Latest News from JAVA Developer's Journal

Cloud Expo New York: The Java EE 7 Platform - Developing for the Cloud

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST

The focus of Java EE 7 is on the cloud, and specifically it aims to bring Platform-as-a-Service providers and application developers together so that portable applications can be deployed on any cloud infrastructure and reap all its benefits in terms of scalability, elasticity, multitenancy, etc. The existing specifications in the platform such as JPA, Servlets, EJB, and others will be updated to meet these requirements. Java EE 7 continues the ease of development push that characterized prior releases by bringing further simplification to enterprise development. It also adds new, important APIs such as the REST client API in JAX-RS 2.0 and the long awaited Concurrency Utilities for Java EE API. Expression Language 3.0 and Java Message Service 2.0 will undergo an extreme makeover to align with the improvements in the Java language. There are plenty of improvements to several other components. Newer web standards like HTML 5 and Web Sockets will be embraced to build modern web applications.

The Super Bowl Effect on Website Performance

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 08:30:00 EST

Whether or not you are a fan of U.S. football – it was really hard to avoid this huge sports event on February 5. In addition to the actual game, it’s the Super Bowl commercials that – besides being very expensive to air – usually drive a lot of load on the websites of the companies that run their ads. The question is whether the millions of dollars spent really drive consumers to these websites and make them do business with them. As we won't get an answer from the top brands that advertised about the actual conversion rates we can look at the End User Experience and performance of their websites while these ads were aired. By analyzing the data that we can get through continuous synthetic monitoring combined with deep dive browser diagnostics, we’ll be able to see whether their web application was actually able to handle the load and didn't leave too many of these users with a bad user experience.

Migration Failures in a WebSphere Network Deployment on an AIX Platform

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST

Migration failures may occur when migrating application run time configurations for large complex network deployment to higher version of WebSphere Application Server (WAS) Network Deployment(ND) on AIX platform. The WebSphere migration utilities such as WASPreUpgrade and WASPostUpgrade provide the necessary mechanism to move the existing configuration information such as older defaults and settings including ports, JVM parameters etc from previous version to higher version of the WebSphere Application Server. These migration failures may happen due to several reasons such as any shortcomings in the procedure or a peculiar deployment topology chosen by the customer or due to any underlying network and synchronization failures from configurations in WebSphere or AIX.

Book Excerpt: Essential Java Skills (Part 1)

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 10:00:00 EST

When Sun’s developers created Java, they tried to keep the syntax for Java similar to the syntax for C++ so it would be easy for C++ programmers to learn Java. In addition, they designed Java so its applications can be run on any computer platform. In contrast, C++ needs to have a specific compiler for each platform. Java was also designed to automatically handle many operations involving the creation and destruction of memory. This is a key reason why it’s easier to develop programs and write bug-free code with Java than with C++. To provide these features, the developers of Java had to sacrifice some speed (or performance) when compared to C++. For many types of applications, however, Java’s relative slowness is not an issue. Microsoft’s Visual C# language is similar to Java in many ways. Like Java, C# uses a syntax that’s similar to C++ and that automatically handles memory operations. However, in practice, C# code only runs on Windows. Because of that, C# is a good choice for developing applications for a Windows-only environment. However, Java is a better choice if you need to develop crossplatform applications.

Got REST? Build an HTML5 Mobile App

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 09:00:00 EST

There are literally thousands of different REST APIs available today, and new APIs are being created and exposed daily. There are API aggregator sites such as apigee.com and programmableweb.com that collect APIs from various sites. apigee.com makes available a very nice API console where a REST service can be tested. Testing a REST service is cool but what if you wanted to build a mobile app using it? Tiggzi, the cloud-based mobile app builder comes with a REST API console and makes it super easy to connect to any REST API. Check it out: 1. Enter any REST service URL. In this example I use Cocoafish Location API. Now, this is the most awesome part. You can use any REST URL here. You can of course do get, post, delete and push.

Oracle to SAP: ‘See You Back in Court’

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 08:30:00 EST

As predictably as the sun rising in the east, Oracle Monday rejected the slashed $272 million award for damages that the presiding federal court judge decided it should get from SAP for its admitted copyright infringement rather than the $1.3 billion the jury awarded Oracle in late 2010 following a captivating and highly publicized trial. Oracle told the court it wants the new trial it was offered to “vindicate” the jury and its property rights as well as to avoid risking its right to appeal the court’s decision. SAP, which agreed to pay a $20 million fine to the US government to avoid criminal prosecution, said it was “disappointed.” Calling the jury award “grossly excessive,” Judge Phyllis Hamilton last September found Oracle only proved actual damages of $272 million. SAP’s third-party maintenance arm TomorrowNow illegally downloaded reams of Oracle software and customer-support documents before it was shut down in 2008.

