Oracle Infogram

2012-02-13T14:42:00.000-08:00

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

A message from Dennis Reno, VP, Oracle Customer Portal Experience
Over the weekend of January 27-29, 2012, we upgraded My Oracle Support’s HTML-based user interface (UI) to a new one built using Oracle’s Application Development Framework (ADF). I’m pleased to welcome you to the new user interface, which will help provide our My Oracle Support HTML-based users more streamlined access to support information and services.

I encourage you to access the below resources for additional information regarding the new My Oracle Support UI:

The New My Oracle Support User Interface Web Page (Article ID 1385682.1)—Find up-to-date information on the new My Oracle Support UI and access the video series designed to take you through My Oracle Support’s features and functionality using the new UI.

Although the supporthtml.oracle.com web address and your My Oracle Support username and password remain unchanged, there are some changes to the list of browsers that are supported by the new UI. For example, Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) is no longer supported on supporthtml.oracle.com; you can visit “The New My Oracle Support User Interface” web page noted above for a list of supported browsers. Please note that you can still use IE6 on the Flash-based UI at support.oracle.com.In the coming months, we plan to also transition users of the current Flash-based UI to the new HTML-based My Oracle Support UI. We plan to release additional enhancements to the new UI during the time leading up to this transition to help ensure that Flash-based users have access to similar My Oracle Support functionality that they use today.

If you have any questions or feedback, please log into My Oracle Support and use the “Contact Us” link located in the upper right hand corner.We appreciate your continued feedback, as we work to improve your online support experience.

Sincerely,
Dennis RenoVP, Customer Portal ExperienceOracle Support

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 08-FEB-2012

2012-02-08T14:52:00.000-08:00

Cloud Computing

The Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control blog informs us that CloudManagement documentation has been enhanced and released.

The Oracle Enterprise Manager blog tells us about Delivering Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) with Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c.

RDBMS

Rulegen dives into some of the mechanics of how triggers fire during amerge: Statement-levelconstraint validation: MERGE + MTI.

Over at Triggers Considered Harmful, Considered Harmful is a posting on Where TK agrees with TK (or: why are triggers harmful). So between the title of the article and the title of the blog, figuring out what I should think of triggers makes me wish I paid more attention in algebra class so I could parse the whole thing out.

SQL Developer

SQL Developer 3.1 production is nowavailable.

SQLDeveloper on OTN

...and the That Jeff Smith blog provides you with Your Guide to NewFeatures in Oracle SQL Developer version 3.1.

SOA

The A-Team - SOA (didn't they have a TV show?) are pleased to announce that theSOA11G Database Growth Management Strategy white paper (the 'purging'whitepaper) is now available.

Trace

Wedon’t usually share links that involve buying things (at least not things wedon’t sell. But Cary Milsap recommends this site/product in a Tweet. If you can’ttrust Cary Milsap, who can you trust? getyour traces - yourself at berxblog.

PeopleSoft and MOS

Sometimes it's hard to find the patches you need in MOS. Here's a document to assist on PeopleSoft patches in particular: Searching using the Certifications Application.

Oracle Support

The Proactive Support EPM and BI blog has a pointer to a good note on Hot Topics on MOS and patches.

Performance

Jonathan Lewis has his new book out: Oracle Core: Essential Internals for DBAs and Developers.

At his blog this week there is an engaging experiment in Index naming.

2012-02-08T11:54:00.000-08:00

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

Big Data Online Forum - Big Data Essentials: What You Need to Know

Date: Thursday, February 16, 2012 Time: 10:00 a.m. PT – 1:30 p.m. PT / 1:00 p.m. ET – 4:30 p.m. ET

Big data is big news these days. But you don’t base IT investment decisions on magazine headlines. Join us for the Big Data Online Forum to learn the essentials of big data – from the technology underlying it to real-world use cases. Oracle Senior Technical Architect Tom Kyte, Cloudera CEO Mike Olson, and other industry thought leaders will be on hand to explain how big data can deliver revolutionary insight and competitive advantage. You’ll get answers to tough questions surrounding big data, including:

What business insight can big data uncover?
How do you manage big data?
How do you integrate big data and decision-making?

Register Here

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 01-FEB-2012

2012-02-01T18:06:00.000-08:00

Important Security Announcement

Oracle Security Alert for CVE-2011-5035 was released on January 31st, 2012.

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

Oracle Security Alert CVE-2011-5035

MySQL

MySQL storage engines confusing you? You're probably not alone. Hopefully this spot the MySQL team tweeted from the documentation will clear up the fog between the NDB and InnoDB engines: 16.1.5.1. Differences Between the NDB and InnoDB Storage Engines.

Migrations

No, not geese, systems. The Reckless Logic blog points out a posting at Technet on How Dell Migrated 1700 Servers to Oracle Linux.

Performance

Jonathan Lewis shows us how evaluating bug documentation can produce more than just keeping up with bugs in this posting on Subquery Factoring.

RAC

The Oracle Instructor looks into how to Monitor RAC I/O with gv$iostat_function.

RDBMS

The AskDba.org Weblog promises to keep adding to this posting as they discover new problems, which makes it worth following on your RSS reader. They discuss 11gR2:Listener Startup Issues, giving us the first three problem causers to check for if you have problems bringing up the listener.

The Rulegen blog relates some interesting investigations they made on Statement-level constraint validation: MERGE + MTI while working on their product.

EMC and Oracle

Kevin Closson's Blog: Platforms, Databases and Storage has a very good resource to share: EMC Oracle-Related Reading Material of Interest.

2012-01-31T12:35:00.000-08:00

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

E-Business Suite 12.1
Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1 Helps Customers Reduce Customizations, Consolidate Instances and Achieve Faster and More Simplified Reporting. This press release highlights companies that have successfully moved to 12.1.

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 25-JAN-2012

2012-01-25T16:20:00.000-08:00

Important Planned Outage

My Oracle Support Outage Planned for Weekend of January 27, 2012

A 5 hour outage is planned for My Oracle Support on Friday January 27, 2012 starting at 9:00 PM Pacific Time (Saturday January 28, 5:00 AM GMT/UTC) for system maintenance.
All My Oracle Support functionality will be inaccessible for approximately 5 hours starting at 9:00 PM Pacific Time. We encourage you to plan accordingly and to download any information that you may need ahead of time. Please write down your Support Identifier so that you will have it available if you need to call.
For urgent issues during the outage, please call your local Oracle Support center. Phone numbers globally may be found on the Oracle Global Customer Support Contacts Directory page.

		Complete My Oracle Support Outage
Scheduled Start		Friday January 27, 2012 / Saturday January 28, 2012
Orlando		Friday/Saturday 12:00 Midnight
San Francisco		Friday 9:00 PM Pacific
London		Saturday 5:00 AM
Paris		Saturday 6:00 AM
Bangalore		Saturday 10:30 AM
Tokyo		Saturday 2:00 PM
GMT/UTC		Saturday 5:00 AM
		Duration: 5 Hours

Thank you in advance for your patience and we apologize for any inconvenience.

Oracle Documentation

I've been a Kindle fan since day one, and I'm always encouraged to see others take the extra effort to make it easier to read important items on the Kindle. What could be more important than Oracle documentation? Precious little, that's what! Martin Widlake's Yet Another Oracle Blog has the instructions: Oracle documentation on a Kindle.

Bugs

One of our favorite blogs, Upgrade your Database - NOW!, weighs in on the SCN bug that is fixed in the latest quarterly patchset: Fundamental Oracle flaw revealed??? Really ...?

MySQL

Some of the basics on MySQL if you already have a background as an Oracle DBA: MySQL: An Introduction for Oracle DBAs over at the Oracle's MySQL Blog.

PeopleSoft

Interested in OVM and PeopleSoft? There's a whitepaper on that: New PeopleSoft OVM Red Paper over at the PeopleSoft Technology Blog.

Check out this upcoming Advisor Webcase: Why use BI Publisher? New Features in PeopleTools 8.52 (Doc ID 1348987.1).

EBS

The latest from the Oracle E-Business Suite Technology blog:

WebCast Replay Available: Personalize, Customize, and Extend Oracle E-Business Suite User Interface

ATG Live Webcast: Oracle E-Business Suite Secure Configuration

Oracle Magazine

Have you read Oracle Magazine lately? The January issue is out there, and you don't even have to rush to your newstand to get one. It's right here online: Oracle Magazine January/February 2012.

Performance

The Oracle Optimizer blog clears up one of those great philosophical questions that depress teenagers and keep middle aged people awake at night (well, alright, mostly the latter): My cursor wasn’t shared because of STB_OBJECT_MISMATCH. What does that mean?

Also in the wonderful world of performance is this item about Non-Specific Index Hints over at Charles Hooper's Oracle Notes blog.

Oracle Linux

Technet, by way of YouTube, talks about how to attain Zero Downtime OS Updates with Ksplice.

WLS 12c

This is a very useful article if you've been kicking the tires on 12c: VirtualBox for WebLogic 12c, Coherence 3.7.1, NetBeans 7.1, OEPE 12c and more at the Cloud Application Foundation blog.

Enterprise Manager

This week the Proactive Support EPM and BI blog is running a good guest article: Tips and Tricks with Enterprise Manager - troubleshooting EPM/BI.

APEX

There are a lot of blogs, docs, in fact whole sites that will tell you about installing EBS, but the Dimitri Gielis Blog goes into installing APEX to combine it with EBS in this posting: E-Business Suite and APEX installation.

Corporate Life

Cary Milsap tweeted an article at Inc. that will raise a smile (or perhaps a bit of a shiver) as you recognize some of the 6 Phrases You Should Never Say Again from the speech of managers and co-workers or, heaven forfend, your own words.

2012-01-24T12:27:00.001-08:00

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

New My Oracle Support Interface
My Oracle Support is migrating from a Flash based end user interface. Learn more about this change and preview the new interface at Note:1385682.1.

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 18-JAN-2012

2012-01-18T18:08:00.000-08:00

Quarterly Patch

It's that time again, and this one from the Oracle Security Team is very important (as always).

OracleCritical Patch Update - January 2012
The OracleCritical Patch Update for January 2012 was released on January 17th, 2012.Oracle strongly recommends applying the patches as soon as possible. Pleasenote that Sun products are included in this Critical Patch Update.

