Hyperion, Web Analytics, Inspiration, Keeping Your Sanity, Performance, EBS

Hyperion

There's a great series starting up over at the In 2 Hyperion blog: Free Tools for Hyperion Professionals, starting with a link on documenting business rules in a format more readable/convenient than XML: Document Business Rules. (What, you don't read XML for pleasure?)

Some valuable notes on Debugging the EPM Configurator over at Tim Tow's Hyperion Blog.

Web Analytics

Edgewater Technology blog has started a series on web analytics. It's titled Ten Steps You Can Take to Improve Your Web Analytics Program, and you can find part 1 here, and part 2 here.

Inspiration (and Performance)

Two great postings over at Cary Milsap's blog:

It's the end of the year, a time for assessments and resolutions. A good place to start the review is this posting by Cary Milsap, Oracle performance guru and all-around genius: The “Do What You Love” Mirage.

And for one of the best summaries of how to do performance on someone else's system (with many lessons for doing it on your own): My Whole System Is Slow. Now What?

Keeping Your Sanity

The article is on tracking parameter changes, which doesn't seem to be directly linked to the topic of keeping one's sanity, unless, of course, you've been through several days of tracking a very exotic and sporadic 'bug' only to discover that it was actually caused by the setting of a non-default value to something that caused the problem. Now if only there were a function that generated a ruler to slap the hands of people approaching the initialization parameters without due diligence....Tracking Parameter Changes over at Kerry Osborne's Oracle blog.

Performance

Richard Foote has some valuable input in his series: The CPU Costing Model: A Few Thoughts

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

EBS

This week at the Oracle E-Business Suite Technology blog:

EBS 11i Applications Desktop Integrator (ADI) Certified on 11gR1 Database

Oracle Internet Directory 11g (11.1.1.2) Certified with E-Business Suite

11gR2 Database Certified with E-Business Suite 12

Podcasts, Optimizer, PeopleSoft, APEX, DBFS, Index Performance, Performance, EBS, Charity

Oracle Podcasts

It's three AM. You can't sleep. You need to do something useful that will also help you sleep. Subscribe to Oracle podcasts!

http://www.oracle.com/database/podcasts.html

Just kidding. There are a lot of really good podcasts listed here, including some by suchleading lights of our technical realm as Tom Kyte.

Optimizer: Moving from 9i to 11g

A lot of production systems are moving to 11g and one of the key factors, particularly when moving from older versions of the RDBMS, is changes in optimizer behavior. The Inside the Oracle Optimizer blog has an excellent posting on the subject.

PeopleSoft

This posting at the The PeopleSoft DBA Blog is on an aspect of SQL tuning of particular interest to PeopleSoft DBAS: Hinting Sub-Queries on Oracle.

APEX

David Peake lets us know that APEX 4.0 early adopter is now available.

And Joel Kallman has a few notes on the new release for us at his blog here.

DBFS

Kevin Closson is embarking on a series of postings about the 11g feature DBFS, starting with The Oracle Database File System (DBFS). It’s Not An “Exadata Feature.” – Part I.

Index Performance

Some fine points of index statistics over at the Striving for Optimal Performance blog, particularly interesting if you are using partitioning.

Performance

From the specific to the general, Tanel Poder has some thoughts on a posting from Cary Milsap we linked to previously here at the Infogram.

Continuing the performance vibe, Alejandro Vargas has some scripts for assessing IO for us here.

And one last performance article, this time on data warehouses over at the Structured Data blog: The Core Performance Fundamentals Of Oracle Data Warehousing – Balanced Hardware Configuration.

EBS

This week at the Oracle E-Business Suite Technology blog:

Using Oracle VM with Oracle E-Business Suite Virtualization Kit

E-Business Suite Release 12.1.2 Now Available

Charity

Each year at the holiday season I bring my favorite charity to my readers' attention. This year that charity got an incredible boost from CNN. After CNN ran an article on Modest Needs the charity got a flood of contributions. With the economy what it is, more money is going to be needed and appreciated. You can give once or set up a monthly contribution, and Modest Needs is often able to double, sometimes even triple that donation through matching grants. Please have a look!

SOA Blog, ODTUG, PeopleSoft, BI, EBS, APEX

SOA Blog

Clemens Utschig-Utschig was quiet on the blog front for a while, but he came back with a roar (with his characteristic energy) at his new blog:

Inside scoop on Oracle SOA Suite, BPM and EDA

Tips and tricks straight from the SOA / BPM development team at Oracle HQ

With a title like that, you know it's going to be good. And here's just a small example: Using the event api to publish an event programmatically.