Three Buzzwords That Every CIO Hears but One They Should Listen To

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 05:00:00 EST

Anyone that's managing an enterprise IT with aging or outdated client/server systems is starting to feel the heat. Soon, their systems and applications will be obsolete and unsupported. At the same time, the industry as whole is seeking the fastest gateway to the latest .NET, HTML5 and mobile deployments including SaaS models. Right about now, there will be a knock on your door with team members offering their advice as to what you should do to ‘keep up' with the latest trends and supported architectures. Here are three of the buzzwords they will have probably used, and what they actually mean.

Book Review: The Definitive Guide to HTML5

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 08:30:00 EST

Although I started with Cold Fusion for application development, I did plenty brochureware sites with HTML. I believe the version was HTML 2.0 for IE 2.0. I lived in the browser world for years doing Cold Fusion, ASP, and HTML sites. When winforms and Smart Client with Web Services emerged I changed my religion. I have been avoiding the browser whenever possible since. For the past couple of years my extent of using simple HTML has been limited to writing blogs and book reviews. Simple HTML means no ASP.NET or ASP.NET MVC. With all the HTML5 hype I figured I would take some time and read a few books on it. This one is my third and I have one more on the way.

Java's Road Ahead in 2012, Oracle at the Wheel

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 05:00:00 EST

Oracle's ongoing stewardship of the Java platform and language is still garnering the occasional spat of criticism from time to time. Much of the disquiet rests on Oracle's plans to bring Java Standard Edition 6 to the end of its natural life. Adrian Bridgwater

SeaMicro Adapts Xeon for Microservers

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST

SeaMicro, the ambitious start-up that has been building so-called microservers out of low-power Intel Atom chips, has started building microservers out of low-voltage quad-core Intel Xeon chips using the same architecture its Atom systems use. The development is called the SeaMicro SM10000-XE. Needless to say, it’s the first fabric-based Xeon microserver ever made. It’s also supposed to be the most energy-efficient, highest-density, highest-bandwidth Xeon server now available, period. A single SM10000-XE replaces 32 dual-socket servers, but draws half the power and takes up a third the space without any changes to operating systems, applications or management tools. It eliminates layers of Ethernet switches, server management devices and expensive load balancers.

When Was Your Last Enterprise Architecture Maturity Assessment?

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:00:00 EST

Every company should plan regular architecture capability maturity assessments using a model. These should provide a framework that represents the key components of a productive enterprise architecture process. A model provides an evolutionary way to improve the overall process that starts out in an ad hoc state, transforms into an immature process, and then finally becomes a well-defined, disciplined, managed and mature process. The goal is to enhance the overall odds for success of the enterprise architecture by identifying weak areas and providing a defined path towards improvement. As the architecture matures, it should increase the benefits it offers the organization. Architecture maturity assessments help to determine how companies can maximise competitive advantage, identify ways of cutting costs, improve quality of services and reduce time to market. These assessments are undertaken as part of the Enterprise Architecture management.

Component Development and Assembly Using OSGi Services

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 11:45:00 EST

This article introduces the concepts of Component Oriented Development and Assembly (CODA) using the OSGi Service platform with an example application. The article starts with an introduction to software components, elaborates with an example application, followed by an overview of the OSGi Service platform, and an implementation of the example application using this platform. Components are parts that can be assembled to form a larger system. Electronic components such as ICs (Integrated Circuits) are assembled together to build an electronic system; similarly software components are assembled together to build a software system. Software systems have a static form as well as a dynamic runtime form. Software components can be assembled either in static form or dynamic form. In either case, the software component is an independent unit of development, deployment, and assembly. Using components to build software systems will provide many architectural advantages apart from promoting ease of reuse.

