Oracle Infogram

Performance
Cary Milsap once again uses examples from life to think about performance. Check it out here.
APEX
APEX is a wonderful way to get more bang for your buck. Ask Tom, one of the most popular and authoritative knowledge sites for Oracle in the world, moved to APEX recently, and Joel Kallman writes about it in his blog: YABAOAE. Speaking of Tom Kyte, Kevin Closson reminds us that he will be the keynote speaker at this year's Hotsos Symposium.
EBS
This week at the Oracle E-Business Suite Technology blog:
Tuning the Oracle E-Business Suite Environment (OpenWorld 2009 Recap)
Integration Architectures for Oracle EBS (OpenWorld 2009 Recap)
EBS 12 Certified with 10gR2 10.2.0.4 DB on Windows Server x64 (64-bit)
Clouds
At the OTN blogs we have Creating Prebundled Machine Images for the Cloud
Have a Happy Thanksgiving, all who celebrate the day!

MOS
My Oracle Support has been a hot topic out in the blogosphere. For instance Chris Warticki's blog, which has a pointer to the FAQ.
Linux
Kevin Closson has some words of technical wisdom on Linux memory, free vs. reclaimable.
EBS
New from the Oracle E-Business Suite Technology blog this week:
E-Business Suite Technology Essentials (OpenWorld 2009 Recap)
Application Change Management Pack for EBS (OpenWorld 2009 Recap)
Critical Data Protection + Security in EBS (OpenWorld 2009 Recap)
Analytic Features
Tom Kyte is looking for feedback and ideas from users on Comparative Window Functions... in the analytics featureset of the RDBMS.
Optimizer
The Optimizer team over at the Inside the Oracle Optimizer blog remind us that old hints can go 'stale', how that happens and what to do about it.
OTN Best Articles for the Year
As we start the holiday season and the long slow slide out of 2009, OTN has a blog entry on the most popular articles of the year here.
Indexes: To Rebuild or Not to Rebuild
Yes, that ever-controversial topic is covered by Richard Foote, veritable doctor of indexology, at his blog, along with a very engaging comment thread beneath it.

Join us for the next Oracle Content Management Quarterly Customer Update Webcast scheduled for December 2009.

Don't miss this chance to get an overview:

• New PeopleSoft adapter for I/PM, plus solution templates
• New E-Business Suite adapter for UCM
• Updated Siebel adapter for UCM
• New features in the latest Site Studio roll-up patch
• Latest IRM Desktop release
• Other content management news

Americas / EMEA time zones: Customer Update
Tuesday, December 1, 2009 - 60 minutes
9:00 a.m. US PST / 12:00 noon US EST / 17:00 GMT
*Remember to use your existing InterCall username & password if you already have one.

Asia-Pacific time zones: Customer Update (Repeat Webcast)
Wednesday, December 2, 2009 - 60 minutes
1:00 p.m. Sydney AEDT, 10:00 a.m. Singapore
(December 1, 2009 @ 6:00 p.m. US PST)
*Remember to use your existing InterCall username & password if you already have one.

Missed Previous Customer Quarterly Updates?
Get caught up on Oracle & ECM news. View a recording or the presentation from previous Webcasts held since June 2008.

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

Check out this link to Oracle Premier Resource Library. It contains Oracle's Lifetime Support Policy, Analyst Reports , Customer Success Stories and More.
http://www.oracle.com/support/library/index.html#guides

Customer Service
With all the dust in the air from the recent changover from Metalink to MOS, this article is a good reminder to everyone in Oracle Support about keeping the customer at the center of everything we do: 16 Lessons in Customer Service form a Car Salesman.
Hyperion
Tim Tow has some helpful material for you if you are upgrading from 11.1.1.1 to 11.1.1.3.
PeopleSoft
The PeopleSoft Technology Blog brings us an anouncement on the availability of the Oracle VM Template for PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 and PeopleTools 8.50
Oracle Search Utilities
If you were using the excellent Firefox plugin for finding Oracle information directly, Gareth Roberts over at In Depth Apps has an update for you.
ECM
Oracle ECM Alerts lets us know that Oracle IRM 10.1.3.5.2 Desktop supports Windows 7.
Performance
Cary Milsap discusses Latency Hiding, continuing the discussion started by James Morle. If you know anything about Oracle performance, you know that those two are major figures in the field, so this light-hearted article bears reading.