ODTUG

The election results are out for the ODTUG board, as the Look Smarter Than You Are blog. It looks like a hotly contested result, and Tim Tow, who we frequently link to from here, has been bested for his place on the Development Tools User Group board by Mark Rittman, who we frequently link to from here.

Keeping in Touch With People Using PeopleSoft

Seems like a natural thing to do. The Grey Sparling Solutions blog has a fine article on creating all manner of Wikis and other things social using the Related Content Feature in PeopleTools 8.5.

BI

Dynamic SQL is a tricky and extremely useful beastie. Read about it in Dynamic SQL query in Data Template at the Oracle A BI Publisher developer's diary... blog.

EBS

This week at the Oracle E-Business Suite Technology blog:

Microsoft Windows 7 Certified with Oracle E-Business Suite

E-Business Suite 12.1.1 Templates for Oracle VM Now Availablel

APEX

Over at the (YABAOAE) Yet Another Blog About Oracle Application Express blog there's a good discussion on Moving table data from SQL Developer into Application Express using XML.

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

Build your own RAC cluster for less than $3000. Here are step by step instructions on how to build an Oracle RAC 11g Cluster on Oracle Enterprise Linux and iSCSI:

http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/hunter-rac11gr2-iscsi.html

Contributions by Sherron Garnett, Infogram Contributor

Year-End Processing Courses

It’s that time of year! Oracle University offers courses that help you handle year-end processing and payroll activities. For more information, call 1.800.529.0165 in the U.S. or 1.800.510.3432 in Canada to speak with an education sales representative.

JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 1099 Year End Processing 2009 Rel 8.12 – LVC ( U.S. / Canada)
JD Edwards EnterpriseOne US Payroll Year-End Process 2009 Rel 8.12 – LVC ( U.S. / Canada)
E-Business Suite Rel R12 Year-End Payroll 2009 US – LVC (U.S. / Canada)
PeopleSoft Year-End Payroll 2009 - U.S. Rel 9 – LVC (U.S. / Canada)
PeopleSoft Year-End Payroll 2009 - Canada Rel 9 ( U.S. / Canada)
PeopleSoft Year-End Payroll 2009 - Canada Rel 9 – LVC (U.S. / Canada)

Flash Storage, EBS, Forms, CJ Date, Technology, Warhouse Security

Storage

Some thoughts from Kevin Closson on a post from Jonathan Lewis we blogged on previously here: Pardon Me, Where Is That Flash Cache? Part I.

EBS

This week at the Oracle E-Business Suite Technology blog:

Round-up: All E-Business Suite Techstack Sessions at OpenWorld 2009

Oracle E-Business Suite Install and Cloning Best Practices (OpenWorld 2009 Recap)

Forms

Grants Blog lets us know that: Oracle Forms certified on Windows 7 and IE8.

CJ Date

Tom Kyte notes in his blog that one of the great figures in relational database theory is speaking in Dallas next month: A fairly unique opportunity... CJ Date's books form the theoretical foundation of the relational model as it is currently understood, so the chance to participate in a seminar with him is rare and valuable.

I'm not a fan of the the term 'fairly unique', by the way. It's one of those oddities of human language vs. logic, like the sales ads you see boasting: Up to 30% off...or more. Well, if it's up to 30% then it's not more than that. If it's unique, it's unique. To me, 'fairly unique' is in the same domain as 'somewhat pregnant'.

Technology: The Smart Tag Gets Smarter

Michael Fauscette has a posting on the expanding realm of the Internet, and mentions senseaware, an innovative technology from FedEx. It's like the smart tags that have started circulating in the supply chain, but is, for lack of a better word, smarter. You can read about it here.

Warehouse Security

Speaking of tracking things in a warehouse, this time a data warehouse, the Data Warehouse Insider has part 3 in its series on Lock Up Your Data Warehouse for us this week.

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

Priority Service is part of Oracle Advance Customer Services. Ninety-four percent of the S&P Global 100 use Advanced Customer Services to:

Achieve continual operational improvement
Accelerate return on IT investment
Reduce cost, risk, and complexity of change

Oracle Advanced Customer Services, a global business unit within Oracle Support, focuses exclusively on facilitating the continual operational improvement of your Oracle environment—throughout the life of your Oracle solution.

