Oracle Infogram

BI
Does bursting support translation (huh? ok, it's a BI thing I guess, I've personally never seen bursting and translation in the same sentence). Well, it does, according to this article at A BI Publisher developer's diary blog.
APEX
David Peake points out a good item at Chris Muir's blog on Stress and Load Testing Web Applications using apache jMeter.
EBS
Moving to R12? Already there? Have questions? Don't miss

Note: 824414.1 R12.1: Frequently Asked Questions related to the R12.1
Release(Financials)

And from Chris Warticki's blog we have a link to FREE R12.1 Advisor Webcast



This week at the Oracle E-Business Suite Technology blog:
Roundup: Oracle JInitiator 1.3 Desupported for EBS Customers in July 2009
Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Certified with Apps 11i and 12
Interim Update #1: Certifying Windows 7 with Oracle E-Business Suite
Support
Another item from Chris Warticki's blog reminds us that the time is at hand to get ready for My Oracle Support.
Internals
I debated whether this falls more into internals (where Tanel Poder is an expert) or performance (where Tanel Poder is an expert). In either case this links page of his is something you should put in your favorites. Lots of goodies on both those topics to be found.

Contributions by Sherron Garnett, Infogram Contributor

Upcoming My Oracle Support

In 2009, Oracle customers and partners will migrate onto a single My Oracle Support portal. This will include upgrading MetaLink 3 users to the My Oracle Support platform and migrating Classic MetaLink users to My Oracle Support exclusively. In the past few months, several communications have been delivered to our customers and partners. If you missed the communication sent on June 30th, please read now E-mail Blast

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

Oracle continues to lead the data warehousing market both in terms of market share and product innovation. Oracle Database 11g offers fast, reliable and secure reporting, analytics, and data mining on low cost, scalable grids. Learn more about Oracle data warehousing at the following links:

http://www.oracle.com/solutions/business_intelligence/dw_home.html
http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/bi/index.html

EBS
This week at the Oracle E-Business Suite blog:
Understanding J2SE 1.5 End-of-Life Implications for Oracle E-Business Suite
Applications Management and Change Management Packs Certified with Enterprise Manager Grid Control Release 5
Tablespace Encryption 11.1.0.7 Certified with EBS 11i
Which is Better: Forms Servlet or Socket Mode?
Interim Update: ATG RUP 7 for E-Business Release 11i
Oracle Tutor 12.1 Certified with Word 2007 and Vista Clients

11g and MS Access
It all evolved over time. In the fog-shrouded past of the 60s computers were giant centralized monsters. People kept spreadsheets on, well, spreadsheets, things made out of paper. Then came the PC with electronic spreadsheet, first VisiCalc, then Lotus 1-2-3, finally Excel came on the scene, gobbling up the market. And that's where a huge amount of data remains, those Excel spreadsheets and the Access databases that evolved from them. So sometimes it is still a very economical and useful practise to connect an enterprise RDBMS to its smaller, less relational, and thus less evolved relatives like Access (notice that I did not use any disparaging terms, much as I wanted to since I used to be an Access developer in a former life, and am now utterly relationally snobbish).
I once worked on a contract where a one billion dollar government budget was kept in Access. People making changes would pop up from their cubicle, prairie dog like, to announce that they were updating the Eastern_region_Input table, so everybody stay out of it! Thankfully, they moved to Oracle a year or so after that point. But it would have been a good interim solution to connect Oracle to those Access instances to start working with the data. There is a handy ongoing series on doing just that over at the Global Oracle Contractors Network blog:
Querying Microsoft Office Access 2007 data from an Oracle 11g Database Part 3:
Section A
Section B
Section C
Hyperion
The start of what looks like a great five part series over at the In 2 Hyperion blog: Hyperion Release 11 Architecture and Installation, Part 1 of 5. This promises to be some very useful info to go beyond the documentation (Yes, you still need to read the documentation. Sorry about that).
PeopleSoft PeopleTools 8.5
Some specifics on the new features of PeopleTools 8.5 over at the PeopleSoft tipster blog.
ADF
Yet another reason to participate in the Oracle Wiki is this link to the Community-Created Watch It ADF Series at the Dive into Oracle ADF blog.
Enterprise Storage
Kevin Closson has been adding to his already invaluable archive of material, and points out a link to a link for Recorded Webcast Available: Exadata Storage Server Technical Deep Dive – Part IV.
Speaking of Exadata, there is a bit of a well-justified bragging article over at the Structured Data blog: Exadata Snippits From Oracle F4Q09 Earnings Call.
APEX Contest
Write APEX? Want to go to Oracle Openworld...free? Then you need to make your way to David Peake's Oracle APEX blog, write the best APEX application ever, and submit it to the Application Express Developer Competition 2009.

