Just read a great article where AARP replaced an Oracle implementation with IBM Netezza.
AARP had been using Oracle Database for their data warehouse. But their system simply could not keep up with the demand. As Margherita Bruni from AARP says, “our analysts would run a report, then go for coffee or for lunch, and, maybe if they were lucky, by 5:00 p.m. they would get the response—it was unacceptable—the system was so busy writing the new daily data that it didn’t give any importance to the read operations performed by users.” The stresses on their system were so great that in 2009 alone, their Oracle Database environment had more than 30 system failures. To compound matters, these system performance issues meant that full backups were not possible. Instead AARP would back up only a few critical tables, which is a less than desirable disaster recovery scenario. Clearly, something had to be done.
Getting the Pulse of the social world
Fri, Jun 14th 2013 6:00a Bob Balfe If you haven’t seen the “Pulse” area on Klout you might want to check it out. You can see the most influential people by many different categories ranging from Late Night hosts to Universities. [read] Keywords:
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Congratulations to my son Nathan, best Fathers day gift ever!
Thu, Jun 13th 2013 10:22p Bob Balfe I don’t normally write much personal stuff on my blog but I was so proud of my son Nathan last night I have to put this on my blog so I will always have this here.
Last night my son had his “moving up ceremony” from fifth grade to sixth. This is a pretty big deal because three elementary schools merge to one school – about 240 kids total. What I did not know was what I was about to hear when the awards ceremony started. At all of these events I record as much as I can dur [read] Keywords: facebook
Product delivery date: An online shopping experience
Thu, Jun 13th 2013 7:50a Bob Balfe I have been in the process of remodeling my kitchen. I am not going to mention any companies here but you can imagine two very large home improvement stores in the United States and those are the two I will be talking about. Oh yes, and I also checked Amazon.
This particular order was for a new faucet you see in the post. It is the Delta 9192T, it is very cool and can be turned off and on by touching the metal casing.
The two stores in question did not have this model “in stock” s [read] Keywords: connections
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Using XPath API to figure out my stats post is now translated in Spanish!
Tue, Jun 11th 2013 8:00a Bob Balfe A bit back I was asked if one of my blog posts could be translated on a support page for a hosting company’s site. The post was originally put on this blog on 12/19/2012 and is titled “Using the XPath API to figure out my stats“. Here is a snippet of the translated post and link to the site:
Uno de los problemas principales que tengo con WordPress básico es que si bien hace un buen trabajo proporcionando tus estadísticas alrededor de las vistas (el número de vistas que obt [read] Keywords:
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Introducing my new Commerce channel on Youtube
Fri, Jun 7th 2013 7:30a Bob Balfe I have a collection of videos on my YouTube channel and most of my recent ones are about commerce and more specifically WebSphere Commerce. The commerce related videos are similar to what we would show to a customer in a meeting or at a conference but in a smaller scope and generalized.
Since YouTube decided to make my channel pretty ugly and harder to find things I attempted to arrange my videos in sections by content type – I hope this helps. If you are looking specifically for commerce [read] Keywords: ibm
development
websphere
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Sorting a HashMap in Java: SortedMap to the rescue!
Thu, Jun 6th 2013 8:50p Bob Balfe I recently had to populate a list and make sure there were no duplicates so I immediately thought of a hash map. While this worked great, I also needed the output to be sorted alphabetically. This is where SortedMap comes into play.
While I could have done this a few ways, I found this method very simple and straightforward. The hash map provides the unique values while the SortedMap provides the auto sorting I needed. I only had about 1000 records to sort so I didn’t have to worry about p [read] Keywords: java
oracle
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The WordPress subscription feature is awesome!
Wed, Jun 5th 2013 7:30a Bob Balfe In case you do not use the Jetpack plugin for your WordPress site you might want to consider it. The plugin is packed with some professional features. One of those really cool features is the Subscriptions feature. Not only is it easy to subscribe on a WordPress site – see my home page on the upper right for an example, the administration of the subscriptions is basically seamless.
Many visitors land on your site once, never to return. Convert more visitors into regular readers by making i [read] Keywords: administration
email
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Want to learn Dojo? Then check out this site today!
Wed, Jun 5th 2013 7:10a Bob Balfe Dojo is considered the most robust JavaScript framework for business applications. If you want to really sink your teeth in then you might want to check out what Sitepen has to offer. The site hosts a blog, support, and workshops to get your team up and running with Dojo very quickly. You can even schedule a free 30 minute call to talk about your project.
Sitepen - Development, support, and training from the makers of Dojo. [read] Keywords: applications
development
dojo
javascript
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Using Dynamic Drive’s Image Zoomer in WebSphere Commerce
Tue, Jun 4th 2013 11:40a Bob Balfe This blog post shows how you can use the Image Zoomer plugin by Dynamic Drive:John Davenport Scheuer for jQuery to provide image zoom capability in WebSphere Commerce. While many companies use their own package for image zoom like Adobe, a Dojo widget, or any other JavaScript framework, I wanted to show how easy it is to use this plugin on your WebSphere Commerce site. One, because most of WebSphere Commerce uses Dojo and two, I wanted to show how easy it is to do something like this with the MV [read] Keywords: ajax
css
dhtml
dojo
integration
javascript
websphere
widget
widgets
