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• More Stuff less Fluff

  - by brendonpage

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/brendonpage/archive/2013/11/08/more-stuff-less-fluff.aspxYAGNI – "You Aren't Going To Need It". This is an acronym commonly used in software development to remind developers to only write what they need. This acronym exists because software developers have gotten into the habit of writing everything they need to solve a problem and then everything they think they're going to possibly need in the future. Since we can't predict the future this results in a large portion of the code that we write never being used. That extra code causes unnecessary complexity, which makes it harder to understand and harder to modify when we inevitably have to write something that we didn't think of. I've known about YAGNI for some time now but I never really got it. The words made sense and the idea was clear but the concept never sank in. I was one of those devs who'd happily write a ton of code in the anticipation of future needs. In my mind this was an essential part of writing high quality code. I didn't realise that in doing so I was actually writing low quality code. If you are anything like me you are probably thinking "Lies and propaganda! High quality code needs to be future proof." I agree! But what makes code future proof? If we could see into the future the answer would be simple, code that allows for or meets all future requirements. Since we can't see the future the best we can do is write code that can easily adapt to future requirements, this means writing flexible code. Flexible code is: Fast to understand. Fast to add to. Fast to modify. To be flexible code has to be simple, this means only making it as complex as it needs to be to meet those 3 criteria. That is high quality code. YAGNI! The art is in deciding where to place the seams (abstractions) that will give you flexibility without making decisions about future functionality. Robert C Martin explains it very nicely, he says a good architecture allows you to defer decisions because if you can defer a decision then you have the flexibility to change it. I've recently had a YAGNI experience which brought this all into perspective. I was working on a new project which had multiple clients that connect to a server hosted in the cloud. I was tasked with adding a feature to the desktop client that would allow users to capture items that would then be saved to the cloud. My immediate thought was "Hey we have multiple clients so I should build a web service for these items, that way we can access them from other clients", so I went to work and this is what I created.  I stood back and gazed upon what I'd created with a warm fuzzy feeling. It was beautiful! Then the time came for the team to use the design I'd created for another feature with a new entity. Let's just say that they didn't get the same warm fuzzy feeling that I did when they looked at the design. After much discussion they eventually got it through to me that I'd bloated the design based on an assumption of future functionality. After much more discussion we cut the design down to the following. This design gives us future flexibility with no extra work, it is as complex as it needs to be. It has been a couple of months since this incident and we still haven't needed to access either of the entities from other clients. Using the simpler design allowed us to do more stuff with less stuff!

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• Deliberate Practice

  - by Jeff Foster

  It’s easy to assume, as software engineers, that there is little need to “practice” writing code. After all, we write code all day long! Just by writing a little each day, we’re constantly learning and getting better, right? Unfortunately, that’s just not true. Of course, developers do improve with experience. Each time we encounter a problem we’re more likely to avoid it next time. If we’re in a team that deploys software early and often, we hone and improve the deployment process each time we practice it. However, not all practice makes perfect. To develop true expertise requires a particular type of practice, deliberate practice, the only goal of which is to make us better programmers. Everyday software development has other constraints and goals, not least the pressure to deliver. We rarely get the chance in the course of a “sprint” to experiment with potential solutions that are outside our current comfort zone. However, if we believe that software is a craft then it’s our duty to strive continuously to raise the standard of software development. This requires specific and sustained efforts to get better at something we currently can’t do well (from Harvard Business Review July/August 2007). One interesting way to introduce deliberate practice, in a sustainable way, is the code kata. The term kata derives from martial arts and refers to a set of movements practiced either solo or in pairs. One of the better-known examples is the Bowling Game kata by Bob Martin, the goal of which is simply to write some code to do the scoring for 10-pin bowling. It sounds too easy, right? What could we possibly learn from such a simple example? Trust me, though, that it’s not as simple as five minutes of typing and a solution. Of course, we can reach a solution in a short time, but the important thing about code katas is that we explore each technique fully and in a controlled way. We tackle the same problem multiple times, using different techniques and making different decisions, understanding the ramifications of each one, and exploring edge cases. The short feedback loop optimizes opportunities to learn. Another good example is Conway’s Game of Life. It’s a simple problem to solve, but try solving it in a functional style. If you’re used to mutability, solving the problem without mutating state will push you outside of your comfort zone. Similarly, if you try to solve it with the focus of “tell-don’t-ask“, how will the responsibilities of each object change? As software engineers, we don’t get enough opportunities to explore new ideas. In the middle of a development cycle, we can’t suddenly start experimenting on the team’s code base. Code katas offer an opportunity to explore new techniques in a safe environment. If you’re still skeptical, my challenge to you is simply to try it out. Convince a willing colleague to pair with you and work through a kata or two. It only takes an hour and I’m willing to bet you learn a few new things each time. The next step is to make it a sustainable team practice. Start with an hour every Friday afternoon (after all who wants to commit code to production just before they leave for the weekend?) for month and see how that works out. Finally, consider signing up for the Global Day of Code Retreat. It’s like a daylong code kata, it’s on December 8th and there’s probably an event in your area!

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• Handling WCF Service Paths in Silverlight 4 – Relative Path Support

  - by dwahlin

  If you’re building Silverlight applications that consume data then you’re probably making calls to Web Services. We’ve been successfully using WCF along with Silverlight for several client Line of Business (LOB) applications and passing a lot of data back and forth. Due to the pain involved with updating the ServiceReferences.ClientConfig file generated by a Silverlight service proxy (see Tim Heuer’s post on that subject to see different ways to deal with it) we’ve been using our own technique to figure out the service URL. Going that route makes it a peace of cake to switch between development, staging and production environments. To start, we have a ServiceProxyBase class that handles identifying the URL to use based on the XAP file’s location (this assumes that the service is in the same Web project that serves up the XAP file). The GetServiceUrlBase() method handles this work: public class ServiceProxyBase { public ServiceProxyBase() { if (!IsDesignTime) { ServiceUrlBase = GetServiceUrlBase(); } } public string ServiceUrlBase { get; set; } public static bool IsDesignTime { get { return (Application.Current == null) || (Application.Current.GetType() == typeof (Application)); } } public static string GetServiceUrlBase() { if (!IsDesignTime) { string url = Application.Current.Host.Source.OriginalString; return url.Substring(0, url.IndexOf("/ClientBin", StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase)); } return null; } } Silverlight 4 now supports relative paths to services which greatly simplifies things.  We changed the code above to the following: public class ServiceProxyBase { private const string ServiceUrlPath = "../Services/JobPlanService.svc"; public ServiceProxyBase() { if (!IsDesignTime) { ServiceUrl = ServiceUrlPath; } } public string ServiceUrl { get; set; } public static bool IsDesignTime { get { return (Application.Current == null) || (Application.Current.GetType() == typeof (Application)); } } public static string GetServiceUrl() { if (!IsDesignTime) { return ServiceUrlPath; } return null; } } Our ServiceProxy class derives from ServiceProxyBase and handles creating the ABC’s (Address, Binding, Contract) needed for a WCF service call. Looking through the code (mainly the constructor) you’ll notice that the service URI is created by supplying the base path to the XAP file along with the relative path defined in ServiceProxyBase:   public class ServiceProxy : ServiceProxyBase, IServiceProxy { private const string CompletedEventargs = "CompletedEventArgs"; private const string Completed = "Completed"; private const string Async = "Async"; private readonly CustomBinding _Binding; private readonly EndpointAddress _EndPointAddress; private readonly Uri _ServiceUri; private readonly Type _ProxyType = typeof(JobPlanServiceClient); public ServiceProxy() { _ServiceUri = new Uri(Application.Current.Host.Source, ServiceUrl); var elements = new BindingElementCollection { new BinaryMessageEncodingBindingElement(), new HttpTransportBindingElement { MaxBufferSize = 2147483647, MaxReceivedMessageSize = 2147483647 } }; // order of entries in collection is significant: dumb _Binding = new CustomBinding(elements); _EndPointAddress = new EndpointAddress(_ServiceUri); } #region IServiceProxy Members /// <summary> /// Used to call a WCF service operation. /// </summary> /// <typeparam name="T">The type of EventArgs that will be returned by the service operation.</typeparam> /// <param name="callback">The method to call once the WCF call returns (the callback).</param> /// <param name="parameters">Any parameters that the service operation expects.</param> public void CallService<T>(EventHandler<T> callback, params object[] parameters) where T : EventArgs { try { var proxy = new JobPlanServiceClient(_Binding, _EndPointAddress); string action = typeof (T).Name.Replace(CompletedEventargs, String.Empty); _ProxyType.GetEvent(action + Completed).AddEventHandler(proxy, callback); _ProxyType.InvokeMember(action + Async, BindingFlags.InvokeMethod, null, proxy, parameters); } catch (Exception exp) { MessageBox.Show("Unable to use ServiceProxy.CallService to retrieve data: " + exp.Message); } } #endregion } The relative path support for calling services in Silverlight 4 definitely simplifies code and is yet another good reason to move from Silverlight 3 to Silverlight 4.   For more information about onsite, online and video training, mentoring and consulting solutions for .NET, SharePoint or Silverlight please visit http://www.thewahlingroup.com.

