Gareth Roberts

A bit of a delay on my final post on OpenWorld - Wednesday, the Appreciation Event and Thursday went past in a blur, then on to enjoying the final moments in the Valley, lastly the long haul home & back to reality.

Fusion Applications came to the fore at Steve Miranda's presentation on Wednesday the highlights for me were as follows - let me know if my scrawls have been translated to something incorrect!

• Built on ADF stack - I went to a few hands on sessions prior so familiar with the look n feel. Nice.
• WebCenter Integration
• Document Management (Stellant?) Integration
• Secure Enterprise Search (SES) standard (top and center in the UI)
• BI Publisher in the technology stack
• Prebuilt Dashboards and Embedded BI
• Tagging / Categories
• RSS
• Instant Collaboration built in - Chat / IM / Voice / Email
• Help includes User Ratings, Audio/Video
• Configuration comparison and loading tools across instances
• Upgrades as per provided today - ie. If you can upgrade your eBusiness Suite, then the same will apply to upgrade to Fusion. Note upgrade paths do not including merging instances, splitting instances. Supports Pillars.

But when are Fusion Applications going to be available? Let me know! Although given the fullness of the demo screens and a couple of mumbles I'd bet there are business trialling it now.

Following on from that the next interesting item was Larry's speech from the blogger's area and that box with the X and Oracle/HP badges; the HP Oracle Database Machine. Unfortunately my sentiment on this is similar to Tim Hall's - in New Zealand there might be 2 perhaps 3 companies with the kind of dosh needed to shell out and buy one... sigh ... but hey, prove me wrong someone in NZ and get me in to have a little play ;-)

After a highly enjoyable and entertaining night at the Appreciation Event, amusements, Seal and UB40 (thanks Greg, Michael & co) Thursday came around all to quick for me and my new Unicorn friend ;-) so skipped a few sessions, and headed to the demo grounds, notes follow.

Oracle Enterprise Manager Change Pack for Release 12.x

The "Change Pack" was very briefly mentioned during the R12 and 12.1 update without details. So I got down to the demo pod to check it out. Had a succinct demo from one of the On Demand team who are currently using it. With my Apps DBA hat on the the Change Pack looks really, really good and here's a rundown of the features:

• Automation of Patch Application, including automatic downloads, unzip and merge of designated patches. Basically you specify the patches you want applied and it comes up with a task list based on the patches where you can add/reorder etc. the steps.
• Creation of custom steps to integrate into a given patch run
• Patch run scheduling, including viewing status of other patch runs
• Automated notification of patch failures
• Post install tasks like Generate Messages, Compile etc just a checkbox
• Creation of Custom Patches that can be applied by adpatch

Note that unfortunately the features don't include patch analysis or automated dependency checking based on the underlying patch Metalink Notes... or should I call them Knowledge Base Notes now? It would be great if the Metalink Notes for Patches were in a strict format so the Change Pack could datamine them and work out patch dependencies etc. Hoping for too much ;-) Of course all features mentioned here are not official yet as Change Pack is due for release sometime in 2009 I think. Bring it on!

Release 12 Payment Manager was the next demo pod, the updates to Payment Batch process from Release 11i and earlier is something I've been looking forward to for a loooong time ... even though parts of it such as easy payment document changes via BI Publisher Templates and built in FTP/SFTP etc delivery are going to negate the need for some of my development time! Good stuff.

The Secure Enterprise Search (SES) for Release 12 demo pod also caught my attention, so took a brief flight through that - seems like it would take quite a bit of configuration to get it working, and more than a few $$ as well, with the need of the SES server and the eBusiness Suite "adaptors". But worth a look all the same ... now where did I put that Google Desktop Search for eBusiness Suite functionality ;-)

Eye Scanning: One of the more fun pods was focussed on UI design by tracking and recording eye movements - so I sat down and after a quick callibration exercise and intro, I went through an eye tracking session. Very very interesting to see where I looked when reading and searching for something on screen. Worth the time - glad the 50K price of the hardware isn't coming out of my budget though!

Well, that wraps up my first OpenWorld. The highlight for me was meeting all the people face to face that I've interacted with or heard about online - the stars from Oracle Forums, Bloggers, Oracle Staff (especially those Product Managers ;-), various NZers/Australians and a bunch of other great people. Good to hang out and catch up at the OTN Lounge, and events like the Bloggers Meetup, OTN Night and APEX Meetup. Hope to hear from you all soon!

