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Oracle Fusion Applications price list

Nitin Jain — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 16:20:21 +0000

Is Oracle Fusion Apps now generally available ?

Well, with all the talk coming out of Oracle stable for all these months, even if it IS generally available, it may not make for a good business case for all businesses to jump for it right away.

Oracle has made available different components of the Fusion Apps stack in a piecemeal fashion. Click here to access the complete Price List released on 1 June, 2011.

To access all our articles on Oracle Fusion Apps Click Here

For regular updates on Oracle Fusion Applications, join our Linkedin group here -
LINKEDIN : Oracle Fusion Stack – CRM, ERP, Middleware, SOA, AIA, Integration

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Research to Development – Fusion Apps Series

Nitin Jain — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 08:40:26 +0000

This post follows our last post about the UI Experience enhancement in the Fusion App Series. Development of any new, ground-breaking product requires a lot of hard work, and never ending pain-staking effort.

Fusion Applications Stack has been a product which Oracle claims it has built right from the ground up. Though they have leveraged the good business principles of the various products, technically it has been built from scratch. Let’s investigate each of the inputs one by one.

Do we know what all has actually gone into creating this so-called, a wonderful, revolutionary, and ground-breaking product from Oracle ?

Let’s investigate the process that Oracle has followed and the results that they have been focussing on during the development cycle of Oracle Fusion Apps.

The product Oracle Fusion Apps has been made with the “customer” in mind (now that’s a refreshing change! What was kept in mind when developing other products ?? ). Quite obviously, if it’s a customer-centric product, the first thing that would be needed is a very strong interaction with the Customer. Oracle representatives have been doing that very well, by making a large number of visits to the customers who were involved deeply in the Oracle Fusion Apps development from the very beginning.

You would want to interact with the customers more and more when coming out with this type of product. It is said 1,350 usability participants from 20 different industries were considered.

Lulit Bezuayehu, a Principal Usability Engineer with the Oracle Applications UX team who worked on Fusion HCM features says, “We created user profiles based on the site visits that we conducted, and then developed roles to really understand what roles are involved in what activities. During the site visits, we would just sit at the end user’s desk and watch, seeing all the shortcuts and tips and tricks that they’ve come up with to overcome usability issues. We took copies of cheat-sheets and uncovered pain points. It was really interesting and very, very valuable.”

During Customer visits, Oracle formed “Focus Groups” to focus on specific parts of the application to ensure the best solutions, bit by bit, and then integrating them all together.

These visits would make use of personal interviews, feedback sessions, surveys and polls from amongst the candiates to arrive at the best possible solution for the new product. UI, for example, would have a very strong focus on usability.

Another one of the techniques used widely in this research by Oracle was the “eye tracking research”. Typically, the screen we look at is a rectangular object on a computer, or a hand held device. However, we as humans don’t focus on the complete screen all the same. There is a higher focus, for example, towards the left of the screen where we start reading a statement from (We read English from Left to right). Also, we may be inclined to think that there would be a higher focus around the top of the screen, than to the lower portions for the same reasons.

The response to such diligent research has been positive, Bezuayehu said. “In almost every feedback session we’ve done since then with prototypes, customers say, ‘Oh wow, I can’t wait to get my hands on this.’ They’re very eager to actually use the product.”

All said and done, the real litmus test is going to be when the product becomes generally available to the organizations globally, and their real world feedback of them. Ahoy Oracle, better get your Customer Feedback Management systems / software up and working well before that.

To whatever I have leant and seen so far, UI is the only interesting part. Rest just looks like old wine in a new bottle. Only time will tell whether it’s yet another marketing gimmick, or Oracle really has an Ace up its sleeve this time around.

