OraNA :: Oracle News Aggregator

PROGRAMA FORMACION PARTNERS Talleres FMW iSeminars DB Bootcamps DB&FMW Si deseas descargarte el calendario completo en PDF haz click aqui El equipo de Alianzas & Canal de Oracle a diseñado un Programa de Formación Gratuita exclusivo para Partners. Este calendario incluye diferentes seminarios y cursos que cubren tanto el área Comercial como Técnica de FMW (SOA, E2.0, IdM, BI) y DB & Options. Como Novedad, presentamos los Nuevos Bootcamps impartidos por Partners especialistas que le ayudaran a conseguir las especializaciones del nuevo programa de OPN a un precio realmente competitivo (250€ persona y día). Para más información haga click aqui

3 weeks of traveling through Asia and Australia - nearly 500 customers and partners in 8 workshops in Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing, Shenzhen, Singapore, Melbourne, Perth and Manila. Great people in all places, many interesting discussions, several new reference prospects for Oracle Database 11g Release 2 - YOU should upgrade as well pretty soon :-)

But now it's time to go home. We are a bit exhausted but we really enjoyed it talking to and with you. And I'd suppose we'll meet again the sooner or later.

Thanks to everybody - and special thanks to the local colleagues and especially to Abe-san, Kota-san, Blair Layton and Shaheen Ismail for taking care on us, organizing our workshops and the whole setup!!!

Thanks a lot to everybody for attending today in the Oracle Office in Manila. It was (actually it still is as we are still running the workshop at the moment) a pleasure for us - and great fun, too :-)
And, as always, please download the most recent version of the slides from here:
http://apex.oracle.com/folien
Use the keyword (Schluesselwort): upgrade112

Let us and the local colleagues from Oracle know once you have upgraded successfully - and don't wait too long - 10.2 goes out of Premier Support end of July this year - that's only 4.5 months to go.

OK so not a customized world, but do you know what goes into creating that customized web store front for you? How do you get those additional offers from vendors when you call in for service or when you are browsing a storefront.

This is what is has been happening behind the scenes. 

When a customer calls in a contact center for service, at the end of the conversation, they are offered a new product, or service. But what just transpired was that the CRM system that was in place had routed the call to the right agent, the agent got the pop up screen with the customer information, and the call request  was handled. Then came the decision point to cross-sell and up-sell, The agent got some recommended offers that were created based on analyzed data (this data had been put into a data warehouse, modeled, profiled and rules were implemented e.g.. People with profile X like product Y).  But with this system, what happens is that analytics can be applied to a very small subset.

Now comes Real Time Decisioning (RTD), this helps companies make optimal decisions in the context of transactional systems. It enables companies to improve business processes with real time intelligence on every single transaction. RTD is like a service plug-in that you put at the back of your transactional systems and that you  ping to get a recommendation.  It listens to business process flows and data moving through the process, getting all that data, processes all that you can do with that data, and gives out out various offers. It takes a process centric view of analytics rather than just a data centric view. It continuously observes and learns from ever-changing customer behavior and applies those insights to providing real-time decisions and recommendations at any customer touch point.

At Oracle we define Real Time Decisioning as “ The solution that addresses a business issue faced by all organizations : how to make accurate decisions, using the most up to date information, in real time…consistently and in large volumes”.

Here is a video on recommendation engines that are benefiting from real time decisioning today and see how it is helping online vendors.

In Support we field a lot of questions about the migration of Oracle Applications to different platforms.  This article describes the techniques available for migrating an Oracle Applications environment to a new platform and discusses some of the common questions that arise during migration.  This subject has been frequently discussed in previous blog articles but there still seems to be a gap regarding the type of questions we are frequently asked in Service Requests.

Some of the questions we see are quite abstract. Customers simply want to get a grip on understanding how they approach a migration. Others want to know if a particular architecture is viable. Other customers ask about mixing different platforms within a single Oracle Applications environment.   

