Scripting, EBS R12 Debugging, IT Opinion, Oracle Coherence, Humor

Scripting

Some thoughts on Scripting, with a pointer to Larry Wall's article on the same.

E-Business Suite

Essential debugging tools for R12 from Stephen Chan (his blog is an EBS goldmine).

IT Opinion

Like getting performance evaluations? Like writing them? Ok, right, no on both counts. So read this article about them at the Simple DBA blog and feel better about things.

Oracle Coherence Datagrid Video Presentation

Oracle Coherence Datagrid Video on YouTube by way of Eddie Awad's blog.


Humor

The end of the year is a good time to look back...and not take things too seriously. So here are a couple of humor items.

A Support Dialog Overheard (First Half Hour Not Recorded)

Customer: Okay, how do I do that?
Help Desk: I just told you that.
Customer: I don't understand.
Help Desk: Click the 'Go' button and your file will download.
Customer: (Long silence). It doesn't work. I can't find it.
Help Desk: Ok, let's take a new approach to this question. Do you have a Blockbuster video in your town?
Customer: (Brightening audibly) Why yes! Yes we do!
Help Desk: Good. Please write these instructions down then. I want to you get in your car and drive to the Blockbuster. Have that so far?
Customer: Yes, yes.
Help Desk: Ok, once you are there find the Drama Section. Got that?
Customer: D-r-a-m-a. Yes, got it!
Help Desk: Okay. In the Drama Section, look for a section marked 'Detective Movies'.
Customer: Yes, detectives, good.
Help Desk: Okay, once you find that...RENT A FREAKING CLUE! (Click).

Now aren't you glad you have Oracle Support. I've never once told a client that.

A Few of the Better Web Videos to End the Year

Three of the better ones, including the Support in the Middle Ages video that everyone who has worked for a help desk watches and nods through every time, at the Belgian Mainframe blog.

This Week's Apps Info from Anu Sachdeva

This week's batch of great sources of info on Fusion JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, Hyperion, Siebel...the list goes on and on. All contributed to the Infogram by Anu Sachdeva:

Fusion, Hyperion, Siebel

ODTUG's Kaleidoscope 2008 - Evolution of the Developer: Middleware and Beyond
June 15-19, 2008, New Orleans, Louisiana. Registration now open. Special prizes if you register before January 1, 2008
Agenda is designed to help developers evolve through the changing Oracle landscape.

For more details: http://www.odtugkaleidoscope.com/

PeopleSoft and JD Edwards

Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) - is a global organization that enhances the capabilities of real Oracle users in their day-to-day use and management of the growing family of Oracle Applications. There are Geographic(Geos) and Special Interest Groups (SIGs) and Siebel, Oracle Retail(Retek) and PeopleSoft Applications user communities.

http://www.oaug.org/about/index.html

PeopleSoft users community: http://www.oaug.org/usercommunities/peoplesoft/index.html

Check the latest Oracle University Newsletter (Dec, 2007) for PeopleSoft and Enterprise One (JD Edwards) Featured Courses
http://www.oracle.com/education/america_eblasts/07/q2/newsletter.html

Upcoming Advisor Webcasts for January, 2008:

Check Customer Connection > Advisor Webcasts for detailed information

http://www.peoplesoft.com/corp/en/news_events/events/advisor/pa_home.jsp

PeopleSoft Enterprise

PeopleSoft Enterprise Student Administration Integration Platform: Connecting Academic to Administration
January 17, 2008, 12:00 noon (MST)

PeopleSoft Enterprise Campus Solutions (CS) 2008-2009 Financial Aid US Regulatory (Regs) 2
January 29, 2008, 12:00 noon (MST)

PeopleSoft Integration Broker - Tools 8.48/8.49 Overview and Changes
January 30, 2008, 1:00 pm (MST)

JD Edwards EnterpriseOne

EnterpriseOne tools 8.97 Feature Overview - Get More Value with the Latest Version of EnterpriseOne Tools
January 8, 2008, 10:00 a.m. (MST)

Transportation Freight Update
January 31, 10:00 a.m. (MST)


JD Edwards World

JD Edwards World: A91 Enhancements to the Sales Management System
January 9, 2008, 9:00 a.m. (MST)

JD Edwards World: Navigating Customer Connection
January 10, 10:00 a.m. (MST)

JD Edwards World: Leadtime, Backscheduling Overview
January 16, 9:00 a.m. (MST)

EBS, JDK...Better life through Acronyms

E-Business Suite

Stephen Chan brings us a couple of good items, Running Multiple Java Plug-Ins on the Same Windows PC and JInitiator 1.1.8 To Be Desupported for Apps 11i.

