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  • SQL SERVER – master Database Log File Grew Too Big

    - by pinaldave
    Couple of the days ago, I received following email and I find this email very interesting and I feel like sharing with all of you. Note: Please read the whole email before providing your suggestions. “Hi Pinal, If you can share these details on your blog, it will help many. We understand the value of the master database and we take its regular back up (everyday midnight). Yesterday we noticed that our master database log file has grown very large. This is very first time that we have encountered such an issue. The master database is in simple recovery mode; so we assumed that it will never grow big; however, we now have a big log file. We ran the following command USE [master] GO DBCC SHRINKFILE (N'mastlog' , 0, TRUNCATEONLY) GO We know this command will break the chains of LSN but as per our understanding; it should not matter as we are in simple recovery model.     After running this, the log file becomes very small. Just to be cautious, we took full backup of the master database right away. We totally understand that this is not the normal practice; so if you are going to tell us the same, we are aware of it. However, here is the question for you? What operation in master database would have caused our log file to grow too large? Thanks, [name and company name removed as per request]“ Here was my response to them: “Hi [name removed], It is great that you are aware of all the right steps and method. Taking full backup when you are not sure is always a good practice. Regarding your question what could have caused your master database log to grow larger, let me try to guess what could have happened. Do you have any user table in the master database? If yes, this is not recommended and also NOT a good practice. If have user tables in master database and you are doing any long operation (may be lots of insert, update, delete or rebuilding them), then it can cause this situation. You have made me curious about your scenario; do revert back. Kind Regards, Pinal” Within few minutes I received reply: “That was it Pinal. We had one of the maintenance task log tables created in the master table, which had many long transactions during the night. We moved it to newly created database named ‘maintenance’, and we will keep you updated.” I was very glad to receive the email. I do not suggest that any user table should be created in the master database. It should be left alone from user objects. Now here is the question for you – can you think of any other reason for master log file growth? Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Backup and Restore, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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  • How can we improve overall Programmer Education & Training?

    - by crosenblum
    Last week, I was just viewing this amazing interview by Kevin Rose of Phillip Rosedale, of Second Life. And they had an amazing discussion about how to find, hire and identify good programmer's, and how hard it is to find good ones. Which has lead me to really think about the way we programmer's learn, are taught. For a majority of us, myself included, we are self-taught. Which is great about being a programmer, anyone can learn and develop skills. But this also means, that there is no real standards of what a good programmer is/are, and what kind of environment's encourage the growth of programming skills. This isn't so much a question, but just a desire in me, to see how we can change the culture of programming, and the manager's of programming, so that education and self-improvement is encouraged. There are a lot of avenue's for continued education, youtube videos, books, conferences, but because of the experiental nature of what we do, it isn't always clear what's important to learn and to master. Let's look at the The Joel 12 Steps. The Joel Test Do you use source control? Can you make a build in one step? Do you make daily builds? Do you have a bug database? Do you fix bugs before writing new code? Do you have an up-to-date schedule? Do you have a spec? Do programmers have quiet working conditions? Do you use the best tools money can buy? Do you have testers? Do new candidates write code during their interview? Do you do hallway usability testing? I think all of these have important value, but because of something I call the Experiential Gap, if a programmer or manager has never experienced any of the negative consequences for not having done items on the list, they will never see the need to do any of them. The Experiental Gap, is my basic theory, that each of us has different jobs and different experiences. So for some of us, that have always worked with dozens of programmer's, source control is a must have. But for people who have always been the only programmer, they can not imagine the need for source control. And it's because of this major flaw in how we learn, that we evaluate people by what best practices they do or not do, and the reason for either can start a flame war. We always evaluate people in our field by what they do, and think "Oh if this guy/gal isn't doing xyz best practice, he/she can't be a good programmer, so let's not waste time or energy talking to them." This is exactly why we have so many programming flame wars, that it becomes, because of the Experiental Gap, we can't imagine people not having made the decisions that we have had to made. So this has lead me to think, that we totally need to rethink how we train, educate and manage programmer's. For example, what percentage of you have had encouragement by your manager's to go to conferences, and even have them pay for it? For me, and a lot of people, this is extremely rare, a lot of us would love to go to conferences, to learn more, but the money ain't there to do that. So the point of this question is really to spark a lot of how can we train, learn and manage better? How can we create a new culture of learning that doesn't insult people for not having the same job experiences. Yes we all have jobs and work to do, but our ability to do our jobs well, depends on our desire, interest and support in improving our mastery of our skills. Right now, I see our culture being rather disorganized, we support the elite, but those tons of us that want to get better, just don't have enough support to learn and improve ourselves. I mean, do we as an industry, want to be perceived as just replaceable cogs? Thank you...

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  • Get to Know a Candidate (9 of 25): Gary Johnson&ndash;Libertarian Party

    - by Brian Lanham
    DISCLAIMER: This is not a post about “Romney” or “Obama”. This is not a post for whom I am voting. Information sourced for Wikipedia. Johnson served as the 29th Governor of New Mexico from 1995 to 2003, as a member of the Republican Party, and is known for his low-tax libertarian views and his strong emphasis on personal health and fitness. While a student at the University of New Mexico in 1974, Johnson sustained himself financially by working as a door-to-door handyman. In 1976 he founded Big J Enterprises, which grew from this one-person venture to become one of New Mexico's largest construction companies. He entered politics for the first time by running for Governor of New Mexico in 1994 on a fiscally conservative, low-tax, anti-crime platform. Johnson won the Republican Party of New Mexico's gubernatorial nomination, and defeated incumbent Democratic governor Bruce King by 50% to 40%. He cut the 10% annual growth in the budget: in part, due to his use of the gubernatorial veto 200 times during his first six months in office, which gained him the nickname "Governor Veto". Johnson sought re-election in 1998, winning by 55% to 45%. In his second term, he concentrated on the issue of school voucher reforms, as well as campaigning for marijuana decriminalization and opposition to the War on Drugs. During his tenure as governor, Johnson adhered to a stringent anti-tax and anti-bureaucracy policy driven by a cost–benefit analysis rationale, setting state and national records for his use of veto powers: more than the other 49 contemporary governors put together. Term-limited, Johnson could not run for re-election at the end of his second term. As a fitness enthusiast, Johnson has taken part in several Ironman Triathlons, and he climbed Mount Everest in May 2003. After leaving office, Johnson founded the non-profit Our America Initiative in 2009, a political advocacy committee seeking to promote policies such as free enterprise, foreign non-interventionism, limited government and privatization. The Libertarian Party is the third largest political party in the United States. It is also identified by many as the fastest growing political party in the United States. The political platform of the Libertarian Party reflects the ideas of libertarianism, favoring minimally regulated markets, a less powerful state, strong civil liberties (including support for Same-sex marriage and other LGBT rights), cannabis legalization and regulation, separation of church and state, open immigration, non-interventionism and neutrality in diplomatic relations (i.e., avoiding foreign military or economic entanglements with other nations), freedom of trade and travel to all foreign countries, and a more responsive and direct democracy. Members of the Libertarian Party have also supported the repeal of NAFTA, CAFTA, and similar trade agreements, as well as the United States' exit from the United Nations, WTO, and NATO. Although there is not an officially labeled political position of the party, it is considered by many to be more right-wing than the Democratic Party but more left-wing than the Republican Party when comparing the parties' positions to each other, placing it at or above the center. In the 30 states where voters can register by party, there are over 282,000 voters registered as Libertarians. Hundreds of Libertarian candidates have been elected or appointed to public office, and thousands have run for office under the Libertarian banner. The Libertarian Party has many firsts in its credit, such as being the first party to get an electoral vote for a woman in a United States presidential election. Learn more about Gary Johnson and Libertarian Party on Wikipedia.

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  • Are there too many qualified software development engineers chasing too few jobs?

