OraNA :: Oracle News Aggregator

Full Table Scan when Selecting Null Values

Charles Hooper — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 06:52:28 PDT

July 29, 2010 Another interesting thread appeared on the OTN forums this week. The original poster in the thread stated that Oracle Database was performing a full table scan for a SQL statement like this: SELECT COUNT(*) FROM T1 WHERE COL1 IS NULL; While a SQL statement like this following did not perform a full [...]

A few good posts for MySQL and Postgres

Lewi — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 06:37:16 PDT

Thought I would share a few links that I read this morning. I don’t do a lot of link posts but these three came off my RSS, one after the other, and all three are worth sharing.

The first is Will Oracle kill MySQL? Come on people! I can’t believe people are still stuck on this FUD. Ronald gives some good reasons why that is not likely. The only thing this kind of FUD… Read the rest!

Advert: The Michigan OakTable Symposium

Marco Gralike — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 05:41:58 PDT

Lets say you can’t make it to those presentations of Oracle Open World this year and you also hadn’t the budget to come to Europe to see really (technically) in depth, practice driven, great (probably new) views on your performance and architecture work at work during Miracle Open World, then there is a great alternative: The Michigan OakTable Symposium.

Its “only” a 2 day symposium but you have a chance there to come up personal, discuss issues during presentations and on site, for instance in the lobby, with some of the top people in their field like, among others, Jonathan Lewis, Tanel Poder or Cary Millsap.

I really like those mini-conferences, because they always bring me new ideas how to solve problems at work or stuff that I am dealing with in my mind, seeing them from a new perspective or get new info and techniques, involving Oracle software, I didn’t know about yet…

During this years The Michigan OakTable Symposium you have to chance to enjoy Cary’s extended version (2 slots, one on Tuesday and one on Friday) of his “Thinking Clearly About Performance” presentation that won this year’s ODTUG Editor’s Choice Award. Anyway, almost all presenters during this 2 day event are Oracle ACE’s, ACE Directors or the top in their field and really have something to say…

Christian Antognini
Mark Farnham
Randolph Geist
Alex Gorbachev
Tim Gorman
Marco Gralike
Eric Grancher
Jonathan Lewis
Cary Millsap
Doug Burns

Jeff Needham
Mogens Norgaard
Tanel Poder
Tuomas Pystynen
Robyn Sands
Joze Senegacnik
Riyaj Shamsudeen
Chen Shapira
Jeremiah Wilton
Andrew Zitelli

Their biographies of, I guess probably almost combined 200+ years of practical IT experience, can be found here:

MOTS Speakers and Biographies

As Mogens Norgaard said it during his remarks (see the video on Miracle Channel) on the new Second OakTable book called “Expert Oracle Practices: Oracle Database Administration from the Oak Table” that those “new” people really made a better book than the first one, they know their stuff…

Anyway, in short, I suggest to have a look at the MOTS agenda yourself:

MOTS Agenda

See you there? If your not convinced look them up on the internet or via the OakTable aggregated www.oaktable.net blog site.

ApEx 4.0: Map not showing data points correctly

Olivier Dupont — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 05:48:27 PDT

In ApEx 4.0, when working with a map region (World without Greenland) (Map world/world_wo_gr.amap) you might experience that not all data points are correct.
For example: when you work with the map “World without Greenland” and you choose a query with Series Type of Bubble, Switzerland is positioned in America while Spain is in the ocean.

Oracle recognizes the bug (9950531) and will supply a fix in upcoming patch 4.0.1.
Meanwhile as a workaround the next action is suggested: setting “Series Type” to “Map”, and the countries will be correctly labeled

OBIEE Hide “my dashboard”

John Minkjan — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 04:59:02 PDT

Recurring OTN Question:

How can I hide my dashboard:

Goto Administration:

Next goto manage privileges:

Next goto Catalog Personal storage:

Set the privileges:

tada:

Till Next Time

Oracle Database SQL Expert (1Z0-047)…

Tim... — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 04:19:56 PDT

I can see this post degenerating into a rant, so I would like to preemptively appologize to anyone involved in the production of this exam. I’m guessing it’s a real pain to develop these exams, especially when some ass like me starts moaning about them. Added to that, I’m guessing the word “Expert” means slightly different things to different people…

I’ve been barking on recently that in my opinion, the most important skill required by any PL/SQL developer is SQL, with knowledge of PL/SQL itself coming in second place. Having recently taken the “Oracle Database 11g: Advanced PL/SQL (1Z0-146)” exam (mentioned here), I thought it was a little hypocritical not to sit the “Oracle Database SQL Expert (1Z0-047)” exam as well, so this morning I did just that.

