Please note that this is a draft document, and work in progress. At this time only the public facing websites have been successfully set up with a CA signed certificate.

• The Apache configuration file for the setup wizard is:/etc/apache2/httpdWSW.conf
• The Apache configuration file for the intranet is here:/etc/apache2/httpdInt.conf with the corresponding SSL configuration here: /etc/apache2/extra/httpdInt-ssl.conf
• First copy the new key and cert (in the same file, key goes on top and then the cert) into /etc/opt/ibm/bbp/smartcontainer/httpdWSW.cert
• (Optional, this step hasn’t been successfully tested, because a non-RFC compiant method is used.) To create an RFC compliant PKCS8 version of the key pair where the intranet config file is expecting it:
cd /etc/opt/ibm/bbp/
openssl pkcs8 -topk8 -inform PEM -nocrypt -in smartcontainer/httpdWSW.cert -out PKCS8.cert
• Make sure the CA bundle is made available and properly reference in the above mentioned config files (cp path/to/sf_bundle.crt smartcontainer/)
• Create a PKCS12 version of your certificate:
openssl pkcs12 -export -chain -CAfile sf_bundle.crt -in '<your>.crt' -inkey '<your>.key' -out PKCS12.cert -name <name> -passout pass:111111
(at the time of this writing, the default cert store password hard coded in the VERDE install is 111111)
• Location of the Java SSL Keystore: /etc/opt/ibm/bbp/SSLkeystore
• Location of the [SAFEv3] encription tool:/opt/ibm/bbp/saf/encryptPassword.sh
• Password retrieval command:/opt/ibm/bbp/saf/lib/security/manageAdminCreds -f get -a JavaKeyStore2048BitKey -i 1
• Create a new keystore based on the PKCS#12 cert:
keytool -importkeystore -destkeystore SSLkeystore.new -srckeystore PKCS12.cert -srcstoretype PKCS12 -alias <common_name_of_SSL_cert>
• Update the Keystore configuration reference in /opt/ibm/bbp/saf/cfg (use the password retrieved above).
• Copy the PKCS#12 cert to the VERDE Tomcat cert store:
cp PKCS12.cert /var/lib/verde/host.p12
cp /var/lib/verde/host.p12 /usr/lib/verde/etc/host.p12
(Make sure you save your previous copies of any file you modify.)

At this point, you have to restart the system, to make sure that all public services get the proper certificate loaded on boot. If you prefer, you can restart the services:

• /etc/init.d/lwi restart
• /etc/init.d/simpleAgent_d restart
• restart the VERDE software from the web console

References

• http://conshell.net/wiki/index.php/Keytool_to_OpenSSL_Conversion_tips
• http://cunning.sharp.fm/2008/06/importing_private_keys_into_a.html
• Many thanks to the bISV IBM support team

As a follow up to the DB2 Discovery Kit post, here is a link the the Updated IBM DB2 e-kit for Database Professionals

This new kit has a number of resources for migrating to DB2 from other databases, such as Oracle.

The need to host a shopping cart comes up on a regular basis. There are literally hundreds of very good solutions out there. Here is a list of carts that satisfy the following criteria:
- configurable
- customizable
- embeddable
- has a flexible API
- compatible with IBM DB2
- scalable
- reliable

With these requirements, Java EE is a good technology to settle on, hence the need to find Java Shopping Cart Hosting.

Java Shopping Cart Hosting – Ready to Go Solutions

The following products have been identified as viable solutions for Java Shopping Cart Hosting deployments:

• http://www-01.ibm.com/software/genservers/commerce/express/
• http://www.softslate.com/
• http://ofbiz.apache.org/
• http://www.shopizer.com/
• http://www.jadasite.com/
• http://www.openedit.org/
• http://www.konakart.com/
• http://www.avetti.com/
• http://allbinary.appspot.com/Weblisket.jsp

Java Shopping Cart Hosting – Tutorials

There are also a couple good tutorials we found that would walk you through how to create a shopping cart from scratch to embed into an existing application:

• http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/j-ajax1/
• http://www.tech-freaks.in/Java-Programming/JSP-Servlets/shopping-cart.html

Any of the above is supported in our Managed Hosting environment for a successful Java Shopping Cart Hosting deployment.

The concepts in this guide apply for the DB2 version of the rating engine.

Data Fromat

product_code_call,description,cost,call_type

Data Upload

For the MySQL back-end, use phpMyAdmin to upload the data:

Log in to phpMyAdmin
Select the rate table
Click the import tab
Select the file that has the comma delimited values (CSV)
Set the number of lines to skip to 1
Select CSV radio button
Set the delimiter to “,”
Check the replace data with file box
Click Go

Upon successful import, a message diplaying the number of values imported, for example:
Import has been successfully finished, 1578 queries executed.