And some notes on setting up Workflow Notification Mailer in R12 over at the Online Apps DBA Blog.

BI, 11g RAC, Storage Qos, Virtualization and End of Year Wisdom

BI

The Rittman Mead Consulting Group blog has a nice collection of their ten Top BI & DW Events of 2007.

11g RAC

Christian Bilien provides an interesting article today on 11g ASM preferred reads for RAC extended clusters.

Storage

Some thoughts on Storage QoS (Quality of Service) over at the Pythian blog.


IT Opinion

The Simple DBA shows us the profundity of her simplicity with this posting, which calls on us all to verify backups, but includes much more. There's a lot of wisdom here, and not a small amount of humor.

The IT Management blog brings us some thoughts on the top five virtualization vendors in today's market.

ApEX

David Peake brings news of a possible certification track coming for ApEx here. Please consider taking the survey he points to if you are interested in this idea.

Santa Lore and Free Stuff

Free Stuff

Web Worker Daily, one of my favority sources of utility programs and the like, has a good summary of sites where you can find free software here.

Santa

I read an article in the Wall Street Journal just the other day that claimed that Santa's red suit was introduced by the Coca Cola company. Well, turns out that's an urban legend. A pointer from Seth Godin's blog to this excellent history of the modern image of Santa Claus at the Urban Legends site is worth a read in this season. As you can see there, some of the original 19th century pictures of Santa show him in his 'signature' red suit.

Apex and ADF, a Sad but True Tale on I/O and a Moment of Clarity for C Developers

ApEx

A good two part series on APEX and/or ADF - demonstrating two similar yet different applications at the AMIS Technology Blog.

And some comments on the same at Patrick Wolf's blog.

Also at AMIS, news of the Oracle 11g Fusion Middleware technology preview.

I/O

I/O is often a bone of contention, with the storage team blaming the database and the database team pointing back a the SAN, here's a typical sad story from Doug's Oracle Blog.

C vs PL/SQL

Not C versus PL/SQL, really, but seeing the differences between the two. A couple of heads up at the Simple DBA Blog.

IT Opinion

A discussion of the 'Multicore Crisis', the good, the bad, and the controversial at the SmoothSpan blog.

This discussion brings up a lot of memories for those who've worked with Oracle products for some time. In the old days you had to design your application from the ground up to accommodate the Oracle Parallel Server architecture. As that product evolved, eventually morphing into RAC in recent years, the 'under the covers' parallelization became more and more automated until now a relevantly inexperienced team can tackle RAC and usually not have to modify there application to any great degree to accommodate the RDBMS architecture itself. What systems lend themselves to RAC, and what constitutes a real business requirement for RAC is often a controversial conversation. I'll let others argue that out. But the challenges of using the full capacity of multcores is the latest in a long line of hurdles that Oracle has faced over the years, and I'm looking forward to what we come up with.

Chris Gait
Editor, Oracle Infogram

Oracle Infogram Weekly, 20-DEC-2007

Oracle RDBMS
(From Chris Gait, Infogram Editor)

As we close out 2007, here is the Most Popular Technical Articles on OTN for 2007.

In the realm of performance, Pythian Group has a very informative podcast on memory, swap, and all that jazz here. It was even recommended by performance guru Jonathan Lewis here. Authoritative praise indeed.

A holiday diversion from OraStory.

HA (High Availability)
And no, HA does not stand for High Anxiety, usually

In praise of Oracle Streams for moving a large DB at the Oracle at Work Blog

APEX

Patrick Wolf gives us a way to effectively 'comment out' code within ApEx when we may need it back later here

BI (Business Intelligence)

Part 3 of a series on building an analytic workspace at the Oracle BI Blog

Security

Mining the listener log can give you great forensic information on intruders, and many other things. read the series at DBAZine.

E-Business Suite

Two links from Steven Chan's blog:

Linux Itanium & Windows Itanium Certified for Release 12 Database Tier

HP-UX 11.31 Certified for Apps 11i & 12

PeopleSoft

A nice set of links on PeopleSoft reporting tips and tricks.

Next time you're on line at the market and bored, you can strike up a conversation on the PeopleSoft aspects of:

Changes in Calculation of Predicate Selectivity in Oracle 10g

IT Business News

In praise of checklists at Radio Free Tooting blog. Lessons from emergency medicine that transfer well to IT.

