Northwest Oracle Users Group

OK, you’re a customer service agent or a sales rep and you need to small talk for a minute or two while your computer is doing its thing. What’s better than a chat about the weather? Click a link and you’ll see if it’s sunny, snowing, or sweltering at the contact’s location. Here's how to do that!

1. Go to the Contact Field Setup page: Admin > Application Customization > Contact > Contact Field Setup

2. Add a new field:

a. For Display Name, enter Weather.
b. For Field Type, select Web Link.

c. On the Contact Fields page, scroll down and click Edit Web Link next to Weather:

a. Go to www.weather.com.

b. Enter a zip code at the top, and click GO. You’ll see the weather page for that zip code.

c. Copy and paste the URL from that page into the URL field in CRM On Demand:
http://www.weather.com/weather/local/19382?lswe=19382&lwsa=WeatherLocalUndeclared&from=searchbox

d. From the URL, delete the text that is specific to your search, which is everything after “local/”, so that it looks like this:
http://www.weather.com/weather/local/

e. Place your cursor at the end of your URL, click the Contact Fields drop-down list, and select Contact Zip/Post Code. This inserts the parameters for the URL, so it should look like this:
http://www.weather.com/weather/local/%%%PERSONAL_LIST_ZIP%%%

f. In the Display Text field, enter How’s the weather?

g. Click Save.

a. Go to Admin > Application Customization > Contact > Contact Page Layout.
b. Click Edit for the appropriate role.
c. Click Step 3, Field Layout, in the Page Layout Wizard.
d. Click Weather in the Available Fields column and then the arrow next to the section where you want the Weather field to appear.
e. Click Finish.

Multiple Prometric IDs. What a pain.

Having exam records under two different Prometric IDs is one of the main causes you might not receive your Oracle certificate - even if you have completed all of the certification requirements.

First of all I should mention that you should always take all Oracle exams under one Prometric ID. This ID is your unique identifier within the Oracle certification program. If you create another ID by accident (or on purpose?) it will mess up your record, history and status in our certification database.

This is an issue at the root of many customer questions that we receive and it fortunately has a simple solution: merge your Prometric Testing IDs. Follow the steps below:

• Go to Prometric's customer service form at http://tinyurl.com/5frnss
• In the e-mail template, choose “Other” in the Subject line.
• In the body of the e-mail message, type "Request: Merge Multiple Prometric IDs for Oracle Certification Customer" and include the following information:
  • full name
  • first Prometric ID
  • second Prometric ID
  • other Prometric IDs (all records will be merged under your original Prometric ID unless you specify otherwise.)
  • the nature of your problem (e.g. missing certificate, etc.)
  • complete mailing address
  • telephone number
  • email address

Follow this procedure and your merged records will be sent tour certification database, helping tkeep our records accurate and avoid delays in getting certified.

Thanks!

QUICK LINKS

• Prometric customer service
  

This week I was invited to join Brenda Hughes from Cisco on next weeks DIDW panel discussing "Lessons learned from Successful Compliance Deployments". My hope is to share some of the insight I obtained from watching (at uncomfortably close quarters, from a vendor perspective) a number of our customers go through the process of deploying identity management to solve some of their main compliance issues. Obviously, compliance has been the big story in IdM the last few years, and most companies still have a long way to go. But the nature of the discussion seems to be changing a bit, as compliance itself is de-mystified. Come by for what is sure to be an interesting conversation.

Also, I will be connecting with a number of folks who are coming out to DIDW, both one-on-one and in some interesting group settings. Matt Flynn has organized a blogger meet, which I look forward to, since my attempt at a Tweetup sort of fell flat. Should be interesting. Again, grab me if you see me at the opening reception or at the demogrounds, or while I am rushing from one session to another, if you want to chat.

Continuing something I started as an experiment at Burton Catalyst, I will be twittering extensively during the conference, sharing what I am hearing, my thoughts and the experiences of DIDW (provided I can snag a power outlet and/or AT&T 3G can avoid going down again). Be sure to follow me at http://www.twitter.com/NishantK if you are interested in my perspective on the proceedings.

