Having a bit of free time at the OAUG conference this week has given me time to catch up on a few new blogs that I'll be adding to my blog roll and I want to share them with you!
http://john-goodwin.blogspot.com/ - Good updates on things Hyperion, very through articles with images that help
https://blogs.oracle.com/jobsatoracle/ - No I'm not looking to leave, but I think it is interesting that Oracle provides this blog (which hasn't been updated in a while) that promises a look into "what it is like to work at Oracle" and I don't think there are a lot of people that WOULDN'T like to know how Oracle does what they do.
http://nigelnoble.wordpress.com/ - A performance related blog that has only had a few updates over the past few years, but with the author starting to post in the last few weeks hopefully he'll keep up on blogging and add more to the conversation.
http://jamesmorle.wordpress.com/ - Well this is the address I ran across to read later, but it redirected me to http://www.scaleabilities.co.uk today and James has his blog at http://www.scaleabilities.co.uk/author/morlej/ now. I'm going to add it to my blog roll since performance and hardware issues that he talks about really seem to coincide with what I'm looking to do, and we'll see if that page will update when he puts up a new post.
https://blogs.oracle.com/fadevrel/ - An often updated Fusion Application blog for Developers that has lots of information, plus they even have their own YouTube channel for their tutorial videos http://www.youtube.com/FADeveloperRelations
http://www.munzandmore.com/blog - Really good articles on SOA, which makes sense with him being a published author on WebLogic, so I feel like I'll be learning some very interesting kernels.
https://blogs.oracle.com/oem/ - I can say that I'm a bit overwhelmed by how much information is here, maybe especially since we don't use OEM on our team, but I think that I'll be able to pick up things here or there in an overall sense.
https://blogs.oracle.com/support/ - We had the pleasure of having Chris and some of his cohorts from Oracle visit us, and I really haven't had a chance to read his blog until now yet I can tell that customer support is a real passion of his since his blog comes off exactly like he is in the classroom.
http://www.antognini.ch/blog/ - A performance related blog so it's pretty much an automatic add. :}
https://blogs.oracle.com/GetProactive/ - From my standpoint, this is exactly the type of blog I need to be reading! I think when I go back through these blogs digging up things over the past year for those all to important nuggets of information, this blog will likely be a large part of getting some good articles!
www.oraclenerd.com - I'm not sure how I stumbled on this site, but I'm going to stick with it! Seems like a very straightforward and lighthearted take on Oracle issues, which does have that occasional nugget of information or just something to get you thinking another way on an issue.
http://richardfoote.wordpress.com - Filling this under the Jonathan Lewis or Tom Kyte file since it's heady stuff that I probably won't understand much of right now, but boy when I do.....watch out! Just some of the recent 12c posts are enough to make my head spin.
http://connormcdonald.wordpress.com - Okay this one might get filed into the same spot as Richard's blog above is, but it does look very interesting and fact filled with examples too!
http://fritshoogland.wordpress.com - Wow I had a big run of really smart people that I found huh? With Frits dealing with Exadata a bit, I have to follow him and I've seen some good stuff from him recently that puts him on the top shelf.
https://blogs.oracle.com/opscenter - This blog was deceiving since I thought it was an "operations center" type of blog, but it's actually a blog for the Oracle product Ops Center which disappointed me until I realized that we might a. be able to use it or b. not know what it is and in that case I'm going to hang around for a bit and go through the documentation later when I get time to sit down and comprehend it.
https://blogs.oracle.com/reynolds/ - For a good blog on SOA and Fusion Middleware, it'll be hard to beat this blog!
http://ocprep.blogspot.com/ - A solid certification blog, with a dash of career advice thrown in too.
Thursday, August 1, 2013
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
OAUG Connection Point - AppsTech - Day 2 + me
The final day of the OAUG Connection Point - AppsTech conference here in Pittsburgh, and my schedule of events for the sessions I attended today include:
9:00 AM - R12 Surprises in User Management - City Center A - Susan Behn and Karen Brownfield with infosemantics.com
While I was going into this presentation expecting just to find out the "surprises" with User Management, I was pleasantly surprised myself to find that Susan and Karen covered a lot of basic core UMX concepts so that we could then understand the "surprises" they were going to present to us. Great explanation of what the function security and data security layers were and some of the building blocks related to them. Especially to know that Oracle is adding new roles in UMX so you have to be proactive, instead of reactive. Some of the notes they shared were 737547.1, 804296.1, 553290.1 and 1162403.1 in this very good presentation.
