Re: Oracle Financials
Date: Wed, 3 Mar 2010 07:17:55 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID: <818300.33688.qm_at_web111709.mail.gq1.yahoo.com>
My learning style must be the opposite of Niall's then...:)
I was quickly able to come up to speed and manage the day to day demands after reading "Oracle Application DBA Field Guide". It is the book I would have recommended of the two that I purchased a couple years back, but I am one of those who work best in the "just give me the facts" without any "fluff", it just clouds the essentials. If I need more filled in after I've disected it myself, I'll hopefully know enough at that point to google for specifics...:)
I've been out of Apps for a year now, but can agree, it is a moving target that requires a DBA that can think outside the box. After getting to know the concurrent manager, FND wrappers to Oracle packages, etc, etc. you really do get the feeling that Oracle took a group of developers, put them out on a little island, said, "build us a financial application" but forgot to let them in on the 10 commandmants of Oracle, (i.e. thou shalt not build complex views upon complex views, though shalt not index every column in a table,....:))
Kellyn Pedersen
Sr. Database Administrator
I-Behavior Inc.
http://www.linkedin.com/in/kellynpedersen
www.dbakevlar.blogspot.com
"Go away before I replace you with a very small and efficient shell script..."
- On Wed, 3/3/10, Niall Litchfield <niall.litchfield_at_gmail.com> wrote:
From: Niall Litchfield <niall.litchfield_at_gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Oracle Financials
To: john.kanagaraj_at_gmail.com
Cc: j_akins_at_nc.rr.com, "oracle Freelists" <Oracle-L_at_freelists.org>
Date: Wednesday, March 3, 2010, 8:02 AM
On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 4:57 AM, John Kanagaraj <john.kanagaraj_at_gmail.com> wrote:
I also know of "Oracle Application DBA Field Guide" by Elke
Phelps and Paul Jackson, but I haven't read it so cannot comment.
Hi, I asked the exact same question in 2006. I got 4 replies in total 3 of which mentioned this book. I'll quote Mark Farnham's reply to me from back then below. I do think it's a very good book. It didn't however turn out so suitable for me learning about apps. It really is a field guide, that is a quick reference style book - think the Reference or SQL Reference books in the database docs, invaluable but not the best place to start. I personally don't learn very well from lists and bullets, but much prefer to understand the first principles and then the design and then the implementation details. This of course means I take a while to get up to speed and have an instinctive aversion to google style type a keyword get an answer searches. Mark's review is below. The paper he refers to is John K's "What is an Apps DBA?" that at the time was on geocities (now dead) which was excellent but now seems to be unavailable, and is probably somewhat outdated by
now.
I'm in the middle of reviewing Oracle Applications DBA Field Guide by Elke Phelps and Paul Jackson and published by Apress. The ink seems a little moist, but it is available to purchase.
Disclaimer: Elke wrote something nice about me, and my ethics advisor says I have to mention that when I review the book. Check. Also I got a free copy to review. Check.
This book will definitely save you a ton of time just looking for where the various geniuses decided the various configuration files affecting the E-business suite should live.
The bonus is that it describes what lives where on all the logical tiers and describes common ways of positioning the various logical tiers on actual servers. You'll get an appreciation of the whole stack of technology that an E-business suite (Oracle Apps) DBA often gets roped into supporting. John's paper is also good, but here is the problem: Not just the implementation, but also the architecture of the E-business suite is a moving target. Without pulling it up and reviewing again after four years, I'd wager a dozen donuts that bits of John's paper are now wrong (I think that is what John is implying when he says it is still relevant from a conceptual view, which I'm sure it is.) Soon bits of Elke and Paul's book will be out of date. For example, real soon now you won't have to use jinitiator any more and the native java "thingy" will work just fine. (The early adopter program is already open, and this is NOT smoke and mirrors.) However, right now the book is extremely accurate (as far as I've read, and that's about half way through), and the sectional description should stand the test of time at least until Fusion.
I hope you find it useful. (And I have no financial interest in the book and this is not a paid review, in case you wondered.)
-- Niall Litchfield Oracle DBA http://www.orawin.info -- http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-lReceived on Wed Mar 03 2010 - 09:17:55 CST