Happy Friday!

We have an excellent article this week for our Friday Spotlight, written by Oracle's Robert Chase. From Robert's introduction:

"In a previous blog, Oracle Linux Tips and Tricks, I covered alternative ways to use SSH. In this article, I will cover some additional tips and tricks for using SSH for remote access, as well as some other ways to connect remotely to a server. "

Head on over to OTN Garage to read the full article.

Have a great weekend!

-Chris 

Java Community - 

Java 8 Launch - Over 9000 developers joined the Java 8 launch webcast. You can watch the replay and over 30 videos covering features of Java 8.

Java Tutorials Update for Java 8 - Find the JDK 8 Release Notes, and updates for specific features.

Java 8, Eclipse, and the Future
Java 8 Day at EclipseCon was standing room only. Learn what Mike Milinkovich, Executive Director of Eclipse Foundation, said about the trends he sees that will have an impact on developers and IDEs in the future.

Friday Funny by OTN Java Community Manager Tori Wieldt: Easy come, easy go Thanks @aljensen7

Architect Community - 

Video: ADF - Designing for Application Customization & MDS - MDS Infrastructure Decisions | Frank Nimphius
In this episode of ADF Architecture TV Frank Nimphius covers the MDS repository infrastructure you need for customizable and personalizable ADF applications.

You Are Not Even Wrong About the Cloud - Part 3 | RogerG
"The Cloud is not magic – reduced costs are not suddenly available through magic Cloud pixie dust," says RogerG. His article clears up some common misconceptions about moving existing applications to the cloud.

IoT end-to-end demo - Remote Monitoring and Service | Harish Doddala
IoT expert Harish Doddala's demo "showcases how the health of remotely deployed machinery can be monitored to illustrate how data coming from devices can be analyzed in real-time, integrated with back-end systems and visualized to initiate action as may be necessary."

Friday Funny by OTN Architect Community Manager Bob Rhubart: How about never?
This is my all-time favorite New Yorker cartoon, the creation of the brilliant Bob Mankoff. Reproducing the cartoon here would violate copyright laws, so you'll have to click the link. It's worth it.

Database Community - 

The Oracle Big Data Appliance 2.5 was released last week. With every BDA release, we upgrade the Big Data Light VM. Get it Now!

Quick Read: great article from Deiby Gómez (Oracle ACE), YV Ravikumar (Oracle OCM) & Nassyam Basha (OCP) on how “Flex ASM” and “Flex Cluster” support demanding requirements of Cloud Computing-oriented environments.

Friday Funny by OTN Database Community Manager Laura Ramsey: Oracle ACE Director Bjoern Rost is getting ready for the RAC ATTACK at the Finnish User event in Helsinki in June. (see picture at top.)

Systems Community

If You Have to Ask, You Wouldn't Understand - Resources, software, links, and the proper developer attitude to join the beta program for Oracle Solaris Studio 12.4, which began this week.

More Tips for Remote Access with Oracle Linux - Robert Chase continues with his series of tips and tricks for using SSH and other utilities to connect to a remote server.

Friday Funny by OTN Systems Community Manager, Rick Ramsey: OTN's Got Talent - Bob Rhubart, who manages the OTN Architect community, is also the lead singer for The Elderly Brothers, a band in Cleveland, Ohio.  I love their blend of old folk, blues, and rock.  White Freightliner is my favorite.

The latest release of Oracle VM Server for SPARC 3.1.1 was announced recently. It has extended Single Root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV) benefits beyond Ethernet and Infiniband devices by adding support for Fibre Channel devices. In addition, it provides the ability to control the amount of physical network bandwidth consumed by virtual network devices, thus prevents guest domains from consuming excess bandwidth. To take advantage of the latest features to benefit your virtualization deployment, read Jeff Savit's blog here.

This post is one of a series of "best practices" notes for Oracle VM Server for SPARC (formerly called Logical Domains). This is an update to a previous entry on the same topic.

