Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 30-MAY-2012

MOS

My Oracle Support (the entertainer formerly known as Metalink, for those of you who still remember Prince), is on the move. Here is a page with links to videos and information on the new look of MOS.

ZFS

I've heard that this blog was originally going to go out on paper, but the paperboys were collapsing from yelling out 'Get your Oracle EMEA Value-Added Distributor News here!'. In any case they have a link to the New ZFS Storage Appliance Objection Handling Document. 

Virtualization

The Oracle tweet stream let everyone know this week about the INFORMATION INDEPTH NEWSLETTER, Virtualization Edition.

VM Templates

Also in the happy land of virtualization (where everything is bigger and cheaper than it really has any call to be), there are new templates available, according to Wim Coekaerts Blog: New Oracles VM RAC template with support for oracle vm 3 built-in.

ADF

One of our favorite ADF blogs at the Infogram is Andrejus Baranovskis's Blog, and he comes through again: Solution for Sharing Global User Data in ADF BC.

Oracle Magazine's Digital Edition

Want to start the world's easiest magazine subscription? Just go to http://www.oraclemagazine-digital.com and fill in name and email and you'll get access to Oracle Magazine in all its digital glory.

Storage

The OTN Garage discusses something free you may not know about. And even if you do know about it, and know it's free, you may not know how it is neater than sliced bread. Indeed it's a kind of sliced up storage that pulls itself together as needed: Is Linear Tape File System (LTFS) Best For Transportable Storage?

SOA

I haven't seen this blog from Francis the SOA Man before, but this article seems a useful start: Where and How to Set JVM Parameters in Oracle SOA 11G.

RDBMS: Doctor, Doctor, It Hurts When I Iterate This!

I love medical metaphors for databases and other computing matters. My favorite expression from medicine that works in IT is: 'If you hear hoof beats, think horses, not zebras'. In other words, don't start diagnosing a performance problem by examining the spin counts on a latch, start from seeing if the SQL was written by a frustrated jigsaw puzzle designer who is now writing regulatory acts for Congress. Tom Kyte also seems to find value in medical metaphors, as you can see in this recent posting on his blog: Doctors...

Tom also proved that he has literally forgotten more about Oracle than a lot of us ever knew in the first place with this article: When is a foreign key not a foreign key...

Indexing

Richard Foote delves into the very interesting topic of virtual indexes: Cost of Virtual Indexes (Little Lies).

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 23-MAY-2012

SOA

A-Team - SOA continues to bring us useful technical material for those exploring the wonderful world of SOA: BPM 11g Deployment & Instance Migration.

Speech, Speech!

Oracle Technology Connection lets us know that Larry Ellison and Mark Hurd will be speaking about our cloud strategy: Larry Ellison Webcast June 6th at 1:00pm Pacific Time

Oracle Communities

Do you use Oracle Communities? If you don't you're missing out. Consider this article (login required): Resolve your E-Business Suite Patching Incidents Faster in My Oracle Support Community [ID 1453113.1]

Diggings

As an SDM I often research some of the issues my customers are encountering, sometimes coming across interesting, if not new items. Here are a couple of my finds for the week: Oracle Grid Infrastructure Reboot less Node Fencing at the {Unbreakable} Cloud blog.

and

some of the many facets of the Ora-494 error (there were a lot of articles and discussions, but this one seemed to cover a lot of ground): Thinking in ORA-494, ORA-239 Instance Crashes and Hangs at the Life DBA blog.

Utilities

Wim Coekaerts Blog gives us the facts on using ovm_utils.

Design

Tom Kyte is tweeting and, predictably, pointing out some great stuff. For instance this item: We Who Value Simplicity Have Built Incomprehensible Machines, at the programming in the twenty-first century blog and Complication is What Happens When You Try to Solve a Problem You Don't Understand at SIGPWNED.

I've always thought that a lot of modern engineering falls short of the 'bad old days' of simple, mechanical and fundamental electrical inventions. Let's face it, if someone invented the telephone after about 1980, it would have required a lot of skills to use. Picture a phone similar to the old Windows 3.x networking world: Pick up the phone, select your communications protocol, make sure you get a modem tone, discover that there is a mismatch somewhere in the dozens of configuration files used to set up your phone...you get the picture. Or imagine a light bulb engineered based on making money for lobbyists and politicians rather than functioning and selling on an open market. It would be hideous looking, expensive, dim...oh wait a minute, sore points there. Let's leave that one alone.

Tom also pointed out an old detective story over at Coskan's Approach to Oracle: 11.2.0.2 performance stories.

Opinion


Mobile Computing 

This brief opinion piece at Cloud Migrations put me up on my soapbox: iPad and tablets - Back to thick client devices and 3270 vendor lock in?

