Saturday, May 31, 2014

Oracle Asset error listings

Have you ever needed to get Oracle Asset error listings real quick?  As you can tell from the title of this My Oracle Support page that I just used tonight "R11i to R12 Assets Error Listings for: ORA-0000, ORA-00001, ORA-00054, ORA-00904, ORA-00979, ORA-01012, ORA-01400, ORA-01403, ORA-01406, ORA-01438, ORA-01452, ORA-01476, ORA-01555, ORA-01652, ORA-01779, ORA-02289, ORA-04030, ORA-06550 and other ORA-XXXXX" from document ID 1474752.1 this is your one stop shop for just about every error message Oracle Assets will throw at you!  Like other articles I've shared before too, this one has a lot of extra information at the end of the page in the references so that is an added bonus!

Friday, May 30, 2014

Weekend Learning: 12c Invisible Columns

Sure, I mentioned that Tom Kyte shared something about invisible columns but I do not think that I read the post he linked to which did go a bit deeper into the subject.  I bring this up, because I found a pretty good article that walks us through several scenarios around making columns invisible in 12c.

Do you know if a column can be selected if it is marked as invisible?  Are there any pitfalls you need to avoid when changing this property of the column?  If you aren't sure of the answer to these questions, go visit the article from Rajesh and learn something new this weekend!

Thursday, May 29, 2014

Thursday Twitter - 5/29/14

After deciding not to do a Twitter post last week, I'm trying a new tactic by giving you a 24 hour snapshot of posts that I enjoyed or found interesting!

Announcements:

https://twitter.com/Seth_M_Miller/status/472027037549338625 - Oracle buys ZFS technology team GreenBytes!

https://twitter.com/Oracle_EBS/status/472029626093817857 - Flattery?  A few days ago I posted about customizing OAF pages, and today the official Oracle EBS account posts the exact same MOS article!

https://twitter.com/Oracle/status/472116707461722113 - A chance to join Larry Ellison live on June 10th for an introduction of 12c In-Memory Options.

Training/Free Stuff:

https://twitter.com/oracleace/status/472155893136908288 - Sign up for a free webinar on DB locking!

General News/Information:

https://twitter.com/DBAKevlar/status/471925191325401088 - Kellyn gives us an article from Harvard Business Review about data analysis for those that do not like math.

https://twitter.com/OracleBlogs/status/471884924513812481 - Are you using these Analyzer tools from Oracle to enhance your EBS application?

https://twitter.com/CondeBond/status/471953034432770048 - Xavier shares a post from Lucas Jellema on creating charts from SQL!

https://twitter.com/DBAKevlar/status/471968218748551168 - We get a list of Linux performance monitoring tools from this post by Kellyn, and I'm looking forward to using some of these!

https://twitter.com/FirstLiberated/status/471971869072322560 - Bob Doyle shares advice from the CEO of Delphix to CIOs that just care about keeping the lights on.

https://twitter.com/UweHesse/status/471979275223326721 - Uwe shares something from Richard Foote about estimating index sizes via explain plans.

https://twitter.com/IOUG/status/472025314441572352 - IOUG shares a post from Leighton Nelson about DBs and storage, and it even links to the first part of the series too; so you get 2 articles for one mouse click here!  :}

https://twitter.com/CondeBond/status/472031959686717441 - Xavier asks if DNS is our Achilles heel in a MySQL installation, and I would turn the question back into what could be an Achilles heel in ANY kind of installation?  Food for thought.

https://twitter.com/OracleDatabase/status/472032132026875905 - Steven Feuerstein's list of recommended resources for people getting into PL/SQL.  I think this post will be favorited so I can come back to it time and time again!

https://twitter.com/UweHesse/status/472051060413308929 - Uwe points out Jonathan Lewis' list of articles on execution plans, which I'm looking forward to taking time to read this weekend!

https://twitter.com/OracleBlogs/status/472067444056809472 - Oracle Fixed Assets RPC.  'Nuff said!

https://twitter.com/OracleBlogs/status/472067444186836992 - Oracle MAA: When one size (solution) doesn't fit all.

https://twitter.com/FranckPachot/status/472073696358989824 - Franck Pachot on Exadata not handling FIRST_ROWS well.

https://twitter.com/delphix/status/472107671324491776 - Kyle Hailey from Delphix on the 5 DB issues that are costing you time and money.

https://twitter.com/MartinKlierDBA/status/472107884017635328 - I need to get that shirt!

https://twitter.com/UweHesse/status/472109415802613760 - Kellyn has a great post on unknown targets in EM12c.

https://twitter.com/OracleMiddle/status/472178100252708864 - What is the role of SOA Suite in the integration space?

https://twitter.com/DBAKevlar/status/472184033351172096 - Like a detective story?  Follow this one as Kellyn troubleshoots/investigates some issues in 11g regarding stats, bind peeking and histograms.

