Northwest Oracle Users Group

Oracle's Database Insider newsletter's November edition is now available.

This edition covers upgrading to Oracle Database 11g, Cloud Computing concepts, Data Warehousing, as well as events in your area and much much more.

Have you subscribed?

Regions and dynamic regions are initially refreshed in the ADF Lifecycle prepareModel phase when the binding container of the containing page is refreshed. On subsequent requests, the region or dynamic region will be refreshed during the ADF Lifecycle prepareRender phase depending on its taskFlow binding Refresh and RefreshCondition attributes and parameter values. Task flow definitions associated with dynamic regions are only switched during the ADF Lifecycle prepareRender phase.

For further information on ADF region taskFlow binding Refresh and RefreshCondition attributes, refer to the Fusion Developer’s Guide for ORACLE ADF section 17.1.7 “What You May Need to Know About Refreshing an ADF Region”.

Increase your sales close rates by improving collaboration within your social network with more effective and targeted presentations and messages. Oracle Sales Library is a collection of shared content, which sales persons can rate, tag, comment on, and leverage to build the best presentations for advancing their sales opportunities. The Oracle Sales Library Solution Brief discusses on how to leverage social intelligence to deliver world class presentations.

(Migrated from Rob Woollen's blog on dev2dev with his permission. This entry was originally posted on August 22, 2005 02:40 PM)

Application libraries use the same deployment and distribution machinery as "regular" applications so users are not forced to learn a new set of commands. A library is deployed with either the WebLogic Administration Console, the weblogic.Deployer command-line, the wldeploy ant task, WLST scripting, or the programmatic deployment APIs. Library deployment distributes the files to the target servers and registers itself with the target server's library manager. When an application references a library, the library manager is consulted to ensure the library exists and the correct version is "linked" with the application.

After library deployment, one or more applications may be deployed which reference the library. As was discussed earlier in this series, each referencing application imports its own library copy. The purpose of libraries is to change the packaging of J2EE applications not their semantics.

Libraries may also be undeployed to unregister them and remove their files. Undeploying the library is only possible if there are no deployed applications current referencing it. An attempt to undeploy a library which is still being used will be refused with an error message instructing the user which applications are still referencing it. Versioning Use Cases

The product documentation provides a lot of background on libraries and their versoning support. Instead of duplicating that effort here, I thought I'd cover a few common use cases, and how they can be solved with library versioning along with some examples.

A library may include a standard java manifest file which supplies version information. The product documentation covers this topic in depth, but the main idea is each manifest may optionally include a specification-version and an implementation-version.

An application includes a library with an entry in its weblogic-application.xml. The entry may optionally specify a specification-version and implementation-version. If a version is not specified, the server defaults to using the latest deployed library version. When a version is specified it indicates the app wants that version or later. The exact-match flag indicates that a later version is not acceptable and only the exact specified version will be used.

The rules are relatively straightforward, but some quick examples will probably help. Examples Deployed Libraries

Assume the server currently has 2 versions of the DAO-LIB library deployed:

Name Specification-Version Implementation-Version Abbreviation DAO-LIB 2 3 2/3 DAO-LIB 3 1 3/1

Note for convenvience, I will abbreviate spec-version of x and impl-version of y as (x/y). Application library References

Now consider which library is used when applications are deployed with the following DAO-LIB references:

Name Specification-Version Implementation-Version Exact-Match Which library is used? Why? DAO-LIB Not specified Not specified Not specified 3/1 No spec-version was specified so latest is used. DAO-LIB 2 Not specified Not specified 3/1 App is requesting spec-version >=2. 3/1 is the highest >= 2 DAO-LIB 2 Not specified True 2/3 Exact-Match requires only library with spec-version 2 to match DAO-LIB 4 Not specified Not specified None Deployment fails since no app has spec-version >= 4 DAO-LIB 2 4 Not specified None Deployment fails since no app has impl-version >= 4 Version Recommendations

It is good practice for each library to include a specification-version and implementation-version. Both versions should be decimals or dewey decimals (eg major.minor.patch) rather than arbitray strings (this makes them comparable.) The specification-version should change when any of the interfaces or conventions change incompatability (basically anytime a referencing application would have to change or recompile.) The implementation-version can be a build number.

