The Feature

Oracle Business Intelligence – A Chance To Get In The Game

February 21, 2007 on 7:49 pm | by Floyd Teter | In Worth Noting | Enter Comments |  Print |  Email

Oracle Applications Development is creating a Customer Advisory Board (CAB) for Oracle Business Intelligence Applications. This is a great opportunity to participate in the development of Oracle’s BI products.

The CAB will work closely with the Oracle Development team to validate the strategic direction, provide and review requirements, review designs, evaluate architectural blueprints, including data warehousing options, deployment options, and provide timely feedback on usability, deployment and ownership experience. Customers will be able to contribute and influence critical decisions to make the release a success.

Ideal candidates for this CAB are large Oracle E-Business Suite customers with complex reporting needs, who have implementations across more than one major functional area, or have one or more Oracle Applications instance.

Experience with Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (formerly Siebel Analytics), Oracle Warehouse Builder or Daily Business Intelligence is desirable but not essential.

If your organization is considering a single integrated solution for your reporting & analytics, or if you are planning to implement a data warehouse on Oracle Applications, serving on this CAB may be a great way to influence Oracle’s product direction to support your needs.

Hal Kazi is Oracle’s Group Product Manager for Business Intelligence Applications, and is putting the BI CAB together. If you are interested, you can contact Hal directly at hal.kazi@oracle.com. Be sure and mention my name when you contact Hal; if I provide enough referrals, maybe he’ll get me one of those cool penguins from last year’s Linux announcement at Oracle OpenWorld!

Christmas Is Over – Get To Work On Daylight Savings Time

December 26, 2006 on 6:35 pm | by Floyd Teter | In Worth Noting | Enter Comments |  Print |  Email

I hope everyone’s holiday was at least as wonderful as mine. Now forget those visions of dancing sugarplums and start working on an upcoming issue with Oracle products – Daylight Saving Time.

Background

Under the Energy Policy Act of 2005, Daylight Saving Time begins 3 weeks earlier and ends one month later in 2007, running from March 11 to Nov. 4. The US Department of Transportation, which is responsible for administering daylight savings time, has published a reminder that can be found here. Oracle software does not support the extended periods of Daylight Saving Time.

Impact to E-Business Suite Users

>In the E-Business Suite, there are two types of date fields:

1) Dates with a time component to show a specific point in time.

2) Dates without a time component, showing date but not a specific time

The impact to E-Business customers on Daylight Saving Time will be that time values, whether recorded or displayed, will be offset by one hour from the actual time. Incorrect time values will appear in all date fields with a time component. In addition, there is a possibility of incorrect dates (for example, in the event that a transaction takes actually takes place at 12:55 a.m. but the system time lags the actual time by one hour) . Under certain circumstances, incorrect dates could appear in either type of date field.

The E-Business Suite customers impacted will fall into one or more of the following scenarios:

1) an EBS database running in an affected time zone (in other words, all EBS customers in the U.S. and Canada)

2) an EBS user with the “Client Timezone” profile option set to an affected time zone

3) Communications or data transfers between time zones, at least one of which falls into Daylight Saving Time.

At this point, Oracle has not heard much feedback from EBS customers so they’ve assessed this issue as a “minor inconvenience”. Nevertheless, they are working the issue.

Oracle Research

Although I’ve only discussed the impact on E-Business users, this issue also impacts the Oracle database and middleware. Although this is a developing issue, there are several sources of information available:

Oracle Metalink

• Notes 403311.1 and 399375.1 discusses the implications for Oracle E-Business Suite users.
• Notes 397281.1 and 359145.1 discuss the impact on and the patches for the Oracle database, Oracle middleware, and various supporting operating systems – many patches called for between these two notes. The latter note will also lead the reader to Metalink Note 396387.1, which covers workarounds when DST-related database patches are not available for a particular configuration.

Other Sources

• Oracle’s Director of E-Business Technology, Steven Chan, has written articles on this subject that can be found on the Oracle E-Business Suite Technology blog. The articles can be found here and here.

OAUG is also tracking this issue. Their progress can be followed here.

Next Steps

I suggest that every Oracle user in the U.S. and Canada should at least give some brief consideration to this Daylight Saving Time issue. Maybe it doesn’t impact your organization or perhaps you can live with the glitch. On the other hand, you may have a problem to resolve before March. If you fall in the latter category, you’ll want to start planning now.

Gee, don’t you wish it was still Christmas!

Demystifying Fusion – OAUG’s Three-Step Fusion Program

November 16, 2006 on 7:32 pm | by Floyd Teter | In Worth Noting | Enter Comments |  Print |  Email

The Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) has just announced a new educational series under the “Community Thursdays” eLearning program: “Demystifying Fusion – OAUG’s Three-Step Fusion Program”. I can promise you that this will be a good series, because I’m a co-host…so you can complain directly to me if the series is missing the mark and we’ll get it fixed (how I got involved in this is another story, but if you check OAUG’s Fusion Council site and scroll down to the announcement about the new Fusion Council Co-Chair, you’ll get a flavor for how it happened and who to blame).

The idea of the Demystifying Fusion sessions is to “lift the curtains and show how the magic tricks are performed”. What that means is that we’ll be doing more than just running through PowerPoint decks (although there will be some of that too); we’ll be running demos with various components of Fusion Technology relevant to Fusion Applications. In addition, we’ll be providing some guidelines for helping you build your organization’s road map to Fusion Applications. The first session (given at noon EST and again at 8 p.m. EST on Nov. 30th) will lay out the program and some basic concepts regarding Fusion Technology and building your roadmap.