The Word from the Web – 09/05/08

With less than three weeks until the start of Oracle OpenWorld, the blogosphere is bursting with great, new information on the show. If you're taking Google's Chrome for a spin, why not check out these posts in your new browser.

The Art of Justification: Attending Oracle OpenWorld 2008
It's not always easy to make the most of a conference. Especially if you're having trouble getting permission to go. One of our favorite bloggers, Mohan Dutt, shares some tips on how to convince the suits in management that the value of Oracle OpenWorld is much greater than the expense.

Still Going
To find information about the largest update of Oracle Coherence ever, catch Cameron Purdy (formerly CEO of Tangosol, now VP of Development at Oracle) at his session at Oracle OpenWorld. If you miss him there, check his blog for some other upcoming appearances.

Portal Related Sessions at Oracle OpenWorld 2008 in San Francisco
Right now Peter Moskovits is up to his neck in Oracle Openworld demos. But somehow he found the time to compile an impressive list of sessions about Portal, Web 2.0, and Enterprise 2.0 technolgies. Check out his blog to see if you can cram all these important sessions into your schedule.

What Is Going on for PHP and Ruby on Rails at Oracle OpenWorld, San Francisco, Sep 21st–25th
Kuassi Mensah, co-author of Oracle Database Programming Using Java and Web Services, is coordinating a handful of PHP and Ruby on Rails sessions and hands-on labs. If you've got time, take a look at the Java/JDBC sessions and hands-on labs he has lined up, too.

Oracle OpenWorld 2008: LIVE Demonstration of Eye Tracking on an iPhone
We don't often toot our own blog horn, but the folks over at the Oracle Usable Apps blog are talking about some very cool technology coming to the DEMOgrounds. Get in on the discussion today, and see the results on the show floor.

Eighty percent of the time users might not need the features of the wizard's third page.  The other twenty percent the third page will come in handy.

Customizations on the page can be as simple as updating the package name of the generated JAR class files to overriding the type hierarchy specified in the XSD (or types node in the WSDL) through binding customizations using XPath expressions.

Below is a screenshot of the 3rd page:

Options on the page get more complex from top to bottom.

If the user decides they don't like the default package naming of the generated classes using the target namespace they can type in a valid package name in the text field next to the Package label.

WSDLs are normally copied into the JAR file for ease of reference during runtime. The user can disable this if needed. If the user types a package location (including the filename) then the wizard will warn the user if the Copy WSDL into Client Jar is not enabled. WSDL Location is optional, though, if Copy WSDL is selected. Then the WSDL should be copied over to the JAR using the original WSDL name.

A neat feature, and possible time saver , is when the user is offline yet the WSDL refers to an online XSD document. Using an XML Catalog file (most typical naming of the catalog is: jax-ws-catalog.xml) the user can override the online URI location by specifying the local path (making sure to have a local copy) to the same schema so the ClientGen wizard can actually create the JAR file.

The XML Catalog entry will be added to the ANT build file when it's run and also added to the JAR file if the user selects Generate Runtime Catalog.

Select Bindings is quite complex for this blog entry (I may add some more detail next week) but if need be, more advanced users can customize the types using XPath expressions where the XML type hierarchy in the schema might not be to their taste.

As was mentioned in the prior post, a user is able to select a local or remote WSDL from which to create the ClientGen JAR.

For most cases a user will select a WSDL from the Project Explorer page, right click on it and invoke Web Services > Web Service Client from ClientGen...

Once the wizard pops the second page is displayed as shown below:

The user has the option to select a service from the top pull down menu. Usually there is only one service node but if there is more than one than the pull down menu will have these other selections too.

There's a default location for the ClientGen JAR file to be placed and most times the Jar File Destination won't be updated unless there are customizations beyond a normal deployment.  WEB-INF/lib is the most standard location for the JAR to be placed and used by other files.

Since the ClientGen wizard wraps itself around the WLS clientgen ANT task we provide the user with ability to save the ANT file for further customizations or if need be - the ability to run the build file on the command line. By default the Execute Ant checkbox is enabled and either it or the Keep generated Ant Script has to be enabled for the wizard to run.