Most referencing applications should specify a specification-version and exact-match=true but not specify an implementation-version. This allows the admin to use a newer library build with the latest bug fixes without updating all the referencing application EARs. Use Cases

1. Integrating Library Bug Fixes

In this scenario the admin receives a new, compatible version of the library with some bug fixes. The library would have changed its implementation-version but not its specification-version. The new library build can be deployed to the server. The application should have specified only a spec-version in its descriptor and when it is redeployed it will automatically pick up the latest library with the bug fixes.

2. Multiple applications using different library versions

In this scenario there are multiple, incompatabile versions of the library being used by different applications. This might occur if an application has not been tested, certified, or updated with the latest library, but another application requires new library functionality. This can be accomplished by deploying the incompatabile libraries with different specification-versions. The referencing applications should specify their required version and set exact-match. This ensures each application will in parallel find their appropriate library version.

3. Zero downtime upgrade of library applications

Application upgrade without downtime is worthy of its own future blog entry. The product documentation covers the background information on this topic. In the library scenario, the first step would be to deploy the new library version. Since libraries only distribute code and register themselves, this won't interrupt any existing applications. Next, the new application can be deployed alongside the existing application version. If the library has changed as well, the updated application can specify exactly what version of the library it requires.

I hope these blog entries have shown you the flexiblity that libraries now offer in WLS 9. There are many more innovative features in WLS 9 that I'll try to cover in the next few weeks.

(Migrated from Rob Woollen's blog on dev2dev with his permission. This entry was originally posted on August 08, 2005 11:29 AM)

Designing large software features like application libraries is always an interesting challenge. While it wasn't initially a stated goal, in retrospect the design was heavily influenced by a desire to minimize the implementation work. I'm certainly not trying to imply the development team was lazy, but minimizing new concepts became the best means to achieve our main design goals:

1. Address customer use cases, specifically separately packaged code libraries potentially shared between many applications and versioned independently.
2. Make it easily possible to port library-based applications to earlier WLS releases or other J2EE servers.
3. Ensure libraries are easily understood and require limited change to existing applications.
4. Provide equivalent deployment, versioning, and management functionality as non-library applications.

I'd really like to emphasize the second point here. While libraries are an innovative feature only in our application server, they aren't meant to lock developers into 9.0. The design strives to make it easy and natural to port library-based applications to older WLS releases or other J2EE servers which don't support this concept.

With those goals in mind, the design that evolved was simply that library applications have the same semantics as if they were deployed together as a single EAR file. Internally the server runs through a series of steps as applications are deployed on the target server. During an early stage in deployment, it establishes which modules are in an application and instantiates containers for each. These might be ejb or web modules declared directly in the application.xml, or they may be imported from a library. The only real difference is the path on disk to the module.

The vital piece to understand is that libraries only change the path where classes and resources are loaded. After the container is created, all semantic behavior is exactly as if everything was within a single EAR file. The classloading, management, console pages etc are all the same. Libraries are merely a packaging concept.

Libraries can be either java classes, a single component (eg a war or ejb-jar), or an EAR file with 1 or more components. In the java class case, the server just adds the jar file to the application's classloader. The single component case is essentially adding a new module entry to the application.xml with a different relative path to the ejb-jar or webapp.

EAR libraries are a slightly more complicated case since the library has its own application.xml and weblogic-application.xml. The server handles this by merging the library's application.xml with the application.xml in the application. The merge is relatively straightforward, but it should be noted that the application's descriptor takes precedence on any conflict. For instance, if you had the same ejb module (same uri) in both the library and the application, the application's version would be used. (I included this information for completeness, but I would recommend that applications not override library modules. If this is necessary, I would suggest repackaging the library as needed.)