    - by T Gregory
    I am trying to write this question in a non-argumentative way, but it is quite emotionally charged for some, so please bear with me. In the U.S., we hear constantly from CEOs that they cannot find enough qualified software engineers. In fact, it is the position of the U.S. government that demand for software engineering talent outpaces supply. This position can be clearly seen in the granting of tens of thousands of H1B visas, but also in the following excerpt from the official 2010-11 Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook: Employment of computer software engineers is expected to increase by 32 percent from 2008-2018, which is much faster than the average for all occupations. In addition, this occupation will see a large number of new jobs, with more than 295,000 created between 2008 and 2018. Demand for computer software engineers will increase as computer networking continues to grow. For example, expanding Internet technologies have spurred demand for computer software engineers who can develop Internet, intranet, and World Wide Web applications. Likewise, electronic data-processing systems in business, telecommunications, healthcare, government, and other settings continue to become more sophisticated and complex. Implementing, safeguarding, and updating computer systems and resolving problems will fuel the demand for growing numbers of systems software engineers. New growth areas will also continue to arise from rapidly evolving technologies. The increasing uses of the Internet, the proliferation of Web sites, and mobile technology such as the wireless Internet have created a demand for a wide variety of new products. As more software is offered over the Internet, and as businesses demand customized software to meet their specific needs, applications and systems software engineers will be needed in greater numbers. In addition, the growing use of handheld computers will create demand for new mobile applications and software systems. As these devices become a larger part of the business environment, it will be necessary to integrate current computer systems with this new, more mobile technology. However, from the the employee side of the equation, we often hear the opposite. Many of the stories of SDEs with graduate degrees and decades of experience on the unemployment line, or the big tech interview war stories, are anecdotal, for sure. But, there is one piece of data that is neither anecdotal nor transitory, and that is the aggregate decisions of millions of undergraduates of what degree to pursue. Here, a different picture emerges from the data, and that picture is not good for the software profession. According the most recent Taulbee Survey from Computer Research Association, undergrad degree production in CS and CE has fallen nearly 60% since 2004. (Undergrad enrollments have ticked up in the past two years, but only modestly). Here we see that a basic disconnect between what corporate CEOs and the US government are saying and what potential employees really think about job prospects in software engineering. So my questions are these. Who are we to believe? Is there an acute talent shortage, or is there a long-term structural oversupply in the SDE labor market? Can anyone provide reliable data on long-term unemployment among SDEs? How many are leaving the profession due to lack of work? Real data is most helpful. Thanks.

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  • Save the Date - Oracle Partner Community Forum: Exadata, Exalogic and Manageability, Vienna, 23-24 April 2013

    - by Javier Puerta
    Hardware and Software Engineered to Work Together .Ritu { font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; } .Ritu { font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; } .Ritu { font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; } body,td,th { font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; } .color { color: #F00; } .c { color: #F00; } .c { color: #F00; } .c { color: #000; font-size: xx-small; } .c a { color: #F00; } .c { color: #F00; } .cl { color: #F00; } .b { color: #000; font-size: xx-small; } .i { font-style: italic; } .i { font-style: italic; } .i { font-style: italic; } .i { font-style: italic; } .i { font-style: italic; } .c { color: #F00; font-size: small; } .b { font-weight: bold; font-size: x-small; } .c { color: #F00; font-size: x-small; } .clr { color: #F00; } .c { color: #F00; } inside the Click Here The order you must follow to make the colored link appear in browsers. If not the default window link will appear 1. Select the word you want to use for the link 2. Select the desired color, Red, Black, etc 3. Select bold if necessary ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Templates use two sizes of fonts and the sans-serif font tag for the email. All Fonts should be (Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif) tags Normal size reading body fonts should be set to the size of 2. Small font sizes should be set to 1 !!!!!!!DO NOT USE ANY OTHER SIZE FONT FOR THE EMAILS!!!!!!!! ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ -- Oracle PartnerNetwork | Account | Feedback SAVE THE DATE ORACLE PARTNER COMMUNITY FORUM: EXADATA, EXALOGIC AND MANAGEABILITY 23-24 APRIL 2013, VIENNA, AUSTRIA The 2013 event expands its scope to cover all the building blocks of the Cloud infrastructure: Exadata, Exalogic and Manageability! Dear partner I am delighted to announce the 2013 edition of the Exadata, Exalogic and Manageability Partner Community Forum for EMEA partners which will take place in Vienna, Austria, on April 23-24, 2013. After the experience of last year where we ran a joint Exadata and Manageability event, we received requests from many of you to add also Exalogic to the scope of the forum, and this way to cover the complete infrastructure architecture on the Exa platform. The continued market adoption of Exadata and Exalogic is being paralleled by a growth in the rate of projects sold and implemented by partners. Sharing customer cases and best-practices presented by other partners constitutes the core of this event. If you want to present an experience of your company around Exadata, Exalogic or Manageability that can be a learning experience for other partners, we still have some slots in the agenda. (Please contact Javier Puerta if you want to present.) Attending the Community Forum you will also have the opportunity to get Oracle’s insight on new products and market trends. And, of course, interact with the Oracle executives responsible for the Exadata, Exalogic and Manageability business. The atmosphere of beautiful Vienna will be the scenario of the event. Detailed venue and hotel booking information will be sent to you in January. Don't miss out on attending this key event! Save the date now - 23 & 24 April 2013, and watch out for your formal invitation coming soon. Kind regards, Javier Puerta Core Technology Partner Programs, Oracle EMEA E-Mail: [email protected] Jürgen Kress SOA Partner Adoption Oracle EMEA E-Mail: [email protected] Copyright © 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Contact PBC | Legal Notices and Terms of Use | Privacy Oracle Corporation - Worldwide Headquarters, 500 Oracle Parkway, OPL - E-mail Services, Redwood Shores, CA 94065, United States

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  • Save the Date - Oracle Partner Community Forum: Exadata, Exalogic and Manageability, Vienna, 23-24 April 2013

    - by Javier Puerta
    Hardware and Software Engineered to Work Together .Ritu { font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; } .Ritu { font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; } .Ritu { font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; } body,td,th { font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; } .color { color: #F00; } .c { color: #F00; } .c { color: #F00; } .c { color: #000; font-size: xx-small; } .c a { color: #F00; } .c { color: #F00; } .cl { color: #F00; } .b { color: #000; font-size: xx-small; } .i { font-style: italic; } .i { font-style: italic; } .i { font-style: italic; } .i { font-style: italic; } .i { font-style: italic; } .c { color: #F00; font-size: small; } .b { font-weight: bold; font-size: x-small; } .c { color: #F00; font-size: x-small; } .clr { color: #F00; } .c { color: #F00; } inside the Click Here The order you must follow to make the colored link appear in browsers. If not the default window link will appear 1. Select the word you want to use for the link 2. Select the desired color, Red, Black, etc 3. Select bold if necessary ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Templates use two sizes of fonts and the sans-serif font tag for the email. All Fonts should be (Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif) tags Normal size reading body fonts should be set to the size of 2. Small font sizes should be set to 1 !!!!!!!DO NOT USE ANY OTHER SIZE FONT FOR THE EMAILS!!!!!!!! ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ -- Oracle PartnerNetwork | Account | Feedback SAVE THE DATE ORACLE PARTNER COMMUNITY FORUM: EXADATA, EXALOGIC AND MANAGEABILITY 23-24 APRIL 2013, VIENNA, AUSTRIA The 2013 event expands its scope to cover all the building blocks of the Cloud infrastructure: Exadata, Exalogic and Manageability! Dear partner I am delighted to announce the 2013 edition of the Exadata, Exalogic and Manageability Partner Community Forum for EMEA partners which will take place in Vienna, Austria, on April 23-24, 2013. After the experience of last year where we ran a joint Exadata and Manageability event, we received requests from many of you to add also Exalogic to the scope of the forum, and this way to cover the complete infrastructure architecture on the Exa platform. The continued market adoption of Exadata and Exalogic is being paralleled by a growth in the rate of projects sold and implemented by partners. Sharing customer cases and best-practices presented by other partners constitutes the core of this event. If you want to present an experience of your company around Exadata, Exalogic or Manageability that can be a learning experience for other partners, we still have some slots in the agenda. (Please contact Javier Puerta if you want to present.) Attending the Community Forum you will also have the opportunity to get Oracle’s insight on new products and market trends. And, of course, interact with the Oracle executives responsible for the Exadata, Exalogic and Manageability business. The atmosphere of beautiful Vienna will be the scenario of the event. Detailed venue and hotel booking information will be sent to you in January. Don't miss out on attending this key event! Save the date now - 23 & 24 April 2013, and watch out for your formal invitation coming soon. Kind regards, Javier Puerta Core Technology Partner Programs, Oracle EMEA E-Mail: [email protected] Jürgen Kress SOA Partner Adoption Oracle EMEA E-Mail: [email protected] Copyright © 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Contact PBC | Legal Notices and Terms of Use | Privacy Oracle Corporation - Worldwide Headquarters, 500 Oracle Parkway, OPL - E-mail Services, Redwood Shores, CA 94065, United States

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  • The Evolution of Television and Home Entertainment

