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Not very long before we kick off the 2013 Great Lakes Oracle Conference in Cleveland ( 2013 Great Lakes Oracle Conference ).  This will be our biggest and best ever conference.

Key notes by Tom Kyte and 2 from CJ Date ( the godfather of relational database design ).  Workshop sessions by Joel Kallman ( Apex I never new it was this easy ) / Tom Kyte / Craig Shallahamer.

Two days of sessions by top Oracle national class presenters Oakies / Aces / Ace Directors ... we got the whole enchilada ... please check it out and think about attending ... May 13/14/15 2013.

Hope to see you there!  If not this year then next year and think about submitting a presentation abstract next year ( yeah that's you Mr. Gorbachev and the pythian gang!  also you Enkitec people )!

Another talk I gave at Collaborate 2013 is this one on ADF Mobile and WebCenter. It builds off my talk from last year about general techniques, and gets into specific about the new ADF Mobile technology, and how to integrate it with WebCenter content and WebCenter Portal.

Integrating ADF Mobile with WebCenter from Brian Huff

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At Collaborate 2013 this year, Tony Field and I put together a talk about a topic that has been been floating around the WebCenter community as of late...How do I integrate WebCenter Sites (Fatwire) with WebCenter Content or Site Studio? We put together a handful of integration techniques, but the main focus was on upcoming features in the next version of WebCenter... specifically the official Sites/Content connector, and support for External Repositories. Cool by themselves, but when combined with Site Studio for External Applications, it's a compelling set of integration options:

Seamless Integrations between WebCenter Content, Site Studio, and WebCenter Sites from Brian Huff

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Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Deputy Editor

Oracle Magazine
The May / June issue of Oracle Magazine is now available.  It features articles on Oracle Cloud, SOA and more.  Be sure to check it out. 

The database is the central repository of an enterprise's total assets, and therefore it is imperative that companies deploy the proper solutions and services to support functionality. As managing the data center becomes more complex, experts agree it is important to leverage remote database support for support in ensuring proper bandwidth, optimal connectivity and overall administration so that analytics and other operations can run smoothly.

In an interview with Smart Business, Mike Tighe, executive director of data products for Comcast Business, explained that the data center itself doesn't affect value or generate ROI, but management of critical IT functions does.

"The function of a data center is to ensure availability of IT applications and data," Tighe told the source. "If employees don't have access, they can't be as productive and in some cases, the business can't run."

Tighe further predicted that the concept of leasing as opposed to owning IT infrastructure will only accelerate as businesses increasingly migrate to the cloud, which offers more rapid deployment of applications and enhanced scalability. He noted that more companies will likely outsource IT, such as with dba services, for higher security and uptime.

"When IT becomes an important component of how you run your business, you have to ensure high availability," Tighe stated to Smart Business. "If, for example, you install specialized applications used for resource planning and creation of content, but the server starts going down because of power or network connectivity loss, it impacts your business's ability to run."

Maximizing Oracle benefits
These considerations are particularly important when it comes to maintaining Oracle performance. TechTarget reported that there are many powerful functions that come with Oracle products, such as SQL construction, application development and database optimization, but seeking third-party tools can be even more beneficial. By filling in gaps in these systems with the help of Oracle experts, firms can effectively enhance the native tools to these technologies while customizing the application for unique and specialized advantages. For example, the source pointed out that cross-platform data replication helps to unify information across multiple database platforms, while other solutions offer improved disaster recovery, business continuity and cross-platform data sharing.

With support from third-party services, enterprises can generate greater value from the database by uncovering bottlenecks, debugging issues more quickly and optimizing performance to support new features and capabilities.

RDX is a leading provider of advanced remote database management and monitoring solutions. For more information about database administration and management, please visit our Services page or contact us.

Reblogged from So Many Oracle Manuals, So Little Time: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE San Francisco (April 1, 2013) – In a dramatic move calculated to give fresh life to the moribund relational database movement, the latest version of Oracle Corporation’s flagship database has eliminated the famous “join penalty” by making it possible to store rows from […]

This entry is part 5 of 5 in the series Grow Your Career 

All work and no play makes us dull DBAs.

