OraNA :: Applications

The Origin Of Bex: Now Available On Netflix

bex — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 14:52:13 PST

I'm frequently asked where I got the nickname "Bex." Back in 2008 I finally put the matter to rest by explaining the origin of "Bex".

The quick story is this: a while back I saw a British TV show with a character named "Bexley," thought it was a cool name, and started using "Bex" as one of my (many) internet aliases. When I went to college, there were too many "Brians" in my dorm, so they decided I needed a nickname... one of my geekier dorm-mates asked me what I used for internet aliases, I mentioned them, and they liked "Bex" the best.

The rest, as they say, is history...

The TV show in question is Red Dwarf, which is a something of a sci-fi cult comedy... I was recently surprised to see that Red Dwarf is available via NetFlix-On-Demand! If you have NetFlix, and about 20 minutes to spare, you might want to watch the television episode that spawned my nickname. And maybe a few more episodes, if you care to...

The show is well written, if not a bit quirky... but, if you're a frequent reader of my blog, you probably have the sense of humor necessary to find it charming ;-)

Configuring Lost Password management in Oracle Access Manager

Mahendra — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 22:40:08 PST

If you want to configure Lost password policy management using Oracle Access Manager for your application, then here it is how you can do. In real time scenario, once the user clicks on Lost Password link, the user will be challenged with questions registered during first login, followed by a change password.

How can we do this?

1. Create an LDIF schema file with a new auxiliary object class and two new attributes as shown below. Here only 1 challenge attribute is used, if your requirement demands, you can add many more.

dn: cn=schema
changetype: modify
add: attributetypes
attributetypes: ( 1.3.6.1.4.1.9999.1.1094.204 NAME ‘Challenge2′ SYNTAX 1.3.6.1.4.1.1466.115.121.1.15 )

dn: cn=schema
changetype: modify
add: attributetypes
attributetypes: ( 1.3.6.1.4.1.9999.1.1094.205 NAME ‘Response2′ SYNTAX 1.3.6.1.4.1.1466.115.121.1.15 )

dn: cn=schema
changetype: modify
add: objectclasses
objectclasses: ( 1.3.6.1.4.1.9999.1.1094.206 NAME ‘oblixAuxPerson4LPM’ DESC ‘User defined objectclass’ SUP top AUXILIARY MAY ( Challenge2 $ Response2 ) )

2. Import the LDIF file into the LDAP where OAM stores user data.

3. Now we have to configure this new object class in the OAM. Goto the Identity System Console and click on Common Configuration tab. Click on object classes in left pane and Add the new class by selecting the type as Person object class.

4. Goto Identity System Console -> System Configuration. Click password policy.

5. Enter the URL for Lost Password Redirect URL. Please remember to enable both checkboxes of Successful Attempts Attribute and Failed Attempts Attribute with attributes oblastSuccessFulLogin and oblastFailedLogin respectively.

6. Click on Lost Password Policy.

7. Enter the name. You can specify the challenge phrases to be user defined or pre-defined or both. If you wish to have pre-defined, then Enter the challenge phrase in the text box and click Add.

8. Enter the values for Minimum Challenges to be configured which specifies the no. of challenge phrases that will appear.

9. Enter values for Challenge Response Minimum Length and Allow Duplicate Responses appropriately.

10. Enter value for Minimum Challenges to be Answered which specifies the no. of challenges that user has to answer.

11. Select value for Challenge Pose Type. All at Once allows all the challenge phrases to appear at the same time. One after the other allows the challenges to appear after the user answers the first question.

12. Enable Send Email after password change if you want to configure SMTP stuff.

13. In the end, enable check box of password policy.

In your custom application, you can insert the Lost Password link as shown below.

http://machinename:portnumber/identity/oblix/apps/lost_pwd_mgmt/bin/lost_pwd_mgmt.cgi?program=passwordChallengeResponse&login=%scheme1_uid_parameter_value%%scheme2_uid_parameter_value%%schemeN_uid_parameter_value%&target=top

14. To enable the password policies to the resources protected by the OAM, then modify the authentication scheme that protects those resources. In the validate_password plugin of your Authentication Scheme, add this obReadPasswdMode=”LDAP”,obWritePasswdMode=”LDAP” and the new validate_password plugin appears like this

obCredentialPassword=”password”,obReadPasswdMode=”LDAP”, obWritePasswdMode=”LDAP”

For more information, check this.

References:

Oracle Documentation

Let’s get together at Collaborate

David Andrews — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 12:03:43 PST

Before Oracle OpenWorld last September I invited readers of this post to meet me in person there. That led to a number of meetings and new friendships. For me, Collaborate is the best chance I have each year to find out what is really happening within organizations that use JDE as well as to learn [...]

