Social networking more populair

Luis Benitez is blogging about the fact that by 2011 social networking will be More Popular than Face-to-Face Collaboration. At least that is what IBM is stating in one of the youtube movies they posted.





I am not sure if IBm is correct however I think that social networking will create not only new friends online, it will also create new friends offline. If you look for example at the opencoffee meetings you see happening around the world I think that social online networks are making the offline connections stronger instead of weaker. That social networks will start playing a bigger role is without any doubt however it will not have much negative impact on real-life meetings in my opinion.

Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler

We have waited for it a long time, however Oracle has now finally launched a great tool for data modeling. Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler is a new graphical tool available for Windows, Mac and Linux to develop your data model. One of the great advantages is that you can very quickly drag and drop an entire data model and create a DDL file. DDL stands for Data Definition Language and can be used as a medium between your design tools and the real database where you would like to deploy your model.

One of the great benefits of this tool is that you can not only create a model for an Oracle database, it is also capable of creating DDL files for other databases like Microsoft SQL server and DB2 databases.

In some cases when you create a DDL file from a model you will encounter errors like: “There are # errors Check the design rules for more details”. You can enforce design rules so when working in a larger team than one person on a design you will have to comply with the same rules. You can check the design rules under “Tools” > “Design Rules”. When applying the rules you will be presented with all the violations on the rules so you will be able to repair them and make your model compliant before deploying it to a database instance.

Besides this you will also have the option to engineer from your relational model a logical model. This can be very handy if you first create a logical model and afterwards need to document your model. This can save you a lot of visio time.

Opensource movie

We all know opensource software by now and the concept behind it. If you do not like it you can change it, if you spot a but report and or even better repair it. This way the software can stay free (as in free beers) and you will create a better product every time you solve a bug.

A concept that you might not know is openbooks, you can reed some about it on the O'Reilly pages who give away some on how this works and you have the GNU Free Documentation License for example. Books under GFDL can be changed, adopted,... etc etc.. We all know also the concept of Creative Commons. All those ideas have provided a ground for a group of Polish filmmakers to create a "OpenFilm".

You will have access to all the raw material of the Valkaama project and if you do not like the compiled film as it is..... you are free to create your own movie. In my opinion this is a great concept for showing what can happen if you leave a community to decide. I will follow this closely and hope to see a lot of interesting changes to the plot.

If you are interested in the project or just want to catch a free movie, check the Valkaama project site. One of the trailers can be found below:

Sharepoint opensource

Most likely you do have encountered Microsoft sharepoint somewhere in a corporate environment. It can be that it is used as the basis of your companies intranet, a team platform for teams working on different locations and using it to share knowledge. The options are almost endless. One of the great benifits is that you can change a lot and that you can see it as a framework to develop exaclty that what you need. The downside is that you will not be able to change all. It is a product from Micrsoft so it will stay closed source and for some of us (me included) this is somewhat a downside to the product.

If needed some of us woul like to have full access and the ability change whatever fits a particular need. I am currently asked to look into a sharepoint like solution for a non-profit organisation and came accross a product called Cy.nin which is a opensource alternative for Sharepoint.

Cy.nin provides you with almost the same options (and some extra) as you would expect from Microsoft Sharepoint. The difference is that Cy.nin is opensource and you can download the sourcecode for free. Also a commercial version is available and you will have some more support on this version. However, for everyone who starts in a green field situation for a knowledge sharing platform, corporate and non-corporate I can only advise you to have a look. Install it on a Linux box and give it try. You will be supprised with the options and possibilties you find.

Richard Stallman

I received a mail from someone asking me what the deal is with Richard Stallman on my Blog. Well,... I will not say to much about it.... the only thing is that I like to state a homage to Richard because he is one of the founding fathers of opensource and I think he is one of the great inspirations for the GNU developers.

So if anyone wants to know what the deal is with Richard,... he is one of the best developers I have ever encountered and he is the leading man behind GNU.

By the way... if you have any money you are not using... think about GNU! And NO they are not on the stock market, it will buy you a good feeling :-)

Address style Oracle

Oracle Applications let you enter customer, supplier, bank, check, and remit–to addresses in country–specific formats. For example, if you have customers in Germany, you can enter German addresses in the format recommended by the Bundespost, or you can enter addresses for customers in the United Kingdom in the format recommended by the Royal Mail.

This is done by using descriptive flexfields to enter and display address information in the appropriate formats. The flexfield window opens if the country you enter has a flexible address style assigned to it, which lets you enter an address in the layout associated with that country. If there is no address style associated with the country, Oracle Receivables uses the standard address format.

