COLLABORATE19: Day 3

8:00 AM–9:00 AM - Compute Cloud Performance Showdown: Oracle, AWS, IBM, Google, Azure - @Ahmed_Aboulnaga

I really liked the subject matter, but really, really liked how Ahmed presented his findings by mainly focusing on the data results, and how he tried to make sure all VMs from the different providers were the same before he started. One caveat, by way of story, is that Netflix found out that all AWS VMs do not perform the same, so they will build thousands at a time, and then test them, destroying those VMs which do not perform up to expectations; Ahmed's point here was that he did not have the time or resources to do that, so was assuming each vendor would provide a VM that would perform the best they could, and he was not taking dedicated hardware options either as that defeats his purpose of testing actual VMs. In general, he found that AWS has a slight edge over the competition (mostly due to their newer and higher end CPU model), and in most testing Azure was the lowest performer, and Oracle Cloud was roughly half the price of the other options.

9:15 AM–10:15 AM - Enabling Canary Testing with Edition-Based Redefinition - @mohio73

With this presentation, Michael spent a lot of time explaining what canary testing and EBR were, before he did a very extensive demo to show how sessions connecting to the database to the ORA$BASE version would get redirected to the new VERSION1 edition after setting up triggers. I really did like this, and the demo was great, but I would have liked a little more about the canary release strategy. Visit https://www.github.com/mfhaynes/canary_ebr to get his code for the demo and see what he was doing!

10:30 AM-11:30 AM - Automate the operation of your Oracle Cloud infrastructure - @ncalerouy

This was a lot of screenshots and information, but there were a few tidbits here and there which I found useful like making sure you look for the new version of OCI documentation on docs.cloud.oracle.com as any OCI documents on docs.oracle.com actually refer to OCI CLASSIC and now v2. If you want to work with APIs, there are a few links to check out on docs.cloud.oracle.com/iaas/api/ and docs.cloud.oracle.com/iaas/Content/API/Concepts/devopstools.htm and when you are spinning up instances you have to make sure port 22 is open so read MOS Note 2433870.1 for all the details.

Lunch again! Beginning to be a habit here, but I had to make it a short lunch since I wanted to visit a session at noon, and the flat iron steak was pretty good even in a hurry.

12:00 PM-12:30 PM - All you need to know about Backup and Recovery - @fcomunoz

Did you know that Francisco has built a free tool called CrashSimulator that will do just that? I am looking forward to combining this tool, with the vagrant Oracle database from Blaine's blog post, and blowing up the database again, and again, and again!! Then we saw Oracle Backup Cloud Service which keeps your data secure, with the keys on site and not in the cloud, and no ACO licenses needed to compress your data. Oh, and did you know that data pumps and RMAN Backup/Recovery options are actually in Oracle SQL Developer?!? I had no idea!

12:45 PM–1:45 PM - Data Analysis SQL vs Pandas Python Package _ - Rama Koganti

Python is about the speed of code vs. speed of development, and an example of this is how Google was doing video before buying YouTube, but Google had around 1,000 developers using C/C++ and YouTube had around 20 developers using Python to get features into the marketplace quicker and that is why Google decided to stop competing, and just buy them up. Very interesting! Lots of this presentation was demo, but check out his repository at https://www.github.com/ramak919 to get up to date on the panda Python package which turns tables into data frames, and supports a LOT of data sources to get your data from! Again, another tool to combine with something else I learned at the conference since I can use Python to connect via the cx_Oracle package and then call the panda package in order to get my data out, then put it into a data frame, and do analysis or convert it, etc.

2:00 PM-3:00 PM - Devops Tools for Database Developers - @OraBlaineOS

Key in this is how DevOps is more about culture than the tools, and how you interact with your TEAMS. Again there is a GitHub repository available https://www.github.com/oracle/dino-date he used combined with Oracle Application Container Cloud Service to show the application Liquibase which is version control for your DB, change sets, auto generate SQL, tracks changes, rollback, conditions, diffs / reverse engineer, docs and the application utPLSQL which is a unit testing framework for PL/SQL.

4:30 PM-5:30 PM - Introducting Oracle Database 19c - @SeanStaceyfwiw

Sean is an Oracle PM for the Database product, so he is one of the few authoritative voices on the topic, so I was excited to dip my toes back into my Oracle roots with this session. The 19c product is a "long term release" which you can see as 18c support appears to end around 2021, but 19c support ends somewhere beyond 2026, and the core aim for the release is stability with thousands of bugs fixed and thousands of human years were spent in automated regression testing. There are a lot of new features you need to look up like Stats Only Queries, SQL Quarantine, High Frequency Automatic Statistics Collection, Real Time Statistics Collection, Automatic Indexing, and Partitioned Hybrid Tables! How best to find out? Go to https://apex.oracle.com/database-features/ then click on 19c, click on New Features Only, and then pick your new feature of choice to see the documentation. Oh, and want to know something neat? Try running this on a 19c database: select json_object(*) from customers and see what you get.

COLLABORATE19: Day 2

9:15 AM–11:30 AM - Hands on Lab: Migrating WebLogic Applications to Kubernetes in Oracle Cloud - @richardintx & Thomas Palzkill

Picking up where I left off the day before, I'm back in the same room, with the same Oracle experts, back at https://go.oracle.com/hol but this time ready to migrate WebLogic to Kubernetes! Exciting! Except.....when you see most of the introduction of the lab is the same as the day before, yet it does not work at the end this time, and the solution is to delete the Kubernetes cluster. That part is not even the bummer, the bummer is when it is giving the whole class an error message about APIs taking longer and just stalling us all for an hour until the instructors find out the Management backplane is having an issue, and to resolve it we have to switch to another Oracle Data Center. That is.....not really reassuring about going to the Oracle Cloud. Sure, everything in their DC is still running what was running (per Richard) but if the 20-30 people that might have been hitting the Management part of that DC helped to overwhelm it in some way, that seems like a bad thing. When a Cloud is not working, is it a StormCloud then?

Lunch! I finally got to have lunch when everybody else was eating! It was a novel experience! :}

12:45 PM–1:45 PM - Designing Scalable Oracle Database Solutions in AWS - Nick Walter of @houseofbrick

The one big takeaway here from Nick, is that the licensing costs of software going to AWS will be the biggest costs you will have and any AWS options are peanuts comparatively. Also, I loved his quote "a well tuned database is always limited by I/O" which is in relation to how to buy I/O options from AWS and that is good to know/remember! More importantly, instance local storage is fast and dangerous because it does NOT survive instance reboot so you CANNOT put Oracle files there!!