10:15 AM - Tuning the eBS Middle Tier - City Center B - Arian Stijf
Unfortunately, I was kind of disappointed that Arian decided to condense a day long training into 45m-1h and kept saying "I won't get into that" several times to open his presentation. My take away was "don't offer a presentation and then tell the audience that you won't be sharing anything they can take back home, with the veiled hint they should talk to you later for consulting". Even worse, he didn't include any personal or professional details to contact him for the work! He does seem like a very personable individual and has some good presentation skills keeping the room laughing from time to time but when asked a direct question he avoided answering it and on one occasion said something very strange which isn't what I've heard or experienced. Doesn't mean it's not true, but again it made me pause.
All that said, I did get a few nuggets of information about notification mailer, advanced queues and different parameters you can change (but not really what you should change it to) for container and component level settings.
11:30 AM - Oracle - Minimizing Oracle EBS Downtimes - Grand Ballroom - Elke Phelps
From a big picture perspective, this was a really interesting presentation. She gave us several ideas on how to create a maintenance strategy, make sure our system stays healthy and is up-to-date, reduce downtime tips, table AD_TASK_TIMING. Another big idea shared is that you should define SLAs with your business group to agree on planned/unplanned outages, what Prod and non-Prod outage windows are, and daily/weekly/monthly/yearly regular planned maintenance windows are. Also, when I get back to work I need to look into Application Testing Suite Accelerators to automate testing! The My Oracle Supports that were shared in this session were: 1400757.1, 1078973.1, 228779.1, 1077709.1, 387859.1, 236469.1.
1:45 PM - Deployment and System Administration of EBS 12.2 - City Center A - Elke Phelps
First, I need to say it was pretty awesome how Elke had the room setup with a microphone so her voice wouldn't die on her and she didn't drop a beat while the mic was getting set up all around her. If that was me, and it was the hour following, I would've freaked out and started blubbering like an idiot. Not that I can't do that on my own, but anyways...I think this session may have been mislabeled because I was looking for changes in how the system would be administrated but it really wasn't a bad session overall because we got a LOT of technical details about 12.2 that isn't even released yet! The big thing for me is the replacement of the OC4Js in favor of Oracle HTTP Server (OHS) and WebLogic Server (WLS) for 12.2, since I'm not a DBA and I don't use RapidWiz(ard) to really care too much about out of the box RAC install being available. On the other hand, hearing that we're going to be required to have a dual file system (and a potential 3rd) for the Online Editioning really scares me. I mean, I'm really glad that the system is getting more complex to allow patching to be entirely "online" (maybe in-line is a better term since concurrent is already taken?) and that Oracle is working with real world customers to get sizing requirements for the multiple filesystems down before release but complexity means problems I usually find.
3:00 PM - Analyzing Oracle Workflow Data for increased System Performance - by Erwin Schmidt (Me!) with Apollo Group, Inc.
Of course I did good! Are you crazy?!? Okay all modesty aside, I was happy to have met people during the conference that were planning on attending my presentation because they had a problem with this or were interested enough to spend time in my session when there were several other good options available. Very humbling experience and I hope it stays that way because after getting done and hitting every note I wanted to, Karen Brownfield (from yesterday's session that I did NOT get to go to) was among several people that came up to let me know that they enjoyed the presentation! Just blown away and really invigorating on top of everything I've been doing with the blog....I'm floored and humbled and excited and.....yeah you get the idea.
9:00 AM - R12 Surprises in User Management - City Center A - Susan Behn and Karen Brownfield with infosemantics.com
While I was going into this presentation expecting just to find out the "surprises" with User Management, I was pleasantly surprised myself to find that Susan and Karen covered a lot of basic core UMX concepts so that we could then understand the "surprises" they were going to present to us. Great explanation of what the function security and data security layers were and some of the building blocks related to them. Especially to know that Oracle is adding new roles in UMX so you have to be proactive, instead of reactive. Some of the notes they shared were 737547.1, 804296.1, 553290.1 and 1162403.1 in this very good presentation.