IBM Creates a Virtual World to Hold Conferences

Big Blue has been investing a lot of time and effort in the virtual world of Second Life, and previously announced an effort to standardize virtual world interfaces (thus permitting a person to create a single 'avatar' identity that would have the same possessions and characteristics in a variety of worlds). Now they are making use of the experience gained to build their own internal metaverse:

Free Stuff!

You can get a free database. Small, yes, not with the rich features of an enterprise, yes, but the price is right. Please ignore all the products in the review that are not Oracle XE :):

http://webworkerdaily.com/2007/12/18/get-your-workgroup-into-gear-four-free-database-apps/

IT Opinion

As more IT people are blogging, more of what they think, rather than strictly what they do, is appearing on the Web. This week I am including a couple of items from the category of IT Opinion.

Accusations and observations on software development as a whole over the last couple of decades from Daniel Fink: We are IT! We are Devo!


Legend, Lore and How We Deal With Them

Richard Foote's discussion of Oracle Rules here gave rise to an interesting article on the Dizwell Blog: here about the philosophy of 'Oracle Nostrums'. Should we rebuild indexes? Does the buffer cache hit ratio mean anything? There are some rules of thumb that, over the years, become all thumbs. Human nature tends to move from one extreme to the other. Thus if something is no longer the norm it becomes, in the minds of many, useless. The Dizwell article, and the discussion in comments, brings up several interesting points.

The comments area is of interest both for content and nature. Human communication is at its best in person. A phone conversation loses a certain amount of the 'signals' involved (gestures, facial expressions, etc.), written communication loses yet more (inflection, tempo and other subtle signals). This results in people who would have come to an understanding within a few seconds on a technical issue in person getting into a polite but firm flame war on the issue instead when the discussion is written, particularly on the Web.

I have found that the intermediate between phone and in-person conversations, virtual meetings (such as in Second Life), restore some of the lost signals in conversations. However a virtual world or 'metaverse' introduces its own set of distractions and troubles, so it's yet to be seen if it becomes a popular method for conducting business and technical meetings. But some companies are already experimenting with this form of communication (see the item on IBM's Metaverse in the IT Business News section today.

The latest issue of Oracle magazine (Jan/Feb 2008):

http://www.oracle.com/technology/oramag/oracle/08-jan/index.html

Infogram Now Blogged!

This is the premier issue of the Oracle Infogram weekly newsletter available as a blog (and thus available as an RSS feed). Now you don't have to wait till the end of the week for a new set of links to useful Oracle info, it will be coming into your RSS reader automatically (anyone have a favorite? Mine is the Sage RSS plugin for Firefox).

Let's start things off with some ideas on using checksums to compare tables from a blog I just discovered recently (by way of another blog, man, this is getting 'linky'):

http://geertdepaep.wordpress.com/2007/12/07/compare-tables/

More links tomorrow, but in the meanwhile, here's last week's collection:

Oracle 11g

Caching and pooling:

http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/oracle-database-11g-top-features/11g-caching-pooling.html

RDBMS

(Contributed to the Infogram by Chris Gait, Infogram Editor)

Some good ideas about using RDA (Remote Diagnostic Agent) from Chris Warticki:

http://blogs.oracle.com/Support/newsItems/viewFullItem$37

The finer points of outer joins, ANSI, Oracle and all points between:

http://optimizermagic.blogspot.com/2007/12/outerjoins-in-oracle.html

Security

A long, sad, detailed history of data breaches over the last several years:

http://www.privacyrights.org/ar/ChronDataBreaches.htm

Peter Finnigan's Security Masterclass available:

http://www.petefinnigan.com/weblog/archives/00001134.htm

Podcast from Mike Rothman. He speaks with Rich Mogull of Securosis about database security:

http://www.slaviks-blog.com/2007/12/03/the-need-for-database-security-explained-in-5-minutes/

APEX

ApEx doesn't do everything? Well, practically everything. And when you need something else there are Java libraries:

http://carlback.blogspot.com/2007/12/apex-and-3rd-party-js-libraries.html

Oracle e-Business Suite News

Best Practises for upgrading to R12:

http://blogs.oracle.com/schan/2007/11/29#a2268

Optimizing EBS:

http://blogs.oracle.com/schan/2007/12/11#a2297

ESM Links from Asmi Maharishi

General Announcements

Oracle Configurator ranked as "Strong Positive" in Gartner MarketScope for Sale Configuration
In the recently released Gartner MarketScope for Sales Configuration Oracle Configurator was the only vendor ranked as 'Strong Positive', the highest possible ranking.