Conference News:

https://twitter.com/dba_hba/status/471989278327984128 - Allan promises that Oracle sessions from EMC World are available, but I'm just not seeing them right now.  Am I missing something?

https://twitter.com/brost/status/472002040067928064 - A great picture of Jim Czuprynski teaching a room full of people in Riyadh attending the OTN MENA Tour!

https://twitter.com/JLOracle/status/472028210142916608 - Jonathan Lewis will be attending the CBO Days 2014 from Trivadis in a few weeks!

https://twitter.com/oracleace/status/472047445653090305 - Did you know that 55 Oracle ACEs will be speaking at the KScope conference this year?  Amazing!

Social Media/DevOps:

https://twitter.com/dba_hba/status/471984918583463936 - Filing Allan's post under this heading as it has a strong social media concept in keeping on top of emerging technologies.

https://twitter.com/TheGrahamHussey/status/472017141148172289 - Graham Hussey has launched a blog!

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

A cautionary SysAdmin tale: Rebooting a DC

Courtesy of @sql_handle on Twitter, I read this article from Joyent that every person in a SysAdmin, DevOps, PROD Support, what ever title you put on it, role needs to read.  A person was able to take down an ENTIRE data center with a command based tool, without any additional precautions, so most customers had downtime for 20 minutes but some were down for more than TWO hours.  Of course this is an extreme example, but it is important to realize that until the rubber meets the road you don't understand just how badly something can go with something this simple.  Would a "two-key" type system have prevented this?  What about additional parameters required on the command line?

Now that Joyent knows the flaws in their architecture, and there are some doozies which we should all review to make sure they aren't in our own architectures, they have put out a plan for how to move forward past this.  Can they move fast and smart enough, while maintaining their internal controls, so that they don't create more downtimes for customers by implementing new and improved processes?  Time will tell I guess, but this article helped me widen my scope a bit for just what could be pain points in the future.

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Customizing OAF pages

Have you ever wanted to learn how to see the customizations that are on Oracle Application Framework web pages?  Do you want to create your own?  Are you interested about getting down into the pages themselves and learning how they go together?  If you answered yes to any of these, you should get yourself over to the new My Oracle Support page "How to Make Customer Address Column Sortable on Page AcctOviewPG?" via note 1673284.1!  This page has an incredible wealth of information, so you could learn quite a bit in one sitting.

Monday, May 26, 2014

Concurrent Processing - Information Center

Have you ever wanted to learn more about the Concurrent Manager, know more about concurrent processing in general for your EBS application, or even try to stay on top of current known bugs and issues out there for the CM?  Look no further!  My Oracle Support's article "Concurrent Processing - Product Information Center (PIC)" found in note 1304305.1 is your one stop shop for everything related to the Concurrent Manager with at least a hundred, if not twice that number, articles linked from the page so you can favorite it and stay on top of the latest updates!

Sunday, May 25, 2014

In, Exists, Not In & Not Exists

Closing up the blog spotlight on Ric Van Dyke this week I actually give you two great articles that are roughly the same, but very different indeed!  First off, the article on if using the IN or EXISTS operators really gives a difference in current versions of Oracle is pretty interesting but his article on the difference between using NOT IN and NOT EXISTS operators takes the cake and I won't spoil the surprise at all.  Go read it, and you just mind find out that you'll learn something new from it!

Saturday, May 24, 2014

Debunking performance tuning myths

Being the Education Director for Hotsos, Ric Van Dyke gets to interact with a lot of people so he sees a lot of common myths out there in Oracle-land and his post from last year has several that he debunks.  I thought the one on full table scans was interesting, as I haven't seen a lot of these acting like he talks about, but now I'll keep my eyes open for an example!

