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• JavaOne in Brazil

  - by janice.heiss(at)oracle.com

  JavaOne in Brazil, currently taking place in Sao Paolo, is one event I'd love to attend. I once heard "father of Java" James Gosling talk about Java developers throughout the world. He observed that there were good developers everywhere. It was not the case, he said, that that the really good developers are in one place and the not-so-good developers are in another. He encountered excellent developers everywhere. Then he paused and said that the craziest developers were definitely the Brazilians. As anyone who knows James would realize, this was meant as high praise. He said the Brazilians would work through the night on projects and were very enthusiastic and spontaneous - features that Brazilian culture is known for. Brazilian developers are responsible for creating one of the most impressive uses of Java ever - the applications that run the Brazilian health services. Starting from scratch they created a system that enables an expert doctor in Rio to look at an X-Ray of a patient near the Amazon and offer advice. One of the main architects of this was Java Champion Fabinane Nardon the distinguished Brazilian Java architect and open-source evangelist. As she writes in her blog:"In 2003, I was invited to assemble a team and architect a Public Healthcare Information System for the city of São Paulo, the largest in Latin America, with 14 million inhabitants. The resulting software had 2.5 million of lines of code and it was created, from specification to production, in only 10 months. At the time, the software was considered the largest J2EE application in the world and was featured in several articles, as this one. As a result, we won the Duke's Choice Award in 2005 during JavaOne, the largest development conference in the world. At the time, Sun Microsystems make a short documentary about our work." "In 2007, a lightning struck twice and I was again invited to assemble a new team and architect an even larger information system for healthcare. And thus I became CTO and one of the founders of Zilics Healthcare Information Systems. "In 2010, I started to research and work on Cloud Computing technology and became leader of the LSI-TEC Cloud Computing group. LSI-TEC is a research laboratory in the University of Sao Paulo, one of the best in Brazil. Thus, I became one of the ghost writers behind the popular Cloud Computing Twitter @the_cloud."You can see and hear Nardon in a 4 minute documentary on Java and the Brazilian health care system produced by Sun Microsystems. And you can listen to a September 2010 podcast with Nardon and her fellow Brazilian Java Champion Bruno Souza (known in Brazil as "Java Man") here at 11:10 minutes into the podcast.Next year, I'll hope to be reporting in Brazil at JavaOne!

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• Craftsmanship Tour: Day 3 &amp; 4 8th Light

  - by Liam McLennan

  Thursday morning the Illinois public transport system came through for me again. I took the Metra train north from Union Station (which was seething with inbound commuters) to Prairie Crossing (Libertyville). At Prairie Crossing I met Paul and Justin from 8th Light and then Justin drove us to the office. The 8th Light office is in an small business park, in a semi-rural area, surrounded by ponds. Upstairs there are two spacious, open areas for developers. At one end of the floor is Doug Bradbury’s walk-and-code station; a treadmill with a desk and computer so that a developer can get exercise at work. At the other end of the floor is a hammock. This irregular office furniture is indicative of the 8th Light philosophy, to pursue excellence without being limited by conventional wisdom. 8th Light have a wall covered in posters, each illustrating one person’s software craftsmanship journey. The posters are a fascinating visualisation of the similarities and differences between each of our progressions. The first thing I did Thursday morning was to create my own poster and add it to the wall. Over two days at 8th Light I did some pairing with the 8th Lighters and we shared thoughts on software development. I am not accustomed to such a progressive and enlightened environment and I found the experience inspirational. At 8th Light TDD, clean code, pairing and kaizen are deeply ingrained in the culture. Friday, during lunch, 8th Light hosted a ‘lunch and learn’ event. Paul Pagel lead us through a coding exercise using micro-pomodori. We worked in pairs, focusing on the pedagogy of pair programming and TDD. After lunch I recorded this interview with Paul Pagel and Justin Martin. We discussed 8th light, craftsmanship, apprenticeships and the limelight framework. Interview with Paul Pagel and Justin Martin My time at Didit, Obtiva and 8th Light has convinced me that I need to give up some of my independence and go back to working in a team. Craftsmen advance their skills by learning from each other, and I can’t do that working at home by myself. The challenge is finding the right team, and becoming a part of it.

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• Innovation, Adaptability and Agility Emerge As Common Themes at ACORD LOMA Insurance Forum

  - by [email protected]

  Helen Pitts, senior product marketing manager for Oracle Insurance is blogging from the show floor of the ACORD LOMA Insurance Forum this week. Sessions at the ACORD LOMA Insurance Forum this week highlighted the need for insurance companies to think creatively and be innovative with their technology in order to adapt to continuously shifting market dynamics and drive business efficiency and agility.  LOMA President & CEO Robert Kerzner kicked off the day on Tuesday, citing how the recent downtown and recovery has impacted the insurance industry and the ways that companies are doing business.  He encouraged carriers to look for new ways to deliver solutions and offer a better service experience for consumers.  ACORD President & CEO Gregory Maciag reinforced Kerzner's remarks, noting how the industry's approach to technology and development of industry standards has evolved over the association's 40-year history and cited how the continued rise of mobile computing will change the way many carriers are doing business today and in the future. Drawing from his own experiences, popular keynote speaker and Apple Co-Founder Steve Wozniak continued this theme, delving into ways that insurers can unite business with technology.  "iWoz" encouraged insurers to foster an entrepreneurial mindset in a corporate environment to create a culture of creativity and innovation.  He noted that true innovation in business comes from those who have a passion for what they do.  Innovation was also a common theme in several sessions throughout the day with topics ranging from modernization of core systems, automated underwriting, distribution management, CRM and customer communications management.  It was evident that insurers have begun to move past the "old school" processes and systems that constrain agility, implementing new process models and modern technology to become nimble and more adaptive to the market.   Oracle Insurance executives shared a few examples of how insurers are achieving innovation during our Platinum Sponsor session, "Adaptive System Transformation:  Making Agility More Than a Buzzword." Oracle Insurance Senior Vice President and General Manager Don Russo was joined by Chuck Johnston, vice president, global strategy and alliances, and Srini Venkatasantham, vice president of product strategy.  The three shared how Oracle's adaptive solutions for insurance, with a focus on how the key pillars of an adaptive systems - configurable applications, accessible information, extensible content and flexible process - have helped insurers respond rapidly, perform effectively and win more business. Insurers looking to innovate their business with adaptive insurance solutions including policy administration, business intelligence, enterprise document automation, rating and underwriting, claims, CRM and more stopped by the Oracle Insurance booth on the exhibit floor.  It was a premiere destination for many participating in the exhibit hall tours conducted throughout the day. Finally, red was definitely the color of the evening at the Oracle Insurance "Red Hot" customer celebration at the House of Blues. The event provided a great opportunity for our customers to come together and network with the Oracle Insurance team and their peers in the industry.  We look forward to visiting more with of our customers and making new connections today. Helen Pitts is senior product marketing manager for Oracle Insurance. 