Marazzi (Italy) - Oracle EBS R12 where Demantra was key!
The Marazzi Group is one of the main tile manufacturers in the world and is the leading tile producer in Europe. Demantra was key in proving Oracle's supply chain management-driven solutions. Click here to read more.

Events

Oracle's 2nd Annual Maintenance Summit is now open!
January 30 – February 1, 2008 - Gaylord Palms Resort and Convention Center, FL
Register Now...click Here
Last year’s inaugural event was a tremendous success, and this year’s Summit promises to be even more spectacular. The conference is free to all Oracle customers and prospects. This year’s conference will be focused on delivering a reliable Asset Lifecycle Management program through people, business process, and software.

Case Studies

Motorola - Case Study on Reverse Logistics
The Integrated Digital Enhanced Network (iDEN) division of Motorola,which provides global support for a wide range of cell phones and two-way radios, took up the challenge of creating competitive advantage by streamlining its reverse supply chain, an often-overlooked area of the value chain. iDEN looked to turn its product return and refurbishment processes into a strategic competitive advantage.

White Papers

Global Supply Chains - Understanding Risks and Rewards

A briefing paper from the Economist Intelligence Unit sponsored by Oracle

JDeveloper

How to implement Amazon webservice in ADF:

http://technology.amis.nl/blog/?p=2654

Performance

Richard Foote, a well known name in the realm of optimizing Oracle, has a blog now:

http://richardfoote.wordpress.com/

Web 2.0

There's an Oracle Wiki:

http://wiki.oracle.com/page/FAQ

Have you joined Oracle Mix yet? Oracle Mix is a place you can post that idea you’ve had for years about improving an Oracle product and have the rest of the user community vote on it, or you can just network. It’s like a cocktail party, only without the drinks, or the snacks, or…well it’s still worth checking out:

https://mix.oracle.com/\

Eddie Awad talks about user groups, not a Web 2.0 concept per se, but many of the implementations make use of the latest gadgets and gizmos. (There's even an Oracle user's group in Second Life):

http://awads.net/wp/2007/12/13/the-value-of-oracle-users-groups/

IT Business News

Ever have a web-conference meltdown? I sure have. Web Worker Daily brings us some tips to avoid debacles:

http://webworkerdaily.com/2007/12/13/how-to-have-a-great-web-meeting/

Have any operations in China? This is an excellent blog on Chinese legal issues (and this article points to an interesting blog on business in China):

http://www.chinalawblog.com/2007/12/china_sucess_stories_new_blogr.html

Another 'best of breed' China blog is Danwei:

http://www.danwei.org/from_the_web/danwei_picks_20071213.php

Client Side Oracle

Tired of using JInitiator on the client for EBS Releases 11i and 12? You can now Replace JInitiator with Sun Java Plug-in 1.5.0_13:

http://blogs.oracle.com/schan/2007/12/07#a2290

Oracle Retail

Here are some Metalink 'notes of note' on Oracle Retail that Debbie Alms discovered for the Infogram:

Retail Allocations

1. Same Allocation Can Be Approved In Multiple Concurrent Sessions
MetaLink Note 461260.1


2. Are You Receiving Errors After Applying Patch 12.0.5?
MetaLink Note 465094.1

Retail Merchandising

1. "Modulus 10" Algorithm Used to Verify Item Number In Retail Merchandising System
MetaLink Note 466840.1

2. Finding Actual Income Does Not Get Populated In DEAL_ACTUALS_ITEM_LOC Table For Bill Back Rebate Deals?
MetaLink Note 469403.1

3. Receiving An Error When Creating An External Transfer In A Non-Multichannel Environment?
MetaLink Note 462928.1

Retail Invoice Matching

1. Finding That The Invoice Is Not Matching Correctly When Using Amount Tolerance?
MetaLink Note 434978.1

2. Are You Receiving The Following Warning Message During Detail Matching: "Dept/Class For Item Is Not Associated With A Business Role Needed For Routing"?
MetaLink Note 434978.1

Retail Price Management

Discrepancy In Field Size In RPM GUI And In Tables On Backend
MetaLink Note 460780.1

Retail Integration Bus

1. RIB Container Shutting Down Unexpectedly And Not Being Restarted For Version 12.0.1
MetaLink Note 467317.1

2. Retail Integration Bus 12.0.1.x Patch Releases
MetaLink Note 461062.1

3. Required Grants For Retail Integration Bus Distributed XA Transaction
MetaLink Note 467466.1

Retail Data Warehouse

Finding Overlapping Seasons Or Phases Are Getting Rejected in RDW
MetaLink Note 455925.1