Learn more about Advanced Customer Services at:
http://www.oracle.com/support/advanced-customer-services/index.html

BI, PeopleSoft, Essbase, SOA, APEX, 11G

BI

Over at BI Publisher Developer's Diary there is a short but handy posting on Having SQL queries from different databases in one data template.

PeopleSoft

The PeopleSoft DBA blog brings us an item that is of interest to a quite focused group of the overall Oracle community. if you are using PoepleSoft COBOL this should be of interest: Controlling How PeopleSoft Cobol Collects Statistics.

Running PeopleSoft on Linux? There's a great hands on posting about that here: Application Designer on Linux.

One of the blogs I've started following recently is On the PeopleSoft Road (love the title, sounds like you're running your business from inside a 60s folksong). There are several postings on running PeopleSoft on VMWare, you can find the latest here.

Essbase

This article on ODI Series - Extracting essbase formula issue over at the More to Life Than... blog attracted my attention as much for its intro as its content:

"Just a quick blog from me today. I was contemplating writing a useless blog having a go at companies I know nothing about for absolutely no reason but I decided there is more to life and I am going to answer a question asked on the otn forums, which hopefully will do more good than bad."

SOA

There aren't a lot of books out there yet about Oracle's SOA, and Olaf Heimburger brings us a book review on the latest: Getting Started with Oracle SOA Suite 11g R1

APEX

We don't usually feature job postings here at the Infogram, but Scott Spendolini couldn't resist this one, and neither can I. Yes, you too can use APEX to work on the massive piece of technology that CERN is using to study blackholes. I'm a pretty whimsical person, so I can just imagine the conversation on your first day:

"Ok, here's your cubicle. The location of offices is based on seniority, with the junior people closest to the accelerator. Ah, you don't want to put your coffee cup down just there....WHOOSH, POP!...Right. We'll get you a new cup. Your first project will be calculating the attenuation on your cup as it entered the black hole. Welcome aboard!"

11G Features

Guy Harrison has an article on Using the Oracle 11GR2 database flash cache at his blog.

Contributions By Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

Here is a good article on using the automated patching capabilities of OEM Grid Control to simplify patching of large numbers of databases:

http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/havewala-patch1000.html

Performance, APEX, EBS, Clouds

Performance

Cary Milsap once again uses examples from life to think about performance. Check it out here.

APEX

APEX is a wonderful way to get more bang for your buck. Ask Tom, one of the most popular and authoritative knowledge sites for Oracle in the world, moved to APEX recently, and Joel Kallman writes about it in his blog: YABAOAE. Speaking of Tom Kyte, Kevin Closson reminds us that he will be the keynote speaker at this year's Hotsos Symposium.

EBS

This week at the Oracle E-Business Suite Technology blog:

Tuning the Oracle E-Business Suite Environment (OpenWorld 2009 Recap)

Integration Architectures for Oracle EBS (OpenWorld 2009 Recap)

EBS 12 Certified with 10gR2 10.2.0.4 DB on Windows Server x64 (64-bit)

Clouds

At the OTN blogs we have Creating Prebundled Machine Images for the Cloud

Have a Happy Thanksgiving, all who celebrate the day!

MOS, Linux, EBS, Analytic Features, Optimizer, OTN, Indexing

MOS

My Oracle Support has been a hot topic out in the blogosphere. For instance Chris Warticki's blog, which has a pointer to the FAQ.

Linux

Kevin Closson has some words of technical wisdom on Linux memory, free vs. reclaimable.

EBS

New from the Oracle E-Business Suite Technology blog this week:

E-Business Suite Technology Essentials (OpenWorld 2009 Recap)

Application Change Management Pack for EBS (OpenWorld 2009 Recap)

Critical Data Protection + Security in EBS (OpenWorld 2009 Recap)

Analytic Features

Tom Kyte is looking for feedback and ideas from users on Comparative Window Functions... in the analytics featureset of the RDBMS.

Optimizer

The Optimizer team over at the Inside the Oracle Optimizer blog remind us that old hints can go 'stale', how that happens and what to do about it.

OTN Best Articles for the Year

As we start the holiday season and the long slow slide out of 2009, OTN has a blog entry on the most popular articles of the year here.

Indexes: To Rebuild or Not to Rebuild

Yes, that ever-controversial topic is covered by Richard Foote, veritable doctor of indexology, at his blog, along with a very engaging comment thread beneath it.

Join us for the next Oracle Content Management Quarterly Customer Update Webcast scheduled for December 2009.

