Sherlock Holmes, project implementations and leaps of logic

In what possible way can I tie Sherlock Holmes and projects together in talking about leaps of logic?  If you are familiar with the famous detective you may associate him with deductive reasoning, which has us building on top of things we believe are true to reach a conclusion but just as often he would practice abductive reasoning that starts with an observation, to our conclusion, and then we try to explain it.  Why talk about this?  Simply put, when you have a implementation project it is easy to use either path of reason to believe that the object of your project is the cause of the problem you encounter but it is entirely possible for that not to be the case.

I will go into the technical details tomorrow about a situation we just had, but in a broad sense think about this scenario:

You install new servers, install a new version of Oracle DB, synchronize all your data, and turn it on but there is a problem.

What is the cause of your problem?  Did you say the new servers?  Did you say it was the new version of the database?  Was your guess that we had a data issue?  Would you be surprised if I told you that it was really none of the above?

It is easy to jump to conclusions when we are in the moment of a project, but we need to keep our scientific focus and prove out hypothesises with facts.

R12.1.3: Rejected PO mistakenly documents approval

Obviously the title catches your eye just the way it did mine as I thought I did not read it right the first time I saw it!  The content of My Oracle Support document "Purchasing Document was Rejected by the PO Approver, but it is found that the Status is Approved in the Action History" in note ID 1684684.1 actually is exactly what it says as rejected POs are instead documenting approval in the history lines due to a known bug.  Are you affected by this?  Repeat the steps as Oracle has shared them, and make sure you have already applied the bug fix to prevent data issues!

What is the point of Incremental Global Statistics?

Oracle 11g introduced the feature Incremental Global Statistics, but Doug Burns answers the burning question of why this new feature actually takes LONGER when you gather your statistics initially.  Interested in more about this subject?  You are in luck as he has a second post with some more information and a third post with a lot of links to other sites and people on the subject!

How the NTP service can be your weakest link

If you are not familiar with the Network Time Protocol and the services related to supporting it, do not feel bad; I did not know either until we had a problem with it!  Why could this be your weakest link?  I am glad you asked!  Recently we had our Exadata DBs start reporting different server times because it seemed that they were getting the server time from their switches but the switches were not correctly getting their time from our network time server.  That is obviously a problem, but imagine my surprise when I tried to log in and received "Permission denied, please try again" when trying to SSH into our server.  Why does this relate to NTP?  Well, it seems that if the time drifts too much on a server the SSH login attempt is rejected!

Why am I making a big deal out of this?  What happens when you are alerted that your CPU is starting to spike and you want to log in to take a look, but are rejected?  Do you have time to waste on getting a system administrator to restart the ntpd service so you can get into your machine?  I doubt it!  Now, it is on to making an alert to check our system time against the network time server!

Weekend Learning: My Oracle Support Accreditation

Do you work with Oracle directly through the My Oracle Support site?  Do you have a few minutes free this weekend to learn something, and prove that you have what it takes to work with Oracle?  If you have answered yes to these questions, then you should go to MOS and look up these articles to start getting accredited:

My Oracle Support Accreditation Series - Level 1 My Oracle Support - 1579751.1
My Oracle Support Accreditation - Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) - 1585906.1
My Oracle Support Accreditation Series - E-Business Suite - 1580100.1

Yes, there are more series besides the EBS application so go check out the other series available!

Extending V$SQLTEXT with DBA_HIST_SQLTEXT

I found out today that not only do I have GV$SQLTEXT, but another tool in the toolbox is DBA_HIST_SQLTEXT which will give me some historical data according to I believe our retention options and since SGA or PGA have been cleared.  Speaking of SGA and PGA, did you know there are some DBA_HIST tables related to them as well?

Do yourself a favor, and query your ALL_OBJECTS table for DBA_HIST objects to learn more things that can be put in the toolbox for later!

Presentation preparation

Today my post will be not so technical in nature, but I feel it is just as important!  As I have mentioned a few times, I am presenting for OAUG on July 21st and to brush up a bit on my skills I visited Tim Hall's series of posts on presenting today!  I shared something about this before, and I have spotlighted several of Tim's 12c posts before, but I wanted to spotlight this series directly after having a chance to use them to refresh myself.  The best part about these posts by Tim?  You do not need to have a presentation lined up already as several of them are tips about how to get involved or perfect your pitch to get selected!

Do you know the policy Oracle Support has on performance tuning and scalability for reports and forms?