10:15 AM - Tuning the eBS Middle Tier - City Center B - Arian Stijf
Unfortunately, I was kind of disappointed that Arian decided to condense a day long training into 45m-1h and kept saying "I won't get into that" several times to open his presentation. My take away was "don't offer a presentation and then tell the audience that you won't be sharing anything they can take back home, with the veiled hint they should talk to you later for consulting". Even worse, he didn't include any personal or professional details to contact him for the work! He does seem like a very personable individual and has some good presentation skills keeping the room laughing from time to time but when asked a direct question he avoided answering it and on one occasion said something very strange which isn't what I've heard or experienced. Doesn't mean it's not true, but again it made me pause.
All that said, I did get a few nuggets of information about notification mailer, advanced queues and different parameters you can change (but not really what you should change it to) for container and component level settings.
11:30 AM - Oracle - Minimizing Oracle EBS Downtimes - Grand Ballroom - Elke Phelps
From a big picture perspective, this was a really interesting presentation. She gave us several ideas on how to create a maintenance strategy, make sure our system stays healthy and is up-to-date, reduce downtime tips, table AD_TASK_TIMING. Another big idea shared is that you should define SLAs with your business group to agree on planned/unplanned outages, what Prod and non-Prod outage windows are, and daily/weekly/monthly/yearly regular planned maintenance windows are. Also, when I get back to work I need to look into Application Testing Suite Accelerators to automate testing! The My Oracle Supports that were shared in this session were: 1400757.1, 1078973.1, 228779.1, 1077709.1, 387859.1, 236469.1.
1:45 PM - Deployment and System Administration of EBS 12.2 - City Center A - Elke Phelps
First, I need to say it was pretty awesome how Elke had the room setup with a microphone so her voice wouldn't die on her and she didn't drop a beat while the mic was getting set up all around her. If that was me, and it was the hour following, I would've freaked out and started blubbering like an idiot. Not that I can't do that on my own, but anyways...I think this session may have been mislabeled because I was looking for changes in how the system would be administrated but it really wasn't a bad session overall because we got a LOT of technical details about 12.2 that isn't even released yet! The big thing for me is the replacement of the OC4Js in favor of Oracle HTTP Server (OHS) and WebLogic Server (WLS) for 12.2, since I'm not a DBA and I don't use RapidWiz(ard) to really care too much about out of the box RAC install being available. On the other hand, hearing that we're going to be required to have a dual file system (and a potential 3rd) for the Online Editioning really scares me. I mean, I'm really glad that the system is getting more complex to allow patching to be entirely "online" (maybe in-line is a better term since concurrent is already taken?) and that Oracle is working with real world customers to get sizing requirements for the multiple filesystems down before release but complexity means problems I usually find.
3:00 PM - Analyzing Oracle Workflow Data for increased System Performance - by Erwin Schmidt (Me!) with Apollo Group, Inc.
Of course I did good! Are you crazy?!? Okay all modesty aside, I was happy to have met people during the conference that were planning on attending my presentation because they had a problem with this or were interested enough to spend time in my session when there were several other good options available. Very humbling experience and I hope it stays that way because after getting done and hitting every note I wanted to, Karen Brownfield (from yesterday's session that I did NOT get to go to) was among several people that came up to let me know that they enjoyed the presentation! Just blown away and really invigorating on top of everything I've been doing with the blog....I'm floored and humbled and excited and.....yeah you get the idea.
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
OAUG Connection Point - AppsTech - Day 1
Continuing my coverage from the OAUG Connection Point - AppsTech conference in Pittsburgh, here is the schedule of events I went to including my reviews of the sessions:
8:30 AM - General Session, Steven Chan - Oracle EBS Technology Latest Features & Roadmap - Grand Ballroom
Here I had the chance to talk with Steven one-on-one for a moment before he gave the opening session, which was a very pleasant experience because he seems like a very genuine and relatable individual. He even remembered my name from a brief e-mail encounter (I had completely embarrassed myself by sending him a comment meant for my team because it was too early in the morning to be online for an Oracle webinar) which happened almost six months ago, and tells me that he takes his blogging and role at Oracle very seriously!
