Monday, November 7, 2016

COLLABORATE17: Accepted!

This year I had a lot going on at COLLABORATE16, and next year seems to be going the same way as my new presentation that was for the ConnectionPoint - Apps Tech conference was selected for COLLABORATE17!  OAUG's COLLABORATE conferences are always jam-packed with information and great networking opportunities so make sure to check out the registration page and sign up before the rates change!!

Friday, October 14, 2016

12c: Updates to Fast-Refresh Materialized Views with joins are lost after DB upgrade

An interesting article on My Oracle Support, "Updates Lost to Fast-Refresh Materialized Views with Joins After Upgrade to 12c" from document ID 2186836.1, tells us that an upgrade from 12.1.0.1 to 12.1.0.2 can negatively impact your fast-refresh materialized views with joins!  It seems that the system "covers up" the problem by having the last update date updated while the data does not get updated!!

Monday, October 10, 2016

The Return of the King!

No I am not talking about Elvis, J. R. R. Tolkien, or even Peter Jackson!  It has been a few months since I last posted, but I am back and ready to reclaim my throne of being a leading expert on the Oracle e-Business Suite application!!  In the last 6 months I have been thinking quite a bit about the future of the blog, and how best to deliver content, but I have not made any changes or decisions right now beyond the fact that I do not think I can do another 365 days straight of posting.  I am going to target 3-5 posts per week, and if I meet the target, or miss it, I am not going to let it discourage me going forward into the next week!

Monday, August 8, 2016

R12 Purchasing: PO lines are validated even though they were cancelled

On R12.1.1 "Canceled PO Lines Are Getting Validated During PO Approval" in Purchasing per My Oracle Support note ID 2169842.1 when at least one line is cancelled from a PO that has already been approved!  The good news is that there is a patch, and that you can design a testing scenario to validate that this issue does not come back in the future!

Sunday, August 7, 2016

Weekend Learning: Exadata Database Machine and Exadata Storage Server versions

Have you ever asked yourself what the latest and greatest versions of Exadata components are?  So have I!  Well we are all in luck, as MOS document 888828.1 for the note "Exadata Database Machine and Exadata Storage Server Supported Versions" has all of the information you would ever need about Exadata versions!!

Saturday, August 6, 2016

Weekend Learning: Oracle Key Vault - Master Note

Are you responsible for the security of your Oracle installation or the EBS application?  Do you know what Oracle Key Vault is, or how it can enhance your current security measures?  Find out more from MOS note 2120572.1 for the article "Master Note For Oracle Key Vault" so you can research!

Friday, August 5, 2016

Drastic increase in blog traffic!

As you may remember when we celebrated the blog's fourth anniversary, I reached 100,000 views and am approaching 1,000 posts, which is why last month I was SO surprised to get over 10,000 hits with 85% of those coming from Russia alone!  I wonder if other people are experiencing this type of traffic increase as well, and I also wonder if that type of pattern will be maintained going forward!

Thursday, August 4, 2016

R11i/R12 Payables: What data does the table PO_HISTORY_VENDORS hold?

If you are on R11i or R12 check out article "What is the purpose of PO_HISTORY_VENDORS?" from My Oracle Support via note ID 2169186.1 to find out what data the table holds and how it relates to purging programs!

Wednesday, August 3, 2016

R12.1: Enabling TLS in Oracle EBS

Read up on MOS article 376700.1 to learn how to start working on "Enabling TLS in Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1" for your environment today so you can get away from SSL as many third party vendors are going away from SSL due to all of the issues like POODLE.

Tuesday, August 2, 2016

ZFSSA: Network Data Management Protocol (NDMP) backups can fail after configuration backup starts

Check out My Oracle Support note "All ZFS Storage Appliance (ZFSSA) Software Network Data Management Protocol (NDMP) Backups Will Fail After a Configuration Backup Has Been Initiated" via document ID 2165712.1 where the NDMP daemon needs to be restarted in certain cases!

Monday, August 1, 2016

OOW16 Rejection!

In past years I have been rejected by the Oracle OpenWorld, and last year I was positive I would get selected, but this year I was even MORE positive I would get selected yet it was not to be!  Maybe next year, since I just gave my AppsTech presentation, which was really well received and pushed me a bit so if I add some more polish it I could get accepted for OOW17!!

Monday, July 11, 2016

R12.1.3 Assets: Unsecured books show up in LOV

Did you know that Asset books that are not secured show up in the application?  That is exactly what My Oracle Support document "All Asset Books Appear in the List Of Values in FA After Doing Security By Book Setup for Some Asset Books" via note ID 1582935.1 teaches us as the key here is not all books have been secured, and the unsecured books will show up in the LOV while in the other books!

Thursday, July 7, 2016

Register for OAUG's Connection Point - AppsTech conference today!

I may have mentioned that I am presenting at OAUG's Connection Point - AppsTech conference, and it is never too late to register for it!  This will be an online only conference so you do not need to travel at all, and you can check out the great lineup for the event too!!

Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Assets: How can you reverse an already amortized adjustment?

Look no further than My Oracle Support note "How To Reverse An Amortized Adjustment?" via document ID 1251976.1 for the short steps on how to do this for 11.5.10.2 and after (which I will assume applies for R12 as well)!

Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Happy (belated) Birthday to the blog!!

Four years, and a week, ago I started this blog and interestingly enough exactly four years ago I made my second post too!  What has changed in that time?  I have finally hit 100,000 views, I am almost at 1,000 posts, and I even posted every day for 365 days in a row!  I have presented many times over the past few years, and I have another coming up next month as well!!

I am looking forward to what else is coming during the next year, and now that my newest presentation has been finalized and approved, I will be able to spend more time with the blog.  There are some plans I have in mind for the blog, so next year it may not look the same, or even be the same, but I hope you'll join me on where ever the journey takes me!

Tuesday, June 7, 2016

R12.1.3 Receivables: Autoinvoice Import fails with APP-AR-11526/ORA-04063 errors

Did you know that in R12.1.3 the "AutoInvoice Import Fails With Error: APP-AR-11526: ORA-04063: package body "APPS.ARP_PROCESS_RETURNS" has errors"?  Well looking at My Oracle Support document 2143556.1 it appears that there are mismatched versions causing this, and the required patches are listed in the document!

Monday, June 6, 2016

Presenting again!! OAUG Connection Point - AppsTech 2016

Hi everybody!!  Have you been wondering what I have been up to lately?  Well, the cat is out of the bag now with the presenter list for the OAUG Connection Point - AppsTech 2016 conference now online and my brand new presentation "R12: Reducing the data footprint of Oracle E-Business Suite" is listed!!  This is a great honor as this was by invite only, and this project is the one I alluded too earlier in the year in my Happy New Years post which I have been doing work on for quite some time but now I feel confident that I have enough material for a new presentation!  Do not miss this opportunity to learn from a lot of experts in application technology by registering today!!

Monday, May 23, 2016

JDBC connection throws ORA-01489 error when querying

Even though article "ORA-01489 When Running Query" in My Oracle Support document 2141406.1 is about JDBC, the underlying issue is likely one you could see outside of a JDBC environment so take a moment to read up on this error and find out why it is happening!

Sunday, May 22, 2016

Weekend Learning: Configuring the Workflow Mailer for a Proxy Server

On Oracle EBS R12.1.3 you can follow the MOS document "How To Configure the Mailer to Connect To a Proxy Server" via article ID 2139133.1 and even if you do not plan on changing your configuration you may want to see what is required.  This article even has reference to the additional step required if you have moved on to R12.2 and want to do this!