A few updates on BI Publisher and a couple of interesting notes through the OpenWorld sessions that I attended over the last day or so.

BI Publisher:

• eBusiness Suite Release 12.1 - All standard reports to have Templates (Data still generated in Reports)
• Excel Templates for FSGs from EBS Release 12.0 (currently controlled release)
• DataTemplate Builder coming... still.
• ... did I miss anything? I was hoping for a little more, but beggars can't be choosers, even in San Francisco ;-)

Other Interesting Stuff:

Attended a couple of top sessions today, first was Steven Feuerstein's 11g PL/SQL session on making the most of the Function Result Cache - an important feature in my mind similar in nature to prior PL/SQL performance enhancing features like bulk binding that developers neglect somewhat. Although with its conflict with authid current_user and my focus on the EBS I'm going to have to do some digging to see if its usable with the EBS (apparently not at first glance).

Second was Juan Ruiz's MS Office Front Ends for ADF, where he demo'd upcoming (Q1 2009?) Desktop Integration components for ADF - very sexy stuff, ADF components built into Microsoft Excel 2007 with http/https communication through to backend ADF based model. In the world I live in the solution will definitely gain some traction. A bit of a shame its not here today although there are people/products achieving the same via varying means - a few of them in the audience including a couple of Kiwis (a.k.a. New Zealanders) - nice to see.

The Fusion Applications scene is very hush hush, some rumours around but unfortunately nothing of public attention - Oracle people keeping everything under wraps.

PS. Trying to keep these posts short and to the point given the heap of posts on OpenWorld around.

A quick wrapup of the announcements of interest to me from the OpenWorld keynotes this morning:

From OpenWorld Keynote: Charles Phillips and Chuck Rozwat

• Oracle eBusiness Suite Release 12.1 General Availability (GA)
• Oracle Beehive: a suite of collaboration tools including MS Outlook integration
• Oracle JDeveloper Release 11g GA
• Oracle Database Release 11.1.0.7
• My Oracle Support: replacement for Oracle Metalink

From Oracle Develop: Ted Farrell

• Oracle JDeveloper Release 11g GA
• Oracle ADF 11g GA including 130+ JSF components (next week)
• Oracle Toplink 11g GA
• Oracle Enterprise Eclipse Pack focus

So that wraps up the biggest announcments so far. I was expecting R12.1 and JDev 11g, will be very interesting to follow the progress of Beehive and whether it can gain a footing against other specialist collaboration tools.

Update: Still awaiting details of the major database announcement later in the week... rumours are Database Accelerator... still guessing!

Shortly off to OpenWorld. Sooo much to do, so little time.

Below are the sessions I'm lining up - also planning to head to the Blogger's Meetup on Sunday night (my apologies for the Australia/New Zealand dinner) and the OTN night Monday night amongst other things - so hope to see some of you there. Drop me a line if you want to catch up.

ID DATE TIME TITLE S299504 21-Sep-08 11:45 Build the Next Generation of Composite Applications with Oracle WebCenter, SOA, and Enterprise 2.0 S299048 21-Sep-08 13:15 Hands-on Lab: Adapters for Service-Oriented Architectures S300199 21-Sep-08 14:30 Oracle JDeveloper with Oracle Application Development Framework and Oracle Fusion Stack: Is It Oracle Forms Developer Yet S298690 21-Sep-08 15:45 Oracle ADF Faces Rich Client Components: Ajax and Web 2.0 with JavaServer Faces S299488 22-Sep-08 11:30 Road Map for Oracle Fusion Middleware Application Server Infrastructure S300603 22-Sep-08 13:00 Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher Automation: Bursting and Document Delivery in Oracle E-Business Suite S300595 22-Sep-08 14:30 Oracle PartnerNetwork: Taking Advantage of Oracle's Acquisition Strategy to Grow Your Business S298724 22-Sep-08 16:00 Redeveloping an Oracle Forms Application with Oracle Application Development Framework: A Case Study S298463 22-Sep-08 17:30 What's New with Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher: The Standard Reporting Platform for All Applications S299928 23-Sep-08 9:00 Best Practices for Deploying Oracle Software and Linux: Oracle Validated Configurations and Preconfigured Templates S298688 23-Sep-08 13:00 Oracle Application Development Framework 11g: New Declarative Validation, List of Values, Search, and Services Features S298715 23-Sep-08 16:00 MS Office Front Ends for Oracle Application Development Framework Applications: Intro to Oracle ADF Desktop Integration S299306 23-Sep-08 17:30 Zero-Cost Business Intelligence Using Oracle Database 11g and Oracle Application Express 3.1  S301712 24-Sep-08 9:00 Successfully Developing and Integrating Applications in Oracle Application Express in Oracle E-Business Suite S298467 24-Sep-08 11:30 Oracle Fusion Applications: Applications for the Next-Generation Organization, Part 1 S299588 24-Sep-08 13:00 Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher Road Map and Planned Features S300478 25-Sep-08 9:00 Choose Your Weapon: An Overview of Oracle Development Tools S299685 25-Sep-08 10:30 Bridging the Oracle Applications Unlimited/Oracle Fusion Applications Gap with Oracle Application Integration Architecture S299692 25-Sep-08 15:00 Oracle Application Integration Architecture for Oracle E-Business Suite 