    - by Bill Evjen
    This is a group that is focused on entertainment in the aviation industry. I am attending their conference for the first time as it relates to my job at Swank Motion Pictures and what we do for our various markets. I will post my notes here. The Evolution of Television and Home Entertainment by Patrick Cosson, Veebeam TV has been the center of living rooms for sometime. Conversations and culture evolve around the TV. The way we consume this content has dramatically been changing. After TV, we had the MTV revolution of TV. It has created shorter attention spans, it made us more materialistic, narcissistic, and not easily impressed. Then we came to the Internet. The amount of content has expanded. It contains a ton of user-generated content, provides filtering, organization, distribution. We now have a problem. We are in the age of digital excess. We can access whatever we want. In conjunction with this – we are moving. The challenge we have now is curation. The trends  we see: rapid shift from scheduled to on demand consumption. A move to Internet protocols from cable Rapid fragmentation of media a transition from the TV set to a variety of screens Social connections bring mediators and amplifiers. TiVo – the shift to on demand It is because of a time-crunch Provides personal experiences Once old consumption habits are changed, there is no way back! Experiences are that people are loading up content and then bringing it with them on planes, to hotels, etc. Rapid fragmentation of media sources Many new professional content sources and channels, the rise of digital distribution, and the rise of user-generated content contribute to the wealth of content sources and abundant choice. Netflix, BBC iPlayer, hulu, Pandora, iTunes, Amazon Video, Vudu, Voddler, Spotify (these companies didn’t exist 5 years ago). People now expect this kind of consumption. People are now thinking how to deliver all these tools. Transition from the TV set to multi-screens The TV screen has traditionally been the dominant consumption screen for TV and video. Now the PC, game consoles, and various mobile devices are rapidly becoming common video devices. Multi-screens are now the norm. Social connections becoming key mediators What increasingly funnels traffic on the web, social networking enablers, will become an integral part of the discovery, consumption and sharing model for Television. The revolution will be broadcasted on Facebook and Twitter. There is business disruption There are a lot of new entrants Rapid internationalization Increasing competition from existing media players A fragmenting audience base Web browser Freedom to access any site The fight over the walled garden Most devices are not powerful enough to support a full browser PC will always be present in the living room Wireless link between PC and TV Output 1080p, plays anything, secure Key players and their challenges Services Internet media is increasingly interconnected to social media and publicly shared UGC Content delivery moving to IPTV Rights management issues are creating silos and hindering a great user experience and growth Devices Devices are becoming people’s windows into all kinds of media from all kinds of sources There won’t be a consolidation of the device landscape, rather the opposite Finding the right niche makes the most sense. We are moving to an on demand world of streaming world. People want full access to anything.

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  • Oracle celebrates a successful Oracle CloudWorld in Bogotá

    - by yaldahhakim
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 written by: Diana Tamayo Tovar Oracle CloudWorld Bogotá began with scattered showers, rain and strong winds, inviting Colombians to spend a whole day in the social, mobile and complete world of Oracle Cloud. The event took place on November 6th with 807 attendees, 15 media representatives and 65 partners, who gathered to share the business value of Cloud along with Oracle executives and Colombian market leaders. Line-of-business leaders in sales and marketing, customer service and support, HR and talent management, and finance and operations, shared their ideas with Colombian customers, giving them a chance to learn, discover and engage with the tools, trends and concepts of Cloud. The highlights of the event included the presence of keynote speakers such as Bob Evans, Chief Communications Officer, and a customer testimonial session with top business leaders from insurance, finances, retail, communications and health Colombian industries, who shared their innovation experiences and success stories on workforce empowerment, talent management, cloud security, social engagement and productivity, providing best case scenarios on how Oracle has helped them transform their business with technologies like cloud, social collaboration and mobile applications. The keynote session was preceded by a customer success story from one of the largest virtual network operator in the country, providing an interesting case study of mobile banking innovation and a great customer testimonial of the importance of cross industry strategies and cloud technology. The event provided five different tracks on the main trends of how companies communicate and engage with different audiences, providing a different perspective on the importance of empowering brands through their customers, trusting and investing in technology for growth, while Oracle University shared their knowledge with “Oracle Cloud Fundamentals” a training lesson regarding Java Cloud, Database Cloud and other Oracle Cloud product technologies and solutions. The rainy day scenario included sideshows of aerial acrobatics and speed painting performances to recreate the environment of modern and flexible Cloud Solutions in a colorful and creative way. Oracle CloudWorld Bogotá was a great opportunity to expose invalid cloud Myths and the main concerns of the Colombian customers towards cloud, considering IDC Latin America studies stating that 93% of Colombian business leaders are interested in cloud but only 47% understand its business value. Spending a day in the cloud with 6 demogrounds stations, conference sessions, interesting case studies and customer testimonials will surely widen the endless market opportunities for Colombian customers, leaving them amazed with how Oracle Cloud works towards integration with other environments, non oracle applications, social media and mobile devices with bulletproof security infrastructure. /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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  • Bad Spot to Be In: Playing Catch-up with Mobile Advertising

    - by Mike Stiles
    You probably noticed, there’s a mass migration going on from online desktop/laptop usage to smartphone/tablet usage.  It’s an indicator of how we live our lives in the modern world: always on the go, with no intention of being disconnected while out there. Consequently, paid as it relates to mobile advertising is taking the social spotlight. eMarketer estimated that in 2013, US adults would spend about 2 hours, 21 minutes a day on mobile, not counting talking time. More people in the world own smartphones than own toothbrushes (bad news I suppose if you’re marketing toothpaste). They’re using those mobile devices to access social networks, consuming at least 17% of their mobile time on them. Frankly, you don’t need a deep dive into mobile usage stats to know what’s going on. Just look around you in any store, venue or coffee shop. It’s really obvious…our mobile devices are now where we “are,” so that’s where marketers can increasingly reach us. And it’s a smart place for them to do just that. Mobile devices can be viewed more and more as shopping facilitators. Usually when someone is on mobile, they are not in passive research mode. They are likely standing near a store or in front of a product, using their mobile to seek reassurance that buying that product is the right move. They are the hottest of hot prospects. Consider that 4 out of 5 consumers use smartphones to shop, 52% of Americans use mobile devices for in-store for research, 70% of mobile searches lead to online action inside of an hour, and people that find you on mobile convert at almost 3x the rate as those that find you on desktop or laptop. But what are marketers doing? Enter statistics from Mary Meeker’s latest State of the Internet report. Common sense says you buy advertising where people are spending their eyeball time, right? But while mobile is 20% of media use and rising, the ad spend there is 4%. Conversely, while print usage is at 5% and falling, ad spend there is 19%. We all love nostalgia, but come on. There are reasons marketing dollar migration to mobile has not matched user migration, including the availability of mobile ad products and the ability to measure user response to mobile ads. But interesting things are happening now. First came Facebook’s mobile ad, which let app developers pay to get potential downloads. Then their mobile ad network was announced at F8, allowing marketers to target users across non-Facebook apps while leveraging the wealth of diverse data Facebook has on those users, a big deal since Nielsen has pointed out mobile apps make up 89% of the media time spent on mobile. Twitter has a similar play in motion with their MoPub acquisition. And now mobile deeplinks have arrived, which can take users straight to sub-pages of mobile apps for a faster, more direct shopper/researcher user experience. The sooner the gratification, the smoother and faster the conversion. To be clear, growth in mobile ad spending is well underway. After posting $13.1 billion in 2013, Gartner expects global mobile ad spending to reach $18 billion this year, then go to $41.9 billion by 2017. Cheap smartphones and data plans are spreading worldwide, further fueling the shift to mobile. Mobile usage in India alone should grow 400% by 2018. And, of course, there’s the famous statistic that mobile should overtake desktop Internet usage this year. How can we as marketers mess up this opportunity? Two ways. We could position ourselves in perpetual “catch-up” mode and keep spending ad dollars where the public used to be. And we could annoy mobile users with horrid old-school marketing practices. Two-thirds of users told Forrester they think interruptive in-app ads are more annoying than TV ads. Make sure your brand’s social marketing technology platform is delivering a crystal clear picture of your social connections so the mobile touch point is highly relevant, mobile optimized, and delivering real value and satisfying experiences. Otherwise, all we’ve done is find a new way to be unwanted. @mikestiles @oraclesocialPhoto: Kate Mallatratt, freeimages.com

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  • Announcing Oracle Knowledge 8.5: Even Superheroes Need Upgrades