To access all our articles on Oracle Fusion Apps Click Here

For regular updates on Oracle Fusion Applications, join our Linkedin group here -
LINKEDIN : Oracle Fusion Stack – CRM, ERP, Middleware, SOA, AIA, Integration

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“Managing Oracle Fusion Applications”

Nitin Jain — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 14:31:27 +0000

This is significant news. Even though Oracle’s Fusion Applications is not even generally available yet, there is a new book that has recently been launched that left me foxed. In fact, I looked at the title again to verify that it actually meant the *new* breed of Oracle Fusion Applications being launched by Oracle, and currently available only under Controlled Access.

Read our recent coverages on Oracle Fusion Apps..
ORACLE FUSION APPLICATIONS’ UNIQUE DESIGN PRINCIPLES
LET’S UPGRADE SIEBEL CRM TO FUSION APPS “RIGHT NOW” !!
INSIDE ORACLE FUSION APPS : CRM PERSPECTIVE

It seems, it was all true. Richard Bingham from Oracle has authored a new book, “Managing Oracle Fusion Applications”, through the Oracle Press.

Fusion Apps Cover page

The book is said to explain, how to use a wide range of Tools, Services and Best practices to manage Oracle Fusion Applications, the so-called next generation Enterprise Applications.

Richard Bingham, is probably a member of the Oracle team designing the support strategy for Oracle Fusion Applications, and that is how he has the inside information on Oracle Fusion Apps architecture, and how to design a Support Strategy around it !

The book claims to show readers how to achieve application uptime, improved performance, and the lower TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) through the effective system management principles outlined in the book.

The book is said to include both the product and technical overviews for Oracle Fusion applications, and also a wide range of toolboxes focussing on reliability, availability and more.

It’s a 352 page book which helps -

Understand the components and architecture of Oracle Fusion Applications

Plan, develop, and implement an effective application management plan

Resolve reliability issues with Oracle Enterprise Manager

Configure and deploy applications from the Oracle WebLogic Server Administration Console

Adjust run-time parameters using Java Management Extensions and MBeans

Generate and distribute reports using Oracle Business Intelligence 11g

Establish solid user authentication, access control, and data protection policies

Work with Oracle Fusion Governance, Risk, and Compliance Intelligence

The Table of Contents in the book are -
  Chapter 1. A Fusion Applications Product Overview
  Chapter 2. A Fusion Applications Technical Overview
  Chapter 3. Successful Enterprise Application Management
  Chapter 4. The Fusion Applications Lifecycle
  Chapter 5. A Fusion Applications Management Toolbox
  Chapter 6. A Reliability Management Toolbox
  Chapter 7. The Availability Management Toolbox
  Chapter 8. A Performance Management Toolbox
  Chapter 9. An Optimization Management Toolbox
  Chapter 10. A Governance Management Toolbox
  Chapter 11. Getting and Staying Healthy
  Chapter 12. Planning for the Future
  Appendix A. Further Reading and References
  Index

To download the complete Table of Contents (TOC) PDF, click here.

Don’t ignore Chapter-1. With our limited knowledge of the Fusion Apps, being outside the Oracle’s round buildings, it could be very insightful.
To download a sample chapter (Chapter 1) of the book, click here.

Following are the prices, and the links for the book, currently available through major online book retailers -

Cisco Press $50

Amazon $31.50

B&N $31.18

Infibeam ~$42 (1892 INR)

Richard can be found on Twitter, and Linkedin as well.

psst.. if you have tolerated me this far, you are in for a bonus!
I found a link where you can get the legit copy of the above book for just $25. It seems the Oracle employees are being offered a flat 50% off on the book directly by Oracle Press making it by far the most inexpensive option around. Click here to access the discounted order page. Alternatively, you can also use the promo code, “opress” on the Oracle Press book buy page.

Just thinking about it, are you still looking around for crm gratis tools to help you manage your applications ?
This doesn’t quite seem to be the case. The book focusses on high quality, high availability, high *cost* applications to bail you out.

Here’s the link to get all your Oracle Press titles at 50% instant discount.

Happy reading !!