Rarely does my title say it all, but today is the exception as I found out in note 1352875.1 "Oracle Support Policy on Oracle Forms/Reports Performance Tuning and Scalability Issues" on MOS that such a policy DOES exist and it is fairly straightforward and clear for such a broad subject.  It might be worth your time to brush up on it just to refresh yourself prior to opening a new SR for a problem in this area!

R12.1.3: Voiding payments not working as intended

Have you ever encountered an issue where an application tells you one thing, but just will not do what it says it will?  If not, then allow me to introduce you to the issue in the My Oracle Support article "Unable To Void All Payments In a Payment Process Request" within document ID 1560203.1 where just that exact thing is happening.  The Void All Payments button indicates that a completed Payment Process Request can be voided, but the status of the checks is not set correctly to let the system void them.

Find out what the problem is, and what Enhancement Request has been opened so you can keep tabs on this issue!

When a bug really is not a bug

Since I do not get to develop or QA in my regular job duties, articles like this one from Maris Elsins are perfect eye-openers as they expand my horizons a bit so when I get into unusual situations I have more tools in my mental toolbox.  Go read Maris' article about what he found when he encountered an issue where it really looked like it was a bug on his version of the Oracle DB, but after troubleshooting and analysis it really was not a bug at all.

This situation reminded me a lot of my recent posting about how XLA data builds up and affects the A/P module in ways that were totally not expected or encountered when we were testing R12!

Weekend Learning: R12 upgrade issues and solutions for Oracle Payments

If you are still on EBS 11i, this weekend you should read the My Oracle Support article "EBS 11i to R12 : Upgrade Issues and Solutions for Oracle Payments" in note 1466998.1 to find out what patches you need to be applying with your upgrade so you avoid problems before they actually become problems for you.  Of course, if you are on R12 this would be worth a review just in case you have not encountered these problems yet and can patch your system to make sure you never do see them!

Celebrate your independence from bad Oracle education!

I said that I would update you when I found out more information about the OAUG Connection Point - AppsTech conference going online, and I just found out that this conference is only going to cost $95 for members, and $135 for non-members, which includes all 18 of the sessions!  With a group rate, you can get training for less than $5 a session, while the regular rate is JUST above $5 a session!  Register now!

Thursday Twitter - 7/3/14 (Part I)

Going into the American holiday of July 4th, I am splitting up a very long week of reading Twitter into multiple posts which I do not think you will mind at all!

Announcements:

https://twitter.com/Pythian/status/482196590770552832 - Did you know that Pythian bought Blackbird?  Looks like they are stacking up data experts!

https://twitter.com/OTNArchBeat/status/482506468332429312 - Oracle SOA Suite 12c is now available!

https://twitter.com/dhaimes/status/483661723686035456 - David Haimes tells us about Oracle's newest $5+ Billion deal.

https://twitter.com/OracleLL/status/483678882181423104 - From Oracle Learning Library (if you aren't following, do it now!) is a post on the release of Oracle Business Process Management Suite 12c.

https://twitter.com/OTNArchBeat/status/483684723064315905 - The Oracle Mobile Application Framework is now live!

https://twitter.com/Oracle/status/483735007367016449 - The newest OS for ZFS has set a world record!

Training/Free Stuff:

https://twitter.com/lakshram/status/482238780510728192 - Lakshmi is having a webinar hosted by OAUG on SLA lessons learned.

https://twitter.com/sfonplsql/status/482541951409860608 - Who would want to pass up getting demo files from Steve Feuersteien on PL/SQL?

https://twitter.com/OraclePress/status/482551577669271552 - Free 15 questions from the OCA 12c SQL Fundamentals I Exam Guide!  I printed these out and learned something from trying to go through them!

https://twitter.com/DBAKevlar/status/483629087311679488 - Join Kellyn Pot'Vin for a webinar on the new 12c AWR Warehouse.

https://twitter.com/OracleDatabase/status/483675102551101440 - Have you signed up for the OTN Virtual Technology Summit?

https://twitter.com/OraclePress/status/483682778752352256 - Another set of 15 Q&A's from Oracle Press, this time from the 12c Installation and Administration Exam Guide.