Being a DBA can be a really thankless job. From Jr. Shutdown Immediaters to Sr. Rockstar Oracle DBA ACE OCM PMP LOL A+ BBQs, we’ve all trudged into work at some point in our careers only to find that we have three impossible tasks, four humiliating tasks, and no less than seven “why is the database causing this query to be slow we haven’t changed it in two years” tasks. Yet we keep on doing it, day after day, for love of the data. Or something like that.

I wrote an article a while back about galvanizing the DBA team into action and making them stand out a bit more in the corporate world. In the end, a lot of that boils down to making sure the DBA team looks less like a cranky support group that constantly needs disk space and expensive Oracle licenses and more like a team that wants to work as a key part of bringing new products to market (and thus earning money). But even then, it can be a tedious, mind numbing task at times.

So how can we spice up the DBA experience and the IT life in general?

Gamification, of course

Everybody loves games. More to the point, people like being competitive and reveling in a sense of accomplishment and achievement. The idea behind gamification is that many things in the day-to-day non-gamified world can have principles of game theory attached to them. For the most part, the current trend of gamification is a corporate strategy that can be used to further engage a customer base (and is predicted to be a $1.6bn market by 2016 as a result). But even from a departmental or team point of view, it can have great benefits to increase morale, productivity, and accomplishment. And with a little luck and project management, it can be used to solve critical issues for your business.

What gamification is:

• Making tasks more like missions. Everything from tuning a query to backing up a database can be a mission. Instead of becoming yet another ‘requirement’, tasks can become goals.
• Providing a system of Achievements, Badges, Rewards, etc. Modern games are nothing if they don’t have some sort of achievement system that allows players to share their accomplishments across their social network or game community. Within a business, that community can be the IT group (like the DBA team), the department as a whole, or even business-wide.
• Competition! Pitting people against each other in a fun, non-threatening way is a great way to improve morale and encourage growth of skills outside of the standard “do this and do it well or you won’t get a raise” paradigm.
• Leaderboards, which are good for tracking the competition and achievements but are also useful for status and review purposes. What’s the point of earning achievements if they aren’t tracked, or competing without scores?

What gamification is not:

• Strapping your DBA team into slingshots and giving them an achievement for knocking over the most developers.
• An IT version of Thunderdome where two DBAs enter, and one DBA leaves.

Let the Games Begin

So it sounds great in theory, but what can we possibly do to bring it into our DBA practices? As with all answers regarding database management, it depends. If you’re a consulting organization, gamifying is simple because you generally are performing work and solving problems for a wide array of clients. You track team members’ status and customer satisfaction anyways because it is part of the business model. For a DBA team inside an IT department at a major corporation, it can become a little more difficult. So let’s look into some of the ways you can make games part of your actual work.

Backup and Restore Challenges

Setting up and monitoring a good backup and disaster recovery solution can be a serious pain in the neck. But everyone would agree it is absolutely vital to your company and your job security. But even worse than setting it up and monitoring it is having to actually put those backups to use in the case of a critical failure. Whether the problem is a single corrupt data block or an entire database ground to dust, having to actually perform a restore when the heat is on and the managers are circling and all your plans for the weekend are being piled up in the “it’s the thought that counts” bin like so much garbage… well, it sucks. There, I said it.

Maybe that (with a hint of staffing problems and financial woes) is why companies are failing to adequately test their DR plans. That’s a highly dangerous practice, right there with giving developers DBA access to production and typing drop database commands and saying just kidding while you fumble for the backspace key. What is the point of organizing and configuring a complex backup solution if you only plan on testing it when disaster strikes? I can’t count the number of times I’ve worked with clients who said “oh, we needed that file?” or “well, the logs all looked okay” as their hopes for database recovery dropped like their company’s stock price after a three day outage.

So test your backup and recovery plan. But you can make it more fun by running simultaneous tests or presenting interesting and sometimes horrifying cases to the team when they are asked to perform restores. In this article I wrote about the Backup/Restore Workshop day when I worked for Oracle University, and how one student took his preparations to a whole new level, ultimately giving me the old what for, so to speak. Make a competition out of it. Challenge your DBAs to recover from sticky situations and to do it quickly and efficiently. Engage other teams too (such as application server administrators), who ultimately should be part of backup and recovery testing. Doing so invites the teams to improve their speed while also giving the business a good idea of where there may be bottlenecks.

