BI, Performance, PL/SQL, EBS, 11G I/O, PeopleSoft, DW

BI

The Oracle Business Intelligence blog tells us that: BI EE 10.1.3.4.1, DAC, and BI Apps 7.9.6 Now Available.

Performance

Another great performance item from Tanel Poder, this time on using DTrace for t.racing Oracle SQL plan execution.

APEX

When in doubt, just start churning out your own code, right? Why reinvent the wheel? Scott Spendolini found what he wanted to do was already in the APEX API and discusses it in Returning a Value from a Popup Page.

PL/SQL

Bulk collect is a method for gathering processing, increasing efficiency. Over at the Systems Engineering and RDBMS blog there is a posting on Bulk collect record collection of interest. What do you think? Agree? Find some hidden problems with the method? Please put comments in our Infogram blog or at the original blog site of the posting.

EBS

This may be old hat to experienced EBS DBAs, but if you are looking for a good series on patching, this one over at The Pythian Group blog has some good info on keeping track of patching: Oracle E-Business Suite: Querying Patches, Part 2

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

Premier Support for SSO + OID 10.1.4.2 Ending in November 2009

11G I/O

Kevin Closson has some words of wisdom on How To Produce Raw, Spreadsheet-Ready Physical I/O Data With PL/SQL. Good For Exadata, Good For Traditional Storage. As reflected in the comments, this method is intended for 11G. 

PeopleSoft

Over at the PeopleSoft Tipster there's a good techie article on Applying homepage pagelets to others.

And on the DBA side of the house there is this posting on Reducing Unnecessary Instances of Temporary Records over at the PeopleSoft DBA blog.

DW

The Rittman Mead Consulting blog has some advice to bring DW designers back to earth on ETL design in this posting on Simple Steps to Sustainable ETL. Essentially, yes, you still need to design it, not just throw everything in product XYZ which the sales and marketing people insist will organize everything for you (and pick up your dry cleaning, and mow your lawn). It's an old, tired saying, but it applies in IT too: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

International Oracle Users Group Community (IOUC)
Contribution by Sherron Garnett

Oracle is committed to fostering strong and independent users groups worldwide. Our 450 users groups provide dynamic forums for like-minded customers to share information, experiences and expertise. To view a summary of our global users groups click here.Learn more about the value of users group membership. Visit www.iouc.org, home of the International Oracle Users Group Community (IOUC).

Advisor Webcast: Developer Forms R11 New Features Presentation

This one-hour session is recommended for technical and functional users who are interested in Oracle Forms 11g new features.

Speaker
Jan Carlin - Product Manager, Oracle App Development Framework

Target audience
All attendees are welcome! This seminar is primarily directed towards all Forms developers.
The web seminar duration is about 60 minutes.

Event details
6-May-2009 at 12:00 am GMT / 2:00 pm CEST Register
6-May-2009 at 4:00 pm GMT / 6:00 pm CEST Register

Contributions By Angela Golla

Oracle Buys Sun
On April 20, 2009, Oracle announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire Sun Microsystems (Sun). The proposed transaction is subject to Sun stockholder approval, certain regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions. Until the deal closes, each company will continue to operate independently, and it is business as usual. Read the press release Read the FAQ

BI, RDBMS x 3,

BI

Now this is how to post a truly technical blog entry. One sentence of English at the start, one at the end, the rest is code: Bursting: Conditional delivery at the BI Publisher developer blog. A few less words and the blog would be entirely machine readable.

RDBMS

Ok, this next one, unlike the BI posting above,  this posting over at the Database Geek Blog has a whole paragraph up front before it goes into code: Use a Pipelined Function to Select Source Code Arguments.

also in the realm of PL/SQL and more generally in the realm of logic is Eddie Awad's posting (with links to Tom Kyte) on Why WHEN OTHERS THEN RAISE Can Be Harmful.

And finally a nice article on Miladin Modrakovic's Blog: Oraclue on Detecting Deadlock Source (Part 1).  Once again, almost all code, and very useful code at that. You can use his example to set up a deadlock and then try a variety of tools to see how well they do on tracking it down.

EBS, OOW Papers, Essbase, Web on the Road, Innovation

EBS

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

Eight Fusion Middleware Hands-On Labs at OAUG Collaborate09

Whitepaper Update: Database Partitioning for E-Business Suite

New Whitepaper: Manually Cloning Apps 11i Databases Running 10g or 11g RAC

OOW Call for Papers

David Peake, Oracle APEX guru, reminds us to get those papers in if you want to be considered for presenting at Oracle Open World. The deadline has been extended to April 26th. That's coming up soon! 

Essbase Books

The author of the Look Smarter Than You Are blog has  a pair of new books out.