Another main design issue was the semantics when multiple applications reference the same library. One option is to have a single library instance shared by all referencing applications. This has some classloader advantages, but it makes redeploying the applications and libraries significantly more complicated. The design instead favored the simpler and more flexible approach where each application included its own library component copy. This approach's advantages may become clearer in the next blog entry which discusses versioning, upgrades, and how to undeploy a library.

WLS 9 includes a tool weblogic.appmerge (run java weblogic.appmerge to see usage) which given an application and 1 or more libraries produces a single, merged EAR file. The tool's merge process shares the same code with the server, but instead of merging data structures in memory, it writes the output to disk. The appmerge tool can be used to debug or better understand how libraries work, but it also allows porting to other servers or older WLS releases.

I hope this blog entry provided further insight into Application Libraries. In my next entry, I'll cover how libraries are versioned, deployed/undeployed, and zero downtime library upgrades. Please post a comment if there's anything that is unclear or suggestions on further topics.

(Migrated from Rob Woollen's blog on dev2dev with his permission. This entry was originally posted on August 01, 2005 01:47 PM)

Application libraries are a new feature in WLS 9 and one which I helped design and implement so I thought it a natural choice for a blog entry. The product documentation gives extensive information about libraries and specifics on their usage. The purpose of this blog is not to replace product documentation but to highlight new features and to give you insight not only in how the feature works but why we made certain design choices.

Like many of the best features, application libraries were developed directly from customer feedback that delivering applications as a single EAR file was too limiting. Applications often contained components deliverd from different organizations and shared common services. Delivering these components together as a single build proved difficult to manage and upgrade. Developers had no idea how many groups were using a specific version of their components, and it was difficult to tease apart shared services from custom application code.

Application libraries bring ideas like shared libraries or DLLs to the J2EE world. They allow an application to be composed of core application code "linked" with libraries of separately packaged J2EE components. Libraries allow each organization to manage their own deliverable and packaging without requiring a single unified EAR.

For instance, an online banking application might be composed of a security framework, data access code, and presentation logic. To keep things simple, let's say the security code is delivered by a separate organization (obviously security is very important in banking) and the other components are specific to this application. The security developers now merely deliver their components as a standard J2EE EAR file. The online banking application adds an entry to their weblogic-application.xml to express a dependency on the security library, and the WebLogic Server treats these 2 separate files as if they were a single merged EAR file. Since they are separate files on disk, it is much easier for the production team to upgrade the security library or determine who is using a particular version of the library. (We'll discuss a lot more detail here in parts II and III of this series.)

Application libraries are an extremely powerful and useful feature, and I'll cover them in detail over several blog entries. For those of you that want to read ahead, I'd suggest the product documentation or even downloading WLS 9 and trying out libraries.

In Part II, I'll give more details about library semantics, their relation to J2EE Optional Packages, and using library-based applications on older WLS releases or other J2EE servers.

In Part III, I'll cover deploying libraries, versioning, and upgrading library applications with zero downtime.

We get this question a lot, so it warrants a post on the blog I think. Most people are asking how to schedule OWB jobs with a 3rd party scheduler like Control M, or Autosys or any other enterprise wide scheduler.

The other question; should I now ignore workflow and if I do what does that mean? is also quite interesting and related of course.

Now, lets look at workflow and schedulers first. If you use a process flow in OWB to create a chain of jobs with email notifications etc, you will deploy this process flow into the Oracle Workflow engine. That engine lives within the database and you can call the actual job (so the entire process flow) using the regular OWB execution templates. In other words you don't have to make an either/or choice here. You can deploy to Workflow and still use Control M for example to schedule the job.

