GeeKs Blogging @ dotCOM

Siebel – Why Upgrade? – Part II

Nitin Jain — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 20:03:20 +0000

This is a continuation of the post, “Siebel – Why Upgrade? – Part I”.

Here are some more..

3) Talk about Performance and Efficiency. Though I agree that the new software generally runs with a higher efficiency with most of the old bugs closed, the higher performance almost always comes at a cost of higher Hardware Configuration as well.

The new softwares are, however, seen to be efficient to handle larger volumes of data, or to churn out decisions on the basis of the humongous data store. Maybe, the old system didn’t support it in the first place to make it possible, forget about efficiency!

4) With each higher version, I have personally noted that Siebel Data Model becomes more and more complex. This in turn means more and more universally agreed standards now form a part of the Siebel CRM Installation. This helps a Customer become more aware of the global standards that he may introduce in his organization, if not already there, or to align his Business Process accordingly.

Another fall-out of this, is higher Regulatory Compliance. Now, how many times have I heard Customers going in for implementation of packaged Applications owing to requirements to map to the local Regulatory Requirements?!

Ask yourself the following questions whenever you are pondering over a Software Upgrade:
1) Do I really need an upgrade?
2) What is it in my business that my current implementation is not able to solve?
3) What are the clear Business benefits that the new system brings to the table? Are they relevant to me?
4) If I must upgrade, is my existing IT Infrastructure upto the demands of the new version Installation?
5) How much time do I have before my IT Support for my current version runs out?

Plan ahead, to be ahead.

Feel free to add, or suggest. I am leaving the ground open. Cheers!

Siebel – Why Upgrade? – Part I

Nitin Jain — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:13:39 +0000

Hi all,

I am back to Siebel Technical Stuff after a long time. I recently worked as a part of a Siebel Upgrade Project for one of my clients.

Siebel Upgrade is a version update methodology supported by Oracle. The Customer can easily upgrade from an older version of Siebel to a higher version.

There is generally a very wide range of reasons as to why people may decide to upgrade. These may range from the obvious, to the obscure, and to truly blasphemous to some CRM Consultants. But, I guess this is one very important aspect which keeps the IT Industry rolling!!

Well, amongst many others, following are some of the popular reasons for which Organizations may decide to upgrade their existing Siebel, or other IT Software Installations.

1) This particular customer of ours very serious about the system running as smoothly as possible. Following this methodology, he banks on a lot of support from Microsoft and Oracle to avoid any issues in Production going forward. The issue is, Microsoft is phasing out support for Windows Server 2003 soon. To make matters worse, Siebel 7.5 is not certified to run on MS Windows Server 2008, the next logical step.

Solution: Upgrade to nearest higher version of Siebel which is supported on the new MS OS. The one you are using is on fire right now.

2) Generally, there is a whole lot of new functionality that Oracle introduces with each new version of Siebel CRM. The customers may want to make use of some of these new functionalities. The Business Benefit may imply a case strong enough to justify the extra cost of moving up to the new version.

Who knows, a Customer may just be able to eliminate a buggy Custom Module altogether by making use of some new functionality provided OOB in a higher version!

Wait for the remaining part of the post. What do you think could be the other reasons?

Siebel : Security Vulnerability !

Nitin Jain — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 20:17:46 +0000

This post could have far-reaching implications. I am still at crossroads whether I should be covering this or not..

The baseline is that there has been a Security Vulnerability detected, and announced. It is said to have been detected nearly a year ago, and informed to the Parent Organization. However, despite a year passing by, we are not aware of any remedial action having been taken by the Corporation. Since the vulnerability has already been publicly announced over the internet, we feel it’s safe to cover it here as well. We feel morally responsible to apprise Oracle Corp of the issue by building sufficient public opinion to patch it..

This Security Vulnerability has been detected in some of the older versions of Oracle’s very popular Siebel CRM Softwa=re, aka versions 7.7 and 7.8. It has not been tested on the older versions, but, expectedly it would appear there as well.

This Security Loophole has been detected by “Yaniv Miron”, a Security Researcher from Israel. Click here to reach his LinkedIn profile directly.