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• SSIS Catalog, Windows updates and deployment failures due to System.Core mismatch

  - by jamiet

  This is a heads-up for anyone doing development on SSIS. On my current project where we are implementing a SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) 2012 solution we recently encountered a situation where we were unable to deploy any of our projects even though we had successfully deployed in the past. Any attempt to use the deployment wizard resulted in this error dialog: The text of the error (for all you search engine crawlers out there) was: A .NET Framework error occurred during execution of user-defined routine or aggregate "create_key_information": System.IO.FileLoadException: Could not load file or assembly 'System.Core, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089' or one of its dependencies. The located assembly's manifest definition does not match the assembly reference. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80131040) ---> System.IO.FileLoadException: The located assembly's manifest definition does not match the assembly reference. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80131040) System.IO.FileLoadException: System.IO.FileLoadException:     at Microsoft.SqlServer.IntegrationServices.Server.Security.CryptoGraphy.CreateSymmetricKey(String algorithm)    at Microsoft.SqlServer.IntegrationServices.Server.Security.CryptoGraphy.CreateKeyInformation(SqlString algorithmName, SqlBytes& key, SqlBytes& IV) . (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 6522) After some investigation and a bit of back and forth with some very helpful members of the SSIS product team (hey Matt, Wee Hyong) it transpired that this was due to a .Net Framework fix that had been delivered via Windows Update. I took a look at the server update history and indeed there have been some recently applied .Net Framework updates: This fix had (in the words of Matt Masson) “somehow caused a mismatch on System.Core for SQLCLR” and, as you may know, SQLCLR is used heavily within the SSIS Catalog. The fix was pretty simple – restart SQL Server. This causes the assemblies to be upgraded automatically. If you are using Data Quality Services (DQS) you may have experienced similar problems which are documented at Upgrade SQLCLR Assemblies After .NET Framework Update. I am hoping the SSIS team will follow-up with a more thorough explanation on their blog soon. You DBAs out there may be questioning why Windows Update is set to automatically apply updates on our production servers. We’re checking that out with our hosting provider right now You have been warned! @Jamiet

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• links for 2010-04-14

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Why business needs should shape IT architecture - McKinsey Quarterly - Business Technology - Organization "Too often, efforts to fix architecture issues remain rooted in a company’s IT practices, culture, and leadership. The reason, in part, is that the chief architect—the overall IT-architecture program leader—is frequently selected from within the technical ranks, bringing deep IT know-how but little direct experience or influence in leading a business-wide change program. A weak linkage to the business creates a void that limits the quality of the resulting IT architecture and the organization’s ability to enforce and sustain the benefits of implementation over time." -- Helge Buckow and Stéphane Rey (tags: architecture it technology enterprise mckinsey) Eric Maurice: April 2010 Critical Patch Update Released Eric Maurice offers the details on April 2010 Critical Patch Update (CPUApr2010), "the first one to include security fixes for Oracle Solaris" (tags: oracle otn database fusionmiddleware peoplesoft security) @shivmohan: Oracle – OAF – Oracle Application Framework – OA Framework "For all the PL/SQL and Oracle Forms developers out there, start planning your evolution. Sure PL/SQL and Forms will be around for some time, but you need to add more skills to your stack if you want to stay current (employable)." -- Shivmohan Purohit (tags: oracle otn application framework) @ORACLENERD: APEX Architecture Oracle ACE Chet Justice offer a "short list of potential architectures" for Oracle APEX, based on his experience with a client. (tags: oracle otn oracleace apex architecture) Luis Moreno Campos: Why is Exadata so fast? "You could find a lot of tech doc around oracle.com, but the bottom line is that the vision to even build a V2 and place it as an OLTP and DW (general purpose) machine is just pure genius." -- Luis Moreno Campos (tags: oracle otn exadata database) Edwin Biemond: Resetting Weblogic datasources with ANT Oracle ACE and Whitehorses architect Edwin Biemond shares an ANT script "to fire some WLST and Python commandos" to correct invalid database session states. (tags: oracle otn oracleace database ANT Python) @deltalounge: The future of MySQL with Oracle Peter Paul van de Beek has compiled an informative collection of Edward Scriven quotes, from various publications, on Oracle's plans for MySQL. (tags: oracle otn database mysql) Cristobal Soto: Coherence Special Interest Group: First Meeting in Toronto, Upcoming Events in New York and California Cameron Purdy, Patrick Peralta, and others are speaking at upcoming Coherence SIG events. Cristobal Soto shares the details. (tags: oracle otn coherence sig grid appserver)

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• The 2010 Life Insurance Conference - Washington, DC

  - by [email protected]

  How ironic to be in Washington, DC on April 15 - TAX DAY! Fortunately, I avoided IRS offices and attended the much more enjoyable 2010 Life Insurance Conference, presented by LIMRA, LOMA SOA and ACLI. This year's conference offered a variety of tracks focused on the Life Industry including Distribution/Marketing Marketing, Administration, Actuarial/Product Development, Regulatory, Reinsurance and Strategic Management. President and CEO of the ACLI, Frank Keating, opened the event by moderating a session titled "Executive Viewpoint on new Opportunities." Guest speakers included Ted Mathas, President and CEO of NY Life, and John Walters, President and CEO of Hartford Life. Both speakers were insightful as they shared the challenges and opportunities each company faces and the key role life insurance companies play in our society and the global economy. There were several key themes that were reiterated in multiple sessions throughout the conference - the economy is on the rebound, optimism is growing, consumer spending is up and an uptick in employment is likely to follow. The threat of a double dip recession has seemed to passed. Good news for our industry, and welcomed by all in attendance. Of special interest to me, given my background, was some research shared by both The Nolan Group and Novarica in separate sessions. Both firms indicate that policy administration upgrades/replacement projects remain a top priority in 2010. Carriers continue to invest in modern technology. Modern ultra-configurable systems enable carriers to switch from a waterfall to an agile project methodology, which often entails a "culture change" within an organization. Other themes heard throughout the two-day event: Virtually all sessions focused on People, Process and Technology! Product innovation, agility and speed to market are as important as ever. Social Networks and Twitter are becoming more popular ways of communicating with both field and dispersed staff. Several sessions focused on the application, new business and underwriting process. Companies continue looking for ways to increase market agility, accelerate speed to market, address cost issues and improve service levels across the process. They recognize the need to ease the way to do business with both producers and consumers. Author and economic futurist Jeff Thredgold presented an entertaining, informative and humorous general session on Wednesday afternoon that focused on the US and global economies, financial markets and retirement outlook. Thredgold did not disappoint anyone with his message! The Thursday morning general session was keynoted by Therese Vaughan (CEO - NAIC) and Thomas Crawford (President of C2 Group). Both speakers gave a poignant view of the recent financial crisis and discussed "Putting the Pieces Back Together." Therese spoke of the recent financial turmoil and likely changes to regulations to the financial services sector. Tom's topics focused on economic recovery and the political environment in Washington, and how that impacts our industry. Next year's event will be April 11-13, 2011 in Las Vegas. Roger A.Soppe, CLU, LUTCF, is the Senior Director of Insurance Strategy, Oracle Insurance.