Don't miss this chance to get an overview:

• New PeopleSoft adapter for I/PM, plus solution templates
• New E-Business Suite adapter for UCM
• Updated Siebel adapter for UCM
• New features in the latest Site Studio roll-up patch
• Latest IRM Desktop release
• Other content management news

Americas / EMEA time zones: Customer Update
Tuesday, December 1, 2009 - 60 minutes
9:00 a.m. US PST / 12:00 noon US EST / 17:00 GMT
*Remember to use your existing InterCall username & password if you already have one.

Asia-Pacific time zones: Customer Update (Repeat Webcast)
Wednesday, December 2, 2009 - 60 minutes
1:00 p.m. Sydney AEDT, 10:00 a.m. Singapore
(December 1, 2009 @ 6:00 p.m. US PST)
*Remember to use your existing InterCall username & password if you already have one.

Missed Previous Customer Quarterly Updates?
Get caught up on Oracle & ECM news. View a recording or the presentation from previous Webcasts held since June 2008.

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

Check out this link to Oracle Premier Resource Library. It contains Oracle's Lifetime Support Policy, Analyst Reports , Customer Success Stories and More.
http://www.oracle.com/support/library/index.html#guides

Customer Service, Hyperion, Oracle Search Utilities, Performance, Product Announcements, Security, BI, Storage, EBS on Exadata, Oracle Magazine

Customer Service

With all the dust in the air from the recent changover from Metalink to MOS, this article is a good reminder to everyone in Oracle Support about keeping the customer at the center of everything we do: 16 Lessons in Customer Service form a Car Salesman.

Hyperion

Tim Tow has some helpful material for you if you are upgrading from 11.1.1.1 to 11.1.1.3.

PeopleSoft

The PeopleSoft Technology Blog brings us an anouncement on the availability of the Oracle VM Template for PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 and PeopleTools 8.50

Oracle Search Utilities

If you were using the excellent Firefox plugin for finding Oracle information directly, Gareth Roberts over at In Depth Apps has an update for you.

ECM

Oracle ECM Alerts lets us know that Oracle IRM 10.1.3.5.2 Desktop supports Windows 7.

Performance

Cary Milsap discusses Latency Hiding, continuing the discussion started by James Morle. If you know anything about Oracle performance, you know that those two are major figures in the field, so this light-hearted article bears reading.

RemoteDBA Experts has a lengthy entry on Using Deductive Reasoning and Communication Skills to Identify and Solve Performance Problems.

Product Announcements

A new version of Audit Vault

and...drum roll...

Golden Gate

This one is a very exciting product. If you are running streams right now, you will want to learn more about GoldenGate.

Security

Over at Pete Finnigan's Oracle security weblog we have a good article on the ever-confusing topic of Direct Grants, DBA, Invoker rights and definer rights (at least I know it used to confuse me when I was a DBA, but perhaps that's not all that hard).

BI

There's the start of a series on Oracle BI EE 10.1.3.4.1 - Single Table Repository Design over at the RittmanMead blog.

Storage

StorageMojo brings us an article this week on Redundant array of inexpensive servers (what's next, redundant array of inexpensive IT departments?).

EBS on Exadata

The Oracle E-Business Suite Technology blog has a posting this week on Running E-Business Suite on Exadata V2.

Oracle Magazine

Looked at Oracle Magazine lately? Here's a link to an article on Driving Down Costs (and no, that doesn't mean laying off all the people in the company you don't like).

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

Here are some helpful links for My Oracle Support:

Main Website (uses Flash)
http://support.oracle.com

HTML Website
http://supporthtml.oracle.com

Sign up for training classes
http://www.oracle.com/support/training-schedule.html?msgid=8268387

OBI EE, RDBMS, Oak Table, PeopleSoft, Hyperion, Data Warehouse, Coherence, Doom, Security

OBI EE

Running OBI EE on Windows? This posting at the Rittman Mead blog may be of interest to you: Using Perfmon.exe to Monitor OBIEE on Windows

Also of interest at Rittman Mead is this item:

Oracle BI EE 10.1.3.4.1 & Essbase Connectivity – Direct MDX Requests – Multiple Measure Dimensions, Varying Attributes & Format Strings

RDBMS

Oracle Scratchpad, Jonathan Lewis' performance blog, has a couple of postings on foreign keys. Though one of the fundamental concepts of the relational model in theory and practise, foreign keys confuse a lot of people, and have more than their share of myths. Jonathan should be able to help you cut through the fog.

The Global Oracle Contractors Network has a series on Using the Oracle PL/SQL Profiler. Here is a link: Using the Oracle PL/SQL Profiler Part 1

Alberto Dell'Era's blog has some good material on changes in 11gR2 Materialized Views.