Top Ten Tuning Tips - Updated

Oracle VM Server for SPARC is a high performance virtualization technology for SPARC servers. It provides native CPU performance without the virtualization overhead typical of hypervisors. The way memory and CPU resources are assigned to domains avoids problems often seen in other virtual machine environments, and there are intentionally few "tuning knobs" to adjust.

However, there are best practices that can enhance or ensure performance. This blog post lists and briefly explains performance tips and best practices that should be used in most environments. Detailed instructions are in the Oracle VM Server for SPARC Administration Guide. Other important information is in the Release Notes. (The Oracle VM Server for SPARC documentation home page is here.)

Big Rules / General Advice

1. "Best practices" may not apply to every situation. There are often exceptions or trade-offs to consider. We'll mention them so you can make informed decisions. Please evaluate these practices in the context of your requirements. There is no one "best way", since there is no single solution that is optimal for all workloads, platforms, and requirements.
2. Best practices, and "rules of thumb" change over time as technology changes. What may be "best" at one time may not be the best answer later as features are added or enhanced.
3. Continuously measure, and tune and allocate resources to meet service level objectives. Once objectives are met, do something else - it's rarely worth trying to squeeze the last bit of performance when performance objectives have been achieved.
4. Standard Solaris tools and tuning apply in a domain or virtual machine just as on bare metal: the *stat tools, DTrace, driver options, TCP window sizing,/etc/system settings, and so on, apply here as well.
5. The answer to many performance questions is "it depends". Your mileage may vary. In other words: there are few fixed "rules" that say how much performance boost you'll achieve from a given practice.

Despite these disclaimers, there is advice that can be valuable for providing performance and availability:

The Tips

1. Keep firmware, Logical Domains Manager, and Solaris up to date - Performance enhancements are continually added to Oracle VM Server for SPARC, so staying current is important. For example, Oracle VM Server for SPARC 3.1 and 3.1.1 both added important performance enhancements.

   That also means keeping firmware current. Firmware is easy to "install once and forget", but it contains much of the logical domains infrastructure, so it should be kept current too. The Release Notes list minimum and recommended firmware and software levels needed for each platform.

   Some enhancements improve performance automatically just by installing the new versions. Others require administrators configure and enable new features. The following items will mention them as needed.

2. Allocate sufficient CPU and memory resources to each domain, especially control, I/O and service domains - This cannot be overemphasized. If a service domain is short on CPU, then all of its clients are delayed. Don't starve the service domains!

   For the control domain and other service domains, use a minimum of at least 1 core (8 vCPUs) and 4GB or 8GB of memory. Two cores and 8GB of RAM are a good starting point if there is substantial I/O load, but be prepared to allocate more resources as needed. Actual requirements must be based on system load: small CPU and memory allocations were appropriate with older, smaller LDoms-capable systems, but larger values are better choices for the demanding, higher scaled systems and applications now used with domains, Today's faster CPUs and I/O devices are capable of generating much higher I/O rates than older systems, and service domains must be suitably provisioned to support the load. Control domain resources suitable for a T5220 with 1GbE network cards will not be enough for a T5-8 or an M6-32! A 10GbE network device driven at line speed can consume an entire CPU core, so add another core to drive that.

   Within the domain you can use vmstat, mpstat, and prstat to see if there is pent up demand for CPU. Alternatively, issue ldm list or ldm list -l from the control domain.

   Good news: you can dynamically add and remove CPUs to meet changing load conditions, even for the control domain. You can do this manually or automatically with the built-in policy-based resource manager. That's a Best Practice of its own, especially if you have guest domains with peak and idle periods.

   The same applies to memory. Again, the good news is that standard Solaris tools can be used to see if a domain is low on memory, and memory can also added to or removed from a domain. Applications need the same amount of RAM to run efficiently in a domain as they do on bare metal, so no guesswork or fudge-factor is required. Logical domains do not oversubscribe memory, which avoids problems like unpredictable thrashing.