The vulnerability comes by the name of, “Oracle Siebel CRM ’start.swe’ Cross Site Scripting Vulnerability”.

It is rated “Low Risk”, and is Remotely Exploitable.

The following is directly from VUPEN :
” ..This vulnerability could be exploited by attackers to execute arbitrary scripting code. This issue is caused by an input validation error in the “htim_enu/start.swe” script when processing user-supplied data, which could be exploited by attackers to cause arbitrary scripting code to be executed by the user’s browser in the security context of an affected site.. “

SECUNIA says..
” ..Input passed via the URL to htim_enu/start.swe is not properly sanitised before being returned to the user. This can be exploited to execute arbitrary HTML and script code in a user’s browser session in context of an affected site.. “

A simple example could be:

http://example.com/htim_enu/start.swe/?>'">

Jan 2009 – Vulnerability found
Jan 2009 – Vendor Notification
Feb 2010 – Public Disclosure

Complete details about the vulnerability can be found at the following URLs where it was first reported:
http://www.vupen.com/english/advisories/2010/0516
http://seclists.org/bugtraq/2010/Mar/6

The original Advisories may be downloaded from the links below:
Siebel Loyalty Advisory
Siebel CRM Advisory

The vulnerability is already popular over Twitter.. try the link below..
Twitter Links for Siebel Advisory

Could there be better reasons to Upgrade to the latest Siebel versions, 8.x ?
Considering Siebel CRM is an expensive product targetted only at the companies with $250K+ revenues, this is all the more important.

Note: This post is for informational purposes only.
The author of this document is not and will not hold any responsibility for any illegal or unauthorized use of the information contained within this document, or that is implied from it.
The author of this document does not encourage in any way whatsoever, attacking any Siebel based System.

10 Reasons to Adopt Salesforce.com

Nitin Jain — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 18:56:06 +0000

After the post on why NOT to adopt Salesforce.com, here is another one to complement it!

“10 Reasons to Adopt Salesforce.com”…

1. Brand Image
2. Easy Installation
3. Customization
4. Online facilities
5. Third party solutions
6. Pricing
7. Benefits to small business
8. Customer Service
9. User-friendly Interface
10. Innovation

Read the whole story directly from the Parent site…

Salesforce.com not upto the mark?

Nitin Jain — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 18:32:10 +0000

Salesforce.com is touted as the next big thing in CRM. At times, Analysts have also dared to compare it to Siebel CRM. Some of them have even gone onto believe that Salesforce.com will eventually gain marketshare at Siebel’s expense.

Though this remains to be seen, Salesforce.com with it Cloud Computing prowess and PaaS methodology does present a compelling case.

Till now, we had heard only the good things about it. Recently, I came across a very interesting article, “10 Reasons Not to Adopt Salesforce.com for Customer Relationship Management” by Partho. Following are the reasons he outlines:

1. Integration and extensions
2. Dashboard
2. Functionality (point 2 repeated. Guess it makes 11 reasons in all !)
3. Not apt for sell services
4. System downtime
5. Back office functionality
6. No SLA(service level agreement)
7. Multi-tenant architecture
8. Data Quality
9. Add-ons
10. Lacks website/web store

Barring a couple of points that I don’t agree with, I guess Partho has a very interesting case!

Check out the complete article at its source.

My Oracle Support Non Flash Version

Nitin Jain — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 18:07:16 +0000

We all need Professional support one time or the other, no matter, what our role is in a Project Implementation.

Professional Support for Siebel from the vendor has gone from..
Siebel Supportweb (god, I loved it!) -> Oracle Metalink3 -> Oracle’s My Oracle Support

My Oracle Support has brought with itself a Pandora’s box of problems, more than the benefits that is offers. The Flash enabled version has a neat UI to look at, and somewhat better navigability. Well, the aesthetics is definitely better.

But, for quite a lot of reasons we may want not to use the Flash enabled version of My Oracle Support. They could range from unfamiliar Interface, to Performance, Flash is not available on my Work Computer!