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• SharePoint 2010 Field Expression Builder

  - by Ricardo Peres

  OK, back to two of my favorite topics, expression builders and SharePoint. This time I wanted to be able to retrieve a field value from the current page declaratively on the markup so that I can assign it to some control’s property, without the need for writing code. Of course, the most straight way to do it is through an expression builder. Here’s the code: 1: [ExpressionPrefix("SPField")] 2: public class SPFieldExpressionBuilder : ExpressionBuilder 3: { 4: #region Public static methods 5: public static Object GetFieldValue(String fieldName, PropertyInfo propertyInfo) 6: { 7: Object fieldValue = SPContext.Current.ListItem[fieldName]; 8:  9: if (fieldValue != null) 10: { 11: if ((fieldValue is IConvertible) && (typeof(IConvertible).IsAssignableFrom(propertyInfo.PropertyType) == true)) 12: { 13: if (propertyInfo.PropertyType.IsAssignableFrom(fieldValue.GetType()) != true) 14: { 15: fieldValue = Convert.ChangeType(fieldValue, propertyInfo.PropertyType); 16: } 17: } 18: } 19:  20: return (fieldValue); 21: } 22:  23: #endregion 24:  25: #region Public override methods 26: public override Object EvaluateExpression(Object target, BoundPropertyEntry entry, Object parsedData, ExpressionBuilderContext context) 27: { 28: return (GetFieldValue(entry.Expression, entry.PropertyInfo)); 29: } 30:  31: public override CodeExpression GetCodeExpression(BoundPropertyEntry entry, Object parsedData, ExpressionBuilderContext context) 32: { 33: if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(entry.Expression) == true) 34: { 35: return (new CodePrimitiveExpression(String.Empty)); 36: } 37: else 38: { 39: return (new CodeMethodInvokeExpression(new CodeMethodReferenceExpression(new CodeTypeReferenceExpression(this.GetType()), "GetFieldValue"), new CodePrimitiveExpression(entry.Expression), new CodePropertyReferenceExpression(new CodeArgumentReferenceExpression("entry"), "PropertyInfo"))); 40: } 41: } 42:  43: #endregion 44:  45: #region Public override properties 46: public override Boolean SupportsEvaluate 47: { 48: get 49: { 50: return (true); 51: } 52: } 53: #endregion 54: } You will notice that it will even try to convert the field value to the target property’s type, through the use of the IConvertible interface and the Convert.ChangeType method. It must be placed on the Global Assembly Cache or you will get a security-related exception. The other alternative is to change the trust level of your web application to full trust. Here’s how to register it on Web.config: 1: <expressionBuilders> 2: <!-- ... --> 3: <add expressionPrefix="SPField" type="MyNamespace.SPFieldExpressionBuilder, MyAssembly, Culture=neutral, Version=1.0.0.0, PublicKeyToken=29186a6b9e7b779f" /> 4: </expressionBuilders> And finally, here’s how to use it on an ASPX or ASCX file inside a publishing page: 1: <asp:Label runat="server" Text="<%$ SPField:Title %>"/>

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• TechEd 2012: Day 3 &ndash; Morning TFS

  - by Tim Murphy

  My morning sessions for day three were dominated by Team Foundation Server.  This has been a hot topic for our clients lately, so this topic really stuck a chord. The speaker for the first session was from Boeing.  It was nice to hear how how a company mixes both agile and waterfall project management.   The approaches that he presented were very pragmatic.  For their needs reporting is the crucial part of their decision to use TFS.  This was interesting since this is probably the last aspect that most shops would think about. The challenge of getting users to adopt TFS was brought up by the audience.  As with the other discussion point he took a very level headed stance.  The approach he was prescribing was to eat the elephant a bite at a time instead of all at once.  If you try to convert you entire shop at once the culture shock will most likely kill the effort. Another key point he reminded us of is that you need to make sure that standards and compliance are taken into account when you setup TFS.  If you don’t implement a tool and processes around it that comply with the standards bodies that govern your business you are in for a world of hurt. Ultimately the reason they chose TFS was because it was the first tool that incorporated all the ALM features that they needed. Reduced licensing cost because of all the different tools they would need to buy to complete the same tasks.  They got to this point by doing an industry evaluation.  Although TFS came out on top he said that it still has a big gap is in the Java area.  Of course in this market there are vendors helping to close that gap. The second session was on how continuous feedback in agile is a new focus in VS2012.  The problems they intended to address included cycle time and average time to repair, root cause analysis. The speakers fired features at us as if they were firing a machine gun.  I will just say that I am looking forward to digging into the product after seeing this presentation.  Beyond that I will simply list some of the key features that caught my attention. Feature – Ability to link documents into tasks as artifacts Web access portal PowerPoint storyboards Exploratory testing Request feedback (allows users to record notes, screen shots and video/audio) See you after the second half. del.icio.us Tags: TechEd,TechEd 2012,TFS,Team Foundation Server

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• XNA extending an existing Content type

