ECM and Stellant, IT Opinion - Patching

ECM and Stellant

Bex Huff is a blog I found from the Oracle New Aggregator list mentioned. This article has some great resources for ECM and Stellant.

IT Opinion - Patching and Security

It seems like our IT Opinion items are always about patching, and there's nothing strange about it. Patching is the bane of the DBA's life and the only thing standing between the DBA's desk and Monster.com's emergency resume submission page. Eric Maurice of the The Oracle Global Product Security Blog has an excellent editorial today on Hamlet's old question: To Patch or Not to Patch?

To patch, or not to patch: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler for the DB to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous vulnerabilities,
Or to take arms against a sea of hackers,
And by due diligence end them?

Performance, and How to Ruin It, Crowdsourcing, R12, Incident Management, We're Rated!

Performance

A brilliant, very funny, and very useful introduction to how NOT to write SQL. Don't do everything that Stephane Faroult discusses in this presentation and you will have a healthier DB.

Crowdsourcing

New term for me, and something Jake from the AppsLab team at Oracle would like to invite you to partake of. In this blog entry he describes crowdsourcing a bit and asks for help gathering info on what you consider to be a Web 2.0 application and how you use them. Oracle Mix, mentioned ofter here in the Infogram, is definitely one of those Web 2.0 entities and is the product of that very same AppsLab team.

EBS R12

This posting from Stephen Chan on Sharing Apps R12 File Systems Across Multiple Database Instances is a pretty exciting feature.

Incident Management

This posting at the AMIS Technology blog would feel right at home in Oracle Support documentation. It outlines how to describe your technical problem and the approach to solving it. It's an adage among programmers that if you can phrase the question properly you are most of the way to an answer. A good item to print out and put in the procedures manual for dealing with Oracle support requests for your business.

We're Rated!

The Oracle News Aggregator has a grand rollcall of Oracle blogs (and some that only deal with Oracle sporadically. The list is in order of the number of blogs that link to the listed blog and....drumroll...the Infogram is in 292nd place! Okay, we 're like the old Avis ad. We're 292nd, so we REALLY try harder. The surprise for me was that Tom Kyte's blog is in second place, with the AppsLab blog in the lead at the moment. Apart from bragging rights about being a whole eight places above 300th place, I wanted to pass this page along because you can pick up some outstanding blogs in the list for your RSS reader (I know I did).

JD Edwards, Java

JD Edwards

The JD Edwards Advisor blog has it's second installment on The Transformation of JD Edwards Applications.

Java

Three flavors of buffer overflow in the JDE, from the aut disce, aut discede blog. I believe the three are crunchy, extra crunchy and just plain annoying.

EBS

EBS

Steven Chan's excellent EBS Technology Blog brings us two updates:

Java 6 Certified with E-Business Suite Release 12

and

OracleAS 10.1.3.3 Certified with E-Business Suite Release 12

Siebel, PeopleSoft

Siebel

Some notes (and a bit of controversy) on improving list of value performance in Siebel. Have you tried this and want to share your results? Please comment here or over on the Notes on Siebel Blog.

PeopleSoft

An article on Portal 9.0 over at PSADMIN, along with a good step by step guide to implementing SSL on WebLogic servers.

Security, Performance, EMC Flashdrives

Security

SOA

Mark Wilcox has written a paper on securing SOA linked from his blog.

VPD

Peter Finnigan has a new paper available on VPD in the real world at his blog.

CPU

The blogosphere is continuing to echo with opinion, head-nodding, etc. from the survey that determined that most DBAs do not keep their systems up with the latest security CPU from Oracle. To echo the old commercial on American TV/radio: 'It's ten o'clock at night, do you know who's logging in to your Oracle instance?' Please try to keep up with the CPUs.

Performance

Richard Foote has some good material on nulls in indexes (and some great discussion in the comments below).

Asif Momen has some nice hands on performance comparisons of datatypes at his blog.