Here are some of my thoughts on the exam, in no particular order of importance:

Regular Expressions: I think it is important that people understand what regular expressions can do and when it is appropriate to use them, but I don’t think it is necessary to test people on the meta-characters themselves. That’s what the docs are for.
Analytic Functions: No sign of them in my questions from the pool. Surely analytic functions are more important than regular expression meta-characters.
The majority of the exhibits were pointless. It seems like they were placed there to waste the time of people with bad exam technique, rather than to assist in answering the question. This was especially true of the schema diagrams, which I only referred to once when the datatype of one of the columns was important.
Several of the questions could be answered without reading the question at all, as the incorrect answers jumped out at you because they contained blatantly incorrect statements.
Several of the questions included the “ANY” and “ALL” comparison operators, which are barely mentioned in the documentation, and I don’t think are included in the 11gR2 documentation at all. I guess these are only included in Oracle because the are part of ANSI SQL. I can’t remember ever using them in Oracle or seeing them being used by others. I have come across them in mySQL so I knew what they were for, which was fortunate.
There were lots of questions that included DML against inline views rather than directly against tables. It got to the point where I felt like, “If it’s got braces in it I’m going to tick it”.

I very quickly turned into a grumpy old man and started to rush through the exam, spending most of my time thinking about writing this blog post, rather than the exam itself.

In the end I got 96%, which I guess means I got 3 questions wrong out of the 70. Serves me right for rushing it so I could come home and bitch about it.

So I am now an “Oracle Database: SQL Certified Expert” as well as a grumpy old shite…

Cheers

Tim…

XMLDB Oracle Open World Agenda…

Marco Gralike — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 03:48:19 PDT

Becoming a bit of a tradition actually…

Trying for others to avoid the same, at least it was in 2008/2009, ordeal going thru the O.O.W. Schedule / Content builder trying to find XMLDB topics, I listed those I could find on the XMLDB OTN Forum. As said, trying to follow up on a tradition and to get myself (and hopefully you) an overview on things to come during Oracle Open World 2010 (/Oracle Develop /JavaOne). This year I think its becoming BIG regarding amounts /attendance of people if not only due to the combination of O.O.W./Develop/JavaOne on the same spot in San Francisco…

So, for me and those who are interested, just like the year before, hereby an attempt to find all XMLDB related presentations, workshops and other events during Oracle Open World 2010. I will try to add info, time and days later on (and/or you might) if I find them and/or if they become known. See for XMLDB presentations and Hands-on Lab sessions here:

Oracle Open World 2010: XMLDB Presentations and Hands-on Labs

I hope you enjoy your presentations during O.O.W. and who knows we meet this year.

Not really into XMLDB presentations? Have a look at the 50+ Oracle ACE(D) presentations Oracle Open World and JavaOne, Oracle Develop listing here…

Release 12.1 ATG RUP3 Highlights for Oracle E-Business Suite External Applications Gateway

Rajesh Ghosh — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 02:10:00 PDT

The R12.ATG_PF.B.Delta.3 patch (8919491) recently got released to Oracle Metalink. This patch contains a quick new feature in Applications Object Library, which could be interesting to you. In most E-Business Suite install base, customers also need to access one or more edge applications e.g. BI Dashboards etc., which are typically rendered as function links on the E-Business Suite Home Page. Some of these applications may require the E-Business Suite security context to render themselves correctly. Until now customers would have to wait for a E-Business Suite certified way of creating links to such edge applications e.g. Discoverer, OBIEE etc.

With this patch, customers will now have the flexibility of creating function links to any such applications of their choice, with or without the E-Business Suite security context. Let me take the example of OBIEE Dashboard or Report to explain the feature.

OBIEE reports are generally organized in a folder like hierarchy so that a report can be referenced as “<my obiee report folder>/<my report>”. Let’s assume we are trying to create a link for the “New Hire Retention by Source” report, which is in “/shared/Human Resources” folder. In order to create a link on the navigator, we must create a “Function”, attach it to a “Menu” and attach the menu to desired “Responsibilities”. The function definition for this example would look like the one shown below.