Just to clarify, throughout this article, the term 'platform' refers specifically to operating systems and not to the underlying hardware. For a clear definition of 'platform' in the context of Oracle Applications Support then Terri's very timely article:

• Oracle E-Business Suite Platform Smörgåsbord
  

The migration process is very similar for both 11i and R12 so this article only mentions specific differences where relevant.

Right after Oracle OpenWorld 2009 we went right into planning for our 2010 World Tour. An ambitious 90+ city tour visiting cities on every continent.

 

The Oracle Applications Strategy Update Tour started January 19th and is in full swing right now. We've put some heavy hitters on the road. If you didn't get a chance to see Steve Miranda, Senior Vice President of Oracle Application Development in Tokyo, Anthony Lye, Senior Vice President of Oracle CRM Development in New Delhi or Sonny Singh, Senior Vice President of Oracle Industries Business Unit in Stockholm don't worry...we're not done yet.

The theme, Smart Strategies: Your Roadmap to the Future is a nod to the fact that everyone needs to be smart about what's going on in their business and industry right now. But just as important---how to make sure that you're on the course to where you need to be down the road. Get the big picture and key trends in "The New Normal" of today's business climate and drill down and find out about the latest and greatest innovations in Oracle Applications.

Check out http://www.oracle.com/events/applicationstour/index.html for an upcoming tour date near you. Pictures, feedback, summaries and learnings from the tour to come soon.

Over the last six months, the FASB and IASB have been working feverishly to converge US GAAP and IFRS standards to meet the 2011 deadline. In March alone, the standards-setters met eight times. Many people fear that this accelerated pace is compromising the quality of the end product and that maybe they should slow down and do their due diligence.

According to WG&L Accounting & Compliance Alert Checkpoint 3/10/2010, many people believe they should slow down their pace and pay more attention to quality, which might be compromised if they focus too much on reaching the 2011 finish line. Thus, I'm not holding my breath that the convergence will really be finalized by 2011.

I personally have mixed emotions about this. On one hand, I have been growing impatient with how slow the US has jumped on the IFRS band wagon. On the other hand, being the conservative that I am and knowing this convergence will be costly and disruptive to businesses, I would prefer to be safe than sorry and get it right the first time.

Note: To view the full article, it requires a subscription and unfortunately I am not allowed to copy any portion of it here.

After a busy Fall and Winter post-Oracle OpenWorld 2009 Oracle's Application Strategy Blog is back. More on what we've been up to shortly.

Me, I'm blogging here for the first time. After nearly 6 years at Oracle working on the Oracle Fusion Middleware business I've recently joined the Oracle Applications team. For me, what's old is new again. Prior to working on applications infrastructure at Oracle...and at BEA Systems before that...I worked at PeopleSoft in a number of roles spanning Enterprise Performance Management, Supply Chain, Public Sector and Financial Services and more. Some of the acronyms are the same, there are (of course) some new ones too.

But what I'm really excited about is the intersection of Enterprise Applications and Applications Infrastructure that's happening right now. "Aligning IT with Business Strategy" has been the buzzphrase for longer than we can all remember---but what I've seen over the past 5 months makes me start to believe that it's finally starting to happen.

My colleague Sam Haradhvala has written a great whitepaper on BDB JE HA/Replication. It takes a high level look at what JE/HA is, when you might use it, and the key architectural tradeoffs you might consider.

Many of our Oracle Database Insider blog readers have asked "how can I access your podcasts on iTunes"? It's really simple, just click here to view all our Oracle Database podcasts and subscribe (to get the latest podcasts automatically downloaded into your iTunes library). The price is free, so get on-board and start listening today on your iPod, iPhone, or simply straight off your computer via iTunes.

* Or if you don't have iTunes, click to download iTunes 9 (for Mac + PC).

This one is for standalone/BIEE uses of Publisher. All the ERP/CRM/HCM folks are already catered for and can tuck into a nut cutlet and arugala salad. Sorry, I have just watched Food Inc and even if only half of it is true; Im still on a crusade in my house against mass produced food. Wake up World!

