Oracle Infogram This Week: Hyperion, Patchsets, Hugepages, APEX, ADF, Exadata, EBS, RDBMS, BI

Hyperion

Over at Rittman Mead Consulting we have a good blow by blow description of Vertical Fragmentation on Parent-Child Hierarchies - Drills from Essbase to Oracle Database.

Up until the 'drilling' part it sounds like something a cultural anthropologist might have written.

Patchsets

It's a frequent question: When's my patchset coming out? Upgrade your Database - NOW! blog has links to the solution in MOS: When will my patchset be released???

Hugepages

Kevin Closson has part two of his discussion of Linux hugepages: Configuring Linux Hugepages for Oracle Database Is Just Too Difficult! Isn’t It? Part – II.

APEX

(YABAOAE) Yet Another Blog About Oracle Application Express brings us some wisdom on integrating Oracle Access Manager authentication with APEX here: Custom Authentication Scheme for Oracle Application Express and Oracle Access Manage

ADF

Shay Shmeltzer's Weblog is a favorite source of mine on ADF, as you've probably noticed. This week we have: ADF Faces Dynamic Tags - For a Form that Changes Dynamically.

Exadata

Oracle Partner Pythian will be holding a webinar on November 4th on their experiences with implementing Exadata. You can find more information at their blog here.

EBS

Brent Lowe's Oracle Apps Blog The Lowe Down has a concluding post to his series on new 12.1.3 functionality: Oracle EBS R12.1.3 Submit Request Delivery Options Button – Conclusion – 6 of 6

RDBMS

The Arup Nanda Blog brings us some of the experience culled from many years working with Oracle products, as presented at NOUG in October 2010: Real World DBA Best Practices

OBI

Speaking of conferences, the OpenWorld 2010 material is starting to trickle into the blogosphere. Jeff McQuigg has put up two of his OOW presentations on OBI at his blog: Achieving Great BI With Oracle BI.

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

Satisfying compliance regulations such as SOX, PCI, and HIPAA and mitigating security risks are among the top security challenges businesses face today. Oracle Audit Vault automates the audit collection, monitoring and reporting process, turning audit data into a key security resource for detecting unauthorized activity. Learn more at:
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/audit-vault/overview/index.html

Oracle Infogram This Week: Performance, RDBMS 11.2.0.2, EBS, SOA, Webinars, APEX, Virtual Conference

Performance: Hard Parses

Hard parses can be the bane of an SQL tuner's existence. Here are a couple of postings to help drive the plague away:

From Orclville, SQL Tuning - Low Hanging Fruit.

and from Charles Hooper's Oracle Notes: Consistent Gets During a Hard Parse – a Test Case to See One Possible Cause

RDBMS 11.2.0.2

Several items on the new release:

Some news from the front lines on using the latest and greatest version of RAC, 11.2.0.2, on the Oak Table net site: First contact with Oracle 11.2.0.2 RAC.

At Miladin Modrakovic's Blog: Oraclue, we have information on Oracle 11.2.0.2 Patch Set and new patching strategy

And for some real in-depth performance info on 11.2.0.2, the ever technical Charles Hooper's Oracle notes: TKPROF in 11.2.0.2 Unexpected Improvement – Rows (1st), Rows (avg), and Rows (max)

EBS

From Oracle E-Business Suite Technology:

Understanding Support Windows for E-Business Suite Releases

SOA

It is a very useful thing to 'throw' events. This posting At the Oracle .. Java .. OpenSource .. SOA blog, helps you do so in SOA. I've always liked the term 'throw' in a computing context. It reminds of phrases like 'throw a tantrum', though it is more often the computer that causes me to throw a tantrum rather than the other way around.

Webinars

At the splendidly named Technology Defenestration blog (how many times have you wanted to defenestrate technology?), there's a handy set of links to Webinars of interest to those working with Oracle, RedHat Linux and VMWare.

APEX

I have no idea if this is going to be a really good conference, but since it is being promoted by Scott Spendolini, I suspect it will be. It's a perfectly good excuse to go to Brusells, Dallas, or both, depending on your budget, location and preference in cuisine: APEXposed 2010 Dallas Discounts.

Also in the world of APEX is this article on What's New in Oracle Application Express.

Virtual Conference

There are some really great names preparing to present this first-time virtual conference over at Kerry Osborne's Oracle Blog: Virtual Oracle Conference.

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

Oracle has released a new document on E-Business Suite's error correction policy. This is a must read for anyone supporting E-Business Suite. Check it out at Note:1195034.1.

This note supplements Oracle's Lifetime Support Policy.

Helpful Phone Numbers and Links

Oracle Lifetime Support Policies: Note 971415.1

Oracle Infogram This Week: Quarterly Patches, EBS, BI, Performance, Hyperion Security, JDE, News

Quarterly CPU

The quarterly CPU is out. You can find out more here:

Critical Patch Update for October 2010 Now Available as well as at the Oracle Global Product Security Blog.

