Oracle Infogram: OpenWorld, ADF, EBS, Recovery, APEX, PeopleSoft, OBIEE 11g

OpenWorld

Have you told your Priority Service SDM who you are sending to OpenWorld? How about figuring out where to go and which lectures are really good technical material and which are, well, not good technical material? Here's a starting point. The Structured Data Blog has a rundown on the Oak Table Net members presenting this year at OOW: Oracle OpenWorld 2010: Sessions By OakTable Members

ADF

Speaking of OOW, Shay Shmeltzer's Weblog has this posting with a link to the official (youbetcha) guide for JDeveloper/ADF users: The Official JDeveloper/ADF Guide to Oracle Develop/Oracle OpenWorld

and from ADF Inspired, this posting which, surprisingly, is technical, but not OOW related: Undoing changes using Middle Tier Savepoints

EBS

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

New EBS 11i Patch Wizard Identifies Patches Needed for Extended Support

Oracle Internet Directory 11g (11.1.1.3) Certified with EBS on 15 New Platforms

Updated Platform Migration Procedures Certified for EBS 12

Have You Used 10gR2 Transportable Tablespaces with EBS 11i?

Recovery

If you've lost a production system and cannot recover due, for instance, to a loss of the system tablespace or unfixable undo/redo corruption with missing control files, i.e. really far up the creek without a paddle, there is an Oracle Support service called DUL (the Data UnLoader). It's a paid service, not cheap, but a lot cheaper than sitting down with 10,000,000 3x5 cards and a terminal and reentering the database. Now some enterprising folks have a non-Oracle version that you may want to play with. I would still entrust prod to Oracle Support, but let's say you have a test system that gets hammered and you need some of the data, or you want to take a look at something from the prod system while waiting to get a DUL in place. In short, there are a lot of uses for an item like this. jDUL DUDE - an Oracle DUL like tool - last resort Oracle recovery.

APEX

Over at (YABAOAE) Yet Another Blog About Oracle Application Express there's a handy item on: Automatic Time Zone support in Application Express 4.0.

Essbase

Rittman Mead Consulting is highlighting (that's also known as bragging) that they have an article in Oracle magazine on Using Oracle Essbase Release 11.1.2 Aggregate Storage Option Database

PeopleSoft

Important announcement:

URGENT: Issue with PeopleSoft Menu Items starting January, 2011 What are we announcing? We need to bring to your attention an issue for customers operating PeopleSoft products that will manifest itself on Jan 1, 2011 if not corrected before then. Many Content References (CRefs) delivered with PeopleSoft applications will expire on December 31, 2010. If this is not corrected, the menu items represented by these expired CRefs will no longer be visible. Access to the portion of the application normally available through the menu is unavailable until the issue is corrected. This issue does not cause any data loss in the system. It is critical that you review the solutions that are available in My Oracle Support, and take corrective action prior to Dec 31, 2010. There are 3 solutions, depending on the PeopleTools version(s) you are running for your application(s): Doc ID 1183084.1 (E-CREF: How To Reset CRef Expire Dates From 2010-12-31 For PeopleTools 8.44-8.51) Doc ID 1183075.1 (E-CREF: How To Reset CRef Expire Dates From 2010-12-31 For PeopleTools 8.40-8.43) Doc ID 1183065.1 (E-CREF: How To Reset CRef Expire Dates From 2010-12-31 For PeopleTools 8.11-8.22) Details about how to contact Oracle Global Customer Support for assistance with any concerns you may have with this issue are included in these solutions. Thank you for your quick attention to this matter. Regards, Oracle Global Customer Support

OBIEE 11g

Siebel Essentials brings us some links: 11 OBIEE 11g Tips: #3 Useful Links.

also from Siebel Essentials is this handy guide: Siebel CRM Example Business Processes

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

Do you have questions concerning adding or maintaining users on My Oracle Support? Check out Note:1098714.1. It contains links to frequently asked questions on this topic.

EBS, Collaborate, Security, BPEL, OWB, Blog of Note, Hyperion, EPM, Burnout, WiFi

EBS

This week at the E-Business Suite Technology blog:

Oracle Internet Directory and Single Sign-On Certified with EBS 12.1.2 on IBM Linux on System z

New Forms and Reports 10.1.2.3 Bundle Patch Certified with EBS 12

Securing E-Business Suite Web Services with Integrated SOA Gateway

A Primer on Hardware Sizing for Oracle E-Business Suite

Collaborate 11

The call for papers has come out for the Collaborate 11 conference.

Esoteric Security

Great, now even if you invest a fortune in extremely esoteric quantum crypto equipment to guard your data transmissions....you're still vulnerable. So far the system used by the ancients--training a trustworthy courier to keep secrets and sending him to the place the data is needed--seems to still be the best technique available: Hardware hackers defeat quantum crypto • The Register

BPEL

Over at the Online Apps DBA blog there is a handy posting on Troubleshooting BPEL worklist integration with Oracle Single Sign-on.