Oak Table

Speaking of Jonathan Lewis, I'd like to remind everyone about the Oak Table Network. They don't update their homepage very often, but the place is definitely worthy of exploration. In my years as a performance specialist I found that most rules of thumb are dangerous...except one: If a performance specialist has been invited to join the Oak Table that is a person of substance in the field. I'm surprised to still see ratio-based optimization being touted, specialists in performance recommending rebuilding indexes, etc. Members of the Oak Table have been pioneers in dispelling such myths and shadow boxing in the realm of performance optimization by a curious activity: direct experimentation and proof by hard example.

PeopleSoft

The PeopleSoft tipster brings us A first look at Tools 8.50’s new User Interface

The PeopleSoft DBA Blog explains some of the arcane knowledge of database links and PeopleSoft.

Hyperion

In 2 Hyperion, one of my favorite blogs, has an article on EPM Reformation (in spite of sounding like a rock band founded by Martin Luther, it's a Hyperion posting).

Data Warehouse

The Data Warehouse Insider brings us some valuable info on Chunking of Updates.

Coherence

SOA and Java Using Oracle Technology blog discusses a cutting edge way to improve middle tier performance, Oracle Coherence*Web: easy in-memory session management in a clustered environment.

Doom and Gloom Supplemental

In a continuing series on project management philosophy, the Edgewater Technology blog runs down the various ways that things can blow up, planets, projects, and what have you: Ten Ways to Ensure Project Failure.

Security

Speaking of gloom and doom, did I mention lately that it is a very good idea to apply the CPUs we put out quarterly? Yes, I hear the groaning, the gnashing of DBA teeth, but there really are people in the world whose moral fiber leaves much to be desired, and many of them have access to the Internet, so it's good to keep up your guard. I even received a warning about an Oracle vulnerability from the makers of my home router (with built-in firewall). If you're running 10g, you should have a look. Further details are to be found in previous Infogram updates about the CPU and all over the My Oracle Support site.

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

The official retirement of Classic Metalink and move to My Oracle Support is here. If you have not already done so, sign up for free training to learn more about the transition and features of My Oracle Support. Here is the link: http://www.oracle.com/support/training-schedule.html?msgid=8268387

Optimizer, Hyperion, Clouds, MOS, I/O, APEX, EBS

Optimizer

The Oracle Optimizer team has an update from their experiences at OpenWorld on their blog here.

Hyperion

Tim Tow has a sobering posting on: One Good Reason to Stick with Supported Versions at his blog.

I've Seen Clouds from Both Sides Now...

The cloud concept is, well, cloudy, and it's hurting its reputation as the 'latest thing'. In fact, some would say that it is merely the latest fad, and the actual heart of the matter is the grid concept. There are several articles in the blogosphere and news that came out of the recent Sidekick debacle:

Defending the cloud over at ZDNet

Examining several aspects of the matter over at cnet, including a link to a statement by our very own Larry Ellison on clouds here.

Typical of the blog entries on this incident was this one over at the CircleID blog, which makes some good points about the underlying issue: Backups and restores.

To me it seems that there needs to be a more robust protocol for validating multiple backups on the cloud side of the equation. But the incident also comes back to some old fashioned, cliche-rich territory: Don't put all your eggs in one basket. What we need is a dispatcher service that copies out key items, like calendar entries and contacts, to several places and programs, and only notifies a user that an entry is confirmed when a minimum number of transactions are complete (similar to the behavior of some Oracle RDBMS features like DataGuard). In other words, it all comes back to basic transaction processing and due diligence on backup and recovery, things that DBAs deal with every day.

My Oracle Support

Have some feedback on MOS? Chris Warticki points to the spot for getting it to Oracle.

IOPS

Kevin Closson discusses the high end of storage and processing in this series: Sun Oracle Database Machine. The Million Oracle Database IOPS Machine or Marketing Hype? – Part I

APEX

David Peake has a link to an Updated Statement of Direction for APEX here.

EBS

At the Oracle E-Business Suite Technology blog this week:

OracleAS 10.1.3.5 Certified with E-Business Suite Release 12

E-Business Suite 12.1.2 Release Content Documents Now Available

Database 11gR1 11.1.0.7 Certified With EBS 12.1.1 on Windows Server 2003 (x64)

Secure Enterprise Search 10.1.8.4 Certified with E-Business Suite 11i

Interim Update #2: Certifying Windows 7 with Oracle E-Business Suite

Critical Patch Update for October 2009 Now Available

October CPU, Hyperion, Diagnosis, EBS, Morgan's Library

The October 2009 CPU is Out

This is another very important CPU to implement. Several high risk vulnerabilities are fixed in this CPU. Here's a good place to start working with it.

