OraNA :: Oracle News Aggregator

ADF EMG goes international - UKOUG style

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Muir) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 23:19:00 PST

I'm happy to say that the ADF Enterprise Methodology Group is running its first UKOUG presentation this year at their annual technology conference in Birmingham November 30th-December 2nd. This is a pretty exciting development for us, as this will be the first ADF EMG session run outside of the USA!

My colleague in ADF crime Simon Haslam, who organised and ran our OOW sessions this year, invites anybody who is interested in ADF and wants to talk with other users to attend. At OOW we had the rather pleasing experience of several ADF "production" system demonstrations which was pretty cool, and hopefully at the UKOUG we can get some of you to talk about your ADF experiences too.

Unfortunately I'm just on 14590.82kms away (9066.56 miles for our UK friends) and wont be able to make it. If only it was a couple clicks closer, oh, and not across several oceans & continents, and a tad warmer too.

"Inside the soa manifesto" - podcast

clemens.utschig — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:51:07 PST

Our Rob Rhubart from the Oracle Technology Network invited Dave Chappel and me to shed some light and insights from coming up with the manifesto.

The first part of the podcast, can be found here.

Read the whole story on Robert's archbeat

Enjoy

Oracle 11gR2 - alternative for CONNECT_BY_ISLEAF function for Recursive Subquery Factoring (dedicated to Anton)

Lucas Jellema — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 22:02:32 PST

On our blog, we have been discussing the new hierarchical query functionality in Oracle Database 11g Release 2, using Recursive Suquery Factoring. Instead of using CONNECT BY and its close associates such as START WITH, PRIOR, LEVEL and more exotic comrades like SYS_CONNECT_BY_PATH, CONNECT_BY_ROOT and NOCYCLE this release gave us a new, less proprietary and [...]

My Oracle Support survey

Forbrich — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 19:50:48 PST

schavali has the following excellent suggestion at http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?messageID=3902274#3902274

---------------------------

I would encourage all that are facing issues to provide feedback to Oracle in one or more of the following ways -

1. Use the "Contact Us" link in MOS (which creates a non-technical SR)
2. Respond to blog posts at the Support blog sites - http://blogs.oracle.com/support and http://blogs.oracle.com/supportportal
3. Respond to survey being run by Daniel Fink - http://www.misterpoll.com/polls/460968
4. If your organization has an Oracle Service Delivery Manager, pl send him/her an email requesting that your feedback be forwarded on to Support Management.

---------------------------

According to Richard Miller's response to me in the comments, those of us who do not use Flash are in the minority and the majority seem to be quite happy with the new MOS Web 2.0 user experience.

I would certainly encourage responding to the survey. (Daniel Fink's MOS survey)

My Oracle Support has landed. Check your links.

jpiwowar — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 18:19:23 PST

So there was a small, inconsequential change in the Oracle Support landscape last week: Oft-maligned-and-yet-somehow-much-beloved Metalink went away, to be replaced by a flashier (hah, I kill me) My Oracle Support. I bet you barely noticed.

One thing that I discovered pretty quickly is that some of my links to old Metalink content no longer worked. Thankfully, the content itself hadn't disappeared, but I had some editing to do in my personal documentation. Here's what I've found:

Links referencing metalink2.oracle.com, specifically those of the super-long form https://metalink2.oracle.com/metalink/plsql/f?blahblah:NOT,nnnnnn.n, are broken. This may be temporary, but somehow I doubt it.
It appears, however, that shorter metalink2 links (https://metalink2.oracle.com/metalink/plsql/showdoc?db=NOT&id=nnnnnn.n) still resolve.
Similarly, links that reference metalink.oracle.com, of the form https://metalink.oracle.com/metalink/plsql/showdoc?db=NOT&id=nnnnnn.n seem to forward to support.oracle.com without issue.
The "new way" to format links to My Oracle Support documents is: https://support.oracle.com/CSP/main/article?cmd=show&id=nnnnnn.n&type=NOT
These direct links to My Oracle Support documents do not open pages wrapped in the new My Oracle Support interface. This is probably a good thing for lots of people.
Links to patches via updates.oracle.com, of the form https://updates.oracle.com/ARULink/PatchDetails/process_form?patch_num=nnnnnnn, are unaffected by the switch to My Oracle Support. Whew.