Saturday, May 21, 2016

Weekend Learning: Transparent Data Encryption and Disaster Recovery

Want to learn more about Transparent Data Encryption?  How about what you need to know if you are using it in a Disaster Recovery situation?  Look no further than Lukasz Feldman's post on LinkedIn!

Thursday, May 19, 2016

Corruption in TEMP tablespace on 11.2.0.4 RAC system

There is a bug where if parallelism is turned on you could encounter the scenario described in "ORA-01578 in temp tablespace on RAC" from My Oracle Support document ID 2140124.1 across the nodes so really your only options are to turn parallelism off entirely!

Wednesday, May 18, 2016

11i Assets: Rolling back a journal entry fails due to batch status

If you are still on 11.5.9 or even 11.5.10.2 you will want to read the MOS note "Rollback Journal Entries Fails with Journal Entry Status Message" from article ID 452583.1 to learn why you cannot roll the journal entry back and the simple action you can take to get around this error message.

Tuesday, May 17, 2016

12c: KGLH0 process is causing Shared Pool ORA-04031 errors and latch contention

Are you looking to upgrade your Oracle database to 12.1.0.2 soon?  You might want to read "Bug 20370037 - Shared Pool from KGLH0 constantly growing causing ORA-04031 and Latch contention" from MOS note 2119923.1 because there seems to be several well known bugs with the KGLH0 process and this document has steps for different ways to mitigate this.  What does that mean?  If there are a lot of ways to encounter this in the system, then you need to prepare for encountering it so deploy the upgrade in QA and stress test to see if you run into this!!

Monday, May 16, 2016

R12.1.3 Payables: Invoice Validation program has performance issue

For the article "R12: AP: Invoice Validation program (APPRVL): Performance Issue - Insufficient Parameters" on My Oracle Support via document ID 2138625.1 you need to read up on the attached bug as well since it appears this dynamic query is actually being designed to run for an excessive amount of time if you do not provide an invoice date range.  That means that just entering an Operating Unit parameter does not actually limit the query as much as you would think, and Oracle Development has closed the bug as "not a bug" even though it really sounds like a bug!

Friday, May 13, 2016

Hyperion Essbase: Setup for automatically disconnecting users

Sometimes I post about things for your toolbox, and other times I post about investigating your own setup; and sometimes I post something from both columns like tonight!  Do you know how long users can be connected to your Essbase server?  If you read the MOS article "Specify when Users are Automatically Disconnected from an Essbase Server" from note 1054448.1 you will AND you will learn how to tell when running with Shared Services too!

Thursday, May 12, 2016

R12.2 Procurement: How to replace seeded FAQ

Check out MOS document ID 2132795.1 for "How can we replace seeded FAQs in iProcurement home page in Purchasing News Section with Business specific FAQs." for the official Oracle documentation on how to customize the PORFAQSS.htm file to fit your needs!

Wednesday, May 11, 2016

Linux OS: Logwatch crontab is sending several e-mails per day instead of one

If you are on a Linux OS then make sure that you check out the article "Crontab Called Logwatch Sends More Email Then Expected" on My Oracle Support via note ID 2114498.1 because there is a very simple reason this is happening and can be easily rectified!

Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Windows Vista: Support ends in April 2017

You should be aware that product lifecycles which Oracle does not directly control CAN impact support for Oracle products.  In this case, Microsoft has set the end of life for Windows Vista to be April 2017 and that means that Oracle will be supporting the EBS product from a historical perspective so you need to get off that product and onto newer Windows platforms which are currently slated to be supported past April 2017.

Monday, May 9, 2016

State of the Blog!

Hi everybody!  After a not so short break I am going to work towards getting back in the groove of posting on a more regular basis, starting with another State of the Union-type post to review where I am today compared to the previous post around 2 1/2 years ago and what I want to be doing with the blog in general!

A few years ago I was excited by hitting 5,500 total views and now I am 90,000 views past that and almost at 100,000 in total!  That boggles my mind and amazing that I have put up another 700 posts to be getting close to 1,000 total posts and that is something I never thought I would be saying when starting the blog.  The stats of the views and posts here just highlight what I have been doing, but do not focus on the future and that is what I need to refocus on going forward!

The mission of the blog going forward is to deliver knowledge for Oracle e-Business Suite applications on a regular basis for SysAdmins in the Application Support and Operations space.  It seems like a simple mission statement, but now I need to go a step further and outline for myself what that means and how I can deliver on it.  Those are the types of things I have been noodling on for the past few weeks, but I have realized that I cannot stop posting while I try to align the future of the blog, so be on the lookout for changes over the next few months!!

Friday, April 15, 2016

COLLABORATE16: Day 4

OAUG Database SIG Meeting - Various

Bylaws came up and were ratified and then the other 45 minutes were talking about issues like licensing around In-Memory and an idea to have Oracle give out free passes for the option to see if it works for customers.
Make sure to sign up on the SIG website http://dbsig.communities.oaug.org/ if you want to get on the mailing list!

Perl - A DBA and Developers Best Friend - Arjen Visser - founder of Dbvisit.com

Awk didn't have what he wanted so he created his own programming language!
Search.cpan.org - Perl app store
Interpreted - not compiled, get under the hood!
Cryptic, hard to master (true for most languages), doesn't have parameters (can get around this), doesn't look pretty GUI!
Use it for shell programming, probably not a new FB app.
Perl motto: there's more than one way to do it
Ten slides in 20 minutes to teach us the basics of Perl, and I think he did it!  I really got a lot out of this session and look to take it back with me to work as a new tool in my toolbox!
CPAN module File::Spec makes perl portable
Programming Perl by Larry Wall is the book Arjen used to learn and is highly recommended as Mr. Wall invented Perl!!
Dbvisit.com/content/freeTechGuides/FreeSpace - Base code for our homework!
Perl.org is the resource you need to know!

Near Zero Downtime Upgrades - Thomas Meeks @Oracle

I LEFT!!!  Why?  Because the session details indicated that this was going to focus on GoldenGate technology but the title slide said it was focused on backup strategy for JD Edwards which we do not have!

IoT Use Cases for Oracle E Business Suite - Samir Rathore w/Hitachi

Industry 4.0 - connecting physical to digital!
IoT is the transformational interconnection of devices and sensors.
Consumer IoT and Industrial IoT but the impact of IIoT is far more than CIoT.
Major obstacle of IoT is the amount of data involved!
IoT- IT disconnect - there were some slides from Oracle on this which seemed odd but were pretty useful to help get the point across!
What is happening in the middle?  Contextualization, filtering, action -comes from business analyst.
Use cases - operation management improvements, asset and material tracking, equipment condition based Preventative maintenance, real time asset health monitoring, procurement automation - these were pretty clear and had good examples!
Smart Logistics & Asset Management Solution from Oracle and Hitachi
EBS is in the Cloud!  This seemed to surprise him, but I am not that surprised and I do not know why as I assumed it was already there!