    - by Richard Lefebvre
    It’s no secret that we like Iron Man here at Oracle. We've certainly got stuff in common: one of the world’s largest technology companies and one of the world’s strongest technology-driven superheroes. If you've seen the recent Iron Man movies, you might have even noticed some of our servers sitting in Tony Stark’s lab. Heck, our CEO made a cameo appearance in one of the movies. Yeah, we’re fans. Especially as Iron Man is a regular guy with some amazing technology – like us. But Like all great things even Superheroes need upgrades, whether it’s their suit, their car or their spacestation. Oracle certainly has its share of advanced technology.  For example, Oracle acquired InQuira in 2011 after years of watching the company advance the science of Knowledge Management.  And it was some extremely super technology.  At that time, Forrester’s Kate Leggett wrote about it in ‘Standalone Knowledge Management Is Dead With Oracle's Announcement To Acquire InQuira’ saying ‘Knowledge, accessible via web self-service or agent UIs, is a critical customer service component for industries fielding repetitive questions about policies, procedures, products, and solutions.’  One short sentence that amounts to a very tall order.  Since the acquisition our KM scientists have been hard at work in their labs. Today Oracle announced its first major knowledge management release since its acquisition of InQuira: Oracle Knowledge 8.5. We’ve put a massively-upgraded supersuit on our KM solution because we still have bad guys to fight. And we are very proud to say that we went way beyond our original plans. So what, exactly, did we do in Oracle Knowledge 8.5? We did what any high-tech super-scientist would do. We made Oracle Knowledge smarter, stronger and faster. First, we gave Oracle Knowledge a stronger heart: Certified on Oracle technologies, including Oracle WebLogic Server, Oracle Business Intelligence, Oracle Exadata Database Machine and Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud. Huge scaling and performance improvements. Then we gave it a better reach: Improved iConnect functionality that delivers contextualized knowledge directly into CRM applications. Better content acquisition support across disparate sources. Enhanced Language Support including Natural Language search support for 16 Languages. Enhanced Keyword Search for 23 authoring languages, as well as enhanced out-of-the-box industry ontologies covering 14 languages. And finally we made Oracle Knowledge ridiculously smarter: Improved Natural Language Search and a new Contextual Answer Delivery that understands the true intent of each inquiry to deliver the best possible answers. AnswerFlow for Guided Navigation & Answer Delivery, a new application for guided troubleshooting and answer delivery. Knowledge Analytics standardized on Oracle’s Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition. Knowledge Analytics Dashboards optimized search and content creation through targeted, actionable insights. A new three-level language model "Global - Language - Locale" that provides an improved search experience for organizations with a global footprint. We believe that Oracle Knowledge 8.5 is the most sophisticated KM solution in existence today and we’ve worked very hard to help it fulfill the promise of KM: empowering customers and employees with deep insights wherever they need them. We hope you agree it’s a suit worth wearing. We are continuing to invest in Knowledge Management as it continues to be especially relevant today with the enterprise push for peer collaboration, crowd-sourced wisdom, agile innovation, social interaction channels, applied real-time analytics, and personalization. In fact, we believe that Knowledge Management is a critical part of the Customer Experience portfolio for success. From empowering employee’s, to empowering customers, to gaining the insights from interactions across all channels, businesses today cannot efficiently scale their efforts, strengthen their customer relationships or achieve their growth goals without a solid Knowledge Management foundation to build from. And like every good superhero saga, we’re not even close to being finished. Next we are taking Oracle Knowledge into the Cloud. Yes, we’re thinking what you’re thinking: ROCKET BOOTS! Stay tuned for the next adventure… By Nav Chakravarti, Vice-President, Product Management, CRM Knowledge and previously the CTO of InQuira, a knowledge management company acquired by Oracle in 2011

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  • Announcing Oracle Knowledge 8.5: Even Superheroes Need Upgrades

    - by Chris Warner
    It’s no secret that we like Iron Man here at Oracle. We've certainly got stuff in common: one of the world’s largest technology companies and one of the world’s strongest technology-driven superheroes. If you've seen the recent Iron Man movies, you might have even noticed some of our servers sitting in Tony Stark’s lab. Heck, our CEO made a cameo appearance in one of the movies. Yeah, we’re fans. Especially as Iron Man is a regular guy with some amazing technology – like us. But Like all great things even Superheroes need upgrades, whether it’s their suit, their car or their spacestation. Oracle certainly has its share of advanced technology.  For example, Oracle acquired InQuira in 2011 after years of watching the company advance the science of Knowledge Management.  And it was some extremely super technology.  At that time, Forrester’s Kate Leggett wrote about it in ‘Standalone Knowledge Management Is Dead With Oracle's Announcement To Acquire InQuira’ saying ‘Knowledge, accessible via web self-service or agent UIs, is a critical customer service component for industries fielding repetitive questions about policies, procedures, products, and solutions.’  One short sentence that amounts to a very tall order.  Since the acquisition our KM scientists have been hard at work in their labs. Today Oracle announced its first major knowledge management release since its acquisition of InQuira: Oracle Knowledge 8.5. We’ve put a massively-upgraded supersuit on our KM solution because we still have bad guys to fight. And we are very proud to say that we went way beyond our original plans. So what, exactly, did we do in Oracle Knowledge 8.5? We did what any high-tech super-scientist would do. We made Oracle Knowledge smarter, stronger and faster. First, we gave Oracle Knowledge a stronger heart: Certified on Oracle technologies, including Oracle WebLogic Server, Oracle Business Intelligence, Oracle Exadata Database Machine and Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud. Huge scaling and performance improvements. Then we gave it a better reach: Improved iConnect functionality that delivers contextualized knowledge directly into CRM applications. Better content acquisition support across disparate sources. Enhanced Language Support including Natural Language search support for 16 Languages. Enhanced Keyword Search for 23 authoring languages, as well as enhanced out-of-the-box industry ontologies covering 14 languages. And finally we made Oracle Knowledge ridiculously smarter: Improved Natural Language Search and a new Contextual Answer Delivery that understands the true intent of each inquiry to deliver the best possible answers. AnswerFlow for Guided Navigation & Answer Delivery, a new application for guided troubleshooting and answer delivery. Knowledge Analytics standardized on Oracle’s Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition. Knowledge Analytics Dashboards optimized search and content creation through targeted, actionable insights. A new three-level language model "Global - Language - Locale" that provides an improved search experience for organizations with a global footprint. We believe that Oracle Knowledge 8.5 is the most sophisticated KM solution in existence today and we’ve worked very hard to help it fulfill the promise of KM: empowering customers and employees with deep insights wherever they need them. We hope you agree it’s a suit worth wearing. We are continuing to invest in Knowledge Management as it continues to be especially relevant today with the enterprise push for peer collaboration, crowd-sourced wisdom, agile innovation, social interaction channels, applied real-time analytics, and personalization. In fact, we believe that Knowledge Management is a critical part of the Customer Experience portfolio for success. From empowering employee’s, to empowering customers, to gaining the insights from interactions across all channels, businesses today cannot efficiently scale their efforts, strengthen their customer relationships or achieve their growth goals without a solid Knowledge Management foundation to build from. And like every good superhero saga, we’re not even close to being finished. Next we are taking Oracle Knowledge into the Cloud. Yes, we’re thinking what you’re thinking: ROCKET BOOTS! Stay tuned for the next adventure… By Nav Chakravarti, Vice-President, Product Management, CRM Knowledge and previously the CTO of InQuira, a knowledge management company acquired by Oracle in 2011. 

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  • Enterprise Integration: Can Companies Afford It?

    - by Ralph Wheaton
    Each year, my company holds a global sales conference where employees and partners from around the world some together to collaborate, share knowledge and ideas and learn about future plans.  As a member of the professional services division, several of us had been asked to make a presentation, an elevator pitch in 3 minutes or less that relates to a success we have worked on or directly relates to our tag (that is, our primary technology focus).  Mine happens to be Enterprise Integration as it relates Business Intelligence.  I found it rather difficult to present that pitch in a short amount of time and had to pare it down.  At any rate, in just a little over 3 minutes, this is the presentation I submitted.  Here is a link to the full presentation video in WMV format.   Many companies today subscribe to a buy versus build mentality in an attempt to drive down costs and improve time to implementation. Sometimes this makes sense, especially as it relates to specialized software or software that performs a small number of tasks extremely well. However, if not carefully considered or planned out, this oftentimes leads to multiple disparate systems with silos of data or multiple versions of the same data. For instance, client data (contact information, addresses, phone numbers, opportunities, sales) stored in your CRM system may not play well with Accounts Receivables. Employee data may be stored across multiple systems such as HR, Time Entry and Payroll. Other data (such as member data) may not originate internally, but be provided by multiple outside sources in multiple formats. And to top it all off, some data may have to be manually entered into multiple systems to keep it all synchronized. When left to grow out of control like this, overall performance is lacking, stability is questionable and maintenance is frequent and costly. Worse yet, in many cases, this topology, this hodgepodge of data creates a reporting nightmare. Decision makers are forced to try to put together pieces of the puzzle attempting to find the information they need, wading through multiple systems to find what they think is the single version of the truth. More often than not, they find they are missing pieces, pieces that may be crucial to growing the business rather than closing the business. across applications. Master data owners are defined to establish single sources of data (such as the CRM system owns client data). Other systems subscribe to the master data and changes are replicated to subscribers as they are made. This can be one way (no changes are allowed on the subscriber systems) or bi-directional. But at all times, the master data owner is current or up to date. And all data, whether internal or external, use the same processes and methods to move data from one place to another, leveraging the same validations, lookups and transformations enterprise wide, eliminating inconsistencies and siloed data. Once implemented, an enterprise integration solution improves performance and stability by reducing the number of moving parts and eliminating inconsistent data. Overall maintenance costs are mitigated by reducing touch points or the number of places that require modification when a business rule is changed or another data element is added. Most importantly, however, now decision makers can easily extract and piece together the information they need to grow their business, improve customer satisfaction and so on. So, in implementing an enterprise integration solution, companies can position themselves for the future, allowing for easy transition to data marts, data warehousing and, ultimately, business intelligence. Along this path, companies can achieve growth in size, intelligence and complexity. Truly, the question is not can companies afford to implement an enterprise integration solution, but can they afford not to.   Ralph Wheaton Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist Microsoft Certified Professional Developer Microsoft VTS-P BizTalk, .Net