OWB

The Oracle Warehouse Builder (OWB) Weblog has a recommendation for those upgrading to OWB 11.2.0.1: Recommended OWB Patch before Repository Upgrade or Migration: 9802120

Blog of Note: Rittman Mead Consulting

You'll find a lot of postings here linked from the Rittman Mead Consulting blog. It's one of the best out there, with consistently high quality technical content. A couple of samples over the last week or two:

Oracle BI EE 11g – Authentication & Authorization – Weblogic Security

and

Oracle BI EE 11g – New BI Server Functions

Hyperion

Speaking of great blogs, In 2 Hyperion has a posting on Long Live The Essbase Add-In!

EPM

New EPM Documentation Portal Available on Oracle.com

The EPM Documentation Portal provides a single entry point to locate documentation, training and other useful information that assists with the implementation process and enhances a customer’s experience with our products.

The tool is available on oracle.com from this link: http://www.oracle.com/us/solutions/ent-performance-bi/index.html.

· On the right hand side of the page, click on Technical Information

· then Enterprise Performance Management Documentation Portal

which takes you to this page: http://www.oracle.com/us/solutions/ent-performance-bi/technical-information-147174.html

Burnout

Over at Lifehacker, always one of my favorite general technology and office life blogs, is an article on the addictive nature of technology and how to keep it from consuming your life:

Why Technology Is So Addictive, and How You Can Avoid Tech Burnout

WiFi

Wifi has become an increasingly important part of day to day life. Windows' wifi builtin is crude at best. Several of these programs look interesting, but I haven't tried them yet, so I can't give you a review. I plan to get the one that measures signal strength of Wi-Fi servers in your home area, though, since it would be nice to know that you are on a channel not getting interference from a neighbor:

6 useful Wi-Fi tools for Windows - Computerworld

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

PeopleSoft Enterprise PeopleTools 8.50 Has Arrived!

Oracle's PeopleSoft Enterprise PeopleTools 8.50 is now generally available. This new version of PeopleTools is the foundation to the PeopleSoft Enterprise 9.1 applications; however, it is also available to customers running any of the recent PeopleSoft Enterprise applications (8.8, 8.9 and 9.0). Start planning your upgrade now! More information is available at: http://www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/peoplesoft-enterprise/tools-tech/index.html

A listing of Oracle Education classes can be found HERE.

Scripting, Doom

Scripting

This posting Effect Of Multiple SHMMAX Settings at the AskDba.org Weblog is useful in itself, but points out something I learned back in my days as a DBA that is of wider utility: Computers are dumb. Yes, I know they seem smart enough, but if you tell them in a batch file: Pour coffee. Put cup in coffee machine filling bracket, that's exactly what they'll do: Pour the coffee all over the floor and then drop the cup in place. The duplicate settings problem can be especially vexing. It reminds me of a time a friend of mine played a CD. Only something completely different played than he had expected. He took out the CD, looked at it, and only then realized that there had been a CD already in the drive and he put the new one in on top of it. Silly error? Perhaps, but things happen. Scripts are prone to this kind of error, and all the more prone if you don't document changes. Let's say Oracle Support solved a problem you were having in 10.2.0.3 by giving you an underscore parameter. You put it in your initialization parameters and all is good....at least until you move to 10.2.0.5 and find whackiness breaking out all over the DB. If you documented things you will find the date and reason that unserscore parameter was set and comment it out. If not, you may have to do a lot of exploring before you remember that change and track down why it is there and why it has kept you up nights all week.

Doomed Again
Every few years (well every few months, really) another death knell sounds for the relational model. Trouble is, it's based on solid math and just doesn't die off. Other bright attempts, however, like the hierarchical database and its stepchild the object oriented application-implemented approach, seem to haunt us regularly, but they never quite measure up to reality. The relational model, of course, is not implemented as theoretically envisioned, in any commercial RDBMS. But the fundamentals are there. This article at ReadWrite Enterprise has some interesting thoughts (in spite of calling tables 'entities' when a relational table is a relation, thus the name: relational): Is the Relational Database Doomed?

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

Here is a handy link for information concerning RAC: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/clustering/overview/index.html
It contains links to white papers, data sheets, tools and more.

An excellent note for Oracle Support processes and best practices is Note:166650.1. Check it out. It contains numerous hints and tips for getting the most from Oracle Support.

The latest version of the Application Technology Group (ATG) Newsletter is available in Note:1158513.1. It contains valuable information for E-Business Suite customers.

Security

Security

An iTunes security flaw from a week or so ago (since fixed) has given rise to a more fundamental issue in Windows security. Ars Technica discusses it: Windows DLL-loading security flaw puts Microsoft in a bind .