The Feature

OpenWorld Presentation Slides Available For Download

The PowerPoint slides for presentations from Oracle OpenWorld 2006 are now available for download here. Use the search engine to search for presentations by track, day, presenter name or keyword. It’s the next best thing to being there!

Fusion Appplications User Interface Previews

Steven Chan posted a nice compilation of the Fusion Applications Preview Screenshots demostrated by Jeremy Ashley during John Wookey’s keynote address at Oracle OpenWorld 2006.

You can still influence what will Fusion Applications look like. The Applications User Experience team at Oracle is currently seeking participants for Oracle’s Usability Program. Participants in the usability studies will work directly with the Applications User Experience team to provide input on developing innovative user interfaces (the “look and feel”) for Fusion applications. If you are interested, please complete the online enrollment form. If you fit the profile for an upcoming usability study, Oracle will contact you directly and all information will remain confidential.

Thoughts on Unbreakable Linux

Oracle OpenWorld 2006 is all wrapped up. While the laser lights, hip-hop dancers, Elton John, and lunch under the big top were all noteworthy elements of the conference, most of the buzz from OpenWorld surrounds the announcement of Unbreakable Linux.

Just to update those of you who were too wrapped up in watching the World Series thrashing of the Tigers by the world champion St. Louis Cardinals to notice anything else, Oracle announced an offering of enterprise-level support for the Red Hat Linux operating system (minus the Red Hat branding) for about half the price of Red Hat’s current support offerings. It’s a pretty creative way for Oracle to finally execute its long-rumored entry into the Linux OS space: rather than build their own distribution, they’ll compete for support of the leading distro (and support is where the money is in the current Linux OS business model for most providers). Oracle has branded this offering as “Unbreakable Linux”.

After Larry Ellison made the announcement, replete with armor-clad penguin logos, Red Hat’s stock dropped by 25% in overnight trading. The buzz on the street is that, once Red Hat’s stock drops to a bargain price, Oracle will acquire the company and thus be able to offer an Oracle OS. Although I’m not privy to Larry’s strategic plans, the idea seems plausible. If so, there may also be another long-term Oracle target in play. Let’s talk about Sun.

Part of Sun’s plan to regain its former glory (and stock price) was to tout Solaris on x86, differentiating Solaris from Linux by contending that the companies offering and supporting Linux are too young to be trustworthy for support of enterprise-critical operations. As of Oracle’s announcement, that reasoning is toast. In fact, doesn’t Unbreakable Linux make Oracle and Sun competitors for the enterprise OS? So to those still holding Sun stock hoping for a rally: My grandmother held onto her Confederate dollars until her dying day, insisting the South would rise again…I felt bad for her too. Sun stock has been cheap for quite some time, and now it’s likely going to stay that way, which makes it a great acquisition target for somebody who understands the business and has the financial chops to make the purchase.

So let’s really go out on the speculation limb. Consider a scenario where Oracle eventually acquires both Red Hat and Sun. Oracle can then offer a full stack of products, including Oracle Linux (Red Hat Linux with the best features of Solaris) on Sun…uh, I mean Oracle…hardware (not just servers but storage arrays too!), all optimized for Oracle’s database, middleware, and applications products. As an additional plus, guess who would be the new custodian of Java as a result of acquiring Sun?

Now keep in mind that I’m just speculating and having fun with recent developments. I have no secret information, inside track, or scoop. And acquiring both Red Hat and Sun does seem like quite a bit for Oracle to digest. Then again, I never thought they would successfully absorb PeopleSoft…

LATE NOTE: Neil McAllister has also written a strong article on this scenario that popped up at InfoWorld a few hours after I posted this piece. No collaboration here - just two minds thinking alike. You can read Neil’s article here.

Not Attending Oracle OpenWorld? Go to the Web!

For the ones not lucky enough to be paid for having fun at user conferences, here are few virtual sources of information worth visiting:

Oracle OpenWorld 2006 Home

An obvious starting place to get information about the conference. It is mostly tailored to the conference attendees but provides some useful links for the rest of us who are attending virtually.

Oracle OpenWorld 2006 Keynotes

Conference keynotes and webcasts by Oracle executives and other industry luminaries.

Oracle OpenWorld Podcasts

Justin Kestelyn, OTN’s Editor-in-Chief, is recording a series of tech podcasts at OpenWorld on OTN TECHBLOG.

Oracle Blogs

Follow a feed of recent posts from Oracle bloggers attending the conference.

AppsZone

Stay tuned to our own news aggregator for OpenWorld news from blogs and other media.