RemoteDBA Experts has a lengthy entry on Using Deductive Reasoning and Communication Skills to Identify and Solve Performance Problems.
Product Announcements
A new version of Audit Vault
and...drum roll...
Golden Gate
This one is a very exciting product. If you are running streams right now, you will want to learn more about GoldenGate.

Security
Over at Pete Finnigan's Oracle security weblog we have a good article on the ever-confusing topic of Direct Grants, DBA, Invoker rights and definer rights (at least I know it used to confuse me when I was a DBA, but perhaps that's not all that hard).
BI
There's the start of a series on Oracle BI EE 10.1.3.4.1 - Single Table Repository Design over at the RittmanMead blog.
Storage
StorageMojo brings us an article this week on Redundant array of inexpensive servers (what's next, redundant array of inexpensive IT departments?).
EBS on Exadata
The Oracle E-Business Suite Technology blog has a posting this week on Running E-Business Suite on Exadata V2.
Oracle Magazine
Looked at Oracle Magazine lately? Here's a link to an article on Driving Down Costs (and no, that doesn't mean laying off all the people in the company you don't like).

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

Here are some helpful links for My Oracle Support:

Main Website (uses Flash)
http://support.oracle.com

HTML Website
http://supporthtml.oracle.com

Sign up for training classes
http://www.oracle.com/support/training-schedule.html?msgid=8268387

OBI EE
Running OBI EE on Windows? This posting at the Rittman Mead blog may be of interest to you: Using Perfmon.exe to Monitor OBIEE on Windows
Also of interest at Rittman Mead is this item:
Oracle BI EE 10.1.3.4.1 & Essbase Connectivity – Direct MDX Requests – Multiple Measure Dimensions, Varying Attributes & Format Strings
RDBMS
Oracle Scratchpad, Jonathan Lewis' performance blog, has a couple of postings on foreign keys. Though one of the fundamental concepts of the relational model in theory and practise, foreign keys confuse a lot of people, and have more than their share of myths. Jonathan should be able to help you cut through the fog.
The Global Oracle Contractors Network has a series on Using the Oracle PL/SQL Profiler. Here is a link: Using the Oracle PL/SQL Profiler Part 1
Alberto Dell'Era's blog has some good material on changes in 11gR2 Materialized Views.

Oak Table
Speaking of Jonathan Lewis, I'd like to remind everyone about the Oak Table Network. They don't update their homepage very often, but the place is definitely worthy of exploration. In my years as a performance specialist I found that most rules of thumb are dangerous...except one: If a performance specialist has been invited to join the Oak Table that is a person of substance in the field. I'm surprised to still see ratio-based optimization being touted, specialists in performance recommending rebuilding indexes, etc. Members of the Oak Table have been pioneers in dispelling such myths and shadow boxing in the realm of performance optimization by a curious activity: direct experimentation and proof by hard example.
PeopleSoft
The PeopleSoft tipster brings us A first look at Tools 8.50’s new User Interface
The PeopleSoft DBA Blog explains some of the arcane knowledge of database links and PeopleSoft.
Hyperion
In 2 Hyperion, one of my favorite blogs, has an article on EPM Reformation (in spite of sounding like a rock band founded by Martin Luther, it's a Hyperion posting).
Data Warehouse
The Data Warehouse Insider brings us some valuable info on Chunking of Updates.
Coherence
SOA and Java Using Oracle Technology blog discusses a cutting edge way to improve middle tier performance, Oracle Coherence*Web: easy in-memory session management in a clustered environment.

Doom and Gloom Supplemental
In a continuing series on project management philosophy, the Edgewater Technology blog runs down the various ways that things can blow up, planets, projects, and what have you: Ten Ways to Ensure Project Failure.
Security
Speaking of gloom and doom, did I mention lately that it is a very good idea to apply the CPUs we put out quarterly? Yes, I hear the groaning, the gnashing of DBA teeth, but there really are people in the world whose moral fiber leaves much to be desired, and many of them have access to the Internet, so it's good to keep up your guard. I even received a warning about an Oracle vulnerability from the makers of my home router (with built-in firewall). If you're running 10g, you should have a look. Further details are to be found in previous Infogram updates about the CPU and all over the My Oracle Support site.