You can also choose to not use the process flows and therefore not use Workflow at all. You will then need to build your dependencies in the external scheduling/flow engine. In that case you will refer to the mappings as SQL or PL/SQL jobs (more about that later). Now you have full control over the flow in the external scheduler. You will also use its notifications etc.

The interesting information is now how to call either the process flow, or how to call an actual mapping. If we look at the PL/SQL mappings they are quite simple to call. You can call the actual main of the mapping. A simple way would be to do something like this:

-- Run in the schema where the map is deployed
declare
status varchar2(4000);
begin
>mapping_name_goes_here<.MAIN(status);
end;
/

This little block you can now plug into the scheduler and it is now a job that will run the specific mapping.

Since OWB mappings can be non-PL/SQL objects (e.g. a SQL Loader call or an ABAP mapping for SAP) you cannot call all mappings like the above example.

Therefore OWB ships a script called the sqlplus_exec_template.sql, which is located in the /owb/rtp/sql. The exec template allows you to run any mapping from SQL. In that case from an external scheduler you would call SQL Plus and then run the above SQL script with the appropriate parameter values (open up the script for examples and for the actual parameters required).

The sqlplus_exec_template.sql script also allows you to run a process flow. So if you are using the process flows and have deployed them to workflow, use the sqlplus_exec_template.sql script to run the process flow from the external scheduler.

All in all, there are many ways to run jobs. The above is a brief summary on what options you have when running OWB jobs of all sorts. While you are reading about schedulers, make sure to also look at the Oracle Database Scheduler in 11g. It allows you to run jobs on non-Oracle systems via a nifty small agent. David wrote about this in some earlier posts on this blog.

Ok we've seen these blogs all over the place now. We know we're in a recession. We know we want to do more with less in our IT budgets. Tell us something we don't already know. But this is taking it just way too far. Now I'm starting see something a bit more outragious. How IT technologies can prevent meltdowns from starting in the first place. Is it possible? Is it even relevant? I'll let you decide:

Todd Goldman (No relation to Goldman-Sachs) writes in his blog:

One of the reasons for the meltdown is that the banks don't have the ability to price these mortgage backed securities because they lack traceability back to the source. They can't tell you what mortgages map to a particular financial product and as a result, no one can say if a certain set of securities is better or worse than another set. Now this particular problem is all about data management. The ability to accurately show the lineage that links the underlying asset to a complex financial instrument based on that asset is not a skill that most banks have. As a result, this only inflames the lack of confidence that has been injected into the market due to the housing bubble bursting, people not being able to pay their variable rate mortgages or refinance those mortgages at a lower rate. So while all of those non-data effects cause concern, lack of good data management to price out the true cost of those effects only pours gasoline on an already raging fire.

My two cents... or make that 750 qua-trillion cents... Definitely definitely consider Data Management for your enterprise architecture, your SOA, your Business Intelligence applications, your data warehouse, your composite applications even... but... Hmmm... I think I need a physics PHD to understand how credit default swaps work.

If you think that Data Management can help for helping with the mortgage crisis, contact the Treasury Department today. But for now, I'm going to use it for preventing Enterprise IT meltdowns on main street.

2日目　「Enterprise ManagerでOracle Databaseを動かしてみよう」

今日も頑張って、3日目やりたいと思います！

■1時限目　データベースの起動と停止

では早速Enterprise Managerを使って、Oracle Databaseに接続したいと思います！
「Enterprise ManagerでOracle Databaseにアクセスします。アクセスするにはリスナー、インスタンス、そして今回の初めて使用するEnterprise Managerを起動させる必要があります。」

