It takes a special kind of IT pro to risk additional carpal tunnel damage to pound out a technical article after spending the day wrestling with a keyboard in dealing with other duties. That kind of dedication is noteworthy, even more so if people actually take the time to read the resulting article. So if you know any of the authors listed below, skip the handshake and give them a congratulatory slap on the back for all that time spent torturing their tendons. Their hard work has earned a place on this list of  the Top 10 most popular OTN articles published in 2012. 

1. Getting Started with Java SE Embedded on the Raspberry Pi
   by Bill Courington and Gary Collins
2. How Dell Migrated from SUSE Linux to Oracle Linux
   by Jon Senger, Aik Zu Shyong, and Suzanne Zorn
3. Exploring Oracle SQL Developer
   by Przemyslaw Piotrowski
4. Getting Started with Oracle Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 2
   by Lenz Grimmer
5. How to Get Started (FAST!) with JavaFX 2 and Scene Builder
   by Mark Heckler
6. How to Use Oracle VM VirtualBox Templates
   by Yuli Vasiliev
7. How to Update Oracle Solaris 11 Systems From Oracle Support Repositories
   by Glynn Foster
8. Tips for Hardening an Oracle Linux Server
   by Lenz Grimmer and James Morris
9. How To Configure Browser-based SSO with Kerberos/SPNEGO and Oracle WebLogic Server
   by Abhijit Patil
10. How to Create a Local Yum Repository for Oracle Linux
    by Jared Greenwald

Of course, OTN has a great many articles covering a broad range of topics of interest to Java developers, DBAs, sysadmins, solution architects, and everybody else who works keeping the IT world running. You'll find them here. If you have suggestions for topics or technologies you'd like to see covered, please let us know.

And if you have insight and expertise to share, why not write your own article? Click here to learn how to get published on OTN.

Our partners have answered the special offer call just in time for you to either shop for the tech professional in your life or share the list below with someone who keeps asking you what you want for the holidays.  Go right to the Oracle Technology Network Member Discount Page or read on for more details.

Oracle  Store has extended their 10% Savings through December 31st 2012.

Oracle Press -
Oracle Technology Network members get 40% off the latest Oracle Press book by Oracle ACE Directors Ben Prusinski and Gustavo Gonzalez, Oracle E-Business Suite Financials Handbook, Third Edition in print and ebook format.

CRC Press - Has added 3 NEW titles!  Get 20% off the below title at checkout.

• Secure Java: For Web Application Development
• Open Source Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence
• Developing Essbase Applications: Advanced Techniques for Finance and IT Professional
• Oracle Embedded Programming and Application Development
  

Packt Publishing -
Get 25% off the print books and get 35% off the eBooks listed below. You will need to be logged in for the discounts to apply at checkout and codes expire December 31st 2012.

• Getting Started with Oracle Data Integrator 11g: A Hands-On Tutorial
• Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g: A Hands-On Tutorial
• Oracle Certified Associate, Java SE 7 Programmer Study Guide
  

Safari Online-  Give the Gift of Knowledge This Holiday Season
Give your friends and colleagues the gift of Safari Books Online! With an ever-expanding library of books and videos from more than 100 publishers (including Oracle Press), a subscription to Safari Books Online is the gift that always fits, helping your friends learn new skills and stay current. Starting at $42.99, gift subscriptions are available for 1, 3, 6 and 12 months.

Get all of this and more at the Oracle Technology Network Member Discount Page!

What's an Oracle ACE? Oracle ACEs and Oracle ACE Directors are community members who have demonstrated both community leadership and expertise with Oracle technologies. You'll get a chance to interact with several Oracle ACEs and Oracle ACE Directors in the mini theater in the OTN Lounge this week during JavaOne Latin America 2012 in São Paulo, Brazil.