If the user doesn't require more advanced customizations than she can click the Finish button and the JAR file should be created.

I'll write about the more advanced customizations for the 3rd page of the wizard in the next post.

There are two approaches to consider for data integration: ELT and ETL (see the blog on Don't Push ELT Around for some of the benefits of the ELT approach. There are also some interesting benefits beyond simply the performance benefits resulting from a localized transformation.

For example, ELT also provides the best possible SQL code generated on any given machine. Since this SQL is localized for the environment where they run, they can be optimized, streamlined, and maintained in their native environments. The ELT approach will generate native SQL for the underlying databases and optimize the code for these databases. There is no translation from pseudo-code into SQL. No generic SQL is required.

On the contrary, the E-T-L approach generates SQL code which is a translation of proprietary code into SQL. This approach will have many limitations: not all transformation functions can be properly translated (the SQL logic would be so different that the entire workflow would have to be re-designed); because the transformations are translated, the resulting code tends to be “all or nothing”. For instance, an ELT can generate code on any system, source and or target, to take advantage of the specifics of the different technologies available. A typical ETL engine will only allow for one of the systems to be used.
The next challenge will be the level of control on the generated code. Because ETL tools will translate from their internal code into SQL, they cannot easily allow for the customization of the generated code (they have to give you the option of going back to a transformation in the engine: doing so with customized SQL code becomes problematic). With an ELT logic, the developers have total control over the SQL code that is generated, and can modify it as needed from within their graphical interfaces to make sure that the generated code is the best possible code for any given platform.

Isn’t it frustrating when you are nearly done with your integration project, just to realize that your data integration strategy is… well, not the best one you could have chosen? You now to revise potentially thousands of mappings, just when you are about to deliver your integration processes. The changes could be in the nature of how you process inserts an updates (this can have dramatic performance implications). Or a last minute modification in the integration requirements regarding errors processing, auditing of the changes applied to the data. The impact of these changes is dramatic on the existing developments, and their implementation is crucial from a business perspective. As most Data Integration products do not offer solutions that help with these types of massive changes, the implementation costs go skyrocket just when you thought you knew what the real cost was.

The Declarative Design approach offers a new paradigm that will make the definition of the data integration strategy flexible enough so that the 13th hour changes will only last minutes versus days. Data Integration processes are made of 3 major elements: data movement, data transformations and data quality. The data movement itself is made of two elements: the transport of the data from source to target, and the integration of the data itself in the target system: inserts, updates, creation of history for older records in the target systems (often referred to as Slowly Changing Dimension), etc. Declarative Design will separate the definition of the transformations from that of the transport and integration. Data Quality rules will also be defined separately. At execution time all components will be combined. But from a maintenance perspective, they can be handled separately.

The transformations themselves are fairly specific, and are usually defined at a column level. Of course, some transformation logic may be found in multiple places, but all mature tools will offer some abstraction layer to centralize the definition of these transformations and make them re-usable throughout the code. But generally speaking, we can consider that the data transformation required to build the information in the target system is defined one column at a time.

At a higher level, data quality rules can usually be defined at a table level, whether they are referential integrity rules or constraints on values or ranges of values. Even complex formulas can be applied at this level. What is important at this level is that all data that is loaded to any given table goes through the same validation logic.

The transport and integration strategies on the other end are quite common to all processes. There will be similarities in how you extract from the source systems and how you load data in the target system. If we consider 200 source tables that are loaded into 150 target tables (with all necessary lookup tables and transformations), the way we do the physical extraction from the source system will probably be the same for all 200 source tables, and the way we will integrate the data into the target tables will probably be the same for all 150 tables, maybe with 2 or 3 variations. Now let us assume that all we have to worry about is two extraction methods and three integration strategies: no matter how many more tables we add on our source and target systems, we would still have this same number of components. Furthermore, if we decide later in our project to modify either the way we extract data or the way we perform our integration, we only have a handful of components to revisit. Not all of the existing mappings. Tools that do not offer this segregation between transformation and data transfer will force you into re-visiting every single step of every single transformation, just to make sure that you have not overseen an option somewhere…