Why Rule-Based Log Correlation Is Almost a Good Idea: The Future of SIEM

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 07:45:00 EST

These past few weeks, I published several blogs pointing out problems with static rule based correlation, their current limitations, their high TCO, etc. Because these solutions have been sold for many years as the end all be all to security problems, it has created false expectations in the industry and among clients. But SIEM as a general discipline holds plenty of promises, let’s not throw the baby with the bathwater.

cVidya Unveils Data Retention Solution

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:40:22 EST

cVidya Networks, a provider of Revenue Intelligence solutions for Telecom, Media and Entertainment service providers, has announced the release of DRMap, a complete data retention solution that enables CSPs to comply with current regulations and swiftly fulfill law enforcement requests. With its current positioning in the revenue assurance and fraud management spaces, cVidya was able to leverage its capabilities to create a solution which by nature collects richer sets of information as part of existing applications deployed at CSPs. With the necessity to ensure compliance with increasing regulations, such as the EU Data Retention Directive 2006/24/EC requiring CSPs to store data for up to 24 months, it is imperative that CSPs have fast, secure, and compliant data retention systems. According to a leading research firm white paper, the majority of CSPs are spending a lot of time and money trying to adapt their current systems to meet the regulations. cVidya is leveraging Oracle Exadata Database Machine, allowing CSPs to benefit from the extreme performance, speed and scalability offered by Oracle. cVidya's DRMap V1.0 has also achieved Oracle Exadata Ready status through Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN). This demonstrates that cVidya has fully tested and supports DRMap V1.0 on Oracle Exadata Database Machine.

DS Data Systems Releases KonaKart v6.0.0.0

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:14:46 EST

DS Data Systems UK Ltd. is pleased to announce the release of KonaKart v6.0.0.0, a Java-based eCommerce shopping cart application that provides an extensive set of features to enable retailers to successfully sell their products over the internet. KonaKart is a Java / JSP / XML based solution with comprehensive easy to use java, SOAP, RMI and JSON APIs that allow you to quickly integrate eCommerce functionality into your existing systems. The customizable parts of KonaKart are Open Source and available under the GNU LGPL.

Project Management Software Project Insight Supports Armada Ltd

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 14:07:17 EST

Project Insight allows the dispersed project team at Armada's prevention, preparedness, response and recovery solutions to access their projects from any location. Project and portfolio management software, Project Insight helps the project team at Armada Ltd. manage its projects more effectively. Armada Ltd. is a world class provider of prevention, preparedness, response and recovery solutions for both public and private sector clients. Project Insight's online project software allows the dispersed project team at Armada to access their projects from any location. Before Project Insight, the project team at Armada used an in-house project management system; however, as the company expanded, they outgrew that solution. As a significant portion of their employees work from remote home offices, it was mission critical for all project information to be accessible online. The organization also needed a good way to track and report on time at a very detailed level. The Chief Operating Officer (COO) decided to find a more robust project and portfolio solution.

Cross-Platform Mobile Website Development – a Tool Comparison

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 11:15:00 EST

Gartner says, in three years, mobile application development projects will outnumber PC projects by 4-1 ratio and in four years, 50% of the people will primarily access their emails from a mobile device. So, the necessity of establishing a mobile channel for your customer is – well a no-brainer. However, should you just build a mobile website or should you also invest in building native application is not easy to decide. There can be no doubt that you need to have a website optimized for mobile devices. What is the best way to build and maintain that website is not a simple decision.

What's New in HTML5?

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:39:00 EST

AT&T’s new AppCenter is an Android app store which will sell “unwrapped” HTML5 apps, promoting HTML5 as an alternative to native mobile apps. The AppCenter was launched January 9, 2012, and is available in beta form on Android devices, with plans for additional platforms in 2012. According to a January 11, 2011 article in Ars Technica, “AT&T Offers HTML5 SDK for Third-party Mobile Web App Developers”, the company has also “released a set of JavaScript APIs and a software development kit (SDK) that provide Web developers with access to certain mobile network features”.

Book Review: Experiences of Test Automation

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 07:00:00 EST

I highly recommend this book to everyone in the business of building software. Before you attempt to automate your testing, read this book! Every once in a while a book is put together that should be read by every person with a relationship to software development. This book is one of them. Everyone dreams of automating their software testing, but few make it a reality. This down to earth book is the stories of 28 teams that went for it. It includes both successes and failures. That is not something you see everyday. Many books simply provide you the success path. This book also provides you with the steps you could possibly be taking that could lead to failure helping you to change your path before fully failing.

Conclusion: Why Rule-Based Log Correlation Is Almost a Good Idea...