And in the Demo Grounds:

Application UI Research and Innovation (Pod I11) SOA Enablement of E-Business Suite (Pod K24) Oracle Secure Enterprise Search (Pod K26) Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher for Oracle
Applications (Pod I01)

Don't forget the Lounges:

Applications Lounge
Moscone West, Lobby Level 2  Monday, September 22 - Wednesday, September 24: 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Thursday, September 25: 9:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.  Database Lounge
Moscone South Esplanade  Monday, September 22 - Wednesday, September 24: 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Thursday, September 25: 9:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. Middleware Lounge
San Francisco Marriott, Yerba Buena Ballroom Foyer  Sunday, September 21: 12:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
Monday, September 22 - Wednesday, September 24: 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Thursday, September 25: 9:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. 

Would have been nice to maket these as well, but hey - don't know of anyone with clones yet ;-)

S299504 21-Sep-08 11:45 Build the Next Generation of Composite Applications with Oracle WebCenter, SOA, and Enterprise 2.0 S299048 21-Sep-08 13:15 Hands-on Lab: Adapters for Service-Oriented Architectures S300199 21-Sep-08 14:30 Oracle JDeveloper with Oracle Application Development Framework and Oracle Fusion Stack: Is It Oracle Forms Developer Yet? S298690 21-Sep-08 15:45 Oracle ADF Faces Rich Client Components: Ajax and Web 2.0 with JavaServer Faces S299488 22-Sep-08 11:30 Road Map for Oracle Fusion Middleware Application Server Infrastructure S300603 22-Sep-08 13:00 Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher Automation: Bursting and Document Delivery in Oracle E-Business Suite S300595 22-Sep-08 14:30 Oracle PartnerNetwork: Taking Advantage of Oracle’s Acquisition Strategy to Grow Your Business S298724 22-Sep-08 16:00 Redeveloping an Oracle Forms Application with Oracle Application Development Framework: A Case Study S298463 22-Sep-08 17:30 Whats New with Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher: The Standard Reporting Platform for All Applications S299928 23-Sep-08 9:00 Best Practices for Deploying Oracle Software and Linux: Oracle Validated Configurations and Preconfigured Templates S298688 23-Sep-08 13:00 Oracle Application Development Framework 11g: New Declarative Validation, List of Values, Search, and Services Features S298715 23-Sep-08 16:00 MS Office Front Ends for Oracle Application Development Framework Applications: Intro to Oracle ADF Desktop Integration S299306 23-Sep-08 17:30 Zero-Cost Business Intelligence Using Oracle Database 11g and Oracle Application Express 3.1  S301712 24-Sep-08 9:00 Successfully Developing and Integrating Applications in Oracle Application Express in Oracle E-Business Suite S298467 24-Sep-08 11:30 Oracle Fusion Applications: Applications for the Next-Generation Organization, Part 1 S299588 24-Sep-08 13:00 Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher Road Map and Planned Features S300478 25-Sep-08 9:00 Choose Your Weapon: An Overview of Oracle Development Tools S299685 25-Sep-08 10:30 Oracle Application Integration Architecture: Bridging The Gap To Next Generation Applications S298403 25-Sep-08 13:30 Opening Up Oracle Application Framework Applications Through Web Services and Portlets S299692 25-Sep-08 15:00 Oracle Application Integration Architecture for Oracle E-Business Suite 

All systems go!