Using Declarative Design we can now build integration templates that pre-define how the integration will be performed. These templates (Knowledge Modules in ODI) will give you this integration flexibility, but will also bring a lot more to your developments. Now that the integration itself is pre-defined, you have the guaranty that all developers will use the integration best practices that you have defined. You will not have to deal with multiple implementations for the same integration logic. You can also task your most advanced developers with the definition of these integration strategies, and have all other developers not worry about this for a bit – and simply focus on the transformations themselves.

The net result will be better code generation overall and more agility for your developments and your maintenance.

More multi-modal goodness, this is an example of voice picking in a warehousing environment. Here a check digit is used to attach location to the item picked for inventory reconciliation later on or in Oracle's case real-time into the Warehouse Management application. There is a similar solution using voice-insight available from Oracle. You can find the demo and booth at Open World, the booth id#: 218 Moscone South.

In much the same way, the voice solution from Oracle partners also has voice directed picking and it is embedded on the Oracle Mobile Supply Chain Application - this can be either a mobile java (andriod like) or a terminal emulators for example the LXE MC7 or the Motorola MC9000 among others.

Go ahead and see the amazing capabilities of this multi-modal platform which allows you to speech enable your applications on the same mobile device & platform that runs your mobile applications!

We may even have an RFID enabled voice transaction for you which can be achieved through the mobile personalization capability in Mobile Applications - if there is interest, so is anyone interested in seeing an RFID/Speech demo on a multi-modal platform?

For inquiries email me at: daio.syngkon@oracle.com

A recent posting by Lucas Jellema in his AMIS Technology blog covers some of the value that the Oracle Enterprise Repository (OER) brings to SOA Governance solutions and how vendors like BEA and Oracle have evolved their governance positioning.  Toward the end of his blog, Lucas points out that OER could very well be used for managing assets that may not fall under the SOA domain. 

It struck me that most of what applies in terms of Governance to SOA assets, also applies to other assets in any software engineering process. Trying to manage reusable components for example or even implementing a good maintenance approach for a non-SOA application is a tremendous challenge, that has many parallels with SOA Governance. And to some extent could benefit from applying a tooling infrastructure such as provided by the Enterprise Repository…

One of the big challenges that SOA has tried to overcome for years is equating SOA to web services.  In the past, governing SOA assets has been about gaining visibility and control over reusable assets to establish the notion of trust amongst consuming applications. As Lucas points out, reuse cannot occur without trust that the service you are reusing won't negatively impact your application. 

Oracle believes that if you want to properly govern your SOA, you need visibility and control over the end-to-end spectrum of assets your SOA is interacting with.  Afterall, SOA Governance is an extension to existing IT governance and enterprise architecture governance, so why shouldn't the same apply to the assets?

OER provides the capability to gain visibility into and track relationships of all the assets that effect your SOA.  Services must interface with something on the backend, so you need visibility into what those underlying components are, whether they be legacy mainframe artifacts, underlying applications, custom code, etc.  You also need visibility going up the stack, including the consumers that are utilizing those services, what policies apply, etc.  Having this end-to-end visibility gives you greater ability to manage change more accurately.  Afterall, change doesn't just happen at the service level.  If an underlying application component changes, you need to know how it will impact everything all the way up to the consuming process of a service interfacing that application component. 

Lucas is correct.  As a side effect of providing this capability, you can expand the role of OER beyond just SOA Governance related issues. The same capabilities and benefits that are provided for SOA related projects can also be applied on non-SOA related projects.  That is one way in which Oracle provides support for you to truly treat SOA Governance as an extension to your existing IT and EA governance programs. 

Read Lucas's entire post: http://technology.amis.nl/blog/?p=3369

A posting in Joe McKendrick's SOA in Action blog, and subsequently covered by my colleague Bob Rhubart, quotes Forrester's Larry Fulton about taking an iterative approach to SOA Governance, much the same way SOA projects have been approached.  Specifically, the blog quotes Larry as saying

The big pitfall to avoid is building out a lot more governance than you need given where you are in your SOA journey.