Contributions By Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

Learn how to harness the power of combining Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control with RMAN in this indepth article:

http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/havewala-rman-grid.html

Computer Humor: Browsers
Well, it's not directly Oracle related, even though most people's interface to most everything, including their database is through a browser in one way or another, but the Oracle Appslab blog has a new topic for geeks to fight over: Which is the best browser? I liken the discussion to the classic bone of contention for geeks: Which is the best Star Trek series? I would associate the browsers with version of Star Trek as follows:

• Deep Space Nine. Quirky and out on the cutting edge, with everything changing, even the morphing security officer who reverts to a fluid at night and sleeps in a bucket--Google Chrome
• Star Trek the Next Generation, new and innovative, but somehow old and stodgy at the same time--Mozilla Firefox
• Original Star Trek: They didn't have browsers in the 60s, so the closest choice would be Lynx, the old text-based browser. Bet you thought I was going to say Microsoft Explorer aligns with Star Trek 'classic', eh? In fact, Microsoft Explorer is a Borg browser.
• Oh, and Safari is for Romulans.

PeopleSoft
PSST0101 has a handy little script for testing workflow and the like in PSoft: AutoLogin GreaseMonkey Script
The PeopleSoft DBA blog has another handy and hands on posting for us today: Manually Booting Tuxedo Application Server Processes in Parallel
Demo Mode
Most people with some experience in IT know about demo mode. Demo mode is what a program is in when, after thorough preparation, iterative testing, rehearsals and repeated home and office sessions, you demo your application in front of:

• A huge crowd
• A small crowd of investors
• A VP/CEO/CFO etc.
• All of the above in one room

...and it falls straight on its nose, often producing smoke. I just found a blog today from someone who specializes in demos, the Tech Demo Guy blog. Here is a nifty little posting on proofs of concept and how to make them benefit you rather than throw you into the depths of the dreaded demo mode.
Cloud Computing
Cubegeek posted recently on the National Institute of Standards and Technology's cloud computing definitions. Lots of good terminology in there alright, but I prefer my own definition of cloud computing: It's like grid computing, only round and fluffy.
Performance
Sun, Oracle, performance, a wiki? Yes, this posting has it all. It's over at Glenn Fawcett's Weblog, and starts off with a timeline of enhancements over the years that have made Oracle on Sun such a great combination.
Conferences and Netbooks
Sage advice from Johns Blog on What I've Learned Going to Conferences. With Oracle Open World slowly and irrevocably sneaking up on us there are some good pieces of advice in here. I'd add that hauling a laptop around is passe now. It costs less than 400 USD for a netbook. That's less than the per day cost of a lot of conferences and a netbook weighs about 1/2 as much as even a small notebook. If you are thinking about getting a cell-phone network broadband card ('air card') there's bad news and good news. The prices don't seem to be going down, so it's still $60 a month, two year obligation. But at least now a couple of the companies are offering you a netbook for $99-200 bucks if you sign up, and the netbook has the air card built in. Another hint: you can double the memory on a netbook from 1 GB to 2 GB with about $30 to buy a memory stick on the web and about 45 seconds to install it. You still have the limitations of a slower Atom CPU, but at least having some memory elbow room will help you on some programs.

Contributions By Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

Oracle’s Lifetime Support also puts you in control of your upgrade strategy. Our support policy stages make it easier for you to plan and budget for Oracle's exclusive product upgrades. You’ll enjoy continued peace of mind knowing that we’ll be there to support your business. With Lifetime Support, when it’s time to upgrade, and if you are current on technical support, you’ll have rights to major product releases, so you can benefit from Oracle’s technology leadership and keep pace with the world of business.