EMC Flashdrives

Some technical details and commentary on the EMC flashdrives that are a good follow-up to last week's news items on this at Robin Harris' Storage Mojo blog.

RAC, Performance, EBS, Recovery, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards

RAC

Last week we pointed out an article on backing up control files. This week Alejandro Vargas calls our attention to an article on How to Recreate the Controlfile on a RAC Environment.

Performance

The Oracle optimizer team has another great 'inside the gearbox' article, this time on the 11g feature that allows you to automate sample size on statistics.

EBS

Stephen Chan (I sure seem to be typing that name a lot) has another great find: Hidden Features Revealed: Technology Inventory Utility for Apps 12.

Recovery

Not backup and recovery, just recovery, which is the key step you do all that backing up for. When you need to recover, you, the DBA, are either the hero of the hour or the Monster.com new profile and resume poster. Tom Kyte has a good article on the subject today at his blog.

I would add that when you are doing a recovery you should not let yourself be rushed, no matter how much pressure is applied (usually lots). Read everything to the end and don't rush any steps. Recoveries often can be like the episode of M.A.S.H. when a U.S. bomb landed in the compound and the doctors had to disarm it using an Army manual. They read out something along the lines of: Ok, pull the green wire out...Done...Now the red wire...Ok. (Turns the page) But first....Oh *&#%@$!...and they dive into a foxhole.

So read all the way to the end of the note you are using before following the steps, and avoid that: 'but first'. My experience is that the red wire is usually RESETLOGS. Please only use that command when you are sure it is safe and needed.


PeopleSoft and JD Edwards

(Contributed to the Infogram by Anu Sachdeva)

HCM -Two-step upgrade from 8.3 to 9.0 - Upgrade Wrapper

Instead of just providing that Red Paper on how to do a two-step upgrade from 8.3 to 9.0, there is a new tool called the "Wrapper".

Here is the link on Customer Connection with the information:

http://www4.peoplesoft.com/upgrades.nsf/0fff1a8d55aa883888256ed1007df764/423a5659a9c505f788257222007223da?OpenDocument

Generic Solutions to be omitted from Customer Connection Solution Search
Global Customer Care, JD Edwards Enterprise One, JD Edwards World, Peoplesoft Enterprise: Beginning Friday, January 25 generic solutions will no longer appear in Solution Advisor searches on Customer Connection. This upcoming change will alter the way solution data is indexed within the application so that when a search is performed, no solution with Type = "Generic" will appear in the results. Removing generic solutions from the search index will reduce the amount of useless items that appear each time an engineer or a customer performs a search for technical solution data.

MOST RECENT APPCASTS

The latest in the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Tools and Technology Area (10 min.)
January 22, 2008 — Live with Cliff
Eric Oss, Manager of Customer Operations from the Oracle JD Edwards implementation and hosting partner WTS and Gary Grieshaber, Sr. Director, Strategy discuss the latest JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Tools 8.97 release, the feedback they have been receiving from the marketplace and why customers should take advantage of this new release.

What are Social CRM Applications? (12 min.)
January 17, 2008 — Live with Cliff
Listen to Anthony Lye, Senior Vice President of CRM, discuss how Oracle's Social CRM Applications combine powerful enterprise applications and the latest in social networking with Web 2.0 technology to dramatically improve end user productivity.

The Benefits of Oracle's Price Management Solution (12 min.)
January 17, 2008 — Live with Cliff
David Trice, Oracle Vice President of Product Strategy presents an overview of Oracle's Price Management Solution, why Oracle has invested in that area, and why customers should care about Price Management.

PeopleSoft: For Your Upgrade and Expansion Consideration (11 min.)
January 15, 2008 — Live with Cliff
Considering an upgrade of Oracle's PeopleSoft? Listen to John Webb, Vice President Strategy for PeopleSoft Enterprise, discuss how upgrading and expanding your PeopleSoft Applications can add tremendous value and how far the Applications have come in the latest release.