2:00 PM–3:00 PM - An AWS DMS Replication Journey from Oracle to Aurora MySQL - @MarisDBA

Maris' presentation was more of an overview from one perspective, but since I have never touched any of the AWS, DMS, or Aurora MySQL technologies he talked about I certainly did not mind at all! I thought it was smart to start us off on some "basics" going over the motivation (DB contract expiration, company wanted to be cloud native), landscape (6 month hard deadline, multiple schemas, cannot move all apps at the same time, too much risk), and complications (cross schema FKs, other apps needed to have access to the main schema that was being moved). The rest of the presentation went by pretty quick, with the ideas and solutions which were put forward, and eventually rejected, until they came upon a solution which solved all their needs and addressed the complications of the project. There was a lot which Maris went through to get the solution implemented, and I am looking forward to seeing if maybe we can replicate some of what he did in order to get something small over to AWS.

3:15 PM–4:15 PM - Cloud 2020 Where We're Going from Here - Various Panel

Going into this, with only 5-10 sessions available for the entire conference, I knew that the likelihood of this being a sales pitch were high, but it did not start off like that! The main concern about moving to the cloud is not really about infrastructure costs, it is more about people (retire old skills, enable new skills), security (60-85% of all security breaches were preventable), and capabilities. Then going to the next presenter on cloud best practices, it is more a question of WHEN we will go to the cloud, not really a question of IF. Most of their presentation was about what services their company offers, which is not really where the cloud is going, even if they did suggest reading the book Leading Change by John P. Kotter. The last presenter on deck started talking about their cloud conversion story, focused on JD Edwards, and after about five minutes of talking about basic project management and app specific details, I decided to leave the session. This was unexpected as the small room was completely full, and LOTS of people were leaving, likely due to the same reason I did, and the abstract really led us to believe it would go differently.

4:30 PM–5:30 PM - 10 things you should know about Oracle and Kubernetes - @MNEMONIC01

I will not list all of these (mostly because I missed a few along the way) but there were a couple that stood out like: Oracle adopts Kubernetes, you can do it yourself even using Google packages on RedHat Linux if you are not on Oracle Linux, you should look into Helm & Tiller which is a release and package manager, there is a WebLogic migration to Kubernetes tool coming soon which will even migrate 11g.

COLLABORATE19: Day 1

8:00 AM–9:00 AM - Keynote: Be The Leader You Were Meant to be, Monday to Monday® - @StaceyHankeInc

This was an interesting session as the message was one of being brief, not saying too much (think, leaving out um and uh type words), and giving yourself time to think about what you will be saying next. Also, "only speak when you see eyes" and "common sense does not mean common practice" are some very sound pieces of advice we could all use.

9:15 AM–10:15 AM - Oracle Database infrastructure as code with Ansible - @ilmarkerm

The missing piece to this presentation was an introduction to Ansible, which Ilmar said could be found anywhere on the Internet and that is a fair point, but I felt that would have helped us to understand the session a bit more. There were a lot of use cases provided, setting up the OS (easy), automating routine DBA tasks (medium), and DB config and changes deployed as version controlled code (advanced). There are a few projects worth checking out here http://github.com/oravirt/ansible-oracle-modules and http://github.com/ilmarkerm/ansible-oracle-home-mgmt which can help you to do some automation around Oracle DBs and ORACLE_HOME directories.

10:30 AM–11:30 AM - Upgrade SIG Meeting - Various Panel Members

The SIG meeting was kind of short on content, on purpose, so that the majority of the hour was spent on answering questions from the audience and most of those questions were about how to upgrade to 12.2, and not at all about going to the Cloud. Some of the content shared: there will not be a 12.3 EBS release, only Continuous Innovation of EBS 12.2, and future releases will separate technology stack from applications code updates.

12:00 PM–12:30 PM - Provisioning Oracle test environments made simple using Vagrant - @simonpane

This is very similar to the blog post from Blaine I shared yesterday, showing us how to use vagrant to start up an instance and then apply 2 levels of customizations: the VM (done via Vagrantfile), and the build (done via install.sh) but was pretty neat to see it done live after a short presentation about what was going to be happening during the demo.

12:30 PM–1:30 PM - OAUG Geo/SIG Coffee Talk Roundtable Discussion - @OATUG1

This was an internal meeting for Geo and SIG leadership, but the gist of it is that OATUG is looking to be Trustworthy, Relevant, Dynamic, and Relatable, and the name change was because 40% of the sessions at this conference are technology focused and the group has been delivering technical content for years. Some very good points brought up here, and hopefully more discussions will be happening as a result of this change as it is not a bad change, but one we need to get used to.

Time for lunch! Still on Arizona time, and the keynote being presented sounds a LOT like something I saw last year, so I decided a better use of time was focusing on the noon session, and then eating later, so time for a short walk outside for some food.

3:15 PM–5:30 PM - Hands on Lab: Container Native Microservices Development - @richardintx & Thomas Palzkill

If you have not noticed this year, I am a fan of Hands on Labs, and I am also looking to get a lot of new technology under my belt, so I wanted to go to this one and was surprised when there were only 10 of us in the room as I thought it would be standing room only! After signing up for a free Oracle Cloud account as a COLLAB19 attendee, we got down to business following one of the labs at https://go.oracle.com/hol to dig in and start up a Kubernetes instance in the Cloud, and connect to it locally!! I probably need another hour or two to get through the rest of the lab, and then there are more labs available (including one I will be going to tomorrow) which I can use my free Cloud account for until I run out of credit or they turn it off next month, whichever comes first. :} Oh, and you can get $300 of free credits too https://cloud.oracle.com/tryit which I am sure you have heard about by now, but if not, I wanted to make sure you had as this seems like a great way to get your hands dirty a bit with this technology.

COLLABORATE19: Pre-Day + Me!

Hi folks, I'mmmmmm baaaaack! It is time for another COLLABORATE conference, so that means it is time for me to blog again!

First off, the major news is that the OAUG has now become the OATUG (Oracle Applications and Technology User Group) as of a few hours ago! LOTS of talk about that happening! Learn more about the change here on the new OATUG website.