Cloud Computing

shivmohan purohit — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 22:36:00 PST

Cloud computing is an emerging computing technology that uses the internet and central remote servers to maintain data and applications. Cloud computing allows consumers and businesses to use applications without installation and access their personal files at any computer with internet access. This technology allows for much more efficient computing by centralizing storage, memory, processing and bandwidth. Cloud computing is broken down into three segments: “applications,” “platforms,” and “infrastructure.” Each segment serves a different purpose and offers different products for businesses and individuals around the world.

Filed under: Oracle Functional Tagged: cloud computing

Blog:: JDev 11g Extension:: Red Samurai Tool:: Validate ADF Code Quality

admin — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 11:11:11 PST

Ok - so this evening whilst surfing blog waves I came across Andrejus Baranovskis’s Blog.

First I have to say the logo for Red Samurai is awesome!!
And from what I can see Andrejus Baranovskis’s is definatley a ninja / samurai developer - dedicated to improving Oracle and producing some great detailed guides in his blog - even spending the time to screenshot and note whats going on!

Anyways; I`m still pretty new to the world of JDeveloper - but I did come across his extension ‘Validate ADF Code Quality‘ that looks pretty good.. A validation tool!
This is exactly what is needed within any organisation developing adf code - I`m going to put this as a recommendation for anyone working with JDev to get this installed now!

I don`t want to see any sloppy code - if I ever have to work with you

Blog:: Fishbowl:: Integrating ECM and Portals

admin — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 09:46:17 PST

There’s a nice technical white paper released today over at Fishbowl Solutions you should check out - on one way to integrate ECM with Portals!

But if you are feeling more adventurous and have 10gr4 setup for your websites - check out this oracle snippet document on how to bring back content to your portlets.

Instead of using CIS just use the UCM services to bring back and display your require content into a portlet.
You can even setup the ability to edit content directly from your portlet if required just as you do with UCM ‘ctrl + shift + f5′.

However if your not feeling adventurous - I would recommend Fishbowl in the US they have a proven tested system in place and use ckeditor - up to date version of fckeditor
If you are UK based however you could contact Ether Solution who have already done the former integration with Webcenter - maybe you`ll even see me working on it.

PeopleSoft Viewlets - Quick Training on Popular PTools Topics

Brent Martin — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 12:52:42 PST

Oracle just launched "PeopleTools Viewlets" at http://download.oracle.com/peopletools/viewlets.html. The viewlets are short training videos on PeopleTools topics like Web services & Integration Broker, reporting, security, enterprise 2.0 etc. They're great if you need a quick refresher or want to see a live example of something you need to do. Check it out.

OAM integration with WebLogic for different versions

Mahendra — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 01:55:15 PST

Hi all,

As you might have observed that the integration between Oracle Access Manager and WebLogic server varies with different versions of WebLogic Server and hence it’s architecture varies.

So I would like to give a brief on how the architecture looks like and what are the components needed for this integration.

Until WebLogic Server 10.3.0, the connector used between OAM and WebLogic is the SSPI and is available for download seperately. It is evident that SSPI Connector configuration is not very easy to get it working as customers will end up with running into lot of issues with access privileges or weblogic startup etc., . However there is no difference in components used for this integration in both WebLogic versions except the separate SSPI Connector. You would need a proxy infront of WebLogic if you want to achieve Single Sign-On and just an access gate if you want to authenticate to the WebLogic as an OAM user. If you are just looking for authentication only, then you can’t achieve SSO which demands a proxy server. From architecture perspective, you will need a Connector (installed explicitly) sitting inside the WebLogic server. The working authentication schemes are Basic and Form.

Moving to the new version, from WebLogic Server 10.3.1 onwards, the connector has been removed. Therefore the integration becomes very easy and so the architecture is. Here, a jar file called oamAuthnProvider.jar (for OAM 10.1.4.3) has been introduced which acts as an alternative to SSPI connector. Internally, it contains classes to talk to WebLogic Server and OAM access server. This jar file has to be copied to lib directory of weblogic server for which we are attempting to do the integration. An Identity Asserter has to be created in the WebLogic server which listens to the ObSSOCookie. The recommended authentication scheme for WLS 10.3.1 is Form Login.

References:

Blog by Josh Bregman

OAM Documentation

Please reply your comments/suggestion and it is highly appreciated.

