Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 29-AUG-2012

Oracle VM

Oracle's Virtualization Blog brings us the news: Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.1.20 released.

Performance

This posting over at External Table has some useful information on How to Turn Off Adaptive Cursor Sharing, Cardinality Feedback and Serial Direct Read but is missing one key sentence: While it is useful to experiment with setting these underscore parameters at the session level NEVER set underline parameters on a production server unless you are instructed to do so by Oracle Support or they are in the Oracle documentation (some products require some underscore settings to be set).

SQL

Unioning looks really neat in the relational theory books. But then you get it back home to the real world and find people lined up at your desk complaining about the application running like...well, you know how that goes. This leads us to this article about how clever the Oracle optimizer is at avoiding unneeded unions in the first place: Exclusion of Unioned SQL in Views? at Martin Widlake's Yet Another Oracle Blog. He also reveals that there are pixies in the optimizer. Dang. We were saving that news for OOW.

SQL Developer

SQL Developer 3.2 is out. Here’s a summary of the new features: New Features in Release 3.2.

IDM

Online Apps DBA talks IDM, specifically: IDM 11gR2 changes/new features : OIM Sysadmin & Identity console.

ADF

Looking for inspiration on your ADF website? Convincing the boss that yes, we can do that? Check out this posting at Angelo Santagata's Blog: Beautiful websites with Oracle ADF/Webcenter.

And over at Sylvain Duloutre's Weblog some Shortcuts to download Oracle IDM and OUD 11g R2.

OBIEE

Links, and it looks like they are significant. That's why they're posted as Significant obiee product links over at obii Tips.

ERP

Jan Greenberg announced the first of a series of Enterprise Performance Management Video Feature Overviews (VFOs), available on our YouTube channel.  The first VFO is for Oracle Hyperion Financial Data Quality Management ERP Integration Adapter (ERPI) which is a 3.5 minute introduction to the product.

BI

Not to be outdone, the BI folks have an Oracle BI Publisher Channel over at YouTube. It's kind of like the NatGeo channel, only with a whole lot less elephants and a whole lot more bar charts.

APEX

Over at Whitehorses there's some prospectss on APEX 4.2: It’s coming soon!

  

And Finally…

WHERE ARE THEY NOW? What Happened To The People In This Iconic Photo Of Oracle's Founders.

From lifehacker: The Hardest Job Interview Questions—And How to Ace Them. I've always liked the old 'What... is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow? from Monty Python.

I’ve mentioned before that 3D printers are one of the key factors of the next stages of industry and technology, here’s the next step: 3D Printed Homes? Here’s The Scoop, at the Singularity Hub.

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

PeopleSoft Blog
A very helpful PeopleSoft blog is available at:  https://blogs.oracle.com/peoplesoft/.  Latest postings include a list of on demand training courses for many PeopleSoft modules available through Oracle University. 

Priority Service Infogram for 22-AUG-2012

RDBMS

Laurent Schneider had an epiphany on Dynamic number of columns based on some postings from Tom Kyte.

Speaking of Tom Kyte, when he gives you The keys to Oracle… it is wise to use them.

Gokhan Atil finds some time savings from running Dbverify (dbv) in parallel.

Exadata

Jonathan Lewis post about Compression Units – 5 and Exadata.

SQL

Over at Martin Widlake's Yet Another Oracle Blog we have a continuation of the saga of Exclusion of Unioned SQL in Views.

PL/SQL

Over at Toolbox.com Lewis Cunningham continues his discussion of booleans with Booleans Extreme (sounds like something from a technically savvy fast food ad, eh?).

MySQL

MacLochlainns Weblog tells us all about MySQL Workbench Scripts.

APEX

Martin Giffy D'Souza on Oracle APEX talks about How to Create an APEX Session in PL/SQL, a handy debugging tool.

Security

A lot of good ideas that are fairly simple to implement in here, though some of them may make for surprises when patching or someone is filling in for you and doesn't know about the non-default settings: 10 Crazy IT Security Tricks That Actually Work at CIO.

ADF

The AMIS Technology Blog initiates us into the mysteries of Creating reusable ADF Library with generic live resource bundle editing functionality and reusing it in any ADF application.

SOA

The VENNSTER blog goes through the steps of Installing Oracle SOA Suite10g on Oracle Enterprise Linux.

Book Review

Alex Nedoboi brings us this review of   “Oracle Database XE 11gR2 Jump Start Guide” by Asif Momen.