9:15 AM–10:15 AM - Hands-on Lab: Using Python with Oracle Database - Blaine Carter - @OraBlaineOS

While not exactly the same, but Blaine's blog post https://learncodeshare.net/2018/07/30/execute-pl-sql-calls-with-cx_oracle/ details most of what we were doing, including the linked documentation at the end of the page to the cx_Oracle module. Want to do something like this, a bit different, but still in the DevOps space? Check out another page he posted https://learncodeshare.net/2019/01/29/how-to-build-an-oracle-database-developer-toolbox/ and get your hands on Vagrant!

10:30 AM–11:30 AM - Hands-On Lab: Low-Code Development with Oracle Application Express (APEX) - David Peake - @orcl_dpeake

Go to https://apex.oracle.com and click on Get Started for Free to get the same experience we did!
This was pretty awesome to get my hands on this technology and actually get to do some development without touching ANY code!

12:30 PM–1:30 PM - Workflow SIG Panel: Current, Future, and Cloud - Me!

Shameless plug time, but this was a pretty exciting panel since Bill Burbage with Oracle Proactive Support was able to share a few ERs (Enhancement Requests) that are making their way through the development pipeline! He also showed a demo of a new Analyzer framework they are working on, to make it easier to do a lot of data gathering all in one place which does not take as much effort to download and add onto your Oracle SR (Service Request). Plus, never forget about MOS Note 432.1 to get the latest on ALL the latest from Proactive Support, including analyzer updates!!

I wanted to go to the Extend Oracle E-Business Suite with Oracle SaaS Applications: Your Journey to the Cloud session, but due to the running around from Convention Center back to the Grand Hyatt room and setup, meant I did not get lunch, so I absolutely had to eat at this time and skip the session, but I am going to try and get my hands on the material Oracle presented so I can get up to speed on this subject! That is almost like attending, right? :}

3:00 PM–4:00 PM - OAUG SysAdmin SIG - James Morrow - @jjmorrow / @kansasdba

As the Vice Chair of this group, I felt I should go, and was looking to get out of the role as it is voted on every two years, and this was the year that role came up for renewal, but Michael Brown @MichaelBrownOrg re-nominated me, with nobody else volunteering, so I have graciously accepted the Vice Chair role yet again. :}

Besides the housekeeping, there was a BUNCH of stuff that came out of this like 12.2 DB support goes until 2030! (Look at MOS Note 742060.1)
MOS Note 2522948.1 shows you how to get a fee waiver for Extended Support fees for older DB versions up to 2020 ONLY IF USED FOR EBS.
The EBS application version 12.2 has Extended Support through March 2026, but you'll notice that EBS has not yet been certified on DB version 12.2. There are reasons for that, and apparently Oracle is SKIPPING certifying EBS on that version of the DB, and will go straight to certifying it with 19c (12.2.0.3) which is the terminal release of the DB 12.2 code line. It is important to note, that with the 19c release UTL files will no longer be supported, and it will only be certified in a single container setup.
Check out MOS Note 2409163.1 or patch 28574967 to get the latest about Enterprise Command Center, which is baselined on EBS 12.2.4, which gives you dashboard information about your EBS installation. It absolutely sounds and looks like something some customers might want to investigate, in order to be able to give your executives some very high level details very quickly!

4:00 PM - OAUG Popup Event - @OAUG1

OAUG becomes OATUG! This was an almost emergency meeting that was shared and posted about an hour it happened, and was not even in the conference app/website listing of sessions, but I was pretty glad I had an essentially front row seat to the event after James and Michael mentioned this was going on!

5:30 PM–7:00 PM - OAUG Welcome Reception - @OATUG1

The first ever OATUG event! Which also, was probably the best Welcoming meeting I have been to at COLLABORATE! An outdoor event with the Riverwalk running through it, wonderful Mexican food, and various musicians roaming around playing, was VERY festive!

Happy to be back at COLLABORATE again, enjoying the company of some great people I have met over the years, excited to met new people, and get my hands on some new technology in the process to advance my career just THAT much further!! I will be seeing you in most blog posts over this week, and maybe I will even post after COLLABORATE is over too. :}

COLLABORATE: Day 3

Even though I had to get up bright and early to get ready to be involved in the first two sessions of the day, it was not a chore because I am back in the conference swing! My feet might hurt, and my brain too a bit, but I forgot how much I missed this conference!

Upgrade SIG - Sandra Vucinic, Panel & Me! - 8:30 AM

I enjoyed how little Sandra had to present, but she could barely get through it because the crowd was really into the subject and kept asking good questions which fired off many discussions from the panel! An important takeaway for me is that there is likely no upgrade path from R11 to R12.3 when it comes out because it will be another major technical upgrade like from R12.1.3 to R12.2.1 was.

Analyzing Oracle Workflow Data for Increased System Performance - Me! - 9:45 AM

This is the old standby, the one that first got me on this journey, so it is good to get back to it AND I was able to address a question that had come up during the week at another Workflow event too like when should I purge (always!).

Workflow Administration 101 - Mary Hammes - 11 AM

Even though this is a 101 class, do not be fooled, it is GOOOOOD! I am taking this home and sharing this with the EBS Administrators-to-be so they can see a real world example of what we used to do in the day with workflow a LOT and what they might be asked to do/investigate. I mean, there is a reason that 40-50 people AT LEAST attended this session!! Awesome response, with about 10-15 people hanging out afterwards to chat with Mary and other OAUG members too. That is what COLLABORATE is all about! Oh and did you ever think to add a vacation rule to the SYSADMIN account to route errors to your team? Me neither, that is really smart!

Virtualized Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) - Containers and VMs for RAC - Marcus Michalewicz (@OracleRACpm) - 12:15 PM

I thought this session was interesting, and to start off the comment was made that "generally, the Oracle DB & Oracle RAC could be supported on a variety of virtual platforms". Ohhhhh really? While Oracle VM is the only certified VM solution for Oracle RAC for x86 environments, did you know that Docker Containers are supported for Oracle RAC for test and development environments? Yeah, I did not either!