Formula One Performance on Exadata - Gold Standards & Best Practices, Tips & Tricks - @JimTheWhyGuy & @ExaOracleTariq

Oracle Problem Solving and Troubleshooting Handbook - an upcoming book that I think I will be ordering!
ioug.org/cloud - go sign up if you are interested!
Performance tuning approaches - TOP DOWN vs. BOTTOM UP, evaluate approach, most cases a hybrid approach works best!
Tune the waits!  The three As of tuning AWR, ASH, ADDM!
Use both moving and static baselines.
Keep copies of key files.
Track changes - Resource Manager/IORM can make or break your system!
TFA - what's that?  Packages up info to Oracle and supersedes ExaWatcher/RACchk
Use small page cache
1070954.1 exachk can be run via daemon!
Use Real Application Testing to destruction - find out how much your system can take!
Tablespaces should be auto allocated
Power, partitioning, parallelization - The three Ps of Oracle performance!
Use VARCHAR2 instead of CHAR.
LONG datatype is NOT supported by HCC!
Keep optimizer statistics fresh!
cell single block physical reads - this wait event is similar to db file sequential reads on non-Exadata systems.
Set PARALLEL on tables to force Smart Scans for large tables!
Global Hash Partitioned Indexes - need to look into this!
Storage indexes - on storage cells!
There is a v$ table for what is offloadable so need to find it!
Make indexes invisible to see how performance changes before removing - great story!
Can usually get rid of 30-40% of indexes in Exadata but not blindly.
INTERdatabase RM - Instance Caging, IORM, DBRM
INTRA - IORM, DBRM, Quality of Service, Parallel, Statement Quering

Thursday, April 14, 2016

COLLABORATE16: Day 3

OAUG E-Business Applications Technology Stack SIG Meeting - Various +
Kevin Hudson, Elke Phelps and Steven Chan were part of the panel from Oracle!

http://ebsatssig.communities.oaug.org/ - Here is the website for the SIG and it should have the presentation uploaded!
WebLogic is made up of the following components: Node Manager, Domain, Administration Server, Managed Server, Deployments
New structure to find the log files that you need to know!
Change of the Node Manager and Admin passwords - done during install of R12.2, console (not recommended).
After using FNDCPASS/AFPASSWD you need to change password in WLS Datasource, or txkManageDBConnectionPool.pl
Elke Phelps said that AFPASSWD is recommended and the utilities use different encryption algorithms.
Be familiar with the AD scripts for managing WebLogic!
AppsDBA needs to know WebLogic pwd, could be an issue for SOX compliance.
Oracle working to make AutoConfig, other things, easier to manage for DBAs!
Read the Concepts Guide, and ALL the other Guides too - DO NOT SKIM THEM!!
100s of SRs per early adopter for R12.2, many bad SRs were put in by experienced DBAs that didn't read the new Guides and assumed they knew how to do it because they have been doing it for 20 years!
Does the R12.2.4 apps password change use FNDCPASS or AFPASSWD?  The panel did not know, but Elke will give us the information so stay tuned!
1905535.1
Soon to be Java 1.9, but that could be next year kind of soon.
Security, stability, performance in _0 Java releases, major releases give new features.
New tech in the labs to replace JRE because of Chrome, Windows 10, and soon Mozilla due to the core APIs they use, so there is a "Java webstart" being tested - will be a minimum version required!
Is webstart going to be installed on the desktop like J-Init?  No!
Query the certified database, let Steven know if not in there!
Don't need to uncompress before upgrading!

OAUG Upgrade SIG Meeting - Various (and Me!)

I am now the Program Director for the SIG - Yay a promotion (I thought I was the Secretary!)
12.1.3 fees waived for Extended support until 2019, but Extended means there is no obligation from Oracle to certify new platforms.
12.2 Premier until 2021, no Extended planned!
1495337.1
1494891.1
1583092.1
Do I have to enable EBR for my 3rd party schema?  No, BUT it may need to be EBR aware!
There was a bit more covered here, but I'm going to make you join the LinkedIn group to get it later!  :}

Ready to Start a BLOG? - @erik_benner

Look at comment choices - His opinion is moderating comments, which is kind of opposite from what Craig said the other day.
3-400 hits a day is normal for him!
If it is a chore, you'll stop - I can attest to that!
What do I blog about?
Be positive - great, and overlooked, tip!
Do you need a domain?  Should I use a blog hosting company?
Good blogging habits: formatting, edit your screen shots, be focused - can always be multi-part, read your comments, take your time, have fun!
Editors to blog with online?  Online, built into the blog engine, offline no blogging for you!
Editors to blog with offline?  Microsoft Live Writer!  This was awesome to see in action AND he showed the connection options and it hooks into Blogger/Blogspot!
Maximizing SEO - Yoast SEO plugin for WP & Google Analytics - entry page, what people are searching for - Both of these are making me rethink my previous choices and how to maximize what I can do going forward.

Oaktable World: Performance Feature Enhancements in Enterprise Manager 13c with DB12c - @DBAKelvar - Kellyn Pot'Vin-Gorman

AWR/ASH architecture review
rdbms/admin/awrrpt.sql, ashrpt.sql, awrsqlrpt.sql, awrinfo.sql, awrddrpt.sql, awrgrpt.sql
Do not mess with underscore parameters!
In-Memory support, like with SQL Monitor reports, AWR
OEM can run on iPad now that it doesn't run on Flash!
Average Active Sessions - new ASH Analytics!
Top ADDR findings now in ASH.
Top TEN foreground now instead of 5, CPU should be on top…to a point…
IO profile
New sections - GoldenGate, Xstreams, Resource Stats
Wait event alert 10 min sample, then example to show slices of CPU use - great example and along the lines of my hourly wait event script!
SQL Monitor, is it done yet? Did it use parallel? What important data do we know?
Exadata shows offload percentage, In-Memory info too if on
v$sql_monitor

EBS 12.2.x – Deep Dive into Online Patching Feature - @kaiglittenberg

Adop cycle - Prepare, Apply, Finalize, Cutover (users offline), Cleanup - users online during 4 phases!
EBR is one of the most important parts of R12.2!
Run Edition VIEW and Patch Edition VIEW - need to change development.
DBA_OBJECTS_AE / DBA_SOURCE_AE - all editions view with column edition_name
DBA_EDITIONS
GV$SESSIONS -> column SESSION_EDITION_ID
2 adop phase=prepare phases because 2nd one applies what was patched to the 1st file system.
Make adop work faster with workers=20, if you don't put in cm_wait=10 for cutover phase the CM will come down immediately, and don't use less than 5 because of odd behavior!
!!Adop kills all DB sessions in cutover phase!!
Adop phase=cleanup cleanup_mode=full followed by adop phase=fs_clone.
1366187.1 - all the log files
Cannot run adadmin in run fs while adop cycle is open, but can do it in patch fs!
Ad_adop_sessions
Ad_adop_session_patches
AD/TXK delta.7 - Has a lot of good changes, even talked about in the TechStack SIG!
Ad_zd.get_edition();
Ad_zd.set_edition('RUN');
Can I test my code in the patch fs?  No!
Admin and transaction tasks get slower with too many editions, around 20-30 editions at least so clean it up constantly

Getting Optimal Performance From Oracle E-Business Suite - Samer Barakat with Oracle

2125596.1 - The entire presentation is listed here at this MOS note, so go there because there were quite a few note IDs that I missed because he usually gives this talk in 2 hours so he was going pretty fast!