The Critical Patch Update Advisory is thestarting point for relevant information. It includes a list of productsaffected, pointers to obtain the patches, a summary of the securityvulnerabilities, and links to other important documents. Supported Productsthat are not listed in the "Supported Products and ComponentsAffected" Section of the advisory do not require new patches to beapplied.

Also, it is essential to review the Critical Patch Update supportingdocumentation referenced in the Advisory before applying patches, as this iswhere you can find important pertinent information.

Critical Patch Update Advisories are available at the following location:

Oracle Technology Network:
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/security/alerts-086861.html

The Critical Patch Update Advisory -January 2012 is available at the following location:

Oracle Technology Network:
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/security/cpujan2012-366304.html

The next four Critical Patch Update release dates are:

April 17, 2012
July 17, 2012
October 16, 2012
January 15, 2013

Performance

Over at Real Life Database / SQL Experiences (a little while ago, but I've been meaning to link to it), is Vivek Sharma's contribution on the subject of How Challenging is the task of a Performance Optimization Expert ? A real life example….

UNIX

Some people are just lucky. They get to be the DBA AND the Sysadmin. Others are luckier still. They get paid for both. Whatever your karma, the OTN Garage has some useful links to New Documentation for Common Sysadmin Tasks.

Also in the realm of Unix is this posting from Using kexec for fast reboots on Oracle Linux with UEK at Wim Coekaerts Blog.

Relational Theory, Legends and Guru Division

Chris Date is presenting, as tweeted by Cary Milsap, on February 2nd: C. J. Date “SQL and Relational Theory: How to Write Accurate SQL Code”.

Exalogic

Cristóbal Soto's Blog points out a good white paper on Exalogic Disaster Recovery.

EBS

The latest from the Oracle E-Business Suite Technology blog:

Quarterly E-Business Suite Upgrade Recommendations: January 2012 Edition

ATG Live Webcast: Personalize, Customize, and Extend Oracle E-Business Suite User Interface

Enabling Case-Sensitive Passwords with E-Business Release 12

RAC

Over at Alejandro Vargas' Blog, a useful posting on RAC11.2.0.2 redundant interconnect and the Cluster Health Monitor.

SOA

The A-Team - SOA blog fills us in on how to get through one of those awkward social situations...well, not really, they discuss How should I generate an external reference to a composite instance?

Bugs

Oracle related stuff delves into the bugs of Dynamic Sampling On Multiple Partitions.

Read the Lovely Manual

One of Tom Kyte's favorite spots when a new version comes out is the new features guide. Great minds think alike and Eddie Awad recently tweeted us all in that direction for 11g release 2.

MySQL

The January 2012 issue of the MySQL Newsletter is out.

Work

The economy and labor partsof our current reality are like the old Chinese curse: May you live ininteresting times (I’ve never seen that curse in Chinese, by the way, so it maybe a pseudo-proverb. If anyone knows the original Chinese for the phrase pleaselet me know). Here’s a link to a very useful and thoughtful article at LifeHacker on what many hiring managers look for (and some good replies in thecomments from people with a lot of experience on the other side of the desk).One item I agree with in general, but would amend, is the length of resume. Anon-IT should fit on one page, maximum two. But if you are looking at atechnical person you sometimes want to know EXACTLY what they can do and whatthey have worked with, and that can take a few pages. My advice to friends I've helped with IT resumes in the past is to structure the resume with a summarypage up front that boils it all down to a 30 second summation and then gothrough work background in subsequent pages.

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 11-JAN-2012

2012-01-11T14:41:00.000-08:00

Security

We've thrown the protective barrier out further: Oracle Database Firewall extends support to MySQL, over at Help Net Security.

Speaking of MySQL and security, the MySQL on Windows blog brings us a posting on Using MySqlClientPermission Class on Connector/Net 6.5 to restrict data access.

Last but not least in security is this posting at Security Inside Out entitled Is Your Organization Susceptible to a Data Breach? I don't think you're going to like the answer.

Better Life Through Clouds

So there you are, 3 AM, the stores are closed, you're bored, you have a pile of unmapped genes as big as your couch and you want to map them. But you don't have a supercomputer and that makes you bored and resentful. No more! You can rent one now, and it willl come to exist long enough for you to map that genome, cure cancer, and finish in time for the package stores to open: Amazon takes supercomputing to the cloud, from c|net.

Essbase

The entirely technically named blog: EPM / OBI - Product Assurance Engineering (/PAE) fills us in on Essbase 11.1.2 - Commit Block Tuning.

Blast from the Past

The wonderful command line world of Oracle 5 and Forms 2, now available for your viewing pleasure on YouTube as tweeted by Kyle Hailey: Oracle 5 and Forms 2 on DOS.

The People Behind the Screens

A couple of interesting items in the press of late about the people who speak with the machines, that would be us if you are reading this blog:

First a fairly scary but interesting item from Pulp Tech about:

Tech’s Relationship With Depression, Suicide and Asperger’s.

Next, someone finally explains why it is most companies should try to keep their developers on an island somewhere in South Pacific with big-pipe internet but no cable TV or email:

Why programmers work at night (from the A geek with a hat blog).

PeopleSoft

The PeopleSoft Apps Strategy blog discusses how to Extend Business Processes with New PeopleSoft Forms and Approval Builder Capabilities.

Oracle Gurus

Cary Milsap speaking live, and you can listen, and it's free? That can't be beat. All Things Oracle tweeted it from Redgate: Oracle Database Webinars - Real Developers DO use Tools, presented by Cary Millsap on Tues 24th Jan 2012 @ 16:00 (UK time).

Oracle Support

It looks to me like Chris Warticki is trying to become to Oracle Support questions what Tom Kyte is to Oracle RDBMS and development questions - a central source, and I applaude the effort. Here's a really useful answer he gave to an enquiry about notifcations in MOS: Ask that Support Blogger...he'll know (Notifications).

Fusion Middleware

Did you miss the advisor webcast: How to plan for a new installation of Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g? Well there is a recorded version available (along with lots of others ).

Performance

The Oracle related stuff blog discusses: Dynamic Sampling On Multiple Partitions - Bugs.

2012-01-10T12:46:00.000-08:00

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

Oracle Newsletter Index
Oracle has a wide range of technical newsletters for many of our products and technologies. Check out the complete list at Note:222.1.

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 04-JAN-2012

2012-01-04T17:37:00.000-08:00

MOS

My Oracle Support is in the process of change, moving from Flash and HTML to an ADF-based solution, as I understand it. Also made available recently is a great App/site for mobile access:

Mobile Clients for My Oracle Support at the My Oracle Support blog.

Security

Randomize your hash functions. In this, as in many computing matters, the less hard wired and predictable a face you present to the Net, the better. Check out this posting at Cryptanalysis: Effective DoS attacks against Web Application Plattforms – #hashDoS [UPDATE3]

Coding

At the blog with the curiously crafted name of: Triggers Considered Harmful, Considered Harmful is a posting about those pesky mutating tables and why they may be a friend in disguise: The mutating table error prevents non-deterministic behavior of your code.

OATS

Ah, the possibilities for tasteless and silly puns on OATS are endless, but all I'm going to do is link you to a posting from Giri Mandalika's Repository on using it: Oracle Application Testing Suite (OATS): Few Tips & Tricks.

WLS

More news and tips coming in on the new WLS 12c:

From the Java / Oracle SOA blog, Using Bean Validation together with ExtVal in JPA and JSF

Over at Middleware Magic: WebLogic 12c in Action

RDBMS Design

An outstanding posting from someone sharing wisdom clearly acquired over a long time:
Do You Make These 5 Database Design Mistakes? at SQL Rockstar Thomas Larock.

OBIEE

Looking for the default ports on OBIEE? Sunil S. Ranka's Weblog comes to the rescue: Default OBIEE 11G Ports

SOA

Antony Reynolds' Blog discusses bloat, both that caused by holiday eating and that caused by debugging: Too Much Debug

Exadata

Pythian fills us in on availability: Oracle 11.2.0.3 is now available for Exadata

and please remember that there is a range of ACS services available for Exadata: Oracle Advanced Customer Support Services for Exadata

EBS

The latest from the Oracle E-Business Suite Technology blog:

Oracle Database 10gR2 10.2.0.5 Certified with EBS 11i on Tru64, Linux on Power, Linux Itanium

WebCast Replay Available: Desktop Integration Beyond Client ADI

Limited Extended Support Available for Oracle Single Sign-On through 2012

WebCast Replay Available: Advanced E-Business Suite Architectures

EBS R12 Certified with Database 11gR2 on SLES 11

Support

More cool stuff at Chris Warticki's Blog - Oracle Support: Oracle-Xcerpts from the Experts Vol #1

New Hyperion Book Out

There's a new book on the market, and I haven't seen any reviews yes, so if someone has it, please comment here (comments are moderated, so give the comment a few minutes/hours to post): Oracle Hyperion Interactive Reporting 11 Expert Guide

Human Capital Management News

2012-01-04T06:24:00.001-08:00

New Feature Pack Adds Efficiency Tools to Oracle’s PeopleSoft HCM
In a move that signals Oracle’s continuing investments in Oracle’s PeopleSoft human capital management solutions, the company announced the availability of PeopleSoft HCM Feature Pack 2 capabilities.Read More

Roadmaps Revealed: Enterprises Discuss Why They’re Adopting Oracle Fusion HCM
Oracle Fusion Human Capital Management has been designed from the ground up to be a fully integrated HR and talent management system that can run on-premise or in the cloud. It allows organizations to align their HR business to the rest of the organization and be more strategic with their talent. Oracle Fusion HCM also includes game-changing functionality such as actionable talent reviews, predictive analytics, and social networking.Read More

Survey Reveals Widespread Misalignment of HR and Business Strategies
Human resources executives overwhelmingly see talent retention as the top business challenge for their organizations, but most say their HR organizations lack a formal talent management strategy. The reason: siloed business practices, created in part by the use of niche technologies, make it difficult to coordinate compensation, promotion, succession planning, and other key talent development activities.Read More

2012-01-03T13:45:00.000-08:00

Contributions from Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

Oracle Open World HA Presentations
Many of the Oracle Open World (OOW) presentations have been posted on TechNet. Check out the presentations on High Availability (HA) and Backup / Recovery best practices available here.

