So you want to replicate your production data into your test environment. You understand all the reasons you shouldn’t do this, but your client wants it done anyway. Soooo, here’s a generic outline of the steps you’ll need to do. After this is done, don’t forget that you need to “refresh” all your resources (AD, OID, etc), so that all the accounts match up.

• Who's got a G+ account? I wanna add ya. #

I know I can’t be the only one out there, so I gotta know, who the hell actually says “yeah, that sounds like a good deal!”?

Here’s a job description I just received:

Hello
Hope you’re doing well

Title : ITIM resource
Location-US – New York
Duration -12 months
Rate-$40p/Hr

Technical Skills:

Excellent knowledge on Tivoli –TIM/TAM
Should have knowledge on SiteMinder integration with WebServer, OID, Application Server
Good knowledge on Websphere Application and Portal Server
Should have WAS Administration Knowledge
Should have Portal administration experience.

Anyone worth their salt in this industry isn’t going to accept that. So what’s this really mean? It means that the client put out a bid for lets say $130/hr for this position because they’re smart and know they need someone half-way decent. Next comes these guys…my little Indian staffed headhunter agencies that have no problems pitching someone completely useless with the requested technology. And they get paid for this? This is bullshit! No middleman should get a chunk of the hourly just for finding a resource to do a gig. A finders fee, I understand, but this is ridiculous!

You think these guys even tech out the resources they pitch back to the client? Hell no. The only question they need answered is how much you’ll do the job for, other than that, they don’t give a rats ass. You know what I hear when I respond with, “I don’t even have experience with XXX” ? They tell me it’s ok and they’ll submit it anyway. OR(!) a couple of them even told me, “Why don’t you just add it on there, and then we’ll submit it.” !!!

Companies : ^^^^ These are the people you’re getting to staff a position you probably know little about!

It all seems normal, because it’s been going on for so long, that no one really questions it, but take a look at it from the consultants point of view. The company is paying an hourly fee for a service which is rendered by the consultant. The headhunter then takes their vig off the top before the consultant see’s a dime! It’s almost like the consultants are the one’s paying to have the gig.

Ok, I’ll subside on my rant… it’s just frustrating to get phone calls and emails every day with garbage like this. Because in the end the consultant is getting ripped off, and the client is getting a shoddy resource. Everyone looses except the scam artist in the middle.

My message to companies hiring consultants: Using headhunter agencies is fine, but make sure you’re getting a legit resource and they’re not a Visa mule, or getting suckered.

My message to the headhunters: FAIR SHARE! I get it, you definitely deserve a piece of the pie, and I have no problem giving it to you, but if you call me with a thick Indian accent and ask me to work for $40/hr, I will laugh at you and hang up.

My message to the consultants: Stick up for what you’re worth! Just because a bunch of dolts are saying yes to lower wages so that they can learn on the job and set the client back more time than they can afford, doesn’t mean you need to cave in.

You get what you pay for. So know what you’re paying for.

.: Adam

I am a dropbox user, and I love their service. That was until this security breach was found!

Here’s my interaction with Dropbox support on this one…

—————————————

So… after a bunch of 11g attempts, turns out that OIM (Identity and Access Management) 11.1.1.4 isn’t compatible with anything in the 11.1.1.3 stack (including WebSphere 10.3.4).

Soooo… *Everything* must be at the 11.1.1.3 level! Why not release the 11.1.1.4 patches all at the same time? To easy. Why not make everything backwards compatible? It would probably put me out of a job.

Thanks Oracle!

.: Adam

Another version question =)

You can see the generic version number in the Web console by clicking on the About link in the corner. You’ll see the build number and current version:

If you really want the nitty-gritty details of the installation though, you’ll need to turn to the OIM database. There is a table called XSD. In there are all the tasty bits:

And there ya have it!