On to the session itself, there was SO much that he went over that my head felt like bursting but then I reminded myself that I'd read a lot of his work already and that this was a refresher course almost. Except for actually finding out: what Endeca really was, that 12.2 will likely (since it hasn't been officially announced) be replacing the OC4Js with WebLogic, the code name for 12.2 is Skyros (if I spelled it right), a move towards more SOAP & REST services, there are new whitepapers coming out for each module with relation to Exadata and Exalogic, Oracle saved 231 TB of space with Advanced Compression on their own systems, then a few notes 1484997.1 and 1195034.1 that were referenced. Whew! And I cut that list in probably 1/4th too!
9:45 AM -Workflow Performance Tuning in R12 - Salon 6 - Karen Brownfield - Scratch that, Working Effectively with Oracle's Public APIs - Salon 5 - Rob Lepanto with API Wizard
Why? I was thinking that the name of Karen Brownfield. sounded familiar but I didn't know why until I started doing a run through of my presentation last night and it dawned on me that she was the author of the Solution Beacon PDF that I referenced in my presentation! I don't remember reading her whole presentation, so I had made a mental note to review it anyways so now that she has updated her presentation for R12 (and is no longer with Solution Beacon) I'll read the new one when it becomes available but since I'd already seen some of it I went with the APIs to learn something new.
This was a fairly basic introduction to APIs with a distinction between those that are Public (for customers to use) and Private (not not supported to use) and while there are 1500 APIs in R11 there are 2500 in R12. We were provided with a pretty good query for DBA_OBJECTS to find what are potential APIs in our system, as well as a nice listing for what could be considered Oracle API standards. We also had types of API failure, tips for improving API performance, wrappers (no not Dr. Dre) and information about a seeded responsibility called Integrated OA Framework responsibility with R12. Good session!
11:00 AM - Getting ready for 12.2: Edition-Based Redefinition - City Center B - Michael Brown from BlueStar Inc.
When this one started, I was really chomping at the bit to get a sneak peek at this, and the OAUG Member of the Year for 2013 did not disappoint! Again, Michael was under a NDA so he could not speak about his direct experiences but the public information out there tells us a great deal about this feature which is basically a type of change control within the database for only certain objects. There are of course new types of objects to enable the editioning to happen and while I'm not going to dive into the specifics here (because then you won't visit any of his future sessions) there are a few new tables that I will share that are deployed with 12.2: dba_editions and dba_editioning_views. There, you got a few nuggets of information after all. :} Really great session for the "download" and then mind boggling live demo of editioning.
1:15 PM - Oracle EBS 12.1 Upgrade Best Practices - City Center B - Elke Phelps
I thought this was going to be one of the best sessions in the conference, and I wasn't disappointed at all as I got a lot of content out of the session! Explanation of Rapid Install and the comparison between the file sizes for 12.1.1 and 12.1.3, many reports, customer stories, and the meat and potatoes of the best practices that are recommended. I found a lot of these were covered more in-depth during Mike's presentation the day before, but it wasn't Elke's fault I went to the pre-conference session now was it? That said, with the wealth of knowledge that was transferred to us it was hard for our eyes not to glaze over (since it was after lunch) yet she kept us engaged and the topic was lively so we all stayed focused.
Here are all the notes she went over: 761570.1, 1290886.1, 1327399.1, 1446430.1, 1448102.1, 16791553, 384248.1, 734025.1, 399362.1, 8557019, 244040.1!
2:30 PM - Advanced Management of Oracle EBS with Oracle Enterprise Manager - Grand Ballroom - Vasu Rao
For an "advanced" type of session, this wasn't that advanced as it was more a prep for starting to use OEM which was okay with me since I don't use it today and now I want to badger my DBAs to let me use it a bit! The way Vasu started the presentation by highlighting the top 10 CIO business and technical priorities had a great lead in to getting value out of implementing OEM, so I really started feeling like I was in a sales presentation a bit even though I was learning just about every minute about more modules or features available with the Application Management Suite which is a separately licensed product from Oracle, of which the application management pack is a part of. I thought we got some real value when he was modeling how RUEI (Real User Experience Insight) worked to help replay a user's entire session which was a WOW moment for me! Note 1434392.1 was mentioned, as well as I'm sure quite a few more but I have a LOT of documentation to catch up on for OEM and now excuse me I need to go bug somebody about getting me access to OEM.
