Firebox Training Blog

Teradata is one of the leading analytic data solutions companies in the world. On the 23rd of January, the company announced next generation capabilities for organizations that want more functionality, control and business value.  These capabilities are to be provided by Oracle’s Business Intelligence technologies and will soon be incorporated into the education systems of IT professionals through programs like an OBIEE training course, according to a MarketWatch.com report.

In order to be able to handle rising volumes of data, companies are looking for high-end technology that simplifies data, delivers essential information to expanding communities of business users and extends the range of their business intelligence. The Teradata-Oracle alliance aims at doing exactly this by integrating and optimizing Oracles business intelligence and Teradata’s technologies.

Expectations

According to the President of Teradata Labs, Scott Gnau, these capabilities are just an example of the value that is given to Oracle Business Intelligence and Teradata clients though a firm engineering relationship.  The engineering resources together with professionals from Teradata professional services are working to give these next-generation BI capabilities with OBIEE for joint customers who would like to gain the potential to manage new types of data better. It is also meant for those who wish to improve the functionality of business intelligence environments that are complex. The popularity of these solutions is increasing the need for OBIEE training courses.

The New Capabilities of OIBEE With Teradata

Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) together with Teradata Geospatial will inform companies better with automated business decisions and location intelligence that is integrated. OIBEE with Teradata Aggregate Designer Optimization partially automates the making and design of Virtual Cubes that ensure better performance of data aggregation in order to support the BI environments. Teradata Qeury Banding with OBIEE make it simpler to manage and monitor user profiles and activity. It also simplifies the process of prioritizing system access by user and at the same time improving the management of workload across users. This enhances better speed of insight.

The latest BI capabilities approach the most important needs that today’s data warehousing and BI professional’s face. The integration of these two technologies permits the storage, handling and consumption of data that allows key measurements such as distance to be calculated. It helps give the companies’ insights such as the best location for a new store branch or the distance that customers are willing to travel in order to redeem discounts and promotions. The automation of Virtual Cubes increases the speed of performance by cutting down the overhead aggregation.

Another complex issue faced by BI system administrators is workload management. A majority of BI tools hide users’ identity with pooling mechanisms. This comes in the way of the administrators’ ability to include application and user identity into decisions. These decisions are usually related to the prioritization of the resources of a system across various user communities, chargebacks, accounting and troubleshooting. OBIEE with Teradata Query Banding permits the identification of the source of requests that are submitted via middle-tier application. The workload strategies are based not only on the application but also on the source of the individual request.

Oracle recently shipped its Big Data Appliance in January, according to a ComputerWorld.com report. This appliance together with the NoSQL database was unveiled last fall at the OpenWorld user conference. The company declared that this new appliance will run Cloudera’s Apache Hadoop implementation and management software. This announcement was made on the day of the shipment of the appliance. This shipping would possibly challenge its competitors like SAP, Hewlett-Packard and IBM and push them to also introduce Hadoop offerings that combines software, hardware and other tools.

Opinions From the Industry

An analyst from Ventana Research, David Menninger stated that this offering will make IT managers look more at bundled systems that could fulfill all the data needs of corporates. He said that the spontaneous decision of Oracle to incorporate Cloudera could be an advantage to corporate clients and professionals who are associated with this appliance. These clients include those that conduct Oracle Middleware training courses. He added that initially Oracle was supposed to run an Oracle distribution of Hadoop. But if Oracle had done this, its rivals would have probably exploited it as a weakness.

Another analyst who works with Forrester Research, James Kobielus said if IT managers do adopt this bundled Hadoop system, the other tech vendors, many of whom have already spent money on big data research will be pressed to follow. He holds the opinion that these systems give customers a wider choice. Kobielus observed that most of the enterprise Hadoop deployments have been custom built by IT engineers from the company. The companies had to purchase the hardware, license the software and then integrate it by themselves. He also said that the increasing popularity of the framework of open-source Apache Hadoop should eventually help increase the number of big data packages that are available to IT managers. This will also coincide with the increasing number of Oracle Fusion training courses available.