Oracle iStore for example also uses these formats to output the address for example in the checkout pages. An address style tells Oracle Applications how to format and arrange the address fields so that they best suit the address entry requirements of a particular country. Many countries can use the same address style, although a country can only use one address style at a time. You assign address styles to countries using the Countries and Territories window. You can assign one of the address styles provided or you can create your own.

You can create your own by using the using the “Application Developer” responsibilities and selecting the “Flexfield” > “Descriptive” > “Segments” menu. Here you can search for Application: Oracle Receivables & Title: Address, this will give you the Descriptive Flexfield Segments who are taking care of the address style in Oracle.

By using Segments you can add or remove valuesets to the address style. This will result in a new style for input and output of your addresses and will result for example in changes in the Oracle iStore checkout pages.

Bittorrent Google Chrome-OS 1.3.0

As already posted in my previous post about Google Chrome OS, it is coming the long awaited Google OS. The point that it is announced by Google on their blog is already a little giveaway that they are quite far with the development.

A second pointer that they are quite far with the development is that screenshots are available. The current version mentioned is the Google Chrome OS : OS DEV –V1.3.0

Someone took some “screenshots” in the form that it is a photo from his screen ;-) You can find a couple on the engadget.com website.

The second step you most of the time will see is that a developers version is leaked and can be downloaded. I wonder how long it will take before you can download Oracle Chrome OS via bittorrent.

Google Chrome OS

Google announces a new operating system named Google Chrome OS. As we have learned in the past is that if Google launches something it most of the time is a good product. So should we be happy with a Google OS?

Yes, why:

- It will be opensource so the Linux developers will have access to the sourcecode and can learn how google did things.

- It will be a big momentum against the dominant position of Microsoft.

- It will be a free (no charges) operating system.

- It will be easy to integrate the OS with Google products

No, why:

- Google can become just the next Microsoft.

- It will give Google (possible) the power to also harvest information when you are not online and store this for building more knowledge around their users.

- It might possible defer developers from some of the Linux projects to Google OS projects.

The problem for Google is that it is always has been a very friendly guide for a lot of internet users. You currently see more and more users who are asking questions about the more dominant position of Google. When launching a operating system it can step into the same trap as Microsoft. Even do Google launches great products which I personally love I think they now should be ultra careful to not upset the masses.

I personally cannot wait to have some more information about the new operating system than already published at the moment however I am even more interested in how Google will handle the critics on the system which they will get. Not the comments on the working, because they will be able to handle this, I more interested in the comments on the operating systems impact on a security, privacy and moral front.

Do I think it is good to have a Google OS? Yes, and I can not wait to see it and how it will come into place.

Debian Apache AddHandler mod_python

When you like to create a web-application using python and you are running a Apache webserver you will most likely like to add the handler mod_python. mod_python will allow you to run for example python with a extension like .py and .psp .

The below example is done on a clean default install of a Debian linux server. First thing to do is install the mod_python module in apache. You can do so by executing the following apt-get command.

apt-get install libapache2-mod-python

Now we have mod_python installed however we have to do some manual configuration. open the following file in vi (or any editor you like) /etc/apache2/sites-available/default . Here you have to look for the vhost configuration part you like to add the handler to. As this is a default install you will be looking for the /var/www location.

Here you will have to add the following lines:
AddHandler mod_python .py .psp
PythonHandler mod_python.publisher | .py
PythonHandler mod_python.psp | .psp
PythonDebug On

This will make sure that you have something like this for you vhost configuration:

Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
allow from all
AddHandler mod_python .py .psp
PythonHandler mod_python.publisher | .py
PythonHandler mod_python.psp | .psp
PythonDebug On


Now you can test it by adding some .py and .psp code to /var/www and call it with a browser. If all is correct you should see the result of your code and not the code itself.

Enterprise Manager Grid Control 10gR5

Chung Wu reports on his weblog that Enterprise Manager Grid Control 10gR5 is now available for download for all supported operating systems. This now includes 64-bit Windows (x86-64) and HP Tru64 Unix.

You can download OEM from the oracle website or the eDelivery website. If you would like to know what the new features are in 10.2.0.5 you can take a look at this website from Oracle; “New in Enterprise Manager 10g Release 5 (10.2.0.5)”
Some of the things I really like in this version are for example:

Repeat notifications are now supported for all notification methods – OS Command, PL/SQL procedures and SNMP traps. Administrators can customize the format of the e-mail notifications sent by Enterprise Manager to better satisfy their operational requirements. Customizations include the changing of the content and inclusion of target properties and other information that provide more business and operational context about the alert.

