Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

Oracle continues to lead the data warehousing market both in terms of market share and product innovation. Oracle Database 11g offers fast, reliable and secure reporting, analytics, and data mining on low cost, scalable grids. Learn more about Oracle data warehousing at the following links:

http://www.oracle.com/solutions/business_intelligence/dw_home.html
http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/bi/index.html

EBS, 11g and Access, Hyperion, PeopleSoft, ADF, Storage, APEX

EBS

This week at the Oracle E-Business Suite blog:

Understanding J2SE 1.5 End-of-Life Implications for Oracle E-Business Suite

Applications Management and Change Management Packs Certified with Enterprise Manager Grid Control Release 5

Tablespace Encryption 11.1.0.7 Certified with EBS 11i

Which is Better: Forms Servlet or Socket Mode?

Interim Update: ATG RUP 7 for E-Business Release 11i

Oracle Tutor 12.1 Certified with Word 2007 and Vista Clients

11g and MS Access

It all evolved over time. In the fog-shrouded past of the 60s computers were giant centralized monsters. People kept spreadsheets on, well, spreadsheets, things made out of paper. Then came the PC with electronic spreadsheet, first VisiCalc, then Lotus 1-2-3, finally Excel came on the scene, gobbling up the market. And that's where a huge amount of data remains, those Excel spreadsheets and the Access databases that evolved from them. So sometimes it is still a very economical and useful practise to connect an enterprise RDBMS to its smaller, less relational, and thus less evolved relatives like Access (notice that I did not use any disparaging terms, much as I wanted to since I used to be an Access developer in a former life, and am now utterly relationally snobbish).

I once worked on a contract where a one billion dollar government budget was kept in Access. People making changes would pop up from their cubicle, prairie dog like, to announce that they were updating the Eastern_region_Input table, so everybody stay out of it! Thankfully, they moved to Oracle a year or so after that point. But it would have been a good interim solution to connect Oracle to those Access instances to start working with the data. There is a handy ongoing series on doing just that over at the Global Oracle Contractors Network blog:

Querying Microsoft Office Access 2007 data from an Oracle 11g Database Part 3:

Section A

Section B

Section C

Hyperion

The start of what looks like a great five part series over at the In 2 Hyperion blog: Hyperion Release 11 Architecture and Installation, Part 1 of 5. This promises to be some very useful info to go beyond the documentation (Yes, you still need to read the documentation. Sorry about that).

PeopleSoft PeopleTools 8.5

Some specifics on the new features of PeopleTools 8.5 over at the PeopleSoft tipster blog.

ADF

Yet another reason to participate in the Oracle Wiki is this link to the Community-Created Watch It ADF Series at the Dive into Oracle ADF blog.

Enterprise Storage

Kevin Closson has been adding to his already invaluable archive of material, and points out a link to a link for Recorded Webcast Available: Exadata Storage Server Technical Deep Dive – Part IV.

Speaking of Exadata, there is a bit of a well-justified bragging article over at the Structured Data blog: Exadata Snippits From Oracle F4Q09 Earnings Call.

APEX Contest

Write APEX? Want to go to Oracle Openworld...free? Then you need to make your way to David Peake's Oracle APEX blog, write the best APEX application ever, and submit it to the Application Express Developer Competition 2009.

Contributions By Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

Learn how to harness the power of combining Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control with RMAN in this indepth article:

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

Browsers, PeopleSoft, Demos, Cloud Computing, Performance

Computer Humor: Browsers

Well, it's not directly Oracle related, even though most people's interface to most everything, including their database is through a browser in one way or another, but the Oracle Appslab blog has a new topic for geeks to fight over: Which is the best browser? I liken the discussion to the classic bone of contention for geeks: Which is the best Star Trek series? I would associate the browsers with version of Star Trek as follows:

• Deep Space Nine. Quirky and out on the cutting edge, with everything changing, even the morphing security officer who reverts to a fluid at night and sleeps in a bucket--Google Chrome
• Star Trek the Next Generation, new and innovative, but somehow old and stodgy at the same time--Mozilla Firefox
• Original Star Trek: They didn't have browsers in the 60s, so the closest choice would be Lynx, the old text-based browser. Bet you thought I was going to say Microsoft Explorer aligns with Star Trek 'classic', eh? In fact, Microsoft Explorer is a Borg browser.
• Oh, and Safari is for Romulans.