The Big Data Appliance

The components of this data appliance are 18 Linux-based x86 Sun servers, which have 216 processor cores, Sun server hardware, 648 tetra bite of raw disk storage with an Oracle NoSQL database, 864GB of working memory, a copy of Oracle’s Java HotSpot Virtual Machine. It also includes an open-source distribution of R statistical software. This system has been designed in order to analyze and manage sets of data. Some of these sets include click-stream data, log data that are too large or unsuitable for database storage and telemetry data.

This data appliance gives 40Gbps of InfiniBand connectivity amongst the nodes. This feature is not commonly seen in Hadoop as most of them employ Ethernet to link the nodes. A cluster configuration of numerous racks can be secured together as well. Oracle’s vice president of data warehousing product management stated that the company began shipping Big Data Connector drivers that are used for exchanging data between the Big Data Appliance and many other products of Oracle. These other products include Exdata data warehousing appliances, the Exalytics business intelligence appliance, Oracle Database 11g and its online transaction processing appliance.

An annual survey conducted by a consultancy group known as Gabriel Consulting points to the fact that virtualization is not very important to Unix customers. This survey was called “Is Commercial Unix Relevant in the Midmarket.”  There were nine factors that were taken into consideration for the survey, according to a ZDNet.com report. These nine factors are the deciding factors during the selection of Unix for commercial purposes.

Out of the nine, virtualization capability ranked last.  The other features that were on the list included stability, performance that is predictable, the ease of administration, familiarity, price, availability, quality of operating system and support from the vendor. All these features are essential while choosing commercial Unix and virtualization just does not meet the necessary capabilities.

Research Findings

This ranking can also be attributed to fiscal reasons. Consumers would not want to buy a large system to use as a virtual host as some very important applications and services are operated on them. This is only done in case virtual zones are being used in order to control the hardware resources and to segregate one source from the other. Commercial Unix implementations are also expensive. For instance x86 is affordable when compared to Unix. Companies do not waste their Unix resources in operating a Windows web server.  An x86 cluster could be built for the same price.

Despite these facts, Unix is central to several organizations and the number of professionals signing up for Unix training classes is steadily rising. An important fact to consider is that these finding are only for medium sized businesses (40,000 employees or less). Bigger businesses rank virtualization as their fifth determinant. This is owed to the fact that larger establishments use virtualization solutions that are related to their vendors or zones. These big companies can afford to buy the equipment and related infrastructure that is required to support virtualization on commercial Unix. Large companies buy commercial Unix because of its stability and durability. The cost factor ranks seven in the survey.

Research Conclusions

It is vital for vendors of Unix to concentrate on the strong characteristics of the operating system and should continue to offer virtualization solutions in the form of zones. The need for spending more funds on virtualization research is unnecessary. Zones are a mature technology. Unix enables users to setup many virtual machines on a single system. It additionally gives better isolation and leverage. These qualities make it ideal for a Unix training course. Zones make handling multiple applications easy. Configuring zones is simple, secure and lightweight. Capability comes as a standard with Unix.

It is important that commercial Unix vendors provide back up for companies who want to use virtualization. The idea that Unix is fading away is a huge misconception. More than 80% of the medium sized businesses that were considered in this survey stated that they only intend on increasing their usage of Unix if it does not stay constant. This makes it clear that commercial Unix is extremely relevant to the industry even though virtualization may not be considered important.  A technical course in Unix will help developers stay current.

According to a recent BGR.com report, only 27% of smartphone owners in the U.S. owns an iPhone, while 47% of them owned Android devices. The research also found that less than half the people researched their phones before purchase and their decision was mostly based on Google’s reputation. This amounts to Android having almost twice the market share as compared to Google. The most popular brand purchased by Android consumers in the U.S is Samsung, followed by Motorola, HTC and LG.

Most Preferred Android Brand

The past few years has witnessed a significant increase in the popularity of the operating system used in Google’s Android smartphone devices. Recent research by iGR shows this increase in the percentage of U.S users who own an Android device, which is double than that of iPhone users. There are several brands that support Android; however, Samsung is the most preferred among them, not for personal use but also among corporates who conduct Android training courses for their employees.  Huawei and ZTE were among the lesser preferred brands using Android for their phones.

IGR’s Press Release

The company’s research found that among the users of Android, 45% researched Android devices prior to the purchase and make a planned decision to buy an Android specifically. Android can be run on Python as well, with a number of Python training courses being offered for Android developers.