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• SQL Server Configuration timeouts - and a workaround [SSIS]

  - by jamiet

  Ever since I started writing SSIS packages back in 2004 I have opted to store configurations in .dtsConfig (.i.e. XML) files rather than in a SQL Server table (aka SQL Server Configurations) however recently I inherited some packages that used SQL Server Configurations and thus had to immerse myself in their murky little world. To all the people that have ever gone onto the SSIS forum and asked questions about ambiguous behaviour of SQL Server Configurations I now say this... I feel your pain! The biggest problem I have had was in dealing with the change to the order in which configurations get applied that came about in SSIS 2008. Those changes are detailed on MSDN at SSIS Package Configurations however the pertinent bits are: As the utility loads and runs the package, events occur in the following order: The dtexec utility loads the package. The utility applies the configurations that were specified in the package at design time and in the order that is specified in the package. (The one exception to this is the Parent Package Variables configurations. The utility applies these configurations only once and later in the process.) The utility then applies any options that you specified on the command line. The utility then reloads the configurations that were specified in the package at design time and in the order specified in the package. (Again, the exception to this rule is the Parent Package Variables configurations). The utility uses any command-line options that were specified to reload the configurations. Therefore, different values might be reloaded from a different location. The utility applies the Parent Package Variable configurations. The utility runs the package. To understand how these steps differ from SSIS 2005 I recommend reading Doug Laudenschlager’s blog post Understand how SSIS package configurations are applied. The very nature of SQL Server Configurations means that the Connection String for the database holding the configuration values needs to be supplied from the command-line. Typically then the call to execute your package resembles this: dtexec /FILE Package.dtsx /SET "\Package.Connections[SSISConfigurations].Properties[ConnectionString]";"\"Data Source=SomeServer;Initial Catalog=SomeDB;Integrated Security=SSPI;\"", The problem then is that, as per the steps above, the package will (1) attempt to apply all configurations using the Connection String stored in the package for the "SSISConfigurations" Connection Manager before then (2) applying the Connection String from the command-line and then (3) apply the same configurations all over again. In the packages that I inherited that first attempt to apply the configurations would timeout (not unexpected); I had 8 SQL Server Configurations in the package and thus the package was waiting for 2 minutes until all the Configurations timed out (i.e. 15seconds per Configuration) - in a package that only executes for ~8seconds when it gets to do its actual work a delay of 2minutes was simply unacceptable. We had three options in how to deal with this: Get rid of the use of SQL Server configurations and use .dtsConfig files instead Edit the packages when they get deployed Change the timeout on the "SSISConfigurations" Connection Manager #1 was my preferred choice but, for reasons I explain below*, wasn't an option in this particular instance. #2 was discounted out of hand because it negates the point of using Configurations in the first place. This left us with #3 - change the timeout on the Connection Manager. This is done by going into the properties of the Connection Manager, opening the "All" tab and changing the Connect Timeout property to some suitable value (in the screenshot below I chose 2 seconds). This change meant that the attempts to apply the SQL Server configurations timed out in 16 seconds rather than two minutes; clearly this isn't an optimum solution but its certainly better than it was. So there you have it - if you are having problems with SQL Server configuration timeouts within SSIS try changing the timeout of the Connection Manager. Better still - don't bother using SQL Server Configuration in the first place. Even better - install RC0 of SQL Server 2012 to start leveraging SSIS parameters and leave the nasty old world of configurations behind you. @Jamiet * Basically, we are leveraging a SSIS execution/logging framework in which the client had invested a lot of resources and SQL Server Configurations are an integral part of that.

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• Sneak peek at next generation Three MiFi unit – Huawei E585

  - by Liam Westley

  Last Wednesday I was fortunate to be invited to a sneak preview of the next generation Three MiFi unit, the Huawei E585. Many thanks to all those who posted questions both via this blog or via @westleyl on Twitter. I think I made sure I asked every question posed to the MiFi product manager from Three UK, and so here's the answers you were after. What is a MiFi? For those who are wondering, a MiFi unit is a 3G broadband modem combined with a WiFi access point, providing 3G broadband data access to up to five devices simultaneously via standard WiFi connections. What is different? It appears the prime task of enhancing the MiFi was to improve the user experience and user interface, both in terms of the device hardware and within the management software to configure the device.  I think this was a very sensible decision as these areas had substantial room for improvement. Single button operation to switch on, enable WiFi and connect to 3G Improved OELD display (see below), replacing the multi coloured LEDs; including signal strength, SMS notifications, the number of connected clients and data usage Management is via a web based dashboard accessible from any web browser. This is a big win for those running Linux, Mac OS/X, iPad users and, for me, as I can now configure the device from Windows 7 64-bit Charging is via micro USB, the new standard for small USB devices; you cannot use your old charger for the new MiFi unit Automatic reconnection when regaining a signal Improved charging time, which should allow recharging of the device when in use Although subjective, the black and silver design does look more classy than the silver and white plastic of the original MiFi What is the same? Virtually the same size and weight The battery is the same unit as the original MiFi so you’ll have a handy spare if you upgrade Data plans remain the same as the current MiFi, so cheapest price for upgraders will be £49 pay as you go Still only works on 3G networks, with no fallback to GPRS or EDGE There is no specific upgrade path for existing three customers, either from dongle or from the original MiFi My opinion I think three have concentrated on the correct areas of usability and user experience rather than trying to add new whizz bang technology features which aren’t of interest to mainstream users. The one button operation and the improved device display will make it much easier to use when out and about. If the automatic reconnection proves reliable that will remove a major bugbear that I experienced the previous evening when travelling on the First Great Western line from Paddington to Didcot Parkway.  The signal was repeatedly lost as we sped through tunnels and cuttings, and without automatic reconnection is was a real pain to keep pressing the data button on the MiFi to re-establish my data connection. And finally, the web based dashboard will mean I no longer need to resort to my XP based netbook to configure the SSID and password. My everyday laptop runs Windows 7 64-bit which appears to confuse the older 3 WiFi manager which cannot locate the MiFi when connected. Links to other sites, and other images of the device Good first impressions from Ben Smith, http://thereallymobileproject.com/2010/06/3uk-announce-a-new-mifi-with-a-screen/ Also, a round up of other sneak preview posts, http://www.3mobilebuzz.com/2010/06/11/mifi-round-two-your-view/ Pictures Here is a comparison of the old MiFi device next to the new device, complete with OLED display and the Huawei logo now being a prominent feature on the front of the device. One of my fellow bloggers had a Linux based netbook, showing off the web based dashboard complete with Text messages panel to manage SMS. And finally, I never thought that my blog sub title would ever end up printed onto a cup cake, ... and here's some of the other cup cakes ...

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• I’m a Phoenix… and I’m miffed

  - by Stan Spotts

  For personal reasons, almost 30 years ago I left school to enter the workforce. I decided late 2008 to go back to school and finish my degree. After the expected loss of credits for a transfer, from Temple University to University of Phoenix, I'm now about 75% done. The experience has been interesting. Classes are time compressed, only 5 weeks each. Because I have a family and a full time job, I'm taking one at a time. Even so, I've written more papers in these classes than I ever wrote at Temple. My own papers are one thing, but the team papers give me heartburn since I can't completely control what goes into them. Not a big deal except that they make up 30% of our grade. In any case, most of the class facilitators have been great. I had great ones for Accounting, Finance, and frankly most others. I've had a few (4, maybe) cases where I was less than 2 points from an A, and asked the facilitator if I could get any of my work reviewed to see if I could get those extra points. I figured it was worth a shot, and there were no extenuating circumstances to help make my case. I think that only one facilitator decided after a review of one paper that my interpretation was good, just not what he expected, and gave me another point, which gave me an A. So while none are pushovers, they've all been open to discussion, which is as much as I should expect. Overall, good experience. That is, until my last class. On the second week, the day I was due to hand in my personal assignment for the week, I was in an accident. An SUV creamed my little Ford Focus, and totaled it (estimated repair over $11K). I was pretty banged up, especially my left shoulder. I was scheduled for rotator cuff surgery for two weeks later, and getting hit against the door really made it worse. After dealing with the police, the EMT, the tow truck, and the Percocet and Flexeril for the pain, I crashed for the night and didn't get to upload my paper until the next day. The instructor took 30% off for it being late, even after I supplied photos of the car, my arm (huge bruises), and offered to supply the police report number. I figured I'd be okay since that's 2.7 points, and I could lose up to 5 before jeopardizing an A grade. Well, that wasn't the case as we lost more points than I expected on our team paper in Week 5. I ended up with a 94.3. Yes, 7/10 of a point from an A. Of course I asked the instructor to review the issue with the accident and give me just the 0.7 points I needed for the A. That got me a short response of "I have received your emails and review your work over the last five weeks. Your current grade will stand. If you would like to dispute your grade then please feel free to contact your academic advisor. I wish you much success in your professional and academic career." Brrrr….! So I asked my academic advisor to file a dispute. If it wasn't that a pretty bad car accident was the cause, I wouldn't have. Without the grade reduction, I would have had a 97 for the class, so I'll argue that I was performing at the A level throughout the class. Why her purported "review" of my work didn't then warrant such a minor adjustment, I don't know. An A- drops my GPA, and this ticked me off. Now I have to wait and see what the school says about the grade dispute.

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• Protecting offline IRM rights and the error "Unable to Connect to Offline database"