UPK version 3.1 goes GA! (5 min.)
January 10, 2008 — Live with Cliff
Hear Russell Handley, Director, UPK Product Marketing, discuss the much anticipated release of UPK 3.1, and how it can benefit enterprises of all sizes, across all geographies.

Calendar of upcoming Webcasts for February:

More details available on Customer Connection > Advisor Webcasts

PeopleSoft Enterprise:

PeopleSoft Web Services

February 26 -12:00 noon (MST)

JD Edwards EnterpriseOne

Transportation Freight Update

January 31 - 10:00 a.m. (MST)

Using Change Assistant for Search and Deployment of JD Edwards EnterpriseOne ESUs

February 12 -10:00 a.m. (MST)

Basket and order Repricing

February 12 - 8:30 p.m. (MST) 9 a.m. (IST) on February 13

Government reporting for Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO)

February 14 - 10:00 a.m. (MST)

Quote Management

February 19 - 10:00 a.m. (MST)

Features of 8.11SP1 India Localization in Comparision with Legacy Products

February 19 - 8:30 p.m. (MST) 9 a.m. (IST) on February 20

Automated Receipts Processing

February 26 - 8:30 p.m. (MST) 9 a.m. (IST) on February 27

JD Edwards World

A9.1 HRM/Payroll Enhancements

February 21 - 10:00 a.m. (MST)

How to Generate Timecard Journals

February 27 - 10:00 a.m. (MST)

JD Edwards, Hyperion, EBS, CSS, ApEx, Hints

JD Edwards

Some new tools in an article over at the JD Edwards Adviser blog.

Hyperion

Tim Tow explains Why you can't use SQL to query Essbase

EBS

Steven Chan tells us that: Discoverer Cumulative Patchsets Now Certified for Apps 11i & 12

CSS

Christian Bilien has noted some odd behavior in Clusterware and is looking for others with whom to share notes. A very violent vocubalary in CSS, all kinds of 'split brains' and nodes shooting each other or encouraging shooting.

ApEx

Dmitri Gielis, a major ApEx evangelist, speaks of some of the times when not to use ApEx.

Hints

No, not for housekeeping or communications, but hints in your SQL to change the Oracle optimizer's way of doing its work. H.Tonguç YILMAZ has a good article with some warnings and a handy way to turn hints off to diagnose a problem here.

Performance, RAC, Shameless Bragging

Performance

Jonathan Lewis discusses the delicate art of moving statistics from one instance to another here.
I believe the key is to keep the statistics very steady so they don't fall out and smash through the floor.

IT Opinion: To RAC or Not to RAC

A very thought-provoking discussion at the Just a Simple DBA blog on RAC vs. Dataguard, the costs and other factors involved.

Oracle BI

Time for a bit of shameless bragging. Oracle's BI is helping travelers in England have an easier time of it by allowing them two hand carried bags. Read about it here.
That's very good news, right up until they fly home and have to check that second bag, that is. After all, not all airports use Oracle Business Intelligence. And that's sad, because as an Oracle employee and stockholder, I think they should.

Chris Gait,
Oracle Infogram Editor

Apps

PeopleSoft Enterprise

(Contributed to the Infogram by Anu Sachdeva)

Critical Patch Update: January 2008

Oracle released the Critical Patch Update January 2008 to resolve a number of security vulnerabilities in Oracle and PeopleSoft products. It is strongly recommended to apply the patches as soon as possible. The CPU Advisory is the starting point for relevant information. It includes the list of products affected, pointers to obtain the patches, a summary of the security vulnerabilities for each product suite, and links to other important documents. Supported products that are not listed in the "Supported Products and Components Affected" section of the advisory do not require new patches to be applied. Also, it is essential to review the CPU supporting documentation referenced in the Advisory before applying patches, as this is where you can find important pertinent information.