And Finally…

I have long watched the gaming realm with interest (even though my idea of an advanced video game is moving from Solitaire to Angry Birds). This article at Oracle SOA Suite - Team Blog discusses GaaS (Gaming as a Service). I'd love to see the area expand. There are some pretty exciting items coming from the realm of games now, after all. For instance robots that use inexpensive cameras with integrated motion controls based on Microsoft's innovative Kinect system.

A new game for phone owners over at Martin Widlake's Yet Another Oracle Blog, and you don’t even have to download an app: Friday Philosophy – New Game: Phone Zombies! (You Too can Play).

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

Oracle Magazine
Check out the current issue of Oracle Magazine.  It features articles on database security, developing applications used from multiple devices and more. 

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 15-AUG-2012

Testing

A couple of interesting viewpoints of late on testing, how much is enough, when do you reach the point when testing reaches around and runs into itself like the serpent of eternity Ourboros or the painting of a large bridge. First from the New York Times: Errant Code? It’s Not Just a Bug and at oracleblog Robert Vollman opines about The Two Ways of Doing a Job (the articles aren't individually linked so look for the August 11 posting if it has crept down the page).

MySQL

MySQL Connect 2012 registration is open. It's in San Francisco, on September 29th and 30th.

OpenWorld

Think you should go to OpenWorld? So do we. Maybe this will help:

Top 10 Reasons Your Manager Should Let You Attend Oracle OpenWorld.

RDBMS

That Jeff Smith comes through again with a useful posting: Using Oracle SQL Developer to Setup SQL*Loader Runs.

AMIS Technology gives us a Quick introduction of what and why of Oracle Database Edition Based Redefinition.

Performance

Over at Striving for Optimal Performance is this item you'll want to save for a slow, rainy day: Event 10046 – Full List of Levels.

Over at Oracle related stuff there is a free tool and a teaser for more goodies to come: Parallel Execution Analysis Using ASH - The XPLAN_ASH Tool.

Support

Chris Warticki's Blog - Oracle Support discusses the CPU (the kind in the patching system, not in the server, that is): Oracle E-Bus 11i and R12 CPU Knowledge Document (July 2012).

Total Recall

Just in time for the remake it seems that Total Recall has been folded into Advanced Compression as someone pointed out to Tom Kyte and he pointed out to the world: What I learned new about Total Recall...

SOA

A-Team - SOA has some sagely advice: Automatically Disable Proxy Service to avoid overloading OSB.

EBS

The Oracle E-Business Suite Technology blog lets us know about a new course at Oracle U: Oracle E-Business Suite Personalizations Course Now Available.

Oracle VM

Oracle ACE Director Kai Yu's Oracle Blog introduces us to Virtualizing Oracle E-Business Suite through Oracle VM, with a link at the bottom to a more detailed treatment.

Linux

Another article on Btrfs over at Technet that is worth perusing: How I Use the Advanced Capabilities of Btrfs.

Solaris

Under the Microscope gives us a head start on planning OpenWorld activities (it's not all cocktail shrimp and beer you know!): Oracle Solaris at Oracle Open World.

And Finally…

The ever useful and engaging Interesting Things You May Have Missed on August 9, 2012, from Eddie Awad.

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 08-AUG-2012

ADF

At Shay Shmeltzer's Weblog: Migrating ADF 10g to 11g - Should You?

And from Andrejus Baranovskis's Blog: Difference Between ADF BC Groovy Old Value and Posted Attribute.

SQL

At Toolbox.com: Implementing Booleans in SQL.

And from the Oracle Warehouse Builder (OWB) blog: OWB – ANSI and Oracle SQL code generation.

Performance

At Oracle Scratchpad an article entitled Arithmetic, which is quite appropriate since I understand that Jonathan Lewis used to be a mathematics instructor.

Tanel Poder weighs in on: The limitations of CURSOR_SHARING = FORCE and FORCE_MATCHING_SIGNATURE for SQL plan stability.

HA and Production Apps

Two good articles at Amis Technology Blog about keeping the app up and looking like a hero by reducing the risk of getting snagged by moving parts in production:

Quick introduction of what and why of Oracle Database Edition Based Redefinition

Reduce occurrence of ORA-04068 while upgrading PL/SQL packages by moving global variables to Application Context

OVM

Over at blogging about oracle applications the full series is now complete: Running Oracle VM Templates on Oracle Linux guide.