Anyone notice anything else? Please comment away.

(off-topic aside: I didn't really expect to break a long blog silence with another post about Support. Ah well. Man plans, God laughs.)

Around the World

stephen.fox — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 10:05:37 PST

The Word from the Web - 11/13/2009

Have you been avoiding walking under ladders, being extra careful around mirrors, or staying out of the paths of black cats today? The more superstitious of us have been rubbing our rabbits' feet, hoping to get lucky in finding some more talk about last month's Oracle OpenWorld. We had the good fortune to find these gems for this week's Around the World.

Podcast Audio of My Oracle OpenWorld Live Interviews
If you missed any of Justin Kestelyn's interviews from the OTN Lounge, we have good news. The Oracle Technology Network guru has posted the audio from all of the TechCasts featured on Oracle OpenWorld Live.

Fully Integrated
John Parkinson, chief technology officer of a global credit and information management company, shares his thoughts about the integration road map Oracle presented at this year's show. See if you agree with his approach to the infrastructure balancing act.

On-Demand/SaaS Reality
Among the thousands of sessions and hundreds of exhibitions available at Oracle OpenWorld 2009, Gary Damiano focused on cloud computing and SaaS-based applications to better understand Oracle's intentions. Take a look at his thoughtful assessment of his days in the Moscone Center.

Exclusive Interview With Brent Leary on Social CRM and the Influence of Smart Phones
Dr. Natalie Petouhoff took some time during her Oracle OpenWorld schedule to sit down with Social CRM expert Brent Leary. Watch the video of their discussion about smart phone use that Dr. Nat just posted to her YouTube channel.

Tyler Says He Is Not Quitting Aerosmith
Earlier this week, we thought that the Oracle OpenWorld Appreciation Night might have been one of the last gigs ever for Aerosmith. But singer Steven Tyler joined guitarist Joe Perry onstage late in the week to assure fans he's not quitting. We hope not; they put on one heckuva show.

Two Live Webcasts Next Week: ECM with PeopleSoft and E-Business Suite

michelle.huff — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:42:33 PST

There are two Oracle Content Management Webcasts next week you might be interested in:

Webcast: Personnel Processes go Paperless
Make your HR documents more secure AND accessible with Oracle's content management and imaging solutions.

Tuesday, November 17th at 10 a.m. US PT / 1 p.m. US ET
Length: 1 hour
Speakers: Brian Dirking - Principal Product Director & Kevin de Smidt - Product Management Director, at Oracle
Register: http://bit.ly/2WT71N
Audience: PeopleSoft customers, Human Resources, IT Managers and above

Webcast: Still haven't found what you're looking for?
Do you have trouble managing important order management, accounts payable, and asset management documents scattered throughout your enterprise? Then discover how you can streamline these processes with Oracle's document management solutions!

Wednesday, November 18th at 10 a.m. US PT / 1 p.m. US ET
Length: 1 hour
Speakers: Kevin de Smidt - Product Management Director & Stephen Schleifer - Senior Product Manager, at Oracle
Register: http://bit.ly/364sCF
Audience: E-Business Suite customers, Operations, Purchasing, IT Managers and above

Arch2Arch Podcast Show Notes: Inside the SOA Manifesto

Bob Rhubart — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:56:26 PST

Both segments of my interview with SOA Manifesto survivors Dave Chappell and Clemens Utschig-Utschig are now available.

In Part 2, Dave and Clemens talk about why the manifesto’s authors avoided any attempt to define SOA or what a service is, about the relationship between vendors and non-vendors during the three-day collaboration, and about what they’ll do if there’s ever movie version of the SOA Manifesto.