リスナーにインスタンス。

どれもこれまで学んだことばかりですね。

サービスの状態が開始になっているか確認します。

大丈夫そうですね。

そして2日目の最後にメモしたURLを活用するときが来ました（笑）

メモしたURLを入力してEnterprise Managerにログインします。

ユーザー名、パスワードを入力して・・・

無事ログインできました。
おーこれがEnterprise Managerの管理画面ですね。なにやら項目がいっぱい。

こういうのは触ってみることが肝心・・・ということで
書籍通りに「その他」をクリック。
現在のPCのCPUやメモリーの状態が確認できるよう。

さて、前の画面に戻ろうとして「ホーム」を押したら・・・

あれ・・・戻れない。

どうも画面右上の「データーベース」というタブで戻るらしい。
左にある「ホーム」というナビゲーションは何なんだろう？

いろいろ他のメニューを触ってみたら・・・他のページは「ホーム」で最初の画面に戻れます。。。

どうもこの「その他」をクリックしたときのナビゲーションが他と違う様子。

Webの担当者としては、ページによってナビゲーションルールが違うのは気になります（笑）

とりあえずEnterprise Managerの操作は出来たので、次に進みます。

※Enterprise Managerの管理画面にある項目は書籍の補足ページで詳細説明を確認することが出来ます。（P.80～）時間がある人はチェックしてくださいね。

やっと1時限目のテーマ「データーベースの起動と停止」を実践します。
やり方はいくつかあるらしいのですが、今回は「サービス」を使う場合と「SQL*Plus」を使う手順の2つを学ぶみたいです。

◆サービスを使う場合

最初にサービスの開始状況を確認する手順で画面を遷移し、

OracleServiceORCLをダブルクリック。
プロパティが表示されます。

あとは「停止」を押せばサービスが停止されるし、停止後は

「開始」を押せばいいってことですね。

簡単ですねー。

◆SQL*Plusを使う場合

スタート>ファイル名を指定して実行

sqlplus/nolog
と入れたところ・・・あれ、うまくいかない。

あ、半角スペース忘れてました。
sqlplus /nolog

SQLPlusが起動しました。

connect sys/orcl　と入力し、、、

「ERROR:
ORA-12560:　TNS:プロトコル・アダプタ・エラーが発生しました」

おや。Error発生。

Error内容で調べたら解決してくれそうなページを発見しました！

Oracle 起動に関するエラー

「この ORA-12560: ～エラーは、一般的にプロトコル・アダプタ・エラーというより準備・設定エラーとした方が良いのではないかと思うくらいに多くの場合はケアレスミスによるものであることが多い。」

・・・どうやら私はケアレスミスでつまずいているよう。（泣）

----------------------
原因 (Windows 限定)

Windows プラットフォームの場合、Oracle のインスタンスは Windows サービスの上で稼動する。 Oracle の起動時にサービスが起動していないとアイドルインスタンスにも接続できず、ORA-12560: ～エラーがでる。

----------------------
まさか、最初に確認したサービスが稼動していないなんてことは・・・・

先ほど「サービス」を使ってデータベースを停止、開始を何度か繰り返してやったときの最後に
「開始」を押し忘れていたようです。

開始ステータスに変更して再度「connect sys/orcl」と入力した後は書籍どおりに進めることが出来ました。

お騒がせしました。

1時限目無事終了です。

補足ページにはEnterprise Managerの簡単な説明のほかにも、データベースの起動、停止に関する詳細情報や、Oracleのネットワークについても詳しく書いてあります。

Oracleのネットワークに関して、書籍（P89）で得ただけの知識で、以下コラムの問題に答えてみました！（10gですけど）

徹底攻略ORACLE MASTER Bronze DBA 10g問題集「第４回：ネットワークの構成」
by　Think IT

4問中2問正解（笑）

解答を読むといろいろ細かく分かります。楽しいです。皆さんもやってみてください。

■２時限目　ユーザーと権限の管理

はじめにOracle Databaseのデモ用に登録されている「SCOTT」ユーザーのアカウントを使えるようにすることから始まるようです。

SCOTTユーザー？

誰？？？

-----------------------------------------------------
「SCOTT」とはオラクルの前身であるSDLに在籍していたBruce Scottを指し、「Tiger」は彼の愛猫の名前に由来する。
-----------------------------------------------------