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  • Live Event: OTN Architect Day: Cloud Computing - Two weeks and counting

    - by Bob Rhubart
    In just two weeks architects and others will gather at the Oracle Conference Center in Redwood Shores, CA for the first Oracle Technology Network Architect Day event of 2013. This event focuses on Cloud Computing, and features sessions specifically focused on real-world examples of the implementation of cloud computing. When: Tuesday July 9, 2013              8:30am - 12:30pm Where: Oracle Conference Center              350 Oracle Pkwy              Redwood City, CA 94065 Register now. It's free! Here's the agenda: 8:30am - 9:00am Registration and Continental Breakfast 9:00am - 9:45am Keynote 21st Century IT | Dr. James Baty VP, Global Enterprise Architecture Program, Oracle Imagine a time long, long ago. A time when servers were certified and dedicated to specific applications, when anything posted on an enterprise web site was from restricted, approved channels, and when we tried to limit the growth of 'dirty' data and storage. Today, applications are services running in the muti-tenant hybrid cloud. Companies beg their customers to tweet them, friend them, and publicly rate their products. And constantly analyzing a deluge of Internet, social and sensor data is the key to creating the next super-successful product, or capturing an evil terrorist. The old IT architecture was planned, dedicated, stable, controlled, with separate and well-defined roles. The new architecture is shared, dynamic, continuous, XaaS, DevOps. This keynote session describes the challenges and opportunities that the new business / IT paradigms present to the IT architecture and architects. 9:45am - 10:30am Technical Session Oracle Cloud: A Case Study in Building a Cloud | Anbu Krishnaswami Enterprise Architect, Oracle Building a Cloud can be challenging thanks to the complex requirements unique to Cloud computing and the massive scale typically associated with Cloud. Cloud providers can take an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) approach and build a cloud on virtualized commodity hardware, or they can take the Platform as a Service (PaaS) path, a service-oriented approach based on pre-configured, integrated, engineered systems. This presentation uses the Oracle Cloud itself as a case study in the use of engineered systems, demonstrating how the technical design of engineered systems is leveraged for building PaaS and SaaS Cloud services and a Cloud management infrastructure. The presentation will also explore the principles, patterns, best practices, and architecture views provided in Oracle's Cloud reference architecture. 10:30 am -10:45 am Break 10:45am-11:30am Technical Session Database as a Service | Michael Timpanaro-Perrotta Director, Product Management, Oracle Database Cloud New applications are now commonly built in a Cloud model, where the database is consumed as a service, and many established business processes are beginning to migrate to database as a service (DBaaS). This adoption of DBaaS is made possible by the availability of new capabilities in the database that enable resource pooling, dynamic resource management, model-based provisioning, metered use, and effective quality-of-service controls. This session will examine the catalog of database services at a large commercial bank to understand how these capabilities are enabling DBaaS for a wide range of needs within the enterprise. 11:30 am - 12:00 pm Panel Q&A Dr. James Baty, Anbu Krishnaswami, and Michael Timpanaro-Perrotta respond to audience questions. Registration is free, but seating is limited, so register now.

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  • Live Event: OTN Architect Day: Cloud Computing - Two weeks and counting

    - by Bob Rhubart
    In just two weeks architects and others will gather at the Oracle Conference Center in Redwood Shores, CA for the first Oracle Technology Network Architect Day event of 2013. This event focuses on Cloud Computing, and features sessions specifically focused on real-world examples of the implementation of cloud computing. When: Tuesday July 9, 2013              8:30am - 12:30pm Where: Oracle Conference Center              350 Oracle Pkwy              Redwood City, CA 94065 Register now. It's free! Here's the agenda: 8:30am - 9:00am Registration and Continental Breakfast 9:00am - 9:45am Keynote 21st Century IT | Dr. James Baty VP, Global Enterprise Architecture Program, Oracle Imagine a time long, long ago. A time when servers were certified and dedicated to specific applications, when anything posted on an enterprise web site was from restricted, approved channels, and when we tried to limit the growth of 'dirty' data and storage. Today, applications are services running in the muti-tenant hybrid cloud. Companies beg their customers to tweet them, friend them, and publicly rate their products. And constantly analyzing a deluge of Internet, social and sensor data is the key to creating the next super-successful product, or capturing an evil terrorist. The old IT architecture was planned, dedicated, stable, controlled, with separate and well-defined roles. The new architecture is shared, dynamic, continuous, XaaS, DevOps. This keynote session describes the challenges and opportunities that the new business / IT paradigms present to the IT architecture and architects. 9:45am - 10:30am Technical Session Oracle Cloud: A Case Study in Building a Cloud | Anbu Krishnaswami Enterprise Architect, Oracle Building a Cloud can be challenging thanks to the complex requirements unique to Cloud computing and the massive scale typically associated with Cloud. Cloud providers can take an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) approach and build a cloud on virtualized commodity hardware, or they can take the Platform as a Service (PaaS) path, a service-oriented approach based on pre-configured, integrated, engineered systems. This presentation uses the Oracle Cloud itself as a case study in the use of engineered systems, demonstrating how the technical design of engineered systems is leveraged for building PaaS and SaaS Cloud services and a Cloud management infrastructure. The presentation will also explore the principles, patterns, best practices, and architecture views provided in Oracle's Cloud reference architecture. 10:30 am -10:45 am Break 10:45am-11:30am Technical Session Database as a Service | Michael Timpanaro-Perrotta Director, Product Management, Oracle Database Cloud New applications are now commonly built in a Cloud model, where the database is consumed as a service, and many established business processes are beginning to migrate to database as a service (DBaaS). This adoption of DBaaS is made possible by the availability of new capabilities in the database that enable resource pooling, dynamic resource management, model-based provisioning, metered use, and effective quality-of-service controls. This session will examine the catalog of database services at a large commercial bank to understand how these capabilities are enabling DBaaS for a wide range of needs within the enterprise. 11:30 am - 12:00 pm Panel Q&A Dr. James Baty, Anbu Krishnaswami, and Michael Timpanaro-Perrotta respond to audience questions. Registration is free, but seating is limited, so register now.

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  • Centralized Project Management Brings Needed Cost Controls to Growing Brazilian Firm

    - by Melissa Centurio Lopes
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Fast growth and a significant increase in business activities were creating project management challenges for CPqD, a developer of innovative information and communication technologies for large Brazilian organizations. To bring greater efficiency and centralized project management capabilities to its operations, CPqD chose Oracle’s Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management. “Oracle Primavera is an essential tool for our day-to-day business, and I notice the effort Oracle makes to constantly innovate and to add more functionality in an increasingly shorter period of time,” says Márcio Alexandre da Silva, IT department project coordinator, CPqD. He explains that before CPqD implemented the Oracle solution, the company did not have a corporate view of projects. “Our project monitoring was decentralized and restricted to each coordinator,” the project coordinator says. “With the Oracle solution, we achieved actual shared management, more control, and budgets that stay within projections.” Among the benefits that CPqD now enjoys are The ability to more effectively identify how employees are allocated, enabling managers to increase or reduce resources based on project scope, as well as secure the resources required for unexpected projects and demands A 75 percent reduction in the time it takes to collect project data and indicators—automated and centralized collection means project coordinators no longer have to manually compile information that was spread among various systems Read the complete CPqD company snapshot Read more in the October Edition of the quarterly Information InDepth EPPM Newsletter Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-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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  • JCP Awards 10 Year Retrospective