Retail Security Manager

Finding You Can Only Access Role Admin / Role Admin Workspace Using Admin Role?
MetaLink Note 467514.1

Retail Point-Of-Service (versions 6 & 7)

How Is It Possible To Close A Store Through The Use Of A Database Script?
MetaLink Note 396091.1

Retail Price Optimization

Oracle Retail Price Optimization Personal Computer (PC) Recommendations
MetaLink Note 465321.1


Retail RPAS

1. Domain Daemon Process Disappears And Users are Prohibited from Logging In
MetaLink Note 464169.1

2. Experiencing Contention Issues on the "Wbbatch" Binary When Running the Autoworkbook Build Job?
MetaLink Note 467450.1

Retail Store Inventory Management (SIM)

Receiving An Error In Retail Merchandising System (RMS) When Processing A Warehouse Return Created In Store Inventory Management (SIM) System?
MetaLink Note 465291.1

Retail Point-Of-Sale

How To Setup Base Currency In Store Inventory Management (SIM) And Retail Point Of Sales (RPOS) version 11.1?
MetaLink Note 415454.1

Retail Warehouse Management System

Why Can The Receiving Labels Be Nulled Even Though An Appointment Is In "Open" Status?
MetaLink Note 433987.1

Support News

Finally something to do with that spare mainframe in your closet. Oracle 10.2.0.3 now certified for IBM System Z (Linux on a mainframe):

http://blogs.oracle.com/schan/2007/12/10#a2292

What's New in Oracle Support Services

Releases and Patching

11g RDBMS releases (HP-UX added on 21-Nov-2007:

http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/database/index.html

Some Metalink notes of note contributed to the Infogram by Pushpinder Sethi:

Oracle Workflow Notification Mailer

Metalink Note #

268085.1 Configuring the Oracle Workflow 2.6/11i.OWF.H Java-based Notification Mailer with Oracle Applications 11i

164871.1 Configuring the Workflow Notification Mailer in Oracle Applications Manager 11i

172174.1 WF 2.6: Oracle Workflow Notification Mailer Architecture in Release 11i

OCP Tracks

New Oracle Certification Beta Exams Now Available:

· 1Z1-241 PeopleSoft Application Developer I: PeopleTools & PeopleCode (Last Date for Beta version: November 30, 2007)

· 1Z1-242 PeopleSoft Application Developer II: App Engine & Integration (Last Date for Beta version: January 4, 2008)

· 1Z1-312 - Oracle Application Server 10g: Administration II (Last Date for Beta version: Extended to November 30, 2007)

· 1Z1-402 Enterprise Linux Fundamentals (Last Date for Beta version: Extended to December 15, 2007)

· 1Z1-403 Enterprise Linux System Administration (Last Date for Beta version: January 20, 2008)

Read more

Security: Critical Patch Update for October 2007 issued

Reading for your testing enjoyment on it's way toward prod:

http://www.oracle.com/technology/deploy/security/critical-patch-updates/cpuoct2007.html

And a blog entry with some best practices on the CPU:

http://blogs.oracle.com/gridautomation/2007/10/17#a71

The latest issue of Oracle magazine (Nov/Dec. 2007):

http://www.oracle.com/technology/oramag/oracle/07-nov/index.html

Oracle Priority Support General News

(Contributed to the Infogram by S. Vitani)

Reminders:

17-Oct-2007 - Oracle Critical Patch Update - October 2007 Release

https://metalink.oracle.com/metalink/plsql/ml2_documents.showDocument?p_database_id=NOT&p_id=455284.1

17-Oct-2007 - Oracle Critical Patch Update for Oracle Server and Middleware Products including Enterprise Manager - October 2007 Release

https://metalink.oracle.com/metalink/plsql/ml2_documents.showDocument?p_database_id=NOT&p_id=455287.1

17-Oct-2007 Oracle® E-Business Suite Critical Patch Update Note - October 2007 Release

https://metalink.oracle.com/metalink/plsql/ml2_documents.showDocument?p_database_id=NOT&p_id=455294.1

