Thursday, July 9, 2009

Hyperion, PeopleSoft, Parallel Procesing, SQL*Net


Hyperion

Essbase

Want to put a timestamp on zipped up versions of all of the Essbase objects in an app subdirectory? The Cubegeek blog has a simple Perl script to let you do that.

Virtual Machines in Hyperion

in 2 Hyperion has a posting on managing virtual machines. Make sure you speak with your Support rep on this if you are implementing VMWare or some other virtual machine system. There can be some complications if you encounter bugs, and you'll need to demonstrate that the bugs reproduce in a non-VMWare environment. While you are at it, you should really add the RSS feed for in 2 Hyperion, because there is always something interesting over there for Hyperion customers, such as this posting on Comparing Current Periods to Prior Periods.

PeopleSoft (and the editor on his soapbox)

There's a nice review of the basics of using PeopleSoft Performance Monitor over at the Grey Sparling Solutions blog.

And over at the PeopleSoft DBA blog we have a nice use of the features of 10gR2 to solve a bottleneck: Dynamically Switching PeopleSoft Temporary Records between Global Temporary and Normal Tables during Application Engine Programs. Naturally, you're going to want to test this to make sure it works as well on your system as on the author's, but I definitely like to see our customers using advanced Oracle features.

There is an old argument in IT that one should seek to be 'database agnostic', keeping to a lowest common denominator of features to make things easier if you ever want to switch to a different RDBMS. The trouble with that thinking (apart from the horrible concept of switching from Oracle, even potentially), is that you pay heavily every day to save money once in a possible future. Any accountant can tell you that it isn't the one time expenditures that are dangerous (except a really huge one, of course), it's the monthly expenditures and entitlements that drag you down. Even more so the daily ones. By all means, use the advanced features you've paid for. You always want to be selective and cautious, thus avoiding the inevitable bugs of a first release, but using advanced features will help your bottom line. Advanced features and options will allow you to do more with the resources you've paid for, as long as you don't get carried away with novelties and overcomplicated designs. By this I mean a design that gives more consideration to the 'Wow!' factor of the technology than to the actual requirments of the business (you remember the business, it's that thing that pays IT's bills and is the actual reason we do all this computer stuff).

Generally speaking (and I do a lot of that, speaking generally), there is a tradeoff between novelty and risk. But business is all about risk, and a business that is totally without risk is simply not profitable, usually settling into a quagmire of niche markets then washing out when the next major innovation wave rolls in. The realm of the real risk jockeys is not something I'll discuss. If you're one of them, you don't want or need advice anyway.

Ok, enough time on the soapbox for this week.

Parallel Processing

Over at the Oracle Database Performance And Scalability Blog there is a highly technical and useful examination on Interconnect Myths And Misunderstandings

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