Application

1594274.1
1617461.1
244040.1
Reduce load on the DB server - avoid blind queries, provide selective criteria in find windows/LOVs so they can use indexes!
Minimize network traffic and form open times!
Size middle tier for concurrency - JVMs and Forms both!
40 MB is average memory used by each frmweb session - interesting, did not know that!
E22950 Guide for sizing
1905593.1
He had something on a slide about PCP and not automatically failover based on your setup, which I need to re-read and send over to our DBAs because I think our CMs need manual intervention here too!
Manage CM jobs lifecycle, CM Managers, CM Schedules, CM State Data!
842850.1 - I shared that in my presentation!
1375769.1
1616827.1
Inode and new environment APPLLDM
Concurrent manager reports have a new parameter SHELF_LIFE to tell what purge schedule to use!!
1583902.1
As in the previous session 20 editions is the threshold and what is actually slowing down in the system?  HWM issues!
blogs.oracle.com/stevenChan/entry/e_business_suite_technology_learning

Database

396009.1
216205.1
244040.1
744769.1
1392497.1
Only SGA benefits from Huge pages, not PGA (I think for just Exadata)
Pin top SQL if needed.
Check for cursor leaks!
Gather Application Stats!
1586374.1 - gathering stats
FND_STATS.LOAD_XCLUD_TAB - Allows you to exclude a table from being gathered and this should be useful for us because we do have a table that gets purged and then has stats gathered on it at the wrong time while empty!
Gather dictionary stats after major changes!
341788.1
1373500.1
810394.1
2029173.1
1311528.1
1129203.1
1362445.1
1499132.1
1633952.1
986690.1
1472716.1 - hot files in ExaLogic
1623879.1
1594274.1
1392527.1
1965343.1 In-Memory Advisor
2025309.1
Transactional, transient, reference/seed - different types of data!
FACT: More than 80% of data is inactive!!
Purge Portal - Make sure you know about this and use it!
752322.1
554539.1 - 200+ tables partitioned out of the box!
1110648.1

Wednesday, April 13, 2016

COLLABORATE16: Day 2 (and lots of Me!)

Database Security - Case Study for Enterprise License Features - @aprilcsims

Oracle External Password Store - something worth looking into so you do not need to put passwords in clear text or pass them around.
Blogs.oracle.com/upgrade
Some features in Advanced Security Option now moved to Enterprise License (and free) because of Cloud encryption needs.
271825.1 - Passwords "Is the password encrypted when I logon"
Wireshark can see scripts in plain text if there is no encryption!
Database auditing - table privileges, system privileges, logon/logoff trigger- AUDIT SESSION WHENEVER NOT SUCCESSFUL is the base you need to start with.
dba_stmt_audit_opts - a new table I did not know about!
1299033.1, 553225.1
LogRotate on Linux - this might be worthwhile for our environment!
Open Source product LogSearch lets you collate log files for analysis later.
12c - DBMS_PRIVILEGE_CAPTURE
Use orapki to create the wallet with -auto_login_local so it can't be transferred to another server!
1114599.1 testing the wallet on another server
Sqlnet.ora parameter WALLET_LOCATION
Dead Connection Detection - zero length packets being dropped by the new Cisco router!
Some Unified Auditing is on with a fresh 12c DB installation so check v$options!

Blogging: The How and Why to Propel Your Career - Craig@orapub.com

You may ask yourself "why are you going to a session on blogging if you already blog?" and that would be a great question but I think there is always room for improvement in all things so I went to several sessions during the conference on this topic to try and pick up new tips or tricks that can make me deliver better content to my readers.

Craig redesigned his website to focus on Oracle performance because he had a site that was not focused at all and it was difficult to decide what to do.
The plan: making the best decision, getting started, what to write about, tuning your blog.
Are you interested in blogging?  You can download this from orapub.com soon!
Blogging takes time, so WHY do it?  Help others, help yourself, career goals - OracleACE, independent consultant, business owner, shift in career path, career development.
A blog is your living resume
"Inbound marketing"
What you can expect: perceived as an authority, develop a following, think a question through to completion, become a better writer and communicator, increased conference participation, develop thicker skin, encouragement (from readers) is a life giving.
Turned comments off - this was interesting to me, and made me think a bit!
Define your objectives: be honest about your market and impress them, do not do it just to be famous.
Measure your objectives: views, clicks and downloads, email volume, conference invites, career objectives, recognition, registrations for on-site training, memberships, consulting work.
Purposefully design your blog: reflection of you, aligns with objectives, easy to read, easy to be found, easy to migrate, easy to change format, easy to build content.
Choosing a platform: hubspot, wordpress, blogger, build your own.
Learn to create basic graphics - a good tip that I took away, and something I have heard in another arena and an obvious weakness in my armor.
How often to post?  Once a week, keep content size and scope very small 3:1 rule, break up larger topics into a series, mix "how it works" to "how to do" - this ws pretty interesting too, because when I fail to post I see it as a failure but Craig seems to be saying to reduce the amount of content so you do not burn out.
What to write about?  Watch and listen to what others are interested about, write what you have already written about, what interests you, what other people are wondering about (Cloud anybody?)
Tuning your blog, pictures, sign up, latest/popular posts, charts, video - all great tips to take away!
SEO: be easy to be found, be the answer to the question, create a title as if solving a problem, use Google to suggest titles, repeat key words in your post, content is king - don't try to fool Google.
Make it enjoyable, spacing easier to read!
Search "inbound Marcus" for an ebook about the topic.

Analyzing Oracle Workflow Data for Increased System Performance - Me!

Right after lunch can be a difficult spot to be in, but I was pleasantly surprised when about 20 people showed up and seemed to be enjoying the session!  They even asked some really good questions which should give me some good ideas for the next version of this presentation.

OAUG Workflow SIG Meeting - Various (and Me!)

Check out the website http://workflowsig.communities.oaug.org/ for the presentation that John Peters put together!
We also had a visit from Oracle and they demoed the Mobile approval solution which was great!  I am thinking about trying to lead a project to get this going at work, that is how great it looks!!
Oh, and I am a Board Member of this SIG as well now!  I do not know what title or role, but I am there!

E-Business Suite R12: Application Lessons Learned for Support and Implementers - Me!

Even though there were about 100 people that had showed interest in this in the application, I was REALLY surprised when I had around 40 people show up for this session!  I did get time to add some new information to the presentation, even something I have not blogged about yet, and was able to cover all of the content in 46 minutes (obviously shooting for 45 so I was happy) with a lot of people writing MOS notes down or making notes about some of the project lessons that came from our experience (and did not have MOS notes)!

Deep Dive into the Internals of a SELECT Statement - Michaelwcunningham.com

I was really interested to get a lot more on this topic after the session I had the day before that was all talking about finding out when a parse is hard, soft, soft hard, or harder soft, if you are having issues running a SQL statement and while I did not get as much out of it as I thought, I really was inspired to start digging deeper into the internals!

Cursorttrace level 580, address <hash_value from v$sql>
Oradebug setmypid
Oradebug set library_cache 4
obj$, tab$, ind$, seg$, objauth$ - Data Dictionary information
10053 trace shows a lot of this data
ALTER SESSION SET EVENTS 'IMMEDIATE TRACE NAME TREEDUMP LEVEL 20679
ALTER SYSTEM DUMP DATAFILE 4 BLOCK 8531
x$bh is the buffer header structure

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

COLLABORATE16: Pre-Day + Day 1

After weather delays leaving Phoenix, due to thunderstorms over Las Vegas, I missed a few sessions I wanted to attend on Sunday but I luckily was able to attend fellow Upgrade SIG Art Dowd and then make the Meeting of the Members!  On Day 1 there was a lot to take in, so that has a much fuller download to share with you, but I am going to have to skim and give you the high level takeaways or MOS notes you should look up later - if you are an OAUG member look these presentations up later!  Not a member but interested in some of the things I posted?  Change that and sign up!