And speaking of OVM: Calling all SysAdmins: FREE Oracle Linux and Oracle VM training - Aug 23.

PeopleSoft

The PeopleSoft Tipster is issuing a newsletter of their own. Judging from the number of good items from them that have made their way here to the Infogram I'd say it would be a worthwhile subscription: PeopleSoft Weekly Newsletter.

APEX

Dimitri Gielis comes out in favor of: Moving to the Oracle APEX Listener.

OBIEE

Rittman Mead continues their series on: Using OBIEE against Transactional Schemas Part 2: Aliases.

SOA

The SOA & BPM Partner Community Blog lets us know that: SOA Lifecycle Management with Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c Now Available!

Clustering

The OTN Garage provides a slighly misspelled Clustering Cheet Sheet.

Security

The recent cascading hack that made much noise in the blogosphere is critiqued by AppsLab: A Case Study Hack.

Education

(Thanks to Kevin Lyons for pointing out these items)

Sign up for Technology-Focused Virtual Classrooms

Oracle Database Appliance Wednesday, August 8, 2012 @ 1:00pm EST REGISTER Database Lifecycle Management Packs Thursday, August 9, 2012 @ 1:00pm EST REGISTER Java SE Advanced and Java SE Suite Tuesday, August 14, 2012 @ 2:00pm EST REGISTER Oracle GoldenGate Real-Time Data Integration & Replication Thursday, August 16, 2012 @ 1:00pm EST REGISTER Increase IT Agility at Lower Cost Administration - Enterprise Manager 12c Tuesday, August 21, 2012 @ 1:00pm EST REGISTER Database Security Thursday, August 23, 2012 @ 1:00pm EST REGISTER Migrating from Oracle iAS to WebLogic 11g Tuesday, August 28, 2012 @ 2:00pm EST REGISTER

Oracle Database Appliance: Wednesday, August 8, 2012 & August 22, 2012 @ 1:00pm EST The Oracle Database Appliance is a new way to take advantage of the world's most popular database—Oracle Database 11g—in a single, easy-to-deploy and manage system. It's a complete package of software, server, storage, and network that's engineered for simplicity; saving time and money by simplifying deployment, maintenance, and support of database workloads. All hardware and software components are supported by a single vendor—Oracle—and offer customers unique pay-as-you-grow software licensing to quickly scale from 2 processor cores to 24 processor cores without incurring the costs and downtime usually associated with hardware upgrades. Database Lifecycle Management Packs: Thursday, August 9, 2012 @ 1:00pm EST Oracle Enterprise Manager provides a comprehensive solution that helps database, system and application administrators automate the processes required to manage the Oracle Database Lifecycle. It eliminates manual and time consuming tasks related to discovery, initial provisioning, patching, configuration management and ongoing change management. In addition, this solution provides compliance frameworks for reporting and management of industry and regulatory compliance standards. Java SE Advanced and Java SE Suite: Tuesday, August 14, 2012 @ 2:00pm EST Learn more about Expert Monitoring and Management for Mission-Critical Java Applications Oracle's Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE) binaries provide enterprise features that minimize the costs of deployment, monitoring, and maintenance of Java-based IT environments. Oracle GoldenGate Real-Time Data Integration & Replication: Thursday, August 16, 2012 @ 1:00pm EST Are you concerned about maintaining availability for applications during an upgrade or migration? Are you interested in having real-time data available for your business intelligence systems? Increase IT Agility at Lower Cost Administration - Enterprise Manager 12c : Tuesday, August 21, 2012 @ 1:00pm EST Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c is the only complete cloud management solution for your enterprise cloud. Learn about Oracle’s unique approach to cloud management, and see how Oracle helped its customers provision applications 84 percent faster, reduce time-to-resolution of service requests by 50 percent, and easily manage user experiences for millions of customers. Database Security: Thursday, August 23, 2012 @ 1:00pm EST Did you know that 30% fewer breaches occur when data is encrypted at the source? Do you need to address regulatory compliance requirements by protecting sensitive data? Oracle provides a comprehensive portfolio of security solutions to ensure data privacy, protect against insider threats, and enable regulatory compliance. Migrating from Oracle iAS to WebLogic 11g: Tuesday, August 28, 2012 @ 2:00pm EST WebLogic is Oracle's strategic application server platform and the new 11g version of products such as Forms, Reports, Discoverer and Portal run on the WebLogic Platform. This classroom will highlight the installation of WebLogic and traditional Oracle products such as Forms and Reports and new features in WebLogic 11g for OAS Customers.