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 28-DEC-2011

2011-12-28T18:56:00.000-08:00

APEX

I have to admit that I only watched McGyver once, and only lasted about 10 minutes before my implausibility meter pegged and I switched it off, but the concept of MyGyvering technology is still valid, and here is an instance: APEX app running native on iPhone - the details. Over at Roels Blog. In an ironic twist, the link doesn't run right on iOS devices and you have to go to a different version to get it to display.

JDE

There's a session coming up on: Introduction to Troubleshooting EnterpriseOne Performance Issues. It's scheduled for January 11, 2011 at 8 am PT, 9 am MT, 11 am ET.

MOS

There's a new version of MOS in the works, not Flash and not HTML. I generated this set of hints the other day for a customer, and they apply to the current systems, and probably will come in handy for the next one as well. When you can't get through to MOS or, even more frustrating, have an SR creation process fail, here are some things to try:

Toggle between the Flash and HTML versions of MOS
Clear cache and cookies in the browser
Use another browser
Submit a quick 'shell' SR in a couple of minutes to make sure there aren't any timeout issues along the path. You can then edit it to add information to it.
Call hub (1-800-223-1711) to find out if there any problems showing up with your CSI, they have the ability to test, look at your account, etc.
If all else fails, hub can open a new SR for you.

Proactive Support

Over at Chris Warticki's Blog - Oracle Support is a link to a posting on Good example of Proactive Support from EPM/BI

.Chris has one of the best Oracle Support blogs out there and the daily Oracle News, Info and Support now as well. Also check him out on Twitter.

Log Buffer

Always a source for good reading, The Pythian Blog hosts the Log Buffer: Log Buffer #248, A Carnival of the Vanities for DBAs.

Oracle Fusion Middleware

Feeling short on newsletters at this festive time of year? Go on over to the Oracle Fusion Middleware Newsletter.

...and if that didn't slake your thirst for newsletters, try this: Oracle EBS CRM Newsletter Current Edition.

MySQL

MySQL Workbench 5.2.37 GA Released. Over at the MySQL blog.

Java

Over at Geertjan's Blog there's a good rundown on NetBeans Property Editors for java.io.File and String Arrays.

Solaris

In a dangerously self-referential posting the Oracle Solaris team, on the Oracle Solaris blog, reflects on Oracle Solaris in the Year 2011 - A Review.

WLS

Scott Nelson's Portal Productivity Ponderings presents us with a warning on a WLS 10.3.x Silent Install Gotcha.

SQL Developer

That Jeff Smith (not the other one, mind you), posts on Top 10 Preferences to Tweak when using SQL Developer

Upgrades

Gokhan Atil's Oracle Blog posts on Best Practices to Use Database Upgrade Assistan

Book Review: Oracle Core Essential Internals for DBAs and Developers

Charles Hooper does his usual thorough and helpful job reviewing this important resource for those who want to really want to know what is going on under the covers of an Oracle RDBMS.

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 21-DEC-2011

2011-12-21T13:52:00.000-08:00

Solaris

A good intro at OTN: Introducing the Basics of Image Packaging System (IPS) on Oracle Solaris 11.

WLS

From Andrejus Baranovskis's Blog: How to set EAR Version for ADF Application on WebLogic.

Just like in the old Dragnet show: 'just the facts,ma'am.': WEBLOGIC 12C (=JAVA EE 6 FULL PROFILE EDITION) AND A SERVER SMOKE TEST at ADAM BIEN'S WEBLOG.

Hyperion

Installation is still a fairly complex activity, but thispost can make life a little simpler: Smart View Command Line Install from Essbase Labs.

High Availability/Survivability

As everyone knows, the Mayans predicted the end of theworld in 2012, so here's a solution for that (which leaves open the question whyMayan seers seemed to miss the end of their own civilization). Personally Ithink the Mayans simply let their calendar subscription run out when it came upfor renewal a couple of centuries ago. At OTN Garage: How to Survive the End of the World - Part I (also handy if you want to read about How to Install and Configure a Two Node Cluster, by the way).

Tempus Fugit

The end of the year approaches, and with it the 'best of2011' articles. Here's one from OTN: Our Most Popular Tech Articles of 2011.

SQL Developer

SQL Developer Data Modeler 3.1 Early Adopter 3 is nowavailable.

Please see the links below to download the software and provide any feedback tothe team.

· EA3Downloads

· BugsFixed

· ReleaseNotes

· NewFeatures

Data ModelerForum.

NoSQL

If you have five minutes and a computer with Internet you can get things rolling with NoSQL: Oracle NoSQL Database in 5 Minutes (Charles Lamb's Blog).

My Oracle Support is now LIVE on Twitter!

Twitter isnow available on My Oracle Support! For those who are not familiar with howTwitter works; Twitter is simply a way to connect you to the latest informationabout what you find interesting. Connecting is easy! Just find the publicstreams you would like to follow and a world of conversations will be open toyou. My Oracle Support Twitter will feature topics on Proactive Services,Webinars, My Oracle Support features, and especially the latest information onMy Oracle Support Community events and important news.

If you don't have a twitter account, get started now at: http://twitter.com/

If you do have a twitter account, we invite you to follow the My Oracle Supportteam for the latest news and information at: http://twitter.com/myoraclesupport

Oracle Linux

Over at Tom's Hardware: Oracle Releases Linux 6.2 With Driver Upgrades.

SOA

A step by step guide: Cookbook creating Business Rule Engine with a simple Decision Table in Oracle SOA Suite, over at the AMIS Technology blog.

Oracle Community

2011-12-20T06:07:00.000-08:00

Would you like to interact with the extended Oracle community, but don't know where to start? Here's a handy cheat sheet with links to differenct communities along with a short description of each:

OTN Forums
These are legacy forums that have been around for over a decade. Maintained by Development, every product along with features and functions are shared and discussed by our customers. It's in the Oracle domain. Call it free, but it is still part of a customers Premier Support investment. There are millions of threads and users.

MOS Communities
Included as part of a customer's Premier Support investment. There are about 300 or so communities. They are moderated by Support personnel. There are tens of thousands of users. There is a customer knowledge repository where customers upload their own docs, ppts and other user-created FAQ's/Guides.

OracleMix
The operative word here is blend. Where forums are product based, Mix blends products with products or products with industries, or products with whatever you want.
You can create your own Mix groups, both public or private.
Some Mix groups include most Products but for example there is a group created specifically for R12 Implementations. Another one specifically for Secure Gov't IdM product users. Anything can be created.

Blogs
Blogs are authored. Blogs are created by Oracle employees externally to communicate messaging around our products, product lines and services.
Blogs are articles that may include; links, video or other media and invite feedback from the readership and subscribers.

Wiki
Think Wikipedia here.
The purpose of a wiki is that anyone can create, edit, contribute. Anything.

Twitter
A.K.A. - microblogging. Short < 120-140 character messages that can be broadcast to the world. People choose to follow you and your messages based on keywords, #hashtages, messages or message theme.

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 14-DEC-2011

2011-12-14T12:32:00.000-08:00

Blogger of Note

We frequently post items from Jonathan Lewis, so he is our 'Blogger of Note' this issue. He lets us know his wish for a more efficient way to gather stats (Dev, are you listening?): I wish. While you are there, don't miss his home page with its great list of quotes: Oracle Scratchpad.

EBS

From the Oracle E-Business Technology blog:

E-Business Suite Certified on 11gR2 11.2.0.3 on IBM AIX on Power Systems

Sun JRE 1.6.0_30 Certified with Oracle E-Business Suite

Reminder: ATG Live Webcast Dec. 15: Desktop Integration Beyond Client ADI

WebCast Replay Available: Planning Your Oracle E-Business Suite Upgrade from Release 11i to 12.1 and Beyond

BPEL 11.1.1.5 Certified for Prebuilt E-Business Suite 12.1.3 SOA Integrations

SQL

A very seasonal approach to SQL over at the So Many Oracle Manuals, So Little Time blog, based on the old Christmas song and starting from relational algebra: The 12 Days of SQL: 12 Things Every Oracle DBA and Developer Should Know About SQL (Day 1)

Also in the wonderful world of SQL is this posting on Factorial in Oracle SQL – using both new Recursive Subquery and classic Connect By approach from the AMIS Technology blog. Complex and useful.

Continuing the theme of complexities of SQL, here is a posting from Triggers Considered Harmful, Considered Harmful: "Workarounds" for ORA-04091

Performance

Some good solid material on the Challenges and Chances of the 11g Query Optimizer at the Striving for Optimal Performance blog.

SQL Developer

A couple of good postings on SQL Developer over at the That Jeff Smith blog:

Visualize Spatial Data with SQL Developer

and

SQL Developer Tip: Viewing REFCURSOR Output

Check in once in a while on the EPM / BI Information Center, as pointed out in this posting at the Proactive Support EPM and BI blog.

Solaris

How to Get Started Creating Oracle Solaris Zones in Oracle Solaris 11 over at OTN.

APEX

APEX Process Condition with Multiple Buttons over at Martin Giffy D'Souza on Oracle APEX.

ATG

Using ATG? Looking at Exalogic? Here's a whitepaper where the two come together.

Big Data

Some videos on Big Data from the experts at The Data Warehouse Insider.

New Releases

Oracle Releases Oracle Solaris Cluster 4.0

Oracle NoSQL Database Now Available for Download from OTN

Oracle WebLogic Server 12c: Look Ma, No Installer!

Really Cool Stuff Department

I never did anything more audibly amusing in the old days than putting an AM radio next to my 286 AT to listen to the RF coming out of it, but this is several levels of magnitude better than that: (Making a scanner sing) To all those old geeks out there at the Annals of Oracle's Improbable Errors blog.

2011-12-12T13:23:00.000-08:00

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

Customer User Administrators (CUA) control access to My Oracle Support and your CSI numbers for your company. This is important to control access to sensitive information for your SRs. If you are a CUA, be sure to check out Note:238871.1 for information and helpful tips for this responsibility.