Note that the Function Type has to be “SSWA jsp function”. Continue to the next page and complete the rest of the function definition.

Note the HTML Call, which says “GWY.jsp?targetAppType=OBIEE&Path=/shared/Human Resources/Recruitment/Hires/New Hire Retention by Source&Action=Navigate”. You may substitute appropriate value for the “Path” parameter, if you want to create link for another OBIEE Report. Additionally, you may also pass OBIEE specific parameters in the URL. The details are published in Oracle Metalink Note 974422.1.

Once the function is created, you may attach it to appropriate menu and then attach the menu to appropriate responsibilities. This will ensure that the function link for the OBIEE report is rendered on the applications navigator, when such responsibilities are accessed.

I shall post more updates shortly on this feature, where I shall discuss how customers can extend this feature to render links for custom and/or 3rd party applications.

Release 12.1 ATG RUP3 Highlights for Oracle E-Business Suite Secure Enterprise Search

Rajesh Ghosh — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 01:42:00 PDT

The R12.ATG_PF.B.Delta.3 patch (8919491) recently got released to Oracle Metalink. I wish to take the opportunity to highlight the major changes in Enterprise Search area, which are included in this patch.

Advanced Results Display Option in Enterprise Search Toolbar

Assuming you have already enabled the Enterprise Search Tool bar in OA Home page, you would notice that a “Search Results Display Preference” choice box has been added. This gives you a very flexible option of switching back and forth between our standard search results display and Oracle SES default search application. You may customize the Oracle SES search application’s results display, the way you want.

Result displayed in Standard display preference:

If you switch the display preference to “Advanced”, this is what you get:

You may need to login one more time depending on whether you have SSO in place or not. In either case, you should be able to seamless switch between the two different display options.

Export Search Results to Excel Spread-sheet

You may now export the search results, when rendered in “Tabular” style into an excel spread-sheet.

Sort by Displayed Attributes

Search results are displayed in the descending order of relevance by default. You may also choose to sort the results on any other displayed attribute of a search object.

Note:- Sorting is currently done on top 100 results. If the result set contains more than 100 results, you may not get the desired outcome.

Info:: Simdraz Engine:: Adobe AIR and html 5 websockets

admin — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 01:46:12 PDT

Yes!! We are working on it!

Currently only Chrome and Safari from what I can see support websockets; but we are including this functionality. So; if you are using the AIR version of the Simdraz engine or a browser that supports websockets you won`t need to worry about AJAX request and polling even though AJAX is fast, it’s just not as fast as websockets and it also helps saves on bandwidth.

In theory less request & better performance

Oracle 11i Applications Working on IE8, Firefox 3.5 & VISTA and Windows 7

sam — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 23:33:58 PDT

Oracle 11i Applications Working on IE8, Firefox 3.5 & VISTA and Windows 7 What you need to do is below and please follow the exact steps for this to work. I got this to work on latest Firefox 3.5 and IE8 and that too on VISTA. It also works on the current Windows 7 RTM [...]

Sun Ray : addons (unsupported for fun scripts)

wim.coekaerts — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 22:48:25 PDT

I put together a few RPMs that can help make life easier on SRS5 on OEL (or RHEL or CentOS).

Download here.

- libflashsupport will help OSS audio support for flash10
- SunRay-addons is an rpm that contains 2 utaction scripts
1) autoresize -> will try to reset resolution based on your new DTU screen resolution when you hotdesk
2) usbdrived (Daniel Cifuentes's usbdrived script) -> pops up a nautilus window when you plug in a usb flash drive into your DTU
-) these scripts can be enabled/disabled from /etc/sysconfig/SunRay-addons

again, this is all just for fun - unsupported - but they help me and I thought I'd share

FBI Bug

Jonathan Lewis — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 23:42:44 PDT

See also fbi_stats.sql for reproducible test case There are often odd little details that need finishing off. The wrong index is chosen – cost based – if it starts with a virtual column and the predicate is range-based, and there is an alternative index that starts with a real columns http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=1064154&tstart=0

Featured Blog

Jonathan Lewis — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 23:33:02 PDT

From time to time I add links to my blog list, but highlight for a few days with a blog posting as well. I’ve just been browsing through http://gavinsoorma.com and it’s probably worth keeping an eye on it – especially if you’re getting to grips with Goldengate. Filed under: Uncategorized

SSL handshake failed: X509CertExpiredErr

sam — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 22:56:44 PDT

If you’re running an Oracle Application Server 10g instance you are probably familiar with Oracle Enterprise Manager Application Server Control. If not, go back to the manual. This is not a how-to on setting it up or using it. If you want to know how to secure it and refresh the certificate when it expires, [...]

