If you use VirtualBox you might check out a few BIOS settings regarding virtualization. Running a 64 bit guest OS needs you to enable the VT-settings (on my HP ProBook 6550b it's called "Virtualization Technology setting"). On other notebooks it might be called otherwise. Make sure you reboot your OS. Another thing to consider is so called "trusted execution" or "Data Execution Prevention". Of course you want this enabled to be more secure against mal-ware. However it turns out that it is quite a performance-drain when using VirtualBox. A colleague who tipped me told that he copied a VM with SOASuite to his new laptop, where Weblogic need 15 minutes to start! After a change in the settings he managed to decrease this to 5 minutes. Which is pretty normal for a Weblogic startup. He couldn't remember the settings, it had something to do with "security". So I turned "Data Execution Prevention" (as it is called on my HP) off and it turns out that my complete VM "feels" faster. I did not time my VM yet, but it seems to cope with the performance improvement of my colleague (thanks).

Today I ran into the unability to deploy my SOA/BPM project to my development SOASuite installation in my Virtual Machine. I haven't used it for a while, and it turns out that the passwords of my MDS users in the database are expired.

Since it is my personal dedicated development server I don't want passwords to expire at all. So I found out that I have to update the default profile to have the password expiration turn of:

ALTER PROFILE DEFAULT LIMIT
  FAILED_LOGIN_ATTEMPTS UNLIMITED
  PASSWORD_LIFE_TIME UNLIMITED; 

To check this you can use the following query:

select LIMIT from dba_profiles where RESOURCE_NAME ='FAILED_LOGIN_ATTEMPTS' 
     and PROFILE = (select profile from dba_users where username like 'DEV_%');

But still the passwords are expired... You can alter user every MDS user one by one. But you can also use the following piece of plsql (run as System):

declare 
  cursor c_ddl
    is select 'alter user '||username ||' identified by welcome1' ddl
    from all_users
    where username like  'DEV_%';
begin
  for r_ddl in c_ddl loop
     execute immediate r_ddl.ddl;
   end loop;
end;

You should change the 'DEV_%' in the where clause of the cursor to reflect the prefix of the MDS users in your system. And to possible show errors you might want to catch exceptions within a local block around the execute immediate.

This week at my customer, I got my laptop replaced. Where I had a laptop with Windows XP and was Local Admin on it, I now have a Windows 7 with a standard user account. For my development work I have a remote pc in a closet (a closet-PC or "Ophok PC").

The most annoying thing is that I can't install my favorite browser Firefox.  But I also want to use XMind mindmapping program and several other tools. For instance, Total Commander is becoming more and more my personal desktop. It's the first thing to start and from there I have buttons to start other apps.

Now I remembered that there are several initiatives to have a collection of apps on a USB stick. For Firefox, and XMind there are portable versions. And also Totalcommander is runnable from a USB stick.

So I got me a spare 8GB USB stick (or at least I made it "spare" for this purpose) and I searched and got into "Portable Apps". This initiative makes it really easy to get a stick with your favorite apps, where it gives a Start menu and a place to browse and work with your documents on a stick. It has an "exit" button to savely remove your stick from the machine.



After you install it on your stick, you can start it with the start.exe file.
Then you get this nice looking start menu:
With the link below, "All Portable Apps", you can switch to a categorized display of your apps. With the Apps menu option you get the possibility to install extra apps:
With Get More Apps  it goes checking it's online repository and from there you can install apps just by checking them and press "Next".





Create an XMind installer
If you want to add your own apps, check the PortableApps.com  Apps Installer:



With this App you can create your own installer.

For Xmind it is pretty easy. Download the Portable version. Unzip the common and the XMind_windows to a temp dir:


Then you can move the contents of the XMind_Windows folder to the upper folder besides the Commons folder. You have to edit the xmind.ini file to replace all occurences of  "../Commons"  with "./Commons".
Then you can direct the PortableApps installer to that folder, and follow the instructions. However, it will fail running the first time.
But it creates several folders, amongst others:



With a tool like Irfanview it is easy to replace these icon-files with a resized version of the picture that can be found if you search on xmind pictures in google. (http://lmgtfy.com/?q=icons+xmind and click on images). Then it will complain for a help.html. You can copy that from an other portable app, like the one of Kompozer/NVU. With Kompozer/NVU you can edit the html file easily. After these changes the PortableApps installer will work, and creates a nice XMind installer.
Here you see that I managed to install it in Portable Apps with even a correct Icon:

Total Commander
For TotalCommander, you simply install the TotalCommander Launcher. Then running it for the first time, it will complain that it hasn't got a correct TotalCommander installation. But it will suggest to copy the installed version to the stick. So just run it for the first time on a machine with a normal installation of TC.

Conclusion
So what does this have to do with Oracle? Almost nothing. But lots with being a consultant that has to do his "thing" on any machine of a customer, with his own favorite tools.

Have fun.