For regular updates on Oracle Fusion Applications, join our Linkedin group here -
LINKEDIN : Oracle Fusion Stack – CRM, ERP, Middleware, SOA, AIA, Integration

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Nitin Jain — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 18:41:37 +0000

Great news guys. The wait is over. Oracle’s first versions of Fusion Applications is now available for use by its customers. It’s being called “Oracle Fusion Applications 11g R1 (11.1.1.5.0)”.

Some of our previous coverages on Oracle Fusion Apps include -
ORACLE FUSION APPLICATIONS’ UNIQUE DESIGN PRINCIPLES
INSIDE ORACLE FUSION APPS : CRM PERSPECTIVE

From the reports coming our way, the Oracle Fusion Apps is now available and easily accessible over the Oracle eDelivery network. It’s a mammoth 40 GB download, split into 11 parts. It is recommended for you to use a good Download manager to manage broken downloads, else, the complete download can be a real pain!

We understand that though it’s available for download, not everybody can download, install and start playing with it. It has actually been made available in a pretty restricted mode, in select geographies, and to a set of existing customers who are willing to experiment with it.

The customers are expected to reach out to their Oracle Sales reps in case they are interested.

Okay, I hit the download button on eDelivery Network, and it started downloading right away. So, that part is solved. Confirmed that the download is not restricted. But, I still wonder, where am I expected to get the license keys from ?

I tried reaching out on the Oracle License Codes website, and noticed that the website has not yet been updated with the License Codes for Oracle Fusion Apps. This further substantiates the claim that Oracle Fusion Apps is not for the general developer or Customer out there. It’s only been made available through their partners. Cognizant has been a major Oracle partner in the Oracle Fusion Apps, CRM Space.

Another thing I noticed is that with the Oracle’s famous “Unbreakable LINUX” push, the release is available only for the Linux platform, both 32 and 64 bit flavors.

The credit for breaking the news goes to Floyd Teter. To the best of our knowledge so far, he was the first one to break the news on eDelivery Fusion Apps downloads!

Alex has done a very good coverage on Oracle Fusion Apps on his blog, here.

Detailed comments by the UKOUG chairman Debra Lilley, are available on Computer World here.

Do share your comments and views on the new Oracle Products through the comments below.

For regular updates on Oracle Fusion Applications, join our Linkedin group here -
LINKEDIN : Oracle Fusion Stack – CRM, ERP, Middleware, SOA, AIA, Integration

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Free Oracle Summer Camps ADF, BPM & WebCenter – Portugal

Nitin Jain — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 12:31:44 +0000

Off late, Oracle has been offering some really good training courses to get the Developer community going. The higher level Oracle partners have always had an unfair advantage.

Another such extensive workshop is now being organized for the Oracle Partners for advanced tracks of -
- Business Process Management (BPM)
- Application Development Framework (ADF)
- WebCenter

All these sessions will take place at the Product Management HQ between June 20th until June 24th 2011, in Lisbon – Portugal.

There are a couple of really good things Oracle has done this time.
I noticed time and again when I attended these sessions, that people would register in bulk, and then fail to turn up on the day of the training.

One, Oracle has limited the participation to 2 participants per organization. So, make sure you are from the first 2 to grab those seats from your company!

Also, although the training is being conducted free of cost to the partners, there is a steep cancellation fee of 2.000 EUR, ouch!!

All in all, you better be serious when you are applying for this one. I am still not sure though as to how Oracle plans to recover the dues from defaulters in this case..

Third, Oracle has also put up some very strict skill requirements. If you are NOT hands-on with these products, these *advanced* tracks are not the ones for you. Oracle says, don’t apply, we’ll send you home!

Here are the training, and the registration details for these 3 courses -
- BPM Advanced Track
- ADF Advanced Track
- Webcenter Advanced Track

Well, it’s always good to hone our skills. They would obviously help us perform better in our current Job, or the next Job, or maybe just find a better Job in these tough times!

More about the Insider’s view of Oracle Fusion Middleware presentation by Oracle – Cognizant coming up after the break.