4:00 PM - Ask Oracle ATG Panel Discussion with Steven, Elke, and Vasu - Grand Ballroom
Oddly, I don't have any questions on my mind to ask Oracle at this venue but maybe it isn't so odd because I'm a speaker and didn't come here with all of the "baggage" from work expecting solutions. I hate to put it that way, maybe a better way to say it is that having a complimentary registration from being a speaker has put things into perspective and I respect the other people that have had their company pay (or even out of their own pocket!) to come here to get something in return.
Talk about single sign-on and how complicated it is, but Elke and Steven indicated they have simplified the documentation from 50 pages down to 20 pages and are working on roadmap items such as changing the architecture to use WebLogic which should reduce the complexity.
Every group in Oracle has been told to integrate with OEM. Great news to me!
Are there any thoughts to a shared oracle_home? No. Different risks, certs, and they still have plans on getting EBS certified on 12c.
"Sales" is pushing Fusion applications so how do we get ready? Fusion is not the successor to EBS, as they really do different things, yet you can have some Fusion and EBS running at the same times doing their different things. A big hint was being dropped at 12.2 (or some future release, but one that isn't TOO future) supporting touch devices.
Is your database and application supported on VM? VMware runs their installation of EBS on VMware, and Oracle will give support until they decide it is a problem with VMware.
DBAs are asking to upgrade the database that is currently 11.1.0.7 while the app is on 12.1.3, is that supported or suggested? The database and applications have been decoupled, so they CAN upgrade the DB to 11.2.0.3 but may have to apply some interoperability patches for it to work. Also, R12.2 has to be on 11.2.0.3 at least so you might as well go now.
Is Oracle going to provide archiving for EBS? Current applications on the market are only going to really come from Oracle developers or from former Oracle developers, and now that the former Oracle employees don't have access to R12 Steven suggests rather strongly that those tools may not have all the hidden secrets figured out just yet. An idea on using 12c heat maps to help subset data in the EBS in some way.
8:30 AM - General Session, Steven Chan - Oracle EBS Technology Latest Features & Roadmap - Grand Ballroom
Here I had the chance to talk with Steven one-on-one for a moment before he gave the opening session, which was a very pleasant experience because he seems like a very genuine and relatable individual. He even remembered my name from a brief e-mail encounter (I had completely embarrassed myself by sending him a comment meant for my team because it was too early in the morning to be online for an Oracle webinar) which happened almost six months ago, and tells me that he takes his blogging and role at Oracle very seriously!
On to the session itself, there was SO much that he went over that my head felt like bursting but then I reminded myself that I'd read a lot of his work already and that this was a refresher course almost. Except for actually finding out: what Endeca really was, that 12.2 will likely (since it hasn't been officially announced) be replacing the OC4Js with WebLogic, the code name for 12.2 is Skyros (if I spelled it right), a move towards more SOAP & REST services, there are new whitepapers coming out for each module with relation to Exadata and Exalogic, Oracle saved 231 TB of space with Advanced Compression on their own systems, then a few notes 1484997.1 and 1195034.1 that were referenced. Whew! And I cut that list in probably 1/4th too!
9:45 AM -
Why? I was thinking that the name of Karen Brownfield. sounded familiar but I didn't know why until I started doing a run through of my presentation last night and it dawned on me that she was the author of the Solution Beacon PDF that I referenced in my presentation! I don't remember reading her whole presentation, so I had made a mental note to review it anyways so now that she has updated her presentation for R12 (and is no longer with Solution Beacon) I'll read the new one when it becomes available but since I'd already seen some of it I went with the APIs to learn something new.
This was a fairly basic introduction to APIs with a distinction between those that are Public (for customers to use) and Private (not not supported to use) and while there are 1500 APIs in R11 there are 2500 in R12. We were provided with a pretty good query for DBA_OBJECTS to find what are potential APIs in our system, as well as a nice listing for what could be considered Oracle API standards. We also had types of API failure, tips for improving API performance, wrappers (no not Dr. Dre) and information about a seeded responsibility called Integrated OA Framework responsibility with R12. Good session!
11:00 AM - Getting ready for 12.2: Edition-Based Redefinition - City Center B - Michael Brown from BlueStar Inc.