The market research administered by IGR also covered brand preferences and other factors relating to the purchase of Android devices. Sarah Thoman, a research analyst also stated that understanding the specific needs and reasons behind customer preferences is a key to a brands success, especially in the U.S market, which is extremely competitive. For instance, the display properties, quality of the device and utility play important roles in consumer purchase decisions. The main topics that this research approached include:

Oracle ADF makes authentication and authorization easy via a nice graphical interface. During development, you can use the builtin file-based policy store called jazn-data.xml. You can then later swap out your authentication provider, using something a bit more scalable such as an LDAP server or custom database store. ADF also provides a default HTML-based login form that can be automatically generated for you. It calls an authentication servlet behind the scenese, which in turn looks at your data store. Although this default login.html page is easy to work with, since it is NOT ADF-based, it doesn’t have that “ADF” look and feel.

In this video tutorial, we show you how to bypass the “default” login.html page and instead create our own custom ADF login page. Our page will have fields for the user to enter their credentials, and when the user clicks the submit button, it calls the adfAuthenticationServlet for us. *** There are two part to the video tutorial. Part 1 shows you how to create the Login Bean, and part 2 shows you how to create the users  and roles and to configure the authorization.

To create the custom ADF Login form:

1. Create a new .jspx page called “login.jspx”. Place 2 input text components on the page for the user name and password, as well as command button with the label “Log in”. Set the password’s ‘secret’ attribute to ‘true’.
2. You’ll need a managed bean to capture the username and password, as well as call the authentication servlet. In the ViewController project, create a Java class called “loginBean.java”. Create 2 private String variables – _username and _password. Provide public getters and setters for these as well. The complete Java code is provided for you below. It contains a doLogin method that explicitly calls the adfAuthentication servlet. Be sure to register the LoginBean in your adfc-config.xml file using request scope.
3. The Java code depends on three .jar files that you must add to the project’s classpath: %MIDDLEWARE_HOME%\modules\com.bea.core.weblogic.security.auth_xxxx.jar, %MIDDLEWARE_HOME%\modules\com.bea.core.weblogic.security.identity_xxxxx.jar, %WLSERVER%\server\lib\wls-api.zip
4. Create an error page the ViewController layer – call it error.jspx. For now, just put a text output component on the page that says “error”.
5. Configure ADF security for your application. Go to Application -> Secure -> Configure ADF Security. Choose the first option – ADF Authentication and Authorization. On the next screen choose form-based authentication. Be sure to point the login and error pages to the pages you just created. The paths should look like this: /faces/login.jspx, /faces/error.jspx.
6. On the next page, choose the first option – No Automatic Grants.
7. On the next page, do not choose “Redirect Upon Successful Authentication”. The managed bean’s doLogin method programmatically provides the redirection for you.
8. Open the login.jspx file in design mode. Set the username and password text fields’ ‘value’ properties to the managed bean’s username and password fields, respectively.
9. Set the command button’s ‘action’ attribute to the managed bean’s doLogin method. Use the Expression Builder to help you correctly build the EL.
10. Let’s now create the users. Go to Application -> Secure -> Users. Hit the green plus icon to add a couple users. Let’s create ‘bob’ and ‘julie’. Set both of their passwords to ‘password1′ so it’s easy to remember.
11. Now create an enterprise role called ‘managerGroup’. Add Bob to the group, but don’t add Julie.
12. Create an application role called ‘managers’. Add the managerGroup to managers. The effect here is that Bob is a manager, but Julie is not.
13. Create a page called managerPage.jspx. Place a panelHeader on the page with the text set to: Welcome, #{securityContext.userName}! Since you are a manager, you can access this page!
14. From the Application Navigator, right-click on the managerPage.jspx and create a page definition file. This will force authentication to be performed on the page.
15. Go to Application -> Secure -> Resource Grants. Select “Web Page” for the resource type. Select the managerPage from the list on the left. In the middle page, add the managers application role. This means only authenticated users who belong to this role can access the page. Stick with the defaults for the Actions in the right-hand pane.
16. Run the managerPage. Try logging in first as “bob”, then as “julie”.