Upgrading to R12.2 - Lessons Learned and Tips That You Need to Know to be Successful - Art Dowd - o2works.com

Great point that there are 2 types of projects, technical and full "business-aligned", and there is an 8 piece plan to build a repeatable process for both of them.
269.1
461705.1
aaplcust.txt 889733.1
At least 3 iterations of upgrade before go live.
Add 50% time to previous 11i project for R12.
416699.1
12.2.2 is the Holy Grail of patching with 2 file systems - 1 run, 1 patch.
SYSTEM and SEED tablespaces double!
Going to the cloud?  Need to adopt SaaS and PaaS, and a full reimplementation.

General Session - Trends & Technologies Shaping Your Future

The big takeaway here was only about 20% of companies are going to the Cloud, and most of the rest are not due to security and cost reasons.

Linux/UNIX Tools for the Oracle DBA - Tim Gorman - @timothyjgorman

Why CLI?  GUI not supported, vendor support, automation and scripting.
Unixtools.com is a good resource.
Sar is really underneath what you see in OEM/TOAD!
Mpstat gives you information per CPU, can show a busy system for instance XTTS is single threaded no matter how parallel you make it - interesting!
Uptime and w give you uptime and user stats.
jstat shows JVM memory usage displays.
Dtrace.org is a free tool.

Architecting for the Cloud: Best Practices - Zeeshan Baig - @IamZeeshanBaig

What is Cloud computing?  gMail has been SaaS for a while we just didn't realize it at the time!
Hybrid, private, public, community - different cloud deployment models!
Core concepts for Cloud, elasticity - allows you to scale up and out!
Business benefits of cloud - low up front costs, in time infrastructure, efficient resource utilization, usage based cost, reduce time to market.
Technical benefits of Cloud - automation, auto-scaling, proactive scaling, efficient development lifecycle, DR and business continuity.
Design for failure - remove single of failure, design for automatic recovery, graceful failures, consistent backup and recovery strategy, don't fix - start a new instance, avoid stateful sessions.
Decouple components!
Elasticity + parallelization = WIN

Productivity Enhancing SQL*Plus Scripting Techniques - Bert Scalzo - @bertscalzo

set linesize 512 produces a larger file than set linesize 256!
set trimout on is different when going to the screen.
Do not forget about the BREAK or the COMPUTE commands.
Dynamic scripting is the most important technique where you can have SQL producing other SQL to run!!

Oracle Database Networking Basics - Eric Siglin - @ESiglin

What is a DB?  That is where we start, and if you do not know the answer go look it up.  :}
Access challenges - must be connected, logging into the host is impractical, security challenges with DB.
What is a client?  Anything that connects to a DB, even another DB!
Two ways to register performance stats: response time and throughput.
Shutting the listener down does nothing to current connections, only new connections - important to know!
Creating and destroying database session is one of the biggest things to ask the DB to do!
docs.oracle.com - Database Net Services Administrator's Guide (Part I: Understanding Oracle Net), Database High Availability Overview

OAUG E-Business Suite SysAdmin SIG Meeting - Various

Drew Chiaiese and David Heisler from Oracle joined us!
We went over and adopted the bylaws for the group and then I was put forward for Secretary of the SIG!
432.1
1939637.1
1584210.1
1581299.1 - 12.2 Information Center
1633974.2
793436.2 - Hot Topics
1580100.1 - MOS Accreditation

Arizona/New Mexico OAUG - Kickoff Meeting - Various (including Me!)

This was a really positive meeting!!  There were individuals in attendance which had run groups in both states before, so I think we will have a lot of good information about what works and does not so going forward we will be more successful!

The Bad One In Your Crop - SQL Tuning Analysis For DBAs - Martin Klier - @MartinKlierDBA

If you can do it, submit abstracts for the DOAG conference in Germany, but even if you do not do that make sure to follow the hashtag #DOAUG2016 later this year!
SQL -> Syntax -> Semantic -> Library Cache check -> Optimizer -> Execution is a hard parse!
Soft parse avoids the Optimizer because it has been found in the Library Cache.
Great story about bad weather affecting DB performance, and something I have seen happen in person (not with bad weather, we never have that in Arizona).
Bind peeking is a harder soft parse.
Before you tune, analysis is mandatory!
Starts with "What's the problem?"
His style is to simplify your toolset by using AWR/ statspack, SQL*Plus, SQLci, SQL Developer, dbms_xplan.display_cursor; being suspicious; looking thoroughly; having situational awareness; using intuition (over time you will get the right approach 80%); going down to the second, one hour has 3600 seconds which is a static and common measurement.
Finding the culprit (unfortunately this is where I had to step out and take a phone call, but I cannot to download the presentation and finish it!)

Monday, April 11, 2016

COLLABORATE16: How to follow along with the home game!

I've been quite busy the past few nights so no posts about what I've attended just yet, BUT if you want to play along at home you can always follow the #C16LV Twitter hashtag at home and get great content and commentary from the community while they are attending!  Hopefully I'll have time tomorrow night to transcribe my notes a bit for you to give you a few days of interesting factoids I picked up here and there!

Sunday, April 10, 2016

My COLLABORATE16 schedule!

Are you going to OAUG's COLLABORATE16?  Awesome, me too!!  Here is my schedule of events, and I'm sure you'll be able to find me at many other times and places too.  :}

Sunday

Meeting of the OAUG Members - 4:45 PM - South Seas F - Obviously this is something for all the OAUG members and I'll be there, so it might be a good chance to catch me today!

Monday

Arizona/New Mexico OAUG Kickoff Meeting - 3:15 PM - Mariners AB - I'm the Chairman of this brand new Geo, and tomorrow is our first real meeting (outside of the several phone planning meetings we've had over the past few months)!

Tuesday

Analyzing Oracle Workflow Data for Increased System Performance - 1:00 PM - South Seas A - This is the standard bearer, but the first time I'm bringing it to COLLABORATE!

E-Business Suite R12: Application Lessons Learned for Support and Implementers - 3:30 PM - Breakers B - A "Best of COLLABORATE" from last year makes a return, maybe with a few new surprises in store!

Wednesday

OAUG Upgrade SIG Meeting - 9:15 AM - Reef F - I'm a Board Member of this SIG and will be helping to moderate the panel discussion!

Wednesday, March 23, 2016

R12.1.3 Workflow: Notification preferences are being set to DISABLED

The My Oracle Support article ID 1588209.1 for "Notification Preference Gets Set To DISABLED" appears to be from 2012 or 2013, but appears to still be relevant as there are several patches which need to be applied AND you can find a pattern in the Notification Mailer log files which can be monitored for!

Tuesday, March 22, 2016

R12.1.3 Assets: YTD depreciation is calculated wrong at year end while posting impairment

On EBS R12.1.3 when you get to year-end you might have to find out that Assets cannot be completed due to "YTD Depreciation Is Calculated Wrongly When Posting Impairment in the End of the Year" from MOS note ID 2119515.1 so why not apply the patch or test now just to make sure you do not find yourself in this situation right at year-end?

Monday, March 21, 2016

Oracle Linux: Windows AD or LDAP server cannot authenticate due to TLS error

While the My Oracle Support article "OL 6 & 7 - Unable to Authenticate to Windows AD or LDAP Server "Could not start TLS encryption. unknown error"" from ID 2109478.1 may not be relevant if you are not changing your configuration, you may have to know this when you decide to do an upgrade so check this out!

Sunday, March 20, 2016

Weekend Learning: Enabling data encryption for Oracle Payments module in R12

If you have upgraded to R12, or have a plan to do so, make sure you read MOS document "How To Enable Oracle Payments Data Encryption Functionality" from document ID 1301337.1 to learn how to get on the middle tier, create an Oracle Wallet .p12 file, and what concurrent requests you need to be running as well depending on what profile options you choose for the encryption method.