   In general, add another core if ldm list shows that the control domain is busy. Add more RAM if you are hosting lots of virtual devices are running agents, management software, or applications in the control domain andvmpstat -p shows that you are short on memory. Both can be done dynamically without an outage.

3. Allocate domains on core boundaries - SPARC servers supporting logical domains have multiple CPU cores with 8 CPU threads each. (The exception is that Fujitsu M10 SPARC servers have 2 CPU threads per core. The considerations are similar, just substitute "2" for "8" as needed.) Avoid "split core" situations in which CPU cores are shared by more than one domain (different domains with CPU threads on the same core). This can reduce performance by causing "false cache sharing" in which domains compete for a core's Level 1 cache. The impact on performance is highly variable, depending on the domains' behavior.

   Split core situations are easily avoided by always assigning virtual CPUs in multiples of 8 (ldm set-vcpu 8 mydomain or ldm add-vcpu 24 mydomain). It is rarely good practice to give tiny allocations of 1 or 2 virtual CPUs, and definitely not for production workloads. If fine-grain CPU granularity is needed for multiple applications, deploy them in zones within a logical domain for sub-core resource control.

   The best method is to use the whole core constraint to assign CPU resources in increments of entire cores (ldm set-core 1 mydomain or ldm add-core 3 mydomain). The whole-core constraintrequires a domain be given its own cores, or the bind operation will fail. This prevents unnoticed sub-optimal configurations, and also enables the critical thread opimization discussed below in the sectionSingle Thread Performance.

   In most cases the logical domain manager avoids split-core situations even if you allocate fewer than 8 virtual CPUs to a domain. The manager attempts to allocate different cores to different domains even when partial core allocations are used. It is not always possible, though, so the best practice is to allocate entire cores.

   For a slightly lengthier writeup, see Best Practices - Core allocation.

4. Use Solaris 11 in the control and service domains - Solaris 11 contains functional and performance improvements over Solaris 10 (some will be mentioned below), and will be where future enhancements are made. It is also required to useOracle VM Manager with SPARC. Guest domains can be a mixture of Solaris 10 and Solaris 11, so there is no problem doing "mix and match" regardless of which version of Solaris is used in the control domain. It is a best practice to deploy Solaris 11 in the control domain even if you haven't upgraded the domains running applications.
5. NUMA latency - Servers with more than one CPU socket, such as a T4-4, have non-uniform memory access (NUMA) latency between CPUs and RAM. "Local" memory access from CPUs on the same socket has lower latency than "remote". This can have an effect on applications, especially those with large memory footprints that do not fit in cache, or are otherwise sensitive to memory latency.

   Starting with release 3.0, the logical domains manager attempts to bind domains to CPU cores and RAM locations on the same CPU socket, making all memory references local. If this is not possible because of the domain's size or prior core assignments, the domain manager tries to distribute CPU core and RAM equally across sockets to prevent an unbalanced configuration. This optimization is automatically done at domain bind time, so subsequent reallocation of CPUs and memory may not be optimal. Keep in mind that that this does not apply to single board servers, like a T4-1. In many cases, the best practice is to do nothing special.

   To further reduce the likelihood of NUMA latency, size domains so they don't unnecessarily span multiple sockets. This is unavoidable for very large domains that needs more CPU cores or RAM than are available on a single socket, of course.

   If you must control this for the most stringent performance requirements, you can use "named resources" to allocate specific CPU and memory resources to the domain, using commands like ldm add-core cid=3 ldm1 and ldm add-mem mblock=PA-start:size ldm1. This technique is successfully used in the SPARC Supercluster engineered system, which is rigorously tested on a fixed number of configurations. This should be avoided in general purpose environments unless you are certain of your requirements and configuration, because it requires model-specific knowledge of CPU and memory topology, and increases administrative overhead.

