Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 28-SEP-2011

Upgrades and the Optimizer


Jonathan Lewis at his Scratchpad blog goes into his usual very instructive depth when discussing problems he encountered after a 10g to 11g upgrade: Upgrade Argh.

WLS

As Amis Technology informs us, there is more than one way to start and stop your 11g WLS environment. They have recommendations on how to automate it: WebLogic 11g start and stop automation.

SOA

Over at the Java/Oracle SOA blog there's a handy posting on Base64 encoding in oracle BPEL 11g.

OOW

It's right around the corner, with the front already visible, in fact. Oracle OOW starts this Sunday and there are a couple more directories of sessions for you to use:

From the Oracle BI Publisher Blog: BI Publisher sessions for Oracle Open World 2011

From the Oracle Solaris blog: Oracle Solaris at Oracle OpenWorld 2011

From the PeopleSoft Technology Blog: PeopleTools Sessions at OpenWorld 2011.

From The Data Warehouse Insider: Focus On: Big Data at Openworld.

Another event coming up at OOW is the RAC attack. Want to challenge these guys? Tell them to install on a couple of iPhones. RAC Attack in OTN Lounge at OOW11

Fusion

Okay, I'm going to be honest about this one. I have a varying depth of technical knowledge on various articles I link to here on the Infogram, and my most common depth is 'shallow'. But on this one I know the word 'SSL'. Beyond that, you're on your own. But it does look useful to those working with the same configuration: Using the nsstools to manage SSL stores for curl at the Oracle Fusion Middleware Security blog.

The Appliance, Exadata, and the Fog of Buzz

Buzzwords take on a life of their own. Java is still producing a daunting quantity of coffee-related punning after all these years, for instance. But sometimes there is basic misunderstanding of terms, and Kevin Closson is trying to correct that in this posting about the Exadata and the new Oracle Database Appliance: Oracle Database Appliance–Bringing Exadata To The Masses. And, No More Patching!

speaking of the Appliance, The Pythian Blog has the Unofficial Oracle Database Appliance FAQ. 

APEX

Handy overloading going on here at Triangle Circle Square: Apex Tutorial - Form & Report sharing the same page. 

Philosophy

A bit of IT philosophy as respected Oracle authority James Morle discusses: Right Practice

Science News

The big sensation is around the discovery, so far not confirmed, of particles that move faster than the speed of light. That's fine, changes our perception of reality, measurements of the universe, understanding of time and space, yada, yada. But I'm linking to this article, which is about potentially being able to make recordings and movies directly from dreams. I can see a future profession here. Somewhere out there is someone who has the most interesting and entertaining dreams in the world and they don't even suspect it is going to make them rich some day: (from Gizmodo):  Scientists Reconstruct Brains’ Visions Into Digital Video In Historic Experiment.

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

PeopleSoft HCM
Learn more about upcoming PeopleSoft HCM functionality and features in the Information Indepth Newsletter Human Capital Management Edition.

Oracle Priority Support Infogram for 21-SEP-2011

Exadata and Oracle Database Appliance


It's an appliance, it's just been announced, and, this is not an icebox or a dishwasher by any measure of the term. The postings are starting to circulate on the blogosphere. Here is one from Amis Technology: Oracle Database Appliance – mid market Exadata in a scalable (license) model.


Bringing us some stealthy things about Exadata storage (stealthiness being a standard over at Oracle-Ninja.com) is this posting: Exadata Storage on Demand.

Critical Patch Update - September 2011

Oracle Security Alert for CVE-2011-3192 was released on September 15th, 2011.
Oracle strongly recommends applying Security Alert fixes as soon as possible.

The Security Alert Advisory is the starting point for relevant information. It includes the list of products affected, a summary of the security vulnerability, and a pointer to obtain the latest patches. Supported products that are not listed in the "Affected Products and Versions" section of the advisory do not require new patches to be applied.

Also, it is essential to review the Security Alert supporting documentation referenced in the Advisory before applying patches, as this is where you can find important pertinent information.

