Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Hyperion, Web Analytics, Inspiration, Keeping Your Sanity, Performance, EBS


Hyperion

There's a great series starting up over at the In 2 Hyperion blog: Free Tools for Hyperion Professionals, starting with a link on documenting business rules in a format more readable/convenient than XML: Document Business Rules. (What, you don't read XML for pleasure?)

Some valuable notes on Debugging the EPM Configurator over at Tim Tow's Hyperion Blog.

Web Analytics

Edgewater Technology blog has started a series on web analytics. It's titled Ten Steps You Can Take to Improve Your Web Analytics Program, and you can find part 1 here, and part 2 here.

Inspiration (and Performance)

Two great postings over at Cary Milsap's blog:

It's the end of the year, a time for assessments and resolutions. A good place to start the review is this posting by Cary Milsap, Oracle performance guru and all-around genius: The “Do What You Love” Mirage.

And for one of the best summaries of how to do performance on someone else's system (with many lessons for doing it on your own): My Whole System Is Slow. Now What?

Keeping Your Sanity

The article is on tracking parameter changes, which doesn't seem to be directly linked to the topic of keeping one's sanity, unless, of course, you've been through several days of tracking a very exotic and sporadic 'bug' only to discover that it was actually caused by the setting of a non-default value to something that caused the problem. Now if only there were a function that generated a ruler to slap the hands of people approaching the initialization parameters without due diligence....Tracking Parameter Changes over at Kerry Osborne's Oracle blog.

Performance

Richard Foote has some valuable input in his series: The CPU Costing Model: A Few Thoughts




EBS

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


Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Podcasts, Optimizer, PeopleSoft, APEX, DBFS, Index Performance, Performance, EBS, Charity


Oracle Podcasts

It's three AM. You can't sleep. You need to do something useful that will also help you sleep. Subscribe to Oracle podcasts!

http://www.oracle.com/database/podcasts.html

Just kidding. There are a lot of really good podcasts listed here, including some by suchleading lights of our technical realm as Tom Kyte.

Optimizer: Moving from 9i to 11g

A lot of production systems are moving to 11g and one of the key factors, particularly when moving from older versions of the RDBMS, is changes in optimizer behavior. The Inside the Oracle Optimizer blog has an excellent posting on the subject.

PeopleSoft

This posting at the The PeopleSoft DBA Blog is on an aspect of SQL tuning of particular interest to PeopleSoft DBAS: Hinting Sub-Queries on Oracle.

APEX

David Peake lets us know that APEX 4.0 early adopter is now available.

And Joel Kallman has a few notes on the new release for us at his blog here.

DBFS

Kevin Closson is embarking on a series of postings about the 11g feature DBFS, starting with The Oracle Database File System (DBFS). It’s Not An “Exadata Feature.” – Part I.

Index Performance

Some fine points of index statistics over at the Striving for Optimal Performance blog, particularly interesting if you are using partitioning.

Performance

From the specific to the general, Tanel Poder has some thoughts on a posting from Cary Milsap we linked to previously here at the Infogram.

Continuing the performance vibe, Alejandro Vargas has some scripts for assessing IO for us here.

And one last performance article, this time on data warehouses over at the Structured Data blog: The Core Performance Fundamentals Of Oracle Data Warehousing – Balanced Hardware Configuration.

EBS

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


Charity

Each year at the holiday season I bring my favorite charity to my readers' attention. This year that charity got an incredible boost from CNN. After CNN ran an article on Modest Needs the charity got a flood of contributions. With the economy what it is, more money is going to be needed and appreciated. You can give once or set up a monthly contribution, and Modest Needs is often able to double, sometimes even triple that donation through matching grants. Please have a look!

Thursday, December 17, 2009

SOA Blog, ODTUG, PeopleSoft, BI, EBS, APEX


SOA Blog

Clemens Utschig-Utschig was quiet on the blog front for a while, but he came back with a roar (with his characteristic energy) at his new blog:


With a title like that, you know it's going to be good. And here's just a small example: Using the event api to publish an event programmatically.

ODTUG

The election results are out for the ODTUG board, as the Look Smarter Than You Are blog. It looks like a hotly contested result, and Tim Tow, who we frequently link to from here, has been bested for his place on the Development Tools User Group board by Mark Rittman, who we frequently link to from here.

Keeping in Touch With People Using PeopleSoft

Seems like a natural thing to do. The Grey Sparling Solutions blog has a fine article on creating all manner of Wikis and other things social using the Related Content Feature in PeopleTools 8.5.

BI

Dynamic SQL is a tricky and extremely useful beastie. Read about it in Dynamic SQL query in Data Template at the Oracle A BI Publisher developer's diary... blog.

EBS

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



APEX

Over at the (YABAOAE) Yet Another Blog About Oracle Application Express blog there's a good discussion on Moving table data from SQL Developer into Application Express using XML.