6. Single thread CPU performance - Starting with the T4 processor, SPARC servers can use a critical threading mode that delivers the highest single thread performance. This mode uses out-of-order (OOO) execution and dedicates all of a core's pipeline and cache resource to a software thread. Depending on the application, this can be several times faster than in the normal "throughput mode".

   Solaris will generally detect threads that will benefit from this mode and "do the right thing" with little or no administrative effort, whether in a domain or not. To explicitly set this for an application, set its scheduling class to FX with a priority of 60 or more. Several Oracle applications, like Oracle Database, automatically leverage this capability to get performance benefits not available on other platforms, as described in the section "Optimization #2: Critical Threads" inHow Oracle Solaris Makes Oracle Database Fast. That's a serious example of the benefits of the combined software/hardware stack's synergy. An excellent writeup can be found in Critical Threads Optimization in the Observatory blog.

   This doesn't require setup at the logical domain level other than to use whole-core allocation, and to provide enough CPU cores so Solaris can dedicate a core to its critical applications. Consider that a domain with one full core or less cannot dedicate a core to 1 CPU thread, as it has other threads to dispatch. The chances of having enough cores to provide dedicated resources to critical threads get better as more cores are added to the domain, and this works best in domains with 4 or more cores. Other than that, there is little you need to do to enable this powerful capability of SPARC systems (tip of the hat to Bob Netherton for enlightening me on this area).

   Mentioned for completeness sake: there is also a deprecated command to control this at the domain level by using ldm set-domain threading=max-ipc mydomain, but this is generally unnecessary and should not be done.

7. Live Migration - Live migration is CPU intensive in the control domain of the source (sending) host. Configure at least 1 core (8 vCPUs) to the control domain in all cases, but an additional core will speed migration and reduce suspend time. The core can be added just before starting migration and removed afterwards. If the machine is older than T4, add crypto accelerators to the control domains. No such step is needed on later machines.

   Live migration also adds CPU load in the domain being migrated, so its best to perform migrations during low activity periods. Guests that heavily modify their memory take more time to migrate since memory contents have to be retransmitted, possibly several times. The overhead of tracking changed pages also increases guest CPU utilization.

8. Network I/O - Configure aggregates, use multiple network links, use jumbo frames, adjust TCP windows and other systems settings the same way and for the same reasons as you would in a non-virtual environments.

   Use RxDring support to substantially reduce network latency and CPU utilization. To turn this on, issue ldm set-domain extended-mapin-space=on mydomain for each of the involved domains. The domains must run Solaris 11 or Solaris 10 update 10 and later, and the involved domains (including the control domain) will require a domain reboot for the change to take effect. This also requires 4MB of RAM per guest.

   If you are using a Solaris 10 control or service domain for virtual network I/O, then it is important to plumb the virtual switch (vsw) as the network interface and not use the native NIC or aggregate (aggr) interface. If the native NIC or aggr interface is plumbed, there can be a performance impact sinces each packet may be duplicated to provide a packet to each client of the physical hardware. Avoid this by not plumbing the NIC and only plumbing the vsw. The vsw doesn't need to be plumbed either unless the guest domains need to communicate with the service domain. This isn't an issue for Solaris 11 - another reason to use that in the service domain. (thanks to Raghuram for great tip)

   As an alternative to virtual network I/O, use Direct I/O (DIO) or Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) to provide native-level network I/O performance. With physical I/O, there is no virtualization overhead at all, which improves bandwidth and latency, and eliminates load in the service domain. They currently have two main limitations: they cannot be used in conjunction with live migration, and introduce a dependency on the domain owning the bus containing the SR-IOV physical device, but provide superior performance. SR-IOV is described in an excellent blog article by Raghuram Kothakota.

   For the ultimate performance for large application or database domains, you can use a PCIe root complex domain for completely native performance for network and any other devices on the bus.

