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Fastest Web Application yet??

Nitin Jain — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 03:26:48 +0000

I just had to share this!

How fast do you think can you build a fully functional Web Application? A little bit of twist here. The Web Application must have the Session Handling facility through Java Session Beans. It can optionally make use of Java Service Facades (I am still wondering what in the world that is!!).

A month, 10 days, 5 days??

How about 10 minutes?
Shay Shmelter from Oracle is back with a miracle for us. He has created a fully functional Web Application using Oracle JDeveloper (part of the Oracle SOA Suite) and ADF bindings. Check out the video here. It really is a visual treat.

Is Oracle throwing out a challenge to everybody here?
Just a thought. What prevents this exact scenario to be simulated in other IDEs or RAD Tools? With a little background preparation and practice, a pro may just be able to simulate it in NetBeans as well.

Did I hear NO?? Be a little louder please. You are not audible yet!

Changes to the Oracle Homepage?

Nitin Jain — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:43:27 +0000

Just browsing through the Internet, particularly the Oracle Homepage, http://www.oracle.com, I noticed it to be a little different than the way I had seen it in the past. The changes are subtle, but, in Web Designing, it is these subtle changes which bring about a big difference!

Googling it brought up this beautiful post from Tim Bonneman from Oracle outlining the changes. See if you can catch all of them!

The top has some menus. I see the menus have been reorganized. They have become a little more classy, and the text easier on the eyes.

For a change, I see the banner is now bigger, and the entire flash banner towards the top of the page has been turned into a hyperlink. This practically means, instead of scrolling out mouse especially to “Learn More”, clicking anywhere on the banner will take us to the relevant article.

From the concept I feel similar to Video Advertising by Google on Youtube, News from 3 special categories, Customer Spotlight, Special Events and Innovation Showcase is now shown in a translucent space, just below the large flash banner. Links to more news are also easily accessible through a single click.

There’s a new News Ticker, something like a Java Applet being refreshed continuously, just below the banner. More News! Well, a company the size and diversity of Oracle is expected to have lots to share after all. There are new developments happening at Oracle everyday!

Something peculiar I noticed as a flaw, the News Ticker item doesn’t stay on the Mouse Scroll above the News Item. It continuously refreshes itself irrespective of the Mouse Cursor position and you have to wait for the News Item to appear again in case you miss it the first time. A small Javascript could fix this. Too difficult for a better Customer Experience, eh??

The refresh interval also seems to be close to 3 seconds. My personal feeling is that it is more to draw attention to the News Ticker, than actually extract value out of it. Just one of the many differences the gurus claim between a FLASHY website, and a USEFUL website. Subtle, yet important!

A new Quick Links applet has been added to the bottom right. My question, “Can I customize it to show only the links I want to show, as per my personal usage?”. If it is not my own Quick Links, then it may be quick for others, but not that quick for me!

Nice little tweaks! I am sure the competition can also learn a lot from the Oracle Website on how to keep it simple, yet intuitive, and useful. A couple of things here and there may be discounted as personal choices. Let’s wait for the customer reactions on this one. What’s your take? Leave a comment..

Oracle Openworld 2009: Heralding a new journey

Nitin Jain — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 16:47:33 +0000

Oracle’s much famed Open World 2009 in San Francisco, US came to a close yesterday. Open World is Oracle’s Annual showcase event where veterans and Partners from all over the industry join in to share their experiences. It is also one of the most awaited times of the year for the Oracle User Community because of Oracle’s practice of making some of the biggest announcements this time of the year.

This year matched all the drama in the previous years, and, added a pinch of lemon and salt to the entire serving. What with some of the biggest announcements coming, huge workshops, SFDC CEO, Mr Bennioff joining the stage amid mud slinging on the competition and not to forget the open challenge thrown by Oracle + SUN combination to the entire Industry. The people returning from the hands-on sessions on the Oracle Fusion Platform and the new capabilities demonstrated by Oracle just sit there gaping with their mouths wide open, facial expressions confused between awe and joy!

From the CRM and SOA community point of view, arguably one of the single biggest announcements was the announcement of the Oracle Fusion Application Stack. This had been in the wings for quite a few years now and had created considerable buzz in the Developer community as what all will be wiped out along with its launch, and what all would come. I had always seen the wrinkles reappear on the clients’ faces on the very mention that the products they are buying today, may become obsolete quite soon!

We will try to provide an insight into some of the heaviest happenings of the Oracle Openworld 2009 in the days to come. In case any of you has had the chance to visit the Oracle Openworld LIVE, feel free to share your experiences.