If you have your own questions for Dave or Clemens – on the SOA Manifesto or anything else -- you can connect with them through various social networks:

David Chappell: Blog / Twitter / Oracle Mix / LinkedIn
Clemens Utschig-Utschig: Blog / Oracle Mix / LinkedIn

Coming Soon

Upcoming Arch2Arch Podcast programs include:

A look inside the Oracle ACE Program with Floyd Teter (Systems Engineer for Institutional Business Systems at the California Institute of Technology's Jet Propulsion Laboratory) and Ronald van Luttikhizen (consultant and architect at Approach Alliance)
An interview with the Masons of SOA, an international group of software architects that includes Clemens Utschig-Utschig (Oracle), Bertold Maier (Oracle), Torsten Winterberg (Oracle ACE Director -- Opitz Consulting GmbH), Bernd Trops (Sopera GmbH), and Hajo Normann (Oracle ACE Director - EDS).
A preview of the presentation to be given by Oracle’s Hamidou Dia and Hamza Jahangir at the Gartner Enterprise Architecture Foundation Seminar

Stay tuned: RSS

(Programs/schedules subject to change.)

del.icio.us Tags: oracle,otn,arch2arch,podcast,soa,soa manifesto,soa symposium,thomas erl

Technorati Tags: oracle,otn,arch2arch,podcast,soa,soa manifesto,soa symposium,thomas erl

Top Issues for My Oracle Support migration - FAQ Released

chris.warticki — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:40:19 PST

It's here. Take a read.

Notably are explanations of what to do for SSO and Login issues. Also, this is good too: We are planning to run a weekly script to move Bookmarks to Favorites each week for approximately six weeks after the migration date. Customers who have registered or validated their SSO account after November 7 will see their old Bookmarks reappear as Favorites as we pick up the newly validated customers each week.

This will continue to be updated as necessary.

-Chris Warticki

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

Check out

Angela Golla — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:47:52 PST

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

test

Vikas Jain — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:35:17 PST

Grow thick anodyne flowers

New russian Oracle exploit tool “Oracle Security Tools”

Alexander Kornbrust — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:39:43 PST

During my research on Russian websites I found a new security tool called “Oracle Security Tools“. This tool offers different methods to exploit Oracle databases.

Here is a list of features

The privileges escalation of the Oracle users;
The verification of system accounts concerning the existence of a default password;
Account compliance test of login=password
The execution of the PL/SQL code;
The privileges escalation in the OS Windows 2000/XP/2003 (add a local user as root and holder of remote connection powers);
The infiltration into the OS and the execution of DOS-commands, holding the administrative rights.
Viewing the users’ connections to the database and their activity;
Analyse the external TNS listener.log;

After checking the executable on virustotal I run the program on one of my test VMwares. After switching the russian interface to the english interface I not able to run the tool. I always got the error message:

New OTN Whitepaper on Using 11.1.1.2 UI Shell

steve.muench — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:06:55 PST

Our ADF Patterns team has published a new whitepaper that gives a step-by-step tutorial of using the new UI Shell provided in JDeveloper / ADF 11.1.1.2.0

Oracle User Interface Shell

See the ADF Patterns page for all whitepapers:

http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/adf/patterns/index.html

Download: Oracle Database 11g Release 2 for Solaris Sparc

william.hardie — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:04:24 PST

Oracle Database 11g Release 2 for Solaris Sparc now available for download from OTN.

Oracle Database Vault now available for SAP Applications

william.hardie — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:53:44 PST

Oracle Database Vault is now certified for use with SAP applications (in addition to Oracle eBusiness Suite, Oracle Peoplesoft, Oracle Siebel and Oracle JDE applications) to help customers better secure their SAP applications and data.

Check out full story in the 'Security Inside Out' blog.