9. Disk I/O - For best performance, use a whole disk backend (a LUN or full disk). Use multiple LUNs to spread load across virtual and physical disks and reduce queueing (just as you would do in a non-virtual environment). Flat files in a file system are convenient and easy to set up as backends, but have less performance.

   Starting with Oracle VM Server for SPARC 3.1.1, you can also use SR-IOV for Fibre Channel devices, with the same benefits as with networking: native I/O performance. For completely native performance for all devices, use a PCIe root complex domain and exclusively use physical I/O.

   ZFS can also be used for disk backends. This provides flexibility and useful features (clones, snapshots, compression) but can impose overhead compared to a raw device. Note that local or SAN ZFS disk backends preclude live migration, because a zpool can be mounted to only one host at a time. When using ZFS backends for virtual disk, use a zvol rather than a flat file - it performs much better. Also: make sure that the ZFS recordsize for the ZFS dataset matches the application (also, just as in a non-virtual environment). This avoids read-modify-write cycles that inflate I/O counts and overhead. The default of 128K is not optimal for small random I/O.

10. Networked disk on NFS and iSCSI - NFS and iSCSI also can perform quite well if an appropriately fast network is used. Apply the same network tuning you would use for in non-virtual applications. For NFS, specify mount options to disable atime, use hard mounts, and set large read and write sizes.

    If the NFS and iSCSI backends are provided by ZFS, such as in the ZFS Storage Appliance, provide lots of RAM for buffering, and install write-optimized solid-state disk (SSD) "logzilla" ZFS Intent Logs (ZIL) to speed up synchronous writes.

Summary

By design, logical domains don't have a lot of "tuning knobs", and many tuning practices you would do for Solaris in a non-domained environment apply equally when domains are used. However, there are configuration best practices and tuning steps you can use to improve performance. This blog note itemizes some of the most effective (and least exotic) performance best practices.

Continue reading "Migrating JDBC Resources from GlassFish to WebLogic" ...

I am very pleased to announce the availability of E-Business Suite 12.1.3+ Recommended Patch Collection 1.  This Recommended Patch Collection combines recommended patches for EBS 12.1.3 into a single integrated and regression-tested patchset:

• Oracle 12.1.3+ E-Business Suite Recommended Patch Collection 1 [RPC1] (Note 1638535.1)

Why is this important?

Getting to EBS 12.1.3 isn't enough.  Additional patches must be applied on top of EBS 12.1.3 before going into production. These include individual patches, product family Release Update Packs (RUP), and product-specific Recommended Patch Collections (RPC). 

For example, there are Recommended Patch Collections for Financials products such as General Ledger, Payables, and others.  On the technology side, there are patchsets such as the OA Framework 12.1.3.1 Consolidated Update Patch. 

Identifying these individual patches, RUPs, Family Packs, and RPCs can be time-consuming.  Complicating matters further, patchsets across multiple product families are generally not tested together.

Included in Recommended Patch Collection 1 (RPC1)

The EBS 12.1.3+ RPC1 patchset includes a comprehensively-tested set of the latest recommended patches and their dependencies for the following EBS product families:

• Applications Technology Group (ATG)
  
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
• Financials (FIN)
• Human Resource Management System (HRMS)
• Procurement (PRC)
• Projects (PJ)
• Supply Chain Management (SCM)
• Value Chain Planning (VCP)

Your feedback is welcome

We are very interested in hearing about your experiences with this new Recommended Patch Collection.  You can post a comment here or send me an email directly.

Related Articles

• Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.3 Now Available
  
• New OA Framework 12.1.3.1 Consolidated Update Patch for Now Available
• Oracle E-Business Suite 12.2.3 Now Available
  

Today I want to point you to an upcoming webcast to be held April 16. The webcast will highlight an update to the product, and you can register for it athttp://event.on24.com/r.htm?e=765685&s=1&k=D37AC4D390BA9799E5834B8D4F965DC8&partnerref=evite. I can't give advance information on what's to be announced (that would spoil the surprise), so please register for the event.