  - by Maarten

  We are doing a game in XNA that reacts to music. We need to do some offline processing of the music data and therefore we need a custom type containing the Song and some additional data: // Project AudioGameLibrary namespace AudioGameLibrary { public class GameTrack { public Song Song; public string Extra; } } We've added a Content Pipeline extension: // Project GameTrackProcessor namespace GameTrackProcessor { [ContentSerializerRuntimeType("AudioGameLibrary.GameTrack, AudioGameLibrary")] public class GameTrackContent { public SongContent SongContent; public string Extra; } [ContentProcessor(DisplayName = "GameTrack Processor")] public class GameTrackProcessor : ContentProcessor<AudioContent, GameTrackContent> { public GameTrackProcessor(){} public override GameTrackContent Process(AudioContent input, ContentProcessorContext context) { return new GameTrackContent() { SongContent = new SongProcessor().Process(input, context), Extra = "Some extra data" // Here we can do our processing on 'input' }; } } } Both the Library and the Pipeline extension are added to the Game Solution and references are also added. When trying to use this extension to load "gametrack.mp3" we run into problems however: // Project AudioGame protected override void LoadContent() { AudioGameLibrary.GameTrack gameTrack = Content.Load<AudioGameLibrary.GameTrack>("gametrack"); MediaPlayer.Play(gameTrack.Song); } The error message: Error loading "gametrack". File contains Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Media.Song but trying to load as AudioGameLibrary.GameTrack. AudioGame contains references to both AudioGameLibrary and GameTrackProcessor. Are we maybe missing other references? EDIT Selecting the correct content processor helped, it loads the audio file correctly. However, when I try to process some data, e.g: public override GameTrackContent Process(AudioContent input, ContentProcessorContext context) { int count = input.Data.Count; // With this commented out it works fine return new GameTrackContent() { SongContent = new SongProcessor().Process(input, context) }; } It crashes with the following error: Managed Debugging Assistant 'PInvokeStackImbalance' has detected a problem in 'C:\Users\Maarten\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Projects\AudioGame\DebugPipeline\bin\Debug\DebugPipeline.exe'. Additional Information: A call to PInvoke function 'Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content.Pipeline!Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content.Pipeline.UnsafeNativeMethods+AudioHelper::OpenAudioFile' has unbalanced the stack. This is likely because the managed PInvoke signature does not match the unmanaged target signature. Check that the calling convention and parameters of the PInvoke signature match the target unmanaged signature. Information from logger right before crash: Using "BuildContent" task from assembly "Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content.Pipel ine, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=842cf8be1de50553". Task "BuildContent" Building gametrack.mp3 -> bin\x86\Debug\Content\gametrack.xnb Rebuilding because asset is new Importing gametrack.mp3 with Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content.Pipeline.Mp3Imp orter Im experiencing exactly this: http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/t/75996.aspx

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• Advice Needed: Developers blocked by waiting on code to merge from another branch using GitFlow

  - by fogwolf

  Our team just made the switch from FogBugz & Kiln/Mercurial to Jira & Stash/Git. We are using the Git Flow model for branching, adding subtask branches off of feature branches (relating to Jira subtasks of Jira features). We are using Stash to assign a reviewer when we create a pull request to merge back into the parent branch (usually develop but for subtasks back into the feature branch). The problem we're finding is that even with the best planning and breakdown of feature cases, when multiple developers are working together on the same feature, say on the front-end and back-end, if they are working on interdependent code that is in separate branches one developer ends up blocking the other. We've tried pulling between each others' branches as we develop. We've also tried creating local integration branches each developer can pull from multiple branches to test the integration as they develop. Finally, and this seems to work possibly the best for us so far, though with a bit more overhead, we have tried creating an integration branch off of the feature branch right off the bat. When a subtask branch (off of the feature branch) is ready for a pull request and code review, we also manually merge those change sets into this feature integration branch. Then all interested developers are able to pull from that integration branch into other dependent subtask branches. This prevents anyone from waiting for any branch they are dependent upon to pass code review. I know this isn't necessarily a Git issue - it has to do with working on interdependent code in multiple branches, mixed with our own work process and culture. If we didn't have the strict code-review policy for develop (true integration branch) then developer 1 could merge to develop for developer 2 to pull from. Another complication is that we are also required to do some preliminary testing as part of the code review process before handing the feature off to QA.This means that even if front-end developer 1 is pulling directly from back-end developer 2's branch as they go, if back-end developer 2 finishes and his/her pull request is sitting in code review for a week, then front-end developer 2 technically can't create his pull request/code review because his/her code reviewer can't test because back-end developer 2's code hasn't been merged into develop yet. Bottom line is we're finding ourselves in a much more serial rather than parallel approach in these instance, depending on which route we go, and would like to find a process to use to avoid this. Last thing I'll mention is we realize by sharing code across branches that haven't been code reviewed and finalized yet we are in essence using the beta code of others. To a certain extent I don't think we can avoid that and are willing to accept that to a degree. Anyway, any ideas, input, etc... greatly appreciated. Thanks!

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• How can I convince cowboy programmers to use source control?

  - by P.Brian.Mackey

  UPDATE I work on a small team of devs, 4 guys. They have all used source control. Most of them can't stand source control and instead choose not to use it. I strongly believe source control is a necessary part of professional development. Several issues make it very difficult to convince them to use source control: The team is not used to using TFS. I've had 2 training sessions, but was only allotted 1 hour which is insufficient. Team members directly modify code on the server. This keeps code out of sync. Requiring comparison just to be sure you are working with the latest code. And complex merge problems arise Time estimates offered by developers exclude time required to fix any of these problems. So, if I say nono it will take 10x longer...I have to constantly explain these issues and risk myself because now management may perceive me as "slow". The physical files on the server differ in unknown ways over ~100 files. Merging requires knowledge of the project at hand and, therefore, developer cooperation which I am not able to obtain. Other projects are falling out of sync. Developers continue to have a distrust of source control and therefore compound the issue by not using source control. Developers argue that using source control is wasteful because merging is error prone and difficult. This is a difficult point to argue, because when source control is being so badly mis-used and source control continually bypassed, it is error prone indeed. Therefore, the evidence "speaks for itself" in their view. Developers argue that directly modifying server code, bypassing TFS saves time. This is also difficult to argue. Because the merge required to synchronize the code to start with is time consuming. Multiply this by the 10+ projects we manage. Permanent files are often stored in the same directory as the web project. So publishing (full publish) erases these files that are not in source control. This also drives distrust for source control. Because "publishing breaks the project". Fixing this (moving stored files out of the solution subfolders) takes a great deal of time and debugging as these locations are not set in web.config and often exist across multiple code points. So, the culture persists itself. Bad practice begets more bad practice. Bad solutions drive new hacks to "fix" much deeper, much more time consuming problems. Servers, hard drive space are extremely difficult to come by. Yet, user expectations are rising. What can be done in this situation?

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• Keep taking the tablets

  - by Roger Hart

  A guest editorial for the SimpleTalk newsletter. So why would Red Gate build an Ipad Game? Is it just because tablet devices are exciting and cool? Ok, maybe a little. Mostly, it was seeing that the best existing tablet and smartphone apps do simple, intuitive things, using simple intuitive interfaces to solve single problems. That's pretty close to what we call our own "intuitively simple" approach to software. Tablets and mobile could be fantastic for us, if we can identify those problems that a tablet device can solve. How do you create THE next tool for a completely new technology? We're glad we don't face that problem every day, but it's pretty exciting when we do. We figure we should learn by doing. We created "MobileFoo" (a Red Gate Company) , we picked up some shiny Apple tech, and got to grips with Objective C, and life in the App Store ecosystem. The result so far is an iPad game: Stacks and Heaps It's Rob and Marine's spin on Snakes and Ladders. Instead of snakes we have unhandled exceptions, a blue screen of death, and other hazards. We wanted something compellingly geeky on mobile, and we're pretty sure we've got it. It's trudging through App Store approval as we speak. but if you want to get an idea of what it is like to switch from .net to Objective C, take a look at Rob's post Android and iOS is quite a culture-change for Windows developers. So to give them a feel for the problems real users might have, we needed some real users - we offered our colleagues subsidised tablets. The only conditions were that they get used at work, and we get the feedback. Seeing tablets around the office is starting to give us some data points: Is typing the bottleneck? Will tablets ever cut it as text-entry devices, and could we fix it? Is mobile working held up by the pain of connecting to work LANs? How about security? Multi-tasking will let tablets do more. They're small, easy to use, almost instant to switch on, and connect by Wi Fi. There's plenty on that list to make a sysadmin twitchy. We'll find out as people spend more time working with these devices, and we'd love to hear what you think about tablet devices too. (comments are filtered, what with the spam)