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 07-DEC-2011

2011-12-07T17:28:00.000-08:00

EBS

From the Oracle E-Business Technology blog:

WebCenter 11g 11.1.1.5 Certified with E-Business Suite Release 12

Oracle VM 3 Certified with Oracle E-Business Suite

ATG Live Webcast: Desktop Integration Beyond Client ADI

and a few good release 12 notes collected by one of our top SDMs:

Oracle E-Business Suite Diagnostic Test Catalog for 12.1.3 [ID 1083807.1]

E-Business Suite Diagnostics Period / Year End Close [ID 402237.1]

Other R12 Resources:

Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1 Information Center [ID 806593.1]

Oracle E-Business Suite Diagnostics Reference for Release 12.x

R12 PERIOD-END PROCEDURES - An Oracle White Paper [ID 961285.1]

White Paper: E-Business Suite Diagnostic Tools Release 12.1, RUP 1
- Using Diagnostic Tests for Custom Applications [ID 762875.1]

E-Business Suite Diagnostic Tools FAQ and Troubleshooting Guide for Release 11i and R12 [ID 235307.1]

New JDE Release Out

Oracle Announces Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Tools Release 9.1

JD Edwards EnterpriseOne delivers a major new release for the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne product line including a next generation user experience for all JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.0 Application releases. This is the most significant new release for the JD Edwards application suite in over 5 years!

Background Information

Thousands of organizations around the world rely on JD Edwards EnterpriseOne applications for their daily business operations. Supporting every JD Edwards EnterpriseOne installation is a JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Tools release which delivers a scalable, platform independent, secure and reliable platform for the application modules and the supporting infrastructure technologies from Oracle and other technology companies. Since all JD Edwards EnterpriseOne users interact with Tools through every inquiry, report, and transaction, every JD Edwards EnterpriseOne customer will benefit from improvements to the Tools releases.

These tools releases are designed to be “backward compatible” meaning a customer can apply a new tools release without a corresponding application upgrade. See below for specific backward compatibility details. This allows customers to rapidly add value to their enterprise applications without changes to their business processes.

Tools 9.1 dramatically improves the end user experience for all JD Edwards EnterpriseOne applications

· The traditional left-hand navigation is replaced with modern drop down menus, graphical navigation pages, and a carousel. As a result, users can much more quickly access frequently used applications and reports, report output, and open applications.

· Many improvements to the browser based user interface including a modern look and feel, advance interactive query capability, improvements to the line items grid, and seamless search and select dialogs.

· End user personalization capabilities to increase end user productivity and simplify upgrades by reducing the degree of customizations required. Users have the ability to create, save and auto-execute queries on any JD Edwards EnterpriseOne application form. They can also interactively create custom grid formats to meet their requirements including the ability to hide, show, freeze, and unfreeze columns in the grid.

Tools 9.1 continues to lower the customer Total Cost of Ownership

· Improvements which leverage the certification of the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Application Management Suite for Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c. In addition to prior support for proactive system monitoring and administration, Tools 9.1 provides additional details on the processes running on the JD Edwards server including mission critical call object kernel and batch processing.

· To simplify the process of configuring High Availability solutions for a JD Edwards EnterpriseOne implementation, several new server clustering options are available including the clustering of the Business Services Server (BSSV) and the Real Time Events Transaction server (RTE). Also, Oracle Active Data Guard has been certified to provide a disaster recovery solution for the JD Edwards database.

· Improvements to system Performance and Scalability. The embedded Oracle BI Publisher reporting capability is improved to handle very large (>2GB) reports. A faster table conversions process was added to support the faster conversion of database tables during an application upgrade. Also, complex database join operations against large data sets execute much faster in many cases, such as the Customer Service Inquiry application.

Tools 9.1 further leverages the technology stack

· Certification of the latest Oracle technology stack components, including Oracle Solaris 11 and Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g PS4

· Uplifted certification of browser technologies including Internet Explorer and Firefox

· Certification of latest server infrastructure technologies from IBM and Microsoft, including AIX 7.1, Windows 7 and Visual Studio 2010.

Key Facts

· Available as part of standard maintenance, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Tools 9.1 is available for Application releases 9.0 including Updates 1 & 2.

· JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Tools 9.1 is not compatible with Application releases prior to JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Applications 9.0.

· JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Tools 9.1 will also be compatible with JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Applications 9.1 when that product is released.

Resources and other information

· Press release

· Customer facing version of this announcement on My Oracle Support

· Video Demos of the Tools 9.1 User Interface (see Tools 9.1 playlist)

· Upgrade Value Proposition for Tools 9.1

· Release Notes for Tools 9.1 (included in Upgrade Value Proposition)

· (All) Releases Documentation Overview

· Tools 9.1 Online Learning Library (Product documentation)

· Tools 9.1 Data Sheet

· User Experience Data Sheet

· Tools 9.1 Release Overview Functional Transfer of Information

· Tools 9.1 User Experience Improvements Functional Transfer of Information

· Tools 9.1 Frequently Asked Questions

· Minimum Technical Requirements for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne

· Oracle Application Management Suite for JD Edwards data sheet

· JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Whitepaper library

WLS

Catch the latest WebLogic Weekly for December 5th, 2011, at The WebLogic Server Blog

And a set of slides to check out for a good overview of WLS 12c: Oracle WebLogic Server 12c - Developer Overview Slides.

Great Bloggers: Charles Hooper

Charles Hooper continues to impress me as the most thorough technologist online. Consider these two items from his recent blog postings. In one he ran into an intermittent problem on OTN and dove in at great depth. The process will give you a lot of insight into how to troubleshoot the Web: Internal Server Error – Contact Your System Administrator.

and his approach to a problem of whether some key performance options are part of standard RDBMS edition, or only enterprise: Stored Outlines (Plan Stability) are an Enterprise Edition Feature? A Self-Conflicting Story

SSD

Over at Pythian, a much cited posting on De-Confusing SSD (for Oracle Databases).

BI and OBIEE

There was a movie called the 13 Steps. This posting has nothing to do with that: Integrate OBIEE 11g with OAM 11g for Single Sign-On in 13 steps. It's over at the Online Apps DBA blog.

Rittman Mead posts on Calling BI Publisher 11g Web Services from BPEL.

2011-12-07T11:26:00.000-08:00

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

PeopleSoft Newsletter
There is a new newsletter available for PeopleSoft Supply Chain Support Newsletter, Note: 1368043.1. The newsletter contains a list of SCM Bundles, Maintenance Packs & Bundle Release Notes as well as Supply Chain Patching and Maintenance Advisor tools.

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 30-NOV-2011

2011-11-30T13:57:00.000-08:00

EBS

The latest posts from the Oracle E-Business Suite Technology blog:

ATG Live Webcast: Advanced E-Business Suite Architectures

In-House Generated Certificates Supported for Signing E-Business Suite JAR Files

ATG Live Webcast: Planning Your Oracle E-Business Suite Upgrade from 11i to 12.1 and Beyond

And don't miss this great posting:

Summary of Oracle E-Business Suite Technology Webcasts and Training

Performance

Over at the Striving for Optimal Performance blog there is a brief but very useful posting for those trying to use SQL Trace and Oracle Portal.

Oracle Forums

When is the last time you used the forums? (or is it forii?). There's a lot of useful info there to search through as well as some heavy-duty experts to help you with questions, and that can sometimes include the kind of questions that SRs don't typically deal with (can anyone say 'customizations'?)

Here are a few examples:

A discussion on Constraints and Indexes from Hemant's Oracle DBA Blog.

A discussion of Lost Sysadmin Access After Upgrade to Solaris 11 at the Oracle Forums at OTN.

A posting arising from a discussion at the Oracle Community forums at Eddie Awad's Blog: Why You Must Use an ORDER BY Sometimes

New Support Articles

Speaking of Eddie Awad. He shared some new Support documents of interest: Five Recently Created or Updated Oracle Support Articles.

Upgrades

The Upgrade your Database - NOW! blog gives us a heads up on an 11.2 RDBMS bug you should keep an eye out for if you are upgrading: Wrong statistics in AUX_STATS$ might puzzle the optimizer.

APEX

Amis Technology lets us in on the secret and arcane art of making clickable columns in APEX reports (okay, nothing is particularly arcane in APEX, that's why people love it, but it sounds cool to say it's arcane): APEX: Make a report row clickable.

Java

Get involved with the process. Stephen Colebourne's blog fills us in on JDK Enhancement Proposals in this posting: The future is in the JEPs

CRM

I've owned a Kindle since the day they came out and definitely comparison shop on my iPhone and iPad when I'm in the store. Over at the The Complete CRM Blog we have an article about that comparison shopping and how widespread it is becoming. Indeed it makes me wonder about the future of bookstores. Perhaps they will morph into cafes that maintain sample copies of most books and a few big coffee table books that don't lend themselves to electronic form. I know my personal progression for purchasing books is: Kindle version, if there is none, used copy, if that doesn't work, new book from Amazon. That model doesn't leave a whole lot of room for the old fashioned brick and mortar book chain. I do still cruise used book stores, but it's more like going to an antique shop to see if something turns up now rather than looking for items of current interest.

3 Key Trends For Mobile Commerce – Location, Location, Location

MySQL

SearchOracle has good things to say about a new book: Book explores Oracle, MySQL query methods

Rittman Mead goes over some of the features of Web Services in BI Publisher 11g.

Backup and Recovery

It's a good time to review backup and recovery. I guarantee it is. In the hubbub of maintaining, improving, upgrading and dealing with a chaotic mass of opposing wills (developers, I'm not talking about you...really), backup and recovery gets neglected. When it comes up as an issue it is often time to tune up your resume because it's too late to fix things. So this cautionary article is a good read: Why do companies backup infrequently? at Help Net Security.

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

2011-11-30T09:21:00.000-08:00

Oracle Technology Newsletters

Oracle Support has some great newsletters available filled with technical tips. Checkout four of them below:

Database Support Newsletter Note 230.1 (contains feature article 'SQL Tuning Health-Check Script - an alternative to SQLTXPLAIN (SQLT) ')

Enterprise Manager Support Newsletter Note 1363807.1 (contains feature article Enterprise Manager 12c has Arrived!)

Fusion Middleware Support Newsletter Note 1347075.

EPM and BI Support Newsletter Note 1347131.1

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 23-NOV-2011

2011-11-23T16:47:00.000-08:00

A short issue this week, what with the holiday and all most people are thinking more about their families than their server configurations. Can't say I blame them.