Workflow Tips and Tricks - (@anand_jp07) - 1:15 PM

I was really looking forward to this one, but in the end the title should have been "Workflow Tips and Tricks for Developers" since the speaker went over what Workflow was, showed a very outdated technical diagram with OAS 10g as our platform, and just generally was going over how you would change things in Workflow Builder if you had different business cases. Kind of disappointing for me, but I hope the other attendees got something out of it!

Hit Refresh with Oracle GoldenGate Microservices - Bobby Curtis (@dbasolved) - 2:30 PM

This topic was all about Release 12.3 for GoldenGate and first off a major thing in this release is moving from a reliance on command line interface and going to a GUI instead! Whoa!! Really??!!? This release seems to be shaking the whole dynamic up, as it is a significant change in the architecture of GoldenGate for pretty much the first time in 20 years by having different REST APIs replacing key components of your architecture and even introducing AdminClient which is your GUI with security actually modeled and defaulted in the tool.

Virtualizing Oracle 12cR2 RAC Databases with Oracle VM and/or VMWare - Kai Yu (@ky_austin1)- 4:15 PM

While I had some RAC virtualization from Marcus earlier in the day, I was thinking this would be more compare/contrast of the options, and maybe even a discussion of why you would pick one, but in the end it was a very technical discussion of how to implement each option. Not what I was expecting, but a good kind of talking point abstract that I can try to get my head around if we decided to go to either option some day. Very interesting how the Dell EMC Ready Bundle (small version) is 6 VMs that can support up to 10 DB instances and they are building much bigger systems to handle larger ecosystems!!

COLLABORATE18: Day 2

I may have planned on sleeping in just a bit and missed the robots, AI and the future keynote this morning since I have already seen the Terminator movies, so I know how this ends in Skynet. :}

Working with Oracle 12c Databases in the Cloud - Mark Kurtz (@ToadSC_CHI) - 9:45 AM

I really enjoyed this session a LOT! There was quite a bit of material which added CONTEXT, something I am not seeing a whole lot in some Cloud presentations/papers, around the questions you need to be asking in the meetings where people are deciding to go/figuring out how to go "the Cloud". Why are you going? What are you trying to accomplish by going? Then there are a SLEW of questions you need to be asking your vendor too!

Troubleshooting Workflow Notification Mailer in Your E-Business Suite - Jevgenijs Reuts (@jreuts) - 11 AM

I went into this session expecting a lot of razzle dazzle about everything new, but instead I was pleasantly surprised to see quite a bit of repetition about troubleshooting the mailer because it was done in such a thoughtful way, that for people that have not had these experiences now they have blueprints for how to deal with several different common scenarios! Even picked up some new things along the way, like did you know that FNDCPGSC is the mailer process that you can look for at the OS level? Oh and also there is a Workflow Purge Data Collection Script in MOS note 750497.1 which I will check out later to make sure I am not missing anything obvious in my toolkit!

Survival Tips for an Oracle DBA inside the MySQL World - Nisha Riyaj - 12:15 PM

If you go to mysql.com there is a Community Edition which is free to download and use, so you can get some practice! Look at 1300654.1 for help installing it, but it is as simple as yum install mysql and then you are on your way! SYSDBA = root in MySQL, spfile = my.cnf file in MySQL, schema = database in MySQL, SELECT * FROM V$SESSION = show processlist \G;, also there are many different log files in MySQL and the binary log is the transaction log.

ASM Concepts, Architecture and Best Practices - Pini Dibask (@pini_dibask) - 1:15 PM

This one was not exactly what I thought it would be, but then again, it was exactly as advertised in an odd way. For some reason I thought this was going to go over the internals of ASM, but it was more basic low level concepts and even then I still picked up a lot of information like an ASM allocation unit is the smallest ASM unit, what the 3 ASM redundancy levels are (normal, high, and external), and even tables in ASM to look at for detailed status information like GV$ASM_DISK_STAT and GV$ASM_DISKGROUP_STAT. Getting into this session really made me want to finish up my Oracle Press book on ASM that I started a long time ago, and then get some hands on with ASM.

The Secret to Driving Digital Transformation within Your Organization - Chris Garrity & Shane Eisenhauer (@Terillium) - 2:30 PM

I thought this was going to be a sales pitch, and thankfully I was WRONG! This was pretty good example of how to drive digital transformation in 4 ways: stay informed, evaluate opportunities, set your strategy in motion, and achieve results. It seems simple when you think about it! Along the lines of Tesla outpacing GM in a session yesterday, did you know that by the end of 2019 digital transformation spending is supposed to be $1.7 Trillion worldwide? What about end of 2018 Cloud spend is supposed to be $160 Billion? Change is here, we need to embrace it and use it to benefit us.

Buzzword Bingo -- What does DevOps, IaaS, PaaS, CI/CD mean for the Oracle DBA? - Kirby McCord - 4:15 PM

Right off the bat, one of the first content slides shook me up since it had the regular People, Process, and Technology diagram BUT this time it had Organizational Culture smack dab in the middle which is TRUE and the first time I had ever seen that articulated in the "PPT" discussion! Very interesting! Did you know that for the most part Exadata hardware costs have stayed relatively the same since V2, up to X6, but the software costs have exploded? An example of the changing times where compute power/hardware is getting cheaper (or staying the same cost for more power) but the software to run on them is costing more. Again, The Phoenix Project book is mentioned. I really have to read this sucker! Three main ideas for DevOps: System Thinking, Continuous Experimentation, and Amplifying Feedback Systems. Also, Kirby kind of rocked my world with the statement "Standardize before Automation" which seems SO obvious, but for a complex organization it is incredibly difficult to do! As he said, every database is a snowflake, sometimes on purpose (read: job security), sometimes just out of habit/ignorance/"this is how we have always done things". Sound familiar to you?

COLLABORATE18: Day 1

Yesterday you probably noticed a trend, and today I can tell you was NOT all about me. :} Instead of running or helping run SIG meetings, I decided to spend my day getting outside of my comfort zone and getting into sessions that were not in my wheelhouse so I would have to stretch and pick up new skills or at least knowledge/terminology!

Building A Continuous Development Pipeline for WebLogic DevOps - Eric Mader (@ericgmader) - 9:45 AM

Eric sure knows his stuff! We do have CD were I work, but we are not fully DevOps in my area...yet...AND I have been working on WebLogic for the past year so this was too good to pass up! I liked it, and it helped reinforce some things like the People, Process, Technology pyramid, that I have to read The Phoenix Project book, and what some obvious benefits of DevOps are. Oh, and it was interesting how there is a new role coming out called "Operation Developer" which really embraces DevOps and what a person has to do here in this space.

