buying razor blade replacements — or ink, in this case. Many printer manufacturers go out of their way to make it difficult for you to use unofficial ink cartridges, building microchips into their official ink cartridges. If you use an unofficial cartridge or refill an official cartridge, the printer may refuse to use it. Lexmark once argued in court that unofficial microchips that enable third-party ink cartridges would violate their copyright and Lexmark has argued that creating an unofficial microchip to bypass this restriction on third-party ink would violate Lexmark’s copyright and be illegal under the US DMCA. Luckily, they lost this argument. What Printer Companies Say Printer companies have put forth their own arguments in the past, attempting to justify the high cost of official ink cartridges and microchips that block any competition. In a Computer World story from 2010, HP argued that they spend a billion dollars each year on “ink research and development.” They point out that printer ink “must be formulated to withstand heating to 300 degrees, vaporization, and being squirted at 30 miles per hour, at a rate of 36,000 drops per second, through a nozzle one third the size of a human hair. After all that it must dry almost instantly on the paper.” They also argue that printers have become more efficient and use less ink to print, while third-party cartridges are less reliable. Companies that use microchips in their ink cartridges argue that only the microchip has the ability to enforce an expiration date, preventing consumers from using old ink cartridges. There’s something to all these arguments, sure — but they don’t seem to justify the sky-high cost of printer ink or the restriction on using third-party or refilled cartridges. Saving Money on Printing Ultimately, the price of something is what people are willing to pay and printer companies have found that most consumers are willing to pay this much for ink cartridge replacements. Try not to fall for it: Don’t buy the cheapest inkjet printer. Consider your needs when buying a printer and do some research. You’ll save more money in the long run. Consider these basic tips to save money on printing: Buy Refilled Cartridges: Refilled cartridges from third parties are generally much cheaper. Printer companies warn us away from these, but they often work very well. Refill Your Own Cartridges: You can get do-it-yourself kits for refilling your own printer ink cartridges, but this can be messy. Your printer may refuse to accept a refilled cartridge if the cartridge contains a microchip. Switch to a Laser Printer: Laser printers use toner, not ink cartridges. If you print a lot of black and white documents, a laser printer can be cheaper. Buy XL Cartridges: If you are buying official printer ink cartridges, spend more money each time. The cheapest ink cartridges won’t contain much ink at all, while larger “XL” ink cartridges will contain much more ink for only a bit more money. It’s often cheaper to buy in bulk. Avoid Printers With Tri-Color Ink Cartridges: If you’re printing color documents, you’ll want to get a printer that uses separate ink cartridges for all its colors. For example, let’s say your printer has a “Color” cartridge that contains blue, green, and red ink. If you print a lot of blue documents and use up all your blue ink, the Color cartridge will refuse to function — now all you can do is throw away your cartridge and buy a new one, even if the green and red ink chambers are full. If you had a printer with separate color cartridges, you’d just have to replace the blue cartridge. If you’ll be buying official ink cartridges, be sure to compare the cost of cartridges when buying a printer. The cheapest printer may be more expensive in the long run. Of course, you’ll save the most money if you stop printing entirely and go paperless, keeping digital copies of your documents instead of paper ones. Image Credit: Cliva Darra on Flickr     

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  • Measuring Usability with Common Industry Format (CIF) Usability Tests