package com.fireboxtraining.view;

import javax.faces.application.FacesMessage;

import javax.faces.context.FacesContext;

import javax.security.auth.Subject;

import javax.security.auth.login.FailedLoginException;

import javax.security.auth.login.LoginException;

import javax.servlet.RequestDispatcher;

import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;

import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;

import weblogic.security.URLCallbackHandler;

import weblogic.security.services.Authentication;

import weblogic.servlet.security.ServletAuthentication;

public class LoginBean {

    private String _username, _password;

    public void setUsername(String _username) {         this._username = _username;     }

    public String getUsername() {         return _username;     }

    public void setPassword(String _password) {         this._password = _password;     }

    public String getPassword() {         return _password;     }

    public String doLogin() throws LoginException {

       String un = _username;

       byte[] pw = _password.getBytes();

       FacesContext ctx = FacesContext.getCurrentInstance();

       HttpServletRequest request = (HttpServletRequest)ctx.getExternalContext().getRequest();

       Subject mySubject;

       try {

          mySubject = Authentication.login(new URLCallbackHandler(un, pw));

          ServletAuthentication.runAs(mySubject, request);

          ServletAuthentication.generateNewSessionID(request);

          String loginUrl = "/adfAuthentication?success_url=/faces/protectedPage.jspx";

          HttpServletResponse response = (HttpServletResponse)ctx.getExternalContext().getResponse();

          RequestDispatcher dispatcher = request.getRequestDispatcher(loginUrl);

          dispatcher.forward(request, response);

        } catch (FailedLoginException e) {

          FacesMessage msg =  new FacesMessage(FacesMessage.SEVERITY_ERROR, "Invalid username or password", "Invalid username or password");

          ctx.addMessage(null, msg);

        } catch(Exception e){

          System.err.println(e.getMessage());

        }

     return null;

     }

}

Securing your Oracle ADF pages, task flows, entity objects and attributes is an integral part of any robust ADF application. The Oracle WebLogic container provides many authentication providers for you to choose from, and since you can seamlessly swap them out after creating your application, you can opt to stick with using the jazn-data.xml file during development, then later choose something else, such as an LDAP server or custom database tables.

In this video tutorial, we show  you how to enable ADF security through JDeveloper to create the default login.html page. Assuming that you already have a basic ADF application web page that you want to secure, you can implement authentication and authorization by following these steps:

1. Go to Application -> Secure -> Configure ADF Security.
2. Choose the first option – ADF Authentication and Authorization.
3. On the next screen choose form-based authentication. Check “Generate default pages”.
4. On the next page, choose the first option – No Automatic Grants.
5. On the next page, choose “Redirect Upon Successful Authentication” if you want to automatically be redirected to a welcome page. You can even have the wizard generate the welcome page for you - check ”Redirect upon successful authentication” and “Generate Default”.
6. Now refresh the Application Navigator, and you should see login.html, error.html, and an optional welcome page.
7. Look at the login.html code. The form sends the information to j_security_check, and the username and passwords are the j_username and j_password fields, respectively. When the built-in adfAuthenticationServlet is called, this form information is sent to the servlet, when performs the authentication on our behalf.
8. During runtime, if an unauthenticated user attempts to access a protected page, the authentication mechanism automatically kicks in. If authenticatication fails with the provided user credentials, the user is redirected to the error page, which you can of course customize.
9. To create users, go to Application -> Secure -> Users. You can add the users to enterprise roles (aka “groups”), then add groups to application roles.
10. You can secure several types of resources – web pages, task flows, ADF methods, entity objects, and entity object attributes. To define what roles have access to particular resources, go to Application -> Secure -> Resource Grants. Select the resource type from the drop-down menu, then select the resource you want to protect. If you are trying to configure authentication for a web page and you don’t see the web page in the list, most likely the problem is that the page is lacking a page definition file. To create one, right-click on the web page in the Application Navigator and select “Go to page definition” from the context menu. If you are looking to configure entity object authetication, be sure you have already enabled it from the Entity Object Editor.

According to Dice.com, a recruitment agency, hiring managers are looking for employees who are well versed in Java. The company conducted a survey comprising 1,200 hiring managers in the tech sector, who all stated the same, reports Dice.com.

Demand for Java Developers

The demand for computer professionals who are well versed in Java has been on the rise, especially in the past two years. The job listings on Dice.com support this fact. The representative of Dice.com stated that Java developers have a lot of options when it comes to job opportunities. With the increase in demand, the number of tech professionals enrolling for Java training courses are also on the rise.