View the Critical Patch Update Advisory on Customer Connection:

http://www.oracle.com/technology/deploy/security/alerts.htm

PeopleSoft HCM Upgrade 8.3 to 9.0 Wrapper available
You can now "wrap" this two-step upgrade into one template, cutting the number of steps required by 15 percent, reducing costs and risks, and improving overall efficiency for your upgrade. Learn more

http://www.oracle.com/go/?&Src=5634322&Act=43&SC=msgid=6031468

Upcoming Advisor Webcasts for this month: PeopleSoft Enterprise

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

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

JDE EnterpriseOne

(Contributed to the Infogram by Anu Sachdeva)

JDE E1/Demantra TPM Integration

This enhancement enables JD Edwards EnterpriseOne users to leverage Oracle Demantra's industry leading Predictive Trade Planning, Promotion Optimization, and Deduction and Settlement Management solutions in concert with JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Sales Order Management, Advanced Pricing, Accounts Receivable, and Accounts Payable.

The following SAR number may be used to download the ESU from the Update Center: 8276978. Demantra updates are available on E-Delivery.

Upcoming Advisor Webcasts for this month: JD Edwards EnterpriseOne

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

February 12 10:00 a.m. (MST) - Using Change Assistant for Search and Deployment of JD Edwards EnterpriseOne ESUs

Back to Basics, Storage meets Performance

Two good back to basic items:

Distinguishing RAID 1+0 and 0+1

and

using autobackup for your control files.

Storage and Performance

EMC is replacing some hard drives with solid state disks in its high-end Symetrix systems. This is very good news for Oracle performance jockeys. There are several approaches I could think of off-hand for making use of this resource. Large enterprise systems have often used the expensive solid state disks as a last resort for handling massive transaction loads. As the prices glide downward we may see time sensitive areas of memory like redo move to solid state disks in more of the small and medium sized systems now using SAN/RAID for everything.

RUP 4, IT Opinion

Apps Technology 12.0.4 Update Now Available

As Steven Chan informs us here RUP 4 (12.0.4) is now out for R12 EBS.

IT Opinion

It is disturbing how many Oracle instances never get the quarterly CPU applied to them. This blog entry at Doug's Oracle Blog links to several relevant articles. More automation might help, since unseen patches or patches that just ask to apply themselves (like the ones pushed to many corporate PCs) make life easier, at least when they work as promised.

The trouble is that for a production system, with all the money and stress riding thereon, a lot of customers have a real-world test cycle for the patch longer than one quarter. What I mean by 'real-world test cycle' is the one that actually happens.

The DBA gets tasked with all the database stuff. Ok, makes sense.

Then with all the backup and network issues and the appserver....riiight.

Then with handling all the chaos produced by a development effort that isn't actually production...wha, wait a...then with a whole set of tasking totally unrelated to all the above...then it's time for moving the Oracle CPU to production.

Guess what loses out? There are probably six managers breathing down the DBA's neck on the other tasking. The CPU is something, on the other hand, that is 'good to do'. It is due diligence, but the only way a problem is revealed is when there is a security breach and it is already too late. So the DBA depends on dumb luck and mumbles about his/her schedule and grinds on.

In the battle of time, human nature and obligations involved in operating an Oracle RDBMS, a lot of companies don't apply the CPUs. That's bad, and I'm hoping that Oracle's continuing move toward automating whatever lends itself to automation is going to make it continually easier for DBAs to patch their systems every quarter. In the meantime, we can just repeat our plaintive cry to please stay up to date on the CPUs!

Chris Gait, Infogram Editor

ASM, EBS, TLA

ASM

A blog entry on ASM from Christian Bilien with a link to an article on ASM internals with plentiful grotty technical details.

EBS

This blog entry is a good example of thinking beyond the obvious to attain a solution. Often when we are faced with a core dump our instinct is to blame the code. But you should always step back a bit and look at all the factors involved: Did we just upgrade the hardware? Did we make key environmental changes? Did we upgrade the RDBMS (as in this case)? In all of these cases we need to make sure that everything works, not just on the surface, but in action, preferably after a restart of everything (sometimes an installer will get the program running, but the next time around the settings that are in memory but didn't make it into configuration files come around to bite you). As always for the DBA, the trouble is not that you are paranoid. The trouble is that they really are out to get you. Several other excellent postings on the Experiments from the Field Blog this week, by the way. Highly recommended.