Oracle BPM 11g Integration with ADF and WebCenter Suite - Quick Overview

Andrejus Baranovskis — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 22:55:27 PDT

In May, I was blogging about new Oracle product release - BPM 11g. You can check this post - Oracle BPM 11g Integration with ADF and WebCenter Suite. I'm working now in this area and integrating BPM 11g Human Tasks into WebCenter Spaces 11g. Really good news for BPM people is that now we can create rich SOA type applications, it is possible to bring standard ADF Task Flows and Oracle BPM based ADF Task Flows together into WebCenter Spaces 11g Process Space.

I can access custom ADF Task Flows in WebCenter Spaces 11g, by declaring them and extending WebCenter resource catalog:

My custom ADF Task Flow is present in resource catalog - it brings filterable list of company employees and allows to modify employee details:

Through WebCenter Composer, this custom ADF Task Flow can be easily added to the Oracle BPM Group Spaces page:

From Oracle BPM Group Spaces page user can see and manage assigned BPM Human Tasks. Additionally, our custom ADF Task Flow for Employees data management is available on the same WebCenter Spaces 11g page:

Oracle CEP: Enriching the Results of CQL Aggregation Queries

seth.white — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 21:23:08 PDT

In this post I continue to look at CQL aggregation queries and the issues that arise when writing real-world applications. One requirement that I have seen over and over in my interactions with CEP customers is the need to include some additional data in the output of the aggregation query, in addition to the aggregated value itself. I shall call the addition of this additional data to the query result "enriching" the aggregation query. Enrichment examples include adding the symbol of an equity to the query result when calculating the moving average price, including the call center location when calculating the number of calls processed in the last minute, or selecting the campaign ID in the case of an advertising application that is aggregating revenue in real-time.

Let's consider some examples of enrichment queries in the context of the system monitoring example that was used in the previous post to this blog. Previously, we defined the following query

istream(
SELECT sum(severity) as totalseverity
FROM alerts[rows 3 slide 3]
HAVING COUNT (*) = 3)

This query processes a stream of incoming alert events each of which contains a severity code. The query sums up the severities of every three alert events into an outgoing aggregate or "complex" event. The query makes sure that it doesn't generate any output unless there are three alert events that compose the result and it makes sure that only consecutive sequences of incoming alert events generate output. For example, consider the input stream


alerts: 2, 7, 1, 4, 10, 1, 8, ...

The query will generate the following output:

10, 15,...

10 (2+7+1) is the first value output, followed by 15 (4+10+1), etc. Now, suppose that in addition to selecting the totalseverity value, we also need to include the name of the machine room where the alerts were generated. For simplicity, I shall assume that all of the alerts in the incoming stream come from the same machine room. Here is the query:

istream (

SELECT machineroom as mr,

       sum(severity) as totalseverity

FROM alerts[rows 3 slide 3]

GROUP BY machineroom

HAVING COUNT (*) = 3)

If we assume that all of the incoming alerts come from machine room 'mr10', this query will generate outbound events like the following:

('mr10', 10), ('mr10', 15), ...

Another common enrichment requirement is to enrich the aggregation result with a value from the most recent event participating in the aggregation. For example, suppose that each incoming alert event contains the name of the system administrator who should be contacted and that we want to include the name of a system administrator in each outgoing complex event, as well. One way to do this is to use the name of the system administrator from the last event received. Here is a query that implements this strategy:

istream (

SELECT alerts.machineroom as mr,

       recent.administrator as admin,

       sum(alerts.severity) as total

FROM alerts[rows 3 slide 3] as alerts,

     alerts [rows 1] as recent

GROUP BY alerts.machineroom, recent.administrator

HAVING COUNT (*) = 3)

Given the following input stream:

alerts: ('mr10','Hoyong',2), ('mr10','Alex',7), ('mr10','Eric',1) , ('mr10','Anand',4), 
        ('mr10','Seth',10), ('mr10','Andy',1), ('mr1','Manju',8), ...