Flash Enabled Version:
http://support.oracle.com

Non Flash Version:
http://supporthtml.oracle.com

Welcome back, Metalink!

Siebel – Unable to login to mobile client

Madhvi Arora — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 20:08:58 +0000

After long time I am writing a blog…

This time related to Siebel Admin
Earlier I used to work with Siebel 7.8 and now 8.1..
So quite a different experience..

In Siebel 8.1, I had successfully initilized my dbf from tool and was able to login into Siebel Tools.
But suprisingly, using same dbf I was not able to login to my mobile client and it was throwing the error,
“user id /password not correct..”

I tried everything..from reinializing my dbf to changing parameters in my client cfg…
But all atempts were in vain..
Finally I looked in to Siebel logs and found the error as “Error connecting to datasource SSD Local Db default instance”

I tool the help from one of my seniors and he recommended the following way out.. I tried, and it worked..

Just followed below mentioned steps and problem got resolved and I was able to successfully login into local client…
1. Open the ODBC Administrator.
2. Select the System DSN tab.
3. Select the local Tools datasource (by default, “SSD Local Db default instance”).
4. Click the Configure button.
5. In the configuration window, select the Database tab.
6. Clear the field labelled “Server name”.
7. Close the configuration window and exit the ODBC Administrator.

I am really happy that the issue finally got resolved, and I would like to thank my mentor for helping me. Please add a comment if this helps you sometime.. I’ll be glad to know..

Google Advertising Chrome now?

Nitin Jain — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 03:01:21 +0000

Well, here it is. After Google advertising its Search, it’s the turn of its Web Browser, Google Chrome to be advertised now!!

Check out the video below:

As a matter of my personal choice, I liked the Search ones better.

Oracle + Sun : New Download Site

Nitin Jain — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 22:54:44 +0000

This one came through the new Google Buzz. Guess too much buzzing happening all of a sudden..

After completing the acquisition of Sun last week, all of Sun’s Downloads are available with a new ORACLE branding. Check out the link below:

http://www.sun.com/download/

woooh!! m still trying to get used to Oracle logo on a Sun website!

Thanks for the tip, @lex..

Oracle buys Convergin

Nitin Jain — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 16:24:29 +0000

Oracle has announced buying out of Convergin. The never ending hunger of the giant that Oracle is, just doesn’t show any signs of tiring down.

Convergin is an Israeli based start-up. They are leading providers of real-time service brokering solutions. A service brokering solution is a software that lets telcos deliver services across multiple networks and platforms.

I took the following off Ericsson’s website:
“.. In recent years, costly and slow integration has created an unnecessary gap between the telephone companies (or telco) and IT worlds. However, collaboration between Internet and telecom standards is essential for future development. The service broker concept has been developed to fill this gap. Indeed, the service broker provides a flexible layer in the telecom architecture to bridge these two worlds. Such a concept is essential to coordinate the diverse future services and provide mash-up opportunities through a single point of entry ..”

Wanna know more? Check out this link, and feel free to read at your leisure about the Service Brokering Solution.

Pre-paid charging of mobile phones is just as important as billing for the Post Paid Customers. Convergin provides a J2EE based Service Broker Platform enabling the Service Providers to manage services for a wide range of networks and applications.

As Oracle says, combination of Oralce and Convergin is expected to provide a single carrier grade, standards based IT platform allowing CSPs to effectively evolve their service delivery capabilities at a lower total cost of ownership.

Oracle already has a handsone Communications’ integrated Product Suite. It includes Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management, Oracle Communications Converged Application Server and Oracle Communications service fulfillment applications.

Convergin’s products are expected to complement Oracle’s existing arsenal in the domain, and thus improve the Customer Experience for Oracle’s Customers. Convergin’s customers include T-Mobile and SaskTel. Its competitors include Apptrigger, Aepona and OpenCloud.

Though the financial details of the deal were not disclosed, it is expected to close in the first half of this year.

This is Oracle’s second acquisition in the week. Oracle had previously announced its plans to buy SOA Management Vendor, AmberPoint.

Google goes down??

Nitin Jain — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 13:30:30 +0000

whoa.. just couldn’t resist posting this…

just tried to log onto Google.com.. look what I found..