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 07:45:00 EST

Disappointed with your SOC in a box solution? Here are a few steps to improve your static rule based correlation solution... During these past few weeks, we have looked at several reasons why a static rule based correlation is not the "SOC in a Box", end-all be all that many thought it was. Indeed what to think about a "solution" that: Can only address a very limited set of attack scenarios Requires meticulous consideration on how to map out the few selected attack scenarios Doesn't guarantee you to catch attacks in progress even when one of the few selected scenario is taking place Obliges you to think of minute details to slightly reduce false positives Yields hundreds and thousands of basic correlation rules that need to be programmed, tuned, managed, kept up to date and constantly revisited Needs massive computing power and memory resources to run Cannot manage all of your logs or IT Data, otherwise the engine blows up in smoke

Judge Blocks Oracle’s Appeal in SAP Case

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 16:00:00 EST

Oracle can’t appeal the judge’s decision to cut the $1.3 billion jury award in its suit against SAP to a mere $272 million unless it rejects the $272 million, the judge told Oracle last Friday. Oracle is trying to avoid the other option the judge gave it, which is a new trial. If Oracle rejects the $272 million, there would be a new trial and then it could appeal the judge’s decision. The judge contends Oracle only proved actual damages of $272 million when SAP’s now defunct TomorrowNow third-party maintenance subsidiary illegally downloaded reams of Oracle software. Reuters, which reported the decision, said the order did not indicate if Oracle could accept the $272 million and then appeal, but an IP lawyer the wire service talked to said probably not. If SAP appealed to the size of the judge’s award Oracle might be able to try for the $1.3 billion.

Access Control in Multi-Tenant Applications

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 11:00:00 EST

Defining "Who sees what" and "who does what" are the two important aspects of access control in any software application. "Security" is a much larger subject, but this article focuses on just the access control aspects of Security in a software application. When you build a custom application for a specific customer, the access control policies of the organization are often defined upfront as part of the requirements phase. Depending on the vertical, domain and the specific organizational structure of the business, first the roles are defined. And then each role is given access to a set of screens, forms, pages and reports. What role A sees might be different from what role B sees. What role A can do could be different from what role B is allowed to do. Of course, certain areas in the application can be accessed by multiple roles. While building software products (used by several customers), the roles are often generalized and predefined. The various access control policies of the product are often hard coded in to the roles. The customer will be able to assign one or more roles to their users.

Why Rule-Based Log Correlation Is Almost a Good Idea... (Part 6 - APTs)

Sat, 14 Jan 2012 13:00:00 EST

You remember that "False Sense of Security," the feeling that you are secure, but in fact you're not...? Attackers know that an attack is a process, it is not an event. And they use this - and they use time - to their advantage. They use time scales that static rule-based correlation simply cannot cope with. If you want to correlate disparate events, you need to keep state information on these events, and of course the longer you need to keep the state, the more expensive it becomes, expensive in RAM, CPU, storage etc etc., to the point where it is not affordable anymore. Did you know that many/most static rule-based correlation engines cannot keep state for more than a few minutes? This means for example that many correlation engines will not even be able to address the Scenario 1 - Identity Theft - discussed above.

Fabric Engine Boosts Node.Js Performance 25-Fold

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 13:20:00 EST

Fabric Engine, a software engineering company focused on bringing multi-threaded, compiled performance to web applications, has announced that its Fabric Engine server technology now supports Node.js, boosting its computational performance more than 25X. Fabric Engine has published the results of its performance benchmark online (http://fabric-engine.com/2011/11/server-performance-benchmarks/), and will be showcasing its support for Node.js at NodeJam this January. Fabric Engine is designed to tap into the power of modern, multi-core processing to bring true, multi-threaded, compiled performance to web applications. As web applications grow, they start to run into performance and scalability problems that dynamic languages like JavaScript are not well-suited to solve. Consequently, these applications need to be re-architected using compiled languages like C++, introducing significant costs to the developer. Fabric Engine gives the same performance as C++, yet retains the ease of use and speed of iteration of dynamic languages.

Asynchronous Logging Using Spring

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 10:45:00 EST

Each application developer faces the problem of logging usage information. On the one hand, the more logging that’s done the easier it is to detect and locate the source of problems. On the other hand, large volume logging might impair an application’s performance. This problem is typically solved by defining various log levels dependent on a program’s maturity. For example, a program in developmental stages would have a higher logging requirements; logging requirements would be relatively lower in the production phase. If an application requires a lot of logging for audit purposes, then special measures are required to protect performance. This article provides a possible solution for this problem by using Spring asynchronous support. Logging is used extensively to help find problems within applications. A developer who finds a problem can investigate it by enabling debug logging. He may then reproduce the problem, or create additional logging if needed. Programmers usually require extensive logging to locate problems.

