Scripting, EBS R12 Debugging, IT Opinion, Oracle Coherence, Humor

Scripting

Some thoughts on Scripting, with a pointer to Larry Wall's article on the same.

E-Business Suite

Essential debugging tools for R12 from Stephen Chan (his blog is an EBS goldmine).

IT Opinion

Like getting performance evaluations? Like writing them? Ok, right, no on both counts. So read this article about them at the Simple DBA blog and feel better about things.

Oracle Coherence Datagrid Video Presentation

Oracle Coherence Datagrid Video on YouTube by way of Eddie Awad's blog.


Humor

The end of the year is a good time to look back...and not take things too seriously. So here are a couple of humor items.

A Support Dialog Overheard (First Half Hour Not Recorded)

Customer: Okay, how do I do that?
Help Desk: I just told you that.
Customer: I don't understand.
Help Desk: Click the 'Go' button and your file will download.
Customer: (Long silence). It doesn't work. I can't find it.
Help Desk: Ok, let's take a new approach to this question. Do you have a Blockbuster video in your town?
Customer: (Brightening audibly) Why yes! Yes we do!
Help Desk: Good. Please write these instructions down then. I want to you get in your car and drive to the Blockbuster. Have that so far?
Customer: Yes, yes.
Help Desk: Ok, once you are there find the Drama Section. Got that?
Customer: D-r-a-m-a. Yes, got it!
Help Desk: Okay. In the Drama Section, look for a section marked 'Detective Movies'.
Customer: Yes, detectives, good.
Help Desk: Okay, once you find that...RENT A FREAKING CLUE! (Click).

Now aren't you glad you have Oracle Support. I've never once told a client that.

A Few of the Better Web Videos to End the Year

Three of the better ones, including the Support in the Middle Ages video that everyone who has worked for a help desk watches and nods through every time, at the Belgian Mainframe blog.

This Week's Apps Info from Anu Sachdeva

This week's batch of great sources of info on Fusion JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, Hyperion, Siebel...the list goes on and on. All contributed to the Infogram by Anu Sachdeva:

Fusion, Hyperion, Siebel

ODTUG's Kaleidoscope 2008 - Evolution of the Developer: Middleware and Beyond
June 15-19, 2008, New Orleans, Louisiana. Registration now open. Special prizes if you register before January 1, 2008
Agenda is designed to help developers evolve through the changing Oracle landscape.

For more details: http://www.odtugkaleidoscope.com/

PeopleSoft and JD Edwards

Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) - is a global organization that enhances the capabilities of real Oracle users in their day-to-day use and management of the growing family of Oracle Applications. There are Geographic(Geos) and Special Interest Groups (SIGs) and Siebel, Oracle Retail(Retek) and PeopleSoft Applications user communities.

http://www.oaug.org/about/index.html

PeopleSoft users community: http://www.oaug.org/usercommunities/peoplesoft/index.html

Check the latest Oracle University Newsletter (Dec, 2007) for PeopleSoft and Enterprise One (JD Edwards) Featured Courses
http://www.oracle.com/education/america_eblasts/07/q2/newsletter.html

Upcoming Advisor Webcasts for January, 2008:

Check Customer Connection > Advisor Webcasts for detailed information

http://www.peoplesoft.com/corp/en/news_events/events/advisor/pa_home.jsp

PeopleSoft Enterprise

PeopleSoft Enterprise Student Administration Integration Platform: Connecting Academic to Administration
January 17, 2008, 12:00 noon (MST)

PeopleSoft Enterprise Campus Solutions (CS) 2008-2009 Financial Aid US Regulatory (Regs) 2
January 29, 2008, 12:00 noon (MST)

PeopleSoft Integration Broker - Tools 8.48/8.49 Overview and Changes
January 30, 2008, 1:00 pm (MST)

JD Edwards EnterpriseOne

EnterpriseOne tools 8.97 Feature Overview - Get More Value with the Latest Version of EnterpriseOne Tools
January 8, 2008, 10:00 a.m. (MST)

Transportation Freight Update
January 31, 10:00 a.m. (MST)


JD Edwards World

JD Edwards World: A91 Enhancements to the Sales Management System
January 9, 2008, 9:00 a.m. (MST)

JD Edwards World: Navigating Customer Connection
January 10, 10:00 a.m. (MST)

JD Edwards World: Leadtime, Backscheduling Overview
January 16, 9:00 a.m. (MST)

EBS, JDK...Better life through Acronyms

E-Business Suite

Stephen Chan brings us a couple of good items, Running Multiple Java Plug-Ins on the Same Windows PC and JInitiator 1.1.8 To Be Desupported for Apps 11i.

And some notes on setting up Workflow Notification Mailer in R12 over at the Online Apps DBA Blog.

BI, 11g RAC, Storage Qos, Virtualization and End of Year Wisdom

BI

The Rittman Mead Consulting Group blog has a nice collection of their ten Top BI & DW Events of 2007.

11g RAC

Christian Bilien provides an interesting article today on 11g ASM preferred reads for RAC extended clusters.

Storage

Some thoughts on Storage QoS (Quality of Service) over at the Pythian blog.


IT Opinion

The Simple DBA shows us the profundity of her simplicity with this posting, which calls on us all to verify backups, but includes much more. There's a lot of wisdom here, and not a small amount of humor.

The IT Management blog brings us some thoughts on the top five virtualization vendors in today's market.

ApEX

David Peake brings news of a possible certification track coming for ApEx here. Please consider taking the survey he points to if you are interested in this idea.

Santa Lore and Free Stuff

Free Stuff

Web Worker Daily, one of my favority sources of utility programs and the like, has a good summary of sites where you can find free software here.

Santa

I read an article in the Wall Street Journal just the other day that claimed that Santa's red suit was introduced by the Coca Cola company. Well, turns out that's an urban legend. A pointer from Seth Godin's blog to this excellent history of the modern image of Santa Claus at the Urban Legends site is worth a read in this season. As you can see there, some of the original 19th century pictures of Santa show him in his 'signature' red suit.

Apex and ADF, a Sad but True Tale on I/O and a Moment of Clarity for C Developers

ApEx

A good two part series on APEX and/or ADF - demonstrating two similar yet different applications at the AMIS Technology Blog.

And some comments on the same at Patrick Wolf's blog.

Also at AMIS, news of the Oracle 11g Fusion Middleware technology preview.

I/O

I/O is often a bone of contention, with the storage team blaming the database and the database team pointing back a the SAN, here's a typical sad story from Doug's Oracle Blog.

C vs PL/SQL

Not C versus PL/SQL, really, but seeing the differences between the two. A couple of heads up at the Simple DBA Blog.

IT Opinion

A discussion of the 'Multicore Crisis', the good, the bad, and the controversial at the SmoothSpan blog.

This discussion brings up a lot of memories for those who've worked with Oracle products for some time. In the old days you had to design your application from the ground up to accommodate the Oracle Parallel Server architecture. As that product evolved, eventually morphing into RAC in recent years, the 'under the covers' parallelization became more and more automated until now a relevantly inexperienced team can tackle RAC and usually not have to modify there application to any great degree to accommodate the RDBMS architecture itself. What systems lend themselves to RAC, and what constitutes a real business requirement for RAC is often a controversial conversation. I'll let others argue that out. But the challenges of using the full capacity of multcores is the latest in a long line of hurdles that Oracle has faced over the years, and I'm looking forward to what we come up with.

Chris Gait
Editor, Oracle Infogram