  - by Simon Thorpe

  One of the most common problems I get asked about Oracle IRM is in relation to the error message "Unable to Connect to Offline database". This error message is a result of how Oracle IRM is protecting the cached rights on the local machine and if that cache has become invalid in anyway, this error is thrown. Offline rights and security First we need to understand how Oracle IRM handles offline use. The way it is implemented is one of the main reasons why Oracle IRM is the leading document security solution and demonstrates our methodology to ensure that solutions address both security and usability and puts the balance of these two in your control. Each classification has a set of predefined roles that the manager of the classification can assign to users. Each role has an offline period which determines the amount of time a user can access content without having to communicate with the IRM server. By default for the context model, which is the classification system that ships out of the box with Oracle IRM, the offline period for each role is 3 days. This is easily changed however and can be as low as under an hour to as long as years. It is also possible to switch off the ability to access content offline which can be useful when content is very sensitive and requires a tight leash. So when a user is online, transparently in the background, the Oracle IRM Desktop communicates with the server and updates the users rights and offline periods. This transparent synchronization period is determined by the server and communicated to all IRM Desktops and allows for users rights to be kept up to date without their intervention. This allows us to support some very important scenarios which are key to a successful IRM solution. A user doesn't have to make any decision when going offline, they simply unplug their laptop and they already have their offline periods synchronized to the maximum values. Any solution that requires a user to make a decision at the point of going offline isn't going to work because people forget to do this and will therefore be unable to legitimately access their content offline. If your rights change to REMOVE your access to content, this also happens in the background. This is very useful when someone has an offline duration of a week and they happen to make a connection to the internet 3 days into that offline period, the Oracle IRM Desktop detects this online state and automatically updates all rights for the user. This means the business risk is reduced when setting long offline periods, because of the daily transparent sync, you can reflect changes as soon as the user is online. Of course, if they choose not to come online at all during that week offline period, you cannot effect change, but you take that risk in giving the 7 day offline period in the first place. If you are added to a NEW classification during the day, this will automatically be synchronized without the user even having to open a piece of content secured against that classification. This is very important, consider the scenario where a senior executive downloads all their email but doesn't open any of it. Disconnects the laptop and then gets on a plane. During the flight they attempt to open a document attached to a downloaded email which has been secured against an IRM classification the user was not even aware they had access to. Because their new role in this classification was automatically synchronized their experience is a good one and the document opens. More information on how the Oracle IRM classification model works can be found in this article by Martin Abrahams. So what about problems accessing the offline rights database? So onto the core issue... when these rights are cached to your machine they are stored in an encrypted database. The encryption of this offline database is keyed to the instance of the installation of the IRM Desktop and the Windows user account. Why? Well what you do not want to happen is for someone to get their rights for content and then copy these files across hundreds of other machines, therefore getting access to sensitive content across many environments. The IRM server has a setting which controls how many times you can cache these rights on unique machines. This is because people typically access IRM content on more than one computer. Their work desktop, a laptop and often a home computer. So Oracle IRM allows for the usability of caching rights on more than one computer whilst retaining strong security over this cache. So what happens if these files are corrupted in someway? That's when you will see the error, Unable to Connect to Offline database. The most common instance of seeing this is when you are using virtual machines and copy them from one computer to the next. The virtual machine software, VMWare Workstation for example, makes changes to the unique information of that virtual machine and as such invalidates the offline database. How do you solve the problem? Resolution is however simple. You just delete all of the offline database files on the machine and they will be recreated with working encryption when the Oracle IRM Desktop next starts. However this does mean that the IRM server will think you have your rights cached to more than one computer and you will need to rerequest your rights, even though you are only going to be accessing them on one. Because it still thinks the old cache is valid. So be aware, it is good practice to increase the server limit from the default of 1 to say 3 or 4. This is done using the Enterprise Manager instance of IRM. So to delete these offline files I have a simple .bat file you can use; Download DeleteOfflineDBs.bat Note that this uses pskillto stop the irmBackground.exe from running. This is part of the IRM Desktop and holds open a lock to the offline database. Either kill this from task manager or use pskillas part of the script.

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• Understanding Collabnet&rsquo;s LDAP binding

  - by Robert May

  We want to use both subversion usernames and passwords as well as Active Directory for our authentication on our Collabnet subversion server. This has proven to be more of a challenge than we thought, mostly because Collabnet’s documentation is pretty poor. To supplement that documentation, I add my own. The first thing to understand is that the attribute that you specify in the LDAP Login Attribute ONLY applies to lookups done for the user.  It does NOT apply to the LDAP Bind DN field.  Second, know that the debug logs (error is the one you want) don’t give you debug information for the bind DN, just the login attempts.  Third, by default, Active Directory does not allow anonymous binds, so you MUST put in a user that has the authority to query the Active Directory ldap. Because of these items, the values to set in those fields can be somewhat confusing.  You’ll want to have ADSI Edit handy (I also used ldp, which is installed by default on server 2008), since ADSI Edit can help you find stuff in your active directory.  Be careful, you can also break stuff. Here’s what should go into those fields. LDAP Security Level:  Should be set to None LDAP Server Host:  Should be set to the full name of a domain controller in your domain.  For example, dc.mydomain.com LDAP Server Port:  Should be set to 3268.  The default port of 389 will only query that specific server, not the global catalog.  By setting it to 3268, the global catalog will be queried, which is probably what you want. LDAP Base DN:  Should be set to the location where you want the search for users to begin.  By default, the search scope is set to sub, so all child organizational units below this setting will be searched.  In my case, I had created an OU specifically for users for group policies.  My value ended up being:  OU=MyOu,DC=domain,DC=org.   However, if you’re pointing it to the default Users folder, you may end up with something like CN=Users,DC=domain,DC=org (or com or whatever).  Again, use ADSI edit and use the Distinguished Name that it shows. LDAP Bind DN:  This needs to be the Distinguished Name of the user that you’re going to use for binding (i.e. the user you’ll be impersonating) for doing queries.  In my case, it ended up being CN=svn svn,OU=MyOu,DC=domain,DC=org.  Why the double svn, you might ask?  That’s because the first and last name fields are set to svn and by default, the distinguished name is the first and last name fields!  That’s important.  Its NOT the username or account name!  Again, use ADSI edit, browse to the username you want to use, right click and select properties, and then search the attributes for the Distinguished Name.  Once you’ve found that, select it and click View and you can copy and paste that into this field. LDAP Bind Password:  This is the password for the account in the Bind DN LDAP login Attribute: sAMAccountName.  If you leave this blank, uid is used, which may not even be set.  This tells it to use the Account Name field that’s defined under the account tab for users in Active Directory Users and Computers.  Note that this attribute DOES NOT APPLY to the LDAP Bind DN.  You must use the full distinguished name of the bind DN.  This attribute allows users to type their username and password for authentication, rather than typing their distinguished name, which they probably don’t know. LDAP Search Scope:  Probably should stay at sub, but could be different depending on your situation. LDAP Filter:  I left mine blank, but you could provide one to limit what you want to see.  LDP would be helpful for determining what this is. LDAP Server Certificate Verification:  I left it checked, but didn’t try it without it being checked. Hopefully, this will save some others pain when trying to get Collabnet setup. Technorati Tags: Subversion,collabnet

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• Beware when using .NET's named pipes in a windows forms application

  - by FransBouma

  Yesterday a user of our .net ORM Profiler tool reported that he couldn't get the snapshot recording from code feature working in a windows forms application. Snapshot recording in code means you start recording profile data from within the profiled application, and after you're done you save the snapshot as a file which you can open in the profiler UI. When using a console application it worked, but when a windows forms application was used, the snapshot was always empty: nothing was recorded. Obviously, I wondered why that was, and debugged a little. Here's an example piece of code to record the snapshot. This piece of code works OK in a console application, but results in an empty snapshot in a windows forms application: var snapshot = new Snapshot(); snapshot.Record(); using(var ctx = new ORMProfilerTestDataContext()) { var customers = ctx.Customers.Where(c => c.Country == "USA").ToList(); } InterceptorCore.Flush(); snapshot.Stop(); string error=string.Empty; if(!snapshot.IsEmpty) { snapshot.SaveToFile(@"c:\temp\generatortest\test2\blaat.opsnapshot", out error); } if(!string.IsNullOrEmpty(error)) { Console.WriteLine("Save error: {0}", error); } (the Console.WriteLine doesn't do anything in a windows forms application, but you get the idea). ORM Profiler uses named pipes: the interceptor (referenced and initialized in your application, the application to profile) sends data over the named pipe to a listener, which when receiving a piece of data begins reading it, asynchronically, and when properly read, it will signal observers that new data has arrived so they can store it in a repository. In this case, the snapshot will be the observer and will store the data in its own repository. The reason the above code doesn't work in windows forms is because windows forms is a wrapper around Win32 and its WM_* message based system. Named pipes in .NET are wrappers around Windows named pipes which also work with WM_* messages. Even though we use BeginRead() on the named pipe (which spawns a thread to read the data from the named pipe), nothing is received by the named pipe in the windows forms application, because it doesn't handle the WM_* messages in its message queue till after the method is over, as the message pump of a windows forms application is handled by the only thread of the windows forms application, so it will handle WM_* messages when the application idles. The fix is easy though: add Application.DoEvents(); right before snapshot.Stop(). Application.DoEvents() forces the windows forms application to process all WM_* messages in its message queue at that moment: all messages for the named pipe are then handled, the .NET code of the named pipe wrapper will react on that and the whole process will complete as if nothing happened. It's not that simple to just say 'why didn't you use a worker thread to create the snapshot here?', because a thread doesn't get its own message pump: the messages would still be posted to the window's message pump. A hidden form would create its own message pump, so the additional thread should also create a window to get the WM_* messages of the named pipe posted to a different message pump than the one of the main window. This WM_* messages pain is not something you want to be confronted with when using .NET and its libraries. Unfortunately, the way they're implemented, a lot of APIs are leaky abstractions, they bleed the characteristics of the OS objects they hide away through to the .NET code. Be aware of that fact when using them :)

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• Keepin’ It Simple with StorageTek SL150

  - by Kristin Rose

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Are your customers archive and data protection environments getting out of hand?  Are they looking for a little simplicity in their lives? How about some scalability? Or are they looking for a way to save on capital and operational expenses? If you answered yes to any of these, then  Oracle's new StorageTek SL150 Modular Tape Library is the product for you. It beats the competition in terms of simplicity, scalability and savings, and provides some seriously wallet friendly revenue opportunities for you. If the long-term service annuities on the SL150 aren’t convincing enough, then the resale margins, rebates and follow-on revenue from modular upgrades will be!  The SL150 simplifies StorageTek’s tape portfolio by replacing three products with one scalable solution that  provides an entry point for repeat business within accounts. The SL150 expands your potential storage customer base to smaller companies with low cost, simple upgrades and streamlined management that help alleviate key customer pain points. With the SL150, your customers will be able to simplify growth of their archive and data protection environments with small entry configurations and 10x growth, something that would require multiple box swaps across up to three product categories with competitive products. With the SL150, Oracle can help you provide greater customer satisfaction with  Simplicity, Scalability and Savings! We know you’re probably wondering how you can get started and sell this new and magnificent product… Well, look no further because the only thing you need to do is complete the SL150 Guided Learning Paths (GLPs). For some extra insight, watch the video below on the new StorageTek SL150 modular tape library, and don’t forget to ‘tweet’ this post, and share it on Facebook to spread the good news! Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Wishing you Simplicity, Scalability and Savings, The OPN Communications Team

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• Backing up my Windows Home Server to the Cloud&hellip;