If there is one thing that will get me up on that soapbox it's iPad browser hijacking. I don't know why somebody in their right mind would decide that instead of advertising their mobile app on their news page they should hijack links to articles when they detect an iPad reading the page, thrusting a page that you have to search around to find 'No Thanks' on or be taken to the Apple store and locked into yet one more news app that you will never use. Browsers and hyperlinks are what the web is all about. There are a few magazines and papers that have pulled this whole app thing off  well (the Wall Street Journal comes to mind), but the companies that feel you absolutely have to consume their free news in a sealed-up proprietary app, sometimes denying you the article altogether if you don't accept the hijacking, for those companies' products I reserve a special place in historic 'Failed Product Hell'. They can be right in there in the cave where they keep the old Office paperclip guy, the Windows Vista source code and all the betamax tapes and cases of new Coke. Okay, I'm climbing down now.

COBOL

Also at Cloud Migrations: The COBOL Brain Drain. COBOL is apparently like  the alligator. Nobody respects it, but it is just goes on and on, living through age after geological age. While more sophistical programs end up in museums, COBOL keeps right on hunkering down in the muddy depths of a million legacy systems.

...and Finally

We find out that Every black hole contains a new universe. Why do I get that dizzying feeling when you find out you are actually in the Matrix? Or that there are infinite universes in a multi-dimensional matryoshka doll, each one odder than the last? We're all going to have a good laugh about this some day.

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

Oracle Advanced Customer Support Services

Seamless data availability, optimal application performance, and reduced IT risk are critical to business success. Oracle Advanced Customer Support Services delivers tailored, mission critical support services to help you maintain and maximize the performance of all mission critical Oracle systems.   Priority Service is just a part of the many services offered by Oracle Advanced Customer Support Services.  Learn more about the other offerings here.

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 16-MAY-2012

Stored Procedures

Eddie Awad tweeted a link to this useful article at The Professionals Point blog. For many DBAs the idea of using more stored procedures is preaching to the choir. But this article can give you some ammunition when arguing your point in the process of app planning and design: 6 Advantages of using stored procedures in your application.

Relational Database Theory

At a blog appropriately named Relational Database Theory there was a recent posting of interest called A long long proof. If you are intrigued by the mathematical foundation (or lack thereof) of what commercial databases are doing, have a look at this blog. I recomend reading some of Chris Date's books first, though.

RDBMS Internals

Tanel Poder pointed out this blog as interesting, and I trust hisjudgment: Latch, mutex and beyond.

RDBMS

Richard Foote discusses Index Rebuild – Does it use the Index or the Table ? (Nothing Touches Me).

Middleware

The Oracle Middleware Blog reminds us of a step often forgotten in doing an FMW upgrade: Upgrading Database Schema in FMW Upgrade.

Security

A fascinating blow by blow of a spammer's message header (okay, you have to be a bit of geek to describe a message header using words like 'fascinating') at the Word to the Wise blog: Things Spammers Do.

And at Security Inside Out this week there is a Best Practices for Database Privileged User Access Controls posting.

The Oracle Database Twitter feed points us to a great compendium of Racel security resources: Oracle Database Security technical resources.

PeopleSoft DFW

Increase your knowledge of the PeopleSoft Diagnostic Framewok: PeopleSoft DFW Plug-In Comprehensive Catalog.

M2M

An insteresting post at the Oracle PartnerNetwork Blog on M2M architecture entitled Machine to Machine – The Internet of Things – It’s about the Data. It's all about devices dealing with one another. I can't help but be excited by the increases in connectivity that are constantly growing of late. I must admit, though, that I don't look forward to the 'connected refrigerator they always seem to bring up in the popular press on this issue. It monitors your milk and reorders when you run low, etc. Very neat. But I can't help imaging some point when a person comes home from work and is informed by their spouse: We'll have to go out to eat. Why? The refrigerator's been hacked and the bacon has gone rogue and is holding all the food hostage. I'm waiting for an icebox negotiator from the county now.

Spatial

Chris Wartcki's Blog - Oracle Support sheds some light on resources for those using geospatial information: Spatially Speaking: Conference & Support Resources.

Oracle Linux

Wim Coekaerts Blog has some good things to say about Oracle Linux: building an appliance? physical ? virtual? production quality? use Oracle Linux.

Utilities

Finally this week, the The ORACLE-BASE Blog discovered that a production version of UltraEdit 3.1 has been snuck out the door.

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

Advisor Webcasts

Did you know that Oracle offers a wide array of webconference training across Oracle's product line.  Check out the current schedule and access past webconferences at Note:740966.1. 

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 09-MAY-2012

APEX


Over at Scott Spendolini's Blog there's a great posting this week on APEX UI Lessons.