If you have ventured into the world of sub templating, you'll be reaping some development benefit. In terms of shared report components and calculations they are very useful. Just exporting all of your report headers and footers to a single sub template can potentially save you hours and hours of work and make you look like a star. If someone in management gets it into their head that they would like Comic San Serif font rather than Arial in their report headers, its a 10 min job rather than 100 hours!

What about the rest of the report content? I hear you cry. Its coming in 11g, full master template support. Your management wants bright blue borders with yellow backgrounds for all the tables in your reports, 5 minute job!

Getting back to sub templates and my comment about all the ERP/CRM/HCM folks be catered for. In the standalone release there is no out of the box directory for you to drop your sub templates. Dropping them into the main report directory would make sense but they are not accessible there via a URL. An oversight on our part and something that will be addressed in 11g. Sub templates are now a first class citizen in the world of BIP, you can upload them and BIP will know what to do with them. But what do you do right now?

The easiest place to put them where BIP can 'see' them is to create a directory under the xmlpserver install directory in the J2EE container e.g.

$J2EE_HOME/xmlpserver/xmlpserver/subtemplates

You can call it whatever you want but when the server is started up, that directory is accessible via a URL i.e. http://tdexter:9704/xmlpserver/subtemplates/mysub.rtf. You can therefore put it into the top of your main templates and call the sub template.

<?import: http://tdexter:9704/xmlpserver/subtemplates/mysub.rtf?>

Of course, you can drop them anywhere you want, they just need to be in a web server mountable directory. Enjoy the arugala!

• Andy Mulholland: (Information Technology) + (Business Technology) ÷ Clouds = Infostructure
  "Internal information technology with its dedicated users, applications, licenses, client-server, data-centric and close coupled integration architecture cannot support externally oriented business technology where almost every condition is different. Internet connectivity and the emergence of people centric services in the web 2.0 world has led business and user expectations to shift dramatically and give rise to the expectation of a new and completely different working environment, based in the cloud, or more correctly, clouds." -- Andy Mulholland, CTO Blog, Capgemini
  (tags: enterprisearchitecture cloud web2.0 entarch)
• @myfear: Getting started with (GSW #2): GlassFish v3
  "If the application server/container of your choice is a Java EE compliant one, you are on the right track. This list is not too long these days, if you look for Java EE 6 compliant servers. The most prominent and well-known is also the Java EE 6 reference implementation (RI): The Oracle GlassFish v3." -- Oracle ACE Markus "@myfear" Eisele
  (tags: oracle otn oracleace glassfish java)
• @oraclenerd: The"Database is a Bucket" Mentality
  "Could it be that everyone out there believes that the sole purpose of a database is to store data? That it can't do anything else?" -- Chet "@oraclenerd" Justice
  (tags: otn oracle database dba)
• The Encyclopedia of SOA
  "SOA is an anagram for OSA, which means female bear in spanish. It is a well-known fact in the spanish-speaking world that female bears are able to model business processes and optimize reusable IT assets better than any other hibernating animal." -- One of the surprisingly funny nuggets of wisdom available in the Encyclopedia of SOA.
  (tags: architecture chucknorris humor soa software technology webservices)
• Marina Fisher: Book Review - Web 2.0 Fundamentals
  Marina Fisher reviews WEB 2.0 FUNDAMENTALS by Oswald Campesato and Kevin Nilson.
  (tags: sun web2.0 bookreview socialnetworking)

Is Jdeveloper hanging on you when use the XPATH expression Builder? Have a look at the Release notes for 11.1.1.2. This will relieve a lot of frustration.

http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E15523_01/doc.1111/e14770/bpel.htm#BABECHBF

16.1.6 Oracle JDeveloper May Hang When Using the Expression Builder

Using the Expression Builder to build XPath expressions may cause Oracle JDeveloper to hang. If that happens, perform the following steps:

1. Kill the Oracle JDeveloper process.

2. Restart Oracle JDeveloper.

3. Select Tools > Preferences > SOA, and deselect the Validate Expression checkbox.

After performing these steps, Oracle JDeveloper should no longer hang.