A word on one-off patching vs larger patchsets. Applying patches is rarely fun (ok, I admit it, it's never really fun, but I saw someone smile once while the files changes flew by on the screen). But it is good to recall that although one-off patches touch less code and thus seem to carry less risk, they lack the iterative testing that is done on larger collections of patches such as the CPU. Life is all about tradeoffs and compromises, so these factors are something to keep in mind.

Clouds of Hyperion

Sounds like poetry, albeit buzzword poetry. This posting at Tim Tow's blog looks to the future and a product to let you easily move things in and out of clouds.

Diagnosis

The metaphor of clinical concepts and IT continues at Edgewater Technologies blog with this post on diagnosis. I've always liked medical metaphors in IT, particularly in performance optimization. One of my favorite aphorisms from medical diagnostics applies very well to performance problems: If you hear hoof beats, think horses, not zebras. It's tempting to dig around in obscure internals and figure out some kind of latching linkages correlated to phases of the moon. But it's usually more productive to figure out what has changed and either improve it or change things back to the way they were before the problem.

EBS

This week at the Oracle E-Business Suite Technology blog:

Oracle Application Testing Suite 9.0 Supported with Oracle E-Business Suite

E-Business Suite Release 12.1.1 Certified on Windows Server 2008 (32-bit)

Using Oracle Application Server 10g with E-Business Suite (OpenWorld 2009 Recap)

Morgan's Library

Kevin Closson points out a great resource this week, Morgan's Library. I don't think we've blogged about it here before. And now we have.

PeopleSoft 9.1 and PeopleTools 8.50 Webcast

Join us on Wednesday, October 28, 2:00 PM EST for this special webcast: Introducing PeopleSoft Enterprise 9.1 and PeopleTools 8.50. We’ll cover:

• Newest capabilities demonstration
• Embedded Web 2.0 capabilities and industry-specific enhancements
• Robust Talent Management features and new Succession Planning solution
• Enhanced Financials Management
• Industry-specific applications for education and research, public sector, retail, and professional services.

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

Oracle Support is pleased to announce the availability of the ComputerWorld Paper on My Oracle Support. This industry paper articulates why the proactive and personalized capabilities of My Oracle Support are having such an impact in the support industry. The paper covers multiple customer testimonials and an analyst perspective on why My Oracle Support is key to any support strategy. Read the article at:
http://www.computerworld.com/pdfs/a_oracle_stimulus2.pdf

Classic MetaLink Retires Nov 6: Essential My Oracle Support Customer Training Now Available

Contributions by Sherron Garnett, Infogram Contributor



Classic MetaLink Retires Nov 6: Essential My Oracle Support Customer Training Now Available



During the weekend of November 6–8, 2009, My Oracle Support, Oracle's next-generation customer support platform, will be upgraded and Classic MetaLink will be retired. Oracle is providing free training on My Oracle Support to help customers through this transition. Read more here here to learn about the training available.

EBS, APEX, Hyperion, Triage

EBS

The good folks from Oracle E-Business Suite Technology are out at OpenWorld this week, but still found time to post some valuable info on...OpenWorld 2009: E-Business Suite Technology Stack Certification Roadmap

APEX

The Application Express Listener Early Adopter is now available here.

Hyperion

Over at 'in 2 Hyperion' we have a posting on an Excel feature, custom lists, that many use and few know about, and how to combine it with Smartview: Compliment the Excel Add-In or SmartView with Excel Custom Lists.

Feel like bragging about how you have the biggest Essbase install in the cosmos? Well it has to be bigger than the one described here at Tim Tow's blog to qualify.

Are you a developer looking at Hyperion's complexities and wondering how all the pieces fit together, particularly Planning? This article from Rittman Mead Consulting is a good start toward clarity.

