January Critical Patch Update is Out

Yes, it's that time again!


The Critical Patch Update for January 2008 is now available.
Oracle strongly recommends applying the patches as soon as possible.

The Critical Patch Update Advisory is the starting point for relevant information, and it provides instructions on how to obtain the patches. It contains a summary of the security vulnerabilities and links to other important documents.

It is essential to refer to the Pre-Installation Notes before applying patches, since it is where you can find clarifications and corrections to the installation instructions.

The Critical Patch Update Advisory is available on the Oracle Technology Network:
http://www.oracle.com/technology/deploy/security/alerts.htm

Critical Patch Update - January 2008
http://www.oracle.com/technology/deploy/security/critical-patch-updates/cpujan2008.html

The next four Critical Patch Update release dates are targeted for:
April 15, 2008
July 15, 2008
October 14, 2008
January 13, 2009

(provided to the Infogram by S. V.)

Grid Automation Webcasts

Oracle is offering some webcasts on "Lowering Management Costs through Grid Automation". Okay, I'm going to be honest and say that the title makes me think of the old gag: "Better life through plastic!", but they do look to be a decent series of webcasts if you are looking for more ways to get things done without ever shutting down. This is especially relevant for our RAC customers.

Fusion, PeopleSoft, CSS, Hyperion, JD Edwards, OWB

Stealth Fusion

Ok, nobody is talking about Fusion. So here is Stephen Chen on Fusion. But he didn't mention it. And I didn't link to his article either.

PeopleSoft

David Kurtz offers some insight on PeopleSoft and temporary tables.

CSS

Customer Self Service (CSS) has an Oracle blog now.

Hyperion

There's a new Hyperion blog out here. I love his subtitle to the blog. I wonder if this makes Oracle some kind of sun god by buying Hyperion? Have to ask our theology department.

Tim Tow has taken over the Hyperion Advanced Security Manager application while it is in transition. You find out more details here.

J D Edwards

There is a new series of articles starting at this blog on the transformation of J D Edwards after its acquisition by Oracle.

OWB

There's an Oracle Warehouse Builder blog you should check out if you are working with that product. For instance here is a link to an article on the 11G Heterogenous Agent there.

I guess I've just watched too many second-rate movies in my life. When I hear 'heterogenous agent' I think it's some guy who started out spying for the Soviets, got compromised by the Albanians, but really turned out to be working for the Chinese the whole time.

Security, Performance, PL/SQL, RDBMS

Security

In the ‘I Told You To Not Wake that Sleeping Dog’ Department

A British television personality set out to prove that all these losses of personal computer data are ‘much ado about nothing’.

Well, that was a sad story, because he decided to prove his point by publishing his own data, and an enterprising member fo the TV audience used that data to take a batch of money from his account and transfer it to charity to prove his or her point. Read about the whole thing here.

Forensics

A good link to a paper from University of Arizona on database forensics at Paul M. Wright’s blog.

Performance

Christian Bilien has a great little article on tracking down missing memory (containing all kinds of grotty technical detail).

PL/SQL

Using PL/SQL Associative Arrays

ODP.NET developers can use PL/SQL as an API to the data in the database and use associative array binding to reduce network round-trips. The result is a reduced workload for both the network and Oracle Database, which means faster performance and better scalability for your applications.

Read the article.

RDBMS

I don’t know how I missed posting a link to this list of the Seven Deadly Habits of a DBA before.

Expensive Calculator

In the early days of the mini-computer (i.e. before PCs), someone came up with a very simple editing program. You couldn’t realliy call it word processor, because it basically just printed things you typed on paper. They called the program Expensive Typewriter.

Well now you can relive those days of heady misuse of technology thanks to Tanel Poder and his article:

How to use Oracle as an Expensive Calculator.

ASM, Humor, PeopleSoft, RDA,, The Oracle Plane, Various, IT Opinion

ASM

Some wisdom on cloning an ASM database from Alejandro Vargas.

Humor

Ok, let's face it, Oracle has never been, shall we say, a strong Microsoft partner, but this video that Bill Gates did linked from Carl Beckstrom's blog is very amusing.

PeopleSoft

An article on PeopleSoft Enterprise Portal 9.0 over at PSADMIN.

New Version of the RDA Available

The Remote Diagnostic Agent is an often misunderstood beastie. Some customers think we here at Oracle have them run an RDA just to get them out of our hair for a while. Nope. It's a very useful utility that gathers a huge amount of useful information about your system. When I worked performance optimization in the field in my past life as a DBA I would often use the RDA as a tool to quickly evaluate a customer's system on a lot of details that effect performance.

Here's the official announcement:

Oracle Support Announces RDA 4.10 - Production Release

RDA is used to gather detailed information about an Oracle and Operating system environments. The data gathered is used to aid in problem diagnosis. The output is also used to monitor the overall system configuration. Oracle Global Product Support encourages the use of RDA because it provides a comprehensive picture of the Oracle Product and Operating System environments.

Read the full article. (in Metalink).


The Oracle Plane

Video of the Oracle stunt plane showing that gravity, physics, etc. all are negotiable, even flexible...if you're a good enough pilot.

Various

A miscellany of links of interest from Eddie Awad here.