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• SQLAuthority News – Featuring in Call Me Maybe The Developer Way – Pluralsight Video

  - by pinaldave

  Is SQL boring? Not at all. SQL is fun – one has to know how to maximize the fun while working with SQL Server. Earlier I was invited to participate in the video Pluralsight. I am sure all of you know that I have authored 3 SQL Server Learning courses with Pluralsight – 1) SQL Server Q and A 2) SQL Server Performance Tuning and 3) SQL Server Indexing. Before I say anything I suggest all of you watch the following video. Make sure that you pay special attention after 0 minute and 36 seconds. What I can say about this. I am just fortunate to be part of the history in the making. There are more than 53 super cool celebrities in this video. In this just over 3 minute video there are so many story lines. I must congratulate director Megan and creative assistant Mari for excellent work. There are so many fun moments in this small video. Let me list my top five moments. @John_Papa ‘s dance at second 14 @julielerman playing with cute doggy The RACE between @josepheames and @bruthafish – the end is hilarious The black belt moment by @boedie @stwool relaxing on something strange! Well, this is indeed a great short film. This video demonstrates how cool is the culture of Pluralsight and how fun loving they are. A good organization provides an environment to its employees and partners to have maximum fun while they all become part of the success story. Hats off to Aaron Skonnard for producing this fun loving video. Well, after listening to this song for multiple times, I decided to give a call to Pluralsight. If you want, you can call them at +1 (801) 784-9032 or send an email to james-cole at pluralsight.com . What are your top five favorite moments? List it in comments and you may win Pluralsight subscription. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: About Me, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• What tools exist for assessing an organisation's development capability?

  - by Eric Smith

  I have a bit of a challenge at work at the moment. Presently (and in fact, for some time now), we have been experiencing the following problems with some in-house maintained applications: Defects (sometimes quite serious) being released into production; The Customer (that is, the relevant business unit) perpetually changing their minds (or appearing to do so) about what issue to work on next; A situation where everyone seems to be in a "fire-fighting" mode a lot of the time; Development staff responding to operational requests from business users; ("operational" here means something that needs to be done in order to continue with business, or perhaps just to make a business user's life a little less painful, as opposed to fixing a bug in the application, or enhancing the application); Now I'm sure this doesn't sound particularly new or surprising to most of the participants on this Q&A site and no prizes for identifying the "usual suspects" when it comes to root causes. My challenge is that I have to persuade the higher-ups to do uncomfortable things in order to address all of this. The folk I need to persuade come from a mixture of the following two cultures: Accounting; IT Infrastructure. I have therefore opted for a strategy that draws from things with-which folk from such a culture would be most comfortable (at least, in my estimation), namely: numbers and tangibles. Of course modern development practitioners know all too well that this sort of thing isn't easily solved using an analytical mindset (some would argue that that mindset is, in fact, entirely inappropriate). Never-the-less, this is the dichotomy with-which I am faced, so that's the stake that I've put in the ground. I would like to be able to do research and use the outputs to present findings in the form of metrics and measures. I am finding it quite difficult, though, to find an agreed-upon methodology and set of templates for assessing an organisations development capability--the only thing that seems applicable is the Software Engineering Institute's Capability Maturity Model. The latter, however, seems dated and even then rather vague. So, the question is: Do any tools or methodologies (free or commercial) exist that would assist me in completing this assessment?

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• ArchBeat Facebook Friday: Top 10 Posts - August 15-21, 2014

  - by Bob Rhubart-Oracle

  As hot as molten rock? Not quite. But among the 5,313 fans of the OTN ArchBeat Facebook Page these Top 10 items were the hottest over the past seven days, August 15-21, 2014. Oracle BPM 12c Gateways (Part 1 of 5): Exclusive Gateway | Antonis Antoniou Oracle ACE Associate Antonis Antoniou begins a five-part series with a look at In the gateway control flow components in Oracle BPM and how they can be used to process flow. Slicing the EDG: Different SOA Domain Configurations | Antony Reynolda Antony Reynolds introduces three different configurations for a SOA environment and identifies some of the advantages for each. How to introduce DevOps into a moribund corporate culture | ZDNet Confused about DevOPs? This post from ZDNet's Joe McKendrick -- which includes insight from Phil Whelan -- just might clear some of the fog. Oracle Identity Manager Role Management With API | Mustafa Kaya Mustafa Kaya shares some examples of role management using the Oracle Identity Management API. Podcast: Redefining Information Management Architecture Oracle Enterprise Architect Andrew Bond joins Oracle ACE Directors Mark Rittman and Stewart Bryson for a conversation about their collaboration on a new Oracle Information Management Reference Architecture. WebCenter Sites Demo Integration with Endeca Guided Search | Micheal Sullivan A-Team solution architect Michael Sullivan shares the details on a demo that illustrates the viability of integrating WebCenter Sites with Oracle Endeca. Wearables in the world of enterprise applications? Yep. Oh yeah, wearables are a THING. Here's a look at how the Oracle Applications User Experience team has been researching wearables for inclusion in your future enterprise applications. Getting Started With The Coherence Memcached Adaptor | David Felcey Let David Felcey show you how to configure the Coherence Memcached Adaptor, and take advantage of his simple PHP example that demonstrates how Memecached clients can connect to a Coherence cluster. OTN Architect Community Newsletter - August Edition A month's worth of hot stuff, all in one spot. Featuring articles on Java, Coherence, WebLogic, Mobile and much more. 8,853 Conversations About Oracle WebLogic Do you have a question about WebLogic? Do you have an answer to a question about WebLogic? You need to be here.