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

The official retirement of Classic Metalink and move to My Oracle Support is here. If you have not already done so, sign up for free training to learn more about the transition and features of My Oracle Support. Here is the link: http://www.oracle.com/support/training-schedule.html?msgid=8268387

Optimizer

The Oracle Optimizer team has an update from their experiences at OpenWorld on their blog here.

Hyperion

Tim Tow has a sobering posting on: One Good Reason to Stick with Supported Versions at his blog.

I've Seen Clouds from Both Sides Now...

The cloud concept is, well, cloudy, and it's hurting its reputation as the 'latest thing'. In fact, some would say that it is merely the latest fad, and the actual heart of the matter is the grid concept. There are several articles in the blogosphere and news that came out of the recent Sidekick debacle:

Defending the cloud over at ZDNet

Examining several aspects of the matter over at cnet, including a link to a statement by our very own Larry Ellison on clouds here.

Typical of the blog entries on this incident was this one over at the CircleID blog, which makes some good points about the underlying issue: Backups and restores.

To me it seems that there needs to be a more robust protocol for validating multiple backups on the cloud side of the equation. But the incident also comes back to some old fashioned, cliche-rich territory: Don't put all your eggs in one basket. What we need is a dispatcher service that copies out key items, like calendar entries and contacts, to several places and programs, and only notifies a user that an entry is confirmed when a minimum number of transactions are complete (similar to the behavior of some Oracle RDBMS features like DataGuard). In other words, it all comes back to basic transaction processing and due diligence on backup and recovery, things that DBAs deal with every day.

My Oracle Support

Have some feedback on MOS? Chris Warticki points to the spot for getting it to Oracle.

IOPS

Kevin Closson discusses the high end of storage and processing in this series: Sun Oracle Database Machine. The Million Oracle Database IOPS Machine or Marketing Hype? – Part I

APEX

David Peake has a link to an Updated Statement of Direction for APEX here.

EBS

At the Oracle E-Business Suite Technology blog this week:

OracleAS 10.1.3.5 Certified with E-Business Suite Release 12

E-Business Suite 12.1.2 Release Content Documents Now Available

Database 11gR1 11.1.0.7 Certified With EBS 12.1.1 on Windows Server 2003 (x64)

Secure Enterprise Search 10.1.8.4 Certified with E-Business Suite 11i

Interim Update #2: Certifying Windows 7 with Oracle E-Business Suite

Critical Patch Update for October 2009 Now Available

The October 2009 CPU is Out

This is another very important CPU to implement. Several high risk vulnerabilities are fixed in this CPU. Here's a good place to start working with it.

A word on one-off patching vs larger patchsets. Applying patches is rarely fun (ok, I admit it, it's never really fun, but I saw someone smile once while the files changes flew by on the screen). But it is good to recall that although one-off patches touch less code and thus seem to carry less risk, they lack the iterative testing that is done on larger collections of patches such as the CPU. Life is all about tradeoffs and compromises, so these factors are something to keep in mind.

Clouds of Hyperion

Sounds like poetry, albeit buzzword poetry. This posting at Tim Tow's blog looks to the future and a product to let you easily move things in and out of clouds.

Diagnosis

The metaphor of clinical concepts and IT continues at Edgewater Technologies blog with this post on diagnosis. I've always liked medical metaphors in IT, particularly in performance optimization. One of my favorite aphorisms from medical diagnostics applies very well to performance problems: If you hear hoof beats, think horses, not zebras. It's tempting to dig around in obscure internals and figure out some kind of latching linkages correlated to phases of the moon. But it's usually more productive to figure out what has changed and either improve it or change things back to the way they were before the problem.

EBS

This week at the Oracle E-Business Suite Technology blog:

Oracle Application Testing Suite 9.0 Supported with Oracle E-Business Suite

E-Business Suite Release 12.1.1 Certified on Windows Server 2008 (32-bit)

Using Oracle Application Server 10g with E-Business Suite (OpenWorld 2009 Recap)

Morgan's Library

Kevin Closson points out a great resource this week, Morgan's Library. I don't think we've blogged about it here before. And now we have.