「SCOTT/TIGERの由来」
by　ウィキペディア

SCOTTさんより、愛猫の名前のほうが驚きでしたが、謎が解けたところで、管理者以外のサンプルユーザーということなので、早速始めたいと思います。

1時限目の手順でEnterprise Managerにログインし、ユーザー画面まで進みます。

SCOTT発見！（笑）

ラジオボタンにチェックを入れて、編集画面へすすみます。

SCOTTユーザーの権限編集を行います。

「オブジェクト権限」で『表』を追加し、

「ロール」の設定で『DBA』を選択。

無事に追加されました＾＾
2時限目はスムーズに進みました！

解説ページではユーザー管理と権限管理について、詳細が書かれています。

今回の解説ページは青山のカフェでくつろぎながら読みましたー。

ユーザー、スキーマとスキーマオブジェクト、権限の管理、システム権限、オブジェクト権限、ロール・・・。

スキーマの概念は書籍でなんとなく理解できました。

「スキーマ」という言葉で検索をかけてみましたが
今回は書籍での説明が私には一番分かりやすかったかな。

<<スキーマとは>>
http://e-words.jp/w/E382B9E382ADE383BCE3839E.html
http://d.hatena.ne.jp/keyword/%A5%B9%A5%AD%A1%BC%A5%DE

とりあえず、ロールがあることでいろいろ権限設定ができるユーザーの管理が煩雑にならずにすみそうだということが分かりました（ざっくりとしすぎ！？）。

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
本日の内容まとめ
所要時間　：　2時間15分（Cafeでの解説ページ参照時間は除く）
トラブル：特になし
調べた用語： SCOTT、スキーマ、ストアドプログラム

一言：SQL*Plusでのデータベースの起動、停止はケアレスミスの連続でしたが無事に完了しました。ユーザー管理については、解説ページを読んだほうが絶対いいですね！実践だけだといまいち何をしているのか分からなかったんですが、解説ページのおかげでSCOTTに与えた権限がどういったものか理解できました！

When meeting the customer and discussing the day-to-day issues I often stumble over 'desupported' software versions.  Most of the time the friction starts when the customer is trying to approach support in case of a stressful event - system down - .

The real problem starts when the cause of the problems needs development attention and relates to software in 'sustaining support' the discussion usually ends quickly with 'please upgrade to a supported version' so we can proceed with our help.

I agree this is a very shortsighted answer unfortunately in many times the only right one. But.... in reality there is simply no time for an upgrade so "please upgrade" is the last thing you like to hear.

Therefore the theme Supportability gets a lot of attention in our teams.  Usually the first question I ask when the 'hot-potato' surfaces is 'how did you implement the version management process in your IT department' and WHO is responsible for maintaining this ? The reaction on the faces of the IT managers often explains more then words can tell.

My 'simple' advice is to make sure you have your strategic systems on your radar. Make sure you know the product-lifecycle dates (of the compete stack so database, middleware and (third party) application.

Agree on your plans with the user community (the business). Once agreed, take the plan to action when you are planning for your maintenance-downtime.

To complex .. afraid for the impact of required upgrades ? do not postpone till the first real system crash... request for help - you are not the only one dealing with this challenge.

Next time we meet, when you have lifecycle management embedded in your standard process, I hope we can discuss topics that can really improve your ROI.

p.s.   more info on the Oracle product lifecycle (we call the lifetime policy) can be found on our website

Paul Vallee from Pythian emailed me that they have a new installation guide out. The name says it all:
Installing Oracle 11gR1 on Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex.