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• Business Choices and Evony

  - by Robert May

  Recently, I’ve been playing a game called Evony, and I finally decided to quit the game and thought I should warn others who might be tempted.  I also find a lot of insight with this game as an example.  A few of the companies that I’ve worked with or worked for have been like this and they are NOT good places to be. Evony is a joke designed to milk as much money out of people as possible.  As a professional software developer who mentors teams on how to build better software, here's what I see: They obviously offshore all development and have little oversight over that offshore development, and they probably have a small team at that.  Evidenced by the poor grammar throughout the game. They're seeking to maximize revenue and pushing to do as little development as possible, which would mean a small team. They're horribly understaffed in the customer support department as evidenced by never replying to this forum and never responding to bug reports or help requests (I've had one open with no response AT ALL for over a month . . .) They have way inadequate testing, no CI, and probably no automated unit tests.  You can see this by the poor grammar throughout the game and the type of bugs that show up. They aren't following a formal development process (no Agile, Waterfall, or anything else) as evidenced by their lack of predictable release cycle and lack of visibility. I'm guessing that the internal code base is terrible, otherwise, there wouldn't be an "Age II" that had nothing more than a new visual interface and a few rule tweaks.  This is also evidenced by the itty bitty scope of bug fixes and their inability to really fix bugs. Their Architect sucks.  Really, 42k user is all you can handle on a single server?  Could you REALLY not come up with a better way to scale to handle users?  They've built isolated worlds, instead of a single continuous world. Back to milking people for money--to really progress, you have to spend money. All of this adds up to knowing, deliberate actions on the part of management.  They CHOOSE to do this (like AOL choosing to send more discs instead of improve quality). So, what can we learn? This game will never really improve, since the bosses don't care, they're only in it for the money. The game will never have good support.  Again, the owners don't care. Giving them money only perpetuates this scam (and yes, I've given them money, way too much money. :() They don't care if you quit.  There's a new sucker born every day. Don't EVER go to work for them.  I've worked both with and for people like this and the culture is NEVER good. Ah well. Technorati Tags: Evony

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• My Graduate Experience at Oracle by Mayuri Khinvasara

  - by david.talamelli

  My experience at Oracle. I still vividly remember the day, when my name was announced in the campus hiring list of Oracle at my college. I was proud of myself but at the same time, I was getting goose bumps!!! A new world had arrived before me and the anxiousness of whether I could survive it or not had gripped me. Nervous about moving into an unknown city, I came to visit Hyderabad with my father. One look at the Oracle Campus and I felt some kind of magnetism pulling me towards it. And then, I joined Oracle in June 2009, with a lot of apprehensions in my mind. The HR Rep made us really comfortable in the first week itself. I met so many new people, managers, HR folks and most importantly 20 other Campus Hires like me. Then we had our team bonding sessions, team parties etc. I didn’t realize when the transition from campus to corporate happened. And I had started loving it. The confidence the HR Reps gave us and the bonding our managers imbibed in us, made us all ready for the new life ahead. Then started the rigorous training sessions, the excitement about our new work, new cubicles, new desktops, our first business cards, our first conference call and so on. I made new friends which were now my extended family, the freedom and courage of living alone. I was enjoying all that. As I was getting totally immersed into my regular work schedule I started getting to know the innumerable Oracle products, their functionalities, implementations and realizing the brand that Oracle is. Work pressure started increasing and so did the challenges to understand and deliver. I Didn’t realize how days and soon months passed by. Then came a golden chance to visit the Oracle Headquarters in US for 45 days training in November 2009. Once again, the excitement was enormous about the counter team-mates in HQ, the trainings ahead, the US work culture and my stay there. I felt so privileged for the company I was working. Boarding an international flight for the first time and visiting famous US cities which I had just seen in movies, was now a reality. It was a totally amazing experience. Work pressure kept me really busy, with learning new things every day, the immense satisfaction of delivering something, the nightmares of debugging a mistake, only to realize how silly it was.  I was enjoying the process. Soon a year passed by. I had transformed into this corporate software professional, I couldn’t believe I could be. Today, I complete 1 year and 8 months at Oracle and continue to look forward to the enriching experience I will have here. Truly one of the Top Companies in the World. Mayuri Khinvasara

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• What do you do when practical problems get in the way of practical goals?

  - by P.Brian.Mackey

  UPDATE Source control is good to use. Sometimes, real world issues make it impractical to use. For example: If the team is not used to using source control, training problems can arise If a team member directly modifies code on the server, various issues can arise. Merge problems, lack of history, etc Let's say there's a project that is way out of sync. The physical files on the server differ in unknown ways over ~100 files. Merging would take not only a great knowledge of the project, but is also well beyond the ability to complete in the given time. Other projects are falling out of sync. Developers continue to have a distrust of source control and therefore compound the issue by not using source control. Developers argue that using source control is wasteful because merging is error prone and difficult. This is a difficult point to argue, because when source control is being so badly mis-used and source control continually bypassed, it is error prone indeed. Therefore, the evidence "speaks for itself" in their view. Developers argue that directly modifying source control saves time. This is also difficult to argue. Because the merge required to synchronize the code to start with is time consuming, across ~10 projects. Permanent files are often stored in the same directory as the web project. So publishing (full publish) erases these files that are not in source control. This also drives distrust for source control. Because "publishing breaks the project". Fixing this (moving stored files out of the solution subfolders) takes a great deal of time and debugging as these locations are not set in web.config and often exist across multiple code points. So, the culture persists itself. Bad practice begets more bad practice. Bad solutions drive new hacks to "fix" much deeper, much more time consuming problems. Servers, hard drive space are extremly difficult to come by. Yet, user expectations are rising. What can be done in this situation?

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• Gauging Maturity of your BPM Strategy - part 1 / 2

  - by Sanjeev Sharma

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} In this post I will discuss the essence of maturity assessment and the business imperative for doing the same in the context of BPM. Social psychology purports that an individual progresses from being a beginner to an expert in a given activity or task along four stages of self-awareness: Unconscious Incompetence where the individual does not understand or know how to do something and does not necessarily recognize the deficit and may even deny the usefulness of the skill. Conscious Incompetence where the individual recognizes the deficit, as well as the value of a new skill in addressing the deficit. Conscious Competence where the individual understands or knows how to do something but demonstrating the skill requires explicit concentration. Unconscious Competence where the individual has had so much practice with a skill that it has become "second nature" and serves as a basis of developing other complementary skills. We can extend the above thinking to an organization as a whole by measuring an organization’s level of competence in a specific area or capability, as an aggregate of the competence levels of individuals it is comprised of. After all organizations too like individuals, evolve through experience, develop “memory” and capabilities that are shaped through a constant cycle of learning, un-learning and re-learning. Hence the key to organizational success lies in developing these capabilities to enable execution of its strategy in-line with the external environment i.e. demand, competition, economy etc. However developing a capability merits establishing a base line in order to Assess the magnitude of improvement from past investments Identify gaps and short-comings Prioritize future investments in the right areas A maturity assessment is essentially an organizational self-awareness check that is aimed at depicting the “as-is” snapshot of an existing capability in-order to guide future investments to develop that capability in-line with business goals. This effectively is the essence of a maturity Organizational capabilities stem through its architecture, routines, culture and intellectual resources that are implicitly and explicitly embedded in its business processes. Given that business processes underpin realization of organizational capabilities, is what has prompted business transformation and process management efforts. Thus, the BPM capability of an organization needs to be measured on an on-going basis to ensure delivery of its planned benefits. In my next post I will describe Oracle’s BPM Maturity assessment methodology.