Saturday, March 19, 2016

Weekend Learning: Background information on using 4k redo logs on Flash and SSD-based storage devices

Check out MOS document "Using 4k Redo Logs on Flash and SSD-based Storage" from note 1681266.1 to get details about using 4k storage media like Flash and SSD to see how they can be logically setup or used in hybrid situations to avoid misaligned I/O issues!

Friday, March 18, 2016

11gR2: Connections fail with ORA-12560 while SSL_VERSION is set to TLS 1.1 or 1.2

If you are getting ready to upgrade to 11.2.0.4 or if you are on that database version and need to change TLS settings, you really need to read My Oracle Support document "11.2.0.4 Connections Fail With ORA-12560 When Using TLS 1.1 or 1.2 (By Setting SSL_VERSION In Sqlnet.ora)" as a bundle patch needs to be applied to get the connections working!

Thursday, March 17, 2016

Exadata: Flash Cache Compression on X3 and X4 Storage Servers causing disk drive failures

Check what version of software you have on your Storage Servers immediately due to the bug listed in "(EX28) High risk of data loss on X3 or X4 Exadata storage when flash compression is enabled and running late 2015 or early 2016 software release" MOS article ID 2115005.1 which currently has NO solution!  There is a workaround listed, but that is turning off the Flash Cache Compression which will likely negatively affect the performance of your Exadata application and Oracle gives some great advice about proceeding with caution if you are planning upgrading!

Wednesday, March 16, 2016

R12.2.4 Payables: Payments form has performance issue

I have talked about XLA slowness in Payables before, but the My Oracle Support note "R12: AP: Performance Issue With Payments Form (APXPAWKB)" from article 2117534.1 has no hooks into XLA but still has a performance issue due to indexes that appear to be missing or incomplete on AP_INVOICES_ALL!

Tuesday, March 15, 2016

R12.2.4 Receivables: Create Accounting errors due to imbalanced CM application distributions

Although MOS document "Create Accounting Completed With Error (319) Unbalanced Distributions of CM Application" from article ID 2116697.1 does not give you an exact issue or resolution, it may help you to build some proactive alerting around an imbalance in credit and debit entries in AR_DISTRIBUTIONS_ALL.

Monday, March 14, 2016

Backups can completely age out of the Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance

With a name like Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance, one would think every scenario had been thought of which Oracle would prevent against right?  Well not so fast!  Read the article on MOS "(RA10) Bug 22378407 : BACKUPS WILL AGE OUT COMPLETELY IF ONE STOPS CREATING THEM" from note ID 2112880.1 which seems to be half process issue, and half bug since it doesn't prevent this from happening!

Sunday, March 13, 2016

Weekend Learning: Required/recommended bundle patches and patch sets for OBIEE 11g

If you are running an Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition platform do yourself a favor and add the article "OBIEE 11g: Required and Recommended Bundle Patches and Patch Sets" to your favorites list in MOS via document ID 1488475.1 to keep on top of changes!!

Saturday, March 12, 2016

Weekend Learning: Master reference note for "CPU time" wait events

If you have ever looked at what your database is doing in either a real time fashion, or via ASH/ADDM reports, then you have obviously seen wait events referencing the CPU and that does not mean there is a problem with the CPU or even with the database, but for the times when you are not sure make sure you have favorited the document ""DB CPU" / "CPU + Wait for CPU" / "CPU time" Reference Note" in My Oracle Support note 1965757.1 so you have a one-stop shop at your fingertips!  This would also be useful too, if you wanted to utilize it to check out possible issues when upgrading your database version or adding new features!

Friday, March 11, 2016

R12 Payables: JBO-25013 error is thrown when selecting supplier relationship

A few months ago there was an article I put up about several IBY tables and article "R12.1:22878464:Error JBO-25013 On Supplier When Selected The Supplier Relationship Tab" on My Oracle Support via document number 2115923.1 was just solved today but what I think is important from this is finding out a new IBY table AND another instance of something that needs to be added to your testing suites!

Thursday, March 10, 2016

Exadata: CellCLI "list activerequest" command can produce I/O hang in Storage Server

Do not miss out on applying the patch to resolve the issue described in the MOS article "(EX27) Database IO may hang when CellCLI command "list activerequest" is executed on an Exadata Storage Server" from note ID 2095255.1 so your system is not subject to this if you ever need to run the command in an Exadata machine!

Wednesday, March 9, 2016

R12 Payables: Invoice Mass Additions Diagnostics

Make sure you have installed the diagnostic from My Oracle Support document 1162973.1 "R12.1 Mass Additions Diagnostics" so you can find out why something did not transfer from the Payables module in EBS over to the Assets module!

Tuesday, March 8, 2016

Exadata: Oracle Enterprise Manager shows Management Server is DOWN but ping shows SUCCESS

With MOS document "EXADATA:OEM errors MS Status is DOWN and Ping Status is SUCCESS" from note ID 2112971.1 we learn that in Exadata Cell server software 12.1.2.2.0 the ipconf utility restarts the Management Server and that since ipconf runs with Exachk the MS gets restarts every time you run Exachk!  Seems like a problem huh?  The good news is that cellsrv does not actually go down, so there is no service interruption, but this is something you may need to know for your next patch application!

Monday, March 7, 2016

R12: Programs complete in Warning due to "Output Post-processor is Running But Has Not Picked up This Request"

Article "R12: Various Programs End With Warning: The Output Post-processor is Running But Has Not Picked up This Request" in My Oracle Support refers to R12.0.6 in document ID 1224684.1 BUT has a lot of information about the setup of the Concurrent Manager and Output Post Processor so it is a good one to read up on even if you know about this and have patched to help prevent the issue from happening!

Sunday, March 6, 2016

Weekend Learning: What APIs and programming languages can be used to make a connection to an Oracle DB?

While not directly on point for somebody in an application support role, you may need to know the information within MOS document "Oracle Client API's that can be used to access an Oracle database." from article ID 739169.1 so take a moment to brush up on your knowledge!

Saturday, March 5, 2016

Exadata: InfiniBand may fail to send messages to cause I/O failures on Oracle VM

If you are running Exadata on Oracle VM, you need to look at the article "(EX26) Messages over the InfiniBand network may fail to send causing IO failures and hangs when using Exadata OVM with Exadata cell version 12.1.2.1.3" in My Oracle Support from note ID 2105407.1 as there is a pretty straightforward way to resolve this, even if it might not be the kind of solution you are looking for!

Friday, March 4, 2016

R12 Payables: Vendor and vendor sites can be updated post merge

The My Oracle Support article "R12: Payables: Merged Vendor and Vendor Sites can be Updated in Supplier Entry Screen" via document ID 2107797.1 talks about what happens when vendor sites can be updated after being merged and an error is thrown when trying to merge it again.  Also, I learned about the table AP_DUPLICATE_VENDORS_ALL which will let you know if a vendor has ever been merged before and with the data pattern described in the document could give you a chance to build a proactive alert!

Thursday, March 3, 2016

ZFS Storage Appliance on Solaris could have transient write hangs due to snapshot actions

Tonight from My Oracle Support "Solaris 10, Solaris 11 and ZFS Storage Appliance (ZFSSA) Software may Intermittently Experience Transient Write Hangs if a Snapshot Destroy or Replication is in Progress" in document ID 2067174.1 is a pretty straightforward article that you need to be reading if you are on these Solaris platforms as this could happen at any time due to the type of actions being taken which are automatic!