Join us on Wednesday, October 28, 2:00 PM EST for this special webcast: Introducing PeopleSoft Enterprise 9.1 and PeopleTools 8.50. We’ll cover:

• Newest capabilities demonstration
• Embedded Web 2.0 capabilities and industry-specific enhancements
• Robust Talent Management features and new Succession Planning solution
• Enhanced Financials Management
• Industry-specific applications for education and research, public sector, retail, and professional services.

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

Oracle Support is pleased to announce the availability of the ComputerWorld Paper on My Oracle Support. This industry paper articulates why the proactive and personalized capabilities of My Oracle Support are having such an impact in the support industry. The paper covers multiple customer testimonials and an analyst perspective on why My Oracle Support is key to any support strategy. Read the article at:
http://www.computerworld.com/pdfs/a_oracle_stimulus2.pdf

Contributions by Sherron Garnett, Infogram Contributor



Classic MetaLink Retires Nov 6: Essential My Oracle Support Customer Training Now Available



During the weekend of November 6–8, 2009, My Oracle Support, Oracle's next-generation customer support platform, will be upgraded and Classic MetaLink will be retired. Oracle is providing free training on My Oracle Support to help customers through this transition. Read more here here to learn about the training available.

EBS

The good folks from Oracle E-Business Suite Technology are out at OpenWorld this week, but still found time to post some valuable info on...OpenWorld 2009: E-Business Suite Technology Stack Certification Roadmap

APEX

The Application Express Listener Early Adopter is now available here.

Hyperion

Over at 'in 2 Hyperion' we have a posting on an Excel feature, custom lists, that many use and few know about, and how to combine it with Smartview: Compliment the Excel Add-In or SmartView with Excel Custom Lists.

Feel like bragging about how you have the biggest Essbase install in the cosmos? Well it has to be bigger than the one described here at Tim Tow's blog to qualify.

Are you a developer looking at Hyperion's complexities and wondering how all the pieces fit together, particularly Planning? This article from Rittman Mead Consulting is a good start toward clarity.

IT Philosophy: Triage and Queuing

I sense a resonance between these two postings, one, at Edgewater Technology's blog, speaks of project triage, a very high level concept, another, at The ORACLE-BASE Blog, goes down into the code to discuss queuing, another form of triage. Triage runs from the queing on the CPU all the way up to the user's daily calendar entries, it is a concept that should always be kept in mind when planning and building projects. It is also the most fundamental element of Oracle Support. Something is broken, or you don't know how to get the product to do what you need, you make an appointment with the doctor (file an SR) and the doctor (a combination of Oracle's internal workflow's interaction with the your profile and how you answer the questions when opening the SR and the actual support engineers) , sees you. Responses range from an unhurried process of preventive care (Sev 4) to rushing your DB to intensive care (Sev1). For Priority Service users you are near the front of the line as soon as you hit the submit button on the SR, and also have better ability to call in specialists if the problem is exotic, but the triage concept remains throughout. When is it time to think of triage? When the workflow gets out of whack. Wrong prioritization can lead to needless waste and damage. Increasing the priority of some tasks for politics or appearance' sake can cause harm, so can 'cry wolf' syndrome (i.e. if you always claim that any problem, even something minor, is a world-ending problem from hell). Artificially inflated priorities can wear out IT staff and waste money, ultimately slowing down the very project it was supposed to be expediting. Intelligent triage, though sometimes seeming harsh, will benefit your bottom line.