Friday, May 23, 2014

Weekend Learning: Setting LONGOPS

Almost two years ago I posted about how we started proactively looking for data in the gv$session_longops table for things that could use tuning in our system and now after quite a bit of use I think we have realized that not everything which runs long goes into this table.  How do we fix that?  Enter Ric Van Dyke's article about actually using the DBMS_APPLICATION_INFO package to explicitly have your code enter run information directly into the gv$session_longops table.

Thursday, May 22, 2014

Delayed Block Cleanout and Interested Transaction List

Continuing the Ric Van Dyke blog spotlight comes his article introducing me to DBC (Delayed Block Cleanout), ITL (Interested Transaction List), and how they work in conjunction with each other in DML operations!  Not only does he introduce these concepts, but he proves out that the cleanout has changed in 12c and last week in his comments he confirms that Oracle development agrees that this is a bug!  That is VERY cool!!

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Performance tuning: Rows or blocks?

In today's article from Ric Van Dyke he teaches us some of the finer points of performance tuning by making us question some "conventional wisdom" about tuning for rows.  With a great example showing two identical tables that have their data packed differently, he is able to show how the focus on row returns is not always the best idea for SQL performance tuning.  Why is this so important?  Ric gave a great talk at Hotsos this year that opened my eyes to how Oracle deals with blocks and combined with the information in this article gives me a better idea of how to measure and tune our performance!

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Whitespace and SQL formatting

Today I share something I learned from Ric Van Dyke while continuing the blog spotlight, in that the PL/SQL engine actually breaks down the SQL bits of code into machine readable (formatted) text by standardizing the spacing so that the engine can digest it in a uniform manner.  I have been aware that the comments and spacing were removed or ignored, but I never knew why and now I do.  It even created a good exchange in the comments section too and you may get some new ideas there!

Monday, May 19, 2014

Blog spotlight: Ric Van Dyke's rambles

Almost a year ago, I started a spotlight feature that I sadly haven't followed through on in a while so there is no time like the present!  I met Ric Van Dyke when he was part of the Hotsos team that came into our offices several years ago to diagnose our performance problems and teach our group how to avoid them in the future.  Imagine my surprise and delight when I found his blog after I attended the Hotsos Symposium in 2012!

Flash forward a few years and here we are!  The first article I want to share is his latest about HASH_VALUE and PLAN_HASH_VALUE, as it has some "basic" information which is nonetheless important to have in our quest for complete knowledge about the Oracle database.  Aside from the history of the feature, which is great as I am getting into this a bit late, Ric proves out the fact that two similar SQL statements that are written differently actually can share the same PLAN_HASH_VALUE but have different HASH_VALUEs.  Additionally, he helps us remember another tool we have available to do troubleshooting and diagnosis of SQL plans!

I thought this was a great example of the articles that Ric writes, and I hope you'll enjoy the week long spotlight on his blog!

Sunday, May 18, 2014

Weekend Learning: How to set up client multipathing for ZFS

Have you ever wondered how easy it is to setup client multipathing for your ZFS?  Wonder no more!  Read the My Oracle Support document "Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance: How to set up Client Multipathing" which is a how-to for several different platforms in document ID 1628999.1 but of course the document doesn't tell you WHY you would want to set it up.  I'll try to dig up more about that for a future Weekend Learning post!

Saturday, May 17, 2014

Weekend Learning: Exadata smartscans

In an effort to revisit some of the blogs I have found, and been out of touch with due to more of a reliance on Twitter and My Oracle Support, I happened upon a new post from Frits today on Exadata smartscans which can be found here.  Do you have some time to set aside and learn?  You'll need it, as Frits goes deep into the Oracle internals taking us on a very interesting journey within the Exadata smartscans like you've never seen before.

I had an opportunity to speak with Frits briefly after his presentation at Hotsos this year, and he really blew me away and inspired me to start digging a bit deeper into the internals so when I get a chance to see something like this it really gets me excited!

Friday, May 16, 2014

Weekend Learning: Procurement Personalization Index

If you have dealt with the EBS application for a while, you know that there are several different ways of creating personalizations in the application and what can be personalized is different in each module that you work in.  The My Oracle Support document rather simply named "Procurement Personalization Index" in note 1553987.1 has a plethora of information related directly to Procurement but also a lot of general information that will be interesting to you if this is something you always wanted to know about.