Wednesday, March 2, 2016

R12.1 RPCs Superseded Again

Back in 2014 I posted a short post about Recommended Patch Collections being superseded for many modules and starting with My Oracle Support note 2102716.1 for "EBS: R12.1: Receivables Recommended Patch Collection (RPC), Feb 2016" you can find other RPCs but an even better idea is to add the document "EBS: R12.1 Latest Oracle Financials Recommended Patch Collections (RPCs)" from article ID 954704.1 to your favorites list in MOS.  This way when there are future updates, you can always stay up to date!

Tuesday, March 1, 2016

ANNOUNCEMENT: Arizona/New Mexico OAUG Geographic Region

Tonight I return from a short sabbatical to let you know that a new Geo has been formed by OAUG to represent the Arizona and New Mexico region, and you can go to the LinkedIn group to stay informed about recent updates which should be coming over the next few days and weeks leading up to OAUG's COLLABORATE conference!

Thursday, February 4, 2016

R12 EBS: Output Post Processor not working due to JVM error

The article "EBS: OPP does not work After Platform Migration ; Conflicting Collector Combinations ; Could not Create the Java Virtual Machine" can be found on My Oracle Support via note ID 2103349.1 which tells us why this happened AND also more details that could be useful in your toolbox about "developer parameters" or environmental files being used!

Wednesday, February 3, 2016

R12 Purchasing: Template clears information on category change

Over 3 years ago the issue "INFORMATION TEMPLATES CLEARED WHEN CATEGORY CHANGED FOR THE LINE." was reported on My Oracle Support via bug number 15863073 where template information is cleared after the requisition gets saved and then altered before submitted and if you are affected by this make sure you get your data added to the bug!

Tuesday, February 2, 2016

11gR2: ASH report has "null event" wait event

The My Oracle Support article "'Null Event' Wait Events Occurs Intermittently in ASH Report" from document ID 2102027.1 clues us into a known bug which is resolved in 12.2 and lets us know that this is a pretty insignificant issue but it is really important to know this does not mean anything so we do not freak out when we see it in the wild!

Sunday, January 31, 2016

Weekend Learning: Bill Presentment Architecture (BPA) setup

Do you use XML for your PDF generation?  Have you looked at "Bill Presentment Architecture Set Up And Usage" on My Oracle Support from document ID 786553.1?  You should!  Find out if you can upgrade your processes and environment!!

Friday, January 29, 2016

R12.1.3: Is there a problem with AME rules not being executed due to notification delegation?

In any busy environment you know that delegation is incredibly important to make sure workflows keep moving and business keeps happening, but is there a flaw with AME rules being fired when delegated?  My Oracle Support note "AME Rule Is Not Getting Executed With The Notification Being Delegated" from article ID 2015185.1 has all the details including a very good explanation for the answer!

Thursday, January 28, 2016

Linux VM: Server crash due to Fatal Machine kernel panic

As our systems become more and more complicated, and we look for more and more ways to consolidate and save money I am sure more technologists will need to learn about bugs associated with the Linux VM platform!  Tonight is one such lesson from MOS note "Server Crashed with Kernel panic - not syncing: Fatal Machine check" via ID 2093734.1 as the vmcore output shows very clearly that the kernel did panic which resulted in the server crashing, but just as important as knowing that information is WHY Oracle indicates this happened!

Wednesday, January 27, 2016

R12.2.3 Payables: Maximum value size is violated for DFF

The issue described in MOS article "DFF Error - The Maximum Value Size For Segment Is X. Truncating Value To Xxx (R12.2)" from document ID 1960243.1 may be due to a direct upgrade from 11.5.10.2 right to 12.2.3 but I will bet it could also be seen if you upgrade from an earlier version of R12 as well!  Check out the associated bug and patch for all the details and update your testing suites accordingly!

Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Solaris: ZFS root pools hang system when unavailable

While we are talking about ZFS and not ZFSSA "Systems with a ZFS Root Filesystem Running Certain Solaris 10 patches or Solaris 11 SRUs may Hang if the Disks of the Root Pool Become Temporarily Unavailable" is still a good document to read on My Oracle Support from article ID 2098232.1 so you can learn what symptoms are possible on Solaris just in case this happens to your system!

Monday, January 25, 2016

R12.1.3 Payables: APP-SQLAP-10264 error is thrown while new operating unit is setup In Financials During Setup Of New Operating Unit [2096022.1]

Article "R12 AP: Error APP-SQLAP-10264 In Financials Options During Setup Of New Operating Unit" on My Oracle Support via document ID 2096022.1 is a good one to read about why data validation is important and how automatic numbering can trip the system up.

Sunday, January 24, 2016

Weekend Learning: Whitepaper on Exadata monitoring with Enterprise Manager

Do not miss this whitepaper on Monitoring Exadata Storage Server Grids with Enterprise Manager from the Maximum Availability Architecture (MAA) team which has the entire step by step process and all the SQL you need to set up all of the conditions you need to alert on!

Saturday, January 23, 2016

Weekend Learning: Defining the TCP Socket (KGAS) wait event

I have talked about this wait event before as a potential warning sign of network issues, as well as an indicator when you have database traffic misbehaving, but what does Oracle say about the TCP Socket (KGAS) wait event?  I am SO glad you asked!  Wait no more, check out MOS article "What are 'TCP Socket (Kgas)' Waits?" from document ID 416451.1 for the official word on why this wait event is not a cause to open an SR with Support, and what issues it could be representing!

Friday, January 22, 2016

Oracle Forms: Frmall.jar and Frmwebutil.jar files are set to expire soon

So when I say soon, I mean the .jar files may have already expired in your system or will expire tomorrow.  Oops.  Find out more about this from My Oracle Support article "How to Extend Frmall.jar and Frmwebutil.jar Expiration Beyond 22, 23-Jan-2016" via note ID 2072400.1 to learn what can be done for 10gR2, 11gR1, and 11gR2!

Thursday, January 21, 2016

R12 Workflow: Automated replies give "Client was not authenticated" errors

On R12.1.3 and R12.1 "Automatic Reply To Unsolicited Mail shows erros 530 5.7.1 Client was not authenticated" from MOS document ID 1991613.1 indicates this can be resolved with a patch but it seems like the root cause is when the SMTP server gets changed!

Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Transparent HugePages on several Linux kernels should be turned off

Even though the document "ALERT: Disable Transparent HugePages on SLES11, RHEL6, RHEL7, OL6, OL7 and UEK2 Kernels" in note ID 1557478.1 on MOS has been out there for years, it is still good information to have that the Transparent HugePages (not regular HugePages) feature is enabled by default AND that it can cause instability in RAC or non-RAC environments!  Since Oracle recommends turning this off in all your database machines, do you know if it is off in your systems?

Tuesday, January 19, 2016

11gR2: Performance with NVL or NVL2 is slow

My Oracle Support article ID 2093132.1 for the document "Slow Performance With NVL or NVL2 Referencing PL/SQL Function Even When Ignoring the Function's Result" directs us not to an issue but to a basic fundamental part of PL/SQL that is certainly worth checking out!  Without looking at the document, can you guess why this is happening?

Monday, January 18, 2016

R12 Payables: AP events unprocessed but new header is created

Is the most important lesson from the article "R12:AP/XLA: Event Left Unprocessed and Creates a New Header Each Time Invoice is Attemped for Accounting" on MOS via document ID 2097911.1 that a custom object is at fault here?  No!  The most important lesson is the referenced documents to learn something more that might be able to be applied later when you have a problem with the AP or XLA modules!