Introducing Kafka to the Oracle DBA - Mike Donovan (@dbvisitmike) - 11 AM

I was totally not ready for this session, and that is great! It was ALL completely new to me!! "The truth is the log. The database is a cache of a subset of the log." Whooooooaaaaaa!! Boiling Kafka down to the nitty-gritty, it is pretty much just a log writer/reader that is really good at what it does. I need to get over to http://confluent.io to see about getting some free books which may include Kafka: The Definitive Guide book, or otherwise just find it online at a retailer since this seems like a wide open space which is interesting.

The Self-Driving Oracle Database of the Future (or Present) - Rich Niemiec (@RichNiemiec) - 12:15 PM

DBAs need to become data experts, not database experts to survive the future, which includes moving closer to the business and innovation. Awesome stuff to hear! Data will become the new oil, which we see with Tesla becoming worth more than General Motors who shipped 92 TIMES as many cars as Tesla in a quarter recently. On-Prem 18c DB WILL exist. Also, try it out by going to http://cloud.oracle.com/tryit with some free credits.

Going Serverless - An Introduction to AWS Glue - Michael Rainey (@mRainey) - 1:15 PM

In this context, serverless is going to a fully managed provider which allows developers to focus on developing instead of supporting. There are challenges facing this such as: monitoring, debugging, integration testing is difficult, maintaining state of application across multiple functions is tricky, startup latency, built for small short functions, vendor lock-in. AWS Glue - "a fully managed extract, transform, and load (ETL) service" straight from their manual.

General Session: Oracle Cloud - How to Build Your Own Personalized Path to Cloud - Steve Daheb SVP (@OracleCloud) - 2:30 PM

This one was a lot of general things I have heard before, including some data/examples Rich shared at lunchtime (like AWS only offering 99.95% availability which comes out to 20 minutes of downtime a month NOT including several other reasons there could be an outage, yet Oracle is offering 99.995% which means less than 2.5 minutes of downtime a month WITH NO CAVEATS), but one thing I heard which caught my attention was Oracle Autonomous Cloud is coming at some point, in addition to the OLTP version of this (18c) coming this Summer.

Advance from DBA to Cloud Administrator - Erik Benner (@Erik_Benner) - 4:15 PM

This echoed a lot of what Rich was saying too, where DBAs need to go from Database Management to Systems Management. Example of how many people in the audience (most) that were using Outlook 365 which is just an instance of a workload/system moving out of your DC and into the Cloud. New skills you need to get include: DATA administrator, small environments (focus on the application), large environments (focus on all of that plus, automation, security, integration). Brand new product to help with this called Oracle Management Cloud, which is NOT replacing Oracle Enterprise Manager, but this is an evolution of OEM in that it is using a big data repository to put just about everything into the same bucket so it can learn about the whole system. After it learns, it allows you to drill into what it has aggregated so you can get down to the specific transaction/SQL statement/error message at any time in the past. Heady stuff!!

COLLABORATE18: Pre-Day

Hello faithful readers, I have returned to regale you with stories of the OAUG COLLABORATE conference for 2018!  I will try to start returning to some kind of regular blogging this year, but we will see how it goes.  :}

Workflow SIG Meeting - Why Won't My Workflows Purge!?!?!?!? - Karen Brownfield (@BrownfieldKaren) and I

Karen put together the presentation for this session which pulled together a lot of what she has done, things I have done, and even things that former SIG Chair John Peters has done over the years, so it was really awesome to see things come together like that. I'm going to change what I do a bit this year, and NOT detail everything little thing I see in a session, BUT I will post some of her tips and tricks later this year because some of them were really good, and deserve their own spotlight.

EBS SysAdmin SIG Meeting - James Marrow (@jjmarrow) and I

Brandy Robert w/Oracle from Proactive Support had a really great presentation for us!
Are you using Online Patching Log Analyzer Utility for ADOP?  What about Online Patching Diagnostic Reports for ADOP too?
Check out 1901242.1 for ADOP diag information.
Of course there is always 432.1 on MOS.  :}
There are changes to analyzers detailed in 1939637.1 to allow them to autoupdate!

Database SIG Meeting - Michael Brown (@MichaelBrownOrg) and I

News about a new EBS Advanced Architecture and High Availability SIG coming out!
Santiago Bastidas from Oracle had a presentation on licensing EBS on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
EBS - BYOL (Bring Your Own License), only PROD instances, still pay yearly support
Cloud - subscribe to basic IaaS services
Differences between BYOL for app server EE on Compute, BYOL DB EE on Compute, BYOL DB EE to DB Cloud Services, and Exadata Cloud Service
Cloud pricing = automation + infrastructure + (licensing) but (licensing) gets waived with BYOL

COLLABORATE17: Day 4

Oracle E-Business Suite Mobile and Web Services Security - Michael Miller - Integrigy Corporation - @Integrigy

While I only took a few notes, that does not reflect poorly on Michael, actually the opposite!  There was SO much information that I decided early on to go get his presentation and download it instead!  I put my name down to get invited to regular security webinars, and I suggest you go to their site and do the same!!

Great opening note that Oracle attack toolkit exists in the wild, and people download it to work against Oracle installations.
FND_IREP_CLASSES - Integrated SOA Gateway (ISG) cropped up again, so I really need to look into it.
"Yesterday's interfaces are now web services."  Just awesome quote!
Httpd.conf -> url_fw.conf -> url_fw_ws.conf

Personalize and Extend Oracle E-Business Suite for Desktops and Mobile Devices - Maher Muhanna and Vijay Shanmugam from Oracle