Personally, in addition to key notes, I’d like to see more subject-matter webcasts online. I encourage every application product manager, program manager and SIG chair to start their own blog where we can all participate and have an ongoing dialogue about product direction, new features and changes, etc. instead of relying on a week long crescendo. There is only so much you can do with conferences and news releases.

Sample Ad-Hoc SQL Queries for Oracle Projects

Here is a compilation of several ad-hoc SQL queries I created over time to perform various analytical tasks with the Oracle Projects data. I am by no means a SQL guru, these are simple queries that provided me with information I needed at different occasions. I am posting the queries here to find them when I need them for my next assignment and share them with those of you who may find them useful.

Labor Billing Rates

Find labor bill rates used to calculate T&M labor revenue for the existing labor transactions (timecards).

Billing Rates by Job

Billable Expenditure Items by Customer

Find billable expenditure items by customer. The Expenditure Inquiry screen provides a great way to search and export expenditures, however, it lacks a search by customer.

Billed Expenses by Customer

Create OTL Tasks View

This is a sample script with an example of how to modify the list of available tasks in OTL based on Service Type.

Create OTL PA_ONLINE_TASKS_V View

Fixed Price Projects without Activity

We use the percent complete revenue recognition method for fixed price projects. We rely on the percent complete amounts to trigger the revenue accrual generation each month. This query provides revenue managers with the status of activity in the fixed price projects to determine whether the revenue should be generated, or projects be closed.

Fixed Price Projects without Activity

Future-Dated OTL Timecards

Find timecards entered into future periods.

Future-Dated Timecards

Future-Dated Expense Report Items

Find project-related distribution items in AP with Expenditure Item Dates in the future. Most expense policies do not allow submitting expenses for reimbursement until they actually occur. However, iExpenses [OIE 11i.10] lets users enter, approve and pay future-dated expense items, and they get rejected during the Interface Expense Reports from Payables process. This query should help you identify such items and extract them into a user-friendly file.

Future-Dated Expense Report Items

Project Agreements and Funding

Find existing project agreements and funding allocations.

Project Agreements and Funding

Project Agreements Created by Contingent Workers

Find all project agreements created by contractors (contingent workers). There was a bug in Oracle Projects 11i.10, which would cause agreements not to show if created by contingent workers.

Project Agreements Owned by Contingent Workers

Project Configuration Details

Find projects with their configuration details including the owning organization, status, customer, key members, etc.

Project Configuration Details

Project Cross-Charge Transaction Details

Find project transactions cross-charged between different providing and receiving organizations.

Project Cross-Charge Transactions

Project Customers

Find customers and contacts used on the existing contract projects.

Project Customers

Project Invoices

Find project invoices by status, project type, etc.

Project Invoices

Project Percent Complete Amounts

Find project percent complete amounts. Also, get a list of projects with percent complete amounts but no revenue generated.

Project Percent Complete

Project Revenue Events

Find project billing and revenue events.

Project Revenue Events

Project Key Members

Find projects with specific key members, e.g. those who need to be replaced by new ones.

Projects with Key Member to Replace

Update Transaction Import Status

Update the Transaction Status in the Projects Transactions Interface table. When importing external project transactions, they may get rejected and you have to set them to ‘Pending’ status in order to make them eligible for next import.

Set Transaction Import Status

Unbille Project Expenditures

Find billable project expenditures, which have not been billed yet. Surprisingly, there is no standard report showing this information (11i.10).

Unbilled Project Expenditures

Uninterfaced Project Expenditure Adjustmemts

Find more information expenditure distribution lines, which show up as Projects exceptions when trying to close the Projects GL and PA periods.

Uninterfaced Project Expenditure Adjustments

OTL Timecard Needs a Makeover

Here is some unsolicited feedback for you, Oracle Time and Labor (OTL) developers. Implementing Financials and Projects (11.i.10) I spent a good deal of last month with a group of Oracle users whose primary interaction with Oracle Applications was entering time and expenses against the projects they worked on. Being new Oracle users, they reminded me how “different” Oracle was and how it took some time to “get used to Oracle’s nuances”. I documented some their comments and observations below:

Usability

• Users are having tough time remembering to hit the “Go” button when they change time periods or templates; as a result, many timecards get entered into wrong periods.

• It is not very obvious one has to hit TAB to navigate across fields to “commit” values in each field (this is a general Framework issue). If you, for instance, entered a project number without hitting TAB and hit Search for tasks (Flashlight), the form generates an unintuitive error message or starts an infinite search that freezes the page

• It would really help the time entry process if users could see additional fields including project name, task name, or customer on their timecard lines. This would be particularly useful when, due to business requirements, you cannot limit the list of available project values based on people’s assignments.