I'd like to see a "free" (as in beer) version of BI Publisher (XML Publisher) added to the list of "free" Oracle products. Here are my reasons:

1. BI Publisher for everyone.

BI Publisher is fundamentally such a fantastic product that every organization and developer should benefit from it.

2. Remove the quirks.

The accelerated uptake from the "free" version would (hopefully) translate to the quirks of the product being identified and fixed in fraction of the time it would take for a paid expensive product.

3. Ease the expense.

BI Publisher bundled up in a package costing large $$$? I have trouble driving Oracle's online store at the best of times, and I can't find "BI Publisher Standalone" on its own - only bundled with other stuff I don't need or want, yet ;-) Try searching on "Publisher". Now making a free version would solve this problem - no license to find and buy!

4. It needs other technology to lean on.

In a similar nature to a plugin, BI Publisher doesn't stand on its own feet. Like APEX (needing the Oracle RDBMS) and JDeveloper (an IDE) it needs either someone to feed it or something else to connect to. If there is a free version its more likely that the other thing will be Oracle. Update: This point has been updated from the original post to clarify my use of "plugin".

5. It's a killer combo with APEX and XE.

The other "free" products - APEX and XE are natural integration partners with BI Publisher and the resulting combination is a awesome one. I see a number of people wanting this integration - but without the cost.

6. Raise visibility.

Although its been around for a number of years in various forms, the product on its own doesn't seem to be highly visible. Or is that just because of the quirks?! Making it free would bring visibility to new levels.

7. Beat the competition

Various other competitors exist, both in free and paid form. Making at least an entry level version of BI Publisher free would make it a viable competitor, and ensure Oracle customers lock into Oracle products taking out the chance of a competitors plugin being used.

8. Create Leads for Oracle

Oracle would benefit by having a greater stream of leads and support revenue.

Oops, that's 8, oh well, luckier than 7 for some ;-)

Post your support here!

One of my major gripes with Oracle APEX is / was its lack of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) friendliness. At least of couple of us down under have almost pulled out our hair trying to get APEX to play nicely with Google, lynx, Apache rewrite etc. without much success. A couple of references here and here (thanks Steve).

Well, the good news is that a "session 0" fix and the related URL redirect issue look to be resolved in APEX 3.1.2 (patch 7313609) recently released, expertly covered by John Scott here , glad that it got your attention John! So that should really help with Google's crawlers and raise the profile of APEX sites using session 0.

An announcement for those readers on the conference trail to New Zealand in October:

Join me at the NZOUG Conference 2008 October 20/21 in Rotorua and go in the draw for an iPod Touch! Early Bird registrations have been extended and will close on Monday 8 September, so register now and be in the draw to win!

Details at: http://nzoug.org/ipod08

PS. I'm on the NZOUG Committee and will be at the conference hence the shameless plug for this event ;-)

PPS. If you have any sessions/questions/design issues or ideas bring them along or let me know and I can tee up a special slot for you!

So your Oracle Reports based concurrent request completed with warning and your concurrent request log file looks like this:

+------------- 1) PUBLISH -------------+
Beginning post-processing of request 1294502 on node XXXX01 at 02-SEP-2008 12:53:28.
Post-processing of request 1294502 failed at 02-SEP-2008 12:53:33 with the error message:
One or more post-processing actions failed. Consult the OPP service log for details.
+--------------------------------------+

And if you go to System Administrator, Concurrent > Manager > Administer, Query up "Output Post Processor", click on Processes, View Manager Log, you see something like:

[9/2/08 10:44:34 AM] [198325:RT1294354]
Template code: XXGLXXXX
Template app:  XXV8
Language:      en
Territory:     US
Output type:   EXCEL
[9/2/08 10:44:49 AM] [UNEXPECTED] [198325:RT1294354] java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
 at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
 at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
 at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
 at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:585)
 at oracle.apps.xdo.common.xml.XSLT10gR1.invokeParse(XSLT10gR1.java:517)
 at oracle.apps.xdo.common.xml.XSLT10gR1.transform(XSLT10gR1.java:224)
 at oracle.apps.xdo.common.xml.XSLTWrapper.transform(XSLTWrapper.java:177)
 at oracle.apps.xdo.template.fo.util.FOUtility.generateFO(FOUtility.java:1044)
 at oracle.apps.xdo.template.fo.util.FOUtility.generateFO(FOUtility.java:997)
 at oracle.apps.xdo.template.fo.util.FOUtility.generateFO(FOUtility.java:212)
 at oracle.apps.xdo.template.FOProcessor.createFO(FOProcessor.java:1657)
 at oracle.apps.xdo.template.FOProcessor.generate(FOProcessor.java:967)
 at oracle.apps.xdo.oa.schema.server.TemplateHelper.runProcessTemplate(TemplateHelper.java:5888)
 at oracle.apps.xdo.oa.schema.server.TemplateHelper.processTemplate(TemplateHelper.java:3438)
 at oracle.apps.xdo.oa.schema.server.TemplateHelper.processTemplate(TemplateHelper.java:3527)
 at oracle.apps.fnd.cp.opp.XMLPublisherProcessor.process(XMLPublisherProcessor.java:247)
 at oracle.apps.fnd.cp.opp.OPPRequestThread.run(OPPRequestThread.java:157)
Caused by: oracle.xdo.parser.v2.XMLParseException: Invalid char in text.
 at oracle.xdo.parser.v2.XMLError.flushErrors1(XMLError.java:324)
 at oracle.xdo.parser.v2.NonValidatingParser.parseDocument(NonValidatingParser.java:290)
 at oracle.xdo.parser.v2.XMLParser.parse(XMLParser.java:266)
 ... 17 more
[9/2/08 10:44:49 AM] [198325:RT1294354] Completed post-processing actions for request 1294354.

You look at your XML file via View Concurrent Requests, Diagnostics, View XML. Then how do you find the invalid character?

Try loading the XML Data in BI Publisher Desktop Word Plugin (Data > Load XML Data), and hopefully you'll see something like the following that gives the details of where the error is occurring (of course without the smudges ;-):

In this case the "invalid char" is indicated by the square box.

Throwing that into a hex editor (part of the highly recommended PSPad) we see character hex 05 followed by the two periods (hex 2E):

Looking at our ASCII table we see 05 is Enquiry - but this isn't a printing character and so will be causing the problem.

Okay, so now we know what's causing it, we can just update the data to remove the special character, and run the report again without hassles!

Or we could write a wrapper PL/SQL procedure to remove the control characters from the affected fields and add to the Report definition SQL.

Or those of you with more problems that just one occurrence of the control character could log an SR and see if something can be done other than that referred to in Note:155078.1!

Keen to head down-under? Check out this message from the New Zealand Oracle Users Group.

The New Zealand Oracle Users Group is pleased to announce…

Call for Papers and Training for the 2008 Conference

We only require your ABSTRACT of not more than 150 words at this stage.

We invite all users and suppliers of Oracle technology and applications and related products to submit presentations, including

• Oracle Users with an interesting story, case study or any useful tips
• Oracle Partners playing a key role in the Oracle world
• Third party suppliers of products and services that will assist Oracle technology and application users

Presentation topics may include but are not limited to Oracle Aplications such as eBS, JDE, Peoplesoft and Hyperion, and Oracle Development, Middleware and Database technologies. Everything is welcome for submission but delegates are especially interested in hearing case studies of real life scenarios and situations, lessons learnt and best practices.

Both Technical and Business streams will run throughout the conference programme with presentations covering the implementation, use and support of the whole range of Oracle and associated third party products and services.

If your paper is selected for presentation:

• You’ll be admitted to the conference free of charge upon submission of your full written paper, and
• Your paper will be published in the conference proceedings.

SUBMITTING AN ABSTRACT

How do I submit an abstract? Visit our submission website and complete the Call for Papers submission, by 20 June 2008

Also anyone can submit topics you are interested in, and we’ll try to source a presenter for the topic. We’ll post further information about this and for presenters on our website in due course.

Remember to visit our website for all up to date information on regional events, the conference, and other news.

We look forward to receiving your completed submissions by 20 June 2008

HOW DO I REGISTER FOR THE CONFERENCE?

We are not quite ready to open registration but watch this space (or keep an eye on our website) in the next few weeks for an announcement.

WHAT DISCOUNTS CAN WE GET?

There will be an early bird discount for all registrations before the 1st September 2008.

Watch this space for these great rates.

VENUE AND DATES

Rotorua

20th and 21st October 2008 Novotel Rotorua Lakeside – Rotorua

NEED MORE INFORMATION?