RDBMS and Performance


It looks like Tanel Poder has a new name for his blog, the quality seems just as high as ever, as demonstrated by Oradebug hanganalyze with a prelim connection and “ERROR: Can not perform hang analysis dump without a process state object and a session state object.” at TANEL PODER'S BLOG: IT & MOBILE FOR GEEKS AND PROS.


Also from Tanel was a Twittered tip that not only is Tom Kyte tweeting now, but is also offering one of his books for free in e-book form: FREE! Expert Oracle Database Architecture, 2nd Edition.


Consider this summation from the intro. Pure gold: 


• An application built around the database—dependent on the database—will succeed or fail based on how it uses the database. As a corollary to this—all applications are built around databases; I can't think of a single useful application that doesn't store data persistently somewhere. 


• Applications come, applications go. The data, however, lives forever. It is not about building applications; it really is about the data underneath these applications.  


• A development team needs at its heart a core of database-savvy coders who are responsible for ensuring the database logic is sound and the system is built to perform from day one. Tuning after the fact—tuning after deployment—means you did not build it that way.  

This week Eddie Awad's Blog has some good posts in the 8 Interesting Things You May Have Missed This Week. 


And if all this socialization is just too much for you, take advantage of some of the 13 Ways to Create a Cringeworthy Social Media Presence and lose some of those pesky followers, an article he pointed to in his tweet stream.


ADF and OAF


Dana Singleterry's Weblog lets us know about Oracle ADF Developer - A bimonthly newsletter for developers interested in or using the Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF).


Shay Shmeltzer's Weblog discusses the alternatives: To ADF or to OAF? or Can I use ADF with Oracle E-Business Suite?


And if you do go with OAF after all, here is an OAF Developer Guide over at the Welcome to My Oracle World blog.

Oracle Support


Looking for some Oracle Product Support Newsletters?

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 02-MAY-2012

Security: Key Patch Issued

Oracle Security Alert for CVE-2012-1675 was released on April 30th, 2012.

This security alert addresses the recently publicly disclosed "Oracle TNS Listener Poison Attack" affecting Oracle Database Server.

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/technetwork/topics/security/alerts-086861.html

Oracle Security Alert CVE-2012-1675:
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/security/alert-cve-2012-1675-1608180.html.



Hotsos


Doug from Doug's Oracle Blog attended Hotsos this year and has a day-by-day review of how things went: Hotsos Symposium 2012 Summary.

BI


The BI & Analytics Pulse blog let's us know about the New Oracle Endeca Information Discovery YouTube Channel.

OUD


I hope you appreciate my labors here as the editor of the Infogram. I read this article over at Sylvain Duloutre's Weblog: Cohabitation/Migration ODSEE->OUD: schema checking, and reviewed some other items over there and found it valuable enough to pass along to our readers and...not once did I make a wisecrack about the term Cohabitation/Migration. And that hurts.



RDBMS


This week That Jeff Smith praises lazy programmers. I'm with him on that. in fact I'm so lazy I stopped programming years ago. He gives those lazy programmers a handy technique: Formatting Query Results to CSV in Oracle SQL Developer.

In a tweet this week Eddie Awad mentioned this article which sounds like a very handy thing to do: Select * from Inbox... or how to read your (Microsoft Exchange) email using SQL and PL/SQL at the ORA-00001: Unique constraint violated blog.

Another great blogger and tweeter is Coskan Gundogar. This week he pointed out, among other items, this great posting at Oracle database internals by Riyaj: _gc_fusion_compression.

Martin Widlake's Yet Another Oracle Blog discusses a topic that often befuddles DBAs: Table High Water Mark and How Empty the Table Is.

Finally, a white paper: Best Practices for Upgrading to Oracle Database 11g Release 2.

Performance

This looks like a great technique to work with (published at Technet): How to Trace a Java Application Running on Oracle Solaris.

The battle royal is set for June, clustered indexes vs. IOTs, and Jonathan Lewish is to be our knight in the joust. Don't miss it! Clustered Indexes at Oracle Scratchpad.

Demantra

Naturally, none of our large family of Oracle programs ever encounters errors (I'm keeping my fingers crossed when saying that, so you have nothing that will stand up in court). Well, ok, apparently Demantra does. And it's on their blog: Demantra Engine Common Run Time Errors. 

Keeping Up

Once again thanks to Eddie Awad's tweeting skills I found an article of use to all us busy and sedentary folk: Fitness for geeks. Bruce Perry on how to get away from the computer, eat well, and live a healthy life. It's up at the O'Reilly's Radar site.

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

Get Proactive!

Let us help you solve problems without having to log an SR; streamline and simplify your daily operations; reduce risks and maximize up-time and lower your organizations costs through preventative maintenance. How? By Getting Proactive! Check out the Proactive portal available at Note:432.1.  It contains links for many of Oracle's products.