When this one started, I was really chomping at the bit to get a sneak peek at this, and the OAUG Member of the Year for 2013 did not disappoint! Again, Michael was under a NDA so he could not speak about his direct experiences but the public information out there tells us a great deal about this feature which is basically a type of change control within the database for only certain objects. There are of course new types of objects to enable the editioning to happen and while I'm not going to dive into the specifics here (because then you won't visit any of his future sessions) there are a few new tables that I will share that are deployed with 12.2: dba_editions and dba_editioning_views. There, you got a few nuggets of information after all. :} Really great session for the "download" and then mind boggling live demo of editioning.
1:15 PM - Oracle EBS 12.1 Upgrade Best Practices - City Center B - Elke Phelps
I thought this was going to be one of the best sessions in the conference, and I wasn't disappointed at all as I got a lot of content out of the session! Explanation of Rapid Install and the comparison between the file sizes for 12.1.1 and 12.1.3, many reports, customer stories, and the meat and potatoes of the best practices that are recommended. I found a lot of these were covered more in-depth during Mike's presentation the day before, but it wasn't Elke's fault I went to the pre-conference session now was it? That said, with the wealth of knowledge that was transferred to us it was hard for our eyes not to glaze over (since it was after lunch) yet she kept us engaged and the topic was lively so we all stayed focused.
Here are all the notes she went over: 761570.1, 1290886.1, 1327399.1, 1446430.1, 1448102.1, 16791553, 384248.1, 734025.1, 399362.1, 8557019, 244040.1!
2:30 PM - Advanced Management of Oracle EBS with Oracle Enterprise Manager - Grand Ballroom - Vasu Rao
For an "advanced" type of session, this wasn't that advanced as it was more a prep for starting to use OEM which was okay with me since I don't use it today and now I want to badger my DBAs to let me use it a bit! The way Vasu started the presentation by highlighting the top 10 CIO business and technical priorities had a great lead in to getting value out of implementing OEM, so I really started feeling like I was in a sales presentation a bit even though I was learning just about every minute about more modules or features available with the Application Management Suite which is a separately licensed product from Oracle, of which the application management pack is a part of. I thought we got some real value when he was modeling how RUEI (Real User Experience Insight) worked to help replay a user's entire session which was a WOW moment for me! Note 1434392.1 was mentioned, as well as I'm sure quite a few more but I have a LOT of documentation to catch up on for OEM and now excuse me I need to go bug somebody about getting me access to OEM.
4:00 PM - Ask Oracle ATG Panel Discussion with Steven, Elke, and Vasu - Grand Ballroom
Oddly, I don't have any questions on my mind to ask Oracle at this venue but maybe it isn't so odd because I'm a speaker and didn't come here with all of the "baggage" from work expecting solutions. I hate to put it that way, maybe a better way to say it is that having a complimentary registration from being a speaker has put things into perspective and I respect the other people that have had their company pay (or even out of their own pocket!) to come here to get something in return.
Talk about single sign-on and how complicated it is, but Elke and Steven indicated they have simplified the documentation from 50 pages down to 20 pages and are working on roadmap items such as changing the architecture to use WebLogic which should reduce the complexity.
Every group in Oracle has been told to integrate with OEM. Great news to me!
Are there any thoughts to a shared oracle_home? No. Different risks, certs, and they still have plans on getting EBS certified on 12c.
"Sales" is pushing Fusion applications so how do we get ready? Fusion is not the successor to EBS, as they really do different things, yet you can have some Fusion and EBS running at the same times doing their different things. A big hint was being dropped at 12.2 (or some future release, but one that isn't TOO future) supporting touch devices.
Is your database and application supported on VM? VMware runs their installation of EBS on VMware, and Oracle will give support until they decide it is a problem with VMware.
DBAs are asking to upgrade the database that is currently 11.1.0.7 while the app is on 12.1.3, is that supported or suggested? The database and applications have been decoupled, so they CAN upgrade the DB to 11.2.0.3 but may have to apply some interoperability patches for it to work. Also, R12.2 has to be on 11.2.0.3 at least so you might as well go now.