Any questions please contact our conference management company, The Conference Company.

By phone on +64 9 360 1240 or by email at nzoug@tcc.co.nz

If you are attempting bursting and hit an error that looks something like the following:

[082608_022234429][oracle.apps.xdo.batch.DeliveryHelper][EXCEPTION]
oracle.apps.xdo.delivery.InvalidPropertyValueException: Invalid String property  value for Integer. 
Property name :[IPP_HTTP_RESPONSE_CHECK_INTERVAL], 
Property  value :[O]

Check out Metalink Note 603424.1!

Solution:

A patch containing a later version of the DeliveryHelper.java must be installed in order to resolve the issue:

• Oracle E-Business Suite 11i The issue is encountered only when Patch 6470598 has been installed. This one-off patch has already been superseded by a new patch which included the fixed version of the DeliveryHelper.java. Patch 6470598 XML Bursting Reply-To Using From Instead resolves the issue.
• Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 A one-off patch on top of the 12.0.4 code level is required to resolve the issue: Patch 6482024 Bursting Engine Does Not Resolve OA_MEDIA. This patch is released under the terms of 'By Support' which implies that the patch is queryable on Metalink, but downloads of this patch requires a password. Please contact Global Customer Support to receive a password to download the patch.

If you find that Discoverer Plus won't start (or the Discoverer Plus windows doesn't appear) after downloading the Java Applet, or if you're having issues with JInitiator with Oracle Applications, then it could be that you have multiple versions of Java required. For your Oracle Discoverer Plus, Oracle JInitiator Java Plugin (JVM), or other Java based software multiple versions of Java can cause conflicts, so try the following steps. Actually I'd recommend any rollout of the Disco Plus or EBS client include the below steps!

1. Allow multiple concurrent versions of Java to run by enabling Secure Static Versioning.

Update or Create the following Windows registry entry on your desktop client as follows;

1.1 If the 'Java Deployment' and 'Policy' folders do not exist under your HKEY LOCAL MACHINE -> SOFTWARE -> JavaSoft entry in your registry you will first need to create these folders as follows;
1.2 Right mouse click on the JavaSoft folder in your registry and from the menu select 'New -> Key'. Name the new folder 'Java Deployment'. Open this folder and create another folder named 'Policy' underneath it, then follow the rest of the steps below.
1.3 Go to 'HKEY LOCAL MACHINE -> SOFTWARE -> JavaSoft -> Java Deployment -> Policy' in your Windows registry
1.4 Right mouse click on the Policy folder and from the menu select 'New -> DWORD Value'
1.5 Right click on the newly created value and rename it to - 'EnableSecureStaticVersioning'
1.6 The Data value should remain at the default of '0x00000000 (0)'

2. Switch off automatic updates of Java.

It is advisable to turn off the automatic upgrade facility for the desktop client JRE. This will ensure that newer versions of the JRE plug-in are not installed, and used with Oracle E-Business Suite / Oracle Discoverer unknowingly. This feature can be turned off as follows;

2.1 From the 'Start Menu', select 'ControlPanel'
2.2 Double click the 'Java' icon
2.3 Select the 'Update' tab
2.4 Uncheck the 'Check for Updates Automatically' box
2.5 Click the 'Never Check' button on the 'Java Update -Warning' pop up window
2.6 Click 'OK' to close the 'Java Control Panel'

If you are getting crashes that refer to jvm.dll see my other popular post on JVM crashes.

References:

• Sun Forum 1
• Sun Forum 2

The NZOUG Conference 2008 is open for registrations. The event is shaping up well, with some excellent sponsors, high profile speakers, and interesting papers. As well as that the entertainment in Rotorua is not to be missed!

The Call for Papers is closing 25 July, so if you are a potential speaker make the most of the last minute and get those abstracts in!

Watch the NZOUG website for updates on the conference.

PS. If you're sending a group, watch out for the buy 3 get 1 free offer.

In a prior post I raised the question of why mod_plsql was not supported with the eBusiness Suite R12. Excellent to see that Oracle was listening to the community and as Steven Chan's post highlights, Metalink Note:726711.1 has been created to address this question.

In summary you can still run mod_plsql connecting to the eBusiness Suite as long as the Apache/mod_plsql are in an isolated install and you address security and associated considerations. And of course as a customization it is not supported under the guise of the eBusiness Suite ... but hey your customizations never are!