Tuesday, 4 December 2012

	Presentation	Presenter	Presenter title and company
4:30 – 4:50	Co-existence between Applications' Unlimited and Fusion Applications	Gustavo Gonzales, Oracle ACE Director	CTO, IT Convergence
4:50 – 5:10	Pipeline Table Functions	Marcelo Ochoa, Oracle ACE	CTO, Scotas.com
5:10 - 5:30	Automatic Diagnostic Repository (ADR) Day-to-Day	Rodrigo Almeida, Oracle ACE	CDS - Condomínio de Soluções Corporativas

Wednesday, 5 December 2012

	Presentation	Presenter	Presenter title and company
4:30 – 4:50	TBA
4:50 – 5:10	Oracle VM Template - Facilitating the Construction Environment.	David Siqueira, Oracle ACE	CDS Condominio de Soluções
5:10 – 5:30	Database Migration with Minimal Downtime	Marcus Vinicius Miguel Pedro, Oracle ACE	Discover

You can't gift wrap it, and you can't stuff it in a stocking, but you can give yourself the gift of improved Oracle Fusion Development skills by participating in Virtual Developer Day: Oracle Fusion Development.

This free online event features six sessions in three tracks, plus live hands-on labs, all focused on Fusion Development with Oracle ADF. The event takes place on Tuesday December 11, 2012, and is scheduled specifically for those in EMEA.

Visit the registration page for more information, plus complete agenda information and session abstracts.

By now it should be clear to even the most tenacious Luddite that the social media phenomenon is no mere fad. Those ubiquitous icons for Facebook and Twitter and other social networks are little beacons of disruptive change signalling yet again that the 20th century is over, dude. And that presents an opportunity for software developers with the necessary insight and expertise to tap into and expand social platforms for forward-thinking organizations.

If you're a developer and you're interested in exploiting these emerging opportunities you'll want to check out three new videos that focus on software development for social platforms.

• Developing with Facebook: An Introduction to Social Design
  James Pearce, Facebook's head of Mobile Developer Relations, provides an overview of the Facebook platform and the underlying APIs that are available to the developer community.
• Building on the LinkedIn Platform: Content Amplified
  Adam Trachtenberg, Director of LinkedIn's Developer Network, discusses how you can make it simple for a professional audience to discover and distribute your content on LinkedIn.
• Emergence of the Social Enterprise
  Roland Smart, Oracle's VP of Social Marketing, shares Oracle’s vision for the social-enabled enterprise and highlights the role developers will play in the next phase of enterprise development.

OTN has also created the Oracle Social Developer Community, a new Facebook page devoted to the promotion of community conversation and resources to support Social Developers. If you're working on a social development project, visit the page and tell us about it.

Oracle Technology Network is a Platinum sponsor at QCon San Francisco.  (qconsf.com).  Don’t miss these great developer focused sessions:

Shay Shmeltzer
How we simplified Web, Mobile and Cloud development for our own developers? - the Oracle Story
Over the past several years, Oracle has beendeveloping a new set of enterprise applications in what is probably one of the
largest Java based development project in the world. How do you take 3000 developers and make them productive? How do you insure the delivery of cutting edge UIs for both Mobile and Web channels? How do you enable Cloud based
development and deployment?  Come and learn how we did it at Oracle, and see how the same technologies and methodologies can apply to your development efforts.

Dan Smith
Project Lambda in Java 8
Java SE 8 will include major enhancements to the Java Programming Language and its core libraries.  This suite of new features, known as Project Lambda in the OpenJDK community, includes lambda expressions, default methods, and parallel collections (and much more!).  The result will be a next-generation Java programming experience with more flexibility and better abstractions.   This talk will introduce the new Java features and offer a behind-the-scenes view of how they evolved and why they work the way that they do.

Arun Gupta
JSR 356: Building HTML5 WebSocket Applications in Java
The family of HTML5 technologies has pushed the pendulum away from rich client technologies and toward ever-more-capable Web clients running on today’s browsers. In particular, WebSocket brings new opportunities for efficient peer-to-peer communication, providing the basis for a new generation of interactive and “live” Web applications. This session examines the efforts under way to support WebSocket in the Java programming model, from its base-level integration in the Java Servlet and Java EE containers to a new, easy-to-use API and toolset that are destined to become part of the standard Java platform.