  - by eddraper

  Ok, here’s my scenario: Windows Home Server with a little over 3TB of storage.  This includes many years of our home network’s PC backups, music, videos, etcetera. I’d like to get a backup off-site, and the existing APIs and apps such as CloudBerry Labs WHS Backup service are making it easy.  Now, all it’s down to is vendor and the cost of the actual storage.   So,  I thought I’d take a lazy Saturday morning and do some research on this and get the ball rolling.  What I discovered stunned me…   First off, the pricing for just about everything was loaded with complexity.  I learned that it wasn’t just about storage… it was about network usage, requests, sites, replication, and on and on. I really don’t see this as rocket science.  I have a disk image.  I want to put it in the cloud.  I’m not going to be be using it but once daily for incremental backups.  Sounds like a common scenario.  Yes, if “things get real” and my server goes down, I will need to bring down a lot of data and utilize a fair amount of vendor infrastructure.  However, this may never happen.  Offsite storage is an insurance policy.   The complexity of the cost structures, perhaps by design, create an environment where it’s incredibly hard to model bottom line costs and compare vendor all-up pricing.  As it is a “lazy Saturday morning,” I’m not in the mood for such antics and I decide to shirk the endeavor entirely.  Thus, I decided to simply fire up calc.exe and do some a simple arithmetic model based on price per GB.  I shuddered at the results.  Certainly something was wrong… did I misplace a decimal point?  Then I discovered CloudBerry’s own calculator.   Nope, I hadn’t misplaced those decimals after all.  Check it out (pricing based on 3174 GB):   Amazon S3 $398.00 per month $4761 per year Azure $396.75 per month $4761 per year Google $380.88 per month $4570.56 per year   Conclusion: Rampant crack smoking at vendors.  Seriously.  Out. Of. Their. Minds. Now, to Amazon’s credit, vision, and outright common sense, they had one offering which directly addresses my scenario:   Amazon Glacier $31.74 per month $380.88 per year   hmmm… It’s on the table.  Let’s see what it would cost to just buy some drives, an enclosure and cart them over to a friend’s house.   2 x 2TB Drives from NewEgg.com $199.99   Enclosure $39.99     $239.98   Carting data to back and forth to friend’s within walking distance pain   Leave drive unplugged at friend’s $0 for electricity   Possible data loss No way I can come and go every day.     I think I’ll think on this a bit more…

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• Big Data: Size isn’t everything

  - by Simon Elliston Ball

  Big Data has a big problem; it’s the word “Big”. These days, a quick Google search will uncover terabytes of negative opinion about the futility of relying on huge volumes of data to produce magical, meaningful insight. There are also many clichéd but correct assertions about the difficulties of correlation versus causation, in massive data sets. In reading some of these pieces, I begin to understand how climatologists must feel when people complain ironically about “global warming” during snowfall. Big Data has a name problem. There is a lot more to it than size. Shape, Speed, and…err…Veracity are also key elements (now I understand why Gartner and the gang went with V’s instead of S’s). The need to handle data of different shapes (Variety) is not new. Data developers have always had to mold strange-shaped data into our reporting systems, integrating with semi-structured sources, and even straying into full-text searching. However, what we lacked was an easy way to add semi-structured and unstructured data to our arsenal. New “Big Data” tools such as MongoDB, and other NoSQL (Not Only SQL) databases, or a graph database like Neo4J, fill this gap. Still, to many, they simply introduce noise to the clean signal that is their sensibly normalized data structures. What about speed (Velocity)? It’s not just high frequency trading that generates data faster than a single system can handle. Many other applications need to make trade-offs that traditional databases won’t, in order to cope with high data insert speeds, or to extract quickly the required information from data streams. Unfortunately, many people equate Big Data with the Hadoop platform, whose batch driven queries and job processing queues have little to do with “velocity”. StreamInsight, Esper and Tibco BusinessEvents are examples of Big Data tools designed to handle high-velocity data streams. Again, the name doesn’t do the discipline of Big Data any favors. Ultimately, though, does analyzing fast moving data produce insights as useful as the ones we get through a more considered approach, enabled by traditional BI? Finally, we have Veracity and Value. In many ways, these additions to the classic Volume, Velocity and Variety trio acknowledge the criticism that without high-quality data and genuinely valuable outputs then data, big or otherwise, is worthless. As a discipline, Big Data has recognized this, and data quality and cleaning tools are starting to appear to support it. Rather than simply decrying the irrelevance of Volume, we need as a profession to focus how to improve Veracity and Value. Perhaps we should just declare the ‘Big’ silent, embrace these new data tools and help develop better practices for their use, just as we did the good old RDBMS? What does Big Data mean to you? Which V gives your business the most pain, or the most value? Do you see these new tools as a useful addition to the BI toolbox, or are they just enabling a dangerous trend to find ghosts in the noise?

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• Oracle Social Network Developer Challenge: TEAM Informatics

  - by Kellsey Ruppel

  Originally posted by Jake Kuramoto on The Apps Lab blog. Here comes another Oracle Social Network Developer Challenge entry, this one courtesy of TEAM Informatics (@teaminformatics). As their name suggests, their entry was a true team effort, featuring the work of Jon Chartrand, Deepthi Sanikommu, Dmitry Shtulman, Raghavendra Joshi, and Daniel Stitely with Wayne Boerger doing the presentation honors. Speaking of the presentation, Wayne’s laptop wouldn’t project onto the plasma we had in the OTN Lounge, but luckily, Noel (@noelportugal) had his iPad and VGA dongle in his backpack of goodies, so they were able to improvise by using the iPad camera to capture Wayne’s demo and project the video to the plasma. Code will find a way. Anyway, TEAM built Do Over, an integration with Atlassian’s JIRA, coincidentally something I’ve chatted with Rich (@rmanalan) about in the past. The basic idea is simple; integrate JIRA issues with Oracle Social Network to expand and centralize the conversation around issue resolution. In Dmitry’s words: We were able to put together a team on fairly short notice and, after batting a few ideas around, decided to pursue an integration with JIRA, an issue and project tracking tool used in-house at TEAM.  After getting to know WebCenter Social, we saw immediate benefits that a JIRA integration could bring, primarily due to the fact that JIRA only allows assignment of an issue to one person at a time.  Integrating Social would allow collaboration and issue resolution to happen right from the JIRA Issue interface. TEAM tackled a very common pain point among developers, i.e. including everyone who needs to be involved in issue resolution into a single thread. If you’ve ever fixed bugs or participated in that process, you’ll know that not everyone has access to the issue resolution system, which makes consolidating discussion time-consuming and fragmented. Why? Because we typically use email as the tool for collaboration. Oracle Social Network allows for all parties involved to work in a single, private and secure conversation, and through its RESTful Public API, information from external systems like JIRA can be brought in for context. TEAM only had time to address half the solution, but given more time, I’m sure they would have made the integration bidirectional, allowing for relevant commentary to be pushed back to JIRA, closing the loop. Here are some screenshot of their integration. #gallery-1 { margin: auto; } #gallery-1 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-1 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-1 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } When Oracle Social Network is released, TEAM will have something they use internally to work on issues, and maybe they’ll even productize their work and add it to the Atlassian Marketplace so that other JIRA users can benefit from the combination of Oracle Social Network and JIRA. Thanks to everyone at TEAM for participating in our challenge. We hope they had a good experience. Look for the details of the other entries this week. Be sure to check out a full recap from Dmitry over on the TEAM blog.

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• A SharePoint Developer&rsquo;s Toolchest

  - by Sahil Malik

  Ad:: SharePoint 2007 Training in .NET 3.5 technologies (more information). When we develop for SharePoint, we end up using many tools, third party or Microsoft, to facilitate our development. What are some of your favorite tools? Mine are as below - 1. Reflector: When I saw reflector, I was pretty convinced that a tool better and more useful than it doesn’t exist. Well I was wrong! Redgate took over reflector and they still offer it as a free version, but they have a paid version called reflector pro. It lets you debug third party source code, as if you had the source code. Brilliant! Who needs documentation anymore when you have real code? 2. ULS Viewer: It is no secret, reading ULS logs is a pain in the rear. Well, not so with ULS Viewer, which does work with SharePoint 2007 as well. But it’s just way cooler with SharePoint 2010. You know when you get an error in SharePoint 2010 it shows you an error like as below: Well, the ULS Viewer will allow you to set filtering critereon, allowing you to immediately zero in, into an error, across multiple WFEs even. Also there are numerous other facilities built into the tool, such as advanced filtering, critical error notifications, etc. A must have! You can read the documentation of the ULSViewer here. 3. SPDisposeCheck: Did you know that the MySite object is strange? What is strange about it? That you have to dispose it even if you didn’t create it!? Well who the hell remembers all that! Honestly I do! And you should too. But there is a tool to help you sanitize your code. And that is SPDisposeCheck. You run it against your DLL or EXE, and it will give you suggestions on where you might have missed calling dispose on an object. You still have to use your head, but having this tool helps. 4. DebugView: Debugging for SharePoint can be difficult sometimes. Sometimes your breakpoints don’t get hit. And while you can try and make them hit, it is sometimes easier to just write a bunch of Debug.WriteLines, and catch them from an external application such as DebugView. You simply use your code, and DebugView will catch all the Debug.WriteLine’s in your code like this - 5. BGInfo: One annoying thing about SharePoint projects, it causes the number of servers to multiply like bunnies. As I’m RDP’ing into many computers trying to diagnose a crazy issue, sometimes it becomes hard to remember which machine is which. BGInfo puts all that on the wallpaper, alongwith a bunch of other useful info. A bit like this - 5. WSPBuilder: SharePoint 2007 only, but I think there maybe a version for SP2010 coming later. I think the VS2010 tools for SP2010 development are quite nice, so WSPBuilder, well so far I don’t miss it. But lets see what WSPBuilder for 2010 brings – I haven’t seen it yet. However, I want to confidently assert that WSPBuilder for SP2007 is simply awesome. 6. SharePoint Manager: The SharePoint Manager 2010 is a SharePoint object model explorer. It enables you to browse every site on the local farm and view every property. It also enables you to change the properties. The VS2010 dev tools now include a server explorer, which show you a subset of properties in read-only. I would LOVE to see SharePoint manager like functionality built into VS2010. SharePoint Manager, a total must-have. Comment on the article ....