    - by Applications User Experience
    Sean Rice, Manager, Applications User Experience A User-centered Research and Design Process The Oracle Fusion Applications user experience was five years in the making. The development of this suite included an extensive and comprehensive user experience design process: ethnographic research, low-fidelity workflow prototyping, high fidelity user interface (UI) prototyping, iterative formative usability testing, development feedback and iteration, and sales and customer evaluation throughout the design cycle. However, this process does not stop when our products are released. We conduct summative usability testing using the ISO 25062 Common Industry Format (CIF) for usability test reports as an organizational framework. CIF tests allow us to measure the overall usability of our released products.  These studies provide benchmarks that allow for comparisons of a specific product release against previous versions of our product and against other products in the marketplace. What Is a CIF Usability Test? CIF refers to the internationally standardized method for reporting usability test findings used by the software industry. The CIF is based on a formal, lab-based test that is used to benchmark the usability of a product in terms of human performance and subjective data. The CIF was developed and is endorsed by more than 375 software customer and vendor organizations led by the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), a US government entity. NIST sponsored the CIF through the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standards-making processes. Oracle played a key role in developing the CIF. The CIF report format and metrics are consistent with the ISO 9241-11 definition of usability: “The extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use.” Our goal in conducting CIF tests is to measure performance and satisfaction of a representative sample of users on a set of core tasks and to help predict how usable a product will be with the larger population of customers. Why Do We Perform CIF Testing? The overarching purpose of the CIF for usability test reports is to promote incorporation of usability as part of the procurement decision-making process for interactive products. CIF provides a common format for vendors to report the methods and results of usability tests to customer organizations, and enables customers to compare the usability of our software to that of other suppliers. CIF also enables us to compare our current software with previous versions of our software. CIF Testing for Fusion Applications Oracle Fusion Applications comprises more than 100 modules in seven different product families. These modules encompass more than 400 task flows and 400 user roles. Due to resource constraints, we cannot perform comprehensive CIF testing across the entire product suite. Therefore, we had to develop meaningful inclusion criteria and work with other stakeholders across the applications development organization to prioritize product areas for testing. Ultimately, we want to test the product areas for which customers might be most interested in seeing CIF data. We also want to build credibility with customers; we need to be able to make the case to current and prospective customers that the product areas tested are representative of the product suite as a whole. Our goal is to test the top use cases for each product. The primary activity in the scoping process was to work with the individual product teams to identify the key products and business process task flows in each product to test. We prioritized these products and flows through a series of negotiations among the user experience managers, product strategy, and product management directors for each of the primary product families within the Oracle Fusion Applications suite (Human Capital Management, Supply Chain Management, Customer Relationship Management, Financials, Projects, and Procurement). The end result of the scoping exercise was a list of 47 proposed CIF tests for the Fusion Applications product suite.  Figure 1. A participant completes tasks during a usability test in Oracle’s Usability Labs Fusion Supplier Portal CIF Test The first Fusion CIF test was completed on the Supplier Portal application in July of 2011.  Fusion Supplier Portal is part of an integrated suite of Procurement applications that helps supplier companies manage orders, schedules, shipments, invoices, negotiations and payments. The user roles targeted for the usability study were Supplier Account Receivables Specialists and Supplier Sales Representatives, including both experienced and inexperienced users across a wide demographic range.  The test specifically focused on the following functionality and features: Manage payments – view payments Manage invoices – view invoice status and create invoices Manage account information – create new contact, review bank account information Manage agreements – find and view agreement, upload agreement lines, confirm status of agreement lines upload Manage purchase orders (PO) – view history of PO, request change to PO, find orders Manage negotiations – respond to request for a quote, check the status of a negotiation response These product areas were selected to represent the most important subset of features and functionality of the flow, in terms of frequency and criticality of use by customers. A total of 20 users participated in the usability study. The results of the Supplier Portal evaluation were favorable and exceeded our expectations. Figure 2. Fusion Supplier Portal Next Studies We plan to conduct two Fusion CIF usability studies per product family over the next nine months. The next product to be tested will be Self-service Procurement. End users are currently being recruited to participate in this usability study, and the test sessions are scheduled to begin during the last week of November.

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  • HTML5 and CSS3 Editing in Windows Live Writer

    - by Rick Strahl
    Windows Live Writer is a wonderful tool for editing blog posts and getting them posted to your blog. What makes it nice is that it has a small set of useful features, plus a simple plug-in model that has spawned many useful add-ins. Small tool with a reasonably decent plug-in model to extend equals a great solution to a simple problem. If you're running Windows, have a blog and aren’t using Live Writer you’re probably doing it wrong…One of Live Writer’s nice features is that it can download your blog’s CSS for preview and edit displays. It lets you edit your content inside of the context of that CSS using the WYSIWYG editor, so your content actually looks very close to what you’ll see on your blog while you’re editing your post. Unfortunately Live Writer renders the HTML content in the Web Browser Control’s  default IE 7 rendering mode. Yeah you read that right: IE 7 is the default for the Web Browser control and most applications that use it, are stuck in this modus unless the application explicitly overrides this default. The Web Browser control does not use the version of Internet Explorer installed on the system (IE 10 on my Win8 machine) but uses IE 7 mode for ‘compatibility’ for old applications.If you are importing your blog’s CSS that may suck if you’re using rich HTML 5 and CSS 3 formatting. Hack the Registry to get Live Writer to render using IE 9 or 10In order to get Live Writer (or any other application that uses the Web Browser Control for that matter) to render you can apply a registry hack that overrides the Web Browser Control engine usage for a specific application. I wrote about this in detail in a previous blog post a couple of years back.Here’s how you can set up Windows Live Writer to render your CSS 3 by making a change in your registry:The above is for setup on a 64 bit machine, where I configure Live Writer which is a 32 bit application for using IE 10 rendering. The keys set are as follows:32bit Configuration on 64 bit machine:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\FeatureControl\FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATIONKey: WindowsLiveWriter.exeValue: 9000 or 10000  (IE 9 or 10 respectively) (DWORD value)On a 32 bit only machine: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\FeatureControl\FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATIONKey: WindowsLiveWriter.exeValue: 9000 or 10000  (IE 9 or 10 respectively) (DWORD value)Use decimal values of 9000, 10000 or 11000 to specify specific versions of Internet Explorer. This is a minor tweak, but it’s nice to actually see my blog posts now with the proper CSS formatting intact. Notice the rounded borders and shadow on the code blocks as well as the overflow-x and scrollbars that show up. In this particular case I can see what the code blocks actually look like in a specific resolution – much better than in the old plain view which just chopped things off at the end of the window frame. There are a few other elements that now show properly in the editor as well including block quotes and note boxes that I occasionally use. It’s minor stuff, but it makes the editing experience better yet and closer to the final things so there are less republish operations than I previously had. Sweet!Note that this approach of putting an IE version override into the registry works with most applications that use the Web Browser control. If you are using the Web Browser control in your own applications, it’s a good idea to switch the browser to a more recent version so you can take advantage of HTML 5 and CSS 3 in your browser displayed content by automatically setting this flag in the registry or as part of the application’s startup routine if not dedicated setup tool is used. At the very least you might set it to 9000 (IE 9) which supports most of the basic CSS3 features and is a decent baseline that works for most Windows 7 and 8 machines. If running pre-IE9, the browser will fall back to IE7 rendering and look bad but at least more recent browsers will see an improved experience.I’m surprised that there aren’t more vendors and third party apps using this feature. You can see in my first screen shot that there are only very few entries in the registry key group on my machine – any other apps use the Web Browser control are using IE7. Go figure. Certainly Windows Live Writer should be writing this key into the registry automatically as part of installation to support this functionality out of the box, but alas since it does not, this registry hack lets you get your way anyway…Resources.reg Files to register Live Write Browser Emulation (set for IE9)Specifying Internet Explorer Version for ApplicationsSnagIt LiveWriter Plug-inDownload Windows Live WriterDownload Windows Live Writer with Chocolatey© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2013Posted in Live Writer  Windows   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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  • Big Data – What is Big Data – 3 Vs of Big Data – Volume, Velocity and Variety – Day 2 of 21