RSS

Real Simple Syndication (Yes, that's really what RSS stands for) is a way to get updates on blogs. At least that's the traditional use. You use a service like Bloglines to track RSS streams, or you use a standalone reader or a reader built into your browswer (Sage for Firefox, for instance), subscribe to the RSS feeds that interest you, and life is good.

By using an RSS stream you just push a button and all the blogs you are subscribed to are checked for updates. Within a few minutes you know exactly where the latest news is to be found.

But wait, there's more!

This article at Tahiti Views shows an intriguing use of RSS, a subscription to a search. When new items appear, you can find out automatically. The author speaks of some other intriguing ideas like updates to books. But to my mind updates to books should be automated behind the scenes. A digital book (the next big thing) should have the latest version of every one of your technical books downloaded silently in the background to the reader (like the Amazon Kindle).

Rather than make life quite that simple, it would be a very good idea to allow people to leave their books without updates if they like, and also to have an update history available at least in some central source so one can tell what changes have been made to a particular text and when. Otherwise when you're explaining to the boss why you did XY and Z to your RDBMS based on the technical suggestions in the digital book: Database Risk Factors, How to Live on the Edge, you can say: 'See, I told you the book said to delete all the redo. It was in the text up to last Monday'. It's going to be a complex, blame-filled future by the look of it.

January Critical Patch Update is Out

Yes, it's that time again!


The Critical Patch Update for January 2008 is now available.
Oracle strongly recommends applying the patches as soon as possible.

The Critical Patch Update Advisory is the starting point for relevant information, and it provides instructions on how to obtain the patches. It contains a summary of the security vulnerabilities and links to other important documents.

It is essential to refer to the Pre-Installation Notes before applying patches, since it is where you can find clarifications and corrections to the installation instructions.

The Critical Patch Update Advisory is available on the Oracle Technology Network:
http://www.oracle.com/technology/deploy/security/alerts.htm

Critical Patch Update - January 2008
http://www.oracle.com/technology/deploy/security/critical-patch-updates/cpujan2008.html

The next four Critical Patch Update release dates are targeted for:
April 15, 2008
July 15, 2008
October 14, 2008
January 13, 2009

(provided to the Infogram by S. V.)

Grid Automation Webcasts

Oracle is offering some webcasts on "Lowering Management Costs through Grid Automation". Okay, I'm going to be honest and say that the title makes me think of the old gag: "Better life through plastic!", but they do look to be a decent series of webcasts if you are looking for more ways to get things done without ever shutting down. This is especially relevant for our RAC customers.

Fusion, PeopleSoft, CSS, Hyperion, JD Edwards, OWB

Stealth Fusion

Ok, nobody is talking about Fusion. So here is Stephen Chen on Fusion. But he didn't mention it. And I didn't link to his article either.

PeopleSoft

David Kurtz offers some insight on PeopleSoft and temporary tables.

CSS

Customer Self Service (CSS) has an Oracle blog now.

Hyperion

There's a new Hyperion blog out here. I love his subtitle to the blog. I wonder if this makes Oracle some kind of sun god by buying Hyperion? Have to ask our theology department.

Tim Tow has taken over the Hyperion Advanced Security Manager application while it is in transition. You find out more details here.

J D Edwards

There is a new series of articles starting at this blog on the transformation of J D Edwards after its acquisition by Oracle.

OWB

There's an Oracle Warehouse Builder blog you should check out if you are working with that product. For instance here is a link to an article on the 11G Heterogenous Agent there.

I guess I've just watched too many second-rate movies in my life. When I hear 'heterogenous agent' I think it's some guy who started out spying for the Soviets, got compromised by the Albanians, but really turned out to be working for the Chinese the whole time.

Security, Performance, PL/SQL, RDBMS

Security

In the ‘I Told You To Not Wake that Sleeping Dog’ Department

A British television personality set out to prove that all these losses of personal computer data are ‘much ado about nothing’.