The Advisory is available at the following location:

Oracle Critical Patch Updates and Security Alerts
http://www.oracle.com/technology/deploy/security/alerts.html
Oracle Security Alert CVE-2011-3192
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/security/alert-cve-2011-3192-485304.html


Hyperion

Hyperion V 11.1.1.4 is available on e-delivery….

Oracle Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) System Release 11.1.1.4.000 is Now Available (Doc ID 1345585.1)

Supported Upgrade Paths for EPM Release 11.1.1.4 (Doc ID 1354894.1)

Documentation:

http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E12825_01/nav/portal_1.htm

OS

This looks like a disturbing cloud on the OS horizon posted over at ITWorld: Windows 8 OEM specs may block Linux booting

APEX

We haven't linked to one of Eddie Awad's postings in a while, and this is a really nice one to pick up on: Create an Application to Upload Files Using Oracle APEX, In Less Than 10 Minutes (Video).

Also in the APEX realm:

How to include background images easily using Data URIs, from Random Insights into Oracle.

Technology News

This is some exciting technical news over at International Business News. I have long looked forward to the day when gaming can be harnessed to accomplish tasks in technology. In fact I'd like to see something like a version of Sim City connected to an RDBMS. Okay, I admit that I found Farmville extremely annoying, but if people were paying small amounts of real money for gamers to carefully keep storage configured on a growing system, for instance, or respond to complex deadlocks on an application that would appear in the form of a puzzle in the metaverse, I think it would have both IT and business potential. The various tasks of the game are translated into a real world application. Online Gamers Solve AIDS Puzzle that Eluded Scientists

Performance

Words of wisdom, and caution, from Jonathan Lewis at his Scratchpad blog on System Stats.

Book Review: Performance

Charles Hooper's Oracle Notes blog gives us another very detailed review: Book Review: Oracle Database 11g Performance Tuning Recipes. 

EBS

The Online Apps DBA blog fills us in on some key: Changes in Oracle E-Business Suite R12 12.2 from 12.0.x and 12.1.x.

Going to OpenWorld? Here's the roundup on E-Business Suite Technology-Related Sessions at OpenWorld 2011 from the Oracle E-Business Suite Technology blog.

Support News

Oracle Proactive Support


Streamline success across your entire Oracle stack. Adopt Oracle Proactive Support to benefit from health services, intelligent fault management and timely, personalized advice—all part of your Oracle Premier Support subscription. Make sure you’re getting the most value from your Oracle investments by leveraging the My Oracle Support portal to help drive greater efficiencies throughout your IT organization.

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

Oracle Magazine
The September / October edition of Oracle Magazine is available. It contains a preview of what will be available at Oracle OpenWorld and more.

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 14-SEP-2011

Performance: Mutex


Sounds like a badly named audio product, or perhaps some kind of cleaning agent, but in fact it's an important term for performance troubleshooting. Here are a few links I found researching it for a customer (some are a bit old, but from very solid sources and still useful):


From Tanel Poder: 


cursor: pin S waits, sporadic CPU spikes and systematic troubleshooting


Latch and Contention Troubleshooting in Oracle


Library cache latches gone in Oracle 11g


A posting with some good comments below at Jonathan Lewis' Scratchpad blog: Concurrency


 From Andrey Nikolaev: Mutex waits. Part 1. “Cursor: Pin S” in Oracle 10.2-11.1. Invisible and aggressive.


And finally from the 11.1 docs, on V$MUTEX_SLEEP_HISTORY.


Database Express

The Upgrade your Database - NOW! blog lets us know that: Oracle Database Express Edition 11g Release 2 is now available!