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• Install Problem (Ubuntu Server 10.04) with USB as it reboots when I hit 'enter' for 'Install Ubuntu Server' option! Help

  - by Alastair

  We cannot seem to install Ubuntu Server with USB as it reboots when I hit 'enter' for 'Install Ubuntu Server' option. My friend wants to try setting up a server so; we downloaded Ubuntu Server 10.04.4 we created a boot CD and installed ubuntu server no problem at all. But then the problem arose the hardrive we wanted to use is a 1tb sata drive and the computer orginally has 40gb IDE. So I bought a Sata to IDE and IDE to Sata converter from: http://www.microdirect.co.uk/Home/Product/52926/IDE-to-SATA-converter---Converts-IDE-HDD-to-SATA-inc-sata-data-and-power-cables Unfortunately this converter means I cannot plug in the IDE cable meaning I only have one IDE connection i.e CD drive has to be disconnected for the 1tb sata Hardrive to be connected. So now the 1tb drive is connected, powered it on opened the bios to make sure the hdd appeared it did as ST3ASDAPFKG (somthing like that). Fortunately the computer supports USB booting, so I read ubuntu server usb install instructions I tried: Startup Disk Creator & Unebootin Startup Disk Creator made the usb bootable with the 'ubuntu-10.04.4-server-i386.iso' All looked fine stuck the usb drive in, booted the machine up and I am quickly presented with ubuntu language choice. I hit enter to select English then I am presented with: Install Ubuntu Server, Install Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud, Check Disk for defects, test memory, Boot from first hard disk, Rescue a broken system I can move up and down the menu fine everything seems ok, I select 'Install Ubuntu Server', computer just hangs and screen either goes blank or locks. So I rebooted the computer loads the same menus fine, I select 'Install Ubuntu Server' hit 'enter' and the computer just restarts then brings me back to the same menu. hmmm Then I tried choosing the rest of the options separately: Install Ubuntu Server, Install Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud, Check Disk for defects, test memory, Boot from first hard disk, Rescue a broken system computer just restarts and back to the same ubuntu menu every-time. Grrrr At this point I wish I actually new how to command line install or something but I don't have a clue how to do that. So I tried hitting 'f6' for 'other options' and I tried them all in various combinations and individually. No Luck: (Expert mode, acpi=off, noapic, nolapic, edd=on, nodmraid, nomodeset, Free Software only) At this point I am wondering if it is a bios setting causing problems, I tried turning every option in there on off that I don't understand. No Luck. I then discovered by accident if you hit esc in the ubuntu install menu it says "you are leaving the graphical boot menu and starting the text mode interface" I hit 'Ok'. Next a prompt pops up saying 'boot:' One time it responded when I typed somthing with 'Cannot find kernal image (something like that but since then it just restarts when I hit enter in that prompt). I had a browse on the net and found someone suggesting removing quiet from install command for 'Install Ubuntu Server'. Made no difference at all just reboots... Orginal boot options noprompt cdrom-detect/try-usb=true persistent file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu-server.seed initrd=/install/initrd.gz quiet -- Modified boot options noprompt cdrom-detect/try-usb=true persistent file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu-server.seed initrd=/install/initrd.gz -- Still I cannot install Ubuntu Server by USB as it, reboots when I hit 'enter' for 'Install Ubuntu Server' option. This is a real pain as we cannot take the 1tb Sata Hardrive and swap it for IDE to be able to use the cd drive. Why is is it so hard to install ubuntu server with usb? I have wasted a full day and half on this really frustrated any help would be amazing! I know the answers out there just seems a bit illusive at the moment! Computer Spec- Asus Motherboard, 1gb RAM 2X512MB, Powersupply 200watt, 2.8ghz Processor Intel, On-board 64mb graphics, 100mb Ethernet, 54mb Wireless,

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• Xorg does not see my monitor EDID

  - by sean farley

  Below is the output from my Xorg.0. X.Org X Server 1.11.3 Release Date: 2011-12-16 [ 22.311] X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0 [ 22.311] Build Operating System: Linux 2.6.42-23-generic x86_64 Ubuntu [ 22.311] Current Operating System: Linux sean-P55-USB3 3.2.0-34-generic #53-Ubuntu SMP Thu Nov 15 10:48:16 UTC 2012 x86_64 [ 22.311] Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-34-generic root=UUID=0a34603e-aee9-44d1-8982-a5a5a38c3e4d ro quiet splash [ 22.311] Build Date: 29 August 2012 12:12:33AM [ 22.311] xorg-server 2:1.11.4-0ubuntu10.8 (For technical support please see http://www.ubuntu.com/support) [ 22.311] Current version of pixman: 0.24.4 [ 22.311] Before reporting problems, check http://wiki.x.org to make sure that you have the latest version. [ 22.311] Markers: (--) probed, (**) from config file, (==) default setting, (++) from command line, (!!) notice, (II) informational, (WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown. [ 22.311] (==) Log file: "/var/log/Xorg.0.log", Time: Sat Nov 17 13:20:45 2012 [ 22.311] (==) Using config file: "/etc/X11/xorg.conf" [ 22.311] (==) Using system config directory "/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d" [ 22.311] (==) No Layout section. Using the first Screen section. [ 22.311] (==) No screen section available. Using defaults. [ 22.311] (**) |-->Screen "Default Screen Section" (0) [ 22.311] (**) | |-->Monitor "<default monitor>" [ 22.311] (==) No device specified for screen "Default Screen Section". Using the first device section listed. [ 22.311] (**) | |-->Device "Default Device" [ 22.311] (==) No monitor specified for screen "Default Screen Section". Using a default monitor configuration. [ 22.311] (==) Automatically adding devices I have searched all over, and followed lots of dead ends and unanswered questions on this issue. I need to get this monitor recognised so I can use the native resolution of 1600x1200. The Nvidia driver in Windows has no problem with this. The monitor is an old Iiyama HM204DT A. Is there a way of configuring Xorg manually to get these working? I have tried xrandr but this will not work. Output:- sean@sean-P55-USB3:~$ xrandr Screen 0: minimum 8 x 8, current 1152 x 864, maximum 16384 x 16384 DVI-I-0 connected 1152x864+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 0mm x 0mm 1024x768 60.0 + 1360x768 60.0 59.8 1152x864 60.0* 800x600 72.2 60.3 56.2 680x384 119.9 119.6 640x480 59.9 512x384 120.0 400x300 144.4 320x240 120.1 DVI-I-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) DVI-I-2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) HDMI-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) DVI-I-3 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) Tried Nvidia Xorg.config: sean@sean-P55-USB3:~$ sudo nvidia-xconfig [sudo] password for sean: Using X configuration file: "/etc/X11/xorg.conf". VALIDATION ERROR: Data incomplete in file /etc/X11/xorg.conf. Device section "Default Device" must have a Driver line. Backed up file '/etc/X11/xorg.conf' as '/etc/X11/xorg.conf.nvidia-xconfig-original' Backed up file '/etc/X11/xorg.conf' as '/etc/X11/xorg.conf.backup' New X configuration file written to '/etc/X11/xorg.conf' How do I insert a driver line? This is a bit of a pain as I want to use my Vectorworks cad program in a WinXP Vbox at 1600x1200 but all virtual drives are restricted to the host screen resolution. Do i need to manually create EIDI info in Xorg? I am slightly confused about how Xorg and Nvidia relate Please help

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• A debugging experience with "highly compatible" ASP.NET 4.5

  - by Jeff

  I have to admit that I will pretty much upgrade software for no reason other than being on the latest version. I won't do it if it's super expensive (Adobe gets money from me about once every three or four years at best), but particularly with frameworks and stuff generally available as part of my MSDN subscription, I'll be bleeding edge. CoasterBuzz was running on the MVC 4 framework pretty much as soon as they did a "go live" license for it. I didn't really jump in head-first with Windows 8 and Visual Studio 2012, in part because I just wasn't interested in doing the reinstalls for each new version. Turns out there weren't that many revisions anyway. But when the final versions were released a week and a half ago, I jumped in. I saw on one of the Microsoft sites that .Net 4.5 was a "highly compatible in-place update" to the framework. Good enough for me. I was obviously running it by default in Windows 8, and installed it on my production server. I suppose it's "highly compatible," except when it isn't. Three of my sites are running with various flavors of the MVC version of POP Forums. All of them stopped working under ASP.NET 4.5. It was not immediately obvious what the problem might be beyond an exception indicating that there were no repository classes registered with Ninject, which I use for dependency injection in the forums. This was made all the more weird by the fact that it ran fine locally in the dev Web host. My first instinct was to spin up a Windows Server VM on my local box and put the remote debugger on it. (Side note: running multiple VM's on a Retina MacBook Pro with 16 gigs of RAM is pretty much the most awesome thing ever. I can't believe this computer is for real, and not a 50-pound tower under my desk.) What might have been going on in IIS that doesn't happen in Visual Studio? In the debugging process, I realized that I might be looking in the wrong place. POP Forums creates a Ninject container using a method called from a PreApplicationStartMethod attribute, and at that time registers a module (what Ninject uses to map interfaces to implementations) that maps all of the core dependencies. It also creates an instance of an HttpModule that originally hosted the "services" (search indexing, mailer, etc.), but now just records errors. That's all well and good, but the actual repository mapping, where data is actually read or persisted, happens in Application_Start() in global.asax. The idea there is that you can swap out the SqlSingleWebServer repos for something tuned for multiple servers, Oracle or something else. Of course, if I used something like StructureMap, which does convention-based mapping for dependency injection (a class implementing ISettingsRepository called SettingsRepository is automagically mapped), I wouldn't have to worry about it. In any case, the HttpModule, being instantiated before Application_Start() gets to run, would throw because there was no repo mapped where it could get settings from the database. This makes total sense. The fix is sort of a hack, where I don't setup the innards of the HttpModule until a call to its BeginRequest is made. I say it's a hack, because its primary function, logging exceptions, won't work until the app has warmed up. Still, this brings up an interesting question about the race condition, and what changed in 4.5 when it's running in IIS. In ASP.NET 4, it would appear that the code called via the PreApplicationStartMethod was either failing silently, and running again later, or it was getting to that code after Application_Start was called. In any case, weird thing. The real pain point I'm experiencing now is a bug in MVC 4 that is extremely serious because it renders the mobile/alternate view functionality very much broken.