Canberra Oracle User Group (ACTOUG) get together…

Tim... — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:51:05 PST

I was chatting to Marcel Kratochvil at OpenWorld this year and he suggested I visit Canberra to have a chat with the guys from ACTOUG while I was in Australia, so yesterday morning I flew into Canberra.

On the plane I developed a splitting headache, due to lack of sleep, so by the time I got off I was feeling pretty bad. Marcel was meant to be giving me a lift to the hotel, but I couldn’t see him so with self preservation in mind I got into a taxi and went straight to the hotel. I told the front desk to tell him I had arrived if he called, but told them not to disturb me. I got to my room, puked a couple of times and fell asleep for most of the day.

Marcel called me from reception at 16:30 and off we went to the Oracle office in Canberra…

The format was a “Beer and Pizza” night. People eat, drink and chat for a while, then I did a one hour presentation while they were too subdued to leave. Once the presentation was over we went back to just general socializing. Nothing for pulling a crowd like free beer and pizza…

Despite still not feeling too great, I had a really good time. Put me in a room of people and tell me to talk and I’m in my element. Throw in pizza as well and I’m in heaven.

I got up at silly o’clock again today, 02:00 to be precise. Marcel is giving me a quick tour of the city on my way back to the airport, where I will fly back to Melbourne.

Cheers

Tim…

PS. Where were you Richard? There will be repercussions…

WordPress 2.8.6 Released…

Tim... — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:17:57 PST

There’s a new security release of WordPress, so get upgrading…

WordPress 2.8.6 Security Release

Cheers

Tim…

Sizing an RTD installation - Part 1

michel.adar@oracle.com — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:45:17 PST

In every implementation of RTD it is necessary to determine the hardware configuration to support the expected loads of RTD applications. While we try to provide guidelines and generalizations, it helps to understand the most significant factors that affect the desired hardware configuration. In a series of blog entries we describe the different factors that need to be considered.

Throughput

The first factor to consider is the expected load, in terms of number of events per second, that the servers will need to deal with. These events have different types and therefore may cause different loads into the servers.

Estimating the number of events per second usually begins at some given metrics. Examples of typical metrics include:

Web site pages served per second/day/month
Web site [unique] visitors per month
Web site visits/sessions per day
Call Center calls per day
Average call length
Maximum number of concurrent agents
IVR calls handled per day

The first thing to do with these metrics is to translate them to "per second" numbers. The translation from large time periods, like months, can not be done by directly dividing by the number of seconds in a month, as it is typical that there are busier days and busier hours of the day.

Some rules of thumb that I have found to result in numbers that are pretty close to reality for a wide variety of situations are as follows:

Monthly numbers can be divided by 10 to produce the numbers for a busy day
Daily numbers can be divided by 10 to produce the numbers on a busy hour
Hourly numbers are divided by 3000 (or sometimes 2000) to produce the number per second
If number of pages per visit is unknown, 10 to 15 can be assumed for many sites
If call length is unknown, 5 minutes can be assumed
Dividing the number of concurrently active agents by the length of a call (in seconds) gives the number of call starts per second

From these we can compute the expected number of requests per second. Lets look at some examples.

Web example: a bank. Only the following information is available: "The bank has 5M customers, of them 2M have signed up for online banking. They are planning to use RTD to determine content and promotions in several places in most online banking pages."

Since this is all the information we have, we will do a calculation based on many assumptions. Later on we can confirm or adjust our assumptions based on any additional information we are given.

Assuming 1/2 of the signed up customers are active, and we have on average 4 visits per month we have 4M visits per month. Using the rules of thumb above, we can assume 400k visits on a busy day, and 40k on a busy hour. Dividing by 2000 seconds in an hour that gives us about 20 visits started per second. Assuming 10 pages per visit and 3 requests per page we have 30 requests per visit and 600 requests per second.

Call Center example: "A telco has 5000 agents in the call center. They are interested in implementing RTD for offer recommendations at the end of service calls."