Thursday, May 15, 2014

Thursday Twitter - 5/15/14

This week, I'm going to keep it simple and short; only 10 links will be shared!

Announcements:

https://twitter.com/enkitec/status/466972415512166403 - Enkitec has been acquired!


Training/Free Stuff:

https://twitter.com/oracleace/status/466475726708174848 - The Oracle ACE program shares how to script for Essbase!

https://twitter.com/dbms_output/status/466382367398305794 - Filed under training, here is a bunch of WebLogic 12c information!

General News/Information:

https://twitter.com/ignacioruizmx/status/466596158530658306 - Nacho has made the list again this week, this time sharing Exadata Best Practices!

https://twitter.com/chrisantognini/status/466581866855022594 - Did you know that the newest version of Christian Antognini's Troubleshooting Oracle Performance book has 150 additional pages?

https://twitter.com/dba_hba/status/466516826642329600 - Allan has a very insightful comment about tuning, and how to categorize it!

https://twitter.com/tanelpoder/status/466450107249229824 - We can't have a roundup without Tanel!  This time it is a blast from the past article on latch contention troubleshooting which could help you out if there are some lessons to learn!

Conference News:

https://twitter.com/biju_thomas/status/466578101577977857 - Biju asks a great question, has the tag for the GLOC conference, and shows Ric Van Dyke giving a keynote address!

https://twitter.com/muralivallath/status/466541500332277760 - If you're in the neighborhood, this conference may interest you!


Social Media/DevOps:

https://twitter.com/clicktips/status/466483406155829248 - If you are interested in AdWords, you might want to check this out!

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

R12: ADRELINK utility on HP-UX creates excessively large executables

When I first clicked on the MOS article "ADRELINK utility for E-Business Suite Release 12.0 and 12.1.1 result in large executables which may lead to out-of-memory issues" from note 1060979.1 I assumed that it was something I could look for in my system but luckily this affects only HP-UX operating systems.  Yet this does give one pause as it COULD happen on any OS in the future so this is another opportunity to monitor our systems for extreme changes.

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

R12: Reversing matched PO/Invoice distributions

A question that came into my Inbox recently was: can you reverse a PO in R12?  I didn't know, so I decided to search out an answer to the question and I found it in the My Oracle Support article "R12: How Do You Reverse PO Matched, Invoice Distributions?" in note 729985.1 which was directly on point.  The note said that when you receive an error message of "APP-SQLAP-10103 You cannot reverse this distribution." it is by design as with R12 you cannot reverse matched PO distributions.

What can you do?  Well, the note goes on to direct us to go to the Invoice Lines tab and hit the Discard button which with automatically reject the associated PO distributions.  To stay up to date with these types of issues, you can join the My Oracle Support community for Payables by clicking this link.

Monday, May 12, 2014

Invoice DM matching validation problems

The article "System Allows A Standard Invoice Matched To A Debit Memo (DM) To Be Validated Or Remain Validated, Even Though The DM Is Not Validated Or The DM Is Cancelled" found with document ID 1629189.1 is very interesting in that this is a complex problem but most of the solution is business process instead of applying a patch or other fixes.

Sunday, May 11, 2014

R12: GL posting ends in ORA-00001

Staying with my R12 updates, you will need to verify you don't run into the issue detailed in the MOS document "GLPPOS: Posting Terminated With ORA-00001: unique constraint (GL.GL_JE_HEADERS_U2)" in ID 758785.1 because there is a known restriction on the uniqueness/length of the journal names.  The problem?  It doesn't seem like the uniqueness is enforced 100% of the time, so you will need to verify how the business sends this data into the system to ensure it will not hit this error.

Saturday, May 10, 2014

Latency in OSB causes error messages

The next time somebody in a project says that any latency between systems is not an issue, point them to MOS articles like "Latency in Performing Message Level Security in OSB" within note ID 1629831.1 where an incorrect configuration (another item to always be checking for) caused the latency that started timing out authentication requests.

Friday, May 9, 2014

Thursday, May 8, 2014

Thursday Twitter: The Return!

It has been a while since I've shared Twitter posts, but it's past time for it to return!  I'm going to start off slow with just a part of what I've favorited this week.

Announcements:

https://twitter.com/oracleace/status/463672039081902080 - Congratulate the newest Oracle ACE and ACE Associates!