Sybase Migration

A client of mine is looking at a major Sybase conversion and was looking for resources. Things seem to boil down to two key portions - SQL Developer Migration Workbench for the database objects and GoldenGate for replicating the data in the fastest possible way. Here are a couple of postings/pages I found to be good starting points:

From Jason's Blog on Integration, Consolidation and Migration: Sybase Migrations with Oracle SQL Developer

And Using Oracle GoldenGate for Real-Time Data Integration

Oracle Open World

A couple more items on what's coming up at OpenWorld. As always, a major conference makes you want to clone yourself to be at several events at once (like when several Oak Table members all present on performance at the same time). Not to mention that if you were cloned six times that means collecting SIX shopping bags of conference swag.

Let's start with MySQL: MySQL@Oracle OpenWorld

and continue with data integration:

Discover What's Coming Up at OpenWorld on Data Integration


UNIX: Back to Basics

Unix is powerful, and thus has a reputation for being dangerous. To be frank, a misplaced comma in a script can undo an entire enterprise, so it can be dangerous. But if you feel confident and use Unix tools right it will save you enormous amounts of time and money. Here are a couple of items for those starting out or those reviewing:

Learning Unix

and

The Vim Cheat Sheat for Programmers by Michael Pohoreski


and a quick example from over at dbaStreet on how useful Unix scripting can be in the day to day work of a DBA: Shell script to generate awr diff reports.


Data Warehouse

From The Data Warehouse Insider: So why do I need "so much extra space" for my partition SPLIT operation?




Oracle VM


Oracle VM 3 is out there. It might be time for you to take another look: Oracle's Big Virtualization Bet.





Star Trek at 45

Nothing to do with Oracle, of course, but I'm a Trekkie, so, it would appear, is Tom Kyte, and anything he writes about has been 'touched by Oracle'. So here is his posting on the 45th anniversary of Star Trek: 45 years ago...


And in science news, another step toward Star Trek technology:



Interesting how technologies evolve in similar ways. When the city reached its limits builders broke through to the next level by adding layers. The introduction of cheap, strong steel and re-bar reinforced concrete allowed the birth of large, inexpensive buildings and skyscrapers. And the city moved to the next stage. From this article it looks like the next re-bar has been found for computer chips, allowing them to sprout up into skyscrapers full of churning data.

Breakthrough: The Secret to Making Processors 1,000 Times Faster [VIDEO]

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

Oracle Open World is almost here. Support is offering 15 sessions ranging from from upgrade best practices to effectively using My Oracle Support. Learn more on these sessions at: http://www.oracle.com/us/support/oracle-openworld2011-444301.html

Human Capital Management: News and Events

News
New PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 Functionality Targets Payroll, Compensation, and Time and Labor
Three important new features are now available for Oracle’s PeopleSoft human capital management 9.1 solutions. They’re coming prior to the formal release of that platform’s Feature Pack 2, scheduled for early 2012.
Read More

Events
Strategic HCM and Oracle Fusion HCM Will Top the Lineup at Oracle OpenWorld 2011
Managing talent, strengthening strategic workforce planning, and coexisting with Oracle Fusion Human Capital Management—these critical HCM topics and others will be showcased at Oracle OpenWorld 2011.

Oracle’s Steve Miranda, Row Henson, and Steve Boese to Share Best Practices at October’s HR Technology Conference
Oracle expects more than 2,000 HCM professionals will gather to meet industry thought leaders and network with colleagues at the 14th Annual HR Technology Conference & Exposition, scheduled for October 3–5 at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.
Read More

Support News
New position statements are now available on My Oracle Support (login required)
- PeopleSoft Payroll for North America Position Statement—Pennsylvania Act 32
- PeopleSoft Human Resources Benefits Position Statement—HIPAA 834 5010

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 07-SEP-2011

Education

Time grows short for enrolling in some of the free computer courses that Stanford is offering. Please have a look if you are interested in database theory, artificial intelligence and machine learning, all of which are offered as described at ZDNet: Stanford opens some information technology courses to the world

Oracle VM

ReadWrite ENTERPRISE introduces us to some new VM features: What's New in Oracle VM 3?