Questionable Query Quality

Not only is this topic worth 192 points in a triple word score in Words with Friends, it’s also a serious issue that almost every DBA/Development group has to face. Writing queries can be a very tedious task to the point where many groups skip that whole tuning thing and go straight for production, guns blazing. This is, of course, a bad idea.

At one company I worked for we came up with a really interesting, fun, and productive way of tackling this issue: we pitted the query developers against each other in battle. Developers would requested to put a comment in their SQL code with their name so we could 1) track who wrote it, and 2) hold contests periodically. So when someone did “SELECT /* Steve Karam */ count(*) from RIDUCLOUSLYHUGETABLE;” we knew who it was and where to go to get it fixed.

That can make for some seriously awesome competition. Each month, quarter, release, etc. you can host ‘award ceremonies’ honoring the best and worst of the time window. Grab explain plans for all the queries and come up with valuable metrics to track like:

• Most readable
• Best use of indexes
• Least blocks touched
• Most convoluted query
• Least likely to make it to production
• Most likely to result in concurrency waits

It’s all in good fun. And it makes query reviews almost bearable. In fact, I’ve noticed in cases where I used this (whether in real environments or in training sessions) the participants were not embarrassed or angry about writing a bad query. They wanted to figure out how to make it better so they could be in a different acknowledgement tier the next time around.

Professional Growth Challenge

While there are a ton of competition ideas within the DBA team (best use of indexes, most SQL profiles used, fastest mouseslinger in the Grid) there is also that of professional development. How about a competition on who can get their OCP certification first? Or one of the many Oracle Expert certifications out there? Heck, even a contest to see who can rack up the most obscure or highest count of certifications from anywhere in the industry would be fun and potentially enlightening. Not only will the team benefit from the certifications and the process to get them, but it makes the team look better as a whole when everyone is clamoring to get professionally acknowledged the fastest.

If you have a really top notch team, then challenge them to get their OCM. While this will require some company backing to keep it fair since the OCM is an expensive and time consuming test to take, it definitely has its rewards. It is a great way to encourage professional growth within your team using pre-built metrics.

D&D Tabletop Drills

My current company had a pretty cool idea as the result of a stability and process review initiative. We started doing tabletop drills once per quarter. For these drills we assembled a team of moderators (usually one manager from each IT group) that came up with a couple scenarios of problems that can occur in our production systems. A ‘player’ is chosen from each team to act as representative: one DBA, one applications administrator, one system administrator, etc. And we would get everyone in a room, surrounded by observers, and act it out.

The idea is to act out the response to the crisis exactly as we would if it were really happening. Sometimes input is needed; for instance, if they discover that this scenario includes application servers being down, they can ask how many are down. Moderators answer questions and keep track of the progress to gauge how the activity goes as a whole, whether SLAs were acknowledged and met, and what can be improved. Following the activity, observers, moderators, and participants have a discussion about the scenarios as a whole and what action items should occur as a result of the findings.

I like it because it’s like the IT version of Dungeons and Dragons. We’ve got game masters and a group going through a perilous journey through a broken and charred land that was once a shining beacon of production goodness. Heck, we could even include dice next time. “How many DBs are down?” “Roll 2d6″. Critical hit, go to DR!

What’s In It For Me?

Even though there are built-in rewards to many challenges — better queries, faster backups, certifications, what have you — people still want to have something a little more, particularly in the gamified experience. So what can you offer up your team or colleagues for a job well done?

Achievements: One of the cornerstones of game theory, achievements are fun and fulfilling. Use stickers, logos, Portal shoutouts, even badges inside the company intranet to show accomplishments. I personally think it would be neat to see “Achievements” next to Job Description, Contact Information, and Org Chart in my company portal filled in with things like “Onward and Upward – Upgraded three databases in a two week period” or “Did I Do That? – Fixed a fat-finger mistake with flashback or restores”. In fact, I would go out of my way to do amazing things just to earn more achievements.