Life is Short – Enjoy your coffee

shivmohan purohit — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 20:02:19 PST

Filed under: Oracle Functional

Bringing order to a chaotic work day

Ravi Banda — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:33:40 PST

My usual day started with early morning meetings, catching up on email, looking up my memory for the to-do tasks and following up with my team by writing more emails, participating in meetings, and resulting in more emails.

As you can imagine, it was pretty hectic, a reactive work style and of my own doing. However much I tried to come out of it, I sunk in further so decided to take help from the “Productivity” class – one of the cool benefits of working @ Oracle is the access to a wide-variety of development tools (ok – I had to put in my compliments for Oracle somewhere )

My style is now “task based” and its simple –

I am writing down all tasks – work and personal (using Outlook) with the goal of not relying on memory.
I have set myself a frequency on checking mail (every 1 hour)
I am now quickly processing the mail and dividing into 3 buckets
- If it can be replied quickly in 1 min or less, do it immediately.
- If it needs an action or following up with someone, create a Task for it and set a Start Date and Due Date. The tendency is to focus more on Due Date but at the same time “Start Date” is critical, as setting it correctly based on the work load for today / tomorrow and the current week, will determine how successfully I will get to it and complete it.
- If it’s a FYI mail, move it into an archive folder and rely on “search” tools to find it later

All I am now focused is to get the Tasks done and yes – writing this blog post was a task for Today.

I now have a “0” mail Inbox and a healthy list of 30 tasks that I need to do this week.

The added benefit of having Tasks is that I can now lookup my Tasks for the last week and send my Goals mail (which is the work I did last week + work to do this week) to my team. For some of the larger tasks – I can also pull them easily into my performance review document

My team is also following this approach, and as a result, we are all now competing with each other to show who is more productive. And, just the fact that, I have come out of a 2 year blog hibernation shows how happy I am with the new “me”.

What about you ? Do you have any productivity tips to share ?

Blog:: WCI.. Webcenter Interaction video

admin — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 11:45:23 PST

So I was a bit bored over the weekend and decided to do the Oracle geek thing and watch a few presentation..

To my surprise; I actually stumbled across quite a good video on Vimeo to do with WCI by Chris Bucchere.
He walks you through quite a few real-world mashups of open source applications written in their own chosen language - PHP, RoR, Python etc.

If your bored and there’s just nothing on TV check out this presentation!

Disater Recovery documentation for Oracle WebLogic Server 11g (Fusion Middleware)

Atul Kumar — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 08:40:10 PST

If you are looking for documentation on Oracle WebLogic Server 11g (component in Oracle Fusion Middleware) then here are few good links

1. Recommendation for Oracle WebLogic Server 11g Disaster Recovery here which covers File System and Network artifacts.

2. If you are using JMS (Java Messaging services) and T-Logs in WebLogic server then check recommendations for DR here

3. Whole Server Migration : Read about Server migration in WebLogic server (Automatic and Manual server migration) here

4. Service Migration for pinned services (JMS, JTA and user defined singleton service) here

5. If you are planning to use Virtualization and Partitioning technologies (Non Oracle) with WebLogic server then check this

6. Check High Availability configuration for Oracle WebLogic here

More information on High Availability and Disaster Recovery documentation for Fusion Middleware component - SOA, WebCenter, Identity Management (OID, SSO, Access Manager) coming soon …..

If you know any document regarding WebLogic Disaster Recovery (Failover) configuration then update it under comments section.

Previous in series

KnowOracle – Starting with Video Tutorials

shivmohan purohit — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 03:47:40 PST

KnowOracle – Starting with Video Tutorials

Starting – How to Use this blog

Filed under: Oracle Functional

The March 7th Leadership Development Carnival is up!

Mark Bennett — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 22:50:30 PST

Go check out the new March 7th Leadership Development Carnival. Dan McCarthy has gathered together over 40 top posts, putting them in an Academy Award categories format. Dan introduces each submission with a brief description to help you decide if you want to read it.

Some notable posts include: Art Petty’s Leadership Caffeine-Learning to Lead in the Project-Focused World, Jason Seiden’s Your Job Sucks? Really? I’m Shocked. Oh, Wait: No I’m Not, Anne Perschel’s Fixing the Hole in the Corporate Soul, Jason Reid’s Multi-tasking – doing things badly in twice as much time, and our own Amy Wilson’s Pay for Performance is Dead…almost.

This is a terrific opportunity for you to get a great sample of a variety of perspectives, thinking, and just plain good writing. Who knows? Maybe you’ll discover a great blog you never heard of before.