Whether the Openworld has come to a close, or whether it has just heralding the beginning of a new era in Enterprise Architectures as we know them, sit back and give it a thought.

Query on the Long Column or Field

Nitin Jain — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 19:56:13 +0000

A typical problem in any EAI project. Others too!!

One of the most common ways of building custom Error Handling or Logging mechanisms include dumping huge messages and XMLs in the database for future reference. It works as an excellent logging mechanism which can be pulled out in case something in the system fails.

This is generally achieved by using the “Long” column of the Oracle Database, and/or concatening multiple String type of columns.

Now, the typical problem. We dump the XMLs, fair enough. However, we can only pull out specific information from this XML and populate on some other columns, but, definitely not ALL the data in the huge XML that we have. We may pull out the Order Id, Reference Number and a couple of more fields, yet we definitely cannot drill out all the information.

However, the XML contains a lot more data. How do we query on the data in the Long column, in case the information is hidden deep into the XML, and is not saved separately in a String type column? I am assuming the Table based Logging mechanism.

I ran across something similar recently when I realized that I could not query on the Long Database column. Now, I have not discovered a special way of querying on the Long column that I am going to share here. Rather, this is a workaround.

Query for the relevant data in a traditional PL/SQL Editor like the SQL Developer or TOAD. You can still not run a query on the Long data type of column, but, with sufficient filters, you can reach out to a limited RecordSet around the actual record.

Right click -> Export -> TXT / CSV format and open the newly created file in a file editor. Run our favourite “Find..” tool to query for the exact data that you are looking for. And, voila, it could help you get as close to the actual record as possible.

Yeah, I agree if some of you out there are shouting, “Dumb, dumb, dumb tip!!”. But then, worked for me.

I had this typical interface which was just dumping XMLs in the Logs one after the other, without any identifiers. And, it was becoming terribly difficult to dig out the XML with a particular identifier. After all else that I could think of failed, this one worked like a charm.

I thank all my friends who were with me till late night, helping me get this through! Thanks, Madhvi. Thanks, Himanshu. Cheers..

ORACLE – DUAL Table

Nitin Jain — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 15:22:46 +0000

One of the first things that any introductory SQL tutorial teaches, is about the DUAL table in Oracle. It is the commonest of the lot, and extremely useful, I must say. The DUAL table is installed automatically with the standard Oracle Data Dictionary at the time of installing the ORACLE Database itself.

I wanted to write an introductory article on Siebel EIM today, however,somehow, DUAL seemed to catch a bigger fantasy! In any case, proficiency in DB is just as much desired at times, as in Siebel Architecture. I tried a little dabbling around with this little table. I am summing up my findings here.

As I said before, the DUAL table is installed along with the Oracle Data Dictionary

After logging into Oracle, I described the table. I was using Oracle’s SQL Developer, so if you were expecting the SQL prompt here, I am sorry!

DESC DUAL

Output:

desc dual
Name Null? Type
—————————— ——– ———————————————————————————————–
DUMMY VARCHAR2(1)

1 rows selected

Next statement, “SELECT *”..

SELECT * FROM DUAL

Output:

DUMMY
—————-
X

I tried the above from my own login without any Admin priviledges on the Oracle DB and it seemed to work just as fine.
DUAL table can be very useful with the many uses that it ca inherently be put to.

Finding out the System Date:

SELECT SYSDATE FROM DUAL

Output:

SYSDATE
—————–
10-AUG-09

A number of system variables may be found out from the system this way, using the DUAL Table.

It can also be useful, if in case you want to output a particualar value in the output of an SQL Statement. For example:

SELECT ‘GEEKSBLOGGINGAT.COM’ FROM DUAL

Output:

‘GEEKSBLOGGINGAT.COM’
————————————
GEEKSBLOGGINGAT.COM

The above functionalities are of immense use, especially in the case of Siebel EIM where we need to twist the outputs as per our Business Requirements. One of the places it can be used is to set up the Headers to the SQL Output, while spooling it to a TXT file.

Now, the catch. Try doing the above on other tables, it will still work. Surprised?? However, we generally use DUAL in normal practice so as not to touch the other tables and tamper them by mistake. Also, DUAL will return exactly one record, while the other tables are likely to return much larger number of records, which could possibly keep varying with time.

There is obviously much more to the DUAL table. It is already available in detail on the Oracle website for the more inquisitive. The above was only a brief introduction.