WebLogic

It's out there! A presentation: Introducing Oracle WebLogic Server 12c, the #1 Application Server Across Conventional and Cloud Environments

Data Guard

Connections between various pieces of a Data Guard environment, and the latencies thereof, can be a key issue for DBAs. At the Alejandro Vargas' Blog there is a posting on: How to Calculate TCP Socket Buffer Sizes for Data Guard Environments

Exadata

Also from Alejandro is this handy item about Configuring FTP on Exadata.

Solaris 11

The blogosphere is generating a lot of info about Solaris 11. Here are several postings of interest:

From Dave Miner's Fore! blog: Virtually the fastest way to try Solaris 11 (and Solaris 10 zones).

How to Find Out Which Devices Are Supported By Solaris 11 (Oracle Technology Network Blog (aka TechBlog)).

Solaris 10 branded zone VM Templates for Solaris 11 on OTN (Virtually All The Time blog)

Fixing a shell problem: New Shell In Oracle Solaris 11 (OTN Garage).

And when it all goes 'Woof': How to Recover a Solaris 11 System (OTN).

Oracle Service Bus

Spider Logic brings us: Oracle Coherence & Oracle Service Bus: REST API Integration.

Demantra

From the Oracle E-Business Suite Communities Blog: Oracle Demantra BAL Migration

Clouds

From Syngress: A Brief Introduction on Migrating to an Oracle-based Cloud Environment.

Primavera

CBR Online discusses: Oracle introduces BI publisher for enhanced visibility across project portfolio.

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 16-NOV-2011

2011-11-16T12:06:00.000-08:00

Clouds

It takes a really long wrench, but you can build a cloud. Here's a posting to help do just that over at Oracle Systems Blog Austria: Building an Infrastructure Cloud with Oracle VM for x86 + Enterprise Manager 12c.

Oracle Wiki

The Wiki's back. Get the info here at OTN: The Return of Oracle Wikis: Bigger and Better.

EBS

The latest from the Oracle E-Business Suite Technology blog:

11gR2 11.2.0.3 Database Certified with E-Business Suite

Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1 Certified on Solaris 11

Java

Are you a good Java programmer and want to show it? Nothing better than being published in Java Magazine for that (well, actually coding a killer app, making a fortune and retiring at thirty is probably somewhat better, but let's not get bogged down). Oracle Technology Network Blog (aka TechBlog) let's us know all about it: Java Magazine calling all Java Coding Gurus.

Backup and Recovery

The key word there is recovery. No amount of backups are as reassuring as the actual restoration of your business data. Over at Hemant's Oracle DBA Blog there's a link to some good discussions on RESTORE, RECOVER and RESETLOGS.

SQL

Charles Hooper in his usual detailed technical manner, discusses a request he encountered and the solution he came up with for: Matching the Expected Output – Analytic RANK, ROW_NUMBER, DENSE_RANK, or Something Different?

RDBMS Performance

Tanel Poder pointed out a blog I hadn't seen before: Alexander Anokhin's Oracle Performance and Scalability blog. Judging from this item on Dynamic tracing of Oracle logical I/O it should be a good one.

Another great item from Tanel Poder is this: Profiling trace files with preprocessor external tables in 11g and some parallel execution hacking.

Troubleshooting

We've all been there. It's a normal day, then suddenly it's chaos as directors circle the DBA's cubicle like sharks and the application wallows. This posting at dbaStreet has some good thoughts on one of the solutions: How to influence the execution plan without modifying the sql from the application. The most effective solution involves airline tickets to a country lacking an extradition treaty with the U.S., but that's somewhat career-limiting, so influencing the plans may be better.

Another good item on troubleshooting is over at the Oracle at Delphix blog: Why does the same job run slower on an exact clone? My explanation was either gnomes or cosmic rays. The folks over at Deliphix take a far more scientific approach.

Linux and Oracle

This posting at the Pythian blog discusses a very important element of patching -- you're not just patching the DB, you also need to be aware of the OS patches and, preferably, involved: Linux Patching and Oracle – how to detect RPM conflicts before they happen.

and you can look at some of the OpenWorld material on Linux from this link at Oracle's Linux Blog: Linux Presentations from Oracle OpenWorld 2011.

Data Warehouse

The Oracle related stuff blog gives us some material on some of the potential pitfalls of misusing star transformation: Star Transformation And Cardinality Estimates.

Links

Pythian has lots of links of interest to DBAs: Log Buffer #245, A Carnival of the Vanities for DBAs. (I must say I find a carnival of the vanities a lot better than the historic 'bonfire of the vanities').

Avian Education

Yes, you too can make millions of dollars .99 cents at a time. Just take this free course offered at Stanford: Stanford University Offers Free Course on Developing Apps for iPhone and iPad, then write the next Angry Birds. Speaking of which, people are getting heavily into Angry Birds, and I'm talking about physicists figuring out parameters of the yellow bird: Physics of the Yellow Angry Bird.

2011-11-15T14:20:00.000-08:00

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

Recorded Technical Advisor Webcasts
Did you know that Oracle has hundreds of recorded technical webcasts available for download. Products having presentations available include Hyperion, JD Edwards, Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle Database, Oracle Enterprise Manager, Fusion Middleware, Primavera and PeopleSoft. The complete archive list is available at Note:740964.1.

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 09-NOV-2011

2011-11-09T14:54:00.001-08:00

Newsletters

The Infogram isn't a newsletter (perish the thought!), but there are a batch of good newsletters for our Oracle Support customers. Here are some samples in MOS:

Database Support Newsletter Note 230.1 (contains feature article SQLTXPLAIN (SQLT) - The tool for SQL Tuning analysis and more)
Enterprise Manager Support Newsletter Note 1363807.1 (contains feature article Enterprise Manager 12c has Arrived!)
Fusion Middleware Support Newsletter Note 1347075.1
EPM and BI Support Newsletter Note 1347131.1 .

MySQL

The Ilmar Kerm DB blog has an original approach I thought was original and resourceful. Have a look: Clustering MySQL instances with Oracle Clusterware 11gR2.

Performance

The Oracle at Delphix brings us this very handy script to help with: Importing AWR repositories from cloned databases.

SOA

Deltalounge fills us in on their upcoming SOA and Governance seminar.

RAC

Some good material on Troubleshooting ‘DFS lock handle’ waits over at Oracle database internals by Riyaj.

PeopleSoft SCM

If you are using SCM you will find this MOS page very useful: Information Center: PeopleSoft eProcurement Document 1358021.1

News of the Future

I've been predicting and looking forward to this use of technology for years. I've always thought that you could harness the efforts of gamers to resolve real world problems. And now you can: Computer gamers develop problem-solving algorithm that beats scientists’ best efforts. In fact, you've already been doing a human-machine assisted reading program yourself and didn't know: Deciphering Old Texts, One Woozy, Curvy Word at a Time .

Book Review: "Oracle Weblogic Server 11gR1 PS2: Administration Essentials" by Michel Schildmeijer

The reviewer didn't think much of the book. Anyone disagree? Review: "Oracle Weblogic Server 11gR1 PS2: Administration Essentials" by Michel Schildmeijer

APEX

Something handy over at (YABAOAE) Yet Another Blog About Oracle Application Express:

Adjusting the Width of an Interactive Report Filter Textbox

Siebel

Siebel Essentials discusses some new releases on CRM: New Siebel CRM Releases: 8.1.1.6 and 8.2.2

Hyperion

Cameron's Blog for Essbase Hackers discusses Resolving EPM and BI support issues faster.

Statistics

Tom Kyte has a follow-up to this posting last week that we linked to here: I really liked this one (the followup) .

Free Courses

We've had a few articles about mainly IT-specific courses available from several universities. This site gathers those and much more, along with language courses. Worth having a look over at Open Culture: 400 Free Online Courses from Top Universities

2011-11-07T14:29:00.000-08:00

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

Top 11 Things to do NOW to Stabilize your RAC Cluster Environment
Check out the details in NOTE:1344678.1.

2011-11-02T14:21:00.000-07:00

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

Application Technology Group (ATG) Newsletter
Check out the latest Application Technology Group (ATG) newsletter. Featured topics include Concurrent Processing with E-Business Suite and E-Business Suite Cloning. It is available at Note:1367975.1.

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 02-NOV-2011

2011-11-02T11:24:00.000-07:00

Hyperion

Some good hands on programming material in this posting at Cameron's Blog for Essbase Hackers: Stupid Planning queries #7 -- User Variables

Another interesting looking technique over at Essbase Labs: Add-in Load Times.

EBS

This week at the Oracle E-Business Technology blog:

EBS 12.0 Minimum Baseline Required by Feb 2012 for Extended Support

11gR2 Transportable Tablespaces Certified for EBS 11i

Premier Support ends December 2011 for Discoverer 10g, Portal 10g, Single Sign-On 10g, and others

Quarterly E-Business Suite Upgrade Recommendations: October 2011 Edition

APEX

David Peake is looking for information if you are in higher education and using APEX.

PeopleSoft

For those who, like the blogger are 'On the PeopleSoft Road' is this posting on some new aspects of Peopletools 8.52 : managing PIA with psadmin.

Indexing and Performance

Over at Martin Widlake's Yet Another Oracle Blog is part six of an excellent series on index only tables: IOT Part 6 – Inserts and Updates Slowed Down (part A)

Performance

Okay, I'm not touching the title with a ten foot pole, but it's a useful script, so here's the link to the posting over at the Ora-600 blog, one of the Oak Table's many awesome blogs: Oracle ASS - one time it will save yours !

RDBMS

One of the new 11.2 features is Auto Degree Of Parallelism (DOP). The Oracle related stuff blog gives us some valuable information on this, along with a few caveats (database features always seem to come with caveats, but such is life): Auto DOP And Direct-Path Inserts

ADF

Want to roll your own iPhone apps with ADF? Andrejus Baranovskis's Blog can get you started: iPhone Web Application Development With ADF Mobile Browser.

Statistics

This question reminds me somehow of the time in classic Star Trek when Kirk destroys a villainous supercomputer with a simple paradox (the old 'I am lying' line, which in turn traces back to a classical paradox about the Cretan who says: 'All Cretans are liars'). Tom Kyte found this call on random answers of interest and there is already a wide variety of answers accumulating in the comment area: I Really Liked This .