Learn more about Lifetime Support at this link to the FAQ document:
http://www.oracle.com/support/library/oracle-lifetime-support-policy-faq.pdf

Open World
Time to start planning for Oracle Open World 2009 in October. You can start by suggesting topics, as discussed in this posting over at the AppsLab blog.
Oracle Magazine
Speaking of Oracle (you remember them, right?) the latest copy of Oracle Magazine is online. While you're there, make sure you take a look at this article on using Exadata with OWB at the Oracle Warehouse Builder blog.
Oracle Networking
Miladin Modrakovic's Blog: Oraclue has some fine internals material, as always, and one item you should definitely put in a place where you can find it later; Examining Oracle Net Trace Files.
The network portion of Oracle, in my experience, anyway, tends to be 'set it and forget it'. Then, months or years later when something really odd is going on and the accusations are flying between the sysadmins, the DBAs and the network folks, with the managers looking on with their grim 'I do recommend the hiring and firings you know' look, you may need to do a network trace. And Miladin found a good note on how to interpret the esoteric runes of that trace. (And yes, an eight-year-old whitepaper is still valuable, especially when it's written by Kevin Reardon).
Books and the PGA
No, not golf books. First Jonathan Lewis over at Oracle Scratchpad has a thought-provoking article on books, and the times they can lead us astray. There are honest mistakes and then there are some books out there that preach an incorrect approach and call on you to do things that are sloppy, dangerous, sometimes even things that will put your database in an unsupported state. Then you'll want to look at his in-depth piece on figuring out PGA allocation with a script at the same blog. As always, Jonathan is one of the leading figures in our field. If you don't have him on your RSS, you really should. Go to see one of his presentations if you get a chance. He plays the saxophone and improves your RDBMS performance. Really.
EBS
This week at the Oracle E-Business Suite Technology blog:
Interim Update #3: Using IE8 with E-Business Suite
EBS 11i Certified with 10gR2 10.2.0.4 DB on IBM Linux on Power and Linux on System Z
Updating the Default JDK Installed in OracleAS 10g
Sneak Preview: Integrating EBS with Desktop Apps via Web ADI Development Framework

Contribution by Sherron Garnett, Infogram Contributor

Oracle’s PeopleSoft Workforce Communications Unveiled

Oracle has released PeopleSoft Workforce Communications, a comprehensive solution for planning and delivering human resources (HR) programs and surveys to the workforce. PeopleSoft Workforce Communications is a fully integrated, bundled solution that allows HR organizations to deliver the right message to the right audience, capture workforce feedback and take action on it, gain program insight, and quantify success.

Using PeopleSoft Workforce Communications, HR departments can reduce the risk of noncompliance, improve productivity, identify underperforming areas, identify workforce segments that need additional training and development, and reduce program costs. “PeopleSoft Workforce Communications has the potential to offer great value to organizations through improved employee engagement and the ability to understand where your organization is being successful and where you need to apply more attention or refocus efforts,”says John Webb, Vice President, product management at Oracle.

Learn More: PeopleSoft Workforce Communications

Later this year, Classic Metalink will be retired and Oracle customers will use My Oracle Support. Research shows that using My Oracle Support allows for up to 30% faster service request creation and up to 40% faster service request resolution. Learn more at this handy link:

http://www.oracle.com/support/premier/myoraclesupport.html

Risk, Again
I speak here often of risk, the unpleasant edge that reality sometimes takes on. Chris Warticki discusses the matter this week in a posting on backup and recovery. Run practise recoveries, really. You don't want to suddenly find out that the recovery takes ten times longer than you thought when the VP is on the phone asking when your store is going back online. The posting is here.
Linux
Already running Unbreakable Linux? Thinking about it? Gavin's Blog has a link to the Oracle Public Yum Server. And no, it has nothing to do with the Pasta posting from last week.
BI
Gerard Braat passes along the voice of experience in advocating a new phrase in place of the traditional buy vs. build options of setting up a BI system: Buy and Build Less. Building it from stratch is just not economical. But if someone tells you 'just pop this in place and push the button and our system will run your business, make tea and do your laundry' check to make sure you still have your wallet. The term 'some assembly required' comes to mind. Sometimes it would be more honest to use the label: 'An incredible amount of detailed and laborious assembly required'. But it's still less work than building from the ground up, so buy and build less is where the smart money is.
PeopleSoft
My background is in core database work, so I'm a bit short on PeopleSoft wisdom. But I can recognize something that looks elegant and useful, and this posting on nPlosioin over at the Grey Sperling Solutions blog is exactly that.
EBS
Lots of goodies this week at the Oracle E-Business Suite Technology blog:
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1 Reaches End-of-Life
Hands-On with Oracle's iPhone Apps
Extended Support Fees Waived for EBS 11.5.10 and 10gR2 DB Through 2011
Using SecureFiles with E-Business Suite Databases
New Rapid Install StartCD (12.0.4.9) for Release 12 Now Available
Of particular interest is this one:
Applications Change Management Pack 3.0 and Applications Management Pack 3.0 Now Available
We've been waiting for the Apps Change Management for a while now. This should be a very handy tool for Apps DBAs.
Indexing
In addition to his continuing series on indexes and small tables, Richard Foote points us toward a couple of good postings on indexing at other blogs here.