When it is time to upgrade from DB2 on Intel to DB2 on Power for example, taking a backup/restore approach isn’t possible as DB2′s backups are platform dependent. The solution is to use a DB2 command called db2move.

Basics of db2move

db2move allows to export data from DB2 at different levels of granularity. It also has a very simple syntax to allow exporting all of the data and structure of a database.

Exmaple of db2move


su - db2inst1
mkdir /tmp/db2export
cd /tmp/db2export
db2move sample export

Where db2inst1 is the db2 instance owner, /tmp/db2export is where the DB2 data and structures are being exported, and sample is the database name.

For more DB2 Support hints, please visit our DB2 category.

Storage Requirements

• What our their current storage environment? (What technology do we use? NetApp, EMC, HP, Hitachi, Compellant?)
• What is our current amount of usable storage?
• What is our current data in GB / TB? How much of that data is deemed critical as opposed to 2nd tier, or even archivable?
• What growth increase are we seeing from year to year? (25%? 30%? 40%? More?)
• Is this our largest variable IT cost within our overall budget?

Server Infrastructure

• How many servers do we have within our overall Infrastructure environment?
• What percentage is comprised of Power, Linux or “Wintel”?
• Do we have a vendor standard? (HP, Dell, IBM?)
• What is our overall server utilization (7%? 10%? 20%? 50%? More?)
• Do we utilize virtualization in our server infrastructure environment?
• If so, what percentage of our environment is virtualized?
• What version / type of virtualization do we use?
• Are we looking to do a server consolidation project to help us save on additional software maintenance and energy costs?

Network Infrastructure

• Do we have (primarily) our own data center or do we store all of our equipment at a co-location / managed services location? (and if so, whom?)
• What is our current network environment (Cisco? Avaya?)
• Do we standardize on a vendor?
• How old / new is their network environment?
• What kind of connectivity do they have? (T1? T3? DS?)

Security Solutions

• Do we have a set standard for our security environment?
• Do we do quarterly security assessments? (PCI and/or FFIEC Assessments?) (Who do we use?)
• Are there areas we need to improve?

Software Maintenance

Do we have a goto partner we standardize on for software and hardware maintenance contracts?

Projects

• What are there next three primary projects?
• What is our IT budget?
• What is our Calendar year? Jan – Dec? July – June? Etc.

For more information about planning for storage, servers, and network infrastructure, look at our data warehouse pages.

If you have just reclaimed a shelf from a NetApp SAN that you would like to use with an older head, you will notice that the drives are not recognized. This is due the the fact that DataOntap upgrades the drives automatically when you plug them in to an updated shelf, but it won’t downgrade or even recognize correctly drives that come from an higher level revision.

Downgrading drives while keeping the contents is actually impossible.

Actually downgrating the firmware on NetApp SAN drives

Chances are that you don’t really need to downgrade the firmware on the drives, and you can just skip to the next section.

If you are sure you need to downgrade the drives, here are the basic steps:

• Get a linux box, with a qlogic HBA, and cables that can attach to the shelf that has the drives to downgrade
• Make sure only the drives that you want to downgrade are in the shelf
• Make sure the proper disk qualification package is on the filer (if not, download the Disk Qualification Package as a zip file from: http://now.netapp.com/NOW/download/tools/diskqual/ and extract it to the /etc directory of the NetApp)
• Download all current disk firmware from http://now.netapp.com/NOW/download/tools/diskfw/
• Get the right firmware for your disk (the new you just downloaded, or an old one, if you need to downgrade) — the old firmware is already on the root volume of the netapp
• Use the proper firmware upgrade tool from your manufacturer to flash the firmware from the Linux box

Wiping labels on NetApp SAN drives

If you simply can’t get the old filer head to recognize the drives that had new labels, the only viable solution to get the drives to work is to reconnect the shelf to the old filer head that was running a newer firmware.

Erasing labels on NetApp SAN drives

• Boot into maintenance mode (CTRL+C at boot and then Option 5)
• list the drives: label summary
• erase the labels: label wipe 4.23 where 4.23 is the drive number to wipe
• exit maintenance mode: halt

Chances are that this will still not allow the older filer to see the drives properly. The next step always works: zero the drives.