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 26-OCT-2011

2011-10-26T13:30:00.000-07:00

NoSQL

The Data Warehouse Insider blog lets us know that: Oracle NoSQL Database EE is now Available. And there is plenty of punditry starting up on what NoSQL is all about and how it fits into the overall scheme of things over at v3.co.uk: Oracle bolsters big data strategy with NoSQL Database release

Big Data

Speaking of big data, and who isn't, A Closer Look at Oracle Big Data Appliance at the Data Warehouse Insider.

EBS

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

Webcast Reminder: Sysadmin-Oriented Preview of EBS 12.2 on Oct 27

Oracle Internet Directory 11gR1 11.1.1.5 Certified with E-Business Suite

Latest DSTv17 Timezone Patches Available for E-Business Suite R11i

ATG Live Webcast: E-Business Suite 12.2 Directions: Deployment and System Administration

Sun JRE 1.6.0_29 Certified with Oracle E-Business Suite

and a reminder that the October CPU is out:

Critical Patch Update for October 2011 Now Available

Also on EBS item is this link from Asmi Maharishi, our Infogram Deputy Editor:

Extended Support Fees Waived for E-Business Suite 12.1.x

Oracle has announced that we will waive the first year of Extended Support fees for Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1.x. The waiver is valid from June 2014 – May 2015. During this period, customers will receive all of the components of Extended Support at no additional cost other than their fees for Software Update License & Support (Premier Support).

For more information about Extended Support for E-Business Suite 12.1.x please access the Frequently Asked Questions (Document ID 1362757.1).

OOW: HA

And the OpenWorld papers and presentations start flowing. Here are some on high availability over at OTN: HA Presentations from OOW.

Upgrading the RDBMS

This one was posted on Upgrade your Database - NOW! some time ago and I missed linking to it. It's a very good list fro those working on an upgrade. Have a look: Database Upgrade: Most important Support Notes .

Migration from Sybase

Moving from Sybase to Oracle? I found this tutorial out there to help out.

Performance: HugePages in Linux

I was researching HugePages for a client and found this really interesting discussion of 10g RAC and HugePages at Pythian, including some great material by several Oak Table types in the comment area: Performance: HugePages in Linux

Hyperion

Over at Proactive Support EPM and BI there is a link to a webcast of interest: SmartView 11.1.2.1.102 Webcast by Debbie Coomber.

SOA

Amis Technology brings us this posting on how to Increase the timeout of Oracle BPM Worklist app.

APEX

Join the challenge: APEX-Challenge.com.

2011-10-26T10:10:00.000-07:00

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

My Oracle Support Release 5.4
During October, My Oracle Support (MOS) was upgraded to Release 5.4. Learn more about the new features and functionality at My Oracle Support Center, Note:1326487.1.

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 19-OCT-2011

2011-10-19T14:30:00.000-07:00

OOW

We're in the great post-OpenWorld quiet in the blogosphere; that time when the chattering of keyboards and scribbling of notes being collated builds in the background in preparation for many, many OOW posts in the next few weeks. The networking, the knowledge exchange, and the lessons learned are all out there jelling. For the present, here is Tom Kyte's first post-OOW posting: A little more on Oracle OpenWorld...

OBIEE

Some of the complexities of Changing your password in OBIEE 11G over at the RittmanMead blog.

Hyperion

Also from the good folks at RittmanMead is this posting on Oracle BI EE 11g – Hyperion Financial Management Analytics (HFM Analytics)

Oracle Internals

Over at Martin Widlake's Yet Another Oracle Blog one of the reviewers gives us a look into the future, announcing preordering available on Jonathan Lewis' book. Bound to be a must for all fans of internals and the esoteric knowledge that can come in handy when something 'odd' seems to be going on: Want to Know More about Oracle’s Core?

EBS

The latest from the Oracle E-Business Suite Technology blog:

OpenWorld 2011 Presentations Available for Download

Latest DSTv16 Timezone Patches Available for E-Business Suite 11i

A well-deserved award:
A "Lifetime" Already?

Latest DSTv17 Timezone Patches Available for E-Business Suite R12

Performance and Upgrades

What looks like the start of a great series over at the Upgrade your Database - NOW! blog: It's always the Optimizer, isn't it?! - Part 1

ADF

Lots of goodies out there of late on ADF. Let's start with this from the ISV Migration Center Blog: Pather Webcast- Reusability in Oracle ADF Development.

Shay Shmeltzer's Weblog brings us: Warning of Uncommitted/Unsaved Changes in ADF Faces Pages

and AMIS Technology contributes ADF Faces: Handle task in background process and show real time progress indicator for asynchronous job using Server Push in ADF to the mix.

Patches

David Niven summed up the human dilemma when he said of his health: 'After 50, it's just patch, patch, patch.' Most binaries aren't over fifty (unless they were written on punch cards), but you still need to patch. Here's some important ones:

OracleJava SE Critical Patch Update - October 2011
The OracleJava SE Critical Patch Update for October 2011 was released on October 18th,2011. Oracle strongly recommends applying the patches as soon as possible.Please note that Sun products are included in this Critical Patch Update.

The Critical Patch Update Advisory is thestarting point for relevant information. It includes a list of productsaffected, pointers to obtain the patches, a summary of the securityvulnerabilities, and links to other important documents. Supported Productsthat are not listed in the "Supported Products and ComponentsAffected" Section of the advisory do not require new patches to beapplied.

Also, it is essential to review the Critical Patch Update supportingdocumentation referenced in the Advisory before applying patches, as this iswhere you can find important pertinent information.

The Critical Patch Update Advisory is available at the following location:

Oracle Technology Network:
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/security/alerts-086861.html

Oracle Java SE Critical Patch Update- October 2011:

Oracle Technology Network:
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/security/javacpuoct2011-443431.html

The next three Java SE Critical Patch Update release dates are:

February 14, 2012
June 12, 2012
October 16, 2012

_____________________

OracleCritical Patch Update - October 2011
The OracleCritical Patch Update for October 2011 was released on October 18th, 2011.Oracle strongly recommends applying the patches as soon as possible. Pleasenote that Sun products are included in this Critical Patch Update.

The Critical Patch Update Advisory is thestarting point for relevant information. It includes a list of productsaffected, pointers to obtain the patches, a summary of the securityvulnerabilities, and links to other important documents. Supported Productsthat are not listed in the "Supported Products and ComponentsAffected" Section of the advisory do not require new patches to beapplied.

Also, it is essential to review the Critical Patch Update supportingdocumentation referenced in the Advisory before applying patches, as this iswhere you can find important pertinent information.

Critical Patch Update Advisories are available at the following location:

Oracle Technology Network:
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/security/alerts-086861.html

The Critical Patch Update Advisory -October 2011 is available at the following location:

Oracle Technology Network:
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/security/cpuoct2011-330135.html

The next four Critical Patch Update release dates are:

January 17, 2012
April 17, 2012
July 17, 2012
October 16, 2012

Musings

And finally some Oracle musings from, appropriately enough, the Oracle Musings blog: The Social Development Database.

Oracle OpenWorld On Demand

2011-10-12T19:17:00.000-07:00

If you missed any or all of the dynamic and informative Oracle OpenWorld keynotes or some of the interesting and inspiring general sessions or Executive Solution sessions, you can access them at any time, at your convenience. Here's where you'll find them.

2011-10-11T12:02:00.000-07:00

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

Oracle Technical Support Policies now include policies for Exadata and hardware. The index for technical support policies can be found at: http://www.oracle.com/us/support/policies/index.html.

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 12-OCT-2011

2011-10-08T10:09:00.000-07:00

WLS

The latest issue of the WebLogic Weekly (it's kind of like Better Homes and Gardens, but more like Better Servers and Services). It's at the WebLogic Server Blog: WebLogic Weekly for October 3rd, 2011

Performance: Hotsos Symposium

As we said last week, early bird registration is open for Hotsos 2012, the best performance conference on the market. Have a look at 2012: Hotsos Symposium .

Solaris

New Solaris Security White Paper: Overview of Security Controls in Oracle Solaris 10

ADF

AMIS Technology posts about ADF 11g Rich Faces: using popup for viewing and editing big fields.

Virtual Box

Have you taken look at Oracle Virtual Box? The ORACLE-BASE Blog lets us know: VirtualBox 4.1.4 Released…

Exadata

Some thoughts on Exadata and the DBA skillset. The DBA professional has been expanding for some time to include a deeper knowledge of the OS, the storage and the tiers of the enterprise beyond the cloistered walls of the SGA, and this article over at SearchOracle.com touches on some key points when thinking of managing the new Exadata machines: Can the DBA manage the Exadata machine?

Pythian discusses a new capacity for Exadata, with some interesting discussion of the pros and cons down in the discussion area of the article: Exadata smart flash cache now supports redo writes.

Finally, Jonathan Lewis' Scratchpad blog discusses Hybrid Columnar Compression in Exadata: HCC.

Performance

Charles Hooper's Oracle Notes gives us another excellent technical run down on traces, this time the 10200 trace: 10200 Trace Shows Consistent Reads, but Not All Consistent Reads.

Hyperion

Unexpected and unwanted growth. In medical texts it's called things like neoplasia and hyperplasia and is not pleasant. The surprise of having your planning and forecasting databases grow for apparently no reason at all is also not a happy thing. The In 2 Hyperion blog discusses it here: Why is my database growing? It’s killing my calc times!

RDBMS Unicode Conversion

Converting an existing DB to Unicode has always been one of those 'I told you so moments' in many enterprises. Usually the routine goes: DBA warns the team that they should use Unicode up front to avoid grief later. That costs more. The DBA is vetoed. Later the Unicode is needed and the process to convert the existing database costs a lot more than doing it up front. Well The Arup Nanda Blog brings us some relief. This posting on Unicode Migration Assistant for Oracle is a must read for those facing a character set conversion.

Oracle Magazine

The latest issue of Oracle Magazine is out. Okay, admittedly a centerfold of a 6-node RAC may not be considered 'piquant', but there you can tell people you read it for the articles. Really. Oracle Magazine November - December 2011.