Training/Free Stuff:

https://twitter.com/oraclepress/status/464104980115648512 - Get a free chapter comparing SQL and NoSQL.

General News/Information:

https://twitter.com/ignacioruizmx/status/464403212360241153 - Nacho shares a MOS article about ASM and Exadata.

https://twitter.com/myoraclesupport/status/464389279507304449 - Group your MOS identifiers!

https://twitter.com/c_martin2/status/463768857950572544 - Learn about DBMS_SQLDIAG.DUMP_TRACE which is not documented yet in 12c!

https://twitter.com/woodendaily/status/463768601858560000 - Love this quote from John Wooden!

https://twitter.com/oracleblogs/status/463718511500873729 - Do you use ORACHK?

Conference News:



https://twitter.com/collab_oaug/status/463742714916651008 - If you are a member of OAUG, the slides from Collaborate are now available!

https://twitter.com/centraloaug/status/463697161390026752 - Join the Central States OAUG group!

https://twitter.com/martinberx/status/463379244127879168 - I couldn't agree more with Martin!

https://twitter.com/kylehhailey/status/462337726344212480 - Oracle wait event documentation shared by Kyle Hailey!


Social Media/DevOps:

N/A - Nothing this week.

Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Receivables LOV shows inactive values

The MOS article "List of Values (LOV) in the Receivables Interface Lines Table Shows Inactive Tax Codes Values" found in note ID 1625874.1 isn't just for R12, as it pertains specifically to 11.5.10.2, but it has a general lesson for us.  When dealing with LOVs, one needs to make sure what data does not show just as well as what data DOES show up.  We had an issue with this the other day, as the form LOV was not respecting the end date placed on the value set which drove the LOV.

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Finding Solaris OS Release and Kernel Information

Have you ever wanted to find out more about the Solaris OS that your system is on, like the release and kernel details?  Look no further than the document "How to Determine the Release and Default Kernel Version in the Solaris Operating System" on the My Oracle Support site in note 1002239.1 for all the details.

Monday, May 5, 2014

Conference Update: OAUG Connection Point - AppsTech 2014

Last year I was lucky enough to be selected to speak at the inaugural OAUG Connection Point - AppsTech conference in Pittsburgh.  This year?  I submitted several abstracts and it's déjà vu all over again, as I've been selected to speak at the conference this year!!  I hope to see you there in July, for what is sure to be another great line up of speakers and information for the attendees!  I'll continue to share with you about the conference as we get closer to the date, but right now I'm on Cloud 9.  :}

5/6 EDIT:  Added links and labels to the post and minor change to the conference name as "Connection Point" is correct but "ConnectionPoint" is not.  I'm picky, sue me!

Sunday, May 4, 2014

R12: GL Secondary Ledger Conversion Level Change

In today's installment of "did you know" for R12, the short article "GL Secondary Ledger Conversion Level Change" in note 1614737.1 stirs up more questions than answers for me.  First off you can't enable a conversion of a secondary ledger once disabled, but that makes me wonder why you would want to disable it and what the business implications are if you get to the point you need it enabled again.

Saturday, May 3, 2014

Weekend Learning: Useful R12.2 Documents

There are SO many things in note 1585889.1 on MOS "Useful 12.2 Documents For Customers And ATG Support Engineers" that I can't even begin to explain it.  I'm making this a favorite in MOS so I can keep tabs on this to stay on top of changes coming down the road with the various versions of R12.2 as I know that we will be upgrading someday even though we JUST got done with an upgrade.  I would rather have things in the back of my mind for when we start planning, and keep this around for handy quick reference later.

Friday, May 2, 2014

Weekend Learning: OS Watcher

If you want to start getting deeper into the internals of the OS your Oracle products are running on, you need to take a while this weekend to read the "OS Watcher User's Guide" on MOS via note 1531223.1.  This was a tool mentioned during the Hotsos Symposium in March, so I've been on the lookout for an opportunity to learn more about it!

Thursday, May 1, 2014

R12: Changes in GL_DAILY_RATES table

Catching up on more changes in R12, note ID 1611110.1 "Why there is the change in GL_DAILY_RATES.STATUS_CODE from 'C' to 'O' after an upgrade to R12?" shows why the status is different depending on what actions are taken to create the items.  Additionally, you can check out an old note 290666.1 to learn more about these status codes.