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• Windows 8 and the future of Silverlight

  - by Laila

  After Steve Ballmer's indiscrete 'MisSpeak' about Windows 8, there has been a lot of speculation about the new operating system. We've now had a few glimpses, such as the demonstration of 'Mosh' at the D9 2011 conference, and the Youtube video, which showed a touch-centric new interface for apps built using HTML5 and JavaScript. This has caused acute anxiety to the programmers who have followed the recommended route of WPF, Silverlight and .NET, but it need not have caused quite so much panic since it was, in fact, just a thin layer to make Windows into an apparently mobile-friendly OS. More worryingly, the press-release from Microsoft was at pains to say that 'Windows 8 apps use the power of HTML5, tapping into the native capabilities of Windows using standard JavaScript and HTML', as if all thought of Silverlight, dominant in WP7, had been jettisoned. Ironically, this brave new 'happening' platform can all be done now in Windows 7 and an iPad, using Adobe Air, so it is hardly cutting-edge; in fact the tile interface had a sort of Retro-Zune Metro UI feel first seen in Media Centre, followed by Windows Phone 7, with any originality leached out of it by the corporate decision-making process. It was kinda weird seeing old Excel running alongside stodgily away amongst all the extreme paragliding videos. The ability to snap and resize concurrent apps might be a novelty on a tablet, but it is hardly so on a PC. It was at that moment that it struck me that here was a spreadsheet application that hadn't even made the leap to the .NET platform. Windows was once again trying to be all things to all men, whereas Apple had carefully separated Mac OS X development from iOS. The acrobatic feat of straddling all mobile and desktop devices with one OS is looking increasingly implausible. There is a world of difference between an operating system that facilitates business procedures and a one that drives a device for playing pop videos and your holiday photos. So where does this leave Silverlight? Pretty much where it was. Windows 8 will support it, and it will continue to be developed, but if these press-releases reflect the thinking within Microsoft, it is no longer seen as the strategic direction. However, Silverlight is still there and there will be a whole new set of developer APIs for building touch-centric apps. Jupiter, for example, is rumoured to involve an App store that provides new, Silverlight based "immersive" applications that are deployed as AppX packages. When the smoke clears, one suspects that the Javascript/HTML5 is merely an alternative development environment for Windows 8 to attract the legions of independent developers outside the .NET culture who are unlikely to ever take a shine to a more serious development environment such as WPF or Silverlight. Cheers, Laila

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• Unity works on my PC but not on the Server. What did I miss?

  - by Erik France

  I have a web service using Microsoft Unity to hook the pieces together.  It all works fine on my PC but when I put it on the web server, I receive this error message: System.ServiceModel.FaultException`1[System.ServiceModel.ExceptionDetail]: The value of the property 'type' cannot be parsed. The error is: Method 'GetClaimsForUser' in type 'WebService.Implementation.ClaimsRetriever' from assembly 'WebService.Implementation, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=62cac0f1a908971a' does not have an implementation. If I look at the web.config, I see the following: <unity>     <typeAliases>       <typeAlias alias="ITokenGenerator" type="WebService.Interfaces.ITokenGenerator, WebService.Interfaces" />       <typeAlias alias="TokenGenerator" type="WebService.Implementation.TokenGenerator, WebService.Implementation" />       <typeAlias alias="IClaimsRetriever" type="WebService.Interfaces.IClaimsRetriever, WebService.Interfaces" />       <typeAlias alias="ClaimsRetriever" type="WebService.Implementation.ClaimsRetriever, WebService.Implementation" />       <typeAlias alias="TokenGeneratorSettings" type="WebService.Implementation.TokenGeneratorSettings, WebService.Implementation" />       <typeAlias alias="String" type="System.String, mscorlib" />     </typeAliases>     <containers>       <container>         <types>           <type type="ITokenGenerator" mapTo="TokenGenerator">             <typeConfig extensionType="Microsoft.Practices.Unity.Configuration.TypeInjectionElement, Microsoft.Practices.Unity.Configuration">               <constructor>                 <param name="retriever" parameterType="IClaimsRetriever">                   <dependency />                 </param>                 <param name="settings" parameterType="TokenGeneratorSettings">                   <dependency />                 </param>               </constructor>             </typeConfig>           </type>           <type type="IClaimsRetriever" mapTo="ClaimsRetriever">             <typeConfig extensionType="Microsoft.Practices.Unity.Configuration.TypeInjectionElement, Microsoft.Practices.Unity.Configuration">               <constructor>                 <param name="connectionStringName" parameterType="String">                   <value value="devDatabase" type="String" />                 </param>               </constructor>             </typeConfig>           </type>         </types>       </container>     </containers>   </unity> I have another web service, using an almost identical config running on the web server.  But this new web service will not run. Any ideas on what I have not told Unity to do?  Or maybe what I told Unity to do incorrectly?

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• Hadoop, NOSQL, and the Relational Model

  - by Phil Factor

  (Guest Editorial for the IT Pro/SysAdmin Newsletter)Whereas Relational Databases fit the world of commerce like a glove, it is useless to pretend that they are a perfect fit for all human endeavours. Although, with SQL Server, we’ve made great strides with indexing text, in processing spatial data and processing markup, there is still a problem in dealing efficiently with large volumes of ephemeral semi-structured data. Key-value stores such as Cassandra, Project Voldemort, and Riak are of great value for ephemeral data, and seem of equal value as a data-feed that provides aggregations to an RDBMS. However, the Document databases such as MongoDB and CouchDB are ideal for semi-structured data for which no fixed schema exists; analytics and logging are obvious examples. NoSQL products, such as MongoDB, tackle the semi-structured data problem with panache. MongoDB is designed with a simple document-oriented data model that scales horizontally across multiple servers. It doesn’t impose a schema, and relies on the application to enforce the data structure. This is another take on the old ‘EAV’ problem (where you don’t know in advance all the attributes of a particular entity) It uses a clever replica set design that allows automatic failover, and uses journaling for data durability. It allows indexing and ad-hoc querying. However, for SQL Server users, the obvious choice for handling semi-structured data is Apache Hadoop. There will soon be an ODBC Driver for Apache Hive .and an Add-in for Excel. Additionally, there are now two Hadoop-based connectors for SQL Server; the Apache Hadoop connector for SQL Server 2008 R2, and the SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse (PDW) connector. We can connect to Hadoop process the semi-structured data and then store it in SQL Server. For one steeped in the culture of Relational SQL Databases, I might be expected to throw up my hands in the air in a gesture of contempt for a technology that was, judging by the overblown journalism on the subject, about to make my own profession as archaic as the Saggar makers bottom knocker (a potter’s assistant who helped the saggar maker to make the bottom of the saggar by placing clay in a metal hoop and bashing it). However, on the contrary, I find that I'm delighted with the advances made by the NoSQL databases in the past few years. Having the flow of ideas from the NoSQL providers will knock any trace of complacency out of the providers of Relational Databases and inspire them into back-fitting some features, such as horizontal scaling, with sharding and automatic failover into SQL-based RDBMSs. It will do the breed a power of good to benefit from all this lateral thinking.