IT Philosophy: Triage and Queuing

I sense a resonance between these two postings, one, at Edgewater Technology's blog, speaks of project triage, a very high level concept, another, at The ORACLE-BASE Blog, goes down into the code to discuss queuing, another form of triage. Triage runs from the queing on the CPU all the way up to the user's daily calendar entries, it is a concept that should always be kept in mind when planning and building projects. It is also the most fundamental element of Oracle Support. Something is broken, or you don't know how to get the product to do what you need, you make an appointment with the doctor (file an SR) and the doctor (a combination of Oracle's internal workflow's interaction with the your profile and how you answer the questions when opening the SR and the actual support engineers) , sees you. Responses range from an unhurried process of preventive care (Sev 4) to rushing your DB to intensive care (Sev1). For Priority Service users you are near the front of the line as soon as you hit the submit button on the SR, and also have better ability to call in specialists if the problem is exotic, but the triage concept remains throughout. When is it time to think of triage? When the workflow gets out of whack. Wrong prioritization can lead to needless waste and damage. Increasing the priority of some tasks for politics or appearance' sake can cause harm, so can 'cry wolf' syndrome (i.e. if you always claim that any problem, even something minor, is a world-ending problem from hell). Artificially inflated priorities can wear out IT staff and waste money, ultimately slowing down the very project it was supposed to be expediting. Intelligent triage, though sometimes seeming harsh, will benefit your bottom line.

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

Enterprise Architecture is always a hot topic. Learn more about it at Oracle's Enterprise Architecture Center:
http://www.oracle.com/technology/architect/entarch/index.html

Training Classes PeopleTools 8.50

Contributed by Linda Corniola, Infogram Contributor

Training PeopleTools 8.50

In case you were wondering, we are preparing lots of training classes for Tools 8.50. By Oracle Open World customers will be able to schedule themselves on the Oracle University website (oracle.com/education) for the following classes (Note that these classes are not available yet, names may change etc... ):

PeopleTools 1 rel. 8.50
PeopleTools 2 rel. 8.50
PeopleTools 1 & 2 Accelerated rel. 8.50
PeopleCode rel. 8.50
SQR for PeopleSoft rel. 8.50
Application Engine rel. 8.50
PeopleCode/SQR Accelerated training rel. 8.50
PeopleCode/Application Engine Accelerated

Secure Testimony

Contributions by Sherron Garnett, Infogram Contributor

Secure Testimony

Mary Ann Davidson is the Chief Security Officer of Oracle. She is responsible for securing development practices and security evaluations and assessments. She represents Oracle on the Board of Directors of the Information Technology Information Security Analysis Center (IT-ISAC), and has served on the U.S. Defense Science Board. Read her article Secure Testimony on advising the United States Congress about cybersecurity.

Performance, PeopleSoft, IT Philosophy, Links, Hyperion

Performance

Over at Alberto Dell'Era's blog we have the start of a series on the statistical density of "cardinality" in the CBO.

I wish I could say my math and logic skills were anywhere near close enough to keep up with Cary Milsap, former VP of Oracle for all things performance and originator of the Method R approach to optimization, but they're not. But I still advocate them in principle, if not personal practise, and so recommend this article on the Importance of Diagnosing Before Resolving at his blog.

PeopleSoft

Need to find how many concurrent users there are on PeopleSoft? Here's a handy script at ERP Associates' PeopleSoft Corner.

IT Philosophy

One of keys to solving complex IT problems, especially the tense situations when a key server is down and the fingers are pointing in flocks, is finding a likely cause. That search is often more difficult than it first appears. Let's say the database is down: Call Oracle, right? But what if you go through the steps and it turns out that the DB is fine, but someone wrote over a firewall configuration that didn't include its ports and ... kerfluey. These chains of causation can be lengthy and multifactorial. It is rare to have the opportunity to do full RCA on the matter. The main concern is usually getting the users reconnected, assigning blame, and moving along smartly. But I would ask you to keep the scientific approach always there. A majority of people nodding and saying: Yup, it's the application server, does not necessarily mean that it is the cause of the problem. Logic, not majority sentiment, should always prevail in IT troubleshooting. With that long and tedious preface, please read this item from the adhd ocd blog on nonsense correlations. And for another viewpoint on statistics and the manipulation thereof, have a look at Kosher Visualization over at the I'M JUST A SIMPLE DBA ON A COMPLEX PRODUCTION SYSTEM blog. Want to meet some of the bloggers you read here at the Infogram? Get together with them at Oracle Open World as described in this posting at the same blog, along with a batch of other links of interest.

RDBMS Links

A few handy links in this posting by Eddie Awad, all of interest to the DBA/Developer/Designer types out there. Oh, and 36,000 scripts. For those of you who really need something to do for the next ten years, test them out.

Not Oracle related, more like amusing psychology, but this link at Eddie's blog is fun too.