Cheers..

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Inside Oracle Fusion Apps : CRM perspective

Nitin Jain — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 12:50:41 +0000

Okay, now this is bigg news. We all know about the Oracle Fusion Applications coming up, and how it is almost dreaded to eat up our jobs, viz. jobs for the technologies as we know them today.

One of the major components of the to-be-released Oracle Applications stack is the Customer Relationship Management or the CRM part.

Oracle has been building this component with a strong support, and partnership with Cognizant, or so it appears. At the time of my writing this, there is a huge event that Oracle is organizing on 1st June, 2011, at 10 AM PDT where we are due to get the first insight into this new software.

As Oracle claims, you can get the *insider’s* point-of-view on Oracle Fusion Apps and the business drivers behind it. Oracle says, the Oracle Fusion CRM component will set a new standard for CRMs today in sales performance management, enterprise integration, sales force automate, planning and business flexibility. Just has me asking, are you telling me that your current offerings are not upto the mark with the competition ?

Rest is more of Cognizant brouhaha over how many implementations it has done, or the number of man-hours of Siebel CRM experience that CTS has. Big deal. My question, how many of the consultants who worked on the CRM implementations, are still with CTS ??
In our ever dynamic IT Industry where *qualified* CRM consultants are one of the hottest commodities around, churning and the manpower turnover ratios are pretty high for nearly all the outsourcing players.

Of course, US and Europe would rather keep it simple. Just hire as-needed on contracts !

On a serious note, I would say all of us should be attending this webinar, maybe because for many of us, our daily bread depends on Oracle corp, and it would be good to know what’s coming my way.

The proposed agenda and takeaways from the event are -

Developing your Oracle roadmap and strategies to protect existing investments

Maximize revenue potential and achieve better sales performance management

Gaining a single view of your customer and harness the technical complexities of disparate systems

Some of speakers lined up for the event include -
Folia Grace, the Vice President of applications marketing for Oracle ERP and BI applications
As we know, Oracle Fusion HCM component peek-a-boo has already been offered by Oracle before. Folia has been related very closely to HCM development. Grace is helping to define and drive the market strategy for Oracle Human Capital Management, Financial Management, Project Management, Corporate Performance Management and BI Applications.

Philip Philippides is a Director and Practice Leader in Cognizant’s Customer Solution Practice
e began his career in high technology sales with over 13 years of successful sales and sales leadership. For the past 11 years has been focused on Sales Force Effectiveness strategy and process as well as Sales Force Automation (SFA) technology enablement. He has led dozens of lifecycle SFA implementations, as well as numerous customer strategy, customer experience, and sales effectiveness engagements.

Timothy Blank is a Director and Western Region Practice Leader responsible for: all Oracle CRM related business development activities, on-shore client facing delivery activities (focusing on oversight and quality assurance), personnel development, and thought leadership. He is focused on exceeding the year over year regional growth and performance metrics attributed to the organization as a whole by maintaining delivery excellence on all solution delivery opportunities. Tim is based out of Seattle, Washington and has been working with Oracle solutions for over 15 years

That’s all folks. If you may be interested, you can register for the event through the link below -
Oracle Fusion Apps : CRM perspective Registration Link

For regular updates on Oracle Fusion Applications, join our Linkedin group here -
LINKEDIN : Oracle Fusion Stack – CRM, ERP, Middleware, SOA, AIA, Integration

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Oracle Fusion Applications’ Unique Design Principles

Nitin Jain — Mon, 23 May 2011 20:14:21 +0000

Designed from the ground-up using the latest technology advances, Oracle Fusion Applications are 100 percent open-standards-based business applications that set a new standard for the way we innovate, work, and adopt technology. Built on a set of unique design principles, only Oracle Fusion Applications set a new standard for business.