Enhanced management and monitoring support for new Oracle Database 11g features such as ADDM for RAC, Real-time SQL Monitoring, Partition Advisor, and Automatic SQL Tuning are provided.

Comprehensive automation provides a simple, user-friendly workflow for capturing production workload, copying it to a test system, setting up software and test databases to the point time of capture, deploying replay clients, orchestrating the replay process, and analyzing the replay results.

Oracle Virtualization (Oracle VM) Management: Virtualization management involves the monitoring, administration, and maintenance of the virtual servers and guest virtual machines in your enterprise. Enterprise Manager is now able to monitor virtualized entities alongside the physical infrastructure and perform complete lifecycle management of virtual servers and software running on them.

Real User Experience Insight: This product maximizes the value of your business critical applications by delivering insight into real end-user experiences through reporting on user traffic requested by, and generated from, your network. It integrates performance analysis and usage analysis into a single offering, enabling business and IT stakeholders to develop a shared understanding into their application users experience. Out-of-the-box support for Siebel and E-Business Suite is provided.

Milepost GCC machine learning

Developing code for embedded programs just got a little more easy. When you develop embed software most likely you will have to face things like performance and how much power the device will consume. Tuning such code can be very very complicated. You will have to study the device and your code. Developing a first beta of a embedded program which is not consuming to much power and is performing in a good fashion can take up to months.

Now IBM Research and Milepost Consortium have developed a new GCC open source machine learning compiler. The compiler will optimize your code and make shorter and better performing code so you can shorten your development cycle.

Besides having your compiler learn from your own devices and tricks you can also use the ctuning.org website to collaborate and upload code. This way you will get automatically input on how to improve your code.

If you are a developer on such code,….. or looking into the latest DARPA challenge you might want to give this a go.

Mapreduce Lectures

If you want to learn more about mapreduce and Hadoop as I do currently it can be good to follow some classes. However, I am currently not studying at any university so this will make it somewhat harder to follow some lectures. The great thing about the internet is that you can almost find anything you want. So one of the things I just learned is the University of California Berkeley is having a YouTube channel where they post lectures.

Meaning that even if you do not study at UCBerkely you can follow lectures. You can just watch the lecture as a student only then online. When you like to know more about MapReduce and follow some classes you can watch the video’s of “CS 61A The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs”. This is given by Brian Harvey.

CS 61A is more than only MapReduce so if you are interested in the entire course please go to the channel mentioned above. If you are only interested in MapReduce you can watch the below 2 video’s.

Oracle Database Cloud Backup

When you are looking into the architecture of a new database system a lot of things are to be considered. Besides the applications that will be using the database you will have to think about hardware, networking, storage, failover systems, backup and recovery, etc etc etc.

Traditional backup is done in many cases on tape, when disks and storage appliances came into play and became cheaper backups started to be done on disk arrays. Network attached storage is currently a commonly used way to store backups, in most cases combined with tape storage to move backups to another location. Some companies use mirror filers to store backups on other locations and/or standby in case a failover should become active.

All options are still very useful and in some situations still the best however now we have a new and very good option, and it is still a very affordable solution. Oracle is providing a solution to store your backups in the cloud, in cooperation with Amazon it is now possible to use RMAN to backup your database into the storage cloud of Amazon. As part of the cloud computing solutions Amazon provides the also provide Amazon S3 (Amazon Simple Storage Solution).

Instead of using a tape to backup your database or a storage filer Oracle is providing you the option to backup your database into the cloud and on a Amazon server. Even do this is already possible for some time many companies have not yet started to use this because due to a couple of wrong assumptions. Common, and wrong) assumptions are that it is costly, insecure, slow, only applicable if you run your database in a Amazon datacenter, not applicable for the current setup used. However, all of those assumptions are, as already stated, incorrect.

They way the cloud backup module is created is that you can use it as if you were doing a backup on your own storage filer, you will be able to use the same scripts, tools and techniques as you are always used to however now your target system is the Amazon cloud. Also a restore can be done in the same way and it is definitely faster than a restore from tape. Meaning the assumption “not applicable for the current setup used” is in most cases not correct. DBA’s will still have the same options as they would have in cases that you use your own storage filer.