Web on the Road

Travel, especially international travel, can be a challenge to getting a decent Internet connection. Web Worker Daily has some good tips on tuning things up to have a better experience on the road.

Companies of the Future: Festo

A company I'd never heard of, Festo, is working on everything from robotic penguins to 3d printers. There's a nice promotional video showing off the penguins etc. here. Apart from the scary glowing white eyes, you could mistake these critters for real penguins if you saw them in murky water. 

Contributions By Angela Golla

Learn how to get the most out of Oracle Streams with these two whitepapers:

http://www.oracle.com/technology/deploy/availability/pdf/maa_10gr2_streams_configuration.pdf
http://www.oracle.com/technology/deploy/availability/pdf/maa_wp_10gr2_streams_performance.pdf

Groovy, APEX, Optimizer, Nehalem, EBS & CPU, Model, Hyperion

Groovy APEX

Yes, it's a new language named Groovy. I suppose it was inevitable. The link to an Oracle whitepaper on this new language in JDeveloper is to be found here.

Also over at Grant's blog is a good list of factors when you are thinking about moving from Forms to APEX. I'd say go for it. I love APEX. But don't assume it's a push-button process. There is still plenty of room for the usual vicissitudes of computer development work.

Optimizer

The Inside the Oracle Optimizer has a good technical article (they have yet to produce a posting that is less than 100% technical) on Adaptive Cursor Sharing. Ah, that brings back memories of school...no, wait...that was Abusive Chalk Hoarding.

Nehalem

We blogged last week about Kevin Closson's posting on the unnerving speed of the new Nehalem processor. Well, in the realm of peer review, there is a posting this week on the Structured Data blog that link's to Kevin's posting and shows off some results that back it up.

EBS

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

Critical Patch Update for April 2009 Now Available

Support Policies for Virtualization Technologies and Oracle E-Business Suite

Please note that first one: CPU for April 2009 now available. Starting with the advisory for the April 2009 CPU here at OTN. 

Here, courtesy of Keith Murphy of Oracle, is an availability matrix for the CPU:

Platform	11.1.0.7	11.1.0.6	10.2.0.4	10.2.0.3	10.1.0.5	9.2.0.8 DV	9.2.0.8	Comments
Terminal Critical Patch Update	-	CPUJul2009	-	-	CPUJan2012	CPUJul2010	CPUJul2010
AIX 5L	8290478	8290402	8290506	NA	8290534	8290542	8290549
BS2000	NA	NA	8290506	NA	NA	NA	NA
BS2000-SX	NA	NA	8290506	NA	NA	NA	NA
HP Itanium	8290478	8290402	8290506	NA	8290534	NA	8290549
HP-UX	8290478	8290402	8290506	NA	8290534	8290542	8290549
IBM S/390 Linux	NA	NA	NA	NA	NA	NA	OR
IBM zLinux	NA	NA	8290506	NA	OR	NA	NA
IBM z/OS 390 (Server)	NA	NA	NA	21-APR-2009	OR	NA	OR
Linux Itanium	NA	NA	8290506	NA	OR	NA	8290549
Linux on POWER	NA	NA	8290506	NA	OR	NA	NA
Linux x86	8290478	8290402	8290506	NA	8290534	NA	8290549
Linux x86-64	8290478	8290402	8290506	NA	8290534	8290542	8290549
Mac OS	NA	NA	Planned	NA	OR	NA	NA
Solaris	NA	NA	NA	NA	NA	8290542	8290549
Solaris 64-Bit	8290478	8290402	8290506	NA	8290534	8290542	8290549
Solaris x86	NA	NA	8290506	NA	8290534	NA	NA
Solaris x86-64	NA	NA	8290506	NA	NA	NA	NA
Tru64	NA	NA	21-APR-2009	8290523	8290534	NA	8290549
VMS	NA	NA	8290506	NA	OR	NA	8290549
VMS Itanium	NA	NA	8290506	NA	NA	NA	NA
Windows 32-Bit	8343061	8333655	8307237	NA	8300356	NA	8300340
Windows 64-Bit	NA	NA	8333678	8288853	8300360	NA	8300346
Windows x86-64	8343070	8333657	8307238	NA	NA	NA	NA

  

Indexes

How small should you go? Can tables of a few blocks benefit from indexing? The typical DBA answer, as for everything, is: Well, it depends. Richard Foote, Dr. Index, tells us more about it.

Model Clause

Jonathan Lewis has a posting today over at his Oracle Scratchpad blog on the Model Clause. Give it a read.

Hyperion

Run Hyperion? Need to use it in something other than English? The Look Smarter Than You Are blog has good news: 

EPM 11.1.1.2 Is Available (AKA localized Hyperion with more patches)