Emdeon is a leading provider of revenue and payment cycle management and clinical information exchange solutions, connecting payers, providers and patients in the U.S. healthcare system. Emdeon's offerings integrate and automate key business and administrative functions of its payer and provider customers throughout the patient encounter. In the following testimonial watch Bill Muir, SVP Business Management Platform Services at Emdeon discuss how their implementation on Oracle SOA Suite Engineered Systems helped them with the following:

• Lowered total cost of ownership with a unified management framework across the infrastructure

• Delivered on unparalleled performance on services and applications

• Improved time to market and maximized business agility by minimizing set up and maintenance

To find out more Engineered Systems Advantage: SOA & Exalogic 

As I've mentioned before at least one or two times, this is a great time to take a look at moving from IBM POWER servers to Oracle Solaris and SPARC systems.  We'll be discussing this very topic in an upcoming webcast:

Modernizing IBM AIX/Power to Oracle Solaris/SPARC
Wednesday April 2, 2014
10:00am (PT) / 1:00pm (ET)
REGISTER NOW

Oracle's Ken Kutzer and Randal Sagrillo will give an overview of not only what the benefits are of moving to Oracle's systems, but what the simple transition process is to get there.

Meanwhile, while you're waiting for Wednesday, here's a video to check out.  Learn how one company used Oracle's SPARC servers with Oracle Solaris to architect a more robust cloud solution, at a lower cost, compared to x86 servers with Red Hat Enterprise Linux:

Using a Single Queue for Multiple Message Types with SOA Suite

Problem Statement

Background

The JMS Adapter is unaware of who receives the messages.  Each adapter instance just takes the message from the queue and delivers it to its own configured interface, one interface per adapter instance.  The SOA infrastructure is then responsible for routing that message, usually via a database table and an in memory notification message, to a component within a composite.  Each message will create a new composite but the BPEL engine and Mediator engine will attempt to match callback messages to the appropriate Mediator or BPEL instance.
Note that message type, including XML document type, has nothing to do with the preceding statements.

The net result is that if you have a sequence of two receives from the same queue using different adapters then the messages will be split equally between the two adapters, meaning that half the time the wrong adapter will receive the message.  This blog entry looks at how to resolve this issue.

Note that the same problem occurs whenever you have more than 1 adapter listening to the same queue, whether they are in the same composite or different composites.  The solution in this blog entry is also relevant to this use case.

Solutions

• Service 1 receives messages on the single outbound queue from SOA, it send responses back on the single inbound queue.
• Similarly Service 2 and Service 3 also receive messages on the single outbound queue from SOA, they send responses back on the single inbound queue.

• aThe inbound JMS adapter is configured with a JMS message selector.  The message selector might be "JMSType='Service1'" for responses from Service 1.  Similarly the selector would be "JMSType='Service2'" for the adapter waiting on a response from Service 2.  The message selector ensures that each adapter instance will retrieve the first message from the queue that matches its selector.
• The sending service needs to set the JMS property (JMSType in our example) that is used in the message selector.

1. We can do manual correlation with a correlation set, identifying parts of the outbound message that uniquely identify our instance and matching them with parts of the inbound message to make the correlation.
2. We can use a Request-Reply JMS adapter which by default expects the response to contain a JMSCorrelationID equal to the outgoing JMSMessageID.  Although no configuration is required for this on the SOA client side, the service needs to copy the incoming JMSMessageID to the outgoing JMSCorrelationID.

Special Case - Request-Reply Synchronous JMS Adapter

When using a synchronous Request-Reply JMS adapter we can omit to specify the message selector because the Request-Reply JMS adapter will immediately do a listen with a message selector for the correlation ID rather than processing the incoming message asynchronously.
The synchronous request-reply will block the BPEL process thread and hold open the BPEL transaction until a response is received, so this should only be used when you expect the request to be completed in a few seconds.