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• Vitality of Product Information Management Showcased at OpenWorld 2012

  - by Mala Narasimharajan

   By Sachin Patel Can you hear the countdown clock ticking!! OpenWorld 2012 is almost here and as I write this Oracle is buzzing with fresh new ideas and solutions that will be showcased this year. What an exciting time for all of us to be in midst of a digital revolution. Whether it is Apple fans clamoring to find every new feature that has been added to the iPhone 5 or a startup launching a new digital thermostat (has anyone looked at the new one from Nest ), product information is a vital for companies to grow and compete in this cut-throat market. Customer today struggle to aggregate and enrich this product data from the myriad of systems they have in place to run their businesses and operations. Having a product information strategy is paramount to align your sales channels and operations with the most accurate and upto date product data. We have a number of sessions this year at OpenWorld where you can gain more insight into how Oracle’s next generation of Fusion Applications, in this case Fusion Product Hub can provide you with a solution to streamline and get control of your Product Master Data. Enabling Trusted Enterprise Product Data with Oracle Fusion Product HubTuesday, October 2nd 11:45 am, Moscone West 2022 Join me Sachin Patel, Director of Product Strategy and Milan Bhatia, VP of Development as we discuss how you can enable trusted product master data in your enterprise. In this session we plan to cover the challenges companies face today in mastering product data. The discussion will also include how Fusion Product Hub brings new and innovative features to empower your product data owners to create a holistic and rich product definition that can be leveraged across your enterprise. We will also be joined by Pawel Fidelus from Fideltronik an Early Adopter for Fusion Product Hub who will showcase their plans to implement Fusion Product Hub and the value it will bring to Fideltronik Multichannel Fulfillment Excellence in Direct-to-Consumer Market Thursday, October 4th, 12:45 am, Moscone West 2024 Do you have multiple order capture systems? Do you have difficulty in fulfilling orders for your customers across various channels and suppliers? Mark Carson, Director, Fusion DOO and Brad Kerr, Director, AGSS will be showcasing the Fusion Distributed Order Orchestration solution and how companies can orchestrate orders from multiple order capture systems and route them to the appropriate fulfillment system. Sachin Patel, Director Product Strategy for Product MDM will highlight the business pain points in consolidating and commercializing data from a Multi Channel Commerce point of view and how Fusion Product Hub helps in allowing you to provide a single source of truth to drive a singular and rich customer experience. Oracle Fusion Supply Chain Management: Customer Adoption and Experiences                                                Wednesday, October 3rd 10:15 am, Moscone West 2003 This is a great session to attend to learn about how Fusion Supply Chain Management and Fusion Product Hub Early Adopters, including Boeing and Fideltronik are leveraging Fusion Applications to improve their Supply Chain operations. Have a great OpenWorld and see you soon!!

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• Entity Framework 4, WCF &amp; Lazy Loading Tip

  - by Dane Morgridge

  If you are doing any work with Entity Framework and custom WCF services in EFv1, everything works great.  As soon as you jump to EFv4, you may find yourself getting odd errors that you can’t seem to catch.  The problem is almost always has something to do with the new lazy loading feature in Entity Framework 4.  With Entity Framework 1, you didn’t have lazy loading so this problem didn’t surface.  Assume I have a Person entity and an Address entity where there is a one-to-many relationship between Person and Address (Person has many Addresses). In Entity Framework 1 (or in EFv4 with lazy loading turned off), I would have to load the Address data by hand by either using the Include or Load Method: var people = context.People.Include("Addresses"); or people.Addresses.Load(); Lazy loading works when the first time the Person.Addresses collection is accessed: 1: var people = context.People.ToList(); 2:  3: // only person data is currently in memory 4:  5: foreach(var person in people) 6: { 7: // EF determines that no Address data has been loaded and lazy loads 8: int count = person.Addresses.Count(); 9: } 10:  Lazy loading has the useful (and sometimes not useful) feature of fetching data when requested.  It can make your life easier or it can make it a big pain.  So what does this have to do with WCF?  One word: Serialization. When you need to pass data over the wire with WCF, the data contract is serialized into either XML or binary depending on the binding you are using.  Well, if I am using lazy loading, the Person entity gets serialized and during that process, the Addresses collection is accessed.  When that happens, the Address data is lazy loaded.  Then the Address is serialized, and the Person property is accessed, and then also serialized and then the Addresses collection is accessed.  Now the second time through, lazy loading doesn’t kick in, but you can see the infinite loop caused by this process.  This is a problem with any serialization, but I personally found it trying to use WCF. The fix for this is to simply turn off lazy Loading.  This can be done at each call by using context options: context.ContextOptions.LazyLoadingEnabled = false; Turning lazy loading off will now allow your classes to be serialized properly.  Note, this is if you are using the standard Entity Framework classes.  If you are using POCO,  you will have to do something slightly different.  With POCO, the Entity Framework will create proxy classes by default that allow things like lazy loading to work with POCO.  This proxy basically creates a proxy object that is a full Entity Framework object that sits between the context and the POCO object.  When using POCO with WCF (or any serialization) just turning off lazy loading doesn’t cut it.  You have to turn off the proxy creation to ensure that your classes will serialize properly: context.ContextOptions.ProxyCreationEnabled = false; The nice thing is that you can do this on a call-by-call basis.  If you use a new context for each set of operations (which you should) then you can turn either lazy loading or proxy creation on and off as needed.

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• Find the best OpenWorld sessions for learning about UX highlights

  - by mvaughan

  By Kathy Miedema, Oracle Applications User Experience  Have you clicked through the Oracle OpenWorld 2012 catalog? It’s amazingly dense, as usual. But one thing we noticed this year is that nearly half of the sessions mention some component of user experience, which is a sea change in our world. It means that more people understand, appreciate, and desire an effective user experience, and it also means that Oracle’s investment in its next-generation applications user experience, such as Oracle Fusion Applications, is increasingly apparent and interesting to its customers. So how do you choose the user experience sessions that make the most sense for you and your organization? Read our list to find out which sessions we think offer the most value for those interested in finding out more about the Oracle Applications user experience. If you’re interested in Oracle’s strategy for its user experience: CON9438: Oracle Fusion Applications: Transforming Insight into Action10:15 - 11:15 a.m. Tuesday, Oct. 2; Moscone West – 2007 CON9467: Oracle’s Roadmap to a Simple, Modern User Experience3:30 - 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 3; Moscone West - 3002/3004 CON8718: Oracle Fusion Applications: Customizing and Extending with Oracle Composers11:15 a.m. - 12:15 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 4; Moscone West – 2008 GEN9663: General Session: A Panel of Masterminds—Where Are Oracle Applications Headed?1:45 - 2:45 p.m. Monday, Oct. 1; Moscone North - Hall D If you’re interested in PeopleSoft/PeopleTools: GEN8928: General Session: PeopleSoft Update and Product Roadmap3:15 - 4:15 p.m. Monday, Oct. 1; Moscone West - 3002/3004 CON9183: PeopleSoft PeopleTools Technology Roadmap4:45 - 5:45 p.m. Monday, Oct. 1; Moscone West - 3002/3004 CON8932: New Functional PeopleSoft PeopleTools Capabilities for the Line-of-Business User5:00 - 6:00 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 2; Moscone West – 3007 If you’re interested in E-Business Suite: GEN8474: General Session: Oracle E-Business Suite—Strategy, Update, and Roadmap12:15 - 1:15 p.m. Monday, Oct. 1; Moscone West - 2002/2004 CON9026: Latest Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1 User Interface and Usability Enhancements1:15 - 2:15 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 2; Moscone West – 2016 If you’re interested in Siebel: CON9700: Siebel CRM Overview, Strategy, and Roadmap12:15 - 1:15 p.m. Monday, Oct. 1; Moscone West – 2009 CON9703: User Interface Innovations with the New Siebel “Open UI”10:15 - 11:15 a.m. Tuesday, Oct. 2; Moscone West – 2009 If you’re interested in JD Edwards EnterpriseOne: HOL10452: JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.1 User Interface Changes10:15 - 11:15 a.m. Wednesday, Oct. 3; Marriott Marquis - Nob Hill AB CON9160: Showcase of the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne User Experience1:15 - 2:15 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 3; InterContinental - Grand Ballroom B CON9159: Euphoria with the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne User Experience11:45 a.m. - 12:45 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 3; InterContinental - Grand Ballroom B If you’re interested in Oracle Fusion Applications user experience design patterns: Functional design patterns that helped create the Oracle Fusion Applications user experience are now available. Learn more about these new, reusable usability solutions and best-practices at the Oracle JDeveloper and Oracle ADF demopods during Oracle OpenWorld 2012. Or visit the OTN Lounge between 4:30 p.m. and 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 3, to talk to Ultan O'Broin from the Oracle Applications User Experience team.    Demopod location: Moscone Center, South Exhibition Hall Level 1, S-207 OTN (Oracle Technology Network) Lounge: Howard Street tent On the demogrounds: Head to the demogrounds to see new demos from the Applications User Experience team, including the new look for Fusion Applications and what we’re building for mobile platforms. Take a spin on our eye tracker, a very cool tool that we use to research the usability of a particular design. Visit the Usable Apps OpenWorld page to find out where our demopods will be located.Photo by Martin Taylor, Oracle Applications User ExperienceA tour takes place in one of the usability labs at Oracle’s headquarters in Redwood Shores, Calif. At our labs, on-site and at HQ: We are also recruiting participants for our on-site lab, in which we gather feedback on new user experience designs, and taking reservations for a charter bus that will bring you to Oracle headquarters for a lab tour Thursday, Oct. 4, or Friday, Oct. 5. Tours leave at 10 a.m. and 1:45 p.m. from the Moscone Center in San Francisco. You’ll see more of our newest designs at the lab tour, and some of our research tools in action. For more information on any OpenWorld sessions, check the content catalog, also available at www.oracle.com/openworld. For information on Applications User Experience (Apps UX) sessions and activities, go to the Usable Apps OpenWorld page.