One of the other assumptions “only applicable if you run your database in a Amazon datacenter”, also not true. Even do you might possible gain some speed when you run it in the same Amazon datacenter it is not true. It is however possible to run your database at the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud.

Costly, well especially during the current financial situation you will have to face this question. What is this costing me? Well currently this is costing you 3 dollar cents a month per GB. Now it becomes time to make a quick calculation for yourself, or your customer. For example, what are the costs of a new Netapp filer + what is it roughly costing me on cooling, rackspace, power consumption + what are the costs for moving my backup to a other location. Also take into account that if you want your own storage you will most likely need someone who can administer your storage filer. Also those costs need to be taken into account. Now reconsider the 3 dollar cents per GB from Amazon. Another thing to consider is that if you want your own storage you will most likely want to be prepared for data growth. You will buy that extra shelf of disks so you can store your data and backups. When you consider using Amazon S3 you will only pay for the storage used instead of also paying for all those empty disks in your filer. This can be very interesting for customers who have a changing demand for the amount of storage.

Slow, depending on some things. What is the current way of backup? Is it tape backup, then you will gain a lot of speed. If you try to benchmark it against a backup to your own filer in your own datacenter it will be somewhat slower as your data will be traveling over the public internet. However, even do bandwidth can be a problem there are some things notable in the Oracle Secure Backup Cloud Module has some things to speed things up considerably.

For example, Oracle Secure Backup will identify unused blocks in your database and will not incorporate them in the backup. In almost every database there is more space allocated than used. In a normal backup this will become part of the backup, now those blocks will be left out so they will not consume any bandwidth and time when you send your backup to the cloud. A second thing is that you have the option to leave out undo data which is already committed to the database. When you have a database with a high volume transactions your undo tablespace will be loaded with undo data which will never be used again because it is already committed by the users. You have the option to leave this out while preserving the undo data of transactions that are in process during the backup. This can also save a lot of data in the backup and save you a lot of data traffic.

And standard is the use of the 11G Fast Compressed Backup feature which normally will require the license for Oracle Advanced Compression and is standard with the cloud backup module. Resulting in a 50% compression in most cases.

Security, this is one of the parts you will have to convince your board of directors (or the one of the customer). This can become a hard battle. In most cases people tend to state that if it is not running on their own server it is not secure. If it is on a public storage location everyone can read your data. Also in this case they are wrong. To start with, all the data transmitted between the system running the database and the storage cloud is encrypted using a key pair which is currently seen as one of the best ways to encrypt data streams. This makes it virtually impossible to read the data while it is transmitted. Besides the security while transmitting the data there is also the option to encrypt your backup before you transmit it. Meaning that the real content of the backup is also encrypted. Even if someone gains unauthorized access and hacks into the already very secure Amazon storage cloud he is still unable to read the data because the backup itself is encrypted. When you like to look more into the ways of encryption you will be able to find some documents on all the security options and algorithms that can be used on the Oracle website.

In conclusion, Amazon E3 is a great, fast and secure way to backup a oracle database. It is cheaper than most other options and even do you will have to convince your customer to make use of it is a something that should be considered when thinking about backup. In some cases their might be a very good reason why you do not want to have your backup stored a Amazon E3 however in most cases it is worth a serious look.

Twitter for small business

Ralph Wilson has posted a new video on his website where he is having a talk with Avinash Kaushik. They are discussing how to use Twitter as a small business and how it can help you start your business.

Problem for startups is getting in touch with the right people and groups to promote your product and keep your 'followers' informed. You do not have a huge marketing budget so all solutions to promote your product or service are very welcome. Twitter is one of them, not only small companies are using it also large companies are using twitter and you can make use of the same facility.

With twitter you can very simply start promoting and try to start a viral marketing campain. If you do it in the correct way you send out a message and it will be re-tweeded from person to person via twitter. With a very small action you might be able to get your company at the peoples attention. Besides looking at the video which is below you might also want to look at the smallbiztrends.com website.



In the video Avinash Kaushik is talking about tweet-rank.de, I have been looking into it and I have to say I do not really see the benifits of this service. I have been playing arround a bit however it is less than I expected. However, if you feel you want to give it a try, just visit the website and make sure you start following @tweet_rank via twitter because this is needed before you can use it. They use it to do some measuring.

Web Trend Map 4 2009

Here you can find as a reference the web trends 4 map for 2009. This map is made by informationarchitects.jp and more information can be found at their website. However, the map can also be found here.. and it is real fun to have a look at it and you might even stumble upon some unknown stations.