    - by Heather VanCura
    As we celebrate 10 years of JCP Program Award recognition in 2012,  take a look back in the Retrospective article covering the history of the JCP awards.  Most recently, the JCP awards were  celebrated at JavaOne Latin America in Brazil, where SouJava was presented the JCP Member of the Year Award for 2012 (won jointly with the London Java Community) for their contributions and launch of the Global Adopt-a-JSR Program. This is also a good time to honor the JCP Award Nominees and Winners who have been designated as Star Spec Leads.  Spec Leads are key to the Java Community Process (JCP) program. Without them, none of the Java Specification Requests (JSRs) would have begun, much less completed and become implemented in shipping products.  Nominations for 2012 Start Spec Leads are now open until 31 December. The Star Spec Lead program recognizes Spec Leads who have repeatedly proven their merit by producing high quality specifications, establishing best practices, and mentoring others. The point of such honor is to endorse the good work that they do, showcase their methods for other Spec Leads to emulate, and motivate other JCP program members and participants to get involved in the JCP program. Ed Burns – A Star Spec Lead for 2009, Ed first got involved with the JCP program when he became co-Spec Lead of JSR 127, JavaServer Faces (JSF), a role he has continued through JSF 1.2 and now JSF 2.0, which is JSR 314. Linda DeMichiel – Linda thus involved in the JCP program from its very early days. She has been the Spec Lead on at least three JSRs and an EC member for another three. She holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University. Gavin King – Nominated as a JCP Outstanding Spec Lead for 2010, for his work with JSR 299. His endorsement said, “He was not only able to work through disputes and objections to the evolving programming model, but he resolved them into solutions that were more technically sound, and which gained support of its pundits.” Mike Milikich –  Nominated for his work on Java Micro Edition (ME) standards, implementations, tools, and Technology Compatibility Kits (TCKs), Mike was a 2009 Star Spec Lead for JSR 271, Mobile Information Device Profile 3. David Nuescheler – Serving as the CTO for Day Software, acquired by Adobe Systems, David has been a key player in the growth of the company’s global content management solution. In 2002, he became Spec Lead for JSR 170, Content Repository for Java Technology API, continuing for the subsequent version, JSR 283. Bill Shannon – A well-respected name in the Java community, Bill came to Oracle from Sun as a Distinguished Engineer and is still performing at full speed as Spec Lead for JSR 342, Java EE 7,  as an alternate EC member, and hands-on problem solver for the Java community as a whole. Jim Van Peursem – Jim holds a PhD in Computer Engineering. He was part of the Motorola team that worked with Sun labs on the Spotless VM that became the KVM. From within Motorola, Jim has been responsible for many aspects of Java technology deployment, from an independent Connected Limited Device Configuration (CLDC) and Mobile Information Device Profile (MIDP) implementations, to handset development, to working with the industry in defining many related standards. Participation in the JCP Program goes well beyond technical proficiency. The JCP Awards Program is an attempt to say “Thank You” to all of the JCP members, Expert Group Members, Spec Leads, and EC members who give their time to contribute to the evolution of Java technology.

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  • ArchBeat Link-o-Rama Top 10 - September 16-22, 2012

    - by Bob Rhubart
    The Top 10 most popular items shared on the OTN ArchBeat Facebook Page for the week of September 16-22, 2012. The Real Architects of LA: OTN Architect Day in Los Angeles - Oct 25No gossip. No drama. No hair pulling. Just a full day of technical sessions and peer interaction focused on using Oracle technologies in today's cloud and SOA architectures. The event is free, but seating is limited, so register now. Thursday October 25, 2012. 8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. Sofitel Los Angeles, 8555 Beverly Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90048. OIM-OAM-OAAM integration using TAP – Request Flow you must understand!! | Atul KumarAtul Kumar's post addresses "key points and request flow that you must understand" when integrating three Oracle Identity Management product Oracle Identity Management, Oracle Access Management, and Oracle Adaptive Access Manager. Cloud, automation drive new growth in SOA governance market | ZDNet "SOA governance tools and processes learned over the past decade are now underpinning cloud projects as they scale across enterprises," reports Joe McKendrick. But there remains a lack of understanding about SOA Governance. DevOps Basics: Track Down High CPU Thread with ps, top and the new JDK7 jcmd Tool | Frank Munz "The approach is very generic and works for WebLogic, Glassfish or any other Java application," say Frank Munz. "UNIX commands in the example are run on CentOS, so they will work without changes for Oracle Enterprise Linux or RedHat. Creating the thread dump at the end of the video is done with the jcmd tool from JDK7." Frank has captured the process in the posted video. Oracle OpenWorld 2012 Hands-on Lab: "Leading Your Everyday Application Integration Projects with Enterprise SOA" Yet another session to squeeze into your already-jammed Oracle OpenWorld schedule. This hands-on lab focuses on how "Oracle Enterprise Repository, Oracle Application Integration Architecture (AIA) Foundation Pack, and Oracle SOA Suite work together to help you drive your enterprisewide integration projects." Loving VirtualBox 4.2… | The ORACLE-BASE Blog Is it wrong for a man to love a technology? Oracle ACE Director Tim Hall has several very good reasons for his feelings… ADF Create and CreateInsert Operations for ADF Table | Andrejus Baranovskis Oracle ACE Director Andrejus Baranovskis answers the question, "What operation is best to use to insert a new row into an ADF table, Create or CreateInsert?" Fault Handling Slides and Q&A | Ronald van Luttikhuizen Oracle ACE Director Ronald van Luttikhuizen shares the slides and a Q&A transcript from a presentation he and fellow ACE Director Guido Schmutz gave at the recent Oracle OpenWorld and JavaOne preview event organized by AMIS Technology. Why IT is a profession in 'flux' | ZDNet I usuallly don't post two items from the same person in one day, but this post from ZDNet blogger Joe McKendrick deals with some critical issues affecting those in IT. As McKendrick puts it: "IT professionals are under considerable pressure to deliver more value to the business, versus being good at coding and testing and deploying and integrating." Running RichFaces on WebLogic 12c | Markus Eisele "With all the JMS magic and the different provider checks in the showcase this has become some kind of a challenge to simply build and deploy it," says Oracle ACE Director Markus Eisele. His detailed post will help you to meet that challenge. Thought for the Day "Less is more." — Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (March 27, 1886 – August 17, 1969) Source: BrainyQuote.com

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  • From DBA to Data Analyst

    - by Denise McInerney
    Cross posted from the PASS Blog There is a lot changing in the data professional’s world these days. More data is being produced and stored. More enterprises are trying to use that data to improve their products and services and understand their customers better. More data platforms and tools seem to be crowding the market. For a traditional DBA this can be a confusing and perhaps unsettling time. It’s also a time that offers great opportunity for career growth. I speak from personal experience. We sometimes refer to the “accidental DBA”, the person who finds herself suddenly responsible for managing the database because she has some other technical skills. While it was not accidental, six months ago I was unexpectedly offered a chance to transition out of my DBA role and become a data analyst. I have since come to view this offer as a gift, though at the time I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. Throughout my DBA career I’ve gotten support from my PASS friends and colleagues and they were the first ones I turned to for counsel about this new situation. Everyone was encouraging and I received two pieces of valuable advice: first, leverage what I already know about data and second, work to understand the business’ needs. Bringing the power of data to bear to solve business problems is really the heart of the job. The challenge is figuring out how to do that. PASS had been the source of much of my technical training as a DBA, so I naturally started there to begin my Business Intelligence education. Once again the Virtual Chapter webinars, local chapter meetings and SQL Saturdays have been invaluable. I work in a large company where we are fortunate to have some very talented data scientists and analysts. These colleagues have been generous with their time and advice. I also took a statistics class through Coursera where I got a refresher in statistics and an introduction to the R programming language. And that’s not the end of the free resources available to someone wanting to acquire new skills. There are many knowledgeable Business Intelligence and Analytics professionals who teach through their blogs. Every day I can learn something new from one of these experts. Sometimes we plan our next career move and sometimes it just happens. Either way a database professional who follows industry developments and acquires new skills will be better prepared when change comes. Take the opportunity to learn something about the changing data landscape and attend a Business Intelligence, Business Analytics or Big Data Virtual Chapter meeting. And if you are moving into this new world of data consider attending the PASS Business Analytics Conference in April where you can meet and learn from those who are already on that road. It’s been said that “the only thing constant is change.” That’s never been more true for the data professional than it is today. But if you are someone who loves data and grasps its potential you are in the right place at the right time.

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  • Working for free?