03-Oct-2007 - Oracle Announces Maintenance Wizard Version 2.06 for the eBusiness Suite Upgrade to Release 12
Oracle Support provides Maintenance Wizard to guide you through the upgrade of Oracle Applications technology stack and products from Release 11i versions to Release 12. It draws on instructions from numerous manuals and other documentation to provide you with a complete picture of the activities required for an upgrade.
Maintenance Wizard helps you to reduce upgrade tasks by dynamically filtering the necessary steps based on criteria it obtains from your Applications environment. The resulting report is a set of step-by-step instructions of exactly what you need to do to complete your specific upgrade, including any critical patches that your system may require. It can also automatically execute many of the tasks for you, so as to reduce the possibility of errors or accidental omission of vital tasks.

https://metalink.oracle.com/metalink/plsql/showdoc?db=NOT&id=215527.1

01-Oct-07 - Oracle Announces the Support Diagnostics Patch for eBusiness Suite Release 11i - September Release

* Support Diagnostics is a free tool provided by Oracle Support to ease the gathering and analyzing of information from your eBusiness Suite specific to a existing issue or setup

· Formatted output displays the information gathered, the findings of the analysis and appropriate actions to take if necessary

· This tool is easy to use and is designed for both the functional and technical user
Oracle Support Diagnostics are designed to improve:

· Problem Avoidance - resolving configuration and data issues that would cause processes to fail

· Self Service Resolution - resolving problems without the need to contact Oracle Support

· Reduction in Resolution Time - minimizing the time spent to resolve an issue by increasing support engineer efficiency

https://metalink.oracle.com/metalink/plsql/showdoc?db=NOT&id=226429.1

20-Jul-07 - Introduction to Database N-apply for CPU Patches:

With the July 2007 Critical Patch Update for 10.2.0.3 Database, Oracle is introducing a new way of packaging and applying CPUs called N-apply. This eliminates all non-security fixes from Critical Patch Updates, eliminates the cumbersome CPU merge patch, and in general improves customer experience by allowing them to install Critical Patch Updates more quickly and easily.

For more information see MetaLink Note:Note 438314.1.

Webcasts also available: https://metalink.oracle.com/metalink/plsql/showdoc?db=NOT&id=444376.1

Software Configuration Manager:

Diagnose system issues before they become critical. Increase system performance and availability. Get faster
problem resolution and reduce IT risks and costs. Optimized performance.
HealthChecks identify potential issues that may affect the overall stability, performance, and scalability of your
Oracle environment and inform you of the risks and recommendations associated with these issues.
Software Configuration Manager, a proactive automated support capability, included in Oracle Premier Support,
offers you a simpler way to track, manage, and support your Oracle configurations while reducing the risk of
unplanned system downtime.

Overview - http://www.oracle.com/pls/ebn/swf_viewer.load?p_shows_id=5073092 (Flash: 4 minutes)
http://www.oracle.com/support/premier/advanced-support-technologies/my-configurations-projects.html

Webcasts also available: https://metalink.oracle.com/metalink/plsql/showdoc?db=NOT&id=418277.1

Podcast: The Importance of Using Oracle's Software Configuration Manager (mp3: 12 minutes)

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/OracleAppcast/~3/104568129/5272999.mp3

Important Numbers:

Oracle Support: 800.223.1711
Oracle Telephone Conference: 888.967.2253

Helpful Links:

Oracle Web Conferencing: http://conference.oracle.com (disable pop-ups)
MetaLink - Oracle Support: http://metalink.oracle.com
Oracle Technology Network: http://otn.oracle.com
Oracle Applications Community: http://www.oracle.com/applications/community/index.html
Oracle OpenWorld: http://www.oracle.com/openworld/index.html
About Priority Service: http://www.oracle.com/support/advanced-customer-services/priority-service.html

Online Tutorials: Oracle By Example: http://www.oracle.com/technology/obe/start/index.html
Oracle University: http://education.oracle.com/
Oracle Advisor Webcast Program:
https://metalink.oracle.com/metalink/plsql/ml2_documents.showDocument?p_database_id=NOT&p_id=398877.1
Schedule: https://metalink.oracle.com/metalink/plsql/showdoc?db=NOT&id=398884.1
Archive: https://conference.oracle.com/imtapp/app/arc_pub.uix?scope=m

International Oracle Users Group: http://www.ioug.org/
Oracle Applications User Group: http://oaug.org/ - http://floridaoaug.oaug.org/
Special Interest Groups:
http://secure.meetingexpectations.com/oaug/groups/GroupList.aspx?type=1001&name=Special%20Interest%20Groups%20(SIG)

PublicSector: http://www.govtsig.org/
Human Resources: http://ohug.org/
OHUG Oracle University site:
http://education.oracle.com/pls/web_prod-plq-dad/ou_usergroups.ou_ohug_home