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 05-OCT-2011

2011-10-05T15:28:00.000-07:00

It's OOW week, so to be in clear contrast to the rest of the world this issue of the Infogram is about all kinds of things...except OOW.

ODA

People are starting to use the ODA and post about it. Example? Karl Arao's Blog, which brings us this posting: Oracle Database Appliance (ODA) Installation / Configuration.

Oracle's Twitter Presence

Twitter is a great resource for Oracle information that many of our customers don't use. Read all about the possibilities: Oracle Twitter List, over at Chris Warticki's Blog - Oracle Support.

Performance: Hotsos Symposium

There's no such thing as budgeting too early for a conference, especially one of the quality and fun of the Hotsos Symposium. Many of the leading lights of Oracle performance gather yearly in Texas to reduce the overall quantity of in-state BBQ while learning and networking about performance. Have a look at 2012: Hotsos Symposium .

PeopleSoft

Over at The PeopleSoft Road blog there's a discussion of load balancing and failover for Peopletools 8.5.1: Application server load balancing and failover.

And at Jim's PeopleSoft Journal we find another 8.51 posting, this time on Creating Binary Arrays.

Compellent SAN

Using a Compellent SAN with Oracle? The Dell TechCenter has some handy info on Best Practice of sizing Compellent SAN for Oracle deployments.

Oracle VM

One of the coolest things about the new version of Oracle VM are the templates. Think of them as a collectable, like baseball cards or stamps, only for enterprise databases. Here's an example over at the Wim Coekaerts Blog: New Oracle VM template : Oracle 11g Release 2 + Real Application Cluster patchset 3 (11.2.0.3).

Data Guard

Okay, this article does talk about OOW a little, but it's mainly To SYNC or not to SYNC – Part 2 at the Maximum Availability Architecture blog.

MySQL

There's a new update out to the MySQL for Database Administrators course.

Utilities

This tool looks very useful for elimanating drudgery: Log Templater (Artificial Ignorance Utility) at the SecViz - Security Visualization site.

Technology News

Neal Stephenson is a popular science and fantasy author, and this article shows two things: 1) He is concerned about innovation and our place in history 2) He's middle aged (we start comparing generations as soon as we get into the 'next' generation and can look back): Innovation Starvation at the World Policy Institute.

2011-10-05T10:39:00.001-07:00

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

Getting the most from My Oracle Support (MOS)

Did you know that there are many brief recorded training sessions on MOS to help you learn more about this vital tool. Topics covered include Dashboard Customization, Quick Search, Power Views and more. Check out Note:603505.1.

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 28-SEP-2011

2011-09-28T14:19:00.000-07:00

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.

2011-09-26T14:22:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-21T16:19:00.000-07:00

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.

CriticalPatch Update - September 2011

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

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

Also, it is essential to review the Security Alert supporting documentationreferenced in the Advisory before applying patches, as this is where you canfind 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
OracleSecurity 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 Release11.1.1.4 (Doc ID 1354894.1)

Documentation:

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

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 longlooked forward to the day when gaming can be harnessed to accomplish tasks intechnology. In fact I'd like to see something like a version of Sim Cityconnected 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 realworld 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

2011-09-21T11:32:00.000-07:00

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.

2011-09-20T13:42:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-14T17:31:00.000-07:00

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 andwas looking for resources. Things seem to boil down to two key portions - SQLDeveloper Migration Workbench for the database objects and GoldenGate forreplicating the data in the fastest possible way. Here are a couple ofpostings/pages I found to be good starting points:

From Jason's Blog on Integration, Consolidation andMigration: 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 similarways. When the city reached its limits builders broke through to the next levelby adding layers. The introduction of cheap, strong steel and re-bar reinforcedconcrete allowed the birth of large, inexpensive buildings and skyscrapers.And the city moved to the next stage. From this article it looks like the nextre-bar has been found for computer chips, allowing them to sprout up into skyscrapersfull of churning data.

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

2011-09-14T11:52:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-14T06:54:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-07T12:47:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-07T11:50:00.000-07:00

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.

2011-09-02T12:07:00.000-07:00

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.

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 31-AUG-2011

2011-08-31T15:24:00.000-07:00

PeopleSoft

A quick rundown on security at PSoftPros: An Introduction to PeopleSoft Security

Bored with your PeopleSoft GUI? Here's a posting at the PeopleSoft Technology Blog on getting some excitement in there (well, other than having it offer a 'give me a raise' button, that is): Creating a Great User Experience in PeopleSoft.

And an official, suitable for framing press release on some of the new features: Oracle Updates Oracle’s PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 with the Release of New Features.

CRM OD

Speaking of releases, from NEWSBYTES: Oracle rolls out latest version of on-demand CRM .

Indexing

Invisible indexes are a really splendid 11g feature, something you had to spend a whole lot of money to do using a third party app in past versions, and I wanted to make sure our customers explored it. It's a form of conditional index you can use in delicate situations (like performance problems on prod). From Yet another DBA blog: Invisible Indexes in Oracle 11g.

Richard Foote wrote up a nice demo of Jonathan Lewis' article on BLEVEL 1 => BLEVEL 2. Just the kind of hands on, techie approach that wins the day.

WLS

Into each life, a little rain must fall, sometimes in the form of a service failing. Middleware Magig discusses: Managing Failure Conditions in a WebLogic Environment.

Backup and Storage

A new whitepaper out there: Creating a Hierarchical Database Backup System using Oracle RMAN and Oracle SAM QFS with the Sun ZFS Storage Appliance.

APEX

APEX 4.1. Come and get it: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/developer-tools/apex/downloads/index.html

Data Masking

Data masking can be invaluable. There's no better model of production than production. But often you can't use it because of the sensitive data. Good data masking can preserve the 'shape' of the data while sanitizing content. Read about it at the Oracle Enterprise Manager blog: Overview demo of Oracle Data Masking solution - Safely use production data for development, testing and sharing with partners.

EBS

This week at the Oracle E-Business Technology blog:

WebCast Replay Available: Tuning All Layers of EBS (Part 1)

Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 now Certified on AIX 7

New Rapid Install StartCD (12.1.1.13) for Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1 Now Available

and a couple from the blog that one of our ACS SDMs found particularly valuable:

Two Essential Tools for Diagnosing E-Business Suite Network Issues (Oracle

E-Business Suite Technology)

New Whitepaper: Symmetrical Network Acceleration with EBS 12 (Oracle

E-Business Suite Technology)

E-Business Suite ATG Advisor Webcast

2011-08-30T14:44:00.000-07:00

E-Business Suite - RAC & Parallel Concurrent Processing (PCP)
· Overview of RAC
· Overview of Parallel Concurrent processing
· PCP with RAC: How it works
· Configuration
· Failover/failback scenarios and examples
· Common Issues and troubleshooting

Session Details:
EMEA / APAC session:
Tuesday, 13-September-2011 at 10:00 am CET, 01:30 pm India, 05:00 pm Japan, 07:00 pm Australia (Sydney)

US session:
Wednesday, 14-September-2011 at at 17:00 UK / 18:00 CET / 09:00 am Pacific / 10:00 am Mountain / 12:00 Eastern
For Registration- and Dial-In Details, please log in to My Oracle Support to see Note 1342343.1

For any other Advisor Webcast scheduled for the Applications Technology Group of the E-Business Suite, please check Note 1186338.1.

2011-08-26T09:37:00.000-07:00

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

High Availability Best Practices
Oracle has released a new whitepaper on HA Best Practices for RDBMS 11g R2. It is a comprehensive document with in depth technical information on how to get the most out of your HA environment. Check it out at: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/focus-areas/availability/ha-best-practices-112-452463.pdf

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 24-AUG-2011

2011-08-24T14:46:00.000-07:00

WLS

Online Apps DBA gives other Oracle users a heads up on something they encountered: WebLogic Startup fails with Unable to obtain lock on Server may already be running.

RDBMS Performance

Craig Shallahamer, an author of many articles and books on Oracle performance over the years, posts this article at his A W i d e r V i e w blog: Why tuning oracle works and modeling it. Give it a read and tell Craig your thoughts.

Always one of the joys of performance (well, for engineers, anyway), trace files come in many flavors. the Structured Data blog gives us a new angle: Creating Optimizer Trace Files.

Computing and the Future

Ok, so it wasn't in our labs, but this is seriously cool: IBM unveils chips that mimic the human brain

JDeveloper

Shay Shmeltzer's Weblog has a few semi-sneaky tricks in the realm of Java Class and UML Modeling with JDeveloper. Did you know that many people never do a full, proper design process the way we did in the 'good old days'? I am shocked.

GoldenGate

The Oracle DBA – Tips and Techniques blog posted a useful method for GoldenGate users: Using the GoldenGate column conversion functions - CASE and EVAL.

Exadata

Martin's Blog is subtitled 'Another Oracle DBA blog'. I like that, though I probably would have used YAODB (Yet another...). It seems a very useful part of the crowded field, though. Here's a link to Martin's article on Essential tools for Exadata performance experiments.

ECM

Oracle WebCenter Content Alerts blog lets us know that the next quarterly customer update is rolling around soon.

EBS

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

Reminder: ATG Live Webcast Aug 24: Tuning All Layers of E-Business Suite (Part 1)

Managing EBS 12 Physical Standby Databases with Oracle Data Guard Broker

ATG Live Webcast: Tuning All Layers of E-Business Suite

Hyperion

The Cubegeek discusses Attribute Drilling and In 2 Hyperion fills us in on: How to Maximize Excel by Using Customer Functions.

Book Reviews

Charles Hooper brings us a very detailed review on the new edition of Beginning Oracle SQL at his Charles Hooper's Oracle Notes blog.

Also of interest is this review of Oracle on Amazon Web Services and Rackspace Cloud over at the One Size Doesn't Fit All blog.