OpenWorld

UNIX type going to OpenWorld? Make sure you check out "What's New in Oracle Solaris 11" Training at Oracle OpenWorld from the Oracle Solaris blog.

and the Exadata Partner Community - EMEA lets us know that you can Take the OPN Specialization exams for FREE at Oracle OpenWorld!

and from the Oracle E-Business Suite technology blog (more links below): E-Business Suite Technology-Related Sessions at OpenWorld 2011

RDBMS

This comes in the context of exporting and importing a warehouse, but it's really all about a bug involving index creation. Everything just goes peachy....and then the index creation drops from warp to impulse drive. Read about the experience at Marko Sutic's Oracle Blog: IMPDP creates indexes with parallel degree 1 during import.

Invisible Indexes and Exadata

We talked about the intriguing invisible index feature last week, here is an item on using it for Exadata at The Oracle Instructor: Invisible Indexes & Exadata. I definitely recommend looking into invisible indexes and testing them out so you are ready to use them if you run into a performance problem on prod and need to make some discreet changes that won't effect your business application.

Security

Oracle's Security Inside Out blog fills us in on Shady RAT. We're not in Kansas any more, Toto. In fact, we might have spies on the system right now capturing intellectual property. If you haven't reviewed security for a while, now is definitely the time: Shady RAT Raises the Ante on Data Breaches.

SOA

Oracle's SOA Governance@work blog offers us a demo on: Monitoring SOA Infrastructure Components Using Enterprise Manager Grid Control.

EBS

From the Oracle E-Business Technology blog this week:

Do You Need to Bounce E-Business Suite Application Servers Regularly?

Name (SCAN) Listeners with Oracle E-Business Suite

Java and JDeveloper

Something slips outt, it flies around the house, it lands. You know that's not going to end well. Catching bugs that cause race conditions. An interesting article at the Java Specialists' Newsletter: Implicit Escape of "this"

The tastily named: 'burek for breakfast' blog posts about the OpenJDK bug process: A bug's life

Running JDeveloper and want to hack things to run on Mac? Shay Shmeltzer's Weblog is the place to go: Installing JDeveloper on Mac OS X Lion (10.7)

Book Reviews

A couple of books out of late, and some positive reviews, by the looks of it. First the more general interest: Oracle 11g R1/R2 Real Application Clusters Essentials reviewed at the Oracle Performance and Backup Blog.

Then a welcome addition to a pretty specialized realm, but it's an area that is poised for massive growth: New Book: ECM and Electronic Health Records, at the bexhuff blog.

Industry Spotlight: Utilities

News
Oracle Announces Oracle Utilities Network Management System 1.11
Advanced Distribution Management features help utilities extend Smart Grid initiatives to support renewable resources and electric vehicle recharging.

More than 100 Customers Select or Implement Oracle Utilities Technologies in Fiscal Year 2011
Rappahannock Electric Cooperative selects Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management to support Smart Grid and green initiatives.

White Papers
Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management 1.5 Performance Benchmark on Exadata 1 (PDF)
This white paper describes the performance and scalability results of Oracle Utilities Meter
Data Management version 1.5.0.6 on the Exadata 2 full software stack using Exadata 1
hardware. It demonstrates the near linear application scalability up to the maximum CPU
capacity of Exadata 1 database machine.

Serve Prepaid Customers without Prepayment Meters
The Smart Grid lets utilities offer prepayment services with little or no extra cost.

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

Discover the Cloud Advantage for Databases External Series
Oracle is hosting a monthly external Webcast series, Discover the Cloud Advantage for Databases, through November 2011, and Oracle customers, partners, and employees are invited to participate in one or all of the upcoming live Webcasts.

A private cloud enables organizations to consolidate workloads onto a shared infrastructure. Analysts predict that within a few years the private cloud market will be nearly a US$16 billion industry. During our live Webcast, Database Consolidation onto Private Clouds, Oracle's William Hardie, VP of database product marketing, and Mark Townsend, VP of product management, will discuss how customers can save millions consolidating database onto private clouds and more.