.: Adam

I was working with a client and this error popped up at me when trying to export some configurations in OIM. Not really paying attention, I became very confused and aggravated. I clicked the Export link, the window opened, and then .. splat… nada. I see this:

Nexaweb Client failed to load. and a button telling me to click for more info… so what do I do? I click it:

This description didn’t help much either:

Your environment is supported. However the Nexaweb application failed to load. java.lang.SecurityException: sandboxed loaded attempted to load trusted resource from blah blah blah /xlWebApp/ClientClassServlet/xlWebApp/NexawebClient.jar

ok… what the hell? My connection works fine. When I copy the link and pop it into a browser, I get the JAR file no problem. So WTF?

Turns out, I hastily clicked “Yes” on this window dialog when it initially popped up:

Not reading it, I thought I was supposed to… wrong! Click “No” and the JAR file is loaded properly and the app launches…

Success!

Lesson learned? When in a hurry and simple shit stops working… slow down =)

Hope this helps all others that are as impatient as myself

Later!

.: Adam

This is kind of a taboo topic in my industry, especially considering that I’m a consultant… freelance at that. But… here we go!

I ask my clients this all the time, but not with regards to my work, but to that of other consulting companies that I have to work with. When it comes to the circle of trust between clients and consultants, it’s never the same. Night and day differences for different clients and different consultants.

The answer to this question should always be, never. You should always have checks in place to verify your consultants work. This can either be employees, a third party consultant, logging software, or even documentation reviews.

Now, I’m not saying that all your consultants are lying to you, generally they’re trustworthy people, but most people forget that this is business, and there’s a lot of time and money on the line. I like taking someone at their word as much as the next guy, but when all hell breaks loose, all you’ll have is a, “But you said…” And that’s not something you can take to your board with.

If your consultants are on the up-and-up then they will have no problem with one of your own sitting with them, or asking them for documentation outlining all the steps taken for you to verify in a separate environment. Checks and balances exist for a reason.

Very rarely do I take anyones word on anything completely. Nine times out of ten, when I learn something new, I verify it through a second source. It doesn’t mean that I don’t believe the person or piece of information that I’m reading, but it’s a cold hard fact that people lie, forget parts, or exaggerate all the time. It’s nothing personal, but it happens.

I worked with one client where they had outsourced a huge chunk of development to a very large consulting company. They hired me to check their work. Think of it like an ongoing development assessment. It wasn’t that they had no faith in the large consulting company, it’s just that they knew that they had no clue what was technically going on and they wanted someone on their side to verify this multi-million dollar project instead of just taking their word that “it works”. By me being there, and my reputation of being a no bullshit kind of guy that only cares about my client and will easily chew out a third party when they’re caught lying to my client, their work improved greatly while I was there, and it even tightened up. No more sloppy code that’ll get the code working… barely. No more crappy documentation that’s virtually unreadable and definitely not useable. No more useless meetings that were wasting tens of thousands of dollars. And most importantly, the consulting company was being held to their word with a paper trail. All of this happened just because I sat in on a few meetings and reviewed their environments. As they say, “You can’t bullshit a bullshitter.”  And I’ve seen it all, so I was the companies ace in the hole that wound up saving them a ton of cash, and even better, getting the project in on time.

At another client in a similar situation, the consulting company kept telling them that “no changes were made”, and they didn’t have a large IT staff knowledgeable to check into this. After some checking some history loggers I had setup on the servers, I was able to send them a transcript of all the commands issued, files updated, and in some cases differences in code (I had the previous versions saved elsewhere). This was especially important as it was relevant to a milestone that required payment.

Again, a lot of this comes down to standard business practices, but a lot of the time, in the niche field of Identity Management, most companies don’t have anyone on staff that knows this type of work well enough to do these checks properly.

I know that most people won’t read this and agree, but do nothing about it. I hope that it gets at least one person to follow through and save them a ton of headache down the road.

.: Adam

I’ve seen this question a lot on client sites…

When trying to install the design console for oracle identity manager, all the text  in the prompt windows is missing. You can see the radio buttons and text boxes, but the descriptions are all empty.

This is most likely because you’ve copied only the setup_client.exe file to do the install.

To fix this, you need to also copy over the folder: installServer/com/oracle/xl/installer

This folder contains the text files needed =)

.: Adam