The JCA Connection Factory used must point to a non-XA JMS Connection Factory and must have the isTransacted property set to “false”.  See the documentation for more details.

Sample

I developed a JDeveloper SOA project that demonstrates using a single queue for multiple incoming adapters.  The overall process flow is shown in the picture below.  The BPEL process on the left receives messages from the jms/TestQueue2 and sends messages to the jms/Test Queue1.  A Mediator is used to simulate multiple services and also provide a web interface to initiate the process.  The correct adapter is identified by using JMS message properties and a selector.

The flow above shows that the process is initiated from EM using a web service binding on mediator.  The mediator, acting as a client, posts the request to the inbound queue with a JMSType property set to "Initiate".

Summary

When using a single JMS queue for multiple purposes bear in mind the following:

• If multiple receives use the same queue then you need to have a message selector.  The corollary to this is that the message sender must add a JMS property to the message that can be used in the message selector.
• When using a request-reply JMS adapter then there is no need for a correlation set, correlation is done in the adapter by matching the outbound JMS message ID to the inbound JMS correlation ID.  The corollary to this is that the message sender must copy the JMS request message ID to the JMS response correlation ID.
• When using a synchronous request-reply JMS adapter then there is no need for the message selector because the message selection is done based on the JMS correlation ID.
• Synchronous request-reply adapter requires a non-XA connection factory to be used so that the request part of the interaction can be committed separately to the receive part of the interaction.
• Synchronous request-reply JMS adapter should only be used when the reply is expected to take just a few seconds.  If the reply is expected to take longer then the asynchronous request-reply JMS adapter should be used.

Deploying the Sample

The sample is available to download here and makes use of the following JMS resources:

To run the sample then just use the test facility in the EM console or the soa-infra application.

I've posted a substantial readout summarizing some of the more salient findings from a long-running programmatic research program into data science. This deck shares synthesized findings around many of the facets of data science as a discipline, including practices, workflow, tools, org models, skills, etc. This readout distills a very wide range of inputs, including; direct interviews, field-based ethnography, community participation (real-world and on-line), secondary research from industry and academic sources, analysis of hiring and investment activity in data science over several years, descriptive and definitional artifacts authored by practitioners / analysts / educators, and other external actors, media coverage of data science, historical antecedents, the structure and evolution of professional disciplines, and even more.

I consider it a sort of business-anthropology-style investigation of data science, conducted from the viewpoint of product making's primary aspects; strategy, management, design, and delivery.

I learned a great deal during the course of this effort, and expect to continue to learn, as data science will continue to evolve rapidly for the next several years.

Data science practitioners looking at this material are invited to provide feedback about where these materials are accurate or inaccurate, and most especially about what is missing, and what is coming next for this very exciting field.

Recently the Federal Tax Service of Russia migrated from their Microsoft SQL Server environment to an Oracle Database 12c centralized environment with the help of ODP.NET.

The Federal Tax Ministry of Russia is a national government agency located in Moscow. It operates nine regional offices that oversee major taxpayers with a wide network of local offices that employ 140,000 people.The ministry is in the process of migrating from Microsoft SQL Server to Oracle Database 12c technology and Exadata. Its goal is to centralize all fiscal data access, improve performance, and reduce storage costs, while continuing to keep its investment in a Microsoft .NET infrastructure.

Oracle Database 12c makes developing and deploying Oracle on Windows and .NET easier, faster, and more cost-effective.  By using Oracle’s .NET components (ODP.NET), the tax ministry can adopt new Oracle Database 12c features for their .NET applications. The migration to Oracle so far is meeting their goal for centralized data access and provides 20x better performance with a tenfold reduction in storage costs.

Listen to this Database Insider Podcast Interview for more details about their migration from Microsoft SQL Server to Oracle Database 12c.