This query produces the following output stream:

('mr10', 'Eric', 10), ('mr10', 'Andy', 15), ...

Notice that Eric and Andy are the administrators in the third and sixth incoming alert events, respectively. It's worth saying a few words about how this query works conceptually, especially for those not familiar with CQL/SQL. The query executes by first evaluating the FROM clause. The FROM clause specifies a type of join called a Cartesian product between the alerts and recent windows. Conceptually, this appends the recent row to each of the rows in the alerts window. Then, the query groups these concatenated rows by the alerts.machineroom and recent.administrator columns, but since these columns have the same value in every row, this operation doesn't actually do anything. Next, the HAVING clause is evaluated to see if there are three row concatenated rows or not. This test eliminates the startup events that don't include three rows. Finally, the select clause is evaluated which selects the machineroom and administrator columns (which are the same in every row) and aggregates the severity column. Note also, that the slide clause causes the query to be executed (modulo startup) once for every three events.

Technorati Tags: CEP,CQL,SQL,Oracle

JRockit JVM 技術セミナーまとめ記事

yosuke.arai@oracle.com — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 18:03:40 PDT

侍で有名な山本祐介さんがblogでまとめてくださいました。ありがとうございます。
http://samuraism.jp/diary/2010/07/29/1280330031333.html

> これまでメモリリークの解析にはヒープダンプと Memory Aanalyzer が標準的？な解析方法だったと思いますが問題が２点ありました。
> １点はヒープダンプの取得はとても重く、運用環境での取得が難しい場合があること。もう１点はリークしているインスタンスをどのクラスローダを保持しているか見極められない事です。
> フライトレコーダーはオンラインでもオフラインでも非常に軽くヒープ内の解析が行えること、またクラスローダ別に解析できることでこの２つの問題を見事にクリアしています。

ステキなコメントありがとうございます。
また、blogでお知らせ頂いているように、OTNライセンスに統一された結果、JRMC/JFRの試用に際して時間等の制限はなくなりました。ぜひお試しください

Supercharged Checkins

David Dorf — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 19:24:01 PDT

Location-based social networks are the latest fad to hit mobile phones. Foursquare seems to be getting most of the attention even though MyTown, Brightkite, and Loopt actually have more users. The concept has mobile phone users using GPS to "checkin" to establishments, including restaurants and retail stores. Checkins are rewarded differently by each system, but some benefits include getting location information (maps, hours, description), reviews, find nearby friends, or receive coupons. There's also the game angle for those that like to collect points, unlock rewards, and gain status.

Retailers would like to know when someone shows up at a store. Its a good time to entice them with an offer, or better yet attract them from a nearby competitor. CardStar, the mobile application that consolidates all your loyalty cards, is now automatically performing a checkin via Foursquare when you use your loyalty card. That marriage makes perfect sense.

Now SCVNGR is taking checkins to the next level. Retailers create challenges for users to perform in exchange for rewards. For example, a retailer may provide a coupon to anyone that checks into 2 different store locations in the same day. Users can earn points for checkins, comments, and photos they take of the store. Then when a certain point threshold is reached, they get a reward.

The flexibility of the program allows retailers to tailor the program to influence behavior better than just a simple checkin. Starting tomorrow, SCVNGR users can earn a $10 coupon at Journeys 800+ stores by winning challenges and earning points. These activities are meant to engage customers and have them get to know the shoe store.

Seems to me that supercharged checkins make a nice addition to loyalty programs.

Special Report on Virtualization: Profit Magazine

monica.kumar — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 17:02:43 PDT

Read the latest issue of Profit Magazine (July 2010) for a special report on Virtualization with a spotlight on Sun Ray 3 Plus Client and Sun Ray Software.

The report also links to Oracle's Virtualization Strategy Webcast as well as the latest webinar on Oracle VM VirtualBox 3.2

It would be an under statement to say that Oracle is moving full speed forward to enhance Oracle Virtualization product portfolio on all fronts. Stay tuned for more!

To get the latest updates, also follow us on twitter!

More later,
Monica