Is Oracle going to provide archiving for EBS? Current applications on the market are only going to really come from Oracle developers or from former Oracle developers, and now that the former Oracle employees don't have access to R12 Steven suggests rather strongly that those tools may not have all the hidden secrets figured out just yet. An idea on using 12c heat maps to help subset data in the EBS in some way.
Monday, July 29, 2013
OAUG Connection Point - AppsTech - Day Minus 1
Got into Pittsburgh last night without any issues for the OAUG Connection Point - AppsTech conference, and was ready for the pre-conference R12 workshop to get started today a little after noon local time. This meant that I had some "free" time in the morning to walk around a bit, catch up on a few of my blogs, and work on getting my blog roll updated as well. Mike Swing from TruTek presented part of his "the little r12.1.3 whole nine yards workshop" since we only had 4 hours, but I walked away really glad that we got the chance to be introduced to the upgrade process for R12!
I'm not a DBA by any stretch of the imagination, so since this was born in Mike's step-by-step self-documentation I think that some of it wasn't targeted for me but I could follow along and stay on top of what he was explaining to us. It was really interesting to see how he presented in general, as well as on the topic at hand, so I did get a few pointers for my presentation on Wednesday also but the best was seeing some of his instances not behaving exactly as he predicted so we were getting troubleshooting with our "hands on" session too! Good session as a warm up to the conference!
I'm not a DBA by any stretch of the imagination, so since this was born in Mike's step-by-step self-documentation I think that some of it wasn't targeted for me but I could follow along and stay on top of what he was explaining to us. It was really interesting to see how he presented in general, as well as on the topic at hand, so I did get a few pointers for my presentation on Wednesday also but the best was seeing some of his instances not behaving exactly as he predicted so we were getting troubleshooting with our "hands on" session too! Good session as a warm up to the conference!
Sunday, July 28, 2013
Windows and R12
Closing up our spotlight of Steven Chan's EBS blog for the week, is this article where R12 is certified for running on Windows 2008 Servers in Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V clients. Why is this important? Oracle on Windows is now fully certified inside and outside VM clients! I remember several years ago when we were going to Solaris VM containers at a company level to save resources in non-PROD environments yet our group wasn't able to shift solely due to the certifications or support that was available at the time. That leads me to wonder just what environments are NOT supported or certified to run Oracle?
Saturday, July 27, 2013
Where Should EBS Concurrent Managers be Located?
This article is chock full of goodness in our next spotlight of Steven Chan's EBS blog! This is particularly interesting to hear that it seems like there are several different ideas about the best way to complete this, even if technology has advanced to make some of those options no longer relevant.
Outside of what is listed in the title of the article, if you follow the link in the article, you'll find four MORE potential problems you could encounter with your EBS installation. More information is good information!
Outside of what is listed in the title of the article, if you follow the link in the article, you'll find four MORE potential problems you could encounter with your EBS installation. More information is good information!
Friday, July 26, 2013
Oracle EBS Demos on YouTube
Today in the spotlight of Steven Chan's EBS blog is a more straightforward type of article where Steven announces the opening of a new YouTube channel which is really EBS-centric in the introductory and demo videos that are posted. I'm even looking forward to watching the videos about Oracle customers upgrading to R12 and their experiences with it. How can you turn down free information about the EBS or R12? You can't! To that end, I'd click through on some of the other links in this article as they will help guide you to more information.
Thursday, July 25, 2013
Are you wise to SAML? Does that make you SAMLwise?
What is SAML? Great question, glad you asked! In our continuing spotlight, I didn't know either until I read this guest author article on Steven Chan's EBS blog about SAML, XML, WS-Security, and the interaction of the Oracle product mix. Not only do we get an in-depth explanation of what these ideas/objects are, but Rekha offers us a nice visual aid which helps to pull the article together. Worth a read, especially if you utilize SOA and looking to help change the landscape at work to make sure your EBS platform stays secure.
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
What is RBAC and how does it affect EBS?
In today's entry of our spotlight, comes a guest author detailing Role Based Access Control (RBAC) which shifts the access paradigm from our traditional (old) ways of directly assigning responsibilities directly to user accounts to a better (new) way of using responsibility assignments in conjunction with grant assignments as another layer of security. It may surprise you to know that this isn't just for R12 either! Plain old R11 can utilize this as well so give the whitepaper a read, if only so you are sure of what RBAC is and is not.