Complete Standards-Based Platform: Reduce Costs and Accelerate Innovation

Reduce staffing overhead and training budgets through a foundation built on commercially available technology standards

Enable IT consolidation and reduce management costs

Accelerate the pace of change and time-to-market for new initiatives

Create unique processes and differentiation

Complete User Experience: A Role-Based Approach to Increasing Productivity

A tailored experience with built-in flexibility to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your organization—from the executive leadership team to front-line workers and customers

Incorporating more than 4,000 hours of customer input and testing involving more than 1,000 businesses and public sector organizations

Embedded business intelligence accelerates the pace and accuracy of business decisions

Integrated collaboration connects teams with the processes in which they participate

Powerful Enterprise 2.0 technologies incorporate unstructured information—such as invoices, product manuals, and business documents—into structured processes for richer experiences and better-informed decisions

Complete Choice: A Flexible Approach to Adoption and Deployment

A complete yet modular approach enables the uptake of Oracle Fusion Applications at your pace and on your timeline

New and value-added applications work with and add significant business value to other Oracle Applications

Flexible deployment options including on-premise, public clouds, private clouds and software as a service (SaaS)

Application and Process Leadership: Best-of-the-Best Combination

Processes based on a best-of-the-best combination of Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle’s PeopleSoft, Primavera, JD Edwards, and Siebel applications

Based on customer input and innovation covering all areas of business and industry requirements

Source – Oracle Fusion Apps Official Website

For regular updates on Oracle Fusion Applications, join our Linkedin group here -
LINKEDIN : Oracle Fusion Stack – CRM, ERP, Middleware, SOA, AIA, Integration

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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..

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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..

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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.

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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..

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Sun + Oracle is faster: Proof October 14

Nitin Jain — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 08:15:59 +0000

Well, here’s the second one in series for all the Oracle enthusiasts out there!

Oracle has pitted October 14, 2009, in Oracle Open World (OOW) as the date where it will demonstrate its muscle. Check out the ad below:

Oracle + SUN: October 14 at OOW the defining date

Just a thought crossing my mind at this very time. Did someone find out how many of SUN’s customers have left SUN, ever since news of Oracle taking over break out?

However, looking at Oracle’s track record of many different acquisitions, Oracle has kept its word so far. So much so, acquisition of SUN is an altogether different ball game than acquiring Siebel or Peoplesoft.

Looks like, it’s going to be an interesting game.

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Oracle v/s IBM: One poster says it all

Nitin Jain — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 18:46:46 +0000

Oracle versus IBM Ad

The poster above was recently released by Oracle. Just one poster says it all, about Oracle’s acquisition of SUN, and Oracle’s plans for SUN !

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Oracle finalizes new Training Partner

admin — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 11:58:47 +0000

Hello,

We reported last week that Oracle has decided to separate with Prometric as its worldwide Training Partner for the Oracle University courses. Beginning September 25, 2009, Oracle University Courses will no longer be offered through Prometric.

Well, from the news reaching us, it seems Oracle has finalized Pearson VUE as the new Training Partner to conduct Certification courses for the Oracle University. Pearson VUE, it seems has made an official announcement on its website on the 1st September, 2009. Oracle has sent out an email to its partners, but, we are not sure if it has been officially announced by Oracle yet.

Pearson VUE has a very wide Authorized Test Center Network of 5000 sites in 165 countries. Through this exclusive partnership, Pearson VUE will now conduct about 120 different Oracle Certification Exams through single registration and scheduling system. September 13 is reportedly the last day of registration of OU Certification exams through Prometric. From 14th September, 2009 onwards, the exams will be registered exclusively through Pearson VUE.

Do log onto the Pearson VUE official web page that they have setup for Oracle Certification courses. Wishing everybody Best of Luck from GeeksBlogging@dotCOM in all endeavours.

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Oracle divorcing Prometric

admin — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 16:58:15 +0000

Whomsoever of us has been through the official Oracle Traning through the coveted Oracle University knows about Prometric. Prometric has long been the official training partner with Oracle for all of the Oracle courses offered through OU. But, this seems to be changing as Oracle sees its partnership with Prometric souring out.