Seminars and Conferences: Maybe the DBA with the most accomplishments gets to go to Oracle Open World this year. Or perhaps the developers with the best (or worst, to be more logical) queries get tickets to the next big Java conference. Whatever the case may be, I’ve noticed a growing number of companies unwilling to send their teams to conferences. In some cases they believe them to be merely a chance for the DBA (or other professional) to find another job. In others, they see it as a waste of money compared to other training. While ultimately these are horrible reasons to deny technical conferences to your team, perhaps using achievements and fulfillment of goals as a way to send people will improve performance as well.

A break: You could always give the winner a day to work from home (or off, you taskmaster you). Or for the thrill seeking types, the ‘losers’ have to give the winner a week off on call by taking it for them.

Will Turner: What are they wagering?

‘Bootstrap’ Bill Turner: Oh, the only thing we have. Years of service.

Company Certifications: Why not create a set of certifications within your own organization? As someone who has been in education and publishing for quite a while and as one of the lead writers of the Oracle 10g Certified Master exam, you can trust me when I say that certifications are an outstanding way to bring job satisfaction and a feeling of recognition to an IT team. Come up with certifications within your company that can be awarded for exemplary work or completion of certain achievements. Use those certifications during review time as a concrete measurement of success within the company. Make it possible for anyone to get certified in-house (e.g. developers can get in-house DBA certifications) to keep the career paths open at your organization. There are many ways you can acknowledge people for hard work; a certification they can put on their company profile, their emails, or even their resume can go a long way toward that goal.

Let them destroy something: This one sounds funny, and it is… but next time you migrate from one server to another or decommission an environment, let the winners of various competitions be the ones to type and press enter on that DROP USER command or DROP DATABASE. A company I worked for a long time ago did this. We finally moved off of an old and painful architecture. Once the database was moved over and the old one set to be deleted, we allows developers to drop the tables they hated the most and gave the honor of dropping the main schema to our lead (and most overworked) customer service representative. It was a great way to celebrate the occasion.

Conclusion

Some of these ideas may seem far fetched or downright silly. But you have to track employee progress, tasks, and status anyways. Why not do it in a way that gives everyone a sense of competition and accomplishment?

Gamification doesn’t have to be strictly for companies to rope in consumers. By using it within teams it can also improve morale, grow employees at a professional level, and give everyone something to strive for.

The post Gamifying the DBA Experience appeared first on Steve Karam :: The Oracle Alchemist.

Ever changing labor market conditions and supply demand fluctuations make sure that organizations don’t design employee compensation strategy in a vacuum. Success of your compensation strategy not only depends on your system’s ability to provide market data analysis during decision-making but also on how well you analyze the external data during your planning phase.

You start this exercise by deciding on the source of market data as per your industry benchmarks. Relying on multiple survey sources for market salary data will be more beneficial than depending on a single source. In case you opt for multiple sources, you need to decide on mathematical techniques you are going to use to combine multiple sources into an easily comparable source to make comparison with the internal data a smooth exercise.

Getting your current job descriptions updated into your internal system is a must have requirement before you proceed any further. While analyzing the survey data, you need to make sure that you are matching your detailed job description with benchmark job descriptions as matching just a job title or a brief summary can result in wastage of money, time and resources. You also need to have a plan in place for the cases where you don’t find job match in benchmark data.

How you utilize survey results after your internal analysis depends on your current or desired market position. Either you can decide to pay as per market dynamics or you can decide to lead the market. It’s very unlikely that you will decide to pay below market standards after putting so much effort in analysis. You can also opt for total compensation offerings to match or lead the market rather than focusing only on base pay.

It’s easier said than done, you need real experts for a detailed market data analysis internally as software in place will not help if you fail to analyze the data correctly.

Tagged: Market Data

 It's fitting this week that we are focusing around social collaboration, since the key buzzwords at the Gartner Portals, Content & Collaboration Summit have been social, mobile, cloud and information. As the event comes to a close, John Brunswick shares his best practices for social collaboration adoption and how you can see the best results when implementing social technologies.

Want to get the most from your social collaboration investments?  If you already have or are contemplating investment in this technology, consider the following to boost your social collaboration adoption.