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• Database – Beginning with Cloud Database As A Service

  - by Pinal Dave

  I love my weekend projects. Everybody does different activities in their weekend – like traveling, reading or just nothing. Every weekend I try to do something creative and different in the database world. The goal is I learn something new and if I enjoy my learning experience I share with the world. This weekend, I decided to explore Cloud Database As A Service – Morpheus. In my career I have managed many databases in the cloud and I have good experience in managing them. I should highlight that today’s applications use multiple databases from SQL for transactions and analytics, NoSQL for documents, In-Memory for caching to Indexing for search.  Provisioning and deploying these databases often require extensive expertise and time.  Often these databases are also not deployed on the same infrastructure and can create unnecessary latency between the application layer and the databases.  Not to mention the different quality of service based on the infrastructure and the service provider where they are deployed. Moreover, there are additional problems that I have experienced with traditional database setup when hosted in the cloud: Database provisioning & orchestration Slow speed due to hardware issues Poor Monitoring Tools High network latency Now if you have a great software and expert network engineer, you can continuously work on above problems and overcome them. However, not every organization have the luxury to have top notch experts in the field. Now above issues are related to infrastructure, but there are a few more problems which are related to software/application as well. Here are the top three things which can be problems if you do not have application expert: Replication and Clustering Simple provisioning of the hard drive space Automatic Sharding Well, Morpheus looks like a product build by experts who have faced similar situation in the past. The product pretty much addresses all the pain points of developers and database administrators. What is different about Morpheus is that it offers a variety of databases from MySQL, MongoDB, ElasticSearch to Reddis as a service.  Thus users can pick and chose any combination of these databases.  All of them can be provisioned in a matter of minutes with a simple and intuitive point and click user interface.  The Morpheus cloud is built on Solid State Drives (SSD) and is designed for high-speed database transactions.  In addition it offers a direct link to Amazon Web Services to minimize latency between the application layer and the databases. Here are the few steps on how one can get started with Morpheus. Follow along with me.  First go to http://www.gomorpheus.com and register for a new and free account. Step 1: Signup It is very simple to signup for Morpheus. Step 2: Select your database   I use MySQL for my daily routine, so I have selected MySQL. Upon clicking on the big red button to add Instance, it prompted a dialogue of creating a new instance.   Step 3: Create User Now we just have to create a user in our portal which we will use to connect to a database hosted at Morpheus. Click on your database instance and it will bring you to User Screen. Over here you will notice once again a big red button to create a new user. I created a user with my first name.   Step 4: Configure your MySQL client I used MySQL workbench and connected to MySQL instance, which I had created with an IP address and user.   That’s it! You are connecting to MySQL instance. Now you can create your objects just like you would create on your local box. You will have all the features of the Morpheus when you are working with your database. Dashboard While working with Morpheus, I was most impressed with its dashboard. In future blog posts, I will write more about this feature.  Also with Morpheus you use the same process for provisioning and connecting with other databases: MongoDB, ElasticSearch and Reddis. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: MySQL, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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• Oracle Social Network and the Flying Monkey Smart Target

  - by kellsey.ruppel

  Originally posted by Jake Kuramoto on The Apps Lab blog. I teased this before OpenWorld, and for those of you who didn’t make it to the show or didn’t come by the Office Hours to take the Oracle Social Network Technical Tour Noel (@noelportugal) ran, I give you the Flying Monkey Smart Target. In brief, Noel built a target, about two feet tall, which when struck, played monkey sounds and posted a comment to an Oracle Social Network Conversation, all controlled by a Raspberry Pi. He also connected a Dropcam to record the winner just prior to the strike. I’m not sure how it all works, but maybe Noel can post the technical specifics. Here’s Noel describing the Challenge, the Target and a few other tidbit in an interview with Friend of the ‘Lab, Bob Rhubart (@brhubart). The monkey target bits are 2:12-2:54 if you’re into brevity, but watch the whole thing. Here are some screen grabs from the Oracle Social Network Conversation, including the Conversation itself, where you can see all the strikes documented, the picture captured, and the annotation capabilities: #gallery-1 { margin: auto;? } #gallery-1 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-1 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-1 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; }    That’s Diego in one shot, looking very focused, and Ernst in the other, who kindly annotated himself, two of the development team members. You might have seen them in the Oracle Social Network Hands-On Lab during the show. There’s a trend here. Not by accident, fun stuff like this has becoming our calling card, e.g. the Kscope 12 WebCenter Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robots. Not only are these entertaining demonstrations, but they showcase what’s possible with RESTful APIs and get developers noodling on how easy it is to connect real objects to cloud services to fix pain points. I spoke to some great folks from the City of Atlanta about extending the concepts of the flying monkey target to physical asset monitoring. Just take an internet-connected camera with REST APIs like the Dropcam, wire it up to Oracle Social Netwok, and you can hack together a monitoring device for a datacenter or a warehouse. Sure, it’s easier said than done, but we’re a lot closer to that reality than we were even two years ago. Another noteworthy bit from Noel’s interview, beginning at 2:55, is the evolution of social developer. Speaking of, make sure to check out the Oracle Social Developer Community. Look for more on the social developer in the coming months. Noel has become quite the Raspberry Pi evangelist, and why not, it’s a great tool, a low-power Linux machine, cheap ($35!) and highly extensible, perfect for makers and students alike. He attended a meetup on Saturday before OpenWorld, and during the show, I heard him evangelizing the Pi and its capabilities to many people. There is some fantastic innovation forming in that ecosystem, much of it with Java. The OTN gang raffled off five Pis, and I expect to see lots of great stuff in the very near future. Stay tuned this week for posts on all our Challenge entrants. There’s some great innovation you won’t want to miss. Find the comments. Update: I forgot to mention that Noel used Twilio, one of his favorite services, during the show to send out Challenge updates and information to all the contestants.

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• Welcome to Jackstown

  - by fatherjack

  I live in a small town, the population count isn't that great but let me introduce you to some of the population. We'll start with Martin the Doc, he fixes up anything that gets poorly, so much so that he could be classed as the doctor, the vet and even the garage mechanic. He's got a reputation that he can fix anything and that hasn't been proved wrong yet. He's great friends with Brian (who gets called "Brains") the teacher who seems to have a sound understanding of any topic you care to pass his way. If he isn't sure he tells you and then goes to find out and comes back with a full answer real quick. Its good to have that sort of research capability close at hand. Brains is also great at encouraging anyone who needs a bit of support to get them up to speed and working on their jobs. Steve sees Brains regularly, that's because he is the librarian, he keeps all sorts of reading material and nowadays there's even video to watch about any topic you like. Steve keeps scouring all sorts of places to get the content that's needed and he keeps it in good order so that what ever is needed can be found quickly. He also has to make sure that old stuff gets marked as probably out of date so that anyone reading it wont get mislead. Over the road from him is Greg, he's the town crier. We don't have a newspaper here so Greg keeps us all informed of what's going on "out of town" - what new stuff we might make use of and what wont work in a small place like this. If we are interested he goes ahead and gets people in to demonstrate their products  and tell us about the details. Greg is pretty good at getting us discounts too. Now Greg's brother Ian works for the mayors office in the "waste management department" nowadays its all about the recycling but he still has to make sure that the stuff that cant be used any more gets disposed of properly. It depends on the type of waste he's dealing with that decides how it need to be treated and he has to know a lot about the different methods and when to use which ones. There are two people that keep the peace in town, Brent is the detective, investigating wrong doings and applying justice where necessary and Bart is the diplomat who smooths things over when any people have a dispute or disagreement. Brent is meticulous in his investigations and fair in the way he handles any situation he finds. Discretion is his byword. There's a rumour that Bart used to work for the United Nations but what ever his history there is no denying his ability to get apparently irreconcilable parties working together to their combined benefit. Someone who works closely with Bart is Brad, he is the translator in town. He has several languages that he can converse in but he can also explain things from someone's point of view or  and make it understandable to someone else. To keep things on the straight and narrow from a legal perspective is Ben the solicitor, making sure we all abide by the rules.Two people who make for an interesting evening's conversation if you get them together are Aaron and Grant, Aaron is the local planning inspector and Grant is an inventor of some reputation. Anything being constructed around here needs Aarons agreement. He's quite flexible in his rules though; if you can justify what you want to do with solid logic but he wont stand for any development going on without his inclusion. That gets a demolition notice and there's no argument. Grant as I mentioned is the inventor in town, if something can be improved or created then Grant is your man. He mainly works on his own but isnt averse to getting specific advice and assistance from specialist from out of town if they can help him finish his creations.There aren't too many people left for you to meet in the town, there's Rob, he's an ex professional sportsman. He played Hockey, Football, Cricket, you name it. He was in his element as goal keeper / wicket keeper and that shows in his personal life. He just goes about his business and people often don't even know that he's helped them. Really low profile, doesn't get any glory but saves people from lots of problems, even disasters on occasion. There goes Neil, he's a bit of an odd person, some people say he's gifted with special clairvoyant powers, personally I think he's got his ear to the ground and knows where to find out the important news as soon as its made public. Anyone getting a visit from Neil is best off to follow his advice though, he's usually spot on and you wont be caught by surprise if you follow his recommendations – wherever it comes from.Poor old Andrew is the last person to introduce you to. Andrew doesn't show himself too often but when he does it seems that people find a reason to blame him for their problems, whether he had anything to do with their predicament or not. In all honesty, without fail, and to his great credit, he takes it in good grace and never retaliates or gets annoyed when he's out and about.  It pays off too as its very often the case that those who were blaming him recently suddenly find they need his help and they readily forget the issues pretty rapidly.And then there's me, what do I do in town? Well, I'm just a DBA with a lot of hats. (Jackstown Pop. 1)