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

Enterprise Architecture is always a hot topic. Learn more about it at Oracle's Enterprise Architecture Center:
http://www.oracle.com/technology/architect/entarch/index.html

Contributed by Linda Corniola, Infogram Contributor

Training PeopleTools 8.50

In case you were wondering, we are preparing lots of training classes for Tools 8.50. By Oracle Open World customers will be able to schedule themselves on the Oracle University website (oracle.com/education) for the following classes (Note that these classes are not available yet, names may change etc... ):

PeopleTools 1 rel. 8.50
PeopleTools 2 rel. 8.50
PeopleTools 1 & 2 Accelerated rel. 8.50
PeopleCode rel. 8.50
SQR for PeopleSoft rel. 8.50
Application Engine rel. 8.50
PeopleCode/SQR Accelerated training rel. 8.50
PeopleCode/Application Engine Accelerated

Contributions by Sherron Garnett, Infogram Contributor

Secure Testimony

Mary Ann Davidson is the Chief Security Officer of Oracle. She is responsible for securing development practices and security evaluations and assessments. She represents Oracle on the Board of Directors of the Information Technology Information Security Analysis Center (IT-ISAC), and has served on the U.S. Defense Science Board. Read her article Secure Testimony on advising the United States Congress about cybersecurity.

Performance
Over at Alberto Dell'Era's blog we have the start of a series on the statistical density of "cardinality" in the CBO.
I wish I could say my math and logic skills were anywhere near close enough to keep up with Cary Milsap, former VP of Oracle for all things performance and originator of the Method R approach to optimization, but they're not. But I still advocate them in principle, if not personal practise, and so recommend this article on the Importance of Diagnosing Before Resolving at his blog.
PeopleSoft
Need to find how many concurrent users there are on PeopleSoft? Here's a handy script at ERP Associates' PeopleSoft Corner.
IT Philosophy
One of keys to solving complex IT problems, especially the tense situations when a key server is down and the fingers are pointing in flocks, is finding a likely cause. That search is often more difficult than it first appears. Let's say the database is down: Call Oracle, right? But what if you go through the steps and it turns out that the DB is fine, but someone wrote over a firewall configuration that didn't include its ports and ... kerfluey. These chains of causation can be lengthy and multifactorial. It is rare to have the opportunity to do full RCA on the matter. The main concern is usually getting the users reconnected, assigning blame, and moving along smartly. But I would ask you to keep the scientific approach always there. A majority of people nodding and saying: Yup, it's the application server, does not necessarily mean that it is the cause of the problem. Logic, not majority sentiment, should always prevail in IT troubleshooting. With that long and tedious preface, please read this item from the adhd ocd blog on nonsense correlations. And for another viewpoint on statistics and the manipulation thereof, have a look at Kosher Visualization over at the I'M JUST A SIMPLE DBA ON A COMPLEX PRODUCTION SYSTEM blog. Want to meet some of the bloggers you read here at the Infogram? Get together with them at Oracle Open World as described in this posting at the same blog, along with a batch of other links of interest.
RDBMS Links
A few handy links in this posting by Eddie Awad, all of interest to the DBA/Developer/Designer types out there. Oh, and 36,000 scripts. For those of you who really need something to do for the next ten years, test them out.
Not Oracle related, more like amusing psychology, but this link at Eddie's blog is fun too.
Hyperion
A good Hyperion posting recently over at Rittman Mead Consulting: Oracle Essbase 11.1.1.3 – Integration with Relational Sources and Applications.

Contributions by Linda Corniola, Infogram Contributor

PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 is GA

PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 is now generally available. Customers can start downloading it from the Electronic Product Delivery (EPD) site now. Physical shipment delivery will be available on October 1.

The upgrade scripts are usually available 6 - 8 weeks after GA. A great site to monitor is PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 Documentation Home Page on My Oracle Support Just log into My Oracle Support and search in knowledge for document ID 845867.1

Hyperion

A handy posting today over at Tim Tow's Hyperion blog on Running Essbase on an Alternate Port.

EBS

This week over at the Oracle E-Business Suite Technology blog:

Using Transportable Database 11gR1 with E-Business Suite

Database Vault 11.1.0.7 Certified for E-Business Suite on Windows Platforms

Firefox 3.5 Certified with E-Business Suite

AIA

Several valuable postings at the Official AIA Blog, including this one on AIA 2.0.1 and MLR # 18

Forms

Using Forms? There's a link to a webcast on Web cast with Oracle Forms Support Experts coming up on October 7th at OTN over at Grant's Blog.

Performance

Jonathan Lewis has been one of the leading lights of Oracle performance for as long as I've been involved in it. His blog is always worth a look. For instance this posting with links to forum posts on processes. Is it really a good idea to use the overkill approach and allocate lots of processes up front 'just in case'.