1. Drive Awareness - Your line of business leaders hold the key to success.  Ideally they proactively request this type of tooling in support of an existing use case, but that is rare.  If you are looking to drive adoption, hold a lunch and learn and using "business speak" share external case studies and focus on capabilities - instead of product functions.
2. Deploy Within an Existing Process - Start viewing social collaboration more along the lines of process management.  Identify "unstructured" processes with definitive start and end points that exist today.  Social collaboration deployed to resolve challenges with existing unstructured business process are most likely to succeed.
3. Require a Strong "Why" - Ensure that rationale for a given social collaboration use is justified.  Address this upfront, as the actual use - or lack of use - of your deployment will objectively confirm if the "why" was compelling enough.
4. Focus on Low Friction Experience - Regardless of the quality of your underlying technology, it needs to be easily accessible for end users.  Success occurs when use takes place within existing flows of work, without additional need for login, frequent context and window switching.
5. Avoid "Just Because"  - Social collaboration is a spice, not the main dish.  Keep in mind that social collaboration is most impactful in the context of business entities and existing work flows.  Social collaboration works when it is "purpose driven".

“What have I gotten myself into” ran through my head during the first week of training at Pythian. The environment was great, the people were great, the work was great, but many doubts ran through my head as I ran from training meeting to training meeting – how am I going to retain all this information (my memory skills are bad as it is), am I going to meet their expectations, am I too junior for this, I can’t seem to catch up on anything, is this the right career choice.
6 months later and I’m still here! I feel more comfortable with the work, I know I am meeting expectations, I have confidence in my skills, my organizational skills have improved, I know I’ve made the right career choice, even my memory has gotten much better! What changed over the past 6 months you ask? Well, here is how it started.

I was happy and content at my previous employer. I knew what I was doing, I had the skills and knowledge, and I was regarded as one of their senior employees. Although it was mainly recruiting work I was performing, it was under a Sales umbrella. I had always wanted to follow the path of an HR professional, may it be recruiting, organizational design, compensation, employee relations, training – all of which fell under the umbrella of HR. I arrived at Pythian because I was contacted by a previous colleague with an opportunity that I could not resist. Finally, I will get a chance to get my hands dirty and work on my true passion – Human Resourcing (HR). Contrary to some beliefs, HR professionals are not “paper pushers”, administrators or strictly recruiters but in fact we are pieces of the strategic puzzle in any organization. The harsh reality though is that much of the world still believes that we are administrators. So, for me I really wanted to join an organization that leverages HR as a strategic partner for the organization.

What Pythian offered me was the “3 Pillars of Growth” – Sales, Service Delivery and HR. These 3 ‘pillars’ are crucial in helping grow a business. This was further solidified for me by the people I met, the new/ existing plans and programs within HR, and the focus on culture Pythian provided for the growth of the business. This was a great opportunity for me to grow as a person and my career, and be part of a strategic team.

So I arrive at Pythian and was excited to learn the things I have always wanted to learn while providing the expertise I already possessed. In fact, I was delegated as the lead on a major, high profile project within the first week. However, shortly after doubt crept in as I found myself feeling like I could barely tread water (ask my wife, I’m not a very strong swimmer). Here I was absorbing so much information about the company, policies, procedures and now I have to figure out how to role out a project while I was still learning about the internal processes (and performing my main responsibility of recruiting). I rapidly felt like I was taking on too much water and started drowning. I started to loose confidence in my abilities and doubted the decision to take on this roll. I had several discussions with my work colleagues and my peers about my concerns. However, the one discussion that really changed my mind set was a conversation with my wife, she told me – “You worked too hard for this, don’t let yourself be your worst enemy.” There it was, clear as day! It was all my own insecurities, my own self-doubts, myself talking me out of this equation. So, I worked hard to observe and utilize the tools I had been provided throughout my career and at Pythian.

