Creating a Cube in Oracle Warehouse Builder

In this article by Bob Griesemer, author of Oracle Warehouse Builder 11g R2: Getting Started 2011, we will define our cube, which is where our measures will be stored—the facts that users will want to query. There is a wizard available to us for creating a cube that we will make use of to ease our task. So let's start designing the cube with the wizard. We'll create the objects using the wizards that the Warehouse Builder provides for us to simplify the task of building cubes and dimensions.

We will cover:

• Creating a cube with the wizard
• Using the data object editors

Magento: Exploring Themes

Magento is a popular open source e-commerce project. While it comes with a number of 'default' themes to change the look and feel of your store, many people both new and old to Magento struggle with even the more basic aspects of customizing Magento themes.

Magento can be a complex platform to customize, so this article by Richard Carter, author of Magento 1.4 Themes Design, will help you to explore Magento themes, including the following:

• Magento terminology
• What a Magento theme is: the elements that comprise a Magento theme
• Theme hierarchy in Magento
• Magento's Blank theme
• Installing and activating a Magento theme

Tuning WebSphere Security

The generic term "tuning security … " some say, it's an oxymoron. Why so? Well, in many cases, tightening up security is normally reflected in poor performance. So, if a portion of your environment is performing poorly, it may need a review of the security configuration in order to see if loosening it a bit does not compromise the environment itself. This article by Omar Siliceo, author of IBM WebSphere Application Server v7.0 Security, briefly describes tuning in three major areas:

• General security configuration
• CSIv2 connectivity
• LDAP and Web authentication

Troubleshooting WebSphere Security-related Issues

It is not uncommon to run into issues when global security is first enabled in a WebSphere environment. Some of those situations may occur due to performing tasks out of order. Other problematic conditions related to security configuration may take place due to inadvertently omitting one or more steps in a set up process. Moreover, a third category of errors that may happen due to security configuration is caused by using the wrong values to one or more parameters.

In the previous article by Omar Siliceo, author of IBM WebSphere Application Server v7.0 Security, we took a look at tuning websphere security. In this article we will be presented by a set of some conditions that may appear in a WebSphere Application Server ND version 7 (WAS ND7) when global security is first enabled. The first subsection covers circumstances that may come about during the configuration phase. Next, a subsection is included that presents circumstances that may happen at runtime.

Understanding and Developing Node Modules

Node is a newly-developed software platform that liberates JavaScript from the web browser, enabling it to be used as a general software development platform in server-side applications. It runs atop the ultra-fast JavaScript engine from the Chrome browser, V8, and adds in a fast and robust library of asynchronous network I/O modules. The primary focus of Node is on building high performance, highly scalable server and client applications for the "Real Time Web".

In this article by David Herron, author of Node Web Development, we shall:

• Learn what a module is
• Learn about the CommonJS module specification
• Learn how Node finds modules

GLSL 4.0: Discarding Fragments to Create a Perforated Look

Fragment shaders can make use of the discard keyword to "throw away" fragments. Use of this keyword causes the fragment shader to stop execution, without writing anything (including depth) to the output buffer. This provides a way to create holes in polygons without using blending. In fact, since fragments are completely discarded, there is no dependence on the order in which objects are drawn, saving us the trouble of doing any depth sorting that might have been necessary if blending was used. In this recipe by David Wolff, author of OpenGL 4.0 Shading Language Cookbook, we'll draw a teapot, and use the discard keyword to remove fragments selectively based on texture coordinates.

GLSL 4.0: Using Subroutines to Select Shader Functionality

In GLSL, a subroutine is a mechanism for binding a function call to one of a set of possible function definitions based on the value of a variable. Subroutines therefore provide a way to select alternate implementations at runtime without swapping shader programs and/or recompiling, or using if statements along with a uniform variable.

In this article by David Wolff, author of OpenGL 4.0 Shading Language Cookbook, we'll demonstrate the use of subroutines by rendering a teapot twice. The first teapot will be rendered with the full ADS shading model described earlier. The second teapot will be rendered with diffuse shading only. A subroutine uniform will be used to choose between the two shading techniques.