Welcome to the PGBU partner searchlight blog. Please stay tuned for our upcoming posts

We had a great day with +50 customers in Perth - so thanks to everybody! We hope you'd enjoy the day as well. And thanks to Tim for the excellent organization!!!
And - again as always - please download the most recent version of the slides (and we've changed a few of them during the Perth workshop) from here:
http://apex.oracle.com/folien
Use the keyword (Schluesselwort): upgrade112

So hope to see you all next time again when we'll visit this amazing country - and sorry in advance if we'll beat Australia (and maybe Serbia as well) in World Cup 2010 :-))))

Das in meinem Posting von neulich erwähnte Customer Success Forum zu dem Projekt bei Zebra Technologies ist aufgezeichnet worden und inzwischen hier verfügbar.

Dazu gibt es außerdem eine Zusammenfassung in Form eines Customer Snapshot als PDF (Download hier), sowie einen Video (hier).

The position(s): CORPORATE RECRUITING RESEARCH ANALYST(S)

ABOUT ORACLE

Oracle's business is information--how to manage it, use it, share it, protect it. For three decades, Oracle, the world's largest enterprise software company, has provided the software and services that allow organizations to get the most up-to-date and accurate information from their business systems.

Only Oracle powers the information-driven enterprise by offering a complete, integrated solution for every segment of the process industry. When you run Oracle applications on Oracle technology, you speed implementation, optimize performance, and maximize ROI.
Great hiring doesn't happen by accident; it's the culmination of a series of thoughtfully planned and well executed events. At the core of any hiring process is a sourcing strategy. This is where you come in...

Do you want to be a part of a world-class recruiting organization that's on the cutting edge of technology? Would you like to experience a rewarding work environment that allows you to further develop your skills, while giving you the opportunity to develop new skills? If you answered yes, you've taken your first step towards a future with Oracle. We are building a Research Team to support our North America Recruitment Team, and we need creative, smart, and ambitious individuals to help us drive our research department forward.

Oracle has a track record for employing and developing the very best in the industry. We invest generously in employee development, training and resources. Be a part of the most progressive internal recruiting team in the industry. For more information about Oracle, please visit our Web site at http://www.oracle.com

Escape the hum drum job world matrix, visit the Oracle and be a part of a winning team, apply today.

POSITION: Corporate Recruiting Research Analyst

LOCATION: Bangalore, India

RESPONSIBILITIES:

•Develop candidate pipeline using Web 2.0 sourcing strategies and advanced Boolean Search techniques to support U.S. Recruiting Team for various job functions and levels.

•Engage with assigned recruiters to understand the supported business as well as the recruiting requirements; partner with recruiters to meet expectations and deliver a qualified pipeline of candidates.

•Source candidates to include both active and passive job seekers to provide a strong pipeline of qualified candidates for each recruiter; exercise creativity to find candidates using Oracle's advanced sourcing tools/techniques.

•Fully evaluate candidate's background against the requirements provided by recruiter, and process leads using ATS (Applicant Tracking System).

•Manage your efforts efficiently; maintain the highest levels of client satisfaction as well as strong operations and reporting of research activities.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS:

•Fluent in English, with excellent written and oral communication skills.
•Undergraduate degree required, MBA or Masters preferred.
•Proficiency with Boolean Search techniques desired.
•Ability to learn new software applications quickly.
•Must be able to accommodate some U.S. evening hours.
•Strong organization and attention to detail skills.
•Prior HR or corporate in-house recruiting experiences a plus.
•The fire in the belly to learn new ideas and succeed.
•Ability to work in team and individual environments.

This is an excellent opportunity to join Oracle in our Bangalore Offices. Interested applicants can send their resume to david.talamelli@oracle.com or contact David on +61 3 8616 3364

When developing on top of a portal platform to support an intranet or extranet, a portion of the development time is spent adjusting the out-of-box user templates to adjust the look and feel of the platform for your organization. Generally your deployment will not need to look like anything like the sites posted on http://cssremix.com/ or http://www.webcreme.com/, but will meet business needs by adjusting basic elements like navigation, color palate and logo placement.