One of the most common challenges to SOA Governance success is adoption of the governance process.  Taking a big bang approach will undoubtedly lead to low adoption, as you tend to put too many control mechanisms on a culture not quite ready to accept them. 

Larry is correct, an iterative approach to governance is the right way to go.  Start with your most immediate concern and grow from there.  As your SOA expands, new challenges and circumstances will present themselves, so your governance program needs to evolve as your SOA evolves.  As one customer I recently spoke to put it, a key to governance success is knowing ahead of time that you're going to have to reinvent your governance program as your understanding and maturity of SOA progresses.  Don't let one evolve without the other.

One word of caution about this though.  Don't be too tactical.  You want to address your immediate concerns, but not without an understanding of the longer term goals and objectives.  Doing so will help ensure your governance program can evolve with your SOA. 

Read Joe's entire post: ebizQ Presents Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) in Action Virtual Conference Blog

The following wordles were created by copying the full text of each person's convention speech into wordle. They all have the same layout but different color schemes. The concept clouds that emerge are interesting. What is YOUR analysis of the clouds? Comment away!

McCain:

Obama:

Palin:

Biden:

Performance has everything to do with passion, motivation, dedication, skills, teamwork. Performance is about People. Management is all about control, procedures, guidelines and regulations. Management is about processes and systems. In other words, Performance comes from Venus, and Management from Mars.

Seen this way, ‘performance management’ is a bit of a contradiction in terms. I have been exploring this idea for the last three years, and many of the posts in this blog have been inspired by this journey. And this journey has had a deliverable that I am very proud of…

TODAY, September 5, my book called “Performance Leadership” has come out. It is published by McGraw-Hill and it will be available world-wide.

Often, people start to behave strangely when confronted with performance indicators, management reports and targets. They sit back after the target is made, and push things to the next year, or start spending excess budget as much as they can. Management sometimes spend more time explaining why certain numbers are not right, instead of trying to increase sales. And people have endless creative ways of playing the numbers.

This goes for people and their behaviors within the organization, but also for organizations in relation to their environment, their stakeholders.

What would happen if we apply lessons in the field of personal development to performance management? Stephen Covey (Seven Habits of Highly Effective People) teaches us that people should ideally develop on four dimensions. The physical dimension is needed to stay healthy, and have energy for the other dimensions. The mental dimension helps us get ahead: where are we now, where do we want to be, how do we get there? The social and emotional dimension helps to develop ourselves as balanced people who are an asset to their environment. The spiritual dimensions, lastly, helps us to think about what we stand for, or in other words, what we want to be remembered for.

How does that translate to performance management? The physical dimension is comparable to managing day-to-day operation. These must be efficient, so that there can be the appropriate management attention for improvement and innovation. The mental dimension nicely dovetails with strategy, asking yourself the same question: where are you now, where do you want to be, how will you get there? But that is where performance management usually stops, it’s all we ask ourselves. And as organizations are living organisms, according to the Covey-parallel, we leave half on the table.

How do we manage the social dimension of the organization? How do we make sure that the value we add, is not substracted somewhere else? Are we really running a transparent and responsible business? At first glance, talk about the spiritual dimension seems far-fetched, but it isn’t. Every organization has core values, has a certain culture, attrachts certain people and has a certain image. This describes what the organization stands for, which has a huge impact on the bottom line.

Do you want to know more? Check out www.performance-leadership-book.com. You can subscribe to the mailing list, order the book, read the ‘lost chapters’ and leave comments.

Can’t wait to hear your feedback…

These are my top 10 best sessions focused on Data Integration. You can download a nicer PDF of this on our Oracle Open World registration page. Looking forward to seeing you there!