Don’t forget to be awesome

shivmohan purohit — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 21:16:04 PST

Filed under: Oracle Functional

Thoughts for today : 8 March 2009

shivmohan purohit — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 21:14:32 PST

Filed under: Oracle Functional

Software Testing and Development Newsletter - March 2010

Tim Jones — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 14:12:33 PST

Up to Newsletter Index

Quotable Quotes

The chief lesson I have learned in a long life is that the only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him; and the surest way to make him untrustworthy is to distrust him and show your distrust. –Henry L. Stimson

If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. –African Proverb

The world is wide, and I will not waste my life in friction when it could be turned into momentum. –Frances Willard

Every now and then go away—for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. –Leonardo DaVinci

I'm not a genius. I'm just a tremendous bundle of experience. –R. Buckminster Fuller

Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success. –Henry Ford

There is a wisdom of the head, and a wisdom of the heart. –Charles Dickens

People do not decide to become extraordinary. They decide to accomplish extraordinary things. –Edmund Hillary

On two occasions I have been asked [by members of British Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question. –Charles Babbage

Lofty goals

Meg Bear — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 13:43:58 PST

I love my Tivo.

I think it’s the best invention of it’s decade and a close second to the remote control, as being the most useful invention of my lifetime.

I love it not so much for it’s technology, but for it’s simplicity. The idea was so simple, all the technical pieces we readily available, and yet it changed the way we watch television forever.

Tivo changed my relationship with television, and in doing that, it changed my expectations of television. If it’s true that television has more to do with our generational divide than date of birth, we should expect that we haven’t seen the real result of the impact of Tivo yet. That’s pretty cool for such a small company.

When I think about what I want for our own industry, I really want the same thing. I want to change the way we think about systems and business.

I want to change how we look at people in business.

I want to bring the human back to human resources while also making business work better.

I want to realize the statement Laurie said about me. I want to make work better.

The landscape of business is becoming more complex every day. Social norms, expectations and markets are all changing. Rapidly.

Global isn’t an idea, it’s a business imperative for big companies. Companies are having to make bigger decisions with less insight since management by walking around is a lot harder when you have to walk across an ocean.

We need a new relationship between systems and business and I for one, think that it’s about time. It all starts with lofty goals in my world.

Blog:: Webcenter:: Spaces:: The latest new skin is underway..

admin — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 06:38:28 PST

I hope you guys enjoy this latest skin - as you can see its based on the original white design - I did back in December with a few slight alterations.

No I didn’t reskin firefox aswell, before anyone comments
Search for NASA Night Launch to download the firefox skin if you really like it..

Yes I know you are all asking for the extended trinidad css skin files for the design - in a couple of weeks fingers crossed I`ll have them complete and you`ll all be able to get them install them and alter them as you wish.

I’ll also be working on a complete new interface for Spaces approaching it from a Social networking view rather than a portal widget styled design that Spaces currently implements!!
So think facebook, linkedIn, MySpace’d version of Spaces for connecting and collaborating… I have my work cut out for me - but its going to be great fun….

##Update ##

I have thrown together a few widgets.. This is just a quick mockup and not a final representation..
And yes for all you designers obsessed with following the box model guidelines - I`m sorry.. But I prefer randomness than conforming to the rule..
And with this design it seems to actually work

BI 11g is coming soon, perhaps at Collaborate

David Andrews — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 06:15:30 PST

Oracle has been working on a major upgrade to its Business Intelligence product line for almost four years. We were told at Open World that the result would be called BI 11g and would arrive in 2010. Oracle does not like to introduce anything near the end of its fiscal year that finishes at the [...]

OraNA :: Applications

The Origin Of Bex: Now Available On Netflix

Configuring Lost Password management in Oracle Access Manager

Let’s get together at Collaborate

Cloud Computing

Blog:: JDev 11g Extension:: Red Samurai Tool:: Validate ADF Code Quality

Blog:: Fishbowl:: Integrating ECM and Portals

PeopleSoft Viewlets - Quick Training on Popular PTools Topics

OAM integration with WebLogic for different versions

Life is Short – Enjoy your coffee

Bringing order to a chaotic work day

Blog:: WCI.. Webcenter Interaction video

Disater Recovery documentation for Oracle WebLogic Server 11g (Fusion Middleware)

Related Posts for Learn WebLogic with Us

KnowOracle – Starting with Video Tutorials

The March 7th Leadership Development Carnival is up!

Don’t forget to be awesome

Thoughts for today : 8 March 2009

Software Testing and Development Newsletter - March 2010

Lofty goals

Blog:: Webcenter:: Spaces:: The latest new skin is underway..

BI 11g is coming soon, perhaps at Collaborate