Google Down

Google is supposedly the most stable web address on the internet.. remember the secret sauce by Mr Page???

Just once in a while .. this happens too I guess..
Just thinking.. now that Google has loads of money in its bank.. doesn’t this call for a redesign?

Regular columns coming back soon.

Cloud Computing : Plain and Simple

Nitin Jain — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 04:27:46 +0000

The following video on YouTube, says it all:

Google Advertising Chrome now?

Google advertising its Search??

Nitin Jain — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 00:53:51 +0000

Is the Bing competition really heating up enough to give Google the jitters? That is the question that you may ask on the basis of Bing’s rising popularity, and Bing fast becoming the engine of choice for many.

Yet, this seems premature since at least one of the reports has shown Google Search still occupying the apex position with more than 72% of Search Market share. Search has been one of the biggest cash cows for Google, which it continues to milk. Whether it is happening today or not, Google probably cannot risk it.

Somebody has said, “The best mode of Defence, is Offence”.

Now, the question, how often do you use Google Search?
What all do you use it for? Which all sections of the society could potentially be using Google Search?

Check out some interesting Google Search Advertisements that I ran across on YouTube last night. They definitely make an interesting watch.

Who else?
Do you think Batman would have a use for Google Search somewhere? Think again..

Seems quite some use for Google in everybody’s life, eh?? As if we don’t know!!

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!

Google gives words a new meaning

Nitin Jain — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 21:21:33 +0000

Now that Internet is beginning to threaten so many Traditional Trades and territories, things just keep coming with a greater force. Twitter, TV Channels, and other social media have defined the doom of the Newspapers as we know them today. There have been several reports, where people prefer using some of the online media for getting information faster rather than waiting for the newspaper to arrive at the doors the next day.

Dictionary is another one of these domains where some of the traditional websites like the Free Online Dictionary and more traditionally Wikidepia (though more oriented towards Encyclopedia) have been taking more and more of the pie in comparison to the traditional ones in the Book Form Factor. Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com have also been some of the more popular ones.

It seems Google has taken a plunge into this world too by launching the Google Dictionary.

I just tried a few words and the results seem to be pretty decent. It comes out with some clear advantages which could help making it the Dictionary of choice.

The design is simple and minimalistic. This makes the page load faster.

I noticed that ads are missing on the page. Forget about external advertising, Google Ads are missing too. But, then, I guess that is just a matter of time. However, for the time being, it gives the page a clean kind of look.

Seeing is believing! Take a look at the image below.

Google Dictionary

The page is easily segregated into Google Dictionary meaning towards the top, and the other results from other websites titled, “Web Definitions” in the last section. The middle section provides other words with semantically similar words, with the label, “Related Phrases”. More on that later.

The results returned in the Web Definitions section are from amongst some of the typical websites that we have been using up till now, like Princeton, Wikipedia, etc. etc.

One of the features I particularly liked was the ability to star the word I just searached. While preparing for my Management entrance examinations, I remember it being a feature I used to crave for! And, this seems to be only one of the several features borrowed from its more popular and the youthful cousin, the formidable Google Reader.

All the words that have recently been starred are shown in a list towards the right, for easy reference later. Just below the Starred Words appear the recent searches tab. I, personally, see this as yet another attempt by Google to invade on my privacy. This feature is obviously linked to my personal login id for Google to keep track. Yet, this is just one more instance in the list where Google collates yet more information about me as an individual.

Does Google Dashboards really help? Give me your take on this.

I searched for “dog”, and the Related Phrases section returned phrases like, hangdog, hearing dog, sea dog, guard dog, etc. So, probably you can make out what I am talking about.

Poof.. does this new section by google run out of features ever..?!!

Another interesting feature is returning a set of images, something like Google Images search, corresponding to the term just searched. A Visual Image definitely helps in better memory retention than just reading words, and their meanings. It is easier to teach a young kid the meaning of words this way.

The words I searched for, returned the meaning, plural, person, tenses, corresponding participles, usage in sentences, Synonym, Antonym, slang usage, and so much more!