Monday, December 14, 2009

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

Build your own RAC cluster for less than $3000. Here are step by step instructions on how to build an Oracle RAC 11g Cluster on Oracle Enterprise Linux and iSCSI:

http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/hunter-rac11gr2-iscsi.html

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Contributions by Sherron Garnett, Infogram Contributor

Year-End Processing Courses

It’s that time of year! Oracle University offers courses that help you handle year-end processing and payroll activities. For more information, call 1.800.529.0165 in the U.S. or 1.800.510.3432 in Canada to speak with an education sales representative.

JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 1099 Year End Processing 2009 Rel 8.12 – LVC ( U.S. / Canada)
JD Edwards EnterpriseOne US Payroll Year-End Process 2009 Rel 8.12 – LVC ( U.S. / Canada)
E-Business Suite Rel R12 Year-End Payroll 2009 US – LVC (U.S. / Canada)
PeopleSoft Year-End Payroll 2009 - U.S. Rel 9 – LVC (U.S. / Canada)
PeopleSoft Year-End Payroll 2009 - Canada Rel 9 ( U.S. / Canada)
PeopleSoft Year-End Payroll 2009 - Canada Rel 9 – LVC (U.S. / Canada)

Flash Storage, EBS, Forms, CJ Date, Technology, Warhouse Security


Storage

Some thoughts from Kevin Closson on a post from Jonathan Lewis we blogged on previously here: Pardon Me, Where Is That Flash Cache? Part I.

EBS

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



Forms

Grants Blog lets us know that: Oracle Forms certified on Windows 7 and IE8.

CJ Date

Tom Kyte notes in his blog that one of the great figures in relational database theory is speaking in Dallas next month: A fairly unique opportunity... CJ Date's books form the theoretical foundation of the relational model as it is currently understood, so the chance to participate in a seminar with him is rare and valuable.

I'm not a fan of the the term 'fairly unique', by the way. It's one of those oddities of human language vs. logic, like the sales ads you see boasting: Up to 30% off...or more. Well, if it's up to 30% then it's not more than that. If it's unique, it's unique. To me, 'fairly unique' is in the same domain as 'somewhat pregnant'.

Technology: The Smart Tag Gets Smarter

Michael Fauscette has a posting on the expanding realm of the Internet, and mentions senseaware, an innovative technology from FedEx. It's like the smart tags that have started circulating in the supply chain, but is, for lack of a better word, smarter. You can read about it here.

Warehouse Security

Speaking of tracking things in a warehouse, this time a data warehouse, the Data Warehouse Insider has part 3 in its series on Lock Up Your Data Warehouse for us this week.

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

Priority Service is part of Oracle Advance Customer Services. Ninety-four percent of the S&P Global 100 use Advanced Customer Services to:

Achieve continual operational improvement
Accelerate return on IT investment
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Oracle Advanced Customer Services, a global business unit within Oracle Support, focuses exclusively on facilitating the continual operational improvement of your Oracle environment—throughout the life of your Oracle solution.

Learn more about Advanced Customer Services at:
http://www.oracle.com/support/advanced-customer-services/index.html

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

BI, PeopleSoft, Essbase, SOA, APEX, 11G


BI

Over at BI Publisher Developer's Diary there is a short but handy posting on Having SQL queries from different databases in one data template.

PeopleSoft

The PeopleSoft DBA blog brings us an item that is of interest to a quite focused group of the overall Oracle community. if you are using PoepleSoft COBOL this should be of interest: Controlling How PeopleSoft Cobol Collects Statistics.

Running PeopleSoft on Linux? There's a great hands on posting about that here: Application Designer on Linux.

One of the blogs I've started following recently is On the PeopleSoft Road (love the title, sounds like you're running your business from inside a 60s folksong). There are several postings on running PeopleSoft on VMWare, you can find the latest here.

Essbase

This article on ODI Series - Extracting essbase formula issue over at the More to Life Than... blog attracted my attention as much for its intro as its content:

"Just a quick blog from me today. I was contemplating writing a useless blog having a go at companies I know nothing about for absolutely no reason but I decided there is more to life and I am going to answer a question asked on the otn forums, which hopefully will do more good than bad."
SOA

There aren't a lot of books out there yet about Oracle's SOA, and Olaf Heimburger brings us a book review on the latest: Getting Started with Oracle SOA Suite 11g R1

APEX

We don't usually feature job postings here at the Infogram, but Scott Spendolini couldn't resist this one, and neither can I. Yes, you too can use APEX to work on the massive piece of technology that CERN is using to study blackholes. I'm a pretty whimsical person, so I can just imagine the conversation on your first day:
"Ok, here's your cubicle. The location of offices is based on seniority, with the junior people closest to the accelerator. Ah, you don't want to put your coffee cup down just there....WHOOSH, POP!...Right. We'll get you a new cup. Your first project will be calculating the attenuation on your cup as it entered the black hole. Welcome aboard!"
11G Features

Guy Harrison has an article on Using the Oracle 11GR2 database flash cache at his blog.


Contributions By Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

Here is a good article on using the automated patching capabilities of OEM Grid Control to simplify patching of large numbers of databases:

http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/havewala-patch1000.html

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