General News/Information:

https://twitter.com/TanelPoder/status/482265163664736257 - Tanel has an enhancement request he would like to see go through.

https://twitter.com/dba_hba/status/482492718271037441 - Allan Robertson reminds us about Pete Finnigan's blog with this article on 12c SQL translation as it relates to security.

https://twitter.com/dba_hba/status/482492838614020096 -Allan is on a roll as he shares with us a post he found about converting SCNs to timestamps and vice versa.

https://twitter.com/dba_hba/status/482502841840324608 - Again Allan comes through for us with this article on how to map back Linux processes to DB processes.

https://twitter.com/OTNArchBeat/status/482534579132461056 - A new feature of Oracle SOA Suite 12c is Native Format Translation!

https://twitter.com/kylehhailey/status/482604709870452736 - Kyle Hailey helps inform us that 97% of world's fastest supercomputers run Linux.

https://twitter.com/sql_handle/status/482614917552283648 - A great question is asked about if an HBA goes crazy/bad, do you notice beforehand?  Good discussion in here!

https://twitter.com/CondeBond/status/483579443990908928 - Xavier Picamal shares an old article from Pythian about ACLs, but it is still relevant if you are new to using (or coping) with ACL setups!

https://twitter.com/CondeBond/status/483598425171443713 - Another article shared by Xavier, this time from David Fitzjarrell about the team that it takes to support a "slow DB".

https://twitter.com/thatjeffsmith/status/483666611493027840 - A tip from Jeff Smith on using multiple monitors with Oracle SQL Developer.

https://twitter.com/OracleMiddle/status/483667553789964288 - Check out all the features of SOA Suite 12c!

https://twitter.com/SOAScott/status/483688882081263616 - Oracle University has created SOA Suite 12c upgrade videos!

https://twitter.com/OracleDatabase/status/483691459917647873 - Did you know there is an Oracle DB Resource Portfolio Home Page on MOS?

https://twitter.com/MarkVHurd/status/483699041671585794 - Mark Hurd has joined Twitter, and releases a post on 5 reasons CEOs should love the cloud.  He had more than 2,000 follows in just 24 hours!

https://twitter.com/mmilella/status/483715133722468352 - A Smart View presentation from KScope14, along with several different links that might be useful learning for you!

https://twitter.com/ChrisAntognini/status/483723511744462848 - Christian Antognini has published his files for the newest edition of Troubleshooting Oracle Performance.

https://twitter.com/dhaimes/status/483742020750417920 - Plan for Cloud?  Mark Hurd wants Oracle to be #1.

https://twitter.com/OracleBlogs/status/483750739236618241 - June Oracle Security newsletter.

https://twitter.com/sfonplsql/status/483751259128606720 - Steve Feuerstein's part 2 of a new series on the "joy" of PL/SQL.

https://twitter.com/OracleBlogs/status/483771063981981697 - Whitepaper for developing a WebLogic 12.1.3 server.

https://twitter.com/OracleBlogs/status/483779042290982912 - Elke Phelps (via Steven Chan's blog) shares a great idea and webinar for creating a proactive strategy for Oracle EBS maintenance.

https://twitter.com/biju_thomas/status/483783852528115712 - Don't miss out on Biju Thomas' "Oracle Tidbits".

https://twitter.com/lucasjellema/status/483831556688347136 - If you are at all interested in SOA Suite 12c, you need to hit this link to add Lucas Jellema and others plus a great read about releasing blog posts after the announcement.

https://twitter.com/TanelPoder/status/483844622721224704 - Tanel Poder's "Advanced Oracle Troubleshooting Guide, Part 6" about execution plans and https://twitter.com/TanelPoder/status/483844623438458880 an interview with him too!

Conference News:

https://twitter.com/EastCoastOracle/status/483596191330889729 - Don't forget that the deadline to submit to the East Coast Oracle conference is July 14th!

https://twitter.com/UKOUG/status/483619029572415488 - A sneak peek of the confirmed speakers for UKOUG Apps14!

Social Media/DevOps:

https://twitter.com/IOUG/status/483663916044935168 - Join a Special Interest Group (SIG) to widen your audience and meet others with your skill/mind set.

https://twitter.com/thatjeffsmith/status/483615166886457344 - A great article from Jeff Smith of Oracle SQL Developer fame, with tips on how to increase your chances to be accepted to a conference.

Engineered Systems Documentation

Tonight I found a new blog via Twitter, on Engineered Systems, which seems like it is worth keeping an eye on so I'll be adding it to my Oracle blog list!  First is the link to Werner's post on E-Business Suites on Engineered Systems, followed by the post about PeopleSoft on Engineered Systems which are definitely good reads!

Twenty thousand, twenty-five hundred, and two

Just over two years ago I started this blog, and today I just hit twenty thousand lifetime hits!  Not only did I hit that amazing milestone, but last month I had my largest pool of visitors as I had just shy of twenty-five hundred hits in June!  That is even more than the month when I presented at Hotsos!

Thanks for tuning in each day to listen to my dialog about what I consider important to Support professionals relating to Oracle DB, Exadata, ZFS, E-Business Suite, Hyperion and PeopleSoft HR (more coming soon)!