Immersing into JavaScript Frameworks

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 10:40:00 EST

During the last month my colleagues and I were immersing into the world of modern JavaScript frameworks. We didn’t start from scratch though. My business partners spent the first 5 years of this century porting PowerBuilder, a used-to-be-popular client server tool, to a JavaScript framework. That product was called XMLSP and you can still find its 5-year old version online. The word AJAX was not even invented back then. In 2006, a killer UI framework Adobe Flex 2 was released and we started using it. It was clearly better than any AJAX offering, and I was not shy in publishing blogs and articles explaining its superiority to any AJAX solution available at the time. Flex remains a great solution for developing UI for the enterprise Web applications, and our company,Farata Systems, is committed to support any client who decides to hire us for any Flex/AIR Web/Desktop/Mobile project. But the world of software and hardware is hugely different in 2012 comparing to 2006. And we are stepping into the same JavaScript river once again.

Why Rule-Based Log Correlation Is Almost a Good Idea... (Part 5)

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 06:00:00 EST

Compounding the combinatory explosion in the number of static-based correlation rules, it is impossible to correlate 100% of all your logs, it is just too expensive and not practical. Read on... A correlation engine works really hard, even when dealing with a limited set of scenarios: - Each scenario requires lots of rules and exceptions, and most of these rules need to be interpreted further as dozen, if not hundred of simple checks and tests. For example, you may want to flag loops with a simple rule such as "IP Origin" = "IP Destination". If you have 1 000 logs this means that for each log you need to do 1 000 tests. Imagine having a million logs, a trillion logs, which is not uncommon on a medium sized infrastructure over a couple days.

Oracle Fusion Applications - Installation and First Impressions (Part 7)

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 06:00:00 EST

Oracle Fusion Applications Provisioning is the überinstaller for OFA. Based on your input and its knowledge about OFA dependencies it will prepare and deploy OFA components to appropriate target locations. Provisioning Plan is driving the installation process. It is created when you select this option from Provisioning Wizard. Here you pick components Provisioning Plan is created for - we chose Oracle Financials module. Wizard will show you topology summary and details about the chosen configuration. Here we provide Access Manager details.

Patterns for Building High Performance Applications

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 08:00:00 EST

Performance is one word that is used to describe multiple scenarios when talking about application performance. When someone says I need a High Performance Application, it might mean any/all of the following: Low web latency application ( meaning low page loading times) Application that can serve ever increasing number of users (scalability) Application that does not go down (either highly available or continuously available) For each of the above, as an architect you need to dig deeper to find out what the user is asking for. With the advent of cloud, every CIO is looking to build applications that meet all of the above scenarios. With the advent of elastic compute, one tends to think that by throwing hardware to the application, we may be able to achieve all of the above objectives. The patterns employed to achieve the above scenarios at times are different and it is important to find the right approach to the solution that meets the above objectives. We will examine some of the common patterns that can help us to achieve the objectives

Oracle Fusion Applications - Installation and First Impressions (Part 5)

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 12:15:00 EST

Oracle Forms and Reports is one of Fusion Middleware components needed for OFA installation. Forms is a GUI tool used to develop, generate and run database front end applications. Reports is a GUI tool used to develop, generate and run database reports. For the purposes of Oracle Fusion Applications installation we will secure Forms and Reports with Identity Management. Once you download and unzip Oracle Forms and Reports software and run installer you will be presented with the welcome screen.

Oracle Fusion Applications - Installation and First Impressions (Part 6)

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 16:40:09 EST

Oracle HTTP server is one of Oracle Fusion Middleware for Oracle Identity Management components. Oracle HTTP Server provides HTTP listener services for Oracle WebLogic. Once you download software ( it is a part of Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g Media Pack; HTTP server resides in Oracle Fusion Middleware Web Tier Utilities 11g DVD ), unzip it and run installer you will be presented with welcome screen.