If you are an OAUG member, you can sign up for the first session here. If you’re not an OAUG member yet, you must join in order to attend these sessions: send an email to membership@oaug.com to get more information. You’ll get the value of the nearly negligible membership fee back just from the information in these sessions, so don’t hesitate to join up.

I hope you’re there when we lift the curtains!

R12 and Mod-plsql…Not!

November 6, 2006 on 2:54 pm | by Floyd Teter | In Worth Noting | 5 Comments |  Print |  Email

Two quick questions for you:

1) Are you considering a move to E-Business Suite Release 12?

2) Are you planning to migrate to R12 custom or 3rd-party “bolt on” applications from your current E-Business environment that utilize the mod_plsql cartridge?

If your answer to both these questions is “yes”, you have some important planning to do before moving to R12. Mod_plsql has been eliminated from the E-Business middleware as of R12. Running pl_sql on the middle tier will now take come creative advance planning.

I know that I have some serious planning to do on this issue. How about you?

LATE UPDATE: I’ve started to share this news with some developer-types where I work. The responses are generally unbelief and denial, even after I show written backup from OOW.

EVEN LATER UPDATE: On his own blog (and as Marion noted in a comment to this article), Steven Chan has reinforced the message: There will be no support for the use of mod_plsql in R12. You can read Steven’s thoughts and recommendations here.

OpenWorld Presentation Slides Available For Download

October 31, 2006 on 2:35 pm | by Floyd Teter | In Worth Noting | Enter Comments |  Print |  Email

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!

Thoughts on Unbreakable Linux

October 30, 2006 on 6:31 am | by Floyd Teter | In Worth Noting | Enter Comments |  Print |  Email

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.

Fusion Sessions at OpenWorld

October 14, 2006 on 4:02 pm | by Floyd Teter | In Oracle Press, Worth Noting | Enter Comments |  Print |  Email

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

October 4, 2006 on 9:47 am | by Floyd Teter | In Worth Noting | Enter Comments |  Print |  Email

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!

Bye-Bye Discoverer 4i – Time to Upgrade

September 14, 2006 on 7:53 am | by Floyd Teter | In Worth Noting | Enter Comments |  Print |  Email

This is a reminder that the official desupport date for Oracle Discoverer 4i is October 31, 2006. Discoverer 4i has been obsolete for most Oracle customers for quite some time, but E-Business Suite users have worked with 4i under a special exception. That exception is now coming to an end. The official notice can be found on Metalink Note 337576.1. If you have not already upgraded to Discoverer 10g, you should begin to move out on this effort right away.

For those E-Business Suite users who have yet to upgrade to Discoverer 10g, you’ll be pleased to know that the upgrade from 4i to 10g is a pretty simple process. When you install Discoverer 10g, do so on a physically separate server. During the installation process, 10g will make a copy of your existing 4i End-User Layer (“EUL”) and upgrade the copy to 10g. Because you were smart enough to install 10g on a physically separate server, your users can build their confidence in 10g and complete their acceptance testing by comparing workbooks against the two EULs side-by-side.

If you’re already upgraded, pat yourself on the back for staying on top of this change. If you haven’t upgraded, no need to despair…just get on it right now!

Zero Faith in Zero Defects

August 31, 2006 on 7:35 pm | by Floyd Teter | In Worth Noting | Enter Comments |  Print |  Email

E-Week ran an interesting story today on Oracle’s Fusion Applications. Among other things, the story broke the news that Oracle has instituted a zero-defect policy for the first release of the Fusion Applications. I personally got a bit of a chuckle over the zero-defect policy. Based on experience, I have zero faith in zero defects – especially for an initial release.

Zero defects is a very worthwhile and commendable goal, but one practically impossible to obtain. The nearer a project comes to delivery, the more pressure is applied to compromise on the zero defects goal. As any project manager worth his or her salt will tell you, the key issue in project management is balancing the classic triple constraint: cost, schedule and quality. Choosing an absolute standard for any one of these constraints will increase the value of the other two. In the case of zero defects, costs increase and the schedule grows longer.

Now couple a zero-defect policy with the promise that the Fusion Applications will be released in 2008. We now have some absolute boundaries on not one, but two constraints: zero defects delivered by the end of 2008. Assuming that the quality and schedule constraints can both be obtained (and I’m only conceding this point for the moment), that leaves us “wiggle room” with only one constraint – cost. Simply put, hitting both the schedule and quality goal will likely cost some pretty big piles of cash. Hmmm, saving cash versus software quality…which concern do you think will take priority?

What usually happens is that, as the project comes close to the budgeted cost ceiling and the delivery day draws near, the decision is typically made to compromise on the zero-defects goal rather than exceed the budget and deliver late (for additional references on this trade-off, recall the early versions of the 11i E-Business Suite). I anticipate that the same trade-off will be made here, probably sometime in early 2008.

A zero-defects policy is a wonderful goal early in any development project. And I’ll tip my hat to anyone delivering a perfect initial release within budget and on schedule. However, experience indicates that software quality will usually lose out to cost and schedule. Do I expect the first release of Fusion Applications to be of higher quality than the early releases of the 11i E-Business Suite? Reading John Wookey’s words from that E-Week article, he sounds pretty serious about quality, so I’d say “yes”. However, any customer expecting zero defects should prepare for disappointment.