Near the end of it, the most interesting feature – The language to language translation. Towards the top, where we enter the search term, google if offering one more choice, that of translation of the word into some other language. So much for Google’s investment on Google Translate feature which helps translate words and sentences into multiple languages. I am throwing out the English <> Hindi dictionary weighing nearly 10 lbs. out of the window ASAP.

Shortcut tip: when searching on the Google search page, use the syntax “define: search term“. For eg. “define:conundrum”

Also, we have reports arriving telling us about a Firefox Add-on which adds the option Define “

” as an option on the right click menu options. Reduces Google Dictionary to being just one click away, doesn’t it?!!

I have seen extensive reviews of it over the past few days on
Texhnixupdate ,
GSM Arena ,
NKJLive ,
TechCrunch and
The Next Web among others.

I see this as an example of my pizza with all the possible toppings on top ever invented in the world, on top of it. I guess this leaves the competition faaar behind with all the features. The new innovation by google gets thumbs up from me. What’s your take?

Aaaah.. don’t miss the official Google copyright and link towards the end of the page, when you check out Google Dictionary here.

Managing Intellectual Properties

Nitin Jain — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 22:24:45 +0000

hmmmmm.. Interesting!! Tell me honestly, have you ever thought of this aspect?

A very warm Hi to all the readers of my blogs here. I am expected to move in as a Business Analyst for an upcoming opportunity in NY State shortly. As a normal practice, I sat with the existing Technical/ non-Techie people of the team today trying to understand the application. Mark my words, it’s a complex maze of views, screens, integrations, lots of known / hitherto unknown IDs, and definitely, very colourful. I am sure it must be as per the client requests and a baby of the pretty abused term, the “Agile Methodology”!!

All in all, the application seemed very interesting. A thought struck my mind when going through this magnificent piece of art. I could see so many non-vanilla features in the application that I got thinking, “hey, are we tracking these anywhere?”. My point is, any application successfully going live (;-)), has an entire hive of people breaking their heads over it. The requirement could be as absurd as, hey, we don’t like the colour of the default application. Can you just make it just a little more greenish towards the top right?!! Don’t get me wrong, some really interesting and useful ones too!!

There are a lot of people working all through the chain, the developer’s slogging it out and making it technically possible in the end, the solution designers coming out with innovative solutions, the Business Analysts painting all kinds of rosy pictures to grab more and more business, totally unmindful of the poor people behind him when he is making wild commitments, or the business himself, who doesn’t really understand the technicality, but demands just out of intuition and his expected ROIs. Everyone is adding value to the entire process somehow at each step, one way or the other. In the process, they are coming out with some really nice features in the application which could be added as resouces in a separate repository, and pulled out to benefit the next implementation (yeah, I know. This is the shoddiest part of all. After all, this is the part which doesn’t add revenues in the short term to the company’s bottomline!!).

Well, if it is really innovative, and you really follow it up to lodge patents or something similar, you have actually created an Intellectual Property for the organization on the whole. So many of such innovations and IPs come forward everyday in an IT savvy organization. My question is, do you track them? How? What help do you take from IT for IT related IPs?

I understand that GAAP still doesn’t recognize them as Assets in Advanced Accounting, but all the same, the Reported and Actual Accounts are always differentiated.

A simple Googling brought up so many options for Software Solutions to manage these,
IP Menu
Decipher
Mindmatters
Protecode
Anaqua

In fact, a new term, IAM, or the Intellectual Assets Management has been coined for a broader coverage. I guess this is enough food for thought for the day. I will follow this up with my closing comments on what I feel of the entire subject.

Meanwhile, do feel free to put in your thoughts if there is anything you do in your workplace to build up such resources.

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..

CRUD

Nitin Jain — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 08:27:58 +0000

No, I am not referring to the Billiards game here. While browsing the Internet, I keep coming across a plethora of new technical terms everyday.

One such term I came across recently is ‘CRUD’. If you already know what it is, this post is not for you!!

For those who don’t, CRUD is a general terminology for Create, Read, Update and Delete.