    - by Jonny
    I came across this article Work for Free that got me thinking. The goal of every employer is to gain more value from workers than the firm pays out in wages; otherwise, there is no growth, no advance, and no advantage for the employer. Conversely, the goal of every employee should be to contribute more to the firm than he or she receives in wages, and thereby provide a solid rationale for receiving raises and advancement in the firm. I don't need to tell you that the refusenik didn't last long in this job. In contrast, here is a story from last week. My phone rang. It was the employment division of a major university. The man on the phone was inquiring about the performance of a person who did some site work on Mises.org last year. I was able to tell him about a remarkable young man who swung into action during a crisis, and how he worked three 19-hour days, three days in a row, how he learned new software with diligence, how he kept his cool, how he navigated his way with grace and expertise amidst some 80 different third-party plug-ins and databases, how he saw his way around the inevitable problems, how he assumed responsibility for the results, and much more. What I didn't tell the interviewer was that this person did all this without asking for any payment. Did that fact influence my report on his performance? I'm not entirely sure, but the interviewer probably sensed in my voice my sense of awe toward what this person had done for the Mises Institute. The interviewer told me that he had written down 15 different questions to ask me but that I had answered them all already in the course of my monologue, and that he was thrilled to hear all these specifics. The person was offered the job. He had done a very wise thing; he had earned a devotee for life. The harder the economic times, the more employers need to know what they are getting when they hire someone. The job applications pour in by the buckets, all padded with degrees and made to look as impressive as possible. It's all just paper. What matters today is what a person can do for a firm. The resume becomes pro forma but not decisive under these conditions. But for a former boss or manager to rave about you to a potential employer? That's worth everything. What do you think? Has anyone here worked for free? If so, has it benefited you in any way? Why should(nt) you work for free (presuming you have the money from other means to keep you going)? Can you share your experience? Me, I am taking a year out of college and haven't gotten a degree yet so that's probably why most of my job applications are getting ignored. So im thinking about working for free for the experience?

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  • How to Waste Your Marketing Budget

    - by Mike Stiles
    Philosophers have long said if you find out where a man’s money is, you’ll know where his heart is. Find out where money in a marketing budget is allocated, and you’ll know how adaptive and ready that company is for the near future. Marketing spends are an investment. Not unlike buying stock, the money is placed in areas the marketer feels will yield the highest return. Good stock pickers know the lay of the land, the sectors, the companies, and trends. Likewise, good marketers should know the media available to them, their audience, what they like & want, what they want their marketing to achieve…and trends. So what are they doing? And how are they doing? A recent eTail report shows nearly half of retailers planned on focusing on SEO, SEM, and site research technologies in the coming months. On the surface, that’s smart. You want people to find you. And you’re willing to let the SEO tail wag the dog and dictate the quality (or lack thereof) of your content such as blogs to make that happen. So search is prioritized well ahead of social, multi-channel initiatives, email, even mobile - despite the undisputed explosive growth and adoption of it by the public. 13% of retailers plan to focus on online video in the next 3 months. 29% said they’d look at it in 6 months. Buying SEO trickery is easy. Attracting and holding an audience with wanted, relevant content…that’s the hard part. So marketers continue to kick the content can down the road. Pretty risky since content can draw and bind customers to you. Asked to look a year ahead, retailers started thinking about CRM systems, customer segmentation, and loyalty, (again well ahead of online video, social and site personalization). What these investors are missing is social is spreading across every function of the enterprise and will be a part of CRM, personalization, loyalty programs, etc. They’re using social for engagement but not for PR, customer service, and sales. Mistake. Allocations are being made seemingly blind to the trends. Even more peculiar are the results of an analysis Mary Meeker of Kleiner Perkins made. She looked at how much time people spend with media types and how marketers are investing in those media. 26% of media consumption is online, marketers spend 22% of their ad budgets there. 10% of media time is spent with mobile, but marketers are spending 1% of their ad budgets there. 7% of media time is spent with print, but (get this) marketers spend 25% of their ad budgets there. It’s like being on Superman’s Bizarro World. Mary adds that of the online spending, most goes to search while spends on content, even ad content, stayed flat. Stock pickers know to buy low and sell high. It means peering with info in hand into the likely future of a stock and making the investment in it before it peaks. Either marketers aren’t believing the data and trends they’re seeing, or they can’t convince higher-ups to acknowledge change and adjust their portfolios accordingly. Follow @mikestilesImage via stock.xchng

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  • New R Interface to Oracle Data Mining Available for Download

    - by charlie.berger
      The R Interface to Oracle Data Mining ( R-ODM) allows R users to access the power of Oracle Data Mining's in-database functions using the familiar R syntax. R-ODM provides a powerful environment for prototyping data analysis and data mining methodologies. R-ODM is especially useful for: Quick prototyping of vertical or domain-based applications where the Oracle Database supports the application Scripting of "production" data mining methodologies Customizing graphics of ODM data mining results (examples: classification, regression, anomaly detection) The R-ODM interface allows R users to mine data using Oracle Data Mining from the R programming environment. It consists of a set of function wrappers written in source R language that pass data and parameters from the R environment to the Oracle RDBMS enterprise edition as standard user PL/SQL queries via an ODBC interface. The R-ODM interface code is a thin layer of logic and SQL that calls through an ODBC interface. R-ODM does not use or expose any Oracle product code as it is completely an external interface and not part of any Oracle product. R-ODM is similar to the example scripts (e.g., the PL/SQL demo code) that illustrates the use of Oracle Data Mining, for example, how to create Data Mining models, pass arguments, retrieve results etc. R-ODM is packaged as a standard R source package and is distributed freely as part of the R environment's Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN). For information about the R environment, R packages and CRAN, see www.r-project.org. R-ODM is particularly intended for data analysts and statisticians familiar with R but not necessarily familiar with the Oracle database environment or PL/SQL. It is a convenient environment to rapidly experiment and prototype Data Mining models and applications. Data Mining models prototyped in the R environment can easily be deployed in their final form in the database environment, just like any other standard Oracle Data Mining model. What is R? R is a system for statistical computation and graphics. It consists of a language plus a run-time environment with graphics, a debugger, access to certain system functions, and the ability to run programs stored in script files. The design of R has been heavily influenced by two existing languages: Becker, Chambers & Wilks' S and Sussman's Scheme. Whereas the resulting language is very similar in appearance to S, the underlying implementation and semantics are derived from Scheme. R was initially written by Ross Ihaka and Robert Gentleman at the Department of Statistics of the University of Auckland in Auckland, New Zealand. Since mid-1997 there has been a core group (the "R Core Team") who can modify the R source code archive. Besides this core group many R users have contributed application code as represented in the near 1,500 publicly-available packages in the CRAN archive (which has shown exponential growth since 2001; R News Volume 8/2, October 2008). Today the R community is a vibrant and growing group of dozens of thousands of users worldwide. It is free software distributed under a GNU-style copyleft, and an official part of the GNU project ("GNU S"). Resources: R website / CRAN R-ODM

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  • Microsoft Build 2012 Day 1 Keynote Summary

    - by Tim Murphy
    So I have finally dried the tears after watching the Keynote for Build 2012.  This wasn’t because it was an emotional presentation, but because for the second year I missed the goodies.  Each on site attendee got a Surface RT, a Lumia 920 and a voucher for 100GB of SkyDrive storage. The event was opened with the announcement that in the three days since the launch of Windows 8 over 4 million upgrades have been sold.  I don’t care who you are that is an impressive stat.  Ballmer then spent a fair amount of time remaking the case for the Windows and Windows Phone platforms similar to what we have heard over the last to launch events. There were some cool, but non-essential demos.  The one that was the most fun was the Perceptive Pixel 82” slate device.  At first glance I wondered why I would ever want such a device, but then Ballmer explained it’s possible use for schools and boardrooms.  The actually made sense. Then things got strange.  Steve started explaining features that developers could leverage.  Usually this type of information is left to the product leads.  He focused on the integration with the Charms features such as Search and Share. Steve “Guggs” Guggenheim showed off an app that would appeal to my kids from Disney called “Agent P” which is base on Phineas and Ferb.  Then he got to the meat of the presentation.  We found out that you could add a tile that can be used to sell ad space.  In the same vein we also found out that you could use Microsoft’s, Paypal’s or any commerce engine of your own creation or choosing. For those who are interested in sports and especially developing sports apps you would have found the small presentation from Michael Bayle of ESPN.  He introduced the ESPN app which has tons of features.  For the developers in the crowd he also mentioned that ESPN has an API available at developer.espn.com. During the launch events we were told apps were coming.  In this presentation we were actually shown a scrolling list of logos and told about a couple of them.  Ballmer mentioned specifically Twitter, SAP and DropBox.  These are impressive names that were just a couple of the list impressive names. Steve Ballmer addressed the question of why you should develop for the Windows 8 platform.  He feels that Microsoft has the best commercial terms for developers, a better way to build apps than other platforms and a variety of form factors.  His key point though was the available volume of customers given the current Windows install base and assuming even a flat growth of the platform.  This he backed with a promise that Microsoft is going to do better at marketing and you won’t be able to avoid the ads that they are bringing out. The last section of the key note was present by Kevin Gallo from the Windows Phone team.  This was the real reason I tuned into the webcast.  He impressed upon those watching that the strength of developing for the Microsoft platform is the common programming model that now exist.  While there are difference between form factor implementations you can leverage code across them. He claimed that 90% of developer requests for Windows Phone 8 had been implemented.  These include: More controls with better performance Better live tiles including lock screen integration Speech support in custom apps Easier submission to the market place App camera integration VOIP and chat support Bluetooth and NFC support Native C++ development Direct 3D development   The quote from Kevin that stood out for me was that “Take your Dramamine and buckle your seatbelt type of games are coming to Windows Phone 8”.  He back this up by displaying a list of game development frameworks and then having Unity come out and do a demo. Ok, almost done … The last two things of note for me were the announcement that the SDK is immediately available at dev.windowsphone.com and that they were reducing the cost of an individual developer account to $8 for the next 8 days. Let the development commence. del.icio.us Tags: Build 2012,Windows 8,Windows Phone 8,Windows Phone