Apart from Java developers, the demand for software developers is also high. Employers seek developers having a strong opinion on what is required to create software codes that are of superior quality. Hiring managers need look for employees who have talent and passion for creating high end business solutions and user experiences. A technical course will help developers produce the problem solving skills required in today’s market.

Hiring managers told Dice.com that there was a dearth of .NET and mobile developers. The main reason for this is that the increase in the number of developers is insufficient to fulfill the demands created by the rapid expansion of the sector. Moreover, professionals have been hesitant in developing their expertise in this area because of the gap in terms of finance and the career scope.

Job Responsibilities of a Java Developer

The primary skills that hiring managers look for are the ability to implement, develop and maintain Java based interfaces. The main duties assumed by Java developers include setting objectives by analyzing the requirements of the client and creating the system and its features functional. They design and create user interfaces by understanding development life cycle, setting design methodologies and programming by utilizing software products. The developers are expected to recommend solutions by comparing the advantages and disadvantages of purchase alternatives and custom development.

Developers create multimedia applications using the appropriate tools and softwares. It is vital for Java developers to be in touch with current developments by constantly researching new technologies that include and exclude the internet. They should also participate in educational programs like Oracle training classes that focus on Javascript. Reading official publications and joining Java related networks and societies are also very helpful.

New Additions This Year

Systems and network engineers are the professionals in highest demand this year. These professionals are required to preserve, run and optimize the entire channels and platforms of communication. The qualifications that are in demand are Java, Web Programming skills, Java Applets, Verbal Communication, Teamwork, Software Requirements, Web User Interface Design, Object-Oriented Design (OOD), Software Development Process, Multimedia Content Development and Software Debugging. According to Dice.com, the top 10 skills in demand this year in the order of preference include:

The results of a recent survey conducted by the Yankee Group show that more than 70% of customers, who are planning on buying a smartphone in the first half of 2012, will buy a handset based on Google’s Android software or an iPhone. With increase in the use of these software, the number of people enrolling for iOS and Android training courses is also increasing.

Research by Yankee Group

According to an eWeek.com report, the research included 15,000 participants. Out of these, 47% stated that they already own a smartphone. 58% of the people surveyed stated that they would buy a smartphone as their next mobile. 39% stated that they plan on buying an Android in the next six months and 35% said they were planning on buying an iPhone in the same time. 25% of the respondents stated that they already own an iPhone.

These results have led to the conclusion that 74% people would purchase either an Android or iPhone during the first half of 2012. A lot of these purchases are motivated by professional rather than personal needs. The increased use of Android devices across various sectors is directly related to the increase in the popularity of Android training classes. These classes not only improve IT knowledge, but also boost job prospects. Analysts from Yankee state that the opportunities presented by the smartphone market are vast and now is the time to make the most of it. The buying patterns in the next three years will determine the future of the sector.

Future Predictions 

The Yankee Group predicts that the sales of smartphones will rise from 97 million in 2011 to 175 million by 2015.  Even though the natural tendency is to expect this figure to be a culmination of many operating services, these numbers will primarily be shared between iOS and Android powered devices. Research in Motion (RIM) and Microsoft are already having a tough time attracting new customers and convincing existing users to upgrade their devices.  An analyst at Yankee, Katie Lewis mentioned that out of the 20% of Blackberry customers in the US, only 12% plan on buying the same handset in the near future.  Only 9% of the 14% of people using a Window’s based device plan on sticking to it on their next purchase.

Microsoft and Nokia may prove good competition in the future, with Nokia’s Lumia 900 ready for release in March. Lumia 900 drew positive reviews even from Microsoft’s critics at the 2012 Electronics show. But Lewis still recommends that Microsoft buy over Nokia in order to stabilize its environment. The partnership with Nokia isn’t enough to persuade manufacturers to choose a Windows phone. Gaining the ownership of Nokia’s manufacturing abilities, software and hardware is Microsoft’s only ticket to success according to her. Android still holds more than 50% of the market share. This figure can be challenging to beat.  iPhone on the other hand accounts for 20% of the world market share.