Lets assume that the maximum number of agents active at any given time is about 2/3 of the agents, say 3500. Assuming 5 minute calls, which is 300 seconds, we have an average of about 12 call initializations per second. Assuming 4 requests per call, we have about 48 requests per second.

In upcoming posts we will explore other considerations that come into play when selecting a configuration.

EA Bashing?!? Open Season on EA’s??? Who is at Fault? (Or should the question be how do we fix it?)

pat.shepherd — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:34:53 PST

There are a number of blogs and posts out there that are centered around the validity (and even the value) of having Enterprise Architects at all. In a recent ebizQ Forum posting by Neil Ward-Dalton, the question is opened up for responses of which there a number of good and worthy responses (see link below).

I want to state that I have meet with a number of EA’s who “get it” and do add value. So I, for one, say ENOUGH already. EA’s perform a valuable function that would otherwise be left to chance (hardly an engineering construct in anyone's view).

True, EA’s are constrained by the reporting structure as mentioned in the posts. Also mentioned are the shortcomings of frameworks as well as the very definition of what an EA really is. Those are all valid points as well. Yet some people are able to cut through these concerns and actually add value.

I will add another issue to the fire, which is time. I have seen so many projects recently where everyone gets the value of doing it right (deep integration of the EA with Business Units, using SOA, Governance, Virtualization, etc..) but these notions are the first to get killed as pressure mounts. A lot of people I meet want to get it right and have enough “personal power” to overcome the shortcomings posed by a less than optimal environment.

Some issues EA’s face

Reporting structure/sponsorship
Frameworks (or lack there of)
Definition and scope of EA
Focus of EA’s being constantly down-leveled info nitty-gritty issues (counting CPU’s for a project)
How do you measure EA success?
How do you communicate EA success? (see http://blogs.oracle.com/enterprisearchitecture/2009/10/archbeat_ea_visibility.html for a podcast on this topic)
Time

All of these things can be solved - as there are solutions for each of them. For example, the Oracle Enterprise Framework solves the problem some other frameworks have of being too rigorous - to the point of making them too confining to actually “get work done.” The Oracle framework takes a big picture view but also focuses on delivering value, not run-on-forever-science-experiments. (See: http://www.oracle.com/technology/architect/entarch/pdf/oea_framework.pdf). It is my belief that this framework is rigorous enough to be valid, but flexible enough to be practical.

So, who is at fault? The EA’s who are honestly trying to maintain the big picture view by mapping business strategy and trends to technology enablement and working to overcome shortcomings like the ones mentioned here (and often successfully)? No.

Should the question, instead, be - How do we fix all this?

That is the question I’d like to pose. Not “Is EA Dead,” but rather ideas for refining the role (and even profession) so that it better matches the needs of today’s businesses (which themselves are always changing). If EA’s are not there to help pull everything together, who will??? Someone needs to! Otherwise it will be right back to “every LOB for themselves.” The role / function of EA will remain ever increasingly valuable as the nexus for pulling together business and IT across Line of Business (LOB) boundaries, no matter what you call the actual role (can you imagine a new title such as Business Technology Vision Synergist???)

What should we do differently where we do have poser to change things? Ideas anyone????

Neil Ward-Dutton: The original vision of Enterprise Architecture (as proposed by Zachman and others) was that it was about understanding an entire enterprise as a system - that is, understanding the connections between the structure of the business, its capabilities, its organization, and so on (as well as the structure of the IT systems which supported the enterprise). Do today's EA practitioners get at all close to this vision in terms of their influence and understanding, or are they really Enterprise IT Architects - only concerned with IT systems, even if at a large scale?

Do Today's Enterprise Architecture Practitioners Get at all Close to the Original Vision of EA? - ebizQ Forum

Rethinking Information Architecture for the New World (Part 3)

hamza.jahangir — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:20:08 PST

First of all, I am very happy to return back from my very intense month of October on the road for work and mini vacation at the end of it all in the great city of London. And now happier to be able to resume blogging on my favorite topic of information architecture.