Hyperion

A good Hyperion posting recently over at Rittman Mead Consulting: Oracle Essbase 11.1.1.3 – Integration with Relational Sources and Applications.

Contributions by Linda Corniola, Infogram Contributor

PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 is GA

PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 is now generally available. Customers can start downloading it from the Electronic Product Delivery (EPD) site now. Physical shipment delivery will be available on October 1.

The upgrade scripts are usually available 6 - 8 weeks after GA. A great site to monitor is PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 Documentation Home Page on My Oracle Support Just log into My Oracle Support and search in knowledge for document ID 845867.1

Hyperion, EBS, AIA,, Forms, Performance

Hyperion

A handy posting today over at Tim Tow's Hyperion blog on Running Essbase on an Alternate Port.

EBS

This week over at the Oracle E-Business Suite Technology blog:

Using Transportable Database 11gR1 with E-Business Suite

Database Vault 11.1.0.7 Certified for E-Business Suite on Windows Platforms

Firefox 3.5 Certified with E-Business Suite

AIA

Several valuable postings at the Official AIA Blog, including this one on AIA 2.0.1 and MLR # 18

Forms

Using Forms? There's a link to a webcast on Web cast with Oracle Forms Support Experts coming up on October 7th at OTN over at Grant's Blog.

Performance

Jonathan Lewis has been one of the leading lights of Oracle performance for as long as I've been involved in it. His blog is always worth a look. For instance this posting with links to forum posts on processes. Is it really a good idea to use the overkill approach and allocate lots of processes up front 'just in case'.

General Availability (GA) of PeopleTools 8.50

Contributed by Linda Corniola, Infogram Contributor


General Availability (GA) of PeopleTools 8.50

We are pleased to announce the general availability of PeopleTools 8.50. This release is important to Oracle and PeopleSoft customers since it demonstrates Oracle's commitment to the PeopleSoft product family and continuing to provide significant enhancements to these products. The new PeopleTools features and capabilities have created more customer excitement than we have seen in years. Since this release is available to customers running all of the recent PeopleSoft applications (eg. 8.8, 8.9 and 9.0) and is the foundation to the 9.1 applications, we are sure to see rapid and enthusiastic adoption of PeopleTools 8.50.

PeopleTools 8.50 is now available for download through Oracle Electronic Product Delivery and the Oracle Store. Check EPD for specific platform downloads, which are updated regularly.

Reference Material
To review additional documentation for the 8.50 release, please visit My Oracle Support at https://support.oracle.com/. Search for Doc ID: 847882.1. This document includes all documents related to the 8.50 release: release notes, install guide, cumulative overview, data sheets, links to the 8.50 PeopleBooks, technical certifications, etc.

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

Hard to believe it, but Oracle Open World is almost here. Oracle TechNet is sponsoring a wide array of activities. Learn more at:
http://www.oracle.com/technology/events/oracle-openworld/index.html

Exadata, Hyperion, EBS, APEX, AIA, Performance

Exadata

Interested in Exadata? If you are running an enterprise scale RDBMS you really should investigate it. Kevin Closson has a link to a good white paper to help you along your way:

Fresh Oracle White Paper Covering Sun Oracle Exadata Storage Server and Database Machine

Hyperion

You've seen a lot of links here to the Look Smarter Than You Are blog, and here's another one. They have their book out, and it's available in all forms on Amazaon (yes, including on the Kindle!):

Essbase 11 and Smart View Books On Amazon Kindle

Amazon Printed and On-Line

EBS

This week at the Oracle E-Business Suite Technology blog:

Six Options for Getting Help for E-Business Suite Issues

APEX

APEX is one of Oracle's best products. I don't feel it gets the publicity it deserves, but it's out there, day after day, plugging away, running a formidable amount of online apps. Tom Kyte was one of the early adopters and advocates of APEX, and has an interesting under the covers article on the move of his AskTom site from a conventional RDBMS (with him as DBA) to running completely on APEX.

Did you take part in the APEX Developer Competition for 2009? David Peake has the results here.

AIA

Another of the phalanx of new and/or newish products at Oracle is AIA. I have deep knowledge of AIA, or at least enough depth to recognize the acronym as one of our products. Any product that can discuss interoperability between PIPs with a straight face, as this one does over at the official AIA blog, is a cool product.

Performance

Great news in the realm of performance blogs! James Morle, Oak Table Net member and author of one of the best performance books back in the 8i days, has started a blog. Here are links to the first couple of postings:

Spotting the Red Flags (Part 1 of n)

Forget I/O Bound, You’re Latency Bound, Bub