Last year was a year that saw a lot of changes in the world of programming languages. Mobile phones continued to emerge as a popular platform for programming, and when it came to applications and data use, the most popular platforms were cloud based. PCs and laptops got a lot more computing power though the multiple core processors and RAM, which also ended up affecting the programming languages and how they were used. Whether it be scripting languages like Ruby on Rails, Python or Pearl, or other languages like C# and objective-C, there was a lot of change in how they were being utilized.

The changes in the use of languages are monitored through the Tiobe index. This index observes the frequency at which different languages and language products are mentioned and then expresses them in terms of percentage of the total mentions. Tiobe index showed that for 2011, the maximum growth was seen for Objective-C.  This can be easily understood from the fact that Apple products like the iPhone, iPod, iPad and even Macs have been quite popular. This has resulted in an increase in demand for Objective-C skills.

Impact of Mobile Phones

The impact of smartphones is most clearly visible on languages like Java. In the 90′s, Java was pretty much the most popular language for management development platforms. This changed in the new century as more options became available. But, with the introduction of Android platforms in the market, Java again received a boost. In 2011, it did not increase when compared with the previous year, but did not decline either. JVM languages like JRuby, Scala, and Groovy are pulling developers away from servers and desktop platforms.   Android is being used to fill this void that is being created.

Ruby and Python

You have to understand that as mobile computing grows in popularity, developers have to lay more stress on the programming language that is used. This is because, for mobiles, the programming language should be closely linked with the hardware.  The reason behind this is that with mobile phones, codes have a small base and the main focus is to make use of every feature that is offered by the hardware of the phone.  A scripting language has difficulties in doing this and as a result most of the scripting languages were on a decline this year.  However, the case was not so straightforward with Ruby and Python.

Ruby saw a decline on Tiobe and on Ohloh.net figures as well, which tracks the lines of codes submitted in a particular language. On the other hand Python did not see any drop at all in the number of lines of codes submitted. This means that use of Python did not decline and it still remains a popular language. That is why a Python training course is still very important for many developers. This particular trend of going away from the scripting languages was more evident in the .NET domain. C# saw tremendous growth and was only behind Objective-C in the Tiobe index. This is only a single year, so the results cannot be described as trends, but it is safe to say that mobile computing has had a significant impact on the use of programming languages.

At the Oracle Open World in 2011, it was announced that Oracle fusion applications will soon be available to the general public. These applications are meant to be the ERP solution for the next generation and will soon take place of the current Oracle E Business Suite, Siebel, PeopleSoft and other products that were developed or acquired by Oracle in the past. This suite has been in development for six years, comes on 24 DVDs and is over 50GB in size. Oracle Fusion training classes can be quite helpful for those who are interested in this massive set of applications.

Installing such a huge product is never easy, even for the most experienced IT administrators. Oracle understood the precarious situation and responded by making a provisioning structure and a suite comprising of provisioning tools that would make deployment a lot simpler.

Installing Fusion Applications

A great platform for creating instances for test and development of the Fusion application is the Amazon Web Services. You can choose Oracle’s VMK AMI as the OS and the virtual machine as it has some OS components that are necessary for the installation. Also, in the end, every Oracle product becomes certified and is supported on Amazon Web Services, given that they run on an Oracle VM. There is a small glitch in the AMI that makes the server hang on restart.  However, this glitch can be solved by removing a line from the HWADDR file.

As the product size is so big, the software should always be launched from the server which will contain all of the target media. You can do this by starting your browsing session on the server and then opt for the direct download. You will only be required to enter username, password and certain questions regarding the export limitations. After you do this, the provisioning framework is the first thing to be installed which has the provisioning wizard tool and other required tools.

You are then required to run the provisioning wizard tool. This tool will help you in performing various actions. You can maintain the existing environments, provision the transaction environment or create a transaction database. As the transaction database is a must for Oracle fusion applications, it should be installed first. First, you have to provide answers to questions related with Oracle Home, base, and the new data file locations. When you are done, the new database is created. The transaction database is created by using the templates provided, which are about 55GB in size. The database contains a lot of important structures that are required for the later installations.

Other Components

Once you are done with the transaction database, you need to install the Application RCU (Repository Creation Utility). This is important because the RCU helps you in creating tablespace and schemas that are specific to a particular application. You will need to install the Oracle Identity Management tool that is important for managing various user identities across the enterprise. You will also need to install the SOA suite, Oracle Forms, Reports, and Oracle HTTP server.  A technical course will help with the new installations.