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  • Growing Talent

    The subtitle of Daniel Coyles intriguing book The Talent Code is Greatness Isnt Born. Its Grown. Heres How. The Talent Code proceeds to layout a theory of how expertise can be cultivated through specific practices that encourage the growth of myelin in the brain. Myelin is a material that is produced and wraps around heavily used circuits in the brain, making them more efficient. Coyle uses an analogy that geeks will appreciate. When a circuit in the brain is used a lot (i.e. a specific action is repeated), the myelin insulates that circuit, increasing its bandwidth from telephone over copper to high speed broadband. This leads to the funny phenomenon of effortless expertise. Although highly skilled, the best players make it look easy. Coyle provides some biological backing for the long held theory that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to achieve mastery over a given subject. 10,000 hours or 10 years, as in, Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years and others. However, it is not just that more hours equals more mastery. The other factors that Coyle identifies includes deep practice, practice which crucially involves drills that are challenging without being impossible. Another way to put it is that every day you spend doing only tasks you find monotonous and automatic, you are literally stagnating your brains development! Perhaps Coyles subtitle, needs one more phrase, Greatness Isnt Born. Its Grown. Heres How. And oh yeah, its not easy. Challenging yourself, continuing to persist in the face of repeated failures, practicing every day is not easy. As consultants, we sell our expertise, so it makes sense that we plan projects so that people can play to their strengths. At the same time, an important part of our culture is constant improvement, challenging yourself to be better. And the balancing contest ensues. I just finished working on a proof of concept (POC) we did for a project we are bidding on. Completely time boxed, so our team naturally split responsibilities amongst ourselves according to who was better at what. I must have been pretty bad at the other components, as I found myself working on the user interface, not my usual strength. The POC had a website frontend, and one thing I do know is HTML. After starting out in pure ASP.NET WebForms, I got frustrated as time was ticking, I knew what I wanted in HTML, but I couldnt coax the right output out of the ASP.NET controls. I needed two or three elements on the screen that were identical in layout, with different content. With a backup plan in  of writing the HTML into the response by hand, I decided to challenge myself a bit and see what I could do in an hour or two using the Microsoft submitted jQuery micro-templating JavaScript library. This risk paid off. I was able to quickly get the user interface up and running, responsive to the JSON data we were working with. I felt energized by the double win of getting the POC ready and learning something new. Opportunities  specifically like this POC dont come around often, but the takeaway is that while it wont be easy, there are ways to generate your own opportunities to grow towards greatness.Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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  • Managing Operational Risk of Financial Services Processes – part 1/ 2

    - by Sanjeevio
    Financial institutions view compliance as a regulatory burden that incurs a high initial capital outlay and recurring costs. By its very nature regulation takes a prescriptive, common-for-all, approach to managing financial and non-financial risk. Needless to say, no longer does mere compliance with regulation will lead to sustainable differentiation.  Genuine competitive advantage will stem from being able to cope with innovation demands of the present economic environment while meeting compliance goals with regulatory mandates in a faster and cost-efficient manner. Let’s first take a look at the key factors that are limiting the pursuit of the above goal. Regulatory requirements are growing, driven in-part by revisions to existing mandates in line with cross-border, pan-geographic, nature of financial value chains today and more so by frequent systemic failures that have destabilized the financial markets and the global economy over the last decade.  In addition to the increase in regulation, financial institutions are faced with pressures of regulatory overlap and regulatory conflict. Regulatory overlap arises primarily from two things: firstly, due to the blurring of boundaries between lines-of-businesses with complex organizational structures and secondly, due to varying requirements of jurisdictional directives across geographic boundaries e.g. a securities firm with operations in US and EU would be subject different requirements of “Know-Your-Customer” (KYC) as per the PATRIOT ACT in US and MiFiD in EU. Another consequence and concomitance of regulatory change is regulatory conflict, which again, arises primarily from two things: firstly, due to diametrically opposite priorities of line-of-business and secondly, due to tension that regulatory requirements create between shareholders interests of tighter due-diligence and customer concerns of privacy. For instance, Customer Due Diligence (CDD) as per KYC requires eliciting detailed information from customers to prevent illegal activities such as money-laundering, terrorist financing or identity theft. While new customers are still more likely to comply with such stringent background checks at time of account opening, existing customers baulk at such practices as a breach of trust and privacy. As mentioned earlier regulatory compliance addresses both financial and non-financial risks. Operational risk is a non-financial risk that stems from business execution and spans people, processes, systems and information. Operational risk arising from financial processes in particular transcends other sources of such risk. Let’s look at the factors underpinning the operational risk of financial processes. The rapid pace of innovation and geographic expansion of financial institutions has resulted in proliferation and ad-hoc evolution of back-office, mid-office and front-office processes. This has had two serious implications on increasing the operational risk of financial processes: ·         Inconsistency of processes across lines-of-business, customer channels and product/service offerings. This makes it harder for the risk function to enforce a standardized risk methodology and in turn breaches harder to detect. ·         The proliferation of processes coupled with increasingly frequent change-cycles has resulted in accidental breaches and increased vulnerability to regulatory inadequacies. In summary, regulatory growth (including overlap and conflict) coupled with process proliferation and inconsistency is driving process compliance complexity In my next post I will address the implications of this process complexity on financial institutions and outline the role of BPM in lowering specific aspects of operational risk of financial processes.

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  • PASS: International Travels

    - by Bill Graziano
    Nihao!  One of the largest changes PASS is going through is the the expansion outside the US and Canada.  We’ve had international chapters and events in Europe since the early 2000’s.  But nothing on the scale we’re seeing now.  Since January 1st there have been 18 SQL Saturday events outside North America and 19 events in North America.  We hope to have three international SQLRally events outside the US in FY13 (budget willing).  I don’t know the exact percentage of chapters outside the US but it’s got be 50% or higher. We recently started an effort to remake the Board to better reflect the growing global face of PASS.  This involves assigning some Board seats to geographic regions.  You can ask questions about this in our feedback forum, participate in a Twitter chat or ask questions directly of Board members.  You can email me at if you’d like to ask a question directly.  We’re doing this very slowly and deliberately in hopes that a long communication cycle gives us a chance to address all the issues that our members will raise. After the Summit we passed a budget exception allocating an extra $20,000 for Board members to travel to local events.  I think it’s important for Board members to visit new areas and talk to more of our members.  I sent out an email asking where people had attended events outside their home city.  Here’s the list I got back: Albuquerque, Amsterdam, Boston, Brisbane, Chicago, Colorado Springs, Columbus, Dallas, Houston, Jacksonville, Las Vegas, London, Louisville, Minneapolis, New York City, Orange County, Orlando, Pensacola, Perth, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Redmond, Seattle, Silicon Valley, Sydney, Tampa Bay, Vancouver, Washington DC and Wellington.  (Disclaimer: Some of this travel was paid for by employers or Board members themselves.  Some of this travel may have been completed before the Summit.  That’s still one heck of a list!) The last SQL Saturday event this fiscal year is SQL Saturday Shanghai.  And that’s one I’m attending.  This is our first event in China and is being put on in cooperation with the local Microsoft office.  Hopefully this event will be the start of a growing community in China that includes chapters, SQL Saturdays and maybe a SQLRally or two in the future.  I’m excited to speak with people that are just starting down this path and watching this community grow. I encourage you to visit the PASS Global Growth site and read through the material there.  This is the biggest change we’ve made to our governance since I’ve been on the Board.  You need to understand how it affects you and how it affects the organization. And wish me luck on the 15 hour flight to Shanghai on Friday afternoon.  Rob Farley flies from Australia to the US for PASS events multiple times per year and I don’t know how he does it so often.  I think one of these is going to wipe me out.  (And Nihao (knee-how) is Chinese for Hello.)

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