After spending some time doing custom UI development with WebCenter Spaces 11G I have gathered a few tips that I hope can help to speed anyone's efforts to quickly "skin" a WebCenter Spaces deployment. A detailed white paper was released that outlines a technique to quickly update the UI during runtime - http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/webcenter/pdf/owcs_r11120_cust_skins_runtime_wp.pdf. Customizing at "runtime" means using CSS and images to adjust the page layout and feel, which when creatively done can change the pages drastically.

WebCenter also allows for detailed templates to manage the placement of major page elements like menus, sidebar, etc, but by adjusting only images and CSS we can end up with something like the custom solution shown below.

view large image

Let's dive right in and take a look at some tools to make our efforts more efficient.

Greetings everyone!

If you're reading this, hopefully it's because you have been following our series of webcasts on Oracle 11gR2 that we've been hosting on Wordpress. If you found us some other way, well that's even better - the more the merrier as they say.

In either case, welcome to our new blog!!! Over the next few days, Ill move the old posts from wordpress to here its all in the one location.

Right! Who are we? The authors of this blog are the ANZ Inside Consulting Team.

Currently, this is made of of:

1. Tom Jurcic
2. Yasin Mohammed
3. Andrew Clarke
4. Rene Poels and
   
5. me - Alex Blyth

Basically, our role in Oracle is to help users of our technologies get the most of their existing investments as well as what's new, old, blue, what have you...

Ideally, this is all going to be technical in nature and not of a marketing nature (we'll leave the marketing up to others).

For now, there's obviously not much here. But that won't last too long. In the mean time, those who are interested can find replays and slides of our previous webcasts on the "Oracle 11g Webcasts" page.

Till next time

Alex

Hey Folks--It's "elephant in the room" time. Imagine a representative from a CRM VENDOR discussing CRM FAILURES. Well. I recently saw this blog post from Michael Krigsman on "six ways CRM projects go wrong."

Now, I know this may come off defensive, but my comments apply to ALL CRM vendors, not just Oracle. As I perused the list, I couldn't find any failures related to technology. They all seemed related to people or process. Now, this isn't about finger pointing, or impugning customers. I love customers! And when they fail, WE fail.

Although I sit in the cheap seats, i.e., I haven't funded any multi-million dollar CRM initiatives lately, I kept wondering how to convert the perception of failure as something that ends and is never to be mentioned again (see Michael's reason #4), to something that one learns from and builds upon.

So to continue my tradition of speaking in platitudes, let me propose the following three tenets:

1) Try and get ahead of your failures while they're very very small.
2) Immediately assess what you can learn from those failures.
3) With more than 15 years of CRM deployments, seek out those vendors that have a track record both in learning from "misses" and in supporting MANY THOUSANDS of CRM successes at companies of all types and sizes.

Now let me digress briefly with an unpleasant (for me, anyway) analogy. I really don't like flying. Call it 'fear of dying' or 'fear of no control.' Whatever! I've spoken with quite a few commercial pilots over the years, and they reassure me that there are multiple failures on most every flight. We as passengers just don't know about them. Most of them are too miniscule to make a difference, and most of them are "caught" before they become LARGER failures. It's typically the mid-sized to colossal failures we hear about, and a significant percentage of those are due to human error.

What's the point? I'd propose that organizations consider the topic of FAILURE in five grades. On one end, FAILURE Grade 1 is a minor/miniscule failure. On the other end, FAILURE Grade 5 is a colossal failure A Grade 1 CRM FAILURE could be that a particular interim milestone was missed. Why? What can we learn from that? How can we prevent that from happening as we proceed through the project?

Individual organizations will need to define their own Grade 2 and Grade 3 failures. The opportunity is to keep those Grade 3 failures from escalating any further. Because honestly, a GRADE 5 failure may not be recoverable. It could result in a project being pulled, countless amounts of hours and dollars lost, and jobs lost. We don't want to go there.

In closing, I want to thank Michael for opening my eyes up to the world of "color," versus thinking of failure as both "black and white" and a dead end road that organizations can't learn from and avoid discussing like the plague.