To get back to my traveling for a minute, I picked up the latest Harvard Business Review at Washington Dulles while I was waiting for one of my flights going somewhere at some point in October (its all a bit blurry now). Last month’s HBR had an IBM advertisement that I felt was insanely wise and sums up exactly what I have been meaning to convey all this time on the subject of information architecture. Except, they were able to say it in the following 15 words:

“Your data is trying to tell you something.
Is your business built to hear it?”

I have to hand it to IBM for their ability to make a pitch-perfect pitch on information architecture. Whether they have anything of value to sell on that topic is another discussion, but at least they have the marketing down.

Ok, so enough about marketing and advertising. Let’s return to where we left off our discussion in part 2 of this blog series. To recap, we discussed that there are fundamentally three things an architect, dealing with modernizing their enterprise information architecture, has to define to make a successful transformation in how they leverage information in the new world:

1. Establish a common language for conversations between business and information technologists (an EA framework usually calls this the business architecture)

2. Define a shared set of principles around how information is treated and leveraged by the business

3. A governance model for course correction when strategies and tactics are not working and need to be rethought.

Let’s take them one at a time.

1. A Common Information Language

This is probably the most challenging aspect of information architecting. And especially, given we are almost always starting with a legacy environment where systems have many, often inconsistent, data models, rationalizing all the data, their semantic and their physical structures is where we tend to spend overwhelming amounts of time and, usually, resort to frustration and eventually giving up that mind-numbing endeavor. Here’s a very simplified example of lacking a lacking language of information:

Here are two data model records from two applications:

System A	System B
Product: Name, Price, LOB, Manufactured At	Product: Name, Price, Purchased By, Manufactured At

Can you guess which one is a product that the business is selling and which one is a product that the business is buying from suppliers? If you can, there is a 50% shot you are not right.

This is precisely the challenge of normalizing data definitions and models to a common semantic that all parties, relevant to producing or consuming this data, is able to easily understand and leverage this information for their purposes. While this exercise can involve solutions such as master data management, data integration, data analytics, data cleansing, etc, at the heart of it, it is about making data accessible (a key principle in data architecture).

Now, you might be wondering what is a practical and low-risk way to normalizing all the data in your enterprise so you can achieve this normalized information language. In my experience, I would recommend key high-level steps to practical information semantic normalization:

a. Select a Business Process or Function – Taking a business process lets you work with a small set of data that is consumed by a business process. This is very critical to making the enterprise data modeling process a low risk proposition for all stakeholders. You don’t want to be touching and messing around with too many moving parts since that might take too long and complicated to normalize.

b. Ignore the current data models – Define a logical data model that doesn’t dwell on the specific physical characteristics of the data model (e.g. data type, naming conventions, etc). Instead defining a clean and simple model that makes sense to a business user executing the process is a decent validation of the desired data model for architecture.

c. Map your Logical Enterprise Data Model to Specific Systems – If you are working with a specific business process, your next task is to map those logical objects you have modeled in step b, to the actual data models in the different systems that are touching the business process. This approach takes a just-enough mindset to information modeling and you are normalizing only the systems that are critical to process execution.

d. Rinse and Repeat across other business processes

This approach to information semantic normalization and building out a canonical data model for your enterprise is often supported using MDM solutions. However, it is important to keep in mind that having an MDM system doesn’t automatically buy you a master data model. You can certainly use industry standards and reference models, however at the end of the day someone has to go through this exercise to create a data model that houses your enterprise’s strategies and functions. At the end of the day, your enterprise data model might look something like this at the 10,000 feet level. What comes after this is what makes your business different from the competition.

In the next post of this blog series, we will discuss the architecture principles (and the rationale behind those principles) to govern and influence the decisions you need to make around building out the information architecture.

Happy friday to you all.