Guess that means the same for the other sweet tools you'd connect/integrate to your eBusiness Suite ... like Application Express (APEX), PHP/Zend, Ruby on Rails, etc.

Update: As posted on Steven Chan's blog, the answers to my queries in this post are now well described in Metalink Note Note:726711.1

One of the well publicized and contentious considerations at the crossroads of Fusion relates to the "official" lack of support for the mod_plsql component in the Oracle eBusiness Suite Release 12.

I'm a keen battler on items of contention and I've been tracking this one for while. A high percentage of customers I've dealt with have invested in mod_plsql (mod PL/SQL) based solutions. With its reappearance on the forums recently and interest in R12 I thought it would be nice to take a step back to this.

First of all let's neglect the question a bit longer and look at a different statement, for reference, from here:

Although mod_plsql is no longer hosted as part of the standard Release 12 technology stack infrastructure, it's still possible to use it, in albeit a configuration that requires more diskspace. You can have a separate Oracle Application Server 10g installation, either in a separate ORACLE_HOME on an existing server, or on a physically separate machine.  You can use mod_plsql and other mod_plsql-based tools (such as Application Express) on that instance to access the E-Business Suite Release 12.

Hmm, so we know that we can use mod_plsql with Release 12. Just need to spin those propellors a bit and hey presto - there you go, working again. Or even just plug that Apache module back in.

If thats the case, then how does this all relate to support? Surely if the product can be used in a supported configuration, then it should be supported!? Using Apache (Oracle HTTP Server) and mod_plsql is one supported configuration of Oracle Application Express so I don't see the problem being with mod_plsql itself. If it was an inherent problem with mod_plsql then where would that leave Metalink?

Also, the quoted statement above conveniently fails to mention that inevitable L word - licenses. I'm no expert in the L word, so I venture no further and leave that to your own due diligence!

My current understanding - and I may be wrong so correct me if I am - is that:

1. the use of mod_plsql in combination with the APPS schema inherently raises security problems
2. mod_plsql is not on the roadmap to Fusion

With respect to 1, security problems generally can be fixed, for example, as they were for those issues in Security Alert #28.

With respect to 2, this is a technology decision in direction made by Oracle so my feeling is that it shouldn't affect support.

So where does that leave us?

Well, I leave you to form your own opinion, but I'd love Oracle to clarify further their position on the support of mod_plsql with Release 12.

PS. For more details on using mod_plsql with Release 12 open a Support Request (SR) on Metalink and ask for Note 435544.1.

A quick post ... it's been a frenetic few months, so blog posts a bit thin lately but plenty of good stuff in the pipeline!

Generally when I'm designing a BI Publisher/XML Publisher report I'll create a concurrent program that generates XML, I'll follow the usual steps:

1. Setup the concurrent program to output Text
2. Run it to ensure its working
3. Switch the concurrent program to output XML
4. Run the concurrent program to output XML
5. SFTP/copy the o*.out XML file from $APPLCSF/$APPLOUT
6. Load it into Word via the BI Publisher Desktop plugin and design the layout "on the run".
7. Setup the BI Publisher Data Definition/Template
8. Perform system/unit tests

Is there an easier way to get the XML file from a concurrent request? Sure is - nice and easy through the front end.

Get the XML File from a BI Publisher based concurrent request/report:

1. View->Requests
2. Find the request you're interested in
3. Click on Diagnostics button
4. Click the View XML
   
5. Save the file to your PC by doing File->Save As, *.xml

But where does the XML file live?

Well, by default it is $APPLCSF/$APPLOUT/o{REQUEST_ID}.out.

But if that's the XML file, then where does the actual output file reside as the location of the XML file is where normal request output resides?

Get the Request Output File for a BI Publisher based concurrent request/report:

The output is $APPLCSF/$APPLOUT/{REPORTNAME}_{REQUEST_ID}_{COUNT}.PDF|RTF|EXCEL|HTML

Where

• REPORTNAME is the concurrent program short name,
• REQUEST_ID is the concurrent request ID
• COUNT is a counter based on the number of times a request has been re-published.
• One of PDF, RTF, EXCEL, HTML is the file extension/type dependent on the output formats chosen.

An example is: XXXX_FNDSCURS_2803880_1.EXCEL

Output file location courtesy of Tim's post here.

Cool, file locations identified!