Oracle is pleased to announce the call for nominations for the 2014 Oracle Excellence Awards: Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation.The Oracle Excellence Awards honor organizations using Oracle Cloud Application Foundation products to deliver unique business value.If you consider yourself a pioneer in using WebLogic, Coherence, and/or Tuxedo, using these products in innovative ways to achieve significant business/technical value, submit your nomination for the 2014 Excellence Awards by Friday, June 20th, for a chance to win a FREE registration to Oracle OpenWorld(September 28-October 2, 2014) in San Francisco, California.Top customers will be showcased at Oracle Open World, get a chance to dialogue with Oracle executives, network with their peers and be featured in Oracle Publications.Winners are selected based on the uniqueness of their business case, business benefits, level of impact relative to the size of the organization, complexity and magnitude of implementation, and the originality of architecture. For additional details, go here.

The author's recommendation: the ADF Architecture TV channel is a training course to extend customers' knowledge in ADF, it is not a marketing or promotional exercise from Oracle Corporation. If you've arrived on this episode by Googling in, please make sure to look at all of the content on the TV channel rather than taking this episode as a standalone topic.
This episode: Frank Nimphius in this episode of the ADF Architecture TV channel explores the ADF service integration architecture for SOAP services. Frank explains the Web Services Data Control, POJO Data Control, ADF BC and when to use which for web service access. Watch the video here.

WebLogic Partner Community

For regular information become a member in the WebLogic Partner Community please visit: http://www.oracle.com/partners/goto/wls-emea ( OPN account required). If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center.

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Visit the Voice of User Experience, or VoX, blog for a new post about the strategy behind Oracle’s Human Capital Management (HCM) simplified UI. Learn what’s new from the Oracle Applications User Experience team in Release 7, and find links to new video demos on simplified UI for self-service users and managers.

Floyd Teter, of EiS Technologies and an Oracle ACE Director, also writes about simplified UI and Oracle Fusion Applications HCM in his recent blog post, “Oracle Fusion HCM - The Kettle Is Beginning To Boil.”
There are also a few new posts about Oracle Sales Cloud, such as a post  on the Oracle Applications Blog called “Wow Sales Managers and Reps with An Unmatched User Experience.” A separate post published on VoX last month about Oracle Sales Cloud focuses on what’s new with simplified UI in Release 7.

Also on VoX, Oracle partner Anne Meyer, of MIPRO Consulting LLC, talks about seeing the direction of the Oracle user experience, including simplified UI, in “Partner Gives a Thumbs-Up to Insight on Oracle User Experience.” She says, “I’m anxious for these products to make it to the marketplace. Some may be game-changing for Oracle, and how people view Oracle products.”

Exploring new user experience concepts
Oracle invests a great deal in creating a user experience for its applications that empowers customers to be more productive and efficient. One way that investment is made is by exploring new technologies and looking for ways to use them so that the Oracle user experience continues to evolve. Much of that research takes place among the ranks of the Oracle Applications User Experience (UX) team.

Recent posts on the Usable Apps blog and on TheAppsLab blog look at what and how members of the Applications UX team are exploring new concepts. We invite you to join the conversation! Tell us about your experiences with new technology, and how you think they could be used. To read more about what we’ve found, head over to the Usable Apps blog for new posts on Voice, social network integration, and Google Glass. Then check out Jake Kuramoto’s new post about exploring new concepts on TheAppsLab blog.

Support for building your own good usability practices
Visit the Voice of User Experience, or VoX, blog for a new post from Misha Vaughan, an Oracle Applications User Experience director, to see what she writes about “Six Things You Can Do Today to Jump-Start Your User Experience for Enterprise Applications.” Her post tells you how to build in good usability practices, even on a small budget.

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I saw this blog post "Get all the country using Java Locale List" and then I thought about posting something similar, but using Lambda and the Stream API of Java SE 8. Here's my "fork", including a call to sort the locales based on "display country" property.

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