Oracle Fusion Applications - Installation and First Impressions (Part 4)

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 14:49:12 EST

Oracle Identity Management is a component of Oracle Fusion Middleware and part of the Oracle Fusion Applications infrastructure. Its purpose is to manage user identities across the enterprise. We are going to install Oracle Internet Directory 11g (OID), Oracle Virtual Directory 11g (OVD), Oracle Identity Manager 11g (OIM), Oracle Access Manager 11g (OAM) as well as two instances of Oracle Database (11.2.0.2) - one for the Identity Store and the other for the Policy Store. SOA Suite is first component to be installed since Identity Manager requires it. Some SOA Suite components (Oracle Identity Manager, Oracle Access Manager ) require schemas to be created in middleware repository database. We created separate database to contain Oracle Identity Manager schemas.

How to Scale Agile

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 10:00:00 EST

Scaling agile is not simple. The complexity increases not in proportion to the size of the team but at the square of the size of the team. That means a 20 member team project will be 4 times as complex as a 10 member team. To ensure that complexity does not turn into chaos it is inevitable that the pure agile way of working may have to be sacrificed – is it possible without violating agile manifesto? It is also inevitable that the agile practices will need to integrate into other practices of the enterprise.

Oracle Fusion Applications - Installation and First Impressions (Part 3)

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 09:51:48 EST

Oracle Fusion Applications is a very complex product that relies on a number of components. One of them is Oracle Fusion Middleware for Oracle Identity Management, which in turn is built using Oracle Forms, Reports, WebLogic, HTTP server and other products. Here we are briefly describing installation of the WebLogic. Oracle Fusion Middleware components are not included in Oracle Fusion Application Media Pack - they need to be downloaded separately. Once you unpack components and start installer you will be presented with the following WebLogic welcome screen.

Oracle v Google Java Trial Kinda Sorta Scheduled

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 01:45:00 EST

Oracle’s long-simmering Java infringement suit against Google, postponed from Halloween, has been scheduled to go to trial on or after March 19, according to case tracker Florian Mueller. It’s not the firmest date ever and to Oracle’s chagrin, federal Judge William Alsup has decided that the proceedings will be in three parts with a single 12-man jury deciding first Oracle’s copyright infringement charges, then its patent infringement claims, and finally any damages Google might owe and the extent of its willfulness. Oracle wanted to present all its evidence at once. It was also hoping the trial would start this month. Google, on the other hand, wanted to push it off until at least the summer. Florian says Wednesday’s order doesn’t hold out the possibility of a stay to accommodate a re-examination of five Oracle patents-in-suit by the US Patent and Trademark Office. But that doesn’t mean, he says, that Judge Alsup, who wishes Oracle and Google would settle their differences and go away, couldn’t issue a stay before the patent part of the trial starts. The jury will also be told a re-examination is in progress including the PTO’s prior art concerns and its initial findings of invalidity. However, despite a string of Google appeals, it will also be told about the compromising Lindholm e-mail in which a senior Google staffer told Google’s supreme command it needed a Java license, a piece of evidence for infringement as well as damages that the judge has previously considered damaging. At this point Florian figures that the judge realizes “the best chance to get the parties to settle is a reasonably firm trial date and, possibly, a ruling on the copyright part of the case. Once the copyright phase is over, the possibility of a stay of the patent liability part may be on the agenda once again.” Otherwise the court’s gonna need 12 jurors with well-padded bottoms and the ability to recall testimony from in a previous phase.

Oracle Fusion Applications - Installation and First Impressions (Part 2)

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 12:02:12 EST

In the second article of the Oracle Fusion Applications installation series we are looking at Repository Creation Utility which populates transaction database with OFA schemas. The Oracle Fusion Applications Repository Creation Utility (Applications RCU) creates applications-specific tablespaces and schemas. According to the OFA installation manual: The Applications RCU loops through all the middleware components in the component definition file and applies the relevant ones to the database. For each component, the Applications RCU creates the appropriate middleware tablespace and schema user. After creating the schema user, it defines the tables, views, and other artifacts that the schema owner owns.

Oracle Fusion Applications - Installation and First Impressions (Part 1)

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 16:13:58 EST

Oracle Fusion Applications are released for production use. We are investigating the product and installation process. Oracle announced the general availability of Oracle Fusion Applications at Oracle Open World 2011. Oracle Fusion Applications is the next generation Oracle ERP that will gradually replace the existing Oracle E Business Suite, Peoplesoft, JD Edwards, Siebel and other products that Oracle either acquired or developed inhouse. According to Larry Ellison it took Oracle six years to develop and finalize this product. If you look at the Oracle E-Delivery Oracle Fusion Applications download page one of the reasons why it took so long becomes obvious - product comes on 24 DVDs - total size of downloaded software is over 50GB. Installation of such a humongous product requires special preparations and is a daunting task even for very experienced administrators. Oracle recognized the complexity of this product and responded by creating the provisioning framework and the suite of provisioning tools to help with the deployment process.