The full conference schedule is here: http://qconsf.com/sf2012/schedule/wednesday.jsp

But wait, there’s more!  At the Oracle booth, we’ll also be covering:

·         Oracle ADF Mobile
·         Oracle Developer Cloud Service
·         Oracle ADF Essentials
·         NetBeans Project Easel

Lastly we’ll share the results of a short cloud survey at QConSF ater this week.  If you attended this year's Oracle OpenWorld and JavaOne conferences, it would be hard not to notice that Oracle is clearly "all-in" when it comes to the Cloud.  With Cloud computing being such a hot topic on many OTN members' minds, we'd like to know what you're doing in the cloud and invite you to take this short cloud survey.

Happy November!  OTN has worked with its partners to bring you more new offers or extend their existing ones.

Oracle Press New Offer-

Oracle Technology Network members get 40% off the newest Oracle Press titles by Oracle ACE Mark Rittman, Oracle Business Intelligence 11g Developers Guide and Oracle Exalytics Revealed  (ebook format only).

Extended Offers -

Oracle Store - Save 10% on Your Next Software Purchase from the Oracle Store

Pearson Publistiong - 35% off Hacker’s Delight

Manning Publishing - 41% off the MEAP, eBook and print format of the following books:

• Making Java Groovy
• OCA Java SE 7 Programmer I Certification Guide

Safari Books Online - OTN members get 30 days of free access + 20% off unlimited access to Safari Books Online for 6 months.

Packt Publishing - 25% off the print books and 35% off the eBooks listed below:

• Getting Started with Oracle Data Integrator 11g: A Hands-On Tutorial
• Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g: A Hands-On Tutorial 
• Oracle Certified Associate, Java SE 7 Programmer Study Guides.
  

Murach  Publishing -  Get 30% off for OTN members - Murach’s SQL Server 2012 for Developers by Bryan Syverson and Joel Murach.

Get all of this From the OTN Member Discount Page!

Oracle OpenWorld and JavaOne were GREAT!  Thanks to all who dropped by one or both OTN Lounges (Howard St Tent and Java DemoGrounds).  Don't think we forgot about the OTN Discounts for October.  Read on to see what was added or just go to the OTN Member Discount page.

Oracle Store is back with a 10% discount!

Oracle Press added some new titles - 40% Off Latest Titles!

• OCA Java SE 7 Programmer I Study Guide (Exam 1Z0-803) 
• Oracle Solaris 11 System Administration: The Complete Reference
  

Packt Publishing, Apress, Manning and Safari all extended their September offers!  

Happy buying!

Here's a quick rundown of today's activities in the OTN Lounge:

OTN Lounge hours today: 8:00 am - 2:00pm

9:00 am - 1:00 pm

RAC Attack Learn about Oracle Real Application Clustering (RAC) in this collaborative event. You'll work with experts from the IOUG RAC SIG to get an Oracle Database 11gR2 RAC cluster running inside a virtual machine. For more information: RAC attack at Oracle Open World (Pythian Blog) RAC Attack - Oracle Cluster Database at Home/Events (WikiBooks)

The OTN Lounge is located in the Howard St. Tent, between 3rd and 4th, directly between Moscone North and Moscone South. Access to the OTN Lounge requires an Oracle OpenWorld or JavaOne conference badge.

Here's a quick rundown of today's activities in the OTN Lounge:

OTN Lounge hours today: 8:00 am - 6:00pm

9:00 am - 1:00 pm	RAC Attack Learn about Oracle Real Application Clustering (RAC) in this collaborative event. You'll work with experts from the IOUG RAC SIG to get an Oracle Database 11gR2 RAC cluster running inside a virtual machine. For more information: RAC attack at Oracle Open World (Pythian Blog) RAC Attack - Oracle Cluster Database at Home/Events (WikiBooks)
4:30 pm - 8:00 pm	Oracle Social Network Developer Challenge Judging The Oracle Social Network Developer Challenge comes to its conclusion with the final judging on entries and the award of the single prize: $500 in Amazon gift cards. Click here for more information.
4:30 pm - 5:30 pm	Oracle ADF / Oracle Fusion Middleware Meet-up Join other Oracle ADF and Oracle Fusion Middleware developers and meet the product managers and engineers behind Oracle ADF, ADF Mobile, and ADF Essentials. Did we mention free beer?

The OTN Lounge is located in the Howard St. Tent, between 3rd and 4th, directly between Moscone North and Moscone South. Access to the OTN Lounge requires an Oracle OpenWorld or JavaOne conference badge.