PeopleSoft

PSST0101 has a handy little script for testing workflow and the like in PSoft: AutoLogin GreaseMonkey Script

The PeopleSoft DBA blog has another handy and hands on posting for us today: Manually Booting Tuxedo Application Server Processes in Parallel

Demo Mode

Most people with some experience in IT know about demo mode. Demo mode is what a program is in when, after thorough preparation, iterative testing, rehearsals and repeated home and office sessions, you demo your application in front of:

• A huge crowd
• A small crowd of investors
• A VP/CEO/CFO etc.
• All of the above in one room

...and it falls straight on its nose, often producing smoke. I just found a blog today from someone who specializes in demos, the Tech Demo Guy blog. Here is a nifty little posting on proofs of concept and how to make them benefit you rather than throw you into the depths of the dreaded demo mode.

Cloud Computing

Cubegeek posted recently on the National Institute of Standards and Technology's cloud computing definitions. Lots of good terminology in there alright, but I prefer my own definition of cloud computing: It's like grid computing, only round and fluffy.

Performance

Sun, Oracle, performance, a wiki? Yes, this posting has it all. It's over at Glenn Fawcett's Weblog, and starts off with a timeline of enhancements over the years that have made Oracle on Sun such a great combination.

Conferences and Netbooks

Sage advice from Johns Blog on What I've Learned Going to Conferences. With Oracle Open World slowly and irrevocably sneaking up on us there are some good pieces of advice in here. I'd add that hauling a laptop around is passe now. It costs less than 400 USD for a netbook. That's less than the per day cost of a lot of conferences and a netbook weighs about 1/2 as much as even a small notebook. If you are thinking about getting a cell-phone network broadband card ('air card') there's bad news and good news. The prices don't seem to be going down, so it's still $60 a month, two year obligation. But at least now a couple of the companies are offering you a netbook for $99-200 bucks if you sign up, and the netbook has the air card built in. Another hint: you can double the memory on a netbook from 1 GB to 2 GB with about $30 to buy a memory stick on the web and about 45 seconds to install it. You still have the limitations of a slower Atom CPU, but at least having some memory elbow room will help you on some programs.

Contributions By Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

Oracle’s Lifetime Support also puts you in control of your upgrade strategy. Our support policy stages make it easier for you to plan and budget for Oracle's exclusive product upgrades. You’ll enjoy continued peace of mind knowing that we’ll be there to support your business. With Lifetime Support, when it’s time to upgrade, and if you are current on technical support, you’ll have rights to major product releases, so you can benefit from Oracle’s technology leadership and keep pace with the world of business.

Learn more about Lifetime Support at this link to the FAQ document:
http://www.oracle.com/support/library/oracle-lifetime-support-policy-faq.pdf

Open World, Magazine, Network, Books, PGA, EBS

Open World

Time to start planning for Oracle Open World 2009 in October. You can start by suggesting topics, as discussed in this posting over at the AppsLab blog.

Oracle Magazine

Speaking of Oracle (you remember them, right?) the latest copy of Oracle Magazine is online. While you're there, make sure you take a look at this article on using Exadata with OWB at the Oracle Warehouse Builder blog.

Oracle Networking

Miladin Modrakovic's Blog: Oraclue has some fine internals material, as always, and one item you should definitely put in a place where you can find it later; Examining Oracle Net Trace Files.

The network portion of Oracle, in my experience, anyway, tends to be 'set it and forget it'. Then, months or years later when something really odd is going on and the accusations are flying between the sysadmins, the DBAs and the network folks, with the managers looking on with their grim 'I do recommend the hiring and firings you know' look, you may need to do a network trace. And Miladin found a good note on how to interpret the esoteric runes of that trace. (And yes, an eight-year-old whitepaper is still valuable, especially when it's written by Kevin Reardon).