Monday

5:30 p.m. Data Integration Advanced Use Cases
Marriott, Salon 06

Tuesday

9:00 a.m. Data Modeling Techniques Using Oracle Business Intelligence Server
Moscone West, Rm 3008

1:00 p.m. Raiffeisen Bank: Achieve Rapid Migration of ETL for Better Data Warehousing
Moscone West, Rm 3022

2:30 p.m - 4:30 p.m. - Keynote with Thomas Kurian, Your Information@Work, This one is not to be missed!

Wednesday

1:00 p.m. Data Services from Oracle Fusion Middleware
Marriott, Salon 07

2:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m - Keynote with Mark Hurd and Larry Ellison - Another must see!

Thursday

9:00 a.m. Oracle Data Integrator Customer Panel
Marriott Golden Gate C3

10:30 a.m. Oracle Data Integrator: A Key Element of Enterprise Performance Management
Moscone West, Rm 3022

12:00 p.m Better Information Through MDM; a Foundation for Data Warehouses and BIMoscone West, Rm 2024

1:30 p.m. Oracle Business Intelligence Strategy for the Data Warehouse-Enabled Enterprise
Marriott, Salon 09

... Look for many of us at the Oracle Data Integration the Demo Pod: A49

... happened on the way to the forum. For the uninitiated, Frankie Howerd was a fabulous British comedian from my youth, fantastically camp and ever so slightly 'saucy' - "Oooh nooo missus". I can't think of an American comedian that even comes close?

Now things seemed to have calmed down on the Oracle Forums with respect to performance I think its safe to talk about the new version of the Publisher forum. We have a very active forum, not one of the top guns like SQL or the database but the top BI related

Maybe not in number of threads, Disco still holds that crown but in sheer number of views we have steamed ahead. So it appears folks are at least finding the forum whether directly or through their favorite search engine. I can not say whether the quality of the answers is good enough for folks but that brings me to another talking point.

I have had a couple of mails asking why folks have been demoted to 'noob' status on the forum. The forum is no longer rewarding folks for the volume of posts but now there is a reward scheme for the quality of the posts.

If you ask a question and someone answers it you can award them points, 10 for a perfect answer, 5 for a 'helpful' one. So, if someone has taken the time to look at your question, go and look up the solution or share some of their knowledge please reward them with some points. We are certainly not a forum of newbies so don't be put off by everyone's status.

There are now a core bunch of helpful folks out there contributing to the forum. Im very appreciative, its making my life easier to login of a morning and seeing that Vetsrini, SteveCallan, M14, rwillems and others have jumped into the fray and have bashed out answers to questions. Sorry, if I missed any other regulars, I know I have.




The other new thang is the new message editor, no more pain writing HTML that you could not easily re-edit of you made a mistake, there is now a rich text editor. You can even add emoticons to your post, if you are so inclined?!?

Sadly the only thing lacking, that would really help our forum is the ability to upload files. If I had a dollar for the number of times I see a question that could be so easily answered more quickly, if I could 'see' the template and data files, I'd have a lot of dollars. I guess that wont be here anytime soon. As a workaround, if you can mount your files somewhere on the web and point to them you are going to get an answer much more quickly!

So, onward dear readers, keep posting questions and please give back by answering when you can and very quickly you'll move out of 'noob' status and into the realm of 'Journeyman' Sorry ladies, this is evidently a man's forum, I guess Journeylady, Journeygal or Journeyperson does not trip off the tongue so well :0(

Having come to Oracle via BEA, I thought it was worth giving an extra bump to OTN capo Justin Kestelyn's very recent post about OTN swag at Oracle OpenWorld, a post that includes details about how BEA customers can get swaggy with it in the OTN Lounge (Moscone West, 3rd floor).

Read: Swag Upgrades at the OTN Lounge, Oracle OpenWorld 2008 Edition (OTN TechBlog)

Writing in his AMIS Technology blog, Lucas Jelema offers his take on the evolution of SOA Governance:

Lucas then provides a nice overview of Oracle Enterprise Repository.  Check it out: The world of SOA Governance according to Oracle - Introducing the Enterprise Repository

Most of what is said about SOA Governance and management of (the life cycle of) services and service related artefacts, really applies to all software components meant to last longer than say three months, especially those we aspire to reuse.