Error Messages

Many existing OTL messages are not user friendly and explanatory. Error messages should explain to users what they did wrong. The existing OTL messages quite often tell the users what they don’t need to know and don’t not tell what they do.

OTL and OIE Inconsistencies

There are several differences between the OTL and iExpenses (OIE) look and feel that let you know you are using two separate applications developed by separate teams. For instance:

• Time Entry responsibility (sub-menu) lists the OTL functions in the Navigator window; OIE has a consolidated Expenses Home link with functions as Tabs.

• OTL lets you restrict a list of project-related values (project, task, expenditure type), OIE does not.

• OIE lets you search for projects by Project Number, Project Name, Start Date, End Date and Organization, OTL does not. In OTL, you can only search by Project Number and Project Name.

No Save at Timeout

If you walked away from your desk before saving your timecard - too bad for you. Typically, there is a 10 minute “inactivity” timeout that terminates your Oracle session after 10 minutes of no activity. This is a general Framework feature, not just OTL. Make sure you save your work every time!

Offline Timecard

This feature may look good on the OTL data sheet, but in reality, it is a joke (it generates laughs and sarcastic remarks every time we show it to end users, so we no longer do so). I’d really like to know if anyone is actually using it.

Project Timecard Approval and Import

There are, essentially, no parameters to control which timecards get approved and imported into Projects when the background approval method is used. It would be very useful to restrict approval and import by time period, organization, project type, or range of projects.

OTL and iExpenses are often the only two Oracle applications that many users will see. When they do not provide user experience people expect, they give the applications a reputation they do not deserve.

What is your experience with using OTL timecards and expense reports? Share your thoughts and experiences as comments below!

Fusion Sessions at OpenWorld

I’ve been working with my friends over at Solution Beacon to develop a list of Fusion-related sessions at OpenWorld. Although things can and will change even after OpenWorld begins, as of now that list looks like this:

So, to all of you wrapped up in all the fuss over Fusion…see you at the show!

Fusion Applications - Bits and Pieces of Future Direction

I’ve spent a couple days over the past two weeks at Oracle’s HQ in Redwood Shores. My role during the first trip was as a member of the IOUC’s Fusion Applications Customer Profiling committee - our team presented the profiling survey results to Oracle. During the second trip, I was part of the management team for the Jet Propulsion Lab’s annual session at Oracle’s Customer Visitor Center. Both trips provided some bits and pieces on the direction of Fusion Applications. I thought I’d share those bits and pieces here.

While I believe this information to be reliable, please insert the appropriate legal boilerplate: these thoughts are my own and do not represent those of Oracle, JPL, or Itsafeature.com; while I believe this information to be accurate, I do not present them with the intent that any person or enterprise to rely on this content to their detriment, the author accepts no personal liability, blah…blah…blah…

Now that the CYA is finished, let’s get on with sharing the news. While much of this may be old news, this info may be important to those just beginning to track the development of Fusion Applications.

Release 12

R12 of the E-Business Suite is, to a large degree, a delivery iteration on the path to Fusion Applications. Although we probably all already know that R12 will run on Fusion Middleware, I’m not sure we all understand that one of the major points of R12 is to extend the functionality of the E-Business Suite using Fusion Middleware. In other words, this might be a worthwhile release for those E-Business customers ready to dive deeper into SOA.

Fusion Applications

I noted some important points, some of which were new to me. Some “rapid fire” highlights from my notes:
- Oracle Forms will be replaced by Java Server Faces (”JSF”)
- The combination of Business Process tools and a BPEL execution environment will replace the Oracle Workflow product
- Fusion 1.0 will not eliminate PL/SQL and C++ from the apps environment, but the intent is for both to be eliminated at some point
- The Fusion development effort is still on-track to release individual applications in 2007 and the integrated Fusion Applications Suite in 2008.
- Oracle has released their flavor of an SOA maturity model, which you can read about here. This model provides substantial insight on where Fusion is headed.
- JDeveloper with ADF will continue to be the IDE and framework of choice for development work within the Fusion Applications environment.

Well, that’s all I have for now. Like I stated earlier, it’s in bits and pieces. There is not much of a unifying thread running through all this, it’s just chunks of info that seem worthy of sharing.

There are several additional bits and pieces about Fusion Applications that will come out during OpenWorld later in October, so stay tuned!