EBS

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

Warning: E-Business Suite Issues with Sun JRE 1.6.0_22

Portal 11g (11.1.1.3) Certified with E-Business Suite

BI

From the ever valuable Rittman Mead Consulting blog comes this posting on the evaluate function:

Oracle BI EE 11g – Calling Database Analytic Functions – EVALUATE

Performance Troubleshooting

Three postings of interest I found recently in the realm of performance:

From Doug's Oracle Blog an article on one of the most commonly ignored aspects of performance--the network. It's rare to find it is really the cause, but how do you eliminate it from your list of suspects: Network Events in ASH

And this Structured Data blog article goes on at some length about bloom filters. It's a very useful item. And no, bloom filters are not in your swimming pool maintenance plan: Reading Parallel Execution Plans With Bloom Pruning And Composite Partitioning.

Last, from Jonathan Lewis' Oracle Scratchpad, Always a fount of Oracle wisdom and experimentally confirmed results (in other words, conjecture-free), a valuable discussion of histogram behavior on text fields: Frequency Histogram 5.

Hyperion and Security

This posting at the Hyperion Consultant Blog brings up a concern with developing good security habits from the start in a Hyperion project (and promises some more details and tips in a later posting), but this is something that applies to all projects. It's often too easy to just throw open security during the development process because it's easy, then nail things down when you get close to production. It's a bad, wasteful idea in most cases. If you design the security in from the start you'll miss some last minute surprises in the final stages of your project. And while I'm up on the soapbox, let me put in a word for putting the security in the RDBMS. If you have the world's greatest application-implemented security and I can get unauthorized access to your RDBMS as an insider in your company at the command line, how's your security? Oracle has a ton of built-in and add-on security features. Please, use them!

What is the most overlooked task on Hyperion Planning projects? Security.

JDE

Certifications are back: The Good News: JDE Certification is back. The Bad News: JDE Certification is Back., brought to you by the What's Hot & What's Not with JD Edwards blog.

News You Can Use

Finally, one of the great quandries of life settled. No, it's not the new planet that may or may not have the right conditions for life (and may or may not exist, and may or may not have originated a SETI signal), but something really important: Lifehacker tells us how often you should flip a burger (the title really gives it away): Flip Your Burgers As Often As You'd Like for Better Cooking.

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

The November / December issue of Oracle Magazine is already available. It features articles on this year's Editor's Choice Awards, Oracle OpenWorld and Business Intelligence. Check it out at: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/oramag/magazine/current-issue/index.html

Oracle Infogram this Week: EBS, Grid, ADF, SOA, OTN, Passlogix, Blog of Note, Performance, Business News, Humor

EBS

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

Portal 10.1.4.2 Certified with EBS 12.1.2 on IBM: Linux on System z

New Video Primers on EBS Patch Wizard Now Available

In Search of EBS Techstack Documentation

Grid

If you are running Enterprise Manager Grid Control on the IBM AIX platform, you should have already received this important alert. If not, please have a look:

- ATTENTION AIX CUSTOMERS: Enterprise Manager Grid Control Certificate Authority Will Expire On 31-Dec-2010 (Doc Id 1181173.1)
- AIX Enterprise Manager Grid Control 10.2.0.5 SSL Certificate Authority Expires on December 31, 2010 (Doc Id 1171558.1)

ADF

Another week, and (at least) one more great posting over at the Shay Shmeltzer blog on the topic: Passing Parameters to ADF Application through the URL.

SOA

Antony Reynolds' Blog brings us a very useful item on Configuring a RAC Cluster for SOA.

OTN Whitepapers

Lots of good OTN white papers this week by way of Delicious. Here are some on optimized solutions. You know management is going to yank the hardware you need from under you at the last minute anyway, using the funds to buy a small island in the Caribbean for 'off-shore backup and recovery', but at least you can plan on getting that configuration just right.

White Paper: Oracle’s Optimized Solution for WebLogic Suite: An Optimal In-Memory Data Grid Architecture

White Paper: Oracle Optimized Solution for Siebel CRM

White Paper: Oracle's Optimized Solution for E-Business Suite

Passlogix

On October 5, 2010, Oracle announced the acquisition of Passlogix, adding enterprise single sign-on (ESSO) and strong network authentication capabilities to Oracle’s Identity Management Suite. You can read more in the official FAQ on the subject here.

Blog of Note: Oracle Nerd

I love the name of this blog, and the contents are excellent. Here's something I like for both content and the name we've used: OBIEE: obieerpdmigrateutil.exe. That .exe name is a winner. I picture the frayed production DBA typing it rapidly three times over at 3 AM and thinking: 'In a world of cryptic acronyms and abbreviations, I get the one utility with a name longer than its binary code!'

Performance

Over at the Striving for Optimal Performance blog, Christian Antognini has been experimenting with a new 11.2.0.2 package: DBMS_AUTO_SQLTUNE: ORA-01748 and Documentation Bugs.

Business News

This article at the Wall Street Journal site (a part of the site you can see without paying any tolls), was of interest to me. As an employee of a large company that uses a mix of traditional and innovative management to keep up with a fast-moving world of technology, I started reading up on the subject right away: The End of Management.

Humor

I can't resist passing this one along. It could easily be a Monty Python routine, but is in fact a transcript from a real British courtroom: High court hang-ups.