• Podcast: Achieving Gridness: Oracle Application Grid Mike Piech, Senior Director of Product Marketing, discusses Oracle Application Grid -- what it is, what it means, and where it fits in the world of Grid computing, Cloud computing, and SOA. (tags: podcast grid soa cloud)
• Google CEO Eric Schmidt Calls For Innovation Bailout -- Google -- InformationWeek "In a speech Tuesday at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C., Google CEO Eric Schmidt called for an innovation bailout, a bold government-funded effort to create jobs by rebooting America's energy infrastructure, and a reformation that restores trust in government by using technology to increase openness and civic participation." (tags: google innovation bailout)
• Blog: TV Redefined Before Your Eyes InformationWeek's Fritz Nelson, writing about the changing TV industry, says, "I see the future, and it seems within our grasp, like breasts sticking out in a 3-D movie." (tags: TV)
• Blog: Don't Share Information; Instead Teach Knowledge Bex Huff channels Socrates to explain the important difference between sharing information and teaching knowledge. (tags: data knowledge sharing)
• Blog: BPEL Deployment Framework Antony Reynolds illustrates what he calls "one of the coolest features in BPEL 10.1.3.4," the deployment framework that greatly simplfies the task of moving processes between dev, test and production environments. (tags: BPEL)
• Blog: BEA Certification to Integrate with Oracle Certification in December (Oracle Certification) Paul Sorensen reports that on December 1, 2008, the integration of BEA Certification with Oracle certification will be complete. Oracle will re-launch four BEA certifications and republish their corresponding exams under the Oracle Certification program. (tags: BEA Oracle certification)

Registrations have begun today for the new "Oracle Database 11g Performance Tuning Certified Expert" (OCE) certification.

Exam 1Z1-054 – Oracle Database 11g: Performance Tuning is now available for registration at Prometric testing centers worldwide.  While the exam is in beta, it is available at the special beta price of only $50 USD. Beta exams are an excellent way to directly provide your input into the final version of the certification exam as well as be one of the very first certified in the track. Furthermore – passing the beta counts for full final exam credit. Note that beta testing is offered for a limited time only.

Learn more about this new certification from Oracle in our post: Oracle University Announces New Database 11g Performance Tuning Certification.

QUICK LINKS

• Certification Track: Oracle Database 11g Performance Tuning Certified Expert
• Certification Exam: 1Z1-054 – Oracle Database 11g: Performance Tuning
• Training: Oracle Database 11g Performance Tuning
• Blog: Oracle University Announces New Database 11g Performance Tuning Certification
• On The Web: About Oracle Certification Beta Exams

Ever been using BIP and had to step away for something only to come back to find you have been logged out ... again!

There is some help out there, you can control the time out for the system. In the web.xml located in WEB-INF folder (location varies with which app server is used to deploy BIP). With OAS, it is located in \applications\xmlpserver\xmlpserver\WEB-INF

Look for the tag:

30

You can change it as you wish, its measured in minutes. Thanks to Nikos and Kevin for the tip. Lots of other stuff in that file ... please don't touch, support folks will not be happy :)

It's a conference with a difference: PHP Brasil '08 is on next week. Yours truly will be presenting an extended session on Friday.

My colleague Todd Trichler will also be in town to help present one of our great "InstallFests" on Saturday. At these, we walk right though the steps to install and use some interesting Oracle software. We're going to partition the session so you can attend all or just parts of the fest. We'll be showing off Oracle VM for virtualization, Oracle Database, and the PHP OCI8 extension. I'll give more detail during my Friday talk.

Both sessions will have live translation.

PS, I'm bringing a blue PHP elephant or two to give away.

A few months back I was shopping for a Wii Fit at Amazon.com, but they were out of stock just like every other retailer. But I noticed they offered a Text Alert, which sends me a SMS message when the product is in stock. I decided to try it out, and it worked well. (BTW, when you receive that text message, you have about 2 mins to buy the Wii Fit before they are sold out again.) Not only does it send you an alert, but the service allows you to search for product, then initiate a purchase all via SMS. The system calls your phone to complete the purchase. Amazon calls it TextBuyIt. The alert part is useful, but I can't think of a worse way to make a purchase. I guess they decided to limit themselves to SMS in order to reach all mobile phones. Its a case of least-common denominator.