Oracle has announced that starting September 25, 2009, Oracle courses will no longer be offered through Prometric. OU is believed to be already in discussions with a new testing vendor, who would move into Prometric’s shoes. This was let out by Paul Sorenson from Oracle, while the official Oracle announcement is expected shortly. The announcement, amongst others, is expected to include new registration steps for candidates after 25th September, 2009.

However, it seems Oracle still plans to allow candidates to continue using their existing Testing ID issued by Prometric. Also, the unexpired vouchers issued by Prometric are expected to be functional in the new system as well.

As an implication of going in for a new vendor, the Oracle Certification candidates will have to register on a new website, quite obviously. A new Web Account with the new Testing Vendor partner will thus be needed at the time of registration.

Oracle is expected to launch a replacement to the “Hands On Course Requirement Forms” in the form of “Course Submission” system on the new website. Forms already submitted will, however, continue to be processed by OU.
You can email to ocpreq_ww@oracle.com in case you have an outstanding form that needs attention of the Oracle University ASAP.

A 2-3 week delay in shipment of printed certificates is expected while maintenance is underway on Oracle Certification Database.

If you are still anxious about the whole thing, check out Paul Sorenson’s address for some Expected Questions regarding the same.

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Oracle VM Templates for Siebel CRM

Nitin Jain — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 03:05:22 +0000

In a normal case, to set up a Siebel CRM solution on a server, we would first need to separately set up the Server Operating System, Database Server and Siebel CRM. This could be quite a task and could take substantial time and resources. Why not follow the easy way out?

Oracle VM is Oracle’s Virtual Machine offering from Oracle. Virtual Machines in general allow us to set up a completely new Hardware like Software on top of our existing installations such that the new VM can be started or stopped right from within our existing Operating System without affecting any of our existing settings.

Siebel CRM is the leading CRM solution from Oracle. Oracle has recently announced new Oracle VM templates pre-installed with Siebel CRM. This means huge value addition to ISVs and clients alike where the users can just install the Oracle VM (with Siebel) on the existing architecture, and as Oracle claims, to be up and running in lesser than 3 hours!

Oracle VM templates for Siebel comprise completely of the Oracle stack. it contains:
1) Oracle Enterprise Linux – The famous connotation of Unbreakable Linux comes to my mind. Available as a Free Download from Oracle website.
2) Oracle VM – Available free of Cost.
3) Oracle Database Server
4) Oracle’s Siebel CRM

The complete set is downloaded in the form of two separate VM downloads:
1) Oracle Database VM
2) Oracle Siebel CRM VM

Highlights:
1) Full Oracle support – Since the entire stack has been provided by Oracle in this case, it could be a big pain reliever to many organizations.
2) Cost savings – These templates work on Oracle’s Enterprise Linux. The bundle is nicely priced to make a tempting offer.
3) Huge Energy and Space savings – This comes directly from it being a Virtual Machine based solution. Do we need say more?
4) Quick Start – Oracle VM solution will reduce the set up time for any Siebel Installation. We can almost bet that the time cannot be matched by the regular Siebel Installation.
5) I have always been a big fan of sourcing as many softwares from the same vendor, be it Oracle, or be it Microsoft, or SAP for that matter. Interoperability issues are largely avoided with this approach. I like that!
6) Can be integrated in an existing Siebel environment. New instances of Application Modules, Application Servers and Web Servers can be provisioned within minutes.
7) Go Green! Is that not the mantra nowadayz. Virtual machines are always a no-brainer in this regard.

One of the flaws that I noticed with the installations made available were that there was no support for 64-bit Enterprise Linux. Only 32-bit standard Linux was available in this case. I personally feel that should definitely be an option.

The real adoption and corresponding reviews, though, will take some time to come. Till then, let’s wait and watch to see how it shapes up!

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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.

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