RE: Oracle Apps customization help working with consultants

You
have hit the nail on the head.  I realized late yesterday that I needed to get some standards in place here quick so I don't have deal with this stuff.  Since I am the first DBA here, I will probably be playing a big role in this.  But it would be nice to have another person/s involved with this project.  The major challenge will be to get the involvement we need with the consultant projects.  They just provide some documentation and there is little to no involvement in the meetings by users and developers as I can tell.  I have never been to a meeting.  This will have to change and I have to figure out a way to integrate everyone.
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If
anyone has any standards or suggestions, feel free.  I am will to exchange it for a recipe for Peaches and Cream Pie or Chocolate Baklava recipe posted tomorrow... ;)
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class=930171915-19072001>Kathy

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  size=2>-----Original Message-----From: Hallas John   [mailto:John.Hallas_at_btcellnet.net]Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2001   1:31 AMTo: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-LSubject:   RE: Oracle Apps customization help working with   consultants
  Kathy, A lot of issues there but they   all seem to boil down to one thing. What is the remit   of your job? Are you responsible for ensuring standards are in place , are   consistent and are maintained.
  If so then get stuck in and layout a naming convention and a   set of standards if they do not exist already. If that   is not your role then put pressure on whoevers role it is. If that role is not   assigned then see your management team and insist that someone (not   necessarily yourself!) is given that role and responsibility.   Apps is a complicated beast and from what I have seen the main   tuning is done at the Application level by the developers. It is very   important that a realistically sized development environment is used. That is   not to say that database tuning is unnecessary but certainly the key aspect is   the application.
  The consultants should not be working standalone, they must be   tasked with integrating with existing staff and ensuring that the final   product is integrated and manageable.
  Not a definite answer but I hope it helps   John
  -----Original Message----- From: Kathy   Duret [mailto:KathyD_at_belkin.com]
  Sent: 19 July 01 00:01 To: Multiple
  recipients of list ORACLE-L Subject: Oracle Apps   customization help working with consultants   First some background
  We are running on Unix 8.1.6 with 11i Apps.  I know very   little about Oracle Apps and I am the first DBA hired in house who has walked   into several projects mid streams that consultants are working on and they   continue to exclude me from design meeting and I get little or no information   about the project.
  A consulting group is customizing 11i Apps.  Part of this   involves an EDI application that will take in files load them into staging   tables that then will be loaded into the appropriate 11i App table.    There are various Oracle and Crystal Reports that will be extracting   information from these tables as well.  Why use both... go figure... they   are using Crystal for some reports and Oracle Reports for others.  Just   like some of the screens are being done in Forms and some done in   ASP.
  These custom EDI app tables have 10 attribute columns defined   as varchar2(100) in the middle of the table.  These are extra columns to   that may be used in the future for what ever reason.  I have asked these   be removed and real column names and data types be added as needed.  They   refuse saying they will have to redesign the forms they have created to use   with these tables.  Isn't is reasonable that the Forms should also   reflect real column names not Attribute 1...10?  Isn't it better to add   columns to tables as I need them with an appropriate name and data type?    At the very least I asked that they put these columns at the end of the   table.  They have agreed to this.  
  They are also using a lot of sequences for Primary Keys   instead of using columns from the table that would make an intelligent primary   key and would be unique. 
  They also have many columns as NUMBER that could be defined as   NUMBER(3) or NUMBER(4).  Is there any pros or cons to using NUMBER   without defining a data length?   That is besides the obvious that   NUMBER you don't have to worry about losing precision data   precision.
  Also they use a lot of char(1) in defining what they think   will only be one character fields.  I was under the impression that it   was better to use varchar2(1)?  Any comments...  This is probably a   trivial issue but I would like to know people's opinions.   I am just a bit brain dead from arguing with them anyway about   using a consistence naming convention, including me on the database design,   etc.  Even with renaming a column I get "We are on a tight schedule and   this would put us behind".   Or this is how Oracle Apps works.    My point is that Oracle Apps as a generic product and this EDI application   shouldn't be made generic but specific to our company needs.  That is not   putting in this Attribute fields into all the EDI tables, using intelligent   keys not sequence numbers, defining the data length of the NUMBER   Fields. 
  I am really worried about performance since I will have to   maintain this in January after they are long gone.     Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.  Any good   books to get me quickly up to speed on how to tune Oracle Apps?   Thanks very much.....
  Kathy
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