Oracle Supply Chain News

2011-08-24T06:28:00.000-07:00

Supply Chain Best Practices at Oracle OpenWorld 2011
Oracle senior vice president Rick Jewell outlines the overall direction for Oracle supply chain management strategies in a keynote session at Oracle OpenWorld 2011 on Monday, October 3. Additional sessions focus on key business issues and solutions for manufacturing companies in today's uncertain business environment, along with supply chain best practices in complex global business environments.
Read More

Oracle Slated to Introduce New Electronic Kanban Capabilities
Oracle is expected to announce that new electronic Kanban, or eKanban, features will be included in an upcoming version of Oracle E-Business Suite designed to improve the flow of resources in manufacturing operations.
Read More

New Safeguards Protect Workers in Hazardous Areas
An upcoming release of Oracle Enterprise Asset Management is slated to include additional controls for protecting maintenance and technical workers against accidents in hazardous environments.
Read More

2011-08-22T09:42:00.000-07:00

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

Advisory Webcast: Making EBS Upgrade From 11.5.10 Easier
A successful upgrade requires careful planning, correct upgrade processing, detailed testing, and user (re)training prior to upgrade. There are a number of tools available via My Oracle Support and as part of the E-Business Suite product offerings to assist customers in a successful upgrade. To learn more about these tools and how to use them, join us for a two part webcast series, Making The EBS Upgrade from 11.5.10 Easier available at Note:1342291.1. The first webcast will be on September 8, 2011 at 8:00 a.m. Pacific.

TOPICS WILL INCLUDE:
Overview of Tools Available for Upgrading
Upgrade Community
Upgrade Product Information Center Page
Detailed Look at Upgrade Advisors
Detailed Look at Patching and Maintenance Advisor

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 17-AUG-2011

2011-08-17T13:29:00.000-07:00

PeopleSoft

Over at the PeopleSoft Technology Blog this week there's a peek into the future: Related Content Framework--Great Things Happening.

Enterprise Computing

A couple of interesting posts from Kevin Closson of late, both of them looking back at the past while keeping up with the cutting edge of high powered systems of today:

File Systems For A Database? Choose One That Couples Direct I/O and Concurrent I/O. What’s This Have To Do With NFS? Harken Back 5.2 Years To Find Out.

and

Facebook Adopts Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud, Replaces Tens Of Thousands Of Servers. Memorable Conference Keynote Addresses.

EBS

At In Depth Apps - Oracle eBusiness Suite - Gareth Roberts we have some useful material on how to Track and Trace E-Business Suite Concurrent Request - EBS Logs, O/S Process IDs, Locks.

Over at the Oracle E-Business Suite Technology blog this week:

Sun JRE 1.6.0_27 Certified with Oracle E-Business Suite

Security

An overview of Oracle Audit Vault over at OracleApps Epicenter.

Performance (and how to maintain it, and your sanity)

Over at Coskan's Approach to Oracle there a really nice technical rundown on what can happen to your I/O when you move from 10.2 to 11.2 without enough of the right kind of testing: What happens, when you did not do a load test before release upgrades ?. The I/O display is a colorful picture, but pretty only in a very abstract sense. If it's your system, it's not pretty at all. And it's loud, with all those application managers and directors yelling at your over the phone and around your desk. Take home lesson: You can get some great improvements from upgrading the RDBMS, but you can also produce some really bad short term situations. Please test thoroughly! And yes, this may require a battle with some of the other divisions in your company, but if you can get across to them that it is precisely their interests at risk, they may wise up and give you the time and resources you need.

SOA

Okay, I don't know a whole lot about SOA, but the folks at A-Team - SOA sure do, and they want to tell us about Coherence in SOA Suite 11g.

Oracle Support

An outstanding listing of self-help (and help us help you) resources at Chris Warticki's Blog - Oracle Support: 8 Habits of Highly Effective Oracle Support Users.

OOW

Structured Data has a run down on: Sessions By OakTable Members.

RDBMS

Some interesting material over at a blog I haven't posted from before: iMERGE Group : Bhavik Fuletra : (OCE)

Oracle 11g Release 2: CTSS and NTP Service

Oracle 11g Release 2: ASM Intelligent Data Placement (IDP)

RDBMS Class

Education is expensive, but Stanford seems to be giving away a valuable course for techies for free: Introduction to Databases. I particularly recommend this kind of course for non-DBAs. Application developers often don't understand what the DB is capable of and try to stuff all the functions into the code, to the determinent of both. If they understand the logic of the relational model, etc., they can design and write better code.

Links to Links

Finally this week a link to Log Buffer #233, A Carnival of the Vanities for DBAs, a blog with a similar links to the links format as the Infogram.

2011-08-12T08:49:00.000-07:00

Contributions from Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

Java Magazine
Oracle has just launched Java Magazine. This publication, which is designed from the ground up to fulfill the full reader-engagement promises of digital publishing, is an essential source of knowledge about Java technology, the Java programming language, and Java-based applications for people who rely on them in their professional careers, or who aspire to. Subscribe to this important publication here.

2011-08-10T12:50:00.001-07:00

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

New PeopleSoft Time and Labor Resource
Check out the new PeopleSoft Time and Labor Support Newsletter, Note:1338875.1. It contains information on the Approval Workflow Engine, HCM 9.1 Bundle 16 highlights and Health Checks. You can also subscribe to have upcoming newsletters sent to you.

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 10-AUG-2011

2011-08-10T11:32:00.000-07:00

Exadata

Kevin Closson, one of our long-time favorite bloggers, cuts through some of the forming fog around Exadata with this posting: Exadata: It’s The World’s Fastest Database Machine And The Best For Oracle Database – Part I. Do As I Say, Not As I Do!

...and speaking of favorite bloggers on Oracle, there is the start of much anticipated series from Tanel Poder on Exadata here: Are you getting the most out of your Exadata performance? Part 1.

Linux

Oracle's Linux Blog announced that: Oracle Linux 5 update 7 is on edelivery.

RDBMS

The AMIS technology blog has a good posting on how to: Remove duplicate rows with Oracle SQL ROW_NUMBER – intelligent and efficient data cleansing.

Now if only they could tell me how to get iTunes to not produce scads of music duplicates everytime I change out an Apple device.

The Upgrade your Database - NOW! blog has some words of wisdom on: DBMS_SCHEDULER jobs stuck after upgrade to 11.2? Check this parameter!

Sokrates on Oracle discusses ORA-8103s, with pointers to Tanel Poder's invaluable blog.

I don't think we linked to this series on index organized tables at Martin Widlake's Yet Another Oracle Blog previously, so better late than never: IOT Part 4 – Greatly Boosting Buffer Cache Efficiency.

Performance

Hotsos has historically held the best Oracle performance symposiums, and they are open for early purchasing rates for the Symposium in March 2012.

Solaris

Interested in Oracle Solaris 11 Express? Here's a good place to start: First Steps with Oracle Solaris 11 Express.

WLS

Online Apps DBA has an article on: How to reset Lost Oracle WebLogic Password for Fusion Middleware Applications. I want to stress, as I often do, that you always want to test on other systems before moving to prod and, in an operation that may involve multitiered security changes as one often encounters in Fusion and WLS, it doesn't hurt to get Oracle Support involved if you have any questions or doubts whatsoever.

Did you know there's a weekly WLS update over at the The WebLogic Server Blog? Here's the latest: WebLogic Weekly for August 1st, 2011 - New exam, Exalogic go-live and more.

Java

As we announced previously, Java 7 is out, and people are beginning to identify some of the features they like best in it, like this posting over at sellmic.com: 7 new cool features in Java 7.

PeopleSoft

Can't sleep nights wondering what's in all those PeopleSoft tables? Yeah, thought so. Still, this posting at Peoplesoft /Oracle tips points out a handy reference: PeopleTools Table Reference.

OBIEE

A good reminder on OBIEE and Websphere in this posting from Rittman Mead Consulting: OBIEE 11g Statement of Direction for IBM Websphere.

Hyperion

Cameron, over at Cameron's Blog For Essbase Hackers, is pretty happy about our upgrade advisor from 11.1.1.3 to 11.1.2.1. If Cameron is happy, I'm happy. Read about it here: More cool free stuff from Oracle, upgrade edition

Data Mining

Over at the SmartData Collective there is an article taking a First Look at the latest Oracle Data Mining Update.

EBS

The latest from the Oracle E-Business Suite Technology blog:

Summary of Oracle E-Business Suite Technology Webcasts

Latest DSTv16 Timezone Patches Available for E-Business Suite R12

Internet Explorer 9 Certified with Oracle E-Business Suite

Why Does EBS Integration with Oracle Access Manager Require Oracle Internet Directory?

Oracle Infogram

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 08-FEB-2012

Wedon’t usually share links that involve buying things (at least not things wedon’t sell. But Cary Milsap recommends this site/product in a Tweet. If you can’ttrust Cary Milsap, who can you trust? getyour traces - yourself at berxblog.

PeopleSoft and MOS

Sometimes it's hard to find the patches you need in MOS. Here's a document to assist on PeopleSoft patches in particular: Searching using the Certifications Application.

Oracle SupportThe Proactive Support EPM and BI blog has a pointer to a good note on Hot Topics on MOS and patches.

PerformanceJonathan Lewis has his new book out: Oracle Core: Essential Internals for DBAs and Developers.At his blog this week there is an engaging experiment in Index naming.

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 01-FEB-2012

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 25-JAN-2012

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 18-JAN-2012

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 11-JAN-2012

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 04-JAN-2012

Human Capital Management News

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 28-DEC-2011

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 21-DEC-2011

Oracle Community

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 14-DEC-2011

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 07-DEC-2011

Other R12 Resources:

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 30-NOV-2011

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 23-NOV-2011

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 16-NOV-2011

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 09-NOV-2011

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 02-NOV-2011

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 26-OCT-2011

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 19-OCT-2011

Oracle OpenWorld On Demand

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 12-OCT-2011

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 05-OCT-2011

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 28-SEP-2011

Oracle Priority Support Infogram for 21-SEP-2011

Support News

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 14-SEP-2011

Human Capital Management: News and Events

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 07-SEP-2011

Industry Spotlight: Utilities

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 31-AUG-2011

E-Business Suite ATG Advisor Webcast

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 24-AUG-2011

Oracle Supply Chain News

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 17-AUG-2011

Oracle Priority Service Infogram for 10-AUG-2011

Oracle Support

The Proactive Support EPM and BI blog has a pointer to a good note on Hot Topics on MOS and patches.

Performance

Jonathan Lewis has his new book out: Oracle Core: Essential Internals for DBAs and Developers.

At his blog this week there is an engaging experiment in Index naming.