Well, that was a sad story, because he decided to prove his point by publishing his own data, and an enterprising member fo the TV audience used that data to take a batch of money from his account and transfer it to charity to prove his or her point. Read about the whole thing here.

Forensics

A good link to a paper from University of Arizona on database forensics at Paul M. Wright’s blog.

Performance

Christian Bilien has a great little article on tracking down missing memory (containing all kinds of grotty technical detail).

PL/SQL

Using PL/SQL Associative Arrays

ODP.NET developers can use PL/SQL as an API to the data in the database and use associative array binding to reduce network round-trips. The result is a reduced workload for both the network and Oracle Database, which means faster performance and better scalability for your applications.

Read the article.

RDBMS

I don’t know how I missed posting a link to this list of the Seven Deadly Habits of a DBA before.

Expensive Calculator

In the early days of the mini-computer (i.e. before PCs), someone came up with a very simple editing program. You couldn’t realliy call it word processor, because it basically just printed things you typed on paper. They called the program Expensive Typewriter.

Well now you can relive those days of heady misuse of technology thanks to Tanel Poder and his article:

How to use Oracle as an Expensive Calculator.

ASM, Humor, PeopleSoft, RDA,, The Oracle Plane, Various, IT Opinion

ASM

Some wisdom on cloning an ASM database from Alejandro Vargas.

Humor

Ok, let's face it, Oracle has never been, shall we say, a strong Microsoft partner, but this video that Bill Gates did linked from Carl Beckstrom's blog is very amusing.

PeopleSoft

An article on PeopleSoft Enterprise Portal 9.0 over at PSADMIN.

New Version of the RDA Available

The Remote Diagnostic Agent is an often misunderstood beastie. Some customers think we here at Oracle have them run an RDA just to get them out of our hair for a while. Nope. It's a very useful utility that gathers a huge amount of useful information about your system. When I worked performance optimization in the field in my past life as a DBA I would often use the RDA as a tool to quickly evaluate a customer's system on a lot of details that effect performance.

Here's the official announcement:

Oracle Support Announces RDA 4.10 - Production Release

RDA is used to gather detailed information about an Oracle and Operating system environments. The data gathered is used to aid in problem diagnosis. The output is also used to monitor the overall system configuration. Oracle Global Product Support encourages the use of RDA because it provides a comprehensive picture of the Oracle Product and Operating System environments.

Read the full article. (in Metalink).


The Oracle Plane

Video of the Oracle stunt plane showing that gravity, physics, etc. all are negotiable, even flexible...if you're a good enough pilot.

Various

A miscellany of links of interest from Eddie Awad here.

IT Opinion

H. Tonguc Yilmaz reminds us that all that seems to come from a guru may not in fact be wise in this article. Over my years working with Oracle technology, and many other topics of interest, I have found that the humble are often the strongest authorities. When you question a real expert about their topic they will either:

• Prove to you then and there that they are right (Tom Kyte usually does it by creating a schema, running several experiments, then tearing it all down, all at a SQL*Plus prompt and NEVER BACKSPACING ONCE, which scares most mortals).
• Cite a reliable source or two that demonstrate their point
• Admit that there may be a problem and look into it.

If you get an answer based on the fear of being wrong it will often be tinged with anger, because anger is the shadow of weakness, following along wherever it goes. If you get an answer that seems to be couched in the language of non-Euclidean geometry intersticed with the tax code you are probably dealing with ignorance. Of course if you are discussing a meta-study of non-Euclidean geometry and the tax code this may be a normal answer. Generally, though, a clearly phrased question should elicit a clearly phrased answer, and technology often allows answers that fall into clear categories:

• That's how it works
• It's like that because it's broken, but the fix is coming in release XYZ
• It's like that because the software is hopelessly hosed and you are making a major career error by attempting to install it on prod.
• I don't know.