Once I was more open, I quickly noticed that Pythian really believes in their employees. They really empower their employees to do well and have a company culture to nurture their growth. They are always to open to new ideas and are always willing to take on risks with you. In the event that your new idea does not work, they still support you and move on to other ideas without pointing fingers or seeing you as a failure. Pythian’s unwritten culture is to make sure their employees don’t fail. Being in HR here, I was able to observe these facts are not just in our department but it is well exemplified in all business units across Pythian, starting from the CEO and Founder, to the Senior Executive team, to the Leadership team, and so on. I also had the opportunity to address my concerns to my own colleagues and manager and they were nothing but supportive. They provided immediate feedback and were able to provide relatable experiences with me.

Today, I feel like I am a much better swimmer. With the support I was provided by my colleagues, my managers, and the company my confidence in my abilities have grown and I know I have and will continue to add value to the organization. I feel I have met the expectations of the people who hired me, and I know I have made the right decision in joining this team.

This was my own experience of the first 6 months at Pythian. I hope that others have had similar or will have similar experiences as I have had (although I hope they are better swimmers). It has been tough but I’ve enjoyed every second of it. Life is a journey after all!

As Exadata Storage Indexes (SI) are purely memory only structures located on the Exadata storage servers, care needs to be taken in how much memory they can potentially consume. As a result, there is a limit of 8 columns (or 8 SIs) that can be defined for a given 1M storage region at any point […]

With the recently released vFabric SQLFire 11 version the query execution plan is much easier to read then previously. An example below.

  
[Wed May 01 11:32:11 papicella@:~/sqlfire/vFabric_SQLFire_11_b40332/pasdemos/sqlfire ] $ sqlf
sqlf version 10.4
sqlf> connect peer 'bind-address=localhost;mcast-port=12333;host-data=false' as peerClient;
sqlf> explain select * from emp where deptno = 20;
MEMBER_PLAN                                                                                                                     
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ORIGINATOR 192.168.14.167(73118)<v6>:61492 BEGIN TIME 2013-05-01 11:32:39.735 END TIME 2013-05-01 11:32:39.777
DISTRIBUTION to &
Slowest Member Plan:
member 192.168.14.167(72048)<v1>:42223 begin_execution 2013-05-01 11:32:39.74 end_execution 2013-05-01 11:&
Fastest Member Plan:
member 192.168.14.167(72048)<v1>:42223 begin_execution 2013-05-01 11:32:39.74 end_execution 2013-05-01 11:&

3 rows selected
sqlf> select STMT_ID, STMT_TEXT from SYS.STATEMENTPLANS;
STMT_ID                             |STMT_TEXT                                                                                                                       
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
00000001-ffff-ffff-ffff-000400000016| select * from emp where deptno = <?>                                                                                           

1 row selected
sqlf> explain '00000001-ffff-ffff-ffff-000400000016';
stmt_id 00000001-ffff-ffff-ffff-000400000016 SQL_stmt select * from emp where deptno = <?> begin_execution 2013-05-01 11:32:39.735 end_execution 2013-05-01 11:32:39.777
QUERY-SCATTER  execute_time 0.0 ms
  QUERY-SEND 
    RESULT-RECEIVE 
      SEQUENTIAL-ITERATION (0.38%) execute_time 0.136 ms returned_rows 5 no_opens 1
        RESULT-HOLDER  returned_rows 5 no_opens 1
          DISTRIBUTION-END (99.61%) execute_time 35.073 ms returned_rows 5
member 192.168.14.167(72048)<v1>:42223 begin_execution 2013-05-01 11:32:39.74 end_execution 2013-05-01 11:32:39.774
QUERY-RECEIVE 
  RESULT-SEND 
    RESULT-HOLDER  returned_rows 5 no_opens 1
      ROWIDSCAN (1.71%) execute_time 0.148 ms returned_rows 5 no_opens 1 node_details EMP : 
        CONSTRAINTSCAN (98.28%) execute_time 8.482 ms returned_rows 5 no_opens 1 scan_qualifiers None scanned_object APP.6__EMP__DEPTNO:base-table:APP.EMP scan_type  node_details WHERE : ((DEPTNO = CONSTANT:20) and true) 

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Update: the migration has been delayed so they can "establish thread level redirects across the site". Yay!

In case you missed the notifications, the Oracle Technology Network forum software is going to be upgraded this weekend. This is great, since the old software is getting long-in-the-tooth and doesn't allow a bunch of useful features. The current forums will be in read-only mode over the weekend.