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
Why should we care about iPads if we're on R12?
Continuing my spotlight of Steven Chan's EBS blog, is a solid article on the certification for iPads with use of R12.1.3 and higher on the iOS 6 platform. While the headline doesn't spell this out this certification is targeted just at the SSWA (HTML-only) EBS pages, yet doing our homework now will allow us to answer executives when they ask about being able to use their latest and greatest iPad to do everything their laptops used to do. Right? Who doesn't like to be ahead of the curve!
A few nuggets about what applications/platforms Oracle will test the Oracle Workflow product against as well as a suggestion that the Android certification is being worked on but nowhere near being ready for prime time yet.
A few nuggets about what applications/platforms Oracle will test the Oracle Workflow product against as well as a suggestion that the Android certification is being worked on but nowhere near being ready for prime time yet.
Monday, July 22, 2013
Blog spotlight: Steven Chan's EBS blog
Quite a while ago, I threatened to start spotlighting blogs I follow but this week I'm going to do better than just spot light a blog; I will share with you each day a different article, which has given me food for thought, taught me something about Oracle technology or just showed me how to be a better blogger.
If you aren't following Steven Chan's EBS blog, you need to! There are SO many snippets of good information that come out of this blog, that I eventually signed up to get the e-mail digest when a new post has gone up that day and I regularly send the information out to my team so we can all stay informed.
Recently we had a problem which we thought might be a load balancer or the firewall, so to My Oracle Support we went to try and find out what was happening. To my surprise several articles linked back to this post from 2007 on Steven's blog that very simply details out the interaction between loopbacks, firewalls, virtual IP, and load balancers which is so useful it is still a reference documentation Oracle uses today SIX years later!
If you aren't following Steven Chan's EBS blog, you need to! There are SO many snippets of good information that come out of this blog, that I eventually signed up to get the e-mail digest when a new post has gone up that day and I regularly send the information out to my team so we can all stay informed.
Recently we had a problem which we thought might be a load balancer or the firewall, so to My Oracle Support we went to try and find out what was happening. To my surprise several articles linked back to this post from 2007 on Steven's blog that very simply details out the interaction between loopbacks, firewalls, virtual IP, and load balancers which is so useful it is still a reference documentation Oracle uses today SIX years later!
Sunday, July 21, 2013
Introduction to Data as a Service via Social Media
I read this article several weeks ago which introduced me to the concept of Data as a Service (which does seem to be a natural extension of the I(nfrastructure)aaS, P(latform)aaS and S(oftware)aaS that we all know and love already. The slides really do the introduction justice as the example is easy to understand for how social media is digested and analyzed between "public data" or application data among many different dimensions. It is also an extension of the Oracle Cloud offering as well, since the KPIs and other devices which you can use to gather data really belong in a large repository type receptacle with easy to use features. Great article, very informative, and just touches the surface of a new concept enough that I want to go out and learn more.
Saturday, July 20, 2013
Oracle Multitenant
Here you can find a podcast about Oracle Multitenant, which is of course a new solution provided with Oracle Database 12c, but you should start your research with this visual right here that shows the new Oracle Multitenant architecture containing memory, processes and the containerized databases. Also from the second link you can get access to the webcast for Oracle Database 12c as well!
Friday, July 19, 2013
Containing Oracle Linux
When I originally read this article on the Linux Containers project I was surprised this virtualization technology is being proposed for use on Oracle Linux. Today I re-read the article, and saw this note emphasized:
Note: Linux Containers on Oracle Linux 6 with the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 2 (2.6.39) are still marked as Technology Preview - their use is only recommended for testing and evaluation purposes.I think using this to test and maybe offset some costs is a great idea, but then you're getting outside the prospect of having the same approved and supportable configuration in your PROD, QA and DEV instances.
Thursday, July 18, 2013
Two weeks away from Oracle Certification Retirements
Several days ago I updated you about Fusion Certifications being available and certain tests and paths being retired at that time. Well, it appears some older tests are also being retired on July 31, 2013 also which makes sense with the whole 12c announcement since 9i and 10g exams are getting the boot with Hyperion 9.3 too. If you have the skills, or have been studying for these tests, there is no time like the present to get them done. Actually, the only time is the present because if you wait 2 weeks you won't have any time left!
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