Human nature has a strong element of rationalization. This ill-begotten child of the rational makes us want to explain every problem we encounter in the simplest possible terms, perfectly happy to dispense with all norms of reality and logic to do so. How many times have you read that the market took a downturn today because of a loss of consumer confidence in sealing wax or the like? It may very well have been caused by the consumers being frightened by a rise in the number of gopher coughs or a simple increase in the seasonal flu statistics as filtered through the complex mechanism of society and the economy, or a combination of innumerable factors. But what's needed in journalism is a quick explanation that everyone can understand. As a result of this, the answer, 'I don't know' is often very hard for us to pronounce. Experts use the term fairly often because they have a firm grasp of their field and actually know what they do and do not know.

So be careful of who and what you trust online, and that includes blogs, even this august institution you are reading.

Chris Gait
Infogram Editor

Business in China, Humor, Indexing,, Performance, Security, EBS, JDEdwards, PeopleSoft

Business in China

A blog on sourcing in China brings us some conjecture on what many aspects of business in China will be in the coming year.

Humor

Next time someone tells you how difficult it is to install Oracle RDBM, involving hours of labor and complexities, show them this demo from Miracle AS in Denmark.

Indexing

Richard Foote, master of all that is indexed, brings us this series on unique and non-unique indexes.

Performance


Snapper

Tanel Poder links us to Wolfgang Breitling's version of a new and improved snapper script for gathering session info in real time here.

Vibe

Sometimes you can actually feel the ground shift as a new way of assessing and fixing performance problems emerges. This is such a time. See Mogen Norgaard (sponsor of the Oracle nose installation method and founder of the Oak Table) who has posted a link here to an article by James Morle's here.

As Mogen points out, it's been a long time since Mr. Morle has written a book, and we're all waiting for the next one. Let's hope the article at the Optimal DBA blog pointed out above is but a preface.

Collectl

I somehow missed posting a link to this endorsement by Kevin Closson of Collectl for gathering performance information. (So no, Collectl is not a typo)

Help Gather Data

Would you like to help the Structured Data blog gather data about system statistics usage? Then go over to this posting to run a couple of quick queries and let them know what you come up with.

Security

Pete Finnigan points out an important security reminder on the 'emkey' at the Pythian Blog.

E-Business Suite

Gareth Roberts brings us this invaluable Oracle eBusiness Suite Product and Acronym Listing.

Hitting the Apps Audit Trail

The Apps DBA blog has a series on data auditing in Oracle applications.

_________________________________________________________

This week's updates from Anu Sachdeva:

JD Edwards

JD Edwards EnterpriseOne: Baseline Roadmap for Calendar Q1 and Q2 now published
Please follow this link to see the Roadmap for Updates and Baselines for EnterpriseOne. Requires Customer Connection login.

PeopleSoft

http://www.peoplesoft.com/corp/en/doc_archive/pub_library/cc_home/060501e1_update.jsp

EnterpriseOne Manufacturing: Breaking news article posted on November 29, 2007: 8.11SP1 and 8.12: P31123 Super Backflush Null Pointer Memory Leak.
Description: Third party softwares creating high volume transactions for E1 P31123, Super Backflush, produce null pointer errors.

Please see additional details in Solution 201056290 in Customer Connection.

Ora-Click, Hyperion Docs, Performance, Oracle Mix, ADF

Ora-Click.com

This new site, another product of the Web 2.0 movement, lets you vote for sites and submit Oracle news items you find interesting. Imagine how pleased I was to discover the first item on the page was...The Oracle Infogram. You'll need to register at Ora-Click.com to vote for us.

Hyperion

Looking for the docs? They're at the Oracle site now according to this from Tim Tow's Hyperion Blog.

Performance

Alejandro Vargas provides a script for running AWR reports at the recommended frequency.

Oracle Mix

A run-down on the year's events and improvements over at our Web 2.0 community for Oracle users and employees, Oracle Mix at the AppsLab Blog site here.

Accessing Google Calendar from an Oracle ADF Application

The Amis Blog brings us an article on using ADF to access Google calendar. Now if it would only allow stretching the time space continuum to accommodate more meetings!