IT Opinion

H. Tonguc Yilmaz reminds us that all that seems to come from a guru may not in fact be wise in this article. Over my years working with Oracle technology, and many other topics of interest, I have found that the humble are often the strongest authorities. When you question a real expert about their topic they will either:

• Prove to you then and there that they are right (Tom Kyte usually does it by creating a schema, running several experiments, then tearing it all down, all at a SQL*Plus prompt and NEVER BACKSPACING ONCE, which scares most mortals).
• Cite a reliable source or two that demonstrate their point
• Admit that there may be a problem and look into it.

If you get an answer based on the fear of being wrong it will often be tinged with anger, because anger is the shadow of weakness, following along wherever it goes. If you get an answer that seems to be couched in the language of non-Euclidean geometry intersticed with the tax code you are probably dealing with ignorance. Of course if you are discussing a meta-study of non-Euclidean geometry and the tax code this may be a normal answer. Generally, though, a clearly phrased question should elicit a clearly phrased answer, and technology often allows answers that fall into clear categories:

• That's how it works
• It's like that because it's broken, but the fix is coming in release XYZ
• It's like that because the software is hopelessly hosed and you are making a major career error by attempting to install it on prod.
• I don't know.

Human nature has a strong element of rationalization. This ill-begotten child of the rational makes us want to explain every problem we encounter in the simplest possible terms, perfectly happy to dispense with all norms of reality and logic to do so. How many times have you read that the market took a downturn today because of a loss of consumer confidence in sealing wax or the like? It may very well have been caused by the consumers being frightened by a rise in the number of gopher coughs or a simple increase in the seasonal flu statistics as filtered through the complex mechanism of society and the economy, or a combination of innumerable factors. But what's needed in journalism is a quick explanation that everyone can understand. As a result of this, the answer, 'I don't know' is often very hard for us to pronounce. Experts use the term fairly often because they have a firm grasp of their field and actually know what they do and do not know.

So be careful of who and what you trust online, and that includes blogs, even this august institution you are reading.

Chris Gait
Infogram Editor

Business in China, Humor, Indexing,, Performance, Security, EBS, JDEdwards, PeopleSoft

Business in China

A blog on sourcing in China brings us some conjecture on what many aspects of business in China will be in the coming year.

Humor

Next time someone tells you how difficult it is to install Oracle RDBM, involving hours of labor and complexities, show them this demo from Miracle AS in Denmark.

Indexing

Richard Foote, master of all that is indexed, brings us this series on unique and non-unique indexes.

Performance


Snapper

Tanel Poder links us to Wolfgang Breitling's version of a new and improved snapper script for gathering session info in real time here.

Vibe

Sometimes you can actually feel the ground shift as a new way of assessing and fixing performance problems emerges. This is such a time. See Mogen Norgaard (sponsor of the Oracle nose installation method and founder of the Oak Table) who has posted a link here to an article by James Morle's here.

As Mogen points out, it's been a long time since Mr. Morle has written a book, and we're all waiting for the next one. Let's hope the article at the Optimal DBA blog pointed out above is but a preface.

Collectl

I somehow missed posting a link to this endorsement by Kevin Closson of Collectl for gathering performance information. (So no, Collectl is not a typo)

Help Gather Data

Would you like to help the Structured Data blog gather data about system statistics usage? Then go over to this posting to run a couple of quick queries and let them know what you come up with.

Security

Pete Finnigan points out an important security reminder on the 'emkey' at the Pythian Blog.

E-Business Suite

Gareth Roberts brings us this invaluable Oracle eBusiness Suite Product and Acronym Listing.

Hitting the Apps Audit Trail

The Apps DBA blog has a series on data auditing in Oracle applications.

_________________________________________________________

This week's updates from Anu Sachdeva:

JD Edwards

JD Edwards EnterpriseOne: Baseline Roadmap for Calendar Q1 and Q2 now published
Please follow this link to see the Roadmap for Updates and Baselines for EnterpriseOne. Requires Customer Connection login.

PeopleSoft

http://www.peoplesoft.com/corp/en/doc_archive/pub_library/cc_home/060501e1_update.jsp

EnterpriseOne Manufacturing: Breaking news article posted on November 29, 2007: 8.11SP1 and 8.12: P31123 Super Backflush Null Pointer Memory Leak.
Description: Third party softwares creating high volume transactions for E1 P31123, Super Backflush, produce null pointer errors.

Please see additional details in Solution 201056290 in Customer Connection.

Ora-Click, Hyperion Docs, Performance, Oracle Mix, ADF

Ora-Click.com

This new site, another product of the Web 2.0 movement, lets you vote for sites and submit Oracle news items you find interesting. Imagine how pleased I was to discover the first item on the page was...The Oracle Infogram. You'll need to register at Ora-Click.com to vote for us.

Hyperion

Looking for the docs? They're at the Oracle site now according to this from Tim Tow's Hyperion Blog.

Performance

Alejandro Vargas provides a script for running AWR reports at the recommended frequency.

Oracle Mix

A run-down on the year's events and improvements over at our Web 2.0 community for Oracle users and employees, Oracle Mix at the AppsLab Blog site here.

Accessing Google Calendar from an Oracle ADF Application

The Amis Blog brings us an article on using ADF to access Google calendar. Now if it would only allow stretching the time space continuum to accommodate more meetings!