Books and the PGA

No, not golf books. First Jonathan Lewis over at Oracle Scratchpad has a thought-provoking article on books, and the times they can lead us astray. There are honest mistakes and then there are some books out there that preach an incorrect approach and call on you to do things that are sloppy, dangerous, sometimes even things that will put your database in an unsupported state. Then you'll want to look at his in-depth piece on figuring out PGA allocation with a script at the same blog. As always, Jonathan is one of the leading figures in our field. If you don't have him on your RSS, you really should. Go to see one of his presentations if you get a chance. He plays the saxophone and improves your RDBMS performance. Really.

EBS

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

Interim Update #3: Using IE8 with E-Business Suite

EBS 11i Certified with 10gR2 10.2.0.4 DB on IBM Linux on Power and Linux on System Z

Updating the Default JDK Installed in OracleAS 10g

Sneak Preview: Integrating EBS with Desktop Apps via Web ADI Development Framework

Contribution by Sherron Garnett, Infogram Contributor

Oracle’s PeopleSoft Workforce Communications Unveiled

Oracle has released PeopleSoft Workforce Communications, a comprehensive solution for planning and delivering human resources (HR) programs and surveys to the workforce. PeopleSoft Workforce Communications is a fully integrated, bundled solution that allows HR organizations to deliver the right message to the right audience, capture workforce feedback and take action on it, gain program insight, and quantify success.

Using PeopleSoft Workforce Communications, HR departments can reduce the risk of noncompliance, improve productivity, identify underperforming areas, identify workforce segments that need additional training and development, and reduce program costs. “PeopleSoft Workforce Communications has the potential to offer great value to organizations through improved employee engagement and the ability to understand where your organization is being successful and where you need to apply more attention or refocus efforts,”says John Webb, Vice President, product management at Oracle.

Learn More: PeopleSoft Workforce Communications

Later this year, Classic Metalink will be retired and Oracle customers will use My Oracle Support. Research shows that using My Oracle Support allows for up to 30% faster service request creation and up to 40% faster service request resolution. Learn more at this handy link:

http://www.oracle.com/support/premier/myoraclesupport.html

Risk, Linux, Exadata, BI, PeopleSoft, EBS, Indexing

Risk, Again

I speak here often of risk, the unpleasant edge that reality sometimes takes on. Chris Warticki discusses the matter this week in a posting on backup and recovery. Run practise recoveries, really. You don't want to suddenly find out that the recovery takes ten times longer than you thought when the VP is on the phone asking when your store is going back online. The posting is here.

Linux

Already running Unbreakable Linux? Thinking about it? Gavin's Blog has a link to the Oracle Public Yum Server. And no, it has nothing to do with the Pasta posting from last week.

BI

Gerard Braat passes along the voice of experience in advocating a new phrase in place of the traditional buy vs. build options of setting up a BI system: Buy and Build Less. Building it from stratch is just not economical. But if someone tells you 'just pop this in place and push the button and our system will run your business, make tea and do your laundry' check to make sure you still have your wallet. The term 'some assembly required' comes to mind. Sometimes it would be more honest to use the label: 'An incredible amount of detailed and laborious assembly required'. But it's still less work than building from the ground up, so buy and build less is where the smart money is.

PeopleSoft

My background is in core database work, so I'm a bit short on PeopleSoft wisdom. But I can recognize something that looks elegant and useful, and this posting on nPlosioin over at the Grey Sperling Solutions blog is exactly that.

EBS

Lots of goodies this week at the Oracle E-Business Suite Technology blog:

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1 Reaches End-of-Life

Hands-On with Oracle's iPhone Apps

Extended Support Fees Waived for EBS 11.5.10 and 10gR2 DB Through 2011

Using SecureFiles with E-Business Suite Databases

New Rapid Install StartCD (12.0.4.9) for Release 12 Now Available

Of particular interest is this one:

Applications Change Management Pack 3.0 and Applications Management Pack 3.0 Now Available

We've been waiting for the Apps Change Management for a while now. This should be a very handy tool for Apps DBAs.

Indexing

In addition to his continuing series on indexes and small tables, Richard Foote points us toward a couple of good postings on indexing at other blogs here.

Contributions By Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

E-Book: Grid Computing - Enabling the Hyper-Efficient Data Center Oracle's new free eBook on Grid Computing solutions provides a fast-paced introduction to the data center best practices that will drive IT costs down and IT productivity up.