And Finally…

As always, Eddie Awad's Twitter feed is rich with useful distractions:

The 10 Most Ridiculously Awesome Geeky Computer Pranks

Interesting Things You May Have Missed on August 8, 2012

and a free e-book from MIT: How to Design Programs.

And while you're at it, the Oracle Hardware blog points out: Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure for Dummies eBook - Get your copy now.

And at Pythian, the ever-popular Log Buffer #280, A Carnival of the Vanities for DBAs.

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 01-AUG-2012

Exalogic

A new white paper: Evolution from the Traditional Data Center to Exalogic: An Operational Perspective.

Linux

Tips for Hardening an Oracle Linux Server at Technet.

Solaris

A posting on Under the Microscope called Automated Installation Services for Oracle Solaris 11 holds out some intriguing possibilities.

Scripting

Tanel Poder recommends Python as the scripting language to go for if you are involved in things Oracle, and tweeted this page with resources at codeacademy:

Python

SQL Injection

You're heard about it before and will hear about it again, hopefully not over the phone from an irate and managerial voice at 3 AM. It's SQL injection, and it's insidious and dangerous as termites. Eddie Awad tweeted this page over at Java Code Geeks on another aspect of the problem: Database Abstraction and SQL Injection.

MOS

Exciting days on MOS as the move away from Flash proceeds. Read about how to get the most out of the changes: The New My Oracle Support User Interface [ID 1385682.1].

Another note of note this week over in the ‘MOS-o-sphere’: How to Configure and Setup F9 [File > Send Email] Microsoft Outlook Integration[ID 1140543.1]

Support

Chris Warticki tweeted about this very informative discussion over at Oracle Communities: The INs and OUTs of the information PUSH. Subscribing to Product Support Newsletters, Hot Topics E-mail, and other cool stuff.

EJB

Marina Vatkina's Weblog looks to the future, at least the part of the future called EJB 3.2: If you didn't know what is coming in EJB 3.2...

ADF

A value demo from Shay Shmeltzer's Weblog on Monitoring ADF Pages Round-Trips with the HTTP Analyzer.

Siebel

The actor David Niven once said "After you hit 50, it's just patch, patch, patch." Very true in IT, but with the addition of versions, versions, versions. Here's a few for Siebel and Explorer over at MOS: Siebel CRM v7.5.2 to 8.1 settings for IE 6, 7 and 8 [ID 1066053.1].

Commerce

Also at the Insight-Driven Retailing Blog, and on a more serious note, some information on EMV, the technology that may soon be showing up in your credit cards and phones: EMV on its way to the US.

___________________________________________

Oracle Gold Partner redgate Offers Webinars

Recent webinar recordings: Two sessions on Oracle Enterprise Manager, including one on 12c, presented by Doug Burns

August Webinars Oracle Cost-Based Optimizer Advanced Session 01 August 2012, presented by Randolf Geist (OakTable, Oracle ACE Director). Find out more & register Oracle Enterprise Manager - Highlighted Questions and Extended Answers 15 August 2012, presented by Doug Burns (OakTable, Oracle ACE Director). Find out more & register Performance Tuning with ASH and AWR Data 30 August 2012, presented by Kellyn Pot'Vin (Oracle ACE, RMOUG Board of Directors). Find out more & register Adding SOA Suite to E-Business Suite in Two Hours Oracle ACE Jerry Ireland explains how to add SOA Suite to EBS in under 2 hours, including download time, with no worries about possible conflicting technologies. This article is based on Jerry's Top 5 Paper from ODTUG Kscope12. Read the article Help Red Gate Develop Source Control for Oracle Source Control for Oracle will automate the process of pushing database changes into your version control system, and keep everyone in sync with the latest changes. We'd like you to help us develop it. Please help us by answering 4 quick questions: Source Control for Oracle V1 survey Stay informed with the tool's development at: red-gate.com/source-control-for-oracle ______________________________________________________________

And Finally...

The Insight-Driven Retailing Blog reveals that Amazon not only dominates its market, but controls time and space: Amazon is Amazing.

Eddie Awad tweeted to this article of The 9 most endangered species in the IT workforce. A funny but serious type of article for those who want to stay ahead of the changes.

And for those of you, who like me, aren’t above saving the occasional buck on the red-eye: How can I arrive feeling rested after a red eye flight?