On launch of the new version, a minimal set of features will be supported. Once the upgrade is stable, then additional features will be turned on.

As a side part to the migration project, some little used and obsolete forums will be removed. Some other categories will be reworked.

You can get more information about the migration here. One thing to note is that the forum software is powered by Jive; i.e it is a packaged application so not all features you (and I) have requested will magically become feasible. And also, for better or worse, Jive has renamed "forums" as "spaces" - apparently we can't change this.

I’ve been doing more tinkering with my development toy, the Nexus 7, and kudos to Anthony (@anthonyslai) for finding this gem.

WebKey is an Android app and accompanying service that allows you to manage your device from a browser.

WebKey (Play Store link) isn’t new. I found coverage from the Android Police and Lifehacker from a couple years ago, but it’s new to me.

It’s actually a nifty little tool. All you do is install the app, then visit webkey.cc or navigate directly to the supplied IP address on your local network to view your device’s screen. Actually, it’s a bit more involved, but that’s the gist.

WebKey is both a useful development and demonstration tool.

For development, it exposes pretty much everything you can do on the device in the browser interface. Clicking on the screen executes taps, you can launch apps, change settings, input text from a more familiar keyboard, all that. I’ve tested it over wifi, but it claims to work over 3G connections too.

For demonstration purposes, especially remote ones, it’s much quicker and easier than firing up the Android emulator.

All this in a browser window, no plugins required.

Ingenious.

WebKey does require root, so there’s that. For the security conscious, it is fully open sourced under the GPL and supports SSL over direct connections via IP. Seems there is an issue encrypting connections through WebKey’s servers.

Not bad for a free app built by two guys.Possibly Related Posts:

• Bypass the Android Setup
• How to Take a Screenshot in Android
• Are Multi-Screen, Portable Devices Just a Gimmick?
• A Quick Test of Firefox OS, a.k.a. Boot to Gecko
• The New Face of Fusion on Android Devices

@flashdba:

If any of this is ticking boxes for you, it’s time to consider what flash could do for the performance of your database:

• I/O wait times are high. Essentially we are looking for high latency from the existing storage system. Flash memory systems should deliver I/O with sub-millisecond latency, so if you see an average latency of 8ms on random reads (db file sequential read), for example, you know there is potential for reducing latency to an eighth of its previous average value.
• I/O forms a significant percentage of Database Time. If I/O is only responsible for 5% of database time, no amount of lightening-fast flash is going to give you a big performance boost… your problems are elsewhere. On the other hand, if I/O is comprising a large portion of database time, you have lots of room for improvement.

★

© Eddie Awad's Blog, 2013. | Permalink | Add a comment | Topic: Links, Oracle | Tags: flash, storage

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Last week – along with others from Succeed – I attended the UKOUG PeopleSoft Roadshow. Although it’s just a single day event (where the Apps Conference is spread over two days) it does have the benefit of Senior Oracle US speakers – Jeff Robbins and Marc Weintraub.

As we have for a few years now, Succeed sponsored the event/the post event drinks.

We also took out a stand, here’s John and I attempting to charm some delegates:

There’s many reasons why I enjoy attending these events. It’s great to catch up with friends I’ve worked with previously, it’s great to meet new people who we might be able to help in some way, and it’s always a treat to hear what innovations are coming down the line in recently released and future versions of PeopleSoft and PeopleTools.

So, other than the exhibition, what did we learn?

From Jeff, (other than what we’ve previously discussed on Tools 8.53) we found out:

- the release frequency of PeopleTools is now around every 12-18 months, so Tools 8.54 would be mid-2014.

- Tools 8.54 is fully defined scope-wise and the developers are almost done with it. About half of the scope for 8.55 is done.

- the way PeopleTools handles mobile devices is changing, allowing it to be much more responsive to the resolution of the requesting browser based on templates (so a page would have different templates, a large and graphically rich one for PCs on the LAN, a smaller resolution graphically leaner template for mobiles etc).

- the new Update Manager Tool isn’t that new. It’s something that Oracle/PeopleSoft have been using internally for a decade, so it should be stable and mature already.