Contributions By Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

E-Book: Grid Computing - Enabling the Hyper-Efficient Data Center Oracle's new free eBook on Grid Computing solutions provides a fast-paced introduction to the data center best practices that will drive IT costs down and IT productivity up.

Hyperion
Over at the In 2 Hyperion blog there is a brief but useful posting on the utility of dirty calcs. 
JD Edwards Webcasts
Since the JD Edwards Advisor blog was kind enough to relay info on two webcasts about upgrades, I thought I would extend the chain one link further and link to them here.
My Oracle Support
Ok, so we're renaming something, and you know that's unusual at Oracle. Right. And we're changing around our knowledge base/support portal entirely with the introduction of My Oracle Support.  We are going this because:
1. We like shiny new technical things.2. We want to torment you.3. We want to improve Oracle Support.
If you think the answer is mainly 3 and perhaps a little of 1, you are right. We don't really want to torment you by moving everything around to where you can't find it (though we may have succeeded in doing so, it was not intentional). As Chris Warticki points out in this brief posting on Projects, My Oracle Support will open up whole new ways to get support in an orderly, timely manner. Crisis management can be fun and adventurous at times, but so can a badly planned vacation. We'd rather have your support experience be well planned and perhaps even fun here and there. That's why we are introducing so many positive changes to the system.
Collaborate09
Tom Kyte has some thoughts for us on his experiences at Collaborate09, as well as some links to other Oracle gurus' findings here.
Optimizer
You've set cursor sharing to shared. You've sat back with a cup of coffee to watch and...there are hundreds of child cursors being spawned. The Inside the Oracle Optimizer blog explains why this is normal, under certain circumstances, and does so in a way that is very instructive about how the cursor sharing feature works.
EBS
After a brief hiatus, the Oracle E-Business Suite Technology blog is back, and has a batch of useful and interesting postings for us:
New Rapid Install StartCD (12.0.4.9) for Release 12 Now Available
15 New Technology Stack Enhancements in EBS 12.1.1
10gR2 10.2.0.4 DB Certified with EBS 12 for Four New Database-Tier Only Platforms
Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About AutoConfig Variables

Contributions by Sherron Garnett, Infogram Contributor

Oracle OpenWorld 2009 Registration Now Open

Oracle OpenWorld 2009, Oct. 11 - 15, is the world's largest event dedicated to helping enterprises understand and harness the power of information. Connect with the people, products, and trends at the forefront of business and information technology in San Francisco. Customers can:

• Experience the latest in Oracle applications, technologies and solutions
• Meet and exchange insights with their peers and Oracle business partners
• Gain inspiration from industry thought leaders and featured keynote speakers

In years past the field has been the most successful weapon in helping drive demand for the event. Your help is needed this year as well. Conference Details

Oracle is announcing the general availability of Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1. With this latest release, Oracle delivers on its Applications Unlimited commitment to continue enhancing your existing investments in Oracle applications. Release 12.1 provides product enhancements across human resources, supply chain management, procurement, projects, master data management, customer relationship management and financials. It also delivers significant industry-specific advancements for wholesale distribution, public sector, high technology, engineering & construction, life sciences, retail, professional services, communications, consumer goods, and utilities. More...

Contributions By Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control Architecture for Very Large Sites Need to guarantee high scalability for Enterprise Manager Grid Control? This architecture, described by Oracle ACE Director Porus Homi Havewala based on real-world experiences, may be for you. Learn about the internals of Grid Control and how to maintain peak performance.