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• Oracle Social Network Developer Challenge: Bezzotech

  - by Kellsey Ruppel

  Originally posted by Jake Kuramoto on The Apps Lab blog. I’ve covered all the entries we had for the Oracle Social Network Developer Challenge, the winners, Dimitri and Martin, HarQen, TEAM Informatics and John Sim from Fishbowl Solutions, and today, I’m giving you bonus coverage. Friend of the ‘Lab, Bex Huff (@bex) from Bezzotech (@bezzotech), had an interesting OpenWorld. He rebounded from an allergic reaction to finish his entry, Honey Badger, only to have his other OpenWorld commitments make him unable to present his work. Still, he did a bunch of work, and I want to make sure everyone knows about the Honey Badger. If you’re wondering about the name, it’s a meme; “honey badger don’t care.” Bex tackled a common problem with social tools by adding game mechanics to create an incentive for people to keep their profiles updated. He used a Hot-or-Not style comparison app that poses expertise questions and awards a badge to the winner. Questions are based on whatever attributes the business wants to emphasize. The goal is to find the mavens in an organization, give them praise and recognition, ideally creating incentive for everyone to raise their games. In his own words: There is a real information quality problem in social networks. In last year’s keynote, Larry Elison demonstrated how to use the social network to track down resources that have the skill sets needed for specific projects. But how well would that work in real life? People usually update that information with the basic profile information, but they rarely update their profiles with latest news items, projects, customers, or skills. It’s a pain. Or, put another way, when was the last time you updated your LinkedIn profile? Enter the Honey Badger! This is a example of a comparator app that gamifies the way people keep their profiles updated, which ensures higher quality data in the social network. An administrator comes up with a series of important questions: Who is a better communicator? Who is a better Java programmer? Who is a better team player? And people would have a space in their profile to give a justification as to why they have these skills. The second part of the app is the comparator. It randomly shows two people, their names, and their justification for why they have these skills. You will click on one of them to “vote” for them, then on the next page you will see the results from the previous match, and get 2 new people to vote on. Anybody with a winning score wins a “Honey Badge” to be displayed on their profile page, which proudly states that their peers agree that this person has those skills. Once a badge is won, it will be jealously guarded. The longer your go without updating your profile, the more likely it is that you will lose your badge. This “loss aversion” is well known in psychology, and is a strong incentive for people to keep their profiles up to date. If a user sees their rank drop from 90% to 60%, they will find the time to update their justification! Unfortunately, during the hackathon we were not allowed to modify the schema to allow for additional fields such as “justification.” So this hack is limited to just the one basic question: who is the bigger Honey Badger? Here are some shots of the Honey Badger application: #gallery-1 { margin: auto; } #gallery-1 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-1 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-1 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } Thanks to Bex and everyone for participating in our challenge. Despite very little time to promote this event, we had a great turnout and creative and useful entries. The amount of work required to put together these final entries was significant, especially during a conference, and the judges and all of us involved were impressed at how much work everyone was able to do. Congrats to everyone, pat yourselves on the back. Stay tuned if you’re interested in challenges like these. We’ll likely be running similar events in the not-so-distant future.

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• Parner Webcast - Innovations in Products Program

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  We are pleased to invite you to join the Innovations in Products –webcast. Innovations in Products will present Oracle Applications' Product's new functions and features including sales positioning. The key objectives of these webcasts are to inspire System Integrator's implementation personnel to conduct successful after sales in their Customer projects. Innovations in Products will be presented on the 1st Monday of each quarter after the billable day (4:00 to 5:00 PM CET). The webcast is intended for System Integrator's Implementation Certified Specialists but Innovations in Products is open for other interested Oracle Applications system Integrator's personnel as well. At first, two Oracle representatives will discuss Oracle's contribution to Partners. Then you will see product breakout session followed by Q&A with Oracle Experts. Each session will last for maximum 1 hour. A Q&A document covering all questions and answers will be made available after the webcast. What are the Benefits for partners? Find out how Innovations in Products helps you to improve your after sales Discover new functions and features so you can enrich your Customers's solution Learn more about Oracle Applications products, especially sales positioning Hear crucial questions raised by colleague alike, learn from their interest Engage and present your questions to subject experts Be inspired of the richness of Oracle Application portfolio – for your and your customer’s benefit Note: Should you already be familiar with a specific Product, then choose another one. Doing so you would expand your knowledge of the overall Applications portfolio. Some presentations contain product demonstration, although these presentations are not intended to be extremely detailed technical presentations. Note: At the latter part of this email you have also 17 links into the recent Applications Products presentations and 6 links into the Public Sector Value Proposition presentations that were presented in Innovations in Industries -program. Product breakout sessions: Topics Speaker To Register Fusion Applications Technology and Extensibility: A next-generation platform that adapts to client needs. Matthew Johnson, Sr. Director, SCM Product Development, EMEA CLICK HERE Fusion Applications - Transforming your Back-Office Accounting Function: Changing how people work in back office functions to drive value add Liam Nolan, Director, ERP Product Development, EMEA CLICK HERE Fusion HCM & Talent Overview & Extensibility: A more in-depth look into a personalized HCM solution Synco Jonkeren, Vice-President HCM Product Development & Management, EMEA CLICK HERE Fusion HCM Compensation Planning: Compensate To Compete Rosie Warner, Director, HCM Sales Development CLICK HERE Enterprise PLM for the Product Value Chain: Oracle Enterprise PLM offers Industry specific solutions that cover the Product Value Chain Ulf Köster, Sales Development Leader Enterprise PLM, Oracle Western Europe CLICK HERE Oracle's Asset Management and Maintenance Solution: What you need to know to successfully implement Oracle Asset Management solutions within Oracle Installed Base Philip Carey, Asset Management and Maintenance Solution Specialist CLICK HERE For more details please visit Innovations in Products and other breakout sessions on OPN page. Delivery Format Innovations in Products –program is a series of FREE prerecorded Applications product presentations followed by Q&A. It will be delivered over the Web. Participants have the opportunity to submit questions during the web cast via chat and subject matter experts will provide verbal answers live. Innovations in Products consists of several parallel prerecorded product breakout sessions, each lasting for max. 1 hour. At first, two Oracle representatives will discuss Oracle’s contribution to Partners. Then you’ll see the product breakout sessions followed by Q&A with Oracle Experts. A Q&A document covering all questions and answers will be made available after the webcast. You can also see Innovations in Products afterwards as its content will be available online for the next 6-12 months. The next Innovations in Products web casts will be presented as follows: July 2nd 2012 October 1st 2012 January 14th 2013 April 8th 2013. Note: Depending on local network bandwidth please allow some seconds time the presentations to download. You might want to refresh your screen by pressing F5. Duration Maximum 1 hour For further information please contact me Markku Rouhiainen. Recent Innovations in Products presentations Applications Products presented on April the 2nd, 2012 Speaker To Register Fusion CRM: Effective, Efficient and Easy James Penfold , Senior Director, Applications Product Development and Product Management CLICK HERE Fusion HCM: Talent management overview performance, goals, talent review Jaime Losantos Viñolas, Director, HCM Sales Development CLICK HERE Distributed Order Management - Fusion SCM Solution Vikram K Singla, Business Development Director, Supply Chain Management Applications, UK CLICK HERE Oracle Transportation Management Dominic Regan, Senior Director Oracle Transportation Management EMEA CLICK HERE Oracle Value Chain Planning: Demantra Sales & Operation Planning and Demantra Demand Management Lionel Albert, Senior Director Value Chain Planning, EMEA CLICK HERE Oracle CX (Customer Experience) - formerly CEM: Powering Great Customer Experiences Maria Ramirez , CRM Presales Consultant, EPC CLICK HERE EPM 11.1.2.2 Overview Nicholas Cox , EMEA Sales Development Director - Enterprise Performance Management CLICK HERE Oracle Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management, 11.1.2.1 Daniela Lazar , Senior EPM Sales Consultant, EPC CLICK HERE January the 16th 2012 Speaker To Register CRM / ATG: Best-in-Class CRM & Commerce Maria Ramirez , Associate CRM Presales Consultant, EPC CLICK HERE CRM / Automate Business Rules for Maximum Efficiency with OPA (Oracle Policy Automation) Marco Nilo, Associate CRM Presales Consultant, EPC CLICK HERE CRM / InQuira Toby Baker, Principal Sales Consultant, CRM Product Specialist Team CLICK HERE EPM / Business Intelligence Foundation Suite – Sales and Product Updates Liviu Nitescu, Senior BI Sales Consultant, EPC CLICK HERE EPM / Hyperion Planning 11.1.2.1 - Sales & Product Updates Andreea Voinea, EPM Sales Consultant, EPC CLICK HERE ERP / JDE EnterpriseOne Fulfillment Management Overview Mirela Andreea Nasta , ERP Presales Consultant, EPC CLICK HERE ERP / Spotlights on iExpenses Elena Nita ,ERP Presales Consultant, EPC CLICK HERE MDM / Master Data Management Martin Boyd , Senior Director Product Strategy CLICK HERE Product break through session Fusion Applications Human Capital Management Rosie Warner , Director, HCM Sales Development CLICK HERE Recent Innovations in Industries Value Proposition presentations January the 16th 2012 Speaker To Register Process Modernisation Iemke Idsingh Public Sector Solutions Director CLICK HERE Shared Services Ann Smith Business Development Director, Shared Services CLICK HERE Strengthening Financial Discipline Whilst Delivering Cashable Savings Philippa Headley UK Sales Development Director Public Sector - EPM Solutions CLICK HERE Social Welfare Industry Solutions Christian Wernberg-Tougaard Industry Director - Social Welfare CLICK HERE Police Industry Solutions Jeff Penrose Solution Sales Director CLICK HERE Tax and Revenue Management Industry Solutions Andre van der Post Global Director - Tax Solutions and Strategy CLICK HERE  

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