    - by Pinal Dave
    Data is forever. Think about it – it is indeed true. Are you using any application as it is which was built 10 years ago? Are you using any piece of hardware which was built 10 years ago? The answer is most certainly No. However, if I ask you – are you using any data which were captured 50 years ago, the answer is most certainly Yes. For example, look at the history of our nation. I am from India and we have documented history which goes back as over 1000s of year. Well, just look at our birthday data – atleast we are using it till today. Data never gets old and it is going to stay there forever.  Application which interprets and analysis data got changed but the data remained in its purest format in most cases. As organizations have grown the data associated with them also grew exponentially and today there are lots of complexity to their data. Most of the big organizations have data in multiple applications and in different formats. The data is also spread out so much that it is hard to categorize with a single algorithm or logic. The mobile revolution which we are experimenting right now has completely changed how we capture the data and build intelligent systems.  Big organizations are indeed facing challenges to keep all the data on a platform which give them a  single consistent view of their data. This unique challenge to make sense of all the data coming in from different sources and deriving the useful actionable information out of is the revolution Big Data world is facing. Defining Big Data The 3Vs that define Big Data are Variety, Velocity and Volume. Volume We currently see the exponential growth in the data storage as the data is now more than text data. We can find data in the format of videos, musics and large images on our social media channels. It is very common to have Terabytes and Petabytes of the storage system for enterprises. As the database grows the applications and architecture built to support the data needs to be reevaluated quite often. Sometimes the same data is re-evaluated with multiple angles and even though the original data is the same the new found intelligence creates explosion of the data. The big volume indeed represents Big Data. Velocity The data growth and social media explosion have changed how we look at the data. There was a time when we used to believe that data of yesterday is recent. The matter of the fact newspapers is still following that logic. However, news channels and radios have changed how fast we receive the news. Today, people reply on social media to update them with the latest happening. On social media sometimes a few seconds old messages (a tweet, status updates etc.) is not something interests users. They often discard old messages and pay attention to recent updates. The data movement is now almost real time and the update window has reduced to fractions of the seconds. This high velocity data represent Big Data. Variety Data can be stored in multiple format. For example database, excel, csv, access or for the matter of the fact, it can be stored in a simple text file. Sometimes the data is not even in the traditional format as we assume, it may be in the form of video, SMS, pdf or something we might have not thought about it. It is the need of the organization to arrange it and make it meaningful. It will be easy to do so if we have data in the same format, however it is not the case most of the time. The real world have data in many different formats and that is the challenge we need to overcome with the Big Data. This variety of the data represent  represent Big Data. Big Data in Simple Words Big Data is not just about lots of data, it is actually a concept providing an opportunity to find new insight into your existing data as well guidelines to capture and analysis your future data. It makes any business more agile and robust so it can adapt and overcome business challenges. Tomorrow In tomorrow’s blog post we will try to answer discuss Evolution of Big Data. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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