Book Review: Sams Teach Yourself Java in 24 Hours

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 15:30:00 EST

If you want a well rounded introduction to JAVA 7, look no further. This book touches on all the things you would expect in an introduction to a programming languages. The book is broken down into six parts and a set of appendices. I have listed the chapters by part below. Part I: Getting Started- Becoming a Programmer, Writing Your First Program, Vacationing in Java, and Understanding How Java Programs Work. Part II: Learning the Basics of Programming- Storing and Changing Information in a Program, Using Strings to Communicate, Using Conditional Tests to Make Decisions, and Repeating an Action with Loops. Part III: Working with Information in New Ways- Storing Information with Arrays, Creating Your First Object, Describing What Your Object is Like, and Making the Most of Existing Objects. Part IV: Programming a Graphical User Interface- Building a Simple User Interface, Laying Out a User Interface, Responding to User Input, and Building a Complex User Interface.

Why Rule-Based Log Correlation Is Almost a Good Idea - Part 3

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 15:15:00 EST

We'll see below some examples of security attack scenario that many people will put forth as a perfect example of how powerful, valuable and simple correlation is. As you can see, the overall approach of using static rule-based correlation on these is simply flawed. Attack Scenario Example 1: Identity Theft There are numerous ways to perform an Identity Theft attack, but let's focus on just one of them, recognizing that somebody cannot be in two places at the same time and hence that a user cannot log in your infrastructure from VPN and locally from the office "at the same time." Furthermore, if he connects through VPN, then disconnects and then "shortly thereafter" he reconnects locally, then it is probably Identity Theft.

Third-Party Content Management Applied

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 15:00:00 EST

Today’s web sites are often cluttered up with third-party content that slows down page load and rendering times, hampering user experience. In my first blog post, I discussed how third-party content impacts your website’s performance and identified common problems with its integration. Today I want to share the experience I have had as a developer and consultant with the management of third-party content. In the following, I will show you best practices for integrating third-party content and for convincing your business that they will benefit from establishing third-party management. First the bad news: as a developer, you have to get the commitment for establishing third-party management and changing the integration of third-party content from the highest business management level possible – the best is CEO level. Otherwise you will run into problems trying to implement improvements. The good news is that, from my experience, this is an achievable goal – you just have to bring the problems up the right way with hard facts. Let’s start our journey toward implementing third-party content management from two possible starting points that I’ve seen in the past. The first one is triggered if someone from the business has a bad user experience and wants to find out who is responsible for the slow pages. The second one is that you as the developer know that your page is slow. No matter where you are starting, the first step you should make is to get the correct hard facts.

Why Rule-Based Log Correlation Is Almost a Good Idea... Part 4

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 09:00:00 EST

We saw what typically happens when trying to use static rule-based log correlation to perform real-time incident management... combinatory explosion and lack of scalability. How do you automate non-deterministic attacks in a few discrete steps??? Today, we'll look at more scenarios for which static rule-based log correlation doesn't make sense. Attack Scenario Example 2: Brute Force Attack Let's look at another example scenario. Brute Force Attack.

An ADF Logic Bomb

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 13:15:00 EST

One of my talented colleagues discovered an interesting ADF logic bomb which I thought I'd share here. The issue is with the instantiation order of ADF Faces scoped beans in JDev 11g when using Bounded Task Flows embedded as regions in another page. Regular readers would be familiar that Oracle's ADF solution is built on top of JavaServer Faces (JSF). ADF supports bean scopes such as ViewScope, PageFlowScope and BackingBeanScope on top of the regular JSF ApplicationScope, SessionScope and RequestScope beans. Readers should also be familiar that the beans have a defined life (ie. scope) as detailed in the JDev Web Guide:

Selecting a Business Intelligence Solution

Sat, 17 Dec 2011 11:00:00 EST

A new era of Business Intelligence is unfolding with users buying and deploying BI either with or without cooperation from IT. Because of this shift, users now have many choices and need to make the best decision when it comes to BI features, functionality and price. Stay up-to-date on the ever-changing BI market by reviewing the findings of the 2011 Dresner Advisory Services Wisdom of Crowds BI Market Study. Howard Dresner, report author and worldwide authority on BI, shares the latest market trends and provides true insight into what is happening in the BI arena today. In addition, read why Actuate/BIRT is in the top position and how it exceeded its peer group and the overall sample average for all Technical Support and Product metrics by a wide margin. Read to find out: The best approach to selecting a BI solution that is easy to buy, fast to deploy and simple to use How to take a more active role in planning, managing and evolving your BI portfolio Why Actuate is named the Leader in the Open Source Business Intelligence Vendor category

OpenXava 4.3: Rapid Java Web Development

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 09:00:00 EST

OpenXava is a framework for Rapid Java Web Development, well-suited for business and database oriented applications. OpenXava allows you develop applications just by writing simple domain classes with Java or Groovy. The user interface is generated automatically in runtime, without code generation. OpenXava 4.3 adds support for total properties in collections, it has a new editor for HTML_TEXT stereotype, add info and warning messages and some other useful new features. Now you can use square brakets in @ListProperties to asociate one or more properties of the container entity to a property of the collection. In this way you can add arbitrary values as totals.

Book Excerpt: Introducing HTML5

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 15:00:00 EST

HTML5 is a draft specification for the next major iteration of HTML. It represents a break from its predecessors, HTML4 and XHTML. Some elements have been removed and it is no longer based on SGML, an older standard for document markup. HTML5 also has more allowances for incorrect syntax than were present in HTML4. It has rules for parsing to allow different browsers to display the same incorrectly formatted document in the same fashion. There are many notable additions to HTML, such as native drawing support and audiovisual elements. In this excerpt, we discuss the features added by HTML5 and the associated JavaScript APIs.

VMware vFabric tc Server Streamlines Application Deployment

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 08:45:00 EST

The Integration Group in John Muir Health’s ITS department is responsible for maintaining a broad range of applications that link all the department systems to the core health system, enabling data exchange, enhancing functionality and improving productivity throughout the organization. Read this case study to understand how VMware vFabric tc Server delivered more efficient application deployment, improved server deployment and management and rapid response time.

Solving the Data Challenge for Real-Time Awareness and Risk Assessment

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 08:30:00 EST

Real-time, global data updates have become a critical business requirement for financial-services firms. Overnight or hourly batch jobs can cause erroneous results and missed opportunities. New regulatory requirements dictate real-time reporting of liquidity; traders want access to real-time market and risk positions; and the time windows for relevancy of cross-selling and marketing opportunities are getting shorter. To deal with these issues and new requirements, firms need to be able to react quickly to changes in data. Quick reactions require near-instant access to data, risk analysis and deeper computational analysis for effective decision making. View this webcast to learn how to achieve real-time awareness by: Managing ever-increasing data volumes and transaction rates Supporting a single, consistent view of a global business while running on regionally provisioned hardware Integrating various client systems as active subscribers to different slices of rapidly changing data Overcoming the scale and latency issues associated with traditional relational database management system (RDBMS) models

Seven Qualities of Wildly Desirable Software

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 07:45:00 EST

Great software applications seldom happen by accident: Wise design decisions are the key. Yet many application development teams only design for one, two, or three of these qualities, and others have strayed from design altogether as teams, distracted by shiny new technologies, methodologies, and platforms, fail to engage design principles and talent effectively. Is your business demanding more innovation? You must respond by rising above mediocrity to deliver great software and, to achieve this, you must balance your design to provide seven key qualities: user experience, availability, performance, scalability, adaptability, security, and economy. Boost your commitment to design and design for all seven qualities to create better software, faster.

Web Applications at Cloud Scale

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 06:45:00 EST

Modern web applications must meet the needs of users connecting anytime, anywhere, and from a variety of new devices, in particular mobile handsets, tablets and non-traditional PCs. Supporting these new, modern web applications and devices requires an application infrastructure that easily scales and is cost-effective to monitor and manage. VMware vFabric Cloud Application Platform enables modern applications at cloud scale.

Migrating JEE Applications to SpringSource tc Server

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 11:15:00 EST

This white paper discusses an important trend in IT development and deployment architectures: the evolution from JEE Application Servers to lighter weight Java containers. As evidenced by the growing popularity of Tomcat server, many IT organizations have been re-thinking their commitment to commercial JEE Application Servers. The IT Manager considering migrating applications from their commercial JEE servers has a number of important things to determine before embarking on the process.