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• What kind of position matches my skills, experience and interests? [closed]

  - by Ryan

  I work in a large firm and my current job covers a variety of different duties. Due to several factors I am seriously considering finding a new job (hours, pay-cut, limited career growth). I have worked for the company nearly 4 years and almost 2 years ago I transitioned into more of a business analyst role (previously I was working in a client facing role for our audit group). In this role I have overseen all aspects of the development of a large scale re-platforming of our firm's key tool in analyzing investment portfolios. I gathered requirements, wrote specs, designed the UI and functionality, worked closely with developers (onshore and offshore) to see to it the implementation was correct, managed schedules and was the lead tester. This is a large scale system used by thousands of people around the world. I've also written Excel macros, reports in SQL, given trainings, written technical manuals, interfaced with senior managers and partners, etc. I've been on a couple interviews sporadically, most of which were for positions aimed at higher management consulting type positions, dealing with strategy, overall process management, project management, etc. What really interests me is the technical stuff and overseeing a project from beginning to end (although I would rather not have to do so many of the tasks on my own). I genuinely like a lot of what I do, but the company culture and attitude towards overworking people combined with my recent pay-cut (my overtime was cut due to a promotion to a higher level) has lead me to want to seek work elsewhere. The problem is - what type of work could I realistically do? I feel like traditional business analysis is too much business and not enough tech stuff, and I've really taken a shine lately to beefing up my programming abilities and creating small programs to automate things around work. I also feel that because my actual years of experience as a business analyst (figure 1.5 years realistically) puts me at a junior level doing a lot of grunt requirements gathering, when the work that I have been doing with my current company is more in line with what a Program Manager does (depending on your definition I guess). So in reality, when I'm job hunting I get a bit perplexed because I feel like the traditional BA stuff wouldn't really suit me, and even if it did it's usually something along the lines of 5-10 years experience for the type of work that is similar to what I've done (and I've also found most BA jobs to be contract only which at the moment I'm not too keen on). Program Manager is something that interests me, but again I feel like the experience is lacking because that's a much more senior position. Am I in some kind of career no-man's land? Any idea what would best suit me given my experience and abilities, as well as my interests? I plan to keep learning programming on the side, but don't expect to get a job being a straight programmer given my relative inexperience with programming.

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• Think Before You Leap - Life is Dangerous for Change Agents

  - by technodrone

  So you want to introduce agile methods to your team... The following are some "lessons learned" when from someone who advocated agile/scrum to a group that was not ready for it. "Change agents, in my experience, face negative consequences. Sometimes, most of the time at the beginning, it's painful. This is the question you might have to ask yourself. Do you want to be a developer in scrum project or do you want be a scrum master managing the process? I think with proper mentoring/training, you can become good scrum master. But is that what you want? if yes, you can go ahead, take the training. if you want to be a developer, you may not need to be certified  as scrum master. You can just pick up from a book such as Mike Cohn new book Succeeding with Agile, I am reading it now. It's good. In my experience, I did waste my resources by trying to change the culture. It cost me lot. Instead, I should have focused on technical practices that are core to agile. Then look for teams that are good at agile. I would have saved lot of energy, and time. Try baby steps first yourself in the company, and next with the team, starting with technical practices like writing unit tests, SOLID principles, patterns, refactoring, continuous integration, pairing, and peer code reviews. These have inherent pull that can bring collaboration from a team.  Once you see team adaption in core practices, then you can introduce scrum concepts like user stories/task board etc.  This idea of Leading by example seems to be working for most of the agile folks. You can pitch core practices to the manager, and the team, and start showing them how you are doing.  You can put a road map for agile adaption and you can pitch to your manager. I would include need for scrum master training as part of the road map. " I thought about his advice for a couple of weeks and read about the pitfalls of technical debt and the team not having prior awareness of agile methods. The more I read and think about it the more I think he was right.  What do you think?

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• Analysing SQLBits Feedback

  - by jamiet

  Earlier this week I received all the feedback that people offered on my session at SQLBits 7 in York – “SSIS Dataflow Performance Tuning” (the video is available online if you wish to see it). As you may have gathered from previous posts on this blog and my less-SQLy-focused Wordpress blog I am a big fan of collecting and tracking both personal and public data and session feedback lends itself very well to tracking because it is quantitative rather than qualitative; by that I mean attendees are invited to provide marks out of ten rather than (or, in the case of SQLBits, as well as) written comments. The SQLBits feedback is also useful because they use a consistent format – the same questions are asked each time – this means it is particularly easy to to track whether the scores that people give are trending up or down. I suspect that somewhere the SQLBits organisers have a big Analysis Services cube (ok, perhaps its an Excel pivot table) that allows them to analyse these scores per conference, speaker, track etc.… and there’s no reason that we as session speakers cannot do the same thing. To that end I have started to store my feedback in an Excel spreadsheet of my own which in the interests of transparency is available for public viewing (only a web browser required) on SkyDrive at http://cid-550f681dad532637.office.live.com/view.aspx/Public/Misc/Personal%20SQLBits%20Session%20Feedback.xlsx. I have used a pivot table to aggregate all that feedback and here is a screenshot: I am hereby making a public plea to the SQLBits organisers (on the off-chance that they are reading) to please continue to keep the feedback format consistent in the future and I encourage them to publish all of the feedback in an anonymised form. I would also encourage anyone doing conference speaking to track their conference feedback in the same way that I am doing so that you get an insight into whether or not you are improving over time. It is not difficult to setup and maintaining it as you do more sessions takes very little effort. Storing feedback data like this leads me to wider thoughts about well-known conventions and data format standardisation. Let’s imagine a utopia where there were a standard set of questions for capturing session feedback that were leveraged at every conference regardless of subject matter, location or culture; that would give rise to immense cross-conference and cross-discipline analysis – the data analyst in me goes giddy at the thought of it. It is scenarios like this that drive my interest both in data formats such as iCalendar, microformats and RDF, and in emerging movements such as the semantic web and linked data, all things which I have written about in the past. I don’t know whether we will ever reach the stage where every piece of data has structured, descriptive metadata associated with it but I live in hope. @Jamiet

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