Maher
6 levels of OA Framework personalizations
New components can be added at the Site level like buttons.
Ability to undo personalizations from the Manage Levels page - as result of feedback
Copy Personalization, again something new that was designed as part of user feedback.
R12.2.4 a new simplified home page, more tablet like.
Personalized Announcements looks like a widget on the home page that can deliver specific messages you want to your customer base.
User level global header can be selected between icons only or classic links only, and the same for Alta UI options in 12.2.5+ too.
Save search as a view as user personalization, sounds like a great feature.
12.2.3 allows column reordering on webpages, and can hide columns too - Settings menu allows you to do this too
Column Freeze indicator like Excel's grid freeze
Admins have more powers to disable freezing or hiding columns on pages
Plan for a smoother upgrade by making sure your OAF points to synonyms not the tables themselves!!
1531121.1 Online Patch readiness
Oracle Alta UI is the only supported skin in 12.2.5
Simplified Global Header
HTML 5 Standards Uptake
12.2.3 takes on ATG 12.2.4/12.2.5
Working on:
- a WYSIWYG admin personalization workbench
- theme editor form Alta UI
- column freeze for HGrid
- page as favorite part of every favoritable page

Vijay
Mobile list 1641772.1 / search "Oracle EBS America" - same app connects to 12.1 and 12.2
Need to apply patches on 12.1 to start using it.
Can use VPN to connect apps
Smartphone apps can use existing authentication
No SSO between apps because apps are installed in one offs, no shared browser cookies
1642431.1
1641772.1
807319.1
Choice between App Store and enterprise distribution (seems like a killer choice to enable uptake by management) - allows you to not upgrade the app, and have to patch EBS as a result
cacerts file cannot be updated after app is installed from store - I might ask for some clarification about this one, as this could be a deal-breaker as we have other certs in this file that might be on different schedules than the mobile suite is.
Working on:
- adding certificates dynamically after installation
- reassign in Approval (seems like a blocker for us)
- AirWatch and MobileIron 3rd party apps
- push notifications

Oracle WebLogic Server Administration and Management with Oracle E-Business Suite 12.2 - Kevin Hudson and Elke Phelps

Kevin
This is a brand new session based on OAUG ATG feedback, which is pretty awesome!
To WLS, EBS is a handful of web applications, deployed to Clusters of Managed Severs, supervised by AdminServer.
oacore_server, forms_server, oafm_server are just different nodes that need to run, forms-4ws_server comes disabled but do not delete it, it will be deleted with a later patch!
Online Patching is used to apply ALL patches in 12.2!!
1583902.1 Online Patching FAQ
Identical FMW_HOMEs in FS1 and FS2
3 Oracle homes in here, FMW Common, Webtier & Utilities, WLS home
Synchronizations to one FS goes to the other FS
Recommendation for ports to be incremented by 10 example: FS1 :0 and FS2 :10
Not supported to have direct connection to PATCH FS
Multiple ports with administration - think about having a VIP pointing to both locations?  Need to ask more about this, but I think it would work.
100-150 concurrent users per JVM
1905593.1
Add WLS managed server gets added in RUN, then prepare PATCH creates it for you
Adding nodes 1383621.1 / 1375769.1
pairfile - important new file, need to understand it
dualfs=yes after ATG.D7

Elke
Downtime for changing WLS admin password, since you have to stop application tier services
New things in changing APPS password, and does require downtime too - AFPASSWD recommended
EBS Technology Code level Checker (ETCC) 17537119.1
Process to patch the 3 homes is essentially the same - key step is adop phase=fs_clone 1355068.1
1905593.1
ss -l -p -n | grep <AdminServer PID> - Need to try this in our environment to see what port the server is running on!!
1940996.1 DS connection pool diagnostics
1428056.1 Oracle Fusion Middleware diag
2230225.1 WLS utility - MOS
1984710.1 Summary of EBS login

I had a really great time at COLLABORATE yet again, and I am already looking forward to next year!  Hope you join me!!

COLLABORATE17: Day 3 + Me!

As you will see, today was pretty much all about me!  :}

E-Business Suite Workflow SIG Meeting

I tried to sneak into the room and be a normal attendee, but current SIG Coordinator John Peters spotted me and made me sit at the table up front!  This meant that I couldn't take too many notes, but you should visit the http://workflowsig.communities.oaug.org/ website in a day or too for the conference slides.

Other than that, the major announcement that started off the session was my promotion to SIG Coordinator taking John's place due to his time commitments at the moment.  I promise to try my best here!

E-Business Suite Upgrade SIG Meeting

EBS R12.3 is expected 2019 at the earliest which is coming from Cliff Godwin, as they expect R12.2.7 this year and are planning a "year off" of releases in 2018, but that could change depending on other technologies that are in the works so R12.2.8 COULD come out at some point.
There was some very lively discussion about upgrading from 11.5.9 instance on Windows or if reimplementation is a better idea, which had the entire panel agreeing on something for the first time, that reimplementation is the preferred option.

Next up was lunch, and then instead of going to a session I took the hour off to practice for...

R12: Reducing the Data Footprint of Oracle E-Business Suite - Me!

Obviously I could copy and paste all of my slides here, but that just is not a lot of fun!  I thought it went well with 20-25 people attending, and they seemed engaged and interested in the subject, so that was really great.

How Arby's Restructured Their GL Chart of Account Without Re-Implementing EBS: You Can Too - Matt Powell

This one should have said the answer was they contracted services from EiS Consulting and used a tool from eprentise to get this done since, other than that there was not a lot of meat to the presentation.
I did think it was interesting that they were trying to collapse 18 companies into a single unit but were having problems.
Reimplementation was going to be 500-750k, upgrade only 100k, which was a great motivator for not doing reimplementation.
Used eprentise to have FlexField software.
Created a one-time responsibility just to allow people to help with COA conversion, and I found this a good idea.
Leveraged SharePoint w/WebADI templates.
Summary Template deletion delayed by 18 hrs due to DB performance and then on top of that the Internet went out at their office!

COLLABORATE17: Day 2

E-Business Suite on Oracle Cloud: An Architect's Perspective - Roy Hunter

Business priorities - innovation, agility, lower cost and risk (grow and transition the business)
IT priorities - on-demand self-service, rapid elasticity, measured service (enable business growth and transformation)
Five QA systems to support a PROD system, TEST, UAT, SIT, performance test, and stress test!
Migration tools allows automated cloning.
Reimplement onto SaaS
Re-platform onto IaaS - why?  Current environment tailored (customized) to support unique business processes and requirements, while SaaS requires business process re-engineering and SaaS modules lack features/functionality, or don't exist.  Doing IaaS allows you to eventually move to SaaS when ready while getting benefit of IaaS immediately!
Constraints on moving - Data Sovereignty, Control, Latency
Oracle Cloud Machine moves into your Data Center to solve some of those constraints.
Co-existence between Cloud and on-prem is possible, and actually even expected!
Can't get a trial account for Exadata, but if you talk to your tech rep they may be able to help set up a POC
https://blogs.oracle.com/EBSandOracleCloud/
This is for EBS 12.1.3 and up.
There is also a new disconnected OCM which to me sounds like an Exadata box, where it gets installed in your DC and then does not connect to Oracle.