Zeroing spares on NetApp filer

• Boot into maintenance mode (CTRL+C at boot and then Option 5)
• list the drives: label summary
• force the drives to become spares: label makespare 4.23 where 4.23 is the drive number
• exit maintenance mode and boot:
> halt
ok boot

• zero the spare drives: drive zero spares
• remove the shelf or the drives from the new filer, and you can now put them back into the old filer, as they will be recognized just fine.

For more information about our SAN support, look at NetApp SAN.

DataOntap is a FreeBSD based operating system built by NetApp. However, most of the command line interface commands differ from the usual FreeBSD commands. When a new NetApp installation is performed, or a NetApp migration is needed, typically the IP address needs to be changed, as well as the default gateway. The first step before changing the network configuraiton is to check if the current configuration, and capture it in case you need to back out of the migration. The following paragraphs show how to check existing configuration, and how to set the new gateway.

Show NetApp SAN network config

To print the current network config, run:
ifconfig -a

To set a new network IP, run:
ifconfig e0 192.168.1.2 netmask 255.255.255.0

Where e0 is your network interface name, and 192.168.1.2 is the new IP of the NetApp.

Show NetApp SAN route config

To print the current routes, run:
route -ns


Setup NetApp SAN default route

Delete NetApp SAN current default route

route delete default

Add NetApp SAN new default route

route add 0.0.0.0 IP_OF_DEFAULT_GW 1
For example, if the fedault gateway is 192.168.1.1:
route add 0.0.0.0 192.168.1.1 1
For more information about our SAN support, look at NetApp SAN.

From the thread “My Quest for Understanding Business Intelligence” this comment was posted by Leslie Dudley:

Business Intelligence Background

A little off topic perhaps, but as an IT business intelligence worker who was interviewing during the economic downturn, I have a slightly different perspective. First, I found myself to be fortunate to be in one of the few growth fields. One of the reasons that the large consulting firms have been investing and focusing on the Business Intelligence field is because it was the first area to show growth activity during the most recent recession.

Business Intelligence and Technology

My other slightly off topic point is that the resurgence of interest in Business Intelligence technology is not a fad but the inevitable result of the major shift in media consumption in our culture. In BI IT we are the beneficiaries of the change in how our society consumes media. As a result of both a cultural shift and the recession, media spend moved from traditional to digital. The effect has been the rapidly growing influx of big data that makes it possible to measure the impact of the new media marketing – digital advertising, email, search, social media, site metrics, engagement.

Business Intelligence and Culture

The cultural shift has changed the context of business intelligence. No longer can spreadsheets and MS Access databases meet the needs of the business to identify actionable insights from data. The challenge of handling the pedabytes of data being generated by multiple sources is one that IT data warehousing workers are uniquely qualified to handle. The growth of business intelligence is not a fad, nor a recognition of IT, it is the ripple effect of the disruptive innovation going in technology, digital media and culture at large.

Business Intelligence in Context

I do agree that business intelligence is a business process. And I do agree that technology workers are being called on to meet the challenges of BI. But I don’t see a ‘BI Movement’. I see a broad cultural shift in the way we consume data and media.

Technologists with experience in handling and making sense of big data are rising to the challenge, and many others are trying to get on board a growth industry. Yes, many people want to learn more about the technology for managing and analyzing big data from disparate sources. It is at this point in time a growth field.

But the impetus is not BI technology: the movement changing the face and players in BI is not BI technology. We are downstream from more significant cultural shifts being played out by the success of disruptive innovations – google, search analytics, site analytics, ad-serving, social media, entertainment and news delivery. To get an idea of where our industry is heading look forward – to the semantic web.

Our role as workers with knowledge of handling and analyzing disparate, big data will grow and the opportunities will be in understanding semantic data, unstructured data and relationships. Marketing is moving ahead quickly now due to being nimble, fast and flush. Academia is lumbering forward with complex concepts, ontologies and methodologies. We are feeling the early rumblings of what will happen when the two begin intersecting.

Posted on LinkedIn by Leslie Dudley, member of the Business Intelligence Professionals group. More articles on Business Intelligence…

Installing IDS 11 on Mac OS X

Solution

After installing the server, update the sqlhosts file and replace the default host name by * so that the server listens on all IPs. The sqlhosts file may be names sqlhosts.ol_server_name, and its contents would look like:

ol_server_name onsoctcp * ol_server_name
dr_server_name drsoctcp * dr_server_name


References

When IDS 11 is officially released, more information will be published here. For now, the following links have pointers:

• http://practicallyagile.com/2010/01/installing-informix-on-a-mac/
• http://www.xmission.com/~dbaresrc/Intro_IDS_on_Mac_v3.pdf
• http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/downloads/im/ids/dev.html?S_TACT=105AGX28&S_CMP=DLMAIN