- there’s a new ‘Mastering PeopleTools’ scheme that is starting, enabling everyone easier access to Best Practice and to make sure that customers aren’t just upgrading to stay supported, but gain genuine value from the new functionality

Jeff also flashed up some brief glimpses of something that his team are trying with Tools 8.54. They’re changing the UI a little more – and it’s a tile-based layout (more akin to Windows 8 or Pinterest, I guess). This is the landing page:

 

Also, to access the menu you’d hit the orange button on the right:

Finally, there were a host of other ‘coming soon’ areas, like In Memory Processing, TimesTen for nVision and a ‘TCO lower than SaaS’ which will be really interesting to see how it’s done. Jeff actually said PeopleSoft will have the lowest TCO in the market, bar none, which we’ll all really look forward to.

One of the most interesting take-aways for me wasn’t something that was said, but was more of a general feeling. A couple of years ago when Oracle said “we’re still investing in PeopleSoft” I don’t think many people believed them – I was certainly sceptical. However with the content in the latest Tools and App releases their claim is much more credible. There were certainly a lot of customers that I spoke to who were either planning a 9.2 upgrade or had it on their roadmap.

The first two photos are from the UKOUG Facebook page which contains many more photos of the event.

Two Oracle Technology Network events coming up next week in New York City will answer several critical questions for architects and developers. One question is, "Where can I get a couple of free meals?" Another question is, "Where can I learn more about Cloud Computing and Big Data and sharpen my skills in hands-on labs focused on relevant Oracle technologies?"

OTN has the solution for both your belly and your brain.

On Tuesday May 7 OTN Developer Day: Cloud Application Development will bring you up to speed on Oracle Cloud services for developers with an agenda that includes intensive hands-on labs in two parallel tracks, one for those interested in developing with the Oracle Database Cloud Service, and one for those interested in developing with the Oracle Java Cloud Service. Seating for this free event is limited, and pre-registration is required. Register now.

Two days later, on Thursday May 9, OTN Developer Day: Big Data will offer yet another opportunity for free breakfast and lunch along and a schedule that includes four hands-on labs focused on Oracle NoSQL Database, MapReduce, Hadoop, Oracle Database, and Oracle Advanced Analytics. Seating for this event is also limited, but you can register now to insure your spot.

Visit the registration pages for each event for session abstracts and other important information.

2 years ago I already did the same with ANT and now I migrated these scripts to Maven. These Maven poms can still do the same like my ANT scripts. Build and deploy an OSB OEPE workplace Build one OSB project. Export OSB projects from an OSB server and generate a customization plan. Here you can find my code https://github.com/biemond/soa_tools/tree/master/maven_osb_ps5 or the PS6 version https:

With Oracle Service Bus PS6 or 11.1.1.7 we finally have an new offline build tool with does not require Eclipse (OEPE).  With this OSB configjar tool ( located in the OSB home /tools/configjar/ folder ) you can make OSB export sbconfig jar based on 1 or more OSB projects or even with more then one OSB Configuration projects. Plus have total control what to include or exclude. In this blogpost I

We just released version 5.0 of Oracle Secure Global Desktop (for those that don't know what it is, formerly known as Tarantella...). It's a great product that I have been using every for a long time now. I have it installed at home on my servers so that I can get access to my home network from anywhere...without vpn.

Anyway, a few nice things that I personally like in the new release :

(1) html5 client support. In particular, at this time the ipad. So now, I can use my ipad to log into SGD and connect to my apps without having to download and install a client. It just works with the built-in Safari browser. We will expand this over time, right now it's ipad only.

(2) the tta rpm will automatically pull in all dependencies on Oracle Linux 6. So all you need to do is download the tta (sgd) rpm from oracle.com and type yum install tta-5.00-907.i386.rpm. When Oracle Linux is configured to connect to ULN or just go to http://public-yum.oracle.com it will grab all the required OS rpms. This makes it super easy to install and get going.

To download the software, go to http://edelivery.oracle.com, go to the Oracle Desktop Virtualization Products product pack and click on Oracle Secure Global Desktop 5.0 Media Pack.