International Herald Tribune edition is now available in Greece, by Kathimerini

For those interested in learning news from the inside, about Greece: 
http://www.ekathimerini.com/

Comments on Oracle SOA Suite 11g R1 Developer's Guide, by Matt Wright and Antony Reynolds

On the bright side, the text is well written in British English,  and neatly organized as well. It is based on the successful recipe of the previous book about 10g SOA and it's  divided in three parts: the first is a short introduction to the Oracle SOA Suite and its various components, and will give you an fast-paced, but limited hands-on, introduction to each of the key components. The second section provides a brief best-practice guide to applying the various components of the SOA Suite to implement a real-world SOA-based solution; it illustrates this through the development of an auction site (oBay) whose source code is actually missing! The final section covers other subjects, such as the packaging, deployment, testing, security, and administration of SOA applications.
On the dark side, some hands on practice although realistic, require a permanent connection to the internet, since currency rates conversion and stock exchange quotes are necessary for testing your BPEL process. These are not always available (I got many "Server too busy" messages) and this might hinder you from completing your practice correctly. Besides, the source code offered publicly, contains only the final solution, but no solutions for the intermediate steps, nor sample inputs for testing, i.e. EUR for the euro currency. Furthermore, the code for oBay application is actually missing and so is its installation guide, mentioned in the text. I think the approach about self contented practice taken by the other competitor: Getting started with Oracle SOA 11g suite is by far better. In fact, its step by step instructions are more exact and easier to follow.
In summary, the book offers a sound theoretical basis better than its competitor, but it is so much weaker in guidance  and in hands on practice. Moreover, some chapters, such as 18 about business rules, are rather purely descriptive and hence difficult to follow. Whether you need such a book which resembles the free on line Oracle Fusion SOA developer guide manual, it is up to you. It targets developers or  technical architects who work in the SOA domain. Of course there are some prerequisites, I quote: "You need basic understanding of the concepts of SOA, as well as some of the key standards in this field, including web services (SOAP, WSDL), XML Schemas, and XSLT (and XPath)". Finally, you need a fast computer, preferably with more than 4GB of memory, to setup the SOA suite.

JDeveloper 11g:Using Log4j in ADF business components projects

In case you prefer using  ADF business components in your Model project, the procedure for using log4j logging is almost identical with the EJB way. You might also read an example on using logging within an ADF application module as well.
First, you need to add the library, by double clicking your Model project, as you can see on your left hand side.
Second, you need to create a log4j.properties file within:
C:\...\Model\src

just  like the following:


# Set root logger level to INFO and its only appender to ConsoleOut.
log4j.rootLogger=INFO, ConsoleOut

# ConsoleOut is set to be a ConsoleAppender.
log4j.appender.ConsoleOut=org.apache.log4j.ConsoleAppender

# ConsoleOut uses PatternLayout.
log4j.appender.ConsoleOut.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
log4j.appender.ConsoleOut.layout.ConversionPattern=%-5p: [%d] %c{1} - %m%n

log4j.logger.org.apache.jsp=DEBUG
#Addon for
com.sun.faces.level=FINE


Third, you edit your entity object code like that:
...
import org.apache.log4j.Logger;



public class ImagesImpl extends TuhraEntityImpl {
...

    private Logger logger = Logger.getLogger(this.getClass());
  ...

    private void adjustImageUsages(RowSet newImageUsagesBeforePost) {
   ...
      if (logger.isDebugEnabled())
             logger.debug("ImageUsages has been adjusted");
        }
...
}

Finally the message you created appears in the log output window:
INFO : [2010-09-12 09:56:32,593] ImagesImpl - ImageUsages has been adjusted

Would you like to refactor?

Furthermore, if you use logging within multiple entity objects, you could move the declaration code line:

private Logger logger = Logger.getLogger(this.getClass());

to the super class:

package tuhra.model.framework;

import oracle.jbo.server.EntityImpl;
import org.apache.log4j.Logger;

public class TuhraEntityImpl extends EntityImpl {
  protected Logger logger = Logger.getLogger(this.getClass());
}


Upon commit, the logger output appears once more:

INFO : [2010-09-16 10:28:07,288] ImagesImpl - ImageUsages has been adjusted

For dynamic changes of logging levels, one can consult for example:
dynamically-changing-log-level-with-weblogic-log4j-jmx-and-wlst/

Finally, if you need more tips about appenders:
http://www.mobilefish.com/developer/log4j/log4j_quickguide_appenders.html
https://logging.apache.org/log4j/2.x/