Digby, an independent M-Commerce vendor, has a very nice interface but requires users to download their application. So it only supports Blackberry, iPhone, Windows Mobile, and Android. Frankly, I'm not sure how many people will go to the trouble of downloading the application.

Recently, Sears announced their Sears2go program for making purchases from a smartphone. Its basically an e-commerce site that's optimized for a small-footprint Web browser. The experience is not much different than using the website, so its fairly intuitive.

But overall, I just can't bring myself to buy something from my phone. If I'm in the house, I'm using my PC. If out shopping, I'll drop by the store. I doubt consumers will hunt-and-peck on their mobile phones to buy grandma new earrings.

I think there's a better chance consumers will use their mobile phones for payment. This has already taken off in Japan, so the "wallet phone" technology is mature. But I've seen this movie before. Back in the '90 Visa and MasterCard introduced smartcards to the US without success. This is where contactless payments originated. The issue has never been the technology; Japan and Europe have been using "chip & PIN" systems for years. The problems are with the business case in the US. Mag-stripe credit cards are ingrained in the culture, and our low-cost infrastructure won't get any cheaper with mobile payments. Consumers aren't demanding it, retailers don't think it will increase revenue, and banks are happy collecting zillions in credit card fees and interest payments. Anyway, is it really that much better to wave your phone rather than swipe your card?

I admit I use my phone for email, text messages, games, and web browsing more than I do for calls. But I don't see a compelling application for retail yet.

Presented by GoldenGate Software and Oracle Corporation
Event Date: December 11, 2008
Live Start Time: 10:00 AM PST / 1:00 PM EST
Live Event Duration: 1 hour

Speakers: Oracle’s Group Vice President for CRM Applications, George Jacob, is joined by certified partner GoldenGate Software’s Vice President of Technology, Alok Pareek.

Attendees will learn how to successfully upgrade to Siebel 8.0 with zero downtime and vastly improve transition success. This upgrade approach allows customers to more quickly realize the ROI of the latest release of Siebel particularly with the rising cost of ownership by staying on older versions.

To Register, click here

A couple of months back OTN upgraded the software version that runs the forums.
One nice addition that it added is the ability to mark question as answered and provide feedback on replies you got to your questions.

However from my experience it doesn't seem like a lot of people are using it - maybe because they don't about those features - so here is the basic thing you should try:

Once you get a reply to a question you asked you'll see two buttons that will allow you to mark the response as helpful or correct.
Doing this will reward points to the person who answered your question - which might give them a motivation to answer other questions in the future.

Then once you resolved your question you'll also be prompted to mark your question as answered. Again this is an important thing to do for the benefit of the other forum users. So please use this one as well.

Oracle SSI is hiring the following profiles for its Bangalore offices :

• Senior Applications DBAs / Architects; Experience: 4+ years (Code : SSI-N1)
• Oracle Applications Technical Consultants / Leads; Experience: 1-4 years of Custom development experience in Oracle Applications. Knowledge of Oracle development tools (Code : SSI-N2)
• Technology Developers / Leads; Experience : 2+ years experience in Application architecture development and providing inter application/technology integration solutions (Code : SSI-N3)

If interested or know of someone interested, mail to careers-ssi_in@oracle.com.

Read more about Oracle SSI.

Hi folks. This is my first post on my first blog. First of all, I have to apologize for my English: I am italian and live in Rome. I have been worked for Oracle since 1998 (10 years!!) as Sales Consultant specialized on Middleware Solutions and related technologies with a focus on Enterprise 2.0.

On this blog I will report my direct experiences with two main topics:

1) web oriented architecture (woa)
2) enterprise 2.0

Both points will be seen from two different perspectives:

a) what others than oracle are saying about them, emphasizing the differences and similarities
b) very technical point of view

In other words I will try to say, about these topics, what you cannot find so easily on the net.

I hope you will find useful this blog.