Pasta Printing
Okay, I got an SR today that made me smile. I love pasta, and have no idea how you use it to print from EBS. So I dug around, and found this really nice posting from Vikram Das at the Oracle Apps Technology blog on Pasta Printing.

Contributions By Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

Simple, predictable, and the most comprehensive policy available, Lifetime Support helps drive your business success. Oracle's industry-leading Lifetime Support covers your entire technology stack, from database to middleware to applications. It puts you in control of your upgrade strategy so you can enjoy continued peace of mind, knowing that no matter which product release you're running, we'll be there to support your business. See this link for the latest updates: http://www.oracle.com/support/lifetime-support-policy.html

Developer Day
Grant's blog informs us that there is an Oracle Developer Day coming up on May 28th. You can join grant there to discuss JDeveloper, ADF and a host of other topics.
Oracle Tweets
No, not those free breakfasts you get at Oracle events and education, but Twitters and Tweeters, the latest thing. I have to admit to being a slow adapter on this one, but Chris Warticki is way ahead of me, and points to a list of Oracle-related tweeters.
Hyperion: Kaleidescope
The Look Smarter Than You Are Blog brings us news of a conference a lot of you will not want to miss: Kaleidescope 2009 . What's really exciting is that we'll have the Hyperion product managers there on Sunday's Developer Symposium talking about the roadmaps for their products over the next year or two. A lot of you have asked for a webinar on precisely that, and this is an opportunity to go several steps beyond that and speak directly with the managers, 'en masse'. 
ADF
 I wish more developers would think like Luc Bors over at the AMIS Technology blog who posts about ADF 11g - Invoke a Popup from a Popup. I hate to dialog with software that doesn't want to share status information with me, and Luc's article will help your popup interface be more helpful to users.
RAC
Here at the Infogram we are known for providing real information for real users, nothing dressed up or propagandized (well, not much, anyway). So I point you to H. Tonguç Yılmaz 's article on a RAC Aware Software Discussion. He raises many good points. I never specialized in working with RAC, but I've been 'messing around the edges' of the product since it was still called Oracle Parallel Server. The need to design hardware configurations and customize applications to take advantage of OPS used to be a major part of the design and implementation effort. It's less of a challenge now, but still has its moments, as you can read in Tonguç's posting. He also gives a nice list at the bottom of some of his favorite resources.

Contributions by Sherron Garnett, Infogram Contributor

Extended Support Fees Waived for Several Major Oracle Product Lines

Our customers spoke and we listened. Unprecedented economic pressure across the globe is making business as usual a thing of the past. As part of Oracle’s continued commitment to provide the industry’s leading support offering, we’ve waived Extended Support fees for a number of major Oracle product lines through 2010 and 2011. Now customers have more time to optimize their existing infrastructure and can choose when to upgrade to Oracle future releases when the time is right for their business.

What’s New

First Year Extended Support fees waived:

Oracle E-Business Suite 11i Release 10 through November 2011·
JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 8.11 through December 2010·
Siebel Customer Relationship Management (CRM) 7.8 through May 2011·
Oracle Database 10g Release 2 through July 2011

Extended Support fees waived:

PeopleSoft Enterprise 8.9 through June 2011

Extended Access to Fixes:

Oracle E-Business Suite 11i Release 9 through June 2010
Resolution of severity-one technical issues and US year-end 1099 support


Even More Time to Upgrade

Oracle’s Lifetime Support puts customers in control of their upgrade strategy. This flexible support policy makes it easier for customers to plan and budget for Oracle’s exclusive product upgrades allowing them to upgrade at the speed of their business. And with Oracle Lifetime Support, upgrades are always included at no additional charge beyond their annual support contract.


We’re Focused on Your Success

Oracle Customer Services Support is focused on one thing: customer success. This announcement further demonstrates Oracle’s commitment to protect and extend customer investments as part of its Applications Unlimited and Lifetime Support programs.


Begin Planning For Your Next Upgrade

For more information about the Extended Support Fee Waiver, review the Frequently Asked Questions. For more information and to learn about the benefits of upgrading to the latest releases click here.To discover the services available to help achieve a smooth transition and well defined upgrade strategy for minimal business disruption click here.