Sunday, January 17, 2016

Weekend Learning: MySQL binary logs and when they are purged

How much do you know about MySQL?  Could you learn more?  Check out My Oracle Support article "When Are Binary Logs Purged?" from document ID 1937267.1 that talks about when they are purged, and then click on the links below in the article to learn about what binary logs actually are!  Always be learning and adding to your toolbox!

Saturday, January 16, 2016

Weekend Learning: Creating statistics on global temporary tables

While the note "How to Create Statistics on Global Temporary Tables" on My Oracle Support from article ID 351190.1 is talking about post 9.2.0.6 Oracle databases, it also has specific information on how this is different for 12c and introduces the idea of dynamic sampling as well!  How does this apply to you?  Well, I have seen system generated global temporary tables perform badly where you really do not have any control over it, so this could possibly give you some kind of control!

Friday, January 15, 2016

R12.1 Oracle HR: Receiving FRM-40654 error when trying to modify name

You will not believe the root cause of the MOS article "FRM-40654: Record has been updated. Requery block to see change Error When Updating a Person's Name" from note ID 2096800.1 but it sure is a good reminder to add data checks like this to your testing suites!!

Thursday, January 14, 2016

R12.1.3 OAF: Menu disappears after login for Oracle EBS

The article on My Oracle Support "Main Menu Getting Disappeared In Oracle EBS After Login" via document ID 2078117.1 apparently has come up so many times that it is "Customer Recommended"!  If you are planning on going to R12.1.3 because you are not on it yet, make sure you check this out and verify what patches are applied so you can avoid this problem!

Wednesday, January 13, 2016

R12 Payables: Invoice numbers can be duplicated

Even though this main article is directed at R12.2, I know we have had this issue reported in our R12.1.3 instance AND the linked document in MOS article "R12:AP:Duplicate Invoice Numbers Got Created For Same Supplier and Site" from ID 2094877.1 is for all versions of R12 after R12.0.1 so consider yourself warned that a custom index needs to be created to prevent this from happening to you!

Tuesday, January 12, 2016

R12.1.3 Workflow: Hiding information within a workflow

Check out My Oracle Support note "Is it Possible to Hide Request Information Button In Email But Keep In Notifications Page?" in document ID 2086835.1 to learn how to hide objects within a workflow and from the notifications page too!!

Monday, January 11, 2016

R12.1.3 Purchasing: System checks that prevent PO from being merged

In R12.1.3 do you know "What checks are Done to a Prevent PO From Being Merged When Running Supplier Merge"?  Find out via My Oracle Support document ID 2095172.1 tonight so you can tell the business why the data might not be in the right conditions to let this happen!

Sunday, January 10, 2016

Weekend Learning: Calculating swap space on Linux

Want to learn something interesting this weekend?  Then check out the article "Swap Space on Oracle Linux Server and RedHat Enterprise Linux Server" on MOS from note ID 225451.1 because you never know when this tool in your toolbox will become handy!!

Saturday, January 9, 2016

Weekend Learning: Proactive Oracle Support Event Calendar

Make sure you take a look at My Oracle Support's "Get Proactive Dynamic Event Calendar" from note ID 125716.1 because there are some very good sessions on the upcoming calendar about Accreditation, Administration, Working Effectively, and Service Requests!

Friday, January 8, 2016

Windows: 12c forms instance does not exist after startup

Are you running 12c on Windows?  We don't really run on Windows, but MOS document "Forms 12c Instance (FORMS_INSTANCE) "forms1" and Forms Related Registry Variables Do not Exist after Starting Nodemanager and Adminserver" via note ID 2094031.1 taught me something new tonight about the folder structure and what the solution is for this problem so maybe someday I can use it!

Thursday, January 7, 2016

Oracle Linux: Getting alias to run within bash scripts

Were you aware that aliases do not get expanded when the shell is not interactive?  Learn how to get the alias command to run in bash via My Oracle Support note "Oracle Linux 5 & 6 - Why does "alias" not work with bash scripts?" from article ID 2092019.1 so this is in your toolbox just in case you run into this situation while scripting automated solutions!

Wednesday, January 6, 2016

R12 Purchasing: Approval of PO with AME ends in ORA-00060 error

If you are on R12.1.3 or R12.2 make sure that you bone up on MOS article "When approving a Purchase Order using AME, the Approval Workflow completes with ORA-00060 and "ECX_PROGRAM_EXIT_EMBD" errors" from note ID 1585839.1 as a certain Transmission Method can cause an ORA-00060 error to happen in the AME Workflow.

Tuesday, January 5, 2016

ZFS Storage Appliance may hit 100% CPU on Linux due to ungraceful shutdown

Do not miss out on My Oracle Support note "ZFS Storage Appliance (ZFSSA) Software 2013.*.*.* May Experience 100% CPU Utilization With Linux Clients Using kernel-uek-2.6.39-400.247.1 or Earlier" via document ID 2091319.1 if you are on either one of these versions of the application as NFSv4 protocol states are lost and error messages are reported until resolved!

Monday, January 4, 2016

Payables: Reversing swept transactions or sweeping future period transactions?

As I work on the Close for Receivables tonight, the document on MOS "How do you unsweep/reverse the sweep for transactions swept by the Unaccounted Transaction Sweep Program? How do you sweep transactions entered in a future period that was mistakenly opened to a previous period?" from article ID 2094016.1 seems especially penitent!  Check this out for the answers AND participate in the Payables Community by voting on the associated Enhancement Request!

Sunday, January 3, 2016

Exadata: Cellsrv process could crash on Storage Servers during cell-to-cell offload operations

If you are running Exadata platforms, do you know what version of software you have in your Storage Servers or what is running on your Grid Infrastructure?  Find out because the article "(DB35) Cellsrv process on storage servers may crash when performing a cell-to-cell offload operation" on My Oracle Support affects only certain combinations of software and note ID 2074393.1 details both of the patches that are needed to combat this situation!

Saturday, January 2, 2016

Weekend Learning: Backing up and recovering Hyperion Planning applications

Tonight we have our first Weekend Learning of the year, and it is a pretty good one if you have Hyperion Planning in your environment from My Oracle Support article "How to Backup And Recover a Hyperion Planning Application" via document ID 1195635.1 and while I will be glad I had this at hand I really hope I never need to use it.  :}

Friday, January 1, 2016

Happy 2016 Everybody!!

Happy New Year!!  Last year on this day I put up a set of resolutions that I think I did a good job of working and reaching towards most of them, but I haven't had a lot of time to think about what I want the resolutions for the blog this year to be yet!  Well, now that I have said it, now I need to do it!  Look for some resolutions later in the month after I spend some time reflecting, but from last year here is what I would consider my scorecard to be:
  • Return to my weekly Twitter column - F+ - I really have not realized the opportunity that Twitter provides, so I will be working towards that this year!
  • (Super secret project) - C- - I did some work towards this, but did not get it anywhere near completed.
  • Continue to create new presentation content - B - This one I worked on at the end of this year, but it was not what I expected to be working on, and it was submitted and accepted as an alternate!
  • Visit new conferences - A+ - Last year I was on my way to RMOUG, and this year I am on my way to COLLABORATE for the first time to present multiple presentations!!
  • Get published again - B- - This is something I need to work on more, but stay tuned for more information about this soon!
  • Start discussions about Support - F - I really did not do anything on this, and I will need to focus on it!
  • Keep working towards Oracle ACE - D+ - While I did not do anything directly on this, even though I had planned on it, I have some plans and checkboxes for this in the coming year!