E-Business Suite 11i/12.1/12.2 to 12.2.6 Upgrades: Quick, Fast, and Easy - @OATCInc

Relational calculus is what Oracle is built on, did you know?
Review of the support timelines, which is always good.
742060.1 DB support note
If you are going to do a fresh install, do R12.2 now, there is no reason to do R12.1 anymore.
1439822.1 EBS customers get updates for JRE
Forms won't launch in Chrome without an addon that is unsupported anyways!
Microsoft Edge doesn't support Java, so won't support EBS!
Oracle Forms are not going away due to how powerful they are, and cannot replicate what they do in Java...yet at least!
There are 22 mobile apps right now - 1641772.1
2114173.1 R12.2 Knowledge Center
1984710.1 architecture
UI login in 12.2.6 and favorites have a tablet look and feel which is completely different!
E48834-13 11i to R12.2 upgrade document
R12.2 patches are C patches, R12.0 are A, and R12.1 are B, so know which are which and do not apply the wrong thing!
How long it takes depends on: Time, scope, budget (famous triangle)
1 month per module!

Navigating My Oracle Support with the Customer Support Council - Doug Hahn - @doughahn

oaug.org/resources/csc
Enhancement Requests
Extended Premier Support for 12.1
ORAchk, Oracle Analyzers, Support Identifier Groups (virtual CSIs)
Hot Topic notifications
Bundle Analyzers - concurrent reports DO update
1939637.1
Focusing on being proactive

Architect Data for Excellence - Ian Abramson - @iabramson

Bi-model BI, this is new to me, so need to research it a bit.
Wal-Mart is like a cult…Sam Walton was focused on innovation
Hans Peter Luhn, Bill Inmon, Ralph Kimball - major influencers on Business Intelligence/Big Data
Ian deals with a 40 Petabyte data lake!
Variety, volume, velocity, veracity
Data Lake - highly agile, data scientists vs. Data Warehouse - less agile, business users
Need to celebrate failures as much as successes - this is a major takeaway because the thought process behind it is that you learn from failing just as much (if not more) than succeeding!
Key question is: What do we expect from Big Data?
DW is highly governed data, low latency, 1000s of users vs. Big Data raw and unstructured data, unrestricted and ungovernable data
Out of a million products, probably 200k are right, so how does that throw off the company?  Millions of dollars out the door!
What do we need to do today?  Need to provide access to all data, be able to bridge data between business units and data sources, keep data secure, bi-modal BI is the new analytic approach.
Hadoop is not a database.  Hadoop is not an IDW.
Data warehouses are not going away, they are going to instead evolve!
Big Data is not a solution, but a tool
New analytic needs - new data integration, business need for lower data latency, support for dynamic structures, report personalization.
How to evolve?  Understand the architecture.
Analytic Sandbox -> Raw Data Hub -> Enterprise Data Lake
Three components of data architecture: landing & assembly, general DW, specialized data warehouse

Low-Hanging Fruit: Tuning & Securing WebLogic Server - Sid Patel & Smarajit Pramanick - @ASTCorporation

Intro of WLS - example of a sandwich to show how what is in the middle might really matter…great example!
Common issues - system errors (stuck thread, thread waits, timeout, memory issues - StuckThreadMaxTime default is 600 seconds), bad throughput (server not responding to new requests), loss of messages (intractability of messages, network/socket issues), poor performance (request taking longer time than expected, SLAs violated)
Common performance issues - memory leak, thread deadlock, WLS session replication, high number of open file descriptors or sockets, long running DB queries, JVMs spending took much time in GC, too chatty system, improper hardware sizing, network bandwidth, payload size, load balancer issues, bad application design
Performance tuning - how is WLS performance measured?  Response time, latency, throughput, resource utilization - how is WLS performance tested?  Functional, stress, load, and soak testing
Benchmark
Identify possible bottlenecks
OS tools - netstat, iostat, top, vmstat
WLS tools - server logs, WLS diagnostic framework, WLS console & EM, WLST
JDK tools - JPS, thread dumps, heap dumps, Java flight recorder, jvisual vm, jconsole, jstat (some of these I do not know so I need to look them up)
Log and debug options - logging service, log subsystem events (startup/shutdown, application deployment, subsystem failures), communicate status, domain message log (overall status (server logs and out, domain logs)), change log location, message catalog (Java logging API), use Java logging (Log4j), subsystem logs (http, transaction, data source, diagnostic images)
Log severity levels
Log rotation policy
WLDF (WebLogic Diagnostic Framework) free out of the box
OS parameters need to be tuned, especially for Linux
file descriptor since everything is a file - "Too many open files"
ps -eaf | grep Java -> pfiles processID | grep rlimit
ulimit -H -n
ulimit -S -n
TCP tuning, default wait time netstat -a | grep TIME_WAIT | wc -l

COLLABORATE17: Day 1

Keynote Session - Jenn Lim - deliveringhappiness.com

There was SO much good stuff here that it was hard to capture, so I recommend that you check it out for yourself BUT there were six keys that I thought were important to capture: commitment, revisit your core values, commit to transparency, purpose, build meaningful relationships, build the right team!

Get More from Data by Giving It to Your Customers - Bryan Brewer

This was interesting as Womble is a pipe coating company that doesn't own their inventory!
Internal challenge to find a dashboard with the following features: real time, integrated, secure, Internet enabled, summary and detail reporting, easy to install design/develop, and train/support.
External challenge to provide the customers the same thing!
What they did is come up with a combined checklist!
Looked at BI Publisher, OBIEE, OBIFS, Hubble (Insightsoftware.com) and finally used Hubble in their efforts.
Went from a report with over 900 lines to a dashboard with 4-5 visual reports that can be drilled down into!