These are some of the typical operations that one performs on a set of data in a Database or any other Persistent Storage.
Creation refers to creation of new records in the Database, typically the Database Insert Operation.
Read is the reading of the records from the Database. Typically the view operations.
Update would be the usual updation of some particular data in some existing records.
Delete would mean the data is no longer available in the Database. Better be careful here!!

Question: How is this relevant to Siebel or CRM which is the current theme on GeeksBlogging@dotCOM?

Answer: Lots!
We work with CRM systems all the time. Now, that means creation of huge chunks of data. If this is an indication, Siebel CRM system houses 4500 tables in its Database! Just imagine the kind of data that would be there in the system. I recall coming across the 50-100 GB Database sizes quite frequently.

With so much of data flowing around, all the operations on every record are equally important. A small goof-up could easily mess up thousands of records, just to start with, in a very small span of time.

[Update] I also came across an interesting differentiation from Graham. Let’s talk about VBCs and EBCs in Siebel. Following is the text from Graham himself:
“.. As long as the data is only being used to read then an EBC on a view will be a good solution, it has a “short” path to the database and so will give a good level of performance. However, updating or creating records through this route will not be supported by Oracle.

If a full CRUD solution is needed then you’ll be forced into the VBC route, as you then have the control (within script or any other technology you use to implement the background logic) in order to implemented your business rules and logic so that the database integrity is maintained.

This technical solution needs backed up by a careful functional analysis though. Why do the two BCs need combined? How will updates be handled? What are the relationships? Often exploring these sort of questions uncovers that a carefuyl structuring of the view and the applets within it are all that are really needed to solve the business requirement; remember that by creating an EBC or VBC to meet the requirement you are implying an ongoing maintenance cost for the life of the implementation, an operational cost that the business will not necessarily have considered when they wrote the requirement!
.. ”

Following alternative definitions for CRUD are available on Wikipedia:
ABCD: add, browse, change, delete
ACID: add, change, inquire, delete — though this can be confused with the transactional use of the acronym ACID.
BREAD: browse, read, edit, add, delete
VADE(R): view, add, delete, edit (and restore, for systems supporting transaction processing)
QDIM: query, delete, insert, modify
SAID: show, alter, insert, delete
VEDAS: view, edit, delete, add, search
SCUD: select, create, update, delete

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.

Google Mobile blurring boundaries?

Nitin Jain — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 21:24:28 +0000

I always used to think, are the mobile phones with their teeny weeny power, ever going to match the mammoth options I have with my Desktop. I, personally, am not even all that big a fan of Laptops despite so many people touting the umptieth number of benefits of Laptops over Desktops. I just can’t get over the humongous power of my Desktop over even the Best lappy available in the market.

Considering mobile phones, yeah even in this age, I consider them more to be important for making and receiving calls. At times, some text messages. To me, all others look fancy add-ons.

All this seems to be changing, and changing quite fast. Needless to say, Google is turning out to be the pioneer here, once again. Google search has been available on the mobile phone for quite some time now. Google has now gone one step ahead and introduced some advanced Search Options on its mobile version too! In the process, Google has just brought the mobile version closer to the Desktop search.

Most notable are the additional searching options such as
Choosing the timeframe for search results
Dedicated searches for forums and reviews
The amount of images to be displayed

Come on now, the Desktop offers sooo many more options. Yet, well begun is half done! Great work so far, Google!

The painful part is that these new options are currently available only on a limited set of smartphones – running of Android OS, WebOS and our very own, Apple iPhone. Yet, the support for other mobile Operating Systems, including Windows Mobile, Symbian and Blackberry may not be too far away.

The existing Android users are anyways in for a party. The Google 1.6 Donut upgrade introduces Quick Search Box (QSB). This practically combines phone search tool with a Google Search Box. The QSB lets its users search on a wide range of data like the content on your phone and content from the web without ever opening the Web Browser.

Voice Searches and Voice Dialling may be enabled. Another limitation that came into picture was English as the only search option. If it is not all that important to Google, how does Google Desktop search occurs in so many languages around the world?

Let’s see what is next, that Google churns out. We will keep you posted.