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

Contributions by Sherron Garnett, Infogram Contributor

Five Great Ways to Save On Training

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Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

Here is a good whitepaper concerning the hot topic of cloud computing:
http://www.oracle.com/technology/architect/entarch/pdf/architectural_strategies_for_cloud_computing.pdf

PeopleSoft, EBS, Presenting

PeopleSoft

I was reading a post at the Grey Sparling Solutions blog today about the 'PeopleTools product team wants your input' and realized I'd never seen the PeopleSoft Technology blog.

And there's a really handy method for Identifying Application Engine Source Code over at The PeopleSoft DBA Blog.

EBS

From the Oracle E-Business Suite blog this week:

Recommended Database Parameters Updated for EBS 12

Internet Explorer 8 Certified with E-Business Suite Release 12

Presenting

Though it's not directly about APEX this week over at David Peake on Oracle APEX, it's still valuable material. He summarizes his advice from many years of public presentation here.

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

Oracle Database 11g Release 2 is now available. Learn more at:
http://www.oracle.com/database/index.html

11gR2 RDBMS and OWB, Hyperion, EBS, Security, RDBMS Internals, Cloud Storage

Hyperion

Thinking about moving to 11? There's a good list of new features for you to consider over at the In 2 Hyperion blog.

EBS

New this week at the Oracle E-Business Technology Blog:

Thirteen New E-Business 12.1.1 Database-Tier Only Certifications for 10gR2

Spotlight on E-Business Suite Sessions at OpenWorld 2009

Interim Update: Certifying the 11gR2 Database with the E-Business Suite

11gR2 RDBMS

Ready to take 11gR2 out for a test drive? Here are some of the funnest bells and whistles to tweak, courtesy of the Structured Data blog:

Top 10 Oracle 11gR2 New Features

11gR2 OWB

Over at the Rittman Mead Consulting blog there is a series about OWB 11gR2 and BI EE. 11gR2 RDBMS got most of the fanfare, but there is a new version of OWB out as well, and it has some valuable features. See part one of a series on OWB 11gR2 and BI EE – Deriving the Business Model here.

Security

Summer R & R. That's Rest & Relaxation, or for some of us, Reading & Relaxation. But for Oracle's Chief Security Officer, Mary Ann Davidson, the relaxation comes in the form of a lot of interesting thoughts on cybersecurity and the nature of legislation (good and not so good). And there are even notes on summer reading to relax after the serious part.

RDBMS Internals

Do you stay awake nights wondering if buffer cache can be stored inside the shared pool? Then this posting on that very subject from Tanel Poder, internals guru, is for you.

In another posting at his blog he has some help for performance DBAs looking to find the hot spot (in Oracle's reality, a hot spot is not a really rocking club to be sought out, but a place of I/O contention to be avoided). The posting is called latch: cache buffers chains latch contention – a better way for finding the hot block.

Cloud Storage

Backblaze is making some noise. They released plans on how to build massive high density cloud storage arrays for $100 a terabyte, as Robin Harris reports over at Storage Mojo. My question is, once you have the cloud stored, do you have to take it out once in a while to air it out? Doesn't it zip back up into the sky when you do that? I'm just not as technical as I used to be.

Hyperion /proc, EBS, PeopleSoft

Hyperion

I found a new blog recently that has some good items: Ranzal & Associates Weblog.

Buried in the news and events on their main site (along with links to a whole bunch of webinars) is this really useful white paper: Hyperion System 9 Financial Management Subcube Architecture.

Better Life Through /proc

The old line from grainy documentary/industrial propaganda films was 'better life through plastic'. But Kevin Closson shows us how to find out a lot about an Oracle instance by exploring components in the Linux /proc directory. Give it a read here.

EBS

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

Critical Rollup Update for E-Business Suite Integrated SOA Gateway Release 12.1.1

PeopleSoft

Ok, a link to a link to a link: Jim's PeopleSoft Journal has link to Rich Text Editor for PT 8.4x this week.

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

The September / October issue of Oracle Magazine is now available. The featured product is Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g. http://www.oracle.com/technology/oramag/oracle/09-sep/index.html?msgid=8140209

11G, Optimizer, ADF, PeopleSoft

11gR2

The new 11g release 2 of the RDBMS is out! See details here, Linux only so far: http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/032365

Optimizer

Another really valuable blog entry over at the Inside the Oracle Optimizer blog this week: What's Changed between my New Query Plan and the Old One? Behavior of individual pieces of SQL can be a really sensitive issue, particularly after an opimizer change, such as from an upgrade. This posting gives you some of the tools you'll need to compare explain plans.

ADF

Looking for a whole batch of demos for your ADF and JDeveloper work? Have a look at Not Yet Documented ADF Sample Applications over at the Dive into Oracle ADF blog.

PeopleSoft

Great article on Figuring out where your Financial Data came from over at the Grey Sparling Solutions blog.

While you are there, have a look at this article on: Protecting PeopleSoft against "Real-Time" Secure ID Snatching.