JSON is not another YAML ("Yet Another Markup Language") - Coleman Leviter - @cleviter

Lightweight compared to XML.
Basic types - number, string, Boolean, null, whitespace
JSON data types are few and predefined, it has a simple structure-defining and document-combining constructs, order of the objects is insignificant, is very data centric
JSON doesn't have its own data type like XML does
JSON operators - json_exists, json_query, json_table, json_value, RETURNING
json.org

What you need to know about Oracle's password file - Michael Nelson

Password file is stored at the OS level so you can log into a down DB!
If you are on the server, be part of the ora_dba or dba group, but if you are not on the server, use the password file stored on the server!
Run select * from v$pwfile_users to see who is in the password file.
Password file is encrypted on the OS for security!
The file is usually located at $ORACLE_HOME/DBAs/orapw$ORACLE_SID
orapwd command - can be used on ASM only in 12c, only if ASM is set to 12c also
ORA-1996 indicates that the password file is full!

Oracle E-Business Suite SysAdmin SIG - @kansasdba and @michaelbrownorg

EBS 12.2.6 released on 9/2016, while 12.1 was released on 5/2009, and 12.3 is coming at some point.
EBS 12.1 supported until 2021!
My Oracle Support note ID 742060.1
https://blogs.oracle.com/stevenChan/entry/db121_extfee
https://blogs.oracle.com/stevenChan/entry/db112_extfee
Housekeeping
-Bylaws
-I'm now the Vice Chair!
Santiago Bastidas with Oracle gave us a presentation on EBS on Oracle Cloud.
This strategy uses both PaaS and IaaS.
Shift to the cloud is going to be assisted by automation!
DataBase Cloud Services (DBCS) is different from the offering for Exadata Cloud.
My Oracle Support note ID 1383621.1
My Oracle Support note ID 2066260.1
Lift and Shift - process of moving an existing EBS system from on prem to the Oracle Cloud.
Enhanced EBS management with EBS Cloud Admin Tool, adds SOA CS, OAM/OID instance, Mailer instance.
Roadmap - lots of things, but major takeaway is REST/SOAP enablement is being worked on in the Cloud!

McDonalds's journey to re-platform Java applications from IBM WebSphere to Oracle WebLogic Server - Chandan Bedi & Sundeep Khurana

I felt sorry for these gentlemen, as I was the only person in attendance and it was a pretty good presentation!  Since I was the only person, it was kind of hard to take notes while they were talking directly to me, but it was a good overview of their project, pitfalls they encountered, and how they got the applications from one system to the other.

What's New in PL/SQL and EBR in Oracle Database 12c Release 2 - @BrynLite

Bryn started with a ten minute pep talk about using coding correctly, which seemed a bit odd, but what the hey, right?
Edition-based Redefinition (EBR) has been around since Oracle OpenWorld 2009 in 11gR2!
Brand new code coverage tool - start coverage, run the tests, stop coverage (there didn't seem to be a lot of detail about this, so I am going to have to go searching for this).
alter session set Plsql_Warnings = 'Error:All' - This was a new one for me, since I'm not a developer, but I'm squirreling this away for later if I ever need it!
It took about ten seconds to refresh his 12.2 PDB locally, so try to be destructive and curious if you can recover from it with little to no effort!!
Pl/Scope (what is this program?)
HPROF (hierarchical performance profiler) enhancements - identifies SQL "subprograms" with the SQL_ID (again, what is this?)
Accessible by is a feature that is pretty new, but not a lot of people in the room were using it.
New pragma allows an element of any kind to be marked as depreciated.

COLLABORATE17: Pre-Day

Testing Oracle E-Business Suite Best Practices - Mazen Arar - 12:30 PM

"Change is constant" was on his first slide, and this is SO true these days for many of us!
Testing readiness means challenging facts.
A great insight that Mazen had was that QA needs to be proactive, as early as possible, even to listen.
Have the hardware on hand, including different versions of it.
Where/how do we start?  Plan, Execute, Automate
Planning - what is the task on hand, what documentation is at hand?  RCD (Release Content Document), FIAD (Functional Impact Assessment Document)
Scope - key business flows, impacted flows, usage patterns
Mark test flows with priority - basic, sanity check, detailed
Follow a testing methodology based on task - theme based, exploratory, role based, end to end flow based
Make sure to have well defined entry and exit criteria
Cloud testing - Shorter Release Cycle (automation), Rapid Addition of features, security, integration, multi tenancy
IoT testing - Complex Architecture, Complex data, security, validation, performance and scalability
Good practice - be creative/innovative, review results, learn from them, plan next cycle with a new flavor, improve scoping
Automation!  Who can do it?  Anyone.  What do you automate?  Critical and repeatable flaws.  When should we?  Now!  Allows more innovation out of employees
There are several different applications for this in Oracle Application Testing Suite (OATS), Oracle Load Testing Suite, and Oracle Test Manager.
Oracle QA reduced their automation time by 60%!
Flow Builder application allows you to generate test scripts.
API and WebServices support in Advance Pack
Due to their own use of these applications, EBS patching won't break OATS.
If you are around at the conference, stop by Demo Booth 14 to see this in action!

Real- time Data Integration in Oracle E-Business Suite using Integrated Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) Gateway by Faraz Khalik with @DeloitteOracle - 1:45 PM

This was supposed to be a case study about transitioning to SOA, which was technically what was provided, but really what Faraz talked about was the solution/process that was put in place, not much technical information.  This was kind of frustrating, but I'll check out the addendum in the whitepaper/presentation to see if there is any kind of technical information included.

Geo Land setup! - 3:00 PM

The coordinators of the Geo's had a blast getting everything set up for the OAUG members!

OAUG Geo Land! - 4:00 PM

This was even more fun than the setup hour was!  The Arizona/New Mexico Geo had a cactus themed ring toss game, and a LOT of the OAUG members had a blast!!

OAUG Meeting of the Members - 5:30 PM

There were some awesome awards given out, and even had a sneak peek of an Oracle and OAUG survey which is going to be made public in a few days!

Kicking off OAUG's eLearning for 2017!

Hello everybody, I do exist!  Sorry I have been away, but I plan on returning on a more regular basis very soon!!

Anyways, the OAUG is having another great eLearning slate of sessions and none other than yours truly is going to kick it off next Tuesday with my Workflow purging presentation!!  If you are not already a member, make sure you sign up as an individual member or get your company to join and all employees get this amazing benefit.  This gets you ready to attend COLLABORATE17 in Las Vegas in April!!

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!!

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

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

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

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!)

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!